Cows Love Goblins

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We hit the craziest streak last night. So if you have read this blog for any period of time you will know that my friend Grace is pretty much my driving force for half of the nonsense that I get up to in Diablo 3. We started the evening with a simple goal of leveling a bunch of Gems… or at least in my case getting the gems I actually needed for my set. In order to do a run of a bunch of Greater Rifts we were grinding some normal’s to get keystones when we happened upon a Cow Level themed Rift.

After completing the Rift we just let it ride and kept going because we noticed a trend that pretty much every floor had a Goblin on it. This trend continued until Floor 11 with only Floor 9 not producing a Goblin that we were at least aware of. Sadly none of them were menagerist goblins, but we did get a bunch of crafting material, gem and blood shard goblins. Sometimes in Diablo 3 you just have to roll with whatever the randomizer gives you. I am not sure if the one goblin per floor thing happens in every single Cow Level Rift, but if you wind up getting one leave me a note in the comments as to your results.

This image… is a prime example of why people hate Kadala. I was trying to get an Aquila Cuirass for the cube which is normally something I have seen dozens of by this point in the season. As a result I spent down my new found wealth of blood shards and got an inventory full of yellow and blue with absolutely nothing even vaguely interesting. There are times when this would be half full of legendaries and set pieces, but nope… the Kadala express decided to let all of the passengers off at Trash Town.

The set dungeon continues to more or less be the bane of my existence. I did manage to get through enough of it to get Slayer knocked out, but now I am stalled out on gems and Set Dungeon Mastery on Champion. What I ultimately need is to spend some time working on some of these things when I don’t have a captive audience willing to do literally anything else. It feels like doing my homework when I have these handful of tasks that I really don’t enjoy, but I know I should take care of so I can progress past them. Ultimately I am trying to push all the way to the end so I can get the Tyrael themed Goblin pet which is being offered this season.

Here is hoping I can mange to do that, but I am not loving the Wizard. I have half a mind to convince Grace to boost me a Demon Hunter, because thus far at least Wizard is really not my jam. There is an explosions build that I am trying to piece together which I think doesn’t have near the top end capability, but would maybe feel more mobile than the meteor build I am running with currently. This is probably going to be the last time I play up a Wizard however because I didn’t quite understand how different they were as far as squishitude. Demon Hunter can be pretty squishy but they have way better mobility to handle it. Wizard… just wants to die a lot.

Pouty Wizard

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Friday was the start of another Diablo 3 Season, and as is usually the case Grace and I met up and leveled together until I decided it was time for bed. This season we also grabbed our friend Byx to join along in the fun, which made for a really enjoyable grind. Since I had never gotten a Wizard or a Witch Doctor to level 70, I opted to play a Wizard this time around and to be honest… it is messing with my head. Finger Wigglers are not exactly the sort of classes I excel at, and I am having trouble adjusting to just how squishy I am and now much I am riding the razors edge between destroying everything with impunity and my own death.

The set this time is Tal Rasha which has a bunch of different viable builds. Essentially the idea behind it is to stack up a massive buff for casting an ability of each element. This sort of idea plays nicely into items like the Convention of Elements that give you alternating buffs, but there really is no way to actually time hitting the right ability while the right buff is up… or at least that is not something in my scope of functionality. Instead I teleport wildly while spamming every ability trying desperately to keep my buff at 4 stacks while destroying everything with a cavalcade of Meteors raining down from above.

This season we cheated and cheated hard in the form of Saturday morning getting one hell of a boost from a friend of ours named Kolrath. He seemingly ground all night long and by 9 am Saturday morning was a whirling avatar of death that managed to push me from 40 to 70 and Grace from 55 to 70 in a matter of two runs. After that I have spent a bunch of the weekend farming bounties in an attempt to get all of the items needed for my particular build. At this point I think I have them and now begins the slow process of grinding out the post seasons journey steps. The bane of my existence is the set dungeon and I will have to buckle down and master that as it is ultimately going to hold me back from completing two of the steps.

I really do not like being on a timer and having to be mindful of that while doing a bunch of other shit… is pretty much the exact opposite of the kind of gameplay that I want from a game. As a result it is the set dungeon that always hamstrings my progress. I can do them, I just need to sort of force myself to do them. If anyone is online and doing literally anything else… I will join in that and ignore my maintenance duties. Similarly I tend to push off the solo Greater Rifts as well, but at least in this case I have done through a solo 40 and need to knock out a solo 50 soonish. I am missing most of the gems that i need to finish this set so I am going to be doing a lot of grinding of Greater Rifts.

AggroChat #277 – Failures to Launch

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Featuring: Ammo, Ashgar, Belghast, Grace, Kodra and Thalen

Tonight we have a show with a running theme about launches of varying degrees of success.  We get the memes out of our system about the Cybertruck and how Bel would absolutely drive one.  We talk about the concerning launch of the Google Stadia and the challenges of cloud gaming in general.  We talk about the announcement of Half Life Alyx… and how we all became way less interesting when we heard it was VR.  We talk about the launch of Pokemon Sword and Shield and how Ash is frustrated about the lack of the eternal PokeDex, but otherwise it is a solid game.  Grace and Bel talk about the rocky start to Diablo 3 Season 19 and the various bugs that they are encountering. Bel and Thalen talk about the Vex Offensive entering the Final Assault in Destiny 2, and how players were expecting it to be something different.  Finally Bel talks a little bit about returning to and playing a bit of the Anthem Cataclysm events.

Topics Discussed

  • Cybertruck
    • Object Still Loading
  • Google Stadia
    • Challenges of Cloud Gaming
    • Unknown Market
    • XCloud / Playstation Now / Parsec
  • Half Life Alyx
    • Half Life 1 ½ 
    • The Failure of VR
  • Pokemon Sword and Shield
  • Diablo 3 Season 19 Issues
  • Destiny 2 Vex Offensive Final Assault
    • Fans Expected Fatebringer 2.0
  • Anthem Redux

Original Blog Post on AggroChat.com

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

When it Rains It Pours

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This is Kenzie. In one of the yesterday’s photos she was the one laying on my legs while Allie was laying beside me. She is my crazy monkey girl and is currently screaming at me to throw a hairband for her to fetch while I am typing this. Along with everything I talked about yesterday, we got some bad news about Kenzie recently as well. It turns out she is Diabetic and after taking a second round of bloodwork to verify it… we will have to very soon begin giving her insulin shots every morning and evening. Insulin is nonsensically expensive and while an injection pen is in theory going to last us a good while with Kenzie, I am now deeply concerned about the expense for those who have to take way more doses.

I was at first appalled when the vet said that in a lot of cases folks end up putting the animal down when they have diabetes. I could never consider something like that with Kenzie, but when the cost of upkeep is going to add one to three hundred dollars a month depending on severity I guess I can see how that would put folks in a really tough spot. I am thankful that we will be able to weather the burden and that our Vet did a ton of legwork for us and found the cheapest place for insulin pens and needles and we just had to then go acquire them. At some point this weekend we will be taking her into the Vet to be taught how to deliver the shots correctly, and then this gets added to my daily routine.

I am also thankful that Kenzie takes meds well and will pretty much tolerate us doing anything. I hope that streak continues when that “anything” is poking her with a needle twice a day. She has finally stopped screaming and is laying down beside me now on the box that a PC Tower Case came in. I was so slow getting my system transferred over into it that she claimed the box as her domain, giving her a way to be close to me while I sit in my office chair. When I finally swapped over to the new case, I put the old case in the box and taped it back shut so she would continue to have her own personal perch. For the longest time she laid beside me on my desk, and there is a blanket sitting there still for that purpose… but she prefers the cardboard box.

Now we get on to the title of this post that is both figurative and literal. We are going through a nonsensical amount of rain right now and coming home from the store yesterday I got completely drenched, along with the four sacks of groceries I was carrying. When I got everything into the kitchen I went back into the living room to take off my jacket and lay it up to dry when I noticed a bunch of water on the coffee table. I had a moment where I was trying to figure out if I accidentally sat the wet sacks down on the table, or if it was something else. Then while trying to figure this out I heard a distinct drip coming from the rafter above the table. We have a very slow leak and it has happened once or twice before, generally speaking when the rain is blowing horizontally due to the wind. So that is another thing on the list that will have to be dealt with as we get someone to come out and look it over. I am hoping it is just a case of the flashing pulling up or something like that.

Tonight however… I am hoping to get some relaxation in the form of mindless Diablo 3 grinding. It is the opening of a new season and with it comes something I have never done before. I have a plethora of Demon Hunters, Crusaders, Barbarians and Necromancers… but I have never before gotten a Wizard or a Witch Doctor to 70. Grace confirmed that the Haedrigs set this time is a good one for Wizards and as a result I am planning on pushing myself well out of my comfort zone and running up a finger wiggler. If this works I might even knock out the Witch Doctor next season.

There is just something relaxing about our quarterly ritual of grinding up fresh characters in Diablo 3. Given all of the nonsense happening right now in my life I really need something peaceful and relaxing. I’ve had pretty fraught evenings of late where I never could quite settle into playing anything in particular. So I am looking forward to having a purpose tonight.

Lastly before I close things out. I want to take a moment to thank everyone for their comments yesterday. They really do mean a lot even though I told you that you didn’t have to make them. I mean I knew that my admonishment would do nothing, but I also sorta felt like I needed to let people off the hook. We all have a lot of things that we are dealing with and my burden is by no means more significant than anyone else. That said I really do appreciate the constant reminder that I have a bunch of people out there that care about me.