Power Through Experimentation

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I finished Tyranny the other night, solid ending.  I opted to take the Disfavored path, so that meant killing Nerat.  I won’t ruin the rest, but I tied up loose ends with the other 3 Archons nicely.  The game ends with a nice set-up for a sequel, if they so choose.

One thing I like are boss fights, and most RPGs have a half dozen or so.  Due to the way Tyranny works, the bosses you end up seeing are all at the tail end of the game.  The fights are impressive, very impressive.  Enough to make you wonder why there aren’t more of them throughout the game.  You really need to think strategically, which is a swap from the floor mopping you’re doing by level 10 or so.  I died a few times in them, then needed to swap some things around.

Which ties into a thought I had about the game overall, and that’s how it approaches experimentation.

Finding the Elements

Tyranny doesn’t provide you with nearly enough instructions on how to experiment, or how the systems intertwine.  It’s quite old-school in that regard, as until you understand how Sigils work together, and what Sigils exist in the game world, you’re mostly playing blind.

This reminds me a lot of Dragon Age Origins, or even Fallout, where you needed a full playthrough to understand all the pieces and how they fit together.

When I completed the game, I was missing a few Sigils, though I had an idea what they did.  I was missing upgrades to them as well, like improved accuracy and whatnot.  What I didn’t realize was that I was missing some essential ones – like Volcanic Weapon.  This one makes it so that every melee strike shoots out a beam of elemental damage.  Combined with Verse’s ninja-melee speed, there’s a potential for a nuclear event if you build her right.

Making Explosions

My favorite part of learning is making mistakes.  I have made more than my fair share of mistakes, and each one taught me something.  Rarely have I ever made a mistake that I would consider permanent, which is good.  Experimenting and tweaking is the key to success.

Some games punish this behavior (EvE with it’s time-based skill points) and others allow you to go wild (WoW with infinite talent resets).  Stand-alone RPGs often put you in the former situation, where once you make a selection, you’re stuck with it.  Very few games allow you to turn back the clock, though it should be said that few actively punish you for poor choices.

I wrote a character building guide for Dragon Age Origins, it’s on Gamefaqs.  I wrote it originally for myself, as a sort of grid to map out options.  I came up with a concept of a tank/mage, though it was predicated on unlocking a certain class in a previous playthrough.  It took a fair chunk of tweaking mind you, and the tank never really stood on it’s own until the early mid-game, but from that point on, it was a walking god.  It took a fair chunk of tweaking to get there, and a lot of talent reloads.

Given the way that Sigils work in Tyranny, there’s a tremendous opportunity to experiment.  I now know that the latter portion of the game has fairly high armor and magic resistance on enemies, meaning that base damage is vitally more important that attack speed.  I now know that Raw damage and Cold damage are king, that Fire and Shock are used more for crowd control than damage.  I know that AE attacks are vital, that fast movement and ranged attacks are needed, that Quickness is better than Resolve and whole bunch more.

It took the first playthrough to understand the mechanics, some reading to understand the pieces I had missed, and now it will take some planning to come up with a new strategy for the next try.  I have a bit of writing to do, methinks…

 

Tyranny – Companions Overview

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Many RPGs allow you to form a party of motley characters.  Sometimes you make them yourself, sometimes they are preset.  Tyranny follows the latter model, where you make the main character but then get to select up to 3 companions, of 6 total, to accompany you in your travels.

Companions fill 2 roles.  First is the story aspect, where they add color, comments, and context to the events as they unfold.  Maybe one is a hardline militant and another is a hippy. Each brings a unique flavor to the game – or at least they should.  Iron Bull in DA3 is a good example.  Companions in Tyranny do this job fairly well.  I do wish they would interject more often, but each is rather firm in their beliefs.  Verse loves chaos, while Sirin is distrustful of everyone.  It does make it so that you want to interact with the party, and see where the story takes you.  One tweak that I’ve yet to find is a way to expand on a character’s abilities aside from what you see at level 1.  Barik, the game’s sole true-tank, doesn’t allow for armor upgrades.  You’d think that would change over time, especially if he’s always in the party.  Maybe I’m missing something.

The second role is the numbers role – stat machines.  Most events are resolved through either combat or some magical dice roll on other stats.  Given that you’re in a small (4 person) group, and most combat is against groups of enemies, you’re going to want a tank.  Since damage spikes are normal, and you’re going to find some big monsters, you’re going to want a healer too.  Now we get into the damage dealers, and this part gets complicated.  Similar to MMOs, AE damage is everywhere, and that’s a rather massive disadvantage to melee classes.  Stealth plays a very minor part of the game, as it only impacts the start of battle – there’s no way to get back into it.  Positioning also doesn’t appear to have any effect, so no backstabbing here.  Finally, casters are not bound by manage but by cooldowns.  4 spells or so is usually enough for a full rotation.  All told, that means that you’re likely going to want ranged attackers.

So let’s review the companions, in the order I encountered them.

Verse

DPS role, either dual wield in melee or from range with a bow.  She has a stance that improves her damage if she takes damage, but you should only ever have her in light armor.  The ranged skill selection is rather poor as compared to melee, but it’s next to impossible to keep her alive once she gets into the fray.  That said, there are some amazing bows in the game.  Might, Finesse and Quickness are your friends.  The solid part here is that you can set Verse on pure AI mode and not have to worry.

Of special note for Verse in Duelist mode.  Three Whispers stance, Killing Spree, dual wielding, high speed and Volcanic Weapons makes for some rather interesting combat mechanics.  Every hit will shoot out laser beams of elemental damage, and she will be hitting quite a few times per second.  She’s essentially a lawn mower.

Barik

Pure tank, made to take the big hits.  It takes a while for taunt to work on large groups properly, and he lacks defensive cooldowns, but he gets the job done.  Giving him a couple spells to self-manage is good too.  His combo attack with Verse is insane.  Putting stats into Vitality, Might and Finesse are a solid bet.  Unless you’re making your own tank, he is miles away the best option.

Lantry

The source of the healing sigil (talk to him for a bit), he’s a solid mage option to either nuke or support your team.  The only character with a res spell, and he can have the highest lore score of all characters (including the PC) – meaning the most devastating spells.  His combo with the PC is a massive AE heal from the group, which is extremely valuable.  Wits, Quickness and Finesse the stats you want to stack.  He’s the only true healer in the game, and with tweaking can cast the best spells.  Really hard to dismiss that value.

Eb

Casts water and gravelight spells, and is a serviceable mage overall.  She’s quite good at crowd control and knockbacks, as well as draining enemies.  I find that playing with her is more of a skill/talent affair as compared to customized spells – and in that regard, the AI is really the issue here.  I like enemies to stay put on the tank, and that’s hard to do with Eb.  She’s a mage, so Wits, Quickness and Finesse are the stats to take.  A pure DPS mage, you need to invest in her Lore skill early to get enough skill upgrades to work in the late game.

Sirin

The group chanter, which is a similar role found in Pillars of Eternity.  This is a set-it and forget-it character, as it takes a while to build up enough power to cast spells.  I dislike that you cannot build your own songs, and that the ability to sing 2 songs takes until Act 3 to really unlock.  The songs are ok at the start but quickly get eclipsed once you upgrade other characters.  She’s quite strong in AE fights, but when against a boss, she provides little value.  The best benefit from her is a rather deep investment in her talent trees, which is unfortunate.  Wits, Quickness and Finesse here as well.  I like the character story-wise, but always feel hampered when she’s in the team.

Kills-in-Shadows

A melee DPS/tank hybrid that is meant to deal big hits. Some of her best skills are from stealth, so you only get to use them once per battle (if pathing works).  She has next to no armor and takes a massive beating if she does end up tanking, without some talent investment.  She can’t wear armor, but can equip a 2handed weapon in 1 hand.  Might, Finesse and Quickness are the best stats here.  On paper, her best build is an unarmed melee attacker, as when she hits, it’s a massive amount of damage.  In reality, she rarely hits and takes all the hits, dropping like a fly.  There is so much potential here…She even has some late-game accessories that improve her damage further.  There’s a pile of potential here.

Player Character

I play mages in my games.  Tyranny lets you build spells, and the power of them is limited by your Lore ability (which improves as you level).  I can de/buff, heal, and damage – but not tank.  The mage talents are solid enough, especially the last one.  Leadership after that is pretty good too.  Remember to train Lore between level ups.  If you do this every time, then you’ll likely be around 150 Lore at the end game.  Of particular note, Frost deals the most consistent damage, Lightning for the stuns, and finally Fire due to resists.

That said, a tank is also a solid option, as you have tons of customization options available to you.  Barik does a more than serviceable job, but you can be essentially invincible by mid-game.  Even swapping out the shield for more damage is a good option.

Melee DPS, that’s a weak point in this game.  There’s too much AE and you’re made of paper.  Unarmed deals a pile of damage but is bugged.

Ranged (bow) DPS has some solid options, but still feel highly limited when you compare them to mages.

My Party

For now, my Party consists of Barik, Lantry and myself.  Verse is there as a passive DPS increase as she provides more value than Sirin, more area control than Eb, and none of the bugs of KiS.  Once the unarmed attack bug is fixed though, KiS is going to rock it.

Tyranny

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Link here

First, I liked the previous game, Pillars of Eternity.  It was in the vein of Baldur’s Gate, with the same difficulty challenge and bugs/features.  Some things worked well, others were less fun.  The dragon at the bottom of the tower was one such thing, where it took 2 days to beat, and with ample amounts of cheese.

oei-edgeringruins_2

Tyranny uses that engine as the foundation, then lays a new RPG game on top.

Story

Instead of a combat-heavy game, Tyranny is more akin to a choose-your-own-adventure.  It is incredibly text heavy, though each on-screen message has links within to add extra context.  Choices matter, and you gain favor/wrath based on it.  This may close out entire quest paths, or provide alternate solutions.  And that choice is consistent throughout, with each map offering at least one of these decisions per.  It certainly makes you feel more invested in the story, as you’re a part of it, rather than an on-rails approach in most other games (Final Fantasy).

A further change is the overall plot of the game.  This is no hero’s journey.  You play an adjudicator for an immortal tyrant, in the final throws of a campaign to conquer the continent.  You’re thrown between 2 supporting factions, with wildly differing approaches to life (order vs chaos) and eventually need to pick a side.  None of the sides are nice.  Even the rebels you’re attacking aren’t nice in the traditional sense. So each and every decision you make is either the lesser of two evils, or a completely pragmatic one.

For example one quick conversation had me adjudicate a deserter from one faction trying to gain acceptance into another.  The one doing the running saw that it was a better deal on the other side.  The one accepting had strict rules to join, and even more strict rules on deserters.  The options were either to let either side “win”, outright execute the deserter, or subject them to a live of slavery.  The “win” options were not viable to my character plan, plus it would have pissed off the opposite side something fierce.  I opted for slavery, to which the deserter was actually happy as an outcome.

The main judge in all this is a character called Tunon.  An extremely pragmatic character, with a penchant for the long game.  Two people argue in front of him, one wins but rarely in the fashion they thought.  Which in fact is a smart thing, as it forces people to resolve their issues outside of court, as no one really wins but someone ends up losing big time.

Suffice it to say, that the writing is very well done, and the characters are much more than just posters.  There is purpose.

Mechanics

Mechanically the game is fairly sound.  It’s a mix of PoE,Dragon Age, and Elder Scrolls. You have a 4 person party to play with, though by the 5 hour mark I had 3 more in the wings.  You start off with the traditional tank/dps/healer folks, then get some interesting additions.  Again, there’s a bard-like player who uses song to help in combat.  You can issue commands in real- or stop-time, and health pools are inflated enough that combat isn’t over in 3 hits.  Group combat is common, and some strategic planning is required so that people don’t get knocked down.

Getting knocked down introduces wounds to the player, which can stack.  A 10% hit to stats may not seem like much, but compounded it makes a large difference.  Rest is the only way to cure the status.

Magic, melee, stats and whatnot are still there.  There are fewer equipment slots, which is good.  You can craft your own spells, for more damage, range, effects – each increasing the Lore requirement to cast.  Mana doesn’t exist, just cooldowns on spells and skills, stopping you from chaining the same attack.  Reducing that cooldown is a big deal.

Stat themselves are interesting. You have the basic attributes that impact damage, health, crit and the regular stuff.  Then you have the combat skills and tertiary skills.  Swing a two-hander, get better at two-handed weapons.  Cast fire spells, get better at fire spells.  Pick locks, get better at Subterfuge.  And these skills are used in more than combat – it could be climbing a wall, intimidating someone, or finding a secret.  It all works.

Miscellaneous

I’m not terribly far into the game, under 10 hours.  I’ve had a few head scratchers where I wanted to find a better way out of a situation.  I’ve had combat go terribly poorly, until I seriously rethought my combat approach.  I’ve encountered few things I’d consider a bug, though I did find an odd dead end without much reason behind it.

The sound and art click for me.  The voice acting is relatively well done.  I get the feeling I’m in another world, which is essential for any RPG.  I like that my reputation precedes me, and that for good or ill, I don’t have to rebuild things in every new town.

It’s certainly an iterative take on the classic RPG, one that I think works better for the risks taken.  I strongly recommend picking up a copy.  It’s a rare thing where we get indie companies that can make such strong gaming statements – and we should be supporting that as much as possible.

 

Fun Times Ahead

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I guess I got a BINGO on the previous post, smack through the middle.

Blizzcon Bingo Win.png

I think that was the easiest of the bunch to score upon.  There was certainly a lot of opportunity for surprises… which didn’t really show up.  To me, the high points are:

  • Diablo 3 is getting DLC (necromancer and D1 retro)
  • After 7.2 we go to outer space again in WoW (not sure how an entire planet becomes a patch and not an expansion…)
  • That WoW actually has something planned past the next patch!
  • Varian and Ragnaros in HotS.  Especially the latter who can transform into a raid boss.
  • Blizzard’s own esports league. Why?  Starcraft 2 can’t be there.  There’s no real esport in HS.  WoW hasn’t had any since arenas were a thing.  HotS doesn’t work at that level.  Overwatch seems the only candidate…maybe something else is in the pipes.

Overall, not disappointed with Blizzcon but not impressed either.  Wasn’t really expecting much either, given that WoW and Overwatch launched to acclaim this year.  Guess it means next year…

Mobile Stuff

I like idle games.  They scratch the RPG itch of growth, the rogue-like of restarting, and don’t require full attention.  I have played a metric ton of them as well.  Soda Dungeon is right at the top for set-it-and-forget-it gameplay. There are countless others in that stream and most people have to try a couple out to get a feel for it.

The one currently hitting the right notes in Endless Frontier.  It has the same level progression as others, plenty of characters, guild wars, PvP battles, dungeons, and pets.  It’s a rather complicated system to grasp at first but it is quite generous with mistakes.  The best part is the dev’s approach to in-app-purchases.  Gems are used for nearly everything, but you get an ample daily credit, and more during special events.  In a good week, you could get 20k or more.  So while you certainly can use the IAP to progress, it isn’t mandatory at all.  It is exceedingly rare for a game to find the right balance on this front, and eventually they all tend to tip towards dumbness (hello Non-Stop Knight!)  Might as well take a look at it today if you can.

US Elections

Up here in igloo-town (Canada, eh?!), our media cycles are captivated by the US election.  I am also quite curious to see what goes down.  Regardless of what happens, I think the end result is that everyone will have a poorer opinion of the US overall.  For a country that prides itself on the “best of the best”, the options that are on the table are so dramatically polarizing, it boggles the mind.

And that’s on top of a congressional approval rating (11%) that is lower than most warlords in other countries.

It’s just a sad state of affairs, and one I hope that they can get out of without dragging the rest of the world through the wake.  That said, I think we’re all going to wake up to a different world-view tomorrow.

 

BlizzCon Bingo

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blizzcon-bingo

 

Feel free to play along.  Inspired by Wilhelm’s post.  I think there’s a fair mix of probable (WoW movie) and unlikely (Diablo Mobile).  Then there’s guaranteed (Sombra).

Not expecting anything mind-shattering.

Chromecast

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The other night when the family was asleep early, I went out and bought a Chromecast.  A regular one, that streams HQ video – not the audio one or the 4k one.  $45CDN later, and what amounted to 3 clicks and 10 minutes, I had a streaming service plugged into my TV.

I already have a Roku3 plugged in.  Works fine.  Netflix and that remote (with headset) are amazebang.  I have a few other apps on it as well.  I also have a NAS that runs a media server.  Very basic setup mind you.  I have a Raspberry Pi, though that’s set up as a Minecraft server rather than KODI.  I was really looking for something stupid proof.

And sweet molly, is the Chromecast stupid proof.  I can stream from iOS, Android and any PC with a Chrome browser.  My entire tablet is streamed with 2 clicks.  I can stream  a tab in Chrome and play WoW on the same PC, with no issues on sound (dedicated channel).  I can also stream the entire PC if I wanted to.  Again, 2 clicks.

So I watched the Habs beat the Islanders last night.  Sidebar, the NYI rink appears to be surfaced with sand and not up to NHL (or even adult league) standards.  Congrats on the move!  Find another rink before someone breaks an ankle.

Back on track.  This doohicky is giving me ideas as to sharing info with the kids on the TV.  I can use it for the hockey pool, easily share content from web sites, emails, cat GIFs, the good stuff.  My wife can likely use it at work for her presentations.

It’s more and more amazing the world that we live in.  I can still remember having to walk to the TV to change the channel on the brown/yellow picture.  It’s like living in a world of magic.

WoW

Rogue cleared ICC and the Argent Tourney raids without any real issue.  There were a couple bugs where I killed the boss too fast and their speeches went wonky.  Guess I can try for the Glory of the Icecrown Raider here.  Raiding with Leashes 3/4, I think I ended up with 3 pets after 6 raids.  Not exactly super progress, but some nonetheless.  I tried a bit more with Assassination, but nothing compared to the Outlaw shooting a gun, or Blade Fury killing 30 enemies at once.

7.1 added some nice quality of life changes too.  There’s a path now in Azshara to get to the faction vendor (instead of jumping on rocks), the quests for unlocking the class quests have been dropped to 3 hours each, and you only need 20 WQs instead of 30 to get the final relic.  Artifact research is still way too damn long to have any appreciable benefit to alts.  My rogue is halfway to 14 points, while my monk (rank 11), is over 25 points.  Might not seem like much, but my Monk has over 465,000 points invested while my Rogue has over 6,800 points.  68 times more points!

I would expect that this gets tweaked, as it’s impractical to bring an alt up to main speed in anything close to reasonable time.  In fact, I would argue that it’s safer just to level up to 110, and park the character until they reach rank 9-10 in AK before playing them again.

In good news, my DH has both alternate appearances for his artifact weapons (both on the same play session no less), and my Monk has yet to get any.  The BrW appearance is a daily “click on the keg” event, the MW is a raid-only drop (so once a week), and the WW is a once every 3 days (Withered Training) event.  The last one I think I missed a week’s worth of chances since the game launched – still no luck on the drop.  Still no horseman mount drop either.

Ah well, still fun to play both the Monk and DH.  That’s what really counts.

Da Rogue and 7.1

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7.1 is out.  I need to run some mythics to give Kara a shot, which is a different attunement process than what I thought was due.  Something around a class hall quest is what I thought.  Oh well.  Seems Kara is tuned as a 5 man raid as well, so perhaps I’m going guild shopping…

And the bugs.  Lordy the bugs in 7.1.  There is little Blizz polish on this patch.  Heck, sheathing your weapon crashed the game for most of the day.  And class balance was more or less a % increase/decrease to classes, with no real mechanical changes.  You know a spec is bonkers when all its skill get a 15% flat increase in damage.

Making Gold

7.1 brought in the blood vendor.  Everyone was sitting on piles of Sargeras Blood as it was BoP and used only for crafting.  The vendor lets you swap the blood for a set of crafting materials, which flooded the market.  Starlight Rose went from 150g to 35g.  So what do to?  I bought about 1000 of them, because the market will eventually bounce back up to a higher number.  Let’s say it reaches 100g per.  That’s 60k profit.  Not too bad.

Felwort, for some really weird reason, has spiked in price.   It was running between 300-400 per.  I sold 70 of them for 500g (Mobile Armory is an awesome app).  Put that into perspective – on the ride to work, I sold enough Felwort to pay for a month of WoW.

I am not putting in any extra effort here.  My Felwort comes completely from the WQs (you get 5+1 per quest, and maybe some seeds).  Starlight Rose are picked up in the various Suramar WQs.  And my DH and Monk have herbalism, so there’s some overlap.

Anyhoot, herbalism alone has made me about 300k this expansion.  No flipping.  No crafting.  Just plain ol’ farming when I can see the mats near my quest objective.

Rogues in Legion

I’ve played a rogue since day 1, and as a main for vanilla, BC and LK.  Subtlety was for PvP (still the most suitable), Assassination was for regular PvE (even when bosses were immune to poison) and Combat was the ugly step child.  Pick Pocket and Lockpicking meant something during those days.  Member-berries!

Anyways, Legion rejigged all 3 specs, though Assassination the least.

Subtlety is a 3 button spec, where the best talents are all passives.  I personally think that’s pretty dumb, given that it was the most complex rotation for the longest period of time.  Good PvP players are found with a high skill ceiling, and Sub was the spec.  Not so much today.

Assassination is the poison/mutilate spec.  It is incredibly slow to play, with little variance.  You keep Garrote and Rupture up, then Evenom at -1 combo points.  Very bad AE, and no real ranged attacks.  It’s great for running old content, as you get 20% movement while stealthed, and Fan of Knives is more than enough to clear packs.  It is the slow and steady spec.

Outlaw (renamed from Combat) is the slot machine of WoW specs.  It is based entirely on a single finishing move – Roll the Bones -which literally rolls some die to determine your buffs.

17wo3bu

The above diagram, while sarcastic, points to a core issue with the spec.  When you get that 6 buff roll, you are a living god.  The DPS spike is absolutely massive.  If however, you get a 60% roll and a cruddy buff, then you’re stuck fishing for a better buff.  And if you’re even more unlucky and don’t get any procs, you could be energy starved for a long time.  Doing little damage.

So yeah, the DPS works itself out to being even when you take all the % into account.  The spikes are mana from heaven, the lulls are nails on the chalkboard.  And it’s not like they can buff the % chance to get 3 or 6 roll, cause then everything shifts to OP.  And by buffing the base skills, it makes the 6 roll spike even more absurd.  Maybe they can baseline one of the buffs (TB, or SIW) into a finishing move, so that there’s less variance overall.  Right now, it feels like I’m in a casino when I’m playing Outlaw.

But I have a Grappling Hook, a pistol shot, and a parrot, which is nice.

Civ 6

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First impression is that I’m drinking from a firehose.

I started a game as Rome, cause you know, Rome rules.  The game looks and sounds good, though not a whole lot different than Civ V.  Sean Bean’s narration is a nice addition mind you.  The overall presentation is fairly solid, though a few of the menus aren’t terribly intuitive.  Research/Civics selection menu is slightly too big for my tastes, as it’s hard to see the relation between all the items.  Selecting a city can be confusing in all the options/buttons.  Backing out of menus isn’t done with ESC most of the time, but with an on-screen button.  These little UI tweaks are more of an annoyance as compared to the rest.

The core systems work mind you, and are quite intertwined.  Builders and Settlers work very similar to before.  Roads provide some benefit (Rome rules).  Merchants travel for trade.  Emissaries are in for city states.  Still confused as to how I can deal with other nations with only a few clicks.  There’s a lot of “I want to do this, but I need to do this, and this, and this first”, which is both cool but also frustrating.

Combat is a good example.  With 6 nations on the map, I know that a military way forward is going to be required earlier rather than later.  To that end, I went down the military route and had catapults, bowmen and legion up fairly early.  Taking down the Barbarians is fairly easy, including their little towns.  I figured I was ready to take down a city state.

I was wrong.  Even with 3 catapults, 3 bowmen, 2 legions and a great general, it took nearly 10 turns to take down the city.  And it was the weakest city, only at rank 3.  I saved before hand, to be able to go back and apply what I learned. And what I learned is that an early military attack doesn’t make sense unless you dramatically outnumber the opponent.  I was nearly 2 ages above my opponent and it wasn’t enough.

I’m going to have to rethink my strategy.  It’s a fun game, but when I hit that hurdle, I shut down for the night.  That is honestly the first time I shut down a new Civ game.  Not sure how to read that…

WoW

The Rogue’s class quest requires a run through Maw of Souls and Black Rook Hold.  DPS queues are 30 minutes.  My DH tank is under 2 minutes, my Monk healer is instant.  So doing it as DPS, not so much fun.  I’m on the “5x 12 hour quests” phase now.

Now that I hit 110 with him, I have zero interest in doing group content with him.  If I could assign a negative number, I would.  I like the Rogue, sure.  Outlaw has it’s nice perks when you get a solid roll.  It just pales in comparison to playing a tank or a healer, and my time is much better invested both of those rather than another alt.  I’ll keep the artifact research going mind you, maybe come back to it near the holidays.

Speaking of holidays, I’m on 15 runs of the Headless Horseman without a mount this year.  That’s on top of the ~50 runs over the years.  Luck is not on my side.

Headless Horseman is Back

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headless_horseman

Headless Horseman – with head

Hallowe’en is one of my favorite times of the year.  You get way more candy than at Easter and you don’t get guilted for it.  (If you avoid stepping on the scale for a while that is).  Every game seems to have some sort of theme going on and WoW is not exception.

For my money though, Wildstar has the best event.  Shade’s Eve fits really well in the game theme, and the mini-instance is fun to rerun.  Last year I must’ve done it about 50 times across all my toons.  I have a serious itch to try it again!

Back to WoW though.  This year, there’s a new daily quest in Val’shara, near Bradensbrook.  You drink from a cauldron, kill a wraith and get a loot bag, maybe get a witch’s hat.  Yay?  The Headless Horseman is back again, same loot as always, just ilvl 835 now.  Which should be pretty meaningless for anyone who’s been at 110 for a couple weeks.  But it’s better than Brewfest’s ilvl 810 gear. Which, to me, seems like an odd choice given that it’s not like you can kit out a player in event-based gear…

Hallowe’en in WoW is more of an achievement hunt than anything else.  Go collect candy in buckets, use wands to transform people and collect masks.  Run the daily horseman event and cross your fingers on the mount.  Considering that it’s the only real-life event that Blizzard actually endorses (pumpkin content anyone), it’s still strikes me as odd that this event doesn’t have more to it.  Heck, Brewfest had a pile of things to do, with plenty of toy-based rewards.

I still like the event, if only for the theme.  Just could use a bit more to it.

Rogue Update

Bugger hit 110.  I did it much faster this time than I had expected, largely to a very interesting mod – ConsLegion.   It works a little weird at max level, and can be very distracting, but for leveling, it is really hard to beat.  It works by selecting the optimum route in a zone for both accepting and turning in quests.  It avoids sending you across large swathes of land, and instead focuses on the core quest line.  There’s a TomTom-like arrow and a few other bells and whistles that make the entire process super fast.  I cut my leveling time by a quarter, if not more.  So much so, that I had not even finished my first 8hr class hall quest from the one offered at 105.

I haven’t really played a DPS role at 110 – instead focusing on tank for solo play, and healer for some groups.  I will admit that a leather wearing rogue in ilvl 775 gear isn’t very powerful, so from this point after unlocking world quests, I think I’m going to park him until gearing drastically improves.  That’s likely a week or so, as even the emissary quests give decent upgrades.  Then we’ll see where he ends up.

World Bosses

Final thought here.  Blizzard needs to change the display options on world bosses, especially those out in the open.  Nithogg was surrounded by mountains and J’im was in a cave, so that wasn’t the end of the world.  Levantus and Calamir are in the wide open, with massive AE.  A 40 person raid just destroys my experience, which works fine in all other cases.

It would be great to have a toggle… maybe there’s a mod for that.  Or you know, Blizz can stop making PC-melting events.

Shutting Down the Cottage

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This wet weekend was spent shutting down the cottage for the winter.  I had helped with doing that exact work at other cottages in the past, and we did open it this year, but it was the first time where the wife and I were left to our own devices.

Saturday we had the final fire in the pit and got to watch the hunter’s moon (a giant blood moon) come over the rise.  That was seriously impressive.  Plus, the cottage is in the laurentian hills, which means hills everywhere with changing colors… I should get some pictures up about that view.  Combined with the rain clouds, it’s a bit like watching a movie.  Very serene.

A few lessons learned

  • Get the work done outside before it start raining.  Especially if it’s a downpour.
  • Containers that stack together empty and pile on when full are a solid investment
  • Hot water tanks hold an incredible amount of water
  • Don’t bleed the hot water lines until the pressure is off the tank.
  • There is a surprising amount of bedding to store in a cottage with 5 beds
  • The water is ice cold in October.  Bone chilling cold.
  • There’s a certain amount of sorrow when locking the door for the last weekend

So the first year is done.  Nothing but positive things to say about that.  Great memories, lessons that we all learned from, and very much looking forward to the spring.

Fall Habits

With that official closure, it means getting into the fall and winter habits.  I had a few too many beer over the summer and I need to work that off.  But the food in the fall is the best food of all.  Soups and stews and muffins…oh my.

Some people may have this too, but the lack of sunlight has a rather dramatic impact on my energy levels.  Waking up and heading to work in the dark, and coming home in the dark, that’s the worst part of this time of year.  Last year was a good year, and I hope that this one follows suit.  So far, the best remedy is exercise.  A rather tough gambit this month as it seems every night is booked with something.  Heck, I have hockey 4 times this week alone.

Yet it’s manageable and I’m having fun.  And at the end of the day, that’s really what matters.  Now for a cup of hot chocolate…