3: It's Been a While

I was just browsing the internet while my phone waits on hold and saw my last blog post of from yeeaaars ago, wanted to make it more current/relevant.

Hi friends! I hope you all have been well. As of recent I've been focusing less on hardcore easy game grinding and trying to have a bit more"fun" with my games (what a loser amiright). I still go after achievements in any game I play, but they're only a light selection criteria when I decide to fire things up. My completion ratio has plummeted, but I'm perfectly fine with that.

A few highlights, I finished Warriors Orochi 3 a little while ago. Still going after the Dynasty Warriors endless hack and slash murder 1000 dudes in 5 minutes games, thoroughly enjoy them.

I am almost done with all of the achievements in Elder Scrolls Online, which I never expected to happen when I started playing it, one of the highest TA games there is. I got "Emperor!" done last week, arguably the hardest/most luck-based achievement in the game. I got genuinely into it and have played it a ton without achievements in-mind. My "achievement score" in the game is almost 30,000 on my main character, which anyone who's played knows is getting near completion. For the in-game/not the Xbox achievement list I'm primarily missing the ridiculous DLC veteran 12-man trial "do the absolute hardest content without anyone ever dying within a time limit after upping the last boss from 'only a few hundred people have done it' to 'like 3 teams have ever done it' mode, all at the same time" ones. You get a fancy "I am better than you" in-game moniker for them, which I am likely to never collect.

All I need still is "Cool Your Heels" aka Elder Scrolls Online platforming edition. Getting a group who can complete Bloodroot Forge veteran in the first place who are willing to run it the 5-ish times in a row needed to give it enough attempts is the hard part. I have a great group of friends who I will rope into my obscure achievement earning, but Bloodroot Forge only drops one gear set that is useful for some niche/non-meta stamina PvP builds/all the others are near-useless, and the hard mode/no death/speed runs out of veteran Bloodroot only give a hat, where all the others for DLC give a flashy skin or personality, making it hard to get people to want to do it. The monster helmet that drops off the last boss is great for healers, but most-everyone who is passably mediocre at the game already has one. I'm at a point where it's silly easy for me (veteran hard mode Bloodroot is probably 25% as difficult as the hardest 4-person content gets, 5% as hard as the worst 12 person stuff) but 95% of players don't learn how to play the game well enough to be capable. There's one boss with a lot of the lava platforming, and dragging a group through it that dies multiple times on bosses means personally failing the platforming mechanic and dying to not have 25+ chances to ruin the achievement, or having a ton of chances to screw up, with a boatload of variables that make it nigh-impossible to avoid entering lava the entire time. But suiciding with a bad groups means they are very likely not going to beat the fight, rock and a hard place, is good times.

There's a "champion point" misnomer that makes new players think they need levels to be more powerful, when over half your raw output in the game is how well you press buttons with the right abilities equipped. It's nice that ESO is mostly skill-based with the MMO gearing grind and leveling grind being a cherry on top, but the memo is not blasted out and you more-or-less need an experienced player to walk you through the reality of the situation. It causes the random dungeon que to be filled with people who should not be running the content. I'll get it done eventually though, not going to let one achievement that takes 20 minutes with a proper group keep me away from the completion. Another DLC comes out tomorrow as well which will hopefully not add a new huge roadblock.

That's about it, my playtime has mostly consisted of ESO and the odd extenuating completion. I've just started playing Red Dead 2, which has been an outstanding time wild westing around. One of the achievements requires you to play it like the anti-GTA, never killing anyone innocent of fighting the cops, to unlock a mission that becomes unavailable after Chapter 4 thereby making "finish all missions" impossible. Gaining honor is a slow grind of choosing all the nice guy options in random encounters/doing camp chores/throwing fish back after you catch them. Losing all of that honor is one rampage away - killing one person negates an entire nice guy random encounter choice, looting their body cancels out a full second one, really can do little to nothing dishonorable to have level 4 honor by chapter 4.

That's that for now, will maybe post another update 3 in years.