Good Morning Friends! Those of you who have been around awhile will know that it was only a matter of time before I would be back on my Diablo nonsense once again. This past Friday signaled the opening of Season 23 and with it a whole new grind to the top for loot and fame. Actually for me personally it is always entirely about the pet that is generally the final reward for making it all the way in a season. I don’t make it every season, but this one contains a pet that is so purrfect that I have to do it no matter what.
You can check out all of the rewards on the official blog post but really… it is all about this weird half cat half goblin thing that I love and need to be my friend. I mean the portrait frame is pretty badass as well but really… its about the pet. Apart from the rewards I just generally have a good time hanging out with my friend Grace and stomping demons. This time around they gave us a greatest hits collection of amazing builds to play with on Haedrig’s Gift which is gained through completing some meta achievements. The sets that are up for grabs this time are as follows:
Monk – Rainment of a Thousand Storms
Demon Hunter – Unhallowed Essence
Crusader – Roland’s Legacy
Wizard – Tal Rasha’s Elements
Barbarian – Wrath of the Wastes
Witch Doctor – Helltooth Harness
Necromancer – Bones of Rathma
I think we got all of these tried and true sets in part because this season ushers in quite possibly the largest change to take place with Diablo 3 in a since maybe loot 2.0. Our loyal followers now get full gear builds which greatly increases their general effectiveness in combat but also brings with it some interesting party tricks. A new affix is showing up on gear called “Emanates” which means if the item is equipped on your follower, the effect will spill over to your character as well. So for example if I throw Nemesis Bracers on my Templar it will allow Elites to spawn any time I pop a Shrine freeing up a slot for my build that would have consumed either space in the cube or my bracers slot. Similarly I have mine equipped in 3 pieces of Sage armor so that every time I get Deaths Breath I get twice as much…. leading to an interesting situation of not being quite so limited in that department. You can check this wiki page for a full list of gear that has this new Emanates property.
I went with the tried and true “Spin to Win” Barbarian build because honestly of all of the sets available it is by far my favorite. It was a close tossup with Demon Hunter, which is also a build that I greatly love but seeing as Grace went that I think we are covered for stupid amounts of wave clear. There was actually this weird place in the leveling curve where I was the primary carry which is a relatively new feeling for me given that she is usually dragging my worthless butt around. Right now I pretty much have to stay out ahead of her to remain useful when grouped up because she just destroys everything in sight. My biggest challenge the entire season has been survival and trying not to die to things that are likely going to kill me.
The other major issue that I suffered from for a very long time was resource generation. My personal preference for a whirlwind build is to run the Bull-Kathos set of weapons which greatly increases your fury generation and makes it so that you can basically whirlwind forever… and speeds you up in the process. I pulled a grand total of eight Bull-Kathos Solemn Vow before ever seeing a single Warriors Blood but thankfully when I did finally get one… it was a Primal Ancient Legendary. For now I am running full diamonds for survival and it seems to mostly work. I finally got my Templar the immunity item which also helped me in the “cheat death” department as well. Now comes the slow grind of leveling gems and actually doing set dungeons and such to knock out seasonal objectives.
The other big thing that I did this season is spend a good chunk of my Friday off cleaning out my vault and deleting characters. Previously I was locked with no ability to create new characters and now at least before the season I was down to just having a single character of each class. Ultimately my goal is to create new characters each season and then delete back down at the end of the season so that I maintain the “one of each” flow. I did ultimately create two Barbarians this season… one to actually play and a level 1 Barbarian that I named “DeleteMe” that I used to gamble on getting a Band of Might since at level one there are only two possible legendary rings I could have gotten. All in all a great start to the season and hopefully in the coming week I can knock out the rest of the bits. Avarice and the bounty grind is going to be the longest part which I should be getting started on shortly.
Good Morning Folks! I was realizing this morning just how completely out of date my blog side bar is when it comes to the games that I have been playing regularly. In theory I claim that this is my semi-monthly process of trueing up the sidebar so it represents the sorts of games that I am playing. What actually happens is that I go for large blocks of time without updating this and when that happens massive swings occur. For example the last one of these that I did was in October of 2020 and some stuff has changed. So here goes an attempt at maybe doing these regularly again for a bit. For those not already indoctrinated into the process I divide things up into a few categories:
To Those Remaining – The games that I am still actively playing or at least expect to be playing within the month.
To The New and Returning – The games that I am either dusting off and revisiting or are brand new experiences that I am enjoying.
To Those Departing – The games that I am finally removing from the list for one reason or another.
Ships Passing in the Night – Games that I don’t expect to regularly play but I spent some time with over the month and enjoyed enough to talk about.
To Those Remaining
Diablo 3 – PC and Switch
My sweet sweet Diablo 3, you are rarely ever gone from this list. There is even a new season starting this Friday and I am looking forward to going through the routine of the seasonal grind. This season has a bunch of changes to the game and as a result they sorta gave us a greatest hits collection of sets available through Haedrigs Gift. As a result I am looking at probably starting a Whirlrend Barbarian for this season because those are so stinking fun to play.
Ghosts of Tsushima – PS5
I am going to be honest, I am leaving this one on the list more as an aspirational placement than a game I am truly actively playing. I boot it up from time to time and play through a few encounters and then put it to bed for a longer period of time. I hope to get back in and play it more intently because also while we have been spilling truth… I feel a little guilty that I am not really doing much with my PlayStation 5.
Hades – PC and Switch
This one retains its spot because it is still probably my go to “playing switch from bed” game. The pattern of play just fits spending a few minutes before falling asleep. I am not terribly good at it but I enjoy it mechanically and thematically. This is the only game I have played where I enjoy losing, because it means I am going to get some more story beats.
New World – PC
I am leaving this on the list for reasons of which I am contractually not at liberty to talk about. It comes out in August officially and I am looking forward to that release. I’ve never seen a game that has gone through quite so many changes during its late development cycle as this one. It is going to be interesting to see the state of this game at launch. I have quite a bit of faith in it.
Retro Games – Retro Freak Console, RG350, Retroid, Raspberry Pi 4
Still very much spending a chunk of my time playing games that I grew up with… that are now referred to as Retro games. Still feels really weird to be calling them Retro to be honest. Actually yesterday I literally just got an 8 gb Raspberry Pi 4 model in that I am going to be playing with. That is probably going to become my main emulation device for the short term for anything other than higher end stuff like Cemu that absolutely requires the power of my gaming PC.
To The New and Returning
Destiny 2 – PC
Putting this one back on the list because I am technically playing it again. I am nowhere near as engaged with it as I would like to be and I am not exactly certain why that is the case. From all accounts this is a really good season but I find myself just unable to get stuck into it very deeply. Since we are trueing things up it is in somewhat regular rotation so it is going to get a spot on the list.
The Elder Scrolls Online – PC
I am experiencing a massive renaissance of Elder Scrolls Online and it has rapidly become my primary game over the past month. While I am mostly leveling alts right now, I am going to return to the normal course of trying to quest my way through all of the content in the game and maybe just maybe be ready for the launch of the next expansion in June. I somehow doubt that is going to be a thing because I have to make it through large blocks of content and I know I will become distracted by other games that spring up along the way.
Minecraft – PC Java Client
Another thing that happened since my previous update is that I have returned to Minecraft in a huge way. I spent a lot of time playing solo and even recorded a semi-daily YouTube series on my adventures. Now however I spend my time either popping between my own private Realms world or a closed server run by my friend Zeli. Not playing near as much as I was but I am still popping in and wandering around. There is a stronghold in the nether that I am clearing and trying to set up a dual blaze farm right now so I still have projects that I am plugging away at. Right now I am likely going to wait to re-engage heavily until the new caves update comes out and create a brand new world.
Outriders – PC
Outriders is the new looter shooter hotness that is shipping tomorrow officially. I played the hell out of the demo and now am looking forward to consuming this game peacefully. I am not really planning on playing it as my primary game because I am super engaged with Elder Scrolls right now, but I am absolutely going to slow grind it. The launch time is just really bad because it overlaps with a bunch of other things going on like the launch of a new Diablo 3 season.
Valheim – PC
Valheim is freaking great. If you do not already own this game you should pick it up because it is dirt cheap and one hell of a lot of fun. I’ve reached a point of equilibrium with this game at least until new content ships. I had been playing regularly on a server but I have mostly been playing lately on my solo world. When the hearth and home update ships, I might start a new world depending on how deep the changes go. I will likely always keep Beltopia around given that it is set up nicely for crafting and such.
To Those Departing
Genshin Impact – Android/PC
I have no real idea why I bounced the way that I have from this game. I think partially it might just be that I don’t love “maintenance gaming” where all I am really doing is dailies. However in this game that isn’t even true because they have released a ton of story content since I last played and I never can quite bring myself to come back and play it. There are a lot of things about this game that work so well and then a lot of things that just frustrate me. For example the fact that I feel like I don’t have a reasonable manner in which to level new characters and catch them up to my core party… means that I largely feel like I am stuck always using my core party. Maybe at some point I will return when it ships on the Switch but for now it is a distant memory.
World of Warcraft – PC
Shadowlands is a bad expansion filled with systems that I am not interested in engaging with. In fact I would probably say that Shadowlands is going to be up there with the worst expansions of all time. I talked about how frustrated I was with Battle for Azeroth, but at least that is an expansion that I actively enjoyed the leveling process. Shadowlands I barely made it to the level cap with one of my characters and couldn’t even manage to stomach a single zone on my alts. I am not exactly sure how things went off the rails in the manner that they did but for now at least I am done with the game. Like I have not talked about it a lot because in truth I am not even sure it is worth talking about it. I miss hanging out with my friends who play the game but I miss nothing about Shadowlands.
Ships Passing in the Night
Cyberpunk 2077 – PC
Unlike most of the internet I have nothing but love for this game. I apparently had a sufficient system to play it and lucked out on not encountering many bugs during my play through. As such I am actively craving more content for it, but throwing it on the “ships” list because I have more or less put the game aside for the moment. When DLC releases I will either play through the DLC on my current play through or start a brand new campaign. I hope the issues surrounding this game do not kill this franchise because I loved it deeply on so many different levels.
Dragon Age Inquisition – PC
Dragon Age Inquisition was one of those games that I had bounced off of so many times in the past and then suddenly was able to play happily. I have found with the hustle and bustle of the end of the year… I crave deep single player experiences. This is one of those games that I played during that period and had a blast. Looking forward to this story continuing.
Jedi Fallen Order – PC
When this game first released I tried playing it with a controller because it seemed like that was the proper way to play it. I bounced because the game is not terribly good at explaining when you should leave a planet. However over the holiday break I returned to the game and had a blast, this time playing with my more native control scheme of keyboard and mouse. Truly great game and great experience. If you have not played this game you really owe it to yourself to do so, especially if you like Star Wars even in the least bit.
Knights of the Old Republic 2 – PC
Another game that I have bounced off numerous times is Knights of the Old Republic 2 and for some reason over this break I managed to make my way through it. Like the game is a mess… there is no getting around that but it is a mess that I am happy to have experienced. There is a lot of interesting things going on in this game and knowing now that this released before Fallout New Vegas I can see some of the things that they expanded upon later and made work better in that game. Would I recommend it to someone else? Probably not, but I am still very happy to have experienced it myself.
Summary
The funny thing about this is that I just realized upon writing out this post… that my sidebar was never actually updated from the October edition meaning it was even more out of date than I realized. Now I will hopefully remember to do the thing and actually make the updates once I finish with this post. Here is to also maybe doing this at least once a quarter going forward… if not monthly.
When looking upon Season 22 of Diablo 3, there was a good chunk of me that wanted to skip it. Right now there just seems to be way too much going on and not nearly enough time to do any of it. However as I got closer to the seasonal start, the more I decided I would ultimately miss the tradition if I had kicked it to the curb even for one season. When I found out that my friend Grace was planning on doing the season regardless it changed my tune a bit and once again we were spending Friday night starting brand new characters and beginning yet another seasons journey. Thankfully we had quite possibly the easiest challenge rift ever to get some initial goodies to begin the process.
Admittedly one of the things that made me a little hesitant was the fact that Haedrig’s Gift this time around was a selection of the newest sets. I had not tried Gears of Destruction for example on Hunters and was not sure how I would like this up close and personal strife/fan of knives build. The end result however is complete nonsense as this is essentially the “Spin to Win” Demon Hunter that plays much like a “Whirlrend” Barbarian. Like so many builds it takes a few seconds to prime the pump but once you are up and running it is pretty easy to maintain a rapid whirlwind of death as you clear the map. For the most part my current build is patterned off of this guide on Icy Veins, though it took a lot of changes along the way as I spent the majority of my time leveling with a grenades heavy build.
Friday night we managed to grind up past 50 before sleep claimed us, and then Saturday morning we wrapped things up pretty quickly and before I knew it all I was missing for my seasonal journey was the solo 20. After getting those first four steps however I of course enlisted in the later goals. Currently slayer is hanging by a thread with only a set dungeon in my way. Set dungeons are the bane of my existence because I hate being asked to perform on a timer. Sadly the Gears of Destruction set does not have a dungeon, which means I am having to farm the components for other builds. Most of the hunter set dungeons are somewhat fiddly and since I am going to need multiple classes to finish the conquests I might push up something a little easier.
The conquests are ultimately going to be the problem this season. The easy one of course is grind up 3 gems to level 65, and since I can relatively easily run higher tier greater rifts I should be able to knock that one out without much issue. Here is a list of what is available for Season 22:
Boss Mode – Kill all of the bosses in Diablo 3 on Torment X within 20 minutes
Sprinter – Complete the entire campaign from Act I to Act V at Level 70 in under 1 hour
On a Good Day – Level 3 Gems to 65
Years of War – Clear Greater Rift 55 solo with the full bonuses of Six Class Sets
Masters of the Universe – Master 8 Set Dungeons
Boss Mode and Sprinter are things I need to do some research into. The speed of this build is insane given that you move super fast while you are fully buffed up. This might be reasonable but given that I don’t have the best pathing memorized due to NEVER playing the campaign mode of the game… I am not sure how viable that option is. Years of War seems pretty reasonable since you can build out MOST gear sets in a way to be able to clear 55 solo. I hate set dungeons… so I absolutely do not want to do that one if I can at all have any other options.
I’ve reached a point where I can fairly reliably clear Torment XVI, and have MOST of this gear set in the bag. I am contemplating running up a Barbarian for my second seasonal character since there are a lot of really powerful builds there that could make clearing those six grifts a bit easier. Boss Mode is the one that intrigues me the most, and I am wondering if a party of 4 could divide and conquer and take them all out at the same time. That is the part that I need to research to see if that counts. If so then it might be doable pending I find two more speed builds to go along with Grace and I. The other question is… how much I actually care given that tonight Shadowlands opens and I trying to decide how much that pet matters to me.
Well friends, I find myself in the odd position of having way more things right now that I want to play than I can possibly find hours in the day to play them. To be fair I am notorious for trying to juggle two or three games at a time, but I find myself in truly anxiety ridden territory right now. With the blog in theory behaving properly and me getting back in the swing of daily posting, lets delve into what happens when everything gets pushed off to the end of the year.
Destiny 2
This is the game that has been getting the majority of my attention since the launch of Beyond Light. I wrote the other day about the frustrations that came with the weapon sunset and the removal of content, and those frustrations still exist but have lessened a bit. Firstly with the beginning of the Season of the Hunt we have a new method to target specific drops, which helps to fill out that weapon vault once again. Additionally the content seems to have a longer tail than a traditional D2 expansion and I am still seemingly unlocking content long after finishing the story. Lastly I have found out that I can just kill roaming rares on Europa to get a shot at the entire weapon pool from that destination and as such have picked up several options including a new functional legendary Machinegun.
Now the thing that makes ZERO sense to me… and I wish someone could explain is that each time I have run a strike and a legendary has dropped… it has been this legendary. I have looted so many copies of this weapon, but the original roll that I have been holding onto seems to still be the best. Not saying this isn’t a solid weapon, but I would love to see more of the loot pool than just this one shotgun.
Genshin Impact
Genshin Impact is the game that is suffering the most right now due to my many distractions. There are a few events happening and I am failing to participate in them. The challenge with Genshin Impact is that it feels like this game really wants it to be your ONLY game right now. We went from the challenge of not having enough to do in a day to having WAY MORE to do than you can possibly get done. This is awesome for those who are still mainlining this experience, but for me who has pushed it to the back burner I feel like I am getting further and further behind. Grace and I are now no longer on the same world level which limits what we can do together… which is frustrating.
Diablo 3
Diablo 3 Season 22 starts on Friday, and originally I had contemplated just giving this one a skip. The conquests are not super enjoyable looking, but the book pet is sorta adorable. Grace was planning on doing this one solo even if I decided to skip, and as a result I have decided I am going to do the thing as well. More than anything I think I could just use the chill hang time that a Diablo seasonal grind always represents. In truth it doesn’t really take all that much time, and I plan on going easymode demon hunter in order to complete things quickly. May the luck be in my favor that I get a primal ancient yangs or something like that to help push this along faster. The 4th cube slot is going to provide some really odd builds.
Godfall
I feel like in another world and another time this game and me might have had something. However given its relatively lifeless state and the fact that I have so many other things on my plate right now… I am mostly okay watching it whiz by. To be honest I think the only reason why this game is getting any notice is the fact that it is one of the next gen experiences available for the PlayStation 5 right now. I have it on the PC and it has some significant performance issues on my 1080 ti, which admittedly is part of the reason why I am fine not playing it. I hope it gets some tuning passes, but the bigger problem is that the game as a whole feels like it doesn’t really have a soul to bind you to it. It reminds me of all of the story problems that Destiny 1 had of making you feel like you are dropped in the middle of something that was already happening and giving you zero explanation of what the hell is going on. The problem there however is that Destiny 1 had compelling enough gameplay to make me overlook that but Godfall does not.
World of Warcraft Shadowlands
I was more than happy to largely ignore that World of Warcraft existed for the last few weeks. I spent some time doing the Icecrown rares with my guild and managed to gear up my Paladin and even got the much coveted 34 slot bag. However without realizing it… we are now on the cusp of a new expansion launch. Monday night at 5pm my time I will be venturing forth into the Shadowlands and as a result I am preparing for this to suddenly take all of my focus. I’m even contemplating cooking up something in the crock pot during the day so we have a hot and ready meal waiting on us that I can just fix a plate of whenever I get hungry. That way I can focus all of my attention on being frustrated as the servers burn down around me. Given the state of this year I am expecting anything but a smooth launch, but have a glimmer of hope that I will be pleasantly surprised. Regardless it is leveling in a new expansion time and that is a rare and precious thing that I am going to cherish.
Demon’s Souls
I have no idea why I suddenly find this game so damned compelling. It might be that I Just bought a $500 console and I feel like I need to justify that purchase and this is the only truly next generation game available for it. It might also be that I have always been intrigued by the Souls game genre but never really allow myself to get into it, and there is something oddly compelling about the gameplay. I rerolled last night as a Temple Knight, so that I could start out with a decent twohanded option or at least one that can switch hit between one and two. The two handed no block style is definitely more of my jam, and as a result I made it quite a bit further last night before dinner arrived and I got distracted by the comfy sofa. I realize I live in opposite land where my consoles are all hooked up in my office and my sofa is where I do chill laptop gaming. I still have no clue what I am doing but I am enjoying myself so I guess that is the first step?
Ghost of Tsushima
I finally have my PS5 and you are so damned gorgeous and play so incredibly smoothly. Now I just need to figure out a way to duplicate myself so I can enjoy all of these experiences at once without feeling like I am leaving anything on the table. Hold tight my sweet… we will have our time eventually once I stop being so damned distracted.
Bugsnax
In another time and another place we could have been friends weird muppet pokemon skyrim. You just aren’t compelling enough when compared against all of the other things on my plate. I am glad you were given to me freely by the good folks that set up the PlayStation Now games, because I would have felt awkward ignoring you. I know Tam is your friend, and I am sure I am going to feel pangs of regret this weekend as he tells me how wonderful you are. Seriously though… just can’t right now.
Watch Dogs Legion
Legion is a really interesting game, but there is just something about it that never really grabbed me. I love how rich the world is… but it also feels like there isn’t a lot to do in it other than walk around. I feel like this is a game that Grand Theft Auto players would really be into, given that it is mostly a cycle of steal a car, drive to the mission, do the mission and then try and escape and lay low until the heat has dissipated. That has never really been a super enjoyable format for me, because firstly I don’t love driving cars in these sort of games. Secondly I found myself wanting something to do in the points in between the missions. At least in a game like Division where society has fallen… there are random combat encounters as I wind my way across a painfully detailed landscape. Here you just have a bunch of civilians and occasionally one of them might be interesting enough to want to recruit, but mostly you are traversing large spaces to get to small bits of micro content. I want to return to it someday but I am very glad that I chose to go the Ubisoft subscription route rather than plunk down a large wad of cash on this given how distracted I am right now.
Assassin’s Creed Valhalla
This one I feel real sad about because I have it installed… but have not even booted it up. Too many other things pulling my attention in too many other directions. I also know that since the way I play this game is in a purely single player fashion, that I will get just as much enjoyment from playing it in 2022 as I will in 2020. Someday I will visit it and roam around in its Norse goodness. This is also another situation where I am real glad I opted for the monthly sub rather than buying it outright.
There we have it friends… my very first world problem that I am lucky to have. On the other side of the coin I am still regularly playing caretaker for my parents, and more of my family has contracted covid so there are stressors there as well. I am thankful that I am so lucky as to be constantly distracted by my hobbies, because this is a year where I am clung to them like a safety blanket. They have been what has allowed me to stay sane through all of this, and while I am in sort of overload mode right now it will give me plenty to focus on as we go into 2021 and realize that things are not going to be magically better. I fully expect that 2021 will feel an awful lot like 2020, minus one major factor… that we will have a change in the oval office. The plague will still be out there and even though vaccines are on the cusp of release it is going to take a significant amount of time to distribute them far and wide enough to make a dent in the numbers. I am very thankful to have many other worlds that I can escape into when this one is just too much to handle.
