Yesterday I decided to give Microsoft $25 to access Avowed early. Essentially I noticed that Battle.Net was showing it as available through Gamepass but only the Deluxe edition could start playing early. I would honestly love to see Microsoft migrate all of the Gamepass PC games over to the Battle.net launcher, because really it feels like a better interface than essentially going through the Microsoft store via the Xbox app. Essentially Avowed is what if Obsidian made their own Elder Scrolls Game, this time set in the same universe as Pillars of Eternity. So far it feels very Morrowind to me, in that you are arriving on the docks of a far flung destination… filled with all sorts of creepy fungus growing everywhere. I am playing a melee character so far and the combat feels pretty enjoyable.
I got my first companion, which is essentially a Shark dude straight out of the Tigersharks Cartoon. Essentially we are adventuring together out of convenience at the moment, but I assume some events are going to happen that bind us together going forward. I know there are other companions but right now I am digging Kai because he gives me the ability to burn things down, since I am not going down the magical route. I believe I can make my own firebombs eventually out if this plant that I occasionally find laying around. One of the objectives of the tutorial area was to shoot one of those plants down so it fell onto some vines and burned it to open up a new area, which makes me think at some point I can use the same plant to do the same thing in other areas.
I’ve not made it super far but I am enjoying it. There are these adorable Aye Aye meets Lemur meets Cat things all over the island that sort of purr when you get close to them. Unfortunately this particular one meets a grim fate in the opening cinematic. I’ve heard this is around a 40 hour campaign start to finish, which seems fairly reasonable. It is open world, but open world within the confines of a fixed map level so there are is a lot of exploration, but it doesn’t really let you stray too far off the beaten path. I am hoping at some point I find a companion with some healing spells because right now I am having to chug a lot of healing potions to keep topped off after combat. I specced into this thing that heals back 50% of the damage that was dealt after combat, but that still makes a lot of the fights a battle of attrition.
Over in Pohx League I did a safehouse and got one of the crafting benches that allow you to swap one Divination Card for another random one. The first one I turned in was nothing special, but the second one landed me a Brother’s Gift card which I immediately turned in for 5 Divine Orbs. I’ve not been terribly wealthy during Pohx league, but then again I have not really focused on trying to make currency. Given that it is a private league, everything costs way more than it would during a normal league economy. This is especially noticeable on the currency exchange, because buying relatively simple things… like a Tainted Fusing for example costs around 50 Chaos each. Gemcutter’s Prisms similarly are really expensive so I figure at some point I am just going to chain run a lot of Labyrinth to get gems upgraded. I purchased every single Ice Trap of Hollowness in the entire league and have been leveling them all to 20 so that I can attempt to corrupt a 21/20% gem.
Immediately after turning in the Brother’s Gift card, I took four of those Divine Orbs and converted them into an Omen of Connections. Now that these exist in the game, this is more often than not who I end up getting my six-linked chest. I was running a Ritual/Einhar Atlas quite a bit trying to get either this or a Black Morrigan so I could use beast crafting to do the same thing. The new Gem that I have mixed in is Cold Penetration and lord does it make a massive difference. I also added Bonechill to my Skitterbots and together I am dishing out a ton more damage. I bought this chestpiece ages ago and I had been throwing fusings at it in vain thinking that either I would six-link it the old fashioned way or I would earn enough currency to do it the easy way. I’ve since corrupted my old one and got a white socket on it, so I will probably throw the first tainted fusings at it trying to six-link it so I can sell it for a decent profit.
I am pretty happy with my progress in Pohx league and honestly… would be fine if I don’t make it any further. I’ve completed 110 out of 115 maps, with the remaining 5 maps all being uniques. I will probably start using Singular Scouting Reports when I get Kirac missions to try for the remaining maps since I can’t really afford to buy any of them off the market right now. I’ve finished two of my voidstones, and I might make a run at Uber Elder and Maven, but I am in no rush to do either. If they happen organically it is cool, but I am not necessarily going to push my way through it. I still do not love bossing and I also feel way too squishy to reasonable deal with the damage output from those encounters. I would essentially have to perform both of them perfectly… and I can’t say I have ever done that. I did however do a no-death Eater of Worlds which made me happy. Searing Exarch though was a complete and total mess, which is funny because as Righteous Fire that fight is a cakewalk.
I say I am happy with my progress in Pohx League in large part because I know come the 20th I will not be playing it anymore. Yesterday GGG released the full trailer for the Legacy of Phrecia Event and with it came the start date of February 20th. Which gives me eight days of undivided attention before Monster Hunter Wilds comes out and I tag out to play that with friends. I have no clue at all what I am going to play. Right now I am leaning towards either doing Poison Summon Raging Spirits on Servant of Arakali Shadow or try and build something Righteous Fire themed on either Ancestral Commander Marauder or maybe Polytheist Templar. The problem with that last one is I do not think there are four ascendancies that will help me out… Scavenger Scion could probably also work. If I do go RF, I will probably wait to see what ideas Pohx has before going down that path. I am also somewhat interested in 100% melee with Behemoth Marauder.
Have you played any of Avowed yet? Are you going to be joining the nonsense of the Legacy of Phrecia Event in Path of Exile? Drop me a line below with your thoughts.
The post Avowed and Brothers Gift appeared first on Tales of the Aggronaut.
Featuring: Ashgar, Belghast, Grace, Kodra, Tamrielo, and Thalen
Hey Folks! This week we are down an Ammo which throws Ash off a bit. We start off with a discussion about the changes to the death system and multiplayer in Windblown. From there we talk about the most recent updates to Utopia Must Fall. Citizen Sleeper 2 has been released and Tam shares some of his early thoughts. Dwarven Realms Season 3 is going on and the game continues to get more polished over time. Bel and Grace talk about the Lunar Awakening event and how it represents this perfect example of why Blizzard’s Design Ethos makes the game less fun. Path of Exile has an upcoming Phrecia event with 19 new Ascendancies and we talk about the four that have been spoiled so far. Grace talks about Spirit Swap which is Lo-Fi Beats to Match Three To. Kodra has had a bit of a revival of Ultimate Chicken Horse in his house as his son gets super into it. Grace shares her early experiences with Deep Rock Galactic Survivor and we bid farewell to Kodra’s cat Willow.
Good Morning Folks! Since I finished the season in Diablo IV, I am now much more focused on Pohx League. I am very only likely to be dipping my toes back into Necromancer fun times when Ace wants to play, and particularly as we work on some of the seasonal objectives for them. In Pohx League I rolled something that was completely new to me, and it has been shockingly fun. I had never really played a Trickster before, or honestly gotten anything based on the Shadow class to maps. I’ve also not played a pure traps build even though Righteous Fire derives a lot of its damage based on Fire Trap. Ultimately I set out wanting to try a Trickster and then found a build that seemed like it might be enjoyable with that Ascendancy and rolled with it.
This build my friends… is ludicrous. I’ve never played anything with this level of full screen coverage. Sure my lightning arrow and later elemental hit of the spectrum builds could off screen enemies, but nothing to this point has ever just blanketed the entire screen in death. Yesterday I made some significant tweaks to the build and migrated to the “final form” and shifted over to Ice Trap of Hollowness. This is an alternate version of Ice Trap that comes from the Labyrinth that essentially scales up the area of effect of the traps, so that there is a dead spot in the center but MUCH wider coverage. It also has a much shorter time to trigger on its own, which makes it prime territory for some shenanigans.
Essentially to exploit the benefits of this alternate version of Ice Trap, we swap so using the Sunblast unique belt that makes it so enemies cannot trigger your traps, but allows you to throw 2 additional traps and explode on their own significantly faster. A perfectly rolled Sunblast is 75% reduced trap duration, but I was only able to afford a 61% one in Pohx league given the limited market. Since Tinkerskin works exclusively based on when traps are triggered, this means we need to move away from that chest and the most common choice is to go with a Carcass Jack for the additional Area of Effect and Area Damage scaling. The end result… is just truly silly for map clear because you essentially hit the entire screen at once.
More important than that, since I can easily have 17 traps up at once there is quite a lot of overlap which leads to shotgunning. The trick however is that you need to dance around the screen to limit the amount of mobs that are in the dead spot in the center that deals no damage. For bossing it is pretty straightforward to swap back to using the normal Ice Trap but it does mean having to take a moment to swap out your primary gem. I’ve never really loved gem swapping, but it does make enough of a difference to be worthwhile and will be even more so if I can get a slightly better roll on my Sunblast belt. What is nice about this build is with the swap it is both an extremely fast mapper and a pretty competent bosser. If you are curious I dumped a POB of the state of my build.
The only thing really lacking with this build is general defenses. I have enough layers to keep me from getting one shot, but I do have to hit my potion way more often than I would care to. There are a lot of things that I ultimately need to do to scale up the defensive layers, but the biggest one would be a load more evasion. Right now I have around 65% evasion and 90% lucky spell suppression combined with around 3500 hit points and 1700 energy shield. The only thing that is really going to one shot me is chaos damage, because I still have negative resistance in that department. Essentially the build is good enough to probably finish out the Atlas and unlock a few of the boss encounters, but would really need to find better versions of almost every rare slot in my build to make it feel a bit more comfy. Were I playing in a normal trade league this would not be a problem at all… but in a limited time event league there just isn’t a ton of stuff available for prices that I can afford.
I think much like it was in NecroSettlers, my first goal is going to be unlocking my full Atlas. When I get my third passive tree I plan on building it out to be Ritual and Einhar for the purpose of trying to farm either a Black Morrigan or an Omen of Connections to turn my five-link into a six-link. I am pretty happy with the state of my build craft in Path of Exile, where I can make a character function without trade intervention more or less. I still like trading for specific upgrades, and I like selling random stuff as well… but I like knowing that I can mostly get a build off the ground and capable of mapping on my own. I will likely never be a big crafter, nor someone who dives deep into market manipulation… but I do like that I can be fairly self sustaining. That is a pretty huge thing coming from the very rocky starts that I had back in Sentinel and Kalandra leagues to where I am today.
The post Fullscreen Frostyboom appeared first on Tales of the Aggronaut.
Hey Folks. Getting a bit later of a start today than I normally do for a blog post. I had a weird day with a weird schedule… but things seem to have calmed down enough for me to sit down over lunch and make a proper post. Last night I spent some time hanging out with Ace and specifically trying to target a few different seasonal objectives. Initially the idea was that we would knock out the “Pit 75 with 5 mins remaining” and got that on our first attempt with about a minute to spare. From there we decided to make a go at opening 25 of the seasoning root pods within 15 minutes… thinking surely that grouping up we would both get credit. It turns out that we did not… and my spamming the pods meant that I got the achievement and Ace didn’t. So at some point over the next few days we will make another go at it and I will just murder things while they spam the pods.
Since last night I managed to knock out the achievement for opening 10 chests in a single Helltide, which pushed me over the edge and completed my seasons journey. In theory I still have a few objectives left but I really have no pressure to complete them as I have accomplished the thing I set out to do in Season Seven. I have a new raven pet, and also picked up another resplendent spark. Essentially I could stop playing right now and feel entirely satisfied. That said I am probably going to keep playing a bit to see if I can improve my gear and maybe do another round of boss summons trying to more Mythics. We should probably try and link up with Eliyon or Kodra and let them get in on the summoning nonsense to get some good loot from it.
For the New Years event and seasonal reputations I am sitting at rank 7 and rank 18 respectively. I’ve found the most luck so far just hanging out in a Helltide or Witchtide zone and farming the special seasonal altars, rather than grinding out Nightmare Dungeons. More than likely in the coming days I am going to finish up my Coven Reputation and hopefully at the same time finish out the Lunar New Year rep as well. This is going to give me a couple more resplendent sparks that in theory will let me craft another mythic… which hopefully gives me one of the others I want for my build. If I max both reputations that will give me 3 sparks… giving me a second chance pending I get a bad option when crafting the first one.
Past that I think I am done with Helltide and am going to mostly make myself available to help Ace complete the rest of their season journey objectives. Diablo IV is a pretty great game at this point, but very much feels like it takes the same role as Diablo III does. Its a fun game to play for a few weeks with a nice clear progression of objectives to finish. However once the Seasons Journey is over, I find that I lose my desire to keep grinding. Mythics are just unobtainium enough to make them feel like they are not a realistic goal… it is like getting a Headhunter or Mageblood to drop. Whereas Path of Exile has little hits of dopamine along the way… Diablo IV doesn’t really have much in the way of interesting things to farm once you have gotten your build to the point of functional.
The post Season Seven Complete-ish appeared first on Tales of the Aggronaut.
