When the Fae of the star court visited Earth during the bronze age and early iron age they struck a deal with the gods and other primordials that had interests in this world. What this deal exactly entailed is unknown. The star court was allowed to appropriate humans over the years until they had a sizable population of various cultures. The Fae put these people on a new world, a world where magic flowed stronger that on earth and their gods came with them.
One of these groups were people of what is now known as Ireland, their descendants remember this place as "Eirè" and although few stories have survived about this mysterious place of origin it is clear to them that the Fomorians, Firbolg, Sidhe, and even the Tuath Dé Dannan existed back then as well.
according to the stories, the Fomorians were the first inhabitants of Eirè who were challenged by the Fir Bolg, these two would then be overthrown by the Tuath Dé Dannan, though the Fomoire seemingly allied with the Dé Danann at first. The origins of the "Goodly folk", the Aos Sidhe is also unclear but almost all druids and bards agree that they were responsible for bringing their people to Talam ùr.
The specifics are unknown to them, they know not of the courts, but they do know of the "Sidhe", their power, and the "otherworld".
Most humans living on Talam ùr call themselves "folk of Eirè", referencing the mysterious place where they originated from. After being brought to Talam ùr in separate groups the Tuatha Dé Dannan tried to help them in building a new existence, however, during this period the Fomire, diminished Fae that had a rivalry with the Tuath Dé Dannan managed to find a way to Talam ur and attacked them in full force.
this war raged on for centuries and meanwhile, the separated groups tried to survive, some who had been brought here with some resources and tools fortified themselves and tried to survive by farming and hunting. In these early days three groups came into being that are somewhat separate from the normal "Folk of éire", the Faoladh, the folk of the scythe, and the Muirgheilt.
The following descriptions are a summary of these concepts, but i am unsure if this could work, though i hope it will.
The Faoladh are descendants of earthborn "werewolves" unlike true shapeshifters these people can freely turn into an animal or hybrid form. this ability comes from the rituals that created werewolves in the Neolithic era, the Faoladh are descendants of people affected by a weaker ritual, their claws are not anti-magical and they cannot turn others into werewolves and they are in full control of their ability. The Faoladh’s population is large enough to reproduce themselves without inbreeding and thus after multiple generations, they have become somewhat distinct from normal humans with wolf-like eyes, a more muscular body, and legs that are seemingly starting to become digitigrade
these traits are however mostly found in the Tuath Connoicht, a territory that the Faoladh ruled and protected during the war between Tuath Dé Dannan and Fomoire and where most of them live. Faoladh that live elsewhere are more likely less wolf-like in appearance. Though there are relatively few of them they can be found outside of the Tuath Connoicht, often as sellswords.
The Tuath Péal are what we would call "giants", standing twice as tall as a large human they are descended from a group of people that prayed to their ancestors for aid as they were having trouble surviving in this strange land. Their ancestors, the Fir Bolg granted them aid in the form of a transformation that would create the first Giants, or that is at least what most people believe as the giants do not often speak of the Fir Bolg or their origins.
The larger tribes of giants are known as the (folk of the scythe), as they have over generations turned to farming to survive. There are more than 20000 Giants on Talam ùr nowadays, a small population compared to the more than 100000 normal humans living on this humongous island though there are similar populations on the other islands as well which suggests that at some point they crossed the frozen bridges during the Winter of Mourne when the human settlements struggled to survive to seek for new lands and resources.
In rare cases where giants and men fight the giants have the overall advantage, however since they need far more food their true weakness is their supplies, this is less a weakness for the Tuath Fiach who are nomadic but for the Tuath Peal this is a big problem. have less skill in crafting armor and weapons and fewer numbers than the smaller humans such wars have always ended in stalemates. Giants have the same weak spots as normal humans and spears are very effective against them. These clashes are however unlikely, giants might have two times the strength of an average man but they also are far less warlike.
They are very talented stonecrafters and buildings made by giants are works of art.
The Muirgheilt are however an enigma to most, they are considered as a form of Sidhe by most, but the truth is far more terrifying, these half-human, half-fish/seal creatures were once humans. They struck a deal to escape the Fomorians with a Sidhe and have since then developed into their own species (They are the least fleshed out of all these concepts)
The idea is that most of these people have due to their history learned to cooperate, it is no utopia but overall Faoladh and the folks of the scythe and of Eirè live together under the rule of an Ard Ri, a high king to who the other provincial Ri owe fealty. Most of Talam ùr is wilderness and thus cooperation is necessary to survive Fomorian raids for example.
Their cultures are something I still have to flesh out, but I wanted to ask if these concepts might work for a Celtic inspired island.

Hello!
Here is my feedback to the developers of MTGA which I would like for them to read and probably do something with it. This post is solely devoted to the non-core part of the game, which I consider to be a premium part of it: cosmetics. Let me start with the most recent events.

1. Pre-orders

Now with the LotR preorders out we can compare them with what we had before. For 2 sets, starting from ONE, we had a split preorder which was known before that as Play bundle which was targeting those who don't want to buy packs (mostly those, who builds their collection through the drafts). I will still consider both play + pass bundle as one bundle since that's how I buy and it makes the comparison easier.
Both ONE and MOM play bundles were of the same value:

• Sealed token
• 2 draft tokens
• 5 Play-In Points
• 2 different mythic card art sleeves
• 2 different mythic cards + their styles
• Unique pet
• Mastery Pass

And compare it to the LotR preorder:

• Sealed token
• 2 draft tokens
• 5 Play-In Points
• Mythic card art sleeves
• Mythic card + style
• Mastery Pass

So if we pre-order LotR we lose a mythic card, its parallax style and a pet. If you take the pet's value from the store we are missing out on (1200 + 3000 + price_of_the_mythic_card) ~= 4200 gems or 20$. So we buy essentially the same product which we bought previously but now we are getting 20$ less content from a bundle which costs 40$. So get basically half of what you usually get. Not cool.
Yes, the pre-order can still be considered good in terms of gems-to-$ but it doesn't matter to me, because I felt like we had a contract which terms won't be worse as we proceed. Yes we didn't signed anything but since the things have been the same for some years I used to some particular treatment and wouldn't mind the terms to improve. But when the terms deteriorated it left me confused to say the least. That's why I choose not to buy any of the pre-orders this time (first time since IKO!): you violated the contract so I have to abstain from buying it, even if I want to—I just can't condone such a behavior. And given that my main game formats are Historic + Alchemy + Limited I'm the target audience for this set and pre-order, what an irony.
So whoever is in charge of this change just lost a customer who has been buying the product for 3 years (apart from me not playing during VOW-SNC). And even if the next set is done better than this one, like the old ones, the damage is still done, you lost some of the goodwill. From now on the pre-orders are no longer must buy for me. Nice!ly done.

2. Daily deals

Since the DD has been introduced we had the following unwritten contract:

• 40-50% off the most recent cards (mostly 50% with occasional 40%).
• 50-75% off the older cards.
• Occasional, but not rare, 80-95% off some card. Cards usually playable.
• All rare duals/triome land parallax styles within ~2 weeks of the set release. All at once for 50% off.

Personal story of how I dealt with these deals. I bought all the lands. Bought all the 60%+ outside of the cards I deemed unplayable. Bought most of the 50% if I could imagine playing some of these cards later. Many of the cards I ended up never using but that was ok. Also I was unwilling to spend more than 3000 gems per day, just a personal quirk. I spent a lot on DD styles. Anyway, it was always fun to check the DD every day and read what other people think about the cards offered: what is playable, how good they are etc.
Of course, there was a room for improvement for the DDs: more thematic sales, like tribals, deck that won something, most played cards in this month etc. (like a few days ago was the best deal in months, featuring Creativity card styles; both discount and card selection were great). Instead, some 7-8 months ago you broke this contract and filled the DD with uplayable cards, which sometimes are not playable even in the corresponding draft format, accompanied by the bad discounts.
Now we have 20%-40% for the new and old cards alike. Most of the time the card selection is boring even for bigger discount. There is nothing to read about the deals because it is mostly gloom and despair. In ONE you didn't even sell all the rare dual land styles which never happened before! I don't know what numbers are telling you but as far as I'm concerned you almost killed the thing that needed an improvement and it is sad. Why almost? Because I still have hope.
Now personal story of how my dealing changed. I do not buy anymore styles which I won't play today or tomorrow. They became expensive and I don't want to buy them. Only what is necessary I buy. And it doesn't matter anymore if it is 50% today because I know that everything else will be expensive tomorrow so I'd rather keep my money for what I really need. For example, recently the MOM Kogla card was offered for 50% and while before it was a snap buy (because I see myself playing it in some unknown-yet deck), now I just abstained because right now I don't have or see the deck I want to put it in. With this change I mostly stopped using gems to buy styles because the rare occasions I buy them, I can use gold which keeps growing for having nothing else to spend it on. Since the DD has been introduced I almost never had gold on my account until 6-8 months ago. Now I almost always have it. Oops.

3. Card styles

And finally I want to point out the most egregious part of the negligence toward the premium content and us, buyers. Implementation of the so called depth art card styles, or parallax styles as we, MTGA people, call it. Here are the problems with them that I know of.

3.1 Styles exist/existed but not applied to the cards.

There are many cards which were lacking styles before these styles were added through the spellbooks or conjuring of the corresponding digital-only cards (aka Alchemy). Most of them were also applied to the older cards but not all of them. Cards like Colossus Hammer, Blood Artist and Youthful Valkyrie all have styles implemented but you can't buy/apply these styles to the existing standalone cards. That should be fixed.
NOTE: this and later lists are not comprehensive and are here to illustrate the problem, not to build an exhaustive list of all the problems. I'd appreciate (and hope the devs would too) if you improve these lists by commenting with the cards these lists are lacking.

3.2 Styles for the tokens.

While you seem to have some kind of diligence as far as main cards are concerned you seem to casually ignore tokens which these cards are producing. The most egregious example is the release of MOM where no card generates a parallax token. Not a single one. The main theme with incubators and none of them are implemented properly. Guys, that's really really bad. You seem to not understand that for us, buyers, the token is as important as the main card. And I'm not just talking about cards like Sunfall or Ral's Reinforcement where it should be obvious. I'm talking about consistency: I want my part of the board to look consistent, which means all the permanents on my side should not have borders.
If I have cards that I can't make lose borders then the consistency dies and I stop caring about other cards, essentially making me not wanting to buy anything at all! One more time: tokens are as important as the main card, they all should be parallaxed. And if some card, having parallax style, produces non-parallax token then it should be considered a bug which has to be fixed. We don't know if the card worked before or not and we shouldn't bother to know that: no style, report, get it fixed. As simple as that; for everyone.
Speaking of which the following list presents you with the cards (category of cards, really) which used to produce the styled tokens but not anymore (and for some this "anymore" is how long, year, more than a year?): Wedding Announcement (staple card in virtually any white deck in Standard!), Verdant Command (squirrels), DnD treasures (Prosperous Innkeeper and many other playable cards), Legion's Landing. Is this list exhaustive? I don't think so but these I came up with anyway. What should we do with the styles we bought months ago? Should we ask for refund en mass? Thinking...
And there is another list of playable cards which to my knowledge never produced styled tokens: Saprolings (Slimefoot and Squee is now a playable card, sapros should be styled), Devils from “Ob Nixilis, The Adversary”, Rhino for Titan Of Industry, Cats & Dogs from Jinnie Fay, Angels from Resplendent Angel (staple in the angels).
So 2 lists, the first one is full of bugs the second is full of job-not-done. I know that, because I'm curious and have been playing this game for long. Average user doesn't and shouldn't know that. So for the avg user both lists should be the same: bugs. And bugs should be fixed. Since these bugs are in the premium content they should be fixed ASAP. The only thing that outclasses it is the core gameplay. And for these bugs there should be a separate category on a normal bug tracker where people can get some feedback, not this seemingly abandoned self-hosted User Voice where you post to oblivion.

3.3. Non-existent styles for the staple cards.

Now let's go to the territory of missed opportunities. The following list contains the list of cards which are staple in meta decks but never had the styles for them added:
Munitions Expert, Reckless Charge, Shoreline Scout's conjured Land, Regal Force from Freyalise, Sterling Grove, Parhellion II, Damping Sphere, Elvish Clancaller.
And here is another list with not staples but solid cards which saw and still see play in probably not tier 1 but solid competitor decks: Dwynen's Elite, Spawn Of Mayhem, Legion's Lieutenant, Champion of Dusk, Vicious Conquistador, Herald's Horn, Shaper's Sanctuary, Archon of Emeria.
And finally to some interesting example which we had with SIS (bonus-sheet subset to Shadows Over Innistrad Remastered, or SIR). We have styles for Falkenrath Noble, Kruin Outlaw and Barter in Blood but don't have styles for Snapcaster Mage, Avacyn's Pilgrim (and/or Young Wolf), Griselbrand. 3 whatever cards have styles while 3 playables with 2 of them iconic (?) do not. Who planned the implementation of these styles? Good game.
So this section is about missing opportunities. Why? Because you fail to present me with the options to buy. I want to buy styles in general but I snap buy the styles for the staple cards I can play every day and in multiple decks. We have tons of cards, mostly from the time when there were no paralax styles, still not implemented. But with SIR & SIS we had a newly introduced to Arena set which has most of the cards unstyled. Not cool.
I get it, you have only so much you can do with the resources you have. I really do and if you can't for some reason style every card from the past let's implement the priority queue where we, the users, will vote for what should be implemented next. You create a list of all the not-implemented card styles and we vote. You implement the top-voted style and remove it from the poll. That way we will see progress, have influence on what should be done next and you will see what styles people are not interested in and can be safely ignored. Implemented styles should be put into the patch notes so we know when to come back and vote again.
So that's how I see the final solution:

1. All new-to-Magic sets should be fully styled. It is your face, it is what new and casual users will meet with first. You can't tolerate half-baked premium content there.
2. New-to-Arena (but not to Magic, like SIR) should be fully styled if possible. If not then the priority should be deduced from the MTGO data (or other data you think is better) of the most playable cards in the formats Arena has some access to (Explorer ~ Pioneer, Modern ~ Historic, Historic Brawl ~ Commander) and implemented accordingly. The rest should be added to the vox populi list of delayed implementation.

3.4 A few words about other styles.

Sagas is another thing that is a bit controversial and inconsistent. Most of them are not parallaxed and, in my opinion, the saga permanent itself should not be parallaxed. It doesn't need this treatment they are good as is. But some of them still should have parallax styles. Why? Because some of them produce tokens or transform. You had Tymaret Calls the Dead parallax style implemented which reflects on the saga but not tokens. Instead it should produce parallax tokens and the saga itself can be unstyled (anyone have other opinion on that?). The same goes to other token generating sagas like History of Benalia and others. But the more important ones are the NEO sagas which transform into creatures. While, again, the saga permanent doesn't need to be parallaxed the resulting creature should.
So when you implemented everything mentioned in this post I will finally being able to have my side of the board fully styled in one consistent style. For which I paid real money because there is no way for a f2p player to style their decks fully and consistently. As far as I'm concerned it is a win-win for both parties. Because the other way to have your side of the board consistent is to not have styles at all. And that is lose-lose for me and you.
--
The last topic I'd like to touch is parallax lands. IIRC the last parallaxed non-full art basic lands were implemented in Eldraine and then you stopped (snow lands in KHM were also gorgeous). The only full-art lands which got parallax styles were Nyx lands from THB. It is the other thing that you are missing out: probably not every set has beautiful basics but LotR has some, why not implement the parallax lands there? Same goes to some full art lands. I get it that you need a square to have the land looks cool but some of them can be cut to squares and still look good, so maybe experiment some? Lands are sellers, aren't they?
Personally, I stopped buying lands after THB because they have borders. I really like my THB lands but don't mind to buy some others to have some diversity across the decks. Oh, and give the people who wasn't lucky playing during THB an opportunity to buy these parallaxed lands. Take their money they are throwing at you!
Anyway my long feedback post is finally over, not that I don't have anything more to say, I just think it is enough for now. I hope u/WotC_Jay and other people responsible for making decisions for this game will read it in words and spirit. If I was harsh in some words, I don't really meant it that way. I wish this game all the best and hence this post. But only you can make it happen, so...
Your Go

Bloons TD 6 v37.0 - Update Notes!
Rolling out now on iOS, Android, Steam please restart your storefront or be patient if it does not appear for you, these updates can take some time to be rolled out to every region due to how the storefronts are set up.
Key New Features

• New Paragon - The Magus Perfectus! (loves casting spells) Some of you know we teased this last year, but we needed more time to balance the art and design required to make this extra special, so we are very pleased to get this live! Wizard Monkey’s Paragon is designed to be a higher level strategic Paragon with powerful ability usage similar to the Doomship.
  
  • The core of the Magus is a toggle to and from a Draining Beam which deals very small single target damage but absorbs graveyard mana as it damages and destroys Bloons
  • While toggled off from the Drain Beam, Magus attacks with a powerful Arcane Spike that deals massive damage to MOABs and revives Bloons it slays, while a Dark Phoenix circles overhead attacking with Firebomb breath and a radial fireball attack
  • Phoenix Explosion Ability: can be cast to consume the Paragon’s entire graveyard to set all Bloons on screen on fire for 30 seconds and summon one Zombie ZOMG for every 9000 graveyard mana consumed
  • Arcane Metamorphosis Ability: can be used to consume all graveyard mana and transform the Magus briefly into an alternate form which decimates everything with a flame cascade attack; Metamorphosis lasts longer the more mana it consumes
  • Magus was designed for armchair play so it will fill and consume graveyard mana on its own, but our goal was to create more actively controlled Paragon for those who will enjoy microing between Beam on and off and choosing which awesome Ability to unleash and when

New Awesome

• Happy Birthday BTD6 - On June 14th, BTD6 will celebrate 5 years of monkeytastic fun and strategy! We hope you’ll join us for the main menu changes, skinned Collection event, special Questing, and general celebration. Thank you for five amazing years and we’re looking forward to all the years ahead!
• New Hero Skin - Jiangshi Sauda, a fun new cross-cultural look for Sauda brainstormed by the art team, mixing inspirations from a favorite show and Chinese folklore
• New Map - Erosion
  
  • Community designed advanced map Erosion
  • TheWiseTroll’s original concept proposed land and water but when thinking about map colors and the little stories we think of behind each map, the concept of the polar bear walking back with the shrinking ice was too compelling to do anything else
• New Quests
  
  • Birthday Party - Pop the Party Bloon as many times as you can before it escapes
  • Blade Sauda Nowhere - Try out Sauda and learn some of her skills
  • Patch’s Cheap Chimps Challenge - Beat Logs with as little cash spent as you can
  • Striken Bad - Defeat the BAD on round 100 using First Strike. The spelling hurts us, too, you’re not the only one - but we had to do it!
• Least Cash and Least Tier Boss Events
  
  • We’ve heard feedback about and have been wanting to shake up Boss rules, so here we go!
  • Applying new victory conditions to Boss Events completely changes the focus while still needing the damage output and type to handle each Boss
  • Time still matters, as the secondary time score will break any ties
• New Trophy Store Items
  
  • Heroes: Geraldo Pack Mule pet, Quincy Spec Ops Drop In placement
  • Monkeys: Sweden Village Flag
  • Bloons: Party Hat Bloons
  • Game & UI: Vortex Avatar, Sunset Samba 64 Mix music track, Quincy Arrows banner
  • Nexus.gg Creator Supporter Avatar - show your support for Content Creators by using the Creator Support button on the Settings screen and purchasing any IAP
• Limited Time only {trophy items if there’s a seasonal}
  
• 5 Year Anniversary Avatar, 5 Year Anniversary Banner
  
• New CT Team Store items
  
  • Base Props: Treasure Chest
  • Icons: Overclock icon, Archmage Staff icon
  • Frames: Bloon From The Dead frame, Mage Hat frame
• New Slider
  
  • Everybody loves sliders, right?
  • After lots of discussion on the team and a fair few player requests, we’ve added a ‘Projectile and Effects Scaling’ accessibility option to main menu Settings
  • This is primarily for accessibility to minimize the size and brightness of projectiles and effects, especially when the screen is crowded with Monkeys and Bloons
  • This is not directly a performance improvement feature, so please do not expect the game to run noticeably better - just noticeably cleaner
  • We tried not to remove key game state indicators but this is ultimately in player control - if you adjust the slider and effects and projectiles make it harder to play the game, please reset the slider until the game is working the way you want
  • It’s also really fun for silly screengrabs, so please post your favorites!

​
Game Changes / Additions

• New Party Time game theme event!
• Refactored how leaderboard scores are stored so that we could add Least Cash/Tiers ranking options for Boss Events
• Bosses on spawn will now clear the map of all existing projectiles
• Highest Round profile stat renamed to Highest Round (All Time) & added in the new profile stat Highest Round (Current Version).
• The 4 different Highest Round profile stats are now grouped together near the top of the profile stats page
• Freeplay budget scaling reduced slightly (same speed/hp, but number of Bloons added per round will increase at a slower rate)
• Added a new Roundset with Income curve to be used by our events team; this customized income curve allows us more flexibility to make this roundset than would otherwise have been possible with existing roundset tools
• Translated game into Thai

Quest Changes

• Added a ‘Play Again’ button to the victory screen for quests
• Added a ‘Disable Dialogue’ checkmark for some quests after beating them
• Game hints are now hidden during Quests
• Story Quests now sort to the top of the quest list & completed Story Quests sort to the bottom

Bug Fixes & General Changes

• A large number of localization fixes - thanks for the player feedback on your pet peeves!
• Resolved a number of general crashes
• Number of additions/changes to improve existing quests, highlight scores to beat & increase our possibilities for quest creation
• Resolved an issue with abilities highlighted in quests remaining highlighted after restarting
• Holding down on a tower should correctly hide the UI again
• Quests no longer play placement effects for any pre-placed towers
• Resolved an issue that could prevent Total Damage from counting correctly to profile
• Resolved an issue where total insta monkeys profile stat would decrease if the instas were used
• Resolved certain very specific freeplay seeds causing crashes on certain rounds
• Bloons Leaked summary no longer gets cleared in co-op after reviewing map
• Stairs in the top corners on Resort are now placement blockers
• Resolved a crash that could occur when waiting on the events screen as events end
• Resolved a crash that could occur when the Hero Booster popup was canceling via any map mechanics forcing the player to deselect the hero
• Fixed some towers not targeting the test bloon when set to target type Strong
• Fixed position of the full patch notes link on update popups on some resolutions
• Midnight Mansion plays a fishie animation in the bloon exit on loading in
• Resolved an issue where placed items on the map lose their cosmetic skins after a resync occurs during a co-op game.
• Obtaining towers from redistribution on co-op that are still locked for you will now show messaging in the unlocks screen as to why you are not earning XP for it
• Pressing back from the avatabanner selection will now just back out of that selection
• Changed Pop Count on summary screen to Damage Count and added actual Pop Count
• Hero portraits no longer linger too long on the screen after exiting the upgrades menu in game
• Paragon art state changes moved from 22/42/62/82 to 20/40/60/80
• Resolved map-based buffs not inheriting to subtowers correctly
• Resolved an issue where an external proxy could sometimes cause the game to hang on loading forever
• Co-op red areas fade in more slowly when you cross the boundary
• Resolved online/Invisible profile setting displaying text incorrectly
• Audio polish when opening reward chests in the collection event
• Updated wording on logout screen to address some confusion
• Added a background to the rewards UI
• Added confirmation pop-up for In App Purchases added from outside the game
• Monklish font has been regenerated to include the Māori macrons

Tower Specific Fixes
Ice Monkey

• Resolved a number of cases of the xx2 Refreeze crosspath not re-freezing bloons when dealing certain numbers of damage.

Monkey Buccaneer

• xx5 Trade Empire should no longer buff too many merchants in co-op
• Resolved tower moving from flagship to navarch displaying vfx at the wrong scale
• Resolved "Paragon available" pip displaying for Buccaneer with only Flagship and Pirate Lord unlocked
• Resolved an issue where Navarch’s attack rate buff would not apply to Doomship in some cases depending on build order

Monkey Ace

• xx2 Centered Path ace no longer displays it’s placement target on screen initially when loading a save
• Upgrading to 002 Ace no longer refreshes the cooldown on the special toggle
• Resolved an issue with Monkey Ace jumping offscreen after a Retry Last Round

Banana Farm

• 5xx Banana Central no longer buffs other Banana Centrals in co-op

Engineer

• 1xx Engineers can now place their sentries correctly on One Two Tree
• Overclocking a 5xx Engineer’s sentry just as it starts exploding no longer crashes the game
• Engineer Paragon no longer crashes if created while a Bloontrap is being deployed
• Engineer Paragon no longer crashes when selling the main tower while it has a sentry moving through the air that has not landed yet
• Engineer Paragon should no longer throw sentries into the middle of the map due to techbots
• Resolved an issue where the Paragon’s permanent speed boost per round would not load until the end of the first round played after loading a save

Beast Handler

• 3xx Great White projectiles can no longer hit bloons far out of range
• 3xx Great White rare crash that could occur at end of rounds has been resolved
• 3xx Great White’s slow applied to grabbed target now expires correctly
• 310 Beast Handler now has eyebrows, just like that one map suggestion
• Corrected the splash asset for crosspathed 4xx & 5xx Beasts
• Merging an Orca into a Megalodon while it's taking out a bad should no longer cause a 2nd Megalodon to briefly appear
• x1x Microraptor no longer fails to attack in some cases when being moved to different heights
• x4x Tyrannosaurus Rex ability now scales with Challenge Editor ability cooldown slider
• Beast Handler's bird targeting no longer breaks when set to strong if bloons are leaving radius
• Resolved a crash that could occur when moving a beast to the screen boundary

Hero Specific Fixes
Obyn Greenfoot

• Resolved an issue where Obyn’s Wall of Trees when placed on an intersection looping back around on itself would not be able to hit the children of any targets that passed over it

Psi

• Resolved a crash that could occur when attacking glued Bloons

Geraldo

• Resolved an issue where selling Geraldo, and then re-buying him would show the description of the last-viewed store item from before selling him

Platform Specific fixes

• PC: Beast Handler’s hotkey in the hotkeys menu has been moved up near the rest of the support towers
• PC: Added a ‘ Monkey Special 2’ hotkey (for towers like Beast Handler, Necromancers & Ace Paragon). By default the Special 1 & Special 2 hotkeys have been assigned to PageUp & PageDown and ordered so that PageUp triggers the upper specialty, and PageDown triggers the lower one
• Arcade: Resolved a strange one pixel wide black line that can appear above some text characters on the arcade font
• Chromebook: Game no longer crashes if attempting to login via webview
• Chromebook: Resolved an issue with bluetooth mice being unable to scroll

Balance Changes
Boomerang Monkey
This part has to be included along with the Lych Soul rework with Paragons which is finally making it in this update after necessary delays. As Boomerang Paragon’s knockback hits so many times so quickly, we need to make it more reasonable when applied to targets that aren’t immediately destroyed.

• Boomerang Paragon knockback amount reduced 3 > 1

Bomb Shooter
MOAB Assassin fills a useful role of a pure long cooldown ‘single target assassination’ in the game, but when compared to something like First Strike it feels a little lacking that it is unable to carry damage through MOAB Layers

• x4x MOAB Assassin ability passes through MOAB layers
• x4x MOAB Assassin ability explosion centers around the impact target

Tack Shooter
Blade Shooter has always struggled to find much value without MK or as a step to Maelstrom, so to give it build value on its own we feel like this should be a part of the base value on the upgrade.

• x3x Blade Shooter pierce increased from 6 > 8

Ice Monkey
Lowest tiers of ice monkey are far too effective for their cost against ceramics, with this scaling well all the way to round 100, we feel like ice duration against ceramics needs to be reduced to counter this but for now this reduction will only apply until T3.

• 000 Ice Monkey freeze duration reduced by 50% on ceramics
• All T3 Ice Monkeys increase freeze duration on ceramics from 50 > 100%
• 203 Icicles crosspath now gains camo prio

Glue Gunner
The Bloon Solver’s rework has been very popular, however, we’d like to have a better lead up into the new mechanics by introducing this earlier at the tier 4 now.

• 4xx Bloon Dissolver now creates puddles on track leading up to Bloon Solver, puddles deal 1 damage, all other stats and crosspath benefits are the same.

Sniper Monkey
This will allow Cripple MOAB to take out regular MOAB layers in one shot until round 100; for such a slow attacking single target tower we feel this will help top path flex, even if mostly for show.

• 5xx Cripple MOAB damage increased from 80 > 280

Monkey Buccaneer
Reworking Grape Shot crosspathing as it gains far too much crosspath value by T2 but then is lacking in purpose at higher tiers, double shot will only work as one extra grape however Destroyer will now apply its full attack rate buff to the grapes and Flagship will equip aspects of Grape Shot on the mini planes.

• 210 Grape Shot total projectiles reduced from 10 -> 6
• 310 Destroyer also reduced from 10 > 6 grapes
• 310 Destroyer now increases grape attack rate twice as much, matching increase to the regular attack
• 410 Aircraft Carrier planes radial attack now fires an arc of grapes instead of darts
• 410 Aircraft Carrier planes radial Emission Angle 360 > 90
• 410 Aircraft Carrier planes radial projectile count 8 > 6
• 410 Aircraft Carrier plane grape projectile speed 100 > 200
• 420 Aircraft Carrier planes radial projectile art: dart > hot grape
• 420 Aircraft Carrier planes radial damage type Sharp > Fire
• 400 Aircraft Carrier plane radials damage 1 > 2
• 4xx Aircraft Carrier missiles now follow tower target priority

Monkey Ace
Spectre is shifting a little of the ceramic bonus around into basic all damage at the cost of reduced pierce, which should make up for lack of single target damage while also making the pierce crosspath more necessary when being used for cleanup focus.

• xx4 Spectre Dart damage increased 3 > 4
• xx4 Spectre Dart ceramic bonus reduced 2 > 1
• xx4 Spectre Dart pierce reduced 15 > 10
• xx4 Spectre Bomb damage increased 2 > 3
• xx4 Spectre Bomb ceramic bonus reduced 4 > 3
• xx4 Spectre Bomb pierce reduced 30 > 20

Heli Pilot
Even with the map-range advantage, rotors are weak compared to any other constant AoE circle like this. Chinook feels like it’s near a place we are happy with now, however we want another tiny nudge on cost while keeping cash generation value the same. Pushing some higher values on the last Comanche Commander changes as the missile attack is effectively such a small portion of the tower’s total damage late game.

• 302 Razor Rotors will now benefit from the faster firing crosspath
• 3xx Razor Rotors cooldown rate 0.75 > 0.5
• x4x Support Chinook price reduced from $10500 > 9500
• x4x Support Chinook supply crate cash generated reduced $1650 > 1,550
• x4x Support Chinook max uses per round reduced from 3 > 2
• xx4 & xx5 Comanche mini's follow the target priority set on their main Heli
• xx5 Comanche Commander missile damage 7 > 15
• xx5 Comanche Commander missile moab bonus 5 > 8
• xx5 Comanche Commander mini's missile dmg 5 > 15
• xx5 Comanche Commander mini's missile moab bonus 5 > 8

Mortar Monkey
As the Rapid Reload crosspath has actually fallen behind in value compared to Burny Stuff for top path Mortars we want to try a slight stun duration increase as this buffs the base path with a larger benefit to Rapid Reload mortars as a stalling option. Mortar consistency is lacking at x3x making it tough to spend on even though x4x is fairly good, so some of the T4 rate is shifting down to help out with this. As the camo property has grown quite weak and currently Signal Flare is considered the best decamo tool, we want to push back slightly on its cost and by reducing the blast radius of the decamo area while emphasizing crosspathing for effectiveness there.

• 4xx The Big One stun duration non-MOABs increased from 0.5s > 0.75
• 5xx The Biggest One stun duration MOAB increased from 0.3s > 0.5
• 5xx The Biggest One stun duration BFB increased from 0.2s > 0.3
• 5xx The Biggest One stun duration DDT increased from 0.2s > 0.3
• x3x Heavy Shells attack delay reduced from 1.08 > 0.81
• x4x Artillery Battery attack rate buff reduced from ¼ to ⅓ (remains the same rate: 0.27)
• xx3 Signal flare cost increased $700 > 800
• xx4 Shattering Shells price reduced from $11,000 > 10900
• xx3 Signal Flare decamo radius reduced from 50 > 43
• 103 Signal Flare decamo pierce increased by 5 > 10
• xx4 Shattering Shells burn DoT deals moab bonus +5

Super Monkey
As Engineer sentries do this already, newly spawned Mini Avatars from temples will now by default match the target priority of the temple.

• 4xx Sun Temple's Magic Sacrifice mini Sun Avatars when placed will spawn with the same target prio as their parent tower

Ninja Monkey
We’re changing the Ninja Monkey Paragon’s focus as a fighter against camo, as we feel like a greater strength and tactical value against camo will be the full reveal of all camos rather than all camo removal.

• Ascended Shadow now grants global camo detection for all your towers
• Ascended Shadow no longer strips camo from Bloons with every attack
• Ascended Shadow main attack gains bonus to camo +6
• Ascended Shadow Flash Bomb Explosion gains bonus to camo +20
• Ascended Shadow Flash Bomb Shurikens gains bonus to camo +16
• Ascended Shadow Sticky Bomb Projectile gains bonus to camo +3200
• Ascended Shadow Sticky Bomb Explosion gains bonus to camo +700
• Ascended Shadow now deals 25% damage to all non-Boss MOABs that spawn

Alchemist
Alchemist Transforming Tonic is in a weird spot with the transformation unable to attack through walls when the base alchemist is able to. Also with this, including a QoL fix for the T5 that currently prevents transformed towers from functioning with target priority.

• x4x Transforming Tonic transformed alchemist can now ignore line of sight
• x5x Total Transformation towers transformed by the x5x will keep their Target Priority

Druid
While the tornado doesn't do anything to MOABs, it still spends itself on them which wastes a relatively long cooldown, so addressing this flaw. Avatar of wrath doubles the base attack speed before any scaling is applied, but this hasn’t ever applied to the 205 Lightning, so taking care of that as well. Housekeeping - even deep in the forest, it does actually make life better.

• 3xx Druid of the Storm’s Tornado no longer targets MOAB-class Bloons
• x3x Druid of the Jungle no longer pops Lead Bloons without 130 crosspath
• x3x Jungle Vine follows target prio of tower instead of strong
• x3x Jungle Vine defaults tower to strong priority when purchased
• 205 Avatar of Wrath base Heart of Thunder attack rate increased 2.3s > 1.15

Spike Factory
We’ve heard the feedback, so Spiked Mines get a tweak to get more mines exploding but with less pierce on each, to overall increase quality of life in more frequent use but less wasted pierce. This will help out with some of the problems it has scaling into late game super ceramics.

• 4xx Spiked Mines pierce increased from 12 > 20
• 4xx Spiked Mines explosion pierce reduced from 40 > 30
• 4xx Spiked Mines DoT damage increased from 1 > 10
• 5xx Super Mines explosion pierce remains at 60
• 5xx Super Mines DoT damage increased from 1000 > 2500

Monkey Village
A minor QoL for cheap Monkeyopolis creation, we included a small base amount of cash production to the generation formula.

• xx5 Monkeyopolis income formula now includes a base +$2500 minimum

Engineer
The 005 crosspath fix in the last update left XXXL Trap slower than previously even if crosspathed to 205, so we are increasing that base 005 slightly to match up the 205 crosspath again so that it isn’t any slower than before.

• xx5 XXXL Trap attack cooldown reduced from 5.8s > 4.6

Beast Handler
As our newest tower to be added to BTD6, we went over feedback for every path and made a large number of adjustments addressing a variety of points.

• 3xx Great White thrash rate benefits from speed buffs
• 3xx Great White damage increased 4 > 8
• 3xx Great White max extra damage from merge increased 8 > 16
• 3xx Great White max attack rate buff from merge increased 0.20634 > 0.38
• 3xx Great White extra thrash knockback duration from merge increased 0.1 > 0.2
• 4xx Orca thrash damage increased 20 > 30
• 4xx Orca thrash max extra damage from merge increased 40 > 60
• 4xx Orca max attack rate buff from merge increased 0.37829 > 0.38
• 4xx Orca thrash radius increased 20 > 24
• 5xx Megalodon price reduced from 55,000 > 45,000
• 5xx Megalodon thrash radius increased 30 > 36
• 5xx & x5x Beast handler paths are now overclockable
• x4x and x5x Max Merge Bonus: Overkill damage on MOABs now distributes to the children of that target
• xx1 Gyrfalcon path deals +1 damage to Regrows to stop accidental infinite regrow farms
• xx3 Golden Eagle pierce increased 12 > 15
• xx3 Golden Eagle pierce range increased 24 > 30
• xx3 Golden Eagle ceramic pierce penalty reduced from +3 > 1
• xx3 Golden Eagle Max Merge Bonus: Now grabs MOABs with pierce penalty +14

Gwendolin
Removing the stacking aspect of Gwendolin’s burn damage over time, but increasing the damage as she levels up so that it actually scales up in power now.

• Lv6 Gwendonlin main attack DoT stack count 0 > 1
• Lv6 Gwendonlin main attack DoT damage increased from 1 > 2
• Lv9 Gwendonlin main attack DoT damage increased from 1 > 4
• Lv10 Gwendonlin main attack DoT damage now increases by 1 per additional level

Adora
While they are complicated individuals, Adora can now fully appreciate the sacrifice of the newest Monkeys in the struggle against the Bloons.

• Lv7 Blood Sacrifice can now be used on Beast Handlers

Admiral Brickell
We aren’t happy with strats that start looking like exploits with frequent sell-replace loops.

• Upon Selling Brickell - all of her placed Mines are now expired along with her as well

Psi
Psi’s stalling out of the end of round is an odd mix of useful / annoying / out of control, so we are for now capping this to a 3 seconds of overtime stalling. Psi’s Psychic Blast ability also has weirdly low pierce for a long cooldown ability with no damage, we are increasing the base pierce greatly but it no longer increases in pierce at Lv7 since the extra pulse brings more pierce anyway.

• If no Bloons are left unpopped on screen aside from ones Psi is currently holding & destroying, these Bloons will be destroyed after a maximum of 3 seconds
• Lv3 Psychic Blast pierce increased from 50 > 200
• Lv7 Psychic Blast pierce increased from 100 > 200

Event / Boss / Relic / Knowledge

• All Lych Soul variations can now be stunned/slowed by paragon tier upgrades

Looking Forward
Five months of 2023 done and dusted, which feels to us like it has zoomed by, perhaps because the Auckland office where the BTD6 team is based has only just reopened after the severe flooding at the end of January. All of Update 36 and the majority of Update 37 were completed while again working from home, but we’re very excited to have the office repairs done, the flood wall almost finished, and the ability to work shoulder to shoulder again on fun new things for the monkeyverse! Here’s the latest gaze into the crystal ball:

• Update 38 Key Content
  
  • New Boss - Phayze: another all new Boss concept and play style, not giving any other hints apart from the name itself
  • Summer fun: a new Brickell hero skin and a waterpark map aimed toward Intermediate to help keep northern hemisphere summer cool
  • Quests: continuing to build new quest system features and adding a few new Quests to the list
• Update 39 Key Content
  
  • Map Editor: under construction since last year with internal systems testing happening during 38.0 development, we are super excited to put map creation tools in player hands on as many platforms as possible when it goes live
  • New Hero - Spirit Walker: another unique design that we’re sandboxing already to make sure it has as much balance and art iteration as possible, again no hints other than the name
• Update 40 Key Content
  
  • New Paragon - Monkey Sub: we’ve tagged sub as the next Paragon, so tell the Navarch to stop hoarding all of the Portable Lakes!
  • Stretch Goals - Boss Rush Team Event and CT Themes: lots of unknowns 3 updates out but we have strong plans for a new Team event and new parameters for Contested Territory that will make each CT more dynamic - anything that we don’t get done by end of year will have strong groundwork for next year
• Console
  
  • Getting closer to submission on Xbox and PlayStation but this has been slow going. We’ve added another programmer and are working even more closely with platform partners to get through our last issues and launch as soon as possible, but that’s likely at least another 2 months. Switch is still a consideration depending on response to Xbox and PlayStation, as it will require additional bespoke development.

Hey my dudes, I know you see 10,000 server ads a day but just wanted to throw ourselves into the mix and hope for the best 🤍
For those of you that played Rust Sanctuary at it's peak, you may recognise a lot of familiar faces & features!
POLAR RUST STRIVES TO CREATE A FUN, VANILLA+ EXPERIENCE WITH QUALITY OF LIFE UPGRADES INCLUDING:
Additional recyclers & drone markets at fishing/ranch
increased sulfumetal/stone ore spawn rate
50% base upkeep (TC has half the usual resource cost)
Long days, short nights
ingame cosmetic item store, buy fun rewards with points earned by playing!
Custom designed outpost/bandit for ease of access and better FPS.
No BP Wipes, ever! In the event of facepunch forcing a BP wipe (extremely rare) we keep backups to restore your hard work.
Discord
Join Server: connect join.playpolar.uk:28095
We're a community-tab based server for the time being - run on dedicated hardware with active staff who have worked with orgs such as apollo, dubs, helix etc... - admins are NOT allowed to play.

THE PALE PREACHER
Before they were The Pale Preacher, it was a simple cleric. During its life as a mortal, the Preacher was a core pillar of Theomort's society, using its divine magic to heal to aid the island's people in various ways. However, none of this charity could stop the Preacher from descending into madness upon being the first witness of the Deep Ones, and discovering a truly impossible truth that would haunt its dreams.
As the months passed, the Preacher became a shadow of its former self, abandoning its belief in the divine as vivid visions of Theomort vanishing from the sea steadily shattered its mind. All of this culminated in the Preacher coming to the sudden, demented conclusion that the island itself required a sacrifice to not disappear. Thus, the Preacher kidnapped a child one night and brought it to the shore, kicking and screaming for mercy.
The townsfolk followed, fully prepared to end the disgraced cleric's life in order to rescue the child, but they wouldn't be alone for long. The Deep Ones, awoken by the sound of the angry mob, surfaced to slaughter every living thing they could see... all while the Preacher drowned its captured sacrifice in the salty sea waters. Immediately after this, the Deep Ones turned their attention to the Preacher, who they dragged beneath the waves. It was then that The Mists made their grim, inevitable approach.
The Pale Preacher's Powers and Dominion
The Pale Preacher is an unpredictable force, driven by insanity. It is a tentacled monstrosity with statistics similar to an Aboleth. Despite commanding legions of aquatic monsters, it has very little strategic ability, simply demanding more sacrifices for the island. Those sacrificed return to life as Sea Spawn in a constant state of physical and mental agony, who will ultimately aid in the capture and sacrifice of more of Theomort's people.
Unknown Prophecy. The Pale Preacher's visions are varied and abstract, all except for two commonalities. The first being the approach of an aquamarine comet, and the second being the total disappearance of Theomort. Whether or not these dreams are truly signs of things to come is ambiguous at best, but the Preacher has been known to predict the appearance of newcomers to the island, so who knows what the limits of its visions are.
Closing the Borders. When The Pale Preacher closes Theomort's borders, The Mists swirl and roil into dark stormclouds that roar with wind and thunder, lightning revealing incomprehensible shapes hidden beyond the dark veil. Any creature that leaves Theomort takes 6d8 psychic damage and has their mind irreversibly warped by what they witness within The Mists. See Seeds of Fear in VGR or Indefinite Madness in DMG to determine how this experience changes a character.
The Pale Preacher's Torment
The Preacher's new aquatic congregation is eternally loyal to their master, and its influence over Theomort is absolute, but none of this saves it from its punishment:
• The Preacher believes the only way to save Theomort's people is to sacrifice them, turning them into Sea Spawn that don't need to live on the island if it vanishes.
• Anything and everything from the surface world frightens and sickens the Preacher, including the people it still longs to save from the island's disappearance.
• The Preacher's visions have deprived it of sufficient sleep, further feeding its madness and keeping it in a constant state of delirium.
Roleplaying The Pale Preacher
The Pale Preacher's mind is a twisted and unreadable mess of paranoia and superstition. It simultaneously hates the mortals who call Theomort their home, yet wants to rescue them from the doomsday it has foreseen in visions even it can't fully comprehend.
Personality Trait. "I am not the mad one! It is the animals that live on the surface who are truly insane!"
Ideal. "All will follow me to the ocean depths, or die by my will! Anything is better than living to see the future I have seen!"
Bond. "The cold darkness of the sea is the only comfort left in a world without meaning!"
Flaw. "None can stop Theomort's destruction except for myself, you hear me?!"
Part 4 -

This server has a hardcore vanilla feel but with tasteful mods and cool features that aren't available in official servers. Check it out if you're interested! I'm hoping to grow a community of DayZ enthusiasts who love the vanilla plus experience.
Server Features
Active admins
Vanilla stamina and loot economy
Dark nights
NVGs can spawn in any military area
AK101 and AK74 have rare green and black versions along with the individual attachments spawning rarely
Green and black M4 attachments also spawn rarely
Camo and green plate carriers spawn in military areas
Black plate carriers spawn in dynamic events
Plate carrier attachments of all colors spawn in military areas
Shoes spawn pristine or worn
Loot spawns in green military towers
Less useless items like thermometers and construction helmets
Flashlight have a chance to spawn with a battery
Witch hoods spawn in red, brown, and black variants
Military backpacks with weapon slots rarely spawn in dynamic events and toxic zones
Noteworthy Mods
Advanced Weapon Scopes-Adds a better variety of scopes and adapters.
Autorun
BuildEverywhere
Building Fortifications-Adds the ability to build window barricades and doors with a vanilla feel. Window barricade kits and door kits are crafted the same way as vanilla wall kits (rope and sticks).
Car Cover-Allows vehicles to be covered with camo nets.
Code Lock
Ear Plugs
Flip Transport-Allows vehicles to be "pushed" in case they get stuck or flip over.
MMG Base Storage-Adds many new storage items such as cabinets, gun racks, and safes.
MMG Civilian Clothing
No Vehicle Damage-Vehicles can no longer take collision damage however they can still be damaged with bullets, explosives, overrevving, deep water, or driving without enough water in the radiator.
Red Falcon Flight System Heliz-Adds helicopters into the game which mostly spawn in military areas. They will require parts, fuel, and hydraulic fluid to operate.
RFFS Heli Car Cover Addon-Adds the ability to cover helicopters with camo nets.
Trader Plus-Adds car codelocks and car lockpicks which are both rare on this server. Car codelocks can be found in the same areas as codelocks however car lockpicks only spawn at dynamic events such as helicopter crashes. Please note that this server does not have traders.
Vehicle 3PP
ViewInventoryAnimation
WindstridesClothingPack
Zen Notes-Adds pens to the server which can be combined with paper to write custom notes that can be stuck to surfaces.
Please feel free to check out my discord for more information
https://discord.gg/xuayHU9V

I just completed my first modded playthrough of Icewind Dale EE and I thought I give a review and my thoughts about the stuff that the New Light mods add to the game for those people who think about playing with these mods as well.
I have played through Icewind Dale about 4 or 5 times. Its a game that stuck with me from my teenage days. I hold it quite dearly and replay it about every 3 years. I love the atmosphere, the locations, the battles. And I also love the Baldur's Gate series with all its banters and great companions. So I hoped that with the NPCs from this mods I would get an interesting party together that would comment on the specific situations and revelations throughout the game, that the NPCs would have interesting backstories and strong personalities and I have to say: That is exactly what I got.
I was also looking forward to the quest mods. Especially the rediscovery of Kuldahar because I always felt that the vanilla game could have made Kuldahar much more interesting. It is one of the most cozy and beautiful places that I have ever experienced in a video game but it was also flawed in a way. There could have been more quests there, or more interesting NPCs. So I hoped that the quest mods would give me that and I installed them all.
Naturally I could only take 5 companions with me so I had to choose which one I would want. I settled for L'anna, Dusky, Minerva, Karihi and Nella (from Kulyoks NPC mod). Having one character from a different modder turned out not to be a problem, because there is a crossbanter mod available that worked flawlessly and it never felt as if Nella wasn't part of the team.
That means I cannot comment on T'viy, Urchin, Oak-Maw, Tipps, Orra, Dandjelion, Hommet or Ina, because I haven't played with them.
I will no go over the different companions that I played with one by one and give my thoughts and ratings.
L'anna: She is an elven paladin that has a story connection to the Severed Hand and the Mythal magic that I found very interesting. She started out slowly and a little bit on the uninteresting side and while it definitely got much better once I reached the Severed Hand, I could not shake the feeling that she was the most bland of the NPCs. I liked her and I learned a lot about elven culture and tales from her, which was very interesting, but she didn't have a personality that stood out from the others. Her voice acting also wasn't the greatest and I had to replace her portrait with another one more to my liking, but all in all she was a good companion to have. Strong as well with pretty good unique class skills. It felt like she had very little banter with the rest of the group though and thus felt a little bit isolated from them.
Rating: 5/10 Pretty good companion but the most uninteresting of the ones I took with me.
Karihi: She is a fire Genasi and a specialist fire mage so to speak. She gets unique fire spells at certain levels that were very strong and flavorful and she gets a bonus to fire damage. Also a staff that can do a range attack from the start which was extremely good for the early game. I have to say that she was pretty much a perfect companion in every regard. Portrait, voice acting, backstory or class skills. It left nothing to be desired and she just flawlessly fit into the setting. Of course having a dedicated fire mage is a great thing to have in the frozen north where many enemies are vulnerable to fire. And she became extremely strong very quickly. I found Items for her, that raised her bonus to fire damage even further up to i think almost 100% at later levels, making her spells like Fireball do ridiculous damage to large clusters of enemies. Also there was gear that raised her casting level and lowered the cast time like the Robe of Vecna does in BG2. That made her an absolute monster of a damage dealer and made some fights trivial. Is she OP with the right gear that you will find during the game? Yes, she is. Is it gamebreaking? No. Should you use Karihi in your party because her presentation, her writing and her gameplay is incredibly great. Absolutely.
10/10 Would recommend for everyone to try her out. I haven't romanced her so I don't know how it goes but as a friend and companion I loved her the most of my companions, second only to...
Minerva: Minerva is a Gnome Artificier. That means she is a fightethief with no ability to backstab, but instead with unique traps, the ability to craft very powerful potions and later a stationary autocannon and even a Modron. Minerva is probably the most likeable companion I have ever had in any party. She is cheerful, positive, funny but she never goes over the top and has serious moments to. Her personality is great and she is a joy to have around. Just as with Karihi, everything is perfect here. Voice actress does a phenomenal job, her portrait fits her perfectly and her skills are interesting and strong. Her backstory also feels realistic and fitting and I want to visit Lantan with her now. She uses throwing knifes and is very good at it. Its a bit tedious at first when you have to craft her special knifes that can do friendly fire if your micromanagement slips a litte but once she gets a returning throwing dagger she is just simply fun in combat. She also comments on getting a returnable throwing dagger and how convenient that is for her when you ask her how she is doing in a player initiated dialogue. How great is that?
10/10 Companion. I would have loved to romance her but I saw to late that the romance required 14 Intelligence to trigger. When I EE Keepered my Intelligence up during the Vale of Shadows its seems to have been to late and the romance didn't trigger properly. Real shame. You should definitely take her with you if you want a ranged damage dealer with fun skills that will be the positive heart of the party. Minerva is great.
Dusky: He is a Half-Orc Cleric/Thief. His portrait is abysmal. You need to swap it out to a better one at the very start of you playthrough or it will ruin that character for you. I gave him Dandjelions Portrait because I thought that it fit but you can use any Half-Orc portrait that you like. Everything else about him was pretty good. He has some intersting stories from his past and his personality is very likeable. If you play a male character he will try to initiate a romance at some point. If you are not into that stuff you can turn him down and he will be a good friend for the rest of the game. He will ask you to have drinks in an inn several times where he will then initiate a dialogue. I found that to be great idea and it really enhanced the atmosphere. Nothing like having an ale together in the Kuldahar Root Cellar after a return from a deadly dungeon and have a chat. As for effectiveness I really didn't have a good role for him because I already had Minerva to take care of traps and locks. His priest spell progression is slow because he is a multiclass and so he mostly stayed back with a sling in hand and supported with heals and defensive magic. His stats are great but with only 1 APR i wanted to keep him from the frontlines. Later he became a lifesaver when I had him scout ahead under the effects of Sanctuary and made him disable traps and trigger ambushes prematurely. He was a good secondary cleric and his pickpocket skills were needed to get the three rings from Orrick, Arundel and Oswald at the start. I liked his realistic, down to earth character and he had quite a lot of banter while never going on the boring side. His voice actor did a good job as well.
7/10
So that is it for the companions. I didn't include Nella, because she is from a different modder. I can quickly say that I liked her really much and I found her connection to Arundel too interesting to not take her.
Now onto the quest mods. I am a bit torn here because my Nr.1 criteria was that those quests would fit in with the rest of the worldbuilding and atmosphere. I hoped that those mods would enhance the experience of the game while not changing how the game feels too much. Some of them succeeded in this, some of them didn't.
Tale of our Lady Dreamless: This is a pretty short quest that actually fit in flawlessly with the rest of the game. I has a few small, but extremely beautiful maps, an encounter with one of the barbarians before we meet more of them in Heart of Winter and a quick but fitting resolution. I can say nothing bad about this mod and would absolutely recommend it.
8/10
Below and Below Inn: I was really looking forward to this mod I have to say. A new cozy Inn in the Icewind Dale that I could visit and spend some time in? Yes please, But unfortunately I was really not a fan of this when I played it. That is because it really doesn't fit with the rest of the setting. The Inn is not in Kuldahar but somewhere between Dorn's Deep and the Hand of the Seldarine on the Map. Umm what? To my knowledge that means it is in the middle of nowhere in one of the most deserted places in the Icewind Dale. What would an Inn do there? There should have been no customers at all, but instead it is an Inn that has stuff like a piano and luxurious furniture in it. There are Noblemen and Noblewomen, Merchants and other people there. It just didn't make any sense to me and pulled me off of my immersion. No one mentioned why there would be rich people like this in the middle of the wilderness of the North, nobody mentioned the blocked passes to the Ten Towns. Icewind Dale is such a great game because after you leave Easthaven you are cut off from Civilisation. The people of Kuldahar are on their own, living in a desolate and dangerous area and no help is coming to them apart from you adventurer party. Below and Below Inn destroyed that Image for me. It felt like it belonged in a different area of the Icewind Dale or even further south and felt really out of place. There wasn't even snow at the entrance now that I think of it but green Grass. I would not install it again. Minus points for having a cook that does not want to throw me out of his kitchen. This goes against every RPG rule in existance and really made me question my view of the world!
2/10
Terror of the Skineater: Another short quest that made good use of the haunted forest maps from Icewind Dale 2. You are approached by a mage that tells you of that a creature that slaughters people from his village roams around in a nearby forest and wants you to kill it. (Although he never mention what and where this village is, what kinda put me off) What I liked was that it was a pretty short and interesting quest that even had a connection to a Character that we meet in Icewind Dale 2 and gives a little more backstory to that Character. 7/10 Good mod. You get a very powerful spear from it that dominates the early game if you do this quest early.
Night of the Blinking Dead: If you want to fight through yet another of the BG2 Beholder lairs this mod is for you. I really didn't. The attempt of recreating the comedy with the speaking Spectator Beholder kinda worked, but it was not enough for me to recommend this mod. It didn't fit in in my opinion. At least its also pretty short.
3/10
Snowytoes Hamlet: This mods adds a Halfling Village to the map where you can get some gear and some quests. It really wasn't bad. My biggest criticism for it was that it made you backtrack to already cleared dungeons like Kresselacks Tomb or the Temple of the forgotten God. I didn't like this. Those are locations that should be visited once and not a second time. It felt a little bit devaluation going there again and bringing some halfling boys back home from there. Also the existance of another Village in a supposedly wild and uninhabited part of Faerun was not something that I particularly needed. Its an okay mod though.
5/10
The Rediscovery of Kuldahar: Finally the mod that I was looking forward to the most. As I said earlier I always felt that more could have been done with Kuldahar. I always bothered me that all the villagers there all have the same exact dialogue. That there are very few interesing NPCs. Kuldahar didn't change as you progressed though the different chapters of the game was also something that I would have liked to see changed. Why didn't Mother Egenia show up in the temple of Illmater after I rescued her from Dragon's eye? It would have been so nice to have her back, be able to talk to her there, maybe buy better equipment from her. Where are the other villagers that were held captive in Dragon's Eye? Only Sheemish appears in Kuldahar afterwards. Big missed opportunity not having some of the other people show up, making Kuldahar seem more inhabited again, maybe have them give some small rewards or even quests when you talk to them after their rescue. The Root Cellar is the coolest and most cozy Inn that I can think of but after the Lysan story there is nothing more to do there and the guest there all have the same dialogue. So I hoped that this mod would adress all that. And unfortunately it didn't. It added some caves to the original maps where you could get two smaller quests. The one where I had to hunt a Chimera was okay, the one where I had to prepare a get together for two women (one apparently a Noblewoman in Kuldahar?) was not and I had to look for that candle that I needed to complete this quest way too long. The mod also adds a completely new section of Kuldahar that is really well designed and had a lot of potential. But the people you meet there were a little bit disappointing to me. There is a Xvart merchant there that sells you flies and eyes and chicken feet and stuff like that. In my opinion, he absolutely didn't fit into the setting. The Mushroom Café was interesting but ultimately lacked any importance and there was not reason to go there more than once. More could have been done with it. The Throne of Bhaal prophecy Stone Face that gave forshadowing about the events of Icewind Dale 2 was good, but the other stuff not so much. You get some Quests that make you search for pages of a Spellbook for a Mage (Isn't Orrick supposed to be the only mage in Kuldahar), or get a Telescope for a Stargazer that you can either steal from Oswald or get a different one later, for which this guy will reward you with a Star Atlas that raises Saving Throws and Lore. But you have to wait a whole Month until he finishes it and by that time you have either rested 90 times i a row or pretty much completed the game already. Ultimately this area of Kuldahar, while beautiful to look at, didn't give me the feeling of it being a natural extension of the existing Kuldahar. While it wasn't bad it was just simply not what I expected so it left me disappointed. There is one thing about this mod that redeems it for me though. An that is the upper Kuldahar section. Remeber Lysan telling the barkeeper of the Root Cellar that she uses to go to upper Kuldahar from time to time? In the Vanilla game we never get to see upper Kuldahar but with this mod we can. And we can see why Lysan went there and what she did. Don't want to spoil it for anybody what you find there but this part of this mod was 100% perfect. This is what I wanted to see. An extension that build upon content from the original game and built onto it. For the upper Kuldahar addition alone I would recommend to install this mod. That was exactly what I hoped the Rediscovery of Kuldahar would do and it felt like straight out of the base game.
6/10 I would have been 3/10 without the upper Kuldahar section but this part really pulled it on to a higher rating alone. The rest was just not what I expected and some people might enjoy it more than me, because it really isn't bad.
Items and others: The last mod on my list and I cannot say too much about it. This mod adds a ton of items, some of them craftable. I do not know exactly which ones of the items I found came from this mod, which ones maybe came from the NPC mods and which ones were in the base game, so its hard for me to judge. The Item crafting was very fun and gave some appropriately powerful items. A shame that you have to play Heart of Winter and Trials of the Luremaster before you defeat Belhifet in order to get every item crafted though as it never made sense to me to play the games it that order. For me it was always defeat Belhifet, than export my characters to HoW and close out with TotLM. Overall I felt pretty much overequipped during my entire playthrough. Some items appeared way to often, like the Hands of Takkok (the gauntlets of Ogre strenght) which I found about 5 times. Or the cloak of displacement which appeard about as often. Not sure it is the fault of this mod though so its hard for me to judge. I mostly enjoyed the item variety that came with it. Its maybe a bit too much as I was closing in on having a million gold pieces at the end of the game.
So thats it. A lot to read through but hopefully you found my thoughts about these mods helpful.
I want to put out a big thank you to the creators because you really gave me a fresh playthrough, extremely well written companions that enhanced my gaming experience a lot and made me want to play with the other companions that I couldn't take along too.
Not everything was exactly to my liking, but you can't please anyone. And most of the stuff you created was extremely well done and thought out.

~Escape The Night~ PvE w/PvP ZonesWIPED3PPHelisAI-BossesRaidingBBP100kNoobsKeycardsAirdropBunkersParty-SystemTraderBlackmarketBankingDrugsBedRespawnSpawnSelectVehicles+Guns+Loot+
IP: 51.81.221.168:7915
Join Our Discord https://discord.gg/2EQPEZ8
Server Restart Intervals Are At 5:40AM PST - 11:40AM PST - 5:40PM PST 11:40PM PST
BASE BUILDING: AT THE MOMENT TRADERS DO NOT SELL NAILS/FOOD/ARMOR, for a more survival feel we made base building a little more grindy than other servers for a better experience (MOD: BASE BUILDING PLUS), THERE IS NO BUIDLING NEAR PVP ZONES, HIDEOUTS, OR TRADERS (500m from Hideouts/Traders, 300m from PVP zones). Get your grind on and have fun with more of an immersive pvp building system. We have BasicTerritories/PVEZE Flag Zones. You need a flagpole to make a base & you need a flag fully raised on your pole to enable PvP. Since we use PVEZ the flags help in case you need to defend against a raid. The flag also helps keep all your items secure from poofing away. Sadly bases can be raided even with your flag pole lowered. So it’s recommended that you keep your flag pole raised.
ALL BASES HAVE A LIMITED AMOUNT OF VEHICLES THEY CAN POSSESS! Each base can have a max of 3 Land Vehicles & 2 Helicopters (This Is To Help Prevent Lag)
PVP ZONES/PVE: All PVP Zones contain either a military spot on the map, or Custom Keycard areas, Custom Key Cards spawn randomly around the map or in airdrops/military bases/bunkers.THERE IS ABSOULETLY NO KILLING OUTSIDE PVP ZONES, what ever damage you afflict on another Survior, that damage will come back to you, this a noob/pve setting of a server so show some respect.
KEYCARDS: There many different keycards you can get but they all are different. Some have different loot, some have mixed loot. Rare keycard rooms give 10x better loot than normal military/bm loot. There Is 2 Red/Black/Violet/Green Rooms. 1 Yellow/Blue/Med Lab/White Rooms.
Right Now The Keycards Ranging From Best To Worst Are Red, Black, Yellow, White, Violet, Green, Blue, Med Laboratory. There will probably be more in the future. Red Keycard Loaded but is suuuper rare.
(NOTE: Right now please don't fly into keycard areas. We recently added helis again and some areas are possible to fly into (AI will probably shoot them down but still we want keycards to be used to access keycard areas. ALSO When you open a keycard room it will stay open until server restart because the loot crates wont reset until after restart)
THE BUNKER: Right now there is currently 1 bunker on the server. You need a White Keycard to enter it & when you enter it turns to total darkness. You'll need a light or nvgs too see anything after entering. This place is worth checking out but be careful of possible chances of Zombies/AI. The bunker is really nice for finding blackmarket items and chances decent/guns/armoammo.
TRAVEL TRADER: We recently added a trader that can change locations and also change what they Buy/Sell! The Travel Trader Can Spawn At Any Keycard Locations (Based On When I Move Them) & Trades Rare Items Other Traders Might Not Sell Or Might Buy/Sell At A Discount!
TRADERS: Traders are all around the map and they only sell certain items there. Very high powered weapons cannot be bought a civ traders, they will most likely be purchasable at Blackmarket or not purchasable at all, you will need to scavenge your way around the map if you want to be the best, there are no handouts. Normal Civ Traders will have the essentials there to survive.
AI/BOSSES: AI spawn at all keycards/hideouts except Blue/Green Keycards. They have a chance to spawn anywhere else. There are 3 Bosses on the server. Killa, Zryachiy, the Goons. Killa spawns at Red/Black/Yellow Keycards. Zryachiy spawns at Prison Island. The Goons can spawn at Red/Black/White/Med Lab. The Goons are the rarest Bosses to run into right now while Killa and Zryachiy are about the same. Killa and Zryachiy can have guards.

I thought a Creature like the Ocean Sunfish (also called "Mola Mola") would be a pretty cool addition to Minecraft.
It could spawn in the Deep Ocean, I thought it would make sense as a new type of food source for the water that drops it's own meat that gives a special buff, or maybe just gives 4 hunger bars, as they are pretty rare.
They would also give a lot of experience aswell.
But the main reason I want them is because they are HUGE! look up any picture of divers swimming along side them, they are Massive and I think the Ocean could use some bigger Animals.
I also drew some concept art for it.
https://i.imgur.com/nqwpINz.png

I am going on 3,208 hours on Fallout 4. At this point, I have various personal challenges to play by, to not get bored.
Please note that both encounters I am talking about occurred in the same general spot, around broken buildings in the vicinity of Ft. Hagen. I have not as of yet seen this in any other combat random encounter spot, though I am now next to 100% certain that it's possible.
Traditionally, Mirelurk Queens and Behemoths have appeared in certain, fixed spots. There are some where they may be encountered or not encountered, but still the place where they may appear is preset. This is true of the Mirelurk Queen in the general vicinity of Lynn Woods and the Mirelurk Queen near Leonard Moore's trading shack: those Queens may not appear, but if they DO appear, they appear at preset spots.
Ten days ago, I fought a Behemoth where I've never seen one before. There's an area around Ft. Hagen, the series of broken homes one of which has a bunch of beds, where you can have a complex battle encounter. You often have leveled Gunners, or a pack of leveled Ferals, such as the Sole Survivor's pre-War neighbors, Scavengers, or leveled Raiders.
The Gunners and Behemoth hadn't noticed each other. And the Behemoth was placed in the middle of grass and bushes right next to the building.
I made a thread about it here, asking other people for their experiences. Nobody seemed to have encountered a random Behemoth before, so I thought maybe it was an abberation.
It's not.
Just now, I encountered a Mirelurk Queen around that area. I have never seen a Mirelurk Queen in the vicinity of Ft. Hagen before, or any random encounter. Like with the Behemoth ten days ago, there were also leveled Gunners in one of the ruined buildings, but they hadn't seen or engaged the Queen. The reason I know for sure it was a random encounter, rather than an insertion of a regular combat event, was because I sprinted past the very spot I found the Queen in towards Sanctuary, and came back to the spot to get another combat random encounter. The spot where I fought the Queen was empty about 5-7 minutes before she spawned on my return.
I was exploiting random encounters for combat because I hunted out the entirety of the Commonwealth, including the Glowing Sea, to make it to a certain level and use Regi Blatteria near the Corvega Factory to farm up a Two-Shot Gauss for a "perfect save" for use later.
I can only guess that some patch to permit Behemoth and Queen random encounters has been added to the game.
Please note, however, that these encounters seem to be very rare. I've been playing Fallout 4 a lot these last couple weeks, and only encountered one random Behemoth and one random Queen, once, within ten days of each other. So, it's not like fighting two Raider Wasters or some such.
Happy hunting, ladies and gents!

With the quest board rare gave players the ability to make their own x marks voyages for others, could they expand upon that with other quests like riddles and skeleton bounties.
Like you bury something and are given the option for a blank paper you could pick points of interest for that island and could decide what it requires to progress (song,lantern,read me prompt)
Skeleton bounties like a new way to interact with skulls to bring them back (like helping them to rejoin the war for the sot on flame hearts order) and difficulty or swarm spawn could depend on the type of skull(s) used.
Is anything like this possible or just wishful thinking. It would be nice if the quest board got some sort of update.

Welcome once again to my Riordan Retrospective. For those of you just joining the fun, this is my look back at the works of Rick Riordan. That means Percy Jackson, its sequels, and spin-offs. This is less of a formal review and more of a relaxed look back.
Last time, we finished our look back at The Trials of Apollowith a look back at The Tower of Nero. We thought that we’d said goodbye to the worlds of Rick Riordan. Little did we know that a new book was about to surface. As such, we’re taking a look back at Daughter of the Deep.
Ana Dakkar is about to finish her freshman year at Harding-Pencroft Academy. It is a five-year academy specializing in marine science. She, and her nineteen classmates, are about to begin their freshmen trials. Harding-Pencroft holds its students very high standards. However, before they can take off, the school is destroyed by a series of sonic torpedoes. The remaining students and professors of Harding-Pencroft regroup aboard their yacht the Varuna. Ana discovers several major revelations. Jules Verne’s novels 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea and The Mysterious Island were based on actual events. Captain Nemo was indeed a real person, and Ana is his direct descendant. In fact, the whole point of Harding-Pencroft Academy is to safeguard Nemo’s legacy and technology. Their next stop is Lincoln Island, the final resting place of Nemo and the Nautilus. But danger lurks around every corner as the survivors of Harding-Pencroft are hunted by their old rivals: Land Academy.
Well, it looks like we’re back sooner than I expected. I thought we’d be back for that Irish Mythology book Rick said he was planning. However, that seems to have been put on the back-burner. Daughter of the Deep apparently has been a long time coming. Way back in 2009, Disney executives asked Rick what Disney property he would want to write a book based on. It could be anything he wanted. He chose 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, as the 1954 film adaptation is one of his favorite movies. Technically, Disney only owns the rights to the movie, not the original book. The original Verne novel has long since slipped into the public domain. I’m tempted to think that Rick was, at least somewhat, trolling the executives.
I actually went back and watched the 1954 movie adaptation of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. I agree with Rick here. The movie is, I must say, a truly underrated gem among live-action Disney films. In fact, I might even give it its own review at some point. Now, the movie does take some liberties with the source material. Though, personally, I’d say that was to its benefit, as it made for a more engaging story that worked better in film. Verne was known for doing a lot of research with his novels, and often devoted entire paragraphs to explaining the science in detail. Unfortunately, this does make for a rather dry reading experience. I’ve heard Verne works better in the original French, but that is a language I do not speak. Amusingly, students at Harding-Pencroft are required to read 20,000 Leagues Under the Seaand The Mysterious Island. Ana found them both to be a bit dry for her taste. I myself enjoyed The Mysterious Islandslightly more than 20,000 Leagues, but it still suffered from many of the same issues.
I’ve heard a few people wonder what it might be like if Rick Riordan were to write a science fiction novel. Well, we now have our answer. We know more about the surface of the Moon than we do our own deep oceans. Twelve people have walked on the surface of the Moon, but only two have ever been to the bottom of the Marianas Trench. Ocean-based science fiction is still comparatively rare compared to space-based or terrestrial-based science fiction. So, I’m glad to see that Daughter of the Deep tapped into some of the vast potential of ocean-based science fiction.
Now, I should probably clarify that Daughter of the Deep is set outside of the Riordanverse. Rick has confirmed that it takes place in its own self-contained world. So, don’t expect to see any cameos from Percy, Annabeth, or any other Riordanverse characters. Still, it is similar enough in terms of style to a typical Riordanverse novel, and thus, I’ve chosen to include it as part of the retrospective.
Speaking of style, let’s begin there. Rick has said he took a film writing course before he wrote Daughter of the Deep. That is very apparent in how the prose itself is written. It reads very much like a movie script. The narration is presented in first-person present tense. This helps add to the sense of action and urgency as the plot movies along. The pacing also feels very much like what you might find in a movie. We got a lot of action scenes in quick succession. We get the usual info dumps, but we don’t really take as much time for introspection. As we’ll discuss a bit later, this lack of introspection was very much to the book’s detriment. I’m willing to bet that all this is very much by design. Daughter of the Deep is being adapted into a movie on Disney+. In fact, the movie was announced even before the book came out. So, it certainly feels like Rick wrote Daughter of the Deep with an eye towards the movie adaption.
I would have liked if we had gotten to explore Harding-Pencroft Academy a bit more before it got destroyed. What brief glimpses we do see are utterly fascinating. The students are all decided into four different houses based on their area of study. Yeah, they’ve heard all the Harry Potter jokes plenty of times. Though, personally, when I saw the initials HP in an ocean-themed book, I briefly wondered if Rick Riordan was going to tackle the Lovecraft Mythos. Back on topic, the houses are Dolphin, Shark, Cephalopod, and Orca. Dolphin focuses on communications, exploration, cryptography, and counterintelligence. Shark handles command, combat, weapons systems, logistics. Cephalopod deals with engineering, applied mechanics, innovation, and defensive systems. Orca is all about medicine, psychology, education, marine biology, and communal memory. If you’re wondering about that last one, it basically means the history of Harding-Pencroft and Captain Nemo.
One of the things I appreciated was that each of the four main characters is from a different house. One of my gripes about Harry Potter is that pretty much all the important characters come from Gryffindor. Well, unless they’re a villain, and come from Slytherin. Ravenclaw had Luna and Cho, I guess, but Hufflepuff got the short end of the stick for sure. Getting back on track, having the four main protagonists of Daughter of the Deep be from different houses provided a theme that everyone has something unique to bring to the table. You can also see it as advocating for multiculturalism, but without being preachy about it. However, I do have on criticism. House Orca needed a better name. Orcas are a type of dolphin, the largest, in fact. We’ve got representatives for mammals, fish, and mollusks. How’s about giving some love to the reptiles? Personally, I would have named them House Sea Turtle instead. Or failing that, show some love to the echinoderms, and name them House Seastar. House Sea Cucumber would also work. Don’t give me that look! Sea cucumbers are noble animals and wonders of nature.
I do wish that we’d gotten to see more of Harding-Pencroft before it was destroyed. What brief glimpses we do get are utterly fascinating. As you might expect, they have quite an expansive aquarium full marine creatures. Upperclassmen train in submarine simulations using full-size mock-up submarines submerged in deep pools. However, the most fascinating class is one where students get to consider, and theorize, about the ways technology and science might have developed had history gone differently. As a major fan of alternate history I have but one thing to say: sign me up now! Well, its actually there as a way to slowly ease the students into learning the truth about Captain Nemo and his inventions. Still, sounds like a very fun class to take. I also liked how the various sections of the school are named after famous ocean explorers. There’s one part named after the Chinese navigator Zheng He, and one named after the polar explorer Ernest Shackleton.
I thought all of the diving scenes were particularly well-written. Rick Riordan has a true passion for scuba diving. This really shines through during the diving scenes. I also really like how the diving suits all use jet-propulsion that mimics the siphons of cephalopods. That was a really creative touch.
Okay, let’s talk about the characters. Ana is the protagonist, but I want to save her for last. We’ll start with her roommates, and best friends, Nelinha and Ester. Nelinha da Silva grew up in an orphanage in Rio de Janeiro, but got to attend Harding-Pencroft on a scholarship. She’s also the closest the series gets to referencing Percy Jackson and the Olympians. I can best describe Nelinha as what would happen if Charles Beckendorf and Silena Beauregard were to have a kid. And, you know, if they were still alive. She’s a complete mechanical genius, and geeks out over machines and engine parts. She’s a member of House Cephalopod, naturally. However, she is also obsessed with fashion, and always makes sure to look her best at all times. Nelinha doesn’t just pack outfits, she packs entire wardrobes.
One of my prior complaints about Rick Riordan is that he only seems to know how to write one type of female character. Namely, he seems to believe that being a strong female character means being a tomboy who hates all things girly. So, it was nice to see Nelinha as a course correction on that front. Nelinha being from Brazil is likely a nod to how popular Rick Riordan’s books are in Brazil. So, I’m sure Brazilian fans were excited to finally get a Brazilian main character.
On the flipside, we also get Ester Harding. She’s a member of House Orca. She is a blood relative of one of the founders of Harding-Pencroft. She is also the first autistic character in a Rick Riordan book. I’m still bitter about how he wrote a Muslims character before he wrote an autistic character. In the Riordanverse, anyone can be a demigod, unless you’re autistic, it would seem. I had high hopes for Ester. You don’t see autistic girls too often in the media. Riordan has said that he got sensitivity readers to help him with writing characters from different cultural backgrounds. However, it would seem none of them offered insight into autistic people. It almost feels like Riordan watched a couple episodes of The Good Doctor and was like “I got this!” You know those TikTok clips of that guy having a temper tantrum while shouting “I am a surgeon!” Yeah, that’s The Good Doctor. It was another show I had high hopes for, but fell back on stereotyping autistic people. Don’t get me started on my problems with The Good Doctor, we’ll be here all day.
Anyway, Ester displays a number of stereotypical traits. She yo-yos between being basically non-verbal, and shouting at the top of her lungs. She does this all in a robotic monotone voice. In contrast to Nelinha, Ester has basically no fashion sense, and seems to be going for the long-lost daughter of Albert Einstein look. Ester also doesn’t have much in the way of common sense, and though it never comes up, she’s probably Jewish. Not too many gentiles name Ester. She’s got an excellent memory, to the point of being almost eidetic, but that’s somewhat accurate. Well, maybe not eidetic, but most autistic people do often have amazing memories. How do you think I’m about to write these retrospectives?
Ana briefly remarks about how some people claim that autistic people can’t feel love or other emotions, and that Ester proves this isn’t true, due to how empathetic she is. Again, this is true, as autistic people can be quite empathetic. Though, I can’t help but wonder if Disney specially made Rick insert that line to cover their asses. See, this isn’t the first time Disney has tackled autism. There was an episode of Girl Meets World about how we should all be nice to autistic people. All well and good, but they also claim that autistic people are incapable of experiencing emotions, including love.
Gemini Twain has been assigned as Ana’s bodyguard. He’s a no-nonsense member of House Shark. He’s also a member of the Church of Jesus Christ and Latter Day Saints. This is certainly an interesting choice, as Gemini is also Black. Historically, Mormons haven’t exactly gotten along well with Black people. Or Native Americans, or Polynesians, or…well, pretty much anybody who isn’t White. The most infamous instance was when Mormon schools refused to desegregate. The American government threatened to revoke their tax exemption status, but wouldn’t you know it, Mormon God rather conveniently changed his mind about Black people. Though, Gemini’s faith doesn’t really come up that much. He doesn’t like swearing or taking the lord’s name in vein, and he mentions his grandma raised him and his brother in the LDS church, but that’s about it. Well, he did get into a minor scuffle with Nelinha. Gemini’s brother went on his mission trip to Brazil, and Gemini assumed Nelinha would know his brother, because she’s from Brazil.
Well, nice touch having one of the non-White characters be flawed enough to be accidentally racist. I remember back in The Hammer of Thor retrospective when I said, paraphrased, “A Muslim demigod? What’s next, a Mormon demigod?” I have on occasion wondered if Rick Riordan reads these retrospectives. Probably a long shot, but you never know.
Technically, there is a fifth main character: the Nautilusitself. It took until about halfway through the book before the Nautilus showed up. Yeah, this book has some pacing issues. The Nautilus has what can best be described as an artificial intelligence system. Also, apparently it also includes some organic components. As you might imagine, it is extremely untrustworthy of anyone who isn’t a blood relative of Prince Dakkar, aka Captain Nemo. So, Ana’s biometrics are key to unlocking the Nautilus.
Unfortunately, the Nautilus also highlights one of the issues I had with the book. Apparently, every major invention of the 20th Century was a result of Harding-Pencroft discreetly releasing them to the public. That, or Land Institute stealing them. This caused Daughter of the Deep to evoke the Great Man Theory of History. The theory goes that society gets stuck in ruts until a great man, and it’s always a man, shakes up the status quo and moves the world forward. This view has largely fallen out of favor with mainstream historians. Most historians emphasis how the changes were put into motion, often by complex chains of influences, long before the supposedly great men came about.
You do kind of get this with the main Riordanverse, where pretty much anyone who did anything was either a demigod or a magician. However, that was softened by just how many demigods and magicians there were throughout history. So, it felt more like a team-effort. By contrast, Daughter of the Deep gave us a single scientific übermensch who, apparently, leapfrogged from steam-power to cold fusion reactors. Now, granted, this is also true of Nemo in 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. Still, maybe Rick shouldn’t have depicted Nemo in such a lock, stock, and barrel sort of way.
And that segues into my next point. Harding-Pencroft is deathly afraid of letting the general public get access to Nemo’s technology. They only release technology sparingly, and only when they feel humanity has earned it. Uh, and what metric do they use to determine how worthy humanity is? Beats me, the book offers no details. The adults all make a big deal about how corporations would try to monopolize Nemo’s technology, but nobody ever suggests releasing it as open-source tech. Well, I know the real reason for that. There’s no way that Disney, the poster boy for copyright abuse, is going to be advocating for open-source. A particularly facepalm worthy moment is that fact that Harding-Pencroft refuses to release cold fusion technology…despite climate change being a serious issue! The book would have you believe Harding-Pencroft are the good guys. However, I’m tempted to think Land Institute had a point about Harding-Pencroft being corrupt and selfish.
Hey, wait a minute. Harding-Pencroft is a secretive organization that is very selective of its membership. It trains its students so that, effectively, they’re cut-off from the outside world. They indoctrinate their students from a young age into their views. They have charismatic leaders and founders. Yikes, I hope the cafeteria never served Kool-Aid! Harding-Pencroft is a cult!
It would seem that Harding-Pencroft has something akin to the Prime Detective from Star Trek. There has been a lot of debate about the morality of the Prime Detective. The main thinking seems to be don’t give advanced weaponry to civilizations that aren’t morally mature. The Original Seriesalso says that it is okay to break the Prime Directive if a planet is in imminent danger. Contrast this with Next Generation, where one episode has Captain Picard dithering about if he should save a planet, even if it break the Prime Directive. Of course, the worst offender was Voyager. It had an episode where the moral was, basically, don’t save a baby trapped in a burning car, or else the baby will grow-up to be Hitler. Yeah, the Prime Directive kind of devolved into an immoral religious dogma as Star Trek went on.
Point is, Harding-Pencroft’s Prime Directive seems to lean towards that of the later Star Trek entries. Apparently, screw the planet, we need to keep the tech away from corporations! The irony of Disney railing against corporations is so thick you can practically cut it with a machete. Also, if the concern is that the corporations would hoard stuff like the cure for cancer, well, how’s that any different than what Harding-Pencroft is doing?
Much is made about how Ana must choose to reconcile both the good and the bad of Nemo’s legacy. However, nothing really comes of this. We don’t see her seriously debate or challenge Harding-Pencroft and Land Institute’s views of Nemo. In fact, she gets indoctrinated into Harding-Pencroft’s views pretty quickly. It would have been a great opportunity to show Nemo’s complexity, not just tell us about it. How many innocent lives did he take in his quest for vengeance? Should he have shared his technology with the oppressed peoples chafing under the yoke of colonialism? Is it possible that Land Institute has some valid points, and that Harding-Pencroft has lost its way? All excellent questions that sadly go unanswered.
As for why that is, it ties into the biggest problem I have with Daughter of the Deep. Overall, it feels like merely the novelization of the yet to be produced movie. I was hoping that the novel would be able to stand on its own merits. However, Riordan clearly wrote it so that the adoption process would be streamlined. Debating ethics might not translate to film. Though, it could work in the hands of a competent scriptwriter.
I feel this streamlining was ultimately to the novel’s determent. I certainly didn’t hate Daughter of the Deep. It had plenty of the action and adventure you’d expect from a Rick Riordan novel. However, for every thing I liked, there was almost always something else I didn’t like. It is ironic that Rick claims he spent years working on Daughter of the Deep. It overall feels like it was yanked out of the oven before it had a chance to bake properly. Then again, he also claims to have gotten the idea for Magnus Chase before he wrote Percy Jackson, and look how that turned out.
The audiobook is narrated by Soneela Nankani. She’s the narrator for the Aru Shah audiobooks. Personally, I wasn’t too thrilled when I saw that Soneela would be narrating. However, she gave a fairly decent performance. She voiced Ester in a rather stereotypical way, like she was imitating Sean from The Good Doctor, but that was the only true sour note. Speaking of music, the audiobook is filled with music. There’s lots of musical cues throughout the audiobook. Scenes of wonder and whimsy have inspirational music, action scenes have exciting music. There’s a scene where Ana plays a pipe organ aboard the Nautilus, and we actually get to hear it. I thought that was a really nice touch.
Now, let’s analyze the cover. This is a nice looking cover. The undersea landscape is bright and vibrant. We see Ana and Gemini in their divining suits. Their faces are clear and unobscured. The Rick Riordan Presents books goes with this approach as well. Something about it being important for minority kids to see themselves clearly represented on book covers. We also see the Nautilus in the background, along with a giant octopus.
So, Daughter of the Deep has a lot of potential, and I certainly wouldn’t mind a sequel. However, there’s a lot of room for improvement. It needed to stand on its own merits, not just be the dry run for the movie script. Still, it's lightyears better than our next port of call. Next time, we’re tackling The Sun and The Star. The claws are coming out, and I’m prepared to fully eviscerate Mark Oshiro’s glorified self-insert fanfic.
​
Link to the original retrospective on my blog: https://drakoniandgriffalco.blogspot.com/2023/06/riordan-retrospective-daughter-of-deep.html?m=1

Been searching the island and lost island swamps since release on official Xbox. Does anyone know if it’s like a ultra rare spawn? Or am I missing something?

Here is the most important information, and related articles, from this article.
Published on 2023-06-05 at 03:36, this article is written by helen regan and published by cnn. (2 minutes)
Save 2 minutes of reading with this summary:

Australia plans to triple the size of an ecologically important marine park and close off an area larger than Germany to fishing and mining, the government announced Monday, protecting millions of vulnerable seabirds and animals. The Macquarie Island Conservation Foundation told CNN it provided expert input into the public consultation process and the result was “exceptionally important for the species of Macquarie Island.” “Strong sanctuary protection will help this unique Sub-Antarctic marine environment build resilience in the face of these growing threats and will also help to future proof this globally significant wildlife hotspot from threats such as seabed mining.”

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Top 10 Places to Visit in Thailand

From the glittering temples to white sand beaches and culinary traditions, Thailand has captured the attention of every tourist. Famous as the ‘Land of Smiles,’ this blog will help you prepare the best itinerary for your next vacation by offering a list of the top 10 places to visit in Thailand.
Are you searching for the best tourist destination for a family or honeymoon vacation? Don’t worry. We have the perfect choice for you!
Thailand offers visitors an ideal mix of adventure, peace, romance, and royalty. It is popularly known for its pristine beaches, magnificent temples, rich culture, and flavorful cuisines. The Big Buddha, Golden Triangle, delicious street food, and exotic floating market completely fascinate Northern Thailand and Southern Thailand among visitors.
This country is home to an incredibly rich cultural heritage, breathtaking scenery, and incredible nightlife. Whether going out with your friends and family or planning a romantic getaway with your partner, nothing can be better than making unforgettable memories in Thailand.
Thailand hosts many cities, each with a unique identity and charm. We know it’s challenging to identify the top ones from the platter. So, we have relieved you of this task by listing the top 10 places to visit in Thailand.
Bangkok – The capital city
It is Thailand’s capital city and offers an exhilarating mix of the big-city bustle, modern architecture, and happening lifestyle. It hosts the impressive grand temple of Wat Pho with the giant reclining Buddha, and the shimmering nightlife is a treat to watch. The Chatuchak weekend market, loaded with sumptuous Thai cuisine and shopping sprees, is no less than a pleasing gimmick for travelers. The Khao San Road is the best place to begin your journey and experience the tropical beauty of Bangkok.
Khao Yai National Park – The wildlife haven
If you are a wildlife enthusiast, Khao Yai National Park is the best place to soothe your love for animals. It is the first and the third largest national park in Thailand. This UNESCO world heritage site shelters diverse wildlife like elephants, monkeys, hornbills, wild Thai tigers, gibbons, bats, Asian black bears, freshwater crocodiles, pig-tailed macaques, etc. The dense, dripping flora and beautiful waterfall are a sight to watch the long-standing natural preserve. The park also features more than 50 km long hiking and biking trails passing through the jungle pools of vines and orchids.
Phuket – A family getaway
The palm-fringed beaches, authentic and delicious cuisines, exotic local culture, luxurious spas, and high-lit lifestyle make up the ravishing beauty of Phuket. Adventure the adrenaline rush with kayaking, jungle trekking, white water rafting, scuba diving, and much more. Phuket is the country’s largest island and the perfect family getaway for relaxation and pampering. A visit to Patong Beach, the most popular beach in Phuket, and Phang Nga Bay, a fantastic place that houses aquatic grottoes, limestone islands, and beautiful caves, fill up the fun spaces in the entire journey.
Chiang Mai – The temple city
With more than 300 temples, Chiang Mai is famous for its rich and magnificent ancient temples. It is the second-largest city in Thailand and home to two tribal villages. For tourists wishing to experience the coexistence of historical and modern Thai architecture in the mountainous landscapes, Chiang Mai is the perfect place to be. One of the most famous temples in the area is Wat Phrathat Doi Suthep, situated on a mountainside overlooking the city. Some of the fascinations of Chiang Mai are botanical gardens, handicraft markets, elephant nature parks, etc.
Sukhothai – Rich ancient ruins
Sukhothai beholds the rich ancient historical sites, statues, and temples of Thai culture. It was the first capital of Thailand, then Siam, during the 13th century. The Sukhothai historical park is home to multiple ancient temples, Buddha statues, chedis, and other archaeological sites highlighting Thailand’s rich history with stucco relief. This place depicts the golden period of Thai civilization – The Dawn of Happiness through its architectural beauty. If you reach early, you can also experience the peaceful and rare sight of the sun glinting off the historical sites.
Ko Chang – The Elephant Island
If you are looking for the best of a tropical vacation with your friends, family, or spouse, Ko Chang is the best destination to capture the most beautiful memories. It is the second-largest island in Thailand and has the elephant-shaped headland. Hence, famous as Elephant Island. The area is adorned with vast sandy beaches and tropical jungles. The White Sand Beach is the island’s most popular and longest beach to visit, and Namtok Khlong Phlu is the largest waterfall in Ko Chang that drops into cascading tiers. The route here is underdeveloped, so getting here is more of a trek. This island offers tourists fun, rustic, budgeted bungalows, glittering bars, and restaurants.
Kanchanaburi – City with the iron railway bridge
Although admired for its natural beauty, national parks, waterfalls, and gigantic scenery, Kanchanaburi is primarily known for its iron bridge over the river Kwai that links the Death Railway to Burma. It got its name as “Death Railways” because, between 1942-1943, one hundred thousand Asian laborers and prisoners of World War II died during its 16 months of construction under the Japanese occupation during WWII. Kanchanaburi is also an ideal pursuit for hiking and rafting. You also get to explore the Thailand-Burma Railway Center, an interactive museum that tells the tragic story, and the JEATH war museum, a replica of the ‘prisoners of war camp.’
Krabi Province – Authentic Thai culture
If you are fascinated with the authenticity of Thai culture, Krabi Town, a small city in the Malay peninsula, is the perfect vacation destination to engross more in it. Flourished with jaw-dropping scenery and island-hopping tours, this place is one of the must-visit destinations for a vacation trip to Thailand. Some popular attractions of Krabi town are Koh Phi Phi Viewpoint, Railay Beach, Bamboo Island, PhraNang Cave Beach, etc. Explore the local night markets, have a soothing Thai massage, and spend days wandering around the incredible nearby attractions.
Koh Tao – Learn to dive
This 21 sq. km island remained uninhabited until the late 1900s and was recently developed as a travel destination. If you are a marine water activity enthusiast, Koh Tao is the best place to learn diving and become a certified diver. It also offers open water diving courses. The place is also home to abundant marine life like whale sharks, butterflyfish, bull sharks, batfish, etc. Koh Tao also offers to explore the vibrant scenes of vast sandy beaches, lush forests, and majestic granite rock formations. Travelers can accommodate in luxury resorts while enjoying the scenic paradise.
Pattaya – Pulsating nightlife
Pattaya is the best place to be if you are a party freak and enjoy loud music, running lights, and booze! Formerly a beach resort for American GIs during the Vietnam War, Pattaya is famous for its raucous nightlife, exotic bars and clubs, massage parlors, and adultery. However, the quality of its beaches, multiple water sports, shopping centers, and entertainment zones have cleaned up Pattaya’s reputation as a family vacation destination.

How to find diamonds
Diamond animals have the highest AI of any animal in a herd. They are usually the last to show up at a need zone and the first to leave. They have heightened senses and are the easiest to spook. The first step is to level up and choose the right skills. I’m not saying you can’t stumble across and bag a Diamond at low levels but the game is designed to prevent that from occurring.
Step 1 “Choose your skills wisely”
3 points in “Spotting Knowledge” because the third level allows you to see the approximate trophy rating for an animal. Since all animals (albeit rare) can make Diamond a level under max level. Some animals like Ibex actually frequently make Diamond at level 4. “I’m only happy when it rains” decreases the players visibility to animals in the rain and fog. “Soft Feet” reduces your sound when walking through vegetation. “Improvised blind” can help further decrease your visibility when hiding in vegetation.
To name a few. Read the descriptions as some skills help to reduce the sound you make and visibility you present so animals are less likely to spot you and spook.
Step 2 “No Backpack”
Absolutely no backpack! The additional sound you will make will spook that Diamond even before you get a chance to get a glimpse of it running away. There is a skill called “Pack Mule” that allows for an extra 3kg.
Step 3 “The Wind”
Animals can smell you coming a mile away. Please always look at the bottom right corner for wind direction. If that cone is point forward as you are walking the wind is making your scent travel right to the heard. Either come in from a different direction or time if the wind changes.
Step 4 “Run, Walk, Crouch”
If you are trying to find drink zones as an example and you are nearing a body of water my rules are always Run to within 200M, walk to within 125M and crouch walk until 75m and Crawl the rest. The reason being if there was a Diamond right at the waters edge you are coming towards will already be gone by the time you reach the water. You can then adjust this to setting a marker on found need zones and doing the 200, 125 and 75 trick.
Step 5 “Spot Everything”
When you come to an open area and see some animal activity (big lake, open field etc) spot everything. Don’t just shoot the first animal you see. Spot all animals in the herd as a Diamond or a rare fur could be sitting there. Spot all the ducks at a water zone even though you were there for that whitetail trophy. A level 3 Diamond duck could be sitting there quacking unnoticed.
Step 6 “Hunt Drink Zones”
95% of the animals have drink zones (except all birds, mountain goat, chamois, springbok, side-striped jackal to name a few). If you find most of your drink zones for a species you have a high probability of finding a max level or rare fur animal of that species. I’ve found most of my diamonds by just doing the first 5 steps in the process and applying them to drink zone hunting. Drink zones (except some rivers; I’m looking at your Hirschfelden) tend to have better visibility for shots and spotting.
Bonus Ways
“Multi-player hopping”
If you know the hot spots for animals you have hunted on single player then it’s east to apply this knowledge to multiplayer. I did not have any Diamond Mule Deer on my SRP map but I did find 5 on multiplayer. I know the best spots on my map where I had large herds and when I found a map that had Mule Drink time and went to those zones. So be aware of the map you are on and what’s drinking at that time and you are off to the races.
“Herd Management”
There are plenty of posts and YouTube videos on the subject but basically if you shoot the mid level animals the respawns will eventually have a better chance to spawn max level animals if you leave all small level Animals on the map. If you do this with a species you really want a Diamond for you can eventually spawn a max level.

See my post from yesterday for more information about this series of posts.
​

Act II: Malta

The abducted
Victoria is brought by Rainn to some airstrip. While waiting for his contact's plane to arrive, he has a phone conversation with her. At first, she's satisfied he got an Achillobator but when he precises it's the young and not the mother, she reprimand him for only getting Victoria and after he confess that he might have badly injured Blue and that Owen was there, she calls him a jackass as the Raptor Whisperer will probably want her head if he learns that she originally ordered the capture of Blue. And if he decide to follow the trail up to her, Claire will too and she's worse than her husband-to-be. Due to his stupidity, Rainn might have triggered a whole deal of undesirable consequences.
The quest
Claire and Owen have a video call with Vuillier. He tells them several things:
- His other agents have seen Rainn in Malta on several occasions and that the poacher serves as a liaison between the Maltese black market and the North American poachers.
- One of their overseas colleagues, Dougal Benett, is already there, acting as a civilian supervisor for the group of grey guards the WDMC recently deployed on the island with the agreement of the Maltese authorities.
- As Dougal has asked for reinforcements but that the other European WDMC field agents are busy with another operation, Vuillier propose the couple to go to Malta and help their colleague. Thus, he can hit two birds with one stone. They accept.
- He adds that the black market is about to be taken down during a joint operation with the CIA's DSD, something that Vuillier reluctantly agreed after some pressure from its superiors and a meeting with Isaac Gibbon. He tells the couple to be wary of the DSD agents.
- Lester Nyamu will join them in Malta as he was tasked with following Claire in her missions.
The truth about Charlotte
Maisie and Theo arrive at the Citadel, where they are greeted by Wu, Dodgson and Doctor Katia Lesser, another geneticist. The two scientists and the CEO leads Maisie to a room with a laptop, where Wu shows the teenage girl videos on which her mother Charlotte appears, explaining that the whole car crash thing was a lie and so on... (basically the same stuff as in Trevorrow's version, with Charlotte as a child visiting Site B and Charlotte as an adult working in some lab). While Maisie digest those revelations, Dodgson promises that he will help her follows her mother footsteps, become a great scientist, restore the name and prosperity of the Lockwoods, and protect her against some dangerous people who would like to harm her (When she ask for an example, Dodgson say "Claire Dearing", who didn't received Lockwood Foundation's help as initially promised. Among other things, he tells Maisie that Claire might want to target her in her revenge because of that). The only thing she has to do in exchange is stay a little bit in Auronzo and collaborate with Doctor Lesser. Maisie is pissed that Wu left her in the dark about this and relations between the two don't improve, not at all. As Maisie and Theo are being shown the facility by Lesser, Wu lets out a bitter sigh while Dodgson has a smirk, implying that something isn't right.
In the middle of the night, a message reading "Invisible Fence deactivated" can be read one of the control room's monitors while a dot is seen leaving the valley on a map. Suddenly, another message appears, reading "Invisible Fence reactivated", telling the audience that someone in Auronzo is messing with the Invisible Fence system.
The farmer and his son
One afternoon, in a remote village of the Sabine Hills, in central Italy, a farmer and his son are attacked in their home by a (or several) strange creature which belongs to the same species as the prologue's attacker and its appearance is revealed: It's a small grey theropod with bulbous eyes and sickle-like claws on its feet, a Pectinodon, once known as Troodon (it's indeed those from Jurassic Park: The Game), a species which InGen once confined in the darkest and deepest parts of Isla Nublar's underground. The farmer and his son defends themselves with tools like pitchforks but just as the Pectinodon is about to bite one of them, one of the family's dogs rush to their aid and at the cost of his life, manage to kill the attacker.
Wasting no time, the farmer takes the dinosaur's body and show it to the other villagers. With pictures and videos of it being taken and shared on social media, word quickly spreads out, reaching Biosyn's ears.
The Maltese Dragons
Claire and Owen arrive in Malta the eve of the operation against the black market. At the airport, they meet with Dougal and Nyamu, who arrived a few hours earlier, and their British colleague brings them to a residence. It's where he and the Grey Guard Mediterranean Company are housed and the trio of newcomers meet them and their leader, the Italian Laurenzo Cesare. The expeditionary force is made of 13 members who hail from various Mediterranean countries (Spain, France, Italy, Greece, Egypt, and Morocco) and the United Kingdom due to Malta's history with it. They also recognize one of them, Vincent Chapuy, who was on Nublar when JW fell, and the Frenchman tells them about the whereabouts of some of the surviving main and secondary grey guards characters from the JW rewrite.
Dougal, Cesare and a couple of other guards then talks about the black market and their targets in the operation along with the code names they gave to them: Santos ("Lady Gaga"); Kayla ("Launchpad McQuack"); Rainn ("Daryl"); François Chartiers ("Jabba the Hutt"), CEO of the maritime transport company Cetus and one of the black market's pillars as his docks and ships are used to transport illegally de-extinct animals in and out of Malta; and two of the latter's henchmen, Laurent and Sylvain ("The Attic Gamers"). Corruption of some Maltese officials is evoked and eventual connections between the black market and Biosyn are also shown (pictures of Dodgson or Murdoch meeting Chartiers, mention of Sonoya acting as an intermediary between Dodgson and the market, and Kayla used as a "flying Uber" between Malta and Auronzo Valley), with Dougal theorising that Biosyn use the market to acquire and sell specimens, dead or alive. Cesare tells the couple he has two men infiltrated: Frenchman Armand Massoud in the market itself, where he pretends to be a Syrian merchant; and British Ada Digby within Chartiers' inner circle. In parallel to the presentation, we have a montage showing the grey guards spying the market, its secret entrances, Chartiers' residence and docks, the airstrip where Kayla usually lands, while posing as tourists or local inhabitants and workers; footage of the Market itself from Massoud's POV.
Later that day, Dougal, Cesare, and the couple meet with Bigelow and some of her men in St. Dominic Convent, where they discuss the collaboration between the UN and the CIA on this operation.
The body
The farmer from the Sabine Hills receives the visit from a couple of people who claims to be from the local veterinarian services and announce they're here to take the Pectinodon's body. However, the farmer notice several cues which indicates that the two individuals are not who they pretend to be. Aware they're being unmasked but having seen that the farmer had modest incomes, they offer him a considerable amount of money in exchange of the body and his silence in front of the media but he categorically refuse, telling them he'll give the body only to the competent authorities. Defeated, the two shady individuals leave and once they're in their vehicle, they phone Dodgson, informing him that the soft approach failed. Dodgson orders them to keep an eye on the farmer and his relatives while he prepares a new tactic. Meanwhile, the farmer tells his son they have to hide the body.
Dining with Chartiers
In the evening, Chartiers invites Santos for dinner at his residence (Kayla could also be there as she flew the pack Santos intent to sell the following day). Both discuss business while Ada Digby listens carefully. During that scene, we also meet Chicot, Chartiers' pet Dilong, which he treats like a dog (His henchman Laurent has even to walk it in the residence's garden).
Drinking confessions
During a drinking session with Drummond in the palaeontologist's office or in Biosyn village's bar (He's one of Wu's few real friends within Biosyn. Both have the common point of having lost their romantic partner: Drummond's wife died years ago and Wu's boyfriend was killed by his own creation during the Lockwood incident), Wu confesses that the Charlotte videos he showed to Maisie are nothing but bullshit. Drummond asks why and Wu says that the woman on the video looks a lot like Charlotte but isn't her, that those videos are fake, an illusion made by Dodgson in order to ensnare and manipulate Maisie, and that he forced him to summon her. Had Wu not complied, Dodgson would have thrown him to the media and the authorities for some of his past ethical misconduct. Drummond then asks why Wu doesn't explain the whole deal with Maisie but the geneticist answers he has no real proof and is among the last persons the girl would trust.
Earlier in the scene, the two talked about Jack Horner (Both badmouth him and Wu even met him several times during the JW years, precising that Horner sat in a corner and just waited for his paycheck) and Steve Brusatte (he was the paleontological advisor for the "based upon real events" film Universal made about JW's fall, directed by none other than Colin Trevorrow) who also work for Biosyn as a consultant. Drummond knows him and tells Wu that they had an argument about some CGI short film full of anachronisms Biosyn's media division made and uploaded online. He even says "A T rex and a Godzilla-like Giganotosaurus fighting in the Maastrichtian? What a f*****g disgrace!").
Sabine Standoff
In the Sabine Hills, shortly before daybreak, a squad of Biosyn soldiers park near the farmer's house and invade his property, with the son having just the time to escape. While he runs to the village in order to warn the other villagers, his father is brutally interrogated by the squad's leader about the body's location. The other villagers, along with a Carabinieri or two, soon arrive at the farm and a standoff between them and the soldiers occurs, which reach its paroxysm when one trigger-happy Biosyn soldier shoots on the crowd. While the Carabinieri are powerless, The villagers retaliates and the soldiers barely escape while they're being stoned.
The La Vallette Incident
The day of the WDMC-DSD operation in Malta, Rainn is spotted near the black market in La Valette. Disguised, Owen and Dougal enter in the latter with Massoud while Claire (who can't go in the market due to her celebrity, as a disguise can hardly hide her gash while entering with her face concealed would have aroused suspicion. It could have worked in a Muslim country but not in Malta) and Nyamu waits outside with other grey guards. The WDMC agents are disgusted by what they see in the market: various small species (like Diictodon) or juveniles sold to be pets; poached specimens like horns, pelts, bone powder...; pit fights (one of them could oppose an Anzu to a juvenile Udanoceratops)... Owen asks Massoud if he recently saw a young Achillobator but the under-cover grey guard says he hasn't. The WDMC agents then founds Rainn (I don't know yet if the potential buyer for Santos' pack is him like in Trevorrow's version or another person). Chaos erupts soon after and while the unfolding of the La Valette incident is still unclear in my head, I have the following ideas:
- While on watching duty, Claire spots Bigelow walking alone near the market. Noting the CIA agent has a suspicious behaviour, she decide to follow her and ends up spying a conversation between Bigelow and Rainn. During the latter, we learn that Rainn is the CIA's informant within the poaching circles and Bigelow warns Rainn about the WDMC's raid, telling him to spread the word to the market's pillars. Claire rushes back to the grey guards to warn them about Bigelow's treachery.
- Following Bigelow's orders, the DSD team betrays the grey guards at the last moment. It's revealed that their true objective is trying to discredit the guards by turning the whole operation into a fiasco. However, Claire's warning help mitigate the consequences of this betrayal.
- Owen chase Rainn through the market and up to a pit which contains predators (I'm imagining either small or juvenile carnivorous dinosaurs; either predatory mammals like Hyaenodon or a large sabre-toothed felid). After being violently interrogated about Victoria's whereabouts and telling Owen that she never went to Malta and was directly sent to one of Biosyn's scientists, Amelia Everett, Rainn insults Blue's memory. Angered, Owen throw the poacher in the pit, where he is ripped apart by the predators it contains. Among our protagonists, only Claire witnessed this but as they both let Blue devour Mills alive at the end of the Lockwood Estate incident, she isn't shocked.
- During the market's chaos, various creatures end up freed including a Carnotaurus, another theropod of similar size, and the fighting pits' veteran, a mentally-broken and scarred Gigantopithecus. Some of those are deliberately released by the DSD agents as part of their sabotage plan but it backfires against them, with the animals killing several of them. The animals escape into La Valette's streets.
- With her colleagues either dead or routing, Bigelow knows she must get out of Malta. She prevents Kayla from being captured by the grey guards and both women flee aboard a vehicle, heading towards the airstrip where the pilot has left her plane. On the way, they are chased by one or two of the loose creatures (one of the large theropods for example). They manage to take off and the CIA agent asks Kayla to fly to Italy. As her flat is in Rome, the pilot sees no objection.
- Having been told of her true identity (probably by the DSD agents), Chartiers is holding Digby hostage and some of her characters have to rescue her, fighting the businessman's henchmen and even Chicot the Dilong (which might die, accidently thrown in the open mouth of a larger predator). I'm not sure if this side plot happens in the black market or Chartiers' residence but Digby ends up being killed by one of Chartiers' goons.
- After the beginning of the market's raid, Santos have her transport truck driving away. She lures the WDMC agents, Nyamu, and the few grey guards or Maltese police officers with them into an enclosed location where she releases her pack, made of Herrerasaurus. With her laser pointer, she sends the dinosaurs on her enemies and ensues another action-suspense scene where the herrerasaurs have to be defeated (I'm not sure if I include a motorcycle chase). Before she can points Nyamu with the pointer, Claire shoots Santos' hand, saving the Kenyan's life, and bleeding, the dinosaurs' seller flees to a nearby house where the two women have a fight. Santos ends up being eaten by one of the Herrerasaurus. Claire also gets minor wounds (bruises) during that part of the incident.
- Once Sonoya's and the herrerasaurs' situation is solved, the WDMC agents go help the grey guards and the Maltese authorities stop the loose creatures (the Gigantopithecus is pursued on the roofs and the ramparts; the Carnotaurus or the other large theropod is stopped near a large plaza...). During the incident, Claire also fights side by side with the grey guards and as she had bad relations with those on Nublar before the Fall of JW, they're surprised to see how she evolved.
In the evening, the UN agents and the Maltese take care of their dead and wounded, and our protagonists have some rest. Searching through the deserted black market, one of the WDMC agents finds parts of an animal exclusively bred by Grendel and which Biosyn supposedly captured and sent to the Dolomites Sanctuary, confirming Dougal's suppositions. The couple and Dougal ends up talking about Victoria's whereabouts and when Owen mentions the name of Amelia Everett, Claire tells him that she used to work at Jurassic World as she was one of Wu's scientists and part of the team who created the Indominus and the Indoraptor. They fear that she was tasked with resuming the behavioural research on dinosaurs for military applications.
​
End of Act II.
See you tomorrow for Act III

How to find diamonds
Diamond animals have the highest AI of any animal in a herd. They are usually the last to show up at a need zone and the first to leave. They have heightened senses and are the easiest to spook. The first step is to level up and choose the right skills. I’m not saying you can’t stumble across and bag a Diamond at low levels but the game is designed to prevent that from occurring.
Step 1 “Choose your skills wisely”
3 points in “Spotting Knowledge” because the third level allows you to see the approximate trophy rating for an animal. Since all animals (albeit rare) can make Diamond a level under max level. Some animals like Ibex actually frequently make Diamond at level 4. “I’m only happy when it rains” decreases the players visibility to animals in the rain and fog. “Soft Feet” reduces your sound when walking through vegetation. “Improvised blind” can help further decrease your visibility when hiding in vegetation.
To name a few. Read the descriptions as some skills help to reduce the sound you make and visibility you present so animals are less likely to spot you and spook.
Step 2 “No Backpack”
Absolutely no backpack! The additional sound you will make will spook that Diamond even before you get a chance to get a glimpse of it running away. There is a skill called “Pack Mule” that allows for an extra 3kg.
Step 3 “The Wind”
Animals can smell you coming a mile away. Please always look at the bottom right corner for wind direction. If that cone is point forward as you are walking the wind is making your scent travel right to the heard. Either come in from a different direction or time if the wind changes.
Step 4 “Run, Walk, Crouch”
If you are trying to find drink zones as an example and you are nearing a body of water my rules are always Run to within 200M, walk to within 125M and crouch walk until 75m and Crawl the rest. The reason being if there was a Diamond right at the waters edge you are coming towards will already be gone by the time you reach the water. You can then adjust this to setting a marker on found need zones and doing the 200, 125 and 75 trick.
Step 5 “Spot Everything”
When you come to an open area and see some animal activity (big lake, open field etc) spot everything. Don’t just shoot the first animal you see. Spot all animals in the herd as a Diamond or a rare fur could be sitting there. Spot all the ducks at a water zone even though you were there for that whitetail trophy. A level 3 Diamond duck could be sitting there quacking unnoticed.
Step 6 “Hunt Drink Zones”
95% of the animals have drink zones (except all birds, mountain goat, chamois, springbok, side-striped jackal to name a few). If you find most of your drink zones for a species you have a high probability of finding a max level or rare fur animal of that species. I’ve found most of my diamonds by just doing the first 5 steps in the process and applying them to drink zone hunting. Drink zones (except some rivers; I’m looking at your Hirschfelden) tend to have better visibility for shots and spotting.
Bonus Ways
“Multi-player hopping”
If you know the hot spots for animals you have hunted on single player then it’s east to apply this knowledge to multiplayer. I did not have any Diamond Mule Deer on my SRP map but I did find 5 on multiplayer. I know the best spots on my map where I had large herds and when I found a map that had Mule Drink time and went to those zones. So be aware of the map you are on and what’s drinking at that time and you are off to the races.
“Herd Management”
There are plenty of posts and YouTube videos on the subject but basically if you shoot the mid level animals the respawns will eventually have a better chance to spawn max level animals if you leave all small level Animals on the map. If you do this with a species you really want a Diamond for you can eventually spawn a max level.

This is a copy of a post I made on TheSilphRoad (where it was moderated away for reasons I don't understand yet) and on pogoraids.
Dear Silph Road and PoGoRaids communities, dear Pokémon Go community,
Many of you know me directly or indirectly as the (now retired) Silph Road Scientist who used to publish raid attacker spreadsheets, actually even as "prestiger" spreadsheets even before raids existed, who predicted forced nest migrations, or as the co-discoverer (together with u/DrThod_PokemonGo) of the egg rarity tiers, or just as the guy who tried fun and funny raid challenges with teams of small unevolved Pokémon, already before raids were even a thing.
I started playing in July 2016 and I played almost every single day between November 2016 and March 2023.
My passion for statistics / quantitative analysis + geo-located stuff had me hooked, and the challenge of achieving different goals kept me in the game despite the frequent bugs and the lack of communication from Niantic's side.
I decided to stop playing cold turkey when Niantic announced the price increase for remote raid passes, but that was just the final nail in the coffin Koffing in a season full of frustrations, which in turn were only the tip of the iceberg above a huge chunk of unsolved issues.

What promped me to quit the game for good

1) The first frustration was when Master Premier Classic was removed. Master Premier Classic was my best GBL league, I had a well-balanced team (Togekiss - Snorlax - Swampert) that I knew very well and brought me twice to Veteran. Now, to be equally competitive in Master Premier XL, I needed hundreds of XL candies for my team, which were basically locked behind events and trading. That is, easy for people flexible enough to play when Niantic wants, and easy for multiaccounters, but hard for legit players with work and family obligations like me.
2) Then in March I felt for the umpteenth time the rush to remove Frustration exactly in that week because it's just one week (or less) every three months, and not even with a fixed calendar.
3) Meanwhile I was hovering in the 2000s in GBL, without much hope to achieve Veteran any time soon, and still being forced to tank and go back up to get Rare Candies (because a 1-4 followed by a 4-1 gives 3 Rare Candies while two 3-2 sets give 0 Rare Candies).
4) I also realized that the "Go Battle League Pass" locked Elite TMs behind 900-950 battles per quarter, which amount to 20 monthly hours of GBL. At a $15 hourly salary that corresponds to $300 per month i.e. $3600 per year. Not sure if everyone realizes how much time/money it is.
5) At the end of March, the "Bronzor Cup" obviously added to the frustration level.
6) So the remote raiding kill (which not only meant I would have a hard time competing for the pokeraids Phantom Drafts, but also meant that walking to a gym locally, finding no one, and asking for remote help on Discord wouldn't be a possibility anymore) was just the cherry on top.
But these are just the final hits that made me realize there are many more unsolved issues in the game.

What really needs to be fixed

1) The biggest problem of all: This game more and more feels like a series of chores. Gift sending/opening, buddy hearts, Frustration/CDs/events that force you to do something specific at set dates/times... All these things make the game an obligation to play during certain times, and no longer a game that can be played on one's own terms and schedule.
2) Related but slightly different: Rarity goes from "impossible" to "too much of it" AND BACK in a matter of days. I'd spend months chasing a rare Pokémon (e.g. Togetic), only for there to be a 3-hour window where I'd get plenty of it. But if in those 3 hours my daughter's school organizes an event, I may miss 90% of that exclusive time window and go back to "impossible" rarity at the end of the event. It also made any buddy walking or egg hatching or spawn chasing feel useless, because the game now is mostly "play in the scheduled obligation time to get what you need".
3) Being force-fed event after events also deprives players of the time to explore "natural" spawns (which are bad anyway) or nests (which nobody reports anymore because it's pointless on many levels).
4) It's very hard to coordinate with other players. For years we had to just be lucky and bump into other players by chance, and then try to find the right third-party app for that particular community (Telegram, WhatsApp, Discord...). Campfire is too little, too late, and not available for everyone yet.
5) Most game incentives cater to rule violators (mostly spoofers, multiaccounters and account sharers). Raids must be in person? "We'll fly to it." Guaranteed XL from trades? "I don't need your help, I just do 100 daily trades with my baby account." Regional exclusives? "My sister is in New Zealand, if you want I can ask her to catch a Relicanth for you." Especially multiaccounters get a lot of the good stuff: a second account, even without significant work put into it, adds firepower to raids, especially with the Mega attack bonus, it is a better Pokémon transfer "sink" than Professor Willow, who almost never gives XL candy, while "trades" with the alt account are often guaranteed, and a second account of a different team can conveniently take out the demotivated gym placeholders for 50 guaranteed coins a day. I literally emigrated away from a country that implicitly tolerates rule violators. I'm now leaving a game that implicitly tolerates rule violators.
6) Raids have been broken since freaking 2017 and no fix is in sight. I'm referring to the extremely annoying bugs called phantom hits and boss health regeneration.
7) RNG is everywhere. Spawns are random, eggs are random, IVs are random, the number of XL candies is random, GBL encounters are random, raid bosses appear randomly, nests rotate randomly, raid rewards are random, quests are random, and so on and so on. Yes, that's what keeps players trying for more, and yes, in the long term many things even out, but it's still quite frustrating.
8) Many ways of wasting raid passes. People backing out at the last moment because there is no in-game communication channel (and because the number of needed trainers and the actual attacker effectiveness are being kept obscure by Niantic), inability to re-enter when the raid has expired, and the already mentioned raid bugs make raiding sometimes just a waste of time and raid passes.
9) The GBL reward structure incentivizes tanking. Giving rewards on the basis of how many matches have been won within a set instead of overall, coupled with matchmaking based instead on Elo and therefore (roughly) on overall match wins, pushes players to lose matches on purpose in order to win more when their Elo is artificially lower but rewards are higher because of Go Battle Days or just 4-1 being just so much better than 3-2, given the poor average quality of encounters.
10) Communication sucks. It's June 2023 and there is still no way a new player can figure out that at the end of each GBL season the star piece has to be activated before clicking on Battle. And the same goes for a lot of in-game mechanics that can only be figured out by reading a lot of posts here or by trial and error. In addition, often the official blog and even Niantic support give wrong information.

Minor problems

This above was enough to make me quit. But we also have some minor problems that would be nice to be solved because they are additional nuisances:
1) The gym system is stupid. Instead of being competitive (actual battles for gym control among the three teams, with appropriate rewards) or cooperative (before the 2017 gym "reform", players from the same team could "power up" a gym by "training" in a raid-like way), it is just a race to who gets the first 6 spots in an empty gym without any effort (or with variable effort only by the first player) and then hoping that someone from the opposing team kicks out your "defender" after more than 8 hours but possibly every day, but not from all gyms but only one gym a day. Or just multiaccounting (ToS violation) and do it all yourself.
2) Too much focus on Saturdays and Sundays. For me it's a major problem, but I can understand the reason. However I'm around more often Monday to Friday than on weekends, so it's annoying that CDs, raid days and special research events (which are by the way the shortest and the ones that shouldn't be missed) fall on days when I'm not so flexible.
3) Too many pointless time sinks. Pointless animations when fighting gyms, pointless 120-second lobby when soloing a low-tier raid, pointless animations for buddy feeding, pointless need for AR when AR is not functional to the game, pointless Rocket rewards screens, etc.

Conclusion

I hope that someone at Niantic reads half of what I've written, knowing that they have lost one of the (many, but few in percentage) people who have contributed to the growth of the awesome community around this game, and knowing that, if the game is kept in this "alpha-version" state, many other players will leave and move on to something less frustrating and more enjoyable.
I'm thankful to the Silph Road Team (moderators, scientists, researchers, and everyone else) and to the PoGoRaids Team (moderators, draft leaders, and everyone else) and to both TheSilphRoad and pogoraids communities because they have made this not-so-short phase of my playing life more enjoyable despite Niantic.
List of my most significant posts, i.e. my legacy, for those interested:

• The GPS switch-off trick to walk away during the 120s raid lobby: https://www.reddit.com/TheSilphRoad/comments/ey6ilq/the_gps_switchoff_trick_to_walk_away_during_the/
  
• The disappearing TMs problem, explained to Niantic (who eventually silently fixed it): https://www.reddit.com/TheSilphRoad/comments/f2b80z/the_root_cause_of_the_disappeared_tms_double/
  
• Theory of nesting species and how migrations practically work: https://www.reddit.com/TheSilphRoad/comments/7xatvf/why_aron_nests_are_about_to_host_gen2_starters/ https://www.reddit.com/TheSilphRoad/comments/9gks2p/complete_table_for_the_september_1314_forced_nest/
  
• Return on stardust/candy per Pokémon level until 40: https://www.reddit.com/TheSilphRoad/comments/6r4hxt/chart_return_on_stardustcandy_investment_pe
  
• How many catches/evolves are needed to complete the Hidden Power collection: https://www.reddit.com/TheSilphRoad/comments/7ajphi/54_caught_suicune_or_starmie_or_porygonporygon2/
  
• How many TMs are required to get the desired moveset on Mew: https://www.reddit.com/TheSilphRoad/comments/8aypoq/it_takes_13_fast_tms_and_24_charged_tms_on/
  
• Sometimes raid advice doesn't need to be complicated: https://www.reddit.com/TheSilphRoad/comments/ayb2ay/the_most_compact_rayquaza_raid_advice_for_casuals/
  
• When I was still enthusiastic about the game: https://www.reddit.com/TheSilphRoad/comments/6o7k96/one_year_as_an_average_silph_road_player_recap/
  
• How the Ingress Sojourner medal actually works: https://www.reddit.com/Ingress/comments/avtdrz/miniresearch_sojourner_cutoff_is_36_hours_from/
  

My "David vs. Goliath" challenges:

• 1000 prestige against Blissey: https://www.reddit.com/TheSilphRoad/comments/61ynox/1000_prestige_against_blissey_is_definitely/ (my first "raid" before raids were invented)
  
• 6 Venonat vs. Exeggutor: https://www.reddit.com/TheSilphRoad/comments/87ifpt/the_mighty_mites_exeggutor_solo_with_venonat_yes/
  
• 6 Smoochum against A-Exeggutor: https://www.reddit.com/TheSilphRoad/comments/9pj6fo/aexeggutor_can_be_defeated_with_a_team_of_l20/
  
• 6 Sudowoodo against Scyther: https://www.reddit.com/TheSilphRoad/comments/9h50oy/fun_challenge_6_sudowoodo_vs_scyther_no_weathe
  
• Gastly vs. Kirlia 1v1 (with 6 Max Revives): https://www.reddit.com/TheSilphRoad/comments/98thng/gastly_1v1_kirlia_using_6_max_revives/
  
• World's first (and maybe last) level-30 Tier 4 solo: https://www.reddit.com/TheSilphRoad/comments/acmbua/rhydon_solo_with_a_level_30_team_in_rain_possibly/
  
• Level 30 Weavile vs. Rocket Leader Sierra: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2SfgmtP0SCg