Good Afternoon Folks. I know my blog is a bit of a mess at the moment, but yall are going to have to bear with me. I used to live my life based on a deeply predictable rhythm. I got up around 5:30, and was upstairs around 6 am, having done all of my morning chores like feeding myself, the indoor cats, and the outdoor cats, and even often doing something like starting a load of dishes or laundry. That process is so much slower right now because it takes me quite a bit of time to recover from pretty much every action. I am hoping that, given enough time, I will develop stamina again. I am already doing way better today than I was last week, and a lot of that was jumping through hoops to figure out exactly how much medication I need to maintain my blood pressure at reasonable levels right now. I’ve also found a few things that taste reasonable, and honestly, even kind of hit the spot, so my nutrition side is way more functional as well. My life has often been about figuring out and building routines… and this whole cancer/chemo thing is a giant wrecking ball to one routine and I am having to craft a brand new one out of the pieces that are left behind.
First off, huge props to Quelex for sharing with me some info on how to knock out one of the Gallant Grinding Goals extremely easily. Sure, it was a bit “spendy” because it required some specific popular scarabs, but over the course of four maps, I was able to knock out that bottom objective. I am now slowly poking my way through influenced maps with over 100% Item Quant, and also doing them in Astrolabe maps, so I can be knocking out two objectives at the same time. I am still using the Scarab/Domination/Legion Atlas that I threw together for the previous objective, because it drops plenty of stuff and goes pretty quickly. I figure around the time I ding 100, I will probably knock out the Influenced maps objective and polish off “GGG”. Then it is just down to slowly chipping away at Tyrannical Tiers and Sandswept Survivor, which are both easy enough but simply require a stupid amount of map runs. Atlas Astrolabes should also be finishing up while I am doing the influenced maps, but it mostly just requires me spending chaos to buy the astrolabes.
Mapping has been a really chill experience for me to turn my brain off and just exist. Last night I spent most of the evening watching shows and catching up on various things. I finished up on Season 2 of Fallout, and am pretty pumped with where things left off there. Fallout may be the single best video game adaptation of anything, because it nailed the universe so perfectly… without seeming to feel like it needed to retread ground we have already gone over in the games. After that, I started up Season 2 of Monarch, and thus far, that show continues to give me everything I want in a Godzilla franchise television outing. I am pretty sure that Apple TV might pay more for their shows than other platforms, because the VFX budget here is pretty amazing. At that point, it was getting late, and I figured I should probably turn in early, given that my body is still recovering from everything it is going through. I will probably pick up where I left off tonight and dive into more episodes of Monarch while I chip away at Path of Exile challenges.
Yesterday I talked about Scalpel, but I figured I would give a bit of an update. I have been 100% using it since then and now… I think I can never go back to good ole Awakened POE Trade. Firstly, the whole ability to manipulate your loot filter on the fly is really nice, and the only thing I wish that it did was directly integrate with my profile on Filterblade, so that I could use it to tick up and down the strictness. You can manipulate individual rules and currencies very easily, but yesterday I wanted to just escalate everything up a strictness tier, and still needed to go to Filterblade to do that. The best part about Scalpel for me personally is how good its price prediction tools are, which admittedly are simply relying on Ninja and the Trade API. Awakened POE Trade always tried to make a bit of a fuzzy recommendation, and it was always slightly wrong, and it relied on me looking things up manually most of the time. Scalpel solves those problems and seems like it is just going to keep getting better, the more functionality that is added to it. I need to sort out the Patreon information and give them some money, because I think I will be using this every single league going forward.
I went to my primary care doctor today, which is part of a monthly check-in that we have had since starting tirzepatide. I had to deal with changing how I am getting the meds going forward, but in truth, it should be much easier. I am desperate for a new normal and figuring out what that starts to look like. However, I realized in chatting with my doctor how different my life is going to look by this time next year. In theory, cancer should be far in my rearview mirror, and hopefully, they have pieced me back together into something resembling the original order of how organs connect. I am already down 50 lbs roughly since I started the journey with tirzepatide…. so I am going to be a completely different person than I am today. 2027… I need there to be no crisis of the year… because the death of my spouse last year, and cancer this year… are a decade’s worth of bullshit at once. I really want to travel next year, and figure out how to go see some of the people who matter to me deeply. I’ve lived my life long enough that various folks whom I have known for literal decades, and cannot imagine living my life without, are just amorphous “internet people”.
Anyways! Thanks for bearing with me as I construct a new normal over the course of the next several weeks.
The post Mr. House and Scalpels 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.
Good Morning Folks. Last night I fell into a book and sort of forgot that the world existed. The book is a complete and total mess, but it is a compelling one… that I might talk about at some point. I spent the night largely playing Path of Exile, and attempted to go downstairs in the hopes that I would have cats snuggling with me. Gracie took the bait, but sadly, Josie did not. I’ve been careening towards destiny when it comes to the medical side of things, and I think I am just about out of hope that we have a shot at the easy path. I will probably talk more about this in another post at some point, once we have a predetermined path that I know for certain we are going down. However, today I am going to an orientation class on chemotherapy, and how to take care of the port they will be installing into me… so none of these things are doing especially good things for my current mental health. Neither is the book that I am consuming, but at least by falling into another world, I am not having to think about myself and my issues.
Yesterday, one of the big changes that I made with my character was that I replaced all of the jewelry that I had been wearing in order to fix my glaring Chaos Resistance problem. Since I got a +2 gems corrupt on my books, that took away my reliance on needing All Skill/All Fire Gems on my Necklace, allowing me to open up the suffixes to get some chaos resistance on it. Mostly, I needed Dex, Int, and Chaos Reists and was willing to sacrifice just about anything else to get them. One of the rings comes with some downsides, but since I do not care about evasion rating, and that is a negligible amount of phys damage that I am adding to anything hitting me… it was worth it to get the massively elevated stats the ring otherwise comes with. This also pushed me to 400 strength, which is the next breakpoint of the increased damage per 100 strength implicit on my gloves.
Another big change that I made yesterday was that I swapped the colors on my helmet and switched over to the new Searing Bond of Detonation gem. This is pretty interesting and I patterned my gems off some of the other people playing this ability. I really need to swap my helm at some point for one with Burning Damage on it, but for the moment thing seem to be pretty solid. The place that I really notice this is clearing in Delve because I am constantly dragging laser beams behind me that deal burning damage to everything that gets close to them. Bossing also seems much faster than with Fire Trap, because I set down six totems and they all explode at the same time. I am not entirely certain this is going to have the top end that Fire Trap can reach, but it is certainly fun to play with for the moment, and it is easy enough to recolor my helm if I want to swap back to Fire Trap. I went with Less Duration for the imbue mostly because it was one of the cheapest options that actually did anything. Since I am self exploding the totems by oversummoning them, it isn’t like the duration actually does much… but the more multiplier does.
If nothing else, it is entertaining to see all of these totems making cool patterns as I run around the map. Searing Bond, in general, is such a weird ability, and the fact that they all explode means I no longer really have to care about totem placement. I think with the normal version of this, you want to create a crisscrossing box pattern so that the beams hit as many targets as possible. All I really care about is that every third summon, I am causing all six to explode. The baked-in negative of this abiltiy however, is that I am lifetapping a heck of a lot of damage, which is a noticeable hit when I summon something. Once I pushed up into the 6k for max health, this cost seemed far more negligible and seemed perfectly fine. Unfortunately, the jewelry swap, though, was a hit to some of my total regeneration, but I could upgrade my immortal flesh to get that back.
All in all, I am pretty happy with the state of the build, but that said… I am feeling a bit of wanderlust, and I think before long, I will probably roll a second character of the league. I am not entirely certain what I want to be playing, but I will sort something out. Holy Hammers still is calling my name.
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