Category Archives: Gaming

Exhaustion strikes

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So I’ve been back at work and the first evening of falling asleep the moment I’m home has happened. It’s always a major struggle getting back into my proper work rhythm after I’ve been off work for more than a week but this time it feels even worse because I’ve had an exceptionally lazy vacation, meaning I’ve lost the tiny bit of stamina I had acquired with my normal schedule. So I’m rebuilding this, and more, and it’s making me very much tired. It also doesn’t help that I was up hunting mosquitoes untill 01.30 in the morning last night I guess but still.

It’s one of the few things I dislike about my job at times. When you get back from vacation it’s always a struggle to get to a point where you are all “caught up” on current work and circumstances. I’ve been dutifully slavering away at my slightly exploded mailbox since people figured it was okay to start mailing me again on Thursday/Friday to get things in motion on Monday. Next to that I have my regular tasks that need doing so I’ve been quite swamped with all of it. I managed to make it to about 50 “unread” mails though so I guess there’s that. I’m really hoping that I can get the last bit down tomorrow and be all where I need to be again.

In gaming news, the newest patch of FFXIV hit today, bringing with it the new Tomestones and the Savage mode of the Eden raid. The reward for defeating the final boss is an awesome four seater mount and I may actually want to try to clear it just for that, if I can get into decent PuG groups. For tonight though I think I’m going to stick to clearing the normal version of the raid and start doing expert roulette again for the new tomestones and not play my Black Mage for a night. I made it to level 75 on that playing yesterday evening, aswell as getting my Alchemist to 65 and my Culinarian to 41.
Another good change was the rate that Trusts gain experience from the dungeons you do with them. It’s going to be a less torturous road to get them from 70 to 80 now and I may even use them a bit more as I’m leveling up the rest of my dps classes to circumvent queues and still get leveling done when I’ve exhausted my roulette options.

I’m still quite curious how the Relic Weapon grind will look this expansion. Square Enix hasn’t said a word about it yet, which is rather worrisome. It feels like they launch the weapon much later every expansion and if this one is going the way of Eureka in Stormblood it will mean that I’m probably once again going skip out on it. I really didn’t enjoy Eureka and I’m in no way up for the same sort of grind again. I rather go back to the ARR and Heavensward types of Relics but I guess time will tell how things turn out. I would be very disappointed if they didn’t do any Relics this expansion but with the ever growing amount of jobs it wouldn’t surprise me. I mean they already took job quests away… Maybe Relics are too much of a hassle aswell.

Schedules and ponies

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So today is officially the first day of my “new” schedule for Blaugust. I’ve roughly made up my mind and settled upon the following for weekdays after work.

17.30-18.00: Come home and wind down a bit. Maybe head over to the store for dinner or something else.
18.00-19.00: Dinner time! This spans cooking, eating and doing dishes
19.00-20.00: Blogging time. I’ve carved out an hour mostly so I can start a bit later if needed but mostly so I have enough time to sit down and write a proper post.
20.00-22.30: Activity for the night. This will mostly come down to gaming but I’m also planning to take more walks and get exercise so whatever goes really.
22.30: Shut down and get ready for bed.

By sticking to this time schedule I’ll get enough time in to play the games I want, have time to cook/eat and still have time to blog and go to bed at a reasonable hour. Let’s see if I can make this work!

All the pretty ponies!

Throughout my years playing FFXIV I’ve never managed to get any of the primal mounts when it was current content. I was really happy to land in an FC that did a few farm nights leading up to Stormblood and I got a few ponies and birds then but never really pursued it any further. While I was doing my crafting dailies yesterday I figured that now that we are level 80, soloing the original primals in A Realm Reborn content should be a piece of cake now and seeing as I only needed the Shiva and Ramuh ones I decided to set an hour aside to farm those.
Shiva was peanuts for my Summoner. I barely took damage, especially with the shielding that the Titan egi provides and I managed to get the mount to drop there in two runs without dying. Ramuh was a bit trickier since he does the tankbuster move. Once I figured out how to survive that, it killed me two-three times, I managed to down him pretty easily and to my surprise the mount dropped from that first time I killed him.
This meant that I finally had all the ponies and could do the quest to obtain the Kirin mount, earning that achievement in the process. The quest itself was okay. You go to the Yoshida guy in Mor’Dhona who has a quest for you once you obtain all the primal mounts. He then gives you a whistle that only one worthy can blow and asks you to do this at an overlook so you can make pretty screenshots as Kirin appears before you. It was simple and short and you walk away with a badass looking mount in the end. I think the scene I captured above was one of the better ones I could get with all of the ponies gathered around.

I’m quite happy that I finally got all the mounts with all their awesome primal music. I think the Shiva one will be my go-to for a bit now since I absolutely adore the music from it, but really I could put all of those mounts on my favourite roulette and not be disappointed by whichever would come out.
The next step will be figuring out how many people you need to get the birds from the Heavensward fights. I’ve already obtained a few there but still need the ones of Bismarck, Sophia, Sepiroth and Nidhogg. If it’s doable with two or three people I may just convince a few buddies to tackle those fights in the coming weeks.

Tonight I will probably turn my attention back to leveling though. My Black Mage hit level 74 yesterday and I want to get it to level 80 as soon as I possibly can, purely so I don’t have to play it anymore. I honestly really don’t enjoy myself on this job and I want to be done with it sooner than later. I just don’t understand how I can fit in Flare and Freeze in my rotations, not now I’ve barely figured out how Blizzard and Fire 4 work. The numbers are pretty but I’m way to distracted with not letting Enochian fall off and having to move in the middle of my casts to really enjoy it. So I’m gonna just grind through the levels, do the 80 quest when I get there and then call it a day and start leveling my next job.

Blaugust prep!

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Today the first day of the Blaugust schedule started and we are calling it prep week. I know it’s not officially August yet but nonetheless it can’t hurt to start a few days in advance laying out what I’m planning to do for Blaugust exactly. Writing a blog post every day isn’t necessarily as easy as it may sound, especially when you don’t have a variety of topics to write about. So today I’m going to talk a little bit about how I want to tackle the every day blog posting and what kind of posts you can expect from me over the coming five weeks.

FFXIV progress posts. This will probably still be my main game over the coming weeks. With the new tomestones out on Tuesday and me wanting to atleast attempt to do some Savage content next to leveling up my jobs I will probably have enough to write about for a decent amount of posts. Most will probably be just a quick insight of where I’m standing at the moment progress wise but I may write about a questline or encounter here and there that I feel needs some spotlight.

WoW/GW2 posts. Now that I’m wanting to dedicate less time to FFXIV I can dedicate a bit more time to the other two MMO’s that I have installed on my PC. In WoW I’m mostly planning to explore the 8.2 content and earn flying aswell as catch up to the raid content that I’ve missed so far. In GW2 I want to continue leveling my Elementalist and hopefully push past the level 25-30 barrier that most of my characters seem to end up stuck on and hopefully be able to turn the adventures there into some entertaining posts about how much I suck at this game.

FFVIII and Spiderman posts. As I mentioned before I intend to play through FFVIII. I’ve never finished a mainstream Final Fantasy game and so I figured it was time to pick one at random and just work my way through it. Apparently I picked the one with the most convoluted battle mechanics out there but I’ll make it work. I’ll be taking notes and screenshots as I play through the game so I can make more indepth posts about the story, how far I am and what my opinions of the game are so far. I intend to do the same for Spiderman on the PS4, although that is a much shorter game so I’m probably not going to post about that one a lot.

General topics. I have a few gaming and non gaming related topics that I want to talk about aswell. I’ve taken the habit of writing my ideas down and then sitting down at a later moment to turn them into proper posts.

Next to topics I’m also working on a “posting schedule” so that I can sit down and write a blog post around the same time every day. I’ve also taken note of days where I won’t be able to post on my scheduled time or at all so I need to make sure I have a few extra posts lined up to post during that time. The big problem that I’m facing with here is that I’m horrible at sticking to schedules. Something I’ve been struggling with for a big part of my life and something that I’ve been meaning to change forever. So I’m using the Blaugust opportunity to do so and create some new, healthier, habits for myself so my days will maybe go a bit smoother and more enjoyable than they are going now.

All in all I feel like I’m more prepped this year to participate and succeed in posting every day than I have been in previous years, so let’s aim to make it work!

A hot mess

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Today is the final day of the heatwave we’ve been dealing with here in the Netherlands (and a big part of Europe). It’s really weird how our country is divided in two at the moment with the south having enormous thunderstorms and rain and a 21 degrees Celsius average and the northern part sunshine and still 29 degrees average during the day. But now it’s finally dropped to a nice cool 22 degrees here aswell so now I just need to wait for the temperature in my house to go down as well (currently still sitting around 27 degrees).
All this heat has seriously fucked up our sleep schedules here so I wasn’t too surprised to be falling asleep after my guests left and only waking up about two hours later. I’m still kind of groggy as I’m writing this and I’ve skipped dinner altogether because I just couldn’t be arsed with cooking but atleast I’m no longer sweating when I move my big toe so there’s that.

I can’t believe it’s almost August. It feels like the month of July has flown by faster than any other month so far, even with two weeks off in the middle of the worst heatwave we’ve ever seen here. And people still claim climate change isn’t real. Unfortunately due to this silly heat I’ve not really been able to do much of anything that I wanted to. I’ve been mostly hanging out on my couch, watching a lot of Netflix and trying not to melt into a puddle of oblivion. On the plus side this has allowed me to finally finish Lucifer season 3 and 4 and I’ve started watching “The Good Place’ which so far is a hilarious show. I’ve also spent a bit more time using my 3DS and playing Theatrhythm Final Fantasy Curtain Call, seeing as it wouldn’t heat up house as much as using my PS4 or PC would. But mostly I’ve just been listlessly sitting on my couch and lying on bed hoping for the heat to go away.

Next week I’m going back to work and with that I also hope to go back to a more normal routine. I want to make sure that I’m getting back to a healthy sleep schedule and that I’m setting myself to a healthy eating schedule aswell. I may not be perfect with what I eat but I want to eat at steady times and not have snacks after dinner anymore. I’m also going to plan my gametime again seeing as how I’m done with most of the FFXIV rush of the expansion and I’m back to simply leveling all my jobs/classes again. This means I can spend less time on there and more time playing other games like FFVIII which I’m going to use for Blaugust and I may want to poke my head back into WoW and GW2 again aswell. I might even pick up Spiderman on my PS4 again now that it’s cooled down since I really enjoyed the game before FFXIV launched.

All of this should lead to me having more than enough to write about during Blaugust, I just need to get myself to sit down and write… Which I’m going to put into my daily planning.

Blaugust is coming!

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You’ve maybe seen it go around the blogging community but this year we are once again going to have Blaugust, as usual started up by Belghast. I’m participating again this year as a participant. Even though I’ve been blogging since forever I don’t think I’m the correct person to mentor other people. My blogging track record is shady at best and I don’t really want people to use my blog as an example of how to run things. Hell even I still don’t know how to run my own blog properly so it’s usually a small miracle if I’m able to pump out more than one post every two weeks.
Anyway, this year there are a ton of people participating again, for a full list I’d recommend going over to Bel’s blog. He’s posting a list of people under every post he’s writing right now so you will have the most up to date list of people participating.

As for me and Blaugust.. I’ve decided to pick up FFVIII to play during this time so I can write a small series about it. Why number 8? Well, no reason actually. I could’ve picked any of the Final Fantasy games (except 14) and write a series about it because, gasp, I’ve never actually played a Final Fantasy game from beginning to end. I’ve not even touched a lot of the iterations. So I figured I would pick one of the games that I bought during a big steam sale and start playing that and write about it. So FFVIII it became.

I’ve played a tiny bit of the game so I could create a save file to work off of, but I’ve already hit my first wall in doing so. For some reason I can’t seem to run the game in fullscreen mode. It will either be a tiny ass window (when I have fullscreen checked) or it’s a windowed fullscreen mode where the bottom bit is falling off when I don’t have fullscreen checked. I don’t seem to be able to find a fix for this.. All the suggested things have come up with no results for me. So I will probably have to make do with the whole windowed fullscreen game and see from there.
I’m also still struggling a bit to learn the keyboard scheme but I guess that’s just a matter of getting gametime in.
I know that FFVIII is a bit different when it comes to the leveling and magic experience but I want to see that for myself. Maybe by playing this game I will propel myself to play more of the entries in this series but I guess we will see that later. For now I want to make an honest effort into playing this game and writing about it and hopefully take everyone with me on the journey to completing my first standalone Final Fantasy game.

In other FF related news.. I managed to get my Astrologian to level 80 yesterday meaning that I’m officially done with leveling my healers, yay! This also means that I could finally get rid of all the healer gear that was accumulating in my bags and I basically have all my healers on a high item level now so that’s nice aswell.
The next class I’m focusing on is Black Mage and I managed to get that almost to 71 by spamming FATEs so I’m sure it won’t take me that long to get that to level 80 either.
I also managed to get my Alchemist up to 63 and my Culinarian to 36. My Miner and Botanist are both sitting halfway to 78 so it’s been progress all around!

The garden of Eden?

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Not what I would imagine Eden to look like..

Now that I have my house to myself again it’s time to get back on track for my blogging schedule. I remember vaguely that I said I would blog on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays. So I guess it’s time to stick to that rhythm. I may actually blog more in August seeing as Belghast is doing another round of Blaugust this year but I will elaborate on that in another post. Today I want to talk about the new 8 man raid in Final Fantasy XIV: Eden.

I have cleared this raid twice now and of course I’m not immune to the ton of biblical references that are going on with this quest chain, and in FFXIV in general in this expansion. From the bible the garden of Eden was the place where Adam and Eve lived and it was paradise.. Untill they ate the apple and got banned for all eternity. I’ve heard this tale more than once growing up seeing as how I attended a Christian school in my youth. I’m not Christian myself but I respect the religion, as I do with all others. As long as no one is trying to convert me I’m cool with whatever you believe in. I wonder if we are creating a paradise in FFXIV though, even if that is the inspiration for the story.

So yeah, the Eden raid. As far as the fights go I have an obvious favourite already, namely the first wing. I really love that first fight with it’s anime feel and all the pretty colours and the music. After the first wing I think I like the Neo-Leviathan and Neo-Titan fights about equally and I hate the second wing fight the most. Luckily people have pretty much figured out the mechanics for that one so we don’t have fuckups like we had in the first week.
All in all I’d say that Square has delivered a solid 8 man raid again when it comes to the fights themselves. I’m ridiculously pleased about the new loot system aswell. Having 8 items drop in these raids has been a massive improvement over the old system. You basically only have to run the raids once per week now to get an item and since we’re still early in the lifecycle all the tokens are useful. I personally lucked out on the final wing and got the pet last week on my first run aswell so I don’t have to roll on that anymore either. So far I managed to pick up an accesory, the belt and the gloves for my White Mage and I hope to be able to pick up the helm and chest piece next week. Or atleast make some progress towards that.

Seconds from being blasted into space

As far as the story goes, I’m more invested in this 8 man raid than I’ve been in the Heavensward and Stormblood ones. The story, like the mainstory for this expansion, is solid and I can’t wait to see what we’ll get with the next iterations. I’m assuming we are going to be fighting all the original primals in a sort of “new form” and I can’t wait to tackle Ramuh and Garuda specifically. Of course there will have to be some other fights aswell since we basically “only” have four primals left to reimagine but I’m sure that Square has some pretty neat stuff for us in store. As far as Savage goes… I’m not sure if I will be doing that. I may opt to pug as I don’t have a steady raid group right now. I mean it worked out for downing Titania Ex and I’m sure I can pug Innocence Ex aswell so pugging the first wing of Eden on Savage mode should be doable aswell right? Especially with White Mage being in the awesome position it is in now, I’m sure to be able to secure a spot somewhere.

All in all I’m quite happy to run this piece of content on a weekly basis and (slowly) gear up my classes with loot from here and from the new tomestones that are coming out next week. With the updated loot system and the fact that people get better and better at these fights as time goes on I’m quite confident this will remain enjoyable content untill the next raid comes out.

A small vacation update

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Seeing as how I’ve been hosting a friend for the past week I’ve not really felt like blogging. But I’m going to do it now anyhow since I want to give a small update on my progress in FFXIV.

First off I’ve finished leveling my Summoner/Scholar and have picked up Astrologian next, which is already sitting at level 76 aswell. Just doing roulettes for this one since the damage output on AST is horrible and because of that doing hunts and FATEs is just really time consuming. It’s still more fun to play than Scholar though, especially now that I’ve kind of figured out the new card mechanics.
I think I’m going to start leveling Monk next where I can do some sidequests and FATEs inbetween waiting for queues to pop. This also means I can pick up another class quest since I did the Caster one with Summoner. I can’t wait to see what the melee/ranged dps quests look like! I’m also planning to tackle Innocence Ex before my vacation comes to an end, since it’s the only endgame content I haven’t cleared yet. I did Eden the day it came out and really enjoyed the fights and the new loot mechanics.. I even won the pet from the last boss!

On the Crafter front my Goldsmith has hit level 70 (and almost 71 after finishing off all of the job quests) and my Alchemist is now firmly in Namazu dailies territory at level 61. This means I can start working on my Culinarian again and drag it through the Ixal dailies next. That’s currently sitting at level 33 by the way so I still have quite a decent way to go. I still have a goal to get all my crafters to atleast level 70 since that’s easily obtainable with the beast tribe dailies and the grand company turn-ins. Once I hit 70 on all though I’m not sure what I’ll be doing next. Maybe level them up to 80 via levequests or maybe wait untill the level 80 crafting beast tribe comes out…

On the Gathering front both my Botanist and Miner are level 76. The Crystarium hand-ins combined with the easiness of the levequests have made levelling these classes a walk in the park. I firmly believe that I can get both of them to 80 by the time the weekend rolls around since my friend will leave tomorrow so I will have more time to play. Then the only Gathering class that is behind is Fisher. I’m not really sure if I want to spend time leveling that one up yet. It’s sitting at level 48 now though so I may want to push it up to 50 and see from there.

On non FFXIV related news: I’ve bought Taiko no Tatsujin during the Nintendo E-shop sale. I love rhythm games and even though I don’t have the proper drums to play it’s still a blast so I think I’ll be spending a bit of my off time on that. I’m really tempted to pick up the Persona 3 and Persona 5 dancing games off the Playstation summer sale aswell… I still have about two days to decide on that though.

Something old, something new

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It’s really funny how I can be totally engrossed in other people’s blogs and their gaming stories and then feel like whatever I write up will never come anywhere near to that and I possibly can’t be that interesting to follow. I do have a steady amount of visitors on my blog every day though so I assume that whatever I write up must be interesting to some people atleast.

I had an awesome night last night to kick off my vacation with. I’ve recently discovered the joys of film and game themes being played live by orchestras and have had the privilege to attend Star Wars and Final Fantasy themed concerts so far. However yesterday was even better. Yesterday I went to see Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back at the Dutch Concertbuilding in Amsterdam. Basically it’s the Star Wars movie being played with the soundtrack replaced by a live orchestra and honestly I don’t think I can ever watch any movie again without a live orchestra now. The sound was simply amazing, the atmosphere was great and I have to say it was money well spent. Next year they will do Episode VI and I will definitely attend again. In the meantime I will keep an eye on the concert agenda for more movie and game related stuff that they may do that I want to attend.

In Final Fantasy XIV I’m still hammering away at leveling various jobs. My Summoner/Scholar is sitting at level 75 as of this morning after doing a few roulettes and grinding out some FATEs in Rak’tika Greatwood. I happened to stumble on the big FATE chain that eventually leads to the FATE achievement for the zone and decided to sit that one through to the end. I love how those FATE chains all tell a story one way or another and seeing as how most people are still actively doing FATEs right now I figured I would take advantage of that fact and just try to get all of the achievement ones done. So now I’m only missing the one in the Tempest which is of the same calibre as Ixion/Foxy Lady. I’ve not seen it spawn yet but I may just take a bit of time, now that I have time off, to hang around in the zone in the hopes stuff will spawn. As added bonus you can get a pet and a costume from killing the big boss FATE because it drops tokens and I’m eyeing the pet atleast. As far as the Kholusia one goes.. I managed to kill it once, earning me enough tokens to get the pet. If I want the mount however I need to go back and do it two more times.. Something I’m not really sure of if I want to do just that.

On the Gatherer/Crafter side I’ve been making some way on my Miner, Goldsmith and Alchemist. Doing the Namazu and Moogle beast tribe dailies take little to no time at all so I’m happy to just get those done. I’m leveling up my Miner with levequests though and that is going a bit slower. I hit level 73 this morning which means I’m only one level behind Botanist right now. I’m hoping I can get to 74 somewhere this weekend and then swap gear sets so I can start tackling the level 74+ levequests with a bit more success at gathering. Another reason I’m leveling up Miner and Botanist simultaneously is that apparently you need both at some point to make your way through the Crystarium hand-in quests.. So I might aswell bite the bullet and level both classes at the same time. I’ve not really touched any of my level 70 crafters to level yet (although that’s only Weaver and Carpenter for now) seeing as I want to focus on getting everything else to 70 first before submitting myself to the torture that is craftiong levequests.

Finally I’ve hit the part on my White Mage where I’m steamrolling through dungeons with even mediocre tanks. Unlike many people I know I don’t actually mind running Duty Finder groups, especially as healer. I know that I can keep people alive 99% of the time and now that I have decent gear it’s even less of an issue. Even so some people seem to just make things difficult which in turn can lead to hilarious situations.
Like me rescuing a tank out of the lasers on the last boss of the Twinning only for him to run away and get hit by them anyway. Left me speechless that one. Luckily he didn’t actually die from them but I had to powerheal him up before the next auto-attack would kill him. Keeps me on my toes, stuff like that.

For the rest of the weekend I’m going to try to get a kill on Innocence Ex and grind out some treasure maps with people from my FC. Let’s hope I get some shiny stuff!

Shadowbringers Mayhem

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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

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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.