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Balmorra and Oryx

September 28, 2015 by Belghast

Awesome Wife Update

My wife is always awesome, but every now and then she does something so cool that I have to brag on her. This weekend she was out shopping with a friend when I got a series of excited texts from her about something she found for me. Awhile back I picked up some Star Wars shoes with this “A New Hope” artwork spread across the two shoes. The problem being that they were expensive as shit and I hate the idea of wearing them out in my normal shoe rotation. I wear a mixture of Vans and Airwalk slip on style canvas shoes and I seem to be able to destroy them pretty effectively. My wife however found the above pair that is absolutely Star Wars print but not to the level that I wouldn’t want to wear them constantly. She didn’t end up picking them up, mostly because she wanted me to try them on. We get up yesterday and they were apparently also on sale at Target, so I am not sure how much we paid but I think they were under $20. I just think its awesome that she saw the shoes and immediately thought that I would want them. My wife isn’t necessarily a geek like I am, but she has always “gotten” the fact that I am and supported me in my quirkiness. I am exceptionally lucky, and every now and then I feel like I need to acknowledge that fact publicly.

Starting Balmorra

I had all of these intentions to make a big push yesterday in Star Wars the Old Republic, but in reality I only ended up playing it in the evening while watching television. I did however manage to finish up all of the end of chapter one back and forth for the smuggler. I now have Risha as an official companion rather than just someone hanging out on my ship. Granted I will likely never end up using her, given that the Tank/Healer combo of Treek and I allows me to pretty much take on anything with ease. Overall I do like the character of Risha and it is going to be interesting to see how the rest of the game plays out. I figure she is going to remain being a vocal participant in the content. Now we are going to enter into some spoiler territory, so you might want to stop reading if you have not completed the smuggler story line and intend to do so. One of the absolute best moments in the game so far… was when I finally got to take down Skavak. Up until this point I kept thinking to myself… god why will this game not let me just kill this guy already!

Now that we have moved into Chapter 2 we get a new set of bad guys. At this point I don’t really care much about this Voidwolf character, but I am absolutely all about taking on Rogun the Butcher. Up until this point I have had him looming over my head and he has sent the occasional bounty hunter after me. My hope is that when I finally am able to take him down it will be just as sweet as it was for Skavak. I feel like as a smuggler I probably shouldn’t want to have a stand up fight against these Kingpins, but then again Leia did slay Jabba in rescuing Han… so there is that example to follow. There are moments in this game that I know are traps… but you pretty much have to go through them anyways. The “rescue” mission on the derelict freighter for example, was absolutely going to be a trap and it was. I did not however expect Port Nowhere to be the trap that it ended up being. I guess it makes sense, because pretty much EVERY map you go to that is not on a main world ends up being a trap. Looking forward to pushing through Balmorra because I can tell you right now I am ONLY doing class story quests here. This is the planet that often kills my progress on Sith side, so will be looking forward to getting through it here on Republic.

Heroic Light

Yesterday was a day almost entirely lost to Destiny. After finishing my blog post, advertising the podcast, and finishing up the youtube version we ended up running out to Target to pick up my shoes. We got home around 11:30 and from that point until around 3:30 I was engrossed in this or that activity within Destiny. I wound my way through the Taken King story, largely because I wanted to open up the Dreadnought patrol zone. I have to say Oryx was one of those fights that was probably way worse in my head than it actually was in reality. The entire time during the fight I was tense beyond reason because I did not want to die and have to start over again. So I spent most of my time dodging and running away while trying to regroup and get some solid shots in. I don’t want to go into too much detail for those who have not done the fight, but there is a moment where he goes invulnerable except for a specific moment when you can attack. This phase… freaked me out more than anything I can remember in this game.

I kept trying to time my sunbreaker super attack for when he was becoming vulnerable again all the while dodging taking damage. The only negative about the encounter is that the adds definitely felt like nothing more than ways for you to regenerate your ammunition, and they were less of an issue once I realized this. At first I kept trying to run from them and focus down Oryx, but I quickly realized that if I kept doing this I would get overwhelmed. The big takeaway from the weekend is that I managed to hit 240 light, which is the first heroic level. I did a couple of the Vanguard strikes on the play list, and I am going to keep trying to do those periodically. I also started getting quests to do various “end game” content. My main goal for the week is to regenerate enough Strange Coins to be able to buy something next Friday if Xur has anything interesting. I am really happy that I had enough to buy Hawkmoon since I pretty much exclusively use Hand Cannons on my Titan. At some point I plan on working my way up on either a Warlock or a Hunter, but for the time being I am really enjoying leveling Sunbreaker. I am not sure exactly why Destiny has this renewed life for me… but for whatever reason I am grabbing on with both hands while the fun lasts.

Week In Gaming 9/27/2015

September 27, 2015 by Belghast

Week of Playstation

This week was very much a week of me waiting on something to happen on my PC while pivoted to the side and playing the PlayStation 4 instead. The strangest thing has happened and I am not sure exactly when it did. For years I was a diehard Keyboard and Mouse gamer… and if you suggested that I play a shooter with a controller I would give you a dirty look at best… and at worst give you a thirty minute rant about why that is a sloppy control mechanism. The thing is… shooters now have a significant amount of aim assist regardless of what platform you happen to be playing them on. Sure you can get closer to pixel perfect aiming with a keyboard and mouse… but I am finding for extended gaming sessions a controller just feels more comfortable. Destiny was essentially the game that forced me to learn how to play with a controller, and now… I am finding myself replaying some games that I played exclusively on the PC on my PS4. Over the week I picked up the Borderlands “Handsome Collection” because it was silly cheap on PSN, and I have to say… I am finding the game more enjoyable over there. While I won’t necessarily say I have abandoned the keyboard and mouse… I am finding myself equally comfortable with a controller and it seems so strange to be typing those words.

Destiny

Week In Gaming 9/27/2015 — Exotic Weapon FTW!

This week the game that I spent the most hours playing was without a doubt Destiny. I am not sure why but the game feels fresh and new, and all of the frustrations I had over gearing for light are just gone. Instead light has become this number based on the average attack power and or defense of your items, and seeing it climb is awesome… but at the same time not something oppressively holding me back from doing interesting things. I now think of light much more like a traditional gear score system in MMOs. There is some content gated on that number, but it doesn’t feel like something that is extremely grindy to get. I happened to luck out this week and Hawkmoon this seasons exotic hand cannon was available on Xur. I had enough coins to buy it and bam I am now rocking a really awesome weapon, which only serves to improve my experience. I’ve heard that you can send blue engrams to low level characters as a more efficient way of farming Strange Coins, and I might end up doing that as I pretty much depleted my entire stash on this one item.

Other than that I am slowly working my way through all of the story content that I have not played since launch. It feels strange to be progressing in three different storylines at essentially the same time, doing whichever happens to suit me at the moment. The big thing I am trying to work towards right now is I really need the dreadnought patrol zone opened up because I keep getting those as daily quests. I am not sure how far into the story that happens but I keep working on creeping that storyline forward in the hopes that the next one will unlock the patrol zone. Other than that I unlocked Sunbreaker and am completing most of my content as that, in the hopes of leveling it quickly. There is something satisfying Fist of Havoc, but I have to say super fire hammer brothers is also pretty awesome as well. You can whittle down objectives super quickly while throwing those hammers. I’ve taken Taken bosses down to half health during my “hammer time” but the only problem is it essentially leaves you out in the open and vulnerable. So I end up having to run for cover as soon as I’ve spent all of my energy. Needless to say I am having a lot of fun with Destiny and probably going to continue playing it over the coming weeks.

Creativerse

I’ve blogged about this game already at length this week, but I have to say I am still really liking it. I am also digging that the company is from McKinney Texas which isn’t terribly far from me. Not sure if I can rig this but it would be kinda awesome to go down and meet that team at some point. I am hoping that they end up doing Pax South this year, because the game has so much potential. I called it “Pretty Minecraft” but really that is selling the game short by a large amount. I will say that it has pretty much killed my desire to play Minecraft at all from this point out. I get what people say about the mods, but in reality I never modded Minecraft that much other than adding in quality of life things like a mini-map. Regardless of how I modified the game it just felt like I was playing the same thing over and over with varrying differences. This game however feels fresh and interesting because the world itself is something that I don’t know the formula behind. I talked about this a bit the other day, but I think part of it is the fact that I have no real resources to rely on yet. I can’t go on a wiki and find out that obsidian spawns between these two coordinates or if I need an item for a recipe I have to find it the old fashioned brute force way of exploration. If you are in the mood for a building and exploration fix I highly suggest you check it out.

Star Wars the Old Republic

Last night during and after the podcast I finished up Alderaan on my Smuggler. In the time it has taken me to get this far on my Smuggler, I found out that Tam has leveled like three characters from 1 to 50. How is he doing it? Well he is doing ONLY the class storyline, and I think maybe he has made a convert out of me. I shot through Alderaan last night only working on my class storyline and gained three levels in the process. Mostly at this point I just want to see the class storyline on several new classes before Fallen Empire comes along and changes a good deal of it. I think the rest of the day I am going to likely work on my Smuggler and see just how close to the end I can manage to get. My hope is that even after Fallen Empire they come up with a way to speed characters to the post 50 content. I need to circle back around and do the Shadows of Revan content on my Jedi Knight, but honestly I am having so much fun with my Sawbones. This is still such a great game, if you just treat it like a subscription. The free to play options are complete and total bullshit, and feel like the most punitive way to play a game I have seen period. If you can stomach the fact that you have to pay a subscription to really enjoy this game… then it seems like a really enjoyable experience still.

AggroChat #76 – The Tron 2.0 Show

May 21, 2019September 27, 2015 by AggroChat

Tonight we celebrate our Eighth Aggrochat Game Club game, Tron 2.0. What makes this week so interesting is the fact that this is a game from 2003. For a point of reference this is the year that the original Call of Duty was released, as well as the PC port of Knights of the Old Republic. This is an era when the Quake 3 engine still reigned as the king of all shooters, and people were branching out to do some interesting things with the FPS model. The results of this week are a bit mixed, and represents the first time we had a few people reach rage quit moments. Listen into the show to see how our group fared and some of the commentary we have about this interesting title.

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Thalen Reads The Dreamstone

September 30, 2015September 27, 2015 by Thalen

They will not be wise, who set foot in Ealdwood. - Arafel

This week we take a look at a fantasy story with roots in Celtic mythology. The Dreamstone, by C. J. Cherryh, centers around the last remnant of Faery upon the earth, and it's guardian, Arafel, the last of the Daoine Sidhe.

This is actually the first of Cherryh's books I've read. She's been on my list of authors to try for a while, and I do still intend to get to some of her more famous works in the future. Based on what I've read here, I expect them to be a good read.

The Dreamstone is another of those works which combines multiple previously release works into a full novel. In this case we have two parts which are connected primarily by location and the presence of Arafel. The course of the novel spans some decades and most of the mortal characters from the first section of the book are years dead when the second section begins.

In an unnamed kingdom somewhere in the British Isles (most likely somewhere in modern England near the borders of Wales) a rebellion against the rightful king has recently succeeded and the former lord Niall, who remained loyal, flees his enemies. Taking shelter in the Ealdwood, he draws the attention of Arafel, last of the Daoine Sidhe, who refuses any direct aid but guides him to a protected valley where those who are lost can find refuge.

Years pass, until events lead Niall's villainous cousin Evald to invade the Ealdwood and come into conflict with Arafel. When word of Evald's death comes to Niall, he leaves the valley to retake the lands his cousin had usurped from him. He marries Evald's widow and accepts her son as his own heir.

Decades later, Niall has died and his heir rules in Caer Wiell. The old king's heir has come of age and has launched a campaign to retake his throne. After a great battle is won, a messenger is sent to warn Caer Wiell of enemy forces come to try to take it in an attempt to hold it against the king. His path takes him into the Ealdwood, where he meets Arafel and ultimately brings her to the aid of Caer Wiell, though not without cost to himself.

The Dreamstone is a book that focuses on one small area while great conflicts occur in the background. The old king is already dead by the time the book starts, and we barely meet his heir many chapters later. The kingdom and its fate isn't what matters here; this is really the story of Arafel and her somewhat unwilling part in the human conflicts near her home. Elves in this book are very much in the classic Fair Folk vein; mischievous and given to stealing people away to Faery (though not, in Arafel's defense, from any real malevolence.)

The Dreamstone is also a quiet book, mostly concerned with character interaction and the intrinsic conflict between man and elf. There is a battle near the end of the book, but it's secondary to the conflict within the messenger who convinced Arafel to aid them, and the conflict within Arafel herself regarding mortals and her place in a world where Faery has nearly withdrawn entirely. To anyone with an interest in Celtic mythology I can recommend this as an interesting take on the concepts.