Trine 2 (AggroChat Game Club 2)

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I’m a big fan of the AggroChat podcast and when they revealed the game they’d be all playing in March turned out to be Trine 2 I rummaged around in my Humble Bundle purchases because the name sounded vaguely familiar. I was in luck, because I apparently had a key and so I wanted to give it a try after all.
So like most of the folks from AggroChat I did not finish Trine 2, but I wholeheartedly agree with most of their review points: It’s a nice platformer/puzzle game that looks absolutely fantastic. Most puzzles (up to the point where I stopped, at some point after the 2nd boss) were fair.
I did nearly all my fighting on the Warrior (with a few arrows here and there and crushing a few enemies with a box), did most of the jumping on the Thief and solved most of the puzzles as the Wizard.
I also agree on the shortcomings, meaning that “conjuring boxes” solves too many problems.
I totally couldn’t stop laughing when it came to discussing the pipe puzzles and the perceived lack of means to rotate them – like Bel I spent a minute or two on each puzzle hitting them against the assets and my character to spin them around instead of finding the keybinding to do that.
Oh, and go listen to that episode if you’re interested – I think besides the criticism of it being too easy I agree with mostly everything they said. I’m so out of touch with single player games in general and platformers especially that it was hard enough for me. But I mostly stopped for time reasons (all those Marvel Heroes need to be levelled after all…) and I’ll absolutely try to finish it at some point.
Awesome game – play it!

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Welcome to Tyria

/ / Leave a Comment / Guild Wars 2 /

There was a sale recently and so I decided to spend 10 bucks and finally try Guild Wars 2. Trying to remember how I would’ve described without having played it, this would probably include “fantasy MMO”, “frequent content updates”, “no subscription” and “Guild Wars 1 was kind of weird” (but I only saw it for an hour or two when someone showed it to me).
So yes, I’ve started levelling a Male Norn Warrior and managed to get to Level 17 on the weekend. I have 100% map completion in Wayfarer Foothills and Hoelbrak and it’s been enjoyable so far. Relatively unexciting, but that’s not a bad thing I guess. Plus I’d only played WoW for one month in the last ~9 months – so maybe I did miss my Fantasy MMOs?
The game is relatively easy to get into, had to look up a few things on various wikis and websites, but in general it seems newbie friendly, although combat can be clunky I think. We’ll see about this weapon switching and end game.

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Running out of Marvel Heroes post titles

/ / Leave a Comment / Marvel Heroes

As usual I played a lot of Marvel Heroes, after the letdown in my last post I got a lot luckier again, I drew Ms. Marvel and Cable from random boxes bought with splinters and got Taskmaster from a free code (thanks PCGamesN). Incidentally I was working from home today and got the news of this only 2h after they posted those 5000 keys, now 12h after the post they’re already gone. I’m not terribly keen on either Cable or Taskmaster, but I haven’t played them yet – and I’m sure as hell not complaining.
So yes, I did level Storm since my last post and also Ms. Marvel (a week of Midtown really helped here) – both to 60 and Hulk is also 33.
MH_20150310
I’m pretty surprised that I’m still getting a tremendous amount of fun out of this game, I think I’ve logged in all the ~72 days since I started (for the login bonus) – but of course I didn’t play on all the days, but still quite a lot.
Immediate plans for the future include:

  • Get enough Cosmic Worldstones to buy the Doop pet
  • Get enough OMEGA stuff to get Agent Coulson (Team-Up)
  • Get a Legendary on the Heroes that are lacking one: SW, HT, CAP, HULK
  • If possible, get the Hero a legendary before starting to level
  • Story mode is incomplete on: HT, STM, MM
  • Get Domino (Team-Up)
  • Decide what and if to prestige again, preferably before retroactively completing story mode

Short names grabbed from this site.
Maybe I should track my most sought after Heroes, those would be right now:

  • Iron Man
  • Punisher
  • Rogue
  • Deadpool
  • Nightcrawler
  • Juggernaut

And because I’ve never written it down, if memory serves me right, I now have:

  • 3x normal stash
  • 1x reagents stash
  • hero stash for: HWK, SW, GMB, HT, STM, MM

Money I spent so far, if I remember correctly:

  • 15$ for 1575G in the first week (1 Hero for 450G, 2 Heroes for 225G each?, 1 crafting stash) – 1200G
  • 10$ for 1000G (3 hero stashes) – 1050G
  • 10$ for 1000G (3 hero stashes) – 1050G
  • 10$ for 1000G (2 normal stashes) – 1000G

That’s ~11$/10€ per month (still got some spare G) so far, compared to the ~14$/13€ for other MMOs.
That’s ~14$/13€ per month (still got some spare G) so far, exactly like in other MMOs.

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Not many Heroes

/ / Leave a Comment / Marvel Heroes

So wow, a month has passed and I didn’t play anything besides Marvel Heroes.
I was just busy levelling Captain America when on Sunday morning I noticed that my bags were exploding with stuff (as usual) and I didn’t have a pet to feed all those delicious cosmic items to, so I set on getting a pet. Not having enough Cosmic Worldstones I first tried my luck with a few Fortune Cards – no luck of course. Then I saw that you can just buy pets for 1m credits but they have a prestige requirement. The cosmic event is going on right now which seems to be the thing to do prestige, so I didn’t hesitate (this would be the perfect moment for a pun that only works in German…) to start a prestige run on Human Torch, who seems to be my most AoE-heavy grindy hero at the moment. I managed to get to 56 until Sunday evening by basically doing Midtown Patrol for 20 levels, then Industrial City until around midnight. I used 3 2h +50% exp potions in the process. Then yesterday after work I finished the remaining 4 levels in Midtown (Monday!) and also brought Captain to from 47 to 60 there.
So this is how it looks. The “Random Hero Token” thing already bit me twice now, I got a 2nd Human Torch (translates to Ultimate token) and now a 2nd Storm. Meh. If I got my statistics math correct this should only be a 3%((8/44) * (8/44)) chance, so I don’t think they are really random – there was another unlikely 8% ((13/44) * (13/44))  case of getting 2 duplicate tokens in a row in the household.
But whatever, 30 more splinters and I can try again, I am not immensely pissed about dupes. Still unsure what to level next, probably Storm, maybe Ghost Rider.
 
MH_20150224

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New Eden minor updates

/ / Leave a Comment / EVE Online, WildStar

I haven’t touched WildStar in a few days (or has it been 2 weeks with only logging in for a few mins?) because my non-Marvel Heroes time was mostly spent in New Eden, where my Nullsec char has now learned Interceptors (still need to save up for one though) and I also bought the first Scythe for Space Priesting after two quick stints in a Probe. Not sure yet how good I am at it, but it’s fun. Maybe more fun than shooting space ships. And my older “main” high sec carebear character can now fly Gallente HACs, as soon as I have enough ISK to buy and fit an Ishtar (notice a pattern?).
I think I’ve never been that low in ISK since my first week in EVE, but buying ships for two characters now, spending money on skill books and with the only source of income being ~5h of semi-afk mining in high sec while I surf the web on the second screen.. Not good. And while I’m not planning to buy PLEX to sell it for ISK, I kind of need to find a source of income it seems. Still plan to try Station Trading but I usually hate this AH flipping, it really feels like Excel to me and I never did it in WoW, where the source of my income was nearly 100% based on levelling so many alts and selling excess stuff that the gold kind of came in quicker than I could reasonably spend it, without investing a single minute into *earning* gold since TBC.
Moreover, I’d love to buy a PLEX or two for ISK in order to not pay for dualtrain, but apparently that’s a very unrealistic scenario. I wonder if there are people hating economics in games as much as I do and still making a decent income. The only game where I enjoyed trading a lot was some ~1997 era trading sim with ships. I really should search for the name, to have an example handy.
So while I enjoy reading Syp‘s shenanigans in multiple MMOs, I can definitely say it is not for me. In some weeks I might even spend more time ingame than he does, but 2 games are the absolute reasonable maximum that I can focus on. The only exception might be a mobile game on the subway or some Guitar Hero, but both occur more on a bimonthly (non-)schedule than on a daily one.

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Monday seems to be Marvel Heroes day

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Yesterday with Monday Midtown Madness live again I (finally) made it to 60 on Hawkeye, now my first max level character in Marvel Heroes (and making it the maybe 4th MMO where I have achieved that feat). The current event is kind of crazy (higher stacking XP buff every day) so after hitting 60 and then spending roughly 15 minutes opening loot boxes I immediately switched to Scarlet Witch, because your first 60 gives an account-wide +25% XP buff if I am not mistaken.
So I continued with story mode where I had left off at level 7 and this brought me to the Kingpin at Level 19ish which is when I switched to Midtown again to get to 25 (one more Synergy bonus, yay).
Thoughts on play styles so far:

  • Hawkeye feels cooldown heavy (like Rogues in WoW used to be). Every 50s I can literally destroy a screen full of enemies (with the help of my turret) but without my summoned demon pet (35s cooldown, 30s active) I would be quite helpless in the Holo-Sim, whereas when partnering with Rocket Raccoon with a pure minion spec everything was smooth.
  • Scarlet Witch only started to kick ass at around 20 with my spec, before that a bunch of ranged mobs would hurt and bosses take a while because of dotting, strafing, running. Definitely not a tanky character, but fun to play. Unlike Hawkeye, I don’t like the default costume a lot. It’s a bit skimpy.

So my humble roster now looks like this now:
MH_20150119
So that’s one max level character and 2 at the first “important” level, which gives them access to their first Uru-Forged item and also unlocks a Synergy buff. Plus around this level you usually complete story mode for the first time. In WoW I used to define this important level as 40, when you got your mount, because I am that old. Nowadays I’d say it’s 20 (first mount) and 58/60 (going to the first expansion zone, plus flying mounts) and 70, 80, 85 and 90 aren’t that important as milestones, unless you personally set your goals like this. Yes, I do, but it’s kind of arbitrary.
Whereas my partner in crime (fighting) already sports around 2 60s and 3 25s. But as in Diablo 3, as much as I enjoy the game in small bursts, after 2h or less I need a break. Something I don’t know from other games, but apparently at times I even grab my mouse a lot harder because my hand hurt. Time to relax more I think.
I think my favorite gimmick feature is heroes quipping to/about other heroes when they encounter them ingame. Even quite funny at times.

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Midtown Madness

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Apparently yesterday there was an event called Monday Midtown Madness (or any combination of the three) which resulted in me playing for roughly 6h straight, something I hadn’t done in a while, in any game. It was just the right amount of carrot on a stick it seems.
Go to Midtown, wait a while, kill 2-5 event bosses, loot, have no bagspace, go donating to level up your vendor, wait up to 3 minutes or how long you needed to check all the gear that dropped from the loot chests or cards, repeat.
Yep, that escalated quickly. I got from 35 to over 42 with no additional XP than the events, a whole new set of equip, about 15 Uniques and 6 Uru-Forged and still 20 loot chests in the bank that I will postpone opening until I run out of bank space again (they always drop loot of your level, that’s why it makes sense to keep them).
Oh, and I got one of these now:
MH_20150112
(generated by this page and of course Green Armadillo pointed me to it)
I think this was the first post written in wordpress.com’s new editor, not sure I like it, but it seems to work well enough. I have no clue what “Featured Image” does, I nearly didn’t find “Add Media” and I don’t see how the final url will look, that’s especially bad.

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Marvel Heroes: Hello Heroic

/ / 2 Comments / Marvel Heroes /

I wrapped up the first playthrough on Normal difficulty yesterday, defeating Dr. Doom and then Loki with Hawkeye. I was Level 28 or 29, now I’m in Lowtown again and nearly Level 31.
I really like playing Hawkeye, although he’s not feeling like easymode like Human Torch (up until Level 14, so my experience is limited).
Loki was a real pain, though. I think I died 6 or 7 times, a first. The jump from Normal to Heroic is not really noticeable I think, less than in Diablo 3 for sure.
I got weak and bought a little more ingame currency for 5$ and now have a crafting tab. I could buy a Hero tab as well but so far it’s been bearable. I am feeding all the items I get to the crafter to reach level 20 there, but so far it’s only Level 8.
The winter/holiday event ended yesterday evening with a long downtime and today there’s a new event with 42% XP bonus. I was happy until I noticed that the holiday event had 100% XP bonus, it just wasn’t easily recognizable if you started during it. Ah, whatever, 29 levels wasn’t too bad.
I played a lot less WildStar, but my Medic is 38 now and halfway through Wilderrun already.

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WildStar Updates

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I haven’t done any dailies at 50 for ages, but there has been some other progress.
My Medic hit 35 and I enjoy playing her very much. Enough damage that it feels quick and a little healing so that I can solo 2man mobs.
When my Engineer ran out of rested XP at 16 I switched over to my Warrior again because he had loads, so now he’s 21 and I don’t want to repeat Galeras only a few days after I just did the quests. Doh, should’ve thought that through a little better.
I just went to grind out the Journeyman Tailoring achievement/tree thingy Enemy Patterns: Shatterforce Dominion which is a bit of a pain because you have to kill mobs in the Dominion quest hub Shatterforce Outpost. Luckily there are 5 mobs that can be killed on respawn if you stand right in the middle and because of Void Slip I can aggro everything else and kill the remaining ~8 mobs every minute. It took me about an hour of work while reading stuff on the second monitor. Not too bad. But apparently it’s bugged and I need to craft all 5 of them now. Time to farm or buy some lowbie cloth then…

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2014 gaming expenses

/ / 1 Comment / About this blog, Games /

Why come up with original content when you can grab the best ideas? 🙂
This is what I spent on games and gaming in 2014, but I’m sure I forgot somethng.

MMOs, roughly by time /played

WoW: 156 EUR
I was subscribed for 6 months in early 2014 (I think 2 of those were spent only logging in once a week and chatting to guildies, could’ve saved that) and for 1 month in December after I had bought Warlords of Draenor 2 weeks after launch, end of November. WoD was 45 EUR and I also had one paid character transfer in February to the server where I was working on Algalon.
WildStar: ~105 EUR
I don’t remember the box price (around 40 EUR?) and I’ve been subscribed since launch (5 months).
Pet peeve: NCSoft always needs 2FA via email because my IP changed. Doh, I live in Germany, where roughly 75% of non-mobile users have a new IP on a daily basis.
SW:TOR: 36 EUR
I was subscribed for 3 months, January until March. If I remember correctly I was levelling my Jedi Sage to 55. No clue why I didn’t write about it.
EVE Online: 48 EUR
I was subscribed until February and came back in late October. That’s 4 months of subscriptions (1 discounted) and I spent 2 PLEX on dual training I had already paid for in 2013.
Marvel Heroes: 8.50 EUR
I started close to New Year’s Eve and spent money on 1000G to buy 3 heroes at the sale. Quite fun, looking forward to finishing the story mode for the first time.

Other games

Diablo 3 – Reaper of Souls: 40 EUR
Back when it launched it was fun for a while, but now awesome fun like Diablo 2 was. In the patch preceding the expansion launch and also after the expansion I played a whole lot. Worth the money, even if went a little stale after a while again.
Steam: ~30 EUR
Hammerwatch 4-pack, Assassin’s Creed 2, AC 3, AC: Brotherhood, AC: Revelations, 10000000, Game Dev Tycoon, Terraria, Gunpoint
I had grabbed Assassin’s Creed 2 at a sale, completed it in a few days and bought the sequels, started with Brotherhood then went to play something else. Still looking forward to finishing them.
I wrote about Game Dev Tycoon and loved it. Same for Gunpoint. Terraria wasn’t really my cup of tea and 10,000,000 was a bit weird, but after an hour it was more fun than in the beginning. And Hammerwatch I only stopped playing because of Marvel Heroes. Still plan to finish it piecemeal.
GoG: 15 EUR
Heroes of Might & Magic 5 Bundle, The Settlers 4, Age of Wonders Shadow Magic, Master of Orion 1+2
After this post I didn’t buy Anno, but Settlers 4. I got the Master of Orion titles because of good things I heard, but it’s a bit too oldschool it seems, I wasn’t immediately hooked. HoMM 5 got a decent amount of play time already, it looks better and plays nearly as good as HoMM 3. (HoMM 4 sucked, btw)
Humble Bundle: 13 EUR
Humble Bundle 11 and Shadowrun Returns, haven’t played any of these for an extended amount of time.
XBox 360: 0 EUR
The only topic where I can’t easily track my purchases online, because I only pick up discounted games in stores here and there, but I’m pretty sure Lego Marvel Heroes was the last one at Christmas 2013.
That’s ~450 EUR in 12 months or 37.50 EUR per month. A lot more than I had thought but still not too bad for a hobby that I could spend a few hours a day with.
To reflect on what could be done to save some money:

  • only 2 MMO subs per month (should be no problem, 2014 it was 19 months of subs in total)
  • restrain myself even more at sales on Steam/GoG/Humble Bundle (wasn’t too bad though) Then again I think I bought more Humble Bundles because of the soundtracks or one game than because of the majority of games in it
  • if I didn’t count incorrectly, I paid for 3 full price games or expansions (D3, WS, WoD)

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