2024 – Page 2 – Many Welps (2025)

Finishing up Heart ofThorns

September 12, 2024September 12, 2024Kluwes1 Comment

2024 – Page 2 – Many Welps (1)

Well at least the personal story part. I’m sure there’s still a ton to do outside of that. Considering the personal story only required getting 5 out of 23 total masteries and the fact that I didn’t need to explore any of the Dragon’s Stand zone means I have more to do there. But I also know that if I stop the progressing the story to dig in now, there’s a good chance I won’t pick it back up. Long term, I’m going to take my current character, Vale Faelight the Sylvain Guardian, through all of the story first before venturing out to other aspects of the game or other characters.

I was surprised how short the story was for Heart of Thorns. Only 16 chapters and it probably took me around 10 hours in total to complete. I would hazard a guess that the core story felt longer because chapters were broken up by level requirements. Heart of Thorns, on the other hand, only required masteries to move the story along which did offer a nice break to explore and participate in events. The lack of Renowned Hearts threw me off at first but after a little while I preferred the dynamic events.

2024 – Page 2 – Many Welps (2)

As I mentioned when I first got here, Heart of Thorns open world felt more difficult than the core Tyria. It did force me to pay a little more attention now that things weren’t face-roll easy. By the end of the story, I didn’t find myself staring at the downed screen quite as often.

As for the story itself, I preferred Heart of Thorns to the core story. The whole build up a large army and lead it storyline didn’t do much for me. Heart of Thorns’ storyline of a rag tag bunch behind enemy lines going to save their friends and defeat a big dragon was definitely more my style.

2024 – Page 2 – Many Welps (3)

Playing a Sylvari lead to way more little interactions than I thought it would. Surprised that was the case, when everyone’s the hero I would have thought the story would be the same for everyone. Every once in a while I was questioned by Pact soldiers whether I could still lead because of the influence of Mordremoth. Some of the story missions had Mordremoth talking to me. On the final mission, I chose Caithe and Cnmach to come with me and someone made a comment about everyone going in to the final fight being Sylvari. What can I say? I love a good redemption arc.

It was so nice to get out of the same zones I’d seen a dozen times over and see some new environments. Gliding is a fun way to traverse the map but I enjoyed those first moments in (zone name) without the glider where one misstep would send you over the edge of a cliff.

For now, it’s on to Living World Season 3 but I have a feeling I will return to the jungle eventually.

(Bl)August 2024 Wrap Up and September 2024Goals!

September 4, 2024September 4, 2024KluwesLeave a comment

2024 – Page 2 – Many Welps (4)

Whew, I can’t believe August is over already. With it go the last remnants of summer. Break out the Halloween decorations! Take out those hoodies! Bring on the Pumpkin Spice EVERYTHING!!

I love Fall, can you tell? Summer is great and all but we only get so many months of warm weather in Northeast Ohio so we tend to try and pack in as much outdoor activities as possible. This summer was full of concerts, trips to the zoo and the beach and then back to the zoo. Every weekend was booked from the end of May until right now. I’m so ready for a nice break.

I took part in Blaugust this year which was a rousing success. I skipped last year completely, so it was nice to rejoin the event again. My participation was for wholly selfish reasons, to inspire me to write more than I have been. Considering I’m writing this post, I’d say that was a success. I managed to write 22 posts last month which was above and beyond the goal of 10-15 posts I set for myself at the start of things.

Spending all of my time on my own writing meant I didn’t have as much time as I would have liked to check out other blogs participating this year, especially all the new ones. When I did, I tended to stick to the blogs I’ve been reading for years anyways. It’s something I would like to work on for next year for sure.

My initial thought is, if I spend more time throughout the year writing I won’t feel compelled to cram it all in one month..or…and hear me out on this one….I might be able to plan better and give myself more time to read all those other blogs. Time will tell!

As always, thank you Belghast for organizing and putting on this awesome event year after year!

2024 – Page 2 – Many Welps (5)

Top 5 Games in August

GameHoursTotal % of Time Played
Guild Wars 220h47%
No Man’s Sky11.5h27%
Dragon Age: Origin7.5h18%
Hunt: Showdown2h5%
Disney Dreamlight Valley1.5h3%

I’m going to be honest, I didn’t think I’d have enough games to fill this chart this month.

I knew Guild Wars 2 and Dragon Age: Origins would be up there because I’ve written a bunch of posts about those. No Man’s Sky being in second was a bit of a shock. I know I wrote a few posts about it too but if you asked me to guess before I put together this list I would have said Dragon Age would be higher. It makes sense though, it was the Squads’ weekend game this month.

I gave Hunt: Showdown another try this month and it fell flat for me. I don’t think I’ll be returning to it anytime soon even though it does have an awesome soundtrack. Disney Dreamlight Valley was vying for 5th against 3 other games that had a little less than an hour in them but the new Star Path that came out this month has had me logging in to the game every few days for a quick check. Earlier this year, it would have been higher on the list but my interest in that particular genre has waned since the beginning of summer.

2024 – Page 2 – Many Welps (6)

September 2024 Goals

  • Finish the Heart of Thorns story. This one is a bit of a gimmie because I’m pretty sure I’m nearing the end of it anyways.
  • Continue my Dragon Age: Origins play through. I’m not naive enough to think that I will be anywhere close to finishing this game by the end of the month. Who knows, I may never start it up again. Such are the whims of my interests!
  • Don’t go dormant! aka post at least 1 time a week in September. Now that I’m back at it, I don’t want to lose momentum but I also don’t want to set a goal to high for myself the first month post Blaugust. Boom! Got the first week covered already.
  • Bonus Goal: Finish the Living World Season 3 because I think I’m very close – very, very, very close to the end of Heart of Thorns already…

Minor Technical Difficulties

August 28, 2024Kluwes5 Comments

2024 – Page 2 – Many Welps (7)

So I started a new play through of Dragon Age: Origins this week on PC. It’s only been about 13 years since my last one and that was on the PS3 so it’s basically like my first time through all over again. It’s been a while since I booted up an older game (ya, ya 2010 is old now). It’s amazing how many thing I take for granted that just work with games now.

Borderless Window for one. Dragon Age either runs in Full Screen or a window. I can’t stand playing games in window mode, everything looks so small and seeing my messy desktop breaks that immersion! So that option was out.

Let me tell you, Dragon Age does not take kindly to switching to other applications when in full screen mode. Every time I went to take a note it was a gamble whether or not the game would come back up. Either the game would crash to desktop when the window was opened back up. It was a fifty-fifty shot whether I’d get back in. To get around that, I used the SimpleNote app on my phone to take notes even though I had the desktop version open on my second monitor.

It felt a bit silly but you gotta do what you gotta do, you know. That’s the plight of the game blogger.

2024 – Page 2 – Many Welps (8)

Speaking of plights, Dragon Age doesn’t support Steam Screenshots. I found this out when I hit F12 to take one and the game crashed yet again! So I went to my backup option, Greenshot. It’s free, it takes screenshots, it even puts them in a folder for you. I typically only break this guy out when I’m playing games through Epic because that still doesn’t support screenshots. Unfortunately Greenshot, wasn’t really working while Dragon Age was in full screen. When I went to take a screenshot everything would freeze up for a few seconds. I’m noticing a trend here…

I thought maybe I could suck it up and play in windowed mode. Greenshot appeared to be working there. Appeared is the key word here. When I went to look at my screenshots they were not what I was expecting:

2024 – Page 2 – Many Welps (9)
2024 – Page 2 – Many Welps (10)
2024 – Page 2 – Many Welps (11)

I was about to call it a day. But on my next launch of the game I saw the familiar green logo in the corner of my screen for the Geforce Experience overlay. I have only seen this thing in action once and that was last week where it kept saving clips of me being killed in Hunt: Showdown. I had no clue I could also use it to take screenshots and, surprisingly, it worked without an issue in full screen. It does save them to the Videos folder in Windows which I find weird but other than that it works!

2024 – Page 2 – Many Welps (12)

Which brings me to my last pain point with this aging title: It. Kept. Crashing! Well most of it was my fault, I’ll admit, trying to swap applications while it was running BUT it also crashed while playing a few times. I managed to get past the starting zone of Orzammar – I’m playing a dwarf rouge by the way – and to the surface to join the Grey Wardens. This about 1.5 hours in to things when the game crashed while I’m running around trying to find my next plot point. It had been a little while since I saved and even longer since the auto save saved so I found myself losing some time.

That’s when I remembered that these older titles usually have some sort of mod or stability patch that makes them run better on newer hardware/ Windows versions. So off to the internet I went to find one. The first Google result lead me to the 4GB LAA Patch for Dragon Age: Origins which let’s the game access more than 2GB of RAM. For the EA and GOG versions of Dragon Age there’s a little program that needs to be run on the Dragon Age .exe.

Since the Steam version is encrypted you need an unencrypted version of the .exe which I found on NexusMods. I found the guy’s video on how to install the patch confusing so I went to try and find a write up somewhere. Lucky for me, there was a 10 year old Steam thread that detailed how to to it, which in all honesty, was very easy. Now that I have it patched, the game hasn’t crashed once in the last few hours.

Hooray!

Reminiscing on DragonAge

August 27, 2024August 28, 2024Kluwes1 Comment

A few months ago I saw the entire Dragon Age franchise on sale for like $15. At the time, I wasn’t looking for a big fantasy RPG of any sort let alone three. But I know me so I scooped it up for the inevitable day that I would be compelled to play it. That day has come. It was apparently last night.

This 1000% has to do with all of the news I keep seeing about The Veilgaurd coming out this October. Also because I can’t seem to do anything unless I make it into a project. So of course I’m like “Let’s play all of the Dragon Age games! I totally have time for that!” (I probably don’t…)

So there I was, creating a new characters in Dragon Age: Origins and reflecting back on my time with the series as a whole. Well – not really – but I needed a way to somehow segue into this next part! I make no claim that any of the following is actually accurate, I’m just jotting down what I remember, I didn’t bother to fact check anything other than the dates the games came out.

2024 – Page 2 – Many Welps (13)

Dragon Age: Origins was one of the first games I played through on the PS3. I must have gotten it over winter break of my freshman year of college because by the time I picked up the physical copy, it was the ultimate edition. Fun fact, I used the remaining balance of my meal plan that semester to buy it.

What I remember most about Dragon Age were the commercials leading up to the games release. I distinctly remember seeing one at the movies is somewhere in between those Maria Menounos Noovie things they played before the trailers. Grey Wardens looked awesome! A fantasy game that wasn’t Lord of The Rings!

What I remember from my first playthrough of the game? Not a whole lot. I remember Alaistar, the swamp witch lady, a particularly challenging boss fight with a very large boss, and speccing my character out to be a sword and board warrior. That last part was my favorite, I liked that I could be an actual tank for my party taunting enemies and knocking them down. It wasn’t a role I played a lot of in other RPGs, preffering characters who used a bow over melee. I also remember the combat feeling like a tab targetting MMO complete with a big hot bar with lots of skills that somehow was manageable on a controller. I thought that was pretty cool too!

Other than that, I couldn’t tell you much about the story. Something about the templars hunting down mages maybe? But then, that might have been a bigger plot point in Dragon Age 2 which I also played, though never finished. I did finish Dragon Age: Origins. Spent plenty of nights that winter break sitting in front of the living room TV plodding my way through. I did start the DLC, but I think around that time, classes had started back up. I never got back to it and just played Dragon Age 2 the next summer.

2024 – Page 2 – Many Welps (14)

Dragon Age 2 I remember being more of an action game. Less create your own character and more you’re going to play our character but you can change their looks and pick their class. I don’t know how true that is, it’s been ten plus years since I played it. I think the main character actually had voice lines which I always preffered over the Silent Protagonist type.

For that game, I switched it up and played a mage. Again, I think a big plot point of that game was outlawing mages or something so I thought it was an interesting background to try out. I distinctly remember being a gravity mage that pulled enemies together and flung them all over the place while my party wailed on them. Good times.

2024 – Page 2 – Many Welps (15)

Dragon Age: Inquisition dropped the fall of 2014, the year I graduated from college and had just started living with my then girlfriend/now wife. It wasn’t a game that was on my radar anymore, I had fallen off of gaming in general during college, well except for League of Legends. We played a lot of that.

I think my mom gifted it to me for Christmas that year. I distincly remember creating a character in the likeness of my now-father inlaw which my now-wife did not find it the least bit funny. I, on the other hand, found it very amusing…I remember some cutscenes, an interegation of sorts, then being thrown out into the world and not getting very far.

You know what also released in the fall of 2014? Destiny. That had a hold on me for at least a year and there wasn’t’ much time for anything else.

Weird Bug Creatures andStuff

August 26, 2024KluwesLeave a comment

2024 – Page 2 – Many Welps (16)

Earlier this month, I wrote about how No Man’s Sky didn’t have much to offer in the way of multiplayer. I still think that rings true, but the Liquidators Expedition does solve some of the problems I have with it. Mainly, the shared goals, well sort of.

The Squad has been picking our way through the latest expedition which is set to end on September 2nd. So far, most of us have made it to Phase 4 out of 5.

2024 – Page 2 – Many Welps (17)

This Expedition is suppose to take you through worlds that showcase the latest graphical and procedural generation update. We have visited some interesting places, my favorite being the starting world with a giant floating eye creature and islands floating everywhere. We’ve also seen planets made up of mostly water with huge waves and even bigger underwater creatures. Other planets may not have been memorable but they did show off the new flora and fauna combinations.

The Liquidators Expedition focuses heavily on combat. Each phase of the expedition has you traveling to a drop zone, which spawn bug creatures that you need to eliminate. Then you have to travel to an infestation site to shoot even bigger bug creatures! Each phase has an optional goal of killing x number of bug creatures too.

There’s been a whole lot of shooting things the last few weeks.

2024 – Page 2 – Many Welps (18)

Combat, inherintly, lends itself as a great multiplayer activity. It’s certainly easier to take on the swarms with a few friends. There isn’t much structure to it, nothing to really plan for, just go out there and shoot the bugs until there aren’t any more bugs! The big boss bugs add some variety, they have armor that needs to be shot off before they take damage so there’s an option for coordination but it’s not strictly required.

The shared Milestones for each phase of the expedition also lean in to a more focused multiplayer experience. It would be nice if these were actually shared between the party playing together so each person didn’t have to go to their own drop zone, or collect their own eggs, or take out their own number of bugs, but it’s something. Inevitably there is some waiting around while every one finishes up their milestones for the current phase. It does give us all something to work towards together which is more than I can say for the normal game.

2024 – Page 2 – Many Welps (19)

With that said, the expedition does kind of speed run you through the different features of No Man’s Sky that we haven’t seen before. Things like Frieghters, mechs, and other exocraft that can maybe serve as goals for us to chase together when we do go back to the main game. I still think the Nexus missions will give us more focused goals to persue together too, we just haven’t tried them yet.

My Blaugust State of Mind: Week 3 – wait, Week4!?!

August 25, 2024Kluwes1 Comment

2024 – Page 2 – Many Welps (20)

Well, well, well, we’re a bit late for this post that was suppose to be published last Sunday aren’t we? Yes, yes we are….

But that’s ok, this whole positing daily thing was starting to drive me a little crazy. I felt like I fell behind and then couldn’t keep up. Quite frankly, I was starting to get a little obsessive. So I took a small break – okay a bigger break than I intended – and that felt great. It silenced the little gremlin in my head that said you can’t stop now you’re halfway to 31 posts! But I did stop, and now with a bit of a gap, a lot of self imposed pressure I was feeling went away. I notoriously drop off during the aptly named “Staying Motivated Week”, I tend to take too long of a break and then it’s September. Wasn’t trying to do that this year! (Nearly did though…)

This leads me to one of those lesson’s I tend to learn every year. Daily blogging isn’t for me. It’s a fun challenge but it’s not sustainable for me. Especially coming off of a, more or less, 2 year blogging break. I’ve been trying to find some sort of posting schedule here since I started this thing. At this point, that just might be whenever I fell like it. Though, this event always shows me that I enjoy writing a whole lot and should try to do it more often.

As a whole, Blaugust has been good for me. I have written more in the last month than I have in the last two years which feels great. I’ve already exceeded the goal I set for myself in the beginning of all this. I’m feeling confident that I can finish the month strong with a few more posts!

Hunt: Showdown – Hmmmm hmm hmmhmmmmmm!

August 24, 2024Kluwes1 Comment

Hunt: Showdown has one of my favorite video game theme songs ever. I would recognize it anywhere. Its so catchy it’s about the only thing I remembered about my time playing the game four years ago. It’s also stuck in my head right now after revisiting the game this week to check out the big 1896 update.

Port Sulphur Band does all of the in-game music for Hunt and is made up of Crytek employees. They do both the soundtrack music and all the trailers and event music. According to their Spotify bio:

Since their first album released in 2019, Port Sulphur Band have become a cult phenomenon, with over 26 million streams across three albums, and live shows in Paris, Las Vegas, and Frankfurt. 

They have more music than I would have guessed. The original Hunt: Showdown soundtrack is just six songs coming in at 18 minutes long. I guess you just don’t need that much music in PVP game. They also have quite a collection of in-universe music outside of the OST. Their music gives more insight into the lore of Hunt and fits the vibe of the game perfectly.

The tragedy of Hunt:Showdown is it has such an interesting world but the only way to interact that world is through a PVPVE extraction shooter. This world of supernatural, wild west, with zombies and monsters and the hunters that battle them is ripe for good stories. I would love to see a story mode for this game – I’m not holding my breathe though.

Unfortunately, most of my story with the world of Hunt is walking around for 20 minutes without a soul in site and being mowed down by other players on my way to extraction.

This Week In Screenshots: Set toMusic

August 17, 2024August 16, 2024KluwesLeave a comment

I’ve been listening to the Heart of Thorns soundtrack on the way to work this week. Only the first handful of tracks though, because I’ve found some can lead to some spoilers. I can, in fact I probably will, write a whole post on how I got into listening to game soundtracks on their own but…this is not that post. Just something short and sweet for Saturday.

Heart of Thorns has some great music and I thought it would be fun to match up some screenshots I took to the tracks I’ve enjoyed this week.

Hope you’re having a great weekend!

The Pact Laid Waste

2024 – Page 2 – Many Welps (21)

The Jungle Provides

2024 – Page 2 – Many Welps (22)

Jaka Itzel

2024 – Page 2 – Many Welps (23)

Far From Home

2024 – Page 2 – Many Welps (24)

Tarir, the Forgotten City

2024 – Page 2 – Many Welps (25)

Into the Jungle

August 16, 2024Kluwes2 Comments

2024 – Page 2 – Many Welps (26)

I got a solid start in Heart of Thorns this week. I started the main story and ventured through the first two zones: Verdant Brink and Auric Basin. Neither of which I’ve fully explored yet. The story picks up right where the Living World Season 2 leaves off, naturally. There’s enough of a recap where I would have probably figured out what was going on if I didn’t go through Season 2 but I’m sure glad I did.

The first thing I noticed about this expansion? It’s freaking hard! Well, harder than Central Tyria was, for sure, and a bit harder than Dry Top and the Silverwastes. I did a quick Google search to see if this was the case or I was rusty after picking the game back up after a couple months. Google confirmed that Heart of Thorns is, indeed, harder than the core story. Apparently, it used to be even harder too! But I don’t mind, it’s forcing me to pay attention to what each new enemy does. Thematically, it makes sense too because we’re dropped in behind enemy lines on their home turf.

The zones are beautiful. I have a so, so, many screenshots! I really dig the untamed forest vibe with the lush greens and the tree filtered sunlight….amazing. Plus we’ve got frogs everywhere. Big frogs. Small frogs. Tree Frogs!

2024 – Page 2 – Many Welps (27)

I’ve always heard how wonderful HoT’s vertical maps are. I thought I had some idea of what a vertical map was. Let me tell you, Verdant Brink was rough before I unlocked the gliding mastery. One minute I’d be happily cruising down a hill on my raptor, the next minute I’d be falling off a cliff to my death. It certainly made those first few moments in the jungle memorable.

I like the way the mastery system is laid out here. In the base game, the masteries nice, ok Auto Looting is very nice, but they felt like something to passively unlock while I was doing other things: i.e the main story post 80 or the living world stuff.

Masteries in Heart of Thorns, at least so far, unlock more features for getting around. Gliding helps you get places you couldn’t before, learning how to use the bouncing mushrooms let’s you get places you couldn’t before, the Exalted lore helps you navigate the world. Actually, I’m not sure on that last one, it least let’s you use the teleports in Tarir, which saves a few staircases!

I’m looking forward to getting that next mastery unlock to explore more than. I feel more inclined to explore in this expansion. That could be because I ran through Central Tyria so many times before but, I’m taking my time here.

2024 – Page 2 – Many Welps (28)

In addition to masteries, I also like that the story (again at least so far) is broken up into a few missions and then a pause to unlock a new mastery. This has given me a chance to get familiar with the maps, hone my skills against the enemy types in the jungle, and run around and participate in events. It’s has some nice pacing to it, I haven’t felt like I’ve been itching to get back to the story before I’ve unlocked the next mastery.

I had read that the Hero Points were geared more towards multiple people completing them than the hero points in Central Tyria. They do provide ten hero points instead of one which might explain that. I thought I would have a problem completing these, but every time I started one up, there was always one or two people who came along and helped out. I’m looking forward to unlocking the Dragonhunter Elite spec and playing around with that!

Creator Appreciation Week:Parsec

August 15, 2024Kluwes3 Comments

2024 – Page 2 – Many Welps (29)

It’s Creator Appreciation Week here in Blaugust-land. In years past, I’ve used topical week to talk about podcast that I love. I haven’t been listening to many new podcasts as of late, so this year I’m switching it up and giving a shout out to Parsec. If you’ve never heard of Parsec before, it’s an extremely low-latency remote desktop application geared towards gaming. And it’s free for personal use!

My main use for it is using it to play games that don’t support online multiplayer. My friend group is spread throughout the US so we use it a lot to play couch co-op games like the teenage mutant ninja turtles game. We’ve also used it to play single player games in the “pass the controller” style while sitting on our virtual couch like Little Hope.

I’ve been using it for years and it has always worked as advertised. We still get some latency, nothing is perfect, but for the most part controls are smooth and the frames don’t stutter much. We’ve even used it to play a mildly successful run of Dark Souls 3 where each of us were in charge of a single control of the character. I was on attacking, Blades was on healing and dodging, and CC was on movement. It was wild!

It’s a nice application, and while it can have some weird audio issues with Discord sometimes, I haven’t found another program like it.

2024 – Page 2 – Many Welps (2025)

References

Top Articles
Latest Posts
Recommended Articles
Article information

Author: Trent Wehner

Last Updated:

Views: 6268

Rating: 4.6 / 5 (56 voted)

Reviews: 95% of readers found this page helpful

Author information

Name: Trent Wehner

Birthday: 1993-03-14

Address: 872 Kevin Squares, New Codyville, AK 01785-0416

Phone: +18698800304764

Job: Senior Farming Developer

Hobby: Paintball, Calligraphy, Hunting, Flying disc, Lapidary, Rafting, Inline skating

Introduction: My name is Trent Wehner, I am a talented, brainy, zealous, light, funny, gleaming, attractive person who loves writing and wants to share my knowledge and understanding with you.