christmas – AggroChat

Good Morning Folks. Happy Day After Christmas or as my friend Ace refers to it… Super Xmas, aka the day that you get to chill out after the hustle and bustle of the holiday. I am working today because I did not take my two weeks off like I normally do. That was a thing I mostly did to spend time with my spouse, but now that she has passed… there just didn’t really seem like much of a reason to do it. That and a lot of the folks who report to me have younger kids and I wanted to make sure they could take time off. Other than a barrage of texts and calls I mostly spent the day with my folks. I snapped a photo of my high school car that is sitting there dying a slow death to rust. I kind of wish they had sold it or given it away rather than just letting it sit here and rot. The holiday was weird, and I did not break down like I thought I might. I think more than anything I just feel hollow and numb right now. In general that is my default mode of operation, because life just doesn’t feel like it really has much meaning without my wife. I am trying to find meaning in hobbies… but I will be honest it is hard to find much zest in anything I do. I am largely going through the motions.

One of the dumb things that I gifted my mom was this Gingerbread Star Destroyer that I printed out. Star Wars was always a massive thing in my life, and I will be honest… it was more something pushed by my folks after a point than by me. I think my mom honestly got into the whole search for figures as much as I did, and has always been a big fan of the movies. This print was too cute not to make one, and I even ordered some tan filament just to print it out. I was there most of the day yesterday and while I intended to arrive around 10ish… I made far better time than expected and got there around 9:30. The dynamic that feels the weirdest is when it comes to my inlaws. Like I called my father-in-law that evening and the way he talked it was like he was expecting me to come down for the day or something. I know that they need me around because it is a connection that they have to my wife… but also I have my own family. I do need to take a weekend and go down and spend it with them, but that whole relationship was always awkward. Her mom on the other hand, was super happy to get a call from me and is always chill about our interactions.

I guess while we are talking about 3d printed stuff, this is my next project. Essentially I have bunch of Lego Mini-Figures and I never really had a great way of displaying them. For awhile I was hooked on the blind bags and this is a really cool grand stand that I am printing out a part at a time that will in theory hold them. I am not sure if I will need more than one of these but for the time being this should be a good start. It is apparently scaled to fit a kallax shelving unit. I have this plan in the livingroom to erect a few lighted storage cabinets and in theory the minifigs will go in there. I need to get rid of a few things before I do this however. More pressing project is to clear off the table that I plan on setting up the paint shelves and get those moved into the house. I also need to order the paint sets, but have been putting that off because it will be a big chunk of cash outlay. I am getting to the point though where be it miniatures or things that I am painting that I have printed out… I need some way of painting things soonish.

Over in Path of Exile II, I have been poking around with a few different alt builds. The first being patterened off of the build that is the most meta thing right now, which is poison burst arrows pathfinder. This is essentially the thing that Fubgun is using to farm content, and while powerful…. it isn’t really my jam. I am not sure what it is about it but the playstyle just doesn’t feel good. I’ve never really been that big of a fan of poison builds, and this one essentially uses a one two playstyle of laying down toxic growth pods and then using poison burst arrows to trigger them. Mechanically it just feels a bit more fiddly than I want it to feel. Lightning Arrow as an abiltiy feels way better, but sadly it ate a bunch of nerfs. My favorite bow attacks are the ones that abuse the various ice explosion mechanics, but I think they are also nerfed. Mostly I made it to Act III, and could continue to push forward… but was just not feeling it.

Instead I rolled a new character last night and plan on going explosive grenade witchhunter for it. I am not sure what it is about the playstyle but this just feels better. I guess I like things exploding more than them withering and dying to poison damage. I’ve said it before, but given my druthers if I had to choose an element, I am almost always going to choose fire damage. I like watching things explode, and once you reduce the delay on explosive grenades it feels really good. I have no clue how much I will play it, because in truth I am still having fun with the druid. I just need a break from it occasionally. I should probably be popping back into Path of Exile 1 though and chipping away at challenges, either that or diving back into Guild Wars 1 or Warframe and progressing those. Path of Exile games in general though are just really good for audiobook time, and that is mostly what I did last night.

As far as my Druid goes, I have taken down Kulemak and Xesht and am working on farming up the splinters for King in the Mists and Olroth so I can progress those league mechanics. I am mostly just farming a bunch of t15s and trying to earn some currency. The next big upgrade I want to do to the build is to get a Defiance of Destiny, which will require me to swap around some of my resistances. I should be able to do this by just swapping my belt, but the extra survival of Defiance should make things more comfortable. Mostly I do plenty of damage right now, and any points that I spend will be going into survival. There are some points that increase my regen, so I am probably going to go down that path because again recovery makes things more comfortable.

The other big thing that I need to do game wise over the next few days is grind out a bunch of the sparrow racing event. Essentially I am down to just the brute force things, where I need to throw a stupid amount of snowballs, and complete some more races. I want the dumb snowmobile speeder skin. I know there is another phase of the event that is going to be happening around New Years, so we will see what that requires as well. The Dawning has been pretty great though, and all of the snowball fights and such are pretty fun. They revealed the next banner and it is effectively a mythic redo of Kabr, and I have to admit I am not terribly interested in him. They changed up his weapons from Pulse Rifle and Heavy Machinegun, to Scout Rifle and Linear Fusion Rifle… and I already have characters that fill that role that I like. Helhest is my precision character of choice, and when it comes to Scout Rifles I am likely going to play Umeko. So I might take a hard pass on this banner and just bank up pulls for whatever comes next. Anyways! I hope you have a great rest of Christmas week and I will see you next week as we slide into the end of the year. The post Numb Christmas appeared first on Tales of the Aggronaut.

Merry Sithmas

It has been so surreal since the launch of the Force Awakens toy line. Everywhere I go the world seems to be teeming with Star Wars enthusiasm and with that… comes a bunch of priced to own kitch. While we have yet to reach anything close to the hype bubble we experienced before the release of Phantom Menace, it is still extremely noticeable. A few weeks ago I wrote about re-watching the prequels and how I had wondered if maybe I was just too harsh on them at the time. After re-watching I decided that no… they really were horrible films. The problem is that for years I let them have control over my enjoyment of the Star Wars universe as a whole, and that frustrates me. If you were to completely ignore their existence, then honestly the rest of the Universe is still pretty great. Sure there was some strange stuff on the fridges of the Expanded Universe, but I cannot discount just how phenomenal the Old Republic Era has been. I remember picking up one of the first Tales of the Jedi comics and being completely blown away at this concept of a universe set essentially 4000 years before the time of Skywalker. Then as that universe blossomed over the course of sever comic series, and then came to life in the form of the Knights of the Old Republic game, I was absolutely hooked. Now that I am back roaming around SWTOR, I am realizing I care about this universe far more than I ever realized.

When the game mentions Freedon Nadd or Exar Kun… I remember who they are and what they did in this worlds history. I remember awesome characters like Nomi Sunrider from the comics, or Jolee Bindo from KOTOR. When I see a reference to Casus Fett or Mandalore the Ultimate in game… I know who those characters are and can remember reading about them in the comics. The thing is… it is not just the Old Republic era that is amazing. Essentially each time another creative force has been given free reign in the fertile Star Wars universe… really awesome things have happened. For example while the official Prequels are pretty horrible, the Clone Wars cartoon series is amazing. No one can deny just how awesome Ahsoka Tano as is a character, and just how much more interesting the interaction is between her and Anakin… than pretty much ANYTHING in the Prequels. Now if we scan forward we have Star Wars Rebels… also being allowed free reign in the universe, this time within the constraints of the more well known modern era. Similar to Shadows of the Empire it is weaving its way in and out of events we already know, and doing a great job of making us care about this new cast of characters.

Excitement Grows

Which leads me to realize… the times I have really loved Star Wars lately is when someone has been able to wriggle out front under the grasp of George Lucas and run freely creating their own plot lines and characters. Essentially this is exactly what is happening with Force Awakens… it is all the goodness of the Star Wars universe with none of the harmful effects that Lucas has forced upon it in recent years. In fact Lucas has been more than a little bit salty when talking about Episode VII and the fact that for the most part Disney ignored his plans to create a movie focused around teenagers. What is happening is that Disney has become the most powerful marketing juggernaut on the planet, and at the core of their methodology is protecting the bottom line, and with it the long term profitability of the franchises they own. I am sure there is some computer program somewhere that knows precisely what fans will like, and just how far they are willing to allow the themes to be stretched. While at some point down the line this might be a bad thing for innovation… I sincerely doubt they will allow anything even vaguely close to midichlorians to ever happen again.

The only frustration I have with the Disney approach however is that so much of the Universe became ruled “non-canon”. There were characters like Mara Jade and Grand Admiral Thrawn that were absolutely amazing… in fact I have action figures for both of them hanging on my wall as well as Clone Emperor Palpatine, Dark Jedi Luke, and Jedi Leia. Those stories meant a lot to me, and while there were parts of the Expanded Universe that were completely unfollowable… most of it made a certain logical sense at least at one time. The problem being like most fan centered fiction, it iterated on itself causing the characters to become more distorted and unbelievably heroic as time went on. It is my hope that they will figure out how to work some of the best characters into the new tales. There has been rumors that Mara Jade will be introduced as an Inquisitor instead of the Emperors Hand for example, which is fine with me… so long as she is introduced at all. Basically I find myself in a strange place, of having hope for Star Wars… when for so many years I lacked it almost entirely. I imagine as we get closer to the December release of the movie, the cross promotions and Star Wars branded soup cans will start to get annoying. However in the meantime… I am reveling in Sithmas.

The Professional

As of last night I have finished Balmorra and Nar Shadda on the Bounty Hunter and just went through the “intermission” that generally occurs there. I didn’t really expect to be all that into this storyline, because essentially it was one of the ones that I never intended to actually complete. While I enjoyed the Trooper storyline, the class itself was not that compelling to me. Largely I think this was the reason why I ultimately fell out of love with SWTOR after pushing three characters to the then level cap of 50. Bounty Hunter however feels completely different, and much more action packed. There are little things like rocket punch and the jet pack charge that make it feel more brutal… even if the attacks are essentially the same as my trooper vanguard. The funny thing about the storyline is just how much of myself I can pour into it. I am playing a very grey bounty hunter, who does not kill anyone for free. Also as the story goes on I am becoming a bit of a softy, and I am wondering exactly when that will bite me in the ass. Essentially it does not seem like a very “sith side” storyline so far other than the fact that essentially I am doing everything for the sake of payback… and for a girl.

I imagine over the next few days I will rip through the content quickly and before the end of the weekend start work on the last of two classes. Not sure what I will be doing next, if it will be the Inquisitor and its constant shock treatment… or if I will go for the Imperial Agent. As it stands now… I am starting to lean towards Agent. Whatever the case playing all of these stories is making me fall in love with the Bioware writing all over again. It is also making me look forward to Fallen Empire and its more story driven focus. When you ONLY play the class quests, SWTOR becomes a much better game because it has a nice clean story arc that does not get muddied by repeating the same planetary quests over and over again. At some point I will go back and play some of the quests I missed Sith side, but for the time being I want to push through the classes because each one feels like it adds another piece of a puzzle to the central story arc of this game world. This is also making me want to go back and get KOTOR 2 working, and actually attempt to beat it this time. It feels like there is a chunk of storyline that I am missing there, and with it several characters that I really only know by name. Essentially I am saying by all of this… that once again I am proud to be a Star Wars junkie.