In EverQuest 2 things have come to a bit of a standstill. I don’t have the time to LFG to do dungeons, and I’m pretty bored of running the same advanced solo dungeons every day. I log in to craft, get my loyalty tokens, and putter around, but I haven’t been keeping up with my epic 2.0 or progression in any real meaningful way. Since I have so many characters just doing the little bit of daily stuff I do is enough to keep me ‘busy’ but I’m also wondering if it wasn’t a mistake to get a year long subscription. Of course I had intended to play EverQuest with that, not EQ2, so maybe when I have a bit more time I’ll go back to my original plan.
In WoW things are moving along (even if it is at a snail’s pace). I’m able to queue for a few raids a week, I do some world quests, my characters move up the chain of progression. I’m really excited about the new pet battle dungeon coming to the game soon(tm) and I can’t wait to give it a try. I wish pet battles could be done independently of logging into the game (ie: mobile) but things are not so bad. My subscription for WoW lasts until July, so I have a few more months of that left and I’ll probably renew. It’s a good game even with my limited time.
EVE Online. I subscribed with a PLEX and then played once or twice. Truth of the matter is as much as I adore this game (and I do) I really want to play it with TWO accounts and that’s just not viable for me at this time. I probably won’t renew until I can afford to activate both my accounts, so maybe once my EQ2 subscription runs out. Don’t get me wrong, I love the game, I love playing, but I really like both accounts active so I can make full use of things.
Wurm Online / Unlimited. I currently have two active accounts in Wurm Online, Stargrace, and Blesse (a Vynora priest). I’ve got three active deeds (two on Xanadu and one on Independence) and while I haven’t been doing much to them aside from keeping up with the fields and animals, I still enjoy logging in every day. Wurm is one of those games that just really relaxes me. Plus I can leave it up and running while I putter around with my little one in real life. I also logged into Wurm Unlimited to check on my deed there. One had fallen (I re-deeded the place, my buildings and walls were all still standing) over on Sklotopolis, and over on Age of Urath – well, that server is apparently done now. It had a lock symbol by it with no users online. Should have stuck with my first choice! I also noticed a “new” server with the highest population these days, Zaneth. I’m incredibly cautious about new servers because it seems like there’s a huge overturn and you never know if the server will actually stick around but as long as I don’t go off and donate right away (like I have in the past) then I suppose there’s no real harm in checking things out.
In the meantime life is pretty busy. I get maybe an hour of gaming a day, which isn’t anything to sneeze at, and by rotating what I play I keep from getting bored. Of course it does seem that as soon as I settle in to do a dungeon or improve some weapons my little guy is waking up and begging for my attention, but hey that’s the joys of parenthood. He’s 4.5 months old right now, and while things haven’t exactly gotten easier yet, they’re constantly changing.
I hope everyone else has been having a great time despite the turmoil that seems to be enclosing around the world. Are you checking out Conan Exiles? What about ESO’s big announcement today? Did you give For Honor a try? Head to PAX South? Let me know in comments, and as always, happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself.
I was looking up a bunch of my old posts, and came across this single one for Perpetuum that I wrote back in 2010 – a game I briefly played and then never thought of again for xyz reason. Thought I’d share it, because why not.
Thanks to Scopique I had my interest piqued about Perpetuum a few weeks ago, but I didn’t give it very much more thought until the tail end of their open beta. I decided with early access happening just two days away I’d avoid playing the beta at all. One of the main factors for my decision was the price tag, you really can’t go wrong with 37 days of game play for $10 – no box or game to purchase, just the monthly fee.
The game itself is sci-fi, mech to be more specific. You may have heard it’s like EVE but on a planet, which is very true. The UI is composed of a lot of windows and screens and various boxes that can all be re-sized and moved around to your liking. There are various paths you can chose to go down (much like EVE) like PvP, PvE, and invention / production. I’ve only spent a few hours in game so far, doing tutorials, but it’s been fun.
The learning curve is quite steep so I have been taking my time with the tutorial. It took me three attempts to finally ‘get’ EVE after all, and I expect this will be much the same, especially since the genre is not one I’m typically comfortable in.
I’ve decided to go along a crafting rout (for lack of better term) for my first attempt. I’ve done the tutorials for mining which requires me to head out with my little Arkhe (the beginner uh.. mech? I was given) and extract metals from the ground. What I do with those metals after I’ve extracted them I don’t have the faintest idea. I’m sure it will come with time. The game is pretty, and unique to me. I like that you earn your EP (basically training points) while off line, and put those towards skills. There is no queue for skills, and while the UI may seem very EVE-esc, the similarities stop.
Avatar Creations also did a great job with their promotions, as yesterday numerous bloggers were given free early access codes to use and give out. Since I had already purchased access I gave away the codes on twitter and other Nomadic Gamer writers. Creating a buzz is never a bad thing.
Ok so I haven’t delved into enough of the game to come to a good conclusion on it, but I AM having fun exploring something new, and I’m looking forward to posting future screen shots and articles on my progress here. For now, it’s back to the tutorial about terminals.
We all have them. Those games we like to play, but we don’t really advertise that we play for whatever reason. So what are your guilty pleasure games?
Mine are pretty easy, you can see them on my steam profile, I’ll log in an hour here and there in between life when it allows me a break from nursing / various other baby happenings.
Faerie Solitaire – a really simple cute card game where you can collect animals and evolve them. There’s really nothing to this game, but it’s adorable, fun, and easy to play in spurts. Definitely one of my guilty pleasures.
Tripple Town – another really easy puzzle game that doesn’t require too much brain power to play it. I can easily step away if I need, and it’s cute. After all, who doesn’t like ninja teddy bears?!
Anything Otome – A few friends of mine have started playing Otome games and they’ve gotten a bigger audience over the years which is fantastic to see. I’m a sucker for a good story, and if the artwork and the voice overs are good then it’s all the better for me. Some of my favourites include Seduce Me, Always Remember Me, Date Warp, and Long Live the Queen. Sure, they’re not for everyone, but hey it wouldn’t be a guilty pleasure if it was!
So how about the rest of you out there. What games do you find yourself playing that you never imagined you’d be drawn to? Is maybe World of Warcraft that guilty little pleasure that you don’t want to admit to your friends that you find appealing (there’s nothing wrong with that, by the way, I love playing WoW, and I also play numerous other games. We’re beyond the point of only being allowed to like one single game at a time)? Let me know in comments, and as always, happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself!
Did you know I actually have two gaming blogs? Once long ago I wanted to start a community gaming blog for people who didn’t want to run one, or who didn’t think they had the content to post regularly. Thus, Nomadic Gamers was born. These days there’s only one writer, and I thought I’d give a taste of their posts in case you want to go check them out. Here’s pkudude99.
[FFXIV] Baelsar’s Wall and More
Yep, it’s a wall
You didn’t think I’d tell you about only 1 of the new dungeons, did you?
So yeah, last night I started working through the Main Story Quest in order to advance to unlock the next new dungeon. To those caught up in the story, it’s a nice continuation and the reason for the assault on Baelsar’s Wall makes sense. The dungeon itself is part of the story, and the final boss especially is a “reveal/spoiler” so I don’t actually have a whole lot of screenshots I can share this soon after a patch without people whining at me about spoilers. And TBH, I pretty much forgot to take any shots while in the dungeon both times I did it (once in the MSQ to unlock, and once as my Expert queue pop) so there is that too…..
Initial trash is your typical Imperial soldier cannon fodder, along with some war dogs that do some point-blank AE attacks. There are some ranged mobs, so tanks need to be sure to drag the melees to them in order that everyone gets AE’d down and you don’t kill the group of mobs, then have to individually kill the ranged mob. There are also a couple of “sky armor” mobs that appear and tether to dps players as part of the pulls. I’m not really sure of the effect of the tether, but there seems to be an occasional hit of about 1500-1800 damage to you while tethered, so assuming that’s what it does, they need to be priority targets.
The 1st boss is “Magitek Predator.” It’s a mecha with 2 big tanks on its back. It does a tankbuster “claw” attack and summons more Sky Armor adds that tether to the dps periodically. They don’t have a whole lot of HP so they’re easy to clear. He also does a big raygun shot in a line across the arena that he points at a random player. It’s telegraphed, so it’s easy to dodge. And with a name like “predator” — yeah, he also puts prey markers on the dps. At 1st he only does 1 at a time, but he rather quickly starts hitting both dps simultaneously with it. It hits for about 10-12K damage, so it’s pretty spicy for the healer to deal with. He likes to do it while he’s got his adds up and tethered as well, so …. not really a big deal, but can be a little hectic.
2nd trash set happens while you’re taking a ride on a platform. No “big pulls” here due to the mobs being tossed at you a group at a time. There are a couple of timed ones so you will get a 2nd group before you’re fully done with the 1st, but … they’re trash, so the 2nd group really just turns it into a “big pull” and then it waits until you’re done with that whole thing before it “moves” again to give you more mobs, so it’s not like its a dps race or anything. Mobs are all imperial robots — the colossi, the floating claws, the vanguards, and some little spider robots they call “slashers.” They do the typical attacks you’ve seen before, so… burn ’em down.
“Armored Weapon”
2nd boss is “Armored Weapon” and looks like a mechanical crab, though I guess it’s got 8 legs, not 6 legs plus 2 claws, so it’s more probably a spider. Anyway…. it tosses out random unavoidable AE missile strikes for the healer to deal with, and occasionally casts “Dynamic Sensory Jammer” which puts several red shields around each player and a 5 second countdown. If you do anything (move, cast, whatever) during the countdown then you get tossed into the air, stunned, and take a 12-15K hit, so… watch for that and just stop doing anything when it hits you. Later in the fight he’ll do that and then do a ground target on a player also. WAIT until the red shield is gone before trying to dodge out, else you’ll get hit by both the stun and the dodge-able thing for even more damage. He also sometimes fires a spread of stuff sorta front-ish, but it’s not always the same direction. I haven’t yet learned how to anticipate that attack, but it’s always been toward the front and maybe 1 side, so… stay behind him. And finally about mid-fight he casts “Armored Bit” and some bits pop up from the sides and do a grid-patterned attack. It’s well telegraphed and easy to avoid, and I’ve only seen him do it 1 time in the fight, so it’s not a big deal at all.
I was trying to take a shot of something else, but the scene changed just as I hit the button, so I got this nice selfie instead.
The next trash section is a combination of Imperial war machines and foot soldiers. Lots of ground targeted AE gets thrown around by the magitek armor and gunships, but it’s easy enough to avoid, and hey.. trash.. it all dies fast.
The final boss is you finally catching up to the person you were sent to find in there. It’s not another war machine! He does some light-damage unavoidable AE, a tankbuster that I just don’t recall the name of, but is easy to tell when he’s doing it, so tanks shouldn’t have a problem with it. He also sometimes slides around the arena and then does a gigantic AE that covers the entire arena in front of him, so you have to run behind him to avoid it. It does about 13K damage and does a big knockback. He also does a gaze attack called “Flash Powder” with an easily seen “eye” marker. Just turn around to avoid that. He calls down a bunch of flaming swords (along with an 11K unavoidable AE called Lionsheart or Lionshead or something like that ) that blanket the arena with a ground telegraph, but you can kill them to create safe spaces. Best to all focus on the one closest to the tank. He’ll do his gaze attack while you’re doing that, then mark a player for a big knockback/stun into the “bad” so it’s best to actually run to the edge of the arena in the safe spot if marked so he doesn’t knock you anywhere. He also occasionally has a “titan gaol” type of mechanic where he’ll chain up a non-tank and the dps needs to break the chain to release the affected person before it explodes. Reading back over this it sounds pretty complex, but both groups I was in were able to 1-shot the fight just fine, so it’s really not bad.
Completing this dungeon then goes into a long story sequence which finishes out the MSQ for this patch.
Zurvan
Once it’s done you can then move on to the 3rd fight in the Warring Triad series — Zurvan the Demon. The pug I went into this fight with was all doing it 1st time and blind. Even so, we got him down to about 30% on the 1st try and had him figured out, just weren’t quite executing. The 2nd try went really smoothly. Rumor has it that the Extreme version is “the easiest EX primal fight ever” but I won’t know about that for a while yet, I don’t think.
Anyway, you start the fight with him chained in place like you see there. He does easily avoidable ground telegraphs while destroying the ground in quadrants. Don’t fall in the 1st 3 areas, and then when he does the 4th everyone falls into a new arena and he’s now “free” and the fight begins in earnest. For the most part he just tosses out easily avoidable telegraphs, but he summons adds a couple of times too. With the adds, 1 of them won’t aggro on anyone and just stands there doing a long cast of “[something] Meteor.” You need to find that one and focus it down, else the whole raid takes a very large hit when the cast finishes and the meteor hits the ground. It’s recoverable if you take the hit, it’s just big and on everyone.
This is him casting his Ultimate on us.
After the 2 waves of adds are down Zurvan does a big ultimate cutscene on everyone, and the fight resumes. There’s really nothing that stands out in my mind as special to worry about other than the typical “avoid the telegraphed attacks” so it’s really not a bad fight at all. I take that back — he puts a fire or ice debuff on people and calls meteors that are red or blue. Ice people need to stand under the blue, and fire under the red, else it’s a really big hit to the raid. I think that was actually the wipe the 1st time — a fire guy stood under a blue meteor, and so that hit didn’t get soaked like it should. Still… it’s not hard to do there’s a LONG lead-in, and we got it just fine the 2nd try so… it wasn’t bad at all.
Go me!
After doing this, I did the new beast tribe quests. It’s 100% story and running around. No combat, not doing anything other than watching the story unfold. You learn a new “moonlift” dance as part of it, which is *hilarious.*
The Moonlift dance as it’s beginning
It’s like it’s half moogle dance and half manderville dance, and just all funny.
The Moonlift dance later than the 1st pic ;-)There’s a big spread-eagle jump at the end of the Moonlift dance with this goofy expression. Hilarious!
After finishing that up you’re now rank 8 “Allied” with the 3 Heavensward tribes and it says there is more available on the vendors, but I haven’t looked yet. Not that I’d probably notice anyway. It’s not like I actually use those vendors for anything…
From there I went to Ishgard and picked up the Hildebrand quest line. As with the beast tribes it’s all story. And it’s engaging and funny with some nice visuals, so no complaints at all from me.
Dramatic WalkingNice spell effectNow *that* is a frying pan!
I’ve now also begun the “Scholasticate” side quest series, but all this had taken me up to past my bedtime, so…. I’ll finish that tonight or maybe later this week.
This is my retainer wearing the new caster chest, head, and gloves. Nice gas mask, no?
While watching twitch I happened to stumble across an amazing stream of RimWorld, and ever since then, I longed to play it. It reminds me a lot of Stonehearth (which I have been playing a lot of lately), but far more complicated and involved which is absolutely fantastic.
The game is heavily story driven – perfect. You pick to start out on a planet with one, three, or five colonists based on the story line you’re going after. I started out with one, a rich lady looking for adventure. Your belongings are scattered all over the ground and you have to build yourself a base for survival. You can set the difficulty of the game to various levels, I picked one below rough – you can also pick a story method. Random events, story driven events, or a mixture. I decided to go with random on my latest adventures.
Your colonists have stats, they have personalities, they have flaws. They come with wounds (some of them) from previous adventures. They have skills (or they lack skills).
You finally move all of your items to an area you’ve designated, only to realize you’re going to need shelter – and fast. While you’re trying to set up your basics for survival, the environment is fighting against you. Vicious animals, raiding pirates, toxic fallout – this game has it all, and you need to be quick on your feet and plan ahead in order to survive.
Sometimes the game doesn’t seem to play fair. I had a colony with five people in it, and was raided by three pirates. Two of my people died, and just as the other three were getting ready to vanquish the pirates – the pirates kidnapped them, and thus ended my game since I had no people left. I didn’t have a choice about the kidnapping, the only ‘solution’ would have been to kill the pirates before they were able to kidnap, and unfortunately I failed at that.
Toxic fallout is another really vicious occurrence. Your colonists won’t be able to go outside without getting very sick. Toxic fallout can last from days to months. When it happened on my section of the map it lasted 12 days. 12 very long days. Crops die, and every animal outside also eventually succumbs so that when the toxic fallout is finished, you have nothing to hunt, and no crops unless you planted them indoors with hydroponics. Your colonists will be able to research new items as the days go by, things like a drug lab, or automatic doors.
The game is incredibly involved. Your people take mood hits if they’re not pleased, and they’ll slowly go berserk. Have a nudest around? You’ll want them naked asap. Night owl? They better be sleeping during the day. The variety of personality is amazing, and it adds so much depth.
I was a bit put off by the price tag of the game initially (roughly $35 Canadian) but having now played the game for many hours, I can say that it’s completely worth the price. There’s tons of replay and the story is different every time. What makes this game even more perfect for me is that I can easily pause or slow down / speed up the time based on my RL requirements, so if I need to feed the little one, or get called away for some reason it’s very easy to do so. The game also works either streamed from my PC or installed on my MacBook Pro – all extra benefits.
Honestly I just can’t say enough good about this game. It may be in beta but it’s more of a complete product than many other betas I’ve bought into. I am not sure what the company is waiting for, but it’s ready.
As if the game didn’t already come with loads to do – there are tons of mods in the workshop just waiting to be tried out. Enhancing this game is very easy, and there’s a great player base working towards that.
As always, happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself!
stargrace 
