Good Morning Folks. Yesterday was Labor Day here in the United States and since both myself and my friend Ace were off we hung out doing some multiplayer of a new rogue-like game. They had discovered this one and were having quite a bit of fun with it, and I opted to pick it up so we could test the multiplayer out. Essentially you are a diver and you are exploring underwater ruins filled with baddies. It is essentially a first person shooter with the ability to collect upgrades while in the ruins to tweak your weapon load-out. By default you start out with an auto cannon with two fire modes, one of which causes your weapon to overheat for short periods of time. You also have an ability slot which starts out by default with a bundle of explosives but can be upgraded over time to be other things. So far we have only unlocked the Turret as an option, but it seems like there are a few more that we have not unlocked yet.
Each level has a sequence of different monsters to fight, before moving through a gate to the next area which locks the door and spawns another set of baddies. As you delve further into the ruins you encounter different biomes. The first are essentially what looks to be an old temple filled with vaguely nautical themed robots. There are these dragonfly camera looking things that dive bomb you when they get low on health, and a fast moving robot that we lovingly refer to as the roomba that shoots towards you dealing damage if it hits you. There are more ape like creatures that jump on top of you and another that creates shock waves that you have to jump over. Essentially there are a bunch of different types of mobs that you have to deal with individually and it can get really hectic when it is all thrown at you at once. Occasionally there are group objectives like “stand on the plate” to fill a bar… which is massively challenging because it often puts you out in the open and you both have to be standing on it at the same time to get any progress.
Every few stages you encounter a mini-boss that has its own arena. This is the second boss that electrifies areas of the floor and also likes to hop directly on top of you. We faced him a few times but only beat him in a run where we both managed to get to the boss room with multiple stimpacks and also a bunch of complimentary power ups. The first boss got to the point where we could down it pretty easily, with the only real frustration being that we had to hide from a beam that shot out from the boss towards both of us at the same time. The only time things got really tricky is when we inadvertently ended up on the same side of the arena because so long as we could split the incoming mobs up between us it was pretty easy to deal with things. You have a double jump attack and a dash, which can be used to air dash… both of which make traversing the arenas interesting and are a godsend for avoiding attacks.
Killing a boss drops these things called Soul Fragments, which can then be spent on upgrades on a talent tree. The first points that I spent were on the ability to have more than one stimpack. After that I started pouring points into my basic weapon attack, because that seems to be the thing that I am using the most. When I got to the second tier of points they began costing two fragments per point. In theory you are building out your character and I do wonder how many points total you get to spend, or if this is just something that you can farm indefinitely. Like could you do runs of the first boss over and over and eventually chip away at improving your character? I essentially only played through the tutorial and then immediately started group play, so I will need to play some more of this solo to test out that theory.
At various places inside the ruins are static spawns for upgrades. For example the Engine Rifle is the default load out that you begin the game with but after beating the first boss you can find a shotgun. After being the second boss we found the turret to replace the grenades. Inside the ruins are various chests, both locked and unlocked, and I found a few weapon component upgrades in these. One of these for example changes my alt fire from a full auto minigun, to a single shot that knocks enemies back away from me… but deals a lot of damage with that single hit. I started using that as my secondary fire because it was super effective at dealing with the roombas, and was great for debuffing targets when you get certain upgrades.
One of the things that I really dig is that while there is a listing of all of the achievements that you have unlocked… there is also a physical room where you collect them all. It is like this museum of artifacts that you are bringing up from the depths and each one of them represents some objective that you completed. I figure this is going to look really cool once I have finished more than a handful of these. There were also bonus objectives that we found while completing some of the areas, like not getting hit for a certain number of arenas unlocked a bonus special chest. There are also keys that you can find that can unlock random chests and doors that lead to vendor rooms. Gold is a thing that you collect during your run and when you find a vendor you can buy additional upgrades.
We essentially made it to the second biome… but the bottom fell out at that point. We fought these giant frog like creatures and all of them were super annoying. There were frogs that were floating on a cloud of frog eggs… that flew around the arena healing things. There were grenadiers that would flood the area with bombs that you had to avoid, and others that fired off blow darts in a fan pattern that you essentially had to time a jump over. Given time we will probably get as used to these mechanics as we did the first biome, but it was around this point that Gracie demanded that I hold her… so we called the adventure. I had a heck of a lot of fun and honestly I want to see if I can wrangle two more players and see how the group mechanics feel with a full team. I am hoping that the stand on the plate mechanics are way less onerous when there are more than two players. Also resurrecting players would be easier if the mobs did not immediately swarm the one who was still alive.
The game is $25 on Steam and is a very competent shooter in its own right. If you are looking for something fun to play with friends, I highly suggest giving it a shot. The vibes are immaculate.
The post Delving Abyssus appeared first on Tales of the Aggronaut.
Good Morning Folks. Friday was the start of a new league in Path of Exile II, and with it came a lot of hype from the trailers leading up to the release of it. The skill gem system was getting a massive rework and the abyssal mechanic from Path of Exile 1 was getting reworked and implemented in this game. More important than all of this a new asynchronous trade system was going in, which hopefully resolved the friction of trading items with other players. I figured I would start a Warrior and go crossbows since I had pretty good luck doing that at the end of the last league. The patch notes came out on the 20th and everything looked pretty solid. However these patch notes were woefully incomplete and over the next several days leading up to the 29th… they kept dropping more updates… most of which were nerfs. Days before the launch they broke the interaction that I was going to use to level… which was essentially armor break and armor explosion with crossbows.
I went forward with Crossbow Warrior anyways figuring I could at the very least limp through the first act. Essentially there are three cosmetics available for completing the first act. The first one you get for making it off the “beach” and into town. Another you unlock for killing the Rotten Druid in the Grim Tangle, and the last for clearing Act 1 and killing Count Geonor. I struggled so freaking hard with Geonor… more so than I have ever before… enough that I ultimately had to throw on a mace and cut some slam gems in order to get through the encounter. There are a number of clip channels devoted to Path of Exile 1 and 2 content, and it seems like the streamers were not having a great time either. The above video starts out with a comment from Raxx where a friend of his stated “I’m Clicking around on random streamers and it doesn’t look like anyone is having fun”. After having watched a handful of this videos it seems like this was pretty much the case, with a lot of folks ultimately re-rolling when their original build idea did not work out. Team Empyrean is already done with the game after struggling with grouping issues and general frustrations deciding it was just not worth it to keep going.
Essentially there is a tale of two game experiences happening and once again we can use POE2.Ninja as a gauge of what is happening. Right now if you filter by 90+ players… 73% of them are playing Deadeye as well as 70% are playing Lightning Arrow with another batch playing some sort of Tornado shot. Worse than that, not a single other Ascendancy has double digit numbers of players… with the next highest being Blood Mage at 9%. If you stumbled into one of the builds that is working, you are having a good time. If you are not playing one of those builds however… the game is pretty freaking miserable. I personally re-rolled and gave Raging Spirits Infernalist a go since this was a build that I had a lot of fun with my second character after release, and I had heard minions were in a pretty good state. My friend Eliyon is playing some sort of Sorceress build that seems to be working pretty well for him. However there are just a lot of players that are not having fun out there… especially some of the streamers who are new to this genre and only playing because they were paid to play by Grinding Gear Games. Maybe this was not the patch to showcase the game with a free to play weekend.
This is a bit sad because Abyss actually adds a lot of fun to the mapping experience. It is pretty freaking rippy, and on my Crossbow Warrior I wound up dying to it quite often. However if I treat it with respect on my Minions character I can clear them without much issue and get some really good rewards from the Abyssal Troves that spawn. More than that there are some fun interactions between Abyss and Essences where if an Essence monster spawns inside of an Abyss you get special Abyssal crafting essences. The changes to the way that Essences work were also welcome in that getting them during the campaign feels like something worth using, because they are effectively just a equivalent to a Regal Orb that comes with a guaranteed stat on it. Gearing has felt a bit easier and while I struggled on the Warrior… it was not for lack of items dropping.
More fun than the Abysses themselves, are the Abyssal Depths that can spawn in your maps. These are essentially a whole new map layout that comes with a few rare bosses and access to a bunch of troves scattered through the layout. All of which feel extremely rewarding and worth doing. I got my first Lesser Jeweler’s Orbs from the Abyss mechanic for example, and I’ve seen plenty of clips of folks pulling Divine Orbs and Perfect Jeweler’s Orbs from these layouts. The Abyss monsters can be pretty brutal though, so it is equally likely that you just end up dying to some bullshit mechanic and losing all of the loot. There is one specific Abyssal monster that seems to entirely ignore my minions and spends the entire time chasing me as I am backpedaling while trying to keep my raging spirits summoned. Thankfully my Arsonists carry me pretty freaking hard and so long as I keep dodging they will eventually kill the stupid things.
The thing that shocked me though is on the Infernalist I breezed through my first two ascendancies. Sanctum was super easy and honestly the sprint mechanic makes the death crystal timer thing trivial. Since the monsters all have a “wake up” animation when you get to them in, you can just run past them pending you do not collide into them. In all of these escape trials I largely skipped all of the combat and just ran from crystal to crystal until I cleared the level. What shocked me ven more though is that I got a really good sequence of choices in Ultimatum and was able to knock that one out as well. I will very likely go with Sanctum to get my last two ascendancy points, but that is going to be something I put off for awhile because the last two choices will probably hinder me more than help me until I get some good gear.
One of the things that has annoyed me quite a bit is that Trade is not working out like we were told during the presentation. In the features discussion it was indicated that the gate for trade was having a hideout, and that if we had a hideout already from previously leagues we would be able to interact with it immediately. That is not the case. You have to get to Kingsmarch in Act IV before the system will unlock, meaning that while we can access the UI elements… they are entirely useless until you rush through the campaign. This only further serves to make things worse for players who are struggling… because they have also taken away the currency exchange from the previous zones. So if you are struggling and cannot quite get your build off the ground, you can’t spend the meager exalts that you have gotten to buy gems to improve your situation… and instead are better off just rolling another character.
At the moment I am not really following a build guide, and just sort of yoloing my way through the various minion clusters that I have used previously. This seems to be working for the moment. At some point I am going to have to start investing in defenses but that is a future me problem and not a current problem. I should be able to get through the campaign in my current state and as far as ascendancy points I picked up the Hellhound first and gave it poison support and armor break through corrosion which seems to be working well. Since my build is mostly doing fire damage, I opted to go with Bringer of Flame since ignites are much harder to get than they used to be after the changes they made to how that whole thing works. This node use to require Pyromantic Pact… and now that it does not it seems universally great pending you care about igniting things. I will go for Altered Flesh next, and then might respec to go down to half life reserved and get bonus spirit and energy shield through Beidat’s Will and Beidat’s Hand.
Right now I am running with 4 Arsonists, 3 Skeletal Warriors, and can summon 12 Raging Spirits at a time. I went ahead and picked up Bind Spectre so that I can hopefully gain one of the Vaal dudes that everyone seems to be using since I am nearing the end of Act III. There are apparently 3 types of Vaal Guard and the one that we want is the one that throws green fireballs. You can keep disenchanting your gem each type if you wind up getting the wrong one. As far as gearing goes… I think I am going Armor and Energy Shield bases either that or a mix of pure bases of either. I would not mind having some armor counts towards elemental damage items. I’m also not sure if I can stack block as a defensive layer or not, or if that will cost way too many points on the tree to get a useful amount. Right now I am mostly surviving by not getting hit and letting the overwhelming damage my minions deal carry me.
I am actually enjoying myself now that I swapped characters, and the crafting mechanics that come along with Abyss have been pretty cool. There is a whole version of the veiled orb that allows you to unveil a modifier on your items, and they all seem to be pretty solid options so far. They also drop often enough that I have felt like I could actually use them rather than hoard them for perfect items late in the game. I will at a bare minimum play through all of the new content, but I am not sure how deep into mapping I am going to get. The whole tower chase thing feels pretty hollow, and that seems to be when most of the folks begin petering out. At bare minimum I want to be able to play around with the trade system so I will know what to expect when it comes to Path of Exile 1. I’ve actually come to the point where I enjoy the trade economy and I can only see how this is going to improve things.
Are you playing Path of Exile II? What did you end up rolling? Are you enjoying yourself or did you rage quit out in frustration? Drop me a line below.
The post Tale of Two Game Experiences appeared first on Tales of the Aggronaut.
