MMORPG

Tyria Fits Perfectly

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Good Morning Folks. Last week I talked about thrashing around in a nothing quite fits gaming mood, as I bounced from game to game. Over the weekend, I found the thing that fits… at least for this moment. Guild Wars 2 and I have a sordid past of being an alpha tester, resigning from said alpha test because I did not understand the appeal of the damned game… and then years later falling in love with its particular blend of free range objective game-play. My brain was very much WoWified and this game was effectively the anti-WoW at the time in the manner in which it structured game-play… or more so didn’t structure it. I played heavily last around the launch of Janthir and through its first patch, and then tagged out in an ARPG fueled haze for half a year before finally returning over the weekend.

I was essentially two patches behind, thought I had at least started on Godspawn a little bit before wandering off last time. I spent a bit of time on Saturday catching up on the story… not necessarily because I wanted to play the story… but because I wanted access to the new zone. Why did I want access to the new zone? To tame this fuzzy chonker of a Bee for my ranger that I named Sir Buzzington. Not only is the Bee pet cute, but it has a rather solid kit of abilities which I am pretty happy with. The best of these is Honey Toss which provides the negative effects of slow and cripple… but is also just sort of funny to think about in the first place. Once I got the bee I hit one of the common walls where I needed to skill up a new faction ability for the zone, and I never quite returned to the quest chain after getting that. I am sure in the coming days I will do so.

I spent a lot of the weekend knocking out things on the daily and weekly wizard chores because I was trying to build up 1000 of the wizard chore currency to buy the current legendary weapon starter kit. I missed the first couple of these, but I have been pretty much buying each additional one as they come out because if nothing else… they give me a free gift of might or gift of magic. Essentially I have everything that I need to craft Kudzu the Legendary Long Bow except for a Gift of Exploration and a Gift of Battle. The first comes from doing a full old world Tyrian zone completion and the second from the World versus World mastery track. Luckily when you do a world completion, you end up getting two of the Gifts of Exploration, but given I have none of them available… that means I have apparently crafted four legendary weapons at this point. Time flies when you are literally burning through gold on crafting.

During the podcast on Saturday I chipped away at world completion and I have pushed the Ranger up to 72%… which is easily the highest of my characters who have not completed it yet. Then last night I spent a chunk of time in World Versus World and ground out roughly a third of the mastery track. This really is the perfect dichotomy of a deeply focused activity, because doing World Versus World means you need to be following a squad and participating in structured game-play for multiple hours at a time. On the exact opposite end of the spectrum you have World Completion which is just ticking off boxes in a zone, and doing a bunch of meandering activities until the tracker stops pointing you in a direction and the game awards you a loot box telling you that you hit 100%. I really like that there are things in this game that scratch both itches for me, where I am laze about aimlessly doing things that also work towards objectives, or I can be super serious and also be ticking off boxes.

I think that is the thing that Guild Wars 2 does better than any game out there… is it gives you a bunch of low barrier of entry “default activities”. One of the challenges that I have with other MMORPGs is easing back into them, because it feels like have to remember way too much about the game in order to be effective at doing anything. In Final Fantasy XIV for example you can always pop back in and start the story… but you will quickly hit a gear check wall where you either have to buy your way to freedom or spend some time grinding dungeons to gear up enough to complete the next quest. In Guild Wars 2… I am as geared as I will ever be or at least at this point gearing is really just a matter of minutiae. I can pop back in and join a World Boss train or choose a zone that is about to start its meta and know that I can immediately and seamlessly merge back into the world and be doing stuff without having to think a lot about it. For others they probably spend time roaming around zones and harvesting resources which again… super chill activity that feels purposeful given how damned well the trade system works.

Most MMORPGs feel heavy and cumbersome… like they require too much effort to remember what the hell you were doing last time you played. I never really have that problem with Guild Wars 2 because it sort of scratches the same itches for me that playing an ARPG does. Sure there is story and absolutely it is well written and enjoyable… but I can also just hang out in a zone and do a bunch of objectives as they pop up and feel like I am doing something… without having to care too much about what it is that I am doing. Granted I am over a decade into this game and have purchased all manner of quality of life improvements… like a device that just shows me what world boss is next to spawn, or infinite use gathering tools or the Copper-Fed Salvage-O-Matic which limits my need to keep going back to town. Even in the base version of the game though… the horizons are pretty broad for what all you can do. Really I need to spend some more time in the map metas for the expansions because there are all sorts of goodies that I could get there that I do not have.

Anyways for now I am having a lot of fun, and it is always shocking to me how much I actually enjoy World vs World. I do get annoyed how many private squads there are and how insistent they are that you join their discord. Instead I tend to just look for the tag and follow it around and assist as best as I can… because I have no interest in joining yet another discord. We had a pretty great series of skirmishes in our home borderland last night as blue kept trying to take Dreadfall Bay from us. Admittedly I spent most of my time up top the rampart either using one of the Arrow Carts or raining down my own AOE arrow attack. Occasionally we would go out and push the nearest objective, because they kept trying to starve us resources from the nearest camp. It really was the optimal farming stance for objective tracks, because it made sure that my participation was maxed out at all times. While I am here for the Gift of Battle, I am trying to still make myself useful by doing some of the non-glamorous work of guarding objectives.

I figure this is probably going to hold my attention at least until the release of Path of Exile 3.26 which is supposedly in June.

Guild Wars 2 Massive Discount

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Good Afternoon Folks. This is a bit of a rare post because generally speaking if I do not make my morning post… I just don’t post at all for that day. I spent my morning up at my folks house helping them with some stuff and now that I am back I figured I might as well knock out a post, because I have some potentially time sensitive information. First off if you do not own Guild Wars 2 or are missing any of the content drops… there is a pretty massive sale happening right now on the official storefront. Coinciding with it there is also a sale taking place on Steam but there is a bit of a higher markup there. If you have never played this game you really should especially now that you can get a decades worth of content for $50. That is legitimately one of the best deals out there.

While I was in game I noticed that they once again had the Cat Angel Jadebot skin up… so I broke into my gem reserves and picked it up. I have gone back and forth about whether or not I wanted this for awhile, but I entirely blame Dungeon Crawler Carl and Princess Donut for making me want this. There is no way that given the chance… Donut would not flap around me with wings. I need to dive into the new content which also dropped this week because there is a new Ranger pet Bee that you can get. I’ve been several different mains throughout the years… starting as a Warrior then transitioning to Necro… but I think my true spirit is that of the Ranger. Longbow and Greatsword for life yo! Regardless of how generally selfish that build is since it doesn’t produce Quickness or Alacrity.

I played some Titanquest II and so far I do not think this game is really my jam. Melee combat felt a bit too sluggish for my tastes and pretty much everything seemed to want me to spam the dodge button instead of engaging with mobs up close and personal. Maybe this feels good as ranged, but so far it is not necessarily my jam. However if you are curious for yourself you might check out the Steam page to see if you can still request access to the playtest. The game seems solid enough but leans more towards the never get hit sort of play style that I do not personally enjoy. I am sure it will find an audience, especially with the crowd that feels like the ARPG genre reached its peak with Diablo II.

Another game that I have been fiddling with a bit is Gunlocked. Essentially this is what if Vampire Survivors was a Bullet-Hell shooter. The game starts out a bit weird in that your only attack for a bit is a radar that sweeps around your ship and then marks targets with a lock on, that your ship then fires attacks at to mostly one-shot. As you pick up power-ups you gain a whole slew of interesting attacks slowly giving you a bunch of different ways to take out the ever present deluge of ships and obstacles on your screen. I found out about this game when the sequel was announced on the fediverse, which caused me to go look at the original since I dug the art style. I also checked out Boons and Burdens which is sort of a similar concept but this time smash tv meets vampire survivor but you play as one of several element themed wizards. There is a bundle for both games that is currently just shy of $6.

Another thing that I picked up from the ongoing steam sale is Dragon’s Dogma II. I had played a bit of the first game but never really got fully into it. I thought given my recent foray back into Monster Hunter with Wilds, I might check this out and see if I can get into the sequel. All in all so far I am pretty intrigued. There seems to be more of a clear story element going on here, whereas I felt like I was largely roaming around aimlessly in the first game. So far it sort of feels like a weird version of a Bethesda game in a good way. Not sure how far I will get but I am liking it so far.

I’m also not entirely done with Monster Hunter Wilds either, and I am hoping this weekend I can connect up with my friend Ace and do some more group hunts. In a perfect world maybe also connect up with Thalen, Ammo, or Sita for shenanigans since they all have compatible time zones. I am not in a massive push to clear anything right now, but do want to try out some Charge Blade nonsense to see if I actually like the weapon.

Do you have significant weekend plans? What are you playing currently? Drop me a line below.

Dark Knight Mode

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Hey Folks. I’m in a bit of a weird place right now with Monster Hunter Wilds. I am 56 hours into the game and HR 66 and essentially “done” with the game. That is not to say that I have stopped playing it, but I am also sort of out of stretch goals. I’ve completed the set of gear that I want and the weapons that I wanted… and have taken down the hardest tempered fight currently in the game. I feel like either Monster Hunter Wilds is a much easier game than Monster Hunter World was… either that or my muscle memory kicked in and I am just much better at the game than I was when World launched in 2018. I am also playing from the beginning on my platform of choice (PC) with my control scheme of choice (Mouse and Keyboard) so I figure some of it has to account for that.

Here is an attempt at a Photoshop image that pulls together all of the relevant data points about my gear load out. I am wearing the full Tier 8 Arkveld Alpha armor set and rocking a Guiding Artorious Sword and Shield and a Binder Mace Hammer. I’ve gone hard into defensive stats because I really enjoy being up in the face of the monster and “tanking it” in a manner that I would normally Tank an MMORPG boss. I spent a good chunk of last night running around with Ace and doing various hunts that happened to be up, and it was delightful. They are far better at breaking parts, and my job was to attempt to hold the attention of the monster as best as possible while they peppered it in the butt with arrows. I remembered there being some form of taunt in this game, and I need to look up to see if there is a gem I can add to my weapon that does that.

The most important part of my daily routine however is going to Suja and petting Poogie. In this version you get random items from petting the recurring pig. So far I have not uncovered any outfits and the only customization seems to be the ability to rename Poogie… which would be blasphemy. Hopefully in future patches we get the proper retinue of outfits to deck out our piggie pal. I do love the frog on head though with this rendition. For those who have not found Poogie yet, you have to get to chapter 3-2 and from that point forward you can port to Suja and pet until your heart is content… pending you know when you stop.

I also spent a bit of time and updated my hunter profile. I was still wearing Chatacabra armor up until this point, which was the first set of gear that I made when I started playing the game. The profile name system is a bit awkward so I attempted to come up with something sufficiently stupid. I think it mostly has a cohesive feel now. I am not sure that anyone actually looks at hunter profiles. I’ve not really checked any out of my friends and squadmates other than Ammo when she first joined. I should really do that, to see if anyone has something brilliant on theirs. At some point I need to finish up all of the optional quests that I have yet to run at least once. I lost momentum when I hit the endgame and focused entirely on getting my gear. Now that I am geared… I am a bit rudderless until more content is added.

Mostly I have been chipping away at various gear sets for cosmetic purposes. Essentially once you hit High Rank, any gear set that is blue, purple, or orange can be used for transmog. There are generally two color channels on each item and there is a wide variety of looks you can choose from, as well as some relatively crappy gear that seems to exist purely for cosmetic purposes. I wish however you could transmog your weapons, and dye them. I find it annoying that I was able to dye the entire Arkveld set, but I still have a glaringly white weapon that no longer matches it. Fashion Hunter is probably the true endgame, and I am slowly chipping away at the Jin Dahaad set. I’ve also crafted the full Odog set which I have always thought looked cool. I do kinda wish the Red variant from Worlds still existed. Maybe in a later update we will get the non-Guardian Odog.

I have no clue why… but in every game I end up with what feels like a default activity. For me it is beating up this dumb chicken. I have no clue WHY I like killing it so much… but I really do. I always “feel like chicken tonight”. It doesn’t hurt that Tempered variants are up almost constantly and they all seem to have really good rewards. This morning for example before I sat down to write this post I knocked one out and got three Wyvern gems from it. Basically the rewards that I have been getting is what has been dictating what monsters I hunt. I think I have largely collected a full set of the Tempered monster Investigations, and the Frenzied variants seem way less common. Maybe as I knock out some more of the two monsters at once optional quests, other things will open up. I should probably set my focus on doing those soon-ish just to see if the landscape shifts at all.

Monster Hunter Wilds is a phenomenal game… but also one that I find myself lacking the desire to grind for grind’s sake. I’ve got a couple of friends in the 70s, one in the 80s… and one that is 119 as of this morning. My guess is that they are playing with a fixed group of friends, because the act of doing group hunts is way more enjoyable than solo hunting. I could happily log in to do group content with my friend Ace every night, but my will to keep pushing just for myself is waning. I am likely going to take a break from the game for a bit, at least until the April update that adds new content. I will probably keep doing weekly quests as they show up. However I knocked out most of those in a single evening. I remember all of this taking me so much longer to get to in World, but again… that was really my very first Monster Hunter game.

Fifty Two and Farming Gear

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Good Morning Folks. I spent most of the weekend playing Monster Hunter Wilds and I have officially crossed the threshold into mainline feeming over this game. For the first week or so I was also playing a copious amount of Path of Exile, but this weekend that mostly dropped and I am all in on hunting some monsters. I think it was Wednesday night that I hit the credit roll and transitioned into High Rank, and then this weekend I completed the rest of the main story quests. It is weird though because the game ends at Chapter 6.1 which makes me think that as they release content patches, they will add more main story this time around. I remember them adding additional story quests when they added certain major fights to the game. For example I remember a whole story arc surrounding the addition of Deviljho aka Pickle.

The levels have mostly been coming on their own, because I have been focused on gearing. Going into High Rank I crafted a full set of Guardian Arkveld armor and it did in fact carry me all the way through the rest of the main story. I am now turning around and trying to piece together a set of Arkvulcan armor which is built off farming the non-Guardian version of Arkveld. I’ve managed to pull together four pieces of the set as well as upgrading my defensive charm. I am going super heavy into defensive stats because my gameplay right now is to mostly get right up in the face of the monster and do guard attacks hoping to lock them up in a clash.

Going along with this play-style, I have crafted the Lala Barina Tier 8 weapon. This essentially allows me to play more of a support role in fights and build up to a paralyze. I am also working on the Arkveld weapon set and have crafted the Tier 7 version, but lack the tier 3 hunter tickets in order to craft it into the final tier 8 version. I figure for now if I make a full set of Orange gear I am pretty much going to be able to tackle anything content wise for awhile. I did not necessarily intend on building the Kut-Ku hammer but the previous version was available on sale at the shipment vendor which made it super simple to get that most of the other hammers. My REAL Hammer that I am working on is the Jail Hammer series which is also paralysis based. I’m essentially a few t1 hunter tickets and a bird wyvern gem away from crafting the Tier 8 version. I don’t play hammer a ton, but I do like the way it feels if I want to beat down some monster heads.

Right now my biggest goal in the game is to get my Arkvulcan Mail which is the last piece of the normal Arkveld set that I need. I had to take a break though because I was chain farming Arkveld… and there is only so much of that fight that I can take. I spent a bit of time last night farming the Fire Chicken event quest with my friend Ace because it rewards a ton of cooking materials. Additionally there was the chance of getting a drop from that encounter that I needed for crafting something else on my list, but for the life of me I cannot remember which piece. It might have been finishing out my Defensive Charm III, but I am not entirely certain. Mostly we were beating down the chicken for crafting materials since that is one of the current event quests.

Another thing that I have been doing is looking out for good tempered mobs and saving them as investigations. This is your reminder that this is a thing that you can do. Essentially when you make a quest into an investigation it costs a little bit of guild points but allows you to essentially chain farm them forever. Most vanilla versions of monsters have an optional quest associated with them that you can farm over and over for materials, but this is not the case with a lot of tempered or frenzied monsters. For those you have to effectively be on the lookout for them appearing natively in zones… where you can snapshot them as investigations. Last night I found a Tempered Arkveld for example and will probably make a run at it tonight to see how doable it is. I need to farm a bunch of 8 star fights so I can get those tasty Tier 3 Hunter Tickets.

All told though, I am having a freaking blast and feel like Sword and Shield is the weapon I have been looking for all of this time. In Monster Hunter World I was a Mall Ninja… aka a Longsword Andy. I mostly enjoyed it but I really wanted to be able to soak more damage than it allowed. I tried Lance, but it did not have the mobility that I wanted. I saw my friend Pizza Maid playing Sword and Shield to great success, but am not really sure why I never gave it a spin. At some point I want to make another run at Charge Blade, because it feels like it might be the super advanced version of Sword and Shield. For now though I am pretty happy with my combo of SNS and Hammer. I only really use hammer when a monster has gone to sleep because it hits harder than anything I can do with a sword or shield.

Where are you in the progression of Monster Hunter Wilds? Are you enjoying it so far? What weapon and gear are you running? Drop me a line below.