Good Morning Folks. Yesterday we got a bit of news from Eleventh Hour Games that they would be delaying the launch of Last Epoch Season 2 from April 2nd to April 17th. This is to create some distance between their launch date and that of Path of Exile 2 and its first league on the 4th. This whole situation is frustrating because multiple sources have stated that Eleventh Hour Games was in communication with Grinding Gear Games regarding their choice of April 2nd making it an extreme dick move to schedule their own start two days later. I entirely feel like GGG is in the wrong here… but there also may be some external forces at work that we do not know about.
Whatever the case this is probably the right decision for Eleventh Hour Games. As stated in a Zizaran video talking about this situation, it is rare that people go back to a game after the launch… so that would likely mean folks would play Last Epoch for a day or two… if they even gave it a shot at all, and then would flip to Path of Exile II and never look back. I am disappointed mostly because right now I care far more about Last Epoch than I do Path of Exile II. I do not think that there is going to be enough in the upcoming patch to really shift the trajectory of POE2 enough for me to truly enjoy it more than the first game. I might be shocked on the 27th when they announce all of the content, but in truth I mostly just want to get my hands on the redesigned endgame for Last Epoch.
In the meantime I am still playing quite a bit of the Legacy of Phrecia event. In theory I should hit level 99 tonight and I am starting to pick back up and work on some of the challenges that I never completed from Settlers of Kalguur. I’m cycling between Delve and mapping and still only have two of the four voidstones unlocked. I should probably work on that, but I hate the process of grinding for the fragments required to attempt Maven and Uber Elder. The whole bossing system in Path of Exile feels bad to me. I feel like there should be quest support for all four voidstones like there are the first two so that you can knock these out in a relatively straightforward fashion. At some point I should probably try out a T17 again to see if I can complete that, but my build is not exactly great at bossing. Generally speaking I just do not enjoy that side of the game and the whole process of getting access to the fights.
I have burned through a good chunk of my reserves of gold and dust in order to start up a bunch of mappers. One of the league challenges from Settlers that I never knocked out was running 200 t14 or better maps at 100% success rate with mappers, and I figured I might as well start chipping away at that since I am still playing. If I can push to level 100 and complete the rest of those maps that will knock out one more of the challenges and potentially give me a bigger totem pole for my hideout. In truth Path of Exile is just a comfortable activity for me to spend chill evenings listening to an audiobook, and has kind of become my default gaming activity. I hate that among the AggroChat folks, I am the only one who seems to have really reached that point with the game.
I am also still pushing forward with Kaiju: Battlefield Surgeon because I hate having a “did not complete” in my list. I swapped over to the Soundbooth Theater version of the audiobook and it is infinitely better than the one I was listening to earlier. There is a significant difference between being read a book out loud, and having someone act out a book… and at this point I have become spoiled by the later. This is a brutal story… in content… and in just how much graphic detail is put into it. I am not sure I would ever suggest this to someone else, but it has enough of a hook into me that I am going to see it to its conclusion. Effectively this is Hostel style torture porn, and my kink does not run in that direction.
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Good Morning Folks. I took yesterday off and while I had planned on writing a blog post.. one never actually happened. Instead you are getting the post that I probably would have written yesterday, a day late. This weekend I finished my consumption of the Dungeon Crawler Carl series… and I have to admit I am a bit sad that it is over. This has quite possibly been the book series that I least expected to get into… and then hungrily consumed as quickly as possible after getting into the first book. I admit the whole LitRPG genre never really appealed to me… why read about playing a game when I could just be playing a game? However it can create a really interesting backdrop to tell a well written tale against, as is evidenced by the fact I just spent thirty six days tearing through this series one after another.
The premise of the series is what if you took Duke Nukem… made him lovable… gave him a talking cat companion that is even more lovable… and tossed them both into a Smash TV style Dungeon Crawl where they have to kill their way to the bottom… or die permanently because the planet has been reclaimed for resources by an external galactic bureaucracy. That is one hell of a run-on sentence, but also is about as close as I can really come to explaining the appeal of this series. What this series has in spades is heart. It has so many well written characters that you fall in love with, and genuinely want to succeed and survive… but also know that the odds are stacked against them in spite of quite a bit of literal plot armor. Princess Donut the Queen Anne Chonk is quite possibly the best sidekick ever crafted, and to call her a sidekick though is a bit of a disservice to how much of the plot revolves around her learning how to “adult”. All of the characters show deep growth over the course of the series, and even ones that you kind of sort of loath when you first encounter them… become beloved friends several books in.
What the book series has in abundance though is meaningful payoffs. There have been so many times that a loose plot thread from book one… turns into some significant event later down the line. The dungeon crawl itself has a deeply rich lore surrounding it, and has clear rules that remain in place for the entire series. There are always several different plot threads going at once, and usually colliding in the major event of the individual book. What is really fun however is looking at the artwork for each of the volumes after having finished the book… because there are always so many different moments that suddenly make perfect sense. Sometimes a book series runs out of juice… but this one only seems to be getting better the longer it runs.
On the 16th I finished up This Inevitable Ruin, and it was probably the most epic of the entire series. Even before reading it… I sort of assumed that would be the case given the plot points that were sure to be involved in this single book. It was effectively the culmination of a major event that had bee discussed in every single book of the series, and the resolution was most definitely worth the wait. Carl is a bit of a fuck up at times… and a pure Agent of Chaos… but he is OUR Agent of Chaos. Donut is occasionally very self centered… as is the case with every cat ever to exist on this planet… but she is OUR precious princess. Like I see in her actions literally hundreds of things that my own Gracie, Mollie, and Josie end up doing every day. I feel about Donut the same way that I am certain dog lovers feel about Oberon in the Kevin Hearne books.
So here is the point where I suggest you listen to the Audiobooks instead of reading them. So much of my enjoyment of this series is I think in large part to how well they are acted out by the amazing Jeff Hays of Soundbooth Theater. I decided the embed this video as an example, because it does not really give anything away or steal from you any revelations from the series. God Dammit Donut is sort of the catch phrase for Carl specifically… but other characters occasionally say it as well in the series. So here is a delightful video of Jeff shifting between 14 characters uttering that phrase, and you can see how wildly different each character feels as result. What is often even more entertaining is the in universe advertisement for Soundbooth Theater at the end of every book. These feel like the mid credit scenes in a Marvel movie, because they often have some sort of payoff for the next book in the series… that just happens to take place out of the flow of the novel itself.
The problem with finishing an amazing series… is that I always end up wanting more of it… now. From what I understand more recently there has been a year lag between volumes of the Dungeon Crawler Carl series, and since this last volume came out in November, it means I am going to have a bit of a wait on my hands. One of the other books that has been advertised throughout the audio books for Dungeon Crawler Carl, is Kaiju: Battlefield Surgeon. I love Kaiju… and I enjoyed the DCC series… and with a preposterous name like that I figured surely I would love it. The weird thing about this book is that it feels like it comes from an earlier era in Matt Dinniman’s career… when he had not quite found his voice, or more so the voice of the Dungeon Crawler Carl series. Technically this was published after the popularity of the DCC series, but I kind of wonder if this was a side project that had been shelved for a bit.
Essentially it is a very graphic bio-horror series about being trapped in a world of giant battling Kaiju and playing the support staff to keep them up and fighting. Have you ever dreamed about having an apartment in the bowel system of a giant monster? Oh yeah… me neither. It is most definitely interesting and I will have zero problem finishing it… but it is also just not really my jam. It makes me also think that maybe LitRPG is not really my genre. All of the game elements did not feel front and center in the Dungeon Crawler Carl series and instead it was more of a character driven tale. This very much feels like a book about a game, and the characters themselves seem paper thin so far. Maybe this will change over time… but so far none of the characters are particularly likeable… whereas I fell in love with Carl and Donut almost immediately. It is wild how much of a difference having POV characters that you care about makes for the reading experience.
If you have yet to be infected by the mind virus that is Dungeon Crawler Carl, I suggest you give it a shot. Matt Dinniman has a fancy new publisher and as a result all of the books are being released with more mass-market friendly covers and artwork. I think they all look pretty cool, but also do not have near the heart… nor the final payoff that the original artwork does. They do however make them look far less like graphic novels… which might have been a turn off for some readers. Whatever form you choose to consume them in… I suggest adding them to your list. Give it at least two books, because it is really in the second book that the series comes into its own. I am hooked and am probably going to be consuming these every single time a new one is released going forward. I will probably seek out another popular LitRPG book just to give the genre another chance… but I am not entirely certain reading about a game is really my jam and that DCC might have simply just been a brilliant outlier.
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Good Afternoon Folks. This is a bit of a rare post because generally speaking if I do not make my morning post… I just don’t post at all for that day. I spent my morning up at my folks house helping them with some stuff and now that I am back I figured I might as well knock out a post, because I have some potentially time sensitive information. First off if you do not own Guild Wars 2 or are missing any of the content drops… there is a pretty massive sale happening right now on the official storefront. Coinciding with it there is also a sale taking place on Steam but there is a bit of a higher markup there. If you have never played this game you really should especially now that you can get a decades worth of content for $50. That is legitimately one of the best deals out there.
While I was in game I noticed that they once again had the Cat Angel Jadebot skin up… so I broke into my gem reserves and picked it up. I have gone back and forth about whether or not I wanted this for awhile, but I entirely blame Dungeon Crawler Carl and Princess Donut for making me want this. There is no way that given the chance… Donut would not flap around me with wings. I need to dive into the new content which also dropped this week because there is a new Ranger pet Bee that you can get. I’ve been several different mains throughout the years… starting as a Warrior then transitioning to Necro… but I think my true spirit is that of the Ranger. Longbow and Greatsword for life yo! Regardless of how generally selfish that build is since it doesn’t produce Quickness or Alacrity.
I played some Titanquest II and so far I do not think this game is really my jam. Melee combat felt a bit too sluggish for my tastes and pretty much everything seemed to want me to spam the dodge button instead of engaging with mobs up close and personal. Maybe this feels good as ranged, but so far it is not necessarily my jam. However if you are curious for yourself you might check out the Steam page to see if you can still request access to the playtest. The game seems solid enough but leans more towards the never get hit sort of play style that I do not personally enjoy. I am sure it will find an audience, especially with the crowd that feels like the ARPG genre reached its peak with Diablo II.
Another game that I have been fiddling with a bit is Gunlocked. Essentially this is what if Vampire Survivors was a Bullet-Hell shooter. The game starts out a bit weird in that your only attack for a bit is a radar that sweeps around your ship and then marks targets with a lock on, that your ship then fires attacks at to mostly one-shot. As you pick up power-ups you gain a whole slew of interesting attacks slowly giving you a bunch of different ways to take out the ever present deluge of ships and obstacles on your screen. I found out about this game when the sequel was announced on the fediverse, which caused me to go look at the original since I dug the art style. I also checked out Boons and Burdens which is sort of a similar concept but this time smash tv meets vampire survivor but you play as one of several element themed wizards. There is a bundle for both games that is currently just shy of $6.
Another thing that I picked up from the ongoing steam sale is Dragon’s Dogma II. I had played a bit of the first game but never really got fully into it. I thought given my recent foray back into Monster Hunter with Wilds, I might check this out and see if I can get into the sequel. All in all so far I am pretty intrigued. There seems to be more of a clear story element going on here, whereas I felt like I was largely roaming around aimlessly in the first game. So far it sort of feels like a weird version of a Bethesda game in a good way. Not sure how far I will get but I am liking it so far.
I’m also not entirely done with Monster Hunter Wilds either, and I am hoping this weekend I can connect up with my friend Ace and do some more group hunts. In a perfect world maybe also connect up with Thalen, Ammo, or Sita for shenanigans since they all have compatible time zones. I am not in a massive push to clear anything right now, but do want to try out some Charge Blade nonsense to see if I actually like the weapon.
Do you have significant weekend plans? What are you playing currently? Drop me a line below.
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Good Morning Folks. There is a bit of a kerfuffle happening right now in ARPG land. Essentially this was bound to happen at some point, but the overlapping seasons combined with various setbacks have essentially conspired to multiple things happening all at once. Two days ago Grinding Gear Games released an announcement that 0.2.0 was not months away like we had thought, but would instead be landing at the beginning of April. With it came some new footage and the tease of one of the missing classes being released as part of this. The Huntress has long been an announced class for Path of Exile II and is playing into the Spear Amazon play-style that was popular in Diablo II. My personal guess is that the first successful builds are going to be Lightning Strike and chaining full screen pops with Heralds…. essentially copy pasting the current popular Path of Exile 1 builds.
This is universally a really cool thing though, especially for players who are not mainlining Path of Exile II, and do not care about the other ARPGs in the genre. Where the kerfuffle comes in… is that it is launching 2 days after the start of the second Last Epoch season. For me it is a no-brainer… Path of Exile II can wait and I am going to be spending my time playing Last Epoch until I tire of it. However what proponents of EHG and Last Epoch were hoping… was a little bit of clear runway so that folks bored of POE2 and POE1… might take a chance on seeing how much has changed in what I feel to be the game with the best systems design. That is not happening… and for a lot of players they are going to follow whatever Path of Exile is doing. If they had a few weeks gap they might check out Last Epoch, but with it only being two days… I feel like there are going to be a large chunk of folks who just skip that game entirely.
This also sucks for the dedicated ARPG community Streamers who have been putting a lot of time and effort into the lead up to Last Epoch Season 2. Sure Last Epoch has a dedicated core of streamers like Aaron Action RPG, Dr3adful, and Perry the Pig but they are honestly small potatoes up against the likes of a Darth Microtransaction,Zizaran, or Raxxanterax. Drawing the attention of the Path of Exile streamer community means that you are throwing a bunch of eyeballs on the game that otherwise might not take an interest in it. So they are stuck in a position of whether or not they follow their hearts and stick with Last Epoch, or if they follow the money and flip over immediately to start streaming the new Path of Exile II content. Having major events land this close to each other means… that they have to choose one audience over another and lose out on part of it.
So I am hearing a lot from both the Path of Exile and Last Epoch community that Grinding Gear Games is a bit of a bad guy for doing this. I do think they might have delayed it by at least one week to make things a bit easier on everyone involved… but they are also up against a wall here as well. In 2019 during the ExileCon presentation about Path of Exile II, Chris Wilson outlined that they did not want to split the community with the release of the new game. However that is precisely what has happened, so much so that Path of Exile II players and topics have been kicked off the Path of Exile subreddit. The POE1 players who do not care about Path of Exile II essentially rioted by the delays and we got the Legacy of Phrecia event as a result. In the weeks leading up to this Path of Exile II 0.2.0 announcement, I have been starting to see a similar current happening on the POE2 SubReddit of folks frustrated by the attention that Grinding Gear Games was devoting to something other than the game that they care about the most. Regardless of when…. they needed to release this first proper league for the new game as quickly as possible.
To further complicate things, as of yesterday we have a playtest active for Titan Quest II, another game that is throwing its hat in the ring of next gen ARPG. You have to request access to get into the playtest, but I did so before heading to bed last night and had been flagged for access as of this morning. There is just a lot going on right now and for those who care both Diablo IV Season 8 and a massive update to No Rest for the Wicked are landing at the tail end of April. It is going to be a very tight slot for ARPG enthusiasts, but at least there will be no lack of things to devote our time to. Since I am largely wrapped up with Monster Hunter Wilds, I am probably going to be spending the next few days checking out Titan Quest II. I am also still playing a not-insignificant amount of Legacy of Phrecia as I continue to tweak and improve my Righteous Fire Scavenger.
However when it comes to the Path of Exile II vs Last Epoch debate that is raging in the community… I am drawing my personal line in the sand. I am extremely interested in experiencing what the new endgame for Last Epoch has to show us. So I will be playing Tombs of the Erased on April 2nd and effectively play it until I get tired of grinding. I have no clue how long that is going to be, but on average I get about a month out of a Path of Exile league and a few solid weeks so far out of a Last Epoch event… so I am hoping somewhere around that time frame. Whenever I finish with Last Epoch, I am sure I will check out what is going on with 0.2.0 or as it is officially being called Dawn of the Hunt League. I will of course be tuning in on the 27th to check out the live-stream to see what all it will include. I am not a streamer and no one really cares what I am playing, but I do tend to devote all of my time for awhile to whatever I happen to be obsessed about and as such the pages of this blog.
In a perfect world… Last Epoch would move their own launch up by a few days and Path of Exile II back by a few days to create a bit more room. However there are other forces at play. For example I am pretty certain they cannot reschedule Twitch Drops willy nilly… so the particular timing is probably going to be stuck where it is. I would love to see more folks choosing Last Epoch as well, but I am also realistic that the Streamers are going to chase that money while they can get it.
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