Flowerbabies and Bounty Caches

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This morning should be the beginning of a return to normality for me. The flood related stuff seems to have wrapped up for me and with it my weird alternating work schedule. I still feel somewhat jet lagged from the experience of having to rapidly shift around my schedule for a week and some change. I am sure as I return to my normal rhythm of getting up at 5:30 each morning and going to bed around 10-ish each night those effects will fade. Last night did not help since it was both the return of Fear the Walking Dead and a documentary series on a local murder mystery and we wanted to watch both.

This weekend also signaled the return of the “flowerbabies” in our back yard, as well as the return to having to add another step to my morning routine of watering them. We are getting a really late start to the season in part because our nursery of choice was flooded. We went by on Memorial Day but they seemed to be cleaning up and not actually open for business. Saturday however they were ready to go and we picked up a number of hanging baskets to go on the hooks that we set out around the pool. You never quite know what you are going to get until you go and then sorta pick out whatever happened to speak to you at the time. I am quite partial to the Purslane because those orange and magenta combination is stunning. Also a big fan of the white petunias with the eggplant centers. We have a mix of colors but they now need tending so I will have to start cutting my blog time a little short each morning.

As far as gaming goes I spent the vast majority of my weekend running bounties. I’ve reached the point where I can easily survive Torment XVI so I am now chaining my way through objectives. I finally realize how Grace always seems to know exactly where she is going in these levels, and I feel like once I have reached my final objective… I will have most of the semi-random map layouts nailed as well. At the very least I will hopefully stop going the opposite way given that for the most part the areas around the warp pads are somewhat static. This is not something that I had caught onto in all of my hundreds of hours playing this game. I am sometimes pretty dense.

At this point I have gathered up 25 bounty caches. The majority of these are from Torment 15 with some of the more recent additions to my pile from Torment 16. The caches apparently have a memory for what level you were on when you got the cache even though I can’t seem to see any external indicator of this. Ultimately I am working on knocking out the Conquest of Avarice which is to loot 50 million gold in a streak. Since I don’t want to have to do this insane amount of farming twice… I am probably going to significantly overshoot my target but i am loosely following this guide I found on the forums.

A T13 bounty cache contains 1,190,000 gold.
43 T13 caches contain enough gold to achieve the conquest.

A T14 bounty cache contains 1,440,000 gold.
35 T14 caches contain enough gold to achieve the conquest.

A T15 bounty cache contains 1,540,000 gold.
33 T15 caches contain enough gold to achieve the conquest.

A T16 bounty cache contains 1,640,000 gold.
31 T16 caches contain enough gold to achieve the conquest.

So in theory right now if I figure everything I have looted at this point is a T15 even though I know some are not… it would get me to 38 million gold. I think my goal is going to be to farm up about a page and a half of caches in my vault and then do the mass open. Basically I don’t want to have to do this grind twice so I figure well overshooting my target is the best course of action. 52 caches would be roughly a page and a half and that should in theory net a minimum of 80 million gold… so MORE than enough to hit my target.

It was probably nonsense for me to pick this one as my first conquest… but in doing so it has given me a sense of purpose to grind out an incompatible number of items that have ultimately bolstered my ability to take down content. While I have only picked up a couple of primal ancients… they have seemingly made a difference. The weird thing about this season is that I have yet to see a single Ramaladni’s Gift. I have an ancient Pigsticker waiting in the bank for me to get one since I don’t want to have to re-roll to get a socket… although I guess I could just re-roll one of the stats that I would have re-rolled anyways and roll to something other than the socket when I finally find one.

Whatever the case… I am super into Diablo 3 this season and have been more driven to solo grind than I think I ever have. This somehow transitioned from a social game experience for me… to something that I am finding even more deeply relaxing than it previously was.

Bloodstained E3 Demo

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Another game that I have been messing around with a bit this week is Bloodstained Ritual of the Night Backer E3 Demo. I am assuming this will be the version of the game shown on the E3 floor starting in two weeks. I only know about this existing because I got curious because I could not quite remember which version of the game I had pre-ordered as part of the Kickstarter. When I got to the key redemption page it informed me that I had a yet to be redeemed steam key, which turned out to be for what appears to be a largely finished version of the game.

If you have read this blog for very long you will likely know that possibly my favorite game of all time is Castlevania Symphony of the Night. The very similarly named Bloodstained Ritual of the Night is effectively a spiritual successor designed by the same person, Koji Igarashi. Konami losing their mind ended up stranding a bunch of really excellent properties and we have already seen several of the creators going out and creating new intellectual property. So far I am super on board with the path that Koji has taken in resurrecting the spiritual core of Castlevania in a brand new universe… that quite frankly has a way better story.

In Bloodstained you play as Miriam a Shardbinder, or a human being who has been experimented on with Alchemy to allow them to infuse into themselves the abilities of the enemies that they defeat. Warning this may contain spoilers to Bloodstained: Curse of the Moon the 8 bit honorific title that released before Ritual of the Night as a kickstarter stretch goal. The setting is one of magic blended with burgeoning technology, and one where up until the industrial age the alchemists were treated with almost god like reverence. However with the influx of technology, the common people started relying less and less on Alchemy and more on machinery.

In an act of desperation the Alchemist flung wide the gates of hell letting loose demons and all manner of other creatures. The reasoning here is a little thin but at the same time there was a hunting down of the Shardbinders so that you as Miriam represent one of the last ones. Which makes it super convenient that you now have to kill all of these demons that will ultimately allow you to steal their powers. If you have played Casltevania Circle of the Moon this entire process will feel really familiar. At some point while killing a monster a shard of their energy will infuse itself rather violently with Miriam and from that point on you get a new ability to play with in the menu system. These serve as both attacks and ways to grant new abilities that will help you traverse new areas metroidvania style.

Your character also has a wide variety of weapons available to them, which give you a slew of different ways you can tweak the gameplay to fit your desired style. I’m personally playing a lot with the “katana” style family of blades which have a wide blade flourish and are pretty hard hitting… but also very slow give the extra flourish animation. These are great for taking down bigger monsters, but pure hell for chains of bats or any of the other tiny annoying enemies. Something like the Rapier which hits extremely rapidly would be far better suited for the modern equivalent of the medusa heads. If you want to just feel like a Martial Arts bad ass, you can always stick with the Kung Fu shoes family of weapons which are essentially just boots that you equip and then kick literal ass with.

I am not certain I could be more on board with this game. Sure there is some weirdness at times with it effectively being a 2D parallax side-scroller built in a 3D engine… but this also lets the game do some really nifty things. There is a point I encountered in the third area where you are effectively walking along the base of the castle… and then to denote that you are turning a corner the scenery in the background begins to rotate as your character shifts heading slightly still following what is a 2D path. I have a feeling as I get deeper into the game they are going to do more interesting things with this same sort of mechanic.

The fidelity of the gameplay experience so far feels perfect. It is immediately comfortable and recognizable to someone who has played a lot of Symphony of the Night and it feels like they have taken all of those RPG element aspects that I loved so much and cranked them up to eleven. In SOTN it takes awhile before you reach the library… the area that effectively allows you to manipulate a lot of things about your character. In Bloodstained you are introduced to this aspect after the very first intro level on the ship. Everything about the game feels deeply familiar but also new at the same time.

My backer copy of the game is on Steam, but I fully expect to pick this up for every platform it is available on if for no reason other than supporting the team. I mean I do own a copy of Symphony of the Night for pretty much every platform it was available on. I think this is going to be awesome on the switch, as I think it will be another excellent pick and play intermittently experience given the game has scattered a generous number of save points throughout the game. If you were a fan of Symphony of the Night or any of the modern GBA and DS tittles that were in that same metroidvania style… then I highly suggest you check out Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night when it releases in June.

A Thorny Season

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Things are in theory starting to go the right direction. The lake just up from Tulsa has reached a point where more water is going out than is coming in, which in truth means the beginning of the slow process to pull us back from the brink of disaster. The rain yesterday and last night caused localized flooding but did not fall in the river basin, so did not add to the long term woes. I worked a late shift last night getting home around midnight and as a result I am getting a bit of a slow start this morning. I am looking forward to reaching a point where my life is no longer built around what emergency shift I need to work next. All of that said… I am exceptionally lucky in that the flooding has only effected my schedule and has not decimated my life or livelihood in the process.

A good chunk of my downtime has still been spent working on Diablo 3 Season 17. At this point I am one achievement away from completing Champion rank in the seasons journey, and my home is tonight that I can have the presence of mind to be able to master the set dungeon. These are not exactly my jam and I always end up putting them off until I absolutely cannot progress without doing them. After that I only have gems to 45, one conquest and extracting a bunch more things with Kunai’s cube to be able to complete Destroyer. My goal is to ultimately go for finishing all of these this season and be able to claim the really spiffy wings. This is something that Grace has already managed to finish, but I have a feeling she is going to be willing to help me out with the things I end up getting stuck on.

Ultimately the conquest that I am planning on going for is going to involve running a ton of bounties and stockpiling the caches so that I can open them all at the same time and consume a ton of gold all at once. Once I knock out mastering a set dungeon this might be my next farm for the short term because I need a ton of materials to be able to extract stuff with the cube, so I might as well farm for the chests at the same time. I have no clue how Grace is finished so fast other than the fact that she has poured a significant chunk of hours into the game over the Memorial Day weekend. I am just happy at this point that I have a functional build that seems to be going smoothly.

Invoker is probably my favorite set in the game and I really like the play style of killing things with thorns. I am however going to have to swap out a bunch of abilities to master the set dungeon as I am not playing with a good number of the abilities that are required. I might end up looking up a guide again to see what is the suggested combination. I know I need to disable my Paladin follower because he will ultimately screw things up. When I do the run on the gold achievement I need to remember to disable my pet, because it will also ultimately screw things up. All of that said… I want to make my push to finish up this season so I can devote some time to running up a character on the Switch as well.

Original Start is Best Start

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My schedule is completely out of whack right now because of the stuff I am doing in regards to the flooding in town. We are doing this 24/7 management shifts thing, and previously I took one of those sessions on Friday from 6 am to 3pm, and hoped to keep taking that shift given that it is the closest to my normal sleep patterns. Unfortunately due to some shuffling I am now going to be captain 2pm to 11pm… which is manageable but I’ve not gotten to sleep that late since I was actively raiding. As a result this morning I slept in considerably later than normal as I am not going into the office until right before my shift. The further results of that is that you are getting a blog post later than normal, and that I may partake of a nap at some point between now and 1:30 pm when I leave the house.

I’ve truly been all over the place game wise over the last few weeks and I blame it at least in part of my fragmented schedule due to the weather. One of the things that I poked my head into again was Elder Scrolls Online, in part because the Elsweyr expansion released… and also I find that name complete hell to try and spell. ESO does this interesting thing each time it releases a new expansion, in that it replaces the new player experience with one that begins right at the newest expansion. I believe this started with the Morrowind expansion, continued with Summerset and is now doing it again with Elsweyr, which leads to the problem I am in currently.

I am probably in the minority, but I greatly prefer the original starting experience that shipped with Elder Scrolls Online… aka the three starter islands of Khenarthi’s Roost, Stros M’Kai and Bleakrock. So after piddling around with a Necromancer which so far is nowhere near as much of my jam as I would have thought it would be… I wound up grabbing a character that was still on Khenarthi’s Roost to play around with just because I wanted to experience that start all over again. The funny thing about this is… this is how a character I created as a joke is winding up to be my primary alt. Van Belsing was largely created at the insistence of a friend of mine, and was never intended to be played, but here we are with the fact that I’m now level 8 on that character and having a lot of fun re-experiencing the original starting game flow.

As far as my main goes… I am nowhere near Elsweyr either and still digging into the Vvardenfell campaign. I have a weird requirement when I am playing my main character in that I will only do content in the order in which it was released. Now I had to pace this out a bit given that both Thieves Guild and Assassin’s Guild are not exactly expansion that you can fully complete in this manner given that there is a lot of faction grinding involved. However with the mainline content I have been extremely strict in this nature. I completed all 150 levels worth of original content doing the trip from Daggerfall to Dominion to Ebonheart before touching any of the expansion content.

Now I have a stack of content waiting on me and honestly… that isn’t a bad spot to be in. So often with MMORPGs I am a content locust and can easily gobble up all of the available content leaving me with a feeling of nothing left to do. However the content in Elder Scrolls online is so dense and story driven that I can only handle doing so much of it before I need to go play something else for awhile. The end result is that ESO is a game that I can seemingly constantly return to and experience fresh story driven content that has piled up and is waiting on me. Now I tend to stay subbed pretty much permanently so I can pop in and out at will. I cannot play the game without the magical reagent storage bag, because I like looting pretty much every object that crosses my path.

This is still a really damned good game, but all of that said… I still do think I prefer the story line that came with the original game the best. That is not to knock any of the expansion content, because it has all be excellent. I just prefer the core game flow of the old world. I realized there was a lot of gnashing of teeth and it was fashionable to hate on this game when it first released… but I loved it then and still love it now. It is like a comfy sofa that I can crawl back on at any point I like and take a nap. That might not be the best tagline ever for an MMORPG experience but it seems to have found a niche in my game play schedule that I keep returning to.