June 2017 – Page 10

Proper Deathlord

June 2, 2017 by Belghast

Last night I got to a bit of a late start because I was doing birthday things for my Mom… so totally a valid excuse in any book I would recon. Once I settled in however I had a bit of a laser focus on trying to finish the Death Knight class hall, and more importantly than anything… unlock that damned third artifact slot. The mission in front of me however was to chain run Vault of the Wardens, Eye of Azshara, and Maw of Souls. The fun part about this stage in the expansion is that firstly… it is way easier to get a heroic queue than a normal queue. Secondly… people regularly faceroll heroics since they so grossly outgear them. So in truth I managed to get three dungeon runs with about 15 minute queue times… that then went pretty damned smoothly. Other than Eye where we had some truly way overgeared people in there… I actually managed to hold my own on the dps meters which makes me feel largely validated. I mean I was not trying that hard to make sure I had a reasonable rotation… and largely just pushing a bunch of buttons… and still managed to remain high on the meters. I just don’t have the instincts of a DPS player, but sometimes it is nice to chill and not have to worry about boss placement and picking up aggro on stragglers that may or may not wander in late during a fight. I did however start diverting some artifact power into funneling up my Blood weapon so I could in theory tank at some point.

The real win of the evening however was getting the spiffy upgraded version of the weapon. Side note that I did not realize at all is that the various alternate color palettes are apparently dictated by account based achievements? Either that or I somehow managed to unlock all four color schemes of the new weapon before actually finishing the Death Knight class hall. Whatever the case for Unholy I am still choosing the default one because it seems to match my chosen armor set about the best. This is making me wonder if the various “do X things with your hidden artifact appearance” is somehow tied to the account and not a given character. Because I have done most of those on Belghast already, and it would be sort of awesome if that ended up carrying over to other characters. I do however feel like I have a proper and legitimate Deathlord to do stuff with, at a high enough item level to join in a lot of reindeer games. The only problem is… I also sorta have this looming feeling of “what next”. In truth I probably should start spending more time in Final Fantasy XIV an attempt to continue prepping for the upcoming launch of Stormblood. In exciting news… I stuffed yet another person in my candy van and got the very awesome Gloria to server transfer and start hanging out with us on the Cactuar server. In truth I think it probably had more to do with Grace than me… but whatever the case it is always awesome to have new people joining in the madness.

June 2017 Gaming Goals

June 1, 2017 by Grace

Hello again. I’ve survived yet another month and that means that it is time for this month’s edition of gaming goals.

May Goals Recap:

FFXIV: Get enough scripture to buy a weapon, and get it upgraded. Nope. I’m still sitting on all the materials for this because I could never decide if I wanted to buy it for scholar or astrologian. Then I stopped playing FFXIV for a while so it was moot.

Finish the aether oil step of the anima weapon. Yes! By some miracle I actually got this done. I blame a brief burst of enthusiasm for the game fueled by the most recent live letter with all the new Stormblood info.

Diablo 3: Complete the season. Yes! I honestly surprised myself with this one, because I was afraid I would get bored and wander away just before the finish line like last season. Instead I followed through and was weirdly proud of myself for accomplishing this.

WoW: Level one more class that I don’t already have at 110. Yes. Hahaha! I’ve been playing way too much WoW lately. The only classes I don’t have at 110 in some form now are Shaman, DK, and Warrior.

June Goals:

WoW: Level one more class to 110. I can tell I’m getting close to burning out on WoW, and with Stormblood on the horizon I know I’ll be putting it down once this month’s sub is finished. Hopefully before then I can get one of the 3 remaining classes up enough to see their story.

Subnautica: Rebuild my sweet sea base empire. This is my AggroChat game of the month for June, so I have to play it at least a bit. My intention here is to see what has been added in the 6+months since I last played, and to do my best to recreate some of the cool stuff I had acquired in my earlier playthroughs.

FFXIV: Play Stormblood. Ok this is basically cheating, of course I’m going to do this! But I don’t want to have any more strict goals because I want to be very chill and just enjoy the launch and the leveling process without having to rush things.

Once again this is a month with really modest goals. I’m hoping that means I will actually accomplish them for a change. And I know myself well enough to know that when Stormblood launches all other games will be purged from my attention for at least a few weeks, so there’s no sense trying to do anything ambitious in June.

Catch Up Mechanics

June 1, 2017 by Belghast

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Last week I talked about it feeling like it was the end of the expansion in World of Warcraft, and in part that was due to the way that I am playing the game and focusing on alts. However there is apparently another key way things are starting to feel like the end of the expansion, and that is catch up mechanics. Now yesterday I posted about pushing through and dinging 110 the Legion expansion level cap on my Orc Deathknight. I managed to find a couple of lucky grabs on the auction house including 3 cheap pieces of demonsteel at 835 item level and a cloak at 870 item level. Other than those items however I managed to scrape together what is a reasonable item level to start going and doing stuff… in a single nights time between a combination of world quests, legion invasions, and opening the broken shore. When I first saw the Dauntless items I found them a little underwelming… but that was on my already 890 main character. The fact that you can start picking up 850+ items for 400 nethershards… when I walked into the Broken Shore with roughly 4000 of them… allowed me to really flesh out those missing gear slots. The only negative there is that the rings and trinkets are both “Unique Equipped” which were sadly the two slots I needed the most. Thankfully during the invasion event last night I managed to pick up a second ring at 840, taking my item level to the point where I could apparently start queuing for Looking for Raid.

Now I am not sure what the item level breaks are for the various LFR segments… but I was honestly shocked to find out that I could queue for Nighthold without having done anything in Emerald Nightmare or Trials of Valor. Before heading to bed I did the first part of Nighthold and picked up an 860 necklace and an 860 artifact. So other than a few strategic grabs from the auction house… I managed to pick up everything else I needed to gear a character in a single night. I am now sitting at 846 item level… and will probably finish doing the rest of LFR tonight hoping to pick up a few more pieces. I also need to start running dungeons so that I can complete the Death Knight Order Hall sequence… and during the day today the final missions that I need to run should be finished. I guess while sitting on a higher level character I didn’t notice just how quick the item level ramps up, but while out roaming the world on a brand new character it is extremely noticeable. It definitely seems the end of expansion catch up mechanics are in full effect, as the game attempts to usher you closer and closer to that 900ish item level. I still have yet to get a Legendary, but in truth I have only been trying to two nights now. I also need to research how exactly to get the alternate artifact appearances, because while I am not expecting to go crazy and start farming for them like I did on my Warrior and Paladin… I do however don’t want to miss easy opportunities when they come up.

The other interesting thing I am noticing… is that playing Horde on a server cluster where the Alliance greatly out numbers you… leads to some interesting interactions with other players of the same faction. The two items I got from LFR I was functionally handed by other players who were offering them to me. Also while out in the world on Broken Shore especially… the horde seems to do the same sort of thing that I do in open world zones on my warrior. That is help random players. There are a lot of cases where I was straight getting wrecked and another player ran up and started attacking the same mobs to help me push through them faster. Up to this point I really haven’t had much in the way of communication, so maybe I am just reading intent into their actions where it really isn’t there. Just saying so far it has not been a horrible experience, and at least the public channels are not clogged with madness the way they are Alliance side. I still have a significant problem with the Horde in general… not from a factional standpoint but from the standpoint that “bestial humanoid” is not really the sort of thing that I flock to in games. However Orc seems to be a happy medium for me, and I’ve come to this realization pretty much any time I play one. Every other Horde race and I have significant issues. The Tauren are just too big and feel lumbering and slow. The undead and trolls… I cannot get past the hunched posture… or the tusks… or the missing bits of armor. Bloodelves have the problem of being the most elvish elves ever… and if you have been around my blog for long you know my distaste for all things elf. The goblins in theory are an option…. but they sorta end up being played for comic relief much in the same way that gnomes do that that annoys me. The Horde really missed their opportunity to make a lifetime member of me when they failed to somehow recruit the Dark Iron Dwarves. For the moment however I am largely okay with being a blue green guy with a Mowhawk and Mutton Chops.