Qvaid and I had quite a few interruptions to our gaming schedule this week. Ultimately though it was still a grand bit of adventures. We managed to finish up our run on the Holy Mission characters, and have since started new characters to make a run in The Heroic Kingdom faction line. We’ve only begun to scratch the surface of those adventures as the week was coming to a close and the weekend was fast upon us. We are both looking forward to picking back up next week (if scheduling doesn’t allot us any time this weekend).
I had some issues with my desktop earlier in the week, and though I did manage to get them resolved, I opted to perform a fresh install of Linux to clear up some of the mistakes I made transitioning from a dual boot with Windows to strictly Linux again. There were numerous reasons for the decision, although, it isn’t anything of great importance to anyone other than myself mostly. I managed to get that finished up Thursday before the work day was over. Surprisingly, I had my rig ready to game before it was time for Qvaid and I to start!
After some thought, and a bit of a heavy heart: It would seem the World of Warcraft adventures have yet again come to a close for me. The last few weekends have mostly been solo content for me, as the guys ventured off to play other games. Ultimately, I hold no one at fault for the decision but myself. Even in the short time, I’ve managed to effectively ‘complete’ an expansion in WoW for the first time in a very long time. Granted I’m sure there are raids I didn’t partake of, and even some Heroic and Mythic dungeon runs I didn’t manage to get around too. The group as a whole has all but completely disappeared from WoW at the time of this post. I suspect given a little nudge, I might could have stretched it perhaps another week, maybe even a couple. But we had effectively hit barriers at every corner in terms of scheduling and interest. Initially, I thought I’d get by with just leveling other characters and progressing in other expansions that I have yet to have completed. After some thought though, I feel like I at least got a decent fill for the game again, and I was perfectly fine with moving on to the next adventure with the rest of the group. Or at least trying to do so if we can all agree on something to play for any length of time. Right now, it appears that might be the next Honorable mention below: The Lord of the Rings: Return to Moria.
Honorable Mentions:
Valheim: I did some testing on Valheim on Friday evening, when I noted previously I couldn’t login to Iron’s dedicated server. After a bit of some testing, I tracked it down to the incredible server favorite tracking in the game. I mean like no other game on Steam ever. The issue turned out to be related to the fact that it was tracking the previous server ip address when we played quite some time ago. I had not played in some time, and I just didn’t notice the fact that it was the old information and the icon was a bit off. To be fair, I didn’t spend a lot of time troubleshooting it though, as I was working on server scripting when I noted I couldn’t login to test, and I didn’t get back to it for some time after that. Falken and Iron seemed to also visit Valheim over the course of the weekend at various times.
Hell Let Loose: Aces and Kilen had a few rounds of HLL on Friday evening. We were in Discord, and they did ask if I cared to join. At the time, I was caught up in some WoW quests I wanted to complete, so I respectfully declined for the time being.
The Lord of the Rings: Return to Moria: Well, the name of that game is certainly a mouthful. On Friday evening after my adventures in WoW came to a close, everyone was already logged off for the night. I decided to go ahead and make my dwarf for some upcoming adventures in RtM.
Days played: Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday
Players: Qvaid, Hobbit
Monday evening: Qvaid and I picked back up in Harmattan where we left off. We managed to clear the Loading Docks and the Mana Transfer Station dungeons and acquire all 4 of the Gemstone keys we need to face off against the dreaded Rust Lich!
We’ve both made strides in our combat prowess near the end of this run. If I’m being honest, I wish I would have reviewed that video much earlier. Something clicked on the last time I watched it, and I’ve made some decent improvements since. Still not perfect by any means, but enough that I can actually made use of the build I chose to go with on this run.
We finished out the night on the train, in preparation to go to the Research Facility to lock in the Gemstone Keys and start the final dungeon of the Rust and Vengeance quest line.
If all goes as planned, once we tackle that obstacle in our story, we plan to visit quite a few of the dungeons around the Antique Plateau that we didn’t really visit on our first run! I’m fairly excited to see what those skipped dungeons might have to show us. It is truly ALL about the adventure my friends!
Tuesday evening, Qvaid and I continued our journey through the dauntless areas and dungeons of the Antique Plateau.
We managed to get the remainder of the keys required to access the lair of the Forge Master (aka, Rust Lich), and defeat him after a slight hiccup on our initial attempt. After the Rust and Vengeance quest line had come to a close, we spent the remainder of the night visiting the numerous dungeons and mini-dungeons in the Antique Plateau area, which we just so happen to miss on our first play through.
With all that under wraps, I believe our plan now is to head back to New Sirocco to enjoy the peace we’ve created again under the banner of The Holy Mission and Elatt.
Qvaid and I have already been talking about another possible run through Outward as either The Heroic Kingdom or maybe Soroborean Academy. I’m honestly not sure if we’ll start by the semi-retirement trip to New Sirocco on our current characters, or whether we’ll skip right to creating new characters for Wednesday evening’s adventure just yet! Either way, I’m excited for some more adventures in this fantastic game!
Wednesday evening: Qvaid and I packed up the food and things we had in a backpack in our Harmattan home. We moved it over to our stash to prep for travel with the Soroborean Caravan.
It just so happened the Soroborean Caravan was heading to Levant. That was perfect! We still had not managed to get the home in Levant in our adventures. I ran back to our home, grabbed enough silver to make sure we could travel and buy the house in Levant. Once we arrived, I purchased the home for us, and we equipped our gear for hot weather and started the trek across the Abrassar Desert.
The travel through Abrassar, Enmerkar Forest, and Caldera was not met with too much trouble. A few bandits and random encounters here and there. We picked a few peaches on our way into New Sirocco, and started more inventory management to prep for a semi-retirement of our characters.
After the character retirement celebration was at its end, Qvaid and I started new characters and began the preparations for our new adventures. It looks like this run is going to be The Heroic Kingdom!
We did the usual ‘starter kit’ to keep the grind down a bit, and learned all the recipes. This time we also got gear to start the journey. We’ve had our share of the grind this game has to offer, and at this point we are just wanting to experience the story at our own pace. Sadly, the majority of this combined with the travel and inventory management for the previous characters too a huge portion of the night.
We did manage to save our home in Cierzo, gather up a few supplies to go with our starter kits, and if all goes as planned, we should be ready to start the adventuring on Thursday evening! I believe our plan is to head to a Ley Line (Conflux Mountain) to get Mana in preparation for the class combinations we are going to chose this time around. Qvaid and I both are extremely excited to start another run!
Thursday evening: Qvaid and I picked back up in Cierzo and headed to Conflux Mountain to gain access to the Ley Line. We both took 3 points of mana to start with. We suspect it will probably be enough, but we decided to take precaution. Mostly because you can ‘always’ get more later, but you can’t give it back. Since you sacrifice Health and Stamina for Mana, you have to be careful with those initial choices. You can always decide to get more later, but once you’ve committed to the points, you cannot reverse the effects of the sacrifice.
Qvaid picked up the Kazite Spellblade in Cierzo for her first class. She wanted to see how the Elemental Discharge might play into her already deadly set of melee. Both of us already had some of the passives the Kazite Spellblade has to offer, so that put us in better shape.
From there, we packed up a few supplies and some coin, and talked to the Soroborean Caravan in Cierzo to head to Harmattan. I picked up the entire Hex Mage tree, and Qvaid picked up the Nightmare passive from the tree. We moved on to the Speedster trainer and picked up the useful passives from the trainer. I ran around town just a bit picking up the Hex abilities where applicable, and we were off too the Carvan to travel out of Harmattan.
Once we were done in Harmattan, we checked the Caravan and found it was heading to Monsoon. Qvaid and I picked up the Disipline Skill and passives from the Warrior Monk trainer, and we checked the Philosopher trainer, but didn’t see anything we might need there. We also managed to nab the Blessed Boon Skill from Mofat in Monsoon while we were there. After our brief visit we hit the Soroborean Carvan and headed back to Harmattan.
Back in Harmattan, unfortunately, it did take us about 3 days to get another location to travel too, and that so happened to be Levant. I picked up the entire Mercenary Skill tree for my second class and Qvaid picked up the useful passives from the Mercenary tree as well. We headed over to Smooth and picked up the Warm Boon Skill, and checked the Rogue Engineer trainer, but didn’t see anything either of us was interested in.
We traveled back to Harmattan, and was hoping the next stop might be Berg, but alas, it was Cierzo. It was getting fairly late by this point so we opted to just head back to Cierzo. We pushed on a bit longer and managed to make it to the Cabal Hermit trainer in Chersonese. Qvaid took the entire skill tree, and I picked up the useful passives. We had to call it a night at the Cabal Hermit’s home as time had finally gotten completely away from us, and we were already behind schedule.
Days played: Saturday, Sunday
Players: Aces, Error, Kilen, Hobbit
This is a game that garnered the attention of several of us at the announcement quite awhile back. There were several in our little gaming group that purchased it earlier on. I was a bit frustrated that it didn’t launch on Steam initially, and while I had intended to pick it up at some point, after some time, it slipped between the cracks. The majority of us forgot about it to some extent, especially after those that did purchase it didn’t seem to be playing it any as far as we could tell. Several of us received it as a gift from Error during the Winter sale. Kilen was the first of us to dive in and give it a look. Distracted by our adventures in WoW, Error and I followed a bit later, and Aces even recently had a short adventure with us over the weekend on the 11th. We are still in the very early stages of the game, but I am certainly impressed with what I have experience thus far. Which I’ll also add that I find some of the mechanics a tad bit frustrating. I’m hoping these improve as we progress though, and as such I’ll keep those frustrations to myself for the moment as I’m hopeful better equipment, crafting stations, and improvements will come as we move forward.
Saturday: We had a bit of a later start in the day for a Saturday. Aces start was even later still when he jumped on our Discord server and noted we were playing something ‘new’ (I mean it is technically, ‘new’ to us. 😉 ). He watched Kilen’s stream of the game for a bit, and was loading it up to join us not too long after.
Kilen started a game for Error and I to join, although Error and I both had already created our dwarves prior in preparation for a bit of adventure. This certainly sped up our start, and the adventures began, even though I was a touch late to the party. I was tied up with a few chores and needed to hit the shower before I got to my desk to start the gaming sessions.
By the time I joined, Error and Kilen had already got the majority of the work done repairing the first starter base that the game semi-walks you through. They had a short partition wall setup to at least ‘slow’ down the incoming hordes of Golbins and Orcs, wolves, and various enemies that the noise you make tends to attract.
Once I joined and we got situated, it wasn’t long before we discovered an Elven sanctuary so to speak. The area isn’t incredibly large, but it certainly has a good bit of resources that we’ve made use of. We’ve came back to said area numerous times to gather resources.
Aces joined us later in the evening, as I mentioned above. At one point we got attacked by an Orcish Horde, and Aces managed to not only be the last Dwarf standing, but he defeated enemies until they started to flee, and managed to revive those of us that went down during the battle (aka, um, all of us).
Over all, it was an incredible new adventure. The combat can certainly be challenging, especially given the frustrating mechanics I mentioned prior, which I’m hopeful improve as we progress (or the devs review it and make changes to shall we say, balance it?).
On Sunday: Per a request from Kilen, I started a game on my system, and we effectively started the adventures over. There were some performance hiccups on the night before, but we did end up with a total of 4 people playing, and I wasn’t sure if it might be related to the fact that I was playing the game in Linux. To be fair, while it seemed it might be less, there were still hiccups while I hosted the game as well. Kilen and I eventually caught up to the previous game we played and managed to progress even a bit further in the over all process. Kilen and I played until later in the evening on Sunday, when time finally caught up to me, and I had to call it to prep for a work day starting on Monday morning.
Days played: Friday
Players: Hobbit
Friday evening: After the work day had come to a close and I finished up some testing on another game, I logged into World of Warcraft on my main character. Over the course of the evening, I managed to track down all the quests for the Isle of Dorn, Hallow Fall, the Ringing Deeps, and Azj-Kahet. Technically speaking, I had some of them done, and several of them almost complete. It was a bit of a relaxed gaming session for me as I worked through what remained of the story for The War Within expansion. I seem to be one of the few in our gaming group that enjoys any bit of story, so alas, it was a journey I made on my own for the entirety of the evening.
I did enjoy working through almost all of The War Within. I have some achievements I could attempt, alongside the Siren’s Isle I could work on as well at this point in my adventures. As I look towards the gravity of our gaming group as a whole, it seems increasingly possible that I am the only one currently still interested in what WoW might have to offer at this point. Save for Kilogre, although he’s been spending all of his time of late in Classic WoW as it were.
As I finished up the goals I had accomplished tonight, I headed off to The Ringing Deep again to turn in some wax I got from one of the final quests I did in Azj-Kahet. I made my way back to Dornogal, and called it a night at that point. A bit later than I intended, but still wide awake from the adventures and story I soaked in along the way.
As I mentioned above, it was a bit of a somber moment for me. I had completed (at least to the extent that I could) one of the first WoW expansions in a literal age it would seem. I stared at the character screen for a bit, thinking of what I might do to bid my time next as it very well appeared as though the majority of these adventures might be alone.
Given the lack of interest by some, and the changing in Error’s schedule, I didn’t see a lot of options, other than perhaps building some other characters and continuing their journeys in the Time Walking fashion of other expansions.
To be fair, there are actually quite a few WoW expansions, I have yet to experience to any degree, much less near the completion that I just made in The War Within. Even still, while I’m sure I’d enjoy those adventures a bit, it just isn’t quite the same as the adventures you have with friends and family.
With a somewhat sad demeanor I logged into the battlenet page, and cancelled my upcoming subscription before it hit again this month. I could see the writing on the wall was already there, and I’d much rather join them on an adventure together than trek the worlds of Azeroth alone for the time being. I hope the time frames don’t lapse quite as long as they did on our previous journeys, but only time can tell if we again return to face the foes of Azeroth and the many other lands of the World of Warcraft. (On a side note, I gave everyone a heads up later on Saturday, that I had cancelled my subscription so they wouldn’t be stuck paying for a month they may or may not play as well.)
