Featuring: Ammosart, Ashgar, Belghast, Grace, Kodra, Tamrielo, and Thalen
Hey Folks! It is that time again for our multi-part episode as we talk about the games that were important to us specifically during 2022. A bit of a reminder for anyone who has not heard one of these shows before, we are not necessarily only talking about games that were released in 2022. If we were late playing a game but it was extremely important to us, it might still get the nod here.
Something that is working slightly differently this year is generally speaking we record a marathon show that runs about 3-4 Hours and then I crudely carves it up into multiple shows. However, what happens is we have one show that is full of short topics and another show that has all of the long discussions. This year I sorted the list so we got a blend of single honorable mention picks and meaty multi-member picks in the same show. We are also recording it two weeks apart so none of us have to deal with the late night that this show always brought on.
Hopefully, the changes lead to a better listening experience. So in this episode, we are going to talk about the first half of our games of the year, and next week we will continue with the rest.
Brimstone Sands from New World on PC
Good Morning Friends! It has been a while since I have done one of these roundup posts but that is what you are in for this morning. Over in New World, I feel like I am running on fumes a bit. I do this thing where I get an idea in my head and then I obsess about that idea and when it is eventually accomplished… I end up fairly burned out as a result. My new world version of this was the gear farm series, and now that I have largely finished that… I am struggling to find my next goal. With the start of Winter Convergence, I ground up my faction and now in theory need to spend copious hours following the train and grinding tokens to get kitsch. I’ve also started Brimstone Sands for the first time and lord is that an interesting area. I think I need to just focus on questing out there to get my feet back under me and get to a place where I am deeply enjoying the game again.
Tequatl World Boss from Guild Wars 2 on PC
I’ve also been poking my head back into Guild Wars 2 again and while I am mostly rudderless there I am at least trying to get back in the habit of collecting my daily freebies. Occasionally I do so in a timely enough manner to be able to catch the 6 pm CST Tequatl. This is still my favorite event in the game and quite possibly the first thing I ever did that really sold me on the grandeur and possibility that group content can really have. I need to get back enough into the swing of things to start doing the meta for Cantha and get my siege turtle. I have been growing Kelp in my personal instance for a while now and am hoping that I have enough stockpiled to feed my babby turtle when I finally get one. I greatly appreciate the drop in/drop out nature of Guild Wars 2 and how I can spend an entire evening following the world boss train if I want to… or just not and that is also okay.
Elsweyr in The Elder Scrolls Online
I’ve been visiting The Elder Scrolls Online again and as much as I really want to get back into some questing there because I love the story… I am struggling with it a bit. Mentally I keep comparing the combat in ESO to that of New World and ESO keeps coming up on the losing end of that association. To be completely frank… combat in ESO feels sorta boring. It is a lot of light attacks and heavy attacks with a lowered emphasis on hitting abilities. The time to kill seems way too high for me to enjoyably rip through encounters. Granted I have always played a tank and maybe I should focus more on one of my other characters. That said I am not really sure that anything is going to feel great now that I have seen what a more action-oriented MMO can feel like. Like I am certain that the New World style of combat is not everyone’s jam, but the interplay between weapon abilities feels far better than what ESO is providing currently.
Pohx’s Righteous Fire Juggernaut build for Path of Exile
I think I have landed on the Righteous Fire Juggernaut for the Path of Exile league starts tomorrow. I contemplated a lot of things including a more spin-to-win style build of the cyclone that a friend shared with me. Righteous Fire is something I tried a few leagues back but never really converted from the leveling skill over to RF… which I think was a massive mistake on my part. I went off in my own direction because I happened to be enjoying the Wintertide Brand play style and should have actually tried the proper RF build instead. This time with a new take in the form of the Marauder version, I am going to give it my all and make sure I actually follow the guide completely. I might try Cyclone later in the league if I find myself wanting to do something else. Essentially Righteous Fire gameplay reminds me of another one of my favorite classes which is the Thorns Crusader.
User Interface overloaded with Spell Gems in Path of Exile on PC
There has been discussion about setting goals for a new Path of Exile league and I think my goal will be to stop picking up every spell gem I happen to see in my journies. I spent a while yesterday trying to organize my inventory and collapse some of my remove-only tabs into something that makes sense. Granted I will probably never actually play standard, but I hated leaving it in a total mess. For those unfamiliar when you end a league in PoE it gives you a copy of every tab from that season with the suffix (Remove Only). Basically, you can leave it alone indefinitely and to the best of my knowledge, GGG has never deleted these tabs. One of the suggestions I saw for dealing with them was to create a folder named after the league that just ended, and shovel all of the new remove-only tabs into it. I’ve more or less followed this idea with Maps being held out only because I want to convert them and store them when the new league begins. Others like Spell Gems I opted to dump into my inventory and then migrate over to the proper working tab.
I think I am as ready as I am ever going to be for Forbidden Sanctum. If you are planning on doing the league start either tomorrow or in the coming days, shoot me a note. I will be updating my where to find me page once I have my new set of characters.
The post Righteous Fire Juggernaut appeared first on Tales of the Aggronaut.
Featuring: Ammosart, Ashgar, Belghast, Kodra, and Thalen
Tonight we start off with an apology about missing last week due to severe weather. We did the thing where we accidentally talked about things we should have talked about on the show… and roll straight into a discussion about Drizzlewood and Living World Season 5. From there we talk a bit about the World of Warcraft Dragonflight announcement. This dives into a topic about how the failed state of Warcraft has helped so many games that are not Final Fantasy XIV and the odd thriving condition of legacy games. We talk a bit about Flowstone Saga and vampire Survivors. Then we dive into what ends up being a full spoiler discussion of Outriders that starts with some discussion about the expansion coming in June. We attempt to wrap things up with the Stanley Parable, but get into an offshoot at the end of the show about Marvel shows.
Topics Discussed
Guild Wars 2
Drizzlewood is Great
Chapter 5 of Living World 5 is NOT
World of Warcraft Dragonflight
WoW Failing Helped Everyone Out
Talk about various MMORPGs that are thriving right now
Featuring: Ashgar, Belghast, Kodra, Tamrielo, and Thalen
Hey Friends, it is time for a bit of real talk before I get into the podcast show notes. We had a discussion last night about whether or not we should talk about the horrific Blizzard situation on the show. I’ve made my comments pretty clear on my blog, but it also sorta felt gross and weird to engage in a conversation without anyone other than cisgender men. Real-world emergencies deprived us of both Ammo and Grace last night, and I hope both of those situations got better. It might come up again in the coming weeks but only if everyone on the show is up for talking about it.
As far as the topics we did discuss we talked a bit about Monster Hunter Stories 2 on the Nintendo Switch and how I apparently completely misunderstand the genre of that game. Tam talks a bit about returning to Star Trek Online years later and the pattern of play that the game has fallen into. We also go down a list of games that have quietly been holding on with a steady player base but get very little fanfare. Kodra talks about his experience streaming Celeste and invites everyone to participate in those streams. We close out the show with a discussion about Cyberpunk 2077 because Tam decided to give it a shot and Bel feels at least partially vindicated. It is a mixed bag of a game but an extremely interesting one.
