Guys, it’s December. What the heck? I mean- I am fairly chuffed about this fact, it means the Christmas holidays are nigh! But also, wow.
The week after next I have a surgery scheduled — nothing to worry about, but I have been waiting for it a while and it is going to make Christmas/New Year possibly a little miserable during the recovery. Still, having it in the rearview mirror will be good.
As both an early Christmas present and something to keep me entertained during the recovery period, I bought myself a Steam Deck. Between that, the Kindle, and laptop for shows I feel pretty well covered in that arena now.
I haven’t really put the Steam Deck through its paces yet, started out with Sea of Stars which has been sitting giving me puppy eyes from my ‘To Play’ list since sometime around May.
Turns out, delaying playing it was a genius move, as it has now had what essentially amounts to a 2.0 patch release. So far it has been pretty good! Fairly basic, old-timey feeling game to be sure, but enjoyable for that possibly exactly the sort of low-impact game I’ll be looking for.
And hey, if that doesn’t work… The Autumn Steam sale has let me pick up a few *cough* things.
Gaming Goals
November Gaming Goals
- Call of Duty: Black Ops 6: Reach Level 55 / Prestige 1
For this goal, I want to reach Level 55 (the maximum level per prestige, for the first 10), and then start the Prestige 1 journey!
Prestiging once in Call of Duty was the only goal I set for myself, and it was an easy enough goal to shoot for. But I hadn’t factored in a return to Wuthering Waves in my plans.
It’s possible I’ll get to this goal soon enough anyway, but I don’t plan on explicitly carrying it forward as interest in Call of Duty has currently fallen away in favour of other things.
December Gaming Goals
There are two new releases coming in December that I have a high degree of interest in.
And you know what?
They both come out on the same day.
- Path of Exile 2 – Early Access Launch – December 6th
- Marvel Rivals – Season 0 Launch – December 6th
Both of them will be dependent on server stability to play though, so we’ll have to see how that goes. History teaches us not to raise hopes too high, and Belghast drives this home with the reminder not to take vacation days for PoE2.
Of the two, Path of Exile 2 I’m OK with having a bit of a rough start despite being the one I want to play the most. Largely because I think it’ll be the easier one to play even during recovery from the surgery, whereas I think if Rivals has a rough start I might be waiting on that one for a while.
In any case, I think not going to set myself any specific goals for December beyond dipping my toes into both, as able!
Games Played November 2024
| Rank | Game | Hours | % Gaming Time |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Overwatch | 65.3 | 47.1% |
| 2 | Wuthering Waves | 38.9 | 28.1% |
| 3 | Sea of Stars | 11.1 | 8.0% |
| 4 | Call of Duty | 10.0 | 7.2% |
| 5 | Path of Exile | 2.6 | 1.9% |
| 6 | Techtonica | 2.5 | 1.8% |
| 7 | Granblue Fantasy: Relink | 2.4 | 1.7% |
| 8 | Age of Wonders 4 | 2.3 | 1.7% |
| 9 | Parkitect | 1.8 | 1.3% |
| 10 | Factorio | 1.7 | 1.2% |
Between Overwatch and Wuthering Waves, they took a touch over 75% of gaming time this month, with, I believe, Wuthering Waves perhaps edging out ahead of Overwatch in time spent over the last couple of weeks.
Given my initial bounce off of Wuthering, I’m still somewhat surprised by this.
But I’ve maxed out (insofar as my current Union Level allows) two teams now.
Team A: Camellya, Sanhua and Verina
Team B: Chixia, Taoqi, Baizhi
I hadn’t really planned on doing a second team just yet, but Team A was capped out by around Union level 32 or 33. I can’t take them any further until Union level 40 (I’m 39 now though!).
Also, there is a challenge Tower where each character has only so many points to spend on progressing through it. To complete, another team is essentially required.
Not that I think I’ll be completing it this reset, but still!
On the Overwatch front, despite efforts to reset my mindset, it hasn’t quite taken root. I can tell I’m still playing for rank whenever I do it. Never was this more clear than when I went on a three-game loss streak.
Which, in itself, was actually OK.
The next game though, was tough, but we were going to win it. We were in 4th and final round, having done both teams attack/defend flips, and their overtime round. We were in our overtime round, inches away from the ‘we win’ marker on the ground, and had just wiped their team.
Then… Our game server crashed or otherwise booted us all out. ‘Unknown Error’ or something of that nature.
Suffice it to say, if had continued to play past that game, it definitely would have been tilted.
I have been back and played (and won) some more competitive games since then, but far less than I was doing previously. Mostly bounced back to Quickplay matches.
Even with that being the case though, some of the mindset shift and benefits have carried over — namely being much more willing to try out new characters in Quickplay, particularly expanding my familiarity with the DPS roster.
Books Read November 2024
Over November, I finished Age of Myth, started and finished Age of Swords, and started into Age of War.
I ended up giving Age of Swords 5-stars on Goodreads. Not something I do terribly often!
I’m going to be fairly sad, I think, when I run out of Michael J Sullivan to read.
Fortunately, that isn’t going to happen any time soon — there are another three books in The Legends of the First Empire series that I’m reading now, and another three books in The Rise and Fall series.
So, thankfully, I figure I still have enough to get me through the surgery recovery without having to think too hard about who or what to read next. (I have no idea!)
I’m blown away by how much time you had to do all this this month! Severely jealous too lol. How do you calculate your hours in each game?
I really like this goals and update format!
Run a free tool called ‘Manic Time’ which lets you track app usage. Not just the time it’s loaded, but the time it is actually in focus, too. So if you sometimes have games up with alt-tabbed out or the like, it can tell the difference.
Oh I do most of my gaming on Xbox lately, but I’ll have to use it for my PC games in the future.
How are you tracking your Steam Deck playing now?
I gave up on time tracking since I play on so many platforms and I’ve kind of drifted back to the consoles from PC thanks to COVID knocking me on my butt and the couch looking so comfy and welcoming while I was feeling poorly… :)
Wuthering Waves, a game I keep meaning to get into, is coming to the Playstation in January so I think I’ll just wait for that to happen and play it there.
So far, it has been easy — other than a few minutes here and there of playing around with things, Sea of Stars is the only thing I’ve played AND I only started playing it with the Steam Deck.
It’s definitely going to be a bit trickier once expanding the range of games played on it, and to include things that already have some time banked against them. If I don’t remember to check it before starting and actually note it somewhere, I probably won’t be able to.
Does in part come down to the game in question as well though, e.g., for PS5 games, if it tells me the length of time in the save (like a lot of Final Fantasy and RPG type games do) then sometimes I can work it out from that as well.
I think you’ll like Wuthering once you manage to get in be it on PS or PC. :) But could be wrong! It’s different enough from Genshin that it isn’t necessarily a given, but a lot in common, too.
I have got to get back to WW. I was nearly caught up and then the EQII expansion arrived and I’ve been all in on that ever since. Maybe next week…
I got to Union level 40 yesterday night, and managed to get everyone (from Team A and B) their level 70 weapon ascension unlocked (although not all levelled that far, ran out of the XP resources well before finishing), and almost everyone to have character level 70 ascension unlocked as well.
Will need some more energy to finish off the ascension unlock materials for Verina and Baizhi (my two supports) today, and then it’ll be a bit of a run at getting the necessary XP resources for them as well over the next little while.
Or at least… If I was going full efficiency mode I would, but I still haven’t done too much in the way of the character quests. I completed Camellya’s one, and started Changli’s, but that’s about it. I hear this is some of the best content in the game outside of the main stories, so definitely keen to turn my attention that way!
On what you might like to read next, are you familiar with John Scalzi? Old Man’s War really is a gem.
When looking it up just now (because I didn’t know the english title) I found out that a movie adaptaion is coming in ’26…oh boy. This could be awesome, but as we all know, it being terrible is at least just as likely.
It’s on my ‘To Read’ list for sure. I may have to surface it finally! :)
I’m back home again now from the hospital trip, the Steam Deck didn’t end up featuring very much — just wasn’t up for it, but read a lot and ended up into Book #5 (of 6) of my current series, so something new won’t be too far away. Hah.
Fingers crossed the movie adaptation ends up being one of the good ones, too!