Tales of the Aggronaut

Kombating Mortals and More

May 21, 2026 by Belghast

Mortal Kombat II

Good Morning, Folks. With my brain as muddled as it currently is, I have spent quite a bit more time watching media than I normally do. This morning, I thought I would talk a bit about some of the things that I have watched recently. In 2021, we got an update to the Mortal Kombat franchise that took into account a lot of the changes that have been made since the first movie came out in the 90s. It was a bit of a reboot of the entire movie franchise, and this year, we got the official sequel that builds directly upon that 2021 movie. I’m always a bit hesitant when I sit down to watch a video game adaptation, but this movie was a heck of a lot of fun. Was it high-brow theater? Hell no. Did it drop constant references to the franchise as a whole and make it fun? Heck yes.

The real winner of the movie, though, was Karl Urban as Johnny Cage. Cage is that character that you love to hate… but also secretly love, and he has been that way since the first game. Urban nails the role of Cage so perfectly, and I say this as someone who has never watched The Boys, so I have no frame of reference to his Butcher character. Truth be told, I have pretty much liked Urban in every role he has played. I even liked him as Bones in the Star Trek reboot series. Back to Mortal Kombat II however, if you have ever been a fan of the game series, I highly suggest this movie. Especially if you have played any of the more recent outings where they tweaked the core storyline a bit. The only thing that was missing that I would have liked to have seen was Reptile. We did get a great version of Baraka, which has been one of my favorite characters since the second game in the 90s.

Daredevil Born Again Season 2

I also finished Daredevil Born Again season two, and it was a bit of a mixed bag. So much of that season is so oppressive and keeps Daredevil from getting to be Daredevil. That said it is all building to something pretty great, and when that happens in the last few episodes, it becomes a pretty phenomenal series. The longer I have sat with the conclusion to this series, the more I have appreciated it. I was not fully on board as I was watching this show, and I complained a bit on social media about it. However, they nailed the landing big time. It is going to be a bit of a chore to get through those first episodes, or at least it was for me. Right now we live in a real world where everything is going wrong…. so to watch a show where things keep going from bad to worse is a bit of a large ask at the moment. The payoff really does make it worth the effort.

The Punisher: One Last Kill

Unfortunately, we are ending on a bit of a downer. I have loved The Punisher since I bought my first episode of Spiderman that featured him, which I found in a thrift store in the 80s. I was there for the limited run comic, the standard series, and even War Zone. Probably my favorite version of the character comes from the youtube short Dirty Laundry, featuring Thomas Jane. That said, my second favorite is the Jon Berenthal version, but unfortunately, One Last Kill is a fucking mess. This is one of the more confusing projects that I have seen… it is being released like it is a movie, but it is only around 45 minutes in total runtime. It feels like the first episode of a television series, but there is no more of it coming as far as I am aware. Maybe this was a teaser for the next Punisher series, setting up the key conflict… but what we get is mostly a bunch of gunplay pornography without a satisfying climax. I do not recommend it, because you will only come away unsatisfied, I fear.

Other than that, I have been catching up on Frieren Season Two and watching a lot of Regular Show. I had never watched the series from start to finish, and I find Regular Show just about the perfect comfort television to have on in the background. It was always something that I enjoyed, but I only really caught episodes out of order while watching Cartoon Network, as they replayed past episodes. At some point, I will probably go through my backlog of movies, and for those who are interested, I have been reviewing what I watch over on Letterboxd. That essentially has been what I have been up to in my media viewing habits. If you have any strong opinions that conflict with mine, feel free to post them below. I read every comment, I just don’t always respond to them.

Slug Shakes with Friends

May 20, 2026 by Belghast

Good Morning, Folks! Last night was our regularly scheduled Sibling Time ™, and I spent it with my sibling Ace. One thing that you have to know about Ace is that they love ANYTHING to do with the ocean, which means that I have more or less lost them completely since the release of Subnautica 2. Last night we decided to dive into the realm of multiplayer, and I have to say… much like it is with EVERY survival game… Subnautica 2 is better with friends. That is not to say there are no problems. Subnautica 2 has way more of a specific story than the first game, but less so than the expansion. The unfolding of the story happens in a very non-sequitur manner if you are not the person clicking on all of the objects. You will be exploring the world and have a sudden voice clip play from out of nowhere.

The game more or less follows a similar flow to the first one. You are on an Ocean planet, working for an evil corporation, and the first steps in this new world are to unjam your pod and send it to the surface. From there, you are gathering resources to build a more permanent structure and upgrade your kit of equipment to do various things. Where this game differs from the first one is that it adds to the mix genetic mutations that allow you to interact with various things that you cannot from the start. For example, before you launch your pod, you have to take an adaptation that allows you to process oxygen under the high atmospheric pressure of this planet. One of the first mutations that you seek out when oceanside is something that will allow you to process water and nutrients from the planetary wildlife. This is where the slug shake comes in, because effectively, you end up picking up these adorable sea slugs and drinking the filtered water inside of them.

Last night was a heck of a lot of fun, and we plan on playing on this same save file next week during Sibling Time. Probably the highlight of the night was disturbing this giant crab monstrosity that seems to churn up resources as it moves around. The other highlight is just how fast resource gathering goes when you have multiple people working towards the same objectives. We ended the night with a pretty sweet base, after our first one did not really meet our long-term needs. We had a lot of issues with that first base and object collisions, but in the second base, we largely built it once we opened up the ability to create rooms, so we have so much more space for “activities”. Right now, we are sort of working towards our ability to get a vehicle, and with that, I know that Ace is going to push me to start exploring the deep dark ocean that terrifies me so.

Since I have largely stopped playing Diablo IV, that means I am back in Path of Exile for the moment while waiting on the launch of Path of Exile II’s new league on the 29th. One of the characters that I really enjoyed this league is my yolo build around taking a guardian and then using a few new uniques to create a giant army of minions. Mostly, I guess I am seeing how far I can push this build before I lose focus again and start playing Path of Exile II. It is shocking just how well this build works and how tanky it actually is. It is nothing like my Righteous Fire characters, but it still has a fair amount of block and over 5000 life. I have been doing Delve with this character, which seems wild because you need a very tanky character for that. I’m not sure if I have ever had a Minions character that felt this comfy. Do I think anyone should follow this build? Probably not. It was super easy to level, and I mostly just typed Minion into the search box and went for those nodes.

I think for Path of Exile II, I am once again going to go with an Infernalist for minions. There does not seem to be any really popular overpowered build guides for this class, but my plan right now is that I am going to do what I did with the above build and just type “minion” in the search box and go where the nodes are. If nothing else, that should get me through the campaign pretty easily, and then I just have to work on defenses. My hope is that going Infernalist is going to allow me to pivot pretty easily into Raven Righteous Fire whenever I can get my hands on that staff. This first character will also serve as something to acquire some easy currency and buy some of the other new build enabling uniques. I want to try and shield throw/slam build with the new Tul unique. I am contemplating trying to do that build as a strength stacker with the new water sprinkler unique. Honestly, I am looking forward to playing some POE2 way more than I expected.

This was a bit of a mixed bag of topics, but as is the case often with my muddled chemo brain.

Winding Down Diablo

May 18, 2026 by Belghast

Good Morning, Folks. For the last few weeks, my default gaming activity has been playing Diablo 4. More specifically, playing a Thorns Paladin at first and then switching it over to a Hammer/Arbiter Paladin to push a little further. I felt I hit a wall with Thorns around Torment IV, and that was what prompted me to the build that Raxx had been promoting to see if I could make it further. I could a bit, and now can pretty comfortably do Torment VIII Content, but tend to run Torment VII because it goes much faster. The big problem is that this build was supposed to be something that I could cakewalk Torment XII with, and so far, it has not been that. My time to kill, especially in the pit, is abysmal. I’ve technically unlocked Torment IX, but just barely by the skin of my teeth. I think I am just getting tired of pushing the build, and in theory, need to scrutinize and probably recraft every single piece of my gear to get further, since I cannot seem to get any Mythic Uniques to actually drop.

What I had been grinding so damned hard for was an Ancestral copy of Judgment of Auriel. I finally got that to drop off Lord Zir, and the difference that it made in the build was negligible. Maybe Torment VIII got a bit more comfortable, but nothing really to write home about. I thought maybe there was some hidden multiplier that I was not getting for not having a full set of Ancestral gear equipped, but that does not appear to be the case. The problem is that Ancestral drops still feel extremely rare events, especially from uniques at Torment VIII. It took me probably 60 kills before Lord Zir finally dropped the item I was after, and it took me farming the mercenary favors to get those boss summoning keys. It feels like I have a much harder time getting the keys for the low-level bosses than I do the grand keys for the bigger bosses. Something is not right here, and I hope they sort it out in the coming seasons.

I’ve also had zero luck with Echo of Lilith. I can get her down to around 20% life and then something oneshots me, so I guess I need to spend some time studying videos on this fight. I honestly hate shit like that, when bosses have oneshot mechanics. ARPGs for me are about gaining enough stats to steamroll over the top of content. This is why I hate Maven so much in Path of Exile, because there is no way I can cheese that fight. Bossing in general is not my jam, because I do not want to barely win. I want to crush the monsters and take away tasty loot as a result. At least in Path of Exile, I have done almost all of the fights; I just dislike them. I know Ace, and I have taken down Lilith as a team before, so I just need to figure out where I need to stand during that oneshot phase because it wasn’t really clearly telegraphed. It is also weird that I have to specifically do it on Torment VIII since many of the previous ranks required things way lower than that, and it feels like this one jumped several torment levels at once.

I had mostly been focused on grinding out tokens for the armor sets, because I have completed all of the other reliquaries, but not this one. I’ve gotten the shield and three of the armor sets, but I just do not know if I have it in me to keep grinding. These tokens come pretty slowly through doing content, and I am just not sure I have it in me to grind it out. The last one I picked up was for Spiritborn, which I did mostly because I lack a lot of armor sets that I really like for that class. I have plenty of armor sets for Barbarian, so that will probably be my last if I manage to grind these out. I did manage to grind out the limited-time World of Warcraft reliquary, but now there is nothing left to do with the tokens that I am generating through gameplay. I spent a bit of time playing Path of Exile, and doing maps… and I have to be honest, the moment-to-moment gameplay in that game just feels better. In truth, Diablo IV is at the bottom of the ARPG pecking list for me. If there is a Path of Exile, Last Epoch, or Path of Exile II league in that pecking order… I will choose those before playing Diablo IV. I might even choose fresh Titan Quest II content over Diablo IV, and that is not to say that D4 is a bad game… just that the others are giving me more of what I want.

There is also the problem that we are now roughly eleven days out from a new Path of Exile II league. Return of the Ancients looks wild, and I am here for everything that it is doing. I just have to figure out a class that will be both fun to level and powerful in the endgame. Since I am very much interested in Raven Righteous Fire, I am contemplating going Lich or Infernalist and a traditional Summon Raging Spirits start. I like spamming temporary minions because it feels like I am doing something other than just dragging around an army. I also know the leveling for this sort of build is pretty chill, and I like chill leveling. I am really curious how fast I can get through the campaign with the most recent round of updates to make signposting of content a bit easier to find. More than anything, though, I am somewhat excited to see the updated versions of various leagues and am wondering how much of that will trickle down into Path of Exile, the game I care about the most.

Anyways. I think I am out of things to talk about for this Monday morning. I hope you all have a wonderful week, and as always, feel free to drop me a line if you want to contest anything that I have said.

AggroChat #568 – Anti-Fun Features

May 17, 2026 by Belghast

Featuring: Ace, Ammosart, Ashgar, Belghast, Kodra, and Thalen

Good Morning, Folks! Last night we recorded what I think might be one of our better shows ever, because there were a lot of interesting discussions. We start off talking about Eurovision and how it felt like it almost ended in a riot. It’s a bit dated, but we talk about some of the details that came out of the Dan Frazier plagiarism situation in Magic: The Gathering. Ace talks a bit about Subnautica 2 and how some of the features caused them to bounce early. Path of Exile II 0.5.0 reveal happened, and there are tons of things to talk about as they completely redo the endgame. We talk a bit about the game Everything is Crab, and then follow up with an unrelated topic about how Everything is Roguelike now. Bel goes down this rabbit hole that starts with Item Repair but follows up with pretty much all of the Anti-Fun Features that are in games and why they need to go. We talk a little bit about some of the Steam Controller reviews that are showing up, and Kodra discusses his further descent into Pokémon ZA.