Man sells diamond engagement ring to buy Master Chief armor

By Mike Flacy November 16, 2011

H3_WSJ_CHIEF — Image used with permission by copyright holder

Recounted in full detail at the Bygone Bureau blog, Eric Smith found himself devastated after his long-time girlfriend confessed to cheating and broke up with him. At the time, Smith was prepared to propose to his now ex-girlfriend and had even obtained her perfect image of an engagement ring. Specific to her description of the perfect ring, the diamond was shaded canary yellow and set on a white gold band. After the breakup, the engagement ring remained in his closet for months. Due to the unpopular design, he was unable to sell the ring in-person to anyone, but did find a buyer on eBay and shipped off the unused jewelry.

With a substantial amount of money sitting in his Paypal account, Smith decided to get rid of the cash to destroy any lingering memory of the ex-girlfriend. While Smith still had graduate school loans to take care of, he decided to spend the entire amount on a complete set of wearable Master Chief armor from the popular Halo series. According to Smith’s comment on Reddit, he hired a Detroit-based artist on Etsy before the site shut down the alchemy section during early 2011. The suit is mostly constructed out of steel as well as fiberglass and weighs approximately 40 pounds. Designed by an armor-builder based out of the Philippines that’s known for Stormtrooper designs, the helmet utilizes LED lights and has the shiny golden sheen typical of Master Chief’s armor. The various parts of the suit arrived in seven shipments over eight months.

Since the purchase of the armor, Smith likes to walk around as Master Chief at various conventions. It takes two people to help Smith put on the armor and he has to walk around slowly to avoid breaking any section of the armor. According to Smith, he identifies with Master Chief and doesn’t regret the decision to spend all proceeds from the sale of the engagement ring on the set of Halo-inspired armor.

Contributing Editor

By day, I'm the content and social media manager for High-Def Digest, Steve's Digicams and The CheckOut on Ben's Bargains…

Gaming

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A medieval market in Manor Lords.

You can easily lose hours designing your village and appeasing your citizens in Manor Lords all by yourself. There are so many different avenues to achieve victory, but the only competition or help you can normally find is in the form of NPCs. Other factions around the map can be helpful or harmful depending on how you play, but what if you wanted to team up with a friend to combine resources, or perhaps compete to see who can crush the other first? Many strategy and city builders thrive on multiplayer components, but does Manor Lords offer those same modes? Make sure you know the answer before making your purchase if that's your intention.
Is there multiplayer or co-op in Manor Lords?
To cut to the chase, the answer is no. Manor Lords is a purely single-player experience through and through. There are no cooperative or competitive modes in the game at all, so there's no way to interact with anyone else either on PC or console. This game was just released out of early access, and there is plenty of content on the way, however, we regret to inform you that multiplayer is not in the plans for the time being.

One developer took to the Steam forums to release an FAQ on the game. One question specifically asked if there is any multiplayer or cooperative gameplay in the game. The response said that "he focus is on a refined single-player experience, with no multiplayer or cooperative modes planned at the moment."

Gaming

All console commands and cheats for Fallout: New Vegas

The courier holding a gun with a welcome sign in the background in Fallout: New Vegas key art.

From the moment you begin your adventure in Fallout: New Vegas, you've already cheated death. Your first playthrough of the game should be done as the developers intended, though maybe with a couple of mods to make the experience a little smoother, but nothing that breaks the game. That said, it's been over a decade since the game came out, so odds are you've already played through the intended way at least once. This is when you can have some fun tinkering with the game and play using console commands and cheats if you're on the PC version of the game. There are a ton of commands you can input to manipulate your character, the world, objects, and more. Here's a full rundown of all the cheats there are and how to activate them.
How to enter console commands
Opening up the command console to type in your cheats is just a single keystroke away. While in the game (not paused), hit the ~ key located below your escape key. This will remove your HUD and bring up the prompt to type in any of the below cheats.
All Fallout: New Vegas console commands and cheats

Because there are so many console commands, we're going to break them down into general categories to make it easier for you to find what you're looking for based on what you want to do.
Faction and reputation cheats
addreputation <form id> <variable> <amount> -- Increases your reputation with a faction.

Gaming

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Kril has a gun

Another Crab's Treasure no doubt looks like a kid-friendly game, but hiding beneath its charming and cute exterior is a challenging soulslike experience that can test the mettle of genre veterans. Those who either can't or don't want to engage with such intense difficulty throughout this underwater adventure can make great use of a variety of assists. Among these is a rather shocking, but hilarious option that can completely negate nearly all of the game's challenge while providing some laughs along the way. Here's how to get a gun in Another Crab's Treasure.
How to get a gun
To give yourself a gun in Another Crab's Treasure, head over to the Settings menu. Navigate to Assist Mode at the bottom of the menu, then scroll to the bottom once more to a setting called Give Kril a Gun. Toggle this on, then back out and resume your game to find that Kril now has a massive pistol on his back in place of a shell.

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