hunter Archives - Page 2 of 6 - Tales of the Aggronaut

Ready For Launch

October 23, 2017October 23, 2017 by Belghast

With the launch of Destiny 2 on PC tomorrow I mulled around at great length over this extended weekend on how to best commemorate the moment in blog form. Over the course of the last seven weeks since the launch of Destiny 2on the PS4 my blog has been filled with a bunch of information about the game in general. For the most part I have tried very hard to stay the hell away from story spoilers, but inevitably some of them will have made their way through that mental filter. As a result I thought today I would sit down and write out some general tips about the game, links to tools that I use, and the sources of information I consume.

The Classes of Destiny 2

One of the most important decisions that you are going to make from the moment you fire up the game is what class best fits your play style. Ultimately you are probably going to roll one character of each class because your vault is shared between all of your characters. However you are still going to likely end up with one you consider your main. For me I have been maining Titan since the moment I set eyes on the class and nothing so far has caused me to stray too far off the path. However I have friends who feel equally passionate about the Warlock or Hunter. Essentially each class has a core fantasy that it is based around and I am going to take a few minutes to talk about each and their specializations.

The Titan

The core class fantasy is the “Space Tank” for lack of a better term for it. This is a beefy class that benefits from increased resilience. Among the guardians these are the front line defenders and have a storied history surrounding the defence of the last city on earth and the Tower. It has specializations based on each of the three core elements in the game.

Sentinel – “Void Captain America” – this class wields void energy and can form it in a shield that they can then use to attack enemies. This can be thrown as a ranged attack, used as an enhanced melee swing or consumed to generate a protective bubble.
Sunbreaker – “Super Hammer Bros” – this class wields fire energy and uses it to hurl flaming hammers at their opponents. There are various tweaks that can be chosen like one that causes the hammers to leave flaming puddles on the ground.
Striker – “Hulk Smash” – this class wields arc energy and uses it to slam down at the ground causing a giant area of effect attack knocking enemies back and dealing damage to them. Additionally there are tweaks that let the class crash into opponents when running at high speed and general a much smaller but equally effective version of the slam.

The Warlock

The core class fantasy is the “Space Wizard” and you are going to wield magic energy and sling it at your opponents. The core stat for the Warlock is recovery causing them to bounce back from damage quicker, and they also serve an interesting role as a sort of field medic by being able to drop a shield regeneration puddle on the ground. Once again they have specializations based on each of the three elements.

Dawnblade – “Flaming Angel” – this specialization sees the Warlock equip a flaming sword and sprout wings of fire allowing them to hover in the air for short periods of time hurling down fireballs with each swing of their sword.
Voidwalker – “Void Nuke” – this specialization involves channeling the void into a giant ball of energy that they hurl at their opponents. Additionally they have the ability to devour energy with their melee hits that they can then use to regenerate their shield.
Stormcaller – “Emperor Palpatine” – this specialization channels the arc energy into bolts of lightning that fly forth from their hands as they float in the air. There are some tweaks that allow them to teleport while in this state leaving puddles of electricity on the ground.

The Hunter

The core class fantasy here is something along the lines of a “Space Ranger” they combine aspects of rogue, gunslinger and the traditional gambler archetype into one class. The core class attribute is mobility which will allow them to have a slightly higher base movement speed, and similarly they can dodge out of harm’s way. They have potentially the widest variety as far as their specializations go.

Gunslinger – “Three Shot Wonder” – This fire sub class allows them to fire “golden gun” which are three shots that effectively one shot any player and take off a sizeable amount of damage from bosses. Additionally the class gets the interesting perk of being able to use a ranged melee attack in the form of throwing knives.
Arcstrider – “Pole Dancer” – This class has the most interesting weapon in the form of a staff made of arc energy that it then uses in a combo system to cause extremely high damage melee attacks. If you can master the class you will be able to leap across the battlefield and do some really impressive things.
Nightstalker – “Void Archer” – This specialization literally allows you to materialize a bow out of void energy and fire it at your opponents. When fired at something other than a player it leaves a ball of void energy on the ground that tethers and blinds targets nearby causing them to take extra damage.

General Tips and Thoughts

Get Your Unlocks Out of the Way – There is going to come a point in the main story quest where a number of the NPCs start giving you side quests. Each one of these is something you are going to want to do because they will ultimately unlock the endgame activities. Especially if you are not level 20 yet these are a good boost of XP when they finally unlock.
Trash Your Early Exotics – You will get a few exotics through the main story quest but they will be locked to a specific power level and you will out level them. You could in theory infuse these up, but remember that you can always rebuy your exotics at 205 power level from the collections tab in your vault for only 10 legendary shards. I found it easier just to pick them up again once I hit level 20 than to keep infusing them.
Save 5 Blue Scout Rifles – Once you hit 20 there will be a planetary quest chain that will require you to dismantle 5 blue or better scout rifles. When you hit this point you are going to be in a mad dash to get them to drop unless you simply start banking them while you level.
Adventures Give Unlock Points – generally speaking while you are leveling the various planetary adventures give you unlock points for your subclasses just like leveling up. Make sure you check each one and I highly suggest hitting up the ones that have a skill point waiting for you.
Do Public Events and Lost Sectors – You will be handed one specialization for your class, but in order for you to get the other two you have to unlock them through drops. These come from doing stuff on planets like Lost Sectors and Public Events. If you happen upon an event I highly suggest doing them so you can finish unlocking these specializations.
Learn How To Convert Public Events to Heroic – One of the interesting things about public events in Destiny 2 is that they all have some trigger that allows you to push them into a Heroic version where the rewards are significantly greater. I highly suggest you check out the guide I wrote some time ago on how to convert each of them. Nothing is more frustrating than trying to convert an event when some player is actively working against you without likely meaning to.
Hold Off on Powerful Rewards – There will be milestones that state they reward “powerful rewards” that ultimately give you what is called a Luminous Engram. You want to hold off on using these for as long a possible because they are going to be your single best way to get power level increases once you have hit the 270 soft cap. Once you have finished a milestone you can hold onto the reward without turning it in and at the end of the week when reset happens they will be automatically mailed to you.
Multiple Classes Multiple Rewards – Ultimately if you want to maximize your luminous engrams you are going to probably end up rolling one of each class because they will all get their own set of milestones to turn in. While armor does not swap between classes, you can swap your weapons via the vault or some of the tools I will share with you below. This will allow you to keep bumping up your power level by doing multiple sets of turn ins, each time swapping your best gear onto the next character.
Keep Returning to Tess Everis – As you level your character Tess Everis the Eververse vendor will keep giving you free packages. When you reach the level cap of 20, each time you fill an experience bar you will get a “Bright Engram” aka one of the same loot boxes that are sold with the cash currency. You gain a rested buff that will allow you to get three of these easily each week by doing stuff in game. As a result the cash shop option really is not needed or that appealing.
Save Legendaries You Like – unlike the exotics mentioned above… there is no way to reclaim a lost legendary other than to hope it drops again. The infusion system allows for you to take a weapon that you loved while leveling and bump it up to current levels. More importantly start looking out for gear with legendary mods on them, because they will help you bump your power levels up more than normal gear. Ultimately gear is going to be personal preference, test everything and keep the things you love.
Join A Clan – This one I almost forgot but joining a clan is going to unlock a bunch of things eventually. However up front joining before you have leveled is going to help you in two ways. Firstly your leveling experience is going to count towards clan experience and help level the clan. Secondly you will gain more than the 5000 xp needed to unlock the first clan luminous engram, which is going to be your easiest powerful gear reward each week. Additionally once the clan has leveled it is going to unlock a bunch of perks on the clan banner item Hawthorne is going to hand you.

Powerful Tools

Destiny Item Manager is the single most powerful tool that I use with the game because it does a few things that you just can’t do without third party intervention. Say you are going on a strike but your forgot your favorite weapon in the vault. Using the game interface this would require a trip back to a social space to retrieve it and then having to requeue for the activity. Destiny Item Manager allows you to swap gear in and out of your vault and between your characters while in game… even in the middle of an activity. Additionally it has some really interesting tools that allow you to filter and compare stats on gear as well as a really badass duplicate item finger to help clear that vault clutter. If you so choose you can create weapon loadouts and swap them in and out of your character with the click of your mouse. It is also remarkably mobile friendly so I highly suggest checking it out.

Destiny Sets is a relatively new tool that I just started using. Functionally it shows you every single piece of gear in the game and where it comes from. More than that it also keeps track of the items you have and the items you still need. When you are running three characters this becomes extremely useful especially if you get an item… and are short on inventory space and cannot remember if you needed it or not. This gives you a quick at a glance rundown allowing you to get back in the action quicker. This was super helpful during both Iron Banner and Faction rally in trying to track what I had and what I was missing on each character.

Destiny Tracker is the defacto tracking and statistics site. It harvests information from the bungie api and keeps track on all sorts of stats. This is heavily used by PVP players and even has a tool that lets you track what is going on in the current game. Until recently this was how I was sorting out how much time I had spent playing this or that activity. However a current bug is causing the API to return the incorrect amounts of time, and this has affected both this site and Wasted on Destiny.

Informational Sites

Bungie.net – the official website for Destiny and all Bungie games. This is especially useful for the This Week At Bungie column that usually appears on Thursdays.
DestinyTheGame Reddit – if you are on a low sodium diet then I would probably suggest staying away from this site or the next site. However the official/unofficial reddit is still a decent source of information.
Destiny Official Forums – this can have gems especially if you are having a very specific problem with the game. However for the most part it is a good deal of angry players lashing out at whoever they can. I highly suggest you maybe limit your time here.

One of the problems with the Destiny community is that there really isn’t much of a blog presence. I guess in truth this is only really a problem if this is your preferred method of informational intake. I am honestly likely the closest thing we have to a dedicated blog… and I am not dedicated to ONLY Destiny. Instead you find yourself venturing onto YouTube to get your drip of information and analysis. I preface this section largely because you will need to shift your thinking and effectively treat these sources as though they were blogs.

Helpful YouTube Channels

Arekkz Gaming – While he plays a significant number of other games his Destiny 2 videos are some of the best on YouTube. They are will scripted, informationally dense and are extremely timely. This is probably your best condensed source of the news without a lot of extraneous commentary.
Unknown Player – This is still an excellent source of news but since he is primarily a PVP player it is going to more of a focus on the crucible and trials meta than a lot of other sources. Still definitely someone I listen to on a reasonable rotation.
Mesa Sean – As a fellow “old man gamer” I love this guy because I relate to him on several levels. He makes an effort to be a positive voice for the community and shrugs off a lot of the salt when it is floating around.
Patrick Casey – aka Holtzman – Patrick used to do a good deal of the videos for planet destiny, namely the deep dive technical videos and when he left that channel… it was clear that he was the real force behind that information. Now his channel is packed full of the most technical and in the weeds information but sometimes you want to deep dive into the performance of a specific weapon.
My Name is Byf – While still a great source of news, the reason why I go to Byf is for the lore behind the game. Before the console launch he did this amazing two hour long video explaining the majority of the lore behind the original Destiny game and I highly suggest you check it out if you have the time.
Myelin Games – This is a very lore centric channel and does some amazing deep dives and speculative journeys that piece together what we know and theorize about what we don’t. If you get hooked on Destiny and want to know more about the universe, then by all means check this channel out.

I feel like I have just dumped a ton of information on you. It will take some time to synthesize or even decide if you want to synthesize it. The Destiny universe is a rich one with so many different rabbit trails running off in interesting directions. Similarly the Destiny community is extremely awesome in building tools or sharing information. If you find yourself having issues in your PC launch journeys feel free to drop me a line and I will try and answer whatever questions that might arise. Either that or join the Beyond the Light discord community that I have created for the PC launch. I have so much love for this game and I am ready to share it with all of the new people just getting to play it for the first time now that it is on PC. If you are curious how I actually plan on leveling myself after already experiencing the game multiple times… I also wrote up a post about that.

Destiny Roegadame

September 25, 2017 by Belghast

I had this post that I was contemplating making this morning, but I’ve decided that maybe today is not the right day. I woke up with a headache that sort of feels like my brain case is trying to split in two… so it maybe isn’t the best time to be getting into subjects that require a delicate touch. So instead this morning you are going to get to see some of what I did this weekend over in Destiny 2. Firstly you get a shot of my current Warlock outfit… I am in the one in gold and black with the crazy horns. Now it was announced last week that they nerfed the luminous engrams for multiple characters of the same class. I am beginning to think that maybe they also nerfed said rewards for ANY characters. I spent a good deal of time on the Warlock completing the few “easy” engrams… namely the Weekly Flashpoint (Titan), Clan Experience Reward and Call to Arms Milestone. The last two line up neatly because you get a predictable 500 xp per crucible match, which helps to chew away at that 5000 xp needed to get the Clan reward. I held all of the engrams until I had completed all three and then equipped my strongest power gear and turned them in one at a time so I could in theory adjust as needed. Now when I do this on my Titan I usually see a significant jump in power… and when I turned in on the Warlock they all for the most part dropped at the same light level as me or maybe one higher. Ultimately I am not sure if doing multiple luminous engrams per week is really worth it… but if I can get my Hunter through the main story in time I might try at least one of hers to see if I get the same results.

That brings me to the fact that I started my hunter this weekend, and wound up deleting my Destiny 1 character and re-rolling as a Female Awoken. Some interesting things to note… that even though I deleted my character I got specific story hits as though I was a legacy character. I am guessing those flags are set at an account level and not a character by character level, so I still got referenced based on my past deeds even though I ultimately deleted my previous hunter. My Titan being Exo is really the important part of the equation, and the fact that my other two characters were Exos… was largely due to the fact that there are no beards in Destiny. Since Hunter is such a nimble and graceful class, I always thought in the back of my head that I probably should have rolled a female character… and in part I am just correcting that original error. As far as rolling Awoken… this is the closest I can get in Destiny to having a Roegadame… which is always the correct choice if you have it.

This is ultimately a test run for how I am likely going to level when the PC release happens. I quested my way through the European Dead Zone to unlock Titan, and did the first quest there which unlocks the planet as a whole. From there I ran public events until I reached 20, which for the first 10 levels took a single event per ding… and afterwards took roughly 2 per. So if I functionally get to titan around level 5 that means within 25 public events I should be sitting at the level cap. The reasoning behind this is that you get an awful lot of random gear drops while doing the story content. Now the specific rewards like Exotics have power limits and will not float up as your level increases… but all of these random drops absolutely will. There is a significant part of the leveling process that is going to involve grinding something until you hit 260 light… the cap that you can get to with blue items. From there you will need a stockpile of faction rewards to get to 265… and in this case I had a fat stack of Titan tokens to turn in when I got there artificially by equipping the chest I had purchase from Xur and all of my Titan’s weapons. I started the Hunter around 11 am yesterday afternoon and wound up dinging 20 around 5 pm… with time between to do laundry and cook and random tasks like that. Now I just need to finish out the main story, which in theory I should be able to do tonight.

When I logged my character in earlier to take a few screenshots I noticed that my Clan has defeated the Raid. When this happens everyone in the clan gets a specific engram that is a level 10-15 version of one of the raid weapons. I just so happened to have a base 290 pulse rifle sitting in my bank that I sacrificed for science… and infused to bring the weapon up to usable levels. All in all I like this pulse rifle quite a bit, and while it is going to take some getting used to the action and the sounds it seems to be really solid. The important thing however is that I am super proud of my clan for defeating the angry penis head… which if you have seen Emperor Calus… it is a fairly apt description that I sadly cannot claim as my own. I am not sure which team specifically got the kill, but awesome work because I know it took a lot of people over the course of two weeks to really nail this all down and get the fight across the finish line. Now the rest of us casuals have some shiny baubles as a result. I think tonight I will be working on the Hunter main story so that I can at least test the flashpoint engram to see what sort of levels I get it to decode at.

Horizon Impressions

March 1, 2017 by Belghast

Yesterday morning I warned my friends that there was a 99.9% chance that I would end up hunting Zoids all night long, and not to expect me for anything else. This was a completely accurate sentiment. Sure I popped into Final Fantasy XIV long enough to do my Ixal crafting dailies… which admittedly take way longer than any other set of quests… but after that I had a date with Aloy. Now Monday night I got in for about an hour as soon as the game unlocked, and spent at least a little bit of time getting myself adjusted to the world. My goal this morning is to give you my spoiler free impressions… or at least as spoiler free as I possibly can while still talking about the game and showing things off. When I logged in last night I descended into the valley for the first time on zip line to start my first off rails questing, and I have to say… I was instantly hooked on the game. Granted from the moment I booted it up and played through the first little bit… the hook was already setting pretty strongly. One of the things we do as gamers is try and compare every game that comes along to something else that already exists. The problem with doing this in regards to Horizon Zero Dawn is there is just a lot of things this game is drawing from. In theory if you took Skyrim and blended it with Fallout… then mixed in a huge dose of the modern Tomb Raider games with a little Mad Max and in truth a touch of Farcry… and you end up with a pretty good explanation of this game. More importantly than that… this game is what I wanted Turok Dinosaur hunter to always be…. stalking awesomely augmented dinosaurs with only my bow and my wits.

What is most impressive about this melange of different genres is just how damned good it feels. Not only does the world have a high coolness factor but it also feels like it makes sense. Things exist for a reason, and as the player and observer… it feels like you understand the whys of the world better than the characters that participate in it because you can theorize about what each and every little Easter Egg laid before you might mean. In many ways you get the impression that this is an alternate version of Fallout… where instead of returning to the surface and finding the world a barren wasteland… the first survivors found a world reclaimed by nature and populated by the machines they created run amok and self replicating. Granted none of this is stuff that I know, just things that I have started turning around in my head. What is absolutely true is you are existing in a world where the machine and the wildlife are equally at home on the grassy plains, and you as a hunter need components from both to survive. So with your bow and your spear you set out to scavenge what you need from the landscape. You play the role of an outcast, someone shunned by the tribe from birth… and the key driving force of your actions is more than anything to find out why. The shunning aspect feels a little odd, especially given how many of the tribe you end up helping out along your way as optional side missions. I was originally wondering if these wound up effecting the flow of the story at all.. but so far having played through the first little segment it really doesn’t seem to other than offering items and leveling opportunites.

One of my problems with games that put a bow in my hands is generally that bows have extremely limited ammunition. I love bow weapons, but have always hated either trying to make sure I purchased enough arrows before I left town… or making a trip back to do so in the middle of doing something else. Given that the world of Horizon is a world of scavengers… they fix this issue with giving you the ability to craft most of your needs on the fly. So at any point… even in the middle of a battle which seems a little awkward… I can crack open my crafting pane and knock out a few arrows so that I can continue the fight. The same is true with traps when you eventually get the ability to use those, and upgraded ammunition like fire arrows. Similarly your gear can be modified to improve its stats and tweak its abilities… but I question if this is going to be a key mechanic or if its just the equivalent of enchanting something and you will keep shifting bows and spears as you travel through the world and get exposure to better armor and weapons. I wound up getting the digital deluxe edition and on top of the pre-order bonus… I wound up with a bunch of different options for gear that you would not normally start out with. The only negative here is that there is a moment in the story where someone makes what is probably intended to be a significant upgrade for you… and it ends up not being an upgrade at all.

At this point I have finished playing through what could ultimately be referred to as the “starter zone”. So many times in video games there is a closed off and protected area that you start the game in… and through a sequence of events you are pushed out into the much wider world. I stopped playing at roughly 11 pm last night and I had just literally crossed this barrier, and figured that I really should call it a night otherwise I would literally be up for another two hours. That means to complete this “intro” section it took me roughly five hours… one hour the first night and four hours last night, which all things considered seems to be like a fair amount of game play. Granted I always stop and smell the roses and I attempted to do all of the side quests I could possibly do, as well as spending some time gathering resources to upgrade my quiver and various other inventory elements. What I like the most about this game is that it feels like I truly am self sufficient. I can live off of the things that I scavenge from the land… be it herbs to fill my medicine pouch, or upgrading my various pouches to be more effective at gathering.

The only thing that I don’t really like is that it feels like maybe the game sets you up a little bit to fail. There are some items that you scavenge off of the bodies of the machines that are clearly marked as “crafting” materials. So those make complete sense to hold into for long term use. However there is another category that is marked as “trade to vendors, sell for shards” given that metal shards are the universal currency as well as a crafting material. So my immediate thought was that these would be vendor trash and I could simply sell them with impunity. That is absolutely not the case and as I found out from later vendors… certain items require certain scavenged components as well as shards to purchase. So right now there is a set of armor that I would love to have… but it requires me to collect two watcher eyes… something that I have had plenty of in my inventory but had been selling them to vendors for shards up until that point. Basically… what I am telling you is to hold onto the various materials that you pick up off the machines unless you find out for certain that you are not going to need them. The game at least in theory tries to teach you this… but the lesson was not as clearly outlined as it should have been when you trade a part you scavenge for an item. I am used to bringing all sorts of random crap to NPCs for the sake of a quest… and did not realize that the game was attempting to teach me that this is a thing that could and does happen.

Up until this point I have really only talked about the game play, which is generally a safe spoiler free den of information to dwell on. Now I am going to attempt to talk about the story, which is a section where I am going to get a lot more vague and general. For lack of better phrasing… as good as the game feels when you are fighting robotic dinosaurs… it also feels equally good when you are dealing with story elements. The game has created a world that I instantly want to know more about, and populated it with a bunch of interesting characters that I have feelings about be they good feelings… or bad feelings. I already care far more about this game than I do many others that I simply go through the paces because they are mechanically enjoyable. I really like that the game allows me to tailor the Aloy I want to play through giving me a series of dialog choices that are reminiscent of the Bioware games. There will generally be an option marked with a fist, an option marked with a heart, and an option marked with a brain. So far I have not really chosen the fist that often, but I tend to alternate between the heart and the brain depending on how I feel about a given character. These choices do at least somewhat effect how later interactions are going to work out… based at least in one small part on how I interacted with someone when I was a tiny babby Aloy. I chose to use the brain option… and sure enough the game remembered it and brought it up at a later time. The game does a great job of giving you characters that you are going to hate… and other characters that you are either going to genuinely like… or at least begrudgingly respect.

All in all this game has lived up to every expectation I had for it. I wanted an awesome post-apoc game where I roamed around on an awesome bow lady and took down robotic dinosaurs. This game has paid that off in spades, but also given me a really interesting world that I already deeply care about, as well as giving me just enough call to action to make me want to move forward in the quest chain. This is where so many games fail for me when it comes to open world adventures. In Fallout 4… I simply did not give a single fuck about the main story arc. All I wanted to do was explore the world surrounding me and build up the settlement of Sanctuary. I didn’t care about my baby being stolen, and I most certainly didn’t care about trying to track it down. The game completely failed at giving me enough motivation to keep moving forward… however already in Horizon I care… I want to know more about why this world is the way it is and how exactly all of these different pieces that it keeps exposing me to fits together. Guerrilla games has somehow managed to create an open world with an infused sense of purpose behind everything you are doing… and I like it… I like it a lot. I am sure there will be some slow spots… as happens with literally every game but I feel both the desire to keep moving… but also at the same time the freedom to wander about and explore whenever I want to. At this point I am super hooked, and am fighting every desire to boot the game up and play some this morning because it would without a doubt make me super late to work.

Working Weekend

November 28, 2016 by Belghast

Well this morning is not getting off to a glorious start. File this under the category of more issues with web hosting. I seem to be unable to upload any new files to any of my blogs. Some sort of permission issue, and unfortunately not one that I can remedy myself with the level of access that I have. We had an issue over the weekend where my sites got peppered with a bunch of bad files that were being used to send spam mail. As a result I think the web host maybe locked things down a little too tight. I spent the bulk of my Saturday morning going directory by directory and deleting this fishy files that had gotten uploaded through some exploit somewhere along the line. However in the meantime I can’t upload any new images… which kinda derails the whole process of blogging for me. Instead of writing a proper post I have spent the last forty five minutes trying to resolve the issue on my own with zero luck.

As far as gaming this weekend I was all over the place. I played some Rift and made it to level 67 in the Gedlo Badlands, and also partook of the weekend mount sale to pick up a couple of the previously lockbox only mounts including the back warmech thing. Early in the week I had set my goals on leveling the Deathknight in World of Warcraft to 110. Then I found out that the frost hidden appearance that drops from this weeks world boss… also requires Artifact Knowledge 4, which was not something I could hope to finish during the timeframe. That said I still have been having an awful lot of fun on the Deathknight and even casually playing without a serious push… I managed to get him to just shy of 108. In Destiny I worked on getting all three of my characters through the various weekly quests available from Shiro in the Iron Temple. I now have all three classes at 385 or above with my Titan being the highest at 387. Other than that I started Dishonored 2 and am struggling to get into it. I am not sure what it is about the setting but it is far less interesting to me than Dunwall. I am not terribly far in so I am going to continue giving it a shot until hopefully it clicks.

Other than all of this… my weekend was perforated by a lot of things happening at work that I ultimately had to log in and deal with. A prime example is that I had been trying to finish a dungeon needed by my Deathknight when I had to drop the dungeon finder group… and hop on a conference call for an hour to try and sort out what was happening. The problem with being salary… and not having an official on-call rotation is that it means you are always on call. We sorted it out but it was a something looming over my head because you are never quite certain when you are really “out” for the day. I thought I put things to bed at 11 am… and I kept getting pulled back in until around 7 pm my time. Something similar happened on Saturday as well, and I had to stop what I was doing and drive back to the house just to get in for thirty minutes to fix something. As a result it felt like this really strange pseudo working weekend, and with us skipping the recording of AggroChat something felt off the entire time. It is funny now our rituals ground us… and now badly I needed mine to make the weekend feel normal. Raiding Karazhan I guess however helped to serve as a great cap to the weekend, seeing as we once again had a pretty smooth clear.