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Slay the Spire (StS) has finally arrived to Android! For two years many of us dreamed for this legendary game to be accessible on their mobile devices, and finally the day has come. No need to talk about how awesome this game is, how it basically started a new genre of card-based dungeon crawlers (UPD: or roguelike deck-builders, if you prefer the term), and even about how well or poor it works on Android hardware in its current state (there will be lots of these posts during the days to come). What I wanted to talk about is the impact this game had on (specifically) mobile industry and how other developers were able to utilize this innovative formula in their own products.
Personally, I am somewhat glad that StS release was delayed that much. This allowed a lot of "clones" to be spawned, many of which I enjoyed playing. Some of them appear to be straight rip-offs, but others introduced many fresh ideas of their own, some even surpassing the predecessor's greatness. What the heck am I talking about and how is this even possible will be revealed to you, should you decide to stay on a bit and read through the article below.

General info

First and foremost, let's clarify the important thing: card based dungeon crawlers are not Collectible Card Games (CCGs). Even though they share the same ideas, and some of them (StS included) even have a feature to permanently improve starting cards, or a mode to play with pre-constructed decks, this is not the case for the genre in general. There is no place for multiplayer and PvP battles here: a turn-down for the most, but an undeniable advantage for the rest - only though-out puzzle-like single-player experience which we can pause at any moment and continue when the time is appropriate. Thus, there will never be troubles with downtime, matchmaking, ratings, overpowered builds and other PvP stuff, as there will never be a satisfaction of crushing your opponents with the power of your mighty intellect... The fun of discovering interesting synergies between various card combinations is still present, though.
With this being said, let's quickly look through the core features of the genre, which will be relevant for almost every game we review below: - we must explore a dungeon, which (usually, but not necessarily) consists of three floors with increasing difficulty; - we have limited control over the order in which to face the challenges; - there is a powerful boss in the end of each floor; - we battle using deck of cards, usually drawing new cards from deck to hand each turn; - there is a limitation on how many cards we can play during our turn; - we start with a weak basic deck, but get new cards as rewards for fighting enemies; - there is a possibility to permanently remove (weak) cards from the deck; - successful gameplay strategies revolve around utilizing the synergies between different cards; - there are several character classes, each with their own cards and tactics; - there are often additional items to acquire in the dungeon, providing bonuses and emphasizing specific types of play;
Before Slay the Spire (StS) came out, there was another card-based dungeon crawler called Dream Quest (DQ), which considered by many to be the first game of the genre (at least the first one to make a significant impact). Not sure if the former drew inspiration from the latter, but certain parallels can easily be drawn: in fact, all of the features mentioned in the list above are valid for DQ the same way as it is for StS. The rich plethora of card based dungeon crawlers (both PC/Console and mobile) originated from some combination of the two.
StS, however, can not be considered a clone of DQ, as it introduced a lot of original ideas and spawned its own line of descendants. It is always interesting to analyze each new title to see which of two games was the biggest inspiration, and to group them accordingly. For me the main criteria lies in the core difference in battle system: - in StS, enemies (usually multiple) show their intentions at the beginning of each turn, so we know what to expect and what to play against; - in DQ, the enemy (usually single) draws and plays cards the same way as we do, often using the same abilities and synergies we ourselves can use.
Introductions aside, let's finally get to the interesting part - the games! (Note: Games are listed in alphabetical order to not give any privileges to one over another. For my personal preferences see the comment section).

Dream Quest clones

Call of Lophis takes us on a grim journey through infested lands full of deadly monsters, dangerous traps, and one of the most ridiculous card art I have ever seen. It's surprising to see how dark fantasy elements combine with the humor and gags this game presents. From the gameplay point of view, there is enough card variety and interesting synergies, but it will take a long time to reach the interesting parts. Really: this game just does not know when to end, forcing new and new dungeon locations onto us with basically the same monsters and same approaches to dealing with them over and over. Its the boss battles which crank the difficulty up to over 9000, and if we don't have the right deck by the time we reach them, there is nothing we can do to pull it off. Plus there is some shady business going on with monetization schemes, where even paid version of the game makes us spend money to unlock additional classes and grind a lot to buy permanent improvements. Only truly dedicated players will be interested in dealing with all this nonsense. [...] UPD: Haven't checked on it for a long time - maybe the situation improved somehow.
Crimson Deep is still in early alpha and was not updated for a long time. But the development hasn't stopped, and there is a new major release approaching in the nearest future. It makes no sense to talk about the game till then: the version in the store is too raw to provide any significant gameplay experience, but it would be interesting to see where it goes in the end.
Dimension of Dream is probably the only game that has the same grid-based dungeon layout as DQ itself. This time with full 3D and a possibility to fight only limited set of enemies before facing the final boss (which allows to moderate difficulty as we go, either defeating tougher enemies with better rewards, or to save HP and fight only the easy ones). This game has one of the most interesting battle systems and 6 truly unique classes with deep complex strategies unlike anything we have ever seen (not only the cards themselves, but the order in which we play them greatly affects the outcome). Unfortunately, the English version was pulled from Google Play, leaving only Chinese version for Asian people to enjoy. UPD: Apparently, the game was re-released under different publisher with the title Dreaming Dimension, so there you have it. [...]
Meteorfall: Journeys offers the streamlined approach to dungeon crawling, where all our decisions boil down to Reigns-like "swipe left / swipe right" operation: picking the path, encounter resolutions, and even battles are simplified to utilize this binary choice mechanic. But don't worry: these specifics do not affect the gameplay, still providing enough strategic depth to appeal even to hardcore players. Add here a neat visual style, lots of character classes and their variations, cool card combos, and you get a true masterpiece, which is Meteorfall. [...]
Night of the Full Moon offers a fresh take on a fairy tale of Red Riding Hood, but adding darker elements to it (including werewolves, zombies, mad scientists and cursed cultists). It demonstrates an amazing production quality with top-tier art, beautiful audio support, and intriguing storytelling. Gameplay wise, we have the closest thing to DQ, safe for the grid-based dungeon maps, which were changed to just picking the encounter out of available three. Some people may argue that the game does not offer enough strategic variety, only suggesting a single best build for each class, but you will still get different runs due to the randomness of card and power-up drops. Another argument of it being too easy is completely nullified on higher difficulty levels. Wish the story would develop in a different direction, though. [...]
Spellsword Cards: Origins provides the gameplay similar to the Night of the Full moon, but focuses more on role-playing character development part. Aside from choosing a class, we also get to pick race with unique traits, and a school of magic, greatly affecting which cards will be available to us during the run. The problem here, though, is that monster encounters do not demonstrate a lot of variety, forcing us to fight the same enemies over and over, and the difficulty is rather high, with starting cards doing almost nothing and enemies quickly run out of hand with their devastating attacks, whereas good cards are hard to come by, and even then you will still be devastated on later stages. [...] UPD: Or maybe I am just bad at this game (welcome to comment section for valid strategy suggestions).

Slay the Spire clones

Blood Card offers a unique possibility to construct the dungeon ourselves, providing a pool of encounters of different types: regular monsters, elite monsters, events and shops. We pick a desired encounter from the pool, deal with it and then move on to the next one. Another interesting feature is that our health is defined by the number of cards in draw pile, which limits our tactical possibilities, but is compensated by the fact that we get multiple copies of cards as rewards for fighting enemies. There are a lot of interesting mechanics related to moving cards between various piles, as well as other neat features (like: the Death inevitably arrives in three turns and starts whacking everyone on the field with increasing persistence), but I'll leave them for you to discover on your own.
Card Crusade seemed like a cool idea of mixing classic "roguelike" dungeon crawling with its "deck-based" counterpart, where we explore the dungeon the same way as we do it in Hack, Angband, Pixel Dungeon and other similar games, but use cards to fight actual enemies. In reality though, this implementation just adds a useless abstraction, as the adventuring does not provide any tactical benefits and is only there to inter-connect battle sequences (heck, even breaking pots and chests does not give us any coin, of which developers themselves warn us at the very beginning!). The cards are not very interesting, with next to none cool synergies, and new classes (which should be unlocked by performing specific actions on previous runs) do not provide any major difference. [...]
Card Quest takes us on an epic journey through fantasy lands, where we will perform great deeds as one of the classic RPG hero classes (fighter, wizard, rogue, ranger), each with their own equipment and fighting disciplines. The interesting part is that the cards we use during runs are defined by said equipment, and if we find some new pieces during our adventure, we get to keep them for further runs. Also worth noting that defense cards are played not during our turn, but during enemy turn, which requires us to plan ahead a bit. This being said, the game is extremely hard - it will take a lot of unsuccessful tries to finally reach the end. But the variety of dungeons and possible builds will keep us occupied for long.
Dungeon Tales for a long time was the closest, yet simplified copy of StS mechanics (up to similar cards and gaming strategies), but without certain elaborate features, like upgrading cards or using potions. The basics are left intact though: we still build our deck along the way and face the powerful boss in the end. There are only two characters available yet, but each has a couple of viable builds, so it can keep us invested for quite some time. [...]
Endless Abyss is a close StS clone with very similar character classes (only two so far) and a lot of cards with exactly the same effects. Graphically the game looks very good, but angry monetization, lots of grinding, and forced ads make it almost impossible to fully enjoy. [...]
Heroes of Abyss is a predecessor to Endless Abyss with basically the same core gameplay, but very simplified dungeon crawling part. There is no floor map with choosing our path, nor there are elaborate adventure events: just a series of battles with the boss in the end. The spoils we get after each battle go into improving our starting deck and unlocking new difficulty modes with higher rewards. What makes the game unusual, is that we chose the preferred build right from the beginning with appropriate set of starting cards, without the need to rely on the randomness of card drops. It may be interesting to unlock and compare all the 6 available builds, but once the task is done, there is almost no reason to play the game further.
Heroes Journey provides a different setting for a change: this time we will play as space explorers, who crash landed on an alien planet. Thus, instead of familiar swords and bows, we will be wielding blasters and energy shields: the rest remains the same, up to the majority of cards straight up copied from StS. Unfortunately, this innovative idea was completely ruined by repetitive grinding and angry monetization, forcing player to make dozens of identical runs with the same small card pool, until something adequate is unlocked. Oh, and the game is long abandoned by the developers.
Pirates Outlaws is an amazing rework of original StS ideas in a pirate setting with some changes to gameplay mechanics, such as introducing persistent charges needed to play certain cards, and different buff/debuff statuses that replace each other. There are also some questionable features, such as ship stamina that deteriorates over the course of the journey and leads to game over if not repaired in time, or a quest system, where quests can not be completed in parallel, but instead picking the new quest resets your progress in the current one. Some may also argue that new classes take long to grind for, or expensive to pay for, but with permanent booster pack this should not be a problem. Anyway, the game is highly recommended for any StS fan. [...]
Rogue Adventure offers a twist to usual mechanic: our hand is limited by 4 cards, but each time we use one of them, a new card is immediately drawn to its place, thus we never run out of cards to play. Non-starting cards are common for all classes, but are grouped by type (or race), giving huge synergies depending on how many similar cards we have. Aside from this, the game offers diverse gameplay by providing a lot of different classes, each with its own unique strategies and dynamics, and some interesting items to work around. The developers constantly provide updates with bug fixes and new content, but be warned that new mechanics may break what you are already accustomed for.
Royal Booty Quest started as a straight rip-off from StS with the same classes and abilities, and even cards having the same names. And absolutely atrocious pixelated visuals, which were not possible to look at without eyes bleeding out. Over time, though, it developed its own unique mechanics and interesting card combinations, but the art style did not get any better. However, if this is not a problem, the game is enjoyable to an extent, but since it was not updated for a long time, I doubt it will keeps anyone's interest for long. [...]
Tavern Rumble adds an unusual strategic element - a 3x3 grid, on each units and enemies are placed. The core gameplay remains the same (we still see what opponents are planning to do each turn and adjust our own strategy accordingly), but the addition of the grid introduces another tactical layer: not only we should maximize the damage output, but also plan the layout for our troops to provide the effective delivery of said output, while at the same time establish enough defense to minimize the damage to ourselves. There are a lot of cards and classes to play around, different play modes and a lot of features that are still being constantly added to the game. Some may argue about simplistic pixel graphics or long repetitive grinding, but it is easy to unlock everything within reasonable amount of time, even without paying. [...]

Other Games

Of course, my criteria does not work 100% of the time, as some games are way too different from anything else to confidently enroll them into one of the categories. They either demonstrate traits of both, or implement entirely unique mechanics of their own (which I like the most), while still maintaining the basic dungeon crawling ideas (so a lot of the games you might think of will not end up in the list). What I have in mind is the following:
Dungeon Reels removes the cards from card-based dungeon crawler - why bother, right? Instead, it provides some kind of a slot machine, where each turn three rows spin independently to pick available actions based on what slots we have in our reel. Winning battles awards us with new, better slots to add, each with their own specifics and synergies. Enemies also randomize their moves with slots of their own, but the most satisfying mechanic is the possibility to spin a jackpot with three identical slots for some powerful effect. It is interesting to see this concept developed further, but the game has not been updated for a long time.
Iris and the Giant takes us on journey through imaginary world, inspired by Ancient Greek mythology. Each battle takes place on a grid, where various enemies advance in huge numbers. We play a card from our hand, usually dealing damage to nearest enemy, and then everyone who is still standing and can reach us deals damage in return. There are cards that target multiple enemies at once, as well as ways to play more than one card during our turn, so most of the time we will be deciding which card to play at which moment. The deck has limited size, and if it becomes empty we lose, so new cards should be constantly acquired. There are a lot of interesting mechanics to discover, but the game is very hard and luck based, requiring a lot of trial-and-error to finally reach the end. [...]
Phantom Rose Scarlet has the same basic core, but with completely innovative battle system, not seen in any other game. On each turn there are four positions for cards to be played in strict order, where two of them are randomly filled with opponent's cards, and the remaining two are left for us to fill. Instead of drawing the hand, we have our entire deck available right away, but playing cards puts them on a cooldown, which does not reset between battles, so we constantly face the strategic choice of playing our best cards right away or keep them for later. The game is in active development, providing new mechanics and further developing the story, which is quite captivating here. [...]
Void Tyrant is a bit of a stretch, but still a "card based dungeon crawler", in which we basically play BlackJack against our enemies by dealing card with numbers from 1 to 6 one-by-one from our deck until we stand or bust. Whoever has the highest value wins and deals damage to the loser. There are various supporting cards on top of this mechanic, allowing us to either jinx the outcome in our favor, or to perform various other metagame manipulations. The only downside of the game is the lack of content, as it quickly runs out of interesting things, and since it was not updated for a long time, it is unlikely that anything new will be added in the future. [...]

Conclusion

As you see, there is a lot to play besides StS, so even if you are not hyped by its long-awaited Android release, but appreciate a good intellectual dungeon crawler, you will find something to suit your needs. I hope, even with StS release, new games of the genre will continue appearing on mobile phones, and I will gladly review them and add to the list. If you know any hidden gems (or even trash) that was not highlighted in this article, please share the names and/or links in the comments. I am also open to any discussions on the topic, as I am obviously able to talk a lot about my favorite genre.
Good luck to everyone in all your endeavors.
P.S. I am well aware of games like Dungeon Cards, Card Adventure, Dungeon Faster, Meteorfall: Krumitz Tale, Card Thief, Maze Machina, Cube Card, Card Hog, Fisherman, Relics of the Fallen and other "grid-based puzzles", but do not consider them to be a part of the "family".

Season 12 Update: What’s New

· Updated mods section to reflect new mod structure
· A few updated thoughts on Stasis classes
· Significant update to Warmind Cell section, including information on Seventh Seraph weapons
· New recommendations for defensive and offensive mod loadouts
· Recommendations updated for Season 12 mods
· Weapons recommendations
Part 2 of this guide is here: https://www.reddit.com/DestinyTheGame/comments/k5fzne/moving_into_highlevel_pve_guide_for_beginners/

Before We Get Started

Why you should trust me

I’ve got a few hundred raid completions, including flawless completions of the post-year 1 raids, and I’ve soloed each of the dungeons flawlessly as well. But also: I’m not an amazing player; I’d say I’m above average but I am nowhere near as talented as some of the people whose videos you can watch online, or indeed who are in my clan. I am someone who has to work hard to get good and who makes up for a lack of talent with stubbornness and a willingness to learn from my mistakes.
So this advice is not for the amazing D2 player. It’s for someone who’s just starting to move into raiding or is thinking about working on raid triumphs, or soloing a dungeon for the first time, or maybe dreaming of earning the Conqueror title. My main goal is to help you become a better teammate—to know what weapons, mods, and armor you need in different situations, and to learn how to use them. Hopefully I’ll answer your basic questions and give you a starting point from which you can learn more.

What do I mean by high-level PvE content?

1. Raids: multi-encounter structures that require team coordination and adaptation to/knowledge of various raid-specific mechanics (ball throwing, buff swapping, tethering, cranium charging, etc.)
2. Sublight challenges: master and grandmaster nightfalls, master nightmare hunts, solo 1280 lost sectors, 1280 empire hunts, or any new content where players are likely to be 0-25 light levels below the enemies they face. This content includes raids and dungeons in their initial season of being offered.
3. Solo challenges: attempts to accomplish 1 and 2 by yourself or with a suboptimal team (like doing a raid with three people instead of six).

General Advice

As you begin to push into more challenging content, one lesson is key: dying is not good. That’s kind of a strange lesson to have to learn, but the reality is that Destiny does not punish you much for dying in ordinary content. That makes it easy to develop habits that will serve you poorly in raids and other situations, where dying can lead to a cascading series of mishaps that will cause a wipe or an extinguish mechanic. So one of your main goals as you start playing in these situations is to try to get better at not dying.
The other thing to begin to learn—and which the game does not really force you to learn—is how to make weapons, armor, and ability builds that synergize both internally, in relation to your own character, and externally, in relation to your teammates and the environment. Understanding, for instance, not only your role in a given raid encounter but the roles of your teammates, and knowing what classes or weapons they’re running so that you can communicate with them about what to do next, are both critical to becoming a stronger team player. And understanding how your armor and weapons, your mods and class abilities, all interact is critical to your being able to maximize your impact as a solo player.
All this advice is focused on building up the basic sets of gear that will help you through difficult PvE content. I have probably forgotten many things, and of course you can always do things with an off-meta or weird loadout, either because you’re a masochist or because you want to challenge yourself. What’s below focuses on the basics.

Part 1: Armor and Armor Mods

In general a good PvE build will be a fully masterworked set of armor with high recovery and discipline or intellect. (Resilience sounds good but has only a very small impact on PvE combat.) For raids you might end up using melee abilities, but for sublight content you will mostly be fighting at range, and meleeing only in a panic. Grenades have a wide variety of important uses (hence discipline), and supers (and super energy) are also always useful (hence intellect), so spec into one of those if you can. In general armor stats matter much less in PvE than PvP; your armor mods will almost certainly not be focused on other things, which we’ll discuss in a second.
For now it’s worth noting that high-end PvE content tends to feature a pretty limited set of class and subclass options, along with a certain number of key exotic armor pieces.
Hunters: (1) Top or bottom tree void, with Orpheus Rigs (especially top tree) or Sixth Coyote or Wormhusk Crown (the last two for solo especially). (2) Bottom tree solar with Celestial Nighthawk for one-shot boss damage, mainly in raids. (3) Middle tree solar with Assassin’s Cowl for heal on knife melee, for solo content. (4) Stasis, especially for solo content where the grenades and debuffs help with champions.
Titans: (1) Top tree void, for the bubble, along with the Helm of Saint-14 (in some circumstances), or (2) middle tree void, for the barrier, with Ursa Furiosas for orb generation. In some situations, particularly when using Xenophage, Titans will run with Actium War Rigs for the reload benefit.
Warlocks: (1) Top tree void with Contraverse Hold gauntlets for frequent charged grenade use, or (2) Bottom tree void with Nezarec’s Sin, for a devour-focused build especially useful for soloing content (in which case you would want to be running a void energy weapon). (3) Much more often, middle tree solar with either Phoenix Protocol for super regen or Lunafaction Boots for reload benefit, for almost any content involving groups. (4) Middle tree arc with Geomag Stabilizers for some high-end content like grandmaster nightfalls.
Season 12 has added stasis subclasses to all three groups. One of the huge advantages of all stasis supers is that they allow for significant crowd control—for slowing and stunning enemies to take them temporarily or permanently out of the fight. This is true for supers, melees, and grenades. Of the three stasis classes I find the Warlock and Titans supers a bit weak for high-end content, but the grenades and melees to be very strong (especially when paired with the correct seasonal mods).
Note that the most common subclasses for group content are the ones that boost the entire team (Titan bubble, Warlock well), protect the entire team (Titan barrier), make allies invisible (Hunter smoke grenade on bottom tree), or control/manage and debuff enemies (Hunter tether, the stasis classes). Solo players tend to focus intensely on survival abilities—the Warlock devour, the Hunter invis, or the healing melees of top tree void Titan, bottom tree arc Titan, or top tree Arc hunter.
The other thing to say is that roaming supers—arc Hunter, solar or arc Titan, top and bottom arc Warlock, middle void Warlock—are generally not good in high-end PvE, especially if you’re sublight. They simply don’t deal enough damage quickly enough to be viable. This kind of content emphasizes one-shot supers like Celestial/Golden Gun or Nova Bomb for damage, and supers like the well or Titan barriebubbles, for protection.
Must-have exotic armor: Hunter: Orpheus Rigs and Celestial Nighthawk (for group play), Sixth Coyote (solo). Titan: Helm of Saint-14, Ursa Furiosa, Actium War Rig (group), Synthoceps (solo). Warlock: Phoenix Protocol, Lunfaction Boots, and Contraverse Hold (group or solo), Nezarec’s Sin (solo). Of the new Season 12 armor exotics, three have some utility here: Icefall Mantle, which can allow a Titan to tank a single champion (at 10-15 light levels below, at 25 this becomes quite hard); Necrotic Grips, good for Warlocks doing low-level add clear in raids, and Precious Scars, the Titan helmet that gives an overshield when rezzing—very useful in grandmaster nightfalls where a rez can often be a deathtrap.
In season 12, changes to the seasonal artifact mean that only solar and stasis subclasses have the ability to stun Overload champions with their grenades; this means that those classes have suddenly become more viable (and void less dominant) for high-end PvE work. More on that later.

Armor Mods

The key difference between high-level PvE content and ordinary content or PvP content is the importance of armor mods. Where PvP builds tend to focus on statistics like Recovery or Mobility, PvE armor tends to focus on damage resistance.
The Destiny mod system is unfortunately pretty bewildering. There are many many choices and it’s not clear how much any of them matters. So let me cover a few things—all of these now updated for Season 12.

The first mod slot

This mod slot allows you to boost your character’s basic stats. For group PvE content, you’ll want to focus on Recovery (which affects how quickly your health begins to regen when you’re not being hit), Intellect (which increases super regen speed), and Discipline (for grenades). For solo content that relies heavily on a single ability to survive—like the Hunter’s dodge, which regens faster with high Mobility, or the Titan’s healing void melee, which regens faster with high Strength—you will want to focus on those things specifically.
In the previous seasons this mod slot could be used for resistance mods, which are central to many PvE builds. But that has all gone away with Season 12, which means that this slot is less interesting, and less important, than it used to be.

Legacy, Combat, and Raid mod slots

These should be focused on one or more of the following goals, in order of importance:

1. Resistance mods (on chest armor) that reduce incoming damage
2. Mods that stun or disrupt or otherwise affect champions (arms or class item)
3. Raid-specific mods (final mod slot only, and only on raid armor)
4. Charged with Light and Warmind Cell mods (fourth slot)
5. Ammo Finder (helmet) and Ammo Scavenger (boots) mods.
6. For grandmaster nightfalls in particular, finisher mods (mainly Special Finisher) that go on your class item and allow you to trade super energy for special ammo drops.

Resistance Mods

Resistance mods come in four types: energy, melee, sniper, and concussive dampener. They all go on your chest armor. Melee reduces any damage done within 5m (does not have to be melee damage) by 25%. Sniper does the same for damage done from 29m or farther. Concussive reduces splash damage from grenades/boomers. These mods stack, with the second mod getting you to 40% damage resistance. The same goes for the energy resist mods.
Since you only have two slots, you will probably want to change them depending on the activity. For Gambit or really any content where you’re at or above the appropriate power level, melee/concussive or melee/melee is quite strong, since you’ll probably be mixing it up with mobs on the regular. For grandmaster nightfalls and other sublight content, snipeconcussive is a good place to start.

Anti-Champion Mods

These mods come in two types: weapon-specific mods, which go on your arms, and grenade or melee mods, which go on your class item. These mods come from the seasonal artifact and therefore change each season (which is why I have to update this guide).
Most high-end content will have two kinds of champions, so you’ll want to go into encounters making sure that you or your fireteam can stun, disrupt, or stagger the appropriate champions with the appropriate weapons.
For season 12 these mods are: Unstoppable Schwarzschild Condenser (2-Cost, Class Item), which allows Void melees to stagger Unstoppables, and Thermal Overload (2-Cost, Class Item), which allows solar and stasis grenades to disrupt Overload champions.
Another very useful champion mod in season 12 is Surge Eater, which restores your grenade whenever you stagger or disrupt a champion. You can combine this with Thermal Overload to stun Overload champions and immediately get your grenade back, allowing you to stun them again as soon as that’s possible.
In general I would say that the most obvious/basic combo this season is Surge EateThermal Overload… the melee mods are going to be hard to use because it’s going to be hard to get close enough to champions (in sublight content) to actually land a melee hit. The same is true for the Unstoppable Shotgun mod, which is also very highly priced at 7 energy.

Raid and Other Activity-Specific Mods (5th slot)

These include mods that affect Last Wish, Garden of Salvation, and the Deep Stone Crypt, as well as Nightmare Hunts on the moon. For Last Wish Taken Barrier and Taken Armaments are both incredibly useful; for GoS you really only need Enhanced Relay Defender.
For Nightmare Hunts I find that only the Nightmare Breaker mods really come in handy; the others not so much. You can read more about them here: https://www.reddit.com/DestinyTheGame/comments/dkpssk/breakdown_of_the_nightmare_mods_banisher_breake.
In Year 2 and Year 3 armor, these mods go in the fourth slot. Year 4 (Beyond Light) armor has a fifth dedicated slot for these mods, which frees up the fourth slot for other things.
Early analysis of the DSC mods suggests that for most six-person content they are not really worthwhile. See here: https://www.reddit.com/DestinyTheGame/comments/k2mi9s/quick_look_at_the_dsc_raid_mods_minus_suppresso?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf

Charged with Light Mods

The CwL system works as follows: certain mods (colored in green) give you stacks of CwL, up to a maximum of two stacks. Other mods (yellow) spend those stacks. And a third set of mods (white) changes the number of stacks you get or can have (increases your stack maximum, up to five, or gives you two stacks instead of one each time you get a stack).
The basic system is this: (1) Get CwL (2) Spend CwL. The easiest way to get CwL is to use the Taking Charge mod, which gives you charges for picking up a light orb. Combined with a masterworked weapon that drops orbs on fast kills, you can pretty much guarantee that you’ll spend most of the time CwL. You can also get charges from mods that give charges on weapon damage (kills with a certain weapon give you charges) or action triggers (breaking a shield, doing a finisher). For Season 12, Abyssal Charge, in the sixth row of the artifact, will give you CwL for void melee final blows.
So now you have charges. How should you spend them? One option is to look for damage resistance or damage buffs. The best damage resist mod is Protective Light, an absolutely crucial choice that gives you 50% damage resistance when an enemy breaks your shield. I use it almost all the time. Useful damage boost mods include High-Energy Fire (generic 20% damage buff till you kill an enemy), Lucent Blade (for swords), and Surprise Attack (for sidearms).
Other CwL mods will give you chances to drop special ammo, return grenade or melee energy, heal you on grenade kills, and more.
For lower-level PvE content I tend to use damage mods like Lucent Blade or Surprise Attack. For scarier content I’m almost always on Protective Light.
If you have room for mods that increase your stacks, Stacks on Stacks (gives two stacks for each one you earn), Charged Up (increases total stacks by one), and Superpowered (increases total stacks by two) are all useful here.
TL:DR: if you do nothing else use Taking Charge (green) and Protective Light (yellow), and get more fancy once you understand more.

Warmind Cell mods

Like Charged with Light, this system involves creating an opportunity to affect the gameworld (by making a Warmind Cell), and then using that opportunity (the Cell) in a certain way. You create a cell by getting a kill using a Seraph weapon (which now are world drops; Ikelos 1.2 weapons also count as Seraph Weapons). Once the cell exists you can either pick it up or shoot it. Shooting it causes it to explode, and a number of WC mods increase the range of that explosion or add effects to it. Picking up the cell will allow you to throw or, or will (with a Warmind’s Light mod) Charge you with Light, or have some other effect.
Here are the Seraph weapons currently available. Names include “Seventh Seraph” except where noted:
Kinetic: auto rifle, hand cannon
Energy: smg (Seraph and Ikelos), sniper (Ikelos), sidearm, shotgun (Seraph and Ikelos)
Heavy: machine gun
When I’m playing I’ll tend to run an auto/shotgun/Xenophage loadout for max solar explosion damage, unless I’m running a void Warlock, in which case I use the sidearm (void) with Nezarec’s sin. For some explosion-oriented content I’ll run the hand cannon, Jotunn, and the machine gun.
The most basic way to use these cells is to create them and then shoot them. A mod like Global Reach will then give your cell explosions far greater range and effect. But you can also combine numbers of mods to create some pretty cool synergistic builds, as you see here:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/paultassi/2020/03/27/a-destiny-2-solar-inferno-warlock-warmind-cell-build-for-more-room-clearing-fun/#5ec7d0c01c30
You can find a guide to all the Warmind Cell mods here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Kqaf2MdmUm1Ll6jCh-Rt0k6j2-nYCwf5lbbRLtXyr7M/edit#
But here are the basics: Solar mods generally affect cell explosion damage; Void mods create buff and debuff effects that do not rely on exploding the cells; and Arc mods create effects upon mod pickup.
The key to Warmind Cell is to understand that cells, once created, belong to everyone. Effects from shooting or picking up the cells are pegged to the person who picks them up or shoots them. So if Person A has Rage of the Warmind on and shoots a cell created by Person B, who does not have it on, then the explosion will be affected by Rage of the Warmind. And if Person B has Warmind’s Protection on, they will get 50% damage protection from mobs standing near a cell created by Person A—even if Person A does not have that mod on.
What this means that an entire fireteam of 6 people can coordinate Warmind Cell mods to create synergistic effects. I describe some of those below.

Recommended Builds

Add-clear Explosion Fun Build
Global Reach (1 neutral), Wrath of Rasputin (1 solar), Rage of the Warmind (5 solar), Incinerating Light (3 Solar), Reactive Pulse (CwL, 3 Arc). Ideally paired with a weapon that causes solar splash damage (Ace of Spaces, Sunshot, Jotunn, Xenophage, Martyr’s Retribution; the Warlock exotic chest Chromatic Fire also causes explosions on kinetic precision kills) and/or a solar subclass.
This build involves creating cells and then using the explosions from the cells to create more cells, killing everything within 30m (that’s the range of the explosion, Rage of the Warmind doubles that). Wrath of Rasputin creates more cells from solar splash so you’ll be making cells from your non-Seraph weapons and your class abilities (if you’re running a solar class).
Incinerating Light charges you with light when you kill three or more things with a cell explosion, and the Reactive Pulse mod creates a 30m Arc explosion when you take damage while surrounded—essentially destroying red-bar enemies all around you.
This is a build for content where you’re higher or even in power level with your enemies; it’s super fun. In a perfect world it turns your character into the walking center of a series of explosions, and feels awesome.
Defensive Build
Global Reach (1 neutral), Wrath of Rasputin (1 solar), Taking Charge (CwL, 3 neutral), Protective Light (CwL, 2 void), Warmind’s Protection (2 void).
This build has a number of variations depending on whether you’re running a solar class and/or coordinating with a team. A maximum defensive build swaps out Wrath of Rasputin for Cellular Suppression (2 void); you generate fewer cells but the cells you make help more, since shooting cells when you have CS on will send out a stunning pulse that will stun red-bar enemies for 10 seconds. Warmind’s Protection gives you a 50% damage buff against enemies near a cell.
If you have a full fireteam with multiple people using Warmind builds you can coordinate some of these buffs (making sure a couple people have Cellular Suppression on, for instance, or having someone else run Grasp of the Warmind (3 void), which allows you to pick cells up and move them to better places.
Here's a list of some fun builds for you:
Neutral, good for anything

1. Taking Charge, Protective Light, Global Reach, Wrath of Rasputin, Fireteam Medic
   
2. Taking Charge, Protective Light, Stacks on Stacks, Global Reach, Wrath of Rasputin
   
3. Taking Charge, Protective Light, Reactive Pulse, Supercharged, Stacks on Stacks
   
4. Global Reach, Wrath of Rasputin, Fireteam Medic, Warmind’s Protection, Cellular Suppression (this is the build I use most often in non-challenging content)
   

Aggressive

1. Global Reach, Wrath of Rasputin, Rage of the Warmind, Fireteam Medic, Power of Rasputin
   
2. Taking Charge, High-Energy Fire, Reactive Pulse, Supercharged, Lucent Blade (sword) or Argent Ordnance (Rockets) or Surprise Attack (sidearms)
   
3. Fusion Rifle or Shotgun-focused build: Supercharged, Quick Charge, Heavy Handed, High-Energy Fire, Charged Up
   
4. Grenade-focused build: Taking Charge, Firepower, Heal Thyself, Supercharged, Stacks on Stacks
   

Defensive

1. Taking Charge, Protective Light, Global Reach, Wrath of Rasputin, Warmind’s Protection
   
2. Taking Charge, Protective Light, Reactive Pulse, Global Reach, Warmind’s Protection
   

​
Part 2 of this guide, on weapons and the current metas, is here: https://www.reddit.com/DestinyTheGame/comments/k5fzne/moving_into_highlevel_pve_guide_for_beginners/

The only thing different is the format... also a lot more.
Disclaimer: I own nothing of the links and ideas, even if some came from me. Me just compiler no @.
Blackkat FAQ. Seems too aged to work now.
DMesse FAQ. Still seems useful... maybe.

Newbie Guide

GFL Corner	Matsuda	GFC	Gamepress	GFWiki
G-Doc #1	G-Doc #2	G-Doc #3	"Official" Vid	Prio Guide
1st Ech

I've heard things about Newbie Career Quests. What is it and how do I get it?

Things that newbie commanders can use to boost their early game.
Available in Quests button>Career Quests tab.

I think I drove myself into a wall not doing things efficiently. Do I have to restart my account to progress better?

Nah. You'll be just fine continuing. Just do things better from now on.

How do I level my girls? And I heard about corpse dragging, What is it?

First is grinding them on leveling maps. Corpse dragging is a resource efficient way to grind XP. The where and how. Dragging 0-2.
Second is using Combat Reports. You can get them in the Forward Basecamp or through the Data Room. You can give them by going to the Dorm>Warehouse>Gift tab or going to your owned doll profile and tapping the + button by the EXP bar. Note that they are not affected by dummy link EXP multiplier. They give 3000 fixed EXP per report.
Last one is the EXP mode combat sim. Total EXP per run is divided equally between all dolls present.

Is GFL being phased out/abandoned?

NO.

Not anytime soon, at the very least.

When do I do night campaigns?

Best metric would be when career quests send you there. Unlock them by completing the next chapter's emergency map (i.e. 11-4e unlocks 10-1n). Remember to equip PEQs to negate the accuracy penalty and bring HGs for map vision.

Is it worth to reroll in this game?

Depends on what you value more. If you want a pretty easy time until endgame, no need. Game gives you free strong dolls. Endgame? Mostly not, since this is a game of accumulation instead of meta characters.

What teams should I build?

ARSMG first, then whichever second ARSMG or RFHG you need more, then the other one you haven't made yet, then MGSG if you want.

Technical Help

Resupply/Costumes/Furnitures

Field Map

My team says Ammo/Ration depleted.

Move them to helipad. Double-tap them. Resupply is yellow button.

I just had a skirmish and saw that my team isn't in proper formation. Can I fix it without quitting the map?

me not caring enough to paraphrase it

How do I get the gold medals in maps?

• Read the Gold Medal description in the combat summary.
  
• Never retreat your team from the field map either by losing skirmishes (losses) or manual retreating (withdrawing).
  
• Never repair fielded teams (red warning at the bottom left tells you this, don't miss it).
  
• Retreating a doll from the battle phase/skirmish is fine. Really, anything that you SHOULD DO/ SHOULD NOT DO are already listed.
  

*Retreating Support Echelons does not prevent you from gold medals, nor does support kills (shown in green +#) count towards.

Do I keep the drops if I terminate/restart?

"Recently acquired" option in the armory says yes.

Why do I get the lack of ammo/ration warning and sometimes not?

You'll get the warning when you lack either of them and when you can see the enemy.

Combat/Battle/Skirmish

Story

I missed a major event, will it come back?

6mos. after their release they get added to the Campaign tab. For collabs... hope for the best.

What's the sequence of the stories?

Just the overview.

How to read the story again? It's not available in the story playback in Index.

Settings>Game>Story Playback then play the stage again. Or just Youtube it.

Where can I read the MOD, costume, event stories etc?

Every story and details should be included here.
Cafe stories.
MOD stories.
Includes extra artbook lore.^{Clean-up required.}

I want to read the GFL lore. Is there any summary out there?

Video format.

Commander Wardrobe

How do I change my commander's gender so I can change their dirty clothes?

Change gender in the commander's wardrobe, which can be visited by tapping the arrow below then tapping WARDROBE, or tapping your commander name then tapping on the avatar.

What does Infinite Surprise Dyes do?

Changes the appearance of your commander's clothes, IF they can be changed, that is.

What commander costume sets do the older servers have right now?

So far, nothing that the EN version doesn't have.

I saw that commander costumes have skills. How do I level it up?

Get another costume set with the same skill.

Expedition/Forward Basecamp

What should I buy from the black market?

Consumables first.

Which dolls should I use for expedition?

Maybe not Everything related to Forward Basecamp included. GFC Guide. ATM says CLv. 20 required.

Can I deploy two or three of the same pets in expedition?

Actually, that is the method used by min-maxers regarding advantaged pets.

Can the basecamp not give expedition loots?

Only if you didn't do one. If you did and no visible loot, restart app.

Which pet corresponds to which exploration material?

Cat - Bricks/City; Dog - Buttstock/Snowfield; Bird - Acorn/Forest; Misc - Fluid/Wasteland
Then use the corresponding food that gives higher chance to visit a locale for a near 100% visit.

If advantaged dolls change mid-expedition, which one determined your rewards, the advantaged on the start of exploration or at the end?

The start of the expedition.

What are T-doll effects available in the older servers?

Available as of Valentine's Day.

Heavy Ordnance Corps

How to HOC?

Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes.

How high should my Reload stat be to have an effect in attack speed?

CC guide.

Which HOC chips should I use?

Your local reddit guide. Another guide. Gampress guide.The Android version.
Found another one.

Which HOCs should I iterate first?

AGS>2B/M2>AT4>BGM. No quoting.

When do I get to unlock the whole HOC grid/matrix/board?

At full promotion. The yellow ★★★★★ one.

Which HOC can destroy buildings?

All of them. Building attack damage uses the Pierce stat.

How can I get Data Patches?

Either from the Code Refactoring menu in the Garage or getting a 5★'d HOC's Core Data.

What are Data Patches used for?

For Iterating FSTs beyond yellow 5★. They have to be level 100 and at 5★ for Iteration to be available.

Factory Production

Is there a voodoo recipe for *insert pennies here*?

Freedom of information, just add net connection.

When should I do T-Doll Heavy Production?

Preferrably during rate-ups. Low priority otherwise.

Resource Management

Theater

Theater tips?

Theater tips. Theater tips. Theater tips. Theater tips.

Do I have to save HOC charges and Fairy points for the boss?

Nope. Joins boss battle regardless of charges. Replenishes on next raid. Go ham.

What does "Settle Reward" do? It sounds ominous.

More like "Settlement Reward". Just shows you things you'll get once Theater ends.

How much CE do I need for a good score?

Just put your best stacks in your unused slots, especially in boss nodes.

I can't beat the current stage. Is this it for me?

Nope. Just fall back to the last boss node you can handle. These nodes can mitigate the "beaten stage" penalty so it's worth more than non-boss higher node.

I wasn't able to place high enough to 5★ the reward HOC. Is there another way to get their central data?

Wait for the next theater and they'll join the HOC gacha.

I'm thinking of using Landmine Fairy. Will they work?

Well yes... as a stat stick. Can't use a Strategy Fairy skill in theater mostly because you can't tap a node to activate it in the first place. Stick to Combat Fairies if you want to use skills.

Tactical Dolls

Neural Upgrade/MOD

How do Neural Upgrades work?

Gamepress. ATM. GFLCorner.

What's the Fire Control Core for?

Necessary for modding 5★ dolls.

What's the time frame for modding dolls?

From their release 'til forever.

Which dolls have a Mod in the older servers?

Unupdated as of now.

If I Mod my T-doll, is Level 100 still considered max level?

Thankfully, this is where common sense wins. In short, NO.

Where can I Mod my dolls?

Research>Neural Upgrade tab at the left.

Who should I MOD first?

Gamepress version.

Can I use duplicates to raise my doll's MOD level?

Yes, unless you're modding 2★ dolls. First, go to factory then dismantle all dupes. When you get enough cores, you can use them to raise MOD levels.

Events

Why didn't I complete "Consume 100 batteries" for the bingo mission when I EXP trained my HOCs?

Because you can get them back, that's what. It only counts when the training is finished, meaning there's no way to take it back.

Do auto-battles count for "Defeat Enemies"?

No.

What do I do with unused Keycards during the bingo event?

Keep them. You'll get 5 Calibration Tickets per 1 Unused Keycard. Points go to trash. Source: Game info tab.

Will the current event currency carry over to the next event?

No. Event currencies are for the current ones only.

When will my event medals expire?

One week after the end of said event.

Will the *insert ranking reward here* be available in the future?

Only if they rerun ranking maps.

Where can I see rankings?

Tap the bottom-right arrow at the main screen.

I wasn't able to clear the event. Will I still get the clear rewards when they get added to Campaign?

Nope. Gutted rewards compared to original. Free shit is free shit, and doll rewards gets cycled to Limited Dolls.

What's the optimal way of clearing Bingo Key Card Events?

Using the Targeted Draws to fully clear the board in one go.

Fairies

What are fairies?

ATM Guide.

How do fairies work?

GFC.

Does the Fervor talent give a 10% boost at the beginning of the battle?

0s, 8s, 16s. So yes.

Can fairies be recovered from Index?

No, unfortunately.

Third Party

I've heard of GFAlarm. Is it safe to use?

It's not modifying anything that can affect their income nor does it modify gameplay elements that would necessitate a ban. Should be fine.

Is it fine to use GFCalc?

Recommended more like.

Are keybinds bannable?

"Officially" recommended not to use keybinds. If you're willing to take the risk, go for it. Macros ARE a bannable offense, full stop.

Which emulators are good for GFL?

Mumu is the most recommended. There's also Nox, Memu, LDPlayer... Bluestacks seems to get shat though.

Any substitute for brainlets damage sim?

Github version and non-English version for starters. ATM has one too. Hycdes.

How do I kite using an emulator?

Keybinds are favored.

Auto-battles

Auto-battles?

Saves your sanity from painful-AF-to-grind-for-drops maps for starters.

Which map is best for auto-battles?

List of auto-battle statistics. Commentary.

What does total exp in the auto-battle completion mean?

...Not sure.

I can't do auto-battle even though I met the required CE. What happened?

Is it a night map? If it is, refer to night CE. If it still doesn't let you, increase CE, some required CE are listed wrong.

Can I get SPEQs/Limited dolls from auto-battles?

Yes, you can.

Support Echelons

Do support echelons use equipments?

Equipments, formation, and apparently costumes too are saved instances. Doll levels, equipment levels, skill levels, and chibi aren't.

I can't deploy a friend echelon. What do I do?

"Unable to deploy Support Echelon before the mission starts!". Maybe it's possible to set support echelon after starting the mission". If it's still a no, restart or check how many are allowed.

Dormitories

How do friend batteries work?

From QnA.

Why aren't my dorm batteries appearing?

Either it's because it's not their time yet or that you should check your surplus batteries.

Which dolls appear in which dorms?

Echelon position corresponds to dorm positione i.e. Echelon 1 in Dorm 1, Echelon 2 in Dorm 2, etc.

What are all the available pets right now?

If the pet you're looking for isn't here, it might be a Cafe Costume Story reward.

Others

I didn't get *insert reward here*. I checked my inventory but they're not there. How do I get them?

Have you checked the quests? What about the mail? If you did and they're still not there, either restart or wait for a few days.

How do I get a higher success rate for logistics?

Levels.

Would the equipment I'm enhancing get bonus points if I used an enhanced fodder?

Apparently no.

Which SF units are considered dolls/machines/armored/unarmored?

Note that Jupiter Cannons count as unarmored machine type.

Will there be problems with switching between two devices regularly?

Only if you think that manually logging in is a problem.

What's the Double Jupiter formation?

M4 MOD II + self-buff RF (usually IWS) + 3 HG (usually ROF buffers).

I can't access the new map even though I already cleared the prerequisite map.

Beat it again.

When will dorm battery, daily gift, friend battery reset?

Clock for your every need. And ranking updates one hour after Kalina's Daily Gift.

How can I play GFL if Apple Store doesn't have it?

Use Android, use emulator, use VPN, use jailbreak.

How does the rescue station work?

I claim no ownership.

What're the rewards for the Defense Drill?

Also includes the things you'll fight.

When is the anniversary?

May.

What does the Download Data button in the settings do?

Basically fairy and equipment texture, and dorm-related stuff.

How do I bind my account?

Settings>Manage Account>Bind to your preferred account.

Is it fine to use green equips?

Advised to use if lack gold ones. Do calibration only on gold ones for efficiency. Otherwise, fine to level them up.

How do I fill up the Enemy Index?

Just fight them. Win or lose, we get them.

Where can I get doll/fairy costume art?

Updated to CN servers.

How do I remove HOCs from Target Practice?

Tap on them again.

What does "Event" mean on the left side of the mission select screen?

Combat Missions: If there is a new night map, SPEQ rate up for X-4n.
Combat/Campaign: 1.5x EXP
Logistics: Great Success Rate Up
Combat sim: All simulations unlocked.

Which should I prioritizein the Data Room, Combat Reports or Special Combat Reports?

SCRs primarily because you can just EXP sim, corpse drag, and auto-battle the dolls, and also because basecamp sells far more CR than SCR. Note that you'd need 5000 SCRs to fully level a fresh HOC.

How do I maximize the efficiency of my RFHG echelon's ROF?

...I'll just leave it here.

What do advantaged dolls in combat map mean?

20% FP boost for AR, RF, MG. 20% EVA boost for SMG, HG, SG.

Limited-only Dolls

★★★★★

DSR-50	Five-Seven	TAC-50	OTs-14	CZ-75
AK-74u	AUG	Ballista	R93	JS 9
Lewis	HS2000	M82A1	Desert Eagle

★★★★

KLIN	UMP40	Honey Badger	Cx4 Storm	PP-19
KSVK	M1895 CB

★★★
Arctic Warfare

Type81R	RPD	Super SASS	MT-9	Ots-44
Type59

Operation Cube

Z-62	6P62	62 Shiki	ASh-12.7	ARX-160

Deep Dive

AR70	SSG 69	F1	EVO 3	HK45

For more info...

Nice Things To Have

Vertical Messages on Dorms and Chat.
CE Fromula.
Chibi Rips and Character Arts. And the how to's.
GFL Loading Screen Splash Arts.
Pre-mission flavor text.
tehcavy rips of Division CGs and art.

Unobtainable

Anything collab.
Some Kalina costumes.

• Gems and Fireworks

Some doll costumes.

• UMP45 Griffin jacket.
  
• SPAS, SV-98, AK-12 skin.
  
• M1895 KFC.
  

*EDIT * : This is kind of working now, i'm making a new thread to not make confusion since the issue is not the same.
Old message : Hi everyone, i'm trying to passstrough one of my GPU to my "Windows VM" because unfortunatly i need some apps that don't exist on linux (like Fusion 360).
I've essentially 3 GPU available, but, they are old/veryold, i don't have anything more recent, so they are all in "LEGACY" (i use seabios) and not UEFI. (PS : Please consider their age, it's not for gaming, just for running apps)

• NVIDIA GT 320
• NVIDIA GT 610
• ATI RADEON HD5450

In a best situation, i would like the GT 320 to work because it's the most powerfull from the list. But unfortunatly i can't get any cards to work.
PS : I hope is not too long for you to read, i spent all the day on that, tried everything i could...
Some information for the issue :
Here is my grub command line :
video=vesafb:off,efifb:off amd_iommu=on iommu=pt
Here is my /etc/mkinitcpio.conf modules config :
MODULES=(vfio vfio_iommu_type1 vfio_pci vfio_virqfd amdgpu radeon)
Here is some dmesg results :
sudo dmesg | grep -i vfio [ 2.233506] VFIO - User Level meta-driver version: 0.3 [ 2.239236] vfio-pci 0000:05:00.0: vgaarb: changed VGA decodes: olddecodes=io+mem,decodes=io+mem:owns=none [ 2.255885] vfio_pci: add [10de:104a[ffffffff:ffffffff]] class 0x000000/00000000 [ 2.272632] vfio_pci: add [10de:0e08[ffffffff:ffffffff]] class 0x000000/00000000 [ 91.517101] audit: type=2501 audit(1612723506.350:208): pid=612 uid=0 auid=4294967295 ses=4294967295 subj==unconfined msg='virt=kvm resrc=cgroup reason=allow vm="ubuntu20.10" uuid=c624553d-4f0b-4cce-8efa-a1cb624dee62 cgroup="/sys/fs/cgroup/devices/machine.slice/machine-qemu\x2d1\x2dubuntu20.10.scope/" class=path path="/dev/vfio/12" rdev=EC:00 acl=rw exe="/usbin/libvirtd" hostname=? addr=? terminal=? res=success' [ 93.082929] vfio-pci 0000:05:00.0: enabling device (0000 -> 0003) [ 93.102928] vfio-pci 0000:05:00.1: enabling device (0000 -> 0002) [ 287.116407] vfio-pci 0000:05:00.0: vgaarb: changed VGA decodes: olddecodes=io+mem,decodes=io+mem:owns=none
[ 0.000000] Command line: BOOT_IMAGE=/boot/vmlinuz-5.10-x86_64 root=UUID=ef7f6a6e-0b04-4dcb-b7e6-6b72f1ee25ce ro quiet splash apparmor=1 security=apparmor resume=UUID=2cc6254e-c31b-4542-bfb7-b190606857b9 udev.log_priority=3 video=vesafb:off,efifb:off amd_iommu=on iommu=pt [ 0.109252] Kernel command line: BOOT_IMAGE=/boot/vmlinuz-5.10-x86_64 root=UUID=ef7f6a6e-0b04-4dcb-b7e6-6b72f1ee25ce ro quiet splash apparmor=1 security=apparmor resume=UUID=2cc6254e-c31b-4542-bfb7-b190606857b9 udev.log_priority=3 video=vesafb:off,efifb:off amd_iommu=on iommu=pt [ 0.430847] iommu: Default domain type: Passthrough (set via kernel command line) [ 0.838996] pci 0000:00:00.0: Adding to iommu group 0 [ 0.839008] pci 0000:00:02.0: Adding to iommu group 1 [ 0.839020] pci 0000:00:04.0: Adding to iommu group 2 [ 0.839034] pci 0000:00:09.0: Adding to iommu group 3 [ 0.839045] pci 0000:00:11.0: Adding to iommu group 4 [ 0.839066] pci 0000:00:12.0: Adding to iommu group 5 [ 0.839076] pci 0000:00:12.2: Adding to iommu group 5 [ 0.839097] pci 0000:00:13.0: Adding to iommu group 6 [ 0.839109] pci 0000:00:13.2: Adding to iommu group 6 [ 0.839121] pci 0000:00:14.0: Adding to iommu group 7 [ 0.839133] pci 0000:00:14.2: Adding to iommu group 8 [ 0.839144] pci 0000:00:14.3: Adding to iommu group 9 [ 0.839158] pci 0000:00:14.4: Adding to iommu group 10 [ 0.839169] pci 0000:00:14.5: Adding to iommu group 11 [ 0.839181] pci 0000:00:15.0: Adding to iommu group 12 [ 0.839201] pci 0000:00:16.0: Adding to iommu group 13 [ 0.839214] pci 0000:00:16.2: Adding to iommu group 13 [ 0.839250] pci 0000:01:00.0: Adding to iommu group 14 [ 0.839264] pci 0000:01:00.1: Adding to iommu group 14 [ 0.839276] pci 0000:02:00.0: Adding to iommu group 15 [ 0.839289] pci 0000:03:00.0: Adding to iommu group 16 [ 0.839293] pci 0000:05:00.0: Adding to iommu group 12 [ 0.839299] pci 0000:05:00.1: Adding to iommu group 12
I hope it will be enough for you to help me
here is the issue :
The GPU is detected on the VM, On windows with nvidia drivers, Windows detect for example my "GT 320" (it's the same for all) but cannot use it because of code 43. I know there is "virtualisation prevention check" but i think i didn't make mistake on my VM xml, and i also tried a old driver that didn't have this dumb protection and : not working too.
Another thing weird is a screenshot from GPU-Z :
https://imgur.com/5jfNAY8
All those "unknow" and 0MB Memory size ?
I also tried on a linux distro, i took POP OS with "nvidia drivers" and.. it's the same as Windows, GPU detected, but not used.
BUT i tried something else that confirm me that something is wrong : If i plug a HDMI cable to the GPU, and remove the spice display and "QXL", all i got on my screen is : "NO SIGNAL" like if the GPU was turned off or in a zombie state
I also tried to specify the GPU BIOS, unfortunatly no change.
Here is for example my Windows XML :
``` win2k12 26c1161f-b0ee-4eaa-a474-eb23947b3d16 /libosinfo:libosinfo 4194304 4194304 4 hvm destroy restart destroy /usbin/qemu-system-x86_64

/qemu:commandline
```
And finaly my specs :

• CPU : AMD FX 8320.
• Motherboard : GIGABYTE GA 970A-DS3P FX, latest bios update since there is none
• Primary GPU (for linux) : R9 290
• BIOS Settings : CSM disabled, "Windows 8" mode, IOMMU enabled
• Main OS : Manjaro Linux with Kernel 5.10

Thanks you for having reading me, i hope we together find a solution because, it's seems to be hard ..

Part 2 of the "How To Demon's Souls: Sassy Edition." Given that Demon's Souls has brought in a couple trophies for invasion-related activity, I figured some people who struggle with invasions might find a general guide for standard invasion tactics and helpful tips for both the invaders and the hosts' side useful. In honour of my 1000th invasion in Demon's Souls, here is your How To guide to invasions.

So You Want To Be An Invader

You had some red guy come into your world, kill you in two hits with a longsword from across the room, clap at your disintegrating corpse and leave. What was that all about? How was he so strong?
Welcome to Invasions 101. where everything is made up and the points don't matter. ^{Are we allowed to use that? Am I going to get a call from Drew Carey's lawyer?} Here we'll learn how to invade, how to counter invaders and how to get those valuable trophies.

What are Invasions?

Invasions are an online component of the Soulsborne series in which players can attempt to kill one another. There are no rules, there is no honour, and there is no glory. It's like the Thunderdome but with more nudity and less blood. Using the Black Eye Stone in coop areas a player can invade another person's level. They can invade at any time if you're online and human, but it will happen most often at the beginning of a level, as fogwalls create natural coop and invasion boundaries. Most spawn points for invaders are at the beginning of a level, which can be a significant downside for invaders which we will discuss later.

How do you win?

You win by being the person with the shittiest internet. You win by being the last man standing. Invasions are all about skill, tactics and using whatever you've got on hand. For the invader, it's an uphill battle that is often being fought entirely on the backfoot, and so you will want to use whatever you have at your disposal. Poison, hiding behind mobs, . For the host, it's a battle for surival. Use everything you can to eliminate the invader. That includes summoning, hiding, using the Banish spell, abusing the fact that you have 25-50% more health and making a break for the fogwall if you just want to get rid of them.

Finding your Opponent.

As an Invader
One of the more exhilarating parts of invasions is the tracking. Some hosts are like a whirlwind through a level, and you can track their path of destruction through a level. More discerning and skillful hosts can evade pursuit for a surprisingly long amount of time. Always be wary of doors and corners as hosts and phantoms love to hide behind them for free damage. Get into the habit of rolling through doors, and checking corners. A hosts' healthbar is the easiest way to track them. Any time they take any form of damage, their healthbar will show up from any point on the map. Some Hosts will hide, and a new discovery recently is that the Plead emote will cause the host to clip through a wall, leaving only their feet visible. Keep your eyes open and be alert.
As A Host
This bit is easy. If you see an invasion notification, if you head back to the entrance, you're almost guaranteed to run into your invader. It's up to you on whether you want to engage with them, but a surprising amount of invaders are corner-blind and you can elude them simply by standing to the right or left of a door. Be aware that they may have the Graverobber or Thief's ring on, making it harder to track them from long distances. But most of the time, they're actively hunting you, and want to be found. Just be wary of sneak attacks.

Solo Host Invasions

This one is pretty simple, it's a lone host in the area. Depending on your luck, this is either a new player who hasn't figured out the risks of human form; a hyper-competent veteran of the series who is an efficient killing machine and fears no invader; or a lure who is sitting around waiting for invaders because they don't want to engage in combat without their extra 25-50% health.
Most of the time, it's going to be a duel around the Archstone, or an open plateau. Occasionally, you might encounter an entrepid, courageous sole adventurer who can handle both you and the mobs, but most of the time the second they spot you, they're going to make a break for the nearest clear area. You can choose to give them space to do so, or you can choose to hound them relentlessly as they flee, it depends on you as an invader. But be aware of reversals in those situations, as sometimes a fleeing host may turn around and take a few shots at you if you're pursuing too hotly.
Hot Tips

• Beware of Hidden Soul hosts who will take the opportunity to backstab you. They can be spotted more easily by the black outline when moving, or the Augite hanging from their belt. They can also still be locked onto when invisible.
• Slower weapons can be easily backstab fished one-on-one. Abuse this readily for an easy victory.

One Host and One Phantom

This is where the uphill battle really starts to get heavy. Your Sisyphean task only ends when the host is dead, as in most cases, if you merely kill the phantom the host will flee to the start of the area to summon his buddy again.
This is where your spawn point really displays its weakness. You're going to be starting behind enemy lines. Most 2-man invasions are password coop buddies playing through the game. Expect some level of advanced cooperation, as they likely have some form of voice communication. Traps, ambushes and coordinated play is common, you should prepare for this. Graverobber's ring is a must for evasion. Utilise corners, stairs, tight alleyways and doorways, although beware that this can be reversed on you in a heartbeat. Remain mobile as much as you can. Divide and conquer is the key, you want to be able to use mobs like a shield. Most of the time, hosts and their phantom will have an unrelenting bloodlust for you, and will chase you into even the most obvious of traps, so use that to the best of your ability. Force them into mobs.
The most difficult bit is usually finishing off either one of them. If you get one of them to low health, their partner will often automatically close in on you to protect their friend, and giving them time to heal. Use one-shot abilities to eliminate targets as quickly as you can, or prepare for sieges.
Good news is, you won't often be alone for long. Invasions match on a 1-1 ratio, meaning if the host has a phantom, if someone else is invading in the area, you're almost guaranteed to have back up in the form of another invader very soon. When you see that second spawn notification, as soon as it is safe, sprint for backup. If nothing else, you can keep the second invader from being jumped at spawn. Once you are facing 2-on-2, things become a bit more interesting, as they lose their bloodlust and become a lot more timid. Swap opponents often with your partner, and keep an eye out for rogue backstabs, in case your partner's opponent disengages and homes in on you.
Hot Tips:

• See Advanced Tactics for some... well, advanced tactics.
• In general, you're always safe to assume there's going to be more than 1 player in a world. Be prepared for a trap, and keep your eyes open for any secondaries trying to sneak up behind you.

One Host and Two Phantoms

The legendary Gank-squad. Not too common in Demon's Souls Remake yet, but not unheard of. These are usually dedicated, focused, and absolutely deadly. The win ratio for facing three or more players at once is not high, regardless of how skilled you are. Your best hope is for backup. For the most part, the tactics between 1 and 2 phantoms remain the same, but it becomes a bit more dicey running away, as they can cover each other in far more effective ways.
Mages are absolutely crippling here, especially Firespray mages. Anti-Magic is a must. If you're not able to shut down their magic, then you need to eliminate the fire support as quickly as possible. If there's more than one mage, I'm sorry, I'll send a letter to your widow.
Most of the time, they will have pre-cleared the area, meaning there are no mobs to hide behind. Run and hide until back up arrives. Thief's Ring or Graverobber's ring come in great use here.
Hot Tips:

• Send me your address, I'll bring flowers and condoms to your widow.

Advanced Tactics

I want to dedicate some time to talk about advanced tactics. These are things that you may naturally do anyway, but they're good to bring up.
I've already mentioned some chokepoints, but one of the most important ways to use these chokepoints is by playing Fortress.
Fortress is the act of holding siege warfare at certain areas, in which there is back-and-forth, and there is a battle for territory. Some phantoms and hosts will automatically hunker down at a safe spot, and they will not be removed from it. Some common ones are the first large island in 5-2, the Swamp of Sorrow and the first small stairway to the left of the boss room in 1-1, the Gates of Boletaria.
It's important for you as an invader and a host to recognise when a game of Fortress is about to ensure, and what tactics you can use to foist them from their strongest position. I previously mentioned the partner-cover, and this is a huge flag that a game of Fortress is about to start, as well as a lack of desire to move from a particular spot. Most hosts will, upon the loss of a fortress, will immediately seek to either take it back, or flee to the next safe spot.
One possible response to Fortress is to apply pressure to their position, by shooting arrows from a distance. It's not intended to seriously injury or damage, but it's harassment that is used to frustrate an enemy into chase.
Hit-and-Run is particularly effective, as it makes the enemy think you're in hurtin' range, and may force them to take to chase. You're going to want to use a fast weapon for this, as you don't want to have your trousers down at an awkward moment. Hit and run is rarely going to kill an enemy, but it's about unsettling your opponent and keeping the pressure up.
Reversal is a major component to the invasion game. I've mentioned it previously, but the unrelenting bloodlust of some hosts and phantoms you face mean they're more than happy to run straight into your weapon, often several times in a row. Be aware of your surroundings, and make sure that you're only doing it at safe windows where you can target a single opponent at a time, or hit both of them in the same swing. The safe windows for attack are much smaller if you're facing 3 opponents, but still feasible. Use your heaviest weapon, if you can.

Invasion Counters

I've already talked a lot about what invaders can do, and I'm sure you can glean some idea of what to do from that discussion, but just to highlight a few things:
Summon when you can. More enemies that they have to face, the more chances the invader is going to mess up.
Play Fortress. You have the highest chance of success when you own the turf.
Don't chase. Invaders are going to want you to give chase, which they will use to put you into traps.
Keep calm. Invaders are at a massive strategic disadvantage, and you can use that to your delight.
Double Firespray is a guaranteed win. Very few invaders can deal with it without specifically speccing for it, and very few expect it. Grab a buddy and pew pew away. Don't you dare stoop to such low tactics.

Hints and Tips.

• You absolutely must have a fully upgraded weapon. Preferably two, a light chase-down and a heavy critical weapon. Don't even attempt to invade without a maximum upgraded weapon, you have very slim chances of winning.
• Disconnects are going to happen. You're just going to have to accept that. Thankfully the SSD of the PlayStation 5 removes most of the frustration of the previous games. This isn't Bloodborne at launch, thankfully. For Invaders, just pop your stone again and hope you don't get the same host. For Hosts, try not to disconnect. Losing to an invader is a risk, but the positive side of that risk is that if you manage to beat them, then you earn 30% towards Pure White World Tendency, so there is a good reason to stay and fight. If you want to know more about World Tendency, I wrote a short guide on the basics here.
• Your Graverobber or Thief's Ring is your best friend. The element of surprise is by far your best advantage, if your opponent can't see you, they can't tell what you're planning. If not, get used to wearing the Foe's Ring for that extra 20% damage. I can mean the difference between a two-shot and a three-shot kill.
• You're going to be in soul form, for all intents and purposes. It's advisable you get used to wearing the Cling Ring if you don't want to be killed in two hits by a Northern Regalia wielding phantom, if your build can afford it.
• Your spawn point is usually at the start of the level, which is a serious tactical disadvantage. Most of the time, you're going to be facing at least 2 hostile phantoms right out the gate with no backup. Be prepared for immediate death the second you head through the fog.
• For melee builds, I'd highly recommend having Anti-Magic Field, especially if you see your opponent has Homing Missiles. I've been killed by buggy or laggy Homing spells more often than I can count.
• Poison and plague halves healing and lights you or your host up like a beacon across the map, regardless of their Thief or Graverobber's ring. If it's an expansive level, I'd recommend using poison, bleed or plague if your host or invader likes to run away and hide.
• Second Chance can be used before an invasion spawn, and can be an absolute lifesaver. It prevents one-shots, and helps you survive longer. You need a minimum of 15 Faith for the 2 spell slots, and a minimum of 15 Int for the 100MP spell cost, so invest wisely.

As always, if you have anything to add, do so in the comments!

This is a follow-up to a diary that I posted a little under a year ago. Since then, I’ve started a new job and moved into a new apartment! I began this position fairly recently (back in October) and I am still in the process of figuring out my new budget and how much I would like to save on a monthly basis. Link to old diary here!
Section One: Assets and Debt
Retirement Balance: I have ~$17,000 in a 401k from my previous job. I had to rollover money from my old plan to my new one this week, so I’m glad I got that done with! I’m not eligible to contribute to my new job’s plan until 90 days in, which will be in January. After that, I think I will likely contribute 8-10% per paycheck, still deciding!
Equity: Haha, I wish. Unfortunately, no :( it is a goal of mine to buy in the next few years though!
Savings account balance: ~$11,880 in my account as of today - I typically don’t keep much in my savings account, about 3-4 months worth of rent + expenses as an emergency fund. Once the number goes above $10,000 or so, I’ll move money to my investment accounts (this happens every 3-4 months; although this time, I waited a bit longer because I didn’t want to put too much in around election time). I’ll probably transfer a few thousand into my investment accounts at the end of this year.
Checking account balance: ~$3,290 in my account as of today - I only keep my paychecks in here and typically don’t withdraw any money unless I need cash, which is rare. At the end of each month, I’ll transfer any money I have leftover to savings so I can start each month with a clean slate.
Credit card debt: None, I consistently use 1-2 credit cards and everything is always paid off in full at the end of every month. Since I was a teenager, my mom has taught me never to spend more than I can afford and always pay off the statement balance of my credit cards.
Student loan debt: None, and I’m so thankful. Not going to college was not an option in my family and my parents were very determined to put me through college successfully without any debt at the end. I helped out by getting multiple scholarships that covered about 40% of all my expenses but it was still a lot of money. My parents had to work very hard throughout their lives to do this, after coming to America with nothing, but I’m so happy that they did.
Section Two: Income
Income Progression: I’ve held multiple jobs throughout my life and I’ve always been extremely work-oriented, I get pretty bored and restless when I’m not busy so I made sure to use any extra time I had in high school productively!
2010-2013: I worked as a tutor for little kids a few days after school, taught them math/reading and helped my boss with random admin work. Also had a brief stint at a music store for a few months during the summefall of my junior year just to get some extra money.
2013-2017: Had multiple jobs throughout college, all were pretty chill and paid minimum wage. I had work-study positions in my school’s psychology department planning events and was an office assistant in various dorms on campus helping with packages, mail, administrative work, etc.
2017-2020: I was very lucky to receive a job offer in spring of my senior year as a software consultant. I loved this position and my salary rose ~$11,000 through the 3.5 years I was there, from $64,000-$75,000. I received a 10% performance raise in April 2020, but never actually received it as all salary changes were postponed until Jan 2021 due to COVID-19.
2020-present: Switched jobs last month (Oct 2020) and made the jump to management consulting. I won’t say too much about my job since it’s a small company but I appreciate the change in industry and that I’m gaining more project management skills that can be used in the future. They offered me $125,000 as a starting salary and, after three days of debating whether it was too risky to jump ship during a pandemic, I decided to take it. I have heard that our bonuses are $10,000-$20,000 per year but, since I’m not 100% sure on the amount, I’m not including it. I typically put all of my bonus money into investment/savings accounts and don’t touch it.
Main Job Monthly Take Home: $6580.00 after taxes, health insurance, etc. Once I’m eligible for 401k contributions in Jan, this amount will go down significantly.
Side Gig Monthly Take Home: No consistent side gig; I sell clothes on Poshmark here and there, but only when I need to.
Section Three: Expenses
Rent: $1,500.00 a month for my room in an apartment with three other girls; my room is the smallest and hopefully, I can move into a bigger room in the place once my lease is up!
Retirement Contribution: $500 a month to my Roth IRA, I always contribute the max of $6000 every year, I currently have about $23,000 in here as of now
Savings Contribution: Stated above, move all money leftover at the end of the month to savings.
Investment Contribution: Stated above, all extra money (that isn’t meant for my emergency fund) to my investment accounts. I don’t really see a point in keeping a ton of money in my savings account. I currently have about ~$55,000 in my investment and Roth IRA accounts combined.
Debt Payments: Currently none.
Donations: No monthly set donations, although I do send money to different organizations frequently when I see causes that I would like to support.
ConEd: $17-$25 per month, I Venmo my roommate for this and she pays for us
Wifi/Cable: $45 per month; again, I Venmo my roommate for this and she pays the actual bill
Cellphone: I’m still on my parents’ plan but my company reimburses us about $35 every month, which covers my share of the charges.
Subscriptions:
Netflix: $0 - my parents cover this, they pay for some services and my sister and I pay for others. It all evens out in the end!
Hulu: $12.39 - my parents and sister all have access to this
Spotify: $0 - my sister pays for our family plan
HBOMax: I pay for this, my roommates and I all share a login - the cost is covered in our cable bill
FabFitFun: $200 per year, this is definitely my guilty pleasure - I definitely don’t need it, but it’s so fun to get this box every few months
Gym Membership: None at the moment, since I’m pretty iffy about working out with so many other people around mid-pandemic and it doesn’t look like the situation in NYC is going to improve anytime soon. Thinking about getting an Equinox membership though since there’s one pretty close to me - NYC people without a corporate discount to Equinox, is it worth it?
Section 4: Money Attitudes
Was there an expectation for you to attend higher education? Did you participate in any form of higher education? If so, how did you pay for it?: Yes, I think there was always the expectation that I would attend college, my parents both immigrated to the U.S. in their early 20s and told me that they would support me in any kind of career I chose, but that I had to go to college prior to doing so. My mom and dad made sure I was very involved in the process and we used to talk about all my college expenses together as a family. They also had to pay for my sister’s education too so I understand that it was a huge burden but they never complained about it. My parents are also very supportive of me getting my MBA, but I don’t think they would have the means to financially back me for this, since they’re getting close to retirement age and need to build as large of a financial cushion as possible.
Growing up, what kind of conversations did you have around money? Did your parents educate you on finances?: My parents have become more and more transparent about money as my sister and I have grown older. Both my parents are very frugal and taught me important lessons about debt and financial risk when I was growing up. My mom, since she handles most of the finances, was very truthful about how much we had and what we could/couldn’t afford.
What was your first job and why did you get it?: I got my first real job when I was 15, working as a tutor. I didn’t need the money because my parents supported me with anything I needed, but it was helpful to have some savings when I got to college. My parents didn’t pressure me to get one but I figured that it would also look good on college applications.
Did you worry about money growing up?: My parents didn’t really let me worry about money growing up, but I’ve always been more of a saver, rather than a spender. My parents have definitely told me that we couldn’t afford things at times, but if anything really needed to be bought, they found a way. They are now very truthful, since they’re getting older, about what their financial situation is and how much money they have set aside for retirement.
Do you worry about money now?: Constantly, I don’t know if there will ever be a point at which I won’t worry; you always need money for something. I do think that my parents have prepared me to be practical about money instead of wasting it on silly things.
At what age did you become financially responsible for yourself and do you have a financial safety net?: I would say that I became financially responsible for myself once I graduated college, since I started paying my own rent and expenses at that point (minus my cellphone bill). I have a comfortable safety net of savings at the moment, but if I ever really found myself in a bind and couldn’t afford to get by, I would likely turn to my sister for help.
Section Five: Money Diary!
Friday 11/13:
8:00 am - Wake up! It’s finally Friday and I’m so thankful. This week has felt incredibly long for some reason. I have a bit of a later start to my meetings today so I want to get in a workout before. Brush my teeth, change into some work out clothes, and get going on a Sydney Cummings arm/upper body workout video.
8:45 am - Done! I recently discovered her videos from an Instagram influencer I follow; I can actually keep up with them without dying on the floor in pain!
10:00 am - Calls begin and basically do not stop the entire morning. I get a few administrative tasks done here and there but ultimately am not super productive.
1:30 pm - Towards the end of my last call of the day (finally!), I make a quick egg scramble with veggies, lots of hot sauce and some avocado and toast on the side. Pair that with some OJ and get back to work!
4:30 pm - My sister and I text throughout the afternoon about things we want to do while she’s in NYC during Christmastime! I’m so excited to see her; look up times for The Greens in Chelsea but of course, they’re all sold out. Bookmark it on my computer to keep checking for the next few weeks.
6:15 pm - Log off for the week after sending in my timesheet, it’s the weekend!!! I hang out with my roommate before she goes to work and she convinces me to order Thai food for dinner (mainly because I’ve been bringing it up every day). Order Pad Kee Mao from UpThai (best Thai food on the UES) and watch The Parent Trap to distract myself while I wait, classic. - $19.16
7:45 pm - Spend the rest of the night flipping between random movies on TV and talking to Verizon since our Wi-Fi randomly shuts off. I finally fix it and am exhausted by the end of the night.
12:30 am - Fall asleep while watching an episode of The Crown - can’t believe I haven’t watched this show until now, love Queen E!
Daily Total: $19.16
Saturday 11/14:
8:30 am - Wake up and stay in bed for a bit scrolling through texts/TikTok/Instagram. Try not to do this on weekdays but it’s inevitable on weekends.
9:45 am - Make coffee, put clean dishes away, and chill on the couch. Eat a Kind bar and some Cheerios while watching a bit more of The Crown.
12:30 pm - I’ve spent too much time on the couch at this point, oops. Put my workout clothes on and head to the East Side Running Path, it’s such a nice day for a run!
1:45 pm - 4.5 miles done! I head home and pick up some veggies from the fruit stand on my way: tomatoes, green pepper, mini cucumbers, and an avocado. The stuff here is so much cheaper than grocery stores. - $8.00
2:00 pm - Heat up some of the leftover Thai food from last night and spend the afternoon hanging out on the couch with my roommate.
5:30 pm - Going out to dinner with a few friends tonight so I take a shower and put on some makeup. I honestly forget how to put on makeup sometimes because I do it so rarely, anyone else?
7:00 pm - Head down to Little Italy on the subway (using money already on my MetroCard) and meet my friends, S and K, at Aunt Jake’s! This place has the most AMAZING pasta. I get the rigatoni with spicy arrabiatta sauce and we split a bottle of red wine between the three of us. Sit outside in the cold and eat with my huge coat on but it’s better than being inside the restaurant with way too many people. Plus, the wine helps a lot. - $46.30
9:45 pm - We part ways and I subway back up to the UES, the Q makes it so quick. Spend the rest of the night on the couch watching Schitt’s Creek with my roommate.
Daily Total: $54.30
Sunday 11/15:
9:00 am - Wake up and the scrolling happens again, albeit for a shorter time than yesterday. It’s the little wins! I quickly go to the grocery store across the street to grab milk because I can’t have my coffee black, no matter how hard I try. - $2.39
10:30 am - Spend the rest of the morning talking to my mom and then my best friend, L. L and I have been fighting a bit lately so it feels good to get things cleared up. It feels like a weight has been lifted off my shoulders once we’re done!
12:30 pm - Heat up the pasta from last night (with some sautéed veggies added in) and watch a few episodes of The Big Bang Theory. I’m the queen of leftovers.
3:30 pm - Scour the internet for a place to buy paper towels and finally end up scoring some at Staples. Looks like COVID Round #2 is coming in hot. Wear your masks, please! - $21.55
5:00 pm - Between freaking out over COVID infection rates and episodes of Schitt’s Creek on in the background, I raid my fridge and realize I’m out of a few things. Wish I had known this before I went to the grocery store this morning, damn. This doesn’t really help in limiting my exposure....
5:45 pm - Run to Staples to pick up my order of paper towels and then head to the grocery store to get romaine, waffles, onions, and olives. Also see some apple cinnamon donuts while I’m in line and can’t resist.... - $16.40
7:00 pm - Veggie sandwich and tomato soup for dinner while watching The Crown. Clean up the kitchen after I eat and FaceTime my parents for a bit. Spend a majority of the call trying to convince them to get a new laundry machine since theirs keeps breaking. Maybe my sister and I will surprise them for Christmas...
10:00 pm - Walk around my apartment to get my steps in for the day and take a quick shower. Watch a bit more of The Crown while ordering a gift for my old boss. She’s the best and I felt so much guilt leaving my last job mainly because I loved working with her. Ship her a gift basket full of wine (obviously), cheese, cookies, crackers, almonds, and other good stuff. Write her a quick thank you note (110 characters is not enough) and send it off! - $91.00
12:30 am - I call my brother-in-law to wish him a happy birthday and fall asleep immediately after; work is going to be rough tomorrow.
Daily Total: $131.34
Monday 11/16:
8:15 am - Snooze multiple times and finally manage to get out of bed. I have a heated mattress pad inside my bed so it’s especially hard to get up on mornings when it’s 35 degrees outside. I stretch, brush my teeth, and change into work clothes (lol leggings and a tank) before dialing into my first call of the day.
10:45 am - Quick break time! I heat up my coffee while I make a waffle with peanut butter and maple syrup on top. Banana on the side. Back to Excel!
12:20 pm - Morning calls are almost at an end so I head to the kitchen to make lunch. Put some quinoa to cook on the stove (ever since I learned how to correctly make quinoa, I’ve become obsessed and put it in everything) and quickly assemble a harvest bowl a la Sweetgreen. Add in spinach, apples, quinoa, sweet potato, broccoli and carrots. Topped with a pesto vinaigrette, it’s probably a weird combination, but I like it and it fills me up.
3:30 pm - I recently started a new job about a month ago and am finally getting around to rolling over my 401k into my new plan. I requested a check from the old company last week and spend some time going through the rollover process. It’s relatively easy, thankfully, and all I need to do now is get HR to sign a form!
4:45 pm - Tortilla chip snack break because I always get hungry around this time.
6:15 pm - Work is finally over and I’m about to start a workout when my roommate complains that she hasn’t done one in a while. I convince her to do a Sydney Cummings boxing workout with me and we’re both dripping with sweat by the end. Our downstairs neighbors probably hate us though since there was a lot of jumping, whoops!
7:20 pm - Heat up the last portion of TJ’s Roasted Red Pepper and Tomato Soup and eat while watching an episode of The Crown. I wonder how much of this stuff is true and Google random things about Prince Philip while I watch.
10:45 pm - After talking with my mom and sister for almost an hour, I run the dishwasher and finally take a shower. It feels so good to get into bed!
12:00 am - Scroll through random TikTok videos and send a few funny ones to my sister. Pass out while watching old episodes of The Big Bang Theory.
Daily Total: $0.00
Tuesday 11/17:
8:20 am - I wake up too late and scramble around quickly to get ready before my 8:30 call begins. Manage to brush my teeth and make coffee, still in PJs though. Luckily, it’s a conference call with our team in Spain so I don’t have to turn my video on and can sip my coffee while listening.
9:10 am - I have some time before my next call at 9:30 so I change into leggings and a tank, throw a sweatshirt on, and fix my bed. I hate late start days but the time I get to spend under my covers almost seems worth it every time.
10:30 am - Same breakfast as yesterday: waffle with peanut butter and maple syrup with a banana on the side. Can you tell I’m a creature of habit?
12:30 pm - I’m STARVING. I quickly make a small plate of nachos because I have calls until 2:00 and can’t eat until after.
2:00 pm - Yes, calls are over! I swear, half of these could be summed up into an email. Make a harvest bowl like yesterday with broccoli, apples, sweet potato, etc. Make a quick honey mustard vinaigrette with my almost empty mustard bottle - I love hacks like these!
4:15 pm - My paycheck dates have changed so I call to ask Chase if they can modify my credit card statement closing date to be right before I get my first paycheck so I can start each month fresh after rent gets paid. Also get the rollover form back from HR and upload my check to my new 401k!
6:00 pm - Go downstairs to the CVS on my block to get a quick flu shot. I’m in and out within 15 minutes, thankfully!
6:45 pm - Hang out with my roommate before she goes to work and spend the rest of the night watching The Bachelorette and talking to my parents. My sister and I are trying to visit our cousin in California for NYE and we’re not sure if it’s going to be okay getting on an airplane in a month. I tell my mom to book the tickets now, since they’re relatively cheap, and we can always cancel and get our miles back since refund policies are lenient at the moment. Walk around my apartment while talking on the phone to get some steps in. At some point, I make a sandwich with broccoli cheddar soup from TJ’s on the side.
10:30 pm - I spend some time just laying on my couch, my back and shoulders completely kill from boxing yesterday.
11:20 pm - Shower, hot cocoa, a few episodes of The Big Bang Theory, bed.
Daily Total: $0.00
Wednesday 11/18:
7:30 am - Wake up earlier than I want ta so I can get in line early at CityMD to get a COVID test. Quickly brush my teeth and slip on leggings and sneakers and run across the street. The line is already around the block to the next street...great.
8:30 am - Contemplate leaving as I dial into a Zoom meeting, decide wait it out some more.
9:00 am - Okay...pretty sure I have pneumonia by now. IT’S FREEZING and we’ve only moved by half a block. I did not prepare enough for this. Complain/vent to my mom a little on the phone and decide to cut my losses before I freeze to death. Run back home, immediately change into comfy sweats, and spend over an hour trying to get warm again while in meetings.
12:30 pm - Text with my sister while I’m in a meeting about the testing situation in NYC. She wants me to get tested before I go home for Thanksgiving so we don’t have to worry about our grandparents. I search around for other testing sites in the city while I’m in calls.
1:30 pm - I throw together a bunch of vegetables with some spinach and brown rice I had in the fridge and make a quick salad. Use up the last of the honey mustard vinaigrette as dressing.
4:00 pm - Research face masks while I’m on my last call of the day. I like the ones from Rothy’s (recommended by another money diary) but I hold off on buying them for now until I can decide on a color I like.
6:15 pm - Finish up work after sending out a few emails and turn on a Sydney Cummings workout. My butt and legs are on fire after I finish...I take longer than I should to get up off my yoga mat.
7:15 pm - Heat up the rest of the broccoli cheddar soup from TJ’s - it’s actually much better than I thought it would be!
9:00 pm - Head down to CVS quickly because I have a coupon for a free item and my mom would be disappointed in me if I let it go to waste. I can’t really think of anything I need so I grab a muscle relaxant cream to give to my grandma, she has arthritis so I think it would be helpful.
10:00 pm - I get an email that a dresser I’ve been looking at is back in stock. We remodeled my room at my parent’s house last year and it’s basically empty at the moment, so I think it could be a nice addition to the space. I call my mom to ask if she likes it - luckily the color matches perfectly with the rest of the furniture so I go ahead and make the purchase. Open up a Wayfair credit card to get $40 off; I get approved quicker than I thought! - $383.84
11:15 pm - I take a shower, try on the items I got in my latest Stitch Fix box, and get into bed. Exchange random funny TikToks with my sister and fall asleep while watching an episode of The Crown.
Daily Total: $383.84
Thursday 11/19:
7:30 am - I have a call at 8:30 so I wake up early to check if the urgent care near me has time slots. It already says that no walk-in appointments are available for the next hour so I make a note to check throughout the day. Lay in bed and am in and out of sleep for the next half hour.
8:30 am - I get on my first call of the morning after cleaning up my room and brushing my teeth. I listen to our project lead talk about doing business with Asian countries while making my coffee.
10:30 am - Still on calls, ugh. Take a quick break from the Excel file I’ve been working on in the background to make a multigrain waffle with peanut butter and some maple syrup on top. No banana to add on the side today, unfortunately.
11:45 am - I’ve been talking to a guy I met on Bumble for a few weeks now and we were supposed to meet tonight for the first time. I text him to postpone since we’re both seeing our families in the next few days and it would be too risky to meet tonight for the first time. Luckily, he’s really nice about it and totally understands. This pandemic has definitely pushed back my potential wedding by 2 years, ha.
1:30 pm - I finally have a break from meetings to make lunch! I quickly heat up some parmesan arugula ravioli from TJ’s with a salad on the side to use up all of the random produce I have left. Get back to my desk and work while I eat.
4:30 pm - I read a funny article about the little owl that was found in the Rockefeller Center tree and I text my old coworker about it. They call him Rockefeller and he’s so cute! My coworker says he gives her Baby Yoda vibes. I agree.
6:45 pm - Finally finish up work, it’s almost Friday! I check the urgent care site again and it still says that no appointments are available for the next hour. My roommate and I complain about how it shouldn’t be this difficult to get tested in the city. I walk down to the center anyway and the receptionist tells me that she might be able to fit me in if I come back tomorrow around lunchtime. Semi-success!
7:30 pm - I eat a few soft/hard tacos for dinner while talking to my roommate and watching an episode of The Crown - I just want to get to the Princess Diana-era already!
10:00 pm - I spend the rest of the night cleaning up the kitchen, running the dishwasher, showering, etc. I decide on one item to keep from my Stitch Fix box and check out the app. I think I might cancel my subscription, especially since we’re probably not going anywhere for the next few months. - $59.00
11:30 pm - Get in bed, pull up old episodes of Friends on my iPad, and fall asleep at some point.
Daily Total: $59.00
WEEKLY TOTALS
Food + Drink: $92.25
Fun / Entertainment: $0.00
Home + Health: $21.55
Clothes + Beauty: $59.00
Transport: $0.00
Other: $474.84
GRAND TOTAL: $647.64
REFLECTIONS: Aside from the furniture purchase and gift for my boss, I would say that this is a standard week. I honestly don’t think I spend too much but sometimes my credit card bill is way higher than I thought it would be. I thought it would be fun to do a follow-up, especially with my job/apartment change! Still trying to figure out how to live with this salary since it’s a big change for me, has anyone struggled with this? Would love some advice, I realize that it’s a great problem to have but I still feel uncomfortable since I don’t really know how much is right to spend/save.

Happy New Year! My pandemic hobby for 2020 was building SFFpcs.
I started the year pre-pandemic with one big box 750W ATX build, and ended it with three modern, specialized builds tailored to my needs that draw in total the same 750W peak power budget and take the same 20L total of space.
The utility of having my builds be as small as possible was unbeatable, as I moved from the US to Canada in September, and was able to fit all three of my devices in one suitcase safely cushioned with clothing. This easily saved hundreds of dollars of shipment fees.
This post describes my journey into the SFFpc world, and the boxes I built along the way! I'm also, somewhat uniquely for this community, a fairly hardcore Linux user -- I haven't installed Windows on any computer I've owned in over 15 years. Always happy to talk SFF & Linux driver support for specialized components. I'm also providing full detail on my build specs.

Build 1: petunia, the lightweight streaming/meeting box

When the pandemic hit in March, I went from spending 50% of my life on the road meeting clients to being locked down at home. I lived with 4 housemates, and at any given time, at least one of us would be joining meetings from our group office in the living room, or use the living room TV at the exact same time.
After just two weeks, my housemates and I were at each others' throats. As the person who had the most meetings, podcasts, and livestream hosting duties, I needed to move those tasks out of the common area into a corner of my bedroom. I still wanted to game together with the rest of the household, so moving the ATX machine downstairs permanently wasn't an option. And whatever I moved into my bedroom needed to be extremely small/compact, power-efficient, and low noise.
Thanks to the excellent guides pinned here on /sffpc, I quickly settled on the Ryzen 5 3400G APU in the Chopin InWin case (3.3L), given that the kit included a PSU, had a tiny volume, and wouldn't need a separate GPU. It was a good starter experience with the SFF world.
The setup worked flawlessly for running Chrome, Zoom, and OBS, and even could play lightweight games like WoW or League of Legends on low settings. Op success!

Build 2: daisy, the arm64 developer workstation

In May, I received the SolidRun HoneyComb ITX developer SoC board I'd ordered in March. The reason I ordered this board was to have a local testbench for day to day development on the arm64 architecture. At my job, we had switched production workloads from Intel to Amazon Graviton2/ARM Neoverse N1 in March, but didn't yet have a way for developers to validate platform compatibility before merging code. So I ordered the best arm64 developer board I could find, and a case that matched the modest power (CPU TDP: 35W) and cooling needs of that board: the Lone Industries L5.
The build took some time to get right given the firmware was still being stabilized and OS support was maturing, but eventually I got a bootable system that neatly fit in the 4.6L case. And over time, the firmware and OS support has improved, with contributions to the Ubuntu story in particular backported/prebuilt by me for the community once I had my own board bootstrapped.
I was able to fairly quickly shift my day to day computing for my job onto the arm64 workstation, and even run Baker Lab's Rosetta@Home to contribute to COVID research in a power-efficient manner with the spare cycles!

Build 3: lily, the few-compromises amd64 gaming machine

With my move to Canada impending, I realized that if I transplanted my M.2 SSD and existing GTX 1070 from the ATX machine into a SFF build, I could get away with taking all my devices with me on the airplane and not needing to worry about shipping them. Coincidentally, the Ryzen 7 4750G had just come out and I wanted to upgrade petunia.
So my housemates and I gathered around and cooked up a plan similar to hermit crab shell exchanges: we'd hand off my ATX case, board, and installed i7-6700K (2016) Intel CPU to the housemate with the oldest computer, plug in their graphics card/SSD/ram, and ewaste their 5+ year old computer. We'd then take my ram/SSD/1070 and plug them into a X470 motherboard with the 3400G from daisy, and install into a Salvo Studios S402 (9.5L). And finally, I'd get the upgrade I wanted to petunia, of the 4750G in B550 motherboard to enable it to play games at higher than minimum settings, drop fewer frames while streaming, etc.
Some fiddling later, we had three bootable upgraded systems, and one clunker sent to ewaste. It was time to pack the bags and head to Canada.

Future-proofing everything, no compromises

With the launch of the Ryzen 5xxx and Radeon RX 6xxx series (both PCIe 4), and support for the 4750G (PCIe 3 only) finally released for the X470 motherboard (PCIe 3 only), it was time to rejigger everything around to ensure that my builds would be future-proofed for the next 4 year replacement cycle. I found somewhat reputable retailers (scalpers?) who had stock of the 5600x and RX 6800 and charged markup of <10% over Canadian MSRP (thank you AeroMalls & Infonec Computers!).
I set out to work transplanting the B550 into the Salvo Studios case and X470 into the Inwin, re-slotting processors, installing the new GPU and can happily report that I have the Ryzen 5600x, B550, and Radeon RX 6800 all working happily together at PCIe 4.0 speeds with the LINKUP Ultra riser. The only wasted parts here were one outdated 3400G, one half-decade old GTX 1070, a few Wraith stock coolers, and the B550 board I had to RMA.
lily is now a beauty to look at, especially with the RGB from the RX 6800 card. and performs like an absolute beast. yes, on 450 watts. yes, in a 9.8L case. it all does barely fit both in terms of space and power budget.

Gotchas/troubleshooting/tips

A couple of weird incompatibilities turned up along the way that I had to nail down:

1. read the QVL. the Ryzen 3400G really really does not like XMP ram clocked above 3200, so I had to manually downclock while it was lily's CPU. before I downclocked, I was getting random segfaults, and yeah, bitflips in RAM are baaaaad.
2. firmware support for newer processors is tricky. the original plan was to install the 4750G directly into petunia's existing X470 motherboard. That did not work, because X470 firmware supporting 4xxx APUs wasn't out at the time.
3. volting can need adjustment even at stock speeds. the iGPU in the Ryzen 4750G over-stresses the VSoC power delivery of the B550M/itx mobo and needs to be overvolted by 50mV to not crash under texture rendering load. I had tried everything kernel & driver but didn't think to over-volt given I hadn't touched overclock.
4. it's not always the drivers, but sometimes it is. My RX 6800 initially refused to light under Linux after BIOS handoff. It turned out that the 5.10 kernel was panicking due to missing firmware files, and the 5.8 kernel didn't know about the 6800 at all but could get me in via UEFI GOP mode for long enough to install the drivers to make it light properly under 5.10.
5. even without visible damage, travel can stress things. My B550M/itx motherboard suddenly went dead during the transplant, possibly due to the travel exposing a latent bad solder joint. And, worse yet, the SolidRun board also developed a loose carrier board spacer and loose USB port assembly two months after travel >.< Both ASRock and SolidRun have been gracious about RMAs, thankfully.
6. redundancy saved my bacon. Always make sure you have at least one, preferably two, backup systems for looking up directions, searching error messages, or if worst comes to worst, working/gaming/streaming for a week or two without the machine specialized for the role while waiting for troubleshooting or RMA exchange to happen.

The playoffs continue to rage on, but there are 26 teams sitting at home with nothing to do but twiddle their thumbs, watch the Conference Finals, and wait for next season to start.
For their sake, we wanted to look ahead with the next edition of the OFFSEASON BLUEPRINT series. In each, we'll preview some big decisions and make some recommendations for plans of attack along the way. Today, we're looking at the Detroit Pistons.
step one: weave a new narrative
Some teams are good, some teams are bad -- but almost all of them have a general direction. Are you a young team on the rise? Or a veteran team trying to squeeze out as many wins as possible?
Right now, the Detroit Pistons are in a wonky grey area. They're missing an identity. When they tried to make the playoffs, they were fairly mediocre (records of 37-45, 39-43, 41-41). When injuries hit this past season, they plummeted down to 20-46. While that generally suggests a young and rebuilding team, the roster doesn't reflect that yet. Their marquee players are Blake Griffin (age 31) and Derrick Rose (age 31.) They also have a veteran coach in Dwane Casey who's more accustomed to competing than rebuilding. All in all, they feel like a confused, forgotten franchise.
Fortunately, there's a new sheriff in town. The team hired a new GM in Troy Weaver, who had been Sam Presti's right-hand man in Oklahoma City. Weaver's been on the verge of a GM job for several years now, and his hire represents something of a coup for this embattled organization.
Going forward, the franchise needs to hold the keys over to Weaver and allow him free reign to do whatever he wants. Back in OKC, he had experience with a variety of makeups: with a rebuilding team, with a contending team, with a rebuilding-wait-whoops-we're-accidentally-pretty-darn-good team. It's up to him to look at this roster and this payroll and determine the best path forward from here.
step two: hold a garage sale for your old homeowner's property
Presumably, Troy Weaver will treat this project as more of a teardown than a remodel. Mainstay center Andre Drummond is already out of the door, and the other veterans may join him on the bus out of Detroit.
Unfortunately, that may be easier said than done. It makes a lot of sense to trade star PF Blake Griffin to a veteran team, but his injuries and his contract ($37M + $39M player option) would make that difficult from a logistical perspective.
There's a chance that a desperate team may be willing to roll the dice on Griffin. Throughout his career, he's been one of the more misunderstood players in the league. People want to treat him as an athlete-dunker only, but he's actually a skilled ballhandler and passer. In his last healthy season in 2018-19, he averaged 24.5 points, 7.5 rebounds, and 5.4 assists, and even showcased an improved three-point shot (36.2% on 7.0 attempts per game.) If healthy, he'd be a major difference maker to a team like Portland.
Still, teams aren't going to give up major assets for Blake Griffin until he proves that he is healthy. From Detroit's perspective, it makes more sense to wait to trade him. They need him to come back, put up some good stats, and then float him in offers. Right now, you'd be trading Griffin for 20 cents on the dollar.
In contrast, Derrick Rose's stock may be at a high. He put up good raw numbers this year (18.1 points, 5.6 assists), and he's on a reasonable $7.5M expiring contract. He'd be a positive addition to a playoff team, best served as a Sixth Man scorer. The Pistons and their fans like Rose (and he likes playing here), but it'd be irresponsible for them to not consider trade options. If they get any decent offers, they have to pull the trigger. If the offers are weak -- R2 picks or so -- then the team can keep him around as a veteran leader and placeholder starter.
step three: don't let your breakout break out
As bad as the Pistons were, they had a few bright spots. Derrick Rose played better than expected. Luke Kennard looks on track to be a rising starter. And, most surprising of all, rando Christian Wood broke out as a legitimate NBA player. As a starter, Wood averaged 21.9 points and 9.4 rebounds per game. Wood is a springy, energetic player who also has an improving range (40% from three as a starter.)
You can read a longer deep dive about Christian Wood here, but to sum it up. A) His production looks legitimate, as he's been putting up numbers in virtually every stop as a pro. But B) His breakout may be poorly timed for the Pistons, because he's slated for free agency and about to get more expensive. He's a 24 year old whose best days should be ahead of him.
Based purely on his stats and scouting profile, you could talk yourself into a contract closing in on $15M a year for Wood. However, players with his "pedigree" (undrafted, limited sample size) rarely get that type of contract right away. To me, paying him somewhere in the range of 3 years, $36M would be a fair deal on both sides. There's too much uncertainty to justify much more of a commitment.
Of course, the Pistons should know better than any of us whether to trust Wood. Prior to this year, he had a mixed reputation in terms of his basketball IQ and work habits. If Coach Casey can sign off on Wood's character, then the team can feel more comfortable with him as a building block. If there are still red flags, perhaps it's better not to get too attached. The Pistons have more cap room than most teams this offseason, so the money shouldn't be a major deterrent to this decision. It should be entirely about Wood as a person and a player. If you believe that he's the real deal, then you keep him around.
step four: find your next field general
Christian Wood is a solid young player -- Luke Kennard is a solid young player -- but these aren't franchise players. They're secondary scorers and members of a supporting cast. To truly advance to the promised land, the Detroit Pistons are going to need to find transcendent talent, somehow and some way.
Unfortunately, the NBA Draft Lottery didn't help. The Pistons slipped down from the # 5 slot to the # 7 pick, making it unlikely that they'll land a future star.
On the bright side, the "supply and demand" may be on their side. This draft class happens to be heavy with point guards. There's LaMelo Ball (the # 1 prospect on ESPN), Killian Hayes (the # 1 prospect on The Ringer), and Tyrese Haliburton (one of the safer picks in the class.) If any of them slip down to # 7, the Pistons should strongly consider them. It usually takes a point guard a year or two to find their footing, but they can sit behind Derrick Rose for a year and then get unleashed in 2021. From a personality standpoint, Rose isn't going to mentor and educate like Aristotle, but he's capable of soaking up 25 minutes and allowing the next PG some time to develop.
If those top guards are not available (and they are unlikely to be), the Pistons may have to take some chances. One name I'm intrigued by is R.J. Hampton.
On face value, that'd be a "reach." Like LaMelo Ball, Hampton was a top high school prospect who went off to play in the Australian league. Unlike Ball, his NBA stock suffered as a result. While Ball put up numbers (17-8-7), Hampton put up weak stats -- 8.8 points, 2.4 assists on 41-30-68 shooting splits. As a result, Ball is now locked into top 3 pick status, and Hampton is seeing his name ranked around the 10-20 range in mock drafts.
However, I'd defend Hampton to some degree. We have to consider the context here. LaMelo Ball joined a struggling team called Illawarra. With Ball, the team went 3-9 (and finished 5-23.) When you're playing on a bad team like that, you can be the "star" and jack up as many shots as you want. In contrast, Hampton joined the New Zealand Breakers, a better team that relegated him to 20.6 minutes a night and a more limited role. His raw stats may not do him justice.
No doubt, Hampton has a long way to go, especially as a shooter. At the same time, he's a big lead guard (6'4" with a 6'7" wingspan) who flashes a lot of explosive scoring ability when he's getting downhill to the hoop. He's also a smart kid and allegedly a good worker. There's some legitimate "star" potential here, even if it's a narrow bull's eye. Hampton doesn't have the same athleticism as Russell Westbrook (hardly anyone does) but maybe there's a parallel here. After all, Weaver and OKC selected Westbrook after he'd been a little under the radar after playing off the ball at UCLA.
To be clear, I'm not urging Detroit to take R.J. Hampton at # 7. I'm not endorsing him as a future star like Westbrook. I don't know enough to do that; I don't sit around and splice up tape of New Zealand basketball. Still, the point is, the Pistons should be looking at upside players in that vein, knowing that they're going to need to hit a home run in the future.
step five: keep one hand on the detonator
The Detroit Pistons only have $68M committed on the books for next season, which means they could be players in free agency even if they re-sign Christian Wood.
If the team decided to go "all in" in a desperate attempt to compete, then you could maybe talk yourself into retaining Blake Griffin, handing out a big contract for Fred VanVleet, and shooting for the playoffs. That may work. But to what end...? The 7th seed? The 8th seed? Is that the end goal here?
More realistically, the team should (as discussed) try to get Blake Griffin back and fully healthy in order to showcase him for a trade. After that, they'd then dive into a full rebuild.
Presuming that's going to be the ultimate destination, then the Pistons may as well get a jump on that with free agency. With their remaining cap space, they can take on a toxic asset that comes attached with future picks, or take some fliers on young and promising players. Among my favorite gamblers of this offseason may include PG Kris Dunn (CHI), SG Denzel Valentine (CHI), SF Josh Jackson (MEM), and C Harry Giles (SAC.) None of them should draw huge money offers, making them reasonable purchases and lottery tickets.
If the Pistons end up blowing it up, then they should play their younger players over the course of the season. That should mean a lot of Sekou Doumbouya (entering Year 2) and even some Thon Maker (entering Year 42). If that means you only win 25-30 games, that's all right. It'll only help your odds for next year's lottery.
I've mentioned this before with some potential tankers (CLE, CHA, etc), but next year's draft could be quite strong. The group is headlined by point forward Cade Cunningham (heading to Oklahoma State) and scoring swingman Jalen Green (heading to the G-League), but there are about 4-5 other players who have the potential to join the # 1 pick conversation in time. The Detroit Pistons aren't likely to be bad enough to get a top 3 pick on their own, but the flattened lottery odds make it possible for the 7th or 8th worst team to leapfrog into that territory.
Of course, before Weaver and the Pistons officially press the detonator and go into full-blown rebuild/tank mode, they need to have a heart to heart with Coach Casey. He's 63 years old already, and entering the third year of a five-year deal. Is he going to embrace the rebuild? Is he going to be the scapegoat if they rack up losses? They need to get on the same page, out of fairness to Casey and out of fairness to this franchise. A reasonable solution would be to promise Casey that, if he does tank like a good soldier, he'll still be retained for next season. Rome wasn't built in a day, and neither will chrome.
previous offseason blueprints
ATL, CHA, CHI, CLE, DAL, IND, GS, LAC, MIL, MIN, NYK, POR, SA, SAC, UTA

I have a static site with a few lists of items, I'd like to implement a slot machine effect to each list of items - the user only sees a single item at a time, but when they press the button it produces a slot machine effect and selects a random item from the list.
I already have this working with a few arrays - when the user clicks it changes to a random element from the array. I want this to happen but with a nice slot machine effect - https://codepen.io/paulstone/pen/RRrQQB is the one I liked the best (but I'm open to others). The only issue is that it doesn't slow down before stopping (which is something I would like)
I want to make it that when the user loads the page, there is a 1.5s delay and then the slot machines start spinning (each one with a .25s delay after eachother and spinning for a total of 1.5s ) - the idea is that it starts/stops spinning not all at the same time - but there is a period where they're all spinning together.
There is a button which allows them to respin all 4 lists, this would perform the same function as the page load (just instantly, not with the normal delay of page load).
Additionally, they can click on any individual list which would force just that one list to respin at the same 1.5s duration - not the others (this already works with the random, just not the slot effect).
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Let me know if this is something you can do - I'm gonna do this based on a first-come-first-serve basis. Please $bid on my post and message me on discord though welz#1011 along with your username on reddit.
I can pay via PayPal, CashApp or TransferWise