Tag Archives: TR Train

Stabbing you in your Guts and Picking your Pocket

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So with my Arty at 25 and working on gear, Samius rocking EEs as needed and Javabot working on an item or two, I am mostly in get stuff mode. Except on Mon,Tues, Thrus and Fri days on those days I am all about sticking bitches with pointy things, aka leveling my rogue with the wife’s DPS character.  I will say right off the bat I am loving playing this rogue, but he is level 10 and I can see some weaknesses that I might need to address soon… some how.

Why do I bring it up? Good question. The DG/British Invasion people are debating a TR Weekend now that Otto’s boxes are in the mix again for a fast return to epics (assuming a xp weekend over Memorial Day Weekend). And there are many possible TRs that need to happen or are slotted for characters that want a TR. One of which is one of our group’s assassin rogues. The person I went to when I was planning my Rogue build and she expressed interest in the ins and outs of my build ideas so I thought why not do a little how its working.

So BUILD REVIEW TIME!

I am more or less on the build plan for Mcplunderer which can be seen here.

You do need to do a feat order swap from what I have listed and take Point Blank Shot @ 2 using the fighter bonus feat and wait for Toughness until level 3. I have to say it is fairly amazing to play so far. Every time something comes at me and I bluff them I say, “It wasn’t me!” as I start to stab them for big sneak attack numbers. When the wife looks at me like I am nuts I claim “role playing.”

As for actual game play, I will say it is strange to be on a melee with a maxed out Int and no power attack so damage on guys with out dealing Sneak attack sucks, but I am playing the long game on this one. Even so using I am rocking the Threnalian weapons and not doing too bad. I need to take a look and see if there is a worth wild upgrade out their soon to go farm up…

Things I would change put HP/fort gear higher on the gear list. The wife’s evasion pally has WAY more Hp and better saves and she is using blue slots for PRR and Fort and is wearing all the necessary HP gear. And she seems very stable. While a lot of the time I need to break off and pot/wand/scroll repeat until I can turn and clean up my trash.  Guess I am trying to say I know what Tobril was saying back when he was working on his Rog (that didn’t make it much past 10) about feeling like a glass cannon. Then again I seem to do okay at leveling glass cannons, I had lots of Wizards in my stable at one time…

I think at 14 things will be a lot tighter some gear comes on line then like Black dragon armor and Tome of legends weapons and that will be a huge boost. Think I even have an old Treason some place… Maybe. If I do I can treat it like a mini- Epic Midnights Greetings until 20 rolls around.

Well good enough for now. More on trying to take some advantage of the Otto’s boxes later.

<3s

Thank You DDo and Family

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So yesterday I think I learned the meaning of shit rolls down hill as my supervisor pulled me into his office for our weekly meeting let me know that we are finally expanding our web department and then proceeded to tear me a new asshole. The whole time he kept saying things that seemed to imply that he had a bit of an ass chewing. I have the feeling there was some why do you need more staff the staff you have hasn’t rolled anything big out under your watch… His reply should have been mine my staff of 1? He is doing 40 little things AND trying to make progress on this big project….

Anyway needless to say that encounter put me in a foul mood and making me wonder if I need to start looking at other options…. I have been here for, well I need to look but I think the 11th will be 5 years. Maybe that is too long in modern times…

Thankfully my wife made dinner and tried to cheer me up as we worked on our TRs that we are doing on the side, aka my rogue and her new evasion dps pally. Don’t want to say that it took my mind right off of things. But it helped a ton and this morning no signs of going postal. That is a joke btw…

Anyway progress, we lvl 9 with or almost having xp for 10. I am dual wielding the long sword/dagger from Threnal and the dps is fair if not great, unless I don’t have the agro and then boom! So many sneak attack dice….

Took me awhile to remember the ends and outs of this build think I need to reread my post explaining it to myself because I have the feeling that I am missing a little bit still…

Anyway I just wanted to say even though DDo and/or my family can/was pissed me off in the past and I am sure they will again; they do an amazing job of cheering me up when they feel like it. My wife even died saving me from bleeding out when I tried to get though a trap to get to the box. Her evasion is powered by more then 10 more points of dex then mine, but 1s happen. But her CLWs took me to 4 so I could disable the trap and take her stone to the shrine. She was “mad” but I think it was all planed on her part…

<3s

Zero to Five in 24 hours

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So I have been webbing more and more in the last few weeks. And while I am not the best ddo player ever I have the quest more or less down.  So well the last 3-4 runs I didn’t die at all and the raid kept the deaths down to low almost no deaths. But almost always there is at least one person that gets thrown off by a leg.

Jump to run 2 on Samiusbot aka Tuesday night, Brai (I think) asks in Defense if anyone wants to web. I was just clearing the web explorers as it was about bedtime and thought well if it was a fast normal maybe…. Turns out that was his plan exactly. I use a bypass and tag in. Things are going well until I go to sidestep a leg popping out of the ground and walk into another one spawning right behind me. Thought I was good as it looked like I had stopped. Turns out I had just lagged and in fact I was thrown extra far… Like really really far. The rest of the run went very smooth.

Last night Tobril has the on call phone for work so he doesn’t want to solo heal a hard just incase. I tell him to just throw up a normal and say on Tobril then. That was the plan anyway but as people started to file in the Channel people really turned out and we had a hard capable party.  Oh I bypass again, need that repeater, bow, clever on the bot…

My normal task of herding the cat was assigned and I talk to Anna standing behind one of the tooth things. She runs down to attack some random spawn and I jump to behind the rock to tell her to not fight and my vision goes black like I am blinded then I die. Looking at the log I took a hit from Loth for 250 and then I was killed by myself. Not real sure what happened… But I never expect to complete with out dying just thought I had the quest down.

Skip to the leg fight. I see one spawning at my feet and move away but I guess I was doing a running man as I go from trying to move to open space with no in between time. BTW I was asked about what the leg tell looks like and how I would describe it is as if the ground is forming bubbles for about 1 sec if you don’t move in that sec then you are gone. If there is a pre bubble tell I haven’t picked up on it. Sometimes if you are real lucky you can see the start of the leg coming out of the ground with the earth cracking but for me bubbles or go flying.  Death 2.

Death three, in the first optional area I move around the mini boss to keep Anna safe and I am adjusting to avoid the spikes on the roof when we go up. I fall to about 300. I quicken reconstruct quicken repair serous and try a quickened mass light (?) repair no spells go off. Not sure if another person was in my orb or what but I never got a heal and I thought I was shooting the mini boss… But I died on the roof from small arms fire from bowmen. Improved precise shot is a double-edged bolt, one that got me in lots of trouble through out the raid. I picked up 3 tear 2 light dots at one point, as an example….

Death four as I am going to blame on IPS as I picked up a priestess before I could kill her clearing trash mobs and got comet fall tripped chain killed while the healer was right next to me and telling people that I was tipped got me 0 loves.

Five kinda pissed me off a little. We were fighting Loth the second time. Now if I can I like to stay back by that pillar where we all stand to let Anna work the last ball. Lets me keep Anna back and still range when I don’t need to clear trash while having cover from Loth. So I was standing there clearing 3 or 4 spiders when I take a Loth death beam. WTF? Drink a curse pot repair check my placement and take 3 more beams in a row. My stone was right where I should had been safe. Maybe there is no cover from Loth and this whole I was just lucky… Totally questioning my understand of the raid…

Worse part, the only named item that dropped was the hammer (which is a great little item so naturally when it goes up for roll I do so, d100 high. I type out the command and roll a 17 the guy right above me, who is a faster typist I guess nails it with a 100.  Ho hum. But I chill out just in case the winner changes his mind. And the wife files a slot of a guy that randomly DCs in the first part of the quest. So I am waiting for her to pass me her repeater was told to pull but didn’t. Anyway I see Sam wins and the item get moved to my name. I call hang on… And check the txt log. I am guessing that the guy that rolled a 100 was either honestly missed by its original owner or squelched so I confirm that Mr 100 still wants said item and is in the raid and pass it over to him.

Close but no Items for me…

Maybe this weekend?

<3s

134 mins, Slow and Steady Completes the Quest

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Last night after watering the plants and doing some light reading I logged in with the goal of rocking the rest of the DQ flagging quests. I grab a hire, Luna the Halfling Fvs and head out to Chains of Flame.

Now Samiusbot is not what I would call super geared up, but he is on his way. I know Chains is a long quest for the xp and doing it solo on a not real dps alt will make it even longer but I figure an hour or so maybe a little longer. My Slaver’s Hand Crossbow is not amazing dps but the Epic Storm is so much slower that they are about the same vs trash.

Pew Pew Pew

Did you know that epic Hard Chains of Pain is filled with traps? I did, but I don’t have the quest down like I do a lot of other quests.  So there was lots of oh snap there is a trap here, move move move! Luckily I tried to keep myself healed up and fire shielded so most of the “Surprise your on Fire!” traps weren’t too bad. Took me about an hour to get to the first shrine. I was tapped out but the hire was in good shape, she like a real person didn’t like to heal a robot. But she and I had a good working relationship when I was rocking some of the other epics solo… Maybe she was just mad at me…

At the 90ish min mark the wife says she is hungry and goes to make food. It is not something I can eat with out cheating on my diet so I start thinking I should find a save place to take an afk. But I press on.

She returns and asks if I am ready to watch a show with her. I say I just want to finish this quest atm and that is when she realizes I am still in chains I am about at the 2-hour mark. So we keep the Netflix at my desk running for a while. About the time I clear to the end fight she is done waiting which is fine I am mostly trying to stand some place safe with auto attack on auto charging my rune arm/firing it off and forcing the hire to heal with mass heal. So I am not super busy.

Finally clear the bosses and the trash that followed me. I have to clear a few more caster trash mobs that didn’t follow me as I back peddled to the ladders on my way to the chest and the orb… 43k xp….

But one more until I am DQ flagged by the weekend. See if I can do the next one on eNormal with out breaking my streak, otherwise I foresee talking about some of my anger issues in tomorrows post.

<3s

Is this the Answer? Or this? Or That?

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For the last few weeks the wife as been on a terror to get her first character to 20 and hunting new leveling gear so she can TR it into a dps pally build.  Not the way I would go for dps but *shrug, as long as she is happy right?

So I have been debating on what alt/build to bring with her on her sprint to 20 again. I want to be able to help in a meaningful way but I want her to feel like she is the big dog in our pairing….

I have been thinking that I might just use one of my bank alts that are chilling at 4 and then swap to my rogue (that I was loving) when she gets to 8.  But this morning for some reason I can’t shake the idea that I need to TR Butterz my bard.

I liked her being a setup for a long time. She is a true bard my multi tool for times when I needed X and X was not around. But she has no focus, not really. My time for her to be my go to girl for need X role might be over….

Before she could TR however, I would need to wrap up her 20th Von. I know she is real close less then 4 I think. But at our current rate of Vons that would be a month and I don’t think the wife will wait that long to TR. So I would either need to form some pug groups or keep my eyes open for them and jump in when able.

The other thought is I could return AS400 to bot form and get out of the drow shell that he really didn’t like. With 2 wiz past lives I could try moving him to a 18/2 sorc monk but I don’t love monk splashes on my arcane characters so that is a maybe but that is real hard to act like a support guy on a heavy baster with limited spell slots…

No I have the feeling that the right call is to go with my first gut feeling and just use the rogue. I should be able to help her get to 8 easy enough even on a junk alt and from there good times??? Maybe I could set up an bard/trapper/chest buffer on one of our alt accounts and start to level it and take it to 25 with us?

Idk, maybe the loot gods will send me a sign on the day it needs to happen.

Wish me luck,

<3s

When Sam Says:

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Last night was the DG’s normal Wednesday a Web run and an Abbot run. Well I think we are back to normal Abbot runs for a while… I will but this out there again if you are on Sarlona, play during the US evenings and want to try your hand at running the Abbot you need to get in the Defense channel. That could apply to any raid really and soon it will apply to LoB as well but for now Webs and Abbots.

Anyway post raids; Tobril asked me what I wanted to do as I did the raids he wanted to do. I said I was up for almost anything but I would be all for Xping on my Arty some, namely in the FR area, as it would be cool to be running the Web on an Alt that gives a shit about Web loot. Right now that is the Arty and not much else…Right now in most webs I end up taking Samius so I can contribute to DPS while herding the cat… aka Anna. Or Java to help heal while herding Anna. Think you might be starting to smell a theme, I herd Tobril and Anna and he herds the pug unless things start to go pear shaped and then I start to yell. Yep I am turning into Oncler. There are worse people to mimic I guess.

So I swap and join the remains of our Abbot run that is going to tag along with us. Want to say Lost Legion guys/gals and had a good time. I let everyone know that I am way under geared for epics but I am a helper and link my lvl 10 repeater that I am still using because I can’t find anything else as good. I know crazy but Icy burst/blaze/pure good plus rune arm/deadly/Int damage equals a ton of dps with out needed a lot of gear and really what good would it be to farm/build a Hellfire when the Needle is floating around…

Soon as we steam roll the eH quests, the topic of conversation moves to gear and rings. Before long everyone starts linking rings and I link a +6 con ring with a yellow slot filled with +100 sp augment. Yep rocking the gear.

More time passes and we are making good progress burning through the Lord of Dust chain.  In the end fight of the Servants of the Overlord I shrined off my Death Ward and asked Tobril for a new one when the caster end boss starts spamming me then harms. There was some fun poking about being a level 20 arty and needed a DW (not to forget the whole being a WF I had to remind them about the massive harm spamming). Guess I should have dug up a DW goggle clickly. While I am at it I need to get the Haste goggle clickly also and a shield clickly. Maybe some other clickies…

During the Spinner of Shadows quest Rest, makes a comment about being slow because he had to drink a silver flame pot and that I could have scrolled him a heal. I say that I could if I had a heal scroll and laughs start to roll. Tobril says something like “When Sam says his guy has no gear he means it!” and that stuck with me some because it is totally true. On double plus life TRs I worry about gear a lot. Just because you will be playing that alt so much longer to reach 20+ again, but a second life guy?? I just don’t much bother with grinding loot out unless he is sitting on a pile from his first life. The guy has been a bank alt for a long time and going from Wiz to arty has some over lap but less then one might think.

Anyway other then Loth, webbing and killing me in that last quest it was all-good we ran all 3 quests before people’s ship buffs wore out. I picked up a few shards still no repeater (no base or parts). Went from 1 rank in Draconic to the second level in it so very nice xp. I haven’t really worked out a gear list for my Arty. Right now I am just trying to get some options to get some options (:-)) and I am mentally building a trapping/all ranged/thrower/buffing build to pair up with the wife’s dps TR project that she wants to play.

Lolz and <3s

14 xp short

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After Monday’s exercise in tilt dodging and xp grinding I logged 13k xp short of 20 on Samiusbot. Don’t get me wrong Monday was a huge push like 200kish push, but when I hit 13 short I was mentally done even though I wanted to push through. So I hit an untouched explorer zone for me the Erie Forest. My slayer was about 130 for the Reaver’s hidey-hole… I thought the 400 kill slayer xp + the explores + hit a few of the rares would put me over no problem. I was rightish… but that is what happened last night not on Monday.

Monday I ran out summoned the Vamp got 12 kills and failed a destruction spell and died… Reupped my ship buffs and got back in the zone swapping out the Alchemist’s Pendant for what I meant to be my Silver Flame Talisman aka a death block item but turned out to be my Golden Cartouche aka not a death block item…  But I was able to quickly defeat the vamp who was still spawned from my first attempt to clear the zone.  Which I totally do on my second crack at it but I get no other rare spawns. Reset, which you need to do the old break and reform tick on this explorer btw, and repeat run one were right out of the box I fail a destruction spell fighting the vamp and die.

I start to see red as I put on a death block item, which in my rage I noticed that I had swapped around as I talked about above… But I was done the rage machine was running on all accounts.

Last night DDo started late.

First of all it was snowing again Tuesday morning, late in the year for snow but totally out of the blue. But this nice 2-4 days then snow/ice for a day or two then nice again thing is getting old.  Spring can just take hold already. Any way a friend of mine had an accident and needed my help in the morning and needed a place to wait out the day until his wife could rescue him, about 6 pm… It would have been rude to have logged on while he sat totally still as to avoid the dogs barking wrath.

Second of all as I said it was snowing so Monday night in the rain the family and I bundled up the green house to ready for the cold… again. And as I really love to do I went into the green house with snow and the wind blowing and just am amazed at how warm it is with very little light and no outside heat. It was about 25 degrees (f) warmer inside then out. And I found it very comfortable. Although the wife thought it cool.  So that took time.

So at about 7 I finally logged on and finished my runs in the forest. Hit the slayer mark and the vamp and the wagon train a few times and found myself 14 xp short of 20. Isn’t that always how it works….

Anyway I debated on running something WAY under level for that last tiny bit of xp. But instead the wife said just goes find a rare some place else and shut up! Unable to argue with her logic I saved some dwarfs from some dogs and became a hero just in time to realize I have 0 gear plans or play goals other then to have a main account arty ready to go… But I really enjoyed leveling it up for the most part. And I think I can come up with a gear list soon.

While my brain is doing that I also have a ton of work to do and I need to find another project to play while dualing with the wife’s dps alt she is gearing up for a TR at any moment….

Anyway back to work/planning/gear listing…

<3s

Oh and not that I think he reads this but if he does one of my younger brothers turned 30 yesterday and while I knew it was yesterday on Monday (thank you Facebook the exact date always escapes me..) I got swamped at work and helping a friend and then getting that last little bit of xp it slipped my mind. So happy belated Bday little bro. I think this will be a banner year for us all.

I am a Mild Screw Up…

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Okay sometimes I feel like I am not so mild of a screw up. I started gearing up my newly lvl 16 arty last night post taping of the www.DDoCocktailhour.com and I started looking at things.

First off I have a few Dragontouched docents. Nothing amazing, but a con 6/ GFL/ 100 sp one that I have used a lot. Doing a test swap I notice I am not wearing a con item. No wonder I failed all those disintegrates in GH… sigh.

So I start to juggle. I can just leave the DT docent on and try to find room to fit in what I am missing from the docent of Quickening. But I quickly dismiss that idea for a plan B.

Replace the Wrath of Sora Kell set with 3 different items. First a 150 sp hat simple upgrade although the 100 sp from the docent would stack easy enough… My gloves swap to an old stand by of the Spectral Gloves.  And I make an easy con 6 yellow slotted ring.

This is a good spot for a tangent. The new augment system for crafted items are a lot like trash loot to me now. Before I would have used a guild slotted item and devoted it a slot either on my gear list or in my bank for TRing when I finished with it. These new slots unless they are on just amazing gear they are super easy to use and throw away. They seem to drop well enough and if I can handle the higher potential then it is just as usable as a BTA item and I don’t have to go and farm one up.  😉

So my current list is sp hat, UMD necklace, voice, DQ goggles, docent of what is haste, GFL ring, Con 6 ring (yellow slot), Fort belt (med guild slot Sp), Wind howler bracers, FF/divine power clickly boots oh and the Stormreaver cloak!

More or less happy with my gear list I think I can slot some SP in that yellow slot and start putting HP in my belt. Run to the AH/SH and find a 100 sp augment for a price I am not unwilling to pay (6 shards) and get the puppy slotted. When I realize/remember that the augments are all enchantment items and I just slotted that 150 hat into my gear setup…

Sigh…

Guess in the short term I can use my hat as a swap slot… As if I had an item to swap too right now… Long term I just burned 6 shards unless I want to use a jeweler tool to pop it out?  Which seems a little worth less. Going to chalk this all up to a learning experience. But now I am down to 3 of my free shards left…

<3s

Every Beginnings End

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So depending on where you are reading this post, this is a good by post or a welcome post. With the loss or soon to be lost my.ddo I have jumped ship to samiusgurobo.wordpress.com and soon samiusgurobo.com.  Hey for 18$ I can get a domain name to point to my wordpress blog…

Lets jump to some content!

This weekend I busted hump with the aid of my family and we are almost done with my trampoline turned greenhouse. We have a few more finishing touches like getting the door rehang and running some trim around the base to hold the plastic to the bottom of the frame. Then starts the fun stuff the growing.

I have lots of big plans for my greenhouse and as I always do I will share them with you has the come together.  But I will say I have a section planed to re-fire up my aquaponics experiments including using some real fish and a much larger tank.

My little urban farm is coming together nicely; the chicks are doing well so far. Oh for any that didn’t know I now have chickens. Surprise! My town allows up to 15 chickens as long as they are 50feet away from every building or in a mobile coop. All I need now is a few solar panels and a milk goat…

Just because I got things done doesn’t mean I didn’t get some DDo time in because I did. I was able to push to lvl 15 on my arty this weekend Blade Barriers!!! And we got some other things knocked out with the Brits including a 67 min EE Madstone. Which Grim was the only one not to take a death, but I think most of those deaths could have been avoided. I know my 2 deaths were strange things that I should have been smarter about and avoided. One I got pinned against a wall while kitting, should have went for tea with the queen and not tried to heal out of it. The other involved me being a baseball and being knocked into lava, which is very hot…

Lets see we also did an EE Crucible, which took less then the hour of ship buffs. But I had an early death thinking that Tobril on his healer would heal me but he was in save SP mod right out of the gate and I should have just PWKed my attacker when he got too close. Lesson learned!

But over all it was a very good weekend for me. I got the EE Skullsmasher for Java, thanks to my wife being good enough to pass it over to me. And I picked up a spare Iron Beads. Looking at the AH and SH I didn’t see any of them listed. Given the apparent supply and potential demand I think I will list the one I pulled for a fairly hefty sum on the SH and see if it sells. I am thinking of starting at 100 shards and having a buyout of 500. It seems overly high to me but I did get those tells the other day and there are 0 to be found…

Well it is time to go, I will miss my.ddo but these things happen. I got my black log of posts moved to the above URLs. I am really grateful to my.ddo and turbine for hosting my ramblings for as long as it have. My first post on my.ddo was March 16th, 2011 and I started there/here because I didn’t want to pay the hefty price for my guild site that was 80% my blog 10% tobril’s blog and the rest was other guildies chatting back and forth on the private forums or the rare post of their own… So moving due to shutdown is just SOP but I really like my.ddo sure is had a lot of issues but its community was more then top notch. Still I think we will still be around if a little fractured for a while.

Well as always…

<3s

Shatter Shot Mar29 (Gearing up)

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So last night the wife and I went to the farm supply store to buy a stock tank. Like this:
stocktank

So I could make some thing like:
fishtank

For my aquaponics system, this winter I decided I needed a larger tank and more fish.

Instead of buying the tank I ended up buying this:
chickencoop

Yes it is a chicken coop. It is fairly lightweight so we will be able to move it fairly often and it looks like a million times better then anything I would ever be able to do on my own. Think we will be real happy with 4-6 little guys laying eggs.

In game I logged on with the goal of gearing up my rogue with the Threnalian War stuff. I ended up taking Samius and my piking account and soloing the Threnal west quests. More or less just zerged the hell out of them and then did the get the blade quests and boom matching long sword and dagger. Have to say the first damage number is not super impressive in the 20-30s but as I am not a str/power attack build going from a +1 heavy pick of I, X, Y and +1 short sword if X, Y to these guys I have the feeling that once I get them slotted and stone of changed ritualed I will be real pleased!

Then I took my stockpile of ore and hit the Nightforge, key was in the first room so luck was on my side. Cleared the path for my rogue and made a helm, chain shirt, and the choker. I wasn’t going to use the Chain but thought for like 9 or 10 ore why not have it as an option. And it was a good thing I did as I adding life shield to my current armor made it level 12.. I forgot that they moved Invulnerability to a power 3 so adding the life shield also power 3 shard made my item lvl 11 -2 from a masterful shard is level 9… So I am wearing the chain shirt. I need to decide how to fit in some fort. I have a heavy blue fort gem that I could slot for now but as I only plan to use this armor for less then a level seems like a waist. Guess I could craft a mod fort item real fast someplace…

Anyway didn’t get to do any playing with my new gear, but I will have some play time tonight and this weekend.

<3s