Primal
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What we've been watching: Ken Burns' Country Music
This week, Senior News Editor Billy Steele explains why everyone should check out the latest documentary series from Ken Burns. Senior Editor Devindra Hardawar has an unexpected affinity for the latest CBS procedural and Senior News Editor Richard Lawler has found one thing worth watching on Netflix.
'Far Cry Primal' will take humanity back to the stone age
What would happen if you took the large, open-world chaos that defines the Far Cry series, removed the guns, vehicles, modern weapons and political character motivations? You'd have Far Cry Primal -- a survival epic staged in a re-imagined stone age. It's a different, but intriguing idea. The player takes on the role of Takkar, a lone hunter trying to survive on his own in the savage land of Oros. Really, the trailer says it all.
Final Fantasy XIV shows off patch 2.4's story and Shiva
The next major Final Fantasy XIV patch will bring more story content. Every major patch does, after all. A new preview on the official site makes it clear that players will continue working with the Crystal Braves, delving further into the conflict that's brewing deep within Ishgard the threatens all of Eorzea. It also makes it very clear that players will be facing off against fan favorite Ultros in the next installment of the ongoing Gentleman Inspector Hildibrand storyline, which should delight Final Fantasy VI fans even more than their magitek armor mounts. You can also take a peek at a preview of the coming battle against Shiva; the Hard version is part of the storyline, while the Extreme battle requires players to first clear The Striking Tree (Extreme). It promises to be a pretty cool fight. Take a look at the previews, and keep your eyes peeled for when the patch is going live.
New preview available for Final Fantasy XIV's Garuda fight
The primals are among the greatest forces within Eorzea, something that Final Fantasy XIV players are no doubt acutely aware of after the clash with Ifrit. The second primal battle is coming, pitting players against Garuda, deity of the Ixali. That means another pitched battle against a superior foe in the Howling Eye, a battle which the official site has just recently previewed with a video of the fight in hard mode and a video preview of the new weapon rewards. According to the lore, the Ixali revere Garuda as the Empress of Birds, a soaring deity who maintains an appetite for the flesh of land-dwelling creatures. She is the incarnate strength of the bird-men as well as a source of great terror. But just as with Ifrit, players who defeat her can expect to have a variety of fantastic weapons, as illustrated in the video just past the break. Just be careful -- if you aren't on the ball when you fight her, you could find yourself completely blown away. [Thanks to Alex for the tip!]
FFXIV's 1.19 patch features new group content, Ifrit primal
It's patch day in the world of Eorzea, and today's 1.19 update looks to bring quite a bit of new content to Final Fantasy XIV. Said content includes a new confrontation with Ifrit, a fiery primal who waits for brave adventurers at the end of one of the game's newest quests. Final Fantasy XIV's lodestone has all the details, and apparently the Ifrit encounter comes in two distinct flavors. One is designed for level 30 light parties (four members), while the other is a hard-mode run intended for eight-man level 50 groups. Ifrit wears his badassery on his sleeve if the accompanying video clip is any indication, and the lodestone entry describes him as "a demon spawned by the seven hells" whose exhalations "produce heat of such torridity as to reduce iron to pools of white-hot liquid." See for yourself after the break.
Wasteland Diaries: Mutations 2.0
We have a new skills and abilities system in Fallen Earth. I wrote a short guide about the new skills a couple of weeks ago, so this week I'd like to cover the new mutations. If you haven't played Fallen Earth in the past few months, you will log into a very empty hot-key bar and have a very messed-up build. You will have a lot more AP than you did, though. But that AP is useless if you don't know how to spend it. There are no more capstones to plan builds around; you'll have to build a clone that will suit your particular play-style. My skills post and this post will give you a pretty good idea of what each line does and what abilities or mutations they offer. All clones still have alpha mutations, but they are only low-level mutations and are intended to introduce new players to the mutation system. These mutations are based soley on Charisma now rather than Willpower. Every mutation line also has a primary stat attached to it, which determines 75% of the maximum attainable skill level. The other 25% is determined by Willpower. Total gamma (gamma is the mutation stamina pool that you deplete when you use mutations) is now determined by Charisma and Intelligence. Willpower is not nearly as important to mutation-heavy characters as it used to be. Those are the fundamental changes to mutations, and after the cut I'll describe what each line has in its arsenal.
Insider Trader: Patch 3.2 keeps getting better
Insider Trader is your inside line on making, selling, buying and using player-made products.I love it when a content patch includes some professions love. As the details keep surfacing, patch 3.2 is looking better than ever. In fact, with the upcoming patch, Engineers will finally be able to drop their Gnomish and/or Goblin specialties ("for a fee")! This has been one of those issues, like ugly and buggy cat forms, that has dragged on and on. The materials for Jeeves have also been updated (get the schematic!). If you're wondering just what you should be saving, hop on through the break for that and other patch 3.2 news!
Playing the AH on Patch Day
Richard and Paul are both way smarter (and by consequence, way more rich) than I am. They thought ahead, took notes on all the ingredients for the brand new recipes in 2.2, and had all the supplies sitting at high prices on the AH yesterday, ready to be sold to anyone who didn't want to wait to make the new items. Beautiful. I'm jealous-- wish I'd thought of it first.Soulcloth is the big winner, it seems-- it requires Netherweave (which pretty much everyone has), and tons of Soul Essences, which basically drop like candy in Karazhan. If I recall correctly, Soul Essences have sold ok but not great in the past (at least on my server), and they probably still won't sell well, once everyone's made everything they want. But for the next few days, while everyone's learning the new recipes, you'd probably do well to clean out your Soul Essence inventory.Primal Shadow and Primal Air are also doing well from the patch, but since those are Primals, they're fairly rare anyway-- if they were really everywhere (like, say, they dropped off of every demon in the world), Blizzard would change things. But over the next few days (and probably every few days after a big set of crafting changes, so keep an eye out for 2.3 profession news), there's lots of money to be made.
Get rich quick in Outland
And I do mean quick, because these prices likely won't stay this way for long. MBAzeroth points to a forum guide written up by Fanfan on the Mal'Ganis realm forums (that link, strangely enough, doesn't work-- did Blizzard take it down or move the thread somewhere else?) which he says netted him a shiny 1,000g in just two hours.All of it relies on the Primal motes of Air, Fire, Water, Mana, and Earth-- those mots can be combines to make the Primal elements used in all kinds of professions, from Leatherworking to Tailoring and Enchanting. Since everyone is currently working on making their way to 375, sales of this stuff are huge on the AH, and with droprates the way they are, you can net a pretty penny with just a few hours of grinding in these places. Of course that means the more people that find out about this (and the more people that finish their profession leveling), the less it will be worth. But if you get moving on this in time for the weekend AH rush, you could likely make a good headstart on your epic flying mount.The entire guide after the jump.
