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You'll find numerous weapons as you venture forth in Dynasty Warriors: Origins. Curiously enough, it might seem that you're unable to boost a single weapon's strength further, and your only recourse is to find a new one. Thankfully, there are actually ways to further tweak and strengthen your armaments. Here's our guide on how to reforge and upgrade weapons in Dynasty Warriors: Origins.How to reforge and upgrade weapons in Dynasty Warriors: OriginsTo be clear, the Dynasty Warriors: Origins weapon upgrade and reforge function can only be unlocked once you've completed the campaign. So, for the most part, you're likely to just make use of the gear pieces dropped by officers. We don't actually recommend spending gold to buy new equipment.In any case, before we discuss the game's weapon upgrade and reforge mechanics further, we have a couple of related guides that you might want to check out:All unlockable weapons - This guide discusses when certain weapons dropped for us during our playthrough.How long to beat the campaign - This gives you a clear idea on how long it takes to pull a Cody Rhodes by finishing the story. Where to get duplicates for weapon reforging and upgrading?The reforging mechanic can be accessed via any city on the world map. Two options will then appear: Reforge Traits and Reforge Power.Both actions require that you consume/infuse weapons that have the same classification/tier and name, not just the same type. Using Lances as an example, the Marauding Serpent (tier 5) isn't compatible with the Marauding Serpent EX (tier 6). As such, you really need a lot of duplicates.As mentioned, it's best to replay battles so you can pick up all sorts of gear pieces from defeated officers. Buying from the weapons shop is certainly an option, but it's extremely costly, especially since the item you're purchasing will likely be used as infusion fodder. How does reforging power work?Reforging power is fairly straightforward. Select the weapon that needs its power/strength/damage to be boosted, and pick a duplicate that will be used as infusion fodder. The duplicate's upgrade level +1 point will be added to the main weapon.Most weapon upgrade levels are capped at +99. Lastly, note that the cost increases depending on the upgrade level of the gear being destroyed. Here's an example:Main weapon: Cobalt Storm EX +39Duplicate/fodder: Cobalt Storm EX +15Your main weapon gains +16 levels in total. It will become Cobalt Storm EX +55. How does reforging traits work?Reforging traits is a more precise activity, one that you really need to be mindful of. Basically, weapons can roll with multiple random traits/perks. This mechanic allows you to choose specific perks so they can replace the ones you don't need. For example, your preferred weapon has:Extends input window for parries.Boosts damage to officers by 10%.Reduces the charge time for strong attacks.Now, that third one might not be to your liking, so you could opt to change it to another perk that comes from a duplicate. However, bear in mind that this function does not increase the number of perk/trait slots that a weapon initially rolled with. It only allows you to replace one option. As such, it's better to find a weapon that rolled multiple trait slots by default.That does it for our guide on how to reforge and upgrade weapons in Dynasty Warriors: Origins. For more tips, you can head over to our beginner's guide and unlockable weapons guide.From the mountainous regions of the north to the great rivers of the south, you're bound to face numerous foes as you travel across China in Dynasty Warriors: Origins. If you need more help, you can visit our guides hub.

Pochita and Denji have been literally an inseparable duo, considering that Pochita is currently working hard as Denjis heart. Through many trials and tribulations, the two have continued to grow and bond as they found solace in one another, given their tragic backgrounds; one has been living on Earth and the other in Hell.

When the folks at Exalted Funeral first pitched me on Land of Eem the role-playing game equivalent of how the Muppets might play Dungeons & Dragons I was immediately sold. To my pleasant surprise, the review copy held up its lofty, if whimsical, promise. Land of Eem is great in the same way the best cartoons are: wrapping serious themes in a goofy bow that rewards curiosity and social connections. With a big push for TTRPG clubs at schools and libraries, Land of Eem is a great game to bring to a table of players at any age.Based on the middle grade graphic novel series, Rickety Stitch and the Gelatinous Goo by Eem writers Ben Costa and James Parks, the setting and mechanics of Land of Eem are targeted at players who favor story over combat, as well as younger audiences. The core rules will seem familiar to anyone whos played D&D. There are base attributes (Vim, Vigor, Knack, and Knowhow) that influence skills, which modify skill checks. Instead of rolling a d20, however, the game utilizes the far superior (at least in this journalists humble opinion) d12.The character and party creation process, along with Land of Eems system for players to level up, is where the game truly diverges from its inspiration, D&D. This game is explicit about prioritizing and rewarding creativity, curiosity, and exploration, all while ensuring that the adventurers treat everything they come across as a person with thoughts and feelings even if they end up having to fight them.Land of Eem has six classes that cater toward different styles of play, including the classic Bard and Knight-Errant, the exploring Dungeoneer, the supporting Loyal Chum, the magical Gnome, and (my personal favorite) the scoundrel-like Rascal. It also has 16 unique Folk (its term for species) which run the gamut of whimsical little guys. And yes, importantly, you can play a frog person or even a Muppet-looking humanoid.Character creation emphasizes that building out a well-rounded character with ideals, flaws, personal goals, and relationships to every other party member isnt just going to make the game better its how your character will level up. Taking from the tradition of story gaming, experience points arent gained through killing monsters, but acting on your character traits, developing relationships, meeting new NPCs and exploring new parts of the world.While all that is needed for the game is the core rulebook (and character sheets which are available for download online) the full Land of Eem set contains a hefty 500-page setting guide, a bestiary, and a hexcrawl map of Eem that give GMs a vast world to put in front of players. The setting guide is brimming with scenarios that would slot perfectly into a Saturday morning cartoon slot, with depth and care that prioritizes the people who already live there. If youve been looking for a lighter, story-focused fantasy game to play with the whole family (or even just your friend who loves Adventure Time) this is the game for you.The Land of Eem Core Rulebook is available for pre-order for $40 at Exalted Funeral, with expected delivery in February. A quickstart guide is available now.Land of Eem is available now from Exalted Funeral. The game was previewed using retail product provided by Exalted Funeral. Vox Media has affiliate partnerships. These do not influence editorial content, though Vox Media may earn commissions for products purchased via affiliate links. You can find additional information about Polygons ethics policy here.

Designers are skipping steps of the process in a rush for faster outputs. But the contest that really matters is the race towards stakeholder alignment. Designers are both uniquely vulnerable to losing this race and uniquely positioned to winit.For several years, Design has been in survival mode. In a post-ZIRP economy where investment is driven by fear, the question of the ROI of design has returned from the grave with slightly different wording. Todays managers dont just want resultsthey want results fast, and they want to know how UX is going to help them dothat.As the lines between Design and Product continue to blur, one camp of designers has hewed to a line that is familiar to any product manager: that the value of design is not in the race to fastest outputs, but in the marathon towards valuable outcomes. But Product has been escaping the build trap for nearly a decade, and is no closer to making its wayout.Other designers have accepted the challenge, and doubled down on shortening their design process. On the surface, this calculus makes sense: if today value means velocity then the best way for us to demonstrate value is to hock outputs out the door as quickly as requests come in. If ship to learn is real then the faster we can ship, the faster we willlearn.But somehow, the learning has also failed to materialize. Despite what our analytics and user feedback tell us, those requests from upstream never seem to take that data into account. Build, measure, learn inevitably remains at build, build,build.The reason this keeps happening is that the feedback loop is broken. Its being intercepted at its most critical point by one charactera character well call the Fastest Gun in theWest.The Fastest Gun in the West is the hero of his own storyand wants to be the hero of everyone elses,too.The Fastest Gun in the WestproblemImpactful design decisions are typically made well above the level of product teamsCharlesLambdinThe name comes from the analogous phenomenon on Stack Overflow: the design of the system artificially inflates the salience of the first answer posted, disproportionate to its quality. A better answer posted late is buried under a worse one that has simply had more time to accruevotes.There are Fastest Guns in product orgs, as well. But rather than compete for internet points, they race for control of the narrative that frames how the business defines its priorities. The commonly-applied mechanisms of annual and quarterly planning only compound the natural anchoring bias of the first idea on thetable.What makes its way down the planning funnel is neither the most achievable output or the most impactful anticipated outcome, but the minimum viable alignment of the decision-makers involved.At a glance, this problem resembles the classic Waterfall BRD. But the situations couldnt be more different. In fact, Fastest Guns often use the vocabulary of agility and design thinking to paper over complexity and delay hard decisions. Rather than resolving disagreements, the Fastest Gun covers them with a cloud of deliberate ambiguity. He knows that the cloud cant last forever, but it doesnt need toits only there until the idea takes root as the thing we are committed to doing and is embedded in theroadmap.This is where the Fastest Gun in the West becomes a UX-specific problem. When the goal is to rush the idea from concept to backlogs as quickly as possible, user research is not just an unnecessary time sinkits a serious threat. The Fastest Gun will eagerly attack the idea of research, cultivating a sense of urgency, and claiming that it takes too long and we can defer learning about the problem until after weship.When designers accept this framing under the pressure of proving their value, they play right into the Fastest Gunshands.Potemkin DesignLeaders want the payoff of experimentation but without the cost of any dead ends.ScottBerkunThe Fastest Guns path to success relies entirely on creating a perception of a fait accomplithat the scrutiny of refinement is not necessary because it has already been completed. The fastest way to do that is to produce outputs that appear indistinguishable from the outputs of a real design process. Rather than do the work, they simply forge the receiptspopulating persona and JTBD templates with their own assumptions or LLM-generated drivel.The one thing they cant do on their own is produce high-fidelity mockups. The Fastest Gun is utterly dependent on designers to provide legitimacy to their vision, and will put tremendous pressure on design orgs to sacrifice every scrap scrutiny and process at the altar of velocity and skip directly to thisstage.But the deadline UX is rushed towards is not for getting working software into the hands of a user. Its to lock in the Fastest Guns assumptions, drowning stakeholders with trivial detail to avoid pushback on the flimsy premise underneath.A UX design practice that gives in to this working relationship may have a seat at the table, but will have nothing valuable tosay.Party in the front, business-as-usual in thebackDesign positioned in this way also takes on the entire risk when the idea underperforms the Fastest Guns lofty promises. This is becausewithout the decision-making feedback loops of the design processUX becomes entirely a delivery function. And if the vision is sound (after all, the stakeholders signed off on it) then the problems must be with implementation details.This is where the promise of ship to learn falls apart. The delivery team indeed learns something from building the product, but the decisions impacted by those learnings are not actually made in the delivery phase. The relationship between the delivery team and the Fastest Gun is not a feedback loop; choices are made based on horse-trading and internal marketing long before anyone on the ground has a say aboutthem.Fighting fire withdesignYou can be efficient or effective. When it comes to innovation, choose effective.Christina WodtkeThis is why designs appeals to quality have fallen on deaf earsin this influence system, quality is entirely besides the point. The fact that we care about quality and the Fastest Gun in the West does not is precisely what makes them thefastest.The answer is not to try and compete on velocity. No matter how many steps we cut from the design process, we will never be faster than someone who shoots from the hip. Instead, we need to engage stakeholders on a higher levelilluminate the target faster, to show how badly their shots are missing themark.A rational framing of how what we are doing rolls up to what we want to achieve is critical if we hope to be able to say no to low-quality ideas.Optimizing time to high fidelity mockups is the wrong strategy because mockups are not the appropriate tool for this. They are a tool for solutionsand at this point, you have not even framed theproblem.To beat the Fastest Gun, designers need to engage stakeholders at the level of the mental modelthe desired customer behavior change, the outcomes achieved by meeting their needs, and how they impact the business. A UI mockup doesnt carry any of that information, because the UI is not the product. It cannot tell you whether or not its premise isvalid.The lower the fidelity, the fewer distractions from the core value proposition.But low-fidelity tools can; they are designed for that purpose. The customer goal and problem, as well as the implications of the proposed solution framing, can be captured in a scenario storyboard or PRFAQ at the right level of fidelity to invite refinement rather than avoid it. These artifacts give enough clarity for a stakeholder to say no, this would not be a meaningful impact and create permission to avoid a dead end and choose another direction.If we have done our jobs right then by the time the Fastest Gun in the West tries to shoot, stakeholders will be able to see that he hasmissed.The fastest gun in UX: Why your team is telling the wrong story was originally published in UX Collective on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

We may earn a commission from links on this page. Deal pricing and availability subject to change after time of publication.If you wish you would've bought a Peloton on Prime Day, I have good news for you: The original Peloton is cheaper right now than it was on Prime Day. The Peloton+, Peloton's best exercise bike, is seeing a higher discount of $350. You can get a Peloton+ for $2,146.86 (originally $2,495), which is $348.14 off the usual price. The original Peloton Bike is currently at $1,145 (originally $1,445), which is $300 off its regular price. Peloton Bike Includes delivery and setup. $1,145.00 $1,445.00 Save $300.00 Get Deal Get Deal $1,145.00 $1,445.00 Save $300.00 Peloton Bike+ Includes delivery and setup. $2,445.00 at Amazon Get Deal Get Deal $2,445.00 at Amazon Both Pelotons are well-priced considering historical prices, but if you can't make up your mind on which one is better for you, Lifehacker Senior Health Editor Beth Skwarecki broke down their differences in detail here. Essentially, the Peloton Bike has all the important features, like the touchscreen where you follow along classes and can see scenic routes, play games on the screen by adjusting your resistance knob, and even watch Netflix while you exercise. The Bike+ has everything the Bike has, plus resistance that automatically adjusts when youre following along with a class. The touchscreen is also on a swivel, allowing you to do yoga and strength classes on the floor next to your Bike+. Amazon offers free inside entryway delivery when you order a Peloton Bike or Bike+.If you're considering buying a used Peloton instead, here is what you can expect; keep in mind there's a $95 fee (plus some other costs you might want to consider) that you'll need to pay Peloton in order for the machine to trade hands. You'll also need a $44 per-month All Access membership to use all of the Bikes features.

With TikTok likely just days away from being banned in the US, the apps users are pushing some previously little-known apps to the top of Apple and Googles stores. The app that has so far seemed to benefit the most is a Chinese social media app called RedNote or Xiaohongshu, which translates to "little red book."The TikTok-like app for shortform video is currently the number one app in Apples App Store and is in the 34th spot in Googles Play Store. RedNote has been gaining popularity as many TikTok creators have begun posting about their experiences trying out the Chinese app. Meanwhile, over on RedNote, a number of creators have shared videos about welcoming TikTok refugees to the service.The app is set up very much like TikTok, with the ability to vertically scroll through feeds of shortform videos based on your interests. Much of the apps interface is in Chinese, so it can be a bit confusing to navigate, though there are some helpful videos on TikTok that explain how to change the apps language to English.While RedNote seems to have come out of nowhere, the app has been popular in China for years. CNBC reports that the more than decade-old app is seen as a challenger to ByteDances Douyin and e-commerce giant Alibaba, with about 300 million users.RedNote isnt the only app thats been boosted by anxious TikTok users. Another ByteDance app, Lemon8, is also trending in both Apple and Googles stores, where its in the second and first spot, respectively. But while TikTok itself has at times boosted the app, Lemon8 will likely face the same fate as TikTok should the Supreme Court side with the Biden Administration, which seems likely.Another video app called Flip, which describes itself as where social meets shopping, is also trending in both app stores. The app, from Los Angeles-based Humans, Inc., features shortform videos and an in-app storefront. Its currently ranked number 14 in Googles store and number four in Apples. The company was valued at more than $1 billion last year, according to Crunchbase.Another app that has seemingly benefited from the impending TikTok ban is something called ReelShort. While the apps name sounds like a play on Instagrams reels and YouTube Shorts both of which are well established TikTok clones the app seems to be less of a TikTok clone and more of a wannabe streaming platform. The app features bite-sized clips of longer movies with bizarre titles like The Heiress Blacklisted her Husband and In Love with the Alpha. ReelShort is number seven in the App Store number two in Google Play.While its unlikely any of these apps will remain popular for long, the fact that so many relatively unknown apps have risen to the top of the app stores so quickly is yet another sign of how influential TikToks users and creators can be. It also highlights how banning TikTok alone wont curb the influence of Chinese tech companies in the US.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/social-media/chinese-social-media-app-rednote-is-the-number-one-app-as-tiktok-ban-looms-235929802.html?src=rss

Looking for NYT Connections answers and hints? Here's all you need to know to solve today's game, plus my commentary on the puzzles.

The Chinese government is considering a plan for Elon Musk to acquire TikTok's U.S. business, Bloomberg News reported on Monday.

American TikTok fanatics are migrating over to another Chinese short-form social media platform ahead of next weeks potential TikTok ban. On Monday, Xiaohongshu, which translates to little red book but is being called RedNote, shot up to become the most-downloaded app on the Apples U.S. App Store.The app, which has 300 million monthly active users, is similar to Pinterest with a mix of Instagram and TikTok. It also boasts several social shopping features.Xiaohongshu launched in 2013 and is flush with investor attention. Its raised roughly $917 million in venture funding and is reportedly valued at $17 billion. But the American attention has come on suddenly, especially considering Xiaohongshu/RedNote has done little outreach to the U.S. market. Users have to switch the language over from Mandarin to English in the settings. @ferrethybrid because I keep seeing comments about needing a translator you will for chinese users captions and some searches but not app functions now! #fyp #trending #creatorsearchinsights #tiktokban original sound alex TikTok is now being flooded with content from users who are posting their experiences on Xiaohongshu. A large part of the user interest amounts to general pettiness: The government takes a highly addictive app away due to its host countrys national security threats, and users just find another one from said host country.Its actually the funniest turn of events ever, one TikTok user posted in the comments of a video. I made my username my social security number just so my red note guy would get promoted faster, a user joked in the comments on another TikTok, referencing the meme that Chinese spies curated users highly specific TikTok feeds. @annapaigemorgan We petty and I love it, see you on rednote #rednote #tiktokban original sound Kristen The future of TikTok is, for now, still undecided. The Supreme Court is expected to rule by the end of this week as to whether the app can continue operating in the U.S. unless it divests from its parent company or is sold to an approved buyer.Right now, its set to be banned in the U.S. on January 19, and all signs point to the Supreme Court upholding the ban.TikTok would likely be removed from app stores immediately, so that companies like Apple and Google dont have to pay hefty fines. This doesnt mean that the app will disappear from American users devices. But the apps quality would eventually degrade or TikTok could pull users from having access to videos on the platform.President-elect Donald Trump could also try to thwart the bans implementation once he takes office on January 20, but its unclear whether those efforts would actually work.