October Digest #4

World of Warships

Rough mixed day at the office...Ran Salem, San Martin, Goliath, Castilla, and Kitakaze to fulfil Liberty Harbour, Dockyard and Battle of Trafalgar missions.

First time in a long long since I've taken Kitakaze out of port. Got reload down to 2.something seconds so that it was almost Groningen-level rate of fire. Slow torp reload however meant I had to use its guns early on to deal to the opposing destroyer (usually) first up. Once loaded up though that's when the fun began because I could loose off one set at one target and then use to the torp reload to loose off another set almost immediately at a secondary target. Double kills, especially against opposing battleships, is always satisfying. Once I've upskilled this skipper to 21-pt will plonk him on Shimakaze. 

Castilla has burst fire with longer reload (28.5 seconds). Useful at times. Trick I use is to use burst fire, then turn it off to bring reload back to 13 seconds before reactivating burst fire. 

Nothing special about Goliath. Nowadays it's been overtaken by other and newer cruisers. Kept it at a distance and relied on its excellent HP to farm opponents. Am considering swapping the commander over to Defence because it's a stronger vessel by comparison. 

Noticed today Tier X games in Co-Op was filled out with players. Weird or maybe I don't play Co-Op at Tier X level often enough to believe that this might be the norm? Loads of Marceau and Kleber too which seemed funny to me. A trend perhaps?

Trafalgar event means I also get the opportunity to take out both Marseille and Minotaur. Keen to see what the fuss is about a radar Minotaur while I've not really played the Marseille extensively.

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Today's grind involved A. Nevsky, Defence, Kitakaze, Marseille, and Ark Royal in Co-Op, Operations, and Asymmetrics battle modes. Finish this week's Dockyard missions and managed to upgrade more Intermediate levels with the harbour build. 

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Just the two ships in today's extended and for the most part enjoyable commander skill upgrade - A. Nevsky and Salem. Played all three modes - Co-Op, Operations, and Asymmetric battle modes. Added the carrier Ark Royal to play out one of the Liberty Harbour missions. 

The Aegis mission in Operations at Tier X level can be tough. Especially today when the enemy vanguard consisted of the Yoshino and Harugumo. Just getting past them proved fatal as I quickly found out when I died very fast because I foolishly got too close to their withering focus fire. Expected some help because one of the early aims is ensuring the task force commander's ship survives past dealing to the enemy vanguard. But my teammates were hanging back as if...

In a later repeat, survived toward the end but our task force commander died before he even made the gap. What the...?!? What made it worse was some tool of a teammate (in a Libertad too) calling us all dogs in chat for not keeping task force leader alive. He himself didn't make it much further once we finally dealt to the vanguard. It made me all that aware that such toxic player behavious is part of the reason why I don't participate in Ranked or Randoms. Often lapse back to my team sports playing days where teamwork was the whole point of team sports. But this is a pixel online game. Totally different arena. Totally different expectations. 

Thing troubling me was that the level of powerful battleships that we had could have easily knocked off the vanguard sooner rather than much later. Funny part, in that game where our task force commander died early, was that towards game's end there was just me in my cruiser, our carrier and our sub doing his valiant best to infiltrate and cause damage left. Our potent battleships - all four of them - died early and did not make it past halfway point (bar one but he was probably our best battleship player).

Did not know Ark Royal had guns. On the Two Brothers map advanced to help a teammate deal to an enemy battleship but drew too close to effectively launch my attack planes so figured to somehow play gladiator instead once I noticed the defensive guns kicking in the closer I got. Played the carrier like some lumbering Bob Semple tank against a 'modern' battleship. Hilarious to se and really expected to die quick but I survived. And we got the enemy ship...well, my teammate did. 

Reached Level 3 on Liberty Harbour. Wasn't prepared to accumulate the sixty thousand naval base supply tokens needed for the final upgrade so spent doubloons instead. Realised then that I don't want to continue playing the Liberty Harbour event any longer simply because effort is far greater than the value of the reward. Realised then that you can skip the grind altogether by just spending doubloons to reach all three levels. Then you will have completed the harbour, gotten Bridgeport, and collected David Farrgut. And sail on your merry way to the next event over the horizon. 

Finished the first week of the Trafalgar event yesterday. Nice change from the usual skipper grind because it allowed me to sail out other ships not usually deployed. Have yet to take out the Minoatur and test its known configuration - standard smoke or unusal radar. I see it so much on other YT streamers feeds that I already know it capabilities. But seeing and experiencing by association to actually driving are two totally different things, as we all know.

Marseille is an interesting ship. Did not fare well the times I took her out as it was really the first real time testing her. Familiarisation usually requires a week or so of devotion. Hope next week's missions will showcase her strengths, and I can improve. 

Lean on acquiring new ships so far. In fact, no new ships this month. Not bothered however as I'm seriously done with this game. Just going through the motions albeit with some briefly high moments and mostly monotonous mind-numbing lows. The end of this year can't come soon enough at the moment. 

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