Good Morning Friends! Today is the first day of the new school year for my wife, and as a result, much of the weekend was centered around preparing her for that. However, I did manage to get a bunch of gaming in around the margins. I’ve been playing an RF Inquisitor as a test character to decide if I want to go down that path or stick with my Juggernaut shenanigans. In truth, the final decisions will be made when the patch notes drop in Friday and we see if Juggernaut and Righteous Fire spring forth unscathed. One of the things I am playing with as I level this character is relying on Scorching Ray instead of Fire Trap for single-target damage. There are definitely some positives being that I can burn through rare and unique monsters much faster. The glaring negative however is that I have to remain stationary while channeling it, which means there are going to be times when I cannot realistically stop to cast it. I wonder if I can create a linkage that could support both Fire Trap and Scorching Ray without greatly hampering either of them… because it sure would be nice to have both available.
Sir Gog released a video talking about the spoilers that are being released this week for Patch 3.22, and of them, I am greatly interested in Unending Nightmare. Essentially I have always wanted the ability to just not have Delirium Fog clear on its own. I get that for Delirium farmers this is a bad thing, but for me who only ever dabbles in most of the league mechanics it would be pretty great to have the option of simply clearing the entire map before it ends. Similarly, the Expedition node that gives you one big explosion has been something I have often wished existed. If this new Atlas Passive Tree gives me a node that just turns every Alva into the Inverse Incursions from the Memory maps… I would be in heaven. So far it feels like I am getting a lot of the things that I have wanted to exist, so maybe just maybe there are going to be a few more of them.
Most of my weekend gaming was spent playing Baldur’s Gate 3, which is likely no shock to anyone. The game as a whole has had a peak concurrency on Steam of over 800,000 players and it has yet to release on Consoles. I thought I had screwed up my current playthrough because I missed a key character when I could first talk to them. However last night I managed to sort out a sequence of events that had them come to seek me out in my camp, so I have now picked up Karlach and Wyll and shuffled my party around to allow room for both so I can give them a shot. I can already tell that I am going to love running around with Karlach. BG3 is one of those games where you think you are playing for thirty minutes but have wound up playing for four hours. It has been a while since a game has caused this much time dilation for me, but I am enjoying it.
There is a cute web-based game called “Code: Action” going on in Honkai Star Rail where you retell the stories of Blade, Kafka, and to some extent Silver Wolf. The end result is you create these cute movie posters based on the characters. It is largely fluff, but each of the six posters gives you a chunk of currency in the game so if you have fifteen minutes it is well worth doing. I am slowly chipping away at leveling some more characters. I think I have unlocked enough on my Luocha to where he is undeniably the correct choice for party healing over Natasha. Next up I am probably going to start working on kitting out Himeko because I really like her follow-up attacks. Still enjoying myself but this game is very much in maintenance mode for me where I play thirty minutes a day and feel happy doing so.
I did not really get into Palia much more over the weekend, but I did test a theory. The first chest that you place gives you 400 storage capacity, and if you place additional storage chests on your property it just keeps giving you an additional 400 capacity in one large shared bank. Given that I gathered a ton of resources clearing my plot I decided to go ahead and craft a few spares. The grid view is really nice and allows you to align things much more cleanly than you can while placing things in the third person. I sorta wish housing systems like FFXIV had an over-the-top grid view like this for placing objects and aligning them to grid lines.
I also finished Season Three of the Netflix Witcher series. I had been avoiding it because the first half of this season was pretty awful, and I was afraid it would go even further off the rails. I’ve chosen to use an image of happier times when the series was more closely following the actual source material. Essentially The Witcher is a wobbly cart, and the first season had a few rough moments but largely lifted scenes directly from the novels or short stories. In the second season… the cart began to shake itself violently with the mischaracterization and subsequent murder of the beloved Eskel. In Season Three… the wheels have fallen off and the series has been drug along the path on the backs of the still rather excellent character actors. I’ve come to really like the actors playing most of the roles, but instead of doing justice to original property be it the novels or the games… we are just sort of in David Hasselhoff Nick Fury movie territory.
Lastly, to end on a positive note, I spent some time last night hanging out with our community cat Greybie. He has pretty much moved to our backyard permanently along with Tripod. I’ve been going out and loving on him each day when I put down food and water, but he has been mournfully meowing at me for not sticking around and staying a bit. He likes to hop up in my lap while I am sitting in my chair, and it has just been too hot to do this lately. However given that yesterday was the first sub-hundred-degree day in over a week, I figured I needed to go out and indulge the sweet baby. Sadly Tripod is still completely skittish, but at least hangs out… from afar… when I am out there.
I hope that you all had a great weekend. I hope my wife has a great start to the new school year today. I look forward to playing a lot more Baldur’s Gate 3 this week and getting a bit further in my RF Inquisitor test build.
The post A Packed Weekend appeared first on Tales of the Aggronaut.
Good Morning Folks! August is turning out to be exceptionally busy with me doing some build testing ahead of the 3.22 League in Path of Exile, the Launch of Baldurs Gate 3, and in the midst of all of this I finally got my email inviting me to Palia. For those who have not been following this game, it has been billed in the media as coming from former Blizzard and Riot employees, but frankly… given the colossal turnover at both companies, you would be hard-pressed to point at ANY game without being able to say that. It does have a graphical style that reminds me of an amalgam of World of Warcraft, Wildstar, and Free Realms.
What the game promises is an interesting concept, a hangout MMO without combat. What this feels like in practice is Stardew Valley the MMORPG. More than that I also get Landmark vibes when it comes to hunting down rare resources, and even a bit of Animal Crossing. Essentially you are teleported to this world and given an instanced plot of land and some resources to be able to harvest and craft your way into making it a home.
The character creation system is “aggressively fine” but that opinion might be coming from the fact that I also created my character in Baldur’s Gate 3 within a few hours of each other… and that creation system is phenomenal. My key complaint is the lack of beards, which is often a complaint I have with various games. However one of my friends came to the rescue to inform me that this is on the roadmap. Other than being clean-shaven, I was able to create a reasonable facsimile of “Belghast” as I often appear in various games. I would never wear skinny jeans, but I am going to blame some non-GenX artists for that one as they were the most non-descript black pants option I had. I assume over time more clothing options will open up. It would also be cool to have some different body options given that I am a very large man and I would absolutely give my avatar a belly.
Just like in StarDew Valley you are given an area of the map that is littered with volunteer trees, stones, assorted collectibles, and the remnants of a broken down fence and housing foundation. My OCD required that I harvest EVERYTHING within the boundary of my fence line. So now I also have a bulging storage shed filled with basic resources, which should hold me for a little bit when it comes to crafting.
The initial objectives were to build a tent, a workbench, and a storage bin and then the game sent me into town to meet a bunch of town folk. This in turn gave me a whole slew of other objectives. I’ve also learned how to hunt and fish. Hunting… I am extremely bad at it as it involves trying to slowly fire a bow as woodland creatures scurry around the map. Fishing… I got the hang of it pretty quickly once I figured out that I needed to move my mouse from side to side to keep up with the bobber. I’ve yet to learn how to actually go to sleep, or even if I need to but I have a way larger than I expected tent filled with nothing at the moment.
The game is charming as heck and I look forward to watching as it progresses. It definitely fills that Stardew Valley with friends vibe, and I want to see what grouping up while harvesting does. Landmark used to have this mode where if you grouped up and then gathered resources, everyone in the party got a copy of everything that was looted. I could see something like that going really well here. I would also love to see this game implement some sort of large-town project system. In Horizon/Istaria, there were these massive crafting projects that involved building bridges to new areas or building out towns, that essentially required the entire community to pool resources. This sort of experience would fit this game especially given that there is no combat.
I figure most everyone that is interested in this game has already signed up, but if you have not… please feel free to use my Referal Code. As far as I know, it does nothing to expedite your access to the beta but does give me sweet stuff for signing people up, and I believe you get a care package when you first log into the game. I know I had stuff waiting on me from the code I got from Scopique when I finally got access yesterday. All in all, this looks like a really cool game to watch as it develops into a chill game for nights when you just can’t handle anything too terribly complex. I am of course Belghast in thegame, so feel free to friend me if you are already there.
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Good Morning Friends! We are going to go on a bit of a journey. I’m very much in Path of Exile mode with the new league starting some 16 days from now. I have been playing around with various build ideas and trying out new things. This also means I am consuming a lot of content which in turn causes the YouTube algorithm to dredge up even more of it for me to watch. Trade is an extremely important part of Path of Exile, whether or not you want to admit it. If you are playing without access to the trade market, you are absolutely playing on the hardest difficulty settings. Solo-Self-Found is absolutely a game mode, but it is also one that expects you to know quite a bit about the even more obtuse crafting system in order to fix your resistances and craft your own gear. I feel strongly enough about this that I took the time to cobble together a rather detailed dissection of a trade encounter in an attempt to demystify the process.
Then I stumbled onto this video from All-Trades Jack who has been going on his own journey through this game much like I have over the last few years. He has an excellent video talking about the merits of following a guide which I highly recommend watching. Essentially he reached the point that I did two leagues ago, where I finally was willing to engage with the Trade system. He honestly talks about many of the very sane and reasonable objections that I also had. Trade in Path of Exile is needlessly cumbersome and it requires a human element to the trades that I have not dealt with since Everquest and setting up a trader in the Nexus. It should be as simple as putting items in a publicly flagged trade stash tab and then allowing players to purchase those items through an in-game auction house. However two leagues into wrapping my head around the trade economy… it works the way it works for a reason.
One of the core problems with an Auction House system is that it often allows for arbitrage, or essentially buying cheap goods and then selling for a profit margin. This is ultimately how the real-world stock market works, so it makes sense that players will figure out ways to carry over this same logic into a video game. In World of Warcraft, this has led to an arms race over the years of Auction House tools and changes to the way that the Auction House worked, in order to try and throttle the equivalent of “fast trading”. Essentially in an Arbitrage system, there is essentially an invisible broker sitting in the middle of a trade always making sure that prices trend upwards. This is an oversimplification because I don’t tend to engage in “economic pvp” as some call it. I know it works and I have a mount in Classic WoW entirely thanks to the fact that my friend Stargrace is extremely skilled at playing a market and looking for opportunities.
This is not me passing judgment on the system, but just saying that it isn’t really my jam. World of Warcraft specifically has systems in place to help limit the impact of runaway arbitrage. When you use an item, it often binds to your character meaning that you cannot then turn around and sell it after using it. When the game launched bags were not bound to the character, and as a result the bag cartel became one of the most rampant marketplaces. I remember getting very threatening messages when I crafted my first Mooncloth Bag and dared to price it cheaper than all of the other bags on the market. From Burning Crusade and beyond, all bags were set to bind to the character on equipment. BOE as a system is likely largely a result of the trade economy that WoW Devs were all too familiar with in Everquest where all of the gear was tradeable effectively forever. Nothing was ever truly removing gear from the economy because I could use the same Lamentation for 50 levels, and then trade it off to the next person when I got an upgrade.
Path of Exile is similar to the original days of Everquest in that almost everything in the game is freely tradeable between your characters or any other player in the game. This allows for some really interesting decisions where I can take maps with modifiers that I cannot personally run, but sell them to players who have builds capable of running them. I can also take every piece of gear that I find and sell it to any other player, or even when I decide I am done with a character use those items to fund my next character. It is an economy begging to be set ablaze by arbitrage, and there are in fact discords devoted to buying items in bulk for the purpose of flipping them. However, this is not something that the game itself supports, and by default, trade seems to be purposefully cumbersome and requires several human touchpoints in order to stop rampant flipping.
It might be Stockholm syndrome, but I have reached a place of acceptance that All-Trades Jack has yet to arrive at. I accept that the cumbersome nature of trade, and the inconvenience of needing to stop what I am doing in order to sell an item… is a fair tradeoff for having the ability to find reasonably priced items for the vast majority of the league life span. We are currently at the end of a league and the trade market is a bit tight, but my reasonably priced items are going like hotcakes as a result. I will say that the inconvenience factor has changed what I am willing to sell. I am no longer going to personally list 1 Chaos items because frankly, it isn’t worth my time to stop doing whatever I happen to be doing to pop into my hideout to complete that trade. In Sanctum my bulk bin was 1 Chaos, in Crucible my cheapest sell price was 5 Chaos… and going into the next league I fully expect the lowest price I am willing to sell at will be 10 Chaos.
While my personal price point has trickled up, it is not that I am charging more for individual items… it is just that I am only selling better quality items. There are enough dedicated traders out there who are more than happy to take on smaller trades to make sure those 1 Chaos uniques are in plentiful supply. I’ve basically figured out a way that I can live with the system. Would I like it all to be automated and require zero human interaction? Absolutely. However, I am not sure if I would like the ramifications of that system. I get the impression that Grinding Gear Games does not want their trade economy to devolve into a flippers paradise. I feel like they would like to reward players for going out and doing content and then selling the items that they find in the wild. Much of why I never really engaged with the Auction House market in World of Warcraft, is that it felt like it was stacked against the folks going out and doing the content.
Anyways I’ve made my peace with the system. I’ve tried to release content both in written and video form in an attempt to demystify it. There will still be folks who want nothing to do with the system, and at least among my circle of friends I am always willing to interact with trade for them when they are looking for something specific. Last league, I had a bag slot that had currency belonging to Thalen for example, and when he wanted something he would just send me the trade site link and I would snatch it up for him. I’ve reached the point where I am comfortable enough navigating the system that I don’t mind doing it for others. I’ve yet to touch the bulk trading options like TFT, but at some point, I could see myself dipping my toes into that market for no reason other than to get rid of some of my vault clutter. That said I keep buying new tabs in the guild bank so I can start sharing excess things like maps, because after a point I am generating them faster than I can run them.
Anyways! I doubt All-Trades Jack will ever read this… but I figured I would at least share my thoughts on the matter.
The post Inconvenience as a Feature appeared first on Tales of the Aggronaut.
Good Morning Folks! I’ve continued to descend into madness with my Scion and last night made a number of changes. Firstly you will notice that I have a giant firey ring of death… aka Righteous Fire. At this point you are thinking “Bel, you said this was an Armageddon Brand Build”, which is fair and that is still very much the case. The thing is RF gets used in a bunch of builds that are not necessarily relying on it as the primary damage source. In the case of my nonsense build… I am mostly using it as a flat 41% Spell Damage buff, while also doing a decent job of mopping up little things that get a bit too close. The other thing you might notice is that I have reserved almost all of my mana bar, and half of my life bar, meaning I am living somewhat dangerously.
I’ve opted to play around with Petrified Blood, which is the first time I have really used this as a defensive layer. The idea behind it is that you cannot recover more than half of your life, but the bottom half of your life bar… is “protected” in that 92% of damage taken is doled out to you slowly over time… allowing your regeneration to have time to work. Given that my goal with this build is to largely stack life and regeneration, I thought this might be a viable option, and other than causing me to freak out all the time… so far it appears to be working. I’ve included tooltips for both Armageddon Brand and Righteous Fire so you can see where I am currently. Based on Path of Building my numbers do not look amazing… but I am also dealing with a lot of level 14ish skill gems so that should improve over time and levels gained.
Last night I beat my third labyrinth and finished choosing my second ascendency for Scion. I was leaning towards Chieftan just for the regen, raw fire damage, and ability to cover enemies in Ash. The 10% Strength boost may also be good if I pick back up the ability that converts the strength damage bonus to spell damage. All told I think this combo is probably about as good as it gets for Armageddon Brand Scion. I would probably never purposefully build this way again, but in this experiment, I am just rolling with what I happen to have currently. The notable that I need to figure out a way to pick up is Pain Attunement. Since I am permanently on “Low Life” this will give me a significant boost in damage. I do not believe this can be anointed, but it is available as an option from crucible weapons. I need to sift through my stack of rejected sceptres and see if any of them have it.
I got to Act 10 last night before I went outside to play with Greybie. I will likely finish that up over lunch. I often slow-walk Act 10, but really… the only reason why I tend to do that is to finish up my third Labyrinth before taking another resistance hit. Given that I have already done this… I should probably just finish things up and then begin trying to fix my resists permanently and swap out some gear. I’ve taken my sweet time with this character, mostly because I’ve enjoyed the relaxing leveling process but now I am curious how well it is going to do in early maps. I am having way more fun with this character than I ever expected. When I created it, I legitimately expected it to be a throw-away experience and to never log into it again after beating Dominus. I am super excited about the possibility of what ExileCon might bring, and also really interested to see the announcement of the next FFXIV expansion this weekend as well.
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