MMO Archives - Page 89 of 334 - Tales of the Aggronaut

Boosh and Barroth

April 16, 2018 by Belghast

It was a pretty great weekend as far as gaming goals go. Saturday I largely roamed around aimlessly in Everquest while hanging out with my wife downstairs watching various stuff on the television. Then at some point before the podcast I headed upstairs to see if I could knock out the megaman event. This entails fighting the most laughably small Odogoron you have ever seen… and one that is slightly larger than normal. In truth I am not completely sure it is larger than normal… or if it just seems massive compared to the tiny tiny one you fight first. Ultimately you need to get five tickets to get your full palico armor and I managed to finish mine up in three events… with the last one dropping three event tickets… something I was not sure could actually happen.

After the Podcast Thalen and I wound up hanging out and working on our Ryu costumes, which entails doing a challenge arena where you fight a massive Barroth. This thing is so large that really your only option is to wail away on the legs until it falls over…. then start scoring hits on other parts of the body. This event scores event tickets based on how fast you get the kill… if I am remembering right getting it in less than 5 minutes nets you a gold and three tickets, less than 9 minutes a silver and 2 tickets, and finally finishing at all before the 50 minute timer is up earns you bronze and a single ticket. You need seven tickets in total so we wound up running it four times in a row allowing us to craft the Ryu suit… that in all honesty we will probably never actually wear.

When Thalen and I both got on I created an open chat channel and we both joined the Greysky Armanda clan session, and at some point during our Barroth nonsense our good friend Shiana joined us in both. Thalen and I were talking for a bit about both needing Kirin and what sort of gear we were prepping for the fight. It was around about this point that Shiana offered to help us get some attempts in seeing as he was in the 90s rank wise himself. Granted this is like at 11 pm we are starting this madness… but my desire to kill the stupid unicorn was greater than my desire for sleep. So we continued forth with me wearing my mostly Xeno’jiiva set that nets 40 lightning resist with a veggie platter buff. In truth with multiple people the fight already seemed way easier because I was not having to spend my entire time trying to shed aggro from the lunatic horse.

One by one we each got carted… with me taking the last hit and closing out our first attempt somewhere around the 25 minute mark. On our second attempt we managed to get feline insurance, and in truth only managed to get carted the one time if I am remembering correctly. We had better luck as far as where exactly Kirin decided to fight us, shifting back and forth between two relatively open areas. When we managed to whittle it down to enough hitpoints to make it run back to it’s “nest” we barrel bombed it into oblivion then threw on our thunderproof mantles and proceeded to wale away on it. All the while this was going on… I was still very much on edge… afraid something would go terribly wrong and we would fail the fight once again. So when I saw the above screenshot… crediting a kill for Kirin I was ecstatic… making getting to sleep when I finally crawled into bed a little after midnight a bit harder than normal.

Sunday I spent the day swapping laundry and hanging out upstairs playing Monster Hunter while watching The Mighty Boosh on my second monitor. I am not exactly sure what prompted me, but for some reason I fired up Hulu to see what was available and it suggested to me this show. Now I had watched most of it some time ago when reruns were being played as part of the adult swim block late at night. This was back during my wow raiding days… and many of the sayings from the “Old Gregg” episode became constant quotation fodder during fights… especially “Fuzzy Little Man Peach”. So yesterday I hung out watching the Hulu feed of the episodes while doing random nonsense in Monster Hunter World. It was a day truly well spent.

I’ve been slowly adding weapons to my repertoire and then learning how to use them. It seems extremely bizarre but I have been crafting purple and orange versions of weapons that I have maybe never actually used… because I figure as I learn them I at least have an “end game” version to get used to rather than mess with all of the steps in between. For the moment I have solid versions of Charge Blade, Switch Axe, Great Sword and of course the Longsword of which I have developed quite the collection. One of the weapons that I have kept wanting to try is the Dual Blades which seem really cool when I see someone using them, but for whatever reason I have never actually tried.

I really really like the look of the Sin dual Chain Kama looking weapons, and thanks to farming the Odogoron quest I managed to get not only one but two gems. This allowed me to craft the weapon and the complete set of Alpha Odog gear to go with it. Sure it might seem weird that I have a full set of gear largely because I think its cool looking… but whatever. Now I am setting my sights on getting the Zorah blast lance… before giving that weapon a go. Sure I could just go into the training room… but as I keep being reminded I am the patron saint of bad decisions and that simply would not be my way.

Another project for this weekend was finishing farming the Anjanath claws needed to upgrade my weapon I can’t pronounce into the final form of said weapon I can’t pronounce. I then took the firey axe and shield out on a few test runs having really great luck with it. It could use a few more ranks of handicraft to give me more time in the blue zone, because it takes an awful lot of sharpness loss as you use it… but it also dishes out a lot of damage and is crazy fun to use. I am sure there are probably better options for sword and shield, but I like this one and it at least gives me an end game suitable weapon in that category. All in all it was a pretty great weekend… apart from one incident… but that is a tale for another day.

Everquest For Reasons

April 13, 2018 by Belghast

Last night I did some nonsense “for science” or mostly to refresh my mind so that I was no longer talking completely out of my arse about Everquest. Prior to last night the last time I had played was apparently in 2013 if my screenshot archive was to be believed. So not exactly the most up to date information about the game considering it is still receiving updates and tweaks. Prior to starting up… or more correctly as the game downloaded I watched a video from Cohh to sort of re-familiarize myself with the game. This video included a link to Brewall’s Everquest Maps pack… which I then installed to have slightly better guidance than the default options.

The game presented a series of servers… some of which were flagged as preferred… something I am not completely certain what it actually means. However it did get me to end up rolling on Vox instead of one of the classic servers that slowly got joined over the years. This is technically a newer account than the one that I had while playing the original Everquest, but it is the one that I have the vast majority of my EQ2 characters on… so if I am going to sub somewhere it would be here. On my older account however my characters are spread between Veeshan and Xegony… neither of which sounded like an amazing option for starting fresh so I just went with Vox the new standard ruleset server that was being presented in the preferred list.

Originally I created a Gnome Shadowknight… but the fact that I could not change the color of the eyebrows from grey to something else caused me to ultimately delete that character and roll something completely different. This time around I went with a Troll which was a more min-maxery choice given that the latent regeneration has always been a little broken. Essentially there are three races that are large enough to be able to Slam… or essentially shield bash without the requirement of having a shield. So you if you play a Troll, Ogre or Barbarian you can interrupt casting while using a two handed weapon… which always seemed to fit the feel of a Shadowknight better than sword and shield. Yes these are things that I was somehow able to dredge up from the past and summon forth to advise my judgement.

The user interface still makes me deeply frustrated because it is sort of a much worse version of Everquest 2… and I have never thought the EQ2 interface was that brilliant. After about thirty minutes of tweaking I managed to get things moved in a way that didn’t make me quite so frustrated… though still not entirely happy. The hardest part was the mouse but after tweaking both the X and Y sensitivity I managed to get mouse look feeling a bit more normal. The next step was trying to figure out how to get tab targeting to work properly which lead me out onto the forums to sort out which of the keybinds would actually do what I wanted it to do. It turned out that basically I wanted to bind two things to tab… nearest npc and cycle extended targets… which combined sorta give me the style of tab targeting I am used to which is target the nearest thing or cycle through the things I am currently engaged with.

Over the course of the evening things started feeling significantly better as I got adjusted to this window on time. The combat is still largely non-interactive at low levels for a melee character and it was not long before I set up my old “Taunt and Slam” macro so that I could have a single button to train both abilities up with. Originally I had lumped Sense Heading in there but it seems that you maybe no longer need to train that like you did before. Most combat involved me pulling with my single spell Spike of Disease then starting up the auto attack and hitting my single ability button anytime taunt or bash/slam were up. It was not glamorous… but also pretty chill to hang out downstairs while watching television.

Unfortunately as of writing this… I am finding out that they apparently moved the spells so you start to get something new every level instead of not giving Shadowknights much of anything until around level 10. So I just bought Sense the Dead, Locate Corpse, Invisibility vs Undead, Disease Cloud and Siphon Strength which should serve to make combat significantly more interesting. The other thing that makes this entire experience more reasonable is the introduction of mercenaries… so I am running around with I believe a Human Cleric allowing me to do my tanky nonsense almost indefinitely receiving the occasional heal to keep me alive and functional.

All in all it is not a bad experience so I do need to back pedal a bit regarding some of my comments the other day when talking about Project Gorgon. That said I do think the interface for Gorgon is leaps and bounds ahead of this one, and it is probably the single most frustrating part of the experience for me. I feel like I will spend some time soon trying to clean the interface up a bit or seeing if I can hide some of the interface elements to reduce the size of everything. I am linking in a picture from Project Gorgon for reference… as there is just way less stuff on the screen but providing most of the same information that the Everquest screen does. Regardless it was interesting enough for me to get to level 8 and it is highly likely that I will keep leveling for a bit just to see how the experience expands once I leave the newbie cave.

Wandering Aimlessly

April 10, 2018 by Belghast

Right now I find myself struggling a bit to gain purchase in most of my MMO options right now. World of Warcraft I am back and active in because of the Wednesday night Mythical Nonsense thing we are doing. I was logging in every night to try and eek out the last bits of experience needed to unlock the Void Elves and Lightforged Draenei but even then… I have faltered considerably. I really do not enjoy Argus, so logging in every night and grinding every single quest available just seems grossly unpalatable. Final Fantasy XIV failed to catch my attention with Eureka, and I lost momentum catching up on the main story quest patched in with the latest expansion. Destiny 2 is sitting there largely untouched because when I log in… there is really nothing that I want to be doing which is ultimately where that game falls short of the original.. there are no long running breadcrumbs for me to follow when I spin out and lose purpose. Monster Hunter World is always easy to get back into… but there are nights that I just don’t want to spend my evening upstairs and the fact that my PS4 is there limits my play time.

In the end I keep coming back to Project Gorgon and its weirdly charming neostalgic experience. On the podcast Tam talked about the game feeling like the way we remember playing Everquest. While this might sound confusing at first… this is exactly what this game feels like. We have incorrect rose tinted feelings about how Everquest and Dark Age of Camelot for that matter felt to play. If you go back today you end up with a cludgy mess of a game that feels ancient and quite honestly not that enjoyable. However our in our memories the Everquest experience is still vibrant because we have edited out the rough spots and filled in the way those actions made us feel in place of the hard facts of just how limited that game actually was. Project Gorgon remembers those things that were lacking in Everquest and has supplied the spackle and paint needed to make those memories feel true and vibrant.

Sure I am doing the same kill ten rats quests I have been doing my entire MMO gaming career, but the fact that I seem to have a relatively limitless quest log… and the fact that I can complete the quests by killing ANY ten rats… not just the ones five feet away from the quest giver makes the experience feel more open ended. If I have a quest to kill wolves… Sickly Wolves, Mangy Wolves, Supporting Wolves, just plain wolves… specific named character wolves… all count towards a quest that says “kill wolves”. This means you can do the quests while roaming around the world and exploring… rather than feeling tethered to a specific location to be able to clear out your log. There are quests I picked up on my first day that I just managed to finish two weeks later because I had not actually encountered the thing I was needing to find yet. I dig the long tail that this cycle has and the fact that it feels like you are “questing” for something more than just completing a task list.

I am sure some of this is just my inherent lack of familiarity with the world or the fact that the maps don’t really have locations marked on them, or my habit of running the opposite direction I need to go. Whatever the case the specific combination of broad objectives and happy accidents along the way lead to a very immersive experience in spite of the fact that you spend a good deal of time running along and encountering nothing at all. The only real complaint I have so far is the fact that most of the gear that I use looks like complete nonsense… like right now it feels like I am wearing thermal long-johns… but they were unfortunately the best item I had and finally got rid of that horrible yellow bandage appearance.

At this point I have managed to hook two more people on this game, in part because I knew it would be down their alley. For the most part I am limiting myself to just Sword and Psychology… but I am contemplating trying out a few other secondary skills. I spent the 2000 councils aka gold to learn beast taming so it might be interesting to try a pet secondary for awhile. Similarly I now have the ability to learn fire magic, so that might also be interesting to shim in over top of Psychology. The one thing that I am finding weird… and cannot quite reconcile is that our hotbars have six abilities on them… but right now I have seven in both psychology and swords. I cannot however seem to be able to replace the spells from my bar… so how exactly do we use that last one? I might try dragging it to the optional bar and see if it becomes usable that way. Among all of the other games that I have access to at this very moment… this one feels the most comfortable and suited to whatever I am needing at this very moment. I’ve not really streamed much because nothing I am doing right now seems interesting enough for someone to watch. Grinding factions in WoW is boring as hell… and I am afraid me wandering around aimlessly in Gorgon will also be boring to watch.

Rocket-Swords and Pig-Bees

April 6, 2018 by Belghast

Last night I spent some time in Monster Hunter World because the Spring Blossom festival launched about halfway through my evening offering up a ton of things to do. It is this weird blended festival that includes a ton of repeat chances to get items that were offered before as well as several new items including the Greatsword I am rocking in this image and the Megaman/Rockman Pallico Armor that I will ultimately have to get my hands on. I will talk more about the Greatsword a little further down the list… but first I want to talk about how generally happy I am with the pacing of events in this game. It feels like every single week there is a reason for me to log in and do content, and while I am largely stalled out at 49 behind Tempered Kirin there seems to still be a constant deluge of things to do. Granted I have pulled back my playtime a bit given my recent infatuation with Project Gorgon and the return to doing stuff with people in World of Warcraft… but that doesn’t necessarily mean that I am completely disconnected.

I really love the flow of this game because it feels like I can log in any night and feel like I have interesting options to do. There are also things on the horizon that I have to look forward to, like the Devil May Cry collaboration that brings a brand new Charge Blade into the mix. This week however was all about the new fan designed Greatsword and helping me to fill in a weapon slot that I really had not put any effort into. While I don’t think they necessarily have the intention of giving us an event weapon for every slot… so far I have gotten a really nice Bow and a really nice Greatsword with what felt like minimal effort when it comes to farming all of the missing bits I need to get from point a to point b in the crafting tree. Sure the Greatsword and Bow both require a Wyvern Gem which is annoying to farm… but that is one part out of a whole list of parts that might be a pain to get. I wound up using the Gold Wyverian print I had laying around to craft the Greatsword last night.

Like I said before I was ultimately missing a decent Greatsword from my weapon lineup, and while it is an extremely cumbersome weapon… it is one I want to learn how to use because it seems very much a “me” weapon. In order to get this weapon you need to start running the low rank 5 star quest… Every Hunter’s Dream. This involves taking down a Paolumu and a Rathalos… which enter the fight staggered a bit so you can get a significant amount of damage in on the Lumu before having to deal with the poison and fire asshole. I ran the first one of these solo and then grouped up with Thalen who also happened to be on to get the last few kills. I think in total it took us four attempts to get the five Master Craftsman’s Blueprints needed to craft both steps of the weapon. As far as the other items needed… here is a list form breakout even though I crudely photo-shopped it all together above.

Master Craftsman’s Blueprint – 5 – Event Only Item
Dragonite Ore – 7 – I believe any zone after Low Rank Coral Highlands but not 100% sure
Paolumu Webbing – 2 – Low Rank Paolumu
Rathalos Marrow – 2 – Low Rank Rathalos – Green First Wyverian Print
Elder Dragon Blood – 2 – Kill an Elder Dragon – Nergigante, Vaal Hazak, Kushala Daora, Teostra, Xeno’jiiva
Firecell Stone – 2 – Found in Elder’s Recess
Wyvern Gem – 1 – Most High Rank Paolumu, Tobi-Kadachi, Lavasioth, Jyuratodus, Barroth, Radobaan, Diablos
40,000 Zenny – yeah…. you are going to want to farm some cash

I have not really done anything serious with this weapon… but in theory were I to use it regularly I would wear my fire longsword set of gear… make sure I have some Handicraft and figure out a decent item to wear that gives me the hidden elemental damage. 510 is a lot of fire damage to leave sitting on the table with this weapon, so I need to sort out a decent item to slot to give me that back since I am no longer regularly wearing the Zorah Magdaros gloves. I did a few minor quests last night with the weapon and really dig it… even though it is just about the slowest thing in the world. I had already started getting into the practice of sheathing my longsword anytime I was going to be moving for awhile just because the draw attack is really nice. This training has served me pretty well for the greatsword given that you cannot move at more than a snails pace with it drawn.

If you are interested in the timing of everything going on you can check out the official Capcom PDF of events… or better yet check out this site called 28 Games Later that has a really nice full breakout of everything.