Author Archives: sandrian

Going Pro?

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This morning I stumbled upon the fact that MMOgames is hiring freelance writers. After my initial enthusiasm and serious consideration of applying there I gave it some second thoughts after I got home from work.
You see, I write this blog because I enjoy it. Because it gives me a way to write stuff about what I do on a daily basis, what I like and what I don’t like, I can give opinions about anything or nothing. I can make it completely my own and there is no external pressure to write. If I want to have a hiatus I can! If I want to blog on a daily basis, I can! It just gives me a lot of freedom and enjoyment to have my own little corner on the internet that I can manage myself without having people looking over my shoulders or expecting anything of me. If you’re on a deadline to write though, it’s different. There’s expectations, pressure to not only produce content, but well articulated, opinionated content that doesn’t look like a non-English speaking person who has just had their first course in English wrote it. And I don’t think I’m up for that yet. Hell I don’t really produce that type of content on here either.
It’s not that I don’t want to, it’s more that I’m just not experienced enough to feel up to the challenge. Even if I’ve been blogging for multiple years now I still feel like I’m only a beginner. That there is so much room for me to grow, to produce higher quality content, to make this blog more my own. I feel like I haven’t even reached half of my potential when it comes to writing. It’s why I happily accepted the “blog every day” challenge for August. Not only will it help me produce more content, but I will actually have to think about what I write more to stay interesting, thus challenging myself, thus hopefully produce more interesting reading material.

Of course I could just throw myself into the fray aswell. What’s the worst that could happen? Maybe a deadline is what I need to motivate me to do stuff. Maybe I’ll be an excellent writer. Maybe I’ll even be able to produce more content thatn I could have ever imagined. Maybe. And as long as the maybe’s are this plentiful I think it’s probably not the best idea now to commit to something I have serious doubts about. Even if it would look amazing to have on my resumé, even if it’s something I really wanted to do ever since I got into serious gaming and blogging. It’s just something that I don’t feel confident enough about. I really want to improve my little corner of the internet first. Add a bit more posts that cover more than “look what I did today!”. Have more opinions. Write a few guides. Talk about games that I have completed and what I thought about them in a more lengthy, review style way than I have been doing now. It’s all things that I’m working on and it’s all things that I want to get on my blog on a regular fashion. So untill I’ve done that and feel comfortable with my writing and my opinions and my blogposts, I won’t “go pro”.

A Weekend of Eorzea

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I feel pretty pleased with myself today. After a bit of a tumultuous week I’ve had a very nice relaxed weekend with lots of gaming and fun. I made some progress on both of my characters on FFXIV. My Astrologian is now level 54 after finishing Palace of the Dead completely for the first time yesterday. I’m sitting on +18/+21 after that complete run so I shouldn’t be too far off of getting my weapon. I’m still undecided which class I want to give it to, I don’t really play anything besides Ninja, but since I’m already working on my Relic there I want to give it to some other class. Now the only other battle classes I have at max level are Bard and Dragoon. Seeing my little rant earlier about Bard being horrible to play and me not being able to adapt well I don’t think I’ll get that weapon first. I’ve not really touched Dragoon either since I switched to Ninja and I don’t think I will anytime soon, so that one is out of the question aswell. I’m strongly leaning in the way of giving the weapon to my Astrologian. I like having a non-DPS class at max level and am actually having a very nice time playing the class so it would be a logical decision no? The only downside there is that my Astrologian isn’t 60 yet, but I don’t think that will take me that long at all to reach.

Difficult decisions indeed. So instead of grinding out that weapon I turned my attention to some other stuff instead. I’ve gotten almost everything I wanted from the Moonfire Faire on Sandrian, bar the Orchestrion scroll. I have to say man, the absurd amount of people doing those damn two fates makes it really annoying to grind the Faire tickets. Plus the first time the FATE’s didn’t even register me participating, forcing me to drop the quest and pick it back up again. The idea this year is fun though and speaks to nostalgia. Power Rangers and all that. I had hoped for a bit different rewards like maybe a Barding, we haven’t had one of those in a while now. But I guess I’ll have to make do with (ugly) glamours, emotes and an Orchestrion scroll. It could be worse I guess.
Next to the Moonfire Faire I’m also still working on my Yo-Kai grinding. Halfway through weapon number 4 on Sandrian now and I’m working on my second weapon on Sarella. I’ve also completed my weekly Crystal Tower so only two more Aether Oils to go!

All in all I feel like I’m making some progress in FFXIV again. I might not be back on the cutting edge of raiding, but I’m slowly completing the stuff that I want. I really hope I’m able to get all my battle classes to 60 by the end of the year on Sandrian. I know it’ll take a lot of work, but with some dedication and concentration I’m sure I’ll make it. I mean, I only have three classes below level 50 now and with PotD, roulettes, FATE grinding and Crystal Tower raids levelling goes fast enough.

The Summer Is Magic

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After a more personal post yesterday I want to return to games and gaming today, I mean that’s the whole reason I’ve started this blog in the first place anyway right?
Today’s topic covers a magical summer filled with all sorts of lovely events taking place in many of our favourite games. I’ll start off with FFXIV and the second big event that’s taking place in Eorzea next to the craziness that is Yo-Kai medal farming.

I present to you the official art for the Moonfire Faire of 2016! This time Square is preying on our nostalgia and introducing the Power Rangers into our Eorzean lives. I’ve personally not started the quests yet, but I know you can obtain armor, emotes, furniture and an orchestion scroll. I’m absolutely planning on completing this event on both Sandrian and Sarella but reading about a lot of bugs going on right now I think I’ll just wait a few days before throwing myself into the fray. Atleast there will be enough to do next to Yo-Kai farming, my weekly Crystal Tower raids and trying to cap Lore. I already did Weeping City and Void Ark for this week luckily, so I don’t have to worry about those.
Next to that I’m slowly levelling up my alts with all the FATES that I run for the Yo-Kai medals and doing Crystal Tower on my level 50ish characters. So far it’s netted me one level on my MCH, one on my AST and one on my MNK. So I’m slowly heading to 60 on everything!

Next to events in Eorza there’s also a lot of things happening/about to happen in the Blizzard universe. The Legion invasions will start somewhere this coming week so I’ll be on WoW a bit more, soaking it up and experiencing all of it. I have the game pre-ordered, but not via Blizzard so I can’t dive into the Demon Hunter experience yet, and that’s fine with me.
Next to WoW shenanigans a new season has kicked off in Diablo 3 aswell. To be quite honest, I’ve not touched D3 in a very long time and I don’t think I will spend any time playing this current season. I’ve fallen out of love with that game a while ago, mostly because the people I normally play with have all quit… And the constant grinding of the same stuff over and over is starting to get really, really boring. Even the seasonal rewards don’t have me coming back to the game. So unless Blizzard is going to make a major announcement at Blizzcon about Diablo, I think for me that’s a closed chapter for now and I won’t be returning to Sanctuary for a long time.

An event that has caught my attention is the summer games event in Overwatch.
I’ve not played Overwatch that much since launch, but I can never pass up goodies in a game, especially since I can earn them for free! So I’ve strapped on my Overwatch boots again and have about five games under my belt today, and opened a few loot boxes that made me very happy. I got one of the valkyrie skins for Mercy, who is by far my favourite champion, and one of the Summer Games highlight clips, more specifically the one for Tracer. I’m really enjoying myself playing Overwatch for now. Although I end up mostly playing supportive characters like Mercy and Lúcio, I also know my way around on Soldier 76 and Tracer. I hope I can play enough to unlock lots of lootboxes and earn lots of the Summer Games stuff before the event ends on August 22nd.

The last big thing going on is the new Adventure for Hearthstone. Apparently we are getting a partied up version of Kharazan to dawdle around in and I’ve been slowly saving up gold so I can start unlocking the wings as they come out. Blizzard made a tiny prologue to the adventure that is free to play for everyone, so I’m curious to see how that turns out. aswell.

All in all August is going to be a busy month with plenty events, releases and other stuff going on. And I haven’t even mentioned No Man’s Sky or the actual Legion launch yet!

Not Fitting In

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Today’s post is going to be less gaming related and more something personal… With some gaming in the mix I guess. Bare (bear?) with me on this one, I have a very chaotic mind and a slightly chaotic writing style so I’ll try to make this as comprehendable as possible.

Something I notice as active gamer, blogger and online community member is the sheer amount of people that count themselves as introverts. I take a look around on Twitter, I read the blogs in my Feedly, hell I talk to some of my online friends and almost all of them identify as introvert. Some are a bit more outspoken about this than others and that’s okay.
I can get a bit cranky about all the “handbook to introverts” post that seem to pop up on the internet every now and then though. That’s the type of introversion that I can’t really deal with well. It feels a lot like attention whoring which, if I remember correctly, is not something a true introvert would be into at all. So if I rage about these things on Twitter now and then, don’t worry. It’s not that I have something against introverted people, I just have something against people that use said introversion to make them look like a special snowflake.

I myself am an off the scales extravert. I’ve done dozens of personality tests and all of them point in the same direction. I’m highly curious about new experiences, love to partake in social gatherings and have absolutely no issues making new friends fast or talking to strangers. All of this is actually me in real life. I thrive when my life is filled with exciting stuff. Social outings, doing new stuff, doing exhilarating things. I love the feeling of adrenaline pumping through my veins. I’m that girl who will go to the highest steepest waterslide in the waterpark and enjoy the adrenaline rush that I get when standing at the top gazing down what I’m about to do. I’m that girl who will stand on glass bridges over cliffs, staring into the abyss and loving it. I will be that girl who will be chatty with anyone at a party and go home with a new friend or a possible new friend.
This also has translated to my MMO habits for a long time. Due to work restrictions I’m more or less forced to be a “Low Energy” player. Someone who takes a more casual approach and enjoys games as they come. But in my heart of hearts I’m a “High Energy” player. I always want new stuff, more stuff. To be bigger, better, louder! I want to be the first one to race to max level in a new expansion. To get geared. To start clearing raids. More more more, higher higher higher. In my glory days of raiding in WoW I even tried to get into one of the best guilds at the time: Method. Unfortunately I got denied due to not having enough server first experiences but the hunger to join them was there.

If you look at this fact, and how I described earlier that I’m mostly surrounded by introverted people, it’s not strange that I have issues recognizing and identifying with their issues. Of course I am depressed sometimes myself. Ofcourse I have anxieties. Even though I like being around people and tend to draw attention to me I’ve also suffered from crippling anxieties that related to self-image and confidence.
However, where introverts experience their anxieties in relation to people, stress brought on by dealing with people and the fear of the unknown, my depression and anxieties usually have roots in lacking these exact things. I’ve had a very rough year where I was more or less isolated from a lot of social interactions. I was at home, unemployed and done with my education and it slowly drove me mad. I get my energy from being out and about and interacting with people on a daily basis. When I don’t get that I spiral into a black hole that is really difficult to crawl out of. Where an introvert will be happy when a big social event gets cancelled, since they don’t have to deal with the stress of interacting with people, for me it’s a major bummer. It’s denying me the energy and positivity I take out of these things and will confine me to my home where I’m alone, staring at four walls which I hate.

Looking at all of this it’s actually quite strange that one of my biggest hobbies is gaming. I guess there’s a reason why I massively prefer MMO’s over any other genre, but still. Gaming isn’t necessarily a social activity and it’s probably also the reason why I have periods where I’m just completely done with gaming and being a gamer. It’s a nice hobby to have though since it helps me get through days where I have nothing planned or when I have moods where I just want to be left alone.
It’s also the reason why I sometimes feel like I don’t entirely fit into the larger gaming/blogging/internet community as a whole. The internet is an increasingly “safe” domain for a lot of introverted people who are normally afraid of social interactions. It’s safer doing it from an environment where in essence you are talking to a person, but in reality you are typing on/talking to a screen. Whereas I’m way more comfortable talking to someone in person so I can read their body and social cues that you lack on the world wide web. It’s reading posts where people, very justifiably so, express their worry about group content, endgame content, about how to enjoy a game, about how to deal having to play with strangers. Posts I don’t really recognize any of myself in because I don’t have any issues with any of this. It’s people who say they need some alone time, to retreat, play alone or recharge that I don’t identify with. I charge up by playing WITH others and get drained when I have to do everything alone.

It’s all these little things that make me wonder sometimes, do I really fit in? Is this really the platform for me? Am I not to different from all these people I surround myself with? And honestly, up untill today I’ve not been able to answer these questions.

P.S.
As I write this it’s rather funny to realize that all my IRL friends are actually very outgoing and sociable like I am, all extraverts in a sense. And there I tend to not really “fit in” due to my “serious” gaming hobby. It’s kind of odd how the world works huh?

Catching Pokémon and Finishing Games

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As I sit down to write this post I’m still progressing yesterday and today in my mind. Both days have been exhausting in their own ways and both days managed to put a real damper on my mood. Especially trying to make it through an entire day of work while being so tired that I actually almost fell asleep a few times behind my desk has left me reeling. I’m still incredibly tired and will probably head to bed not long after this post is published, but I felt like I had to write to just get stuff off my chest, both good and bad.

First off…
I went to see a friend of mine yesterday who normally lives in Norway. For the summer though he’s actually visiting Dutchieland since his girlfriend lives here and I really wanted to meet up when he was here since he’s a cool guy and I hadn’t seen him in forever, not really counting the 3 hours after he landed somewhere before Christmas. So I took a train to the other side of the country and met up with him and her and it would be a day of watching “Stranger Things” (which I now need to finish, damnit), catching Pokémon at the local park and something I can only describe as a tantrum a 3 year old would be proud of during dinner. Which made the rest of the evening go by slowly and quite awkward. Only good thing is that I made massive progress in Pokémon Go, hit level 12 on my Trainer and got enough Eevee’s to get my first evolution… Which turned into Vaporeon!
For someone who is quite casual about the game it’s really nice to get a bit of progress in and catch/evolve some Pokémon I hadn’t obtained yet. I even managed to get a Pikachu, so that made me really happy aswell.

One of my goals for this month was to finish the Story Mode of Kirby: Planet Robobot. With me having to travel about 2 hours back and forth yesterday this gave me the perfect opportunity to do just that. I had been slowly pushing through all the zones, making sure I got all the datacubes in every level as I played. I actually managed to get all the datacubes, which unlocks a rare sticker, by the time I was in the bus home for the last leg of the journey. Which left me with just the endboss to kill. Or well “just the endboss”… The last Boss level of this particular Kirby game is a chain of bossfights. They’re all executed well and are all unique and fun, but holy hell. I never imagined that defeating all those fights would take me almost an hour, but it was definately worth it. As of now I’m at 70% completion for the entire game. I’m not sure if it counts stickers collected since I still need a lot of those or if it just looks at completion of the different game modes.
With finishing story mode I unlocked The Arena and the Metaknight Nightmare modes, both of which are fun to play. In the Arena you just take on bosses. In the Nightmare mode you rerun the game as Meta Knight and try to set a good time doing so. I’ve tested both modes shortly before heading to bed since by then it was almost 12 and I had to work today so I couldn’t really stay up that late.
In any case I can already scratch off one gaming goal of my August to-do list and this pleases me a lot. I’ve not been this hooked on a game in a very long time and for me to complete it and see the credit rolls within three to four weeks of buying the game is something that hasn’t happened in a very long time. Granted I could have played through much faster but I mostly play my 3DS on the train as I travel to and from work, which was just enough time to complete exactly one level. I clocked in about 10 hours on the game to finish Story Mode with all the Data Cubes. This is more or less in line with the average on “How Long to Beat”. Now I just need to 100% the game.. Which I plan to do eventually.

For now though I’m going to bed happy knowing I only have to work one more day this week and then have a nice gaming weekend to look forward to. I foresee a lot of Yo-Kai grinding, Crystal Tower and maybe even some Overwatch in my not to distant future.

Crashlanding

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When I got home from work yesterday I just completely crashed. Went to bed, got woken up for dinner, went back to bed again. Woke up around 22.00 feeling groggy and realizing that I hadn’t even called one of my best friends to wish him a happy birthday. Yeah. I was THAT tired.

Due to this I obviously also didn’t post, which is lame because I feel like I messed up Blaugust right from the start. Then again I hope to grind out two posts today (one in the morning, one in the evening) to make up for it so I can still say I posted one post “every day”. It’s really not that hard to write, but if your body and mind just work against you and the only thing you want to do is sleep it’s really hard to focus on other things.

As far as this post goes, I’d like to take the opportunity and rant a bit about Bard gameplay in FFXIV. I don’t like it at all. I loved the 2.0 Bard. Although damage may have been slightly bad it still gave me the Hunter Archetype to play that I know and love. Now with Heavensward Square Enix turned Bards into semi-casters, completely taking the fun out of the class. If I wanted to cast stuff I would go Black Mage or Summoner, not Bard. It’s really annoying too that you have to work with an immense amount of cooldowns and somehow have to weave those in between casts. It’s losing me tons of DPS time and honestly, I don’t know how to do it better at all. You can’t really move anymore, if you want movement you need to turn off your Wanderer’s Minuet but then your damage drops. It’s sucky. I don’t want to be a stationary caster. I want freedom to move, I want the old Bard gameplay back! And no buffing their shots/damage doesn’t improve the situation at all. Hell, stuff that I normally breeze through on Ninja like Ex-Roulette, Weeping City and Void Ark take me so much effort to do correctly on Bard that I just more or less have given up on playing the class alltogether.
But Sandrian, you say, maybe you just need to give it more time and practice more and then you’ll get better! Ofcourse that is probably the solution. The thing is, I don’t really have the time to practice the class a lot. It’s not something I would want to be doing with the sparse hours of gametime I have during the week. I want to be able to run content and not be frustrated about having to play a broken class. It’s annoying, it puts a strain on me while playing and it makes me want to throw my controller through the room. And it makes me sad, because I used to main Bard but now… It’s just a husk of it’s former glorious self.

I really hope that SE will reconsider the class design with the next big expansion. I want Bard to feel natural to me again since it is one of my favourite class types to play. I guess only time will tell.

Goals for August

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I didn’t do a goals post for July mostly because I had to work so much that gaming, or anything else for that matter, kind of got set on the backburner. Now that we have arrived in August I actually have a bit more time to play again and I dare to set a few goals again aswell.

So what do I hope to achieve in August?!

  • Upgrade my Kannagi in FFXIV. It will only take three more weekly Crystal Tower runs. I should be able to do that, right?
  • Obtain a few more Yo-Kai weapons. Doesn’t matter on which character. I just want more!
  • Level my Warrior on Sarella to 50. I’m very close and those last 5 levels should be doable, especially since I’m also running PotD on her.
  • Get atleast one PotD weapon on Sandrian. I’m doubting between Dragoon or Bard.
  • Finish off Story Mode in Kirby Planet Robobot. This also means getting all the data cubes so I will have unlocked all the extra levels in all the areas! I technically have 2 areas and two levels left for this.
  • Get rank 20 in Hearthstone. A recurring one I know. But one of the goals I set for this year was getting all the card backs.
  • Play some No Man’s Sky when it launches and write about it.
  • Legion events in WoW!

So yeah. Not that many goals, mostly becuase I’m still going to be really busy with work. Regardless of that I did torture myself for this month by signing up for Blaugust again this year. Well torture… I feel like I’ve not been posting nearly enough so I want to use Blaugust to get back into the rythm of posting regularly. So there. I’ll try to turn out a post every single day. I really hope I can do it this time, maybe even more so since it’s a “chillax” Blaugust.

 

 

Chasing Yo-Kai

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I’ve had a lovely weekend filled with games. Especially today I really got my gaming groove on and did Crystal Tower, a significant amount of FATE farming on FFXIV and finished off the fourth area of Kirby Planet Robobot. And with finished I mean I found all the cubes, thus unlocking an extra stage… Where I found all the cubes aswell! Good times indeed.

Before I discuss the main chunk of this weekend I just want to get a few words in about the 3DS game that has been sucking up almost all of my non MMO time. I got Kirby for €25 about two weeks ago and I’ve been playing it constantly ever since. I’ve never really fully played a Kirby game, but the colourful design and the good impressions it seems to elicit around the web made me cave and buy it earlier than I intended to. So far I’ve been having a blast playing, trying to get most of the stuff on my first runs in levels. Next to 5 levels and a boss level every area you can also unlock an extra level by obtaining all datacubes in every level in an area. Next to datacubes there’s also stickers to obtain in every level, some of normal (blue) quality, some of rare (golden) quality. So far I’ve managed to obtain all datacubes in Area 1, 2 and 4 and I only have 3 left in Area 3. As far as stickers go. I think I’ve gotten quite a lot, but I’m far from being complete.
The game is very happy, bright colours, cool music, not too complicated gameplay. I have died a few times, but that was due to me being a bit of a tard and falling down into the abyss in some levels. I think I have about 5 hours of gameplay in so far and I’m at about 35% completion. I know you unlock new modes after finishing the Story Mode so I’m slowly working my way through that. With only two areas to go I’m sure I’ll be able to atleast beat the endboss of Story Mode this week and then I’ll see what I unlock.

Farming Minions and Weapons
The people who follow me on Twitter already  have seen me post a few pics of me obtaining some Yo-Kai weapons over the week. So far I have the Paladin, Warrior and Ninja weapon on Sandrian and the Warrior weapon on Sarella. I also managed to obtain all 13 minions on Sandrian this afternoon so I could get the Whisper-Go mount. Even though I don’t have much with the Yo-Kai franchise in general I do think all the minions, weapons and the mount are quite cute and a must have on both my characters. Luckily the event lasts all the way untill October, meaning I don’t have to frantically grind to get everything I want. Ofcourse it will still be a lot of work to get all THIRTEEN weapons on both my characters, but seeing the current droprates for the legendary medals you trade in for the weapons, the grind isn’t that bad. I’m in the realm of needing 15 medals per weapon now so it’ll take a bit longer than the 7 I needed for my first one, but farming FATES while waiting for queues to pop has proven to be a very effective way to get my medals and not be bored while waiting for stuff. Couple it with me still having a lot of sub-60 classes and I’m also getting a good chunk of leveling done aswell. My Warrior on Sarella dinged 45 and my Machinist on Sandrian dinged 51 so I’m making some progress in that department aswell!
What’s also really nice is that you can immediatly store the weapons you obtained in your armoire so they don’t take up space in your bags. I’m not sure how many I’ll use for glamours. So far I’m using the Warrior one on Sarella and the Ninja one on Sandrian because I do like the looks of them… For now.

Next to the whole Yo-Kai event I’ve also worked my way through Crystal Tower for the week. I really want to upgrade my Kannagi so I’ll have to bite the bullet and queue up for all the old raids every week for five weeks in a row. With two weeks done I should be done with my upgrade in about three weeks from now, getting a nice glow back on my weapon.
If it wasn’t for the relic upgrade I probably never would have set foot in the old Crystal Tower raids again. I never really liked them a lot, especially World of Darkness, and with so many people rolling on a few of the things I am actually interested in it used to be a very disappointing experience for me as a whole. I can’t count how many times I’ve rolled on the Onion Knight minion and never won it. The music scrolls they added now fall under the same category. Too many people rolling on them. I did however manage to get lucky in my first run of WoD (I had to do a second one because I had forgotten to pick up the weekly quest…) and somehow won the “Puff of Darkness” minion with a very shitty roll. I can only assume that almost everyone else in the raid already had it or didn’t care about it enough to roll on it.

It makes me happy to have it though! I’m over 100 minions collected now. Also thanks to the Yo-Kai event. I still miss a lot of them but even then. More than 100 minions is a lot.
I’ve also been seriously considering ordering the two carbuncle plushies since they’re available in the Square Enix EU store again but man the prices of those things! I don’t mind paying for the plushie and the ingame minion, but with shipping costs included it’s quite expensive in the end. I do want them though, so I’ll wait for my credit card to refresh for August, I’ve limited myself to max €100 euro a month on that thing, and then I’ll probably order them anyway.

All in all I’ve had a nice weekend. Lots of games. Game streams. It was nice. And next to all of that I still got my chores done too!

Announcements Galore

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These past two weeks have been magical. Truely and wonderfully magical. Do you want to know why? I think my inner child cried of joy after some awesome announcements that have popped up in the big bad world of gaming.
Let’s start with the most important one….

The Nintendo Classic Mini NES.
The moment I heard this console was coming out I nearly peed myself with excitement. I’ve never had a NES growing up, I was in the Sega Mega Drive (or Genesis) camp. My uncle did have an old NES but we went there only one or two times a year and I had to share the thing with atleast 5 cousins so actually playing never really happened. Imagine my surprise and excitement that Nintendo announced a special Mini NES containing 30 games out of the blue. Ofcourse I immediatly needed to have this and as we speak it’s on pre-order at my favourite gaming store. For €60 only this little console is very very cheap. Due to it also being tiny I can imagine myself dragging it along to friends to play with. I just need to get my hands on that separate second controller, which for some reason wasn’t in the system yet. I am super happy that I’ll get to experience a lot of games that I’ve only seen glimpses of and finally will be able to mesh with the “oldschool” Nintendo gaming crowd. It’s also nice to see how games have evolved from the NES to the SNES since I’ve been buying some of those on my 3DS on release (DKC 3, Megaman 7/X). Don’t even get me started on the fact that I seriously love small, simple controllers and that I will be able to use this new NES controller with my WiiU aswell. If only I would’ve known earlier, I wouldn’t have bought my WiiU Pro controller. But alas.
I really hope Nintendo doesn’t screw this up like SEGA has with some re-releases of the Mega Drive including 80 games. I’ve read horrible reviews on that…

Speaking of SEGA. They have made a few announcements of their own! Seeing as it’s Sonic’s 25th anniversary they have been working hard on some new releases in the franchise which includes a trip back to the famous 2D platformer where it all started.

Sonic Mania! Just from seeing the trailer I feel like I’m 6 years old again and starting up my Mega Drive for the first time. My mum and dad had a go at playing themselves aswell and we all thought the system was amazing and gorgeous for it’s time. For SEGA to release a major throwback like this just warms my heart and I can’t wait to get the game on either my PC or PS4. Even when rewatching the Youtube announcement while writing this post the trailer gives me a real dose of nostalgia and memories of good times.
But wait… There is more!

Hello Project Sonic 2017. Although the trailer doesn’t give away much it does hint to being able to play with other people. I don’t know if this is online or not or if this some kind of MMO or not but man… Doesn’t this look awesome? Also mark the fact that at the end of the trailer it says it will be released on the Nintendo NX aswell. Which means this is the second big gaming franchise, after the Legend of Zelda, who has a game confirmed for the NX. I know the game won’t come out untill Christmas next year but atleast I will have something to majorly look forward to.
Sonic for me is just flashbacks to my childhood when it was very popular on TV, next to being an immense hit as a game and basically the answer to Super Mario at the time. Although SEGA may have left the competition when it comes to consoles, they have one of the best franchises to their name. And although not all Sonic games have been amazing it’s nice to see them still doing so well after all these years.

All in all an amazing time to be a gamer. The only thing that could top this is Naughty Dog announcing they’re doing a new Crash Bandicoot game for the PS4. If or when that happens I think I’ll be one of the happiest gamers on the planet.

Relic Upgraded!

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Last Thursday I finally got the item I needed to turn my Yukimitsu Awoken into Kannagi.
Before I get the comments. Yes I am slow. I have a love/hate relationship with relics. Have had it since the 2.0 relic and it continues untill today. I remember getting my Dragoon relic for 3.0 when it just released fairly fast. I didn’t mind the FATE grind and also got the dungeon part out of the way pretty easy. I started out on the next step of the quest but then switched main to Ninja. Where I had to grind out the first stages of the relic again and somewhere at that time I just lost interest. The last two months or so I’ve been slowly making my way to upgrading anyway though, mostly through Beast Tribe dailies.

Although I’m not really impressed with how it looks (I lost my glow!) I do think the design of the daggers is quite brutal. Gone is the smooth design, hello hooks that will tear your guts out the moment these daggers plunge themselves into your belly. Honestly I think I should get a damage bonus based on how this weapon does it’s job alone. I mean. Instead of just clean cutting into someone I actually do way way more damage. I do like the screenshot I took when obtaining the weapons though. I managed to get it at just the right time!
Let’s talk some stats aswell.

As you can see when you click on the picture the weapon itself is ilvl 210, which isn’t bad but still the biggest factor that holds back my DPS. Weapon damage is the biggest DPS boost for all classes and for Melee classes this is even more true. Furthermore it comes with a bunch of Dexterity and Vitality, Determination and… Skill Speed. Bummer. Skill Speed isn’t that important to Ninja’s, not since they fixed Mudra lag anymore. I rather would have had Crit instead of SS there, but apparently you can adjust your relic later on so I might just look into that. As for the weapon itself. It’s Dyeable, which I haven’t tried yet, and it was a decent upgrade from the previous version weapon damage wise.

I’ve already taken up the next step in the big relic grind, which basically comes down to running the old Crystal Tower raids 5 weeks. Right now I only need to do Labyrinth of the Ancients for the week and then I’m done for this reset. Compared to the massive grind to get Kannagi I think it’s nice that Square gave us a little breathing space on the next part of the quest. I do understand that this part is more of a “catch up” part since there were ilvl 230 weapons available in the game and the relic needs to be atleast on par. With this information though I should be able to upgrade my Kannagi to Hyperconductive Kannagi somewhere in August. I’m looking forward to it!