Walk like the Blackrock Clan

Didn’t play a whole lot this week, mostly for work reasons, but a bit of progress was made.

Mag’har Heritage Armor (Blackrock), not the best choice for a Rogue
  • Mag’har Orc Rogue is 110 (+5), Legion was a blast (and quick) as usual
  • Goblin Warrior is 100 (+4), starting Legion now
  • Kul Tiran Mage is 95 (+5)
  • Draenei DK is 85 (+5)
  • the 3 lowbie Horde chars got +2 level each

Doesn’t sound like “hardly” played but maybe my queues were shorter and from 90 on everything seems to go really quick anyway. Mage and Warrior are Prio 1 right now.

As I wrote I unlocked the Void Elves and Lightforged and of course I played around in the character creation screen and actually created a Male Void Elf Rogue, with no real intention to start playing… yet. So I chose Wetlands as my starting point, actually took the tram, enjoyed the scenery, flew back to Thelsamar, and logged out. Today while waiting for dinner to simmer in the pot I queued for a random (craving that Rogue gameplay…) and then it happened. I used stealth and noticed what I hadn’t noticed before: the male Void Elf stealth walking animation is so horrible that I simply cannot stand that… I finished the instance and rerolled Female Void Elf. And then I rerolled her again because the pony tail was wobbling very weirdly in stealth. I mean, that’s what every sensible person would do, right? Bit of a shame though, I really wanted a second male Rogue, I have 3 female ones already…

First time I chose a mustache, but the universe said nope
Going for more of a leisurely look this time

Now if only I had Heirlooms in the Feet, Waist, Bracers, and Hands slot to keep it all hidden, probably gonna have to re-transmog with every upgrade… Also I’m sorely missing a reddish blouse that goes with Bard’s Boots and Trousers.

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Gotta catch them all

So today I finally finished the Argus campaign and unlocked the last 2 remaining (old) Allied Races, Void Elves and Lightforged Draenei, yay. The Void Elf recruitment quest was nice and short and a little boring, whereas the Lightforged one was nice and short and really odd… but funny.

I actually don’t have any immediate plans here. The only class I’m missing on Alliance side is a Warlock, and I wanted to make a Mechagnome one – but I’ve not unlocked them, the real last remaining Allied Race. Because I’m lazy and not especially fond of the Rustbolt quests….

In Heritage Armor news there was some progress in the last two weeks – managed to get the Druid to Exalted and now I have the Worgen armor (thanks for the tip with Botanica and Mechanar in the comments, Pallais, that was really quick).

The Goblin Warrior got to 96 (from 86), Nightborne Priest is 52 (49), Zandalari Pally is 45 (40), Highmountain Warrior is 40 (36), Kul Tiran Mage is 90 (84), Dark Iron Monk is 47 (41) and the Mag’har Rogue is 105 (96) and maybe I’ll make it to 110 next week. Bonus: Draenei DK is 80 (74) – there’s always something to do with 8 rested XP bars and – which is kind of atypical – watching a lot of YouTube in the background right now.

I didn’t really play a lot of other things the last weeks though, just a little EVE. I’m kinda curious about Wolcen, but I just got back into the WoW groove and as long as I’m having fun in pursuing my goals… I’m really bad at focusing at several games at once, I know…

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Heritage armor status update

Wrote about this in October and July, but about the the full picture only in May, and so this is a consolidated update:

  • Horde
    • Blood Elf – DONE
    • Tauren – DONE
    • GoblinExalted: 86 Warrior
    • Orc (not ingame) – Exalted: 120 Rogue, 120 Shaman, 120 Hunter
    • Troll (not ingame) – Exalted : 120 Warrior
    • Undead (not ingame) – Revered: 120 Mage (-18600), Honored: 102 DK (-30100)
    • Mag’har – Level 96
    • Nightborne – Level 49
    • Zandalari – Level 40
    • Highmountain – Level 36
    • Vulpera – Unlocked, no character yet
  • Both
    • Pandaren (not ingame) – ???
  • Alliance
    • Dwarf – DONE
    • Gnome – DONE
    • Worgen – Friendly: 120 Druid (-38938)
    • Human (not ingame) – Exalted: 120 Rogue
    • Night Elf (not ingame) – Exalted: 120 Warrior, Friendly: 120 DH (-38000)
    • Draenei (not ingame) – Friendly: 74 DK (-36500)
    • Kul Tiran – Level 84
    • Dark Iron – Level 41
    • Lightforged – nearly unlocked
    • Void Elf – not unlocked yet
    • Mechagnome – not unlocked yet

So the concrete goals are:

  • Mag’har Rogue – 14 levels – yes, actively working on it
  • Kul Tiran Mage – 26 levels – yes, prio 2
  • Goblin Warrior – 34 levels – maybe…
  • Worgen Druid – a lot of rep – maybe…
  • Nightborne Priest – 61 levels – probably, just did a few dungeon runs again
  • Zandalari Paladin – 70 levels – probably, but more slowly
  • Highmountain Warrior – 74 levels – meh
  • Dark Iron Monk – 69 levels – meh

I just started running some 1-2 dungeons per day when fully rested on all the Allied toons this week, but it’s tedious. Also I had a really long break of over 2 months. Rogue is fun and no problem, Mage is coming along ok but it’s slowing down and it’s simply not much fun. Can’t wait for 110 there. Undecided if I’m up for this massive rep grind on the Druid.

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Backlogs of games

When I saw the “Love Your Backlog” I wasn’t really interested at first, it’s kind of dead horse – everyone buys too many games in sales or bundles and never catches up. Bhagpuss’ post somehow stood out, but I’m not really sure why.

First of all, the word backlog doesn’t have such a negative vibe for me. As a Software Developer it’s mostly used for all the stuff that you absolutely plan to do, but not in the immediate future (usually 1-3 weeks). Also it’s mostly sorted by priority, so after your current cycle is over you just pick stuff from the top and start with that. So much for the theory. Very often it’s just a pile of random ideas and stuff that someone should do, but nobody knows why or how. But anyway, for games it’s a coarsely sorted list of stuff I want to play, I don’t see the need to work through it at any certain speed.

And that’s the other point – I don’t really feel the pressure to work through, for most of the titles in it. Sure, there’s always this one full or half-price game you absolutely wanted to start the weekend after buying it, but you didn’t and suddenly it’s 2020.

But I don’t have so many of these. OK, there are some

  • Quake Champions in 2018 – didn’t play a lot
  • Dead Cells in 2018 – I loved it, but it frustrated my by being too hard, but did play it!
  • Cities: Skylines in 2017 – never started

Of course there are a few more, but if I spend 1 EUR on a game and only do that like once a month, I have zero regrets about not playing it. I know I’m kinda not loosely spending money, because I keep track, but the cost of a few coffees or beers over the course of a year don’t bother me. I’m kinda glad I’m not a hoarder, I let most sales pass without buying anything.

Not even sure if this counts towards the backlog, but there’s actually a bigger pile of games that I bought, started to play… and then didn’t love but also didn’t hate. For some reason I just stopped playing before reaching a meaningful amount of hours, usually 2-5. If it was cheap, fine, I got my money’s worth of entertainment out of it already. But some of them… sure it was cheaper than going to the cinema (I’m pinning that at 5 EUR per hour) but I don’t feel like I got my money’s worth if I play a 10 EUR game for only 2h, but maybe I’m overly critical here.

Last point, I find the metric of adding up the numbers for these “How long to beat X” totally useless for me. Take Borderlands 3. Should be 21h(main) and 60h (completionist) – I’m 50h in, finished the main story (more like at 30h) but am only Level 41 and have a ton of side missions to do. What’s the real number now? I stopped playing a lot of games before I reached the completionist or even main+extras number. Anno 1404 should be 17h for the main story, we’ll see. And for all the titles I get from a Humble Bundle or something… it never even crossed my mind that I would play even half of them for anything near completion time, so why would I count them? It’s more like buying a bundle for 2-3 games and getting 5 more for free…

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Playing Anno 1404

It’s been a while since I played an Anno game, and the blog search is being stupid but I think I wrote about Anno 1503 once, but I bought Anno 1404 in January and played it for the first time today. ~90mins for the first two Campaign missions. It’s really nice. I know it came out in 2009, but it looks kinda new (except the menus), especially when being compared to Anno 1503 from 2002 or Anno 1602 from 1998 – and those where the only ones I played, although I think I looked at 2011’s Anno 2070 once at someone else’s computer…

So yeah, the choice was between spending 30 bucks on the recent Anno 1800 with no immediate plan to play it or spend 3 or 4 bucks on the 10 year old one. Easy choice, and now, 2 weeks later I installed it and played for a bit, and those 2 missions were enough for today, so I’m happy. Usually these series tend to evolve into completely complicated and overblown things (this is how 2070 looked to me), so often I am a lot happier with the older titles. But we’ll see how many hours I’ll spend on this one, I usually leave them after 10 hours, at least that’s what happened the last 15 years – I played *a lot* of 1503 at launch, but these times seem to have passed for me, I can only stand a certain type of game for a whole day on the weekend, or even a full 4-5h session on a work day evening.

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Season 19 progress

I just managed to finish Destroyer without spending too much time, but I’m not sure I’ll manage Conqueror – sitting at 3/8 and missing these

  • 2 Gems at 55, 1 at 45 – easy
  • 0/2 Conquests done – 3 to 65 should be easy but tedious
  • Ghom in 30s in T13 – medium, easy as a duo
  • Augment Ancient Legendary – easy, grinding
  • reforge Legendary – easy, grinding

But I suppose I won’t have enough time for the 2 Conquests.. Too bad, don’t think I’ve ever been this close to Conqueror. Paragon 582 isn’t too shabby either.

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Slogging along in D3

I did manage to finish the Slayer and Champion Season goals on the weekend but right now it’s a bit of a stretch. I was lucky with my choice of Demon Hunter, only needed one try for the set dungeon with both objectives. I’m 6/8 on Destroyer now and I guess the Conquest of choice will be 3 gems to 65 as this is just a grind that will happen while playing, and the Hellfire Amulet shouldn’t be a problem either. My real problem is that I am not sturdy enough. A real glass cannon. Just did my first solo GRift 70 and I died all the time. Exactly 5 minutes to spare but I was already going very slowly and killing mobs off-screen with this Sniper build – but every projectile or ranged attack can be deadly. Also my bank is already full… I’m a bit clueless how to get better gear right now – the ring of Royal Grandeur won’t drop, so every single slot except Bracers and Belt are either Set Items or MH/OH which are kinda needed for this build. A good problem to have, but being so squishy isn’t fun. Right now I’m mostly grinding T12 and 60 GRifts, but 70 is still really hard.

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New season? Old season!

Back in Diablo 3 for Season 19. Chose a Demon Hunter, got powerleveled to 70 in just under an hour in Torment 6, then I really felt weak. Probably an L2P issue, but I at least managed to grab a few nice drops on the way to Solo GRift 20. Now I’m at 7h 30min, Paragon Level 352 and just did a Solo GRift 50 in 4:39 – really not bad for just a bit of active farming at 70.

Yeah, boring default set

The season isn’t going on for very long, but apart from the frustrating part it’s a fun diversion for a few hours. I haven’t progressed to Slayer in the journey yet, but at least that one shouldn’t be a problem – I have the whole weekend.

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A quick look at WoW’s 8.3

After a ~7 week break I logged in again to WoW, sent my toons on ship missions (*yawn*) and also finished the Vulpera Allied Race quest line, it was fun. As I’m not yet Exalted with the Rustbolt Resistance (*yawn again*) no Mechagnome Warlock in my near future.

I also wanted to take a look at the 8.3 content and as a non-raider I’m a little disappointed. Cutscene, go to Magni, do a meh zone quest where I can’t solo the elite mobs in a good way as a Rogue, fill up the bar slowly, go to Magni, go to next zone, log out because meh.

Today I logged in, got distracted and didn’t even start the zone event in the second zone, but I guess I will at some point, this week.

Also I’m a bit burnt out on leveling alts, so no progress since November, and no #21 120 in sight. But I’m really ok with that. 20 is a nice number, I got all the classes to max level this time, I had a ton of fun, so why force it now?

Right now I’m happy playing 30-60mins of Borderlands 3 at least every second day. Although a friend was a bit surprised why I am playing it if I don’t really like looter shooters. Even more so when I said I’m playing it mostly for the story and the world. But we’ll see, maybe coop will happen.

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