Ever since the Diablo II Resurrected and Diablo IV rogue class announcements last month, I have had the urge to play all things Diablo, including Diablo III Season 22. When I found out a new Diablo III Season is due to start in April and will feature a somewhat significant content update with a focus on supporting solo players such as myself, I had intended to wait for the start of season 23 and booked some time off of work. But, after a few days, I could not help but take a dive in to Season 22, even with just a few weeks remaining.
At first I only intended to make to level 70 character, just so that I had ‘something to show’ for season 22 on my profile. But, since I was having so much fun, I carried on playing until last Friday, this happened.
As a player who plays Diablo games using the hardcore setting, I am always prepared to lose my character, and the items they’re using. I can honestly say that I am not very disappointed by this, especially considering season 22 is almost over and that I had accomplished quite a lot with just 32 hours and 27 minutes time played, which is very little when considering the last season I played, season 17, I clocked up more than 120 hours of play game across 4 characters.
In season 22 I reached paragon level 403 and my highest greater rift record was level 64 with a wizard, which is a bit of a shame because I really wanted to hit level 70 and obtain at least 1 primal ancient legendary item before the end of the season. Having had a lot of fun playing season 22, I can hardly wait for the start of season 23 where I will have much more time to progress and hopefully beat my season 17 personal bests.
During this month of Classic WoW there has been a huge improvement to raiding with the notable exception of last week when my guild mates and I spent around 2 hours trying to defeat Sapphiron and failed miserably. This week however, it was the complete opposite. We defeated Sapphiron and Kel’Thuzad each on the first attempt, leaving us with more than enough time to clear Blackwing Lair in addition to Naxxramas.
I have been unable to cross anything off from my wish list below, but that’s OK since my loot priority rating has been low after getting a lot of loot in a short space of time. For the time being at least I am next in line to get Bonescythe Ring to complete the Bonescythe Armour set. Hopefully I will see one drop from Kel’Thuzad soon. I do not think it is likely that anything else will come my way anytime soon.
Desireable
Drake Fang Talisman
Jom Gabbar
Best
Shroud of Dominion
Bonescythe Ring
Band of Unnatural Forces
Slayer’s Crest
Kiss of the Spider
Gressil, Dawn of Ruin
The Hungering Cold
Nerubian Slavemaker
Since my previous WoW update The Burning Crusade Classic has been announced and will be released later in the year. This is of no surprise to anyone and for the most part people are looking forward to it.
The Burning Crusade Classic has filled me with mixed feelings, on one hand it’s an excellent opportunity to continue my Classic WoW adventure with Inspire guild. On the other hand it’s a huge investment of time and I worry that I will not be able to keep up and will fall by the wayside. The end game raid content will go from 40 or 20 player raids to 25 or 10 player raids. This will make it much easier for the guild officers to manage and the guild community will be more tight knit, but the guild currently has enough members to consistently fill 40 player raids, sometimes with a few players sitting on the bench. Those 15 or so extra players will more than likely be the ones who hit level 70 last and are those who are unable to commit as much time to running heroic dungeons for pre-raid gear. One experienced guild member has already briefly shared his concerns with me, telling me it practically broke up the guild he was in. I am going to have to put some real thought and consideration in what I want to do, but one thing is for sure, I would miss playing with a lot like minded people if I decided to call it quits.
This time last year guild members Eremir, Grominx and Gurkis (now retired), helped me get the the Hand of Justice trinket which I still use to this day! This was always what my blog was intended for, to capture and immortalize my gaming memories and achievements, it’s so cool to look back at what I was doing a year ago.
The time has come for me to write about the last Classic WoW raid, Naxxramas. As before with Onyxia’s Lair, Molten Core, Zul’Gurub, Blackwing Lair and Ahn’Qiraj blog posts, I have waited until I feel as though I have fully mastered the raid.
My guild and I have now fully cleared Naxxramas 4 times, defeating all 15 bosses including the final boss, Kel’Thuzad. While we did have some problems, indicated in my previous Classic WoW post, we seem to be back on track and most recently cleared 13 out of 15 bosses in a single 3 hour raid. Considering we have been consistently defeating the 14th boss, Sapphiron, in 1 attempt and have been able to defeat Kel’Thuzad without world buffs, I believe it is very likely we will easily clear the raid in less than an hour next Monday. All that remains now is to farm Naxxramas for the loot and attempt to clear it in a single 3 hour raid.
As with every raid in Classic WoW, I am disappointed at how easy it is, however Naxxramas was at least some challenge and did require a number of progression raids. A sticking point for my guild, Inspire, was Gothik the Harvester and to some degree Thaddius which is baffling to me since these are perhaps the easiest bosses in the raid and we have no difficulty with them now. I have made a video of my guild and I defeating each of the bosses and have uploaded them to my YouTube channel. I know I have shared it before, but I think my favourite is when we defeated Sapphiron for the first time, and the reaction that followed.
What I found most surpising was how similar classic Naxxramas is to Naxxramas in the Wrath of the Lich King expansion. Not only do many of the items look similar or the same in appearance, but the mechanics of each boss is very similar, if not identical. This really gave me an edge because I was both a raid leader and main tank throughout Wrath of the Lich King and had a lot of experience raiding Naxxramas.
With Naxxramas being ‘on farm’ we as a guild have successfully completed a Atiesh, Greatstaff of the Guardian staff, in this case for guild officer Mexcoo, who really does deserve it. We are now working on the druid version of the staff for guild member Tailsmad, who is also deserving. Becuase it is only a matter of time before we complete a staff, it is my hope that at least 1 or 2 more deserving guild members will be able to get one before the the end of Classic WoW and beginning of The Burning Crusade.
February has been a month of two halves in Snooker Nation. While this is a lot better than the disappointing January results, I can’t help but feel a little disappointed. I feel like I should have done better towards the end of the month but not for the first time over confidence got the better of me. Here’s to a better outcome in March.
It feels good to break Jason’s win streak and get my first win this season. We both didn’t play particularly well but I had slightly better luck which was enough for me to win 6 frames to 3 in a best of 11. There were 3 century breaks, I got 133 in the 3rd frame, 107 in the 9th frame and Jason got 103 in the 4 frame. Hopefully I can use this to build some momentum and get a win streak of my own.
I have started a win streak by winning 6 frames to 4. There were a total of 3 century breaks, I scored 100 in the 4th frame while Jason got 101 in the 6th and 127 in the 7th frame. All in all I think we both played OK, but there were some scrappy frames in there. I hope I can continue this win streak and level on matches won and possibly take the lead on frames won, currently sitting at 24 to 25 in Jason’s favour.
Jason ends my win streak early, winning 6 frames to 5. At one stage I was ahead 3 frames but somehow, perhaps with over confidence, I could not seal the victory. There were a total of 4 century breaks, I got 107 in the 2nd frame but Jason dominated the second half of this match, scoring 102 in the 7th 112 in the 9th and 106 in the 11th frame. It was a great come back, but I can’t help but feel disappointed.
Hopefully this is not the beginning of a long win streak for Jason, having won 6 frames to 2. I do not think I played badly, but Jason was certainly the better player this evening. My only consolation is that I got a century of 135 in the 4th frame, beating this season’s personal best by 1. Jason got some centuries of his own, 114 in the 1st, 112 in the 5th and 127 in the 7th frame.
Season 4 (January – June 2021) statistics
| Played | Won | Frames Won | Centuries | Highest Break | |
| Copper | 7 | 2 | 31 | 11 | 135 |
| Jason | 7 | 5 | 37 | 16 | 138 |
Blizzcon 2020, due late last year, was unfortunatly cancelled due to the pandemic. Over the weekend however, for the first time, Blizzard fans had access to a Blizzconline 2021 event. Ordinarily I would have stayed up late and booked some time off work to thoroughly enjoy a Blizzcon event, something I did for Blizzcon 2019 and Blizzcon 2018. For this event I decided not to for a number of reasons, the main one being that Blizzard no longer host the Starcraft II finals. Being a free to watch event, I found the time to watch a recoding of the opening ceremony which contains the majority of announcements for new games and expansions. None of it really interested me, other than confirmation that Classic World of Warcraft will naturally move on to Classic The Burning Crusade and, most excitingly the announcement of Diablo II Resurrected.
The announcment of Diablo II Resurrected was very interesting to me. For me this is the most good news from Blizzard in years. Any regular reader of my blog may remember that I played Diablo II for years before the launch of World of Warcraft, as noted in my diablo journey post. Blizzconline featured a lot of Diablo, including an update on Diablo IV which introduced a new class, the Rogue, which was one of the classes in the original Diablo game and a follower in Diablo II.
I think Diablo II is the best dungeon crawling game ever made, even better than Diablo III. I am waiting to create a hardcore necromancer and slowly play my way through the game, collect runes to make runeword items and generally explore with better graphics and qulity of life updates. It’s enouugh to say, with Diablo II Ressurected and Diablo IV in the making, I will be playing and blogging a lot of Diablo content in future.
It has been a mixed bag of a month of Classic World of Warcraft for me. I have consistently raided Naxxramas and occasionally other raids with my guild mates in Inspire and can cross off another 2 pieces of loot as aquired, leaving just 1 piece of loot needed to complete the Bonescythe Armour set. As a bonus I have also been awarded a gun, Toxin Injector, from Grobbulus. While technically this isn’t better than my Striker’s Mark bow, I have found myself temporarily over hit capped making the 1% hit I think less useful than 6 more attack power and 10 stamina the gun has to offer. Having been awarded a total of 8 peices of loot from Naxxramas, my priority rating to get more loot is incredibly low. It is very unlikely therefore that I will be getting any more items from Naxxramas for a long time to come. But that’s OK, I am pleased with what I have.
Desireable
Drake Fang Talisman
Jom Gabbar
Best
Shroud of Dominion
Bonescythe Breastplate
Bonescythe Bracers
Bonescythe Ring
Band of Unnatural Forces
Slayer’s Crest
Kiss of the Spider
Gressil, Dawn of Ruin
The Hungering Cold
Nerubian Slavemaker
The best thing about this last month of Classic WoW is that my guild and I have twice completely cleared all the bosses in Naxxramas, including Kel’Thuzad. This in a sense means my guild mates and I have completed Classic WoW by defeating all of the raid bosses. I recorded and uploaded our first Kel’Thuzad kill below.
Normally I wouldn’t share a second video of the same thing, but I would also like to share a video of my guild mates and I defeating Kel’Thuzad for a second time which was almost flawless. We really do make it look easy, mind you, we did have world buffs this time around.
This is where the good news ends. Since defeating Kel’Thuzad for a second time on the 1st February, everything seems to have got progressively worse with each passing raid. I am not 100% sure why this is but I believe it could be because people have lost all focus now we have ‘completed’ the game. It’s as if it does not matter anymore and people are just waiting for The Burning Crusade. Individual raiders are making terrible mistakes while some others appear to be putting individual DPS (damage per second) before raid mechanics. Most recently it seems as if when people die in the game and lose their world buffs, they stop trying. As a guild we should have defeated Kel’Thuzad twice more by now but we just aren’t getting it done in two 3 hour raids, which should be more than enough. I would like to add that I have not been a perfect player, I too have made mistakes but no more than usual and no blindingly obvious ones capable of causing a wipe (where all 40 players in the raid are wiped out).
With all these failures, tempers are running unusually high, not just with the raid leader but even with usually level headed players. It’s not nice to be on the receiving end of his temper, but I fully support our main raid leader, Warriodude (aka Pallydude) and the other officers. I hope between them they will be able to sort something out and see that our wonderful guild survives Classic WoW in order to flourish in The Burning Crusade.
Looking back to this time last year with my 2020 February update, i’ts nice to see that my raiding had taken off, I had acquired a 100% speed mount and Inspire guild were preparing for Blackwing Lair by issuing everyone an Onyxia Scaled Cloak.
When I started to play EVE Online around 5 years ago, I wanted to fly a carrier. I immediately noticed that miners used drones to protect themselves in asteroid belts, later I found that drones were a good way to deal out damage in order to complete combat sites and missions. I saw that there were drones used for a variety of tasks including salvaging and mining but I also saw there were ‘fighters’. I soon realized that fighters were solely used with carriers and that a carrier was well out of my reach for multiple reasons such as my character lacked the necessary skills and well over a billion ISK (Interstellar Kredits, the in game currency) was needed to buy the ship alone without any fighters or fittings.
Now my character has the funds and skills to pilot some carriers and operate the fittings. I have bought an Archon and have organized some fittings for it. The remaining issue is that carriers (and most other capital ships) can not be used in high security space, so there will always be a high risk of other players wanting to engage in PvP (Player vs Player), something I have avoided as much as possible. I have however successfully completed a small number of test flights out of a station in low security space.
The purpose of these test flights is to give me an opportunity to learn how to operate the carrier’s fighters and fittings. It’s also an opportunity for me to do what I always wanted in small doses in relative safety from other players looking for a nice kill. The problem I face now is that there really isn’t much more I can do without high risk of losing my carrier. If I were part of a large corporation or alliance it would be possible to safely use my carrier, but, since I play alone, test flights is about all I can achieve. Even when undocking for 7 – 10 minutes to do my ‘test flight’ I have seen a growing amount of activity, indicating that I will always need to be extra careful.
For now, I am satisfied to simply have a carrier which I can fly and I will mostly likely work towards improving it by upgrading and revising the fittings and fighters I have for it. I will also be looking to increase my collection of capital ships, perhaps with a dreadnaught or a different carrier, I am not sure yet.
If you are new to EVE Online and are interested in finding out which fittings and fighters I am currently using for my carrier, or are interested in finding out how to get a carrier of your own, please leave a comment or contact me.
When it comes to Snooker Nation, it has been a terrible start to 2021 for me. Of the 3 weeks Jason and I played, Jason won all 3 and ends January with a 6 frame advantage. It is still early in our Snooker Nation season, we have another 5 months to go, but I can’t help but feel a little deflated by the results so far.
A very good start to Snooker Nation season 4 for Jason, winning 6 frames to 2 in a best of 11. Not only that, Jason scored an impressive 4 centuries, 110 in the 1st frame, 108 in the 5th, another 110 in the 6th and 114 in the 8th frame. My only consolation is that I scored a century of my own, 120 in the 4th frame.
Another win for Jason, winning 6 frames to 5 in our usual best of 11. There were 2 century breaks, I got 129 in the 6th frame while Jason bagged 107 in the 10th. I really should have won this match as at one stage I had a commanding lead. I guess I shall have to wait a little longer for my first Season 4 victory.
Jason is able to increase his win streak to 3 matches in a row by beating me 6 frames to 5 again. We both played really well and had quite a few century breaks between us. I had 134 in the 1st frame which is my new high break, followed by 114 in the 3rd and 122 in the 5th frame. Jason responded with 100 in the 2nd frame, 138 in the 6th which is the new high break overall, and 115 in the 10th frame.
Season 4 (January – June 2021) statistics
| Played | Won | Frames Won | Centuries | Highest Break | |
| Copper | 3 | 0 | 12 | 5 | 134 |
| Jason | 3 | 3 | 18 | 8 | 138 |
It’s been an excellent month of Classic World of Warcraft, not just for me but also for the people I play with in Inspire guild. I have been more active recently, attending quite a few guild raids including most of the Naxxramas progression raids. Inspire have now cleared all 4 quarters of Naxxramas and have defeated arguably the most difficult boss, Sapphiron. I believe it’s only a matter of time before Inspire and I are able to defeat the last boss, Kel’Thuzad.
I continue to be fortunate on the loot front and have been awarded Bonescythe Helmet and Bonescythe Pauldrons. The downside to have been prioritized the tier 3 Bonescythe Armour set is that my loot priority rating (PR) is continuously very low. This means any other loot is pretty much off the cards for quite a while, but, that’s OK. If like me you have 6 pieces of loot from Naxxramas while other players have maybe 1 or 2, you shouldn’t complain.
Desireable
Drake Fang Talisman
Jom Gabbar
Best
Bonescythe Helmet
Bonescythe Pauldrons
Shroud of Dominion
Bonescythe Breastplate
Bonescythe Bracers
Bonescythe Ring
Band of Unnatural Forces
Slayer’s Crest
Kiss of the Spider
Gressil, Dawn of Ruin
The Hungering Cold
Nerubian Slavemaker
I have not been part of all of Inspire’s firsts in Naxxramas, but on the 11th January, I was there when we defeated Sapphiron for the first time. Of the 75 YouTube videos I have created so far, my recording of us defeating Sapphiron is probably my favourite. Not only was it a great achievement for everyone who was there, but people’s reaction is priceless. If you haven’t seen it already, please take a look below.
On my ‘to do’ list I can cross off getting exalted with Argent Dawn and have obtained manual of Eviscerate IX from the auction house. Because I have become quite lazy, I do not think I can find the motivation to complete the Darkmantle Armour set and will be taking it off of my list next month. As for reaching exalted the Darnassus, Gnomeregan Exiles and Stormwind, this is something I still want to work on and will leave it in play for now.
Gain exalted with Argent Dawn
Gain exalted with Darnassus
Gain exalted with Gnomeregan Exiles
Gain exalted with Stormwind
Obtain Darkmantle Cap
Obtain Darkmantle Tunic
Obtain Manual of Eviscerate IX
One negative thing about being lazy in Classic WoW, especially during progression raiding, most of my gold (in game currency) and stock of consumables have vanished. At one stage I didn’t have enough consumables for the next raid, and had just 44 gold to my name. This has forced me to rethink how I play Classic WoW if I want to achieve full Naxxramas clearance and continue to raid with my guild mates. Thankfully I am now well stocked and have amassed around 500 gold, which is still really low, but a step in the right direction.
Shortly after unlocking the ‘mastery pass’ for the Magic: The Gathering Arena Core 2021 set in September 2020, Zendikar Rising was released and a new mastery pass was made available to unlock rewards up to level 130. Since then I have enjoyed playing a few games most days and have just reached level 130, 18 days before the event ends. As with before I decided to unlock the mastery pass costing 3400 gems (one of the in-game currencies) to obtain all of the rewards at the same time, as seen in my YouTube video below:
One of the rewards is 1200 gems which effectively reduces the cost to 2200 gems. Gems are usually bought with money, but, if you’re careful you can obtain them by keeping an eye on the in-game store and occasionally exchange them for gold (another in-game currency obtained by playing games) and, when you reach 10,000 gold, you can win gems by participating in draft events. Eventually, over several months, it’s quite easy to obtain more than 3400 gems, making it possible to do what I have done by simply playing the game.
The Zendikar Rising set is pretty interesting, but one thing I really do not like is the way players make a deck designed to ‘mill’ their opponent out of cards. One card, Ruin Crab, as part of Zendikar Rising, makes it that much easier for players to do this. It costs 1 blue mana to cast, so it can be played on turn 1 and forces an opponent to mill 3 cards each time a land is played. Combine that with Fabled Passage, which is land allowing players to search their deck for any basic land and then play it, it makes Ruin Crab overpowered for a really boring and annoying way to play magic.
I have said before that I really do like Magic: The Gathering Arena, but I do wish there was more synergy between the physical off the shelf product and the online game. The occasional code in a booster pack to redeem, giving cards, gems, gold, drafting passes ect would make collecting the cards and playing the online game so much more fun.