Destiny Archives - Page 28 of 46 - Tales of the Aggronaut

Survival Solved

May 3, 2016 by Belghast

Violated

Right now I am having a little bit getting started this morning. I went to the cleaners yesterday, and after I got home I forgot to carry in the clothing. As a result this morning I hurriedly got dressed enough to be seen outside, and went out to the truck to get the laundry. When I got out there the door was slightly open, and apparently I either failed to lock the car last night… or failed to completely shut the door. As a result someone got inside and rifled through the glove box and the center console, I can only assume looking for drugs. They passed up a bunch of change, and didn’t touch my work id badge, or any of the few packs of magic the gathering cards that were deep down in the console. I don’t really keep anything of value in the vehicle, so I am certainly they were sorely disappointed. Unfortunately the whole event has left me feeling a little vulnerable, because we live in this super quiet neighborhood… but every so often something like this happens. We have a ton of teenagers and I am certain it was probably one of them. I just lack the gene apparently to fully understand why something like this happens, and I am kicking myself for not having a more proper inventory of the stuff I keep in my car to be able to tell if anything is actually missing. There is this sense of dread inside me that something was taken that I will miss… I just don’t know it yet.

It seems like another one of those blog award things is cycling through our community, because last night I was tagged by my friend Sandrian. I was originally going to go ahead and answer the questionnaire this morning, but since it is all about positivity and blogging and all of that sort of stuff… I am maybe not in the right mindset to do it. I will have to do it before too much longer however, or I will forget about it… much the way I forgot about the last one and then didn’t actually do it until I was tagged a second time. These things are cute, and mean well but they also often feel like the chain letters of the blogosphere. They are always interesting ways to get to know the people who are filling them out, but by the same token I always feel horrible for trying to obligate someone else to keep the chain letter moving forward. While there are no dire predictions for not completing the task, in the same way as chain letters normally have… I still feel nonetheless obligated to complete the task. In any case… it will be answered in a morning I feel a little less violated.

The Slow Spot

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As far as gaming and happier subjects go, I spent a good chunk of last night playing the tail end of Iron Banner. I am not sure if they ratcheted the drops down as the week went on, but the last few days after hitting rank five on all of my characters I really didn’t see much in the way of drops. I was hoping to get more 335 items to use as infusion fodder, but even though I played a dozen or so matches last night, the only thing I ever seemed to get was a bunch of blues, some strange coins and a single class item. I mean I did get a bunch of drops early on, so maybe there is a cap on the amount of dropped gear you can get from it or something. Either that or maybe I just had a lot of bad luck. In any case, right now my lowest item is 330 with the bulk of my gear being between 333 and 335. I only have boots, gloves and heavy maxed out at 335, so my hope is that with Challenge of Elders this week I will get another piece of armor to fix some of that. The lowest piece is the 330 helm, so getting a 335 helm would go a long way to bringing up my total light level. I am just pumped that I managed to get a set of gear that allows me to max out both intellect and discipline. This weeks Challenge of Elders is going to be strange, in that Melee does bonus damage… but you score extra points through super kills.

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I had every intent of logging in last night to Overwatch and spending the entire team playing that. However when I actually went downstairs, I wound up riding along with Kylana for some more levels and gear. The shitty thing about the item set this time for crusaders is that it feels like I need some super specific items to make it viable. I am sitting at four pieces of Invoker, so truth be told I might jump ship to that set if I find the last two pieces. I did however solve my survivability issues it feels, because after doing some fiddling I was able to survive incoming damage a whole lot better. I had fiddled with some stuff one night as an experiment and apparently never flipped back off the rune that made it so I could not dodge, but blocked more often. That alone was apparently the thing that was completely destroying me when running any content. Once that got turned off, I was amazed at just how well things went. I managed to solo a level 30 greater rift, but my damage dealing capabilities are still too low for me to really be able to do that comfortably. I do however need to spend a bit of time doing greaters so that I can get the rest of the gems I will need, and then also spend some time pouring levels into them. I think a lot of my lack of drive to play Overwatch is knowing that I am already “bought in”, and also knowing that there will be yet another reset before the game actually launches. I do however want to get in and play some with Tam, so I will need to check in tonight to see what folks are doing. It is my hope that I can get home with enough time to run Challenge of Elders in Destiny and then pop in for either Diablo 3 or Overwatch shenanigans.

Flowers and Rank 5s

May 2, 2016 by Belghast

Backyard Whim

One of the interesting developments that has happened this summer is that we are spending a good deal more time outside than we have ever before. I mean we have lived in our house for seventeen years now… and we’ve never really taken advantage of our backyard. My wife and I tried to sort out why this was, and I think in truth it was that the back of our house looked bad. Before moving in during the inspections they found a lot of termite damage on the wooden siding, and the bulk of this was located on the back of the house. The repair job looked adequate at first, but as it aged… the back wall ended up looking like a patchwork quilt that even with a fresh coat of paint just looked “wrong”. So in many ways I think it just put us off from being outside and having to look at it. With the recent renovations and new siding, we also had a door installed off of the bedroom. Years ago we created a quick and dirty patio with pavers, and now it feels like everything has finally come together. Sunday morning for example by the time I had woken up and gotten out of bed, my wife was already on the patio off the bedroom reading. There have been many times during the weekends that we end up eating lunch on the back patio as well.

Now I am not exactly certain where it came from… but recently we have talked about trying to put flowers sprinkled around the backyard. Granted we have always had a brown thumb, but this resurgence of backyarding… has made us want to at least try it. This reached a boiling point Saturday when while running errands we found a couple of planters that we really liked at Sam’s Club, and you can see one of them in the foreground of the above image. Given that Sams always has a rotating stock we went ahead and picked them up, thinking that if we waited they probably wouldn’t have two of the color we wanted later. Now I had zero intention of doing anything with them this weekend… I mean because I had Iron Banner and Diablo Season 6 to play. However before I knew it Sunday we were making a trip to go get rock and potting soil, and plants. We are massively cheating in that the start of each of the pots is a hanging plant, but so far so good. Now we just have to make sure they keep watered, but the hope is that since we are spending so much time out in the backyard anyway… that it won’t be that big of a deal. For those that are curious I created a nifty panoramic shot of the entire back yard.

Rank 5 For All

Even though we spent a chunk of the afternoon working on flowers and such, I still managed to make it upstairs on the PS4 by around 4pm. This allowed me some dedicated time to play the Warlock, and push forward towards Iron Banner rank 5. I closed with the weekend with my Titan and 333 light, Hunter at 324 and Warlock also at 324 which is significant movement. I have a feeling that those last two points of light on the Titan are going to end up being pure hell. However on a similar photo from the 22nd… I was sitting at 324 on the Titan, and 314 and 304 on the Hunter and Warlock respectively. So I have to say… I am pretty damned pumped about the rapid progress. The Iron Banner as a whole was very good to me, especially in the equippable gear and infusion material categories. I managed to get all of the available gear for this week, minus a pair of legs for the Warlock. There are numerous copies of the Auto Rifle, Rocket Launcher, and even managed to pick up a sidearm and sniper rifle from Rank 5 packages. It has been interesting playing all three classes this weekend, and I have to say that in truth… I think maybe the Warlock and Hunter are just inherently better at crucible than my Titan. It feels like they have a lot more tricks up their sleeve, whereas the Titan is just pure brute force. Warlock Blink seems to be the best escape method for getting out of an engagement, and Hunter throwing knives seems to be the best finishing move ever.

As far as the sniper rifle goes that I managed to pick up, I am not exactly a huge fan. It has Eye of the Storm, Speed Reload and Spray and Play which in theory would make it an insanely fast sniper rifle, but given its low impact… I question how useful it really is. For crucible at least you would have to land so many shots to make the kill, and it is hard enough to nail a single shot let along multiple at range. I will probably end up holding onto it just because it looks really cool, but I have a feeling that sooner or later this will get infused into something else to bring up its light levels. As far as new snipers go, I am still a much bigger fan of the 333 Her Fury that I managed to pick up from my Challenge of Elders this week. High impact, paired with Triple Tap and Armor Piercing rounds makes it something enjoyable to use. Tonight I have plans to hang out upstairs at least for a bit and try my luck at getting more of that tasty Iron Banner loot. It would be amazing if before the end of the weekend I manage to get more of the 335 items to help push up other gear. As far as the rest of my Destiny schedule for this week it feels a little up in the air. I did not set foot into Kings Fall last week, and I would really love to remedy that this week. The thing that sucks is that I am now in a position where the only benefit I will see is from a hard mode run, given that all three of my characters are now over the 320 light level that normal drops.

Crusaders and Guardians

May 1, 2016 by Belghast

Season Six

While I greatly enjoy the concept of the Developer Appreciation Week… I am always somewhat happen when it is over. During the week I feel like I have to be making posts along that them, so when things happen that I want to talk about… I end up pushing them down until the week is ultimately over. Now as I sit here for the first unfettered post in awhile… I am finding it super hard getting started. The biggest happening of this weekend is that Friday evening at 7pm my time the newest Diablo 3 season began. For season six I opted to roll a Female Crusader, because I had so much fun playing as one last season. I have this general goal of getting a male and female of each class eventually, but that also means that someday I will have to finish playing that mage and attempt to play a witch doctor. The only problem I am running into is that it feels like what made the crusader so amazing last go round… was the fact that the Invoker set was just phenomenal. Now that I have my six piece Akkhan set, it doesn’t feel anywhere near as powerful as I did last season. In fact while the set dungeon was a breeze for me last go around, this one is only causing chain wipes. Granted I am not nearly as geared as I was at this point last year, in part because I am not getting drug by Carthuun.

When the season started we ended up with six people on the guild discord, and as a result we split into two three player teams. Ultimately ending up with me and Grace playing together, with Solaria and Kodra joining up for short periods of time. Towards the end of the evening Kylana was with us as well as the other three player team ultimately disolved with Ashgar got pulled away for work, and Callalil went to bed. I myself only lasted through level 60, because that was ultimately the point at which I was starting to fall asleep at the keyboard. So I went to bed around 11pm and the rest of the group pushed onward. Yesterday morning Grace and I ended up playing together, and she helped me get the rest of the way to 70, and unlock my gear set. She was sitting over 100 paragon levels, which means that more than likely Carth is sitting around 300ish. At some point I will join in his Torment X shenanigans because I really need some gear. All in all it was a great start of the new season, and at some point I will sort out my spec and with gear should be able to solo more stuff. Right now the challenge is finding thorns on gear, and I have ended up burning through all of my materials trying to enchant away useless stats and turn them into thorns.

Banana Split

Another awesome happening this weekend is that yesterday while waiting on folks to show up for the AggroChat game of the month show, I managed to push my Hunter to rank 5. This is the first month that I managed to get to characters to rank 5, and I’ve since started working on getting the warlock there as well. My hope is that after I finish knocking out this blog post I will head upstairs and work on that. Iron Banner has been really damned good to me, letting me amass a lot of gear and weapons that will ultimately either get used as is or serve as infusion fodder. In theory I should probably be doing matches on my Titan with the hopes of getting more 335 items, but it feels good actually working on my other characters. After playing the hunter I can absolutely see why they do so damned well in the crucible. Throwing knives are amazing, and I had so much fun yesterday finishing off people with them. I still feel like golden gun however is the least exciting of the supers, but I am getting used to using it to optimal efficiency. There was one point where I managed to get three kills in a row with it and earned the way of the gun trophy.

Over the course of the week I have picked up so much gear, with the latest acquisition being a 335 Tormod’s Bellows. The only challenge here is that I am not sure if I will keep it or infuse it into one of my heavy weapons. I could really use a 335 sword… just saying. The funny thing is… I got the 335 drop on my absolute lowest level character while working on the Warlock yesterday. So I am wondering if maybe the buff in faction that you get for pushing up additional characters does something as well to the chances of getting max light drops as well? In any case another Iron Banner has come and almost gone, and I have loved every minute of it. I finally sorted out why I like PVP in Destiny and never have in other games. There is something about getting real loot at the end of matches, as opposed to a currency in lieu of loot that can maybe someday add up to be enough to get something interesting. I love random chance, and I love being rewarded with interesting stuff. More so than that… I love getting not quite perfect items… and then trying to figure out how to use them to my advantage.

Purple Hand Cannon

April 22, 2016 by Belghast

Challenge of Connection

There are some nights where things don’t go quite as planned but ultimately work out okay in the end. Last night was one of those nights. The original plan was to do some Challenge of Elders with Squirrel and Sagacyte. I got home at my normal time, but I couldn’t really commit to doing much of anything until after we ran some errands. So the plan was once my wife got home, we would go run errands, and then grab dinner on the way home. After munching some food it would be challenge time. Unfortunately my wife got home significantly later than I had expected, and then our errands themselves took significantly longer than expected… and when we went to grab food there was a longer line than expected. The end result meant I didn’t actually get upstairs on the PS4 until a little after 8 pm. By that time Squirrel was having all manner of connection problems. While sitting in voice chat together we were getting only every third word he was saying, making it damned near impossible to understand what he was trying to say. We gave it the good college try and made an attempt at doing the Challenge of Elders without him on voice chat.

However a few minutes into the match he disconnected which lead Saga and I to end up having to try and solo Sylok the first boss. We attempted to duo the Cabal boss but had absolutely zero luck there, and ultimately went to orbit. It was around this time that in the clan channel that Broken and Havel were asking for a third for their own CoE shenanigans. I felt like a dick leaving Saga, but he assured me that I should grab the open spot. Last week the bonus was primary ammo headshots, which was super easy and lead to allowing folks well below the suggested 320 light to be able to complete it without much issue. This week however the bonus was grenade kills, making it significantly harder. I went in as Sunbreaker because the Simmering Flames perk meant that so long as I had a super ready my grenade recharge was greatly increased. To that I ended up swapping all of my gear so that I was sitting around 360 discipline. On top of that I wound up getting a 324 Armamentarium moments before the first attempt at the Challenge, meaning that I also had double grenade charges going in. Both Broken and Havel did similar steps to allow them to get super grenade action, and as a result we managed to get 108k score over the course of two matches. So while it sucked that I didn’t get to run with Squirrel and Saga… it is pretty awesome that I managed to finish on my titan regardless. During the course of the weekend my new goal is to make sure that both Squirrel and Saga get through as well.

Spoils of War

The result for me is that I walked away with an interesting Hand Cannon that I am not quite sure if I will actually use. I spent the rest of the night doing bounties with it to see if it was something I actually enjoyed using. For ages I swore by the Hand Cannon, but then I got used to Auto and Pulse Rifles… and quite simply never use them. The state they were in after the serious round of nerfs held me back from really enjoying the experience. During year one I used the hell out of the Last Word, and then for the first part of year two I largely rocked the Hawkmoon… enjoying both weapons greatly. As far as Her Revenge goes… I like how it feels and it has an interesting sequence of perks so for now I plan on leveling it up and seeing how I enjoy it in its final form. As for my armor piece, I ended up getting a 328 chest piece… which was below my current 329 so instead of keeping it I wound up shipping it off to my hunter. As I talked about yesterday, there has always been a pecking order when it comes to gear… which generally falls in line with Titan > Hunter > Warlock. My hunter is closer to being viable for things like Challenge of Elders so my goal is to buff him up enough to be useful when it comes to the current “end game” content.

That said I did also manage to throw a few handmedowns onto the Warlock, bringing the light level up by a few points. If I can keep stair stepping them up with no more than a 10 light level difference between them I think life will be pretty grand. I think the mission for tonight is to try and run some content on either the warlock or hunter with the hopes of bringing their light level up a bit. The biggest thing I need right now are legendary artifacts for both. The best route to that is of course the Court of Oryx, but neither of them has an antiquated rune to make that possible. I do have a few skyburner keys and wormsinger runes… so in theory I could burn through those hoping for some drops. The other awesome thing from last night is that I managed to get another Sublime Engram which takes my set piece count up to three… with 2 chests, 1 helm, and now 1 Titan Mark of the new Jovian Guard set. I really love the look of that thing, and while I am not sure it would win out over my Iron Banner set… it is still something that I would proudly rock. Speaking of Iron Banner, Bungie has apparently announced the next bits of gear that will be available and I am super pumped. I should finally be able to get legs to complete the Iron Banner look, and it also seems like I will be able to get a Titan Mark in the process. Other than that this round is offering the Auto Rifle and Rocket Launcher, both things that I am super interested in. Right now the goal is to push both the Titan and Hunter through, so I will be trying to do daily bounties on both of them.