Christmas Basebuilding

Christmas Basebuilding

My friend Grace calls today Super Xmas…  or the day that you get to chill out and rest after the manic running around that happens around attempting to make everyone happy on Christmas and Christmas Eve.  This absolutely used to be the case for me, but over the last few years Christmas has become a much more low key affair.  I’ve talked a bit about the concept of an anchor household, but for me most of those are now gone.  Instead we have to sort of make our own new traditions, and one of those recently has consisted of going out to dinner on Christmas Eve with my folks, and then coming back to our house and doing gifts together.  For years there used to be a strict schedule of… my folks and mothers side of the family on Christmas Eve, and my Dads side of the Family early early Christmas morning…  then my wife’s family for Christmas lunch and eventually another gathering Christmas evening.  Over the years deaths in the family have taken the corner stone of each of those gatherings to where there really isn’t a whole lot going on during the holidays on either of our families.

There were of course a few options…  one of which was the household that introduced me to the term “titty milk” a few years back and we opted out of that one.  Instead for the most part we just chilled out at home and enjoyed the fact that it was freaking 70 degrees outside for Christmas.  In the afternoon between thunderstorms we went out for a walk, which is something I need to start doing every day in an attempt to get myself prepared for all of the walking that is going to happen at Pax South.  As far as gaming goes… I spent a lot of time not actually gaming yesterday but more in an extended state of transitioning between games… as I checked twitter and surfed the web.  I did play a significant amount of the Sparrow Racing League, but largely playing remotely through the laptop.  I am getting surprisingly good at dealing with the input lag that comes from playing PS4 via PC, so much so that it actually takes a bit to get adjusted to using the real console again.  I am now in this place where I need two items to hit 400 light…  Ghost and Heavy.  I’ve since gotten two Exotic Heavy Engrams… but both of them decoded to 399 light instead of bumping on up to 400.  This seems like a massive bug because every engram seems to decode at 399 rather than giving me what is usually a level bump.  As far as the ghost goes… I tried some more forge only to have it bug out on me with the waves sitting at 100% for 10 mins and then eventually failing out without actually spawning the boss.

Christmas Basebuilding

Another thing that happened yesterday is that I fell into a giant Minecraft shaped hole as we hung out and watched some shows on demand.  It has been several years since I had legitimately played Minecraft and as a result I went back to pure vanilla for the moment at least while I get my bearings.  Before long I was back into my standard operating procedure which is digging a big hole and then eventually erecting some large structures.  I decided to have my main base out over the open water with a big tunnel leading from what is ultimately turning into my quarry.  I used the seed “BelChillingChristmas2016” and wound up with a pretty cool spawn.  My original cave opened into a giant chasm underground and I have been building the infrastructure needed to explore it more properly.  I wound up digging down into the rock and laying a bunch of ladders as I went which ultimately allowed me to create a shaft straight down to the chasm floor.  I have a hut of sorts down at ground level that lets me get down there in relative safety and at least see what monsters happen to be around.

Christmas Basebuilding

I plan on building a dock of sorts under my base that should allow me to launch boats easily for exploring new areas, and I also plan on building another big land bridge/tunnel to the other nearby coast giving me access to new areas.  Right now a lot of my time has been spent simply quarrying cobblestone and hollowing out the mountain side for that purpose.  There is a bunch of gold in the chasm, but I don’t really have much need for it yet.  I have not seen any of the more useful materials like Diamond or Red Stone so at some point I am probably going to have to do the whole dig down to bedrock thing and start some branch mining.  At this very moment however I am trying to expand my base of operations and make more safe space for me to travel in.  Minecraft is one of those games that triggers my base building instinct to the extreme, and I am ultimately falling back into the familiar patterns I do when I always play this game.  In truth I should be playing Diablo 2 since we plan on recording the game of the month show this coming week… but for now I am indulging myself in a little bit of structured madness.

Curve Beating

Curve Beating

I can in all honesty say I did not really expect to be placing this clipping of a screenshot on my blog.  When we cleared Normal Emerald Nightmare… I was pleased as hell.  When we turned around and cleared Normal Trial of Valor…  I was ecstatic.  When we started work on Heroic Emerald Nightmare…  I figured that it would give us a challenge right up until the point that Nighthold Normal was released and that we would ultimately switch gears.  I mean Nighthold is supposedly slotted for January 17th… which is only 26 days away depending on how you count today.  We however started making some significant progress in Heroic Emerald Nightmare… and in truth I didn’t really dare to hope we would manage to get through it yet.  We have several friends who are raiding mythics in a much more serious capacity than our guild raid.  The awesome thing is… we are apparently the sort of raid that they still enjoy coming along on because of the interaction between all of the members.  So in part I chocked our Heroic victories up to the number of “ringer” dps we ended up bringing in as a result.  Last night we were extremely short on numbers and missing most of this overpowered dps that we had so often been bringing.  I had resigned myself to hopefully repeating our previous progress, and just enjoying the process.

Curve Beating

Now is the point where I tell you… that I can not possibly be prouder of my guild.  Instead of struggling with the absence of some mythic ringers…  we instead continued to perform at an admirable level as we not only defeated…  but one shot several of the bosses we have never attempted.  We had some early struggles as we essentially got back in the swing of the raid…  for me not being able to make the last two Friday nights I felt more than a little rusty.  However by the time we reached “Spiderbirb” we were trucking along nicely and managed the first new one shot of the evening.  Similarly we seemingly rolled over Ilgynoth… or at least pulled out a victory doing the fight in a single burn phase.  From there we worked on Cenarius and once again managed to pull out a victory in a single attempt, which lead us to only having Xavius to work on.  This was sitting at 9 pm my time… and I thought to myself that we were in a good position to get a bunch of attempts in… giving us at least 30 minutes before the official end of the raid.  I also thought that with it being the holidays… we might be able to extend a bit to get the kill if needed.  It turns out we didn’t need all of that time on attempts, because we had a very close first shot and managed to pull out the victory on attempt two giving us still about fifteen minutes to spare before our official ending time.  It was a really great night, and I am amped about our prospects going into Nighthold.  We will for the first time this expansion be starting new content on exactly the week it comes out, which is a bit of a point of pride for me.  I love feeling like we can be casual, but still extremely successful.

Curve Beating

By the time the raid was over I realized that I had not actually spent any time with the Luna that evening.  So I took her into my office to chill out and get some attention while I opted to play some Destiny.  At this point I am 399 light… and have limited my list of needs down to replacing my 394 Ghost Shell, 399 boots, and 399 Heavy Weapon.  I had a moment of extreme excitement at one point in the evening when I got an exotic heavy engram…  which decoded at 399 instead of the 400 I have been getting from the SRL event.  Before long I was joined by my friend Grace and we hung out doing some racing.  She was working on one of the quest steps where you had to get ten races where you place in the top three… and I maybe just maybe played a little aggressively with the other drivers.  There was at least one time when I happened to ram into the person who was closing in on her then third place slot.  Who knew you could tank with a speeder bike?  In truth I had seen a few clans doing this over my time racing… where they were essentially clearing the way for their friend to come in and snatch the first place position so I considered it completely fair game.  That said she managed to pull out a few come from behind second place victories like the one I decided to screenshot here.  The bonus of the entire night was that in both cases we improved our light levels… and simply hanging out and chatting made the whole racing thing go significantly faster.

Curve Beating

I have honestly had some extremely good luck during the SRL with crucible weapon drops.  Last night was apparently no different as I managed to pick up a really nice version of the NL Shadow 701X.  Firstly it has triple tap which is a stat I love for boss encounters… or anything else I am pretty certain to land three precision shots in rapid succession.  To crank up the stability is Hand-laid stock… which ultimately reduces the range but I can live with that at 47.  Finally hidden hand helps with triple tap in making it slightly easier to get those precision shots…  so all in all the weapon has some really nice synergy.  The only negative is this is a scout rifle… and I don’t really tend to use a lot of scout rifles.  This lives in the Mida Multi-Tool family, and actually has a higher rate of fire…  which makes it feel extremely spammy.  Now if I could have replaced Hidden Hand with Full Auto… this would have been just about my favorite scout rifle.  In any case this is definitely something worth holding onto and other than my Hand of Judgement from Challenge of Elders… I didn’t really have that many legendary scout rifles that I enjoyed using.  In any case that still gives me a good roll for Eyasluna, and god rolls for Hopscotch Pilgrim and potentially NL Shadow 701X coming from SRL so far.

Shaders and Eyasluna

Shaders and Eyasluna

We have one week down officially for the Sparrow Racing League… and I have to say I am still having a blast.  There is just something about this game mode that makes me happy… and the bounty of rewards available only serves to sweeten the pot.  It seems that when SRL goes away officially… it will still be available through the private match list so there is even talk of organizing an unofficial league of sorts to race during the off time.  There is just so much to like about this event that it hard to place my finger on what exactly makes it special.  You have entire sets of gear up for grabs, with light levels up to 400.  I have to admit a lot of my drive to keep on racing is for the glimmer of a chance at finding some light 400 items.  So far I have gotten one, that I ultimately infused into my best fusion rifle that I am not pretty partial to.  A good amount of my gear is sitting at 399 light with my two severe hold outs being my artifact at 393 and ghost shell at 394.  There are technically ghosts available through the SRL but I have not personally seen one.  As far as the Artifact I guess my option there is probably doing some Court of Oryx because I have heard they drop there up to light 400.

Shaders and Eyasluna

Probably my personal favorite thing about the event is the availability of all of these interesting shaders.  You can check my twitter feed for a shot of one I found last night called “Ghast” which given my name seems a little fitting.  The above shader is my current favorite called Krokos which is mostly white with purple accents… that just happens to look really cool with the PS4 exclusive Jovian armor set.  There are fourteen shaders up for grabs… and I have managed go get thirteen of them with the last one tied to the record book achievements.  According to Destiny Tracker I have raced 68 times and played a total of 7 hours 38 minutes of the Sparrow Racing League…  which is pretty much entirely this year given that for whatever reason I only raced last year on my Hunter and Warlock.  Generally speaking I do a few runs to clear up the bounties and then retire downstairs to racing through the remote client, because really…  me winning or losing doesn’t much matter when I am largely in it for the possibility of maybe just maybe hitting 400 light level.  The goofy part is that even with the input lag caused by remote play… I still generally end up finishing in the top three and have even managed to win a few maps in this fashion.

Shaders and Eyasluna

The other huge perk of the SRL is that it levels your crucible rep while at the same time giving you access to some older legacy crucible weapons.  Of these the one I have been wanting since initially coming back to Destiny during Taken King is the Eyasluna.  This weapon is essentially a legendary version of the Hawkmoon, a personal favorite of mine in the exotic hand cannon category.  Over time I strayed away from Hand Cannons due to the ammo issues, but have recently started getting used to them again and even bought the vendor Palindrome last time I was capped on Legendary Marks.  When I saw this weapon was on the list of available items…  it has been my hope to see it show up on my end of match rewards list and finally last night it did.  I am not really sure what a god roll looks like on this weapon, but I can make the one I got work with Triple Tap, Braced Frame and Grenadier.  While this is going to drop me down to 9 instead of 10 shots in the magazine… it gives me 5 points from maxed stability which should make it insanely easy to headshot with.  The range of 38 is pretty solid for a Hand Cannon as well and the 81 impact is nothing to complain about.  I spent some time running around with it last night… and I think I am going to like it.

Shaders and Eyasluna

If you were not around for the Sparrow Racing League last year, I highly suggest you get in on the Dawning event while it is available.  We still have two more full weeks of racing…  but at some point soon I am going to have to care about the other side of this event… which is the strike list scoring if I hope to complete my record book.  Playing SRL really has made me realize how much I miss games like Wipeout, and the fact that we will at least get to play this game type in private matches going forward gives me some solace.  The only thing that worries me is that a lot of my enjoyment right now absolutely comes from the fact that I have a shot at interesting rewards at the end of the match.  With this carrot removed… will I care about it nearly as much?  As a final side note….  I have to thank Playstation support for taking care of my issues yesterday quickly.  It took some doing… but I finally managed to find the correct link to get some resolution with.  Within a few minutes and a few questions answered… they reset my compromised account back to the original email address and I was able to get in and take control once more.  Additionally when I got home I added the two factor authentication…  which I did not even know they offered until yesterday.  I guess when they introduced it they didn’t make much of an announcement.  In any case… after talking to some folks who got compromised there was a pattern to these attacks.

  • They transferred 50 of whatever the local currency was to the wallet… for me it was Dollars for others it was Pounds Sterling or Euros.
  • They changed the Sign-In email for the account…  which frustratingly invalidates the links being sent out in email that allows you to quickly contest these actions
  • They created a sub account and set it up with unlimited purchasing rights.

What they were planning on doing from there is unknown because I think I maybe got things stopped in time to be able to find out.  I had already put in a Paypal dispute, and Sony asked me to cancel that and they refunded the $50 taken from within their system.  They were quick to point out that they had no legal requirement to do this… since all sales are final…  and that they were doing it out of the goodness of their hearts as a one time exception.  Whatever makes me feel better at the end of the night, because in the end I got my money back without having to claw it back through paypal.  The gotcha however is that instead of refunding it to the bank…  they just placed it in my PSN wallet, which in truth I guess is fine given that I was going to pre-purchase Horizon Zero Dawn at some point anyways.  It was a frustrating start to the morning, but in the grand scheme of things everything seems to be restored to normal.  The only thing that I am going to do as a follow up is to get them to completely remove the sub account.  For now I have changed its password and decimated it through parental controls so it really can’t do anything.

AggroChat #136 – Star Wars Gone Rogue

Tonight Ashgar, Belghast, Grace, Kodra and Tam talk a bunch of games… and then Star Wars Rogue One

aggrochat136_720

This week we are recording a bit of a special show in that we have a bunch of gaming stuff to talk about… but also Rogue One happened.  So as a result we are dividing the show in essentially two parts.  The first part we talk about a bunch of gaming topics, and in the second part we give an intermission of sorts to let folks know we are about to delve into a spoilery discussion of the new Star Wars film…  Rogue One.  For those really cautious our spoilery discussion begins around 56 minutes into the podcast.

On the non-spoiler side of the table we talk about The Dawning event in Destiny and how awesome the Sparrow Racing League is.  This causes a brief offshoot conversation about how we actually grip our controllers.  A few of the crew have been playing Hex the digital CCG that many of us backed eons ago in kickstarter so there is some discussion about its current state.  Bel talks about the Warcraft community Icecrown Challenge charity event.  Bel also talks about his experiences playing Let it Die the Darksoulsian Rogue-Like set in a Neo Tokyo setting.  Finally wrapping up the pre Star Wars discussion is some talk about the 2nd edition of the 7th Sea Pen and Paper game.

Topics Discussed – Destiny – The Dawning – Sparrow Racing League – Controller Grips – Hex – Hearthstone – World of Warcraft – Icecrown Challenge – bit.ly/icecrown2016 – Let It Die – 7th Sea – Star Wars: Rogue One