Yeah, I understand very well. My disability is different, but money is still tight and when my Sound Blaster died it was really annoying trying to find a way to replace it within my budget and without rearranging my whole setup. I’m new to audiophile stuff too so it’s intimidating and a lot to learn.

For my use case, I look more into the USB audio interface side of things because I need to have an XLR input and a monitoring plug with zero latency. If you don’t need anything like that, then a DAC or a DAC/amp combo is what you want. I’m not really an audiophile and this is getting into that area so I’m not the best person to explain it. Definitely take anything I say with a grain of salt and make sure you check. But I think you only really need the amp if it’s required to drive your headphones. If you don’t have high impedance headphones, then you should be able to skip the amp and just get any DAC that fits your needs.

There’s a huge variety of brands, price points, and features. It’s dipping your toe into the audiophile world so the rabbit hole is bottomless, but you can also find very good quality gear on a budget. FiiO, Topping, and Hifiman are brands I recognize, but there are plenty of others I don’t which I’m sure would still be good. It’s the kind of gear somebody buys and expects to still be working in ten years.

The one thing I personally would look for is I would avoid anything with an internal battery. That’s why my Sound Blaster died. For whatever reason, they gave it an internal battery so you could unplug it and use it as a portable headphone amp. I never needed or wanted that, but the battery started expanding and died after over ten years, so that was the end. It’s not a feature I care about, so I’m better off getting something without a battery.

For what it’s worth, a quick search suggests any USB DAC should work fine in both Windows and Linux as long as it doesn’t require special software. So if you look for an affordable USB DAC with physical buttons/dials and all the inputs and features you want, that should help narrow things down to start. You can definitely find one with multiple inputs for both the speakers and a headset, and possibly different volume settings. But I’m not sure - different settings for different inputs might also be more in the realm of a USB audio interface, which may not be as good of a fit for your situation. But you could always look: Focusrite Scarlett 2i2 and Motu M2 2x2 are very strong contenders for me.

Also, at least in the US, Sweetwater is a reputable site for audio gear. I’m sure there are others, of course, but it’s a start.

Good luck!

I haven’t made the switch away from Windows yet, but I hope to try in the near future. So I don’t know if my suggestion is of any help to you. But I’m one of the other weirdos not using onboard sound. Is there a reason you need a PCI card specifically?

Most good options these days are external. I had an external sound blaster for years that I bought before learning that it was basically just a sound blaster branded external DAC. When I can, I want to replace it with either another external DAC from a proper audio manufacturer or a USB audio interface.

If you look for those instead of sound cards, you’ll find a lot more options. I have no idea if that’s useful to you or if any of them work in Linux, though. Well… some idea. I know somebody who I think is running Linux with his DAC, now that I think about it.

So, I hope that’s helpful to you. Cheers :)

It’s a fun sport to watch for so many reasons, but the first that stuck out to me when I first saw it was how fast it is. Sure, there’s a lot of ceremony and lead up between matches, but the matches themselves are short and intense. If you watch a summary that cuts straight to the matches or just have it on while you do other stuff and look up when the match is about to start, you’re basically getting nothing but highlights. Every single match is worthy of a slow mo action shot.

The more you learn about it, the more interesting it gets.

It has its moments of quiet exploration and somber reflection, but it’s nothing if not varied. It’s chill in that there’s no penalty for dying and indeed you’re literally forced to. But it’s still wild and exciting, and sometimes even terrifying.

While I was playing, I had someone ask me my favorite death and I knew my answer right away. That was one of the moments I realized my experience of the game had started to flip, because I had been enjoying even the parts I hated.

Better time control helps a bit too. You can wait at the fire before launch to get a better alignment for where you want to go or for a specific event. I think it was the tornado planet I tended to wait a short bit just so it lined up better? You can also end a loop early, but that you have to be taught. I don’t think it’s a spoiler to say, but if you do don’t finish this paragraph (not sure my app is doing spoiler tags right):

As for my favorite death: I was trying to land on the interloper but missed slightly and it flew right past me. I scrambled to change momentum and chase after it. It got farther and farther away but then slowly I started gaining on it again. I gained more speed and started leveling out after what felt like minutes of turning as hard as I could at max thrust. And then the sun appeared from off screen, like an angry father that just caught a misbehaving child. My punishment was immediate and thorough.

I couldn’t stop laughing for the entire loop animation. (and then I went to the interloper as planned)

It did for me too the first time I played. I’m very bad with time limits and feeling rushed. It was never going to be a good fit for me.

But a friend convinced me to try again and it did eventually get better. It’s a combination of things that’s hard to quantify. The log of hints/objectives in your ship is a huge help, as is making liberal use of the autopilot. Then as the game unfolded and drew me in, I couldn’t put it down. Now it’s one of the most unique and unforgettable experiences in my nearly 40 years of gaming.

It starts out as a bunch of random stuff to explore and it didn’t feel to me like there was much direction or even motivation. But the more I explored and learned, the more I started to ask certain questions. I’d find myself thinking I wanted to explore a place with something specific in mind. But it’s a gradual shift that builds and builds and keeps building like a book that you forced yourself to read one chapter a night. Then it’s two, and before you know it you’re keeping yourself up way too late reading until you’re left empty that there’s no more.

I only say this because you always hear about the people who adore Outer Wilds, and I wasn’t one. I utterly bounced off it and set it down for years. But I’m so glad my friend got me to try again. I want other people like me to know that you can still get into the game and end up loving it even if it didn’t click at first. It’s also okay if you don’t want to. But I have only heard one person ever say it wasn’t worth it, and it was someone who spoiled themselves.

I used to get Taco Bell like twice a month because it was tasty and cheap, even if it was garbage. But when fast food prices exploded the last few years, it really lost its appeal. The quality and variety dropped, too, and it just doesn’t make any goddamn sense to drop $15 to eat at fucking Taco Bell. There are countless better options for that price. I think I maybe ate there once in the last year and nothing about it made me feel like I missed it. A bit sad since I used to enjoy it, but in the end I’m better off.

I’m sorry you had that experience, but glad that you continued trying and had better ones. There are definitely bad therapists, and more often it’s just a bad fit. The same way you’re not going to be friends with everyone, not every therapist can really work for you. It can take a few tries to find one that really clicks. I’ve met too many people who just gave up after one try, some after literally one session. Most were not anywhere near as bad as your experience. So give yourself a lot of credit that you kept trying even after that!

I wrote this out partially for anyone else who may be earlier in their mental health journey. If it’s not a good fit after a few sessions, you can ask for a referral or just stop and find someone else. A professional will not take offense. It’s pretty normal and an expected part of their job.

How much wiggle room is enough will obviously vary a lot by player, but I do truly find the older Souls games to have much more of it than people realize if you play smart. Even a little too smart in some cases.

But I feel you on the carpal tunnel. There are a few rhythm games I enjoy, but I can no longer play them on a moderate difficulty for more than an hour before the pain starts - and it takes a couple days to settle down again. I basically have to play on the lower difficulties or not at all. It was a sad day when I learned that.

Compared to most action RPGs, they’re notoriously more methodical and slower paced. But, they’re still action RPGs. Elden Ring leans more heavily towards the action where memorization and reaction times have the most influence on success. You have to learn the patterns, but good stats and gear can make it more forgiving when you make a mistake. DS leans more towards RPG, which makes it more flexible. You can play it as a pure action game and rely on good reflexes and pattern memorization, but you can also largely brute force it with a powerful character the same as many RPGs.

If you wanted to just mod Elden Ring into something more casual, the closest thing is the seamless co-op mod. But that would rely on having at least one friend to join you. It does drastically alter the balance, but I don’t think it would help the parts of the game that make it feel inaccessible if it’s a reaction time sort of thing that’s spoiling the game for you.

I myself have played nothing but slower paced and turn based games for the last couple years, so I get it. But I have had the Souls craving creeping up on me again recently.

I find their older titles more accessible because they were a bit lower budget, more experimental, and not trying so hard to cater to players who want the hardcore experience. That means the balance is all over the place, which can make the game stupidly hard if you just dive in unprepared. But it can also make the game fairly easy if you know how to cheese the bosses, where to find the OP gear, and what spots are good to quickly level up and just overpower the game. There’s nothing wrong with reading some wiki pages or watching videos ahead of time so you can play more optimally instead of floundering around and brute forcing your way through with an underpowered character.

Demon’s Souls can have long runs back when you die, but is extremely exploitable. DS1 can still be overleveled and you can sequence break to get OP gear, but there aren’t as many blatant boss exploits.

If you get really into it, you can always do challenge runs with certain restrictions, weapons, or builds. You can always make it harder to get the magic back - if the difficulty is part of the magic for you. If it’s not, then using strategy to make it easier is just improving your enjoyment.

Oh please tell me it’s actually in the works. I want to switch to piefed but I’ve been a Boost user for years and every time I try to get used to something else I’m just reminded how much I like Boost.

Similar story here. It really sucks to feel like I’m still learning how to be a functional adult. I hope you keep making progress and celebrate all the little victories along the way.

I see white/gold too, and this always fascinated me because I’m wrong. The real dress is black/blue. It’s very hard for me to perceive that way, partly due to the bad quality picture, and particularly the background lighting.

The gold is black and the white is a dark blue irl, but in the bad coloring/lighting of the picture, the deep blue is quite washed out. Know that the colors are very washed out, know that the “gold” is black. Focus on the lower left where the colors are closest to true and block out the rest, especially the bright parts. The thick black stripe in the middle can also be a good spot to start to see it.

Hot take: their older games are better and the newer ones get progressively worse. Demon’s Souls was a solid RPG with rough edges and an interesting, detailed world. Dark Souls improved on the world and exploration, but they also specifically started to cater to all the fans that loved how “difficult” Demon’s Souls was. Ironically, they were praised for making a game to their own vision without compromising just for the sake of popularity. But difficulty alone was never the main draw of Demon’s Souls or the strength of From Software as a developer. They always specialized in immersive, detailed worlds. But ever since Demon’s Souls, they’ve catered increasingly and exclusively to the get gud crowd because it’s obviously successful (and you can hardly blame them tbh). They’re succeeding off the reputation for not doing the thing that they’re doing.

All that said, Demon’s Souls and DS1 & 3 can be enjoyed by most players if you’re willing to play slowly, level build, and use cheese strategies. I can’t speak to 2, I kinda bounced off it (I’m sorry, Zin). The rest are much harder to enjoy solo without literally just getting good at the game, as per the memes. Co-op may be a different story, obviously. If you can get into the really old stuff, King’s Field (series), Eternal Ring, and Shadow Tower Abyss are actually really fun once you get accustomed to the jank. They have a lot of the charm of the souls games without all the annoying git gud crap. RIP, they shall be missed.

The same happened to one of mine. The doctor said it might stay gone after I removed it on my own (it was easy and painless) but it still came back again so we let it grow out a little until they could do their thing again. I don’t remember it being as bad the second time because there wasn’t much nail that survived the first round, so it was really just clean up. It never came back again after round two.

wtf, they took the whole nail off!? Not that I’d really mind, for the reasons you’ve stated. Ingrown toenails somehow run in my family, but when I get the permanent procedure done the doctor still just removes a slice off on the side. What made them do the entire nail?

Tribute? You steal men’s souls, and make them your slaves!

Hearsay af but I have heard of that amount being taken. The dude was never the same again, though. Whether for better or worse is harder to say. He didn’t regret it at least, and seemed to be doing well. But he definitely saw some shit.

I get it. I’ve been down that road within the last couple years after decades of “treatment resistant depression”. The treatments aren’t pseudoscience, but it might make more sense when you realize it doesn’t do anything that can’t be done without them. It just accelerates what you can already do with therapy and positive lifestyle changes - provided you do those things. It can also help people with lingering depression whose circumstances have changed for the better. I’m not saying it’s impossible for them to help you and anything is worth a shot, but I would emphasize that you get what you put in and if your circumstances are a big contributor (like they are for many of us) it’s going to be an uphill battle.

Shrooms have high potential and they’re honestly easier to get. But mindset is still important. For some people, it’s a one and done cure. For many, they need to re dose every few months. For very few, they convince themselves they’ve messed it up and make things worse. They hold the potential for radical shifts in perspective like you never imagined, but only if you’re ready.