A Boy and his Ship

Healers Not Required

A Boy and his Ship

I have a distinctive grumpy this morning.  For starters it is raining and storming… and I cannot pull the covers over my head and allow myself to be lulled back to sleep by the rhythmic noise.  Secondly I was up far later than I expected last night. but that in itself wasn’t all that out of the ordinary.  However roughly 45 minutes before the alarm was set to go off, our kitten using some of her newly discovered jumping abilities caused an avalanche to occur sending a ton of crap falling off of a high perch.  Instead of just accepting my fate and getting on up, I did the futile thing and attempted to go back to sleep.  So I am going through that sluggish phase when you have attempted to get sleep…  but didn’t get enough of it.  As such my mental processing is a bit sluggish, but the show must go on.  Coffee is being consumed, and hopefully that will fix all the wrongs in the world… or at least lessen them.  As to last night… I was up late in part due to a bout of insomnia and in part due to doing things with friends.  I wrote the other day about my process of working through the HK-47 storyline, and over the weekend Tam managed to get caught up to the same place I was.  As I was folding laundry last night, I got a text asking if I was around but I didn’t actually see it until I was headed upstairs to wait out my insomnia.

There are a whole lot of faffing about that you have to do, which involves going to planets and scanning for HK-47 parts.  After that however you have two dungeons… the first one being a normal mode False Emperor and the second being a hard mode Maelstrom Prison.  We managed to get four warm bodies, which included a tank and three dps…  but unfortunately our only healing option had to go to bed early.  Since  all of us were between 56 and 57 in level  we assumed we would be able to do the normal mode dungeon without much issue.  While I managed to get a little low a few places, False Emperor went off without a hitch and we even managed to get a few cool cosmetic pieces.  Still feeling brave we decided to go ahead and attempt Hard Mode Maelstrom Prison without a healer… and while I took a few deaths due to my own stupidity…  we managed to make it through that dungeon as well.  So in theory…  we can likely run any of the older content without heals.  The cool thing is that while we were running the place we managed to get housing items to drop… which makes the place far more interesting for repeated running.  I think tonight I can run the last part of the HK-47 chain, which is a return to the Heroic 2 dungeon from the very first of it.  I simply did not have the oomph to remain awake last night and push through it.

A Boy and his Ship

A Boy and his Ship

I spent most of yesterday chasing Skavak across Coruscant on my Chiss Scoundrel.  I am having quite a bit of fun playing the smuggler right now, and it is really the only class that I did not spend a significant amount of time playing during release.  Before leaving the game I had managed to get the Jedi Knight, Jedi Consular and Trooper all to level cap, and had several failed starts and playing the smuggler.  This time around I decided to go for the “sawbones” spec, which now does more than it previously did.  The Scoundrel subclass was a confusing mess because I personally struggled trying to figure out what abilities I should be using.  Previously you got this mix of melee focused and ranged abilities… and it seemed like a horrible idea to be a melee healer in this game.  Instead they have taken out all but the crowd control melee abilities and give Sawbones a focus on ranged damage to mix in with their healing.  This combined with switching to Treek as my tank over Corso Riggs has ended up making for a much more enjoyable experience.  Towards evening I blasted out of the space port on Coruscant headed for the wasteland of Taris.

Now that I have dinged 21, I spent some of my hard earned commendations and kitted out both my armor and that of Treek in full level 21 modifications.  I am pretty damned happy that I have orange sets of gear for both, and my theory is that I will upgrade at the end of each planet, hoping to soak up enough commendations while on the planet to be able to kit out my gear each time.  The truth is with the experience bonus I am well ahead of the curve.  Taris for example is originally intended for level 16-20 players… and I didn’t even make it onto the planet until 21.  My hope is this is going to allow me to be able to complete some of the heroic four content, and get more commendations that way.  In theory I think the heroics are daily quests, and I could keep going back to Coruscant to do those in order to soak up a few additional commendations.  In any case I am really enjoying myself, and this has been a welcome diversion.  My hope is that we can muster some grouping again over the next few days and explore some of the flashpoints that we never saw.  While this is a long shot, it would be kinda cool to be able to see some of the operations as well.  Tonight however…  we are going to work on taking down Ravana Extreme.

Something New

Yesterday I decided to try something slightly new, and failed a little bit along the way.  I had noticed that many podcasts actually uploaded their shows to YouTube, by simply throwing up a static image with the audio running behind it.  I figured this couldn’t hurt, and for some people YouTube might be a more comfortable experience than having to set up podcast software.  The first attempt however lacked any audio at all.  I was using Adobe Premiere for the first time, and as a result ended up exporting in some strange format that was a combination of a video file and a waveform audio file as well.  Windows seemed to know what to do with the file, and when I tested it… it appeared to play just fine.  However upon uploading it… I got a really long still image with zero sound kinda defeating the purpose.  The second export however made it just fine, and we now have our first YouTube show up.  We’ve already gotten a few views so we will see how this compares to the podcast.  It might also make an easier format for folks to comment on.  Let me know what you think.  I doubt we will ever do a video show like Cat Context and The MMO Show… but for the time being it gets our show in another medium.

 

Week In Gaming 9/13/2015

Very Rough Week

As you could probably tell from some of the subtext of my posts this week… it was a pretty rough one for me emotionally.  Work is still being stressful, but honestly that really had nothing to do with this one.  For our country September 11th has some pretty tragic context, but for me it has completely different issues.  Firstly September 11th was the birthday of my grandmother, and she would have been 90 this year.  I miss her an awful lot, and there are days where it is just rough to think about her.  Her birthday always brings back memories of her, which are honestly all good…  but there is a bittersweet melancholy associated with it.  She essentially raised me during the first years of my life, because she was my constant babysitter and companion.  She is also the one member of my family that really seemed to appreciate my wife being a member of the family.  If that were not enough to get me down in the dumps…  this week also marks the anniversary of a pretty horrible period of my life.  In September of 2012 I lost my Grandfather, and the day after the funeral…  September 11th… a pretty horrific event happened at my work place.   It quite literally with zero hyperbole ushered in the worst six months of my life.  Someone screwed up, and screwed up badly…  and I had to deal with the fallout and recovery.  So each time this day comes I get a little gun shy.  So this past Friday I was crawling in my skin as I waited for they day to end.

Demon Huntering

Week In Gaming 9/13/2015

As far as gaming this week, I had a pretty cloistered time of it.  I am still very much in my “hiding out” mentality, and I guess in part I think it was just me waiting for this week to pass me by, dreading Friday.  I spent some time working on my Demon Hunter in Diablo 3 and I think when I last played I was about halfway through 69.  At some point soon I hope to pop back in and finish leveling him to 70.  I also spent some time farming away on Rifts, Greater Rifts and Bounties attempting to get blood shards…  which I then disappointingly spent trying to get class set pieces.  I have been stuck at 3 of 4 pieces of the set I am going after on my Barbarian for a few weeks now.  I am not sure but Diablo might have worked its way out of my system for a bit.  I finished off the seasonal stuff, but as of last night Grace on the podcast talked about additional seasonal rewards.  I am just not sure if I will be willing to do any of the crazy things that are required to get them.

Star Wars the Old Republic

Week In Gaming 9/13/2015

The big event of this week was that I apparently have fallen into a Star Wars the Old Republic shaped hole.  I have played this game off and on since release, but this is really the first time I have felt I was actually back in the swing of things.  I’ve played alts a lot in the past, but this is the first time I have actually continued the storyline on my Jedi Guardian main.  As of last night I finished Makeb and am working through the precursor content leading up to Shadow of Revan.  My plan is to finish the story content before the drop of Fallen Empire next month.  Additionally I am taking advantage of the insane twelve times experience bonus.  Last night during the podcast I started working on my Chiss Smuggler and I have to say…  having access to Treek as a tanky companion makes that experience so much better.  Seriously… I hate Corso Riggs so much…  and was completely stalled out trying to play a smuggler because he annoyed me so much.  Treek is simply a better tank.. in that she jumps AT the mobs instead of grappling them back to me.  Who though a tank companion pulling back to the healer was a good idea?  Anyways as soon as I wrap this post I intend to go downstairs and play some more Smuggler… that was how much I was into it last night.  I may or may not have stayed up until 1:30 in the morning playing.

Final Fantasy XIV

Week In Gaming 9/13/2015

I am very much in a lull right now with Final Fantasy XIV.  I talked about this a bit on the podcast, but it is strange… that even while in this lull I still consider it my home base of operations.  I figure when 3.1 lands which should be soonish…  everyone will be invigorated once more and we will return to logging in every single night.  In the mean time I am playing a lot of other games as not to force myself.  I am still raiding on Monday and Wednesday nights, and this week we managed to get a few more people through Bismarck Extreme.  I really want to defeat Ravana Extreme before the new content lands, but one of the big problems we are having is… that honestly it just feels like there isn’t much content for us to be doing.  When we returned to Final Fantasy XIV July 2013 we had a years worth of content to explore since we had last played.  While we managed to slowly whittle our way through all of it… it gave us tons of small goals to work towards.  In Heavensward there really does not seem to be the much for us to work towards.  We can clear Alexander Normal in our sleep, and are pretty successful with Bismarck Extreme.  We are working on Ravana Extreme and I believe it is in our sights…  but Savage Alexander just isn’t a realistic goal, namely because I can’t bring myself to do the gear grinding that it would require to really be viable there.  I am well enough geared to do all of the content I feel like I could do… and I just don’t have the drive to push towards that bleeding edge.  So instead I play other games and wait for another content drop.

AggroChat 74 – Force Binds Us

Week In Gaming 9/13/2015

We start of this weeks show by talking about our continued adventures in Diablo 3, and while a some of us have slowed down our progress Grace talks about falling back into the familiar rhythm of chilling out in solo play. With the upcoming September 29th release of Wildstar Free to Play she also talks about spending a lot of time on the test server, and the recent hoverboard racing event testing. Thalen this week spent time venturing into some single player games that had never got around to playing. First we revive our discussion of Wolfenstein New Order and why you should play it for so many different reasons. In a shocker we find out that Thalen never actually played Fallout New Vegas, which spawns a discussion about our appreciation of the game.

Kodra on the other hand spent his week mostly playing a bunch of indie titles and talks about Circa Infinity and The Magic Circle. Magic Circle being the game that he spent a significant amount of time at Pax talking to the Dev about. Additionally we are all jealous of him as he talks about his experience playing Mario Maker, which is essentially Infinite Mario. This spawns a discussion about each of our early attempts at creating content for our friends to play like Excitebike, Wolfenstein, Doom and Descent. Related to Magic Circle, a seperate discussion breaks out about the Stanley Parable and what it says about gamers themselves.

Ashgar is still heavily involved in LBX: Little Battlers Experience and has even gotten in his model kits from last week putting at least one of them together. He helped to clear up some of my confusion that there is in fact a Roleplaying game there, and it is very similar to the style of game that Pokemon is. We also get into a length discussion about Pokemon Go and how the Ingress type game is likely going to change what we are playing next year. There is really no way this is not going to be a huge title, and for the most part we agree that Ingress has been a tech demo leading up to this.

Finally several of us have spontaneously gotten sucked back into Star Wars the Old Republic. Right now it is impossible to go anywhere in the world without being bombarded by Force Awakens merchandise, and after a point I simply could not resist the pull of nostalgia. The best thing about coming back to a game after years of being away is the huge backlog of content available to be played. The current twelve times experience bonus for subscribers helps as well, because you quite literally only have to focus on your class story to get leveled which was always the best part of the game. Ash, Bel and Tam are all caught in the gravity well of this game for the moment, and it sounds like some of our other hosts might have gotten the bug as well. We will have to see next week if we are still talking out it, or if we have gotten it out of our systems.

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AggroChat #74 – Force Binds Us

swtor 2015-09-12 19-22-10-93
We start of this weeks show by talking about our continued adventures in Diablo 3, and while a some of us have slowed down our progress Grace talks about falling back into the familiar rhythm of chilling out in solo play. With the upcoming September 29th release of Wildstar Free to Play she also talks about spending a lot of time on the test server, and the recent hoverboard racing event testing. Thalen this week spent time venturing into some single player games that had never got around to playing. First we revive our discussion of Wolfenstein New Order and why you should play it for so many different reasons. In a shocker we find out that Thalen never actually played Fallout New Vegas, which spawns a discussion about our appreciation of the game.

Kodra on the other hand spent his week mostly playing a bunch of indie titles and talks about Circa Infinity and The Magic Circle. Magic Circle being the game that he spent a significant amount of time at Pax talking to the Dev about. Additionally we are all jealous of him as he talks about his experience playing Mario Maker, which is essentially Infinite Mario. This spawns a discussion about each of our early attempts at creating content for our friends to play like Excitebike, Wolfenstein, Doom and Descent. Related to Magic Circle, a seperate discussion breaks out about the Stanley Parable and what it says about gamers themselves.

Ashgar is still heavily involved in LBX: Little Battlers Experience and has even gotten in his model kits from last week putting at least one of them together. He helped to clear up some of my confusion that there is in fact a Roleplaying game there, and it is very similar to the style of game that Pokemon is. We also get into a length discussion about Pokemon Go and how the Ingress type game is likely going to change what we are playing next year. There is really no way this is not going to be a huge title, and for the most part we agree that Ingress has been a tech demo leading up to this.

Finally several of us have spontaneously gotten sucked back into Star Wars the Old Republic. Right now it is impossible to go anywhere in the world without being bombarded by Force Awakens merchandise, and after a point I simply could not resist the pull of nostalgia. The best thing about coming back to a game after years of being away is the huge backlog of content available to be played. The current twelve times experience bonus for subscribers helps as well, because you quite literally only have to focus on your class story to get leveled which was always the best part of the game. Ash, Bel and Tam are all caught in the gravity well of this game for the moment, and it sounds like some of our other hosts might have gotten the bug as well. We will have to see next week if we are still talking out it, or if we have gotten it out of our systems.

Thalen Reads The Shepherd’s Crown

Mind how you go. - Terry Pratchett
This was a really hard book to read. Not because it was bad, or because I didn't want to read it. It was hard because for over twenty years I've been either reading a new Discworld novel or looking forward to the next one. And now that's over. Today's book is Terry Pratchett's 41st and last novel of Discworld, The Shepherd's Crown.

Thalen Reads The Shepherd's Crown

I've been a huge fan of the Discworld for the majority of my life, ever since a friend handed me a copy of Guards! Guards! and told me I should read it. Terry Pratchett was on the very short list of authors whose books I always bought on the day of release, sight unseen. I have long been of the opinion that the worst of Pratchett's works is still well above the average and entirely worth the reading.

The Shepherd's Crown is not Pratchett at his height. How could it be, when he was no longer capable of writing and had to rely on an assistant to put his words to paper? Some transitions are a bit rough, some scenes don't quite seem to fit. But the overall story is strong and moving, and the scenes that really matter are deftly written. I was in tears almost immediately on starting the second chapter and by the end I was sobbing. I can't recommend The Shepherd's Crown to new readers, it's both not Pratchett's best and very reliant on what's come before, but for those already invested it's a good and appropriate ending to one of the longest running fantasy series in history.

MASSIVE SPOILERS FROM THIS POINT ON

Although it was the third Discworld novel, an argument can be made that Equal Rites was where Discworld truly began. It's where Pratchett shifted from parody to satire, and it's where he really found the tone and feel that he would retain for the remainder of the series. Equal Rites was a story about a girl who wanted to be a wizard; and it was the first book to feature possibly Pratchett's greatest character, Granny Weatherwax. Fitting then, that The Shepherd's Crown introduces a boy who wants to be a witch, and has us say goodbye to Granny.

In the second chapter, Granny Weatherwax dies.

It's something I've been half expecting for a while now; the obvious final challenge in Tiffany Aching's career, the loss of her mentor. Chapter two is probably the best (and simultaneously most heart-breaking) chapter of the entire book as we follow Granny making all the preparations for her passing (witches and wizards get to know when they're going to die a little early so they can be ready).

Granny's death is what sets the rest of the book in motion, with Tiffany having to deal with suddenly being Granny's chosen successor (witches don't go in for leaders, but Granny was the witch they looked too to not lead them.) Also, with Granny gone, the elves (nasty pieces of work indeed) see the opportunity to make another attempt to break through from their parasite dimension and have free reign on the Disc.

Mostly this is a book about things changing. Steam engines and locomotives have come to the Disc, and technology continues to advance. The elves are remnants of the old times, and they no longer have any place there. It's telling that the ultimate fight against the elves is very one-sided; they never stand a chance. Their time is done. New ideas are embraced and Tiffany realizes that she can never be Granny Weatherwax, but she shouldn't try. She has to be Tiffany Aching.

Like Granny Weatherwax, the Discworld is dead. We'll never see another book, and we'll never know where Pratchett might have taken it next. But also like Granny, the Discworld isn't gone. It's memory stays with us through our fandom, through the books and through the adaptations to screen and stage. Terry Pratchett is dead, but he remains with us through his writing and the lessons he's taught us over the years. Farewell once more, Sir Pterry. Mind how you go.