Missing Cat Chef Theater

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Good Morning Folks! Late Thursday evening Monster Hunter Wilds dropped and I spent a good chunk of time over the weekend playing it. At this point I have racked up just shy of 13 hours and it is weird how fast the muscle memory from Monster Hunter World came back to me. A lot of the controls are different this time around and I have slowly been tweaking things to make them work a bit better. Other than a few wonky performance issues here and there I have mostly had a pretty great time. I’ve been largely focused on the Main Story Quest, but feel like I need to spend a bit more time smelling the roses and exploring the zones. Truth be told my favorite things about the previous game was the expedition zones and tagging in on SOS flares to help folks down bosses. I’ve done a bit of both, but nowhere near as much as I probably should be.

At this point I am down in the third zone and about to fight by my count the fourth major boss. I am not sure if the game is bugged out but I don’t seem to have a quest marker showing me where I should be going next. I roamed around a bit last night and could not figure out where the game was trying to send me. I’ve crafted a bit of gear and trying something that I never really did in the previous game. I’ve equipped a weapon set that causes sleep, so we will see how that bodes for the next major encounter. I took my first death on the Lava Apes and things seem to be ramping up a bit. I think part of the problem was that I did not make a cool drink for the fight, and I think I was taking heat debuffs the entire time. I should probably focus on taking care of those things, which will require roaming around the expedition areas a bit more to collect goods.

One of my only complaints right now is that I miss the Felyne cooking scenes. We have a cute Palico that appears to be wearing a tomato pincushion as a hat… which is pretty great. However I really miss the elaborate cooking scenes and while technically more useful… cooking the food myself is not as fun. Maybe as the game progresses we will get back the kitchen, but I fear that is probably not the case. Even in Monster Hunter Rise they made Dango. Sadly the game peaked at Monster Hunter World and will probably never reach such peaks of Felyne culinary prowess again. This is probably a dumb thing to complain about, but really it was a core chunk of my enjoyment.

I think my new favorite bit from Wilds though are the WudWuds. I have no clue WHAT they are “preslicedly”. Maybe beavers or otters? Whatever the case, I think they are pretty great. So much of my enjoyment of this game come from the non-human characters that we interact with. I had forgotten how much I needed this level of cat adjacent nonsense in my life. We are going through dark times right now, and having a bit of pure escapism is precious. Hunting big monsters with my cat friend that is styled after my own chaos goblin Gracie has been quite a bit of fun. I do sort of get drained by the game, which makes me think I need to spend more time just roaming around the world looting materials. I spent so much of my time in the first game doing that, and I pretty much need to adopt the same stance in this game.

It is definitely a worthy successor to Monster Hunter World. I also dig the ability to be in multiple squads which serve the purpose of guilds. Here is a screen that shows my friend code, if you are playing the game feel free to throw me an invite. So far it seems to be working pretty seamlessly across all of the available platforms. Part of me wants to keep my head down until I hit the end game and then devote the bulk of my time crafting proper gear sets. However I think I will probably enjoy myself if I just mill around a bit and do some nonsense along the way. I’ve yet to actually group up with anyone, and I am contemplating throwing out an SOS for the next boss encounter just to make it go more quickly.

That is really my only complaint about this game is that it continues to provide limited feedback as to how the battle is going. We have a health bar, but what I really want is a boss health bar. The whole system of changing the icon on the mini-map and also getting hints from the guide that follows you along in battle… are fine and all but the game would feel better if you had clear feedback as to how much impact you are actually making during the fight. As it stands now it feels like you are essentially beating a bag of hit points that then randomly falls over and lets you carve it. I get that this is a conscious choice in the design of the Monster Hunter franchise, but I feel like it is the wrong one, especially in the “World” series which is designed to be more approachable.

All in all though I am having fun. I ultimately knew I would because I went completely obsessive about this game series when Worlds released back in 2018. So much so that I played through the progression on PlayStation and then started over from scratch again and leveled everything up on PC when it finally released on that platform. I am very happy that this time we are getting Console and PC releases at the same time with full cross play.

AggroChat #514 – Seeking Tribooty

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Featuring: Ammosart, Belghast, Grace, and Thalen

Hey Folks! We are down our West Coast contingent this week but carried forth with a relatively short show.  Bel talks a bit about the Anti Sanctum Alliance and how it seems to have actually made an impact at least in the pricing of Sanctum Tomes in the Legacy of Phrecia event. From there Thalen shares his experiences with The Roottrees Are Dead, which is a logic puzzle spiritual successor to games like Return of the Obra Dinn.  We move on to talking a bit about Monster Hunter Wilds and our early experiences so far.  We’ve needed some Palico shenanigans to help us cope with our present dystopia. Last week we got a new feature trailer for the upcoming Last Epoch Cycle 2 coming April 2nd.  We spend a bit of time talking about what has been revealed for the new features and how it appears like the long wait has been worth it.

Topics Discussed:

  • Path of Exile
    • Legacy of Phrecia
    • Impact of the Anti-Sanctum Alliance
  • The Roottrees Are Dead
  • Monster Hunter Wilds
  • Last Epoch Cycle 2 Trailer

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Jellies and Palicoes

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Hey Folks. Yesterday I wrapped up the fifth book of the Dungeon Crawler Carl series and made quite a bit of progress in Path of Exile. Originally I was planning on spending the night playing Monster Hunter Wilds… then realized that it was not releasing until 11 pm my time… when I would absolutely very much be largely comatose. In fact I did not even make it to 9 pm before the siren song of the bed called my name. The above screenshot is mostly so I can show off the fact that I picked up the adorable jellyfish portal mtx, which is something I wanted when it was in a loot box… but now that it is up on the store and on sale… I could not resist. Generally speaking I do not mind spending money on Path of Exile because I get so much joy out of the damned game.

Right now there is a farming method that is likely going to get nerfed… that can cause 36+ Rogue Exiles to spawn on a single map… and then get resummoned forth again via the Ritual mechanic for even more loot. I did however take advantage of the fact that the idols associated with this method are going for upwards of 13 div… and sold the one I had for a quick infusion of currency. I then used this to purchase two banger rings which helped me cap chaos resistance, and gain enough other resistances to be able to drop Purity of Elements. I am now instead running Tempest Shield which allows me to cap my Attack and Spell Block meaning that I am recovering life constantly and generally feel quite a bit more tanky in game. As soon as I can get my hands on an Enlighten Support I should be able to add back in Skitterbots and be effectively in my final configuration. The next big purchases would be an Unnatural Instinct and a Light of Meaning with Fire Damage on it… so I can do a big dumb combo.

Truth be told, if I made no forward momentum from this point in the league I will be happy with where I am. As of yesterday I have unlocked all of the non-unique maps and picked up my first two voidstones. This is pretty much the point where I try and get every league and event and consider this the basic “done” point. Anything I accomplish on top of this is just gravy. I will probably unlock some more of the easy favorite map slots like doing the various guardian maps. I doubt I am in a state where I can do a T17 unless it is rolled EXTREMELY easily. It feels like my single target dps is in a really bad state, but I have a decent base that I am going to try and craft a new sceptre with at some point. All in all though I am pretty happy with the state of where I got in both the Phrecia and Pohx League events.

The extremely keen eyed may have noticed some additions to my blog’s masthead. These are palicos that I commissioned Ammo to create for me which represent Gracie and Josie two of my current cats. She has been doing Palico portraits in the lead up to Monster Hunter Wilds and they have all been delightful. I already had a Palico that represents Kenzie in my masthead, and she will eternally be my Monster Hunting buddy of legend… but it is time to bring a few new cats into the fold. Ammo did an excellent job of capturing the essence of these two with Gracie being the chaos goblin that she is chasing the heal bug, and Josie giving some serious side eye as she carefully places a barrel.

I got in very briefly this morning to create my Hunter and primary Palico, and played long enough to get to the first temporary camp that allows you to choose your weapon. I am going to try and main Sword and Shield this time around, and we will see how long that lasts. I chose to model my Palico after Gracie and named her Graciebutt since that is what I actually call her 99.9% of the time. It is going to take a bit to get used to the controls of a Monster Hunter game again but I fully expect to spend most of the weekend playing this game and giving it a go. I will probably pause my sojourn through the Dungeon Crawler Carl series until I get through at least most of the initial storyline. Monster Hunter Wilds will probably be a perfectly fine audiobook game, but it is going to take churning through some story before I get there.

Are you going to be playing Monster Hunter Wilds? What weapon are you going to main? What did you name your Palico? Drop me a line below.

The Idol Based Atlas

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Good Morning Folks. As of this afternoon we will have had access to the Legacy of Phrecia event for a week. At this point I am level 94 and have mostly reached a point of stability with my build. Sure I would like to craft a new sceptre and am on the look out for a few specific jewels, but all in all Scavenger RF works pretty well. However I am not going to talk about any of that this morning, and am instead going to share my thoughts about the new Idol Based Atlas system. This entire event was touted as ideas that were left on the cutting room floor, and this idol concept was originally something that was abandoned in favor of the current Atlas tree system… which admittedly is damned near perfection. The first few days I was pretty hype for the idols, but now I have reached a point where I absolutely see the limitations and understand why this did not see the light of day.

The good about this system though, is that early maps feel amazing. You get a large number of Idols which allows you to cobble together something that mostly works. During White and Yellow progression I was essentially getting Delirium, Harvest, Niko, Essences, and Strongboxes every map… and Ritual, Expedition, and Betrayal pretty freaking often. This is way more content than you would normally have access to during early maps when you don’t really have that many Atlas points to spend. This makes the early game feel amazing… but you eventually reach a point where it starts to taper off.

By the time you are in yellow or red maps, you have quite a few points to spend on the tree which means that you have pretty much every node available for at least one league mechanic, making that single mechanic extremely juicy. In truth I tend to build trees that synergize with different abilities that are all on the same side of the tree. For example I might have a Ritual, Einhar, and Beyond tree as they all exist within a few nodes of each other so that by the time you near the end of your Atlas you have 100% chance for all of those mechanics and have a bunch of nodes that buff them so that they produce better stuff. I tend to be an “Alch and Go Andy” when it comes to mapping strategies, and I juice to extreme levels with the most expensive scarabs and most carefully rolled maps. I drop a map in the atlas, hit go, and then run with whatever content the device gives me.

For the heaviest juicers however… the Idol system is probably much better. For example Life Without Pants is a YouTuber that I enjoy watching content from, and he talks a bit about his strategy that centers around Harbingers. Essentially through the use of the Idols he can force something like six harbingers on a single map, always convert them to harbinger bosses, cause them to drop whole currency instead of shards, and then cause their cool down to be much shorter so you can complete each individual harbinger encounter much faster. Similarly Fubgun is running a strategy where he forces 36 Rogue Exiles onto his map and then uses Scarabs to juice that up considerably so that he can produce Affliction league levels of drops when you combine that with Ritual.

The problem that I have with the Idol system however is that it essentially forces you to go “all in” on a single strategy. Either you can cobble together something like I am running where it ups the chances of a bunch of different league mechanics to spawn, or you carefully craft a single mechanic and then juice it to levels that have never been possible before. The existing Atlas Tree lets you do a handful of of complementary mechanics really well, and I think makes the entire experience feel a bit better as a result. As someone who cannot bring themselves to skip mechanics when they appear on the map… it feels bad to do a bunch of mechanics with zero investment in them. Nodes that I thought might be good on their own like Crop Rotation, actually feel awful when you don’t have the rest of the points in the tree to buff it.

I think part of what makes the Idol system feel extremely bad is the fact that you are almost required to deal with massive amounts of very small specific trades in order to get an individual strategy working. Everything I am running I have cobbled together from the dregs of my bank. If you were wanting to run a hyper specific strategy though, you would need to trade for a bunch of specific rolls on idols… and then deal with the frustration of not getting answers from most of the traders because 1 Chaos trades are not worth stopping mapping for. If you want to bump things up to the next level, you are also probably going to be spending time deleting idols through the recombinator as you try and get a single item with four usable stats on it. This is graveyard crafting levels of tedium… which is again why I am mostly just yoloing my way through the system and trying to make something that feels halfway decent. This is yet another league that proves Path of Exile needs a fucking auction house already.

As glad as I am that the Idol system was left on the cutting room floor and we have our beloved Atlas tree instead… I have to admit that given the choice I would take this immediately over the systems in Path of Exile II. Everything about the Atlas tree in that game is awful, and it is entirely too focused on bossing. Bossing is just a subset of the Path of Exile 1 endgame, and most people… are not really focusing on it. Idols would go a long way towards patching the problems with that game’s system and forcing specific mechanics onto every map instead of the poorly designed precursor tablet system. Conceptually I like the exploration system because I enjoy it in Delve, but it just does not really work as a replacement for mapping. Part of the payoff of leveling and fully unlocking your atlas tree… is the agency to focus on only the mechanics that you want to focus on. You never really reach any of that payoff or any of that agency in Path of Exile II… which feels like the team missed that core tenet of the first game.

Phrecia has been a really interesting experimental league, and it was announced today that it is being extended by a month. I really like chaos pop righteous fire, and I would absolutely play something like this again in the future. Which admittedly makes me wonder what it would be like to play one of the witch based righteous fire builds at some point in the future. I do think that a lot of the ideas behind the Idol system in this league event could benefit Path of Exile II. Right now the endgame does not really work and feels way too far removed from the near perfect loop of game play that exists within Path of Exile’s endgame. All of POE’s problems center around on-boarding the player and gear acquisition for non-traders and non-crafters but the virtuous loop of the endgame was not something that should have been abandoned. Path of Exile II feels a lot like Destiny 2 did at launch… where it feels like they forgot all of the lessons that the previous game had learned. I am onboard for trying out quirky ideas in event leagues until they figure out how to make Path of Exile II feel a bit better though.