The Maze of Madness

This is the last Gianthold one I can do solo.

• Return to Madstone Crater - need to protect priests
• Return to Prison of the Planes - final battle is in a confined room
• The Crucible - final battle is in a confined room
• Foundation of Discord - elementals respawn, possibly could do by ignoring or getting all elementals to the other side of the room then rush in and snipe bad guy, DD out?

Maze of Madness is a bit hard due to fairly restricted battlegrounds and the first few fights Dimension Door back doesn't break lock.

1. skip the first agent of insanity
2. use the "jump up on top of the walls" trick to skip most of the maze
3. kill the final boss; he's tough cause he's a caster and can do Burning Blood (which I can't heal fast enough) and Wisdom ability drain (then I can't cast spells)
4. trigger the first agent, run out and on top of the walls, come back and kill at leisure
5. pretty much the same for third agent, trigger, DD out, climb on walls and come back, kill

--------------------------

Lost in the Swamp

Solo [Deep Gnome Wizard] (L30 R10 D8), no optionals, 2 hours

This was fairly easy.

• The "shoot reaper, dimension door, reaper dies" trick still works.
• Everything is easy to kill. Vine horrors and elementals slow so you can shoot+retreat.
• Wolves are annoying because hidden + on top of you really fast.
• Ignore north-west area optionals must save at least an hour.
• In the final fight you can jump on the cliff or a pillar and are extremely safe there.

Infinity RPG (also done in Dec 2019) from Modiphius

50206 Infinity the Roleplaying Game Corebook (2017) - 520 pp.
50212 Adventures in the Human Sphere (2018) - 116 pp. adventures
50231 Infinity GM Screen Inserts (2019) - with 32 pp. booklet

50210 Infinity RPG Gamemaster's Guide (2018) - 196 pp.
50223 Ariadna (2018) - 116 pp. supplement
50253 Haqqislam (2018) - 116 pp. supplement
50208 Quantronic Heat (2017) - 48 pp. 3 adventure mini-campaign

Infinity Factions

50224 PanOceania (2019) - 118 pp. supplement
50226 Yu Jing (2019) - 120 pp. supplement
50215 Paradiso (2020) - 106 pp. supplement
50211 Shadow Affairs (2021) - 113 pp. campaign
Cost of Greed (2019) - 48 pp. 5 adventure mini-campaign

50216 Mercenaries (2020) - 114 pp. supplement
50229 Combined Army (2020) - 112 pp. supplement
50225 Aleph (2019) - 116 pp. supplement
50222 Nomads (2018) - 118 pp. supplement
50228 Tohaa (2021) - 123 pp. supplement

---------------------------------------

Other Infinity RPG products

50187 Infinity RPG Quickstart (2015) - 42 pp.
50207 Infinity RPG Player's Guide (2017) - 148 pp.
50213 Nebula of Mirrors (2021) - 120 pp. supplement
50217 Technology of the Human Sphere (2022) - 195 pp. supplement
50218 Ships of the Human Sphere (2022) - 195 pp. supplement
50240 Acheron Cascade (2022) - 159 pp. campaign book
50245 TAGS (2022) - 129 pp. supplement
50246 O-12 (2022) - 123 pp. supplement
50247 Hypercorps (2022) - 124 pp. supplement

51219 Infinity RPG Primer "Circular File" (2017) - 36 pp. quick start

Combined Army Geomorphic Tile Set (2021) - accessory
Infinity Faction Dice Sets (2021) - Ten different 7-dice sets
Paradiso Geomorphic Tile Set (2021)

---------------------------------------

Infinity is a science fiction universe based on a miniatures skirmish game from another company.

Both bundles comprise most of the current line and the line is rather too supplement-heavy for my tastes. There is enough leftover material for a third bundle and if that happens previous bundles will also be re-offered.

Also Modiphius not my favorite RPG company (even if they publish Star Trek Adventures RPG). All in all I'm ambivalent about these bundles so I'll skip.

Sat Sep 17 2022

Sleep 0300 to 1100. (8 hours)

• Went to Dave and Sophia's for gaming. Everyone there except Corina. We played dinosaur rancher and I won on tie-breaks.

Sun Sep 18 2022

Sleep 0900 to 1400. (5 hours)

• Stayed up to watch BotezLive in Romania which started at 0300.

Mon Sep 19 2022

Sleep 0000 to 0200, 0830 to 1200. (5-1/2 hours)

• Dinner at Steph's. Dad and Mom staying over there before leaving in the morning from SFO to Switzerland.

Tue Sep 20 2022

Sleep 0115 to 1015. (9 hours)

• Still haven't finished my résumé so not getting an internal position before I'm terminated (will still try to apply to a couple before I leave).
• Requested to move my company cell phone number to a personal account. As usual finding the exact procedure not always easy. The help system said go to this web page then find the country guide and look at the User Leaving Company section but that has a link to a page that doesn't exist. Looking around a bit more I found a second guide that has a link to a page with instructions. Ten business days so I'm cutting it close.

Wed Sep 21 2022

Sleep 2345 to 0400. 1200 to 1600. (8-1/4 hours)

• Just noticed that Activity Monitor now shows % GPU and GPU Time columns. I think there was a system update a couple weeks ago and I haven't noticed since then even though I use Activity Monitor all the time.
• Speaking of which, macOS Big Sur 11.7 and Safari 16.0 update wants to be installed.
• Got email to transfer my mobile phone billing. You go through a web flow and choose a plan but no descriptions so you have to search for details. AT&T Unlimited Premium ($95+) for unlimited cell phone data + 50 GB hotspot, Unlimited Extra ($85+) for 50 GB cell phone data (best effort after that) + 15 GB hotspot, Unlimited Starter ($75+) for best effort cell phone data + 3 GB hotspot. For now I did the middle plan mostly in case I need to use hotspot for a day or two when Sonic goes down.

Thu Sep 22 2022

Sleep 1230 to 1430. (2 hours)

• DDO maintenance this morning. When it was done there was also an update but it apparently caused a critical issue so after 90 minutes they had to shut down the servers with 30s warning. Too bad I was 90 minutes into a quest but I don't mind much since they don't want users to run into this problem (reincarnation cache items go missing when you try to remove them).
• Fortunately yesterday I finished reorganizing my various equipment so my reincarnation cache was empty (as were all items on storage characters).
• It's been a few more days and my MBP is running fine. Three monitors, two Twitch streams, Handbrake running and doing other things like web browsing or spreadsheet edits seems fast (except for Notes sometimes, I get the feeling it's constantly trying to sync data to iCloud).

Fri Sep 23 2022

Sleep 2330 to 0630. 90 min nap. (8-1/2 hours)

• Apple TV+ Friday Night Baseball last game of its season was memorable. Cardinals at Dodgers 11-0 blowout but Albert Pujols hit his 699th and 700th career home runs. Also learned that post-season stats are not counted in career stats.

Trial By Fire

So maybe the reaper-killing bug is for all Gianthold since it works here too. I hit a reaper with Meteor Swarm or Shadowblade (my two main attacks), this also tags them with Draconic Incarnation Destiny Mantle + Inevitable so 3 ticks of fire damage, then step through a Dimension Door and it says reaper killed.

Gianthold adventures are pretty old so haven't been scaled up right I guess. Bad guys are fairly easy to kill, even the generals are only a few hits. It's really nice that once you have the gate open you can run from the entrance to the boss in about 50 seconds.

One difficulty is that the spiders above the boss lair entrance respawn quickly (like less than a minute) so I ended up invisibly running past them and down the hole. Then hit the final boss a couple of times and Dimension Door out. Sure, he regenerates hit points but not that fast -- I can do 5k to 6k damage per run and maybe he heals 1k.

--------------------------

Feast or Famine

Try 1. Getting better using Scarecrow and Shield Guardian to go in and get aggro so I have more time to take out bad guys. Frogo is great at finding and disabling traps.

Unfortunately once you open the final battle there starts to be respawns in the rest of the dungeon, and they'll keep respawning so you can't use Dimension Door afterwards. I wasn't ready for that so eventually gave up.

Need to get to the final room after using the one shrine and then I'll have to die a lot. Will need to investigate how far back I can retreat without hitting a respawn...

Try 2. The map is a bit weird in that there are virtual walls that NPCs will not walk through they can fire shoot and cast spells through. There is one at the first door, in the next room there is a second at the far end of the tent, and a third one at the entrance to the second barracks. The last one is nice in that you can retreat there instead of Dimension Door if respawns start, though I managed to bring the final boss there and kill him and never saw respawns even after a Dimension Door.

Solo [Deep Gnome Wizard] (L30 R10 D10), no optionals, 2-1/4 hours

After I killed the final boss, which ends the quest, there was another half an hour killing enough bad guys to get to the final chest (don't kill everyone since that will initiate the returning hunting party).

Humble Bundle's Doctor Who RPG Book Bundle is very similar to a Bundle of Holding package I bought last year.

I already have these items from my previous purchase

• Doctor Who RPG (12th Doctor Edition)
• The Time Traveller's Companion
• Defending the Earth: The UNIT Sourcebook
• The Gamemaster's Companion
• All the Strange Strange Creatures vol 1
• The Silurian Age
• All of Space and Time vol 1
• Paternoster Investigations
• The Black Archive
• The First Doctor Sourcebook
• The Second Doctor Sourcebook
• The Third Doctor Sourcebook
• The Fourth Doctor Sourcebook
• The Fifth Doctor Sourcebook
• The Sixth Doctor Sourcebook
• The Seventh Doctor Sourcebook
• The Eighth Doctor Sourcebook
• The Ninth Doctor Sourcebook
• The Tenth Doctor Sourcebook
• The Eleventh Doctor Sourcebook
• The Twelfth Doctor Sourcebook

These are new items I don't have, along with their DriveThruRPG PDF prices

• Doctor Who RPG (10th Doctor Edition) ($30)
• Doctor Who RPG (11th Doctor Edition) ($30)
• Doctor Who: Aliens and Creatures ($25)
• Ravens of Despair ($3)
• Medicine Man ($3)
• Cat's Eye ($3)

$18 for the whole bundle doesn't seem worth it to me, especially since I assume the 10th Doctor and 11th Doctor edition RPGs are much the same as the 12th Doctor edition.

Actually all the new stuff is covered in the mid-tier ($10) bundle so that's worth it enough. The $1 tier has the 10th Doctor edition RPG plus the three adventures so best bang but I'm fine paying $9 for two more items.

Sat Sep 10 2022

Sleep 0300 to 1100. 90 min nap. (9-1/2 hours)

• Data Robotics sent me an email saying that Drobo is currently not compatible with the upcoming macOS Ventura, adding an ominous "We cannot guarantee compatibility with future OS updates." I think they declared chapter 13 bankruptcy (reorganization) but if that doesn't work then it's real bankruptcy.

Sun Sep 11 2022

Sleep 1400 to 1630. (2-1/2 hours)

• Cooled off today but for some reason feels muggy.
• So I did stay up last night after DDO and watched the end of Anna Cramling's 24-hour stream. Then an hour later Botez Abroad started at 0600. Then Nemo came on for an early stream at 0900. Crashed about 1400 but didn't want to sleep too much so I can sleep early tonight and catch Botez Abroad tomorrow morning.

Mon Sep 12 2022

Sleep 0030 to 0530. 3 hour nap. (8 hours)

• Today my MBP seems to be running fine. I played DDO while watching a Twitch stream and a TV app video and DDO ran fine. It's a nice day today (high 73F) and my apartment felt cool so I suspect ambient temperature, which might mean a fan problem (or the ducts are getting blocked with dust).

Tue Sep 13 2022

Sleep 0500 to 1400. (9 hours)

• My MBP auto powers when I open the lid which I find slightly annoying. There is a terminal command to disable this which I found on iFixit MBP 16" 2019 Lower Case Replacement.
• I watch Twitch on three iOS devices: iPhone SE (2016) - works great even though screen is small, iPad (5th generation) - same processor, graphics and memory size as iPhone SE but video sometimes stalls for a few seconds or even stops altogether, iPad Pro 10.5 inch - works the best in single app mode but does not support picture-in-picture mode so can't watch Twitch and play Raid Shadow Legends at the same time.
• Wait, I got it to work on my iPad Pro. It doesn't do PinP automatically. In Twitch tap the multitab icon (...) then select side-by-side then select the second app. Once in that mode you can switch apps normally and the PinP window keeps running. Before I depended on going to home and having PinP start automatically.

Wed Sep 14 2022

Sleep 0830 to 1500. (6-1/2 hours)

• BotezLive stream at 0100, because they're in Romania, and ended about 0730.
• Read about using a vacuum to clean out dust from a MBP. If you close it and turn it over you can see the exhaust/intakes are on the back and sides because there is dust accumulated there. Used my vacuum to suck out the dust then an air can to blow a bit inside (mixed reviews about whether blowing dust in is good or not). Let's see if that helps.
• Handbrake conversion fps can vary a fair amount but yesterday it was doing low 100's fps (which is double what it was doing during the heatwave) and today after blowing out the dust it's 170's fps with same CPU usage (a bit over 1000%).

Thu Sep 15 2022

Sleep 0030 to 0430, 1030 to 1530. (9 hours)

• Bundle of Holding: Troika Worlds presents this rules-light weird RPG and some supplements. I already have the main rules and one of the bundle supplements. Don't have Very Pretty Paleozoic Pals and less interested in third party stuff so I'll skip.

Fri Sep 16 2022

Sleep 0030 to 0630 (6 hours)

• Mutants & Masterminds 1E and 2E mega-bundle ($30), with almost everything released for those editions (current is 3E), I assume minus licensed stuff (such as Wildcards supplement which I own, though maybe that is for 3E).

Outbreak

I got up to level 29 and got my Adherent of the Mists and Beacon of Magic sets equipped. I'm really good with fire and impulse damage attacks and illusion DC attacks which are my three things (Meteor Swarm, Shadowblade, and Phantasmal Killer).

Outbreak is annoying because it's a small area. Dimension Door did not break lock. I did so much of this naked and ended up dying 59 times. Three major reapers and about the same for minor reapers, though none in the final fight.

The two mini-bosses were not extremely hard. You can run around the hallway in an oval and hit them and maybe you mess up the timing and they hit you. The south wing guy (Aaron Leifbrand the mage) is much easier because the hallway there is long and wide.

I got lucky in the final fight. I aggroed the boss and retreated up the stairs and he managed to get stuck in the alcove next to the stairs. I could jump up and shoot him and he didn't hit me until one time but at least by then he was down from 77k hp to 7k hp. Meanwhile since I had immediately retreated the initial mob was inactive so I was free to hit the boss.

Unfortunately from the final fight entrance Dimension Door doesn't break lock so I had to stay there and die. But there is a resurrection shrine right there and once you're dead the bad guys walk back to their starting positions.

This one took me 3 hours.

Return to Cabal for One

First one I did at level 30. There's a new Cleric 30 hireling and he can do Divine Vitality III 34 times so that's nice. Also I can summon my level 30 permanent gold key hirelings (Scarecrow, Shield Guardian, Frogo) but that's less useful as I thought with my hit and run tactics. Trying to stay letting my hirelings take aggro doesn't really work well and I tend to stick around too long and get killed.

Gianthold adventures might be suited for me since hobgoblins don't tend to hide and/or have magic resistance. Wolves hide which is annoying and have high detection range so it surprised me to Dimension Door then a minute later a hidden wolf runs up and kills me. Another negative is lots of traps in these adventures though maybe I can have Frogo disarm them.

Anyway, in this one I took the deal so all traps were disabled including the ones guarding the throne room (I'd have expected those to be active since the guy is supposed to betray me). You kind of have to kill all the traitors anyway so take the deal to not have to deal with annoying traps.

Not that many reapers but there's a bug making reapers easy. Hit one then walk through a Dimension Door immediately kills the reaper. Not sure if it's DD doing it or because I tag the reaper with an ongoing effect (3 ticks fire damage). There were like three major reapers and half a dozen minor ones I killed this way.

Not that many champions either so I kind of blew through to the throne room in two hours then another hour to kill the two boss monsters who luckily were together so Meteor Swarm hit both.

Deep Gnome Wizard Level 30, Reaper 10, 13 Deaths, 3 hours.

Week 1 went well as I won 228.00 to 126.88, highest scoring team for the week.

Number of players by position (with off weeks).

QB = 2 (9, 14)
RB = 6 (6, 7, 9, 10x2, 14)
WR = 4 (7, 9, 11, 14)
TE = 3 (6, 7, 8)
IDP = 1 (7)
K = 1 (9)

Number of bye players per off week.

W6 = 2
W7 = 4
W8 = 1
W9 = 4
W10 = 2
W11 = 1
W14 = 3

Lowest performing player was George Pickens (WR, PIT, 9) though Allen Lazard (WR, GB, 14) was out with an ankle issue. I'm going to try and switch out Pickens with Devin Duvernay (WR, BAL, 10) for $10 off waivers.

Sat Sep 03 2022

Sleep 0330 to 1330. (10 hours)

• Lately I've been using VIDL because 4K Video Downloader has ben a CPU hog. Thought maybe it was slow because of the GPU issue. But no, it still uses 600% CPU and it's the application itself using it.

Sun Sep 04 2022

Sleep 0515 to 1230. (7-1/4 hours)

• California Flex Alert started Wednesday and goes through Monday at least because of a heat wave during Labor Day weekend.
• DunDraCon 46 registration starts Nov 01. Maybe I'll go this time.

Mon Sep 05 2022

Sleep 0930 to 1230. (3 hours)

• Couldn't sleep last night. Sigh.
• MBP getting slower and slower. Today pretty much could only watch one Twitch stream (with only main monitor connected) and if I did other things like the browse the web kernel_task would go crazy. Tried to reset SMC yesterday and it didn't seem to work but turns out Intel Macs with a T2 have a different procedure.
• Tried it just now and with three monitors seems ok again.
• 3 monitors + one Twitch + DDO is too much. Two monitors + one Twitch + DDO seems ok.
• No, that also slows down after a bit. Guess resetting SMC didn't really help though it's not as bad as yesterday.

Tue Sep 06 2022

Sleep 2230 to 0500. (6-1/2 hours)

• Let's try this again. Reset SMC using OS X Daily process. Once again after restart everything is fast. Will try three monitors, multiple Twitch views, no CrossOver DDO and see if things work ok.
• Was running just fine with two Twitch views. Then after an hour tried a third view and kernel_task spiked and now it's slow even after closing the extra Twitch window.
• Slower and slower so that didn't work. Not sure if reinstalling OS will help but that's a lot of work so don't want to commit to it yet.
• Yesterday was hot enough that it was fairly warm in my apartment. Today it's already 81F (high will be 90F) and also quite warm n my apartment.
• I remembered I had a fan that I left in the HOA office. Got it tonight and it's helping a lot.

Wed Sep 07 2022

Sleep About an hour. 1215 to 1815. (7 hours)

• Kooma I guess collapsed and had to go to the hospital. Apparently one of the valves in her heart stopped working. Dad went to Peru on Sunday. He said she's still at the hospital for another three days; heart working at 30% which means she'll have to live in a 24/7 assisted care facility.
• I was thinking today is not so bad. Last couple of days were very warm but today doesn't seem so. Looking at the history it was Sun 87F, Mon 96F, Tue 97F, today 86F. So that 10 degrees was difference between "feels fine" to "I'm hot".

Thu Sep 08 2022

Sleep 0700 to 1400. (7 hours)

• Today's high is projected to be 99F.
• After a reboot everything is fast, which I guess is to be expected. Then after opening up enough apps and doing stuff it gets slow, which again can be expected but it slows down sooner than it used to. So maybe there old background processes and stuff messing up the system and therefore a clean reinstall would help.

Fri Sep 09 2022

Sleep 2230 to 0400. (5-1/2 hours)

• Airpods Max automatically switches audio between iOS devices when you "focus" on the other device, which kind of means when audio starts on another device if audio doesn't start then audio keeps playing from old device. So I can listen to Twitch on one device while playing games or read on another device.
• But it fails when I try to watch Twitch on two devices. Start second Twitch, audio switches and first Twitch pauses. Unpause first Twitch, audio switches and second Twitch pauses. I had to turn off Bluetooth so I could play two Twitch channels.

I couldn't sleep last night so I'm awake to watch the event in real time.

Apple Watch

Apple Watch Series 8

- Cycle Tracking: now tracks ovulation using temperature sensor
- Crash Detection (for car crashes) using 3-axis gyroscope and g-force accelerometer
- Low Power Mode: up to 36 hours of battery life (Series 4 or later running iOS 9)
- International roaming: many providers will allow roaming at low cost
- 4 colors: midnight, starlight, silver, red
- $400 GPS, $500 cellular

Apple Watch SE (2nd gen)

- silver, midnight, starlight colors
- Crash Detection
- 20% faster
- $250 GPS, $300 cellular

Apple Watch Ultra

- For rugged/extreme sports (endurance athletes, underwater photography)
- Titanium case with slightly recessed display to protect it better
- Bigger and brighter display for outdoor sunlight (2% bigger, 2x brighter)
- below freezing to 130F operating range
- new Action button
- Digital crown and side button designed to be used with gloves
- Three microphones for talking in windy conditions
- 36 hours battery life, 60 hours extended life (in Fall)
- L1 + L5 GPS for dense urban or forest conditions
- 86 decibel siren (600 foot hearing range)
- water resistance WR100 (resistant to 100 meters, dive proof to 40m, has a depth gauge)
- 3rd party presentation: Oceanic+ app diving computer for scuba diving (subscription app)
- $800 GPS+Cellular

Air Pods

Air Pods Pro (2nd gen)

- H2 chip
- Personalized Spatial Audio
- better Active Noise Cancellation (2x effectiveness)
- new XS ear tip for small holes
- Adaptive Transparency (transparency mode that modulates really loud sounds)
- Touch control: now detects swipes on stem (for volume control)
- 6 hours listening time, 30 hours with charging case
- FIndMy can now find charging case
- use Apple Watch charger for charging case
- $200

iPhone

iPhone 14/14 Plus

- 6.1" and 6.7" display size
- 5 colors: midnight, starlight, blue, purple, red
- better battery life
- A15 Bionic chip (5-core GPU, 6-core CPU, 16-core neural)
- 12MP main camera
- 12MP front camera with auto focus
- Photonic Engine: enhanced image pipeline for photos
- Action mode: video image stabilization
- 5G cellular, eSIM support, US models do not have physical SIM tray
- Crash Detection
- Emergency SOS (via satellite)
++ custom antenna and software so bulky antenna not needed
++ Q&A assistance so you send needed information in one go
++ also send location for FindMy app
++ service is free for 2 years
- starting at $800 (iPhone 14) and $900 (14 Plus)

iPhone 14 Pro/Pro Max

- black, silver, gold, purple colors
- Dynamic Island: info that extrudes/pops out naturally from notch
- 6.1" and 6.7" display sizes
- Always-On display: as low as 1 Hz refresh rate plus smart dimming
- A16 Bionic chip (6-core CPU, 16-core neural engine, 5-core GPU, display engine, image signal processor)
- 48MP main camera, quad-pixel sensor
- 12MP ultra wide camera
- 12MP 3x telephoto camera
- starting at $1000 (Pro) and $1100 (Pro Max)

Thoughts

Apple Watch Ultra is quite sexy. Now that I've used a Series 7 I think in a few years I'd be fine with an SE if the CPU is faster. Blood Oxygen and ECG apps are nice but rather specialized and my stats are normal so skipping those sensors for one generation wouldn't be a killer.

Air Pods Pro looks nice though I'll stick with over-the-ear headphones.

iPhone 14 is nice of course but I'm on the SE track and would only upgrade if it's replacing both my SE and iPad. Dynamic Island is pretty cool though and a great design way to make the front sensor box "disappear" for users.

League expanded to 12 teams (Sepehr left, three more people added) so it might be quite competitive. Weirdly I finished my roster first.

Draft did not go great. Spent a lot up front to get Barkley, Mixon, Jefferson and Kelce then had to sit out until towards the end when everybody else spent their money and it was only me and a couple of other teams with a bit of money. Then I was able to pick up the rest of my players.

QB - Matt Ryan (IND)
RB - Saquon Barkley (NYG) *
RB - Joe Mixon (CIN)
WR - Justin Jefferson (MIN)
WR - Allen Lazard (GB)
WR - Julio Jones (TB)
TE - Travis Kelce (KC) *
RB - Antonio Gibson (WAS)
TE - Darren Waller (LV)
QB - Daniel Jones (NYG)
DB - Harrison Smith (MIN) *
K - Robbie Gould (SF) *

Bench

RB - Josh Jacobs (LV)
TE - Dallas Goedert (PHI)
RB - Devin Singletary (BUF)
RB - Damien Harris (NE)
WR - George Pickens (PIT)

* Returning players. Auto pick bot didn't do well and I really need to not use it next year. But that also means need to know my top choices and have price targets randomly determined beforehand.

Sat Aug 27 2022

Sleep 0415 to 1115. (7 hours)

• Tried DDO Chains of Flame Reaper 10. That first bridge is crazy. Trap right at the door and Iessin can't find the trap box so I'd have to jump over it every time I Dimension Door back to the entrance.

Sun Aug 28 2022

Sleep 0715 to 1515. (8 hours)

• True20 Bundle of Holding is the core rules plus a bunch of rules supplements. I think I have the core rules (an old version, at least) and there are no adventures in this bundle so I'll skip.

Mon Aug 29 2022

Sleep 0200 to 1000. (8 hours)

• Library to return books and check out four though turns out already read one of them (Waterloo (non-fiction) by Bernard Cornwell).

Tue Aug 30 2022

Sleep 0730 to 1230. (5 hours)

• Ok, stayed up all night playing DDO Thorn and Paw.
• Audible Plus doesn't seem worth it as the selection of audio books is quite limited.

Wed Aug 31 2022

Sleep 0200 to 1000. 30 min nap. (8-1/2 hours)

• CrossOver 22.0 released. Had to reinstall DDO which now seems to run slower. Actually really slow unless I quit watching Twitch.

Thu Sep 01 2022

Sleep 0330 to 1230. (9 hours)

• Figured out my computer slowdown problems is the GPU memory. When too many processes using GPU kernel_task spikes to 800% CPU usage and I think it's thrashing moving memory between RAM and VRAM. I closed by MBP leaving two monitors and that seems to have solved it.
• This would not be a problem on M1 Macs since CPU and GPU use the same unified RAM.

Fri Sep 02 2022

Sleep 0130 to 0330. (2 hours)

• Woke up and couldn't get back to sleep.
• Playing DDO with the guys. Bluetooth cycled three times (dropping all connections - keyboard, mouse, headset - then reconnecting them) each time when I switched from CrossOver to TV app (to fast forward something I was watching). Wasn't consistently doing that though, like once every six or so times.

Thorn and Paw starts out tough in that the central room is close enough to the exit that Dimension Door back doesn't break lock on the mini-bosses and major reapers. I did it with no equipment and using the resurrection shrine to resurrect, shoot Meteor Swarm, die then repeat. And then I had to do it again once the north door is opened and you have to kill two mini-boss bears. That was most of my deaths, probably another six to ten doing the run.

For the most part the monsters are easy. Slow and easy to kill. The vine guys shoot but plenty of walls and corners to hide behind. The red zombies come at you faster but again one or two shadow blade hits kills them. The wolves are annoying because they're fast and hiding. Sometimes though a reaper would spawn with them so hit the reaper with meteor swarm a couple of times kills all the wolves. Fair sized rooms and big hallways with good sight lines favors me.

A fair number of reapers. I actually fought three major reapers (one at a time and not doom reaper) in the first big room running around and somehow avoiding getting hit. I'm level 29 now and with equipment upgrades I can meteor swarm and kill a vengeance or despair reaper in like four or five hits so just have to stay alive for half a minute.

Total Time: 4-1/2 hours. Deaths: 37.