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.
Good Morning Folks! Since Path of Exile II is awaiting a patch, I figured I would spend some time doing something else. Sunday I started an Acolyte and turned her into a Necromancer going down the path of doing a fairly common minions build since that is what I played almost 300 hours of in Path of Exile II. It is wild just how comfortable Last Epoch is compared to Path of Exile. While the game is lacking at the endgame, and hopefully the big April patch will alleviate that a bit… the leveling experience is so freaking cozy. By my play session last night I was starting in on Monoliths and having a grand old time with my army of horrible children.
I played quite a bit in September when they did the Cycle Refresh and had gotten my Circle of Fortune faction up to rank 11. This made leveling a new character feel amazing, because I was constantly getting really interesting items. More than that the Nemesis system feels phenomenal at low levels because you are regularly getting pretty interesting unique items turned into legendaries with random stats attached to them. The only negative about the Nemesis systems… is that it makes all of the other content feel significantly worse. Rogue Mages for example need a rework because it feels like they only drop Clutch Plates for a 77 Honda Civic Hatchback… which is awesome if you need one of those but otherwise pretty forgettable.
Some of the items that I am seeing from drops are wild. Path of Exile II wanted to make loot on the ground matter and failed miserably at that, but honestly… that is precisely the state of Last Epoch right now. This is an item I picked up off the ground… that has 3 Tier 6 affixes… one of which sealed so that i could in theory roll off one of the other affixes trying to get something with better synergy. Granted I don’t plan on playing a character that needs any of those things, but it is still a wildly compelling item. Given enough time spinning the randomizer I will start seeing items that DO have the stats that I want on them. The fact that I can target specific monoliths for specific gear slots… and also throw Runes of Ascendance at random items use that trying to get the Uniques that I want. I feel like I have so many options to either farm perfect loot, or perfect less than perfect loot.
Right now I am mostly wearing a bunch of weavers will items, because they were handy and often have interesting results. I’m also running two Hollow Fingers which give me extra skeletons. I had one with two legendary potential and attempted to turn it into a ring with Minion Health and Minion Damage, but unfortunately hit flat health instead. Still a reasonable item to use but not necessarily an ideal item. That is one of the things that I dig about Last Epoch is that you can get to a pretty reasonable gear state easily, and then slowly over time attempt to improve upon it by making more Legendary items or lucking into some really tasty drops.
I am sure when the POE2 patch drops I will be back over there testing out the changes, but for the moment I am living my best life in Last Epoch. This game is so damned good, and really… once it has the amount of content that Path of Exile does… it is going to be the easy winner for my attention. I am definitely looking forward to April and the next Cycle where they are supposedly focusing on the endgame entirely. The monolith is a good core, but it just needs more surprise content to borrow a term from the POE2 patch announcement over the weekend. Monoliths feel great when you have a Nemesis, Rogue Mage, and a loot chest… and feel pretty awful when none of those spawn. The more of those little doses of joy that they can pack into the mapping experience, the better the game is going to be.
Good Morning Folks. Yesterday afternoon Grinding Gear Games released an announcement trailer for the changes that are going to be landing this week in Path of Exile II Patch 0.1.1. This was then followed by an over two hour long Tavern Talk with Darth Microtransaction and Ghazzy TV where they talked with Mark and Jonathan from GGG about the state of the game and the upcoming changes. We won’t know a lot of the specifics until the patch notes actually drop, but the announcement video itself is well worth a watch and is roughly 8 minutes long. If you do not want to sift through the two hour long Q&A the shortest summary that I have seen is from Raxxanterax. SirGog released a similar summary this morning where he talks about some of the specific ramifications of the changes as well. There is also a Reddit thread that bullet points the list of changes if you just want the TLDR version.
This morning I am going to share some of my thoughts about what are some of the major winners of this patch, and what are the losers thusfar.
The Winners
Juicier Maps and Map Identity
We don’t have details here but there are a batch of changes that are targeted at making the gap between the juiciest map and the worst map a bit smaller. Especially early maps, the entire process feels useless and you are not really getting much in the way of usable stuff until you are pretty deep. Specifically they called out improving mob density and making the overall rewards a bit better by default. Similarly they said that there was going to be some sort of specialization system so that maybe a specific map would have a hidden modifier that might make the chests extremely good, or have more essences etc.
Strongboxes are Improved Slightly
Strongboxes were just not worth running because they took forever to finish spawning all of the waves of monsters and had a significant built in delay between waves. This seems like it is being removed and instead of instant popping like POE1, they will spawn in more akin to an Abyss Spire from the looks of it. I am mostly okay with this. They don’t seem MASSIVELY improved, but seem like they are going to be better overall.
Less Visual Clutter and Better Visibility of Monster Effects
This one is pretty huge but they have made a pass to remove some of the ground clutter in maps and have made it so that it is much easier to see visual effects on monsters and their attacks. Specifically it seems like they are doing some sort of tech to render these effects over top of the other layers of visuals so that they will be much harder to miss. I think this is probably what was causing the “random death” problem that players were fighting with is that we simply could not see any of the effects that were being rendered due to all of the visual noise. This is also extending to Delirium Fog, so that you will actually be able to see what the hell is going on.
Better Tiered and Expedition Items
Tiered loot was bad, and apparently this was due to a specific bug in the way these items were being calculated. Some of the culling of lower tiers… actually kept affixes from spawning entirely that did not have higher affixes. Attack speed for example notoriously only has a few affix tiers, the negative… so did light radius. Who knows if this will actually make Tier 5 loot worth picking up but we will see. Additionally they are making changes to the rarity of loot that appears through expedition crafting, so hopefully that actually becomes a viable method for getting some early gear.
Citadels in the Fog
One of the biggest challenges for actually running the pinnacle boss was finding the damned Citadels. They are making a few changes here, the first being that they can spawn closer to the origin point than they previously could. Additionally you will be able to see a glowing spire of light out in the fog of war, so that you know what direction you should be working towards in order to get to a Citadel. This is pretty huge overall. I am not sure if this is going to cause the Citadel market to crash though, because I was making quite a bit of currency tracking these down, clearing them, and then selling the tokens.
Six Pinnacle Boss Portals
Related to this… the tokens might actually be worth using instead of just selling thing. Starting with Arbiter of Ash and eventually ALL of the Pinnacle bosses, you are going to get six attempts at the fight. As you move up in difficulty with the encounter you will get less respawn attempts, but everyone should be able to get six attempts at the zero difficulty. I will probably making an attempt on the Arbiter once, and then go back to selling my tokens because I am really not a boss-centric player. However since more people will be attempting the bosses… it should actually make the demand for tokens a bit higher than it currently is.
Atlas Zoom and Biomes
You will be able to zoom out further on the Atlas of Worlds so that you can see more nodes at a time. Additionally when you mouse over a node it will clearly indicate what biome that maps is in. This is something I specifically called out in one of my posts. I sincerely doubt anyone from GGG has ever read one of my posts, so I am certain this is probably something they were already working on. This is specifically tied to one of the Atlas passives that causes increased chances for specific types of drops in maps within that biome. It was really hard however to tell what map was in what biome.
More Boss Maps and Precursor Support
The design goal for the Atlas of Worlds was that one in four maps would contain a boss. This did not actually shake out, because some of the maps cannot have a boss attached to them. As such they have made tweaks to the spawn rates so that hopefully it will be closer to this one in four ideal. This seems like a good call because in truth it was really hard to find maps that had both Irradiation and Corruption to complete some of the boss atlas passives. Boss maps in general seem to just drop better loot, so they are probably the ideal things to run anyway. They are also adding precursor tablets that can add bosses to maps that do not have them, so that you can further juice your map by adding more of them.
More Tower Maps
The existing state of tower maps in the game is just bad. Most players wanted them removed entirely and the process of juicing maps to be reworked significantly. We are not getting that. However they are adding four new tower maps and improving the layout of the existing one, hopefully making the process of running towers feel less bad. I think the biggest problem right now with towers is that they just feel unrewarding since the towers don’t actually inherit any of the map buffs from other towers. Maybe the overall buffing of map rewards will fix this.
Runes Can Be Overwritten
This is one of those things that pretty much everyone universally was asking for, because it made gearing your character annoying… and a lot of items less valuable because they might have the wrong rune socketed into them. Essentially you reach a point in your builds where you are overcapped on resistances and could them dial back on some of the runes to add something more valuable like defensive layers and life. Additionally there are a lot of soulcores that are super powerful, but you won’t have access to these early on… meaning you can eventually swap out for these as you fix other gear problems.
Armor and Scavenged Plating Buffed
Armor is in an awful state and there have been a lot of videos expounding upon why this is the case. Apparently GGG agrees but specifically said that more needs to happen, but it would not be happening until they do an economy reset with a new league. However in the meantime they are buffing armor a bit and specifically buffing the spirit gem that is associated with scaling armor. We do not know the specifics here, but I am hoping it will be enough to actually make this a viable defensive layer.
No Major Nerfs
Similar to the above item, since they want to reserve significant sweeping changes for largely economy reset patches where they roll out a new league… there are going to be no significant nerfs to any of the existing builds. The only thing that they are nerfing right now are issues that impact server stability and performance. The various “cast on” abilities for example were legitimately crashing server instances so they had to tackle those immediately.
The Losers
No Major Buffs
Once again since they are not making sweeping changes without a league reset… all of the under-performing classes are likely to stay in the shitty state that they currently are. Darth Microtransaction actually went on the offensive a bit during the podcast and effectively made Mark and Jonathan agree that the state of Warrior was not good. This is unfortunately not changing and we will still have a game dominated by four builds… and if you are not playing one of them you are doing it wrong.
No Six Portal Maps
This appears to be a hill that they are willing to die on… but they do not want to give players back six portals for maps. A single death is still going to adversely impact the player and cause them to lose their waystone and the stuff that was on the atlas that made the map worth running. This feels bad and feels like a forced hardcore mode. They did however say that they think the penalties are a bit too strong right now because multiple problems are stacking on top of each other leading things to feel bad. They instead want to smooth out the mapping experience rather than giving players six portals.
No Map Tab… Yet
They said that they are working on it, but as of right now we are still not getting a map tab. This is probably the single biggest issue for me that makes the entire endgame experience feel bad. I consider there to be two tabs that are mandatory to enjoy the game… currency and maps, and having to try and deal with two quad tabs full of waystones and another overflow tab that I have in the guild bank… feels bad.
No Campaign Improvements
This again might be related to the lack of buffs for classes, but the campaign can be a bit rough for certain classes right now. It has some significant difficulty spikes that can crush the will of folks to move forward. GGG stated that they are pretty happy with the current state of the campaign, and I think maybe this is a loss. There are multiple levers that need to be flipped and maybe once the other classes are in a decent state this will no longer be an issue. At this point I have leveled four characters through the campaign and it was “fine”.
No Ascendancy Respecs
While not necessarily a hill that they are dying on… there seems to be a dumb amount of resistance to allowing players to respec their ascendancy class. This is something we were able to do freely in Path of Exile 1 and it feels bad not being able to do it now. Essentially right now it feels like there are certain ascendancies that are “noob traps” and if you chose them… you are just borked. This hurts the more casual players the worst because in its current state, it is exceptionally cumbersome to level more than one character through the campaign.
No Trial Improvements
Trials and the entire process of ascending is sort of bullshit right now. I hate it so much. During the Q&A it was specifically asked that if they thought the fourth ascendancy should be an endgame goal that the average player will never accomplish. For the most part GGG said yes. This is dumb. This feels exceptionally bad. I think the entire process of ascending needs to be rethought from the ground up and that Sanctum and Ultimatum should be optional content.
No Minion Collision Fixes
Right now minions fail to enter most doors, forcing you to wait on them to respawn next to you. This feels awful. Right now there are no major changes coming for minion collision problems. They are working on a solution but have not landed on something that actually works right yet.
No Phasing on Dodge Roll/Movement Abilities
This is still something that I feel like the game needs. Right now movement abilities and the dodge roll still get caught on mob collision and I feel like this is a poor design choice.
No Proper Auction House
I realize this is going to be something that probably never happens, but since we have the currency exchange it only further underlines just how bad the trade system in Path of Exile 1 and 2 are. The chinese players have had an instant purchase auction house for awhile… we need this for western audiences.
No New Gold Sinks
Gold feels useless right now and the current state of gambling feels awful. Apparently Gambling in the hideout was removed last minute due to an exploit of some sort being found. They are working on adding Alva back to he hideout with proper gambling support. However there still needs to be something else that we can do with gold.
A Mixed Bag
I think for the most part the changes are good. I still take umbrage with some of the design decisions that they are standing by. I am curious to see what the actual patch notes look like and what other hidden details are contained within them that they did not highlight in the announcement trailer. I think I am at the point of stepping away from the game until the next league reset. I spent a good chunk of yesterday playing Last Epoch and it felt amazing. I think I am ready for a break from the mindset of Path of Exile 2, and I am most definitely ready for the next Path of Exile 1 league.
Featuring: Ammosart, Ashgar, Belghast, Grace, Kodra, Tamrielo, and Thalen
Hey Folks! We have a bit of a long show because we wound up cramming a few games that we missed in the first show into this list. We round out our yearly tradition with the second part of our Games of the Year show. I am once again so glad that we decided a few years ago to start doing these on multiple nights because this year would have been a four-hour-long epic marathon of recording.
