AggroChat

Nomad Valet Service

April 10, 2017 by Belghast

This weekend was a fun one, and not because I did anything special… but more for the absence of anything planned. Saturday we got up fairly early, and ran errands. I had been putting off going to the eye glasses place since getting my prescription, and I guess I was doing so for good reason. Bifocals are extremely expensive. I priced out a set of daily wear and a set of sunglasses and it was going to be almost $800. That is just straight up ludicrous for eyewear… but it is a carnival of errors that adds up in a final price. I have an insanely strong prescription which generally means I need some of those double super bonus lenses with all of the bells and whistles to keep the thickness down. Then when you combine that with the fact that this time around they were going to be adding bifocals and a prism… shit got crazy really fast. Instead I opted to wait… since my Optometrist said I was really on the borderline as to whether or not they would actually benefit me. So I opted to think about it… and wound up just ordering more single vision glasses for the moment from Zenni optical. I have a feeling that I am going to have enough trouble getting adjusted to the prism… that I am not sure if I want to further complicate things with bifocal lenses this time. However I guess when it comes time to renew I will be going for the vision insurance since that at least will hopefully dent that blow.

As far as the rest of the weekend… we cleaned the house like mad when we got home from errands and this largely freed me up to be able to just chill the hell out upstairs with a cat on either side playing some Andromeda. I have to say I love that I ultimately have two cats on my desk most of the time… I have blankets on either side of the keyboard and it isn’t super long before I have attract both Allie our eldest cat, and Kenzie our middle cat. Hell right now as I am writing this post at 6 in the morning… I already have Allie crashed out on the blanket to the right of my keyboard. She will probably sit there in that state for a bit longer until she decides it is time for food and starts prancing back and forth in front of my keyboard. As far as gaming went… I am so deep into Andromeda at this point. All told I am nearly 70 hours into the game and I have been stalling moving the main story forward until I can complete all of the side stuff. As I learn more about the universe… I am starting to feel like maybe this is a better game than the original trilogy. I know that is going to be a controversial statement. I will however add the qualifier of “for me” to the statement, because personally the original trilogy hit a high point with the second game and Andromeda is really structured in a similar fashion. It involves going off on small missions with your team to effect the world in subtle ways. The game play itself feels like this amalgam of Knights of the Old Republic and Mass Effect, namely the way that KOTOR used to let you roam around planets in what felt like at the time a free manner.

This free roaming nature is for good and bad… like the fact that I never seem to park my Nomad in a reasonable way as I hurriedly hit the E button as I roll up on the next combat vignette. In this case I literally had to jump and try and hit E to re-enter in order to get back in after finishing the remnant site. Side note the N7 armor is still probably the coolest design in Mass Effect, and the Andromeda logo especially will never be quite as cool as it. At this point I am I believe level 43, and I think in truth the game probably expected me to be done with it ages ago. There is a lot of sadness about to happen however, because with the deluxe edition I got a set of really awesome Pathfinder weapons. I’ve become very close with my Pathfinder Auto Rifle, and every time I leveled into a new bracket the next pattern was magically available for development. This has been the biggest resource sink for me as I made one of these each time it was possible. However it seems like you stop getting patterns at Tier 5… and I am not really looking forward to the prospect of trying to find a new auto rifle crush. I am hoping that one of these patches fixes this and lets me keep making my little Pathfinder auto rifle friends. For the moment I am going to be getting my hands on other types of rifles and trying out which seems to fit best for that archetype. In a way it reminded me of the way that Red Death feels in Destiny… and while this game calls it an auto rifle… by Destiny terms it would be a pulse rifle. Whatever the case I am slowing wrapping up some of the loyalty missions because before I start moving the priority ops again I want to make sure I have access to all of the toys.

The weirdest part about this play through is that I am playing in a fashion that I never really thought I would. For the most part I have maxed out a number of the weapon abilities and all of the passive benefit traits. From there I am largely playing a “pet class” for lack of a better term. I am using the turret which I find insanely handy, and my common MO is to open the door to a base… chunk a turret in and then back out to safety as I let it soften the defenses before ducking back in and mopping up. In addition to the turret I am regularly using the hacked observer that PeeBee gives you access to, and letting it loose to run amok. These two things often times distract the enemy and I can pick them off with headshots from either the auto rifle if medium range, or sniper rifle if extreme ranges. For up close and personal action… I have shockwave with the knock back that can clear out a bunch of things rushing at me. In truth it is more of a jack of all trades build than any deep synergy between abilities… but it is also tailored to some of the things that I like from other games. In the Borderlands series I have almost exclusively played whatever character could use auto rifles and turrets. While I like getting up close and personal in most games… in shooters I tend to relish hanging out in that medium range with the ability to duck behind cover. Lately however I have gotten into using my Asari sword to slice and dice Kett in close quarters… so maybe that medium range thing is shifting. Whatever the case… I spent so much time with Andromeda this weekend and the game just keeps getting better as I get further into it. While the game might have started out awkwardly… it really feels like it is going to finish in style.

AggroChat #151 – The Holy Snorkel

May 21, 2019April 9, 2017 by AggroChat

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

Tonight a very sleepy Belghast leads our cast through a discussion of the things that have been sitting waiting to be discussed due to last week being a Game of the Month show. The year of amazing video game releases continues and Tam especially is extremely amped to talk about Persona 5. In a weird turn of events Kodra discovers Castlevania Symphony of the Night in looking for things to play on his PSTV and we dive into a length discussion about that game. We continue on our discussion about Zelda Breath of the Wild and how Tam is just struggling with it. Belghast and Tam gush a bit about the Nintendo Switch given that Bel just recently joined the Cult by getting one from Amazon during their extremely brief window of availability. We talk about Specter of Torment the latest addon pack to Shovel Knight, and how it is doing a bunch of different things than either the Shovel or Plague Knight content. Grace and Bel talk a bit about the Diablo 3 10th Season and how they are desperate for new content… but still finding a lot of fun in the game. Finally there is some discussion about the World of Warcraft 7.2 patch and how both Grace and Belghast have largely bounced off of it so far.

Topics Discussed: Persona 5 – Castlevania: Symphony of the Night – Legend of Zelda Breath of the Wild – Nintendo Switch – Specter of Torment – Diablo 3 Season – World of Warcraft 7.2 Patch

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Ready, Set Mastery

April 7, 2017 by Grace

I’m not sure why, but I ended up getting hooked into Diablo 3 season 10 in spite of myself. The season got off to a really slow start for me, barely getting through the main chapters of the season journey by the end of the opening weekend. Somehow that was still enough to get its claws in. I suppose it helps that I was sick a bit this week, and D3 is nothing if not the perfect mindless pastime when you aren’t feeling well.

One of the reasons I had written this season off is that the conquest options this time around are not that great. The “freebie” one is to level 3 legendary gems to 65, the rest are all stinkers. Two of them are speed run achievements that essentially require a coordinated group, and two more are multi-class achievements that require leveling at least one extra character. So of course I got it into my head somehow that I wanted to do the set dungeon mastery one. This requires mastering 8 different set dungeons. I had been throwing shards at Kadala trying to complete all of my demon hunter class sets and finally got them all.

I did the Marauder’s one first since that was the free gift set this season, and honestly it was one of the worst of the four. Those stupid rock worms are a pain and I was always tight on time because of missing an enemy or two in all the nooks and crannies of that map. Next up was the Unhallowed Essence dungeon, which had a lot of the same problems as the Marauder’s, but with fewer annoying worms. Mostly that one came down to RNG being kind and giving me nice double packs of spiders to hit with my multishot. The Shadow set dungeon was strange to me. I had never used that set before and clearing the whole thing in time with a single target impale build was pretty daunting. It turned out to be far easier than I imagined. After a couple practice runs to get the lay of the land I had no trouble with it. I saved the Natalya’s dungeon for last, mostly because I was waiting for a couple of extra pieces of gear to drop to help make it easier. Honestly I’m not sure it mattered. That dungeon was by far the easiest of the four. The map is nice and open and the objectives are incredibly easy.

The big lesson I learned from mastering all four of these is that set dungeons require a really different mindset from the rest of the game. For one thing, the map for each one is static, so it pays to memorize the layout (or look at the map ahead of time online like I did) to optimize your path. It also requires some patience and discipline, since for some of the objectives one misclick can mean failure. I found it helps to try to achieve a sort of zen state while attempting these. Do a few trial runs so your path through the map becomes second nature, since that will help make sure you finish in time. Then just focus on your objectives and glide along until either you win or you fail. I got very used to letting myself die quickly if I failed so I could port out and start over. All of these dungeons, even the easiest one, took at least 2 or 3 tries. I also recommend sticking with one until you clear it, because the few times I got frustrated and did something else just meant I had to get a few more practice runs in to get up to speed when I came back later. Better to just get through it while the dungeon and your build are fresh in your brain.

Anyway now I have two shiny new banners to show off my DH skills, and can start thinking about which other class I want to master. OK let’s be serious the answer here is wizard, which to my great shame I still haven’t gotten all of the masteries for. I’ll be leveling one up to correct this grievous error. And of course there is the ulterior motive here, which is that mastering ALL of the set dungeons scores you a sweet pair of wings. I honestly don’t know if I have it in me to do these for the melee classes, but maybe someday. Those wings are some serious motivation.

Boosts and Buffs

April 7, 2017 by Belghast

I’ve officially reached the point in the Diablo 3 season where I can straight up wreck at least early torment content, which means… I can boost my friends. Last night I snagged Byx, Ammo and Sol and drug them through a few Nephilim rifts until they came out level 70s on the other side. In truth I am rather horrible at boosting people… I tend to overclear because my tank instincts kick in and I desperately want to protect my fledgling charges. So that means that the individual Rifts probably take way longer than they should. However it also means if you are being boosted by me… you are not only walking away with levels but also with a sizable amount of cash and gems. Sadly the loot is functionally meaningless until you hit 70. However since Byx was way ahead of the rest of the crew I am pretty certain she walked with some decent loot as well. The funny thing with writing about how much I was not feeling this season… is that it actually made me really want to play. The moment I posted the blog post I logged in and did a solo greater rift before heading into work that day, and each night since I have at least spent a little bit of time playing. After the boostery, I connected with Grace and we did a couple of rounds of bounties since we were both in desperate need of the crafting materials. I technically have everything that I need gear wise apart from one legendary gem, and a single ring…. but everything could be improved by getting some ancients which have been in short supply thus far.

After playing some Diablo 3 on the laptop, I decided to go upstairs and check out the latest patch for Mass Effect Andromeda. All in all there have been a lot of subtle improvements to the way that the character models look. In truth I think there are a bunch of improvements to the game in general because the worlds just feel better looking. This might of course be the placebo effect, and because they said they patched…. it is making my brain desperately want to see the improvements. However at the very least my Ryder and all of the characters I am interacting with seem more normal looking. The Botox face is largely gone… and the fully open surprise eyes seems to be gone as well. I am pretty pleased with the results because this little bit of window dressing has fixed a lot of my gripes about the game. On the other side of the equation on non-cosmetic changes… the general inventory increases are also amazing. I feel like I am no longer needing to deconstruct items in the middle of a planet rather than waiting for me to be back on my ship. Similarly the ability to tab out of the flight animations while in a solar system makes that just work better, and I am wondering if there is some option I can check in the settings to default to disabled so I don’t need to hit tab.

I put a few hours in last night and in truth probably played about thirty minutes longer than I should have… for my sanity… and my sleep patterns. I really like this game and It definitely is up in the game of the year territory for me. The problem there is… so is Zelda Breath of the Wild and Horizon Zero Dawn… and all of those were released in the first quarter of the year. I guess in a way I am extremely thankful for all of these games, because with the way the real world is turning out… this seems to be the golden age of escapism. It is comforting to be able to lose yourself in a deep and rich game, and completely forget that the world is apparently on fire and someone replaced the fire extinguisher with a can of easy cheese. There are just so damned many quests that I have picked up and that are littering my inventory that I need to spend one entire night trying to burn those down before I move forward. I will probably always be grossly over-leveled for the content as a result… but whatever I have my trust Rank V Pioneer Gun. I just gotta say that once I stumbled onto the weapons provided by the DLC… or more so I stumbled onto how to GET the DLC items… I fell in love with the Auto Rifle. Yes I keep giving mine bizarre names because I’ve had to craft each after the first one…. but whatever it is a freaking awesome gun. More importantly… Ashgar can be happy that I have finally moved on past the Avenger.