Featuring: Ashgar, Belghast, Kodra, Tamrielo, and Thalen
Hey Folks! We are down a few people this week as we start up our show. Bel is in the process of trying to reboot “Bel Folks Stuff” and realized that he recorded an episode with Tam that never got released. We talk about this weird pre-pandemic time capsule. We discuss building a table for Infinity and how it is a game that wants something more akin to Mordheim. From there, Ash and Kodra discuss the Rabbit and Steel expansion and unlocking new content. We go down a bit of a continuation of a topic from a month ago as we discuss the games that we did not end up playing, and more specifically, Tam exploring what Ys has to offer. Ashes of Creation was one of the more successful Kickstarter MMORPGs, but that is no more, because the entire project imploded almost overnight. We talk a bit about that situation and also what goes wrong when trying to build a niche MMORPG for a limited audience. Finally, Tam shares some of his recent experiences learning to play Star Trek Online and trying to be successful at doing so.
Hey Folks! I am in the process of trying to reboot one of my favorite side projects, “Bel Folks Stuff”, and get into the swing of recording new episodes. However, it was in this process that I realized that I recorded a whole episode with Tam and never released it. What is wild about this episode is that it is a timecapsule from before the world changed. I think many of us were irreparably damaged by the isolation and changes to our norms that the pandemic and lockdowns brought forward. However, for some… the isolation of the pandemic completely changed their lives. This version of Tam that I interviewed was before he got into a lockdown relationship, which turned into a marriage, which ultimately led to him becoming a father.
The negative of this episode, however, is now that I listen to it… I remember why I never released it. I was trying to figure out how to fix the audio. I was dealing with some really frustrating coil whine happening in my microphone, and it just so happened to plague this episode. I think this might have been the point I realized it was a thing, and it took me months to figure out how to keep it from happening. So this episode was edited and ready to go… but just never got released, and I feel like it is unfair to leave this to the void. Some interesting conversations happen in the middle of this episode, and it is fitting that the broader world finally gets to listen to them.
Good Morning Folks. While I am not the biggest fan of the Gauntlet mechanics mixed in with Phrecia, I am still playing Path of Exile because I don’t have the mental bandwidth to pick up something else at the moment. My Servant of Arakaali Poison SRS build seems to keep trucking along swimmingly, and thus far feels like maybe one of the sturdiest builds I have played for minions save for maybe my Guardian from several leagues ago. That is one of the things that I love the most about Path of Exile is that you are constantly learning new tricks, and each build is better than the previous build because you have learned something in the process. For example I learned some tech that is new to me that I can see using in the future. Essentially one of the common things that you can do with a Rare Wand for minions builds is automate your desecration and offering via the enchant that auto casts whatever is socketed into your wand. However I am using a Unique weapon which takes away that functionality, but apparently you can do the same thing with a four socket arcanists brand setup. So now I have a little bit of tech in my back pocket for whenever I need it the next time to work around a constraint of a build.
Some big changes since the last time I talked about the build is that I managed to pick up a Covenant and then six linked it with a Black Morrigan. I am still using my Foulborn United in Dream with unholy might on it, which I picked up early in the league for a single chaos orb. Yesterday I bought a decent shield base with shaper influence and then threw reforge chaos harvest crafts at it until I lucked into a roll with recover life on block. This is not an amazing roll but was good enough to start using it, and at some point I will probably pick up another shaper influenced base and try and craft one with at least 5% recovery on it. This is one of the tricks that I learned over the last several leagues is taking the “good enough” craft and then replacing it with another craft later. I find that I enjoy my characters far better if there is always some upgrade that I can be working towards.
I had to respec my tree a bit in order to pick up Eldritch Battery so that I could afford the costs that The Covenant adds to all spell casts. I have enough life regeneration though to make it feel pretty comfortable. There are a lot of versions of this build that are going blood magic, and I did not really want to deal with the reservation nightmare or going low life. Low Life is fine and dandy if you are also going petrified blood, but I did not want to have to mess with that. I would far rather have my tasty 4500 life pool with good regeneration, and some defensive reservations. When I switched to Eldritch Battery though I dropped Clarity and replaced it with Tempest Shield for more spell block, and Flesh and Stone for more damage reduction.
I’ve also picked up my fourth labyrinth finally for Silk Dancer which causes webbed mobs to deal 20% less damage and have 20% less to all resistances. Since pretty much everything that my minions touch has webs via Aspect of the Spider, it means this is largely just a flat 20% damage reduction. I do not know for certain if this stacks since I believe you can apply multiple copies of the spider webs debuff to the same mob. Since I am doing nothing to scale duration though I am not sure how much overlap I am actually getting. I know that it is being applied constantly however because it has a very clear visual tell when a mob has webbing on it. I almost went down the path of summoning more minions, but since I am still running zombies, and am in the process of leveling a spectre and animate guardian gem to bring those online at some point soon, I am probably going to have more than enough minions especially when you throw in the four breach spider things that I get from doing offerings.
Defensively I no longer have a negative amount of Chaos Resistance, which already helps considerably. I am sitting at 73% attack block, and 65% spell block… which combined with a recover life on block shield feels pretty comfy. The thing is by not having to take Glancing Blows to get to this level of block, it means I am not giving up the complete negation aspect of that defensive layer. I need to get Aggressive Bastion on my necklace so that I can start picking up additional endurance charges which will go a long way towards feeling more defensively comfortable. Again these are all tricks that I have learned over the years by playing other builds that relied on block as a defensive layer. I am not sure who first made this comment but essentially defenses in Path of Exile are like slices of swiss cheese, and if you stack up enough of them you negative the impact of the holes in any one particular layer. Some people play glass canon builds and rely on six portals to succeed, but I really prefer to play builds that simply don’t ever die.
I have still not really made a ton of progress but have largely completed almost all of the white tier maps, and am about to start into yellow maps. With everything going on in my life I have not been able to give this the devotion that I normally I would during a league start scenario. However I am still having a lot of fun chipping away at progression. While the Gauntlet aspects still annoy me, I feel like I chose the right league start character for this event, because so far at least it is working beautifully. I might run into some roadblocks as I hit Red Maps, but I am hoping that spectres and animate guardian coming online around that time will help immensely. Right now my biggest challenge is that I just don’t have much in the way of currency. That will come over time from running more maps, but I could really use a few lucky divine drops to keep my progression from stalling out.
Yesterday I met with the surgeon who will ultimately remove the cancer from my butt. The office was pretty great because they were really leaning into the fact that they were butt doctors with the decor. Prime example is this delightful lamp with a golden backside. They were running behind and originally I was being “worked in” at 16:30 but did not leave the office until 18:30. My dad was going with me as moral support and he was running early… so we got to the doctors office around 3pm and largely waited around for our turn. I have to admit I was nervous as hell about yesterday, because from the moment I learned about this foreign invader in my rectum… I wanted it out. It turns out things are maybe not that simple, and I am still processing the news that I received.
Ultimately the next step is that today they will be scheduling an MRI which will allow them to stage the cancer. What stage it is in will determine what the path going forward is. When I met with the doctor after my colonoscopy he seemed to indicate that it looked like we caught it early enough and that it would likely be surgery without the need for chemotherapy or radiation. Yesterday I learned that is probably not going to be the case. There is still a golden path however where that might be the case, and that all banks on how the MRI looks. In that golden path it would be straight to surgery and then several weeks of recovery, and a travel restriction of not leaving the state, because I will be under risk of something rupturing for the first few months. That honestly fucking hurt more than anything else because it means that my planned trip down to see “Erasure” is off the table. I was warned by the doctor that this is probably going to be a year long ordeal at a minimum.
If the golden path is off the table, then I will be rushed in to get a port put in my shoulder and will begin chemotherapy and radiation treatment with a new as yet to be named oncologist. The most modern studies apparently show that the best case of complete remission is to hit it with chemotherapy now, rather than later. Then after a course of chemotherapy and radiation, the surgery would take place. The monkey wrench this time however is that instead of a quick in and out surgery, I would be on a temporary bag for two to three months while things heal. Then there would be another surgery to reconnect everything and remove the bag. It was around this point where I started freaking out nice and proper. They would be removing a large chunk of my rectum and colon and then when reconnecting things up, in either scenario there would be some weird circumstances for me long term, but nothing unmanageable. I will just always need access to a friendly bathroom.
If things were not freak out inducing enough… the doctor starts going into all of the possible complications. Since they are working in an area where a lot of other things are. I could wind up incontinent if they nick anything to do with the kidneys, or could end up various flavors of erectile dysfunction depending on what they damaged. There is also the possibility of a rupture which means that we would be on a clock to catch that fast enough before I went septic and potentially died. Then there is the whole doomsday scenario of if they did not catch this in time, and it spreads to the lungs or liver… at which point it is probably game over for me as a human being. I get that the first doctor that did my colonoscopy was probably just trying to keep me calm and from freaking out on him… but I was really not fully prepared for the results of yesterday.
More than that I was not really prepared to have a speculum up my ass. For the ladies out there, they did in fact insert it ice fucking cold… so that is unfortunately not just a gynecology thing. Yesterday was a lot. Today is also going to be a lot because I was already scheduled for a cardiology appointment where they do an ultrasound. It is also at this point that the dark thoughts that I have struggled with my entire life start to creep in. Am I really worth saving? Should I just give up and accept my fate and try and eek out as much joy as I can in the meantime? Really out of everything that has happened the thing that I worry about the most is the damage it will end up doing to the fledgling relationship that I am trying to build with “Erasure”. We were friends before, and we will always be at least that… but I wanted more.
Basically I am very scared and not really sure how to deal with those emotions because I am not always great at that. Everything would be so much easier were I not alone. I have people that I can lean on, but I hate asking them for anything… and I also hate tolerating other human beings in my space. Its a catch 22… I need people but I also have to psyche myself up… to be able to accept them. I am lucky in that I have plenty of folks who are willing to help, I just have to start availing myself of them. For the moment I am focusing entirely on getting through the MRI which will hopefully be either at the tail end of this week or beginning of the next week. Nothing can be known until that is done, and from there I figure out how to cope with whatever path we end up going down.
