Oops an Audiobook

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I woke up this morning and as I am oft to do… I sat in bed for a moment and scrolled through email to see what came in over night. I saw a charge from Audiobooksnow the site that I tend to buy my audiobooks for that was $9.99, and had a mild freak out. Did my account get hacked? Did I accidentally sign up for some auto purchase club book thing? NOPE! I apparently pre-ordered Brigands and Breadknives by Travis Baldree and completely forgot about it. So at some point today I will be starting that, and pretty much mainlining it until I finish. Audiobooks are really the perfect compliment for grinding in Path of Exile, and I am very much in head down grind time. Today is a holiday for me, and I have an appointment at 9 am in town, but once I get back from that… I will likely be starting the audiobook and snuggling with cats while POEing it until my brain bleeds. I should probably pick up the house before I dive into that… because everything needs to be cleaned and vacuumed.

Essentially I have reached the point of the league where I need to start chipping away at the various Challenges. Most of them are not that hard, for example I need to unlock 3 Minor Pantheons, and I have plenty of Divine Vessels to do this. I just have not. I did not even fully unlock the one that I am using because the second trait is not really all that important for my build. However there are some that suck… like for example I am going to have to consume a Divine Orb either by using it directly on an item or using it in a craft. I still do not have that many divine orbs to my name, so each one feels like it is precious beyond words.

I have made a handful of Divine Orb sales over the last few days, and I really dig the Sales History tab that got built into the new trade system. The shield I sold for 2 Div was a crafting experiment where I happened into another Shaper shield and I threw purple juice at it until I hit 5% recover on block. The Cloak of Flame is essentially just the first one that I linked using a Black Morrigan that I recently replaced with a corrupted chest with 5% less Fire Damage taken on it. The Stygian Vise was just me flipping a base that I got as a drop that was Hunter Influenced. The gloves were some failed tree tree crafts that were really well rolled, but not good enough to replace my current gloves. While this is still poverty league, some things still sell pretty well.

I am spending most of my time down in the mines still, because there is a brisk business in fossils and resonators, especially now that you cannot passively earn azurite. I expect these to go up in price the longer the league goes, and essentially right now I cash them in whenever I need more divines to buy something. I guess I should figure out what I actually care enough about to buy going forward. I have started doing some heist in the vague attempt that I can get a good ring base to craft on. My rings are not in the best shape, so that would in theory be the next thing I tackle gear wise. Everything else is good enough… or that the upgrade would be 20+ Divines to replace. You quickly reach a place where all of the cheap and easy upgrades are gone. I should in theory start working on replacing my gems with awakened versions.

Over in Destiny Rising, I bumped my Maru high enough to start doing Grandmaster content, and Ace and I got together last night to run through four of our keys. I played Maru one round and Helhest the next round, and then we alternated as we did a few strikes. We tried Gauntlet Blitz, but it was super painful… and scarred us to the point where we did not want to try it again. I think maybe the Grandmaster mode of the new Blitz encounters are a bit overtuned. We got the one where you fight the giant eyeball and we just could not chip away at its health, and everyone kept dying. Strikes on the other hand felt WAY easier, so we instead did two of those and called it good.

I actually managed to get two exotic weapon mods that matched the perks of the Grenade Launcher that I have been using. This is definitely a massive boon for Maru, but will also pull my wolf up a bit as well since I have swapped to using Sweet Business on him instead of the Grenade launcher. I ran out of resources but at some point I will hopefully pull this the rest of the way to +10 on each of the mods. My next step is probably to push the primary weapon slot grenade launcher to 85, as I really like playing Maru. I know she is the new hotness, but I am having a lot of fun and she lives in this weird happy place between how sturdy Jolder is and how squishy Helhast has been. The on demand shield ability helps a ton when it comes to staying alive during content.

After grouping together I went downstairs and started up Delicious in Dungeon/Dungeon Senshi on my television and watched several episodes while playing Path of Exile. I had made it pretty far in the series watching the subtitled version, but decided to restart it entirely with the dual language version. I’ve basically decided that unless I cannot get the english language version of something… I am always going to wait for it because seemingly most content gets released in both languages anymore. I know there are purists out there, but really… I would prefer to not read television if I can help it. It also means that if it is a language that i understand, I can play games while watching it. This series is pretty great, though I have to admit I do prefer the Japanese language voice actor for Senshi. The rest of the actors though I prefer the English language interpretation.

Anyways wrapping this up because I have stuff to do, so that I can get ready for my appointment in town at 9. I hope you have a most wonderful day.

Onslaught with Friends

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Good Morning Folks! Last night I had quite a lot of fun running around in Destiny Rising with Ace and Ammo. Since we had last grouped Ammo had managed to finish up the main storyline which opened access to a whole slew of new activities. She had not experienced Gauntlet Onslaught, aka the raid at all and after taking down the Stronghold we had uncovered for the pack, we queued one by one through all of the parts of it. We also did all of the new Gauntlet Blitz modes that are being previewed right now, and have guaranteed weapon drops associated with them. It was a heck of a lot of fun, and while we struggled a bit with Issakkis, in finding a group that could do the mechanic… we cleared everything without much issue. We did fail once at breakin, but shifted our strategy to make sure that I was on the first bridge crew, and Ace was on the last bridge crew… because we had someone take a key on that last round and just mill around killing random stuff.

The big highlight of the night is that I finally pulled the Renegade ghost shell on my main account, which drops from the raid. I also pulled a second copy of Izanagi’s Burden, which will allow me to progress that weapon at some point for Tan-2 and Umeko. Though to be honest, if I am going to play a precision character I am almost always going to be bringing Helhest. I really love Maru the new champion and am working on leveling her up so that she can become one of my mains for progressing content. I needed someone that I really liked that could handle spread shinkas and she does so masterfully. I think Ace and I are going to hang out tonight and do some of the weekly reset content, and maybe tomorrow during the day a bit since I am off due to the holiday. I have business to take care of in the morning but should be home by noon and ready to roll.

Over in Path of Exile, it was a weekend of finishing things up. I ended the weekend with 115 of 115 maps completed, my four voidstones, and all of the map favorites unlocked except Sirius and the Feared. At some point I will run Sirius, but I have not done enough maps to gain the fragments yet. I just bought fragments for the other ones, and I guess I could do the same for Sirius but it did not feel that pressing. I’ve also completed a t17 which unlocked my six socket map device, and have started running proper maps loaded with scarabs and everything. Right now I am alternating between Shipyard and Toxic Sewer, because both are fairly decent maps for the type of gameplay I play… and not too bad honestly for the breach mechanic. They both offer at least some modicum of bottlenecking for the times when you have to defend Ailith.

When I dinged 96, I devoted some time to running through a bunch of boss encounters and I completed the pinnacle fight for Breach, where you fight both Not-Tul and Not-Esh together. I am not sure if it is always Tul and Esh or if you sometimes get the other combinations of the Breachlords that are not Chayula. The story of this Breach league is really interesting and I love how it is essentially setting up the events that ultimately lead to the coming of Xesht in Path of Exile II. I would love it if we got more of these betweener leagues that move the story forward for each league’s content. For example I would love an updated version of Abyss that brings us closer to what it is like in Path of Exile II, because it is SO MUCH better than defacto Abyss that we currently have. The only league I am scared about them changing is Delve, but that is mostly because I love it so much that I do not want them to fuck it up and make it no longer fun for me.

I’ve been slowly working on my build while leveling my character towards 100, and I picked up a Foulborn Red Dream jewel, which is helpful this league for stacking life. As a result I have almost 8000 life, and there are some other things that I could do to push it higher. Pohx showcased a version of his build running 10k life, and I effectively need to swap from Immortal Flesh to a well crafted Stygian Vise to get there. This was a rather costly swap because the jewel itself was 2 divines, and then each of the five tattoos needed was around 70 chaos. That said… I’ve never run Righteous Fire with this much health so it is at least worth doing for the time being. I feel a bit squishier than I have in previous incarnations of RF, and I am not entirely certain what is going on there. It might be that I currently only have 30% reduced crit damage. I am contemplating swapping in a Taste of Hate to also get more phys to elemental conversion.

I am also still working on getting some better gear upgrades. On the Tree Tree I am working on crafting a new pair of gloves, because while my current ones are pretty solid and I have yet been unable to replace them… I could also have way more life on them. I am still fairly proud of the Archedemon Crown and Shaper Shield that I crafted. I bought a new sceptre which I picked up fairly cheaply, and recently swapped over to a Cloak of Flame with more ignite duration, more fire resistance, and 5% reduced fire damage taken which is super useful. At some point I would love to get a good corruption for Annihilation’s Approach boots, but the best one is super expensive thanks to Pohx’s video about them. My amulet and rings are all sort of trash and could be improved greatly, but it really depends upon how much currency I want to pour into them. Now that I am delving around 200 depth reliably and running t16s easily, I can start generating way more currency.

The other thing that I added was a Light of Meaning, buffing fire damage. I lost some damage in the swap to the Red Dream jewel because I had to give up a jewel with fire multi on it. This single jewel swap pushed me well past where I was originally with the damage and took the entire build up into the 1.5 million-ish range, making the boss fights way more comfortable and the general mapping and delving way faster. Right now I have a jewel with Fire Multi and Max Fire Res on it, and swapping that for one with max life would be helpful… but those are running around 10 div at the moment and I do not have that. I tried the Sir Gog method of crafting Jewels with the Tree Tree for a bit, and didn’t have much luck. I have way more luck printing gloves, so I am back on that path for now. Essentially I am looking for gloves with 21% regen, 100+ flat life, 45+ fire res, 58+ dex… and then anything else that is useful life. I’ve gotten close a few times and have sold the failures. If I get a 21% regen fractured roll I might try either fossil crafting or harvest crafting to get the rest of the way there.

I am basically at the point in the league where I need to start chipping away at achievements so I can get my totem pole. The build is stable and reliable, and I can pretty much do any content on it. I am fishing for an Aul in Delve, but have not had much luck. One thing that I have noticed is that I think they have killed the curse on hit rings from Delve, either that or made them extremely uncommon. I’ve cleared a bunch of the elemental nodes down there and not seen a single one yet. I always beeline for these because they also reward elemental fossils, which I find way more useful than any of the loot other than the curse rings. According to the trade site, they still exist… but have either had their rarity cranked or my luck has just been shit. The death of Hexblast Mines though, pretty much decimated the market for these so it is not like they were selling well anyways. I used to throw 20c on each of them in the hopes that maybe one of them would move, but given the deflation of this league it seems like they are all around 1c each.

In other unrelated news… I have been watching Frieren for the last few weeks and finished up season one on Saturday. This show is extremely delightful and I highly suggest giving it a watch if you like that D&D party vibe. I would say it has thematic notes aligned with Delicious in Dungeon/Dungeon Meshi except it is effectively the tale in reverse. Frieren was the Mage for a party that defeated the Demon King, and a huge part of the show is going on another adventure to somewhat retrace the steps that the first party made. Elves are effectively immortal in this universe, so the march of time just works differently for her… and the decade spent partying together… felt like a brief interaction for her. Through retracing the steps she is effectively realizing what she missed. You would think this would make the show deeply melancholy but it isn’t really, and through retracing the steps… she realizes how special the first journey was. Super charming honestly, and well worth a watch of the first 28 episodes. I will be anxiously awaiting the drop for season 2.

AggroChat #546 – Bouncing Balls of Death

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

We start off the show with some discussion about Geek Girl Con and how it is a great experience for the entire family.  From there, Ash has played a bit more Daggerheart and discusses how not having initiative in that game actually works out really well.  Kodra is trying a new mine build in Path of Exile 3.2,7 and we talk a bit about how Rolling Magma Mine has been working. Bel has finished most of the endgame prep and discusses the state of his build and how Breach has been working as a league mechanic.  Touhou gets a little less difficult to engage with as Fantasy Maiden Wars attempts to present twenty years worth of assorted games into something more approachable. Tam revisited VTM Bloodlines 2 and thinks that maybe we are misremembering the first game, and how the thing that exists is actually pretty good if you give it enough time.  Lastly, Bel finished Frieren this weekend and talks a bit about it being really good and well worth watching.

Topics Discussed:

  • Geek Girl Con 2025
  • Daggerheart
    • Initiative is Overrated
  • Path of Exile 3.27
    • Rolling Magma Mines
    • Breach So Far
  • Fantasy Maiden Wars
    • Super Robot Wars With Shrine Maidens
    • Touhou
  • VTM Bloodlines 2 Revisited
  • Frieren is Great

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Blog Woes and Maru Booms

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Good Morning Folks. I did not get a blog post out yesterday, because for most of the day my site was bricked. This all started the night before with a deluge of spam, that my spam filter seemingly failed to remove. I cleared it up and decided I would investigate the issues in the morning. It seemed as though my site instance was being blocked from reaching out to any endpoints for WordPress, spam filter, the firewall rules, or even google site kit. After going around in circles with a tech twice, they finally escalated me up the tier and around 6:30 last night I got the above email. Apparently my site had received a blacklist complaint for serving up Malware. However they thoroughly scanned my files multiple times and found nothing of the sort. Weird that they took action without actually contacting me about it. I thoroughly scoured my email and found zero attempt to contact me regarding this issue. Things are resolved now and turned back on, but still highly frustrating.

Yesterday was the start of a new season in Destiny Rising, and with it comes a new mythic character called Maru. She had apparently been available during various phases of the alpha and beta testing for the game, and serves as this important niche that was previously only capable of being filled by Wolf or Ikora. The problem there is that neither of those champions are really worth investing a lot of rare resources into, because even fully kitted out… they will never feel as amazing as some of the later champions that came out. This is the problem with Gacha games, there will always be a concerted effort to make the Free characters feel nowhere near as good as the banner pulled characters. I had banked up a few “pink ship” pulls and managed to get a copy of her in my first 10 pull.

Essentially she is using the same class of primary weapon as Ikora, which is a single shot infinite ammo Grenade Launcher. Then she is using the same heavy weapon type as Wolf, which is a multi-shot Grenade launcher. Essentially she is all about explosions and I am not exactly sure why… but the kit feels so much better on her than it ever did on Ikora. Her first ability fires off multiple void grenades at the target, and the second ability provides a shield that then drops when you fire off a charged grenade attack. Her super is great because she bellows “Spray and Pray” and then lobs a heavy machinegun fire rate of grenade attacks at your target. It doesn’t last terribly long, but is pretty great for burn phases.

I ran the Legendary Story Mission on Challenge Difficulty with her and came in well under the gold timer. Sadly this will not count for either silver or gold, because I have yet to get out of bronze with her due to the limited amount of elemental fruit I had available to take her to rank 9 artifact gilding. I have her up to around 60k light, and she is absolutely going to be the next character I push up closer to 64k so I can start doing the Master/Grandmaster content with her. Essentially she fills a niche that I did not really have. For precision content I have Helhest, and for Rapidfire/Solar content I have Estela, but I did not have anyone that could really handle Spread Shinkas. She wrecks them with great abandon, and I pulled her exotic weapon which only serves to greatly improve her utility because it fires faster than the base grenade launchers do.

With today’s patch we also got access to three new Gauntlet Blitz maps, which are mostly better than the original three. I had to snap this screenshot because this represents what most of the night looked like. We queued into a Grandmaster Blitz and half of the party was playing Estela and the other half playing Maru. The thing that kind of sucks about Grandmaster content is that you can only run it once per character, per day… which means you have to go back and do this content multiple days in a row to burn down your limited access keys. I mean it creates scenarios where Ace and I have to group up together multiple days, which is not a bad thing. However I do loathe artificial impositions for play restrictions.

After running the new content in Destiny Rising, I moved downstairs and popped onto Discord for our weekly Thursday night Guild Wars 2 shenanigans. We were down a Sita, though he popped in briefly to say he missed us while he was with family at Disney. It was kind of adorable honestly, and we also missed him. We largely ran Rifts in the first of the new expansion zones, which was great for me because I needed to grind out ranks in Skimmer mastery due to being knee capped by an early bug that I have already talked about. I got the needed rank and a good chunk towards the next rank, though I am probably going to to switch mastery tracks just in case I get gated by something in the zone specific one. It was a lot of fun, as it always is and I greatly love hanging out with Ammo and Sol and doing dumb things. Sometimes you just have to “F” it… which is the primary interaction key in Guild Wars 2.

Lastly over in Path of Exile I am wrapping up red maps on my Atlas and I legitimately have not really encountered any major difficulty spikes. I am in an awkward spot where I need a bunch of different gear pieces and things to happen before transitioning to the next phase of the build. I have a solid life gain block shield that has decent flat regeneration on it, and that will come in handy when I transition to block based. However at the same time I really need a six link helm, which I am working on crafting through delve. The challenge right now is I that I do not have much in the way of currency to spend, so I am having to go out and acquire the needed crafting resources myself which is slowing things down considerably. I think I have enough Divine Vessels to finish out my pantheon so that I can drop Purity of Elements and move to Purity of Fire, but I also need to acquire an Enlighten so that I can get to the res cap. Essentially there are a lot of moving parts but at some point I will click them all into place and shift up my tree. For the time being I am pushing ahead and should be able to complete maps and get at least my first two void stones without much issue.

The biggest challenge that I am having right now is that I am dealing with some health problems and have just not felt like myself for the last few weeks. A medication swap ended poorly, and yesterday I ran to the doctor to talk through the symptoms and it ended up with me having an in office EKG, glucose test, urine test, and ultimately doing a couple of different blood tests that I am waiting on results back from. This morning is the first morning of shifting things back to the way that they were and dropping the new med that seemed to be having some adverse reactions. Additionally I am getting a referral to a Cardiologist and getting signed up for a Colonoscopy since I have never had one of those. They are kind of grasping at straws because at face value… pretty much all of the tests so far have come back normal. If nothing else it was peace of mind, and will be further once the other specialists tag in. Basically I am in a weird place right now, and it is negatively impacting my gusto to push hard in games at the moment.

Having my spouse effectively drop dead in front of my eyes with no warning in July, has basically ratcheted up my sense of panic. I already have natural hypochondriac tendencies that my spouse helped walk me down from, so I am trying to not go into a rampant panic attack. Its scary in the world when you are all alone.