Good Morning Friends! Last night was absolutely a Last Epoch while listening to an audiobook and snuggling with cats type evening. I was not feeling great and I don’t think Josie has been either. She has been glued to me at every possible opportunity and even this morning she is already on the box beside me. As a result of this and the fact that Gracie was telling us it was bedtime at about 8:30 last night… I wound up going to bed significantly earlier than normal. This was probably a good call and other than waking up in the middle of the night to turn off the brightness of the muted television… I think I slept all of the ways through. My major accomplishment for last night is that I dinged 80 on my Necromancer which continues to feel pretty solid.
As far as the audiobook goes, I had originally intended to roll into the next book in the Iron Druid Chronicles series but wound up having the decision made for me. My hold for The Hunger of the Gods the next book in the series that I just finished the first book of came open. So I could either let it pass or roll on into this book knowing that my mind was already keyed up for that particular brand of norse nonsense. At this point, I am around 80% through the novel and should finish it up today… which I guess is a good thing because this morning I woke up to find that my hold for Legends & Lattes has just come open as well and I have three days to claim that. I suppose that my book nonsense is sorted for the next bit then, and that also probably means I am going to be playing a lot more Last Epoch given that ARPGs blend nicely with listening to an audiobook.
At this point, I am working on my fifth monolith. At some point, I should go back to the previous monoliths and unlock those while the experience gained from them would still be reasonable. Essentially when you get the endgame after defeating the boss of the first Monolith you are presented with a choice. Do you go down the level 62 monolith path or down the 66 monolith path? I went down the 66 path and then once I got to the level 75 monolith I was presented with another choice… whether or not to fight and ultimately kill Architect Liath. I did not realize this was making a path choice, because I decided to let her go which led me to the level 80 monolith. Had I chosen to fight and kill her I would have gotten the 85 monolith… but even though I made this decision it seems to have only delayed my progress not changed it significantly as I am now working on the 85 monolith.
Last night I began work on Reign of Dragons which is the level 85 web of echoes and I am nearing the point where I can challenge the boss. Ultimately I have decided that my preferred method for doing a monolith is to fill the bar, and then run through all of the quest’s echoes in order rather than filling to a quest echo and doing it, then filling again and doing the next one. Essentially my general path through an echo is to look for resource nodes, key nodes, and anything that rewards idols or set/unique items. Ultimately you end up having to take some of the crappier gold or rare item nodes in order to connect the dots to some of the nodes you actually want. Ace is already through the first pass of the monoliths and on to Empowered Monoliths so I am trying to play a bit of catch-up.
So I did a thing yesterday that was completely unplanned. I realized I had been talking about what I was not enjoying about Diablo IV Beta, but not really giving many examples of the sorts of things that I do enjoy. As a result, I recorded a quick video of me playing through a Monolith Echo and kind of talking through the process as I did it. It has been a really long time since I last recorded a video, but I think it came together well enough. I will never be a YouTuber in earnest, but I do like occasionally recording videos to share with my friends in order to illustrate a point. Some people write blog posts to back up their videos… and I record videos to back up my blog posts. It wildly has gotten quite a few views over the last twenty-four hours… at least a lot for one of my videos.
The post Reign of Dragons appeared first on Tales of the Aggronaut.
Good Morning Friends. This past weekend was the Open Beta for Diablo IV and since my friend Ace was going to give it a spin, I thought I would try out the Necromancer. That gameplay is something that I have enjoyed greatly in other games, so I figured it was worth a shot here as well. At this point, I have leveled Barbarian and Necromancer both to 25, and they were wildly different experiences. Necromancer felt pretty solid and honestly a bit on the grossly overpowered side, and Barbarian felt like I had made a mistake at the character selection screen. You would think that the Necromancer would have improved my opinions of Diablo IV, but in truth, it didn’t because there is something intangibly wrong with this game and it is almost impossible to put my finger on it.
I thought it was just me honestly. I thought maybe I was struggling to grasp the brilliance of this game. Then Ace played it and had some of the exact same comments. There was a side thread going on over slack about how they felt like the game just was wrong, that there was something not right with the combat, and that they could not put their finger on it either. I’ve tried to give you a close approximation over my several posts about Diablo IV… but none of them really explain the totality of the experience. The thing is… the game that is there seems to be what a lot of players wanted. I’m seeing quite a few comments showing up in my threads about how much they enjoyed the experience. I did not. I stopped playing a little way into Saturday because after hitting 25… I just felt like I didn’t care enough to keep playing. I had accomplished the ephemeral goal I had for the weekend which was maxing out the Necromancer and was largely done with the game after that.
I contemplated trying out the Druid, because that is another class I have liked quite a bit in the past and wished that Diablo 3 got. However, after watching this video from Wudijo… I decided against it. All signs point to the Druid feeling even worse than the Barbarian did. I think maybe my general takeaway is that much like Path of Exile… playing melee is arguably the wrong choice. The players that opted to play the Sorceror or the Necromancer had pretty good experiences. Playing a ranged rogue was fine, but was not really doing it for me in the way that the Demon Hunter did in Diablo III. Though honestly, it seems like a lot of people liked the sluggish gameplay because to them it felt more weighty and meaningful. For me, it just felt like a game from a different genre than the one I was wanting to play. I said this on the podcast but had I not been gifted a copy of Diablo IV, I would have absolutely made the decision to just pass this game up until a year or so after launch. I feel like there are more issues with the game than three months can solve.
Really stupid thing that pissed me off. This screen. When you exit the tutorial you are given a prompt to buy the game. When you finish the campaign… you are yet again given a prompt to buy the game. I own a copy of the game. In fact, I own the granddaddy super mega package for the game, because my benefactor was overly generous. I feel sort of awful not liking the game knowing how much they spent on it. Doesn’t Blizzard have the tech to be able to detect if someone owns a valid license to the game or not? Because that seems like a relatively trivial check. If I already own the game… stop showing me a billboard in the game.
Honestly, I think the problem really is me and my expectations. I am too ingrained in the culture of the ARPG game to accept this MMORPG as the next Diablo game. Had I been someone who played through Diablo III once, and then showed up to play this game… I probably would have been extremely happy with what I saw. It would have been a better-looking game that has the window dressing of a franchise that I remember fondly. However, I have expectations of what it should be based on what I have experienced from games that have moved on past Diablo and created honestly better experiences. So a key example of expectations biting me in the ass is with the World Boss. When you say that, I picture the deep mechanical feasts that are the world bosses and meta bosses of Guild Wars 2 that feature 50 players. What we got instead was a 10-player limited instance featuring a bag of hit points with three mechanics that all one-shot you if you failed any of them. It felt awful and was so much less than what I was expecting as the bare minimum.
So instead of playing any more of Diablo IV after I finished up with Ace on Saturday afternoon… I went back to Last Epoch a game that is making me extremely happy. I’ve since moved on to the level 80 monolith after fighting my way through the annoying revamp of Lagon at the end of the level 75 monolith. Ace is far enough ahead of me to now be on empowered monoliths, so I am trying to catch up. Slowly bit by bit I am replacing gear that I had held onto for far too long, and that is making me feel more powerful as a result.
When I got to the level 75 Monolith I started saving all of my level 75 chest pieces and then using the stockpile of runes that turn an item into a random unique for that slot. There is a new unique chest that went in with the 0.9 patches called Aaron’s Will, named after the content creator behind the Action RPG channel on youtube. Essentially it makes it so you can no longer summon Skeletal Warriors/Archers and instead for every 4 warriors you can summon, it gives you an additional full sized full strength Bone Golem.
So now I am running around with two giant Pyre Bone Golems, that do stupid amounts of AOE fire damage… and the game feels amazing. Like it felt good before now, but after swapping things out it feels dumb in the best of ways. It also meant that I dropped Skeletons since that didn’t really do me much good and let me pick back up Dread Shade again. I had a blast last night chipping away at the level 80 monolith. I ended up killing the Shade of Orobyss without realizing what I was doing… and now have +5% corruption on all of my maps. I think I am stepping away from Diablo IV and the rhetoric surrounding it because clearly, it was not making me happy. Instead, I am focusing on the things that are making me happy and just moving on with life. If you enjoyed Diablo IV, then awesome. I hope it has a very smooth launch. I hope the next few months turn it into exactly the game you want it to be. For me, I think it is too far off the mark to really salvage.
The post Necros and Pyre Golems appeared first on Tales of the Aggronaut.
Good Morning Friends! Last night other than my habitual Tequatl was pretty much a night devoted to Last Epoch. While I have run up a Paladin to 68, there is some stuff about the build that I am not really feeling. So much of it depends on Shield Charge and right now with the movement abilities and rubberbanding… it just sort of feels janky. I think once Shield Charge is as smooth in this game as it is in Path of Exile, I will probably return to the build and enjoy it quite a bit. For now, I have shifted focus back to the class that I played during the test builds, the Acolyte turned Necromancer. Last night I finished the story that exists currently and began working on the Monolith in earnest.
I’ve been mostly following this Fire Necromancer build which I believe originally came from Aaron of the Action RPG channel on YouTube. Ultimately it shifts your Skeletal Mages, Bone Golem, and Exploding Zombies into fire damage and then buffs everything with Dread Shade and gives you permanent Wraiths. Aaron has a unique in the game now that is designed to go with this sort of build, and when you find it you can shift up a little bit and go into a build that can give you up to 4 full-size Bone Golems. I think that is my ultimate hope to find Aaron’s Will and shift into that sort of a setup.
At the moment I am just not really feeling Dread Shade. Like I get that this is probably the superior choice for the build because its aura buffs everything… including me. The problem is… I just can’t afford to stand anywhere near my pack of horrible children. This means that the Dread Shade isn’t of much actual benefit to my survival. I also keep forgetting to resummon it, because it disappears periodically when whatever it was attached to dies or when I shift zones. Since I don’t get an actual minion icon for it in the same row as the rest of my minions… I keep forgetting about it meaning that I am getting zero benefits from it most of the time.
Instead, I have decided to shift things up a bit and drop Dread Shade and pick back up Skeletons. I ran a Monolith this morning and managed to get enough points to make them useful. Essentially I am bouncing around to pick up all of the bonus skeletons, and then Dread Phalanx which makes them stronger but cuts the number I can summon in half, and Shambling Steel which makes them all melee. Combined this gives me four beefy melee characters that are pretty freaking fast… not as fast as my exploding zombies but still able to soak up any threats that are headed directly at me. This is ultimately what I did on the test realm and after switching it up, the build already feels comfier.
So at any given time, I have nineteen horrible children following me around. The full list includes:
1 – Bone Golem
3 – Skeletal Mage Pyromancers
4 – Skeletal Dread Phalanx
2 – Perm Wraiths
6 – Exploding Zombies (this is my spam ability)
3 – Skeleton Vanguard
This will in theory go up significantly when I pick up Aaron’s Will and can start fielding multiple bone golems on the field at once. In testing, I took the trait line that split my golem in half and gave me two less effective ones, and I did not go down that direction because when I did get multiple golems… I want them all to be the big tanky boys that I have currently.
What I need to work on more desperately now is my survivability. I am exceptionally squishy and failed a monolith echo last night for the first time in a while. Essentially if you look at my resists… they are pretty pathetic and the total lack of any physical resist and poison resist means that when one of those hits me… it effectively one-shots me. Having more bodies on the field to soak up more hate definitely helps, but I still keep to chain potions during dicey situations to keep standing which is not a position I want to be in long term. Part of the problem is I am still wearing some items from around level 6… so I hope as I dive further into the monolith I will start finally finding some reasonable upgrades.
I’ve realized that I am apparently in the minority in my feelings regarding Diablo IV. This is honestly probably a good thing because I want that game to be something that most people are going to enjoy. Personally, I think Last Epoch is more my speed. I do plan on giving it another shot over the weekend when the open beta happens and maybe trying a slightly different Barbarian build. I do want to try playing with some friends to see how the D4 group game feels. However, for me, the mix of Last Epoch and Guild Wars 2 seems to work extremely well. I still need to try some of the dungeons in Last Epoch. I’ve been stockpiling keys for a theoretical future date when I grab a friend and do them. Since they are a limited resource, it feels like I almost need to save them like I would a puzzle ring from Diablo III. Additionally the later I wait to run them, the better the rewards will likely be.
The post Enter Dread Phalanx appeared first on Tales of the Aggronaut.
I have this weird superstition when it comes to computers. I will never name the same build the same thing twice. It is almost as though each machine that gets a fresh install is its own “being”, because yes I suffer from the personification of machinery. Generally speaking, the machine gets named after something that I am engaged with at the time. My current gaming desktop is named NormandySR2 and my laptop is named NightCity. My gaming desktop before that was named Serenity, and when I rebuilt the gaming desktop before that into a Plex Server I named it Merigold as I was playing through Witcher 2 and 3 at the time and Triss is legitimately the correct choice. Over the weekend that machine gave up the ghost, and while I could potentially resurrect it with a new system build… I’ve decided to move on. Another proud tradition of mine is to turn my previous gaming desktop into my new “fuck around and find out” system. Merigold was my old AMD FX-6300-based system and when I upgraded to my current i7-10700K-based system a few years ago, I left my previous x99-based i7-5820k system largely sitting there dormant.
The plan is to build this into a Linux Mint based system. Why that distro? Largely it is a case of comfort and familiarity. I’ve built up a few past laptops using it and felt good about it. In theory, I could just run a more server-ly distribution on it, but I often like to use this machine as a secondary desktop. I’ve always built my second machine as a Windows machine, so this is going to be a bit of a first for me. This is going to mean that I will be using Linux a heck of a lot more than I normally do. For decades I’ve had a Linux box as a “toy” machine, that I fiddle with for a few days and then forget about it… and by the time I need it again, I often burn it down and start from scratch. The fediverse however has immersed me more into open source culture… and I am thinking it might be time to test drive actually running one of my primary machines as Linux. I mean I will still likely run Plex on it, but I am also really interested in trying to figure out the best use of it as a remote machine given that I never actually use my second machine with a proper monitor/keyboard/mouse. Previously I had used Parsec as my remote tool of choice, but there is no Linux hosting option for that sadly. In the short term, I will probably use VNC, which I have never loved… but it is functional and easy enough to set up.
I popped in for a little bit yesterday before Diablo IV Beta came to a close and finished leveling to 25, the level cap for that test. I am still a bit “up in my feels” about what I really think about that game. I was honestly not expecting “Blizzard Does Lost Ark” and since I bounced so phenomenally hard from that game I guess I understand the dissonance that I am going through regarding that. Diablo Immortal is also somewhat of a version of that experience, and I liked it just fine because I entered into that with very low expectations. Diablo IV however had been a game I had whether or not I wanted to… been pinning my hopes on as the last chance for Blizzard to really grab me. I’ve always cared far more about the Diablo franchise than anything else that the company has put out, and slowly over the years, I have peeled away from the other franchises. I did not really want to also feel like I had moved on past Diablo as well. I mean I have a copy of it now, so I might sit and watch and see what it evolves into over time.
The experience of the Diablo IV Beta has had the effect of causing me to pour my heart and soul back into Last Epoch. This is honestly the sort of experience I was hoping Diablo IV was going to be. For all of the talk of a return to Diablo 2 from the devs… I sort of expected something that would straddle the gap between Path of Exile and Diablo 3. That is ultimately what Last Epoch feels like, a happy medium between those two games. I got my Sentinel/Paladin up to fairly high levels and while I enjoy it… I also was not really feeling it. So instead this weekend I started pushing up my Necromancer and have now almost gotten up to the same levels that I was sitting at on my Paladin. I’ve not started the Monoliths yet but am working my way through the final chapter of content that is currently in the game. I think I have effectively a fully fleshed-out “kit” at this point and it is just a matter of getting levels and getting better gear.
I’ve also been spending a fair amount of time in Guild Wars 2. Here is one of those Legendary bosses that I compared Diablo IV bosses to. I legitimately hate the Legendary rogues that spawn after you have defeated a Champion rogue. I largely stick around to help fight them because they are such pains in the butt… and I know they can wipe an entire field’s worth of unsuspecting open-world players. It always feels like I spend most of my time resurrecting other players. It is more a case that I don’t want to damn anyone to do this horrible encounter alone, as opposed to actually wanting to fight it myself. That is the weird thing about Guild Wars 2… it makes me want to take action to help other players because it seems like it is the right and proper thing to do. I have a post in me about how Guild Wars 2 is the best game that the mainstream isn’t taking seriously… but that is going to have to wait for another day. The annoying thing about Guild Wars 2 is that it is so good… that it turns players into evangelists for it… which only ends up pissing off the unindoctrinated.
So the goal for today is to finish the installation of whatever I end up naming the new box. I spent most of yesterday furiously copying files from a machine that I have not touched in two years… and probably didn’t actually need anything from… but felt like I had to back up “just in case”. I’m currently running it off the bootable image and am just about ready to do the proper install. Linux “live” images are really a godsend, especially given that they just sort of “work” now to let you copy files off an otherwise dead system. That whole world has evolved so far since the first time I installed RedHat in the late 90s.
The post Goodbye Merigold appeared first on Tales of the Aggronaut.
