[Warframe] MR24 plus Bits and Bobs

As you can see in the screenshot there, I made it to MR24 last night in Warframe.  I haven’t been posting much lately, though, as the game’s settled more or less into a comfortable routine for me, so I haven’t been taking screenshots, and nothing really out of the ordinary has been happening that sticks in my mind and makes me go “oh, I should blog about that.”

On top of that I actually got a bit bored of Warframe for a few weeks and more or less just logged in daily for the login counter, then logged right back out.  Oddly, what got me back in was watching a streamer who recently picked it up and seeing his joy in the game reminded me of how I’d felt when I started it too.  I say “oddly” because I’ve never really watched streamers before, always having the attitude that I’d rather play the game myself than watch someone else play it, but not this time.  Such is life, no?

BTW, I’m not sure if this is a bug or intended, but in the MR24 test if you let the things kill you and re-spawn, you come back with your Amp weapon which you don’t initially get.  Having that makes it a lot easier from that point forward.

This was my final quest. I’m all caught up!

I’ve finished the planet map for Eris, have 1 spot left on the Kuva Fortress, and still have those 2 last spots on Sedna to finish up, and then I’ll have the full star chart completed.  After that, it’s all about the waiting for the Fortuna and Railjack expansions to come out.

There’s still plenty of stuff I can do though — I’ve still got 3 frames and 2 archwings to rank up, several archwing weapons, and about 30 or 40 standard weapons still, so I’ll easily be able to hit MR25 once I get around to all that.  I am not yet max rank with the Ostron or Quills in Cetus, and I could use some arcanes.  I’d like to finish unlocking all my waybound focus slots eventually as well.  I’m about halfway there right now.  I’m also semi-sorta planning to get all the syndicate mods and items for all 6 syndicates.  I’m at positive standings with 4 of the 6 right now, and plan to eventually start swapping around sigils so that I can bring the final 2 up into positive territory, while still maintaining positive standing with their “enemy” ones as well.  That will take a bit of doing, I think, but I also think it will be worth it.

This was a fun graphics bug!

I’ve done a bit of Civ5, a bit of Stellaris, and I even joined the alpha (well, the email says alpha, but in the game there’s a button that says beta, so… I dunno) for “Survived By” which is a sort of Gauntlet-like top-down “kill the hordes of enemies” game with retro-looking graphics.  I never really like Gauntlet much, so I don’t know if this will do anything for me, but… we’ll see.

I also installed and tried out Path of Exile.  It bugged out the moment I created my 1st character.  The very 1st thing you’re supposed to do it pick up your starter weapon from the ground.  Everything says “left-click it to pick it up” but I couldn’t do it.  The mouse never registered it.  Couldn’t click on the item itself, nor on the text of the item.  Nothing worked.  I could click on the NPC next to the weapon and talk to him, but without being able to pick the weapon up I couldn’t leave that area.  I’ll try un- and re-installing it to give it another go this weekend, I think.

I’ve also started up Idle Champions of the Forgotten Realms.  There’s really no game there — it literally plays itself.  And yet, it’s somehow oddly compelling.  How weird is that?  There’s really nothing to say about it, since it plays itself, but it somehow trips that Skinner Box trigger for me.

I backed Fractured on Kickstarter, and it looks like it met its funding goal with less than a day to go, so I’ll be trying that out if/once they release it.  I had good luck with the Shadowrun game I backed a few years ago, so hopefully this studio will do well with this game too.

I thought this color scheme on Nidus made him look appropriately diseased/infested. But I forgot to set my Helios to match. Oops!

On the mobile gaming front I’m playing 2 versions of the same game — Marvel Strike Force and Star Wars Galaxy of Heroes now.  They’re by 2 different companies, but they are functionally identical.  They’re simple turn-based team-fighting games where much of the battle is won or lost simply by the characters you choose to make up your team — to the point where a lot of co-workers who play them (which was how I got started too) will simply use the auto-battle feature for the actual fights, as there’s not really much need to pick the right skill at the right time on the right target.  Sure, you can play manually and do that, and in the Strike Force raids that’s actually a good idea, but for the most part it doesn’t really matter much.  They’re an amusing diversion for 10 minutes a few times a day, but they’re pretty much fluff, not anything I’d seriously get into, I don’t think.  I fell in to that rabbit hole with Astronest, and while I was still enjoying that game when I uninstalled it, I’ve also never missed it either.  I think these 2 games will be the same.  One day I’ll simply be “done” and I’ll uninstall them and never look back.

In other news, FFXIV is having a “4 days free” comeback promo running until August 2nd.  I’ve still got it installed, and my daughter’s been bugging me to play that again, so I’ll probably hit that up this weekend too.  Maybe see if I can’t try out the new dungeons and catch up on the MSQ.  We’ll see.

So that’s where I’m at right now.  Happy gaming out there!

[Warframe] Picture Post

I’m mostly playing Warframe still, but occasional forays into Stellaris.  I’m still trying to get a feel for the flow of the game since the Cherryh update 2.0, and now we’re in to 2.1 already.  I’ve also been trying more Civ 6.  I’m still not enamored of the loyalty and golden/dark age mechanics, but loyalty doesn’t really come in to play much, and dark ages really only affect loyalty generation, so they are actually a lot more minor than they sounded at first, so can quite honestly be mostly ignored, so it’s not as big a deal as it 1st felt.

But anyway, I don’t have a whole lot to say about the gaming world or anything, so… here’s a screenie gallery from Warframe —

My “213” amp. The last amp I’ll ever need, though I really ought to make a 313 and a 123 to gild for the Mastery Rank xp someday.

Yeah, I bought the viking skin for Frost. It just looks great!

An Ayatan statue in the wild, after a container lid got blown on to it

MR 22 achieved!

Guess I’ve seen this tileset’s kuria before.

This one was new, at least.

Saryn 3.0 was really insane. I never actually fired the Zarr on that run, just spores and used the whip to spread them. She’s been re-done again and is now being called “Saryn 3.1” and she’s still pretty nuts, just not quite so much as this.

Oberon’s a lot more nuts than he’s given credit for too. Most of that was from his Hallowed Ground ability. Small numbers, but lots of them — they add up. Plus a Condition Overload build on the Silva and Aegis worked nicely along with it. Radiation from the Hallowed Ground, guaranteed cold from the taxon, then viral and heat from the Silva and Aegis = “god tier” damage.

Night fishing with Luminos Dye

I’m so leet I hunt eidolons with my fishing spear! Okay, not really…

Painting my friend with my mining laser

Just have Patient Zero left…

My doppelganger peeking around the corner

And hanging from the ceiling too.

MR23 test completed with 1:54 remaining.

And yes, I’m officially MR23!

I really like this helmet for Equinox

This event boss was a few weeks back. Same as the Jackal fight on Venus, though with the twist that you can’t shoot his legs to make him vulnerable, but you have to hack bursa mobs that spawn around the edges and then have them shoot its legs instead. Not hard, but kind of annoying.

My friend got a riven mod for completing the War Within quest, but he was bugged out when he tried to unveil it, so he gave it to me, and I was able to unveil it just fine doing the exact same thing we’d just done before. Go figure. And he got a Lanka riven that even with this crappy start he can sell unrolled for lotsa plats becuz LANKA!!!! Or he can keep it and re-roll it himself. Whatever…

There was a “Gift of the Lotus” last weekend that awarded rifle riven mods. I unveiled mine by getting 9 consecutive headshots in the plains of Eidolon while in archwing. That took a few tries, but I got it down. Came out crappy, but the 1st reroll turned out really nicely.

My friend got a riven also, but his unveiling wanted 9 consecutive headshots in the Plains while in archwing *and* solo. Since he doesn’t have archwing unlocked in the plains yet, and he’d kinda glossed over the “alone” qualifier the veil quest had, so I took him in and popped down my archwings for him, but that wouldn’t trip the counter for him since he needed to be solo. Se he traded me the thing, I went in solo and unveiled it for him (I’d just had good practice for my own riven, after all) and he got this one. Good timing, as his Burston Prime had just finished cooking so he could slap this on it from the get-go. Though this could obviously use a re-roll. But he doesn’t have kuva yet, having just barely finished War Within. Soon though…

Happy gaming out there!

[Warframe] Still Plugging Away

Warframe wasn’t the only thing I played this week — I actually logged in to FFXIV for the 1st time in almost 3 months, due to hearing that the current “Little Ladies Day” event included glowsticks as a cosmetic item.  Since my young daughter loves glowsticks, I logged in on her character and ran the event.  It was so quick and easy that I then logged in to my own character and ran the event also.

But that was it.  I felt no desire to follow the additional content released in the latest patch, or to unlock the 2nd new dungeon or anything like that.  I guess that means I should actually cancel my subscription.

I also bought the new DLC/Expansion for Stellaris.  I’m only about 100 years in to my 1st game so far.  The overall feel is much the same, but tech discoveries are quite a bit slower — normally at the 100 year mark I’d be getting close to the end of the tree, but I’m just now starting to research the T4 weapons and barely got cruisers, though I do have Star Fortresses and can build habitats, at least.  I’ll do some update posts after I’ve gotten farther in and have seen more of the new techs and how everything fits together.

***

Oh, I’m supposed to *scan* the kurias? Wish I’d done that on the other 4 I’ve seen. Ah well…

In Warframe, I’m still MR17, though I’m knocking on the door of 18 now.  I’ve been focusing on completing quests and unlocking more of the planetary nodes.  I’ve completed all the nodes going up through Uranus now, only have 1 left on Neptune, and 4 on Pluto.  I’ve also completed all the nodes in The Void.  Sedna’s still got about half the planet to go, and I need to recruit some people to help me do the Derelict Assassination mission so that I can unlock Eris.  That’s what Recruitment chat is for, right?  I’ve even done about half of the Kuva Fortress.  I guess people don’t really go there, though, as I’ve run all but the spy mission on “public” but only the “assault” mission had a person join, and then he dropped back out within a minute or so.

Running the “assault” mission in the Kuva fortress. Basically had to run in, take over their big gun, use it here to destroy one of their ships, then go back and sabotage it. Fun mission!

Can I just say that I love Inaros?  I thought I wouldn’t, due to the frame not having any shields, but it has such a high armor rating that it really doesn’t need them.  I’ve looked up various builds for it and have settled on my own “tweaking” of the mods that I like.  It’s lower than a “max health” build” but has higher armor so it’s still very survivable — in fact, I’ve only ever needed to be revived a single time in all that I’ve played with Inaros so far, and I was doing the level 50 missions in The Void with him just fine.  Honestly, I’m not sure what took me out that 1 time I did fall, as at no other time on that mission was my health even remotely low.  It must have been a sniper or something, I guess.  Fortunately, I was with another player and he was able to revive me, so it worked out fine (and I revived him probably 10x in that same run, so it was only fair the he revive me too — he kept folding like a cheap suit, it felt like).

My co-worker who’s playing now sprung for the Loki/Ember Prime combo pack and has been ranking his Loki Prime up, so I got with him and we ran a few grind runs on Ceres, then he queued us up for a Nightmare “No shields” run on Earth to see what mod we’d get from that.  He had Vitality modded on, but sadly still went down a lot, as did the 2 people who joined us on the run.  It appears that most frames just really need their shields.  I didn’t ever really take much damage though — something about having 4600 health and high armor plus the ability to control crowds and heal myself at the same time, while laying waste in a giant circle around me with my Orthos Prime and Primed Reach mod…

Anthem quest complete!

So far as the quests go, I’ve completed Octavia’s Anthem and Chains of Harrow.  Since I’d already bought the Octavia frame, the Anthem quest rewarded me with a riven mod, though to unveil it I’m going to need to go to the Plains of Eidolon and figure out fishing and mining.  The unlock conditions are: catch a fish, mine a gem, AND kill an enemy within 30 seconds.  That quest was interesting since I had to fight Sentients at one point, so I got to see how using the Operator to reset the resistances made life a lot easier there.  The final phase where you are inside a giant mandachord instrument and have to jump on all the right spots to have it play a song was … if I’m honest, a bit tedious, but still a nice change of pace from how frenetic a lot of the missions and quests can be too, so I won’t say it was bad, just a bit long.

Chains complete. Now to find the 3rd component so I can actually build the frame…

Chains of Harrow was more like a “haunted house in space” than anything.  Unlit mission runs with blood-scrawled messages, fighting zombies and ghosts.  Had I bought that frame with plat the reward would have been another riven mod, but I wanted to earn the frame this time, so… I’ve got the blueprint and I’ve managed to find systems and chassis blueprnits from my regular play, but the neuroptics apparently only drop from defection missions and only during the 3rd phase, and even then only about an 11% chance on any given run, so that might be a while before I get the last piece.  Which is fine, as I need time to farm up more kuva.  I did a kuva siphon mission this weekend and since I knew what to do this time (go go video guides!) I was successful at it and got 643 out of a needed 2000, so… 2 more times at least. And that’s just for Harrow.  I’ve got that “Krokhur” (sp?) weapon that needs kuva to build it, so I’ll need to run a few more of those mission types for that too.

An example of some of the haunted house elements of the Harrow quest.

For Hidden Messages I’m at the last phase, but the quest won’t complete until the Mirage frame is complete in the Foundry.  I started that cooking this morning, so on Thursday I’ll be able to get the completion for that.  The phases of that quest largely just involved clearing out lots of infestations, so nothing much to write about.

This guy’s been hanging out on my ship from time to time since completing the Harrow quest also.

I’m now most actively working on “The Silver Grove” quest.  I’m on the last phase of that, but finding the plants to scan for it has been a pain in the tuchas.  I need 25 of a moss type that grows more or less on Ceres.  The wiki says it’s “very common” there, but I spent nearly an hour last night in a single mission searching for it and only found 3.  Then there’s another “frostleaf” plant that grows on Mercury and Venus, but I haven’t been able to find any of that at all on any of the missions I’ve run there (and yes, I made sure I’m on the correct tileset).  Then there’s the “rare” plant that’s on Earth.  I’ve found 1 of the 2 I need, but it only grows during the day and I keep winding up running missions in the night.  They swap day/night every 4 hours, so I just need to keep trying until I get lucky and find another day cycle, it seems.  Once I finally collect those plant scans, then I’ll get the 3rd Titania piece.  That will be fun, I think.

This is getting long, so… Happy Gaming out there!

[Stellaris] 4X Space Game Time!

 

Gotta love a pretty launcher

I mentioned briefly in my last post that I’d bought Stellaris.  I’ve played rather a lot of it this past month and finally feel like I’m getting a handle on it.  It’s VERY overwhelming at 1st, even with all the Master of Orion, MoO2, and Civ series 4X games I’ve played.

Some things I’ve found that are different than any other game I’ve played:

The planet rotates, there are night-time lights, and the cloud layer moves independently.  Nice details!

It is a pause-able real-time game, not turn-based.  You can pause any time, though, and things queue up when paused, so you can turn it kinda pseudo-turn-based.  1 second real time = 1 day in game.  All months are 30 days, so it’s a 360 day year, meaning that 10 years is 3600 seconds — 1 hour.  This is on normal speed.  Fastest speed feels like it’s 1 second = 2 days.  And quite frankly, so little happens at any given time that since you can pause (and there are auto-pause options for events that you can set too) I really don’t know why anyone ever turns it slower, with the possible exception of watching a space battle play out.  Even on fastest speed with getting 20 years to an hour, I can’t really imagine a win in less than about 150 years (and I think that would be REALLY fast — you can see in my screenshots that these are all 250-276 years along…..), so that’s a minimum 7.5 hours for a game on fastest speed, assuming you never paused it.  Which of course you paused it, so…. yeah.  Games are really long.  Be ready for that.

A late-game map.  I was “The Federation” — pacifistic egalitarians.  Worked pretty well.

The technology tree is indeed a tree, but what you can research next isn’t only dictated by its position on the tree, but also a random system that will only show you a default of 3 available options, so you can’t necessarily determine an optimum research path and then blow through that in each game — you can only pick from what you’re given.  You can take traits and get event rewards that let you see more than the default 3, but those are semi-rare and you can’t be sure you’ll get those in the course of a game either.  The options shown are weighted — prerequisites seem to show almost all the time, so you can generally be sure you’ll see one of them, at least.

The race appearances are completely cosmetic.  It’s the governing civics and traits that actually matter.  And boy do they matter….  Interestingly enough, since you’re the player you aren’t necessarily as governed by the traits as the NPC players are — you can take the Xenophobe trait for the increased border range but then play as a Xenophile, while the NPC player would stay true to the ethic.  But that said…. playing as a Fanatical Pacifist Xenophobe who expands quickly while closing his borders to all others and refusing all trade requests is an interesting RP experience.

Combat is generally “put it all in 1 fleet and whoever has the bigger number is gonna win.”  If you keep your “doomstack” as big or bigger than the NPC nations they tend to not attack since they know they can’t win (the diplomacy screen tells you relative strengths of navies), so try to keep your ship count at or near the cap at all times.  And here’s something a little surprising — your cap goes DOWN by 20% if you join a federation, since part of your fleet is considered to be contributed to the federal navy, so be careful when joining or creating one as it can mess with the upkeep costs and screw your economy.

The game saves the custom races you make and you can use them as NPC players in your games too, so it’s possible to make a bunch of pacifist races and then see who can build up the fastest.  Or a bunch of militaristic xenophobes dedicated to conquering the galaxy and purging all other races…..  or anything in between.

Megastructures — the Sentry Array’s ability to see all ships in the galaxy is a huge benefit.  The Ringworld is simply amazing.  The Dyson Sphere seems awesome, but ends up being a bit underwhelming, as does the Science Nexus.  Habitats seem underwhelming at 1st, but since you can build so many of them, they actually easily are better in the aggregate than the Dyson or the Science station.  And if you can find some of those rare systems with 9-10 planets in them, well … 9 habitats in a system is actually better than a Ringworld.  Or a decent sized planet and 7-8 habitats too.  Here’s the math on that:  Habitat = 12 slots, so 8 planets = 96, 9 = 108.  Ringworld is 4 sections x 25 slots per section = 100.  Size 16 planet + 7 habitats = 100, so that’s pretty much the cutoff there.

Ringworlds are amazing!

For energy, using base numbers (not the bonused ones you get as you research more tech and have higher happiness) — 12 slots.  Capital gives 5 energy and then the other 11 slots give 8 for a total of 93 energy per habitat.  4 habitats thus equals 372 energy.  Cost to build:  400 influence and 20,000 minerals, plus some niggling amount of minerals for the 11 power stations.  And of course the time cost of actually filling the 12 slots with pops.  You can build 4 habitats simultaneously in 5 years (2.5 years if you have the Master Builders ascension perk).  Serially, then it’s 20 years or 10 with the perk.  If you have more than 4 planets in a system you can build that much more energy too.  And when you add in happiness bonuses and whatnot…. well, in my current game I’m getting about 130 energy per focused habitat, so 3 = 390 energy, and 4 is 520.

Dyson Sphere under construction

Dyson Sphere complete!

And it looks awesome!

Compare this to a Dyson Sphere which  is the only structure you can build in a system and can’t be built in an inhabited system.  Cost is 300 influence and 210,000 minerals, with a 55 year build time (27.5 with Master Builder perk).  And you get 400 energy out of it.  Period.  This doesn’t change.  Flat 400.  Habitats are cheaper and build faster.  But you can build a Dyson Sphere without it counting toward your inhabited system total and/or in a sector also, so there are cases where you’d still want to build them.  But not before you can’t build any more habitats, IMO.

This is a… hmm.  Custom race.  Humanoid appearance, but I think I chose the Avian ship appearances, so this would be the Avian habitat, even though I was playing humanoid.

Science Nexus is similarly underpowered/overpriced.  Habitats can do 33 science unbonused, so 3 habitats is 99 science, vs 90 for the Nexus.  Same 300 influence cost.  And 15K minerals for the habitats with a 2.5-15 year build time depending on your builder perk and 3 simultaneous vs serial builds vs the Nexus’s 25 year (12.5) build time and 70K mineral cost.  And this represents an 80% buff to the nexus from initial implementation.  It originally gave 50 science when complete, but is now buffed to the 90.  And you can only build 1 Nexus per system, while habitats are 1 per planet, s you can get up to 10 (5-6 is much more normal, but even 6 is more than double a Nexus’s output.  Or 3 power plants and 3 science to effectively have both a Nexus *and* a Dyson Sphere in the same system…).  And to boot — I’m getting closer to 50 science per habitat in my current game, so 2 habs = better than a Nexus for me.

Sentry Array – Brings the entire galaxy into your sensor range.  Nothing else is like it, so this rocks and you should definitely build one.  300 influence, 70K minerals, 25 (12.5) years.

TL;DR on megastructures:

• Ringworld – Usually the best thing you can build in a system.
• Habitats – Your workhorse megastructure.  It does count as a planet against the penalty to your Research and Unity costs for next, so plan around that when dropping them.
• Dyson Sphere – Focused Habitats are generally better to build.  Only build once you can’t build more habitats.  Or maybe in an extremely crappy system that can’t have at least 3 habitats.
• Science Nexus – Focused Habitats are generally better to build.  Only build once you can’t build more habitats.  Or maybe in an extremely crappy system that can’t have at least 2 habitats.
• Scanning Array – Awesome!  Nothing else like it!

So anyway… yeah, it’s a lot of fun.  I’m very glad I picked it up in the pre-Stormblood lull from FFXIV.

Happy gaming out there!

 

[FFXIV] Bonus Item Screenies

I did the Easter event back when it came out.  The way my Roegadame sits on it though… all of her outfits seem to have skirts of some kind, and the way she sits on the egg makes them “fly up” and look silly.  The only outfit that wasn’t too awful was my gathering gear, but even it had some of the skirt thing going on —

Flying Easter Egg Mount

Frankly, I’ve not played much since then, mostly just an occasional login to say hi to the FC, but that’s about it.  Just waiting for Stormblood to come out…..

But I did buy a 60-day time card on Amazon in order to qualify for the promo, so here as some screenies of that:

The new Dragoon glamour stick. and of course the MSQ outfit becuz it’s pretty kewl looking too.

I glamoured my monk gear to be the new eastern garb. Dalamud Red dye, in case you care. And yes, this is the new cloud mount. I reallllllly like it!

Applying the time card put me over the threshold for the next veteran gear reward, so here’s the barding I got, this time on my daughter’s character.

My daughter’s character in the Eastern Garb with the cloud mount also.

This sounds like a fun game, just like it says

As to what I’ve been filling my time with….. still mostly Civ6 and Pillars of Eternity.  On this playthrough I’ve done the White March 1 and 2, plus I think I’m nearing the end of Act 3.  The group of 6 is all capped at level 16, so…. shouldn’t be much longer to finish, and then perhaps try again on a harder difficulty with a different group makeup.

I’ve also recently bought Stellaris, since it went on sale on Steam this past week, including the new “everything” bundle in the sale.  Haven’t gotten very far yet, but it seems fun so far.

I even reinstalled Morrowind — amazingly still had my disks from when I bought it back in 2002.  and of course I’ve done a bunch of graphics mods to make it not look so 2002-y anymore.  But after I got it modded, I haven’t really played it much yet.  But soon…. soon……  I played it almost exclusively for about 2 years after it came out, so I’m sure a lot of it will come flooding back to me once I get past Balmora.  Until then, I’ve got no problem taking my time getting back into that world.

And of course, watching tv with the wife, reading books, and my wife and I even saw Guardians of the Galaxy 2 last weekend, so….. always plenty of stuff going on, even when I’m not playing a specific MMO each day.

Happy gaming out there!