Featuring: Ace, AmmosArt, Ashgar, Belghast, Kodra, and Tamrielo
Good Morning Folks! We are running things a bit differently this year. Due to unforeseen reasons, Thalen could not join us this week. As such, we paused our games of the year show to record a brief intermission show. This week, we talked about Star Citizen, Pokémon Legends Z-A, Hytale, OrcaCon, Starfinder, Void Miner, the Amazing World of Retro Handhelds, and Kodra finally enjoying Path of Exile II. We ran a bit longer than normal and, as such, cut the show a bit more abruptly than usual. Pretty packed show for being something we pulled together on the spur of the moment, and also bumped a bunch of topics for our show after we wrap the games of the year.
Good Morning Folks. I hope you had a most wonderful extended holiday weekend. I had to work on Friday, which interrupted an otherwise solid weekend. My neighbor down the street also lost their mother and I have been helping out with some photo editing and stuff to prepare for the eventual memorial service. As far as gaming goes I spent a good chunk of Saturday grinding out things in Destiny Rising. We had a large cluster of potential strongholds and I ran all three accounts trying to utilize their map turns to unlock them. We got three and then ran them as a group on Sunday morning. The other focus of grinding was to finish out the sparrow event so that I would be caught up and ready for the next New Years event that starts in a few days. I unlocked the special sparrow and discovered that you can put stickers on your sparrows… and decorated my snowmobile with a sticker of the cutest couple Beleaguered Gwynn and a very sleepy Attal.
Other than that I have worked on my Jaren a bit and unlocked Gold Medal Certification, pushing him up into the hierarchy of my characters. This is one of those characters that grew on me the longer that I had him. Effectively for me he is sort of a better version of Ning Fei, because he has the same speed boost tech but then a whole kit that makes body shots behave like precision shots. This means I can take him into any encounter with precision shinkas without having to play a fiddly sniper character. Other than that I also finally got off my ass and ran a Legendary Mission with Wolf so that I could push him up to gold medal certification as well, which has now officially unlocked the last two ranks of perks. Any ascension points after this is just gravy because everything is now unlocked that can be unlocked currently.
The next banner has been announced and it is a bit of a dud. They are introducing an alternate universe version of Kabr, likely the one that dies in the Vault of Glass in the Destiny 1/2 timeline. As a result he has a completely different kit which I believe is Scout Rifle and Linear Fusion rifle. The thing is… I already have precision characters that I like… namely Umeko and more importantly Helhest. We are supposed to be getting a free copy of this character, so as a result it is HIGHLY unlikely that I spend any pulls on this banner. I will just bank them up and save them for a future banner. There is also nothing particularly special about the 4 stars on this banner either. Why they keep putting Ikora on these banners is beyond me, because feels like four in a row or something dumb like that. I wouldn’t mind more copies of Attal, but very much not a priority for me since she also comes from the blue perm banner.
I am not sure if I talked about it here or not, but I now have all four ascendancies unlocked on the Bear Shaman. Instead of going down the Furious Wellspring path, I opted instead just to pick up two nodes that were useful on their own right, but did not significantly tweak the way the character performed. If I had gone down the furious wellspring path, I would have likely needed to do way more gear swapping to include a Crown of Eyes to make the Druidic Champion ascendancy notable pay off. I’ve already struggled with resistances a bit and the thought of losing another slot and with it even more armor… is a bit rough. What makes it even worse though is that the Crown has -10% Fire Resistance that I do not believe can be removed by any method. It is probably the more powerful path but I like Turning of the Seasons for free exposure in presence range, and Wisdom of the Maji for essentially extra life and mana on all of my sockets.
I did do a bunch of gear swapping though to fit in a Defiance of Destiny. I picked up a cheap one with only 21% life recovery on it… which I then boosted to 25% with catalysts. This tiny bit of defiance effect was more than enough to effectively make my build feel immortal now for mapping. When you combine this with the physical damage shifting of Cloak of Flame and then combine that with Elemental Damage soaked by armor… it feels like no amount of damage is really that big of a deal for long. I am now putting more points into life regeneration on the tree since I feel like I deal more than enough damage when I go try hard and push all of my buttons. Simply bouncing around the map with molten crash is more than enough damage to comfortable clear all t15 waystones and I am sure t16s even thought I have yet to do one of those. I think really the only upgrade that I might focus on now is trying to get a new version of Fury of the King with a level 19 or 20 copy of Molten Crash in it.
I spent a decent chunk of last night trying to unlock these two mansions that are showing on the map. I think these nodes might be bugged because while I found what feels like more than enough stones in the surrounding maps, the pathways to either of these never seem to unlock. I did find a weird bug though, where because I failed one of the maps with a stone in it… it made EVERY subsequent map that unlocked by clearing one of the other maps… show up as though I had failed it, and not allow me to use tablets on it. Essentially when you are doing this thing where you are chasing stones, it can cause new nodes to appear on your atlas until you eventually uncover three stones and unlock the hidden pathway into the mansions. These nodes however appear to be imprinted based on the first one, so failing one, means you fail all of them. There are still a handful of nodes that MIGHT have stones in them, so I might as well burn through those and see if I can unlock both of these.
I’m also finally starting to try and care about the Vaal Temple. Apparently if you set it up correctly you can use it to print currency, but as Mathil says in a video that he released this morning… that is just the path to disappointment. Trying to compare your own drops, to an edited demo reel of the highest juiced content is always going to feel bad. Ultimately I arrive at this point every league where I have more than enough currency to do anything that I actually care to do with it. I’ve had decked out “Mageblood” characters and I did not enjoy them any more than I do my characters that I push just to the point of being functional. Sure having a headhunter for example is a lot of fun, but only if you also have a character build that can make the best use of it. I’ve learned that I don’t really love the blaster archetype character templates and instead like the quirkier builds that are way more tanky.
By not desensitizing myself… I can also still enjoy drops like this. Sure those exalted orbs have little value against he Divine Orb but it still feels nice when you see a bunch drop at once. Path of Exile 1 and 2 are the sort of games where you have to make your own fun. I am having a lot of fun with my Demon Fire Bear that runs amok bouncing all over the place, and that is good enough for me. However at some point today I need to stop avoiding the things that I don’t want to deal with… like the filament jam that I have in my AMS unit. I also need to spend some time properly setting up the hobby area in the other office now that I have most of the parts either printed or delivered and ready to go. I got a big self healing cutting mat yesterday so I need to clean off the existing area and start setting things up, and then figure out if I want to order one of those magnifying lamps or not.
Anyways. I hope you have a most wonderful week. I have to work today and tomorrow before being off weds… and having to work thurs and friday. Hopefully you were wiser and took most of the time off.
Hey Folks! It is that weird time between holidays, and we are down about half of our folks for various reasons. We push forward and record a pretty focused show around a few topics. We start off discussing Q-Up, a game that effectively has a lot of things to say about League of Legends, and also discuss other games like Rabbit and Steel that are themselves commentaries on other games. From there, Kodra takes Bel to task about Path of Exile II, and mostly how the game seemingly has no interest in making sure you can beat Act 1 with any build and player experimentation. Thalen has been back in Warframe and attempts to recruit us all to the fold, and honestly… it is working. Lastly, we wrap the show with some discussion about the genre that evolved out of MMORPGs… where the games are far less massive, but still sort of feel like they are a multiplayer experience in spite of only focusing on a handful of players.
Topics Discussed:
Q-Up
Path of Exile II Still Uninterested in Experimentation
Good Morning Folks. Happy Day After Christmas or as my friend Ace refers to it… Super Xmas, aka the day that you get to chill out after the hustle and bustle of the holiday. I am working today because I did not take my two weeks off like I normally do. That was a thing I mostly did to spend time with my spouse, but now that she has passed… there just didn’t really seem like much of a reason to do it. That and a lot of the folks who report to me have younger kids and I wanted to make sure they could take time off. Other than a barrage of texts and calls I mostly spent the day with my folks. I snapped a photo of my high school car that is sitting there dying a slow death to rust. I kind of wish they had sold it or given it away rather than just letting it sit here and rot. The holiday was weird, and I did not break down like I thought I might. I think more than anything I just feel hollow and numb right now. In general that is my default mode of operation, because life just doesn’t feel like it really has much meaning without my wife. I am trying to find meaning in hobbies… but I will be honest it is hard to find much zest in anything I do. I am largely going through the motions.
One of the dumb things that I gifted my mom was this Gingerbread Star Destroyer that I printed out. Star Wars was always a massive thing in my life, and I will be honest… it was more something pushed by my folks after a point than by me. I think my mom honestly got into the whole search for figures as much as I did, and has always been a big fan of the movies. This print was too cute not to make one, and I even ordered some tan filament just to print it out. I was there most of the day yesterday and while I intended to arrive around 10ish… I made far better time than expected and got there around 9:30. The dynamic that feels the weirdest is when it comes to my inlaws. Like I called my father-in-law that evening and the way he talked it was like he was expecting me to come down for the day or something. I know that they need me around because it is a connection that they have to my wife… but also I have my own family. I do need to take a weekend and go down and spend it with them, but that whole relationship was always awkward. Her mom on the other hand, was super happy to get a call from me and is always chill about our interactions.
I guess while we are talking about 3d printed stuff, this is my next project. Essentially I have bunch of Lego Mini-Figures and I never really had a great way of displaying them. For awhile I was hooked on the blind bags and this is a really cool grand stand that I am printing out a part at a time that will in theory hold them. I am not sure if I will need more than one of these but for the time being this should be a good start. It is apparently scaled to fit a kallax shelving unit. I have this plan in the livingroom to erect a few lighted storage cabinets and in theory the minifigs will go in there. I need to get rid of a few things before I do this however. More pressing project is to clear off the table that I plan on setting up the paint shelves and get those moved into the house. I also need to order the paint sets, but have been putting that off because it will be a big chunk of cash outlay. I am getting to the point though where be it miniatures or things that I am painting that I have printed out… I need some way of painting things soonish.
Over in Path of Exile II, I have been poking around with a few different alt builds. The first being patterened off of the build that is the most meta thing right now, which is poison burst arrows pathfinder. This is essentially the thing that Fubgun is using to farm content, and while powerful…. it isn’t really my jam. I am not sure what it is about it but the playstyle just doesn’t feel good. I’ve never really been that big of a fan of poison builds, and this one essentially uses a one two playstyle of laying down toxic growth pods and then using poison burst arrows to trigger them. Mechanically it just feels a bit more fiddly than I want it to feel. Lightning Arrow as an abiltiy feels way better, but sadly it ate a bunch of nerfs. My favorite bow attacks are the ones that abuse the various ice explosion mechanics, but I think they are also nerfed. Mostly I made it to Act III, and could continue to push forward… but was just not feeling it.
Instead I rolled a new character last night and plan on going explosive grenade witchhunter for it. I am not sure what it is about the playstyle but this just feels better. I guess I like things exploding more than them withering and dying to poison damage. I’ve said it before, but given my druthers if I had to choose an element, I am almost always going to choose fire damage. I like watching things explode, and once you reduce the delay on explosive grenades it feels really good. I have no clue how much I will play it, because in truth I am still having fun with the druid. I just need a break from it occasionally. I should probably be popping back into Path of Exile 1 though and chipping away at challenges, either that or diving back into Guild Wars 1 or Warframe and progressing those. Path of Exile games in general though are just really good for audiobook time, and that is mostly what I did last night.
As far as my Druid goes, I have taken down Kulemak and Xesht and am working on farming up the splinters for King in the Mists and Olroth so I can progress those league mechanics. I am mostly just farming a bunch of t15s and trying to earn some currency. The next big upgrade I want to do to the build is to get a Defiance of Destiny, which will require me to swap around some of my resistances. I should be able to do this by just swapping my belt, but the extra survival of Defiance should make things more comfortable. Mostly I do plenty of damage right now, and any points that I spend will be going into survival. There are some points that increase my regen, so I am probably going to go down that path because again recovery makes things more comfortable.
The other big thing that I need to do game wise over the next few days is grind out a bunch of the sparrow racing event. Essentially I am down to just the brute force things, where I need to throw a stupid amount of snowballs, and complete some more races. I want the dumb snowmobile speeder skin. I know there is another phase of the event that is going to be happening around New Years, so we will see what that requires as well. The Dawning has been pretty great though, and all of the snowball fights and such are pretty fun. They revealed the next banner and it is effectively a mythic redo of Kabr, and I have to admit I am not terribly interested in him. They changed up his weapons from Pulse Rifle and Heavy Machinegun, to Scout Rifle and Linear Fusion Rifle… and I already have characters that fill that role that I like. Helhest is my precision character of choice, and when it comes to Scout Rifles I am likely going to play Umeko. So I might take a hard pass on this banner and just bank up pulls for whatever comes next.
Anyways! I hope you have a great rest of Christmas week and I will see you next week as we slide into the end of the year.
