Docwagon

My son is old enough now that Christmas isn't a big deal.  We got him a few little things, but his big present this year is money toward a car since he turns 16 next Summer.  My wife and I agreed no presents.  We're not traveling or doing anything special other then eating a bunch of carbs and sugar. 😄
 
But I'm off, so I'm home and that's nice. 

I've finished the "main" questline at about 60 hours in and there's plenty more content to do, including tracking down the remaining cultists, discovering who the head of the cult is, etc.  I want to continue to play because I want to see the story completed.  It's a pretty well written game, character and story wise, minor quibbles aside.

Just had an hour before sleepy phil went to beddy byes.
 
The game looks amazing on ultra settings. Nvidia tried to suggest I use medium settings which I laughed at. With everything turned up I struggle to get above 50 frames but a mixture of high and ultra seems the sweet spot for me. I imagine with ray tracing it must look even better. Watched the Digital Foundry vid and they think the way ray tracing is used for lighting is the best they've ever seen.
 
Nomad character to start with. I like the conversation options and the time limit to provide a response before the npc and conversation move on. My guy is taking no shit from the off. My car is a wreck but driving seems ok.
 
That's all I'll say for now. 

Old thread, but I just picked this up yesterday on the Steam sale.  You can get the game with all DLC and a remastered copy of AC III for under $30.
 
So far, I'm enjoying the story and the game play mechanics.  I haven't played AC since III, and I never finished it.

That looks insane! Good work! Glad it worked out well, All of a sudden ive gone really hungry haha 

Turned out pretty good.  Next time I'll use a little less smoke and be a bit more aggressive with the rub under the skin, but all in all I think it turned out really nicely.  Good color, skin was pretty crisp, good flavor.  The flats of the wings were phenomenal, best turkey wing I ever had.  The thinner meat took the seasoning really well and the skin was perfect.  It took about 5 hours at temps averaging 270-ish degrees.  I did a water pan under it for the last 30 minutes or so because the bottom skin was going to get too dark if I didn't.  My rub was garlic powder, onion powder, thyme, kosher sale, medium grind black pepper, and a touch of peri-peri. I butter basted, using Challenge salted butter, every hour once it hit 130 degrees internally.
 

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving in the US, although I will be working so we'll delay the traditional meal until Friday.  The turkey is brining now, this will be my first attempt to smoke a whole turkey.  It's gonna be awesome or it's going to be shit.  Here's hoping...
 

I've been bit by the outdoor cooking bug pretty hard.  I always grilled on occasion, but nothing "special" and maybe 5-10 times a year in total.  A few months ago I bought a smoker.  That's some game changing shit, right there.  It's a combination hobby, science experiment, and art with the result being (usually) very tasty meat.  Trying different kinds of wood, different spice mixes, different temperatures and variations...it's all quite enjoyable.  I note that as I've gotten older my new hobbies are rather sedate, but here we are.
 
Yesterday I had both the grill AND smoker going at the same time.  Note they are both charcoal/wood, no cheating with gas or electric.  Burgers, fish, and veggies on the grill, whole chickens and shrimp in the smoker.  It's enough food for probably four days.  My wife's happy, as she likes the food and the not cooking as often aspect.  I'm happy because I like the food and it's fun.  My son is happy because food.  I'm waiting to see if a pellet grill goes on sale for Black Friday so I can do long/slow cooks while it's unattended (overnight or while I'm at work).
 
I'm doing my own dry rubs, but not my own sauces yet.
 
Anyone else into outdoor cooking?

At least you gave it a go, Doc. 👍

The watch gathers more info then an app.  Average pulse rate over a run, for example, so you can see your fitness improving.  Set a workout schedule and it reminds you it's the day to do X.  Step tracking and "go move" reminders.  Basically it helped me with both motivation and by showing concrete gains even if the scale didn't move that week.

Yeah, my first impression was right.  Not the game for me.

You definitely have drink-outs here as well.  It's usually with burgers and hot dogs on a grill.  I'm not sure what you mean by flavouring the wood.  Different wood already gives a different flavor.  I'm using mostly apple wood, but experimenting with mesquite as well.  Cherry and pecan are very popular as well.
 
 
Lowe's has an 18" Basso Bullet smoker on sale right now for under $100.  Research bullet smokers to see if it's right for you, but basically it's a smaller smoker that can also be used as a grill or steamer and is in a very small form footprint.  I am using an offset firebox smoker, which is much larger: 
 
Amazon.com
WWW.AMAZON.COM  
It's a decent one, but you'll want to do a little bit of modification to really improve it.  I added a high temperature gasket around both doors and sealed up some smoke leaks with high temp silicon.  That helps regulate the temperature better since you can control air flow more.  It's a pretty easy smoker to keep in the 215-225 range.  You'll also want a remote thermometer, as the one in the door only shows the temp in that area, which is much cooler then the bottom racks.  The racks are removeable and you can install them at multiple heights.  What you can't do with this is sear, since it's indirect heat only.  Since you have a grill, you can reverse sear where you smoke to almost done then transfer to the grill just long enough to sear the outside.
 
My next purchase will be a pellet grill, which is sort of an automated version.  You set the temperature you want and an auger feeds wooden pellets in at the correct rate to maintain that temperature.  That will allow me to do long slow cooks like brisket over night or on work days.  Traeger is probably the most common, but I hear good things about the similarly priced Green Mountain Grills.

I've been bit by the outdoor cooking bug pretty hard.  I always grilled on occasion, but nothing "special" and maybe 5-10 times a year in total.  A few months ago I bought a smoker.  That's some game changing shit, right there.  It's a combination hobby, science experiment, and art with the result being (usually) very tasty meat.  Trying different kinds of wood, different spice mixes, different temperatures and variations...it's all quite enjoyable.  I note that as I've gotten older my new hobbies are rather sedate, but here we are.
 
Yesterday I had both the grill AND smoker going at the same time.  Note they are both charcoal/wood, no cheating with gas or electric.  Burgers, fish, and veggies on the grill, whole chickens and shrimp in the smoker.  It's enough food for probably four days.  My wife's happy, as she likes the food and the not cooking as often aspect.  I'm happy because I like the food and it's fun.  My son is happy because food.  I'm waiting to see if a pellet grill goes on sale for Black Friday so I can do long/slow cooks while it's unattended (overnight or while I'm at work).
 
I'm doing my own dry rubs, but not my own sauces yet.
 
Anyone else into outdoor cooking?

I've been bit by the outdoor cooking bug pretty hard.  I always grilled on occasion, but nothing "special" and maybe 5-10 times a year in total.  A few months ago I bought a smoker.  That's some game changing shit, right there.  It's a combination hobby, science experiment, and art with the result being (usually) very tasty meat.  Trying different kinds of wood, different spice mixes, different temperatures and variations...it's all quite enjoyable.  I note that as I've gotten older my new hobbies are rather sedate, but here we are.
 
Yesterday I had both the grill AND smoker going at the same time.  Note they are both charcoal/wood, no cheating with gas or electric.  Burgers, fish, and veggies on the grill, whole chickens and shrimp in the smoker.  It's enough food for probably four days.  My wife's happy, as she likes the food and the not cooking as often aspect.  I'm happy because I like the food and it's fun.  My son is happy because food.  I'm waiting to see if a pellet grill goes on sale for Black Friday so I can do long/slow cooks while it's unattended (overnight or while I'm at work).
 
I'm doing my own dry rubs, but not my own sauces yet.
 
Anyone else into outdoor cooking?

I've been bit by the outdoor cooking bug pretty hard.  I always grilled on occasion, but nothing "special" and maybe 5-10 times a year in total.  A few months ago I bought a smoker.  That's some game changing shit, right there.  It's a combination hobby, science experiment, and art with the result being (usually) very tasty meat.  Trying different kinds of wood, different spice mixes, different temperatures and variations...it's all quite enjoyable.  I note that as I've gotten older my new hobbies are rather sedate, but here we are.
 
Yesterday I had both the grill AND smoker going at the same time.  Note they are both charcoal/wood, no cheating with gas or electric.  Burgers, fish, and veggies on the grill, whole chickens and shrimp in the smoker.  It's enough food for probably four days.  My wife's happy, as she likes the food and the not cooking as often aspect.  I'm happy because I like the food and it's fun.  My son is happy because food.  I'm waiting to see if a pellet grill goes on sale for Black Friday so I can do long/slow cooks while it's unattended (overnight or while I'm at work).
 
I'm doing my own dry rubs, but not my own sauces yet.
 
Anyone else into outdoor cooking?

I haven't even gotten through the tutorial and I'm pretty sure CK2 is not for me.  It seems like way too many moving parts, a fairly complicated UI, and just more then I'm looking for in a game.  I'm sure it's immersive and fun if you want to put the time in to learn all the bits and bobbles, but I don't think I do at this point.  Honestly, I'm just looking for more casual games at the moment.

I'm still playing Civ V mostly.  Even with as many hours in the game as I have I'm still figuring out new things and strategies.  It's still fun.

Old topic, but I now wear a Fenix 5X most of the time, a Vivoactive 4 replaced the Vivoactive 3 and is an occaisonal wear.  It's been immensely helpful in motivation and keeping activity levels up.  As embarrassing as it is to admit it, I got up to around 280 lbs as a detective.  I'm 216 now, which is still overweight for me but not obese.  I got down to 206 for a bit but my heart rate dropped to 44 and I had to back off and let my body reset.  Actually had to have a heart scan because doc was worried, but everything's fine now and I'm working my way back down with the goal of being under 200 and then maintaining 185-200, depending.
 

Everything is going well.  COVID has my son attending high school from home, which has had it's challenges.  Wife's little online store is doing fine.  Everyone's healthy, etc.  We're hoping we can get to Spain next year so we don't lose the credits we have for airfare and hotel, but we'll see what happens.

Been kind of a shit time to be a police officer in the US, but I'm on the downhill side now anyway so whatcha gonna do, amirite?
 
I placed high enough on the LT assessment that I should get promoted sometime in 2021, early 2022 by the latest.  I'm hoping to go back to Invest at some point once that's done.

Been kind of a shit time to be a police officer in the US, but I'm on the downhill side now anyway so whatcha gonna do, amirite?
 
I placed high enough on the LT assessment that I should get promoted sometime in 2021, early 2022 by the latest.  I'm hoping to go back to Invest at some point once that's done.

Old topic, but I now wear a Fenix 5X most of the time, a Vivoactive 4 replaced the Vivoactive 3 and is an occaisonal wear.  It's been immensely helpful in motivation and keeping activity levels up.  As embarrassing as it is to admit it, I got up to around 280 lbs as a detective.  I'm 216 now, which is still overweight for me but not obese.  I got down to 206 for a bit but my heart rate dropped to 44 and I had to back off and let my body reset.  Actually had to have a heart scan because doc was worried, but everything's fine now and I'm working my way back down with the goal of being under 200 and then maintaining 185-200, depending.
 

Been kind of a shit time to be a police officer in the US, but I'm on the downhill side now anyway so whatcha gonna do, amirite?
 
I placed high enough on the LT assessment that I should get promoted sometime in 2021, early 2022 by the latest.  I'm hoping to go back to Invest at some point once that's done.

So for me the game got progressively less interesting.  The amateurish development began to shine through and the narrative died down quite a bit.  The ending is so damned dumb that I can barely make myself care enough to finish it up.  I've turned it down to "story mode" difficulty just to get through the last chapter quicker.
 
Honestly I doubt I pick up the next title and I definitely won't be in on the kickstarter since it took them so long to get this one "working".  The game still crashes more then you'd expect and the longer you play the longer loading screens take.  Anyway, at about the 2/3 mark I felt like the game was just killing time vs wanting to see what happened next.  The biggest kick in the ass is realizing that literally none of the kingdom management stuff did anything but keep you from losing.   Only companion quests mattered.

I downloaded the base game + DLC pack from GOG on one of their clearance sales and have been enjoying it.  If you liked the pen/paper version of Pathfinder DnD and/or don't mind reading up on the rules, you'll have fun with it.  If you expect a standard video-game-ized version, you'll likely be disappointed.  It has pros and cons to the approach, primarily in how much you have to rest at early levels since healing and spells are very limited, as you'd expect from a 1st level DnD character.
 
You can respec for free three times.  I've respec'd once at 10th level because I wasn't using two of my feats at all and for some reason long swords seem to be very uncommon in the game so I wasn't using my weapon focus at all.  I'm playing a human Paladin.  I don't normally go for Paladins, but I figured it would fit this game.  You are trying to establish a barony from an unclaimed land full of monsters and curses, and I'm assuming from the game title you eventually develop it into a kingdom.  I know how AI can be in these games so I figured I'd need a tanky character with some diplomacy skills and so far it's working out well.  I'm using the tower shield specialist fighter NPC as my helper on the front line, gave both the 'shield wall' teamwork feat, and let the tower shield fighter fight defensively.  With the various buffs and lots of lay on hands uses, as long as nobody gets stunned it works pretty well.  The rest of my party is all standard NPCs (you can buy 'mercenaries' and spec them from scratch if you don't want the story based NPCs).  I'm using a kinetics character, something I was completely unfamiliar with, a rogue/wizard/arcane trickster, a cleric, and a bard.  Bards are actually pretty solid in Pathfinder and their party buffs are very helpful.  I let the cleric use a heavy crossbow most of the time and hang back with the squishy characters in case something flanks us, then he can go to mace/shield and fill in the gap.
 
This game mostly plays by the pen/paper rules.  You want to cast stoneskin?  You need (expensive) diamond dust.  You want to cast restoration?  You need an (expensive) diamond.  You need to carry rations into areas you can't hunt in if you want to rest, and rations have weight, and weight leads to encumbrance.  There is no fast travel.  
 
What's actually my favorite departure from standard RPGs is there *is* time pressure.  Don't get your barony established in 90 days?  Game over.  Screw around with side quests and don't follow the main plot line?  It doesn't care, the next curse is coming on X date if you're ready for it or not.  If you aren't, it'll damage your barony and be harder to deal with, or cause you to lose.  The troll invasion starts when it starts, not when you walk over a certain trip wire or use a certain dialogue tree.  Your peasants complain about a problem, there's a deadline to set an advisor on it or if fails.  Early on you may have more problems and opportunities then you have available advisors.  Get a diplomat visiting from another country?  He'll wait for awhile while you're out, but not forever.  
 
Some things will wait forever.  Establishing a trade route with a given country seems to always be an option.
 
Alignment actually matters.  Your dialogue choices may vary based on your alignment.  What sort of things you can build in your city depend on your alignment.  If you get along with your advisors or not, since they aren't all going to be your alignment and apparently if you disagree with them too much they'll quit.  I have a lawful evil treasurer, for example.
 
The combat is...spotty.  There are some real difficult encounters mixed in areas that you wouldn't think they'd be in.  You can change the difficulty on the fly, though.  I have had to do so twice to advance the story in probably 40 hours of game play.  Once when I got stuck in a dungeon with no rations (cave in blocked me in and I was 3 short of being able to rest before a really tough boss fight) and once when I'd spent too much time building my barony and not enough leveling my character and was getting my ass kicked by cursed creatures.  
 
All in all, I have found it to be at least as much fun as the various NeverWinterNight games were, if perhaps just a touch more amateurish in the difficultly scaling and tutorials.