One week, two trips: Catalina and the WMA.


Last year's Catalina crew got back together for another visit. It was thankfully not as hot this time and we had a better idea of what was good and what wasn't.

Town

Last year we were spread out across three hotels, so there was only interaction during activities (dining, diving, beach). So this year we booked a vacation rental and had a place for the kids to run laps. The full kitchen was nice to have as well.


We did the Descanso beach club thing again.

Diving

After years of using rental equipment and/or hand-me-downs, I finally got around to procuring my own dive fins. They're nothing special but proper fitment makes a huge difference.




There were four dives this trip:

1. A shore drive off Casino Point, self-guided because we've been there a time or two. I missed this one so that Jes could check out the spa.
2. A Casino Point night dive, led by a divemaster from the shop. I didn't bring the camera for this one, figuring that even with my ballmount dive light, focus would be a problem. In retrospect it probably would have worked. I recommend this dive: when darkness falls, everything goes hunting.
3. Boat dive #1, I think in the viscinity of Indian Rock.
4. Boat dive #2, somewhere around Starlight Beach.

The boat dives were geographically a lot like Casino Point but with different kelp forest densities and better visibility.


While the divers were out to sea, the land people hit the arcade, rented a golf cart, and checked out the kei truck scene:



We got home from Catalina with a few hours to spare before my redeye out to IAD to see J and family. Me and J have mostly been playing Steam games so it wasn't clear what we would try to conquer on the PS5. We decided on the Elden Ring DLC and the Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel Claptastic Voyage DLC (which we had only once played through).

Shadow of the Erdtree

The Shadow of the Erdtree is accessed via the Mohg boss arena - in keeping with the Soulslike aesthetic, getting to the DLC requires beating an optional boss who is not a cakewalk. And so our first challenge was to beat Mohg in J's playthrough since we'd only done it on mine two years ago.

Starting with Mohg was frustrating, particularly since it initially looked like we weren't going to be able to co-op him. Elden Ring prevents co-op matchmaking for characters that are too far apart in level, presumably to prevent 'taxiing'. It also has an (undocumented?) mechanic wherein you cannot summon a co-op ally if you've beaten the area boss. That, annoyingly, meant that playing through the main game we couldn't rush the area boss and then mop up dungeons and multitude of optional bosses. Or so it seemed at the time and then again when we tried to team up outside the Mohg arena. But then J turned off password-protected matchmaking to see if he could get some randos and, sure enough, both randos and I were available.

Getting co-op going (sometimes with randos) was only the first step. There was also:

• Realizing we left our characters configured for the final boss of the main game rather than their generalist or bleed-focused loadout.
• Relearning Mohg's attacks.
• Remembering that there is a special item to stun him.
• Remembering that there is a special physick ingredient to block his instakill between phases.
• Remembering you can do a ton of damage while he is charging his instakill, thereby minimizing his second phase.

After a few tries and one respec, we got him.

Honourable path? Clearly Leda does not realize that I am wearing my former friend's head.

With that settled, Leda invited us to the Realm of Shadow.


Shadow of the Erdtree is a lot like the main game: beautiful open fields, ample dungeons, NPCs of few words, bad guys big and small. So in a way it is perfect for someone - such as myself - who played through the main game just once and hadn't the stamina for another full run but kinda missed it after a couple of years. And while it is a lot like the main game, none of the critical elements (environments, characters, items) are - or feel - recycled.

SotE is not easy. Part of the difficulty, for us, was self-inflicted; we kinda charged through the overworld rather than fanning out from the start point. We also didn't read up on the new items and mechanics that make a difference.


From an early post on the main game:

Me	Invaders annoyingly love to hang out near NPC enemies so you have to fight both at the same time (and likely lose your runes in an inconvenient place). The even griefier ones simply run and hide, blocking your progress.

It's worse, now invaders are condensed into the smaller (but still quite large) real estate of the shadow realm. We've met a few that simply refused to depart the safety of some heinous NPC abush and others that would actually come and fight. But invaders are a constant annoyance for players interesting in a co-op PvE experience. It's gratifying to beat them though.

The Pre-Sequel

Wanting to diversify between slashing and shooting, me and J decided to play through the Borderlands Pre-Sequel Claptastic Voyage DLC. We had fond memories of the wonky Claptrap-oriented adventure we played many years ago on... XBox 360 probably?

Alas, the DLC starts at level 30 and we had no cross-save TPS characters. The Handsome Collection has a "start a new character at level 30" mechanic, but it requires one completion of the main quest. So we did that.


The game holds up. It wasn't perfect to begin with (especially Pickle) but it plays just as well as BL3 and has a more compelling Handsome Jack origin story.

PB

It had been far too long since I'd had Potbelly.

Don't die!

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