Month: May 2018

Too Soon

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I really do not have a lot to say this morning because I did next to zero gaming last night, nor do I really have a huge back log of topics that I feel like I need to talk about.  Instead of gaming I saw Avengers Infinity War and I have plenty of words to say about that.  However I also feel like maybe it is just too damned soon to really be digging into that movie as of yet.  When there is a huge spoiler laden experience out in the wild I try really hard not to be part of ruining someone else’s experience.  I used to be one of those folks that thought so long as you were quiet during opening weekend you were perfectly fine.

Then life happened and I have turned into one of those people who so very rarely actually goes to see a film on opening weekend.  Like as it stands right now the only absolutely guaranteed movies for me are the Star Wars films.  Even then I largely feel like I am going only to insulate myself from any possibility of having the experience completely ruined.  The truth is I don’t much enjoy the theater experience because above all I don’t like having to deal with the people. I also don’t like having to deal with either paying a lot more for a ticket to get reserved seating…  or getting there a massive amount of time ahead of the film just to sit there twiddling my fingers while someone makes bad jokes and shows me advertisements.

In my perfect world I would be able to stream a film on opening night in the comfort of my own living room and much like the “millennials” supposedly killing things like diamonds…  I would love for them to kill the theater going experience.  Then again I also sorta want to just pay one licencing fee and have access to whatever I choose to consume at any given moment.  I also would love to stop having to pay the ESPN tax to get the other channels I want in a cable package… but now I am just talking nonsense and mentioning a bunch of shit that won’t actually happen.  The movie industry is predicated on the concept of a limited experience and making all of its money in a very short up front burst to fund the next project, and the theaters are the drug pushers distributing the product for them.  It will take a thermonuclear shift to dislodge that bond, but I think it is also something that is going to happen inevitably.

With Infinity War I would love to be cool and quote Morgan from Walking Dead and say “It is not gonna work out how you think”…  but it might…  I honestly don’t know.  There are a lot of theories that have circulated around, some of them are more right than others.  Additionally I think it all depends on your ability to cherry pick things from the comic book source material.  If you read comics heavily back during the early 90s you have very specific expectations as to what is going to happen.  As someone who did this thing… I went into it with a lot of thoughts on my own and while some things did in fact play out just like my expectations…  there was an awful lot that didn’t.

In the grand scheme of things it was a good film and a film that needed to happen to make this long slide to this moment make any sense at all.  I highly suggest you check it out and get to the theater before major plot points are spoiled.  What has annoyed me the most however is the flood of YouTube videos  that were up and available by Friday night…  that were so blissful to dig into the minutiae of every single bit of the film.  I realize they are trying to get that early money from people exiting the theater and feeling they need to talk about it… but can’t talk about it with anyone.  However even the titles of said videos and thumbnails are often spoilers in themselves.  I can at least go into a huddle room at work now and talk to the folks at work who have been dying to talk about the events.

 

May 2018 Gaming Goals

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Another month has left us, taking the tattered ghosts of all my well-intentioned gaming goals with it into the ether. Let’s see if they come back to haunt me in May!

April goals in review:

WoW: Complete all the priest transmog sets up through Cata. Nope, but not for lack of trying. I ran everything on two priests every week, but I’m still missing one piece from Dragon Soul.

Get my new mage up to 70. Nope. 67 is pretty close though! The new leveling experience is slow. It doesn’t feel great.

Participate in my friend Belghast‘s M+ nonsense. Yes! I missed last week due to family stuff, but otherwise I’ve been enjoying this.

Monster Hunter World: Finish the story. Nope. I checked out and fell down a Night in the Woods -shaped hole and then never came back.

May Goals:

WoW: Keep playing in the M+ nonsense group. I don’t know if we will get to +15 before BfA arrives, but we will have fun trying.

Finish all the priest transmog sets up through the first tier of MoP. This seems like a minor goal since I’m almost done with Cata, but the MoP raids have 3 sets each. Plus I think some of the difficulties are mutually exclusive in terms of loot.

Level the new mage to 75. I’m keeping this to baby steps because leveling just feels bad right now. I hope there’s another leveling catch-up bonanza like the Legion invasions as part of the BfA pre-launch.

Destiny 2: Check out the new expansion. I’ve essentially quit playing D2, but since I’ve already paid for this expansion I might as well see what it has to offer, right? Hopefully it will give me a reason to come back.

Stardew Valley: Try multiplayer. A beta version of SDV with multiplayer just got released. I haven’t played in ages but this seems like a good excuse to fire it back up and mess around with a new farm.

That’s it! Another month with very modest goals because real life is still kicking my butt.

Red and Gold

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Red and Gold

One of my favorite aspects of Monster Hunter World has been the constant revolving door of limited time events.  It seems like at some point we will run out of brand new ones, and that they will begin cycling through the past happenings…  but for right now it seems like every time I turn around there is something brand new and shiny to interact with.  Starting on April 27th we got the Code Red event which involves fighting four “red” monsters in the standard arena, one after another.  So you have to work your way through Anjanath, Odogoron, Rathalos and then finally the Elder Dragon Teostra.  Doing this gives you a special currency that looks like a monster gem called a Red Orb.  Collecting seven of these and a slew of parts from all of the monsters included in the quest allows you to craft a set of rank 8 gear patterned off of Dante from Devil May Cry.

What makes this set really interesting is unlike past offerings…  this is not a complete suit but instead individual pieces allowing for some interesting Mixed Build options.  For the unindoctrinated…  armor pieces have specific stats on them and by mixing and matching them you can often times come up with really interesting builds that benefit specific weapons.  The boots for example have two levels of weakness exploit which I can see very easily mixing into other sets to achieve the desired affinity boost while hitting weak areas.  The other special thing about this event is the fact that we get a brand new Charge Blade that is themed after Devil May Cry as well and starts out Rank 8 without any need to do a follow on upgrade quest.  Instead of a sword and shield… it is a short sword with a run that serves as the shield…  that then turns into a giant two handed sword giving it a very unique appearance and feel while using.  A good chunk of my last week and some change has been spent collecting bits for this set and weapon… and last night I finally managed to craft the final piece when Teostra dropped that last piece of webbing.

Red and Gold

The other big thing I have been participating in is the Kulve Taroth “raid” quest that drops materials to create a really awesome set of armor that you can see me wearing in the above image.  Other than that it is also a chance for a lot of really interesting semi-random weapon drops.  During the course of the runs that I have participated in I have managed to get a purple or better weapon for every slot other than bow…  which seem to be extremely stingy for some reason.  I had enough blue weapons that when I sold them all last night I jumped from 10,000 zenny to just shy of 300,000 zenny.  The keepers have been 9 orange rank 8 weapons and 23 purple rank 7 weapons.  Like I have talked about before the real benefit of this quest is it gives you a stable of usable weapons that allows you to branch out a bit.  Like I have a decent Hunting Horn now…  why not try it out and learn to use it?

Red and Gold

Among the weapon drops I have gotten one of the more interesting ones is this Rank 8 longsword with 330 paralysis on it.  If a monster is at all susceptible to this status effect… it seems to proc quite often.  I was clearing out some of my quests last night and took out a Lavasioth and during the short time it took me to lower it to skull territory and trap it… I managed to proc paralysis four times.  While these weapons won’t likely ever outdo a truly tuned weapon… because they are spending some item budget on defense…  I like them as well rounded general use options that I didn’t have to spend a lot of materials to create.  The Kulve Taroth quest goes away May 5th and the Dante quest goes away on May 10th.  I am curious to see what replaces each of them which I guess we will start to see late in the evening on Wednesday?  The content release schedule is odd and ends up with some things releasing Wednesday night and others releasing Thursday night.  I want to get some more farming in of Kulve tonight for more attempts at shiny gold weapons, but in the grand scheme of things I am pretty happy with the progress I managed to make.