Good Morning Friends. I am still dragging ass due to this impossible crud that I cannot seem to kick to the curb, however in roughly an hour I have an appointment with my doctor who will hopefully help with that. I’ve fallen back on the Audiobooks and Chill bandwagon but I will talk about the books portion of that in another post this week. Suffice to say I am mostly spending my time playing Path of Exile. I am still alternating between mapping on my level 96 Ice Trap Elementalist and then diving down into the mines for some relatively safe leveling as I push towards level 100. One of the things that I did not expect enjoying so much is that I have finally properly learned Incursion/Alva and have found great joy in building temples for profit. Essentially if you can craft a temple with a Locus of Corruption on it, you can sell it for a little over a divine, which is meager profit but more than enough to keep paying for the scarabs that I am running and still banking quite a bit for whatever my next project ends up being.
At level 99, I have properly entered the realm of never running without an Omen of Amelioration in my bags. These are going for roughly 120 Chaos at the moment, and is essentially paying for lost time. I took a really dumb death yesterday when I dove into the shadows… did not realize I was out of flares… and then was mercilessly killed by the hubris of using Forbidden Taste as my automated life flask. Thanks to the handy omen though, I did not lose much progress in the grand scheme of things, but any lost progress at level 99 is noticeable. Basically I am going to be pushing hard to hit level 100 so that I can knock another meta achievement off Gear Grinding Goals, and in truth I have hit level 100 in the last several leagues so it feels like a requirement for me to consider myself “finished”. I could buy some 5 way carries or something like that, but it always feels like the wrong sort of cheating. I will happily pay for a Maven carry each league because I fucking hate the memory game and have legitimately beat her myself more than once. Paying for carries for things I can easily accomplish on my own with enough applied time is just a bridge too far.
I continue to chip away at achievements however and knocked out Sinew Swarms yesterday, which required me to do 10 Hive Fortresses or Hive Colonies. This one took so long because they are that much rarer than the other in map breach events. Wierdly since I started running the Ritual and Incursion mapping setup, I have yet to encounter a King in the Mists invitation altar. I did buy an invitation so I have at least beaten him this league, same for Oshabi which I also bought the invitation for off the market. What I really need is a Trialmaster or an Olroth so I can get my last of the bloodline ascendency fights under my belt. I need to also see if I have any of the Vox bros Heist maps so I can knock them off the list of pinnacle encounters. Simialrly I am shocked that I have yet to encounter one of the Kingsmarch fights, which would knock another pinnacle off my list. I am happy to keep my head down and grind for the time being because it pairs so lovely with an audiobook.
Over in Destiny Rising there has been one of the silliest events yet available, called Iron Medley. Essentially it is Iron Banner or as this game calls it Iron Bar, but everyone has to play the exact same character… which produces some really weird end of match shots like this. Essentaily everyone is stripped down to a baseline version of the character with the exact same choices of weapons. In truth… I think this is a better match mode than the default Iron Bar, and should maybe be made into a permanent mode. It feels like running ARAM in League, where your sand off any of the possible advantages and just yolo your way through the matches. I really like when PVP modes in games normalize the advantage so it does not feel like you are getting stomped into the ground because you did not devote time and effort to a game mode that you are not maining.
There is a new character banner starting in roughly two days, and the trailer has been released. Essentially Jaren is just McCree from Overwatch, or whatever the hell they are calling that character these days. All that is missing is Matt Mercer doing the voices. He also gives me BraveStarr vibes, which is not necessarily a bad thing… but also makes me want him to have a talking cybernetic horse companion. My only real problem with him is that I am just not sure if Hand Canon and Shotgun is going to be a fun weapon combo to use. It is really doing to depend on how good the Hand Canon exotic that is going to inevitably come with the character. If the rumors are true… and he is getting Last Word which seems to have been shown during the trailer… he might be super fun. If nothing else this might also revive Attal from being a dumpster tier character for me.
In other news I finally pulled another mythic off the free pulls on the normal banner, and it ended up being my third copy of Tan-2. At some point I should probably build this character out, but I still really prefer Umeko to him. Then again if I am going to play a precision character I am almost always going to pick Helhest for the utility that she provides. I would have greatly preferred an additional copy of Ning Fei because he is up there in the list of characters that I am going to pump currency into to build out. I maxed out Helhests weapon damage, so now it is really just getting a final copy of her bow in order to push her to the same levels as Maru. I still want to build out Gwynn a bit because she is pretty useful when it comes to running limited content even though she is squishy as fuck. Ace and I are getting together to do Grandmasters tonight so we will see what that holds. Hopefully it is a better week than last week.
I am not playing anywhere near as much Destiny Rising as I was, but I am still enjoying myself enough to pop in and do some of the daily and weekly activities. Unfortunately our guild has grown too big for our britches and are no longer able to maintain the upkeep points to keep the “bitcoin miner” active. I wish I could coax a few more people into playing , because just with minimal play we could probably keep things humming again with maybe five more players. We had another really active player that came from the random clan that I was in first, but I think they have also fallen by the wayside. We have managed to find three strongholds for the last two weeks which has been really nice though.
Anyways. Time to get ready for the doctor visit and it is trash day so I have to deal with gathering that. I hope you all are having a wonderful week back, and hope that the doctor can give me something to make me feel less like ass all the time. I need a few days of feeling great so that I can whip the house back into shape, because I have not felt like doing much of anything lately.
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Good Morning Folks. Once a week, Ace and I get together to do Grandmaster difficulty content in Destiny Rising. In general we have had much better luck when we queue together for content, because at a minimum we know that we can rely on each other. This week however is pure butts when it comes to options. For those who have not gotten to this point yet, you are limited in your character options when it comes to Grandmaster activities and everyone has to choose one of six characters that is also over 64k power rating. Really of the options there viable ones are Rossi, Ning Fei, Gwynn, and Jolder. Of those generally the strongest characters damage output wise are Ning Fei and Gwynn… but both of them are very much glass canons that have to get up close and personal with mobs in order to deal the maximum amount of damage.
We started the night with Blitz and I decided to roll with Gwynn and Ace with Ning Fei because they were our strongest options… and quite possibly it was the most frustrating experience we have had in ages. We got one of the new Blitz, and the worst one… where you have to fight the giant eyeball in the center and everything feels super tanky for some reason. After running out of resurrections and only having the boss down to 2/3rds of their health… everyone abandoned and we decided to try something we thought would be easier… and ran a strike. That turned out to also be frustrating and it took us three attempts… with the final being pure spite because we lost our third party member and duo’d down the boss. The biggest problem with the encounter is the fact that the adds are so damned deadly. We had to shift up our strategy from trying to burn down the boss to being on top of the adds as soon as they spawned. It was not the cleanest kill in the world, but we were proud of not giving up.
After that we did some way more relaxing Morgran’s Hunt runs since the event is going on right now. We got quite possibly our highest score yet with a triple Maru setup, and it was a lot of stupid fun. Essentially we got to the round where the game starts to cheat in both runs. I am not sure there is a solid way to get through round eight, because the mob health and mob damage output spikes massively… throwing a bunch of yellow bar mobs at you so that you can’t easily knock out the bonus, often leading to the map ending quickly. That is okay though because we got two four key runs, which are pretty solid. Unfortunately we both got our guaranteed exotics and they were useless ones… with Ace pulling the Old Prefect and me pulling another copy of Two Tailed Fox. Essentially if we get together and do another couple four runs we will wrap up the event with several days to spare.
I finished up my hundred maps running blue altars, and during that time I got one divine altar… unfortunately being one for the boss to drop six divines instead of one for the minions to drop divines. Other than that the only other exciting altar that I got was one for exalted orbs, where I pulled three whole orbs for the entire map. There is a reason why I find myself enjoying red altars more than blue ones, because blue is a pure gamble with most of your maps giving you nothing worth writing home about. Red altars on the other hand end up producing a bunch of Chaos Orbs, which always feels at least somewhat useful. Now I need to shift gears and run one of my atlas trees that can splash in the red altar nodes so I can start grinding out my hundred maps for that.
This has led me to go back to my Alva farming setup with Ritual as I continue my hunt for King of the Mists invitations. I am running the really expensive scarab that makes it so that the last Invasion of each map drops a fully itemized temple. In my experience you end up getting quite a few temples to drop with Locus of corruption, each of which sells for around 100 Chaos, so if you get 3 of these in 20 maps you can pay for the cost of all of the scarabs required for this run. It also is worth quite a bit of experience and should be a good way of pushing up my Ice Trapper in levels. However to make Red Altars viable I think I am going to drop my anti-bleed pantheon and swap over to the one that makes it so burning ground does not hurt me, since you encounter so many burning ground altars.
In other news, my second big splurge should be here shortly. I ordered a Bambu Labs P1S with AMS combo and in theory I should be playing with it within the next week or so. A lot of the work that I have been doing out in my garage has been preparing for the ability to pick up a 3D printer and dive into that world. I have a bunch of things that I want to make and will probably talk about them some on this blog in the coming months. I mostly went with the Bambu Labs option because it seemed the most turnkey and beginner friendly. At some point I would like to also add a Resin printer to my mix, but for the moment I am getting started with what seems to have the lower barrier of entry and FDM with PLA and ABS. ABS really appeals to me becasuse of the ability to use the same plastic cement and sprue-glue that I am used to from plastic miniature kits. I will probably print more stuff in PLA however just for the ease of setup. I stayed out of this world not due to lack of interest, but more that I was waiting for things to stabilize a bit before buying something. We will see how this goes.
In other other news… I am doing considerably better and thanks for the warm wishes from folks over the last few days.
The post Stubbornness Prevails appeared first on Tales of the Aggronaut.
Good Morning Folks. I feel pretty miserable. On Tuesday I had several doctors appointments and spent time in several waiting rooms, and am pretty sure I picked up some dire crud. I was a dumbass and did not wear a mask and am now paying the price. I started feeling awful on Thursday, it got considerably worse on Friday, and then has been backing off slowly over the weekend. I am hoping that by tomorrow I will feel functional enough to work again. It started with an outrageously sore throat, a cough, and some intestinal panic… and mostly what is left is the cough. However it has impacted my ability to sleep with me waking up every 30 minutes or so for a good old fashioned coughing fit. However I did manage to move into the new desktop PC that I talked about last week, and have moved my old one downstairs to eventually be used for some living room big screen gaming. Very much a big fan of the Costco pre-built that I talked about, and it was a massive upgrade over my previous 11th gen intel based system with a 3080 in it.
I honestly spent most of the weekend too miserable to care about much of anything, staring blankly at the wall. When I did feel like gaming I largely played Path of Exile. I am alternating between delving on my Righteous Fire Chieftain, and mapping on my Ice Trap of Hollowness Elementalist, and both are extremely solid. I am getting close to level 99 on the Chieftain and when I hit that, I am probably going to spend a bit more time taking on bloodline and pinnacle bosses to knock out some more credit towards the various challenges. I need to start doing a lot more Tier 16.5 maps because I need to complete a bajillion of them in order to knock out one of the challenges. Right now I am doing Blue altars juiced on my Ice Trapper, and at some point I will swap things up to Red altars and then later Maven Witnesses because there are achievements for doing all of those. I really hate the act of witnessing the Maven because I hate running random map layouts. I wish there was a keystone that gave you random bosses at the end of maps so that you could run a single layout and always be witnessing a new boss.
At this pint I have completed 24 of 40 Achievements and knocked out a few thanks to Betrayal like the one that requires you to use a bunch of rare crafting materials. I eventually got a syndicate crafting bench with a Divine Orb on it, which counts for the achievement requirements. There is another one for using rare currency, but I am not sure any of that stuff actually shows up on the Syndicate benches. At some point I should try and craft a dual influence life gain on block shield to replace my current one, and that will use an awakener orb which is one of the requirements. I am really close to Cross Contamination and just need to figure out which combination of scarabs I need to run to make some of those conditions happen. It took me four maps before I was able to get a Delirious Beyond boss which surprised me a bit. Sinew Swarms is actually closer in progress than the 0 of 3 would indicate but that one will complete in time with me just running enough maps.
Over in Destiny Rising, we had one of our best weekends ever… but I failed to take any screenshots. Essentially we managed to find Three Strongholds as a clan, and then did all of them on Saturday afternoon before I started feeling considerably worse as the day went on. We did not record a podcast this weekend, because I sort of cratered as we got towards evening. That has happened most nights, where I do better in the morning and then feel progressively worse as the day goes on. Morgran’s Prey is also going on again so we knocked a few of those rounds out as a group, and then I have run it a few more times solo. Now that I have every exotic weapon, the enticement of getting a new exotic is not nearly as strong as it once was. However it is still a good source of general resources and materials, and the combat itself is pretty fun.
I finished out the battle pass and got my 4th copy of the exotic grenade launcher, allowing me to max that weapon out. There are still a few minor points that I can upgrade it, but it did bump my Maru over 70k making her my highest character currently. As soon as I settle up from Calamity ops I should be able to max out her relic abilities and bump her score up again. After that I am either going to work on bumping up Ning Fei or Gwynn and I used some of the excess fruit that I had laying around to get artifact gilding requirement done for Tan-2. I’ve upgraded a bunch of my characters somewhat even levels of progress, whereas my friend Ace has mostly focused on one or two. Their method is probably better, but I personally like having a wide stable of characters to play.
I ran two of the three weekly legendary missions this morning, because I needed the components to bump up Maru’s weapon and completed my first three chest run with Gwynn that I have ever done. I need to do another one of these runs as Wolf because the last step that he has between getting another gold medallion is surviving a challenge mode without dying. The push to get more gold characters stopped being anywhere near as interesting when I was not longer gated from upgrades because I was too low level. Now that I am over Ascension 55 I think I can pretty much do anything in the game. I need to spend some time in the coming days trying to get through some more of the challenge content. I am not sure what day of the week Ace and I will get together and do the Grandmaster stuff, but I am sure it will be one of these first few days of the week before Thanksgiving.
Playing Path of Exile on the Livingroom TV was a bit of a wild experience. One of the things that I want to sort out over the holiday weekend is trying to figure out this doodad that I bought which serves as a USB to Bluetooth adapter and should allow me to remote control the device with a normal keyboard and mouse. A lot of the games that I plan on playing in the livingroom will be controller games, but I do still want the ability to play MMORPGs and ARPGs if I so choose it.
The post Maru Takes the Lead appeared first on Tales of the Aggronaut.
Good Morning Folks. I am getting a bit of a late start today because I am fighting some sort of unnamed crud. On Tuesday I had a bunch of doctors appointments, and I am pretty sure I picked up something in the waiting room. I had been hacking and coughing for a few days and this morning I woke up with a ridiculously sore throat and almost hay fever like symptoms. I am taking the day off because I do not feel like working, and going to be trying to push fluids and rest as much as I can. I did not do the weekly Thursday night GW2 thing last week, but did last night and it was quite a bit of fun… even though I was running pretty low on energy. We happened into the meta event for Starlight Weald and that was quite a bit of fun. So far I have liked both of the new meta battles, though I have only caught the first zones a few times now. I’ve yet to properly unlock the second zone, but I did the teleport to friend thing so I could join in the reindeer games.
It has been a bit since I talked about Destiny Rising, but I am still playing at least some of it every day. I managed to pull the final exotic that I was missing the other day when I crafted an engram. Most of these I have not upgraded or anything, but it did feel good to at least check off this box in the grind. I doubt I will ever actually use this Hand Cannon because I greatly prefer the one that works somewhat like a pulse rifle. To be truthful it is going to take a new champion that really makes Hand Cannons fun, before I play any character regularly that uses one. I mean I won’t discount it because I did not like the single shot grenade launcher until Maru dropped, and now I am loving it.
That said, Maru really does not feel good until you get the exotic grenade launcher. I pulled her on the second acount and have been using the mythic grenade launcher with her, and it feels really bad. A lot of her power comes from the exotic’s ability to explode multiple times in a row. Without that, she just does not really have the clear speed. However I am still happy to have pulled her at all on my entirely free to play account, because I never managed to pull Helhest. Maru if nothing else plays a much more important role in the game than Helhest does, because she fills a niches that only one other champion Ikora can really fill. There are at least several other Precision champions at this point, and I have three of them, so if I had to spend my luck on anything I would rather have the void grenade launcher champ.
Ace and I got together last night and did Calamity Ops now that we are finally in a bracket again that allows us to group up together. In doing so I managed to get enough materials to be able to finally push Maru to Gold on my main account. I am still missing one of her weapon mastery points, but after that I will likely start working on pushing Gwynn up. We have three strongholds unlocked this week and need to figure out a time when we can get everyone together to take them down. We did not clear any stongholds last week, and I would really like to get the points this week. We cleared our Grandmaster content earlier in the week, so really the last remaining thing that I really want done this week is the strongholds. I should probably also try and get one more legendary content run so I can get my maximum points.
Over in Path of Exile, I am mostly still chipping away at challenges. I’ve done almost all of the really easy ones, and now everything else that I am doing takes some effort. I’ve unlocked 3 of the bloodline bosses for example, because I finally found an Aul the other night down in Delve. I should wrap up the Bijou Beetles within my next few map runs, because I am running with 5 Scarabs pretty much every time I run a map. Cross Contamination is going to require specific focus and figuring out how to make sure I force a few different mechanics on the map at the same time. Remarkable Realms I should at some point get Doryani’s Machinarium to drop in Delve, because it is currently back to selling for around 5 Divines each due to it being back on the list of challenges. Cunning Crafts requires me to use a Divine Orb, but I keep hoping I will get a Betrayal Stronghold with a crafting bench that has Divines on it, which should count. Atlas Awe requires The Feared…. which I might just pay for a carry because I am not in the mood to farm up all of the content required to unlock that.
I’ve been running a lot of Alva, just because it is great experience and also if you run it with the scarab that generates a random temple, you end up getting a locus of corruption shockingly often. Those sell for at least 100 Chaos each, and if you get a Locus plus the other key rooms they go for significantly more. Essentially I tend to make enough currency to keep funding my scarabs, so that I can mostly just use it as an experience farm. I really should swap one of my scarabs for a stack of Niko scarabs just so I can force getting sulphite at the same time. Every so often I get a big ticket item like a Valdo’s box which also makes the entire thing profitable. At the moment I am running it with Toxic Sewers and at some point I will flip and probably level my Ice Trapper in Tropical Island because it prefers a more open layout so that I can seed the traps before mobs get to me.
Lastly I jumped on a deal for a new computer, so this weekend I will be migrating over to that. Essentially I had been watching a few different pre-builts, one of which at CostCo and with Black Friday specials it dropped in price by $400 finally making me take the plunge. My current machine has been functional with an 11th Gen i7 and a 3080, but it is also around five years old at this point. I had been looking for something reasonable with a 5080 in it, and this MSI pre-built has an Ryzen 9, 32 GB ram, 2 TB M.2, and a RTX 5080 for $2200 currently through the week after Thanksgiving. The CostCo options were already a bit cheaper than some of other other pre-builts I had been looking for, and I priced things out and could not really build something with a 5080 for cheaper. The price drop just finally made me do it…. so now I will be spending my weekend swapping things around and getting it set up. I think I might end up using my current system as a living room PC.
Anyways. Apologies for not blogging yesterday but I was coming down with the crud that I am dealing with today, and just was not feeling up to it. Hopefully y’all have a wonderful weekend and if you are traveling for Thanksgiving, I hope it goes smoothly for you.
The post New Metas, New Weapons, and New PCs appeared first on Tales of the Aggronaut.
