Thanks for tagging but tagging doesn’t work unless you put it in a comment. The pacing of this release feels too slow. I was expecting the league launch to be in early June at this point.

Who is The Originator? New Character? New boss? or an old character. The Originator is capitalized mid sentence, which means that it is a proper noun instead of a noun.

@FunkyStuff@hexbear.net What does it mean? Are we getting a new endgame? Will Zana return? Who wrote the letter?

These are just the rules of the community called “The Scene”. Fitgirl is not scene, for example. Also torrent sites are not part of the scene. Groups which release their content to torrent sites are usually called P2P groups. Torrents have built in hash checking as part of the torrent protocol. A release is only “The Scene” if it is listed in a predb.

The reason that Scene use CRC32 is probably because the scene is focused on racing. SHA256 would have a much longer calculation time. The scene has bunches of different groups, but there is only allowed to be 1 scene release per content slot. The scene rules set a minimum quality requirement. Whichever group fills the slot first has their group name in the predb forever. If a release is a duplicate or doesn’t match the rules, then it gets “nuked”. The groups compete with each other to be fastest.

I think also the CRC rule was originally decided in 1998. This might be the main reason.

https://scenerules.org/html/1998_GAMEiSO.html (1998 scene game release rules)

In either case, be sure that you are not creating a solid archive, because if you do, the FTP sites will not be able to test the CRC integrity of each of the individual 15 meg segment file.

Before you start thinking about uploading your RAR files, please run a quick CRC test on each .0* file to check the validity of the archive. Ensure that you didn’t run out of hard drive space during the archive processing which could result in bad files.

https://scenerules.org/html/2021_GAMEiSO.html (2021 scene game release rules)

1.15 The final release directory may contain only the following items:

• RAR archive volumes
• NFO file (singular)
• SFV file (singular)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_(warez)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simple_file_verification

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warez_scene

Skidrow is a scene group. There’s this thing called “The Scene”. It’s been around since the 1970s. It’s not a website or centralized at any place. The Scene is made up of decentralized groups and they talk over IRC and agree upon release rules and release their files on ftp servers called “Topsites”. Topsites are only accessible by scene members but the releases get leaked to torrent sites. The structure is sort of anarchistic, but which I mean nonhierarchical and consensus-based decision making. It’s kind of fascinating.

To determine whether a scene release is trustworthy, it would depend where you downloaded it from and whether the release is still in the original rar files. Scene releases are uploaded to Topsites, but they are also announced in what is called a “pre”, the pre is the announcement message on the IRC server. There is a thing called “predb”, which records all of the release messages and makes them publicly searchable. The scene rules say that a game release has to be published in a multipart RAR archive, which also includes an .nfo file and a .sfv file. The reason for this is that Scene is very old and file transfers used to be slow so they broke up big releases into small even-sized files to easily replace corrupted files. The NFO file includes ascii art and information about the release. The SFV file contains CRC32 checksums for each RAR file. The SFV file is used to determine whether the RAR files were modified or corrupted.

I will say disclaimer. It is possible to fake CRC32 checksums. Matching CRC32 will not guarantee that files have not been tampered, but if the CRC32 doesn’t match then the files have been tampered or corrupted.

1. Make sure that you are getting the files from a website that you trust.
2. Make sure that the release is still in the original scene multipart rar files.
3. Search a predb website for the release name which matches the files that you downloaded.
4. Look at the CRC32 checksums on the website and check that it matches the file you downloaded.

I not sure the best way to do CRC32 checksums on windows. I usually do checksums on windows using 7zip software. With 7zip software, you can right click on a file in windows file explorer > 7-Zip > CRC SHA > CRC 32.

https://predb.org/ (I think this site is correct, there are other predb sites as well)

Gish is a platform game where you play as a ball of black tar.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gish_(video_game)

https://xcancel.com/KNEECAPCEOL/status/1913714344128651437

video of the crowd chanting “Free Palestine”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZNRfUK6qv98

https://genius.com/33983812

I think this is the song from the video. Around the 1m10s timestamp matches the twitter video. The reason why you can’t understand the lyrics is because they are singing in Irish. haha

KNEECAP is a hip hop trio from Northern Ireland with lyrics influenced by Irish Republicanism and IRA. :ira:

They also invited Hasan to walk across the stage at the start of the show.

https://xcancel.com/CheshrKitn/status/1913420932468916321

The full vod is still on his twitter. doesn’t play with xcancel. He plays for 2 hours and doesn’t make it past the first zone. People spam him with DMs the whole time.

https://x.com/i/broadcasts/1mrGmPleodQKy

From DPRK media, KCNA. There’s 10 photos of Hwasong on the link.

Kim Jong Un went round a 300-seat video game house built in a characteristic style.

He was pleased to hear that the game house to be furnished with various kinds of facilities is expected to be very popular among young people including children when it is opened. He said that special attention should be paid to the establishment of its operation system and order and the preparations for service as this new space specializing in service for video games is a base of the service field to be opened for the first time in the country.

http://kcna.kp/en/article/q/0b82a16b52e14abcf513877d4de4c890.kcmsf

https://bdsmovement.net/Act-Now-Against-These-Companies-Profiting-From-Genocide

If you read this page on their website. The BDS movement says that they have different levels of targets. There is a “consumer boycott” category which says that you should not buy any products from those Brands. Then there is a “pressure target” category. It explains that a Pressure target is a company that you should “boycott when reasonable alternatives exist”.

Inside of the Pressure Target category includes other very large companies: Google, Amazon, Disney. If I understand correctly, Microsoft will also be considered a pressure target, which means that avoiding a Microsoft product is not always possible. Example, many people use Microsoft as an operating system either at home or at work.

The BDS page for Microsoft, which was added to their website today, says “As a consumer, boycott Microsoft products whenever possible.” It also gives you a lot of other pressure options, including “send a letter to Microsoft executives demanding that Microsoft end its complicity in Israel’s AI-powered genocide of Palestinians”, “join or start a campaign to pressure your university to cut ties with Microsoft by divesting from the company”, “pressure your local government to divest from Microsoft”, “sign the workers’ petition at: noaa.cc/sign”.

“If you can communicate a product, you can make money off a product. Look at Gaga, she’s the creative director of Polaroid. I like some of the Gaga songs. What the fuck does she know about cameras?” ~Kanye, 2013

This is not a full league. It’s not 3.26. They have done these types of intermediate in the past, such as infinite delve league, krangled league, mayhem league.

People complained about POE 3.26 being delayed and it worked.

I have over 10,000 hours in POE1 and reached almost level 98 in POE2, reaching 97 in poe 2 is like reaching 100 in poe 1. The endgame in POE 2 is barren.

The only good juicing strategy is running breach on delirious maps and they reduce the rewards further with every patch. I think they may even be silently reducing the rewards of breach juicing between patches without saying it.

To set up the strategy, you have to clear 10-20 junk maps to scout out a zone with 5-7 overlapping towers. Then you have to run another 20+ junk maps to set up the towers.

Once you have all the towers cleared, you put in breach tablets which have the mod which says 18-20% increased quantity of items dropped. This adds breaches to remaining maps within the radius and adds quantity of items to the map, overlapping towers stack. This is the only way to get reasonable way to get increased quantity of items on a map. You can get 20% increased quantity of items dropped on a map item as a prefix or you can get 100-400% increased quantity by stacking quant towers. I suspect this will nerfed in the future.

Map item crafting in POE 1 is logical. Every prefix and suffix in POE 1 both increases the amount of loot dropped and makes the map more difficult. The more mods a map item has, the more difficult and rewarding it is. It is a simple rule, more difficult = more rewarding.

In POE 2, map item crafting is dogwater. In POE 2, rewards and difficulty are separated into prefix and suffix. Prefixes are rewards and suffixes a difficulty. Suffixes also increase quantity of more map items dropping but it doesn’t matter because I still get like 5+ t15 waystones every juiced map, even with 0 suffixes on the map. This means that prefixes matter and suffixes do not matter. There are only 2 good prefix map modifiers, “increased number of rare monsters” and “increased rarity of dropped items”. Rare monsters are the only monster that drops good loot, magic monsters are mid. Increased rarity of items on the map mod is multiplicative with rarity mod on your gear, not additive. (This was proven to be true by reducing character item rarity to 0 with ventor’s ring and then running a rarity map, you get 0 currency because multiply by 0). It is important to have high item rarity in POE 2 because item rarity affects the tier currency orb drops, unlike in POE 1 where it only affects gear rarity. High rarity means more exalted orb and divine orb drops.

Here is how I craft my waystones in POE 2. I start with a quad tab full of t15 waystones (map item in POE 2), that is 576 x t15 waystone. I alchemy orb all the normal waystones and augment/regal all the magic waystones, so that all of the waystones are rare. Then I regex search for map mods which I can not run such as burning ground and I vendor those, which is about 5% of the waystones. Then I regex search for waystones which have either of the 2 good prefix (rarity, rare monsters). I exalted orb those waystones until they have 3 prefixes. If a waystone has both good prefixes then I use it for a delirium anointed breach map. If a waystone has 3 prefixes and increased rarity, I set it aside to run on junk zones. If a waystone has 3 prefixes and none of the prefix is item rarity, then I vendor it. If a waystone has 1 prefix, then I exalted orb it to have a second prefix. If a waystone has 2 prefixes and neither prefix is rarity or rare monsters, then I vendor it. Around 70-80% of t15 waystones I sell to the vendor because they’re worthless and not worth the time running them.

So you do all that and you open your juiced breach map and there’s a 78% the map will only have 1 breach, 15% chance for 2 breaches, 5% chance for 4 breaches, and 2% chance for 11 breaches. In POE 1, you could force spawn multiple breaches in every map. 1 breach per map feels pretty bad.

In case you were wondering, BAMA stands for Blink Arrow, Mirror Arrow. It’s a minion build where you summon a bunch of clones of yourself that shoot your bow.

https://www.pathofexile.com/private-leagues/league/Settlers+Restart+xdd+Thanks+GGG

This is a link to join the POE1 Pohx Private league. It launched 2 hours ago and it will last for 60 days. A private league is a sandboxxed version of the game where you can only interact with other characters in the same private league. Pohx is a twitch streamer known for playing the skill Righteous Fire, a skill which will be added to POE 2 in the future. This private league has 18000 registered players, which is a pretty sizeable amount, though I think a typical poe 1 expansion launch has around 150,000.

Instead of arguing, I am inviting you to play POE 1 with active players and a fresh economy so that you can experience the game for yourself. If you don’t know what to build to play, go to youtube and search “poe 3.25 lightning strike”, “poe 3.25 righteous fire”, “poe 3.25 archmage ice nova”, “poe 3.25 hexblast mines”, “poe 3.25 power siphon mines”, “poe 3.25 holy relic”, or “poe 3.25 bama”. It is important that the video says 3.25 because builds from previous patches will not work.

Please try Path of Exile 1. Any in game purchases that you made in POE 2, such as stash tabs, are also accessible in POE 1.

I never said that I was owed another POE 1 expansion. I didn’t say that I was owed anything. There’s no “entitlement” here. I am not writing a “screed” for the devs. I said that the devs lied for profits. In November, they said give us money now and you’ll get a POE 1 expansion in February. They took the money and then there’s no planned expansion. That’s just a recollection of events that happened.

I make posts on hexbear for my own interests. Path of Exile 1 was my favorite game ever. I have made many posts about Path of Exile 1 and Path of Exile 2. If the devs say that my favorite game is indefinitely put on halt, then I’m going to say that it upsets me. I explained why it upsets me. You are telling me that I’m not allowed to be upset. You are not allowed to police how I feel.

I did not say that people who don’t like POE 2 don’t like it. I didn’t say anyone is pretending. I bet that POE 2 players who never played POE 1 actually really enjoy it. I said that they don’t know that the POE 1 was better because they never experienced it.

Let’s say you’ve never been to a ramen shop and you try microwave cup ramen. Cup ramen tastes pretty good right? It’s not bad. People who go to the ramen shop might say, “Cup ramen is not bad, but I prefer to go to the ramen shop”. People who enjoy the ramen shop even start eating cup ramen on the side and recommend it to their friends. Okay but now the ramen shop says, “We’re closing down the ramen shop because cup ramen is making more money.” The people who enjoy ramen made at the ramen shop are upset because the quality of cup ramen does not match the ramen shop experience. The people who only have had cup ramen don’t really care because they never tried it before. They say, “Why are you mad, we still have cup ramen and I like that a lot.” POE 2 is the cup ramen. I’m happy that you enjoy cup ramen. I like cup ramen too but it’s not a substitute for the ramen shop.

And yes, this is a sign that “they’re literally taking the first game out back and putting a bullet in it”. The last POE 1 expansion was released in July 2024. POE 1 expansions have historically lasted for 3 months. POE 1 expansion 3.26 was expected to be released in November. POE 1 development has been delayed like 4 times now. In the video, Jonathan says that they have not even started working on 3.26. He also says that the expansion will not even be worked on until after POE 2 patch 0.2 is released. When will POE 2 patch 0.2 be released? March maybe? So they’re going to start working on POE 1 again in March? Does that mean 3.26 will be released in summer 2025? Two or three POE 1 expansion cycles have been missed in that time period. He doesn’t even provide any information about a future POE 1 expansion release in the video.

As for POE 2 being in Early Access as you said. During the Early Access announcement, GGG said that POE 2 will complete Early Access within 6 months to 1 year of the initial release. It has been 2 months since. We don’t even have a date or any information for Patch 0.2. At the current rate of development, do you think that Early Access will be completed within 6 months? Do you think that POE 2 will be fully complete within 1 year? How long will the Early Access run at this rate? Is it sensible to abandon a full game for an incomplete game for over a year? Time will tell.

Those characters can retire for now, but even if they die they retain that position on the ladder because they reached the cap.

Path of Exile 2 will follow a ladder reset design similar to Path of Exile or Diablo 2 or other ARPGs. When a new major patch comes out, there is a game reset, all characters and items are moved to “standard league”. Standard league is a snapshotted version of the game where you don’t have access to the new content. To play the new content, you have to make a new character and start from scratch. Characters on the new league are unable to interact with characters from standard league. This should happen every 3 months.

When Path of Exile 2 patch 0.2 comes out in hopefully February, the leaderboard will reset and people will have to make a new character to compete on the leaderboard.

https://pathofexile2.com/ladder/Hardcore

Elon’s boosted character is Random9#2886