Awesome Wife Update
My wife is always awesome, but every now and then she does something so cool that I have to brag on her. This weekend she was out shopping with a friend when I got a series of excited texts from her about something she found for me. Awhile back I picked up some Star Wars shoes with this “A New Hope” artwork spread across the two shoes. The problem being that they were expensive as shit and I hate the idea of wearing them out in my normal shoe rotation. I wear a mixture of Vans and Airwalk slip on style canvas shoes and I seem to be able to destroy them pretty effectively. My wife however found the above pair that is absolutely Star Wars print but not to the level that I wouldn’t want to wear them constantly. She didn’t end up picking them up, mostly because she wanted me to try them on. We get up yesterday and they were apparently also on sale at Target, so I am not sure how much we paid but I think they were under $20. I just think its awesome that she saw the shoes and immediately thought that I would want them. My wife isn’t necessarily a geek like I am, but she has always “gotten” the fact that I am and supported me in my quirkiness. I am exceptionally lucky, and every now and then I feel like I need to acknowledge that fact publicly.
Starting Balmorra
I had all of these intentions to make a big push yesterday in Star Wars the Old Republic, but in reality I only ended up playing it in the evening while watching television. I did however manage to finish up all of the end of chapter one back and forth for the smuggler. I now have Risha as an official companion rather than just someone hanging out on my ship. Granted I will likely never end up using her, given that the Tank/Healer combo of Treek and I allows me to pretty much take on anything with ease. Overall I do like the character of Risha and it is going to be interesting to see how the rest of the game plays out. I figure she is going to remain being a vocal participant in the content. Now we are going to enter into some spoiler territory, so you might want to stop reading if you have not completed the smuggler story line and intend to do so. One of the absolute best moments in the game so far… was when I finally got to take down Skavak. Up until this point I kept thinking to myself… god why will this game not let me just kill this guy already!
Now that we have moved into Chapter 2 we get a new set of bad guys. At this point I don’t really care much about this Voidwolf character, but I am absolutely all about taking on Rogun the Butcher. Up until this point I have had him looming over my head and he has sent the occasional bounty hunter after me. My hope is that when I finally am able to take him down it will be just as sweet as it was for Skavak. I feel like as a smuggler I probably shouldn’t want to have a stand up fight against these Kingpins, but then again Leia did slay Jabba in rescuing Han… so there is that example to follow. There are moments in this game that I know are traps… but you pretty much have to go through them anyways. The “rescue” mission on the derelict freighter for example, was absolutely going to be a trap and it was. I did not however expect Port Nowhere to be the trap that it ended up being. I guess it makes sense, because pretty much EVERY map you go to that is not on a main world ends up being a trap. Looking forward to pushing through Balmorra because I can tell you right now I am ONLY doing class story quests here. This is the planet that often kills my progress on Sith side, so will be looking forward to getting through it here on Republic.
Heroic Light
Yesterday was a day almost entirely lost to Destiny. After finishing my blog post, advertising the podcast, and finishing up the youtube version we ended up running out to Target to pick up my shoes. We got home around 11:30 and from that point until around 3:30 I was engrossed in this or that activity within Destiny. I wound my way through the Taken King story, largely because I wanted to open up the Dreadnought patrol zone. I have to say Oryx was one of those fights that was probably way worse in my head than it actually was in reality. The entire time during the fight I was tense beyond reason because I did not want to die and have to start over again. So I spent most of my time dodging and running away while trying to regroup and get some solid shots in. I don’t want to go into too much detail for those who have not done the fight, but there is a moment where he goes invulnerable except for a specific moment when you can attack. This phase… freaked me out more than anything I can remember in this game.
I kept trying to time my sunbreaker super attack for when he was becoming vulnerable again all the while dodging taking damage. The only negative about the encounter is that the adds definitely felt like nothing more than ways for you to regenerate your ammunition, and they were less of an issue once I realized this. At first I kept trying to run from them and focus down Oryx, but I quickly realized that if I kept doing this I would get overwhelmed. The big takeaway from the weekend is that I managed to hit 240 light, which is the first heroic level. I did a couple of the Vanguard strikes on the play list, and I am going to keep trying to do those periodically. I also started getting quests to do various “end game” content. My main goal for the week is to regenerate enough Strange Coins to be able to buy something next Friday if Xur has anything interesting. I am really happy that I had enough to buy Hawkmoon since I pretty much exclusively use Hand Cannons on my Titan. At some point I plan on working my way up on either a Warlock or a Hunter, but for the time being I am really enjoying leveling Sunbreaker. I am not sure exactly why Destiny has this renewed life for me… but for whatever reason I am grabbing on with both hands while the fun lasts.