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Xur Week Seven: 10/27/17

October 27, 2017 by Belghast

Xur Destiny 2

This week Xur is located on Io in the Giant’s Scar area. He is off to the left side of that area inside of a cave. If you turn around and face away from Xur you should also find one of the region chests if you have not actually looted it. This week is important because it is the first time Xur is available for PC players, and I have in fact double checked that the inventory on console and pc is exactly the same. I however took my screenshots console side because I am still in the process of leveling all the things on PC and only have the Titan to 20… and even then I am not all of the way through the main story quest. I noticed that the exotics were showing as level 19 and 254 instead of the 270 I was expecting, so wondering if finishing the game is a trigger for that shift to level 20 items. I throw this out there just for folks to be careful when you spend your oh so precious legendary shards this week on the PC side of things. Xur will be available until the weekly reset instead of disappearing sometime during the night on Saturday, so you have plenty of time to grind out more shards or get through the story.

This week for the weapon we have D.A.R.C.I. or as I have referred to this every time I have decrypted it from an engram… infusion fuel. What makes this weapon interesting is that while aiming you can view the health and other information about your target through your scope with the Personal Assistant perk. This blends with the target acquired perk that causes you to have better target acquisition and precision damage while the Personal Assistant perk is in action. My general problem with the weapon however is that I just don’t like medium impact snipers. This weapon has 55 impact and the snipers I tend to use personally are in the 70-90 range. Now is the point where I start speaking out of my depth, but I always feel like this medium impact variety has to be targeted at the crucible right? It has really high stability and handling which should in theory make scoping in on your target extremely snappy. I just have zero interest in using a sniper rifle in PVP, and if I am going to use one in PVE I want it to pack a bigger punch. PC players it will probably still be worth a pick up for the power level bump if nothing else.

As far as armor goes this is a really phenomenal week and includes sort of a greatest hits collection of universally useful items. Actium War Rig is one of the options that you can get on Titan, and if you are an auto rifle fan like me… it is probably going to be what you end up using. The Auto-Loading Link perk causes ammo to loaded into your magazine when you stop firing the weapon at a tick rate of roughly one second. What this means is if you are burst firing your weapon you can greatly extend the amount of time you can put off reloading giving you way more time to mop up enemies. This works extremely well with weapons that have the rampage perk because you can keep rolling between targets without having to take the time to wait for reload, just allowing the weapon to tick once between bursts of fire. Definitely going to pick this up for the power level and to have a more current version of this item rather than the level 105 item the game gives you.

Warlocks have a similarly universally good item in the form of the Eye of Another World helmet. Similarly this is an item you can pick up on Titan and the cerebral uplink perk causes you to highlight priority targets but also improves the regeneration speed of grenade, melee and rift abilities. Its rare that an item just makes everything universally work better, but that is in fact the mission of this helm. Once again I highly suggest picking this up for the power level if nothing else, but for anyone who chose poorly on Titan… then here is a nice second chance to get that item.

I’ve talked about this item before and I am not really sure what else I can add. Knucklehead Radar is one of my favorite pieces of gear from Destiny 1 and I am super happy that it returned to Destiny 2. The upgraded sensor pack causes radar tracking to be active while you aim down sights on every weapon. This is just universally useful and is a crutch that I am not willing to give up while playing my hunter. I used the hell out of the Memory of Gheleon artifact in Destiny 1 year 3… and similarly I love this item. Again if nothing else this is a good level boost for those PC players who are just now getting started. I hope to be able to gather enough legendary shards before Xur leaves on Tuesday to purchase each of these items and have them ready for when I start leveling the Hunter and Warlock.

Xur Destiny 1

As has been the case the last few weeks, I am also doing the information about Xur in Destiny 1 lest we not all abandon the players who are still enjoying that game. You can find Xur in the tower next to Lord Shaxx. This week he brought something interesting… the Jade Rabbit which was previously an exclusive for the PS4 players. I had heard that the embargo had been lifted on selling the PS4 exclusive items, but I am guessing this is hard proof. Here is a quick rundown of what he has brought for us this week.

Legacy Helmet Engram – 29 Strange Coins
An Insurmountable Skullfort – Titan Helm – 13 Strange Coins
Crest of Alpha Lupi – Hunter Chest – 13 Strange Coins
Claws of Ahamkara – Warlock Arms – 13 Strange Coins
Jade Rabbit – Scout Rifle – 23 Strange Coins
Hawkmoon and Moonglow Ornament – 30 Strange Coins 25 Silver Dust
Tresspasser and Crucible Assassin Ornament – 30 Strange Coins 25 Silver Dust

Treadblades and Grenades

May 22, 2017 by Belghast

A good chunk of this weekend was about me riding the high that was the Destiny 2 gameplay reveal panel. I wrote about my feelings Friday, but I am still extremely hyped. What I find interesting is that there are some hardcore Destiny players that walked away disillusioned by the announcement. For me I largely wanted them to take the same Destiny mechanics that I love and apply them to a much more open world. From the sounds of it that is precisely what we are getting. However it seems like the competitive PVP scene walked away frustrated, because they were expecting ladder brackets and things like that to support their specific play style. While I love the Crucible, I am anything but serious when I play it… and as a result I largely am okay with a more casual PVP focus. What is funny about this is that it is the same community that got super frustrated when they were only being matched against similarly skilled players, and have been the biggest proponents of moving away from skill based matchmaking. I can at least see one of their complaints, which is largely that they were expecting the game to move to a server/client structure rather than the peer to peer setup that we have today. I feel like the currently crucible matchmaking algorithm does a decent job of weeding out the “redbars”, and it has been a really long time since I have been in a match with more than one of them. That could however be based on the fact that I am living in the center of the United States and have solid pings to either coast though.

What all the Destiny love created however is a strong desire to play the game I currently have my hands on. Over the weekend I spent a good deal of time upstairs playing around, and picked back up my Xbox One character since it allowed me to experience the full circuit of Destiny emotions. All of my PSN characters are comfortably at 400 light, and all I am really doing there is upgrading additional gear to that level. So there is a missing chunk of the experience… the brief joy of seeing a higher light level item that you can then use to infuse into your gear. So as a result I opted to spend most of the weekend playing my now 378 Titan. On PSN however I did spend a bit of time working on achievements, and that meant a lot of chain running of SIVA Crisis Strikes for the purpose of trying to get super kills. This also meant rocking my Bad Juju, because for me at least it seems to be a much better super energy magnet than the Zhalo Supercell. I think right now I am 5 super streaks away from finishing up one book, and then I can start in earnest on the modern Age of Triumph book. I am still a little bummed that they came out and dashed my hopes of “cross save” functionality between the various client versions. I would have happily purchased Destiny 2 for all available platforms if this actually happened.

On the World of Warcraft front, I indulged in something I had been wanting to for awhile. With the recent spike in token prices I opted to purchase one and it sold for roughly 130,000 gold. I then took that gold and purchased the Champion’s Treadblade… which I always thought was a way cooler design than the Warlord’s Deathwheel. This also jarred me off center in being less of a lazy engineer. I never actually got around to crafting the original Mekgineer’s Chopper. It was one of those things I always intended to do… but never wanted to spend the money on. functionally no matter how much faction discount you have the end result is always going to be 12,000 gold worth of parts. I used this influx of cash from the token however to serve as a reason to go ahead and finish this off. I happened to have pretty much everything else needed to craft it laying around on various alts, so it was simply a matter of flying out to Storm Peaks and buying the few vendor items.

The last major event of the weekend is that I finally decided what to use my character boost on. I have not really touched much of anything this expansion on the Horde side. My friend Grace has reverted back to her Horde ways, and as a result I figured I should probably have at least one character that I like to be able to play with her. As a result I took the Deathknight that I rolled on her server and boosted it to 100, and started leveling it last night. The thing that I didn’t realize about the 100 boost… is just how lousy the gear is that they give you. I remember I started Legion sitting in mostly 710 gear on my characters from the pre-launch invasion events. My newly boosted Unholy Deathknight was equipped in a full set of 640 gear… which if I remember correctly was the required level to queue for heroics in Warlords of Draenor. As a result this is the first character I have taken to the Broken Shores invasion scenario that I actually had trouble surviving. I died about four times during this invasion… but that also could simply be because this late in the expansion there was only one other player actually doing it. Whatever the case I clawed my way up from the frustrating gear level and am making progress in Azsuna.

Advanced Spellcraft

February 3, 2017 by Belghast

I’ve talked about quite a few things that I experienced at Pax South, and this mornings post is going to do some more of the same. I feel like this year more than others I walked away with a treasure trove of things I wanted to talk about. I guess in theory it is because I approached the convention significantly differently than I have in past years. In the past I largely only stood in line to play the games that immediately seemed to be in my wheelhouse, and as a result I am sure I robbed myself of a whole slew of interesting things. The game I want to talk about this morning is a prime example of not being able to rely on our instincts and tastes. If you have read my blog for any length of time you will know that I do not handle “finger wigglers” that well… or to clarify my own personal slang… spell casters. So when I walked past a booth demonstrating a game where the main character is slinging spells left and right, my first instinct is to keep moving. However as a group we stopped and listened to the intricate tale that CEO Louis-Félix Cauchon had to weave. Admittedly what make this game so interesting is just how detailed the spell system is. We got to watch a twenty minute demo covering nothing but how the spell system works, before even getting into the awesome pedigree of the storytelling.

Functionally your character has four spells, which in itself doesn’t seem like a lot. However each spell can be modified with what I have been generically calling “mutators” to change the way it responds. So you might have a spell that at face value is a small point blank spark, however by equipping a a behavior you can make it fire out like a fireball… or by equipping an augment you can make it veer to the right after firing it. If you suddenly decide that you don’t want to throw fireballs… but instead iceballs, you can simply go in and change the base element of the attack. Over the course of this demo of the system we got to see personal shields turn into charge attacks, and glorious cascades of rock from the ceiling in place of a traditional blizzard spell. Now you might ask yourself why on each you would need this level of detail for a spell system apart from the simple “wouldn’t it be cool” aspect. Functionally the magic not only serves as a weapon, but also as a complex puzzle system. So there might be switches that you cannot reach unless you modify your fireball to arc in a certain way in order to hit the trigger. The spellbook also allows you to save off several different configurations of a spell, and in the final version you will be able to give them unique names allowing you to quickly recognize which version of a given spell is your avalanche and which is your frost barrier. The only immediate limit to building insane combination spells is your imagination, and of course your mana bar. Each trait that you give a spell increases its cost, and while it was described that this matters less and less as you go through the game… it does limit your early tinkering. Additionally as you play through the game you find modifiers along the way, meaning your palette of abilities starts small and grows as you progress.

Up to this point we have literally just talked about the technical spell casting system, which in itself is a pretty amazing game. On top of this however they have added what is sure to be a pretty great story. Ed Greenwood of Forgotten Realms fame has penned the story for this game about epic spellcasters, which only makes sense given that he gave us the character of Elminster. Functionally I heard the game described as Harry Potter meets Zelda and that seems fitting, with a huge alteration in that there seems to be a lot more physical puzzle solving with your spells. I find it so bizarre though that I am looking forward to the release of a game about magic users, and that includes absolutely zero armor clad characters for me to bash baddies in the head with. At face value this game is traditionally far out of my wheelhouse, but it was also quite possibly the freshest feeling game concept I saw on the Pax floor. We’ve done so much for martial combat and making it feel interesting and nuanced, but have done so little to bring that same level of nuance to weaving complex spells. Most games give us the option of push button throw fireball, or push button create bubble… but this is the first that I have seen that lets you take that bubble and then project it outwards or trigger another spell after the bubble casts. I have this feeling that in many ways it will have an almost metroidvania feel in that each time you unlock a new ability to give you spells it is also going to open up new ways to solve puzzles and allow you to move deeper into the content.

The game right now is targetted for PC, Playstation 4 and Xbox One and does not have a firm launch date… but we heard March or April mentioned which I largely translated into a “Spring” launch window that might be plus or minus a month. They are doing something extremely interesting to get us into the world ahead of the launch by releasing a comic that updates Tuesdays and Thursdays and explains the world and setting. I love it when I experience a game like this, not necessarily because “woo spellcasters” or anything of the sort, but because this is clearly the love child of a bunch of folks who care deeply about it. Talking to Louis-Félix Cauchon within second it was clear to see just how passionate he was about this game, and the work and imagination that went into creating it. That in truth is what makes the convention experience special. You get to meet the creators face to face and see just how much they love what they are doing. In many ways it feels like Pax South recharges the spark inside of me each year, and gives me fuel to keep going throughout the year. We spend so much time on the negatives, the little details that bother us about this game or that. However seeing a game like Mages of Mystralia shows me instantly that there very much still is magic out there… pun only slightly intended. I would definitely add this to your watch list and check it out when it ultimately releases. I find it so bizarre that of all of the games I have experienced, this one ranks insanely high on the list of “wish I had early access” titles, if for no reason other than to play with the spell crafting system. This is the first release from Borealys Games, but if they can pour this much passion into every project they are going to be a studio we see lots of amazing things from in the future.

Weekend Hibernation

December 5, 2016 by Belghast

It was a truly bizarre weekend for a whole lot of reasons. Primarily because whatever illness my wife had seemed to strike with a vengeance during the tail end of last week. As I said before I was originally planning on going to RiffTrax with work friends on Thursday night but by the time I left work I realized there was no way I could make it through an entire evening. Instead I begged off and went home and crashed on the sofa in my fuzzy blanket cocoon. By the time Friday came around I was really doing considerably worse and took a sick day… which in turn screwed up our evening plans. We were originally slotted to do this monthly family dinner thing, but we rescheduled it for next weekend because I was not sure how well I would be to drive. Instead I returned to the blanket cocoon once more and was as a result available for our normal Friday night Emerald Nightmare clear run. I wound up tanking it, with the stipulation being that I was not going to talk at all. In fact to prevent myself from doing this I muted my microphone…. which lead to a weird run since I am fairly vocal as we make it through the content. To make it even more odd, we were without the OTHER vocal leader Kylana which meant a whole slew of people had to step up to the plate and help make sure the run went smoothly. So seriously huge thanks to Mort, Phy, Beist, Bledd, and I am sure a whole slew of other people who also were chatty and helpful but I am not remembering at this very moment. It was once again a super clean run, and in the end I wound up swapping off for Erry for the final encounter since it generally requires a bit more vocal tank coordination.

Past that night I spent a lot of time piddling around in stuff by myself. Namely this meant an awful lot of Final Fantasy XV, and I think maybe just maybe I am finally to the point where I am willing to move on past “world 1”. As I said before there is a point where the game warns you that if you continue on you might not be able to return for awhile. I took this warning to heart given that I just came from playing Final Fantasy XIV where this sometimes means that a two and a half hour long cut scene is about to happen. Instead over the weekend I found out from some of the other folks playing it that at least in this case… the game is talking about a ten minute process and not a thirty hour long one. In past games these warnings often times meant that you would not be able to return until you found the airship, and I am pleased to find out that this is not the case. At this point though I am running out of things I can actually do in the starter world, and all of the hunts are of a significant level difference from my current level so I think the game is not so subtly telling me to move the hell on.

Another thing that took up some time this weekend is that I tore down a chunk of my office and set up my new Xbox One. For awhile now I have been interested in owning an Xbox One to be able to play the titles that don’t exist on the PS4. Similarly there is an entire group of friends that I have that are on the Xbox path, and I have not been able to play with them. Unfortunately there were really no titles that supported Xbox 360 crossplay with Xbox One, so as each of them has upgraded… my options similarly narrowed. While I have had this latent desire… I also just could not justify the street price for the console given that I am primarily a PC gamer first… and a Console gamer second. However on Black Friday I actually partook of a deal on Dell.com for an Xbox One, Extra Controller, Headset, and Five Games: Halo 5 Limited Edition, Farcry 4, Ryze Legendary Edition, Sunset Overdrive, and Metal Gear Solid V Ground Zeroes all for right at $200. For this I was willing to jump on it and the box arrived at my house Saturday during the day… and I wound up setting it up after editing the podcast on Sunday morning. There was another deal on Cyber Monday to pick up a copy of the Destiny Collection for the Xbox One for I believe $25 and I jumped on that too, so while I was installing other things… I ported over my Xbox 360 copy of Destiny. Firstly since I am largely a digital only gamer on PS4… I did not realize the whole download after installation was as much of a tedious chore as it actually was. Halo 5 took a good three hours worth of download time, which I found insane and shocking. Is this what disc copy gamers on the PS4 have to deal with as well? or is this largely just an Xbox One thing? In any case… I was kinda happy to see that my PS4 clan tag ported over to the Xbox One, and while I will still primarily be playing Destiny on PS4, I want to level something to hang with my friends playing on the Xbone.

I’ve decided to start linking the podcast on Monday mornings in what generally ends up being a weekend rundown post. Not that I think there is anyone who doesn’t have access to it… but just in case the youtube version embeds nicely. The other big take away from the weekend was all of the food that we cooked. We wound up having a weekend full of comfort food, cooked in the crock pot. So Friday night before going to bed I threw our breakfast casserole on to cook so that when we woke up Saturday morning it was ready. This dish consists of egg, cheese, potato, ham and sausage and it amazing. We wound up eating on it for breakfast and lunch on Sunday as well… and still have a bunch left over. My wife had the bright idea to turn it into a breakfast burrito with a little salsa. We also cooked our Chicken and Cheese Tortilla soup, which we only got two meals out of… well and an extra helping or two. Finally on Sunday we tried out this Orange Chicken thing… that is close but not quite there. It was good enough but it needs something to make it work properly… and I think I screwed it up by putting the rice directly in the sauce and letting it cook. I should have simply made a couple cups of rice and then ladled the sauce over it instead. In any case… my wife and I are both largely on the mend but we pretty much spent the entire weekend hibernating. We started taking some OTC meds when it initially hit and I think it helped out quite a bit.