Good Morning Folks. I’ve made a few more attempts at getting back into Last Epoch, but I find myself in this really odd place. Namely, I do not have enough gold, and am not generating enough gold, to keep buying new tabs for the stuff that I am farming. I could restrict my filters further, but I already am mostly only showing things that are worth picking up. I’ve made it to the point in my build where I either need to just hang it up or farm super hard to perfect my loot. With everything else that I find myself going through, I am leaning way closer to just hanging it up at the moment and calling myself done with Season 4. I’ve made a few more attempts at Aberroth, and there is a phase that I always end up struggling with a bit, and I am just not sure if I have the mental fortitude or general dexterity right now to push through it. As such, I think it might be time for me to just back away from this season. I had a lot of fun, and I got most of my usual stuff accomplished, but similar to the fact that I don’t really enjoy Uber Bosses in POE… this might just be the limits of how much I care about Last Epoch.
As such, I have been farming quite a bit of random map and delve content in Path of Exile, because my build is immortal enough that I can mostly turn my brain off. This is the level of engagement that I need right now, something that is interesting and passes the time, but does not require a lot from me. I knocked out a few more seasonal challenges and upgraded my totem pole a few times. Right now, I am chipping away at a few really long grinds, while also trying to hit level 100. I am roughly halfway through 99 at the moment, and as such am already running Omens of Amelioration just in case I take a random death. I’ve been running an Einhar/Beyond/Ritual map strat that is generating a large number of them just in case, and when I finally hit 100, I am sure I will just cash in any that I have lying around on the market.
Thirty-Four challenges tend to be where I stop every league, and I am at this point, I think 3 challenges away from hitting that. If I never make it back and do any more challenges in this league, I would be happy enough with this totem as my final mark for the league, especially given everything I am going through right now. I know at some point soon, the whole POE2 machine will fire up, and I will start getting interested in whatever is happening with 0.5. I also know that there is a D4 expansion dropping in May that might garner my attention. So in theory, I should probably push through and knock out whatever I can knock out while my focus is available. Everything in my life feels so up in the air right now, and will probably be that way for at least the next four months as I go through cancer infusions.
One thing that is super interesting that just came out is a brand new tool for Path of Exile that essentially replaces all of the third-party tools that folks generally use. It has a price checker, an item recoloring tool, and a way to edit your filters in real time on the fly while you are mapping to add or remove items or shift tiers. I’ve only just started playing with it, but I can see entirely moving away from Awakened POE Trade, especially if this also starts supporting Path of Exile II. The above video is a deep dive into the features of the tool from the developer and his friend, the streamer Aero. Probably the coolest functionality is to be able to shift what tier something is on the fly, which is especially useful if you might care about an item that the general filters would not. I tend to run my filters way too lax for my own good, because I don’t want to miss anything I might at some point care about. However, if I can shift them on the fly, I might actually start using a tool like this to ratchet things down.
One thing I think I should warn you all is that I do not really know what the future of this blog is going to be in the coming months. My life has been turned upside down. “Chemo Brain” is most definitely a thing I am experiencing, and as a result, I am having a bit harder time concentrating and banging out a blog post than I used to. I’ve already had way more gaps in posting than I have in literal years. This is probably going to continue, and I will keep posting whenever I think I can knock something out in a reasonable manner, that does not upset the delicate balance of everything else I have going on in my life. Hopefully, you will be along for this very intermittent journey.
The post More Challenges and a New Tool appeared first on Tales of the Aggronaut.
Good Morning Folks. I realize it has been a while since I last posted, but my world has been turned upside down in the last few days. On some level, I knew this would be hard, but I am not sure I was fully prepared for what it feels like when your body betrays you. Every day has been its own wild ride. I’ve been taking notes because, in theory, I will be going through the same feelings and symptoms at the same time each rotation, and more than anything, that has me dreading the next four months. Can I really do this seven more times? What will even be left of me when I am through the other end? Nothing about this process is easy or comfortable, and it is honestly a struggle to keep sustenance in me. At this point, I am down 50 lbs from my highest weight, and that is just a start. I have no clue where I am going to end up at the end of this journey, because it definitely feels like everything I am going through is accelerating this process, whether or not I want it to. I had a bit of a scare on Friday as my blood pressure meds pushed me down into dangerous territory, so I have completely halted those for the time being and am not sure if and when I will start them back up.
I am not even sure what this means for my blog right now. This is easily the longest gap I have had in writing for a long while, given that it has been five days since my last post. Essentially, all of last week was a wash, and I am not entirely certain how much that will change over time. I keep thinking I will hit a point of equilibrium with the changes my body is going through because they will be cyclical, and that at some point I will be used to the rollercoaster of killing off cells and waiting on new ones to grow back. Every day has been different than the last, but not the same level of better or worse on a progressive scale. I had it in my head that the worst days would be the days actively taking chemo, and then after I finished that, it would be a progressive recovery of functionality, where every day would build upon the previous. That does not appear to be the sort of curve that we are dealing with. Everything just takes so much longer than it normally would, because I keep having to rest between actions. It isn’t that I “can’t” do things… just that the actions bring me to cold sweats and make me need to take pauses in between every micro action. I woke up at 6 am and immediately started getting ready. It was not until around 7:15 that I made it upstairs with breakfast, and everything in between was “do something” and then take a seat for a bit to recover from the thing I just did.
Writing is how I deal with things. I am in part sharing this with you, my readers… because it is my instinct to do so, not necessarily because I want pity or suggestions. I think we have all been around friends and family dealing with cancer in various ways, and this is just my time of life to deal with it. However, the one thing that I can offer is a perspective, as I write through it to process the experience for myself. I’ve always said that I can get used to anything, given enough time and repetition, and I am hoping that this cancer rollercoaster will be one of those things, or that maybe my body will get better at bouncing back. Right now, it is just so broad the impact… because it feels like every single muscle and every single bone… aches at a deeper level than I have ever experienced. I know logically, those are cells dying off and regrowing, and ultimately, I am going to go through this every single round. It feels like when I was a kid and would have massive muscle and bone aches right before a growth spurt. It would also be hilarious if I grew in height from this, but I don’t think it works that way.
On the gaming front, I have cleared all of the Harbingers and am up to Aberroth, but just cannot bring myself to push past and kill him, because I stopped caring enough about it. The build that I am playing is far from immortal, and right now… given my mental bandwidth, I think I need an immortal build to enjoy myself. I could roll a second character and futz around for a while, but I think I might have reached the point where Last Epoch has run its course for me at the moment. There are so many vectors to scale my build on, but they all require massive amounts of effort to accomplish. Were I playing trade, I could just save up and buy whatever I needed, but I do not play trade in this game. So instead, I might just sunset the game for the moment and move on to other things. Maybe if I run across some other build that I just absolutely have to play, I will give it a go, but for the moment, I think I am going to wind things down in Eterra.
That means that I am largely back playing Path of Exile, because the level of engagement works for me. Before the Last Epoch season started, I got my build to a point of almost being immortal, and as a result, I can just go through the motions and collect loot. There are still a bunch of challenges that I want to knock out so that I can upgrade my hideout decoration. I can slowly chip away at these while I am otherwise incapacitated, and feel like I am doing something… while mostly just faffing about. What worries me is that I have four months of this ahead of me. Four months of barely getting by as my body betrays me, and none of this sounds like a good time. I need gaming to keep me sane, but I am going to have to find easy gaming options because I just cannot function at a high level right now. I was naive in that I expected the between week to mostly be getting life back to normal, but so far it is anything but. Maybe as things move forward into the week, it will improve significantly and rapidly, but every day has been a new series of sensations. I am going to realistically also need to start probably forcing myself to work out some, for fear that I lose critical muscle mass each time I kill off cells and regrow them.
Anyways. I am a fucking mess, friends. I will get through this because I have entered the “only way out is through” territory, but holy crap was it not what I was expecting.
The post Every Day a New Betrayal appeared first on Tales of the Aggronaut.
Good Morning Folks. Last night I stayed up way the hell too late, because I got focused on working on seasonal challenges in the Mirage League. I’ve reached the point in the league where my main build is extremely fleshed out, my second build of the league is pretty solid as well, and I have turned my attention to trying to complete as many challenges as I can before I wander off and play the Last Epoch Season that starts tomorrow. I usually come back later and finish things up, because ultimately my goal is to get 34 Challenges so that I can keep the streak of the same size totem pole in my hideout for each of the recent leagues. I’ve already placed the one for Mirage, and you can see it is a bit lacking so far, but hopefully time and focus will fix that.
Yesterday, I finished up three challenges to knock off the list. Deadly Deeds is one that involves running a bunch of juiced league content, and I completed my final one by running three legion five-ways. This was a big part of why I respecced my third Atlas passive tree over to Legion, so that I could collect a bunch of emblems and finish this one out pretty easily. Seized Strength focuses on completing endgame content that is associated with various leagues, knocking that one out by finishing a fifteen-wave simulacrum. Leathal Leaders I did not end up screenshotting, but I wrapped that up by clearing an Alva Temple and completing a Vox Twin encounter. Finally, I took a few of the gems that I had been leveling and sacrificed them to the Vaal gods so that I could get a corrupted outcome and finish up Glorious Gemcraft.
At this point, I am sitting at 26 of 40 challenges, and have a handful that are pretty close to wrapping up. Coveted Currency mostly just requires that I spend some currency buying coins to imbue things with in order to complete my last objective there. Remarkable Realms, unfortunately, is going to have to wait until I can farm up a Doryani’s Machinarium in Delve because they are going for 16 Divines at the moment… and I refuse to pay that when I run as much Delve as I do. I could, in theory, reroll Kirac until it eventually shows up, which is an option because I seem to be generating a bunch of gold at the moment. Magnificent Memories is honestly pretty close as well, and I have stacks of Originator-influenced maps that I could be running. I need to get in the habit of using Exalted Orbs on maps so that I can get them up to 8 mods before running them for maximum impact.
Last night I also dinged 99, which feels like it is faster than I usually do in leagues like this. It could just be all of the times that I took the Mirage wish that gave me bonus experience. I should probably queue up a bunch of maps that I have with full Mirages, while burning through some of the challenges related to running map content with scarabs, and hope for the experience bonus. In theory, a FULL map with that bonus would be really nice and a decent boost. If I really want to push through experience, though, I should probably either spec one of my trees to an Alva strategy or a Betrayal strategy because both reward a ton of experience for completing them. I think the Alva scarabs are pretty expensive right now, because it seems like Alva maps sell for quite a bit of currency at the moment. Delve is also a pretty great source of experience, and it tends to be relatively safe for me. Tonight is pretty much my last push for getting to 100, though, before I lose focus and play a bunch of Last Epoch for a while.
In other moves, I shuffled some gear around and picked up a new shield and helm, so that I could, in theory, run Malevolence in addition to the auras that I have already been running. Due to socket pressure, I had to drop the arrogance vitality setup, but I still have 2000 life per second regen, so that is fine. I lost a bit of regen with my new Archdemon Crown setup, but gained quite a bit of single-target damage, so I think it shakes out. Mostly, I wanted to buff my damage before I tried the Legion 5-Way and Simulacrum. I have another double influence shield that I have been crafting on, but I doubt I will actually hit anything better than the one I am using. I played pass down the gear to my friend Carthuun, who is a bit behind me in Righteous Fire progression. Sure, I could have sold it for some divines, but generally speaking, I would rather pass gear down to a friend than profit from it.
I feel like I am in pretty good shape for the launch of Last Epoch Shattered Omens tomorrow. I know I will cycle back around to Path of Exile after Last Epoch, but I am hoping I get a good few weeks to a month out of Season 4. I think a lot of the changes are going to be really good, and I am mostly trying to figure out what I want to do for a build. I know I will probably make a Minion Necro at some point, but I don’t think I want to start that. I am contemplating going with Forge Guard and doing the summoned weapons nonsense since I have never actually done that. I will probably talk tomorrow about some of the builds that I am contemplating. For this morning, however, I am pretty happy with the progress I made in Path of Exile last night.
The post Mirage Progress appeared first on Tales of the Aggronaut.
I love Last Epoch, but one of the things that I have lamented for a while is that there just does not feel like there is enough to do in the game. So as a result, I have a couple of good weeks and then bounce because I run out of things that I actually care to do. On Tuesday nights, Ace and I have what we refer to as “Sibling Time” and more often than not lately it just ends up with us hanging out and chatting while we are doing out own things. Ace has been enjoying Path of Exile more than normal, but also was talking about how much they were looking forward to Last Epoch. At this point, I dug out my old lament, which led to us trying to dissect why it is that Last Epoch does not have the staying power that Path of Exile does. After some back and forth, I think we landed on the “why” behind this statement.
Ace and I have had a lot of bonding moments over the years. There is a natural back and forth between a tank that I always played and a healer that they always played. There is also the bonding of growing up in oddly similar circumstances, despite being in wildly different states. However, I would say probably our most pivotal bonding experience was a shared love of Diablo, and quite frankly, were it not for them and the fun that I had playing Diablo III Seasons, I would probably not be the ARPG junkie that I am today. I will always be deeply thankful for them indoctrinating me into the cyclical nature of Diablo III Seasons, and quite honestly, it was an event that I looked forward to more than pretty much anything else on the gaming calendar. I cannot say with any certainty which season was the first season we did this ritual together, but it became sacred.
So much of this experience centered around the Diablo III Seasons Journey, which was a series of achievements that ultimately unlocked some sort of cosmetic item. Generally speaking, this was some sort of a pet or a portal effect, and in the grand scheme of modern MTX, it was rather meager. What it did more than anything was give us something to focus on other than just grinding mobs and explosions of loot. Sure, we only got a week or two out of a Diablo III season, and by the end of that first weekend, we would have 90% of the list checked off, but it did force us to do some outliers in order to complete everything. This is what Last Epoch is missing, some sort of long ranged goal that we can focus on during the season and that pushes us to do specific content in order to knock out individual achievements.
I’ve also realized that is really what changed regarding my interaction with Path of Exile. Starting with the Sanctum league I started caring about trying to complete league challenges. This was an easy carryover from Diablo III, since I was already in that mindset, and for each league from that point forward, I have purposefully tried to get enough challenges completed to earn the little totem pole for my hideout. It started with just attempting to get one at all, to now where I am specifically trying to finish at least 34 of 40 each league, so I can earn the same size as I have in the last several leagues. I’ve never actually completed 40 of 40, because it involves doing a bunch of bossing, which is not really something I enjoy, given that bossing characters are different from mapping characters. It still gives me something to focus on and has pushed me outside of my comfort zone and forced me to learn a bunch of leagues’ worth of content that I had never interacted with previously.
Even Diablo IV has something similar in the form of the battlepass, and while I have issues with its specific implementation… it still gives a long tail to the league. There are specific things that you can focus on doing in order to unlock a sequence of cosmetic items. They made it worse since, in order to do most of these, you have to pay money to unlock them, but it still exists in one form or another. Last Epoch does not have something like this. Sure, Last Epoch has a ladder, but I am not the sort of competitive player who gives a shit about this sort of thing. What it is missing is some sort of long grind that has a destination in mind and rewards some sort of bauble for doing so. There is a certain measure of bragging rights in being able to show off your pet from a season, years later, after it is no longer available. Not that Last Epoch MTX are generally that great… it still would give me a bit more focus towards pushing down to specific levels in the Monolith, completing dungeons, or something that would push me out of the standard practice of playing for a few weeks and then going right back to Path of Exile.
Right now, the closest thing that Last Epoch has is the Forgotten Knights path of killing Harbingers and fighting Aberroth. However, this is often something that you can do in a single weekend with a good enough build and does not really require you to go out of your way in order to accomplish it. I feel like this is the equivalent of unlocking your Atlas and Voidstones in Path of Exile, and less a destination and more the starting place of the “true” endgame. I feel like Last Epoch really needs something that will take a few weeks to chip through in order to keep us grinding well past the natural expiration date of one of their seasons. I’ve jokingly said that I really like grinding and loot explosions, but it seems like the thing that really keeps me engaged is a series of tasks to tick off. I think this is in part why I love daily quests so much, because it gives me a reason to play the game and something specific to focus on without having to make any real decisions for myself. Similarly, this is why I have engaged in so many Legendary gear grinds in Guild Wars 2, because it gives me an overarching goal to focus on. Last Epoch really needs something more than trying to get slightly better gear, and I am hoping that, at some point, they give us some equivalent to all of these systems that I talked about today.
All of that said, I am still really looking forward to the launch of Last Epoch Season 4 when it drops on the 26th of this month. However, I still expect to mostly play for a few weeks and then go right back to Path of Exile.
The post Importance of the Journey appeared first on Tales of the Aggronaut.
