This is day eight of my experiment, and this is the first day I really don’t know what to write about. I knew this day would come sooner or later, as writers block is almost always the headsman’s axe for my blog. I think it could be a bunch of separate things happening all at once. Firstly it has gone from sunny and 80* here in Oklahoma, to dark, dreary and 35*. On top of this, I have a big server move scheduled for 10pm Saturday evening that I am fairly nervous about.
Hellbug Rally
Pretty much my overarching mission for the day was to try and get one of the Hellbugs before the crossover event disappeared. For those who are not familiar with them, the Hellbug is one of the archetypal creatures in the new Trion Worlds and SyFy game/show combo… Defiance. They remind me of a cacodemon from Doom… with legs. Right now in rift, there seems to be a one in five shot of any spawning fire rift being a “Invasive Species” Hellbug rift. Granted this is completely through incidental observance and is “not a real number”.
The big problem I have had is that I have no clue where the best place is to FIND Hellbug rifts . Wednesday night I devoted a bit of time to farming Fire rifts, and never even saw a single one. Thursday at lunch and early evening, I ping ponged between the level 50 top end zones, namely Shimmersand and managed to see three… and in most cases those were just as they were closing.
ARAM Strikes Back
After a few hours of this, mumble was filling up and I needed a break from the skull drudgery of killing closing “not hellbug rifts”. When we had four people online, I got coaxed into doing an ARAM map over in League of Legends. I had initially thought that Tam was going to queue us up for another 2v2 battle… but much to my surprise we were going out into the main queue. We picked up a 5th random, with whom I traded Jayce for Volibear that apparently we were both more comfortable with… and we proceeded into the map.
The takeaway is that I still suck at League of Legends. I had a good time and it was a close map but honestly there is still so much of the time I am running around not really knowing quite what to do. Playing a full on melee support character against a bunch of ranged characters is one of those situations. I like everything about Voli, but he is definitely a “set someone else up for the kill” character. I never could seem to get in sync with the other players on the map.
After that we played a couple of Summoners Rift maps, mostly to get various friends their kill of the day bonus. On the first I played Darius, who is still brutal and awesome to play. On the second I played my current favorite, Wukong and did sizably worse. I played a bit too aggressive a bit too early and wound up underfed for most of the map. After that I was just playing catch up trying to eat all the minions I could. I still have not gotten terribly good at “last hitting” and ended up with way too many minions wasted.
Specimen Captured
After those last few maps, I decided I would head back downstairs and work towards my goal of capturing the illusive Hellbug. Shortly after logging into my account on my laptop, I noticed a player asking for more for a Hellbug Raid group. I figured… sure what the hell, it is not like I had been having much luck on my own. I made my way to City Core, and after a few minutes received a player summon directly into the heart of an Invasive Species rift.
The cool thing about the Raid, is that they seemed to have found a pattern where one had not existed before. We systematically crossed the zone hitting various Fire rifts, with about every third one seeming to be a Hellbug rift. It all felt very reminiscent of trying to spawn the “Ancient Cyclops” in South Ro… but the raid leader seemed to know what he was doing. At the very least it did not involve killing every other mummy or some nonsense like that.
It was round about my fifth Hellbug rift that two things happened. Firstly upon closing my Fifth Rift I got an achievement: When Worlds Collide which apparently happens after reaching the final stage of five of these new rifts. Additionally the achievement nets you the very cool <Ark Hunter> title. Upon receiving my loot, I also noticed that I had acquired a Skittering Hellbug (rifthead does to appear to have parsed yet). Based on discussions with some of my G+ Rift friends, I got extremely lucky to get the mount this soon.
Based on the write-up over on Rift Scene that I linked the other day, it appears that Skittering Hellbug and Skritt pet are the green quality items and red in appearance, Gulanite Hellbug and Burple are the blue quality items and purple in appearance, and finally Toxic Hellbug is the purple quality item and green in appearance. I have no clue if there is also a Toxic Hellbug pet as well, especially since Rifthead lacks any of these items right now. The Toxic Hellbug is rare enough, that in the rift raid, and tempest bay I have yet to see one.
Hellbug of a Different Color
I had quite a lot of fun once I managed to get into a viable rolling raid. I hope to join up again tonight and try my luck at getting one of the other colors and at least one of the companions. While I doubt if a hellbug would ever replace my Snogs, I am a total sucker for pets and mounts. Additionally, I really need to make my way back out to Ember Isle, especially now that it is no longer as heavily farmed and see if I can find any of the other rares.
While I didn’t much feel like writing, I guess I was able to force myself through the process and write anyway. I guess I can throw writing in the same bin with “parties”, in that they greatly stress me out and I try and avoid them… but if I actually attend I usually have a good time. I’ve been enjoying writing to you, my mythical audience. It is always interesting writing something, knowing it is going to go out into public… but also knowing that it is highly unlikely to actually garner any comments.
If you’ve made it this far… I hope you all have a great day, and I hope it is followed by an even better start of the weekend. I have no clue what we are going to be doing, but based on the pile of laundry and the state of our house it will involve some cleaning. I know at some point soon I have to get cable run to a couple of rooms, which will involve making sure nothing is in the way. It has been interesting getting past the initial seven days… I have no clue how long I will actually be able to keep this going.