The Righteous Wrath of Pathfinder!

Before I jumped headfirst into EverQuest Legends, I had casually waded into an older game (crazy that a game made 5 years ago is "older") based on the Pathfinder game system.  Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous!  It was on sale on Steam for $4.99 a month ago, and I had overheard a group of friends were delving into it.

"Group?" You say, "But I thought that was a single player only game!" You are correct, but they were going to play it together through the power of a Multiplayer Mod available through Nexusmods. Honestly, I thought maybe Dylan (yes, the famous Dylan) and I could play it together.  As it turns out, he was busy at the moment and had no time to spare for my silly games, so I just gave it a quick solo run.

I ended up completing what I believe was Act I? I couldn't help myself comparing this game to Baldur's Gate 3 (or even Divinity Original Sin II), and honestly, how I felt like, "Why am I just not playing Baldur's Gate 3?" I guess the answer is, well, I've played Baldur's Gate 3 through four times already (387 hours played), but IT'S JUST THAT GOOD! I'm totally ready to play again (Happy third birthday BG3!)

What's different here is that it's the Pathfinder system (pretty wild and complex on its own), there's an auto-fight feature so you don't HAVE to always play turn-based combat, there are infinitely less branching pathways that affect gameplay, and . . . no epic, wildly inappropriate cut-scenes (like a bugbear playing quarterback and tight end with an ogre). Speaking of that, did you hear that Larian managed to get their stream banned on YouTube and TikTok?

There was a pretty cool cut scene at the beginning of the game. Dragon v Locust Demon!

The openness of the multiclass system has always been pretty great in Pathfinder. You want to build a hand-to-hand specialist that has a pet and buff spells? They got you fam. Of course, you can do the same thing in D&D, it's just a bit more difficult? Weird? More restricted so you don't make a dumb character?

Portrait doesn't match the race which doesn't match the actual character . . . but it's all good.

I did have fun with what I played, and I did like the auto-attack mode for trash fights. The ability to toggle back and forth between auto-attack and turn based worked really well for when the fight was hairy or the stakes were high. I imagine the goal might be to build strong enough characters to just auto-attack all the time, but really that means building pretty basic characters that focus only on attack and not all the myriads of other things you can do with a character that has a lot of spells and skills.

I'm a mythic hero now!

The final fight of Act 1 was pretty epic to be honest, you had waves of enemies coming in from four or five different points in the map, and after 12 rounds or so, the back gate crashes open with a minotaur. I finished that fight and completed the achievement for not letting the town burn, HURRAH!

I've finished a whopping 4 of 153 achievements . . .

I may come back to the game at some point to play a bit more, but for some reason finishing Act 1 felt like I got my $5 worth.  If I was more invested in leveling my weird character, I'd do it, but I'm not sure I like how he's turned out.

What I did find interesting is that . . . well, I wonder if the bargain basement sale came about because of the recent money troubles of Paizo, the parent company? If you didn't hear, Diamond Comics went bankrupt, causing $10 million worth of Pathfinder books to be held up in a warehouse. That coupled with a $2 million loss in 2025 resulted in them letting a dozen or so people go. Anyway, it's hard to see a good D&D competitor struggle.

*raises glass to Pathfinder* stay strong, friends!

Happy Dueling!

Gukking Around in EverQuest Legends

Guess I better get a post out before the day is up!  BLAUGUST! SHEESH! SO DEMANDING!

Today was a pretty chill day. I spent the majority of it playing around in . . . you guessed it . . . Everquest Legends. I ended up reaching level 39 and called it quits for the day. 

Oh, I was watching TV with the Uber Wife, but I also had the game loaded up on a laptop and just sat there camping the Ancient Crocodile in Upper Guk for the Gatorscale Leggings and Gatorscale sleeves. It's an incredibly easy camp and so I was able to get both items up to +4 just sitting there, popping back and forth between difficulties, hitting Origin, hitting Gate, wash rinse repeat . . . of course there was another guy doing the same thing, so it wasn't perfect.

Got me them GATORSKINS!

Back in lower guk I spent a good amount of time hunting the Ritualist, the assassin, and the supplier. It made a nice circuit in my solo instance that I could easily run over and over. I ran it so much I filled all my slots with weight reduction bags from the supplier and I have a new fun clicky mask that can turn me into a dark elf from the assassin.

Stingite Smurfstak!

I explored a bit more and did another circuit farming the Executioner, the Sage, and the Savant. The Executioner drops an axe that has a haste effect!  I'm hoping to get another drop or two of that so I can see if I can pull the augment off of that and put it on another weapon. *scratches chin*

After that, I decided to give Solusek Ro B a shot. It's one of those classic old dungeons. Unfortunately, I don't think it's been redone with more bosses or anything like that, although there is a pretty great spot where I spent some time hunting all the Kobold Royalty. Honestly, it was a little more annoying than I had hoped. The sonic bats there chain stun and have a bunch of health. There were a few times where Feign Death came in REAL handy.

Don't mind me . . . just taking a nap!

The amazing thing is the fact that after just a week of playing, I'm level 39. Do you know how long that took me in old regular EverQuest?! It felt like a year. Things were so much slower in original EverQuest.  At this rate, I'll be max level by next week, hanging out in the Plane of Sky or Plane of Hate! 

Happy Dueling!

Out with Najena, In with the Guks -- Everquest Legends

I logged on this morning to find that the servers were down for EverQuest Legends, so I decided to join the Discord server and see what's up. OH man, that was a weird flame fest. A comment from Brasse was taken out of context (typical for CMs). It certainly got that Discord chat jumping. It felt like all the general chat channels from every unavailable server suddenly exploded on Discord. 

*shivers* PTSD from being a CM

I muted that server quickly and got on with some real-life stuff for a bit. Later I checked back and, sure enough, the servers were back online and ready for my mass destruction of Najena. I started a nice little circuit defeating the Widowmistress (is it just me or would Webmistress have had a bit more comedic flair). 

Kick to the back!

She doesn't drop any gear I'd be interested in currently, but I collected her caster gear just on the off chance that someday I respec with some Magician or Wizard. Eventually I went back to the prison area and had my revenge for the other day, and much to my surprise, I found a throwing weapon I was interested in! 

I honestly was hoping to find a throwing axe, but I'll take a throwing knife. 

All of that led to me defeating Rathyl (and his second incarnation) and collecting the key to Najena's room . . . the final boss I'd need to defeat to say I was officially done with Najena. I mean, I could grind here a bit defeating Ekeros to buff up that throwing knife a bit or farm Najena to buff up the Clawed Knuckle Ring, but that all feels secondary to quick leveling to be honest.

Najena isn't easy at level 29, that's for sure.  Her room has a total of six enemies, well, two mages, herself, and three pets. Separating them and not getting rooted in place is actually pretty tricky.  I died a few times, which made me say ENOUGH, and restart the solo instance with the non-respawning mobs option. I figure if I'm going to die, then I could at least take out one of the mages and make it easier on myself the next time around . . . and that's exactly what happened.

At the end of it all, I had dinged 30 and decided it was time to head to the guks. This was such a confusing area for me when I was playing original EverQuest. At the time I was a cleric glued to my spell book and there was hardly any chance to get to know this place well. My friends were leveling like crazy here, but by the time I made it to that level, they were done with guk and on to better conning pastures. (I think I'm still burnt about being behind the leveling curve.) So, once again, I'm getting my feet wet in an old area that a lot of people already know like the back of their hand.

Trying to make me croak!

Of important note!  I recently picked up two game-changing AA abilities. One is Quick Buff. The other is the Unholy Steed for the Shadow Knight. If you don't know what Quick Buff is, basically you load up your spell bar with buffs, click Quick Buff, and it auto-casts every buff you have simultaneously on you and your pet (and every group member if you're in a group). Such a time saver.  Luckily I also investing AAs in increasing the size of my spell bar. Between Cleric, Beastlord, and Shadowknight, I have a TON of buffs I can cast.

As for the Unholy Steed. Well, it's a mount. Thanks, I love it!

I just need a sidecar for my warder now . . .

Happy Dueling!

"Storyworths" -- I don't want your photograph!

I don't know if you're familiar with Storyworth, but it's a site dedicated to capturing your loved one's memories and keeping them in a book. A year ago, my wife "gave" me a year subscription to the site (part-time job) for my birthday and said "DO IT!" I'm like, but what about my stack of journals and blogs? 

Some of those journal entries are adorably written in crayon

Her response was, "There's no way I'm reading your stack of journals! That is crazy, and I can barely read your handwriting!" Ok ok, I get it . . . I've been wasting my time my whole life cataloging my boring adventures of Tuesday in an unreadable font known as "My Handwriting Scribble LT."   

Basically how Storyworth works is that your significant other buys a subscription as a gift to their loved one. Then, along with the help of Storyworth's suggestions and interest prompting, your significant other develops a long list of questions for you to answer. Finally, every week for a year you're sent a question prompt to answer: 52 Questions in total.

A sampling of my Storyworth Questions . . .

So far I've managed to answer 44 of the 52 questions, which is pretty good, but I have a slew I just don't know if I'll ever get to. I have three months to wrap it up before my access goes away and the printed book that comes along with the subscription is sent to my family.

The Stage Four cancer diagnosis really kind of scared everyone. We didn't know (and really, still don't know) how long I'll have beyond what the doctors tell us is the average life expectancy, which is really just the average from decades of dart throws at the wheel of life for everyone who has ever had NSCLC Lung Cancer.

. . . and so I'm happy to answer the questions.  Today I answered this one: 

~~

What photograph do you most regret not taking when you had the opportunity?

I know this is going to sound strange because it just happened and it's not some super old, cherished memory or something, but the photograph I most regret not taking happened during this last 4th of July. For the past couple of years, we've been going to a local 4th of July parade that's pretty legendary. It's a "candy parade." They have to have police go up and down the sides of the parade just to make sure kids aren't running out and grabbing a stray piece beyond the edge of the bicycle lane.

I've been going to this parade mostly because my youngest plays the mellophone in the marching band, but for the past two years, it's also coincided with either my father-in-law or mother-in-law visiting. My thing is finding little stray pieces of candy no one has grabbed yet and giving them to my elderly guest.

Anyway, this last 4th of July there was this panicked mother that kept screaming at her kid to GET BACK OVER HERE! She had to be in her 20's and dressed in these really nice white cowgirl boots with white fringe. She had gotten all gussied up for the day and was obviously not paying very good attention to her kid. This kid must have been 3 or 4 years old, not very old at all. He was either a fantastic escape artist or she was incredibly distracted.

This is where the photograph comes into play. At one point this scene unfolds right in front of me where she's yelling at her kid and he's unable to vocalize anything. She then realizes that he's stuffed about three or four pieces of yellow taffy into his mouth and can't swallow it.  It's just a giant wad stuck in his mouth. At that moment, crouched down near her kid, in these fancy white boots and expensive, gussied-up, country girl outfit . . . hair perfectly done . . . that she commands her child to spit out the taffy wad in his mouth into her hand.

That's the picture, and I missed it. This goofy kid unleashed the most amazing spit-filled, giant yellow glob of taffy into his mom's hand. He's got this dumb smile on his face that's also mixed with a bit of relief and sugar sadness. She's sitting there with a disgusted look on her face mixed with the emotions of what do I do with this, meanwhile she's spent an hour or more getting ready and looked pristine aside from her hand filled with yellow goop and spit. It captured a feeling that's something akin to everything that a candy parade with a young unprepared, yet fully prepared, mom should be -- a juxtaposition of kid-gross and glam-mom, white boots and yellow taffy . . . where my mother-in-law and I were pretty much the only audience members amongst a sea of legs in shorts that were all instead watching a local parade.

This kid kept running away from his mom the whole parade and she kept yelling after him during the whole event. I had my phone camera prepped in case something amazing like that happened again, but it never did. I would have loved to have that as a picture, but perhaps the picture of it in my mind is better than it would have turned out.

~~

I've been doing the best I can to capture the essence of "me" for this book. Hopefully it'll be much more accessible for my family than my handwritten journals.

Happy Dueling!

MMMMMMM . . . Najena Bosses

Last night I spent more time in Najena in Everquest Legends instead of doing my usual Wednesday game of Dungeons and Dragons. It's too bad, but the DM had surgery last week and was struggling to sit and play our silly little games. On the upside he declared we can all advance to level seven for next week!  MMmmmmm (Homer Simpson voice) Level seven rogue features -- extra d6 sneak attack and evasion.

Anyway, grinding Najena has been kind of brainless fun. I was able to develop a pretty nice pattern with constant killing running between three bosses and building up their magic items by merging them together.  This run involves the Unbound Flame, the Tenderizer, and the Lost Crusader.

Mmmmm . . . Flaming Fist

Honestly, this merging feature is pretty cool. I love the concept that if I get two of the same items, I can just squish them magically together on the fly and make one of them more powerful.  It gets a little one sided with drop rates favoring a common drop vs. a rare drop, but still pretty great to start with a regular Tenderizer hammer and end up with a +5 Tenderizer hammer while leveling up 10 levels or so.

For a soloer, it's a bit of a bummer that increasing the difficulty of an instance doesn't also increase the level of the enemies (at level 24, those entrance skellies still con green. Man, it'd be cool if I bumped it up to Difficulty 4 and they now conned yellow like they did when I first stepped foot in there. I know! I know! That isn't the purpose of increasing the difficulty. I super digressed. Now returning you to the original train of thought), but on the plus side, the enemies on the second and third floors of Najena are still nice and juicy exp-wise.

I started working up a second group of four (sometimes five) bosses last night that seems pretty fun and frantic, which unfortunately are also starting to degrade as the exp keeps flowing. This run involves BoneCracker, Officer Grush, Guard Captain, Visiting Priestess, and Trazdon.

. . . and staring at Najena Banners while waiting for bosses to spawn . . .

I fell down a pit trap at one point last night into a jail cell and started fighting tentacle terrors and a few named prisoners . . . then I opened a door full of enemies and discovered the true meaning of pain as they unleashed several nukes on me. At least there aren't corpse runs and corpse summoning in this game! Again, as I mentioned before, EverQuest Legends is all about the fun of speed running EverQuest without all those painful group-play dynamics. Now that I've hit level 24 and have Feign Death available to me because of my Shadow Knight tertiary class, I could probably survive that room I died in last night and pull it apart with Feign Death. I CAN FEIGN DEATH NOW! 

Happy Dueling!

An Axe-citing Birthday

It was my birthday yesterday! Thought I'd take this opportunity to just do a quick rundown of events on or around my birthday and say that I'm happy I'm still alive and writing about it. How's that?

My typical birthday celebration consisted of two things: Eating at Spaghetti Factory and watching an IMAX film. Although I didn't do either of those things yesterday, I did see a movie a couple days before and eat at ye' old Spaghetti Factory three weeks ago, so . . . it still counts!

We saw Spider-Man Brand New Day with myself, uber wife, my middle kiddo, and my youngest. It was a pretty good show and well worth the price of admission to see it on the big screen. I'm happy we splurged instead of waiting for Netflix. After the show, my youngest (who really isn't much of a Spider-Man fan) called up my oldest (who was instead at a local con with a friend) to declare that "They finally did it! They finally made a good Spider-Man Movie!" High praise from him!

We almost got in the car to make the 40 minute drive to Spaghetti Factory, but I've been craving some Jet's Pizza and offered that up as an alternative. I'd never had Jet's pizza before . . . not bad! It kind of reminds me of what Pizza Hut used to taste like before it went downhill.

Mostly what I did yesterday was play more EverQuest Legends (Ding 20) and throw axes at my new birthday gift!

I paid my buddy (the infamous Dylan) to build me an axe throwing target for my birthday as yet another "in spite of" cancer activity. For those that don't know the story, when I first came down with pains from my lung cancer, I thought it was from going on an axe throwing excursion. It was pretty odd. All the inflammation around the lining of my lungs was somehow causing pain in my upper right shoulder in a very specific spot. After a month of wasting my time and money at a Chiropractor, a couple x-rays and a CAT Scan confirmed it was actually cancer. To those ends, I have a new axe throwing target I can take out my aggression on. (It also helps that one of my favorite D&D characters I played used to specialize in throwing axes at stuff.)

Good times, and I'm happy to still be throwing axes, writing blog posts, and playing EverQuest!

Happy Dueling

Najena vs. The Maps of Myrist

My word I'm having so much fun delving into the newest incarnation of EverQuest. Yesterday I advanced myself to level 16 and explored a bunch of old zones that I really just kind of ignored before . . . because I could. When I started, I was a high elf locked in the whole Greater Faydark area and grew up being lost in that whole area over there.

Now I'm playing as an Iksar in the Deserts of Ro in some strange zone called New Sebilis. WHAT? That zone isn't listed in my EverQuest Atlas: The Maps of Myrist! 

Includes an intro from Maelin Starpyre, Grand Librarian of Myrist . . .

Several years ago when I was working at KingsIsle, my old partner in crime Leah Ruben (Lead Producer of Wizard101) and I got talking about EverQuest. She let me in on a little secret that it was actually Evequest that led her to get involved in the Games Industry, and we talked for a long time about our love of the game. If you go haunt Leah's page on MobyGames, you'll find out that, yes, in fact, she was intimately involved in EverQuest Online Adventures back in 2003, as well as being a Game Master for several expansions. 

After our long conversation about EverQuest, Leah (and her hubby Joel) gifted me an old copy of the EverQuest Atlas. A kind of common-bond item and a very welcome gift by me. It's been sitting in a box in my garage for a couple of years now after I moved to Utah. In fact, I had forgotten about this book until this morning when I remembered . . . OH YEAH . . . I HAVE COOL MAPS!

I never thought I'd actually be using this book for real.

Last night I spent a lot of time in a solo instance of Najena farming up the entrance and an ogre named The Tenderizer who drops a weapon named . . . The Tenderizer . . . and also a haste belt named The Kitchen Toolbelt.

Give me your kitchen tools, Mr. Tenderizer, sir!

I really don't know if this boss existed in the old game of EverQuest. I think it might be an EverQuest Legends exclusive? I of course wouldn't know because I was too busy messing around in the Feydark or over in the future expansion of Kunark. Looking back at the old Najena map over on EQ Atlas, there's certainly no note of such a notable farming spot. Huh. Must be new like the weird tutorial zone with all the Dougs (if you play the tutorial zone, you'll see Old Doug, Doug, Dougina, Dead Doug . . . as I'm gathering, it's a tribute to Doug Cronkhite?)

 Aha! So those are the Dangers, Benefits, and Background of Najena . . . got it.

I suppose finding something in all the old is what really makes EverQuest Legends the ultimate game for old fans. 

 . . . you are here. Wait . . . secret door beyond the Tenderizer?

Happy Dueling!