Author Archives: sandrian

Shadowbringers Mayhem

Posted on by
Reply

I kind of fell off the face of the planet when the early access for Shadowbringers launched, like a lot of people surrounding me who were going to play aswell. I have posted a Twitter update here and there but didn’t really got around to get myself to sit down and blog about this entire experience. Now that I’ve hit a wall in endgame though I figured it was time to drag my attention away from my console and the game and write a blog post instead. I will give a heads up now, since the game has been out for well over a week there will be some spoilers in this blog post. If you don’t want to be spoiled don’t read any further!

So at this point in time not only have I finished the Mainstory, I’ve also gotten all the tome gear for Healers and I managed to beat Titania Ex and get the White Mage staff. The only endgame content that I haven’t finished yet is Innocence Ex but I’m probably going to tackle that somewhere during the weekend with a few people from my FC and then wait for the raid to drop next week.
Seeing as I’m done with the big “get my White Mage geared” grind I’ve already started leveling my next battle jobs: Scholar/Summoner. They’re sitting at level 74 now and with the roulettes that I’m doing I get about a level a day. Add to that the fact that I can do hunts, FATEs and sidequests to level up these classes and I’m sure they will be level 80 in no time, after which I’m going to pick up Astrologian and get rid off all my sub level 80 Healer gear.

All in all I can say that Shadowbringers has been one hell of a ride. I have thoroughly enjoyed the story with all it’s twists and turns. I’ve laughed and I’ve cried. The ending with Emet-Selch was really well done and although I’m not exactly sympathetic to the Ascians mission I can get where they’re coming from.
From start to finish the story had me enthralled. The zones were amazing with the highlight being the music in Rak’tika Greatwood and Upper Kholusia and the remade Ascian city in the Tempest. I loved seeing Graha’Tia again, even though he was not the one from our timeline. I love how the relationship between me as Warrior of Light and the Scions has developed. It really feels like we are a group of friends and that you’re completely accepted among them as WoL. The fact that we’ve said a final goodbye to Minfillia was really emotional aswell and I felt especially sorry for Thancred. All in all this expansion so far has managed to tug on a few heartstrings and I can’t wait to see how Square Enix will expand on the story and how the Scions will eventually return to the Source.

As far as the grinding at endgame goes… As I mentioned before I managed to get all the gear I need on my White Mage fairly quickly. Due to this I’m able to scale back a bit and start focusing on other things like picking up levelling my Crafters again and slowly levelling up my Botanist and Miner to level 80. The Crystarium hand-in quests are interesting but unfortunately only a one time only thing. So I can either choose to use them on my Botanist or my Miner but not both. For now I’ve chosen to level Botanist first and catching up with Miner via levequests. As far as my Crafters go… My Goldsmith got up to level 66 today and my Alchemist should be level 56 tomorrow. I’m a bit unwilling to set any particular goals when it comes to leveling those seeing as I have two weeks off the next two weeks and I have guests coming over so I probably won’t be playing much of FFXIV at all.

Anyway with me slowly coming out of the expansion high I expect to be posting a bit more again about what I’m up to in FFXIV and other games. I’ve attempted to make a bit of a weekly schedule where blogging is set to happen on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays. I just hope I have enough to write about for that schedule to really make sense. I guess we’ll see!

Shadowbringers is here

Posted on by
3

Yay! I’ve survived the hellish temperatures of Europe this week. Luckily living in the Netherlands it’s not as extremely warm here as it is in say France and Spain but still. 30+ degrees (Celsius mind) weather is not fun in our climate. I was happy to be at the office for most of that time where the airconditioning runs steady.

As you all may have noticed Shadowbringers early access has started last Friday. I went home from work a bit earlier so I could get into the game and have been playing a lot of it over the weekend. I’m sitting at level 74 right now and am making my way to the third dungeon.
So far I’m really enjoying myself. White Mage hasn’t changed that much from what it was before except for the fact that lilies are finally useful now and that I’ve lost a few spells along the way. The zones of Norvrandt are absolutely gorgeous with my favourite one thus far being Il Mheg, the faerie zone. That’s also the zone where you fight the first Primal of the expansion and boy that fight was fun! I can’t wait to challenge it on Extreme and hopefully get my hands on a mount because the music is superb, as usual.
I’ve been sticking to doing only main story quests and the sidequests that give Aether Currents or gear pieces. I’m leaving all the rest for the alts that I will inevitably level through the content. I’ve picked up Dancer today but haven’t really played the class yet. I’m also going to pick up Gunblade somewhere this week but I’m holding off on leveling either job untill my White Mage is level 80. I need the roulettes on her sometimes to catch up to the level of the mainstory.
The role questchain has been odd so far. It has a ton of humour in it but it doesn’t really feel like I’m actively doing something as Healer. I’ve only done three of those quests so far though so maybe there will be more interesting stuff coming up. For now I find them to be a bit dissapointing.
The new crafter/gatherer hand-in system is a bit odd. I don’t think you’re supposed to craft collectables but just craft regular items (or gather). Unfortunately for the level 70 hand-ins you’re reliant on some Stormblood crafting supplies so I will tackle that after I’m done with all the battle content I think.

I have been taking some screenshots on my PS4 as I play through the various zones and I will probably post a few once I write the post that will cover me dinging 80 and what I think of the expansion so far. For now though I’m neck deep in Eorzea and I don’t see myself surfacing to play something else anytime soon.

Plans for Shadowbringers

Posted on by
Reply

As I’m writing this post we are on the first day of a few days of pretty warm weather in the Netherlands. Being a sea climate country, any temperature above roughly 25 degrees Celsius is a pain in the ass and we are going over 30 this week so I’m preparing myself for massive heat walls as I exit my airconditioned workplace. At home I’m keeping my windows and almost all of my curtains closed during the day and pray that my house doesn’t warm up too much as I’m gone. It’s all I can do really to stay as cool as possible.

With Shadowbringers early less than a week away I think it’s time I get my stuff in order when it comes to what I want to do with the expansion launch. Obviously there will be a ton of new content to tackle and I’m quite happy that the early access starts before the weekend so I will have a decent amount of time to play the expansion before I have to go back to work.

Before I go head first into the new expansion there’s a few preparations I need to do.
I want to finish off whatever quests I still have open in my questlog. I need to clean out my inventory for both regular items aswell as gear. The gear I’m ditching I will either use to level up my desynth skills or will get converted to Materia and then sold on the Marketboard. As far as my regular items go, I’ll probably put some up on the Marketboard to sell and some will go into my retainers so I can decide what to do with it on a later date.
I’ll stock up on food and drinks for the weekend and probably won’t make any appointments with anyone so I can take full advantage of this few day headstart.

Now as far as leveling goes, I’ve decided to level my White Mage through the content first. It’s been the job that I’ve been enjoying the most ever since I stopped raiding in Stormblood. It reminds me of Holy Priest from World of Warcraft. Next to me simply enjoying the job it also ensures that I don’t have ridiculously long waiting times for dungeons. I guess the only other role that would be more beneficial would be a tank. Speaking of which, I fully intend to try out Gunblade after I finish leveling my White Mage. It looks wickedly awesome and leveling up a tank shouldn’t take too much time. After that it’s a toss up. A lot of class overhaul has taken place so there’s a big chance that I need to learn some jobs again from the ground up. I intend to level all jobs to 80, which should be much easier now that I have them all on 70 to begin with, bar obviously Gunblade and Dancer which start off at level 60.

I’m also going to continue doing my beast tribe dailies to level my crafters. I currently have my Goldsmith sitting at 63, my Alchemist sitting at 52 and I’ve started doing the Ixal dailies for my Culinarian, who is level 33. I’m not sure if I can get my Goldsmith to hit 70 before the expansion launches, especially since we have one offline day on Thursday but I do want to get it to level 70 as soon as possible. Next to that I plan to level my Botanist and Miner to 80 after I get to the endgame on my White Mage. I’m also fully intending to level up Weaver and Carpenter to 80 soon after purely so I can actually start selling stuff on the market board now that everyone is still fresh in the content, plus I may be able to craft useful gear for myself along the way.

I’ve been pretty unsure when it comes to raiding and doing endgame things. My Stormblood raiding experience has kind of robbed me of the fun I was having so I’m really not looking for a steady group to raid with. However I think I should be fine pugging most content, especially ex-primals. Savage raids are a completely different beast but that won’t be available at the start anyway so well. I want to get my White Mage the best gear possible as soon as possible though so I do expect myself to start doing Ex-roulettes again when I’ve reached max level.

All in all I’m going into this expansion fairly blind. I’ve not really looked at all the job changes or all the systems that they’re replacing or expanding upon. I like to discover most of everything on my own and I hope I can get along at a fair pace with this expansion launch. I will probably make a few more detailed plans after I get my White Mage to level 80 but for now this is what I’m hoping to do for upcoming few weeks.

Spiders over Gods

Posted on by
Reply

It’s funny how fast things can change. One day you’re totally committed to playing God of War and a few hours later you’re actually playing another game.
I was testing out yesterday what games pushed my PS4 pro to it’s limits. God of War is definitely doing it, Horizon Zero Dawn is doing it but less. Another game I picked up recently is Marvel’s Spider-man. I’m not a huge comic book person persé but I’ve always enjoyed the Spider-man cartoons when I was little and I was hearing so much praise about this game that I picked it up now that it was on sale on the PS4 store.
After slinging around for an hour or so I’m completely sold on this game. Yes it makes my PS4 sound like it’s going to take off at times but the gameplay is absolutely amazing. I enjoy the fighting and the slinging around buildings. I’m by no means perfect at the game but I’m immensly enjoying myself. I can totally see myself going around this game getting all collectibles done because just going from building to building in various ways is way too much fun. Peter Parker has an amazing personality and I really can’t wait to see where the story goes (I’m still very much in the beginning of things).

So yeah. I’m dropping God of War for now and am instead going to play Spider-man on my PS4. If I get the same sessions in as I did with Kingdom Hearts 3 I will probably finish it over the next two weekends but we’ll see. For now I’m just slinging away in downtown New York!

Kingdom Hearts 3 burnout and a new game started

Posted on by
Reply

Last week has been a bit of a blur. Seeing as how I stayed up really late on Sunday to finish the Kingdom Hearts 3 story I managed to completely disrupt my normal sleep schedule for the rest of the week. I’ve been coming home tired for most of the days and on Thursday I was so tired that I went to bed at 20.00. I got a really nice amount of sleep in though so I woke up Friday more rested than I had been all week so I guess that’s a good thing.
I did manage to complete the Lucky Emblems section on the Gummiphone in KH3 on Wednesday evening meaning I unlocked a trophy, yay, and the secret ending. The ending itself was really short and a bit confusing. You see Sora waking up somewhere in Tokyo, apparently in the setting of another Square Enix game and Riku waking up in the world of Verum Rex, which we got a glimpse of during the Toy Story storyline. After that though I decided I had enough of KH3 for a bit and decided on starting a new game this weekend. I may return on a later date to work on some more trophies but for now that chapter is closed.

The new game I picked was a game I caved on during the 7 days of play sale from Playstation: God of War. I’ve been meaning to pick up the game at some point and with some encouragement from friends I figured I might aswell start it now that I’m done with KH3. I’ve not gotten far with playing yet, I think I may have only played for 2-3 hours between yesterday evening and this morning but a few things have already stood out for me.
First off the game makes my PS4 Pro sound like there’s a jet engine running. I normally keep the console in my cabinet with the door open so that there is enough air circulation for it to run properly. It’s quiet when playing most of my games, hell I barely noticed it when playing KH3 and that was with a disc inserted! However God of War is making it loud. I’ve turned my PS4 so that there’s even more room at the ventilator side but it’s not really helped much. I guess it just comes with this game and I’m trying my best to ignore the sound my console makes. It seems to particularly go into overdrive when I’m looking at the world map or when there’s the “cutscenes” where I don’t control Kratos. It’s something I’ll have to deal with I guess but I wish it wouldn’t be the case.
Secondly I really need to get used to the combat style. Coming off KH3 I was using the symbols a lot when fighting. X was attack, square was shortcuts for magic etc. I could jump in combat with triangle and dodge with circle. In God of War you attack and defend with your L and R buttons. X is for dodge rolling away and circle is for interacting with things in the world. It’s been a real adjustment and I’m noticing I’ve died a lot because I was mashing a wrong button to get Kratos to defend or attack. I’m playing the game on balanced mode because I do like a bit of challenge but I also still want to enjoy the story. I guess it’s the most common mode that people play.
So far I’m enjoying the story of Kratos and Atreus taking the ashes of their mother up the mountain. I’ve met Brok, the weapon/armor smith and I killed the stranger, whoever that may have been. I do feel like Kratos is too distant towards Atreus and I’m already kind of done with him calling his son “boy” the entire time.
Fighting with the Leviathan axe is cool though and I’m starting to learn how to use Atreus in fights more aswell so that’s a positive thing. Now I just need to learn to die less and I’m well on my way into another RPG adventure during the weekends. I’ll hopefully get a few more hours in later today as I come back from groceries and running errands.

It’s only two more weeks untill Shadowbringers early access starts aswell. I’ve unfortunately not played that much FFXIV this week due to me being just silly tired every night. I hope to catch some of that up this weekend though, when I’m not playing God of War. Currently my Goldsmith is sitting at level 57 and my Alchemist at level 41. I’m still on track to get one to 70 and one to 50 before Shadowbringers launches so I should be able to make my goals for FF for the month.

Kingdom Hearts 3: Done!

Posted on by
Reply

After my post from yesterday I didn’t think I would be able to finish off Kingdom Hearts 3 this weekend. I had barely started San Fransokyo and I knew there would be a ton more story to come. To put it in perspective, I was about 23 hours played in at the time. Yesterday evening though I decided I’d pick the game back up again to get a few Caribbean related trophies, which I got. After dinner I decided that I wanted to finish San Fransokyo. The world was shorter than I thought and, unlike other worlds, you didn’t follow the story of the Big Hero 6 game but actually played in a fictional setting sometime after the movie. Maybe this setting is covered in the cartoon but for me it was entirely new.
It was a shorter world than I thought and I finished it relatively quickly. The final bossfight was interesting but not too hard and then I was faced with a choice. Push forward to the next part of the story or stop here?

I decided to push forward and didn’t stop untill I finished the entire game.
As you can see from my report card at the top it took me roughly 32 hours to get to the ending. This was with detours here and there to get some trophies or to get some extra levels in on Sora to make the game a bit easier for me. The last few hours were a rollercoaster ride for me. (Incoming spoilers now!). After defeating the initial wave of Heartless at the Keyblad Graveyard it seems all hope is lost and Darkness wins. Sora is sent to the “Final World” where he has to collect pieces of himself so he can go back to his friends again. I wasn’t surprised that Square had to add atleast one seriously trippy level to the game and this was it. After you “collect” all of Sora’s fragments the buildup to the real ending begins. You need to save all your friend who were lost, and do exactly that. After that you go back in time and face the Heartless who beat you the first time around but this time you fight them. At some point you get help from all the keyblades of the Keyblade Graveyard which produces an awesome sequence, although my thumb really started hurting after mashing the triangle key for 2-3 minutes straight. It’s really cool how Square uses PSN names of actual people who own the game to help you defeat the gigantic big bad.
Then came taking down the members of Organization XIII. I made sure to outlevel them using the Battlegates provided at every save point. I didn’t face off with Xehanort untill I had gotten Sora up to atleast level 50. All the cutscenes inbetween of members fading away or, as Sora put it, getting to be recompleted again were very interesting.
The final battle versus Xehanort was intense. With the flying and swimming and just floaty stuff in general it was quite easy to lose track of my whereabouts. I managed to take him down, obviously, and was finally done with the game after 1AM. At that point I just set back and enjoyed all the cutscenes that played and let the credits roll out in their entirety. During the credits there’s also some adorable scenes from the Disney Worlds you visited so that was a nice added touch.

As far as the actual ending goes, things left me a bit confused. I didn’t really make the link to the four people in animal robes untill I googled it and apparently they appear in the Kingdom Hearts mobile game. I’m really curious as to who Luxu/Xigbar is and how Maleficent ties up into all of this. Did she help Xigbar get the black box? Is there going to be a new Organization? Even though Xehanort is obviously gone it seems that Square is leaving the door wide open for the story to continue.
As for Sora and Kairi. I’m not sure if he found Kairi and then disappeared or if they’re both still gone. I know that I can unlock a hidden movie from finding and photographing all the lucky emblems in the game so I’m going to focus on doing that next. I’m also not quite sure how they brought back Naminé. Wasn’t she locked up in Kairi’s heart? It’s once again really confusing and an obvious setup for another game in the series.
Now that I’m done with the mainstory I want to aim to get a few more trophies, even though I don’t think I want to specifically aim for getting the Platinum one in the near future. It involves a ton of grinding and after finishing the mainstory I’m not sure how much grinding I still want to do.

All in all I found the game to be enjoyable, even though shorter than I though it would be. When it first came out Square Enix mentioned that beating the main story alone would take 40-50 hours and to 100% complete the game you’d have to calculate over 80 hours played. Looking at my own time to beat and looking at what I still need to do I may double my playtime to 60 hours if I want to go for the Platinum trophy but nothing more. Was the game worth the full price? Definitely. I cried during the ending, I loved the worlds and I can see myself taking time to slowly work to that 100% completion because the game is just that fun to play. The music is great, the gameplay is fun if you aim for diversity. In theory you can just press X and win the game that way but it’s way more fun to use links and spells and all the specials you can use during fights like the Mad Tea Cups and Pirate Ship. The graphics are amazing and the game does invite to go back and complete it after you finish the main story just with how well the worlds are crafted and the plethora of secrets they still have.
With the announced DLC that’s coming in the winter I’ll have an excuse to hang onto my copy and start playing again then. For now though I can sort of “clock out” and scratch another game off my backlog when it comes to main objective completion.

As bonus I took a few screenshots from the final few hours of the game. They are a bit spoiler-y so watch at your own peril.

Three day gaming weekend

Posted on by
Reply

This weekend it’s Pentecost, meaning that most people in the Netherlands have a three day weekend instead of a two day one. Seeing as how I find my weekends always a day too short, it’s quite nice to have this extra day off to spend as I please. It means I can spread out my cleaning/other chores over a few more days which leaves me with more time for my hobbies or meeting up with people.
Seeing as how I’ve been really tired the last two weeks I’ve decided that this weekend I’m just going to be indoors and game and make a ton of progress everywhere by doing so. Of course I had to go get groceries for these three days and of course I’m not going to be a total hermit but my main activity for the weekend will be playing games.

So far I think I’ve made good on my plans to spend time in single player games during the weekends. Yesterday I’ve had two long sessions of Kingdom Hearts 3 as I’m making my way through the story. I picked up where I left off last time: Arendelle, the Kingdom of the movie Frozen. It’s really cool to see how Square and Disney have collaborated on this game. Although in all the levels you’re following the story of the movie that the level is based upon, some are a bit more literal than others. Arendelle was one of them. You literally see segments of the Frozen movie, including the entire Let It Go song, as you go through the level. The interference by Sora & co in this level is therefor much smaller than say in the Monstropolis or Caribbean worlds, which I will get to later. I did enjoy Arendelle. I liked the Ice Labyrinth level and the “final” boss fight of the world was interesting aswell, even though I was sure I was going to die while fighting. After I was done with the main story of the world I went back to do the Frozen sledding mini game. Even though I’ve yet to discover all the treasures on the course I did manage to get over the 600k point cap you need to obtain the trophy so there’s that. I’ve not found all of the Lucky Emblems yet so I’m definitely going back for those with the help of a guide. I think I also missed out on a Classic Kingdom mini game but I’m not sure. All in all there’s still enough to do there to have me go back after I finish up the main story.

After beating Arendelle you are sent to the Caribbean where you team up with Jack Sparrow once again. The gameplay in this world reminded me a lot of Assassin’s Creed 4 where you are master of your own ship and sail from island to island and have to defeat boats along the way. During the mainstory of this world there is a race segment versus one of the people from Organization XIII. It was actually quite a bit harder than I thought it would be and I had to redo the race three times because I kept losing at the end constantly. After you defeat the mainstory you can go back and roam around on your boat, exploring islands and finding treasures and more. There’s also a ton of navy battles to do and if you kill enough ships you get a trophy, if you level up your boat enough you get a trophy aswell. I may want to go back and do that at some point. My boat, the Leviathan, is sitting at level 8 now and is already one-shotting all the smaller ships when they show up in the waters, I only struggle with the bigger ships because they hit a lot harder. The amount of treasures on this world is insane, but then again it’s Pirates of the Caribbean so I would have expected nothing less.

To end my session yesterday I went over to San Fransokyo, the world from Big Hero 6, which is the final Disney movie world of the game. The recommended level is level 38 but with me going back to other worlds, especially the Caribbean, I’m well over leveled for this world now. I think I’m sitting close to level 40 and I’ve barely touched San Fransokyo. I’m really curious as to how the story is going to play out here and I’m hopefully going to find out later today when I resume my playing. Right now I’m about 25 hours in with still San Fransokyo and whatever comes after left to finish. Hopefully I can get towards the end of the game by the time the weekend is done but we’ll see. For now I’m really happy with the progress I’ve already made and the fun I’ve been having playing the game.

Next to Kingdom Hearts I’ve also steadily been putting time in on FFXIV. My Goldsmith is closing in on level 55 and my Alchemist is sitting on level 37. I’m not sure how far I can push these up the rest of the weekend but I hope that by next weekend my Goldsmith will be in the 60’s while my Alchemist should be closing in on level 50. It’s slow and steady going but it’s progress so I’m happy with it. I also need to spend a bit of time farming up Moogle tomes so I can get the Pegasus mount and Namazu earrings. I’m actually quite close to get the mount but the earrings are going to be a pain… Next to that I still have a few quests to finish off so I may focus on doing that aswell.

The one thing that is really nagging at me though is the fact that I’ve still not fully leveled up Blue Mage. I guess the concept was fun on introduction but in reality I think Square completely missed the mark on this one. There’s simply not that much fun to be had from leveling the Blue Mage and getting all the abilities. I guess there is the Coliseum but that’s it. I find it a shame really because I think they could have done so much more with this concept. The same goes for Eureka and the Relic Weapon. I never took to the grind and so I have inadvertedly chosen to skip out on this part of the game. Which saddens me because I had a maxed out Relic in both A Realm Reborn and Heavensward and I’ve actually been working on a second Heavensward one. However the Stormblood one was a major disappointment and I really hope they won’t implement a similar mechanic for the Shadowbringers one.

All in all though I can say that I’m finding my fun in gaming again and as result I’m making some actual progress on my backlog and in my MMO’s. Now I just need to figure out how to combine this with getting healthier…

All settled in

Posted on by
Reply

I really wish I could spend post after post telling everyone how happy I am with my own home and how I’m finally feeling like I can live my own life after living with my dad for so long. I’m truly settled in now and I’m slowly getting into new habits now that I have to do everything by myself. So far things are working out nicely. My house is tidy and clean, I try to not leave stuff lying around and I make sure I get all my chores done. My fridge and cabinets are stocked with food and drinks and I always am prepared for guests coming over. It’s nice having the freedom to decide when to come home and having the freedom to be able to write this blog post and watch football on a proper tv at the same time.
All in all I notice that I’m much happier now than I’ve been in a long time. I feel better mentally, I have less stress and I feel less depressed as a result. Not having to live with people that annoy me is helping me so much I can hardly believe how I managed to hold on for such a long time. The only thing I need to start working on for real now is my physical wellbeing. I need to lose weight, I need to start taking care of my teeth better and I need to get a healthier eating pattern. The one thing I am quite pleased with is how I’m handling my skin and keeping it clean and moisturized. I basically don’t have any flaws anymore in my face and it shows. No more pimples means a super confident me.

Anyway, enough about my personal life, I’m also here to talk about me settling into my trusted MMO’s again. I’ve been playing FFXIV throughout the time I was PC less because I have the game on PS4 aswell so it was my go-to MMO for the past few weeks. It’s helped me make a ton of progress there when it comes to leveling my crafters and getting other stuff done. I’ve picked up doing deliveries again and that has netted me the 350 Weaver main hand weapon and the 330 offhand. I’m working on getting the same for my Carpenter now as that is my only other max level crafter at the moment. My Goldsmith hit 53 yesterday and my Alchemist is sitting at level 34. I have pre-ordered Shadowbringers and I’m in a free company with people that are nice enough, that don’t require me to be very social with them when I don’t want to be. I’m plotting my own course and I don’t see myself committing to any raid or dungeon groups for the time being.

In WoW I’m settling in to playing my Mage again. I’m going through all of the quests that I’ve not completed yet on her and I want to start running LFR aswell, seeing as I still haven’t done the Zuldazar raid. It would be nice to get that done before Nazjatar is launched so I can go into that fully updated on the story so far. I think I also want to start leveling my Void Elf Hunter again and get her out of Outlands and into Mists of Pandaria. I did Cataclysm on the last character I leveled so going to switch it up and go to Mists again for this one. I don’t have a specific goal in mind for her, I just want to get an hour of gameplay in here and there, get settled on playing the Hunter again and slowly push her up to 110 to get the Heritage armour.

The final MMO I’m settling into again is Guild Wars 2, as said in the last post. I made an elementalist because I honestly don’t know where I am story wise on any of my other characters. She’s a Norn, which in my opinion is the best race in the game, and currently sitting at level 7 as I am making my way through the Wayfarer Foothills. Here I’m not really aiming for anything either. I’m just doing the hearts, discovering the points of interest and vistas and try to 100% the zone in general before I move on to the next one. I know that at level 10 I can start playing through my personal story so for now the goal is to get to that and move on from there. I’m not really aiming to get into crafting or gathering just yet. For now I just want to quest and level up and stick my nose into zones and dungeons that I haven’t done yet.

I hope I can settle into a nice MMO routine where I get to play all three and make progress in all three. I’m not sure how I’m going to do that yet and it’s probably something that ties in to my mood. I notice that when I feel a bit down I tend to turn to WoW because it’s like comfort food to me. FFXIV is my MMO of choice and I play that the most and GW2 is when I’m bored with both and need something else to play entirely.
As usual I’ll keep you updated. For now though I’m going to watch the ending of the football game and then head to my very comfortable and big bed.

USB issues and back online

Posted on by
Reply

After waiting on my table for 10 weeks it finally got delivered last monday. This means that I now have a proper place to eat aswell as having a desk for my pc. As I was setting up  my PC I realized that I didn’t have a network card installed that could handle WiFi. Seeing as how I really wanted to use my computer as soon as possible I ordered a WiFi adapter and had it delivered yesterday. At first it seemed to work fine but once I logged into World of Warcraft to play around a bit I noticed that I was getting frequent disconnects. At first I thought it was the adapter itself losing connection but then it seemed that my USB port was intermittently cutting power to the thing, thus causing my internet to disconnect.
After poking around a bit I realized my front facing USB ports seem to be the culprits. I’ve since moved the adapter to the back of my PC and it seems that has fixed the problem for now. I’ve not had a disconnect since so let’s hope that it will be working flawlessly for now.
Eventually I will probably get an onboard WiFi internet card but in the meantime this adapter will have to do.

What this all does mean however is the fact that I have my PC back in action and thus I can get back into Azeroth, something I immediatly did as you can see in the picture above. Unfortunately I seem to not be one of the lucky people to get access to the Classic beta so the goal of me playing a bit of it this month will probably go out of the window, unless I find an invite in the mail somewhere in the coming weeks.
It feels nice to be back and picking up my characters again. For now I’m going to focus on the Mage and getting her up to speed with all the new raids and other content. It’s really funny how, after almost 12 years, I feel like I’ve come full circle playing Mage now. It was the very first character I created when I got my hands on WoW and even though I found it to be extremely squishy, I always really enjoyed Mage throughout the time that WoW has been around. I’ll probably forego rolling one once Classic is out, I just can’t deal with the Vanilla squish but nonetheless I’m more than happy to play it on the regular servers.

Next to getting back into WoW I’ve also reinstalled Guild Wars 2. I’m not really sure why, I think it’s mostly to do with the morbid curiousity about the game that seems to surface every now and then. When I bought Guild Wars 2 I really enjoyed it for what it was but after a while I started to miss the standard MMO tropes that came with being a WoW player since forever. Not really having the whole tank/healer/dps setup was odd and the lack of dungeons and raids (at the time) was really frustrating aswell. The story was compelling, but just not compelling enough to keep me coming back. Over time I’ve reinstalled the game a few times and even though I would always tell myself that this time I wanted to stick to it longer and level up more I never did.
This time though I’m just gonna dedicate a few hours a week to just playing the game and make some progress towards higher levels. I may even pick up the expansions when I get towards the end of the “vanilla” content, but I’ll have to get there first.

All in all I’m quite content to have my PC back, mostly so I can sit down and use my own keyboard and mouse instead of a silly laptop plus it’s giving me incentive to sit down and blog a bit more again. So expect more posts to come!

Kingdom Hearts progress… Finally

Posted on by
Reply

With it being tropical humid temperatures outside I’ve spent my Sunday so far bunkered down in my house, playing games and just not really doing anything that would make me sweat. I’ve done enough of that yesterday when I went into town to do some shopping/get my eyebrows done and cleaned my house before my uncle and aunt came along. So today it’s a day for some relaxation, gaming, and doing not much of anything in general. Which is good because it has allowed me to put a few hours into Kingdom Hearts 3 again.

Last time I played I was about halfway through Monstropolis and still in monster form. I’ve finished that world now, and got the keyblade from it, and moved along to Arendelle with a sidestop in the 100 Acre Woods. It’s a small adorable world that consists of mini games to get through. As added perk you earn fruit/vegetables from playing said minigames so I see myself going back there again to earn more ingredients for the whole cooking mini game. Before I went to Arendelle I went back to Olympus to find all the King’s Emblems (imprints or shapes that look like Mickey Mouse’s head) and take some pictures the Moogles asked for. It’s really fun to go back to these worlds after you’re done with them. In Olympus you see Thebe being rebuilt and areas that were previously inaccessible are now free to roam. There’s still Heartless spawns to consider though, you can’t just run around the world without being attacked.

All in all I’ve spent around 3 hours playing and I feel like I’ve been making decent progress again. It’s the start of what I’m planning to do more on weekend days where I don’t have any other plans. Although I need to watch that I take regular breaks when playing and that I don’t forget to eat and drink, which has happened today. I’m not sure how long it will take me to finish up Kingdom Hearts 3. From what I’m aware of I still have atleast three more Kingdoms to play through: Arendelle from Frozen, San Fransokyo from Big Hero 6 and The Carribean from Pirates of the Carribean. I’m sure there’s more to explore after that and I can always go back to collect stuff from the older worlds when I don’t feel like advancing the mainstory. I think there’s a “true” ending as well, although I’m not sure how to get to that just yet. For now though I’m happy to get a few hours of play in, make a bit of progress and then put the game down untill next weekend when I have time to devote to it again.

As part of my goals set for this month I’ve also started up a game on my 3DS again: Detective Pikachu. It’s a game I had for a bit but never really touched up untill now. I’ve seen the movie two weeks ago and even though I know it’s inspired by the game, it’s quite a bit different from the game itself. I’m also of the opinion that, so far, the game is really hand-holdy and kiddie like in how it plays. I’m only 1.5 hours in, finishing off the first chapter, but I hope it becomes a bit less easy as the game comes along or that the story gets interesting enough that I don’t really mind the gameplay. I guess the main thing bothering me is the fact that the game forces you to go through things in a certain way, even though you’ve figured out the “case” early on. I guess it adds flavour and story to the game to do it like this but I also feel this game may have not really been for people like me who see the answers immediately and still have to go through the motions.

As final bit of news. I dinged level 70 on my Carpenter in FFXIV yesterday and managed to finish up both the level 68 and the level 70 job quests, so I can honestly say I’m completely done with that crafter.
If all goes well my Goldsmith should hit level 50 after reset rolls around today… Meaning I can move her along to Moogle dailies and start Alchemist on the Ixal ones. I’ve come to realize that the Ixal dailies can be done quite fast if you just ignore the fishing ones and pick up  everything else. It may sound silly but I just really, really dislike the fishing ones so I dodge those when I can. It’s made the Ixal dailies much easier to deal with for me personally so I think I’ll just keep to this strategy as I level more of my crafters.
Finally I’ve started to partake in the Moogle Tomestone event that is going on in the game from now up untill Patch 5.0. My goal is to get the Pegasus mount atleast and maybe the Namazu earrings. I’ve chosen to run Labyrinth of the Ancients for now because I want the tank set from there for glamour purposes. Once I get that set I will probably move on to Syrcus Tower so I can get the healing set from there. Unless I’m really lucky I think a bunch of runs will be in my immediate future just to acquire all the pieces of these sets alone. Since these particular instances only reward two tomes per completion I’m aiming to run multiple of them during week nights after I finish my crafting dailies. I’m not really sure yet what I’ll be running when I get both the sets, but I’ll see when I get there.

For now I’m happy with how this weekend is turning out for real life stuff and gaming stuff, and I can’t wait untill it cools down tonight so I can open all the windows and my balcony door and let in the cold.