A Year of Books

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I realize I have not written much over the break, and in part, it is due to the fact that I have come down with some random unnamable illness and part because I just needed to vegetate for a while. Now I find myself barreling towards the end of the calendar year and am in that “reviewing” type mode. One of the biggest changes that 2023 brought on is the fact that I read more books this year than I have ever read in a single year… or honestly over the course of several years. While I love books and love everything that there is about a bookstore… specifically the smell of moldering print… I was pretty reliably a “two to five books per year” type person. When something really caught my fancy I would grind through all of the books available in a specific series, but for the most part I picked at books rather than devoured them. My wife was the opposite… and all the time I spent playing the latest MMORPG or ARPG she was curled up on the sofa shotgunning books directly into her brain one after another.

What changed you might ask? Well, this transformation was in large part due to a little thing called the Libby App. It isn’t like my wife and I have not had library cards before… we both spent a large chunk of our adolescence in libraries as they were generally safe places for nerds kind. It was around this time last year that we got our first of many new library cards, and around this time I connected it to the Libby App for the first time. Over the years I have transitioned from reading physical books to reading almost entirely digital books for sheer convenience, and about a decade ago I tried this whole nonsense and found the entire process of getting ebooks from the library to be immensely fiddly. It left a sour taste in my mouth, but apparently, Libby formerly known as Overdrive has come along and smoothed out the rough bits allowing you to link your library card and have it automagically integrate with your eBook reader of choice.

One of the most important lessons that we learned was that different Library systems have different licenses for ebooks and audiobooks. So by going to some nearby communities, we were able to pick up library cards from three different systems… in our state, there is only one other major system and we hope to road trip to get a library card with it soon as well. Between these three systems, it has given us a broad reach of titles and the ability to mitigate some of the hold queues in favor of the shortest. Of the fifty-one books that I have consumed this year, I would say probably 10 were reading the books… and the majority were books that I consumed in audiobook form. My happy place is grinding away in an MMORPG or ARPG while listening to a book and I can legitimately do this for hours at a time.

When it comes to buying audiobooks… I’ve landed on a site called AudioBooksNow. Audible mostly feels like a monopoly and it is way the hell too expensive for most things. Sure Audible has a whole subscription service that supposedly gives you access to lots of content for one “low low price” but I have yet to find a single thing on it that I wanted to read when I wanted to read it. To be fair… we’ve had the same problem with Kindle Unlimited as a concept. I have no clue how this site charges so much less, but I am not going to ask too many questions because based on my research ahead of time they do in fact seem legitimate and well-reviewed. I think at this point I have bought four books and the majority of those were brand new releases that had 40 or so week hold backlogs in the library system. The majority of everything I have consumed comes from three of the four major library systems in my state.

I’ve been using Bookwyrm.social to track my progress this year. Honestly, I am really happy that I had the foresight to set up an account and start using it at the beginning of last year. Since every service seems to have a “year in review” functionality, I should not be shocked that Bookwyrm recently patched one in. If you are so inclined you can check out my year in review here. Largely at the beginning of last year, I set a target of 20 books, and last of last night I finished my 51st for the year blowing that goal out of the water significantly. I think I will probably set forty books as my goal for 2024 because while I am not from the tribe of “line must always go up”, I do think that maybe twenty was a bit low. I started my first book of the year on December 26th and it took me until January 8th to finish it. These days it takes me around two days per book pending I don’t get terribly derailed.

I would say probably my favorite books of the year are the “Viv” series from Travis Baldree first Legends and Lattes technically released last year, and then Bookshops and Bonedust which came out in November of this year. One of the things that I am learning about myself as I venture forth into books that are recommended to me by friends… is that I seem to really care about the characters more than the setting or the story. I love all of the characters in these books and would fight to protect them all. Mostly they arrived at the right time for me when I had just finished what I would term a “heavy read” and were lite and fun entertainment. I’ve tried to hold specific books in reserve like Scalzi’s Starter Villain for example as something that I knew I would enjoy as something I could effortlessly dive into after finishing more serious fare.

I think the book series that I am the most conflicted over is “The Craft Sequence” by Max Gladstone. I enjoyed the totality of this series… but I gotta say that there were some weak spots. You can tell that the entire sequence was planned ahead of time as the first several books introduce you to characters in almost “stand-alone” stories, that eventually weave their way back into the main story arc of the world with book four… which is technically chronologically the first book… and book five which brings everything together. Book six… feels like it should be starting a new sequence but just lands somewhat flat serving mostly as a way of giving a complete story arc to one of the main characters from book three. Three Parts Dead was phenomenal… Four Roads Cross… also phenomenal. Two Serpents Rise and Full Fathom Five were a bit middling… and then Last First Snow and Ruin of Angels I appreciate for the pieces of story that they give… but I didn’t super enjoy large chunks of both books. There is a new series centered on the best character… Tara Abernathy… and I am certain that before 2024 is up I will have given it a shot. Mostly I find myself conflicted because while I enjoyed myself, I am not entirely certain I would recommend the series heavily to others.

As we enter the next year… the book that I am probably looking forward to the most is Alecto the Ninth. This is the fourth part of quite possibly the strangest book series I have ever read The Locked Tomb. Every book has been wildly different than the previous books and I am mostly on board just to see where the hell this is going to go in the end. I am also really looking forward to The Relentless Legion by J.S. Dewes the third book in The Divide Series but there is no real tentative information on when it might drop. Another book series that I am anxiously waiting on is Apostles of Mercy the third book in the Noumena series by Lindsay Ellis which got delayed from a late 2023 release to a mid-2024 one. This similarly is a series that has had high points and low points but I am very much here for the journey. I’ve very recently become obsessed with the Alchemical Journeys series by Seanan McGuire and will be looking forward to reading Tidal Creatures when it also drops in mid-2024. I am also interested in whatever the next book in the Dresden Files series ends up being, but I gotta say after 17 books it does not feel anywhere near as fresh as it once did.

As I look forward to 2024, I am looking forward to as many adventures in books as I had this year. What books are you yourself looking forward to? Drop me a line below.

Zappy Zap Zap

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Morning Folks! Yesterday I wrapped up my third character of “Bel League” and this is ultimately the one I originally planned as my “first alt”. Essentially, I wanted a low-pressure map blaster that I knew I could make work on minimal or easily obtained gear. Essentially the idea is to go Champion for survival and Lightning Arrow for ease of getting off the ground. I am more or less following the template of Belgladius, with some items that I used in the original Raider version of the build that was my Ancestor league starter. Primarily the build uses Shadows and Dust for rampage and unholy might as well as some additional Mana Leech, and Perseverance to turn my permanent fortify stacks into permanent Onslaught as well as a bit of Attack Damage since I am stacking both Armor and Evasion. In this specific build I am throwing in a Poised Prism because it is just a generically good quiver with some resists on it and The Taming which similarly fixes some resists and offers up a bit of elemental damage.

The biggest challenge that I find myself in currently is getting enough levels to finish out my tree and I am one level away from 78 which will allow me to actually equip the belt. I also need to sort out my Pantheon and at a minimum get the freeze immunity. One of the huge benefits of a character like this is that it slides into maps extremely easily. I’ve been grinding tier 5 maps to get some levels and am about to transition up into yellow maps. By the time I am in my 90s I should be ripping through Red maps without much issue and hopefully running red/blue altars for drops. Between now and then I really need to find myself a new bow because while I found a lucky six link along the way 566 dps will not cut it for long. Realistically I need something more in the range of 800-900 to really rip through the t16 maps.

I also probably need to find some better gear, because right now after raiding my vault… I am in an “aggressively fine” state. When I ding 78 I will be able to equip Perseverance, and then with a little harvest crafting, I should be able to balance out my resistances. This will still leave me far in the red as far as Chaos goes, but pending I am careful with map modifiers that should not really impact me heavily even in red maps. I would really like to see my armor and resistances a little bit higher, somewhere in the range of 20k so I will need to be on the lookout for good replacements to slot in. If I find two amazing rings, I might be able to keep the resists while also pouring on some chaos. My amulet is also pretty crappy but I am mostly using it to get some attributes I need to equip other items. If you are curious here is a POB I dumped this morning with the current state of my gear.

None of this really matters though because this is what it looks like to play this build… admittedly with a MTX that makes the Lightning Arrow a bit more vibrant. The biggest challenge is how much I need that Mana Leech because there will be times when I run out of mana while mapping and have to wait for the Leech to catch up. In theory, I should have -7 mana on my Amulet and Rings to make this build feel a bit more stable. It works well enough while you are rolling but definitely suffers from the “never stop killing” problem because when there are lulls in the density I start to bottom out my reserves. While I enjoy Boneshatter quite a bit and it feels good to map on it… this is really the gameplay I want when I just want to delete a bunch of surplus maps for goodies. I need to finish out the fourth lab at some point today, but I don’t figure I will have any issues with it.

So with Lightning Arrow coming online, I am very likely to fall into the old familiar pattern of zipping through maps quickly to gain sulphite and then spending that sulphite while delving on the Boneshatter Juggernaut. For the past several leagues I have preferred to have some sort of fast mapper character and then a delve character and alternate back and forth between the two. I am hoping to get my Lightning Arrow character at least to around 95. I am doubting that I will make the pivot into magic find like I did last league, but If I just happen into a couple of extremely well-rolled Ventor rings and a very well-rolled Goldwyrm I might alter those plans. I mostly hope to be able to juice the maps through the league mechanic and see what all I can get doing that and maybe blending in some delirium.

Anyways! I am off to get ready and go do some shopping. I hope you are all having a great week as we slide forward towards Christmas. I am technically “off” now but I had to pop in and deal with some work this morning. I am looking forward to the long break and finishing my fiftieth book of the year and hopefully having a bit of a much needed mental reset.

Sometimes its Bricked

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If you have followed me over the last few days, you have watched me playing around with one of the new transfigured abilities called Volcanic Fissure of Snaking. My idea behind the build was to go with Chieftain which gives me easy access to lots of resistances as well as Hinekora, Death’s Fury for big explosions, and Tawhoa, Forest’s Strength for what is essentially a form of melee-based spell echo. Instead of leaning into scaling a bunch of physical damage, the idea was to convert all of my physical fire damage and instead scale that, chance to ignite and ignite damage with proliferation. The hope was that I could run around with a mace and shield, which would give me extra defenses, and then paint the room in firey eruptions. Leveling through the campaign this felt excellent and after crafting a few clusters it seemed to solve my problem with single-target damage.

However when I swapped over from the campaign to tier 1 unmodified maps… I had some significant damage problems. Ash urged me to grab one of my spare boneshatter axes and throw it on the character, which meant swapping around a ton of points that I had put into shield defenses and attack damage while holding a shield. This however killed my defenses and meant that I saw the “rip” screen quite a bit more. So I am living in this middle ground between having enough defenses and having enough offensive power to make up for not having said defenses. I am only level 74, and I know that levels could help solve this problem… but I am not really sure it is worth the uphill battle and the constant flow of regrets to try and salvage this character. The only positive is that I didn’t really go out of my way to acquire gear for the character and most everything I am wearing is stuff I had lying around in my bank already.

On top of the ascendancy benefits, I went chieftain because I thought starting on the left-hand side of the screen near all of the fire and physical damage buffs would help me. The problem is… it is sort of hard to scale both physical and fire damage while also adding enough defensive layers to make the whole mess viable. Then there is the problem with the ability Volcanic Fissure of Snaking itself… because using it with a two-hander means that it is almost comically slow. So that adds a whole other thing into the mix, that I would in theory need to blend in a bunch of attack speed to try and make the mess feel a bit better. There are other ascendancies that might be better served for this sort of build, but I fear that they would have to rely on clusters even more than I currently am. I keep thinking that Physical to Fire Melee Ignite is more viable than it might be currently.

Ultimately I wanted to play around with one of the new abilities and I had a lot of fun with it… until I didn’t. I think there is a build here, but I feel like I am maybe not capable of building it. At a minimum, I think this might be one of those things that is a bit harder to build without easy access to some specific uniques that would make the one-handed version viable. Again I am annoyed at the restrictions of SSF, but I might shelve this until I finally do migrate out of the private league. I think I am going to low-key start trying to farm things that I know I can turn into currency when the transfer to trade takes place. It will be very hard coming from behind over a month into the league and trying to gather up the currency needed to finish my builds. I feel so hamstrung by not having access to trade that while I have enjoyed the communal nature of the league… I am not sure how up for this I will be in the future. Maybe as a short-term 10-day league, but never one that goes on this long.

I think I figured out yesterday what it is that I like so much about trade leagues in Path of Exile. In a game like Diablo III, loot is so plentiful and there are truthfully a very limited number of possibilities that it is a foregone conclusion that you will see a given item. Enough time put in and it will absolutely with certainly drop, and often in even an ancient legendary version and maybe if you are super lucky a primal. Path of Exile however has a much wider loot pool and it is absolutely possible that you can spend an entire league grinding away and never actually see something… for example, we’ve yet to see a Profane Proxy for Kodra but in past leagues, I was chucking these into Loreweave recipes because we had spares. Trade League allows me to convert the things I am getting, or even the things I enjoy farming the most… into the items that I am now seeing drop. Everything that I do feels like I am working towards some deterministic goal and I like that a lot.

This is a similar problem I am having in Last Epoch, I have run countless helmet nodes in the Monolith and still have no Herald of the Scurry to show for it. I also have a slew of Necromancer drops that I have never seen and have no real deterministic way of farming them. It makes me question my thoughts about the trade league going into that game, and whether or not I would feel happier playing with access to buy items from other players. Path of Exile and the trade league I think have skewed my feelings about this in ways that I did not expect. I just get frustrated with the inefficiency of waiting around for a specific thing to drop, rather than just converting other items into currency and buying exactly the item you wanted instead.

I didn’t expect to be so vehemently turned into a “trade league enjoyer” but I guess that has happened. I am not sure what I want to do at this point. I might take a bit of a break from Path of Exile and go back to Baldur’s Gate III and try and wrap that up before the end of the year.

Great Clear Bad Bosses

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So I am nearing the end of the campaign on BelGoesFireSnake my Volcanic Fissure of Snaking Chieftain, and I am of mixed opinions. It is amazing to see the entire screen erupting into fire and it brings me immense joy to see a screen covered in magma like the above screenshot. The problem is that it comes with the fairly extreme price of most of your attacks not actually hitting your target. So when you are trying to fight a boss… it feels really bad against anything with sufficient heft. So for clearing entire screens… this build has you covered and does it in a very fun way but anything that is even the slightest bit tanky will feel like you are dealing negative damage.

Right now this is suffering from some of the same problems that I had with my Shield Crush Chieftain from last league. Avatar of Fire may not be worth it. Between it and the fire mastery I am converting 90% of my physical damage to Fire… at the cost of dealing ONLY fire damage. This is why I have leaned heavily into Ignite damage and elemental proliferation… which I just took out of my main five-link because I was able to craft a Fan the Flames cluster. I think I might have to go more heavily into cluster jewels just to pick up enough damage nodes on the end of the tree where I am sitting. My large cluster has Prismatic Heart and Widespread Destruction which help to scale up the Fire Damage further. I’ve also got another easy-to-reach large cluster that I could expand further, but it always feels like you are brute forcing your will upon the tree when you start using a bunch of clusters.

If I can make this stay as tanky as it currently feels… this honestly might be a fun build-down in Delve. The Volcanic Fissures do a great job of finding mobs so you could just be throwing them out while you go down the tunnel mopping up the easy stuff. In theory, I need to find myself a high-level base for a Mace and then try and craft as much physical damage on it. For the moment I am using Lavianga’s Wisdom mostly because it adds a big chunk of increased physical damage. The build that started me down this path was doing Strength stacking and using a Brutus’ Lead Sprinkler which we have not seen yet in Bel League, but I have enough strength to make that a reasonable option. Another potential is Nycta’s Lantern but I am not sure if I have ever actually seen one of those drop. While it is super cheap in trade… I am not sure I can actually find one in SSF.

I have a feeling that this character is ultimately going to be a dead-end learning experience. I think more than anything I need to spend some time down in Delve and pick up some crafting bases to get the rest of my gear fleshed out. If you are curious this is where I am build-wise.