TSW Monday: Trials In Trick Or Treating

Thank you to everyone who came out for the fun last night.

As an MMO gamer, I love October because that’s when all the games roll out their Halloween events, but I gotta say, no one does it better than Funcom and The Secret World.

Since every day is spooky-day in TSW, when Halloween does come around, it’s like their Christmas. It seems no one wants to miss the game’s biggest event of the year, as evidenced by our guild turn-out last night. We could have filled a full raid and then some with everyone who showed up to check out the content.

Seems legit.

There was the old favorite, good old Mr. Cat God, who makes his return with a Nightmare version to boot. This investigative mission line remains one of my all time favorite Halloween quests in any MMO, and it was a pleasure to be able to do it again this year. Funcom really pulled out the big guns for TSW’s favorite holiday.

Finally got a good shot of the Cat God fight this year, which compared to last year’s was not as laggy and I wasn’t so panicky.

Since the Halloween update went live last Friday, we’ve been heading back in there again and again to try for purple-quality loot, even though so far he has dropped Amethyst Mousers more than anything else. I can’t complain about snagging a new pet though!

Purple kitty!

And then there’s the new. This year, the devs have added the “Stories of Solomon Island” chain, which takes you all over the New England zones to hunt down side quests and in the process learn more about the NPCs in the area. That is what we did as a group for Secret Monday, because we are conveniently able to do it all in a raid. It was actually quite fun returning to the earlier parts of the game.

But I still got mauled by Ak’abs.

This ultimately led us to the elusive, creepy, and sometimes buggy “Super Jack”, the big bad boss of this Halloween event. He’s quite the nasty beast, requiring what feels like most of the server to take him down, and that is how we ended our Secret Monday session. With a bunch of new clothing reward additions to my closet, several new achievements to my name and not to mention being a whole lot of AP richer, what a way to wrap out the night!

Carving Super Jack.

Battle Bards Episode 14: World of Warcraft

This newest episode of Battle Bards was a long time coming. Our past episodes have featured music from World of Warcraft before, but now finally we give the game its own show.

Love the game, hate the game, no matter how you feel about it no one can deny WoW has one of the most expansive, diverse soundtracks out there. It’s a big game with a big track list, and it was tough but Syp, Syl and I managed to choose a few to feature out of the dozens upon dozens of tunes this game has to offer.

Fear not if you don’t see your favorites, though, as WoW is definitely a game we’ll have to do as a theme again in the future. For myself, I have so many memories wrapped up in this game; from Vanilla WoW through all the expansions to Mists of Pandaria, so many of those moments are linked to the music. So join me and my fellow battle bards, and let’s talk the WoW soundtrack!

LISTEN NOW

Episode 14 show notes

• Introduction (including “Main Theme” from World of Warcraft and “Howling Fjord” from Wrath of the Lich King)
• “A Call to Arms” from World of Warcraft
• “Elwynn Forest” from World of Warcraft
• “The Shaping of the World” from World of Warcraft
• “The Sin’dorei” from The Burning Crusade
• “Castaways” from Cataclysm
• “Mountains of Thunder” from Wrath of the Lich King
• “Stormstout Brew” from Mists of Pandaria
• Mailbag: Ian
• Outro (“Salty Sailor” from Taverns of Azeroth)

TSW Monday: The Whispering Tide

It never fails; you go on vacation and that is the one week where everything happens in your favorite MMOs. Unfortunately, that’s how I missed out the first part of the second phase of The Whispering Tide event in The Secret World, but I was glad to be back in game last night to catch the main content with the gang.

Our plans were to check out the new five-man encounter, accessed by going through the latest filth portal that has opened up. There’s a normal version and a Nightmare version, the latter only accessible to players who have defeated the Gatekeeper. On Secret Monday, I was able to complete both, and the encounters were much easier than I expected. Flappy the Dragon’s filthy poo bombs were perhaps the worst thing we had to contend with.

Come to think of it, I probably went through more stress trying to get that one lore item on the ledge (until I found out about the “spam ‘U'” method). It’s amazing how much grief one tiny square of damn honeycomb can cause, isn’t it?

Things for the Whispering Tide event may be moving along slowly, but the good news is…they are moving. I don’t know how much longer they will be able to drag this on, but if the Halloween patch is going to be dropping soon (and I have a feeling it will be sometime this week…we don’t have that many days left in October, after all), we’re probably looking at quite a while.

But speaking of TSW and Halloween, I can’t wait! The Cat God event they had in their first year was one of my best experiences in this game, and I’m really looking forward to doing that again and more.

Battle Bards Episode 13: Spirit of Adventure!

A new episode of Battle Bards is up!

This week is a “theme” show, and I have a feeling I’m going to like doing more of these. In this episode, we ask the question “What does adventure mean to you?” Everyone has their own definition, and Syp, Syl and I each submit their own favorite  “spirit of adventure” tracks for group discussion.  It’s a big world out there and we need the very best soundtrack if we’re going the journey  through all of it!

LISTEN NOW

Apologies for the sound quality at the end. Apparently for the last ten minutes I sound l sound like a robot!)

Episode 13 show notes

• Introduction (“Hearthstone Revealed” from Hearthstone)
• “Open Sea Music” from Pirates of the Burning Sea
• “Explorers and Artifacts” from Guild Wars 2
• “Spiritual Elysium” from Anarchy Online
• “Step to the Next World” from Aion
• “Talking Island” from Lineage II
• “Romulus Suite” from Star Trek Online
• “Breeland Jig” from Lord of the Rings Online
• Outro (“Hills of the Shire” from Lord of the Rings Online)

TSW Monday: Our Worst Nightmare

Our group members performing synchronized headstands for a very complicated and top-secret ritual.

At long last, the Knights of Mercy attempt Nightmare modes in The Secret World! Um, can it really be our worst if it’s our first? Wait, don’t answer that. One of my guildies says he’s had worse nights in Elites, but I don’t know; personally, I can’t remember having so much trouble a dungeon since the early days of this game when were were all in crappy gear and none of had any idea what was going on.

But first, it was pleasure before punishment. A group of us went back to the Savage Coast lair after receiving a tip how to do the final mission there, The Cover-up. Thank you for our commenter who showed us the way! I wish I had known setting off all the bombs at once then running like hell out of there was going to work, I would have tried that sooner! This called for a victory dance:

Judging from our dances, all of us are so behind on the times.

While we were in the area, we also called forth the three lair bosses and proceeded to beat the crap out of them for gear and achievements. Might as well put all those blueprint pieces that have been clogging up our inventory and bank spaces to good use.

A screenshot I borrowed from Maric, as usual taking pictures instead of DPSing 😉

And finally, the moment I was waiting for, five brave souls who were keyed for Nightmares (including yours truly) decided the time was nigh. As a group, we chose to attempt Polaris first, since it’s the earliest instance in the game and logic says to start there with Nightmares too. But logic, schmogic. Even then, it was major ouchies.

Granted, we did better than expected, seeing as I never thought we’d make it past the first boss. As it turned out, we did. We also blew through the second boss (our only one-shot of the evening) but as a very wise man once said, “Don’t get cocky.” We hit a snag on the third boss, henceforth known as “Mr. Crabs” because he also sure lives up to his name. He wiped the floor with us like 20 times (it was probably less, but it certainly felt like it) until we finally got him down, and even then we just barely squeaked by.

And what do you know, it IS over when the fat lady sings.

The fourth boss went down after that, but at this point we were all tired and none of us were up for tackling the container boss. We still occasionally wipe on him in Elite mode, I can only imagine the pain he’ll bring on Nightmare.

So our first Nightmare was in some ways a success, but in others also a reminder that we’re back to starting from scratch. For the most part, the encounters aren’t too different, with the exception of a couple added mechanics that are absolutely UNFORGIVING unless you learn to take care of it, i.e. with interrupts or cleanses. So much was practicing on getting the rhythm down, and the good news is we’re learning.

Screenshots Of The Day: Oricon

Lots of purdy screenshots to share today, but before I get to more, first I have some order of business to get out of the way. Due to schedule changes, a couple of regulars in our Star Wars: The Old Republic group have not been able to attend our TORsday nights, and as such Operations have been placed on hold for the time being. Anyway, I know this is a pretty long shot but, I’ve gotten permission from the slavemaster — I mean, our guild leader — to throw this out there: if you’re reading this and happen to have a level 50-55 Imperial character on Ebon Hawk and won’t mind running once a week with a great bunch of folks, let me know because we may have a spot for you.

The thing is, we’re very, VERY casual, and we play more for enjoyment than advancement, but I can promise lots of fun and good company and I will vouch for every single one of my guildies. Well, except maybe that Maric person.

Anyway, on to the pictures! So apparently a new update went live in SWTOR earlier this week and I didn’t even know about it; shows how much I pay attention! Game Update 2.4 reveals the next chapter of The Dread War, bringing a new storyline, a new world in a form of a remote moon named Oricon, and a bunch of new quest areas on said moon.

Lava bad!

Naturally, with nothing else pressing on our agenda, those of us in the Imperial Mercenary Corps who showed up decided to group up and check it out together. We had one member just shy of level 55 and couldn’t get the quests (ugh, such a bummer), but he was able to tag along and, with the help of an XP booster, get the experience required to get him closer to level cap.

What is up with tentacles in all my games lately?

It also goes without saying, doing all the missions in a group made killing everything on Oricon a LOT less of a pain…

…like this bad boy.

I was pretty impressed with the new area. There’s a pretty hefty story component, but going through all the content won’t take very long and it’s pretty easy; once it’s all done, you’ll unlock dailies (which are just essentially the same quests you just did) as well as a new Operation.

This is rather Medieval looking.

That’s pretty much the extent of the update, but the rewards are pretty incredible. Completing the entire story will get you a full set of Artifact quality armor, which is nice because I have a whole new healing set to build plus a couple last pieces I still had to upgrade. All in all, it was a good night!

Very creepy and awesome looking statue. Have the SWTOR developers been playing The Secret World?

TSW Monday: An Exercise In Hi-lair-ity

You have failed me, rainbows and sparklies.

This week’s The Secret World Monday saw us running lairs again (and we will be for the foreseeable future as long as the drops are good, the AP/SP keeps pouring in, and our resident godslayer is still working on beating the Gatekeeper).

Anyway, I just don’t get it. Apparently, lairs aren’t supposed to be very hard. From what everyone’s saying, if your group can do Elites, they shouldn’t pose much of a problem. But while I can see that being the case for the first couple quests you pick up, the difficulty level of the third and final quest always seems to increase noticeably once you unlock it.

In the case of the Savage Coast lair, we blew through the “kill and collect” quests with very little issue, and even managed some of the fights in a partial group. But then we came to the mission The Cover-Up and everything changed — our egos crushed, confidence destroyed, all joy in the world extinguished, boo hoo hoo.

I know, I know, despite the post title, I’m aware this experience isn’t sounding very pleasant. But that’s the thing about having a swell group of people to play with; a great time was had by all, and as usual there were lots of laughs around even as we were being served our asses on a silver platter and all we could do was ask for more.

Ugh, I just can’t help but think we’re missing something obvious (and it’s not the dynamite use…thankfully, we had that “duh” moment quite early on) but even with six people, we weren’t making much headway. It doesn’t help that there’s absolute squat out there in terms of information on TSW lairs, which is another glaring sign sending alarms off in my head indicating something that could be right in front of my nose but I’m just not be seeing.

We even pulled out the big guns, which is um…changing outfits. You know it’s a tough fight when even my sparkly unicorn polarizer get-up does nothing.