Genshin Impact Archives - Page 2 of 7 - Tales of the Aggronaut

Overwhelmed by Possibility

November 19, 2020 by Belghast

Well friends, I find myself in the odd position of having way more things right now that I want to play than I can possibly find hours in the day to play them. To be fair I am notorious for trying to juggle two or three games at a time, but I find myself in truly anxiety ridden territory right now. With the blog in theory behaving properly and me getting back in the swing of daily posting, lets delve into what happens when everything gets pushed off to the end of the year.

Destiny 2

This is the game that has been getting the majority of my attention since the launch of Beyond Light. I wrote the other day about the frustrations that came with the weapon sunset and the removal of content, and those frustrations still exist but have lessened a bit. Firstly with the beginning of the Season of the Hunt we have a new method to target specific drops, which helps to fill out that weapon vault once again. Additionally the content seems to have a longer tail than a traditional D2 expansion and I am still seemingly unlocking content long after finishing the story. Lastly I have found out that I can just kill roaming rares on Europa to get a shot at the entire weapon pool from that destination and as such have picked up several options including a new functional legendary Machinegun.

Now the thing that makes ZERO sense to me… and I wish someone could explain is that each time I have run a strike and a legendary has dropped… it has been this legendary. I have looted so many copies of this weapon, but the original roll that I have been holding onto seems to still be the best. Not saying this isn’t a solid weapon, but I would love to see more of the loot pool than just this one shotgun.

Genshin Impact

Genshin Impact is the game that is suffering the most right now due to my many distractions. There are a few events happening and I am failing to participate in them. The challenge with Genshin Impact is that it feels like this game really wants it to be your ONLY game right now. We went from the challenge of not having enough to do in a day to having WAY MORE to do than you can possibly get done. This is awesome for those who are still mainlining this experience, but for me who has pushed it to the back burner I feel like I am getting further and further behind. Grace and I are now no longer on the same world level which limits what we can do together… which is frustrating.

Diablo 3

Diablo 3 Season 22 starts on Friday, and originally I had contemplated just giving this one a skip. The conquests are not super enjoyable looking, but the book pet is sorta adorable. Grace was planning on doing this one solo even if I decided to skip, and as a result I have decided I am going to do the thing as well. More than anything I think I could just use the chill hang time that a Diablo seasonal grind always represents. In truth it doesn’t really take all that much time, and I plan on going easymode demon hunter in order to complete things quickly. May the luck be in my favor that I get a primal ancient yangs or something like that to help push this along faster. The 4th cube slot is going to provide some really odd builds.

Godfall

I feel like in another world and another time this game and me might have had something. However given its relatively lifeless state and the fact that I have so many other things on my plate right now… I am mostly okay watching it whiz by. To be honest I think the only reason why this game is getting any notice is the fact that it is one of the next gen experiences available for the PlayStation 5 right now. I have it on the PC and it has some significant performance issues on my 1080 ti, which admittedly is part of the reason why I am fine not playing it. I hope it gets some tuning passes, but the bigger problem is that the game as a whole feels like it doesn’t really have a soul to bind you to it. It reminds me of all of the story problems that Destiny 1 had of making you feel like you are dropped in the middle of something that was already happening and giving you zero explanation of what the hell is going on. The problem there however is that Destiny 1 had compelling enough gameplay to make me overlook that but Godfall does not.

World of Warcraft Shadowlands

I was more than happy to largely ignore that World of Warcraft existed for the last few weeks. I spent some time doing the Icecrown rares with my guild and managed to gear up my Paladin and even got the much coveted 34 slot bag. However without realizing it… we are now on the cusp of a new expansion launch. Monday night at 5pm my time I will be venturing forth into the Shadowlands and as a result I am preparing for this to suddenly take all of my focus. I’m even contemplating cooking up something in the crock pot during the day so we have a hot and ready meal waiting on us that I can just fix a plate of whenever I get hungry. That way I can focus all of my attention on being frustrated as the servers burn down around me. Given the state of this year I am expecting anything but a smooth launch, but have a glimmer of hope that I will be pleasantly surprised. Regardless it is leveling in a new expansion time and that is a rare and precious thing that I am going to cherish.

Demon’s Souls

I have no idea why I suddenly find this game so damned compelling. It might be that I Just bought a $500 console and I feel like I need to justify that purchase and this is the only truly next generation game available for it. It might also be that I have always been intrigued by the Souls game genre but never really allow myself to get into it, and there is something oddly compelling about the gameplay. I rerolled last night as a Temple Knight, so that I could start out with a decent twohanded option or at least one that can switch hit between one and two. The two handed no block style is definitely more of my jam, and as a result I made it quite a bit further last night before dinner arrived and I got distracted by the comfy sofa. I realize I live in opposite land where my consoles are all hooked up in my office and my sofa is where I do chill laptop gaming. I still have no clue what I am doing but I am enjoying myself so I guess that is the first step?

Ghost of Tsushima

I finally have my PS5 and you are so damned gorgeous and play so incredibly smoothly. Now I just need to figure out a way to duplicate myself so I can enjoy all of these experiences at once without feeling like I am leaving anything on the table. Hold tight my sweet… we will have our time eventually once I stop being so damned distracted.

Bugsnax

In another time and another place we could have been friends weird muppet pokemon skyrim. You just aren’t compelling enough when compared against all of the other things on my plate. I am glad you were given to me freely by the good folks that set up the PlayStation Now games, because I would have felt awkward ignoring you. I know Tam is your friend, and I am sure I am going to feel pangs of regret this weekend as he tells me how wonderful you are. Seriously though… just can’t right now.

Watch Dogs Legion

Legion is a really interesting game, but there is just something about it that never really grabbed me. I love how rich the world is… but it also feels like there isn’t a lot to do in it other than walk around. I feel like this is a game that Grand Theft Auto players would really be into, given that it is mostly a cycle of steal a car, drive to the mission, do the mission and then try and escape and lay low until the heat has dissipated. That has never really been a super enjoyable format for me, because firstly I don’t love driving cars in these sort of games. Secondly I found myself wanting something to do in the points in between the missions. At least in a game like Division where society has fallen… there are random combat encounters as I wind my way across a painfully detailed landscape. Here you just have a bunch of civilians and occasionally one of them might be interesting enough to want to recruit, but mostly you are traversing large spaces to get to small bits of micro content. I want to return to it someday but I am very glad that I chose to go the Ubisoft subscription route rather than plunk down a large wad of cash on this given how distracted I am right now.

Assassin’s Creed Valhalla

This one I feel real sad about because I have it installed… but have not even booted it up. Too many other things pulling my attention in too many other directions. I also know that since the way I play this game is in a purely single player fashion, that I will get just as much enjoyment from playing it in 2022 as I will in 2020. Someday I will visit it and roam around in its Norse goodness. This is also another situation where I am real glad I opted for the monthly sub rather than buying it outright.

There we have it friends… my very first world problem that I am lucky to have. On the other side of the coin I am still regularly playing caretaker for my parents, and more of my family has contracted covid so there are stressors there as well. I am thankful that I am so lucky as to be constantly distracted by my hobbies, because this is a year where I am clung to them like a safety blanket. They have been what has allowed me to stay sane through all of this, and while I am in sort of overload mode right now it will give me plenty to focus on as we go into 2021 and realize that things are not going to be magically better. I fully expect that 2021 will feel an awful lot like 2020, minus one major factor… that we will have a change in the oval office. The plague will still be out there and even though vaccines are on the cusp of release it is going to take a significant amount of time to distribute them far and wide enough to make a dent in the numbers. I am very thankful to have many other worlds that I can escape into when this one is just too much to handle.

AggroChat #322 – Creativity and Gaming

November 15, 2020 by Belghast

Featuring: Ammo, Ashgar, Belghast, Grace, Kodra, Tamrielo and Thalen

Tonight we start off the show with a brief discussion of the console releases this week and how none of us actually managed to get one yet. Bel has one that is still shipping and Tam has had zero luck even getting to that point in the process. Bel talks a bit about Destiny 2 Beyond Light and how it is a solid expansion but cannot make up for three years of content that was removed from the game. The “sunset” has had some pretty negative impact on the game and even Bungie agrees that they maybe went too far. We talk a bit about the first major Genshin Impact patch and how it added way more content than we were expecting. Finally we dive into a discussion about games and hobbies and seeking out a place for creative expression. We also talk about the differences between creating something that is physical and tangible that you can hold in your hand versus something that takes place solely online.

Topics Discussed

Console Releases
- Sams Doesn’t Understand Preorders
Destiny 2 Beyond Light
- Good Expansion
- Bad Idea removing so much content
Genshin Impact Patch 1.1
- City Reputations
- Way More Content than Expected
Games and Hobbies
- Creative Expression
- Creating Tangible Things

Genshin Marvelous Merchandise Event

October 27, 2020 by Belghast

This morning I didn’t have a ton to talk about so I thought I would talk a little about the current event happening in Genshin Impact. For the most part this is a give away of a lot of items disguised as a daily event. If you go over to the events tab you are going to see an entry for Marvelous Merchandise, and this is going to essentially tell you where the merchant is on any given today. This morning is the second day of the event on the American servers. I am guessing you have two options here… either roam the world aimlessly looking for the vendor or simply reveal the “hint” which just straight up tells you where to go.

So for today he was available in Springvale, and when you get close enough you will start to see the Slime Box icon that represents this vendor. Liben reminds me an awful lot of Don Kanonji from Bleach and this thing seems to be a trope I have seen in several other anime of having a weird sometimes slightly creepy dude that helps the protagonist. You and Paimon are very suspicious of what he is asking… essentially collecting random materials from the world and trading them in for a mystery box.

So far he has asked for some really basic stuff that I already had tons of laying around in my inventory. The first day he asked for the basic button mushrooms that can be found pretty much everywhere in the world and by this point I have a significant number of. On day two he asked for pinecones, which again can be found practically everywhere and I also had a large number collected. I am guessing this pattern is going to keep going as he asks for something basic that then allows us to cash in for goodies. The only day that is going to be a challenge is if he starts asking for things like meat, since I tend to cook my way through those as soon as I get them.

After you hand in your materials he is going to allow you to open up one of the seven elemental slime themed boxes. The first day I opened electro and you can see it still shows as unavailable on day two. Next I went for pyro and am slowly going to work my way across the boxes left to right. It appears that each day your box is not a fixed set of rewards and instead pulled from a random pool of options. Essentially you seem to get some number of primogems, some amount of mora and then maybe some extra items thrown in.

On the first day I pulled 30 Primogems and 40,000 Mora which is absolutely worth the few minutes it took to knock this event out. On day two from the Pryo box I pulled 4 purple experience books, 30 Primogems, and 20,000 Mora. Like I said earlier it appears based on some quick research that the box you choose doesn’t actually indicate the rewards that you are going to get and instead you just get rewards from a pool of available options. So far there appear to be four patterns that you can pull.

30 Primogems and Extra Mora aka 40,000
30 Primogems and 3 copies of 3 different green quality talent books
30 Primogems, 20,000 Mora, and an assortment of experience books
30 Primogems, 20,000 Mora, and an assortment of enhancement ore

I am seeing reports of some folks getting different numbers of items within each category, so for example one reported getting 8 Mystic Enhancement Ore and another person reported getting 6 Mystic and 6 Fine Enhancement Ore. I am not sure if world rank and level have anything to do with this calculation, but essentially those four patterns seem to be what is available.

Another aspect of the event is that by opening boxes each day you are going to end up getting a huge chunk of Battle Pass progress. However that isn’t much of a driving force as I have recently completed my Battle Pass and reaped all of the rewards from it. I find myself in a place where I have less of a focus each day because for the longest time I had been pushing for AR40 and completing BP50… both of which are goals that I have accomplished. Now I am more or less in a daily pattern of logging in, doing the bounties and then trying to farm something useful for character progression.

We are on the cusp of patch 1.1 and I am hoping that on November 11th when it drops we will have more activities to revitalize the gameplay. This currently event isn’t exactly ground breaking, but it is a good opportunity to get some free wishes, which I thoroughly approve of.

AggroChat #320 – Asymmetrical Difficulty

October 25, 2020 by Belghast

Featuring: Ashgar, Belghast, Kodra and Thalen

Tonight we are down several folks because of various reasons. Grace and Tam are both travelling and Ammo was off celebrating her birthday. As a result we go forward with one of the smaller casts we have had in awhile. Tonight we talk a bit about Genshin Impact and the recent Resin adjustments that have been announced. Bel talks about his experiences with the World of Warcraft Exile’s Reach new player starter island. This goes a bit into the awkward fit that it causes combined with the level squish that came in with the Shadowlands pre-patch. We then get into a discussion about games that support asymmetrical difficulty or what is generally referred to as a “handicapping system”. We talk about how this can maybe make it easier to play games with your young children that can’t quite manipulate the moves that well yet. Kodra and Thalen share their progress with Ring Fit and we delve into a discussion about the recent D&D 5th Edition games that have entered early access. Finally we talk a little bit about Spiritfarer and the charming life of being a friendly grim reaper.