Author Archives: sandrian

(Re)Evaluations

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Talanji speech cutscene

As the final 24 hours of my WoW sub are ticking down I’m faced with a bit of a dilemma. On one hand I’m fine with just sitting out these last two nights and then not touching WoW for a while. On the other hand I feel like I’m finally having fun in Azeroth again with people to talk to and goals to tackle. I’ve done the calculations and if I do buy another month there will be plenty time for me to play for the duration of that month. I’ve been weighing the pro’s and cons and I’ve been talking to a friend about my motivations to purchase that one extra month anyway even though I told myself I wouldn’t.

A few of the factors that are influencing my decision are the following:
– After I move in a little over four weeks (I want to get out by Easter) I won’t have access to my PC for roughly a month. That’s when my dining table/desk arrives. In the meantime since I don’t want to sit on the floor I’m just going to count it as not being able to play WoW and FFXIV in that manner.
– I am slightly burned out on the grind in FFXIV. Getting my Carpenter to level 50 and doing a ton of hunts to get my speed books have really eaten up my mojo. WoW is essentially the game that I’m firing up in the evenings to relax and unwind. I’m not sure that if I let that drop now that my evenings will be very constructive. WoW is the only thing keeping me out of bed right now and it also leads me to sit down and write on this blog.
– One of the reasons to give up WoW was to maybe make more room for single player games. However I know myself, during the evenings I really don’t have the time or energy to devote to a single player game. I just want something to play that doesn’t require too much thought and that I can play for an hour or so and still feel like I’ve done something to make progress. Both WoW and FFXIV tick these needs.
– Social interactions. Right now I don’t have much of it on FFXIV but I do have a ton of it on WoW. I really like chatting to people as I play and WoW is giving me this fix.

All in all it’s causing me to come back on my earlier decision to let my sub run out now and instead I’m buying that one month untill I move out. I’m enjoying myself, I have people to talk to and it’s keeping me from sleeping my evenings away for now. Plus it’s giving me stuff to write about on here. Because the screenshot from the start of my post isn’t just any screenshot but the ending cinematic to unlocking the Zandalari Troll race. I really enjoyed that unlock quest, even though it involved less travelling than the Kul Tirans one.
As Talanji prepares to undergo the ceremony to be crowned ruler of Zandalar you as player are asked to quell an uprising against her, instigated by a priestess of the Spider loa. Once you’ve completed this task you are to “help” Talanji get approval by the Loa’s. The ensuing minigames are quite fun and once you get to Bwonsamdi things get interesting. You see I never finished the whole Voljin’s urn questline so I’m a bit in the dark when it comes to that story in this expansion. I do however know that Bwonsamdi really really hates Sylvanas so he asks Talanji to bring her the head of said Warchief in exchange for being released from the deal Rastakhan made with him. She declines leaving Bwonsamdi unhappy but willing to bless her anyway. All of this has made me really curious what Sylvanas role in this expansion culminates to. I really hope we aren’t being set up for Garrosh 2.0 but all the signs are unfortunately pointing that way.

After unlocking the race I immediatly set out to make my Zandalari Troll and I chose to roll a Warrior. I always loved my Warrior back when she was a Troll for a while so it’s a nice bit of nostalgia/flashback to WotLK times to roll a Troll Warrior again. I’m not sure if I can find the time to level that particular character this month but atleast I have it ready to go once I do have access to my PC again.

With this 180 my original goals for March are back on the table again aswell. My Nightborne will probably ding 118 tonight and will be 120 by the weekend. I want to gear her up and get her to current content. I’m also going to spend some time on my Void Elf Hunter again and see how far I get on that before the end of the month. I want to see the Dazar’Alor raid and the mini raid that’s coming in April. I also want to see all the available lore this time and make an effort to get my reputations to Exalted on Horde side.
All in all I will have enough to do and to fill my evenings with. I’ll keep you guys updated on how it goes. For now I’m going to dive back into Azeroth for some more playtime before bed.

More Azeroth Adventures

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So I’ve spent the majority of my Friday evening and Saturday playing World of Warcraft. Maybe I got spurred on by the fact that I only have a few days remaining on my sub or maybe I just had this urge to play a comfort game. In any case I’ve been running around on my Rogue and my Paladin and have been making a ton of progress in the Battle for Azeroth story.
I’ve now finished up the War Campaign story for both factions including Tides of Vengeance. This means I got to unlock Kul Tiran humans on the Alliance side and I got a shiny mount for finishing the campaign on both Horde and Alliance side. I’m currently less than 250 reputation removed from unlocking Zandalari Trolls so that will be my main focus this weekend. After that I only have the Draenor Orcs left to unlock but I’m in no rush to do so simply because I know I will probably never play said race.

Having said this I’m probably not going to reach the goals for WoW that I initially plotted out at the start of the month. I may be able to get my Mage to level 120 but I won’t have the time to gear up/catch up to current content. The same goes for leveling the Hunter, she’s still sitting somewhere around level 55 so there is no way in hell I’ll be able to get her to 110 before my game time runs out. In theory I could purchase another month of game time, but with my move coming up in three weeks I doubt I’ll have much time to play. It’s simply not worth the money for me to maintain the sub if I can’t play for half of the time that it’s running. So I’m just going to let it run it’s course and get my time’s worth as my remaining sub time counts down to zero.

Going back to me finishing off the War Campaigns (so far) I’m still more enamoured by the whole Alliance part in Battle for Azeroth than I am with the Horde part. Clearly Blizzard is steering towards some sort of schism in the Horde or maybe we will see Sylvanas depart alltogether in the next patch. I don’t know. All I do know is that most of the quests I’m performing are making me rather unhappy to play Horde side story wise. Turning people into Forsaken isn’t the most fun there is and honestly I’m kind of happy that the Alliance seemed to have come out with the upper hand after the Battle of Dazar’Alor. It was interesting to first see the Alliance point of view, how they set up the trap for the Horde in Nazmir and left Blademaster Telaamon behind to lead the decoy army against the Horde while the Alliance attacked Zuldazar directly. I felt a pang of guilt as I killed said Telaamon on my Paladin because I had seen the Alliance side of the story. His sacrifice was not in vain.

Seeing the time that I have left in WoW I probably can’t see all the current content. I may be able to squeeze in the Battle raid on my Paladin because I’m a tank so my queue will probably be fast. I’m probably not going to be able to see the Alliance side of things so I guess I’m going to just put that on hold untill I get my PC set up in my new home. For now my goals in WoW are simple. Unlock Zandalari Trolls. Get my Mage to level 120 (only 3,5 level to go) and maybe take a peek inside the raid on my Paladin as time permits. We’ll see how far I’ve gotten after my sub runs out.

Next to making progress in WoW I’ve also made a ton of progress when it comes to my house. Most of the things have been arranged now so I will have running water, heat and electricity from the day I get my house keys. I’m insured and I’ve ordered all my furniture. If all goes well I should have the majority of my stuff in the week of April 8th. That’s when my furniture will arrive and when I will go shopping for a washer/dryer and a TV. I expect that that first week will mostly be filled with me cleaning the house from top to bottom and slowly moving my non-essential stuff over. So I can start with putting all my stuff in the kitchen, buying things like a mop, vacuum cleaner and other cleaning items. After my furniture gets assembled I can start moving over other non-essential items like my books, towels, winter clothes, games and consoles I don’t currently use. I hope that by that time the internet is working as well so I can test it out with my PS4 and Switch. All in all I hope to have completed my move around the Easter weekend. Obviously not everything is in my control when it comes to this. Seeing as it is a new apartment I will have an inspection on the day that I get my keys. Anything found that needs to be fixed or replaced will need to happen in the weeks after. I really hope that there aren’t any major flaws but you never know. It would really suck to have my careful plans ruined because my windows need to be replaced or some sort of other big fix that needs to happen.

I also can’t believe that I will be standing in my own house in a little less than three weeks. Time really has flown by because I feel like they only started building on site a month ago while it’s been over a year. A lot has happened in that time and I’m more than ready to leave my old living situation behind and embrace the new one. I hope it brings me a fresh start in life which I can use to turn some bad habits into good ones. I’ve taken some time off at the start of May to just enjoy living in my house but also to start working on new routines. I want to regularly visit the gym again and the plan is to start going every day when I’m off work and then tone it down to 3-4 times a week when I do work. It’s a bit of an extreme step but I hope I’m able to build up a good start in those two weeks that I’m off and work from there. My weight has been detrimental to my health for a while now so I need to start shedding it one way or another and working out is a surefire way to get that started. I also want to figure out a new morning routine where I show up at work a little better looking than I do now. I want to wear more make-up and do more stuff with my hair than just simply brushing it. I also need to fix my skincare and oral care routines because I’m noticing that what I’m doing now is not working. And what better time to do that when you’re starting fresh in a new home?

Sunday Funday

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Hildibrand picture

With stress around all my house related stuff slowly declining and with me actively doing less at work I can slowly feel like I’m having some breathing room again. It’s not nearly where it needs to be and I’m still really conflicted about my work situtation and how to handle all of that but I can see some light at the end of the tunnel. And for that I’m grateful.
Due to me feeling like I’m slowly getting room to breathe again I’m also more motivated to spend my free time doing things other than lying in bed and sleeping all evening/day. I’ve made some real progress in FFXIV these past two days so I can start pushing things off my bucket list.

I’ve reached my goals for the month of getting all my crafters to atleast level 30, finishing off Leatherworker last. I’m also going to tick off the goal of getting my Carpenter to level 50 tomorrow. I only need about one more round of Ixal dailies to get that done and I’m sure I can even save up a few quests for the next crafter I’m planning to level up this way: Goldsmith. It’s not the fastest way to level up your crafter but it’s a steady stream of experience and it gives you 1-2 levels per day depending on how high your level at the time is. Due to getting fishing dailies aswell my Fisher is about to hit level 45, the nice little push that I needed so Im able to start doing Mor’Dhona levequests for this particular job. All in all I’m happy that I’ve reached a few of my goals this early on in the month and I hope I can hold on to this momentum when it comes to leveling my crafters.

Next to all the leveling I’m also focusing on cleaning up the endgame content that I still have open. One of these was the Hildibrand quest chain. I had started it and did a few quests here and there but never really sat down and just straight up finished all the quests that were available. Since today is Sunday and I had nothing planned for the day except a few chores I figured it would be the perfect time to sit down and grind out those quests. I’m glad I did because once again they are brilliantly done by Square Enix. It’s taken me a few hours but I’m all caught up to the most current chapter and am now having to wait with everyone else untill they release the conclusion to this questchain. The next big thing I want to be working on is completing the Ridorana Lighthouse raid. I’ve never actually set foot in there and it’s about high time that I did. It’s kind of odd going in blind this late into the expansion but nonetheless I don’t want to be spoiled too much on the story or the fights so I don’t plan to read up on stuff before I queue up for it. It’s one of the things that I want to do next weekend when again I will have a bit more time to play than during the week. They may be baby steps but it’s so nice to see the quests go from my quest log…

Finally I’ve been busy completing hunt bills around the A Realm Reborn zones. Having the two-star mount speeds for the zones that I have to do my Ixal dailies in is just too nice to not have. As of right now I’ve attained all the scrolls I needed for that, Mor’Dhona/Coerthas/North Shroud, but I don’t want to give up on buying those scrolls yet. I’m probably going to dial back the amount of time I’m going to spend on gathering Allied Seals but eventually I do want to unlock two-star speeds in all the old zones starting with the Shroud. I’m not sure how much I will get done for the rest of the month but I guess I’ll inform you guys once March is over.

As final note I’m finally sure of my move date. I get my key April 5th and I hope to be all settled around Easter (which is two weeks later). I’m not sure when I will have internet then and I can’t use my PC for a while since I simply don’t have a place to put it. So this month will be the last month of my WoW subscription for now and I’m not sure when I get to play FFXIV again after I move. This means that most likely for April I won’t make a gaming goal list and I will be blogging much less aswell due to not having access to my PC. All of this is still a few weeks away though so untill then I hope I can make a ton of progress in WoW and FFXIV aswell as retain this blogging mojo and keep you guys informed.

Gaming weekend

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Double Dragoon ultimate

Above picture has little to do with the contents of this post but I thought it was pretty. I guess it ties in to me talking about FFXIV so there’s that.

I’ve had an odd week this week. I was planning to play a lot of games during the evenings but those plans were quickly foiled. On Tuesday evening we went out to dinner after having the day off and afterwards I was tied to the TV all evening watching the Real Madrid-Ajax game. On Wednesday I managed to play for an hour or so but on Thursday I spent my evening watching Grey’s Anatomy and Violet Evergarden. Yesterday night I watched the Leaving Neverland documentary so all in all I’ve been watching more TV and shows than I have been gaming.

Nonetheless I want to spend this weekend making some progress in my two MMO’s: World of Warcraft and Final Fantasy XIV. I have the time and the motivation now. There’s no appointments or birthdays this weekend, only some chores. I have the house to myself and no-one to bother me while I will immerse myself in either Azeroth or Eorzea. I’m making small weekend goals for myself to attain and this weekend I’d like to focus on the following things.
In FFXIV I want to get the 2-star speed book for North Shroud. I’ll have all the 2-star speed books I need to make my Ixal dailies go faster. I also want to get Carpenter as close to 50 as I possibly can so I will make sure to do the Grand Company turn-ins next to the Ixal dailies and I may even do a levequest or two. I’m also planning to do the Little Ladies day event on my alt, just to get the flower crown for transmog. It’s a short event this year so that should be doable.
In WoW I want to focus on my Nightborne Mage and start the slog through Nazmir. It’s not like I actively dislike the zone but it’s a rather dark and disturbing story that plays out and it’s big with lots of running back and forth. Not really something I’m looking forward to but something I will have to do to get closer to level 120. I know I could’ve gone to Vol’dun instead but out of the three Horde zones I like that one the least. Deserts are not really my thing and I’m not very enamoured with the zone story there. I know I’ll have to do it at some point, especially if I want to make this Mage my “main” Horde character for the forseeable future. You need to finish off Vol’dun to progress all the stories. For now though the focus is on Nazmir and getting through that as soon as possible.

A big part of this gaming will be done with League of Legends in the background as usual. I really hope Misfits wins their game today to keep playoff hopes alive. Otherwise I’m hoping to see G2 in the finals in Rotterdam, but at this point in time it’s anyone’s game.

All Crafters: lvl 30!

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Achievement all level 30

I’ve been pushing through MMO content this weekend and my persistence has paid off. Today I finally got Leatherworker to level 30 and am now sitting on all my crafting and gathering classes at atleast level 30 or above. After finishing off the level 30 Leatherworker quest I realized I didn’t get the achievement for completing all level 30 crafter job quests. A quick glance showed me I skipped out on the Culinarian one so I ported over to Limsa Lominsa and quickly finished it off, earning me the achievement  that you can see in the above screenshot. I’m quite happy with this progress and I can stripe it off my goals list for March aswelll.

At this moment my main method of leveling my crafting classes is doing all possible Ixali dailies every day. This nets me about 1.5-2 levels per job when I hand all of them in. It’s not the most proficient way to level and I know that if I were to sit down and just push through levequests I would probably get this whole leveling thing done much faster. However this means I would have to either buy stuff off the market board or take time to gather my own materials and craft everything myself. Even though I prefer the second option I’m not quite in the mindset for the mindless grinding that comes along with that so for now I’m content just doing the dailies and a Grand Company hand-in every now and then. I prefer to hand in items marked with a star because they give a really big experience boost to a job, almost up to a level at times. It’s a decent way to level up and it will suite me fine for the coming weeks.

Of course this dynamic completely changes once I get all my crafting jobs to level 50. From then on I can access not only the Moogle daily quests from Heavensward but also the hand-in options for Zhloe. These hand-ins provide a big chunk of experience aswell and would help to boost my crafters from 50-60 in no time at all. I would like to say that the same goes for level 60-70 but I’ve not really looked into M’naago or other hand-ins for crafters of that level. I did play around with gathering hand-ins, and got a nice botanist weapon for it early on into the expansion, but it’s all unfamiliar territory for me right now. It’s not really something I want to commit to at the moment either, my priority lies with just leveling up all the individual crafters and my final gathering class fisher.

Another side goal I’m planning to work towards is upgrading my mounted movement speed in a few areas of Eorzea. Due to me doing the Ixal dailies I’m spending a lot of time running/riding around in Mor’Dhona, Coerthas and a part of the Shroud. It would be really nice to have two star movement speeds there instead of one star, especially in Coerthas and Mor’Dhona. So next to leveling up my crafters I want to dedicate a portion of my time to get hunts done and consequently get enough Allied Seals to start buying speed upgrade books. It’s 250 Allied Seals per book, you get 100 Seals from killing your weekly B-rank hunt and 64 seals if you do all the daily hunt marks. This would mean you would get 548 seals per week if you do your weekly and daily hunts every day. Which in turn means that you can buy about two upgrade books per week. That’s not really a bad turnover at all and I’m hoping that by next weekend I will be in possession of my first to speed upgrade scrolls.

All in all I’m quite happy with the way I’m progressing. I’m setting small goals for myself every day that should be attainable with the hours of play that I have available to me. Leveling obviously isn’t the biggest brain activity, especially considering I’m doing it via dailies that I completely outgear on my level 70 Weaver. I’m therefore confident that I’m able to complete the crafter leveling goals I’ve set for myself for this month and probably even more.

Zuldazar Sightseeing

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Zuldazar: The Great Seal

When taking my second Horde Character through Battle for Azeroth content I specifically decided to tackle Zuldazar first. It was the zone I had up last for my Paladin and therefore I never really finished it. I was 120, I wasn’t that interested in the Horde side of the story and I felt the Horde zones all had to bow to Drustvar which, in my opinion, is the best zone in Battle for Azeroth so far. I still stand by that opinion, Drustvar is just perfect in zone story, atmosphere and level paths. It is by far the zone I enjoyed the most so far and if I could just do Drustvar only and get from 110 to 120 that way I would. Alas this is not an option and definitely not when you play Horde. So this time around I decided to pick up the zone I didn’t get to finish last time and boy am I happy I did.

Zuldazar on it’s own is a beautiful zone. I really enjoy the whole ancient Mayan thing Blizzard has decided to go for and even though Dazar’alor is a real tough cookie to navigate I think it’s very pretty and perfectly designed when it comes to aesthetics. It really is the golden city and the views of the city and anywhere from the city are spectacular and all of them screenshot worthy. So since I’m not really paying attention to the quest text this time around I really opened my eyes to the zone that is Zuldazar and I’m enjoying the view. The dinosaurs, the jungle, the beaches. They’re all extremely gorgeous and I can just run around for hours without getting bored. Unfortunately I finished off my final sidequest chain of the zone today so I will have to say goodbye to the exotic jungle and hello to the creepy swamp.

I sing praises to this zone but there’s also a lot of issues with Zuldazar. It’s a zone with a lot of vertical content, like Highmountain was in Legion. This means it’s kind of annoying and hard to navigate. I think once flying becomes available this zone will be much easier to navigate and it will be much easier and much faster to level that way. This also goes for the troll capital itself which is very vertical and hard to navigate. Although the totems of Gonk, which give you movement speed, help a lot it’s still a rather big pain in the butt.

I think Zuldazar is a perfect example of how much developers can do for an aging MMO. World of Warcraft may not be the best MMO looking out there, the underlying code is simply too old for that. Visual bugs are common and textures aren’t as pretty as they are in say FFXIV. However the developers still craft amazing zones that you can completely lose yourself in if you want to. I really hope that the future patches that bring new zones are just as gorgeous as the initial BfA zones have turned out to be.

Next to poking about in World of Warcraft almost every weekend I’m ready and perched to watch the LEC and LCS which are the European and North American League of Legends leagues respectively. I’ve purchased tickets to go watch the Spring Split European Finals in Rotterdam with a friend and I hope it’s as good as it was last time we went. We probably have a bit better seats this time and maybe we can meet up with some of the players and casters after the games, provided they don’t go on for too long. I’m a huge League of Legends fan and even though I don’t play the game myself I enjoy watching it and cheering for my favourite teams. This year it’s Misfits for Europe and Team Liquid (I’m a Doublelift fangirl) for North America. With Europe getting better and better as region I really hope we have an even better chance the coming World Championship. But a lot can change in six months so who knows. It’s a nice way to get through the weekend evenings though as I struggle sometimes with making my nights meaningful. These days I just make sure that I have League on and even though I may not actively watch it, it makes sure that I stay out of bed and engaged with something I enjoy. I get a lot of things done with League in the background and the games I want to see provide a nice break from whatever I’m doing at the time. So next to following my teams it also makes sure that my room is cleaned, that I make progress in games and that I relax where need be. It’s basically the perfect distraction when I’m at home alone to make sure I get through the evenings in a good way and to make sure I don’t sleep my time away instead.

Gaming Goals: March 2019

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February came and went and now we are already in March. Unfortunately for me I got the news last monday that my move will be delayed by a few weeks. There are issues in the bathrooms that need to be fixed and due to that I can’t move in when I want to. It’s left me rather pissed off and disappointed but alas it’s not something I can help. I just have to keep my head held high and plow through untill moving day.
So with that out of the way let’s see what I did in February goals wise.

February Goals

  • Playstation GotM: Kingdom Hearts 3.
  • Nintendo GotM: Pokémon LetsGO
  • Get all my crafters to 30 in FFXIV and complete all job quests upto and including level 30.
  • Level my Nightborne Mage in WoW
  • Book of the month: Ship of Magic (Liveship traders book 1)
  • Show of the month: Luther/Designated Survivor

I want to start off with the stuff I consider “done”. I’ve finished reading my book of the month so yay for that! Especially this last week I’ve made headway in the book due to having a week off and therefor more time to read than usual. It also helped that I’m in a major gaming slump and reading takes my mind off things so there’s that. I’ve also gotten a long way with leveling my Nightborne Mage. She dinged 110 and got her Heritage Armour as I’ve told a few posts back. I’m now sitting at level 114 and am slowly working my way through all the quests in Zuldazar. It’s been easygoing and I’ve been enjoying my time back in Azeroth.

Now for all the stuff I didn’t finish… As mentioned before I’m in a major gaming slump. I’ve not touched my Switch for the entire month. I’ve managed to level my Alchemist to level 29 in FFXIV but that’s it. I’ve spent 10 hours in Kingdom Hearts 3 before stalling out in Rapunzel’s world. I’ve also opted to not continue with heavy shows like Luther for the time being since I’m already burned out/depressed and the tone of those shows is just wrong for me. So even though I did get some stuff done it wasn’t nearly as much as I hoped it was.

With March starting though I want to kick myself out of this black hole I seem to be in and find my enjoyment in games, reading and working out again. I have some leftover time off that I may use to work a few half days, time that I can then use to put into games and other activities.
So without further ado here’s my goals list for March 2019.

Gaming Goals

  • WoW: Level my Nightborne to 120 (currently 114) and catch up to current content
  • WoW: Level my Void Elf to 110 (currently 47) and unlock Heritage Armour
  • WoW: Attempt to get the Onyxia mount, the only mount I’m missing for my achievement.
  • FFXIV: Complete Little Ladies Day on both my characters
  • FFXIV: Level Alchemist and Leatherworker to level 30 and complete their job quests
  • FFXIV: Level Carpenter to 50 and complete all job quests
  • FFXIV: Gear up WHM and catch up to current content
  • PS4/Switch/3DS: Complete a game of choice
  • Steam: Play atleast one game from my library

As you can see I’m setting a few more goals for myself this month. All of these goals should be relatively easy to obtain. Leveling in WoW is mindless and the levels fly by. Leveling the crafters in FFXIV is a bit more of a chore but again, not really that hard. Catching up to current content is a different thing though and I hope I can stay engaged enough to do this. I also really want to complete a game on one of my consoles and I want to atleast play one of the games in my Steam library because buying games without playing them feels bad enough already.

As far as other goals go… I want to keep on reading the Liveship Traders trilogy and I hope to finish atleast the second book this month. I’m not going to commit to a show this month since my Netflix/TV watching habits are all over the place right now. My final goal is a weird one but I’ll share it anyway. I’ve been given exercises to stretch the muscles in my calves and my hamstrings. This should help me with walking a little easier and with less pain and tension in my legs. If I succeed in doing my daily exercises I should be able to touch the floor with my fingertips while keeping my legs stretched. I really want to get as close to that as I possibly can.

So these are my goals for the month of March… Do you readers have anything you want to achieve this month?

Feeling Detached

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I’ve started writing this post multiple times, inside and outside of my mind multiple times. I find it difficult to talk about personal stuff on a gaming blog but it’s my blog and therefore also my choice. I guess talking about why I’m not gaming is also a gaming post right?
Anyway. I’ve been struggling at work a lot the past few months. Ever since we had a reorganization our department has been a mess. Now, about 4-5 months later, people are finally finding their way and calming down a bit but the damage has already been done. Due to the reorganization I suddenly saw my workload skyrocket. Not only did I became responsible for more categories I also suddenly got dragged into way more meetings and projects. Out of my five days of work per week, 2 or 3 were usually comprised of meeting after meeting making it so that my work suffered. I felt like I was constantly not getting done and pushing things off till the next day and I would go home stressed and completely exhausted. The only thing I was holding onto was the fact that I’m moving in April and had requested three weeks off to make that go smoothly and so that I could enjoy my new house in peace. Two weeks ago I got told my request had been denied and instead I would only get one week off… It was my breaking point. I was already exhausted that day, I’d been thinking of calling in sick to work every day that week and something inside me just snapped. I broke down in tears and just couldn’t stop crying. Fortunately for me I have the best colleagues who immediatly came to talk to me and calm me down and gave me time to explain what’s going on. Eventually we worked out that I was simply overworked and teetering on the edge of a burnout. I have since delegated my tasks to a few coworkers and focused on the stuff that really needed to be done. My meetings have been cut down and I feel like I can sort of breathe again even though I’m still seriously exhausted.

In extension of this I’ve felt extremely disconnected from my personal life. I didn’t (and still don’t really) have the energy to do anything as I got home after work. I would just lie on bed playing a silly colour by number app on my phone or reading other people’s blogs or just fall asleep outright. The same was true for the time period after dinner where I would be lying on bed feeling exhausted and sleep or watch an episode of a show on Netflix while battling sleep. All of this has caused me to feel completely detached from gaming in general. I’ve been logging into WoW here and there because it’s comfortable and familiar but otherwise I’ve not been interested in starting up a game at all. I’ve not really touched FFXIV at all except to do the Valentione event. I’ve barely even looked at my Switch and my Playstation. It’s all fallen into “meh, I can’t be arsed” category the last few weeks. Which sucks. Even on the weekend I find myself mostly wanting to sleep and not do anything. It’s really impacted my plans for this month gaming wise and I’m not sure when this state of mind will let up.
On moments like these I can be very jealous of Belghast and Syp who seem to enjoy their hobbies even when life looks a bit more stressful than normal. For me it feels like it’s the first thing I’m dropping when I feel bad and the last thing I can really get back into when I start feeling better again. It doesn’t really help that I need to arrange a ton of stuff for my move still and that’s occupying my mind aswell.

All in all I feel very detached from my normal routines. I log into games only to log out a few minutes later again. I reinstalled Steam, hoping that maybe playing a game on there would help me get back into the groove but I just stared at my library for a solid fifteen minutes and then realized there’s nothing there that I want to be playing. I just don’t really want to think about picking up a new game and learning to play right now yet I also feel like I need to do something to get out of this rut. My brain just feels overexhausted and I’m not sure where to go from here. If I can’t even enjoy my games… I’m not sure how much deeper I can sink away into this gaping maw that is exhaustion and burnout.

Heritage Armour: Achieved

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I’ve been spending a lot of time playing World of Warcraft over the last two weeks. I’ve not been in a very good mood and I needed something to provide me with some comfort and WoW does that for me. I didn’t really want to play any endgame activities so instead I decided to finally unlock my first set of Heritage Armour on my Nightborne Mage. I achieved that goal last friday after I dinged level 110.
Personally I think the Heritage Armour looks really good. Ofcourse there are some clipping issues but it just fits the race it was designed for so well. I’m pretty sure that this will be my permanent glamour on this character for the forseeable future. I just need to get a different weapon so I can transmog it to match my gear but that’s not something that is high on my priority list right now.
With the nerfs to the experience needed to level up I could enjoy doing this casually. I’d take about 30 mins per level and I played for about 1-1.5 hours per night so the entire level up process was really smooth. Now that I’ve hit BfA content it has considerably slowed down. Since I’m now dividing my game time up in chunks it’s even more slowed down than when BfA launched and WoW was the only game I played. I tend to just play for an hour and see how far I come. I picked Zuldazar as first zone and am slowly working my way through the zone story. I’m also picking up all the sidequests that I can find and I’ve just gotten enough warmode resources to start the War Campaign again.
Leveling a Horde character the second time around I’m less focused on the zone stories and more on the scenery and just running around and having fun. Not having to read quest text helps a lot when it comes to just chaining content so that’s what I’m doing at the moment.

Next to my Nightborne I’ve also picked up leveling a Void Elf Hunter. She’s sitting at level 31 now and I’ve just finished Duskwood and am about to go into Northern Stranglethorn Vale. It’s really odd to be back at such a low level again, even with the levels flying by (5-10 minutes for one level depending on the quest hand-ins). Hunter is probably my most comfortable class to play and I really enjoy having the Blood Elf aestethics over on the Alliance side. For this character I’m also in no rush. As mentioned before I divide my evening into chunks now so I can do more than just play one game. So I set aside an hour for WoW, an hour for FFXIV and an hour for either reading or watching a show. It’s a really great way to be getting things done during my weekday evenings because I’m much more focused on the game I’m playing, knowing I only have about an hour to play. It’s atleast gotten me my Nightborne to level 110 and my Alchemist close to 30 on FFXIV.

All in all I’m quite happy with my unlock and my more concious planning of games. I’m getting stuff done while still enjoying myself in a casual manner.

Wrapping up: Baby steps edition

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In the spirit of setting my own casual goals I’ve started to wrap up some endgame content in FFXIV. Even though I had caught up to the 4.4 story I hadn’t touched 4.5 untill tonight. With some help from a friend I tackled the new dungeon and got the 4.5 story done. I’ve seen a few interesting plot twists, including the real identity of “Shadowhunter” (spoiler! it’s Gaius, yes, that Gaius) and am now patiently awaiting the final patch where supposedly I turn into the Warrior of Darkness. My gear still remains on the bare minimum to do content however. As of right now I’m sitting at ilvl 364, which is only 4 above the bare minimum needed. A big part of this is to blame on my weapon which is sorely lacking behind compared to all my other gear. So my big focus right now lies with upgrading said weapon and I have a two-route option to do so.
The first one is to farm Tomestones, the Mendacity kind to be precise, and kill Kefka three more times. I finally managed to kill him for the first time on Sunday and I have to say the fight wasn’t as horrible as I thought it would be. So that’s Sigmascape wrapped up and a new minion, scroll and weapon possibility to chase. I also count that as baby step number one because I know I’m sorely behind on this content and I do want to see Omega through to the end.. So I expect some more catching up in the future.
The second route is to keep on farming Heaven on High. You need to exchange your gear strength for 10 tokens and I’m currently sitting at 2 with the possibility of getting 4 more, which still leaves me with 4 to get. The weapon is a slightly better one than the one I get via farming Kefka (it’s a 5 ilvl difference) and the queues for farming Heaven on High aren’t actually that bad. It’s quite easy to just take an hour of my time and run 3 Heaven on High instances and pray for tons of silver chests. It also nets me Mendacity and Genesis tomestones which I can then use to purchase more gear for my WHM or my alt classes. My priority though lies on getting that weapon upgrade so that is what I’ll be focusing on for the forseeable future.

In other baby steps news. My Blacksmith made it to level 30 which means I only have my Alchemist and Leatherworker to go. Since I’ve decided to take the lazy route and just level it up via Ixali dailies I don’t expect them to be 30 in a day. Basically the Ixali dailies give about two levels when I do all of them per day and it takes me about an hour to do them. Right now I’m not really pushing myself to do them every day but whenever I feel like it and it seems to work out for me. The progress is there, just slow and it’s really a task that I do if I don’t find anything else to do.

Next to FFXIV I’ve been slowly pushing up my Nightborne Mage in WoW. She’s just hit 90 tonight and I’ve done about 10 levels of progress in Mount Hyjal alone. I’ve not taken a character through that content in a very long time and I have to say that about 8 years later the story still holds up and the zone is still nice to level through. Chucking bears out of trees, rescuing animals, riding a gryphon while lancing Twilight Scum out of the sky. Killing black and twilight drakes. It’s so much lore that has gone to the background with WoD, Legion and now BfA. It makes me nostalgic for what Cataclysm was and how much fun I had raiding Firelands and Dragon Soul. It was interesting to see the struggle between the Twilight Cultists and the Legion. I forgot that they actually weren’t the best of friends. Now I’m on the doorstep of Warlords of Draenor and I want to get that done as fast as possible. As far as leveling goes it’s my least favourite expansion, simply because of too many Orcs… Especially on Horde side. I hope I can keep the zones I need to do there limited to a minimum but I guess I’ll see when I get there. Only 20 more levels to go for my Heritage Armor atleast so that’s a nice goal to work towards.

In Kingdom Hearts I’ve gone through Toy Story world and have landed in the Kingdom of Corona, aka the world of the Disney movie Rapunzel. I’m still having a blast playing through the game. I’ve been trying to unlock as many things as I possibly can and have made a ton of headway when it comes to the cooking section and the classic mini games section. Unfortunately I’m not that good with spotting the Mickey Mouse heads so I’m probably going to look up a guide once I beat the game to get all of that stuff done. I’m hoping to finish the Kingdom of Corona somewhere this week and move on to whatever world is next. It’s a time consuming game, I’m only 10 hours in and I feel like I’ve just scratched the surface, but I can’t wait untill I see how the story plays out. Hence I’m avoiding spoilers and any Kingdom Hearts 3 related content like the plague online. I want to see and finish this in my own pace. Even if that pace is baby steps.