Horse Latitudes

There is a region roughly 30 degrees north or south of the equator that is characterized by very calm winds and areas of high pressure. Historically this is a region that ships would effectively get “stuck” in for weeks at a time as they drift along listlessly without strong winds. According to legend in order to conserve the rapidly depleting supply of fresh water, some ships would throw the horses overboard. As a result they developed the nickname of the “Horse Latitudes”. There are however multiple competing theories about the origin if you are so inclined, but it is one of those terms from history class that held with me throughout the years.
Right now as I have felt so many times… I am feeling stuck. I feel like I am in this strange valley in between passions and just sort of languishing wildly there. I have the desire to play Genshin Impact, but I have ventured into a realm where I can only play so much at a given time without it feeling largely pointless. I figure at this rate I will probably be AR40 in about two weeks, when I will be even further in the hole on trying to get my characters leveled, ascended, talented and geared… when it doesn’t feel like I have made a significant dent since dinging AR35. As I have talked about before, everything hinges upon Resin and I don’t have the desire to spend the roughly $12 a day in primagems to ensure that I can get the maximum number of refreshes done.
So I find myself logging in every day, completing the daily quests… spending the resin I have available to me and then claiming the various daily login bonus rewards. I am now doing this on two different accounts and still finding myself lacking for something that feels meaningful. I could grind super hard on the second account but I figure that way lies burn out. Everything I am doing on that account already has an extreme “been there and done that” feeling to it, so I am trying to limit my time over there to just knocking out the dailies and stockpiling wish material.
Then there is World of Warcraft and the unknown release date of the Shadowlands expansion. If they came out tomorrow and said, that they were not launching until January, I feel like I could happily move on with my life. However the not knowing when and how it is going to launch feels awful. I’m currently running the Headless Horseman every day in an attempt to get the mount, but I found out yesterday that it only works on characters that are capable of getting the purple loot rewards. That limits me down considerably in the number of daily iterations. I should in theory be working on finishing out my rogue but I am just fundamentally not feeling it.
I created a new character on a new server with the theory of wanting to see the Exiles Reach player experience. However here he sits having never logged it in and started. I am just finding myself having a hard to getting started on anything in World of Warcraft right now, because it all feels lacking in some way. I guess what I want is something with the feel of Genshin Impact but the longevity of a World of Warcraft and the wealth of content to complete. I know someone in the comments is going to suggest Guild Wars 2, and god how I have tried to care about that game over the years. Whatever it is doing is not what I am wanting, even though I do clearly see some of the parallels to Genshin and the way the world is designed in both games.
I could in theory return to Destiny 2 and see if I can slide back into the rhythm of that game. The problem however is that I just feel so woefully behind in the seasonal construct. The fact that there has been so much revolving content that comes and then goes and that fact that we are losing several planets when Beyond Light lands in early November sorta paralyzes me. I have a bunch of Exotic quests that require various things, but I would need a team to do them… and I realize I can make that happen as well but that also in itself feels like a large outlay of energy.
In theory I should follow the lead of my friend Warenwolf and head back over to TQMB, but I am not even sure they would still take me back. I left at the PC launch of Destiny 2 because my long time friend group felt more comfortable if we started our own thing. However most of them bounced and I was never really quite capable of rekindling it once they were gone. My own huge lapses in play time didn’t help either, leaving us with effectively a dead clan. Having a vibrant community would probably help especially if it meant there were various drop in events that I could sign up for. That said I also know how much is going to happen in November as a whole and in theory I have a new console waiting on me as well.
That brings us to the next challenge. I have things that I wouldn’t mind getting back into on the PlayStation, but I am largely in a holding pattern until the launch of the PS5. I am not sure how much further I want to get into various games not knowing with 100% certainty that my save progress is going to carry over cleanly. Anyways I realize this is probably an annoying post to read but sometimes I write for me and my own mental housekeeping. I feel stuck and I need to figure out for myself how to get un-stuck. The post Horse Latitudes appeared first on Tales of the Aggronaut.

Headless Mount Search

Good morning friends! We did the thing again and it is seemingly to become a weekly occurrence. Two weekends ago we played Among Us on Saturday and yesterday we did Sunday in an attempt to be open to the folks who could not for some reason make Saturday. As a result we had a slightly different group but it was equally amazing. We didn’t go for quite as long as we did previously, and I had to bail in the middle to run my wife to go pick up her car at the tire place… but I think we are starting to get more in the swing of how this game works. More importantly the Impostors seemed to be more randomized than they were last week when it chose Sita over and over and over.
I am also still playing a lot of Genshin Impact, but as I have stated before I am now down to playing for 20-30 minutes a day and then going on to do other things. The account that I created for farming ore and resources… has turned into an account that I am legitimately and properly playing because it has champions that I don’t own yet on my main account. One interesting tidbit of information is that while I knew chests respawned, I did not realize that the super rarity chests respawn. I thought all of those were surely “one and done”, but apparently even the 200,000 gold chest in the Liyue bank can respawn. So each time a weekly reset happens I guess make your way through the world checking out where chests have spawned previously.
Since I have been so severely throttled in Genshin Impact, I have started trying to ease my way back into World of Warcraft. I gave all of my characters a facelift last week, but for my Paladin that I am currently planning on maining for Shadowlands… I opted to do a outfit change as well. For most of Battle for Azeroth my Paladin has been rocking the “Fel Knight” look, and while I still greatly enjoy it… I wanted something different. Over the weekend I created a similar mishmash of gear pieces to create what one of my friends has called the “Void Knight” appearance/ The actual name of my gearset is “The King in Purple” as a play on The King in Yellow.
Most of yesterday was spent going from character to character on both accounts and farming the Headless Horseman encounter. While I have not done this religiously each year, I have been trying for that stupid mount since it was introduced during Burning Crusade. I have Attumen’s mount which is significantly cooler, but fails hard because it cannot fly… whereas the Horseman mount can. During brew fest I pulled 3 rams and 2 kodos… so I am hoping that by running my army through every single day I will have similar luck. Look at this point all I have to live on is hope.
The entire process took quite a long time as rotating through characters also meant that I needed to sort out their talents and hotbars. Especially on the Alliance side it has been since early Legion that any of these characters really saw much play. I am not sure if it is tank durability, healing throughput issues or just the “bullet sponge” aspect of the Horseman this year… but something is not going as planned. I am chocking this up to the squish, but the encounter seems to be significantly more challenging than intended and as a result I am seeing quite a few parties wipe on the fight. This is not the roflstomp that Coren Direbrew was only a few weeks ago, so I suggest you go in this prepared and do whatever you can do to pick up your dps and get through it quickly.
So that was my weekend… some Among Us, some World of Warcraft mount farming and as much Genshin Impact as the game would allow me to play. How was your weekend? What all did you get around to doing? Drop me a line below and let me know. The post Headless Mount Search appeared first on Tales of the Aggronaut.

AggroChat #319 – The Great Resin Wall

Sometimes a show happens without us really realizing it.  That was absolutely the case for this evening’s show because we had what felt like a very limited number of topics that filled up the full hour.  We start off the show with some further discussion of Genshin Impact.  Last week we thought we had been pushed up against a wall, but it turns out that was just the foothills leading up to the sheer cliff that is being resin locked on progress.  From there we talk about random video game cravings and the games that we either return to periodically or consider comfort gaming.  We wrap things up with a discussion of the games that we are looking forward to on the horizon be it literally like with Horizon Zero Dawn Forbidden West or the release of the new console generation.  Whatever the case it seems like we have a very packed November ahead of us.

Topics Discussed

  • Genshin Impact
    • The limiting factors of Resin
    • Limited Progress
  • Random Game Cravings
    • We talk about comfort gaming
    • We also talk about out of the blue game cravings
  • What we are looking forward to next
    • Release of the next generation of consoles
    • Horizon Zero Dawn 2
    • The Packed November
The post AggroChat #319 – The Great Resin Wall appeared first on Tales of the Aggronaut.

AggroChat #319 – The Great Resin Wall

Sometimes a show happens without us really realizing it.  That was absolutely the case for this evening’s show because we had what felt like a very limited number of topics that filled up the full hour.  We start off the show with some further discussion of Genshin Impact.  Last week we thought we had been pushed up against a wall, but it turns out that was just the foothills leading up to the sheer cliff that is being resin locked on progress.  From there we talk about random video game cravings and the games that we either return to periodically or consider comfort gaming.  We wrap things up with a discussion of the games that we are looking forward to on the horizon be it literally like with Horizon Zero Dawn Forbidden West or the release of the new console generation.  Whatever the case it seems like we have a very packed November ahead of us.

Topics Discussed

  • Genshin Impact
    • The limiting factors of Resin
    • Limited Progress
  • Random Game Cravings
    • We talk about comfort gaming
    • We also talk about out of the blue game cravings
  • What we are looking forward to next
    • Release of the next generation of consoles
    • Horizon Zero Dawn 2
    • The Packed November
The post AggroChat #319 – The Great Resin Wall appeared first on Tales of the Aggronaut.