Now that we have a mod team in place for The Agora, this is our next priority. We're working on some preliminary guidelines based on previous discussions/votes that we'll be discussing soon.

For now, just know that we share your concerns. We want everyone to feel represented here, not just a vocal minority.

Consider this another vote for Ubuntu or any of its variants. They're beginner friendly, and established enough that you'll find plenty of resources written specifically for them. Linux Mint is another one I'd recommend for beginners, it's designed to "just work" out of the box and be an easy transition for Windows users.

Then it's just down to using it some. First and foremost, leave Windows installed until you're comfortable with whatever else you end up trying. Whether you partition, or make a bootable USB drive, or even just a VM, use some kind of temporary space for practice. The terminal is a lot less intimidating when you aren't learning in your main environment, you can go break things and see what happens.

So far, we have a captcha on account creation now and it seems to be working (from what I've seen, anyway)

It'll be a tough balancing act though. Relatively frictionless sign-up has been great for us, and anything that deals with bots will also affect that. Whatever else we may end up doing will need to be carefully considered.

You can buy some at the grocery store, it says "Moon Cheese" right on the damn bag! They wouldn't just lie about what they're selling

If you want impressive, you have 4-6 seperate terminal windows that take up the whole screen collectively. The laymen assume you're hacking the NSA or something if they see that.

Counterpoint: being able to drink a cup of coffee then immediately take a nap leads to the most restful 20 minutes of sleep you'll ever have.

Sure I'd rather be affected normally by caffeine, but at least it isn't a total wash.

9 was even worse for that, every fight drags on for ages. It's the only one I struggle to replay.

For 8, it's generally best to avoid combat anyway because of the way level scaling worked. Enemies get stronger much faster than you do, even with good junctions. And it seems like the devs knew this a, since Diablos is available so early and built for low-level play. It lets you reduce or eliminate random encounters (and very cheaply), lets you refine status magic that comes in handy at low levels, and its attack has great utility against hard targets.

The slower fights aren't as big of a deal when you aren't doing as many of them, they feel more "cinematic" instead.

Multiple lists. Short-term, medium-term, long-term, "maybe eventually". If one of them starts to feel like too much, I can kick some things down to the next one.

They're also kinda based on how much focus will be needed to complete things, not just how important or time-sensitive things are. The medium/long lists are mostly stuff for "good brain days".

I love my old Saddleback bifold. It was pricy, but it's still in great shape 10+ years later. It's also a bit bulky, but that's by design to keep them durable.