Dragon Burnout

Neverwinter's Tyranny of Dragons is giving me some burnout on the daily dragon tasks, though it's mostly my fault for trying to do ALL of them everyday. Advancing the campaign is simply a matter of collecting a handful of different currencies until you have enough to unlock the next tier up, which might be the skirmish or dungeon or bonus keys for either. All that's already open for me, the true killers are the final two boons which each ask for around 100 of the various things to buy the required tomes of knowledge (unless you get lucky and have them drop in the skirmish or dungeon chest). It's easy enough to get 2-4 of the currency items daily. Usually this involves some menial task, a small instanced dungeon and hunting the various dragons. It's that last one that I'm finding annoying with a lot of down time (aka "waiting to have fun").

The five dragons required are open world encounters that spawn every 20 minutes and only hang around for 20 minutes (though realistically they die in less than 10). Getting into an instance with a dragon coming "soon" is often just down to dumb luck due to how the game works. Instances only spawn when the players reach the map limit with new maps getting a fresh 20 minute wait for dragon while instances that "run out" of players just delete themselves so there's no way to determine the time other than arriving at said instance and looking for yourself or relying on the zone chat people who sometimes enjoy trolling folks. It also takes 1.5 minutes before you can switch instances to try again. 

Then you have behavioral issues that come with this (outside the trolls). People ask for dragon times regularly, then get upset when no one gives them times claiming that everyone else is selfish. On the other hand, some people ARE selfish. Getting the good, rare drops from dragons can supposedly only happen when there are less than -x- number of players fighting it. Having a sudden barrage of players coming in means that no one will get -x- equipment so they become vocally annoyed. The same group probably gets annoyed when they run into instances with too few people because while you can survive the dragons with a bit of skill, killing one in the time limit with less than four people would be challenging. If the dragon leaves, no one gets anything.

Need an artifact in game like this I think!

Anyway, I've instead been working again in the Foundry and have finished another quest for people to try out! Might have to hunt it down in the "reviews" or "new" section though. It's another short combat focused quest that you might want to bring some potions to (as per usual). :)

Quest: Coeden
Short Code: NW-DM719BCQ5

Farcry 3: I've got the Stones

[Part of the Diary of a Marked One]

One of the things Dennis told me was to mold the jungle to the things I needed. By that he actually meant harvesting various flora for a variety of syringes and carving up every type of animal on the island to fashion into bags, pouches, wallets and pants. While I was at it I figured I'd do the same to all the pirates I came across, liberating the entire Western part of the island from both their outposts and radio tower jammers.

For extra cash I was also taking odd jobs of hunting critters (usually with bows) or knifing bad men for justice. Most of the money I spent right away on maps to the numerous "whispering" relics (yes satan?) scattered in each region, making it easier to track them down and absorb their power. Truly, finding these small carvings did more for my combat intuition than actually going into combat. It's magic.

Eventually I found myself standing before a large stone temple in the jungle, inside which I met Citra - the "spiritual" leader of the Rakyat tribe, who also happens to be Vaas' sister. She doesn't really think much of my combat skills, despite being able to single handedly do what her tribe can't seem to handle. Seriously, these pirates with automatic rifles are losing to komodo dragons and wild dogs. It's not like defeating them is difficult, so what does that say about the Rakyat?

Your tribe sucks.

Anyway, she made me drink something that made me totally trip balls as a sort of test, concluding with telling me to find what has been lost. Not sure I'll be able to find her mind, but in the meantime I decide to cleanse the rest of the island of the pirate infestation, clearing out relics, old correspondence from japanese skeletons, and odd jobs while I was at it - like sniping some sharks. Another particular highlight was to eliminate a pack of rabid dogs... with an RPG. That was awesome.

There can be only One

My journal through Borderlands! You can follow the rest of the story here!

Baron Flynt detected my arrival at the Salt Flats early and egged me on to come face him. I guess he was a little pissed I've been killing his dudes. Not wanting to disappoint I drove right up to his base, a huge abandoned mining machine, killed his vehicle patrols and base guards then went up to kill his bodyguards and finally him too. Even his rocket revolver couldn't stand up to me. However it was then that I learned I had been betrayed - the self appointed Baron didn't have any artifacts at all!

Commandant Steele or the Crimson Lance radioed in to clear up any confusion, stating Dr. Tannis was working for her. Marcus was wondering who had been supplying the good doctor since it wasn't him. Anyway Steele hoped that Flynt and I would eliminate each other but seeing that I'm alive, she just warned me to stay away before shutting down the communications of the entire region. Obviously that wasn't going to happen. I had planted a bug on Tannis the first time I met her, only an idiot would "give" away artifacts freely.

The blips led me to a heavily fortified Lance outpost. Fortunately there was a convenient "back door" cave nearby which I opted to use instead of the frontal attack. The cave was crawling with spiderants but they weren't that troublesome for my autorifle. I had to switch to my autopistol when I neared the Lance facility though since Master McCloud and two of his buddies attempted to stop me. The trio put up a good fight, but in the end I was the last one standing (and not a melted pile of goo on the floor).

I should have gotten a Quickening!

Station Lockdown

My journal through Stalker Online! You can follow the rest of the story here!

Turns out R4wEC, my new ecuadorian friend, had a lot of quests to complete in the Lubech station area so I decided to help him out - killing dogs and brownies mainly while keeping an eye out for spare parts wherever we travelled. He also advised me to steer clear of the Last_Light clan as they were "looters", an interesting assessment. It was slow going - back and forth in the mist but it was good to have someone watching my back and vice versa. Made a little money selling mutant parts at the Police Station but my funds were drying up pretty quick due to the price of ammo. Really need to find more "arts" soon.

They fetch a lot of money!

We were also both given a task to courier some documents to "the second post" wherever that was, but more alarmingly the gate guards today did NOT want us to exit this area due to the horrible mutants outside. Interesting indeed as I didn't think the gate would be "one way". Not a big deal however as we just took the tunnels underneath the wall, a quick trip since I had previously explored the whole of this underground area.

Once top side we decided to try again for "the city", blasting the mutts that got in the way and carefully avoiding wind and fire anomalies on the road. An encounter with a lone stalker of the First_Light faction startled R4wEC a little until I pointed out they were probably different clans. Got lucky on our approach as none of the other stalkers at the village us till we were in the protection of the guard zone. I say lucky because some of them were packing some scoped high-powered rifles, and we would have been easy pickings coming down the open road during the day like we did. In any case we made it and R4wEC went to get some shut eye while I headed to the chef for some chow.

A Good Place

My journal through Stalker Online! You can follow the rest of the story here!

As we trekked down a lonely road we passed multiple anomalies, some moving around. Larger mutated dogs prowled the streets here, and I took note that even my heavily armored companion was sniping them from as far away as he could. Eventually I saw where we were headed, a small village on the outskirts of the metropolitan area. Smoke from the chimneys were a tell-tale sign of life. Came across a poison anomaly on the road first which Pioyer pointed out had an "art". He instructed me to learn to pick it up which was quite painful, but I managed to get out before dying. With a short congratulation we continued to the village which boasted every single type of shop I've seen so far - what Pioyer called "the city". He explained that selling "arts" was the best way to make money and after selling the one I got for 30k, I really believed him.

He then took me to the local outfitters and got me to buy a backpack which allowed me to carry 10 kgs more weight. After advising what armor I should buy next when I had enough funds, he took his leave - having to rest up for future adventures. Alone again, I decided to explore the surroundings during the day, finding more brownies in houses and learning the big dogs had a bigger aggro range (nothing the AK couldn't handle though). Also found some small boars and a "small" spider (not very small) that Emile was talking about before as well as a line of guild houses nearby. Most importantly I bagged another artifact, this one selling for 50k! At night I explored the village more, and noted there were much fewer stalkers out here (counted around 4 separate people) which made sense.



Yeah, I'm not going out there at night.

Figured that since I was in pretty good shape equipment wise, I went for minor repairs then headed out to explore this region. Started my journey with the nearby burnt forest, taking down a couple of young boars on the way to a broken part of the wall. After crossing the rubble and climbing a rise I found myself on a road! I checked my map and saw that I could go anywhere from here so since old habits die hard, I decided to follow it North but soon got side tracked off it to explore some buildings I could see in the distance across the plains. 

Looks much better in the day.