Mixtape Mondays: Jangly Bits

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Good Morning, Folks! If you have not been around this blog for long, one of the things that you have to know is that mixtapes are really important to me. I have spent large swaths of my life creating carefully curated lists of songs for the purpose of creating an experience greater than the parts. I used to do this for individual friends and paramores while growing up, and now I release my madness out into the greater internet. I am truly uncertain if anyone appreciates this nonsense, but it makes me happy, and I legitimately listen to my own Mixtapes on the regular. So I guess at the end of the day I am doing it for myself as much as I am doing it for you all. If this is your first outing, you can find the other 31 Mixtapes that I have created to date over on the archive.

32 – Jangly Bits

This particular brand of madness dominated my mind one night and would not let me sleep until I had assembled what you see before me. Essentially, it started with Toad the Wet Sprocket and Jars of Clay, and then attempting to craft something that thematically matched that level of melancholy. The only regret that I have with this mix is the fact that there is a whole-assed Cracker album that none of the streaming services have. So I had to choose an alternate song, but in truth, it worked out well because it became the perfect last track. I spent a lot of time listening to this music, especially in late high school, and as a result, I am sharing yet another fragment of my soul with you all. Jars of Clay is a Christian band, which is a thing you are not likely to see often among my mixes, but Flood broke into the mainstream. I once went to a Jars of Clay concert expecting it to be normal, but there were folks in the aisles doing the “celestial benchpress” as a friend calls it, raising their hands to the sky with eyes closed. Side note… I am agnostic. I appreciate the role faith has in people’s lives, but I chose to remain unaligned.

Track List

  • 01 – Flood – Jars of Clay
  • 02 – Promises Broken – Soul Asylum
  • 03 – Come Back Down – Toad the Wet Sprocket
  • 04 – Mr. Jones – Counting Crows
  • 05 – Bittersweet – Big Head Todd and the Monsters
  • 06 – My Sister – The Juliana Hatfield Trio
  • 07 – Allison Road – Gin Blossoms
  • 08 – Selling the Drama – Live
  • 09 – Man On The Moon – R.E.M.
  • 10 – Noah’s Dove – 10,000 Maniacs
  • 11 – Wonderful – Everclear
  • 12 – Somewhere Out There – Our Lady Peace
  • 13 – Best I Ever Had – Vertical Horizon
  • 14 – The Old Apartment – Barenaked Ladies
  • 15 – Sick of Goodbyes – Cracker

Listen to it yourself

Well, folks, that is another mixtape added to the archive. I did not honestly expect to keep doing this thing, as my brain aligns with new mixes, I post them. This one in particular means quite a bit to me, because the music is deeply personal. Trivia… not sure if you have realized, but I specifically never use the same song twice. Often during the process, I add a bunch of tracks and then weed them out, and my brain attempted to reuse three songs while creating this mix. I just hope there is someone out there who appreciates this nonsense.

World Completion Still Chill

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Good Morning, Folks. The other day, I talked about easing my way back into Guild Wars 2. In theory, at this point, I am fully back and having quite a lot of fun. I had been playing my Ranger Main and mostly focused on World Bosses. However, last night I swapped to Belglorian, my Spear Willbender Guardian, because I realized that I needed more gifts from world completion to start working through my backlog of legendary weapons. I honestly have a bunch of fun with this character, and I think at some point I started working on zones, because I have more unlocked than I was expecting.

A lot of my nights still focus on the Wizard’s Vault daily and weekly quests. Right now, the reset is at 7 pm CDT, so as soon as that happens I essentially recieve new marching orders as to what to focus on. Last night was pretty straightforward, as the daily quests generally are. The days that I like the least are the days that ask me to go someplace in the world and kill mobs. For whatever reason, this tends to be Cantha a lot, and for some reason, that seems to be the place I am least likely to be. Thankfully, you can get an easy port from our guild hall. It is not that I dislike Cantha; I just like the zone metas far less than some of the other areas of the game.

Last night was Thursday Funday as it has become known, and around reset, we all joined up in Guild Wars 2. It has been a very long time since we were all playing the same game, and it was nice to run around as a group. Since Summer Games Fest and the Weekly both required event completion in Orr zones, we opted to do that for a few hours. This meant that not only did I knock out my dailies, but I also finished up my weeklies. Generally speaking, I dislike Orr… but Sita loves it so he was seemingly happy as a clam to be leading us around Cursed Shore. Mostly, I dislike that everything in the zone is hyper aggro, which makes sense given that this was the original Endgame for the base content.

At some point, I tagged out of the group because my stamina for all things is pretty low right now. At that point, I returned to the super chill process of World Completion. Admittedly, it is only as chill as it is because I have a skyscale. Thankfully, the process of obtaining that mount got a little easier with Secrets of the Obscure. However, even if all you have is the Raptor or Warclaw, you can have a pretty great time zipping through the zones from objective to objective. This is peak Guild Wars 2 for me, honestly, just roaming around aimlessly and completing random stuff. I am wondering how many days it is going to take me to get 100%, because I did not even finish Queensdale last night.

That is what I have been up to in Guild Wars 2. Especially on Thursdays, if you are in the guild and see us doing stuff, give us a holler, and we would be more than happy to loop you in. If you need a good guild home, and we are mutuals in each other’s orbit for a while, hit me up as well. We got plenty of room in [GREY] for new folks, and it would give you a reasonably well-appointed Guild Hall to farm each day.

How To Buy a Carry

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Good Morning, Folks! Today I turned 50, and it is all sorts of surreal to be that age. The 40s did not seem too bad, but the 50s… that is starting to sound a little old. I swear internally, I do not feel older than maybe my thirties. I have been juggling back and forth between Path of Exile II, and Guild Wars 2 and enjoying both. Last night after knocking out my dailies and a few weeklies in Guild Wars 2, I rolled over on my Spiritimaster in Path of Exile II. One of the things that fascinates me about Path of Exile II, is that everything is for sale in the very thriving economy. There are all sorts of niches that players can take up to make currency. For example, in POE1, I tend to spend most of my time in delve and sell the unique items that come from that game mode. If you are really good at taking down bosses or trials… There is always the option of selling carries.

I have played an exceptional amount of both games, and there is certain content that I do not want to do. For example, I hate the Maven fight. I have done it several times successfully, but when it comes to unlocking my atlas, I would just rather pay someone else for a carry so I don’t have to stress about it. Similarly, I hate both of the trial options for ascending past the 3rd and 4th ascendancy. The Labyrinth was not my favorite content, but I did not mind it because it was quick and to the point. Trial of Sekhamas and the Trial of Chaos both blow massive chunks, and while I have no problem doing the first one of both… I cannot ever see myself doing 4 floors of “suck my ass” as the community refers to it, or 3 rounds of Chaos. As a result, I would far rather gather the currency and pay for a carry that gets me my 3rd and 4th ascendancy in one go. I had a friend who had never done a carry, and it made me realize that maybe I should create a guide for it.

Most carries start with a trip to a discord known as The Forbidden Trove. This discord has been a bit controversial in the past because the originator was a bit of a mess. However, recently, the Discord changed hands and is under new management, and it seems to be way more focused on facilitating the provision of services. Ultimately, if you are looking for carry services, you are going to scroll down to the league that you are playing in and then click on the carry channel that matches what you are looking for. For example, I am looking for a trial carry, and as such, I clicked on that channel. Essentially, every few minutes, someone will advertise a carry. There are always way more buyers than sellers, and seemingly it operates 24/7.

Every seller has some sort of message that they want you to send them. This will be part of the post in the carry channel, and you simply copy that and then paste it into the game and message the seller. If you do not get an immediate response, then the seller is likely full, and you need to try a different one. You essentially wait in your hideout until someone invites you to a group, and then use the teleport to player button to teleport to wherever they are currently sitting. Do not move from the teleport. Sellers have this down to an art form and will direct you on what to do.

For example, there is a ready room for the 4th trial that will give you credit for completion without actually being in the fight. This will not be the case for every carry service. There will be times when you are told to zone into the fight in the final phase, and once again, you should not move because you are given invulnerability until you move. The seller will give you clear directions as to what you need to do and when to do it, so make sure you are watching chat.

When it is clear to zone in and collect your ascendancy points or whatever you are getting from the boss, you will be given a message from the seller. Once inside, interact with whatever you need to interact with and wait. The seller will open a trade window with you, and it is your job now to pay the fee that was originally requested. For example, this morning I paid 3 Divines for a 4th trial carry, which is a little bit more expensive than when I paid this on my necromancer character. However, I was looking to get it done and did not want to wait around for a player selling it for 2 Divines. All in total, it took maybe 5 minutes from the initial message to completion. The part of the community that sells boss carries is extremely efficient because they are trying to keep up that Divines per hour mark. The last step is to join the vouch channel and then post a message vouching for the seller.

Like I said, buying a carry is an extremely efficient way to get past content that you just don’t want to mess with. I will probably never fail to buy my 4th ascendancy, because I hate the trial options. Maybe when Trial of the Ancestors goes in, it might not be that bad. I seriously doubt it because the design ethic of trials in POE2 feels like complete bullshit. If you get really good at bossing, you can make a ton of currency as a seller. I’ve sold a few bosses, namely Aul down in Delve, and it went smoothly. Mostly, I wanted to lay out a straightforward guide to ease some of the fears players might have about engaging in the service economy.

Easing Back In

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Good Morning, Folks! It has been a while since I played Guild Wars 2. Around the drop of the current expansion, I flaked out and stopped playing. My guess is that this correlated with the launch of a Path of Exile league, but whatever the case may be, it has been a bit. We had a regular Thursday night group for months, and it was glorious, but as we all sort of faded away, we started playing other games. The activity of getting together on Thursdays has continued, but the unified game that we were all playing has mostly stopped. I am not saying that I think we will band around Guild Wars 2 again, but lately I have found myself missing it. The glider gameplay of Spirit Crossing feels very similar to movement in GW2, so it made me nostalgic.

The thing that I love the most about Guild Wars 2 is the drop-in nature of activities. As a result, it was super easy for me to get straight into the action, and I spent a bit of time doing World Bosses. These are probably my single favorite activities in game, and were ultimately the thing that sold me on Guild Wars 2 as a whole. I missed Tequatl, which is hands down my favorite event, but managed to catch the boss in Queensdale and a few others. I figured a good way to ease back in was to focus on the various Astral Ward weeklies. There is apparently a legendary kit up and available that I do not have, so in theory, I should probably pick it up if for no other reason than providing me gifts to complete other legendaries.

I also spent quite a bit of time last night in Desert Highlands, hoping that someone would fire up bounties, but it never happened. I realize I can easily do bounties since I have a commander tag, but I was not feeling social enough to make that happen. Instead, I worked on various events that spawned and slowly chipped away at the alternate conditions for that achievement. I did manage to gather up a bit of a group, but we never formalized it with a commander tag. Again, I love how easy it is for others to tag in and follow along and get completion on events. This is really the strong point of Guild Wars 2, and I am hoping that when we get Guild Wars 3, it will have this same functionality.

I had quite a bit of fun, but ultimately ran out of steam around 9:30 pm when I headed to bed. This is the problem that I have had with gaming under chemo, is that gaming exhausts me in the same way that literally anything else does. I wonder if it is mental exhaustion as much as it is physical. I have two more rounds of chemo in front of me, so the end is in sight. I am just hoping that I bounce back pretty quickly. I know I will be rolling into radiation pretty quickly, but it sounds like it will not be as extreme as chemo has been. I think Guild Wars 2 might be my speed, because it allows me to engage as deeply as I want to or as shallow as I might need.