Track is done with video

Hey errybody, we finished the track last night and I recorded this video of the ride this morning. It isn’t anything fancy with crazy loops or some shit, just our first expansion in our world and I’m pretty proud of it.

A couple unexpected things happened due to Minecraft being Minecraft (and us not really “completing” the track yet). It is long as shit, I know.

Big Things

Can’t talk much but here is a bit of what I’ve been working on. Playing Minecraft with my buddy and we want to just build shit. So we went through the Nether portal at our house (right side) and dug through the Nether world pretty far and made a new portal outside of a Fortress which led us to our second house (aka Portress Outpost). Once we had our second house up we began the long process of building a bridge from one house to the other. Yesterday we completed the bridge and got mine cart track across almost half of it (with powered tracks in there for speed boosts). We kind of plan on just making a big fuckin railway system all over the bitch. I intend to record a video once the track is completed just to show you how long it still takes to cross the whole thing even with powered rails.

If you look you can see a 2 block wide gray line going across the whole picture, and that would be our bridge.

Derpadoo

I have no idea what I try to get out of playing games. But Bonedead, they are just games, you say to yourself. Games are there to have fun, you tell me.

Oh you mean they’re not there to make you feel good about yourself because you’re the number one best motherfucker in the whole world (or you’ve wanted to be and never have been lol)?

I don’t know wtf I want, man. Work has been good, got promoted, finally doing real work and feel like I’m contributing to the company while also keeping the internal machine running (company books bro). It feels good. My social life is completely non existent though. I used to go to a bar on Tuesday’s and use some buy one get one on Tuesday’s only text message coupon, but I just can’t get that in to drinking like I used to.

Anyways, I bought Morrowind, Oblivion, and Skyrim this month and have played the crap out of them all. The series is quite enjoyable (though I couldn’t force myself to attempt to stomach the older 2 games). I did get lonely though, even though I play MMOs solo most of the time, I do still enjoy rare encounters when people try to talk to me or something and I ignore them completely most of the time. So, I tried to think of a game I haven’t played in a while that in my memory reminds me most of The Elder Scrolls. Now that may sound like a reasonable thought process, but here is the flaw. Thinking of a game I haven’t played in a while. So from the get go, I don’t REALLY remember anything about it, I am basing my judgement off of a vague feeling I have about a game that I played years ago. The game that I chose is AoC. Yep, you read that right, Age of Conan.

AoC has changed a bit since I last played. It is now free to play with a cash shop. I had 7/8 character slots filled and since I am a free player now, I can only unlock two of them. So, I obviously used the one empty slot to make a new character. There are 3 whole servers for AoC now. One is PvE, PvP, and like Blood and Guts Glory to the Emporer PvP or some equally radical title like that. I chose the crazy one not knowing wtf I was getting into (I still don’t even know the difference).

It is not really like The Elder Scrolls at all, save the questing in Tortage where the NPCs speak. Can’t pick up every little thing everywhere, even though there are a literal fuck ton of boxes that look like chests. It seems like half the mobs don’t even drop loot, though of course every one of them have a sword and shield. But these are things I can get passed, because I realized that there isn’t one fucking MMO that is like that.

I have only played two days or so (and rather lightly, I add) but am honestly not having a terrible time. I barely remember the story so that is good. I have mainly been sticking with the main quest (much like I do in TES) which means I don’t get quite enough exp all the time and need to go outside and kill some shit every now and again.

I have heard plenty of complaining in the Neil Patrick Harris channel (NPH, New Player Help) about people ganking and camping newbs. I imagine this is going on in White Sands as that is where I vaguely remember first encountering PvP way back when. This led me to avoid that area during daytime. However yesterday I did venture there and saw one guy half my level.

I do believe there are level restrictions on who you can attack so it shouldn’t be that bad. Anyways, I shall resume playing it some today. I’m hoping that I will run into one of these griefer guys and that he won’t be way bigger than me.

Oh, I am playing a Demonologist because it was the lowest level I had previously.

That’s it bitches, gtfo!

The Lost Skill

Recently I purchased Skyrim, which would be my first Elder Scrolls game that I’ve played (watched my brother play Morrowind a bit). I am normally not a singleplayer guy at all but this game really grabbed me and held on tight. Next thing I know I had two characters in their 20s having done maybe 25% of the quests. I wanted more without ruining the game by overplaying it. So, I bought Morrowind.

Morrowind looks a lot worse than I remember. It feels like playing in Anarchy Online scenically while having EQ1 models. The graphics are not an issue for me as I was here for the game. I haven’t gotten that far in Morrowind, I’m still hanging around Balmorra doing quests, and the main quest is taking me to Vivee (where I died and forgot to fucking save arg!).

The joy of playing these games in first person prompted me to return to a certain DF beta that may or may not exist. I finally realized that DF is just multiplayer Elder Scrolls without the ability to save. I should not fear the ruthless world.

Something I discovered while playing the Elder Scrolls games is that sometimes you can get ahead of yourself. Maybe you didn’t do enough side quests and focused too much on the main story. Maybe you saw something while travelling and veered off course and never turned back. Eventually you come up against a mob that you simply cannot beat in a fair fight (read: going toe to toe if your melee and killing it before it gets to you if you’re mage/archer). But, if you are determined you can use the tools you have to defeat it by not fighting fair.

We have been conditioned to forget that this is even a possibility with today’s MMOs. You pull a mob and kill it no problem, even if it is upwards of 5 levels above you. Oh, you accidentally aggrod 5 mobs your level? No problem, you can take them out.

We have forgotten what it is like to fail, what it is like to feel lost, and how to overcome those feelings by using the lost skill: your brain.

This revelation excites me greatly as I return to the DF beta that may or may not exist. In the original I rarely ever fought “medium” difficulty mobs. out of fear. I probably tried once and either died or almost died and just thought, well, my skills aren’t good enough yet for that. The problem was that it seemed like they were never good enough for that. However my time in The Elder Scrolls games has reminded me that I actually can defeat these mobs, through trial and error, with patience, planning, and execution.

I feel as though I have turned a new leaf, or whatever the fuck that saying is, and I gotta say that I like it.

Apparently Richard Garriott won’t take the hint

I’ve learned he is trying to get another game going with a kickstarter project fundraising deal. Not to mention all of the hype for it is basically saying how he made Ultima/UO and omg this game is gonna have stuff other games don’t because games have strayed since the old days and yadda yadda yadda. I really hope no one buys into this guys bullshit again because I am pretty fuckin over it.

On a side note I bought Skyrim and have been playing the everloving shit out of it. I usually stray from singleplayer games but hot damn is this one good.

Little Update

I’ve been playin D3 like a mad man, kind of. I’m Paragon level 18 which isn’t really high at all. I’ve done tons of key runs and done Ubers a few times. The first time it was just me and my friend in like MP3 or some shit (30% chance to drop mats for Hellfire ring) and neither of us got a single mat drop. A friend of my friends who is a big badass came and helped us out a bit. With him and his wife we were able to do some MP7 ubers a few times. I managed to get enough mats for a few Hellfire rings and am using one of them on my Barb. It unfortunately didn’t get good offensive rolls but the defensive ones were good enough imo to equip it.

The new patch came out Tuesday. They increased the drop rate of all recipes by like 400% (still don’t see any jewelcrafting ones though) and added some new recipes as well. The new recipes are ilvl 63 with a guaranteed base stat (str, dex, int, vit) and 5 random properties. Gloves, bracers, chest, amulet, and shoulders and the items crafted are BoA (though you can sell the recipes). Some of the items are worthless as most players will use Vileward for Shoulders and Lacuni Prowlers for bracers, not to mention most people’s ultimate goal of getting a 6-100million gold for a set chest piece.

I took a break this last weekend and was rewarded the other day when I finally returned. I found a 1080 dps Echoing Fury (1h mace) with dex and a socket on it. I was able to sell this for 2 million rather quickly. So now I have the most money I’ve ever had and am actually going to save up for my set chest piece (unless of course something shiny catches my eye). Taking my computer and kitty up to my friends this weekend for a shit load of farmin, should be fun.

Here is a link to my D3up page to check out my barb.

Time can heal wounds

In games, that is.

I’ve put LOTRO on hold for a little bit, I really do mean to get back to it sometime soon, but I’m just so caught up in a game that is finally starting to feel like it should have in the first place.

That game is Diablo 3. They made it easier to solo Inferno difficulty and also added a Monster Power setting when you choose to Change Quest. You first need to go into your options menu and check the box so that Monster Power will show up in the Change Quest menu. The way Monster Power works is it makes the monsters more, well, powerful. It also increases magic find, gold find, and I think experience gained (for Paragon Levels after reaching level cap, which also give you magic find, gold find, and a small amount of base stats).

It goes from MP0 to MP10 and also affects the drop chance of keys from Keywardens. Keywardens are new mobs that were added, one for each of the first 3 acts, that have a chance to drop a key. These keys are used to craft portals. There are 3 possible portals that it will open so you really want to have 3 of each key before making them so that you can spawn each of the 3 portals instead of getting the same one multiple times. As it will not craft a portal which already exists. In these portals are Uber bosses, bosses from throughout the game made extremely difficult. I don’t know exactly everything that can come from doing this but I do know that you can get mats to craft a Hellfire Ring. It is a legendary ring that is bound to account. It adds a large amount to a base stat (str, int, dex) along with some other random properties and 35% bonus experience. Quite the ring indeed if you get a lucky crit chance roll on it.

When I started playing again I was shocked to see that I could finally solo Act 3 Inferno. I was stuck on the big fart monster Glom or some shit of a name and I was able to kill him on my first try with my old skill setup. I have since changed my skill setup (exactly what I always wanted to not do, I know) and though I don’t have any sort of speed anymore (leap or charge) I still have my Whirlwind, Frenzy, Oh Shit Don’t Die button (with the rune to make my dmg heal myself) and Wrath of the Berserker. I swapped out leap for Warcry with the resist bonus rune, my ae stun was swapped out for Revenge with the rune to increase proc chance.

I started stacking crit and crit damage which increases your dps a crazy amount, like ridiculous. Then I found myself lacking vitality and resists (I was at 20k hp which is like, lol wtf are you doing?) which are very important. My buddy plays a Monk and found a nice guide that had some item wisdom that I found applied to my class as well. Since Chest and Legs cannot get crazy bonuses like crit chance and crit damage, it is best to find one with at least 70 of your main stat, all resist, a BUNCH of vitality (like a lot), and at least 2 sockets to further customize either more main stat or vitality. So I got me some of those and bam, big as fuck.

One of my main gripes was always not finding uniques (legendaries). Well, I can say that has been fixed as well, not only by buffing the legendary items (a lot of them used to be very fucking laughable) but I believe by increasing their drop rate. It may just be my extra paragon levels and monster power affecting the drop rate, but god damn, it seems to have improved a fuck ton.

In one run (act 3, clearing like 6 zones for loots and a keywarden run) I actually got 3 legendaries. One was a weapon I had just bought but it didn’t have the 200 strength mine does (so I wasn’t like, fuck I just wasted money), and I think I got 2 item level 63 Wizard hats (which both suck and don’t sell for shit). Other than that I found many other uniques over the past week of playing, most would not sell for ridiculous amounts of money, but it feels good anyways because it is just a matter of time until one of them is badass.

I must say I wish the Set item drop rate was increased as those seem to be the big dollars nowadays. Over the whole week only 1 was found by my friend and it was one of the things I had recently purchased from the AH, with not quite as beneficial to me stats rolled on it.

So I went from Paragon level 5 to now having 13, which is like 24% magic find increase and 24 more strength or somethin like that. Me and my friend just started doing MP3 before the weekend finished and though we did die a few more times than in MP2, we still kill things pretty quickly.

Here is my character sheet. I plan on getting some new shoulders and probably bracers next. Not sure what I’m aiming for but it feels like rares are out of the question. It seems like I gotta get two legendaries for those slots (thinking maybe Vileward and Lacunis but, not sure entirely) as legendaries just have more fancy bonuses by default and it is less about getting a lucky roll on stats.

Feels good man, it is kinda like playing D2 all over again, which is exactly what I always wanted out of the game. So it appears time really does heal wounds (because there was so much doubt about that statement hurrrr), even in games. I don’t say it heals ALL wounds because there is always going to be something that could be done in any game. But at the moment, I really don’t have anything to complain about and could see myself playing this for a good amount of time.