First weekend after a long week’s worth of work and my eldest changing schools.  It rained ALL weekend, which actually was pretty good all told.  In the run up, I had 3 games of hockey, the last on Saturday which the wife and kids came to see.  It was a nice day out but nothing too hectic (aside from the aches on Sunday).  It’s a much different pace compared to the spring and it’s one that I’m thankful for.  I guess I’m being more conscious now of my actions than I was previously.  Reading up on the art of mindfulness.

I am not a religious person by any means, though I’ve been more akin to the concepts of karma and zen for a while.  I much prefer the eastern styles than the western & middle eastern guilt/punishment based approach (I’m being very generic here.) Something for another post as my thoughts mature on the subject.

Player vs Character

In recent years, games have learned to focus more on the player than the character.  Gone are the old D&D days of a character being completely segregated from another character being played by the same person.  More and more things are shared across – achievements, pets, costumes, skills.  FF14 takes this to the extreme, where a change of weapon changes you classes but more are taking some sort of middle ground.

D3 uses a shared stash across all players.  I find it rather limiting truth be told, since the amount of options per character are substantial and you have 10 characters per account.  Gone are the days of Tetris in Diablo2 but I’m still juggling tons of items.  One thing I do like is how legendary gems work.  If it’s in the stash, it can’t drop.  Easier to focus farm specific gems that way.

Making an Alt

Further on this point, I need to farm a few materials from time to time.  I’ve made a set of gear for my monk to do this but it’s a few minutes time to set up each session and remember to not muck up for the next GR run.  My brother asked about powerleveling and it dawned on me that the only real limit to an alt is their level, not their gear (if you’re the same class).

The Gem of Ease makes easy work of this as well, giving about 1750xp per kill and allowing you to equip a level 70 item on a level 1 player.  So both of us ranked up the gem, found a legendary with a gem slot , and got a few more items to help out.

• Cubed Leoric’s Crown (for max bonus)
• Helm with a socket and max level Ruby (41%x2)
• Cain’s set (the level 23 version). 2 or 3 pieces, depending if you have the RRoG or not (30%)
• Hellfire Ring and Amulet (both equipable at level 1) (45%)

Sitting at ~160% experience, we hit up a T6 new game with both alts.  Searching for a Curse Chest event is key, as they continually spawn new enemies at the appropriate level.  One event and we both were around 47.

Then we started dying in a single hit and had to drop the difficulty.  A few more cursed events to get into the high 50s and Halls of Agony 3 is the way to go.  While we tried with the alts, it was obvious that a few runs with high level characters would be best.  I think it was 3 runs to go from 60-70.  All told, around an hour total, compared to 6 hours or so doing it the first time.  Which is even less than when the game came out.

I’d actually be curious if it’s possible to do with a GR…

Anyhoot, we now both have alts.  His alt is better than his main it seems.  Mine is just a lightning jet for farming Death’s Breath.  A few minor tweaks through additional play and I was able to clear a T4 rift in about 2 minutes, collecting about 50 DB in the process.   I need some better rolls to move up the chain, which funnily enough means I need more DBs!

To go full circle, I used my high level character to make the material needed for an alt to get to max level in about an hour.  I have to say, this is a nice bonus to players as the leveling portion of the game is really the most boring once you’ve gone through it.