Good Morning Folks! I’ve been back in my happy place each evening of curling up on the sofa with my laptop and usually a cat and listening to an audiobook while I played copious amounts of Path of Exile. There is just something about having two different parts of me engaged at the same time that brings me joy. Mechanically I am happily grinding away at whatever objective I am focusing on in the ARPG, and then mentally I am having a story told to me. It brings me back to happier days as a kid of doodling while listening to storytime. Yesterday however was a bit of a sad day because I started the morning thinking that I would go home that night and start the next book in the Old Man’s War series by John Scalzi after finishing up the previous one Sunday night. Then I realized… I had no more books in that series. For whatever reason I was thinking that another “space opera” series by that author was connected.
That bummer moment however should not blunt the joy I felt consuming this series. Looking back at my Bookwyrm account, I started the first book on August 26th and wrapped up the last on September 17th. So that was most of a month of chilling out with an ARPG and a book and enjoying life. I guess really if you think about it there is a primary trilogy, a book that retells the last book in that series from a different perspective, and then two different anthologies fleshing out the world from a wide number of different but connected perspectives. Through all six books, a cohesive tale is told, even though no single book keeps the same central character throughout the entire story. This is legitimately my favorite part of the series. It is telling a story of a world more than it is telling a story of a single person, even though the same cast of characters keeps popping up regardless of the scenario.
In many ways, it reminds me of another obsession of mine from when I was a bit younger. I stumbled onto Santiago in a battered paperback form at a used bookstore in college and I mostly picked it up because I liked the cover and the “A Myth of the Far Future” tagline. To the best of my knowledge that “major motion picture” never happened. In truth, the novel was something like the 11th book in the “Birthright” series where Resnick created this entire universe out of disconnected novels. Each one focuses on a specific legend of the far frontier, so you might be hearing about a character in one book… and then pick up the next in the series and it is from their perspective. The thing is… Scalzi is just a better writer and gives his characters far more depth and personality.
I didn’t particularly care about any of the characters from Santiago or any of the other dozen or so novels I read in that series, I cared about the world. With Old Man’s War, I feel like I have a personal relationship with each character that the story focuses on. Even when someone seems outwardly evil, you find out that maybe there is a bit more behind that story. There were several times in the story where an entire alien race was considered to be the villain… but we as the reader were given a viewpoint into one particular member of that race to help explain their actions. This elevates the storytelling past hero/villain iconography to something grounded in experience and emotion. My sadness when I realized I was out of books… comes from the fact that I wanted to know more about these rich characters.
Before this year I had never consumed anything by John Scalzi, I am taking a break from his work and diving into another author that I had never read anything from. I am not entirely certain why I chose Mistborn over any of the other series by Brandon Sanderson, but I did and started it last night. It took me a few chapters to switch gears from space opera to fantasy thieves but I think I am on board now. I know absolutely nothing about this series other than the name that kept popping up periodically in my timeline. So far it reminds me a little bit of Locke Lamora, but not enough to shape my opinion. There are already a few characters that I like, and a few others that I dislike but I feel like that is probably intentional. The mythology of the world seems rich, so I am probably going to enjoy it. That is very much a thing for me… I need thick worlds filled with cultures and symbology to keep me going.
Anyways… time for me to wrap this up and move on with my day. If you have never read the Old Man’s War series by John Scalzi it is most definitely something that I would recommend. I am sure in another month’s time when I have consumed all of the books available in Mistborn series I will give you my opinions of that as well.
The post Post Series Sadness appeared first on Tales of the Aggronaut.
Good Morning Folks! I’ve been doing some nonsense this weekend, that I have honestly spent the entirety of my time playing Path of Exile avoiding. The Lord’s Labyrinth and all of the higher-level derivations of it is a piece of game content that unlocks your access to Ascendancy points. On every character you will in theory need to run it 3 times, in order to unlock the 8 points that you can spend on Ascendancy talent points. Then if you need to change your Ascendancy later, you can run it again in order to do that. Essentially these have traditionally been the bane of my existence and similar to set mastery dungeons in Diablo III, they are the thing that I avoid for as long as possible. The problem with the Labyrinth is that there is no forgiveness or wiggle room, and if you die… you have to start over from scratch.
There is a website devoted to telling you the shortest path through the Labyrinth, which is handy while doing your four labs per character… but were that the only benefit the site would likely not exist. The final victory room of the Labyrinth gives you access to a series of glove, boot, and helm enchants. Running the level 75 version called the Eternal Labyrinth costs an Offering to the Goddess, but at the end of it you are presented with a choice of three different helm enchants. There are roughly three enchants available for almost every active skill gem in the game, so that means each time you run the place you are fighting hundreds of possible combinations hoping that you get the one you need for your character. So far I have lucked into the Righeous Fire Area of Effect enchant, but what I really started this process to get was the one increasing Fire Trap Burning Damage.
There are a handful of ways to get your helm enchant. The first way of course is to luck into finding it yourself. The second is to buy a viable base from the market that already has your enchant on it, and then craft the helm into whatever you need it to be. The third… is to hire a hopefully reputable Labyrinth Runner to chain run the zone over and over until they can get the desired enchant on your helm. This weekend I essentialy became a lab runner for myself, and will probably continue doing a few each day in an attempt to get the enchant I really want. It seemed like a waste to not do anything with all of the helm enchants that I could not use, so I have started squirreling away a tab full of reasonable helm bases sorted by armor, armor/evasion, armor/energy shield, energy shield, evasion, energy shield, and pure evasion. I also take the helms off all of my other characters while I am running this process, just in case an enchant they can use comes up.
Since Delve is my primary game mode, it provides for a ton of raw resources. The level at which I am running Delve means that in theory I can farm a near infinite number of item level 84/85 helmets to feed into my Labyrinth running nonsense. For the moment I am pricing these at 1 div, and then will price them down over time as many of them inevitably do not sell. Delve is critical to this strategy because it also produces a truly silly number of Offering to the Goddess, a drop I have long considered to be pure trash for my previous leagues. Because of the sheer number that I have picked up over the course of this league, I ran roughly 30 Labyrinth’s yesterday afternoon and I’ve yet to put a dent in my supplies. Even if I needed to buy them… they tend to go dirt cheap on the market.
The core way that I gain currency will likely always be Delve, but one of the side ventures that I have been playing with this league is resistance gear. Everyone needs it, and everyone needs a unique combination of stat hits. So as I have been running delve I have been chucking rings and amulets with decent resistances on them in my bank under either a 10 Chaos or 20 Chaos tab. It has been shocking the number of items that I would ahve considered trash previously, that I am getting a stack of chaos for now. It isn’t going to make me wealthy by any means, but it is relatively constant trickle of decent currency while I am mapping or delving. The other thing that I have started doing is taking otherwise worthless uniques and throwing a Vaal Orb on them. Often times a 1 Chaos Unique with a really good Corrupted Implicit on it will sell for upwards of a Divine. I’ve sold several of those for in the 80-100 Chaos range.
Nothing will match the stability of Delve though. I know without a doubt that when I am ready to focus on selling this tab I am looking at around 2000 Chaos or 8 and a half Divine Orbs. I don’t tend to price out my delve tab until I am ready to sell it, because otherwise it will annoy the shit out of me with pings. Delve has not been terribly popular this league, and as a result the prices for resonators keep trickling up along with the more hard to get fossils. The later in the league we get, the more big crafting projects tend to happen and for those they need a ready supply of resonators. Folks ramping up for a big project, like to buy in bulk so generaly speaking I can charge a bit of a premium and still liquidate the entire tab in about ten minutes.
The one thing that I wish I could do… is let my guildmates peruse my vendor tabs. I chuck anything that looks halfway decent in the tabs to see if it will sell. That is not to say that I don’t specifically keep my eyes open for anything that I think another guild member might use. I’ve put all of my six links of any use in the guild gear tab, but I know I likely have a bunch of niche items that someone might be interested in. Specifically when it comes to fixing resistances, it would be handy to let folks browse my inventory of wares. I would happily chuck stuff their way because it is mostly just going to sit there and rot otherwise. While I continue to have a fairly constant trickle of trades, I am acquiring stuff way faster than I could ever liquidate it.
I get this weird sense of joy from being a vendor, and this is something that I have not really experienced in other games. I’ve mostly avoided using the Auction House in games with them, and while my retainers are full with random items in Final Fantasy XIV, it was never something I focused on. I think the one time that I really used them was the Broker boards in EQ2, and in truth FFXIV and POE both have a similar system. I can price an item, throw it in a tab, and then mostly forget that I have it. If it sells awesome… if it doesnt… also no big deal because I am not having to constantly retrieve closed auctions from my mailbox and repost them. Path of Exile feels like I have rented out a booth in one of those big flea markets, and I just keep adding more merchandise until everything is crammed in there really tightly. Folks end up needing such weird stats to finish out a character, that there is always someone out there needing at least one thing I have for sale.
I enjoy this aspect of the game, which is ironically the aspect that turns my friend Ace off the most about Path of Exile. I was afraid of trade for the first few leagues. Then it was something I accessed because I felt like I needed to… but ultimately held my nose while I did it. It wasn’t really until I was by myself grinding delve that I finally reached a point of acceptance with trade and eventual legitimate enjoyment. Now trade is a major component of this game for me, and it feels like anything I could be doing in the game… is ultimately getting me towards whatever goals I have. Every map I run, every delve path, every blight, every legion, and god forbid even every labyrinth is collecting dross for me to sell and turn into the item that I need to upgrade my builds just a little bit further. After decades of feeling like I had no viable way of making currency in MMORPGs, it feels like I have so many possible ways to fund my nonsense in Path of Exile.
Anyways. I hope you all had a great weekend, and that the new week is smooth and chill.
The post Apprentice Labyrinth Runner appeared first on Tales of the Aggronaut.
Featuring: Ammosart, Ashgar, Belghast, Grace, Kodra, Tamrielo, and Thalen
Hey Folks! Sorry we missed last week but we were down over half of our show members. This week Bel faceplants the intro and is urged by the entire crew to keep going. We start off with some discussion about the Honkai Star Rail Swarm Disaster event and a bit of idle gameplay with Chillquarium. From there we dive into some Path of Exile talk as Kodra is now beginning to become infected with our madness. He presents the Magic the Gathering draft analogy and we discuss using that as a way of learning Path of Exile as a whole. We talk a bit about Unity’s corporate failure speedrun by burning off absolutely every bit of their goodwill with some dumb service changes. From there we talk about a game with a very long and contorted name that promises to give you access to all those weird mobile game ads that don’t actually exist. Lastly, we talk a little bit about the return of Wizardry and how it is the birthplace of the modern JRPG.
Topics Discussed
Honkai Star Rail
Swarm Disaster
Chillquarium
Path of Exile
The Magic the Gathering Analogy
Guardian SRS is Amazing
Unity Speedrunning Corporate Failure
YEAH! YOU WANT “THOSE GAMES,” RIGHT? SO HERE YOU GO! NOW, LET’S SEE YOU CLEAR THEM!
Yesterday we had a Sony State of Play event, and with it was released some more information about the next part of the Final Fantasy VII reboot saga. There is a part of me that is excited to see more information about this game, and then another part… that is deeply disappointed that it will be released on the PlayStation 5 first. That is not out of some sort of misplaced console fanboyism… because I have a PlayStation 5 and an Xbox Series X. I am fairly agnostic in the console wars. What I am not agnostic about however is the fact that my platform of preference is the PC and my method of play preference is the keyboard and mouse. I often times falter and buy into the hypestorm surrounding a new game. However, I have to examine my track record specifically with major console titles.
Horizon Forbidden West was a game that I had been looking forward to almost more than any other. However I also greatly preferred playing this game on the PC, so when I console release came out I spent about a week playing it… before bouncing and returning to something PC-based. I got frustrated with just how fiddly aiming with a controller was, and how it was hard to read some of the text because we do not have a mammoth-sized television in the livingroom. Then again there was the challenge with the livingroom in general and it mostly being a “public space” and not something that I felt like I could commandeer for long. So now I find myself in a holding pattern waiting and hoping for an eventual PC release of the game so I can finally play it on my platform of choice.
Before HFW, there was Ghost of Tsushima a game that I enjoyed quite a bit. However, the entire time I was playing it… there was a niggling thought in the back of my head about how much I would enjoy the game more if I could play with WASD and Mouse controls. Everything about the game would have been immediately improved if I could just control it the way that I wanted to control it. I made it to the second major area in the game and then bounced because I just didn’t really want to play it with a controller. So I am now sitting in this holding pattern of hoping that maybe one day it also gets a PC release, or that I suddenly switch religion and decide to pick up the controller.
Then there are the games that I bought on console… and ultimately rebought the game on PC much later. Jedi Fallen Order even on PC, goes to a lot of trouble to tell you that playing it with a keyboard and mouse is the wrong way to play. However, I remember when this game first came out, I bounced pretty early into the game. I think I gave it about a weekend and made it to Kashyyyk before completely dropping the game in favor of something else that drew away my attention on the PC. Later I came back on PC with a Keyboard and Mouse and consumed this game hungrily, playing nothing but it until I got the credit roll.
Similarly, there is the case of the first Final Fantasy VII Remake game. I started on the console because it again was a console exclusive to PlayStation, and I didn’t even make it out of the first major area. Then later when it was released on PC via the Epic Game Store, I picked the game up and played it through to completion. The mouse and keyboard controls, while often an afterthought by Squaresoft felt so much better than a controller for me. I had so much fun with this game, but it was largely in part that I got to play it in my way on my platform of choice.
More recently we have the case of Final Fantasy XVI, which again… released as a PlayStation platform exclusive. I bought the game… and I made it about ten minutes into the game before deciding that I didn’t really want to experience it in this manner. So I’ve spent the money… but can’t seem to wrap my brain around wanting to play it on that platform. Everything seems to indicate that the game did not meet sales expectations from SquareSoft, but then again they always seem to say that. My hope is that it legitimately did not… and as a result, it will get a PC release sooner rather than later. I want to experience the game, but I want to experience it in the most comfy manner… with a keyboard and mouse.
So while I am happy as all get out to see more information about Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, and am really looking forward to the game. I am going to try my damnedest to stick to my guns and ignore it until the game releases on my platform of choice. It has happened too damned many times at this point… that I get excited about a game and then ultimately bounce because I don’t really want to play it on my console. Sure it is dumb that I own both brands of consoles and they mostly collect dust… but it is what it is.
I think I am just coming to realize how much playing with a mouse and keyboard means to my enjoyment of a game. I am not entirely certain WHY I am wired this way, given that I grew up with the NES, SNES, and Genesis. I also played a ton of games on the PlayStation and Dreamcast era but after that… I dove hard into PC gaming as my primary platform. Controllers just end up making my hand cramp, which I get is probably the exact opposite for most gamers. I would love for this not to be the case because gaming in general seems to be leaning more and more into controllers as the default input method… but I am not exactly sure how to change that.
The post WASD Stan appeared first on Tales of the Aggronaut.
