Good Morning Folks. I have no clue what I am doing anymore. I have my first counseling session this afternoon so we will see how that goes. I am still having the minor hallucinations that my wife is still here in this home, but like it is more a feeling than actually seeing or experiencing anything. Many folks have told me this is normal, and honestly it probably is. My brain is hardwired to expect her to be here and that does not go away in a few weeks time. I also have a meeting with a financial advisor in a few weeks to talk about how best to handle a bunch of stuff that I am dealing with. Most of which is in a holding pattern until we have a death certificate. Everything needs a death certificate and I am mostly just trying to function until that point. Tomorrow I have taken the day off because I have to move everything out of her classroom, so that they can prepare it for another teacher to move in. Thankfully her teacher pals have offered to pack everything up for me, and it will just be a matter of trucking things home and stacking the boxes up in the garage for now.
This morning I am probably going to be wildly flipping back and forth between my real world stuff… and gaming stuff because that is effectively how my brain works right now. I am latching onto distractions like a life raft, and we got some good distractions in abundance this week. Guild Wars 2 released a reveal trailer for their upcoming Visions of Eternity expansion and it looks awesome. Whoever is responsible for the motion graphics for their expansion logos… they need a fucking raise because this one is the best yet. SOTO and Janthir Wilds were both awesome, but the story being told by this logo is freaking phenomenal. I am really looking forward to the updates to the Skimmer mount because right now… it is the one that I use the least unless I have to be doing underwater stuff. I’m also looking forward to more shenanigans with the Inquest because they are one of my favorite bad guy groups. I am not sure how excited I am for more Elite specs, because quite honestly… I rarely change my builds and something is going to have to be really freaking cool to get me to change things up.
Depending upon how the counseling session goes, I might be ready to dip my toes back into Thursday night nonsense in Guild Wars 2. I have not mentioned any of this to Ammo, Sol, Ash, Thalen, or Sita… but I might do that throughout the day. I know there are a bunch of weeklies that we would even work on, like I could tag up and run bounties to knock out that one. I am also down with more Fractals or Dungeons because there are so many of those that I have not run. I’ve come to realize that my go to for knocking things out in Guild Wars 2 is running rifts in the Janthir area, because they are so much easier to get to than the Rifts in the SOTO area. They area great way to knock out general kills, defiance breaks, combos, and a few other general things because when you start one up… you almost always have a large group. Quite honestly Rifts in general are one of the best things that they have added to the game because they are so easy to get going.
Over in Path of Exile I am still slowly grinding up levels. I dinged level 99 yesterday over lunch and am starting to chip away at the large grind towards level 100. For now I am just pouring my last few points into 5% life nodes. They are generically useful, give me slightly more righteous fire damage… and quite a bit of just general survival. I might do something more clever but I can sort that out once I am actually level 100. I am trying to decide if I want to make a second character or not. I was running up an Elementalist to play with the Golems and was contemplating doing a Penance Brand of Dissipation power charge stacker to see how that goes. I would like to have some sort of a bossing focused character just to rip through invitations faster than righteous fire. There are a ton of challenges that I still need to work on to get my sad little totem pole a bit bigger before the end of the league.
There are a bunch of challenges that are pretty close to wrapping up. Some of them I just need some luck, like finding Infamous Mercs that I can steal gear from that I have not already stolen. Then there are things like the fact that I need to do a Cortex where my merc survives, and I think if I switch to my tanky bossing merc I should be good there. Sanctified Scarabs is in theory just me running a bunch of scarabs from various different league mechanics on a map with a minimum of 80% item quantity which should be reasonable enough to do. My Einhar tree makes a pretty decent base for generic usage of other scarabs so I might start working on those tonight. Remarkable Realms is worse this league because it is 40 maps instead of running one of a specific set of maps. I think previously it was 18 maps in total… so I just need to churn through the maps that I have banked up in order to finish that one out. Either that or pick a map that is not heinous and run that one over and over. Most of the unique maps are annoying in one way or another. I should grab Kodra at some point and force him to run them with me so he also gets credit.
The other thing that I have contemplated… is streaming again. Mostly just as a way of interacting with other human beings while I am playing mostly single player gaming experiences like my beloved ARPGs. I have a pretty beefy gaming desktop and it would not be a big deal to stream while playing most of the games that I play. I used to really enjoy doing this, but it always got really weird and made me feel like I was making myself unavailable to my wife while I was doing it. Now that it is just me… I have lots of time to kill before sleep claims me. I can’t say that I would ever be a good streamer, and there is no way in hell that I will ever turn on a camera. Just thinking it might be something fun to dabble in again on the side. Mostly it is just one of those intrusive thoughts that has started appearing in my head and I am not sure if I am going to allow it to take purchase there or not. If I did stream it would be over on my sad little Twitch channel which I believe is still an affiliate. I streamed consistently enough during the launch of Elder Scrolls Online to actually qualify for that. Apparently I have $71.31 in payouts that I am due… that I sort of wish I could just send to a charity somewhere. Accepting subs always seemed really fucking weird.
I legitimately have no clue what I am doing half the time these days. I think once some of the looming things finally are dealt with… I will maybe begin to allow myself to develop a new normal, but right now everything is too damned fresh. I should really spend my weekends working through some of the things that I need to work through. One of my good friends mentioned a pen and paper game, so I might be tagging in on that soon. I also need to sort out a good place to paint and assemble some miniatures for that purpose. I just do not know what I am going to do long term with my life and I am trying to figure out a lot of things. Thanks for sticking around and reading my nonsense as I flail.
The post Visions of Flailing appeared first on Tales of the Aggronaut.
Featuring: AmmosArt, Ashgar, Belghast, Grace, Kodra, Tamrielo, and Thalen
Hey Folks! We have the full crew this week, and Kodra and Thalen have made their way into Dune Awakening, so we talk a bit more about that game. Bel asks what the dumbest thing we have done in a video game to make currency. Ash is back in Guild Wars 2 and attempting to catch up on the story. Kodra and Tam share their thoughts about the Microsoft PuzzleHunt event and contrast it with the MIT Mystery Hunt. Bel shares his early experiences with the Mercenaries of Trarthus as the Secrets of the Atlas expansion kicks off in Path of Exile. Grace talks a bit about Be My Horde as it lets you play a Necromancer, raising an army in a Vampire-Survivors-like game. Finally, we talk a bit about Deltarune actually getting a proper release and Toby Fox accepting money for the game.
Good Morning Folks. I have an affliction… and it is Path of Exile league start fever. This is how you know I am a mess and fully bought into whatever nonsense Grinding Gear Games is selling, because right before the launch of a new league I get into this pattern where nothing quite works. I’ve never been one to test builds out ahead of a league start… but lord I am pretty close to this level of madness. I am still spending quite a bit of time poking around in Dune, and had a few close calls yesterday crossing the desert between the first area and the second area. I went back south to pick up the remaining intel that I missed, and when I was about to make the run across the gap a worm popped right in front of me forcing me to turn back around immediately. Then after that cleared I made another run at it, and then had a worm pop shortly after I got to the other side.
There is just enough friction that I find I have ground to a halt. The resources that I need… I cannot get, because I am once again deadlocked by the main story quest. However I have apparently not explored enough of the second area to even be able to see where I need to go. Traversal in the second area is just frustrating enough… that I find myself logging in, mining some easy resources… and then logging right back out. Essentially in the second area the biggest problem that I am having, is the increased presence of the Sardaukar. They made my life miserable when I first entered the zone at night, and I wound up getting chain frozen by their stun beams and burning through all of my bandages. This has scarred me a bit and has made me super hesitant to tangle with them again.
There is also just more ground to cover, and it is way more open… meaning that not only do you have to dodge worms, but also Sarduakar at night, and quicksand and drumsand the rest of the game. What I feel like I need is a Stilltent, which exists in the game, but is apparently not unlocked until much further down the tech tree path. Sandstorms are still terrifying and they seem to be of much higher magnitude than they were in the starter area. I am back to questioning if I am enjoying myself enough to deal with the frustrations to claw out of the hole that I am currently in. Tam has a base to the north and in theory I could make a run for it and then attempt to survey more of the area which will hopefully uncover where my next story quest is at. However when I have the time to play… lately I have just been playing more Guild Wars 2.
Side note… my Bi Pride wings have brought me way more joy than I thought they would. I ended up buying a proper game license for my second account during the recent massive sale, in part just so I could claim a set of the wings. I am not necessarily deeply engaged in Guild Wars 2 at the moment, but I am logging in every night just to make sure I am keeping my daily quests farmed down. I’ve bought the Legendary Weapon Kit, all of the Mystic Clovers, all of the Mystic Coins, and am now buying all of the cheap gold sacks and once I have finished with that I will probably pick up the last few items of cosmetic gear from the set that started last season. I’ve knocked out most of the weekly quests and hopefully Thursday we can do some of the Fractals and knock those out as well.
In a move that completely shocked me… I played some Path of Exile II last night. I started up a Crossbow Warrior with the intent of going down the path of trying the Warbringer Armor Explosion build. There was a build showcase three months ago circling around using the Warbringer armor break tech to cause screen wide explosions with a crossbow. It was one of those things that I kicked around the notion of starting, but never actually did. Since I appear to be in a Path of Exile mindset right now, rather than wasting my mojo in the real game… I figured I would pop into the sequel because playing any amount of that… is going to make playing POE1 feel amazing. All in all the leveling has been pretty smooth and I knocked out the first act last night. I would like to push this far enough to get to the point where the tech comes online and I can see how well it works.
However I am very much in this mindset of everything I am doing being very shallow and temporary. Goratha posted a build guide behind the Rolling Magma Mines concept which is worth checking out if you are interested in such nonsense. Right now at this moment I plan on doing a slams start and moving into Righteous Fire Chieftain when I can bring that online early in Act 2. I know that is the boring option… but also it is the predictable option and I know how to get it up and running and farming currency to do other things. There are a lot of builds that interest me, and I cleared out a bunch of available character slots last night so that I can create some of these fringe builds that interest me. I would rather do that from a stable place once I have unlocked my atlas and generated some currency, rather than trying to figure something out… getting frustrated… and then rolling a RF character later.
The post Holding For Trarthus appeared first on Tales of the Aggronaut.
Featuring: AmmosArt, Ashgar, Belghast, Kodra, Tamrielo, and Thalen
Hey Folks! We are down a Grace this week, but still end up filling up more than our normal slot full of nonsense. There is a big sale going on right now for Guild Wars 2, and if you have ever thought about checking it out, now is the time. The Nintendo Switch 2 was released, and we are all pretty happy with it so far, and was at least a MASSIVE upgrade over the OG launch Switch. We talk a bit about the Summer Games Fest… which we only found out this week was not plural… thanks to LRR. Tam and Bel have been playing the Dune headstart, and it is a wild gaming experience. Tam talks a short bit about TMNT Splintered Fate and Bel gives a heads up that Path of Exile 3.26 is coming next week.
