Good Morning Folks. Last night I finished getting the wizard chore currency to buy the last of the three pieces available of the Ward Knight’s Armor set. One of the things I dig about this set is that the appearance works regardless of the armor class, which means I can be running around in leather armor but looking like I am wearing plate. This of course required me to dye several pieces of my set, which led to me changing up a bunch of things about the outfit while still keeping to my traditional red, green, and black color palette. Unfortunately the infusion I am using kind of muddies the waters when it comes to appearance, and everything is a bit more hazy than I want it to be. I could remove the infusion… but then I would just end up needing ANOTHER one that grants some buffs.
Last night was the second outing of what I am currently referring to as Fractals with Friends. I am sure we will vary that activity at some point… but we made it through five fractals before running out of time. Technically in a few weeks when the Street Fighter 2 collaboration happens in Monster Hunter Wilds we will be spending the evening doing that content and taking a break from Guild Wars 2. Additionally there are a bunch of dungeons that I think we want to run as well, so we will probably be weaving those in from time to time. However Fractals with Friends just has the magical power of alliteration so it is what I am using. This whole thing reminds me of how much more enjoyable it is to fail with friends, than execute perfectly with strangers.
I’ve taken a bit of a break from the whole Vision questline and started working on filling every Janthir region renown heart each day. At some point I would like to finish the Janthir Mastery quests, which I believe are a prerequisite for the Legendary Spear. It does not hurt that Janthir is quite possibly my favorite area of the map currently. The Janthir Syntri meta is still butts… and a bit too tight on timing. I was with a team that executed pretty much perfectly and we still only managed to down the encounter with roughly a minute to spare. I am hoping that when the next expansion goes in, that they water down this bit of content at least for the open world variant. I think the tryhard players are probably mostly doing this as a convergence instead of joining in the open world shenanigans. I only do it if I happen to be in zone at the time it is firing off… and only then if we have decent support on both bosses. Last night just happened to be a perfect storm and we got it finished.
The best of the Renown Hearts is the Journeykin Outpost, which is what the Bearfolk call the Warclaws. Sure there is a World of Warcraft poop quest where you gather the scat and take it to the composter… but most of your time is spent petting the big cats and feeding them. The whole thing is delightful, and I would happily take care of my big kitty friends every single day. Janthir is so fucking charming. It has Grizzly Hills vibes and even the later maps are pretty nice. Guild Wars 2 usually has this problem where the early maps are a lot of fun… but some of the later maps are pure hell. I am looking at you Nayos, Desolation, etc. So far all of the Janthir maps feel fairly charming, even though you start dealing with my absolutely least favorite mob type… Bloodstone Elementals.
I did the reset Taco as usual, and there was a point where I was hanging out on voice but cracking up at the fight. Someone decided to take their fishing boat and ram it repeatedly into Tequatl. The above screenshot was taken right before they decided to desummon it and start fighting legitimately. There is just something balancing about doing the server reset Tequatl fight, and folks are generally the most chill you have ever seen. The other night we had something totally dumb where someone asked every one that could tag up to do so… and we had like 20+ commander and catmander tags running on a single map. It is dumb stuff like this that really make me enjoy this fight.
I did encounter what appears to be some sort of a bug. There is a dumb crafting mini game involving fractals where you use one miniature to craft another miniature… over and over until you have created all of the named cat golems. I had three of the Mini Professor Mews sitting in my bank and from a fractal loot box I pulled the very rare Amber Quantic Dipole. So immediately I thought I would try and craft the next Golem in sequence: Mini Mister Mittens. However for whatever reason… the Mystic Toilet is not letting me add the last two ingredients… which I have plenty of: Obsidian Shards, and Crystalline Dust. I have no clue what is going on and have checked the wiki multiple times to make sure I am not missing anything. I am guessing it is just bugged. If anyone out there has an idea of what I might be doing wrong… please let me know.
In other news… I did in fact do the dumb thing. I created a purely free to play character named Belgratis. I might buy the base version of the game at some point for the account, but mostly the idea behind this character is to have something stripped down that I can use for the purpose of writing guides. I have a very basic guide in the works that I took a ton of screenshots for yesterday and will likely massage into something that makes sense over the extended holiday weekend. Not that it will be of any value to a seasoned player… but sometimes the Guild Wars 2 interface is a bit much for players who have come from more Wow-like MMORPGs.
The post Fractals with Friends appeared first on Tales of the Aggronaut.
Good Morning Friends! I am not entirely certain what it is about the ritual of doing Tequatl the Sunless at server reset that I enjoy so much but it is most definitely a thing. I am honestly a bit annoyed with the time change because it pushes the “start” of my evening back an hour later than it was. There was just something about sitting down with dinner and killing a giant undead dragon as my first activity of the evening that set the tone for the rest of it. It isn’t that Tequatl or “Taco” as I occasionally call it is really that rewarding. There are much better uses of my time, but there is something about the event that I enjoy and the fact that I have managed to pull several ascended weapons from it at this point. There is also a little community of folks who run this every single night and I enjoy the vibe they bring… that is unless I get the map with the Goon Squad on it.
I’ve been working my way through the story with my Ranger and am on the second section of Living World Season 2. In theory, my excuse is to use this experience as a way of knocking out the “Return To” achievements and eventually earning myself a Legendary Amulet as a result. Essentially ANet as a way of buying time for the End of Dragons release threw in a “Living World Return” series that provides a ton of rewards along the way and a legendary item that you can use on all of your characters. It was due to some of these achievements that I was able to finish my Skyscale so quickly because completing segments gave me exactly the amount of zone currency required for one of the steps of that quest chain. I have completed all of the content in Guild Wars 2, but had done so often times out of sequence and over the course of ten years of me playing off and on.
What has been so interesting is seeing this cast of characters that I am already so engaged with… evolving into what they will eventually become. It is like I read the last chapter of the story and now can better appreciate the chapters that are leading up to it as a result. So many of these characters I did not like at all when I first met them through Living World Season 2, because I did not understand what had happened during the first Living World Season. The game just sort of threw you in the middle of something that didn’t make much sense. While I disliked Braham specifically for most of a decade, I now feel like I understand him a bit better as a character and also think that Kas is less of an airhead because I know that both Kas and Jory to some extent are dealing with a lot of shit that went down along the way while still trying to remain a strong couple.
It makes me think that at some point in the future, I should probably start a brand new character and play all of Final Fantasy XIV through from the very beginning. Now that I know where the story is going, I feel like I will better appreciate the journey. I’m not one who is negatively impacted by spoilers and quite honestly most of the time… knowing the destination makes me stop trying to second-guess every decision along the way. I can finally relax and enjoy the ride for what it is without feeling like I need to be wary of each step. I think this is part of why I have fairly regular replaying of games that meant a lot to me like Dragon Age, Mass Effect, Skyrim, Fallout, or The Witcher 3. It is the same reason why I find comfort in watching Star Wars, Dune, or Blade Runner… it is comfortable to re-experience things that once made me happy and it is something I can use as a bit of solace when I am struggling.
In more current and fresh news… I was in fact able to skip past the game-breaking bug surrounding the Lagon boss fight in Last Epoch. If you get stuck where Lagon will not summon a portal for you to take, you can just teleport to Soreth’ka in the Divine Era. This does in fact cause you to complete the quest you are on and allow you to pick up the next sequence and begin the ninth and final chapter of the game. The last chapter was pretty fun but included maybe the worst possible archetype of creation… a wizard that summons a ring of bad around him so you have to fight him in close quarters… then summons an endless string of bees for you to fight. Bees in ARPGs are just universally awful and end up doing way more damage they you would think they should.
I’ve made minimal progress in the Monolith system, but have finished the first boss and am working on unlocking the second. I am not sure what it is about the game but I’m less driven to keep going not that I have finished the story. Maybe it is that I know I will be poking my head into Diablo IV in a few minutes, or that I am really enjoying Guild Wars 2 at the moment. The monolith just doesn’t seem as “sticky” as I would like it to be. It is really fun with friends, but I sorta find it less interesting when I am running it by myself. The drop rates of gear also feel a bit fickle in that it has been probably 20 levels since I last got an upgrade. I’m just not seeing items that are worth swapping to and would require more crafting than I have forging potential available to fix. I know as I progress upwards in the monolith that I will keep seeing better and better items, but I am in this weird period where nothing useful seems to be dropping. The rewards from each monolith echo feel significantly less important when you know you are just going to be vendoring almost all of it.
I think in the test realm they must have buffed drop rates significantly because it feels like I am only getting a trickle of useful gear. Maybe it is just that I know more specifically what types of items I am after with my paladin build than I did with the necromancer. Whatever the case the game as a whole just feels less rewarding than it did in testing. I am trying not to force myself to play Last Epoch because I don’t want to ruin the experience. I might try playing something else because while I enjoy the tanky nature of the Paladin build I am running, it isn’t terribly exciting gameplay-wise. I sorta miss having my Bone Golem thrashing about. I would also like to try building something with Primalist, and if I do plan on switching classes I should probably do so before I get too deep into the monolith system since that is unlocked on a character-by-character basis and not account-wide.
In the short term however, I am going to be playing a lot of Diablo IV as I try and get used to that game, and get far enough along to unlock the wolf cub backpack. It is sort of adorable.
The post Enjoying the Journey appeared first on Tales of the Aggronaut.
