Category: Gaming

Bring on the Dragons

As I mentioned yesterday, I’ve returned to Guild Wars 2 with their latest announcement of an expansion and some encouragement from friends (girlvsmmo, that’s you) and I’m pretty pleased about that choice. When I returned I decided to work on the story line of my level 80 guardian who I leveled up through crafting, so she was on a level 10 story. Now she’s on a level 60 story which is where things get interesting (or at least it would be, if I hadn’t already done these stories a few times before on a previous account).

You know the deal, Dragons, Zhaitan, etc.

One thing I’ve noticed is that I’m getting a lot more dye rewards than I used to, and that’s pretty nice since I’m rebuilding everything. I still don’t know exactly what I should be doing that’s current, but with an expansion in the upcoming months I doubt it matters too much. So I’m working on simple achievements, unlocking sections of the map, progressing my story line and all that good stuff.

I’m playing my Asura Guardian, and even though I’ve played quite a few classes to 80 she’s still my absolute favourite (which is why I remade the exact same class / race combo on the new account). I love swinging my giant 2h sword around, and Asura just make everything fun.

Anyone else return to the game in the hopes of playing the expansion when it releases? What are you doing to keep yourself busy between now and then? Let me know in comments, and as always, happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself!

Expansion Excitement

Like a handful of other friends, I tuned in this morning to ArenaNet on twitch to listen to their announcement about the next expansion. It has been some time since I played GW2, but not because I dislike the game by any means. My issue is twofold. First, I am constantly struggling to figure out WHAT I should be doing. Because the game does not go up in levels, progression is an odd and fickle creature and is marked by other means. I have no idea what the current story is and whether or not I should be doing it – and why I should be doing it.

Second, I actually have two accounts. One is 4+ years old, started playing when GW2 released. I have a number of level 80 characters that I took through the game, unlocked the map on one of them, lots of crafting, etc. Then I worked for NCSOFT and one of the perks of that job was getting a copy of the game – and it came with a few bonuses, like the last expansion, some gems, and extra character slots. Things that I really wanted to make use of, so I abandoned my original account and created new characters. I got to level 80 on two of them by crafting, and not adventuring since I had already done the content on my original account. Of course that meant that I now had two level 80 characters who had unlocked zero waypoints, done zero personal story, and had done pretty much nothing except browse the auction house for gear and buy crafting supplies.

That’s where I stopped playing. I didn’t want to re-play through content that I had already completed on my old account, but I had no idea where to take the new characters.

Enter 2017. My time is incredibly limited and I’m trying to save some cash by not paying for a subscription. I’d really like to invest in a gaming laptop so I’m on a pretty strict budget. Anyway, GW2 doesn’t have a subscription, the game is beautiful, and why not return right before their next expansion comes out.

So here I am.

My level 80 Guardian (my favourite character to play) is currently working through her level 30 personal story. I’m not sure if I should be doing these in a different order (ie: latest content first, then backwards to personal story when I run out of stuff to do) but for now I’m going to do things in order. We’ll see how long that lasts. I only have an hour or two to play a day, but it should be enough to make a little progress. Today I managed to get from my level 10 personal story to level 30, so that’s something.

Playing? Excited about the expansion? Already bought it? Let me know in comments, and as always, happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself.

Still Gaming – Sort Of

Life has been kicking me around for so long now I don’t even know what I was doing last, but I do know that I want to get back into the swing of things, back into being me. So here I am. I have done pretty much zero gaming these past few weeks. It’s not that I haven’t had the time, I do, but I’m just emotionally spent and so I end up watching Netflix or reading for an hour and then going to sleep. Or tossing and turning and dreaming about wildfires (that was last night). Either way, I love gaming and I love writing so it’s time to suck it up and get back to it as much as I can with the turmoil that’s going on (if you want to know details you can PM me on twitter / facebook or email).

Yonder – love this game. I’m unfortunately limited to gaming from my MacBook for the foreseeable future, which isn’t completely horrible because I can still stream from my PC to my MacBook, but lets face it, this is not a gaming laptop. I’d love to save up for a proper one but that just isn’t in the cards right now (if you spot a fantastic sale on a gaming laptop that delivers to Canada please let me know). I’d love to get rid of my desktop completely and just use a gaming laptop as I don’t see things changing any time soon for the next couple years. Yonder isn’t compatible with my MacBook but I’ve been streaming it and that works out pretty well.

I’ve also started playing RimWorld again. I downloaded a whole slew of new mods (more details about that later) and happily enough the game doesn’t have to be streamed to play it. So long as I don’t fry the MacBook everything should be good. I haven’t played a lot since the A17 update, a lot of my older mods were broken and I was waiting on them to get fixed, but now some time has passed and the majority (of the popular ones at least) have been updated. I’d love to stream my game play, but for now it’s just not possible (unless I get that gaming laptop, then I will gladly set up some streaming) so you’ll have to live vicariously through my gaming blog posts.

Games coming up? There are a few of them, but honestly I have my hands full with the games I’m already playing. My renewal for WoW comes up soon and I’m still working on my deeds in Wurm Unlimited on the Sklotopolis server. We took down a drake on Saturday and I won another set of gear – but passed it off to the next winner because I’ve already won some and I wanted someone else to get the opportunity. People sort of looked at me oddly for passing, but I felt confident in my decision.

Anyway! This is a post to basically say yes, I’m still here, and I do plan on getting my post counts back up there again. It may not be every day, but we’ll see how it goes. As always, happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself!

Yonder – Where did you come from?!

I had never heard of this game before, Yonder, but then it started showing up in a few Twitter feeds that I follow and of course as soon as I heard it was a Steam game I had to check it out which lasted not even a full day before I ended up getting the game.

Yes, it’s good.

Well, that depends on what you’re “into” as far as gaming. There’s no combat which for some people means they simply won’t enjoy the game. You basically run around as a shipwrecked person doing fetching / finding quests for townsfolk and eliminating “Murk” (the big evil) from various places while playing hide and seek with sprites that you collect.

There’s crafting, there’s housing (in a way, you’re given a farm to run), there’s collections, quests, exploration, and all of it is bundled into a game that looks absolutely beautiful. There’s seasons, weather, and so many little tiny details that I have no idea how I had never heard of the game before.

The best part? It was on sale (already) on steam, and even without the sale it was under $25 CAD. That’s a big win for me.

Oh, and there’s fishing, too. Because what fun is a game like this if it doesn’t have fishing!

If it sounds like something you’d like to play I’d seriously consider picking it up. Give it a try, if you don’t like it get a refund from steam (with their guidelines and rules of course) but I know I’ll be sticking with it and continuing to play. Every so often a gem wanders into my little ring of static games, and this is most definitely one.

As always, happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself!

Pet Battle Dungeons (and other fun)

Today was an odd mixture of accomplishments. I finished off a few raids I wanted to get done before things reset on Tuesday, obtaining a few upgrades (mostly artifact items for my weapons, and a wrist piece) and I got my dailies done. Then I attempted to clear out some quests from my journal, wandering around aimlessly in Broken Shore because I still have no idea what’s going on there.

I managed to unlock more traits on my DPS weapon which is pretty neat. I’m close to “finishing” the basic traits on my holy weapon, so that’s nice too. I’m not punished too much for spreading my artifact points all over the damn place.

Eventually the evening was dragging on and I decided I wanted to attempt one of the pet battle dungeons that were added not too long ago. Friends who know me are aware that I have a lovely little fascination with pet battles (and collecting pets) with 603 unique pets in my collection. Of course not all of them are level 25, or rare, but maybe one day. I haven’t done a lot of pet collecting in Legion (if any) so that number should go up before too long.

The pet dungeon I decided to try was Wailing Caverns, and it was awesome – but a few things frustrated me.

There’s an achievement for completing the dungeon, but you can’t get it on your first attempt through with the weekly. Instead you have to try to get it on your second attempt, the attempt that doesn’t let you heal any of your pets. Great achievement, but it should specify that some place.

Completing the weekly did give me a token to boost a pet to level 25, so that was nice, but I found the dungeon very long. Maybe it’s just because I wasn’t sure what pets to use and it required some trial and error, but it took a good amount of time to defeat the final boss. Of course that’s also a rewarding feeling, but I was hoping for something I could dart into and not worry about if I had to leave early.

Still, I love the idea, and hope they can make a few improvements with time and practice. I only had time for one run through and I don’t think I’ll have the pets required to make a run without heals, so for now I’ll be happy with that.

I also collected enough essences to boost my 940 legendary to 970, yay! Almost forgot to mention that.

So while I don’t have a lot of time to play, I AM making progress. Slowly. In my own time. It’s still a pretty nice feeling. As always, happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself!