Tales of the Aggronaut

Falcon’s Wings

June 21, 2018 by Belghast

Last night was another night in Diablo 3 and I managed to whittle down the remaining objectives in Champion down to one… raise 3 gems to 35. This is more tedium than it is difficult since I can do 45 greater rifts pretty quickly… the challenge is simply not dying and getting that bonus gem level each go round. Demon Hunter is very much a glass cannon and it gets frustrating sometimes when a single hit can send you to the graveyard, but I am getting better at vaulting to safety. The challenge however is now that I have swapped over to the grenades build… there is so much going on with the grenade bounces that it can be extremely hard to actually see incoming attacks that might KO me.

For most of the season so far I have been running the Yang and Rockets build that while it isn’t exactly the same as this one… the one I was running is fairly similar. Last night was all about finishing out the pieces I needed to swap over to the more appropriate seasonal Manticore/Cluster Bombs build that supposedly has a much higher damage potential. The one thing I loved about Multishot is that I could hang way the hell away from my targets and just pepper the screen with nonsense, allowing me to pretty safely clear everything without needing to “get my hands dirty” as it were. This is a play style that absolutely fits the Demon Hunter because it kept me largely safe and at a significant distance to react to incoming damage.

Cluster Bombs however feel like I need to be way closer to the action and as a result spending much more of my time vaulting around the screen trying not to die to poison puddles or explosions. I am adjusting but I still find it less enjoyable overall than the multishot route. That said… Rift Guardians just completely melt at this point when you hit them with a slew of bouncing grenades. I’ve reached the point where the normal mobs are the problem not the bosses because I have enough stacked up boss damage that they just seem to evaporate. By the end of the night I had gathered up all of the pieces of gear I needed for the build and am now working on getting those gems up.

The highlight of the evening however is one specific drop. Grace and I were splitting up and doing a full round of bounties for cube materials, when she was not paying attention and apparently opened the chest in Garden’s of Hope Tier 1… that contained the cosmetic Falcon’s Wings. I thought for certain that they would have only dropped for the people who happened to be in zone at that moment… but apparently that is not the case. I ported to Grace and sure enough the wings were sitting there on the ground waiting for me to loot them. I’ve spent time in the past farming for these without much luck, and it seems to be the way of Diablo 3 that the only time something drops for you… is when you aren’t expecting it at all.

A couple of interesting notes from the Season of Greed double goblins event. Firstly between the two of us we have yet to see a single puzzle ring drop, and the only time we have made it into Greed’s Realm is when a Gilded Baron opened a portal for us. Second note… we have yet to see a single Menagerist Goblin spawn so our dreams of double pet drops have been dashed so far. Similarly we have yet to see any Rainbow Goblins… so no whimsydale nonsense either. We are however seeing a ton of the gem and material goblins… which are awesome but less interesting than the ones that can drop something really rare. All in all I am having a blast and spent from 7 pm onwards last night playing Diablo 3… first solo and then duo’ed up with Grace. I am having more fun this season than I have had in a very long time.

Season of Greed

June 20, 2018 by Belghast

If you have followed my blog for any length of time you would know that I have a deep connection to Diablo 3 and periodically I do the seasonal nonsense. When the concept was fairly new a bunch of us would get together on the Friday night that the season opened and attempt to push as far towards 70 as we could. Over time this group has dwindled from having three teams of four players active during its absolute heyday… to this past Friday just being me and Grace roaming around killing demons. The truth is I often enjoy the more low key seasonal pushes than the bigger groups because you don’t feel like you are letting as many down if you need to take a quick break.

The other thing that has changed is that our speed and longevity does not appear to be anywhere near what it once was. There were several times when we would stay up well past midnight pushing hard to get to 70 as soon as possible, and now.. we often tag out around 10:30. I think this past Friday we managed to make it to 47 before running out of gas for the evening. I picked up Saturday morning and pushed through to I think 68 before Grace and I got back together that afternoon and passed the finish line. Thankfully with a demon hunter… simply passing the finish line to 70 is enough to pretty much finish the seasonal challenges.

Often times double demon hunter seasons start out as ones when we are not super into the process… and are just wanting to unlock the basic seasonal rewards. This season however we both seem to be interested in pushing a little further than those initial steps. For the uninitiated there are four chapters that make up the standard seasonal journey, each including several achievements that you have to unlock like killing a specific boss at a specific difficulty or leveling up the blacksmith and jeweler. These range from trivial to difficult and chapters 2-4 unlock a satchel called Haedrig’s Gift including 2 set pieces each time for a total of the full 6 piece set after completing the journey. Getting to chapter four also unlocks whatever cosmetic rewards are available for a given season… which this time around was a back banner thingy (yes I know it has a name but I am drawing a blank this morning).

However after this initial four chapters you can unlock additional challenges that go through the ranks of Slayer, Champion, Destroyer, Conqueror, and Guardian. At this point I have finished the Slayer step and am currently working on Champion and I am honestly not sure if Grace has defeated that step and moved on to Destroyer or is still working on it. The ultimate reward is an additional bank tab which comes after finishing Conqueror, but this becomes less and less of a thing as you can only get four of these in total. I’ve not gotten my four… Grace has. Demon Hunter with the Marauder set seems to be a reasonable option for pushing higher into the ranks than I normally do in a given season.

Traditionally I play long enough to unlock my set and finish the cosmetic stuff and then check out until the next season. This season started on Friday June 15th and if it goes as it normally does… will wrap up around September 15th. What makes Season 14 special however is there is an event going on called the Season of Greed which greatly increases the number of Treasure Goblins that you encounter. Firstly it feels like the encounter rate has been increased significantly… but when you do find one you will get two copies of the exact Goblin spawned in at once. This means double the loot every time you can get them down, making it feel extremely good to go out and take on things like Nephalem Rifts that already have a fairly high chance of encountering goblins.

I am admittedly a very loot-centric person and the fact that I have hot and cold running goblins on tap… means I am way more likely to spend time roaming around and hunting the good stuff. I’ve already seen myself spending a lot more time in Diablo 3 solo than I ever do during a season. For whatever reason I am finding it extremely relaxing to get in and tear up a rift, but what I need to be focusing on is bounties since I am still down several gem patterns. I think tonight is probably going to be all about doing a full round of bounties and then maybe knocking out some of those Torment 10 achievements needed for Champion. All in all I am still very much a fan of Diablo 3 and I am super amped about the potential for a new Diablo project that they are ramping up the hiring for.

forty two

June 19, 2018 by Belghast

First I feel like I need to start this mornings post off with a discussion of how completely overwhelmed I am by the birthday wishes yesterday. We were travelling and each time we stopped I furiously tried to catch up with personal thanks to everyone who sent me something. I completely missed Facebook unfortunately because I refuse to install the Facebook app on my phone and wound up doing a sort blanket thanks over there when I got home. Twitter however is my social media of choice and I tried my best to keep up throughout the day. I think I successfully thanked each and every one of you… but given how fast everything was scrolling there is a high chance that I missed someone. If I did I am truly sorry because I am super thankful for all of the awesome friends I have.

For the last several years my wife and I have been doing this little mini vacation to the Kansas City metro. As the rockstar teacher she is, she signs up to grade the AP Statistics exams… and for the last several years has been a table leader that is responsible for making sure that all of the essay questions get graded effectively the same way by all teachers. For those who are having trouble picturing this… imagine a convention center filled with tables full of teachers… all of them grading essays for eight hours a day in a sort of weird factory type environment. That is what my wife has been doing for the last week and some change.

Instead of having the AP Board fly her back home I have been driving up on the day she gets released and picking her up. Then we run around Kansas City that night and the next morning and drive back to Tulsa. Because we are lame we mostly just hit a bunch of the Half Priced Books stores there and usually the Microcenter since we don’t have one in Tulsa and pretty much anything else that happens to suit our fancy in the journey. That means as the birthday wishes are rolling in we are usually moving from location to location with me trying to catch up as we go.

I tend to tweet out random things I encounter… like yesterday I made a joke about these being apparently the Amiibos that did not sell, given they were at a Five Below in Olathe KS. Later I found out that no… these are fairly rare and were Amazon exclusives and who knows how they ended up in the secondary market. I wished I had picked up a couple because various folks like Pizzamaid really want the Palutena one. You can find a bunch of odd things that show up at Five Below, which is a discount chain that I wish we had in my area. The Below part is generally a lie because I’ve seen very few things there that are cheaper than $5.

Another weird thing I stumbled across in my journey was this controller at Microcenter. There was no way I was going to pay the $70 price tag but I did snap a photo because I thought it was interesting. Once I got back to civilization I looked it up and apparently it is the Emio 5-in-1 switch controller, but based on the reviews from Amazon it is not a phenomenal product. Apparently the Switch 5.0 update completely broke this controller like it did so many third party peripherals, but it was an interesting idea with swappable button layouts for the different Nintendo control schemes it is trying to emulate.

Anyways this is one of those rambling nothing posts. I feel like I should suddenly feel wiser today given that I am not forty two and apparently the Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything. Unfortunately I don’t feel much different apart from the fact I woke up this morning with an insane headache. I remember as a kid anytime I would go through growth spurts my joints would hurt. I wonder if headaches are just a sign of your mind going through a growth spurt too. Personally I like that thought better than the alternative explanations.

Upcoming Lapse

June 15, 2018 by Belghast

I don’t really have much of a proper post to make today, but I did want to give my readers a heads up that it is highly unlikely that I make a post before next Tuesday. Nothing bad is happening, it just won’t be reasonable for me to be posting much. This makes it all the more inexcusable that I don’t really have much to say today. I’ve been playing a lot of The Division and have managed to get back into the swing of things after the gear swaps I talked about last night. Unfortunately I am having hell taking screenshots right now because both Fraps and the Nvidia Experience based fall back seem to not be picking up and taking the shots. I am not exactly sure what is up but whatever the case I’ve been going into gaming sessions thinking I was taking a bunch of captures but not ending up with anything in the end.

The one new thing I have been playing around with is Survival mode, which was suggested to me by a lot of people. The premise is you are trying to get to the dark zone in order to extract some cure that was found for the small pox based super bug that started the whole problem in the first place. This in itself would probably be reasonable but there is a massive blizzard hitting New York and upon approach your Helicopter crashes… puncturing your hazmat suit and leaving you stranded with only a pistol. Essentially as you roam around you are fighting two problems… the extreme cold and the fact that you have been infected and are trying to stave it off. Either of those things can straight up kill you.

For the cold you wind up moving from building to building or fire barrel to fire barrel trying to stay warm while wandering out in a whiteout blizzard. For the infection you can pick up medication periodically and use it to pause the timer that is ticking down. On top of this… you lost your filter in the crash and need to gather up enough materials to craft a new one in order to move into the dark zone, get the cure and successfully extract. If you choose to queue into a PVP session you are also up against other players who are trying to compete for the same resources and the same eventual cure. To spice things up… you will also encounter the various factions from the game roaming the streets that will of course start firing on you the moment you come in range.

There are a number of things that you can do to improve your odds, because you drop in with a base set of green gear. Drops occasionally upgrade your weapons or your armor, but everything is limited to this one survival session starting you back at square one. The cosmetic clothing increases your survival against the cold letting you stay out longer before needing to run back and warm up somewhere. The entire process is really interesting because it is basically this intense survival game in the middle of an MMO complete with hunger and thirst meters that you need to keep an eye on. Basically the entire world is dead set against you and you need to keep moving, keep searching and keep looting to gather enough resources to be able to survive for a long periods of time as you attempt to cross New York, get into the Dark Zone and retrieve your cure.

From what I understand there are also a number of other gameplay modes that show up once you reach thirty… and as I am sitting at 28 I am feeling close enough to the finish line to try and push through this. Super thanks to everyone who tipped me off to Survival since there were several of you. I linked a guide video since I didn’t have much in the way of screenshots.