Patman99

@turtlebird95: Yeah, they all seem to be overpriced. I hope that there's maybe a few reasonable options but the ones I see cost about 25-33% more than they should. I can't see anyone dropping that much money on one of these things simply "because they're small". You're better off building a proper desktop and then figuring out some other solution for piping the video to your main tv. The savings would buy you a year's worth of games.

This is the correct answer.

Dan getting fucking wrecked in the Smash Bros tournament is probably the funniest thing he has ever done without saying a word. I love that the announcers didn't know Dan was an editor at Giant Bomb until after the first match. Well done, Dan. Fucking classic.

EDIT: Just finished watching that video. Everyone should watch it. Fucking hell. Way to go, Dan. Christ. This is fucking great and I don't even like Smash Bros.

Huh, I haven't heard about this. Sounds kinda interesting.

I think others have said this but I want to reiterate it. If you are constantly feeling short on crowns, a very good way to make some money is to deconstruct sea shells to get pearls. These can be sold to blacksmiths for an incredible sum.

If you make your way to Novigrad, there is one merchant (near the place where they burnt people at the stake) who sells sea shells (but not by the seashore). There is a blacksmith only a few steps away where you can break down the shells (and sell the pearls). I've found that by the time I run back to the merchant, he has restocked. You can sell roughly 30 black pearls for thousands of crowns and it only costs you a few hundred to buy the same number of shells.

It feels a bit "gamey" to do this over and over so I only did it when I was in dire straights, specifically when I needed food to heal but I didn't have enough money to afford to pay 28 crowns for a chicken.

Lastly, I recommend playing on the difficulty below the hardest (I forget what it's called). The combat is incredibly brutal at points but I loved (hated) the feeling of running around a war-torn landscape desperately searching for food and water (and the money to buy it). I found that it added to the very deliberate and real feeling of the world. The combat also gets much easier once you level up a bit and get better equipment.

How much for the game-worn Drew t-shirt?

It personally doesn't bother me. It was a feature he did here and I would expect him to do something similar regardless of the site he publishes it on. If it was something that Giant Bomb did as a staff (or something it continued to do after he left) then it might be something to debate. But it's not.

Yes, I'm still adjusting to the idea that Scoops isn't with Giant Bomb anymore so it's a little weird in that regard. Getting over that hurdle, it doesn't shock or upset me that he would take some of his features/ideas to another site.

I also find the constant questioning if Patrick left on good terms or not to be incredibly boring. He said it did so let's leave it at that. I hate it when people try to assume these personal relationships/dynamics of Giant Bomb despite not knowing anything about these dudes beyond what we see on screen. Our "sample size" in terms of what goes on at Giant Bomb is incredibly small.

I would take the advice from many others in this thread and try and reduce the cost of the PC you want to build. There are plenty of low-cost options out there for a person who wants to play games that isn't going to cost you $2000. Your build is slightly overkill for what I think you would be doing with it.

Regardless of that, I think that your strategy of mowing lawns and shoveling driveways will get you some money but maybe it would be possible to work out some sort of system with your parents. One idea would be to ask them to match dollar for dollar every cent you earn by working. So if you get $20 to mow a lawn, your parents would chip in $20. I think you'd still need a heck of a lot more but it would work with your current strategy.

Alternatively, perhaps you could work out a sort of allowance with them. One (sneaky) way would be to ask them to give you an increasing amount of money each week for a year. So they would give you $1 for week 1, $2 for week 2, $3 for week 3 and so on. So by the last week of the year (week 52) they would give you $52. In total, this would net you $1,378 after 52 weeks. Add that to your lawn mowing and you'd be pretty close to your goal. Certainly close enough to build a very powerful, sub-$2000 PC. It might take some negotiating. Maybe they would feel safer depositing the cash in a savings account that you can only access after a year.

If you are going to ask your parents for money, make it clear why the $2000 would go to good use. One argument you might consider is that this PC would last you for a while and is easily upgraded. Also, it would be powerful enough for you to do media editing (and coding) which are some fairly valuable tools both in high school and post-secondary school. You would also gain some pretty good experience and knowledge from building the thing itself.

Hopefully this helps, young man.

Drew is great. I have a similar taste in games as he does and I think his opinions are generally in line with mine as well. Not to mention his stories are the educational and interesting ying to Jeff's batshit crazy yang.

I really like his sense of humour too. He often says incredibly witty things that go unnoticed.

Good luck to him! I'm a little surprised but I think he will fit in great there.