Tales of the Aggronaut

Saltines and Weaponcraft

August 22, 2017 by Belghast

Yesterday was a weird one, namely because everyone seemed to have eclipse fever for lack of a better term. As a group we had largely made a plan to go over to the roof of the parking garage next door, and by the time the festivities actually started there were between fifty and a hundred people that had the same idea. The positive is that everyone was more than willing to share their assorted ways of viewing the eclipse. In Oklahoma we only actually had about 90% occlusion, which made the world feel like a storm front was just about to blow in. The sky darkened, the temperature dropped a very small bit… but for the most part you could have easily not noticed anything going on unless you happened to look up. I took the first image with the selfie cam on my old phone and that was just about the peak of occlusion… and as you can see the day star still seemed pretty formidable. The second shot is the idea of using a saltine cracker to project the shadow, and the third shot is this awesome box that the same coworkers husband had rigged. The last shot is the eclipse through the filter of a pair of those shades… but unfortunately it was hell to get the focus to latch onto it at all. There were so many sets of shades that people were passing them around pretty freely, and I got to take more than a few peeks at the spectacle. The only problem is… my eyes felt really funny afterwards. Like in part they felt like they were strained… or like I had been driving into the sun’s glare for too long. It took about 2 hours for the effect to fully wear off, so I was concerned for a bit that maybe we ended up with some cheap knock off shades and I had done some actual damage. My eyes are super sensitive to light in the best of conditions… so forcing myself to be out and looking up… probably just caused them to strain a bit.

When I made it home for the evening I was still feeling a little off though. So my evening activities ended up leaning towards the chill side of things. Other than doing my daily completion bonus I largely focused on crafting and pushing up my weaponsmithing. I had this weird sequence of events happen where I saw my character hit 402… then somehow was back at 392. Guild Wars 2 has this problem where the UI sometimes freaks the hell out, and in order to fix it I sometimes have to log out and back in. In doing this I went from the 402 I was supposedly sitting at before I logged back to the 392, which is a bit frustrating. However since for some reason I didn’t have the pattern to Orichalcum Ingots… I am leaning to the side of this just being a presentation bug since the UI was acting up anyways. I still had the materials though to push my way through to the 400s and now everything I craft seems to take a ton of time and materials. I need to do a heck of a lot more farming of the level 80 zones because I only had the materials for I believe 64 ingots of Orichalcum. I was in even worse shape in the Ancient Wood department, so I know I will be spending a lot of time in the end game zones doing content. I am largely going down this path because I want to be able to craft my own ascended gear, and be able to craft my own exotics for the purpose of trying to gamble and get that precursor. I realize I should just focus on making a lot of money and buying the damned thing… but I have a long ways to go until I will be able to do that.

Merry Eclipsemas

August 21, 2017 by Belghast

Friday I was apparently smoking something and I decided to attempt to participate in one of those internet meme quiz things. I was planning on doing it my own way where I just made a giant blog post about it. However thankfully I did not get enough likes to actually trigger me to release the post. Side note… I did actually write it and it is sitting in my saved drafts bin but I am somewhat relieved that I didn’t hit the threshold needed in my mind to make that post. In other news today is in fact the Eclipse and while I am not anywhere near the totality… it should still be interesting. There is a big of a gathering happening on the roof of the parking garage next to work in order to celebrate it, but my meeting schedule will ultimately determine if I can attend. The only negative is that I don’t have any way to view it safely. I remember watching one as a kid, that had to be the one that happened in 1979 and my grandfather who was a welder by trade had me wear his welding hood. I have no clue how best to really watch this one… I mean I guess in theory I could do the pinhole camera thing. The awesome big is that this time we have the internet and live streams… and in theory can get a much better view sitting at the computer than we can outside. It is extremely unique though to have the feeling that it was daytime minutes before and now you are standing in darkness. There have been many warnings about not pointing your camera directly at the eclipse, but I was going to attempt this using my old phone’s front facing camera as a sort of way to know when it is safe to look at not safe to look. Dealing with the eclipse always sort of reminds me of Perseus and Medusa, and trying to use a shiny surface to get a glimpse without turning to stone… or in this case completely wrecking my eyes.

I spent most of my weekend playing Guild Wars 2 and attempted to make further progress in the Living Story Season 2 content. Before I get into that however I want to make another side note about just how damned active people are in this game. It is really hard to get the scale from a single screenshot given how much people in general move around avoiding mechanics… but I was needing to do an event in Frostgorge sound for one of the steps in the quest chain. While waiting for it to kick off I noticed a significant number of people gathering… and by the time we actually started there were a good fifty plus players participating. Over the weekend I discovered Dulfy’s boss timer thanks to my friend Solaria…. and I spent a good deal of time bouncing around and doing world boss fights. The weird thing about the Frostgorge Sound event though is that this isn’t on the timer… it is just something that happens occasionally and apparently there are enough players out there wanting to complete it that we end up with the numbers that we had each time it runs. When I first got to the zone I caught the tail end of the event and did not participate enough to be able to get credit. However during that running there were still a significant number of players participating in the content. It just floors me that there are enough players in the game that you can pretty much show up at any single event timer… and know without a doubt that it is going to happen. Now maybe during the wee hours of the morning this might not be the case but over the course of the weekend I kept hitting various encounters and each time we had more than enough to make sure it was a success.

Another big happening of the weekend is that I managed to get my Ranger to level 80. I managed to get him pretty close through the use of a bunch of Tome’s of Knowledge but I still needed to pour on the last five levels the old fashioned way. Right now I think I am pretty happy with the combo of Greatsword and Longbow for this character, and have tweaked my spec to emphasize both of these weapon selections. I cobbled together a set of gear once I dinged and am now out doing a secondary mission with the character… and that is popping between zones and taming animals. For the most part I seem to have the best luck with my traditional Arctodus and River Drake combo… but the longer I play the Drake seems to keep pulling ahead in most departments. They just seem to be universally good… reasonable dps and excellent survival. All of that said it does nothing to stop my desire to tame all of the things and have a completely filled out pet window. I’m extremely torn as to which character I should be spending most of my time on… and this is one of those moments when I wish the map progress was shared. On my warrior I managed to 100% a few new areas and am continuing down that path that I will ultimately need for the Legendary weapon madness. As far as gambling for weapons… I’ve decide more or less to stop that nonsense until I can actually craft the weapons myself. On that front though I am now in Mithril territory as far as leveling goes and considering how much of that I have in my vault it should go pretty quickly. I am however going to have to focus any of the zones that mine Orichalcum because I am severely lacking in my reserves of that metal.

The other big take away from the weekend is that I am pretty sure the designers of this game intended you to be grouping up for the Living World content. I say this because I just finished the second part of Chapter 4 and towards the end of that mission I had died so many times my character was completely naked. The thing is… it hasn’t just been that one encounter because the last few major fights have taken a significant amount of time and put me up against some extremely hitpoint spongey bosses. I am not going to go into specifics for the sake of spoilers… though I guess the above image is in its own way a little spoilery. I should in theory be grouping with friends to complete this content, but on some level I am getting a sense of pride in being able to do it all solo. Sure sometimes it hurts, and I always have to repair afterwards but it is also forcing me to actually deal with the mechanics which I am hoping will make adjusting to the later fractals all that much easier. I also in truth really need to spend some time optimizing my gear on the Warrior because right now other than the few ascended items I have… it is a little all over the place. I am hoping to push up my weaponsmithing and armorsmithing in part to help fill out some of these gaps as I am already sitting on quite a few patterns that would be useful. Long story short… still having an awful lot of fun in Guild Wars 2 and still finding tons of casual activities to accomplish.

Five Doctors

August 18, 2017 by Belghast

One of the things that I do occasionally with some coworkers is go to the live broadcast of Rifftrax. The concept there is a little odd given that the actual “live” show is in Nashville but is simulcast to theaters around the country… two of which are in the Tulsa area. Generally speaking we all meet for dinner first and then attend whatever they happen to be Riffing at that time. Traditionally this is some movie down on the deep B and or Cult status list. I think the last one I saw before last night was Samurai Cop back in March, and hands down the best one ever was them taking on The Room. The weird thing about last night is that I was not terribly sure how I would feel about them Riffing on one of my Fandoms. I’ve been a Doctor Who fan since my father indoctrinated me during the very long rein of Tom Baker. Whatever concerns I might have had vanished quickly because their send up of the Five Doctors was amazing. Pretty much everything we ever thought while watching some of the campy 80s shows… took verbal form. If you have a chance to see it I highly suggest it. They are doing the traditional rebroadcast on August 24th so you might check to see if it is available at a theater near you. I highly suggest the “live” Rifftrax experience in general.

Past this I don’t have a whole hell of a lot to talk about. The problem with a Rifftrax night is that I don’t get home early enough to really do much in the way of gaming. It was not long before I was downstairs conked out completely. The following story is related for humor… and for evidence of how generally dead to the world I was. I turned in pretty early and at some point during the night I apparently got up to use the restroom. I don’t remember this at all, instead it was just like I suddenly woke up and was on the toilet…. and had apparently been there long enough to have my legs completely fall asleep. So in my sleepy state I had to figure out how to finish my business… and then pull my pants up and somehow stabilize myself as blood goes rushing back into my legs. There was a point where I legitimately considered crawling on the floor to bed. Even weirder was when I managed to hobble my way to the bed and sit down… I couldn’t quite reason how to lift my then “full on pins and needles with a vengeance” legs up into the bed so I could lay down again. This is of course way more than you bargained for when you decided to click through to my blog this morning. While I do suggest Rifftrax… I would not suggest this whole walking on legs that you can’t actually feel thing. It is an overrated experience.

Cruel Grey Button

August 17, 2017 by Belghast

I honestly don’t have a whole hell of a lot to talk about this morning. The world has been crazy between me and my work and juggling managing four different initiatives… and my wife and her normal back to school frantic rush. In theory at least in my world I am hoping that in the near future one of those initiatives wraps up and I can at least drop one team from my radar temporarily. On the school front tomorrow is the first day back with kids, but my wife has been in “back to normal” mode since Monday. The new normal however is extra stressful this year because there were some fairly severe last minute changes. I know I have talked in the deep past on this blog about the forensics class she tag team teaches with a science teacher. On Monday, the first day teachers reported back… that other teacher that she relies on… decided to quit. This of course throws everything into a state of immediate turmoil because moment now is about preparing to have a completely different teacher doing the co-teach thing with her. Thankfully someone she is pretty close with ended up getting the position, but yesterday abruptly turned into a full day of helping this other teacher move classrooms and set up. Today in theory is going to be about trying to discuss what the hell they are going to do… when the kids arrive tomorrow.

The only thing I really have to talk about is the fact that yesterday I fired up the Battle.net launcher… and got super excited when I noticed that they have added a new Activision section to the side bar of games. This is starting to feel super real at this point and I now have a greyed out install button that should in theory become available at some point before the August 29th beta date. It has been a really long time since I longed for access to a beta… but holy shit do I wish I could play Destiny 2 right now. I mean don’t get me wrong I am loving my rediscovery of Guild Wars 2… but I need some Destiny in my life. The problem that I keep running into each time I boot up Destiny 1 is the fact that it feels like I am playing a game that is ultimately going away. I mean I fully expect that the game will remain active for a period of time after the launch of Destiny 2… but it feels like I am not really devoting time to anything meaningful. I have a hard time getting excited about the concept of completing the achievement books. The fact that they tied gear and rewards to them this time made it a little bit better, but it still feels like I am spending my limited time playing what is ultimately a disposable experience. I admit this is a little ironic considering that I wish I could be playing Destiny 2 beta which is in itself a completely 100% disposable experience.

I am really excited about the prospects of playing the game on the PC and having access to my battle.net friends list. I am really hoping that cross chat with other blizzard games is a thing that exists and that I can keep tabs on my WoW playing friends while I am off shooting Cabal for shiny loots. I do however need to have a bit of a “come to jesus” with my friends list and prune it in preparation of the launch. Not saying that there are people from my past that I really am happy that are in my past… but also not saying that. I am sure there are a handful of those people still hanging out somewhere in the bowels of my battle.net friends list. I am also really hoping that with the launch of Destiny they introduce some sort of appear offline mode that they have been talking about. There are nights when I just cannot deal with other human beings. Counter intuitively the feature that I want the most from BNet is cross server chat channels. My social connections have evolved to this state where I sort of have a guild without actually having a game. What I mean by that is I have this stable group of people that I interact with on a daily basis… and slacks and discords that have become the new “guild chat” as it were… but that it isn’t necessarily completely encompassed by a single game. Having a social channel that spanned World of Warcraft, Diablo 3, Starcraft 2, Hearthstone, Heroes of the Storm, Overwatch, Starcraft Remake and now Destiny 2… would be pretty great. Sure one on one conversation is a thing that exists across game but it would be cool to have that extended guild chat feel to it.