Belghast

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Blaugust and the Grand Experiment

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Good Morning Friends! How is your day going? I just spent the last twenty minutes trying to figure out why ShareX was not working… only to realize that it is no longer August and I should be looking in the September folder instead. My wife is a teacher and we are pretty sure she brought home some generic crud to us. She is a few days ahead of me but I am very much starting to feel awful. We’ve been playing the “is it allergies or something worse” game for a bit, but so far neither of us has run a fever or had the traditional Covid symptoms. Regardless I am more than a bit mentally lagged at the moment and I am just very thankful that I made it through “Blaugust Hell Day”, or the day that I have to tabulate everything and post the final tallies. So far it appears that I have mostly been okay on my counts, but I had minor stress out yesterday when I thought all of my graphics were posted in a non-transparent mode.
The truth about Blaugust is I am floored that it is still as big of a thing as it is. The entire idea behind it was somewhat dumb. At this point, I think my blog is known more for the frequency of my posts rather than if any of them are good. However, that was not always the case. In the first several years of the blog I would go months between posts, and each time I did… I found it harder to get up the confidence to post again. So on April 26th of 2013, I set forth on my “Grand Experiment” and decided that I was going to be posting every single day. Why April 26th? I legitimately have no clue other than that was just the day that I started posting… and kept posting for several years in this fashion. After a year of doing this nonsense, I somehow got it in my head that everyone should just hit the post button and challenged folks to a month of posting.
It cracks me up a little when I catch hell for not making it to 31 posts during a contest I started in 2014. It is all in good fun, but after doing the daily posting thing for 1120 days in a row… I decided that it probably was not healthy for me. I dropped my streak on May 21st of 2016 when I took both Saturday and Sunday off from posting. For me, at least the whole daily posting routine had become such a concrete part of my life that I was constantly in fear of failing. Even though Blaugust is just a month-long event, for 2018-2022 I have taken Saturdays off just like I do in my normal posting routine. Now I allow myself the leverage to just not post whenever I am “not feeling it”. This weekend for example is Labor Day weekend here in the United States and it is probably a crap shoot if I am actually going to post or not. I called Blaugust a “dumb idea” earlier because in part I think I thought I had figured out the formula for how to blog post… and the contest was pure hubris. Now I am more in line with the thinking that you have to figure out whatever pattern works for you and then stick to that rather than some dogmatic requirement.
I am not making a ton of traction in Path of Exile at the moment in part because I have generally felt like crap and the content that I am doing requires entirely too much concentration and reaction time for me to succeed. I did clear a few more maps to add to my total of 60 out of 115 cleared. I managed to pick up a few more uniques from Kirac’s quest and failed miserably at a third. I’m in this awkward phase of not quite having the survival to just run amok killing everything, and I am not entirely certain which knobs I need to turn in order to get there. Right now I am at the default cap of 75% on all elemental resists, 20% chaos resist, and 5% spell suppression… which seems really hard to get. I need to get through my 4th ascension honestly and have a couple of tokens saved up now. That is probably going to be my next major focus. I got through to the final boss phase and died to his slam, but have upgraded a few pieces of gear since then.
Because it requires so much less focus, I am spending more time playing Diablo 3 at the moment and have a mostly viable Whirlrend Barbarian build. I can comfortably clear T13 content and uncomfortably clear t16. Mostly my core problem right now is survival… which is admittedly always the problem with an early whirlrend build. I have all of the components to make a functional build, I just need to start upgrading things to ancient and finish upgrading my gems. I think my next push is to get my GR75 out of the way so I can start getting a chance at primal ancient legendary drops. I was able to do a GR66 without much issue other than having to be careful of stray projectiles, so I am certain I will be able to do it without much concern. I am back to being stalled on my old friend the Set Dungeon, so another focus soon will be getting one of those mastered so I can clear the way for other objectives.
I am also spending a minimum amount of time playing Tower of Fantasy each day. Essentially I knock out my bounties and then move on to other things. The biggest problem that I am seeing is that since I am no longer farming content… my character level is not keeping up with the requirements material-wise to keep leveling things up. I can technically level my main three weapons from 90 to 100 but I am lacking all of the materials that I would need to do this. My account still seems “lucky” as I have already pulled the new rate-up banner character/weapon called Balmung which is a matched pair of frost swords. All told it seems pretty cool. I will likely continue to dump free summons into the limited-time banners as I have everyone on the standard banner that I care about. Other than all of this nonsense, if you are in the United States I wish you all a great extended weekend. For the rest of the world… sorry that Monday is going to be oddly quiet. I will likely take the day off unless I have a burning passion to get something out of my system and into a blog post. The post Blaugust and the Grand Experiment appeared first on Tales of the Aggronaut.

Blaugust 2022 In Review

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Good Morning Friends! It is that time again, time for me to attempt to tabulate all of the blog posts from this year’s running of Blaugust and hand out awards. We had a phenomenal turnout this year with a grand total of 67 blogs participating. During this one month collectively we produced a grand total of thirteen hundred and thirty-three new blog posts. This was not our highest attended year, as we had one back in 2018 with over 90 blogs participating, but it feels like one of our busiest years. The community has felt considerably more active than it has in the past, and that might be in part due to finally adding a more “general purpose” channel to the Discord called #blaugust-banter. We are still learning and adjusting each year, and this seems to have been a positive change for group cohesiveness. Blaugust is one of those things that has more or less developed a mind of its own over the years. Originally it was a challenge for folks to blog every single day for a month, and I embarked upon this nonsense after spending the previous year blogging every day. Of note, I made it about three and a half years of daily blogging before I finally needed to dial things back a bit. I really never expected to run Blaugust more than that first year, but collectively the community has always been there to spur me forward to organize yet another one. Over the years it has shifted more into a celebration of blogging, and a time to stoke our creative fires for the next year. There will always be folks that disappear into the woodwork after August is over, but I feel like collectively this is good for the community and keeping blogging alive.

Newbie Class of 2022

One of the things I am proudest of this year is the general outreach we have had to find new voices. Some of our lists are already seasoned bloggers, some started a brand new blog just for this event, and others just rekindled the home fires of their abandoned digital homestead. Whatever the case we had a large list of folks who were participating in Blaugust for the very first time. It has long been our tradition to celebrate our newbies with a special award, and as such here is our list of first-time Blaugustans for 2022.
Now has come the time to talk about the awards. Each year we give awards out to represent the level of posting that each blogger has completed. Since this year had a bit of a Stranger Things theme going on, and since Dungeons and Dragons played such a key role in that series, I decided to use a D20 for the background of this year’s awards. For those who might need a refresher into rules here are the guidelines.
  • Bronze Award – You made at least 5 posts during the month of August 2022.
  • Silver Award – You made at least 15 posts during the month of August 2022.
  • Gold Award – You made at least 25 posts during the month of August 2022.
  • Rainbow Diamond Award – You beat the challenge and posted 31 times or more during the month of August 2022.
Before we get into the lists however it is that time again for my yearly disclaimer. I am a human being and highly fallible. If you feel that I made a mistake in the tabulation process please let me know and I will get the lists remedied as soon as possible. Some blog layouts are easier to tabulate than others and I want to share my undying love for those of you who have a sidebar widget that counts posts by month. Again if I made a mistake in my counting, please reach out to me posthaste and I will fix it.

The Bronze Club 2022

This year we had eighteen blogs that managed the feat of posting at least five times during the month of August 2022. Often times we set ourselves to a goal but fall short, however, if you think about it this way that is an average of one post a week!

The Silver Club 2022

This year we had twelve blogs that managed the feat of posting at least fifteen times during the month of August 2022. if you spread them out across the five weeks of Blaugust, that is posting at least three times a week.

The Gold Club 2022

This year we had three blogs that managed the feat of posting at least twenty-five times during the month of August 2022. The pack thins a bit at this point because if folks are willing to post this much, they are often willing to go that extra mile does daily postings. However, on average, this is at least posting five times a week during the course of blaugust.

The Rainbow Diamond Club 2022

This year we have a very impressive twenty-seven blogs that managed the feat of posting at least thirty-one times during the month of August 2022. There are always folks who end up wildly overshooting this goal and with two blogs in the challenge, Syp managed to bring in 86 total posts between the pair of sites. All of the bloggers who make it to this level deserve our admiration, I started this nonsense and even I don’t do thirty-one posts anymore.

Honorable Mentions

While the first of the awards start with five posts during the month, it still takes a lot of effort to sign up and write even one post. As a result, we have traditionally spent some time honoring those who started down this road and joined in this nonsense we call Blaugust. This year I decided to do something a little differently and go ahead and create a themed image based on the red Blaugust 2022 logo coloration.

Final Thoughts

One of the things that I have done each year pulls together some basic statistics in an easy-to-read summary block. I would love to have some stats around Discord, but unfortunately in order to get that we would have to turn ourselves into a public community server. That feels like a double-edged sword, and I have not gone down that path yet. Regardless it definitely feels like we have had a busier community this year than we have had at any point during the Blaugust process. Without further rambling, here are some basic statistics.
  • 1333 posts were made by Blaugust 2022 Participants.
  • 67 blogs signed up and made at least one post during the month.
  • 24 blogs participated in Blaugust for the very first time.
    • Collectively our “Newbies” made a total of 376 posts.
  • 60 out of the 67 participating blogs made at least 5 posts qualifying for Bronze.
  • 42 out of the 67 participating blogs made at least 15 posts qualifying for Silver.
  • 30 out of the 67 participating blogs made at least 25 posts qualifying for Gold.
  • 26 out of the 67 participating blogs made at least 31 posts qualifying for Rainbow Diamond.
So while it was not our biggest year, it was a significant bump up from the 45 participants in 2021. I think the piece of this year’s Blaugust that I am proudest of, is how much our community has grown in scope. Traditionally Blaugust has been an event that draws its participants from the same pool of bloggers, and while it is awesome that folks look forward to this event… every year we lose a few from the fold. Our impressive twenty-four new participants tell me that we are expanding our reach and moving out into other blogging spheres. As always I am deeply proud of everyone who participated this year. Again I am a very fallible human being and if my counts do you reflect your counts, please let me know. I’ve updated the Blaugust Media Kit page with this year’s images, and the “Blaugchievements” are on the honor system. I hope to see you all back for Blaugust 2023 and whatever twists that might bring us. Lastly, I encourage you to keep blogging and stay active in the community during the coming year. For many of us, this is a support structure that we can rely on, and while I may not say it often… I appreciate all of you greatly. The post Blaugust 2022 In Review appeared first on Tales of the Aggronaut.

Chonky Battlecat Friend

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Good Morning Friends! This is going to be a bit of a mixed-topic post, and we are starting off with my chonky boi above. If you are an existing Guild Wars 2 player or have been considering starting it with Steam… then maybe you should log in and collect the item that is being given away currently. Essentially mount skins are almost always microtransactions found on the gem store. There are essentially three varieties: a specific skin on sale for a limited time, a scroll that gives you a random skin from several available on that scroll, and a scroll that allows you to select a mount of your choice. The last one tends to be the most expensive and I believe is somewhere in the neighborhood of $16-20. What you are getting as part of the 10-year anniversary is a scroll that essentially lets you select a mount skin from many different pools of skins. This includes skins that are part of other bundle packs, as well as some that I have only ever seen sold individually. It was a hard choice for me but I have wanted a Warclaw skin for a while, and those seem to have a much slower rotation than other options. While the base warclaw probably looks more Battlecat-like, you can’t dye the actual tiger portion. So instead I went with this chonky unmasked sabertooth tiger and then dyed him up to look like a proper Battlecat. Sure I will stick out like a sore thumb on the WvW battlefield but it will make me happy doing so.
I spent most of last night swapping map runs with Ace in Path of Exile and I have to say… grouping is the biggest problem I have with that game. Everything about the process feels bad. Firstly you have the contra code problem, and for those who did not experience this, here comes an explanation. Back in the day you could input the Konami code (Up, Up, Down, Down, Left, Right, Left, Right, B, A, Start) and it would give you 30 lives or if you were in two-player mode, you got 30 lives per player. However, when one player ran out of their allotted lives, it started bleeding lives from the other player so collectively you had a pool of 60 lives. When you open a map in Path of Exile it spawns six portals, each portal can only transport a single player… so the more players you have the fewer chances you have of getting through a map. It feels really freaking bad to be the person who dies on a map and has to consume another portal, and there is no mechanic for resurrecting a player.
On top of this, there is the constant frustration of loot. Unlike Diablo 3 or many modern ARPGs, Path of Exile has a single shared loot pool and there seems to be no rhyme or reason as to which items it flags for which players. We’ve watched a lockbox open and every single item is flagged for one player. We’ve seen the same item flagged to be lootable by BOTH players… even though we were running with “permanent allocation” turned on in the group settings. Then there are weird things like trying to pick up an item and not having inventory space seems to count it was looting it… then dropping it on the ground flagging that item as free for all looting. It just feels bad that you are constantly on the verge of ninja looting something because it is never really clear what belongs to you. There are other problems like “fog of war” exploration not being shared… that all lead to Path of Exile just being a game that feels bad to play with friends.
Contrast that with Diablo 3 which has always felt amazing to play with friends. It is super easy to drag someone along with you and the catch-up mechanics serve to quickly lower the gap in power. I mean the game also has its own problems, I love the ability to just trade any item to friends in Path of Exile whether or not they happened to be there at the time it dropped. I feel like I keep finding myself in a situation of really enjoying Path of Exile, but it is nowhere near the group dynamic replacement game that I was hoping it would be. Diablo 3 sadly still sits at the top of that heap and has yet to be dethroned, even though I keep desperately looking for a replacement. After needing a break from the frenzy of running maps together last night, I swapped over to D3 when I went downstairs and finished out the haedrig’s gift portion of my seasonal journey.
For anyone who has never really done the “proper” season start routine, the above video from Raxx outlines the process. Essentially you complete a challenge rift and then attempt to use the materials that you get through that process… to get some items that will give you a bit of a boost while leveling. This season I stuck out big time. I did my challenge rift on Sunday and then failed to hit anything useful. I stuck out completely on gambling and got zero legendaries, and then my upgraded weapon didn’t land on anything useful either. Still, I managed to level fast enough over the course of two days and then began my season’s journey properly. By the time I dinged 70 I had completed all of the achievements required to get my four-piece set.
At this point, I had only four set pieces and nothing else useful. I had managed to pull a set of Nemesis Bracers which I immediately threw on my Templar. I’ve been trained to feel like I need specific gear items and have used them as a crutch, so instead of going after some of the missing achievements directly, I did a round of bounties, as I would need the jewelry patterns contained in the bags in order to complete one of the achievements. My hope was that through this process I would ultimately get some gear… and I poured all of my deaths breath that I got into upgrading mighty weapons in the hope of getting an Ambo’s Pride. However I finished my round of bounties and was in no better state than I started, and I was shocked at just how easy it was for me to complete a level 20 Greater Rift. Basically, I had this moment where I realized… that I am much better at Diablo III than I used to be. I mean that is to be expected considering just how many hours I have played this game over the last several years, but it never really sunk in until last night. Early on when I did the seasonal grind, I would have floundered on a 4 piece set trying to get my 6-piece, but instead I made the best of what I had available to me and cobbled together a custom load out of abilities that would accentuate my strengths. Essentially I used Leap and Whirlwind to gather up packs of mobs and then Rend to do the killing, and managed to finish the Rift with eight minutes to spare. I hope maybe one day I can have this same moment with Path of Exile because I still feel completely overwhelmed most of the time I am playing it.
I am hoping beyond hope that either Diablo 4 or Path of Exile 2 ends up being the best of both worlds. What I want is a game with some of the nuance and complexity of Path of Exile, but the fun drop-in non-punitive gameplay of Diablo III. After the debacle that has been the Lake of Kalandra league, I am starting to lose hope that we are going to find that from Grinding Gear Games. I think there are some aspects of “the vision” that are directly at odds with what I consider to be the optimal grouping experience. Maybe the Microsoft buyout of Blizzard will go through… cause some significant changes in the structure of that company and once again make me feel okay about supporting their games. I am hoping that Diablo IV ends up being a great game, in spite of the conditions it was developed under. Even though they have come out with public statements to the contrary… the experience we all had with Diablo Immortal still gives me some significant concerns about what we will get. The post Chonky Battlecat Friend appeared first on Tales of the Aggronaut.

Sniping a Six Link

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Good Morning Friends! Yesterday was a bit of a departure and now I return you to your regularly scheduled ARPG nonsense. Of all of the games that I play on the regular, I think I have the biggest soft spot for Diablo-style games. I remember getting into the test phases of the first Diablo game in college and it represented pretty much everything I had ever wanted in a game up until that point. When Diablo 2 came out, I made the difficult decision of choosing to buy it over Icewind Dale as they released the same week… and I had limited funds to buy a game with. I remember playing countless hours of “also ran” titles like Fate, Sacred, Titans Quest, and Dungeon Siege. Basically, I am a junkie for the pattern of clicking on baddies and getting a shower of loot as a result. I am surprised on one level that it took me this long to get into Path of Exile, and on other levels… not surprised at all because it can be a deeply frustrating game.
In order to move my Storm Brand into the next phase of its evolution, I really needed a six-link chest piece. The base that is most highly suggested for the build I am running is the Sadist Garb, and holy crap have prices been all over the place. I’ve been trying to craft my own and have legitimately used probably close to 200 orbs of fusing so far trying to get the links correct. When I first started shopping the trade league these were going for somewhere in the neighborhood of 30 chaos for the right colors and right links. At that time I did not have the funds and by the time I did have some money… they had jumped up to somewhere between 1.5 divines and 4 divines. Basically, the loot changes have thrown the trade economy into a state of chaos where no one seems to know how to price anything.
This morning before sitting down to write this post, I decided to check prices so I could snag a screenshot, and sitting there amongst the expensive options… was this Sadist Garb. It is not the best-itemized thing I have ever seen and is corrupted… which limits my ability to do much of anything to change that, but it was only 10 chaos… which seems like an extreme bargain at the moment. Basically, I decided to jump on the opportunity to get six links, so I could start settling my build in a bit more and shift from my 4 links main spell chain to the 6 links version. The only problem here is that I essentially need to shift around all of my gear to make this work because I am not using my body armor for my main spell chain. I’ve been rat-holing some gear but none of it is quite ready for prime time. However, it is much much easier to get some 4 links as opposed to a single 6 link.
As far as atlas progress goes I am sitting at 45/155 nodes. I’ve been weirdly obsessed with filling out the early rungs of the ladder. I’ve completed the first three tiers and have a map each in tiers 4 and 5, and then 3 in tiers 6 and 7. I suppose I should really check in with the rest of the guild to see what they need because they might be able to plug the holes in my progress and the same with my spare maps. As far as unique maps I have managed to catch 3 available so far from Kirac and have knocked out Coward’s Trial, The Twilight Temple, and Whakawairua Tuaha. Whenever I see one of those I try to complete it just because I am uncertain when I will see it again.
In other news, I’ve also started a character in the new Diablo III season 27. I have some awesome friends who offered me a boost since I did not start until Sunday… but ultimately I thanked them and turned them down. Diablo III has been my “chill” game for when I need a break from the stressful pace of mapping in Path of Exile. Basically, my survival is not amazing so I have to be on point… and lag-free… in order to finish most of the higher-tier maps. I’ve been hesitant to grind through the lower-tier maps for fear that someone in my crew might need them. So essentially I opted to chill out downstairs playing Diablo III the last two nights.
Last night I hit 70 and am slowly chipping away at Haedrig’s Gift. The first three chapters were a cakewalk, but I can basically only reliably do T1 right now with the current state of my gear. I am in mostly yellows minus the four pieces of set gear, so I figure I will do a round of bounties for jewelry patterns to knock that one out, and see how much gear I manage to get them. Hopefully by the time I finish that I will be able to bump things up to T4 and knock out the rest of Chapter IV. Once I have a full set of gear and some viable pieces to go with it, I will be able to escalate quickly through the ranks. I’ve done the “whirlrend” barb thing so many times that it is just a matter of devoting the time to farming in order to get there. Once I am up and running I should be able to knock the rest of the achievements out quickly and get my sword doggo. The post Sniping a Six Link appeared first on Tales of the Aggronaut.