Action RPGs

Action RPGs along the lines of the Diablo Franchise

Always the Set Dungeon

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Sometimes a Rift just does not go your way. Yesterday I was trying for a level 72 to keep moving that needle forward and just ran into a chain of deaths and then got behind the timer. That is one of those things that happens in Diablo 3 sometimes, and it sort of highlights just how dependent upon RNG some of your success ends up being. I dusted myself off immediately and tried to just a straight 70 instead of the maximum I could do and breezed through it. I am having a freaking blast right now, in spite of the occasional death storm. There is just something about Diablo III that I have never found in another game. I’ve been spending some time playing Torchlight III a bit more, and it is a better game than I gave it credit for… but the dopamine cycle just isn’t the same.

When it comes to the Season 26 Journey, I have knocked out most of the low-hanging fruit. The one that is ALWAYS the bane of my existence is the set dungeon mastery. I hate doing set dungeons so much and I avoid them until I absolutely cannot any longer. This is a reoccurring theme and if you look up me talking about ANY past season… there is always a point where Slayer and Champion are done apart from the set dungeon. As far as conquests go I will probably start chewing away on those as well. I need to see if I am at a point where I can farm bounties on T16, and then start stockpiling caches for Avarice. Ultimately in an Avarice season, I tend to wait to do the cube 20 and 40 powers until after I have finished with that conquest because I will be swimming in materials. I need to also focus on doing a really fast T13 Neph Rift in order to knock out that under 4-minute run, which will tick two boxes.

Right now I am running a Thorns Bombardment build, mostly because it was something easy to build into from the Akkhans set granted by Haedrigs Gift. I have almost everything I need to switch over to a straight Invoker Thorns build, and I am contemplating making that shift at some point. I think Invoker might be an easier dungeon to do, but I am not entirely certain. I at least know it is a dungeon I have done several times. I have always thought Omnislash thorns build would be cool and apparently, some patch changes have now made that a viable thing. It is sorta dumb the amount of enjoyment I have by running back-to-back rifts trying to farm additional gear for gaining some power. I have a shockingly sparse number of Ancients at the moment, and my Primal gained from the 70 greater rift… was awful. My second primal wasn’t much better, but at least it was something I could hand to my Templar.

In other news, I am still logging into New World at least once a day and running around and collecting a few easy pieces of Gypsum. I’ve managed to slowly work all of my armor slots up to 600 expertise, and am now starting on weapons. I got my Sword all the way to 600 already, and Greataxe/Warhammer is in the 575ish range. I am not entirely certain WHY I continue to play other than running around and harvesting materials is still pretty enjoyable. I think ultimately I am waiting for the dungeon patch that removes keys, and then I will probably be spending some time trying to get groups tanking dungeons to finish out my expertise grind. I am also farming keys on the side because they have stated that each key will become a box full of dungeon loot. Especially now that all of my armor is at 600, there might be some interesting items that come from those.

The other game I am spending time in each day is Guild Wars 2, but lately, that has been limited to farming daily PVP Potions. For the time being the only members of the Greysky Armada that PVP at all… are me and Kodra and we are trying to farm up as many pots as we can. We’ve already farmed up to 50 a few times and unlocked some of those upgrades and now we are chewing away at one of the 100 potion requirements. At a minimum each day I do enough dailies in order to get the completion reward and the free 2 gold that comes with it. If I happen to be paying attention at Tequatl time, I still try and catch that whenever I can. However, the last few days of being in “Diabble land”, have caused me to miss those.

All in all, I am having quite a bit of fun, but I do need to revisit some other projects like finishing out Horizon Forbidden West.

Diablo III Season 26 So Far

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Good Morning Friends! On Monday I talked about my general sense of unhappiness and how my prohibition of Blizzard titles, and specifically my beloved Diablo III had brought me nothing but misery. So the interesting part about that is… I was holding stable up until the point that I tried Diablo Immortal. I largely tried Immortal in the first place so that I could write my impressions given how much Diablo III and honestly D2 and D1 I have played over the years.

I posted a snippet of an article from the Washington Post yesterday on Twitter, and for me at least it rings so true. I think my falling back into Diablo III has been at least in part a way to wash the bad taste of the Diablo Immortal monetization out of my mouth. This seems to have been the case for at least a few of my friends as well. I legitimately had no intention of breaking my Blizzard prohibition but it has now happened… and I am happier for having done so. I missed this game so damned much.

I am still in the “building power” phase of the season. It took me a few nights to level from 1 to 70, and it has been a really long time since I have done that completely solo. When I usually played Diablo III I had Grace along with me, and we at a minimum duo’d most things… and occasionally had others like Byx joining in the nonsense. I was nowhere near as efficient in my leveling as I could have been, in part because I knew I needed a Ring of Royal Grandeur for my target build, and I figured since it was going in the cube I might as well try and get one from bounties as I leveled up. I wish I had managed to get some of the other items I needed for the build because it would have made the start of the season considerably easier.

For those who might have never started a Diablo III season, the general theory is that you create a Seasonal character and then immediately hop into whatever challenge rift was available for that given week. A Challenge Rift is essentially a snapshot of a specific build, often taken from the community… and you have to navigate that build successfully through a fixed Greater Rift in order to beat a specific time. Your reward for doing this… is a cache full of resources that gives you a headstart on the season and allows you to do some specific things. Essentially you get:

  • 5,100,000 gold
  • 475 blood shards
  • 35 deaths breath
  • 125 veiled crystals
  • 350 arcane dust
  • 370 reusable parts
  • 15 of each of the different act bounty currencies

Essentially the standard order of operations is to use this to level the Blacksmith and Mystic all of the ways up, and then attempt to convert a Rare item into a legendary item in Kunai’s Cube. Based on what you get there this generally determines what item you go for in gambling with Kadala using those 475 blood shards. There are specific items that are suggested and I did not get any of them.

What I did get instead however was a nifty parlor trick that I was able to stick in Kunai’s Cube. I am not sure I have ever used Flail of the Ascended, and if I did I largely just used it as a temporary beater until I got something better. This ultimately lead me to build around Shield Glare and Shield Bash, so that I could bash my way through the level and then use Shield Glare as a big nuke to take out bosses or large packs. Honestly, it felt pretty good right up until the point that it stopped feeling good around level 66. In my challenge rift cache shenanigans, I managed to get a level 70 weapon that I could equip at level 49, so once I grew into that I had an express elevator to the top. I’ve had worse seasonal leveling experiences for certain, but I have also had much much better ones.

At this point, I can pretty reliably clear Torment VII Neph Rifts at a decent speed for farming and I have cleared through Solo 43 in Greater Rifts. I have three decent legendary gems and I just need to work on getting those leveled up a bit. This is the Diablo that I love, and this is ultimately what I hoped Diablo Immortal would be… but on the phone. This is what the loot from a Rift should feel like and only exists in Immortal if you spend $25 on Legendary Crests per run. I am having a freaking blast folks, and my hope is to finish off Season 26 before the timer runs out. The prediction is that this season will end sometime in August. With the current double bounty cache reward going on, I should be able to farm up Avarice pretty easily, but I need to really get my power up to where I can comfortably run T13 at a minimum before starting that grind. It is kinda dumb how returning to a game can make me so happy… but it is a thing that has happened. God, I love Diablo III.

Earnest Money and Orichalcum

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Well, friends… I did it. I put my money on the line for a house in the lottery. On Cactuar, there were a number of homes that opened up in pretty much all of the housing districts yesterday. I’ve always been partial to The Mist housing area because I have also been partial to Limsa Lominsa. It is the town I started the game in and was the location of our first Free Company house. After scoping out a number of plots during the downtime when the lottery system was offline, I found one that I think is my favorite, and yesterday I put down my almost 4 million Gil in earnest money. At that point it told me I was the fifth bid on the property so here is hoping that my “Bel Luck” pays off. I am not super hopeful to be honest because I have chased a house at this point for quite a long time. Maybe having housing would make me want to be more active in the game again? I am not sure but it would at least mean I was logging in every week to visit the home and do some nonsense to make sure I did not lose it.

In another of my gaming crushes, there was a significant patch released yesterday in New World that added in PVP Arenas… which I do not give a shit about in the least. However, there were also a large number of interesting changes made, not the least of which was adding more tier 4 and 5 nodes in the world for crafters to harvest. The most immediate and stark change is that apparently by default the map is no longer flood filled with the color of the faction that holds it, and in order to return this functionality it seems you have to toggle on the filter for “faction influence” each time you log into the game. Another really interesting thing that went in is that there are now faction-wide benefits for holding territory. Here is a full list of the benefit given to a faction for holding a given location.

  • Brightwood: Camping no longer costs resources.
  • Cutlass Keys: Increases global gathering luck by 10%.
  • Ebonscale Reach: Decreases the cost of items in the faction store by 5%.
  • Everfall: Increases the amount of Azoth Salt gained by 10%.
  • First Light: Increases global refining yield by 10%.
  • Monarch Bluffs: Increases all experience gains by 5%.
  • Mourningdale: Increase the gearscore ceiling of crafting by 5. The maximum gearscore you can roll is still 600.
  • Reekwater: Increases the amount of PvP Experience gained by 5%.
  • Restless Shores: All fast travel is now free.
  • Weaver’s Fen: Decreases global tax values by 10%.
  • Windsward: Increases the chance that a consumable isn’t consumed on use by 10%.

So currently on Valhalla the Syndicate holds four territories and is given the benefit of free fast travel, a 10% reduction in all tax values, 5% increase in PVP experience gained, and creating a camp no longer requires any resources. Covenant holds six territories and would get 5% discount on faction store, 10% increase in azoth salt gained, 10% increase in global refining yield, 5% experience bonus, gearscore crafting increase by 5 levels, and 10% chance on not consuming a consumable. Then Marauders hold a single territory and get global luck increased by 10%. I think this does some interesting things because it makes terrorises that were otherwise worthless… like Restless Shores and Cutlass Keys exceptionally valuable because of the bonus they grant to your faction. With the ease of travel, it also makes moving around way easier than it once was essentially making ANY crafting hub viable.

The change I appreciate the most however is all of the new nodes opening up around the world. I harvested more Orichalcum yesterday than I probably have in the first few months of playing the game. There is also a side benefit of having a new PVP chase in the rewards track that is taking folks out of the world and focusing them on PVP. This means there is significantly less contention for resources as a result and it is probably a good time to be working on leveling skills. I’ve been stockpiling resources a bit of late because I know that very soon they are going to open up a double experience period which will make finishing off some of my skills significantly cheaper.

I think my next target for skills is Engineering which is currently level 188. I want to craft an Axe of the Abyss, which has improved significantly from the last time I looked at it. I have pretty much all of the materials needed to craft one ratholed in the various storage chests around the world. For the few missing components like Embossed Wrapping, I put in a buy order for 50g and had it filled quickly. I’ve been harvesting a ton of resources because it is very fruitful to grind out those aptitude caches each day. I am really enjoying my time spent in the game and while I wish I had a stable group to run expeditions with, I am content to push up my crafting while also collecting gypsum and slowly working on my expertise.

Lastly a final thought. Recently I have been having this inexplicable desire to poke my head into The Division 2. In theory, I should be amped for all of the things going on in Destiny 2, but the removal of further content really burned me on that game. I would however really like to have some sort of a shooter in my rotation, which sent me down the path of never really having given Division 2 a fair shake. I never even hit the level cap, and at some point, I should probably remedy that. Between Guild Wars 2, FFXIV, New World, and now adding Division 2 to the mix… I am going to be busy.

Outriders Worldslayer

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The reveal that most folks are still talking about is World of Warcraft Dragonflight, but yesterday brought us another reveal trailer that I personally had been waiting for. Outriders is a game that I still very much have a burning candle for, and while I am not actively playing it I still very much enjoy popping in to make some earthquakes. When People Can Fly announced the New Horizon changes last November, they also announced that we would be getting a new expansion in 2022. Yesterday we got some more information about what exactly that is going to entail. Unfortunately there is still not a ton of detail but we do have a release date of 6/30/2022 or… the end of Q2 pushing it as far out as you possibly can while still counting it in the first half of 2022. I have no clue what fiscal year Square uses, but it is entirely possible that 7/1 is the beginning of a brand new fiscal year as well.

Essentially all we really have to go on right now is two trailers:

In both cases there is pretty scant details about specifics but we know that we are going to be getting the following features that were discussed.

  • New Story Campaign
  • New Zones – Ice Themed
  • Talent Tree Expansion System
  • New Apocalypse Challenge Tier System which unifies story and expeditions
    • With this a new Apocalypse Tier of gear that features an extra perk slot
  • Alternate Advancement System – allowing you to gain stat points after you finish leveling
  • New Legendary Gear – Class Sets, Shared Sets, and Weapons
  • “Endgame” – They name drop something called the Trial of Tarya Gratar that sounds like maybe a raid but uncertain
  • Pre-Order head start – 10% discount and 48 hour early access

All of this sounds great, but honestly the core problem that I had with Outriders is that I never really fell into a regular group that was playing it. The game is fun solo, but I struggled with trying to push myself forward much further by myself. At launch I really hated the Expeditions mechanic because it was timed, and I HATE being timed in a game. There are some seriously mental issues that I have over that that I am likely never going to get over… very deep scars. When New Horizon released they removed the timers and as a result Expeditions got immediately better. I spent some time hanging out with Warenwolf, and Thalen started leveling… but we never really connected as a proper trio to do serious content. Maybe with the release of Worldslayer I can convince them both to give it a shot as well.

I think the thing that I like the most about Outriders is that it really takes so many of the things I loved about building characters in Diablo 3, and carries them forward to the looter shooter genre. When this game released so much press was focused on how this was not a live service game, and I have to say… maybe it should have been. Square does a phenomenally poor job at creating live service games in general, but Outriders is one that I think could have been improved by having a regular feed of new content. I would likely bought some cash shop cosmetics to fund additional development work. Instead what we have is a game that is going to seemingly go long periods of time with no updates and be extremely easy to sit back down on the shelf in those lull periods. That is not a bad thing either, but since gaming seems to be dominated by MAU counts it harms a game like this in the long run.

I am absolutely going to be poking my head into this when it releases late in June. I am going to pretend that the date is a late birthday present even rather than probably bumping up against some fiscal deadline. I am curious, are any of you also looking forward to this? The thing I still really want to see is cross save support because I would probably even pick up a copy for Xbox Series X to play with friends over there, but I have no interest in leveling another set of characters or collecting a new set of gear.