Boosh and Barroth

Boosh and Barroth

It was a pretty great weekend as far as gaming goals go.  Saturday I largely roamed around aimlessly in Everquest while hanging out with my wife downstairs watching various stuff on the television.  Then at some point before the podcast I headed upstairs to see if I could knock out the megaman event.  This entails fighting the most laughably small Odogoron you have ever seen…  and one that is slightly larger than normal.  In truth I am not completely sure it is larger than normal…  or if it just seems massive compared to the tiny tiny one you fight first. Ultimately you need to get five tickets to get your full palico armor and I managed to finish mine up in three events…  with the last one dropping three event tickets…  something I was not sure could actually happen.

After the Podcast Thalen and I wound up hanging out and working on our Ryu costumes, which entails doing a challenge arena where you fight a massive Barroth.  This thing is so large that really your only option is to wail away on the legs until it falls over….  then start scoring hits on other parts of the body.  This event scores event tickets based on how fast you get the kill…  if I am remembering right getting it in less than 5 minutes nets you a gold and three tickets, less than 9 minutes a silver and 2 tickets, and finally finishing at all before the 50 minute timer is up earns you bronze and a single ticket.  You need seven tickets in total so we wound up running it four times in a row allowing us to craft the Ryu suit…  that in all honesty we will probably never actually wear.

Boosh and Barroth

When Thalen and I both got on I created an open chat channel and we both joined the Greysky Armanda clan session, and at some point during our Barroth nonsense our good friend Shiana joined us in both.  Thalen and I were talking for a bit about both needing Kirin and what sort of gear we were prepping for the fight.  It was around about this point that Shiana offered to help us get some attempts in seeing as he was in the 90s rank wise himself.  Granted this is like at 11 pm we are starting this madness…  but my desire to kill the stupid unicorn was greater than my desire for sleep.  So we continued forth with me wearing my mostly Xeno’jiiva set that nets 40 lightning resist with a veggie platter buff.  In truth with multiple people the fight already seemed way easier because I was not having to spend my entire time trying to shed aggro from the lunatic horse.

One by one we each got carted…  with me taking the last hit and closing out our first attempt somewhere around the 25 minute mark.  On our second attempt we managed to get feline insurance, and in truth only managed to get carted the one time if I am remembering correctly.  We had better luck as far as where exactly Kirin decided to fight us, shifting back and forth between two relatively open areas.  When we managed to whittle it down to enough hitpoints to make it run back to it’s “nest” we barrel bombed it into oblivion then threw on our thunderproof mantles and proceeded to wale away on it.  All the while this was going on… I was still very much on edge… afraid something would go terribly wrong and we would fail the fight once again.  So when I saw the above screenshot…  crediting a kill for Kirin I was ecstatic…  making getting to sleep when I finally crawled into bed a little after midnight a bit harder than normal.

Boosh and Barroth

Sunday I spent the day swapping laundry and hanging out upstairs playing Monster Hunter while watching The Mighty Boosh on my second monitor.  I am not exactly sure what prompted me, but for some reason I fired up Hulu to see what was available and it suggested to me this show.  Now I had watched most of it some time ago when reruns were being played as part of the adult swim block late at night.  This was back during my wow raiding days… and many of the sayings from the “Old Gregg” episode became constant quotation fodder during fights… especially “Fuzzy Little Man Peach”.  So yesterday I hung out watching the Hulu feed of the episodes while doing random nonsense in Monster Hunter World.  It was a day truly well spent.

Boosh and Barroth

I’ve been slowly adding weapons to my repertoire and then learning how to use them.  It seems extremely bizarre but I have been crafting purple and orange versions of weapons that I have maybe never actually used…  because I figure as I learn them I at least have an “end game” version to get used to rather than mess with all of the steps in between.  For the moment I have solid versions of Charge Blade,  Switch Axe, Great Sword and of course the Longsword of which I have developed quite the collection.  One of the weapons that I have kept wanting to try is the Dual Blades which seem really cool when I see someone using them, but for whatever reason I have never actually tried.

Boosh and Barroth

I really really like the look of the Sin dual Chain Kama looking weapons, and thanks to farming the Odogoron quest I managed to get not only one but two gems.  This allowed me to craft the weapon and the complete set of Alpha Odog gear to go with it.  Sure it might seem weird that I have a full set of gear largely because I think its cool looking…  but whatever.  Now I am setting my sights on getting the Zorah blast lance…  before giving that weapon a go.  Sure I could just go into the training room…  but as I keep being reminded I am the patron saint of bad decisions and that simply would not be my way.

Boosh and Barroth

Another project for this weekend was finishing farming the Anjanath claws needed to upgrade my weapon I can’t pronounce into the final form of said weapon I can’t pronounce.  I then took the firey axe and shield out on a few test runs having really great luck with it.  It could use a few more ranks of handicraft to give me more time in the blue zone, because it takes an awful lot of sharpness loss as you use it…  but it also dishes out a lot of damage and is crazy fun to use.  I am sure there are probably better options for sword and shield, but I like this one and it at least gives me an end game suitable weapon in that category.  All in all it was a pretty great weekend…  apart from one incident…  but that is a tale for another day.

 

Hibernation Season

Hiding Out

Every now and then I go through these periods where I run away from the groups and games that require me to interact with other people and for lack of a better term “hide out”.  They are usually paired with a period of high stress in my life, and I guess the current work stress mixed with the life stress of a bunch of big things looming on the horizon… could count as that.  I also just went to the doctor and found out that I am dangerously low on Vitamin D.  Generally speaking a healthy range is between 30 and 70 and on the test I came back with a score of like 10.  Vitamin D effects all sorts of things… not the least of which is mental health and mood, so I would not be surprised if all of the bouts of depression were related to that chemical deficiency in particular.  I am taking some insane 50,000 unit Vitamin D supplements once a week to help balance me out again, but I am still in the thrall of that desire to hide away from the rest of the world.

I think in part this is why I have not really been around in Final Fantasy XIV much because I have helped to build this wonderful and interactive world…  that likes me being around.  So when I am around I feel obligated to interact and be friendly…. and right now that is just too much of a drain on me.  Similarly I have an issue with Wildstar because the Black Dagger Society is so damned friendly that I feel like an asshole if I am not also friendly back.  As a result I end up playing a lot of Diablo III because I can get lost in a private game without the feeling of needing to reciprocate too many social graces.  This is definitely a me thing and not due to any of the amazing people in my life.  I am broken, and every now and then I just need to retreat inside myself until I am “less broken”.   What I do when I am like this is hang out downstairs and binge television shows.  I don’t really watch TV on a regular basis apart from Walking Dead/Fear the Walking Dead which becomes Monday morning water cooler discussion at work.  I am what is wrong with broadcast television…  I either record a show or watch it from a combination of hulu/netflix/amazon prime.  The concept of watching a television show as it airs just seems so damned strange to me now.  The problem being…  I am the reason why good shows get seen as failures…  because they are designed for people like me…  not the nightly television viewing public.

The Strain

Hibernation Season

Awhile back one of my coworkers told me about the show The Strain.  The problem with not watching television is that you also don’t really find out when a show is on the air.  I love movies and television shows about things that go bump in the night, and as such I have a deep respect for the director Guillermo Del Torro.  This show is apparently an adaptation of a graphic novel by the same title from 2009.  There is really no disguising the fact that this is a vampire show… but not one in the Ventrue/Toreador tradition that we have seen Hollywood obsessed with lately.  These are the Malkavians and Nosferatu that hide in the shadows.  This show brings back a return to “vampires as monsters” instead of “vampires and glittery swoony boyfriend material”.  The problem is I am not sure how much more of the plot that I want to give away other than that.  Suffice to say you end up with a badass team of Vampire Hunters, lead by a grizzled old Van Helsing type that is played by none other than “Argus Filtch” aka David Bradley.  The show has a very “zombie apocalypse” feel to it, but with smarter hunters stalking their prey rather than the mindless oppression of a world constantly looking for food.  If you like the monster genre, I highly suggest you check it out.  Even if you don’t normally like monster movies…  it might be worth your time because the characters are really excellent and with their own interesting flaws.  The first season is available on Hulu, and the show has been picked up for a second season.

Constantine

Hibernation Season

 

Constatine might be the “least NBC” television show I have ever watched.  I am not really sure what the network executives were thinking when they greenlit this show…. but honestly it was not destined for broadcast television.  The show developed a very small but fanatically devoted following… and honestly after finishing the first season I can see why.  Sadly watching this show I felt pangs of regret… because I am part of the reason why the show never got a second season.  I recorded it on my DVR and then binge watched it months after the show was cancelled.  This is going to be another Firefly/Space Above and Beyond regret for me…  because really the show is quite amazing.  It does an excellent job of presenting the character of John Constantine with all of his flaws…  and virtues.  They did a much better job with the casting this time around than the Keanu Reeves movie….  which while they failed miserably at Constantine did a pretty damned good job of capturing the setting.  I am still holding out hope that someone might pick this up as a Netflix, Hulu or Amazon exclusive.  They have already announced that the character of John Constantine would be appearing regularly on Arrow, so there is at least hope keeping this franchise alive.  Placing this show on NBC however…. was just destined to fail.  I think had it even appeared on the NBC Universal owned USA network… it might have found a home.

Killjoys

Hibernation Season

 

This show…  took me a few episodes before I got into it…  but now I am currently watching my way through it and I love it.  What it reminds me of is Firefly… but a show set in a different corner of that universe.  In Firefly you were out on the outer rim of society…  in a lawless wild west simulacrum.  This show instead is about the bounty hunters operating in and out of the core worlds, the Killjoys.  So far the show has spent equal time on and off of civilized worlds, and as it progresses there is an interesting world emerging.  The bulk of the show is set in an area of space known as the Quad… which is a planet orbited by three dwarf planets.  Qresh being the central planet ruled by the nine families, and between them is an unsteady peace…  along with comes a very brutally cold war.  Westerly gives you a big barren wasteland world, that was exploited by the “The Company” for natural resources and then sometimes nuked from orbit when the worker class rebelled.  Lieth is the farmland world, filled with “indentured servant” farms and their own share of illegal farming going on.  Finally you have Arkyn that so far in the series we have not heard much about… other than the fact that something went really wrong there… and folks tend to call it a “dead world”.  I am only about halfway through the first season and I have to say I am loving it.  The first episode does not do a great job of really showcasing the feel of the show so I would say give it at least three before you decide if you like it or not.  As soon as I wrap this up I plan on returning to watching the show…  which is available through Hulu… but you have to connect to your cable provider to grant access to it…  and have to play it through a web browser.  Both of these things I find annoying but I am dealing with it.  What are some of your most recent favorite shows?