This particular Hobbit plays is coming in a bit late. I’m off for the Christmas Holiday this week, and it has my schedule a bit out of sync so to speak. With that in mind and depending on the remainder of this weeks schedule, I may not get around to many other posts.
As always, the gaming over the course of the week was fantastic and chalked full of adventure, story, and great times.
Qvaid and I had our usual adventures in Outward Definitive Edition, and on the weekend the gang and I were roaming the vast lands of World of Warcraft.
I will say this weekend did seem to fly by. Christmas is right around that corner! I look forward to time with the family on Wednesday, 25th! I’m also hopeful I’ll get some extra game time in with the consideration that I’m off this week for the Holidays!
On a slightly different note, I did technically miss the start of the Steam Winter sale!? I picked up Divinity: Original Sin at an incredible discount. Qvaid and I noted it has split screen co-op and I picked up with the intention of another game in our library for later. I’m not sure when we’ll move on from Outward as we are both enjoying it immensely still. It is such a fantastic game! Challenging, but definitely a great one in our book!
Game long my friends, game hard! In case I don’t get around to posting anything further, have a Merry Christmas all!
Days played: Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday
Players: Qvaid, Hobbit
Monday: As projected, Qvaid and I were done with the Holy Mission faction quest. We gathered enough supplies and funds to purchase the home in Berg since we knew we’d have to head that way to start things up in Caldera. After that, we were on the read to Enmerkar Forest and then off to Berg.
When we arrived in Berg, we were met with a message that someone was waiting for us in the Inn. We decided to wrap things up in Berg first before heading over to see what might be waiting on us. In truth, we figured it was the quest line to head to Caldera.
We purchased the home, and visited the merchants in Berg, then headed over to the Inn, and spoke with the Courier. It was, in fact the quest line to head to Caldera and to help the Sirocco residents rebuild in New Sirocco.
In truth, Qvaid and I both hated Caldera the first time we went to the place on our first run. It was a husk of a place full of dangerous monsters and the like. Over our first run, and build of New Sirocco, it has evolved into one of our favorite places. It’s challenging, and has a uniqueness about it that we’ve grown to love.
The first thing we did when we entered Caldera was head over to the Primal Ritualist trainer, and Qvaid learned all the totems and the passive. I picked up the passive, and we looked at what might be required to craft the totems. Initially, Qvaid was going to go with Primal Ritualist as one of classes, but after some thought she opted to just use one of the totems at a time again, and to gain access to other classes she wanted to test on this run.
We took down some Calygreys, and Qvaid looted their weapons. We planed to hold them for now in case she needed some silver to learn the skills she was after. Fortunately she had more than enough, and I did as well, so we were ready to travel again.
We headed out, and in the direction of Old Sirocco, but night fell and we decided to camp in the ruins between the Primal Ritualist and Old Sirocco. Well rested, and ready to travel again, we headed onward to Old Sirocco. It was still a bit dark, but we managed to find our way easily enough.
We spoke with Dorion, Josef, and Evangeline to start the quest. From there we explored Old Sirocco a little bit before heading back to the Quarry to start the process of building New Sirocco.
With access to our stash, we set out our bad to hold our food, setup our plant tents, camp fires, alchemy kit and cooking pot. Our base camp was well established. We were ready to start farming for samples, and building!
We set down 3 houses to finish off the evening, and attempted to set down the Hunter’s Lodge, but forgot you have to have at least 1 house first. We camped for the night, and headed out in the morning to hit the Bathhouse in Caldera. We did manage to come across at least 1 sample, but the evening caught up too us, and we decided to call it a night before we managed to complete the run of the Bathhouse.
Tuesday: The Outward session Qvaid and I had for Tuesday was something more along the lines of Queen’s ‘Another One Bites the Dust’. We both still enjoyed it very much, but we were getting defeated at random intervals through out the night!
I’m still adjusting to a more melee based combat style, and I can’t help but feel like I’m doing something wrong. The build I’m using relies heavily on a shield, but it seems the impact damage I take knocks me down more often than I’d expect, or noted when Qvaid and I watched one of our favorite Outward streamers run it. Now, I did go with some different armor sets, and maybe that could be where my mistake lies. It could also be that perhaps he didn’t attempt to just ‘block’ everything he encounter, and that could also been a flaw in my strategy as well.
In any case, Qvaid and I finished up the Steam Bath Tunnels from Monday night, headed back to New Sirocco and got supplies, than moved on to the Sulphuric Caverns. Between the Obsidian Elementals and some rough situations in the Caverns we found ourselves defeated a few times over the course of the night.
On the plus, this did allow the houses we were building to reach the next phase of construction. Since it was starting to get late, we headed back to New Sirocco to start the next phases for all 3 houses, and gathered more supplies and rested up for our next set of adventures on Wednesday evening!
Wednesday: Qvaid and I were off to another rocky start on our Wednesday evening adventures. We managed to succumb to our enemies (defeated) several more times in our play through in Caldera.
We were finishing up the Sulphuric Caves, and we met some problems at least a couple times there with an Elder like Medyse. I didn’t see it listed as an enemy on the Outward Wiki, but this one was definitely different as it had an Ethereal attack! In one of the defeats, either Qvaid and/or I was injected with a Medyse egg and I was granted the Medyse cosmetic pet as a results. Our combat techniques were starting to improve, and we did eventually manage to finish up the dungeon.
From the caverns, headed to the Oil Refinery and had another rough mishap. Gep saved us, and we noted we were fairly close to New Sirocco so we just headed back into town to check the construction, rest, and resupply. We noted we were starting to run short on time, and opted to just go to The Grotto of Chalcedony. It is a dungeon fairly close to New Sirocco and we though we’d have a bit more time to start that one before the evening caught up to us completely.
Not only did we manage to start it, but we also managed to finish the dungeon. A bit later than we were likely in for, but still a completed dungeon no doubt. We got a sample or two, the loot, and scampered back to New Sirocco for another check on the construction, resupply, rest, and the ever required inventory management. Ready to start our adventures again on Thursday evening if scheduling allows!
Thursday: Qvaid and I started our adventures again in Caldera. At some point the houses were completed, and we set down the Hunter’s Lodge, Masonry and Lumber buildings.
After the constructions processes were in order, we decided to head to the River of Red, as we have done that mini-dungeon numerous other times in our previous run. Now, we expected a bit of some trouble. We knew we used plate traps, and trip wire traps, and all other manner of shenanigans with our first set of characters.
We were not prepared for the beating that lay in store for us without the use of those tactics. I suspect our screams could be heard from the residents of New Sirocco as that Crimson Emissary beat us senseless twice. It was horrific, and disappointing at the same time. Especially considering just how close we came to defeating the Emissary on both our first attempts.
We did managed to take it down on the 3rd attempt though! Glorious victory, if you can call it that! LOL! Sadly the loot on that particular run wasn’t that great, but we made the best of it. After several defeats, we retreated back to New Sirocco to resupply, and then we were off to the Oil Refinery to attempt a run on that again.
This time we did manage to clear the Oil Refinery, although we were a bit confused and had to enter from the bottom to clear it out a bit and drain the oil levels so we could navigate the entirety of the dungeon. For some reason, I had thought you could start from one and just navigate all of it? It maybe that you can and I just missed a passage or something some where, but from what I could gather, it looked like that was really only possible if you started from the cave entrance at the top of the Oil Refinery.
In any case, we got both keys, cleared the dungeon, and headed back to New Sirocco to rest, resupply, check on the construction, and some inventory management. We decided we were so close to the first phase of the construction for the 3 buildings we left going, that we would rest a few days, and start the next phase of construction for them before calling it a night. With all that in order, we ended the night fully rested and ready to take on our next set of adventures, while the building finish up the final phase.
Days played: Friday, Saturday, Sunday
Players: Aces, DNC, Error, Kilen, Hobbit
Friday, Saturday, and Sunday: The majority of the time played over the weekend was several of us working on quests in TWW, some weekly quests for the 20th Anniversary, and a bit of raids to accomplish the weekly quests.
Aces had mentioned running some Heroics or Mythics at some point, but we all ended up getting side tracked with the new-ish Isles content, and all of us managed to get a ring with an item level of 639 (base), gems to socket the ring, and Error, Kilen, and myself managed to break 600+ item levels.
I still had a grand time playing, and this particular weekend was just a bit of chill fun with mostly the fore mentioned questing, delves, and raiding.
