2018 Archives - Tales of the Aggronaut

First off with some business to attend to that is Blaugust related. The very awesome Chestnut has been maintaining a twitter list of all of the folks participating in Blaugust 2018 that are on that platform. Next up I was asked to participate in a couple of blogs, one with recording a promo that they could edit in and another actually sitting down and talking a bit about the event. Those have both made their way into production as it were, and first off you have my promo that appears near the tail end of Geek to Geek Podcast with Void and Beej. Next up I recorded a bit with Syp at the tail end of the Massively OP Podcast, but in both of these cases you should totally listen to the entire show because they are excellent. I always enjoy the conversations that happen between Void and Beej and then Syp and Bree as well so two shows always worth listening to.

Over the last few days I have not done the whole morning Blaugust updates in part because the sign ups had slowed down a bit. However with the spots on the two podcasts we seem to have had an influx of new folks. On the sheet I ask where folks heard about Blaugust, and so far one of my happiest moments is when I get a submission that says something other than the equivalent of “Bel Told Me” because that means we are spreading out and expanding our reach. At this point we have 48 blogs signed up to participate and we still have some time before the festivities actually start… I am cheating a bit with that number because technically one has not signed up but I know it is incoming. If you are wanting a list of all of the participants and mentors I am keeping a google sheet with only the relevant information in it for folks to use on blogrolls and the like.

New Mentors

Braxwolf – Gaming Conversations/Beyond Bossfights

New Participants

punFLOWER – Simply Janine
SDWeasel – Blog In The Works
Matt – Geeky Dad Fitness
Sharlen Grey – Gray’s Cozy Nook
Troy – TroytlePower
Tessa/Endalia – Princess in a Castle

As always though there is plenty of time to get started. Pop over and fill out the sign up sheet to get registered, and then pop by the Discord to hang out with other Blaugustans.

In gaming news, last night I started the Dark Brotherhood series of quests and so far they are pretty freaking cool. This was always one of my favorite guilds in the Elder Scrolls games because I like the whole Sithis and the Night Mother thing going on as well as the fact that in spite of being a bunch of blood thirsty killers… there is this interesting family dynamic happening. This sanctuary is no different and there are some really cool things happening from the sounds of it, and I am interested to see how the events fold out this time. The Dark Brotherhood quest lines tend to go in a specific direction… as do the Thieves Guild to be honest. The Elder Scrolls Online Thieves Guild was in fact a traditional Elder Scrolls Thieves Guild story… so I have certain expectations of how things are about to go here as well.

I am not very far into the quest line and have only done a few contracts, but I am absolutely and completely down with how Blade of Woe has been implemented in this game. I like that it just gives me an assassination ability instead of making me wield a freaking dagger. I am not a stealthy character, but the truth is… Dark Brotherhood is probably going to make me one because I am not sure how long I can pay the upkeep of constantly having a couple thousand gold in bounties on my head. Now the first trait in the DB skill line seems to reduce the amount of bounty gained when someone witnesses a murder… but regardless I need to be at least a little stealthy in my hits.

I do not really like forced stealth mechanics, and my brand is more about charging into battle in a nonsensical manner and as a tank gathering up all that enemy hate. This is not conducive to the Thieves Guild, but you can absolutely go in that direction with the Dark Brotherhood. If you want to complete a mission by making sure there is 100% body count… then by all means that is a thing that can happen. However it becomes painfully obvious that every one of those kills is going to cost you in the long run, with a very tangible bounty associated with it. I came out of one mission with roughly 5500 gold in bounty on my head… and while I could have waited awhile for that to drop I made my way to the nearest outlaws refuge and took care of it rather than be hassled by the guards.

Now that I have gotten slightly better at using Blade of Woe I am doing a better job of getting those kills in unnoticed and as a result reducing that gold footprint. This game is teaching me to be stealthy and while it is weird for me to say it… I am actually enjoying it more than I have in pretty much any other game. I was extremely proud of myself the first time I got into a building unnoticed and back out without having to use one of the magical stealth baskets. The mission I ran at the beginning of the night involved roaming around a palace and it mostly felt easy to go where I needed to go because I am starting to develop the reflexes needed to sneak about. There is a certain muscle memory that I am developing that I have never really had in the past. In other Elder Scrolls Games the only reason why I ever used sneak… was to land a bow shot with the damage multiplier. This time it feels like it allows me to move around freely and avoid entanglements I might not want to deal with. All in all… still having a blast even though I was initially grumpy with the forced stealth.

At this point we are up to 41 blogs signed up for Blaugust in one form or another, with a significant number of folks hanging out in the Discord just for the sake of fun that we may be able to sway one way or another. I am super happy with this early participation, and in side conversations there are a bunch of folks on the fence trying to determine just how much they can afford to participate themselves this year. In that always be plugging style of conversation… if you are at all interested in starting up a blog now is the time to do it. Pop on by the sign up form and let us know your information and we will do our best to support you through that early blogging experience. This is of course also an open offer as well to folks who are currently blogging and just want to up their frequency of posting… or really want to help mentor the next crew of bloggers.

Since I last posted updates there have been a few new entries and you can see the entire list in an easy to use google sheet that I have been maintaining.

New Mentors

Izlain – Me vs Myself and I

New Participants

Rambling Redshirt – Beyond Tannhauser Gate
Ashgar – Ash’s Adventures
Neschria – Municipal City

The official pre-week starts on July 25th so there is still plenty of time to get a blog up and running before the official August 1st start.

There are times where I have the sort of luck that pisses my friends off. For example I have pulled a couple of those ultra rare chase cards from Battle for Zenndikar and Kaladesh, just buying random single packs here and there. Magic the Gathering just released its return to core sets with M19 and there are a bunch of interesting cards in it… namely a much needed reprint of Crucible of Worlds and brand new version of the classic legends era dragons. Ultimately I would like to have a copy of each for eventual EDH brewing purposes, and as a result I picked up a fat pack on Friday in my post funeral travels. Now a fat pack has 10 packs and seems to be for lack of a better term a partial piece of what would have normally been a full box.

They tend to be feast or famine, either you get the good end of the rare/mythic sheet or you don’t. In this case I managed to pull 4 mythics out of those ten packs. I took the above photo to show off everything that came out of that box, with the last two on the left side being just a couple of cool looking common foils. I found it weird that I got a duplicate rare out of the batch so maybe they are doing the fat packs different than they have done before. I was extremely excited that I managed to pull a Crucible of Worlds and at least two of the three color dragons. Unfortunately I did not pull the big daddy of them all… Nicol Bolas, the Ravager. I still consider this an insanely lucky box, and walked away mighty happy with it.

As far as the rest of the weekend… it was largely spent hanging out and playing some Elder Scrolls Online. I have now officially finished the Orsinium content and wow… I am exceedingly impressed with the quality. If that is at all representative of what I have to expect from the follow up releases, then I am going to be a very happy boy. I’ve since started on the Thieves Guild which is the next content release in order… having largely skipped Imperial City due to its PvEvP nature. I did however spent a chunk of last night running around and collecting Skyshards out in Cyrodil.. I am sure frustrating someone who was there to try and take keeps and mile forts. The only actual PVP I got into was being found by a roaming murderball of Ebonheart Pact players… at which point my screen froze and I crashed out of the game only to come back very dead.

The most fun however was prior to that when I was roaming around in Coldharbor with Ashgar and Tamrielo doing the public dungeon there. It all started simple enough… the three of us on Voice Chat when Ash mentioned mostly to himself that he was going to ignore the Public Dungeon for now until he could come back with a group. I said that I had not done the public dungeon there for the same reason and Tam chimed in that he had largely been avoiding any group content. Before long the three of us were converging upon Ash’s location and doing the public dungeon which had two quests inside of it. Additionally we realized that there were a bunch of optional bosses in various corners of the place and we set forth to take each and every one down earning us a conqueror achievement.

I kinda love that this game does not care at all about where a player is in the progression, and that you can pretty much just group in for whatever happens to be going on. I abused this power to help Void get some crafting materials by porting myself to Windhelm and then letting him piggy back in on that to get the shrine there. I love that this game has decided that horizontal progression is the way to go because it has allowed me to invest resources in a really nice set of gear knowing I won’t be upgrading it anytime soon. I love that I can just do whatever happens to cross my path and still feel like I am moving towards a goal in the form of Champion points… knowing that I am also adding progression to every single character as I go. I am very happy with the current state of Elder Scrolls Online.