Last Epoch

Enter Dread Phalanx

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Good Morning Friends! Last night other than my habitual Tequatl was pretty much a night devoted to Last Epoch. While I have run up a Paladin to 68, there is some stuff about the build that I am not really feeling. So much of it depends on Shield Charge and right now with the movement abilities and rubberbanding… it just sort of feels janky. I think once Shield Charge is as smooth in this game as it is in Path of Exile, I will probably return to the build and enjoy it quite a bit. For now, I have shifted focus back to the class that I played during the test builds, the Acolyte turned Necromancer. Last night I finished the story that exists currently and began working on the Monolith in earnest.

I’ve been mostly following this Fire Necromancer build which I believe originally came from Aaron of the Action RPG channel on YouTube. Ultimately it shifts your Skeletal Mages, Bone Golem, and Exploding Zombies into fire damage and then buffs everything with Dread Shade and gives you permanent Wraiths. Aaron has a unique in the game now that is designed to go with this sort of build, and when you find it you can shift up a little bit and go into a build that can give you up to 4 full-size Bone Golems. I think that is my ultimate hope to find Aaron’s Will and shift into that sort of a setup.

At the moment I am just not really feeling Dread Shade. Like I get that this is probably the superior choice for the build because its aura buffs everything… including me. The problem is… I just can’t afford to stand anywhere near my pack of horrible children. This means that the Dread Shade isn’t of much actual benefit to my survival. I also keep forgetting to resummon it, because it disappears periodically when whatever it was attached to dies or when I shift zones. Since I don’t get an actual minion icon for it in the same row as the rest of my minions… I keep forgetting about it meaning that I am getting zero benefits from it most of the time.

Instead, I have decided to shift things up a bit and drop Dread Shade and pick back up Skeletons. I ran a Monolith this morning and managed to get enough points to make them useful. Essentially I am bouncing around to pick up all of the bonus skeletons, and then Dread Phalanx which makes them stronger but cuts the number I can summon in half, and Shambling Steel which makes them all melee. Combined this gives me four beefy melee characters that are pretty freaking fast… not as fast as my exploding zombies but still able to soak up any threats that are headed directly at me. This is ultimately what I did on the test realm and after switching it up, the build already feels comfier.

So at any given time, I have nineteen horrible children following me around. The full list includes:

  • 1 – Bone Golem
  • 3 – Skeletal Mage Pyromancers
  • 4 – Skeletal Dread Phalanx
  • 2 – Perm Wraiths
  • 6 – Exploding Zombies (this is my spam ability)
  • 3 – Skeleton Vanguard

This will in theory go up significantly when I pick up Aaron’s Will and can start fielding multiple bone golems on the field at once. In testing, I took the trait line that split my golem in half and gave me two less effective ones, and I did not go down that direction because when I did get multiple golems… I want them all to be the big tanky boys that I have currently.

What I need to work on more desperately now is my survivability. I am exceptionally squishy and failed a monolith echo last night for the first time in a while. Essentially if you look at my resists… they are pretty pathetic and the total lack of any physical resist and poison resist means that when one of those hits me… it effectively one-shots me. Having more bodies on the field to soak up more hate definitely helps, but I still keep to chain potions during dicey situations to keep standing which is not a position I want to be in long term. Part of the problem is I am still wearing some items from around level 6… so I hope as I dive further into the monolith I will start finally finding some reasonable upgrades.

I’ve realized that I am apparently in the minority in my feelings regarding Diablo IV. This is honestly probably a good thing because I want that game to be something that most people are going to enjoy. Personally, I think Last Epoch is more my speed. I do plan on giving it another shot over the weekend when the open beta happens and maybe trying a slightly different Barbarian build. I do want to try playing with some friends to see how the D4 group game feels. However, for me, the mix of Last Epoch and Guild Wars 2 seems to work extremely well. I still need to try some of the dungeons in Last Epoch. I’ve been stockpiling keys for a theoretical future date when I grab a friend and do them. Since they are a limited resource, it feels like I almost need to save them like I would a puzzle ring from Diablo III. Additionally the later I wait to run them, the better the rewards will likely be.

Goodbye Merigold

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I have this weird superstition when it comes to computers. I will never name the same build the same thing twice. It is almost as though each machine that gets a fresh install is its own “being”, because yes I suffer from the personification of machinery. Generally speaking, the machine gets named after something that I am engaged with at the time. My current gaming desktop is named NormandySR2 and my laptop is named NightCity. My gaming desktop before that was named Serenity, and when I rebuilt the gaming desktop before that into a Plex Server I named it Merigold as I was playing through Witcher 2 and 3 at the time and Triss is legitimately the correct choice. Over the weekend that machine gave up the ghost, and while I could potentially resurrect it with a new system build… I’ve decided to move on. Another proud tradition of mine is to turn my previous gaming desktop into my new “fuck around and find out” system. Merigold was my old AMD FX-6300-based system and when I upgraded to my current i7-10700K-based system a few years ago, I left my previous x99-based i7-5820k system largely sitting there dormant.

The plan is to build this into a Linux Mint based system. Why that distro? Largely it is a case of comfort and familiarity. I’ve built up a few past laptops using it and felt good about it. In theory, I could just run a more server-ly distribution on it, but I often like to use this machine as a secondary desktop. I’ve always built my second machine as a Windows machine, so this is going to be a bit of a first for me. This is going to mean that I will be using Linux a heck of a lot more than I normally do. For decades I’ve had a Linux box as a “toy” machine, that I fiddle with for a few days and then forget about it… and by the time I need it again, I often burn it down and start from scratch. The fediverse however has immersed me more into open source culture… and I am thinking it might be time to test drive actually running one of my primary machines as Linux. I mean I will still likely run Plex on it, but I am also really interested in trying to figure out the best use of it as a remote machine given that I never actually use my second machine with a proper monitor/keyboard/mouse. Previously I had used Parsec as my remote tool of choice, but there is no Linux hosting option for that sadly. In the short term, I will probably use VNC, which I have never loved… but it is functional and easy enough to set up.

I popped in for a little bit yesterday before Diablo IV Beta came to a close and finished leveling to 25, the level cap for that test. I am still a bit “up in my feels” about what I really think about that game. I was honestly not expecting “Blizzard Does Lost Ark” and since I bounced so phenomenally hard from that game I guess I understand the dissonance that I am going through regarding that. Diablo Immortal is also somewhat of a version of that experience, and I liked it just fine because I entered into that with very low expectations. Diablo IV however had been a game I had whether or not I wanted to… been pinning my hopes on as the last chance for Blizzard to really grab me. I’ve always cared far more about the Diablo franchise than anything else that the company has put out, and slowly over the years, I have peeled away from the other franchises. I did not really want to also feel like I had moved on past Diablo as well. I mean I have a copy of it now, so I might sit and watch and see what it evolves into over time.

The experience of the Diablo IV Beta has had the effect of causing me to pour my heart and soul back into Last Epoch. This is honestly the sort of experience I was hoping Diablo IV was going to be. For all of the talk of a return to Diablo 2 from the devs… I sort of expected something that would straddle the gap between Path of Exile and Diablo 3. That is ultimately what Last Epoch feels like, a happy medium between those two games. I got my Sentinel/Paladin up to fairly high levels and while I enjoy it… I also was not really feeling it. So instead this weekend I started pushing up my Necromancer and have now almost gotten up to the same levels that I was sitting at on my Paladin. I’ve not started the Monoliths yet but am working my way through the final chapter of content that is currently in the game. I think I have effectively a fully fleshed-out “kit” at this point and it is just a matter of getting levels and getting better gear.

I’ve also been spending a fair amount of time in Guild Wars 2. Here is one of those Legendary bosses that I compared Diablo IV bosses to. I legitimately hate the Legendary rogues that spawn after you have defeated a Champion rogue. I largely stick around to help fight them because they are such pains in the butt… and I know they can wipe an entire field’s worth of unsuspecting open-world players. It always feels like I spend most of my time resurrecting other players. It is more a case that I don’t want to damn anyone to do this horrible encounter alone, as opposed to actually wanting to fight it myself. That is the weird thing about Guild Wars 2… it makes me want to take action to help other players because it seems like it is the right and proper thing to do. I have a post in me about how Guild Wars 2 is the best game that the mainstream isn’t taking seriously… but that is going to have to wait for another day. The annoying thing about Guild Wars 2 is that it is so good… that it turns players into evangelists for it… which only ends up pissing off the unindoctrinated.

So the goal for today is to finish the installation of whatever I end up naming the new box. I spent most of yesterday furiously copying files from a machine that I have not touched in two years… and probably didn’t actually need anything from… but felt like I had to back up “just in case”. I’m currently running it off the bootable image and am just about ready to do the proper install. Linux “live” images are really a godsend, especially given that they just sort of “work” now to let you copy files off an otherwise dead system. That whole world has evolved so far since the first time I installed RedHat in the late 90s.

AggroChat #427 – Potential Rubbish

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Featuring: Ammosart, Grace, Belghast, Kodra, Tamrielo, and Thalen

Hey Folks! This week Bel talks about his experiences playing Diablo IV Beta and how it is nothing as he expected and mostly Diablo the MMORPG.  From there Bel and Grace talk about their experiences playing Last Epoch multiplayer doing the endgame activity called Monoliths.  Tam talks about Star Citizen 3.18 recovering from its server woes and how fleshed out the new racing league feature is.  Kodra talks about how much he enjoys games that are themselves effectively a tutorial.  We’ve talked about Battletech by Harebrained Schemes quite a bit but we dive into an update about the current state of mods.  Then we end up going off the deep end into a discussion about the 90s internet and the things that are now lost to the sands of time.

Topics Discussed:

  • Diablo IV Beta
    • Bel Has Concerns
  • Last Epoch Endgame with Friends
    • Bel and Grace Play Monoliths Together
  • Star Citizen 3.18 Recovers
    • Racing League
  • Tutorials in Games and Tutorials as Games
  • Battletech with Mods
  • Remembering the 90s Internet

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Enjoying the Journey

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Good Morning Friends! I am not entirely certain what it is about the ritual of doing Tequatl the Sunless at server reset that I enjoy so much but it is most definitely a thing. I am honestly a bit annoyed with the time change because it pushes the “start” of my evening back an hour later than it was. There was just something about sitting down with dinner and killing a giant undead dragon as my first activity of the evening that set the tone for the rest of it. It isn’t that Tequatl or “Taco” as I occasionally call it is really that rewarding. There are much better uses of my time, but there is something about the event that I enjoy and the fact that I have managed to pull several ascended weapons from it at this point. There is also a little community of folks who run this every single night and I enjoy the vibe they bring… that is unless I get the map with the Goon Squad on it.

I’ve been working my way through the story with my Ranger and am on the second section of Living World Season 2. In theory, my excuse is to use this experience as a way of knocking out the “Return To” achievements and eventually earning myself a Legendary Amulet as a result. Essentially ANet as a way of buying time for the End of Dragons release threw in a “Living World Return” series that provides a ton of rewards along the way and a legendary item that you can use on all of your characters. It was due to some of these achievements that I was able to finish my Skyscale so quickly because completing segments gave me exactly the amount of zone currency required for one of the steps of that quest chain. I have completed all of the content in Guild Wars 2, but had done so often times out of sequence and over the course of ten years of me playing off and on.

What has been so interesting is seeing this cast of characters that I am already so engaged with… evolving into what they will eventually become. It is like I read the last chapter of the story and now can better appreciate the chapters that are leading up to it as a result. So many of these characters I did not like at all when I first met them through Living World Season 2, because I did not understand what had happened during the first Living World Season. The game just sort of threw you in the middle of something that didn’t make much sense. While I disliked Braham specifically for most of a decade, I now feel like I understand him a bit better as a character and also think that Kas is less of an airhead because I know that both Kas and Jory to some extent are dealing with a lot of shit that went down along the way while still trying to remain a strong couple.

It makes me think that at some point in the future, I should probably start a brand new character and play all of Final Fantasy XIV through from the very beginning. Now that I know where the story is going, I feel like I will better appreciate the journey. I’m not one who is negatively impacted by spoilers and quite honestly most of the time… knowing the destination makes me stop trying to second-guess every decision along the way. I can finally relax and enjoy the ride for what it is without feeling like I need to be wary of each step. I think this is part of why I have fairly regular replaying of games that meant a lot to me like Dragon Age, Mass Effect, Skyrim, Fallout, or The Witcher 3. It is the same reason why I find comfort in watching Star Wars, Dune, or Blade Runner… it is comfortable to re-experience things that once made me happy and it is something I can use as a bit of solace when I am struggling.

In more current and fresh news… I was in fact able to skip past the game-breaking bug surrounding the Lagon boss fight in Last Epoch. If you get stuck where Lagon will not summon a portal for you to take, you can just teleport to Soreth’ka in the Divine Era. This does in fact cause you to complete the quest you are on and allow you to pick up the next sequence and begin the ninth and final chapter of the game. The last chapter was pretty fun but included maybe the worst possible archetype of creation… a wizard that summons a ring of bad around him so you have to fight him in close quarters… then summons an endless string of bees for you to fight. Bees in ARPGs are just universally awful and end up doing way more damage they you would think they should.

I’ve made minimal progress in the Monolith system, but have finished the first boss and am working on unlocking the second. I am not sure what it is about the game but I’m less driven to keep going not that I have finished the story. Maybe it is that I know I will be poking my head into Diablo IV in a few minutes, or that I am really enjoying Guild Wars 2 at the moment. The monolith just doesn’t seem as “sticky” as I would like it to be. It is really fun with friends, but I sorta find it less interesting when I am running it by myself. The drop rates of gear also feel a bit fickle in that it has been probably 20 levels since I last got an upgrade. I’m just not seeing items that are worth swapping to and would require more crafting than I have forging potential available to fix. I know as I progress upwards in the monolith that I will keep seeing better and better items, but I am in this weird period where nothing useful seems to be dropping. The rewards from each monolith echo feel significantly less important when you know you are just going to be vendoring almost all of it.

I think in the test realm they must have buffed drop rates significantly because it feels like I am only getting a trickle of useful gear. Maybe it is just that I know more specifically what types of items I am after with my paladin build than I did with the necromancer. Whatever the case the game as a whole just feels less rewarding than it did in testing. I am trying not to force myself to play Last Epoch because I don’t want to ruin the experience. I might try playing something else because while I enjoy the tanky nature of the Paladin build I am running, it isn’t terribly exciting gameplay-wise. I sorta miss having my Bone Golem thrashing about. I would also like to try building something with Primalist, and if I do plan on switching classes I should probably do so before I get too deep into the monolith system since that is unlocked on a character-by-character basis and not account-wide.

In the short term however, I am going to be playing a lot of Diablo IV as I try and get used to that game, and get far enough along to unlock the wolf cub backpack. It is sort of adorable.