dungeon Archives - Tales of the Aggronaut

Short and Long Game

September 14, 2016 by Belghast

Last night is a perfect example of why Legion is working so well for me. When I first got home I piddled around for a bit doing the few world quests that actually had upgrades for me. I managed to pull out another 835 trinket, and a 830 Iron Relic which combined with a 830 necklace that I got much later in the evening takes my overall item level to 834. For the most part every single night I am doing two things. Firstly I am knocking out the four quests that are required to get me the emissary chest with whatever faction is highlighted. After that I check World Quest Tracker to see which rewards might be upgrades, because as my gear level has gone up… the sorts of rewards available to me has also increased. For example when I checked a few minutes ago before sitting down to write this blog post I had an epic chestpiece somewhere in Azuna with roughly 20 hours left on it. For those not familiar with the addon, it gives players a similar view to the mobile app in game and allows for the tracking of individual world quests. This is super handy because when you are tracking one… it then also shows up on your flight map so you can see pretty easily which location is the closest to the quest you are trying to finish. It also color codes the quests so you can see which ones are expiring soon. This way if you are trying to complete every possible quest, you can make sure you get those with a short timer on them done so you don’t risk them expiring.

After hopping on voice chat we organized into a group, because in part we were looking for something to do with Tam who has been working on a Monk healer. I needed a quest for enchanting from Halls of Valor… because even though I have done this place five times now the staggering of quests meant I kept needing something from it. The positive is that we could run a dungeon with him… the negative is that because of his “just boosted” gear score we had to zone in manually. What was awesome about the run last night though is that Grace has done quite a bit of healing on the Monk, so Tam and her talks about which abilities work for which fights as we went through the dungeon. By the end Tam was Mistwalkering like a pro, and I went from having to largely keep myself alive with Ignore Pain to not really even getting close to dying at all. The other thing we noticed is just how ridiculous the range on the Monk healing statue is. It seems to be most of an instance worth of distance… and I am not entirely certain that when it finally stopped healing… that it was due to range and not due to line of sight. We finished the dungeon successfully and it broke up the logjam that seemed to be my enchanting progression. After completing that one quest I got four other quests that unlocked a series of endgame neck enchants. Grace and I were talking a bit about this problem last night, that while I really enjoy the quests… it is going to make tradeskilling on alts a pure nightmare.

After the dungeon run, the group broke up as Mor and Ashgar needed to go off to bed… or whatever it was that they actually did. From there Grace and I decided to work on some of the Gold Dragon Wardens quests. These show up on your map with the traditional elite boss seal around them, and represent tougher group content. Sometimes these are reasonable to solo… other times they simply hit too hard or have too much life to be reasonable. While they are not often soloable, they generally speaking can be duo’d with my protection warrior and her mage. I can keep myself alive mostly long enough for her to burn it down and more often than not when we actually get to a given location… there is already a group starting the fight that we just hop in on. So I started the post with a statement about last night being a perfect example of why Legion is working so well for me, and all of these examples are why. I started off the evening soloing, then pulled together a group and ran a dungeon… then continued the grouping in a much smaller scale with tracking down a bunch of elite world quests. I went from solo, to group, to duoing… all in the same night and it felt seamless and largely effortless to find some objective that felt valuable to do in all of those cases. Eventually I am sure raiding will be added in to that mix giving me a whole new level of things to do with friends, all the while constantly feeling like I am moving the needle forward. Legion is doing an excellent job of giving me small term gains, but still keeping extremely long term goals present and making me feel like I am constantly inching forward towards them. Now I just want them to keep this up for the rest of the expansion and continue this feeling into the next.

Begrudging Enjoyment

July 23, 2015 by Belghast

Even More Clarifications!

Starting to get really amped because two days in we have like two pages worth of signups on the forum thread. Since I guess I am the grandmaster of ceremonies, I am getting random questions and have been doing my best to assuage fears. When those questions seem general enough that someone else might have them… I have taken to dumping them in the intro to a morning blog post to help clarify for anyone else reading that might be interested. One of the interesting questions that I had yesterday was if folks could mix things up a bit. Since I am opening the door to vlogging, it was wondered if you could do a mix of the two. The short answer is absolutely! The long answer is just make sure you post your video embedded in a blog post, and advertise it on the Blaugust Nook with what day it was for, just to make my life less hell when it comes to tracking and tabulating this madness.

Next question is what happens if a given blogger is obligated to be posting every so often on another site? Do they have to also post something new for that day on their personal blog? The easy answer here is yes… but with an asterisk. If you are posting a bigger entry somewhere else, it is absolutely cool to post a stub on your own blog linking to the bigger post. Just do a quick synopsis of the post and let folks click through if they want to read more about it. This way you technically have your daily post, but also are linking to the article that you spent the bulk of your daily writing time working on. This is maybe a strange case, but I know that several of our bloggers do the occasional long form article for another source. The important thing is that we need it tracked through the Blaugust Nook so I can give you appropriate credit.

Night of Alex

Pretty much since its inception I have been helping out with the Wednesday night static in our free company. Initially I had intended it to simply be something that I filled in on, but as I dropped my World of Warcraft raiding… I found that I had time to commit to it more seriously. So presently with the Monday night crew we are working through Final Coil of Bahamut, and on Wednesday nights we have been working on Normal mode Alexander. Last night we had every intention of getting through all four wings, but we struggled a bit with turn two due to some changes in how we were dealing with the adds. As soon as we went back to the way we had previously defeated it, things clicked back into place and we pushed through it fairly easily. That took us to turn three, a fight that I had not actually seen yet. Thanks to the expert tutelage of Wulf or as “Wul” as his friends call him… I was caught up to speed and after the second attempt it started to feel pretty natural.

From here it was just learning this particular dance and getting our dps up high enough to burn through it before we hit the hard enrage. Right now that seems to be a problem in general with what we are trying to do. We struggled with the dps check on Bismarck, and struggled again on turn three. As a Warrior I am personally swapping to Deliverance stance every single time I am not in the main tank role so I can push a little more dps and also trying to keep up Storm’s Eye as often as possible… largely when I don’t actually need the damage reduction effect of Storm’s Path. If we can somehow solve the problems we are having on the DPS end however I think we are ready to rock higher content. The dance part seems to come pretty naturally, however there were still several points last night where folks stood in damage that could have been avoided. Part of this is learning, but part of this is trying desperately to avoid tunnel vision.

Begrudging Enjoyment

I’ve gone through a strange evolution with SkyForge of having some vague interest, but finding the game play largely unsatisfying for my first few play sessions. Now that I have unlocked the core abilities of the Paladin, I am actually finding it rather enjoyable. I think this game suffers from what so many games suffer from… rationing of abilities. I know Final Fantasy XIV has this problem where most classes don’t really feel like they should until you are around level 40. SkyForge for the most part has this problem until you have unlocked your base abilities. Had I taken the time to really spend much time in the virtual matrix thing that lets you test every class, I would have realized that the rabbit hole was so much deeper than I was giving it credit for. Another interesting side note… if you finish the training on a given class you unlock the ability to permanently use its class costume.

I booted up SkyForge after the raid last night, with every intention of just poking my head in and then logging right out. Instead I wound up unlocking three costumes and completing a really cool dungeon like mission on an island full of undead Virds. With all of my abilities unlocked the fights started feel more purposeful in design, and less about simply repeating the same attack over and over. There was a boss that required me to intersect one type of beam while avoiding taking the other… and actually dragging the boss into the path of it so that it would take the damage. This felt fresh and enjoyable, so maybe I simply had not seen the “real” game yet. This is ultimately the frustration of designs that doll out abilities one at a time, is that you can’t really see what the final result is going to be like until you have invested a serious amount of effort into the game. Granted this game DID give me an avenue to see how a Paladin or Knight would play… but I simply did not spend much time doing it. Tonight I plan on trying to unlock a few more of these class costumes, so I can get a feel for how some of the other options play. Right now this is shaping up to be an MMO with MOBA character design… and I think I dig this.

Learning to Fly

June 20, 2015 by Belghast

Coerthas Distractions

All I really wanted yesterday was to sit in one spot and play Final Fantasy XIV all day long. While that did not happen as I had originally envisioned I did still manage to get a fair amount of play time. The biggest interruption came early on when I was trying to work on my blog post, and the air conditioning company called to tell me they were on their way over. Firstly I had completely forgotten that I had scheduled our twice a year maintenance for Friday thinking I would be off from work anyways. Secondly… the guy who came over seemed relatively new and manage to take an hour and a half doing what normally takes the guy fifteen minutes to finish. So that was ultimately why I ended up posting so late. By the time that finished we needed to run a few errands, and I spent until roughly two doing that. Finally when I got home however I had a solid block of play time and also a mission set out in front of me.

Tam had apparently been playing since quite literally the servers went life at 2 am pst. As a result he was anxiously waiting on us to catch up so that he could run the very first dungeon. While Dusk Vigil is not entirely gated by the main story, it does require you to have gotten far enough into the story to unlock a specific camp of NPCs. Previously I was getting easily distracted by every single FATE I came across… which was pretty much an endless feedback loop since at any given moment there are a dozen different FATEs up in Western Coerthas. Instead I had to shift to being laser focused on completing the quests. This batch of storyline however deserves some time to slow down and savor it a bit as you quest through it. They have done something that no other MMO has done… picked up the storyline moments after the last quest of the previous expansion. Over the course of “A Realm Reborn” they learned how to extremely effectively tell compelling story, and this expansion just continues that trend. I feel like I am only a little ways in and they have already dropped several big bombshells on me.

Dusk Vigil

Normally I would have told them to go with another tank to Dusk Vigil… even though I love the act of clearing a dungeon that very first time. Problem being at the moment I am the highest progressed tank in the guild and likely the only one who has unlocked it. Around 8:30 last night my wife and I decided to go for a walk down to the local shaved ice place, and I told them that I would run the dungeon when I got back. Upon coming back the new renters across the street were out in the yard and it felt awkward not to go over and say hello. People think it is strange that we don’t really know anyone in our neighborhood… but I have to say this is 0 for 2 when it comes to introducing ourselves to new people. This new one is just as insane seeming and clingy as the last one… now the positive is that there was an Xbox 360 set up on the living room floor with Lord of the Rings movies and Dragon Age Inquisition scattered around it. So maybe just maybe they are going to be cool people? After making them wait half the night we eventually go away from the neighbor and I went upstairs to fight the login boss and get back in game.

Surprisingly I managed to log in immediately and get straight into the server, and got my group invite and we were up and running. The big take away from the dungeon is that much like the overworld… the mobs hit extremely hard. I am an ilevel 128 Warrior, and that first trash pack I pulled was a bit of a wakeup call. The coolest thing about the dungeon however were the bosses which were in essence a remix of mechanics we have seen in some of the raids, but assembled in a manner that felt fresh. I imagine at some point we will have a gear level where we can ignore the mechanics but for the time being… folks have to pay attention. The layout of the dungeon was extremely cool as well and had both a Coerthas flavor and a stone vigil flavor the deeper you got into it. The background music and boss music were both amazing as well… with the zone music sounding like a remix of the Heavensward theme with Snowcloak. The dungeon also dropped some really nice level 110 items that had unique graphics, so I hope to pop back in and try and collect more of it.

Learning to Fly

I have no clue how far a Yalm is, but over the course of yesterday I think I travelled thousands of them hunting down Aether Currents. For the uninitiated Final Fantasy XIV gives you a brand new Black Chocobo just a few quests into the Heavensward Storyline. Also for the uninitiated Black Chocobos old a special place in the Final Fantasy pantheon of being the only breed of Chocobo that can actually fly, and while they often look more purple than black… the one you get in Heavensward is officially a jet black chocobo with pretty cool barding. When you get yours you also get this device called an Aether Compass. In order to fly in a zone you need to track down a certain number of the Aether Currents, and in Western Coerthas this is 10 scattered throughout the zone and 5 that you get from doing quests. If you have ever played a game that has a tracking system the compass works pretty much like this. You click the item and it tells you the direction and distance away the next Aether Current is located. This appears in your quest items tab, but I highly suggest moving it to a hotbar because you will be clicking this thing constantly.

As a result you have to not only try and figure out how to traverse a zone that is extremely difficult to traverse do to some extreme elevation changes, you have to do this while interpreting messages like “381 Yalms to the South East”. Most of the Aether Currents are found as a result of some jumping puzzles, that can either be extremely difficult to get to… or relatively simply if you figure out the path they intended you to take. The worst feeling is jumping down off something and seeing an Aether Current on the way down… that you could have gotten if only you know it was there ahead of time. Once you have gathered up all of the currents you can fly around the zone on your Black Chocobo… and I have to say it feels amazing to finally be able to do this. Sure the whole Aether Current thing is frustrating, but it did an amazing job of teaching me the layout of the zone and it is really the sort of thing that I did not finish until I was already MOSTLY finished with a zone. This is a great compromise for allowing players to fly, but not feeling like you are somehow cheapening the content in the process. Other games should really take note of this system going forward, because it feels like you are really earning your ability to fly each time.

Delving the Sewers

June 14, 2015 by Belghast

Bloody Happy Place

Last night we were down a handful of people with Thalen and Grace being gone, but by that same token it is mostly a cast of original AggroChat folks. Kodra is back from his traveling and it was awesome to get to spend the night hanging out with him again. We have all been spending quite a bit of time in ArcheAge as we have been taking a break from Final Fantasy XIV right before the launch of Heavensward. We talk about our further impressions of the game, and Kodra talks about his since he quite literally just started today. From there we talk about our expectations for the coming launch of Heavensward and how Ashgar and I apparently have enough faith in the release of this expansion to have taken the day off work. From there we meander into talk about the upcoming Four Job Fiesta, and how all of our listeners should really take Ashgar’s money, since he has put up $5 for every AggroChat listener to defeat the game during the event. There was talk of Wildstar and Tam injuring himself, but we had a grand time just chatting about the games we had been playing.

As promised in the show I also posted a picture of the absolutely amazing Fred from Scooby Doo cosplay by Kodra over on AggroChat so you should totally check that out. The title of the show comes from the fact that I am apparently a sick and twisted bastard. One of the happiest moments I have in video games is when I am zoned out and just mindlessly slaughtering stuff for loot and prizes. This is the reason why I have always been able to grind up levels in video games so effectively and why I so insanely over leveled the various JRPGs I have played. Last night while recording the podcast I found myself cheerfully wrecking undead for a good hour of the time we recorded. I slip into this mode from time to time and just got lost in the motion of combat, and as a result I end up over leveled almost all of the time. It is a happy place… just a very bloody happy place.

Beach Racing

ArcheAge is this collection of really strange systems, and I feel like I have only scratched the surface of figuring them out. Yesterday my friends and I took a trip to Mirage Island, which is this strange second life esc showroom allowing you to buy crafting patterns for all sorts of random stuff. The awesome thing about it however is that you can test drive most of them. So Tamrielo and I went off on a tour of the island on the roadsters. The only problem you have a very limited around of time to use it…. and we did not realize that before running off out into the ocean. There is a giant track around the island… and part of it is a sandbar that cuts out into the middle of hte ocean. The problem is…. this island is really freaking huge. I crashed out of the game that apparently dropped me out of Mirage Island, but poor Tam I don’t think he made it around the sandbar before it despawned the roadster. Luckily we had mounts so at least we didn’t have to walk back home if we got stranded.

The biggest problem I am having with ArcheAge is it seems like there are dozens of currencies that I am accumulating but I have no clue where to spend them. I thought maybe Mirage Island would give me some idea, but I didn’t really find any traditional vendors. Some of the kiosks required various currencies that I had not found yet, but I didn’t find any that took any of the ones I actually had. The takeaway is that ArcheAge is a really strange game. I am still liking it but I don’t feel any closer to actually understanding it. The system I want to try and figure out how is that supposedly you can tame named bosses in the world and turn them into combat pets. There is a tiger in one of the zones I have encountered and I am kinda hoping I can figure out how to trap it. I remember in alpha I got some sort of a fox pet as a drop and it was insanely fun to run around with. Not that it was sturdy enough to tank for me, but it did add some additional damage. Who doesn’t like additional damage right?

Delving the Sewers

A few days ago I stumbled into the first dungeon of the game in the sewers under the City of Towers. I managed to sneak my way through the dungeon, carefully pulling mobs and cleared my way to the first boss… only to get my face rocked. However the trash leading up to that boss dropped some really nice items. Since I have massively out leveled my friends I figured I would revisit the dungeon when some of them got closer to my level. So last night after the podcast we thought we would give the place another shot. Unfortunately after getting Kodra and Tam out there, it looks like the 3 man dungeon had a minimum level requirement of 18. So at this point I was sitting at 27, and Tam at 20… so we decided to try and work our way through it. The first room or so was pretty easy because both of us are dual wielding blenders. The first boss however…. ended up to be just as much of a challenge with the two of us as it was solo. We managed to make it through it however with both of us extremely low in health.

The second boss was significantly easier mechanically, but involved me running around like a madman and kiting him for a bit while Tam finished him off. Then we got to the final boss… and quite frankly it rocked our worlds. It took lots of rethinking the situation and a series of I think ten attempts before we finally just barely managed to defeat the encounter. Quite honestly I have no clue how someone would manage to do this dungeon at 18 with three people, when we technically over leveled the hell out of it. This makes me super anxious however to try the next dungeon, because it was an awesome challenge. The dungeon design like much of the game reminds me of an older era of MMOs. There were moments when I was taken back to the mob density and layout of the dungeons in Dark Age of Camelot. We had to very carefully pick our way through the targets and use line of sight to pull things back in order to make sure we only got the one target we needed. The game is far better than I gave it credit for… and I am hoping to piddle around on the side for awhile.