shipping

Settlers League is Great

by
Good Morning Folks! I am a bit late getting a post started today because work things got in the way early early this morning. Friday was the launch of the Settlers of Kalguur League in Path of Exile and I have been having a blast. I was a bit slower going through the campaign than I normally would be, largely because I spent a lot of time doing the league mechanic once it unlocked upon arriving in Lioneye’s Watch in Act 1. Normally I don’t invest heavily in the league mechanic until I have made my way into mapping, but I feel like doing it while campaigning was the correct choice because a lot of the upgrades end up being time-gated. As a result, it took me roughly 20 hours to finish the campaign which was Friday evening, off and on throughout Saturday, and then finishing my 3rd lab and killing Kitava early Sunday morning.
As of this morning, I am 44 maps into progressing my atlas and very smoothly running through white and yellow maps without significant upgrades. I’ve actually kept track of my expenditures this time around so that I would be able to recap in a blog post. Currently, I’ve spent 51 Chaos on everything I am wearing, including an -15 Immortal Flesh (1c), Cloak of Flames (5c), Rise of the Phoenix (2c), a Fire/Chaos/Dex Helm (3c), Chaos/Fire/Life Ring (20c), and Chaos/Fire/Life/Dex Gloves (20c). I had a bit of a windfall pretty early on where I sold an influenced base for 80c, and an Enlighten support for 260c. On top of that, I have picked up miscellaneous Chaos Orbs and 2 raw Divine Orbs. I’m not in a real rush to buy items but it feels good to know I have some spending money when I ultimately want to replace most of my rare gear. You can get a ton of life on items right now, and I hope to end up replacing pretty much everything with at least 100 life rolls on various slots.
What has kept me from needing to buy a ton more gear is the fact that the league mechanic produces a ton of really good items. While it isn’t generating a ton of raw currency it is producing a lot of items that have relatively high tier rolls, including lots of really good resistances on them. I was kind of screwing up the shipping mechanic a bit, but Sunday a bunch of videos came out explaining how it works or at least how to improve your results and I hope to see a big payoff at some point either today or tomorrow. Essentially each port city has a hidden faction system, and you unlock higher tiers of faction by fulfilling their requested goods. When you fill all of the items on an order it unlocks a new higher tier of demands and again… just by shipping only those items you are basically guaranteed to get more return than you are sending.
I’ve gotten some truly wild items out of this. For example, never did I expect to have it in the cards to be using a one-handed axe right now instead of a scepter but…. that is where we are in the league. I got this axe back from a shipment that had +18% Dot Multi, and +24% Fire Dot Multi on it… which was infinitely better than the scepter I had been using. I threw the new Ignite enchant on it and crafted the Fire Damage/Ignite Combo Betrayal mod on it. This is pretty much better than anything I could get for less than six or so Divines at the moment. Sure the physical attack damage doesn’t really do anything for me… but also I might end up recycling this item into some sort of a fire-based melee build later once I can afford to craft or buy a “forever” scepter.
Legitimately I am having so much fun with the shipping mechanic, and a lot of the items it brings back… might be useful for throwing into the recombinator later. Right now I am using my cast-offs to feed into the disenchanter as arcane dust seems to be a premium commodity that a lot of the upgrades require. At some point, I need to spend some time hiring and firing better people, because I have a bunch of workers that are less than optimal. You can get these combo workers that have lots of different skills… but you end up paying a premium for each additional skill level that they have. I would be better off replacing those with single-stat workers to hopefully bring down my total gold sink for the town a bit.
I’ve not made it super far into Delve, largely because… you can’t gather resources down there. You get a heck of a lot of gold in a short period of time which is good, but I keep running dry on the various ores that are needed to feed shipping. As a result… I might be spending a lot more time mapping this league instead of plumbing the depths for cities. I’ve found my very first city, but it is at around 80 depth which means that the payoff is not amazing. I am still working on spending Azerite to unlock things because if nothing else Delve is amazing for producing sheer quantities of bubblegum currency… something that I find myself tragically lacking. For example, I have zero of my flasks automated at this point… because I don’t have the Glassblower’s Baubles to quality them… nor do I have the Instilling Orbs in order to craft on the auto-use enchant. Both of these are problems that will likely be solved by delving more.
What makes this league so great is honestly the virtuous cycle that takes place between mapping/delving and then returning back to town whenever a shipment comes in. Right now I have two ships going one that is working the 45-minute routes nearest to Wraeclast and one that is working the 2-hour routes that are furthest away. This gives me two distinct reward horizons that look forward to, and nothing feels quite as good as seeing the pop-up in the corner of your screen indicating that it is time to go back and see what the journey brought. It puts me in this pattern of trying to see how much I can get done before the ship comes back and the two cycles feed each other. Mapping and Delving generate gold and resources that I can then invest in my town and keep moving forward. I legitimately hope this system goes standard because it is pretty freaking great.
Honestly, I am super glad that I went ahead and stuck with old and reliable Righteous Fire because it has given me more mental bandwidth to explore the league mechanics without also having to figure out my damned build. Are you playing Settlers of Kalguur league? What are your thoughts so far? Drop me a line below. The post Settlers League is Great appeared first on Tales of the Aggronaut.

Expansion Retail Forgot

by

Expansion Retail Forgot

Yesterday was of course the launch of Legion, or more so the first full day of the expansion.  I have a lot of memories of acquiring copies of World of Warcraft throughout the years.  When it launched in 2004, I was firstly in the “never pre-order anything” camp, and while there was a line out the door and down the sidewalk at Gamestop… I was able to stroll into Walmart at midnight and pick up my copy.  I remember Walmart having this huge display in electronics, the size you would have expected for a major movie release.  With Burning Crusade, getting a copy was significantly more difficult, but I still managed to roll into Walmart at midnight and snag one.  I did however spent the next few weeks going out at lunch trying to find copies for folks who could not for whatever reason seem to get it in their area.  When Wrath was released, once again I did the Walmart at midnight thing… and this time there was actually a line.  I had an awesome conversation with another warrior tank while standing in line waiting on our boxes.  However by the time Cataclysm came around… I believe that was the first expansion you could purchase a digital collectors edition and I did so happily because I was getting “too old” to be doing this midnight madness.  I had reached that point in my life when I just wanted to be able to log in and play, and didn’t care too much about how that happened.

With Pandaria I somehow ended up with another physical collectors edition, and at this point I don’t even remember how or why.  Now traditionally speaking around here… World of Warcraft Collectors Editions rot on the shelf.  Not in a large quantity, but up until recently there have been a couple of physical copies of Warlords of Draenor available at various stores.  I have a second account, and could use a second key… so yesterday I checked a few places to see if there happened to be one available.  The idea was that I would ultimately trade that CE key with a friend who just got the normal copy, given that I already have the digital entitlement on my battle.net account.  That plan however backfired in the most spectacular of ways because no one seems to have Legion in any form, let alone Collectors Editions.  Throughout the day yesterday I heard tales of Amazon switching orders to arrive on September 29th, and listened as several friends had to dodge and weave to get around this delay.  Throughout the day I checked Walmart, Target, Best Buy, and Gamestop…  none of which had so much as a single copy.  When I looked up Legion on the Best Buy website, it stated that there were no copies available in a 250 mile radius.  250 miles includes the Dallas Metro, Kansas City Metro, Fayetteville/Bentonville Arkansas area, Wichita Kansas, and Oklahoma City.

I refuse to believe that every single copy sold out, because that just seems impossible.  What seems far more likely is that there has been some massive shipping mishap, that involved delays to the central southwest.  The result however is that it feels like Legion was the expansion that retail somehow forgot.  While Warlords of Draenor was supposed to be this expansion to invite people back that had been gone a long time…  it feels like Legion is actually delivering on that promise.  It is going to be sad if it somehow misses its opportunity simply because the copies of the game are not available.  The truth is… my only interest in a physical Collectors Edition is the fact that it includes the soundtrack.  I wish that they would add that to the list of digital entitlements that you get when you buy the collectors that way.  I can also always use a new mouse pad at work, so there is always that bonus as well.  I however more than anything wanted to walk into Walmart and see a big display of pretty new copies of the game, in the hope that it might entice players to return.  It has been great seeing players coming out of the woodwork for the first time in years, and I guess part of me wants to see that continue.  Pretty boxes sitting on a shelf taunting you when you go to get groceries… seems to be an awesome way to guilt players into coming back.

Expansion Retail Forgot

As far as the expansion itself…  so far I am enjoying myself.  It is a much slower paced expansion, but that is precisely what I had wanted.  I spent all night playing the game, from the time I got home around 5ish until when I finally went to bed around 10:30.  During that time I managed to make it to level 101 and about 15-20% into level 102.  As I had originally planned I went Fury this time around… which is quite honestly the first time since the launch of the game that I will not be leveling my Warrior as Protection.  I am sure somewhere something is turning over in its grave…  but more than likely it is just the old me that used to take pride in saying “Real Warriors Level Prot”.  Fury is fun as hell, but there was a period when I started on the artifact quest… that I questioned my decision.  I am guessing that maybe these quests are just a little “overtuned”… because I remember in beta thinking they were rough.  I died probably no less than a dozen times when I tried to do this as a Deathknight, and I probably took a half dozen deaths as a Fury Warrior.  Towards the end I was super carefully picking my way through the zone a single mob at a time, and kicking myself for not bringing any food into the quest.  That was ultimately the hardest part was that I had no real way other than bloodthirst to get back my health.  I finished it however and once I started Stormheim… everything leveled out and I have had no problem taking down any of the starred mobs solo.  So far I am enjoying the hell out of myself, but I don’t feel like I have spent enough time in game yet to give it much more than a thumbs up.

AggroChat #90 – Star Wars Spoilers Show

by

aggrochat90_720

Firstly let me lead off this post with a quick note…  I screwed up.  We had a discussion last week about potentially switching to the Season/Episode format for our show numbers.  After the discussion we decided to go with continuing the bigger numbers is better format.  Before the show I go out and double check to make sure what episode we are on… and apparently I look at the wrong episode.  As a result I absolutely announced this week as 89 when it should have been 90.  I feel strange about edits… largely because the format of our show is intended to be like listening in on an existing conversation.  So for the time being I’ve decided to let my screw up stand…  feel free to mock me.

On the week of Star Wars the Force Awakens release we actually had planned on recording a show on our feelings about the movie.  The thing is… that we all for the most part loved the movie so much that we did not want to add to the spoilers on the internet.  As a result we put off the show until a point where we felt it was “fair game”.  Upon coming back to work after New Years it seems like the internet has declared Star Wars spoilers open season, so as a result we decided to go ahead and record the show.  What ended up happening is a show really unlike what I expected.  It was far more critical than the hour and a half gush fest that I expected…  but still from the point of fans talking about fandom.

Tonight we also welcome back Dallian and Neph for yet another “big show” which are starting to seem far more common this year.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: RSS