August 2023: The New Blaugs

It's been awhile since I've done a blog status post, so I totally missed announcing that DL managed to get our Guild Hall to level 20 in Neverwinter Online early last month! Also, it's been a minute since I've revisited anything Blaugust but it looks like there's a whole slew of new participants and while I'm not joining those festivities I'll be adding each one to my blog roll as time permits. Just as well since my list was whittled down to 28 over the gap period, so it's time for some new blood. Or new blaugs as it were.

Anyway, it's time for some cool links that I've come across. Mainly "I wish" links. Like, I wish I was this good at archery, or I wish I had Hikaru's precognition(?) of chess, or I wish I had the voice control of Avril Lavigne who can still sing like she's a teenager. Those are all super impressive for me.

If you prefer the funnies you can read through Warframe's red text shenanigans (Red text being the global chat alerts that take place when an update occurs). Or you can watch this amazing clip from an Indian daytime drama. Or relive Neon Genesis: Evangelion, condensed into 10 minutes of live action!

That's it for this post. Have a good day everyone! :)

Neverwinter Online: The return of Rothe can Hell Pit

Dipped my toe back into Neverwinter Online recently as the Hell Pit event is back on and has been adjusted back to levels where I can actually participate (unlike Dragonslayer, but that's currently end game so it's fine for now), which is a good sign. It had previously become too costly to be worth doing (because some moron thought the enemies needed to scale for power creep) here's hoping more things are toned down back to fun levels.

I was also surprised to find Rothe Valley had made a return having previously been removed. What's new? Other than the extra dragon area being gone and two new heroic encounters which are pretty tough, it's actually exactly the same as before - right down to the campaign path. They are getting more foot traffic through it at the moment thanks to the "battle pass" going which give some currency from those aforementioned heroics, but once that's done what are they going to do? Close the area again? Yeah, probably.

Warframe: Xoris and the Steel Path

After completing all the nodes in the original star map you are continuously harrassed invited to attempt "the Steel Path" which basically lets you do all the nodes again, but this time with super powered enemies (+100 level, armor, etc). Since I'm now Mastery Rank 18 (which is the same level as our guild hall in Neverwinter Online) I thought I'd give it a try - and promptly found myself overwhelmed.

I wasn't ready!

Which is great, as it forces you to learn more about weapons and builds to actually handle the increased threat which now includes acolytes of the Stalker invading every five minutes or so. It's still early days but I've found a solution in the Xoris, the frisbee Nef Anyo gives you during the rather early "Deadlock Protocol" quest. Using a heavy build to capitalize on double explosions (because apparently warframe frisbees can explode AND still come back to you) I've Firewalker Loki'd my way through a few of these now, with a Scourge primary to corrode the ones that need some armor reduction before throwing the Xoris at them.

It's good that there are five steel path alerts that take place regularly too, increasing the odds of finding a squad to go with. What I've noticed though is that in all of them I'm the only one using non-prime / non-lich gear. Maybe that will be my thing, to try beat the steel path without any primes. They're a pain to collect / pay for anyway. We'll see how we go. In the meantime, my reward is the Xoris totally obliterates everything in most normal missions now which is pretty sweet. :)

Neverwinter Online: Dragonslayer

There are some nice freebies that come with this and even more (time limited) freebies with the current Jubilee event that are worth logging on to collect.

Dragonslayer itself is a continuation of the Draconic Rage / Dragonbone Vale which is easily summarized as "there are more dragons that need killing". Thus a group of Dragonslayers have setup shop in a small new segment of the city and are offering dragon hunts which in theory are pretty cool. Especially since you're supposed to get good gear from it, and the item level requirement to participate is pretty low (18-22k). 

As someone with characters on 44-45k item level I'm here to tell you that's a lie. To start off, you must kill two baby dragons (one at a time) who both have 26 million hitpoints. Sure, the fight might not be so hard but expect to be bored for the next 15+ minutes (per dragon). Also, you MUST SOLO THESE to progress.

After these are the adult dragons who you can face with two friends. Now if you have strong friends and are strong yourself this is fine. If you are doing PUGs, good luck. As expected the adults are far stronger than the kiddies and come with new moves, many of which are denial of play abilities which in design terms are the most terrible decisions you can put into a game. In a board game that would look like "skip a turn or skip half your turn" while waiting to participate.

Here, the dragon roars and you are stunned / can't use abilities or attack for 3 seconds. Or it eats you and you can't do anything but take damage for 3 seconds. (Both of which they can spam)  Or you get killed, get booted from the fight, and must wait until everyone else dies (or wins) because you cannot rejoin at anytime. And with fights that last this long, you can expect to be waiting and/or be undermanned for a long time.

Curiously, each fight consists of three phases - between each the dragon flies off and you must chase it to fight a handful of little minions. It's almost like the designers KNEW the dragon fights were so dull that there needed to be something different in between, but alas as it stands it's still a piece of shit garbage content that I can't believe got put to live.

On the flip side, people with already high item levels seem to be enjoying the (5 man) ancient dragon hunts (unlocked after killing lots more adult dragons) which leads me to believe this mod is really targeted at them and not at pleb level players like myself. Anyway, since you're logging in to claim the freebies (right?) give it a try. You'll know right away if this is for you or not.

In my case its definitely not. I'll just wait for the next lot of free catch-up gear should it ever arrive, because if you keep making content for end level players - you'll end up ignoring everyone else. Good luck with that.

Return to War(frame)

Morphius convinced us to get back into Warframe which I'd stopped playing in 2014 and boy, has it had a ton of updates since I last played. Better UI, nice quests and excellent songs are all part of the reason it has basically booted out Neverwinter Online as my daily MMO and GTFO from our Friday night rotation. We've just been Warframing the whole time. :P

Since I'll likely be posting more about this in the future I thought I'd start off with my two current favorite frames sitting in my "stable":

Loki - my starter frame who excels at being invisible (which does bonus melee damage if things can't see you). I've also geared him to be pretty much permanently invisible, wherein the energy he spends to "cast" invisibility naturally regenerates before the invisibility wears out. This makes any mission where you can take your time killing things (or specifically killing one non-boss thing) super easy, and any mission where you don't have to kill anything a walk in the park. There's actually a surprising number of those in this game!

He doesn't kill things as fast as other frames can though, and isn't very tough if things can actually spot you which means I take cover a lot if I have no energy while every one else just sprints headlong into battle.

Titania - a fairy themed warframe earned from the Silver Grove quest who has abilities to cleanse harmful conditions, do minor heals and hold an enemy in stasis but my favorite is shrinking to fairy mode, which uses a different set of (stronger) weapons, makes her very hard to hit, and best of all puts her in archwing flying mode even in areas you aren't meant to have archwings! This makes a good number of agility challenges moot, and nullifies the danger of many enemies, including bosses, who don't think to look up.

Again I've tried gear her to be as energy efficient as possible to stay in fairy mode because at regular size she's about as vulnerable as the Loki but that's ok. Seems I prefer function over DPS at the moment.

Anywho - if you haven't played Warframe for awhile you might enjoy "We all Lift Together", the intro song and cinematic when you first get to Fortuna on Venus.

Neverwinter Online: Draconic Rage (and Siege lock)

Using the least amount of effort to keep players in game.

If Draconic Rage isn't the least inspired content Neverwinter Online has offered so far, it certainly is the laziest (or thriftiest) development wise. "A World First" is an odd title to this first chapter which has zero story. While similar in format to Echoes of Prophecy where you are trying to fill a progress bar to unlock loot before time runs out, Cryptic has taken the approach of not adding any extra filler in this time. No extra quest boards or NPCs in town to visit. All you have to do is run skirmishes and dungeons.

This is great it you already do that anyway to get your daily astral diamonds as it means your usual grind already counts as participation! For those of us who don't do those however, bleh! The time investment to run those dungeons is annoying, and I'm not sure the prizes are worth dragging myself into skirmishes to clear it. I'm wondering if Cryptic is regretting their decision to kill some of their content because even me - who doesn't play these much at all - finds the handful of skirmishes quite repetitive. I wish they had a bigger pool of variety to choose from, then I remember that they DID.

Just to hammer home the point that they want you to login and stay in for metrics, the latest Dragon Siege event has a notable difference: the "daily" defeat 2 dragons and beat 3 heroic encounters now fails if you log off mid way and forces you to start again where as before I could happily jump between my two characters to finish those gradually as I saw fit. I don't know who keeps making the decisions there, but they are doing a great job in making their MMO steadily inferior to everything else.

January 2022: You will be Okay

Now that I'm done with Deadfire I've been finishing off Neverwinter Online's Dragonbone Vale campaign and hammering away at Pathfinder: Kingmaker which is a really long game . Certainly feels like it anyway. I'm still going through the steam freebies and have a few more suggestions to post but that feels like it's running out of worthwhile content too. I mean I'm only searching for free, Non VR, English single player games that interest me.

I do question the stupid discovery queue though. Despite explicitly selecting to never see "coming soon" titles, they are still being displayed - possibly because I've just "killed" so many games already (put on the ignore/never show me again list - around 9500+ titles). The result of showing me something not available or "coming soon" is... I kill/ignore that title too - which means when it does become available I won't see it anymore. Good way to shoot yourself in the foot there Steam/developers. Oh well.

I'll finish up this post with some musics for you all, starting with Peter Hollens doing a Disney and Anime medley, Phoebe Bridger's version of "Friday, I'm in Love" and "You will be Okay" from Helluva Boss which is a really great song.

Most Viewed Posts in the last 30 days:
GTFO: R6C2 - Blind (Main)
Interactive Stories
GTFO: R6B1 - Hexahedrons (Main)

Proving once again that maps and walkthroughs seem to be the best types of posts. :P

Neverwinter Online: Dragonbone Vale

Where Cryptic removes something else!

For those who have been doing the Echoes of Prophecy temporary "campaign" this is the culmination of your efforts! For those that didn't, well - Elminster needs you for a war against the Cult of the Dragon. Or is it just another battlefield in an ongoing conflict? Whatever. The Thayans and silly cultists are trying to raise dracoliches in what feels to be a shinier replacement for Dread Ring, except this time you can cosplay as Spiderman while treasure hunting! Don't worry though, the Dread Ring is still there (for now).

Magic grappling hooks for everyone!

What has been removed was the old enchantment system which went from rank 1 to 15 and needed absurd amounts of work / pay to get to the higher ranks. For those who don't play the game, each character is decked out with around 30 of these. Upon this modules release, congratulations! All those are now garbage! Well at least the ones from rank 1 - 9 which was the bulk of mine. If you have rank 10s and up you can trade them all in for points to get one or two of the NEW enchantments (at rank 1). Joy!?

I can just imagine the guys at Cryptic going "please work hard on ranking these ones up too (because its way more work / pay), we promise not to remove them in the future...", hiding the fingers crossed behind their backs. It boggles the mind why anyone gives these people money with all the shit they pull / remove but hey, as a free to player - I can just enjoy the ride!

December 2021 Review: Make Good Choices

It's been a bit of a board game month for me which is why you'll be seeing a lot of board game reviews and play throughs here for a bit. Also coming up is my play through of Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire which I could squeeze in while completing Neverwinter's decently rewarding and SUPER easy Echoes of Prophecy campaign (even the legacy weekly tasks award the currency for this one).  

Our Friday night gaming continues with GTFO and now Mech Warrior Mercenaries 5 beating down Ghost Recon Wildlands. Mech Warrior is an interesting game, but boy did we plug in a lot of mods to make it work for co-op.

Anyway, hope everyone has a Happy New Year! One that will be better for everyone, and one that we can all make good / better choices in. We'll see how we go! :P

That's not a good choice. Who the heck makes these ads?

Most Viewed Posts in the last 30 days:
Steam Discovery Queue - Crusade of the Free XXV
Steam Discovery Queue - Crusade of the Free XXVI
Steam Discovery Queue - Crusade of the Free XXIX

Ah, posts from that silly crusade. As I mentioned previously I'll still be posting about free games I find on Steam but this time just the ones I find interesting.

October 2021 Review: The Next Freedom

Happy Halloween! Lockdown lifted this month which is pretty good morale wise as it means our board game nights can resume! I was hoping to also resume adventures in Black Desert but I keep getting "bin\blackdesert32.dat" is broken even from a fresh install. What the heck? As such I've instead been helping Elminster out in Neverwinter Online with the Echoes of Prophecy campaign and it's just as easy as Shintar said - even starting late I completed the first progression bar whose rewards include a catch-up artifact set.

I also thought to myself - hey, Epic games gives free games every week - surely Steam has some free ones too? The answer to that is... Yep. A LOT. You can expect me to be posting about those soon.

Most Viewed Posts in the last 30 days:
State of Decay 2: Leaderfall
September 2021 Review: Death Count
Blade Runner (1982) and Blade Runner 2049 [tied 3rd]
The King (2019), Outlaw King & Kingdom (Korean TV Series) [tied 3rd]

NWO: Sharandar Episode 3 - The Odious Court

So that's where the bad smell was coming from.

It's safe to say that this final chapter of New Sharandar is the best, despite the new area being less visually appealing than the previous ones because its basically a swamp. That said, props to the very vertical Grung village which is always an extra pain to code NPC pathing. A few things make this one stand out: first it has an early and fast 25 currency repeatable, which is my  favorite of all three zones since it's literally step through portal, take ten steps over there and fight a boss.

Easy to access and no mobs make it perfect, much like Baphomet's weekly. Next up the repeating tasks are less painful this time around since some of them send you to the other areas. These allow for some breathing room from the repetitiveness. Lastly, the final story instance has some really pretty rooms, which kinda counteracts the ugly swamp it sits in. The finale also makes a good story end, much like Barovia's quest line where you feel you "won", prior to entering any dungeon.

The best area in the entire episode.

Those really are my favorite type of story structures. I absolutely hate stories where everything leads up to a ten man instance because suddenly the same enemies you've killed thousands of are more heroic than you. That absolutely kills the vibe for me. Lastly to keep players around, you can hunt not-so-rare critters in each of the three zones to gain some companion gear which is a decent lure if you don't already have said gear.

All up, not bad - but the release structure for New Sharandar simply sucked balls. Here's hoping it doesn't happen again.

Insight: The final repeatable quest lets you skip straight to the hag fight, which means you don't need to go through the earlier stages over and over.

NWO: Sharandar Episode 2 - The Lazy Devs

Erm, I mean "The Soul Keeper".

Carrying on from the last episode, this elves decided to open a gate to an even SMALLER adventure area with mad redcaps (mad caps) and oni who both raise the ancient dead and corrupt a few of the living. Each week, prepare to grind out around ten repeating tasks which you can only carry two at a time for the most part and are mostly variations of each other (per alt), to eventually encounter a semi-cheating mini boss who can hide and damage you for decent periods of time.

The zone and inner instance dungeon bits look great once again and sure the displacer beasts are nice, but there's almost nothing to do here. Story wise I don't think this would even count as filler. So many poor decisions, such lazy devs. Or maybe not lazy, simply reassigned to Magic: Legends.

The biggest problem is you only unlock the weekly (25 currency reward) towards the end of this campaign. I might have been less negative if it was one of the first ones like in the previous chapter. Anyway, if you ever wanted to experience a beautifully polished turd of a release, this would probably be pretty close. Can't believe we lost the old Sharandar for this garbage.

Insight: Ugh, this is so stagnant and repetitive you may as well do what I did and try out Black Desert Online (or literally any other game) instead.

NWO: Sharandar Episode 1 - The Iron Tooth

Troll dentures are a thing.

Years after the war against Malabog, adventurers are sent to investigate why the crossing to the Feywild is being closed only to find a "new" enemy force attacking the upgraded elven city. I use "new" a bit loosely as the few new enemies can be counted on one hand and are only encountered in a few instances.

Everything else are just graphically updated powries, trolls, cyclopses, fomorians and the like from old Sharandar and while there is a possibility they are being mind controlled this time around that doesn't stop us from murdering their army encamped at the ruins with intense prejudice - because the elves want them dead, and we obey. Who is mind controlling who now? :P

Graphically, everything is pretty and I do like the first map / portion of the map we are allowed to get to, particularly the remains of Celadaine's tower. Also good is that the grindy quests are quick to do and often overlap making them fast to get through. While there is a high volume of enemies there are paths you can use to dodge them you want which also gets a thumbs up. Campaign wise it is rather light though, which is probably good for those who have many alts as you will reach the weekly limits pretty fast (an hour per alt at most if you are taking it easy).

All up, it's fine. Is it a good enough replacement for old Sharandar? That's a question best answered after we see the next two releases of this module but right now, nope - simply because old Sharandar released in one big hit and not in this piece meal format.

Insight: Characters with ranged attacks will also have an easier time with everything. Also, on your second return to the Feywild Crossing, if you bring Xuna with you expect a really fun fight at the end as she will wake everything up.

Today I Smiled: I scared the Boogeyman

It's a great feeling when Strahd's pet wraith "the night terror", which serves as a wandering boss in Barovia who hunts down and kills people, decides to run and hide from you in its little sphere of invisibility.

I see you! Get out here and fight me!

Obviously its AI broke because after declaring it was chasing me, I spied him fleeing down the hill at the ruins of Berez and get stuck in a corner. Took some coaxing before he finally came out to be slaughtered. Hehehe.

That's almost as good as the time I was harvesting cyclops eyes from the soon to be "old" Sharandar, and upon killing a single cyclops was surprised to find it dropped two eyes...

Neverwinter Online: Four Life Hacks

Here are some easy tips to speed up the grind which you may or may not already know about.

Press 1 for OK, Press 2 for Cancel

This usually applies even when the option isn't denoted, like when you are trading bounty currency for something and there is no quantity slider. Instead of clicking on OK each time, press 1 to speed up the process.

Aim above the person/item you want to interact with

Helpful if there's a stack of players (or just one mounted on a T-rex) in front of that banker, vendor or gate transition.

Check old campaign stores

Especially if you've been doing the weekly legacy quests, you may have enough to trade for boxes of AD. While you are at it, visit the seal vendors in the market as they hand out AD as well, and if you are really desperate - gold bars are more readily available in Protector's Enclave now to trade on auction.

Avoid fighting if you can (now easier with the free faster mount speed)

Fighting eats up most of the time. If you can brush off the damage and don't need to interact with anything, just run past. In those instances even if the trash does catch you, its quicker to annihilate them simultaneously rather than handle each individual group. Remember you can also speed up some vertical drops by simply jumping down - and if your character can evade, you can even negate all of the damage.

NWO: The Redeemed Citadel

Competitive grinding.

Hot on the heels of Path of the Fallen, players are now tasked with helping celestial forces in reclaiming their stronghold which surprisingly simply entails killing a boat load of devils and demons, and occasionally retrieving lost angel gear.

It's not much to look at.

The type and number of rats to kill vary per immediately repeating quest though you will gain more currency by doing the one off weekly challenges (or relentlessly hunting the BHE apparently).

There is a leader board that will show how far from the top 100 you are - all those players at the end will be getting a shiny vorpal enchantment in addition to whatever tier of support/favor reached. Theses are spaced out in denominations of 7000. Having played around six hours, I got 1600 for two characters so... yeah. Guess I'm missing out this time!

Insight: If you are serious about the ranking stuff, you'll need to chase that Avernus BHE down regularly.

Neverwinter Online: Path of the Fallen

Introduces cars to D&D.

Continuing on from the hell-bound Vallenhas Stronghold, players can explore more of Avernus is this mod which supposedly has the blood war between devils and demons raging. What's it like? Surprisingly a lot like Borderlands 2 actually, especially when it comes to the design of vehicles, wasteland and domiciles.Yes. Vehicles. Soul-powered vehicles.

 You get a car, you get a car, everyone gets a car!

It's not as terribly genre breaking as I initially feared and it's quite fun to race around the wastes. They do take it a step further with the radio though. Yep. Hell radio has talk shows, ads, and a lot of heavy metal music. Devils have electric guitars apparently.

What they don't really have is the blood war, instead letting the player base dictate which side "wins" per cycle by just keeping track of the type of mobs they camp. I do like that there are a bunch of quests that you can accomplish without combat though, or easy enough combat to progress the campaign. Big plus for that.

Also, I agree with Shintar that while most of the campaign is ho hum story wise the finale is pretty good. All up this mod isn't great but it isn't too bad either (unless you are trying to win the blood war to get a rare boss to spawn, in which case happy grinding).

Insight: Try to kill cambions first as they summon those very damaging flame circles.

---

Blaugust Bonus: "If you could change anything about one of your core fandoms, what would it be?" -Belghast

Despite it not being too bad, I still would have preferred it if cars and more modern stuff didn't get shoved into the realms of Dungeons and Dragons.

Neverwinter Online: The Rage of Bel

Some like it hot, but this is just confusing.

Since the hell spawn are experiencing continued failure at Vallenhas (and most likely in the Hell Pit), Zariel the lord of Avernus has sent her best general - the titular Bel - and his legions to turn the tide... which results in a ridiculous failure, not just for the demon army but for the programmed design. Every two hours you can enter a dark rift to fight his troops.

That section currently lasts around 10-20 minutes (thanks to today's patch as it was much shorter previously), afterwards it closes and you can fight Bel himself for an hour (there's a handy timer on the top right part of the Avernus map to help you plan your day). The hardest part of his fight is basically not stepping on any spot you or your team have previously stepped on. Melee centered characters need not worry too much, as the idiot will teleport to you if you move far enough away but ranged DPS will certainly have an easier time in his last phase.

Don't like a team? Bel is quite accessible for solo players too. His only "tricky" part is the catapult section, where he patiently stands still while waiting to get shot. If you have a blue flame on your head, you are the one that needs to find a magic rock and bring it to the catapult which is easy enough. If you are in a team and don't have the blue flame, your job is to keep clear of any loading zones and catapults which often means slow lazy circles while evading the sky fire.

Casually strolling with blue boulders while Bel waits patiently.

Oh well, as usual its a bit short on the story and quite heavy on the grind for the new upgradable buff item. There's also a bit of waiting thanks to somewhat moronic design but I wouldn't expect anything better from Cryptic. Thumbs up though for once again jumping straight into the boss fight. I quite like that!

Insight: Load up on some demonic overloads from your stronghold gem shop if you have it to make your life easier. Probably a good idea to have them for the hell pit too!

Neverwinter Online: Hell Pit - Lazy Rogue Guide

Are you not entertained!?

The Hell Pit event is back as a prologue to the next module episode: the Rage of Bel. Since it seems this is going to happen quite frequently, I thought I'd put a quick guide of how I go through it as a "lazy" rogue. By that I mean my free to play build and gear is nowhere near BiS and while I'm currently at 22k iLevel, the event drops you down to 20k anyway so it shouldn't really matter. I'll just be going through the basics here which is enough for me to get by so, let's get started!

The objective in the Hell Pit is to survive a number of rounds which last 2 minutes each. To be precise 2 minutes of devil or demon mobs endlessly spawning until you can wipe them out when time is over. During the first seven days it is 5 rounds. The next set adds bonus rounds with harder enemies that literally turn most of the ground red and eventually you get boss rounds too. Every round a random power up is dropped into the arena. When invoked they each last 30 seconds (other than the Nuke which is one shot):

-Speed looks like a boot. If you don't have anything better then use it as soon as you get it. Mostly worthless, but it fills up your action points fast for daily power spam.
-HP Regen looks like a heart. Another use ASAP if you have nothing else - don't expect the regen to keep you alive.
-Nuke looks like a skull. More useful than the two above as a crowd cleaner, but takes time to channel and aim. Be in stealth when you use this.
-Invuln* is a shield. It is the best power up and one you should save for the later rounds. Feel free to use it if another shield power up shows up.

*I call it invuln as it certainly makes you feel that way. On the bonus and boss rounds though, it'll help keep you alive but you still need to be on your game.

Required "BYO" Gear: Health stones or health pots. Being lazy I don't dodge everything. If you play the game for long enough (and don't go into dungeons - I'm lazy) it gifts you with enough free health stones to have a decent supply. Health pots are cheap enough with gold but obviously aren't as good. Ideally you always want to heal early - around half health you should be spamming that quickslot heal button. And yes, I mean spam. Lag will sometimes miss a keypress that can lead to your demise. Spamming works just fine as there are cooldowns on all those items preventing you from double drinking.

My basic strategy is: kill the ranged guys. You want to drop your attacks on them or in their vicinity. If your powers are on cool down, feel free to stealth/dodge/run away without attacking to simply heal up until you are ready again. Mobility is key here - you are a fighter plane doing strafing runs. You don't want to get stuck attacking in one spot for too long.

Abilities I use (Executioner path):
Sly Flourish - used sparingly as a finisher, avoided for most of the fight as it roots you in place
Cloud of Steel - ranged "pew pew pew" attack. Useful for attacking at a distance, especially when safe inside a smoke cloud
Smoke Bomb - enemies in it cannot attack, making you safe from most melee guys. Ranged foes can shoot into it though so drop this beside the ranged scum!
Blade Flurry - decent damage to the area around you, best used when mobbed within smoke bomb
Path of Blades - AoE attack that keeps going while you move and/or are stealthed. Perfect as mobility is key.
Shocking Execution - when you want something dead, but I rarely use it in favor of...
Hateful Knives - not the best daily power for rogues but what it has greatly is RANGE. Need to get out of a melee swarm or a sea of dangerous red zones? Target the ranged dude half an arena away and watch as you effectively teleport to him and stomp on his face.

I can teleport to the furthest guy behind the mob of cultists with Hateful Knives.

That's really all there is to my method. I'm sure more "pro" players can do it without using any heals of power ups but this way suits me just fine.

April 2020 Review: Self Isolation

It turns out self isolation and working from home isn't so bad for me, though I am one of those putting on a lot more weight! It's the "See Food" diet I tell ya. I see food and I eat it. Anyway, I've started trying to do some exercise but as they say "you can't out train a bad diet". The isolation affects people in different ways though, and I thought I'd share this particularly creative and funny music videos with you.

Lastly, thanks to Blapril I've added a whole bunch of new blog links on the side there. Please have a look when you have the time! I'll be trimming them down as usual starting next week.

On to the task list...

    End 2020 with less weight (+2 kg from last month, running total: +6 kg)
    Make 1 web comic page (stiiill nope)
    try make a boardgame (idea written out, needs testing)

BACKLOG
How to Survive 2 [gift]
Tomb Raider (2013) [free from Steam] (done)
The Lords of Midnight [free from GOG] (had enough)
Flight of the Amazon Queen [free from GOG] (done)
Sang-Froid: Tales of Werewolves [free from GOG] (done)
Doomdark's Revenge [free from GOG] (had enough)
Sunrider: Mask of Arcadius [free from GOG] (done)
World War Z [free from Epic Games]
Figment [free from Epic Games] (done)
Tormentor x Punisher [free from Epic Games] (had enough)
+Hob [free from Epic Games] (had enough)
+Gone Home [free from Epic Games] (done)
+Close to the Sun [free from Epic Games]
+Sherlock Holmes Crimes & Punishments [free from Epic Games] (borked!)
+Just Cause 4 [free from Epic Games]
+Wheel of Aurelia [free from Epic Games] (had enough)
+Idle Champions of the Forgotten Realms [free on Steam]
+For the King [free from Epic Games]

Board games:
Zombicide: Black Plague (10/11)
London Dread (had enough)
Waterdeep: Dungeon of the Mad Mage (6/13)
Mice and Mystics: Heart of Glorm (0/11)

BLOG STATS

One Year Ago

There was a fire at Notre Dame and Brexit was still perkalating away. Also finished up my Dying Light diary and started the tale of the Black Pits.

Five Years Ago

I was posting the Ambitious Dynasty story and was getting heavily into Payday 2. I also made one of my most popular posts so far: the Neverwinter Online Vigilance Quest Guide.

Most Viewed Posts last Month
Enderal: The Petrified
Enderal: Ark Siege
Enderal: Pulling Our Strings

Top Search Terms last Month
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Seems like a lot of interest in my Enderal play through last month, though I'm very curious now as to what this "infernal cape" is. :P