So, Diablo 4 did release, and it was indeed fun. I reached level cap on a couple of characters, aaaaand..
Got burned out on the game before Season 1.
It’s definitely a great game! I think it goes back to Diablo 1 and 2 alot more than Diablo 3, but it feels like they’ve learned quite a few things from 3 that they use. I think that if I hadnt played as much during the betas, I would’ve not been as burnt out, but here we are.
As I was looking around for other games to play after having been burnt out, I found a couple of other games – Brotato has been a lot of fun, Starship Troopers: Extermination was fun for a while, I tried to pick up Solasta again, but was missing the last DLC, Palace of Ice – which ofcourse had the things I wanted to play, the Tiefling. My idea was that I’d create a completely broken party.
– As a tank, I’d go with a Dragonborn Silver Oath of the Motherland Paladin – as a Silver Dragonborn, they’d have resistance to Cold Damage and a frost cone attack, and as an Oath of the Motherland Paladin, they’d get access to fire spells at level 3, gain a fire resistance aura for the party at level 7, and become immune to fire at level 15. Perfect cold/fire tank!
– The rogue I want to be a Thief, to be able to open any locks for me, and at level 13 they get access to magical items, disregarding class restrictions. Perfect for backstabbing and dealing damage as well. This one also had access to the language Spy’s Codebook, which I thought would get quite handy!
– I went with a Half-Elf for the Charisma bonus and boosted by Dexterity and Constitution with the extra points, which I hope to make her more useful with a few weapons – but the main point was for her to be my partys “talker” and boost the rest of the party with all of her songs and inspirations. I was actually thinking of bringing her down the path of College of Hope for heals, resistance buffs and ressurrects at level 3. Not quite a Cleric, but close enough, and I kinda wanted a bard for the novelty. Never had a bard in my games before.
– And the reason I needed that DLC – I wanted to make a Tiefling Sorcerer with Lightning Draconic bloodline. That way, I can get Misty Step at level 3 “for free”, extra hitpoints per level and 15 in AC for not wearing armor at all – which is pretty damn good for someone who’s going to go full glass cannon! – and at level 6 I get Lightning Resistance for an hour, and at level 14 my Tiefling Sorcerer sprouts Dragonwings. Her background is also “Academic”, which gives her access to using Manaclon Rosary – which is needed to enchant items. For spells I decided to go into a variety of elemental spells in the beginning – Fire Bolt, Ray of Frost, Shocking Grasp, Burning Hands – and eventually I’m just going to specialize her to do as much damage as possible. She’s not going to be a glass cannon anymore in the end, she’ll be a nuking fortress, hopefully.
This way, I can get fire resistances to everyone, my tank is immune to fire and resistant to cold, my sorcerer is resistant to lightning, my thief is a magic item-user who knows the way around locks, spy-ciphers and can hide anywhere in order to go in for the kill, and a smooth-talking bard who can buff and heal, as well as talk the party out of any dangers. Oh, and the coolest part – I’ve got a flying devil as my main damage source, a legitimate mini-dragon as a magic tank, a thief who can see in complete darkness, a bard that cannot sleep and thus can always be ready for healing or buffing or debuffing. I also made sure to try to get all languages between them, and only missed out on Gnomish and Druidic, one being a racial language and one being a class language, neither were actually used in the main campaign anyway.
Ofcourse, I got stomped by the fact that I could not create a Tiefling due to the lack of that DLC. When I eventually got around to buy the DLC, Baldur’s Gate 3 had already come out..
So I brought my party over to that game!
I decided to get Karlach, the Tiefling Barbarian, and respec her into a Paladin. Then I decided to actually do keep a Cleric in my party, so Shadowheart gets to stay. I do wonder if it’ll affect the story if I respec her into a bard…? If I even can, that is. As a rogue, I guess Asterion is quite doable – he’s an elf and a thief already, however, he doesnt seem to like my actions very much, as I’m running around helping people. I think I need to have him stay put during dialogues from now on, or I’ll tank my reputation with him completely. If he doesnt work out, I’ll probably just pick up.. I dont know, literally anyone else. As for “myself”, I decided to go full Tiefling Draconic Bloodline Sorcerer, but I’ve got to admit, it’s the first time I’m playing Sorcerer in any of these games, and it’s… definitely a challenge.
As of right now, that party is only level 4 though, the main reason is that I have not been playing Baldur’s Gate 3 as much as I would have liked. It is fighting for my time with family and another game.
Namely, New World! I’ve been deep-diving into that game again this summer, got offered to join a company and thought about it for a few days, decided to throw myself into the deep end and join them. Me, being the nervous, anxious wreck that I am, talking to other people? Joining the same people day after day and get to know them and play with them?
Where’s Lunnainn and what have you done to him?!
I ran into them a couple of times during some event runs, and spoke to them. Eventually I ran into them again while doing some PvP, where I was supposed to capture forts as part of my Season Journey. I showcased my absolute lack of knowledge in anything non-healing related and they still offered me a spot in their company, and for some reason, I decided to actually take the step. Usually, I’d get terrified, log off immediately and stop playing the game, but something, not sure what, got me to disband my one-man company and join theirs. They had been really friendly and fun during all the other occasions I had ran into them, and they were patient with me being the absolute newb I was, so I figured I’d give them a real chance.
I’ve been playing with them basically every day since, a couple of hours during the evening after the kids have gone to sleep – instead of watching movies, play mindless ARAM’s in League or playing something else, I’ve been playing and learning more about New World.
I was playing at launch for a good couple of months, but the lack of players to play with and the lack of endgame back then had me quit. I tried to come back a couple of times – for instance when the Blunderbuss released – but nothing really stuck with me, and at those times I was playing other stuff – most notably, Elden Ring.
This time, though, it was different. The had implemented “Seasons” which I thought would indicate that the game had come a long way. They had an entire new region to explore (although, that had come out last October – I just didnt play any, and I was knee-deep in other games, like Diablo 4 beta preparations and other stuff), and while there werent that many more weapons, I knew there was a Void Gauntlet that was supposedly pretty good to pair with a Life Staff – the healer weapon – and besides the Blunderbuss and Void Gauntlet, there was the Greatsword. On top of that, there was bound to be atleast one new expedition I had never done, in Brimstone. It turned out there was actually more than that, though – Barnacles and Blackpowder were definitely one I didnt even know about. I also always played solo, randomly teaming up with other players in the area doing the same quests as me, or queueing up for the same dungeon as me, but that was the extent of my experience that was “playing with others”.
But this one guy. He was outgoing, but also respectful enough to not be pushing when I didnt jump on the offer to join his company. He still offered me a spot in the group for events – just like I’ve teamed up with any other randoms, and he didnt get offended when I turned down his offer to join his company. The usual reaction I get from turning down offers like that is just insults and tantrums, but he was understanding and said that if I changed my mind, I was more than welcome. As it turns out, almost a week or so later, I actually did join them. We met again while doing this Fort Capturing as I said, and he asked me if I had thought about his offer to join, and I decided to..well.. take the leap.
They had discord info placed in the company tab, and I joined immediately. I had warned them that I was nervous and didnt really liked to talk much, so while I definitely could join in on voice chat to listen and acknowledge shotcalls, I was probably not going to talk much – which was also completely fine, the important part was for them to being able to shotcall and not having to take the time to type, basically. My thoughts were along the line, “this keeps getting better and better – what’s the catch?”, and honestly? So far, it’s been none. They’re a wonderful bunch of people. The company leader even joked once about me saying I was the silent type who ended up talking almost the most.
They let me play as their dungeon healer for the entirety of the summer, even though one of them was actually their main healer originally – apparently, quite a few people in the company had joined them as a healer and branched out into other roles – and while healing for them I actually built up a decent storage of useful items. Mostly for healing, but I do have a few un-upgraded tank sets, and a couple of upgraded damage dealing sets as well. Actually, all the way up until a few weeks ago, all I did was healing. We’re mostly running what is called “mutations”, which is that every week two new dungeons gets chosen to get mutated – there’s three modifiers to each dungeons that makes it harder, and while really hard – compared to the regular dungeons I’ve been running until I joined this company – they’re also really rewarding to do.
A couple of weeks ago though, the two dungeons that was chosen werent really what anyone of us wanted to play, so we joked around and got one of our main damage dealers to agree to heal for one of the dungeons for the entire week. And while he healed, I was running damage dealing, and honestly? It was more fun than I thought it would be, and I got to understand that role better – which in turn actually helped me understand the healer role more! At the same time, our tank and another damage dealer swapped places as well, and as this new composition, we actually managed to get through all the mutation levels and beat M10 – the highest difficulty – as this role-swapped team. In both dungeons!
The week after, the teams “original” main healer wanted to heal again, which meant that I was playing as a damage dealer again, which was completely workable – I was fortunate enough to being able to run the same gear I had as a healer for both weeks, with the exception of the Life Staff, which I just swapped out to a Great Axe with Focus as a stat. This meant that I was able to run the highest mutation dungeons with my healing gear, do crowd controlling with my Focus-stat Great Axe and deal damage with my Void Gauntlet, and just focus on leveling up my “actual” damage dealing gear. And unfortunately, I managed to get that levelled up only at the end of that week, but I did manage to get a few runs in with armor that gave me dexterity, a Great Axe for crowd control and Greatsword for damage. I ended up 6th place on scoreboard that week!
We even succeeded in doing a speedrun of the hardest dungeon, The Ennead, with me running that gear! If it can be called “succeeded” in getting silver-score that is. My weekly runs were over at that point, but atleast I was able to help find the path we’d take, how many points we were able to get – the “groundwork” for an actual run. In the end, the company managed to get 9th place in Speedruns, at 16:53 for gold in M10! Not my win – but I’ll still take it!
This week though, unfortunately only one of the dungeons work with the damage dealing sets I’ve upgraded – Ennead required two sets, one with Ancient Ward defenses, and one with Corrupted Ward defenses – and it’s also the one dungeon that has the most difficult mutations this week. So far we’ve been running the other dungeon – I do admit though, I kind of expected us to decide to run the more difficult one – so I’m back at running healing again. This time though, I’m saving my upgrade material, so that if I need to upgrade any other set to run as a damage dealer, either next week or just later this week, I should be able to upgrade an entire set immediately. I’m halfway there though, I need about twice as much materials for one entire set that I have currently.
All gear that can be upgraded starts out at the lowest of “gear score” 590, with the maximum “gear score” being 625. The amount of materials needed to upgrade any item from 590 to 625 is roughly the equivalence of the rewards you get from managing to get gold in M10 around one and a half times – fifteen times for a full new set – and so far I’ve got almost half, so probably I’ll have enough by the end of tomorrow, if we manage to squeeze in four gold-runs tonight and four tomorrow evening as well. Meaning, come weekend, I’ll be able to be both healer and damage dealer in either dungeon this week!
Sorry for the terrible screenshot quality – it’s because I run two games at once here just to get these shots.
I dont think they’ll ever read this, but..
Napkin, Fleur, Andicus, Jefery, Hellraizer, Obed, Ansved.
Thank you guys so much for all you’ve done for me. Thank you for teaching me all you’ve taught me.
And most of all, thank you for the friendship and company you’ve given me.