RPG

A Packed Weekend

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Screenshot from Path of Exile showing a Righteous Fire Inquisitor firing off Scorching Ray with the Shaper Beam Micro-transaction.

Good Morning Friends! Today is the first day of the new school year for my wife, and as a result, much of the weekend was centered around preparing her for that. However, I did manage to get a bunch of gaming in around the margins. I’ve been playing an RF Inquisitor as a test character to decide if I want to go down that path or stick with my Juggernaut shenanigans. In truth, the final decisions will be made when the patch notes drop in Friday and we see if Juggernaut and Righteous Fire spring forth unscathed. One of the things I am playing with as I level this character is relying on Scorching Ray instead of Fire Trap for single-target damage. There are definitely some positives being that I can burn through rare and unique monsters much faster. The glaring negative however is that I have to remain stationary while channeling it, which means there are going to be times when I cannot realistically stop to cast it. I wonder if I can create a linkage that could support both Fire Trap and Scorching Ray without greatly hampering either of them… because it sure would be nice to have both available.

A screenshot from Sir Gog's review of recent 3.22 Path of Exile spoilers showing off the Unending Nightmare atlas passive node.

Sir Gog released a video talking about the spoilers that are being released this week for Patch 3.22, and of them, I am greatly interested in Unending Nightmare. Essentially I have always wanted the ability to just not have Delirium Fog clear on its own. I get that for Delirium farmers this is a bad thing, but for me who only ever dabbles in most of the league mechanics it would be pretty great to have the option of simply clearing the entire map before it ends. Similarly, the Expedition node that gives you one big explosion has been something I have often wished existed. If this new Atlas Passive Tree gives me a node that just turns every Alva into the Inverse Incursions from the Memory maps… I would be in heaven. So far it feels like I am getting a lot of the things that I have wanted to exist, so maybe just maybe there are going to be a few more of them.

My Baldur's Gate 3 Party does a murder of some Gnolls

Most of my weekend gaming was spent playing Baldur’s Gate 3, which is likely no shock to anyone. The game as a whole has had a peak concurrency on Steam of over 800,000 players and it has yet to release on Consoles. I thought I had screwed up my current playthrough because I missed a key character when I could first talk to them. However last night I managed to sort out a sequence of events that had them come to seek me out in my camp, so I have now picked up Karlach and Wyll and shuffled my party around to allow room for both so I can give them a shot. I can already tell that I am going to love running around with Karlach. BG3 is one of those games where you think you are playing for thirty minutes but have wound up playing for four hours. It has been a while since a game has caused this much time dilation for me, but I am enjoying it.

Screenshot from the Code: Action mini game in Honkai Star Rail where I have created a movie poster themed after The Matrix called "Super Hacker" featuring Blade as Neo and Silver Wolf as Trinity.

There is a cute web-based game called “Code: Action” going on in Honkai Star Rail where you retell the stories of Blade, Kafka, and to some extent Silver Wolf. The end result is you create these cute movie posters based on the characters. It is largely fluff, but each of the six posters gives you a chunk of currency in the game so if you have fifteen minutes it is well worth doing. I am slowly chipping away at leveling some more characters. I think I have unlocked enough on my Luocha to where he is undeniably the correct choice for party healing over Natasha. Next up I am probably going to start working on kitting out Himeko because I really like her follow-up attacks. Still enjoying myself but this game is very much in maintenance mode for me where I play thirty minutes a day and feel happy doing so.

A screenshot from Palia Beta showing off my plot and the fact that you can have multiple storage chests.

I did not really get into Palia much more over the weekend, but I did test a theory. The first chest that you place gives you 400 storage capacity, and if you place additional storage chests on your property it just keeps giving you an additional 400 capacity in one large shared bank. Given that I gathered a ton of resources clearing my plot I decided to go ahead and craft a few spares. The grid view is really nice and allows you to align things much more cleanly than you can while placing things in the third person. I sorta wish housing systems like FFXIV had an over-the-top grid view like this for placing objects and aligning them to grid lines.

A screenshot from The Witcher Netflix series during happier times in Season One with Geralt and Yaskier/Dandelion

I also finished Season Three of the Netflix Witcher series. I had been avoiding it because the first half of this season was pretty awful, and I was afraid it would go even further off the rails. I’ve chosen to use an image of happier times when the series was more closely following the actual source material. Essentially The Witcher is a wobbly cart, and the first season had a few rough moments but largely lifted scenes directly from the novels or short stories. In the second season… the cart began to shake itself violently with the mischaracterization and subsequent murder of the beloved Eskel. In Season Three… the wheels have fallen off and the series has been drug along the path on the backs of the still rather excellent character actors. I’ve come to really like the actors playing most of the roles, but instead of doing justice to original property be it the novels or the games… we are just sort of in David Hasselhoff Nick Fury movie territory.

Photo of me and Greybie our Tigerstripe Grey Tabby Stray "Community Cat"

Lastly, to end on a positive note, I spent some time last night hanging out with our community cat Greybie. He has pretty much moved to our backyard permanently along with Tripod. I’ve been going out and loving on him each day when I put down food and water, but he has been mournfully meowing at me for not sticking around and staying a bit. He likes to hop up in my lap while I am sitting in my chair, and it has just been too hot to do this lately. However given that yesterday was the first sub-hundred-degree day in over a week, I figured I needed to go out and indulge the sweet baby. Sadly Tripod is still completely skittish, but at least hangs out… from afar… when I am out there.

I hope that you all had a great weekend. I hope my wife has a great start to the new school year today. I look forward to playing a lot more Baldur’s Gate 3 this week and getting a bit further in my RF Inquisitor test build.

Short, Dark, and Screamy

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Good Morning Folks! This is me doing a Saturday post, which is not exactly something that I do often. However this month we have Blaugust running and I thought that just maybe for once I would try and hit 31 posts in my own damned event. In truth, the only day that I don’t normally post is Saturday given that I make weekly normal blog posts, and on Sundays, I advertise the podcast episode. So that really means I am only trying to squeeze a few more blog posts in total to hit 31 so I might as well actually make that happen. I figured that I would start off the first of these and talk a bit about what has garnered the majority of my attention for the past two days… Baldur’s Gate 3. This is a game that I have technically owned since 2020, but have avoided doing much with because I did not want to spoil the experience. I get that probably does not make a whole lot of sense, but I am a huge fan of Larian Studios and I viewed my purchase of Early Access as a way of helping fund the development. It turns out that faith was rewarded as all of the early access holders got access to the digital deluxe version free.

The original Baldur’s Gate was a heck of a lot of fun, but I will be honest it wasn’t really until Icewind Dale was released that I began ravenously devouring these games. So when Baldur’s Gate II: Shadows of Amn I was well enough indoctrinated into the series to be hyped and ready to go on launch day. Playing Baldur’s Gate III, over the last few nights has felt like my memories of Baldur’s Gate II. What I mean by that is that I have been transported back in time to an era when I could just meld with the game and become hopelessly engrossed in it. I’ve experienced “time loss” like I have not in years where I sit down thinking I am only playing for a few minutes, and I look up and three hours have passed. I mean this in the best way possible, and while it took me a bit to get used to the slower pace of a real-time-action game… now that I am engaged I am fully engaged.

I’m not going to dive too deeply into the story, that will probably come for a much later blog post. For character options, I decided to keep it simple and went with a Barbarian. I opted to go for an entertainer background which gave me performance and acrobatics, both of which have already come in handy. For the race I decided to follow my heart and go with a Dwarf and given the Ithilid roots of this game, I opted to go with Duergar. So far I am pretty happy with all of my choices save for maybe the voice I went with. To be truthful, none of the voice actors really felt like a Duergar should feel. Thankfully most of the time I am a silent protagonist, but there is a bit of a mental disconnect whenever I say anything.

For the most part, I like all of the characters. If you told me this was a Bioware game I would have believed you, because I already care about my little party of misfits. Like we really are a “bad ideas” party, but I am enjoying adjusting to the nonsense and I am glad I am able to be zero shocked when someone reveals more awful things that they are dealing with. It does feel a bit weird that in a party of “chosen ones” I seem to keep being set up as the “most chosen” of them all. The only character I am sus about is Lae’zel but mostly because she is a bit aggro all the time. I run around with her mostly because apart from me she is the strongest hitter.

I like Gale an awful lot, but he has this weird uncanny resemblance to a young Mel Gibson. I have to see it every time I play the game so now you do too. All things told though while I don’t normally like “finger wigglers” as I call them… he is pretty cool for a magic user. Like he has his own “bad ideas” traits about him, but he reminds me a bit of my love of Dorian from Dragon Age Inquisition. Shadowheart is probably my favorite, but truthfully… were Shadowheart introduced differently I probably would have hated the character. I have this thing against the “does not trust you” characters… so I could see Shadowheart reading as a “Corso Riggs” if I was not already inherently wired to want to help her because I saved her from a pod.

All told I am about ten hours into the game and still have yet to replace the weapon I got from the tutorial. Admittedly there are a lot of people who probably did not get that weapon, and I only did so because I happened to read a bit specifically stating that I should. Right now my party comp is Shadowheart, Lae’zel, and Gale and I am not sure if I completely missed getting Wyll. I’ve done some research as to where to find him, but I never seemed to bump into him in that area of the game. I do wonder if I screwed that up and am completely unable to get him now. I need to backtrack a bit and roam around the area just to make sure I did not miss something.

Anyways greatly enjoy the game, and will very likely be mainlining this at least until the launch of the Path of Exile Ancestor’s League on the 18th. I hope yall are having a most excellent weekend. It is raining this morning, which we desperately need because it hit 107 the other day… which is just not fun.

Immortality Ends – HSR 1.2

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This week a new content patch dropped for Honkai Star Rail that finishes and I believe more or less concludes the main storyline on the Xianzhou Luofu aka “Space China”. This patch specifically adds two big new overworld areas and a new boss fight. The story content itself was enjoyable but felt a bit on the short side. I guess I was not sure what to expect, but I thought I remembered story patches in Genshin Impact being a little bit beefier. I mostly wrapped this up in a few hours on a single evening, and largely involved a few short quests leading up to the big boss encounter.

The new boss was pretty fun, but what I was really hoping for was a great new theme. It is good… but nowhere near as memorable or epic as Wildfire. In fact, while the fight was going on… I caught precisely zero percent of the theme really and it was only when I came back later that I was able to give it a proper listen. While doing the fight it mostly felt like background noise, instead of Wildfire or even the Doomsday Beast fight where the theme itself felt like a strong part of the experience. Maybe this one just isn’t my jam. It is well orchestrated but won’t likely be something I ever play on the Astral Express, whereas I generally have Wildfire on a constant loop.

The underwater zone specifically is gorgeous. This also gives me a new area to farm Luofu zone currency so I can maybe buy the remaining Eidolon upgrades for Fire Main Character. Actually, now that I think about it… this does make me wonder a bit if we are actually done with this area. If you follow the Genshin model, when you finish with an area you often end up unlocking a new elemental power. Then again maybe those are going to happen here every two planets since Physical form spanned the first two areas, and the Luofu sells up Eidolon tokens for Fire mode. Mostly I think I am mentally done with Space China and am ready to move on to more planetary shenanigans.

The banner this time around is for Blade… which is a character I have zero interest in. I already have Dan Heng that I use as my heavy melee character and I am fine with that. I am in currency hoarding mode for when the Kafka banner starts which I am guessing will be the tail end of August. The only sad thing about this banner is that I like the 4 stars… and would not mind picking more Eidolons up for them. I also do not have Arlan and he is a pretty solid character overall for lightning. I also really like Arlan personality-wise.

One of the really nice things that was added in with the patch is trials for all of the 5-star characters that are on the normal banner. I believe these are also all of the ones that can be chosen from on the 300 pull choose-a-5-star reward. If nothing else… they are a pretty easy way to get 140 free pull currency. It always seems like it is worth taking the time to do trials when they are available because it is essentially free currency and materials.

All told I think it has been a pretty solid patch, but I am looking forward to some of the events starting. Right now the only event available is the login reward bonus that essentially gives you a 10 pull on the Blade banner. There is a new mini-game that was introduced that involves flying around a Cycrane and identifying targets. It isn’t exactly my jam, but it also isn’t annoying. I am hoping we get at least one event during this patch cycle that is even vaguely close to as good as the Museum event was in Belebog.

What are your thoughts so far? Have you finished the story content? Drop me a line below.

What Zelda Was Actually Like

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Hey Folks! I’ve mentioned a few times that I have been playing around with Yuzu and while I purchased Tears of the Kingdom on my Switch… I didn’t really get into it until I dumped the game and started playing it on PC. Essentially “Breath of the Zelda” series has one fatal flaw as far as I am concerned… weapon durability. I hates it… I hates it so much… and it ultimately destroys my enjoyment of the game. So on the emulator, I can apply a “patch” of sorts to simply remove that problem. I did not make it all the way through Breath of the Wild until I played it on Cemu, so it isn’t shocking that the same seems to be playing out with Tears of the Kingdom. You also have the side effect of playing at a higher frame rate and with slightly improved graphics.

All told I think I like this entry a lot better than I liked Breath of the Wild. Both games started you out in a sort of “starter island” experience, with Breath of the Wild being a plateau that you could not leave without access to the Glider and Tears of the Kingdom being a literal island in the sky. You are set forth with only the vaguest of directions and left to sort of bumblefuck your way around the island and figure out exactly how you should go about traversing it. At first, this felt grossly inefficient, especially given that you only end up with one shrine marked on your map and you sorta have to guess at the location of the other two. Each shrine is effectively unlocked by the power you’ve learned from the previous one, so by the time you leave the first island you get a feel of how to use the new combining powers to their fullest.

A few months ago Kodra set forth to play some Tears of the Kingdom and found the experience disappointing which led to a discussion on the podcast with me relating my feelings about Diablo IV to his feelings about the latest Zelda entry. The end result is that we thought maybe Breath of the Wild was a good game but not necessarily a good Zelda game. I think the challenge is that we are looking at the game through the lens of multiple decades of living with this series. I personally consider A Link to the Past as my favorite Zelda game in the entire series and I think for Kodra it is Majora’s Mask. As I have been playing Tears of the Kingdom I have begun to re-evaluate that conversation in my head. I think maybe I was misinterpreting my modern view of the series with what the series originally was at its core.

Thinking back about the very first game… I similarly was left to bumblefuck my way around it and failed to make much progress until I got my hands on the above image. Nintendo of America released this magical tome called the “Official Nintendo Player’s Guide” and it contained detailed maps and boss strategies to take down almost every game in the arsenal at the time of publication in 1987. In the original Legend of Zelda, that first dungeon is super easy to find and then the second dungeon requires you to just roam around aimlessly around a ton of territory to actually find it. I am pretty sure originally I had fought these dungeons out of order and did three long before I finished two. So when I got ahold of the maps… I was finally able to strategically knock out the dungeons in order. Similar to Breath of the Wild, I only had the vaguest of directions to go on… that I know Dungeons exist and that I should clear them.

The outrageous options that you have with Tears of the Kingdom and building took a bit of getting used to. Last night before I logged I was held up in a shrine that required me to make hot air balloons to do “something” but that objective was not entirely clear. It was fun as hell though to slap a fan to a minecart and watch it zoom along a track out over a chasm. I’ve built several different boats to varying degrees of success and can see the potential to make gliders that are powered by a fan and can let me cross great distances. Last night I helped repair a cart and tame a horse to drive it. The objectives are what you make of them, and there is often a simple solution… and then a way more convoluted one that you could take if you are so inclined.

I also now get why folks were telling me that weapon durability was not as much of a problem in this game as it is in Breath of the Wild. One of your powers amounts to the ability to take shitty weapons and glue strong components to them… to make less shitty weapons. For example, I glued a fire emitter to a shield and now have a fire-breathing shield. Similarly, I have a Boss Boko horn that is curiously sword blade shaped… glued to a random tarnished sword that I picked up and have turned into a rather effective piece of gear. Per the lore… every weapon in Hyrule has decayed as a result of the opening moments of the game and the only way to make them viable… is by crafting something with them. I still greatly prefer not to have durability turned on however so that when I land upon a weapon I like… I can just keep it indefinitely.

I’m in no real rush to get through this game, but I do find it rather relaxing to play. I’m trying not to let it bother me how general or vague the objectives are. If I see a shrine along my path… I go attempt it. If I see something off in the distance that catches my eye… I go explore it. I am however mostly going in the direction of my next objective marked on my map. However, I was given four equal objectives… and I just happened to choose the one that seemed like it was the correct one. All in all, I think Tears of the Kingdom is probably a more compelling game than Breath of the Wild. The world already feels more vibrant and alive. It also feels like less of a retread of the rote Zelda story we have experienced in one form or another before. There are more new elements being woven into this tale.

I am honestly surprised by how much I am enjoying the game. After the conversation on the podcast, I sort of thought that it would not be for me. I am pleasantly surprised that has not been the case. It is also shocking how much more I enjoy playing Nintendo Switch games on a PC than I ever did on the console. That is entirely my problem, and I wish there was a way to pass saved data back and forth between the two. I might look into this… or I might just get Yuzu up and running on my Steam Deck as that might be simpler. Hopefully, you are having a great week. At this point, I have gotten three certifications this week and will be wrapping up the fourth today. Then by Friday I should have my fifth and be done for a while. I am so ready to return to being alone in my office plugging away in lieu of being in person. The experience has been fine, but by yesterday at lunch, I was done with human interaction.