event

Festival of the Lost and Impending POE Reveals

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Good Morning Folks. I don’t have any fresh screenshots because I forgot to fire up ShareX yesterday after a system reboot, and as a result none of the times when I attempted to hit Print Screen did it actually do anything. We are currently having a maintenance downtime for Destiny Rising and the patch is buffing Estela, which seems wild to me given how powerful she already is. It is also ending the current wheel of fortune event, and bringing back the Morgran’s Hunt event, which should in theory give us another free exotic. Ace and I hung out a little bit but I was feeling out of it so we didn’t do anything particularly challenging. We ran with their spouse a few times, but unfortunately realized that you can only get credit for running with a new light… once per person. Still though it is always good to run stuff with people and it always counts towards the pack challenges for running together. We still sadly have yet to find a stronghold, so I am starting to give up on those.
Apparently Destiny Rising is getting a version of Festival of the Lost, but sadly it is a really stripped down version from what I can see. There is no trick or treating in haven, like there is trick or treat in the Destiny 2 Tower. There is going to be a seven day limited sign in event, and something that starts on the 30th where you collect a resource called amber to turn in for goodies on a storefront. It seems like the paper masks from Destiny 2 are making a comeback in some form, and at a minimum there will be a hive pumpkin mask. I am all on board more events happening, and I remember remarking the other night that I wished Festival of the Lost was a thing in Destiny Rising. It was always my favorite event in Destiny 2.
What I am really pumped for however is the Path of Exile 3.27 reveal stream which is happening at 12 pm PDT today on Twitch. If you watch for 45 minutes you will get this hiveborn themed spider pet. Throughout the week they have been dropping some significant quality of life buffs. Not only does it appear as though the asynchronous trade from Path of Exile 2 is arriving in Path of Exile 1, but we are also getting free identification. Previously they had patched this in later in 3.27 but it still took Scrolls from your bank. This new version is going to cost nothing, which is great. There are a bunch of little things to like the fact that Rog in our hideouts will allow us access to the disenchanting interface which was 90% of the reason why I ever went to Kingsmarch last league. Another huge one from yesterday is that you can now itemize Beasts without having to buy the Bestiary Orbs. This is pretty huge because I usually have a tree running Einhar just to try and farm up Black Morrigans to six link gear.
The thing that came out over night is that the Assassin’s tree was reworked, and features the ruthless style node for poisoning which was actually way more effective than the normal mode. SirGog released a video going into the changes more in depth, and I highly suggest checking that out if you are interested. I do wonder if we will get any weird builds like poison tornado shot from this ascendancy rework. It is on my least favorite side of the tree, so it is unlikely that I am rolling anything with Assassin. However I am hoping we see some cool builds with it because in the current trade league, only 0.5% of players on the ladder rolled something on the Assassin ascendancy, and it has been that way for several leagues. So something needed to change, and I am hoping this breathes new life into the class for buildcrafters.
The thing that does concern me however is that we have gotten a bunch of really great quality of life improvements, and part of me thinks that this is just to brace us for the massive nerfs that are incoming. So long as Righteous Fire and Chieftain are viable, I am probably going to roll that again because I love the play style. I had a lot of fun with my Storm Brand of Indecision Golemancer, but that build was entirely being propped up by the fact that I could have a Doryani mercenary following me around and debuffing targets by -200% lighting resistance. I would love to see some other brand build thrive with whatever changes are coming. Additionally I am really interested to see what the spectre rework is going to look like, and how it impacts Summon Raging Spirits. There has been some talk of making thorns actually a viable build in Path of Exile 1, so it will be interesting to see if that happens. Whatever the changes are coming… I am here for it.
I had a really great Mercenaries league to be honest. I got a bunch of good drops, ran a ton of maps, and knocked out enough achievements to get a fancy totem pole and a set of cosmetic gear. That is really all I can hope for. I created to characters that were extremely powerful and fun to play. When this league starts next Friday, I am looking forward to doing it all over again. Expect this blog to swap from mainly being about Destiny Rising to mainly being about Path of Exile again for awhile. I still plan on doing dailies in Destiny Rising, and meeting up with Ace at least once a week to knock out some of the harder content that is fun to group together doing. I am trying to coax them back into Path of Exile, but I am not sure that will actually take. Are you going to be playing Path of Exile 3.27? What are you looking forward to from the things that we have seen so far? Drop me a line below. The post Festival of the Lost and Impending POE Reveals appeared first on Tales of the Aggronaut.

Over One Hundred Blogs

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<img data-attachment-id="24433" data-permalink="https://aggronaut.com/blaugust-media-kit/1080pblaugust-allyears/#main" data-orig-file="https://i0.wp.com/aggronaut.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/1080pBlaugust-AllYears.jpg?fit=1920%2C1080&ssl=1" data-orig-size="1920,1080" data-comments-opened="1" data-image-meta="{"aperture":"0","credit":"","camera":"","caption":"","created_timestamp":"0","copyright":"","focal_length":"0","iso":"0","shutter_speed":"0","title":"","orientation":"0"}" data-image-title="1080pBlaugust-AllYears" data-image-description="" data-image-caption="" data-medium-file="https://i0.wp.com/aggronaut.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/1080pBlaugust-AllYears.jpg?fit=1280%2C720&ssl=1" data-large-file="https://i0.wp.com/aggronaut.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/1080pBlaugust-AllYears.jpg?fit=880%2C495&ssl=1" decoding="async" width="880" height="495" src="https://i0.wp.com/aggronaut.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/1080pBlaugust-AllYears.jpg?resize=880%2C495&ssl=1" alt="Ten years of nonsense Blaugust image showing the logos from various years... Blaugust 2015 Blaugust 2016 Blaugust 2018 Blaugust 2019 Blapril 2020 Blaugust Promptapalooza 2020 Blaugust 2021 Blaugust 2022 and Blaugust 2023" class="wp-image-24433" srcset="https://i0.wp.com/aggronaut.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/1080pBlaugust-AllYears.jpg?w=1920&ssl=1 1920w, https://i0.wp.com/aggronaut.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/1080pBlaugust-AllYears.jpg?resize=1280%2C720&ssl=1 1280w, https://i0.wp.com/aggronaut.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/1080pBlaugust-AllYears.jpg?resize=640%2C360&ssl=1 640w, https://i0.wp.com/aggronaut.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/1080pBlaugust-AllYears.jpg?resize=768%2C432&ssl=1 768w, https://i0.wp.com/aggronaut.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/1080pBlaugust-AllYears.jpg?resize=1536%2C864&ssl=1 1536w, https://i0.wp.com/aggronaut.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/1080pBlaugust-AllYears.jpg?w=1760&ssl=1 1760w" sizes="(max-width: 880px) 100vw, 880px" data-recalc-dims="1" />
Friends… I am completely floored. Yesterday we got both our hundredth and hundred and first sign up for Blaugust 2023. This prompted me to look up what our past numbers looked like. The highest participation year ever was 2018 with 90 blogs. There were a lot of factors going into that, not the least of which was having had a somewhat lowkey 2016 and me needing to entirely take off 2017 for running the event. It created a sense of nostalgia about the event I think, and I had numerous folks track me down and ask me if I was going to run it again. When I brought it back folks seemed to come from out of the woodwork and flock to the event, and until this year we had never really captured that kind of lightning in the bottle.
Screenshot of the Blaugust Gamepad.club account on Mastodon
This year is a similarly odd year in that we are in a state of turmoil when it comes to social media. Blaugust was in large part an event that was started on Twitter and dominated by folks who participated in the event in that manner. With me transplanting myself from Twitter to Mastodon last year, I was admittedly somewhat concerned that the interest just would not be there. What has happened instead is that we have gotten traction with folks who had never even heard of the event before. Over half of the blogs that are participating in Blaugust this year are first-timers. That is really freaking huge, but I guess not super shocking. The fediverse as a platform is way more interested in interaction than Twitter ever was, and the number of random conversations that I have struck up with complete strangers has been massive. Mastodon and the Fediverse as a whole seem to be a platform with lowered barriers and in many ways lowered inhibitions.
Screenshot showing Indiecator.org and the Blaugust 2023 - Participant Appreciation Post
If you have a minute I would suggest you pop over to Indiecator the blog run by Magi, and check out his Participant Appreciation Post. On one hand, Magi is a Blaugust success story. If my memory serves me right, he started his blog around the beginning of Blaugust in 2019, signed up as a newbie… got 31 posts in his first year, and is now a rather prolific blogger. Last year he assumed the mantle of Mentor to help out other bloggers and has been aiding significantly this year in trying to keep the roles on the Discord set. However, none of that is why you should go read that blog post. You should read it because he took the time to crawl through every single blog (that had signed up to that point) and write a paragraph talking about them. It is a phenomenal post and does a great job of showing the breadth of folks that we have gathered here.
<img data-attachment-id="14314" data-permalink="https://aggronaut.com/blaugust_450/" data-orig-file="https://i0.wp.com/aggronaut.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/blaugust_450.png?fit=450%2C153&ssl=1" data-orig-size="450,153" data-comments-opened="1" data-image-meta="{"aperture":"0","credit":"","camera":"","caption":"","created_timestamp":"0","copyright":"","focal_length":"0","iso":"0","shutter_speed":"0","title":"","orientation":"0"}" data-image-title="blaugust_450" data-image-description="" data-image-caption="" data-medium-file="https://i0.wp.com/aggronaut.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/blaugust_450.png?fit=450%2C153&ssl=1" data-large-file="https://i0.wp.com/aggronaut.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/blaugust_450.png?fit=450%2C153&ssl=1" decoding="async" loading="lazy" src="https://i0.wp.com/aggronaut.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/blaugust_450.png?resize=760%2C258&ssl=1" alt="The very first Blaugust logo from 2014 with the text It Came From the Summer Haze! Blaugust Thirty One Days of Blog Posts" class="wp-image-14314" width="760" height="258" data-recalc-dims="1" />
I get a lot of credit for Blaugust because I happened to be the idiot who rammed Blog and August together and tried to make it a thing. As I have stated before, I wasn’t even the first person to do this. There was a whole Australian Blaugust dating back to 2010 that Leaflocker and Alecat were part of. I will forever be grateful that they joined in my brand of nonsense instead of being cross with me for stepping on their toes. There is a separate version of Blaugust over on the #MTBoSBlaugust hashtag that my wife helped spawn based on ours, and I’ve heard of similar events out there in the aether. I am somewhat shocked at how far this dumb little idea I had back in 2014 has spread. I am deeply humbled that so many of you keep showing up every single year to participate and spend the rest of the year chatting way in the Discord.
If you are seeing a bunch of information about Blaugust flying by, and you have found your way here… there is still plenty of time to sign up and join in this particular brand of nonsense. I would suggest you check out the information post from mid-July outlining everything about the event. It has links to various key things like the Sign-Up Form and explains how you can participate. While I am overwhelmed that we have officially broken the hundred blogs barrier, there is always room for more. Though it might take me a bit longer to tabulate the results this year than it has in past years. We are only eight days into the month and I am already a bit overwhelmed by the participation. I want to give a huge thanks to everyone that is participating this year and everyone who has participated in any year over the last decade. It has been a wild ride and I am thankful to count you all among my friends. This year set a bar that I am not sure we will ever beat again, but if nothing else we are proving that blogging is still a vibrant means of expression. The post Over One Hundred Blogs appeared first on Tales of the Aggronaut.

AggroChat #182 – Ghostly Haberdashery

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Featuring:  Ashgar, Belghast, Grace and Tamrielo

aggrochat182_720

Tonight we record a fairly short show at least as far as AggroChat episodes go.  We are down a Kodra because of a holiday party and a Thalen because he has officially cloned himself.  This week we welcomed a tiny Thalen spawn into the world, and as a result we are likely going to have fairly spotty attendance from him for awhile because the new boss is brutal.  This week we apparently played quite a bit of Super Mario Odyssey so we talk about the game and our feelings so far. Belghast spends some time playing Skyrim on the switch and how shocked he is about how well it works.  Grace talks a bit about the World of Warcraft 13th anniversary event, and Ash talks about his thoughts regarding Sonic Forces.  From there we delve into a discussion about Necromunda and various Warhammer 40k things.

Topics Discussed

  • Super Mario Odyssey
  • Skyrim on Switch
  • WoW Anniversary Event
  • Sonic Forces
  • Warhammer Necromunda
  • Tyranids Codex
  • Warhammer 40k Nostalgia
  • Great Games of 2017

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

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Listless

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The past week was hyper focused on a single goal… getting Belgaoh my monk from 53 to 100.  The weird thing about this process is that once completed… I am finding myself drifting a bit without purpose.  The above screenshot is unrelated to anything, but I thought it looked cool so you are getting it with this mornings post.  Starting yesterday I begin finally running my stable of characters through the Broken Shore content.  I managed to snag all of the toys, and troll shoes transmog from my single leel 100 horde character, and on my second time through on an alliance character successfully got the bonnet cosmetic item.  I am assuming that tomorrow there will be a new step on the quest chain being patched in, and this time around we will actually do the moving of Dalaran to the Broken Isles bit.  Tonight is our Final Fantasy XIV raid, so that means I will go into this weeks patch not having run Broken Shores on the bulk of my characters.  At least in theory the content isn’t going anywhere so I shouldn’t feel that much of a rush to push through it.  I think this content will essentially be the “welcome to Legion” content for everyone from this point on wards.  I will say it was really strange buzzing right past the quest starter for Cataclysm, Pandaria and Draenor on the monk.  I think I have all of the quests sitting in my log, because they are given automatically when you zone into Stormwind, but I am not sure when if ever I am going to do them.  At this moment I am contemplating using the Timeless Isle port to get to Draenor, but then again that would mean I need to open up Pandaria to get to it.

Listless

Even though I have completed one journey to 100… I am finding that I cannot seem to quit the Invasion Event.  A good chunk of yesterday was also spent running characters through the event trying to get the last few 700 items for each.  I managed to finish off Lodin and Tallow last night, which leaves Gloam, Exeter and Belglaive all needing a single item slot.  Belglaive is a little more complicated because I used that character to purchase the pet, and as a result he is still missing several of the purchased pieces of gear.  I just need to run ANY instances on him to get that finished off.  I do have his Glaives upgraded to 725, and I have started a second set mooching off of everyone else’s spare tokens to upgrade them for my eventual Horde demon hunter.  I wish the other weapons worked like this, in that they were bind on account and you could pass them around as needed.  Some characters I have gotten more than my fair share of weapons… and then others like Exeter have yet to see a single one.  I have this feeling that ultimately it is going to be Ex my Paladin that I will continue to run events on, as I try and get three weapons for him.  The other big thing that I need to accomplish before this event is over is to try and find the Demon that spawns in Orgrimmar and Stormwind and get a Fel Spreader toy.  I failed to get one the two times I tried it yesterday, with the one in Orgrimmar bugging out and running back to the Doomsayer and fading.

Listless

The big thing I have learned over the years is that I have a lot of fun playing World of Warcraft, so long as I have a goal in mind.  For example this last week has been a blast as I leveled my way through to 100 doing events.  In theory I could pick a Horde character and start doing the same, but I don’t really have any that are nearly as close to finish as my Monk was.  Doing the event without flight was a pain in the butt, and I am not sure if I want to go back to that frustration right now.  If I was going to pick a character on that side of the fence I would probably pick my Warlock since I have really enjoyed playing my Alliance lock… and I have full cloth heirlooms.  Similarly I have full leather heirlooms, but of the leather classes the one I am most likely to play… is the Demon Hunter, which is easy as hell to get to 100.  I do however have the cash to just go ahead and outfit my plate heirlooms up to 100 and then push something else that I would likely play.  My Orc Deathknight is sitting at 60, so flight is possible, even if it is a slow version.  I might be fun to be able to use this event to play with one of the other specs like Frost or Unholy.  If the next goal is NOT the event however… I need to pick something be it Mount Farming or Dungeon Achievements because so long as I can keep a list of things I want to do… I will be able to stay engaged in this game.  I really am having a lot of fun being around all of these people again.  It is a bit like a reunion, because everywhere I turn on Argent Dawn I keep running into familiar faces from the past.  I know we have roughly a week until the official launch of Legion, and with that comes a whole new set of goals so I just need to keep busy in the meantime.