Quick 2015 review

Even though this blog doesn’t have many posts and also not many readers, I like doing review posts of my stuff. Caught a cold these days and didn’t get to play a lot on New Year’s Day.
Some people did cool charts on what they played in 2015, I can skip that fancy stuff and do a short list, especially as I can’t tell what I played in which month, as I wasn’t paying many subscriptions and am generally not good enough at tracking these things.

  • Significant amount of time spent:
    • Marvel Heroes
    • Guild Wars 2
    • WildStar
    • Ragnarok Online
    • EVE Online (only January+February)
    • Trine 2 (via AggroChat Game Club 2)
    • Shadowrun: Dragonfall
    • Shadowrun Returns
    • Lost Lands
    • Xbox 360: Rock Band, Rock Band 2, LEGO Rock Band
  • Insignificant amount of time spent:
    • Mass Effect
    • Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood
    • Borderlands 2
    • Age of Wonders III
    • Diablo III
    • Heroes of Might and Magic V
    • SW: TOR
    • Android: Fallout Shelter
  • Log in, play less than an hour, log out:
    • WoW
    • Age of Wonders – Shadow Magic

Gaming expenses in 2015:

Damn, this is a lot harder than last year.

  • WildStar: ~40 EUR for sub in Jan-Mar iirc
  • GW2: 110 EUR: box for 10 EUR, Heart of Thorns Ultimate Edition for 99 EUR
  • Marvel Heroes: ~120 EUR -Magik Hero Pack (16 EUR), ingame currency (~105 EUR)
  • Games on Steam: ~66 EUR – AoW3 (15 EUR), SR: Dragonfall (4,50 EUR), SR: Hong Kong (19 EUR), The Witcher 2 (3 EUR), Borderlands 2 (10 EUR), ME 1+2 + AC4 (14 EUR), Hero Siege (1 EUR)
  • Games on GoG: 3 EUR – Robin Hood (2 EUR), The Witcher (1 EUR)
  • Games on HumbleBundle: 16 EUR – GameMaker (12 EUR), Trine (1 EUR), Talisman (3 EUR)
  • Xbox 360: 0 EUR, unless I forgot a random used game for 5 bucks
  • EVE: 0 EUR (paid in Nov ’14)
  • WoW: 0 EUR
  • Ragnarok: 0 EUR
  • SW:TOR : 0 EUR

To sum it up: 355 EUR in 2015, which boils down to ~30 EUR per month for gaming. (2014: ~450/year or 37.50/month)

  • Amount of MMOs months I paid subs: 5
  • Amount of MMOs I logged into and played truly “F2P” without purchases: 3 (Ragnarok, SW:TOR, WoW)
  • Full price games/expansions I bought: 2 (Heart of Thorns and SR: Hong Kong)
  • Amount of games I feel I supported enough/voted with my wallet according to the amount of time I spent there: 2 of 2
    • preordered the HoT Ultimate Edition because I felt bad for enjoying GW2 so much on a 10 EUR one-time purchase
    • spent about exactly 10 EUR per month for stuff in Marvel Heroes – like a sub, but 100% optional. I never felt pressured to buy something. I <3 you, Gazillion.

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Hawkeye’s Cosmic Prestige, done

Finished! Finally!

Worst screenshot of a ding ever
Worst screenshot of a ding ever

At ~273 hours /played on Hawkeye (yes, that includes a lot of idling as I’m still working on the “500 hours on one character” achievement) it’s finally done – my first (and probably last) Cosmic Prestige Level 60 Hero. I threw all the XP pots I had on top of the +100% server XP and -50% needed for Cosmic Prestige, I think I saw 640% XP on my charsheet at one point.
Gaz is also pretty generous with Team-Ups this Christmas, so this is how it looks now:
mh_20151229
Gambled for another random hero today as well – no luck. And my free costume box was a “Wolverine X-Men Uniform” one, not sure I’ll use it. After the big finale I started a round of clearing up the STASH by exchanging 4 uniques for lots and lots of relics, this time I was a lot luckier and finally got around 200 Atlantis ones. Captain America, Nova and Squirrel Girl are capped at 1000 Relics, but they don’t use Atlantis ones.
So now I’ll focus on either Thor or Blade, and I still have 463 Splinters and 480 G to spend.
All in all I spent a lot more time in GW2 the last few days, but getting this huge thing out of the way will probably fuel my fun in this game again. Cosmic Prestige is just too much.

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A wild single player RPG appears

Recently there was talk about the Mass Effect series and again I noticed I had never played any of them. But I had bought ME1 and 2 on June 20th this year (surely in a Steam sale, or via GOG, or HumbleBundle…). So I set out to at least start playing before half a year is up.
My knowledge of the series was and is still very basic – I only knew about Shepard and that’s a SciFi RPG. I think I’ve never played any of the “big” BioWare RPGs besides KotOR – so even that didn’t help. But now I’m 3h in and I really like it. The music is pretty good, the controls are relatively ok (besides Space not being used for jump – I drew my gun in the face of a lot of people in the Citadel already, but they didn’t seem to mind).
But there’s also a few downsides. First of all the beeping and sounds in the menus. While creating my character I was already close to turning the sound off. WTF. Everything in the 80s on a GameBoy was less annoying. Then I only noticed too late that my character’s nose is not good. I’m usually not the one spending half an hour in the character generator, but I couldn’t adjust the nose, now it’s annoying me in every cutscene. Ah well, the rest of the head is ok-ish. But for a 2007 game I’m a bit disappointed. Sure, that’s 8 years old, but as I wrote above I’ve never played more recent games besides a few MMOs. And while cartoony – I wouldn’t say WoW’s 2004/05 Humans looked worse than the ME1 characters.
I’ve also yet to experience the “great Bioware writing”, Shepard got some introduction and also Captain Anderson, but the rest of my squad haven’t had more than 2minutes of screentime yet. And what’s with the endless elevator rides? Yes, they’re funny the first two times, but I bet I’ll hate them very, very soon.
So yeah, too bad I have a Marvel Heroes character to Cosmic Prestige (hit 56 today and there’s a +200% buff plus event) and a GW2 Guardian to level (40 already) and there’s also the Winter achievements in GW2. I especially like their Rock Band mini game.

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Back to Tyria

Hawkeye is still 55, but a lot closer to 56. I’ve visited the Danger Room a lot, but wasn’t in the mood to grind.
But I’m back in Tyria! After contemplating rolling a Guardian for many months I finally did it. Went for the biggest baddest Norn possible and I’m having a blast. Steamrolled my way to 30 in under 12h with no urgency, just playing and doing what I liked. Used one Tome of Knowledge for 19->20 to get the story going, though. Jeweler is at 150, so only a bit of crafting done.
norn_guardian
So my characters are now 80 Warrior, 80 Thief, 46 Necromancer, 30 Guardian, 13 Engineer and 6 Ranger. I need more character slots.

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Hawkeye’s Cosmic Prestige, part 3

Nope, it’s still not done. But thanks to various events (including a 4 day Midtown Madness) and 2 days of vacation I managed to push Hawkeye to 55 – sitting at 11d, 1h, 20min /played for him.
I randomed Blade (very nice) and still have 494 Eternity Splinters left. Omega Points at 2508 – so nearly exactly a third of the 7500 max. THAT is some work left there.
Roster looks like this now, with all Team-Ups at 60, 31 Level 60 Heroes and 2 not yet started. Daredevil wasn’t especially fun while levelling, but I think with some more gear he might be – on bosses. Really horrible at AoE 🙁
mh_20151208

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So many Heroes

This weekend it was Marvel Heroes again for the most part – how surprising.
First of all, the roster got another upgrade: Thor via 175 Eternity Splinters, then Daredevil via Black Friday Sale (325G) and lucked out on Silver Surfer via BOGO from Daredevil. \o/
mh_20151129
First Magik got to 60 and I’ve been running some Cosmic Terminals already, then finished Doctor Strange and finally brought Silver Surfer from 1 to 60 today. He’s really fun to play, and my first Movement Hero (if you don’t count Nova…)
Captain Marvel, Hulk, Star-Lord and Thing are the only non-Level 1 Heroes that are missing Power points because they were levelled without Story Mode, so that’s something to do once I’m out of non-maxed Heroes. All the others sit at 166 (or 169 with the Limbo quest done) points.
For how much money I spent.. 16 EUR for 2100G in August and November, 980G left – I can really live with that amount of money.
After the STASH changes, I’m sitting at 8 General tabs and 23 Hero tabs – and still running out of space all the time. Curse you, Gazillion 😛

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Marvel Heroes, not so much cosmic

A quick one this time. A bit of work on Hawkeye, still in the low 40s, but Magneto (from my 300 days of Login bonus) is 60 – quite fun to play once you get over the very squishy first 20-30 levels.
I grabbed Pirate Deadpool from the secret achievements via this guide. It felt like grouping didn’t work, but not 100% sure.
pirate_deadpool
And I bought Magik on presale (first time) in the shop, very excited to get her hopefully this week.
mh_20151123

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Hawkeye’s Cosmic Prestige, part 2

It’s nearly a week later and I’m Level 33 (and a bit) – this is really as hard as people wrote on the forums :P. I played most nights since the last post, but not much every time. I think I’ve spent 8-9h in total. The Omega event has started and we’re at (3*24)% bonus XP today, that means 96% tomorrow and I’ll do Monday Midtown again and hoping to get some levels in.
And I’m also taking advantage of every XP bonus I can get:

  • Nanotech: Microsurgery Experimental Robots (+45 XP on kill)
  • Psionics: Overmind’s Power (+6% XP)
  • Psionics: Clairsentience (+20 XP on kill)
  • Neural Enhancement: Amadeus Cho (+5% XP)
  • Pet with +3 INT (+3% XP)
  • Legendary: Pot of Gold of Cassidy Keep (+10% XP)
  • Mole Man Medallion (+9% XP and +2 INT)
  • Seer’s Brilliance Runeword (+1 INT and +100 XP on kill)
  • 1/3 Exp. Enchantment of Year (+20 XP on kill each)

Level 33 Hawkeye with 20 INT. Weird. (Displayed Bonus XP of 275% + 185.)
Other than that I levelled Doctor Strange to 47 casually and did a few Achievements (mostly finding the Treasure Rooms in Story Mode) and shuffling some gear around in the Stash by equipping some neglected Level 60 Heroes.

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Phew, Cosmic Prestige

Yep, I did it. Took advantage of Monday Midtown Mayhem and started Cosmic Prestige on Hawkeye. Managed to get to Level 26 (running several XP boosts) in exactly 4 hours.
Finished Story Mode Chapter 1-3 following to this guide as usual (for the rewards, not everything) and the rest was spent in Midtown, always joining the bracket 2 levels too late and leaving it 2 levels too late in order to not fill up on reward chests I can’t open so much (i.e. joining the 15-19 bracket at 17, leaving at 22).
I don’t want to know how long it will take and if my 25h estimation from yesterday for the whole thing is too high or too low, but I’m gonna make it!

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So much XP

mh_20151108
Some updates. Spider-Man is Level 60 and a lot of fun. Levelling him was so fast that I decided to try something out as long as the A.R.M.O.R. event is supposed to give +100% XP. So I loaded up on 3 different XP boosts I had in my stash and prestiged Hawkeye twice. From Purple to Orange, from Orange to Red. Each run took about 65 minutes (with 2-3 short visits to a terminal for the A.R.M.O.R. drop buff mission thingy). So I still have nearly 4h left on this +150% to everything buff and 110 minutes on the normal +50%, so I’ll maybe look if I have another 1-2 different ones and go for Cosmic prestige tomorrow in Midtown Madness. We’ll see. Or I’ll level Doctor Strange. An additional benefit of those runs was having 3 Hawkeye Costumes for the blender, which yielded the She-Hulk Lawyer costume, the one I was looking forward to anyway. Now I just need to get She-Hulk as Hero.. as I’ll get my 300th login bonus (Random Hero) in less than 2 weeks I’ll probably save up splinters up till then and after using that one just buy her.

So much XP Read More »