This is my new Dole Whip and I'm not going to drop it until I've had one.

Why the new Scarabs actually matter
The rework to Scarabs is probably the biggest reason farming feels less annoying. Before this patch, a lot of players spent more time planning map juice than enjoying the map itself. Now it's cleaner. Currency-focused Scarabs are easier to understand, easier to stack, and way more reliable in practice. That's the key bit. You can feel the return. Instead of gambling on a huge spike every few hours, you're setting up runs that pay consistently. That makes a massive difference if you're trying to fund gear upgrades without burning out by the weekend.

The Mirage Mechanism changes the pace
Then there's the Mirage Mechanism, which honestly feels like the part of the patch people will remember most. The first time it kicks in on a good map, you get it right away. It doesn't feel subtle. It feels like the game just decided to reward smart setup in a very direct way. If your map already has strong density and decent loot flow, Mirage can push the whole thing into another tier. A lucky Divine turning into two is the flashy example, sure, but even outside those moments, the mechanic adds enough value over time that your stash starts filling faster than expected. You notice it after a few sessions, not just in one highlight clip.

Best mechanics to pair with it
What's working best right now is a simple mix of old favourites that already scale well with extra mobs and extra drops. Strongboxes are fantastic again, especially if you build around opening lots of them in one map. Breach also feels worth the slot because the monster count is there, finally, and that feeds everything else. Delirium rounds it out by making the whole map thicker and more rewarding, though it can get rough if your build is shaky. That's the catch with 3.28. The money is there, no question, but you still need a character that can clear fast and survive when the screen gets messy.

Keeping your farming realistic
The nice thing about this league is that you don't have to pretend every map is a jackpot to feel progress. The baseline returns are healthy, and when the big moments happen, they hit harder because they come on top of steady profit. That makes planning a lot easier, whether you're saving for upgrades or just trying to keep momentum going after work. And if you're short on time or want a quicker way to finish a build, plenty of players also keep U4GM in mind for game currency and item support, since convenience matters too when a league is moving this fast.

I like looking shit up online so I've been wanting to make a thread for sharing things you kinda half-remember like toys or whatever. Watch the above video for an idea of what is going on here.

I'll start this off with I had a rubber squeeze toy of a glass frog but it had semi realistic internal organs. Google is giving me ones that are just full of colorful balls and that is not what it was

IN SHORT: Matrix is cool and you can have free stickers and emojis. Sign up for an account on Cinny. For homeserver, you can stick with matrix.org. If you're an Eggware Social subscriber you can use chat.eggware.social but you'll have to contact me for the special registration code.

What?

At its simplest, Matrix is a free and open source alternative to Discord.

It's decentralized and federated, which means you're not relying on a single company.

The idea of "using Matrix" is made up of three components: the protocol, the server, and the client. The most appropriate comparison I can make is to IRC, but here's one you probably use every day: e-mail is a protocol, @gmail.com is a server, and mail.google.com is a client.

Matrix is the protocol. There are a few different choices for server software, but you don't have to worry about that if you're not self-hosting. There are a fair amount of clients, and they all have their own special problems.

Spaces and rooms

Matrix has spaces and rooms. This is roughly analogous to Discord's servers and channels, but there are some differences.

First off, every "channel" in Matrix is a room. Direct messages are 2-person rooms. Spaces are rooms... that contain other rooms.

Two spaces can contain the same room. There's a good explanation for that here. If you had a space for Garfield and a space for food, they could both share the Garfield Food room, and then you'd get some crossover from people who might otherwise not talk. This also cuts down on the need for sending people temporary invites to your friends-only server.

Joining a space doesn't automatically join all the rooms within it. This seems annoying, but I think it's a great idea. My most consistent problem with moderating Discord servers was that there wasn't an easy way to keep people out of channels that they weren't interested in.

Why?

Oh boy! This is the part where I get to sound like a walking advertisement!

Matrix offers end-to-end encryption. That means your data can stay private.

It's not proprietary, and development isn't driven by money. That means the community is generally the ones deciding what features get in.

Since Matrix officially supports community clients, you can install whatever accessibility features you need. Using third-party Discord clients is technically against the TOS even if you're just trying to make the service less hostile towards you.

The protocol doesn't require government-issued IDs for age verification. That means you can join channels with sensitive topics and you don't have to worry about your ID getting leaked in a data breach.

You can have all of the custom emojis that you want, and you can use them across servers for free. You can also use these emojis at sticker size!

How?

You will first need to choose a server and a client. I'll detail those soon.

The registration page on your client of choice will ask for a homeserver, a username, and a password. Depending on your server of choice, it might also ask for a registration token, essentially a secret key; hopefully your admin will have already provided you this.

Once you're signed in, you're free to explore the app a bit. You could make a new Room and try out emojis. Or you could join an existing room and embarrass yourself. Maybe you'd like to join the Eggware Social space!

Servers

If you're just looking to try things out, the official matrix.org homeserver is a decent enough starting point. I used it while I was starting out, and it worked fine. It has file transfer limitations you might want to know about, which is to be expected from the largest and official-est server.

If you're already an Eggware Social subscriber, you can contact me and I can set you up with instructions to get an account on our server.

You do NOT need to be a part of the Eggware Social server in order to join the Eggware Social space or its rooms.

Technical alert! On registration (detailed below), be sure to put the homeserver's full name in. The homeserver's name and its display name are not necessarily always the same. Generally, this is just dropping a subdomain for brevity's sake. For example, Eggware's homeserver is chat.eggware.social, but in your username it will display as "@username:eggware.social".

Clients

There are many clients and all of them have unique problems. I recommend Cinny, which is mostly feature-complete. For mobile, Fluffychat is alright, though it struggles with threads; Cinny also works just fine through mobile browser.

I don't recommend Element; you can't upload custom emoji and I also just don't like it very much. But if you really don't like Cinny and you have free time to waste, you can try out other clients. It might be a good idea to have a feature-complete test room where you can view how it handles threads, custom emojis, etc. You're probably going to find a client that works great except for one feature that you need. Get used to that.

Encryption

If you're just getting started and you're not really tech-y, I really don't think you need to worry about this too much. If you want to read encrypted rooms, make sure not to lose your recovery key, or you'll lose all of the encrypted messages you had access to before.

Why not just use Signal?

I'm adding this now because I've seen this being pitched a lot.

Signal is good for encrypted private conversations. If you want to use it, go for it! Really!

Signal is primarily a messenger. It's just not really a good "chat room" software and I wouldn't be recommending it to people looking to get off of Discord. Accounts need a phone number, which is a significant hurdle. Signal is open-source, but it's extremely centralized, so you don't get client options. It is also all hosted on a main server, so if Signal pulls the rug at any point, you're fucked.

I host Matrix because it has room for fun features, like bots that I can run without needing throwaway phone numbers. I also believe in its commitment to freedom of self-expression, something that other chat software seems to lack. If you're primarily concerned about mass-distributing warez, you... should have been on Signal in the first place.

Signal also has a reputation, which lead to it getting banned in Turkey, and it likely will be targeted in other countries if a mass exodus happens onto it. I just think that's worth keeping in mind and I rarely see it brought up.

One last thing: I know this software can be difficult. If you need my help with something, please don't take your anger out on me. I am not here making these choices to torture you!! I want it to be usable just as much as you do!!

Once I got into it, I was hooked. It hit the perfect notes of horror and strange sci-fi organization for me, especially since I was pretty squeamish about horror and I liked the Containment more than the actual Scary most of the time. In high school, I did not have a lot of friends, so I spent most of my free time in the school library reading SCPs on the computers there. I singlehandedly got TVTropes, the SCP Foundation, and several fanfiction websites blocked on the school's internet filter! It took them a while to catch on, though, and in that time I immersed myself in the world of SCP.

Recently, I learned an artist I liked for completely unrelated reasons had written several fantastic modern SCPs, and it brought me right back to my teenagerhood of reading stupid scary stories in the library...so I decided to use that interest re-ignition to go back and read as many as I could, over a decade since I first tried. I'll be doing this until I either get bored, or get so fed up with terrible stories that I don't want to do this anymore.

I should note, the way I'm going to do this is NOT how I would recommend someone first try to get into SCP. What I recommend, and what I did myself, was checking out the top rated pages on the site, both new and old, to get a feel for what authors and subjects you like, and get a taste of the best SCP has to offer. Reading every single one in order is a lot of quality and content whiplash (and starting with the oldest ones is definitely not good for getting the feel of how the site is now), but for writing about them rapid-fire like this, it's the method I wanted to use.

...I say that, and then I immediately make my first exception. I am NOT reading 001 first. If you really want to read them in order with me, don't read 001 first. SCP-001 is not one SCP, but rather a whole lot of "proposals" for the coveted first slot on the list. I haven't even read all of them myself, because there's new ones for every series (every 1000 SCPs marks the line of a "series") and since these are proposals for SCP Number One, they tend to be very long and elaborate deals, or at the very least have a lot of context.

I'll start most of my mini-reviews with a sentence kind of summing up what the SCP is, and I'll end each one with a rating, similar to the ones on the site -- the way pages get popular, and featured, and chosen for deletions and rewrites is through a voting system. Many people will leave comments stating why they're choosing to rate an SCP a certain way, and though I would not dare leave all these as comments on the actual articles (I'm petty in a lot of these and they're not all super elaborate opinions), I have certainly read a lot of comments, and I think the rating system is a good way to sum up what I feel about an article. +1 means I liked it, and support it being on the list. +0 means I wouldn't upvote it, but would let it be as is. -0 means I wouldn't downvote it, but think it needs some work or is missing something. -1 means I don't like it and think it needs a serious rewrite or even deletion.

I'll get around to it whenever

Banana Peanut Butter

• 1 banana
• 1 equivalent unit of peanut butter

Eat out of a bowl with a spoon.

I used to make a "hot dog" by slicing a banana and filling it with peanut butter and chocolate syrup. I've dropped the chocolate syrup and learned that by the time it makes its way into my mouth it really doesn't matter what shape it's in. I might make myself a banana dog for my birthday though.