Witchers, Heroes, and Zanthimum

by

Good Morning Folks. I am slowly climbing out of the abyss that is whatever the hell crud I ended up getting. What is remaining is a cough and congestion. I started taking some over the counter fake dayquil to help with some of the symptoms and that has improved my general quality of life. I am hoping between today and tomorrow I will have kicked it enough to feel comfortable trying to be around folks for Thanksgiving. Which will probably just mean that I catch something else… but that is the life of someone without much of an immune system. I still have no clue what exactly I have had since it came on Thursday afternoon, and still has held on with a vengeance all weekend long and into this week. Since I tested negative for Covid and Flu, I am guessing just some sort of a random viral infection.

Since I was pretty out of it, and honestly continue to be… I spent a good chunk of yesterday watching some shows. I burned through all of Season 4 of the Witcher and it was “fine”. The storyline continues to be a complete and fucking mess, at least compared to either the books or the games… but the characters are mostly on point and I have to just treat this as its own thing. Liam Hemsworth honestly might be doing a better job of Geralt of Rivia than Henry Cavill did, which is probably a good thing considering I personally gave some major stinkeye at this actor swap given how invested Cavill was in the show. I think he was fundamentally pissed at how much they strayed from the material, and Hemsworth is doing an adequate job of being properly Geralt-ish. It feels like they are attempting to tell the storyline leading up to the second game, more or less, but a lot of the scenes differ wildly from either the book interpretation or the game interpretation, which are themselves two different things. Its fine… and was very watchable, but you have to put that lore accurate side of your brain asleep when dealing with this project.

I also started To Be Hero X, which is a Chinese Anime that I had heard really good things about. Essentially it is a world where everyone has something akin to the social credit score and if this gets high enough, you start to develop super powers. However those super powers are directly influenced by the way that people feel about you. If effectively social media feels that you are super handsome, you will legitimately keep getting more and more handsome. Its a weird concept but the art style is freaking amazing. It flows between at least three drastically different art styles as it tells various stories centered around effectively normal folks who were thrust into the life of a hero. I am not sure how far I am from the end of the series but there definitely have been set up a bunch of interesting background elements and I am curious how some of the plot threads are going to wrap up.

Over in Path of Exile I am still alternating between mapping on my Ice Trapper and then Delving on my RF Chieftain. I thought I would take a moment and talk through what I am running for Scarabs. The goal is just to add additional mobs to the map, which makes my Ice Trapper level faster and also provides for a bunch of potential drops. I am running Alch and go copies of Tropical Island which I am oversustaining, but recently swapped all of my favorite slots to Strand with the goal of eventually flipping between those two maps. Wide open layouts really favor the area of effect of the ice trap lifestyle. Then I add in Two Scarab of Monstrous Lineage, Two Scarab of Adversaries, and One Scarab of Hunted Traitors to add a bunch of extra mobs to the map, while running with my Niko/Betrayal/Beyond atlas. All the while I am running blue altars with support on the tree so I can knock out that 100 maps achievement, and then I will probably swap up what tree I am using and go with something that can do red altar support so I can knock out another one.

One thing that I have been doing that I think I am going to stop doing… is running the 10,000 Blue Zanthemum strategy. I’ve been sending it with 250k dust and occasionally this produces divine orbs, but it does not feel like it does so often enough to make it worth my time. I am probably instead just going to save up enough materials for one of the multi-million shipments and see if I can get mirror shards instead. I’ve not touched mappers, but I have heard they are producing a lot of good stuff this league, however the gold cost is just outrageous. I am not mining at all because mining generlaly produces gear, and at this stage in the game… especially with the addition of the tree tree… I have no interest in random gear. Basically my last few days have been super chill mapping while watching something on the television, and that is about as much activity as I can really take.

Tonight I plan on doing some Grandmaster activities with Ace in Destiny Rising so hopefully I will remember to take some screenshots of our shenaningans.

Maru Takes the Lead

by

Good Morning Folks. I feel pretty miserable. On Tuesday I had several doctors appointments and spent time in several waiting rooms, and am pretty sure I picked up some dire crud. I was a dumbass and did not wear a mask and am now paying the price. I started feeling awful on Thursday, it got considerably worse on Friday, and then has been backing off slowly over the weekend. I am hoping that by tomorrow I will feel functional enough to work again. It started with an outrageously sore throat, a cough, and some intestinal panic… and mostly what is left is the cough. However it has impacted my ability to sleep with me waking up every 30 minutes or so for a good old fashioned coughing fit. However I did manage to move into the new desktop PC that I talked about last week, and have moved my old one downstairs to eventually be used for some living room big screen gaming. Very much a big fan of the Costco pre-built that I talked about, and it was a massive upgrade over my previous 11th gen intel based system with a 3080 in it.

I honestly spent most of the weekend too miserable to care about much of anything, staring blankly at the wall. When I did feel like gaming I largely played Path of Exile. I am alternating between delving on my Righteous Fire Chieftain, and mapping on my Ice Trap of Hollowness Elementalist, and both are extremely solid. I am getting close to level 99 on the Chieftain and when I hit that, I am probably going to spend a bit more time taking on bloodline and pinnacle bosses to knock out some more credit towards the various challenges. I need to start doing a lot more Tier 16.5 maps because I need to complete a bajillion of them in order to knock out one of the challenges. Right now I am doing Blue altars juiced on my Ice Trapper, and at some point I will swap things up to Red altars and then later Maven Witnesses because there are achievements for doing all of those. I really hate the act of witnessing the Maven because I hate running random map layouts. I wish there was a keystone that gave you random bosses at the end of maps so that you could run a single layout and always be witnessing a new boss.

At this pint I have completed 24 of 40 Achievements and knocked out a few thanks to Betrayal like the one that requires you to use a bunch of rare crafting materials. I eventually got a syndicate crafting bench with a Divine Orb on it, which counts for the achievement requirements. There is another one for using rare currency, but I am not sure any of that stuff actually shows up on the Syndicate benches. At some point I should try and craft a dual influence life gain on block shield to replace my current one, and that will use an awakener orb which is one of the requirements. I am really close to Cross Contamination and just need to figure out which combination of scarabs I need to run to make some of those conditions happen. It took me four maps before I was able to get a Delirious Beyond boss which surprised me a bit. Sinew Swarms is actually closer in progress than the 0 of 3 would indicate but that one will complete in time with me just running enough maps.

Over in Destiny Rising, we had one of our best weekends ever… but I failed to take any screenshots. Essentially we managed to find Three Strongholds as a clan, and then did all of them on Saturday afternoon before I started feeling considerably worse as the day went on. We did not record a podcast this weekend, because I sort of cratered as we got towards evening. That has happened most nights, where I do better in the morning and then feel progressively worse as the day goes on. Morgran’s Prey is also going on again so we knocked a few of those rounds out as a group, and then I have run it a few more times solo. Now that I have every exotic weapon, the enticement of getting a new exotic is not nearly as strong as it once was. However it is still a good source of general resources and materials, and the combat itself is pretty fun.

I finished out the battle pass and got my 4th copy of the exotic grenade launcher, allowing me to max that weapon out. There are still a few minor points that I can upgrade it, but it did bump my Maru over 70k making her my highest character currently. As soon as I settle up from Calamity ops I should be able to max out her relic abilities and bump her score up again. After that I am either going to work on bumping up Ning Fei or Gwynn and I used some of the excess fruit that I had laying around to get artifact gilding requirement done for Tan-2. I’ve upgraded a bunch of my characters somewhat even levels of progress, whereas my friend Ace has mostly focused on one or two. Their method is probably better, but I personally like having a wide stable of characters to play.

I ran two of the three weekly legendary missions this morning, because I needed the components to bump up Maru’s weapon and completed my first three chest run with Gwynn that I have ever done. I need to do another one of these runs as Wolf because the last step that he has between getting another gold medallion is surviving a challenge mode without dying. The push to get more gold characters stopped being anywhere near as interesting when I was not longer gated from upgrades because I was too low level. Now that I am over Ascension 55 I think I can pretty much do anything in the game. I need to spend some time in the coming days trying to get through some more of the challenge content. I am not sure what day of the week Ace and I will get together and do the Grandmaster stuff, but I am sure it will be one of these first few days of the week before Thanksgiving.

Playing Path of Exile on the Livingroom TV was a bit of a wild experience. One of the things that I want to sort out over the holiday weekend is trying to figure out this doodad that I bought which serves as a USB to Bluetooth adapter and should allow me to remote control the device with a normal keyboard and mouse. A lot of the games that I plan on playing in the livingroom will be controller games, but I do still want the ability to play MMORPGs and ARPGs if I so choose it.

New Metas, New Weapons, and New PCs

by

Good Morning Folks. I am getting a bit of a late start today because I am fighting some sort of unnamed crud. On Tuesday I had a bunch of doctors appointments, and I am pretty sure I picked up something in the waiting room. I had been hacking and coughing for a few days and this morning I woke up with a ridiculously sore throat and almost hay fever like symptoms. I am taking the day off because I do not feel like working, and going to be trying to push fluids and rest as much as I can. I did not do the weekly Thursday night GW2 thing last week, but did last night and it was quite a bit of fun… even though I was running pretty low on energy. We happened into the meta event for Starlight Weald and that was quite a bit of fun. So far I have liked both of the new meta battles, though I have only caught the first zones a few times now. I’ve yet to properly unlock the second zone, but I did the teleport to friend thing so I could join in the reindeer games.

It has been a bit since I talked about Destiny Rising, but I am still playing at least some of it every day. I managed to pull the final exotic that I was missing the other day when I crafted an engram. Most of these I have not upgraded or anything, but it did feel good to at least check off this box in the grind. I doubt I will ever actually use this Hand Cannon because I greatly prefer the one that works somewhat like a pulse rifle. To be truthful it is going to take a new champion that really makes Hand Cannons fun, before I play any character regularly that uses one. I mean I won’t discount it because I did not like the single shot grenade launcher until Maru dropped, and now I am loving it.

That said, Maru really does not feel good until you get the exotic grenade launcher. I pulled her on the second acount and have been using the mythic grenade launcher with her, and it feels really bad. A lot of her power comes from the exotic’s ability to explode multiple times in a row. Without that, she just does not really have the clear speed. However I am still happy to have pulled her at all on my entirely free to play account, because I never managed to pull Helhest. Maru if nothing else plays a much more important role in the game than Helhest does, because she fills a niches that only one other champion Ikora can really fill. There are at least several other Precision champions at this point, and I have three of them, so if I had to spend my luck on anything I would rather have the void grenade launcher champ.

Ace and I got together last night and did Calamity Ops now that we are finally in a bracket again that allows us to group up together. In doing so I managed to get enough materials to be able to finally push Maru to Gold on my main account. I am still missing one of her weapon mastery points, but after that I will likely start working on pushing Gwynn up. We have three strongholds unlocked this week and need to figure out a time when we can get everyone together to take them down. We did not clear any stongholds last week, and I would really like to get the points this week. We cleared our Grandmaster content earlier in the week, so really the last remaining thing that I really want done this week is the strongholds. I should probably also try and get one more legendary content run so I can get my maximum points.

Over in Path of Exile, I am mostly still chipping away at challenges. I’ve done almost all of the really easy ones, and now everything else that I am doing takes some effort. I’ve unlocked 3 of the bloodline bosses for example, because I finally found an Aul the other night down in Delve. I should wrap up the Bijou Beetles within my next few map runs, because I am running with 5 Scarabs pretty much every time I run a map. Cross Contamination is going to require specific focus and figuring out how to make sure I force a few different mechanics on the map at the same time. Remarkable Realms I should at some point get Doryani’s Machinarium to drop in Delve, because it is currently back to selling for around 5 Divines each due to it being back on the list of challenges. Cunning Crafts requires me to use a Divine Orb, but I keep hoping I will get a Betrayal Stronghold with a crafting bench that has Divines on it, which should count. Atlas Awe requires The Feared…. which I might just pay for a carry because I am not in the mood to farm up all of the content required to unlock that.

I’ve been running a lot of Alva, just because it is great experience and also if you run it with the scarab that generates a random temple, you end up getting a locus of corruption shockingly often. Those sell for at least 100 Chaos each, and if you get a Locus plus the other key rooms they go for significantly more. Essentially I tend to make enough currency to keep funding my scarabs, so that I can mostly just use it as an experience farm. I really should swap one of my scarabs for a stack of Niko scarabs just so I can force getting sulphite at the same time. Every so often I get a big ticket item like a Valdo’s box which also makes the entire thing profitable. At the moment I am running it with Toxic Sewers and at some point I will flip and probably level my Ice Trapper in Tropical Island because it prefers a more open layout so that I can seed the traps before mobs get to me.

Lastly I jumped on a deal for a new computer, so this weekend I will be migrating over to that. Essentially I had been watching a few different pre-builts, one of which at CostCo and with Black Friday specials it dropped in price by $400 finally making me take the plunge. My current machine has been functional with an 11th Gen i7 and a 3080, but it is also around five years old at this point. I had been looking for something reasonable with a 5080 in it, and this MSI pre-built has an Ryzen 9, 32 GB ram, 2 TB M.2, and a RTX 5080 for $2200 currently through the week after Thanksgiving. The CostCo options were already a bit cheaper than some of other other pre-builts I had been looking for, and I priced things out and could not really build something with a 5080 for cheaper. The price drop just finally made me do it…. so now I will be spending my weekend swapping things around and getting it set up. I think I might end up using my current system as a living room PC.

Anyways. Apologies for not blogging yesterday but I was coming down with the crud that I am dealing with today, and just was not feeling up to it. Hopefully y’all have a wonderful weekend and if you are traveling for Thanksgiving, I hope it goes smoothly for you.

Games to Watch: Spirit Vale, Hytale, Guild Wars Reforged

by

Good Morning Folks! I could do a blog post about my meager progression in Path of Exile, but I will be honest that gets boring over time. Instead I am going to talk about a few games that stumbled into my awareness over the last few days. First up YouTube actually served me something interesting in the form of a video about a new MMO called Spirit Vale that is from a one person development team. Essentially the game is free right now and exists in a sort of permanent open play test state. It is very Ragnarok Online inspired, which I only know by the appearance because when folks were playing Ragnarok and Runescape… I was playing Everquest because I was gainfully employed and could afford the subscription fees. There is an entire era of MMORPGs that I have no real experience with, but the video I linked above interested me enough to give it a shot.

I’ve not done much in the game yet, but essentially you roam into the low level zone and play murder hobo for awhile until gear and upgrades drop, and then take that gear and the levels you gained… to the next zone and repeat ad infinitum until you get bored. I like killing things, and while I don’t have much in the way of abilities yet there is something deeply satisfying about the sounds of combat in this game. I am not sure how much I am going to be playing it, but it might be worth a look, especially if you were ever a Ragnarok kid. Definitely plays on the cute side of MMORPGs, and there are little quest NPCs in zone who will craft gear for you if you gather enough items from killing baddies. That is how I got the charming bear hat. Supposedly the content stays somewhat evergreen because there are items that drop from even low level NPCs that can be used as upgrade components in later gear. If curious you can pop over to the Steam page and join the play test now.

Next up we got some new gameplay footage from Hytale, which is a game I was deeply interested in when it was first announced… but then promptly forgot about its existence. Originally this was a Minecraft-alike that was started by the folks behind the popular Hypixel Skyblock Minecraft Server. It then got picked up by Riot Games, and eventually cancelled by Riot Games, and most recently was sold back to the original developers who are attempting to pick up the pieces and keep it moving forward. Essentially the promise of the game is Minecraft but with good combat, and the gameplay demo seems to show that it is making good on that concept. Will this ever actually release? Who knows! However I am still fairly interested in seeing the development progress. I have a friend on Mastodon who is also making a Minecraft-alike that I am watching closely but I am not sure if even they have any idea what the core gameplay loop of that is going to be. Minecraft as a concept is still something fairly compelling for me, so I will probably always like breaking blocks.

Yesterday we got a bit of a mic drop from Arena.net as they announced that Guild Wars Reforged is a thing… and that it is coming really freaking soon. Reportedly it is releasing on December 3rd, and everyone who already owns copies of the original Guild Wars games… are going to get copies of it for free. There is not a lot of information available yet on the game, but essentially it seems like they are targeting a Steam release that is going to be SteamDeck compatible and will bundle all of the existing Guild Wars Trilogy content into a single package but with updated graphics and graphical engines. It also reports to have full controller support, which will be interesting… and might honestly become the best way to play this game. There are a lot of articles on this game but most of them are largely regurgitating the original press release.

My favorite Guild Wars 2 creator/streamer Laranity is hosting a Developer Q&A today at 11 am PST, after which I am hoping we have a better idea of what is coming. Weirdly the original release did not mention anything about Eye of the North and I am really hoping that was not an intended exclusion. I am legitimately pumped about this because I want to experience all of Guild Wars 1… but the engine is pretty damned clunky. I doubt they will give me the ability to jump… but one can hope. I would love for the game to have the option of a more standardized MMORPG control scheme rather than click to move and click to attack. If they support Direct Input… there is the possibility of someone creating an interpretation layer that will support a friendlier keyboard control scheme. I will definitely be watching today to see this discussion, but look forward to the various articles that will likely summarize the details.

That is all I really have to talk about this morning. I’ve also heard that there is a resurgence of folks playing Rift again, but I need to do a bit more research on that before I feel comfortable talking about it. What games are on your radar in the MMORPG space? Drop me a line below.