Tales of the Aggronaut

Catch Up Mechanics

June 1, 2017 by Belghast

Last week I talked about it feeling like it was the end of the expansion in World of Warcraft, and in part that was due to the way that I am playing the game and focusing on alts. However there is apparently another key way things are starting to feel like the end of the expansion, and that is catch up mechanics. Now yesterday I posted about pushing through and dinging 110 the Legion expansion level cap on my Orc Deathknight. I managed to find a couple of lucky grabs on the auction house including 3 cheap pieces of demonsteel at 835 item level and a cloak at 870 item level. Other than those items however I managed to scrape together what is a reasonable item level to start going and doing stuff… in a single nights time between a combination of world quests, legion invasions, and opening the broken shore. When I first saw the Dauntless items I found them a little underwelming… but that was on my already 890 main character. The fact that you can start picking up 850+ items for 400 nethershards… when I walked into the Broken Shore with roughly 4000 of them… allowed me to really flesh out those missing gear slots. The only negative there is that the rings and trinkets are both “Unique Equipped” which were sadly the two slots I needed the most. Thankfully during the invasion event last night I managed to pick up a second ring at 840, taking my item level to the point where I could apparently start queuing for Looking for Raid.

Now I am not sure what the item level breaks are for the various LFR segments… but I was honestly shocked to find out that I could queue for Nighthold without having done anything in Emerald Nightmare or Trials of Valor. Before heading to bed I did the first part of Nighthold and picked up an 860 necklace and an 860 artifact. So other than a few strategic grabs from the auction house… I managed to pick up everything else I needed to gear a character in a single night. I am now sitting at 846 item level… and will probably finish doing the rest of LFR tonight hoping to pick up a few more pieces. I also need to start running dungeons so that I can complete the Death Knight Order Hall sequence… and during the day today the final missions that I need to run should be finished. I guess while sitting on a higher level character I didn’t notice just how quick the item level ramps up, but while out roaming the world on a brand new character it is extremely noticeable. It definitely seems the end of expansion catch up mechanics are in full effect, as the game attempts to usher you closer and closer to that 900ish item level. I still have yet to get a Legendary, but in truth I have only been trying to two nights now. I also need to research how exactly to get the alternate artifact appearances, because while I am not expecting to go crazy and start farming for them like I did on my Warrior and Paladin… I do however don’t want to miss easy opportunities when they come up.

The other interesting thing I am noticing… is that playing Horde on a server cluster where the Alliance greatly out numbers you… leads to some interesting interactions with other players of the same faction. The two items I got from LFR I was functionally handed by other players who were offering them to me. Also while out in the world on Broken Shore especially… the horde seems to do the same sort of thing that I do in open world zones on my warrior. That is help random players. There are a lot of cases where I was straight getting wrecked and another player ran up and started attacking the same mobs to help me push through them faster. Up to this point I really haven’t had much in the way of communication, so maybe I am just reading intent into their actions where it really isn’t there. Just saying so far it has not been a horrible experience, and at least the public channels are not clogged with madness the way they are Alliance side. I still have a significant problem with the Horde in general… not from a factional standpoint but from the standpoint that “bestial humanoid” is not really the sort of thing that I flock to in games. However Orc seems to be a happy medium for me, and I’ve come to this realization pretty much any time I play one. Every other Horde race and I have significant issues. The Tauren are just too big and feel lumbering and slow. The undead and trolls… I cannot get past the hunched posture… or the tusks… or the missing bits of armor. Bloodelves have the problem of being the most elvish elves ever… and if you have been around my blog for long you know my distaste for all things elf. The goblins in theory are an option…. but they sorta end up being played for comic relief much in the same way that gnomes do that that annoys me. The Horde really missed their opportunity to make a lifetime member of me when they failed to somehow recruit the Dark Iron Dwarves. For the moment however I am largely okay with being a blue green guy with a Mowhawk and Mutton Chops.

Turtles and Failknighting

May 31, 2017 by Belghast

Over in Final Fantasy XIV they are having this Make it Rain event, which in truth is a really short quest that leads you to the Gold Saucer where all MGP winnings are increased by 50%. For awhile now I had been closing in on the Adamantoise mount just by doing the weekly and daily cactpot options. However last night the between the free 20,000 MGP you get for the quest and hitting a 1/2/3 combo for 15,000… I finally pushed over the line and was able to purchase it. Now I know Ashgar is holding out for Fenrir but for me… it was always about the turtle. Since I was a little kid I have had a connection with them, largely because I grew up slightly out in the country and spend a good deal of time playing with random terrapins that wandered into the yard. I am the sort of person who will swerve wildly to miss a turtle… or honestly any animal for that matter. What makes this mount even better however is that it can fly… pending you are in a flyable zone and not sitting outside the free company house. Add this to the pile of mounts that Lalafel look adorable on, and I figure I will be riding it in place of my standard Chocobo for the time being.

After that I logged into Belgrok and started pushing towards 110 in World of Warcraft. For the most part it took finishing up the back half of Stormheim, going back to Val’sharah and doing Bradenbrook… and finally doing the first tiny bit of High Mountain for me to hit the level cap. From there it was all about trying to get some gear from whatever quests that were available at the time. In the most questionable of ideas… Grace and I decided to take our freely 110 characters over to the invasion happening in Val’Sharah. This is normally a perfectly reasonable idea, but on a low population server everything that is in the world becomes a little bit more difficult. We were mostly doing okay until we reached the part where we had to do the scenario. At which point we got queued with a super chill rogue who did not call us horrible at all… even though we kinda were. There was this epic fight at the top of the tower where the rogue solo’d down the boss there with an over abundance of skill. He himself was pretty minimally geared, but was obviously far better at survival than either of us were and kept running away from the boss and using columns and such for line of sight… just long enough for his self heal to be up before engaging again. The yakkity sax madness largely continued when we got up to the final eyeball boss… but all in all we managed to finish things up and get some gear in the process.

The unexpected thing about this low population server… is that it seems like someone had flooded the market with really cheap 835 plate armor. I managed to get my item level up to 814, which hoping we have another night of some upgrades through world quests might actually see me able to get into heroics. Right now I really need 2 rings, 2 trinkets and some shoulders… because all of those slots are bringing down what would otherwise be a reasonable position to be in. In the grand scheme of things the only reason why I want the ability to do heroics… is that the queue times for those are generally far shorter than the queues for normals. I am up to the point in the Order Hall campaign where I need to run a bunch more dungeons and I am not really looking forward to doing so with 45 minute queues per dungeon. Whatever the case I am now in the phase where I begin gearing… which tends to be the phase that I enjoy an awful lot as everything is potentially an upgrade. I need to go ahead and unlock the Broken Shore… but the truth is that I am not sure I would even be able to survive out there. A lot of my success with that area has been due to the fact that I am normally playing a grossly overpowered protection warrior. I am sure it is going to be a miserable time as an extremely undergeared dps deathknight. Side note I took the screenshot above before I reapplied my transmog just to show off what a mess that a freshly dinged 110 looks like.

Deathlord Rises

May 30, 2017 by Belghast

For those not in the United States… apologies for taking yesterday off from the blog. I had an insanely busy weekend, and it was about half way through yesterday that I finally realized that it was in fact a Monday… and not a Sunday. Extended holiday weekends always feel a little odd, because it just seemed like I had two different Saturdays. One of the Saturdays we went to Oklahoma City in a whirlwind trip to hit the three Half Priced Books they have… in an attempt to get there and back before the tornadic storms hit that evening. Thankfully for the most part all we got was some rain… and not the grapefruit sized hail that they had been warning us about. Then Saturday number two… aka Sunday… we spent the day deep cleaning the house and working in the backyard. I once again have flower babies, that are going to need to be watered in a few minutes whenever I finish this post. I am going to give them some time to acclimatize to the back yard before taking any photos. Additionally right now our pool is a lovely shade of green because we are fighting an algae bloom… so hoping that clears up as well before I snap some photos. Then of course yesterday was me hanging out and doing nearly two weeks worth of laundry… because we were lazy as hell last weekend. I wound up going to sleep around 9:30 last night instead of the usual midnight… because maybe the crazy weekend was catching up with me.

In gaming news… I played a silly amount of World of Warcraft. Like I am not really certain what is going on but much like Grace I find myself in a mini renaissance with the game. It is funny how when I didn’t have flight I didn’t think I really missed it. I have always been one of those people who espouse the philosophy that not having flying during the early days of an expansion is a better thing. It forces us to get down in the weeds and not to skip quite as much content. That said… it is funny just how much more enjoyable the game has been since I could zip around wherever I wanted to go. I had zero desire to play alts prior to getting the Legion Pathfinder achievement and flight… and suddenly afterwards its like the skies have opened to a whole new day. I had mentioned before that I am now working on my first 100+ hordie and choosing to do it on this low population server that Grace has the majority of her horde characters on. That in itself has been an interesting experience. The challenges have been that there simply are not that many people out in the world so when you encounter something you cannot solo… it might be a bit before another player happens to wander along. The benefit however is that there are always plenty of ore nodes to mine and I figure when I start Broken Shore I will have zero issue finding treasure chests. I figure if I am going to stick around for long… I will have to at least level my tanking weapon so I can solo things a bit easier.

For the moment however I am loving being an Unholy Death Knight. Last night I managed to get about halfway to 109, which I hope means that I can push across the finish line to 110 tonight and begin properly gearing my character. I am completely caught up in the Order Hall quest line, and to the point where I have to be 110 to get the next step. I am sorta fast tracking my way through Stormheim at the moment, and if need be I will do the same in High Mountain. Years ago I compiled a list of the order in which you should do SWTOR planets and bonus series in order to get the most bang for your buck… and if I am going to do more alts I feel like I need to come up with the same sort of thing for classes and the order hall campaign. Grace has a good idea in that she waits to do the order hall dungeon steps until she has opened up that zones quest as well. Had I done this… that would have meant starting Highmountain First and not Azsuna like I usually do. As I have a mountain of alts still to level it would be nice to have some sort of a guide to go off of… and most of this information is available through a series of other sites… but not really written out as plainly as I would have liked. So that might be a little bit of homework going forward. I know that when Stormblood hits I am going to lose a lot of my gusto in World of Warcraft, so I guess in a way I am trying to get the most out of this moment.

Side Note: You should totally check out our AggroChat where we talk about the May game of the month Wolfenstein New Order

Like Its The End

May 26, 2017 by Belghast

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I am going through this really odd period with World of Warcraft. My friend Grace and I had a conversation last night… and it feels like it is the end of an expansion. I guess at this point in the last several expansions the game has been thoroughly in maintenance mode, and we were waiting with baited breath to see if someone announced anything about the expansion. However in this case there is apparently still a good deal of content left to be released. We’ve been told that we would be going to Argus, and the Tomb of Sargeras raid has not even opened… so there are still big things looming on the horizon. However the way I am approaching the game right now very much feels like what I do at the end of an expansion. I am doing all manner of superfluous things that bring my pleasure. For example during the Warlords of Draenor expansion you could not get me into Tanaan Jungle on a regular basis. Once I got my flight… I disappeared from the zone almost entirely. However lately I have been roaming around out there doing all manner of random stuff and attempting to farm Apexis Crystals. Its like I suddenly decided that I really would like to get that Fel Raven mount that is available from there. I’ve also started doing a bunch of achievements… which is odd because generally speaking I am not an achievement driven person… at least not unless there is a mount or pet associated with it.

While I was roaming around Tanaan Jungle I suddenly decided that I wanted to kill the rares that I somehow missed along the way. That lead to me getting the Jungle Hunter achievement for killing 25 different rares. Then something inside of me was like… why stop there… and I looked up what the achievement was for killing everything. Last night I sorted out how to get the last couple I was missing and wound up completing the Jungle Stalker achievement for killing all 60 different named rare mobs in Tanaan Jungle. What is so weird about this is the fact that there is absolutely nothing in it for me… no title, no mount, no pet… none of the things I normally chase after. I just suddenly decided I wanted to do it… and then did it because it was something that existed. Now part of me wants to go around killing all of the named rare mobs in all of the different zones of Warlords… and then maybe Pandaria as well. Ultimately I have zero clue why this is suddenly compelling to me… because there are lots more productive uses of my time. However World of Warcraft, especially running around older content is sort of the pinnacle of “comfort gaming”. I have also been running a lot of older raids attempting to complete various cosmetic sets… that I will honestly probably never wear. There is just something enjoyable at this very moment about checking things off of a list.

I often times have some of the most fun in World of Warcraft when the game is in the lull state at the end of an expansion. I am in no rush to complete anything and not attempting to keep up with anyone else that happens to be progressing faster than I am. I only casually care about raiding, or I have already completed the raid content and shift into a sort of permanently piddling mode of play. Whatever the case it feels like I have generated this artificial bubble of lull, to where things really are not effecting me in any serious way. Sure I am actually raiding again… but doing so in a super casual manner and largely doing content that folks have on farm just for the sake of hanging out with my raider friends. Even though I know in the back of my head that we are going to continue getting a drip of content for awhile now… I am largely okay pretending it is the end. I seem to be able to play more freely and pull random goals out of the air and work towards them. While it would be awesome to get some dungeoning in every now and then… I am happy with not feeling like I am letting someone down by not grinding seriously towards some long term objective. I realize that as soon as Stormblood launches… I will be back in the rat race and trying to make sure I am as well geared as possible to be able to tackle all of the new content. However for the moment I am enjoying this enhanced state of chill.