Because of the weird times that we are living in, we decided to do the normal Blaugust event in April and call it Blapril. The hope was to get our minds off of everything that was going on in the world with Covid 19 and in theory give folks something good to focus on during that month. At that time I think a good number of us expected that by the ACTUAL Blaugust time frame that events would have gotten more or less back to normal. I at least was wrong about that and we are still very much dealing with the world created by living in a pandemic.
As we near the time frame of “actual” Blaugust, I still wanted to do something to mark the event. I think it is WAY too soon to do another “31 posts or bust” type event. Instead I put on my thinking cap and tried to devise something that would be more of a drop in/drop out nature. If you have been around the internet for awhile I am certain you have seen one of those events that involves posting or drawing something based on a fixed number of prompts. Those are cool and all but I had this brain storm… what if we turned something like that into a “pub crawl” of sorts.
What Is Promptapalooza?
The idea is that each day during the Month of August there will be a different writing prompt presented by a different blogger. I think it was Roger who suggested that we are doing a “Blog Relay”, because the second part of this is that each day the person posting the prompt will also indicate who is next in sequence for tomorrows prompt. There is a good deal of flexibility in this, and I am trying to set it up in a way so that you can either supply your own prompt that you want people to create content based on, or we can supply one for you to post.
What we really need is more sites participating, because currently I am roughly half the way to the thirty bloggers I need to carry this event off. I had been keeping it on the down low up until this point as I tried to work out the logistics, but I now believe it is time to do a finish push and get the rest of the participants signed up. Really at the end of the day all that is asked is for you to take a day and at the bottom of your normal post include the prompt that will be used for the next day along with a link to the next person in sequence providing a prompt.
So in theory it would work something like this:
On July 31st I would provide prompt number 1 and link to the person posting prompt 2
On August 1st someone would provide prompt 2 and link to the person posting prompt 3
On August 2nd someone would provide prompt 3 and link to the person posting prompt 4
This in theory accomplishes a few things. Firstly it provides a constant stream of potential topics for folks to write about. You can pick and choose the ones that interest you and incorporate them organically into your content creation stream. You can also completely ignore their existence and just sit back and consume the content that is coming out of it. The second thing is that highlights a different blog each day and hopefully gets traffic to that blog, letting a chunk of the community see what they have been doing.
My intent as the ring leader is to advertise the person who is providing the daily prompt. Since time zones are a bit of a butt this is why we are advertising the topic for the next day. My hope is that in the case of our Aussie and Kiwi friends that they will be able to snag that topic and still make it work. There are other details I am sure we will have to work out logistically as we go. The event at its heart is a way of prompting folks to create content and also serve as a showcase for the various blogs in our community.
What Promptapalooza Is Not
Blaugust Promptapalooza is not the normal Blaugust. We did that back in April with Blapril and this is an attempt at creating something new to take its place this year. It is not a mission to write 31 blog posts during a month, but if that is something you really want to do then by all means go for it. It is a more low key event designed to allow you to cherry pick the prompts that most interest you and also serve as a bit of a way to help spark creativity and inspiration. We are not running a marathon, but instead sorta having a big virtual block party… with social distancing of course.
There will not be medals based on participation. There will however probably be some sort of thing you can dump in your side bar to show that you were a participant if you so choose. This is not a contest but instead is a community appreciation event, that also includes a feed of new writing prompts. This might get integrated into the normal Blaugust event in the future depending on how well this goes. Just to make absolutely certain everyone understands, there is no expectation of trying to write 31 posts during this August. The world is entirely too weird right now for us to try and pin ourselves down like that.
How Do I Participate?
Right now I just need more bloggers to sign up. Once I get the number needed I will be working out a calendar and indicating which bloggers are to post prompts on which dates. These can absolutely be composed ahead of time and just posted on a timer. Additionally the form goes into detail about wanting to know what dates you can’t post on… and I will be using this information to attempt to create something that works for everyone. I think this could be really cool, but I need some more volunteers.
If you have been around this blog for any length of time you will know that I sorta have a thing for Diablo 3. It is easily one of my favorite games of all time. On what is effectively a three month interval I drop everything that I am doing and allow myself to get wrapped up in the seasonal madness. This began on Friday and as is our tradition Grace and I did the early grind together with Byx who has of late become our regular third. Topping off the party was Grace’s husband that we lovingly refer to as “the Kraken” for reasons that won’t make sense. We actually lasted considerably longer than normal and made it to just shy of 60 before sleep finally claimed me. Unsurprising to anyone, Grace managed to grind out the rest of the season before sleep claimed her.
We actually had a significantly more structured approach to this year and we completed a challenge rift in an attempt to get a bit of a boost. I crafted a two handed mighty weapon and it thankfully turned into Fury of the Vanquished Peak, which provided a nice boost to Seismic Slam damage, but also was a required cube item for the final build. This season the Haedrig’s Gift set is Might of the Earth and as a result I built into the Seismic Slam build which involves hopping around the map and each time you do so you drop an earthquake and then using a significantly buffed Seismic Slam to do the clearing. The build ended up significantly more powerful and more quickly than I had expected in part because of that early cube item get.
My goal for the season however was to build out a Whirlrend build, which involves a specific combination of items that effectively lets you spin forever and each time you touch something apply multiple stacks of rend that tick down instantly dealing all of the damage at once. I love the build in part because it is mindless and doesn’t require any timing for finesse. It is the perfect build for farming Rifts and Bounties… which I am going to have to do a significant amount of this season to get the Avarice conquest once again. The only challenge I am running into is that the Might of the Earth build above just has a higher potential right now for clearing. Whirlrend is fun, but at least at this very moment it feels EXTREMELY squishy as in the GR60 range a pack of anything that throws a projectile can effectively end my day.
The challenge that I ran into even trying to make the Whirlrend build work, is that I was missing a number of key items… items that were not dropping at all. The biggest of these was the Ring of Might, and after some reading I found out that the easiest way to get one of these is to do Kadala’s blood shard lottery on a low level Barbarian… level 8 to be specific. As a result my second seasonal Barbarian was born, and sure enough on my third ring bought from Kadala I picked up that Ring of Might. Had I been following a guide more closely it probably would have had me pick up this item early on, but regardless it worked.
The next key item in my cross-hairs was picking up Ambo’s Pride a legendary Mighty Weapon that makes your rend apply all of its stacks at once. I was having zero luck getting this either through the lottery or through converting rare mighty weapons. Doing some more reading it is apparently available at level 29 and at that level the drop pool is significantly smaller. This meant that I needed to level my baby second barbarian so I ultimately ran a round of bounties and that was effectively enough to get it. I proceeded to attempt to gamble and rare convert on my level 30 Barbarian and the luck was not with me. However in one of the runs farming bloodshards to try another round of gambling I managed to get the drop effectively negating leveling up to 30.
The core problem with Whirlrend is that it really needs way more paragon points than I currently have, or at least way more perfect items than I managed to acquire. For now I am probably going to shift back to Might of the Earth Seismic build because while it requires a lot more work, I think I can probably make more progress in knocking out the remaining steps n the seasonal journey. I need to pick which of the set dungeons I am going to master, because quite honestly this is the thing that trips me up pretty much every season. I am bad at set dungeons, and I hate being on a timer… so I pretty much avoid doing them until they are literally the only thing I have left in the season. I’ve already solo’d my GR70, but I have yet to step foot into a set dungeon. I guess I need to buckle down and figure this out.
Secret Mission Update
On Friday I wrote a bit about a Blaugust secret mission I am working on. I still need eighteen bloggers who are willing to do some shenanigans with me. Essentially I am working on something and all it requires is that you:
Have a Blog or Vlog
Are Willing to Make a Post on a Specific Date
If I can pull this off it will be really cool, but I don’t want to go into more details publicly right now. However if you are interested in helping me with this drop me a line on any of the various contact means you might have. Comment section of the blog, twitter, facebook, discord, or whatever other contacts means you might have for me. I have some documentation ready to go that I will share with you if you choose to accept this nonsense.
The post Leapquake and Whirlrend appeared first on Tales of the Aggronaut.
Featuring: Ashgar, Belghast, Kodra, Tamrielo and Thalen
This is one of those shows when we had a long list of things to talk about, but we just sorta started on one topic and it developed a mind of its own. First up we talk about Bel and his insane grinding nature when it comes to the Four Job Fiesta. From there we reprise a topic that got bumped last night and talk about the unique nature of Guild Wars 1 almost trading card game like skill based system. From there we dive into a discussion about the changes that were made with Guild Wars 2, and how they may have taken some wrong advice from the data at the time. This dives into a discussion of what makes up a role in a game and how exactly games tend to message that. We go through a whole series of leaps and wind up in a discussion about how freedom to change your build feels really good in games like Guild Wars 2 and Diablo 3. It even descends into a discussion about what exactly makes up the nature of a “Character” in a game, and if it should just be a cosmetic choice and everything of importance be account bound.
Featuring: Ashgar, Belghast, Kodra, Tamrielo and Thalen
This is one of those shows when we had a long list of things to talk about, but we just sorta started on one topic and it developed a mind of its own. First up we talk about Bel and his insane grinding nature when it comes to the Four Job Fiesta. From there we reprise a topic that got bumped last night and talk about the unique nature of Guild Wars 1 almost trading card game like skill based system. From there we dive into a discussion about the changes that were made with Guild Wars 2, and how they may have taken some wrong advice from the data at the time. This dives into a discussion of what makes up a role in a game and how exactly games tend to message that. We go through a whole series of leaps and wind up in a discussion about how freedom to change your build feels really good in games like Guild Wars 2 and Diablo 3. It even descends into a discussion about what exactly makes up the nature of a “Character” in a game, and if it should just be a cosmetic choice and everything of importance be account bound.
