Where Would You Visit?

I got my inspiration this afternoon from the WoW blogosphere. Alunaria’s post asks “which place would you visit, if you could somehow transfer it from WoW to real life – and why? Or, if the world of Azeroth suddenly would change forever, … where is the one place you would go to, to see it one last time?”

Where Would You Visit?These two questions definitely have different answers for me. The first one took a little thought. I suppose if I could get a potion of water breathing I would love to visit Vashjir. How cool would it be to meet a giant sentient sea creature? Or see all the strange glowing deep sea fish? I always quest there instead of Hyjal when I get my alts to Cata, partly because it is so different and partly because it is so quiet. Everyone loves to hate that zone so it’s always empty and peaceful. I suppose some of my fondness for it stems from the fact that I spent a ton of time there on my druid, zooming around in aquatic form and picking herbs for hours on end. So relaxing.

Where Would You Visit?As for where I’d go to visit one last time if WoW were closing or getting another Cataclysm? That one’s easy. Ulduar. The couple times I’ve thought I was quitting the game for good, I’ve always logged my priest out in front of Ulduar, riding her iron-bound protodrake. Even after all these years, some of my best memories of the game were made in that raid. I was learning how to be a hardcore raider, and I was accomplishing things I never knew I could do. At a time when my real life was in a very bad place, Ulduar was a perfect distraction. It also helped that the raid was gorgeous and the fights were fun as hell. Except XT. Eff that guy and his tantrums. As for a specific spot, I love Vezax’s room and the path leading down to it. I can still remember the first time I saw those amazing stained-glass windows.

Thanks for the blog inspiration Alunaria, and gratz on the real life level up!


Where Would You Visit?

October 2017 Gaming Goals

Another month, another round of gaming goals. I was surprisingly productive in WoW last month, and also knocked out one very large long-term D3 goal. What’s in store this month?

September Goals in Review:

WoW: Get my shaman class mount. Done! DK mount too!

Do more Robosquids stuff. Nope. With the GW2 expansion and Destiny 2 releases, we just couldn’t get everyone together to play.

Horizon Zero Dawn: Finish a second playthrough to see all the updates. Nope. I made a bunch of progress on it though. I’m enjoying this replay and don’t want to rush.

D3: Finish the Barbarian set mastery. Done! This is one of the most satisfying gaming goals I’ve ever achieved. Those set mastery wings were worth it!

Legendary: Get a maxed-star card of every color. Done!


October Goals:

WoW: Level either my warrior or my horde monk to 60. I’ve been bouncing between these two characters and I want to pick one and get some solid leveling done.

Get at least one more of the concordance rewards I’m missing. I’ve gotten most of the mounts, pets, and toys for the characters I have at 110. My rogue is still missing 2 mounts, and I don’t have any of the hunter rewards yet, so those are what I need to focus on this month.

D3: Master the last Necromancer set dungeon. I went digging through my achieves and realized I’m only missing one mastery for the Necro. There’s no fancy rewards for mastering all the Necromancer dungeons, but it just doesn’t feel right to leave this unfinished.

Legendary: Get a maxed-star card of every color. Wait wasn’t this a goal I completed last month? Yes but… it turns out I’ll be getting a new phone soon, and plan to switch from iOS to Android. That means starting over. Ugh. I’ve been messing around with the game on my (android) tablet some already, so hopefully in a month I can get mostly caught back up.

Destiny 2: Hit the level cap. The game launches late in the month, and I don’t want to rush myself.  I do expect to be spending a lot of quality time with it though, so I think this goal is reasonable in a week of play time.


October 2017 Gaming Goals

Reading Challenge #86: The Codex Alera Series by Jim Butcher

I’m back with yet another installment in my reading challenge series. This time we’re discussing #86, The Codex Alera Series by Jim Butcher. According to the all-knowing internet, there are 6 books in this series. For this challenge I read the first one, “Furies of Calderon”, published in 2004.

The story has multiple threads, but the main ones follow Amara, a Cursor (a sort of combination courier-spy), and Tavi, an apprentice shepherd. This book is quite action-packed even from the start, when Amara uncovers the scope of a plot to overthrow the First Lord and the treachery of her teacher, Cursor Fidelias. Amara escapes the enemy camp and after reporting to the First Lord is sent to the Calderon region, where she meets Tavi. The boy had seen enemy  scouts, which Amara recognizes are likely part of the larger plot against her Lord. The rest of the story follows them as they both try to warn enough people to mount a defense, and find and report evidence of who is behind the coup attempt.

Their stories take place in a world where almost every person controls furies,  elementals that help them serve various roles depending on which element they can control. So people with wind furies can fly and speed up their attacks, earth furies can raise stone walls from the ground and sense where people are walking, and water furies can help people sense emotions and heal wounds. I think the cool part of this idea isn’t exactly what the furies can do, it’s that everyone in the kingdom has access to this power to some degree. Everyone except Tavi. He can’t do something as simple as turning on a lamp, because he has no control of the tiny fire fury inside.

I think it is quite interesting that supposedly this series is the result of a bet that Jim Butcher couldn’t write a good book based on a lame idea. The world-building seemed really fun. I enjoyed the idea of the furies, and the thoughts about what a world where all people had their own elemental familiars would look like. The plot on the other hand, was merely adequate. The foreshadowing of some plot points felt very heavy-handed, and made the later “surprise” reveals not surprising at all. Actually the biggest surprise to me was that they did not reveal Tavi as the lost grandson of the First Lord. A quick glance at the internet tells me this happens in a later book. It feels a bit bad to have something telegraphed so loudly and yet not pay off until a different novel. Still, the characters and the world were engaging, and the story zipped along in a way that kept me engrossed. I read this one start to finish in just two sittings so it must have done something right!

TL;DR: Come for the cool world-building, stay for the action and epic battles.

The Codex Alera Series by Jim Butcher

Rating: 4/5 stars

Verdict: A fast-paced fantasy tale and well worth a read.

Next up: Anathem by Neal Stephenson


Reading Challenge #86: The Codex Alera Series by Jim Butcher

Set Mastery Wrap-Up

Set Mastery Wrap-UpI finally finished my goal of getting some sweet wings by mastering all of the (pre-necromancer) set dungeons in Diablo 3. When set dungeons were first announced and they previewed those wings, I knew I had to have them. Unfortunately when set dungeons actually launched I did not enjoy them at all. There’s been a set dungeon requirement in every season since they debuted in early 2016, and it has always been one of the season journey tasks I’ve dreaded. I think that completing the full season journey in season 10 gave me the confidence and drive I needed to dust off this goal and get moving on it.

Working on set dungeon mastery made me realize that I needed to adjust my outlook and playstyle drastically in order to succeed. In a strange way the set dungeons remind me of PvP in MMOs, because you are playing the game in a different way than you are used to, and because you have to make your peace with the fact that you’re going to die a lot but dying is only a temporary setback. Making it all the way through a dungeon only to realize that you never found enough big groups to finish one of your objectives feels bad, but eventually you learn to weigh your success after the first minute of the dungeon or so, and just start over if you got an unlucky spawn. Also like PvP, knowing the map ahead of time and using it to your advantage will make life far easier. I generally tried to run each dungeon blind on my first attempt, but after that I looked up a map and planned out my route.

Having the right gear and builds is a huge part of this process, but I also found that, with a few exceptions, you shouldn’t let perfect be the enemy of good. You need your set pieces to unlock the dungeon, and there are often 1 or 2 key legendaries that really make the objectives possible. Anything after that will make your clears easier, but is probably not required. There were several times when I had looked up the gear list* for a particular build and spent hours trying to farm specific items, then finally gave up and just ran with whatever I had laying around and it worked fine.

Set Mastery Wrap-Up

Speaking of gear, I got very good at farming during this project. Unless you’re aiming for a set mastery conquest, I would highly suggest using non-seasonal characters. On some classes, like my witch doctor, I already had almost everything I needed in my stash, and it was just a matter of running a few rifts with her to get the last few pieces. For monk and barbarian, which I had barely leveled to 70 before and had no clue how to play, farming everything was a more daunting proposition. My method was to primarily use my demon hunter to fill up to capacity on blood shards, then swap to the other class and take my chances with Kadala. If you had a buddy willing to carry you around, farming T13 on the correct class would be optimal. I used a combination of solo greater rifts, so I could get shards quickly and level up gems, and T13 farming with random strangers so I could also pick up plenty of death’s breaths. Just like farming on a fresh seasonal character, I used Kadala for armor and upgraded rare items in the cube for weapons and jewelry. Doing it non-seasonal meant that I had plenty of mats for hellfire amulets, and staples like focus/restraint laying around which saved me a lot of time.

This was a huge project and honestly at this point I’m very glad that it is over. It was occasionally fun, and sometimes frustrating. On average it was more entertaining than I expected it to be but I’m in no hurry to go through this again. On the plus side it did force me to try out almost all of the different classes and playstyles in the game. Only the necromancer is left, and I’m curious whether I will ever bother to master those dungeons since there’s no pretty wings to get. For now I’m going to savor this accomplishment and take a much-needed break from set dungeons.

 

*I used a bunch of sources to help me choose gear and skills along the way, but I want to give a special shout-out to Team BRG which was the most useful, clear, and organized. Most importantly, they included maps with optimal clear paths. I could have finished my mastery without their guides, but it would have been a much more painful process.


Collected posts for each class:

Demon Hunter: Easiest – Natalya’s; Hardest – Marauder’s

Wizard: Easiest – Delsere’s; Hardest – Vyr’s

Crusader: Easiest – Invoker’s; Hardest – Akkhan’s

Witch Doctor: Easiest – Zunimassa’s; Hardest – Helltooth

Monk: Easiest – Sunwuko’s; Hardest – Inna’s

Barbarian: Easiest – Immortal King’s Call; Hardest – Wrath of the Wastes


Set Mastery Wrap-Up