Blog Archives
Goal Wars 2, pt 2023
Yep, still playing Guild Wars 2. About 3 months ago, my goals were:
Play through Icebrood Saga contentPlay through End of Dragons contentTry some of the new Elite specsWork towards completing “Return of” achievements for free LegendaryWork towards unlocking Skyscale mount- Work towards unlocking some Legendary gear
As you can see, I have knocked damn near everything off my list.
ArenaNet introducing the “Return of” achievements with a “free” Legendary amulet carrot at the end (plus Legendary weapon precusor in the middle) has to be one of the most genius marketing moves I have seen an MMO developer take. With the stroke of… uh, some achievement code, they instantly made damn near their entire catalog of Living World content relevant again. The immediate impact was to give the general population something to do before the release of the End of Dragons expansion. But for someone like me, it also generated a means of incremental, meaningful progress that weren’t daily quests.
Plus, it kinda forced me to shell out $10 buying the Living World episodes I missed over the years.
The question is “what now?” I have completed End of Dragons content – and the original story conclusion, 10 years late – so there isn’t really anything left in the plot department. Ostensibly, my goals included unlocking some additional Legendary gear. The options I have been looking at include:
- Weapon (Axe)
- Backpiece (PvP)
- Accessory (Vision)
- Accessory (Aurora)
Of those, the Backpiece has been an interesting consideration. There are three different pathways to a Legendary Backpiece: PvE (Fractals), PvP, and WvW. Right from the get-go, WvW is out – it would take an absurd amount of time just sitting in WvW to accomplish anything. Conversely, PvP is achievable from just about anyone, as none of the requirements involve being particularly successful, e.g. top ranks. The roadblock I have with PvP at the moment though is that you need to complete 50 matches before you unlock the ability to queue into Ranked matches, which the achievements revolve around. It shouldn’t necessary be a “roadblock” for someone who enjoys the experience, but… well, let’s just say I am still figuring that out.
Unlocking the Backpiece via Fractals would perhaps be the most preferred method, but I have not been super successful in finding groups for that. Indeed, I only just recently went into my first Strike Mission, which are sort of mini-raids with just a single boss. It probably does not help that I only play late in the evenings. While the general consensus is to just start your own groups and see what happens, I am not necessarily that committed to the endeavor.
As for the accessories… sigh. To unlock Aurora, you first need to complete a collection achievement for four different items across Season 3 Living World episodes. Just one of those involves finding forty (40!) tokens across a map, some of which are hidden in the infamous Chalice of Tears jumping puzzle. Just look at this Wiki page. That’s just ONE piece. Of four. Then you have to charge the final product up at 21 other locations around the world. Then combine that charged up product with three other collections of materials, which are themselves collections of other materials. The whole thing is rather ridiculous when laid out all at once.
Of course, continuing to play GW2 at all might be considered rather ridiculous.
We’ll see what happens. I am making some headway in other games, and I can see further progress on the horizon if/when I free up extra time by putting GW2 on the backburner/on ice. The tricky part will be actually doing that. It’s seductively easy to log in, collect some easy rewards on each of the characters, and then log off. But before then, oh hey, this meta event is going on, let me just get those rewards. And now I just have an hour left to play “real” games. It’s a rough life, I know.
Slay the Spire: Ascension 20
I have finally “beat” Slay the Spire: meeting my end goal of reaching Ascension 20 (A20) on all four characters. There is technically a higher plane of difficulty whereby you face the secret final boss while also on A20, but I am satisfied with where I am. Specifically because games at the A20 level are already incredibly frustrating and unfun already – no need to delve further into self-flagellation.
For giggles, I’m going to post my thoughts on each of the classes, in the order that I reached A20:
The Watcher
The base mechanics of the Watcher (e.g. double/triple damage) are so powerful that I often found myself progressing despite not having any specific deck or relic combos. It does lend itself to being annoying in how much mental math you have to do lest you miscalculate and end up taking double damage in return. Or in the case of Blasphemy, outright losing the game.
Every Watcher run starts by upgrading Eruption ASAP. After that, my successful decks basically had a hodgepodge of loose synergies with Flurry of Blows (stance dancing), cards with Scrying, and Talk to the Hand. I was always happy to see Tantrum and Fear No Evil. Upgraded Blasphemy is fantastic. Omniscience is an auto-include any time it’s offered, even if I didn’t have Power cards at that point; Omniscience into Wish feels like cheating (it is).
The Defect
The only successful Defect runs I have had revolved around Orbs and Focus-stacking. The Inserter relic is always a welcome boost, and lets you save gold/deck space by ignoring Capacitor and Runic Capacitor. Inserter also allows you to take Consume with no downsides, and possibly ignore Defragment and Biased Cognition altogether. In the absence of Inserter, I focused (har har) on Biased Cognition and trying to get artifact to avoid the downsides.
Beyond that, it really came down to getting Glacier and Creative AI, even against the Awakened One. Upgraded Seek is amazing. My success with All for One decks is probably 20%; it feels more like a trap.
The Silent
The only consistently successful strategy for A15+ runs for me has been Shiv decks. Two Accuracy cards (upgraded or not) plus as many Cloak and Dagger and Blade Dances as I can draft. Always draft a Corpse Explosion if offered. Things get infinitely easier if you can snag one of the scaling attack relics (Kunai or Shuriken), or Oriental Fan or After Image. A Thousand Cuts and Envenom are generally overkill. Poison isn’t bad, but hallway fights are worse.
The Ironclad
Yuck. In pretty much every run, you are entirely dependent on which relics you pick up. Corruption + Dead Branch runs make everything worth it, but they are frustratingly rare. Upgraded True Grit is almost always good. Immolate is an amazing hallway card that is still good in boss fights. Fiend Fire can also end many hallway fights by itself with no setup (vulnerability helps).
Again though, your ultimate strategy will vary based on what relics you pick up.
Final Tips
Artifact is insanely powerful. While negating a random enemy debuff is whatever, Artifact also removes the downside of some self-buffs. For example, Biased Cognition and Wrath Form are powerful cards that have scaling downsides… unless you have Artifact. Additionally, it can also be used to make the lowly Flex Potion just straight-up give you +5 Strength for the rest of the fight. For this reason, the shop relic Clockwork Souvenir is crazy powerful.
When in doubt, upgrade your cards. In a recent Defect run, I got a Sunder and Shovel early in Act 1. Instead of upgrading the Sunder, I chose to fish at Rest sites all the way to the boss. I died. Relics can be amazing, but remember you will be playing cards in every fight inbetween, and saving a few extra HP times however many fights will generally make more of a difference than you think.
Hallway fights matter. When you look at cards like Hyperbeam or Blasphemy, you might think “These are useless against bosses.” Maybe. But if you die before making it to the boss, or end up needing to Rest instead of upgrading cards, none of it matters anyway. So if you have the chance to snag a card or two that helps in hallway fights, grab them.
End of Year: 2017 Edition
Much like with 2016, this year seems to have been one in which we entered the Darkest Timeline… until I look at my personal life and find things have been pretty fantastic this year. Bought a house, got a big promotion, got engaged, played some videogames. Who could ask for more?
Well, aside from ~80,000 people last year, but nevermind.
Here were my goals from last year:
- Give FF14 another shot. [Gave way more than a shot]
- Play through some of those PS3 games I bought four years ago. [Oops…]
- Resist playing WoW until the WoW Token -> Blizzard balance goes Live. [Done]
- Clear at least 30 games from my Steam backlog. [Tentative yes?]
Still haven’t touched those PS3 games, but I did resist the urge to unnecessarily buy a PS4. Mainly by way of missing the Black Friday sales, but a win is a win! Sorta. That said, when I upgraded my 24″ monitor to a 27″, I went ahead and ensured that I could use it for both my normal PC and the PS3. In fact, I have the PS3 hooked up to said monitor right now and could play those games at any moment. Even bought a Bluetooth speaker, so there’s no issues there. Yep. Any day now.
The Steam backlog thing was a bit tricky to figure out. Sorting by the Last Played column and looking at my Finished category, I see the following:
- The Talos Principle
- The Flame in the Flood
- Remember Me
- The Shrouded Isle
- A Story About My Uncle
- Space Pirates and Zombies 2
- Crawl
- Armello
- Black Desert Online
- Darkest Dungeon
- Divinity: Original Sin
- Total War: Warhammer
- SteamWorld Heist
- XCOM 2
- The Forest
- Dragon’s Dogma: Dark Arisen
That’s a total of 16 real, substantial titles that I feel I gave a fair shake whether I ended up beating them or not. The actual total from last year is 88, with a rather large portion (21) being Visual Novels, and the rest being games I tried for about an hour and uninstalled. Looking at my active library, the list fills out a bit more:
- Subnautica
- The Long Dark
- Neon Chrome
- Darkwood
- 7 Days to Die
- Spelunky
- PixelJunk Eden
- Dust: An Elysian Tail
- Kingdom Rush
- Infinifactory
- ARK
- No Man’s Sky
- Getting Over It with Bennett Foddy
- Warframe
So… that’s technically 30. Although, even more technically, these have not been “cleared from my backlog,” as they are still hanging out in my library (some uninstalled). It could go either way, but I’m inclined to give myself a break.
Without further ado, here are my goals for 2018:
- Complete the vanilla, HoT, and PoF story content in GW2.
- Play through some of those PS3 games I bought five years ago.
- Embrace the notion of shorter, possibly more frequent posts.
- Use my Blizzard balance to pay for all my Blizzard gaming.
- Clear at least 40 games from my Steam backlog.
Feels kinda like a low bar, but exceeding low expectations is what I’m all about.
In An Age 