Russian Pirates Rushin' Goals in Windrose

The other day, my youngest looked over my shoulder while I was playing Windrose. At the time I was running around my mishmash rock-and-thatch villa with a dock, goofy giant rock arches, and a farm full of hot peppers and flax. He seemed a bit shocked and asked me what this game was (how could dad be playing a game he had never seen or heard of before). 

My homage to the Wasatch Mountains?

Windrose is, as I told him, the newest survival game, but with pirates, and he was like "survival game?" Now, THAT question, threw me off . . . like he had never heard of survival games before? I mean of course he had! So I took the opportunity to remind him of my library of games on Steam.

Ever heard of Valheim? Survival game but Vikings. Ever heard of V Rising? Survival game but Vampires. Ever heard of Dune Awakening? Survival game but Dune  Ever heard of Ark? Survival game but Dinosaurs. Ever heard of 7 Days to Die? Survival game but Zombies. (I could have kept going on . . . but he got the point . . . of course he had heard of survival games.)

"Why do you have so many survival games?"

Uh . . . they're fun? (I think sometimes he likes questioning me just to see what I would say . . . I should have told him it was all research for a VR Survival game, like Green Hell or A Township Tale, but I would have been lying. It would have been pretty great to work on a VR Survival Game though. Ain't gonna lie.)

So, Windrose is fun. I like it. No one should be surprised I like it, especially after having so much fun in the Demo a couple of months ago. When we saw that Windrose had a full early access release, the entirety of Team Spode (minus Mr. Spode himself, love you, Joey) jumped on board and started going overboard on the newest pirate-themed survival game.

There is a lot more to do here than in the Demo! The quests have all been fleshed out. Factions, Big Boss Fights at the biome end caps, ship crafting, skill trees, new enemies, new exploration types, farming, and more and more were all added in. In fact, two full, entire quest areas of stuff to do were added in, with a fourth promised in the wings!

Dylan and I are once again roleplaying it up and having fun together. Dylan named his character Boris the Blade and suggested Russian Gangsters. I loved it, but my Russian gangsta' ain't typical, see . . . I've been watching a metric ton of hockey and now that my beloved Utah Mammoth are in the Stanley Cup Playoffs, I named my pirate Sergy the Slapshot after Mikhail Sergachev, my favorite Russian hockey player. 

Close enough for hockey pirates . . .

And of course, what ship does Sergy the Slapshot sail?  The mighty Utah Mammoth!

Love the name detail on the back of the ship to be honest . . .

What weapon and armor set does Sergy the Slapshot don?  Definitely the heavily padded Conquistador look with as close to a hockey stick as I can get in game . . . the good ol' Executioner's Halberd.

I get called for High Sticking a lot . . .

Heated Rivalry jokes aside . . . our Russian Hockey Duo is ready to scorch the seas! (Thanks for the joke, John.) 

So many muscles . . . so much heated rivalry . . .

So, I'll be posting more thoughts about the game as we play, but just wanted to get it out there so the readers of the Friendly Necromancer knew what was fascinating me these days.

Happy Dueling!

Team Spode Awakened in Dune's Endgame

Last time I wrote about Dune Awakening, I mentioned that I wasn't sure how much of the endgame we'd be doing . . . that perhaps a little of the magic was gone since completing the main questline? Well, looks like the endgame got me, and I didn't know what I was talking about. We've been playing A LOT of Dune, and by "we," I mean me, Skip Legday, Calrain, and Tipa. (Yes, Calrain and Tipa of Team Spode fame)

Behold the EPICALLY MASSIVE CANNON STATUE from the recent event.

At one time, we had about 10 active players in the guild, but now we're down to 4 active players and the occasional hello from our old guildmates. In addition, we've also kind of been separated into two teams working in tandem. Calrain and Tipa on Team 1, and Skip Legday and I on Team 2. About a week or two ago, we started merging a bit more out of proximity and necessity. In fact, Skip and I defected from our Harkonnen ways (only after securing the super cool Harkonnen Thopter Skin) and joined Tipa and Calrain in House Atreides. That's right! We were double agents all along!

Say what you will about Harkonnens, but they got style.

Last night I crossed the streams and actually joined Calrain and Tipa for some dungeoneering fun in classic Team Spode style. TEAM SPODE TOGETHER AGAIN!

Awaiting Pick Up from Calrain in his massive Assault Thopter.

Up until this point, the Buried Testing Station was pretty much out of our reach (at least for Skip and me). We went there one time and gave up after three waves of enemies in the death room. It was our first experience going there. We were ill-equipped. We didn't even know that the waves would stop spawning. In fact, we thought it might be bugged until we read more about it after the fact. All we knew at the time was there were some pretty sweet patterns in that instance that we wanted to claim.

I cleared a huge dungeon and all I got was this rock, um, dew reaper.

The thing about the Deep Desert is that the instances get harder the further north you travel. The Deep Desert is segmented into a grid system from A through I (South to North) and 1 through 9 (West to East). In other words, a Buried Testing Station in sector C-5 would be way easier than a Testing Station in G-5.  

All of that is a long setup to say we didn't have much difficulty with the Buried Testing Station in sector D-4 last night, but DANG, we were moments away from surrendering in sector F-6. Tipa's gear was broken and all of our spice powers were used up, but the fact we would have lost all of our hard-earned loot from the previous testing station kept us focused. Kiting, poisoning, turrets, and sheer grit (in typical Team Spode fashion) is what got us through. Our reward was a big chest full of unique MK6 sandcrawler engine blueprints, which may or may not have been worth it.  Time will tell!

As for what's next for Skip Legday and Tree Trunks McSkinny? Well, number one, Skip has been building his own church of the Immaculate Harkonnen Saints. It's a thing of beauty. 

Skip invites all prospective members to join us this sabbath. Donations are accepted. 

Two, there's ALWAYS spice farming . . . holy crap so much spice farming.

That's a lot of spice . . .

Three, hey, guess what? There's a new DLC and an update coming in just a few days!  We'll be there with bells on and ready to conquer what lies beyond our dearest deep desert. If you've been wanting to try Dune Awakening out, you should click that link above. There's a free access event happening soon.

Happy Dueling!

Finishing Heart of Thorns -- Onward to Path of Fire

I just finished up the storyline content for Guild Wars 2 Heart of Thorns last night. It was an epic battle to defeat the dragon Mordremoth from the inside out by attacking it within its mind.

Press F for Delivering the Death Blow AND Respects

I am, of course, seven years late on this content since Heart of Thorns released way back in 2015. I went back on my timeline and decided to look and see what had my attention instead of this expansion, and it looks like Team Spode had just made the decision to jump into DCUO again after our stint in Guild Wars 2.

Really, it's Team Spode that has brought me back in to Guild Wars 2 all these years later! It's where we're playing on Sunday nights these days. Last Sunday we were checking out the re-released Living World Season 1 content. It was a huge flashback to those old days. I did all that content back in the day, but apparently they've brought it back (it was limited time previously) and attached new rewards to it.

Guild Wars 2 -- it gives me that old Taimi Feeling

I gotta say, most "rewards" are a bit meaningless to me all these years later. My bank is chock full of trinkets and things I'll never use but earned as a reward sometime in the past. It's that very thing that makes me look at the achievement list for Heart of Thorns and think . . . yeah . . . do I care about that anymore? I mean, it might be cool to earn an exclusive back item for completing all the hard to do story achievements, but it'll just end up as another meaningless trinket in my bank.

Now that I've finished up the story in Heart of Thorns proper, next up is Living World Season 3 content and Path of Fire. I'd decided to skip Living World Season 3 for the time being and just jump into the Path of Fire. I want to get that hopping mount and the skimmer mount from working through the story. Now THOSE I want.  Not the billions of toilet paper rolls and skeleton illusion potions I'm getting in game for Halloween. That stuff is just bank fodder.

Setting sail to Path of Fire -- Man that makes me pine for Eberron and DDO

Anyway, just thought I'd do a quick post to say, yes, I'm still alive and look at me, I'm playing Guild Wars 2! LOL. 

Happy Dueling!

Hitting End Game in V Rising

The past few days have been extremely productive for me in V Rising. On Sunday, Team Spode played together and destroyed a few lower level bosses for Spodepire, which of course is Lord Spode's vampiric name on V Rising.  . . . and then everything after that during the week was a solo hunt for me . . . because I'm addicted . . . seriously.

On Monday I took out the Duke of Balaton, Foulrot the Soultaker, Wilfred the Werewolf Chief, and Azariel the Sunbringer. This allowed me to finally construct the Eye of Twilight. Also, with my new gold bar recipe I had from Azariel, I was able to upgrade my castle to its final full size. BAM!

I spy with my little little eye, something twilight 

On Tuesday I did another round of boss hunting and rounded out the bosses that I had skipped: Mairwyn the Elementalist and Terrorclaw the Ogre. They were difficult hunts, but nothing I couldn't overcome with time, patience, a healing potion, and a bit of skill swapping.  

Thanks for the Golden Jewellery, Mairwyn

On Wednesday, I brought down Morian the Stormwing Matriarch, Matka the Curse Weaver, and Nightmarshal Styx the Sunderer.  With that, I now had my bat form, and I basically rule the night skies. HISS! FLAP FLAP FLAP! (Just don't go trying to fly in the daytime or it's insta-barbecued bat after 5 seconds.)

Stingite and his Batform!

The next three bosses, nay THE FINAL THREE BOSSES, are special! Upon inspecting the Eye of Twilight that I had constructed on Monday, it revealed the location of the final three.  What's special about these bosses is that if you defeat them, you can obtain their soul shard. 

There is a server setting that can make these soul shards unique. Tipa currently has that turned on. (Maybe we should turn that off?) Basically, it's a setting to encourage pvp between vampires as they hunt for soul shards from other vampires. At least I think that's how it works? Probably no need to inspire that kind of competition on our PvE server.

The final three await!

Of other note, these bosses seem like a big jump in difficulty. Granted, I still need to craft my end game amulet and two pieces of endgame outfit.  To get those, I'm either going to have to discover their recipe while farming end game Silverlight Hills and Cursed Forest mobs or burn tons of schematics looking for them.  Either way and ultimately, I'm going to need a lot of reagents to craft them when I get them. I need gold necklaces, yo--a lot of them!

So here I am at end game. I'm staring down the final three and needing just a few more pieces of the final gear set. My castle is built. My animal forms unlocked. LET'S GO!

Happy Dueling!

Team Spode goes Vampire in V Rising

So after spending a good chunk of last year playing Runes of Magic as a vampire, I thought . . . let's do it again! Of course now I'm not playing Runes of Magic, now I'm playing V Rising, and it's super fun.

Last week V Rising launched, and its numbers on Steam went absolutely bonkers. The trend is up, and V Rising had 150k concurrent users in the past 17 hours.  I was one of 'em.

All signs are pointing up!

In fact, all of Team Spode seems to be onboard. It's a great fit for the group IMHO. It's a Diablo-esque isometric view combined with many common features to Valhiem.  Those are two things (Diablo and Valheim) that Team Spode loves!

Tipa was quick to set up a private server for us to play on, and soon after we started chopping down trees, cracking open rocks, and sucking the blood out of wolves and man alike! 

Thanks for giving me your ice bat skill, Keely!

My greatest fear as a vampire doesn't come from silly humans . . . it is from running out of blood, carrying silver, and the searing judgements of heaven every time I set a foot into the sun.

IT BURNS!  FIND SOME SHADE!  

You can still survive out in the sun for a bit, but not for very long. Thankfully even a tiny pixel of shade can sometimes provide a nice escape.

Ultimately the name of the game is to simply follow along with the quest log in the top left hand corner of the screen.  Just follow that and you'll be a master vampire in no time.  Currently I'm stuck trying to build a throne so I can command my minions, socks and shoes, so they may terrorize the land.

Socks and Shoes . . . Pants, Underwear, and Boostier to follow!

But that's the catch, to build a throne, I need Iron Ingots. To get Iron Ingots, I need to have a weapon that can break iron nodes (which I have), and have unlocked the recipe for smelting iron. To unlock the recipe for smelting iron, you need to take down the Bandit King. To get to the Bandit King, you need to craft explosives to get inside his castle.  It's that kind of layering on of requirements that makes this kind of survival game fun and keeps you playing for hours.

I've earned my wolf form, which allows me to run faster, but now it's time to earn my rat form as well.  I'm thinking it most likely lets me sneak around unnoticed. Earning your rat form means you also need to fish for the elusive twilight snapper fish so you can spawn the rat boss you need to defeat. To my happy surprise, fishing this morning also produced a super cool straw hat!

What's that, a hat? Crazy funky junky hat?

It's too bad that straw hat doesn't actually provide any protection from the sun for me.  I'd be the happiest vampire in all the land.

So far I'm loving this game and having a great time playing it. Better yet, I get to take it on with friends.

Happy Dueling!

Going Old School with Diablo II Resurrected

I bought Diablo II Resurrected, along with the rest of Team Spode, when it released, and then we sat on it for a few weeks until our fearless leader Lord Spode could update his windows to Windows 10. I didn't even realize that was a requirement, but it was! 

I'd give a legit review of the game, but everything the honest game trailer says about the game says it already!

Lord Spode was eventually successful in his quest and we finally played good ol' Diablo II together, which was great! Just like old times, in fact I believe it was the original Diablo II that was the first game Lord Spode and I played together all those years ago. (Or maybe it was the original Diablo . . . it's been so many years I can't remember.)

Side note: It's kind of weird in that I'm starting to get to the point where I'm sitting on games until specific days of the week when I can play them like this. Diablo II on Sunday nights and Far Cry 6 on Wednesday nights (when Lessah Ismorah and I do I best to "Liberatardo" in our goofiest fashion). Playdates are the best.

BUT, playdates also lead to wanting to play said games MORE on the off days when I'm not playing with the group! To those ends, I rolled a new online character in Diablo II so I could scratch that itch on the off days.

On Sundays I play as The Friendly Necromancer, but yesterday I rolled up this guy: Stingite the Barbarian.

Gotta love that Jawbone Skullcap look.

I figure eventually Stingite the Barbarian will be my magic find Barbarian that specializes in squishing bodies to find extra loot, and if he finds any good magic items for the group, I can pass them along through the shared bank.

Stingite is currently level 13 and hanging out in the Inner Courtyard of Act I. Before you know it, I'll be out of Act I and pushing forward in Act II. YES!

Truth be known the hardest thing I fought yet to date has been the wait times to even log in to Battlenet. 

127th . . . ugh . . .

At least that's the longest fight I've had to overcome to date in Diablo II.

Happy Dueling!

Moder-ing! What's your price per flight?

Sunday night was once again upon Team Spode. Calrain and Tipa had expended a ton of effort prepping for what was surely an anti-climatic fight for them, but epic for myself and Lars Spode.

Since there was no way I could have been any help to the team in close quarters, I spent more time crafting fire arrows than actually fighting Moder the dragon. 

Once we were in position, Tipa spawned the mighty dragon and we did glorious battle with the beast.

Just look at those beady, blue eyes!

It was long and uneventful aside from a random Stone Golem attack, but there was a lot of dodging and running back and forth as Moder's mighty breath weapon rained down upon us. We also discovered a delightful viking song, sung to the tune of Sister Christian by Night Ranger, that we could sing to while slaying the dragon: "Moder-ing, what's your price per flight. I've got him in my sights. And slaying through the night." 

What a beautiful gradient of blue and red coalescing in the horizon . . . oh yeah, and there's a dragon.

Eventually Moder had broken into tears and we had the head of the beast, which Tipa, Calrain, and Kasul had already ensured was on its sacrifice stone, but we paid a visit to it anyway.

Let no dragon stand between Team Spode and our conquests

And that was that . . . I spent the rest of the night crafting the mighty Iron Sledge and going on a walk about with Tipa and Calrain. We actually tip-toed into the deathly silent Mistlands to look around amongst all the cobwebs and creepiness. 

I'm gonna just go out on a limb and say there's probably spiders in there

Then I found an old tower and hammered it to death with the Iron Sledge just to say I did it.

That was super satisfying, not gonna lie.

Unfortunately Iron has been one of the harder resources to obtain, so I'll need to make a trip or two to an unexplored swamp biome to secure more. Once I have more Iron I can fully upgrade said Iron Sledge and really do some damage with it.

Since that time, I've also logged in and crafted (and fully upgraded) the Frostner epic weapon as well since Team Spode has infinitely more silver than iron. Wow! What a difference having this weapon makes. I'm finally able to stand toe to toe with Trolls and destroy them with a melee weapon -- obviously good gear and food help as well.

Taste the steel of my mighty weapon, troll!

I finally feel like I can just run around and explore this world instead of creeping around and fearing for my life at every turn.  It feels great!

Thanks to my buddies in Team Spode for making Sunday night a fun evening . . . all that's left is that final boss, Yagluth the giant skeleton. BRING IT!

Happy Dueling!

Of Swamp Crypts and Bonemass -- Spodeheim Adventures

Team Spode continues our delve into Valheim and has started a serious look at what lies beyond the Meadows and Dark Forest, and I gotta be honest . . . the real heavy lifting in the group has not been done by me. I've been busy trying to restructure my life after a bit of bad health news (I have diabetes now -- got the news a couple weeks ago), tending to our nana (who's visiting from Colorado), and playing a little Tomb of Annihilation (guilty as charged).

The real heavy lifting for Team Spode has been from Tipa, her boyfriend (Kasul), and Calrain.  These cats have set up a smelting and refining station and have it all down to a science. I started to fall behind once the Bronze Age hit, but the heavy lifters have brought us all solidly into the Iron Age.

Last night I got to reap the rewards of their heavy lifting with a pretty great adventure to down the mighty Bonemass, a blob of a boss where poison resist and frost arrows are a thing of beauty.

You like cereal, Bonemass? Have a taste of frosted arrow crunch!

This was their second dance at the Boss, but my first. (Edit: Apparently it was their third dance with Bonemass according to Tipa!)  It actually went very smoothly thanks to their practiced hands and generous gifts.  In fact, when I logged in, Calrain had put a chest of goodies right outside the door to my house.

Did I craft them myself? No. Do I care? No. Do I have cool friends? Yes!

After defeating the Bonemass, we collectively decided to head to a Swamp Crypt that Calrain and I had spotted earlier in the week and gather what goodies we could.

Team Spode outside the Swamp Crypt -- a successful haul of iron in hand

We cleared the place with ease . . . then we decided to go into the Plains biome. Whoo boy. There was a herd of Deathsquitos and Fulings that made quick work of me. Again, the heavy lifters took care of the problem, and I was once again strapping on my gifted armor. Let's go team!

Up next is a visit to the mountains.  Apparently that's gonna happen sometime this week, and we'll all soon be opening up "current endgame" gear with a dead Dragon in our rear view mirror. 

Apparently updates for the game are in the future! Viking Minecraft is a hit! Valheim goes on. :)

Happy Dueling!

Valheim = Spodeheim Fun!

Almost a week ago, Team Spode decided to make the jump into Valheim together. If you haven't heard, Valheim is all the buzz right now, and it's increasing traction in viral popularity.  We had to try it, and I have to say . . . I'm loving me some Viking Minecraft!

Sailing songs while heading to conquer unknown lands!

This game y'all -- this freaking Viking Minecraft game y'all -- it's super addicting and fun.  I can't tell you how satisfying it was to craft my own bow and arrows and sling an arrow to kill a deer.  It just feels so amazingly satisfying.

Oh I did!

In just a week's time, Team Spode is now in our "bronze" age and everyone is busy using their pickaxes on Tin and Copper all over the world of Spodeheim!

Lemme break down some of the major events so far:

1- Calrain was the first to stake out an area near some water and build a home.  

2- Tipa quickly followed Calrain and started building a home nearer to the Black Forest.  

3- I, as the infamous Stingite, then arrived on the scene and built my home (lovingly called "Junkertown") just next to Calrain's place.  

The Greydwarves would like to take a rip-tire to this place!

4- Tipa ups and tears down her house and builds a new one closer to us along with her boyfriend.  

5- We surrounded the whole living area with fencing and dubbed the town "Brendaheim" in honor of Tipa. 

6- Dreamy shows up and builds her house inside the now walled-safety of Brendaheim -- incidentally over a spot where I was keeping a pig farm (it didn't work out so well). 

7- Son of Spode and Lord Spode himself arrived to round out our little town, complete with a treehouse!

~~

I'm getting to the point where I can anticipate at least a couple of my enemies' movements. Like Greydwarves -- These dudes like to come in and swing -- if I back up just a touch so they miss, I can just zoom up and get in a couple swings and BAM dead.  Trolls! I kite those with a bow -- they give a very telling grunt when they're going to swing at you. It's the perfect queue for hitting the run button, swivvling around and plunking one with an arrow. It takes a bit, but that troll hide makes some really awesome leather. What I really need to figure out is how to melee one of these guys down.

All in all I've had some fine moments this past week, like this time when Tipa, Calrain, and myself went to down Eikthyr.

So much fun.

Next up is the second boss of the world. I'm sure we could take him down individually at this point, but what's the fun in that.

Happy Dueling! 

A luck-filled and grindy week in DCUO -- CR 299

I went a bit crazy last week, team. Crazy. 

It all kind of started back on 11 October when:

1. I started thinking about DCUO when I read an old article on MassivelyOP about spiritual successor games, which got me thinking about DCUO (and why it wasn't mentioned somewhere in the more "super hero'y" sections of the article) 
2. I dropped in on Discord and asked old Team Spode how long it would take to catch up.  My old gaming buddy Tony was like, "pretty easy tbh," 

. . . and that's how it began. 

I've only mentioned my DCUO days in passing on this blog, but crazy enough, I have a whole OTHER blog where I've talked a ton about my experiences leveling through the ranks. All of my previous efforts at DCUO left me at a-one-time-impressive combat rating (CR) of around 180. 

One of my favorite "old" screenshots of my DCUO hero.

A needed sidebar here: once you hit level 30 in this game, all your "leveling" is then done through increasing your combat rating, which is a statistic found on player gear.  As you equip more and more pieces of gear with higher and higher combat ratings, you likewise get a Combat Rating score for your character.  End of sidebar thought.

To put things in perspective, my buddies were all sitting around the CR 315-320 range. From CR 180, that gap seems like it's gonna take forever, but I'm happy to announce that by Sunday night game time on the 18th, I had managed to raise my CR to 299. 

Whew.  

What's so important about 299?  Well CR 299 is the perfect number needed for the most recent DCUO expansion, which is all about the "Wonderverse." That's a magical place where a "sourcewall" has cracked and created a point where all the earths have combined, and you get to chill with a multiverse full of Wonder Women . . . and fight against the gods and a pretty magnificent looking hydra.

~~

Here's how it happened:

1- My timely return to the game was timely, and as it turned out, DCUO was giving away a free bump to CR 255 thanks to Fallfest.  BAM!  I mean, come on, what stars aligned to make that happen?

The Hallowings are pretty great btw.

~~

2- I began grinding up the Wonderverse Single Player adventure . . . over and over and over and . . . y'all . . . I played that instance about 35-40 times. It takes about 10 minutes per run, which means I spent about 6-7 hours grinding this same instance over the course of a week. Each run would consistently net me 1 to 2 upgrades. Easy.  To do this, I had to use a lot of replay badges, but I actually had a glut of them from when I was playing DCUO all the time.

Me and the wonderwomans in an explosion of color!

~~

3- Welcome to the magic of the Metalverse! Back in September of 2019, DCUO released an expansion that began a two part series of a "metalverse," where people start to turn into Metal versions of themselves and a crazy Flash / Batman hybrid from the multivese starts tearing up Gotham.  

All my grinding in the Wonderverse unlocked this zone for me and BAM! I discovered a vendor there that sold gear upgrades for sourcemarks.  That's a currency you can earn in DCUO to buy legacy gear. Once again, I had a glut of sourcemarks from my old days of playing DCUO and what is "legacy" to modern DCUO players is all brand new to me. 

Long story short, I bought a complete set of gear from this equipment vendor and BAM! I was CR 282.

~~

4- The next few days I was able to log in and complete dailies in both the Wonderverse expansion and Thanagar because of my new CR 282 rating. Thanagar was introduced back in December 2019 and was the second part of the metalverse story. 

Sportin that fresh I'm-an-edgey-hero look in Thanagar

Hehe, you better believe I looked for another sourcemark "legacy" vendor in Thanagar, but it's considered current content and because of that, no dice.

~~

5- New solo encounters opened up as I was grinding up these levels and those also offered new opportunities to grind content, but I gotta tell ya . . . those solos are TOUGH.  In the grand scheme of efficiency vs. upgrades, it was well worth my time to hit the wonderverse single player event over and over instead of running those encounters and dying and dying and dying time and time again.

Red Death is terrifying

I mean, I won eventually, but not after repairing my gear a few times.

~~

6- One hour before the scheduled start time of the Sunday night game, I had resubscribed to DCUO and had 500 premium station cash to burn and about 40 lockboxes in my inventory. I'd need 3,600 station cash to open ALL the lockboxes, but I had enough to buy 5 lockboxes, which contained just enough gear inside of them to push me up over the edge and get to 299 just in time.

299!!

~~

So there I was, game ready and ready to go one week later. It felt pretty awesome, and Team Spode didn't fail to provide a fun night as we instantly started the raid circuit in the Wonderverse expansion. It's pretty smartly done and definitely deserves a blog post of its own to explain how it works. I had enough upgrades by the end of the night that I was CR 302 and feeling a lot tougher than I was a week ago.

Happy Dueling!

#Blaugust Day 3 -- Catching up with Team Spode

Aren't familiar with Team Spode? What?! Then you certainly missed pages 72 and 73 of Becket Massive Online  Gamer back in 2011! (Gasp, how could you?)

Team Spode is my "Sunday Night Gaming Group" that's been playing MMOs and RPGs for many many years (over 15 years? 20 years? something like that?)  . . . and the main cause of me feeling super tired on Monday morning for all those years as well. ;)

We've played Diablo through Diablo III, Neverwinter Nights (enough to know we didn't like it), all expansions of Guild Wars 1, Dungeons and Dragons Online, Dungeon Seige I and II, and DC Universe Online.

Our current game is Guild Wars 2. I took a few snapshots of me and the members of Team Spode last night when we were waiting for the Claw of Jormag event to happen. (Forgive the wall of selfies about to hit your screen -- um, I'm the guy in florescent blue with the obnoxious goggles and green Mohawk wielding the butterfly axe)

Vanorika and TFN

Jovan and TFN

Saun Zaumbie and TFN

Tipa Starr and TFN

Lord Spode, TFN, and DreamTamer

We're all level 80 now and it's hard to say if we're ready to move on to a new game or not . . . most of us still seem to be having fun with Guild Wars 2, and some of us *cough* me *cough* might have put in a bit of overtime in the game finishing the personal story and living world story 2, Been there done that explorer badge, full set of luminescent, 500/500 in both Weapon Smithing and Tailoring, and full set of ascended gear to boot (still no epic weapon though).

Most of the time the team has one or two that can't make it to the evening's events and we group up to run fractals or dungeons or WHATEVER.

Everybody showed up last night and we decided that (instead of Silverwastes) we'd hit the World Boss Circuit. You see in Guild Wars 2 there are timed events that happen throughout the day and there are many cool sites that track when an event is about to happen. I personally like the Guild Wars Temple site . . . but to each their own.

We ended up taking down Tequatl the Sunless, Claw of Jormag, Shadow Behemoth, The Frozen Maw, The Shatterer, and Megadestroyer for the night, and pretty much had a lot of fun smack talking each other over Skype and listening to Spode's son torment him while he was playing. (I was just glad it wasn't me this time . . .)

There still is a lot of content left for us to cover. Although we've hit each dungeon, we haven't hit each path of each dungeon, and I would love for the group to persue that, but you never know with Team Spode what's next . . . although a few of the members have been dipping their virtual toes into the pools of Skyforge.

Things go a bit slow when the group only gathers on Sunday nights, but it's a guaranteed group with friends . . . you can't beat it.

Happy Dueling!

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This post is part of the Blaughust challenge -- Thanks to Belghast from Tales of the Aggronaut for hosting.