Good Morning Folks. Last night I officially started the Mad King festivities as we spend our normal few hours of guild nonsense running around the labyrinth. It was a pretty fun time, and eventually we largely followed around a tag. However not before some random idiot seemed to take very hostile offense to us having our own private tag since we outgrew the size of a normal party. I mean we could have dogpiled on the other tag… but technically we were there first, and also after a point it became about the principle of the situation. We were calm and reasonable in map chat, but this other person was actively cursing us out… which does not befit the chill that Guild Wars 2 normally has. I would blame this on the folks filing in from World of Warcraft… but this dude had the God Walking Amongst Mortals title… so they were a special brand of asshole.
That said… it did not really put a serious hamper on our fun, because the biggest component of Guild Wars 2 Thursdays is hanging out on discord and talking about all manner of nonsense. During which Sita the robot… relayed to us some concerning details that deeply concerned me… but then again… that is every week. Joking aside though it is a heck of a lot of fun just to hang out for a bit and do some relatively low effort gaming. This is the part of MMORPGs that I had been missing, and I am glad that I finally got off my ass and tried to wrangle folks to do something together. It doesn’t necessarily happy EVER week, but more often than not we are doing fractals or something similar in Guild Wars 2 every Thursday. If we had more folks… we would try strikes or something that requires slightly more effort. However for now… the Labyrinth was exactly the right amount of nonsense.
Prior to Guild Wars 2 shenanigans I spent a bit trying to catch AFK Journey up on the quest chain. While I don’t talk about it very often, I tend to play this game every night before falling asleep at least enough to do some of the dailies. However I tend to batch the story up and grind it all down in a single go, or in this current case a series of attempts. I think I am nearing the end of this current storyline and I have to say this is one of my favorite so far. I really like the character of Gala and I will kill anyone who threatens to harm her. I’ve started running AFK Journey on the same MuMuPlayer that I use to play Destiny Rising, and it is pretty great for batch doing auto battles to raise various ranks. If you play this game feel free to friend me up and my ID is 39949620.
Yesterday was the release of a new 5 star banner in Destiny Rising, and I had been banking up my pulls for this event. I had phenomenal luck and also spent a little money… and managed to pull 3 copies of her, and 2 copies of the new 4 star which seems WAY harder to get than Umeko was. They also threw Finnala and Ikora on the same banner… which means you are going to get way more copies of them as a result. Sadly neither of them are terribly useful characters other than our PVPVE nonsense. Maybe when we finish with the Ikora madness we should do Nala matches instead. The new champ is pretty cool is both 5 star and 4 star represent the very first bow characters. Thankfully you can pull an Exotic bow, the Trinity Ghoul off the battlepass which greatly improves their functionality. Helhest is ALMOST a great character… but unfortunately the normal drones don’t follow you around. Still it is a solid arc champion that has the ability to make heavy weapon ammo out of thin air… and represents a pretty great support character.
Another cool thing that I think went in with this update, is there are not a ton of outfits available for purchase with ONLY bright dust. This might have been a thing before, but up until this point I thought they required both bright dust and silver. As a result I snapped up outfits for all of the characters that I play regularly. I specifically love this Estela outfit, since green is already one of my favorite colors and green and red is the combination that I tend to build around in Guild Wars 2. My guess is that we were just interpreting the cost of these outfits incorrectly, because I cannot see that so many people spent silver on the green Tan-2 as I have run up against doing events.
I’ve been spending a lot of time in the Chaos Trials of the Nine, because I desperately need an Exotic Artifact for the fourth slot. This is essentially all that is standing between me and getting my Jolder to gold, and unlocking the next batch of ascension points. I’ve refactored all of my exotic artifacts to 2500+, and I think at this point the process is just wasting resources to go any higher. Essentially I am only getting an upgrade when I max out the pity luck on the refactors. If I had ONE more exotic artifact I could push it up to 2500 as well and get across the finish line. The other thing that is actively hurting me is that I am not using an exotic weapon on Jolder, and have not found any Exotic weapon mods that will fit into the submachine gun. All of the rapid fire mods that I can pull from the mod choice engrams… seem to only want to be slotted into the Autorifle.
Even if they did not make the changes to bright dust in this patch… I still feel like they are getting less stingy with alternate outfits in general. I pulled this alternate outfit for Jolder off the normal banner, and then this alternate outfit for Helhest off the new limited banner. I am not the biggest fan of the yellow and grey look for Helhest, but I love the Pink and Purple Jolder and am pretty much using that all the time now. I would love to pull an updated shield to match it at some point, especially given that Jolder right now is my main character that I am playing. It is weird how I originally thought Wolf was so cool, and then as I have played more of the game I have effectively completely abandoned him for greener pastures. I think the thing that could improve Wolf is if they would do the thing that the Mihoyo games do and allow you to change up his element and weapon loadout. If they made it so Wolf could learn how to use any weapons and any element… it would make them way more useful in the long run.
I’ve got a cookout thing going on tonight, so I am realistically not going to get much in the way of gaming. I also have an in person all day event going on at work, so I am going to be exceptionally work out from the combo of both of those events landing on the same day. Tomorrow I need to get up relatively early and run some errands, but after that I am probably going to grind Realm of the Nine until my eyes bleed… or I get an exotic artifact for the fourth slot. Other than that I fully expect to spend some time doing the Labyrinth grind in Guild Wars 2 and maybe try and knock out some of the other seasonal events. I’ve never attempted the jumping puzzle… so I might give that a spin even though I hate jumping puzzles. Sadly I don’t think you can do the teleport to friend nonsense to bypass this one.
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Good Morning Folks. Ace and I got together early in the evening and ran around a bunch of Destiny Rising. Of course we had to do our Ikora nonsense, and we realized there was a clear pattern. We have the first round where we do pretty damned good, and honestly rank fairly high overall. For example once again last night we got 2nd place overall and for most of the match we were running in the first place spot. Then immediately after that… we had a round where we spent most of it dead… and finished in last place. However at this point we only have two more rounds of Shifting Gates in order to complete the objective of running 10 with Ikora. At that point we are probably going to keep doing it… but just play more reasonable characters.
On top of the Ikora nonsense we did two raids last night that went exceptionally smoothly. It makes me wonder if folks are finally starting to grok the mechanics in there, or if there is just no one but hardcore players queuing for it these days. We also did a Master strike, but it was one with Precision Shinka’s which meant that I took one for the team and played Tan-2. I really need to buff him up quite a bit, but I am mostly focused on trying to get Jolder up high enough so that I can get a gold medal and get unstuck from my present light level logjam. Ace managed to move past it with their Estela which of course makes me feel like I am falling behind heh. I did pull a new Exotic weapon out of the master strike, and it is supposedly pretty powerful.
This of course meant I had to drop down to a planet and give it a spin on Xuan Wei, the only character that currently can use a fusion rifle. It is odd… basically instead of firing a spread of shots, you fire one giant grenade like slug. I can see how it would make him significantly more powerful overall and given that there is no spread… you no longer need to get quite so close to a target in order to optimize the damage. At some point I will probably run some Realm of the Nine with him to see how it feels doing proper content. This is something I need to do more often in general, but right now I mostly need to run it as Jolder so I can get void upgrade materials. I think Ace passed me because Destiny Rising is one of the few games they are playing right now, whereas I have a stack of games that I am trying to rotate between.
Speaking of other games… swapping over to a Demon Hunter seems like it was what I needed to get into Legion Remix. I feel like Blizzard has done what Blizzard has always done… and fucked with the formula a bit to make it worse. I feel like Panda Remix was accidentally a great game mode, that was released as a lark as filler content. With Legion Remix they purposefully tried to design this content… and as a result lost some of what made the previous incarnation great. Namely it feels like they have significantly slowed down the progress. What was so great about Panda is that it felt like you were grinding endgame content almost immediately… and this time around it feels like I have to properly level… which delays the enjoyment of grinding raids and such. I am still having fun, the pacing just feels completely off from what it did in Panda.
The flow of things is really weird too, because a lot of the class hall stuff seems to have been neutered, where you cannot run missions anymore. They speed you past the general unlocking phases that were time gated which is a good thing, but it also feels like a lot of the content has been removed. That said there is still a bunch of general unlocking of things content that has to be done, like retrieving your artifact weapons. This morning i started the process of unlocking Suramar and it does not seem to have gotten the timerunner treatment with things being sped up. Legion is still my favorite expansion in all of World of Warcraft, but it also does not feel anywhere near as fresh or exciting as it did with Panda. I think it was just a new concept and now the novelty has worn off a bit.
That said I am still enjoying myself and am nearing level 40 in the first area that I chose to go to, Azshara. I still probably have over half of the zone left to go, and maybe I am making good progress overall… but the pace just feels slower than Panda did. I am not really worrying to much about gear upgrades and I will batch up a couple dozen bronze chests while questing and then unlock all of them and scrap the excess. Of course I have to break out my Yak every time to restore my cosmetic appearance, because that is more important to me than the gear levels currently. I am not sure if I am really getting back into the flow of World of Warcraft, but I am not bouncing as hard as I did with the Hunter or any time I have tried to quest through War Within.
Tonight though is Guild Wars 2 with friends, and the vague plan is to group up and run amok in the Mad King’s Labyrinth. I don’t think any of us have done much of anything from the Halloween event other than maybe opening some trick or treat bags. I remember having a lot of fun with the Labyrinth before, and mostly you just need to run around with a group because it is very easy to get overwhelmed quickly. It has been years since I last participated in this event, so it should be a lot of fun with friends.
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Good Morning Folks. I did not end up blogging yesterday, because admittedly I am going through a bit of a funk. I’ve been fighting what I think is allergies, because ragweed is booming and it is traditionally my worst allergy. However it has been a struggle to drag myself out of bed in the morning and find the oomph to get up and around. I was looking forward to the launch of Legion Remix yesterday, but was not entirely certain when it would be rolling out. I noticed that the servers were still down when I attempted at lunch, and then after work I was able to get in and create a character. The challenge with Remix in general… is I have multiple copies of every class so I had no clue what I actually wanted to play. Originally I thought I would roll a hunter, but I have to admit I was not feeling it at all last night. I think I have just gotten too used to the action combat style of ARPGs and Guild Wars 2, and the game-play felt so sluggish.
This morning I rolled a Demon Hunter, because it is pretty action oriented and we will see if I can get into Legion Remix with this character. I rolled it on Eonar, which is a server that a friend of mine who no longer plays the game, plays on… but if they ever come back… I will at least have another character to poke around on over there. To be fair, I have also not been able to get into retail wow at all, and am only on the second zone of the War Within expansion… making almost no progress the last few times I have logged in and tried. I am wondering if Panda Remix was just magic in a bottle, and happened to be the right thing at the right time to catch my attention. Legion is without a doubt my favorite expansion, but I am wondering if World of Warcraft is just not for me anymore. I rebound a bunch of keys to try and make it feel better. I will give the Demon Hunter a spin over lunch, and see if I can catch it up to at least as far as I got the Hunter last night.
There is a new event going on in Diablo IV where they are lavishing the players with loot. Essentially each time you loot a whisper cache, you get an extra one and apparently the drop rates of chaos armor have been amped up significantly. Additionally they have finally fixed the Spires in Infernal Legions so that they cause monsters to rush in and attack you, and also spawn monsters from within making them significantly faster to clear. I knocked out one achievement on the seasonal journey last night, namely the one for doing an Infernal Legion with over 1000 aether gained in Torment IV. The remaining objectives are all pretty awful, but at some point I will probably make an attempt at them. Essentially I need to catch a Helltide as it is spawning… that also happens to have the Chaos Rift objective associated with it and then clear as many as I can. The problem with all of this… is that other players are going to get in the way of the remaining objectives. So I essentially need to play at a low population time if I am going to be successful at any of this.
Since I could not play Legion Remix over lunch, I decided to unlock the Monster Hunter Wilds quest in Final Fantasy XIV. There were a lot of things happening to land on exactly the same day… new WoW patch, new FFXIV patch, Legion Remix, and Halloween event starting in Guild Wars 2. The intro quest was pretty short as I followed around a palico in the wild west zone adjascent to Tuliyollal. It did not take long until I had unlocked the duty associated with the quest, which is to fight a Guardian Arkveld… aka the signature beast from Monster Hunter Wilds. There is a weapon set and a cosmetic gear set for doing the quest, as well as the ability to unlock a Seikret mount which are the feathered bird raptor things from MHW. Unfortunately I hit the wall quickly that I knew I would… which is that my gear level was not 725 aka the requirement for doing the duty.
So I did the thing that I have done many times before… and bought my way out of the gear slump. It cost around a million gil total, but I bought all of the left side items… aka weapon, and armor pieces, in order to be able to queue for the duty. I am not sure when I am going to run it, but at some point this week I will make an attempt on the Guardian Arkveld. I have not played FFXIV in eons… but at some point I should probably also start working on the story quest. It is weird how FFXIV is not triggering the same issues I am having with World of Warcraft. Everything about FFXIV is slower paced, and as a result it is like my brain is prepared for that. We will see if I can manage to slip back into the game, or if I am ultimately going to bounce off it as well.
I’ve not participated in it, but there is a lot of new stuff going in with the Shadow of the Mad King patch in Guild Wars 2. Specifically the weapon set looks really cool, and at a minimum I want to collect that pistol graphic to use on my Harbinger. I figure probably Thursday night when we do our normal Guild Wars 2 stuff, we might detour to the Labyrinth and spend our time roaming around it as a group. I did pop into Guild Wars 2 last night, but only long enough to do a round of wizard chores before bouncing. I was legitimately all over the freaking place last night, even playing some Path of Exile 1. I am struggling to find something that is really grabbing ahold of me fully right now. Once again… I think it is that aforementioned funk that I seem to be in. Like I have reason… and it hit me yesterday as an employee was requesting of for Fall Break… something that I would normally be doing as well when my teacher spouse was still with me. I have a cookout on Friday with a lot of her friends… so that is going to be a challenge to get through, but I also feel like I need to make the effort.
Anyways… there is a lot going on, and I am hoping you are enjoying at least some of it.
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Good Morning Folks. Last night was our usual Guild Wars 2 shenanigans night and we spent most of it running random fractals through the new quick play system. Of our group, I am the only one who has completed all of the steps required to get legendary gloves and finish the 500 dust achievement that gives you 2 bags, 2 bag slots, and a random legendary. I have no clue how many we ran, but we did have a few weird things happen. There was one time when the quickplay system split our party and sent two of us to one fractal with three randoms, and the other two to another fractal with three randoms. It took us a bit to realize this, because we were talking about different fractals with me and Sol ending up in Kinfall, and Sita and Ammo ending up in the Volcano. When I referred to the boss as a bullet sponge Ammo and Sita were a bit confused.
Over lunch I wrapped up the remaining achievements in Champion and have officially moved on to Destroyer. Most of these require me to be wearing Chaos gear… which GREATLY nerfs my damage and survivability. I am still trying to figure out a build I can go with that does not adversely harm my build so I can start knocking these out. I did run around long enough in a Helltide to open 10 tortured gifts and finish that sub achievement, which is always a bit of a pain in the ass. There are other hateful achievements like finish 5 events with mastery in 20 mins… or kill 200 mobs after triggering the spawning of a Harbinger but before it shows up. I am not entirely certain I am finishing Destroyer in this season, because without Ace playing with me… I’ve lost a lot of my forward momentum to actually knock this out.
Over in Destiny Rising I am dealing with a bit of a logjam as I need to get Silver Medals on three characters in order to progress to the next steps of Ascension. The power grind is of course a big problem for each character, but the bigger one for me is the Legendary Campaign completion. This has been an activity that I have been largely ignoring, because the first one I ever did was the current sniper one… and hated every minute of it. There are a few things that I detest in games… the big one is being on a timer. I have deep seated problems with being timed while doing something… and it dates back to elementary school trauma. I also hate the Shinkas in general and having to fight the sniper ones… was just a pain in the ass and as such I have avoided these completely. Unfortunately this means that I have had zero under 7 minute completions of this event.
This morning I knocked out a completion on Umeko, which means I only need to get her light up in order to get a silver medal. I should probably also borrow a Tan-2 and an Attal and complete all of the ones available this week so that I don’t have to wait multiple weeks for the sniper one to come around again. I will probably give Jolder a try, but I am not sure how she is going to kill the sniper Shinka without killing herself in the process. Maybe because I tend to run with a full bar of overshield, I will be able to soak the damage and survive anyways. However I think I am probably just going to have to wait for another week where Jolder is the suggested champion. These rotate through every week and in theory Jolders should be coming up next.
Other than that I had what was quite possibly my fastest clear of one of the raid phases, which rewarded me another copy of the Exotic crossbow that Ning Fei uses. This one thankfully was already level 80, so I was able to just swap over to it immediately. One of the things that you can do in this game is spend some glimmer… which is mostly useless… and reset a champion reclaiming all of the materials that you have spent on them. I think I might do this for a few champions in order to hopefully push the light levels up on the ones that I am trying to push up to silver. I am not sure if this will matter at all, because it is higher end materials that I am currently jammed up on, not low level materials. However it still might be worth a shot. Especially for the ones where I have completed their main story quest… I no longer really care about having them up at higher light levels.
All of this though is going to get sidelined a bit because I bought a stupidly large TV yesterday, and tonight I plan to tear apart the living room and set everything up slightly differently with the new television. This has been something I have wanted for awhile, and the entire reason why we swapped entertainment centers back in June. I figured while my wife is no longer with us…. I should probably finish up this plan we had for awhile. However I think I probably want to also explore curtains to hang over the circle window so that I can block some more light for optimal movie viewing and gaming.
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