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2024-02-23, 11:45 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Baldur's Gate 3 II: The Urge for a Second Playthrough
SpoilerThe implication is that there was a Mind Flayer colony under Moonrise well before Ketheric had anything to do with the tower, yes.
SpoilerYou'll use a four person party as usual. The others are implied to be off fighting elsewhere in the city during the event, but never shown doing so.Last edited by Zevox; 2024-02-23 at 11:46 AM.
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2024-02-23, 11:55 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Baldur's Gate 3 II: The Urge for a Second Playthrough
Last edited by BRC; 2024-02-23 at 12:12 PM.
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2024-02-23, 12:16 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Baldur's Gate 3 II: The Urge for a Second Playthrough
So I've gone Duelling with a shield for the current portion of my run, but I've heard that Great Weapon fighting works on Smite damage dice as well as those from the weapon itself, so I'm wondering if it's worth switching.
The fact that both Lae'zel and Karlach are two handed fighters makes me suspect it's where the devs put all the really good weapons.
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2024-02-23, 12:20 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Baldur's Gate 3 II: The Urge for a Second Playthrough
The Cranky Gamer
*It isn't realism, it's verisimilitude; the appearance of truth within the framework of the game.
*Picard management tip: Debate honestly. The goal is to arrive at the truth, not at your preconception.
*Mutant Dawn for Savage Worlds!
*The One Deck Engine: Gaming on a budget
Written by Me on DriveThru RPG
There are almost 400,000 threads on this site. If you need me to address a thread as a moderator, include a link.
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2024-02-23, 12:57 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Baldur's Gate 3 II: The Urge for a Second Playthrough
Ansur didn't do that, he managed it on his own - potentially according to prophecy, if this is tied into the events described in the Illithiad.
I mean... Devils like to put things in writing
Act 3 mostly.
Foebreaker / Corpsegrinder
Hellbeard
Nyluran
Lae'zel's Silver Sword
Balduran's Giantslayer
Sword of Chaos
There's some decent ones earlier in the game like Halberd of Vigilance, but the majority of the really hard-hitting two-handers are lategame.
Note that you need to pick those four before the point of no return (i.e. the boat). It's pretty clearly signposted but still.
To maximize your endgame options, I recommendSpoilerGale and Karlach be on the list. In addition, Halsin and Jaheira can help out even if they're not in the party, so I recommend not taking them.Plague Doctor by Crimmy
Ext. Sig (Handbooks/Creations)
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2024-02-23, 01:15 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Baldur's Gate 3 II: The Urge for a Second Playthrough
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2024-02-23, 01:24 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Feb 2020
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2024-02-23, 03:41 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Dec 2007
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- San Antonio, Texas
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Re: Baldur's Gate 3 II: The Urge for a Second Playthrough
The Cranky Gamer
*It isn't realism, it's verisimilitude; the appearance of truth within the framework of the game.
*Picard management tip: Debate honestly. The goal is to arrive at the truth, not at your preconception.
*Mutant Dawn for Savage Worlds!
*The One Deck Engine: Gaming on a budget
Written by Me on DriveThru RPG
There are almost 400,000 threads on this site. If you need me to address a thread as a moderator, include a link.
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2024-02-23, 07:07 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Oct 2009
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- In my library
Re: Baldur's Gate 3 II: The Urge for a Second Playthrough
apparently in BG3 Duelling doesn't work with Versatile weapons... Which is the vast majority of 'warrior' weapons. So I suppose it's back to the greatsword, the weapon of boring Paladins.
Side note: thrown weapons seem utterly ridiculous when properly specced, Larian really needs to nerf Tavern Brawler.
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2024-02-23, 07:22 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Baldur's Gate 3 II: The Urge for a Second Playthrough
Toph Pony avatar by Dirtytabs. Thanks!
"When I was ten, I read fairy tales in secret and would have been ashamed if I had been found doing so. Now that I am fifty, I read them openly. When I became a man, I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up." -C.S. Lewis
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2024-02-23, 10:17 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Baldur's Gate 3 II: The Urge for a Second Playthrough
trying to make more of an effort to get through BG3 but its slow going. game is well made but its making me realize that what I liked about Bioware games was how well streamlined they were in retrospect. they introduced your party members really well and real quickly, they didn't make you travel around random wilderness aimlessly, cause I had to look up a guide to get Karlach faster, I know people like CRPGs now for some reason, but a lot of how it works just seems to be an unnecessary hassle and clunky design. the characters are good and I guess the combat's fine, I just wish it that it played.....faster? its a little too faithful to DnD 5e, and in my opinion it could've done more to strip out the unnecessary ttrpg mechanics. like I could honestly do without having to worry about camp supplies, there is a lot of instances where I just open the wiki for this or that because I'm unsure about a dialogue thing or where to find a party member, it just feels like its expecting things from me when I just want to like get to the meat of it, y'know?
I did get creative with like, getting some infernal iron for karlach, because the ladder blew up, so I had to blast open the chest with the iron in it with my eldritch blast then conjure a mage hand to throw it down at me. which good on the game for having a way to get that in a different way than usual. part of me is annoyed the made ladders destroyable in the first place though, but I guess it did lead to that creative moment.
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2024-02-24, 12:44 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Jul 2023
Re: Baldur's Gate 3 II: The Urge for a Second Playthrough
I'm not the biggest fan of the party member recruits here either, but I actually think they have the opposite problem, they're very fast. The game wants you to have a fully combat capable party as soon as possible, so the second you're out of the tutorial it's rapid-fire companion introductions in the crash site. I actually appreciated that Karlach has an actual recruitment quest and isn't just in the starting area of the map.
It's because they're good.
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2024-02-24, 01:04 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Baldur's Gate 3 II: The Urge for a Second Playthrough
I still don't understand how anyone doesn't find Karlach quickly, unless they choose to ignore Wyll's request and pursue other quests first. They put a marker on the map exactly where she is once Wyll tells you about her. I found her quite quickly just by trying to go there in my very first run.
Last edited by Zevox; 2024-02-24 at 01:05 AM.
Toph Pony avatar by Dirtytabs. Thanks!
"When I was ten, I read fairy tales in secret and would have been ashamed if I had been found doing so. Now that I am fifty, I read them openly. When I became a man, I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up." -C.S. Lewis
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2024-02-24, 01:21 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Baldur's Gate 3 II: The Urge for a Second Playthrough
he didn't do that for me. I tried to talk to him to get the quest and he didn't even give me a marker or an option to talk about it even though he mentioned her name. I recruited him and everything and it didn't say where she was. had to look up an online map to get her location. I wouldn't have even known there was a place to jump across the river on if not for it. heck, I didn't even know where Wyll was and had to look him up first, I passed by the tiefling training are so many times and didn't notice him because I was trying to do other things and listening to them was the same repeating dialogue so I dismissed it as just this random ambient scene.
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2024-02-24, 01:43 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Jul 2023
Re: Baldur's Gate 3 II: The Urge for a Second Playthrough
Well, when it's working properly it's quite intuitive, and I actually think it's one of the better paced companion introductions. It's not lightning fast like the rest of the origin companions and there isn't a frustrating disconnect between the point when you meet them and the point where you get to actually recruit them like some of the later companions.
(The non-origin companions were to my knowledge not originally planned and it really feels like it. They're paced very oddly and there's not very many of them)
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2024-02-24, 07:32 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Baldur's Gate 3 II: The Urge for a Second Playthrough
Okay, my game is definitely bugged. Cleared out Moonrise Towers, including the guests in the cellar, and Halsin is still waiting for me to get to Moonrise Tower.
Eh. I'll just continue without him.Resident Vancian Apologist
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2024-02-24, 08:22 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Oct 2009
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Re: Baldur's Gate 3 II: The Urge for a Second Playthrough
IIRC that maker is actually somewhat off, Karlach was just outside the highlighted area when I first played. Still not difficult to find.
There's also two potentially annoying gnoll encounters in the area, as well as a Raphael trigger. Those gnolls might be a pretty significant roadblock to new players, although there's routes to avoid them (even if the jumping on one always buggs out).
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2024-02-24, 10:02 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Baldur's Gate 3 II: The Urge for a Second Playthrough
I made a webcomic, featuring absurdity, terrible art, and alleged morals.
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2024-02-24, 10:52 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Feb 2020
Re: Baldur's Gate 3 II: The Urge for a Second Playthrough
Eh. If you want to "rush to Karlach" then you are operating with meta knowledge of the game already.
Like, i dont understand the point of the critique here.
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2024-02-24, 12:26 PM (ISO 8601)
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2024-02-24, 01:11 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Baldur's Gate 3 II: The Urge for a Second Playthrough
I wonder if there's some option that you've got turned off, then? Because I know every quest gets marked on the map automatically for me.
Bugs out? You mean the rocks in the river you can jump across? I've always used those, and never encountered any bugs there. Unless you count allies not automatically following you, forcing me to manually tell them to jump across, but that's unfortunately common any time you're going through parts you can only traverse by jumping.
If you don't find her quickly because you don't know she's a companion and thus prioritize other things, that makes sense - and would be covered under what I said about just prioritizing other quests over Wyll's side-quest. But that's not her being hard to find.Last edited by Zevox; 2024-02-24 at 01:11 PM.
Toph Pony avatar by Dirtytabs. Thanks!
"When I was ten, I read fairy tales in secret and would have been ashamed if I had been found doing so. Now that I am fifty, I read them openly. When I became a man, I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up." -C.S. Lewis
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2024-02-25, 10:26 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Baldur's Gate 3 II: The Urge for a Second Playthrough
^ This - she's an origin character, so even on my first playthrough I just assumed she'd be early in Act 1 somewhere if I explored the grove environs long enough, similar to how you run into all the Divinity origins in and around Fort Joy.
I did find the jump-accessible-only areas annoying at first, it's not a traversal method I was trained to think of in this genre. They could have at least had the characters automatically jump if there's a path instead of the "can't reach" error as though it's out of bounds. But by Act 2 I was double-checking every area I couldn't walk to just to be safe.Plague Doctor by Crimmy
Ext. Sig (Handbooks/Creations)
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2024-02-25, 10:40 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Jul 2023
Re: Baldur's Gate 3 II: The Urge for a Second Playthrough
I find the jumping is often frustrating, it feels like a bit of a bodge and it's probably the mechanical element I think this game's successors would benefit most from iterating on and refining, but the moments of organically realizing that "oh, that's something I can do?" were really something, honestly. Like I've found the monastery pretty tedious on repeats because of how much 3d navigation there is, but that first run through was genuinely kind of magical, I never would have expected a CRPG's navigation to feel like Dishonoured
Last edited by Errorname; 2024-02-25 at 10:42 PM.
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2024-02-26, 02:10 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Baldur's Gate 3 II: The Urge for a Second Playthrough
I like it if there are multiple ways to get somewhere and the most straightforward (but not necessarily the most optimal) doesn't require jumping. The monastery I found annoying because I had to alt-tab out to a guide to realize that jumping was the intended way to get basically everywhere. Compare to House of Hope, the Goblin Camp, or Moonrise - places where jumping is useful (especially if you're trying to be sneaky) but not mandatory. I much prefer the latter design.
Plague Doctor by Crimmy
Ext. Sig (Handbooks/Creations)
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2024-02-26, 02:40 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Jul 2023
Re: Baldur's Gate 3 II: The Urge for a Second Playthrough
It's hit by the fact that jumping can be a little tedious? I've mostly been playing on Steam Deck, which is usually extremely natural (maybe too much so, I'm having trouble going back to mouse/keyboard CRPGs actually) but jumping is a major exception to that.
In a setting that manages to make the navigation as fluid as say, jumping and climbing and blinking in Dishonoured, I think mandatory jumps and climbing would be a lot easier to swallow.
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2024-02-26, 03:47 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Baldur's Gate 3 II: The Urge for a Second Playthrough
Also, whenever my main character jumps an even slightly tricky gap, at least one or two party members would always refuse to follow. Meaning I'd have to go into turn-based mode and jump them all across the gap one by one. Made the Underdark incredibly annoying.
Maybe they patched, because I've been having hte problem less in the second act.Resident Vancian Apologist
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2024-02-26, 09:51 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Oct 2009
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Re: Baldur's Gate 3 II: The Urge for a Second Playthrough
BG3 weirdly has the same issue that early Devil May Cry does, the jump feels really good in combat, but pretty terrible outside of it. I think it would have felt much better if noncombat jumps were contextual.
I also think the targeting is a big factor, if I'm just walking around in controller mode it's perfectly fluid but as soon as you need to jump you have to stop, target where you want to jump, and wait for two seconds for the animation. Then you have to spend the next ten seconds making sure Shadowheart isn't still waiting on the other side like a lemon. Then another twenty five jumping everyone else across because you forgot to activate turn based mode. THEN you realize that for some reason Gale's still hanging out at the last light inn while you're exploring the bowels of Moonrise Towers...
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2024-02-26, 11:04 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Baldur's Gate 3 II: The Urge for a Second Playthrough
I was wondering to myself why I didn't have this experience of jumping seeming unintuitive in exploration, but perhaps it's because I'm playing on console? I'm not experiencing it as a point-and-click game, I'm manually moving my character like in any other game, so jumping feels like a natural thing to be doing and looking for places to do (albeit with an unnatural way to access it, since it's bound to up on the d-pad).
No, that's normal, I encountered that all the time all throughout the game. Though my solution was to ungroup people before switching to give them the command rather than go into turn-based mode.Toph Pony avatar by Dirtytabs. Thanks!
"When I was ten, I read fairy tales in secret and would have been ashamed if I had been found doing so. Now that I am fifty, I read them openly. When I became a man, I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up." -C.S. Lewis
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2024-02-26, 12:36 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: Baldur's Gate 3 II: The Urge for a Second Playthrough
For me, jumping was awkward because it was so many steps
Rather than "Click and walk" it was
Select Jump, Select jump location, see if my whole party follows, if NOT ungroup party, position everybody who DID jump such that there is room for the person who DIDN'T jump, make the straggler jump to join, regroup party. If you screw up and click the straggler without ungrouping, people jump back.
It was an awkward break in the mechanical flow of the game. Yeah it can be fairly smooth if it works, but there's enough time it doesn't QUITE work, especially since a decent chunk of your party are 8 strength, it can be easy to leave somebody behind, or need to play with it a bit because the pathfinding won't quite pick up that they can make the jump.
Also, I beat the game this weekend! Yay! Thoughts
Spoiler
So I WAY overthought the prep work and spent a lot of time buffing myself after the point of no return only to then get the forced long rest. The only potion that was super neccessary was the Cloud Giant Strength potion on Karlach. I had everybody else with Psychic Resistance potions, but there wasn't too much psychic damage going on.
I DID have to replay the astral brain a few times, once because the owlbear died, and once because I didn't understand what the "Orb of Negation" meant and lost have my party when a platform vanished.
I betrayed the emperor and let Orpheus become a mind flayer, then killed him as he requested. That was pretty fun.
As for the finale itself
1: The Smuggler Tunnels felt weirdly overbuilt. Like, you get to explore, find out about the smugglers, and you get ambushed by intellect devourers, but there isn't really anything to DO down there. It feels like they had a plan for that to be a proper part of the Finale, but you just wander around until you reach the Netherbrain, at which point you get a forced longrest.
I did like the confrontation with the Netherbrain itself where you learn you can't dominate it.
Phase 2: The Upper City. FINALLY, a clash with the Armies of the Absolute! Calling in your allies! This felt really cool and I liked it a lot. I wish there had been more of this? We end Act 2 with the Armies of the Absolute marching on the city, and a lot of act 3 has this shadow hanging over it of "There is an army marching this way". I kind of wish that battle had been more of a focus, instead of just the mind flayers.
Phase 3: Reach the Elder Brain. I can't say I loved this bit. I think I would have preferred a "break through the enemy lines before the Nautaloid gets here" event rather than "Dodge nautaloid bombardments", since the bombardments themselves were pretty easy to dodge just by positioning yourself carefully. Was more tedious than tactically interesting.
Phase 4: Fight on the elder brain! I wanted to play with calling in my allies, which unfortunately meant a lot of the fight was "My characters do nothing while NPC's take actions", but whatever, it was still fun. I'm curious how that goes if you side with the emperor, since he provides a bunch of the mooks for that fight. Personally, the Emperor went down laughably easily in my run after I called in the bombardments on him. Oddly, I didn't feel like the brain itself was much of a presence here. It spawned some tentacles against me, but the biggest threat by far was the mind controlled red dragon and the wizards spamming magic missile.
The STAGING of this as the "Final boss fight" worked quite well, I just wish the big centerpiece monster was actually something more connected to the Netherbrain or the Absolute, rather than just being "Oh BTW we dominated one of the Githyanki's Dragons". It certainly had the energy of "The DM plops down the coolest model they own", but narratively I would have preferred if the final battle featured a centerpiece monster that was a little more connected to the Absolute, rather than just "Here's a random big dragon to fight". Like, I know and can appreciate that the goal of the fight is to get your Mind Flayer to the crown to dominate it, but part of me was craving a proper Boss Fight, and the closest thing I got was Random Big Dragon and The Emperor, and the Emperor didn't have the staying power to survive my turn.
Phase 5: Battle in the Elder Brain's Psyche. This felt like something that depends a LOT on if you know it's coming. My first time doing the battle half my party was across the map and had to sprint for the portal. The second time I knew to get people into position, and it was a cakewalk. It's mostly an annoying movement puzzle+beating on a pinata, but I think it worked decently well.
More thoughts to come
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2024-02-26, 01:56 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Jul 2023
Re: Baldur's Gate 3 II: The Urge for a Second Playthrough
SpoilerSee, it felt to me like "I need to have an asset that works for whichever path my players end up taking" and that if I had sided with the Emperor I would have had to fight Voss and Qudenos instead. Apparently that's not what happens, but it might have been the intent.