Good Morning, Folks. Yesterday, we got the teaser trailer dropped for the next Path of Exile II league/expansion, and it was extremely brief. More importantly, though, the community has been clamoring for some sort of notice as to when it was dropping. Folks take off work for these things, and in many cases need a decent amount of notice to get the time off. The good news is we are getting a reveal stream on May 7th. The bad is that the league itself is not dropping until May 29th, which is a significant delay from the original intended “every four months” pace of a POE1 and POE2 league. There will be gnashing of teeth, especially among the folks who only play Path of Exile II about this delay. For the Path of Exile diehards, SirGog announced yesterday that he was going to do some sort of a private league, and those are usually interesting. I’ve participated in one of these leagues before, and in that case, everything dropped scoured so you were forced to craft your own gear. It was interesting in an academic sense, but if that ends up being the case again, I am likely going to skip it.
The trailer shows a giant megastructure rising up out of the ground, and I personally think what we are seeing is somehow representative of the new atlas. This has been a feature that has been promised for a while, because the Delve-like Endless Atlas has generally been poorly received by the playerbase. As someone who loves Delve… I have to say that for whatever reason, when you apply this same concept to mapping, it just does not work. At least based on player behaviors in Path of Exile 1, folks tend to gravitate to a few map layouts that they really like and then run them over and over. Truth be told, the new way that the Atlas works in POE1 is brilliant, and I would love to see something like that translated over to POE2. I think the concept of Endless Atlas is cool, but I would love to see it as a side content. The reason why Delve works so well is that any given node only takes a few minutes to run, whereas every map in POE2 feels like it takes an eternity. It would be cool if they translated the Endless Atlas over to a sequence of micro objectives, building a sort of Delve 2.0 in the game with clearly marked rewards on each of the nodes.
Since POE2 is so far out, that has pretty much cemented the idea that I am going to be diving into Diablo 4 Lord of Hatred when it drops on April 28th. Yesterday Blizz released the opening cinematic, and I am maybe more interested than any of the Akarat nonsense has given me to this point. Right now, unless something drastic changes, I plan to try out the new Warlock class when the expansion drops next Tuesday. That is a chemo day for me, but generally speaking, I feel okay for the first few days after the poison is delivered… and then go downhill drastically as I approach the weekend. If, for whatever reason, I do not vibe with the Warlock’s particular form of summoning minions, then I will probably fall back on playing a Paladin. I think I will dig this expansion more than previous ones because I have figured out how to macro multiple abilities to the same button on my G600 mouse, given that D4 tends to be “spam every button on cooldown” gameplay, and I can reduce that madness to a single click. I did this with the most recent Last Epoch season and it worked swimmingly.
I am honestly vaguely excited about Lord of Hatred, because it seems like Blizzard has made some significant steps in the right direction to turning this game into something that has some lasting draw. The big problem that I have had up until this point with D4 is that leveling is generally pretty fun, but once you hit the end game… it feels boring and repetitive, and they ruined the one thing that was actually fun. Ace and I used to group up together and pool our resources and do a bajillion boss summons for drops… and they recently made it so that you only get loot if you are providing materials. The force multiplier of playing with friends stopped functioning, and as a result… we mostly just stopped playing together. Wudijo is pretty much one of the diehard Diablo creators, and he has released a bunch of information once the press embargo was lifted. He released another short video this morning showing off the new map overlay, which is pretty huge. That was one of the things that annoyed me the most about D4. You could not simply toggle the map overlay to stay on, rather than having to keep manually popping it up.
In the meantime, nothing has really been hitting gamewise for me, so I am back to playing Last Epoch. I contemplated rolling a Warpath Void Knight, but instead have gone back to leveling my Fire Aura Spellblade. I keep chasing slightly better gear, so that hopefully I can improve my survival. Ward feels way squishier than Health and Regeneration/Leech. It just seems like all of my ward evaporates at exactly the wrong time, and Omen windows seem to be the hardest content for me. Essentially, I have gotten to the point where I clear everything else in the echo but the Omen, and then do that last so that if I die, I have at least completed the echo and can move on with my life. Right now, I am farming the Blood, Frost, and Death timeline in an attempt to get a better pair of Frostbite Shackles. I love the new corruption system, but I refuse to “yolo corrupt” items and risk not having a copy… so I want multiple copies to play with. I could also use more copies of Last Steps of the Living for the same reason.
Anyways, time for me to wrap this up and move on with life. Are you going to be playing the Diablo IV expansion when it drops next Tuesday? Are you looking forward to the Path of Exile II League and bummed by the delays? Drop me a line below.
The post Ancients and Warlocks Oh My appeared first on Tales of the Aggronaut.
Good Morning, Folks. Last night I managed to get a pretty solid night of sleep with only three wakes, but far enough spaced out that I managed to do some proper dreaming in between. I am not sure if it is related, but this morning was also much better than yesterday, and I managed to breeze through my normal routine with minimal rest stops. This gives me hope that Thursday might just begin the “back to normal” phase and allow me to do the list of things that need to be done around the house that I have largely just pushed off for when I was “feeling better”. As I said yesterday, I am spending a lot more time consuming passive media than I normally do. Even something like an audiobook has been a bit too much for my chemo-addled brain, but seemingly, television and movies hit just fine. I know I have talked in fragments about what my recent consumption diet has looked like, but I figured today I would abuse this topic as a crutch to lean upon as I cobble together a blog post.
I am uncertain how much I have talked about it, but I wrapped up Fallout Season 2 during my first week of lying around and being useless, and it was just about perfect. This is how I want video game adaptations to work in general. They are true to the source material but doing their own thing, rather than trying to retrofit specific events that never quite translate well to the screen. We got to visit New Vegas, years after the events of the titular game, and also, in general, see what has taken place in our absence with the forces in that region, like Caesar’s Legion. What I really dig about this show, though, is the b plot that is showing the events leading up to the end of civilization and how each of the forces in that power struggle was making moves behind the scenes. The first season was absolutely a story of the Vault Dweller arriving at the wild world for the first time, and this one… is a much more nuanced take that is essentially the equivalent of Fallout 2 or Fallout New Vegas that dives deeper into the political structure of that world. Highly recommend both seasons though, and I am amped to see where we go from here.
I generally hate watching series as they are being released, and tend to wait until there is a full season run before diving in. However, with Monarch, I could not help myself, and burned through the first five episodes and then have been catching new ones as they release. I believe the full run is ten episodes, and it will be over the first week of May. I love Kaiju movies, and this show is like the ultimate companion piece to the modern Godzilla/King Kong franchise from Legendary Pictures and Toho. What impresses me the most about this show is its effects budget, because we get proper big-screen Kaiju battles on the regular in these episodes, with a shocking amount of screen time being taken by the big titans. They also continue to flesh out the backstory of Monarch as an organization, zipping between multiple timelines with the brilliant dichotomy of real-world father and son Wyatt and Kurt Russell playing the same character in two eras. I love this show, and I hope it keeps getting more seasons, because it is phenomenal… if you are into this genre.
Another show that I jumped the gun on is Maul Shadow Lord, in large part because I love Sam Witwer and his interpretation of the Maul character from the animated content. I looked it up yesterday, and I did not realize that he played the live-action Maul from the Han Solo movie instead of Ray Park, so I guess at this point, he is just the definitive Darth Maul in the modern canon. What I am enjoying the most about this series is that it gives us a view into a planet that is too small for the Empire to notice… that is, until Maul shows up. There are elements of gritty crime drama happening in this show, as well as the gangland elements, as multiple factions vie for control of the planet. When the Empire comes in, everything changes, and it is interesting to see just how hostile this is for every single player, from the local police force to the street criminals. Against this tapestry is Maul, plotting revenge against those who have wronged him and also attempting to recruit a Padawan as an apprentice. I am six episodes deep, and obviously do not know the totality of the shape of this story, but I am very interested in seeing it play out.
If you check my Letterboxd profile… You will see that I apparently watch a lot of Zombie films. I have no clue why I have such an affinity for this genre, but I do, and seemingly always have. The hopelessness of fighting against unwinnable odds, I think, terrifies me more than just about anything else in horror. Cold Storage is not one of those films, however, and it is way more Kevin Smithian Stoner Comedy, shoved into a fungus zombie package. That is not to say the film is riddled with low-brow dick and fart jokes, but rather the easy-flowing comedic banter of folks put in a bad situation as they unwittingly staff a decommissioned military facility turned self-storage. I also really enjoy the side plot of a pair of grizzled “seen everything” secret agency aging action hero types, getting called back into action to save the day. This could simply be because I myself am rapidly greying and enjoy the irrational wish fulfillment of seeing someone older than me, kicking some ass. On top of all of this, it really is an interesting spin on the fungal zombie trope, and that in itself is pretty cool to see. I had a lot of fun watching it, and I highly recommend it if your sentiments align with mine.
Anyways, that is what I have been watching recently. I have a bunch of media stacked up to watch. At some point, I am going to dive into Daredevil Born Again Season 2, but I am trying to let that finish releasing before I start it. I’ve also got Starfleet Academy that I want to watch at some point, and almost the entirety of Strange New Worlds. I’ve also not watched Wonderman or the modern conversion of The Burbs into a series, and am interested in both. Finally, at some point, I will probably check out A Knight of Seven Kingdoms, even though I have been pretty sour on anything Game of Thrones connected since that series crash-landed so spectacularly. Essentially, I have plenty of media to get me through the next several rounds of chemo hell. That said, is there anything you feel that I should be checking out? Drop me a line below.
The post Convalescence and Cinema appeared first on Tales of the Aggronaut.
Good Morning, Folks. This is going to be one of my rare unsyndicated posts, where I just talk to the folks who read me every day. This is Tuesday of the down week between my second and third rounds of chemotherapy, and I am well into the recovery mode. Yesterday I had my first round of iron infusions, and that seems to have helped quite a bit in general. When I finished with the infusion, it legitimately felt like I was waking up, and I had way more energy than I have had since I started chemo. This morning, unfortunately, things were back to being really rough, and I think mornings are just going to be that way as I recover. I had a lot of issues with nausea and indigestion last night, and as a result, I did not sleep terribly well, so it is hard for me to subtract what I am struggling with because of lack of sleep and what is struggle due to the treatments. Last round, I did not really start to feel like myself again until Friday of the down week, so I am curious if that happens again.
The thing that worries me the most is that the doctors have talked about how Folfox is additive in the severity of the symptoms with the number of rounds that you have. The first round was honestly a cakewalk, apart from the whole blood pressure issues that I was dealing with. This round… the challenges have all increased from more days with nausea, to the whole weird-assed cold reaction lasting longer, to feeling like I just have no stamina when it comes to doing anything. I am trying my best to continue to function, and I am hoping I have a few good days at the end of the week to get some stuff done around the house. For the moment, doing my job and making sure both myself and the cats are fed is pretty much the maximum load that I can seemingly handle. Even playing games feels way more taxing than it should, and I have spent more time just catching up on shows than pretty much anything else.
I am not complaining as a call for help, because I have plenty of resources that I can draw upon. I am just a deeply stubborn human being and really would prefer to do things on my own if at all possible. However, as we roll into round three, I am starting to doubt if that is going to be possible, especially if there is a continued escalation of symptoms, and I have six more rounds of this to go. I am going in for lab work on Friday, and I am really curious to see if the iron infusion has made any sort of lasting change to how low my red blood cell count was. I would post a picture of what the infusion looks like, but it is a wee bit too close to blood, and I do not want to make anyone squeamish. It was really weird because it sort of felt like I was bleeding in the wrong direction while taking it. I still have way more color than I did before yesterday, thanks to the infusion, but I think the burst of energy that I had immediately following it was all too temporary.
All I really want now is a nap, so I might take one over my lunch break. I wish sleep came easier, but there always seems to be something getting in the way, and my old trick of Benadryl and Magnesium Glycinate does not seem to actually be working. One of the things that I swore when I started this process is that I would be honest with my readers about how it is going. This morning’s blog post is mostly just explaining where we are at. I am doing okay, I will be just fine, I will make my way through this… but it is going to be a much larger challenge than I originally thought it was going to be.
The post Mornings Are Hard appeared first on Tales of the Aggronaut.
Good Morning Folks. I am bad at realizing what time of the year it is… and that my blog and podcast anniversaries are approaching. As a result, last Friday, aka April 17th, was the 17th anniversary of Tales of the Aggronaut. The left side of the above image is one of the earliest revisions of the site as saved by the Wayback Machine. Then, of course, on the right side, you have what the site looks like now. I’ve not made any really significant revisions to the look and feel of the site in a very long time, other than to shim in more artwork from Ammo as I commission something else. There was a point where I cared about readership, but honestly, at this point, I view this blog as a sort of outsider art project. You either care about me and what I have to say, or you don’t, and I can’t be much bothered to tailor my writing to follow whatever trends might be happening. Many of you have been with me through the death of animals, the loss of my spouse of thirty years, and now, as I am dealing with cancer. I’ve tried to be as honest as I can be with my thoughts and feelings as I went through all of it. Without really intending to, I somehow built a community of folks who care about me, and I appreciate that so much when things get low.
I also completely forgot to talk about the Anniversary of AggroCha,t the podcast that I started in 2014. This past weekend, we recorded episode 656, and started this nonsense back on April 13th of 2014. Listening to the early episodes makes me cringe super hard, but I think it is more about how different human beings many of us were back then. A lot of stuff had not happened that shook the core of both our gaming roots and, honestly, American civilization, and it shows. Folks have come and gone from the roster, but the original core of Me, Ash, and Kodra has remained pretty rock solid through all of it. It’s only gotten better as we added everyone that represents our current core of Ace, Ammo, Ashgar, Kodra, Tam, and Thalen. At this point, it is way more about hanging out together at a fixed time and talking about discussions that we don’t necessarily make time for at other moments than anything else. For both the blog and the podcast, they are not money-making ventures, nor have I ever wanted them to be. However, I am still pretty proud of us sticking with this for as long as we have.
In gaming terms this weekend, I wrapped up my 36th challenge out of 40 and think that I am going to wind down Path of Exile for the moment. Mirage League was a lot of fun, but I have more or less accomplished everything that I care to accomplish. At this point, I would only be moving forward with the acquisition of currency for the sake of acquiring currency. We should be getting news on the Path of Exile II league pretty soon, and next Tuesday is the drop for the Diablo IV Lord of Hatred expansion. While I have not fallen in love with Diablo IV in the same way as I did Diablo III, it should still be fun to poke around and play with the new Warlock class a bit. I think I have also reached a point where I have wound down my interest in Last Epoch as well. Those seasons are great for a week or two, but I quickly run out of things that I actually care to do, at least much faster than I do in a Path of Exile league. All of the ARPGs are in a pretty great state, and they all become somewhat interchangible for my joy at any given moment.
On a complete whim, over the weekend, I picked up Crimson Desert and started playing that. I am honestly not sure what I think of this game yet. Combat is mostly pretty fun, but movement and the pace of the game in general are a bit on the slow end. The world is gorgeous, and there is a lot of interesting stuff going on. I was not sure what sort of game to really consider this, but after playing, I think it is more akin to something like Dragon’s Dogma. If I had my druthers, it would perform exactly like The Witcher 3, but I do not get what I want most of the time. I am not entirely certain how much I am going to play it, because I have already had moments where the slow pace was a bit too plodding for me. I was also immediately annoyed when Steam popped up the “you should play this with a controller” message, but the game itself performs perfectly fine with a mouse and keyboard. There is a rumor that we are just about to get another expansion for The Witcher 3, and if that happens, it means I am going to drop whatever I am doing and play that.
I have a backlog of a lot of recent titles that I really need to get around to playing. Greedfall: The Dying World moved out of early access to its final release version in March, and as a result, I am now interested in playing that. Greedfall was a deeply imperfect game, but it was doing a lot of things that I really liked. I am also somewhat interested in diving into Star Wars Outlaws and the next part of the Final Fantasy VII reimaginging trilogy. There is also Death Stranding 2, which might honestly be the right sort of game for the weird time that I am going through. I played the first one at the height of COVID isolation, and as a result, it felt deeply poignant. Since I am similarly greatly limiting my exposure to other human beings due to the chemotherapy wrecking my immune system, it might produce similar results. I have more games than I can ever play. If I am being perfectly honest, I just have to figure out something that lands right and brings me joy since I have wound down my old reliable partner in Path of Exile.
Anyways… I have been writing this post for several hours now. I need getting distracted by either work or chemo brain, and figure I should wrap things up. What are you playing right now that is bringing you joy? Drop me a line and let me know.
The post Bad At Anniversaries appeared first on Tales of the Aggronaut.
