New Year, Hopefully New Me

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Hey Folks. I am doing a bit of a weird post because generally I take off holidays, and generally I blog in the morning. Neither of those are happening in this case. I went up to see my Dad this morning because it was his birthday and he had afternoon plans, so I am back at home and sitting down to write. Often times my blog doubles as my diary… just one that I happen to publish so the world can see it. There are days when I widely syndicate my posts, and other days where they are more private and only meant for the “real ones” as it were. This is one of those days.

It is not so much that I had a bad Christmas, but more a situation that I have been numb for most of this year. I’ve been going through the motions and doing the right things, things which should bring me joy… but they have not been. I get that a lot of this is the normal pathways of grieving. I took a major blow… and while not a physical blow… it still takes time for the emotions and mental state to heal. I am not sure if I will ever be fully healed if I am being brutally honest. I lost a critical part of who I was, that had been built up over thirty years. In many ways it feels like I have been restored to an earlier backup of who I was. Like once you took away the material that I had accumulated in my life, and the default reactions that were baked in for being part of something larger than myself… I am left with a me that sort of feels like the me that existed in college before my life 1.0 started.

It is a really weird reset. I am digging back into things that used to give me joy when I was in college. I am figuring out new things that I want to try now that I have effectively unlimited time and zero constraints upon me to accommodate another human being. I’ve gotten into the path of 3D printing, and I have a bunch of model paints on order which will let me start painting my Warhammer army. I completely reworked the garage and installed shelving in basically every place that I could install shelving. I replaced the downstairs entertainment setup, and at some point will attempt to use the PC that I have hooked up down there. I think I might need to resolve some residual wifi issues first, but I have a router and at some point that will be a project to try and do that and apply some repeaters so that the connection downstairs is faster.

I’ve also been able to lean on so many friends. There are my adopted siblings of Ace and Cyl that have meant so much to me during this time. There is an old friend that I have reconciled with and even have plans to meet for dinner on Saturday. There is my Librarian friend who keeps me engaged in things and the new group of people that i have met in the pen and paper game that we all play together on a semi-monthly basis. Then there is a new friend that I have been talking constantly that has been fun and interesting to get to know someone completely out of my depth. All of these have helped to rekindle a bit of a spark in me, and I am feeling joyful about things again.

A lot of this year has also been trying to make sure my health is doing okay. I had a few scares and have a few upcoming medical procedures. I am hoping I get a clean bill of health, but kind of my ongoing new years resolution is to eat better and force myself to get some more exercise. I am bigger than I have ever been at this point, and it is not comfortable. For me and for my general future I need to change that. I also really desperately want to travel and meet some of the friends that I have known for years around the country. In order to do that… I am going to have to make it to a point where flight is no longer as painful as it currently is. I will always have trouble ramming my lets under the seats, but once you combine that with being generally larger than I should be… it is just a recipe for disaster. Sure I can drive to a lot of my friends, but there will be some that have to be arrived at by plane or it just isn’t feasible.

I turn 50 in June, and it feels like that is a bit of a deadline. There are a lot of things that I have said to myself “I will do that in time”. The time is now. I need to stop waiting and stalling and just do things. It isn’t so much that I am running out of time… but I feel like I am running out of time. I need to make significant changes in my life because I am not happy with the null void that I have been feeling, and want to do things to fix that.I am feeling really good today, and have been feeling really good about the last several days, and I am going to start enacting more changes that keep me moving in the right direction.

Happy New Years All. Please let 2026 be a better one.

Season of Providence

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Good Morning Folks! Yesterday was the end of the previous season in Destiny Rising, or more correctly I think Season 2 Act 2? They do this weird thing where they split the same season up into multiple acts, with each being effectively like a new seasonal start. This one is centered around an alternate universe version of Kabr, aka the one that died in the Vault of Glass from Destiny 1. It introduces a few new game modes, and a new raid which appears to be a rework of the Destiny versions of Crota’s End. I have no clue if this will be closer to the original Destiny 1 version or the Destiny 2 reworked versions that have appeared over the years. I do know that gated behind the raid is access to a new Exotic Scout rifle which comes from Destiny 2 called Symmetry. While this weapon was not necessarily associated with Crota I do believe it was put into the game with the Shadowkeep expansion as a chase bonus for buying the fancier versions if I am remembering correctly.

Kabr the Resolute is the new alternate reality version of Kabr that we are getting access to, and I have to say… not really my thing. You can play him in Trial mode, and his kit just doesnt seem like it works that well. Effectively he has a primary scout rifle and a secondary linear fusion… when when combined with a character that mostly creates a bunch of shields feels odd. More so they shifted the burst ability to being one that has to be channeled, similar to how the shield works in Vault of Glass. I mean its a cool call back to that raid mechanic, but honestly… mostly just feels weird and removes any mobility that the character had. Standing still is never a good option regardless of how many shields you are generating. As a result I doubt I will be spending any premium pulls that that I have saved up on this banner.

We were told that we would be getting a free copy of Kabr, and that is true… within a specific frame of reference. Right now Kabr the Resolute exists on his own banner with his own new currency… which instead of pink and blue boats…. is apparently a bright red boat. During the course of this introductory event, doing dailies will get you a currency that will eventually unlock 6 sets of 10 pulls each… and since the pity for this banner is at 60 pulls, that means you are in fact guaranteed to pull Kabr during the event if you hop in and do all the things every day. Additionally you have access to the other four stars on this banner like Ikora, Attal, and Rossi… and in truth I could actually use more talent points for both Attal and Rossi. I will be doing the thing and jumping through the hoops to get my free copy… but I will be slightly annoyed that they didn’t just hand me a copy and let me move on with my life.

There is a brand new game mode that went in with this update called Bullwark Ops. Essentially it is tower defense for Destiny Rising. There is a building phase that lets you place down turrets and other things to help control the waves of mobs spawning, and then those encounters follow a fixed path through the map. Between you and the turrets, your goal is to make sure they die before crossing a finish line. So far it feels like Blight in Path of Exile, where you are the strongest turret, but that might change as I get into higher difficulties. I played a round of it this morning on Maru and it was pretty easy, but then again… Maru is my most built out character with a fully upgraded exotic single shot grenade launcher. I will be interesting to see how this plays with different characters.

There is also a limited mode version called Armed Enclave that I have yet to play, but there are a bunch of limited upgrade currencies gated behind it that I need to finish out some of my characters. Since we shifted into an Arc and Solar meta with this season, that means I need to spend a bit more effort building out Arc and Solar characters. Right now I have Estela, Jaren, and Helhest in a pretty good state with Ning Fei not too far behind. I am certain Jaren will be in the limited list of characters that we can play for Grandmaster content, but I thought Estela, Ning Fei, and Helhest would be as well. However that is not the case… of my built out characters the only two that I will have access to are Jaren and for some reason Jolder. Rossi and Attal are both pretty much in the same spot and would need copious upgrades to get them into the 64k range required for the activities. I will be honest that I don’t really like either of those champions enough to spend resources on them. It might be a REALLY rough week for Grandmasters. I am hoping we can maybe do the Gauntlet.

There is new story that involves us seemingly traveling to the Destiny 1 universe specifically. It was so cool to hear the original version of the Destiny theme song playing during this point. Essentially we meet up with our friend Xur who explains that there are many worlds and while Crota is building power in our world… we are not ready for him. So the storyline seemingly involves us discovering and very likely eventually raiding SIVA technology to make us stronger and more likely to take on Crota in his full force. Thing is… for anyone who knows the lore of the Iron Lords from Destiny 1… you will know that it was trying to capture SIVA that brought the downfall and ultimate death of most of them. Are we doomed to repeat history and see most of our Iron Lords dead and trapped in the chamber with SIVA while our Wolf character and Saladin escape… just like it happened in the Destiny 1 universe? I am very interested to see how this all plays out.

The most hilarious thing about this is… it seems like they were not able to secure the voice actor for Radegast to deliver new lines for this event. As a result they did quite possibly the dumbest and most ridiculous thing they could have done. Instead of voice lines…. Radegast delivers a bunch of Tim Allen from Home Improvement style grunts. Before I started this Ace had warned me about it… but I was in no way prepared for just how silly this ended up being. I was almost crying from laughing so hard by the time the cutscenes finished. I mean I guess this is a choice that could be made. I remember when the last GW2 expansion dropped during the actors strike, and we got silent dialog… and I am thinking maybe that was the better call.

Anyways. Looking forward to another season and a bunch of new events to learn.

Impossible Mansions

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Good Morning Folks. I hope you had a most wonderful extended holiday weekend. I had to work on Friday, which interrupted an otherwise solid weekend. My neighbor down the street also lost their mother and I have been helping out with some photo editing and stuff to prepare for the eventual memorial service. As far as gaming goes I spent a good chunk of Saturday grinding out things in Destiny Rising. We had a large cluster of potential strongholds and I ran all three accounts trying to utilize their map turns to unlock them. We got three and then ran them as a group on Sunday morning. The other focus of grinding was to finish out the sparrow event so that I would be caught up and ready for the next New Years event that starts in a few days. I unlocked the special sparrow and discovered that you can put stickers on your sparrows… and decorated my snowmobile with a sticker of the cutest couple Beleaguered Gwynn and a very sleepy Attal.

Other than that I have worked on my Jaren a bit and unlocked Gold Medal Certification, pushing him up into the hierarchy of my characters. This is one of those characters that grew on me the longer that I had him. Effectively for me he is sort of a better version of Ning Fei, because he has the same speed boost tech but then a whole kit that makes body shots behave like precision shots. This means I can take him into any encounter with precision shinkas without having to play a fiddly sniper character. Other than that I also finally got off my ass and ran a Legendary Mission with Wolf so that I could push him up to gold medal certification as well, which has now officially unlocked the last two ranks of perks. Any ascension points after this is just gravy because everything is now unlocked that can be unlocked currently.

The next banner has been announced and it is a bit of a dud. They are introducing an alternate universe version of Kabr, likely the one that dies in the Vault of Glass in the Destiny 1/2 timeline. As a result he has a completely different kit which I believe is Scout Rifle and Linear Fusion rifle. The thing is… I already have precision characters that I like… namely Umeko and more importantly Helhest. We are supposed to be getting a free copy of this character, so as a result it is HIGHLY unlikely that I spend any pulls on this banner. I will just bank them up and save them for a future banner. There is also nothing particularly special about the 4 stars on this banner either. Why they keep putting Ikora on these banners is beyond me, because feels like four in a row or something dumb like that. I wouldn’t mind more copies of Attal, but very much not a priority for me since she also comes from the blue perm banner.

I am not sure if I talked about it here or not, but I now have all four ascendancies unlocked on the Bear Shaman. Instead of going down the Furious Wellspring path, I opted instead just to pick up two nodes that were useful on their own right, but did not significantly tweak the way the character performed. If I had gone down the furious wellspring path, I would have likely needed to do way more gear swapping to include a Crown of Eyes to make the Druidic Champion ascendancy notable pay off. I’ve already struggled with resistances a bit and the thought of losing another slot and with it even more armor… is a bit rough. What makes it even worse though is that the Crown has -10% Fire Resistance that I do not believe can be removed by any method. It is probably the more powerful path but I like Turning of the Seasons for free exposure in presence range, and Wisdom of the Maji for essentially extra life and mana on all of my sockets.

I did do a bunch of gear swapping though to fit in a Defiance of Destiny. I picked up a cheap one with only 21% life recovery on it… which I then boosted to 25% with catalysts. This tiny bit of defiance effect was more than enough to effectively make my build feel immortal now for mapping. When you combine this with the physical damage shifting of Cloak of Flame and then combine that with Elemental Damage soaked by armor… it feels like no amount of damage is really that big of a deal for long. I am now putting more points into life regeneration on the tree since I feel like I deal more than enough damage when I go try hard and push all of my buttons. Simply bouncing around the map with molten crash is more than enough damage to comfortable clear all t15 waystones and I am sure t16s even thought I have yet to do one of those. I think really the only upgrade that I might focus on now is trying to get a new version of Fury of the King with a level 19 or 20 copy of Molten Crash in it.

I spent a decent chunk of last night trying to unlock these two mansions that are showing on the map. I think these nodes might be bugged because while I found what feels like more than enough stones in the surrounding maps, the pathways to either of these never seem to unlock. I did find a weird bug though, where because I failed one of the maps with a stone in it… it made EVERY subsequent map that unlocked by clearing one of the other maps… show up as though I had failed it, and not allow me to use tablets on it. Essentially when you are doing this thing where you are chasing stones, it can cause new nodes to appear on your atlas until you eventually uncover three stones and unlock the hidden pathway into the mansions. These nodes however appear to be imprinted based on the first one, so failing one, means you fail all of them. There are still a handful of nodes that MIGHT have stones in them, so I might as well burn through those and see if I can unlock both of these.

I’m also finally starting to try and care about the Vaal Temple. Apparently if you set it up correctly you can use it to print currency, but as Mathil says in a video that he released this morning… that is just the path to disappointment. Trying to compare your own drops, to an edited demo reel of the highest juiced content is always going to feel bad. Ultimately I arrive at this point every league where I have more than enough currency to do anything that I actually care to do with it. I’ve had decked out “Mageblood” characters and I did not enjoy them any more than I do my characters that I push just to the point of being functional. Sure having a headhunter for example is a lot of fun, but only if you also have a character build that can make the best use of it. I’ve learned that I don’t really love the blaster archetype character templates and instead like the quirkier builds that are way more tanky.

By not desensitizing myself… I can also still enjoy drops like this. Sure those exalted orbs have little value against he Divine Orb but it still feels nice when you see a bunch drop at once. Path of Exile 1 and 2 are the sort of games where you have to make your own fun. I am having a lot of fun with my Demon Fire Bear that runs amok bouncing all over the place, and that is good enough for me. However at some point today I need to stop avoiding the things that I don’t want to deal with… like the filament jam that I have in my AMS unit. I also need to spend some time properly setting up the hobby area in the other office now that I have most of the parts either printed or delivered and ready to go. I got a big self healing cutting mat yesterday so I need to clean off the existing area and start setting things up, and then figure out if I want to order one of those magnifying lamps or not.

Anyways. I hope you have a most wonderful week. I have to work today and tomorrow before being off weds… and having to work thurs and friday. Hopefully you were wiser and took most of the time off.

AggroChat #551 – Massive Adjacent

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Featuring: Belghast, Kodra, Tamrielo, and Thalen

Hey Folks! It is that weird time between holidays, and we are down about half of our folks for various reasons.  We push forward and record a pretty focused show around a few topics.  We start off discussing Q-Up, a game that effectively has a lot of things to say about League of Legends, and also discuss other games like Rabbit and Steel that are themselves commentaries on other games.  From there, Kodra takes Bel to task about Path of Exile II, and mostly how the game seemingly has no interest in making sure you can beat Act 1 with any build and player experimentation.  Thalen has been back in Warframe and attempts to recruit us all to the fold, and honestly…  it is working.  Lastly, we wrap the show with some discussion about the genre that evolved out of MMORPGs…  where the games are far less massive, but still sort of feel like they are a multiplayer experience in spite of only focusing on a handful of players.

Topics Discussed:

  • Q-Up
  • Path of Exile II Still Uninterested in Experimentation
  • Board Games
  • Returning to Warframe
  • The MMO Successor Genre

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