Minions For Days

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Last Epoch – Many Dead Friends

Hey Folks. This is an extended weekend for me due to MLK Jr day here in the United States and as such I am getting a much later start at sitting down to write words. Additionally it also happens to be inauguration day, but we are not going to talk about that part. I’m still very much spending my time playing ARPGs and have reached that point with Last Epoch where I am not quite powerful enough to push my way into empowered monoliths with zero friction. I essentially am slowly working my way through objectives and can’t roll over the top of maps in quite the same way as I was up until this point. Everything is great… until I start losing minions… at which point it becomes a battle of attrition as I attempt to keep summoning minions and hope I can distract the baddies long enough for them to be killed before they notice me standing in the background.

Last Epoch – Empowered Monolith

To be fair, this feels like something every build goes through in that level 80-90 range where you have completed Normal Monoliths but are still below the optimal level for level 100 Empowered Monoliths. I am sure I could fine tune my build to make this go a bit more smoothly, but for the moment I am using five minions and zero support spells. I am also struggling with mana issues which I need to figure out a way to solve because I cannot really spam my exploding zombies. I am generating quite a bit of ward and I wish I had access to something like Eldritch Battery in this game. Overall I feel much sturdier than my average version of this build thanks to the additional ward. I am not super great at bossing however because the minions just can’t grind them down as fast as I would like. I am also missing a bunch of uniques from the bog standard minions build… namely I have burned through around 60 Runes of Ascendance in an attempt to get an Aaron’s Will with zero luck.

Path of Exile II – Fourth Ascendancy

I’ve also been playing quite a bit of Path of Exile II, even though I largely thought I was finished with it. Yesterday I managed to complete my Fourth Ascendancy, so I am pretty happy with that. I ran a Trial of Chaos and after the nerfing of the Tornado boss it seems pretty reasonable. I did buy the 3 tokens required to fight the Trialmaster off the currency exchange, because I did not really feel like grinding level 80 Trials in order to collect all three parts. Everything went smoothly… until my cat walked in front of my keyboard and then I realized that I could not pause the game during a boss fight. So I rapidly shooed Gracie out of the way in time to dodge a boss attack. Overall though it seemed very doable.

Path of Exile II – Arbiter of Ash

What was NOT doable… was the Arbiter of Ash fight. I assumed this would be just as free as Xesht was on zero difficulty. That was not the case and all of the attacks were very much oneshot mechanics. I feel like I either lack the dps to phase the boss fast enough, or lack the movement speed to be able to complete the encounter. There is this phase where you have to run between safe bubbles that are very much like the meteor attack from FFXIV, and I simply was not fast enough to hit them all. Similarly there is a diagonal attack that you have to find the safe spot in, and I was just not fast enough to be able to move between these if I got one on the far edge of the screen and then the next one on the opposite far edge. Basically I wasted three tokens trying this fight and will now just sell them on the market like I was previously… especially since the price of all three tokens has gone up significantly.

Path of Exile II – Lucky Raw Divine Orb drop

I’ve respecced my character a bit gaining way more life and energy shield… dropping a few points of block and then mixing in a Skeletal Storm Mage to debuff everything with shock. I had to sacrifice one Arsonist but the mix seems to work really well as everything appears to be dying much faster now. The biggest difference is on Rares where my boots are poisoning them, the storm mages are shocking them, and then I am keeping them ignited with flame wall… which keeps the shock from dropping. I am curious how this feels for bossing as I have not really done many since the swap over this morning. I also need to start shopping for a Sceptre upgrade because I would really like to at least get my skeletal warriors up to 19 instead of the 18 version that I am currently using. Additionally it would be really nice to get some more spirit in that slot.

Diablo IV – Season of Witchcraft

For the moment I am having a pretty good time alternating back and forth between Last Epoch and Path of Exile II, and I know tomorrow I will be spending time leveling something in Diablo IV as the new seasons starts. Overall the Season of Witchcraft seems to be a partial reboot of the Vampire season which was quite possibly the best season so far. Leveling through the “bloodtide” was a heck of a lot of fun, and as such I fully expect to level almost entirely through the new witchcraft map mechanics. I am not sure if I will be playing a Spiritborn again or returning to my old standby of Barbarian. Since I am seemingly in a minions state of mind, I might try running up a Necromancer and giving that a proper shot. Whatever the case I fully expect this to distract me for awhile, or at least until we get another Path of Exile II patch.

Contrary to popular belief, Diablo IV is in a pretty good state these days. It took over a year and a major expansion to get there, but it is pretty fun for a week or so. It essentially is a more modern version of Diablo III at this point, and I am on board with that.

AggroChat #508 – It’s Really Real

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Featuring: Ammosart, Ashgar, Belghast, Kodra, Tamrielo, and Thalen

Hey Folks! Welcome to our actual first show of the year since we did Games of the Year shows for the last two weeks.  We start off with being shocked that the Nintendo Switch 2 leaks and rumors were actually real.  From there we talk about the Path of Exile II Patch 0.1.1 information, Elon Musk’s being panned by the community and his subsequent Meltdown, and the frustrations of playing multiplayer.  We also weave in a bit of discussion about Last Epoch as several of us are playing that again.  Tam and Kodra spent some time playing Elden Ring using the Multiplayer mod.  Tam also talks a bit about 1000xRESIST, and Ash shares some of his recent experiences playing Grim Dawn and preparing for the expansion this year.

Topics Discussed:

  • Nintendo Switch 2 Announcement
  • Path of Exile II
    • Patch 0.1.1 Info
    • Elon’s Meltdown
    • Multiplayer Frustrations
  • Last Epoch
  • Elden Ring Multiplayer Mod
  • 1000xRESIST
  • Grim Dawn
    • Upcoming Expansion

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Path of Exile II After Patch 0.1.1

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Good Morning Folks! I talked about Path of Exile II Patch 0.1.1 on Monday after its reveal over the weekend, but yesterday afternoon/evening it finally dropped. So of course last night I had to dip my head back into the game and check out what it felt like after the patch had landed. First I have to say the improved zoom level on the Atlas is pretty massive. This is only going to really be something for players who have reached maps, but being able to see more of the procedurally generated Atlas is pretty big. Additionally it seems like they have improved some of the general bugs. In the patch notes they specifically called out better load times which is true, but it seems like the rings of effect surrounding towers is rendering more reliably than it was previously.

Probably the biggest change is the ability to see the various Citadel maps through the fog of war. Sure enough I was close to way more of these spawns than I thought even though I had actually found several already. One undocumented change is that each of the beacons has a unique color so not only can you see the Citadel, you can actually see which one it is going to be with Iron being a Blueish Gray color, Copper Orangish Yellow, and Stone being traditional Vaal Red. I think this is going to go a long ways to normalizing the prices of the various tokens because now you will be able to clear towards whichever Citadel you are lacking. I need to do another Copper so that I have the tablets needed to make an attempt at the pinnacle boss so that I can hopefully clear the encounter and get my last two boss passives.

Another thing that I was surprised by was that all of the towers on the map that had not been completed, were effectively re-rolled. I thought I would not start seeing new towers until I reached portions of the map that had not been generated yet by removing the fog of war. Instead it seems as though all of the towers were randomized among the new maps, and quite honestly… this is a pretty massive improvement. All of the new layouts are so much better than the original tower save for the Vaal themed one… which suffers from the general “tight corridors” problem that all Vaal maps do. Even the old tower map has been improved significantly by moving it to the more open top of spires layout. This combined with the fact that minions instantly respawn when you get out of range now, cleared up a lot of the problems I had with tighter map designs.

More important than just improving the layout, it feels as though Towers in general are way more rewarding. I’ve gotten significant drops from pretty much all of them that I have completed so far. They seem to have better density of rares and surprise map mechanics like essences and strongboxes. So these might have gone from something you wanted to throw a trash map into just to get past them… to something you actually want to save good maps for. I ran a bunch of them with T15 maps as I am also now seeming to sustain them way better than I was previously. I’ve noticed a lower instance of low level maps dropping and a much higher drop chance of t12 and higher maps, with quite a few t15s each map that I run.

Augury is still Augury… and I think GGG missed part of the memo on this one. You can in fact now interrupt the levers.. but they still take three seconds to pull. Being able to dodge out of a bad encounter while you are pulling the lever is great and all… but maybe make them instant. Additionally at the end of the map it is super annoying that you have to wait for the doors to the central area to unlock. Maybe speed up the Vaal energy surge so that it moves faster than the player so that by the time they reach the door it is already clickable? Better yet…. just make flipping the third switch open the doors automagically. I get that GGG seems to be hung up on this whole immersion nonsense… but clearly we play the game differently than they do. I feel like we need to pay off someone within GGG to make it so that Jonathan and Mark ONLY get Augury maps while they are playing the game so this will get improved.

Another nice benefit is that maps now have checkpoints just like the campaign. This is pretty great for when you path all of the way to the end and notice that you missed a rare at the very beginning. This still feels like a bandaid though, and if they are going to stick to having rares as the map objective… maybe just highlight the rares from the moment you zone into the map? I feel like there are a lot of things that should just be on permanently on your map instead of having to get into range with them. When rituals, breach hands, strongboxes, and essences are all things that should be flagged on the mini map permanently so that you don’t have to worry if you have missed anything. By the time you get to maps the game is not about immersion but instead about efficiency… and maybe it should have different rules than the campaign does.

I am not exactly the best judge of this next point, but it FEELS like the game got a bit easier. It might just be that due to all of the map layouts improving and I am no longer having to fight with terrain collision near as much… I can just move around more freely and am less susceptible by getting stuck on some rock or tree. I took a single death last night, and honestly it was my own damned fault. I was trying to remove the ability on my left click and set it to punch… not realizing that it would swap away from my weapons if I ever used that. Sceptres do not have a default melee attack… and it flipped to gear set two which did not have any weapons equipped… desummoning all of my minions and I did not realize this until I was toe to toe with a monster… dealing zero damage… and getting wrecked. Other than that mishap I have felt pretty immortal even now that I have started putting layers of delirium on all of my maps for funsies.

Was this enough of a patch to make me dig back in for another three hundred hours? Probably not. I didn’t even make it the full evening without flipping back to playing my Necromancer in Last Epoch. The improvements are significant but I think I am probably tapering off my POE2 time until the next league reset. I will likely poke my head back in each time there is a patch, but for now I am in a holding pattern probably until Path of Exile 3.26 and will be playing some Last Epoch for a bit, and then diving into the next Diablo 4 league after that.

I Love Murderbot!

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Hey Folks! I appear to be on this short book kick right now. One of my goals for this year was to not have this massive gulf where I was not really reading anything. Essentially last year I went through this period from the launch of Dawntrail in the summer through to November where I was not consuming books at all. I am really happier when I am actively reading things, and as such one of my big focuses this year is to get back into the swing of things. After only reading a book or two a year for most of my life I have so much catching up to do and so many excellent series that I have never touched. I have this backlog in my head that I should probably document somewhere, but apparently right now I am going through a cycle of reading a bunch of short books.

Right now I am on this kick of tearing through the Martha Wells Murderbot Diaries series. I had to title this post “I Love Murderbot!” because there is this great quote on the cover of each of the books I have read so far and in truth I fully agree with that sentiment. I deeply relate to Murderbot and their outlook on the world. I really like protecting people… I play tanks in video games… but I also don’t really like being observed by other human beings. I get this is a weird take given that I devote tons of my life to actively blogging… but the secret there is that when I am writing these I am effectively talking to myself. This is my private journal and I am just letting you all read it. Anyways I am not sure how many of these books there are but I can already see that I am pretty much going to burn through all of them in a row. I do this occasionally with series, and that is one of the big benefits of being deeply late to the party.

I’ve also recently read through the first two books of the Sworn Soldier series by T. Kingfisher. The first book What Moves the Dead is essentially this delightful revisiting of Fall of the House of Usher featuring a retired sworn soldier Alex Easton and their assistant Angus. The first book is delightful, the second book What Feasts at Night was enjoyable, but not quite as much so. What Moves the Dead leans heavily on being a retread of a familiar story and gains a lot of ground from that. What I really enjoyed about both books however is the characters… specifically Ms Potter the Mycologist. I am pretty sure that my friend Ace recommended these books to me, but also so did Storygraph so I figured I should probably pay attention. Well worth your time and both are extremely short.

Another book I have finished since the start of the year is the third part of The Divide series from J.S. Dewes called The Relentless Legion. I feel like this book series is a relatively unknown gem. Legitimately I only read this because I was looking for something to check out from the library and this was a new release. Did you like playing Mass Effect as FemShep? Did you enjoy The Expanse or the aging Chris Carter series Space Above and Beyond? Legitimately pick this series up and give it a read because it is extremely good. The third book mostly wrapped everything up neatly, while leaving enough room to potentially have follow up books that expand this beyond a trilogy. It was a satisfying end, but also there are still a bunch more questions because there are longer tailed events that will eventually have to be dealt with.

I don’t always do a great job of sharing the books that I am reading on this blog. If you are so inclined and have an existing Fediverse/Mastodon/Pixelfed account you can follow my progress via my Bookwyrm account. Occasionally I give my thoughts about a book when I update my statuses in that application. I am also keeping Storygraph up to date mostly because I like its recommendation system. So if you are using that system already you can also follow my progress there. I am going to make an attempt to start logging recommendations in the “To Read” section of Storygraph because I have been bad about actually keeping track of that, and I don’t really love the Bookwyrm implementation.

All in all though the year is off to a good start book wise. Have you been reading anything good? Drop me a line below and I will pilfer your suggestions.