The Queue: Halloween Time!

It’s nearly the big day! Next time I see you all it will all be over, and I’ll just have to keep the spirit in my heart as we move into the Christmas festivities.

Until then though, how many people have actually bobbed for apples? I know I never have. I know that it’d be pretty far down on the party games list these days with the pandemic, but even before that, I’ve never bobbed for anything! Is it just a Hollywood construct? Am I too young?

While I get to the bottom of this apple related mystery, it’s time for — The Queue!

I definitely waited too long to hit Torment, it basically didn’t feel any different! I’ve even just done one Torment 2 Pit, and it took a couple of minutes longer — but I still didn’t feel like I was in any danger.

I don’t like how rare the Ancestral gear is though, I only have a pair of pieces so far and my other stuff has been holding up well enough that I’m not even glancing at the bags full of Orange loot that I’m feeding into the woodchipper.

I was looking through the rest of the Seasonal Journey things and I think that the one that’s going to take the longest is smashing 100 Ancestral pieces — I’ve already done all of the Tormented bosses except for Duriel and Andarial. I even poked my head into Lilith’s room once and knocked her health down to half without building into a super-powered min/max build.

I don’t know if I’ll have the grinding in me to finish out the full 300 Paragon though. Liz saw someone streaming who said that with the Experience Curve, you hit the halfway point at 284, which is silly. Warcraft Rumble does the same experience silliness with its minis where the halfway point is getting your mini to level 19 out of 20.

There’s gotta be a better way!

Save up to 10k for the Baublewyrm!

Or build a full-length sequined battle gown out of them. You’ll blind your enemies with your finery! You’d maybe even have enough left over for a matching purse! 7500 of anything is a lot of things.

Of course, you probably only need a fraction of those, if my degree in Khadgar-math is worth anything.

Optimistically: They’re going to introduce an easy-to-get toy or profession item that lets you upgrade your gear.

Realistically: It was probably an oversight to not have one of the NPCs be able to do that service for you. We’ve seen them in raids consistently since they added the system, and I can’t think of a good reason not to have them still in raids. If the 11.1 patch doesn’t have one I’ll donate five BlizzardWatch Bux to a good cause.

Pessimistically: Brace for a shop mount that has an upgrade vendor on its back. Maybe it’s just a flying anvil that you ride around on like a witch’s broom.

I’m leaning towards the middle option, but I see a non-zero chance of my optimistic and pessimistic takes coming to pass.

There’s a world where young Cory got a Horde symbol somewhere. There’s also a world where not-so-young Cory got the Druid emblem from Diablo 4 at BlizzCon ’23. We don’t live in those worlds, but it was close!

I like the simplicity of the logos and emblems that Blizzard has created. They’re striking, and probably hold up a little better in the long term than a big complicated piece.

If I was going to get a big complicated piece… Deathwing.

Resident Evil 3 will always have a special place in my heart. I think that was the first zombie game that I ever played. I still remember getting very scared by some zombie dogs jumping through a window in an area I’d already cleared. Not cool zombie dogs!

Vampire: The Masquerade also wins for spooking me real good — it was late, I was playing with headphones on, and all of the lights were out. But wouldn’t you know it I had a Haunted Hotel to clear out. I don’t remember much else from the rest of that game, but oh boy does the ghost whisper coming through my headset as it does a blurry run past at the end of a long corridor stick in my memory.

Even Bacardi gets a Pumpkin Spook Latte! I’m sure that as long as you keep the spooky season in your heart all year ’round you’ll get some spooky good loot luck this week!

Today’s Anna Earworm: Dark Lady

Have a safe and happy Halloween everyone!