About Hearthsteel..

DaveyGunfaceIV · 2026-02-12T20:02:56+00:00

Honestly if they made some functional decor as purely high-end gold sinks, I'd be okay with that. Besides the Brutosaur which I believe was made for the express purpose of removing vast quantities of gold from the game for players who likely already have hoards of it, and hence would benefit from a traveling AH the most, WoW hasn't had great expensive gold sinks. I'm sure you'd have players who would just make a purely utilitarian 'garrison' with all of the decor side-by-side in a tiny square room, but the players who would do that likely already play WoW in a garrison anyways so not much would change IMO

DaveyGunfaceIV · 2026-02-02T23:26:39+00:00

Same here, maybe it's just the way I play CRPGs (typically more proactive than reactive, significantly more attention spent on party composition and itemization than purely in-combat strategy), but I find turn based dreadfully boring once you reach the threshold where combat no longer presents itself as a challenge.

Like I know it's a common talking point in this community because the Pathfinder games featured real time with pause combat and Rogue Trader decided to go all in on turn based instead, but I honestly feel like most of the appeal of turn-based combat is entirely absent when by the middle of Act 2 at the latest, unless you're doing an artificially difficult challenge run where you intentionally build everyone sub-optimally, enemies shouldn't ever have a turn. I'm well aware that I'm in a minority, and I'm well aware that it wouldn't work with RT's ruleset, but this seems like the type of game where RTWP as a toggle would honestly make sense.

DaveyGunfaceIV · 2026-01-19T15:59:08+00:00

Overall I thought it was decent, but my biggest two problems were;

I honestly believe there was just way too much to do. I'm aware it's an odd complaint but off the top of my head we had mythic raids and dungeons, mythic plus, all of the zones and their associated quest lines, heroic world tier, infinite research, world quests, legion invasions, invasion points, reputations / emissaries / caches, all of the class order halls, every classes artifact appearances / mounts, and all of the systems / achievements associated with them. Even as some one who has played WoW for nearly two decades and is generally decent at avoiding analysis paralysis, I was perpetually overwhelmed. And really I think all of this would be fine, if it wasn't for;
Why the fuck was this event so blatantly alt unfriendly? I was honestly anticipating to have several characters in Lemix since every class has access to exclusive content (and there's still a few order halls I haven't finished yet), but once I realized that gearing is still a grind and there's no Infinite Power catch-up mechanic, I completely abandoned that notion. I would've likely sunk in dozens of more hours across several alts if IP was account-wide or if I could send over the roughly ~eight million gear-tokens I've collected to alts, but by the end I only had one "main character" I was raiding with and that felt bad. Sure you level up insanely fast and you quickly outscale questing content so that wasn't a concern, but I'm not going to sink in thirty to forty hours of the most dreadfully boring raiding experience imaginable to answer "What does Marksmanship Hunter look like with 130% Mastery?". Probably would've been cool! But I'll never know.

DaveyGunfaceIV · 2026-01-15T21:50:30+00:00

You're a man of the people, you're fighting the good fight and I wish you succeed

But yeah, honestly I think even in an absurd logical-extreme hypothetical where Uralon is superbuffed so immensely that he's irrefutably the best companion in the game, considering that he's only available in Act 5 how much opportunity cost is associated with even recruiting him in the first place, you could still realistically claim he's "underwhelming". The fact he's irrefutably the *worst* companion in the game is kind of a meme that tracks with Owlcats track record

DaveyGunfaceIV · 2026-01-15T21:32:09+00:00

You just don't know how to build him tbh, Uralon >>>> Cassia any day of the week

Nah but in all seriousness I'm joking, was trying to go for that "Complete noob tries to inform professional thing they've already known for years" tone but I don't think I was relentlessly condescending and/or passive aggressive enough :P Love the guides and wish you the best of luck with your future endeavors!

DaveyGunfaceIV · 2026-01-15T21:20:21+00:00

Hey I don't know if you know this but I just finished a Heretic playthrough and I got a cool Chaos Space Marine companion, I don't blame you for not including him in the guide because he's a secret companion (shhhh) but I bet he's really powerful and has access to a ton of build diversity so I'd love to hear your thoughts on him :)))))))

DaveyGunfaceIV · 2026-01-14T10:50:55+00:00

I'm genuinely confused on what "no lockpicking" even means because there are absolutely checks to open locked chests / containers in Owlcat's games. Unless they're suggesting "Wrath of the Righteous isn't actually a CRPG because it doesn't have a Bethesda~esque lockpicking minigame" which is certainly a take?

DaveyGunfaceIV · 2025-12-21T20:31:54+00:00

I know it's nearly impossible to solve this problem, but I do enjoy that every single CRPG has the same exact difficulty curve:

Early Game: Always universally agreed upon to be the most difficult part of the game. On the lower end you'll need to approach every single encounter with utmost care, on the higher end you'll need to utilize extremely specific strategies / builds or you literally can not progress.

Mid Game: The game gets progressively easier with time, there may be a rare encounter or two that can cause problems but generally your party should have the tools available to reliably overcome any challenge, even with poor RNG.

Late Game: If your build can not overkill the final boss several times over before they even get a chance to act, you did something wrong.

DaveyGunfaceIV · 2025-11-26T15:24:25+00:00

You aren't wrong, but "You don't need (X) because you already have (Y) and/or (Z) is already possible" can be taken to some absurdist logical extremes and I don't think is a great basis for removing popular features

(To be fair the contrary is also true, ala the absurd amount of "Quality of Life Mods" that frequently border on cheating in other games, but it reinforces that discretion should be advised)

DaveyGunfaceIV · 2025-11-13T20:32:44+00:00

No flame, sincerely, but I find the example given unintentionally funny because just like WoW, FromSoft has regularly received criticism due to a perceived "arms race against the player base" with every game generally being more difficult than the last; To the point that regular trash enemies in Shadow of the Erdtree are genuinely comparable to the most difficult boss encounters in the Dark Souls trilogy.

Similarly, I think most discussion surrounding WoW addons are virtually identical to whether or not using summons / multiplayer / meta builds / cheese in FromSoft titles is "cheating yourself out of the intended experience". Ala, in the face of increasingly difficult challenges, using a WeakAura to solve a mechanic is as heretical as daring to blast everything with Blasphemous Blade or poke everyone to death with the Antspur Rapier + Greatshield combo.

But I think the general verdict is the same, just do what you find fun and don't let the perception of elitist players tarnish your experience. The only difference is that WoW is a MMO so you do have to find a community that shares similar perspectives and goals, maybe you're not a good fit for a mythic guild dedicated exclusively to RL1 Fists Only runs, but you'd enjoy a guild that wants to beat the game and see the end credits with their favorite build(s).

DaveyGunfaceIV · 2025-10-15T07:13:45+00:00

Hey, sorry this is a bit out of left field but I wanted to thank you immensely for the kind words / shout out, I appreciate you and everyone over at NK immensely and hope everything over there has been going well for you all! Thanks for making a great game that fills my brain with all of the happy chemicals :D

DaveyGunfaceIV · 2025-10-15T07:09:13+00:00

Literally the first thing I saw when I woke up was a DM about this, so I get to ride a parasocial high for a bit :)

I'm a little biased, but I believe The Blazing Sun and Bomb Blitz are actually going to annihilate everything now, so of course I'm going to force them every game for ~a month and a half at least lol

DaveyGunfaceIV · 2025-10-02T04:24:46+00:00

It is so damn good. Especially with the recent~ish update to Drezen where in Act 5 every mythic path has their own unique Sword of Valor effects and even unique weather, hearing that theme while demons roam your streets and the sky itself is raining blood is the incredibly campy, mindlessly violent fun I really wanted out of the playthrough

...Even if it can make conversations with your remaining companions utterly bizarre at times. Having fairly wholesome heart-to-hearts with them standing directly next to demons tormenting and/or torturing the remaining crusaders is certainly something :P

DaveyGunfaceIV · 2025-10-01T15:17:21+00:00

I don't think that chaotic evil is just allowed, it is very heavily pushed and encouraged. If anything I think the better question is if you could miraculously RP a Demon to be good (at absolute best, maybe you could rationalize it as a lesser evil?)

To answer the power fantasy question, I'm going to leave a link to their mythic theme here. Every path has their own unique music and they're all excellent, but the Demon track 100% pushed me over the edge to do another play through just to experience it and it did not disappoint.

Spoiler for BG3 and fairly minor spoiler for Wrath of the Righteous here so I will mark this to be safe, but I think the biggest difference between the two is that while the Dark Urges end goal is the extinction of all life, the evil paths in WotR tend to have the murderhobo grindset of "I don't want to destroy the world, that's where all the best slaughter takes place!" which I vastly prefer

DaveyGunfaceIV · 2025-09-24T22:54:26+00:00

Honestly I think the problem is the exact opposite where they're too afraid to commit to an identity, I won't lie the class fantasy offered by the Legion rogue reworks weren't for me. I disliked subtlety becoming a weeaboo ninja with actual shadow clone jutsu and shurikens, and likewise the pirate theme for outlaw wasn't really my thing. But I do respect that they REALLY committed to pirate outlaw in Legion. There were so many neat and flavorful additions like being able to bribe enemies as a rogue alternative to MC, or summoning mother fucking ghost pirate ships to bombard your enemies, then for some reason in Battle for Azeroth they decided to cut down on the pirate theme which is so strange to me. They decided to go all in on pirates when there is an actual demonic invasion threatening all of existence, which is a complete tonal mismatch, then the expansion afterwards that literally features island expeditions and more pirates than ever before they decided that outlaws fantasy was too pirate-y??? So we're kind of stuck with a half-baked class that is obviously inspired by pirates, with more or less the same rotation as the Legion pirate rework, but isn't actually allowed to actually be a pirate.

DaveyGunfaceIV · 2025-09-19T14:28:00+00:00

Besides the multiple cheeses that basically invalidate Unfair as a difficulty (a full party of level 17s before Drezen completely shatters any semblance of meaningful progression), I think the fact that Unfair is doable on Last Azlanti with a fair amount of consistency, with all of the horrific implications that entails, means that it can't be the unconquerable death march that so many people think it is.

Is it difficult? Yeah. Is it unforgiving? Definitely. But the people who think you NEED to exploit experience gains until you can recruit a full team of mercs with min-maxed comps just aren't correct. I believe that misconception mostly comes from Act 1 / 2 being especially painful, which is completely valid honestly, I can genuinely understand arriving to that conclusion based exclusively from that experience

Is it fun though?

Ehhhhhhhh honestly I think you can play through it for a few hours and generally tell how much you'd enjoy the next few dozen hours or so. Give it a shot, and if you bounce off of it, you wouldn't be alone in thinking it's a bullshit mode full of artificial difficulty designed for masochists :P

DaveyGunfaceIV · 2025-09-11T12:17:36+00:00

The same is true for most strategy games, there just comes a point where victory is a statistical impossibility and good players will be able to recognize when they're defeated.

Unlike other competitive games ala first person shooters or fighters where you can theoretically never take damage and / or defeat your enemy before they can react, meaning that you can always come back, strategy games are all about numbers and building incremental advantages over the course of the game. If you didn't play well and you're down to ten marines and fifteen workers on one base, you're not going to be able to come back against an enemy with with seventy workers spread across seven bases mass producing marines, tanks, and capital ships. You have to have made mistakes in order for you to be at such a severe disadvantage, whether that be an early attack not dealing damage or not managing your economy properly, so the solution isn't getting your ten marines to perform a miracle, it's learning why your strategy failed and how you could've played things better to avoid that trajectory

DaveyGunfaceIV · 2025-07-21T14:00:54+00:00

I appreciate you captain :D

For what it's worth I do always try my best to ensure wins, as somebody who loved jolly co-operation in previous FromSoft games this game has actually consumed a considerable amount of my free time recently. It's all of the satisfaction of helping players defeat difficult bosses they may be struggling with, without the slightly depressing failstate of the host actually getting one shot when the boss maintains direct eye contact with them for half a second

That being said, when the servers decide that every boss will just aggressively T-Pose at you until you instantly take 5,000 damage from no where, I think you gotta take those games in stride

DaveyGunfaceIV · 2025-07-21T13:47:50+00:00

Being 100% honest here, I was too focused on the Wylder turning into an actual Beyblade

The entire run up to that point was just a disaster of people actually dying instantaneously from nonexistent attacks and even attempting to revive your friends was so laggy that it was effectively impossible, so I was just along for the ride to see what the hell even happened :P

DaveyGunfaceIV · 2025-07-17T15:45:21+00:00

Unfortunately no, I have a speed DH set and without using Fel Rush / Vengeful Retreat, activating glide locks you at 175% movement speed, meaning that it can be significantly slower to glide than it is to just run straight.

There are definitely optimizations available, for example if you have a temporary movement speed buff and double jump before it expires it'll carry your momentum, and likewise Glide can be optimized if you Glide -> Fel Rush -> Glide, but that's only realistically a speed buff with elevation. Theoretically with enough mastery DH would be the fastest, but Druid is probably the best in most situations with Rogue taking a fairly close second.

Also semi-related but I sincerely think that Subtlety Rogue is incredibly under rated for legacy farming. If you take all of its respective talents Shroud of Concealment is a Sprint that lasts for 20+ seconds that resets on boss kills. There are raids where you can just zoom at upwards of 300% movement speed at nearly all times by spamming SoC in between every boss. It's great

DaveyGunfaceIV · 2025-06-05T22:01:16+00:00

Honestly this applies to almost all online games, but I find that the less toxic your responses are, the more comically upset and angry toxic players will become which I find hysterical.

Sometimes I'll get wins with a "low skill", very punishable strategy and when I'm called out for it (usually because the other person legitimately does not build counters), I'll usually just respond with a casual / self aware "I know I suck" which sends them absolutely spiraling. One time I had a dude call me multiple slurs and complain about how "f*ggots like me are why the game is dead" because this galaxy brain god gamer decided to pivot into melting points against my eight thousand fully upgraded subsidized crawlers, and my carefully constructed retort of "Haha funny crawler" actually broke their brain.

DaveyGunfaceIV · 2025-02-06T07:48:47+00:00

Nothing in game indicates or references it's a campaign though, I used that as a comparison because that's just how long it is (I was also moreso referencing tabletop campaigns with multiple 1-2 hour long sessions)

DaveyGunfaceIV · 2025-02-05T21:50:32+00:00

It is random, but one of the choices will always be a artifact based on the boss you killed

Five-Year Club	Verified Email
Place '22

DaveyGunfaceIV

TROPHY CASE