The Queue: Tick tock goes the clock

It’s Wednesday afternoon and the Queue is not late, I meant to post it right now. This exact moment! The moment of arriving!

That’s a roundabout way of saying we’re planning to push the Queue back an hour permanently, scheduling it at 11am pacific/12pm mountain/1pm central (site time)/2pm eastern. (I have to write it out like that to try to stick the change in my own head.) It’s about standardizing post scheduling every day and keeping posts spread out throughout the day rather than clumped together (which tended to happen on podcast days when the podcast went live a half hour before the Queue). We’ll see how it goes.

Now, this is the Queue. Let’s talk.

If you’re behind, you’ll just get more rep from the raid than you would if you were caught up. You earn rep from killing bosses and mini-bosses, so keep killing and you’ll catch up — no need to play on an alt or run more versions or difficulties, you’ll just keep getting rep from bosses after your caught-up compatriots don’t. I’m not 100% sure if there’s a cap on how much you can get per week (if you’re very far behind), but you don’t need to do anything more than keep running the raid.

I have a Paladin at 75 that will probably hit level 80 in no time at all with these extra buffs — probably just finish off delves and run the delve quests. After that I have a Warrior and a Shaman loitering at 70 or so I could level up, and increase the alt collection. I enjoyed playing both of them, but I just haven’t gotten around to level them.

But I also don’t play a lot of alts. I tend to last on to a character, or maybe two, and stick with it. Right now I’m playing a Windwalker Monk and when I’m not playing that I’m usually on a Frost DK. So we’ll see how long leveling more alts holds my interest.

What’s everyone else playing next week? Increasing the alt army?

I actually have never played Baldur’s Gate 3 through. I struggled playing it on console, where the UI is relatively clunky. I started and stopped several times, but never got past the first act. I eventually bought it on sale on Steam, but it was around the time that patch 8 was announced, and I decided to wait on the new classes to do a playthrough.

And now here we are. Patch 8 is live. THE TIME IS NOW.

Unfortunately now I’m kind of obsessed with figuring out Blue Prince, so BG3 is going to wait a little longer. Also how are you supposed to choose from one of these new subclasses? Hexblade Warlocks are absolutely gamebreaking murder machines in D&D 5e, and I usually love playing these subclasses that go against their standard game roles, like Hexblade Warlocks or Bladesinger Wizards. Or add magic to classes that don’t usually have it, like Arcane Archer Fighters. Weird hybrid classes.

I’m feeling like a martial ranged class, I think, so I might try an Arcane Archer Fighter or Swarmkeeper Ranger. But also… I might completely change my mind by the time I actually fire it up.

I am afraid I did already put away my snow shovels for the season, tempting fate. However, I am looking forward to putting some houseplants back out on the porch (some of them are just happier outside and the house is certainly less cluttered) and getting some colorful containers for the front porch that I can enjoy when I look out the window by my desk.

There are also a couple of beds in front of the house that could use some greenery, and I have been contemplating a vegetable garden, but I just don’t know where to put it. We have a lot of trees near the house and I’m not sure where I could carve out a sunny spot. This idea is still a work in progress.

I’ll leave a question of my own to sign off: is anyone else planning any gardening for the year? I’m very excited to see more green outside.

And that’s all for now, friends. Do leave plenty of Matt-friendly questions for tomorrow, and I’ll see you in the comments!