Diablo 3 – Season 10

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When Season 10 started about a week ago? I wasn’t especially keen on participating, but nevertheless got pulled in. Now I’m just shy of 8 hours /played, finished Chapter IV like an hour ago and can do T7 rifts without problems (but not without dying) and T8 barely. As a duo we did T9 relatively easily, so on to Slayer again, but now the grinding part begins and I might fall off the hype train any day. Not really my idea of fun, but we’ll see. The DH is pretty fun, my original “main” was a DH as well, after the failed Barb at launch.

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AC4: Black Flag – First impressions

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After 7h I’m done 10% (so it says) with Black Flag and it’s really good.
Assassin's Creed® IV Black Flag™2017-3-26-22-4-50
I had first played AC2 in late 2014, and instantly bought Brotherhood, Revelations and III – but after just having completed 2, didn’t start the next one – so typical. When I did start Brotherhood the controls were clunkier than in 2 and overall I still liked the gameplay but some oddities annoyed me. After a while I came back but never finished it. Maybe I was also a little sick of Ezio and his fake Italian accent.
In comes Edward and some things are really a lot nicer in Black Flag. The cities are smaller, you’re not called out by a guard instantly when you get on a rooftop (and this is one of the most fun things, anyway). Maybe it’s also easier, but I don’t have to run ALL the time and sometimes can fight and win. Oh, and I don’t have to remove wanted posters to be unknown again, just wait or do something else – a lot more fun. Also chasing shanties and fragments is nice.
That’s not much, but so far I’m really enjoying it, playing 1-2h per day. Only downside so far is the lackluster save method. You can’t just stop. I do get it that they don’t want you to quicksave/reload “cheat” your way through a level, but oh my, why I can’t I pause for an hour to cook dinner or something, do I really have to keep the game open or finish my objective first?
ac4_ship

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Alt-aholic III

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So yeah, I did it (and totally forgot to post on Sunday). After the latest big update levelling is quite quick, then add a few XP boosts you have flying around – and you’re up to 50 Level 60 Heroes. If you have too many Eternal Splinters as well, and just buy once your last one reached 60.
Beast and Black Bolt I got from the Advance Pack, Iron Fist was never interesting before (but that changed thanks to the Netflix series) and had +50% XP this week, Kitty was high on my list since she came out (but I was a bit underwhelmed with how she plays so far) and then for Psylocke… well I had 2 costumes, so I chose her.
From how they actually felt:

  • Kitty – ok
  • Psylocke – good
  • Iron Fist – good
  • Black Bolt – good
  • Beast – a bit meh
  • Angela – ok
  • Luke Cage – ok
  • Ultron – ok
  • Doom – good
  • Juggernaut – good, but I’m inexperienced with Movement Heroes
  • She-Hulk – quite good
  • Elektra – quite good
  • Cyclops – meh
  • Green Goblin – ok
  • Thor – ok
  • Jean Grey – quite good
  • Blade – ok
  • Daredevil – surprisingly good


Not missing many heroes until they launch some more:

  • Ant-Man (interesting)
  • Colossus (meh)
  • Emma Frost (meh)
  • Iceman (mhm)
  • Invisible Woman (meh)
  • Loki (half meh)
  • Moon Knight (half meh)
  • Mr. Fantastic (meh)
  • Rocket Racoon (kind of interesting)
  • Vision (meh)
  • War Machine (all builds use his Synergy, so would be the “smart” choice)

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Mass Effect 3 – Completed

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Finally made it! (Only a few days before Andromeda is released and which I have not preordered, but still)
After 29-30h of playtime I finished Mass Effect 3 (Digital Deluxe Edition) as an Infiltrator FemShep (with pink armor, which looked totally rad). TLDR: I liked it a lot. Maybe not as good as ME2, maybe roughly as good. Scanning was worse and I had to set down the difficulty from Normal to Casual in the last damn fight. Everything else worked fine with a few deaths here and there (not as many as in ME1 by far).
The DLCs I have are: Reckoning, Retaliation, Earth, Extended Cut, Rebellion, Resurgence, From Ashes, Digital Books, Collector’s Edition Materials and the Soundtrack. Didn’t touch Multiplayer, so I guess half of that was useless. It was recommended I get the Citadel DLC, but so far I haven’t.
Apparently I have either 35 or 36 of 50 Achievements, Origin shows both numbers. /slowclap
This time I managed to do all side quests (besides the one that stays in your mission log if you fail to do it 100% on the planet) and I mostly enjoyed them. The Citadel ones were kinda meh, as it involved mostly scanning the exact planet – which would have been fun without the Reaper alertness mechanic which made any straight-on approach infeasible and killed my enjoyment. Get quest, look up exact location in wiki, scan, done, hand in. Meh. Everything else was ok, good, or really good. I think I got stuck not finding the way on one mission and had to look up the way to go. I did most missions with Liara and James. Liara died all the time, but when I tried Javik or Tali, they also died all the time. I was not very happy with the loadout screen before the missions. More than once I misclicked and started the mission early because the buttons are not clearly labelled. But that didn’t really matter, just a small nitpick.
So that’s 3 BioWare RPGs down (and I liked all of them), now I’m unsure if I will start Dragon Age: Origins (which I own, think I got it for free from Origin) or if I will buy Mass Effect: Andromeda. I’m kind of not in the mood for fantasy stuff right now, but maybe playing something else than an RPG *now* would also be a good idea.

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Mass Effect 3 – First impressions

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I finally started playing Mass Effect 3 in earnest (I think I played for 2h late last year, then stopped again), ~14 hours in total so far. It’s awesome. Playing my (imported from ME1 and ME2) female Shepard as an Infiltrator with a Sniper Rifle as usual, but either it’s a lot easier or I somehow managed to learn along the way, because I’m playing on Normal and not Casual and still don’t die all the time (I did die a few times). Quests are mostly varied enough and only some have some “doh” moments where I go look something up.
I think my main point of criticism are the Citadel quests you overhear that are “get me some X” and the X in question is on one of the 50? 100? non-mainline story missions somewhere our there. Also scanning got worse again. Overall nothing big.
Also something about my character’s cheekbones is off. Maybe related to importing and I can live with it, still a little annoying.
I was told to absolutely get the Citadel DLC and maybe I should, but 1200 BioWare points is 15 EUR (twice as much as I paid for the game, but that’s not really a problem) and maybe I’d rather buy Andromeda once I am done here…

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Back on Nexus

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Oh wow, I didn’t write about (and I guess also didn’t play) WildStar for 2 years and 2 months. I patched up and logged in yesterday, and today I cleaned out the bags, unlocked some costumes (in order to clean out the bags, mostly), wondered about the general state of my characters and was overall pretty surprised that I wasn’t in any way dismayed or let down by anything I found. Well, except for the full bags and that iirc some of my main’s gear was transformed into tokens – but I couldn’t care less about this.
I dusted off my Human Exile Medic and managed to do 2 levels in Wilderrun- 38 to 40. I even remembered how to play – or they made everything easier. It was only 3h (including the bank sorting), but it’s been a nice diversion and I didn’t feel pressed to shell out money instantly. Not that I would be against giving them money (again) – but the in-game shop is not IN YOUR FACE – I love that. Let’s see if I’ll taper off again quickly or if I manage to slowly make my way to a 3rd Level 50 character.
Open questions:

  • Is there rested XP? Maybe that’s why it felt so quick.
  • Why haven’t I learned to stay away from those elite mobs? 🙂

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Mini rant about EVE events

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So there’s this Guardian’s Gala event (to get some SKINs) and that what’s got me to try a bit of EVE Online (not offline, i.e. just training) again and I’m a little let down.

  • Jump in a Thorax I have sitting around (Gallente Cruiser) and try to find a “Guardian’s Gala Rendezvous Point” (cool)
  • Had to fly around a bit and find one of those, visited like 7 systems (cool)
  • Finally found one, yay! Engage!
  • Now I know I am probably the worst EVE player in existence, but as I was just returning and didn’t know what to expect (Don’t fly what you can’t afford to lose)… I maybe chose a badly fitted or badly played ship. There’s 5 Angel Cartel frigates and after killing 3 my drones are gone, I am apparently not cap stable and have to warp off. No clue how expensive the drones were, but ship insurance (as I said I was inactive the last months) + repairs = a few mil (still cool)
  • But so now I was curious how much the SKINs actually cost, so I flew my other toon to Jita to check.

TLDR: It’s easier to fly to Jita and spend 50m on ALL the skins for ALL the Gallente ships I can fly or pay 15m in insurance for a Brutix that MAY enable me to do a few of those events and get a handful of skins. Easy choice. Spent 50m, happy with my SKINs, event failed.
Not a real critique of CCP – I am totally happy that they do these events, but if I compare them to WoW (can login on *any* max level toon, do stuff to a) see the event and b) reap some rewards)… it’s not even worth trying it. It’s PvE content, I am shooting some NPC ships and maybe? get 1 SKIN per successful gate. Whereas my participation already costs a sizable amount of what I would get. I have to say that it might be quite different if I had managed to do one in my Thorax (probably easy) or if I had an insured Brutix or Ishtar ready (also easy for most people). Still not sure how Omega toons would do this. EPIC SKILL?

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Marvel Heroes – After the “biggest update ever”

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Oh, quite some time has passed since I last wrote about Marvel Heroes. I did log in for the rewards most days before firing up some other game but wasn’t really motivated. That has changed a bit since “THE BIGGEST UPDATE EVER” has launched.
So far I’m a bit underwhelmed by the changes. Most annoying is not only coming back after half a year, but also having to respec and reread about (now) 45 characters. I also don’t see a big benefit of the Infinity System – before you had Cookie Cutter builds and now you have them.
I do like that you can just take your skills and use them. I find it a bit weird that you can level 1-60 in like 1h (or was that my XP boosts?) or 3h with only Chapter 1-3 of story mode. Midtown Monday is still nice to level or prestige, ICP only heroic means I’m out while levelling, it worked ok at 60.
That all means I’m not against most changes I guess, but I’m also not thrilled. I’m happy I still like the game (~20h since I started playing again like a week ago, that’s not bad) but it’s definitely a -different game- now. Let’s see when marvelheroes.info will have all the builds for all the heroes I care for and if I can still manage some Cosmic Trials. (I hate figuring out builds on my own these days. I guess I last did this in WoW’s TBC expansion…)
Summary of changes in the roster:

  • Doom to 60 and prestiged to Green
  • Ultron to 60
  • Luke Cage to 60
  • Black Cat to 60
  • Venom to 60
  • Angela to 60
  • Iron Man prestiged to Blue (2x)
  • 2 new Team-Ups to 60 (Captain America, Ms Marvel) or halfway there (Winter Soldier, Spider-Man) and one at 1 (Miles Morales)
  • 4884 Achievement Pointsmh_20170131

Tentative to do list for the next weeks:

  • clean out all those Artifacts
  • I have 982 Eternity Splinters, that could be 2 new heroes…
  • Cosmic Midtown
  • do a few Danger Room runs
  • wrap up a few achievements, like 50 Taskmaster kills on Taskmaster
  • try to figure out a few “mains”
  • do some of my “would be nice” prestiges, or at least advance towards:
    • Iron Man to Red
    • Spider-Man to Blue
    • Gambit to Purple
    • Rogue to Green
    • Green Goblin to Green
    • Cyclops to Blue

PS: I still love their business model of giving you so much nice loot that digital hoarders like me have to buy bank space for money.

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Diablo 3 – Season 9

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The “20 years of Diablo” anniversary event in Tristram managed to keep my attention for 62 levels (until I had finished that damn achievement to get all the named mobs in the dungeon) and after a quick ride I was Level 70 (with a little help, as usual, but a lot less this time) and now my Witch Doctor sits at Chapter 4 completed after just ~13 hours /played and I am pretty amazed. I’ve been using the Icy Veins guide as I normally do, but still haven’t fully transitioned from minions to dots. Then again right now I’m having just too much fun with my build. Acid Cloud, Haunt, wait, sometimes Soul Harvest and in between a Gargantuan, 4 Zombie Dogs, an Enchantress and up to 15 Fetishes. I blasted through T4 rifts in ~10-12 minutes, managed to do Solo GRift 20 at 7:5x on first try and it’s really awesome. I even killed Malthael (my number nemesis in this game, on all difficulties and classes) on 2nd try in T4.
After the huge letdown with the Barbarian last season this could motivate me to push through Slayer and some more this time (like in Season 6 with my Crusader), we’ll see.
d3_s9_wd

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The 2016 review

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It’s Christmas eve around noon and this year I’m early with preparing my review post instead of playing games. I think that says enough.
Again I didn’t really go out of my way to buy stuff in sales, but it happened. Again I don’t really buy new stuff. Again there’s MMO subscriptions. Again I’m pretty happy with my spending.

  • Played a lot:
    • WoW: Legion (6 toons at 110)
    • EVE (hard to measure)
    • Marvel Heroes
    • Diablo 3 (S6: Crusader/Slayer, S7: Wizard/Chapter 4, S8: Barbarian/Chapter 4)
  • Completed:
  • Played a bit:
    • WoW: WoD (1 month just before Legion launch)
    • Faeria
    • Mass Effect 3
    • Dishonored
    • Guild Wars 2 (quite a bit at the start of the year)
    • Broken Sword
    • The Witcher
    • FarCry3: Blood Dragon
    • AC: Brotherhood (finally abandoned, Black Flag next)
  • Basically only logged in once or twice:
    • WildStar
    • SW:TOR

Gaming expenses in 2016:

  • WoW: 117 EUR – 45 EUR (Legion), 52 EUR (subscription), 20 EUR (character transfer)
  • EVE: 144 EUR – 2x 6month subscription (until April ’17)
  • Marvel Heroes: 80 EUR for the Advance Pack 3
  • Games on Steam: 33 EUR – Broken Sword 1-5 (15 EUR), KotOR2 (3 EUR), Faeria (6 EUR), Dishonored (3 EUR), Pony Island (2 EUR), Out There Somewhere + Dungeon Hearts (1 EUR)
  • Xbox 360: 0 EUR

This means: 374 EUR in 2016, so ~31 EUR per month, slightly up from last year’s 355 EUR, but with a 4 month subscription credit into 2017.

  • Amount of MMO subscription months paid for
    • with money: 12
    • with ingame currency: 1
  • Bought stuff in the shop: Marvel Heroes
  • Logged in to but didn’t spend money: GW2, WildStar, SW:TOR
  • Full price games: 1 (WoW: Legion)

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