Going south (again)

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It’s been… a week.
We’re packing up and moving down south, for the umpteenth time. I’ve been in Catch 1.0, in Catch 2.0, in Querious 1.0, in Querious 2.0, and now Querious 3.0. I missed Fade 1.0 though.

So apparently the B2 coalition is folding and a good chunk of corps and alliances is joining the Imperium. Not what I had on my bingo card for sure – especially for BRAVE.

I’m not especially fond of this decision although my stance is not as “grr goons” as it used to be in the past, but I’m still not happy. I know they have some decent people and even in general they behaved better than PandaFam did in this war. So even if I left, I’d be staying away from PH and FRT very much. But I’m not leaving, I’m traveling south and will be watching what the future brings.

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Diablo IV on hold, EVE Online back on the menu

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Unfortunately lack of time and a few other things didn’t really allow me to continue playing Diablo IV in Season 1, but I did manage to unlock quite a good chunk of the Altars of Lilith on m Eternal char, in preparation of Season 2. Well, let’s just say I’ve not yet managed to create a new char, about a week after it has launched. Then we had some hardware troubles in the house and have to see if we can even play together in the next few weeks.

But at least I did manage to play a good amount of EVE in the second half of October, so not all hope is lost.

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Diablo IV – Season 1

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Oh wow, another Diablo 4 post? On the same day?

Yeah, after exiting the game in a meh mood last night (just created my Seasonal Rogue, never logged in) today was a fresh day and the difference was night and day. I skipped the campaign I’d just done (not because I didn’t like it, but because it felt moot to redo it just after finishing it) and just did some dungeons, events, quests, and worked on the Seasonal stuff. Managed to do Chapter I quite quickly, then continued to Chapter II, which I finished a bit earlier in the evening.

So I’m Level 26 now and it’s really fun – I just didn’t like the Barbarian that felt so weak. Glad I stuck with it but I kinda hate the fact that they gated the Season behind this artificial wall and I had to suffer through this (or restart). Bonus: At Level 10 she already looked cooler, or maybe I just prefer the Leather/Rogue style.

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Completed: Diablo IV

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Yeah, the post title might be up for debate but if you look at Diablo IV as a game where you play through the story, then it’s correct.

I originally wasn’t really interested but then I got talked into getting it and we leveled a duo of Barbarians and it took like 3 months until schedules had lined up enough to finish this and last night the credits rolled. From what I’ve seen and heard the Barbarian as a leveling class felt very slow and very squishy compared to two different Rogue builds, and at times it was a real slog. But now it’s done and I mostly enjoyed it. Compared to the older Diablo titles you can call it a story – it wasn’t stellar but it wasn’t worse than that of most other games.

I find it a bit silly that you can’t create a Seasonal char without finishing the story, as it’s quite long (Level 45).

So now I have a Seasonal Rogue but I instantly logged out after creating her after that multi-hour session we had to first grind the last 2 levels and then do the last (very long) story part.

Did I like the game? Mostly. Barbarian didn’t feel great and I didn’t want to start a 2nd non-seasonal char and it was also not bad enough to restart.

Will I continue playing? Yeah, can’t wait to try a second class now.

Was it worth the money at launch? Eh, if you play with someone, probably yes. Overall? No, would’ve waited for a sale.

Am I being unfair by not really being in a mood for Diablo? I dunno.

So let’s see, maybe some more posts in the future.

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Patch 10.1.7 goals and stuff

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So, not too long after we finished the Raid on Heroic my WoW subscription ran out and I didn’t renew it at first. We had still planned to get 2-3 people who had missed the kill the achievement, so at the start of September I was on standby, if there were enough people to raid I’d use my token and resub, otherwise waiting. The 17th looked like it might happen but I had to bow out due to RL on short notice, but they didn’t end up killing the final boss again. So today we extended and had 16 people and after a few wipes it worked. I’m amazed I could remember the fight after 5 weeks.

I had actually claimed my token yesterday because I was a little bored and wanted to play WoW again, after that little break, and I also didn’t want to miss out on the Trading Post if I am honest.

So yesterday I didn’t even play that much, but I managed to finish the Trading Post, do the last 3 Zereth Mortis achievements I was missing for the final achievement, caught up on nearly all of the story quests from 10.1.5 and 10.1.7, did the Valdrakken weekly and some WQs and today did some Dragonriding achievements, finished the Niffen weekly and did some digging.

All in all it was quite nice and I had fun, but now I’m already a little unsure how to continue. For the first time I’m not burning to level my Horde chars (not even my old Rogue main), I’m only missing two of 13 classes to 70 (Priest and Evoker) and it feels a little pointless to do stuff on alts at the moment, except for some Profession stuff on 2-3 of them, but only what is useful for the whole expansion lifecycle and not just this patch/tier. I’m totally not in the mood for M+ right now and so I don’t think I’ll do the grind to KSH or KSM as I had originally planned. (I’ve deliberately put off doing the Night Elf & Undead Heritage Quests as they count for the Trading Post, so either I’m saving some time by doing them in October or at worst lose nothing either.)

Now I’m not sure I have a lot of real goals left for this 5-6 week stretch until the next raid opens, maybe some achievements but I’m not enthusiastic. Then again it’s also not that I’m eager to play something else. FFXIV was fun but I’m currently not inclined to resub, Cyberpunk 2077’s new patch sounds cool, Baldur’s Gate III and Starfield are fresh and somewhat interesting, but I dunno. When I’m not really in the mood for any game I suppose it’s a safe bet to stick to something I know and that I could buy with ingame gold. I know I’d be angry if I bought Cyberpunk now and stopped playing again after 10h, even if it’s on sale.

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Completed: Submerged

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I just finished Submerged – I don’t exactly know where or how I got it, but it was in my Steam library and sounded interesting. I played around 3.5h and got 5 out of 10 Achievements, when I finished the main story, all that’s left would be some discovery and I’m not sure I want to do that.

Submerged is a third-person combat-free game in which you explore a mysterious flooded city.

So the exploration is nice, you move around on your boat, then scale buildings and find stuff, so far so good.

My main problem is while the game is not linear at all – you can go in any direction and each of the 10 things you need to find is progressing the story, but I don’t know why they thought it would be a good idea to teleport you back to your base when you found the thing, because this means you need to find all the hidden extras per building BEFORE you use the thing, which makes you needlessly backtrack. The game has a wonderful fast travel option back to base. Why not just a simple “do you want to fast travel back now? Y/N” instead of this?

You can also get some upgrades for your boat but it only enables you to use your speed boost for longer, and travel times are not a problem at all. So more like “find all of them for an achievement”. What would have helped is a sprint key while climbing, especially with the aforementioned backtracking. Also I find it very funny that the protagonist is a better climber than your toon in Assassin’s Creed, but you can’t jump over anything, even if it’s a a big step and if you are balancing across a plank you walk very slowly and awkwardly.

Graphics are fine for 2015, if somewhat repetitive, and hold up pretty well.

So much for the objective criticism, subjectively I didn’t like the story-telling in pictograms, I’m really bad with those, when I looked it up I only got like half of it. But it’s not really important, I guess.

Did I like the game? Yes and no. The problem is that it makes me want to play Assassin’s Creed now, and not their sequel, make of that what you want.

So, recommendation to buy it? No. Recommendation to play it when you get it in a bundle or something? Yes. It’s a short game, I don’t think you’d need more than 5h unless going for completion.

Ninja edit 2023-09-08: 100%ed it in an hour, finding most of the secrets on my own, grabbing a guide for the rest. Total time: 4.5h

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Rise to Ruins Update 2

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Rise to Ruins is an awesome little indie game I bought in Early Access in 2017 and have since come back to play a round or two once in a while.

I’m not one to judge if a game is a classic X or Y with a twist, but you build a village, manage your resources, and at some point at night the monsters come, so you better be prepared and had some towers and walls built. Not strictly Tower Defense, but related.

It’s by no means a perfect game, but it doesn’t have a lot of game-breaking bugs (more like a few small irregular oddities) and some QoL things are missing, but you should absolutely buy it. I’m not saying that often because I suppose my taste in games is weird – but I fully support this game.

I hadn’t heard of this person before but I liked the review a friend linked me when I mentioned the game.

Apparently my timing was perfect because I had made a mental note to play it like a week ago and on August 26th a massive update had come out.

Splattercatgaming on Rise to Ruins

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August in review

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Maybe I’m getting old and caving in to people’s trends, or maybe I’m just trying to learn from the insights and “month in review” posts make sense if you still have something to say that you already didn’t and don’t want a ton of mini posts.

Didn’t get a ton of gaming time in this month, summer has been great, I’ve been outdoors a lot despite no official vacation (except one day, iirc).

We played some WoW, killed the Raid Tier’s end boss on Heroic, have since been struggling to get enough people together for a reclear for the people who missed it (but those also didn’t show up consistently, so maybe only half-way bad form?) but otherwise I’ve ignored it. Logged in a couple of times to grab some achievements or just to relax and do some weeklies, mostly ignoring alts. Refreshing to be a casual for a few weeks!

The 14d free login event in FFXIV came and went and I did put in some hours, but I think I didn’t stress it overly much. I kinda planned to resub directly afterwards, but life got in the way, so I’m holding off until I am needed to tank or heal some Stormblood story dungeons, probably soon-ish.

Then I was craving something different and played a couple games of Stellaris, which was usually a full evening. I suck at it but I like the game. Dug out Age of Wonders III again to see if I might be interested in Planetfall, which was (maybe still is) on sale at the time. But I’m still not feeling it. AoW always teases me with looking and superfluously being like Heroes of Might and Magic, but something is off. PF could be different enough because it’s in space, but i doubt it. I still don’t see them as 4X games for the most part. Might try Civ VI that I found in my library, probably from Epic.

Oh and Blaugust – I managed to keep up with some reading in the first half of the month, not so much in the latter. Discord looked busy though, good times.

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Some FFXIV levels were gained

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The free login campaign is pretty good, I’ve been playing most days since I started. Got about 7 levels on Black Mage and not really having a ton of fun, but I want to progress…

Made about three levels on Dragoon, it’s more fun but not the focus, mostly Tribal Quests, and finally some levels on Sage, which is not my favourite healer, but the last one below 90, and it’s okay. closing in on Level 80.

Also spent my tomestones on the Warrior Relic Weapon (Tier 1) instead of upgrading the Bard’s Bow, but grabbed a couple cheap iLvl 640 weapons from the market board.

Not sure if I am missing something but leveling seems hard. I don’t like the deep dungeons so it’s just duty roulette and a few FATEs. Not so quick and not so fun, but it’s working out at a steady pace.

Again, not really sure if I want to continue after the free login campaign is up – although it’s been really fun. But if I’m trying to think about what I like about this game… it’s apparently not “bringing the last few jobs up to max level” and it’s also not “gearing up via Alliance Raids”. I think I’ll make time to resub a week or two before the next expansion launches, get to max level in my own pace, hopefully play with my FC, and do the normal raid, then level 2-3 more jobs I actually like. (I suppose this is BRD > WAR > WHM/AST > DNC > PLD/DRK > GNB).

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Aberrus – week 11 & 12

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Week 11 was a quick clear of the first 7 bosses and then 3 wipes on Neltharion (as usual), then a clean oneshot on Tuesday and on to Sarkareth. Three bad pulls, six semi-ok pulsl in P3, then 3 pulls below 20%, including our new best 11%.

Week 12 – Sunday. We decided to go the skip route, so boss 1 & 8, then the last boss. Boss 8, Neltharion, gave us some headache today again. Three wipes that were worse than usual, but then it worked. On to the last boss. One 33% wipe without Vantus runes, then off to our break. Came back from the break, someone had bought Vantus runes… and the boss just fell, on the 50th pull or so. One person died, nothing spectacular. Kinda underwhelming because it wasn’t close at all. Now we just need one reclear for our 2nd main tank, who is on vacation… and he already missed one of the last tiers’ end boss, just the worst timing.

Anyway, AOTC in Dragonflight Season 2.

So the real question for me and WoW (until the next raid tier) is now if I want to start doing M+ in earnest or leave it be.

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