Destiny 2 – PC
The first goal of the night was to finish up my purple armor set for the Solstice of Heroes event in Destiny 2. Over the weekend I had knocked out everything but the EAZ minibosses component, and I largely stopped there because I knew given yesterdays patch the requirement was being lowered to 50. I was sitting at 56 so my hope was that it would be as simple as logging in, equipping all of the gear and meditating in front of the statue.
What I did not expect was that all of the gear would be 750, which was a nice boost in item level. I just need to get some powerful items to bump things up on the weapon front to 750 as well. The funny thing is… I will probably be farming EAZ over the next few weeks to try and get slightly better perks on each of the armor slots. As it stands the Helm is ideal for the way I play, but all of the other items could use some work. I opened the rest of the boxes I had in my inventory and picked up four additional pieces of the purple majestic armor.
Final Fantasy XIV – PC
With the first goal knocked out quickly, I moved on to the second goal of the night which was getting the last little bit of a level on the Samurai and hitting 80. I opted for the short queue of a Trials roulette and got quite possibly the easiest option: Cape Westwind. It legitimately takes longer for the new player to watch the cutscene than it does to kill the boss, so we hung out chatting while waiting on the fight to start. Upon dinging 80 I equipped whatever gear I happened to have available and managed to get my item level up to 425.
From there I picked back up with the 74 Physical DPS Role quest, thinking the easiest and fastest way to gear would be completing the quest and getting the 430 gear from the smithy. It took some time though to chew through the remaining 74, 76, 78 and 80 quests so this consumed the majority of my play time last night. However I have now unlocked a second role and have access to physical dps gear. I wound up buying the 450 crafted blade, so I am now sitting at 435 which is enough to be able to dps Eden. Now that I am getting back into the swing of tanking a roulette or two each night, I should be able to bolster that level with tomestone gear.
World of Warcraft – PC
Finally I spent the last hour or so catching up on the War Campaign quest series given that it appears to be the most coherent manner to catch up on story. I think I underestimated just how much story content had gone into the game since I left, because I keep chewing away at it and seem to be not actually making any headway. I started last night queuing for the pieced of the raid finder that involves the Jaina battle seeing as I needed that for the War Campaign. That was a fun fight overall, but I am not sure how I would feel about the middle section where as horde we are forced to fight Rastakhan? I like Rastakhan a lot.
I think for the forseeable future I will be poking my way along these three different paths of catching up on World of Warcraft in getting back into the swing of the game prior to the launch of Classic. Then working on various objectives in Destiny 2 and probably leveling a healer in Final Fantasy XIV. It has been enjoyable to play for an hour or so and then swap to something fresh and new. It has also been nice hanging out and talking to my friends in Facepull once again.
I’ve decided to try a new series of sorts called “Weekend Update” (name shamelessly stolen from SNL) since my Monday morning post tends to just be a rundown of what happened over the weekend. Right now it feels like I have a bunch of competing projects that I have theoretically been juggling reasonably well. At the very least they all appear to be making progress at the same time, which is I guess the master plan behind the juggling.
One of them has been getting a second 80 in Final Fantasy XIV, and this process has largely involved me logging in every day and running the Main Story Roulette. This means that I have seen an awful lot of the cut-scenes surrounding Praetorium and Castrum Meridianum. While it isn’t the same voice actor… every time I hear a Gaius cutscene it reminds me of Dracula from Symphony of the Night. I seem to be the only one because when I type “what is man but a miserable pile of secrets” in party chat I just get confused responses.
As of last night I am just a sliver into 79 and have been taking this opportunity to clean up a bunch of the side quests that I never got around to doing. I’ve finished cleaning up the Dwarven and related areas in upstate Kholusia. I moved over after that to the secret zone that you end up at around 79, and it has a ton of quests to knock out. In theory if I pull another Praetorium I might luck out and get close enough to 80 to be able to ding off of a Trials roulette or something similar. Then begins the process of doing a bunch of dungeon grinding to gear it!
Destiny 2 – PC
On the Destiny 2 front I have reached a point where I just can’t bring myself to push any further. During this weeks TWAB, it was announced that they were lowering the total number of EAZ Miniboss kills from 100 to 50. This means in theory if I just wait for the Tuesday patch, I can log in that night and get my purple armor set without a bunch of mindless grinding. As a result I have spent my time either working on the Hunter to get her the blue set, or working on various other things I have neglected like the loaded question quest. This is why I am rocking a double fusion rifle loadout above.
After I upgrade the armor I will need to sort out what exactly I can do as far as the masterwork quests. However I have heard that these will be something you could complete after the Solstice event is over. I don’t really want to risk it however so I am going to try and knock out what I can while it is going on.
World of Warcraft – PC
I don’t have a proper explanation for this one. I had not logged in since October of last year and then suddenly this weekend I found myself patching my addons up and logging into what had been my main when I was last actively playing. One of the things that I dislike about World of Warcraft when you are several patches behind, is that there is no real way of knowing what content you should be doing short of scouring WoWhead. The main story quest is a point of frustration for a lot of people in Final Fantasy XIV, but I love that there is zero risk of me doing things out of sequence.
I absolutely blindly accepted the quest that the game was trying to send me to… and apparently unlocked Nazjatar instead of all of the content I had seemingly missed between now and then. I guess this makes sense from a World of Warcraft perspective because it is a game that is constantly abandoning what has come before for the new and shiny future. I am going to blame this on the fact that we spent a lot of time this weekend talking about WoW Classic, and on that front we are going to be rolling Horde side on the PVE RP server Bloodsail Buccaneers. If you have interest in this nonsense let me know.
My nights are largely dictated right now by trying to finish doing the grinds associated with the Solstice of Heroes event in Destiny 2. Right now my evenings look a little something like this. I get home and I log into Final Fantasy XIV to queue for Main Story roulette on the Samurai. I either manage to get the long one that amounts for almost a full bars worth of experience, or I get the short one and am out of their quickly. Regardless I am super casually leveling the Samurai who hit 76 last night, without any real need for gearing.
After that I log into Destiny 2 and start chipping away on some objective. There is no way in hell I will be able to complete multiple sets of this armor on multiple characters. However I should be able to wrap up the rest of the requirements before August 27th when the event officially stops. I am off tomorrow and while I have no clue what we are going to do during the day, I should at least get more play time than usual. Then the weekend should also be a significant time for knocking things out as well. My hope is by the end of Sunday to have finished the conversion of the set from Blue to Purple and begin on Masterwork achievements.
The other morning I posted the entire list of things that needed to be completed to get the gear, and this morning I thought I would give an update.
Titan Helm
2/10 Gambit Matches
1500/1500 Orbs generated
30/75 Guardians defeated with Arc Weapons
Titan Gauntlets
10/10 Heroic Public Events
5/5 Challenges
43/100 EAZ Minibosses
Titan Chestpiece
300/300 Matched Orbs generated in Strike Playlist
50/50 EAZ Chests Looted
300/300 Fallen Defeated
Titan Greaves
48/50 Bounties
500/500 Void Orbs generated in Strike Playlist
31/200 Solar Melee Final Blows
Titan Mark
15/25 Patrols on Io
300/300 EAZ Elemental Orbs generated
300/300 Solar Weapon Final Blows
As you can see in the above lists there is an awful lot of stuff struck through and completed. Last night was largely about getting a two for one. Yesterday was Void singe day and I had two Strike Playlist related orb generation bits that could in theory be knocked out at the same time. Firstly I had to generate 500 void orbs and secondly I had to generate 300 orbs matching the daily singe and my subclass. Seeing as it was void day for everyone… most of the folks in the strikes were generating void orbs and after about 4 I managed to knock out both components.
Without a doubt the worst thing awaiting me is getting the last 57 mini-bosses in the European Aerial Zone. That was just a poorly designed component of this grind, because you only get credit for the bosses that you actually manage to land a hit on. Since there are multiple bosses up at the same time, you are going to inevitably miss about half of the kills pending you are not running around purposefully with a group that you also have on voice. The other challenge for me personally is I struggle hard at finding the mini bosses when they are inside the buildings, since those buildings have an awful lot of blind corners that just end up slowing you down.
The rest of the steps are going to just be me sitting there and dedicating time to doing various activities. For example as bad as I am at Crucible, it is just going to take a sheer block of time to finish getting the 45 Guardian kills to finish that achievement out. In theory I might go ahead and knock out the Gambit matches because there is a likelihood that I might get a handful of invader kills that will count towards the total doing that. Bounties will take care of themselves, and Io patrols is just a block of time spent grinding on a single planet.
Solar Melee kills sounds particularly rough, but I plan on stacking that while I am doing patrols on Io because one of the things that I learned during Destiny 1 is that if you punch someone with the hilt of your sword it counts as a sword kill. Similarly if you punch someone with your elemental sword when it is completely out of ammunition… it counts as an elemental melee kill. So I expect to be punching a lot of Vex and Taken on Io while completing patrols, which is a better option that ruining someones ignition in the forge. Apparently the orbs that you are supposed to dunk also count as solar melee.
There is a way to cheese the EAZ boss kills step, but it would require me gathering up a full team, lucking out on getting the cabal invasion event, and not killing a specific boss forcing a mini boss to keep re-spawning. Since in truth I want to gather up a bunch more packages I am planning on doing it the old fashioned painful way, since seemingly on PC side at least we are not having the mass abandonment issues that the console players are with rotating into matches that players have bailed out of after the mini-boss phase and before the final boss kill.
I still think I should be able to finish things up this weekend.
This weekend was largely one lost to Destiny 2, as I am apparently back on that nonsense again. The curious thing is that I had not really been playing for quite some time. I more or less missed the vast majority the last two seasons. So while Bungie was breaking up with Activision and kicking into seemingly overdrive in releasing content… I have been more or less slumbering obliviously to whatever was going on. This means that I am in probably my favorite spot as far as MMORPGs go… returning to a bounty of new systems to play with.
The real reason I have returned however is because of the 2019 Solstice of Heroes event. This time around the hook is the fact that if you manage to earn a purple set of gear, you will be able to turn it in for the Armor 2.0 equivalent as soon as Shadowkeep launches. I love when a game gives me the ability to work towards a future goal and also gives me something to do in the short term. The process starts with our friend Eva Levante introducing us to the new European Aerial Zone content… and quickly unlocking a full set of Green quality level 700 armor.
As players we have to complete a bunch of activities to turn this Green set into the blue 720 set that you can see my character wearing above. For the Titan the items that I had to knock out are as follows:
Complete One European Aerial Zone run
50 Precision Kills Anywhere
50 Hive Anywhere
5 Solstice Bounties
Loot 10 Chests in European Aerial Zone
Defeat 75 Enemies in European Aerial Zone
Complete 3 Adventures
Collect 100 Solar Orbs in Strikes
Defeat 10 Guardians in Crucible or Gambit
Complete 10 Public Events on Nessus
Collect 100 Void Orbs in Crucible or Gambit
Open 10 Solstice Packages
Complete 10 Strikes
Collect 500 Elemental Orbs of Any Time Anywhere
Complete 10 Crucible or Gambit Matches
I spent an excessive amount of time grinding this weekend working towards the objective of turning my green set into a blue set. By Saturday morning I had managed to convert the greens into blues and was starting on the second grind. This one is a little more heinous, and in truth there has been quite a bit of complaining among the community regarding how seemingly unrealistic it is to complete three sets of this armor. I am only focused on the Titan and I am expecting it is going to take me several weeks to actually knock out all of the objectives.
Similar to the list above, here is the specific list of activities I need to tick off in order to convert the blue set into a purple one:
Complete 10 Gambit Matches
Collect 1500 Elemental Orbs with a subclass equipped matching the daily singe
Defeat 75 Guardians in Crucible or Gambit using Arc Weapons
Complete 10 Heroic Public Events
Complete 5 Daily or Weekly Challenges
Defeat 100 Minibosses in EAZ
Defeat 300 Enemies in Strikes with a Subclass Equipped Matching the daily singe
Defeat 300 Fallen Anywhere with a subclass equipped matching the daily singe
Loot 50 EAZ Chests
Complete 50 Bounties
Collect 500 Void Orbs in Strikes
Kill Enemies anywhere with Solar Melee Attacks
Complete 25 Patrols on IO
Collect 300 Elemental Orbs of Any kind in EAZ
Defeat 300 Enemies with Solar Weapons
Another thing that I have been working on is unlocking various items in Callus’ treasure room that he crafted for us. I unlocked access to it on Saturday and I dumped a ton of my glimmer into buying the various trophies. In theory I should have waited for the glimmer discount to have increased after several weeks of doing the content… but I am always looking for something to spend down my glimmer on so I didn’t really mind it. I’ve spent a good chunk of Destiny 2 being glimmer capped, because I am seemingly bad at managing that.
I had an awful lot of luck this weekend with drops. I managed to pick up Lord of Wolves and got it by completing a bounty in the Forsaken Shore. I have no clue how you are supposed to get this thing, but I somehow feel like maybe that was not actually the intended way? I always figured you had to kill the escapees from the Prison of Elders, another thing I have been bad about actually keeping up with. Lord of Wolves was one of my favorite weapons from Destiny 1, and I am super happy to have it back in Destiny 2. This has replaced the Ikelos shotgun in my standard Gambit and Black Armory Forge loadout.
Another thing that I picked up this weekend is what I would probably consider to be my ideal load-out for the Bygones Gambit pulse rifle. The first two pips are “fine” but not perfect with Fluted Barrel and Armor Piercing Rounds. The last two however are dialed in to exactly what I would want with Rampage and Outlaw, because on a Pulse Rifle I am going to do my damnedest to make sure I am dialed in on a precision hitbox before firing… giving me super fast reload. I also really just like the look of the skin I have for the weapon.
I have no clue why Destiny 2 has latched on so hard, but I guess it makes sense given that I tend to cycle through periods where I am obsessed with it. I’ve been really happy to see some of the changes Bungie has made or at least announced since taking over the reins from Activision. I am also looking forward to the shift over to Steam away from Battle.net, largely because I think it will make it easier to connect up with people. More than anything I am looking forward to cross save which is supposedly coming in now ahead of Shadowkeep.
I am still trying to poke my head into Final Fantasy XIV on a nightly basis, but for now I am just letting the obsession play out. I have a feeling that once I knock out the purple set of armor I will dial things back significantly seeing as I doubt I will actually be able to masterwork any of the pieces. Destiny 2 is in a really solid place right now and I am happy to be returning to it.
