I have lost my damned mind friends. A new day dawns and with it will be my eighth day of attempts on trying to get the headless horseman mount. This is something that I have been chasing yearly since it initially released in 2007 during The Burning Crusade expansion. I’ve been chasing it longer than the existence of this blog, which started in 2009. Why have I been chasing it you might ask when I already have the way cooler looking Fiery Warhorse’s Reins that dropped legitimately during a Kara raid? Simple… this one flies and that makes it significantly better. It is said to have somewhere around a 0.5% drop rate, which means in theory that you should be able to get it within around 200 runs. The challenge there however is that the event only lasts two weeks and there is no way you can farm it 200 times on a single character, essentially throwing that logic out the window.
Starting on the 18th I Headless Horseman on every character of level 20 or higher, leaving me making attempts on it 24 times for those first two resets. By the time reset three rolled around I had done some additional research learning that it can only drop from characters capable of earning the epic loot-filled pumpkin. You have to be level 45 in order to win this epic loot, or what would have been the equivalent of 110 prior to the level squish. This forced me to dial things back to 13 characters for a few days until I realized that I had another eligible character on Eonar that I more or less forgot about. Still for days three and four I ran 13 characters and starting on day five I added a 14th.
Now is where the madness starts to settle in to take a rest. I put my thinking cap on and remembered that prior to the launch of level I pushed every single class up to 100 or in the new level squish nomenclature level 40. Surely it wouldn’t take terribly long to push more characters up to 45, given that it is only 5 levels worth of content right? It turns out that no… it really doesn’t take a lot of time and as such I have pushed up my Alliance Demon Hunter and Hunter and now am working on my Warlock. So that has increased each daily run total by a single character for runs six and seven and in theory I should be able to finish off the warlock today increasing it once again for day eight.
Based on my napkin math, I have run Headless Horseman 119 times so far this season, not taking into account any of the runs that I will be making tonight. I’ve seen pretty much every drop multiple times but the mount and now I feel completely committed to see this nonsense through. I have a total of seven more days worth of attempts, counting today since at the time of writing the reset has not happened. Even if I somehow stop with the Warlock that puts me at 17 characters with their own attempt each day for the next seven days which will net me another 119 attempts. I’ve never had this many characters eligible in past years, so I hope beyond hope that I somehow manage to get this thing I have been chasing for thirteen years.
The post Mount Madness appeared first on Tales of the Aggronaut.
Featuring: Ashgar, Belghast, Kodra and Thalen
Tonight we are down several folks because of various reasons. Grace and Tam are both travelling and Ammo was off celebrating her birthday. As a result we go forward with one of the smaller casts we have had in awhile. Tonight we talk a bit about Genshin Impact and the recent Resin adjustments that have been announced. Bel talks about his experiences with the World of Warcraft Exile’s Reach new player starter island. This goes a bit into the awkward fit that it causes combined with the level squish that came in with the Shadowlands pre-patch. We then get into a discussion about games that support asymmetrical difficulty or what is generally referred to as a “handicapping system”. We talk about how this can maybe make it easier to play games with your young children that can’t quite manipulate the moves that well yet. Kodra and Thalen share their progress with Ring Fit and we delve into a discussion about the recent D&D 5th Edition games that have entered early access. Finally we talk a little bit about Spiritfarer and the charming life of being a friendly grim reaper.
Last night the Genshin Impact servers went down for maintenance, and after my fourth night of failed attempts at the horseman mount I found myself a little listless. I attempted to log into Destiny 2 and flew into the tower and then pretty much logged right back out again. Not sure what to do I opted to test the new player experience that went into World of Warcraft with the Shadowlands pre-patch. Instead of starting in the original starter zone, new characters can choose to instead begin on Exiles Reach. I believe this works for any character that is not an Allied Race, given that those appear to still go through the original racial starter experience.
I have some friends on Wyrmrest Accord, and as such I opted to create a clone of the original Belghast over there. From what I understand the flow of the content is effectively the same on both Horde and Alliance. You start with some cinematics laying out the mission before you of trying to find an expedition that has gone missing. While ship side your team similarly encounters issues and finds themselves shipwrecked on an island… conveniently the same island that the earlier expedition shipwrecked on.
Across the board the experience feels like a much more streamlined and simplified version of something like the Ghostlands or Azuremyst Isle. Everything is very self contained and neatly divided into areas that you will only actually go through once as you traverse the island. Along the way you will meet characters that I am certain you will never see again during your entire time in World of Warcraft. That aspect is a little disappointing, but Blizzard might prove me wrong and integrate Captain Garrick for example into future content. You however go through a sequence of events that see you rescuing most of the original expedition and figuring out the central conflict of the island.
A group of Ogres has apparently set up on this island and is trying to use necromancy to resurrect some dragon. I mean it is a generic set up, but also sorta awesome because we have not really seen much from the ogres since Draenor. This is an expert reuse of a bunch of models that had not seen the light of day since the Warlords expansion. Additionally the necromantic dragon seems to be an asset flip of Nythendra from the Emerald Nightmare raid, but similarly it was a cool model and deserved to be reused. Everything though flows together nicely and ends up being a much quicker starter experience than what I remember from the other zone options.
The culmination of the starter experience is a dungeon… but one where the NPCs serve as the tank and the healer and everyone is just effectively following them around and DPSing. I am not going to lie… I would not mind if they did some more of these dungeons for leveling purposes because it didn’t feel horrible. I almost wonder if this is an attempt at them playing with the concept of being able to run dungeons with NPCs much like they have with the Trust system in FFXIV. So far the experiment seems to have worked however because it was a pretty solid experience. I got zero loot from the dungeon but I did watch as other players got things… so maybe spend some time evening that out a bit. It would feel better if everyone exited the dungeon with a shiny blue.
Upon exiting the island you go through an entire sequence where you are introduced to Stormwind, and welcomed back as a hero of the Alliance. This is nice especially since it leads you through some of the important things like binding at an Inn. It also gives you access to your first mount, setting you up to start the game proper. The quests all appear to take place in the Old Town area, which is fine… but everyone knows the Dwarven Quarter is the only good part of Stormwind. I could definitely see this being a good introduction to World of Warcraft for a brand new player.
What felt really odd was that the game immediately went into the Battle for Azeroth content without me really choosing it. I guess as a brand new player this would flow nicely, but I kinda wanted to poke around with the Chromie system. Right now I am rolling with it because it seems like the BFA systems have been modified slightly as well to accommodate a brand new level 10 character. For example I didn’t get to choose which area of Kul Tiras that I wanted to start in, but instead was only given the option of Tirangarde Sound. I never really got into the BFA content for Alliance and maybe playing on a fresh character on a server I have no presence on… would make it feel more meaningful?
I like the experience that is presented here, but I also sorta think it is wasted if Blizzard does not make some fundamental changes to the way that World of Warcraft works. This is an experience ideally designed for someone who has never played this game. I just feel like at this point that if you have owned a PC capable of gaming, that more than likely you have already had access to World of Warcraft. With the introduction of controllers to the game on an official level, it is time for Blizzard to roll this game out to the console players and maybe to mobile players as well. In both cases I think it would work best if they shifted from the subscription only to offering some sort of free to play track as well.
However for the purpose of this post… the experience of Exiles Reach is good. I would probably run new characters through it… were it not for the fact that I already have a stratified army of one of each Alliance and Horde class that are at a minimum of level 40 in the new squished system. I’m already at the point where I have way more racial options than I have classes to play them with, and I think maybe it was a bad idea to not allow the Allied Races to go through the Exiles Reach starter experience. Have you played through the new starter zone? Drop me your thoughts down below in the comments.
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There is a region roughly 30 degrees north or south of the equator that is characterized by very calm winds and areas of high pressure. Historically this is a region that ships would effectively get “stuck” in for weeks at a time as they drift along listlessly without strong winds. According to legend in order to conserve the rapidly depleting supply of fresh water, some ships would throw the horses overboard. As a result they developed the nickname of the “Horse Latitudes”. There are however multiple competing theories about the origin if you are so inclined, but it is one of those terms from history class that held with me throughout the years.
Right now as I have felt so many times… I am feeling stuck. I feel like I am in this strange valley in between passions and just sort of languishing wildly there. I have the desire to play Genshin Impact, but I have ventured into a realm where I can only play so much at a given time without it feeling largely pointless. I figure at this rate I will probably be AR40 in about two weeks, when I will be even further in the hole on trying to get my characters leveled, ascended, talented and geared… when it doesn’t feel like I have made a significant dent since dinging AR35. As I have talked about before, everything hinges upon Resin and I don’t have the desire to spend the roughly $12 a day in primagems to ensure that I can get the maximum number of refreshes done.
So I find myself logging in every day, completing the daily quests… spending the resin I have available to me and then claiming the various daily login bonus rewards. I am now doing this on two different accounts and still finding myself lacking for something that feels meaningful. I could grind super hard on the second account but I figure that way lies burn out. Everything I am doing on that account already has an extreme “been there and done that” feeling to it, so I am trying to limit my time over there to just knocking out the dailies and stockpiling wish material.
Then there is World of Warcraft and the unknown release date of the Shadowlands expansion. If they came out tomorrow and said, that they were not launching until January, I feel like I could happily move on with my life. However the not knowing when and how it is going to launch feels awful. I’m currently running the Headless Horseman every day in an attempt to get the mount, but I found out yesterday that it only works on characters that are capable of getting the purple loot rewards. That limits me down considerably in the number of daily iterations. I should in theory be working on finishing out my rogue but I am just fundamentally not feeling it.
I created a new character on a new server with the theory of wanting to see the Exiles Reach player experience. However here he sits having never logged it in and started. I am just finding myself having a hard to getting started on anything in World of Warcraft right now, because it all feels lacking in some way. I guess what I want is something with the feel of Genshin Impact but the longevity of a World of Warcraft and the wealth of content to complete. I know someone in the comments is going to suggest Guild Wars 2, and god how I have tried to care about that game over the years. Whatever it is doing is not what I am wanting, even though I do clearly see some of the parallels to Genshin and the way the world is designed in both games.
I could in theory return to Destiny 2 and see if I can slide back into the rhythm of that game. The problem however is that I just feel so woefully behind in the seasonal construct. The fact that there has been so much revolving content that comes and then goes and that fact that we are losing several planets when Beyond Light lands in early November sorta paralyzes me. I have a bunch of Exotic quests that require various things, but I would need a team to do them… and I realize I can make that happen as well but that also in itself feels like a large outlay of energy.
In theory I should follow the lead of my friend Warenwolf and head back over to TQMB, but I am not even sure they would still take me back. I left at the PC launch of Destiny 2 because my long time friend group felt more comfortable if we started our own thing. However most of them bounced and I was never really quite capable of rekindling it once they were gone. My own huge lapses in play time didn’t help either, leaving us with effectively a dead clan. Having a vibrant community would probably help especially if it meant there were various drop in events that I could sign up for. That said I also know how much is going to happen in November as a whole and in theory I have a new console waiting on me as well.
That brings us to the next challenge. I have things that I wouldn’t mind getting back into on the PlayStation, but I am largely in a holding pattern until the launch of the PS5. I am not sure how much further I want to get into various games not knowing with 100% certainty that my save progress is going to carry over cleanly. Anyways I realize this is probably an annoying post to read but sometimes I write for me and my own mental housekeeping. I feel stuck and I need to figure out for myself how to get un-stuck.
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