FFXIV: Patch 5.3

This post contains spoilers for Patch 5.3 for Final Fantasy XIV.

FFXIV's latest patch came out last week. The MSQ was the finale of the Shadowbringers story.

Truthfully, I am not the biggest fan of Shadowbringers. It was quite good, but I didn't love it. And honestly, this patch was for the people who loved it. There were long goodbyes, as you go around to all the new zones and say farewells, having many of the story NPCs show up again.

The final fight was quite good, though, with a superb unexpected cameo. The only issue I have with the fight is that there is one of those active time events where you have to rapidly press a button. The problem is that all eight members of the party have to pass the event. I think it should have been 6 of 8 or so, to allow a little carrying of people who might have trouble with that.

The Nier 24-man raid story also continued. There were so many deaths during that raid. I think we had one healer healing and the other constantly ressing. Several times our group got wiped out and the other groups had to come save us. Heh, one time, our healer managed to use Limit Break 3, ressing everyone in the group, right into a mechanic which killed most of us. He was very upset.

However, it is one of those raids where it will be much better when people get used to the new mechanics.

The final bit of the patch is the Sapphire Weapon story. Here the game went full Gundam with piloting a giant robot and everything. I think the entire thing, including a lot of the dialogue, was a Gundam reference, but I'm not very familar with the franchise.

 There was also a season summer event which was pretty weird. There was a FATE where you had to dance to encourage a bomb to blow up and defeat a giant shark with arms and legs.

The problem I'm having with FFXIV is that there doesn't seem to be much to work on. Too much story, not enough grind, if that makes sense. This expansion is really missing something like Eureka, where you can just log in and work on something at a light pace. Admittedly, though, it's been very crafter-centric, and I haven't really leveled any crafting jobs. And unfortunately, I'm really not fond of max-level dungeon gameplay, wall-to-wall AOE, which is the main gearing grind.

Ganking on an RP-PvP Server

Grobbulus is an Role-Playing Player-vs-Player server. That means it's a little bit weird.

On a normal PvP server, a Horde lowbie gets ganked while trying to quest in Hillsbrad Farms by max-level Alliance players.

On a Role-Playing PvP server, a Horde lowbie gets ganked while trying to quest in Hillsbrad Farms by max-level Alliance players pretending to be farmers.

Seriously, there were four of them, dressed up in overalls and plaid shirts and carrying shovels.

Gaming Log - August 10

 World of Warcraft Classic

I did a couple of quests in Stonetalon Mountains and Ashenvale with the Horde Priest. Then I foolishly went to Hillsbrad Foothills and got ganked twice by a 34 gnome rogue. 

The priest is up to level 27. I took Tailoring as a profession, and surprisingly it's turned out to be very useful. I think I'm wearing four crafted pieces at the moment. Retail WoW is much better about giving you a complete set of gear as basic quest rewards, so the crafting professions are much less useful while gearing up.

Vikings: Wolves of Midgard

I did the next map in Vikings. This time I was attempting to make an alliance with Simul, but she refused and forced me to fight Guarm, guardian of the portal to Hel, so that she could enter Hel. Not sure what Simul is after, but I have been side-tracked to sack the home port of the Imperium Romana's northern navy.

Goals

Here's a list of goals or games that I want to play in the next few weeks:

• Vikings: Wolves of Midgard - I haven't played much in the last week or so, but I really should focus on finishing this game.
• Final Fantasy XIV - Patch 5.3 comes out today. I want to play through the story, and try the next Nier raid.
• World of Warcraft Classic - Try to get the Horde Priest to 60.
• Control - There's an DLC coming out at the end of August.
• Horizon Zero Dawn - One of my friends loved this game and enthusiastically recommended it when it came out on console. It's just been released on PC, but there seem to be a lot of people complaining about crashes. Maybe I'll wait for the first patch, or clear up some of the other goals before getting it.
• Crowfall - Beta is starting. I backed it so long ago. I tried to look at some things in early Alpha, but I couldn't really figure anything out. I really should take a look at what they've built.

Gaming Log - August 8

World of Warcraft

We went after the raid achievements for Emerald Nightmare and Nighthold. We did some of them in Mythic, but then dropped back to Heroic when it turned out that the Botanist achievement requires 10 people in Heroic, but 20 in Mythic.

The only difficult one was Xavius, and that was because it requires a Demon Hunter or a Warlock, two classes that we don't normally have in raids, to find creatures hidden in the darkness. A bit annoying because we have a lot of Hunters, but Flare doesn't show you the hidden creatures. The guildmate who switched to Warlock was very excited to use Eye of Kilrogg, though.

World of Warcraft Classic

I found out that a guildmate plays on Grobbulus, an RP-PvP realm. So I made an Undead Priest on that server and have been focusing solely on it. It's actually kind of surprising how fast one can level without distractions. I'm currently level 27.

It's kind of interesting playing on an PvP realm again. I'll probably regret it though. So far, my PvP experience has been:

• Chased into Tarren Mill by a skull gnome warrior
• One-shot by a skull night elf hunter after landing at Tarren Mill
• Killed twice by a skull human rogue while questing near Tarren Mill
• Killed by a 31 gnome warrior while questing near Tarren Mill
• Killed a 31 human rogue while in a group of 4 (28 druid, 27 priest, 23 warlock, 23 priest) in Stonetalon Mountains 

Not really sure if the last was fair or not. The rogue didn't Vanish though, so maybe he thought he had a chance at taking out the warlock.

In any case, there's mostly been a common theme in PvP, and that's being ganked at Tarren Mill.

When did the Forsaken Change?

I'm leveling a Forsaken priest in WoW Class at the moment. It's been a long time since I played Horde or did the early Forsaken quests. But there's a really big difference in how the Forsaken are treated in Classic versus Battle For Azeroth.

Classic makes it really clear that the Forsaken are different after being raised from the dead. They're the same person, but warmer, positive emotions are greatly muted, and the more negative emotions dominate. For example, Clarice Feldman was the wife of a paladin who went off to fight the Scourge. In life she both loved him and resented him for leaving her. In death, the love is muted, and the resentment magnified. There's another quest about a husband who's wife was killed by his best friend. He sends you to kill that friend, and keeps his hands to remind him of his revenge, but gives you his only momento of his wife, her ring.

Classic is pretty clear that this is normal for Forsaken, that it's just how they are. 

In D&D terms, it's like their alignment takes one step towards Evil after being raised. Someone who was Lawful Good in life is Lawful Neutral in death. Neutral in life becomes Neutral Evil in death.

In Battle For Azeroth, on the other hand, this doesn't happen in most cases. There are 3 new Forsaken raised during the story: Amelia Stone, Thomas Zelling, and Derek Proudmoore. All three of them seem like the same person after being raised, and don't exhibit the change in emotions. Zelling in particular is deeply concerned about his family, and hurt when they reject him. A Classic-style Zelling would care about his family in an intellectual sense, and insist that the Horde carry out their agreement to take care of them. But he wouldn't seek to see them or bond with them.

There is one case where the newly-raised Forsaken behaves in the Classic-style: the Night Elf Wardens. They come back angry at the world and Elune. Ironically, I've seen more player complaints about the change in personality for the Wardens than for Zelling or Proudmoore.

It makes me wonder if I missed something in the story. A plot point where Forsaken resurrection was "fixed", and newly-made Forsaken started coming back with an unchanged personality.

AQ Drama in WoW Classic

The Ahn'Quiraj phase started in WoW Classic recently. This phase starts with the War Effort to unlock the gates in Silithus. It also has the race to be the person who unlocks the gates and gets the title of Scarab Lord.

And so we have drama. So much drama.

Check out the WoW Classic forums and reddit. Horde and Ally guilds colluding. Guilds interfering with each other. People being forced to farm so their GM gets Scarab Lord. People mass-reporting each other. Guilds acting like a mafia and controlling the pace of the opening. Half the guilds want to delay the opening so they can have more Scarab Lords, and the other half insists the gates open early so that there are more chances to get loot from AQ40.

You can see why Blizzard took steps to reduce all this drama. 

And yet, the drama is what makes it fun and entertaining, even for those of us not participating. You have actual server communities with guilds who know each other and are fighting and cooperating with each other. There are known personalities on each sides. Check out this video from Grobbulus:

In some ways, there is more "life" in this one event in a replica of a 15-year-old game than there has been in the last five years of Retail WoW.

Perhaps drama is the most attractive point of the MMO genre, what makes it special. And in removing anything which can cause drama, MMOs become just another game.

Legion Antorus Raid Achievments Done!

We only had six people show up for raid this week, so we went and did the achievements in the Antorus raid from Legion. We started trying them on Mythic difficulty, which wasn't too bad, until we got to Eonar. Mythic Eonar requires a bit more coordination than we were expecting, with having to send a team to the ship and everything. So we dialed it back to Heroic.

The only difficult achievement was Aggramar, and that was mostly because we didn't have a second tank who knew how to tank swap during the combo while keeping the boss from moving. We made our DPS warrior learn to tank. It took us a few tries, but we got the tank to combo one of the adds twice, and got the achievement.

We also accidentally killed the last boss on Heroic. The achievement requires you to be in phase 4. So we unloaded on the boss in phase 1 to speed things up. Unfortunately we sped things up a little bit too much, and killed the boss as he was transitioning from P1 to P2. So we had to go to Normal difficulty and slowly whittle him down and make sure all the phases transitioned properly.

We did get all of the boss achievements this week, giving most of us the meta-achievement for that instance, and some sort of mount. Kind of interesting to go back to it after all this time.

Gaming Log - July 27

I was out of town for most of the weekend, so not much happened gaming-wise.

World of Warcraft Classic

• Priest - I did the Dun Modr elite quests. It was a small group, just me, a hunter and a rogue. We died a few times trying to get Balagaras without pulling many adds. But we were successful in the end, and my Priest is up to level 30.
• Rogue - finished off a couple more quests in Stranglethorn Vale. The run from either Booty Bay or Darkshire is so long that it makes me avoid the Rogue.

Final Fantasy XIV

I dropped into FFXIV just to see what was going on. My guild, never active at the best of times, seems pretty dead. Oh well, I guess I'm contributing to that as well. 

I did some Beast Tribe quests, a leveling dungeon as a Dancer, and a couple of FATES.

The Old Republic

Dropped into this one to see what happening as well. I did the Onderon Weekly on my Jedi Sentinel and surprisingly hit Legend reputation with the Onderon faction. I had no idea I was that close, or that I had done Onderon that much with the Sentinel.

Ny'alotha Achievements, Part III

We finished all the Ny'alotha raid achivements and got the mount! Sadly, I don't have a picture, but it's one of those worms which fly through the sky. We actually attempted both of these achievements on a previous raid night, but failed to do them correctly.

Carapace of N'Zoth

This time around we made everyone take off essences and corruptions which do automatic damage. We also were more specific about assigning people to blobs on the side. We also settled on a system where DPS got them down to 30%, then a tank took them down to 10%. Then we all used the cloak, got back to full sanity, got into position, and burst them down after the shield buff expired.

The first time through we took too long in P2. We had a couple people go insane, then we had to kill them and res them. We did kill all the blobs in 10s, but the boss actually enraged and wiped us in P3. We then had a couple of tries where we flubbed it and had to wipe.

The fourth try was the charm, and we killed the blobs after the first cloak in P2, then finished off the boss.

N'Zoth

This time around we didn't do anything special in the first two phases. We did the fight like normal, and went into P3 with high sanity for everyone in the group. Then we got the boss down to 15% and everyone's sanity below 50%. Everyone stepped out of the Harvester's circle, and we all went insane at the same time and then killed the boss.

I imagine we'll do these achievements a few more times in the next couple of weeks. A few of the raiders missed some of the bosses, so hopefully we'll be able to get them their mount as well.

Gaming Log - June 22

World of Warcraft Classic

I managed to find an group going to Shadowfang Keep on my paladin. I even got to DPS instead of tanking or healing. The run went fairly smoothly with the exception of two parts. There was one point where we seemed to get a large number of worgen at once, like we pulled extra packs somehow. We wiped twice there until we managed to pull just one group by itself. The other difficult part was the end boss, Archmage Arugal and his crazy shadowbolts. We wiped there a couple of times.

But we got through, and I got my [Verigan's Fist]! The paladin is up to level 24.

I also did some Loch Modan quests on priest, which is up to 29. Finally, I finished a few quests in Stranglethorn Vale on my rogue, which is level 35. For Alliance, the run just to get to the questing areas in STV is so long. I really miss the flight point at the rebel camp in Retail. I also really need new weapons on the rogue. I think I'm using a level 20 sword and a level 13 dagger.

Ny'alotha Achievements, Part II

A couple more raid nights, more achievements down.

Hivemind

This one is pretty easy. Near the entrance to each of the three wings there's a friendly critter that you can pick up. You'll have to clear a little of the trash to find them. Three people pick up the critter. Then when you start the fight with Hivemend, the critters will appear and 'evolve'. Kill the evolved critters, kill the boss, done.

Ra-Den

There are two obelisks on the sides of the room. The black projectile that a single person soaks bounces in the direction that you face. You have to bounce the projection on top of the obelisk to destroy it. The achievement is to break both obelisks, which you can do in two black phases.

The big danger here is that everyone goes to help with the achievement mechanic, and forgets about the other mechanics. On our first try we had several people die because no one was near the boss to soak the other mechanic which requires you to split damage.

Shad'har

Here everyone needs to pet the dog. You need to pet him one at a time, so we just had one person call someone every few seconds. Here's a simple macro for healers (who may not be targeting the boss):

/tar Shad

/pet

Pretty easy, about the only issue is that you might kill him too fast for everyone to pet him. There's always someone who doesn't hear their name and you have to call them again, which slows everything down. Also, try to do all the petting in the first two phases. Extending the last phase is a pain.

Drest'agar

Here you need to get two tantrum phases within 60 seconds. Drest'agar does a tantrum at 100 energy. Each tentacle you kill gives him 20 energy. Kill 4 tentacles, wait for a second set of tentacles to spawn so that there are at least 6 active. Then burn down all the tentacles. Pretty easy.

Il'ygnoth

This one was a little difficult. You need to kill 10 bloods within 3 seconds. What we did was during the first intermission phase we just let all the bloods come out. People being targeted just ran in circles around the center. We had to wait until 15 bloods were released, before everyone ran into the center and unleashed AoE. Healers popped their big cooldowns to survive. We had all the DPS use the AoE laser Azerite essence.

We ended up waiting for 15 bloods because you have wait for them to actually reach the center. So with 15 out, we had 12 dragged to the center. We still lost half the DPS in the resulting explosion, but the remaining raid was enough to finish the fight on Normal.

Gaming Log - June 19

World of Warcraft

Not a lot happened here. Mostly emissaries and N'Zoth invasions on the paladin.

I also bought 6x Ineffable Truth I corruptions. The sad part is that it reduces the cooldowns of my abilities, but does not reduced the cooldown of trinkets. I had a trinket which perfectly lined up with Avenging Wrath, but no longer does. I ended up swapping it out for a different trinket with an equip proc.

World of Warcraft Classic

Been playing my paladin in Classic. I've been working on the Verigan's Fist questline. I did Deadmines again, found a group for the ogres in Loch Modan, and managed to solo a couple of the elite Naga outside Blackfathom Deeps. Luckily, the second Naga dropped the Kor Gem. Now all I have to do is Shadowfang Keep. Not sure how difficult it will be to find a group for it, though.

Vikings - Wolves of Midgard

I attacked the Imperium Romana's northernmost holdings, but they hunkered down in their impenetrable fortress, Castrum Ignis. I had to bargain with the troll-witch Grindill (mother of my skald, you may recall). In return for the hero Sigurd's ring, she would provide me a path into Castrum Ignis.

So I raided Sigurd's barrow, killed his shade (and a lot of other undead), and took his ring. The troll-witch kept her side of the bargain and showed me a portal from Utgard that led to the mines below Castrum Ignis. I took the portal, sacked Castrum Ignis and killed their leader, the Bishop of the Sea, thus ending the Imperium Romana's northern ambitions.

Now I have to try and forge that alliance with the giantess Simul again.

This game is just great when you recount what happens in the story. They throw in all the twists and turns of a Norse saga. And really, it's just an ARPG where you go and kill everything on the map. But they have the presentation done quite nicely.

Ny'alotha Achievements, Part I

My guild has decided to go after the Ny'alotha raid achievements over the next few weeks. We did the first five yesterday. We had about 12 raiders in the group (2 tanks, 2 healers, 8 dps) and we did it on Normal.

An invaluable tool for this is the Instance Achievement Tracker addon.  I strongly recommend this addon if you are trying for achievements.

Here are some thoughts on the achievements we did:

Wrathion

Every single person in the raid already had the achievement to destroy 10 spikes in 3 seconds. Judging by the dates of the achievements, we actually meet the requirements are every week in the regular raid.

Skitra

This was fairly easy. Just clear the trash before the boss. Have a tank run out and get the Disciple and drag it to the boss. Make sure everyone is in the raid is inside, pull the boss, and wait for the Disciple to split into 3 before attacking it.

Maut

We had our second tank hold an add in one of pools until the stoneskin phase. Then the tank got an orb to hit the add, we killed the add, and then finished attacking the boss. 

This one took us two tries. The first time, the orb accidentally hit the tank instead, and the add did some sort of self-sacrifice move before we could get it to hit a second orb.

Xanesh

This one was the hardest of the ones we did. You have to knock the ball into the goal in the last 3 seconds before the debuff expires, and do this 3 times in one fight. We had two people bounce the ball back and forth in front of the goal, and then they or the third person knocked it in at the 4-5 second mark.

The biggest problem here is that there is no feedback if you are successful or not. Blizzard should have had a chat line on a success or maybe have the fireworks that go off if you score be a different colour.

The one saving grace is the enrage timer on Xanesh is really long. We ended up doing about 6 ball phases, just to make sure we got three successes. There was a whole bunch of "Did that go in on time? I think it did, but I'm not sure." After the second ball phase, we had to stop dps entirely. The tank did get one-shot at some point, but I think we could have avoided that with better tank swaps.

Vexiona

Everyone in the raid needs to get hit with 30 stacks of the beam debuff. A lot of the guides emphasize stacking and using raid cooldowns. I think it's easier to just take your time, and hit everyone with a few stacks every beam, while doing other mechanics properly and avoiding death. 

IAT is a lifesaver here, as it notifies you when people reach the limit and who still needs stacks.

The plan is to do a few more achievements tomorrow and finish up over the next couple of weeks.

Decisions in Vikings: Wolves of Midgard

Every so often in Vikings: Wolves of Midgard, the game presents you with a couple of dialogue options. For some reason, I thought these were just for flavor. But it turns out they actually change the story slightly!

For example, the crone Vala was urging my character to forge an alliance with the giant Simul, the enemy of my enemy. There was an option to say "Alliance? Doesn't she have any treasure?" I took the option on a whim. Then the next map turned out to be attacking Simul and stealing her ring Draupnir.

Once I stole the ring, Vala asked that I give it to her, so that she could return Draupnir to Odin. I chose the "No, I stole it. It is mine!" option. Vala informed me that I had succumbed to curse of the ring. The game then announced that I would get an extra 3000 gold per map, but could not sacrifice to Odin to level up anymore. This would last until I gave up the ring to my soothsayer.

The next quest text, narrated by Vala, then talked about how the "rapacious greed of the Ulfung she-wolf might doom us all." I was greatly amused!

I don't think the story greatly changes, I think we're still on track for an alliance of necessity with Simul. But I really like how the developers have woven a little bit of choice into the game.

A Novel RPG Resolution Mechanic

I came across a homebrewed tabletop RPG based on Magic: the Gathering. In particular, it has a really neat resolution mechanic.

As background, there are five colours in Magic: White, Blue, Black, Red, Green. Each represents parts of the world. For example, among other elements, White is order, Blue is knowledge, Black is death, Red is raw emotion, and Green is nature. If you arrange the colours in a circle, adjacent colours are considered allies, and opposite colors are enemies. For example, White is allied with Blue and Green, and is enemies with Red and Black.

This RPG uses a Fate deck composed of 2 land cards of each colour, and 1 Wastes (colorless). If you attempt something difficult, the Game Master first chooses the color your challenge belongs to. You then draw a card from the Fate deck. If it matches the color of the challenge, it's a success. If it matches an allied color, it's a partial success. If the character you are playing belongs to the same color, you get an extra draw and you take the best result.

For example, if your character is attempting to research something, that's Blue. Drawing a Blue land is success. Drawing White or Black is a partial success. Red, Green, or the Wastes is a failure. If your character is Blue, you get two draws, making it likely you'll get a partial success at least.

This is a very clever mechanic. It matches Magic: the Gathering intuitively, especially the color wheel which all players know well. As well, it's an 18% change of full success, and 36% chance of partial success. I find the clean use of partial successes particularly interesting, because partial success often lead the players to solve additional problems and makes the story more memorable.

Of course, this mechanic isn't really suitable to a numbers-heavy type of game. It looks to be more appropriate for a lighter, story-telling game.

Heirloom Changes

Yesterday, it was announced that heirlooms in Shadowlands won't provide XP bonuses.

I think this is a great change. I am not a fan of heirlooms. One of the elements of leveling that I really enjoy is upgrading gear and watching your character's visuals change. But the XP bonus made heirlooms too advantageous.

This way, the people who don't want to upgrade gear can use heirlooms, while others can avoid them. Or maybe only use them for trinkets or weapons, if that's important enough.

I hope Blizzard does not add any other bonuses, and just makes them very optional.

Blizzard should also take the opportunity to simplify the heirloom system. Right now there's a complex series of upgrades with different prices and different sources in order to increase the maximum level of the heirloom item. It would be best if the concept of upgrading heirlooms was just removed entirely. All heirlooms simply scale to the max level before the expansion. When a new expansion is released, all heirlooms have their caps increased simultaneously.

Stealthed Enemies

In the last post I complained about a Classic quest where you have to kill some monsters who are in stealth.

The thing that makes these quests particularly annoying in Classic is that you can't even be sure that you are in the right area. If you can't find any mobs, it might be because:

• You are in the wrong area. Classic directions are often somewhat vague.
• You might not get close enough to the mob to detect it. This is especially true if you are under-leveled.
• Someone else may have come through just before you and killed the mobs, so you're waiting for them to respawn, but you don't know that.

In retail, the minimap displays the area where you can find the mobs. So at the very least, you know where to search.

In Classic, there's just too little information, and that makes the whole thing a frustrating exercise. These sort of quests really need something to offset that loss of information. For example, a tracker that told you if you were hot or cold.

Or possibly if the geography was constrained to make finding the mobs easier. For example, stealthed mobs in an underground mine or complex. Here you can traverse the corridors, and be reasonably certain that you've found or not found any mobs in the paths that you've already taken.

But stealthed mobs out in the Classic open world are just overly frustrating.

Gaming Log - July 7

World of Warcraft

I did the first part of Heroic Nya'lotha with my Paladin. Also did a couple of Emissaries. Nothing really new happened.

I would like to finish up BfA Archeology, though. Perhaps I'll dedicate some play time to that goal.

World of Warcraft Classic

I've been doing quests in Wetlands with my Priest. This Fen Creeper quest is terribly annoying. I've been wandering up and down the waterways trying to catch a glimpse of these stealthed mobs. Actually, stealth mobs in Vanilla are really terrible quests.

General

I've been writing these Gaming Logs for about a month. I'm not sure what to think about them. On the one hand, I actually wrote more posts last month than I have in a couple years. On the other hand, I'm not sure if these posts are actually interesting or worthwhile.

Gaming Log - July 5

World of Warcraft

Did Heroic Nya'lotha on my Paladin again. We did Mythic Jaina afterwards. One of mounts went to a hunter in our guild. Oddly, of the five Mythic Jaina mounts our guild has, four of them have been won by hunters. Now we do have a lot of hunters--3 of 12 in the raid were hunters--but we also have a lot of mages--3 of 12 were mages--and none of them have won it. Makes me want to roll a hunter.

We also got a new tank who joined the guild/raid, but I don't think he's going to last. He's a good guy and a good tank, but he didn't realize the server/guild was PST. Unfortunately he's on the East Coast, so I think the raid times are just not going to match, and he's going to have to move on. 

My advice when looking for a guild is to determine what times you want to play, and make sure the prospective guild matches. It should be your first consideration, before anything else. There's not much point in being in a guild if you can't play with other guild members.

World of Warcraft Classic

In the constant rotation of Classic characters, I've been focusing on my Warlock lately. On this one, I made an effort to go to Loch Modan early. Bouncing between the Human and Dwarf zones has made questing a lot easier.

Warlock is an interesting class in Classic. Between Life Tap, DoTs, Demons, and Drains, it's a little more intricate than most of the others at low level. It's a real pity it devolves into Shadowbolt spam at max level.

Vikings: Wolves of Midgard

I did a second map fighting the Roman Imperium, this time killing a Bishop with a funny hat. The game made a big deal about the hat. Now my character is off to Utgard, to forge an Alliance with a rival Frost Giant. Or possibly to kill her and steal her treasure, the ring Draupnir. To be fair, the Frost Giant stole Draupnir from Odin first.

In any case, I loaded in the new zone at level 10, and the enemies were level 13 and higher. I'm reaching the point where gear and talents makes up for level, but I decided to do a side map to gain another level first.

Star Wars: The Old Republic

My installation is doing something weird, where the game believes that it is not installed and you can only play on the starter planets with a new character. I looked online, and the fix is to disable the Bitraider streaming client, and basically download and reinstall the game again. I'll probably end up doing that, but maybe Bioware will issue a fix this week.

Swoop Racing

The Old Republic's latest patch introduced Swoop Racing! There are courses set up on Dantooine, Onderon, and Tatooine. It's pretty neat.

There are three team, each focused on a different aspect. One likes explosions, one likes flair and jumps, and one is about speed. Though they all use the same course, it changes slightly for each team.

Basically you're on a vehicle that is always moving faster. You can slow down or speed up a bit, but it isn't very hard to maneuver. Bioware made good use of SWTOR's optional mission directives. The base mission just requires you to complete the course and do a few of the team's specials. A timed run is optional.

You also aren't racing against anyone, but everyone else is all on the same track and going in the same direction. So it feels active and a bit like an actual race.

Apparently Bioware has tied some story to the faction reputation, and it is supposed to advance as you gain reputation. I think this is the first time Bioware has done this, so we'll see how it works out. Reputation is shared between your characters, though there is a cap on how much can be earned each week. Bioware also puts the bulk of the reward into weekly quests, further reducing the grind.

All in all, I found it pretty fun. It's a nice change of pace.