A break in the Rhythm

Good intentions were no match for a heavy dose of Real life!  No blogging and very little gaming for several days has derailed my plans for regular updates here.  Even the little Elite Dangerous I managed was almost more of a setback than advancing the cause. One of the real life interruptions came while I was out farming at the High RES again. I went AFK during a relatively quiet time and came back 20 minutes later to the rebuy screen. I’m not sure exactly what happened but I suspect my ship was either shot at by or collided with hostile ships. I had left it stationary well above the asteroid field, “safe” from danger. Clearly that was not the case.  Rebuy cost was just under 1 million and adds a third destroyed ship to my history.

Since Elite Dangerous requires a certain degree of concentration and has no easy pause button, I’ve played more Diablo on my season 6 mage.  I was around level 40 after my last serious gaming session and over the last 5 or so days in short bursts I’ve managed to get to 70 and collect the first 4 parts of the free set. I have no decent legendary items at level 70 yet so am still struggling on Torment 1 or 2 for the most part.

Just last night I managed to get my Eve online characters updated and sorted out my buggy client. My trade character is slowly ramping back up with the buying and selling and my other characters now have more skills in the training queue. My accounts are so old now that I’m struggling to find untrained skills that will ever be useful, or that I can afford. I have level 5 mastery in pretty much all sub-capital ships and am now held back by the expensive skill books remaining. If I actually played the game more I’d be able to afford them!

Hopefully this evening’s game session is somewhere back to normal and I can progress decently in Elite Dangerous.

A close encounter

There is no Elite Dangerous flying to report on tonight. Its after midnight, so I’m technically late posting to the blog which I usually get done by about 10 pm.  Instead, I have a cautionary tale of the modern age – A close encounter with an internet link spiral! These unnatural phenomena warp time and space and can easily suck in the unwary web surfer. They can start from the most innocent place but soon descend into depths unknown from which you may never return!

Tonight’s link spiral actually started in the most beautiful way possible – I was trying to find music on youtube that my preschool aged daughter had performed to at today’s Mothers Day celebration at kindergarten. (Mother’s day here is this coming Sunday, 8th May).  All the kids were dancing to “I’m a Believer”, the version from Shrek. This lead to the original version by The Monkees and the remake by Smash Mouth. Then of course we watched the Shrek in the swamp karaoke, which is a medley of a whole bunch of songs. My kids loved dancing along.
The list is (From Wikipedia) :
"Just the Way You Are" by Billy Joel
"Like a Virgin" by Madonna
"Baby Got Back" by Sir Mix-a-Lot
"Feelings" by Morris Albert
"YMCA" by The Village People
"Do You Really Want to Hurt Me" by Culture Club
"Stayin' Alive" by Bee Gees
"Who Let the Dogs Out?" by Baha Men
"Dance to the Music" by Sly & The Family Stone
"Happy Together" by The Turtles

Then, after the kids went to bed, I got sucked in watching several more
Such as
Culture Club - Karma Chameleon
The Black Eyed Peas - My Humps
MC Hammer - U Can't Touch This

But then some Elite Dangerous parodies appeared:
Here is a Link to CMDR Hugh Mann’s ED playlist.  I particularly liked “Let Me Interdict You” and “Livin La Vida Imperia” as well as “Uptown PvP” but all of them are very good.

... and then I remembered I had a blog to write and some game to play!
Of course I’ve been sidetracked again somewhat while finding all the links for this post. Maybe I haven’t fully reached escape velocity yet.

CMDR Cryptography, lost in 1990's techno videos!

D3 Season 6 and other pursuits

Instead of playing Elite this session, I started up a season 6 character on Diablo III.  I played a bit on season 5 as a witchdoctor so took mage this time around.  Even with my fairly limited play time I’ve zoomed through the levels pretty quickly.  Level 30 in a bit over 3 hours compares pretty favourably to my original characters which are 20+ hours in and only barely in the 30’s. I’ve seen a season 6 preparation guide which says I’m doing it slowly – they are at 70 already in a bit over 3 hours. I’m still having fun my way and am not in any real hurry.

I’ve also played a little bit of Defiance in ½ to 1 hour bursts over the last week or so. Shooters aren’t my usual game but I’ve quite enjoyed this one in the year or so I’ve been dabbling casually. Prior to restarting my blogging I’d spent about 70% of my gaming time in SWTOR where I have multiple max-level alts.  Since I’ve not even started the current expansion story line yet, there’s plenty of content for me there and I expect I’ll pick it back up soon.

World of Warcraft however isn’t of much interest to me now. I’m still subscribed and log in a couple times each month but Legion may well be the end for my time in Azeroth.  My account was opened in the final months of Vanilla and has been subscribed continuously since then.  It was still new and fresh to me throughout the Burning Crusade and Wrath of the Lich King expansions. I initially liked Cataclysm’s storyline and most gameplay changes but I began to find that the dramatic changes to most every zone broke my immersion into the world and it no longer felt like home. The introduction of goblins, worgen and later the pandas further broke my connection to the world. 

Some of the gameplay changes also reduced my connection to my characters, especially the nerfing of talent trees in later expansions. Making levelling content trivially easy hasn’t helped either. Warlords of Draenor was better in that for a while there I actually cared about the story but that soon wore off with all the scripted cut-scenes and confusing massed battles where I had no idea of objectives. Allied npc’s that simply face-roll the content for you doesn’t help much either. If simply spamming your basic attacks on random enemies still wins the event there’s not much incentive to care. Legion had better bring back some of the spark!

Its patch Tuesday for many games as I write this – right in peak evening game time here in east Australia so I’m not sure which I’ll play after posting.  Back to Elite for tomorrow most likely!

-        ~Cryptography

Elite Dangerous Session 9

Hello again. CMDR Maya Ulniian here.  Over the weekend I actually got the time to run quite a few sorties out to the RES. I started with an A rated “golden” Diamondback Scout and finished with an almost completely upgraded Vulture. My current limitations are not really money but the engineering capabilities of Haxel Port in LTT 15574. Some scenes from my recent trips should highlight the changes.

Balance at end of last report, as well as current balance. I’ve almost doubled wealth with only 154 more kills. High end ships make it a lot simpler.

 

A famous victim.  No idea what an imperial Baron was doing in a federal dropship!

A couple of combat shots. When taking out an anaconda you need to be up close!

 

 

The view of a flyby of a pair of moons not far from the ring system. These two moons are very close to each other and I believe landing is possible on both.

 

My new vulture speeds up money gathering significantly. Those large size weapons hit a lot harder than the small and medium on the Viper or Diamondback Scout making short work of any subsystems.  My original goal was to get 12 to 18 million to spend on an exploration ship but I’m considering pushing for a much better ship around the 50 million mark.  Grinding at the RES is probably the fastest way at least for the short term.

Back to the grind for now!

CMDR Maya Ulniian, 2^nd May 3302