Tales of the Aggronaut

Steampunk Primalist

October 13, 2015 by Belghast

Primal Goodness

Want a #RIFT Wilds Pack? Grab a code from the image we're about to tweet, and enter it in at https://t.co/FtVqj5OrAq

— RIFT (@Riftgame) October 12, 2015

It was honestly a sheer miracle that I made it through yesterday. As the day went on, it felt like my estimate of three hours of sleep was a bit too high. Luckily around 3 pm I managed to catch a second wind which made the whole “driving home” thing significantly safer for everyone on the road. My general goal was to stay awake long enough to be able to head to bed naturally around 9 pm thinking that maybe just maybe it would fix the problems and give me a good nights sleep. For the most part it seems to have worked and while I am a bit groggier than normal this morning, I am feeling significantly “better”. In my stupor yesterday however I managed to have an insane bit of luck. I happened to be watching my twitter feed at just the right moment, when Rift tweeted that they were just about to give out some Wilds Packs. They posted a photo with I believe six different codes on it, and I picked the smallest one… and started typing. Apparently my fingers were fast enough because much to my shock I saw a note in my transaction history that said the Wilds Pack was added to my account. Also much to my shock… I thought this was the basic pack that just included the new primalist class only, but instead it was apparently the $100 pack that includes a ton of other goodies as well including an insane dinosaur mount.

I think maybe that I violated the intentions of the class when it came to outfitting him. I rolled a dwarf, thinking that a dwarf with a big hammer/axe/thing would be kind amazing. Then when it came to actually setting up the wardrobe and picking a mount to use… things happened. Now I have my goggle wearing, leather clad, aetherbiker Dwarven Primalist. I played a little bit but very quickly realized that maybe when I am half awake is not the best possible time to play anything that requires a significant amount of reading. I did play enough to decide upon the Berserker prebuilt class for the time being. I considered going Titan which was the tanky build listed, but for the time being I think I am just going to be a pewpew hammer swinging dps. The starter primalist weapon looks kinda amazing, and honestly one of the big things that I look forward about playing him is that I will actually collect all of the low level gear appearances as I get stuff to drop for me. That was the negative about going into a major change like the wardrobe system with a high level character… that ultimately I was well past the gearing phase and all that I would end up physically seeing was new gear. Playing a low level character again will see me coming across all of that gear that I had and sold, or at least that is the hopes. However this is a journey for another day, one when I am not struggling to exist.

Questing Guardian

One of the negatives about playing Destiny as primarily an MMO player is that there are certain traits that carry over into the MMOFPS title. Namely that you actually find yourself caring about having quests hanging around in your quest log. Since the whole reading and making sense of things part of my brain was largely malfunctioning, I thought I would instead venture into Destiny and work one some of the things that have been looming over my head. Namely the “High-Value Targets” quest. On paper it sounds simple enough, that you need to defeat several of these High-Value targets… 3 in the Cosmodrome, 3 on the Moon, 3 on Venus, 3 on Mars, and 3 on the Dreadnaught. The problem being that in order to qualify as a high-value target, it has to be one of those special patrol missions that ask you to go kill a given mob somewhere in the patrol zone that is marked with a red star. To make matters more interesting… I learned that these only come from special patrol beacons that are also marked with a star. Theses seem to be largely rare and absolute luck of the draw if you will see them. So as a result I managed to complete the Cosmodrome and Dreadnaught quickly… but struggled with having not found a single high value target patrol on Venus or Mars.

So last night I spent pretty much the entire night wandering around various planets looking for star beacons, and when I did not find them… running as many patrols as I could in the hopes of making them spawn. At about 9:30 last night, moments before we were heading to bed… I managed to complete the quest. Additionally I also managed to complete Taken Assault: Mars which gave me enough Queen’s Wrath faction to finally start opening up bounties on the Reef. This also opened up The Wolves of Mars quest chain for Variks which involves doing a bunch of shit involving the Fallen. From what I have heard this will reward a Boolean Gemini at the end of it… which in truth will probably be a Year One variant… but if it works like Last Word did, it also opened up the Year Two blueprint for me. So in theory I can save up my marks and purchase the 280 version as well. In any case I had a lot of fun last night faffing about working through the various quests and bounties. There is something relaxing and mindless about wandering around and taking things out with an assortment of really fun to use weapons. The other big progress I made is I collected enough data using a shotgun, so I am now on the step where I need to disassemble a bunch of blue or better ones. I had a handful stowed away just for this occasion but it was nowhere near enough. As a result I will be farming engrams in the hopes of getting more, and in theory I need to just start running strikes. I did however manage to make it to 287 light when wearing my “best” gear, which is slow but palpable progress.

Sith Sorcery

October 12, 2015 by Belghast

Double Fist Caffeine

This morning I cannot guarantee how intelligible my post might be. Granted every morning I could and probably should give that disclaimer, but this morning in particular it is well deserved. I had another one of my trademark nights of insomnia, and quite honestly I am not really sure when I finally fell asleep. At the earliest it was sometime after 1 am, and I have no clue how much additional tossing and turning time was added onto that. That is the worst part about not being able to see anything without your glasses, that not being able to see the clock means you are constantly estimating upwards on a night like last night. Based on my motor skills, I am guessing I probably got around three hours of sleep. The worst thing about nights like last night is the growing sense of dread and anxiety when you realize that what little rest you might have gotten is drifting away from you. The alarm going off is a fixed point that there is no negation with. As a result I am essentially double fishing caffeine with both a big mug of coffee and a monster zero as a chaser. I might even go down and fix another cup of coffee just to give myself that much more of a fighting chance of functioning today.

The problem is nights like last night get no easier as the years go by. Its just that the stakes get higher, and I find myself struggling to bounce back from them even more than I used to. In the past I would take a nap and life would be peachy, the sleep debt would be repaid and I would move on with my life. Now… there is a lingering disconnected state that continues on for essentially the rest of the week. Which means I will continue to need an ever increasing amount of caffeine in order to continue functioning like a normal human being. Not that any of this is really interesting, but it is what is happening in my world this morning and as a result is what is getting written about. Once upon a time I attempted a sleep study… but I am not going back through that again. I went in for insomnia… and the doctor was damned certain I had sleep apnea. Those are two vastly different things… my problem is not that I am sleeping too much or too sleepy… my problem is that I cannot shut my brain off to go to sleep. As a result I am kinda gunshy about trying to resolve these issues.

Sith Sorcery

One of the things about this recent tour through the Star Wars the Old Republic class stories, is the fact that none of these characters are freshly rolled. At some point over the last four years I have created each of these characters and made decisions that I might not have wanted to make. Namely when I rolled a Sith Inquisitor for some reason I decided going Sorcerer was the best possible idea, instead of the more comfortable melee options. In all honestly the class itself is enjoyable and I am having a blast shocking the shit out of things, but the problem is… my tanky companion feels extremely squishy right now. I am not sure if this is a side effect of Khem Val in particular, or if it is more the fact that I am not quite so grossly over leveled on this play through. Tattooine was an extremely short planet, and as a result I am not pretty much sitting at exactly the level of my next quest. I am also a few levels from my traditional mod swapping point, so my gear is getting a bit dated. In fact as I am sitting here sorting this out in my head… I should have swapped gear a level of go if I am going by my normal pattern which in itself might account for the extremely squishy nature. Basically I have been upgrading every other set of mods… so I am using level 21 mods, and was shooting for level 33 to upgrade… when in reality I should have upgraded at 29.

The other thing I am considering is a swap over to using Treek instead of Khem Val. Not sure why but the Jedi style tank companions in this game just feel squishy compared to the trooper style ones. Bowdaar felt similar, when I have tried to use him in the past. Treek on the other hand seems to have this amazingly useful arsenal of attacks as well as a really nice AOE stun effect that helps to reduce her damage intake. Additionally Treek doesn’t actually give a shit what I do, and is not constantly judging my power… or sizing me up to potentially eat at a later date. As well as playing a finger wiggler, the big departure with this character is that I was using it to shoot for my first Dark Five character. I won’t like, taking the force lightning [shock] options in dialog trees is kinda fun. I do however feel a bit more disconnected from this play experience than others. Especially with the Bounty Hunter, I could see a lot of myself in those dialog options, and in the Inquisitor it feels like the class is nothing like me at all. I would never be cruel just for the sake of doing it, but in order to max out my dark side points… that is pretty much what I am constantly doing. It feels like this is going to be a bit of a slog to get through, but I am making decent progress. As of last night I am level 30 and on Alderaan, and should be wrapping up the first chapter shortly. I am sensing a pretty big conflict coming up, and will be interesting to get through it.

Week in Gaming 10/11/2015

October 11, 2015 by Belghast

A Good Week

I am sitting here this morning with my writing buddy beside me. I’ve shown pictures of Allie in the past as she sits on the blanket that I have folded beside my keyboard, and once again this morning she is there purring quietly. She really is the mascot of the week I have had, because honestly other than a bit of an emotional roller coaster surrounding The Beginner’s Guide, I would say that the week as a whole has been one of contentment. I managed to accomplish quite a bit in my quest to push through all of the stories I had not seen in SWTOR, as well as made small bits of progress in Destiny. At work things seem to be largely calmed down, or at least to a manageable madness. More than anything I think it was taking Tuesday off that helped reorient my world to a much better state of mind.

Star Wars the Old Republic

This week was an insanely productive one when it came to Star Wars the Old Republic. As of last Saturday night during the podcast I managed to wrap up the Smuggler storyline, and picked up work on the Sith Warrior. With Tuesday essentially being a day where I did nothing but play SWTOR, I managed to finish up the Sith Warrior. I’ve talked about this already but I have to say at the time the Sith Warrior was one of the most gratifying experiences when it comes to giving you the control to settle all of your vendettas in one ending. Every person that you want to seek your revenge on is laid out in such a way as that you can, and the final events are so damned satisfying. Having played both Sith Warrior and Jedi Guardian… I have to say I am a bigger fan of the Warrior experience namely because it is deeply personal… and not simply the overarching events of the game as a whole.

From there I picked up on my Bounty Hunter, largely because I needed a palate cleanser from playing a force user… and having just wrapped up Smuggler I was not quite ready for another cunning class. I fully expected to not be terribly into the Bounty Hunter experience, largely because I didn’t really enjoy Trooper that much. However I am coming to realize most of my problems with the trooper was the fact that it was my third class within a few months of the launch of games to push to 50… and at that point I was simply bored to tears of all the repeated planet story content. The Bounty Hunter is quite literally the most reasonable person on the imperial side. The game gives you the ability to play the consummate business man, and that is absolutely the path I took. I killed no one for free, and kept my collateral damage to a minimum. As a result people were constantly surprised that no, I was not in fact going to kill them. Generally speaking I almost always took the option to freeze them in carbonite and return them to the client fully intact. I am guessing that quite honestly, Bounty Hunter is probably going to go down as my favorite game play experience in SWTOR.

Destiny

My progression in Destiny has slowed down considerably, with the bulk of my forward movement coming from Armsday packages and any time I level up a faction like the Gunsmith or the Cryptarch. While I am playing the game of equipping my best gear before I decrypt any engrams, I am still ending up with low level blues most of the time that I turn into crafting materials. I’ve developed the nasty habit of buying shaders, emblems, and ships…. and as a result I am generally running low on Glimmer most of the time. I really need to try using some of those glimmer items that increase the drop rates while I work on bounties. My latest toy that I am enjoying playing with is the scout rifle above that came from a package when I leveled up Dead Orbit faction. I had not really played with a scout rifle much since coming back and had forgotten that it was essentially a high payload sniper rifle. Realistically I am to the point where if I want to progress I need to be running Heroic Strikes, and I simply have not messed with getting friends together yet in order to do that. Still having a lot of fun, but trying to keep it super casual so I don’t burn myself out and get bored with it.

Battlefront

Another game this week that I have spent some time with is Star Wars Battlefront. I pre-ordered this game through PlayStation network the moment it was announced because I am super nostalgic about the lineage of Star Wars shooters. This weekend they allowed players to download and play for free in the beta, and I have to say my feelings about it are extremely mixed. The game does an excellent job of giving you the fantasy fulfillment of playing a soldier in the Star Wars universe. Past that however… I think it suffers from the fact that I have been playing so much Destiny lately. The game handles significantly worse in the moment to moment gameplay that Destiny does. The guns feel worse, the movement feels worse, the cover mechanics… feel worse. I think if I spent enough time I could get used to it and even come to like it, but right now I am struggling with the feeling of “I would rather just play destiny”.

The Beginner’s Guide

I’ve said everything I could really ever want to say in my deeply personal post on the game from last week. Last night on AggroChat I to some extent reprised those thoughts in a much more condensed manner. The take away for me is really this. If you are not in an extremely stable position in your life, and if you are at all struggling with your own emotions… don’t play this game. Essentially there are two possible reactions… either you are going to think it is complete bullshit and it won’t effect you in any way. Or it is going to act as a mirror to show you all of your fears and anxieties about yourself. It quite literally took me a few days to recover from the experience of just watching a play through of this game, and not actually playing it myself. I am not unhappy that I went through it, but it is also not the sort of experience that I would suggest lightly to anyone. I know that sounds weird and arcane… but this game does strange things to you. This is honestly the closest thing I have seen to a real life “The Ring”, in that this game will ultimately leave you slightly changed as a result… and not always in a good way.

Media Consumption 10/10/2015

October 10, 2015 by Belghast

Netflix Binge Time

This week things felt like they were starting to get back to normal. Since last week was so freaking crazy I ended up taking Tuesday off and just hanging out around the house. That meant it was the perfect time to binge watch something on Netflix. Unlike the previous week there have been multiple times that I simply hung out downstairs with the laptop and television, and as such have some shows to talk about. Of note, if anyone has something they suggest I watch feel free and chime in. I am always looking for something interesting, but the caveat is it must be available either through Netflix, Hulu or Amazon Prime streaming. I know iZombie has started back up, and I have the episodes recording to my DVR but am largely waiting on my wife to watch them since she also was able to get into the previous season.

Dark Matter – Season 1

Dark Matter is one of those shows that folks had been suggesting to me for some time now, but I never really got around to watching it. When I first checked to see if the show was streamable somewhere, I was only able to watch like the last five episodes through Hulu. Now the entire series is on Netflix and it seemed like the perfect time to watch it. I can’t think of this show without also comparing it to another SyFy channel show Killjoys. There are moments where you wonder if this is set in the same universe, because they seem extremely similar. Distopic future where corporations control pretty much everything, and folks are forced to carve out their lives on the fringe of society. The twist here is that the crew woke from out of cryosleep only to find that they have all had their memories erased. During the first season we spend a lot of time trying to sort out who they are and what exactly they were doing, and at the same time blending together as a team.

So far my two favorite characters are “Five” aka the hacker stowaway girl, and the Android…. that they sadly just keep calling Android. I am hoping in season two they finally give her a name, because I like the character and actor playing her. If you are a fan of Lost Girl it is the same actor that played the Fae Doctor on that show, and sometimes love interest of the succubus title character. What is awesome is that obviously there is some malfunction with the Android as she is starting to develop emotions, which makes the experience very “Data” like. As far as the hacker… I knew she looked familiar and it finally hit me. She is the little girl that played Alessa in the Silent Hill movie, and I IMDB’d to confirm it. There are moments where the show gives me very Cowboy Bebop vibe to it, as they wander around space looking for jobs to pull…. so you know they can eat and have fuel. All we need now is a genetically modified Corgi.

Arrow – Season 3

Also showing up on Netflix is season 3 of Arrow, which I somehow completely missed arriving until last night. While playing SWTOR I binged my way through about half of the season and plan on trying to finish it up today. So far I am liking it, but I am not super keen on some of the events that have transpired. There is a lot of this season that just feels like it is set up material for future events. I feel like I also really need to watch Flash after this to help piece together some of the parts that are missing when ONLY watching this season. The cross over episode felt a bit odd, because I am assuming it started with Flash. Also the lengthy set up for Atom has been interesting but a little contrived. I am also not super sure what is going on with the character of Felicity this season, she seems to be shifting personalities a lot. I am largely cool with Laurel taking the mantle of Black Canary as well. The problem with the DC universe is that I only really know a shallow version of it that tends to be very Batman-centric.

Growing up I was a Marvel kid, and the only comics I really delved into were the Batman and Green Lantern universes… other than Superfriends that is. Marvel always felt like the universe of gritty anti-heroes and that was the sort of thing I thought was cool. DC however tended to have much more detailed story arcs, and they obviously did a far better job of licensing their properties than Marvel since we have the ability to see all of these cross overs. Obviously the whole handing Cupid over to Suicide Squad bit… is going to end up biting them in the ass. I am hoping as the season goes on we see more of the Suicide Squad, especially as this season and season four probably really need to set up for the Suicide Squad movie, seeing as that is not a part of the DC universe that most people know anything about. Well that is other than Harly Quinn… at this point everyone knows and loves Harly Quinn. Looking forward to finishing the season today, as I continued to work my way through the Bounty Hunter storyline.

Fear The Walking Dead – Season Finale

The funny thing about Fear the Walking Dead is how the episode finale had two vastly different effects on me and my wife. Up until this point in the season she had been watching the episodes with me, and it seemed like maybe she was almost getting into the show. Whereas honestly I was bored and kept waiting for the inevitable other shoe to fall, because having been a long time walking dead watcher… you knew the bad stuff was coming eventually. Finally in this episode everything starts to go wrong, and this is the point at which my wife completely loses interest. It seems like she is fine with a world where people have to sort out how to survive, but not so much in a world where they are constantly being chased by the dead. Daniel still rises from this episode as my favorite character, namely the only one who is truly prepared to exist in this world. The only problem there is he takes what is a bad situation and makes it even worse by letting loose the first horde.

In earlier episodes we find that they were using a stadium as a shelter, much like they did in Katrina with the super dome. Something goes wrong and people start turning, and the military is unable to sort out who is living and who is dead and just ends up chaining the entire contents in essentially assuring that all two thousand plus people end up as zombies. So when Daniel turns them lose to use them to attack the military compounds, it gives us a hint and maybe HOW the hordes form. Maybe they get started when zombies finally break out of places they have been pinned up in and keep wandering together because they don’t exactly have free will. Which makes you wonder… where exactly did the mega horde near Alexandria come from? The big thing I wanted from Fear the Walking Dead, was more insight into WHY the world fell to hell and that seems to be something that was not on the menu. Largely I am disappointed in the show, and the lack of Talking Dead after it was a problem for me. Talking Dead essentially played the role of having someone to talk about the show with, in a strange way. I am hoping when Season Two comes around they will do a “Talking Fear” show or something like that. In any case this week we get the return of the real Walking Dead show so in the meantime I am pretty amped for that since experiencing the watered down version.