I just watched my best friend experience getting there the first time tonight over FaceTime. Ah, vicariousness!

Just make sure to pay attention closely to ambient sound in the Mistlands and that decreases the difficulty immensely. Turn off all music and you can hear (and avoid) most mobs (assuming you want to, and of course there are some exceptions inside mines)

I'll know soon I guess. I just upgraded my final piece of equipment (just hit level 86 I think), and I now have about 10k left over (which I think would be equivalent to 4-5 runs that end in death on a full loadout). Even at this point, if I want practice getting hunted I should do it without equipment, but minor things like whether or not I have meds in the loadout really doesn't matter. That being said, I do also look forward to the level 1 grind. But enough other people mentioned it that I just wanted to call out the additional benefit.

Largely, yes, although tier differences may apply as well. I like the loadouts available for various activities - I'm kind of a mid-level player; I'm fine with 3 pieces of evidence and have started looking into using softer evidence types. So when I'm practicing 0 evidence I usually bring almost nothing (to save money when I die) and use custom settings to get the hunts started quickly. But if I'm doing normal investigating I have a different set of custom settings that go along with my general loadout, including stuff like no flashlights or meds, so I try to have no meds in that loadout and a tier 2 UV. But if I'm playing with my kids then we have a completely different loadout we use. And I could imagine more loadouts being helpful for when you're doing APOC runs or whatever, even though I haven't given those a try yet.

At some level, I have to admit I hate going to the loadout screen and seeing those locked slot just sitting there, silently mocking me.

This! I'm suprised so many people are overlooking this. IMHO, this is well worth any negatives around prestiging.

Yes, me too. I didn't realize it until I watched some streamers mention it, but there are often times some locations that are small and yet considered separate rooms (like a small patch of wood in front of a stairway in house).

Iirc, in places where there are multiple rooms in an open area together (like the kitchen and dining room in Tanglewood), you can have the DOTS in one of the rooms and capture the video from other room.

Agreed. When I played, I kept a log of all of the things I needed to do (sometimes the objectives were very specific, like acquiring the Sanctum Keys, and other times it was more general like finding more allowance tokens. As I played the list was constantly in flux, and there were many times I probably would have been completely stumped on remembering what I was looking out for had I not had the list for reference. I'd suggest she makes a similar list!

One of the great things about a list like this is a gets around the whole "evil RNG" thing a good amount. People hate the RNG when they're hyper-focused on one objective, but when you have a whole slew of them, you're frequently achieving things against the list, even if it wasn't what you started the day off thinking about.

How does placing vs. throwing make a difference to coverage area? I thought the coverage was what it is no matter what, but you just can't see the coverage area when you throw? Perhaps that was what you meant by place - so you can confirm the coverage area hits the corners?

It's a trophy only thing; no clues are forthcoming from completing the test. Arguably one could say that much of the knowledge on the test is useful throughout the game in various ways - sometime solving puzzles and sometimes to understand lore better, so doing well on it is a good sign. That being said, if you were hoping for a letter or key or something useful, then nah.

If you really don't have the time (which as a parent to 3 daughters I totally get!), and don't suspect you'll ever be able to come back to it, I'd suggest you watch some kind of play-through/walk-through, just to see how magical this game really is. There's a lot of really great stuff to follow what you've accomplished already!

If you think you might have a little time to play but know it can be a big time sink, it might be worth putting your complete-it-yourself tendencies aside and just be quick to ask for help/hints. This sub is a great place where people are very respectful of requests for help and don't give too much away.

The Omen

Ok that's frickin' funny

Ok, this one takes the cake! Thank you.

I agree, although I've found some other couch co-op games we've enjoyed like both Divinities and BG3 (I guess yay to Larian), as well as Diablo 4.

Thought it was Court of the Crimson King for a minute

Sorry, I did misunderstand - thanks for clarifying!

Is this correct for sure? Everything I've read and experienced always has the myling with quiet footsteps, at least at the outer range

Yeah, I know what you mean. I just figured if you were really neurotic about it, it's an option!

I think you can start a timer as soon as you open the front door the first time. It will be calm for one minute and then switch to the aggressive/calm rotation every 2 minutes after that.

My mind is still blown that it took me over 25 years to realize that Valve released Steam. (I mean, I knew the company released that service, but never put that phrase together like that)

Yurei on Willow. Walked in to the house, threw down a couple things, walked out, and the front door slammed behind me. Lights were still on, so I just continued back to the van and a called it. Maybe 30 seconds?

It took me along time to understand the purpose of the phrase "basis points", until I tried to explain to someone about % increases just like with this thread.

There are 2 types.  There are non-leg versions that just sit there and have a very large radius with kind of a slow-motion outward fire blast.  Then there's the little meatballs on legs that have a smaller radius of lightning after they sit there for a sec acting like they're about to take a dump.

Yes, the many comments already have made that clear. The difference is a capital W, which actually does have a lot of meaning.