Sure thing. It's true that most of what you missed isn't that important (souls, humanity, equipment, weapons...) to the game itself, but there's two areas you missed with secret bosses and great stuff, and one more that you'll have to discover eventually to beat the game. But you can always come back later after progressing more, so you should just go ahead and do what you feel like now.

And yeah, you can revert your weapons after ascending. All you'll lose are some souls and upgrade materials, which become increasingly available during the later stages of the game. It's good to mull things over, but (boss weapons aside) you can't really make any big irreversible mistakes with your weapons.

Aside from maybe the Undead Parish, there's stuff you missed in every area you listed. And not the super well hidden illusory wall kinda deal, but stuff you can actually find on your own. It pays off to look at everything attentively and scope out environments you've already been to with your binoculars. Break anything you can find and, most importantly, never forget about the level design. Think of where the something might lead, see if you can get a different angle on it and stuff like that. Never not ask yourself "could I maybe jump there" or "what if I roll off there and see if I can do...". The game is full of hidden things and has no real invisible walls, so there's a lot to explore.

The Hydra can be fought at any stage with any weapon. Watch your footing, though.

Making your weapon Divine does not remove previous upgrades. You can't go down the Divine path before your weapon is already +5, and at that point you don't lose your previous levels. Be sure to look at the menus and all the effects upgrading / reinforcing your weapon might have before you do it, though. Divine might be good against some enemies, but it might ruin your scaling or damage output against normal enemies (depending on your build and stats). So even though it'll just be a "Divine Winged Spear", it'll actually be comparable to a "Winged Spear +6". Think of it as a branching schematic, where your weapon is normal at the start but after hitting +5 you can branch out into a number of different infusions, all of which building upon the base power of a +5 weapon.

Sorry to go off on a rant, but it ties into the fact that people need something (or someone) to believe in. If there's just some truth in there amongst all the lies, that's all you'll ever need to fall back on. That core truth that you and all these other people can see and it becomes so easy to fall into a Us vs Them situation. You want to be that way, because it feels right. It feels natural. It's easy. It's satisfying. It's hard to accept the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.

Good post. I agree with that. At this point I'm just wondering if the internet made it worse. Despite the ever increasing amount of information on a myarid of topics out there, people seem even less inclined to seek out anything that could go against with what they believe. In my examples, it would take these people literally seconds to discover the truth.

Google: "US murder weapons". "EU Commission powers. "Paris riots". Even Wikipedia has all this information. But no. Surely, "Gunowningmilitia.blogspot.com", "Britishindependence.wordpress.com" and "United Patriots Front" on Facebook will provide more truthful and unbiased information on these issues than the official sites of the FBI/CDC or the actual treaties establishing the EU institutions.

Just makes me wonder if the insane amount of information the internet has given us access to actually amounts to something and, even if just to some extent, lived up to its original expectations. Or, a minority of people aside, it really does primarily allow people to cherry pick more information that confirms their bias, as wrong as it may be, while completely avoiding actual conversations with people of different opinions and ignoring all information contrary to their preconceived beliefs.

Too close to my first exam, I'm afraid.

...Reading the thread title, I was legit about to come in this thread and post that I always thought it was supposed to be "funnily enough".

The guy with the Dragonslayer Greataxe. Wow, never seen anyone use that before.

You wot. That axe was one of my very first PvP weapons. Like the hipster I am, I used it weeks before I ever saw someone else use it. Don't hate.

Warning: this thread is going to be a bit of rant.

As most of you, I've been an avid internet user for years now. While there's never been a shortage of morons online, I can't help but feel that wilful ignorance is becoming increasingly common. Part of me wonders if I'm alone in this or if you guys have noticed something similar, which is more or less why I'm making this thread.

Pretty recently, I've had a number of interactions with others on the internet that left me, to an extent, dumbfounded at what I was reading. Not your average stupidity or ignorance, but people deliberately choosing to ignore the truth because it didn't align with their bias. And I'm also not talking about vague philosophical issues or hot topics where there's still major contention between both sides of the debate, but actual aspects thereof which really aren't open to dispute. To illustrate my point, I'll describe those encounters which took place in the past few weeks / months.

1. I was reading a post on B.net about (and this shouldn't surprise anyone) gun control and restrictions to firearm ownership. Those threads are always interesting to me, because there's usually a ton of Americans in them who are quite fond of their guns. More often than not, they tend to turn into a massive circle-jerk so it's pretty entertaining to discuss the matter with people who think differently from me. Scrolling through the thread, I saw a post made by someone that had gotten a sizable number of upvotes from other, like-minded individuals. His post said that, according to FBI statistics, the most common murder weapon in 2014 was the hammer. Way more people were killed with hammers than with guns, he said, so obviously the brilliant argument of "better ban hammers!" wasn't far behind.

In reality, blunt objects (of which hammers are only a small sub-category) "only" kill just over 400 people a year in the US. Guns, on the other hand, kill around 8,500, which is 20 times the amount of murders blunt objects are involved with and account for close to 70% of all murders in the US. We know this, because actual official FBI and CDC statistics (which I linked) tell us this and are in line with police reports and media coverage. Of course, this number is bound to be off by a little because you can't accurately monitor every single homicide, but it's as close to fact as we're going to get for the time being. This person's reponse was, and I quote, "whatever". So okay, at this point I'd assume that he knows he's wrong but just doesn't want to fully admit it. That's fine. But then, not even half an hour later, this very same person chimes in on another discussion in that thread and calls out someone support stricter gun control by saying, pretty much literally, "number one murder weapon last year? The hammer!". In addition, my thorough post including citations and links to official governmental databases was promptly downvoted by other people who loudly vocalized their support for the guy making the hammers claim.

2. A PM discussion on the UK referendum on the British membership in the EU ("Brexit"). This person made a somewhat ranty post describing why he wanted the UK to leave the EU. Among his arguments were things like "the president of the Commission elects whoever he wants as his Commissioners and picks people he knows will support him", "there exists not a single accountability mechanism in the entire EU" and "up to 95% of all British laws are forced upon us by the EU". After a short conversation, I informed him (with links to articles, EU websites and the actual treaties / legislation containing the rules on how this all works) that literally every single thing he said was wrong. That there are many accountability mechanisms and safeguards in the Union, that the president of the Commission is not a dictator who chooses whoever and that the number of EU-inspired pieces of legislation is far, far lower than 95%. His response? "I don't care. I will continue saying and doing what I want to get out."

3. A Facebook group someone linked on B.net called "United Patriots Front", which is a great place to go if you want to see nothing but sheer hate and realize how it was possible for our race to commit attrocities and genocide (people are legitimately suggesting rounding up all foreigners and immigrants in camps where they deserve to be shot and treated like the vermin they are). In particular, a single post from that group showing pictures and a video of riots in Paris, accompanied by a post saying that this is happening in France right now. That it's the immigrants and Muslims let in the country who are waging war with police. That the mainstream media and politicians are ignoring it because they want to promote further immigration in Europe, accompanied by the caption that this should be "SHARE BEFORE IT GETS DELETED".

In reality, the pictures shared in the post are 2 years old. They do not have immigrants or Muslims in them. They are not people trying to bring down the West by waging war and starting riots in the cities. They have nothing to do with the current migration crisis. Instead, they were from a protest started by leftist French parties against Israel's actions in 2014 against Palestine. On this Facebook post, there's a number of people actually pointing this out. People linking news articles from 2014 showing that the footage of what is going on in Paris right now according to the Facebook group is actually entirely unrelated, 2 years old and has nothing to do with immigrants or Muslims. And where all the other comments calling for violence against brown people are receiving dozens of upvotes, the few who point out the truth receive nothing but harassment from others and are quickly pushed down to the depths where no one will ever read them.

These people, who were presented with undeniable official statistics coming from the FBI and the CDC, actual EU legislation and rules, or news articles proving that the story they're presented is entirely false, know they are proven wrong, and yet continue spreading lies in support of their own bias. Knowing that what they've been supporting, sharing and using as an argument is 100% wrong, these people choose to value their bias and demonstrably incorrect points over factual truths and, even worse, have no qualms presenting their lies as truth to other people if it means they'll buy into the argument and support the cause.

I realize that this is human nature and I've seen it happen everywhere, this place included. We all have our biases and opinions shaped by experience, and I'm well aware that I'm no different, but I don't understand how some people can do this. I have some strongly held beliefs on certain topics, but when presented with concrete evidence to the contrary, I could never live with myself if I just chose to ignore it and kept relying on what I was shown to be false just so I could keep supporting my bias.

Why do people do this? Is it because we are so fragile that we can't admit when we are wrong and will defend our initial opinion at almost any cost? Is it self-preservation? Or is it nothing but mere human stupidity?

Even more relevant, do you think the internet contributes to this? Does online anonimity or a computer screen remove the barriers and inhibitions we have? Because that is one hell of a living contradiction right there. That in a time where we have complete access to an incredible amount of information, we still aren't any wiser or, perhaps, even less so? In the early years of the internet, some people and philosophers were hopeful that it would usher in something close to a utopia. They believed that the interactivity and the amount of information out there would create open and factual debates which would dispell myths and bring forth progress. Yet instead, we soon found that it would never be like that at all. Instead of open debates between opposing parties, people created echo-chambers. Little bubbles where they grouped together with people who thought the way they did. And rather than have genuine and honest discussions that could lead somewhere, "the other" is relentlessly mocked, ridiculed and ignored by groups of people patting each other on the back, rejecting information to the contrary and priding themselves on being "right".

As much as I love the internet and the opportunities it holds, it sometimes does genuinely make me sad to see what and how people use it.

Quote from: Flee on June 03, 2016, 09:15:43 AM

Quote from: challengerX on June 03, 2016, 08:25:31 AM

Quote from: Flee on June 03, 2016, 08:00:43 AM

Quote from: challengerX on June 01, 2016, 05:01:54 PM

Except my birthday is in this month

Obama pretty much just made you gay by extension.

I've spent enough time in the US to no longer be fased by the disgusting food habits of some people.

>Belgian food

is fucking delicious.



Not sure what I'm looking at in your picture though.

Except my birthday is in this month

Obama pretty much just made you gay by extension.

Quote from: Dietrich Six on June 02, 2016, 02:19:50 PM

Quote from: ❗️Pip❗️ on June 01, 2016, 07:30:45 PM

Just a suggestion that I know is spoilery but will save you some trouble.

DON'T
GO
TO
NEW
LONDO
RUINS
TILL
AFTER
ANOR
LONDO.

You'll see what I mean once you beat a certain pain in the ass area after Blighttown.

Disregard this, pip doesn't know what he's talking about.

I jet to new londo asap every playthrough.

Yeah, I would go through there after my 2nd playthrough to grab some shit real quick but after that NO.

Not for Verb.

Just go Verb. If you feel it's the right choice, you should go. There's no wrong way to go.

New reveal:

- types and abilities of the legendaries
- unique moves of the legendaries shown in battle
- your pokedex is now a Rotom infused thing which talks (horror visions of Navi in Zelda or the Paperclip in Word come to mind)

Another event just started apparently. If you missed the Mew event in January, you can now get one by using the code MEW2016 in the mystery gift on XY/ORAS.

So I just got a Volcanion in a wonder trade.

Also, for everyone else, Manaphy is now available for the month of June. Just connect to the internet and you can get one through the Mystery Gift on ORAS and XY.

Quote from: Flee on June 01, 2016, 09:47:27 AM

Quote from: Tyger on May 31, 2016, 02:22:01 PM

Quote from: Flee on May 26, 2016, 02:58:47 PM

Quote from: Tyger on May 26, 2016, 11:10:14 AM

Quote from: Flee on May 26, 2016, 11:06:40 AM

Quote from: Tyger on May 26, 2016, 10:09:42 AM

Quote from: Flee on May 11, 2016, 11:56:11 AM

Quote from: Big Boss on May 11, 2016, 11:50:22 AM

Quote from: Flee on May 11, 2016, 10:26:55 AM

Hello, my esteemed American friends. As a poor European who is currently being denied access to the US-only Shiny Xerneas and Yveltal event, I was wondering if someone with multiple games / systems has a spare to share. Yveltal is one of my favorite shinies, so that would be pretty great.

Shiny Yveltal looks like bacon

I'm McLoving it.

I can hook U up

That'd be great. Anything you want in return? I doubt I have much or anything you don't already have, as Europe always gets screwed over when it comes to stuff like this.

no  i don't need anything in return, but my internet just went out so I may have to give it to you tomorrow or later tonight whenever it gets fixed

Sweet, thanks. Just let me know whenever. I hate missing out on this event, so it would be great if you have any spares.

had some pretty serious electrical problems but they got fixed yesterday as I'm now the proud owner of a few shiny yvetal. Sadly I missed it's shiny deer counterpart. I'm off work in like 5 hours and off tomorrow so let me know when you wanna trade

I'm on now and for the next few hours, if you want.

are we friends on ds?

Not sure if we are. I just checked and didn't see anyone with Tyger as a name. Maybe your Nintendo name is different, but my FC is 4141 - 5573 - 2509.