We did “Photography Model” for ours lol

I think one of the biggest issues with BE attempting to follow in AC’s footsteps is that the factions were not distinct, and it felt extremely generic. BE’s factions were all similar, played similarly, and all had the same options for development and could all take the same evolutions. In AC, not only were the faction leaders ideologies revealed in quotes in the tech tree and secret projects, it was inescapable in the game mechanics. The reason I feel Stellaris is a closer sibling is that it managed to mimic something of how it felt to be an idealogical leader attempting to make sure your values and your goals for the future were the ones that were supreme. BE was “civ in space”.

This scenario would mean major negligence on their part, as they had been with Cloudflare for years. When it was clear their services were costing more than the business plan paid for, that’s when they should have been contacted with clear numbers and a sheepish admission that “unlimited” doesn’t actually mean unlimited. It certainly seems shady to me that they attempted to make it about a TOS violation, that there’s no public information about enterprise level and pricing, and that the second they said they were talking to a competitor they had their data purged. It sounds like a failed attempt at extortion to me.

Processed food is usually more expensive per portion than the ingredients alone. The farther you get from the raw ingredients the more expensive it gets. Plus, you’re eating all sorts of junk ingredients.

I had about ten years of experience with a very tight food budget to learn what was good value for effort/ingredients.

Good:

Flour, sugar, canned tomatoes, spices, frozen veggies, fresh produce

Bad:

Presliced or pre-grated cheeses, at least in my experience, are marked up 1.5x to 2x the cost per pound of a block. Another commenter said that wasn’t the case in their store, but check and see if that is true for you and if the cheeses you got are available in blocks. You can even go to a place with a deli counter and they will slice cheese for you for free, and you will get exactly how much you want with less waste (yes it’s an interaction with another human, it’ll be alright).

Uncrustables/swiss rolls/mac and cheese… it’s not for me to judge what someone chooses for an indulgence, maybe those things are what get you through your day, but you can definitely do better value wise. Mac and cheese from a box is cheaper than those individual cups, and homemade mac and cheese from scratch is even better and extremely easy if you have any kitchen experience. Uncrustables will always be more expensive than just making the sandwich yourself. The swiss rolls… well you know they’re a treat. In my opinion if you’re going to treat yourself to something unhealthy spend the extra dollar and get something luxurious.

Breads and muffins, again if you could learn how to make them yourself you might be impressed with the results. Bread can be a tricky balance of time, effort and cost of ingredients, and homemade fresh baked bread is incredible, but if you’re short on time there’s nothing wrong with buying it. Muffins are a quick bread though that you could make at home in under an hour with a mixing bowl and a cupcake pan, and then you could control exactly how much sugar went into them and have hot, fresh muffins. It’s worth making them yourself at least once to see if it’s something you can add to your routine, you can get a cupcake pan for cheap from a thrift store if you don’t have one.

Sauces and dips, as other people have said, they are a lot simpler than you might think to make yourself. In my experience they are one of those things you should challenge yourself to make at least once or twice and see how much effort and time it takes you, and then re-evaluate the jarred/canned stuff. Maybe after making it you realize it is worth the extra dollar or so to save yourself the effort, but maybe you realize it’s not that hard and you’re able to save money in the long run and have more control over the quality and ingredients.

All this stuff is incremental, and any one thing isn’t going to magically fix food costs. Plus as the amount of time in your life to spend on meal prep fluctuates you might find it’s worth it to spend the extra money on convenience. However it’s important to at least get some experience with the alternatives so you understand what amount of time and effort you are buying by getting those processed foods. Good luck :)

Celestial Seasonings and PG tips are good grocery store brands with paper bags, but for loose leaf it’s worth seeing if you have a local tea shop. If there’s nowhere nearby, there’s some great online sellers. I’m a fan of Adagio and David’s tea.

Lol yep prismatic bolt embermage is the character I got to max. I realized super early how great that skill was and fully invested in it. I also played sword and board engie and dual pistol Outlander. So maybe if I had invested more in other skills or wanted different builds for my embermage I’d have a more lukewarm view of the game. I had a lot of fun with the builds I did try though.

I never had to go grind for gear, I usually had enough gold to gamble and transmute a decent equipment set together for each character. I did grind for levels in the extra map zones though after finishing the New Game+.

I might have lucked into some cheesey builds, I only maxed one character and have a few at 60. One mod I did get was a full respec mod, but the default reset of the last 3 levels was at least good enough for me to see if a skill was working for me or not. I agree that there seem to be too many “dud” skills, especially on embermage and engineer. My lvl 100 character I did without mods and I kind of liked how punishing it was. I get that that’s a preference though.

Ok, is a Diablo-like a thing I can call it then? It’s just such a specific type of game, the isometric top down view RPG with classes, customizable character leveling, randomly generated levels with area themes, randomized loot, a town hub and inventory etc. I’ve always heard those games called Rogue-likes but I never played Rogue.

I haven’t played it. My impression is that it was trying very hard to cater to the mobile market. I heard it suffered from a lot of design changes and ended up being sold and then patched up and released by a new team to cut their losses. Meanwhile, Torchlight 2 may be older but it was made with love and care and a strong vision. It’s dirt cheap now too so it’s not hard to get your money’s worth out of it.

Torchlight 2 spoiled me for basically the whole genre. It is a classic Roguelike ARPG dungeon crawler but has so many thoughtful player centric quality of life features. Inventory is full but don’t want to stop kicking butt? You have a pet that can run back to town for you, sell your stuff, and even buy a “shopping list” of potions and scrolls for you. It’ll even run and pick up loot for you. I have trouble playing other games in the genre because I keep running into problems Torchlight 2 solved that I didn’t even think about. It also has mods available to add even more or keep things fresh. It’s getting old but because of that you can run it on anything. It’s a damn good game.

Edit: seems I didn’t know what a roguelike was