leveling

Farming the Witchtide

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Good Morning Folks! Yesterday was the launch of Diablo IV Season 7, and last night I rolled the Necromancer that I was planning and started leveling. If anyone is wanting to play along at home, I am mostly following this guide on Maxroll because I do not want to think about anything right now. I am not really going to worry about my gear until I hit level 60 because at this point I have effortlessly gotten to 44 without really trying. I am absolutely half-assing my way through the content and it is delightful, in large part because Season of Witchcraft is effectively the spiritual successor to Season 2. The Season of Blood as Season 2 was properly referred to was essentially peak Diablo IV for me, and the rapid recurrence of the Blood Tide events made it feel great to level.

Instead of Bloodtides… we have Headhunts which I am affectionately referring to as the Witchtide. These will spawn in four places on the map and are up for 40 minutes at a time. However these appear to be staggered so that when one ends there is always going to be another one up that you can be farming. This also means that once you complete all of the Grim Favor objectives in one area, you can bounce to a new area and start the entire process over again. This is by far the smoothest leveling experience ever and even more important… taking a death does not cause you to lose your hard earned event currency like you do in a Helltide. That said… I have not taken a death yet but you are collecting resources that you then spend to unlock Witchcraft abilities.

Part of what made the Season of Blood so great was that in addition to the blood tide events… you had a borrowed power system in the form of vampire abilities. These were gained randomly in a pick one of three scenario and it often took you quite a bit of grinding to get the set that you really wanted to use. Witchcraft abilities work so much better in that you simply get currency for doing events and then can outright purchase the ability that you actually want. Within the first hour and a half of game-play I had all five of the abilities that I wanted, and then could simply focus on leveling them up instead of acquiring new abilities. I highly suggest Aura of Siphoning for your first ability because it is essentially “What if Righteous Fire Healed You”, as you deal damage to everything around you but also gain some of that as life.

I also love that it lets me run around with a giant poison dart frog. The crossover abilities from the D3 Witchdoctor are greatly appreciated. I am sure at some point I will build something around the Firebats ability if I end up running a second character. I am pretty curious how nerfed the state of the Spiritborn ends up being from what it was during the expansion launch. Diablo IV has reached the point of light popcorn fare and I am here for it. I was having a lot of fun from the moment I dropped into game and so far that seems to have no sign of stopping. I really need to run a few Nightmare Dungeons to see how they have been buffed because Ace reported that they got a stupid amount of legendaries from them.

Kind of the crux of the Witchtide events is to spawn these headless husks, which you kill to reclaim heads at least in a narrative sense for the tree of whispers. There is also a background story happening surrounding a coven of witchdoctors that do the bidding of the tree. I have to be honest… I do not care at all about the story side of this, because really it is a loose framework that allows me to keep going out and killing more monsters that are spawning unique to this season. The core mechanical loop feels extremely rewarding, and I am curious to see how this transitions as we move into the endgame. I am sure there will still be the need to farm a lot of summoned bosses for unique drops. Ace and I learned last league that the best option was for us to hold onto everything and then meet up to amplify the number of summons we were able to do in a single sitting.

Another thing that I greatly appreciate is that they have added additional functionality to the Tree of Whispers location. This is where all of the event resources are set up, but also they changed the layout a bit and added an Obols vendor and Alchemist to essentially allow us to never leave this location. I was already setting my default teleport to the Tree of Whispers for dumping Grim Favors, but now there really is no reason to use any other location other than if you are happening to farm the Pit. I still would really like to have something akin to the player hideout from Path of Exile 1 and 2 because honestly… unless I have invited them to my group I don’t really care about other players.

Speaking of not caring about other players… I am guessing the community got the memo that running World Bosses is not really worth the effort. I killed Ashava this morning and it was just me and a Barbarian… and thankfully we managed to take down the boss without much issue. I don’t feel like I am probably too far ahead of the curve… and more that it is just a case that no one seems to care about world bosses. I said this last league, that the older content like World Bosses, Nightmare Dungeons, and Legion Events really do not feel like they are worth doing right now. Sure you can get some drops, but the amount of drops pale in comparison to just farming literally anything else. I mostly wanted to kill the world boss because I am certain that somewhere in the seasons journey there is a requirement for doing so.

By farming effectively nothing but the Witchtide, I am actually progressing pretty quickly through the Coven’s Favor track… aka the event faction for this league. Mostly this serves as a way of unlocking the various quests associated with the league which I am sure will gate some things behind them… so might as well grind it out as quickly as possible. Once I get into the endgame I am probably going to be farming content that is not the Witchtide, so it would probably be beneficial to get the faction now while I am not having to go out of my way to farm it.

All in all I feel like this is a pretty solid outing for Diablo IV. The game will still have its critics, and that is fine… I just wish they were coming from a place of legitimate gripes and not largely piling on the campaign of streamers. The raw game is in a pretty decent state at this point, and I am having quite a bit of fun. It will never be a technical experience like Path of Exile, but for big dumb fun it is pretty spectacular. I am sure I will bore of it quickly once I have finished the season journey… but not everything has to be a forever game. While I can appreciate Citizen Kane… I also really like movies where they have cool CGI and big explosions. Diablo IV is a big explosions type game, and if you can appreciate it for what it is… there is fun to be had here.

Chill Edgelord

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Morning Folks! I popped into the game for a bit this morning before sitting down to write this blog post about nothing and dinged 89 on Dark Knight. That means I am very easily going to polish off that job today probably by doing a set of Hippo Dailies and a MSQ Roulette. Then I plan on shifting my focus to Gunbreaker so that I can potentially get all of my tanks to 90 prior to the expansion and clear out even more gear. I like the concept of Dark Knight more than I actually like playing it. After level 80 it is a pretty fun class to play, but prior to about level 70… it just does not feel like I have nearly enough tools to make the process enjoyable. So this means things like MSQ Roulette are less than enjoyable because I don’t have for example a charge ability… and have very limited mitigation “oh shit” buttons.

Yesterday my friend Ace reinstalled the game, but I mostly left them alone because coming back… is “a lot”. I know each time I have returned to the game after time away… it takes me a few days of futzing before I finally get back into the rhythm of what I actually need to do. I am kinda hoping by tonight however they have sorted things out and have some modicum of goals in mind, and I can help be pocket-tank to rocket them through the Post-MSQ. Not that I intend to rush them or anything, just trying to be helpful… without also being fucking annoying about it. I know I personally hit a “give a fuck” wall when I encountered the first trial fight, and it took me half a year to get back around to engaging with it again. My goal is to help ease some of those barriers.

I warned you at the top of this post that I did not have much to talk about this morning, and I am delivering in spades. I have a problem… and that problem is constantly searching for the ultimate controller. There is part of my brain that thinks that if I ever find the ideal controller for my mammoth hands… I will finally prefer that style of play over a mouse and keyboard. I know this is a fallacy but I have ordered yet another well-reviewed controller… this time the Gulikit King Kong 3 Pro. Because I was in no rush I popped over to AliExpress to grab it and save ten bucks roughly over the Amazon price. Generally speaking, this is a thing I at least check when I buy a controller or one of my emulator consoles because they are all coming from China anyway… might as well pay the least amount for said item.

What interests me about this controller is that it is roughly the same form factor as a Nintendo Switch Pro Controller… which I dig, but comes with Hall Effect sticks that are interchangeable similar to that of an Xbox Pro controller. I also dig the Gameboy-esc color palate. China has retro nonsense on lock honestly. Of course, at some point after I have played around with it, I will report my thoughts. I linked one of the many review videos on this controller which at least piqued my interest enough to try it. One of these days though… I am going to have a massive controller sale or something because I have sooooo many.

Anyways! For a week where I worked two days… I am exhausted and looking forward to the weekend. I hope you all have a wonderful Friday and a great weekend and I will see you again when I post the AggroChat episode on Sunday. Then again I might see you sooner if you are on either Bluesky or Mastodon because I have been more active lately.

Fire Bro On Hold

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Good Morning Friends! I hope you all had a delightful weekend. I spent most of my in Last Epoch and a shocking amount of it grouped up with friends doing some multiplayer shenanigans. That is really the piece of this game that works so much better than Path of Exile… grouping with my friends does not feel needlessly punitive. In fact, if you happen to die while grouped with friends… you can res up and port back into the instance just fine. I’ve mostly shifted back to playing my Void Knight but I will talk about the reasoning for that a bit later. Kodra has come back from his trip and recently we have been trying to get him caught up and through normal monoliths. Originally my Fire Bro was an attempt to keep a character at his level… but then it was just too damned fun and I rushed through to empowered monoliths without really meaning to.

As far as my Void Knight goes, I have added a few levels but have not really made any major gear changes since I last talked about the character. I keep farming 120+ Orobyss but have had zero luck in finding another Apathy’s Maw Axe… specifically one with legendary potential and have not yet seen a Shattered Chains belt. Similarly, I’ve farmed God Hunter Argentus a number of times and have yet to see another Wings of Argentus chest-piece let alone one with legendary potential. I have levers that I can pull to keep trying for better get, but have simply not been lucky. I did find an LP1 copy of Darkstride boots but didn’t exactly get lucky on the craft, but wound up with something better than nothing. If you are curious I’ve dumped a build over on Last Epoch Tools for the current state of my character.

One thing that I had to do this weekend was create a significantly more strict loot filter. I had been using one that started out as something that came from Maxroll and that I kept tweaking. I decided I just needed to blow that away completely and start out on my own. I’m essentially hiding all normal, magic, rare, exalted, and idols and then only showing very specific stats that I care about. I have a broader rule that shifts things to pink that I specifically want to keep track of for sharding. Then I have some super specific rules for the Sceptres and Two-Handed Axes that I am looking for on both Void and Fire builds. Lastly, I have a rule to show ALL Tier 7 Exalted items, and then the one I am showing in the above screenshot in an attempt to catch any Exalted item with two Tier 6 affixes. This was made more important since I am just about to ding Rank 8 with Circle of Fortune where EVERY Rare drop will have a 25% chance of upgrading into an Exalted.

As for Fire Bro…. in truth right now in its current state, this build is just not good enough. I was able to get all the way to Empowered Monoliths… with some help from Ace in killing Elder Gaspar. However in Empowered Monoliths I either need more damage or more survival… because the combination of what I currently have is simply not good enough. I could tweak this build in a number of ways but I was trying to stay pure to the original goal of using the Torch and lighting everything on fire. I want to spend some time pouring over the character sheet and playing with it a bit in Last Epoch Tools to see if I can find a way forward either through gearing or respeccing points. I need to spend some time looking at other ignite builds to see how they are working and what sort of gearing they are going for. I’ve not given up… I just would rather focus on my Void Knight for the time being.

I also have a bunch of alts waiting in the wings that I am probably going to level a bit as well. I have a Falconer, Bleed Wolves Beastmaster, Flame Reave Spellblade, and a character that I plan on trying to yolo my way into a Fire Damage Earthquake Shaman build. Still having a heck of a lot of fun with this game and trying out new characters that I have not played before.

Chieftain Go Boom

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Well friends with the help of my friend Eliyon, we figured out where I fell off the Main Story Quest. It does not in fact end at Valdrakken but instead spins off with a few quests inside of the city, that then lead out into what is the fourth zone of the game Thaldraszus. So I have a bit more questing to go before I can wrap things up and finish out the story… and then proceed onto gearing through World Quests. I remember having this issue as well with Shadowlands where I dinged the new level cap and still had one and a half zones to complete before I could join the open-world “reindeer games”. I remember it was during this chasm that my friend Ace bounced from Shadowlands never to return, so I can’t say this is a super great design decision. It would be nice if World Quests just unlocked whenever you hit level 70 no matter how far you were progressed in the story.

Feeling somewhat deflated I spent most of my evening in Path of Exile. I had converted my attempt at a Volcanic Fissure of Snaking Chieftain over to Righteous Fire and so far… I think this might be the closest to the glory that was Juggernaut Righteous Fire. If you are so inclined here is a POB of where I am currently. The thing is the Chieftain comes with a bunch of really nice perks for Righteous Fire, some of which I had overlooked or at least written off as less good than they actually are. Namely Ramako, Sun’s Light is something that I had skipped on my previous attempts at an RF Chieftain during the Blast from the Past league, and this was a mistake. You spend a surprising amount of time “stationary” as Righteous Fire and if you frostblink from pack to pack you can maintain this “stationary” state. All of that time everything just has -20 Fire Resistance which seems to override all other modifiers and while in theory you can get a resistance much lower than that… this just always works.

This allows me to run a curse that isn’t either Flammability or Elemental Weakness and have it feel like I am double cursing without needing to fiddle with the nonsense that is involved in making that happen. Of the other options, I went with Punishment which causes cursed enemies to take more damage when on low life… meaning that things die faster and hopefully proc Hinekora, Death’s Fury and clearing the entire damned screen. I went Primalist with the hope of eventually using charms to get more chance to explode but for the moment I am running two Percent Strength and Life Regeneration Rate modifier charms. In a perfect world, I would find something that gave me explode and life or regen but I will have to keep fishing in the forest to make that happen. I’ve also still never seen the ACTUAL King in the Mists fight so none of my characters have unlocked their final doodads.

My defenses are also extremely solid and quite honestly… now that I have equipped a Lightning Coil I don’t feel that much less tanky than the Juggernaut version did. What I bring to the table is roughly 25k armor, almost 5000 life, 2500 life regeneration, 90% to all elemental resistances, and 50% of all physical damage is taken as lightning damage… as well as 30% crit damage reduction and some things to limit damage over time which I don’t believe the Lightning Coil applies to. Now that I have the lightning coil I am going to try my hand at juicing some T16 maps and see how that goes. Essentially the gameplay is a bit odd in that you are trying to kill enough small stuff so that you proc an explosion and then the entire screen around you evaporates before moving on to the next big pack. It feels better than it sounds.

All told it is fun to map on albeit a bit slower than Lightning Arrow. Lately, I have been alternating between Cemetary and Tropical Island because both are fairly enjoyable maps and relatively open. I should run some of the crappier and less bow-friendly T16s that I have rotting in my bank and see how that goes. Mostly right now I need a good deal more levels. I am working on getting a Fan the Flames gem up and running while trying to roll a slightly better version. If this works like I think it will… my ignites will proliferate among the packs of things that I am killing, and then also “proliferate” again when one of those things dies thanks to Berek’s Respite. If nothing else this should be fun as hell to watch happening. If I could somehow manage to keep my resistance high enough… I would love to have a set of Maven’s boots as well to only further add to the nonsense explosions.

One of the things that has gotten me down in Path of Exile lately is the frustration of trying to link things. Essentially I had a 900 DPS bow that I was working on getting linked, a Lightning Coil in RF colors, and more recently I finally got a Fourth Vow to drop which I am trying to link for my Boneshatter build. After spending about 1000 fusings trying to get the Bow linked, this morning I had gathered up another hundred or so and managed to get both the bow and lightning coil to six links. That alone has helped increase my enjoyment of the league. I still do not love being isolated from the trade environment, but finally getting some of the things I needed up and running is a significant improvement.