As the Fed begins their journey into a deflationary blizzard, they are beginning to break markets across the globe. As the World Reserve Currency, over 60% of all international trade is done in Dollars, and USDs are the largest Foreign Exchange (Forex) holdings by far for global central banks. Now all foreign currencies are crashing against the Dollar as the vicious feedback loops of Triffin’s Dilemma come home to roost. The Dollar Milkshake has begun.
The Fed, knowingly or unknowingly, has walked into this trap- and now they find themselves caught underneath the Sword of Damocles, with no way out…

Sword Of Damocles
--------------------------
“The famed “sword of Damocles” dates back to an ancient moral parable popularized by the Roman philosopher Cicero in his 45 B.C. book “Tusculan Disputations.” Cicero’s version of the tale centers on Dionysius II, a tyrannical king who once ruled over the Sicilian city of Syracuse during the fourth and fifth centuries B.C.
Though rich and powerful, Dionysius was supremely unhappy. His iron-fisted rule had made him many enemies, and he was tormented by fears of assassination—so much so that he slept in a bedchamber surrounded by a moat and only trusted his daughters to shave his beard with a razor.
As Cicero tells it, the king’s dissatisfaction came to a head one day after a court flatterer named Damocles showered him with compliments and remarked how blissful his life must be. “Since this life delights you,” an annoyed Dionysius replied, “do you wish to taste it yourself and make a trial of my good fortune?” When Damocles agreed, Dionysius seated him on a golden couch and ordered a host of servants wait on him. He was treated to succulent cuts of meat and lavished with scented perfumes and ointments.
Damocles couldn’t believe his luck, but just as he was starting to enjoy the life of a king, he noticed that Dionysius had also hung a razor-sharp sword from the ceiling. It was positioned over Damocles’ head, suspended only by a single strand of horsehair.
From then on, the courtier’s fear for his life made it impossible for him to savor the opulence of the feast or enjoy the servants. After casting several nervous glances at the blade dangling above him, he asked to be excused, saying he no longer wished to be so fortunate.”
—---------------
Damocles’ story is a cautionary tale of being careful of what you wish for- Those who strive for power often unknowingly create the very systems that lead to their own eventual downfall. The Sword is often used as a metaphor for a looming danger; a hidden trap that can obliterate those unaware of the great risk that hegemony brings.
Heavy lies the head which wears the crown.

There are several Swords of Damocles hanging over the world today, but the one least understood and least believed until now is Triffin’s Dilemma, which lays the bedrock for the Dollar Milkshake Theory. I’ve already written extensively about Triffin’s Dilemma around a year ago in Part 1.5 and Part 4.3 of my Dollar Endgame Series, but let’s recap again.
Here’s a great summary- read both sides of the dilemma:

Triffin's Dilemma Summarized

(Seriously, stop here and go back and read Part 1.5 and Part 4.3 Do it!)

Essentially, Triffin noted that there was a fundamental flaw in the system: by virtue of the fact that the United States is a World Reserve Currency holder, the global financial system has built in GLOBAL demand for Dollars. No other fiat currency has this.
How is this demand remedied? With supply of course! The United States thus is forced to run current account deficits - meaning it must send more dollars out into the world than it receives on a net basis. This has several implications, which again, I already outlined- but I will list in summary format below:

The United States has to be a net importer, ie it must run trade deficits, in order to supply the world with dollars. Remember, dollars and goods are opposite sides of the same equation, so a greater trade deficits means that more dollars are flowing out to the world.
(This will devastate US domestic manufacturing, causing political/social/economic issues at home.)
These dollars flow outwards into the global economy, and are picked up by institutions in a variety of ways.
First, foreign central banks will have to hold dollars as Foreign Exchange Reserves to defend their currency in case of attack on the Forex markets. This was demonstrated during the Asian Financial Crisis of 1997-98, when the Thai Baht, Malaysian Ringgit, and Philippine Peso (among other East Asian currencies) plunged against the Dollar. Their central banks attempted to defend the pegs but they failed.
Second, companies will need Dollars for trade- as the USD makes up over 60% of global trade volume, and has the deepest and most liquid forex market by far, even small firms that need to transact cross border trade will have to acquire USDs in order to operate. When South Africa and Chile trade, they don’t want to use Mexican Pesos or Korean Won- they want Dollars.
Foreign governments need dollars. There are several countries already who have adopted the Dollar as a replacement for their own currency- Ecuador and Zimbabwe being prime examples. There’s a full list here.
Third world governments that don’t fully adopt dollars as their own currencies will still use them to borrow. Argentina has 70% of it’s debt denominated in dollars and Indonesia has 30%, for example. Dollar-denominated debt will build up overseas.

The example I gave in Part 1.5 was that of Liberia, a small West African Nation looking to enter global trade. Needing to hold dollars as part of their exchange reserves, the Liberian Central Bank begins buying USDs on the open market. The process works in a similar fashion for large Liberian export companies.

Dollar Recycling

Essentially, they print their own currency to buy Dollars. Wanting to earn interest on this massive cash hoard when it isn’t being used, they buy Treasuries and other US debt securities to get a yield.
As their domestic economy grows, their need and dependence on the Dollar grows as well. Their Central Bank builds up larger and larger hoards of Treasuries and Dollars. The entire thesis is that during times of crisis, they can sell the Treasuries for USD, and use the USDs to buy back their own currency on the market- supporting its value and therefore defending the peg.
This buying pressure on USDs and Treasuries confers a massive benefit to the United States-

The Exorbitant Privilege

This buildup of excess dollars ends up circulating overseas in banks, trade brokers, central banks, governments and companies. These overseas dollars are called the Eurodollar system- a 2016 research paper estimated the size to be around $13.8 Trillion USD. This system is not under official Federal Reserve jurisdiction so it is difficult to get accurate numbers on its size.

https://preview.redd.it/92wcmhdb0uq91.png?width=691&format=png&auto=webp&s=20dbaf63f75ff6f2e255fff06e6f48c03170b11b

This means the Dollar is always artificially stronger than it should be- and during financial calamity, the dollar is a safe haven as there are guaranteed bidders.
All this dollar denominated debt paired with the global need for dollars in trade creates strong and persistent dollar demand. Demand that MUST be satisfied.
This creates systemic risk on a worldwide scale- an unforeseen Sword of Damocles that hangs above the global financial system. I’ve been trying to foreshadow this in my Dollar Endgame Series.
Triffin’s Dilemma is the basis for the Dollar Milkshake Theory posited by Brent Johnson.

The Dollar Milkshake

Milkshake of Liquidity
In 2021, Brent worked with RealVision to create a short summary of his thesis- the video can be found here. I should note that Brent has had this theory for years, dating back to 2018, when he first came on podcasts and interviews and laid out his theory (like this video, for example).
Here’s the summary below:
-----
“A giant milkshake of liquidity has been created by global central banks with the dollar as its key ingredient - but if the dollar moves higher this milkshake will be sucked into the US creating a vicious spiral that could quickly destabilize financial markets.
The US dollar is the bedrock of the world's financial system. It greases the wheels of global commerce and exchange- the availability of dollars, cost of dollars, and the level of the dollar itself each can have an outsized impact on economies and investment opportunities.
But more important than the absolute level or availability of dollars is the rate of change in the level of the dollar. If the level of the dollar moves too quickly and particularly if the level rises too fast then problems start popping up all over the place (foreign countries begin defaulting).
Today however many people are convinced that both the role of the Dollar is diminishing and the level of the dollar will only decline. People think that the US is printing so many dollars that the world will be awash with the greenback causing the value of the dollar to fall.
Now it's true that the US is printing a lot of dollars – but other countries are also printing their own currencies in similar amounts so in theory it should even out in terms of value.
But the hidden issue is the difference in demand. Remember the global financial system is built on the US dollar which means even if they don't want them everybody still needs them and if you need something you don't really have much choice. (See DXY Index):

DXY Index

Although many countries like China are trying to reduce their reliance on dollar transactions this will be a very slow transition. In the meantime the risks of a currency or sovereign debt crisis continue to rise.
But now countries like China and Japan need dollars to buy copper from Australia so the Chinese and the Japanese owe dollars and Australia is getting paid in dollars.
Europe and Asia currently doing very limited amount of non-dollar transactions for oil so they still need dollars to buy oil from saudi and again dollars get hoovered up on both sides
Asia and Europe need dollars to buy soybeans from Brazil. This pulls in yet more dollars - everybody needs dollars for trade invoices, central bank currency reserves and servicing massive cross-border dollar denominated debts of governments and corporations outside the USA.
And the dollar-denominated debt is key- if they don't service their debts or walk away from their dollar debts their funding costs rise putting great financial pressure on their domestic economies. Not only that, it can lead to a credit contraction and a rapid tightening of dollar supply.
The US is happy with the reliance on the greenback they own the settlement system which benefits the US banks who process all the dollars and act as gatekeepers to the Dollar system they police and control the access to the system which benefits the US military machine where defense spending is in excess of any other country so naturally the US benefits from the massive volumes of dollar usage.

https://preview.redd.it/yq1f1anq0uq91.png?width=1140&format=png&auto=webp&s=27447e2acec884848a5c70ab3651820e487fc0f3

Other countries have naturally been grumbling about being held hostage to the situation but the choices are limited. What it does mean is that dollars need to be constantly sucked out of the USA because other countries all over the world need them to do business and of course the more people there are who need and want those dollars the more is the pressure on the price of dollars to go up.
In fact, global demand is so high that the supply of dollars is just not enough to keep up, even with the US continually printing money. This is why we haven't seen consistently rising US inflation despite so many QE and stimulus programs since the global financial crisis in 2008.
But, the real risk comes when other economies start to slow down or when the US starts to grow relative to the other economies. If there is relatively less economic activity elsewhere in the world then there are fewer dollars in global circulation for others to use in their daily business and of course if there are fewer in circulation then the price goes up as people chase that dwindling source of dollars.
Which is terrible for countries that are slowing down because just when they are suffering economically they still need to pay for many goods in dollars and they still need to service their debts which of course are often in dollars too.

So the vortex begins or as we like to say the dollar milkshake- As the level of the dollar rises the rest of the world needs to print more and more of its own currency to then convert to dollars to pay for goods and to service its dollar debt this means the dollar just keeps on rising in response many countries will be forced to devalue their own currencies so of course the dollar rises again and this puts a huge strain on the global system.
(see the charts below:)
JPY/USD

GBP/USD

EUUSD

To make matters worse in this environment the US looks like an attractive safe haven so the US ends up sucking in the capital from the rest of the world-the dollar rises again. Pretty soon you have a full-scale sovereign bond and currency crisis.

https://preview.redd.it/72nlain01uq91.png?width=1141&format=png&auto=webp&s=cbaa411acc88acb3849949d84a36624d75d6cfc4

We're now into that final napalm run that sees the dollar and dollar assets accelerate even higher and this completely undermines global markets. Central banks try to prevent disorderly moves, but the global markets are bigger and the momentum unstoppable once it takes hold.
And that is the risk that very few people see coming but that everyone should have a hedge against - when the US sucks up the dollar milkshake, bad things are going to happen.
Worst of all there's no alternatives- what are you going to use-- Chinese Yuan? Japanese Yen? the Euro??
Now, like it or not we're stuck with a dollar underpinning the global financial system.”
—-------------
Why is it playing out now, in real time?? It all leads back to a tweet I made in a thread on September 16th.

Tweet Thread about the Yuan

The Fed, rushing to avoid a financial crisis in March 2020, printed trillions. This spurred inflation, which they then swore to fight. Thus they began hiking interest rates on March 16th, and began Quantitative Tightening this summer.
QE had stopped- No new dollars were flowing out into a system which has a constant demand for them. Worse yet, they were hiking completely blind-
Although the Fed is very far behind the curve, (meaning they are hiking far too late to really combat inflation)- other countries are even farther behind!
Japan has rates currently at 0.00- 0.25%, and the Eurozone is at 1.25%. These central banks have barely begun hiking, and some even swear to keep them at the zero-bound. By hiking domestic interest rates above foreign ones, the Fed is incentivizing what are called carry trades.
Since there is a spread between the Yen and the Dollar in terms of interest rates, it thus is profitable for traders to borrow in Yen (shorting it essentially) and buy Dollars, which can earn 2.25% interest. The spread would be around 2%.
DXY rises, and the Yen falls, in a vicious feedback loop.
Thus capital flows out of Japan, and into the US. The US sucks up the Dollar Milkshake, draining global liquidity. As I’ve stated before, this has seriously dangerous implications for the global financial system.
For those of you who don’t believe this could be foreseen, check out the ending paragraphs of Dollar Endgame Part 4.3 - “Economic Warfare and the End of Bretton Woods” published February 16, 2022:

Triffin's Dilemma is the Final Nail

What I’ve been attempting to do in my work is restate Triffins’ Dilemma, and by extension the Dollar Milkshake, in other terms- to come at the issue from different angles.
Currently the Fed is not printing money. Which is thus causing havoc in global trade (seen in the currency markets) because not enough dollars are flowing out to satisfy demand.
The Fed must therefore restart QE unless it wants to spur a collapse on a global scale. Remember, all these foreign countries NEED to buy, borrow and trade in a currency that THEY CANNOT PRINT!
We do not have enough time here to go in depth on the Yen, Yuan, Pound or the Euro- all these currencies have different macro factors and trade factors which affect their currencies to a large degree. But the largest factor by FAR is Triffin’s Dilemma + the Dollar Milkshake, and their desperate need for dollars. That is why basically every fiat currency is collapsing versus the Dollar.
The Fed, knowingly or not, is basically in charge of the global financial system. They may shout, “We raise rates in the US to fight inflation, global consequences be damned!!” - But that’s a hell of a lot more difficult to follow when large G7 countries are in the early stages of a full blown currency crisis.
The most serious implication is that the Fed is responsible for supplying dollars to everyone. When they raise rates, they trigger a margin call on the entire world. They need to bail them out by supplying them with fresh dollars to stabilize their currencies.
In other words, the Fed has to run the loosest and most accommodative monetary policy worldwide- they must keep rates as low as possible, and print as much as possible, in order to keep the global financial system running. If they don’t do that, sovereigns begin to blow up, like Japan did last week and like England did on Wednesday.
And if the world’s financial system implodes, they must bail out not only the United States, but virtually every global central bank. This is the Sword of Damocles. The money needed for this would be well in the dozens of trillions.
The Dollar Endgame Approaches…
—-------------------------------------------------------------

Q&A

(Many of you have been messaging me with questions, rebuttals or comments. I’ll do my best to answer some of the more poignant ones here.)

—-----
Q: I’ve been reading your work, you keep saying the dollar is going to fall in value, and be inflated away. Now you’re switching sides and joining the dollar bull faction. Seems like you don’t know what you’re talking about!
A: You’re mixing up my statements. When I discuss the dollar losing value, I am referring to it falling in ABSOLUTE value, against goods and services produced in the real economy. This is what is called inflation. I made this call in 2021, and so far, it has proven right as inflation has accelerated.
The dollar gaining strength ONLY applies to foreign currency exchange markets (Forex)- remember, DXY, JPYUSD, and other currency pairs are RELATIVE indicators of value. Therefore, both JPY and USD can be falling in real terms (inflation) but if one is falling faster, then that one will lose value relative to the other. Also, Forex markets are correlated with, but not an exact match, for inflation.
I attempted to foreshadow the entire dollar bull thesis in the conclusion of Part 1 of the Dollar Endgame, posted well over a year ago-

Unraveling of the Currency Markets

I did not give an estimate on when this would happen, or how long DXY would be whipsawed upwards, because I truly do not know.
I do know that eventually the Fed will likely open up swap lines, flooding the Eurodollar market with fresh greenbacks and easing the dollar short squeeze. Then selling pressure will resume on the dollar. They would only likely do this when things get truly calamitous- and we are on our way towards getting there.
The US bond market is currently in dire straits, which matches the prediction of spiking interest rates. The 2yr Treasury is at 4.1%, it was at 3.9% just a few days ago. Only a matter of time until the selloff gets worse.
—------
Q: Foreign Central banks can find a way out. They can just use their reserves to buy back their own currency.
Sure, they can try that. It’ll work for a while- but what happens once they run out of reserves, which basically always happens? I can’t think of a time in financial history that a country has been able to defend a currency peg against a sustained attack.

Global Forex Reserves

They’ll run out of bullets, like they always do, and basically the only option left will be to hike interest rates, to attract capital to flow back into their country. But how will they do that with global debt to GDP at 356%? If all these countries do that, they will cause a global depression on a scale never seen before.
Britain, for example, has a bit over $100B of reserves. That provides maybe a few months of cover in the Forex markets until they’re done.
Furthermore, you are ignoring another vicious feedback loop. When the foreign banks sell US Treasuries, this drives up yields in the US, which makes even more capital flow to the US! This weakens their currency even further.

FX Feedback Loop

To add insult to injury, this increases US Treasury borrowing costs, which means even if the Fed completely ignores the global economy imploding, the US will pay much more in interest. We will reach insolvency even faster than anyone believes.
The 2yr Treasury bond is above 4%- with $31T of debt, that means when we refinance we will pay $1.24 Trillion in interest alone. Who's going to buy that debt? The only entity with a balance sheet large enough to absorb that is the Fed. Restarting QE in 3...2…1…
—----
Q: I live in England. With the Pound collapsing, what can I do? What will happen from here? How will the governments respond?
England, and Europe in general, is in serious trouble. You guys are currently facing a severe energy crisis stemming from Russia cutting off Nord Stream 1 in early September and now with Nord Stream 2 offline due to a mysterious leak, energy supplies will be even more tight.
Not to mention, you have a pretty high debt to GDP at 95%. Britain is a net importer, and is still running government deficits of £15.8 billion (recorded in Q1 2022). Basically, you guys are the United States without your own large scale energy and defense sector, and without Empire status and a World Reserve Currency that you once had.
The Pound will almost certainly continue falling against the Dollar. The Bank of England panicked on Wednesday in reaction to a $100M margin call on British pension funds, and now has begun buying long dated (10yr) gilts, or government bonds.
They’re doing this as inflation is spiking there even worse than the US, and the nation faces a currency crisis as the Pound is nearing parity with the Dollar.

BOE announces bond-buying scheme (9/28/22)

I will not sugarcoat it, things will get rough. You need to hold cash, make sure your job, business, or investments are secure (ie you have cashflow) and hunker down. Eliminate any unnecessary purchases. If you can, buy USDs as they will likely continue to rise and will hold value better than your own currency.
If Parliament goes through with more tax cuts, that will only make the fiscal situation worse and result in more borrowing, and thus more money printing in the end.
—----
Q: What does this mean for Gamestop? For the domestic US economy?
Gamestop will continue to operate as I am sure they have been- investing in growth and expanding their Web3 platform.
Fiat is fundamentally broken. This much is clear- we need a new financial system not based on flawed 16th fractional banking principles or “trust me bro” financial intermediaries.
My hope is that they are at the forefront of a new financial system which does not require centralized authorities or custodians- one where you truly own your assets, and debasement is impossible.
I haven’t really written about GME extensively because it’s been covered so well by others, and I don’t feel I have that much to add.
As for the US economy, we are still in a deep recession, no matter what the politicians say- and it will get worse. But our economic troubles, at least in the short term (6 months) will not be as severe as the rest of the world due to the aforementioned Dollar Milkshake.
The debt crisis is still looming, midterms are approaching, and the government continues to deficit spend as if there’s no tomorrow.
As the global monetary system unravels, yields will spike, the deleveraging will get worse, and our dollar will get stronger. The fundamental factors continue to deteriorate.
I’ve covered the US enough so I'll leave it there.
—------
Q: Did you know about the Dollar Milkshake Theory before recently? What did you think of it?
Of course I knew about it, I’ve been following Brent Johnson since he appeared on RealVision and Macrovoices. He laid out the entire theory in 2018 in a long form interview here. I listened to it maybe a couple times, and at the time I thought he was right- I just didn’t know how right he was.
Brent and I have followed each other and been chatting a little on Twitter- his handle is SantiagoAuFund, I highly recommend you give him a follow.

Twitter Chat

I’ve never met him in person, but from what I can see, his predictions are more accurate than almost anyone else in finance. Again, all credit to him- he truly understands the global monetary system on a fundamental level.
I believed him when he said the dollar would rally- but the speed and strength of the rally has surprised me. I’ve heard him predict DXY could go to 150, mirroring the massive DXY squeeze post the 1970s stagflation. He could very easily be right- and the absolute chaos this would mean for global trade and finance are unfathomable.

History of DXY

—----------
Q: The Pound and Euro are falling just because of the energy crisis there. That's it!
Why is the Yen falling then? How about the Yuan? Those countries are not currently undergoing an energy crisis. Let’s review the year to date performance of most fiat currencies vs the dollar:
Japanese Yen: -20.31%
Chinese Yuan: -10.79%
South African Rand: -10.95%
English Pound: -18.18%
Euro: -14.01%
Swiss Franc: -6.89%
South Korean Won: -16.73%
Indian Rupee: -8.60%
Turkish Lira: -27.95%
There are only a handful of currencies positive against the dollar, the most notable being the Russian Ruble and the Brazilian Real- two countries which have massive commodity resources and are strong exporters. In an inflationary environment, hard assets do best, so this is no surprise.
—------
Q: What can the average person do to prepare? What are you doing?
Obligatory this is NOT financial advice
This is an extremely difficult question, as there are so many factors. You need to ask yourself, what is your financial situation like? How much disposable income do you have? What things could you cut back on? I can’t give you specific ideas without knowing your situation.
Personally, I am building up savings and cutting down on expenses. I’m getting ready for a severe recession/depression in the US and trying to find ways to increase my income, maybe a side hustle or switching jobs.
I am holding my GME and not selling- I still have some shares in Fidelity that I need to DRS (I know, sorry, I was procrastinating).
For the next few months, I believe there will be accelerating deflation as interest rates spike and the debt cycle begins to unwind. But like I’ve stated before, this will lead us towards a second Great Depression very rapidly, and to avoid the deflationary blizzard the Fed will restart QE on a scale never seen before.
QE Infinity. This will be the impetus for even worse inflation- 25%+ by this time next year.
It’s hard to prepare for this, and easy to feel hopeless. It’s important to know that we have been through monetary crises before, and society did not devolve into a zombie apocalypse. You are not alone, and we will get through this together.
It’s also important to note that we are holding the most lopsided investment opportunity of a generation. Any money you put in there can be grown by orders of magnitude.
We are at the end of the Central Bankers game- and although it will be painful, we will rid the world of them, I believe, and build a new financial system based on blockchains which will disintermediate the institutions. They have everything to lose.
—------
Q: I want to learn more, where can I do? What can I do to keep up to date with everything?
You can start by reading books, listening to podcasts, and checking the news to stay abreast of developments. I have a book list linked at the end of the Dollar Endgame posts.
I’ll be covering the central bank clown show on Twitter, you can follow me there if you like. I’ll also include links to some of my favorite macro people below:

I’m still finishing up the finale for Dollar Endgame- I should have it out soon. I’m also writing an addendum to the series which is purely Q&A to answer questions and concerns. Sorry for the wait.
—-------------------
Nothing on this Post constitutes investment advice, performance data or any recommendation that any security, portfolio of securities, investment product, transaction or investment strategy is suitable for any specific person.

Early forum culture was a real pressure cooker for hobby drama. Lots of big fishes in small ponds. This post provides an example from a very specific niche community - that being amateur adventure game developers in the 2000s. If you're in for some old-school web drama with amazingly low stakes... well, read on.
This story spans 2000-2002, and the primary sources are mostly lost. Much of this post is secondary sources and personal memories, and it is, to my knowledge, the only comprehensive writeup. If you want receipts, the main primary source remaining is an FAQ thread from ~1-2 years after the fact. Though I recommend not reading it right now, as it'll spoil the story.
This ended up being pretty long. I hope it makes at least some sense.

(1) Home computing & the information superhighway

This post is about some old-school web drama, so we need a little background here. I'll try to keep it brief. If you're not interested, just skip this section.
Amateur game development went through something of a golden age in the early 2000s. Dial-up Internet access and game creation kits like Game-Maker and Klik 'n' Play were available to otherwise normal people. Now, everyone with enough patience and some technical skill could now create their own games, and share them with like-minded strangers.
One of these early game creation kits was Adventure Game Studio, an IDE and game engine for DOS and Windows, first released in 1997 by British programmer Chris Jones. Early hits included Larry Vales: Traffic Division and the Rob Blanc series - the latter by none other than Ben "Yahtzee" Croshaw. We'll talk about him later.
The engine was free and had its own web forum, so by the turn of the millennium, a small but healthy development community had formed. There were yearly awards ceremonies and a monthly Game Jam, one of the first of its kind. Good stuff.

(2) Reality welcomes careful drivers

So, communal spirits were high in 2000. This lead to an interesting idea: What if, AGS forum user 'Gravity' proposed, we made an open-source world? A shared setting that anyone could contribute to? The setting, characters and artwork would all be placed in the public domain. Someone would make a game, then another person would make a sequel to that game, and so on, creating a shared storyline and populating the setting with characters.
Once the basic details were hammered out, this project become known as Reality-on-the-Norm (RoN for short). That's the city named "Reality," on a river called the "Norm." There's that famous British humor at work.
The first game was released in early 2001. This was Lunchtime of the Damned, by one Ben "Yahtzee" Croshaw. Again, more about him later. By the standards of its day, Lunchtime is a solid effort, establishing Reality as a vaguely modern town full of quirky characters. The protagonist is a snarky grave-robbing teenage necromancer called Davy Jones, who would become the "protagonist" of RoN more or less by default.
If you're interested in learning more, there's a talk from 2008 archived on YouTube, held by Dave Gilbert, which goes over some of the history of RoN. The community was hosted on abandon-ware website Home of the Underdogs for a while, and you can poke through the archives there as well if you want.
Anyway, Davy Jones appears in most early RoN games. He was an established character, a bit of a nerd, and high-quality sprites were available for him. This status as a "default protagonist" was cemented by The Soviet Union Strikes Back,, which is usually considered to be the first "good" RoN game. That is the real starting point of the series, as it fills in a lot of lore and establishes a lot of fan favourite characters. RoN came into its own, and a flood of games followed.
So, about Davy. As a snarky wannabe sorcerer, Davy is fun enough as an adventure game protagonist. However, by late 2000, people were quickly falling out of love with him. There were several reasons for this, partially tied to the character - and partially to his creator.

(3) The smallest amount of fame that's ever gone to anyone's head

That creator, as I mentioned, was one Benjamin Richard "Yahtzee" Croshaw. He's a writer, author, video game journalist, humorist, podcaster, video game developer and haver of a Wikipedia article. He's perhaps most famous for the Zero Punctuation review series, though this story takes place years earlier.
His first AGS game, Rob Blanc, was actually the first project created with the experimental Windows version of AGS. It was an overnight hit, making Yahtzee one of the AGS community's first rockstar developers. (He's briefly talked about this experience on the Ego Review.)
So, Yahtzee was famous! Sort of! A little bit. At least in the AGS community. Rob Blanc received two sequels in 2000, which people also liked. Yahtzee collected award nominations and developed a bit of an ego. The positive attention went to his head immediately. He became abrasive and arrogant, developed a superiority complex, and soon started going on everyone's nerves. By mid-2001, he had already burned through the goodwill his projects generated.
Lunchtime of the Damned, the first RoN game, was essentially his last attempt to play nice with the rest of the forum. Shortly after its release, he decided he had outgrown the AGS community, and adventure games as a whole, and made a big flashy show of retiring. He never created another RoN game and never came back to the AGS forums.
At this point, Davy Jones had also worn out his welcome. The community already didn't like how people were gravitating towards Davy as the default protagonist, using the same character game after game, and his association with Yahtzee did not help.
There were good reasons to push Davy into the background - as edgy teenage necromancers have a limited amount of storytelling potential - but the idea was also seen as a way to deflate Yahtzee's ego a little. He had put his mark on RoN's history, but people were tired of him, and he wasn't going to be part of its future.

(4) Davey Jones C'est Mort

So, a suggestion was floated by the local idea guys. What if Davy Jones were to be... removed from the setting? Violently, if possible? By late 2001, a community member by the name of Captain Mostly decided to make that idea a reality. Surely, he could do it justice - after all, he was already famous for his achievements in the field of surreal blackface comedy.
The result of that effort is Davey Jones C'est Mort, which is broken French for Davey Jones It's Dead. It's notable for being the first post-9/11 RoN game, which, honestly, checks out.
The game is still available on the web, walkthrough included, but I strongly recommend not playing it. The graphics are a black-and-white mess. Shrill MIDI sounds blare you from your speakers as Davy is insulted by a "voodoo bebe." As for the plot, here's the summary from the official community website:

In this surrealistic game, Davy wanders through his empty house, into the town square, and into the office building. Finding a toilet in the middle of an empty room, he is then r***d by a man in a cow suit. At least that is one interpretation of this enigmatic game.

I've censored the word. In the game, it's not censored. You see genitals. Davey Jones is fifteen years old.
The whole thing seems to have been written as a deliberate insult to Davy Jones as a character, whose name is, once again, misspelled in the title. It's not kind to Davy, or to RoN as a concept. Even if you don't mind the fact that a teenager is sexually violated and killed, the essence of improv is to go "yes, and" rather than "no, but" - and it's just impossible to do anything with Davey Jones C'est Mort.
So, the best solution is obviously to treat this whole thing as canon anyway.

(5) Wait, are we really going with this?

RoN, from the beginning, was designed to be a community-run project. There was no administration, nobody was in charge of anything. Anyone could make anything, and it would all be in canon, and nothing could ever be removed. DJCM was the first real test of that policy.

There should NEVER be censorship allowed a project such as RON. If anyone - and I do mean anyone - actually puts the time and effort into the making of an episode of RON, then it can never be overlooked as something that never took place. Cornjob's said it several times: "if it has to do with RON, it will be posted on the site."

By December 2001, the news had spread. I Spy 2 officially acknowledges Davy's death, as do the games released afterwards.
So, we've done it! We have canon! We don't really know how he died, because Captain Mostly is a magical rat that only speaks in offensive jokes, but we do know that we have a dead kid. That much is certain.
Eventually, one of the more prominent developers in the community decided to clean this situation up a little. The Universal Equalizer (January 2002) is a non-interactive cut-scene that confirms Davy's death once and for all. It's less crude, but no less cruel - in the game, God speaks to Davy, calling him a jerk and graphically exploding his head.
From the AGS thread:

Helm21: Captain Mostly did something wrong. And I fixed it.
goldmund: :) Gory. But I still think that having their protagonist sodomized is a better attempt to make people avoid the character in the series.

So, where do we go from here? As a community, we're finally free of Davy Jones. What should we do next?
Well, obviously, we should make a little something called Davy Jones is Back (February 2002), which resurrects him.

(6) All hell breaks lose

The RoN forums are long gone, and the archives are spotty, but you can still tell from the thread titles that people had no idea what to do with any of this.

Davy Dones is dead
New game in REMPLACEMENT for Davy Jones C'est Mort
davy jones- dead or alive?
I'm making a game staring the 'cow' from C. Mostly's 'game'
New plot after the davys death
Bringing back Davy Jones!
Evil Davy game
Davy Jones
Davy Jones, Alive/Dead Magic Boy
Davy Q.

You see, the same "no backsies" rule that allowed Captain Mostly to kill Davy also made it impossible to keep him dead. If Charles Kelly wanted to undo the death, he could just do that. Worse yet, Davy Jones is Back is actually a real game, not a semi-interactive shitpost like Davy Jones C'est Mort and The Universal Equalizer. If you wanted to remove it from the continuity, well, it would be difficult to make an argument that wouldn't also apply to the "Davy is dead" games.
This back-and-forth ended up pleasing neither the people who wanted Davy gone, nor the ones who hated DJCM. It also left the character in a weird continuity limbo, which, incidentally, did actually have the effect of removing him from the setting for a bit. Nobody really knew what was going on with him.
The second half of 2002 mostly free of Davy content. His next appearances weren't until The First Stitch (December 2002) and Purity of the Surf (January 2003), and even there he was just a side character.
After his revival, it took a year and a half for Davy to receive his next starring role, in Before the Legacy (September 2003). This was followed by Stuck at Home (July 2004), so we were back on track. Then he dies again in Yet Another Death of Davy Jones (February 2005)... which again doesn't stick, because he's inexplicably back alive in I'm Only Sleeping (December 2005).

(7) The dust settles

Cooler heads prevailed, eventually, but the Davy situation was an ongoing problem the RoN community. This is where that thread from 2003 comes back in - people were getting really sick of having to explain it every time.
The situation was eventually acknowledged in the official FAQ. Without other options, the community decided that they needed to have some rules, officially banning major character deaths.
There also was an effort to assemble something of a "canon" timeline, which ended up including Davy Jones is Back but not either of the games that actually killed him. The ambiguous continuity surrounding Davy was never resolved, with the paragraph being essentially a shrug in written form.

As things stand now, the general consensus seems to be that Davy died in some strange unexplained way and was resurrected in an equally obscure fashion. If you want Davy to be dead, do so. Just make sure the it takes place between the two death/ressurection games.

(8) Today

Davey Jones C'est Mort would go on to be nominated for, but not win, 2001's "P3N1S award." This was a booby prize awarded to "the most uninspiring game created with AGS." The medal was taken home by something called Andy Penis Big Adventure, which DJCM just couldn't measure up to.
Yahtzee never commented on the situation. Supposedly he gave permission to kill Davy, but I never found the primary source on that. His otherwise very complete Ego Review video series skips right over Lunchtime of the Damned. When he's asked to list his games, he goes Rob Blanc, Age of Evil, uhhhhhh, Trials of Odysseus Kent. The game has never been listed on his personal website, and the post where he disowns all of his old stuff doesn't mention it either. Even Wikipedia glosses over Lunchtime.
Captain Mostly stuck around the AGS community until 2004 or so. He never made another RoN game, but he's been sporadically active in the game development scene. According to Mobygames, he was a designer on SpongeBob's Atlantis SquarePantis (2007), which to my knowledge does not feature blackface comedy or crudely animated sodomy.
As for the RoN... it survived the Davey Jones incident, and continued for a few more years. When Home of the Underdogs went offline in 2009, it moved back in with its parents (the Adventure Game Studio forum.) The project peacefully died of natural causes in the late 2000s. AGS is still around, being a niche engine for a niche genre with a small but loyal audience, in 2022 as in 2012 as in 2002.
The last game in the RoN setting was released in 2019. Its protagonist is a grave-robbing treasure hunter named... David Jones.

Forex Daily Review: Technical Strategy for the IBEX35 Index

Fri Jun 17 00:33:19 2022

[World of Warcraft]: How Blizzard's new lizard broke a 10 year old loot system, started an in-game genocide, and sparked a player war in their first 48 hours of release.

“Unto you is charged the great task of keeping the purity of time. Know that there is only one true timeline, though there are those who would have it otherwise. You must protect it. Without the truth of time as it is meant to unfold, more will be lost than you can possibly imagine.”

-Nozdormu, Dragon Aspect of Time
On November 28, Dragonflight, the ninth expansion in the popular video game (and frequent Hobby Drama subject) World of Warcraft, released. Our story follows the calamitous ramifications that came from the overlooking of one line of code in the weeks before this expansion's launch. But in the words of Nozdormu there is only one true timeline, and the events which will eventually set this story into motion begin more than 10 years ago, on September 25, 2012.

Part 1: Out of the Mists

On September 25, 2012, Mists of Pandaria, the fourth World of Warcraft expansion, released. Players rushed to explore the newly-discovered island of Pandaria seeking riches, adventure, and of course, mounts.

What are mounts (and why should I care)?

For those who haven't played WoW or similar online games, players tend to focus heavily on making sure that their character looks cool. Whether it’s to stand out in groups and show off, or because players enjoy dressing up and decorating their avatars to fit the story they want to weave around them, character appearance and accessories are a central aspect of the game. Much like in real life, people in-game dress up to impress both others and themselves.
There are a lot of ways to do this, but one of the most common ones is collecting mounts (the vehicles that players use to run, swim, and fly around in the world). Mounts are large, flashy and, unlike armor and weapons, don’t become obsolete when a new expansion releases. Like other rewards in the game, mounts come in varying degrees of rarity, with the least attainable often being the most coveted, and some are incredibly rare. Some of the rarest mounts in the game are owned by less than 1% of the playerbase years after their introduction to the game, and ones that can be traded outside the game can go for absolutely obscene amounts of money.
Not all players farm mounts based on their prestige, mind you. Some simply go after mounts that they think look cool. At present there are over 900 mounts in the game, ranging from dragons to an undead flying horse named Invincible to a giant robot helicopter head, so rest assured that there’s something for everyone!
However, every once in awhile you get a mount that’s both obscenely rare and that the community thinks looks especially cool, and suddenly everyone wants it; either so that they can fly around on it, or so that they can flex on the noobs that can’t.

Back to Pandaria: Enter The Heavenly Onyx Cloud Serpent

It’s 2012. As players storm the shores of Pandaria, many charge towards a new world boss called The Sha of Anger, one of a pair of newly added and extremely difficult enemies that randomly spawn in two of the game’s outdoor zones. The Sha can be killed every 15 minutes, but can only be looted once per week, with the chance to award high-quality armor (among other things). Many players are hunting down the Sha to get said armor (their old gear having become obsolete with the new expansion), but many more are after a more elusive prize listed on the boss’s loot table: [The Reins of the Heavenly Onyx Cloud Serpent].
The Heavenly Onyx Cloud Serpent is coveted because of its visually striking design and bright colors. It both looks good and stands out in a crowd (literally glowing with bright white light), which means everyone wants it. But as more and more of the unwashed masses spill upon the continent of Pandaria to slay the Sha in an attempt to get their very own photonegative dragon, one thing becomes clear. It’s rare. Possibly more rare than any mount added to an enemy’s loot table before. Unlucky players who didn’t get the mount on their first try will have to simply wait until the weekly loot-lockout resets on Tuesday to try and kill him again, or bring their alts (additional characters on their account) to kill him for extra tries.
The weeks pass by. Players begin doing the new raids and out-gear the armor offered by the Sha of Anger, but he continues to be beaten to death nearly as soon as he spawns by a massive, rabid community of increasingly frustrated mount hunters. The more kills players rack up without seeing the mount, the more rare they realize it is, which makes getting it all the more prestigious and increases the desire to farm it further. Someone asks Blizzard to confirm the mount is actually in the game and there isn’t some hidden requirement to unlock it, which Blizzard does, insisting that it just has a low drop rate.
Weeks turn to months. Someone runs a database search and discovers that nobody in the game of 10 million players has the Heavenly Onyx Cloud Serpent yet. They take this information to a forum post that’s directed at Blizzard. The community becomes upset as they realize they’ve been farming a mount that may not actually be in the game yet. Blizzard realizes they made a mistake.

Oops, no dragons! - How Blizzard broke the Sha’s loot table (the first time)

So what happened? Well, the Sha of Anger’s loot table works as follows:

When a player kills the Sha of Anger for the first time each week, the game internally rolls a random number ranging from 1 to 100.
If the game rolls a 1 to 59, the player receives gold and nothing else happens.
If the game rolls a 60 to 100, the player is marked as receiving a piece of loot, at which point the game rolls a SECOND random number to determine what piece of gear the player is awarded from a weighted loot table of class-specific armor (so that a rogue doesn’t accidentally get paladin armor, which they can’t use). The Heavenly Onyx Cloud Serpent is on this loot table as an incredibly low drop.

Well, that’s how it’s supposed to work. In reality, Blizzard either never added the Heavenly Onyx Serpent to the loot table, or accidentally set the weighted chance of awarding it to 0. (They never clarified which they had done, only that they’d made a mistake and fixed it).
So we’re a few months into Mists of Pandaria and all is finally right with the world (of Warcraft). The Sha of Anger has begun dropping its mount as intended. Overjoyed (and irate) players flock to kill him with new found hope and optimism and soon discover a second, far more horrifying truth…
It’s still insanely rare.
The reason Blizzard took so long to realize the mount wasn’t dropping was because, even when correctly added to the loot table, it was so rare that it almost never dropped. The game doesn’t officially publish any sort of drop percentages for its loot, but estimations made by players put it somewhere between a 0.02% to a 0.01% drop rate. That means that on average, the Sha will drop one mount every 7,500 kills. One of, if not the, lowest drop rate of any mount in the game.
When it became clear just how rare this mount truly was, many players (such as myself) gave up on farming it. It just wasn’t worth the hours of camping and thousands of attempts it would take (spread out over multiple years or multiple max-level alts) to farm the Sha for such a tiny chance at getting the mount, no matter how cool it looked. Others made as many characters as they could and parked them at the spawn points to get as many kills as they could each week, racking up thousands of kills over hundreds (or thousands) of hours of farming.
And the world (of warcraft) spun on. The Heavenly Onyx Cloud Serpent remained one of the most prestigious mounts in the game due to its unique look, bugged introduction, and tiny drop chance. After ten years of farming it’s owned by less than 1% of the game’s playerbase, and when it occasionally appears on the Black Market Auction House (an in-game market where a single instance of a rare non-tradeable item is made available for purchase at auction with gold) it regularly goes for the game’s maximum gold cap of 9,999,999 gold (currently valued at 900 USD based on the WoW game-time token’s US regional price).

“You must decide which path you will take. Which story you will tell. An ancient enemy has returned. You will play a part in the events to come and you will have to make a difficult choice, as we did. My story is already written. But yours - and that of all Dracthyr - is only beginning to unfold.”

-Nozdormu, Dragon Aspect of Time

Part 2: The Unwitting Herald(s)

On September 11, 2022, nearly 10 years to the day from the first explorers setting foot onto the shores of Pandaria and beginning the long chain of events that are now so close to their culmination, a redditor by the name of u/Jibbles2020 will make a post that unknowingly heralds the impending chaos.
Jibbles is playing on the Dragonflight Beta, a test version of the new expansion that a small group of players are invited to try out before the official launch in order to test the functionality of new systems and gameplay mechanics. Importantly, items earned on the beta cannot be kept when the beta closes and are not transferred to your main account.
Today, Jibbles is trying out the new race/class combination added in the Dragonflight Beta, the Dracthyr Evoker. After completing the introduction questline Jibbles finds himself flying through Pandaria and notices that the Sha of Anger is up. “Why not?” he thinks to himself, landing and quickly dispatching the boss that he outlevels by five expansions.
The unthinkable happens to Jibbles.
He gets the mount.
What would be a cause of boisterous celebration at any other time leaves a bittersweet ache in Jibbles’ chest. The cruel whims of RNJesus have decided to award him a mount dropped every 1 in 7,500 kills on a test account he will lose when the expansion launches in a few weeks.
Jibbles takes this painful irony in good spirits and posts about his horrible luck on the WoW subreddit where, amazingly, another user, u/Bodehn, mentions that the same thing happened to her while testing her Dracthyr on the beta.
The community shares a laugh in solidarity with these two players, and the astronomical luck (both good and bad) it must have taken for both of them to get the Heavenly Onyx Cloud Serpent within a day of one another on a temporary server that will close within a month.
None among the posters or commenters consider that this could be anything more than a fluke. A freak accident that befell two unfortunate beta testers. Some commenters joke about how this is a prime example of why you should never kill a boss that drops a rare item on the beta. Others speculate that it would be funny if Blizzard made drop rates higher on the beta as a joke. The posts drift off the front page as posts inevitably do, replaced by news of new features and content and release dates in the ever-changing whirlwind of information and excitement that comes with an expansion on the horizon. Jibbles and Bodehn, and their astronomically bad luck, are all but forgotten.

“It is time! I will expend everything to bind every thread here, now, around the Dragon Soul. What comes to pass will NEVER be undone!”

-Nozdormu, Dragon Aspect of Time

Part 3: Tuesday, November 15, 2022

The timeline that follows is reconstructed based on the progression of information recorded in forum, reddit, discord, and WoWHead posts related to Dracthyr and The Sha of Anger over the course of the evening on Tuesday, November the 15th. Stories told from the perspective of a specific character are speculative retellings based on an accurate timeline of when and how community knowledge about the event developed, and are informed by my experience as a mount farmer of 12 years who has participated in the discovery of similar bugs/exploits over my time playing the game. All events not related to a specific hypothetical character are completely factual.

It’s 6:15pm, Eastern Standard Time.

After an extended maintenance lasting most of the day, phase 2 of the Dragonflight pre-patch has come online and is available to play on the live US/Oceanic servers (EU servers will not have access until tomorrow, as their maintenance is on Wednesday). With it comes the Dracthyr Evokers, available to players a few weeks ahead of the official expansion launch.
It takes about an hour to get a newly-created Dracthyr (who start at level 58) through the introductory questline and to the level cap of 60, at which point they are set loose to explore the world (of Warcraft) at their leisure.

It’s 7:15pm, Eastern Standard Time.

Dracthyr pour into the capital cities of Stormwind and Orgrimmar en masse. Most unlock the ability to fly and head to kill elemental lords that have been added for a limited-time pre-patch event which also opened today. Others head to the city training dummies to test out their new class abilities. Others still begin flying to old raids and dungeons to farm armor sets that they think will look good on their new lizards.
We do not know how the event, ten years in the making and mere minutes away from its grand culmination, began. We do not know who first saw the Sha spawning in Kun-Lai Summit and decided to pause for a moment to try their luck. Perhaps it was a player in this last group, flying to some old raid in search of a staff or a pair of pauldrons. Perhaps it was one of those still camping the Sha weekly, hoping desperately for the mount and seeing their new Dracthyr as just another weekly 0.01% chance at the prize that has eluded them for so long. Perhaps it was even Jibbles or Bodehn, hoping in vain to relive their moment of glory.
We do not know how the event that is now at long last upon us began.
But we know what followed.

It’s 7:20pm, Eastern Standard Time.

The Sha of Anger dies, as it has done every 15 minutes for the past 10 years.
The mount farmers, fewer tonight due to the multitudes that have taken a break to enjoy the pre-patch festivities, are given their standard gold and long-worthless pieces of armor.
But this first Dracthyr, who has killed the sha of anger for the first time, receives something different.
They have received the Heavenly Onyx Cloud Serpent.
Players take notice. It’s common to ride a new mount in celebration upon receiving it, and a character’s guild is automatically notified in the chat window when their guildmate receives an especially rare drop such as the Heavenly Onyx Cloud Serpent. At first the luck and humor of Blizzard’s new dragon race receiving this elusive dragon mount amuses those farming, offering the mix of curses and congratulations that so often follow a fellow player receiving a rare reward.

It’s 7:35pm, Eastern Standard Time.

The Sha of Anger dies, as it has done every 15 minutes for the past 10 years.
A second Dracthyr, either encouraged by his comrade’s luck or simply making a quick pit-stop to try their hand at rolling the dice of fate, is among the masses who have beaten it down. Around them stand the mount farmers, many of whom were present at the kill which occurred at 7:20pm and have since switched to another alt for another 0.01% chance.
This Dracthyr, too, has received the Heavenly Onyx Cloud Serpent.
When bugs, especially beneficial ones, are discovered in World of Warcraft, the process is often more akin to the breaking of a dam than the flipping of a switch. In a game with as many random numbers as WoW it can be hard to differentiate what should be attributed to luck from what may be the result of something more.
But this is odd.
Mount farmers and guildmates alike have seen a Dracthyr get a mount that should drop once every 7,500 kills twice within the past hour, and each must have been the character’s first-ever attempt.

It’s 7:50pm, Eastern Standard Time.

The Sha of Anger dies, as it has done every 15 minutes for the past 10 years.
Five Dracthyr stand around it this time, and while not every one receives a dragon, two do. Oddly, none receive armor.
Calculating and estimating drop rates is something that almost becomes second nature to long-time WoW players. Knowing how likely you are to get a mount, pet, or piece of armor allows you to more efficiently decide how best your time in the game should be spent in order to reap the maximum number of rewards possible, or be the most likely to receive the specific reward you want. Dedicated mount farmers are especially adept at calculating these rates, as knowing your odds of receiving a mount allows you to estimate the average amount of farming time required to get your coveted prize.
The most accurate way to determine an item’s drop rate is to review data submitted by other players about whether or not they received the item after killing the boss. If 500 players kill a raid boss and 5 get a mount, it is likely that the boss has around a 1% chance of dropping that mount (assuming all players had equal odds to receive the item, as is usually the case with rare drops such as mounts). As with any statistical estimation, the larger your sample size is the more accurate your estimation will be. But while a sample size of two Dracthyr is too small to accurately estimate anything beyond the fact that something has gone wrong with the Sha of Anger, a sample size of five begins to afford a very rough idea of odds.
It appears that Dracthyr have a 40% chance of receiving the Heavenly Onyx Cloud Serpent.

It’s 8:05pm, Eastern Standard Time.

The Sha of Anger dies, as it has done every 15 minutes for the past 10 years.
Twenty Dracthyr stand around it. Six ride glowing black and white dragons. Once again, none have received armor.
Only six riders indicates that perhaps the drop rate for Dracthyr isn’t quite 40%, but with a sample size this small variations are bound to occur.
One player, an avid mount farmer who has hunted the Sha for years and is intimately familiar with the way its loot table operates (due to the bug that occurred ten years ago) has just realized what happened.

Oops, all dragons! - How Blizzard broke the Sha’s loot table (the second time)

If you recall, the Sha of Anger’s loot table works as follows:

When a player kills the Sha of Anger for the first time each week, the game internally rolls a random number ranging from 1 to 100.
If the game rolls a 1 to 59, the player receives gold and nothing else happens.
If the game rolls a 60 to 100, the player is marked as receiving a piece of loot, at which point the game rolls a SECOND random number to determine what piece of gear the player is awarded from a weighted loot table of class-specific armor (so that a rogue doesn’t accidentally get paladin armor, which they can’t use). The Heavenly Onyx Cloud Serpent is on this loot table as an incredibly low drop.

Note that each class has their own loot table in order to guarantee that each is able to use any armor awarded to them.
What then, hypothetically, might happen if a class simply did not have a loot table?

When that player kills the Sha of Anger for the first time each week, the game would internally roll a random number ranging from 1 to 100.
If the game were to roll a 1 to 59, the player would receive gold as normal and nothing else would happen.
But if the game rolled a 60 to a 100 and that player were marked as receiving a piece of loot, but the player in question did not have a weighted loot table of class-specific armor from which the game could choose a reward, then, hypothetically, the game would be forced to award the only piece of loot automatically added to each class's table. The Heavenly Onyx Cloud Serpent.

It’s 9:35pm, Eastern Standard Time.

The Sha of Anger dies, as it has done much more quickly every 15 minutes for the past two hours.
A cloud of fourty Dracthyr riding fourty black and glowing white dragons rises from the corpse.
Another sixty Dracthyr sit down and begin a 20 second logout animation. Most of these Dracthyr have never sat before in their brief 65 minutes of existence. Many will never stand again.
News of the glitch has begun to spread like wildfire on private forums as players attempt to tell their friends of this unique opportunity to get one of the rarest mounts in the game. Most are careful to not announce the discovery too loudly or too publicly, knowing they likely have mere hours before Blizzard notices their mistake and rapidly corrects it, and the more openly they discuss what they’ve found, the sooner it is likely to be fixed.
The clock is ticking. Game breaking exploits like these tend to be fixed in hours, not days, and all know it will not last to the next loot reset occuring on November the 22nd, almost seven days away. A 40% chance is far higher than the typical 0.01%, but it’s not a guarantee, and while players can farm a coin that allows them to reroll for a second drop to improve their odds, many still find themselves among the unlucky few that do not walk away with a mount. These players know that if they want to benefit from this oversight, they need to do it now. But due to the high level that a Dracthyr starts at, the game prevents players from making more than one on any specific realm.
Unless of course.
You simply deleted them.
Hours after their painstaking creation and minutes after first stepping foot on the foreign soil of Pandaria, many of the Dracthyr unlucky enough to have not secured a mount for their player log out and are unceremoniously destroyed. Their deaths make way for the creation of new Dracthyr with, most importantly, new loot lockouts. No such time or consideration is taken in the creation of this second wave, a randomizer allows players to create their draconic cattle seconds faster, and those seconds could be the difference between making it to the Sha before Blizzard realizes and fixes their disastrous mistake. Where a few hours ago players leisurely explored the new introductory questline, taking in the sights and scenery so lovingly crafted by the developers, now a garish wave of blues and purples and whites and golds races through it with one unifying thought in their minds.
Escape.

It’s 10:20pm, Eastern Standard Time.

The Sha of Anger dies, unceremoniously dispatched by waves of fire and a flurry of hundreds of flashing chromatic draconic fists within moments of its triumphant return. Many that felled the monstrosity are themselves dispatched mere seconds later in the midst of the resulting vortex of black and glowing white, having utterly failed in the singular purpose for which they were created. From the ashes of their destruction yet another generation of garish lizards rise and begin the 45 minute sprint to their own demise.

Wednesday, November 16, 2022

It’s 1:01am, Eastern Standard Time

The primary news aggregation site for World of Warcraft, WoWHead, has posted an article notifying the playerbase that a loot issue has been discovered with the Sha of Anger that is providing Dracthyr a higher than normal chance to receive the Heavenly Onyx Cloud Serpent.
Commenters report that Blizzard fixes the issue within minutes of this article being posted.

It’s 1:20am, Eastern Standard Time.

Thousands of brightly colored Dracthyr who have just finished their most recent mad dash through the introductory questline are joined by thousands more that have just read the new WoWHead article. They kill the Sha of anger almost before he can finish speaking.
Each receives 38 gold.
The window of opportunity has closed.

“Know that even as things appear to unravel, they do so with greater purpose.”

-Nozdormu, Dragon Aspect of Time

Part 4: The Day the World (of Warcraft) Stood Still

It’s November 16, 2022, 9:00am, Eastern Standard Time

Players across the United States and Oceanic realms are waking up to the news, which is now being posted and discussed on all major sources of World of Warcraft information and discussion, that there was a window of time yesterday where one of the rarest, most prestigious mounts in the game was obtainable in a coin flip. And most of them missed it..
Fortunately, the World of Warcraft community is renowned in the gaming sphere for their capacity for level headed discussion and mature presentation of-I’m just kidding they lost their fucking minds.

“I just quit the game.”

“Another joke, after some people had to do over 10k attempts for them.”

“Yeah, glad I didnt purchase DF yet, played the beta.. Im done if they dont remove these mounts. ”

“This is stupid unfair.”

“Welp.So someone has like 2k attempts or more since mop dropped,But some guy just do this and gets nalak,sha and galleon mount. Truly a classic move by blizzard.”

“They need to remove the mounts people got as Dracthyr. This is ridiculous. I farmed the Sha of Anger for years on dozens of toons to get it, around 8500 attempts. People shouldn't be able to log on and get it in one try because of a bug. Don't get me wrong, I'd do it too if I were them. But Blizzard needs to do right by a major community in their game. I'm really frustrated right now. It's shitty that people are being awful about people being upset about this. Y'all didn't play by the same rules. Why insult how I play a game when you want the same reward for doing nothing?”

“it's absolutely asinine that people think that mounts gained through a VERY OBVIOUS EXPLOIT should not be removed - what's even more crazy are the people saying "i didn't get to the exploit in time, so i think you should give everyone the mount for free to make it fair". the mounts should be removed. if you want it, go farm it or buy it like everyone else did. i really hope blizzard does right by the people that put actual effort into getting these mounts over the span of multiple years. this is just sad and gross.”

In addition to frustrated US and OCE players who missed this bug, EU players, who had never even had the opportunity to attempt it because the error was fixed before their version of the pre-patch went live on Wednesday, weigh in.

“Already fixed, big sad for EU & the people who missed it”

“25 kills a week, for years. Just for US to get it via a bug that gets hotfixed before EU even comes up. Those mounts had better be removed. Or compensate everyone else. This is insulting.”

There are, of course, the occasional revelers…

“YEESSSS After so many years I finally got the mount due to this bug.”

“finally got the mount after 30 attempts glad I tried this before it blew up”

Who are usually met with even more calls to have the mount stripped from them.

“They better remove the mounts.”

“This is not fair. Either let it go for a day so others can have a chance or remove it. Already at 1.5k kills and tired of doing it :(”

“Exploited mounts should be removed, because as it stands right now it's both spit in the face of those who spent thousands of attempts to get it and those who would still try to get it after the exploit. What is the point of trying to get it now, as even if you get super lucky and manage to obtain it now, it would be meaningless as people would just assume you got it through exploit by default.”

Some amongst the playerbase see bugs like this (and their subsequent exploitation) as just another part of the game, especially on patch days, and are happy to see their fellow players get an opportunity to secure such a rare reward they otherwise wouldn’t have gotten.

“I hope people get to keep them.”
“Honestly they should leave it. The 15 min wait simulator is stupid and puts pressure on people to just sit around 15 min at a time on an army of alts every week.”

“good job to all the people that got the mounts. To the rest of the miserable whiners...... Get a life! Stop bein so miserable! ”

A few people want Blizzard to go the other direction and give everyone the Heavenly Onyx Cloud Serpent.

“The only way for Blizz to make this right would be to give us all the mounts as well”

“They should just give the mount to everyone or at least increase the drop chance to 1%”

Calls to have the Heavenly Onyx Cloud Serpent be raised to a 1% chance (the normal drop chance for rare mounts) have been common for years, and with the player base debating how best to address this issue, many suggest it as a solution that would allow lucky Dracthyr to keep their mounts, but give other players a better chance to get a dragon of their own going forward.

”Yeah, this is a good chance to fix it to be a 1% drop chance. It will still be rare but it wont be absurd”

“...Please blizz either increase the drop rate and/or make it farmable infinitely on 1 character…!”

“No mount/pet should've been lower than a 1% drop chance, period. Introducing 0.01% drop chance collectibles was a mistake.”

However when bugs like this one have popped up in the past Blizzard has generally displayed a policy of quietly fixing them and not addressing the issue further, either with a public response or a rollback of the awarded items. Some players resign themselves to the belief that Blizzard has done all they will do on the matter.

“This is the perfect time to fix all of these low drop chance mounts to something like 1/100. All world boss mounts & Love rocket should be standardized to either 1/100 or 1/200 like every other mount drop in the game.”

“I agree, but they won't do it. Remember when the fishing mount in BFA had a high drop chance at the beginning of the expansion? Ya. I missed out on that bug also.”

And this guy, who has no idea what’s going on and really just wants the undead flying horse.

“Any chance this works for Invincible?”

(It’ doesn’t)

It’s November 16, 2022, 10:00pm, Eastern Standard Time

After a day of anger, bargaining, and depression (which is honestly hilarious when you remember this is about dressing up virtual paper dolls) the WoW community is moving towards a resigned acceptance that Blizzard will stay silent. The Dracthyr that were lucky enough to kill the Sha in time will keep their mounts, the drop rate will stay as abysmally-low as it’s always been, and the world (of Warcraft) will spin on. For many, the prepatch experience has been soured slightly by the feeling that they’ve just missed their chance to take advantage of this once in a lifetime opportunity.
Then.
For the second time in as many days.
The unexpected happens.
Blizzard releases a list of hotfixes (small adjustments or bug fixes made to the game outside of a major patch) that went live a few minutes ago.
Buried among them, with no other mention of the chaos that has occurred over the last 24 hours, is one sentence:

“The drop chances for Son of Galleon's Saddle, Reins of the Heavenly Onyx Cloud Serpent, Reins of the Cobalt Primordial Direhorn, Reins of the Thundering Cobalt Cloud Serpent, and Solar Spirehawk have been greatly increased.”

It is not clear what greatly increased means.
It doesn’t matter.

It’s 10:15pm, Eastern Standard Time.

The Sha of Anger dies, as it has done every 15 minutes for the past 10 years.
Two hundred players of all classes (although there are probably a few more Dracthyr, since it never hurts to hope a little) stand around its body. Each waits for the second it takes for the game to assign loot with bated breath.
Two players receive the Heavenly Onyx Cloud Serpent.
The drop rate is ~1%.
After ten years spanning six expansions, the dream of the adventurers that first set foot on the shores of Pandaria so long ago are finally realized.
The Heavenly Onyx Cloud Serpent is farmable.

“Compared to all else that has happened, it is a small change to the timeline, and one of which I approve.”

-Nozdormu, Dragon Aspect of Time

Epilogue

So what of your humble narrator?
Well, dear reader, it’s not a HobbyDrama post without a little personal investment on the part of the author. For you see I was one of those players that stormed the shores of Pandaria more than ten years ago in hope of securing a Heavenly Onyx Cloud Serpent of my own.
When the community finally determined just how rare the mount truly was, I gave up on farming it. Instead, like Jibbles or Bodehn or that first Dracthyr, I limited my attempts to the occasional pitstop on my travels. I racked up a few hundred kills between my alts this way over the past 10 years, but like a person buying a Powerball ticket when the pot gets large enough, I had never seen these kills as anything other than a fun shot at a mount I never actually expected to get.
I was among those who suggested blizzard raise the rates to 1% over the years, as I don’t think any reward in a game like WoW should be so rare as to make it unfarmable. But much like with my occasional Sha kill, I never expected these recommendations to bear any fruit.
I was not, sadly, among the garish waves of sacrificial drakes that felled the Sha on that fateful evening of November the 15th. I’d played for about an hour when the patch went live and leveled my Dracthyr through the starting area, but as those second and third Dracthyr were first discovering that something had gone wrong, I was logging off for the evening.
When I woke up the next morning to news that I’d missed a coin toss for a mount I’d wanted for the past decade. I was bummed that I’d missed my chance, but happy for the players that had been luckier than I had. Glitches like these (and the stories that come with them) are part of what make patches fun, and at the end of the day we’re all just trying to make our virtual little paper dolls look as cool as possible. I expected Blizzard would ignore this glitch now that it was fixed. “Exploit early and often.” is a saying in the WoW community for a reason, after all.
I was pleasantly surprised when I saw the news that Blizzard had raised the drop rates, even if we didn’t know what they were yet. Like any good researcher I knew the only way to find out our collective odds was to contribute by adding yet another player to the kill data that is so critical to have, so I logged onto my character, flew to Kun-Lai Summit, and waited.

Wednesday, November 16, 2022

It’s 10:15pm, Eastern Standard Time.

The Sha of Anger dies, as it has done every 15 minutes for the past 10 years.
I stand among two hundred players of all classes, waiting for the second it takes for the game to assign loot with bated breath.
The loot window continues its animation for a half second longer than usual, telling me I’ve been awarded a piece of loot and the game is now rolling a second die to determine what I’ll receive from my class-specific table.
The window flashes to display the piece of loot that’s been selected for me.

I have received Heavenly Onyx Cloud Serpent.

A Malaysian digital nomad guide to Kuala Lumpur (2022)

"Come come, gor gor show you Kolumpo"

This is a highly opinionated piece, coming from a digital nomad born and raised in KL. I have spent a few months travelling through Europe and Latin Americas, and I believe these are the key information you might want to know based on my experiences.

Is Kuala Lumpur for you?

Comparing against other nomad hot spots such as Thailand and Bali.
Pros:

Malaysians in general speak far better English than our neighbours except Singapore and Philippines.
Extremely wide variety of foods compared to other ASEANs, to a point we are often compared to New York City in terms of cultural or culinary diversity.
Malaysia is one of the safest countries you can visit. We are the 18th on Global Peace Index 2021. You are very unlikely to encounter violent crime here.
Luxury condos with awesome view and infinity pools go very cheaply on Airbnb and Propertyguru.

Cons:

Malaysia is considerably more conservative. You are expected to dress modestly most of the time except in the nightlife areas. Public displays of affection like kissing lands you straight in jail.
High taxes on alcohols and tobaccos. Malaysians tend to buy hard liquors upon arrival at the airport and pre-game with that before hitting night clubs.

If you are a foodie and don’t party a lot, you may enjoy KL more than in Thailand, Bali, and other neighbouring countries. You get to live in a developed cosmopolitan city at the same price.
BUT if you wish to party very wildly or enjoy sin entertainments at a low cost, Malaysia is not for you.

Neighbourhoods to stay in

If you have kids and would like them to attend international schools, you should narrow down your choices to just Mont Kiara and Desa Parkcity.
If you like the convenience of transit oriented developments that usually come with huge shopping malls and train stations, consider:

MRT Cochrane — Sunway Velocity mall, IKEA, MyTown all linked to the MRT station. 2 stops from downtown. Condos include: V Residence, UNA Serviced Apt.
KL Eco City at LRT Abdullah Hukum — Connected to Mid Valley Megamall, has a WeWork, close to KL Sentral. Condos incl: Viia Residences, Vogue Suites.
MRT Taman Mutiara — Ekocheras Residences, connected to 2 malls. A short drive away to Taman Connaught, Pandan Indah etc, where you can find plenty of Malaysian food choices. Perfect for those who want to stay close to downtown but not in it.
MRT Surian — Tropicana Garden has some really luxurious and expensive condos in front of a golf course. A bit further away from downtown KL but there are plenty of things to do and eat in Petaling Jaya. Residents are almost all local and tend to speak English.

Where the KL expats usually stay:

Mont Kiara. The go-to expat neighbourhood of KL, plenty of good korean and japanese restaurants, with upscale bars. The best condos are along Jalan Kiara.
Uptown Damansara & TTDI. Surrounded by some of the most famous eateries, high-end bars, and big tech offices in Petaling Jaya.
KL City Centre & Bukit Bintang. Downsides are constant traffic congestions, lack of good local food choices, and is overall rather sterile. There is a reason why the asking rents near KLCC are not much higher than other neighbourhoods above. Good condos include: Star Residences, Marc Residences, One KL, etc.
Bangsar & Damansara Heights. Also dwelled by wealthy and powerful Malaysians, former prime ministers, politicians etc.

I personally prefer Sunway Velocity and Ekocheras because of their proximities to a plethora of good local foods within walking distances. They are only 2 and 6 stops away from Bt Bintang along the rather punctual MRT anyway.

Speaking of KL Condos

These days, most of the new condos come fully equipped with gyms, fiber internet, and infinity pools facing the city skyline.
Now when you are doing your searches on airbnb, how do you know if the condo is any good?

Search “iherng condo_name” on YouTube. iherng is a youtuber that works for an interior design firm and he reviews plenty of the new condos in Malaysia.
Find the condo on Google Maps and read the reviews, don’t forget to check the commute time to your places of interest, proximity to transit stations.
Search “site:forum.lowyat.net condo_name” to see what owners talk about it.

SIM Cards

I highly recommend Yoodo, as of 2022Q4, you can buy 20GB for RM 20 — this is an unbeatable deal. Yoodo also runs on Celcom infrastructure, which is almost on par as Maxis, the best telco network in the country.
Download Yoodo app, get verified (takes 2 days), install their eSIM over the email, and buy the data + talktime before you arrive.

Cash

ATMs aren’t always the cheapest ways to get money here due to hidden spreads, consider Western Union too. Regardless of what your bank says, there is no free lunch on Earth, you may be getting unfavourable spreads when you withdraw cash abroad.
The cheapest way to get Malaysia Ringgit cash is by using the money changers at Midvalley Megamall basement.
The Midvalley money changers often charge a smaller spread than what even Transferwise card offers. You can just bring in a fat stack of your home currency be it USD/EUGBP/JPY and sell them here. I know this before I spent some time visiting them and calculating sell/buy spreads when I changed monies for my trip early this year.
The most famous changer is SMZ at The Gardens basement, the next best options are the 3 changers beside Mark & Spencer at Megamall side across the basement.
Malaysia has high adoption of QR payment. Once you got a local phone number, you can open a Grab account and use GrabPay to make DuitNow QR payments to merchants.

Foods

This section can be endlessly long, so I will just explain the metagame instead of showing you any places.

If you know any Malaysian friends, just ask them for recommendations, follow your friends’ anecdotal experiences and personal opinions before following the bloggers or “best of category” recommendations. From my experience, the “best of category” usually means the foods prepared differently but not are not something the locals eat daily.
1. Hot take: Village Park at Uptown Damansara is merely a better Singapore nasi lemak — with fried chicken and dry rice. It’s a shop owned by chinese and the nasi lemaks served there deviate far from how the malays do it — usually with wet rendang chicken and wetter rice. The real daily nasi lemaks are those sold by roadside stalls, you can find them around office areas outside of Bukit Bintang MRT station exits at 7-9AM.
Be willing to Grab out of the downtown. Malaysians don’t really live in the Golden Triangle and hence there aren’t a lot of authentic Malaysian foods to eat downtown. So be willing to go to neighbouring towns in Ampang, Cheras, Petaling Jaya etc to find good foods.
Look out for weekly night markets (pasar malam) in the neighbourhoods, you can sample lots of lots of foods there. For example:
1. Taman Connaught pasar malam every Wednesday
2. SS2 Chow Yang pasar malam every Thursday
3. Pandan Indah pasar malam every Friday

This is my list for newcomers, and if you need more, I highly recommend Food Ranger channel. He has stayed in Malaysia for about 2 years during the pandemic.

Transportations

Ride hailing: If you can’t get any 4-seaters at late night, instead of calling 4-seater plus/premium, just call a 6-seaters. Grab pretty much monopolised Malaysia market, if you can’t call a Grab in some places, you almost certainly can’t do it with AirAsia Ride and other smaller players.
Street hailing: Don’t even think about hailing a taxi off the street, KL taxis are daylight robbers and the raison d’etre of Grab.
As of 2022Q4, Grab is so cheap and so convenient it will likely be your primary mode of transport. But you may still want to live close to a MRT/LRT station just for you to have 2nd option to beat the jam in the city.
The good train lines: All LRT & MRT lines like Kelana Jaya, Putrajaya, Kajang, Ampang, Putra Height lines. Their frequency is high and cabins are comfortable.
The bad train lines: KL Monorail, all KTM commuter lines. Their frequency is too low to be useful.

Nightlife

In Kuala Lumpur, we have several main nightlife clusters:

Changkat Bukit Bintang — The original, most popular nightlife area full of small clubs and bars. However Malaysians don’t usually come here.
TREC KL — The new purpose-made complex for nightlife. This place has almost no beggars because its not possible to walk here from anywhere, you have to Grab/drive here. Goers are good mix of locals and foreigners.
Jalan Petaling, especially Kwai Chai Hong and Jalan Sultan parallel to it. Famous bars include G-String and The Deceased. Goers are mostly Malaysians.
Jalan Telawi at Bangsar.
Desa Sri Hartamas near Mont Kiara.

Apart from clusters, some of the most popular dance clubs include:

Spark at TREC (formerly Zouk KL).
Kyo at Mandarin Oriental KLCC.
Zouk at Genting Highlands.

General tips specific to Malaysia:

If you want to get wasted cheaply, buy the duty free liquors at the airport upon arrival, pre-game with them before hitting the clubs. I don’t need to remind you of our hefty alcohol taxes.
Kuala Lumpur and Selangor have different laws. For instance, you cannot buy alcohols in the convenience stores after certain hours. If you are not OK with this, consider living in Selangor surrounding KL instead, like in the city of Petaling Jaya.
There are several duty free islands in Malaysia: Langkawi, Labuan, Pangkor, Tioman. It’s possible to smuggle cheap booze from Langkawi and Labuan by flight, they don’t check your bag in domestic terminals.

Halal Nightlife

For most Malaysians, alcohols are either prohibited or prohibitively expensive. So many of us just tend to chill at mamak restaurants.
Mamak restaurants are usually 24 hours joints run by Indian Muslims, selling mainly indian and malay foods, with non-alcoholic drinks and TV playing live football matches.
They are absolutely the best places to go after you leave the clubs, order a big plate of Maggi Goreng and a cup of Teh Tarik to sober up!

Dating

Bars — Drinking out in Malaysia is prohibitively expensive for most people, so Malaysian girls don’t usually go to bars to get picked up by men. Most often they go there for special occasions.
Dating Apps — Malaysian girls use dating apps extensively, the English-speaking ones tend to use Coffee Meet Bagel and Bumble the most. The Chinese-speaking ones like to use Paktor and TanTan.
JIS Bar at Jalan Yap Kwan Seng — My friends and I have the best time here meeting women. It’s a novel Japanese bar that allows women to enter and drink for free, whereas men have to pay for every minute spent inside there. The staffs then act as matchmakers, putting men and women together in sharing tables, drink & chat together, play games etc. Tips:

For women: it’s a safe place to go. Staffs keep watchful eyes on the whole place the whole time. Men who touch get bounced.
Men: Go with 2 or 3 other friends to wing each other. It’s mainly a place where you talk and not dance.
Read their dress code on Instagram and the website. Dress to impress there.
Best time to enter: Friday & Saturday 9-11PM. You can go there before hitting Kyo club or other nightlife areas nearby.

Locals highly appreciate it when foreigners make an effort to blend in, so try learning some Malaysian English phrases, you will come off less foreign and impress the girls here.

3.20 Sanctum League Start Build Index

Interested in what other people played last league at league start and how it went? Check out these posts:

Useful League Links

Sanctum League info page
Sanctum Patch Notes
Announcement Vod
ZiggyD and Chris' Q&A
/pathofexile's league info megathread

General Tips and Advice:

Zizaran’s POE University - an exhaustive guide to all things POE for new players, there are updated videos for the latest league covering more advanced topics as well. Including some new updates released for this league!
Subtractem's Path of Learning - additional videos on some POE mechanics, generally targeted at a softcore trade audience.

Part 1: Top League Start Suggestions

We suggest these builds to players who want a good solid build, new players who want a build that will help carry them through content and for players looking for reliable league starters. Please note this build is sorted by skill alphabetically not by quality or power level.
Please note: Some of the builds listed below are 3.19 or even 3.18 guides, these are builds where the patches since they were released have not had a significant (or any in some cases) impact on the play-ability of those builds.

Cold Damage Over Time (DoT)

Build Description: This build utilizes a variety of different cold skills to apply cold damage over time effects to bring down your enemies. You run around dropping areas of damaging cold This build is a solid bossing build but the map clear is not top end, though it's still respectable. Because this build is a damage over time build the DPS uptime is near constant which makes bossing very comfortable. There are a few different variants of this build (primarily elementalist, trickster and occultist), Elementalist has great clear and the highest damage, Trickster is more defensive focused and Occulist has easy access to explosions to boost clear.
Builds:

Jungroan's Cold DoT Elementalist - A great guide aimed at a softcore enviroment. He has also posted a full 7 hour run from act 1 to exarch
Zizaran's Cold DoT Trickster - A great guide that goes well into the pros/cons of this build and a good explanation of the gear you'll want.
ShakCentral's Cold DoT - A long time cold DoT build from a creator who made their name making this build. This build invests more into brand nodes to use wintertider brand for clear.

Explosive Arrow

Build Description: This build is a totem build with excellent DPS, an easy gear curve and great damage. Because this build is a totem build it’s great for players who find boss mechanics difficult as, like minions, it does damage without you having to be constantly targeting the boss - simply place the totems down and dodge. This build is excellent in both trade and SSF with the primary weapon for this build is a multimod weapon that uses a base that you can farm (Porcupine) and is crafted with essences. This build does have two delays in its damage, there is a wait time as totems “arm” themselves and a delay before the arrows explode.
Builds:

Palsteron's EA Elementalist - A great video with a lot of information provided as well as an extensive written guide. Palsteron has many videos on his channel from the previous leagues going into even more detail as well.
Zizaran's EA Champion - Another great video guide from Zizaran, the video contains a lot of good information for new players and the POB has a wealth of information in it including a lot of tips and advice in the “notes” section.

Poisonous Concoction

Build Description: Poisonous Concoction is a skill which throws out poisonous vials that cause overlapping explosions which can stack up poison very quickly. It is a build requiring very little gear to get going (as part of the skill you can not use a weapon at all), since this build scales its damage off your life flask a solid version of this build can come online very quickly as well as clearing the campaign very comfortably. This build uses Plague Bearer for rapid clear as it zooms through maps. There are two common variants of this build, the Pathfinder and the Occultist versions. This build can struggle with single target in the late game but as long as you’re comfortable with boss mechanics can carry you through to 4 watchstones at great speed.
Builds:

Palsteron's PC Pathfinder - Another solidly written guide with lots of good information easily available.
Asmodeus's PC Pathfinder - This build guide goes over the gearing and tree in great detail, contains lots of good information to help inform your decisions if going PC.
Triploar Bear's PC Occultist - A great guide with accompanying video. This build also presents the option of late game swapping into Bladefall / Bladeblast occultist.
DS Lily's PC Occultist - A great guide and PoB with a lot of notes in it!

Note: Occulist did see some changes in the most recent patch and has lost malediction but the builds using occulist are still viable

Seismic Trap

Build Description: Seismic Trap is a build that utilises two skills, one for clear (exsanguinate traps) and one for single target damage (seismic trap). The build is a trap build so that means you'll be throwing out traps which will detonate themselves targeting enemies around them. For the purpose of this section of the index we will be including mostly just the poison variant of this build as it's the most league start friendly but it can transition into a crit based version with some investment. This build excels at single target damage and has decent clear, though you may struggle against moving bosses.
Builds:

Zizaran's Seismic Trap Saboteur
Jungroan playing a full acts -> exarchs run this video does include leveling pobs and an endgame pob. this is not a guide, just a showcase of the build with pob's in the description
bananananannanananana's Seismic Trap Saboteur - A good guide with quite a few videos on the build.
Ventura's Seismic Bible - just all the info you could ask for on the build
TripolarBear's Poison Seismic Saboteur - A comprehensive guide including an end game goal PoB showing what an end game setup looks like.

Righteous Fire

Build Description: Righteous Fire is a build where you have a damaging fire aura that surrounds you, you clear maps by running head first into enemies and having them die to the damage over time effect surrounding you. This is a great build for those that wish to press less buttons while mapping. This build is very defensively strong and with investment scales into one of the tankiest builds in the game. This build can struggle for damage when it comes to late game bossing.
Builds:

Pohx's Jugg RF - Widely considered to be the most experienced RF player, Pohx has an entire wiki dedicated to the build and all the questions you could have about it.

Note: Inquisitor did receive a slight nerf in the recent patch (effectively lost 5% regen and 25% reduced curse effect) but this change is not going to have a significant effect on RF inquisitors.

This is still a work in progress, more builds will likely make part 1 as more creators release builds.

Part 2: Other League Starters

Warning: Unlike the above section there are almost no requirements for builds to make this section, the builds listed here are not necessarily betteworse than the above but the restrictions based on ability to do certain end game content and ssf viability are not enforced in this section. If you're a new player, we primarily recommend the above builds but if you're a bit more experienced we provide these builds to add to the variety available.

Blade Vortex

Boneshatter

Caustic Arrow

Palsteron's Caustic Arrow Ballista Trickster

Also see Toxic Rain builds below for more CA builds.

Corrupting Fever

Dark Pact

Ghazzy's Dark Pact

Dominating Blow

GhazzyTV's Dominating Blow Necromancer

Ethereal Knives

mbXtreme's Ethereal Knives Ignite Elementalist

Hydrosphere

Aero's Hydrosphere Occultist

Ice Trap

Velyna's Ice Trap Saboteur

Lightning Arrow

Grimro's Lightning Arrow / Artillery Ballista Raider

Maw of Mischief (Death Wish)

TripolarBear's Maw of Mischief Ignite Elementalist

Minions (general)

Rain of Arrows

Fuzzy Duckzy's Rain of Arrow Raider

Spark

Spectral Shield Throw

Summon Raging Spirits

Toxic Rain

Volcanic Fissure (warning: new skill)

Zizaran x Goratha Volcanic Fissure Champion

Wave of Conviction

Zizaran x Cohhcarnage's Ignite Wave of Conviction

Edits:
Update 1: Added a few new builds to part 2, added seismic trap to part 1.
Update 2: Added lots of builds, big thanks to azantyri for a really helpful comment with lots of builds to add.
Update 3: Tonnes more stuff added today, really feeling a lot better at this point than I was last league, seems a lot more build creators are putting out builds this time around which is really exciting (with many more builds to come!)

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Forex Trading Strategy Session: How To Refine Your Entries and Exits

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Opciones Binarias la pampa

'Til all are one! Transformers News and Community!

Swag Academy Review - Scam Stories - BabyPips.com Forex Trading Forum

Telegram Groups & Pumps sub-forum • Signal Group Crypto | Forex | Futures | Indexes | Stocks

@SHChronicle: The City of St. Helens invites the St. Helens community to a public forum on Wednesday, May 4, 2022, to review in-water facility alternatives developed by the Oregon State Marine Board for Grey Cliffs Waterfront Park. https://t.co/hjwOXLo5o9

Strange Things Volume II: Triffin's Dilemma and The Dollar Milkshake

(Seriously, stop here and go back and read Part 1.5 and Part 4.3 Do it!)

The Dollar Milkshake

Q&A

(Many of you have been messaging me with questions, rebuttals or comments. I’ll do my best to answer some of the more poignant ones here.)

My Reuben Review at Sam LaGRassa's - Thanks for helping me find all these great spots in the city. Appreciate this forum so much.

Phoenix replaces Seattle in top three cities in annual gains according to S&P Corelogic Case-Shiller Index - Forex Factory

Academy City Finale, the worst saved for last | A Certain Magical Index III Spoiler Review

Pairs Index Pro Forex Indicator Review

Pairs Index Pro Forex Indicator Review

Entering the madness of Academy City, Part 1 (A Certain Magical Index I/II) | Written Spoiler Review

[Game development] Davey Jones C'est Mort: A long and convoluted about forum culture, amateur gamedev, and Reality-on-the-Norm, guest starring Ben "Yahtzee" Croshaw

(1) Home computing & the information superhighway

(2) Reality welcomes careful drivers

(3) The smallest amount of fame that's ever gone to anyone's head

(4) Davey Jones C'est Mort

(5) Wait, are we really going with this?

(6) All hell breaks lose

(7) The dust settles

(8) Today

Forex Daily Review: Technical Strategy for the IBEX35 Index

Fri Jun 17 00:33:19 2022

[World of Warcraft]: How Blizzard's new lizard broke a 10 year old loot system, started an in-game genocide, and sparked a player war in their first 48 hours of release.

“Unto you is charged the great task of keeping the purity of time. Know that there is only one true timeline, though there are those who would have it otherwise. You must protect it. Without the truth of time as it is meant to unfold, more will be lost than you can possibly imagine.”

Part 1: Out of the Mists

What are mounts (and why should I care)?

Back to Pandaria: Enter The Heavenly Onyx Cloud Serpent

Oops, no dragons! - How Blizzard broke the Sha’s loot table (the first time)

Part 2: The Unwitting Herald(s)

“It is time! I will expend everything to bind every thread here, now, around the Dragon Soul. What comes to pass will NEVER be undone!”

Part 3: Tuesday, November 15, 2022

It’s 6:15pm, Eastern Standard Time.

It’s 7:15pm, Eastern Standard Time.

It’s 7:20pm, Eastern Standard Time.

It’s 7:35pm, Eastern Standard Time.

It’s 7:50pm, Eastern Standard Time.

It’s 8:05pm, Eastern Standard Time.

Oops, all dragons! - How Blizzard broke the Sha’s loot table (the second time)

It’s 9:35pm, Eastern Standard Time.

It’s 10:20pm, Eastern Standard Time.

Wednesday, November 16, 2022

It’s 1:01am, Eastern Standard Time

It’s 1:20am, Eastern Standard Time.

“Know that even as things appear to unravel, they do so with greater purpose.”

Part 4: The Day the World (of Warcraft) Stood Still

It’s November 16, 2022, 9:00am, Eastern Standard Time

It’s November 16, 2022, 10:00pm, Eastern Standard Time

“The drop chances for Son of Galleon's Saddle, Reins of the Heavenly Onyx Cloud Serpent, Reins of the Cobalt Primordial Direhorn, Reins of the Thundering Cobalt Cloud Serpent, and Solar Spirehawk have been greatly increased.”

It’s 10:15pm, Eastern Standard Time.

“Compared to all else that has happened, it is a small change to the timeline, and one of which I approve.”

Epilogue

Wednesday, November 16, 2022

It’s 10:15pm, Eastern Standard Time.

I have received Heavenly Onyx Cloud Serpent.

A Malaysian digital nomad guide to Kuala Lumpur (2022)

"Come come, gor gor show you Kolumpo"

Is Kuala Lumpur for you?

Neighbourhoods to stay in

Speaking of KL Condos

SIM Cards

Cash

Foods

Transportations

Nightlife

Halal Nightlife

Dating

3.20 Sanctum League Start Build Index

Useful League Links

General Tips and Advice:

Part 1: Top League Start Suggestions

Cold Damage Over Time (DoT)

Explosive Arrow

Poisonous Concoction

Seismic Trap

Righteous Fire