Tales of the Aggronaut

In Porg We Trust

December 15, 2017 by Belghast

This morning I do not have a whole lot to say because yesterday I got home at midnight. I had a work dinner thing and then afterwards several of us went to see Star Wars The Last Jedi. It is still way in the “too soon” territory for really talking about this movie at length. I was weirdly not super hyped about this movie before its release. Like I always knew it was on the horizon and that I would eventually go to see it over the Christmas break, but I wasn’t clamoring to see it the way I had been the previous movies. More than anything I think I just lucked into seeing it on opening night… which is confusing because technically tonight is the opening night but Thursday is now the universal pre-opening night? I am more into world building than I am into individual stories, and unfortunately after the movie I feel just as clueless about a lot of things as I did going into it. That said it was a fun experience and I look forward to watching it again. In theory I will be taking my wife to a matinee tomorrow morning, since she could not attend last night. We also did not have the most ideal seats given that we were on the front row staring up at the movie, so there is some aspect of scaling and grandeur that I likely lost. The big takeaway from the movie is that the porgs are in fact every bit as adorable as they seem in the pre-launch hype. I feel like there isn’t enough love for the crystalline fox things, because they were pretty great as well. As far as characters go… all of our favorites from Force Awakens improved over the course of the movie… and I am completely in love with Rose. I thought for certain we were going in for a Empire Strikes back sort of movie… but in truth it ended in a very different manner making me extremely interested in where we are going for episode nine. All in all I had a great time and will likely see it multiple times while it is still in the theaters.

Clipped Wings

December 14, 2017 by Belghast

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Last night I had every intent of coming home and playing some Destiny 2… but instead I logged into World of Warcraft to “check what gear was up on world quests” and never really logged back out. I’m still very much stuck in “must complete the emissary caches” mode and as a result I had one in Argus for the Argussian Reach faction that I lacked enough quests to complete. As a result I started unlocking more of the planet until I finally got enough to finish it out. This however was super time consuming because doing anything on Argus feels needlessly tedious due to the packed base pop and terrain that goes out of its way to keep you from going from point a to b. For my troubles I got a big fat nothing… or in truth a little bit of gold that feels insanely lackluster given the amount of effort I went through to be able to complete it. So the real question I ask to you more seasoned players that did not take a massive break after Nighthold… did they just fucking nerf emissary caches into the ground? In the past these used to be a significant source of gear upgrades, and also used to drop legendaries like candy. At this point I have no legendaries and have not seen a single piece of gear from the six caches I have turned in since starting up playing again. Is this just a bad streak or did they simply remove any reasonable rewards from these things?

I’ve managed to move the needle a little further forward and am sitting at 884 and I think 15 concordance on my two primary weapons. I still have Tomb of Sargeras LFR to do this week but in truth it seems like grinding Argus is going to be my best bet for gear level movement. The only problem there is that I hate Argus and want to nuke the planet from orbit. I mean in all reality it isn’t that bad but it just feels shitty to return to land mounts again after being able to fly literally everywhere else. The base pop reminds me of a lot of what it feels like to roam around in a Rift zone where everything is super aggro and ready to reach out and thump you if you get too close. The main difference is that at least in World of Warcraft it is completely reasonable for me to round up 30 mobs and grind them down…. because I did this thing today out of laziness and not wanting to stop. The only really works if you can keep healing yourself like the protection warrior can, but nonetheless it is a viable option. In Rift if I had more than a couple of mobs I would have fallen over, which makes the game feel super tedious to play. If I apply myself and gobble up every quest I can do on Argus each day… I may be able to purchase a single piece of 910 gear which is a slow way to upgrade but potentially preferable to hoping for lucky double platnium bonus warforged gear from LFR.

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Towards the end of the evening while rewatching Force Awakens I did wind up grinding a bit in Destiny 2 and managed to complete the Mercury Flashpoint. When I turned in with Cayde-6 I managed to get my very first Masterwork item… and I maybe just almost accidentally called it Warforged. The positive it is at least an Auto Rifle which is something I will use. Grace said last night that when she got her first… it was a sidearm… which is something that no sane and rational person would ever want to use. I was absolutely certain that the game would give me a sniper rifle or something else that I generally loathe. Then again if that were the case the decision to shard it and get crafting materials would have been simple… in this case I have the strong desire to start using it even though Solemn Hymn isn’t exactly one of my favorite weapons. As far as the perk on mine, it gives a small range boost which is reasonable enough for the moment. Were it a warforged Better Devils I might work on trying to get the best possible roll, but for now I am okay with a ranged boost. I have a late night tonight because Star Wars… but I might be able to hop on when I get home and give it a proper testing.

Rogue Tanks

December 13, 2017 by Belghast

Yesterday another big update happened to Destiny 2 that added Masterwork level weapons. These are special versions of the existing legendaries that include a single stat boost and the ability for the weapon to generate orbs of light. In theory these can come from anything that rewards legendaries already, but after spending down my stock of tokens I did not actually see any. Granted I have not actually started doing my weekly powerful engram grind activities, so I might wind up with one through that system. That said I think the more important update is the fact that every vendor sells a full set of their unique set of armor that unlocks as you turn in packages. Additionally they have one weapon for sale that is available for a combination of legendary shards and faction tokens. This means that eventually there will be a week where Lord Shaxx sells the Better Devils or Zavala here sells the Curtain Call. Basically this is another way of mitigating bad luck in the RNG systems, and I for one am super happy to see it. I love package loot but it can be frustrating when you keep turning them in and never get the item you are actually after. Additionally this can generate buzz for players to go back into the game when there is a week with a really great item up for sale.

Unfortunately I did not spend much time in Destiny 2 last night because I started the evening in World of Warcraft. By the time I finished doing the few World Quests that had interesting rewards my friend Cuppy popped online and we decided to run a bunch of heroics together. Heroics always felt easier than they probably should be, but at the way the power levels are now… they are insanely easy. For the first Heroic we opted to run Eye of Azshara where a rogue ran off from the group and solo’d more content than the rest of us managed to kill. He killed the first boss before we could even get to it. In the second dungeon I am pretty sure it look less than five minutes to do a full clear, and by the time we finally landed on Blackrook and Darkheart Thicket… we got something resembling a reasonable group and still had zero issue pulling multiple packs and burning things down. It was one insanely fun night and once again… zero drama. All of the groups were chill and once I figured out I had to use /I instead of /P we actually had a lot of people responding and being rather friendly. I guess I need to run some content Alliance side to see if this really is a difference between the factions or if everyone has just reached a point where they are no longer asshats? Additionally as is usually the case with my blog… as soon as I complain about something karma steps in to invalidate my comments. Last night I not only picked up a Trinket, but also got the rest of the relic slots that I had been missing. As a result that takes my overall gear level to 874 which isn’t too shabby for dinging halfway through Sunday.

Deceiver’s Fall

December 12, 2017 by Belghast

What a difference a night makes. I’ve been continuing to work on my Orc Warrior was for the foreseeable future it is likely going to be my World of Warcraft main. Sure I will continue to visit Belghast and unpack him from mothballs but I’ve never really given Horde a proper chance. I am also playing way more casually as a Hordie than I traditionally do as Alliance, which seems to help my general enjoyment of the game. I know were I to start playing on Alliance again as a regular thing… I would be back in the raid before I knew it and being way more serious about the game than I really want to. Sure on Horde side there are raid options but they tend to be super casual about that sort of thing, and also tend to cram it all into a single night win or lose. I’ve been focusing more on Fury given that I doubt I will actually be tanking much other than the occasional run with friends. I got pinged by my good friend Cuppy last night as I was starting to wind down for the evening and it turns out she is a healer, and roughly the same gear level so I foresee some dungeon running in our future. As of this morning I am sitting at 866 with the only thing holding me back still a 800 heirloom trinket. I looked at the auction house options for that last night and there is no way I can justify darkmoon trinket prices just to get a very temporary boost in level.

My focus for the night was getting through as much Looking for Raid content as I possibly could given my item level. I started the night cherry picking world quests focusing on only the quests that had the potential for gear level increases. This managed to push me up to the 660 item level breaking point and as a result could start doing the Tomb of Sargeras LFR, thinking in theory that I might get reasonable gear from it. Unfortunately the luck was not on my side and I wound up walking away empty on most fights. I did however pick up a warforged breastplate and a set of gauntlets at least making the night somewhat profitable. I need to ultimately sort out re-roll tokens because I walked in without any. In the past there was some sort of a catch up mechanic allowing you to get more of the older tier of token, and I will have to figure out if that exists here or not. I had never done any of the Tomb of Sargeras so it was at the very least cool to see it. I am certain that the LFR fights don’t actually represent the real fights that well but still interesting and enjoyable. The main thing I have noticed about being horde side is that LFR seems way less toxic than it is over on Alliance. People seem to just keep their heads down and do the content without need for much bullshit, and I can respect that greatly. Maybe I just had a lucky night, but whatever the case I approve.