u/Schizophrenic_Lizard

"I'll stop. I don't need it .

"Yes, you do, Austin."

That should have been it. A profound profession of a lack of faith of character and a display of only surface level knowledge of who and what I am. Instead I crawled and grovelled, begging for the faintest glimmer of attention and rooting myself in an imaginary identity I had constructed for myself that was built ignorantly on the intrinsic belief that I was part of a whole.

Yet, an exercise in the futile reclamation of a fictitious construct of myself bore fruit in the realization of my makeup.

Time and time again, I have been beaten, crushed underfoot, and brought to my knees by the careless whims of fate. Many have doubted and left me for dead, lying gasping in the desert as my own blood pooled around me, crusting and coagulating in the sand. Each time, I have arisen, wiping my mouth in the face of adversity and continuing onwards. A new scar, a new callous, more armor to protect what I believed to be the soft internal self I carried cradled underneath. But this time there would be no callouses, no scarred flesh.

Gale force winds rend flesh from bone, exposing the internals to the elements. But what was revealed was no soft, tender core, but iron impervious to all but the most crushing jaws and most violent of storms. I had uncovered the true measure of myself through adversity.

I have come a long way in a short time. The doubt of others no longer a force undermining, but bricks used in the construction of a foundation.

This is a love letter to all those who have doubted me. This is a celebration of all those that thought I needed them. This is a toast made with a broad smile and clear eyes to those that thought me weak. I couldn't have done it without you.

Tl;dr: someone was nice to me on a game and it made my whole day. Consider retaining your empathy when dealing with people online.

It's so easy to forget that all those user names you see in Global chat are actually people. Doing the same thing you're doing. Trying to escape for a little bit. We don't consider the impact our interactions in game have on people. We rage, lash out, insult people. It's the same as doing it in real life. But the negative is a frequent topic of conversation and I want to discuss an act of kindness that may have been done out of boredom, even, and definitely wasn't intended or expected to be as impactful to me as it was.

Without over sharing, suffice it to say I've had a pretty rough go and things haven't really been easy. That's neither here nor there. I play the dinosaur game to relax and take my mind off my real world problems and responsibilities. And today, I was not making the game's job easy on that front.

I play on a lot of community servers and was on Natural History this morning. My Yangchuanosaurus on Nat Hist lives in Redwoods (a little fun roleplay) and I was building my nest. I picked an incredible spot all the way at the far end of the poi, in between tunnels connecting both sides and hidden behind a waterfall. Absolutely sick location, if I do say so myself. However, I didn't consider where resources for nest building were in the poi. I needed sticks, roots, and mud. Sticks and roots were quite the haul already. Then I get to Mud. Mud was clear across the other side of the POI near the border with CEF and BFH. Each trip took near 10 minutes. And I needed so much. There was a group of Austroraptors that I had talked with in local and knew the deal somewhat. They were friendly enough and wished me luck. About 2 hours into building my nest when I finally located the mud nodes, even with online help, I'm so very frustrated, but determined. That's when, returning to drop off the like 3rd mud in 30 minutes, I realize one of the Austros had followed me to my nest. Not only that, they were carrying mud and dropped it at my feet and friendly called and ran off. I said thank you and added it to the nest and went to head back and what do I run into en route? Another Austro carrying mud for me. And these 2 spent 20 minutes helping me finish this up of their own volition. Just to be nice. And it seems really small. But they saved me a solid 45 minutes to an hour and that small act of kindness really changed everything for me.

Anyway, I know this is really long. But with so much focus on the negative in the world, I just wanted to share some kindness with you all.

The PT Torvosaurus is obviously most effective as a group of 2 or 3 to maximize the Primed mechanic. However, I really enjoy the playable and would like to play it solo without being worried about getting steamrolled by every 3 slot that feels like I looked at them wrong. I've been experimenting with mixed results. Any Torvo players or even Torvo Mains that could give me some insight?

I feel like I'm either going Splintering Bite and Bunker Buster and then using Claw Attack as my primary

Or

Ditching the Primed mechanic all the way and going with Bite and Competitive Strike.

Thoughts?