u/thenotjoe

I’m following the instructions in the readme that came with the patch by Stardust Crusaders, EsperKnight, and Tom on romhacking.net. I downloaded Flips, the patcher they recommended that accepts expanded ROMs, tried to apply the patch to the ROM I have, and it says “This patch is not intended for this ROM.”

The base ROM works just fine on MesenCE. The ROM has two revisions and it doesn’t work with either. I’m pretty sure all my ROMs are headered (which is what it says to use), but I don’t know how to check.

What’s going on?

I’m NOT interested in the show. I heard Henry Cavill left it because it wasn’t respectful to the source material. That’s why I specify canon media.

I know there’s a short story involving Geralt’s mother, but I’m not sure where to find it. I’m pretty sure there are comics, but I don’t know if they’re canon and I don’t know where to read them.

I’ve become kind of obsessed with the series in the last few months and I wanna see it all!

For context, I haven’t played BL4 or New Tales. I don’t really care about the latter, but I’d like to avoid major story spoilers for BL4.

With the reveal in BL3 that Pandora was constructed by the Eridians (and therefore Elpis probably was as well), that begs the question: where did all the animals come from?

I think there’s a few possible categories for each species:

1. Evolved on Pandora/Elpis through natural selection

2. Introduced by Eridians

3. Introduced by humans

4. Created by Eridians

5. Created by humans

The easiest to categorize are the guardians and the Warrior. They are directly stated to have been created by the Eridians. The Warrior itself bears a striking resemblance to the Kraggons found on Elpis (which was also probably constructed by Eridians). This could imply that the Kraggons are also Eridian constructs!

Wereskags, the Spycho, and Skrakks are all abominations of flesh created by our various friendly doctors.

The Threshers are directly stated to have been introduced to Pandora by the player character and Sir Hammerlock in BLTPS. However, as far as I know, we are not informed whether or not the threshers are the result of Elpisean natural selection.

There are also some examples of species we can firmly put outside of a certain category. For example, the Kraggons were definitely not created or introduced by humans, as they were a result of the Crackening. Crystalisks fit into this category as well, as they were first discovered by Dahl miners aboard Samvtuary.

This would also include some of Pandora’s iconic wildlife, as the original Atlas and Dahl settlers encountered unfamiliar beasts come spring. Exactly which animals hibernate through Pandora’s extremely long winter is unknown, but it likely includes crab worms, as they are almost exclusively subterranean in BL1, but are present on a tropical island in BL2’s headhunter DLC. What season it is during the events of the series, however, remains unclear.

There are also examples of symbiosis on both Pandora and Elpis! Rakk live inside Rakk Hives on Pandora, and Rathyds seem to be associated with Shugguraths on Elpis. It seems unlikely that humans would accidentally introduce two separate nuisance species to either biosphere (unless they are the same species, such as Rakk being the larval form of Rakk Hives, or Rathyds and Shugguraths being highly dimorphic sexes).

Many species are talked about as being *from* their respective world, such as Skags. This language implies NPCs think of these animals as native to their environment, which wouldn’t likely be the case if they had been introduced within the last generation. Additionally, we almost never see them on other worlds (except threshers, of course).

What are your guys’ thoughts? Any echoes I missed that cover this kind of info? Do BL4 or New Tales talk about it at all? What do you think of drifters? Lemme know!

Grog heals an absolutely massive 65% of all damage dealt. That is undeniably great, especially when combined with a secondary damage source, such as a slow projectile weapon that can be fired then swapped out for the grog, a grenade, or an Amp or Nova shield.

The Rubi heals a comparatively tiny, but still significant, 12% of all damage dealt. HOWEVER, unlike the Grog Nozzle, the Rubi actually deals damage, meaning it alone can be enough to heal you. At OP10, a max DPS (according to Lootlemon) Grog deals 200 thousand damage per shot, while the Rubi deals 1 million. That’s *five times more*! Additionally, Rubi’s bullets explode on impact, whereas the Grog’s bullets explode three times along their trajectory, which is much harder to take advantage of.

At high level, the damage numbers are so inflated that a couple shots from Rubi can *easily* heal you past health gate. Plus, a fastball (the go-to tool for quickly healing a lot with a lifesteal weapon, or for a kill in FFYL) does 90 MILLION damage. Multiply that by 0.12 and you get 10.8 million, well more than any character’s maximum health. Even the Lightning Bolt deals 7.6 million (heals 900k), and the Chain Lightning 6.6 million (heals almost 800k). 65% lifesteal is the definition of overkill.

For completeness, I should note that the Grog does have a few notable advantages. For one, it’s always slag. Grinding for a slag Rubi can be a pain, especially since you’ll want to redo it every couple OP levels. Additionally, being a quest item, the Grog levels with you in UVHM, meaning you can grab it at the beginning and just hold onto it forever. It also can’t be sold accidentally, which isn’t a huge deal but is nice.

It also has a huge 400% crit bonus, so it can actually deal damage on a crit (although those are difficult to hit with the Grog), but it can also be used as a poor man’s Lady Fist. Finally, it can give you that weird drunk status, which lowers your fire rate and accuracy, but makes you fire MANY additional projectiles, and this persists when you swap weapons. I find that difficult to take advantage of, personally, but I am notably bad at video games.

Those advantages have some baggage, however. When you get Rubi, its parts are locked in. The Grog’s parts are reset every time you quit and reload. The Grog’s parts mostly don’t matter due to its low damage, but the Rubi’s parts can be significant! Second of all, being a quest item, the Grog disappears on every new game cycle. Plus, keeping it requires the quest to still be active, which can be annoying if you’re a completionist like me.

Ultimately, the decision is up to you, but I find the reputation of Rubi as a kind of “poor man’s Grog Nozzle” to be… misguided. Rubi is just another great healing item. I’d bet you can make a usable (although definitely not incredible) endgame build that’s just four Rubis of different elements. You’d definitely need a way to regenerate ammo (especially if you’re soloing digistruct peak or raid bosses), but you’d be really, *really* hard to kill.

I’m a monolingual English-speaker and I learned a little Spanish in school before I came out as nonbinary. I plan on picking the language back up eventually, and I want to know the proper way to talk about myself and others.

But I don’t want to limit it to just Spanish. There are loads of other languages w/grammatical gender. What do you prefer?

I have Aigis for buffs, Akihiko for debuffs, and I had Yukari for healing, although I may switch her to Ken. They’re all level 75-80 (probably not high enough?) and I’m level 95+ w/ Shiva for Pralaya.

Is there a better way to do this other than just, like, cheesing w/ omnipotent orb (have not gotten yet)? I kill the statues and mayas in 2 Pralayas (although the cycles are often off so I can’t get the AOA). I figured out the strat of using Tetrakarn to reflect Hermit’s Akashic Arts, but it’s still not nearly enough damage to negate the luck needed to survive for long enough to kill it.