Yesterday was a rather rough day, and I never actually got around to writing a blog post. So this morning you get a bit of what I would have written about yesterday and a bit about what I would have normally written about today. So on Monday, I spent a lot of that post talking about how I was largely done with my alts in Path of Exile… then proceeded to spend a bunch of time leveling my Widowhail Deadeye and liking it quite a bit better. The heart wants what the heart wants I guess. Basically, I did some super chill yellow maps… got a bunch of levels… which started to fix some of the issues with the character. I still have awful defenses… and I wasted a ton of regret orbs trying to flip to a more crit-based version… but I am back and happy with precise technique and trying to keep my life totals below my accuracy.
I currently have the weirdest passive tree I have ever had for a bow character. I’m getting a lot of mileage from an Unnatural Instinct jewel currently, which is in part what has prompted some of the weird pathing. My hope is to respec things a bit, gain some more levels, and add in another elemental cluster jewel down in the lower quadrant, freeing up one of my other jewel sockets to maybe add in a Light of Meaning Jewel wherever it will have the most benefit either going for Life, Evasion, or Fire Damage. This build is a bit like trying to make “Fetch Happen” but I am having fun doing my own thing here that again… far as I know no one is actually trying. My life and defenses are still awful but it is softcore and I am mostly okay with dying occasionally on my alts.
In other news, I am creeping ever closer to my shiny pvp mount in Final Fantasy XIV. I have not been doing the daily roulette as religiously as I should, and I might spend some time this coming weekend just grinding it out the rest of the way to victory. I have to be honest… as often as I have run PVP Roulette for leveling… I really wish I had been cognisant of this rewards track before now. There is no telling how many things I just failed to collect and missed out on along the way. I am looking forward to raiding again this weekend because last Sunday we had the original four of Ashgar, Grace, Thalen, and me but then picked up Solaria who was piloted by Ammo because world travel was disabled. In theory maybe this weekend we can get Ammo on her off-server character giving us six of eight total players.
In Guild Wars 2 news, I am largely resigned to not making it through Secrets of the Obscure for the time being. I am basically at the end of the 5th chapter and then had a whole other chapter in Nayos on top of that to finish before moving on. This was such a weird content drop because some of it I liked quite a bit… and other bits I was not feeling at all. I feel like we were supposed to care about the Kryptis, but it reminded me entirely too much of the whole Vampire Courts thing from Dresden Files. In those books, Harry ends up aligned to the White Court at times for reasons that are deeply spoilery, but also in part because they are only sexually and emotionally abusive… as opposed to just straight-up murdering, devouring, and/or potentially wearing victims like fashion accessories. Guild Wars was trying to do something with this story of having a redemption arc for monsters… that just never really landed for me.
Janthir Wilds on the other hand so far seems amazing. I am all about hanging out with a delightful group of furries… err I mean Bearkin. I have a type when it comes to favorite zones… and this is absolutely playing directly into those interests. Grizzly Hills for example in World of Warcraft was such a pure joy to quest through, and I would go so far as to state that maybe Lowland Shore is one of the best zones Guild Wars 2 has at the moment. I’ve not gotten terribly far into it because I spent way too much time being a short-order cook last night for a bunch of hungry bears. I was hoping to get far enough to unlock player housing… but I did not even get far enough to unlock spears.
That is honestly probably my only complaint thus far is that the main story quest chain hits a brick wall when it asks you to level up the mastery that unlocks spears in order to continue. I was already working on the mastery that allows you to do more things with your bouncy kitty mount. So I closed out the evening hopping around the zone doing events, and hunting down a few of these mini-boss tundra beast encounters. I have no clue what the zone meta looks like if it exists, but I have heard it was pretty “spicy”. I am in no massive rush, but I would really like to get player housing as an upgrade to my home instance. I had enough Astral currency to pick up the next Legendary Weapon box… which has Twilight in it… which is probably the next one that I will craft because pretty much every character that can use a Greatsword is currently using one. I am building up a backlog of these because I never crafted the Juggernaut. There is also a weapon quest up on the Astral store, that I will probably devote the next 1000 points towards because from what I understand there is a really cool interaction between the weapon and the gloves that it comes with.
All told though, I am already feeling way more positive about Janthir Wilds than I did about Secrets of the Obscure. The zone design so far is just better. I get what they were trying to go for with SOTO, but flight-required maps are a bit frustrating given that it was not like they just handed you the Skyscale. It still took a lot of effort to unlock it, whereas from what I can tell here… you are pretty much just handed a Warclaw in a similar manner in which you were just handed the Raptor in Path of Fire. I already had my Warclaw from the WVW Track so this mostly amounted to me just getting a new skin to play with. It was cool that I got some cosmetics given to me for having already completed that before Janthir dropped. I will probably be back playing quite a bit of Guild Wars 2 in the coming weeks.
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Last Epoch – Fire Warpath Auto-Smite Paladin
Friends… I had a weekend where nothing was quite right. It was one of those weekends akin to wandering into your kitchen and knowing you want something… but you cannot figure out what it is. I was all over the freaking place. For example, I played some Last Epoch and got to Empowered Monoliths on my Fire Warpath Auto-Smite Paladin, and even took down my very first Harbinger. However, shortly after that I just lacked the will to keep pushing forward. Not that there is anything wrong with Last Epoch, but after playing a lot of Path of Exile during this league it just felt lacking. I wasn’t sure why I was trying to push forward, because I wasn’t sure what I actually wanted to accomplish. The moment-to-moment gameplay is fun enough, and there are brief chucks of excitement when you find a nemesis device on your map, but that is quickly over once you realize that you are killing monsters to fill bars so that you can fill other bars. Don’t get me wrong I love Last Epoch, but I think Path of Exile has just spoiled me.
Path of Exile – Widowhail Deadeye and Bleed Gladiator
Then there was Path of Exile, which has its own problems. I have my Righteous Fire Chieftain main that I have largely taken as far as I really can save for completely redoing my entire tree and diving further into the madness of cluster jewels. I have two alts my Widowhail Deadeye and Tanky Bleed Gladiator that are both fine, but both have their own problems that will need to be solved. The problem is, I am just not sure if I am willing to stick around and solve them. Widowhail Deadeye has NO defenses which means if anything looks slightly in their direction they fall over. Bleed Gladiator feels like a worse version of Righteous Fire in that I am plenty tanky… but also have to hit a bajillion buttons to make anything that feels like optimal progression. I was having more fun when it was just a Two-Handed Sunder build… but that had significant survival problems. Both of these characters can be fixed with an investment of time and gear and levels… but I am just not sure I am willing to go through the motions.
Path of Exile – Settlers of Kalguur Shipments
The League Mechanic has also become a bit stale. I loved it while leveling and gearing because so much of the gear that I am especially wearing on my alts and to a lesser extent my RF main… came directly off a boat. The problem is we were given a bit of a bait and switch when it came to the shipping mechanic because the reveal trailer promised three screens full of loot… and even when folks are shipping over 50 million in value they just end up with a single screen. I’ve not maxed out my workers but I am not sure I am willing to spend the gold prices that it would cost… or farm enough content in order to get said gold. Right now I am sending shipments to Riben Fell for 100k to 120k value and getting a reasonable amount of stuff back… but it is nowhere near as interesting as the giant loot pinatas we were promised. Acquiring stuff just seems to take more time than I am currently willing to put into it.
Diablo IV – Season 5 – Level 55 Barbarian
My friend Ace had been having a really good time with Diablo IV so I figured… what the hell since I seem to be floundering anyways I might as well give it a shot. I started off another Barbarian because of course I did… and I was originally going to go Whirlwind and I still might… but it felt MISERABLE to level as that. I fell back on good ole reliable and comfy Upheaval and as of last night was sitting at level 55. The leveling went extremely quickly, and in theory, I could probably even limp through the dungeon to convert over to World Tier 4 at this point. The problem is… I find the loot uninteresting in this game, and the tempering system is a bit miserable. So I am not sure what I am grinding towards save for completing seasonal achievements and progressing the Battle Pass.
Diablo IV – Tier 1 Infernal Hordes
Infernal Hordes is rather enjoyable. I am glad they are making this an evergreen part of the game going forward because it adds yet another thing that players can focus on. So far it doesn’t feel terribly rewarding given the amount of time it takes to complete one. The final boss phase can also be pretty miserable depending upon which negative affixes you choose along the way. That is probably my biggest problem… you only ever get to choose negatives. It reminds me of a worse version of the Red/Blue Atlars in t14+ maps in Path of Exile. With those you get some negative thing that is going to happen but also some massive bonus… either in the form of specific items dropping or the ability to duplicate loot or increase the quantity and rarity of drops. The carrot to this particular stick is just more aether… which lets you open more chests… which themselves feel rather anemic when it comes to rewards. Maybe these get better as I move into World Tier IV, but for now, mechanically they are a lot of fun up until the boss wave and seem to reward a lot of experience so just for fun’s sake they are worth doing.
Since coming back to Final Fantasy XIV, I have been entering the housing lottery again in the hopes of maybe winning back a plot after losing mine due to my own negligence. I realize it is kind of silly for me to do this given that I have already had a home and lost it, because I got distracted and busy around Christmas time. However this past period the same plot that I used to own was up for grabs, and I thought maybe just maybe fate would smile upon me and let me have it back. I did not in fact have the lucky number for the plot and yesterday I got back my deposit once again. I will once again try in a few days to find another housing plot, because what else am I going to do with the money that I have saved up? It is a bit frustrating, but I am largely resigned to doing this song and dance and never being the lucky winning number.
The thing that probably shocked me the most this weekend is that I actually booted up Warframe and played through a few missions. Of all of the games I have played over the years… Warframe is the one that I really wish that I could get into. It has such an amazing community and really some significant support from Digital Extremes. It is essentially Path of Exile levels of complicated but for a genre more akin to Destiny… and I would love to get into it, but I still find it largely obtuse and incomprehensible. I wish I could reset the progress and play through the game with the updated new player experience, but given that my account is 11 years old and I have all manner of legacy items… that is not going to happen. I might try and find some sort of new player experience guide to see if I can limp my way through unlocking whatever I have not unlocked.
What I should have been playing this past weekend was Guild Wars 2, because tomorrow the new expansion drops, and with it comes a glow-up for the Warclaw and what appears to be an amazing housing system. I’m about five quests away from completing Secrets of the Obscure and probably if I really set my mind to it tonight I could push through it. The biggest problem I have is that I essentially ground to a halt when I hit Inner Nayos. That zone is miserable, full stop. I was playing through it the night I had my little retina detach freak out and all of the shit floating in the air… really seems to aggravate me being able to see the floaters shifting around in my left eye. It does not help that at times it has Heart of Thorns levels of aggro and density just making it extremely unfun to play through. Secrets of the Obscure did some interesting things, but across the board, it is probably my least favorite expansion content from Guild Wars 2. I will be happy to move past it.
So basically where I stand currently… is that I have zero clue what I will be focusing on this week. Hell, it might be something that I have not even mentioned here. I’ve had a rough few weeks and continue to struggle with insomnia issues, so right now I just want something comfortable that can alleviate my frustrations. I am not sure such a thing exists. Hopefully, things chill out so I can get back to normal, but for the moment… I am not even really paying attention to everything going on with Blaugust. I am extremely thankful for the mentors who are largely keeping things running in my absence.
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Featuring: Ammosart, Ashgar, Belghast, Grace, Kodra, Tamrielo, and Thalen
Hey Folks! After taking a week off from it, we are returning to our Dawntrail full spoiler show. This week we say hi to Tam and Kodra… before they boop out of the show given that neither has actually played FFXIV recently. We pick up where we left off with the coronation of the new Dawn Servant and then dive into all of the “things” that happen after that. We also talk a bit about the story surrounding the first raid of the expansion in the Arcadion. It is a bit of a long show clocking in at almost two hours.
Good Morning Folks! Yesterday was a hellacious day for me, and today I am off… so since I did not get a chance to blog I am dropping a mega topic on you. Mostly this is something that I had been kicking around in my head for weeks but I simply did not feel like I had the time to devote to the topic during my normal morning blogging window. We are going to talk about Path of Exile and how the scope and complexity of that game has completely changed my viewpoint on what exactly the term “Endgame” means. At this point in the Settlers of Kalguur League, I am mostly in a game mode of wrapping up challenges, and honestly could in theory walk away happily at any point. Did I complete everything in the league? Absolutely not. Do I feel the need to complete everything in the league? Absolutely not. This morning’s blog post if anything is a post about coming to terms with not being able to do all of the things, or more so realizing that I don’t actually want to do them.
Sentinel League – July 2022
This journey is going to be illustrated as we walk through the last several leagues of Path of Exile, and how my perspective changed during each of them. While I first played Path of Exile in 2015, it was not until July of 2022 that I actually beat the ten-act campaign. I have fuzzy memories of playing during Delve, Heist, Expedition, Breach, and Scourge… and getting several acts deep into each of those characters but never really grasping the game to the level of being able to make it all the way through the end of Act 10. So basically my “Endgame” was beating the campaign… an activity that I now consider so trivial that I level characters for fun. I felt a real sense of accomplishment for getting that far into the game and in spite of not really having a clue what I was doing landed on a love for the ability Wintertide Brand.
Kalandra League – August/September 2022
The Lake of Kalandra League was the first time I was actively playing the game and prepared on the day the league launched. During Sentinel, I had spent time playing Explosive Arrow Ballista and also half-assing my own thing with Wintertide Brand, and given that I liked the brand playstyle so much I decided to explore Storm Brand. I found a guide and attempted to follow it, and then set my goal for that league to complete my atlas… which is all 115 Maps with bonus objectives including the ten unique maps. My “Endgame” in the context of this league was accomplished on September 12th, and honestly… I did not play much more than that. I had a rough time in Kalandra and part of it was how rippy some of the mobs were and other parts were how clueless I was about how one should actually build a character. In either case, I did not have as much fun as I hoped I would have, and damned near swore off the game until my friend Ace got excited for the next League Start. However, I definitely felt like I had reached the Endgame because getting through 115 maps… on a character that was not even vaguely close to having elemental resistance caps… was a challenge.
Sanctum League – December 2022/January 2023
As I said above, this is the league that I almost did not play. I set forth intending to learn how not to die and in doing so I embraced my old friend Righteous Fire for the very first time and learned the goodness that is Pohx. This was the league where I learned that Elemental Resistances were not suggestions, but the absolutely hard requirement to survive in maps and if possible you wanted to do something to increase your caps. I also learned one of the ways you can build a character that feels tanky and unstoppable. This is also the first league that I played where I absolutely hated the league mechanic. There are so many “Sanctum Enjoyers” out there, but running around and never getting hit is not a gameplay style that I enjoy. My player fantasy is to be an unstoppable juggernaut that bulldozes over top of the enemies… and RF with its constant reliance on Shield Charge really fits that fantasy. My endgame was getting through all 115 maps, and while I did not make a post about accomplishing that goal it happened at some point around December 27th. Apart from not dying… I branched out and played with Toxic Rain Pathfinder and Summon Raging Spirits Necromancer… cementing my love of SRS going forward. I had a freaking blast and it was during this league that I think some of the levers of understanding clicked into place that would serve me well going forward allowing me to build not just one character that worked, but at least four of them in a single league.
Crucible League – April/May 2023
Crucible was the first league where I was pretty much the only person in my friend group actively playing the game. This meant more than anything, that I needed to invent my own goals because the friendly competition of knocking out objectives was missing. In Sanctum I dabbled in Delve and had quite a bit of luck with it, deciding that it would be my core focus for Crucible. Again we had a league with a lackluster mechanic, and as such I kept my head down and focused on learning how to make currency that was needed to fund building characters. “Delve Provides” is the motto of Jorgen a YouTuber that almost exclusively covers Delve content, and Crucible is the league where I put that into practice. Trading became something that I tolerated to something that I actually enjoyed doing and as such in many ways, it became my endgame for this league. During Sanctum I had managed to hit enough of the challenges to earn a tiny totem pole for my hideout and as such I knew that I wanted to do at least 19 of them in order to earn another one… which has since then become basically my goal for every league. During the tail end of Sanctum, I recorded a few videos to highlight my point of what felt good and why Diablo IV did not at all… and that turned into me recording videos talking about various side projects and builds during the Crucible league.
Ancestor League – August/September/October 2023
For the Trial of the Ancestors league, I decided to league start something other than Righteous Fire. This was a mistake. While I was able to zip through the campaign extremely quickly on my Lightning Arrow Raider build… I struggled quite a bit with survival when I hit maps… more specifically the transition between yellow and red maps and getting my first two voidstones. So a few days into the league… I was running up a Righteous Fire Juggernaut and essentially starting over. I eventually came to love the Lightning Arrow gameplay style, but greatly preferred running it on Champion. Trial of the Ancestors was another league where the mechanic was sort of meh… enjoyable but also did not really seem to have much of a point to running it. So I focused my time on getting better at mapping and starting to deep dive into various league mechanics like Legion and Breach on a bow character. I also created a staggering eight characters during this league, my favorite alt of which was probably the SRS Guardian. My endgame was learning league mechanics that I had not really dealt with before… and also getting a totem pole.
Affliction League – Bel League – December 2023/January/February 2024
My friend Ace HATES trading. It isn’t so much that they hate buying items… they hate the way Trade is implemented within Path of Exile and the required interaction with other players. During Ancestors League they decided to go Solo-Self-Found which essentially walled them off from the rest of us. In Affliction League I proposed that we start a private league that would take trading off the table, but also allow us to share resources with each other. So as a result “Bel League” was born, and it was simultaneously one of the most enjoyable Path of Exile experiences, and also deeply frustrating. This is also the patch where they largely wrecked Righteous Fire in its previous state, so as a result I decided to try out Boneshatter, a build I had never played before… making my endgame learning how to play this dumb thing in a Semi-SSF environment where I could not buy my way out of problems. Mechanically being able to share resources with other folks felt amazing… but in all cases, there was only so far I could reasonably take a build before running into a wall that was lack of resources or lack of crafting knowledge. We kept the private league going for 40 days… which maybe was overstaying its welcome. When it dropped both Kodra and I went nuts with the economy and funding dumb builds. He got a Mirror of Kalandra drop, and this was the first league where I bought both a Mageblood and a Headhunter. So my endgame shifted from Solo-Self-Found sentimentality to breaking the dumb state of the economy wide open and building some truly broken characters.
Necropolis League – March/April/May 2024
Necropolis League was simultaneously a bad league and one of the best leagues. The League crafting mechanic was dumb and overly complicated, but the sweeping game system changes allowed for an environment where you could do some truly dumb things while mapping. In past leagues, I had reached this point where characters many times where they were comfortable enough, but I never really micromanaged my way into hyper-optimizing them. During Necropolis my “endgame” was seeing how far I could push my Righteous Fire Juggernaut which ended up requiring another Mageblood… but since so many of these were being created I got it for the super low price of 50 Divines. I spent so much time exploring the interactions with different combinations of scarabs, and this is also the league where I accepted that I don’t actually like “Bossing” and just bought a carry for my last two voidstones… the ones that take a stupid amount of time… so I could enjoy T16 mapping for the majority of the league. The endgame goal that I was not expecting was that I would ultimately hit 34 out of 40 challenges completed and get a massive totem pole for my hideout.
Settlers League – July/Current 2024
Now we are here during the Settlers League and I have to be honest… I am not sure what my endgame looks like as of today. Last night I pushed down to 400 Depth in Delve and knocked out my 19th Challenge for the league earning me a totem pole for my hideout. I’ve done a few T17s this league which was something that I could not accomplish during the last league. I’m level 98 and am trying to decide if I want to go ahead and make a push to hit 100, something that I have only accomplished before during Crucible and Necropolis. I would love to get my Widowhail build working… because right now it is doing more than enough damage but also completely unable to survive for more than five minutes when something gets the first hit in. If I can take that build to a comfortable state, my endgame goal might be grinding out the currency to buy it a Headhunter because of the two chase belts… I feel like Headhunter is way more interesting than Mageblood. I also want to try building some sort of bleed-based Gladiator since that is the new hotness so I will likely be running something up to do that. At this point, I have explored most of the endgame systems in Path of Exile and have firm opinions on what I like and don’t like. One thing I have not done is really dive into Blight Ravaged maps so maybe I will set that up as my new endgame goal… to reach a point of comfortability running them.
Endgames Shift Over Time
Essentially the entire point of this lengthy post was not necessarily about a trip down memory lane covering the last three years and Eight Path of Exile Leagues. Instead, it was to set up the notion that you should have a personal Endgame and you really should not allow the opinion of others to color your enjoyment. When you spend time on Reddit, YouTube, and Twitch… so much of the discourse around Path of Exile specifically tends to be about finding the most efficient way to print currency and “getting rich”. I’ve been fairly wealthy in this game, with enough currency to buy anything I wanted… and I gotta admit that is not a goal that I care about. Instead, I have to carve out personal goals that make me happy, that are things I actually care about and that I can focus on.
I have come to realize that this is true regardless of the game. I’ve been playing Final Fantasy XIV and I am doing the things that I personally enjoy. Some of that involves raiding, but also I am not pushing myself to dive in deeper than I want. I remember back in World of Warcraft feeling like an absolute failure when our raid was not progressing as quickly as the others on the server. I felt the need to “keep up with the joneses” and personally blamed myself when we were not able to. I’ve reached a point where “Endgame” is whatever I want it to be. For some games, it is just getting through the campaign and then walking away happily until more story content is released, and in other games, it is trying to consume every last drop of goodness. Being able to set your own personal endgame that is not beholden to the progress of others feels like a requirement to play games like these and not drive yourself insane trying to keep up.
It took me years to get a SkyScale in Guild Wars 2, and I am super happy that I completed the grind… that also greatly improved my enjoyment of the game. However, I did not really feel like I was missing out on something all the time I spent not paying attention to it. When you face a game with over a decade’s worth of content that is still relevant… it becomes impossible to try and immediately encompass all of it. So Guild Wars 2, FFXIV, and Path of Exile all live in these bubbles of having way too much stuff going on to really try and zoom to the end of it without missing a beat. As such I have personally found it all the more important to determine my own goals and decide what I considered reaching the endgame to be in all of those cases. I’ve also given myself the flexibility to revise what those goals are over time.
What lodged this in my head the other day was watching the process a friend of mine has been going through with Path of Exile. They were overwhelmed and were in that state before finishing the campaign. Thing is… there is no rush. There is no real forward push saying you have to complete this much content in order to feel validated. Sure you will miss out on things… but the journey I have been on started in July of 2022 and each new league taught me important lessons that I have built upon to reach the point where I am today. I stopped playing on the Steam client during the last league, but at that point, I was at 2500 hours… and I have very easily put in another 500 hours after that. Path of Exile is the sort of game where even after 3000 hours I feel like I still have a lot to learn, and as a result, there is no way any player is going to do everything in a single go.
The Endgame is what you make of it, and your personal Endgame journey is just as valid as anyone else’s.
The post Endgame is a Moving Target appeared first on Tales of the Aggronaut.
