Monthly Archives: November 2019

Final Fantasy Fever

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Today is always a weird day for me. 18 years ago my Mum died on this day and I’ve made a habit of taking it off every year. I never know how I am emotionally. Some years I have a bit of a breakdown and I spend most of the day crying and listening to the wrong songs and other years I feel quite calm and centered and able to enjoy my day. Today has been the latter, but I’m glad I took the day off nonetheless. It’s given me a bit of respite from work and allowed me to have a day to relax and get back into a calmer state of mind. I made sure I did all the stuff I needed to do in the morning and as a result I’ve had most of the day to catch up on a ton of things in Final Fantasy XIV.

I’ve not really been into a proper gaming mood during my evenings after work but that has made me even more eager to pick up my controller and play during my days off. I made a ton of progress last weekend on my Paladin, which I managed to ding 80 Monday evening, and that has set me up for a nice session today. I did roulettes on my Samurai, climbing up to level 71.5. I finished up a lot of job quests that I hadn’t done yet after getting to max level, Paladin, Monk and Astrologian, and I finished up the Tank class quests from Shadowbringers. By doing so I opened up an extra questline that only becomes available when you’ve cleared all the class quests. It ties the stories together neatly and shed light on an unexpected character.. And that’s all I’m going to say about it. All of this though tends to take up quite a bit of time and it was nice sitting down and just getting all that stuff done and getting bits and pieces of additional story and lore along the way. It’s one of the many things I love about this game and seeing as I still have a ton of jobs to level I’m sure I will get to see much more awesome story bits for the coming few months.

As it stands now I still have to level 9 battle jobs. Three tanks (Dark Knight, Warrior, Gunblade), three melee (Samurai, Dragoon, Ninja) and the ranged physical DPS classes (Bard, Machinist, Dancer). I have started on Samurai because it shares gear with Monk and it means I can get rid of all the sub level 80 gear once I’m done leveling. After that I may switch to a ranged class to keep things a bit more interesting. I’m really digging Dancer right now so it may actually be the class I’m going to focus on after I’m done with Samurai instead of Dragoon which was the original plan.
Next to my battle jobs I’ve also made leaps and bounds in leveling my crafters. Right now Leatherworker is the only job that isn’t level 70 yet, but I’m sure I won’t be too far off. Right now it’s sitting at level 66 and about two-third of the way to level 67. All my other crafters are level 70 or 71 and I’m quite content with that. Once my Leatherworker hits the level 70 treshold aswell I may start looking into the whole Ishgard crafting thing while simultaneously doing the quests in the Crystarium for the massive experience boosts that they give. After that the only classes/jobs that I still need to level are Fisher and Blue Mage and I think I will get to those in due time. Fisher is sitting at level 48 and Blue Mage at level 10.

It may sound a bit odd but having all these leveling goals is what is making me have so much fun in the game right now. I may be a bit of a machine when it comes to leveling, I get very single minded and focused on getting things to maximum level but for some reason this helps me relax and wind down. It also helps that the game rewards you with titles and gear and apparently mounts for getting everything to maximum level so that’s an extra boost to my motivation. Sometimes it feels like I’m feverishly playing the game. Pushing myself to my limits in how much experience I can cram into one session and being exuberant when I get to where I want to be. I may even label myself as a bit obsessed sometimes, especially on days like today where I play for hours straight to get things done. I don’t consider it a waste of time though since I gain so much satisfaction from my play sessions, and that is what is enjoying your hobby is all about right?
I have thought about what I want to do once I do get everything to level cap. I guess the next thing in line is to gear up all these jobs by running ex-roulette, raids and primals. I feel pretty confident in my ability as White Mage to dare to join pick up groups and it’s nice to kit out all my classes in the best gear possible. I think I also want to start doing crafting and gathering related achievements to earn even more titles and gear. Then there are tons of things that I’ve not actively participated in yet. Golden Saucer stuff like Chocobo Racing and Triple Triad, PvP, getting one of the Stormblood relic weapons. There’s just so much to do!

For now though I’m going to end my post here and boot my Playstation back up. All dailies have reset about an hour ago and after spending some time cleaning and typing I feel renewed for another session in the lovely world of Eorzea.
Untill next time!

Sandy’s Sunday: A dash of FFXIV

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It’s a bit ironic to title my post after Final Fantasy XIV and then open with a screenshot from Pokémon Sword. It’s deliberate though seeing as I’ve made it past the third gym today and am progressing nicely through the game. I’ve been sent back to the Wild Area to make my way to the next big city: Hammerlocke.
I have two choices now. I either power through to Hammerlocke and take on the next gym or I start backtracking and catching all the Pokémon I’ve missed in this first part of the game. As of right now I’m still undecided on what I want so I’m just gonna sleep on it for a night and decide then. All in all I’m really enjoying this new Pokémon game and I’m doing my best to keep a party full of Galar Pokémon. It feels nicer to play that way for some reason. I hope I can get a few more badges, and some more Pokémon, the coming week and make a big push through the game towards the Pokémon League. I really can’t wait to beat Leon and his stupid Charizard. I need to see how Bede, Marnie and Hop work out throughout the story and I’m quite curious as to when I get to catch my Legendary. I guess the only way to find all of that out is to just keep playing.

In other gaming news. I managed to get a few proper sessions of FFXIV in over the weekend and my Paladin is now sitting at level 79. If all goes well it should be level 80 tomorrow evening and I can return to leveling my Samurai and get that pushing up. I know I’ve deviated from the plans a bit but I really wanted to see the Tank story line and so far it hasn’t disappointed, like all of the other storylines.
I’m also still slowly leveling my Leatherworker. I’ve not yet used the whole restoration of Ishgard to level anything yet, preferring to stick to my Beast Tribe dailies. This has taken me to level 59 Leatherworker though and I’m positive that I will ding 62 tomorrow once I’m done with all dailies and job quests. I’ve been desynthesizing a lot of my old gear from my Armoury chest, freeing up a ton of space and leveling my Desynth skill on Weaver, Goldsmith and Blacksmith respectively. I may start diving into Ishgard once my Leatherworker dings level 70 aswell but for now I don’t think I want to spend time on that.
For now I’m still in full leveling mode. I can’t wait to get all my classes to level 80 and be “done” with that part of the game. Then I can start working on properly gearing them and keeping up with other things like Achievements, Golden Saucer and getting my hands on silly amounts of collectibles.

Finally last week has been brutal to me on a personal level. For some reason work has decided to crank things up past eleven and as such I come home completely exhausted every day. Having sick coworkers doesn’t help either and for some reason I find myself in the middle of a struggle between coworkers about how to properly do our job. It’s giving me a headache really and I try to stay away from all of it as much as I can. Alas being in my current function I seem to get dragged into the middle of everything. Let’s hope that next week won’t be the same. I have Wednesday off, it’s my Mum’s memorial day, and my car arrives on Friday meaning I will only work 3.5 days this week to begin with. I guess the only way right now is up.

Sandy’s Sunday: Pokémon time

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Last Friday Pokémon Sword and Shield finally launched worldwide. I had pre-ordered the dual pack version which contains both games, a steelbook and apparently a special code together with a friend. I already picked Sword, he picked Shield and we did a coinflip for the steelbook case, which I won.

So far I’ve been having a blast. I’m about 4 hours into the game and am on my way to the first gym. The Wild Area is amazing and terrifying. I wandered a bit too far and suddenly got matched up with Pokémon way beyond the levels of my own team. The Dynamax encounters are actually pretty neat and they drop a lot of useful stuff like experience candies. The story so far is okay I guess, but that’s never really been the highlight of Pokémon games. My rival, Hop, is annoying as usual and the game is still quite hand-holdy but you can opt out of a lot of explanations and just progress through the game at quite a nice pace.
The region is set in Britain this time and it shows. From the absolute weird Pokémon names, a fox called Nickit, to the generally British terms for things that are quite obvious. Hell even team Yell, who are sort of the bad guys?, are a sort of punk-rock style opponents that you can only expect in a British themed game. You can cook curry’s with your Pokémon at your campsite and the towns have a thorough British feel to them. So far I’m really enjoying this, more so than X and Y or Sun and Moon who were supposed to mimick France and Hawaii respectively.

Apart from latching onto Pokémon Sword for the last two days I’ve been feeling a bit detached from gaming. I’ve still not explored everything patch 5.1/5.11 have to offer in Final Fantasy XIV. I’ve not touched anything Warcraft related except to pick up the anniversary pet. The only game I’ve been putting time into has been League of Legends. I’ve been playing a lot of ARAM’s so I can complete the Worlds missions that are still open. I have been having a blast doing this so I guess I can’t say it’s a waste of time.
I have been putting a lot of time into re-reading the Harry Potter series however. This was mostly spurred on by the fact that they’re showing all the movies on TV here and I’ve been watching those on Monday evenings. Tomorrow they’re airing the seventh movie or the first part of book seven. Coincidentally I’ve just started reading that so I’m in full Harry Potter mode for the time being.

So yeah. I’m still feeling very detached from the whole blogging stuff right now. I can’t seem to get myself to write anything besides these weekly mini-updates. I’m also still very much not reading other people’s blogs, sorry! I really should get back into that but I’m just not in the right mindspace right now.
As far as games go, I really should start checking out the Ishgard content for crafters because apparently it’s an amazing source of experience. I’m sitting at all my crafters at level 70 right now, with only Leatherworker at level 50. On the gathering side only Fisher isn’t 80 yet so I hope that Ishgard can assist in that. It would be so nice to just get everything to level 80 for completion purposes. I also really need to do the mainstory content… I may just hop on today and make my way through that.

Sandy’s Sunday: November 10th 2019

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A lot has happened since I posted my November goal post. Blizzcon has come and gone, patch 5.1 has launched in Final Fantasy XIV and I’ve made the decision, and started the process, to buy myself a car. I’ve been pretty busy with real life stuff so gaming has gone onto the back burner a bit right now. Having said this, I still managed to find time to churn through tons of crafting dailies and take advantage of the hefty experience boost that Square Enix has implemented with the latest patch. As such I’ve gotten both my Blacksmith and Armorer to level 70 and my Leatherworker is currently somewhere in the 40-50 range. I’ve also managed to get my Monk to level 80 the past week so I’ve been dutifully working through my FFXIV goals. Instead of picking up Samurai straight after I decided to level my Paladin instead, purely because I want to see the tank story line from Shadowbringers. As a friend of mine put it I’m “bumrushing” the process and am currently sitting at level 73 after two days of doing the new Pixie beast tribe dailes, a ton of FATE’s and roulettes which provide me with very nice instant queues. I may even push to 74 after this post goes live and I do Mainstory roulette.

On the flipside there is the World of Warcraft where I’ve basically stalled out the moment I got my Mechagon rep to Exalted. Right now the 15 year celebration is going on ingame and I will probably poke my nose in and get the nostalgic raids done, purely so I can get the mount and then scoot out of there again. I may also do the PvP event but I’m not sure about that yet. As far as other WoW news goes… I’ve seen the trailer that announces Shadowlands and I should be hyped but for some reason I really am not. I guess Battle for Azeroth kind of soured my enthusiasm for WoW and I’m pretty skeptical about what is going to happen next. Sylvanas being the big bad isn’t surprising but I really wish Blizzard didn’t go that route. I will most definitely get the expansion, seeing as I’m still a big enough fan to play the game but I’m noticing that I’m enjoying myself more in FFXIV right now than I do in WoW.
In related fashion I’m also not terribly hyped for Diablo 4. I mean, I poured a lot of time into Diablo 3 when it launched and through all the changes and the expansion and DLC but for some reason I just can’t seem to get back into the game on my PC or my Switch. The “looter” genre isn’t really appealing to me right now so maybe when we get closer to launch I start feeling a bit more hyped but for now I’m not even sure if I want to get the game to start with.

As for my blogging right now. I’ve not really felt the urge to write or read anything for the past few weeks. My Feedly is kind of exploding with unread posts but I’m mostly just scrolling through them and not really reading what they say. I’m not sure why it’s like this and it’s probably a temporary thing but for now I’m not that engaged with the blogging community as I would like to be. I’m also a bit sad after seeing the League of Legends World Finals today. G2 has been the team I’ve been rooting for the entire season and it seemed like they were well on course to grabbing that very sought after World Cup. Unfortunately it wasn’t meant to be. I can’t imagine how devastated these players must be feeling right now and I can only hope the team will take this as a learning experience and come back stronger next year.

Next friday the new installment in the Pokémon series comes out, I hope that will trigger my need to blog a bit because I will probably be all over that game. Untill then… Stay tuned I guess?

Gaming Goals: November 2019

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October has come and gone and with it my Dad’s birthday, Halloween and a pretty big cold at the start of it. I head really big plans for the month of October but unfortunately I managed to way less than I set out to do. Let’s take a look shall we?

MMO Goals

  • Level my Monk and Samurai to level 80 in FFXIV.
  • Complete the level 80 job quests on Botanist and Miner
  • Level Culinarian and Blacksmith to level 70 + Job quests. Level Armorsmith to 50.
  • Finish atleast three Animus books on my White Mage.
  • Get Exalted with Nazjatar and Mechagon in WoW
  • Level my Warrior to 120 in WoW
  • Defeat Aszhara in the Eternal Palace LFR on my Rogue
  • Complete the zone my Ranger is in currently in Guild Wars 2

Non-MMO Goals

  • Finish Link’s Awakening

So I’ve been pretty busy in FFXIV and WoW but didn’t really play a lot at the same time. Usually I would just log in to do my dailies and then log back out and do something else instead. As such I’ve not done that much besides level my crafters and get exalted with Mechagon and Nazjatar. As sidenote, my Blacksmith is sitting at level 68 today and my Monk on 78 so I did come close to atleast striping those two goals off.
I’ve actually not spent that much time playing Link’s Awakening, something I want to rectify in November. I also didn’t touch Guild Wars 2 but instead played a lot of League of Legends during Riot’s 10 year anniversary celebration. I still log on every day to do an ARAM for fun and World Championship coins. All in all it was a bit of a weird month with some progress on some fronts and 0 progress on other fronts. As such I’m going to port over some goals to November, where I’m sure I’ll get them done, especially with the implementation of the new Beast Tribe dailies and the boost to crafting experience.
As far as my WoW goals.. My Warrior is currently sitting at level 115 so I did do some levelling, just not enough to push to 120. I haven’t touched LFR though and I do want to get that out of the way, even if it’s only to unlock the Wrathion questchain

So without further ado here are my gaming goals for November 2019

MMO Goals

  • Level Monk and Samurai to level 80 in FFXIV
  • Start leveling Dragoon to level 80 in FFXIV
  • Level Blacksmith, Armorer to level 70 in FFXIV and do Job Quests
  • Finish atleast three Animus books on my White Mage in FFXIV
  • Level my Warrior to 120 in WoW
  • Defeat Aszhara in the Eternal Palace LFR on my Rogue WoW
  • Do the Wrathion questchain in WoW

Non MMO Goals

  • Finish Link’s Awakening
  • Finish the mainstory in Pokémon Sword

This month Pokémon Sword and Shield come out and I’m getting Sword. I really want to play through the “mainstory” and defeat all the gyms to become the champion of the new region. I always really like the Pokémon games and franchise so I don’t doubt that this will be an easy goal for me. Before that though I need to finish Link’s Awakening so that is exactly what I’m going to focus on for the next few weekends.

As far as the MMO goals go, they should be easily doable. My crafters are rocketing through the levels since the 5.1 boost to experience and my Monk is as good as 80 aswell so that just leaves Samurai and Dragoon for this month. In WoW I just really want to finish leveling my Warrior and see more of the content on my Rogue so I’m going to be focusing on that.

What does your November in gaming look like?