Temu Dragon Stand

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Good Morning Folks. Yesterday was the drop of the last part of the Janthir Wilds story called Absolution. It was quite a hefty patch, but not one without some issues. The biggest one that I personally experienced is that for whatever reason they did not successfully reset purchases on the wizards vault, meaning that while I could see a new Legendary Weapon Kit was available… it showed that I had already purchased it. This was fixed early in the evening with an additional patch that required a restart, and from that point forward things seemed to be fine. I have pretty mixed emotions about this patch and there are some things that were phenomenal, others that were pretty disappointing, and then some that was just plain bad. Fair warning, as I get into the new map meta, there are going to be complete spoilers over what is going on there. I will warn you again because at least at the start I have some pretty surface level stuff to talk about.

First up, given that it is June now and Pride Month there are some new wings available this year. Initially I thought that they might be a re-offering of the wings from last year, but nope these are entirely new and pretty freaking amazing. The default rainbow pattern on these wings are significantly more vibrant than the previous macaw wings. Both the wings and the glider are patterned after the existing White or Black wings sets. For me it showed up untextured and brown, but I had to go use the dye eraser tool in order to show the default rainbow colors. I like that they are a much fuller wing than the macaw set and looks way more natural on a “girthy” model like that of the Norn and Char.

What is really cool about these wings however is that they have four dye channels. So you can of course use them in the default red, yellow, green, purple blended configuration. However you can also dye them to match ANY color scheme you might want. So this means you can effectively recreate any pride flag or simply dye them to match your outfit of choice. I turned mine into a recreation of the Bisexual Flag, since that is ultimately what represents me personally. No they don’t really match my outfit in the least but are freaking cool and I am really thankful that they are giving these away for free. The only caveat is that you have to have purchased the game. I tried to claim a set of these wings on my free-to-play account and they were not available.

Another really cool thing that they released on the cash shop is this Shimmering Aurora Homestead Sky. They absolutely got $10 in gems from me to pick this up, because one of my complaints about the existing sky is that I could not permanently set it to either night or day. I don’t like the lighting in the homestead during the day, and greatly preferred the night sky… and it would stick until I logged out and then when I logged in again everything would be back to the default day settings. With the Aurora sky it seems to stick permanently and also gives everything a beautiful lighting overlay. This makes me actually want to start building something properly in my homestead. Part of me wants to tear down everything that exists by default and create something from scratch.

Now for the disappointing. I think a lot of the failures that I am going to talk about in this post, come down to over-hyping and poorly marketing changes. One of the big quality of life changes that was announced was the addition of a universal teleportation tome, that in theory would collect all of your teleportation devices into a single item allowing you to free up a bunch of inventory slots. I don’t have mine fully unlocked yet because it is a long quest chain… but I have collected all of the scrolls that would fit into it and while it will free up a few slots… it does absolutely nothing for the cash shop lounge scrolls. So essentially I still will have multiple slots taken up by portal devices. The gobbler is also somewhat disappointing if only because it costs 100 Gold to buy it… which seems like a big chunk of change for something we have already gone through a lot of hassle to unlock.

Now we are entering the spoiler territory of this blog post, so if you care about such things… maybe stop reading.

The new story was pretty enjoyable, but felt extremely short… and also like nothing much happened. The true resolution of the expansion happens inside of the Bava Nisos meta event, and I will talk about that in a few. Essentially it is going between a bunch of locations, including some of Core Tyria searching for artifacts of the White Mantle. If you did not play through Bloodstone Fen or Lake Doric… most of this would largely feel non sequitur. Essentially the quest chain is effectively this heartfelt goodbye to Mabon… a character who does not really feel like earned the place he holds in the canon of this game. Secrets of the Obscure did not really flesh the character out enough to make me feel much of anything as a player about him. It isn’t like Aurene, a character that we learned to love over the course of several expansions worth of content. Mabon is just this character we are told is important and we are told is meaningful… and then is taken away and are told we should feel something about it. The story does however give us one of the best achievements ever that comes with the title of True Introvert… which I am absolutely using from this point forward… so it is not like I can be super harsh about it.

Where things start to fall apart however is when you approach Bava Nisos as a map. It is essentially a map that only exists to serve as a staging place for the meta event associated with it. The entire place is either monster guts or old crumbling buildings… often times a mixture of both as we are essentially fighting inside of a giant titan named Saevus Saxum. The entire map largely centers around killing the titan by damaging its vital organs. There is a staging area that is sealed off from the rest of the map by a Mursaat Mirror, but weirdly… if you are standing in this area when the map resets… you still die which feels thoroughly dumb. There just is not much going on in this map apart from the meta, and there are areas you cannot reach… until the meta has opened them up. All of the marketing going into this made it seem like this was going to be a rich map with multiple lanes… which of course made us all think we were getting another Dragon’s Stand which is quite possibly one of the best maps ever created.

What we got instead is a meta that feels like they ran out of funding, time, or wandered away like a bored toddler in an ADHD fugue state. The entire thing feels unfinished, and like we have half of a meta. Essentially there are some waves of fight the nonsense leading up to a proper boss fight in the form of a Gorseval clone that feels a little overtuned for pugs. Then you enter the lanes phase, where the groups have to split up and each take out a vital organ. I went down the path for the lungs and it involved us breaking objectives while fighting off waves of titanspawn. I will have to do the other lanes to find out what happened there, but for the most part it felt pretty basic. Then you are told to collapse on the heart chamber and wait for Livia. The timer ticks down and then suddenly Livia gets some dialog options that show up… and the event is just over.

Map chat was legitimately mad about this event last night. We were all sitting there wondering if we fucked something up… did we somehow fail the event and got a bad ending. None of us seemed to get credit in the achievements for the kill, but also that appears to just be a bug. Then another timer started and the map reset with everyone dying after having said we did fatal damage to the titan. The entire thing feels like it was half finished and rushed out the door. Is this why the expansion got delayed? Because if so… maybe delay it again and finish the damned thing. The problem is that we are now stuck with another bad map… that no one is going to actually play other than those who are chasing the backpack or specific achievements. This could have been another epic map that folks play every day… instead we get a non-ending. I guess I just want to know what the folks creating this thought about it… because surely they knew this would not be terribly well received.

The other problem with Janthir Wilds as a whole… is that it was impacted by the current SAG-AFTRA Voice Actors strike. It feels exceptionally jarring that you will have multi-character dialogs happening with a handful of them voiced… and the others relying entirely upon reading fleeting dialog balloons popping up on your screen. I will absolutely look forward to hopefully playing through this content at some point in the future when we have voice lines for all of the actors that were on strike. I will be exceptionally frustrated if this never happens however… because holy shit does it feel bad right now. Like the highlight of having Countess Anise in any content… is experience the full on epic levels of sass provided by Catherine Taber. On one hand I am super proud of Arena Net for not replacing folks… but on the other hand it absolutely underlines the importance of these actors delivering the dialog to make the characters feel real. They were in a rough position… and I don’t think just delaying the content would have been viable. Here is hoping we can play through this with all of the proper audio at some point in the not too distant future.

Janthir Wilds as a whole has been a weird mixed bag of an expansion for me. I wholeheartedly love Lowland Shore and the Bearkin and deeply care about many of the new characters that were introduced through their coastal lives. I did not care for the Greer/Decima meta, and still feel like it needs some improvement to make it a big easier to pull off… because getting anyone to do it at all is pure hell. I like the maps overall for roaming around and doing events however, and really enjoyed Mistburned Barrens. The story is a bit hit or miss because quite frankly… I do not give a shit about the Wizards Court. I like some of the characters associated with it, but I just don’t much care about the whole super secret magical society, and as a result the highlight of this expansion has been when I was spending time with the loveable bears. I would fucking die for Pokey, because he is the Braham that actually works and is not an insufferable ass for large chunks of the content. With both Secrets of the Obscure and Janthir Wilds however… they feel like unfinished content. They feel like the content we get, because the studio either no longer has the vision or the funding to create the best content they could be. They are a hollow shade of something like an End of Dragons, that really shows the best that Guild Wars 2 can possibly be.

Please do not take this as me saying that I will riot and want to rage against the crappy content we are getting. I got $25 worth of enjoyment out of Janthir Wilds. In truth I got way more enjoyment out of it… because I am still having a lot of fun with various aspects of that content. I think the Metas we were given are poorly designed and just not representative of the best that Arena Net can do… but the intricate details of the zones and certain aspects of the story make up for it. I think a lot of resources went into the creation of the Homestead, and I am really thankful for that. Hopefully without a big system like that looming and eating up development time… we will finally see what they are capable of with the third of these micro yearly expansions. What I want more than anything from whatever comes next… is more evergreen content that players actually WANT to do… rather than something that they feel compelled to do in order to check some box off in the achievement panel. You can do better Arena Net. I have seen it… countless times.

The Crysta Boss

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Good Morning Folks. Yesterday was a local holiday and as such I got the day off work, and did not really feel like blogging. Of all of the battles that I have had in MMORPGs… by far the toughest that I have ever experienced is the Housing Boss in Final Fantasy XIV. The main problem with this boss however… is that once you have beaten it… you have to keep beating it every few weeks to keep your plot from being repossessed. Thing is… my current plot in The Mists is my SECOND time beating the housing boss. However as is often the case… life got away from me at the end of 2023 and I went two months without logging into FFXIV and my house was demolished. When I finally managed to get a house again around the launch of Dawntrail, I vowed to never let that happen again no matter what I had to go through to keep logging in. I started a weekly ritual of logging in at a bare minimum to play the Jumbo Cactpot, and at that time checking in on my house.

So as a result Sunday morning I had a minor panic attack when I tried to do my log in ritual and encountered this screen. The Credit Card that I had on file had expired, and I apparently did not get around to updating in before Final Fantasy XIV was set to bill me again. This created a whole spiral of frustration as I attempted to renew my card information only to be met with the deeply obtuse “Card Unavailable” error message. There are entire threads on the FFXIV forums talking about this particular error message, and in most cases the answer is either to buy timecards every few months or rely upon the even more obtuse Crysta system. The entire financial processing wing of most Japanese companies seems to be stuck in the 90s, because I can remember jumping through all of this dumb hoops when trying to add money to my SEGA JP account before Phantasy Star Online 2 went to North America.

I remember the Streamer Zepla running up against similar issues of not being able to subscribe to the game, and also not really getting much in the way of resolution. The forum threads are all seeming the blame the issue on Debit Cards, and since I only have one Credit Card and a few Debit Cards… I was really concerned about not being able to dig myself out of this particular hole in time before my house got repossessed again. I was legitimately desperate enough to go down the Crysta rabbit hole… but neither Paypal or Amazon Pay… the two options that were available to me were failing. Thing is… both of those options are also tied to the same Credit Card that was failing out with the subscription. In an absolute last ditch effort I tried entering one of my Debit Cards and it worked. Then I had to go through the process of renewing both my extra Retainers and the mobile app separately. Legitimately dealing with the financial processing boss is far worse than Housing Savage. I think the crux of it is that at some point Square stopped taking my main credit card, but never went through the process of updating all of the information. Because some screens show it as being accepted, and others do not… so I am guessing they swapped processors and they now only reliably take Master Card and Visa. I was legitimately to the point of going down a rabbit hole of trying to set up a virtual credit card that billed back to my main credit card.

My lovely little home is now safe again… at least for a several years. It is now up to me to continue the login tradition and keep checking in on things every week. If you are ever in my neck of the woods swing by and sign my guestbook I am in Ward 28 Plot 3 on Cactuar/Aether. I am yet another one of those folks who only half-assed their home. The front room is nice and cozy… but there is absolutely nothing going on in the basement. The yard is also pretty great, and I am proud of it. Mostly I just did not want to be one of those folks who camped out a home and then never did anything with it. At some point I need to spend some more time and effort decorating the basement, but I am not really sure what to do there. My general idea was the top floor is a store to sell all of the things I have gathered from my adventures, and the bottom floor would be a Lalafellian scaled apartment.

Since you sat through my panic attack… I figure I will share some actual useful information for anyone who does not know this trick. Essentially there is a pattern that I use each day for the Mini Cactpot, that yields the most predictable results. The Cactpot card asks you to reveal specific squares, and then pick a row to submit for the prize. If you punch your card in a Y pattern shown above on the left side, it gives you information about every single slot on the card. Essentially I am mostly gambling on which slots have the greatest chance of either producing a 1/2/3 or a 7/8/9 since they are the biggest payouts. You are always fighting randomization and there are going to be cards that have no good options… but this structured approach feels like I at least have a fighting chance of hitting the big pulls whenever they are available.

Anyways! Now that my home is secured I am way less panicked. I don’t really talk about FFXIV very much, but that is not for lack of me still poking my head into it from time to time. At some point I need to get serious about catching up on the story.

AggroChat #525 – Insurance for Cats

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Featuring: AmmosArt, Ashgar, Belghast, Grace, Kodra, and Tamrielo

Hey Folks! We are down a Thalen this week, but that is mostly because he was up visiting Bel Town, so Bel talks a bit about that.  Kodra discusses how playing a lot of Blue Prince has ruined his brain for every other game… especially Cyberpunk 2077. It is Path of Exile 3.26 Spoiler Season, and Bel talks about some of the quality of life changes coming.  Tam shares his experiences with Skin Deep and why it may not be the “sandbox stealth” game that it is purported to be. Kodra and Tam talk about their experiences playing Lorelei and the Laser Eyes “Co-Op” without official support for that. The early looter shooter Defiance makes a return, and Bel talks about that, and then Tam shares the realization that given enough time, you massively improve almost anything that you try… in his case, painting miniatures.

Topics Discussed:

  • Blue Prince Rewires Brain
  • Path of Exile 3.26 Spoiler Season
  • Skin Deep
  • Fuga: Melodies of Steel 3
  • Lorelei and the Laser Eyes “Co-Op”
  • Defiance Returns
  • Painting Realization

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Failing Can Be Fun

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Good Morning Folks! I did not post yesterday because Thursdays have become a giant mess where I have to pull together this significant report first thing in the morning. I was in a position where it was 11 am and I was still waiting on some of the contributions… for a thing that was supposed to be done and submitted by noon. So essentially… I find myself in a position where I really cannot devote the effort to blogging. In other news today is the “Dateaversary” for my me and my wife, and at this point we have been together twenty nine years. We are old… and are starting to feel it. I got up this morning and got fancy cronuts, and they were delightful. With next year being our 30th year… we should probably plan something more special than chilling out as per our normal.

Last night was another round of Fractals with Friends, and it was pretty delightful as well. I am having a blast doing these each week with Ammo, Sita, and Sol. I think maybe starting this next week we might get a Thalen as well, which could see us turning our focus to dungeons. We actually learned things from the previous round because we did a few that we had already done as a group… and they went SUPER fast. I think we might actually reach a point where we can rip through more than five in our allotted time period. I’ve been scheming about other activities we might do as a group, because I know that Sita specifically needs the Nightmare Tower for Living World 1, which I managed to solo… but was a massive pain in the butt to do so.

I was actually smart and focused on the daily fractals… which means we finished up a several daily achievements and got bonus loot as a reward. At some point I kind of hope that we can manage to get together a group for some strikes and knock out some of the dailies there. In theory I could use my Commander powers to post a daily fractals group and just force them to happen for me every day. I really should get more comfortable being a Commander… or in my case a Catmander. There is a whole lot more than I could be doing in the game were I willing to seize the reigns and lead groups. I always feel like I just don’t know enough about the game to comfortable direct people through it. I am eternally lost… and while I could absolutely lead something like Tequatl that I can do in my sleep… the things I would actually want to do I don’t have a ton of experience doing myself.

I did actually use my Commander tag last night for a brief moment in Dragon’s End. Essentially we were on a map that was going to lose. Zero progress had been made towards buffing the defenses of each area, and there seemed to be only a handful of us on the map. I only really popped into the map to farm void mobs for the weekly quest, so I decided to tag up and see if I could get at least five of us so that we could do the three escort events. By the end I think we maybe had eight total… so not enough to do the meta event, but enough to actually do some stuff and have fun in the process. I made a few new friends, specifically one person who was with me in the notion that we would fail beautifully together. It was honestly a heck of a lot of fun… which is what makes me think I should actually put myself out there more often.

I am really looking forward to the patch drop next Tuesday and the assorted quality of life changes that come with it. The big thing will be reclaiming all of the shared inventory slots that I am currently using for teleporters. It does make me wonder what exactly I am going to use for the rest of the space. Having an all in one “gobbler” makes me actually want to start working on collecting more of these. Quality of life changes honestly are my favorite changes in any game, because I love convenience items. The less friction I have towards doing what I want in a game… the more likely I am to keep playing that game. At some point though I do want to dive into the housing system and actually build some proper structures in my Homestead.

I hope you all have a wonderful weekend, and if you make it into Guild Wars 2 say hi.