MMORPG – Page 204

Wiggle Wiggle Wiggle

March 6, 2018 by Belghast

Last night was all about Monster Hunter World as I had made plans ahead of time to run around with Grace and do the various events. First out of the gate we worked on the Wiggler quest that grants this truly questionable helm. It truly is the stuff of nightmares and honestly would have been a pain in the butt had we not realized that you could register multiple wiggler catches at once. We quickly fell into a pattern of sneaking up on the wigglers and getting one in our sights… then coordinating over voice a 3, 2, 1, GO! to capture both at the same time. Sure it took three shots at the quest to get all of the tickets needed to craft this monstrosity but here we go… I have a goofy helm that I wasted some zenny on crafting and will likely never actually use.

From there we spent some time doing the “The Proving” quest that involves killing a fairly beefy high rank Anjanath. We ran into all sorts of problems with PSN connectivity which made it significantly more challenging than normal. Throughout the night I kept getting disconnected from the quest with a “Left Quest” message. At first Ash suggested that Grace was just going off and leaving us… but I think it was more than that considering Ash and Mor both got punted out of the mission after having successfully joined with no ability to get back in. We struggled through two kills and called the process done for the moment moving on to other things.

Grace is in that awkward in-between step where she is officially a High Rank player… but still is using a significant amount of low rank gear. Considering her next quest is the Pink Rathian, that is probably something she needs to fix and as a result we farmed Zorah Magdaros a bit for parts. I am still to this day wearing the Zorah gloves for the hidden element ability, and honestly its an easy farm considering the event mostly just finishes itself. Now when I was farming this I SOS Rouletted my way into full groups that allowed us to quickly complete the event which for those who need Zorah bits is a completely viable option. The biggest challenge I ran into… and why I kept running it was that Zorah is super stingy with gems which are unfortunately needed for the gauntlets.

As far as starter High Rank gear goes… I am way more in favor of the Alpha Bone set because it has a lot of good stuff as well as 10 fire, 10 dragon and I believe 10 lightning resistance. All total to craft the full Bone Armor set you need… 12 Quality Bone, 10 Monster Bone +, 2 Warped Bone, 3 Monster Bone L, 3 Boulder Bone, 3 Coral Bone, and 3 Ancient Bone. Basically you need to kill a few big monsters and run amok harvesting bone piles in most of the zones to get it. The end result gives you a set with Health Boost, 3x Attack Boost, 3x Entomologist, Slugger, Horn Maestro, and Master Fisher. Not all of those are winners… but Entomologist can be super useful if you are farming bug parts. All of that said I still think its a great starter set for High Rank shenanigans.

The highlight of the evening however was getting a Tailrider Safari with Grace’s Neutrino and PizzaMaid’s Aria. Normally I just send Tailriders out from my room back in Asteria, but for this combination I made the trek to the Research Base so I could get the cutscene. I am also realizing that I need to trade cards with Pizza and Grace because neither of them are actually using these outfits anymore. The PS4 always has a bit of a delay when you attempt to take a screenshot so I am super happy that I was able to catch a decent one of this party going out to fight.

Tonight however I am thinking about kicking back and streaming some Final Fantasy XV on the PC… all depending on how well today goes. I will be in training and in theory will have homework tonight because I am going through one of those cram session courses. As a result my brain may be too broken to do anything interesting.

Bunny Fail Tank Returns

March 2, 2018 by Belghast

I’ve talked about this a bit in the past, but I have struggled with Final Fantasy XIV since finishing the Stormblood main story. I am not exactly sure why, but after leveling my Warrior through the questing process… and then grinding up a Samurai I bounced. When I say I bounced… I bounced hard. I just stopped logging in entirely and even didn’t care enough to log in for most of the major holiday events that have gone on. At one point I made an attempt to get back into the game and pushed through the new MSQ content right up until I reached the Drowned City of Skalla. I could not bring myself to tank that with a random group and I told myself… I would wait until I had friends around to run it with me. That event never happened and I got distracted by a bunch of games in the meantime.

The problem with this is that it sort of set up an artificial barrier between me and the content. It was as though I had some sort of a mental block preventing me at just throwing myself at content the way I used to be willing to. I knew I needed something severe to get me off high center and back into caring about what was going on in Final Fantasy XIV. There used to be a time when I willing to log in each night and run experts with completely random groups of players from the roulette system. However I developed some sort of barrier against doing that… one that I think was slowly chipped away given how freely I am willing to do my “SOS Roulette” nonsense in Monster Hunter World.

Watch Sleep Deprived Bel tries to remember how to Fail Tank in FFXIV from Belghast on www.twitch.tvAs a result last night I used the presence of an audience as a bit of a kick in the butt to get me back into Final Fantasy XIV and doing dungeon content again. I streamed for a little over two hours and in that time I believe I ran four dungeons and made some progress in the MSQ afterwards. In truth were it not for the MSQ slowing the pace down significantly… I might have streamed longer throwing myself at more dungeons for gear currency. I managed to pick up a chestpiece with tokens and now feel like maybe I can do this thing and catch my gear levels up to something reasonable. At the start of the night I was 313 item level and by the end I edged it up a bit to 315. Skalla and the next set of patch dungeons all drop gear that is an incremental upgrade, as well as some tasty tasty currency. Basically at this point I need to reach a state where I can start doing expert roulette again to play catch up.

After taking a break from streaming and FFXIV I hopped over to Monster Hunter World for awhile and spent some time running nonsense with Grace. I have been mostly running hammer when we are doing stuff, because it is a weapon that I like quite a bit… and one that I want to get better at using. There are definitely times when I am fighting something that it feels like having something more than a longsword in my arsenal would help greatly. We took down a Squirrel Blimp and I managed to unlock the third of my elder dragons while she ran around trying to find the Great Girros. I was not in terribly long as I was already in a fairly sleep deprived state from the previous nights fragmented sleep schedule due to the launch. All in all though it was a pretty great night and I want to thank everyone that stopped by to tune in and chat with me. Also huge thanks to Solaria who actually joined my discord and hung out with me while I eased my way back into Final Fantasy XIV. It’s fun lobbing comments at text messages scrolling across twitch chat, but it is even more fun when you have someone hanging out in chat to talk to over voice as well.

AggroChat #192 – Essentials of Grind

May 21, 2019February 25, 2018 by AggroChat

Featuring: Ashgar, Belghast, Grace, Kodra, Nephsys and Tamrielo

This week we went a little off course from our normal show. In truth we are all largely playing the same games we have been playing for the last few weeks. Instead Ashgar proposed a topic where we discussed what makes a grind work in a game. This eventually devolves into a discussion of mostly Monster Hunter World because it seems to have a really great grind mechanic. We also discuss traditional JRPG grinding, MMO grinding, and a bit about why the Destiny 2 grind isn’t really working out. Tune in and grind your faces off!

Topics Discussed:

Grinding in Games

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Grind to a Halt

December 4, 2017 by Belghast

When we last visited my Orc Warrior on this blog I was just about to start the Warlords content, and this week when I have not been poking my head into Destiny I have spent it pushing forward in World of Warcraft. It’s honestly been a shock just how fast leveling went until I hit Legion content. The old world was a confusion slog where I jumped zones each time I saw an exclamation point show up on the adventure guide. This meant I was constantly jumping zones every few levels and most of that journey was a complete blur. When I started Outland I did the majority of Hellfire Plateau then jumped over to Terrokar Forest for a little bit before finishing up the grind in Nagrand. From there I jumped to Northrend and did a good chunk of Borean Tundra before jumping to Grizzly Hills and doing most of it and finally leaping over to Scholazar Basin to finish the run out. From there we entered the Cataclysm zones and did all of the 80-85 grind in Vashj’ir without actually completely finishing that zone. Then came Pandaria and I managed to do the entirety of the 85-90 grind without leaving Jade Forest. From there I went to Draenor where I managed to hit 98 by doing the entirety of Frostfire Ridge and finishing up with just a tiny tiny bit in Spires of Arak.

This is the point where the express elevator has come to a grinding halt and I’ve been confronted with normal speed leveling because all of my heirlooms petered out at 100. I chose to do Stormheim first largely because it is both my favorite and least favorite zone at the same time. All of the Norse themed Vrykul bits are awesome, but all of that faction nonsense is not. It did give me access to another Order Hall champion quickly however so I am down with that. At this point I have finished both the main story arc of the zone and the faction bullshit arc and am likely to move on to the next area. There are a lot of things I have noticed… not the least of which is how ridiculously huge this shield is on my female orc warrior. It is as thought they scaled the shield for the insanely bulky male models and then just called it good enough for the female ones. The second of which is how much more intricate and slower paced the Legion content is compared to Pandaria or Warlords. When I leveled through the content it seemed really quick, but what makes things slog a bit in comparison to what came before is how fragmented the quest hubs quickly become. This might also be an aspect of the map itself feeling so busy with so many world bosses and objectives hidden out there to slow your journey down. I cannot resist wasting a few minutes to find a chest that is nearby or going after a mini boss, and as a result my leveling pace has gone to hell.

At this point I am contemplating investing in a set of Heirlooms which will set me back quite a bit of gold. It isn’t as much about leveling quickly, it is more about not outpacing the gear I am wearing…. and also not looking like I am picking up scraps from the battlefield while I level. I’ve liked making outfits for my character up until this point and then progressing my way through the content without having to care too much about swapping out items. In a perfect world Warcraft would have heirlooms for every slot and I could simply level my alts without ever having to worry about swapping gear out. With the new races coming in I fully expect to be leveling a lot more alts, and in truth investing in plate 110 heirlooms now will probably helm in the long run given that I tend to play plate wearing classes more than any others. I am still really bummed about the direction they are taking with artifact weapons. I would have loved to see them turn them into leveling heirlooms much the way that the items that dropped off Garrosh in Pandaria served this purpose. It would have been a fitting end to a really awesome chapter of the game to be able to then use those weapons to level your alts. Still having a lot of fun but I am also ready for the ride to be over and for my character to get geared up.