Made it, barely

After a few days of absolutely unhealthy amount of gaming, I finally completed the season journal for Diablo IV fifth season: Season of the Infernal Hordes.

Had to go through this unfun time no thanks to the short season. If it's the usual three months I am sure I can make it in the usual fun way, as gaming should be.

Managed to complete most of the season journal quests as part of levelling to, or shortly after reaching, character level 100. That is good game design, so credit to Blizzard on that.

Each chapter of the season journal requires a certain minimum number of quests completion in order to proceed to the next chapter, giving players some semblance of choice. However, I hit a wall when I got to the final chapter of the season journal. It needs a minimum of 9 quests out of 11 to complete the chapter, and I managed to complete 8 without much trouble. The three quests left though, are basically gear level check, and are gated behind tedious and unfun grind-fest.

Now that is horrible game design, shame on you, Blizzard, shame on you!

To be honest, even if I had one more month to play leisurely in enjoyable fashion (as playing game should be!), I still would have hated the grind. Grind to get suitable end game gears, which is RNG-based. Grind in The Pit to get end game Masterworking material to upgrade the gear, which also has RNG-based portion. And grind to get the shards to open portal to go into The Pit... Argh!!!

Honestly I am so sick of the game now after days of tedious unfun grind.

Anyway, I managed to solo three of the five level 160 Fell Council of Zakarum, the high priests corrupted by Mephisto we first encountered in Diablo II, now brought back into Diablo IV season 5. Took me many minutes as I am poorly geared, I simply could not stomach the grind anymore so I did the quest under-geared. Their obscenely high resistance to damage (or perhaps because I was under-geared) resulted in way too long a fight.

Nail-biting too as I was down to my final chance after dying twice before even getting to them, but I prevailed. That's the quest I needed to complete the final chapter of the season journal. The other two quests are to face level 200 bosses. Forget it, because I don't find the grind for gear check fun.

That's season 5 done for me. I need to break from Diablo IV for now until the expansion comes out, which is just in a few days time, not long enough a break from this unfun episode.

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