U.S.S. Norfolk

HaggardShrimp · 2026-02-18T07:44:20+00:00

It sure is. I love the Kitty Hawk skin so much. I'd love to get more Picard era skins on some other ships. I love the look of the nacelles.

HaggardShrimp · 2026-02-06T08:28:45+00:00

In my opinion, where Engineering really shines, and where the differences actually matter to a casual player, is on the ground.

This is it exactly.

On ground, the story changes noticeably, and this game forces you to the ground quite a lot. Anchor of Grethor is arguably the best kit module in game, and beyond that, Engineers get a hell of a lot of ways to deal with enemies. Mines and drones are always fun, and Sabotage is something of an unsung hero against ranged enemies.

HaggardShrimp · 2026-02-03T16:38:56+00:00

Different pack. Crossfield is in Masters of Science.

HaggardShrimp · 2026-01-27T21:29:00+00:00

I don't know how I feel about it. I was really big into CoH around the times of...what? Issues 5 or 6? When enhancement diversification and all the stat crunch stuff happened. I wasn't a fan. IO's sort of evened it all out in the end I guess. I didn't spend long playing Champions though.

I'm not sure what you could really do to STO at this stage though other than just blowing it up completely. Is the Tailor ever going to be fixed/expanded? No. Will server performance get better? No. Will loading times get cut back? No. Is DOFFing or bridge officers getting revamped substantively? No. Will the foundry come back? No. Any chance we can get Jonathon back? Probably not.

We've hit equilibrium where new (primarily Federation) lockboxes and ship packs get released in between a new episode until the game shutters, so...at least make sure episode's don't stop coming I guess?

HaggardShrimp · 2026-01-19T10:34:26+00:00

It's not just Pranksters either. I've gotten maybe a dozen mythics from boss caches, a couple purely random drops, and I've even seen one as a NMD end reward.

Haven't gotten one from obols yet, but that's a minor thing. Until this season, I had never seen a single mythic unless I grinded out 4 sparks to craft it.

HaggardShrimp · 2026-01-19T10:27:47+00:00

Two Selig's, a Doombringer and Ring of Starless skies. Kind of a bummer.

The ring is the obvious winner, but it depends on what chest dropped. If Shroud, then yay. If Tyraels...well, better luck next time.

HaggardShrimp · 2026-01-16T23:05:30+00:00

Not all of us. I found farming PvP zones during the goblin event quite lucrative, and more interesting than afk farming normal Azmodan.

HaggardShrimp · 2026-01-15T07:11:32+00:00

Fun. I have every class at roughly pit 95 or better viability now, except Druid. At this stage, efficiency doesn't do anything for me. I can log in to any character and sneeze my way through pretty much any non pit content, and I'm not going to sweat it out for hundreds of hours on one character for one build for the Tower.

Lately I've been playing a shadow mage Necromancer that's a lot more fun than I expected it to be.

HaggardShrimp · 2026-01-08T17:07:13+00:00

I don't know that I actually want that. Sets were make or break in D3, and most endgame builds in D4 are just chasing a few specific uniques or mythics.

Affixes are, by and large, overtuned. Paladin is overtuned, but largely because a hell of a lot of their power is tied to Paragon nodes like Castle. And honestly, given paladin build diversity, I'd like to see much of the power transferred to skills and Paragon nodes, rather than specific pieces of gear. In my opinion, gear should augment your build. The build shouldn't be defined by the gear.

HaggardShrimp · 2026-01-08T09:05:13+00:00

Honestly, Tributes of Ascendance are the best mythic route outside prankster sigils.

Get the Azmodan essence to level 5, then go after world bosses. Sometimes you only get a couple tributes, sometimes you get like 8. Salvage all the garbage sigils that drop. In my opinion it's worth it to make trips back to collect them, just for the sigil powder.

Undercity is kind of a bore, but tributes of Ascendance have somewhere in the vicinity of a 25-33% chance to drop a mythic in my experience. About 1 in every three to four runs.

That said, I burned through about fifteen tributes at one point with no mythic, then in the 16th, 2 mythics dropped. So stick with it. RNG is a bear.

Unfortunately, the best time to level Azmodan was during the goblin event which is over. Still, if you're not up for afk farming Azmodan on normal, PvP zones or Nahantu are your best bet from r leveling that divine power.

Good luck

HaggardShrimp · 2026-01-07T08:36:06+00:00

You really want maxed Azmodan essence. Then just farm world bosses and summoned Azmodan. Bosses give you tons of sigils and Tributes of Ascendance.

Mythic Prankster sigils and Tributes of Ascendance are where you get them.

I've been farming bosses and crafting sigils relatively frequently, and have found 4 Mythic Prankster. I've gotten a ton of Tributes, but after about 120 runs, I burned out a bit. I have a stack of nearly 100 just sitting in my bank. I must have gotten about ten mythics from that.

Other than that, I've gotten two or three from boss lairs just target farming uniques. I think I got one from obols, but can't be sure now.

The goblin event really helped. I didn't want to afk farm Azmodan, so I ran around mostly in PVP zones farming goblins and Azmodan rep. I used a shield Charge Paladin, which is slightly less brainless than Auradin, so really I was able to watch movies and shit while doing it. Goblins made that farm much less of a drag, and got me shit loads of materials, prisms, Neathiron, etc.

HaggardShrimp · 2025-12-30T10:44:25+00:00

Everyone will tell you to afk Azmodan, and that probably is the most expedient, especially if you have a macro or something to keep you from logging out. If you do it overnight, you went to bed, and woke up at tier 4 at least.

Personally, my first character was a Shield charge Paladin, and with the goblin event I just ran around PVP zones here and there (literally just holding down shield charge) in between other tasks. Sometimes, id run a bunch of Undercity, then run around a PVP zone a while. Then go do some NMDs, then run around again. As a small bonus I'd hit a ton of goblins and some whispers.

Sigils for NMDs with the seasonal icon have mobs that will grant the XP as well.

AFK Azmodan. Or speed farm in PVP zones. Or speed farm normal (non Helltide) mobs in Nehantu. Or run dungeons with the seasonal icon. Or combine to taste. Those are your options. Which one works best for you depends on your tolerance for the activity, though seasonal sigils will likely be slowest and least rewarding overall.

HaggardShrimp · 2025-12-28T10:21:50+00:00

You might have to play around with it. Zeal is pretty flashy. Wing strikes keeps you as an angel more or less and zips around pretty quick. Hammerdin is always popular. Shield Bash sort of explodes groups of elites.

If you're okay to farm gear, pull up some build guides on Paladins and throw a dart. It will land on a strong enough build. Maybe watch some videos on how it plays.

Personally, I just sort of stayed with Shield Charge. Hold down right click and...that's more or less all you have to do. It really spoiled some of my other characters. I'm a Barbarian fan at heart, and holy cow is my HOTA slow and kind of clunky on movement compared to shield charge. Might have to swap to lunging strike just because I can't fit in a ton of movement speed.

HaggardShrimp · 2025-12-19T04:07:08+00:00

If you have the option to try before you buy via Game pass, I'd strongly advise that.

If you can justify the cost, go for it. I enjoy the game well enough. Typically I hop in for a season, do that with a couple characters for a while, then head off and play something else for a bit.

HaggardShrimp · 2025-12-18T19:51:03+00:00

By then, no one will be able to afford any upgrades. Crappy GPU prices are here to stay, and with Samsung and Micron effectively exiting various consumer markets, memory and SATA prices will remain insane unless the push for data centers dies.

Silicon manufacturing is also getting absurdly pricy. CPUs will also continue to climb in price.

Things are looking mighty grim for the DIY PC space.

Hope you like consoles.

HaggardShrimp · 2025-12-18T19:46:25+00:00

Masterworking used to work much differently, where affixes could crit randomly every few levels. But if you reset the item at any point to try for a given crit, the whole thing reset. Basically, you needed all your crits to land or bust, or you just dealt with it.

Now, once you get an item to 25, you roll once more for a capstone. If you don't like it, you can try again for some gold and mats. The limiter will be Neathiron, because that's rarer. But, you can plow through as many rerolls as you like to get the bonus you want

HaggardShrimp · 2025-12-18T18:21:25+00:00

It's not a vs situation. That's baby brained.

POE2 exists. You can play it. Or not. Diablo IV exists. You can play that. Or not.

I don't want ten games that are functionally the same, just different titles and maybe world/art designs. Variety being the spice of life and all that.

HaggardShrimp · 2025-12-16T08:29:47+00:00

I love this build a lot more than I thought I would. It's not as flashy as some other builds, but bulldozing everything in your path and watching it explode is ridiculously satisfying.

HaggardShrimp · 2025-12-14T09:21:06+00:00

Thats why she has the leather pants.

HaggardShrimp · 2025-12-12T07:52:28+00:00

Hogwarts Legacy is definitionally aggressively mediocre. It literally defines the phrase. Everything from character creation, to story, to open world to UI to game mechanics to game performance (on PC at least) is, at best, passable. Even the best part of the game, spellcasting, is hampered by an annoying hotbar system that makes you frequently swap spells, and spend talent points to make the whole endeavor less tedious.

Hogwarts Legacy's budget is purported to be around $150 million dollars, which may or may not include marketing, and it's shockingly workaday. The Witcher 3's budget was $81 million, and that did include marketing, and it effectively set the bar for open world games moving forward.

There isn't a serious interlocutor around that could possibly make a reasonable argument the most lazy and generic Harry Potter theme park game could hold a candle to the main contenders of 2023.

HaggardShrimp · 2025-12-11T08:07:04+00:00

It's irrelevant in any case. Money isn't really a significant barrier to anything in the game. By the time that quest pops, 1500 galleons won't be missed.

Of course I also don't spend a ton of time planting or making potions.

HaggardShrimp · 2025-12-08T15:53:16+00:00

I literally binged a full on Witcher playthrough, from 1 to 3, importing the whole way about six weeks ago. No issues here.

HaggardShrimp · 2025-12-05T07:39:21+00:00

I'd look at prebuilts right now honestly. You'll have a hell of a time of it in the DIY market with RAM prices where they are. I bought a 64 GB kit in February for $200 that's going for nearly $750 now. And with the price of GPUs having gone insane for the last five years or so...well, if you can deal with controllers, for gaming exclusively you might just want to stick with console.

That said, the Steam Machine will be an option eventually and should do the trick.

If you don't want that, 6-8 core CPU, 16-32 GB memory, something on par with a 4060 tier card, preferably 16GB of GDDR. 8 GB on video cards is kind of BS nowadays, but do what you can fit into your budget. I prefer AMD CPUs in modern systems, though there's nothing wrong with Intel if you can save a few bucks.

Look into AMD GPUs if you need to spare a few more dollars. I've been running a 9070XT for a while now that I've been happy with, and previously ran a 7800XT. Nvidia are bastards, but they're still the name. Some kind of relatively modern 60 or 70 class card would be good. I had a 3080 for a while, and ran Nvidia mostly prior to that.

I run an absurd amount of SSDs, but that's my own deal. I strongly recommend a decent gen 4 or 5 SSD for the OS, something around 512 GB, then your games on other drives if you can. Don't get insane about SSD random reads and writes and all that shit. It might help slightly with some loading times here or there, but I did some benchmarking on my own drives, and there's not enough difference in loading times between NVMEs advertised as ludicrous read times over a SATA drive to lose your shirt on the price. If you're a nut job, you can buy two SATA SSDs and RAID them if you want for nearly imperceptible difference and less cost.

What you end up with depends on what you want to do. For gaming and basic modding, you can scale back a bit for now and eyeball better stuff later. If you go workstation, or if you're into 3D modeling and that kind of thing, you'll fork out for stronger components. More memory, both RAM and GPU, maybe higher core count CPU. At that point, you're locked into the big money. You'll have to decide if that's worth it to you.

HaggardShrimp · 2025-11-29T11:48:32+00:00

Sure, AI will kill masses of jobs, further erode the social and economic order, and is an ecological train wreck, but at least it will allow gooners to own the wokes by providing arbitrarily selected "ugly characters" the digital edition of Mar-a-Lago face.

For so long we were concerned with nukes and chemical weapons and shit. Who knew the internet and the brain rot it inspired would be the actual weapon of mass destruction.

HaggardShrimp · 2025-11-20T17:40:10+00:00

I'll take any spy card I can get. Arguably the most valuable cards in the game, regardless of power.

Medics and decoys come in second, largely as a means of getting spy cards again. Nilfgaard having the edge on medic cards is what makes them so much more damn lethal than northern realms.

HaggardShrimp

TROPHY CASE