March 2016 - Tales of the Aggronaut

Life in Tornado Alley

March 31, 2016 by Belghast

Closer Call

Last night was an interesting night to say the least. In the morning folks were talking about the potential for serious storms, but in Oklahoma we tend to take that with a grain of salt. From the months of March through June pretty much every week there is some severe thunderstorm either hitting or looming on the horizon. Living in “Tornado Alley” gives you a strange relationship with the weather. It is something you fear at least a little, but also something that you get used to. There are close calls and then there are close calls so when you hear a storm is a few miles away, you get to the point of being able to look at a map… knowing the general topography and deciding that will never make it to me and going on about your business. Last night was not really one of those nights, because the storm in question was a bit of a sidewinder. At first it looked like it would miss the suburb of Tulsa that I live in, so I was milling around upstairs not thinking much about it. Then I got an urgent series of messages from my wife saying that they were watching it out of the window of the church and that it was coming straight for town. I of course did the most Oklahoman of all things that I could do… I went out on the front porch and tried to see the storm. In the above picture I circled the area of the cloud that was starting to lower, and moments after taking this photo I watched it slowly rope its way downwards towards the ground. It was at this point that I started to take things deadly serious. The below video that I found linked to a local news site shows the same area as I pointed out in the picture, but as it was actually lowering.

TORNADO NORTH OF AIRPORT pic.twitter.com/tHZJT39een

— Brandyn (@BAK_yn) March 31, 2016

The problem is… if a Tornado hits our house we are probably dead. The conventional wisdom is that you need to get to an interior room, as close to the center of your house, with no windows and doors. The way our house is laid out this room doesn’t really exist. We do however have a very tiny laundry room crammed between the garage and the hallway outside of the bedroom. From the garage side there is a steel core door, and from the other side a wooden one. So I proceeded to hang out on the floor of our laundry room crammed between the washer and the dryer with a thick blanket to pull over my head if things went really bad. I tried to gather the cats, and as any cat owner will know… the best way to get your cats into an area is the shut the door. So I shut myself in the laundry room and within a few moments the cats were scratching at the door so I let them in and shut it again. I had the bedroom television blaring so I could somewhat tell where the storm was, and this is when it shifted course drastically again. This time instead of coming straight for us like it seemed, when it hit the reservoir it shifted go to more straight east than north east and ended up passing just to the south east of us. Since I mentioned it last night, we are fine just was a much closer call than I was used to. Had the Tornado continued on its course it would have hit us, but instead it went off and hit a neighborhood about a mile and a half from us. I spent the rest of the evening watching the weather as the storm picked up strength and hit other communities. Unfortunately this is going to be the norm for the next several months as we make our way through another “Tornado Season”. Huge apologies for missing the raid last night, but when shit like that is going on… I kinda need to prep to duck and cover.

Obsessions

I originally had a post for this morning talking about “chasing unicorns”, but I feel like I want it to have its own full post, and with the happenings of last night I felt the need to talk about that instead. So instead I am going to talk about another one of my Craigslist dealings. I am cheap… and if you have read this blog for very long you will know that I really hate having to pay retail price for something. I’ve gotten countless laptops, desktops, and gaming systems from Craigslist, but using the local site is an absolute craps shoot. Some days there are amazing things out there, and then there are weeks or months of absolutely nothing. When I get something stuck in my head that I would like to have… I tend to start searching Craigslist for it. Recently one of those obsessions has been a Wii U and I had it in my head that I wanted to try and get one for under 200 bucks. The bane of my existence however is that apparently on the Tulsa site no one EVER removes anything once they have sold it. So you always have to start every discussion with the same message “Hey do you still have X thing you posted on Craigslist?”. Last week I thought I had found my Wii U. It was not in the Tulsa metro but was within easy driving distance… was $180, came with a pro controller, and I believe a single game. The problem is by the time I contacted the guy he already had someone coming to look it at 4pm that day. After not returning a text asking if they did in fact buy it… and the person still not having removed the ad from Craigslist… I was back at the drawing board.

The only problem is at this point the obsession set in completely. I don’t have a clue why I decided I needed a Wii U, but apparently it was one of the more important things in my life for a period of days. There was a point where I had text conversations going with four different sellers, trying to talk them down to the price range I was willing to pay. All of them had positives and negatives… and none of them were willing to go all the way down to $200 for this reason or that. The biggest problem in Tulsa is that everyone thinks their stuff is worth more than it actually is. Then my wife suggested that I contact this one newer seller that had a bundle of stuff they were trying to sell for $300. I had completely ignored it because it seemed so far out of my target price. Amazingly enough after a few back and forths I got them to a $250 price tag for a very new looking system and four games: Mario Kart, Hyrule Warriors, Splatoon, and Bayonetta 2. All of the games being ones that I would have eventually picked up for myself… except Bayonetta. I figured if nothing else that game could potentially be traded off for something else, or it might surprise me. Once I got the unit it actually ended up being a better deal because also installed on the system was Super Mario U/Luigi U and Megaman Battle Network 4: Blue Moon. So a total of six games and a unit with no scratches that I could see for $250. While the price was not as low as I was hoping I think the end value of the deal was worth it. At some point I am going to pick up the title that ultimately made me want a Wii U in the first place… Mario Maker, but I want to spend some time playing the games I just got before going down that road. Now I need to keep my eyes peeled as we are junking for some of the Wii titles I never actually played.

Iron Banana

March 30, 2016 by Belghast

Iron Banner

The strange thing about this week is that we just finished one Kings Fall raid on Monday night, only to start a brand new one fresh last night. It gave a certain Deja Vu feeling to the whole doing Oryx fight, especially given that it was so damned hard fought on Monday night. However I will talk about that a little later. First I want to talk about what seems to be me going completely off my rocker. If we had talked months ago I would have told you I was a Diehard Carebear, and that if pressed I could probably shoot rainbows out of my belly in a pretty mean Carebear Stare. Over the last few months however something has happened and I have come to realize that I actually do enjoy doing PVP in limited situations. Those limited situations appear to largely be “Destiny” and “The Crucible”. I am not exactly sure what makes this game different… it could be that there are relevant items that I can be earning that help me in PVE content, or it could be that it simply feels like there is no negative to doing it. Whatever the case doing the Crucible is one of those activities that I mix in when I want to do something… but don’t want to do bounties or be bothered with grouping up for a strike. The other interesting thing is… that I don’t really mind that I am ultimately bad at the content.

Now I have heard stories of much toxicity from the Xbox Live community, and folks leaving crucible matches only to have nastygrams waiting for them from other players complaining about their performance and questioning their parentage. So far the PSN community has been pretty chill about such things, and nobody actually uses the voice chat for public groups either. The end result is that I can just zone out and play some Crucible without fear of retribution, and this zero pressure setting has made me actually enjoy it quite a bit. So much so that while I know this is far from the first Iron Banner… it is the first one that I actually care about and will be trying to rank up to level five during. Largely I am looking at it as a way of maybe getting some infusion fodder, and maybe just maybe a decent legendary hand cannon or machine gun out of the process. As of last night I am closing in on Rank 2, and have managed to complete several of the pieces of the bounties that I never expected to…. like getting highest score among all the players in a match. I’ve been warned that I should hold onto my brown weekly bounties until later in the week to turn in, because I guess they become worth more points as the weekend goes on. I am however trying to complete the three dailies each night, and in theory when I get home from work tonight I should be able to knock those out and put in a bit more work towards the weeklies.

Melting Ogres

Like I mentioned at the top of the post, it was a little strange stepping back foot inside Kings Fall given that we just finished Oryx the previous night. Before the start of a new raid I end up with quite a bit of anxiety that is not fully alleviated until we get past both the ships and the piston wall jumping puzzles. I am just bad at both of them, and end up falling so damned often that I feel like a moron. I had a significant better run last Tuesday, and was back to my fumbling prime last night. That said in both cases I was not the last person through either puzzle, so I guess I don’t feel too awfully bad about my performance. For months I have listened to folks in the Destiny community complain about the RNG in the Kings Fall raid and how it never seems to actually give them any upgrades. I feel like I have crested the new and shiny portion of the raid and am entering the valley of slow and prodding forward movement. Which is to be expected given that at least armor wise I have every available drop… but still have a bunch of weapons I have yet to see. The odd thing there is that I have gotten two of the pulse rifles, and two of the auto rifles… but the rest of the primary weapon types I have not seen yet. Given that last night was only my fourth trip to the raid… I feel like I have plenty of time.

War Numen’s Chest – 304

War Numen’s Fist – 303

Anguish of Drystan – 306

Suros Regime – 290

Thunderlord – 310

Of the drops that I did manage to get… the only piece of armor that I might use is the chest piece and even then only because it has intellect on it. The fist and auto rifle will absolutely be used as infusion fodder to push something else up. The Suros Regime will replace the 280 one that I picked up off Xur some time ago, and the 310 Thunderlord will replace my previous 290 dropped version. One of the things that I am coming to realize quickly is that apparently my first two times into the raid were flukes. Granted all of the encounters still for the most part melt before us… but those first two Oryx kills seemed effortless. They just worked flawlessly without much issue and while they still took a couple of attempts… they only took a couple of attempts. Monday and last night both seemed like a battle of wills as we kept plugging away at the fight, only to be waylay’d by this quirky bit or that. I am not sure if I would truly elevate the problems we were having to the glitch tier, but definitely things felt like a battle and not like a loot pinata. We managed to get Oryx on what we had deemed was the “last try” because several of us needed to go to bed, and even then we failed at doing the challenge mode variant… finally deciding to go ahead and finish up “as is” just to get the kill in. Supposedly I can walk in and do challenge mode at some point during the week and still get the bonus chest. In any case… content lag or not… I am loving this game more than pretty much anything else right now and looking forward to the big April patch.

Glitchy Oryx

March 29, 2016 by Belghast

Rookie Revenge

Last night was one of those nights that went in a completely different direction than I was expecting. If you remember last Tuesday we had a combination of one of the smoothest runs for me personally in Kings Fall with the jumping bullshit. That then quickly became one of the glitchiest runs once we hit Oryx, and though we put up the valiant fight we simply ran out of time for attempts. We had agreed to meet up last night, given that it was the night before reset… and give taking down Oryx another go. We had a checkpoint already saved sitting at that encounter, so in theory it should not have taken terribly long. That was at least my line of thought going into the night. However we ran into a myriad of issues, but in part that is why this “Rookie Raid” exists is to get folks through the fights and teach them the things they need to succeed. I absolutely resemble that remark given that this week was just my third time into the Kings Fall raid at all. There is still so much about the raid and the various encounters that I simply don’t know… but I am trying to assimilate information as fast as I can.

One of the things that threw off the rhythm of the raid early on was that Wet had to rush to the hospital with his mom. Jex filled in admirably, and instead of snuggling with Wet in the middle I got to snuggle with his Titan while doing bubble duty. For leadership we had an alternating mix of Jex and Squirrel depending on the situation, and they both did a great job stepping up to the plate and helping folks through the Oryx fight. That said there is something almost talismanic about Wets presence, and when that is gone it is noticeable. It is almost like we need his snarky commentary as a good luck charm to get us through the encounters. We tried our best to fill in with talk of “MacGuffins” and “Tummy Wumzles” but it just didn’t quite feel the same. So Wet if you are out there reading this you were definitely missed.

The Haul

On the positive side though it took us an hour and a half worth of constant attempts we managed to get down Oryx. This was made even sweeter when we all realized that this was Warman’s first Oryx kill after apparently having gone to various Kings Fall raids for the last year on an almost weekly basis. That right there is why the Rookie Raid exists, to get folks access to this sort of content and I am super thankful to be part of it. I had wanted to raid myself for ages but never really had the opportunity, and then Squirrel, Wet, Jex and the rest of the Axioma Clan stepped in and bam… I am now doing awesome stuff in Destiny. I am also falling off things quite a bit because I can’t jump for shit. My biggest need right now is simply raw light levels, which I am working on a little bit at a time through exotic farming. Unfortunately I seem to mostly get the same slots… that don’t really need leveling up, however I figure during this weekends Iron Banner I should get a few more exotics.

War Numen’s Crown – 304

War Numen’s Chest – 305

Smite of Merain – 304

As has been my habit of late, now the haul for the night. I was sitting at 25 moldering shards so apparently the “bonus loot” business is in full effect now. The portion that I did not realize however is that it seems like the moldering shards are consumed upon getting said bonus loot? I ended up getting three drops from Oryx plus additional shards, but it takes my total shards to 7 so it means that I guess I got two off the boss. Anyways the awesome thing about last night is that I have a full “set” of armor from the raid and can now look like a Hive Knight. I also picked up a second Smite of Merain which will just serve as either a spare copy for an alt… or infusion fodder to try and get my Mida Multitool up in level. What I am looking forward to this weekend however is the return of Iron Banner which supposedly also has a decent chance of dropping me some upgrades. It seems like the clan as a whole is planning on running stuff with it, and hopefully even though I suck at PVP in general I can get in on some action. It would really be awesome to be able to hit rank 5 so I can start getting the good drops.

Scattered Gaming

March 28, 2016 by Belghast

This weekend was an odd one. After a string of relatively nice weekends, we ended up getting one that was either cold and windy… or cold and rainy, both of which drove my instinct to stay inside and hibernate. The only problem is… with all this play time I largely squandered it and spent more time staring without purpose at games… than actually playing them. It feels like I am starting to go through another one of my “funks” because nothing seemed to fit “just right” as far as games go. I flitted between lots of different titles, playing them for a bit before shifting to something else… often times ending right back up in the game I started in. For a good chunk of the weekend I had the desire to play Destiny… but wanted to instead be hanging out downstairs which only left me the unofficial remote play app as a solution. Then there were games that I felt like I needed to make progress in like Division where I am still not at the level cap. Friday was largely devoted to Undertale, and I think after forcing myself to play that game… it maybe soured the rest of my weekend. So this morning I thought I would run down some of the progress I made in various games.

Undertale

I wrote about this at length but after hanging up my controller as it were… I opted to instead watch several of the different endings. I still feel fine in my decision to just abandon this game in an undefeated state. I guess I don’t have a primal urge to finish games, and more often than not I get to the ending and just don’t finish. I reach this point where I have gotten out of the game what I wanted, and I don’t see the point in expending that effort to push it across the finish line. In the case of Undertale the thing that was driving me forward was to understand the story, and now between the podcast and the various youtube ending videos… I feel like I do. Once that carrot was gone, the game play itself doesn’t make me want to ever touch this game again. On the podcast folks talked about ways to lower the impact of the mechanics, like the Temmie armor… but that isn’t even really an interesting option to me.

Destiny

I really did not do much in Destiny other than a little bit of Crucible. I am constantly amazed at how much I actually enjoy player versus player content in this game, when traditionally that is just not my thing. I think a lot of it is that in this game it feels like there is zero negative impact on the rest of the game. It is just another option I have to play, and gives me the same sort of PVE rewards that I expect to receive elsewhere. Other than specialty modes like Trials of Osiris it feels like I am rewarded equally for just doing whatever I happen to want to do at the time. I started down the path of the crucible simply as a way to get more Legendary marks, and then recently when I was grinding out sword kills I came to realize… I was actually legitimately enjoying myself. What is great about the crucible is that I get the central game play loop that I enjoy of shooting awesome weapons and charging around… without zero downtime. It seems like it is easier to get Three of Coins to proc on Crucible than it is while doing strikes… or it might simply be that Crucible itself is just about the perfect amount of time per coin use. While I have not actually gotten any of the really cool PVP drops… I do get a fair amount of strange coins, motes and random pieces of armor that end up getting deconstructed. Tonight I will hopefully be finishing up the rest of the Kings Fall raid that we had to abandon on Oryx last Tuesday, and beforehand it is my goal to hang out upstairs and run some more Crucible.

The Division

This weekend I managed to push Division a little harder than the rest of the games and caught up with my friend Tamrielo at least. At the start of the weekend I was sitting at roughly level 20, and as of this morning I am just about a third into 22. While I absolutely could play this and only give it partial attention at lower levels, as I have gotten into the twenties this is not really the case. As a result this weekend I managed to die probably more than I actually managed to accomplish anything. There are two missions that I know I attempted at least a half dozen times before finally giving it my full attention and pushing through. My standard operating procedure while hanging out with my wife downstairs is that I essentially have one eye on the game and one eye on whatever we happen to be watching… not literally but you know what I mean. The problem with this is that in doing so I am not exactly paying attention to the best possible tactical spot that I could be in while shooting incoming mobs. The addition of snipers really changed how the game works, and now that I have guys that rush me with shotguns as well.. I am having to be way more careful about how I take on content. That said I feel like I made some decent progress, but most of it was in short bursts of me playing for thirty minutes to an hour… and then logging out and doing something else. Thankfully much like Destiny… short batches of play time feel just as rewarding to me as multiple hour long sessions.

World of Warcraft

The other major happening of the weekend was me poking around on my Forsaken Hunter in World of Warcraft. Recently Blizzard added an achievement that you could unlock by leveling a character in WoW to 20, aka the free mode level cap. For doing this you end up getting Lady Liadrin as an alternate Paladin hero in Hearthstone. Not that I really play Hearthstone… and even more so… not that I really like playing Paladins in Hearthstone… I have this drive to get the achievement and unlock the extra shiny bits. The negative of this achievement is that it only counts if you have recently leveled to twenty after the launch of the achievement, that means my army of level 100s are doing me zero good for this goal. As a result I opted to level something on The Scryers Horde side since that is where the bulk of my lower leveled characters are these days. I largely played during the podcast on Saturday night, and as a result managed to get to I believe 18 before giving it up for the night. The goal is to spend some time this week pushing it over the line, so that I at least can feel like I got this out of the way. I honestly think this whole promotion is a brilliant idea to try and cross pollinate some of the players actively playing Hearthstone and get them to try World of Warcraft. I know Hearthstone is a major nostalgia bomb for me… but I wonder if it is the same for a player who has ONLY played Hearthstone, now being able to see where those cards they love are actually from.