Hey Folks. I’m still on my Destiny Rising bullshit, I think in large part because I don’t really have another game to obsess about. That is going to change a bit towards the end of this month because I will have the first part of the latest Guild Wars 2 expansion to play (28th), and then a brand new Path of Exile league following closely after that (31st). I will likely be ping ponging between those games, while still doing my dailies in Destiny Rising from that point forward. That probably means that I will let the second account that I rolled up to create the guild lapse a bit, because I won’t be mainlining the game quite so hard. I did however give them some more money and bought the Crow outfit for Helhest because I still think it is badass.
The biggest news since yesterday is that I managed to push Helhest up to gold rank which unlocked another significant boost to exotic mod drop rates. That really is the piece that I need to focus on farming right now. I have decent artifacts for most of my champions, but have next to nothing in the exotic mod department. I did manage to get a single pierce exotic mod that would work for Hellhest’s linear fusion rifle, and that was the thing that pushed me over the light cap for gold. The champion that I am probably going to work on next is either pushing Umeko up to Gold, or spending some time focusing on Ning Fei because after getting him on my second account… I’ve come to realize that I actually really like playing him. Umeko is probably my favorite pure sniper though, because of the self healing benefits. However if I need to take a precision champion somewhere… I am probably going to be playing Helhest for the broader versatility.
Speaking of the second account, over lunch I tried to run a bunch of gauntlet ops, and ran into some friction. This is the first time in the community I have been kicked from a group… seemingly because I had low light levels. It happened twice while trying the run the Gauntlet Break In part of the raid. The irony behind this is that in the teams that I managed to get into… I dusted them hard, and was one of the key players doing the mechanics. More so I ran a strike with Ning Fei and was less than half the light level of the other players… but did 71% of the damage. Please for the love of god.. do not judge players for being new lights, because sure everyone wants an easy run… but there are a ton of folks running second accounts in this game and you can never tell when that new light might be a ringer. Additionally it is just a dick move to try and be exclusionary like that.
Part of what has made my alt Ning Fei so powerful so quickly, is that I managed to get the exotic crossbow to drop as well. That account is shaping up to be pretty freaking strong with both Jolder and Ning Fei. Hopefully I can pull a Helhest while this event is still going on. It sucks that it will be a long time before it has access to Gwynn or Estela since those banners are over. I am guessing when the new content goes in early next year hinted in that trailer, that Gwynn and Estela might be joining the permanent banner at that point. I am still having a lot of fun with Destiny Rising, even though I know I am probably switching gears especially when the Path of Exile and Guild Wars 2 expansions drop.
Speaking of which we have a name for the expansion, a theme for the expansion, and a reveal date of the 23rd. Keepers of the Flame seems like maybe this is going to relate to the Acolyte of Chayula from Path of Exile II. Then the theme of the expansion feels like it is going to be Breach focused, and maybe a significant upgrade to the way that it works. The hand jump scare, specially looks like the hand shaped “wings” on the back of Xesht who serves as the boss of Breach in Path of Exile II. I think essentially, we are seeing more content that knits the storyline between the two games together a bit, and maybe serves as a gap closer between the events and organizations that appear in the 20 year gap. It That Fled, one of the Betrayal NPCs specifically talks about the Hive, so yeah…. it feels like we are getting a Breach upgrade league. It does make me wonder how sweeping of a change it is going to end up being.
Additionally there are going to be some sweeping changes coming to Diablo IV. It feels like we JUST started Season 10, and that it is way too soon to begin talking about Season 11… but apparently they are just about to start up the PTR on October 21st. Due to this they dropped some big patch notes, and Raxx also released a video talking about them. I am seeing some things that will probably be really good for the game, namely changes to how Masterworking and Tempering functions to be a bit more deterministic. They are however talking about making combat harder… which worries me because really the point of a Diablo game is getting to a place where you can blow up entire screens. The game itself is not mechanically enjoyable enough to really lean into the soulslike direction like Path of Exile II did. However that said… I am not even sure what sort of unique niche this game can carve out. It will always be a shallower version of better games like Path of Exile or Last Epoch, because it is not growing over time.
Don’t get me wrong. Diablo IV is a pretty good game. It is fun in small doses, but there just isn’t really a lot going on… and they are squandering the seasonal model to keep creating thoroughly disposable content. Each season comes with a new borrowed power system, and a new faction to grind… which gives you rewards that will all be washed away the next time a season rolls out. Last Epoch and Path of Exile 1/2 create permanent changes to the game that grow the depth and complexity each time a season/league happens. Not everything goes “core”, but enough does that it makes the game feel like it is growing and changing in interesting ways. Diablo IV more or less feels the same today as it did at the launch of its DLC… because there is nothing really new to do that did not go in with that DLC. Sure they have moved the chess pieces around on the board, by shifting this or that balance…. but at the end of the day you still have to grind the same endgame that existed a year ago when Vessel of Hatred launched. We are about to be eleven seasons deep into this franchise and have very little to show for it. I think more than anything… the game disappoints me, because it could be a better game than it is now.
The other thing that I am playing that I have not really talked much about is Bravely Default, on my Switch 2 hooked to my new television downstairs. This is a super chill activity that I often do when I am winding down for the night, and at the moment I am largely in Act 2 and grinding levels right in front of Ancheim. At some point I am going to swap up the jobs of everyone so that they can learn a second trait line. Currently I have Edea as Knight, Tiz as Monk, Agnes as White Mage, and Ringabel as Black Mage… and I am going to swap my two martial fighters and my two magic users so they are cross trained. I find grinding levels in turn based JRPGs deeply relaxing, and especially since this one has an auto mode where you can set up a set of attacks and just have them follow them over and over. I am not really sure what level I am going to call “good enough” to move forward, but right now I am mostly farming until I have enough gold to buy all of the upgrades available in town. I like overpowering content, and do not really want to have to think about it.
Anyways. I hope you all have a wonderful weekend. It is supposed to be cooler again, so I will likely be working on the south half of the garage. Once I have finished with everything I will probably post before and after photos. It was a complete mess, and it is becoming less of one, every time I go out there and work.
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Good Morning Folks. This most important thing that I do every day… is find one of the cats in Haven and figure out what fish it wants to eat. This is harder than it sounds… because you are having to translate what is often poorly translated features… and then playing a guessing game as to what exactly a “Plump Fish” is. Whoever added this feature to the game is delightful… because they fucking nailed this feature. The cat “chirps” are on point… and enough so that if I were not playing with headphones it would freak my cats out. I don’t love the fishing mini game… but I keep doing it so I can make sure I have the right fish that these adorable darlings want on a given day. Please note… the gift that they give me back… is in no way actually worth doing this thing. I just get brief sparks of joy from feeding these virtual cats.
Ace and I made a date to meet up last night and burn through some of our challenge keys. When you get deep into this game you can access much harder versions of existing content, and one of the things we had never participated in was “Master” difficulty of Gauntlet Blitz. Now the normal version of Gauntlet Blitz is generally a pretty chill activity, one you can absolutely complete without much issue using a group of bots. Master difficulty however does not exist with bots… and apparently few people are trying to run it. So we started this madness with just us attempting to learn the mechanics and slowly over time more people joined in until we finally had five players. There were these crazy singularities that would spawn… and slowly pull us in so we had to stop everything we were doing and dps them down to keep from getting instagibbed. This made the entire experience way more stressful… but also way more enjoyable. I would love to do this content with a full group of people I know.
One of the cool features of the game is that you can borrow characters from your friends, so it is actually pretty beneficial to friend random players who perform well in content with you. I have a well geared Helhest, but I noticed that Ace’s was a bit higher than mine so I borrowed her for an attempt at a Challenge Difficulty version of the Legendary Campaign. Side note… this apparently DOES not count for any of the objectives on your ascendancy. I made decent time, and did not take any deaths… but did not get credit towards her “do challenge legendary campaign without dying”. So seemingly if you borrow a character it will not count towards your achievement unlocks. Mostly just throwing this out there so someone does not get disappointed like I did.
Speaking of Helhest, I completed another phase of her story and I am really enjoying this particular plot thread. Spoilers ahead so be warned if you care about such things. Destiny 1/2 players have a long relationship with Mara Sov the Queen of the reef, this story-line deeply involves her and what appears to be an AI Consciousness backup known as the White Queen. Helhest in her pre-resurrection life was a Crow, and specifically a Crow tasks with hunting down the White Queen and assassinating her and anyone guarding her. I’ve always thought the whole memory wipe that comes with resurrection as a lightbearer an interesting part of this whole setting. I remember they brought back Mara Sov’s brother as a Guardian in Destiny 2… and that felt weird… considering how icky and awful he was during his normal life. So this is a similar story thread, and it is interesting unpacking Helhest’s former life.
Being completely honest. Helhest is the first time I have been tempted to give them money for the cosmetic outfit set. The crow outfit looks fucking badass. Thing is I really like this character and it is probably going to be my primary arc damage character that I run. I am working on pushing her light levels up, and will probably spend my stamina to run a bunch of chaos trials today in order to try and get a full set of exotic artifacts for her. Once I have that, I should be able to push the light levels up to a sufficient place, and if I get the rare runestones from the wheel of fortune event I should be able to complete gold this week/weekend. The game just keeps throwing discounts at me… which I know is the trap that they keep hoping I will spend more money. However like I said I am legitimately considering picking up this sweet outfit.
We got a teaser trailer dropped for where the story is going… and I am pumped, other than the whole “Coming in 2026” part. The game really needs to drop some more story content soon. In theory we will have another season between now and then, because the Season of Daybreak is coming to a close soon. So I am hoping with it comes another destination and maybe some more activities. However I am pumped that we are at least leaving the planet at some point, because the teaser trailer shows a spaceship. I am hoping this game gets a version of the Dreadnaught from Destiny 1, because that was one of my favorite environments to explore. I loved all of the weird unlocks and jumping puzzles and ended up getting us our first sword if I am remembering correctly. I love the Hive and the nonsense of Oryx, Savathuun, and Xivu Arath… and we have already seen that Crota exists in this setting which means Oryx likely does as well.
I wish the whole mobile nature of the game was not a massive turn off to most folks. It is shockingly good, and for a gacha game it is weirdly fair about its spending. In a worst case scenario, if you the the worst possible luck… just the act of pulling a new character is at most around $50. However I have never made it all of the way to pity once… before getting a new character. So far with Helhast I have had outrageous luck and pulled 3 copies of her just using my banked up resources. I am continuing to pull on that banner as I get free currency because I am wondering just how many stars I can unlock before that banner ends. This is putting me in a bad position for the next banner… but like I said, I really like this character.
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Good Morning Folks. Yesterday I took the day off and it was needed. I didn’t really get much of anything accomplished, but after yesterday’s emotional blog post… and tears that followed… I think I just needed a day to fall apart. I spent a good chunk of the day playing Destiny Rising. If you have ever loved Destiny at any point in its history, you owe it to yourself to check this game out. While I have spent money on my main account, I have created an alt account that is entirely free to play, and quite honestly… I have plenty of good stuff to make playing that account enjoyable. It has been interesting to see how fast I can progress it through the ranks and am already up to heroic content. Which means that I get to have the exciting grind of collecting all of the mythic weapons all over again. Over on my main account I am mostly spending my time learning Helhest, the new Arc champion and think I am going to add her to my more focused lineup since I already have Jolder to represent Void, and Estela to represent Fire.
The biggest news from yesterday is that we managed to get the Greysky Armada guild online in Destiny Rising. You’ve likely heard me complaining about the process of creating a guild… and it is in fact even more onerous than I expected. Firstly everyone has to be available during a 24 hour period to join the guild, and has to leave their existing packs before they can even be invited. I am not sure if extended friendships are not important to the Chinese player base… but every single one of these mobile games has an awful guild system. In AFK Journey you get thrown on random servers and can ONLY ever invite people from that random server. We cheated in getting this guild off the ground when Ace and I realized that we could easily create alt accounts. With our alts and a handful of people actively playing , we managed to get the guild up and running and actually leveled it up the first time and upgraded the hangar to level 2. If you are playing this game and a reader of this blog, feel free to join the guild.
I am pretty pleased with our progress for a single day of doing pack hunt. Granted this was swapping between two accounts and running missions to uncover more ground. Essentially I was trying to find one of the strongholds, because I have never actually managed to do one of those and thought maybe with a guild of people I actually know I might be able to arrange a time when we could have three people on at the same time. The mountain ranges are somewhat infuriating because you have a bunch of highlighted areas around the map, and inevitably you will run into a wall that is not passable that will cause you to waste a bunch of turns. Sadly the community has not figured out the pattern to these maps so it isn’t like the Labyrinth in Path of Exile where you can see where you are going each week. You sort of have to just poke around in the darkness trying to find resources.
In other news, I managed to get the currency needed to push Estela up to gold and clear the logjam that was halding my ascendancy points. So I went immediately from 24 to 30, and have since pushed it up to 31. Right now I am working on getting Helhest up to gold, but have quite a bit of work left to go on her. I knocked out Silver on her last night, and am working on farming a set of exotic artifacts so that I can properly equip her. I am not sure if I can just do the equip highest and get her past the hurdle or not. I essentially need another round of the rare materials in order to push her up to gold anyways, so I am likely going to be in a holding pattern for a bit. I might start working on some of the other characters and knocking out bronze and silver so that I can get more points and raise my ascendancy level up a bit while I am waiting.
I’ve continued pulling on the Helhest banner since I like the character so much, hoping to get more copies and ultimately more talent tree points. This has led to an abomination… and I now have a 6 star version of Finnala. Like there is nothing inherently wrong with Finnala, she just does not have that great of a kit. She is ultimately a less useful version of Wolf, and the big problem I have with her is that she has no range abilities. This means that you are essentially left in the dust while running content on her because Destiny Rising is like every other game where you do the same content over and over… and it is go go go go go. She is perfectly cromulent for doing content planet side, and that is honestly have I have ranked up most of her reputation doing dailies, because she is really good when it requires fire stuff.
Speaking of abominations… we finally got our Trikora match and it was just as hilarious as we expected it to be. We honestly did better than I expected, but due to seemingly no one queuing for shifting sands, we ended up in there with two human teams, and everything else bots. We did fairly well and I think we placed second overall, but it was a massive difference between playing against human players and bots. The bots were way more aggressive… and actively tried to hunt us down constantly… but were also sort of dumb. The one time we ran into a human team unprepared we were quickly wiped. However we wrecked the bots in pretty much every encounter. This is a bad ideas match up…. but was super funny to play through.
Mostly right now I am going to be playing a lot of Helhest so that I can unlock the last bits of her storyline. So far I really like it and she is one of the more interesting characters in the game. I legitimately like her both in her skill set and the story that is being told. I think this was also part of the reason why I bonded with Estela so hard, is because the story that was being told was actually really good. Helhest would be better if you did not have to keep resummoning the drones… but then again they probably learned their lesson with Estela. The little manta ray things that she summons are constantly running ahead of the players and clearing objectives before anyone has a chance to get to them. Helhest though is a beast when it comes to a burn phase because pending she has all three drones up… you can just wreck a boss big time. This is absolutely my sniper of choice going forward, and I have contemplated burning down Umeko just to get the resources back to spend them on Helhest.
Anyways. Destiny Rising is fucking great. You should check it out, and when you do… join our guild. Legitimately though, if you ever enjoyed Destiny at some point in the past, you are going to love this game. I personally find it way more enjoyable than Destiny ever was. I just hope we get some more world content soon at the end of this season.
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Good Morning Friends. The Settlers of Kalguur league is finally over… and I have never been so happy to see a league go. Don’t get me wrong… I loved the Settlers league, but also did not expect it to last over 300 days. It also had some really hype league events like the Phrecia league, which honestly should have been its own thing. During this one league I competed in two different Pohx leagues, a Sir Gog league, and the Phrecia league… so when I just attempted to wrangle my stash it was pure madness. I did the traditional thing of just shoving all of those remove-only tabs into a tab labelled “Settlers” but even that felt insufficient given that there were four different event leagues that got lumped into that same banner. I’ve been out of Path of Exile just long enough… to now be feening to get back into it and tackle a brand new league when it launches on Friday.
The new league looks amazing, and while it is very much focused on additional pinnacle content… there is more than enough other things going on that someone like myself who is traditionally not bossing motivated can enjoy. I will miss Atlas Memories a bit, but honestly… unless I needed a specific resource I never ran them. My favorite one was the one that made Alva spawn adds in the map instead of forcing you to dip into her incursions. I’ve always wished that was an Atlas keystone, that then just caused Alva to drop random temples. Traditionally I skip that mechanic entirely in most leagues because I hate the time pressure aspect of having to dip into the temples. What we are getting instead looks even more interesting and hopefully the new gear that comes with it will be worth the effort. Let’s not get it twisted however… I am more than likely going to be running Delve like normal, and the fact that we no longer need Betrayal to get crafts means I can start with a comfortable crafting Niko and Harvest Atlas.
There has been enough of a shake up in the meta that I am interested in looking at some other builds. I am doubtful I will actually league start anything but my beloved Righteous Fire… but I do feel like this is probably going to be a league where I have a bunch of alternate builds. The first one that seems interesting is Explosive Trap Trickster. During the first Pohx League I started an Ice Trap of Hollowness Trickster and had a heck of a lot of fun with it. In truth it was a damned good build and while the Trickster ate some minor nerfs it should be just fine. It did however make me interested in exploring some of the other Traps on Trickster concepts and Explosive Trap is already fun on its own. The original Ice Trap Trickster build was from Aero and if you are interested in it I suggest checking out his video. This is where I ended up with my POB on that build if you are curious.
Wintertide Brand got some buffs with the patch notes, and it has once again made me consider playing something around that skill. I love the Brand gameplay and Wintertide is probably my favorite of all of the available options. Storm Brand of Indecision is pretty fun, but there is nothing more comfortable than the chill and freeze lifestyle. This morning I saw the above build concept float across my feed on bluesky, and it seems like a reasonable option for a Wintertide start. The concept here is to use the new major buffs to golems and Elementalist node to pick up some survival and damage output for cold dot. I am not really sure if this is the sort of thing that I would want to league start, but I can absolutely see myself trying to make something around Wintertide brand work during this league as an alt build.
Champion got some massive buffs and I have been trying to sort out what I would want to play with it. There are a few options floating about, but this one from Woolie is basically just a true Cyclone build… not a cast on channeling Cyclone. I’ve never actually played Cyclone in any form, and I have always loved spin to win builds in other games… specifically Whirlwind in Diablo III and Warpath in Last Epoch. On some level I feel like I might owe it to myself to go down this rabbit hole and see what it feels like. Champion is already an ascendancy that I have built many different characters on over the years and they switched it away from generic damage to focused more on banners and melee hit damage… so with Lightning Strike eating a massive nerf you have to figure out a better vehicle for that. This is probably the closest thing to getting me to start something other than Righteous Fire. The only thing keeping me from doing it… is this is not a resolute technique build and I hate fucking around with accuracy bullshit.
Another thing that I am really interested in is some of the reworks for Saboteur. Essentially they can now get an ascendancy node that is effectively a weakened version of the Nimis Ring. Shrapnel Specialist causes projectiles to have a 50% chance to return to you, and projectiles to be fired in random directions. So essentially you need a mine or a trap that throws out projectiles… but that you would not care about them firing in unpredictable directions. From the Trap side of things I am thinking Lightning Trap might work well. From the mine side I am thinking either Rolling Magma converted to a mine as seen above or potentially Pyroclast Mine of Sabotage. This is a little too fringe for me to ever consider starting it, because quite honestly… I want to be able to look at POE.Ninja and see how well this is working and what sort of concoctions folks end up doing with it. It is still an interesting concept that I can’t seem to dislodge from my brain. The biggest problem that I have is that I have never really liked the Mines play style.
Being perfectly honest with myself… I am 99.9% likely to just start Righteous Fire again because it is comfortable and reliable. I’ve done it in trade and in an SSF environment and can pretty much get up and running without any issues and be capable of doing around 200 depth in Delve quickly. The main thing that I will be doing differently is that I hate muling a witch to get Rolling Magma as Pohx suggests, and am just going to do slams until I can turn on Righteous Fire in Act 2. During the SirGog Gauntlet league I went with a strength stacking slam character and my early tree was almost indistinguishable from the general RF tree up until the point you can take it. It felt way more comfortable to slam and shield charge my way around the zones than trying to get perfect bounces from rolling magma and fire wall. So instead I will do Ground Slam to Sunder and then use Crushing Fist with retaliation procs for single target damage. I will have to be on the look out for the correct colors on bases for the swap to Righteous Fire in early Act 2, but that should not really be much of an issue. My first pick ups will be an Cloak of Flame and Immortal Flesh and then hopefully I get some good fire resistance drops to see me cruising into maps and delve depths.
I am soooo ready to be back in Path of Exile and excited for a new league. I’ve missed this and I am pretty amped if Grinding Gear Games can really hit the target schedule that they have planned. Essentially every four months a Path of Exile league and the between months… will be a new Path of Exile II league. Hopefully given enough time POE2 will turn into something that I actually enjoy. Right now it just isn’t there for me, but given enough time cooking there might be an enjoyable game there. I think the challenge for me is that I am a mapper and delver… and just do not care about boss fights. POE2 is a game for people who care about boss fights. I like playing near immortal characters that can steam roll content and collect the shiny loot. I will always optimize the difficulty out of whatever games I play… and I am hoping that at some point there is a path for me in that game. For now though… I am looking forward to getting back into Path of Exile and grinding.
I have a whole slew of audiobooks lined up to listen to while I grind. Are you going to be checking out Path of Exile 3.26? If so what are you looking towards playing? Drop me a line below. Kodra if you are reading this… I really think you need to go down the projectile mines path with Saboteur so I can see how that works.
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