Machinist to Ninety

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Good Morning Folks! I spent a lot of this weekend catching up on Final Fantasy XIV stuff. I talked a bit about this last week but the character that I took through Endwalker was a Paladin aka a Tank. I did not really want to slide back into the game and experience the content… in a job with quite as much responsibility as a tank. Given especially how much the FFXIV community is on the “BIG PULLS” bandwagon usually… I want to just chill out in the background and play a class that no one respects much from. I like the feel of the Machinist animations, so I opted to push that up. I managed to hit level 90 relatively easily by running a combination of Duty Support dungeons, daily frontline, and starting to chip away at the new combat beast tribe quests in Thavnair.

Rather than pestering friends, I wound up buying a set of gear for a little less than a million gil. This might not have been the most cutting-edge gear but it should be able to take me all the way through the new story content, while also hopefully picking up a handful of pieces along the way. I think my goal is to get caught up on the story and then maybe do some of the additional content like the Alliance Raids that I have missed, and maybe the 8-player content on the easiest difficulties. Pending the next expansion comes with Duty Support… I might just level a DPS character from the start so I don’t run into this problem at the end of the expansion when I want to play catch-up, but don’t feel like tanking.

One of the things that I unlocked over the weekend is the next Deep Dungeon system that is Crystal Tower themed. One of the weird things that bugs me is the gaps in these systems. Palace of the Dead the original Deep Dungeon takes you to level 50 extremely easily… but then Heaven on High does not start until level 61. HoH will take you pretty easily to level 70… but again you have this huge gap between when it stops and level 81 required to do the new one Eureka Orthos. Prior to the launch of Endwalker I managed to get all of my jobs at the time to level 80, so that means I am going to have to put on at least one level before I can step foot into the new Deep Dungeon. This morning I started working on Samurai as my next job to level and knocked out Thavnair dailies and then a set of the Fae dailies from Shadowbringers as that is still reasonable experience.

Mostly I plan on leveling classes that share a gear set, because that way I can get rid of excess gear that I have lying around for them. I really really need to clean out my retainers and just shred any gear that I don’t need to make room. I’ve not touched Reaper or Sage so at some point I will probably level those as well. For the moment though I plan on knocking out Monk and Samurai largely because those were the gearsets that I had completed and did not need to do anything in order to switch to… other classes I will have to sort out what is missing from my inventory before I can swap over to them. Technically leveling bard would make a lot of sense given that I just finished up Machinist, but I think I removed some of the lower-level Dex ranged gear from my inventory while leveling and trying to make room for things.

All in all I have been enjoying myself, but mostly because I am biding my time for the next Path of Exile event. I have a feeling that it is going to take me a while to get caught up in the story because when I am working my way through an audiobook, I can’t really do story content. It was cool to get in over the weekend and get invited to the assorted Fediverse-based Cross World Link Shells, so it will be nice to get to know all of those folks a bit better and maybe even run content with them at some point.

AggroChat #454 – World of Wonder

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Screen Card for Episode #454 of the AggroChat podcast showing Ashgar, Belghast, Kodra, Tamrielo, and Thalen with a screenshot of Super Mario Wonder in the background featuring Elephant Mario.

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

Hey Folks! We are back but still down several members of our crew.  This week we start off with some discussion about Diablo IV Season 2 and whether or not the game is good now.  From there we talk a lot about the events of the Star Citizen CitizenCon.  Super Mario Wonder has come out and we talk about the experiences with the game so far.  Tam talks a bit about Endless Dungeon and how it might actually be fun in multiplayer.  Kodra shares some news about an upcoming SudokuCon Fundraiser stream he is going to be part of this week.  Finally, we talk a bit about Cities: Skylines 2 and the changes it brings to the genre.

Topics Discussed:

  • Diablo IV is Good Now?
    • Season of Blood Review
  • CitizenCon
    • Did you hold the line?
  • Super Mario Wonder
  • Endless Dungeon
  • SudokuCon Fundraiser Stream
  • Cities: Skylines 2

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

An Evening with the Scions

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I’ve most definitely reached this place in Diablo IV where my only real progression comes in the form of lucky drops from the World Boss. At this point, I have item level 925 items in every slot but my Chestpiece and Two-Handed Hammer weapon and it is all up to the luck of the draw when I finally replace those. I am using a unique main weapon that is going to be a bit harder to replace than your average hammer. Given that I am getting zero benefit from Whispers Caches and the Bloodtide event… I am guessing that means I would have to grind up to high levels of Nightmare Dungeons to actually find some viable drops again. As a result, I am mostly only logging in for World Boss kills.

I could always fall back on playing some Path of Exile, but I do not really want to burn myself out further knowing that I really want to play next Friday when the Sentinel/Kalandra event starts. At the moment I think I am going to try out leveling a Righteous Fire Chieftain as an alternative for when we start “Bel League” at the beginning of 3.23 in December. Mostly I want to test that out as an alternative to Juggernaut because it is so much easier to get maximum resistances on and we won’t likely have access to Legacy of Fury boots for quite some time. Hinekora’s Wrath gives a nice big explosion that is actually better than the Maven Boots but I will be missing a lot of the bonuses that you get as a Juggernaut for survival purposes. It won’t be as sturdy, but hopefully, the big explosions will make up for it.

What I did instead last night was poke my head back into Final Fantasy XIV and do something more than playing the daily cactpot and reset the demolition timer on my house. I’ve been in this weird place with FFXIV for a while now because I leveled a Paladin through Endwalker. Playing a tank is not really conducive to easing back into a game in a low-pressure manner. I did not last long enough in Endwalker to actually get to the point of leveling a DPS alt, which has made it a bit hard for me to summon the desire to come back in earnest.

Yesterday however I remembered that Duty Support exists, and is no longer the massive pain in the ass that leveling the trust system was. This has allowed me to pick up where I left off on my Machinist and run some low-key chill dungeons with my Scion friends. Sure it is a bit boring to keep running the same dungeon over and over… but that is probably what I would be doing anyway with a pack of random strangers. I might as well ease back into the game with friendly bots that are not going to hassle me over dumb mistakes I make while I get used to the game again.

It has to be said that right now Final Fantasy XIV feels really odd. It has been a very long time since I have played a purely hotbar combat MMORPG. Over the last few years, I have either been playing ARPGs or Guild Wars 2 and New World… both of which are way more closely related to an Action MMO than their earlier hotbar cousins. The first time I needed to get out of an AOE I instinctively tried to hit my usual dodge roll button… and was really sad when I remembered that Final Fantasy XIV does not have something like that. The game feels very “old” when it comes to design… but again I think it is more something that I will have to get used to.

Largely I want to get to the point where I can catch up in the story, and grind out some gear so that I can get ready for the next expansion. I am going to give it a shot even though I largely felt like FFXIV storywise wrapped up in a good place with Endwalker. I think Guild Wars 2 might be more my speed as far as MMORPGs go, because I have gotten used to more active combat but by the end of the evening I did finally start to hit my stride. I know FFXIV is probably never going to be my main game again because my tastes have changed a bit but I do want to get back to a point where I can have fun with it again.

Of Harvests That Are Dark

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Friends… I have been on a bit of an adventure. The other day I saw some commentary from a friend talking about the movie Dark Harvest that came out earlier this month. The poster for it seems rather compelling and being a huge fan of Children of the Corn it piqued my interest. This was released as a rental on streaming platforms and got a live screening at the Alamo Drafthouse. So in another place and another time this likely would have been a major theatrical release, but in the weird place we are in at the moment it went “directly to home video”.

Then I read the fateful words on the poster… that it was “Adapted from The Award-Winning Novel”. 2023 has been the year of the book for me, and I am currently reading my fortieth of the year. Given how drastic movie adaptations can veer from the original material, I figured I would take a pause in my reading of Agency by William Gibson and give this novel a try. In the worst-case scenario, I bounce hard and simply watch the movie like I was going to originally.

This was a bit easier said than done because apparently, Dark Harvest has been a VERY popular name for novels. Some further research led me to the fact that the first one in this sequence is the one I was looking for by Norman Partridge. The “Award Winning” in the movie tagline relates to the Bram Stoker Award for Best Long Fiction from the year 2006. So yesterday morning I popped over to the Libby App and luckily one of the three libraries that I have a card for had it available. The novel itself is really more of a novella given that it is only 176 pages in length and I was able to easily read it over my lunch break.

Dark Harvest tells a tale that isn’t necessarily unique, but it does so in a really visceral manner from the perspective of an omniscient narrator that you learn more about as the tale comes to its conclusion. It is a tale of a suffocating small town, with bitter meanspirited people, and a yearly ritual that holds a dark secret. It is a novel that contains a “twist” but one that is pretty easily guessed and outright explained well before you have reached the halfway point. It is a novel with a deep sympathy for the monster, more in the vein of Frankenstein than Pumpkinhead. The town and more specifically the Police Officer stand in opposition against our trio of anti-heroes as we the readers root for them to succeed. Things may not be tied up in the neatest of bows at the end… but it was still fairly satisfying. More than anything this is a novel that rebels against the “things have always been this way and have to stay that way” narrative of small-town America. As a product of deeply rural “one horse town” America, I at least found it satisfying and immediately identified with the narrative of wanting to leave at any cost. That is precisely what I did… once I was gone, I was gone and I didn’t even come home on the weekends.

The movie however does what Hollywood always seems to do… and mercilessly fucks with the story. By the time we are ten minutes into the tale, it is already barely recognizable from the source material. While the novel is a tale of rebelling against dark traditions… the movie leans significantly more into the monster movie genre. As a result, you end up with this sort of what if Lord of the Flies happened during the Purge where the kids who all look like Back to the Future 1950s extras go out and wage war against Pumpkinhead. The only pieces that remain from the Novel, are the most basic building blocks of the plot… the October Boy, Starved Children Pressed into Service to Defend the Town, and the townsfolk enabling or at least turning a blind eye to the whole process.

I am not saying Dark Harvest is a bad film, just that it has very little to do with the novella that spawned it. It seems to constantly be flipping back and forth on this border of taking itself way too seriously, and cartoonish levels of nonsensical violence. For example, I give you the “bloodsplosion” which is a truly nonsensical scene where apparently the monster brutally murders an entire cellar worth of kids who have tried to hide away from “The Run”. Nothing that the monster could have done… would have caused this giant fountain of blood to come crashing out of the cellar, but we have it nonetheless as a weird hamfisted callback to the elevator scene from The Shining maybe? There is zero sympathy for the devil here… as Sawtooth Jack is just a mindless abomination that must be killed. There is some attempt to pin a message on at the end… but the delivery just does not really work with anywhere near the same gravity as it does in the novel.

I am not saying it is a bad film. So long as you go into it with the knowledge that it is going to be a movie with an easily guessable twist that makes some oftentimes interesting stylistic choices… you will probably enjoy yourself. That said after watching it… I fully understand why this went “directly to home video”. I think the biggest sin that the movie does, is doing a poor job of representing the novel. That however often seems to be the case, especially with horror adaptations. It isn’t that the novel itself is the best thing I have ever read, but it is good enough that I would suggest it, especially considering how quick of a read it is. I am less certain however if I would recommend the movie. This is maybe one of those situations where you would be better off watching the movie first, and then reading the real story afterward if you found the premise at all compelling.

So yes… I am damning this with the faintest of praise. If nothing else it was an interesting journey that I went on yesterday. The novel if nothing else has some really damned good lines in it. I will leave you with my favorite:

words don’t matter unless they are walking the hard road to the truth