30 October 2018

Day Before Halloween - Fear and Being a Magick User

Greetings Sapient being. It's been a while since the last post, even had one written that I removed because I didn't realize something rendering the whole post as misinformative and wrong. It happens from time to time. I don't have a group of people who check my posts working all on my own.

Anyways we have the 30th of October on the day I'm writing this post and it's not long until Halloween. Tomorrow evening already. So I've been wondering about what to write about. You know Halloween is this famous festival where people, especially younger ones wear scary, creepy or spooky costumes and they go trick or treating - an old ritual that was performed to scare away the evil spirits. Not to be confused with Carnival where you wear scary, creepy, spooky nowadays any kind of costume to scare away whatever makes the nights longer.

To be honest... I don't have anything specific. So instead I'm gonna write two posts about how getting into magick has affected my perception of scary things and what my current relation to nightmares and scares are and the scariest things I have seen, heard or experienced in my life.

My Current Perception of Scary Stuff

The Downside of Being Scared

Depending on which direction you go into when performing rituals or magick, fear has a big factor in the result of your actions. Almost always, negatively. As such there are actual rituals that you are encouraged to do to get rid of your fears so that they can't affect the result you want to go with. The most obvious example is that of a demon. Though I must admit that I do not believe in demons in the way it has been portrait in the western world. Anyways the idea is if you're scared of a demon it gets stronger. However fear may be a more or less unconscious reaction to a situation making this kinda difficult.

Fear Rituals

Still, from personal experience, these rituals that exist seem to take care of the unconscious part not too bad. So, what's the idea of these fear rituals or rituals against fear? Basically the same thing people do when they have arachnophobia. You have to fight your fear by confronting it. The way it's done in these rituals differs from throwing yourself into a closed space with spiders or clowns if you get the thought process. As with most rituals or magick stuff, in general, this is instead done with meditation. Sorry, scary clowns that wanted to get hired. How does it work? I'm going to take the example from Frater V.D. mentioned in his book "Die Hohe Schule Der Magie" (engl.: The High School of Magic") as I've used that ritual myself and had good experiences. Additionally, it's one of the non-dangerous ones. *cough cough*

Performing the Ritual

Anyways to perform this ritual first you have to get into a comfortable position. Sitting, lying, whichever fits you best. Make sure you don't get interrupted and don't have to change your position. This will interrupt your focus. It's a meditation after all. Spend some time doing nothing, basically emptying your head so to speak. Once you're ready to go through all the things you're scared of in your head. Don't judge them just think about them or imagine them neutrally. Go through everything that comes to your mind. Once you're through every little fear or detail you repeat the phrase "Who is scared of whom?" or "Wer hat vor wem Angst?" depending on whether you prefer to use German as your "magical" language.

And that's it. Pretty simple, not too crazy. It is just meditation and it helped me.

The Results

I've performed this ritual about three times, to be honest, I haven't been scared of anything much since then and the rest is basically gone due to the believes I hold for myself at the moment. I've written about those too. Another way to get over fears is to empower yourself. It sounds crazy and egoist when you perform the "Kabbalistic Cross" claiming to be a god yourself, but whether you are or not is not to be debated, the fact is it works. Empowering yourself actually empowers yourself. You could say it's a mind trick and an amazing one at that. You may have heard one or two crazy stories about superhuman feats that were achieved in special situations like a mother protecting their child. Actually looking at research about the placebo effect and what it was able to do. Another good video for showing this is from the YouTube Red series: "Mind Field" with the host Michael Stevens from "Vsauce".

Anyways enough about the details, the fact is I've been hardly ever scared of situations. This does not mean that I'm crazy doing dangerous stuff. I'm still careful in those situations that require it, but I'm thinking things through more calmly instead of panicking.

Unfortunately, this also ruined the "scariness" factor of horror movies and games which is quite disappointing. Luckily enough Amnesia: The Dark Descent has a good story attached to it, so that's still enjoyable.

Nightmares

I still have nightmares, sorry. They're not gone unfortunately but it might not be the same as what most people experience when they have nightmares. I'm going more into the exact things I dreamed about tomorrow but for now, I can say this: 

Waking up from a supposed nightmare does not have me scared, shocked, sweating or any of these. I wake up from them just like from a normal dream. Furthermore to scary parts in the dream, I might still react as before but only for the first moment, it's like the habit taking over for the first few seconds. Afterward, I try to carefully think things through or even defend myself. If you haven't heard about it before, you can pretty easily defend yourself against literally anything in your own dream with enough practice and with the right mindset. Also part of personal development in magick.

Conclusion

So yeah, that's my current relation towards fears and scary stuff and how I got to that point. If you plan to get into magick yourself I can only advice you the described ritual. Fear is a bad thing for you in the future. Especially if you want to protect yourself from bad things that might happen. It still takes me to get through everything. Keep in mind the fear of the unknown can be described as indirect proportional to your knowledge and I assume your knowledge of ghosts, demons, youkai, magick, etc. isn't much bigger than most peoples are.

And with that... Happy Preparational Halloween. :P


11 October 2018

Guild Wars 2: Are the New Raid Infusions Worth It?

I wanted to write this post on the day after the previous one. However, once I had everything calculated I kinda felt dumbfounded. I was extremely disappointed and additionally, there's not much there to write about.

New Raid Infusions

So, Arenanet has added a new infusion that can be bought at the raid vendor for gold and Magnetite Shards. As you all know Glenna already sold the Ghostly Infusions for 1000 Magnetite Shards and 20 gold. The price of the new infusions is 75 Magnetite Shards and 15 gold. BUT! The new infusions have only +5 agony and +5 stats. The Ghostly Infusions had +9 agony resistance and +5 stats. For a person who only does raids that is no problem. For a person who plays Fractals of the Mists (FotM), it's another story. Fortunately, this +5 agony resistance and +5 stat infusions that were added can be upgraded just like any other stat infusions from FotM.

So, Which One Is Better? 

We're comparing a +9 agony resistance and +5 stat infusion that costs 1000 Magnetite Shards and 20 gold and can be sold for a bit of a sum with a +5 agony resistance and +5 stat infusion that costs 75 Magnetite Shards and 15 gold.

The first thing we gotta do now is upgrading this infusion until both are equal. Upgrading an infusion requires the stat infusion of the same level twice as well as six +5 agony infusions or +7 agony infusions. Upgrading it will increase it from five to seven to nine. So, if we want one +7 agony resistance +5 stats infusion we need two +5 agony resistance and +5 stat infusions. If we want one +9 agony resistance +5 stat infusion we need two +7 agony resistance +5 stats infusions. That's two times two (2 * 2 = 4). Thus we need to buy four. Buying four costs 4 * 75 = 300 Magnetite Shards and 4 * 15 = 60 gold.

This means we save 700 Magnetite Shards but pay three times the gold price.

Conclusion

I'm always low on gold since I'm doing a lot of achievements that require gold like the Black Lion Collections. I mean I could use real cash but... seriously I'm not that rich, not at all. 全然! Well.. this is my plan:

I'm gonna continue buying Ghostly Infusions and sell those for their price. (You can make between 60 and 101 gold plus at the moment depending on how you sell them and when) Then I'm gonna use this money to buy myself Stabilizing Matrix and use those with my fractal rewards to craft me multiple +9 agony resistance and +5 stat infusions. Makes more sense doesn't it?

01 October 2018

Guild Wars 2: Ways to get the Sigil of Nullification

I'm still having internet issues when surfing the web, gaming, Teamspeak and discord work just fine. Well, anyways. I have reached the step for which you need the Superior Sigil of Nullification for the Elegy or Requiem armor that has been added with the most recent living story update "A Star to Guide Us".

Sigil of Nullification

This sigil is a unique item that doesn't have a major or minor variant. Additionally, it can't be crafted. Since you need 20 of these for the armor achievement "The Convergence of Sorrow II: Requiem" the big question is... Where do you get them from?

There are a few ways like looking it up on the wiki. Namely:
  • An item choice once you reach level 64
  • Through the mystic forge
  • Trading Post
  • Salvaging certain weapons

Item Choice Once You Reach Level 64

This requires a character slot or characters you haven't leveled to 64 yet. Though leveling characters up to 64 takes quite some time. We want something faster. If you have them lying around you could use the birthday level up boosts. These provide you with 19, 29, 39, 49, 59 levels when starting from one. If you threw them away like be because you didn't know what to do with them there's still hope. The Tomes of Knowledge can be used to increment your character's level. Each tome rewards one level. This means you need 63 tomes for each Superior Sigil of Nullification. Simple calculation. 20 sigils 63 tomes each 20 * 63 = 1260 Tomes of Knowledge required.

Through the Mystic Forge

There is a 20% chance to get an upgraded version or superior sigil out of throwing in 4 major sigils. Now keep in mind that the superior sigil you get may not be the one you want. Exact data on which ones you can get are not known. Hence we can't calculate the exact chance. Though since you get a lot of major sigils, I'm gonna try to figure this out and add this to my research page.

Stay tuned for that ;)

Trading Post

Straight forward, buy it for its high price or buy a weapon that you can salvage to get it out. Though from what I've seen the weapons are even more expensive.

Salvaging Certain Weapons

This goes more or less hand in hand with the one I mentioned above but I've noticed looking at the weapons that there are some that you can farm for. There are also some you can craft but those have a higher crafting cost than buying the weapon or sigil itself. Anyways the ones I noticed are the named exotic weapons such as Arc or Soulstone. First, one can be found in champion bags, the latter can be found via raids.

[UPDATE] Silverwastes

How could I have not noticed this? In Silverwastes you can get a ton of champion bags by opening the lost bandit chests with bandit skeleton keys. Each key/chest rewards you with one bag. This is the most efficient way to get tons of champion bags. Making it most likely the most effective unreliable source of the Sigils. Remember it's a chance, it's not guaranteed. 

About the Tomes of Knowledge

I took my liberty to take the price of the Superior Sigil of Nullification (~15 gold at the time) and divide it through the number of Tomes of Knowledge you need to reach level 64 since I've heard you can sell that sigil. 15 / 64 = 0.2343 gold or 23 silver and 43 copper. If this sounds interesting to you, you can now make quite an okay sum using your Tomes of Knowledge.

And with that, GreenyNeko out. The next post is gonna be about the raid infusions that you can buy now.





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I'm a B.Sc. Games Engineer and I created this blog to share my ideas, theorycrafting, thoughts and whatever I'm working on or doing.