ammosart Archives - Tales of the Aggronaut

Onslaught with Friends

November 10, 2025 by Belghast

Good Morning Folks! Last night I had quite a lot of fun running around in Destiny Rising with Ace and Ammo. Since we had last grouped Ammo had managed to finish up the main storyline which opened access to a whole slew of new activities. She had not experienced Gauntlet Onslaught, aka the raid at all and after taking down the Stronghold we had uncovered for the pack, we queued one by one through all of the parts of it. We also did all of the new Gauntlet Blitz modes that are being previewed right now, and have guaranteed weapon drops associated with them. It was a heck of a lot of fun, and while we struggled a bit with Issakkis, in finding a group that could do the mechanic… we cleared everything without much issue. We did fail once at breakin, but shifted our strategy to make sure that I was on the first bridge crew, and Ace was on the last bridge crew… because we had someone take a key on that last round and just mill around killing random stuff.

The big highlight of the night is that I finally pulled the Renegade ghost shell on my main account, which drops from the raid. I also pulled a second copy of Izanagi’s Burden, which will allow me to progress that weapon at some point for Tan-2 and Umeko. Though to be honest, if I am going to play a precision character I am almost always going to be bringing Helhest. I really love Maru the new champion and am working on leveling her up so that she can become one of my mains for progressing content. I needed someone that I really liked that could handle spread shinkas and she does so masterfully. I think Ace and I are going to hang out tonight and do some of the weekly reset content, and maybe tomorrow during the day a bit since I am off due to the holiday. I have business to take care of in the morning but should be home by noon and ready to roll.

Over in Path of Exile, it was a weekend of finishing things up. I ended the weekend with 115 of 115 maps completed, my four voidstones, and all of the map favorites unlocked except Sirius and the Feared. At some point I will run Sirius, but I have not done enough maps to gain the fragments yet. I just bought fragments for the other ones, and I guess I could do the same for Sirius but it did not feel that pressing. I’ve also completed a t17 which unlocked my six socket map device, and have started running proper maps loaded with scarabs and everything. Right now I am alternating between Shipyard and Toxic Sewer, because both are fairly decent maps for the type of gameplay I play… and not too bad honestly for the breach mechanic. They both offer at least some modicum of bottlenecking for the times when you have to defend Ailith.

When I dinged 96, I devoted some time to running through a bunch of boss encounters and I completed the pinnacle fight for Breach, where you fight both Not-Tul and Not-Esh together. I am not sure if it is always Tul and Esh or if you sometimes get the other combinations of the Breachlords that are not Chayula. The story of this Breach league is really interesting and I love how it is essentially setting up the events that ultimately lead to the coming of Xesht in Path of Exile II. I would love it if we got more of these betweener leagues that move the story forward for each league’s content. For example I would love an updated version of Abyss that brings us closer to what it is like in Path of Exile II, because it is SO MUCH better than defacto Abyss that we currently have. The only league I am scared about them changing is Delve, but that is mostly because I love it so much that I do not want them to fuck it up and make it no longer fun for me.

I’ve been slowly working on my build while leveling my character towards 100, and I picked up a Foulborn Red Dream jewel, which is helpful this league for stacking life. As a result I have almost 8000 life, and there are some other things that I could do to push it higher. Pohx showcased a version of his build running 10k life, and I effectively need to swap from Immortal Flesh to a well crafted Stygian Vise to get there. This was a rather costly swap because the jewel itself was 2 divines, and then each of the five tattoos needed was around 70 chaos. That said… I’ve never run Righteous Fire with this much health so it is at least worth doing for the time being. I feel a bit squishier than I have in previous incarnations of RF, and I am not entirely certain what is going on there. It might be that I currently only have 30% reduced crit damage. I am contemplating swapping in a Taste of Hate to also get more phys to elemental conversion.

I am also still working on getting some better gear upgrades. On the Tree Tree I am working on crafting a new pair of gloves, because while my current ones are pretty solid and I have yet been unable to replace them… I could also have way more life on them. I am still fairly proud of the Archedemon Crown and Shaper Shield that I crafted. I bought a new sceptre which I picked up fairly cheaply, and recently swapped over to a Cloak of Flame with more ignite duration, more fire resistance, and 5% reduced fire damage taken which is super useful. At some point I would love to get a good corruption for Annihilation’s Approach boots, but the best one is super expensive thanks to Pohx’s video about them. My amulet and rings are all sort of trash and could be improved greatly, but it really depends upon how much currency I want to pour into them. Now that I am delving around 200 depth reliably and running t16s easily, I can start generating way more currency.

The other thing that I added was a Light of Meaning, buffing fire damage. I lost some damage in the swap to the Red Dream jewel because I had to give up a jewel with fire multi on it. This single jewel swap pushed me well past where I was originally with the damage and took the entire build up into the 1.5 million-ish range, making the boss fights way more comfortable and the general mapping and delving way faster. Right now I have a jewel with Fire Multi and Max Fire Res on it, and swapping that for one with max life would be helpful… but those are running around 10 div at the moment and I do not have that. I tried the Sir Gog method of crafting Jewels with the Tree Tree for a bit, and didn’t have much luck. I have way more luck printing gloves, so I am back on that path for now. Essentially I am looking for gloves with 21% regen, 100+ flat life, 45+ fire res, 58+ dex… and then anything else that is useful life. I’ve gotten close a few times and have sold the failures. If I get a 21% regen fractured roll I might try either fossil crafting or harvest crafting to get the rest of the way there.

I am basically at the point in the league where I need to start chipping away at achievements so I can get my totem pole. The build is stable and reliable, and I can pretty much do any content on it. I am fishing for an Aul in Delve, but have not had much luck. One thing that I have noticed is that I think they have killed the curse on hit rings from Delve, either that or made them extremely uncommon. I’ve cleared a bunch of the elemental nodes down there and not seen a single one yet. I always beeline for these because they also reward elemental fossils, which I find way more useful than any of the loot other than the curse rings. According to the trade site, they still exist… but have either had their rarity cranked or my luck has just been shit. The death of Hexblast Mines though, pretty much decimated the market for these so it is not like they were selling well anyways. I used to throw 20c on each of them in the hopes that maybe one of them would move, but given the deflation of this league it seems like they are all around 1c each.

In other unrelated news… I have been watching Frieren for the last few weeks and finished up season one on Saturday. This show is extremely delightful and I highly suggest giving it a watch if you like that D&D party vibe. I would say it has thematic notes aligned with Delicious in Dungeon/Dungeon Meshi except it is effectively the tale in reverse. Frieren was the Mage for a party that defeated the Demon King, and a huge part of the show is going on another adventure to somewhat retrace the steps that the first party made. Elves are effectively immortal in this universe, so the march of time just works differently for her… and the decade spent partying together… felt like a brief interaction for her. Through retracing the steps she is effectively realizing what she missed. You would think this would make the show deeply melancholy but it isn’t really, and through retracing the steps… she realizes how special the first journey was. Super charming honestly, and well worth a watch of the first 28 episodes. I will be anxiously awaiting the drop for season 2.

Jellies and Palicoes

February 28, 2025 by Belghast

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.

Guildhalls and Shield Charge

September 5, 2017 by Belghast

Tonight is the launch of the Destiny 2 console editions. Technically it is launching on Wednesday but they are starting that clock at Midnight Eastern Time… which means since I am in Central time I might actually get a chance to poke my head in and check out the game at 11 pm tonight. I have not plans to do a late night marathon or anything like that, but today I am mostly wanting to show off the new artwork from Ammosart that I commissioned for my blog header. Since adding “LalaBel” to the header with the launch of Stormblood… I’ve been plotting to add something up there to balance things out. With the launch of Destiny 2 and my new love of the Sentinel Titan… I thought it would be pretty great to add a version of me charging with the void shield. The only problem here is… Ammo was working off a game that wasn’t out yet. I gathered up a bunch of screenshots from the PS4 beta, and attempted to augment them with as many relevant screenshots as I could find around the interwebs. I am super happy with the end result and she did a great job of capturing the whole “covered in void energy” aspect that happens when you are ping ponging between mobs while charging like Captain America. Now I have a version of myself as a Sunbreaker that she did earlier as my avatar… and now a really cool version of the Sentinel that emblazons the blogs masthead. I had hoped she would get it done in time for the launch and like a trooper she pinged me last night with the final version. I cannot express in words how great Ammo is at this sort of thing.. and like always you should totally check out her website and tumblr for more awesome stuff. These are of course paid commissions, so please please please don’t go pestering her for free work.

As far as other happenings this weekend… I split time between Guild Wars 2 and World of Warcraft. In truth I played way more WoW than I expected to be playing, especially working on assorted World Quests and Emissary missions. That said the bulk of my time was spent working on a bunch of scattered objectives in Guild Wars 2. About a month ago the AggroChat crew and friends managed to get a guild hall purchased for Greysky Armada the GW2 branch of our FFXIV guild. The only problem is… saving up the currency and influence was only the beginning because you have to in theory fight to take back the hall from the mo that had invaded it. We tried this with about five players shortly after purchasing the hall and failed miserably. I’ve talked about the process before, but functionally there are mobs that spawn in that you have to take out… and you have something like 3 mins from the moment they spawn to defeat them. The problem is that they could be anywhere on a rather large map. With five players, if we happened to be close to one of the Maws we could take it out without much problem… but the run time combined with the time to chew through the copious amount of adds meant that we were always behind the curve. Each time you fail to defeat a Maw the toxin levels increase… which is functionally a hard timer on how many attempts you have before you have to call it and try again. Monday afternoon we managed to gather up a bunch of folks and had I believe nine people working on this mission and that seemed to go so much more smoothly. I think there was one that we failed to get, but shockingly we kept knocking down Maw after Maw until we were rapidly approaching the final boss phase… where you have like 10 minutes to defeat the purple border Legendary mob that you can see me fighting in the above image.

We spent the rest of the afternoon pouring through our vaults and dredging up materials to attempt to purchase upgrades. By the time we called it a night we had a chest full and ready for a couple more upgrades… and have the guild sitting at Level 5. Basically at the moment we are favor locked, which is the currency you gain by doing guild quests. We did the Trek one yesterday which is pretty simple… and failed miserably at completing the bounty task. That one gives you 15 minutes to kill 3 mobs that are roaming around the world. Firstly the mobs are not static spawns and you have to go “find them”, and then some are spawned by doing other activities… like kicking suspicious barrels in a zone with about 300 of them. The real challenge though was killing the mobs fast enough because these spawn in as champions… and one of them was absolutely straight up one-shotting me as a Hammer Warrior which is pretty tanky in the grand scheme of things. Basically this again is a situation where we need more people on at a given time so we can spread out and then coalesce on a target when someone finds one and take it down quickly… then return to the hunt once again. I also need to see what the specifics about Hard Weekly Challenges are… to see if this is a thing we can actually manage to do. I am questioning it however given that it suggests that we have 15 players… and so far this suggestion number has been pretty right on the money.

It feels like opening up the Guild Halls has infused me with new purpose because finally I have a reason to be stockpiling all of these materials. I am just thankful that none of the materials are the ones that I have been needing for pushing Weaponsmithing up higher… which currently sits at 486. The other thing about me is I am notorious for taking the hardest route to get somewhere… and this has been true with Mastery points. For whatever reason I decided to keep focusing on the Pact Commander tree… and then once I realized what was at the bottom of that tree I just kept going. This put me in the position of needing 8 Mastery points to finish it out and gain “Advanced Logistics” that enables the Auto Loot checkbox in the options menu. What this does is allow you to stop feeling the need to hit F constantly to try and loot corpses after everything you killed. I know over the years I have left a lot of loot on the battlefield because I get caught in the heat of the moment and am busy whacking things with my hammer to notice that I had a prompt telling me to loot things. The only negative here is I am afraid this will be one hell of a way to fill my bags… but then again I have access to Mistlock for selling and banking anytime I like. Additionally as we build out the Guild Hall it will serve as a similar option some day. I’ve known for awhile that there were a bunch of Mastery points that I could get by running around Tyria and communing with certain locations. The problem is I never really did anything about it… until last night when I literally ran around and collected all of them. This gave me enough Mastery points to earn Advanced Logistics that I was after as well as enough to pick up the next rank in the Fractal Attunement tree. Overall this takes my Mastery rank to 29… which still feels like a complete newbie in the grand scheme of things. Every time you complete one objective in this game it seems to unlock a dozen more that you didn’t even know existed… which is I guess how it has kept people engaged over these last five years.

Finding the Forge

January 5, 2017 by Belghast

First off I have to start this mornings post by talking about the surprise I got last night. For awhile now I have had my friend AmmosArt working on a series of avatars to use for anything AggroChat related. When I do the title cards it always somewhat bugs me that we don’t have a set of Avatars drawn by the same person, because I think that would end up looking a lot nicer. As a result I commissioned her to create a set for the main cast, and we kicked it off with mine… however I think she has a few of them waiting in the pipes as well. Since I have “Fantasy Bel” thanks to the project that Tam started, and now “Realistic Bel” thanks to the prize commission from Faebelina I thought it would be kinda cool to have a “Sci-Fi Bel”. So when she asked me what I wanted drawn for my AggroChat avatar I sent her this overly complex idea for me wearing a bunch of named armor pieces from Destiny. Here she has expertly rendered that idea with me, a giant flaming Iron Lord axe, my Sunbreaker hammer and Nolandroid. I could not be happier, and while she was concerned about how the fire effects would feel… I think they work amazingly well. Thanks once again Ammo for taking mad ramblings and converting them into a picture format. You should also check out some of her other works on her website or on her daily art tumblr.

I have to say… it is truly bizarre getting back to the task of blogging in the morning. It is 6:23 and I have consumed my first cup of coffee and am trying to get on about the business of blogging like I know what the hell I am doing. Today is a day I have been dreading because it means that I have to give up the comfort of my sofa blanket cocoon and venture forth into the cruel and now very chilly world. Of note… I have been off work since Friday December 23rd. So I have had two blissful weeks that have allowed me to get completely out of the habit of functioning on any sort of a schedule. Those weeks have been shockingly busy with only a couple days where I could truly hang out dawn til dusk in my flannel pajama pants and pretend the world didn’t exist. During that time we dealt with a handful of crisis that involved changing out a leaking faucet in our bathroom… and then ironically rushing some big air mover fans to my mother in law who had a major leak in her front bathroom. In between that there were numerous Christmas celebrations, and an attempt to properly recognize my father’s birthday… which also coincides with New Years day. I have not even really gotten around to making some proper resolutions, and while I don’t really buy into them much, the New Year is a decent time to start new things. At the moment however my mind has turned towards preparing for Pax South which is coming up in a few weeks.

The Forge Trick

Yesterday I posted a mammoth Destiny guide of sorts that I had been meaning to create. I have a number of friends in various stages of getting sucked into the game… and when I try and give them advice it often comes off as mad ramblings filled with a bunch of topics that they don’t quite understand yet. The guide was my attempt at writing something for someone just getting started but also still focused on pushing through the light levels as quickly as possible. As I said yesterday… I failed to do 99% of the things mentioned in the guide but I am following a similar thought process on my Xbox One account since it is largely starting from zero. One of the things I mentioned doing was Archon’s Forge… and you might of thought to yourself “But Bel, that is a Group Activity… how did you solo it?”. Some time ago my friend Shadoes gave me some tips on how to reliably make Archon’s Forge spawn with a group in progress. Firstly you have to understand how patrol zones in Destiny work in order to make this happen. Each named area is essentially a match made zone that the game tries to pair you with other players also in that area. However you usually zone in and out too fast for the game to effectively do this, so there are things you can do to force the game to match you up with other players. Inside of the Archon’s Forge there is a path behind the forge that leads down to an area that a number of missions and patrols send you to, but is effectively open at all times. You can see this path as the opening with the ride SIVA cables coming out of it in the above image.

What I find works is to run down this tunnel to the next area, you will be able to tell you have transitioned by a title card coming up identifying that you have entered “The Warrens”. From here I tend to kill the various splicer mobs that spawn in… which may include a handful of 2-4 Vandals, 2-4 Stealth Vandals, 2-4 Dregs… and potentially a Captain. The mix varies slightly, but essentially I spend enough time in this area to clear out whatever happens to have spawned. From there I slowly walk back up towards the Archon’s Forge, and for me personally it helps for me to crouch while walking just to force myself to slow down. In Destiny I am so used to constantly sprinting that I find myself doing it without realizing it. Essentially you are trying to give the game plenty of time for it to notice that you are entering an area with an event… and that it should match you up with additional people.

If it works, you should hear the familiar Fallen Klaxon as you near the tunnel leading out of the area and into Archon’s Forge. If you make it to the Forge without getting matched into an open world group… then simply head back down to the Warrens and start the process over. I would say 99% of the time by the moment I reach the top I hear the Klaxon and am up and running with a viable open world team doing Archon’s Forge. The longest so far it has ever taken to get matched is three trips up and down the tunnel but your mileage may vary depending on the time of day you are trying and your platform. I’ve not tried this on Xbox Live, but considering the person who tipped me off to this method plays there I am going to assume it works fine as well. Basically doing this method is going to allow you to hop into the Plaguelands and farm the forge until your heart is content, just remember to keep going to orbit every so often to make sure you are not losing loot. Your mailbox can only hold 20 items… and while it takes longer for your inventory to fill up now that greens turn immediately into materials… it still happens frighteningly fast while doing the Forge.