Tales of the Aggronaut

Survival Solved

May 3, 2016 by Belghast

Violated

Right now I am having a little bit getting started this morning. I went to the cleaners yesterday, and after I got home I forgot to carry in the clothing. As a result this morning I hurriedly got dressed enough to be seen outside, and went out to the truck to get the laundry. When I got out there the door was slightly open, and apparently I either failed to lock the car last night… or failed to completely shut the door. As a result someone got inside and rifled through the glove box and the center console, I can only assume looking for drugs. They passed up a bunch of change, and didn’t touch my work id badge, or any of the few packs of magic the gathering cards that were deep down in the console. I don’t really keep anything of value in the vehicle, so I am certainly they were sorely disappointed. Unfortunately the whole event has left me feeling a little vulnerable, because we live in this super quiet neighborhood… but every so often something like this happens. We have a ton of teenagers and I am certain it was probably one of them. I just lack the gene apparently to fully understand why something like this happens, and I am kicking myself for not having a more proper inventory of the stuff I keep in my car to be able to tell if anything is actually missing. There is this sense of dread inside me that something was taken that I will miss… I just don’t know it yet.

It seems like another one of those blog award things is cycling through our community, because last night I was tagged by my friend Sandrian. I was originally going to go ahead and answer the questionnaire this morning, but since it is all about positivity and blogging and all of that sort of stuff… I am maybe not in the right mindset to do it. I will have to do it before too much longer however, or I will forget about it… much the way I forgot about the last one and then didn’t actually do it until I was tagged a second time. These things are cute, and mean well but they also often feel like the chain letters of the blogosphere. They are always interesting ways to get to know the people who are filling them out, but by the same token I always feel horrible for trying to obligate someone else to keep the chain letter moving forward. While there are no dire predictions for not completing the task, in the same way as chain letters normally have… I still feel nonetheless obligated to complete the task. In any case… it will be answered in a morning I feel a little less violated.

The Slow Spot

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As far as gaming and happier subjects go, I spent a good chunk of last night playing the tail end of Iron Banner. I am not sure if they ratcheted the drops down as the week went on, but the last few days after hitting rank five on all of my characters I really didn’t see much in the way of drops. I was hoping to get more 335 items to use as infusion fodder, but even though I played a dozen or so matches last night, the only thing I ever seemed to get was a bunch of blues, some strange coins and a single class item. I mean I did get a bunch of drops early on, so maybe there is a cap on the amount of dropped gear you can get from it or something. Either that or maybe I just had a lot of bad luck. In any case, right now my lowest item is 330 with the bulk of my gear being between 333 and 335. I only have boots, gloves and heavy maxed out at 335, so my hope is that with Challenge of Elders this week I will get another piece of armor to fix some of that. The lowest piece is the 330 helm, so getting a 335 helm would go a long way to bringing up my total light level. I am just pumped that I managed to get a set of gear that allows me to max out both intellect and discipline. This weeks Challenge of Elders is going to be strange, in that Melee does bonus damage… but you score extra points through super kills.

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I had every intent of logging in last night to Overwatch and spending the entire team playing that. However when I actually went downstairs, I wound up riding along with Kylana for some more levels and gear. The shitty thing about the item set this time for crusaders is that it feels like I need some super specific items to make it viable. I am sitting at four pieces of Invoker, so truth be told I might jump ship to that set if I find the last two pieces. I did however solve my survivability issues it feels, because after doing some fiddling I was able to survive incoming damage a whole lot better. I had fiddled with some stuff one night as an experiment and apparently never flipped back off the rune that made it so I could not dodge, but blocked more often. That alone was apparently the thing that was completely destroying me when running any content. Once that got turned off, I was amazed at just how well things went. I managed to solo a level 30 greater rift, but my damage dealing capabilities are still too low for me to really be able to do that comfortably. I do however need to spend a bit of time doing greaters so that I can get the rest of the gems I will need, and then also spend some time pouring levels into them. I think a lot of my lack of drive to play Overwatch is knowing that I am already “bought in”, and also knowing that there will be yet another reset before the game actually launches. I do however want to get in and play some with Tam, so I will need to check in tonight to see what folks are doing. It is my hope that I can get home with enough time to run Challenge of Elders in Destiny and then pop in for either Diablo 3 or Overwatch shenanigans.

Flowers and Rank 5s

May 2, 2016 by Belghast

Backyard Whim

One of the interesting developments that has happened this summer is that we are spending a good deal more time outside than we have ever before. I mean we have lived in our house for seventeen years now… and we’ve never really taken advantage of our backyard. My wife and I tried to sort out why this was, and I think in truth it was that the back of our house looked bad. Before moving in during the inspections they found a lot of termite damage on the wooden siding, and the bulk of this was located on the back of the house. The repair job looked adequate at first, but as it aged… the back wall ended up looking like a patchwork quilt that even with a fresh coat of paint just looked “wrong”. So in many ways I think it just put us off from being outside and having to look at it. With the recent renovations and new siding, we also had a door installed off of the bedroom. Years ago we created a quick and dirty patio with pavers, and now it feels like everything has finally come together. Sunday morning for example by the time I had woken up and gotten out of bed, my wife was already on the patio off the bedroom reading. There have been many times during the weekends that we end up eating lunch on the back patio as well.

Now I am not exactly certain where it came from… but recently we have talked about trying to put flowers sprinkled around the backyard. Granted we have always had a brown thumb, but this resurgence of backyarding… has made us want to at least try it. This reached a boiling point Saturday when while running errands we found a couple of planters that we really liked at Sam’s Club, and you can see one of them in the foreground of the above image. Given that Sams always has a rotating stock we went ahead and picked them up, thinking that if we waited they probably wouldn’t have two of the color we wanted later. Now I had zero intention of doing anything with them this weekend… I mean because I had Iron Banner and Diablo Season 6 to play. However before I knew it Sunday we were making a trip to go get rock and potting soil, and plants. We are massively cheating in that the start of each of the pots is a hanging plant, but so far so good. Now we just have to make sure they keep watered, but the hope is that since we are spending so much time out in the backyard anyway… that it won’t be that big of a deal. For those that are curious I created a nifty panoramic shot of the entire back yard.

Rank 5 For All

Even though we spent a chunk of the afternoon working on flowers and such, I still managed to make it upstairs on the PS4 by around 4pm. This allowed me some dedicated time to play the Warlock, and push forward towards Iron Banner rank 5. I closed with the weekend with my Titan and 333 light, Hunter at 324 and Warlock also at 324 which is significant movement. I have a feeling that those last two points of light on the Titan are going to end up being pure hell. However on a similar photo from the 22nd… I was sitting at 324 on the Titan, and 314 and 304 on the Hunter and Warlock respectively. So I have to say… I am pretty damned pumped about the rapid progress. The Iron Banner as a whole was very good to me, especially in the equippable gear and infusion material categories. I managed to get all of the available gear for this week, minus a pair of legs for the Warlock. There are numerous copies of the Auto Rifle, Rocket Launcher, and even managed to pick up a sidearm and sniper rifle from Rank 5 packages. It has been interesting playing all three classes this weekend, and I have to say that in truth… I think maybe the Warlock and Hunter are just inherently better at crucible than my Titan. It feels like they have a lot more tricks up their sleeve, whereas the Titan is just pure brute force. Warlock Blink seems to be the best escape method for getting out of an engagement, and Hunter throwing knives seems to be the best finishing move ever.

As far as the sniper rifle goes that I managed to pick up, I am not exactly a huge fan. It has Eye of the Storm, Speed Reload and Spray and Play which in theory would make it an insanely fast sniper rifle, but given its low impact… I question how useful it really is. For crucible at least you would have to land so many shots to make the kill, and it is hard enough to nail a single shot let along multiple at range. I will probably end up holding onto it just because it looks really cool, but I have a feeling that sooner or later this will get infused into something else to bring up its light levels. As far as new snipers go, I am still a much bigger fan of the 333 Her Fury that I managed to pick up from my Challenge of Elders this week. High impact, paired with Triple Tap and Armor Piercing rounds makes it something enjoyable to use. Tonight I have plans to hang out upstairs at least for a bit and try my luck at getting more of that tasty Iron Banner loot. It would be amazing if before the end of the weekend I manage to get more of the 335 items to help push up other gear. As far as the rest of my Destiny schedule for this week it feels a little up in the air. I did not set foot into Kings Fall last week, and I would really love to remedy that this week. The thing that sucks is that I am now in a position where the only benefit I will see is from a hard mode run, given that all three of my characters are now over the 320 light level that normal drops.

Crusaders and Guardians

May 1, 2016 by Belghast

Season Six

While I greatly enjoy the concept of the Developer Appreciation Week… I am always somewhat happen when it is over. During the week I feel like I have to be making posts along that them, so when things happen that I want to talk about… I end up pushing them down until the week is ultimately over. Now as I sit here for the first unfettered post in awhile… I am finding it super hard getting started. The biggest happening of this weekend is that Friday evening at 7pm my time the newest Diablo 3 season began. For season six I opted to roll a Female Crusader, because I had so much fun playing as one last season. I have this general goal of getting a male and female of each class eventually, but that also means that someday I will have to finish playing that mage and attempt to play a witch doctor. The only problem I am running into is that it feels like what made the crusader so amazing last go round… was the fact that the Invoker set was just phenomenal. Now that I have my six piece Akkhan set, it doesn’t feel anywhere near as powerful as I did last season. In fact while the set dungeon was a breeze for me last go around, this one is only causing chain wipes. Granted I am not nearly as geared as I was at this point last year, in part because I am not getting drug by Carthuun.

When the season started we ended up with six people on the guild discord, and as a result we split into two three player teams. Ultimately ending up with me and Grace playing together, with Solaria and Kodra joining up for short periods of time. Towards the end of the evening Kylana was with us as well as the other three player team ultimately disolved with Ashgar got pulled away for work, and Callalil went to bed. I myself only lasted through level 60, because that was ultimately the point at which I was starting to fall asleep at the keyboard. So I went to bed around 11pm and the rest of the group pushed onward. Yesterday morning Grace and I ended up playing together, and she helped me get the rest of the way to 70, and unlock my gear set. She was sitting over 100 paragon levels, which means that more than likely Carth is sitting around 300ish. At some point I will join in his Torment X shenanigans because I really need some gear. All in all it was a great start of the new season, and at some point I will sort out my spec and with gear should be able to solo more stuff. Right now the challenge is finding thorns on gear, and I have ended up burning through all of my materials trying to enchant away useless stats and turn them into thorns.

Banana Split

Another awesome happening this weekend is that yesterday while waiting on folks to show up for the AggroChat game of the month show, I managed to push my Hunter to rank 5. This is the first month that I managed to get to characters to rank 5, and I’ve since started working on getting the warlock there as well. My hope is that after I finish knocking out this blog post I will head upstairs and work on that. Iron Banner has been really damned good to me, letting me amass a lot of gear and weapons that will ultimately either get used as is or serve as infusion fodder. In theory I should probably be doing matches on my Titan with the hopes of getting more 335 items, but it feels good actually working on my other characters. After playing the hunter I can absolutely see why they do so damned well in the crucible. Throwing knives are amazing, and I had so much fun yesterday finishing off people with them. I still feel like golden gun however is the least exciting of the supers, but I am getting used to using it to optimal efficiency. There was one point where I managed to get three kills in a row with it and earned the way of the gun trophy.

Over the course of the week I have picked up so much gear, with the latest acquisition being a 335 Tormod’s Bellows. The only challenge here is that I am not sure if I will keep it or infuse it into one of my heavy weapons. I could really use a 335 sword… just saying. The funny thing is… I got the 335 drop on my absolute lowest level character while working on the Warlock yesterday. So I am wondering if maybe the buff in faction that you get for pushing up additional characters does something as well to the chances of getting max light drops as well? In any case another Iron Banner has come and almost gone, and I have loved every minute of it. I finally sorted out why I like PVP in Destiny and never have in other games. There is something about getting real loot at the end of matches, as opposed to a currency in lieu of loot that can maybe someday add up to be enough to get something interesting. I love random chance, and I love being rewarded with interesting stuff. More so than that… I love getting not quite perfect items… and then trying to figure out how to use them to my advantage.

DAW2016: Final Day

April 30, 2016 by Belghast

DAW2016_logo

Developer Appreciation Week is here! For the uninitiated the concept of Developer Appreciation week dates back to 2010 and was started by Couture Gaming the Blogger formerly known as Scarybooster. The idea was simple, spend a week talking about all of the things you love about various game development companies and studios. As a blogger we spend plenty of time pointing out what is wrong in the games we love, and talking about ways that they could be better. That said it is important to understand that for most of us this critique comes from being a huge fan of the games and genres as a whole. So during this week we point out the things that are going right and make a point of mentioning all the things we really appreciate out there. If you too are a blogger please feel free to join in by posting your own Developer Appreciation Week ideas.

The Roundup

Today draws to a close this years Developer Appreciation Week and there are always more things that need to be talked about than there was time to do so. During the week I wrote about five different studios. Some of them were pretty pointed discussions, and others were just nostalgic romps. What is always left at the end of the week however are a bunch more than I COULD have talked about. So the purpose of today’s post is to recap where I have been this week and do a few shorter blurbs. Here is the rundown of studios discussed this week.

Now here are some topics that ultimately got left on the cutting room floor for lack of time.

Bethesda Softworks / Zenimax Media

Ultimately had I not taken a break for a day this would have been the missing topic. I have this huge love for Bethesda games in their own right, but over the years they also snatched up iD software and became a third party publisher for amazing studios like Arkane. The root of my love however comes from the modern Fallout and Elder Scrolls Franchises. These are games that I can lose myself in for hundreds of hours and still feel like I have not even begun to scratch the surface on what there is to see. There are so many times in the past where I have lost entire weekends to exploring Tamriel or the burnt out husk of the Capitol Wasteland. I will also always have a soft spot in my heart for Elder Scrolls Online, since it feels like I have a closer connection to that title than most. It has made me pretty happy to see that the game is now thriving after a pretty rough start.

Larian Studios

I love this company, in spite of the fact that they have seemed horribly confused as to what sort of game company they actually wanted to be. They have this world that is amazing, and each game they have released has told a piece of the story of its background. The only confusing part is that each game for the most part has been in a vastly different genre. You have Divine Divinity which was originally a Diablo style game… and then the follow up Divinity II which has a very Elder Scrolls/Dragon Age type feel to it. Then there is Dragon Commander which is this strange 4X mixed with RTS elements. Finally you have Divinity: Original Sin that feels like the game they always had been meaning to create. The title is so insanely content dense that I have trouble actually making any progress because I keep finding something else that is interesting to check out. In the very first town it felt like every single NPC had some interesting backstory to delve into. I just love that a game company is out there trying to create all of these different game types, and for the most part succeeding at it. I have thoroughly enjoyed every single Larian game that I have set my hands on, and look forward to playing more in the future.

Supergiant Games

This company makes some really amazingly detailed and well crafted games. Bastion had so much going on, from the physical mechanics of gameplay… to the amazing running narration. I was also a huge fan of the soundtrack and have spent many an hour with it running in the background. When Transistor came out, I was shocked that I loved everything about that game even more. We have devoted at least three podcasts where we have gushed about Transistor, and how well written the story was… which combined amazingly with the soundtrack and gameplay. Now Supergiant has a brand new game that they showed at Pax East called Pyre. At first look it doesn’t exactly seem to be my sort of game, but I know from past experience that if they have crafted it… then chances are I will ultimately love it too. I am amazed how they can seem to do it every time… build this completely unique experience that I still love just as much as their others.

Gearbox

This company comes with some baggage. I unequivocally love the Borderlands series of games. It has such amazing characters and writing, and manages to pull off a sort of self aware comedy that is extremely hard to do in a game. Most “comedic games” fall short, and end up not quite translating into actual humor. Borderlands has mastered the art of telling a real story while making me go into full on belly laughs at times. This in itself wouldn’t been all that amazing, but it is on top of a really damned solid shooter. When I first heard the concept of “Diablo with Guns” I was not 100% sure I would be sold. However playing the first Borderlands I was completely bought into the concept, and then Borderlands 2 came after improving quite literally everything. Now I am not sure if I am sold on the notion of Battleborn, but I am giving it a shot because of the pedigree and some of the single player videos remind me a lot of the things I loved from Battleborn. Now when I say the company has some baggage…. this is also the studio that released Duke Nukem Forever and Aliens: Colonial Marines. I am just hoping that Battleborn ends up feeling more Borderlands… and doesn’t add to the detractor column.

Bungie

I feel like I have to write about Bungie, but I also didn’t really feel like I had enough ammunition to really do a full post. I was never a Halo player. I never owned an Xbox, and when I played the PC port it didn’t feel all that amazing as compared to the game I was super into at that time Unreal II: The Awakening. I feel like Microsoft did a massive disservice by keeping a strangle hold on the Halo franchise, and does to this very day. However when I first saw Destiny… I knew this was going to be a game for me. In fact this was the game that ultimately made me buy my PS4 and learn how to play a shooter with a controller. While the game didn’t really grab me and keep me during year one… year two and the Taken King expansion have been amazing. I love this game so much and over the course of the last few months it is really my primary game. While I loved the Diablo 3 season launch last night, there was a little part of me that would have rather been playing Iron Banner in Destiny. The game has its hooks in me hard, and it really has become this perfect package of game play feel, with a reward system that makes it feel like my time spent was worth it. Seriously bravo to Bungie for the creation of this game… the only thing that could make it better is if it released on the PC as well.