I guess I am digging into Enshrouded as a primary game… after saying that I was mostly casually playing it on the side. The Path of Exile league is winding down a bit, and we are a ways out from the launch of Last Epoch so I am finding myself gravitating towards this game more and more. Last night I pretty much only played it and as a result made a ton of progress. They recently added a hide HUD option in the menu, but I really wish it was something that I could hotkey quickly as the game can generate some really breathtaking vistas. That is a general comment though, because I wish ALL games had a hide UI button that was easily hotkeyed or better yet… have the ability to configure in-game screenshots that by default hide the UI. I don’t remember which game had that but I loved it.
Mostly I have been focused on collecting the various tradespeople from around the map so that I can flesh out my trade hall. At the moment I have unlocked the Blacksmith, Alchemist, Hunter, Carpenter, and Farmer… with Carpenter probably being the most difficult to get to. I’ve been using the waypoint tower that I unlocked as a way of gliding down toward various map objectives and at least getting part of the way there. I’ve also been using the fact that I could craft flame altars cheaply as a method of creating a waypoint network to get around the map quickly. Unfortunately, I seem to have reached the point where I can no longer place down any more of those. I am not sure if that number goes up as I upgrade my primary altar or if it is a fixed number of “bases” you can have around the world.
I guess I will have to reassess where I have placed them. Unfortunately, I built a bit of a base near the one furthest to the west, so that one is probably stuck where it is currently. The others are just a flame altar without anything build around them, and in theory I really need to move one of those to the north. That is the direction I need to explore now because apparently that is where I can find clay. I need clay in order to craft the Kiln that the Carpenter is requesting, which in theory should unlock additional stuff that I can craft. I also have a slew of fetch quests for the various tradespeople that I already have, and in theory, should probably focus on those now to unlock additional recipes. I also need to find a more reliable source of tar than just crafting campfires and letting them burn out.
I veered off the Tank path a bit in my character build in order to pick up some utility abilities. Double Jump is something that pretty much makes EVERY game better, and Enshrouded is not an exception to that rule. In theory, going forward I would probably rush that ability because it makes that much difference while trying to traverse dangerous areas. I think Double Jump is probably as far into the Survivor tree as I want to go for the moment and there are still a number of beefy abilities in the Tank tree that I want to pick up. I like that I can pretty easily respec my character completely by spending some of the runic coins that you get off monsters and from salvaging weapons. One of my bases is next to the spot where a legendary sword can be obtained, so in theory, if I ever get short I can just go there and keep looting that sword to salvage it.
Speaking of weapons… I’ve picked up a number of very nice items along my travels. In truth, the only one of these I can say for certain where it comes from is the Wailing Blade, which started a neat dialog with the Smith because apparently he crafted it. I found it originally because this video showed up in my YouTube feed, and in truth, it is pretty straightforward to get early on and I leaned on it heavily for some of the harder areas I have been adventuring in. I am not sure if the Wand or Bow are from fixed locations because they are named similarly to green or blue quality weapons, so I think I might have simply hit the jackpot there. One thing that I did not appreciate early on is just how good wands are in this game. They auto-target things… making them super freaking easy to kite mobs while plinking away at them. The range is really short so if you want to snipe… you still need a bow but once you equip your bow in the ranged slot you can access it from whatever weapon you have equipped currently by holding down Q.
Other than that I have been starting to do some renovations on my keep. I am trying to make it a bit less “big generic stone box” so I will likely be spending some time trying to improve the outside now. The main crafting hall works pretty well and I ended up replacing chunks of the wall with wood just to vary the appearance a bit. The little annex I built off the side was originally just a way to have an entrance on the other side of the building but I’m contemplating closing it in and opening it up to the inside and turning it into a treasure vault. I just unlocked magic boxes when I rescued the Carpenter and those allow you to draw from those boxes automagically when you are crafting in your base. So in theory I am going to want a room with nothing but a ton of boxes in there, potentially one box for every item type. Having it off the room where I spawn into the keep would be extra handy because it would mean depositing loot is pretty straightforward.
I’ve also spent a bit of time trying to craft out some living quarters and something resembling a proper bedroom. Most of this was to get my comfort buff up a bit, but also because it felt like I needed something down here. I am looking forward to whenever I can craft some bookcases or something like that. I just unlocked the ability to make rugs so I am probably going to focus on getting one of those which I think will bump up that buff a bit more. All in all I find myself going through phases of serious crafting and other phases where I am adventuring. I need to figure out where best to park some of my flame altars to make farming resources a bit easier.
The post Rescuing Tradesfolk appeared first on Tales of the Aggronaut.
Hey Folks! It has been a bit since I have done one of my dumb little videos and I figured I finally had something worth showing off. I did not expect to be rolling a new character this late in the league, but I enjoy brand characters and Penance Brand of Dissipation is a little cracked right now. If I remember correctly, I started this character last Monday, leveled it through the campaign in two days, then threw on some pretty basic rare gear, and have been using that ever since. In any other league this would be a character walking around under a divine orb’s worth of gear… but given that dissipation is a flavor of the week build and wants specific things, it is causing a bit of inflation to happen. I think in total though I am wearing roughly 10 Divine Orbs worth of gear and a lot of it could be rolled either by yourself or through something like Rog crafting.
Right now I am using zero uniques in my build, but that is not to say there are not some that would probably work well with it. Since I am doing cold damage and lightning damage, I could see this potentially working well with an Inpulsa’s Broken Heart but I have not made that swap because I would end up losing some physical damage taken as elements conversion. I’ve wound up honestly fairly tanky for the sort of damage that I am dealing. The only three specific gear slots that I sought out was +1 level of physical gems on weapon, amulet, and caster shield which give my Penance Brand of Dissipation additional levels and more damage as a result. At some point I should probably spend some currency and try and get a +2 weapon or amulet but again… during an inflation league that would end up costing probably more than I am willing to spend. Another option would be a Replica Dragonfang’s Flight but those start around 10 Divine Orbs and higher for one with decent mana reservation efficiency.
To demonstrate the build I ran a quick Shaper Guardian map at t16. You can see that the mapping is honestly reasonable for a build that is not really focused on doing full-screen clears. The brands bounce between packs quickly shredding all of the monsters within them and my gameplay largely revolves around moving constantly while dropping fresh brands and attempting to keep my Divine Blessing Haste up all of the time. When I get to the boss it isn’t so much that I nuke it instantly, but it gets shredded pretty quickly. At this point, I have done Elder, Sirius, and Maven and in all of those cases, I was pretty much ending each phase before the mob had much chance to do anything. It took me a bunch of portals on Maven but only because I suck at the memory game and dropping puddles. Sirius and Elder I oneshot and it wasn’t even close. I’ve not done Shaper only because I have not gotten one of the four guardian maps to drop but I am grinding maps the atlas support hoping to see it.
I am having a heck of a lot of fun with this build and quite honestly… I am pretty happy with the state of all of my builds right now. I’ve spent some time tweaking Boneshatter to the point where it has much better survivability thanks to Defiance of Destiny. I am also very happy with the current state of my Righteous Fire Chieftain and the only thing I would really change on it would be to potentially add Oriath’s End for more explosions, then again I could also use one on Penance Brand just to help with the clearing. Then I have my Lightning Arrow Champion that I bought a Headhunter for because they are so damned cheap this league and that has been a lot of fun. I really don’t have a single build right now that feels like it is underperforming. There is room on each of them to improve but I am relatively happy with where they all are.
The post Dissipating A Minotaur appeared first on Tales of the Aggronaut.
Featuring: Ammosart, Ashgar, Belghast, Grace, Kodra, Tamrielo, and Thalen
Hey Folks! It is that time again, time for our yearly Games of the Year show. Last year we learned that it was far better to record two weeks in a row instead of creating a marathon three-plus hour long show and cutting it in half. This week we dive into the second half of the show covering the final eleven games. These are games that were important to us this year and may or may not have actually been released this calendar year. A lot of them were, but I just wanted to set the expectations.
This year we did not have a lot of overlap, which is to be expected given that the seven of us have some wildly different tastes. It was a big year and I am sure there are a lot of games that you think might need to be on this list that we did not choose. Hopefully, you enjoy our thoughts all the same.
At this point in the Diablo IV Season, I am level 36, and have completed the main story quest and defeated the story version of the new boss. Quest length is about equivalent to one of the Final Fantasy XIV Holiday quests, which is perfectly fine and more than enough for a seasonal introduction. I’ve also largely finished acquiring the abilities that make up my current Upheaval build on the Barbarian, which also feels perfectly fine. The problem that I find myself in however is that I am not sure what else I want to do. In Season 2 there was this extremely fun seasonal mechanic that colloquially was referred to as the “Bloodtide” and it really created this central focus. When in doubt… do the bloodtide and it felt overwhelmingly rewarding.
I talked about this the other day, but instead of a rotating mechanic that really draws your focus… there are instead five areas on the map that ALWAYS have spawns related to the seasonal mechanic. One of those areas will have around three limited-time Tree of Whispers quests, and if I understand correctly these shift locations every hour. Mechanically this is exactly the same as the Blood Harvest aka the Bloodtide but the lack of a regional colored highlight… makes it less obvious where you should be spending your time. The density of mobs also feels less than that of the vampires which might simply be that the vampire packs had so many ghoul mobs that it just FELT like you were killing more. I feel like they need to bring back the green color coding to indicate where the player focus should be drawn on the map. This is one of those things where the vibe feels off and in spite of it mechanically functioning exactly the same it does not feel as “good” to experience.
The other challenge with this league mechanic is that the pet does not appear to scale with your level, which means that while they might start out fairly strong they quickly become useless. Even at 36, I can’t really see any noticeable difference between when my pet is attacking something versus when I am taking something out solo. I am specifically using the flame ability that chains a beam of fire between all of the mobs that the pet is engaged with so that I can for certain see that it is doing something, but still, it isn’t like it can really solo anything on its own unless you went afk. All of the defensive abilities seem to fire infrequently enough that I gave up on them and just went with Flash of Adrenaline which gives me a short-term buff. Some additional damage some of the time is better than nothing I guess?
I’ve now done several more vaults at this point and even did the whole Zoltun’s Warding mechanic successfully and I have to say… it does not really feel worth the effort. If there was a chase unique associated with the vault then it might be worth spending time in there, but as it stands it is just a more annoying version of the already bad dungeon system. The funny part about the Vaults is that you can absolutely cheese them. You can clear everything in the entire vault, then go back to the start and get the Zoltun’s Warding buff… then go back to the treasure chamber and get the loot 100% of the time. I did not do this and managed to get hit twice during the encounter leaving me with one warding, and my rewards were the same if someone went through the encounter flawlessly. I guess what I don’t get about the vaults is that players have given copious amounts of feedback that they want dungeons without ANY OBJECTIVES… that you just clear your way to a boss and get loot. Vaults seem the exact opposite of this, because in addition to the same “take the MacGuffin to the location” that all dungeons seem to have… you have to avoid traps while doing it.
I’ve seen this said a number of times, and can’t really find any origin to back up the validity one way or another. However, the “urban legend” is that the Diablo IV team has two sub-teams that work on seasonal content with one doing Seasons 1 and 3 and the other working on Seasons 2 and 4. I really hope this is not the case because I feel for that first team immensely given that Seasons 1 and 3 were both stinkers and Season 2 was pretty freaking great and brought a lot of players back to the game. At a minimum if this is the case, that first team really needs to assess their objectives and take some lessons from the second team. The plague tunnels and the gems that they rewarded were boring, and did not really add something new and fun to do to the game. This time around the pet is boring and the vaults really feel like a worse version of the dungeon system that is already in the game. I would like to say I would grind out the battlepass but I am just not sure I will be sticking around that long.
Here is hoping we get some mid-season patches that improve upon the mechanics enough to make them feel worth doing.
The post Still Not Feeling Season 3 appeared first on Tales of the Aggronaut.
