The crap we are going through right now with Twitter has made me re-evaluate a lot of the things that I use in my life. One of these is Linktr.ee a site that I have used for several years as a catch-all for all of the various social and project links associated with me. I’ve owned the domain Belgha.st and Belghast.com and for eons I simply had an apache redirect pointing at my Link Tree page. It gave me a clean and simple way to link someone to all of my things at once in a very mobile-friendly format. However, if tomorrow it vanished… I would honestly have trouble cobbling together all of the links again because that has been the place where I have largely stored them.
This idea of hosting my own links page had been living rent-free in my head for a while now, but never really coalesced into action until I saw this video from EposVox. While he provides a number of solutions that would be fine including just firing up a NeoCities website to host all of your content. It was not however the solution I was looking for. One of the things that I always enjoyed about Link Tree was just how fast I could add links to it, and how everything had a nice clean look and feel. This sent me down a rabbit hole of searching for solutions and I think I landed upon something. I even went so far as to share the solution I found with EposVox who has since created a Shorts video about it as well.
The tool that I landed upon is called LittleLink Custom and it is essentially a self-hosted version of Link Tree. It took all of a few minutes to set up the website, and by default exists in a multi-user mode so you could allow other friends to sign up for their own faux link tree pages that you were hosting. I did not necessarily need that functionality which is cool because it allows you to configure it in a way to automagically redirect people to a single profile. I already had space carved out for Belgha.st and Belghast.com, so I removed my .htaccess file that was bouncing people to Link Tree and started installing the software.
The most basic version of the site requires Php 8.0 or higher and SqlLite which is fine for a smaller install. It also supports MySQL if you want a more robust multi-user environment. I think the longest part of the setup was actually uploading the files to my host. There are a LOT of files, so I would highly suggest uploading the archive and then going through your host’s backend to extract those files otherwise you will be FTPing like 8000 tiny files forever. After minimal fiddling, I was in and configuring my link page. All that was left was for me to pick a theme I liked, install it, and then start adding all of my links.
One of the things I specifically dig about Littlelink custom is that it has support for a wide variety of options already out of the box, but you can easily configure custom links as well. I wish there was a bit more support for adding custom quick icons but I have faith that over time this will be adding more features. For what I really need, which is the ability to add headings, and sets of links… this will do swimmingly. Now the real hard part is going to begin, which is finding every place I had linked to my Link Tree and replacing it with the new Belgha.st link.
Since the software technically supports many different “users” I went ahead and created one for AggroChat and have migrated the Link Tree I had for the podcast over to it as well. Mostly this is just a place to keep a running list of all of the podcast mirrors as well as the most basic social information. I’ve even created a “Bel Gaming” one where I am going to experiment with using it as a dumping ground for the various video game-related profiles and accounts to make it easier to link up with me. This is very much a work in progress as many of the platforms don’t really have a profile page you can link to. You can add blocks of text to your link page, which is handy but I am going to have to fiddle with how that actually looks in practice.
The slow death of Twitter has really made me evaluate the tools that I use on a daily basis. I think we are heading towards me potentially just paying for a server somewhere out in the cloud and migrating all of my resources to that instead of paying for piecemeal hosting. It would be a big change, but it is one that I think is on the horizon. I am just not sure how much I want to trust “free” services anymore. This could of course be a wild overreaction, but it would be nice to feel like I have a bit more control over the fate of the things I enjoy. Even if it isn’t a scenario where a rich manchild destroys it… it could be something as simple as Google deciding the product is no longer viable. We started out on the internet with needing to host everything for ourselves, and I wonder if I will be moving back to that again.
The post Goodbye Link Tree appeared first on Tales of the Aggronaut.
Hey Folks! This weekend I spent some time exploring the ARPG called Undecember. I was completely unaware of this game until the launch of Diablo Immortal, and shortly after that point, the folks behind this title started doing some sponsored videos. However similar to Diablo Immortal, discussion of the game also came with a discussion of its cash shop and pay-to-win elements. After going through what we went through with Diablo Immortal and being so egregiously monetized… I decided that I would just give this game a hard pass.
I had largely put it entirely out of my mind when this weekend on a whim I decided to go through steam recommendations. One of the things I greatly appreciate about the Steam interface is the recommendations by friends section because in truth… I care way more about the opinion of my friends than I do any gaming pundit. So I noticed that Teufelaffe had left a review and honestly… it was enough to spark my curiosity and get me to install the game. His stance largely aligns with mine… that I don’t care if there is a way to shortcut the process by spending money so long as it isn’t required to do so. That was the problem I had with Diablo Immortal is that you could not get a fully geared-out character without spending literally tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars. This created a hard wall that blocked my progression where I could not function in Hell 2 because I lacked the “gear score” to make it viable because the game was actively debuffing me for not having spent enough money.
As Teufelaffe said in his review, the game really does feel like a blending of the best parts of Diablo III and some of the better parts of Path of Exile. It is a game where you have no classes and that you get to create your own character and choose their appearance. Then the spell gems that you equip and attribute points that you spend, determine what sorts of builds you can do. I opted to go for a largely Dexterity-based character, trying to replicate something like the Diablo III demon hunter so I am wearing leather armor, spending most of my points in Dex, and using ranged bow abilities. The hardest thing to get used to is the fact that you do not have full control over all of your keybinds… left click is your movement key and there seems to be no way to change that. However, if you hold down your left click you can steer with your mouse cursor which is functionally what I do with putting “force move” on W in the games that will support it. It took some getting used to but now feels comfortable enough.
Instead of relying on getting gear with specific sockets on it, in order to make your build like Path of Exile you have a hex grid that you lay gems on. Each gem has six sides and each side can have one of three colors on it or be completely empty without any colors. Essentially you can use these special helper gems to link other abilities or buff specific things about it. For example, my main attack right now is a spread shot and I have it linked to cast the ability Chain Lightning on hit. That means I fire off this spread of arrows and the first time it makes contact with any enemy, that triggers a lightning bolt to course and spread through surrounding enemies. Spread Shot also has a green gem that increases the number of projectiles… and I am sharing that with another ability called Flame Shot. Essentially it becomes this puzzle game of trying to figure out how best to place your gems in order to make sure you are getting the maximum benefit.
One thing of note is that Undecember is also a mobile game, and is available on Android and iOS and with it… comes a number of very mobile mechanics. Every time you do anything in the game, you are going to see a dozen teal arrows light up on your interface drawing your attention to various systems. This means spending a lot of time clicking through various menus in order to get various “rewards” that are largely meaningless at the moment because I am not entirely certain what anything does yet. The same is true with the cash shop in general. There are things that the game would like me to buy there, but all of it largely seems like nonsense. The only thing that I did notice is that it would cost you about $40 to buy a full cosmetic skin because skins are broken up into 4 chunks: armor, helm, mainhand, offhand… and each of those costs around $10 in cash shop currency.
For those who have played Path of Exile, the crafting system will be very familiar. In fact, there are a number of items that you will simply recognize as their Path of Exile equivalents… like I got my first Chaos Orb and Exalted Orb the other day and the icons feel similar enough. You can do some basic crafting through the enchant system at the blacksmith, or more hardcore crafting recipes at the alchemy table… aka the crafting bench. One thing that takes a bit to get used to is the fact that you have to manually level your gems by feeding them magic shards. That means at some point in the future you will be grinding random stuff trying to get magic shard drops so that you can catch your gems up. Right now I have not really struggled but at 30… I am starting to notice that I simply don’t have enough magical dust to level everything up at the same time.
All told I have been enjoying myself quite a bit and if you also were looking for a happy midpoint between Diablo III and Path of Exile you might check it out. I will let you know as I progress through the game if I hit any hard paywalls. That will be the point at which I check out, because while I am not afraid of spending money on a game… I don’t want it to be a requirement to progress. We tried some of the groupings over the weekend and unfortunately, there is no level-scaling, so you can drag someone along like you can in Diablo III but if you want grouping to be meaningful… you will have to stay within the level range of your friends. I am hoping that when I reach the endgame the content will be fun for grouping because right now the normal leveling content isn’t terribly exciting with other players.
So now to finish up with a bit of housekeeping. Last Friday I posted a note as a bit of a teaser stating that I was involved in the rollout of a gaming-focused Mastodon Instance. It rolled out on Sunday but I regret to inform you that I am no longer involved with it, nor can I suggest that anyone migrate to it. My yesterday was honestly pretty awful and it involved a sequence of events that led to me getting ejected from the planning discord, moderator status, and ultimately losing my account on the server. Granted I am being told that my account and the account of Scopique were not deleted… but they disappeared in sequence with me being shut out of the project so I drew what felt like obvious conclusions because neither account exists anymore. It was a bad situation but I am not going to go into details publicly, suffice it to say I am withdrawing my support in any capacity from the project. If you do migrate be cautious I guess that is all I would say.
I hope you all have a great day and a phenomenal week… and I am hoping my mental health improves because yesterday was a massive blow to it.
The post Exploring Undecember appeared first on Tales of the Aggronaut.
Good Morning Friends! I hope today is getting started in a reasonable manner. We continue on with the series of New World gear farms that I have spent the last few weeks documenting. This one is a bit of an odd one because technically you will be located within the boundaries of Everfall, but more naturally you are actually on the edge of Ebonscale Reach. On this farm, you will be hanging out near a waterfall and taking down a giant white crocodile over and over. I specifically came out here seeking a good necklace and a strength-based Great Axe, but having a Tanner Shirt drop is also a nice added bonus.
The core problem with this farm is where it is located. You have a few options namely that you can either run through Ebonscale Reach and an area infested with very aggro Alligators, or you can drop down a waterfall coming from the Everfall side. My suggestion and the directions that I have drawn in are to drop down from the Everfall side. You will of course need to understand how to break up your fall into smaller segments to keep from dying in the process as you cannot survive just jumping in from above given that there are no actual swimming mechanics. You will need to slide down the mountain and hit ledges on the way down to break up the momentum of your fall. Once there you can safely hang out next to the waterfall where the Tazorjaw won’t actually aggro you when it spawns in.
The worst part about this camp is that the terrain around the waterfall is a little janky, and it is entirely possible for a loot bag to spawn in half embedded in the ground. If this happens hold still and look for sparkles on the ground, which will indicate where the bag is located. Then in theory you should be able to hover over that patch of ground and loot what just dropped. I tried to kill him backed into the corner of the waterfall as the terrain there seemed to lead to more reasonable drop locations. All in all, this was a pretty quick farm and I got all of the drops in less than two hours. You will of course also get a lot of leather from the gator each time you skin it. Let’s look at the drops.
The big bonus of this camp is the Tanner Shirt, which sells pretty well on the trading post if you get spares. I know in my short farm I think I picked up three of them in total. The most common drop for me was the necklace, and the hardest thing to get dropped was the Greatsword. However, as I have talked about before since the game tends to “get stuck” on a single item your mileage may vary significantly. I have a handful more of these guides that I will be posting over the coming days and have collected them into a Loot Farms category on my blog. As always if you know any great spots that I have not visited that drop level 590 gear, please drop me a line below.
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Good Morning Friends! I hope you all had a most excellent weekend. This weekend was more dedicated to watching films than to playing much in the way of games. I kept up my daily Tower of Fantasy and New World activity and spent quite a bit more time in Night City but the key activities centered around three movies that I had been looking forward to watching. As a result, most of this post is going to be me trying to give my best spoiler-free impressions of each.
Hellraiser (2022) – Hulu
I have to admit that going into this movie I was deeply confused as to what it actually was. I thought it was a series and I thought it was intended to be a reboot of the franchise. In truth, it is neither of these things. Instead of a series, we are treated to a full-length movie, and honestly one of the better ones so far in the Hellraiser franchise. Essentially for me, the first three films in the original series are pretty good, with the third one being more a matter of taste than the first two. While I enjoyed Hellraiser Bloodlines because it felt like it book ended the story, it is also a deeply subjective thing and most people think it was the beginning of the end. Everything that came after was released directly to home video and can largely be skipped unless you are a glutton for punishment… but it might be more enjoyable to ACTUALLY summon the Cenobites than to watch those films.
This Hulu Hellraiser does a great job of walking a very narrow path between being completely new and unique… while still largely being complimentary to everything that came before it. Nothing in the movie outright contradicts the things that we already knew, and more than anything just fleshes out and expands the universe. The new designs for Pinhead and the other Cenobites are exquisite, and I am extremely obsessed with the one that is apparently being referred to as the Weeper. Jamie Clayton does an excellent job of playing Pinhead and they seem way more like “Dark Angels” than the original designs. If you were a big fan of the original, and especially the extended lore that surrounded them… then I think you will probably enjoy yourself as well.
Werewolf by Night (2022) – Disney Plus
I’ve been looking forward to this movie for so long and more than anything… the Werewolf by Night character joining the MCU. I think we are likely setting ourselves up for maybe a Dark Avengers at some point in the future. I loved these comics as a kid because like I talked about on Friday… the movie Lost Boys and my desire to find the comics in that film… led me down a rabbit hole of diving into all of the Marvel horror comics. The film itself is this delightful noir affair that harkens back to the “Universal Monsters” series of black-and-white films. It also has some pretty great comedic moments and introduces another of my favorite characters the monster that is being hunted.
I am really hesitant to go into much more detail because I don’t want to spoil anything, but I have a feeling that everyone is going to love Ted.
Day Shift (2022) – Netflix
To be completely honest, after the first two… Day Shift is a bit of a drop in quality. That is not to say it is not an extremely enjoyable movie, but it just hits differently. The Day Shift is essentially a buddy cop meets modern vampire hunter story. The positive is you get to see Snoop and Jamie Foxx as vampire hunters. The negative is the vampires themselves are not terribly interesting. There are elements of the film that feel like they have been borrowed from simply better stories. Again I am not bashing the film because I enjoyed it quite a bit, just trying to temper your expectations. The big takeaway from this film is that I really want to see Snoop in a Western as a gunslinger-type character. Jamie Foxx is a talented enough actor that he can make even the most milquetoast story entertaining to watch. Had this movie come out in the 90s, we would have loved it because it feels like a product of that cinematic generation.
Other than that I am winding my way down toward the end of this Cyberpunk playthrough. I am stalling out the main story so I can spend more time in each of the neighborhoods knocking out side quests. there is a ton of content that I never saw in my first playthrough, in part because I was hooked on the main narrative path and wanted to see it through to the conclusion. Now that I know the story and several of the alternate endings… I can take my time and spend more time just engaging with the streets and what they have to offer. There are quests that I have not found yet that I remember fondly, but cannot remember what triggered them. Essentially questing away in Night City has been a delightful diversion while waiting on the New World patch drop coming up on the 18th.
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