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Reading Challenge #88: The Thrawn Trilogy by Timothy Zahn

July 11, 2017 by Grace

It’s reading challenge time again! This time I’ll be sharing my thoughts on #88, The Thrawn Trilogy by Timothy Zahn, originally published in 1991. This is a rare find for this challenge – part of a large series of novels licensed to expand on a movie franchise, as opposed to the many novels on the challenge list that eventually got made into movies.

I have been looking forward to reading this book (series) for a while now. In fact, the weight of other people’s opinions and my own expectations actually made me delay starting this book a bit. What if I hate it? What if it doesn’t live up to the hype? Eventually though, my own curiosity and honest desire to see what all the fuss was about won out and I got started. I only read the first book, Heir to the Empire. As with the Elric saga, I suspect I’ll want to pick up the rest of this story once I am finished with this challenge list but it didn’t quite grab me enough to convince me to get sidetracked from my goal for it.

This first novel in the Thrawn trilogy takes place after the events in the movie Return of the Jedi. There’s no way to place it into context with the newest films since the entire Extended Universe of these old Star Wars novels has been declared non-canon. This was unexpectedly off-putting for me while I was reading. I felt like I was reading a piece of fan fiction instead of a professional, sanctioned novel simply because I knew up front that the world in this book is no longer connected in any way to the events in the ongoing movies. Sure, the new movies are going through and systematically lifting some of the choicest bits from the Extended Universe, but the specific events and specific characters and their reactions in this novel are no longer tied to the greater cinematic universe.

In this novel, Leia has been training with Luke to become a Jedi herself. She is also pregnant with force-sensitive twins, representing a potential rebirth for the Jedi order. The New Republic is established as the new government for at least part of the galaxy, and the remnants of the Empire are trying to fight its expansion. The main antagonist of the story is Admiral Thrawn, whose keen strategic thinking keeps him a step ahead of our heroes for much of the book. I can see why Thrawn is so memorable as a villain, he’s smart and calculating and poses a true threat to the Republic. Unlike many movie villains, Thrawn also knows when a battle is lost, and chooses to save his forces and regroup instead of lashing out. That move definitely raised him in my esteem.

Throughout the book Thrawn is slowly drawing together several threads of his plan to defeat the Republic. Some of these come to fruition in this novel, while others are left hanging for the other two books in the trilogy. While he is thinking on a grand scale, the story also becomes personally perilous for Luke and Leia. Thrawn enters into a bargain with a dark jedi, promising to hand them over in exchange for help coordinating the fleet’s attacks using the force. Both bounty hunters and squads of lethal aliens under Thrawn’s command are hunting both Luke and Leia.

One of the people hunting Luke in particular, for her own reasons, is fan-favorite Mara Jade. I can only imagine that she does some awesome stuff in the later books, because I didn’t really like her much in this one. She spent most of the book brooding, with a planet-sized chip on her shoulder. Sure, I wanted to find out what her deal was with Luke, and her hatred was probably justified. After all that build-up, though, I’m still not sure why exactly she never just orchestrated an “accident” to kill him on the many occasions she had the opportunity. Something about honor? It never came across clearly.

The book ends almost immediately after the climatic space battle, with a fairly major cliffhanger. It threw me off a bit, mostly because my copy had a hefty excerpt from the 2nd book tacked on at the end so I didn’t realize I was so close to being finished. Zahn did a good job of making me want to see what happens next with Thrawn’s plan, but not quite good enough to get me to dig into the second book right away. Overall, Heir to the Empire felt like a huge disappointment mostly because it had been hyped up so much over the years. I believe I would have loved it if I had read this back in the 90’s when I was both younger and desperate for any new continuation of my beloved Star Wars. Now it’s just a reasonably decent “what-if” story set in that universe.

TL;DR: It’s essentially high-quality fan fiction at this point. It was okay but I’m sad it didn’t remotely live up to the hype. I wish I had read it back when it was first published.

Heir to the Empire by Timothy Zahn

Rating: 3/5 stars

Verdict: Great for die-hard Star Wars fans but I’m not sure it’s a must-read in a post-The Force Awakens world. If you don’t love Star Wars (what’s wrong with you???) you can definitely skip it.

Next up: The Book of the New Sun by Gene Wolfe

Witch Doctor Set Mastery

July 10, 2017 by Grace

I’m still slowly moving forward with the goal of mastering all of the set dungeons in Diablo 3. So far I’ve finished the Demon Hunter, Wizard, and Crusader ones. Next I decided to work on the Witch Doctor mastery, since I play that class fairly often and had all of the sets laying around. Sadly even with all of the time I spent with the class, I had only mastered one dungeon so I still had plenty of work to do. At least the pennant reward for this mastery looks neat!

The set dungeon I had already completed was the Jade Harvester’s. I decided to try it again for this project just to remind myself what it was like so I could record it here. The objectives are to harvest 15 enemies (x10) and kill a total of 100 enemies while they’re affected by both haunt and locust swarm. I got it on my first attempt. It definitely helped that this is the set I’m most comfortable with and I had plenty of choices for legendaries to make it work. I suspect the biggest issue with this one would normally be clearing everything within the timer since the map is fairly large and convoluted. I used Shukrani’s Triumph in the cube which let me spirit walk until I attacked or found an enemy, which made for a speedy, easy run.

Next up was the Helltooth Harness set dungeon. The first objective here is easy. “Do not take any poison damage” can be utterly trivialized by cubing Mara’s Kaleidoscope. I’m sure it is possible to do without this item but why bother if you have one available? The second objective is to kill 20 enemies with a single wall of death (x4). This was the sort of objective that gives me trouble. First, you have to be able to 1-shot the small enemies with your wall, which hopefully shouldn’t be too hard. I used a Jeram’s Bracers to increase damage to make sure of this. More importantly though, you actually have to find or make groups of 20 enemies. It was tricky to do since the dungeon has a lot of little pockets and pillars that make it hard to find and group up the mobs. I had no trouble running through and killing everything in time, but it took me 5 or 6 tries to meet this objective. If RNG is kind and you get good pack placement this one should be easy.

After that I worked on the Arachyr’s Mantle dungeon. The easier objective here was to let your hex toad lick 30 enemies. On my first attempt I was so eager to get this done that I botched the other objective. Killing all of the elites while they are both webbed and piranha’d was tricky simply because they got accidentally killed by other things first. On the plus side there aren’t that many enemies and the layout is fairly straightforward so eventually I just ran through to find the elites first and then let the toad mop up for my 30 licks. The other good thing about this one is it didn’t require much in the way of specialized legendaries other than the set itself. It took a few tries to get the hang of what I needed to do but was definitely easier than the Helltooth dungeon.

The last of the Witch Doctor dungeons was Zunimassa’s. This one asks you to grip 150 enemies in grasp of the dead, and to avoid getting into melee range with anything. That second requirement really slows you down, because you can never risk running ahead and getting too close to an enemy. With reasonable gear things should die quickly to your swarm of pets before they get to you though. I managed to 1-shot this one without even looking at the map ahead of time, so I’d call this one very easy.

Overall these were way easier than I expected them to be. Since I already had all the gear I needed I managed to knock all of them out in a single evening. I’m getting close to my goal but the next two classes are ones I’ve never played so there will be some down time while I level and farm gear for them. Still, I’m getting close enough that those awesome wings look like an achievable goal now!

AggroChat #164 – Fish With Hats

May 21, 2019July 9, 2017 by AggroChat

Featuring: Ashgar, Belghast, Grace, Kodra, Tamrielo, Thalen

Tonight we talk about a bunch of assorted topics. Firstly we talk about the issues with leveling second jobs in Final Fantasy XIV Stormblood. We reprise our discussion about how they should have introduced a new tank this expansion. We talk a bit about the new raid Omega and why we generally think it’s better than Alexander was. From there we get into a discussion about phones and mobile gaming, and the game Grace is currently playing where you collect interesting fish with hats. We venture forth into a discussion about the Diablo 3 Necromancer and the upcoming Season 11. Thalen and Ashgar have been hanging out with space ninjas and we get into a discussion about Warframe. Finally we go into a lengthy discussion about Warhammer 40,000 and how much the game has improved.

Topics Discussed:

FFXIV: Leveling DPS is Butts
Omega Raid
Mobile Gaming
Diablo 3: Fun with your dead friends
Space Ninjas
40k gets good
Amonkhet – Nicol Bolas

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

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Crusader set dungeons

July 6, 2017 by Grace

I guess I’m following through on this nonsense mission to try to master all of the set dungeons in Diablo 3, because cosmetics are the true endgame and the wings you get as a reward are so very sweet. Having finished off the Demon Hunter and the Wizard dungeons for Season 10’s conquest waay back in April, I decided to step out of my comfort zone for the next one. So I leveled a crusader, a class which I’ve never really played any farther than leveling to 70. I don’t really love playing melee in Diablo games, I’m not sure why. Mostly I suspect that it is far outside of my “player fantasy” idea. I want to be smart and precise and out of harm’s way, not wading into the thick of things. Even so, the crusader is survivable and has enough shiny tricks to be entertaining.

I did the dungeons in order of what gear I happened to collect, so the Invoker dungeon was up first. This might have been the easiest set dungeon out of any of the ones I’ve tried. The objectives are to get hit by the goatmen’s spears, and to kill the elites while both consecration and iron skin are active. The enemies are easy and the dungeon layout is very straightforward without a lot of twists or dead ends. I looked up the map before I started, and I completed the mastery on my first try with almost 30 seconds to spare. My weapons and armor (other than the Invoker set) were a random collection of whatever I had laying around, including some yellows. Seriously easy. If you’re struggling with mastering a set dungeon for the season journey, I would highly recommend this one.

Next up was the Light’s set dungeon. The objectives are to use falling sword 3 times within 15 seconds (x3) and to not get hit by any of the enemies’ mortar attacks. You’ll want the weapon Cam’s Rebuttal for this one, since it will let you cast falling sword more often. The layout of the dungeon is a very simple series of T intersections, and wasn’t bad at all to finish. The main thing holding me back on this one was my time to kill the elites, since that both made it harder to kill everything in the time limit and made me have to dodge more mortar attacks. With some slightly better gear this one would be a breeze.

The third crusader set dungeon I attempted was Roland’s. I struggled with this one until I got the exact right gear for it. Namely, the Flail of the Charge/Shield of the Steed combo for faster movement, and Golden Flense (2H flail) for wrath restoration. Without the steed charge boost I couldn’t clear fast enough, and without the Flense I couldn’t meet one of the objectives at all. The first objective is to hit 12 enemies with a single sweep attack (x7). There are multiple points on the map with big groups of enemies so this wasn’t too bad, especially with Illusory Boots in the cube to allow easy positioning. Like many similar set dungeon objectives this one is a matter of holding off until you have a promising pack and being prepared to restart if you get bad RNG on group spawns. The other objective is to spend 300 wrath within 10 seconds (x5). That is what I really struggled with until I could cube a Flense. It was still difficult to spam enough within 10 seconds but I got it done. This dungeon was not as bad as some of the RNG-heavy ones from other classes but it was incredibly gear-dependent.

The last crusader dungeon I completed was Akkhan’s. This one’s objectives were to use condemn on 10 different enemies (x10), and to kill 150 enemies while under the effect of Akarat’s Champion. The steed charge weapon/shield combo I farmed for the Roland’s dungeon also worked great here. In fact it felt almost mandatory, because my biggest challenge with this set dungeon was clearing all the required enemies in time. Raw power also seemed to matter again in this one, and like in the Light’s set dungeon, much of the time I wasted was spent trying to take down the elites. Rounding up tons of enemies with steed charge + illusory boots was simple and the small enemies died quick enough from condemn at least. Of all the crusader dungeons this one took me the most tries. My failures were all either by dying like an idiot, or to the timer running out with a handful of enemies left.

Overall these weren’t too bad. The Invoker’s is by far the easiest, not just of the crusader dungeons but including the wizard and demon hunter ones as well. Considering I had never really played a crusader much before attempting these, I was pretty pleased at my success. Even without really knowing what I was doing this series was easier than the wizard ones. Now to figure out which class to work on next!