CR 340 Review and DCUO News -- #Blaugust2021 Day 6

So I hit the 340 Gear rating in DCUO a month or so ago, but I never wrote an update post at the time. All it took was finishing out my Wayne Token purchased gear in Flashpoint Gotham and raising the level of my wings up a bit and BAM . . . 340.  I don't think I can take things to 341 without some significant effort, so it's probably not worth it at this point. 

Sporting the nightmare aura, which is hard to see through the sorcery red stuff . . .

To also add to my small inches of power, I raised my second artifact to level 160 and began working on my third artifact (you can have 3 artifacts equipped at one time), which is currently sitting at a lame 120.

It's all good though. I'm "Team Spode" worthy and since we aren't elite raiders, it doesn't really matter if I increase my power any further, which makes it a little hard to log in and do my dailies each day at this point. It feels a little like . . . what's the point? I'm perfectly fine logging in on Sundays to chill with the team, and I don't really feel a sense of urgency at this point. 

It'd be fun if I felt the drive and had an amazing plan for harvesting an additional 100 feat points, but I don't.  If only there was an up to date easy to use and cool checklist out there somewhere that detailed feats and how to get them from easiest to hardest. (Currently it's a lot of cross referencing and nonsense to figure it all out.)

 . . . aaaaand that's enough of my personal DCUO news . . . in actual DCUO news today, they just released a new style pack based around the new 2021 Suicide Squad movie, so if you feel like dropping 15 bucks, you got it! In exchange you'll get the following:

• The complete Pyschotic Style set
• A perpetual motion boomerang accessory that hovers around you while you're playing
• A King Shark Doll Accessory (you can only have one accessory equipped at a time FYI)
• A Shark Fin (I think you can already get something like this in the Summer event?)
• Shark Gloves
• A Bizarre Polka Dot Aura
• and an Orbital BOP Uplink Device (a giant harley hammer that smacks opponents)

Honestly, the real wins here are the aura and the orbital. Both look really fun.

New orbital strike image from the daybreak forums

ALSO, as a heads up, simply log into the game from August 5th to August 19th and they're going to drop a free Starro Pet on you to mess around with in game. It's a Tier 1 combat pet that you can queue up every couple of minutes (recharge seems almost twice as fast as the regular BOP henchmen rate).

Finally someone I can roleplay Spongebob and Patrick with

Tier 1 pets are the bottom feeders of the pet hierarchy (shoot for Tier 2 or Tier 3 pets if you want to use one). I probably won't make it a permanent lineup in my pet army since I have better stuff taking up those slots anyway. It's already getting a little ridiculous for me right now since I can already summon at my max:

• 3 Sorcery supercharge pets
• 3 henchmen
• My regular sorcery pet
• Quislet pet

It's a lot of pets . . .

And finally . . . one last piece of news. If you'd like to preview the newest Episode for DCUO, tune in to the official DCUO livestream today at 3pm pacific. They'll be previewing the new House of Legends content and chatting with the devs.  You can find links and information here.

Happy Dueling!

CR 338 -- A "try hard" noteworthy weekend in DCUO!

I played more than my fair share of DCUO this weekend and ended up with a new pair of shoulders and gloves that pushed me up another point of gear rating.  Lord Spode and Teal Lantern are both sitting at CR 340, so I've got a bit more to do to match their CR, but that's not even the noteworthy thing for me about this weekend in DCUO.

Chillin on Aquaman's boat with my new sunglasses . . .

I suppose the most noteworthy thing in DCUO right now is that the "Tides of War" Summer Event is happening.  Every day you log on and complete Aquaman's quest out in the ocean area of DCUO and an event instance where you stop Ocean Master from . . . idk, what am I stopping him from?  Holding an outpost? Doing bad ocean war stuff? Um, I'm stopping him from being, uh, his nefarious self!

In exchange for all that I get sand dollars, which can be exchanged for summer attire. I have no interest in wearing summer attire (aside from the legit sunglasses), but I do like the feat points I get for purchasing said summer attire . . . but even THAT is not the most noteworthy thing for me about this weekend in DCUO.

When you're 100+ CR over the raid event . . . of course it's ultra-easy . . .

I spent a huge amount of time grinding old content this weekend, trying to earn feat points. I focused in on the old tier 7 and 8 raids that I missed. I snagged a couple feats in the Earth 3: The Panopticon Raid, another in the Doomsday raid, another couple in Wonderverse off of things I had left half finished, and more!  So much more that it ended up being about 10 skill  points over the weekend, which ain't too shabby considering most of these feats are 1/10th to 1/25th of a skill point, but even THAT is not the most noteworthy thing for me about this weekend in DCUO!

I fell asleep while our raid group tried to get Solomon Grundy to spawn 20+ foot soldiers

Also, I finally progressed my first artifact to 160! I cashed in a huge amount of source marks in exchange for most of the catalysts I needed to progress my artifact, and then, yes, I dipped into real life money to purchase a seal of completion because when an artifact evolution only has a 10% chance to succeed, you need to guarantee that it's going to work, but even THAT is . . . 

level 160 source shard . . . a thing of beauty . . .

ok, I'll stop . . . The most noteworthy thing was that, after all that work, it didn't really mean anything special. It was a lot of "try harding" for micro boosts in DPS. I mean, yes, my Godwave Strength skill refreshes quite a bit now, and it even makes a special FX and sound when it refreshes and, yes, it makes my button taps a bit more exciting. But let's be honest . . . I don't think it was an "I win" button like I was thinking in my earlier post. C'est le vie. It's still pretty cool though. :)

I guess really the most noteworthy thing was that I got to play with my buddies on Sunday night!  That's always the best reward.

Happy dueling!

CR 337 —Taking it to the Nth Metal Degree in DCUO

I'm continuing my daily grind in DCUO and playing with Team Spode on Sunday nights. There are still a few pieces of gear I need to buy to complete my set for this expansion, but for the most part I'm just going with the flow.  In other words, I log in, I do my dailies, and I log out.  

However, lately I've been a bit more focused on raising my artifacts, and I can already see the results.  Last Sunday Team Spode hit their usual raids and group instances, and my DPS was up! After thinking about that a bit, the only thing I can really attribute to that being up was that I was able to raise the level of two of my three trinkets. Being able to keep up with Spode in DPS despite him outpacing me by 75-100 Skill Points is kind of encouraging.

I'm using a sorcery build that's highly focused on amplifying my fury pet's damage and building supercharge, and I've been pretty happy with the results. (You know how I love my pet classes in MMOs.) The real power has come from coupling the Fury Pet with the Source Shard Artifact's Godwave Strength skill.  When that happens, my Fury becomes super charged and lands a huge series of hits, with one of those in particular hitting over 100k.

Me-wow!

Taking a big chunk of time off from playing DCUO (what's a 3-4 year break anyway?) got me a fair bit behind the rest of Team Spode, and especially when it comes to leveling trinkets and skill points.  The only way to level trinkets is to power them up with something called Nth Metal. The first 80 levels of a trinket kind of sail by, but when your trinket gets above level 120, things slow waaaaaaay down, and it's easy to tell that this is one of DCUO's major monetization legs for the game.

So, let's break down the ways to get Nth metal.

1- Probably the number one thing you can do when you log into DCUO daily is hit that stupid Vault instance that's been in game forever.  At the end of the run, you'll typically receive a rarer piece of Nth metal worth a bunch of trinket exp.  

2- If you have Nth metal detectors and know you're going to play the game for at least an hour, pop it and for the next hour your Nth metal finds will be up and you can also get your hands on Nth metal caches that can contain 3 pieces of Nth metal each.  You'll typically find anywhere between 3 and 6 Nth metal caches per hour with an Nth metal detector running.

3- Just play the game. Nth metal naturally drops from mobs that you outright defeat (not the mobs where you have to click on them to capture them), so farming "defeatable mobs" is your best bet for farming.

4- Buy booster packs of Nth metal in the store. Yup, it's pay to win, but if you want to drop $100 on Nth metal, you certainly can and will (if you're hungry for artifact exp).  

5- Buy Nth metal caches off of players in the auction house. Um, this is super not worth it . . . gonna be honest. The metal to money ratio is pretty bad. One cache for 2-4 million game cash? I'd rather spend my in game money in other ways, but to each their own.

So my Soul Shard artifact is currently at level 150.  When I get it up to level 160, 25% of the time, using a superpower will instantly refresh my Godwave Strength ability from the shard, and my DPS will jump . . . and it'll be awesome and fun. I can't wait for that to happen. When it does, I might just make Lord Spode jealous of my DPS once again.

Soul Shard at level 150

One thing is for sure . . . no way I'm dropping $100 real cash on Nth metal.  It's the farming life for me.

. . . or perhaps if I really want to DPS, maybe switch builds to Munitions Skill instead of Sorcery?  Nah, I love my Fury pet too much.

Happy Dueling

MMO Brain Dump 5/25/2021

Just wanted to get a few things out of my brain that have been rolling around inside it, and for some reason I'm feeling the drive to write more, so I might as well go for it. You know?

~~

1- SOLO -- I've been hearing a lot about Swords of Legends Online . . . FROM MY WIFE of all people.  One of her friends was streaming game play from the Beta and she seemed super interested. Honestly, I'm a bit nervous when I look at the graphics that I'd probably need an upgrade to my computer to really play it well.

My gut wants to label it as Guild Wars 2 that's deeply based in Chinese mythology, but you never know with a game like this until you play it. It's due out some time this summer, so I'm sure we'll be hearing more about it.

~~

2- WoW -- I've jumped in and started a new character Horde side because guess who else also got interested in the game lately . . . Beau and Leala! My old partners in crime from the Overwatch Potato League. Thus Gobbolicious was born!

trike mount ftw

So there you go. I've got someone new to hang out with in WoW for a bit. Should be fun exploring the game with them. I'm all about replacing those old bad memories with some good ones.

~~

3- Wizard101 -- There's a new pack that features a itty bitty streetcar mount, a blimp pet, and all the various clothes you'd find on The Art of Warlord's OC (as I teased them about yesterday).

My boi Blaze Lifehammer did a great video pack opening and seemed less than pleased. I'm always entertained by watching pack openings like this.

The three items that appeal to me here are the tiny streetcar, the blimp, and the hairstyle. 

~~

4- DCUO -- Y'all . . . I'm right on the cusp of getting that chroma pack . . . 99/100 seed pods.  Thank goodness I still have tomorrow morning to finish this up.

I cri everytime . . .

~~

5- Project Gorgon -- whoa whoa whoa . . . they're adding a subscription to Project Gorgon?! To be honest, adding VIP is something they've batted around for a while now. It's kind of cool to see it finally come to fruition.  Good for them!

The extra bag space sounds so nice. I'm such a hoarder when it comes to MMOs that, honestly I'd probably do it just for the bag space alone.  Although the neat .csv exports of data is pretty cool and the ability to level skills while not being logged in sounds fantastic right about now.  I haven't logged in to the game in forever, so building up the hammer skill without all the grinding sounds fantastic.

~~

That's it. Just a few thoughts I wanted to brain dump out there into the void. Lemme know what you've been thinking about in the MMO world!  I'd love to hear from you.

Happy Dueling!

CR 335 -- A Springtime Rendezvous in DCUO

 Ahh springtime! The rain, the sun, the birds, and the swamp things! 

Fun times with the power of the Green

The spring event in DCUO hasn't changed much over the years, but what has changed are the rewards you get from completing it again and again. In exchange for your seedpods this year, you can pick up a super cute bee pet, a new aura, a new chroma, some antenna, and these! My new bee wings.

Bee wings are the perfect accessory for any punked out lizard man satyr

The event is only on for another week and a half, so grind that same old instance over and over for your new stuff while you can! 

As for the regular game, things have been going pretty good. I'm making small CR bumps here and there, mostly on my healer kit lately as I've been saving up for either a weapon or legs purchase (that feeling when you're at 89 tokens and it takes 90 to buy)

The coolest news for me is that Spode and I have run the elite duo two or three times and managed pretty well. I heal, he kills.  done.

Sting and Spode helping out Bats and Bots

What we've discovered is that the real key to beating that elite duo is voice communication to tell each other when we're stunned and . . . keeping the healer alive (cough). 

Now to just do that elite duo 15 more times so we can actually buy a piece or two of elite gear.  It'll happen!  I honestly just need my kids to start Summer break, and I'll have plenty of play time in the mornings again. :)

Happy Dueling!

CR 330 -- World of Flashpoint releases in DCUO

DCUO has released Episode 40 and it's all about Flashpoint, a comic series from 2011. The same Flashpoint that played out in Season 3 of CW's Flash (It was after season 3 that I stopped watching myself).  Things are all upside down in flashpoint, where Cyborg is the main hero while Superman is locked away in a government facility. Flash messed up the timeline and now it's going to take a lot of work to restore it.

Apparently you can read Flashpoint #1 for free on the DC Comic Subscription service if you sign up for it. I may have to do that. Apparently you can also watch the animated Flashpoint movie on HBOMax . . . also something I may have to do. (But I may have to finish watching the Stargirl series first though.)

Chillin' with the boss in Flashpoint

For players, this means we get a new duo event, a new 4-player event, 2 new raid events, and ye' old standard fare of open world daily missions. In other words, it's exactly what you'd expect from new content in DCUO.  

For me, it means my CR needle can move once again! The last time I posted a CR update on my character was way back at the beginning of January. So far my gains have only been through the standard boxes you get from completing missions and the duo. On Thursday when the new content released, I was lucky enough to find my buddy, Teal Lantern, online and we crashed through the duo without problems.

Batman . . . or rather Batman's Dad in Flashpoint . . . backed us up to take down Amazo.

The open world raids are interesting and involve taking down a couple of super villains and fighting 100 enemies.  One of the villains you get to fight is Doomsday.

Laying the smackdown on Subject Doomsday

It's a pretty standard fight, but I do like how he ends up grabbing a gigantic chunk of metal towards the end and starts smacking people around with it.

I'm pretty sure Team Spode will shift back to playing through this content for a little while, at least to do the new 4-player event and raids. It'll be fun to play through this new world with my buddies once again.

Happy Dueling!

CR 328 -- DC Universe Online Turns 10

Well well well . . . I guess I'm really not surprised at all to tell you that DCUO has turned 10 years old. It's always been a pretty great game with some fun innovations. It keeps rocking out the updates year over year, and it makes a ton of money . . . so, again, no surprises.

Possibly the most surprising thing here is that I'm "once again" playing during this anniversary! WHAT?! Yeah, I truly thought I would never set foot inside this game again. I was sooooo done, but the lure of hanging with Team Spode again was too great. Here I am, CR 328. Wild.

Anyway, the 10th Anniversary looks to be pretty epic. All month long, DCUO will be hosting the "Attack of the Anti-monitor" event which includes:

- Giant 3-headed dog licks!

- Glowy balls of paradox demons!

- Oracle herself telepresence bot! (less exciting, but I'll take it)

- A new event raid with a big cute chonky boi!

- Ten Tickles!

Even better, it really really REALLY sounds like you should log on to the game on January 11th itself because there's going to be a goodie pack on the anniversary day itself. Can't miss that!

OH BOI! WHAT WILL IT BE!!

I just want an updated piece of anniversary day cake to throw around, really. I'm a simple man with simple needs, but if they wanna drop a new texture pack and a bunch of awesome stuff on me, I'll take it. To be honest, what I've really been getting with this anniversary event so far is feat points! Love me some feat points.

Here's to you, DCUO!  You've provided me with a lot of entertainment over the years.  It's good to be back playing with Team Spode as you turn 10.

Happy Dueling!

CR 327 -- Bring out the TOYS!

 At this point for me in DCUO, it's a slow grind up the CR ladder. Basically, I'm logging on for two reasons: 

    1- Team Spode's Sunday Night games (yay!)

    2- Trying to earn Quintile crystals to build up an epic item (I need to epic-out them there shnazzy goggles in Long Live the Legion!)

To those ends, I'm also hitting up the dailies and "legion bounties" over and over while waiting for whatever new expansion they might throw our way in . . . maybe a few months?  Who knows how long it will be until the next update.

And if you're really crazy, you'll do all that for all your alts as well . . . I may or may not have logged on to Death Unicorn, my old Fire Tank . . . ok, I totally logged on Death Unicorn. I have no idea how to play him anymore, but chucking meteors around is super fun.

Long Live the Death Unicorn!

Because I've also been hitting up those Legion bounty raids, I've also been bringing out my old toys in my storage while waiting for the raid to start.

I've got the Riddler Ball, the Superman Ball, and a piece of 2nd anniversary cake.

YAY! IT'S TOY TIME!!

I've actually had a couple fun games of catch with people while waiting for the raid to begin because of this.  The cake is way easier to play catch with btw, the balls move too fast and have too much roll-y/bouncy physics to them to be easily picked up.

I was super happy when another guy joined in this morning and summoned up his dice to throw around as well.

Batman look-a-like gonna roll a nat 20!

TOY FEST!  So if you're reading this post and happen to also have toys in the bank . . . make a friendly necromancer happy and join in the fun. It's Christmas time after all. 

(You know . . . I should go play the toyland instance in DCUO again . . .that's a good time!)

Happy Dueling

CR 325 and Holding in DCUO's Long Live the Legion

Long Live the Legion released just 20 days ago, and since that time I've been hitting up the futuristic roads of this 31st century version of Metropolis and helping out a "unique" legion of superheroes, which I know nothing about. Um, I totally missed the boat here on this group of DC heroes. I had no idea there was a comic book series and even a 2006 animated series about a legion of future heroes.

I may have to watch a few episodes now!

~~

To describe what it's been like to run this new DCUO content for the past 20 days, it's all about running the morning MMO treadmill:

1- Fly around the hub gathering all the exclamation point quests that refresh daily.  Usually there's just a free "talk to me" quest to get a free source mark and a free solar credit and four other quests.

There's a lot of hub bub going down in the town hub!

2- The first dialy has you hunting down "sources of magic."  These typically take the shape of enchanted weapons floating around in a purple circle.

There's a  sword trying to stick itself in my back.

3- The next daily has you destroying / deactivating rogue robots that are possessed by magic.

No one's quite sure why the probteks are attack futuristic garbage cans, but *shrug*

4- The next daily has you helping students of the Legion while magic demons try to harass them (they ALWAYS try to harass them).

Crazy kids from all over the galaxy come here to learn superhero moves!

5- And then the final daily has you just go around hunting down big groups of magic demons.

Down with demons!

6- At the start of the week you also get a quest to repair signs and antennas around town that's worth a hefty 8 solar credits and source marks.

7- At the start of the week you also get a quest to defeat the open world bosses of the expansion, which are also worth another hefty 8 credits.

Validus is a big boy. A very big mean boy.

If anything has changed in my time of playing DCUO, it's this.  Hanging out and killing world bosses over and over is the new pink in DCUO. You do this over and over and earn a secondary currency to the content you're in while killing time in game. If you're lucky, other things will drop for you as well . . . like rare furniture or cool trinkets.

Gotta Love a Loot Shot! Yay for Time Beacons, Might Mods, and Housing Furniture!

8- There is a new, short (2 bosses) 4-player instance you can play every day.  There's three versions of this instance: easy "event" mode, basic mode, and elite.  If you do the easy mode you only get solar credits. If you do the basic mode, you get solar credits and source marks.  If you do the elite? I don't know . . . it's above my skill level. 

9- There's also a new 8-player raid (3 bosses) you can play once a week with the same three difficulty levels.  It's pretty epic. You basically get to help the legion take down Mordru and trap him in Amber. 

~~

And that's it. That's the expansion! You'll be doing this content over and over and over for a few months while the DCUO team puts together something new for you to play. 

I've got just enough upgrades now to reach my first big wall while playing since my return to DCUO. It's going to take a lot to move the needle into higher CR ratings while waiting for the next update.  That's fine.  

The good news for me this week is that it's double source marks from 26 November to 2 December. I need so many source marks, it's not even funny. I guess it's not a problem for people that haven't just returned to the game like me.  I'm just happy it's a thing.

Happy Dueling!

CR 313 -- Out with the Wonderverse, in with the Legion in DCUO?

 Behold the wonders of the Wonderverse!

How did I shoot a lighting bolt from the back of my head into Athena anyway?

As of this weekend, I was able to finally raise my CR up to what I'd call "current and casual" on DCUO at a respectable 313.  I mean, for the big raids in DCUO right now, you're going to want 318 and above on your teams, but (according to Lord Spode of Team Spode) I'm probably right where I want to be for when the next big expansion hits DCUO.

That's right! I said I'm current and casual! You gotta problem with that?

The big reason I was able to hit 313 was because of the "double splintered coins" promotion going on in DCUO right now.  Splintered Coins are the main currency you earn from running Wonderverse content, and the same currency used to buy all the Wonderverse gear.  Having Double Splintered Coins meant I could pay to reset all the raids, and my once hefty balance of 2,000 reset tokens has been whittled down to 500.

When I say "reset the raids," I'm talking about the amazing circuit of open world raid bosses in Wonderverse that just continue to cycle every 30 minutes.  It's really quite ingenious, and you could spend night after night grinding this raid boss circuit for hours on end and fill up on mods and oddities, but what you're really going for (at least when you're my level) is to complete three weekly quests that are worth 8 splintered coins and a large loot box EACH:

• Hydra Havok
• Conquerer Counterstrike
• Circe's Panthemonium

Paying to reset those is a whopping 87 badges each, but during double splintered coins that means I can get 48 splintered coins for 30 minutes of lazy open world raid stuff.  Easy.

Anyway, I think it's probably best to sit on that balance of reset tokens for the next big expansion, which was actually just recently teased on a Twitch stream: Long Live the Legion! From the sounds of it, we'll be traveling 1000 years into the future where a legion of superheroes is banding together and Mordru just wants to end it all.

Screengrab from the Twitch Stream preview of Long Live the Legion. Pretty!

In the meantime I'm trying my best to find how the heck to spec my sorcery character with 200 feat points, and it sounds like the pendulum has swung away from precision and weapon-based builds and more towards might and super-power based builds.  I don't know . . . I'm going to have to figure it out.

I SAID I HAVE TO FIGURE IT OUT! *cough* sorry, got emotional there . . .

It's times like these that I wish I had 2 more armory stations so I could really play a strange DPS build and save it so I can easily compare my builds, you know?  They cost 500 station cash each . . . hmmmmm . . . maybe.

Anyway, I'm just happy to be playing with Team Spode again on Sunday nights. It's an absolute pleasure listening to these peeps talk again over Discord. Good times. Good times.

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!

Project Gorgon: So Long and Thanks for all the Grapefish?

I've played Project Gorgon to the point where now I feel like ranting about stuff, so . . . you know what? I might just be done writing about my beloved indie MMO darling for a bit and instead leave it happily on the shelf as a good memory. It's probably time to just write about something else.

Yes, a ghost town in a harsh environment can be a happy memory!

Looking back, I wish I would have done that with DCUO, but I played it to the point where logging on made me feel ill, which is a shame . . . it's a wonderful MMO with tons of great memories for me. What a great game that is, but I'll probably never log on again. I *can't* log on to DCUO now without getting a pit in my stomach.

Sure it gives me a stomach ache, but it's still a great game!

To sum up my Project Gorgon rant . . .since I know you're curious:

1) Cooking isn't a fun skill. As much fun as cooking evil bacon that talks to you sounds like it is . . . overall the skill is tedious with a lot of running from zone to zone without much joy mixed into the ingredients.

• Free counter-argument: Lots of skills in Project Gorgon are joyless and you picked this one to be the bad guy?

• Free counter to counter-argument: Yup. Stuff that and your 100 different ingredients into a limited inventory space!

2) The fairies are coming, and they'll be getting two free max level bee/wasp pets that I paid many 1,000's of councils to obtain and many 100's of hours to level. To make matters worse, they also get free ice knives . . . so . . . it's like my exact build I've been playing, only cheaper and better. So much for uniqueness?

• Free counter-argument: No one is actually going to be playing AH / Knives build, and the pet will just help with power-leveling what people really want to play. 

• Free counter to counter-argument: Sigh. Is that supposed to make me feel good that people won't be playing my build?

3) I don't know if I have the stamina to level 2-4 more combat skills, even though there's a hat for the deer class that turns them into a unicorn (but still you're a brown deer-looking unicorn . . . you don't turn white and have a rainbow trail shining behind you . . . I may have unreal expectations here tbh).

• Free counter-argument: Look yo, you gotta branch out and find some new combat skills . . . THERE'S SO MANY!!  Also, unicorns with rainbow trails are for losers.

• Free counter to counter-argument: If loving unicorns is wrong, then I'm the King of the wrong, baby!

King of the Wrong, riding proudly into the sunset!

So now what? I don't know, but what I do know is that I'm The Friendly Necromancer, and that definitely means you'll hear from me again.

I wouldn't say I'm completely giving up on Project Gorgon . . . just . . . slowing down a bit and switching gears. I've learned a lot by playing it and made some truly quality friends. The people in my guild are top notch and my in-game buddies awesome. If there's anything that will keep me logging in, it's those guys. Community is definitely a strong suit in Project Gorgon.

Hang in there my friends and thanks for reading along.

Happy Dueling!

Ender Dragon . . . again . . .

Hey all!  Let's talk games! (Just a quick catch up post for this morning!)

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Minecraft

It happened again!

I destroyed that big bad Ender Dragon in Minecraft again, and . . . it'll probably happen at least one more time.

My youngest son was asleep when I defeated this dragon, and I didn't think much of it at the time. Unfortunately when I told him about it after he woke up, there was much wailing and gnashing of teeth. "WHY DO I ALWAYS MISS THE COOL STUFF WHEN IT HAPPENS!"  Yeah, apparently this is the second time he's missed my defeat of the Ender Dragon.

*claps hands together* AGAIN!

It's ok . . . I know what to do, and THIS time when I fight him, I'm going in STRONG!

(Hehe, you just know I'm going to end up losing all my gear and using ladders and death after death to punch those stupid tower gems.)

NO!  This time, it's going to be epic.

Question. Would anyone be interested in watching a Twitch stream of me playing a game of Minecraft from beginning to "The end"? I haven't Twitch streamed in quite a while, but it could be fun?

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Wizard101

Brecken (aka Morgrim aka The Art of Warlord) returned from her long bout of Internet outage and is back for the attack.  Here are episodes 6 and 7 of our Let's Play for your viewing entertainment.





(Episode 8 is to release shortly and Episode 9 is in the wings. :))

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Pirate101

Yup! This guy as talked about on this thread.

. . . nuff said.

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DC Universe Online

Team Spode continues to fight the bad guys of DC Universe Online -- it's what we do. There was a brand new duo added with some great gear in Episode 21 that is all the rage now with the team. It'd be a good one for me to do a YouTube on.  Stay tuned.

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DOTA 2

I've once again been playing DOTA 2 on and off with my significant other and a neighbor.  I seem to have moved away from The Beastmaster and Lycan . . . these days I'm favoring Phoenix and (strangely enough) Medusa, who apparently is a very hard "carry" to play. Honestly, I play her more like a strong support. /shrug . . . you know me . . . I'm kind of a MOBA newb.

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Hearthstone

I got the Valentine's Day Back! woot!

Kinda bummed I took a break from the game and missed out on a few the past couple of months, but I've only been playing a few short matches a day lately to keep up . . . anyway, there's still plenty of fun to be had in Hearthstone.

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And that's all I've got this morning, but I wanted to take some time and resurface here on the blog to say hello and give you a brief overview of what I've been up to.  Feel free to say hello in the comments and let me know what you've been up to as well.

Also . . . if you have any game or topic you'd like me to hit on, let me know as well!

(p.s. I don't have any Galvanic Hammer Codes to give out. Sorry!)

Happy Dueling!