Monthly Archives: March 2018

The Goal is Set: Unlocking Skins

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Fury Warrior challenge skin unlock

I’ve been addicted to World of Warcraft again. After not playing for most of Legion I’ve jumped back in again for the past few months and started a grind that seems to be nigh impossible, yet I want it done badly.
It all started with me making an overview of the things I have already obtained in Legion, on what characters and what I’m still missing. As I write this post I am down to three classes left to level (Warlock, Death Knight and Rogue) and I have obtained a boatload of Artifact skins. Getting seriously back into WoW has been a mixture of circumstances. I’m currently playing a lot on the Horde side with one of my best friends aswell as trying to get that Mythic+ 15 done on my Warrior on Alliance side. I’m actually having a lot of fun again and only play with the people I want now. Couple this with a severe decline of interest in FFXIV, Eureka has been a serious disappointment for me, and I find myself on Azeroth a lot once again.

One of the things that has me pulled back into WoW, next to playing with the right people and an immense collectors’ drive, is the fact that I can make progress towards something on any character I happen to log and don’t need to spend a lot of time doing it. Aside from the Mythic+ madness I’ve been solely focused on leveling all my classes to max level, do their class hall campaign, unlock the class hall mount and grind out Hidden Artifact skins. On top of that I finally managed to get my first two Challenge skins (the Fury Warrior one pictured above) and I feel like I can actually get done what I want to before Battle for Azeroth hits. In FFXIV if I want to level my Machinist I will have to queue up for roulettes because doing only the six available Beast Tribe dailies every day is too slow. In WoW I’ve been doing invasions, which grant atleast a level and take about 15-20 mins to do, aswell as just doing the main story line in the zones. I can literally play for 30 mins and make progress. In FFXIV that’s usually the time it takes for me to even get into a dungeon.
Even though WoW is a bit more chaotic at endgame, seriously Blizzard needs to stop throwing all these quests at me as I ding level 110, it’s also somehow less time consuming to get what you want, granted you need to plan very carefully so you don’t get sucked into the game and waste three hours doing nothing, which is something that tends to happen in MMO’s.

I’m chunking up my WoW time effectively, dividing it towards what I want done for the day and making sure I get it done aswell. Sometimes this entails running a Mythic+ or two for gear and progress towards getting the +15 on all my characters. Sometimes it’s doing a few quests in the Legionfall campaign so I can unlock another Class Hall mount. On my Warrior I’ve been diligently doing all my Emissary quests for the caches, but also all the PvP World Quests to edge closer to that new Prestige level. I plan to take my Paladin and my Priest through the Argus campaign in the near future so I can get proper gear and maybe start working towards tackling the Mage Tower challenge on them aswell. I can make this progress in tiny amounts, usually I don’t have more than 2-3 hours of game time a day anyway, and still slowly tick goals off my spreadsheet.

Compare that to running Eureka for three hours and maybe advance an elemental level or two… I feel like I can get more out of my limited game time in WoW right now.
It’s not to say I’m abandoning FFXIV outright, it will probably be my weekend MMO, but I will be playing it a lot less than I was a few months ago. I still plan to get all my classes to level 70, eventually.

For now though I’m working on a rather prestigious WoW project that I hope I can see through to the end: Obtain every Mage Tower Challenge skin in the game and do M+15 on all 12 classes. Why? Because those are the only skin variants (MT base and +15) that Blizzard will remove with BfA. And so I am going to work my butt off to get them all before that happens.

Current status: 0/12 M+15; 2/37 Challenge skins. Wish me luck!

 

Frozen Friday

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Normally I’m so dead on Friday evenings that the only thing I want to do is lie down and sleep, doesn’t matter if it’s only 19.00. Today though I have a bit more energy and I would want to churn out a post because it’s been a bit of an odd week for me this week.

First off we’ve been dealing with a serious cold front coming in from the East that has basically made going outside a very painful chore. With temperatures dropping to -8 degrees Celsius (which is about 17 degrees Fahrenheit for my US friends) during the day, and the wind making it feel like -18 instead it was really no fun having to step outside. I had to conquer the cold for work and some hospital visits aswell but ideally I tried to stay inside as much as I could. I’m really not built for this weather and I notice it impacting my mood a lot, making me very grumpy and mostly in the mood to just lie down in bed and be warm.
I guess you never really appreciate having a mild climate untill the moment it’s taken from you and you have to deal with temperatures you’ve not really experienced since early childhood. I guess the one thing I can be thankful for is that we’re not stuck with a ton of snow, something the UK is dealing with right now.

You would think having this horrible weather outside would be an amazing excuse to spend some time in games but I’ve not really felt the gaming groove that much this week. Maybe it’s because of feeling cold almost the entire day or maybe it’s because my mind has mostly been with University and work stuff but I just couldn’t get myself to sit down and game. I did however pick up some new game related stuff that I’d like to share a bit of here.

I enjoy collecting things. Be it games, books or collectibles, I enjoy when something is well made and looks good on my shelves. Even though I know I shouldn’t by as much dust collecting stuff I still can’t seem to control my impulse buying, expecially when it comes to stuff that doesn’t only look good as decoration but also serves a purpose for games. I have an enormous Disney Infnity figurines collection and I was immensly sad when Disney decided to pull the plug from that franchise. However I found a new love in Nintendo Amiibos and am slowly growing my collection. The two newest additions are some of the newer Breath of the Wild Amiibo and I’m just amazed by the detail that Nintendo has put into making these. The archer Link looks absolutely amazingly detailed and the Zelda is probably the only real iteration of Zelda that I can really appreciate.
I didn’t actually intend to buy these guys when I went to my regular Game shop this week. I was just heading there to pick up the codes that would allow me to download Palkia and Dialga on my Pokémon Moon and Ultrasun games respectively. The sales rep was minding his own business untill he suddenly mentioned he had some Zelda amiibos lying around that he had ordered for himself but decided to cancel. Knowing that they would sell fast he offered them to me first and after one look at them I was absolutely sold. I think this line of amiibos in general are the best ones made so far and I don’t regret buying them whatsoever. What they exactly unlock ingame is not really clear to me. It looks like equipment and some consumables but I didn’t really buy them because of that anyway.
I do hope that they’ll get some sort of use outside Breath of the Wild but only time will tell on that one.

Even though I’ve not really been in a gaming vibe over the past week I do hope to make some progress in WoW and FFXIV over the weekend. I’d love to knock out some levels on various characters and classes and feel like I’m slowly ticking of goals. Especially with Battle for Azeroth inching closer there is a lot of stuff I still want to do. I hope I can. But we’ll see. For now I’m going to focus on getting through the weekend, play hopefully some games, get some exercise in and clean my room again because somehow during the week it just becomes an enormous mess.

 

March Gaming Goals 2018

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Wow, I’ve kind of straight up abandoned my blog somewhere at the start of February. I have no idea what exactly happened. Maybe it was writer’s block, maybe it was just a lack of willingness to sit down and type. Whatever the reason I’ve not looked at my blog at all the past few weeks and I do feel slightly guilty about it.
I want to take this chance though to look back at my gaming month and look ahead to the best month in the year, March!

Monk Class Mount & Pet

February has been a mixed bag for me with a lot of MMO time and not that much time for anything else. I did make some progress here and there though and I guess I’d want to share this with you guys!

  • In World of Warcraft I’ve gone above and beyond the goals that I had set for myself. Not only did I level my Shaman to 110, I’ve also leveled my Horde Priest and Horde Monk to 110 and finished both of their Class Hall campaigns respectively. On my Monk I’ve gone even further and also made the push towards the Class mount because I really REALLY wanted that tiger. So yeah, I’m down to four classes that still need to be leveled to 110 and five classes that still need their Class Hall campaign finished. I’m currently working on finishing my Shaman’s campaign while also trying to level my Mage, who is sitting at 104. All in all I feel I’ve done a lot in WoW and I think the majority of my MMO gaming time will be spent there in March aswell.
  • In Final Fantasy XIV I’ve leveled my Summoner/Scholar to level 70 as I hoped I would. I’ve barely touched any of the other classes though, except for a few crafters that I’ve gotten up to level 30 (Armorer, Culinarian and almost Blacksmith). I’ve done my beast tribe dailies here and there and did the first wing of the new Omega raid but otherwise the game didn’t really keep my attention much.
  • In single player games I’ve not actually played that much. I’ve continued a bit of Yo-Kai Watch, dabbled a bit in Persona 5 and started Dragon Quest Builders on my Switch. For some reason my willingness and energy that I want to put into games is at an all time low so besides MMO’s I’ve not really played that much at all.
  • IRL I’ve not lost the weight that I wanted to lose. I had hoped that I would be able to go outside a bit more but especially the past week has been unbearable as far as temperatures go so I rather stay inside than go out and freeze to death.

What am I looking forward to in March?
Well first of all I’ll be celebrating my 29th birthday halfway during the month. I had kind of agreed to not wanting a birthday present, but maybe my Dad will surprise me nonetheless. I can also finally pick up my diploma at the University, an event which I’ve been looking forward to for the past four years or so. It finally closes a very stressful chapter in my life and I would love to finally feel stress free in that regard.
I’m also starting the search for a new job since I feel like I’m not really where I should be at work anymore. I’m kind of grumpy, do not enjoy my tasks anymore and don’t feel inspired by the people I work with. All signs that it’s time to move on and luckily I will get some help from one of my managers. I also really want to get on track with working out more so keep your eyes out for some fitbit news on my Twitter and maybe here on the blog.

Now to the actual topic: Games.

  • I want to keep up what I’m doing right now in World of Warcraft which is work towards getting Exalted with the Argus factions on my Warrior and gear both my Warrior and Monk so I can run high level Mythic + dungeons on them. I really enjoy doing them on my Monk and I actually predict that I’ll be getting to higher level M+ on her than on my Warrior. I also want to get my Mage up to 110 and finish the Shaman class campaign. I’m thinking of leveling one of the new Allied Races but I’m not sure yet. I’d rather focus on getting all my remaining high level characters to 110, which are Warlock, Rogue and Death Knight after I’m done with Mage.
  • In FFXIV I want to check out Eureka. The patch is coming in two weeks and probably (finally) has the Stormblood Relic weapon tied to it so I’m definitely going to check out all of that. I also want to level atleast another class to level 70. As it stands right now it will probably either Machinist or Black Mage or maybe even both. I’m also slowly nudging my Crafters up so if I could get all of them to level 30 atleast that’s another goal I can strike off my list.
  • I want to spend a bit more time on both Persona 5 and Dragon Quest Builders. I absolutely adore playing both games and I feel like I need a serious story game and a lighthearted one side by side right now and those two games fit the bill perfectly. I know that especially Persona can be quite long before I finish it but I still want to play it, it’s just that good. For the rest I’m unsure what I’ll do with my time games wise. I’ve picked up the latest Layton game recently and am hooked on all the tiny mini puzzles that you get as daily downloads, but the mainstory isn’t that appealing to me yet. I may pick it up as distraction from the more story driven RPGs.. I do like solving the puzzles.

All in all I mostly want to use this month to further my real life goals and maybe pick up some gaming on the side. I’m in a bit of a slump anyway and I feel like I should do other stuff than spend most of my free time playing games. It’s a phase that will probably pass, but for now expect a bit less gaming from me and a bit more real life stuff.