December 2017

Armies of Legionfall Faction Work

stargrace December 5, 2017 0Comment

I really want to fly in Legion before I level up any more alts. It makes it easier, and a lot more fun. Especially since I’ve already leveled up three times (I realize many people have done this many more times, but this is my personal experience). So I’ve been grinding away on my priest who is the furthest along with the achievements.

One of my hangups has been getting Legionfall Commander – where you need Armies of Legionfall faction. The problem is one huge chunk of this faction comes from a quest where you defeat the legionfall armies. For whatever reason Blizzard has this on a really weird schedule that you have to do on their time and being a solo mother with an active one year old who doesn’t let me game with two hands I have just not been able to meet their schedule until yesterday. The assaults take place maybe once a day, sometimes twice a day really spread out. Never more than that. They occur at odd hours, and the easiest way to see if a legion assault is going on is to check out Wowhead because it’s on their main page. At the time of this post (4:30 PT) the next assault is at 3:30pm – no way could I make that one. Then the following one is 10am tomorrow, again another one I couldn’t make, and 4:30am on Thursday. Nope. It was by pure luck that I happened to make the one yesterday. When the assault goes on you need to go to the zone it’s taking place in, and complete four legion assault world quests. Then you need to do two more smaller quests, and a scenario. you defeat a commander boss, and you get a chunk of faction.

Now you don’t NEED to do this to work on flying, but it’s the difference between 1500+ faction, and whittling away at faction 83 points at a time. It was INCREDIBLY frustrating, and I absolutely dislike this mechanic. Lock things behind time walls all you want but let it be on MY time, and not your own schedule. Or at least make them more frequent!

I am very glad I got it done. Now I just need to keep grinding away at the weekly and daily quests and eventually I’ll get there.

As always, happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself.

Gaming

The Wombats do Fractals

stargrace December 2, 2017 0Comment

I had never done a fractal in Guild Wars 2 before because it’s really hard to join up with people when I never know what my schedule will be like. Thankfully @Pixel_One_ has loads of experience with all things GW2, and she organized a night for the Combat Wombats to get together. There was only the three of us (myself, @pixel_one_ and @scopique) because @arislyn met up with some account difficulties, but that didn’t stop us!

Fractals are like mini instances. Shorter than your average one, and they scale in difficulty. We started off at level 1. The first zone involved some tribal folk being held captive by this bone guy, and we had to smush his adds while tossing boulders at him to break him out of the invulnerable shell he had. Then we had to run through the zone like Indiana Jones, dodging flaming boulders. The final fight had another flame themed boss – and most people left without looting the chest – whewps!

We decided to do one more, this one involving a crazy Asura and their zone of endless jumping. We defeated harpy after harpy while balancing delicately through the skies, or rather falling to our deaths once or twice. We had some electric beams to run and try not to get hit by instead of the flaming boulders, and our boss fight seemed pretty simple in comparison to the first fractal, we had to fight four robots that came to life one at a time, then fight them all together while trying to dodge electricity from their boss.

Another chest of fun and it was a great end to the evening. I enjoyed myself quite a bit, fractals don’t take a huge amount of time, and the lower level ones at least are not exceptionally painful, even though there were only three of us. Hopefully this becomes a weekly event for the Combat Wombats, and if you’d like to get in on it you just have to let one of us know. It was nice returning to GW2 for a bit. I had wandered off not too long after Path of Fire released through no fault of the game, my attention span just doesn’t last that long.

As always, happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself!

Gaming

Nintendo Switch in the Family

stargrace December 1, 2017 0Comment

I’ve wanted a Switch since they came out, but they’re pretty expensive and I already have a WiiU and a PS4 (which is basically collecting dust). I used the WiiU quite a bit until my cat chewed through some of the cords, and then I bought replacement cords and miss placed them.. some where.. I’m sure I’ll find them when we’re packing up the house to move.

Anyway, my husband surprised me this year buy making a black Friday purchase of a Switch for me for Christmas, along with Mario Odyssey, Skyrim, and Mario Kart 8 Deluxe. I was incredibly surprised and it got here this week – I asked first if it was OK to set it up and use it before Christmas or if I had to wait, because that’s just the polite thing to do!

He let me know I could use it right away. My main reason for wanting a Switch was because my little guy is pretty clingy and I don’t get a lot of time to do any sort of gaming because he wants to be on my lap at my desk, and occupies my hands. I’m restricted to playing games with one hand, and he gets wiggly and he doesn’t actually want to be up on my chair he just wants to be close. So I spend most of my days sitting on the floor playing with him while he roams around the baby gate area of our living room, and watching him do his thing when he doesn’t want to play with me. He’s great at playing on his own – so long as I’m within arms reach. I’m sure a lot of this is due to his Daddy not being here, he has kept me in close range ever since his Daddy left for depot back in July.

Anyway. The Switch is an amazing console and I couldn’t be more pleased. I tend to use it mostly as a handheld, and have only played it on the TV a few times. It’s smaller than I anticipated, so it sits on my mantel with no issues at all. I was concerned I’d need a second table set up and that my little guy would start pulling cords, etc. Now it’s perfectly out of reach.

I haven’t picked up an SD card yet, and I’ve been contemplating the pro controller that everyone has been raving about, but honestly the joy con has suited my needs just fine and I haven’t had any issues. What really surprised me is how incredible games look on the hand held. It’s quite a bit larger than my 3DS (the only other hand held I’ve owned) and the games are just amazing, especially Skyrim.

I’m hoping to pick up Stardew Valley, Portal Knights, and a few other games as time goes on. It depends on the budget, of course. There are quite a few games in the library now which I’m really pleased about. I do wish there were some visual novels in there because honestly that would rule out my desire for a Vita instantly. As it is Sony still holds the market for those games.

Is it worth the very high cost? Well, for my family, yes. I have already used it more than I ever used the PS4 or the WiiU. I haven’t played Mario Odyssey yet because I’m waiting for my husband to come home so we can play that one together. I’m really happy with my Christmas present though. Hopefully he enjoys my gifts just as much. It’s not as extravagant as a Switch (good thing, our budget certainly couldn’t handle that) but I got him two board games because he expressed an interest in collecting them and trying to get to know some of our new neighbours when we move in February. Hopefully this all works out.

As always, happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself!

Armies of Legionfall Faction Work

The Wombats do Fractals

Nintendo Switch in the Family

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