Featuring: Ammosart, Ashgar, Belghast, Grace, Kodra, and Tamrielo
Hey Folks! We were out last week because Bel’s world was burning and all of the smoke was killing his lungs. This week we start off with a discussion about the Eleventh Hour Games and Grinding Gear Games situation as GGG pulls a Blizzard and ambushes the Last Epoch Season 2 launch. From there we talk about the chill tea shop gameplay of Wanderstop, telling us that sometimes it is a good idea to stop and relax for a bit. Tam and Kodra played through Wanderstop and talked about how it has evolved the already great co-op gameplay of It Takes Two with a much better story. Ash and Ammo talk about diving into Xenoblade Chronicles X as it just was re-released on Nintendo Switch. Bel talks a bit about Gunlocked which attempts to be the Vampire Survivors of Bullethell Shooters… and fails in interesting ways that will hopefully be addressed in the sequel. Bel also shares his initial thoughts from the Titans Quest II playtest, and Tam shares his thoughts about what he is seeing about Dune Awakening.
Good Morning Folks. With the delay in Last Epoch Season 2 and the upcoming launch of Dawn of the Hunt in Path of Exile 2, it has had me thinking about Path of Exile 3.26 a bit. On March 4th we got an announcement that the Legacy of Phrecia Event was being extended to April 23rd. Additionally as part of this news post, we got a tentative launch window for the 3.26 League landing in June. This means that 3.25 will have lasted just shy of one full year, which is a pretty far fall from the 4 leagues of a year goals that Path of Exile used to attempt. Granted a whole new game has launched so I have to give them some credit.. but given that I am one of the folks who greatly prefers the original game to the sequel… it isn’t going to be much credit. It has made me start to daydream a bit about what 3.26 might look like, and this morning I am going to talk through some of my thoughts.
What Makes a League?
I guess for the uninitiated I should start off with what exactly a league entails. The best leagues feature some sort of brand new mechanic that has its own type of drops associated with it. In the Trial of the Ancestors they introduced tattoos, which allow you to sacrifice a travel node on your passive tree for some powerful buff. Additionally it came with a whole new autobattler style mechanic where you set up matches against various Karui Ancestors and were rewarded with drops based on your success. During Affliction there was this whole new realm that you went into before every map, that allowed you to wildly juice the outcome of that map. Additionally it introduced brand new secondary ascendancies that gave your character brand new abilities. Essentially the best leagues change the way you play the game… over the course of the league and also often introduce items that eventually get worked in as permanent updates going forward.
Settlers Goes Standard
By the time 3.26 drops, we will have had access to Kingsmarch for a full year. As such it would feel really freaking weird to lose access to it. In my perfect scenario we would retain full access to these systems in their entirety and effecting Settlers of Kalguur just goes Standard. Maybe streamline some of the leveling processes a bit and speed things up so it does not take quite as long to get everything online. I think almost everything included in Settlers was a pure win, and I would love to see it continue. Since this involves a lot of the characters from the Heist League already, I would love to see the evolve to fill both roles. Rogue’s Harbor has always been a bit of a pain in the ass, as well as a lag fest that often causes MTX to crash players out of the game. Having a solo instance that fills both jobs would be pretty epic. Once I leave the campaign… in truth I never want to see another player unless I am doing a trade.
Currency Exchange
If for whatever reason Settlers does not go standard in full… at a bare minimum the Currency Exchange must be carried forward. There is no way I can go back to trading currency through the trade website. This has been the single best quality of life improvement in the game full stop. Sure I would love to have better visualization into what people actually want, or the ability to post an item up for players to make an offer on it… especially if it is something that does not have a huge volume of trade. Even in its current form though it is a requirement going forward for the health of the game.
Recombinators
I also feel like Recombinators need to exist in one form for another going forward. Even if this is a machine that we place in our hideouts instead of in Kingsmarch, this is something that needs to stick around in the game. Recombinators give you a reason to care about amassing crafting bases… giving them value and making loot more interesting while you are mapping. Being able to work your way slowly towards a perfect item is a huge boon for a lot of players, specifically those in self-found game modes. I don’t fully grasp the ins and outs of this system, but I feel like once I get a firm handle on it I should be able to slowly work my way towards better gear, rather than hoping and praying for the right item to drop.
Replica Ascendancy
Given based on the volume of trade I am still seeing… the Legacy of Phrecia event has been a massive success. Adding nineteen brand new ascendancies to the game has been wild for class balance, and I would love to see some way of this continuing forward into the game. I’ve heard a bunch of ideas from having a rotation of ascendancies similar to the map rotation, to having some alternate method for ascending to the alternate versions. My favorite name for these was “Replica Ascendancy” and I am sorry that I do not remember who coined this term. I have had a freaking blast playing Scavenger Righteous Fire, and I am not sure if I would continue to choose it over my beloved Chieftain but it would still be nice to have options. Similarly there are a whole bunch of cool builds that have been enabled by the toolkit these new ascendancies have. I would be perfectly happy if 3.26 just had six different paths you could choose off the base classes and then two for Scion.
Mapping Idols
The other big change that the Legacy of Phrecia event introduced was an alternate atlas tree in the form of a series of itemized idols, and a grid that popped out of the side of the mapping device. The existing Atlas Passive tree is near perfection… but it would be exceptionally cool if the Idols moved forward in a limited fashion. What I envision is a 3×3 grid that allows you to fit in a limited number of idols to tweak your existing Atlas strategy. The limited grid would also limit your access to the most powerful abilities that can roll on Idols, and greatly limit the overall impact it has. In doing this I would almost suggest removing all of the nodes that cancel out league mechanics from the Passive tree, and instead limiting them to only exist as Unique Idols. It allows you to either buff existing strats, or splash in something that might be harder to get because you are on the wrong side of the passive tree.
Identification Vendor
Borrowing some quality of life from Path of Exile II… I would love to see one of the vendors have the Identification functionality that The Hooded One/Doryani provides. There were few things that I found myself missing from Path of Exile II, but this was absolutely one of them. I liked the flow of exiting a map, clicking on the vendor to identify everything… and then doing whatever else I wanted to do with the items. Surely this would not be that hard to implement, and it would be a significant quality of life improvement.
Item Salvaging
The other functionality from Path of Exile II that I would love to see implemented… that I think is probably reasonable without massive system changes is the Salvage Bench. The ability to salvage items for various currencies really changes the way that you look at items. For example there are a lot of times in Path of Exile that items drop with quality… but unless the item is rolled particularly well or a base that you care about… it is effectively useless loot. If you could instead then salvage that item to turn it into quality currency, it would make especially the early game feel much better. Similarly if you could convert magic, rare, and unique loot into fractional currency shards it would allow you another way of working up towards currency items that are actually useful for crafting purposes. Having more reasons to actually pick something up off the ground is a good thing.
[EDIT] – After a conversation with Ashgar
Ash remarked that there are in fact vendor “recipes” for a lot of this stuff. I think my point is that the salvage ratios from Path of Exile II, feels more generous than the vendor “recipes” from Path of Exile 1. Maybe this is entirely a “feels” thing and there may be no numerical proof of this. Salvaging things for whatever reason feels better than selling them.
Lantern of Arimor
Necropolis League was not exactly amazing. It introduced this whole itemized corpse system that you planted in graves, in order to craft gear. It was cumbersome as hell, and I do not want it to come back. However it also introduced the Lantern of Arimor, which was a widget that you could fiddle with at the beginning of a map in order to have some agency in the sorts of mobs and types of loot you might encounter. While this slowed down the action a bit, I also found it really enjoyable during mapping. Especially when you added Allflames into the mix that allowed you to substitute out a different monster type for something that would normally spawn on the map. If they brought this back I would prefer to have this as something that appears in the endgame and that you would have to specifically spec into in order to enable.
Bring Back Metamorph
One of the things that often happens during a League patch is the re-introduction of mechanics that have left the game for one reason or another. When Ultimatum was reintroduced, it caused Metamorph to get bumped from the list. I really liked fighting Metamorphs in maps because they were often worth quite a bit of loot. I did not however really enjoy the system where you built your own monster, because while rewarding this required you to exit the flow of the normal game. Since Ultimatum got the drops that traditionally came from Metamorph… and the mechanic was all about crafting monsters… maybe have this as an alternate source of the corpses that currently drop in Ritual that can be used as Spectres. Additionally I feel like the flavor of this mechanic would also make it a good place to reintroduce Allflames in lieu of monster parts. Have this be a map only mechanic and potentially add it to the number of alternate mechanic spawns, either that or implement it through Idols.
Weapon Passive Trees
Another thing that I think would be fun to see make a return, is the Crucible weapon passive trees. Essentially during Crucible every item had the ability to craft on a weapon tree, that could then spawn all sorts of nonsense on them. There was a whole forge mechanic that allowed you to merge together multiple trees similar to how things currently work with Recombinators and item affixes. My idea is to implement these but have them drop from a specific mechanic similar to how fractured bases drop. Instead of the channeling mechanic, make it so that they just level up through combat similar to how virtue gems do. Then the whole manipulation of items can be merged into the Recombination system. You could use that system to either manipulate the crucible trees if both items have one… or put the tree on the item base that you want. This just adds further depth to the crafting system and gives the mirror crafters more nonsense to make even more perfect weapons.
Primordial Blocks
This is a personal desire, and not necessarily a systems thing… but I really want Primordial Blocks to be in the league map rotation. For those who have not participated in many leagues before, essentially each league has a slightly different set of maps included with it. Primordial Blocks has been out of the rotation for a few leagues and I would really love to see it come back. It isn’t necessarily that I love the layout, but there is a Hideout associated with it that spawns exceptionally rarely… and it is my white whale. I have run countless copies of this map and have yet to get it to spawn, and I really want to give it another go.
I get that we are still several months away from 3.26 or even the beginning of early spoilers… but that in part is why I am creating this post now. I did not want my ideas to be tainted by the various prognostication that happens once the spoilers begin to flow. I legitimately have no clue what sort of big system GGG might implement for 3.26, but I wanted to at least talk through some of the quality of life and general systems that I would love to see return. What do you want to make a comeback with this league? What are some of the things that you would love to see implemented in Path of Exile? I would love to have a game pausing system, but I figure that is way too structural to ever actually get. Drop me a line below with some of your own thoughts.
Good Afternoon Folks. This is a bit of a rare post because generally speaking if I do not make my morning post… I just don’t post at all for that day. I spent my morning up at my folks house helping them with some stuff and now that I am back I figured I might as well knock out a post, because I have some potentially time sensitive information. First off if you do not own Guild Wars 2 or are missing any of the content drops… there is a pretty massive sale happening right now on the official storefront. Coinciding with it there is also a sale taking place on Steam but there is a bit of a higher markup there. If you have never played this game you really should especially now that you can get a decades worth of content for $50. That is legitimately one of the best deals out there.
While I was in game I noticed that they once again had the Cat Angel Jadebot skin up… so I broke into my gem reserves and picked it up. I have gone back and forth about whether or not I wanted this for awhile, but I entirely blame Dungeon Crawler Carl and Princess Donut for making me want this. There is no way that given the chance… Donut would not flap around me with wings. I need to dive into the new content which also dropped this week because there is a new Ranger pet Bee that you can get. I’ve been several different mains throughout the years… starting as a Warrior then transitioning to Necro… but I think my true spirit is that of the Ranger. Longbow and Greatsword for life yo! Regardless of how generally selfish that build is since it doesn’t produce Quickness or Alacrity.
I played some Titanquest II and so far I do not think this game is really my jam. Melee combat felt a bit too sluggish for my tastes and pretty much everything seemed to want me to spam the dodge button instead of engaging with mobs up close and personal. Maybe this feels good as ranged, but so far it is not necessarily my jam. However if you are curious for yourself you might check out the Steam page to see if you can still request access to the playtest. The game seems solid enough but leans more towards the never get hit sort of play style that I do not personally enjoy. I am sure it will find an audience, especially with the crowd that feels like the ARPG genre reached its peak with Diablo II.
Another game that I have been fiddling with a bit is Gunlocked. Essentially this is what if Vampire Survivors was a Bullet-Hell shooter. The game starts out a bit weird in that your only attack for a bit is a radar that sweeps around your ship and then marks targets with a lock on, that your ship then fires attacks at to mostly one-shot. As you pick up power-ups you gain a whole slew of interesting attacks slowly giving you a bunch of different ways to take out the ever present deluge of ships and obstacles on your screen. I found out about this game when the sequel was announced on the fediverse, which caused me to go look at the original since I dug the art style. I also checked out Boons and Burdens which is sort of a similar concept but this time smash tv meets vampire survivor but you play as one of several element themed wizards. There is a bundle for both games that is currently just shy of $6.
Another thing that I picked up from the ongoing steam sale is Dragon’s Dogma II. I had played a bit of the first game but never really got fully into it. I thought given my recent foray back into Monster Hunter with Wilds, I might check this out and see if I can get into the sequel. All in all so far I am pretty intrigued. There seems to be more of a clear story element going on here, whereas I felt like I was largely roaming around aimlessly in the first game. So far it sort of feels like a weird version of a Bethesda game in a good way. Not sure how far I will get but I am liking it so far.
I’m also not entirely done with Monster Hunter Wilds either, and I am hoping this weekend I can connect up with my friend Ace and do some more group hunts. In a perfect world maybe also connect up with Thalen, Ammo, or Sita for shenanigans since they all have compatible time zones. I am not in a massive push to clear anything right now, but do want to try out some Charge Blade nonsense to see if I actually like the weapon.
Do you have significant weekend plans? What are you playing currently? Drop me a line below.
Good Morning Folks. There is a bit of a kerfuffle happening right now in ARPG land. Essentially this was bound to happen at some point, but the overlapping seasons combined with various setbacks have essentially conspired to multiple things happening all at once. Two days ago Grinding Gear Games released an announcement that 0.2.0 was not months away like we had thought, but would instead be landing at the beginning of April. With it came some new footage and the tease of one of the missing classes being released as part of this. The Huntress has long been an announced class for Path of Exile II and is playing into the Spear Amazon play-style that was popular in Diablo II. My personal guess is that the first successful builds are going to be Lightning Strike and chaining full screen pops with Heralds…. essentially copy pasting the current popular Path of Exile 1 builds.
This is universally a really cool thing though, especially for players who are not mainlining Path of Exile II, and do not care about the other ARPGs in the genre. Where the kerfuffle comes in… is that it is launching 2 days after the start of the second Last Epoch season. For me it is a no-brainer… Path of Exile II can wait and I am going to be spending my time playing Last Epoch until I tire of it. However what proponents of EHG and Last Epoch were hoping… was a little bit of clear runway so that folks bored of POE2 and POE1… might take a chance on seeing how much has changed in what I feel to be the game with the best systems design. That is not happening… and for a lot of players they are going to follow whatever Path of Exile is doing. If they had a few weeks gap they might check out Last Epoch, but with it only being two days… I feel like there are going to be a large chunk of folks who just skip that game entirely.
This also sucks for the dedicated ARPG community Streamers who have been putting a lot of time and effort into the lead up to Last Epoch Season 2. Sure Last Epoch has a dedicated core of streamers like Aaron Action RPG, Dr3adful, and Perry the Pig but they are honestly small potatoes up against the likes of a Darth Microtransaction,Zizaran, or Raxxanterax. Drawing the attention of the Path of Exile streamer community means that you are throwing a bunch of eyeballs on the game that otherwise might not take an interest in it. So they are stuck in a position of whether or not they follow their hearts and stick with Last Epoch, or if they follow the money and flip over immediately to start streaming the new Path of Exile II content. Having major events land this close to each other means… that they have to choose one audience over another and lose out on part of it.
So I am hearing a lot from both the Path of Exile and Last Epoch community that Grinding Gear Games is a bit of a bad guy for doing this. I do think they might have delayed it by at least one week to make things a bit easier on everyone involved… but they are also up against a wall here as well. In 2019 during the ExileCon presentation about Path of Exile II, Chris Wilson outlined that they did not want to split the community with the release of the new game. However that is precisely what has happened, so much so that Path of Exile II players and topics have been kicked off the Path of Exile subreddit. The POE1 players who do not care about Path of Exile II essentially rioted by the delays and we got the Legacy of Phrecia event as a result. In the weeks leading up to this Path of Exile II 0.2.0 announcement, I have been starting to see a similar current happening on the POE2 SubReddit of folks frustrated by the attention that Grinding Gear Games was devoting to something other than the game that they care about the most. Regardless of when…. they needed to release this first proper league for the new game as quickly as possible.
To further complicate things, as of yesterday we have a playtest active for Titan Quest II, another game that is throwing its hat in the ring of next gen ARPG. You have to request access to get into the playtest, but I did so before heading to bed last night and had been flagged for access as of this morning. There is just a lot going on right now and for those who care both Diablo IV Season 8 and a massive update to No Rest for the Wicked are landing at the tail end of April. It is going to be a very tight slot for ARPG enthusiasts, but at least there will be no lack of things to devote our time to. Since I am largely wrapped up with Monster Hunter Wilds, I am probably going to be spending the next few days checking out Titan Quest II. I am also still playing a not-insignificant amount of Legacy of Phrecia as I continue to tweak and improve my Righteous Fire Scavenger.
However when it comes to the Path of Exile II vs Last Epoch debate that is raging in the community… I am drawing my personal line in the sand. I am extremely interested in experiencing what the new endgame for Last Epoch has to show us. So I will be playing Tombs of the Erased on April 2nd and effectively play it until I get tired of grinding. I have no clue how long that is going to be, but on average I get about a month out of a Path of Exile league and a few solid weeks so far out of a Last Epoch event… so I am hoping somewhere around that time frame. Whenever I finish with Last Epoch, I am sure I will check out what is going on with 0.2.0 or as it is officially being called Dawn of the Hunt League. I will of course be tuning in on the 27th to check out the live-stream to see what all it will include. I am not a streamer and no one really cares what I am playing, but I do tend to devote all of my time for awhile to whatever I happen to be obsessed about and as such the pages of this blog.
In a perfect world… Last Epoch would move their own launch up by a few days and Path of Exile II back by a few days to create a bit more room. However there are other forces at play. For example I am pretty certain they cannot reschedule Twitch Drops willy nilly… so the particular timing is probably going to be stuck where it is. I would love to see more folks choosing Last Epoch as well, but I am also realistic that the Streamers are going to chase that money while they can get it.
