Another great week of gaming and adventure! Qvaid and I had some incredible sessions of Outward. Those of us available enjoyed some fun filled sessions of Conan Exiles. We even managed a bit of a hang out with our D&D group to get characters ready for the one shot adventure we’ll be running during our gaming convention later in the year. Some of the changes of scheduling did limit the bit of variety we were able to add to the mix this week, but I still enjoyed every single second of the time and gaming that was available. The recent addition of Outward and Conan Exiles to the our current list has certainly made me a fan of the ‘Souls-like’ combat system. It can make for a difficult start, and certainly some challenging situations, but there is also a great bit of joy that comes from being victorious on said combat style! I even manage to enjoy the defeats, if you can believe that, as it motivates me to do better when I return, gather my gear, and prepare for the fight once more!
Days played: Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Sunday
Players: Qvaid, Hobbit
Comments: On Monday evening, Qvaid and I were trying to think of the next thing to do for our Outward adventures. We decided to head into Conflux mountain and debate on how much mana (if any) we would take. In Outward you have to effectively sacrifice some of your ‘life essence’ to gain mana at the ‘Ley Line’. You lower your over all health and stamina for each point of mana you decide to take on. The process increases your mana pool, but it appears to be a careful balance of obtaining the mana you want and need, without completely crippling your character for other combat styles, survivability, and balance. The run itself was quite a bit of adventure as the path to it has Trogs and Mana Shrimp (huge mantis like crabs) that can decimate your characters if you are not careful. And, we dead. But it spawned us at the beginning of the dungeon this time, and we managed to make it to the Ley Line on our second attempt. Ultimately, Qvaid has decided to refrain from obtaining any magic just yet. I believe she wants to try a melee based route, and will be picking up classes that work to that advantage. I wanted to pick up at least Rune Sage, so I opted for 2 points of mana at this time, although I may need to hit another Ley Line at some point to pick up a 3rd and final point. I have also been contemplating going into a complete mage build, in which case, I may end up with a touch more at some point, but that is still in the air for me as I’m not sure it will work well for our currently combination of play styles. We made it back to town a bit later after I picked up the Flamethrower ability and Reveal Soul from the watcher at the Ley Line. From there it was just a bit of inventory management, crafting, and rest to prep for our next gaming session.
After a bit of consideration, Qvaid and I decided we needed a boost in the game. While I don’t normally condone ‘cheating’, the grind for the both of us to get currency in game to gear and skill up is just taking us far too long. We’ve mainly been hanging around in Cierzo and Chersonese. Now we realize that is likely the majority of the problem, but we’ve had some difficulty with the game, and most other places we’ve dared venture too have ended fairly horribly for us. We decided to use the debug tool to give us some currency so we can start playing with skills and get recipes. I did make a mention of this in a recent post, which you can take a look at, here. Initially we started out Tuesday evening with just currency, we travelled to Harmattan and picked up some skills and visited all the merchants and just bought recipes. We have since decided this is taking far too much time, so I think we are just going to spawn the recipes in, and start adventures to travel to visit the class merchants in other cities and areas. If we make a mistake we feel like we are not really so far in that we couldn’t just start new characters and continue testing until we find what class combinations we want to use. Our plan is too keep the ‘cheating’ to an absolute minimum. Only currency and recipes so we can finally move beyond the basic start of the game and see what classes and items we’d like to make. In earnest, the recipe situation could be avoided with a little bit of research as you don’t ‘have’ to have the recipe to craft items, you can just look it up online, and then if you have the materials you can craft it and learn the recipe in the process. However, we would like to just skip that part and save some time. We’ll just have to see how it works out for us over all. My hopes are that it doesn’t kill the over all fun, since we are not going to go beyond currency and recipes. This leaves us still having to gather the materials to craft the items, and mostly just the ability to pick up the passives and skills we want from most classes, along side of finally being able to pick up some class breakpoints and dedicate our characters to said classes.
On Wednesday evening, Qvaid and I were able to continue our testing of the forementioned additional currency and recipes. I spawned in 2 of every recipe I could find in the list, ultimately making the mistake of going through to the enchants. We boxed those for now and moved to learning the recipes. I did lose my place a time or so and we did end up with some duplicates from that, along with recipes we already had learned at some point. We wrapped that up fairly quickly with a bit of an early start and took a short break to wrap up some things we needed to do before the serious play through session began. When we got back to the PC, Qvaid and I went over the classes and some research until she settled on at least one class she wanted to dedicate too. During the process she believes she has a total of 3 now, and surprisingly she doesn’t want to take on any mana. We found we needed to head to Levant for her first choices, which so happens to be in the same City. She decided to start with Rogue Engineer (mostly because I think the break through allows her to dodge with a backpack, and secondly because she can master pressure plate traps). The other class being Mercenary again mostly for the break through because she wants the faster movement speed. She’s wearing Blue Sand Armor, which is heavy and impedes movement speed a decent amount. With a quick bit of research, we found we ‘should’ be able to reach Levant via Enmerkar Forest, and decided to go ahead and hit Berg to camp for the night while we were there. We hit a couple merchants, and while we were there, I did move forward with my decision to get Rune Sage. I walked all the way through the tree, and decided not to go with Internalized Lexicon. I’m going almost full mage (or at least I’m going to try). She looked over a few merchants, picked up the Enrage Skill and we headed back out into Enmerkar Forest for our trek to Levant. Except… we took a wrong turn at some point and ended up way off course with darkness soon to be setting in, alongside of running out of time. We did manage some adventure with some vastly improved combat, and even managed to take down a Beast Golem or two, which previously would have just decimated us. In fact we had several battles that we came out of with some improvements even before we picked up other skills in Berg. It was such a great feeling to see the improvements, even if they were garnered by unconventional means for the time being. We got back to Berg and camped in the inn for another time, before checking our inventory and gear, and then calling it a night with preparations to head out to Levant on the next attempt we have to play.
With quite a bit of a later start, Qvaid and I hopped into Outward on Thursday evening to begin our journey to Levant! She was really in need of some skills herself, and it just so happened that two of the 3 classes she wants to pick up are in Levant. Ultimately, she is mostly going for the breakthrough skills for these classes as she favors two handed weapons, but there were some decent skills and passives here and there she could pick up. For the Rogue Engineer she decided to trek down the path of Pressure Plate Traps, so she’ll be setting all of those we use in the near future. For the mercenary, she stopped just short of the last skill. I believe it was so she could see which might prove useful in the later future should she decide to give: guns, shield, and/or mana a try. The last few adventures we’ve had, I have to say have been truly exciting. We didn’t fight a lot in the desert, but we got caught off guard by a Rock Mantis twice! The first time I thought it might be a mineral vein of some sort, boy was that a BIG SURPRISE! The second time, we just didn’t see the rock formation off to our left as we were charging towards Levant trying to beat the desert heat! That one chased us all the way to the ramp to Levant! Qvaid and I were passing out in turn, and having to revive each other from the heat exhaustion! We spent two days in Levant to rest up, gather supplies, and learn skills. I picked up two passives from the Mercenary skill tree, but opted to leave the Rogue Engineer skills out because Qvaid picked up the expert skill for pressure plate traps, so there is really no need for me to be setting those down. We both doned what gear we could find from Merchants to combat the desert heat, and started the run back to Enmerkar Forest for a possible trek to Hallow Marsh. Our hopes were to at least reach Monsoon to camp in the inn there for the night, as it was getting late. Unfortunately, even though we’ve seen a few SheenShots videos encountering this… we forgot about the gigantic force field that blocks the bridge thus cutting us off from the ability to traverse the swamp like region. We also couldn’t remember how to deactivate the force field, and likely wouldn’t have attempted it even if it were possible from that side of the Marsh. After we defeated a few swamp bandits, barely escaping with our lives, and Qvaid scared me near to death when she yelled so loud! I did run up to the force field just to make sure we couldn’t pass. I mean it’s kind of magic, maybe it doesn’t stop friendly people!? Nope. Can’t cross here. We camped in our sleeping bags (going to pick up some tents soon) at the bridge back to Enmerkar Forest, and from there we scampered back to Berg to camp in the inn where we called it for the night.
A bit later in the evening on Sunday, the guys had already decided to turn in. Qvaid and I hopped into Outward to continue the trek to Hallow Marsh so we could visit Monsoon for our final choice of classes and skills (at least in terms of the 3 classes we can get all the skills from). For Qvaid, Warrior Monk was the final class she was after, and for me I finally decided to settle on Philosopher. We started the journey in Berg where we left off previously, and headed to Chersonese. Once we arrived in Chersonese, we headed north from following the road until we can to the pass to get to Hallowed Marsh. We fought some bandits, and a few enemies here and there, but we were short on time, so we did evade the fighting quite a bit to try and reach our goal of landing in Monsoon so we could complete our mission of gaining our final skill trees. It was still a good bit of fun, and we managed to complete said mission and both of us now have 3 full skill trees, alongside a bit of passives and skills from other classes in the Tier 1 category. My decision to go full on mage wasn’t probably the best, but since we always play together, I believe I can make it work. I had pondered going with a Rogue Engineer build of some sort, but sadly my previous two class choices were already locked in, and I just didn’t think I could make it work. No matter what class I looked at I already had a slew of skills from the Hex Mage and Rune Sage skill tree that I needed to make room for. I decided in the end, I would place Torment, Jinx, Mana Ward, and Spark, with the 4 runes from Rune Sage on my hot bar, and use K to access the skills to use things like Fire Sigil, and other buffs from Warrior Monk as needed. I can use Fire Sigil -> Mana Ward (for the immolate buff, as I chose the fire passive from Philosopher), and have fairly decent fire balls by casting Spark inside the Fire Sigil. I can follow up with Lightning from the Rune Sage build, and toss a couple Jinxes and follow up with Torment in some cases as well. Ultimately, I see I made a mistake with my build, and I’m doubtful I’ll ever mix Hex Mage and Rune Sage again for the sheer number of skills you need to fit into the build. Alas though it is too late now, and I believe I have ideas and combos that can make it work. At this time, I don’t have any intent to use the Chakrams from the Philosopher build, but I did pick the skills up in case I decided to try them at some point. Qvaid and I called it in Monsoon at the Inn, and plan to start our week heading back to Cierzo to swap out gear, craft things we need for the road, pick up her pressure plate traps from the stash, and look at the tent options we have already in our stash. Then it’s onward to near areas for some new adventures!
Days played: Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday
Players: Error, Kilen, Iron, Hobbit
Comments: Thursday evening started out with Kilen and I hopping into Conan Exiles to pick back up on our barbarian adventures. In case I haven’t mentioned it, even though all of us playing have Isle of Siptah, we choose to play the Exiled Lands on this play through. Mostly because Kilen knows them fairly well in comparison, and we had potential for new players to be joining us, so we felt it would be a good introduction for Error and Iron. Ironically, neither Kilen, nor myself have an extended play through of Isle of Siptah to date. In any case, Thursday nights tend to be shorter gaming sessions, with work pending on Friday for the lot of us. Iron joined us a bit later as Kilen and I were running some dungeons to gather armor scraps for the Godslayer Gear. Initially, the plan was for us to kill the boss in the Arena first since we didn’t know how much time we would have, but Iron picked back up after we finished that up, so we decided to hit some of the bosses near the map room, and then we headed back into the Arena to hit that again. We managed to gather up a decent amount of the scraps, but shortly after completing the run, it was time to call it a night for Iron and Kilen. Typically, I would have called it there as well, but Qvaid was up for some Outward adventuring, so we started that and gamed a bit later than we intended too for a Thursday night.
On Friday evening, Kilen and I picked back up in Conan Exiles for a bit of exploration, resource gathering and adventure. We had a decent session until the realization of Kilen having to get up so early for work that day set in. Error had contemplated joining when he got off work, but it looked like things were rolling to a close, so he opted to call it a night, and Kilen called it very shortly after that.
On Saturday, Error, Kilen, and I started a gaming session in the earlier part of the evening (D&D hangout earlier in the day), and we ended up starting a dungeon run in the Volcano after we got some improvements to our gear and ran the Arena dungeon a bit earlier. It was getting late by the time we started the volcano dungeon, and we pushed through for some time, but ultimately had to call it before we brought it to a completion.
On and off all of Sunday until about the time we would normally call it on a work day, we played Conan Exiles. We did a bit of work on the new base, Error built a new building to place a couple vaults in, and we ran dungeons for the majority of the time. We started with the Frost Giant dungeon, and moved back to the Volcano, where we managed to complete it this time. We revisited a lower level dungeon that had a water puzzle with gongs we shot with arrows that would raise the water level and allow us to progress to the next areas. Given the complaints I was getting for the stray cat pet I picked up and placed in the animal pen and kept in my room, I broke the bond on the pet to free Kilen and Error of the troubles it was causing. However, I noticed a horn in one of the chests at the base in the crafting room and managed to summon a Frost Giant pet named aptly, Frosty a bit later. After the water puzzle dungeon, a bit of inventory management, and placing Frosty to guard the new building housing the vaults, we called it a weekend.
Days played: Saturday
Players: The gang
Comments: On Saturday around 1 PM our gaming group meet up to make characters for our game con we have every year at Iron’s. This year will be a one shot against a very difficult foe, and we are all going to be 20th level. I decided to just list the players as ‘The gang’ because of the group, at least two of them don’t have gaming handles I can use to keep their privacy intact. Several of the group managed to complete the task in its entirety but I still need to get gear and the magic items allotted for the task. It was really great to meet up with everyone for a bit, as it has been quite some time since our group met up and hung out for a bit. We called it a bit early in the start of the evening, and Error and I headed back to The Shire (house) to start some more gaming with Kilen, as Falken and Iron appeared to be mostly MIA for the majority of the weekend.
