Last Epoch

A Very ARPG Year

by

Good Morning Friends! I spent a bit of time yesterday setting up my bookwyrm profile and loading the books that I have already read this year into it. So far I dig it. Unlike Good Reads it does appear to be an entirely manual process. This morning for example I updated my progress in The Exiled Fleet and it just required me to plug in a page number that I was sitting on. As a result, I am probably not really going to be updating progress that often and simply adding a book when I start reading it and then marking it as read, and writing some general comments about my experience. The other aspect of the tool that I want to explore a bit more is using it as a cache of books that I want to read. Libby does not exactly have the best discovery engine, so my goal is to use the “To Read” section as a sort of memory-jogging mechanism when I find I am looking for something new to consume.

What I had feared might happen… has happened. I am around 60% through The Exiled Fleet and my hold for the last Dresden novel has come open. Essentially as I understand it I have three days from the time of receiving the notice to claim it or else the book goes to the next person in line and I keep my “next in line” spot. My hope is that I can push through the novel I am currently reading in the next few days so that I can go ahead and claim my spot and go back to the gaming/audiobook nonsense that I enjoy so greatly. This is the part of the library system that I do not love… is the inherent pressure of trying to churn through something in a specific amount of time. As a result last night I spend most of the evening reading rather than gaming, which was its own sort of charming. My wife is admittedly a bit flabbergasted by this sudden transformation because reading all night is her jam, not necessarily mine.

That is not to say I am doing zero gaming. I am starting to poke my head back into Guild Wars 2 a bit, because I’ve been craving that sort of gameplay. I seem to be very much in this ARPG/Action MMO mindset right now and after coming from Path of Exile, I have to admit Lord of the Rings Online was a little slow for my tastes right now. I am easing back into Guild Wars 2 by spending some time doing the world boss train. I think ultimately however I will pick up and start working on the main/expansion stories with my Ranger. I am not sure what shifted mentally but I just started enjoying running around with my Ranger a bit more than I did my Necromancer.

I’ve also been playing a bit more Last Epoch and currently am really enjoying the Acolyte class which will eventually become a Necromancer. After decades of avoiding casters like the plague… which admittedly is probably a defunct saying given that we had a plague and no one avoided it… I actually find that I enjoy casters quite a bit these days. Most of the classes that I have played in Path of Exile ultimately end up being some sort of a caster given that melee is just not great there. While I enjoyed my Paladin character in Last Epoch, I think I am enjoying being a Necromancer a bit more. With the upcoming Multiplayer release, I figured it was time for me to finally get a character to the game’s endgame. I don’t think Last Epoch will be anywhere near as rich as Path of Exile but I am hoping it will be a better “with friends” experience.

I do not exactly feel great playing Blizzard games right now. I know that there have been significant changes inside of the company, but so long as Kotick still profits from it… I feel more than a little dirty spending time on those games. That said… I will be pausing my prohibition for a bit and diving into Diablo III Season 28 soon. It looks fucking amazing and this may be the last new season we get for a while, given that Diablo IV will be launching before we see another season. I figure a lot of the live team currently supporting Diablo III will end up getting transitioned. Mostly I am really interested in the Altar of rites which is a system where you sacrifice various things and get permanent account-wide buffs. Some of these give you significant amounts of power and others are just quality of life like the ability for your pets to pick up and salvage white, blue, and yellow items. I am deeply interested in this season, and in theory… once it has run its course I will have either Multiplayer in Last Epoch or another Path of Exile league to focus on.

Basically, it feels like this is going to be a very ARPG year for me. I knew at some point I would be playing Jedi Survivor but with it being bumped back by another month yesterday that gives me a bit more wiggle room to fully dive into this nonsense.

Going Warlord

by

I am getting a bit of a late start this morning, and also contemplated just not blogging at all. It has been one of those days. I usually exit the holidays in “turtle mode”, where I have pulled my head up into my shell and largely ignore the world. Generally speaking, this is brought on by the fact that traditionally I tend to spend my large blocks of free time over the break diving into single-player games. However, I find myself in a similar funk and have spent most of my time playing Path of Exile, which is ostensibly a multiplayer game. I think the key difference is that other than trading and sharing things through the guild stash, I very much play the game in a single-player manner. I’ve also been spending my gaming time listening to Audiobooks, which are also largely a solo activity where I spend most of my time focused on the book rather than the game. In order to do this successfully I need a game that I have largely committed to muscle memory, which often means either some sort of well-trod MMORPG or an ARPG.

I know I said yesterday that I thought I was done with my Seismic Saboteur experiment… but instead, I largely focused on playing it last night and have gotten to the blood aqueducts in Act 9. I’ve yet to successfully do the second Labyrinth, largely because I still have significant survival issues. I just do not know how to survive from a pure evasion build, to be honest. I am used to Armor, Regen, and Energy Shield, and Evasion always feels exceptionally squishy. My last attempt frustrated me so completely because I managed to die in the third trial of Labyrinth, probably moments away from a victory. I decided to put on some levels and as a result, I have been abusing the excellent layout of the blood aqueducts in order to do this. Considering I have gotten four Tabula Rasas this league, it isn’t like I need another one… but I have already picked up a handful more Humility cards.

A few days ago I put a call out on Mastodon for folks to suggest ARPGs, and one that I have seen pop up multiple times is Grim Dawn. I’ve actually played a lot of this game, but never really got to the point where the endgame actually begins. As a result, I have created a fresh character and am going down the Soldier path once again. I just got to the point where I could choose my second class and went with Oathkeeper which makes me a Warlord now in the game’s mastery system. I am hoping to go for something akin to the Diablo 3 Crusader in feel. Overall I am easing back into the game but I remember very little of how anything worked mechanically. I know there are a ton of crafting materials and I largely just keep banking them for some point in the future when I might need them.

I’ve also poked my head back into Last Epoch because they keep easing closer to the release of multiplayer. There is a beta event scheduled for the end of this month, with a larger test happening in early February and the intended launch of the feature in March. I have a lot of hope that this game is going to feel good as a multiplayer experience. In the meantime, however, I would like to get at least one character up to endgame levels so that I can see if there is even an endgame that I might enjoy there. My highest character currently is in my mid-20s, so I need to devote a bit more time to pushing that up. What I have read of the end game makes it sound interesting, and sort of a blend of maps from Path of Exile and Rifts from Diablo III. My biggest hope is that playing with friends actually feels good rather than a punitive mess as it does in Path of Exile.

I would also like to really give Wolcen another shot, after having been away from it for a few years. I have no clue if that game evolved at all. I remember specifically the core problem was that it had some pretty atrocious net code, and playing with friends meant that the entire experience was a laggy mess. I think I would also like to start fresh and see the entire game as it stands today, rather than trying to pick up where I left off not remembering how I even got there. I might even do a bit of research into what constitutes a viable build in that game so that I can give it the best possible shot. I keep looking for a good replacement for Diablo III, when none of them really give me the sort of experience that I have been craving. I could of course just play Diablo III, but I still do not feel extremely comfortable giving Blizzard the time of day right now.

Lastly, I would really like to slide back into Guild Wars 2, which feels deeply ARPG adjacent. It has always felt more like a game in the lineage of Diablo than a game in the lineage of Everquest for me. I never finished Living World Season 1, and I would like to do that. I would also like to make progress on my Skyscale because I feel like completing that would greatly improve my long-term enjoyment of the game. I need to do something other than Tequatl, even though I love that fight so much. I’ve fallen into the rut of logging in, doing a few world bosses, and logging back out. Without a wealth of stories to rely on, I sort of lost focus. I guess in theory I could start from scratch on my Ranger, because I’ve not done ANY of the living world stories on that character, and it tends to be who I spend most of my time on these days.

I find myself still very cemented to the ARPG style of gameplay regardless of the form it takes. I have plenty of long-term goals, I just need to focus on completing some of them. I might be in the process of slowly winding down this league in Path of Exile. I should probably at least buy the maps that I am missing and try and finish the last few normal mode atlas bosses before I leave.