My main character, an Arcanist, has been sitting in the Scholarium (opening for the Gold Coast) for quite a while. Time to get her out of there and off into the world.
Fallen Leaves of the West Weald
This limited time event has only a few days remaining. It’s the sort of thing where they hope the whole community will play and contribute, then get a commensurate reward. I hope to get in a few swings.
I confess I’m stuck in Linda’s Garage. I’ve gone over every pixel in the place and can’t find a new thing, and can’t get out the door. I think I’ll need to re-start. Luckily, I haven’t gone far.
I think those two bits are all I’m going to be able to fit in, as it’s hard to tear myself away from Wow right now.
I’ve been reading Blaugust end of the season posts, and am thinking of what might be reasonable post scheduling going forward. I will try what has often worked for me. My goal is 100 posts a year for a blog, and I like round numbers, so ten posts a month hits that goal.
Before Blaugust, I may have posted three times, so that’s a burn. Weasel brained creature that I am, I float the Blaugust numbers between June July August in my head, then I continue 10 posts a month. To make up the 50 missing posts, I just cram in a few extra and there we are.
World of Warcraft:
Atherne my main character will finish the Ringing Deeps quests, then head back up on top because I didn’t get all of the side quests done. I was led down the rabbit hole, aka The Coreway and could not resist. Back down and perhaps get all of the quests finished by September’s end.
The next of the four Campfire figures will go in. I’m thinking my Fire Mage who is also my main Tailor, who could then in theory make bags for all three Guild Realms. Clever.
Have abandoned Cataclysm Classic for the new shiny of the War Within. I’m hoping to get back in there to level up.
Elder Scrolls Online
Time to Hit The Gold Road. My main character has started the first quest line. I should have saved enough Crowns to buy a new home someplace. As my main is my main crafter, let’s hope she finds some good recipes while she’s out adventuring.
3 Minutes To Midnight
I just need to install and play. I’ve looked forward to it for a long time.
DragonAge
Kind of itching to play a DragonAge game, but can’t pick one. Also, not so sure if my EA login info is correct.
Once again I largely played World of Warcraft and Elder Scrolls in January.
Elder Scrolls Online
My game time dropped in ESO once I found myself with six level 50 characters. Though there are many places in Tamriel I haven’t played through yet, there’s something about doing so with maximum level characters rather than leveling characters that simply isn’t as fun.
I purchased a character slot for an Argonian I felt I should have, and she’s great, but again, she is treading ground I’ve been over numerous times.
While I was briefly enjoying dungeons, they’ve felt like an empty experience after a bit, once my characters had better armor than they were getting questing. I hoped to get furniture and other recipes in dungeons, but you can never stop to loot even a crate or you’re way behind the crowd. My feeling was they ruined the game for me a bit. All flash, no truly interesting loot.
Now, I’ve just been logging in for the daily rewards each day, not even doing my Main Crafter’s Writs most days.
Even so, I’m super excited about the Next Chapter, the Gold Road.
I had looked at pre-reveal speculation on the next chapter, and Skingrad seemed the most popular choice. My first thought regarding Skingrad was Vampires. Not my favorite thing in any game, let alone Elder Scrolls. Never speak to me about Knights of the Nine.
Even so, look at that picture. Sun drenched adventure. Everything you want in Elder Scrolls is promised by that one painting. I pre-ordered immediately. Here’s part of the map from Oblivion, showing the Gold Road and Skingrad.
Is it possible we will get to visit Kvatch, Anvil and Chorrol as well? I haven’t been so excited about a Chapter since Morrowind and Elsweyr. Goal oriented person that I am, I should have my main character work through as many of the Pact areas and expansion areas as she can by June, so she can go in strong, adventuring along the Gold Road.
World of Warcraft
My time in Hardcore Classic and Modern Era Dragon Isles might be about equal in the last month, again with little Wrath time.
Hardcore’s version of the game where everything matters remains irresistible. My Paladin Main is halfway to level 30. My Paladin Blacksmith is 19 and my Priest who levels with my spouse is just about there too.
My secondary Alchemist who was doing all the low level alchemy crafting, was killed by a Harvester in Westfall last week. Dang. It’s still horrible to lose a character completely. She was a level 13-ish Warrior. I’ve been playing Prot Warrior in the Wrath version of the game, and wanted to do that here too. My usual spec has always been Arms. I was playing her as Arms until she got Revenge, and was busy nattering between the two stances when I got within the Very Long (!) aggro range of a harvester and she couldn’t fight him effectively, and classically tried to run too late and poof.
In her honor I made a character with her name on Blackwater Raiders, so she lives on and can’t be destroyed again.
I also created a character in her place just to hold meats and fish (somebody has to do it). I came up with the name Sophiebear on a whim and loved it so much, I created a live game Pandaran with that name and got her through the Panda starter are in a single night. I really dislike this area, and it often takes a month or more to struggle through. Sophiebear FTW! I love her so much.
Speaking of love, here is my Kul Tiran Druid and my real life little sister queuing up for a few dungeons.
The Trading Post is becoming interesting to me beyond logging in to get the new Mount of the Month. I’ve found myself looking at some of the pets and transmog items.
Since I’ve been killing off and creating new modern era characters left and right, I’ve had some of the lowbies who survive these purges doing Pet Battles, something I never got far in, and I go to the Transmogrifier after every dungeon run to get my character’s “look” back.
Alan Wake 2
Department of games I’m not playing: Alan Wake 2. My son got it for Christmas and I’m sure he’s not afraid of anything in the game, but he and I disagree on what they did to Alan’s face. Aggh. WTF. The new version, with no explanation of his changed visage, looks like he should be in the Last of Us. Axe Man must have got him
Screenshot
Real Alan
The Elder Scrolls Castles
It has apparently been released in the Philippines, but there’s little information on the game. Here, however is a Redditor’s guide that may give you an idea of game play. It looks different than anything else I’ve seen from Bethesda. I like that they are doing so many new and interesting games.
Wow “live” continue Shadowlands for most modern characters, level my “Fabulous Five” on Blackwater Raiders through Dragon Isles (Druid, Warlock, Mage, Paladin, Rogue).
Hardcore keep my Paladin main moving along without dying, natch.
Starfield
A short note on Starfield-I did have to uninstall a fair few things to get it to run, and it wasn’t enough. Everything was sluggy. I uninstalled Starfield last week and will try to (gasp) finish something that remains installed, then poof that to make more space. I don’t know how I fill a hard drive so fast.
The Classic eras of World of Warcraft, particularly the Wrath of the Lich King version, dominated my gaming year. The picture above is my Wrath Paladin Merrie, wishing you a happy holiday. The hat does nothing for her hair. Merrie is still crawling along at 75 trying to dungeon and quest her way to 80.
Once the Hardcore version was released, my spouse and I migrated to playing that almost exclusively, despite 5 character deaths for me, and approximately 16 for my spouse.
I like being in a guild in Hardcore, even though there are no perks except for a bit of conversation with others about the game now and then. Our Dragonsworn guild got smaller every day then it was gone. I quit the Paladin guild as it was just too chest thumpingly manly for me. I normally get along better with men than women, but, good grief. Our joint play characters are now in Filthy Casuals, and by god I am that and more. So love the name. Nice people. I suspect most of the guildies are playing Season of Discovery.
My son is playing SOD as it is unfortunately called, and asked about a family guild there, but Mr Big is not interested, and my sister and her family are partially not playing, partially they’ve gone Horde, gasp. That my baby sister would do such a thing.
That said, in the Modern era (dubbed so by Holly Longdale in a post, and I like it) I have four Horde characters on a server. I only like the Undead Hunter.
She’s a level 9, a record for how high of a Horde character I’ve gotten. Such a different game. I have no idea where or what or who things are. At some point, my Hunter at least might get into known areas of the world, and I will just play away, all the while feeling guilty for going Horde, and imposter-ish (as if I carry a huge sign in game that says “SHE’S REALLY AN ALLIANCE PLAYER!!!!).
Yesterday I really cleared the decks and killed off quite a few characters, including a couple who have existed for a long time. Felt guilty, but I did deposit their usable resources and gold in the guild bank. My main realms are Blackwater Raiders, Earthen Ring and Proudmoore. We have “family guilds” on those. I’ve narrowed down the other realms I like to Wyrmrest Accord, Argent Dawn, and Silverhand. So those characters (mostly) live on. How I love having 60 character slots, but tsk is it really enough?
Despite all that, I started a new Gnome Mage and she is fabulous, with big blond hair and blue eyes. She will be a Fire Mage, my preferred type.
I need to mention my original Evoker died in the purge, but is replaced with a new, fully armored, much cooler Evoker.
Shadowlands
It gets worse and worse, doesn’t it? I defied the advice to send every freaking character to Ardenweald and sent Atherne to Revendreth. What the hell. The storyline of Revendreth seems flimsy to not there at all. All I get are quests to the Maw, with side runs into Torghast the Ghastly. Then, I get quests to go help out in Bastion and Maldraxxus. I’m going to gut it out as Atherne is my main character, and she should do All The Things.
Since my Warlock was 61 and really a tough character (Ath got her butt handed to her in the Dragon Isles when I peeked in) I sent her to the Dragon Isles and she’s doing the butt kicking. Yo.
Elder Scrolls Online
At some point this year, I started playing this every day. I now have 6 level 50s. While there is plenty to do at max level that isn’t some dopey equivalent of Raiding, my addiction to character leveling caused me to buy a character slot with my puny Crown hoard. I used to have loads of Crowns when I didn’t play much. Buying houses all over, and even more fiendish, buying furniture that I don’t have to sell my soul to create, has me down to a paltry amount. Whine, whine.
Steam Sale, Winter Edition
I finally purchased Starfield, which is downloading as I write. Quite expensive even on sale. However, I’m a huge Bethesda fan, and how do I not get their first new IP in an age, particularly one set in space? I hope I like it as it’s a real space hog, and there’s nothing in my Steam library currently installed I care to uninstall.
I purchased Storyteller because it looked vaguely intriguing and I’d like to be a storyteller. Who knows?
In keeping with my building a Nancy Drew library at these sales, I purchased The Ghost of Thornton Hall. I’m still stuck back on the Egypt one, but I’ll get here 🙂
I can’t resist puzzles I can’t solve with pretty graphics and a loose story line, so I was intrigued by a newer version of this game, but thought I should start at the beginning. Good thing I married Mr. Logic.
My price point for buying games in these sales is $10.00 or less as an ideal. Fallout 76 is 7.99 this time around. I confess I find it intriguing because Biobreak plays it on occasion and seems to really like it. Though he and I are nothing alike, I have to say of the bloggers out there, he likes most of the types of games I like, so his recommendations are good. Also, my kid likes it, and for this type of game, he and I are peas in a pod.
I fear that since there are real people in the game and I’ve got a natural PVP Victim, Roast Me Now banner flying, I’ll be flattened pretty quickly, and will go whining back to the games where I’m only crushed by NPCs.
Somehow I made a big list of games that looked good and marked some “buy next time” on my sheet. Could squeak in a couple more yet.
Starting at the top, in Wow Hardcore, where we spend most of our time, we lost one of these level 15 characters because “I didn’t think we could die.” Yo. This server is all about dying. We are starting brand new characters. Got them to level 5 tonight. A little tense.
My main Hardcore character is a level 26 Paladin. Carefully creeping her along and hope to reach 30 by month’s end. She has spent an awful lot of time in the graveyard for someone who doesn’t want to die.
On the live servers, I’m back playing Atherne my Feral Druid main character. Still making her way through Revendreth, I visited Torghast for the first time. I’m not sure what I expected, but it was a bit disappointing. Waves of stuff. Yawn. I hate “waves of stuff” only a little less than escort missions. See me go.
I personally enjoyed the World of Warcraft section of Blizzcon, and found myself interested in playing the next expansion (s) The Worldsoul Saga. This means I will play my live server characters to level them and gear them up by next fall’s release.
I should mention I’m not playing Season of Discovery at all. Just not interested. I have three versions of the game to level characters in. Don’t need another.
Elder Scrolls Online
I have been playing this game so much. I’m heavily into crafting. I’ve got plans for each character as to how they move through the world. Just in the past few days I’ve finally tried Dungeon Finder. It works really well, queues aren’t too long. The dungeon designs are fantastical.
However. Groups are four people. These dungeons have been speed runs in all but a couple of cases. Literally, you have to jam on your sprint key the whole time. Trash mobs are ignored, you just barrel through them and race to the next boss.
The two pictures above aren’t the same dungeon. It’s just hard to take a moment to take a screenshot. As I’m doing these, I’m trying desperately to grab the quest at the beginning of the dungeon, clicking through dialog as fast as I can. I don’t dare get behind because I sure don’t know where I’m going. I just race along, killing what’s being killed.
On the plus side, anything you loot is filled with stuff you’d get if you killed the creatures on your own out in the world. You get loads of stuff in these dungeons. There’s gold, great gear. Kind of a heady experience, kind of stressful.
I’ve three characters at 50. Two Templars and a Nightblade. All feel much weaker at 50 than they did before getting there. I really despise the Champion points system. The graphics for the three skill trees, as far as seeing what to pick is terrible. Gack. I’ve been reading Champion Points guides but am not feeling it.
In truth I’ve been buying a home in each area of the game where I’m working, and I buy them furnished, these days. I have the massive Mathiesen Manor in Auridon to thank for that. It’s a massive place that needs a lot of work. Room upon bare room.
My main crafter gets all of the recipes for furnishings, and she’s the one to go around placing the furnishings she makes. Amazingly, I just found out that you can buy furniture from the Crown Store right from the home editor. Then Plink, it’s in your home.
My characters spend a great deal more time in inn rooms than in my homes because of their placement in cities. Finally I’m decorating them with some basic decor.
Here’s a frequent stop, the Mara’s Kiss Public House in Auridon with previous and new decor.
Old.
New. Needs more little details. A 30 item limit for this room.
One of my favorite inn rooms is the Rosy Lion in Glenumbra.
Except for the chair I just purchased from the Crown Store, these are all items crafted by my Khajiit. I tend to love making rugs and lights above all things. I can make quite a few beds now, and also rugs. The two most important decorating items for your home and hovel.
High on my list of games to revisit is Call of the Sea. It’s a gorgeous pure adventure game. I need to find my notebook for this game (I take lots of notes) before attempting to advance but I took a few pictures for today’s post without trying to actually solve any puzzles.
The picture of this I drew in my notebook looks so much like this. Insert the emoji that has tears of laughter coming out of the icon’s eyes.
My drawing did not help me.
Searching tents, the codes came up yet again.
I decided to do a little exploring in case I could just slide past these puzzles because I was tired.
A long rock path is a dead end with a nice piece of art on the wall.
The path does lead you to a great view of the shipwreck.
Must find previous notes.
System Shock
I had a good plan to take out the Cyborg and Turret in System Shock.
So easy. Draw the Cyborg down the hall away from the turret. Take out Cyborg.
So ez.
Now, sneak up on turret really fast and just whack it down with my pipe.
Dead. It seemed impervious to my pipe.
So try that gun they gave me for just such a situation, right. Seven bullets!
Had no effect on it.
Next plan is to try to run past the turret. That will work.
I checked back in with the genetically modified folks at Citadel Station in System Shock.
I picked up a gun! Now for me, guns in games are good, but unless you’ve unlimited ammo, you don’t want to use them up. So I don’t use them.
I don’t know what was happening with some people when things went bad, but…
There’s a new mutant in town and his name is Cyborg Drone. He shoots blue jaggy rays from a bit far out. I handled the first one fine, but kept getting killed at the second one. A bot on a nearby platform takes you right down. Watch your back!
Speaking of upgrades, you can go, literally, into Cyberspace to get upgrades! Boink!
I wanted to give a further peek at the cozy apartment in System Shock. It’s just a great little place.
Elder Scrolls Online
One of my August goals in ESO was to finish the Dungeon Xi-Tsei, that I had begun and set aside. I had no problem there at all this time and finished with ease.
Outer Worlds
I had another couple of goes at the Maraudersby Hawthorne’s ship.
Use Crouch to Sneak Up. Detected. Dead.
Gun to try to take one out. Everyone shot back at once. Dead.
Clever, tried popping off a shot, then running back to the Lieutenant for help. They all came, never shot at the Lieutenant, shot through rocks, as a matter of fact. Dead.
Circled way around to the left, sprinted in, got three of the four. Dead.
My quest to find the scholars of the Antiquarian Circle led me to a new to me area: Western Skyrim. For some reason, I’ve never gotten far in the actual Skyrim game, but I spent quite a bit of time last night in the ESO version. Though I passed the initial tests of the Circle with flying colors, I need considerable practice in Scrying and Digging.
I spent time helping a Dunmer in a Peculiar Bottle try to regain his own form. There are more steps, but at least he’s in his own form to complete the Maelmoth Mysterium.
Next The Aspiring Scholar in which a young woman needs help getting rubbings from Dragon mounds.
I spent a considerable amount of time in Kilkreath Temple because I went in without having the quest for the dungeon, because, hey, the entrance was right there, and the quest giver was a distance away in a cave I hadn’t found. The second time through was a breeze.
Rounding off the evening, I found Lyris Titanborn in a seedy tavern, and began an investigation into smugglers. I have not done the Main Quest with this character. She’s not a soulless vestige who rescued Lyris. They’re just new partners.
I was immersed in the story and looking all around the landscape for places to explore, so I forgot to take many screenshots. More next time.
Level Up! My level 73 Retribution Paladin is the main character I’m leveling towards 80. I’ve been playing her almost exclusively, just dabbling in a few other characters. Let’s get her to Level 75 as the goal for August.
I also only dabble in the current version of the game, and haven’t any goals there.
Elder Scrolls Online Goals
I’ve modest goals for my Khajiit Templar in ESO.
I started her with the Blackwood Expansion and think I have done the quests there with the exception of two quests. One requires stealth and breaking into a criminal’s office. The other is in a dungeon I died horribly in and am not sure I’m up to it yet.
I think I’ll go fill in the Blackwood Map before moving on. It actually looks like there’s quite a bit to be done. Hmmph.
This Antiquarian Circle Quest came up and sounded intriguing enough. Who doesn’t want to join a Scholarly Society? After completing Blackwood’s map, I’ll go do this quest.
Lord of the Rings Online Goals
I did a foolish thing and boosted my main character. She’s someplace I’ve never heard of and is supposed to do who knows what. The place looks grim.
This character will get her Legendary Weapon set to rights, and her Traits set in August, is the goal. I’ll have to do some research but the Bowmaster set seems most like how I play.
This level 43 Minstrel has been around forever. If I knew how to play her, I don’t anymore. So, the play time this month goes to a fall back Hobbit Minstrel.
Since it’s Blaugust I’ll be revisiting some games I started then sort of left behind. Any progress is good progress. What a hoot if some of these only get advanced each August as post fodder. These will be from my deep Steam Library.
The Last Chapter Gaming Blog 