Monthly Archives: July 2020

Chasing Completion

Posted on by
Reply

I’ve alluded to it multiple times but I feel like I’ve done pretty much everything I wanted to do in the World of Warcraft. As such I’ve been trying to come up with new things to keep me occupied in the game, rather than taking an (extended) break. So when all else fails, or better when I don’t want to do challenging group content, I return to my completionist roots and start working away on earning achievements again. One of the more notable ones that I was close to was to get 100 reputations to Exalted. I think I only needed 5 more before the weekend. I found out that I could get two “free” reputations to Exalted by going back to Desolace and finish a, for some reason, resetted questline involving two centaur clans. After completing said questchain I got awarded with both their reputations being set to Exalted. The next reputation that I managed to get up, with the help of Timewalking, was the Sha’tari Defense reputation from Warlords of Draenor. For some reason though that one didn’t count towards my 100 so I had to think of other reputations to grind.
And that’s how I spent two to three hours of my Sunday grinding out Gadgetzan, Ratchet and Everlook reputation by committing pirate genocide in Tanaris. I got lucky with another player seeking to do the same and we grouped up, making the farm twice as fast. At the end of that grind I walked away with all those reps to Exalted, the achievement completed and a mount and title earned. There’s not many reputations that I’ve not touched now. I think three PvP ones are most notable, Silverwing Sentinels from Warsong Gulch, League of Arathor from Arathi Basin and Wrynns Vanguard from Ashran. I doubt I’ll ever get those to Exalted since I’ve not been interested in running battlegrounds for a long time now.
As far as PvE reptutations go… I still have Ravenholdt on Neutral and if I really wanted to I guess I could go for Insane in the Membrane, but I’m not that crazy yet. There’s Chromie rep to get and a variety of fishing reputations aswell as Draenor Garrisson bodyguard stuff. Nothing that is very appealing to me right now. I’m also still steadily working away on getting Exalted with the Rajani, I’m done with Uldum Accord, but that rep is limited to the assaults and dailies that I can do. I’m currently sitting around 17.5/21k though so I think I should be done with them around the weekend.

I’ve also started to do achievements that are specifically tied to Battle for Azeroth. Killing all rares in the various zones. Finding all treasures. Read scrolls and ride rickety planks or find grey items that are hidden in plain sight, if you know where to look. Eventually I’ll get to the harder to get ones and back to Nazjatar and Mechagon meta achievements, if I can keep interested until that.
There’s also some older “group” achievements that I’m eyeing to do. They mostly evolve around raid/dungeon achievements that also give a mount and I see that I’ve basically stopped doing them around Mists of Pandaria. Since that is all outdated content now I’m going to try to do as much as I can on my own and maybe ask a friend or two to assist me with the rest. That should keep me busy for a while atleast.

I’m also maybe planning to casually level up some Allied Race toons, if only to unlock their respective heritage armours and get those achievements out of the way aswell. Leveling is pretty braindead right now and fast enough to keep me entertained while also getting reasonable progress when I play for an hour or so. I’ve been poking around on a Lightforged Draenei Paladin and a Zandalari Troll Monk. Seeing as how I play tank and healer respectively I get pretty fast dungeon queues and when I don’t feel like doing dungeons I can just switch to a dps spec and quest my way up. By no means is this a big time consumption for me and I’m not going to make it some sort of “must do” goal but it’s nice to sometimes play a lower level toon and not have to think about too much.

Anyway, before this post turns even more rambly that’s what I’m mostly up to in WoW these days and I don’t see it changing anytime soon. I’m also still playing FFXIV and leveling my Dark Knight there now, but that also limits itself to doing the pixie dailies and a random dungeon when I feel like it. I feel like summer is kind of taking away my will to game and instead I’m trying to be more outside. Be it in an active way or just lounging on my balcony while reading a book, it feels good to be in the fresh air and about instead of staying cooped up in my apartment the entire day. Especially now that my vacation is over and I’m back to work I feel like I need to make use of my free time to get away from my house, before the walls start closing in on me.
And inbetween that I’m satisfying my completionist urges. Let’s hope those can tie me over untill the Shadowlands prepatch.

End of Vacation

Posted on by
Reply

They say that time flies when you’re having fun. It’s not a wrong saying but time seems to fly by in general these days. I blinked and my two week vacation was done. I went to my cabin in the woods. I’ve relaxed. I did a small project that was sort of related to work but not really and I’ve slipped back into the habit of reading a bit every day.
I managed to get my Warrior to level 80 in Final Fantasy XIV and I’m turning my attention towards leveling Dark Knight now. Being a tank aswell I’m sure I’ll have that up to 80 in no time and then it’s just Gunbreaker left.
I’ve been poking about in World of Warcraft the most on my Warrior. I’ve been diligently doing my dailies on her and managed to get the Uldum Accord reputation up to Exalted, which means I can drop doing those dailies (yay!) and only have the Rajani reputation left to get to Exalted… I’m only 5k reputation off that so I think I can get to it next week maybe.
With working on these reputations I realized I wasn’t too far off the 100 reputations to Exalted achievement. I went back to Desolace to bump up the centaur reputations to Exalted there and I’m working on the Sha’tari Defense reputation now that we have Warlords of Draenor timewalking up. If I can finish that up and get Exalted with the Rajani I only have one more reputation left. Unfortunately that one will require some grinding on my end since it’s one of the goblin town reputations (Gadgetzan) and I’m about 5k off there aswell… And the only way to get that up is to repeatedly kill pirates in Tanaris that give 5 reputation per kill. I kill them pretty fast but it’s 200 kills for 1k rep so that means that I’ll have to kill around 1000 mobs to get where I need to be. I could sit down for a day and grind it out but I’m not that masochistic so I’m taking 30 minutes here and there to dedicate to that grind.

I’m not sure how to feel about these two weeks off. I did what I wanted to do in regards to taking a weekend away from my house and I managed to read through two full books, but on the gaming front and on the relaxation front I’m not that happy. I do feel more relaxed than I have been in a long time, but I’m also still somewhat restless and dreading to go back to work on Monday. In the gaming world I’ve been mostly hopping back and forth between games but never sat down to play through something properly. I spent most of my time poking around on WoW and chasing silly goals and I did a light leveling bit on FFXIV but that’s mostly it. I didn’t touch Ratchet & Clank and I didn’t touch the Final Fantasy 7 Remake.
I didn’t even manage to keep up with my weekly planner, something I have been doing since I got it and it kind of stings. Luckily I’ll have a rematch next week which I will be planning out tomorrow.. But it still doesn’t sit quite right with me.
If anything it shows me I’m still far away from forming good habits and having a clear structure to my days. Going back to work may help a bit in that regard but I struggle with making “optimal use” of my free time. I tend to spend a lot of time just lounging on the couch and staring into the abyss or the tv while time ticks away and it annoys me. I want to be more productive and I want to have more fun doing things after work but I’m just struggling to motivate myself to get there.

For now though it’s time that I get a good night’s sleep and then have my final day of no work that’s probably filled with doing chores tomorrow… I can’t wait till my next two weeks off.

Cabin in the Woods

Posted on by
1

Vacation has been treating me well. It’s taken a few days to wind down and not feel completely exhausted, 5 to be precise, and I’ve been enjoying the stress free life. A part of me is curious how my team is doing without me but I need to learn to let go, so I’m doing exactly that.
I’ve been spending a lot of time sleeping, doing as little as possible and gaming. Especially World of Warcraft has seen a lot of love the past few days with me kind of abandoning the gold grind for a bit and instead hunting achievements on my Warrior. The army of alts that I’ve been using to grind gold have kind of worn me out and as such it was nice to put that on hold and just play my Warrior and not worry about running EVERYTHING because I feel like I have to. We still do our weekly heroic Ny’alotha clear and I’m helping people with some Mythic+ keys but overall I’m noticing that my playtime has gone down significantly and my focus has shifted to other things.
Like playing Final Fantasy XIV! The next patch, 5.3, is due to land on August 11th. I managed to get the Ixion mount that I had been wanting from the Moogle Tome Event today so I’m essentially done with that for now. My Warrior is sitting at level 78 and I managed to unlock two more Relic Weapons for my Dragoon and Bard respectively. I love that they only take 1000 Tomestones of Poetics to unlock since you kind of get those passively if you do roulettes anyway. After my Warrior gets to level 80 I only have Dark Knight and Gunblade left and then I’m done with all my battle jobs. I may turn my attention back to crafting instead then to get all those jobs from 70 to 80 and then I really only have Blue Mage left before I’m officially done with leveling everything.

However those plans need to be put on hold for a few days since I’m leaving for a cabin in the woods tomorrow for a long weekend. I have my bag already packed. I’m taking my Switch and an e-reader and nothing else. I just have to check the air in my tires before I go tomorrow and do a few groceries and then I’m all set. It’s going to be so nice to escape my apartment for a bit and have a “vacation feel” for real, even if it’s only for a few days. I’m planning to keep my phone off for most of the time when I’m there since I just really need to disconnect from social media and everything related to that for a bit. I’m planning on doing some nice walks and maybe dip into the local swimming pool but otherwise it’s just relaxing to the max. The cabin I’m renting is a bit of a luxury one which comes with a bath that also doubles as jacuzzi and a sauna and I’m going to use both. I even finally get to use some of the bathbombs I’ve taken home with me from work!

I’ll come back on Monday afternoon and then I still have the rest of the week off to enjoy untill I go back to work. For now though I’m going to get a good night’s sleep before I do the final round of apartment cleaning tomorrow morning and head off for a few days.

What are you doing this weekend?

Vacation, finally.

Posted on by
2

This past week has been rough. I’m starting a two week vacation today where I don’t have to do anything for my job and can finally relax for the first time since March. And for longer than a week aswell!
I’ve been looking forward to this for a while because I could seriously feel the burn from work. It’s been crazy with everything that has happened the past four months. The pandemic hitting, suddenly being forced to work from home and having almost no live social interaction for weeks to finally being allowed back into the office again for a few days a week and getting a sense of normalcy back.
Not to mention that it feels like there was an even bigger amount of work piling up than normal and we were going stir crazy with all the projects and last minute jobs that needed to be done.

Two of my coworkers had a few weeks of in the weeks before this and as such a lot of the day to day work had landed on my shoulders since we’re a really small team. In my current position I’m a senior and even though I do help with the day to day stuff I often don’t partake in a lot of recurring work anymore since my focus has shifted towards other things. So having to do my current job and part of the “old” work takes it’s toll after a while. I could feel myself just not being able to care about the work anymore and having an increasingly harder time focusing on just getting stuff done. That’s usually the sign I really need a break so I’m happy to have the coming two weeks to rest up, relax and hopefully tackle some of my backlog of games.

I have planned to take a long weekend getaway to a different part of the country in a bit of a luxury cabin with a sauna and jacuzzi. I’ll be in a very wooded area so I also plan to take a few nice long walks and enjoy the scenery, but mostly I just need a few days away from my regular environment. Being cooped up in my apartment for the last four months hasn’t been the best on my mental health unfortunately, so being able to get away is extremely nice. I’m probably going to pack my e-reader and my switch and just spend a few days in an extremely relaxed state reading and gaming and not being available to anyone.

As for the rest of my vacation plans… I will be attending my cousin’s wedding, in my country the COVID-19 restrictions have been slowly lifted so this is possible again, and otherwise it will hopefully be a lot of sleeping in and gaming and then hopefully be all fresh and happy to go back to work!

Getting into planners

Posted on by
2

I’ve been trying to get more structure in my life. When I was still in school and college I would keep a weekly agenda for all my lessons and homework and what not. They were fun and themed and I loved picking out a new one every new school year.
Ever since that part of my life is over I’ve tried to keep agendas but never seemed to be able to keep at it. They felt boring and the horizontal weekly format wasn’t working for me anymore and as such I stopped keeping track of my stuff on paper and instead opted to keep everything on my phone.

I tried keeping a bullet journal but it was a bit too free form. I’m not that creative and I felt like I couldn’t make good use of it. I try keeping a diary sometimes or just a daily note of what I did that day but those aren’t the long lasting type either. So I just gave up on the whole idea.
But then I saw this Youtube video by Chestnut and suddenly an entire world opened up to me. It looked so much fun to use a planner like that and it will finally help me get some planning and structure to my day so I splurged on a planner, a bunch of planner stickers and I made my first weekly spread!

It’s my first spread so I got pretty creative with it but I’m already thinking about what I can do differently in the next week. I also should have saved some of the full box stickers for another week but you live and you learn I guess.
I really like this planner so far. It allows me to track if I get enough hydration during the week. It helps me track habits that I’m trying to form, like taking a walk every day and taking care of my teeth better. I am planning my meals ahead, although I’ll probably move that particular box to the notes side next week. It helps me track important things and I can decorate to my heart’s content.
I’ll probably do a weekly “plan with me” post on Tuesdays, seeing as I want to get a bit more scheduled with posting here aswell. Then I can show off my spreads and fill you all in how I did with the old spread aswell.

So far I’m experimenting a lot and having fun with it so I hope this won’t be a phase but something that sticks for longer and helps me get a bit more of a grip on my life.

Sandy’s MMO Sunday: July 5th, Big Milestones Time!

Posted on by
Reply
Warrior on Black Serpent of N'zoth

When there’s progress and you know it clap your hands!

What a long strange trip it’s been for the past few weeks. I’ve been writing drafts, deleting them and then starting new ones without actually finding it good enough to post. I don’t know how many semi finished posts have ended up in the trash but it’s been more than I intended to have.
As I’m writing this I only have one week of work left and then I’ll be away from having to work from home or in the office for two glorious weeks. I’ve been looking forward to this for quite a while now, I can feel it’s been a while since I had more than a long weekend off. It’s summer here in the Netherlands and as a good Dutch summer pertains we had a few days of seriously hot weather followed by rain, wind, and more rain. As I’m writing this post it’s sunny out but also very windy so I can’t really have all my windows open because the wind is making them slam shut. Instead I’ve opted to open my balcony door, which is pretty securely fastened, and then try to cool down my house a bit that way. So I figured now was a perfect time to attempt another blog post, in the hopes that this one will make it to published status.

So to start off: I’ve been extremely busy in the World of Warcraft. I’ve been working on many different things and am close to accomplishing a few of the bigger goals I set for myself in this game.
First off I managed to complete both a Stormwind and Orgrimmar 5 mask Vision run. Both were brutal in their own way but I’m glad I did it nonetheless. Since I completed them solo I got a nice Feat of Strength achievement, which came with a shiny title, and I was one step closer to getting the meta-achievement to get a mount. Today I managed to finally complete the last step I needed for that and obtained the mount as shown in the screenshot, the Black Serpent of N’Zoth. I’m so pleased! This means I don’t really have to do difficult Visions anymore but instead I can just relax and start grinding out currency so I can buy another mount and a backpack transmog item, the first one in the game. This was one of the things on my big “I have to complete this before Shadowlands comes out” so I’m happy to be able to cross it off the list.

Another big goal I was working towards getting is timing every single dungeon on a Mythic+15 level. For a quick explanation, dungeons in WoW are for 5 people. As you level up you unlock the “Normal” version and once you hit max level you unlock “Heroic” version. Things start getting interesting from “Mythic” version and upwards. Seeing as you can just queue up for Normals and Heroics they’re usually pretty fast and easy to use to gear and level up your character. For Mythic (and Mythic+) you need to assemble a group yourself, like in ye gooden olde times. You can still use the Looking for Dungeon tool but it’s not as easy as queuing up. Now the + in Mythic+ comes from the fact that you can “level up” Mythic dungeons by the use of keys. In theory these keys can level up infinitely but there are some major breaking points to be had. With every level the dungeon goes up the mobs in the dungeon increase in health and damage done. Next to that there will also be special affixes to the dungeons. The very first one is one that is active from Mythic 2 and up and it is one that boosts either Boss health or Trash health, then at Mythic 4, Mythic 7 and Mythic 10 another affix is added to the dungeon making it much harder to attempt. The affixes can be many things and for a full explanation of them I would like to refer you to this guide on WoWhead.
I’ve gotten to the point that I’ve been sort of smoothly tackling Mythic level 15 and above. I’ve done every single dungeon on level 15 except for one. Which is kind of a bummer since if you do all of them at level 15 or above you get a nice Feat of Strength achievement and a mount. Which is obviously what I’m after most. I’m hoping that I can get into a group for that final dungeon somewhere this week because the affixes are relatively easy so it shouldn’t be to hard to get. Once I do that’s another big goal striped off the list!

Warrior in Uldum for daily quests

Feeding a little monster

With the above two goals being (almost) completed it means I have to look for something new to keep me occupied in WoW. I’m still working away on leveling up my Rajani and Uldum Accord reputation, whenever I feel like doing the dailies. I’m also doing a daily quest chain in Uldum which will eventually reward me with a mount, but I’m not quite there yet. Other than that I’ve kind of given up on leveling more alts for the time being since I don’t want to burn myself out even harder on this game. Instead I’ve decided to be insane and try to farm enough gold to get the 5 million Brutosaurus mount before it disappears in the Shadowlands prepatch. I’m currently sitting on 600k gold so I still have quite a ways to go, but I’m hoping I can get there. I have 4 max level characters which I can use to farm old raids with, who I’m doing all Emissaries with and who I use for crafting various gear items to sell at the vendors. All in all I’m making around 50-100k gold per week just from “farming” gold. If I could start playing the Auction House in addition to that I’m pretty sure that I will be able to make that 5 million gold in time. But only time will tell.

All this focused attention on WoW has unfortunately meant that I’ve barely played anything else. I did a few sessions of FFXIV over the past weeks but didn’t really make any progress. I should really play a bit more though because I still want that Ixion mount before it’s gone. I have untill August 11th though but I don’t want to do it last minute.

As for the rest of my gaming time.. Well I have picked up a new hobby that has nibbled into that. I will probably do a blogpost on that somewhere this week so keep an eye out for it! For now I’m going back into WoW and grind out some more gold.