Bio Break (original) (raw)
Gearing up is all well and good, but it’s not the only game in World of Warcraft. I like me a good clean map, free of all of those extra exclamation points, so I carved out some time to focus on those with my DK. My vow is that I won’t even touch an alt until I’ve done a full quest sweep of all of the zones. And why wouldn’t I, when kobolds like this little guy needs my help?
I actually ended up running a raid too, maybe my first on-expansion one since… Legion? I don’t do raids that often. But LFR made it easy enough to hop into one, and I figured one run was worth it for the great vault unlock. It was OK. We downed the three bosses but I didn’t get any loot.
Spiders don’t like buckets on their head, I learned.
After Blizzard did some of its delve tuning, I started pushing up in tiers. I was happy to clear Tier 6 pretty easy now and had hopes for future success in this field.
Last week’s weekly reset was pleasant, as I was able to net a 603 chest armor piece from the Great Vault. Although for as much as I busted my butt filling out that whole thing, it did feel cheap to realize that you can only pick one (1) item from it. You’re just increasing the selection, not the overall rewards. So I don’t think I’ll be killing myself as much for this going forward.
So far in The War Within, I haven’t touched any of my alts, mostly because I wanted to focus on a single character for a while and get my bearings. But with the timewalking dungeons last week, I felt it was time to dust off my other four characters and see what I could do to get them to 80. I guess Blizzard did a bunch of Hunter changes between the launch and now, because I had to rejigger a bunch of her talents and reorder her hotbar. Again.
But after an unsatisfying night of playing a Hunter, I gravitated over to my Druid — the character I thought I wasn’t even going to play this expansion. And thank goodness I reconsidered that, because it was actually fairly joyful coming back to this character and getting her going to 80.
I mean, never say never and all that, but I really don’t see playing more than two characters in this expansion right now. I barely have time to play one character, and a second one is only permissible with the warband system allowing for pooled progression. I start to go cross-eyed thinking of trying to juggle five characters with weekly quests and all that.
As my River-Hobbit Captain pushes further into the 40s on the Angmar legendary server, I’ve been experimenting a lot with her build to find something new and tailored to my playstyle. Unlike my old Captain, who specced blue line, she’s deep into the red tree. My favorite thing to do with her is to quickly round up a half-dozen mobs, then use a chain of cutting attacks to make them all bleed. I’ve also been trying her out with spear-and-shield for some extra survivability — and because River-hobbits get a spear bonus. And because spears are cool.
But I think I need to stick to two-handers, because Captains already aren’t pumping out that much DPS. Plus, with Fearless difficulty happening (including Sauron’s happy eye beams nuking the combat area) and wraiths popping out of nowhere, damage is more important than some extra armor. I need all the edge I can get. I’ve even taken to haunting the auction hall to see if there are any gear upgrades for a reasonable price.
With an eye on the calendar and Moria’s expected opening in December or maybe January, I took back out my Hunter and started zipping her around on a quick virtue tour. Sometimes you need a ranged class as a flavor change from a melee, you know? Laying down a spread of traps and decoys, then pulling enemies into them with arrow attacks produces beautiful chaos.
I also — and this feels very out of character for my tastes — began to fool around with a Brawler named Sypsonica. This is a class that I don’t think I’ve touched, ever, but if there is a time to experiment with characters on the legendary server, it’s now before Moria comes out.
Meanwhile on Landroval, I finished up all side quests in the Neaths and only have the Tales of the Kindred quest series to complete… until the expansion arrives, that is. These are four meaty series, kind of side adventures, of which I’m only in the first arc.
Hey, that’s a totally normal sight that doesn’t make my skin crawl and want to bolt for the surface!
I got this fantastic hat as one of the new Tales of the Kindred quests rewards and immediately knew I had to put together an outfit for it. I’m a fancy lass!
It’s the start of the week, so why not start it off right with some great tunes? Enjoy your latest Bio Break Mix Tape, a random collection of awesome songs that I’ve discovered lately and want to pass on to you to enjoy too…
With the daring rescue of a cannibal named Milza who was in trouble about a half-day’s journey away, our Randy Random-dictated colony is now up to five souls. But winter… winter is coming soon. And our weapon stock is pretty pathetic. We are trying to research up to guns, but it’s slow going. Maybe over the winter. At least we’re not starving.
No lie, the first winter was a bit rough. Lots of snow, lots of temperatures in the -20s F, and a raid that ended up wounding most everyone in the colony. But we made a cute snowman, so everything was OK! Oh, and we got a few more guns, kidnapped a dude to brainwash him, and rescued a transport crash victim (who also joined!).
Unfortunately because of all of the extra people and perhaps some bad planning on my part, we completely ran out of food by the 10th day into winter. And with so few animals on the map because of the cold, that put us in a hard state and some people began to starve. Then Randy sent me cargo pods chock full of corn, and we were suddenly given a new lease on life! Well, for a few more days at least.
You best believe that when some animals wandered onto the map, we went on a colony-wide slaughter spree. A grizzly bear and five muffalo appeared the day after the cargo pods, and we got them all with some focused fire. That set us up with enough meat for meals to last for a week or two.
Come spring, and we were up to seven colonists with nobody dying of starvation. I went way overboard planting crops, but we also continue to progress in research toward fabrication, added a dedicated crafting room, and started strip mining the few hills in the area.
I *may* have been excessive with my planting, but in my defense, it was pretty frightening to almost have the whole colony starve last winter. Better safe — and corny — than sorry! I just wish I had room for all of this.
Poor Milza, he’s a hot mess of a human being. His left eye got shot out during a raid, he’s got a prosthetic leg, and now he’s permanently infected by body-altering (and quite painful mechanites. And he’s one of my best hunters!
Well, all of that didn’t matter, because Randy decided to throw a raid of six robotic Scythers against me — and we had absolutely no chance. We took one of them down before the other five cut through all seven of my colonists, the husky, and even the Man in Black who showed up to help.
It wasn’t a fight; it was a massacre. As all of my colonists bled out, the robots spent the next day systematically dismantling the base I took two years to create. Game over. Blah. What a bummer. I actually felt a bit of rage at this one, then walked away to cool down.
While I’m not completely flailing about in The War Within, I still don’t feel as though I have a proper footing yet. I’m searching out the endgame, picking and choosing what works for me and my playstyle. Happily, there’s a lot from which to choose and plenty that is accessible for dumb Death Knights like me.
So I’m forming a weekly routine, doing some of those bigger quests on Tuesdays after the reset for a shot at much better gear, then mopping up any world quests that look rewarding. After that, I’ve been trying to do one heroic dungeon and one delve a day, and side quests and random map exploration after that. That’s more than enough to keep me busy.
I’m hoping that delves do become very viable as a solo option, although I know I still have a way to go at my pace.
The sheer amount of side quests, other quests, upgrade paths, and explorables is almost overwhelming… but it doesn’t feel as bad as it did with Dragonflight for some reason. Maybe because I’m more determined to stay on top of it and chip away at all of these to-dos. But let me tell you: I haven’t even thought about bringing in any alts yet. Not until I’ve finished up all of the non-repeatable content on this character.
I got that Delve Diver’s ship that everyone else gets, but you know what? I still love it. It reminds me a lot of the old engineering helicopter/plane thing, just a bit more compact and detailed.
Season 1 kicked off last week, ushering in another wave of “holy crap there’s so much to do, what do I do first” anxiety/excitement. I’m bound and determined to progress in delves, and at least for now, my gear is climbing northward.
Speaking of gear improvements, my very first world boss in this expansion spat a trinket at me that ended up being my first 600+ ilevel item. Every little bit helps!
On the Angmar server, my Captain cleared level 35 and trotted merrily to Trollshaws for a stretch of adventuring. I can’t tell you how pleased I am that I’ve been able to put together a really good suit of armor that doesn’t look too cumbersome or overdone. Just enough to make her look like she’s a fierce fighting machine, with a splash of color and cloth.
We were talking in kin chat about our guess as to when Moria will open. The consensus is “early December,” which sounds about right, but it could also be in the new year. In any case, I have plenty of time to get to level 50 and accomplish everything I want to do in Eriador before moving on. It’s nice not to have to rush and still be in the same level range with everyone else.
I normally wouldn’t quest or deed too much in Trollshaws because of navigability issues, but I’m in no rush and the scenery is soothing. I figure I’ll do Trollshaws proper from 35-40, then pop down to the Angle to quest and deed from 40-45. Then it’s a hop over to Eregion for the rest. Nice and neat and troll-filled.
In my opinion, there really are only two good things about Trollshaws proper. The first is that it’s a pretty zone with a great wild autumnal feel to it all. The second is that practically every critter on the map is part of a bunch of a daily quests to kill 6 of whatever. You can top off the zone quest meta pretty easy this way.
However, Trollshaws is really due for a revamp. It’s way too hard to navigate with all of the gorges and specific paths and obscuring foliage. And the quests here are… well, let’s just say that they’re from an early, clearly rushed period of LOTRO’s development and leave it at that.
Once I finished what I wanted to do in Trollshaws and got to level 40, I figured I was good enough to enter the Angle and do a full zone sweep of that area.
Often I simply stop to drink in the environment. It’s a big, big world out there, and I’m just a small Hobbit.
After a month-plus absence from Landroval, I’ve decided it’s time to come back for at least a little bit of questing every day. My Minstrel only has one of the Umbar Neaths sub-zones to do (the temple/vaults area) and that special storyline that went with it. But it needs to get done, and after I finish, I’ll dust off my high-level Lore-master and start working her through the expansion as well.
It’s the start of the week, so why not start it off right with some great tunes? Enjoy your latest Bio Break Mix Tape, a random collection of awesome songs that I’ve discovered lately and want to pass on to you to enjoy too…
For my next Rimworld run, I’m going to tackle something that’s intimidated me for a while yet I think could be a lot of fun — and that’s to play a game with Randy Random as the storyteller. He spawns all sorts of unpredictable — and even random — events at unpredictable intervals. Something to keep you on your toes.
With this, I’m going to go with the standard three-pawn Crashlanded scenario, pick my three out of the eight colonists presented (no rerolls), accept a random site, and play on commitment mode.
I ended up in a remote tundra area — not the best biome, but it could be worse. I don’t know what was going on with this ship, but half the colonist options had the “wimp” trait. Anyway, I got a fast-moving teen girl, a middle-aged lady with asthma but some great stats, and a ship tech who’s a wiz with construction and a light sleeper to boot.
The site is… OK. It’s very OK. Not that many hills, which stinks for mining, but plenty of wide-open spaces, plenty of berry bushes and healroot growing, and both a ruin and a patch of rich soil right at the center to help start my colony. Oh, and I got a husky and even a book, so that’s a good starting hand right there. We got to work ASAP planting and building and hauling.
Things remained blissfully quiet as the trio built up a small but functional base. By summer, we had a power supply, a ton of potato crops (and some cotton) in the ground, had a cooler and kitchen, and were harvesting all of the berries and healroot on the map. My next main concern is getting enough leather to make parkas for winter.
My first bit of randomness came when a pack of four alpha beavers charged into the area, intent on chewing down all my trees — and then I got a one-man raid a few seconds later. Thankfully, both of these were easy to handle.
I was an idiot and started building batteries in a room that wasn’t fully enclosed yet. Then it started raining and sparking fires and explosions. Fortunately, only one of my colonists was lightly burned.
It’s about time for an unforced error, starring yours truly! My research, doctor, and construction maven Sarai got a shooting bonus, so I thought I’d have her go plug some caribou to get leather. That angered the whole herd, who stampeded all over her face. She actually survived and crawled halfway back until my husky could rescue her. Unfortunately, while the wound wasn’t bad, the infection that set in quickly overtook her and killed her. That’s a huge blow to the colony. The only upside was that I got a new recruit soon thereafter, as we finished brainwashing the raider we had holed up in the kitchen.
A few days later, a slaver caravan came through, and I bought 20-year-old Choto for pretty much all the silver in my supply. I needed the extra hand at this point, otherwise I would’ve kept my silver.
All in all, my first full week in The War Within felt and played out quite good. I made progress in levels, kept upgrading my gear, started plowing through the campaign, and generally didn’t feel quite as lost as I feared. And I figured out what I want to be when I grow up, which is the king of the candles. I think I could put even more on my head than this guy. He must have third-degree wax burns.
Ringing Deeps was fine — just fine. I didn’t hate it, but I’m afraid it’s going to be the least-liked zone in this expansion just because it feels like your standard cavern. Sometimes flying around in it became annoying because of low ceilings and pillars (coupled with skyriding, which always has you traveling at 88 mph without brakes). At least the main story felt zippy and didn’t overstay its welcome.
I’ve been looking forward to Hollowfall due to so many people gushing about this place. I guess a little artificial sunlight via giant ceiling crystal goes a long way, eh?
September’s trading post offers were sadly disappointing. There’s this whole pirate theme going on with them, but that’s a well that the TP has gone to a few times now, and I didn’t find anything that appealing. I picked up the above alchemy backpiece, mostly because I try to have non-cape options for the back transmog slot, but I wasn’t even that enthusiastic about it.
Starting to think that this entire expansion is a therapy session for Anduin. Yeah, he’s been through a rough time, but we ALL had to play Shadowlands, and where’s our Blizzard-mandated therapist?
Let me tell you, I let out SUCH a sigh of relief to hit level 80 and finish the campaign to get steady flying and unlock world quests. These underground zones are not made for skyflying at all, and now I can start working on gearing and other forms of progression.
Today I learned that talking fish don’t like to be kicked. Good to know.
After a few weeks of running the Farmer’s Faire quests every day, it was a joyful relief to finish up the final wrapper on both characters, get all of the rewards I wanted, and be fully done with it… at least for this year. I don’t mind that I did it, because it really did help with both furnishings and outfits, but it was a chunk of time out of questing and seemed to stall this character’s progress.
Before I got back to regular adventuring, I stopped over at the bank to pull out my four free keys to use on lockboxes. And lo and behold, I got this amazing Birder’s Outfit (and the matching backpack). I threw on this roguish cap from the Farmer’s Faire, and now I’ve got a new look. I think it’s fun!
My only real pet peeve with this server is that, at least for me, wraiths are almost impossible to beat solo on fearless difficulty. I like the difficulty level a lot — I truly consider it the “standard” challenge level for this game — but it makes the wraiths overpowering. So my strategy is either face it and die or run away. I’ve been running away a lot, and that’s a bit demoralizing.
Sure, I could downgrade the challenge level, but I’d be giving up some nice bonuses and future rewards (plus, I’ve never hit 50 or higher on a fearless character, and I’ve really wanted to do that). So I’m gritting my teeth and sticking it out, but I truly wish I had a fighting chance.
It took me a week longer than I anticipated — again, I blame the festival, also WoW — but my Captain finished up Cardolan and got that sweet deed mount. Why do I like this horse so much? All the pouches and bags, of course! It very much looks like a horse equipped with supplies for a journey. Now if only LOTRO would add tents that we could put up in a field!
It’s been on my to do list to spend some time with the revamped Lore-master, so I took a break from the Captain life to go back to pets, fire, and the combination of the two.
The other day I spent a couple hours on a column outlining the easiest virtues to get from level 1 to 50 that would end up more than maxing out your core five. It began as an intellectual exercise, but by the end, I realized I had just outlined an interesting leveling path — so why not try it out? I’m game!