AggroChat

The Secret Stash

April 10, 2016 by Belghast

Comfort Gaming

One of the things I always have trouble sorting out, is what game I plan on playing during the AggroChat podcast. Now there are casts that have a strict no gaming rule while talking, but I honestly think that would damage some of the discussion. Essentially we are hitting record on conversations that naturally happened already on our voice chat server. Part of that equation is the fact that we are talking while gaming, and for the last couple of weeks the game of choice has been Diablo 3. I think partially it is that I know the season is coming to an end, and as a result it is fresh in my mind again. The ultimate irony however is that I am not playing seasonal characters at all. While recording two shows ago I ended up pushing my non-seasonal monk to 70 and last night I started working on trying to get my non-seasonal warrior from 60 to 70. That would leave only my Wizard as being sub max level, which honestly…. I am considering giving another chance. I am not a huge fan of finger wigglers… but after running with a lot of wizards over these last couple of seasons… I have to say I see the charm. They can simply melt anything that they come up against, and there actually is a semi melee range option that I would probably be able to stomach.

The other thing that I tried my hand at this week was Path of Exile. I find it shocking that the game has been out this long and I have yet to even really give it a shot. The talent screen honestly scared me off a bit because it looked as complicated as the final fantasy x sphere grid. However for some time my friend Carthuun has been talking it up, pretty much anytime we brought up Diablo 3. It is entertaining and I feel like I could play it happily, but I have to say I was somewhat shocked how relatively difficult that it starts. I mean it is not super hard, but you can’t simply mow through the mobs in quite the manner that you do in Diablo 3. All this really means is it makes me realize just how watered down the latest Diablo installment really was. The only disappointment was that there didn’t seem to be any sort of a real “knight” light character with a sword and shield in the manner of the Crusader in D3. I ended up choosing the big brute character, and at some point I will probably try and go sword and shield. I am not sure exactly how I am building the character yet because I have yet to get terribly far.

Pre-Patch Farming

The majority of yesterdays game time was spent running around in The Division and attempting to farm crafting components. At the current moment I have a decent stash of materials, or at least am in a better position than I was before I knew the crafting changes were coming down. I am not super pumped about the patch, because it feels like it is taking the game in a less player friendly direction. However that said I am still slowly making progress towards the level cap. While running around yesterday I managed to ding 24, and encountered some areas that I had not seen yet. The strangest of course was this marijuana farm that was nestled deep inside a building. As the day goes on today my goal is to continue trying to level because I would really love to be able to participate in some of the big activities, but I am absolutely certain I will not hit the cap before the patch. I am somewhat frustrated that it sounds like gearing is going to be harder for me, than it was for the folks who rushed the leveling process. That however always seems to be the case… the first few you get to cap get easy epics, and those who level slowly have to struggle through the throttled drop rates.

AggroChat #102 – Rogue One Love

May 21, 2019April 10, 2016 by AggroChat

Tonight Ashgar, Belghast, Grace, Inky, Tamrielo, and Thalen talk about stuff!

Tonight we welcome back to the show Inky, and talk a bunch of topics. Tam discusses his experiences playing the latest XCom and how each of the AggroChat facsimiles fared throughout the missions. Inky talks about playing the beta of the upcoming Fallout 4 survival mode. We delve into a discussion about Funko Pops, Disney Infinity and Amiibo. Belghast talks about the upcoming patches for The Division and Destiny and the positive and negative of each. We all share the love of the new Rogue One trailer, and how it makes is happy to be Star Wars fans. Finally Inky talks about a game has has been playing Submerged, which is something in the “walking simulator” genre.

This Weeks Topics

XCOM
Fallout 4 Survival Mode
Funko Toys
Disney Infinity
Amiibo
Division / Destiny Patches
Rogue One Trailer
Submerged

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: RSS

Sword Logic

April 9, 2016 by Belghast

Conversions Away

Last night I had every intent of logging into The Division and playing it all night long. If nothing else I knew I needed to pop in long enough to convert all of my materials to orange or blue quality. This Tuesday there is a pretty horrible nerf coming down the pipe in crafting. In the case of high end crafting it is more than doubling the amount of materials needed to craft something through the form of an extremely lossy conversion of materials. Right now it takes 5 greens to make 1 blue, and 5 blues to make 1 orange crafting material. Which has always felt like a pretty fair method. However after the patch it will take 10 green mats to make a single blue, and 15 blues to make a single orange. To make matters worse they are also nerfing the amount of materials you get off of deconstruction which right now usually yields two materials… but after the patch it will more consistently yield a single material. Essentially all of the love I have for Destiny and the quality of life improvements… I am feeling the opposite for Division and what seems to be some very unfair changes for the casual player. As a result I highly suggest you get into the game and convert everything you have up to the highest tier of material you can make.

Unfortunately there is no batch conversion option so you will be holding space bar and hitting escape a bunch to burn through your materials. It took me about twenty minutes to convert everything up because I really did have a lot of materials. I need to focus on farming some more weapon nodes this weekend so that I can hopefully convert up at least enough to get 10 for one weapon. Right now high end craftables take 8 orange mats, and after the patch they are going to require 10. I didn’t notice any mentioned nerfs to the world nodes, so I am wondering if these changes are designed to get players to prioritize going after them instead of simply killing a bunch of stuff to deconstruct. In any case I know today/tonight I plan on farming as many nodes as I can get my hands on with the hopes of converting it all upwards into shiny orange materials. In the process of screwing around yesterday I did manage to complete a mission and hit 23 so at some point I really need to make the final push to 30 so I can join in all the fun end game “reindeer games”.

Unintended Exotics

As unexcited as I am about The Division patch…. I am insanely so about the Destiny patch. Yesterday I was super pumped to see what the next Playstation exclusives would look like, namely I really really want that new exotic sniper because it has an almost Tex Mechanica vibe. I also think the new Jovian Guard armor set is probably the coolest Titan armor to date, so I will absolutely be farming up a set of it, which should go a lot more smoothly given that I can infuse things much easier. On the infusion department there is some conflicting information up on the Bungie site, but it makes it sound like we will no longer get engrams to decode to less light than our converted light total. Meaning that if you are 309 light when you decode you should get items of level 309 or higher. What is confusing is this seems like a massive change, but one that I really welcome. I am sick of getting 260 blues and 270 purples from engrams. I’ve been holding onto a vault full of interesting weapons, that just need to be infused to use… so I am amped that this might mean that process becomes super simple. At some point before Tuesday I really need to sort through my vault and deconstruct all of the lower level items that I was holding onto as stepping stones for leveling higher stuff from 280 and beyond.

I didn’t intend to play Destiny last night, but at some point during the evening I flipped over to the clan messaging app and saw that my friend Jex was trying to get ahold of me. Now I have needed to finish up the Exotic sword quest for some time, but I wasn’t really pushing the issue. It turns out that Jex and Squirrel were looking for something to do last night, and thought that it would be the perfect time to work on that quest for me. The sunless cell is probably my least favorite strike because I don’t like the whole “not being able to see” aspect, and the exploding thralls coming out in close proximity. That said the worst part about it last night was the anxiety of not wanting to screw up the pattern. You have to bleed down the main boss to where you can finish him off in a hit or two… and then drop the warden of your elemental type and then within 30 seconds finish off the boss to complete the quest. The problem being that the flame sword warden is apparently the most annoying because he could almost one shot all of us.. and we were well above the suggested 300 light. We managed to do it in a single attempt, but with a lot of resurrections in the process. Afterwards we popped over to the dreadnaught and did some Court of Oryx, with the goal of finishing some antiquated runes so we would each have a stack to go through with the patch on Tuesday. I know personally I have six, but it sounded like Squirrel had a full stack of them. The hope is that we can farm up one or more of those 335 artifacts to boost our light level before the raid that same night. In any case I am super grateful for the group, and my shiny new exotic 310 sword.

Sword Logic

April 9, 2016 by Belghast