Category Archives: Gaming

Mage Tower Madness

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Draenei Hunter with MM challenge bow

I’ve had a post about my Mage Tower shenanigans coming down the pipe for a very long time. For those of you who have been following me on Twitter this whole blogpost shouldn’t really come as a surprise but I want to get it out anyway.

Somewhere earlier this year I had this grand idea to start chasing the Mage Tower challenges. With patch 7.3.5 gearing up had become really easy and with every Mage Tower I tackled I found the next (same) one on a new class to be easier and easier. Where I’ve taken between 20 and 30 tries to down some of my earlier ones I can now proudly say that I have oneshot multiple ones over the last few weeks, including the cheese that is Affliction lock.

I’m not really sure what attracted me in doing all the Mage Towers. Maybe it was the idea that the skins would become permanently unavailable or it was the idea that these were solo challenges that I could undertake by myself without having other people involved. They felt like a “true” test of skill to me, moreso than any raid or dungeon has been.

As of right now I’m down to my last three Towers: Outlaw, Assassination and Subtlety Rogue. I’m in luck because the Command Center is up, effectively buffing my Agatha attempts even more than I can already do. I also don’t predict any problems with the Assassination challenge but I do hope I can luck my way through the Subtlety one.

All in all it’s been a rather long strange trip. The Artifact boost came at a perfect time and even though I had my doubts that I would complete this journey I’m very proud to be able to call myself a member of the “club 36” at the end of the day.

 

June 2018 Goals

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Druid class hall flight form

I’ve had a rather active month in May. I started working fulltime in my new position. I’ve jumped back on the FF wagon since the new patch dropped. I’ve been chasing Mage Tower challenges (and am currently sitting on 10/36 done) and my most recent unlock in World of Warcraft has been the new flight form for my Night Elf Druid. You get this instead of a Class Hall mount and I have to say it looks really good!

Looking ahead at June I find my game time to be rather limited. I work 40 hour weeks now so I only have time to game after dinner really, cutting my evenings short to about four hours. I also want to make it a bi-daily habit to go onto our crosstrainer (respectively weekends, Tuesdays and Thursdays) effectively cutting short my gaming time even further since following a workout I would obviously need a shower. There’s a few single player games I’ve picked up that I want to finish, I’ve been rewatching Grey’s Anatomy from the start and I’m reading my way through the Farseer Trilogy by Robin Hobb. All in all I’ve started a lot of projects over the past month and I want to use June to complete some of them, be it game related or not.

Gaming Goals June 2018

World of Warcraft

  • Get Rogue to level 110 and finish the first leg of the Class Hall Campaign
  • Do Mage Tower challenges on as many class/specs as I can. The ones I really want: Guardian/Feral Druid, Elemental Shaman, Holy Priest.
  • Unlock more Class Hall mounts.

WoW looks to be basically continuing what I’m already doing. I’m still focusing on completing as many Mage Tower stuff as possible but seeing how Legion is only about 2 months away things are starting to look a bit dire. I’m hoping Blizzard decides to permanently enable the Mage Tower at some point but I doubt it. So I’m trying to double down on gearing up my alts and getting stuff done. Luckily getting to about 920 ilvl isn’t that hard anymore and most challenges are doable at that gearlevel even without optmized gear. I also want to finish up leveling the last class I need to 110 and inbetween unlock a few more Class Hall mounts.

Final Fantasy XIV

  • Get my Machinist to 70 and start leveling something else
  • Get my Weaver to 70 and start leveling another crafter
  • Play on my Au’Ra and progress through Heavensward story

I’m trying to keep my FFXIV goals light. Right now I’m just doing dailies and ex roulette for cap and that’s it. My Machinist is sitting on level 68 now though and I think I should be hitting 70 sometime next week if I continue on doing what I’m doing. The same goes for my Weaver. She’s dinged 64 today thanks to the Namazu quests and I’m hoping to push her to 70 this month. Then I will need to start working on another crafter, I’m probably going to go with Carpenter since that one is level 37 and I want to get it to Heavensward so I can take advantage of the Moogle quests.
You also may have seen me mention my Au’Ra on Twitter. My Moogle FC unfortunately has disbanded and moved, in large part, to Cerberus. Not wanting to transfer my Miqo I instead opted to bring over my Au’Ra. She’s still in the start of the Heavensward Story so my goal for now is to slowly push through that as Monk.

Other games

  • Progress in Mario+Rabbids
  • Progress in Monster Hunter Stories

Seeing as most of my attention is going into my MMO’s I don’t have that much time for other games. However Mario+Rabbids seems to have me hooked for now and I’ve already made it to world 2-6 in the mainstory. This is also what I want to focus on moving forward this month. I hope to be able to make it through atleast the rest of World 2 and hopefully a good chunk of World 3 aswell. I’m really enjoying the game and can’t wait how it turns out.
Monster Hunter Stories is one of those games that you really need to bite into for a longer time to understand the concept and to just get through the story. I’ve made my N3DS my Monster Hunter machine for now (save games are stored on the console rather than the card) and I’m planning to play this on the train and during any form of transportation/inbetween time. It’s a nice bright game and I do want to see how it plays out.

Real life and non game related goals

  • Finish the second book of the Farseer Trilogy
  • Clean out and rearrange some cabinets
  • Use the crosstrainer more

I’ve alluded to these goals at the start of my post but I want to start working on my health a bit more, so I want to use the crosstrainer we have on the attic on a more regular basis. Weekend mornings seem to be ideal for this and I want to take atleast two nights a week on the thing aswell. I may expand my routine later on with some strength exercises but for now some extra cardio to build stamina and start losing weight is the way to go.
Another thing I want to be doing over the course of the year is continue cleaning out our attic and more importantly start picking out things of mine that can go. I’ve been told that my apartment will be done sooner than expected (June 2019 instead of September 2019) and it’s time I start making lists of things I still need and things I already have and things that I want to get rid of. I don’t want to end up like my dad with a house full of stuff so I need to think long and hard about what I want to take with me and what not. As bonus perk this helps my dad aswell with getting rid of things from the attic, thus creating more new space.

Finally I’ve kind of found my reading vibe again and I want to continue that. I’m over halfway done in the second book of the Farseer Trilogy and I want to atleast finish it and hopefully start on the third. I’ve unexpectedly fell in love with the series and I know there’s more trilogies ahead for me to buy, which has me quite excited. However I have a bunch of other books that I still need/want to read first so I’m probably going to hold off on more books in the saga untill I’ve read all the other ones I still have.

All in all I’ve tried to keep my goals realistic. With me class hopping on WoW (and focusing on one class at a time) I can do most of the daily stuff there in less than an hour. The same goes for my Final Fantasy XIV dailies. That leaves me with 1-2 hours a night to spend on whatever else I want. I can read, I can play more of WoW/FF if I feel like it. I can choose not to game at all and just relax with my tablet and a show. I just hope that when July starts I’ve made a lot of progress in all the things I want because then I’ll have even less time to game due to vacation and more business at work. For now though it’s time I logged off and started cleaning my room. The dust seems to be everywhere! If you’re interested in more productivity tips and managing time effectively, consider checking out microstartups.org.

No Mother’s Day

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Monster Hunter Stories

A ton of people around me are celebrating Mother’s Day here in Europe and I see a lot of things on my Twitter timeline from both EU and NA people but I’m not joining in with the holiday. I have no mother or grandmothers to wish a happy Mother’s Day to anymore and thus for me it’s a regular Sunday with no social obligations and lots of time to clean and game. Because it’s like this I’d like to talk a bit about a game I’ve started playing last week: Monster Hunter Stories.

Let’s start off with a bit of background. I have never really been interested in the Monster Hunter franchise. I was aware it existed and I was aware it has quite a hardcore community of people who completely adore the games and have spent hundreds to thousands of hours playing them. I’ve downloaded a demo on my 3Ds of either Generations or 4 Ultimate at some point and it didn’t really capture my interest. Then Monster Hunter World came out on the PS4 and I downloaded the demo again and again I decided the game was not for me. The whole “kill consecutively bigger Monsters” theme didn’t really hook me in and seeing the grind that came with it I just bounced hard and didn’t look back.
Now how comes Monster Hunter Stories into play? I am a big fan of traditional RPGs and the games that I have sinked by far the most hours into besides MMO’s have been Pokémon games. I like collecting things and I like simple turn based combat. Monster Hunter Stories plays into both of these tropes very well. Next to having a story you are also collecting Monster Eggs to build your team and the combat is rather simple turn based with some gimmicks. Next to that the game is cute and chibi like aswell as very colourful, some other things that really attract me and the interest was born.

I’m not going to build in Spoiler tags for this post, or any follow up ones on my progress, mostly because the game has been out since last year and everything is on the internet anyway. I just want to share my experience playing so far, how I like the game and if it might pull me into the franchise further.
So you start out the game going into the forest looking for Monster Eggs with two friends Lilia and Cheval. Lilia finds a nest full of eggs where one has a different colour and lo and behold the egg hatches and the little Rathalos (lovingly called Ratha) imprints on you as hero. At this point you have not seen the face of your character yet and with good reason, you are prompted into a character creation screen then where you can pick your gender and appearance which will then appear in subsequent cutscenes. After creating your character you get back to town where the people are apparently mad at you and your friends for sneaking into the forest without permission. After getting scolded but then forgiven by the village elder a mysterious shadow Monster attacks the village killing Cheval’s mother. Your Rathalos manages to chase the Shadow away but gets thrown into a ravine in the process, disappearing from your life.

The game cuts back to your character one year after these catastrophic events. You are now going to do an exam to become a “rider” which is a character that rides and battles with Monsters, or Monsties as they’re called here. During your initiation ritual you befriend a Felyne called Navirou and together with him and your first official Monstie that you hatch you’re basically set on the start of your story. In the meantime Cheval has undergone a serious character change and Lilia has decided that she doesn’t want to become a rider prompting her to seek another goal in life.

This is kind of where I am now. There is a mainstory to follow and at this point you have unlocked vendors, a buff shrine, your house,  sidequests and downloadable content. There are lot of staple Monster Hunter tropes in the game. When you battle Monsters in the wild they will drop items based on how well you do the fight and these items are needed to upgrade gear or cook or sell on the markets. You’re encouraged to explore around a lot so you find more Monster Eggs and other things. There is a ton of sidecontent and a big world to explore. The only real downside is that for some reason Capcom has decided to tie save games to your system instead of to the game cart. Which means that if I switch systems I will lose my save game and have to start over again.
From what I’ve seen so far though this game may not be as massive as other Monster Hunter games but it’s still a game that you can easily sink many hours into trying to 100% it. There’s a ton of downloadable, FREE, content for when you are done with all that the game has to offer and then there’s online battle stuff that I’ve not even touched yet.

All in all it looks like a game I could really lose myself in. I like that it is on my 3DS which means I’m more inclined to pick it up for short bursts on the train or when lying in bed, which is what I’ve been doing with most of my non MMO gametime anyway. I’ll let you guys know how I get on!

Why’s My Life So Boring?

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Retribution Challenge Weapon

I’m having one of those weekends where I feel like my life is going by too fast and I’m wasting my time doing useless stuff. And with useless I mean lying on bed or spending a lot of time dallying in a game while not really making any progress anywhere.
Which is odd because I’ve been slowly ticking off goals for World of Warcraft (see the above screenshot of my proud Paladin and her Retribution Challenge Weapon) and managed to actually finish a game within a week of buying it. And yet I feel useless and bored, not to mention fat and ugly.

I think my depressive mood comes down to my less than ideal living situation and the fact that I lack the motivation to change anything about my life right now. My house is being built and I can’t move out untill next year. I’m still quite overweight but I can’t seem to get myself to start working out seriously and working on losing that weight. I’m also staring at a contract deadline which basically means I should find a new job by October 1st. Something I really really want aswell but I can’t seem to motivate myself to do anything. I feel mentally exhausted and I’m not sure how to turn it around right now. I think the best thing I can do is focus on tackling one thing at a time and right now my health, and the slow deteriation of it, is my number one priority. Because next to being simply overweight all that extra cushion I’m dragging around is causing me other issues. I’m short of breath, my feet constantly hurt, my back hurts and I honestly look ridiculous in any clothes I’m wearing. Looking at myself in the mirror becomes harder by the day and I’m desperately finding a way to get motivated to lose weight.

I have considered tying gaming and working out together. Especially during weekends I just don’t get enough exercise/movement and so I’m thinking of a system to make sure I do not sit on my ass and game all day. I’ve been trying to apply it to my WoW sessions where I am taking breaks whenever I level up on my Rogue (which is rougly every 45 mins). During these breaks I either go get a drink, clean a bit of rubble from the attic or spend a few minutes just walking around, stretching and maybe walk up and down the stairs a few times just to get some movement in. I want to progress this further and stand on our crosstrainer or do some strength exercises inbetween my gaming sessions. Anything to start getting healthier again and be happier with the way I look and feel, seeing as this body has to last me atleast another 40-50 years.

In gaming land however…
I’ve been scratching off a lot of goals. I’ve completed 8/36 Mage Tower challenges now and I hope to be able to complete three more the next time the Tower rolls around. If I’m able to do that it means I have all the Mage Tower appearances for Monk, Paladin and Warrior and 2/3 for Hunter. Although the challenges still aren’t a walk in the park they’ve become significantly easier by gearing up my characters. I’m really close to getting the MM Hunter challenge done but I’m trying to get a better legendary than the ones I have in the hopes that it will help me actually kill off the stupid challenge. I’ve also picked up leveling my Rogue, who is my last class not on 110 yet, and I’ve made some pretty great strides today going from level 82 to almost level 87 in a few hours of play on and off. From level 90 onward I will be duoing up with a friend and we’ll make the final push to 110 together over a weekend, something we’ve been doing with a lot of our characters.
In terms of gameplay I don’t really enjoy Rogue all that much, there’s a reason why I’ve practically not touched this character since Wrath of the Lich King, but I want to get it to max level for completion sake so I will.
I’m also making a point to log into FFXIV once a week to do some beast tribe quests and to log into my house so that I don’t lose the plot. Even though my interest in the game has been waning a lot I’m not letting my sub lapse because I know I will get burned out on WoW at some point and will most likely return to FFXIV more fulltime then. In the meantime I’m super slowly leveling up my Machinist and just fiddling about getting my Beast Tribe rep up, I’m almost done with the Ananta now which means I can soon buy the pretty Gryphon mount. But since I’m only logging once a week or so it’s been going at a snail’s pace. Oh well.

In non MMO land I’ve bought Kirby Triple Deluxe on impulse Friday the 4th and finished it last Thursday. It reminded me of how much I love Kirby games and how nice and relaxing they are to play. I’ve yet to finish Star Allies on my Switch but seeing as I completely got sucked in by Triple Deluxe I’m taking a bit of a break and focusing on a game in an entirely different genre: Monster Hunter Stories. I’ve only started playing this game today so I’m not that far in but from what I’ve experienced so far it’s MH Light with a mix of Pokémon. It still has the Monster Hunting aspect, you still get a shitton of crafting mats and there’s a ton of sidemissions to do next to the main stuff, but this game actually has a story to follow and the gorgeous, colourful graphics had me hooked immediatly. I feel like this is by no means a simple game, but I’m determined to plant my feet in it and make progress this week and hopefully understand a bit more about how I have to actually play the game and if this may get me into other games in the Monster Hunter franchise.

For now though I’m going to sign off here and hopefully catch a good night’s sleep. I predict a ton of gaming and cleaning in my future tomorrow and I prefer not to have laid awake half the night before that.

Tons of WoW and a bit of Zelda

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Violet Spellwing

Seeing as I’m taking the time to deep clean my room this week I figured I would dust off the blog aswell.
I’ve had a rather busy month last month. A lot of IRL stuff has happened. I said goodbye to one of my coworkers who has gone on maternity leave and to our interim manager who unfortunately had to leave us due to not getting a permanent contract. I’ve also transitioned into a new position at work, one I’ve been wanting to do for quite a while, and found myself immensly tired after being trained for two weeks. This week however I have a week off and I’m hoping to spend it reading books, playing games and continuing to get rid of stuff on our attic. Hayfever has kicked in immensly and the tons of dust that seem to nestle itself everywhere in my room has made me sneeze more than I want to admit but it’s nice to have a truly clean room again, even though I know it will only last for a week or two.

Next to the IRL business I’ve also spent a lot of time playing games, or more specifically a game: World of Warcraft. I have set a goal for myself to obtain as much of the Artifact skins as I possibly can before BfA launches, with a special focus on the Mage Tower ones. I really want to get atleast all the Warrior, Monk, Paladin and Priest skins and will probably take a jab at Hunter aswell for atleast Beast Mastery and Marksmanship. I feel the Mage Tower challenges are not that hard to do but having to gear all my characters to be able to do them takes a lot of time and I rather focus on the classes I actually play over the ones I levelled up just to experience the stories.
Speaking of that, I only have the Rogue left to level. My latest toon, the DK, has gotten to 110 and I’ve finished her class campaign. I hated it (SPOILERS AHEAD). I feel like a Lich King slave all over again, especially when I was basically forced to annihilate the Silver Hand just to attempt to resurrect Tirion Fordring. I don’t feel comfortable at all making more Death Knights and I certainly don’t appreciate the telepathic link the Lich King seems to have permanently instated in my head again. Out of all the class campaigns I’ve done so far I’ve liked this one the least purely because of the story. I know it’s strong storywriting on Blizzard’s account otherwise I wouldn’t have these strong feelings about it. And even though I hated how the story played out I’m curious to see what ramifications my actions had and how things will go in the future for the Knights of the Ebon Blade and the Lich King himself.

Another goal I had on my list was to get the “Ahead of the Curve” achievement before BfA hits. I think the mount is super pretty and I would be sad to not have it. I have gotten every Ahead of the Curve achievement since it was instated in Warlords of Draenor except for the Kil’Jaeden one. So last Friday one of my best friends arranged for me and him to join an Antorus HC group. I was the lowest geared of everyone and didn’t have my Curve achiev but I think I did pretty well. I had minimum deaths and my DPS wasn’t super bad. All in all the run took about two hours after which I had my achievement, and my mount, and feel like I don’t have to do this raid anymore at all, which is a relief all on it’s own. My next big achievement is to get M+15 done. I’ve pushed up to +11 so far on my Monk and I’m confident I can get +15 done if I get a bit more gear.

Priest Class Mount

For now though I’m slowly ticking off goals of my list as BfA draws nearer. I’m slowly obtaining all my Class Hall mounts, working on the Field Medic achievement, gearing up to take on Mage Tower challenges and hunting Hidden Skins. It’s keeping me busy and I’m happy playing with my own goals set in mind. I’ve also almost decided what class I will be rolling as new main in BfA. Unfortunately since my Alliance guild is dead and I don’t really enjoy playing with the majority of people there I’ve decided to roll Horde so I can play with friends over there. I’m currently leaning heavily towards rolling a Protection Paladin but am still undecided because I just love my Windwalker Monk so much that I can’t make the final decision yet. It will mean that I am moving away from my Warrior at the start of BfA but I intend to level her up fast aswell so I can see the Alliance story.

Even though WoW is consuming a lot of my time I’ve still found some time to tackle other things. I’ve started reading the Farseer Trilogy by Robin Hobb and am halfway through The Assassin’s Apprentice. I’m also finishing off The Man who Mistook his Wife for a Hat. Reading is a nice diversion from staring at a screen all day and seeing as I have about five books on my shelf that are still untouched I will be reading for a while to come.
I’ve also finally started my first serious playthrough of Ocarina of Time on my 3DS. I never had proper Nintendo consoles when I grew up, only handhelds, so I didn’t really experience any of the Zelda games. I bought Ocarina of Time when it became a select and now finally bit the bullet and started playing it. My first impressions are that it’s a rather confusing game which doesn’t give that many clues and the clues you do get are rather cryptic. I know there is a ton of side content to do in the various villages and I have been peeking into a walkthrough every now and then when I was really stuck but otherwise I’ve been trying to make it through on my own. OoT really is a game that wants you to explore and test and do a lot of things on your own so I’ve been wrecking every jar and box I’ve come across, headbutted every tree and talked to every dude in every village. I’ve made it to Dodongo Cave right now but I’m shivering when I think about what’s to come. I heard the Water Temple is legendary and notorious at the same time so I’m quite curious as to what it entails.
I’m also slowly advancing through Dragon Quest 8, for when I’m stuck and frustrated in Zelda, and completed my party by adding Angelo. I’m really enjoying the story, although the monsters are still very bizarre. I think I’m about 8 hours into the game where I know it’s about 80 hours or so long so I’ve barely begun to scratch the surface but still. It’s a nice game to fire up every now and then and play for an hour or two before putting it away again.

There’s more games I would like to focus on after I finish Zelda and/or Dragon Quest 8. I still have Persona 5 and Horizon Zero Dawn that I want to finish on my PS4 and Kirby: Star Allies on my Switch. For the time being though I only have one week off and not enough time in the world to do everything I would want. So I’ll see how far I come with my books and my games, aslong as I get to relax and be happy.

The Goal is Set: Unlocking Skins

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Fury Warrior challenge skin unlock

I’ve been addicted to World of Warcraft again. After not playing for most of Legion I’ve jumped back in again for the past few months and started a grind that seems to be nigh impossible, yet I want it done badly.
It all started with me making an overview of the things I have already obtained in Legion, on what characters and what I’m still missing. As I write this post I am down to three classes left to level (Warlock, Death Knight and Rogue) and I have obtained a boatload of Artifact skins. Getting seriously back into WoW has been a mixture of circumstances. I’m currently playing a lot on the Horde side with one of my best friends aswell as trying to get that Mythic+ 15 done on my Warrior on Alliance side. I’m actually having a lot of fun again and only play with the people I want now. Couple this with a severe decline of interest in FFXIV, Eureka has been a serious disappointment for me, and I find myself on Azeroth a lot once again.

One of the things that has me pulled back into WoW, next to playing with the right people and an immense collectors’ drive, is the fact that I can make progress towards something on any character I happen to log and don’t need to spend a lot of time doing it. Aside from the Mythic+ madness I’ve been solely focused on leveling all my classes to max level, do their class hall campaign, unlock the class hall mount and grind out Hidden Artifact skins. On top of that I finally managed to get my first two Challenge skins (the Fury Warrior one pictured above) and I feel like I can actually get done what I want to before Battle for Azeroth hits. In FFXIV if I want to level my Machinist I will have to queue up for roulettes because doing only the six available Beast Tribe dailies every day is too slow. In WoW I’ve been doing invasions, which grant atleast a level and take about 15-20 mins to do, aswell as just doing the main story line in the zones. I can literally play for 30 mins and make progress. In FFXIV that’s usually the time it takes for me to even get into a dungeon.
Even though WoW is a bit more chaotic at endgame, seriously Blizzard needs to stop throwing all these quests at me as I ding level 110, it’s also somehow less time consuming to get what you want, granted you need to plan very carefully so you don’t get sucked into the game and waste three hours doing nothing, which is something that tends to happen in MMO’s.

I’m chunking up my WoW time effectively, dividing it towards what I want done for the day and making sure I get it done aswell. Sometimes this entails running a Mythic+ or two for gear and progress towards getting the +15 on all my characters. Sometimes it’s doing a few quests in the Legionfall campaign so I can unlock another Class Hall mount. On my Warrior I’ve been diligently doing all my Emissary quests for the caches, but also all the PvP World Quests to edge closer to that new Prestige level. I plan to take my Paladin and my Priest through the Argus campaign in the near future so I can get proper gear and maybe start working towards tackling the Mage Tower challenge on them aswell. I can make this progress in tiny amounts, usually I don’t have more than 2-3 hours of game time a day anyway, and still slowly tick goals off my spreadsheet.

Compare that to running Eureka for three hours and maybe advance an elemental level or two… I feel like I can get more out of my limited game time in WoW right now.
It’s not to say I’m abandoning FFXIV outright, it will probably be my weekend MMO, but I will be playing it a lot less than I was a few months ago. I still plan to get all my classes to level 70, eventually.

For now though I’m working on a rather prestigious WoW project that I hope I can see through to the end: Obtain every Mage Tower Challenge skin in the game and do M+15 on all 12 classes. Why? Because those are the only skin variants (MT base and +15) that Blizzard will remove with BfA. And so I am going to work my butt off to get them all before that happens.

Current status: 0/12 M+15; 2/37 Challenge skins. Wish me luck!

 

Frozen Friday

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Normally I’m so dead on Friday evenings that the only thing I want to do is lie down and sleep, doesn’t matter if it’s only 19.00. Today though I have a bit more energy and I would want to churn out a post because it’s been a bit of an odd week for me this week.

First off we’ve been dealing with a serious cold front coming in from the East that has basically made going outside a very painful chore. With temperatures dropping to -8 degrees Celsius (which is about 17 degrees Fahrenheit for my US friends) during the day, and the wind making it feel like -18 instead it was really no fun having to step outside. I had to conquer the cold for work and some hospital visits aswell but ideally I tried to stay inside as much as I could. I’m really not built for this weather and I notice it impacting my mood a lot, making me very grumpy and mostly in the mood to just lie down in bed and be warm.
I guess you never really appreciate having a mild climate untill the moment it’s taken from you and you have to deal with temperatures you’ve not really experienced since early childhood. I guess the one thing I can be thankful for is that we’re not stuck with a ton of snow, something the UK is dealing with right now.

You would think having this horrible weather outside would be an amazing excuse to spend some time in games but I’ve not really felt the gaming groove that much this week. Maybe it’s because of feeling cold almost the entire day or maybe it’s because my mind has mostly been with University and work stuff but I just couldn’t get myself to sit down and game. I did however pick up some new game related stuff that I’d like to share a bit of here.

I enjoy collecting things. Be it games, books or collectibles, I enjoy when something is well made and looks good on my shelves. Even though I know I shouldn’t by as much dust collecting stuff I still can’t seem to control my impulse buying, expecially when it comes to stuff that doesn’t only look good as decoration but also serves a purpose for games. I have an enormous Disney Infnity figurines collection and I was immensly sad when Disney decided to pull the plug from that franchise. However I found a new love in Nintendo Amiibos and am slowly growing my collection. The two newest additions are some of the newer Breath of the Wild Amiibo and I’m just amazed by the detail that Nintendo has put into making these. The archer Link looks absolutely amazingly detailed and the Zelda is probably the only real iteration of Zelda that I can really appreciate.
I didn’t actually intend to buy these guys when I went to my regular Game shop this week. I was just heading there to pick up the codes that would allow me to download Palkia and Dialga on my Pokémon Moon and Ultrasun games respectively. The sales rep was minding his own business untill he suddenly mentioned he had some Zelda amiibos lying around that he had ordered for himself but decided to cancel. Knowing that they would sell fast he offered them to me first and after one look at them I was absolutely sold. I think this line of amiibos in general are the best ones made so far and I don’t regret buying them whatsoever. What they exactly unlock ingame is not really clear to me. It looks like equipment and some consumables but I didn’t really buy them because of that anyway.
I do hope that they’ll get some sort of use outside Breath of the Wild but only time will tell on that one.

Even though I’ve not really been in a gaming vibe over the past week I do hope to make some progress in WoW and FFXIV over the weekend. I’d love to knock out some levels on various characters and classes and feel like I’m slowly ticking of goals. Especially with Battle for Azeroth inching closer there is a lot of stuff I still want to do. I hope I can. But we’ll see. For now I’m going to focus on getting through the weekend, play hopefully some games, get some exercise in and clean my room again because somehow during the week it just becomes an enormous mess.

 

March Gaming Goals 2018

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Wow, I’ve kind of straight up abandoned my blog somewhere at the start of February. I have no idea what exactly happened. Maybe it was writer’s block, maybe it was just a lack of willingness to sit down and type. Whatever the reason I’ve not looked at my blog at all the past few weeks and I do feel slightly guilty about it.
I want to take this chance though to look back at my gaming month and look ahead to the best month in the year, March!

Monk Class Mount & Pet

February has been a mixed bag for me with a lot of MMO time and not that much time for anything else. I did make some progress here and there though and I guess I’d want to share this with you guys!

  • In World of Warcraft I’ve gone above and beyond the goals that I had set for myself. Not only did I level my Shaman to 110, I’ve also leveled my Horde Priest and Horde Monk to 110 and finished both of their Class Hall campaigns respectively. On my Monk I’ve gone even further and also made the push towards the Class mount because I really REALLY wanted that tiger. So yeah, I’m down to four classes that still need to be leveled to 110 and five classes that still need their Class Hall campaign finished. I’m currently working on finishing my Shaman’s campaign while also trying to level my Mage, who is sitting at 104. All in all I feel I’ve done a lot in WoW and I think the majority of my MMO gaming time will be spent there in March aswell.
  • In Final Fantasy XIV I’ve leveled my Summoner/Scholar to level 70 as I hoped I would. I’ve barely touched any of the other classes though, except for a few crafters that I’ve gotten up to level 30 (Armorer, Culinarian and almost Blacksmith). I’ve done my beast tribe dailies here and there and did the first wing of the new Omega raid but otherwise the game didn’t really keep my attention much.
  • In single player games I’ve not actually played that much. I’ve continued a bit of Yo-Kai Watch, dabbled a bit in Persona 5 and started Dragon Quest Builders on my Switch. For some reason my willingness and energy that I want to put into games is at an all time low so besides MMO’s I’ve not really played that much at all.
  • IRL I’ve not lost the weight that I wanted to lose. I had hoped that I would be able to go outside a bit more but especially the past week has been unbearable as far as temperatures go so I rather stay inside than go out and freeze to death.

What am I looking forward to in March?
Well first of all I’ll be celebrating my 29th birthday halfway during the month. I had kind of agreed to not wanting a birthday present, but maybe my Dad will surprise me nonetheless. I can also finally pick up my diploma at the University, an event which I’ve been looking forward to for the past four years or so. It finally closes a very stressful chapter in my life and I would love to finally feel stress free in that regard.
I’m also starting the search for a new job since I feel like I’m not really where I should be at work anymore. I’m kind of grumpy, do not enjoy my tasks anymore and don’t feel inspired by the people I work with. All signs that it’s time to move on and luckily I will get some help from one of my managers. I also really want to get on track with working out more so keep your eyes out for some fitbit news on my Twitter and maybe here on the blog.

Now to the actual topic: Games.

  • I want to keep up what I’m doing right now in World of Warcraft which is work towards getting Exalted with the Argus factions on my Warrior and gear both my Warrior and Monk so I can run high level Mythic + dungeons on them. I really enjoy doing them on my Monk and I actually predict that I’ll be getting to higher level M+ on her than on my Warrior. I also want to get my Mage up to 110 and finish the Shaman class campaign. I’m thinking of leveling one of the new Allied Races but I’m not sure yet. I’d rather focus on getting all my remaining high level characters to 110, which are Warlock, Rogue and Death Knight after I’m done with Mage.
  • In FFXIV I want to check out Eureka. The patch is coming in two weeks and probably (finally) has the Stormblood Relic weapon tied to it so I’m definitely going to check out all of that. I also want to level atleast another class to level 70. As it stands right now it will probably either Machinist or Black Mage or maybe even both. I’m also slowly nudging my Crafters up so if I could get all of them to level 30 atleast that’s another goal I can strike off my list.
  • I want to spend a bit more time on both Persona 5 and Dragon Quest Builders. I absolutely adore playing both games and I feel like I need a serious story game and a lighthearted one side by side right now and those two games fit the bill perfectly. I know that especially Persona can be quite long before I finish it but I still want to play it, it’s just that good. For the rest I’m unsure what I’ll do with my time games wise. I’ve picked up the latest Layton game recently and am hooked on all the tiny mini puzzles that you get as daily downloads, but the mainstory isn’t that appealing to me yet. I may pick it up as distraction from the more story driven RPGs.. I do like solving the puzzles.

All in all I mostly want to use this month to further my real life goals and maybe pick up some gaming on the side. I’m in a bit of a slump anyway and I feel like I should do other stuff than spend most of my free time playing games. It’s a phase that will probably pass, but for now expect a bit less gaming from me and a bit more real life stuff.

A (slightly) Disgruntled WiiU Owner

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I’ve been mulling over whether or not I want to write this post. With the recent announcement of more WiiU ports to the Switch, and me reinstalling my WiiU again to play games, I feel like I want to get this post out sooner rather than later.
I am well aware that this is a debate going on within the Nintendo community and it has split the community into various camps. I find myself to be in the digruntled WiiU owner camp mostly, but the reasons may differ from what I’ve seen online so far.

What is it all about?
Nintendo has announced their line up plans for the Switch multiple times. From the get go it was clear that they were going to reuse some of the things from the WiiU to target a broader audience now that the Switch was launched. I myself hopped on the bandwagon for Mario Kart 8 DX, mostly because it’s one of my favourite franchises, it had bonus tracks as default that you had to purchase as standalone packs on the WiiU and being able to take Mario Kart with you anywhere and be able to play with anyone was super appealing. Later on we got Pokken Tournament DX. I wasnt too phased by that since I’m not interested in that type of game but I could hear the community grumble a bit. Luckily with Arms and Splatoon 2 Nintendo showed us that they were more than capable of bringing us new IP’s and also sequels instead of direct ports. Even though by all means Splatoon 2 is half a port, I still picked it up because I’ve never gotten Splatoon on my WiiU. Notice that I’m not counting Breath of the Wild as a port seeing as it was a simultaneous release for the WiiU and Switch and I personally chose to get it on WiiU.
Fast forward a bit and more ports of WiiU games are announced. We are getting Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze and Bayonetta. Two great WiiU titles that should have gotten a bigger audience than they did. Nintendo realized this and chose to bring these games over to the Switch as ports.

Now this is where it starts to wring
As a WiiU owner myself I’m happy that Nintendo recognizes that games like DKC: TF and Bayonetta are deserving of more love and that they want to bring them over to the Switch. Hell if you don’t own a WiiU it’s great to be able to pick up these games and play what you’ve been missing out on! The ports themselves are probably just fine, you get more polished images and maybe a few extra modes. If you don’t own these games I strongly recommend to pick them up. However….
Nintendo is releasing these games at full prices. Me, being the WiiU owner that I am, already own these games. There is zero incentive for me to rebuy a game that I already own for a new system. And certainly not at full price. Just for comparison, DKC: TF is only €25 right now because it’s a Nintendo select so it’s easily picked up for WiiU owners. The Bayonetta special edition (which contained both Bayonetta 1 and 2) cost me €50. Seeing as these are marketed as new games for the Switch they will be expensive. I’m sure as hell not going to rebuy a game that I already own, that gets little to nothing special added, at full price. It may be nice to have the portability of the Switch for these games and they may look better but it’s simply something I refuse to do.
And I’m not the only one.
It also saddens me a bit because instead of focusing on new games in the series (with the exception being Bayonetta 3) they release ports and then hope people will be happy. I rather get an entirely new Donkey Kong game than a rehash of one I already know and have. The same can be said for Pokken DX and MK8 DX. I much rather would have had an entirely new Mario Kart game. I know that ports require less resources and I know Nintendo wants to keep people’s attention so they probably feel the pressure to bring as many games to the system as they can. Which is fine, but I feel like they’re going about it in a less than ideal way.

Ofcourse I’m not a big publisher and I know these games will sell well, even for people that already own their WiiU counterparts. But it still feels like they could have put this time of porting into focussing on bringing the Virtual player to the Switch, do something about the My Nintendo rewards for Switch (which they have finally announced!) or just give us more customizability. And maybe take a look at the Switch E-shop and get rid of all the shovelware games.

I guess I’m just a bit salty about not being able to look forward to a lot of actual new games. I know that Kirby Star Allies will come out and I will definitely pick that one up, aswell as most likely Project Octopath Traveler and Bayonetta 3. I’ve also not nearly finished Xenoblade Chronicles 2 or Super Mario Odyssey so I still have tons of hours of playtime to get out of my Switch without even having to look at the ported games. But where my 3DS library is full of amazing games I feel like my Switch is falling behind… And that’s not what I hoped it would do.
I just really hope Nintendo picks up on the mixed messages when it comes to porting games and devotes more time to develop sequels instead.

Sunday Summary: Jan 29-Feb 4

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I wanted to blog yesterday about some of the issues I have with WiiU games being ported en masse to the Switch. However because of a hiccup with my host my blog wasn’t accessible so I’ll save that particular post for a later date.

Alpha

I’ve had a quite productive week this week, both in and outside of gaming.
I’d like to start off with my real life endeavours because they are much more important, and interesting, than my gaming ones. So this week I finally was able to fix the last things for Uni and I can finally apply for my Master’s degree now, making me an official MSc! It’s taken me a while and some of the things weren’t necessarily my fault. For instance I handed in my Master’s thesis at the end of November (November 27th to be exact). It took untill December 20th to get my grade for that and then it took my Uni untill January 25th (YES THAT LONG!) to actually submit the grade into the system. It’s all been a very frustrating ride, especially since I knew I had to switch Master tracks because I accidentally entered the wrong track in September. Yeah that was my own fault. However this has been solved and after a very, very, very long wait I can finally say I’m done with that. So big party for me! Sort of. I guess I’ve celebrated by getting the Battle for Azeroth pre-order. I’ve also been working a bit more this week and it’s been a bit of a weird week over there. Basically I’m still uncertain what will happen to the department where I work for. I have a contract untill July 1st and no idea how things will look after that. I’ve also talked to my interim manager a bit and she’s given me some advice when it comes to improving my communication skills. I will take this advice to heart, especially when I may be in the position where I have to apply for another job. All in all I’ve had some breakthroughs this week on a personal level and for the first time in ages I finally feel at ease.

In games I’ve been mostly bouncing back and forth between FFXIV and World of Warcraft. I’ve been leveling my Summoner aswell as trying to unlock all the 4.2 content. I’ve played through the mainstory quest and I have the quests to unlock the new ex-roulette dungeons. I’ve also unlocked the first part of Sigmascape but I don’t really feel like queueing up for that just yet. I know I’ll miss out on the first reset of new tomestones but I’m having so much fun on my Summoner that I have a hard time tearing myself away from the leveling stuff.
I’ve also gotten myself the upgraded yellow scrip weapon for Botanist. I’m not actively chasing Botanist and Miner gear but the weekly hand-ins from M’naago allowed me to buy the Botanist weapon and upgrade it in one go.

Windwalker Panda Monk artifact weapon

As a surprise I’ve been spending more time in World of Warcraft that I thought I would.
I’ve unlocked both the Nightborne and Highmountain Tauren and made one of each race on Draenor (my main Horde server). So now I have a Nightborne Warlock and a Highmountain Shaman that are standing by to be leveled somewhere before Battle for Azeroth launches. I’ve also been playing a ton of Warrior just so I can try to get my Argussian Reach and Army of Light rep to exalted. Unfortunately I’m only honored with both so it will take a while yet.
In the screenshot above you see my Monk getting her Windwalker Artifact weapon. A friend of mine is on the same quest as I am: do all class hall campaigns before BfA. He had a level 100 warrior, I had a level 102 Shaman. We’ve decided to team up and right now I’m sitting halfway to level 107 and I should be able to get close to 110 tonight after we finish Stormheim and maybe Highmountain. Playing Monk again has been a blast. Windwalker has turned into a really fun spec to play and I can see myself spending some time on this after I ding 110. Mostly because I really want the awesome Tiger Class mount they get. For now thought I’m slowly working through the Class Hall campaign and hoping I will ding 110 sooner rather than later. Atleast I have a buddy to level with and who boosts my queues since he plays Protection.

Inbetween the leveling frenzy in my MMO’s I’ve also been playing through Yo Kai Watch bit by bit. I’m about 7 hours into the mainstory now and I feel like I’ve only started to scratch the surface. It’s a more in-depth game than I imagined and much less of a Pokémon clone than I thought it would be. I’m still not really sold on the whole battle mechanics but the story is nice and I find myself returning to it again and again. It also helps that I can play it in short bursts on the train.

All in all I’ve had a nice week. I made progress in real life things. I gamed quite a lot. I’ve been trying to be more healthy. I’ve tasted sushi for the first time and I’m having fun playing WoW again. The only thing to make this even better if I can find some time to play either my WiiU or Switch a bit. Maybe next week.