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Blog Your Current Game

Apparently Facebook is fact checking video games now...

 
I managed to defeat Uber Duriel in the Diablo 4 progression this morning using my Necromancer because yesterday morning I got the special Necromance ring to drop off of Varshan.

The ring didn't have good stat rolls on it, but it still manages to do the job.

The Duriel fight was much like my high level Butcher fights with my Necro build in that it took forever because my DPS is terrible but was successful because I literally can't die with this build. I think there might be something broken in the tick-order for this constantly regenerating shield and fortification build because a boss needs to hit me for basically 3 times my base life in one hit to kill me. I rapidly accumulate full fortify and shield which effectively brings my life to ~25,000 health, but I don't think any hit really does 24,000 health in one tick, it seems to rapidly drop health on a critical, but a few times when my rotation was off I seemed to be saved by an uptick in health/shield/fortification from my generators long enough for me to use a health potion to stabilize.

The Duriel fight took about 8-10 minutes for my Necro at level 90, but the fact that I beat him without much threat would indicate that by the time I hit level 100 he'll be easily farmable.

I still have a lot of sub-par gear, and the new Damage system is a confusing mess, but I feel I'm pretty close to burning out on my Necro again. For me burnout comes after I achieve a long-shot goal and have only a barren wasteland of grind ahead of me for small gains. I'm not going to put Uber Lilith on my list of goals at this point, but I might put something like "Reach Level 100" on the list and just focus on that. Even just basic level-up bonuses will put me, on paper at least, on par with the rest of the end-game builds... but there are end game builds that 1-shot Duriel and Uber Lilith... I was in a World Boss fight yesterday where a death-blow Barbarian one-shot the boss. So numerically we are the same, but I'm still little league... mostly because I like the hunt for my own fun builds rather than tying myself to farming entirely for meta.

I watched a video the other day of a Barbarian death-blow build that hit Uber Duriel for over 1 billion health in a single hit. Same guy one-shot Uber Lilith in both phases. :rolleyes:
 
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Also, as a funny aside, I was trying out the new Training dummy in the game and found out that with the right circumstances, my build is a perpetual damage machine that constantly feeds itself corpses that then explode and feed itself corpses and on and on...
 
I decided to take a break from leveling the Necromancer and go full meta on a Sorcerer Ball Lightning build.

It's a VERY VERY simple build to make, and it's currently the most powerful build in the game, so I might as well try it...

Here are the moving Parts:

Gravitational Aspect (drop) - This aspect makes your ball lighting rotate around you

Recharger Aspect (Codex, drop pref.) - This aspect makes Chain lighting refund X amount of mana per enemy hit

Chain Lightning Enhancement - Making chain lighting one of your two enhanced spells means it auto casts after you spend 100 mana (equivalent of 2 ball lightning)


... And that is really the core of the build's motor. Essentially you cast 2 ball lightning that star orbiting you, this triggers a chain lighting that bounces around in a group of enemies which gives you mana to cast another ball lightning, rinse repeat

The reason the build is big now is because of two ... bugs? with the redesign of ball lightning that causes it to scale like crazy with attack speed. Even without a lot of attack speed buffs the ball lightning does crazy damage, with certain vampiric powers and the right gloves the damage scales through the roof.

Is it fun? I mean yeah, what is Diablo 4 for if not melting bosses in seconds?

That said, the build only really is top tier as long as Blizzard doesn't nerf the damage scaling, and as long as Season 2 and it's huge attack speed buff vampiric power exit. So it is fun, but the character will probably become unplayable after the season is over.
 
I decided to try out the new Unreal Engine 5 remake of Ark.

The good:

Unreal Engine 5 is the real deal. The game looks beautiful and lacks all the weird graphics quirks of the original game (never could figure out why they couldn't fix the absurd ocean reflection bug.. but it's gone now)

The Bad:

This is an early alpha build. It is rather unfinished and incredibly buggy. The oddest thing is that the biggest bugs are in parts of the game that are straight carry-overs from the original game. The inventory menu is buggy as hell.

There is also a hard crash bug I have hit a few times.

Bottom Line:

When the game has a workable, cleaner build this will be a superior version of the original game. I'll check back in a couple of months.
 
This morning’s flight was nice. I took off on runway 27R from Gillespie Field at about 7AM, misty conditions in some places. The aircraft was an F4F-4 Wildcat, a WWII Navy plane.
Climbed to about 3500 and did some practice landings at Miramar Air Station. The Wildcat can be a handful to land. At one point, I noticed Air Force One was parked near the Terminal. Taxied up there, but didn’t see Biden.
Took off and flew West to check out the ocean, then south to see downtown and the Navy.
At that point, I noticed I had lees than 20 gallons of fuel left, so headed back to El Cajon and landed back at Gillespie.
It was Microsoft Flight Simulator of course. As if I could afford a vintage warbird. Haha.
 
This morning’s flight was nice. I took off on runway 27R from Gillespie Field at about 7AM, misty conditions in some places. The aircraft was an F4F-4 Wildcat, a WWII Navy plane.
Climbed to about 3500 and did some practice landings at Miramar Air Station. The Wildcat can be a handful to land. At one point, I noticed Air Force One was parked near the Terminal. Taxied up there, but didn’t see Biden.
Took off and flew West to check out the ocean, then south to see downtown and the Navy.
At that point, I noticed I had lees than 20 gallons of fuel left, so headed back to El Cajon and landed back at Gillespie.
It was Microsoft Flight Simulator of course. As if I could afford a vintage warbird. Haha.
That is pretty cool, but I cannot help but be painfully anal about what is wrong there. The F-4 fuel gauge reads in pounds, not gallons. 20 gallons is about 200 pounds, out of a full load of 20,000 pounds, so you where on fumes at that point.

Sorry, I know how annoyingly anal that is, but military aircraft is a love of mine.
 
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I cant play a flight sim without a pilot's stick...
 
That is pretty cool, but I cannot help but be painfully anal about what is wrong there. The F-4 fuel gauge reads in pounds, not gallons. 20 gallons is about 200 pounds, out of a full load of 20,000 pounds, so you were on fumes at that point.
There
Sorry, I know how annoyingly anal that is, but military aircraft is a love of mine.
The simulator will show gallons or pounds in the information screen. And you’re right, the 1200 horsepower radial engine is very thirsty.
The sim also has a P-40N, An OV-10 Bronco, P-51, Curtiss JN-4, F-18C, C-47 and other military aircraft.
The Wildcat is a favorite of mine.
 
The simulator will show gallons or pounds in the information screen. And you’re right, the 1200 horsepower radial engine is very thirsty.
The sim also has a P-40N, An OV-10 Bronco, P-51, Curtiss JN-4, F-18C, C-47 and other military aircraft.
The Wildcat is a favorite of mine.
I worked on the F-18C, so I would be a little partial there.
 
Still falling back on Diablo 4 and I do my annual house cleaning of games I don't play anymore. This is less urgent this year given the addition of 16TB of SSD storage, but it still fills my OCD inventory management impulse.

Anyway, I've now built a fairly unique Necromancer build, a fairly standard Druid build, a rehash of my fairly unique (at the time) Rogue build, and a fairly novel approach to a meta Sorcerer build so now I've moved on to trying -- for the first time ever -- a purely cookie cutter meta build: The Hammer of the Ancients 1-Shot Barbarian.

I had a Barbarian in Season 2 that I had abandoned because he was just awful.. I kept trying different skills for the early game and he just wasn't working, so he sat there while I leveled pretty much every class past him.

The other day I was on my Sorcerer farming materials for some Duriel runs, a fight I had not yet developed to farming status. I did a server invite for anyone who wanted a few free Duriel runs and I had 2 joins, one a Rogue, the other a Barbarian.

I summoned the first Duriel and let the barbarian rush in to gain aggro because I was going to draw so much aggro with the awesome DPS that my Sorcerer was going to lau... huh, the Barbarian killed Duriel in 1 hit. One. frickin'. hit.

It wasn't long after that that word started floating around that Blizzard was perfectly happy with the 1-hit builds and had decided to just let people have fun. An interesting concept!

So since this build was not going to get nerfed I decided it was time I tried it out. I followed the build guide up to the level of my character (30) and took him into the field. He faired pretty well with mobs, but was still a button masher build, when I came to my first boss, I went through my cast progression, hit "death blow" and I did all of the boss' health in a single hit.

Well... ain't that somethin'...

The funny thing is, I'm still not entirely certain WHY this build works the way it does, it just does. Knowin' stuff is for tomorrow. Today I smash.
 
So weird thing happened with me this morning. I went to bed last night with my usual excitement of getting up early Saturday morning for my YouTube binge while playing a computer game. I had every intention when I went to bed of playing Diablo 4 and continuing my Barbarian progression, but by the time I got up, turned on the PC and loaded Diablo 4 I was over it. Burned out. I thought about the grind of finding incrementally better gear and refining the Barbarian build (or any of my other 4 builds for that matter) I it just seemed like work.

Luckily the first YouTube video I had on my to watch list was from a channel called SplatterGaming. He's a guy who built a channel around trying out indie games and only indie games. I have found a lot of really good games through watching his channel.

The latest game he is demoing is called Realms of Magic, a game marketed as "Terraria meets Skyrim". On that alone I knew I had to try it.

And it's pretty much a Skyrim-esque open world RPG in a Terraria setting. Every square on the map when you explore it becomes a mini-Terraria map that you mine through, gather resources, craft gear and move on. The minerals you find in each map depends on the level of the map and the map access is gated through a questing system.

So far it is definitely the change of pace I needed. The progression is essentially gear up, go to a dungeon and beat a boss, hope for better gear, gear up and go to a dungeon to beat a boss, rinse repeat.

I fired it up at 6am this morning and I'm still playing it. I just took a quick break to give it my endorsement.
 
I'll be playing Diablo 4 until the 28th, that's when the freebie trial ends. I'm at level 11, a Barbarian, which is the class I play in most of these kind of games. It's not bad, better graphics that D3, more back story. Not worth $50 though.
 
"Finished" Diablo IV... some thoughts on the state of the game and the upcoming content releases:

I completed the 1-Hit Bonk build for my Barbarian, I can now 1-hit pretty much all of the content in the game, so I guess I won. I never defeated Lilith, but that is because my old reflexes need a lot of training to get through the phases. I one hit her first form and then the second form is just pattern memorization and timing... that last bit is the part where my old man reflexes fail me. So basically I'm done. That build can 1 shot anything that isn't programmed to not be 1-hit from level 80 or so.

Granted, I did benefit greatly by having accidentally farmed all of the uniques I needed for the build while leveling other classes.

Anyway, I think I can officially set the game aside.

It's a fun game, and I like that they left in the various super powered builds, but itemization and skill lets essentially force you down narrow builds if you want to do well in the end game, especially if you are a casual player.

The new content coming, and Abattoir of Zir (AoZ), is just Blizzard making more Blizzard mistakes. The AoZ is just a rehashed Diablo 3 Greater Rift (GR) minigame, which is fine because GRs are fun, but with the absurd level scaling of Diablo 3 release build. For those who don't remember, Diablo 3 release had an absurd level scaling in the end game that made end game essentially unattainable for casual players. Blizzard spent YEARS trying to learn that lesson by creating various end game content that made the end game level scaling more gentle... eventually settling on just dropping absurdly powerful gear on everyone making it pretty much impossible to play endgame without full gear sets... which killed the innovation that makes Min/Maxing fun.

So along comes AoZ, the new content for us all to play.. except that the level scale of the first AoZ map is already out of reach of the majority of players. The power level of AoZ Tier 1 is targeting players who can reliably finished Nightmare dungeons (NMD) at Tier 100. That tier of NMD is out of reach for the majority of players, and only doable by players with completed one of a very few number of meta builds with the durability and insane damage potential to both survive and actually defeat enemies. These players, unless insanely lucking, are playing the game essentially full time to get their gear. I don't know the numbers on the percentage of players who can complete Tier 100 dungeons, but I'd guess it is maybe 5%.. and the new content is meant to challenge them.

So basically Blizzard to trumpeting an upcoming release of new end game content that most players will never really experience... unless they plan to start dumping new high powered gear on everyone.

They seem to never learn.
 
I've been going through some old games that I had set aside for various reasons because they have had updates, trying to remember why I stopped playing and to see if I could get back into them. I give each one about 15 minutes to jog my memory and see is I have some interest.

The one game that has held my attention the most is the game KING AURTHUR: KNIGHT'S TALE (KAKT)

A quick reminder of what the game is:

KAKT is a turn based X-Com-style RPG set in a sort of Post-Apocalyptic King Arthur universe. The base story when you start is that King Arthur at some point went insane with power and all hell (literally) broke loose. many knights and ladies are dead or turned undead by the mad King Arthur, and numerous human and fantastical factions are now vying for power in the land around Camelot. Your main character is Sir Mordred who has been brought back to defeat King Arthur and *hopefully* restore the glory of the Round Table.

What makes KAKT so unique in the world of X-Com-likes is that THere is real depth to game and character development.

You play Mordred however you want and the game organically tracks all of your decisions. You end up developing a morality that is based on a standard 4-Quadrant chart with one axis ranging from Old-God Religion to Christianity and the other measuring Tyranny to Rightful. As you make decisions in quests a various dilemas in the game your position on the chart changes. Each quadrant is full of various boons you can earn, from things as simple as resources to unlocking classic King Arthur Characters who come foward when you have acheived a moral position they find worthy to serve.

THis portion of the game alone presents immense replay value. One game you may try maximize the full Rightful Christian quadrant and unlock Sir Galahad, the next playthrough maximize Old Faith Tyranny and unlock Lady Morgan Le Fay.

What makes the game even more insteresting is that while there are general classes in the game that fill the various expected roles (Tank, Melee DPS, Ranged DPS, Healer) every character is unique in a number of ways. While all of the characters in teh game are assign to specific combat roles, the skills that they have availavble as they level vary a lot, so not every Sword&Board Defender (Sir Mordred's class) will have all the same skills available, making each and every character you unlock fairly unique.

On top of that, there are numerous characters that you can unlock through quests, all having their own Morality, Class and varied skill set. Piecing together a round table and effective 4-person squads can be challenging since the game tracks, to an extent, the loyaties of your team, and they can look down on you if you put them on teams with opposing morallity.

All missions have random loot that you plunder from chests that have rarity levels, and various boons that you can synergize with skillsets of various team members. It can be as simple as a bow with bonus fire damage for the Marksman on your team with fire arrow skill, to items that refund action points on kill that can turn a DPS class into a killing machine.

THat said, the game can be VARY challenging. You don't have the ability to sort and assign gear while in a mission, every character goes in with the gear on their back and the items in their consumable slots. This can make for some pretty difficult missions when there is a lot of combat. Most missions end up being a war of attrition... at least for your team. You have a limited, map-dependent number of resting spots where you can choose either to heal wounds of repair armor, but not both (though some skills and items can somewhat mitigate that), leaving a poorly prepared team beat up and beat down by the final fight of a mission. Conversely, with the right team synergy and gear you can roll over your enemies.

In combat you have armor which is usually the first in line of defense, with physical attacks subtracting armor. Once armor is gone you lose vitality, and when vitality if gone you lose life. When taking life damage there is a high possibility that your character will sustain injuries that can side line them in the hospital between fights.

Finally, the main base in KAKT is, or course, Camelot. In between missions you will save and spend resources to upgrade various features of the castle to improve the outlook for your team (better hospital so you can take in more patients/heal faster.. better quality of gear at the merchant, etc.)

Anyway, I'm running out of characters so I should wrap this up. If you like X-COm-likes and you are in to King Arthur mythology, this game is rather fun.

It's also current on sale on Steam for $18. I haven't tried out all of the DLC yet since I'm still working through tthe main campaign.

The End.
 
This is pretty funny. I'm in the Mid.late game for King Arthur: Knight's Tale and I'm play the Christian/ Righteous morality line so I have unlocked Lancelot.

It turns out that with the right gear and spec Lancelot becomes a rather game breaking beast.

I hadn't played Lancelot much because he didn't seem like the best of his class, so I just kept him in training to make sure if something came up that might fit his skill set he'd be the right level.

On a previous mission I received a random high quality relic that had an interesting trait: When you kill an enemy you teleport to the next closest enemy within 4 squares... pretty handy! I used it for a while on some characters to nice effect, saving them a lot of action points with the free movement.

In between missions I decided to go ahead and spend Lancelot's skill points because I you don't get to see later skill tiers until you spend enough points in early tiers. When I unlocked his final tier I saw a skill called "Ice Aura" which did, when upgraded, 60% weapon damage to every enemy within 1 square. THis seemed VERY promissing since the biggest issue that I had with the Champion class (the heavy armored DPS class) was that they had all the DPS your need, but can be quickly overwhelmed.

... then it dawned on me.

I had some gear sitting around that granted +damage until the end of combat on kill.... and I had that free teleport on kill relic... so what if I built Lancelot spcifically to boost Ice Aura? My thought was that by late game he could start doing serious damage to back line magic and ranged units.

I didn't know the half of it..

Watch this video I just made:



I have to assume that since I posted this on Steam that the devs are going to nerf it, but damn this will be fun while it lasts.
 
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Warhammer 40k: Rogue Trader initial thoughts - I have played it about 2.5 hours, and love and adore this game so far. I am very much a click through dialog quickly, skimming just enough to get an idea what is going on with the plot. Not so this game, where I find myself reading every word and investing in the various characters(Argenta's entrance for example is epic). It looks great, the story is awesome, combat is pretty decent, and this game is designed for people to min/max, or experiment with various builds, and there are so many possible builds. Melee, psyker, sniper, spray and pray, buffer, combinations of those, all are possible. But mostly, just great writing, and fun gameplay. This could very well be my favorite RPG of the year(time will tell).
 
2020-10-19-product-19.webp

After an enjoyable time with my son on Hogwarts Legacy, I started playing Baldurs Gate 3 and... Im just not feeling it.

I mean, its well made and all that but it just doesnt have any excitement for me anymore. I played BG1 and 2 when they came out, but this new one doesnt feel groundbreaking or fresh in any way. Its like Im playing Grim Dawn or Path of Exile all over again, but with a turn based combat instead of realtime.

Oh well Ill keep playing, maybe itll get more interesting.
 
I mean, its well made and all that but it just doesnt have any excitement for me anymore.
That was kinda my impression too. It is a great game, but not so much for me. Combat felt entirely meta to me, instead of making sense from an ingame world kinda sense. For example, carry boxes around, stack them on ground at start of combat, jump on them, have height advantage. Just totally meta, not something people would actually do. Great look, great systems, great story, and I just did not have a great time with it.

Is Hogwarts Legacy worth playing? What was your impression of it? I love the Harry Potter stuff, but game adaptations of books/movies don't tend to be great so kinda been hesitant about it.
 
Also, still loving Rogue Trader. Went and looked up a build, trying a psyker assisted melee character which is kinda fun. I also like that in addition to the party based turn based combat, it also has ship combat(your ship gains levels!) and base building. Also, trading is completely different than most RPGs, in a good way.
 
Warhammer 40k: Rogue Trader initial thoughts - I have played it about 2.5 hours, and love and adore this game so far. I am very much a click through dialog quickly, skimming just enough to get an idea what is going on with the plot. Not so this game, where I find myself reading every word and investing in the various characters(Argenta's entrance for example is epic). It looks great, the story is awesome, combat is pretty decent, and this game is designed for people to min/max, or experiment with various builds, and there are so many possible builds. Melee, psyker, sniper, spray and pray, buffer, combinations of those, all are possible. But mostly, just great writing, and fun gameplay. This could very well be my favorite RPG of the year(time will tell).

I started this morning and played for an hour or so until the demands of Christmas pulled me away. I haven't gotten any further than I did in beta, I played enough to see that the graphics were cleaned up considerably from my first play through, which is welcome.

Since I have experience from the beta I knew that, at least for me, the party weakness in early game is in ranged combat, and enemy Las fire might be "weak", but it's plentiful, so I am trying the game with a sniper. It goes much more smoothly when I can essentially plink 1 enemy every turn.

That said, I really wanted to create an alternate universe around Ibram Gaunt, who weilded a bolt pistol and Chain Sword/Energy sword... but in the beta he always died and was hard to keep in position since ending a turn in sight of 3 or 4 grunts with Las rifles is basically death.
 
Also, still loving Rogue Trader. Went and looked up a build, trying a psyker assisted melee character which is kinda fun. I also like that in addition to the party based turn based combat, it also has ship combat(your ship gains levels!) and base building. Also, trading is completely different than most RPGs, in a good way.

Basically unrelated, but playing Rogue Trader has me reminiscing all over again on how odd it is, these decades later, that Rogue Trader was Games Workshop's first foray into the Warhammer 40K universe. It all started with essentially an RPG set at the outer perifery of a vast galaxy that had yet to be really fleshed out. 10 editions and about 400 novels later ...
 
For those interested, Archive.org has a digital copy of the original Rogue Trader which is visually both different and similar to modern Warhammer 40K.

I discovered last night there is a Warhammer 40k store right near me, that I am going to have to watch and see if I can learn and maybe get involved in the tabletop stuff. https://www.facebook.com/WarhammerSarasota/
 
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