Exploring the inter-dimensional and aptly named Nowhere Vault
Elder Scrolls Online‘s first seasonal content, Return of the Thieves Guild, is aiming to bring a lot of new content to the game that, for the first time, isn’t just creating a whole new zone. Running from July 8th to October 21st, the first season features a new Thieves Guild storyline, Dynamic Encounters, a Favors System, a Sheogorath Storyline, the Nowhere Vault, a Rumors System, a High Seas of Tamriel Event, and other “quality of life” improvements. That is an impressive list to pump out all in a little over 4 months.
As of right now I’ve played through the new Thieves Guild storyline, the Sheogorath storyline, and tried one of the new Dynamic Encounters, and really, so far so good. The original Thieves Guild DLC is some of my favorite content that has been released in ESO featuring a lot of good and interesting characters and a nice mix of gameplay between combat and sneaking around. I enjoyed it so much that my main ESO character is built to be exceptionally sneaky and likes to pickpocket and steal anything that isn’t tied down. The new storyline, also well done and filled with interesting characters, continues that quality.
As for rewards, the new content gives you early on a very nice Legendary amulet, the Prowler’s Talisman, that, among other things, gives you a 5% pickpocket success increase and an ability that turns you invisible for 10 seconds while sneaking. Both are nice, but that 5% pickpocket increase is really, really nice. 5% doesn’t sound like much, but maxing out your pickpocketing skills leaves you with a 95% success rate on the hardest pockets to pick. Not bad, failing equivalent to rolling a 1 on a 20-sided die, well worth the risk. However, the amulet takes away even that small risk. Pickpocketing guards with the talisman now starts with a 100% success rate. Pick all the pockets!
Dogs playing cards. Not poker, because in Tamriel it’s probably called like Filo’s 5-Card Bounty or something.
The new Sheogorath storyline, similarly, is also very well done. Lots of fun new environments featuring quite mad sights, leading the great Sheogorath on a cheese-sampling tour of the land, and just fantastic voice acting. Whoever voices the new khajiit disciple Noth the Unhinged does just a phenomenal job. JB Blanc, as ESO’s Sheogorath does quite a fine job also, blending the silly with the threatening very well.
All said it encompasses 14 new quests that were quite entertaining and took me around 6 nights to complete. The new Dynamic Events, at least the only one I completed in Glenumbra, just felt like a follow quest with periodic bad-guy spawns depending on how many people are hanging out. Not bad, but nothing too terribly special.
I do have one big complaint, though. Well, two. One, all the layoffs that just happened, this content drop is impressive but it’s also overshadowed by yet another corporation flexing its treating peoples lives as throwaway, which puts a pall over everything. But two, as part of the Thieves Guild new quests there is a dog. Sadly, you can not pet the dog. I blame the layoffs there, too. The nerve.
// Ocho
P.S. – I do have to give credit to ESO for being one of the few games to not just log me out every time my internet hiccups. Been having internet problems for a few months now and ESO is one of the few games I can play without being kicked. Effing Comcast, but good on ESO for being able to handle small drops.
The group takes a breather after felling the mechanical constructs. Jim, a disfigured scout from the local village, hides by the treeline.
Jeremiah is a bullfrog. He is a good character of mine. I never understand the magic words he says, but his slings that slime a-mighty fine (And he always has some might fine slime). Ribbit.
The longest gaming group that I’ve been with now since April of last year has been led by John Fredericks of Sharp Mountain Games and has mostly consisted of running games within the systems that John has created, Many Worlds and Streamlined Superheroes, systems that are designed for very quick play – or even solo play – and very heavily revolving around story than more numerically demanding and complicated rules. The systems have been so flexible that genres can switch quickly. The first one I played with John was Star Trek, and we’ve played other genres like high fantasy, Ghostbusters, and Supernatural with it. Finally, the latest, which we have been greatly enjoying, set in Larry MacDougall‘s Gwelf, but using John’s Many Worlds system, a version he’s calling “Woodland Warriors“, where we play a group of anthropomorphized animal adventurers.
Our group consists of Borusk, badger tank; Kricklen, suave porcupine warrior; Hedgeson, rabbit scout; Huudy, wise owl healer; and my character, a magic-slime slinging bullfrog wizard named Jeremiah. Because of course.
Not going to lie, this has been quite fun. John’s system is such that it never feels like the dice will really screw you over, and that it’s more about the story, entertainment, and “coolness”. I can see more hardcore tabletop purists might have an issue with the more loose rules, but it’s a system that can easily be used to play in any setting you want, not dice heavy (it only needs at most 3 d6s), and easy to understand character sheets. Great for beginners just looking to jump into tabletop or for a group of tabletop veterans just looking to have a good time and hang out with friends. Literally. John’s table that I’ve been joining has newbies like me and the rest of the group are all veterans! Certainly doesn’t hurt a good number of the guys are super-welcoming Canadians.
The party returns Snikt, the nefarious rat, to the bat village that he’s been causing trouble to.
Jeremiah’s Travels
We started the adventure coming off a long journey and landing at a port city a ways away from the town of Gwelf. Asking around we heard rumors of a local hamlet having issues with smoke-filled skies and enraged ghosts scaring people away (this may not be exactly right, but give me a little leeway it’s been a while since we started). This led to confrontations with evil ravens, brigand rats, and large wooden machinations. We’ve met kindly hedgehog witches, unruly bear farmers, demonic spirits, paranoid bat villagers, heroic jackrabbits, priest hedgehogs, frog tavernkeepers, and many others I can’t remember.
Our latest adventures had us being attacked by giant machines, directed by a no-good rat, intent on sowing discord among a village of insular bats. We tracked the machines down to a cave on the mountainside and there put an end to their infernal and unnatural intents. Continuing on to assist at the garrison wall and watchtower separating the forests around Gwelf from the northern badlands, on the way we felt massive rumbling in the ground. The rumbling seemed to be be heading in the direction of a local monastery. Hurrying that way we encountered the source: a massive millipede was being controlled by a raven witch for their own nefarious ends. After much sneaking, reconnaissance, and debate, we launched a surprise attack on the witch and multi-legged menace that started well, but we’ll see.
John has been streaming our games and his solo-play sessions on Youtube. You should totally give it a follow and check out some of our actual play! It’s been fun for sure.
Orluf Wavebane and party rest in a safe alcove, guarded over by a statue of a legendary cleric.
Over the past year or so I’ve been trying to get more into tabletop roleplaying and I feel I’ve been pretty successful. I’ve had the urge to get back into it for many years, after some unsuccessful previous attempts from a while back. This new attempt started by my overhearing in the school pick-up line a couple of people talking about playing some D&D or something like it. The next time I went to pick up my son from school, I made sure to wear one of my nerdy D&D t-shirts. Sure enough, it caught their eye and the ice was broken. Since then, I’ve discovered there is an annual TTRPG mini-convention within walking distance and from tables played there have joined multiple weekly online groups. Today I’ll talk about, in narrative style, the adventures of the most recent one I’ve joined, a Tales of Argosa group, where I’ve started playing a 1st level barbarian sailor named Orluf Wavebane.
Orluf’s Adventures Begin
Orluf, starting his adventure making their way through a deep jungle with his compatriot Ronin Tasar, is following a map that he thinks is a path to valuable loot but the further along they go the more he doubts the map’s veracity. After surviving a pitched battle against a small group of monsters two adventurers stumble on the scene, Brogan and Calder. At first, the tension is hight, Orluf and Ronin having just finished their battle and Brogan and Calder finishing running from a giant lizard – which literally just ate one of their companions.
However, after Orluf and Ronin realized the newcomers were not threats, axes and swords were put down and Calder asked if possibly the treasure-hunting pair could assist them on their mission. Calder had, in his vision, a runic symbol that was leading them toward the location of cypher discs they needed to decode some important text. With the treasure map seeming more and more like a dud, Orluf and Ronin accepted the offer and the joined group went off together.
Following the runic sight, the party happened upon a cave leading deep into the earth. After scouting ahead and disabling some initial traps, Brogan, the rogue, made a little too much noise and alerted the Urgot inside to their presence. Abominations of dark sorcery, Urgot are twisted humans mashed with perverse animal-like mutations. Defeating them, the party fought its way deeper into the caves until it came to a temple.
The temple appeared to be in reverence to a group of adventurers from the weekly group’s previous campaign, who had just barely saved the world in a spectacular, um, world-saving fashion. Their travails depicted as frescos all around the temple walls. Using the legends of the previous group’s adventures, the new adventurers found hidden switches within the frescos leading to a chest containing the cypher.
A crab-like abomination with tentacles swirling emerged near the chest and immediately attacked. After stunning half the party with its sudden appearance and ferocity, Orluf regained his senses, hefted his axe, and smashed down hard on the creature’s exoskeleton, opening a rift that allowed Brogan the opportunity to penetrate their dagger deep and end the crustacean-abomination.
Finding a safe space to catch their breath, the party finally relaxed, cypher discs in hand, ready to make their way out of the cave and on to their next endeavor.
I’ll give thoughts on Tales of Argosa and how it compares to other TTRPG systems I’ve played later, which is very limited, but so far this has been a pretty nice start for the burgeoning barbarian sailor. Or, at least I think so. The seemingly unforgiving system that is Tales of Argosa may have other ideas.
Woah. I only just experienced Path of Fire within the past year or 2, despite it being out for almost 9 years now. But it’s new to me and I played it, so that’s something.
Yesterday’s post was a stark reminder to me that, yes, I’ve been blogging on this site now for 14 years. 14 years! Over that time I’ve had a ton of changes in my life from jobs to cars to kids to my hair turning grey and yet here I still am. Tapping away into the void. It’s pretty obvious I’ve become more jaded over the years, and yet simultaneously I’ve grown a lot more compassionate and understanding. But, being I started this as a gaming blog, have my gaming tastes changed? Almost a resounding ‘No’.
It’s wild, really. When I started this blog back in 2012 it was part of MMO Gaming writer Syp’s “Newbie Blogger Initiative” (scary that Google’s AI called out his whole name when I tried to look it up, but that’s beside the point). Or, well, I think I started it a few weeks earlier in April and it just so happened he was launching the project the next month, so close enough really. The start of this blog and the NBI are tied in my brain, anyhow. But I started this blog focusing on two genres of gaming: MMOs and Retro/Classic games. What am I mostly still into 14 years later? MMOs and Retro/Classic games!
The term “Retro”, though, has certainly changed over the years. Games that were new then are basically retro now. My personal definition I derived from the totally scientific method of categorizing all the games I owned into Retro/Not Retro and determining where the mental cutoff was — 15 years, as it turned out. So at 14 years, heck, this blog has only one more year to go until it turns Retro. Of course I’m still enamored with the look, feel, and handling of older games. Guess I’ve always been a curmudgeon against anything new.
MMOs, though, although the sub-genres of MMOs have changed and the monetization has definitely changed, here I am still enamored with them, too. I’m trying to decide if how I play them has really changed, though, and I think it has. Since about 2017 when I came to the full realization I was just spinning my proverbial gaming wheels, not completing games and constantly restarting them, I took on the self-initiative of changing how I approached games and MMOs. Namely, to treat games as if this was the only time in my life I’d ever get to play them. And, really, how far is that from the truth? As I age I feel my time is more and more finite, reminded of it almost daily, but there are so many games still in my backlog that if I really want to make inroads into it I only have time to go through any game once. So I might as well make it worth it and explore every nook and cranny, getting as close to 100% as I reasonably can.
So that’s how I play MMOs, too. I generally have one character, and I mostly play to complete the story and systematically 100% every zone as I go through it. Looking back over the past years of doing this, has it been effective? Yes and No. No because my backlog is still a mountain and, in a lot of MMOs, I’m so far behind the primary player curves that I’m being lapped by “classic servers”. Yes, however, because all the content I play is all new to me, even if it is years old to everyone else, and it’s still interesting and wonderful and beautiful.
Just as interesting to hear me write about or watch me stream it? Well, that I guess is up to you. I’ll just try to make it more available.
An ornithopter in Dune Awakening turns toward a large sand-storm sweeping across the land
* Dramatically Blows Years Worth of Dust Off Casual Aggro’s Cover *
It’s that time of year again. The time when our gaming community leaders start gathering the community together to pick up our digital “pens” en masse and encourage each other to write our thoughts down. To be fair, I am awful at it. Not necessarily the quality of my writing – I think it’s okay and I’m sure I could be critiqued to heck and back by a legit editor – but by my consistency. Or lack thereof. A quite common issue, really. One I share with a whole bunch of other bloggers out there, finding years worth of dust gathering on our digital spaces. I hate that about myself, that I can’t keep this blog consistent. However, I don’t see that as a personal failing.
You see, it’s good to try new things. You should always be trying new things, even if they eventually fall by the wayside. Am I inconsistent about every aspect of my life? Of course not! I don’t think I’d be able to even have a blogging and gaming hobby if I was. Hobbies are, by their definition, done during free time and for relaxation and pleasure. Once you lose one of those conditions, be it free time, relaxation, or pleasure, or even find a different hobby which starts taking up that same space, the tendency is to drop one of them off. And again, that’s okay. It’s natural.
However, we live in an age where if that’s the only thing people see of you online they tend to see and judge you in the light of your failures. It’s Survivorship Bias, really. If all they see is my inconsistency when it comes to blogging and writing, something I most certainly don’t consider a strength, then you get judged for being inconsistent. You can see that from the fact that, even on the Blaugust Discord server (which you should join by the way), I’m not among the “mentors” despite having blogged now for … 14 years?! That can’t be right, can it?! Holy smokes. But that’s okay, because, again, inconsistency due to not being a high priority leads to not being taken seriously. So it goes.
But try again I will, because it might stick more this time. I might be taken more seriously now than I have for the past 14 years. Probably not on both accounts. I wouldn’t put money on it, but you never know. So if there’s one takeaway it’s this: Judging yourself or others based on consistency of hobbies is not helpful. We all have lives and priorities that always come first. Instead, celebrate when others have the time and will to share. They’re reaching out, saying “this is important to me”, and giving of themselves for the chance to be heard.
It’s that, that spark of authenticity, that baring of our souls, that gives our words value. And in this age where our authenticity is being scraped for regurgitation by uncaring “large language models”, authenticity is valued higher than it’s ever been. You know it is by how hard they work to gather it up.
So go on, as another Blaugust comes around, let the words, spirit, and energy flow. Even if you don’t keep it up, the fact you tried and shared at all means everything.
Halloween events in MMOs. That’s what October modern gaming for me has meant going back as far as my memory allows and this year was no different. Lord of the Rings Online, Star Trek Online, Guild Wars, Guild Wars 2, and The Division 2 were the main games I celebrated the spooky season in this year, using the opportunity in some to make some decent progress. None of the events I played had any real new content, though, aside from a few cosmetics. As these games age and players move on to other shinier pastures I can’t really fault them for it. Just sort of sad that these decades-old games are almost fully relying on nostalgia to draw players in. Still, seasonal events are always a good excuse to pop back in, even if the stay isn’t a long one.
October’s Goals Rating: 50/50
My goals for October mainly focused around Halloween events, as usual.
Complete the 1st Part of Division 2‘s Year 5 Season 2 Update and Hit SHD level 250 – Complete!
Check out LotRO‘s Harvestmath – Complete!
Check out GW2‘s Shadow of the Mad King –Complete!
Check out ESO‘s Witch’s Festival – Nope. Started very late and ESO just wasn’t calling me.
Order a few more parts for the new PC and put it all together (3rd time’s the charm?) – Parts came in, now I’m just procrastinating.
Get out 3 blog posts (One less than last goal?) – Nope. I’m awful.
Prep for a Return to Streaming on Twitch – Kind of? I’ll explain.
3.5 out of 7. Not bad. I hit up the Halloween events in a lot more games than I was expecting myself to, Elder Scrolls Online just wasn’t one of them. ESO‘s event basically revolves around playing the game like normal, maybe making sure to run a delve or a public dungeon every day to get tickets just to do their awful seasonal rewards schtick of forming one pet just to use doohickeys to turn it into another pet or mount or something. Since the tickets are capped, though, if you want the top stuff you have to log in and play content you wouldn’t normally, like PvP. Their system mostly ends up feeling grindy or tedious so I only really play an event if I feel like it, which this time I didn’t.
As for returning to Twitch streaming, I was reminded that if I receive a payment from Amazon for streaming on Twitch during the year, then I’d have to upgrade to a deluxe tax package when doing my taxes next year which is going to be an extra $50 or so. I doubt if I return for just November and December I’d receive enough donations to offset that extra cost alone. So, better to return after the new year. Otherwise I’d be paying to do so. Nobody in the streaming community ever really talks about the taxes. Mostly because taxes are just not a fun thing to talk about, I guess.
Guild Wars 2’s Mad King, Stopped Clocktower, and Draconis Mons
I just said nothing was new in Halloween events this year, but that’s not entirely true. This year during Guild Wars 2 Shadow of the Mad King Halloween festival the infamous Clocktower jumping puzzle, notorious for not allowing you to take a moments breath while jumping, was standing still. Allowing all players to ascend the tower at their leisure, even gliding. Not only was this a nice change of pace, but at the top was a vendor where you could trade some crafting components for paper bag helms with emoji faces on them. Adorable.
Also I spent some days before all the Halloween events started in earnest finishing up the Living World Season 3Flashpoint release and Draconis Mons zone, the penultimate leading up to the Path of Fire expansion. Yes, I’m that far behind in the story. It was due to the years there where Arenanet was just being an absolute garbage company. Treating their employees quite poorly and for a long time it just felt wrong supporting them. However, with a regime change in mid-2019, it finally felt worth coming back to. So I started a brand new 2019 character with the intent of 100%’ing everything I can and now I’m playing catch up.
Shooting Through Star Trek Online’s Catspaw Castle
Star Trek Online will take any content from the deep well of Star Trek to use for its multiple missions, but they only recently started to get into the Halloween spirit in 2021 with a spooky Task Force Operation, STO‘s version of dungeons, based off the TOS episode Catspaw. It’s a classic episode in which Kirk, Spock, and Bones find themselves in a quintessential spooky castle with witches, black cats, dungeons, and magic. Of course it ends up being alien shenanigans. The TFO in Star Trek Online, which has been expanded to multiple solo instances as well, takes that idea and uses another spooky Star Trek foe, the out-of-phase ghostlike Dividians and combines them in an old castle, witches-and-ghosts encounter. It’s… a little cheesy. But then again, Star Trek itself can also be quite cheesy at times, too.
Aside from the Halloween missions I used the time to catch up on the latest feature episodes, Wish Upon A Star and Taken By Surprise in the new Kings & Queens story arc involving the Mirror Universe Borg. A foe that hasn’t been explored before in the Star Trek mythos.
Revisiting the Original Mad King in Guild Wars Nightfall
Over the last week or so, as I’m nearing completion of the Living World Season 3 in Guild Wars 2, I’ve been back in Guild Wars 1 in preparation going through the Nightfall release. As I was too entrenched in World of Warcraft at the time Guild Wars was popular I never completed their storylines and have been trying to make up for that. My plan is to complete each branch of Guild Wars before completing it’s related expansion in Guild Wars 2. So I completed Prophecies before I went through Heart of Thorns, and plan on completing Nightfall before Path of Fire, and then Factions before End of Dragons. Then probably Eye of the North before Secrets of the Obscure. Although those last two aren’t as closely linked as the other three, it at least matches the back and forth pattern.
The nostalgia got to me and I had to complete the old school Mad King’s Finale on Halloween as well as doing some of the Halloween themed missions in Elona, which I had never completed before, this being my first run through Elona. So many trick-or-treat bags opened.
To continue the trend, I also made more headway through Elona. Completing the Grand Court of Sebelkeh, Nundu Bay, and Jennur’s Horde mission and all the side quests I could find, I’ve played up to entering the Desolation area and the Gate of Desolation mission before losing steam.
Haunted Burrow and Tipsy Wistmead
Rounding out the month of October I spent a few days in Lord of the Rings Online for their yearly Harvestmath festival. It’s always a fun LotRO holiday as it entails the spooky Haunted Burrow as well as the Wistmead zone. In the past LotRO has absolutely won Halloween for Wistmead and the spooky Bingo Boffin quests associated with them and should absolutely be done by anyone who hasn’t run them yet, it’s just great content. However, the only items I found myself going for this year were the new mount, an elk with a massive curving rack that’ll poke your eye out, the new pet, a day-of-the-dead themed goat, a couple of gear cosmetics I’ll probably never wear, and a couple of cats to hang around my hobbit home. Cats in a hobbit home. Can you *get* any comfier than that?
Not a lot of stuff, though. So it didn’t take long to get the tokens needed, only 3 nights. I did use the opportunity to create a fast-run guide for future years. Spoilers: you spend most of it drunk. Dang drunk quests.
Saving the First Puppeteers Victim and Hitting SHD 250
The Division 2 is a game I’m quickly finding myself coming back to over and over again and it’s really surprised me. It’s not like I’m a big FPS aficionado. There’s just something about The Division 2‘s balance between the fun minute-to-minute gameplay, a consistent progression that feels meaningful, and a storyline and world that is evolving and playing out slowly but meaningfully that is just hitting all the right notes.
I remember once hearing from an MMO game designer interview that you should give the players multiple goals to work on that stretch over different lengths. So have goals that could be completed in a single session, goals that can be completed over multiple sessions from days to weeks, and goals that can take months to even years all going on simultaneously. If you can balance goals like that well, there will always be something for players to chase well beyond when the main story ends. I feel like The Division 2 really showcases that concept well, as well as having excellent minute-to-minute gameplay. Such that running the same missions over and over doesn’t feel like a slog or a grind, which is quite the trick.
To that effect my time in Division 2 in October was quite fruitful. I completed the first manhunt target of Puppeteers, the Year 5 Season 2 ongoing story, saving Cindy McAllister. Thus expanding the staff in the ongoing rebuilding of the Castle settlement after its decimation during the base games main story. At the same time I hit the first soft-cap of SHD level 250, an ongoing slight vertical progression you unlock after completing the Warlords of New York expansion that scales 1:1 with base game levels and Season progression track levels simultaneously. At SHD 250 you complete the first set of major performance increases. SHD 500 and SHD 750 bring lesser but still significant increases with a total SHD cap of 1000 to attain. On top of that, completing my 4th of 6 specializations, and acquiring all of the hidden collectibles to be found in the main DC area — aside from the Dark Zone. Many different progression tracks, all of them worth progressing, and every session played brings progress made in each of them. Whoever is in charge over there knows what they’re doing and other MMOs should be taking note.
Gaming Goals For November
As we enter November I’m feeling very blase, a bit melancholy, and feeling some burn out from MMOs. So maybe I’ll make more headway in single players? Which ones, though, are a little up in the air. Been working through New Vegas, so that’s a lock, but another? We’ll see. Having gone 50/50 for October let’s try this again.
Complete 2nd Part of Division 2‘s Year 5 Season 2 Manhunt
Finish Fallout New Vegas
Play a good chunk of another new/returning single player title
Write 3 blog posts (keeping it at 3, it’s a good minimum)
Organize enough to prepare for building the new PC (trying a new tactic)
Prepare to start streaming again in 2024
Some of these feel a little loose but that’s only because I’m feeling so meh right now, and I expect the lack of motivation to continue as the sunlight decreases and it gets colder. I always enjoy the beginning of fall but the post-Halloween lull always gets to me. Here’s hoping I get some of it done. Ending on a bit of a down note, but as always, thanks for reading!
September came in hot as heck and is leaving also pretty hot. I’m sure we’ll start cooling off soon. Hopefully. My hoodies are calling me from the depths of the closet so I certainly hope so, anyway. As I sit with a nice breeze and campfire smoke on the air let’s go over my September gaming, which — sort of weird for me — only consisted of mainly two games: Lord of the Rings Online and No Man’s Sky. LotRO pulling me in with their new piratey quest chain and No Man’s Sky with their 11th Expedition. Sadly both, in my opinion, ended up a little underwhelming. Not bad, per se, just a little less than I was expecting.
September’s Goals Rating: Not Bad, I Guess
Some of the goals I had for September were putting my wishes out into the universe to hold me accountable, so that I didn’t meet those I’m not surprised. But that’s okay as they weren’t that bad. Let’s check them out.
Complete No Man’s Sky‘s Expedition 11 – Complete!
Check out Star Trek Online‘s Incursion (and complete missed story) – Nope, wanted to, but just wasn’t feeling it.
Check out LotRO‘s Tale of the Shipwrecked Mariner – Complete!
Build the New PC (2nd Time on Goals) – Nada, but I think my hesitancy is stemming from too much risk, so I need to address that first.
More Fallout: New Vegas – Nope. Also, just wasn’t feeling it.
Get out 4 posts; Get on a weekly blog posting schedule – 25% complete! Hey, 1 is better than 0, right?
Avoid dire sickness, unlike last year – Complete! We got sick, of course, but far from dire.
3 out of 7? Decent batting average, but far from stellar. I blame the Expedition but I’ll get into that. But hey, we only ended up under heavy sickness for only 3 or 4 days, the back-to-school crud mainly making us feel run down and crappy all month, but still able to function. A HUGE improvement over last year.
Lord of the Rings Online: Milling in a pre-Mariner Multiverse
As I type this recap of September, the Mariner, LotRO‘s newest class is officially live and players are able to start swashbuckling their way across Middle-Earth. Which is awesome. The new class sounds like a lot of fun but I’m the type of MMO player that splits up all my characters among multiple games, so rarely do I create more than one character per game.
My reasoning is that until I see all the story a game has to offer re-rolling new characters in the middle of that only delays how long it takes to see all that content. Of course when I reach the top my inclination is instead of restarting the game to see how other classes play I just play a different game. It’s not a hard rule, mind you, like lately trying out ESO‘s Arcanist until level 10 to unlock rewards, or having multiple Star Trek Online characters to play through their Recruitment Events and different faction-specific stories. But still, one character is usually enough for me.
Anyway, for Talk-Like-A-Pirate Day Lord of the Rings Online this year launched a set of eleven missions titled Stowaway: The Old Man on the Shore with the reward of a full sailor-themed outfit, which is quite excellent. The storyline followed the tale of this old man as he recounts his life, his trials and tribulations with a nemesis sailor and achieving vengeance and was a decent story to play through.
However, I thought the missions themselves felt a little bare. The maps were basically a generic tavern, a generic port city, generic ruins, generic cave, and a generic bad-guy encampment. All with sets of mobs wandering around, just waiting for players to beat up on. Not bad, really, but with their next expansion Corsairs of Umbar not too far away and this content being released featuring sailors and pirates, I was expecting this to be a little more of a preview of what is to come and it just didn’t hit that mark. Ah well.
It did get me back into playing LotRO for a time, though, so it totally succeeded in that regard. My main, a Dwarf Runekeeper finished up everything in the winter-cursed zone of Wildermore and started good progress into Western Rohan. I finished up the zone of Kingstead, fully leveled up my warsteed, and started in on Eastfold. Also, been experimenting with the new Landscape Difficulty slider, currently set at +3 Fearless, but I’ll give my varied thoughts on that in another post. Hopefully.
No Man’s Sky: Expedition 11, or Starfield-Lite
The other half of the month I spent in No Man’s Sky in their 11th Expedition. Expeditions, as I have mentioned before, are generally one of the best launching off points for new players and usually act as a tour through the game’s newest content. For veteran players who have learned the ins and outs these usually only take a handful of nights to complete. This one, however, took me 8 nights, and was all over the place that I can’t in good faith suggest it.
It was focused primarily on “exploration”, which in this case meant landing on random hot/acidic/whatever planets and scanning everything around until you finally come across one creature good enough for the missions to complete. This took way longer than I feel it should have and maybe was used to help bolster a player’s nanite reserve — as, you see, scanning every creature on a planet’s surface gives the player a sizable nanite boost — but the tedium of landing and scanning, landing, scanning, landing, scanning, was just too much. As for the phases, milestones generally completable in order following a guided path, I ended up finishing the 1st phase, then the 5th last phase, then the 4th, the 2nd, and finishing up with the 3rd phase. Totally out of order, but that was the easiest path to take.
I can only guess this Expedition was released simply to compete with Starfield. Which, to me, seems silly. Starfield is the latest Bethesda game that’s been in development for years and, by most accounts I’ve read, plays exactly like a Bethesda game. A style that between Fallout and Elder Scrolls has fully cemented itself in gamers brains so much that it’s essentially a money-printer now. Trying to compete with that feels like throwing rocks at a mountain. Totally unnecessary. No Man’s Sky and Starfield are two totally different products with their only real similarity being spaceships and planets. They’re completely different otherwise.
Oh, except for the bugs. This Expedition was riddled with bad bugs, just like Starfield, including one bug where, until it was hot-fixed, stopped most players from even finishing the Expedition! So it, just like LotRO‘s new Stowaway story, felt totally rushed. The rewards leave a lot to be desired, too, the best of which being an electric backpack trail and a simple tent — a base addition that does allow you to get out of the elements without needing to build a full structure, which is nice, but not thrilling. Both of these combined, along with the bugs, leave me no choice but to not suggest playing this Expedition. I have yet to add it to my Expedition ranking, but when I do it’ll be very low down the list.
The worst part is they added a whole bunch of great things with the Echoes update! Including a new race, new Pirate reputation, huge capital ship battles, new story, and a staff multi-tool. All excellent additions to the game that the Expedition doesn’t touch at all! The reasoning being, I guess, is that the new content is mostly found after the main story’s end. Which also feels unnecessary. So I spent the rest of my time in No Man’s Sky checking out all the new stuff. But why have this race, with a full language, only available after the conclusion of the main storyline when the rest of the game is all relatively non-linear? Even the new story didn’t feel entirely like a justification for it. Just a weird miss-step. They could’ve waited a few weeks, polished it up, maybe added some of the new elements, when players are now getting a little tired of Starfield, and they probably would’ve been better off. But that’s just my armchair thinking. Who knows what they were really thinking.
Gaming Goals for October
So, all in all a little disappointing. Except, that is, for making good headway into a new-to-me LotRO expansion. So what do I hope to complete in this, the spookiest month of October? Here are my goals.
Complete the 1st Part of Division 2‘s Year 5 Season 2 Update and Hit SHD level 250
Check out LotRO‘s Harvestmath
Check out GW2‘s Shadow of the Mad King
Check out ESO‘s Witch’s Festival
Order a few more parts for the new PC and put it all together (3rd time’s the charm?)
Get out 3 blog posts (One less than last goal?)
Prep for a Return to Streaming on Twitch
All of these feel totally doable as I know I will be checking out all the Halloween offerings in the games I usually play, but this year (hopefully) without all the sickness and vacation prepping as last year. Here’s hoping a safe and spooky month for all!
So now that August and #Blaugust have ended, I’ve taken a week off, and I’ve done a post-mortem soul-search of how I performed on this blog during the month, how did I do on actual August gaming? As usual I hopped from game to game, which is my nature, spending time in 6 different games this month. Those being Guild Wars: Nightfall, Elder Scrolls Online, Fallout: New Vegas, The Division 2, Honkai: Star Rail, and Lord of the Rings Online. Yet simultaneously, due to #Blaugust and still not finding the best rhythm when it comes to blogging, I spent less time gaming in August than I have in the past 6 years. Bit of a wild month, for sure.
August’s Goals Rating: Not Bad
The goals that I had for August were also varied — but reasonable — and I feel like I accomplished most of them.
Complete ESO‘s Markarth — Complete
Get out 15 posts for Blaugust — Not quite, I only made 8 posts.
Get My New PC Built — Didn’t even start. Going to try again this month. Hopefully.
Complete Division 2‘s Year 5 Season 1 Broken Wings Manhunt — Complete
Check out Lord of the Rings Online‘s Farmer’s Faire — Complete
Complete Fallout New Vegas — Not completed, but I did make good progress.
I’ll admit my bar is fairly low but 3 out of 6 goals fully complete, with 2 others making decent progress: I call that a win. We are talking about hobbies and entertainment, after all.
Guild Wars: Nightfall’s Vabbi Exploration
Using a system that I have where if I’m feeling uninspired and can’t decide what to play, I list off all the MMOs and games that I’d like to play or make more progress in, note the ones I’d actually play at a given time, and then use a random number generator or spinner to pick what I play. The reason I keep coming back to this system is because I’ll usually end up playing the game it picks for a long while, which was again the case as it picked Guild Wars: Nightfall and it was my most played game of the month.
I’ve made good progress in Nightfall, exploring about 75% of Elona and working through the Vabbi region with my Mesmer main. Shocking nobody, I never made any real progress in the original Guild Wars when it was in its prime, but periodically come back to it as the gameplay is so unique and, for the time, the environments are so well done. They feel a little dated now but, come on, it’s been out for 16 years. That’s to be expected. Still fun to play and I hope to complete Nightfall before I get to GW2‘s Path of Fire. Even if I’m behind the curve I still like all my story content in relative order, thank you very much.
Elder Scrolls Online’s Markarth Completion
One of my August goals was completing Markarth and I did just that, prompting me to write about how over-congratulatoryElder Scrolls Online can feel. Overall, Markarth felt fine. Using the above/below ground zoning and Harrowstorms like Greymoor did but completing with what felt like a better boss battle.
My issue with ESO right now is, though, that my main character feels quite overpowered for main story content, but that’s the only content I really want to play. I have zero interest in running dungeons, raids (trials?), or PvP. When the main content feels totally trivial it lacks that real pull, then that triviality reflects on the game overall. So even if the story is amazing it’ll get a bit of hit in my mind just for being too easy, which isn’t really fair, but not something I can really help. If they instituted a sort of self-difficulty scaling similar to Lord of the Rings Online, maybe that would help some. Certainly couldn’t hurt.
Fallout: New Vegas Finally Getting to the Main Story
The game I’ve so far played more than any other this year has been Fallout: New Vegas. Widely considered by many to be the best Fallout game to date, I have a hard time disagreeing. My experience through the Mojave Wasteland has been fantastic. Having that expected Bethesda difficulty curve that feels very rewarding and compelling, I’ve explored every nook and cranny the base game has to offer and love that the game made it easy to do. Combined with the all-encompassing faction reputation system and mission completion branches that spiderweb through the whole game, this has been a wonderful playthrough. After exploring as much as I could and completing as many side missions as possible, including every companion’s storylines, I finally made it past the first act of the main story at level 36, 6 levels past the base game’s initial max level.
However, I’ve learned through some wikis — I like to make game decisions and then look up what happens if I picked the alternate instead — that when the main story completes the game ends and doesn’t let you proceed. So I intend to get as far as I can in the main story and then start on the DLCs first. I expect I’ll be playing this well into winter depending on how long those DLC take.
Cleanup: Division 2’s Broken Wings Completion, LotRO’s Farmer’s Faire, and Honkai: Star Rail
Rounding out the month were some other notable and not-as-notable accomplishments.
I rescued the final minor target and primary target of Division 2‘s Broken Wings, helping to rebuild the DC Castle Settlement after it had been obliterated during the main story. Easy enough for a now well-geared and built Agent, but getting to the point of soloing the Challenging manhunts has been quite a journey. Well worth it, though. The minute-to-minute gameplay I find quite fun. Division 2 just hits way more enjoyable boxes for me than I ever thought it would.
I spent only one evening in Lord of the Rings Online Farmer’s Faire this year. Surprising considering I spent so much more time in the event last year but with my back-supply of tokens one night was all that I needed to get all the new rewards. Hoping to pop in this month for the upcoming new Mariner stuff, though.
Finally, I’ve been checking out Honkai: Star Rail on mobile and coming away liking it quite a bit. The game plays like Final Fantasy X, complete with turn-based combat, giant attack animations, and hallway-esque maps which works extremely well on mobile devices. Combined with that nice Genshin: Impact anime style and writing evocative of old-school point-and-click adventure games — or I think so, anyway — I’ve been finding it quite enjoyable.
Genshin: Impact always felt like it had an identity crisis to me. Too much of a mobile UI feel on PC, but was super hard to control effectively on mobile. Honkai: Star Rail, in comparison, feels like it knows what it is and just feels “cool”. Probably won’t be playing it much on PC, though I like that the option is there.
Gaming Goals for September
September has famously been the month where we all start getting sick and spend it mostly feeling icky, so we’ll see how much gaming or writing I end up doing. However, here are my goals for September.
Complete No Man’s Sky‘s Expedition 11
Check out Star Trek Online‘s Incursion (and complete missed story)
Check out LotRO‘s Tale of the Shipwrecked Mariner
Build the New PC (2nd Time on Goals)
More Fallout: New Vegas
Get out 4 posts; Get on a weekly blog posting schedule
Avoid dire sickness, unlike last year
We’ll see how things go, I guess. How about you, dear reader? What are your goals? What are you playing? Let me know!
This month, like many many others, didn’t quite go as planned. As it usually does, Blaugust, the blogging during August writing festival, drew me in to once more take up the task of writing as much as I could during what I’m quickly learning is the most chaotic month of the year for my family. Despite all the writing and disarray this month brings, though, I was able to get in some gaming time, albeit not nearly as much as I’m use to. So I guess this post will mostly be me self-reflecting and reasoning how I’m so bad at this.
So how did I do in Blaugust this month? Including this post I will have written a total of 8 posts and 11 out of the 20 achievements. I’ll give myself enough props to admit it’s far from zero, but not enough to garner any sort of praise or pride from. As usual, I had a lot of steam in the beginning, setting a goal I believed to be high but achievable of 1 post every 2 days. Up until the middle of the month I had a steady rhythm going. Then, Life happened.
As it always does, though, right? Life will always get in the way. That’s what life *does*. Then it comes down to priorities, reality, and understanding. My son, whom I refer to as “Baby Ocho” — but is far from a baby any more– turned six years old and is starting school full-time in September. So that meant celebrating his birthday with all the family and his school friends, a lot of travelling and six different social events. Then came all the back-to-school events for both him and my wife, shopping, visiting, and helping set up classrooms. Couple that with aging parents, whose injuries and maladies pop up out of nowhere, so multiple hospital visits. I’m exhausted and stressed.
That’s why I game, though, to help relieve exhaustion and stress. To be the balance that helps keep me from going over the deep end into serious depression. Been there. Don’t recommend it. Without my gaming time, I don’t know where I would be. Some people turn to gambling, alcohol, or drugs. Gaming feels way more innocuous, but to get the stress-relief I have to, you know, actually find time to play. Doing that at the same time as writing for fun has been my constant challenge.
So what’s the benefit of writing? I’ve never been into writing. Science, math, theatre, sure, but writing had always been a challenge for me. Doing a 3-page physics problem was always way easier for me than writing a 3-page essay. Yet, here I am, blogging. I’ve always considered myself a jack-of-all-trades, so I tend to gravitate toward what I’m *not* good at, just so I can understand it better, practice, and learn more about it.
Also, the community around blogging is quite fun! Blogging has allowed me to feel part of something a little bigger than myself, and that’s a good feeling. I still feel like I’m on the outside looking in, though, and not wholly welcomed, but that’s how I feel in most groups which is a self-reflection for another time.
Since writing time and playing time overlap for me so much, then, that means sacrificing one to do the other. With writing I’ve spent so little time gaming that the last month I’ve gamed less was July 2017 when my wife was 8 months pregnant. So every night turns into a choice of which do I do, write or game? Logically, I have to game to have something to write about in the first place. Plus, writing doesn’t help with my stress — most times adding to it — but gaming does help. So writing sadly and inevitably takes the backseat. So it goes.
In the end all I can say is ‘I tried’. Could I have done better? Absolutely, but I also could’ve done a lot worse, or not even tried at all. That’s a worse sin in my book. So I won’t be winning anything outside of the ‘Bronze’ award, or even improving my sad blogging reputation. I have, though, learned a little more about myself. And really, isn’t that the whole point?
There’s a psychological belief out there that the reason we play the games we do is that they give us experiences we don’t normally receive in our real lives. So the other day I was joking about how some of the reasons we play MMOs are that they complete that psychological need for being given reasonable tasks, completing those tasks, and being rewarded well for our efforts. The feeling of having a to-do list, crossing off everything, and being rewarded for it? The. Best.
There’s a point, though, when the felicitations become way too much. Especially for those of us who like story and don’t like missing anything so we’ll read every piece of dialogue handed to us. Saying a nice ‘thank you’ and giving us some new shiny is one thing, but having us be the centerpiece of a giant ceremony while every character we’ve ever helped is in attendance, giving each of them new lines to say, thanking us *again*? I’m talking about Elder Scrolls Online.
I like Elder Scrolls Online a lot. Only a couple years behind new releases — I’ve almost 100%’d now 35 out of the available 40 zones with my completion of the Markarth DLC — Elder Scrolls online is my 2nd most played game over the past 6 1/2 years. But they go *really* hard on the overly congratulatory fluff. Out of those 35 zones, not sure about maybe the starter zones as much, but every other single zone’s story, especially the DLCs, wraps up with some huge ceremony saying how our characters have saved the world, yet again, and how we’ll always be welcome in the halls of blah blah blah.
What makes it standout more than other games, aside from all the pomp and pageantry of it, though, is also, in juxtaposition, how *not* rewarding it is. Elder Scrolls Online, like many other games, has an excessive amount of loot drops where you’ll find yourself selling it all to vendors or breaking it all down into crafting materials. Not necessarily a bad thing as the highest quality loot is attained through crafting, so those mats are essential. It just hits different when at the end of the DLC they handed me a single epic axe of a seemingly-random zone gearset and 600 gold. A relatively less than stellar reward.
Although, once you start accruing Champion points the game’s difficulty drops as well, which is reminiscent of every other Bethesda game, to be honest. So this massive challenge was also fairly easy for a decently geared, post-max level player. It could be that they’re not-so-subtly pushing players to more challenging content, too. Like it has an undercurrent of sarcasm. Or that’s just how it comes across to me being so over-geared, anyway, and I’m probably imagining it.
I get it, though. It’s not just that we beat some big bad thing. It’s more than that. They’re also, basically, thanking us for buying the DLCs, subscribing, basically supporting and playing the game itself. They’re not just thanking your character. They’re thanking *you*, the player. So these moments are basically the developers reaching out to us directly. The end gathering of all the NPCs you helped and giving them all a new thankful line or two to say acts as a sort of credits scroll, too. A definite capstone to the zone.
I know I don’t have to read each and every one of the breathless thank-yous, but my completionist tendency compels me to. I’ll only come back to this zone if I need to farm some dailies, so I might as well get everything I can out of it while I’m here now, including all the dialogue. Still, though, for an introvert like myself, I never expected the thankful dialogue in the end to be the game’s real challenge.
Casual Aggro 
