{Skill} {Do You Have It?} {Where?}

Alright, I'm bored. So I'm starting another one of my threads where I ask you fine people another one of my random questions.

If you had 30 minutes to explain any topic, share any skill, or teach any trick, to all of us, what would you talk about or teach us? Feel free to share pictures too if you have examples.

All venues are welcome, so this can be a hobby, a passion project, your full-time business, a side hustle, or even something you just fell into and got really good at.

Let us know!

(I'll post my answer after a few people get a chance to go)

Savage Blade, Calamity, Black Halo, Judgment, Shark Bite, and Dragon Kick can all be spammed at the same time without skillchaining with each other.

Edit: Those are my go-to weaponskills anytime my friends and I are in "Savage Blade"-mode. There's enough random stuff in this game that is just Savage Blade spam but not every job has access to Naegling. Knowing these saves you the hassle of knowing which do and do not skillchain with it.

OK, that's neat, but can you show your work / provide context?

Those are my go-to weaponskills anytime my friends and I are in "Savage Blade"-mode. There's enough random stuff in this game that is just Savage Blade spam but not every job has access to Naegling. Knowing these saves you the hassle of knowing which do and do not skillchain with it.

Ok but do we have to say where?

That's actually really cool. I noticed that Polearm / Marksmanship is not included. Can't win them all, I guess.

On MNK if you want to avoid sc you can spam Raging Fists too.

Convert all the old Reisenjima WSD gear
Like the Valorous set to Phalanx now

Do people not understand the skill chain box?

Fragmentation fusion
Gravitation distortion

If you spam a bunch of frag weapon skills on top of each other without talking about the time limit they won't skillchain unless they have a lvl 1 that chains which is less likely.

Bro left Resolution and Tachi: Shoha(non Doji) off the list! Polearm can alternate Penta THrust and Camlann's Torment and fit right in.

Let's see... 30 minutes to teach... Something I'm good at...

I think I could explain the skillchain chart in about 30 minutes.

That skillchain third party tool is for lightweights.

Too many people rely on the calculator without knowing the basics
If I had 30mins I know what I would want someone to teach me
A Masterclass on the unwritten basics of life

Like
How to master teaching yourself and others

Far too many things out there that we take for granted that can be applied to everything

Understanding how to apply something everywhere makes you a true Renaissance man.

They say Mushashi after winning so many duels had a aha moment
Through the mastery of himself and basic skills achieved through battle
He was able to apply these to various art fields and other skill requiring fields.

Some say it's as simple as adjusting your perspective.
Just like mastering breaking down a problem can be applied everywhere.

This just raises more questions. Sounds like you have a very particular set of skills...

Now that we get 6 DM augments/day, this should be decent to accomplish. You shouldn't have to go buying Dark Matter. (I mean, you can get Phalanx+3 and still be at net Inventory+0 when compared to Skirmish/Yorium gear. "Phalanx+4" is obtainable, but +5 has been very rare for me).

Anyway, the purposes of this thread is share your skills and passion projects, but I'm so happy that ya'll love shitposting as much I do.

I have a trick for when your car is crazy hot during the summer. Before you get in a turn on the AC and run out or scream in the process, just simply get a spray bottle with distilled water and alcohol in it and spray into the car. It will cool the car very quickly. You can keep doing it after you got in and open all the window until the AC can get really cold.

Let's see...

When cooking with tougher meat, or a type of cut that dries out too much when heated(like pork chops), you can brine the meat to make it more flavorful, juicier, and less tough.

Brining per pound usually involves about 5~6 cups of water, along with a liberal amount of salt and sugar. A lot of sites say to use like 2 teaspons of salt or something like that, but you won't get a lot of flavor that way.

You also wanna heat the water before you add it on top of the salt and other flavor agents you're using, so that as much of it will sink into the solution as possible.

Then you wanna cool the brine down before you let the meat sit in it. How long you brine the cut for depends on several factors, but most of the time you don't need to brine for any longer than an hour.

After the brine's done, let the meat rest for a bit on a platter, and then you can cook it however you like. Pan fry, grill, or in the oven. It'll generally come out tender, flavorful, and moist. At least far more than it otherwise would.

You can brine meat for too long, and if you do, generally the out side of the meat will develop a kind of crust or scaling. This happens rather easily with beef, in my experience, and so some meats don't get along well with brining (at least low effort brining). The scaling doesn't detract too much from the flavor, you may even enjoy it, but I don't. It kind of runs counter to what you're attempting to do to the meat, anyway.

I have 23/25 for Phalanx
On Valorous set at the moment for SAM

If you can get a real RDM to drop a Phalanx II
It's night and day difference

Can even take it a step further and sub /RUN
Feels pretty tanky

Staying alive is a skill
Most DD don't have it

Won't show video of myself for obvious reasons, but the gymnastics style pushup aka perfect form pushup is a skill everyone should know Imo.

@Vire

To mitigate some of the problems with brining beef, try a dry brine instead. Works great with pretty much any type of meat, but is my go-to method to use with beef roasts like tri-tip, steaks - in particular a rib eye or New York Strip, and skin-on grilled or roast chicken.

Pat dry the protein as much as you can with paper towels, then using as much salt as you would normally use to season the meat (perhaps a bit more), thoroughly salt the meat on all sides (for extra credit, use diamond-crystal!), place on a drying rack and put it in the refrigerator uncovered for up to 24 hours. Remove the meat, pat dry again and season as normal (adding more salt really isn't necessary). Cook it as you normally would. Gives a great sear on steaks, and fully seasons the meat throughout instead of just on the surface. For the chicken, it will really help with that wonderful crispy grilled or baked skin. For the steaks/roasts, grill to a good rare internal temp (121F), then sear - tent with aluminum foil and let rest for half the time it took to cook, or about 10 minutes. Serve with rosemary garlic roasted potatoes and grilled asparagus.

It also helps tenderize tougher cuts of meat, too. The salt penetrates all the way through the cut and does some alchemical wizardry with the fibers without adding extra moisture. The draw-back is that it takes significantly longer than a wet-brine method. Always recommend this if you have the time to do it!

Could probably geek out all day talking shop about grilling, baking, roasting, etc. Learning to cook is one of the more fulfilling and enjoyable hobbies I've ever found. Can get quite expensive though... Do I NEED 5 different grills in the back yard? Answer: yes.

Regular stretching, and ergonomic posture for desk work.

I have a somewhat active job that involves a lot of walking around a factory, but some days I am just at my desk programming. over the years I have become pretty obsessed over my chair, monitor, desk and accessory placement.

I think knowing your ergonomics for desk work is important and not knowing them slowly eats away at your body in ways you just don't notice until you are all messed up and can't enjoy retirement.

Also eye strain got to keep those things work as best as they can, mine are already a model the I think I should seek a class action against the manufacturer for.

No, that's what skillchain calculators are for. The way elements combine in the skillchain heirarchy makes no sense.

its really easy with lvl2s and 3s
everyone should learn at least that much

savage blade(frag) into fusion makes light
at this point not to confuse everyone but if you hit it with something that also is light itself CDC, FUDO, VS you get double light

frag<>fusion
grav<>distortion


hitting a distortion with leaden(grav) makes darkness


the four are better represented on this old chart at the top
for beginners only look at the top right



for the sake of learning only pay attention to the outside 4 on this messy chart

EDIT: I just noticed this one is flipped, gross

Light is comprised of fire, wind, and thunder

Dark is comprised of earth, water, and ice

Level 2 skillchains follow the same pattern. Frag is thunder/wind. Fusion is light/fire, distortion is water/ice, and gravitation is earth/dark


So how the *** does it make sense that when I combine ruthless stroke --> Ruthless stroke == fusion and follow it up with evisceration I get gravitation, which I can then follow up with rudras storm to make darkness!! Ruthless stroke is liquifaction/impaction/frag. Pure light attributes. If I did it three times in a row I make light, but by throwing evisceration into the mix I take that light skillchain and flip its polarity entirely and make darkness? How is this logical at all.

Examples of these are everywhere, where you take elements that seem to make sense going in one direction and you flip it around completely. THAT'S why it makes no logical sense.

the primes use the lvl 1-1 to make 2 then 3

the evisceration part is easy
look at the first picture.

so you have fusion in the top right
and you have grav in the bottom left

evisceration is a grav ws doing it after a fusion makes grav
adding rudras Darkness / Distortion is adding distortion to grav

the darkness part allows it to double up

Fusion -> Gravitation = Gravitation

Evisceration has the gravitation property first, which from fusion makes gravitation (earth/dark). Follow that with darkness from Rudra's and you make darkness.

Fusion -> Gravitation -> Darkness = Darkness

ruthless stroke --> Ruthless stroke (fusion) -> Evisceration (Gravitation) -> Rudra's (darkness) = darkness

All the lvl2 properties can be exchanged whether directly or indirectly.

I think your point is valid. Unfortunately, the whole system is very unintuitive.

Few people can read the SC chart and infer correctly what WS is required to make a specific skill chain.
Even fewer people can do what you did, which is to establish that elemental properties of Weapon Skills don't offer hints as to what Property Skillchain is invoked.

I wish I could make it make sense. Dodik did a good job of explaining it directly from the chart ...but I don't think anyone can explain SC changes using fundamental elements (as it pertains to flipping of light and dark)

its not so much illogical as asymmetrical, which is just as bad imo.

Fusion -> Gravitation = Gravitation, from there the Distortion part of Rudra's SC properties escalates it to a regular/normal Darkness SC. If you'd then add a second Rudra's Storm the Darkness property of the WS would escalate it to a double darkness if I'm not mistaken.

Level 2, 3 and 4 properties are worth looking into how they chain.
However, I think most people don't know how the level 1 properties chain from the top of their head and the only ones worth looking into are imho the ones that escalate to lvl 2 properties like in the example above, most can probably learned if you check the prime weapon properties of the weapon classes you can equip because that's kind of their whole gimmick.

The rest of the lvl 1 chains are nice if they happen... but most people aren't going to bother setting up their skillchain around them, maybe with the exception of SCH (fkn nerds).

https://www.ffxicalculator.com

I use this thing
For all those skill chain shenanigans

2 3 4 are really easy and you should learn them
It enables more damage and more group synergy

Some jobs not just Sam really crank on the second, third fourth ws

Taking a lvl 2->3 is a massive jump doubling the light is worthwhile even with a bad ws.

I forget what the mnk used to use as the opener

Fudo> kasha = fusion + frag(shoha) = light + light(fudo) = double
Asuran> hf/rf/dk = fusion + frag(vs) = light + light(vs) = double

You can also substitute frag for savage blade as stated previously
With all the skillchain bonus gear and the cumulative the light off the fusion is massive

Ok, so do you guys wanna know why the Skillchain system is the way it is?

Well, initially in 2002 and for most of 2003, only level 1 and level 2 skillchains existed.

This means that the level 2 and level 3 interactions that most are familiar with and can easily remember were not present in the game at all.

Look at the level 1 Skillchain chart on BG Wiki. That's all that there was, and initially, skillchain damage worked in a vastly different way, and could not be resisted whatsoever.

Many weapon types would also only have a single type of skillchain element across any weaponskill. Dual type skillchain elements were somewhat rare, and only added in late in 2002. Most weaponskills also had entirely different Skillchain properties, and said properties used to interact differently.

Some prime examples being:
Penta Thrust used to have Tranfixion as well as Compression, and so could skillchain endlessly with itself.
Rampage used to have Detonation as well, so could skillchain endlessly with itself.

Priority system with SC properties was also not a thing initially, so a lot of dual property WSes used to make level 2 SCs that no longer do.

TL;DR - The system got changed dramatically when they introduced level 3 skillchaining, and the priority system for level 2 SCs along with it. Initially there was an intended system for every opposite element to be able to SC endlessly like Detonation/Scission and Comrpession/Transfixion still do. The idea around the system was the combination and duality of all elements. This changed particularly with level 1s to accomodate the higher tiers and to limit player progression, as original SCing was seen as too powerful and made early game too quick.