Category Archives: Gaming

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?

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.

Enjoying the casual

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One of the best things I’ve done so far is stop being commited to a steady raiding crew or group in World of Warcraft and/or Final Fantasy XIV. Although I really enjoyed raiding a lot, and still do up to a point, I just can’t really set aside multiple nights a week for it anymore. When I come home from work I want to be able to sit down and relax, not rush my dinner and showers because a group of 7 or more people are waiting for me to show up. I guess it comes with being an adult and having a fulltime job. I guess it also comes with having raided on and off since 2008 and at some point you’ve kind of seen it all. Even though the developers think of new and interesting mechanics every raid boils down to the same thing: don’t die and make sure you get the boss’ health to 0. And then pray for loot. It’s a gameplay loop that I’m not really interested in anymore. I rather see a raid for the story once and then move on.

Not commiting to raiding has allowed me to enjoy my evenings my own way and has allowed me to take up other projects like leveling all my battle jobs to 70 in FFXIV or chasing after all the Mage Towers in WoW a year ago. Content I enjoyed way more than the raids of Legion. Not being committed has also made me feel less guilty for not logging into games. No one is pressuring me to stay on top of gearing, I don’t have to keep playing to not get sloppy on my classes. I don’t have to log on constantly to stay on the curve. If I don’t want to log on I don’t. If I do log on and decide to spend my time just running around leveling an alt then that’s fine aswell. I have no expectations from others, only the ones that I put on myself.

Not pushing myself to participate in the gearing/raiding loop also exposes how much stuff there is actually to do in an MMO. There are various collections to attend to like mounts, minions and glamour/transmog gear. There’s achievements to be had that come from all types of content. On WoW for instance while I was leveling I made it my mission to complete the “Kill all rares” achievement for zones, or atleast get as close as I possibly can. In FFXIV there’s achievements for logging/mining/fishing X amount of times in a zone. There’s achievements to craft all items available for a given profession. There’s sightseeing, PvP, FATE’s and more. I could choose to lose an hour of my time logging into all my high level characters in WoW and just kill Onyxia over and over again untill she drops her mount, which is the last one I’m missing for an achievement. I could head back to old raids alone or with a friend to get gear for transmogging or to just get achievements and mounts that I’ve missed over time. I could farm ponies, birds and dogs in FFXIV or I could pursue the Big Game Fishing quests and related achievements. All of this these things are obviously designed to make you log back in again and again. When I was raiding that was the thing that kept me coming back and now it’s all the other stuff I can do.

Next to opening up MMO content I’m also free to just drop my MMO’s altogether when a game like Kingdom Hearts 3 comes out and play that instead. There’s more time for other (single player) games, there’s more time for shows and books and other hobbies. I don’t have to stay up until X time because the raid isn’t over yet. I can keep my own sleep schedule going and decide for myself if I’m going to call it an early night or not. All because I choose to be commitment free when it comes to games. All because I choose to be a “filthy casual” as some people would say. Do I miss raiding? Do I miss interacting with a group of people on a regular basis? The answer to both of those swings between absolutely and not at all. Do I feel bad for giving it up? Never. I’m going to stay casual for as long as I want to and enjoy time the way I want to spend it.

A final note. The screenshot at the start of my post doesn’t begin to do justice to the gorgeous game that is Kingdom Hearts 3. But it’s pretty nonetheless so I felt the need to share it here.

Gaming Goals: February 2019

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I can’t believe January is over already. Time seems to fly by these days, even if I’m spending significantly less time in games and more time watching Netflix and relaxing. Not playing as much games has also caused me to bit a bit more relaxed in my head and has gotten me going to bed earlier and fall asleep faster. The past week I’ve only played for an hour or so each night and it’s been great. I’m sure that at some point I’ll get back to gaming a bit more again but for now the game time is low and other activities time is high. I’ll see where it heads since I am going to formulate a few goals for this month. But first lets look back at January.

Gaming Goals

  • Level Dark Knight to 70 in FFXIV and complete all Job quests DONE
  • Level Samurai to 70 in FFXIV and complete all Job quests DONE
  • Nintendo GotM: Pokémon LetsGo. Technically cheating this one a bit but I want to finish it up in January
  • Playstation GotM: Spyro 2: RIpto’s Rage. I’m aiming for 100% completion and the platinum trophy here

So I’ve accomplished two of the goals on my list being the FFXIV related ones. I’ve actually spent a lot of time in January to getting these goals done and it’s taken up most of my gaming time. It’s also caused a bit of a gaming burnout to the point that I’ve not touched Spyro 2 at all and I’ve put in the bare minimum in Pokémon LetsGO. I did manage to get the 6th badge but I stalled out afterwards, which I’m actually quite disappointed about. I’m not sure what causes me to put down games and just not return to them but it’s a thing I want to stop doing.

Other goals

  • Book of the Month: Roger Daltrey – My Story (Thanks, Mr. Kibblewhite!) DONE
  • Show of the Month: Luther

So I finished up the book really early in the month and it has been a nice read. I watched the first season of Luther in full and am now halfway through season two. I have been watching other shows on Netflix however and finished “Tidying up with Marie Kondo” and “Consumed” in full so I got a bit more worth out of my Netflix for the month. I even managed to jam in “Carmen Sandiego” which I thoroughly enjoyed aswell.
All in all I’m quite happy here even though I didn’t get to finish the show I wanted to.

So now that we have January out of the way let’s look forward to February!

Gaming 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

So ofcourse the game of the month for Playstation is going to be Kingdom Hearts 3. I’m about 5 hours in and I want to play through this game so much. I love the worlds, I love the fighting, I love the story. I’m itching to explore more of it and to get it completely played through by the end of the month. I’m lifting Pokémon LetsGO over to February so I can work on completing that aswell. Again I made it to the 6th gym and I really just want to get to the Elite Four atleast.

In MMO land I want to keep my goals light. The only thing I really “want” to achieve in FFXIV is to get all my crafting classes to level 30 and have all the job quests up untill that point completed aswell. I’m currently sitting on level 27 Blacksmith, level 24 Leatherworker and Level 21 Alchemist so that’s the three jobs that need to go up. I go up about two levels when doing all the Ixali dailies that I can and to complete those I only need an hour or so… So it should be a very doable goal.
As far as the leveling in WoW goes. I just really want atleast one Allied Race to max level. My Nightborne Mage is sitting at level 78 now and I’m not really setting a goal for myself level wise but I would like to be over 78 at the end of the month. Maybe I’ll get all the way to 120, maybe I’ll only make it to 85, I don’t know. I just want to spend a bit of time leveling and enjoying some of my favourite older zones again.

Other Goals

  • Book of the month: Ship of Magic (Liveship traders book 1)
  • Show of the month: Luther/Designated Survivor

I’m starting a new book and a new trilogy all in one go. It’s the second trilogy I’m going to read that’s written by Robin Hobb and it takes place in the same world as the first one only with different characters. I’m really curious how these books are compared to the ones I’ve read so I’ll report back as soon as possible when I’ve finished the book.
On the shows front I want to finish watching Luther and then start watching Designated Survivor again. I started that show at some point but kind of trailed off after ten episodes or so. I like the show and I want to watch more of it so that’s the plan.

All in all I’m mostly going to focus on the big game of the month which is Kingdom Hearts. Since I’m in a minimal gaming jam right now I’m trying to keep my goals light and attainable and will probably focus on doing other stuff instead. I guess I’ll see how far I’ve come at the end of the month!

FFXIV: What’s next

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After the euphoria of finally finishing leveling all my battle jobs I figured I need to come up with a new plan regarding FFXIV and how I see myself playing the MMO for the forseeable future. I’ve spent a lot of time just leveling up all these classes and now I need to get myself out of that rythm of spending so much time on the game every week night. I do however have a list full of things that I still want to do in the game, but I’m not inclined to spend as much time as I have been doing anymore. This ties in to my February goals post that I will put up in a few days where I want to step away a bit from MMO’s and focus on single player games more.

So first off I’m going to cut down my time playing FFXIV drastically. I’m not sure if I’m going to log in every day anymore because there are a ton of other games I want to play and other stuff I want/need to do. When I do log on the focus will be on one of the following three things:

  • Casuallly level Blue Mage and unlock all spells there are to learn. I’m pretty sure that at some point I need to enlist the help of a few friends to boost me through dungeons and primals but for now I’d like to take my time leveling the class and learn all the spells I can do solo while doing so. I find Blue Mage to be typical and not really what I expected it to be but it’s a nice little project to be working on.
  • Casually start working on leveling up my Crafters. As I’ve mentioned before I have Weaver, Botanist and Miner on level 70 and the rest of them vary between level 20 and 40. I want to slowly get everything to 30, then to 40 etc. My main source of doing this will probably be the Ixali dailies and not much else. I want to eventually get everything to level 70 but I’m in no rush.
  • Get caught up on current content. Unfortunately my White Mage isn’t high ilvl enough to run all the current roulettes so I need to work on that. The biggest thing holding me back is the weapon, which I will probably aim to acquire via Heaven on High. I also have a ton of unfinished side content to get to including Hildibrand and more than one primal. I think I’m going to relegate working on this to the weekends where I have more time to play and queue up for stuff.
  • Get atleast one Stormblood relic done. This will probably be White Mage again. I’m currently not even done with the first zone, Eureka, but I do want to go through the relic stages at some point so I can see Pagos and Pyros and get my glowy weapon.

So yeah. These are my main points of focus for the time being. Luckily for me most of them I can do in under an hour when I do log on. Queue for a single instance, level a bit on my Blue Mage or just do a few dailies for my crafters. I don’t have to spend the silly amounts of time anymore that I have been doing and that’s nice. I still have some goals to keep me going but I’m opening up so much more time for other things and that’s definitely something I need.

Since I will be prepping to move over the coming two months I will have less time to game in general. The house I’m living in with my dad has been my home since birth and there are a lot of items I need to start sorting through. I’ve accepted the fact that I can’t take all my things with me and I will leave some stuff behind in this house but I don’t want to become like my dad and hold on to things I don’t need. Most of the things that I will be going through will be old toys but also books and maybe more recent stuff. I have full intentions to declutter to the max meaning I’m going to get rid of most stuff I encounter.
Next to this I want to spend more time playing through my enormous backlog of games. I probably have enough games to keep me busy for atleast a year if I were to take that time off so it’s high time I start playing some. Right now my focus lies on Kingdom Hearts 3 because I’ve been waiting for this game to come out for forever, but I have so much more games to play. I’ll talk about this more in my upcoming “Gaming Goals: February” post though so I’ll leave it at that for now.

All in all the main takeaway from this post is that I’m going to cut down in FFXIV time and increase my time on other things while still trying to casually get stuff done in the game.

Done! All level 70 battle jobs achieved!

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Finally, finally, finally! I did the final push on my Samurai tonight via Heaven on Hight and made it to level 70, rounding out all the battle jobs to max level! Except for obviously Blue Mage. It’s been a long journey and one that I’m happy I’ve finished. I’ve seen all the job quests, done over 2000 dungeons/trials/instances on my character so far. I’ve ran tons of dailies, hunts and the odd fate. I leveled alone or with friends but the end goal was always the same and it’s a goal that I now achieved.

From about level 64 onwards Samuari finally started clicking for me. That’s when I unlocked the more interesting abilities that had interactions with my Kenki-gauge and gave me more to do than just the combos. All in all I enjoyed the final journey. The questline from 50-60 was great and the plot twist in the 60-70 quests was nice aswell. I had to push myself to get over that finish line, especially when I picked up Kingdom Hearts 3 early and it has been demanding my time. For now I’m going to take a well deserved break from FFXIV. I think the rest of this week I will be full focus on Kingdom Hearts 3. February is right around the corner and I’ll think up what I want to be doing then over the coming few days.

For now I’m just going to enjoy scratching off one of my major gaming goals and kick back and relax. A longer post will be on the way but for now my brain is tired and I just wanted to share this with you all.

Almost done

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This screenshot basically means the end of the level 50-60 journey for Samurai. As of right now I’m sitting at level 63 so I hope to be done with my big level journey by next weekend. Samurai is finally starting to click as I level up, so I’m having way more fun already. This also means I will have all my battle jobs to level 70 then and I can breathe easier untill the next expansion drops somewhere (probably) in June. It also means that I have been able to rid my bags of most of my leveling gear with only a few 60-70 Striking pieces remaining. It’s going to be so satisfying to go down to only seven gear sets in my bag total instead of the scattering of gear that I’ve been holding on to all this time. All things said and done the end of this project is in sight and then it’s time for me to focus on other aspects of the game and other games aswell.

As of right now I spend most of my evenings running every roulette possible, doing beast tribe dailies and working my way through the daily hunting logs just to push up my alt jobs to 70 as fast as possible. This usually takes about 2-3 hours of my evening meaning I rarely have time to play or do something else. When I finally reach that final job to 70 I’m going to dial back on FFXIV a lot. The plan is to log in and get capped on tomes throughout the week on my White Mage so I can continue the story and level up the itemlevel on that job. I want to finish up all the sidequests that I missed aswell but I’m going to turn that into a weekend-only type of engagement because then I just simply have more time. As for the leveling… Now that I’ll be done with battle jobs I’m probably going to turn my attention to my crafters. I don’t want to put in tons and tons of effort there so it will boil down to just doing beast tribe dailies every day. I see a lot of Ixali quests in my immediate future. I may do some Grand Company deliveries when I feel like it but for now it’s just going to be dailies all the way. With this I’m hoping to cut down my FFXIV times to around 45 mins to 1 hour a day at most. This leaves me with a ton of room to focus on other games and with Kingdom Hearts 3 dropping next week I think it’s the perfect time to focus on that in February.

I’ve been finding my way back into Azeroth, spurred on by reconnecting with some online friends and some IRL friends jumping back into the game. For now I’m keeping it very casual, just playing an hour here and there. I’m character hopping a lot and am currently bouncing back and forth between leveling my Nightborne Mage (77) my Void Elf Hunter (25) and my Alliance Demon Hunter (101). I have a vague idea of what I want to do in the game and leveling Allied races is a part of it. It’s just really nice to be able to log on, play for an hour or so and log off again. There’s no pressure and there’s people to talk to so that’s always nice. In that hour I can fit in a dungeon and some casual leveling in zones I enjoy. I’ve gone to Sholazar Basin on my Mage and am now roaming around in Nagrand in the hopes of getting to 80 in the next week or so. That will enable me to jump to Mount Hyjal and from there probably one of the Pandaria zones although I enjoy Deepholm aswell. All this leveling just to unlock the Heritage Armour and the accompanying achievement. And all only as long as I’m enjoying myself.

As for the rest.. I’m currently so focused on just pushing through in FFXIV that I’ve sadly not really felt like playing anything else. I pushed through the sixth gym in Pokémon LetsGO a while ago and need to go back and beat a ton of trainers but haven’t really done that yet. I haven’t even touched the second Spyro game unfortunately and I don’t think I will this month because I’m going to be too busy losing myself in KH3 in a week. So even though I’m happy with the major progress I’ve made in FFXIV, I’ve kind of ignored the other games that were on my “to play” list this month. I hope I can spend a bit more time in Pokémon letsGO over the weekend as I finish off leveling Samurai though and see how far I’ll get.