Necromancer Set Mastery

Necromancer Set MasteryThere is no fancy wing reward for mastering the Necromancer set dungeons, which partly led to me ignoring these set dungeons for so long. Like all of the other classes, there are still two banners to get though, one for basic completion and one for mastery. At this point there’s also the principle of the thing. I’ve come this far, I might as well master all of the available dungeons. Plus it is my secret hope that Blizz will continue to add more classes, and eventually add another cosmetic reward for mastering everything. In any case it’s finally done, and here’s how it went:

The free set for Season 11 was Rathma’s, so that’s where I started. The two objectives were to get a total of 500 seconds of cooldown reduction on army of the dead, and to summon 100 skeletal mages. The summoning part was easy, especially with the ring that summons an extra mage every time. The cd reduction was a bit trickier. On my first attempt I didn’t get anywhere close. The second attempt saw me get the objective but run out of time trying to mop up the required kills. I finally mastered it on the third try. The “trick”, which wasn’t really a trick, was to make sure I was using army of the dead immediately when it came off cd so I didn’t waste any cd reduction. I basically got to a big room full of enemies and let my skeletons swing at them until I got the objective done, then summoned tons of mages and mopped up. I waited to summon the mages since when they’re up the damage buff means things die before they contribute much to the cd objective. Not a bad dungeon at all, and I appreciated that both objectives tied to the set, and weren’t gimmicky “don’t get hit by X” type things.

I worked on the Inarius dungeon next. The objectives also both directly tied to the set bonus: rip the bones from 100 enemies and kill 200 enemies affected by a bone armor tornado. This one was incredibly easy. I had the full set but no other specific legendaries, I just used whatever I had laying around in the season. I went in blind to the map and I got the mastery on the first try. Killing enemies affected by bone armor tornado is super easy, it will pretty much happen naturally. Ripping the bones from enemies required a bit more care, mostly because I was killing things before I could group them up. It was definitely easier than Rathma’s dungeon so if you’re having trouble with that one try Inarius’ instead.

Necromancer Set Mastery

Next up was Trag’oul’s dungeon. This one requires you to spend, and then heal, 1,000% of your life with your abilities. I basically just went at a cautious pace, alternated blood nova and devour, and beat it in one try. The layout of the dungeon has some nooks and crannies for enemies to hide in, but as long as you don’t leave stragglers you should have plenty of time.

After how easy the first three dungeons were, I was pretty nervous that I had saved the hardest for last. In retrospect I should never have worried. It was way harder for some reason for me to actually farm up the full set and bother to try this dungeon than it was to master it. The Pestilence dungeon objectives are to hit enemies with 150 empowered bone spears, and to NOT take 400k damage. The first bit is the easy part, it will pretty much happen with any build that you would want to use in this dungeon. Avoiding damage wasn’t that bad either, I just had to play a bit conservatively and not rush into the middle of swarms and elites. I mastered this dungeon on the first try, with over a minute of time to spare. Easy as bone spear pie.

Necromancer Set Mastery

Overall the Necromancer set dungeons were some of the easiest in the game. The worse of this lot was definitely Rathma’s. I one-shot all of the others, so I guess they were all equally easy. You can find my thoughts on the other classes’ dungeons in this post from September. I wish I hadn’t waited so long to finish the Necromancer, especially with how easy the last dungeon was to master. It felt a bit anticlimactic after the long journey it took to get to this point. At least now I’m officially finished with set dungeons, at least until they release a new class!


Necromancer Set Mastery

Reading Challenge #84: The Crystal Cave by Mary Stewart

I read this book more than 20 years ago, and remember liking it, so I was worried whether it would hold up to a critical re-read as an adult. This book combines a lot of things that normally are huge turn-offs for me. It’s low-magic fantasy with plenty of war and politics, embedded in a quasi-historical real world setting. Any one thing on that list is often enough to make me completely mentally check out. Luckily in this case the story and characters are well-written and compelling, and the Arthurian legend is both beloved and familiar but also flexible enough to withstand many interpretations. The combined effect is a book that I routinely stayed up hours past my “bedtime” for, eagerly devouring chapter after chapter.

The Crystal Cave is the first book in a series, and the whole story takes place before the birth of Arthur. Instead, it follows the life of Merlin from his childhood as a royal bastard with an unknown father, through his mundane and magical education, and sees him coming into his powers as an advisor and a prophet. One of the things this book does so well is it forces us to see Merlin as a human being, one whose magical gifts aren’t always controlled. We see his seemingly unending need for information and knowledge, and how much of his magic and prophesy are really just a combination of soaking up information and combining it with intellect to suit his needs. He’s a man who has a small amount of magical power, but uses his wits to leverage that into a larger-than-life reputation and political clout.

I know the shape of the myth of King Arthur but not all the details, so I don’t have the clearest sense of what is “canon” and what is unique to this retelling. What I do know is that this book places the coming-of-age of Merlin into a historical context that feels authentic from my admittedly fuzzy point of view. The details of daily life, the scope of the battles and military intelligence, the medicine and engineering were all touched on with a level of care that drew me deeply into the world and held me there. It may not be completely accurate, but the world felt alive and real on every page.

Honestly I was surprised that The Crystal Cave was listed by itself, instead of as the full series like so many other works on this challenge list. It left me wondering if the quality of the later books isn’t up to the level of this one, or whether this was just the most well-known of the series. I loved this one enough to want to keep reading. Honestly my only complaint is that it wasn’t available on Kindle, which made it harder for me to read in bed until the middle of the night like I wanted to.

TL;DR: An origin story for Merlin and the beginning of the King Arthur Legend.

The Crystal Cave by Mary Stewart

Rating: 5/5 stars

Verdict: Excellent read, if you’re interested at all in the Arthurian mythology I would highly recommend.

Next up: The Culture Series by Iain M. Banks


Reading Challenge #84: The Crystal Cave by Mary Stewart

January 2018 Gaming Goals

Happy new year! December was a month of mostly not meeting my goals. Let’s resolve to do better in 2018!


December Goals in review:

WoW: Decide on a new long-term goal. Done! I’ve been chasing old transmog sets on my priest. As an extra bonus side project I’ve been trying to go through her tailoring and craft every item she still needs the appearance for too. It’s not super exciting but it is keeping me busy.

Destiny 2: Explore the new expansion content. Sort-of. I have explored some of the new expansion, but I still haven’t finished the story or moved on to the new grinds yet.

Diablo 3: Complete the last Necromancer set dungeon. Nope.

Horizon Zero Dawn: Complete the new DLC. Nope. I fully intended to do this over the holidays but I got distracted by other things.


January Goals:

WoW: See every Legion raid at least once, even if it’s just LFR. The last bits of the current WoW raid will be out for the LFR crowd this month. That means it’s time for me to see them. I still haven’t finished all the wings of the previous raid yet so I’ve got some queuing to do.

Destiny 2: Finish the Osiris storyline. I’ve been working through this with the spouse on my hunter and solo on my warlock. Hopefully I can finish both soon.

Diablo 3: Finish that last set dungeon already dang it. I have no motivation to play D3 right now but this goal has been on my list for months and it would feel great to knock it out.

Horizon Zero Dawn: Start playing the new DLC. I might not have time to finish it considering all the other things on my list this month, but I would at least like to see it.

Hollow Knight: Get to an ending. I picked this one up on the Steam holiday sale and have been loving it. I have a lot of trouble with the boss fights but I like everything else so much it balances out. I doubt I’ll ever get close to 100% completion, but I hope I can progress far enough to see an ending.


January 2018 Gaming Goals

AggroChat #185 – The Last Jedi Show

Featuring:  Ashgar, Belghast, Grace, Kodra, and Tamrielo

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This week we decided to bypass a traditional show and do a full spoiler episode for Star Wars the Last Jedi.  We talk about the latest Star Wars movie and our thoughts given that they are super fresh in our minds at the moment.  This is a very different sort of Star Wars movie and we have a wide variety of opinions on various aspects of the film.  Once again this is a full spoiler show so I highly suggest not listening until you have seen the film…  or in a few of our cases seen it several times.