crafting Archives - Page 2 of 4 - Tales of the Aggronaut

Rescuing Tradesfolk

February 1, 2024 by Belghast

I guess I am digging into Enshrouded as a primary game… after saying that I was mostly casually playing it on the side. The Path of Exile league is winding down a bit, and we are a ways out from the launch of Last Epoch so I am finding myself gravitating towards this game more and more. Last night I pretty much only played it and as a result made a ton of progress. They recently added a hide HUD option in the menu, but I really wish it was something that I could hotkey quickly as the game can generate some really breathtaking vistas. That is a general comment though, because I wish ALL games had a hide UI button that was easily hotkeyed or better yet… have the ability to configure in-game screenshots that by default hide the UI. I don’t remember which game had that but I loved it.

Mostly I have been focused on collecting the various tradespeople from around the map so that I can flesh out my trade hall. At the moment I have unlocked the Blacksmith, Alchemist, Hunter, Carpenter, and Farmer… with Carpenter probably being the most difficult to get to. I’ve been using the waypoint tower that I unlocked as a way of gliding down toward various map objectives and at least getting part of the way there. I’ve also been using the fact that I could craft flame altars cheaply as a method of creating a waypoint network to get around the map quickly. Unfortunately, I seem to have reached the point where I can no longer place down any more of those. I am not sure if that number goes up as I upgrade my primary altar or if it is a fixed number of “bases” you can have around the world.

I guess I will have to reassess where I have placed them. Unfortunately, I built a bit of a base near the one furthest to the west, so that one is probably stuck where it is currently. The others are just a flame altar without anything build around them, and in theory I really need to move one of those to the north. That is the direction I need to explore now because apparently that is where I can find clay. I need clay in order to craft the Kiln that the Carpenter is requesting, which in theory should unlock additional stuff that I can craft. I also have a slew of fetch quests for the various tradespeople that I already have, and in theory, should probably focus on those now to unlock additional recipes. I also need to find a more reliable source of tar than just crafting campfires and letting them burn out.

I veered off the Tank path a bit in my character build in order to pick up some utility abilities. Double Jump is something that pretty much makes EVERY game better, and Enshrouded is not an exception to that rule. In theory, going forward I would probably rush that ability because it makes that much difference while trying to traverse dangerous areas. I think Double Jump is probably as far into the Survivor tree as I want to go for the moment and there are still a number of beefy abilities in the Tank tree that I want to pick up. I like that I can pretty easily respec my character completely by spending some of the runic coins that you get off monsters and from salvaging weapons. One of my bases is next to the spot where a legendary sword can be obtained, so in theory, if I ever get short I can just go there and keep looting that sword to salvage it.

Speaking of weapons… I’ve picked up a number of very nice items along my travels. In truth, the only one of these I can say for certain where it comes from is the Wailing Blade, which started a neat dialog with the Smith because apparently he crafted it. I found it originally because this video showed up in my YouTube feed, and in truth, it is pretty straightforward to get early on and I leaned on it heavily for some of the harder areas I have been adventuring in. I am not sure if the Wand or Bow are from fixed locations because they are named similarly to green or blue quality weapons, so I think I might have simply hit the jackpot there. One thing that I did not appreciate early on is just how good wands are in this game. They auto-target things… making them super freaking easy to kite mobs while plinking away at them. The range is really short so if you want to snipe… you still need a bow but once you equip your bow in the ranged slot you can access it from whatever weapon you have equipped currently by holding down Q.

Other than that I have been starting to do some renovations on my keep. I am trying to make it a bit less “big generic stone box” so I will likely be spending some time trying to improve the outside now. The main crafting hall works pretty well and I ended up replacing chunks of the wall with wood just to vary the appearance a bit. The little annex I built off the side was originally just a way to have an entrance on the other side of the building but I’m contemplating closing it in and opening it up to the inside and turning it into a treasure vault. I just unlocked magic boxes when I rescued the Carpenter and those allow you to draw from those boxes automagically when you are crafting in your base. So in theory I am going to want a room with nothing but a ton of boxes in there, potentially one box for every item type. Having it off the room where I spawn into the keep would be extra handy because it would mean depositing loot is pretty straightforward.

I’ve also spent a bit of time trying to craft out some living quarters and something resembling a proper bedroom. Most of this was to get my comfort buff up a bit, but also because it felt like I needed something down here. I am looking forward to whenever I can craft some bookcases or something like that. I just unlocked the ability to make rugs so I am probably going to focus on getting one of those which I think will bump up that buff a bit more. All in all I find myself going through phases of serious crafting and other phases where I am adventuring. I need to figure out where best to park some of my flame altars to make farming resources a bit easier.

Toucan Treasure Hunt

October 2, 2023 by Belghast

Good Morning Folks! I did something silly this weekend. In Path of Exile, there is the concept of a private league, where you can pay to essentially play the game in a bubble with your friends. I’ve contemplated trying to do a small private league amongst my handful of friends who play the game regularly, mostly as a way of creating a sort of “Guild Self Found”. The idea is where you can still trade items freely but only amongst a smaller group of people giving you that Solo-Self-Found type experience of needing to actually find things, but also being able to rely on and help out your friends. There are a handful of streamers who run events throughout the year that are specifically associated with private leagues. The most popular of these is probably The Gauntlet, which is very much a much harder mode experience. There is another event called the Badger Private League where folks compete as teams with other teams of players.

SirGog one of my favorite POE information sources, also has one of these leagues that he has run a few times now called the Toucan Treasure Hunt. The idea is fairly straightforward, private leagues expand the lifecycle of a given Path of Exile league by allowing players a renewed focus on the fundamentals and an alternate way to play the game. There is a simple rule when it comes to private leagues, they cannot make the game easier and if you change the rules it can only be to make the base game more difficult. Toucan League for example is focused on crafting and the challenges that it provides. On Friday the league started at 7 p.m. my time and I decided to give it a shot. Specifically, the Toucan League had the following rules associated with it.

All Items Drop Scoured, so everything is essentially “white” quality and all you are really looking at is item bases and sockets.
All Players Start with -20% Resistance across the board, so you immediately need to try and dig yourself out of that hole.
Acts 1-3 have increased difficulty.

I decided to use this opportunity as a way of testing the SSF viability of Guardian SRS. When I was playing my Ancestor League version of this build, I noticed that for the most part, the uniques weren’t really “enabling” that build. They were buffing the strength of it, but they were not doing anything that a set of basic rare gear wouldn’t. Sure enough that has largely worked out as expected and now that I am level 81, I am mapping exceptionally smoothly. With only using some Alchemy Orbs and some Chaos Orbs to re-roll items I was able to land at over-capped elemental resistances thanks to Purity of Elements, but have thus far had no real hope of solving my Chaos Resistance problem. However, as I have learned several times… you can map pretty well with no Chaos Resistance at all. I managed to take my character up through early yellow maps yesterday afternoon and I think I took a single death doing so.

In the Discord associated with the event, there have been daily stretch goals that involve all sorts of things. I’ve largely been ignoring these, but I will say that more than anything I want to at least achieve the bronze-tier goal for the entire event. I’ve already passed level 80, and now I just need to complete my fourth ascendancy and I will feel fine with my progress for the league as a whole. I sincerely doubt that I will accomplish any of the further goals because more than anything this league has taught me a few things about my enjoyment of this game. Firstly I am not really that into the crafting system. I will use it when I need to in order to make serviceable gear, but I just don’t enjoy crafting as an endgame in itself. Secondly, I really hate that items being dropped scoured bricks an entire system that I have leaned on heavily for early gear. Essentially you cannot get crafting patterns from Betrayal as when the items drop, they drop scoured without veiled mods on them.

More than anything else… I am a loot-driven player. I like seeing loot. I like checking loot to see if it might be useful. Sure I can freely admit that 99.9% of rare items that drop on the ground are useless… but in Ancestor League I have made a pretty brisk trade in selling the items that I found in my travels that were NOT useless. For example, I spend a lot of time checking rings and amulets for resistances, and now my only real option is to attempt to brute force craft the resists that I need. Because everything drops scoured… mapping just feels bland and meaningless. I’ve run over a dozen maps, and I am largely just running them for completion sake. I know going into them that the only worth anything that I am going to walk away with, is maybe a few chaos orbs or other assorted bubblegum crafting materials.

I think easily the most interesting aspect of the event though, is it gave me a way of testing to see just how strong Guardian is on its own with absolute dumpster-tier gear. If you want to check out my POB, you can see the level of gear that I currently have. I am still using a level 20 helmet because I just happened to randomly chance my way into a +1 to all minion skills. I am using The Anvil as a necklace, mostly because it was the only unique that I got that actually halfway made sense for my build. I rolled a decent enough Convening Minion damage wand, and am now pretty much stuck with it because I don’t have the base Intelligence to move up to a Convoking wand. The lack of Betrayal crafts means I can never get my auto cursing/offering setup off the ground which means I am losing a lot of efficiency with the build.

Still, however… the build is perfectly playable and I am having little to no resistance progressing through maps. A lot of this is due to the fact that Radiant Crusade and more importantly the Sentinel of Radiance is so damned overpowered. I feel like there is no way that this build survives into 3.23 without at least taking a significant nerf to the amount of damage that the sentinel deals. We talked about this a bit on the podcast and Ash suggested that they might flip the order in which you get Radiant Crusade and Unwavering Crusade so you are at least getting it a bit later in the game. As it stands… Guardian SRS has been the best feeling Minion build I have played in Path of Exile. The fact that I have been able to get it up and running and feeling great with garbage gear only serves to underline this fact.

Alternately, I think I have learned that while I find the concept of the Toucan Treasure Hunt very interesting… I just did not enjoy myself nearly as much as I hoped I might. The lack of good loot really hampered my enjoyment. I’ve known for a while that the only reason why I ever raided in MMORPGs is because I wanted the shiny loot that was exclusive to it. It seems that I am only really into ARPGs because of the constant rain of potentially interesting loot. Don’t get me wrong I absolutely enjoy them mechanically, but mechanics alone are not enough to keep me engaged. Do I regret trying out the Toucan League? Nope! It was worthy of a shot, and I greatly appreciate Sir Gog for running the event. However, I think I will probably take a hard pass going forward because it just did not flip the right switches in my brain.

Stardew Landmark Crossing

August 4, 2023 by Belghast

Good Morning Folks! August is turning out to be exceptionally busy with me doing some build testing ahead of the 3.22 League in Path of Exile, the Launch of Baldurs Gate 3, and in the midst of all of this I finally got my email inviting me to Palia. For those who have not been following this game, it has been billed in the media as coming from former Blizzard and Riot employees, but frankly… given the colossal turnover at both companies, you would be hard-pressed to point at ANY game without being able to say that. It does have a graphical style that reminds me of an amalgam of World of Warcraft, Wildstar, and Free Realms.

What the game promises is an interesting concept, a hangout MMO without combat. What this feels like in practice is Stardew Valley the MMORPG. More than that I also get Landmark vibes when it comes to hunting down rare resources, and even a bit of Animal Crossing. Essentially you are teleported to this world and given an instanced plot of land and some resources to be able to harvest and craft your way into making it a home.

The character creation system is “aggressively fine” but that opinion might be coming from the fact that I also created my character in Baldur’s Gate 3 within a few hours of each other… and that creation system is phenomenal. My key complaint is the lack of beards, which is often a complaint I have with various games. However one of my friends came to the rescue to inform me that this is on the roadmap. Other than being clean-shaven, I was able to create a reasonable facsimile of “Belghast” as I often appear in various games. I would never wear skinny jeans, but I am going to blame some non-GenX artists for that one as they were the most non-descript black pants option I had. I assume over time more clothing options will open up. It would also be cool to have some different body options given that I am a very large man and I would absolutely give my avatar a belly.

Just like in StarDew Valley you are given an area of the map that is littered with volunteer trees, stones, assorted collectibles, and the remnants of a broken down fence and housing foundation. My OCD required that I harvest EVERYTHING within the boundary of my fence line. So now I also have a bulging storage shed filled with basic resources, which should hold me for a little bit when it comes to crafting.

The initial objectives were to build a tent, a workbench, and a storage bin and then the game sent me into town to meet a bunch of town folk. This in turn gave me a whole slew of other objectives. I’ve also learned how to hunt and fish. Hunting… I am extremely bad at it as it involves trying to slowly fire a bow as woodland creatures scurry around the map. Fishing… I got the hang of it pretty quickly once I figured out that I needed to move my mouse from side to side to keep up with the bobber. I’ve yet to learn how to actually go to sleep, or even if I need to but I have a way larger than I expected tent filled with nothing at the moment.

The game is charming as heck and I look forward to watching as it progresses. It definitely fills that Stardew Valley with friends vibe, and I want to see what grouping up while harvesting does. Landmark used to have this mode where if you grouped up and then gathered resources, everyone in the party got a copy of everything that was looted. I could see something like that going really well here. I would also love to see this game implement some sort of large-town project system. In Horizon/Istaria, there were these massive crafting projects that involved building bridges to new areas or building out towns, that essentially required the entire community to pool resources. This sort of experience would fit this game especially given that there is no combat.

I figure most everyone that is interested in this game has already signed up, but if you have not… please feel free to use my Referal Code. As far as I know, it does nothing to expedite your access to the beta but does give me sweet stuff for signing people up, and I believe you get a care package when you first log into the game. I know I had stuff waiting on me from the code I got from Scopique when I finally got access yesterday. All in all, this looks like a really cool game to watch as it develops into a chill game for nights when you just can’t handle anything too terribly complex. I am of course Belghast in the game, so feel free to friend me if you are already there.

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.