destiny Archives - Page 59 of 60 - Tales of the Aggronaut

Leopard Print Paladin

September 22, 2014 by Belghast

Susceptible to Grind

This weekend I played a good bit of Destiny because it is the perfect game for those moments when I don’t feel like I am get into something terribly detailed. I play this game much in the same fashion as I play Diablo 3, in short bursts with the ability to jettison out if needed to go do something else. As such this has become in many ways the game I play when I know we are going to be leaving the house soon. I am never more than just a teleport to orbit away from safety, which makes me consume the game voraciously in small doses. As such I have mostly been running the game in private mode with my fire team locked down to keep people from popping in at random. I feel like I don’t want to deal with the expectations of others when I am playing a game in this fashion. Generally speaking I am either moments from leaving the game, or playing the game while camping something in Final Fantasy XIV… and in either case I am not exactly responsive enough to be a proper group mate.

The bulk of my gameplay has been doing either patrols on the Cosmodrome or on the Moon. I finally got a blue engram to drop, but unfortunately it was for my class item… which is essentially just decoration. Instead of the traditional “flag football” towel, this one is a series of 3 banners that hang down from my waist. One of the things I am learning about myself is that I am deeply susceptible to grinding. I find it super easy to zone out and just wander around aimlessly in an area. I seem to be able to get infinite amounts of entertainment value from simply wandering around killing Fallen and Hive on the moon and accepting the little mini-quests. As such I was level 16 before I actually finished the Moon this weekend and got the quest chain sending me to Venus. I am sure I will be 20+ before I finish Venus, because as soon as I unlock the next patrol zone… that is more than likely what I will be doing quite a bit of.

I think part of the problem with Destiny is the fact that it has relatively little to go with as far as Story goes. As such I find absolutely no sense of urgency pushing me forward to keep completing missions. In a game like Mass Effect 3 I felt like I was moments away from doom at all times, so I just had to keep pushing forward and trying to turn back the tide in a war larger than myself. In Destiny they have failed to infuse the narrative with any of this. Sure things are going horribly wrong out in the galaxy, but we have this last city that seems completely immune to the effect of what is happening. Sure The Traveler is “dying” but I don’t feel this happening, I feel like that is generations away and I have just been drafted into essentially a science fiction stalemate. So I have zero issue wandering about and taking time to smell the “helium coils” as it were. The moment to moment gameplay are what keeps me engaged with this game, and the story line and as such story quests could not exist at all and I would still be happy.

Leopard Print Paladin

At the beginning of the weekend I was a level 40 newly christened Paladin of Uldah. Over the course of the weekend I managed to push my way through to 46 and get the first of my spiffy gear. For those who are not familiar with Final Fantasy XIV, at 45 you complete a class quest that will reward you four pieces of “Relic” gear that represents the defacto look for your class. This means you get a full set of gear minus two slots. The belt is not terribly important because no belt really changes the look of something drastically. However the other missing piece is the chest piece and it is essentially the item that always ties a class set together. On the Lalafell the paladin “short shorts” look is minimized by the total lack of height, however of anyone else it looks like you are wearing white boxer shorts without the chest piece that gives you the plate skirt that is so characteristic of a paladin in this game.

There is a full set of gear that drops in the dungeon Dzmael Darkhold, that rarely sees much use since it is level 44, and at 45 everyone gets their class set. However the one piece that is extremely useful is the chest, which thankfully in all of my journeys I have gathered up a few of these. The problem is that for pretty much every class there is something goofy going on with this set. For the tanks the set features an inexplicable leopard print inlay, with no way to “dye” the pattern away. So as a result for the last few levels you end up looking a bit goofy until you finally ding 50 and get that class chest piece. Thankfully for me I also managed to pick up a nice pink quality chest for 47 that should make the outfit look a little bit more put together for the last few levels.

Red Bunny Samurai

The other thing I am realizing is just how much of my other gear will work for Paladin. Almost all of the dropped pieces and jewelry from the endgame levels worth for Marauder, Warrior, Gladiator and Paladin. The problem with this is that I have several of the pieces glamoured to look like the Warrior class set. Apparently this will not show as such when I equip them however, and quite frankly the Syrcus tower set looks like crap for plate wearers. So I am wondering what set I am going to glamour to that can be neutral and work for both classes. The most important thing after all is that I still have a proper bunny hat. While I freely admit that I stole wearing this helm from Tam, I think I have more than made it my own… since it was clearly designed to be worn by a Lalafell. He tends to favor the white one with the full face mask, where I am enamored with the red one that allows my full face to show through.

My goal for the coming days is to push the paladin to 50 and get it fully geared in 90 or better items. I’ve been stockpiling hunt marks to be able to do this the moment I ding, but I am really not sure how many pieces I will actually need to buy. All of my jewelry is dual class, as well as my chest, belt, and boots. That just leaves three pieces of gear that I actually need to purchase, and then again I will need to spend the requisite 1125 tomestones of mythology to get the zenith weapon and shield. Right now I have a dilemma I suppose in that I am really close to being able to purchase my next Animus book, but I am also really close to 50 at this point. I don’t have the tomestones to do both. In theory I can get the book and the process of simply getting my relic weapon should give me more than enough tomestones to be able to at least craft the relic. Then I can deal with grinding out the rest as a paladin if I so choose. In either case I should have another animus book and a 50 paladin soon enough. Then I suppose my focus turns to finishing off my White Mage.

#FFXIV #Destiny

Dance of my People

September 15, 2014 by Belghast

Enter the Jigglehats

Yesterday the Breaking Brick Mountains event started in FFXIV which is a repeat of an earlier event used to commemorate the launch of DragonQuest X. For those not terribly familiar with the Dragon Warrior/DragonQuest franchise, it has a rather distinctive art style. So seeing that art style appear in Final Fantasy XIV is extremely entertaining. The quests have this great Dragon Quest stylized “Quest Accepted” and FATE related text that just makes me happy to see in game. The quest itself is rather simple. You talk to Havak Alvak near the Central Thanalan gate in Uldah, which sends you to talk to the Beefy Businessman down by the Thaumaturge guild. From there you have to find a specific fate called “Brick by Brick”. This will lead into one of two other FATEs either called “Brick by Stone Brick” or “Brick by Gold Brick”, both granting you quest completion.

One of the things I love about Final Fantasy XIV seasonal and special events is that they are super easy to complete. I used to hate how frustratingly grindy other games events were, in that if you did not participate every single day of a holiday you could not get all the prizes. Even with the Lightning Returns event, and trying to collect all of the weapons… it essentially meant I had to farm 5 different FATEs and then was completely done. This event in total took maybe 30 minutes, and most of that was travel time. Completing the quest nets you a Thug’s Mug cosmetic helm and a Wind-up Brickman cosmetic pet. Next to the Beefy Businessman there is a Toughie Peddler NPC that sells the amazing “Jigglehat” or more properly known as the King Slime Crown.

It has become common place for our guild and the members of Howling Moon free company to mingle around while waiting on things to happen. The events of last night are pretty common, in that we each tend to hang around the market board just down from our house, which can be seen in the background of the above image. It all started when Joren Noye started up with this amazing outfit that he had built around his Jigglehat, that was mostly comprised of a dyed to match vanya robe. What happens when to amazing Lalafell meet? Well we dance of course, and within moments the ever adorable Jade Taiga showed up as well. Well it was not long before Ayla Noye joined in as well, and we had an impromptu jigglehat party. You have to love any game that supports this sort of random dancing in silly hats. My friend Tam is convinced that the entire point of this game is to collect ever more amazing hats.

Paladin Soul

I spent most of yesterday working away quietly on my Gladiator turned Paladin. I completed the final level 30 Gladiator quest, and went through the opening quest for becoming a Paladin. So far the 30 and 35 quests that I have completed are significantly easier than most of the job quests that I have done on other characters. I am guessing that at some point in the near future they will drop the floor out from under me with a quest that is significantly more difficult than the others. I personally thought the final level 30 Gladiator quest was rather challenging, in that I seemed to fail it the first time for no apparent reason. I was doing everything they had told me to do and then all of the sudden I got duty failed. Upon trying it again this morning I apparently did all of the things that I was supposed to and then some because I passed, but still have no idea what I did the first time versus what I did the second time.

I started the day at level 28 and finished the evening about halfway to 36. I have yet to really sit foot in a dungeon yet, and have been mostly doing the FATE grind. First in Costa Del Sol and now I am out in Coerthas. In part I guess I like FATE grinding because it is mindless and something I can do over and over. Additionally I have really become addicted to the whole Quick Ventures system, and I view FATEs as a way to feed Venture tokens to my Retainers. For those that are unaware you can buy 5 venture tokens for 1000 grand company seals at your grand company quartermaster. So far I am digging playing the Paladin again, but in truth I am mostly leveling this so that I once again have a good class for grinding FATEs to get Atma parts. I maybe made a mistake in going for the Atma weapon on my warrior first. That is pretty much the ideal fate grinding class, and in order for me to get another one up with that sort of survival… I am going to have to play my paladin.

Moonwalker

Other than playing quite a bit of Final Fantasy XIV, I spent the bulk of the rest of my weekend playing some Destiny. At this point my Titan is level 10 and I am spending most of my time in the Moon Patrol zone. While I was waiting for FATEs on Saturday to spawn for my Animus book, I was hanging out on the PS4 wandering around either the Cosmodrome or Moon Patrol areas. This is pretty much the ideal play style for me. I like wandering about doing mini quests and killing lots of Fallen and Hive aliens. However if you listen to our podcast you can tell that several of our cast have a real issue with the fact that the game has very little tangible story. The story that does exist is questionably written and even more questionably acted. For me, it is enough story to keep me entertained, but we have already agreed that I need and more importantly want significantly less story than most folks. Wandering around and killing things is totally enough motivation to keep me enthralled, especially when the controls feel so damned good.

The weird thing for me is I tend to lose motivation to do the various missions whenever I actually unlock the patrol zone. It is as though the mission only serve as a vehicle to unlock patrol and once I have done that I have no real interest in progressing further. At some point soon however I should really finish clearing out the moon, but in the mean time I am wandering around the surface looking for interesting stuff. I love it when I find a chest or a new place that I had overlooked previously. I love exploring this game, but find it more than marginally frustrating when I encounter the “turn back now” wall around the outskirts of the areas. At least with the Cosmodrome you have understandable boundaries that limit you to just being on this one island. On the moon you can see forever, so it makes no sense why I cannot wander out in the open, as there are no logical obstructions. In any case, I am still really enjoying the game and look forward to playing more of it.

#FFXIV #Destiny

Angry Red Ball

September 10, 2014 by Belghast

Starting Coil

For some time now after coming back to the game, we have been in a process of getting enough level 50 characters up to be able to tackle the official 8 man raid in the game. Now there is a 24 man raid, but to some extent I equate that to the LFR system in World of Warcraft. Both Labyrinth of the Ancients and Syrcus Tower are tuned in such a way as to allow complete strangers to be able to complete them. They are however an excellent source of gear, and all of us have been doing them pretty much on a weekly basis on a shot of getting some ilevel 100 gear. The Binding Coil of Bahamut however is serious mode raiding, or at least it was when the game was released. It takes eight players through a series of separate “turns” as they call them… or floors as I think of them as we traverse one big raid.

Last night we took a friend of the guild in with us to get to our eight players, and she and another guildie had a sizeable amount of experience in the dungeon. For the most part we were trying to figure out the fight on the fly, however after a few wipes Spiral started giving us tips. Thanks in part to these tips we made adjustments and progressed pretty quickly through Turn One. Since we had not been there terribly long we opted to continue on to turn two. The First half of Binding Coil of Bahamut consists of five turns in total, with an extremely large boss encounter waiting at the end of it. In order to progress to the next turn, your group has to have defeated the previous one. I can see this becoming a bit of a pain later on as we bring new folks in that have not been keyed for the one we are actually working on.

Angry Red Ball

When we reached the second turn, I feel like the bottom dropped out from under us. The first turn once we adjusted a bit was rather manageable. So I had this fear that we would simply blow out the entire first half of the raid due to the fact that we way over geared the level that the encounters were designed for. This was pushed aside however as we started the second ADS encounter. ADS is a angry red ball defense system that you encounter as the first boss in turn one, however this time around it brings friends. The entire encounter is somewhat of a gauntlet in that you are trying to get to the boss before it enrages, which the process starts the moment you encounter the first mini-boss. You proceed down towards ADS by taking a series of optional bosses out, Each time you take a specific boss out, it removes a negative effect from the final encounter, but at the same time adds some form of a buff.

On our first turn we tried to take as many mini-bosses out as we could, and I think we only actually left one alive. The end result was absolutely brutal as we fought a severely buffed and hasted final boss. After that we more ploddingly identified which orbs removed which buff and gave which buff to figure out the path we could afford to take. Spiral had told us that every group she had been with went left, but we wanted to know WHY they went left. As a result we ended up going right, and for a period of time this seemed like the correct answer. The mini-boss before ADS removed this frustrating mechanic known as Rot that causes a debuff to be passed around the raid like a baton. If the debuff is NOT passed, everyone in the raid takes a significant amount of damage. We thought this would make the ADS encounter more manageable, however after a few tries we noticed that it was giving ADS an insane haste buff, causing it to absolutely wreck us.

The Left Path

So at this point we figured out why exactly every group went left, and by trial and error decided that this would be the best course of action. It is at this point that I should explain that we knew a supposed easy way to defeat the boss from the moment we walked in. The thing is while we can totally cheese out the Binding Coil of Bahamut, we will not in any fashion be able to cheese the Second Coil of Bahamut that features turns 6 through 10. I figure that if we learn these fights now, we will have an easier time learning the fights in Second Coil, because we will have some insight into the way that the designers of the raid content think. So throughout all of these tries we had a guaranteed win condition in our pocket, but we chose not to use it for as long as was feasible as to learn the fight for real.

Admittedly our biggest issue with this content was the fact that we lacked a Bard. I can already tell that group composition is going to be a pretty critical thing for certain fights. Normally we would have had Warenwolf on his Bard, but he was not available tonight. We could have shifted players around to get a bard, however we were not really prepared for that and didn’t see that zoning back out and back in was really worth it. As a result we struggled through and came within a sliver of defeating the boss a few times before taking not of just how late it was getting. Finally when we were just about to call it, we opted to take the easy route. Apparently ADS is one of the few bosses that is actually significantly easier to defeat after it enrages. Instead of having to deal with mechanics like Rot, you have to deal with constant AOE pulse damage through the raid. It literally becomes a burn phase and an endurance match for the healers to keep the raid up long enough to dps the encounter down.

Post Apocalyptic Halo

After we had finished the second turn we all dispersed, and I filtered off into playing some Destiny. I really did not want to get too terribly involved in anything, so I opted to just poke around in the level two mission that I had already defeated. One of the cool things about the way the world is laid out, is that you can just wander around off the main course allowing you to explore new areas that are not necessarily involved with the current task at hand. I had not unlocked the completely open world version of the zone yet, so this was the next best thing. Funny thing is a little bit into me poking around I had someone from my friends list join my fire team. I have to say I am not quite used to this concept yet of someone just randomly dropping down into your game. I sent him a message warning him that I was kind of just poking around aimlessly and went on about my business.

Interesting thing of note is that apparently if your friend zones into one of the “darkness” areas that are instanced… it also pulls you into the area as well. So one moment I am wandering about killing level 7 mobs that I had stumbled onto, and then the next I am being sucked into the battle with the Archon at the end of the level 2 mission. This was all fine and good as it is a pretty fun encounter, and since there were two of us the game scaled up the difficulty a bit. The problem is… moments into the encounter my partner in crime disconnected from the mission leaving me there to deal with all of the mobs alone. It turns out he was trying to upload a video clip and it disconnected him, which for future reference might not be the best thing to do in the middle of a fire fight. I managed to finish off the encounter solo and got a nice helm as a reward for doing so. On that note I shut things down for the night and tried to figure out why exactly my Vanguard Armory was not showing up. Thanks to Ashgar I went in and did some “renew licenses” function within the PS4 settings, and that seemed to clear it up immediately.

#FFXIV #BindingCoil #Destiny

Destiny is Gorgeous

September 9, 2014 by Belghast

Squandering the Morning

This morning I have absolutely squandered my morning away, because today the servers for Destiny came up. In truth the servers came up over the night, and there are already a large number of folks milling around in Tower that are level 10 or so. This morning my overriding goal was to get a character created and get it to tower so I could eventually meet up with friends and play. This formidable mug you are seeing represents the new version of me in Destiny. At character creation you are given the choice between Human, some sort of translucent skinned humanoid, and robots. Generally speaking I tend to heavily favor humans but there is a fatal flaw in the character creator… no beards. Since I can’t have a beard then I pretty much have to go robot.

All in all I am fine with this because I feel like a badass with the green glowing eyes. I played robotic characters in City of Heroes and Champions Online, so I guess that fits my motif anyway. I ended up rolling a Titan again, because I have to admit I like having the insane attack that slams the ground and knocks all of the enemies away. Additionally I found I liked having a jet pack better than some form of a modified jump. In theory the titan becomes more tanky over time, which also definitely fits my overriding goals in pretty much any game. Similarly I know that there will already be a lot of Warlocks and Hunters among my friends, so I figure it is best to stick with what I know and enjoyed playing in alpha and beta.

Destiny Is Gorgeous

The thing I keep forgetting after large blocks of time being out of the game is just how damned gorgeous this game is. I guess as a habitual member of the PC master race, I have a hard time realizing that the consoles have finally caught up. Always in the past there was something wrong with the console images, either they were grainy or washed out or blurry. They lacked the saturation and definition that I was so used to from playing on a PC. The PS4 however playing destiny looks amazing, and I doubt it would perform any better on a PC, or at least not with the mid range video cards I generally purchase. The big difference of course is that I am running around this landscape with the joystick rather than a keyboard and mouse. This is the biggest adjustment for me, because I still don’t quite feel comfortable without the precision control to make headshots that a mouse gives me.

Thankfully Destiny has more than a fair amount of aim assist, and while I can’t really draw a bead and get head shots reliably, I can chew down encounters with body shots. I managed to make it through the first tutorial level in pretty good time, and as I now idle in Tower to write this… random people keep landing and dancing with me. I am not exactly sure when I will really get a chance to start this game properly. I know we have plans for this evening, but I might pop in after that to at least run the first couple of missions. This is one of those games that I don’t mind being behind the curve. I am not really competing with anyone to get to max level first. I feel like Destiny is going to fill the same role that Diablo 3 does. Fun game that I can get into quickly, kill some stuff and pop back out without many hard feelings. I like the big open world areas in Destiny for this, in that I can land and make my own objectives or simply run around looking for interesting stuff.

Beginning Coil

The picture is completely unrelated here, but I look adorable like always in my White Mage outfit. I mentioned earlier that we already had plans for tonight, and primarily that is because we have decided to start raiding Binding Coil, and this evening is the time that seemed to work the best for most people. I honestly figure by the time evening rolls around Destiny will be completely unplayable, so I thought this might be a good idea to give us all something to focus on other than the inability to play with our new toy. For some time we have been gearing up and wanting to start Binding Coil fresh as a guild. I believe that mostly we will be going into this one completely fresh, in that none of us are really doing research ahead of tonight. One of my biggest joys is figuring out content with my friends, and I think we will do just fine.

One of the most awesome footnotes about the community however is the reaction folks have had to us beginning Binding Coil. Now this raid in one form or another has been out for a year, and they simply keep adding new turns to it. So as I have talked to some fairly serious raiders about our guild starting the Coil fresh, I’ve received a completely unexpected reaction. Were it World of Warcraft, I would have gotten reactions like folks chiding us for being “Months Behind”. Here I have gotten nothing but positive responses, talking about how they wished they could go back and see the Coil with fresh eyes again, and that we would enjoy ourselves. This overwhelming sense of others wishing us well and being happy for us is extremely refreshing. I am glad that this same strong community attitude extends to raiding as well as the dungeon content we have experienced. Hopefully we will go in, clear the first turn and walk away with some awesome memories.

#FFXIV #Destiny