Hey Folks. I have to fight the urge to open with morning, because by the time I end up posting this it will be afternoon. Yesterday was a weird schedule which meant that I never got around to posting anything, and then this morning… I sat in front of the screen and was just not feeling it. I am very sensitive to my routines and when they are off… everything in my life is off. I had to be in the office very early yesterday, and then today was a snow day and as such my wife is home with me… essentially throwing off my normal patterns. You know how when a washing machine gets off balance, and the longer it goes the worse it gets? I feel like that is me with my routines… and the further I stray from them… the less that is right with the world. Which is weird because growing up I used to always think of myself as being highly adaptable.
The pandemic and the transition to remote work… has meant that in many ways I just don’t force myself to operate in uncomfortable parameters anymore. When I am forced to be in person… it is almost like trying to use a muscle that has atrophied from lack of use. I get so damned drained that when I do make it back home… I am just mentally dead. I was never an extrovert, but I’ve also stopped fighting against my weird tendencies and pretending I was perfectly normal. However when I am in person again, I feel like I have to fake it and push myself out there in ways that I am just no longer used to. Essentially this combined with the break in my routine did a number of me. Suffice to say… I just have not felt like putting pen to the virtual page and spawning forth a blog post. Granted it is probably weird that I just devoted two full paragraphs to get to that point.
Last night I finished up the first book in the Dungeon Crawler Carl series and it was a delight. Essentially what if you had Duke Nukem… but lovable and begrudgingly caring, thrown into Smash TV but its a dungeon crawler… and forced to fight for his life as a namely corporation attempts to convert the Earth into raw resources while using Humanity as extras in reality television. Combine with that the fact that he entered this dungeon with a cat named Princess Donut, who developed the ability to talk… and cast magic missile… and hilarity ensues. I started the second one and it is just as great as the first one, so I highly suggest checking this out if you have it available.
I’m still futzing around in Path of Exile, but not taking it super seriously. I really enjoy this build, but also feel like I don’t really have access to enough currency or even items available in the private league to fix the problems the build has. I have made it stable, but the survival is definitely a thing that I struggle with. Essentially any time I take any manner of damage over time it is a struggle because I am not recovering enough life through regeneration and don’t have access to leech due to the way the build works. I tried the whole Mind Over Matter thing for awhile, but honestly it just caused more problems than it was worth. It would lead me to run out of energy shield… which I am using as mana… causing me to have to run around hoping to get clear and free long enough for my energy shield to start regenerating. It feels easier to just watch my health with a potion and top off whenever I take a hit. I’ve gotten my evasion up to a little bit over 70% and wish I had a way to make it lucky.
I’m also keeping close tabs on the Legacy of Phrecia event league and some of the information coming out is pretty freaking wild. I can see a bunch of different builds that would be interesting to create, but am still leaning towards trying a Poison SRS league start. The Paladin shown above looks interesting, as does the build that focuses heavily on stacking heralds. I’ve always loved the interactions between heralds and could see that being extremely fun. It still looks like we are a few weeks out and will likely be happening in March… which will be a fun time and I will likely have run out of gusto for it before Last Epoch Season 2 drops in April. At least I am hoping it plays out in that manner because if I have to choose between this and Last Epoch I am going with Last Epoch.
I feel like the sort of thing that I am doing is not really interesting for anyone but myself. I am doing super chill mapping and delving while listening to audiobooks, and the combined total is delightful. I am pretty pleased with how easy it has been to farm cluster jewels. This has turned into a not-insignificant profit center for me. I’ve been dumping these into a 20 Chaos tab and selling quite a large number of them. I am probably selling them cheaply, but it is pretty easy and does not require any thought. It isn’t like I am getting spammed for any of them, which is usually the sign that you are WAY too cheap. I hate the thought of price gouging someone, especially in a pretty chill private league economy. However 20 chaos is pretty much the least amount of currency that I am willing to stop what I am doing in order to go sell an item for.
Anyways… I am still alive. I am just off balance from a few weird days. I am sure at some point I will get back to normal and regain my gusto for morning blogging. Gracie was super snuggly last night… as see in the photo at the top of this post so that helped a bit.