#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. 

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!

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!

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

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!

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!

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! 

It's my Birthday! Time for a review of '21 to '22

The well wishes started to come in last night from my online Australian friends (I mean, it was the 4th for them after all and social media sites started tattling on me early), and a few more are trickling in this morning. That said, we're not really celebrating much on the actual day this year. I'm still working today, but I am going to play some D&D tonight, so there's that! Our family will be waiting until the weekend to really have fun together.

Overall, the span of 2021 to 2022 was much better for me than the span of 2020 to 2021. Last year I wrote about all the stress and recovery I went through, but this year, it's been more of an amazing ride. I'm still getting over the fact that I actually released a new album of music, but I thought I'd take a moment and just write down a few thoughts and highlights from the past year.

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1- Runes of Magic -- RoM solidly had my ear for the first half of the year last year. I saw mention of it on Massively OP as a forgotten MMO and that was my cue to go check it out. (You know I love a good off beat MMO.) I was pleasantly surprised to find an actually pretty vibrant community keeping that game going. The best thing to come out of my time in that game was all the friends I made in an old folks guild there. The second best thing to come out of Runes of Magic was a massive amount of game writing for me on the way up to end game as I took a good look at what makes the game tick. 

A small gathering of guildies in Runes of Magic

It's fun . . . but the Guild vs. Guild PvP in that game is a pay to win mess, and I think it was actually the end game gear grind that caused me to check out. I found my breaking point about six months in when I was approaching end game and saw it for what it was in the bottom half of this post: "I don't know . . . maybe I don't have the full picture on gear costs and I've never seen anybody with a tier 20 piece of gear because if you do the math, isn't that like 4.5 million dollars for one piece of gear?  That can't be right, can it? No . . . I gotta be looking at this wrong . . . THAT CAN'T BE RIGHT?! Please someone educate me in the comments if I'm not looking at this right." No one came to educate me on my post, but as it turns out, there is another way . . . it just takes a lot of time. More time than I'm willing to give to the game.

2- VR -- I fell in love with VR this past year. I mean, I had already started down that path a couple years ago thanks to PSVR games like Astrobot, Beatsaber, and Dreams, but my son introduced me to the Oculus 2, and that's all it took this year for me. As it turns out, it was good timing since my company had also decided to take a look into VR development. The big announcement for me there is that I'm now part of our first VR Skunk Works team, making a new game and learning the ropes as we go.  That also means I'm also really trying to immerse myself in VR news, games, and thoughts. I'm making daily trips to the Road to VR and Upload websites (a couple good bookmarks for you) and playing VR daily.

If you stick around and continue reading here at the Friendly Necromancer, you'll probably see more VR game reviews and thoughts as I continue to be fascinated with it.

3- Launch of RPG Dice, Heroes of Whitestone. There were two things that actually tore me away from Runes of Magic last year, and that's the launch of WIMO's RPG Dice and playing a little New World with my friends Stephen and Christina.  It was a one-two-punch for Runes of Magic, and I bounced. My wife and I run a guild in RPG Dice called Wyrd Beards, and it's been our mobile game of choice to play together the past half of the year.  

I find it hard to be subjective about reviewing a game I also worked on, so I haven't talked much about it here on my blog. I will say that I'm having a great time playing our game. Perhaps when I'm going through my Game Portfolio this month, I'll say a few more thoughts.

As for New World, I really only penned two posts about it here on my blog, but it really was a very enjoyable game.  I'd love to head back in and hit more of the dungeons with Stephen and Christina. We'd just need to get our schedules to sync up again and find some time. It was nice having some time to talk with Christina about the recent death of our beloved Chrissy the Blesser . . . long time supporter of Pirate101 and The Friendly Necromancer.

4- My amazing son. It wasn't just all about games of course, I had a lot of great things happening in my real life. The big event was when my son, "Kyle Skystaff" as he was known on this blog, graduated from High School. He's such a great person, and I'm so proud of all he's done in his life. There was a time in my life when I wasn't sure if he'd ever be communicative because of his autism, but he's in such a good spot now. It's pretty amazing.

For his senior trip we took him and the whole family over to Pensacola Florida so he could hang out with his friend.  He's still learning to drive, so we drove him and made a little family vacation out of it. Pensacola has the most amazing white and soft sand. That was a great trip for all of us!

*waves*

5- My trip back home to Utah this year was also a real-life treat. I loved that I was able to just spend a week there, and while it was a busy trip full of things to do, the real highlight was spending my mornings simply sitting with my mother in her retirement home, watching Star Trek Next Generation with her. I wish time and proximity allowed me to do that more often. Also getting to meet Adam Terry of FountainAVM and actually play in a club in SLC after 30 years of not doing so . . . wow. I'm stunned that I actually spent some time on stage performing this past year.

Yup, that's me on that stage *pinch*

6- Gaming with the legendary Lessah Ismorah has been another great highlight this year. We played a ton of Far Cry 6 together, as well as 7 days to die, and now we've started dipping our toes into Icarus. I honestly don't know why more people don't follow Lessah. As I tell her all the time, "WHY ARE YOU NOT FAMOUS YET?!" She's a hidden gem of a person, and I'm glad I discovered her funny sense of humor through listening to Dungeons and Dragons Online podcasts. 

7- I loved reconnecting with Team Spode and playing through V Rising. Even if the game puttered out on us, it was a lot of fun when we were all vamping it up and having fun in a game together again. Team Spode is looking to head back into Guild Wars 2 for a while, and that'll consume many many late Sunday nights to come. Calrain, Tipa, and Spode are the best static group friends you could ever ask for, and as for Tipa . . . what an amazing writer she is! 

Team Spode swinging around on a vine in Guild Wars 2

8- Fun at Mutant Reviewers. This year also saw me starting to write a few movie reviews at the Mutant Reviewers website. If you guys don't know Syp, you should get to know him. The guy puts out an amazing amount of content that is truly to be respected.  Between movie reviews, podcasts, game writing, being a pastor, and more . . . I just don't know how he does it all.  He, of course, attributes it to organization and a few good tools, but I think it's magic. Yup, it's magic.

9- Great friends, like you! I just want to say how happy I am to have friends that check in on me and are making their way in the world, being successful humans. Too many great people to mention, but you all are fantastic people. Have to call out by name my friends Mercedes and Kayly. To see the great things they're doing at KingsIsle, and to know that their paths to becoming game devs was so similar to mine just makes me happy. I'm so sorry I keep myself so busy and don't have as much time to chat as we used to.

Thanks for reading, and here's to making the upcoming year just as amazing! (Why as I type that do I fear the worst? The pandemic has had a really long shadow.)

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!

GW2: It's such a pretty (confounding) game

About a week ago I was talking with a few of my old friends from Team Spode. We have our own Discord channel, and I drop by to say hello once in a while to see how their adventures in DCUO and otherwise have been going.

It was there that I started chatting with my old gaming pal, Ellie aka Clever Clara, who has been thoroughly enjoying the World vs. World PvP in GW2 for several years now. Lord Spode of Team Spode also mentioned that he still drops in daily to collect his rewards in GW2 . . . and he's been doing this for 3 or 4 years.  He logs in, he grabs his stuff, he logs off.  Amazing, the dedication on that one.

The Heart of Thorns beckons you deeper into this tangled web of a blogpost.

This got me to thinking about my Necromancer in Guild Wars 2, so I loaded up the game and logged in. It immediately struck me all over again just how pretty this game is . . . especially after playing the visual mess known as Project Gorgon for so long.

Here it's as if I'm constantly running and jumping through a concept artist's portfolio, leaping from one page to the next. It's such a pretty game.

The level of detail in Lion's Arch is staggering.

It was also then that I remembered I haven't picked up the Heart of Thorns or Path of Fire expansions, and lo and behold a THIRD expansion is now in development!

That's a perfect storm: friends still playing, tons of content I haven't explored, a visual feast after a season of starving, and promises of a bright future. SOLD!

So after picking up the HoT/PoF expansion bundle, I jumped into the new content only to remember . . . oh crap, combat in this game is lengthy, I don't remember anything, and there's a bunch of "things" now like wings and mounts. Oh man, what have I done?

In fact, I spent a few days just logging on, playing 15-20 minutes, and logging back off in frustration thinking perhaps I made a mistake . . . until last night.

  I'm in blue and that's my crew!

Clara gathered the troops yesterday, and soon I was playing GW2 with my old podcasting friends of Ravenwood Radio and Spiral Radio fame. Yup, Steve, Icy, and John . . . all in one group!

I can't even explain what a relief it was to get on a Discord call and have John talk us through the UI, new features, and the world event in the Verdant Brink. A little handholding and laughs between old friends goes a long way to establishing some hope.

We played around for a couple hours and broke the group for dinner, but I logged on later and did just a bit more of my story quest, just enough to take on this wicked vine beast.

Scary vine wyrm thingys are scary!

So there you have it . . . I'm back in GW2 for a bit to explore new content, hang with some old friends, and learn new tidbits of information: things like, Friendly Necromancers can now wield giant two-handed swords! Looks like it's the season of the Reaper for me in Guild Wars 2.

Yup, that's about the size of it.

Happy Dueling!

Moving on up in V Rising

The old castle in V Rising was becoming a bit problematic. Everything was crammed up against each other like a disorganized workspace area at a FedEx Kinkos, and quite honestly, I was running out of room.  Team Spode made the decision early on to try and keep our castles close to each other in a communal vampire coven, but the only problem with that is . . . I'm freaking addicted to this game.

The old castle is a bit crowded

I've been spending far FAR too much time in this game. I've soloed all the bosses up through Frostmaw (as of this post), and the rest of Team Spode has been involved in other things. (Gratz Tipa on reaching the final boss of Elden Ring.)

Kind of disappointing, Frostmaw bugged and ended up being easy to kill

Luckily you can have a couple of castles at once in V Rising, so I hiked up North, found a really great location to make a new castle and went to work. Team, the new castle is looking LEGIT! I've got rooms separated out with differing floor tiles and workstations that get bonuses from being located on those tiles. I've got a jail. I've got a throne room. I've got a secret garden in back with two gigantic copper resource nodes. I've got servant quarters . . . and look, I'm not even DONE DECORATING!  It's going to be epic.

The Forge is separated from the Library and Alchemist's Lab!

The best part of the new castle, however, is that it's located in the heart of Dunley with easy access to a slew of bosses and resources.  It was pretty natural to move my bass of operations from South to North.

One of my latest conquests was killing Tristan the Vampire Slayer. Man that felt good.  Whenever you'd see Tristan in your lower levels you'd run like you were an expendable low rank hacker in the Matrix and Agent Smith was after you. As a bonus for killing him, I got three things. 1- His cool vampire hunter pilgrim hat. 2- A recipe that allows you to transmute your boxes and boxes full of blood essence into that delicious Greater Essence. 3- A cool skill that lets you easily see the types of blood and purity of blood of your enemies.

Ready for thanksgiving . . . and murder . . .

That last skill is pretty epic. Rolling your mouse over an enemy to see that information was cumbersome. Launching a skill to see blood type and quality is epic. Why?  Lemme see if I can explain that a bit.

A 15, a flock of 19s, and a 22 . . . 

So basically, there are several types of blood in the game right? Brute, Rogue, Warrior, Worker, Scholar, Beast . . . think those are the main ones. In addition, each living enemy you encounter has one of those blood types and a percentage of blood purity. When you drink an enemies blood, you switch to their blood type and percentage.

In a way you can think of it as your sub-class because each of these blood types give you different bonuses base on its purity.  If you want to go kill a bunch of enemies, switch to a battle type.  If you want to do a lot of spell damage, switch to Scholar.  If you want to spend a chunk of time crafting, switch to Worker.

Worker blood . . . Gotta love that increased resource yield!

Also, just to note, blood percentages don't stack. So let's say you're rocking a 54% Warrior blood and you drink the blood of a 9% warrior, you're going to drop down to a 9% warrior blood type. You don't want that because there's bonuses for getting higher quality blood.

This blood also naturally decays over time, and using vampire skills also drains it a bit. The big blood hog happens when you regen life through a vampire skill . . . that drains it big time. The ultimate drain of course is when you die. If you die, you lose your blood type completely and your blood type says "frailed." If you eat heart or a rat, your blood will fill, but it'll replace your blood type with frailed, so only use those in an emergency. (You should really only be using rats and hearts for other crafting related things anyway.)

Eventually you'll be able to craft jail cells and charm your enemies with a vampire skill. Those 100 percent blood enemies are EXTREMELY valuable and you'll want to put them in a jail cell because eventually you put them on tap . . . and then 100 percent blood will be available to you all the time . . . as long as you don't completely drain your jailed purebloods, which is actually surprisingly easy to do.  That's where fishing comes back in to play.  If you feed your prisoners good fish, they are less miserable and less likely to die from blood draining.

100 percent warrior blood . . . melikey!

YOU GUYS THIS GAME! It's so good. I don't know . . . I know a few of my friends have struggled with the controls, but I kind of took to it like a fish in water. Good times.

Happy Dueling!