Wipeout Simulator

Wipeout Simulator

Yesterday was the release of the Destiny 2.5.0 patch which brought in a brand new holiday event called the Dawning.  However lets not kid ourselves that the part of this patch that really matters is the fact that once you hit max rank… every green you pick up with simply automagically get converted into Weapon Parts or Armor Materials.  I guess another important part is the fact that the SRL has returned… or the Sparrow Racing League for the uninitiated.  I spent my entire day pumped for this event… and then I got home and had to wait an hour for my PlayStation to patch up.  This is sincerely one of the more painful patches I have experienced as far as download times go.  Generally speaking I am used to booting up my PS4 and having the patch install and being in game within a few minutes given that I leave my PS4 in that pseudo online mode to allow for patching.  Unfortunately this patch appeared to be a two parter, with one piece installing almost immediately…  and then following up after that was another 2 gig download.  This is the point where I wish that invest in some better patching infrastructure because with my internet connection… I should not be having this issue.`Given that how much else is “peer to peer” in modern gaming… I would not be shocked if someone on a DSL like in Lexington, Kansas is slowing me down.

Wipeout Simulator

There is a truly silly amount of changes, including an entirely new strike scoring system that seems to work very similar to that of the Prison of Elders event.  With it comes a whole new set of bounties that involve you completing various things in the strikes in order to complete them.  Another massive change is that Skeleton Keys that are used to open chests containing strike specific loot… are supposedly dropping significantly more often.  On top of this your first Nightfall of the week per character will include a guaranteed Skeleton Key drop.  There are other nice quality of life changes, like supposedly Xur now sells Exotic Shards for Strange Coins rather than you having to break down an existing Exotic to get one.  There are new quests from several of the tower vendors, including a Dawning Holiday themed one started with Eva Levante.  Like with the Halloween event this year there are hidden items available like a green and black sparrow that can be obtained through collecting a dead ghost fragment on the  Bannerfall map and then using that to open the chest hidden underneath the Future War Cult staircase back in the tower.

Wipeout Simulator

The highlight of the patch for me however is the introduction of SRL again, and all of the bounties and such that come with it.  The sub highlight of this however is the fact that Sparrow Racing counts as a Crucible match…. and rewards drops that can scale all of the way up to 400 light.  Of note… it seems like the Crucible reputation booster absolutely works on SRL and I was running them last night while doing some racing.  Right now I am getting mostly gear that is going to serve as infusion fodder, but wearing it at the moment until I figure out what I plan on doing with it…  because for now I am really only doing racing.  The above rocket launcher for example is nothing I would ever use because it is missing either Tracking or the Grenades and Horseshoes perk.  However for the purpose of infusing it into another item… I will absolutely take that 395 light level.

Wipeout Simulator

What makes this event so much better than a normal Iron Banner event for light levels… is the fact that complete sets of gear for all slots can drop from it.  In addition to some blast from the past crucible weapons…  there is a full set of “racing” gear that can drop.  So far I have only managed to get the chest piece but it too dropped at 396 light… which was significantly higher than anything I had equipped.  it is not exactly the sort of gear you would want to go out adventuring in… since its perks are exclusive for sparrow racing.  However for the purpose of getting that light level up… I am absolutely going to wear it and hope to keep getting better drops.  The weirdest thing about Sparrow racing is the way it makes me change my controller grip.  Traditionally I grip my controller with my index fingers resting on the L2 and R2 triggers respectively, because in theory if I need to hit L1 and R1 it is not too painful to simply move my finger up briefly.  However in the SRL you literally never want to take your finger off L2 ever….  or at least not unless you really plan on doing it purposefully to bank a corner at the right speed.  While racing sparrows however L1 and R1 serve the purpose of shifting your sparrow slightly in that direction…  think using collar buttons to bank turns in F-Zero.  You can get the same effect by pressing in your thumb sticks for L3 and R3 but I find this pulls my steering off significantly.  So when I am doing the SRL event I essentially move my hand up on the controller and use my middle fingers to hit L2 and R2 resting my index fingers then on L1 and R1.  It takes some getting used to but for me personally it seems to just “work better”.  I could never handle this as my standard grip, but for the short length of a racing match it works well enough.

 

Warlock Banana

Warlock Banana

Last night did not go exactly as expected, but I am pretty pleased with the results anyways.  Last night was a good night, and it started from the moment I got home and got a bunch of things accomplished while waiting on the rice cooker.  After a furious round of chores, my wife and I sat down to eat and then I was off to play some PS4.  With my leg in its current mauled state it hurts to sit on the couch given that in order to use my laptop I need to use the recliner.  This ends up putting pressure on the four wounds and while I can take it for a few minutes… it doesn’t exactly make for comfortable gaming.  As a result I am largely upstairs right now, and other than being isolated from my wife it does give me access to my gaming consoles and my legit gaming desktop. The original goal for last night was going to involve running around and doing stuff  with some friends in Destiny, but while waiting for that to happen I decided to start doing Iron Banner on my Warlock.  I had not actually touched the Banner on either the Warlock or the Hunter during Year 3, and as a result I had the Lady Efrideet quests to complete which also reward some gear.  I managed to exit the week long even with my Titan main at 393, Warlock caught up to 391 and my Hunter lagging a bit out of disuse at 389.

Warlock Banana

I’ve tried a whole slew of weapons and honestly nothing makes me nearly as happy as my Year 2 Iron Banner Auto Rifle… the Haakon’s Hatchet.  So for the most part playing on my Warlock meant swapping this over via Destiny Item Manager.  For those who are not using this I highly suggest installing the chrome plugin, because it greatly improves the utility of being able to swap gear while playing the game.  Essentially I swapped my Auto Rifle and my Gjallarhorn over and was off to the races.  There is a part of me that is sad that this Auto Rifle just simply doesn’t exist any more.  I wish there was something you could do, like a weekly bounty for Lord Saladin that rewarded the year two weapons… just a random draw at the huge vat of available options.  Range Finder is one of those perks on a weapon that I feel like gets overlooked a lot, but given the normal crap range on this weapon… with that perk it allows me to melt targets an entire map away it seems.  Counter Balance and Perfect Balance on the same weapon always makes it feel great and I think a huge part of why I keep favoring this weapon… is that I have used it so much that I can predict exactly how it is going to behave in pretty much every situation.

Warlock Banana

Throughout the course of the evening I managed to go from Rank 0 to Rank 5 and complete all four of the bounties on my Warlock along with the three one time Lady Efrideet quests.  That meant I saw an awful lot of gear as a result.  Most of it was largely “more of the same” but I am picking out a few items to talk about.  Firstly I am not a huge fan of Sidearms, but I am trying to learn how to use them.  They play this interesting role of operating somewhere just outside of shotgun range but largely something you swap to when you empty your primary.  Normally speaking I would just infuse this into a weapon I am more familiar with but for the moment I am holding onto it largely because I think the perk package looks interesting.  With Hand Loaded and Range Finder… this means my side arm is going to have a massive operating range, and with Quickdraw I will be able to swap to it extremely quickly.  Combine this with the already insane Stability and Rate of Fire on the weapon… and it might be useful if I can learn to use it well.

Warlock Banana

One of the strange things about Iron Banner is that your drops seem to be extremely character dependent.  For example this time around the drops that were available were Class Items, Helms, Artifacts, Ghost Shells, Scout Rifles, and Fusion Rifles.  On my Titan I got Fusion Rifles almost exclusively, save for a single Distant Star Scout Rifle drop.  On my Warlock…  the Scout Rifles were raining down upon me.  I still think that more than likely I am going to be using the vendor roll which includes Full Auto… giving me a crazy high power auto rifle hybrid thing.  However I did manage to get a few other interesting rolls, including the one above that I thought were worth talking about.  Firstly to spec this out I would end up taking Braced Frame… which I really don’t like doing because it reduces the magazine size.  For the second pick I would ultimately take High Caliber Rounds to give some stagger and a bit more impact, and lastly would probably go for Firefly…  just because right now I don’t have a decent scout rifle with that on it.  For the un-initiated Firefly makes it so that when you kill a with a headshot… it causes it to explode dealing damage to all other mobs around it.  Firefly does a really great job at helping with wave clear and it is just fun to watch all of these things explode.  All in all it was a pretty great week in the Banana, and I am hoping the next time it comes around I can maybe push my army of characters up to 400ish.

Literal Ankle Biter

Literal Ankle Biter

This was a bit of an odd weekend.  Lets get the bad out of the way.  For several months we have been trying to figure out how to get Luna to a point where she does not attack the other two cats on sight.  We’ve kept her sequestered in my wife’s office and each night I grab her and we hang out in my office while I play games.  She almost always ends up snuggled on my desk, and in truth is just about the sweetest cat ever…  when not around our other two.  This is an important distinction before I tell you this next bit… because she is adorable and cuddly…  when she is by herself.  In my infinite lack of wisdom I decided that I wanted to make one last attempt to socialize them since she had seemingly bonded with me so tightly after our many many weeks of chilling in my office.  We locked our eldest cat up in the bedroom and brought Luna out, at first carrying her and holding her on the sofa.  Before long thought she wanted to explore… and for the most part our youngest and her were not interacting at all.  However there came a point where we were moments away from a cat fight, and I tried to gather Luna up and carry her off to my office.  She struggled to try and get away but I got her up to the office without much issue.  I turned to shut the door and I felt this searing pain on my leg around my lower calf.  She had bit me… and now I was left with the decision of how the hell to get out of my office without letting her out so she could go after Kenzie.

I snuck out and by the time I got downstairs I was bleeding pretty badly.  There are five marks…  so I am guessing one is maybe a claw mark or she drug off of me and raked me with her fang again.  Two of them are about a half inch in length and pretty deep… and two others are deep puncture wounds where she chomped down hard on my leg.  It hurts quite a bit to walk and just generally exist in the world right now, but I don’t think there is any real damage.  After going through the crap with my wife when she got bitten we are being extra cautious, and using the super duper antibiotic creme that they gave us back then.  Walking is not comfortable and today is going to be interesting.  I had to venture out to get more extra large band-aids, because in theory you can hit all of the spots with two of the largest size.  After getting bandaged up I went back upstairs where she seemed as freaked as I was by the event.  She sat on the floor in the back of my office up against the accordion closet door for a long while looking freaked.  Eventually I peeked down underneath the desk towards where she was at and said “it’s okay, I’m not mad” and almost instantly her demeanor changed and she bounded over and hopped up on the desk laying down beside me.  The thing that is breaking my heart is that I now know that this is probably never going to get any better, and we really do need to find her a new home.  Unfortunately the friend that we thought was going to take her… had her landlord say no.  It was in their contract that they could have pets if landlord approved… but I am guessing the asshole is biased against cats, because he assumed they were talking a dog.

Literal Ankle Biter

Other than the cat thing…. and hurting…  I streamed a lot of Iron Banner.  I think it was Friday night at some point that I managed to hit Rank 5 with the Banana, and from that point on it was just gravy as far as loot went.  I guess in theory I should have been swapping to the Warlock or Hunter to get them to Rank 5 but instead I simply made a poor attempt at farming some more gear to increase my light levels.  This last 10 points is going to be slow as hell, but I entered the weekend at 390 and exit at 392 which I guess is reasonable.  According to beam I have now streamed seven hours of game play, which I guess isn’t a bad start for my first week.  Now a good chunk of that on Sunday at least was to an empty audience, but I entertained myself and have a bunch of footage to sift through.  There was one Iron Banner match where for whatever reason I started humming the Super Mario Brothers theme song inserting “Nope” instead of some of the notes.  All in all I think I like Rift for an Iron Banner match type, but like I said before I struggled a bit at first because the game play feels so vastly different from anything I had been used to.  The best item I got all weekend is still the above Branded Lord with Hammer Forged, Enhanced Battery and Range Finder… which I now have fully leveled and am almost using exclusively.

Literal Ankle Biter
LET IT DIE_20161211162544

Lastly I played some “Let It Die” as evidenced by the first screenshot in the post today, and streamed it as well…  except for whatever reason my audio was being overpowered completely by the game audio.  I will have to fiddle with that and adjust it some.  This game is just strange as hell, and I guess in many ways it feels a little Dark Soulsian, in that the mobs that you encounter are somewhat brutally powerful at times.  There will be times that you get stunlocked to the point where you simply cannot do anything to deal with the encounters other than die.  The strangest part so far is the types of weapons you encounter…  hot irons, router drills, hammers…  firework launchers.  As you ascend the Tower of Barbs you encounter all sorts of monsters that should be in a silent hill game with bizarre implements that are trying to kill you, all the while you are using a zombie corpse thing as your avatar.  You start out buck naked each time and have to scrounge up armor and weapons to be able to survive for terribly long in the tower.  This is of course a “free to play” game and where the money aspect comes in is that in order to resurrect yourself using “death insurance” you need to spend a rainbow skull currency, that the game gives you a handful of to start out.  However in the brief period of time I played yesterday I wound up using two of them before realizing… that in truth I had not really made any actual progress and should stop doing that.  I’ve not quite figured out what the point is yet…  as far as how you actually improve your character.  I thought after I cleared a level I would be taken back to the lobby… but apparently I have to do that manually so I essentially lost all progress on that character and had to grab a fresh corpse to start the climb all over again.  It has some deep rogue like elements, all the while mixing in bizarre Neo Tokyo and Silent Hill tropes…. with a dash of Dark Soulsian difficulty.  Given that several of those checkboxes are things that Kodra likes, I think he maybe should try this game out.  What I am wanting to know is if you can play it multiplayer, because this would probably be super enjoyable with friends.

 

AggroChat #135 – Looks Like A Kahuna

Tonight Ashgar, Belghast, Grace, Kodra and Tam talk Pokemon and a whole list of other topics.

aggrochat135_720

Tonight we got a bit of late start, but once things got rolling we recorded a proper show.  Last week we had pushed off the topic of Pokemon Sun and Moon because we literally ran out of time.  We start recording around 9 pm CST and when it is past midnight…  we know we are in trouble.  So we talk a bit about the game and things that folks have noticed about it.  Several of us are not terribly far along… others have beaten the game.  Grace talks about her addiction to Justice Monsters Five and how no other games really matter at all.  

Bel goes on a discussion about his feelings about various streaming options and why he is moving towards Beam.  Bel talks about how this is the year that he stopped browsing steam, because there is just too much random stuff out there.  This spawns a conversation about games that get lost in the mix…  like Obsidian’s recent release of Tyranny.  This oddly spawns another contorted shift as Bel talks about that he figures out why he doesn’t really enjoy Halo games.  We shift gears and talk a bit about Final Fantasy XIV and the Alexander Turn 11 fight.  Finally we wrap things up with some talk about the new Star Wars Destiny Collectible Card Game.

Discussion points: Pokemon Sun and Moon – Justice Monsters Five – Twitch vs Hitbox vs Beam – Browsing Steam – Tyranny – Bel and Halo – Final Fantasy XIV – Alexander Turn 11 – Star Wars Destiny