#Blaugust2019 Day 4 -- Diablo 3 Featuring Dalia Falmea, Chapter 1

A lot of the people that read my blog from the Wizard101 Community know exactly who Dalia Falmea is, but during Blaugust, chances are I'm going to have to explain why this is awesome. 

The new set for Wizards this season in Diablo 3 features FIREPOWER.

In Wizard101, the FIRE professor is Dalia Falmea.

THUS DALIA FALMEA THE FIRE WIZARD WAS BORN!!

My only disappointment . . .

SHE NEEDS TALLER HAIR!!

Since I've never really played a wizard much in Diablo 3, I figured I'd try to really push myself hard to get all my seasonal achievements done by August 18th, which is when this season ends. That's super super soon, and I'm super super late to the party by deciding *now* is the time I want to go for a seasonal set, but I am happy that as of last night, I completed Chapter 1 of the seasonal achievements!

Go me! I'm going to have to really push myself to get those achievements done, but I figure enough adventure grinding should help me get that soon enough.

Time to KILL ALL THE THINGS!

Happy Dueling!

#Blaugust2019 Day 3 -- Barrowmaze Delving on Roll20

Do it! Just Google the word "Barrowmaze" and you'll find more links than you would think possible of reviews and information about this particular Dungeons and Dragons campaign. It's legendary. It's the ultimate Dungeon Crawl in a huge Mega-Dungeon that just goes on and on.

This is old-school role playing at its finest. 

The Barrowmaze was originally written by one Dr. Greg Gillespie. He's an Associate Professor at the University of Western Ontario and actually teaches a class there on pop culture and role playing games . . . and apparently is a blogger himself!

The Barrowmaze gained a lot of renewed attention when it was re-released in the D&D 5e ruleset thanks to a successful kickstarter, but the one thing most geeks know about the Barrowmaze is that 1- It's deadly and 2- The most impressive part of this dungeon is its sheer size. When they say "mega-dungeon" they aren't kidding.  You can easily get 100 long play sessions out of this dungeon.

I'm playing through this one with the infamous Jeff Toney as our DM and a few other cool people like The Art of Warlord, Vanessa Mythdust, Professor Falmea and Decius. (My word, we all got crazy handle names except for Jeff Toney -- I guess that's not true, technically his handle for fun work stuff is The Gobbler King.)

Jeff DMs this game every other Thursday for us on Roll20.net, and because of that is redrawing the entire map for his campaign to fit the Roll20 format.

In the Barrowmaze, you begin as level 0 characters who basically die if you breathe on them the wrong way. In the beginning of the campaign, it's best to try to keep your distance from monsters and get lucky with treasure until you get 100 xp. At that point, you're level 1 and Jeff will make you a personalized token for your Barrowmaze adventures.

My character is the green half-orc named "Gumby." He's a fighter that uses a spear and is about as smart as a bag of rocks. Which reminds me . . . another thing about your Barrowmaze characters, they are made with 6 3d6 rolls straight in a line from Strength through Charisma and what you get is what you get. 

Our game this week was pretty great. We managed to fight a couple rats and got surprised by a couple of ghouls who burst through the door below when they heard the scuffle. Gumby was in great form and saved the level zero characters from being eaten alive by rats with a brave action surge and taking a risky opportunity attack from one of the Ghouls. If Gumby would have blown his Constitution saving throw, he would have been paralyzed and pretty much a tasty snack for the Ghouls.

This is actually my second time running through the Mega Dungeon. The first time was over lunch breaks once a week at work for around a year until our DM, Ben Durbin, wasn't able to host anymore. It's so huge that there's no way to memorize your way around and it's easy to get lost.

Needless to say, it's a good dungeon and I highly recommend it to anyone wanting to pick up a new adventure. You can get it at Drive Thru RPG.

Happy Dueling!

#Blaugust2019 Day 2 -- Gems of War Necromancer Build

The Necromancer class in Gems of War seems to be a one trick pony for me, and that pony gallops to the hoof beat of farming souls. For those that don't know, spending souls on your troops is the main way you level them up, and it isn't cheap. You can pony up anywhere from ~4,300 to ~6,900 souls to level up one troop based on their rarity.

I've horsed around with the Necromancer class enough that I have the class's Mythic weapon, which is a pretty mean-looking Scythe.

I hear that weapon actually pairs better with the Sorcerer class, but what I use when playing the Necromancer is the Soul Blade, which is arguably a little easier to get as it's a free weapon from getting 28 gem mastery in both blue and yellow. You get gem mastery naturally as you level up vs. having to win 250 battles as a Necromancer to get Creeping Death.

The whole key to farming souls in Gems of War is jockeying characters that have the Necromancy trait.

Yes, in fact, there's a great old video by a really talented Gems of War player, and he simply used three Warlocks and a Valkyrie in his set up, but that video is old and Valkyrie has been nerfed since then.

(I'm sorry, I can't stop with the "lame" horse puns.)

The best team I've seen so far comes from Sinnycool Games (Side note: wouldn't the name Whinnycool games be better?), but I can't use it . . . because getting the Pharos-Ra elite troop is a "bit" out of reach for me at the moment. (You need to "rein in" 4,000 diamonds by hitting the dungeon boss game every day for about three months)

If you're looking for the ultimate soul farming set up, that video above is probably what you're looking for . . . he even goes over how you should find the pet named "moon moon" and level him up for bonus souls.

But, again, I don't have Moon Moon . . . and you, kind reader, probably don't either.

So what do I use?

I use three troops with the Necromancy trait that also have the widest color variety. For me that's Soul Blade with Necromancer wearing Celestial Armor, Warlock, Keeper of Souls, and Flesh Golem.

With this team I can consistently hit the max cap on souls and survive moderately well. Basically you want to charge soul blade 3 times, and with all the other bonuses from being a necromancer and wearing Celestial armor, it does pretty well.

I'm sure your mileage may vary and there are a lot of builds with more horse power than this, but this seems to work pretty well for me.

Now the real question is . . . is there a necromancer build that *isn't* about soul farming, and how does that work? That's a mustang to ride on a different day!

Happy Dueling!

#Blaugust2019 Day 1-- It was Overwatch killed the beast

You know, I used to play a wider array of video games until Overwatch jumped into my life like a Winston with no cooldowns, but now I've logged ~700 hours on that single game. And I still suck at it. Well, my Reinhardt is pretty scary.

OH! Those poor fools running into my ultimate!

If you play any Overwatch recently, then you know the big talk of the town is the incoming 2-2-2 role lock change.  For those of you who don't know anything about Overwatch, that means soon you'll have to declare up front in a match that you will play a dedicated role for the group, either Tank, healer, or DPS. 2-2-2 means that your group will now always have two healers, two tanks, and two DPS. It's a "beauty" of an idea that's had a "beast" of a debate, but overall people feel it's going to improve the game.

I'm sure it will . . . and if not, well, there's always Overwatch 2.

From what I understand, you'll actually do your competitive placement matches now on a per role basis, which is interesting. In my comp group I play heals about 80 percent of the time, the other 20 percent of the time I play either Mei or TORBJORN!

IT WAS TORBJORN KILLED THE BEAST!

Oh my gosh I love my new summer skin so much.

Anyway, our comp group has done a lot of switch-on-the-fly calls in the past where if a certain defensive team isn't working, one of our swaps is to a team where I play a more offensive role.  It's still a 2-2-2 comp for us, but once PTR hits live, we can't do that. I'll always be playing healer. That's OK in the long run, but it feels like flexibility for the group took a big hit. On the other hand, no longer will we see a 6-DPS meme team in comp mocking us for not being able to handle them.

One cool side benefit from all this is that, now I could play Comp outside of my group of friends in a totally different role (like tank) if I wanted to and not have to worry about getting out of the SR range our comp group needs to play together . . . either in the positive or negative . . . I worry more about the negative.

There's some speculation over on the Overwatch forums that the real losers from 2-2-2 are those that only play DPS roles, since that's the most popular role to play . . . or so it seems. Will there really be 20-40 minute wait times for a game? I have no idea.  Those that enjoy it say it's to be expected and will be worth the wait.

All I know is that I'll probably have to take my love for the beast, aka Torbjorn, over to the arcade where apparently the old mode of quick play will still be sticking around. That's a beautiful compromise. 

Happy Dueling!

Blaugust Prep Week -- Looking for inspiration? Use your Tools!

One thing that's great about Blogspot (and probably Wordpress too -- I'm less familiar with that blogging platform's tools) is that it gives you a nice page of your blog's statistics.  Here's a quick sneak peek under the hood of the Friendly Necromancer blog.

That's all pretty straight-forward, but the one tool I want to point you to is found under the heading called Traffic Sources. Within that heading is a great piece of information called "Search Keywords."

So, people that searched my blog and landed there were mostly looking for Wizard101 information. Some of those topics I covered a long time ago and they still get hits, but there is at least one search term that grabbed my eye . . . and that's the Gems of War one.

I actually feel a bit bad for that person. They searched my blog hoping for a guide or at least some insight into building a good necromancer team, and I failed 'em. Instead all they found was me rambling on about how great of a game Gems of War is. So now it's decided!  During Blaugust I'm definitely going to have a post on exactly that.

As for the other search terms . . . there's some outdated information, some good information, and some information that I haven't gone into detail on yet, but I do have some good links to where you can get information:

• Grizzleheim books: https://thefriendlynecromancer.blogspot.com/2009/11/where-are-all-grizzleheim-books.html
• Grizzleheim quest tree: http://www.wizard101central.com/wiki/Quest:Grizzleheim_Quest_Tree#axzz5v9yzYOzF
• How to get to Krokotopia: https://thefriendlynecromancer.blogspot.com/2009/03/google-searches-answered.html
• Wizard101 Mannequins: https://thefriendlynecromancer.blogspot.com/2009/06/tons-of-exclusives-mannequins-go-live.html
• Emperor's Retreat: https://thefriendlynecromancer.blogspot.com/2010/03/how-do-i-solve-puzzle-in-emperors.html
• Star School Boosts: http://www.wizard101central.com/forums/showthread.php?459453-Boost-Resist-Chart
• Wizard101 Fishing: https://thefriendlynecromancer.blogspot.com/2014/07/fishing-wizard101s-test-realm-is-live.html
• Gardeners in Wizard101: https://thefriendlynecromancer.blogspot.com/2010/12/where-are-gardener-moles-in-wizard101.html

I really like using that Search Keywords tool for finding out at least why people come to my page, and in my case it's 80 percent to find out old school information about Wizard101. And, now I have a topic I can add to my list of things to write about during Blaugust.

Happy Dueling!

Blaugust -- Prep Week Thoughts from The Friendly Necromancer

So, this week is intended to be a kind of a prep week for Blaugust. According to the official site, this week is where seasoned bloggers give tips and tricks to the newcomers, and I'm definitely SEASONED . . . like a fine steak of blogging with a side of savory podcasting and livestreaming with a little parfait of Pintrest for dessert.

There's no need for me to bore you too much with rehashing the past, but you can see the whole herd of blogs I've kept over the years from my profile (including the ones I kept with my kids when they were little and when blogging was more popular). Probably this blog's greatest claim to fame was that it got me a job, first, as a writer at Beckett's Massive Online Gamer magazine where I wrote mostly about Wizard101 and Dungeons and Dragons Online and, second, at KingsIsle Entertainment as the Community Manager for Pirate101.  

. . . After that, my writing and livestreaming was mostly for work, and since I could no longer theorycraft about the games I enjoyed playing (because, you know, I already knew what was coming up), my blog changed and eventually waned.  

Times also changed!  YouTube took over as well as microblogging and a number of other Internet innovations that made your standard blog kind of fade to the background, but that doesn't mean blogging isn't still alive and well (as evidenced by the outpouring of bloggers participating in Blaugust.) There's a lot a standard video game blog can provide still . . . even in 2019 . . . and especially for those who love to write.

Thing 1: You've got to love to write.

It kind of makes sense, but you'll have a better time blogging if writing just comes naturally to you, and if it doesn't come naturally to you . . . write until you do love it. If that still doesn't work, maybe blogging ain't for you, but surely there's something else that will quench that thirst inside ya. (Vlogging anyone?)

Thing 2: Scream into the universe with your blog and make it your place.

What's the saying over there at Penny Arcade? Stream like no one's watching? Yeah . . . Stream like there's nobody watching.

It's a power statement. I like it. BLOG like there's nobody reading 0 0 0.

When you make a place your own, you control all the cards and ain't nobody gonna take that away from you despite how unpopular or popular it is. At least you can point people there and say, if you want to know what I think, read my blog. BOOM. 

Side note: There's nothing cooler than when a topic breaks out and you can say, oh yeah, I wrote a blog post about that one time . . . link.

Thing 3: Build a community or be a part of a community.

While the power statement of "Stream like there's nobody watching" is amazing, it's a lot better when people are watching. For me, a really vibrant Wizard101 blogging community developed around me circa 2009 without much effort other than making a giant list of wizard101 bloggers and making a post. If you want on the list, contact me. Done. 210 posts later . . . I had a pretty cool community. They even made themselves a badge, and a couple of them still proudly display on their blogs. How cool is that?

Thing 4: Develop a thick skin and allow room for others.

Not everybody is gonna love ya, Smalls.  That's just not how it goes. I mean, as much as I would love for everyone to fawn over me . . . lol . . . it's not going to happen. In fact, for the majority of this blog's life, I've been an outsider to mainstream MMO blogs. Wizard101 just isn't everyone's cup of tea, and that's fine. I'm cool with that.

Even then, within our own community of Wizard101 blogs, there were times when the waters got rough as big fish and little fish alike fought for territory in the itty bitty community pond without even knowing we were fighting for territory.  It's real though.  The pull to be THE FIRST to blog about a new upcoming feature, game, or thing is tangible 100%.  In my blog's busy days, that drove us on.  It was fun. I tried to always give credit to another blogger if they posted about something before I did.

Thing 5: Always be thinking about what's next for your blog.

You know . . . Drive! Passion! All of that good stuff!

Obviously this is no longer a big concern of mine seeing as how my post count per year has tapered off to almost nothing . . . although Blaugust is going to be a really good refresher for me! PROMISE! Back in the day, I constantly kept a running list of things I could talk about or do on my blog. I tried all kinds of "features" like Pet of the Day, Ask Friendly a Question, Interviews, and even a really lame comic series (let's be honest, it was pretty bad.) 

Keep a steady stream of blog posts coming, and the readers will follow.

~~

So that's about all I've got in me for tonight.  Hope something in there made sense.

I do want to wish those new video game bloggers luck in their endeavors.  Blogging truly can be life changing if you let it.  (hint: Hard work trumps luck . . . you got this!)

Happy Dueling!

It's High Noon, Blaugust!

Well, I did done sign up, cowboys and cowgirls . . .

In case you cow hands have forgotten what Blaugust is, check out this post from the originator of the event himself, Belghast from Tales of the Aggronaut.

This here ain't my first rodeo. (I don't know why I have a McCree Cowboy voice running through my head this morning, but I'm going with it.) I did done participate in this waaaaay back in two aught one five. Yup, partner, them were the good old days of 2015. There was a trip to a Classic Game Fest and Hearthstone was my kind o' poker. Why, I posted every day of the month back then.  Who knows?! Maybe I can pull off the same buckin' bronco type of moves this year as well. How de doo!

Now let's tie it all together with a random video from the Internet:

I wish that was a card . . . then I'd actually be able to play McCree without feeling like I'm throwing.

If you have any ideas for posts or things you'd like to see me writing about next month, just leave a comment.

Happy Dueling!