Preordering GW2… again

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I wrote a post back when I preordered Heart of Thorns in June 2015. So on September 15th I did it again and preordered the Ultimate edition of Path of Fire, Guild Wars 2’s second expansion. I’ve been playing again for a few weeks now, the cash shop was not in my face, I’m thoroughly enjoying myself and this is my “Thanks developers, have some money, because I don’t have to pay a monthly fee”. That’s less than 200 EUR for more than 2 years of GW2, if I had chosen to play that much. WoW would’ve been at least 300 EUR for exactly 2 years.
This time I’m not forgetting to take a screenshot of the page:
gw2_pof_buy
So yes, I like this package – I’ve bought HoT with gems that lasted me until now and now I have 4000 more gems to spend and in between there’s a few bonus things.
“Pre-purchase before launch and receive one Sunspear Weapon Skin of your choice, a Miniature Balthazar, and the title of Elonian Envoy.”
Also not bad for just buying it a few days earlier than launch.

I’m not so much excited for the content (I liked Tyria better than the HoT content) but we’ll see. I’m definitely eager to check it out, but not necessarily on launch day.
I now also have 2 open slots, 2 character professions missing, and 2 Level 80 boosts. Fits perfectly, and still there’s so much to do even without this.

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Running out of clever GW2 titles

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Big surprise, I’ve been playing GW2. Did some more levelling/using Tomes and now the roster looks like this:

  • Warrior – 80
  • Thief – 80
  • Guardian – 80
  • Mesmer – 80
  • Ranger – 80
  • Necromancer – 64
  • Engineer – 32

Just finished the story quests at 30 on the Engineer, nearly finished Act 1 of Heart of Thorns on the Mesmer, did the 3 daily quests for most days in the last 2 weeks and worked on some achievements:

  • 75% map completion (actually 78 already)
  • 13/18 Heart of Thorns Act 1 (needed a second playthrough, working on the rest)
  • Got to 520/1000 skins
  • Got my first set of Cultural Armor (Norn, Heavy, Tier 1)
  • a few Jumping Puzzles (most are really fun)
  • Got all Tyria Mastery Insights
  • Progressed a bit along “Anomalous Occurrences”
  • Alpha Crafter
  • 2745 (2205 + 540) Achievement Points (boo)

 
So the current plans are:

  • 100% map completion on the Warrior
  • finish the Personal Story (instance quest) on the Warrior
  • progress in HoT with the Mesmer
  • collect a little more equip for Mesmer and Ranger
  • maybe craft a 3rd Ascended piece (currently: Helm, Legs, Amulet, 2 Rings)
  • wrap up some achievements
  • Level Chef and Scribe to 400 (hopefully)
  • decide if any of the PoF elite specs are worth preparing some spare Hero Points

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Thoughts about Destiny 2

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Is Destiny 2 the shooter I’ve been waiting for all those years?
My first real shooter was Quake 1 back in ’96 ond the coming years, on LAN parties. Then came Quake II with its various mods, which I played for many years, even in the ESL. I tried a few more, Duke Nukem 3D on LAN parties (didn’t really like it), SiN (awesome), Kingpin, Malice, Jedi Knight: Mysteries of the Sith, Starsiege: Tribes, Half-Life, Team Fortress, Quake III Arena, Soldier of Fortune, Unreal, and Unreal Tournament (or 2003?, I don’t remember). But that was it, I’m sure I played nothing serious or for a longer period of time for the last 12-13 years, except a few hours of Borderlands and Borderlands 2 (and Blood Dragon, apparently, my first and only entry in the FPS category…) and a single game of GitS: First Assault.
But.
But I downloaded the Destiny 2 Beta after watching a few trailers and reading what Belghast has been raving about since I’ve been reading his blog and also some others generally speaking highly of it.
And to my surprise… my only complaint was that the Story mode mission was too easy (hey, I didn’t die once and as I said I’ve not played FPS for years… I’m like 7 hours into Borderlands 2 and I’m dying all the damn time), and the first 3 person strike mission (with 2 randoms) was perfectly well-balanced already. One was a bit better than I was and the other was slightly better and we made it.
So yeah, I’m usually not the person to grab stuff at release day, I’m not the person to buy shooters, but if I’m still in the right mood when it launches… I might join.

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Guild Wars 2 Update

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ranger_63
Ranger at 63

Yeah, I’ve played a lot of GW2 in the last 2 weeks. First I brought my Mesmer to 80 (boosting with Tomes between the Story missions) and grabbed enough Hero points to get the Chronomancer weapon, then I levelled my Ranger normally to 63, still doing all the Story missions (maybe  a bad idea to do them twice in a two week window).
Then I noticed that I had never finished the Personal Story on my first 80, the Norn Warrior, so I did all of them and am stuck now at the very last once – the instance one. I’ve never done an instance in GW2 so that might be a fun experience, which I postponed for now.
Apparently crafting doesn’t give as much XP as I thought, so it’s probably not really wasted when you do it at max-level. I do need to level Tailoring and Chef, but I’ve not yet decided on which toon.
This is how I’ve set it up currently:
 

  • Warrior – 500 Armorsmith
  • Thief – 200 Huntsman / 500 Leatherworking
  • Guardian – 400 Jeweler / 400 Weaponsmithing
  • Necromancer – 380ish Artificer

 

mesmer_80
Mesmer at 80

So maybe Chef for the Warrior and Tailoring either for Necromancer or Mesmer.
I’m also not big on Achievements in this game, but I think I should really at least get to 75% map completion and finally continue with Heart of Thorns. This isn’t even in anticipation of the new Expansion, apparently measuring levels is a really good idea for my playstyle – as soon as I hit max-level my interest plateaus pretty quickly. More so in WoW, but in GW2 it’s also more like.. “get a decent set of gear, continue to next character”
I did read up on how to get Ascended gear and the Warrior actually has a Helm, Amulet (and as of last week, also 2 Rings) – but I really should check if and how to continue there.
Oh, and I’m still sitting on 200 Tomes and a few Level 20 boosts and a Level 80 boost. So if I use the 80 boost and get another character slot for fully boosting an Elementalist (60) and the Ranger (17) and the Necro (16) I still have too many even if I boost the Engineer (56). Wow.

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Marvel Heroes revisited

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Currently back in the “play grindy games and listen to podcasts” mood, so not only have I played a lot of Guild Wars 2, no, also did more than log in for Login bonuses in Marvel Heroes!
mh_20170826
So, what changed? There’s 5 new 60s I guess. Nick Fury was in the Advance Pack and I levelled him a while ago already (probably in April). This week I spent most of my >2000 Eternity Splinters and bought 5 heroes for 400 each. Ant-Man, Warmachine, Loki, Rocket Raccoon and Moon Knight. All besides Moon Knight were already rushed through parts of story mode and are Level 60 with an absolute minimum of gear. Meh, completionism only for now. Still sitting on a massive amount of G from a ridiculous sale a while ago, will probably be spent on Team-Ups. I also worked on a few achievements, but not really worth mentioning I guess.
To my big disappointment the Fantastic Four were taken out of the game, so unless you got/bought them before, you can’t get them. This sucks quite a bit, as I only have two of them, and could’ve easily grabbed Invisible Woman and Mister Fantastic if I had heard about the change in time 🙁

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Busy in Tyria

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gw2_ranger_40
Ranger at 40

Oh wow, I haven’t written about Guild Wars 2 in a while, but I didn’t play much I guess. In December ’15 I wrote “80 Warrior, 80 Thief, 46 Necromancer, 30 Guardian, 13 Engineer and 6 Ranger”.
Trying to retell the order of events: Guardian hit 80, went to be a Dragonhunter. Necro is got to 60, Engineer got to 20. That was in 2016, I guess.
When I started to play again last week (or was it 2 weeks ago?) I did some crafting first. The Necro is now 62 thanks to levelling Artificer to 265. Then I wasted the tasty XP because the Dragonhunter is now at 400 Weaponsmithing. Then I levelled the Engineer to 25 and stopped playing after researching builds and not liking what I saw at all. So I switched to the Ranger, played until Level 13 and used one of the “Get to Level 20” boosts. Then I levelled without any boosts to 40. Didn’t continue the story yet.
 
gw2_mesmer_30
Mesmer at 30

Also I finally spent most of the Gems I still had from buying Heart of Thorns on 2 character slots and a crafting mats expension because they were on sale. So I started a (Female Human) Mesmer and boosted her from 2 to 20, then did my story mode quests, finally used a few of my >200 Tomes of Knowledge and am now sitting at Level 30, waiting for the story quests to continue (but I logged out for lunch and writing a post.) So that’s >200 Tomes of Knowledge left, and also one full Level 80 boost. Maybe I got that when I bought Heart of Thorns as well? I think I’m saving this one for a Revenant as I’m not particularly interested in an Elementalist.
So that’s it now. Enough Tomes to boost whatever I like, but playing the Ranger is fun. Mesmer as well, but I think I’ll continue boosting her for now. And I still haven’t levelled Chef, Scribe, or Tailoring at all.

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Diablo 3 – Season 11

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Four months since the last post and I didn’t really play many games.
I was persuaded to get the Diablo 3 Necro Pack (is there even an official name? Rise of the Necromancer it seems?) and now I’m Level 70, Chapters I-III finished and 3/12 at Chapter IV. 4h played so far and it’s relatively fun. What wasn’t fun was emptying my S10 char’s stuff into the non-seasonal bank. Took an hour, as usual. We’ll see how far this will go, but at least it’s a fun game after 4 months of only Fallout Shelter and a few hours of EVE.
s11_necro1

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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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