Buzzer Beater

Good Morning Friends. I am what I would prefer as a buzzer-beater. I get things done, but almost always end up doing them right before the deadline. I am the sort of employee that drives their managers insane when it comes to compliance items. If you tell me something is due on a specific date, I interpret it as being done at the close of business on that date and will hand it in without fail at the last minute. It is this way with seasonal events in video games, and last night I finally got around to checking out the Halloween event in New World. You technically can receive the quest at 35, but given how fast I got my ass handed to me by the roaming 60s I decided I would come back later. The problem is that “later” never really happened until last night.
When the fight begins properly you have a big boss called Baalphazu and a few types of smaller adds that spawn around it. The most common are these little pumpkins, which you can destroy and get a pumpkin bomb that you can throw at the boss. Essentially I think the plan is for those who are lower level to be picking up the pumpkin bombs and chucking them at the boss, which lowers its defenses and starts a burn phase. The larger challenge with that however is when it is doing a burn phase, it is also dealing massive AOE damage. The strategy seems to be to dogpile everyone on the boss and throw down enough healing circles to allow everyone to effectively shrug off the damage. When it worked it went well and 30-40 players showed up at the spawn point. When it did not go well, we struggled to burn down the boss until reinforcements arrived.
There were a number of rewards for the event that now makes me wish I had started this a bit earlier. There were three helmets, the one shown above, a pumpkin head, and a witches hat. There was also an armor set featuring a chest piece and helm that are designed to make you look like Baalphazu, as well as a “pumpkinling” that you could get for your home. The bigger reward is that after you had completed the event a few times you got enough faction with the vendor and could start buying item-level 600 weapon patterns. I ran enough of the event yesterday to pick up the cosmetics and greatsword, sword, and shield crafting patterns. Doing the event drops bags of loot that contained the lower-end versions of the weapon patterns, and I believe I managed to get one of those for all the other slots. All told it was a good event and I wish it was sticking around a bit longer, and that more level range variety could have easily participated.
Other than that I continue to quest my way through the game. Right now I have a few competing goals the first of which is to continue harvesting up all of my banks full of material so I can do another massive crafting session. The next is to gather up gold and territory standing so that I can purchase a Tier 4 house in either Brightwood or Mourningdale. Weirdly on my server… the guild that controls Brightwood seems to not care much about leveling up that territory so I am starting to lean heavily toward Mourningdale. Whatever the case I have to hit 30 faction in that territory in order to unlock that max-tier home. I think I am about to wrap up questing in Mourningdale, and not certain where the game will send me next. I would assume more than likely it would be Ebonscale Reach.
In other news… I lost yet another lottery in Final Fantasy XIV. I know a while back I said I was hopping off the lottery train, and I did for a few rounds… but alas I am back to doing the four-day wait. I do not understand why Square did not seize the opportunity with the Island Sanctuary to give us all an instanced housing plot. That seems like it would have been perfect to just have those hidden among the island somewhere and function essentially like a housing district for one. Right now on my server at least, it seems we are all vying for the same plot each week, so the likelihood of me ever winning one is pretty minimal. If nothing else I guess it gets me logging into the game every week, though I almost always stay parked at the placard awaiting the sad trip back into the game when the results are posted. The post Buzzer Beater appeared first on Tales of the Aggronaut.

AggroChat #318 – BiznsBel is Sus

Featuring:  Ammo, Ashgar, Belghast, Kodra, Tamrielo and Thalen
Earlier this afternoon a large chunk of the AggroChat crew spent a few hours playing Among Us, a two year old game that is now suddenly the most popular thing on the planet.  So of course we lead off the show talking a bit about that experience and how we are making tentative plans to do this as a regular thing.  Maybe at some point we should even offer it up as a stream.  From there Bel talks about a bumped topic from last week and the delay of the World of Warcraft Shadowlands expansion to an undetermined time in the future.  The pre-patch starts this coming week which means the expansion likely lands in November.  However we discuss some of the core problems this expansion cycle has had and the frustrations the players have brought up.  This leads to a further discussion of Genshin Impact and how much Bel has been playing it.  This time Thalen also was able to chime in as he recently started and had some general thoughts to share.  Finally we wrap things up with a discussion about how Games Workshop once again should really stop being afraid of the internet and how their actions are just going to lead folks to pirate copies of their products.

Topics Discussed

  • Among Us
    • Playing with AggroChat and Friends
    • Repeat Impostor Problem
  • Shadowlands Delay
    • Problems with Expansion
    • Problems with BFA
    • Problems with MMORPGs in General
  • Genshin Impact
    • Bel Plays a Nonsense Amount
    • Thalen has thoughts from playing
    • Switch Version needs to Hurry
  • Games Workshop Fears Internet
    • Removing Digital Copies of Books
      • Will Lead to Pirate PDF copies
      • 3D Printing Models
    • Ways that Corvis Belli does this better
The post AggroChat #318 – BiznsBel is Sus appeared first on Tales of the Aggronaut.

AggroChat #318 – BiznsBel is Sus

Featuring:  Ammo, Ashgar, Belghast, Kodra, Tamrielo and Thalen
Earlier this afternoon a large chunk of the AggroChat crew spent a few hours playing Among Us, a two year old game that is now suddenly the most popular thing on the planet.  So of course we lead off the show talking a bit about that experience and how we are making tentative plans to do this as a regular thing.  Maybe at some point we should even offer it up as a stream.  From there Bel talks about a bumped topic from last week and the delay of the World of Warcraft Shadowlands expansion to an undetermined time in the future.  The pre-patch starts this coming week which means the expansion likely lands in November.  However we discuss some of the core problems this expansion cycle has had and the frustrations the players have brought up.  This leads to a further discussion of Genshin Impact and how much Bel has been playing it.  This time Thalen also was able to chime in as he recently started and had some general thoughts to share.  Finally we wrap things up with a discussion about how Games Workshop once again should really stop being afraid of the internet and how their actions are just going to lead folks to pirate copies of their products.

Topics Discussed

  • Among Us
    • Playing with AggroChat and Friends
    • Repeat Impostor Problem
  • Shadowlands Delay
    • Problems with Expansion
    • Problems with BFA
    • Problems with MMORPGs in General
  • Genshin Impact
    • Bel Plays a Nonsense Amount
    • Thalen has thoughts from playing
    • Switch Version needs to Hurry
  • Games Workshop Fears Internet
    • Removing Digital Copies of Books
      • Will Lead to Pirate PDF copies
      • 3D Printing Models
    • Ways that Corvis Belli does this better
The post AggroChat #318 – BiznsBel is Sus appeared first on Tales of the Aggronaut.

AggroChat #312 – A Whole New World

Featuring:  Ammo, Ashgar, Belghast, Grace, Kodra, Tamrielo and Thalen
Tonight we are back after having a week off due to scheduling.  Bel is super excited to talk about Amazon’s New World, which finally leaves NDA.  He goes into a deep dive of his experiences so far with the assorted systems of the game.  From there we have a reasonable segue into a discussion about Guild Wars 2 and getting used to the WvW pvp system.  We also talk a bit about other games like Final Fantasy XIV and how it handles PVP.  We have a random aside where Bel talks about how he tends to avoid using mounts in Open World games, and finally Ash talks about how he has come to peace with the Blue Mage in FFXIV.

Topics Discussed:

  • Amazon’s New World
    • Deep Dive into Systems
  • Guild Wars 2 WvW System
    • Final Fantasy XIV PVP modes
  • Frog Fractions ???
    • When a DLC is a new game
  • Bel Ignores Mounts in Open World Games
    • Ghosts of Tsushima
    • Horizon Zero Dawn
  • Making Peace with the Blue Mage
    • How Ash Learns to Accept the Systems
The post AggroChat #312 – A Whole New World appeared first on Tales of the Aggronaut.