Tales of the Aggronaut

Fetching Cats

November 22, 2016 by Belghast

My evening playing catch with our youngest cat Kenzie… she loves her rubber bands pic.twitter.com/Bckn0nFg9V

— Bel 🆚 Hatred (@belghast) November 22, 2016

I am not entirely certain how well this video is going to come across on the blog, since I am just using the default twitter embed process. I’ve talked about playing fetch with my youngest cat Kenzie before. She loves rubber bands, and whenever she wants to play will bring one and drop it beside me. Traditionally this has meant tossing it around the room and her chasing after it. However over the weekend my wife went to a craft fair and picked me up a basic rubberband gun. Now at first the results were mixed, but I quickly realized it was because it moved quicker than she could actually track. So firing it across the room in the air meant she would just look at me confused a few times and then give up. However if I fire it across the floor so that it makes impact and slides the rest of the way… she is able to track that and bolts off after it. I decided to attempt to record this in the process and overall it turned out pretty well… including the batting of the gun to try and make me fire it. This was my evening… and when she would get tired she would bring it back… and then lay down on top of it. Later she would discover it again when she got up and the circus would continue.

As far as gaming went… it was another mixed bag of an evening. Firstly early in the evening before my wife got home I spent that time working on my Warlock and namely doing the Shiro and Tyra weekly quest. The idea being that if I keep doing those every week I am bound to get some interesting stuff from the load of legendary engrams that they ultimately provide. At this very moment I swap them all to the bank and then hop on my highest light character to open them. However before long that won’t matter quite so much given that the only sub 385 character I have right now is my Warlock. Today is the weekly reset, and from what it sounds like it is a really good week to farm packages. If nothing else this is going to be the week that I farm up all of the heroic strikes I need for Future War Cult quest. Small Arms and Solar Burn means you can farm heroics, and Mayhem Clash means you can finish games in 6 mins making it an insane Crucible farm week as well. Needless to say I am probably going to be playing Destiny tonight.

In World of Warcraft last night was our traditional Mythical Monday night… which is just a cute name for “oh shit we never did a mythic this week”. It seems like Monday is the night that I always end up doing a keystone just in time to get a free item today. This time around there was a double benefit, in that my friend Mor needed Black Rook Hold for the Karazhan attunement, and he also had a keystone for it. It is getting to the point where these runs are largely pretty smooth and we managed to complete in with enough time to spare that we got two chests at the end. Unfortunately I don’t think anyone managed to get any usable gear. Quite honestly it has been a really long time since I have gotten anything useful out of a Mythic, and largely they are just something I do… because of the fear of missing out on something from the chest. I enjoy them, and I am always happy to tank them pending I can dedicate 30 minutes of my time in one sitting. However I am not necessarily running them because I need them.

Lastly I finished the evening in Rift and managed to finish up Scatherran Forest. I got so into the game that I completely did not watch the time… and wound up finally heading to bed when my wife started to wake up from the sofa at 12:30. From there I had a pretty fitful night sleep wise, so it is definitely going to be an interesting day. That aside… Scatherran Forest was a great experience and the wrap up event was full of epic moments. At the end of the zone you wind up going into a mini solo dungeon of sorts, with I believe four boss encounters that you take on with two companions. As far as the story line and ramifications… they also felt pretty awesome. There were some definite feels caused by the ending… that were not entirely attributable to the late hour. I’ve now moved on to the Gedlo Badlands, with my general idea being to ping pong back and forth between the two as I work my way through the comet towards the Tower of Ahnket. I had my first real run in with Ahnket and it was interesting… definitely get a malevolent evil vibe… but also that of a cat playing with a toy which makes it all the more fitting to talk about this morning. I talked a bit during the day about Time to Kill issues… and apparently a good chunk of that was my own damned fault in that I forgot to slot any planar fragments. Once I did that… I noticed a significant boost in damage output, so if you are similarly struggling try that. So far my favorite thing about this expansion is largely just a side effect. I love that I am gaining planar levels insanely fast anytime I do pretty much anything… which is helping me flesh out those neglected trees.

A Good Weekend

November 21, 2016 by Belghast

This past week was the week of seemlingly smooth and fast clears. Wednesday night we worked on progression content, which mean’t that we spent the majority of the evening wiping to new and exciting things. However the end result of that evening was that we downed Odyn and made a decent amount of progress on Guarm. The only negative aspect of that is that it also means that none of us actually saw progress on the quest chain that haunts us. We kicked around the notion of having an Emerald Nightmare clear night, that I ultimately decided would be Friday. I set up a calendar invite and hoped, and then was pleasantly surprised at the number of folks that signed up. In fact we technically had more than our normal raid nights, and other than some starts and stops while waiting on folks or dealing with disconnections… it was a very smooth evening. So smooth in fact that I seriously wonder if we could have cleared the entire place in an hour. I mean because of the various time spent waiting… that was not a thing that happened however it seemed like we might have been on pace for it. That general smoothness continued on last night with Karazhan, but so did the whole waiting business. Thalen got sidelined with family stuff, and we had the option of either filling his slot or waiting. It turned out we ended up getting started roughly an hour and a half late, but once again things went amazingly smoothly. So much so that I think next week we are going to make a proper attempt at a Nightbane run. We would have one shot every boss… were it not for the fact that we tried some madness for an achievement on Medivh.

Another big part of my weekend was roaming around and exploring the Comet of Ahnket in the Rift Starfall Prophecy expansion. At this point I am sitting around 66 1/3 and feel like I have barely scratched the surface of the Scatherran Forest zone. Firstly I have to say this expansion is charming as hell so far, namely because of the two companions that follow you around at times… but also because it is a great example of environmental storytelling. Every area is packed full of little things to be scene and experienced much in the same way the zones are built in Guild Wars 2. Lots of things are happening in the background and all it takes is you sitting still long enough to experience them. The best of these vignettes has to be the hedgehogs who are stuck in a ball rolling… until one of them realizes that they can just let go of their feet to stop. Similarly there is this adorable sequence where you are playing hide and seek with baby unicorns, and you have to go out and find them so that you can lead them back home. The only negative so far is that I feel woefully undergeared for some of the content, and there is a bit of an uneven difficulty level happening. There was an area full of spiders… and they seemed literally twice as tough as any of the other equivalent level 66 mobs. I could take down entire packs of humanoids… but a single spider was a race to see if I could finish them off before they finished me off. Getting a second spider meant absolute certain death. All in all though I am really liking the expansion and it feels much more like Storm Legion did as far as content goes.

Finally I spent a good deal of time playing Destiny this weekend and was able to push my Titan to the 385 barrier. This is the point where you stop getting upgrades from legendary engrams, and are stuck relying on faction rewards that stop at 390… and exotic engrams that will take you all the way to 400. This means I am hoping tomorrow starts a small arms week for the heroic strike list because I absolutely need to spend some time farming. In theory I believe the Archon’s Forge will go up to 400 when it comes to end of event rewards, but not anything coming from an engram. I spent some time working on my Hunter and Warlock and getting both of them through the Rise of Iron story so I can have three sets of world bounties to work on each week. I realize they just reward engrams at this point… but if nothing else it can be infusion fodder to help work up additional weapons and armor. I need to find the free time to try and sign up for one of the machine raids so I can see the content and get some more tasty gear. However 385 is a completely respectable place to be, and in theory during the next iron banner I should be able to make a decent dent into pushing that number up into the 390s. It was a great weekend and especially considering we have a short week ahead of me.

Weasel Town

November 18, 2016 by Belghast

Last night I was having one of those nights where I needed to just blend into the background, and largely avoid human contact. That said I needed to schedule an invite for a potential Emerald Nightmare raid tonight, and finish up my Emissary quests that I had hanging out there. However before long I had done just that and was off to Rift to explore some more of the Starfall Prophecy expansion. This is the point where I am at a bit of a disadvantage because I never got the opportunity to play through the Comet of Ahnket 10 player raid instance, and learn more about the story of what is going on here. From what I have been able to glean, Ahnket is this sentient creation engine of sorts that seems hellbent on destroying Telara. I am sure at this point Captain Cursor is cringing like mad and will pop in and correct me, but like I said having not played that raid I only have impressions to go on. This expansion we take the fight to the comet, which has grown into a landmass. It seems like every time Ahnket crashes through a plane on the way to Telara it picks up a chunk of that world and carries it with it. At this point the comet has traveled through the planes of Fire and Nature and as a result we have two new zones themed after each, and a fifth zone that seems to be a place where everything clashes in conflict. We as ascended are sent here to try and stop Ahnket once and for all and help the friendly folk who have gotten uprooted as a result of the comet passing near their homes. All of this is irrelevant however because all I really want to do is hang out with this lovely bunch of weasels.

The other thing that has changed is this time around we have companions that tend to roam around with us as we complete the quest content pretty regularly. Firstly there is Shyla Starhearth that you might recognize as being the formerly half naked lady hanging out in the throne room of Sanctum for the Guardians in the room. This time around she managed to find some proper armor and is apparently now a super tanky badass. Next up we have Tasuil the Dragon, that we last saw in the Dendrome… and has shrunk down a bit to make adventuring with a little easier. At some point in the quest line you find someone who can Corgify him at which point he is both hilarious and adorable. Then during my current sequence of quests I also have Windflower the babby Unicorn hanging out with me. So I am hanging with a Corgi, a Unicorn, and a heavily armored elf lady… who could ask for more? It seems like with the impending doom the Guardians and the Defiant have set aside their grudges because in the new hub town you can also find Asha Catari leading the offensive, which makes my little Defiant heart crackle to life. I apologize for the image quality in the above two shots, but at some point during the evening I transitioned from my desktop upstairs to hanging out on the sofa with my laptop… that cannot run the game in nearly the same graphical fidelity.

In truth I feel like I have not experienced enough of the new content to give it a proper review at this time. Overall I like it considerably more than I liked Nightmare Tides, but I think that is because this content brings back familiar landscapes. Goboro Reef was just a completely foreign and alien looking zone, with its angry technicolor vibrancy. These zones are similar to what I have been seeing in the game since launch, just subtle variations on the planar themes. Of not I have only actually ventured very far into Scatherran Forest, as you are presented with two possible choices at first… and I could have similarly gone down the Gedlo Badlands path if I wanted to see a lot of fire themed landscapes. Even then I feel like I have just barely scratched the surface of the zones, and in the few hours I played I pushed about halfway through my first level. The leveling is slow, but it feels not quite as slow as it did during Nightmare Tides which is definitely a good thing. As far as crafting and such… I have only barely scratched the surface because I am competing with everyone out there for ore pops. If anything that would be my one complaint so far that the spawn rates maybe need to adjust up a bit to deal with the influx of players. Completing any of the “kill x” style quests seem to require either a lot of luck or patience. The best part so far however has been the music, which is more technological in nature… and it comes with an amazing remixed version of the main Rift theme. If you have been a long time fan of the franchise, I feel like this expansion is already well worth checking out. That said expect it to still feel more like Storm Legion or Nightmare Tides than the original content.

Trials of Valor

November 17, 2016 by Belghast

Last night was a raid night… and I failed to take any screenshots so you are stuck with an image of me in the order hall. After having cleared Emerald Nightmare a few weeks it was decided that we would instead poke our heads into the Trial of Valor. The goal set out by the raid leader for our group was to attempt to stay current with normal mode progression, so instead of spending several weeks farming Emerald Nightmare it seemed reasonable to just jump straight into the Trial content which has a much higher item level. That was a big part of the decision factor in that the baseline for gear is 850… and literally everyone in the raid last night has 850 or better. All of that said though… there are several of us who still want to keep clearing the Nightmare in the hopes of getting specific items or for no reason other than the try and complete that Balance of Power meta achievement step. So I think in the coming days/weeks we are going to try and sort out a secondary night with a clear purpose of farming the raid. I mean back in the day we used to have a Molten Core night even though we were actively progressing in Blackwing Lair…. and for that matter also had a Zul’Gurub Night. Karazhan is somewhat taking the place of ZG however as far as gear progression goes, but still I want to finish out some quests.

As far as the raid itself, it went fairly well but it is a big of a punch in the gut going from killing eight bosses in a single night to struggling to kill one. All in all it took us around six attempts to work out the mechanics for Odyn and largely sort out how not to have the tanks die during the final phase. The fight reminded me so much of Binding Coil Turn 9 in FFXIV, in that the really rough part was at the very end… but you had to wade through a bunch of mechanics that were more tedious than difficult to get there. This is very much a learn the mechanics fight and less a gear check in the traditional sense of damage output. For some however it is likely a bit of a survival check in that even if you are doing mostly everything as intended you are still going to take the occasional damage that becomes hard to control. We however pushed through and got a kill… and by kill I mean we pushed Odyn to 10% where he once again congratulated us on our performance. What is it about this guy wanting us to beat him up… is this a fetish? In any case a lot of gear dropped, but I got double gold both off him… and off the world boss that I attempted right before the raid. That leaves me with a single roll token for the week that I am going to need to use judiciously and determine what exactly I want to spend it on. Largely nothing from mythic+ is really worth it apart from the occasional trinket.

We put in several attempts on Guarm and that fight feels like a pretty hard gear wall the way that Patchwerk used to be. It has a very short enrage timer, and a oneshot kill mechanic that you need to avoid… while juggling even distribution of the colored debuffs. So there is a lot more going on than there was with Patchwerk, but it is no less of a hard dps race trying to kill him before he enrages and kills us. Last night was largely Art and I figuring out the tanking, and placement… and learning how to avoid the charge attack and get through it without taking much in the way of damage. It also very much felt like the healers were desperately trying to sort out all of the details because there were so many times where I was painfully low and straight up out of cooldowns to mitigate that fact. A little gear, damage output optimization, and some practice and I am absolutely certain that we will get that fight to farm status before long. We also have an alternate path open to us of trying to push through Heroic Emerald Nightmare, but with a brand new raid open that hasn’t seemed that compelling. In truth I hope we get to a point where we can easily clear Trial of Valor and then go back and worth on Heroics all in the same night. Of note however… “ToV” will always be Temple of Veeshan to me and never Trials of Valor.