Morning Folks. It rained most of the day and so far it seems like the fix from the roofers is working. That said, it has only ever leaked when it was torrential rain, and instead we got a light drizzle. I finally washed the towels, but here is a picture of Gracie guarding against leaks. Yesterday was a lot. Not only did I have the fasting blood draw that I talked about yesterday, but I was trying to deal with a bunch of “death stuff” as I collectively call it. Namely I have had a few checks come in that were in my spouse’s name… after I had done what I thought was the right thing and removed her name from our banking accounts. It seems as though I will have to file a case with the probate court and create an “estate” account in order to cash these now… something that at a bare minimum will cost me $200 just for file the paperwork, let alone whatever I will need to pay a lawyer to draw up said paperwork. Thus far the checks don’t even total $100… so this is not likely something I will be doing. I dealt with a bunch of other miscellaneous stuff yesterday, including calling the medical examiner to see if they have finally given a proper cause of death…. which they have… but now I am waiting for official death certificates. All of this… extremely fucking draining.
The absolute high point of my evening was hanging out with my virtual sibling Ace and doing some Destiny Rising. We essentially hung out together and ground out a bunch of strikes, until we were both completely out of pinnacle currency… and then ran a few after that for good measure. For whatever reason we seemed to keep getting The Pit over and over, and stumbled onto a weird glitch in the matrix. It seems that if you have gone down the path of becoming a Mentor… your light requirement is higher for queuing for heroics than when you were a “New Light”. This seems exceptionally lame, and led to a scenario to where they could not queue as anything other than Estela, the champion that they have most recently poured resources into to bump up. This was a bit annoying when one of the dailies involved killing things with a void champion, and they could not play one.
My highest light champion is Jolder, which I am largely still maining. However Estela, Wolf, and Umeko are all pretty close in ranking. I’ve still not really found an Arc champion that I enjoy very well, and I am hoping that maybe the next premium banner will bring one that is a bit more enjoyable to play than anything I have gotten so far. Ace pulled the Arc Staff guy and said that so far they seem pretty fun. I am not too far from the Mythic choice pity on the normal banner, so in theory I will likely pick him as my choice when it comes down to that. I really wish that the banner was just for pulling additional copies of champions for powering them up, and that there was a way to unlock every champion by default through a quest chain or something. It really feels like that sort of thing would better serve a game like Destiny Rising, where so much of the game is based on team composition.
Yesterday was the launch of Diablo IV Season 10, and I rolled a new character to see how the game has progressed since I last paid attention to it. I’ve sat out the last few seasons and for the most part… everything is perfectly cromulent. I heard that the pulverize druid was really strong, so I ended up rolling one of those. I think the challenge that both Druid and Barbarian have is that they feel sort of awful to play early game… but become godlike in the late game. So you have to suffer a bit until your build comes online. I am very thankful that at some point in the past I spent money on a nice looking cosmetic set… because the base druid vibe is not really my thing. I wish there was a way to just run around in Werebear form all of the time, because that shit is awesome. I feel like this is missing out on something significantly here. The game would be better if you could just always be Werebear or Werewolf.
I have not made it super far, but I am also not really rushing it. This morning my build started to come a bit more online and the Druid as a whole is feeling much better as I am now in my 20s. I figure this is going to be something that I poke out off and on until I hit the level cap and build a reasonable build. That said… when a new Path of Exile season drops I am abandoning this. Additionally I know that Legion Remix is happening early in October and it is likely that if I have not hit the level cap and am farming the endgame by the time that comes out… D4 is also getting dropped in favor of that. I’ve contemplated firing up World of Warcraft and trying to get caught up on the story there, but it still just doesn’t really feel right. I am interested in a lot of the things that are going on in that game, but am not sure I am really in the mood for a traditional MMORPG experience.
New World on the other hand seems to be clicking pretty well. I’ve swapped back to my level 65 main on Pangaea and spent a bit of time just roaming around and getting used to the combat again. Mostly it is muscle memory that came back extremely quickly. One of my favorite aspects of the game has always been roaming around and harvesting resources, and I am starting to do that again. I did figure out how to upgrade gear, but the process is confusing and arduous and nowhere near as clear as it used to be. I think Amazon Game studios suffers from some poor game design at times… and there are weird gates for things that should be more accessible. The whole concept of needing to craft dungeon keys for example seems to still be a thing, and it is weird that you would not want your players just playing your content all of the time. This is especially fraught given the great experiences we have had recently with the Fractal Incursion event in Guild Wars 2.
All of that said, there are some pretty solid crafted gear options and I think in the short term I am going to focus more on leveling up my tradeskills. Ultimately I would need to push things up to 250 in order to craft the best stuff, and a lot of my harvesting abilities are already climbing past 200. I am in no rush to do any of this, but I am interested to see what the new content that drops looks like. The biggest problem I have had with the evolution of New World, is that it has removed zones from the game in order to rework them as something else. I am hoping this new zone is actually that… new territory to be explored that has never existed in the game before. That is not to say that I don’t think that the reworked zones are not good steps… but games need to expand… not just be revised to death.
Anyways. That is my yesterday. Today I am back at work like normal and will probably futz around with Diablo IV some more this evening and see if I can get closer to the level cap.
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