Month: March 2022

Stomping Dredge and Golems

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Good Morning Friends! One of the things about me that I find odd is for as much as I claim to enjoy spontaneous events in games… I find myself falling into a large number of routines. For example I have begun this lunch time routine of working on whatever the World vs World dailies are for the previous reset. The server reset happens at 7 pm my time, and often times I chew through the PVE requirements and use those as a guide to determine what I am doing in a given evening. However that leaves some valuable dailies still on the table and I have realized that I can usually do at least two of them solo. Each daily done is direct rewards track progress via the potion you get, so this gives me a fairly casual way of getting my Gift of Battle progress. Admittedly I could do the thing that folks talk about and just grind out eight hours worth of solid progress on a weekend… but I would far rather spend thirty minutes to an hour each day and get incremental progress. I am however close enough that I might finish it up this week.

I am still progressing my way through the Path of Fire story. I now have my skimmer and I am guessing next comes the Jackal. I’ve arrived at the Domain of Vabbi through questing and honestly I like that area quite a bit. The Desolation is a zone I need to revisit but it seemed to be a bit painful to navigate. Vabbi on the other hand seems completely reasonable and I have had a lot of fun doing content in it. It does not hurt that last nights PVE event completion daily took place in the same zone I have spent quite a bit of time lately chipping away at.

Prior to the reset I even seem to have lucked into part of the meta, or at least a series of events that reward a Hero’s Choice chest. I honestly damned near solo’d this event because for the first phases I had an Engineer with me, but when the two legendary hounds started attacking they kept dying in a place that I found it extremely hard to resurrect them. I solo burned them down through the first several phases of the encounter, because every 25% health they swap places and one hound becomes invulnerable and the other becomes the main target. Once they get below 25% health in total however they both start attacking and I had whittled them both down to around 15% when a group of players showed up to help me finish out the event. Most of that time though I was solo kiting while waiting on my Flesh Golem to cooldown.

Once reset happened though, this sleepy hamlet of a zone become hopping. I think that is one of the cooler things about the Daily quests is how they focus the player base on a specific segment of the game. If you are able to be on at the time the daily reset happens, you can guarantee a massive amount of players trying to complete the same content at the same time. One thing that I have noticed that is pretty great is that for the jumping puzzles, there is almost always someone in the looking for group tool with an open party that you can use “teleport to friend” on and get completion. After having it suggested to me many times I am starting to pay a bit more attention to the tool and have joined a few groups through it.

The timing landed just right and I happened into a run of Dragon’s Stand later in the evening. I poked my other guild members and Ash and Tam happened to get slots in the southern group with me. This went exceptionally smoothly and I arrived in zone just before the last attempt failed, so we had a critical mass of players ready to go immediately. I think for the next run I am going to need to go mid so I can finish my mastery points for completing the event on a specific lane. I also probably need to focus on the bosses a bit because I noticed there were achievements for those as well. I don’t really have any speed boost abilities so I am better suited for the boss burn party rather than the folks running around in a ring killing the dudes who regenerate the towers.

I closed out my evening with a daily dungeon run, and I am super happy the timing landed in a way as to be able to do it. Granted I got to bed a little later than normal, but it was worth it. We only did the story mode version, but picked up a random player who was outside the instance asking for a group. The person seemed nice enough so I friended them for later shenanigans. I need to work on building out my friends list in Guild Wars 2, because this absolutely seems like a game where having a deep list could be beneficial. This game lives in this weird place where most grouping is inconsequential to your enjoyment… but then there are other modes of play with STRICT grouping and no auto matching tool to act as a bridge. I want to be able to explore more of the game and I know in order to do so I am going to have to reach out a bit. I have access to a large multi-game guild and I have contemplated joining up on one of my guild slots. I need to see what their rules are regarding representation because really I still plan on spending most of my time in Greysky chat.

All told though another great night in Guild Was 2 doing a staggering variety of different things. I think more than anything that is the thing that I am enjoying. So often I get into situations in MMORPGs where every night feels pretty much the same, because I end up doing the same things. Between slowly chewing through the story, allowing myself to get caught up in events, and occasionally doing more structured group activities… it all seems fresh. Granted in several years of doing all of this I am sure it would start to feel stale. Prior to this resurgence I had put in around 200 hours in the game, but it was spread out over the course of the decade it has been in operation. Belgraven my Necromancer is a character that I created when I returned… and it already has 240 hours worth of playtime associated with it according to GW2 Efficiency.

Super Adventure Box

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So for years I have heard about Super Adventure Box from the Guild Wars 2 playing folks, and I have to admit I was looking forward to it quite a bit. Yesterday the patch landed and for the next twenty days we are able to get into this Mario 64 feeling world and farm Baubles which can be used to buy things that last beyond the festival. The weird part about this however is as much as I thought I would enjoy it… I am not really feeling it. Like sure it is cute but also I am too used to the way things feel when doing events out in the world and as a result this game mode doesn’t feel terribly rewarding. Now I am trying to decide how much effort I want to put into it, and what I actually want to get from it if anything.

Looking for information about the entire experience, I came across this “Super Casual Bubble Farm” video from Tekkit. In theory I could probably go this route if I wanted to just accumulate large amounts of bubbles efficiently. However that sort of goes counter intuitive to the types of things I am enjoying doing in this game. Instead I spent some time running world bosses, metas, and moving the Path of Fire story forward a bit. I need to get my way through the Super Adventure Box just to have completed it once. I will probably do it on “infantile mode” first but then follow up with a normal run. There is no way in hell I have any real interest in doing the torment run or whatever they call it.

I remember doing some sort of Super Adventure Box themed jumping puzzle once, but past that I never really interacted with this event. As a result I am also having to buy my way into being useful, so it is going to take awhile just to buy all the necessary bits. I have the baubles farmed up to buy my bomb now, and I guess the next step will be to farm up the baubles to upgrade my wallet. The limited nature of this event though really makes it so that I feel like I need to make a conscious decision of whether or not I want to participate and set forth to farming now for the things I actually care about. I did pick up one of the weapons associated with the event yesterday in a random box, and I chose to get the Hammer since of the three available it is the one I am most likely to use. I might throw it on my Guardian actually since I can see an Asura using that weapon.

The other problem that I am having a bit with the items from SAB is that none of it really fits the theme of the game. This came up in a conversation last night regarding a cross over between Rainbow Six Siege and Rick and Morty, and how this property really does not fit the nature of that game. The items and appearances from Super Adventure Box, really don’t feel like they should exist in the Guild Wars 2 universe and even if I earn some of them… I am not entirely certain I would use any of them. I get that the Guild Wars 2 players seem to really like flashy/glowy/blingy stuff… but if you can’t tell by the fact that I am dressed mostly in black that it isn’t really my jam. So SAB thus far has been this interesting and cute nostalgic experience, but I think the main thing that I want to earn is the thing for my home instance. Past that I might be interested in some of the minis because they are cute but the weapon skins are way less of my thing.

I think it is very neat that something like the Super Adventure Box exists. It was very obviously a labor of love and is extremely well crafted. I just am uncertain how much time I am going to spend engaging with it. I will probably farm up enough baubles to buy the home instance doodad and then call it good. Then again if I don’t care about the appearances… why am I even farming up enough for that? I mostly feel like I want more things in my home instance to give me a reason to go there. I have I think six intractables currently so I am just seeking more things to put in there. I know pretty much every one of these events is going to have something along these lines.

Mouth of Mordremoth

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Good Morning Friends! While I think it is sort of cute, I don’t really love the springer mount. I mean it has its uses but unlike the raptor or warclaw (the other two mounts I have so far) it is just harder to use “on the go” when running away from a pack of mobs. It’s gimmick is that it can leap up super high, but you have to stop what you are doing and hold down the space bar to make it do this trick. That means you sorta have to have already cleared an area so you can attempt to execute some precision maneuvers. I super dislike jumping puzzles that require the springer, and I just had to do one as part of the Path of Fire main story mission. It made me want to punch puppies, but I suffered through it. Mostly the way this mount works feels way less precise than the raptor is for horizontal jumps. I am working on unlocking more mastery points and hoping it improves over time.

My core focus right now is largely pushing the Path of Fire story forward. Mostly I find myself in a position where I want to unlock more mounts and also at the same time unlock more zones to roam around in. Part of the reason for this forward momentum is that I want to unlock the Icebrood Saga zones so that I can have access to strikes, which are sort of mini “puggable” raids. At some point I hope to be doing the current content in Canta, but my obsession with doing things in the order they were released means that I am enjoying Elona at the moment. Nightfall is the campaign in Guild Wars 1 that I spent the most time in, so it has been interesting seeing the areas again.

One thing that happened last night however is that I needed a break from questing and decided to work on my dailies. One of them was doing events in Dragon’s Stand which is the final region of the Heart of Thorns story area. What happened instead is that I got caught up in the meta progress and instead of bailing after getting my few events completed, I stuck around and attempted to finish the meta. We failed, I think in part because folks were popping in, getting their handful of events completed and then popping out. However towards the very end of the meta we got super serious about trying to complete it. This led us to fail and then immediately restart the timer with most of the folks sticking around for a second go.

I had learned enough during the failed attempt that I mostly knew what was happening and as a result was way more effective at moving things forward. Essentially the entire Dragon’s Stand map is a giant MOBA arena, but we the players play the role of keeping the lanes clear. Essentially the map involves a few phases but most involve escorting a payload to a specific destination, and then holding that location until all three teams have completed their push to that destination as well. There are giant wurm minibosses, a fight with one of three tower guardians, and then eventually it culminates in a giant cinematic fight against the “Mouth of Mordremoth”. During this phase you have to guard a number of platforms and use wind currents to travel between them… that is if you are a scrub like me that does not have a skyscale mount.

I mostly rode one platform until a burn phase happened because each platform had to be protected from a number of events. Flowers would spawn or roots would take hold, and someone on that platform has to destroy that objective to keep the way clear. Every so often the mouth will destroy a platform, which requires everyone to shift quickly… and hope you can get into a wind current in time to pop over to another platform. Like all big meta events the “on death” reset time is pretty quick so when I failed to transfer platforms I was able to get back into the action extremely quickly. The sheer amount of loot that I walked away with was staggering from a failed attempt and a completed attempt. Granted most of it ended up getting salvaged, but I view that as just a mad influx of materials and not as a loss.

I have no frame of reference for how long it takes to drop the Mouth of Mordremoth, but apparently I got an achievement for doing it quickly. This rewarded me an inventory item called Ley-Energy Matter Converter which opens up a vendor screen and gives me access to purchase one item each day. The first tab just contains a bunch of the keys for zone activities, but the other tabs can apparently be unlocked by spending 100 of a given zone currency to open new things that I could purchase. I had a freaking blast and would absolutely do this event again, pending I happen to notice it is firing up. I’ve done Auric Basic a number of times and have done I believe Verdant Brink once. I need to sort out what the other Heart of Thorns metas are and try them as well. Metas are easily one of the coolest ideas that Guild Wars 2 has come up with, and ultimately I get why folks will spend their entire evening popping from one meta to another.

It was a great night. I think the sheer variety of things I could be doing is what is giving this game life for me. I spent a very small amount of time playing around on my Mesmer and putting on a few levels as well. I am hoping at some point I can try some of the more serious group activities and see if I can hang with them. I would love to explore more of the dungeons, do some of the deeper fractals, and maybe even try a raid. In order to do some of these things I would probably need to branch out and add a much larger guild to my repertoire, or at least one with more folks available on my time frame.

The “What Now” Problem

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Good Morning Friends! Last week I finished World Completion on my new Necromancer main, and this weekend I wrapped up the Living World 3 story. I have some deep concerns about where things are going, and I realize that everything is essentially resolved for the players that are caught up on End of Dragons but for me… I am still chewing through years-old content. I just have deep concerns that I might be raising a monster, but that is all I am going to say on that point for now. One of the main things for me and an MMORPG is that I am pretty good at focusing on an end goal. That goal might be pushing through all of the storylines, or doing a damned fool thing like chain leveling all of my jobs in FFXIV to level 80. The problem is once I achieve that goal I am always left asking myself… okay… what now?

Generally speaking this causes me to flail around for a bit trying to find a new purpose, only to end up bouncing shortly after because either I am lacking a good grind or the ones I have to feel too “overwhelming” to tackle. After finishing the Endwalker story I tried to return to pushing through leveling everything to 90 but ran out of steam quickly. This is honestly one of the greatest gifts that Guild Wars 2 seems to have is that it is almost a nesting doll of systems, each one of them filled with a smorgasbord of both short term and long term goals and objectives. I thought maybe finishing up World Completion and getting my Gift of exploration would be an action that stopped me in my tracks, but instead, I just shifted that same drive towards slowly chipping away at my Gift of Battle in World vs World.

I think one of the things that I am finding interesting about the experience is that everything I do, is sort of moving me forward towards my goal of eventually crafting the Legendary Sword Twilight. When I do craft it, that weapon will become available to all of my alts for them to use as well. The thing that makes this fairly compelling is knowing that I am working towards a fixed point that is not going to suddenly become useless by the time I get there. I also don’t necessarily “Need” the item so there isn’t the strong desire to bankrupt myself in the process to make it faster, because I already have access to crafting Ascended weapons (and have crafted them) which share the same strength. This is a mission about opening up new playstyles and opportunities and not necessarily a purely cosmetic mission. That has always been my problem with Relic weapons in Final Fantasy XIV is that I will never be serious enough to do them while they are relevant which means the ones that I seek always just end up being cosmetic fodder.

A highlight of the weekend is that I finally got some time to run Fractals with friends. Since we are not recording the podcast for the next few weeks, we ended up repurposing that same time slot for Guild Wars 2 shenanigans. Fractals are just about the right size to be honest because you can do a bunch of them in a row before feeling like you need a break. Tam and later Ash lead us through a number of them and I saw some that I had done before, and others that I had never experienced. I would like to do way more of these but they require a stable group, though maybe not as many as originally thought. Ash talked about doing several of these with only three people so maybe just maybe I could muster a group to do more during a more East/Central timezone-friendly time.

A cute thing that happened is that I did not even notice that one of my party members had changed their tag until I got this achievement. I really like how this one works in particular because it is just a sort of nice to have fluff thing. In Destiny 2 you got all sorts of rare emblems and such for running with the devs of that game, which meant that it was a highly sought out thing. This is just a simple acknowledgment in the list that is in itself not worth any achievement points. This is really the way this sort of thing should be done, and I applaud ANet for not pinning any rewards to it. I do however want to try and collect the full set of these, which means I am going to have to drag a said friend into other activities.

So my current modus operandi is to keep moving forward in the Path of Fire story, while doing various assorted zone activities. Then once a day I am trying to knock out any of the easier World vs World… which I am finding out is called both “Dub Vee Dub” and “WuvWa”. Knocking out a few achievements gives me both time in zone and the little potions that give you instant progress towards your rewards track. Both of these serve the goal of getting me closer to that Gift of Battle. I am finding out that any one thing in this game can seem overwhelming if you focus on it too hard. However, if you do it along with a bunch of other things, that variety means you are going more progress towards more things at once. Admittedly this was also what I landed on as my best means of leveling characters in Final Fantasy XIV, by doing a bunch of varied activities that made it feel less grindy.

“What Now” is likely always going to be a question I am asking myself each time I finish a goal. However, Guild Wars 2 seems to be exceptionally adept at answering back with something that is just within reach. I went down a whole new rabbit hole this weekend of listening to some videos on the underground economy of Guild Wars 2, and honestly… if I could make the right connections it seems like something I could excel at. I’ve never done a great job of the high-speed trading nature of auction house flipping in a game like World of Warcraft. However what I do excel at is grinding out resources, and Guild Wars 2 seems to be a game about providing the right resources to the right people. If I descend further into this madness I will let you know the results.