Superior Realities, Tower District, and Richards

Daily Ramble 165: Superior Realities, Tower District, and Richards

I’m moving further into Neverwinter Online and am enjoying it this time. I’m not really sure what the difference is from the last couple of times I played the game other than that I’m a Paladin this time around rather than a Cleric but I’m not sure that’s the only difference. If the developers have updated things since the last time I played…good for them, they did the right things. If they did nothing, maybe I just became more entertained by the quests. I’m not sure though. In any case, I leveled from 11 to 14 where my highest level character before this was 10.

Rambling today also took me to Superior Realities. This is the last of my stops on my current Six Degrees trip and once again I’ve been to Tyler’s site multiple times. TV, RTS games, music, and movies, all vie for time on this site and I find the writing entertaining and topics engaging. I’m definitely keeping this site on my list for regular viewing.

Finally, Garrett Richards made his Spring debut Sunday and the Angels held the Padres to a single run. Hopefully they have many more low scoring games and good pitching like they did yesterday but it certainly looks like the pitchers have much further to go this Spring than the batters.

Neverwinter Online – Tower District

After dropping off the dispatches and updating my powers I continued my journey through the Tower District by heading back to Captain Janros. He sent me into the sewers to take on Karr Nevrim and put down the Nashar rebels.

Once he was dealt with, I was tasked with bashing my way through the Many-Arrows Orcs to get to Kartok Paingiver.

This fight was a bit more or a battle since I had used my Divine Judgement daily power inadvertently in a previous fight. This then, had me fighting for almost 60 seconds as I whittled down his hit points and bashed through his defenses. I never feared I would fall but it certainly took longer than any other boss fight I’ve had up to this point. I’ve got to remember to save my ultimate for the big fights.

Regardless, I took him down and ended up meeting Scout Gaelen who gave me the XP needed to reach level 14. I’d accomplished a bunch and was ready to call it a day but I had to update my abilities before I took a break.

Here’s what my powers breakdown looks like at level 14:
Radiant Strike – Level 2
Valorous Strike – Level 2
Burning Light – Level 2
Divine Judgement – Level 2
Aura of Courage – Level 2
Sacred Weapon – Level 2
Smite – Level 2
Heroism – Level 1

And my feats:

Superior Realities

Tyler F. M. Edwards writes this blog that I’ve been following for quite a while. I actually looked back in Evernote to see previous trips I’ve made to his site and I found this post about iZombie and Diablo III which by the way is appropriate since iZombie will be starting season 4 tonight.

In any case, I’ve been reading Tyler’s blog for many years and have enjoyed a lot of his coverage of games, TV, movies, and music…actually, I just listened to Get Out by Chvrches based on his post and found it really cool – I appreciate that he promotes bands he likes since I certainly have no idea these days how to find good music. Left to my own devices, I’m still listening to the 80s and 90s with Oingo Boingo, Transvision Vamp (like I mentioned last week), Indigo Girls, OMD, and Depeche Mode…oh yeah and my favorite They Might Be Giants.

But beyond music, Tyler covers a lot of interesting topics. The recent post about Age of Empires Definitive Edition actually has me itching for some RTS gameplay which I haven’t had for probably a decade. I skipped the latest Starcraft since it seemed like so much of the genre was tired. But with his post, I’m thinking I might go back to that title to see if there is any spark left that I can derive enjoyment out of. Tyler at least seemed to enjoy himself for a bit.

He also took the leap and jumped in on Star Trek: Discovery. As much of a fan as I am of the many Trek shows, I just couldn’t pull the trigger to pay for CBS All Access. And from what Tyler has to say…I’m glad I didn’t. He lays out his problems with the show pretty well in the post about the season finale and I really get the sense that the Star Trek creators need to move back to the future. Trying to dump a series before ToS just seems to be a problem but at least this one seemed to have decent opening title music as opposed to Enterprise.

Finally, I really love his idea of the Light Sith. I’ve always enjoyed playing characters in novel ways and one of my favorite book series has been R. A. Salvatore’s Drizzt Do’Urden series. So why not have Sith that aren’t just evil but are chaotic good? And I love the code he puts forth as strong and fierce like the Sith but more focused on the good that can come of passion and wisdom directed in a positive direction. The Sith and Jedi might be two sides of a coin but as Tyler mentions, in SWTOR the fact that you can play a Sith with “good” tendencies is a really fun aspect…maybe one we’ll see down the road in the movies?

This has been an installment of my Six Degrees 2018 series in which I take a look at the wonderful blogs that surround Beyond Tannhauser Gate. The blogosphere is large but there are so many friends to be found within Six Degrees.

Is Garrett Back?

Garrett Richards threw in a Spring Training game for the first time yesterday and if its any indication, he looks to be ready for the season. Sure he gave up a home run to Austin Hedges in the 2nd but he looked to be in control the rest of the time. With 3 strike outs and a walk, Richards threw 35 pitches over 2 innings that made me feel good that he could be fully recovered from his injuries and is ready to go.

This game featured a lot less offense than the previous 2 but the Angels were still able to pull off the win 2–1.