Hey Friends! So yesterday I was talking about the “inbetweensies” and one of my working theories as to why I bounced off Destiny Monday night was the impending reset. This more or less seemed to be correct because last night I pretty much played nothing but Destiny and had a grand ole time. I wish I could shape my mindset because in theory anything that was able to accomplish on Monday would have been a bonus, but instead I only saw the looming deadline that came with the weekly reset and resigned myself to not even try. This is what my brain does when you tell me something is a limited time event or something that is eventually going away. In theory it SHOULD get me to fly into action and do the things before the deadline, but it ends up having the opposite reaction.
This has been the case anytime something comes into game for a limited time. I think that I will buckle down and farm before the deadline comes up, but instead I end up bouncing under the anxiety of maybe just maybe not being able to get everything I wanted out of the event. The same is true with timed content in games. If you tell me that I am on a timer I will fuck up endlessly, but if you just sorta hide the existence of the timer then I will breeze through whatever it is. Anxiety is a thing and the older I get and the more removed from constant group interaction…. the more I find myself struggling with it. Like maybe it is just that my real world daily life is full of more high pressure interactions than it used to be, that I just do not want them at all in my gaming life.
This is the beloved Steelfeather Repeater that I have talked so much about in other posts. The roll that I ended up with that I considered a God Roll has Feeding Frenzy and Multikill Clip and I have loved this weapon so damned much. So one of my goals moving forward with this season has been to find a viable replacement for a Kinetic Auto Rifle. Pretty much I always have an Auto Rifle slotted and then alternate the other weapons around this, so as such I need something in that first slot to go along with my Gnawing Hunger which is my Energy Rifle of choice. I did a bit of research into some of the options and then last night I happened to get a few of them to drop.
I did not play at all during the season when Seventh Seraph weapons were actually dropping. As a result this Auto Rifle is completely new to me. For starters this appears to be based on the Khvostov which is one of my all time favorite weapons in Destiny. I got what I would consider a reasonable roll with Fourth Time’s the Charm and Vorpal Weapon. Looking however at what is actually available to roll on the weapon… it seems that I got one of the better rolls that I could have. The only thing that I guess I would have really changed were the barrel and magazine options. I guess this weapon can roll with Rampage so maybe I also want to see a copy of that weapon drop as well.
I did play when False Promises was a weapon that was dropping during Season 11, but for whatever reason I never really liked it that much. This is in a very slow archetype and it just doesn’t feel like it shreds in quite the same way that other Auto Rifles do. However last night I pulled a pretty solid roll that I am going with for now as I keep trying this weapon out. Feeding Frenzy and Rampage are solid, but I would have rather had High Caliber rounds in the magazine perks slot. It is a fine enough weapon and sorta reminds me of a Suros Regime on the slowest fire mode, which again was not really a thing I enjoyed that much.
Another thing that I managed to pull last night was the new Gambit exclusive Hand Cannon, or at least new to me. I remember once upon a time being desperate for a void Hand Cannon when I was grinding some past achievement, but I don’t know if that is still a gap in the itemization. It seems to hit really hard but could use a slightly larger number of rounds and faster reload speed. I have a feeling that Rangefinder and Multikill Clip are far from optimal for this weapon. Rapid Hit seems like a better choice all around since you are probably going to be firing off the full nine rounds anytime you are using it. Wellspring apparently can roll on this weapon so that might be interesting as well.
Finally I got a Seventh Seraph hand cannon, which again is new to me since I did not play during that season. I love the look of this thing but don’t so much love the way it plays. I wish it was a little harder hitting. The even rounds makes me think of the Hawkmoon, but this thing does not really hit terribly hard which is unfortunate. It was fun playing around with it last night but ultimately I would probably use the Gambit option to this one. The God roll appears to be Corkscrew Rifling, Appended Mag, Threat Detector and Feeding Frenzy. Maybe I will see something a little closer to that as I continue opening engrams.
This week is apparently Shadow Price in Nightfall Ordeal so I am probably going to spend some time in the coming evenings attempting to farm one of those up. Even if I don’t get an optimal roll it should at least tell me if it is going to be a weapon I like or not. I tend to have a pretty visceral reaction to weapons in Destiny, where I either like the thing they are doing or don’t at all and it comes down to a mixture of weapon look, animations and weapon sound. You could hand me the most optimal weapon and tell me it is the perfect roll but if it doesn’t “feel good” to use it… then I simply won’t and it will rot in my vault. So far of everything I have gotten I find myself using the Carbine the most, because it “feels” right.
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Morning Friends! Surprising to no one I played an excessive amount of Valheim over the weekend. We talked a bit about it on the podcast but I am quickly realizing that for me it is just a different sort of gaming experience. Like when I have played Minecraft in the past, the adventure is fine… but at the end of the day it always ends up being about the building. So since I am slowly moving on past my first foothold in the shared server environment, I thought I would at least talk about it a bit this morning. While my foothold has evolved into something that everyone just generally refers to as “Fort Bel” the truth is it started out as me trying to stay out of everyone else’s hair since I was further progressed.
I posted a walkthrough video of Shade’s Folly aka my starter place on the island. The goal was to run down the coast and sorta do my own thing while everyone else caught up, and as a result I never really assisted much in the building of what became the main town hub for our island. What was originally the building shown on the lefthand side of the screen, I eventually added the second building… and then proceeded the erect a giant stone wall around the entire compound and build further structures directly connected to that wall. This also caused me to create a more shared crafting area and open up my storage reserves to pretty much everyone on the server.
The longer I have been here however the more stale it has gotten. There isn’t that much more I can do with my current location because I risk taking up more space and encroaching upon the territory of those who built around me. Additionally I am on the border of the nearest entrance to the Black Forest and I don’t want to “unwild” that region any more than it already is. As a result I have gone out onto the ocean in search of new areas and at some point I will probably do other walkthrough videos talking about each of them. The biggest of these is Dawn’s Rest or what folks are just mostly universally referring to as “Castle Bel”.
I also played quite a bit of the Outriders demo this weekend, and hit the level cap. I could in theory do like the YouTube community has been doing and grind their faces off against a tiny amount of content trying to farm things… or I could just stop playing. I am likely going to more or less stop playing. I’ve spent a tiny bit of time trying out the other classes but I am pretty certain that Devastator is the class for me. So far my second favorite is Trickster… but they both sorta do the same thing where they are up close and personal with targets which seems to fit my enjoyment pattern with aggressive gameplay and bad decision. Really looking forward to the launch of this game at the end of the month.
The thing that I was NOT expecting this weekend is that I ended up firing up Destiny 2 and playing some of it last night. It is amazing how much more enjoyment I get out of the game now that I know that the weapons I am earning won’t be irrelevant now that the gear Sunset has officially been called off. Unfortunately one of my favorite Auto Rifles is in the sunset, so I will be trying to find a new favorite Kinetic Auto since Steelfeather Repeater is already sunset. Anything that is not currently sunset should be fair game however, so I am hoping to get a few Shadow Price variants to see if I like that weapon. I vaguely remember it from Destiny 1, but not extremely well.
Like every weekend it went entirely too fast. Time moves extremely strangely in the time of the self imposed lockdown. What did you get up to this weekend? Did you check out Outriders? What were your thoughts.
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Featuring:Â Ammo, Belghast, Grace, Kodra, Tamrielo and Thalen
Tonight we are down an Ashgar but work our way through a series of topics from the list. First up Bel can in fact confirm that the PlayStation 5 exists and talks about his early experiences. From we talk a bit about Bugsnax and how it is this weird Muppet Pokemon game that also has deeply disturbing Bioshock style undertones going on. Tam talks a bit about puzzle shooter Superliminal and Kodra talks about What Remains of Edith Finch. We talk a bit about parkour ninja game Ghostrunner and Bel shares some of the recent changes to Destiny 2. Finally we wrap up with some extemporaneous viewing suggestions… Duck Tales, Animaniacs, Mandalorian and the Ashens series of movies.
Topics Discussed:
Right now my low key chill game has been Destiny 2 as I slowly and methodically work my way through the various opportunities for light levels each week. I’m enjoying the new seasonal hunts quite a bit even though the formula itself is rather repetitive. You essentially “do some things” in order to gain a charge for your lure and then fill out the 3 slots on the lure to determine who you are going after. Finally you plunk that puppy down in the Tangled Shore, fight a mini boss, and chase glowing green goo until you reach the lair of the boss you are going to fight. Lastly you damage specific majors in the encounter in order to drop the invulnerability shield on the boss allowing you to burn it down and get your loot.
What do you get for a reward? Well largely a series of weapons of which for me at least there seems to be one available at any given time. The loot acquisition is so much slower than some of the other seasonal events, and I think that in part is what has made it feel like we just aren’t getting as much useable drops. Corsair’s Wrath is a perfectly cromulent linear fusion rifle, but as far as heavy weapons go… it is not my favorite archetype to use. I greatly prefer a Rocket Launcher, Machinegun, Grenade Launcher or a Sword. I mean I will hold onto this for the times when I get bounties that require one.
This however is what I was wanting to get my hands on. Wave Frame grenade launchers are special in that they fire out a wave of elemental energy after the detonation. As a result you often times don’t even care about the detonation but are instead using them for wave clear. The Season of Dawn had some of my absolute favorite weapons to be introduced into Destiny 2 and one of them was a wave frame grenade launcher called Martyr’s Retribution. In practice it was essentially an on demand Titan Thermite Grenade, and it was amazing… and also sadly sunsetting after this season. Deafening Whisper steps in to take its place and instead of a wave of Solar damage it deals a wave of Void Damage. Hoping to get a good roll on this that I can hold onto for awhile.
Another interesting weapon that I managed to pick up is the Coriolis Force, and it too is a special type of weapon we have not really seen before. Usually fusion rifles have a vertical spread as you fire them as a sort of energy shotgun. Coriolis Force instead has a horizontal spread pattern allowing you to spray an oncoming wave of mobs with charged energy particles. The “One For All” perk works with this nature and if you hit three different targets with one spread, it gives you a damage boost. I am sure one could build around this in some interesting ways.
I’ve also reached a point of peace with the Behemoth Stasis class for Titans, as I finally got a grenade that I actually like using. Coldsnap Grenade freezes whatever it hits and then spreads ice out freezing whatever it touches. This seems to be more predictable than the other two options which are effectively a freezing fog bubble or an ice wall. Last night I spent a lot of time playing Striker for the vanguard weeklies and it felt odd NOT being Stasis, and it seems like some of the new content was designed expecting guardians to be using that spec. The new Disgraced strike, which is essentially a rebrand of the Omnigul strike… was sheer madness without the crowd control that Stasis provided especially with waves of thralls and the fact that we had the affix that increased melee damage.
The real news however is that this weekend the Deep Stone Crypt raid race starts on Saturday at 10 am PST or 12 my time. This is one of the few “esports” activities that I actually care about and I had a great time watching last year as folks raced through the Garden of Salvation raid. I am not sure who is going to be commentating the race this time around, but last year a team effectively came from out of nowhere to get the win so it isn’t like one of the big name teams is absolutely going to take the prize. What is going to be interesting is that for the first time I am going to have a clan that is actually participating. What is even cooler is that my friend Warenwolf that I have known since Vanilla WoW is on the roster. Right now the team is comprised of:
I am not sure if there are going to be multiple streams going or not, but I do know that CajunGeek plans on streaming Tequila Mockingbirds attempts. At a minimum I think they want to make sure they get the day one clear. Initially Deep Stone Crypt is going to be open in what they call Contest Mode where artifact power is disabled and your light level is capped at 1230. While there are absolutely players in the game sitting at the 1260 cap… this attempts to even the playing field so that builds and group composition matter more than who ground the hardest. Seeing that I am sitting at 1225 and have been pretty casually playing this seems like a completely doable number for everyone to hit that was super serious about making this raid race.
Right now I plan on trying to keep the TQMB stream up while also watching any official coverage from Bungie. I am sure I will be tweeting out links and such tomorrow as it is going down.
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