Hey Friends! I spent most of the weekend bouncing back and forth between two games. The primary of these was Outriders, which makes sense given that the new expansion dropped. I have to admit there are a lot of things about the expansion that annoy me. One of my favorite aspects of the original was the fact that after I completed the story, I could do some “choose my own adventure” type gameplay as I bounced back to previous flags on the map. There are a number of encounters that would spawn in as you moved through the world, and these were somewhat fun to play. You have to understand in Destiny 1 and 2… my all-time favorite game mode was patrol, where I could just roam aimlessly and kill things for fun and profit. The new story content does not have this functionality and the only way that you can go back to a previous area in the new zones… is to reset your story progress to that specific point.
It is very painfully clear that the studio’s intent was that we would be spending all of our time playing the Trial of Tarya Gratar, because that is the ONLY activity that is easily repeatable. Granted this is a perfectly fine game mode, but for my tastes, it takes entirely too long to do a full run. Once you sit down to play through it, you are committed to thirty minutes to an hour of dedicated attention. Granted you can checkpoint and resume a save attempt if you need to leave halfway through the event, but it will cost you an attempt in doing so. What I have instead been using the Trial for is to drop the difficulty down to apocalypse 10, and breezing through it to farm legendaries for deconstruction. This is giving me access to a good number of mods that I did not have in my repository given how stingy legendary drops were before.
Right now this is my favorite weapon in the game. I honestly do not remember what the original first slot trait was, but I replaced it with Firestorm from one of the new legendary weapons called Sunfall. Essentially Firestorm calls down a beam of fire from above that roasts anything within its radius for 8 seconds. The beam will follow your attacks, so if you get good with it you can have it slowly beam its way through a pack of mobs. This combined with Claymore which calls down an anomaly attack every 2 seconds for over 100k damage, means you can whittle things down very quickly. Firebrand Defiant is a random roll weapon, and I just happened to luck out and get something that worked extremely well for my purposes. Your mileage will absolutely vary given that I have gotten weapons named this… with completely useless perks on them. This also proves that the new purple three-perk weapons can be better than the legendaries that drop.
As far as usable gear goes, I have taken a page back from my old playbook of farming the beasts. In the base game, there are two quest chains that start out of the bar in Trench Town. Specifically for these purposes, I care about the Hauras hunter quest. If you do not have access to this because you have completed it in the past, simply finish up the rest of the hunter quests and that NPC will allow you to restart the entire chain. The reason why we care about this quest specifically, is that you can run in and kill two boss-type monsters… then let the waves of trash kill you as you hit your auto loot key to vacuum up the items. I’ve gotten pretty much all of the gear that I am currently using, as well as quite a few legendaries doing this rather mind-numbing farm.
The key to this success however is that you need to set your level to one apocalypse tier down from whatever you can currently do. Deaths at your current apocalypse tier cause you to lose experience progress, but if you have already filled the bar on a given tier… you can’t lose any progress. So when I was farming this the other day my highest tier was 14, but I was farming it at 13 and weirdly enough was still gaining pretty constant ascension XP regardless of the deaths. The only negative about this method is I have so much sustain that it sometimes takes forever for the trash mobs to kill me off. As a result, you can always go back to the lobby and come back into the game in order to reset at the checkpoint. Keep that trick in your arsenal if you also run into this problem.
I spent some time bouncing around the map trying different spots, and realistically Hauras seems to be the best option. There were a few other areas that I liked, that also gave me access to multiple boss types but the reset cycle was much more obtuse and took longer. There is a specific area in the Quarry for example that I really like, but it involved moving the truck to a new location and back to the Quarry in order to reset the spawns. As much as I hate dying over and over again to the same encounter to farm loot… it really is the most efficient method. I might record a video of the run at some point, but basically, trust the monster fights if you are just wanting to work on your gear. If you can burn through Trial of Tarya Gratar then by all means keep farming the proper endgame content.
The post Death Farming Hauras appeared first on Tales of the Aggronaut.
Featuring: Ammosart, Ashgar, Belghast, Kodra, Tamrielo, and Thalen
We did not record a show last week because the news of our country was a bit too fresh for most of us to talk about video games. Now another week has passed and the wound has begun to scab over a bit. Tonight we start down a Thalen and Grace but eventually pick up a Thalen as we go. We talk about Summer Games Done Quick and have an aside about Wiley Wars coming to the Switch. From there folks talk about Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder’s Revenge and trying to play it six-player on a console that does not support that. From there Bel talks about falling back into Diablo III and finishing out Season 26… while also playing a horrible ideas class that is really bad at boosting friends. From there Bel talks about his recent experience diving down the Path of Exile rabbit hole. Guild Wars 2 made many changes that were not well received by the most hardcore players, but we largely think they are a good thing and talk about that. Finally, we wrap up with a quick discussion about Outriders Worldslayer and how it is still a very bleak game, but also a great mechanical experience if you can get past that.
Good Morning Friends! Yesterday was the official launch of the Outriders Worldslayer expansion, but I have had access to it for a while now. I did not really spend much time in it because there were some early server issues, and I had other things I wanted to be playing. Last night I pushed my way through the new story content and unlocked the new endgame area. I figured this morning I would talk a little bit about that experience. It is my goal not to really spoil anything in the story, but to be honest this is not exactly an epic fantasy tale… so I am not sure you would care if I spoiled it in the first place.
So I figure I should start out with an explanation for anyone who has not experienced Outriders before. This game is essentially a third-person run and gun looter shooter with a loot system that feels very similar to that of Diablo III. When you deconstruct an item you collect the mods that were on that item and then can modify any other gear to replace a single mod slot from one of the ones you have collected. You play as an Altered, or a character changed by the anomaly that ravages the planet. There is a class system and each class has a talent point system to build your character. I personally spend most of my time playing the more tanky close ranged earth-elemental-themed class called the Devastator and have specced down the Seismic Shifter tree that increases the damage I deal with my “earth” themed abilities. Pyromancer is medium ranged fire-focused class, Technomancer is long ranged focused on turrets and poison damage, and Trickster manipulates time and space while in close range.
The world of Outriders is extremely bleak, as humanity essentially exhausted the resources of the earth and attempted to find a new planet… and then found out when they arrived that it was also ruined in a different way. It is the sort of bleak that sees you nonchalantly climbing up a pile of corpses as you walk through a city that was quite literally a concentration camp. As such, I feel like you need to be a certain brand of desensitized to be able to look past this and see the deeply nuanced gameplay that it offers. If you can deal with the emotional barrage of the story… Outriders is quite possibly the most interesting looter shooter out there with fun and engaging gameplay and an “avoid cover at all costs to keep healing yourself” gameplay strategy. Unfortunately, most of the AggroChat crew could not look past the harsh exterior and get through the game in order to experience the “good parts”.
Unfortunately, as the story goes… Worldslayer is a tale of going from bad to much worse. You are presented with a new threat to humanity as the Anomaly keeps getting worse, this time deciding to freeze the planet in its wake. You also have to contend with a renewed focus on the civil war between the last remnants of the colony forces that you represent, and the insurgency camped just outside its gates. You also find yourself squaring off against “The Commander” of the insurgency which is an ultra-powerful Altered that seems to be able to channel some sort of hentai void tentacles nonsense. The story is still very bleak… but also maybe has a ray of hope for the future. I have to say that across the board the story does flesh out quite a few details about the world itself, and the people who lived here before. We find out that they seem to have also ruined the planet in their own way before figuring out a method for turning back the anomaly.
The new content area is rather small and consists of six story areas and a seventh are containing the new endgame activity. All told it took me around three hours to burn through the story, and I was doing so at a fairly leisurely pace. If you were moving faster there is probably only around 2 hours of solid gameplay here. If that is a thing that concerns you, then you might take that into account because this expansion is more a systems-wide upgrade than a juicy slab of story-driven content for you to explore.
Quite possibly my favorite aspect of the expansion is the unification of the challenge system. Above is a chart that I made trying to relate the two different difficulty systems to each other. Previously you had Story Mode World Tiers, which went up through 15, and that 15 related to around Challenge Tier 8, which was used for Expeditions. The problem is that if you preferred to run World content over and over, it essentially capped out at Challenge 8 and you could get no loot higher than level 42. Now Apocalypse Tiers essentially unify all of this mess. I had progressed through Expedition Challenge Tier 13 before, and the game started me at Apocalpyse Tier 13 with a maximum difficulty rating of 40 that I can unlock over time. This means stupid story mission farms like the Outhouse mission that I enjoyed doing over and over… are a completely valid want to level and get loot.
There are a few new systems that are added into the game, like Ascension points which are a direct equivalency of Paragon Points from Diablo III. You can essentially max this out and earn 200 of these, slotting 10 points into each attribute line. For example, I have already out 10 into bonus anomaly power, and now I am working on weapon damage. Given enough play time, we will end up maxing each one of these out at 10 points per attribute. This is not a terribly interesting way of gaining power, but it does help out nonetheless.
The more interesting new system is the Pax trees. These give you broad sweeping modifications to your existing builds. There are only five of these points in total and they are unlocked through completing the story, with the final point being tied to completing the Trial of Tarya Gratar end-game activity. I admit I am a bit torn here as to whether I should drop the apocalypse tier down and just burn through the activity to get my final talent point… or if I should gear up and do it at a reasonable apocalypse level for the loot rewards. I guess that ultimately is the decision always if you should grind it out… or go for the quick loot at the highest challenge you can complete.
I guess it is time that I should probably talk about the Trial of Tarya Gratar itself. Essentially this is a series of challenges that you need to complete in sequence and in a single play-through in order to reach the final boss encounter. I’ve played through two of these so far, the first being a ring-style encounter with three waves with the final wave being comprised largely of boss types. The second encounter was flagged as a “skirmish” and largely felt like playing through a normal map where there was a broad mix of enemy types and mini boss types in order to get a full clear. The absolute shortest route through the map sees you completing eleven events and you are given a limited number of attempts to get through the entire sequence. I think the fastest possible clears will take at least thirty minutes, with it taking considerably longer if you are struggling. Getting to the end apparently allows you to choose one of three apocalypse tier legendary items.
I think at this point we should probably talk about the changes to the loot. The above items are currently available as twitch drops, and if you are so inclined I would highly suggest farming them up, especially if you are a new player. Each of these new items has three mods associated with them, and specifically, these twitch drops include a Tier 3 mod that was previously only available on legendary items. So even if you are not going to these them specifically they are worth deconstructing to gain the mod for your character. Epic and Legendary loot now have the chance to drop with three stats like this, which means that a good number of the purples that you are going to be picking up will be functionally better than the original set of legendary items.
The other thing that I have noticed is that the game seems to be way more generous than it was previously. While I have only gotten a few legendary drops, the purples are raining down from the sky. All of the expansion world content seems to also provide drop pod resources, which were key to upgrading gear past a certain point. I will need to spend some time figuring out what the most lucrative solo farm areas are for me personally, and then I will of course share that knowledge at a later point. For a game that seems to want to be Looter Shooter Diablo 3, it is most definitely following that Loot 2.0 progression path and giving me a rain of shiny items to pick up.
So I guess we get down to whether or not it is worth buying the expansion. If you already have Outriders the expansion will set you back $40. If you are completely new to Outriders you can buy a combo pack for $60. Do I think the expansion is worth it for the story? No… it is a short campaign that will only get you around two hours’ worth of gameplay. Do I think the expansion is worth picking up for the other systems that it adds to the game? I am leaning towards yes because it normalizes the rewards structure, adds some long-tailed grinds, and also presents a new raid-type game mode that should be good fun with a full party of friends. I think Outriders is a mechanically better game than Destiny 2, that just does not get the love that it deserves. The challenge with Outriders however is the fact that it is not a live service game, which means future updates will be few and far between and will be largely limited to balance patches.
I am hoping to gather up a group of friends to take on the new Trial and see how that game mode feels with multiple people. I also need to get more serious about my build and tweaking it to perform better. Right now I am very much abusing a one-trick pony in the form of a couple of Tier III weapon perks on the same auto rifle I have been using forever.
The post Outriders Worldslayer Thoughts appeared first on Tales of the Aggronaut.
Whelp friends… I am apparently playing Path of Exile. I’ve attempted to play this game so many times in the past but bounced off each and every time. The main reason because is the extremely obtuse nature of the game that I will get into shortly. As a heavy Diablo III player, I have always been jealous of the amount of love Path of Exile players get from Grinding Gear Games. While the seasons have gotten more creative, I think in an effort to compete with POE Leagues… we don’t really get much in the way of new kinds of content. Even more so Diablo III is not really growing its game, whereas a good number of league mechanics that work well… get cycled into the main branch of the game. Now with Path of Exile 2 on the horizon… it really probably is a great time to try and sort out this game and determine if it is something I can enjoy in the long run. Hint… I think it is, but there are a number of caveats with that statement.
The core problem with Path of Exile is the passive tree and its cyclopean nature. That in itself would not be a massive problem if the game supported some sort of reasonable respec system. The problem there is that it does not… I am 37 levels into the game and I have acquired six “refund points” which means every decision that I have made needs to be tactical and planned. I have an army of functional alts in this game, in large part because I made decisions that were too hard to undo without really knowing what the overarching picture I should be going for looks like. In Diablo III I am used to playing in a way where I level with whatever build I happen to make work as I go… and then completely respeccing at the end game into a specific structured build. Path of Exile on the other hand essentially requires you to find the build you want to play… and commit to it entirely. This level of required research really make the entire experience out of reach for a lot of players that simply don’t want to box themselves into a corner before they even start the experience.
As part of my recent foray into the Diablo Immortal quagmire, I ended up familiarizing myself with a number of the Path of Exile YouTubers who also gave it a spin. This leads me to watch a few videos from Zizaran’s PoE University series. I have this habit of listening to long-form YouTube videos thrown up on the second monitor as though they were a podcast. So when I saw a video proclaiming that it was “Everything Explained” I fired it up… only then realizing that it is legitimately 7 hours long… and this is only the first part. I by no means watched the entire thing, but I did listen to the first hour or so of gameplay and it piqued my interests enough to give out the build that he was playing in the video a shot. I liked the idea of playing a steel-slinging magneto character and thought the entire “steel” magic line was a cool idea and seemingly provided a gameplay style similar to that of the D3 Demon Hunter.
If we are going to talk through the Path of Exile rabbit hole in its entirety… we have to get into Path of Building. For those who are uninitiated like I was… Path of Building is a third-party open source software designed for trying to keep track of your build and how you should be expanding it at each phase of the game. For example, the build that I am working off divides the passive tree into 9 distinct phases and presents you with an ever-expanding footprint as you work through them. So when you are building to level 12, you are only shown those first 12 nodes… then you bump up to 32 nodes, etc until you eventually end up with the convoluted masterpiece that is the key part of what turns people off from the game. Often times there is a notes tab that explains the decisions you should be making along the leveling process, what gems you should be using, and what gear you should be seeking out.
The other component that I think is important to starting this game is being able to put yourself in the right frame of mind. I’ve mostly played games with classes that more or less align to the holy trinity of roles, with some pretty clear assumptions as to what type of gameplay provides. If you see a class called the Marauder, and it is a big hulking brute of a guy… then I assume that is the melee/tanky class. If I see a character called the Duelist, I assume that is the rogue type character. The truth is these names associated with classes or even the choice that you make… doesn’t necessarily intrinsically shape your character. All characters have access to the same passive tree, with the key difference being where they “start” on said tree. So it is best to think of the classes as something along the lines of this.
Marauder – Pure Strength
Ranger – Pure Dexterity
Witch – Pure Intelligence
Duelist – Strength/Dexterity Hybrid
Templar – Strength/Intelligence Hybrid
Shadow – Dexterity/Intelligence Hybrid
Scion – Pure Hybrid… Strength/Dexterity/Intelligence
The other thing that I have had to effectively “unlearn” is the importance I place on gear. Right now I am level 37 and wearing a level 6 chest piece, not because I have not had access to better-itemized chest pieces… but because I’ve yet to come across another item with Green/Green/Red with linked sockets. All of the abilities that you use in Path of Exile come from Skill Gems, and these can be connected up in different ways so that they provide wildly different effects. Right now I am using Splitting Steel as my primary attack and it is being augmented by Vicious Projectiles Support and Chance to Bleed Support. This is my core combo and gives me the ability to shatter my weapon into steel projectiles that ricochet across the battlefield and deal significant damage while having a good chance of inflicting massive bleed damage over time debuff. I am now seeking a Red/Red/Green/Green item so that I can build into Fire Arrow damage that this build eventually targets, but I am experiencing something that the community refers to as “socket pressure” where I am not able to find an item with the correct arrangement of linked sockets.
The thing is there is enough flexibility in this system that players more seasoned than me… would be able to pivot their build on the fly to work with what they have been given. For me, I am mostly following the build dogmatically, at least until I understand the impact of different nodes on the passive tree a bit better. I have a nice 4 link item, and the game gives you rare items that will reroll the colored gems… but I have yet to reroll to a RRGG like I am wanting. Truth is that I am not reaching the limit of what I can do with my initial GGR Splitting Steel combo, so I figure I have time to find the item that I actually need. The only problem is right now I am building into options in the passive tree that are giving me no real current benefit. That has not however stopped me from having a freaking blast playing this game.
As an outsider who is not already bought into the Path of Exile community, the game has a number of problems. I think the two largest however are the frustratingly obtuse nature of the passive tree overwhelming players with choice, and not giving them a free pass at changing their mind without rolling a brand new character. The second problem is that Act 1 is objectively not good. It shows off the most uninteresting parts of Wraeclast and it is painted in the drab color palette of the first quake game. This is not doing the game any favors when it comes to indoctrinating new players. Those who manage to push through this rough exterior and devote the necessary homework to learning the game… absolutely love it. However, for years I was one of the ones that bounced almost immediately. Now I find myself starting to lean towards the “omg this game is brilliant” spectrum.
The other thing that I absolutely love is the fact that after I got to a specific point in Act 2… I unlocked a Hideout. This is effectively ARPG Player Housing and I am hooked. I’ve also seen that there is guild support, but I am not sure what that even entails. I know there is Guild Hideout support as well along with a guild stash, but I have not gone down that rabbit hole given that I am playing alone. I am not going to undersell the amount of work that I had to do in order to arrive at the point I am at, in understanding Path of Exile. I am also not trying to say that I fully understand the game because I am extremely novice in my knowledge. However, I do feel like the game is more approachable with the right research, and once you get the ball rolling… there is an extremely fun experience to be had. Right now I am loving it and I look forward to seeing what the rest of the game gives me.
The post Path of Exile Rabbit Hole appeared first on Tales of the Aggronaut.
