MMORPG

Hunting Aul

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Friends… I thought this would be the week that I started to distance myself from Path of Exile. Between adventures in Grim Dawn and starting to fiddle around with Lord of the Rings Online, I expected to dial back my gameplay. Yet last night I was back on my bullshit happily plugging away at the same stuff I have been plugging away at for a while now. I guess the heart wants what the heart wants, and my heart is seemingly not quite done with Path of Exile. My main strategy continues to be running maps on my Fire Summon Raging Spirits Necromancer… largely because I don’t care about her level… and then once I have filled up my Sulphite going back down into delve and hunting for the last rare thing that I have not seen… Aul. I think maybe once I finally fight the Crystal King this will lose some of its stickiness for me but I really want to see that encounter at least once.

I wish there was a good gauge numerically on how far to the left or right of the main column I have gone, similar to a depth reading. Essentially I seem to be moving around in a band between 150 and 170 in depth and am six or seven screens away from the central column at this point. I found a very tasty Abyssal City last night as well as a nearby Primeval Ruins but sadly no boss nodes in either. I think I have fought the Vaal boss three times, and the Abyssal boss twice… but have yet to see Aul even though I am poking around in the range where it is reported to find those nodes. I need to dive a bit deeper, but you are sorta at the mercy of the map when it comes to how you can travel. As I dive down I keep hitting dead ends and having to backtrack my way up to higher depths.

One thing I have to say about Delve City farming is that you end up with a truly staggering number of maps. You can see for some tiers I am sitting on over 100 maps and a large chunk of these are coming from the cartographer’s chests that I am pretty regularly finding one or more of in each city node. I currently have Primordial Blocks as my favorite map, not necessarily because I love the layout, but because I am trying to get the hideout to spawn in it so I can collect that for my account. For whatever reason, Primordial Blocks seem to have a higher-than-average spawn rate of Metamorph as well, and as such, I can use it to collect parts. Granted this could just be me running this map over and over and my Atlas tree triggering, but even before I specced into Metamorph I seemed to get that mechanic here more often than not.

Speaking of Metamorph, it continues to pay off nicely. I quietly stockpile body parts and then run through several metamorph spawns at once whenever I get a moment. If I stack currency nodes in every body part, it seems to often produce Divine and Exalted Orbs. This isn’t exactly going to win any divines per hour races, but it is a nice residual impact of me doing the things that I was already going to do in order to fuel my delve addiction. At some point, I am going to need to spend some time selling off undesirable body parts in an attempt to get the ones I am missing because a few of the slots in my metamorph tab are filling up rapidly. That is the most annoying thing about this mechanic is that the body parts are heavily skewed toward a few specific slots. For me, at least the most common part is Heart and Brain and the least common are the Lungs and Eyes. You can sell 3 body parts for a random part, so I need to cull Hearts and Brains in an attempt to fill the other slots as I am completely out of eyes at the moment.

Lastly here is a bonus image of sleepy cats. I wasn’t sure where else to fit this one in, and I know it is awful quality. Essentially the other night my wife snapped a quick photo in the dark because she knew I would not believe her. This is Josie snuggling with Gracie, and this is important because we have never really had cats that would actively snuggle with each other. I am not sure if Josie was even aware that Gracie was there or not, but I did what I could to try and enhance the image so you could see more than a blurry mess. Gracie is damned determined that everyone must love her, and she adores her big sister so I am happy to see this. I noticed Gracie grooming Josie the other day, but I figured it was a fluke.

I hope you are having a most excellent week, and we will see if I actually do something other than Path of Exile.

Harrow the Ninth

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Good Morning Friends! I opted to take yesterday off because for me it was a holiday and I was off work, and also I was feeling like complete shit. I am either fighting off allergies turned asthma attack, or I have picked up something… but for the latter, I’ve not really been around anyone to catch anything. Over the weekend I finished up my second book from the Libby App, and it was a wild ride. I think last I said I had started Skin Game by Jim Butcher, but I abruptly paused that because my library hold came up on the next novel in the Locked Tomb series. Harrow The Ninth was a hard book to get through, because it has you questioning the events of the first novel… which ended on a bit of a frustrating cliffhanger. During at least the first fourth of the novel, I was going back and forth about whether or not Tamsyn Muir had a fucking clue what they were doing with this story. Thankfully it paid off in the end and the story that was woven between the two tales is extremely good.

Essentially between the two novels, there is a character perspective shift, from the very likable Gideon Nav to the very unlikeable Harrowhark Nonagesimus. It feels like a massive “bait and switch” at the end of the first book and the beginning of the second book, which knocks the reader off balance. However, I would assume this was all on purpose to make you now start to deeply care about Harrow and move her from the Villain column more solidly into the hero column. Now I just want to read the next one the sequence, Nona the Ninth… but the Libby App tells me it is going to be about a six-week wait. Granted the last book told me it would be a four-week wait and that is why I had started Skin Game, but my hold suddenly came available after about a week. I figure I will finish Skin Game and evaluate where I am at that point, but I might end up just buying this next book so I can consume it faster.

In other random events this weekend, it appears that Tam and a few others have been screwing around in Lord of the Rings Online. I opted to go ahead and install the game and start a brand new character, a Guardian named Belglaive on Landroval. Immediately stepping into this game feels like I went back two decades in MMORPG design, which has its ups and downs. I opted to start the recently released new character starter experience, and honestly… I think I like the Shadows of Angmar option a bit better. This is really slow-paced and I feel like I am completely disconnected from the rest of the game at the moment. With the previous experience, I could at least rush to Bree and train professions, and I guess in theory I can probably do that now… but I am trying to follow the breadcrumbs that are laid out in front of me. All told though I am enjoying myself in what feels like an anachronistic jaunt into MMORPG gaming.

In Path of Exile, I spent a bit more money… swapped out some gems for Awakened versions, and got my flasks in order so that now I am much tankier even than I was before. Righteous Fire is still really bad at bossing, and as such, I have continued trying to tweak my Fire SRS Necromancer to set it up as my bossing character. In the grand scheme of things it works… most of the time. I did a Maven Invitation last night and wrecked it as the Necro, something that I would have struggled at length on the Juggernaut. I’ve done several invitations, but it just takes forever whereas on the Necro I kept a pretty good pace as the new bosses were being released. I could pour some more funds into the character and improve this I am certain. I think my short-term goal is to keep getting levels on the Juggernaut, and I would really love to hit level 100 this season.

I officially have more currency than I have ever had before in Path of Exile. That catch is it isn’t mine. Thalen lucked into an Unrequited Love card, that at the time was going for 18 Divine Orbs. However since he got it, and when he decided to have me sell it… the price dropped considerably. I originally priced it at 18, hoping the price would go back up but in the meantime, a number of 17 Divine cards have created this price barrier that I knew we would not be breaking anytime soon. I priced it at 16.5 Divines and within moments had sold it. Now I am essentially acting as a concierge broker and Thalen sends me a link to something he wants, and I attempt to acquire it for him. I’ve set aside all of his currency and my purchases from it in a stash tab to keep it separate from everything else. This also allows me to just ignore that tab when running Exilence to see if I have any other high-value items that I should be trying to sell.

I made a bit more progress in Grim Dawn on the Soldier/Oathkeeper combination and I have to say… I am not sure if I like the build at all. I am not really enjoying myself that much, so I might fall back on playing my original level 42 Warder character which is Soldier/Shaman. I also need to try some ranged and caster options because at the moment I am just not feeling the game. I feel way more squishy than I want to feel, so I either need to kill things much faster or have better layers of defense. Unfortunately, it is nowhere near as active of a community as say Path of Exile, and while there is a build guide website it is much harder to gauge how successful a given build is going to be. Admittedly that is my lack of knowledge of the game because I am sure if you are already well indoctrinated into Grim Dawn it would be fine.

Anyways I hope you all had a most excellent weekend, and now if I can just kick this crud life would be grand. As is often the case I have way too many gaming irons in the fire at the moment. It is a much better problem to have than languishing in that “nothing I want to play” feeling.

Going Warlord

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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.

Surprise Suckerpunch

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The start of a new Path of Exile season overlapping with the holiday break has really shifted up the dynamic for what the beginning of a new year looks like on Tales of the Aggronaut. Generally speaking the last few weeks of one year and the first few weeks of the following year are filled with a lot of posts navel-gazing about my thoughts about the year coming to a close and my hopes for the next. I’ve just not really been in the headspace to do much forecasting of what is on the horizon, and quite honestly now that I have abandoned Twitter I am not nearly as connected to the zeitgeist and the constant thrum of new releases. I’ve been weirdly comfortable just doing my own thing in my own corner and if the world is interested in tuning in… awesome. If not however I am going to keep doing my nonsense regardless.

This means that other than time spent in Alpha and Beta, I completely missed the launch of Dragonflight. While I saw bits and pieces of it flashing across my feed in Mastodon, it was not nearly as constant and imperative that I be doing the thing along with everyone else. Similarly, I am seeing flashes of the 6.3 patch that landed in Final Fantasy XIV, but it is nowhere near as constant as it would have been if I were active on Twitter. My engagement with FFXIV seems to be limited to logging in every four or five days and putting in yet another bid on a house that I won’t win. I think that if I do ever win a housing plot… it will probably signal my re-engagement with that game in a large way.

There was a patch last night in Path of Exile, and during it, I dusted off Grim Dawn and gave it a bit of a spin. It has been a few years since I last played it, and admittedly last night I mostly fiddled with keybinds because I have “specific preferences”. I’ve never made it through the campaign and seen the endgame and would really like to do this. Mostly I want to know what the multiplayer feels like once you are in content designed for multiple players. When I last played trying to do the campaign with another person was a bit of misery, because it very clearly was not designed for more than one person. I am going with a tanky character and have been doing a little bit of research on how best to build that, which should shock no one. I remember really liking the vibe of this game, and while the crafting system confused me at the time… I think after having assimilated to Path of Exile it should seem much easier.

Part of why I am hunting for another ARPG experience is that I am still at odds with actively playing Blizzard games while Bobby Kotick still has his thumb on that company. Then there is Path of Exile which I love for a single-player experience, but feels weirdly punitive when it comes to playing with other folks. This week my good friend Ace largely checked out of the league, because we found out the hard way that if your Animate Guardian dies… you lose all of the gear you equipped it with. It is stupid decisions like that which really harm Path of Exile as a long-term experience. The game is oddly hostile toward its players and so much of your success or failure is that you “bet” on the right build at the start of the league. For Ace, this was a third strike, and as a result, just too much frustration to recover from during this league. The first strike was that the Dark Pact Necromancer really did not pan out as well as it sounded like it would. The second strike was that Summon Raging Spirits was great, but the Poison variant became the flavor of the month and elevated the prices to make it unaffordable. Losing the Animated Guardian and having to buy admittedly a bunch of cheap uniques to equip it again… seemed a bit futile knowing that it could happen again in the future.

I completely understand what they are going through, because last league… I came precariously close to just saying fuck it and abandoning my character entirely. It was only through sheer dumb stubbornness that I made my way through all 115 Atlas nodes, and after completing that… I was largely done with the league. Ace made a comment that really hit home with me and put it all into perspective. Ultimately with POE you never really reach a point where you can have chill interaction with the game that also feels like it is moving your character forward. You spend so much time making incremental progress on levels after 90… that can then be wiped out completely by one or two deaths. You feel like you are stuck in this rut of not really having anything you can do that is enjoyable without feeling like the sword of Damocles is hanging precariously above your head at all times. Last night I took the first death on my Righteous Fire Juggernaut that I had in weeks… and it felt completely random and at the same time, I have no understanding of WHY I died. I just suddenly took way more damage than I ever do and fell over.

I’ve started a number of side projects this league and I am not entirely certain how I feel about any of them. Right now my Seismic Trap Saboteur feels like it is in this awkward pubescent phase of not quite being able to shift to using the abilities that will ultimately be the hallmark of the build. I need to knock out the first two Labyrinths but also feel ungodly squishy most of the time. This is a familiar side effect of leveling while using a Tabula Rasa, and honestly, I am beginning to think that item does more harm than it is worth. This is the second attempt at using one to jump-start a class and they feel like they begin to fall apart a bit around the first death of Kitava. I could pour resources into making it work, but also… I am not sure if I care enough yet to do that.

I wish I was more motivated by currency, because if that were my ultimate gauge of success then I would say I am doing grand. According to Exilence I am up roughly 3000 chaos since the last snapshot I took on Monday. I’ve had a large number of higher ticket items start moving, as well as a constant flow of resonators from my delve excursions. So I have resources that I could pour into fixing builds… but I am not entirely certain there will ever be a place I reach where everything feels amazing. It seems like Path of Exile is the sort of game that is always going to be pulling the rug out from under you when you feel like you reach solid ground. The more you engage with the game, the more it feels like there is another sucker punch waiting around the corner.

I don’t think I will ever reach a place of complete happiness with this game. I have moments of excitement and joy, followed by a pound of frustration being dumped in my lap. This is in part why I don’t try and get people to play this game like I do others. I enjoy myself but also sorta feel like I should maybe be playing something else after awhile.