Good Morning Folks. Yesterday was Labor Day here in the United States and since both myself and my friend Ace were off we hung out doing some multiplayer of a new rogue-like game. They had discovered this one and were having quite a bit of fun with it, and I opted to pick it up so we could test the multiplayer out. Essentially you are a diver and you are exploring underwater ruins filled with baddies. It is essentially a first person shooter with the ability to collect upgrades while in the ruins to tweak your weapon load-out. By default you start out with an auto cannon with two fire modes, one of which causes your weapon to overheat for short periods of time. You also have an ability slot which starts out by default with a bundle of explosives but can be upgraded over time to be other things. So far we have only unlocked the Turret as an option, but it seems like there are a few more that we have not unlocked yet.
Each level has a sequence of different monsters to fight, before moving through a gate to the next area which locks the door and spawns another set of baddies. As you delve further into the ruins you encounter different biomes. The first are essentially what looks to be an old temple filled with vaguely nautical themed robots. There are these dragonfly camera looking things that dive bomb you when they get low on health, and a fast moving robot that we lovingly refer to as the roomba that shoots towards you dealing damage if it hits you. There are more ape like creatures that jump on top of you and another that creates shock waves that you have to jump over. Essentially there are a bunch of different types of mobs that you have to deal with individually and it can get really hectic when it is all thrown at you at once. Occasionally there are group objectives like “stand on the plate” to fill a bar… which is massively challenging because it often puts you out in the open and you both have to be standing on it at the same time to get any progress.
Every few stages you encounter a mini-boss that has its own arena. This is the second boss that electrifies areas of the floor and also likes to hop directly on top of you. We faced him a few times but only beat him in a run where we both managed to get to the boss room with multiple stimpacks and also a bunch of complimentary power ups. The first boss got to the point where we could down it pretty easily, with the only real frustration being that we had to hide from a beam that shot out from the boss towards both of us at the same time. The only time things got really tricky is when we inadvertently ended up on the same side of the arena because so long as we could split the incoming mobs up between us it was pretty easy to deal with things. You have a double jump attack and a dash, which can be used to air dash… both of which make traversing the arenas interesting and are a godsend for avoiding attacks.
Killing a boss drops these things called Soul Fragments, which can then be spent on upgrades on a talent tree. The first points that I spent were on the ability to have more than one stimpack. After that I started pouring points into my basic weapon attack, because that seems to be the thing that I am using the most. When I got to the second tier of points they began costing two fragments per point. In theory you are building out your character and I do wonder how many points total you get to spend, or if this is just something that you can farm indefinitely. Like could you do runs of the first boss over and over and eventually chip away at improving your character? I essentially only played through the tutorial and then immediately started group play, so I will need to play some more of this solo to test out that theory.
At various places inside the ruins are static spawns for upgrades. For example the Engine Rifle is the default load out that you begin the game with but after beating the first boss you can find a shotgun. After being the second boss we found the turret to replace the grenades. Inside the ruins are various chests, both locked and unlocked, and I found a few weapon component upgrades in these. One of these for example changes my alt fire from a full auto minigun, to a single shot that knocks enemies back away from me… but deals a lot of damage with that single hit. I started using that as my secondary fire because it was super effective at dealing with the roombas, and was great for debuffing targets when you get certain upgrades.
One of the things that I really dig is that while there is a listing of all of the achievements that you have unlocked… there is also a physical room where you collect them all. It is like this museum of artifacts that you are bringing up from the depths and each one of them represents some objective that you completed. I figure this is going to look really cool once I have finished more than a handful of these. There were also bonus objectives that we found while completing some of the areas, like not getting hit for a certain number of arenas unlocked a bonus special chest. There are also keys that you can find that can unlock random chests and doors that lead to vendor rooms. Gold is a thing that you collect during your run and when you find a vendor you can buy additional upgrades.
We essentially made it to the second biome… but the bottom fell out at that point. We fought these giant frog like creatures and all of them were super annoying. There were frogs that were floating on a cloud of frog eggs… that flew around the arena healing things. There were grenadiers that would flood the area with bombs that you had to avoid, and others that fired off blow darts in a fan pattern that you essentially had to time a jump over. Given time we will probably get as used to these mechanics as we did the first biome, but it was around this point that Gracie demanded that I hold her… so we called the adventure. I had a heck of a lot of fun and honestly I want to see if I can wrangle two more players and see how the group mechanics feel with a full team. I am hoping that the stand on the plate mechanics are way less onerous when there are more than two players. Also resurrecting players would be easier if the mobs did not immediately swarm the one who was still alive.
The game is $25 on Steam and is a very competent shooter in its own right. If you are looking for something fun to play with friends, I highly suggest giving it a shot. The vibes are immaculate.
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Morning Folks! The truth of Diablo IV is that it is not necessarily the most compelling game on the planet, but it absolutely nails one aspect. It is easy, seamless, and non-punitive to group up and do content with your friends. I think above all else that is the main reason why this is going to remain in the rotation of games for me, because it gives a good meet up destination for me and Ace to hang out and slaughter demons together. I love Path of Exile, but it feels bad to group with other players. Everything about the calculus of grouping makes it feel overly punishing, whereas Diablo IV has nothing but benefits when it comes to hanging out with friends. Ace had a bad day, and I also have not had the most wonderful week so far… so as a result we decided to hunker down and burn through a bunch of bosses last night.
That really is the biggest benefit of Diablo IV, that grouping especially when it comes to bossing is a force multiplier… not necessarily in the time to kill but definitely in the access to loot. I took a screenshot of my materials tab before the night and at the end of the night, and we burned through so many bosses it was silly. We gave up on Varshan though, because after four trips to vendor/salvage it just felt silly to keep going given how largely unrewarding that boss feels. Essentially we did the rotation of Beast in the Ice, Varshan, Grigoire, and Zir first so that we would then have more summons for the two best bosses Andariel and Duriel.
Going into the night I really only wanted two things. I needed a good Ancestral copy of Ring of Mendeln, and a good Ancestral copy of Blood Moon Breeches. Thankfully I walked away with multiple copies of both so that I could spend some painstaking time evaluating all of them to determine which one I would end up using. Additionally I think I picked up a few good copies of every Necromancer specific unique just in case I needed to swap builds at some point. I might try and kit out a full second set of gear and try Blood Wave, since it is so relatively easy to swap between builds now thanks to the armory. Essentially if you need uniques… you need to be running the summoned bosses because that seems to be the only reliable way to get them. Ace got my luck and walked away with two Mythics, and unfortunately I walked away with none… but last league I think I got 5 to their 2 so we will call it even.
I wish I had a good count of just how many boss summons we did last night, but I did not keep track. I know I carried Ace through a 50 Pit before the evening so we could attempt to farm on Torment 3… which was doable but just went a bit too slow and we bumped it down to T2. At the end of the evening I drug them through a Pit 65 so that they could begin to play with Torment 4. Past that we did run a 10 Wave Infernal Hordes on Torment 3, just so we could stockpile some obducite to masterwork the ancestral uniques we got. It was a pretty great night and essentially wall to wall boss and monster killing. No better way to soothe the soul.
I’ve knocked out three objectives on the final tier of the Seasons Journey, but I swear that this season seems to be much harder than the previous one. I seem to be able to run open world Torment 4 content without much issue, but Nightmare Dungeons seem a bit rippy at times. I am either immortal… or getting one-shot with little room between. There is an objective where you have to kill 50 Elites in Nightmare Dungeons without taking any deaths. Similarly there is a one that requires opening 25 of the roots from the events… in 15 minutes that is going to be hard as hell to get done. Everyone is out there spamming those things and you don’t get credit when someone else opens one. It is going to be rough getting through this one, and it might be something that I do once the season has died down a bit.
I am pretty sure Ace walked away with every unique but one, which is pretty decent considering I think that specific build requires a bunch of uniques. They did get what felt like 20 different copies of the ring that they needed, at least one of which was double ancestral. I got a wild quad ancestral necklace, which sadly I have no use for… but still cool to see. This is honestly what I wish Path of Exile 1 or 2 or even Last Epoch could be. All three of those have various punitive reasons why grouping up is occasionally butts. Diablo III and IV though… its all good and honestly better the more people you can pack into an event. The only negative would be the sheer amount of time and running back to a vendor that would be required to do four different players worth of summon materials. It would literally take an entire afternoon to cycle through a similar payload of four players worth of mats. It essentially took all night… around three hours maybe, to do all of our summons for six bosses.
I still feel like I am probably starting to wind down a bit. I want to start ratholing decent ancestral gear so that I can build an entire second set of gear and try blood wave. As much as I do not love the concept of a minion-less Necromancer, I still feel like I owe it to myself to try this season’s god build. Pure minions should get better at some point soon hopefully, because right now the Ring of Mendeln is not interacting correctly with several other legendary items, keeping the stack of multipliers from happening on minion damage. I will say it is kind of butts right now if you happen to die in any content, because there is no easy way to get back your minions unless you left a stack of corpses laying around. This is also a problem I have had in Last Epoch, except there you have to summon them all painstakingly one at a time. Path of Exile II really has the right idea by making your minions summon automatically. At a minimum in both Last Epoch and Diablo IV there should be a channeled button that will summon up all of your minions at once so that it isn’t something you can realistically use in combat, but it does allow you to get back to fighting shape easily.
I hope you are also finding some comfortable distraction from the bullshit that is happening in the real world. I am not blind to it, I just figure it is better for my mental health not to engage right now. Enough information is filtering through to know that shit is really bad. Please do not take my lack of engagement with it as a sign of not caring. I care about you and your safety, and if you need me I am only a message away on the plethora of platforms that I have an account on. I am still checking everything sporadically, but I am also denying them my undivided attention.
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