Back in Azeroth – 2019 edition

Yes, I did it. Last night I came home from work and instead of logging in to SWTOR (or making dinner, like a reasonable person would) I went to the website and subscribed to WoW for a month. As I had already purchased the Battle for Azeroth expansion at the Black Friday sale and had patched up last week I could start 5 minutes later. Quite a nice experience.
Sadly my Horde guild of many years seems to be even more dead than in Legion (last login of anyone else: more than a week ago) I chose Alliance. Also because I wasn’t in the mood of sorting out bags. And I want to see both story lines anyway, so might as well start in the guild – because the Alliance guild is big enough that I was sure they’d still be around – just as they were back in late October.

So I dusted off my Dwarf Retribution Pally, abandoned nearly all Legion quests, put my stuff in my bank (not full already on this toon), disabled all addons and off we went. Halfway through the intro I remembered I had already done it in October. The Fall of Lordaeron scenario is pretty nice for the first time, ok for the second time 2 months later.. but I guess I’ll skip it from now on unless there’s a year between new toons. Anyway – a quick web search told me Drustvar is the place to start, so I did. And didn’t feel the need to stop or get up for 4 hours. This was pretty nice. It’s fun, I love the zone – some of the quests made me smile or laugh and in the end I was Level 111 and a half and can’t wait to continue playing.

Back in Azeroth – 2019 edition Read More »

Podcast update

I wrote about podcasts in the past and not much has changed.
The one I’m looking forward to every week is AggroChat and I’ve listened to every single episode.
Lately I’ve come back to the Massively OP Podcast and I’ve listened to 24 episodes out of the last ~35. It’s a bit heavy on current stuff, so there’s not so much use going through the backlog.
Battle Bards is an alltime favorite and I need to listen to those 13 episodes (excl the latest) I missed (out of 135 + 14). I did not listen to it for the first half of 2017 and just haven’t caught up.
Unfortunately none (except one) of the SWTOR podcasts I tried [0] have really clicked with me. For some of them the hosts seem to be talking over each other all the time, sometimes it’s just a little long-winded, some I enjoyed a few episodes of, then it didn’t work out. Sometimes it’s as simple as me not liking the hosts’ voices. I know that’s petty but I used to say I’m not a big fan of podcasts – and I’d still say it’s true. If anyone involved is reading this, I’m sorry. It’s definitely me, not you.
I sampled a lot of them (not just SWTOR) and the ones above are the only ones I’ve been sticking with for a few years. There are only 2-3 more in general I ever stuck with. The one I did like was State of the Old Republic – but that’s not so surprising as I did listen to the Hunting Party Podcast back when I played WoW, despite never maining a hunter. But it’s pretty short, which is fine unless you need more material 😛
But I finally managed to watch the rest of the Pugging with Shintar episodes of Season 2. Too bad I am absolutely not good with remembering tactics anymore. The explanations would be helpful enough… I know this is not a podcast, but I watch it on the second screen while playing. It’s mostly audio and a little less watching for me.
I exclusively listen to podcasts while playing games (MMOs or puzzles) – and never when I’m interested in the story (like in SWTOR), that means not with new content or content I haven’t done in a while – mostly while killing mobs or while spacebaring through stuff I’ve really seen 10 times (Hello, Makeb!). I think for this limited scope managing to be caught up on this amount isn’t too bad. I’m just glad I don’t have this fear of missing out – I am absolutely happy to ignore all the podcasts about topics I’m interested in if I don’t instantly love it (and I still give them a fair chance, usually).
[0]: Shintar has a list in her sidebar that I’m too lazy to copy, one currently (indefinitely?) on hiatus (Corellian Run Radio) is missing. I think don’t know any others, but I’ve not yet explored a lot – checking 7 new ones was already some work.

Podcast update Read More »

Last week’s goals, updated

I wrote about some goals a week ago and despite not being at home for a few days I managed to check a few things off the list. But tomorrow (in like 9h) work starts again and things will slow down. Also I managed to do some of the easy ones, pfff
 

  • DONE Harlow Ricks’ daily on Light Side Empire chars
  • Get Commando to CL 300 (at 265)
  • Missing 4 3 conquest events: Emergency Operations, The Dread War, Total Galactic War, Flashpoint Havoc
  • Missing 2 1 strongholds: Yavin 4 and Umbara
  • Companion Achievements:
    • Recruit: M1-4X
    • Refuse: Broonmark, Ak’ghal Usar, Sgt. Rusk, Skadge, Lokin
    • 1000 kills:
      • Andronikos Revel: 815
      • Talos Drellik: 417
      • Lord Scourge: 444 0
      • Sgt. Rusk: 885 675
    • Search cantinas for Paxton Rall
  • Leveling/Quests:
    • Finish Ziost on Merc
    • Finish Ziost on Sentinel
    • Get Marauder to 70 (at 57)
    • Get Guardian to 70 (at 58)
    • Finish Makeb on Marauder
    • Finish Makeb on Juggernaut (low prio)
    • Finish KotFE/KotET on Operative
    • Finish Ilum on Operative
    • Finish Ilum on Assassin
    • Finish Ilum on Shadow (low prio)
  • Have a look at the Ossus dailies – normal / heroic

So that’s only one of twelve chars not having done Makeb and one of twelve not having done Ilum. But seven sitting with “Battle of Ilum” in their quest log and one with “False Emperor” – so that’s the cutoff point for my willingness to continue the Ilum story arc.
 

Last week’s goals, updated Read More »

2018 in review

As is customary I am writing a “year in review” post that shows my exploits and ignores the rest of the world, there are better writers for this kind of stuff 🙂
What I played a lot:

Where I spent a decent amount of time

Played a bit:

Gaming expenses in 2018:

  • SW:TOR: 7x 13 EUR = 91 EUR for subscriptions
  • WoW: 1x 35 EUR for Battle for Azeroth, no subscription yet
    • Oh my, just checked the Blizzard store. It’s on sale *again* for 25 EUR. Stupid me for buying it, but I really had planned to play around this time. Is it selling so badly they need to have it on sale twice in the first few months? Wow.
  • Games on Steam: 24 EUR for Quake Champions, 0.42 EUR to complete 2 Card sets
  • Games on GOG: 3.90 EUR for Torchlight 2
  • Games on Humble Bundle: 20 EUR for Dead Cells, 1 EUR for Shadow of Mordor

This means: 176 EUR in 2018, at ~15 EUR per month. WTF, this is a new low I guess.

  • Amount of MMO subscription months paid: 7
  • Bought stuff in the ingame shop: SWTOR, but with no additional cash
  • Full price games: 2 (Quake Champions, Dead Cells)
  • MMO Expansions: 1 (WoW: Battle for Azeroth)

So (and this is new this year) some analysis:

  • I’m still mostly playing one MMO at a time
  • Although I have 4 mobile games up there, this was only a few minutes at home this year, mostly while waiting for something
  • Depending on how much public transport commute I have, I play some mobile games. Usually I read RSS feeds, this winter I preferred gaming
  • I guess I didn’t buy so many games that I won’t play then. Yay.

There are still a few Steam games on sale I’m thinking about 😛

  • The Flame in the Flood
  • Convoy
  • Tooth and Tail
  • Cat Quest
  • Prison Architect
  • Another Brick in the Mall

2018 in review Read More »

Setting goals for the future

A goals/achievements update. Funny how I wanted to post this on Sunday but ended up playing a lot, until after midnight. So some inline updates. 😛
Missing/working on it:

  • 13x 9x Harlow Ricks’ daily on Light Side Empire chars, then the 200 missions are done
  • Get Commando to CL 300
  • Missing 4 conquest events: Emergency Operations, The Dread War, Total Galactic War, Flashpoint Havoc
  • Missing 2 strongholds: Yavin 4 and Umbara
  • Companion Achievements:
    • Recruit: M1-4X
    • Refuse: Broonmark, Ak’ghal Usar, Sgt. Rusk, Skadge, Lokin
    • 1000 kills:
      • Andronikos Revel: 815
      • Talos Drellik: 539
      • Lord Scourge: 444 309
      • Sgt. Rusk: 885
    • Search cantinas for Paxton Rall
  • Leveling/Quests:
    • Finish Ziost on Merc
    • Finish Ziost on Sentinel
    • Get Marauder to 70
    • Finish Makeb on Juggernaut (low prio)
    • Finish KotFE/KotET on Operative
    • Finish Ilum on Shadow (low prio)
  • Have a look at the Ossus dailies
  • Group Content:
    • Heal a Flashpoint
    • Heal an Operation
    • Do the 8 FPs I’ve never seen at least once
    • Try out Galactic Starfighter
    • Try out Space Missions for the first time since 2011
    • Try out an Uprising
  • Do the Star Fortress quests for a second time
  • Finish my Datacrons: Rishi, Fleet, Corellia, Taris

Done (what a short list):

  • 10th Class to Level 70 (Mercenary), now missing Marauder (55), Guardian (20 50), Sniper (20), Sorcerer, Gunslinger, Vanguard
  • 100% Life Day
  • 2500 kills with C2-N2, and thus all achievements with the 2 droids

The real question is now if I want to grind out those 2500 kills on the Sentinel/Assassin that I hardly play or if I try to get my 20 Guardian up quickly to do Rusk/Scourge. Sounds a lot more interesting, with the XP event I can focus on the class story and still progress quickly. Then there’s still the weeklies, right now I’m using my Smuggler to farm healing gear for the Operative: Do weeklies, gain ~20 boxes, respec Healing, open them, reslot all 246/248 items to Bind-to-Legacy. Same can be done with the Commando once I hit 300. Not a bad use of my time I guess.
Also the Relics of the Gree Conquest (that I usually don’t like provided me with more completions than usual. Bounty Hunter, Mercenary, Juggernaut, Operative, and maybe I can even finish Guardian).

Setting goals for the future Read More »

Healer incoming

Some time ago I decided I want to try healing in SWTOR, but I had no suitable character. As I’m playing mostly Empire right now, that CL 300 Smuggler with ~240 DPS gear wasn’t any help, so I started to play my Operative a bit more, with the intention to grab some healing gear from the higher tier Command chests. He’s CL 134 now, so that’s not so much, but ok, it’s progressing.
But I also still had one of those boosts left so I went out to create a new char with the intention to boost. Then I read up on the boost and I felt this wasn’t worth it. You skip all the story, you can’t make your decisions, meh. How long can it take to level up? Wasn’t there some Double XP event planned after Christmas?

Commando with a new helmet

That’s how my Mercenary got started. I wanted to replay the Bounty Hunter story line anyway (thus the boost would have sucked) and I very quickly went to Level 20 (big surprise). Then I couldn’t play for a few days due to Christmas stuff, but with the +25% XP boosts from quests and the +100% server XP buff I managed to get to 70 in less than 10h, and I’m sitting at CL 26 already, having finished everything up to and including Yavin 4, as I usually do on all my chars. I just skipped Ilum again this time. And I already could transfer one 240 item from my Commando (at CL 236 now) over, via slotting the modules into a bind-to-legacy item. It’s not so cheap, but I’m not exactly lacking funds right now. 240 is a lot better than the 210 item he had equipped. So I guess this route is a lot quicker now. I respecced the Commando to Healing as well to get healing gear from the boxes, then I will transfer that over. Maybe I should’ve done this legacy-ification a lot sooner, but I felt it wasn’t really worth pre-248. This is now just an exception because I want to have some healing equip. Of course I was still too chicken to try to heal a random FP, but I hope I’ll feel confident enough soon 😛 I do think it has more to do with “running a dungeon” than “the pressure of healing” – I just don’t like small group content.
I’m pretty happy how he looks, I wrote before that I tried Male Body Type 4 once and hated it. This one now is fine – I just need to watch out which chest item I show, because in some of them he really looks to fat and unfit for combat.
Twi’lek Mercenary at Level 70

I usually insert too many screenshots, because I make too few – but here’s one of one of my favorite semi-reproducible bugs: If you change your spec while being mounted you will sometimes be shown running while mounted. Depending on the type of your mount this looks wrong or really funny:

Healer incoming Read More »

Christmas shenanigans

Did I already rant how I hate December and all the stress about Christmas? Probably not here (at least this year) but it’s real. I stopped playing Destiny 2, I still haven’t resubbed to WoW.
Torchlight 2 was on sale the last days, so I finally bought it after some nudging. It’s fun, although I didn’t play a lot yet. The only game I was playing a little was SWTOR – but I’ll have a separate post for that, maybe sooner. At least now the real part of my vacation time starts, all the Christmas stuff is over now.

Christmas shenanigans Read More »

A few achievements here and there

It seems I’m falling back into a lower cadence of posts, but apparently the holiday season has started, which means a lot of stuff to do. Fun things like meeting people for mulled wine but also buying presents and other stuff. Or travel for work. I did play a bit, but not much this week.
This “Continuing Comfort” weekly quest I wrote about is finally done, I managed to not forget to visit Odessen every week and hand in some (not so) expensive mats.

No more handing in stuff in Odessen every week

I did manage to get my Smuggler to Command Level 300, so that should grant me the maximum of a +100% boost to Command XP on the remaining toons at 70. Yay, more weeklies! 😛
Fourth mirror class to Command Level 300!

I also managed to get my Jedi Shadow to Level 70 today (finishing everything up to Ziost and then doing the last 1-2 levels via daily quests, as usual). She’s my first toon that “duplicates” a per-faction mirror class. The moment I dinged I bought her a full set of 230 Tanking Gear with Command Tokens (1700 left now) and respecced to Kinetic Damage, we’ll see when I will try playing that.
That makes 9x Level 70

Speaking of alts and levels, apart from this 9th Level 70 I now only have a 50 Marauder, 20 Guardian, and 17 Sniper. I still have a Level 65 boost which I think I’ll use on a Healing Mercenary, but I haven’t decided on the race yet. Then there’s still this male Rattataki Vanguard and the male Togruta Gunslinger on the table, a male Zabrak Sorcerer is created, but never logged in yet. Yeah, that should be 16 characters according to a plan of 8 male and 8 female (for the stories and voice actors), one per class each.
Doing Conquests with a guild in a coordinated manner is still fun, not having to grind daily, but being able to commit to 2h once per week and knock out 15k on one toon, still leaving the possibility to do it solo on another. Also I’ve seen some more operations, Dread Fortress, Terror From Beyond, and if you want to count them Xenoanalyst and Golden Fury.
Some more progress:

  • Rishi “A Pirate’s Life”: 132/200
  • Lokin to 1000/1000 kills
  • C2-N2 to 1674/2500 kills

And a huge fail: I tried to do the Eternal Championship again on my Bounty Hunter, where I had not so huge problems getting to the 6th boss, but then failed (back when I hit 70). Now I tried this again – with 246 gear and a 41 Companion. Wow, I still failed at the exact same place. Of 3-4 tries I nearly managed to win the 6th round once, but that was half luck and then I gave up some time later anyway. The internet told me to let my companion get aggro on one of the 2 adds, then kill an add, then kill the main enemy, then kill the second add. Apparently my companion is not able to either hold aggro, or survive. Don’t even remember which spec worked (tank or dps) but with healing it was an even bigger disaster. Maybe I should try with a different class, that one’s certainly my nemesis. And I’m also not used to really hard content anymore, I know that 😛

A few achievements here and there Read More »

Ticking off the todo list

Another week has gone by and I did progress a little with my SWTOR goals, yay.

  • Get Sith Juggernaut to 300 Command Level DONE
  • Get Scoundrel to 300 Command Level (at ~271 currently and still hopes for this week…)
  • Progress with the Rishi “A Pirate’s Life” achievements (100/200 done *yawn*, at least it’s possible in afk mode :P)
  • 2 more weeks of “Continuing Comfort” DONE
  • 20 PvP matches on the Sage for M1-4X (8/20 done)
  • Start KotFE, get to Alliance Alerts (3rd time) DONE and DONE (on Operative)
  • refuse Rusk/Skadge/Broonmark/Lokin/Xalek/Ak’ghal Usar (not yet)
  • Bonus: Got to Rank 20 with the 4 alliance contacts, now overflowing with Legacy gear
  • Farmed some guards on some planets with the guild for achievements
  • Completed Dread Fortress 8 man SM – this was really fun, but a DPS PT is not a good offtank.

Last week I only managed to contribute around 34k on 2 chars to the Guild Conquest, but I’m not good at crafting. This week we have the Gree event, also not looking forward to this…

Ticking off the todo list Read More »

Shooting things

I’ve been slowly chopping away at Destiny 2 and I’m level 11 now.
destiny2_exo_hunter_11
Apparently I suck at PvP in a way that’s hard to describe in words, but let’s say I play this game not like a real shooter I guess. Scout Rifle + Sniper Rifle + Melee + My Ultimate (or whatever it’s called). OK, sometimes I use the Grenade Launcher, but this is in no way frantic, it’s careful going forward and backward and aiming for head shots 😛
I’m not sure if this “Forsaken” expansion would be interesting to me – it’s 30 instead of 40 EUR right now, but I guess I’ll see if I get to max level first. My track record of actually staying with shooters is so bad I should probably not risk it after playing only a few hours.
I did buy Battle for Azeroth today because it was 10 EUR off though, because I’m absolutely going to play it for the story – I just don’t know yet when, probably over the holidays, so I didn’t subscribe just yet.

Shooting things Read More »