Category Archives: Gaming

Status: Happy

Posted on by
Reply


I have gotten into a new FC on my main character a few weeks ago to properly prepare for Stormblood. I didn’t want to go into another expansion without a group of people I could do content with so I made it a priority to find a group and so I did.
I’m super happy I’ve taken this step. It’s a very active FC that organizes a lot of events for their members. I’ve seen a grand FC lottery so far, an evening of pony farming, clearing old coil synched, clearing A10S and much more. There’s always friendly people online to help with things and I’m more than happy to help these people myself aswell. It feels nice being able to log on to this type of community after trying to find one for a very long time. Hell it’s made me think of my old World of Warcraft guild of ages past where being in a guild actually meant that you had people to play with and do content with. Where helping eachother out was normal and you would always be doing something with someone and enjoying yourselves.

All of this has made me really eager to start up Stormblood. We are less than two weeks away from early access now and I can’t wait to jump into all the new content. I’ve settled on playing Ninja as main. I know some people are disappointed with the Ninja design in Stormblood so far but I’m actually quite happy that not too much is changing. The class really needed a pruning of some abilities that, honestly, were never used. From what I understand we’re losing smokebomb and silhouette together with dancing edge and sneak attack. All for the better. Poisons will now be a standard passive buff, so you can’t forget to apply them, but we will lose the Mug heal as a consequence of this. Unfortunately mutilate has also been put on the chopping block meaning that, with the changes to the rest of the skills, ninja will just have all three step combo’s from now on. One for armor crush, one for spinning edge and one for shadow fang. I’m not too thrilled with this (they could’ve kept shadow fang a two-step combo) but I guess this is the direction they wanted to go in. Luckily for me switching to any other class is not really a hassle in this game so I’ll just wait and see how things will work out.

In the meantime I’ve been on this rather weird levelling spree. I had gotten my DRK to 50 in my last blog post but since I’ve also levelled my Machinist to 60 and completed the questline on that. Running Palace of the Dead may be slightly mind numbing, but it’s by far the best way to level your classes right now and it took me about 2-3 hours to get the last two levels for my Machinist that way.
I’m not really sure where I want to focus on next. There is still the Relic Light grind looming over me that I will have to start doing at some point. I know that doing level 60 content fuels it and I know that farming A1S is the best and fastest way to get this step done but I just can’t seem to motivate myself to do it. I’m also a bit torn on what I want to level next in PotD. It’s either going to be Summoner or White Mage. The problem I have is that I have 0 casting gear for level 60 while I do have a full healing set ready. So both classes are doable if I intend to go Scholar at 60. Which I actually am trying to avoid. Seeing as the expansion is only 11 days away though it doesn’t really matter what I pick up at all since I won’t be bothering to level anything but Ninja for a while. That being said I will probably spend most of my time getting my classes up as high as possible through PotD so I won’t be too far behind come Stormblood.
Which means a lot of idle hours in Quarrymill… Shooting fireworks.

All in all the Stormblood hype is getting more and more intense. I really hope the expansion is good, the new relic weapon will be interesting and the new classes will find their niche in the raiding world. As for now I’m going to dive into some more PotD. Catch you guys later!

Ticking Off Goals

Posted on by
Reply

I’ve been really busy over in FFXIV the last few weeks. Not only did I complete a ton of my relic, I managed to level both my Warrior and Dark Knight to 50. My goal of not having any battle classes below level 50 has been obtained! It was also the first time going through the Warrior story proper which means I’ve seen a few new things. The same goes for Dark Knight. I really enjoy these sidestories and I can’t wait what the quests from 52 untill 60 have in store for me. My focus will now turn to leveling my Machinist. She’s level 58 so I’m only two levels away from the current level cap. It’s an enourmous help that Machinist, Bard and Ninja share half their gear so those will probably be the first three classes I will focus on in Stormblood.. Together with Astrologian.

Next to leveling my tanks I’ve also been doing some Palace of the Dead on my Summoner for fun. I finally cleared up untill level 100 and upgraded my Astrologian weapon to a Kinna one! I’ve grinded my way back up after to 19/25 by running some level 1-50 stuff. It’s really not that bad and a nice distraction from the relic weapon farm. With a three day weekend inbound I will probably see PotD a lot as I level my Machinist and probably my Summoner after. I’m not sure where this enormous need to level suddenly comes from, maybe it’s because I don’t want to be majorly behind in Stormblood anymore. As of right now I have 4 jobs at level 60, one at 58, two at 52 (since I’m leveling summoner I’m automatically leveling Scholar) and the rest at 50. I hope to have atleast my Machinist and Summoner to max level before Stormblood hits. With the addition of Samurai and Red Mage I will have 8 classes at level 50 then, of which four share gear (Monk and Samurai/ Black Mage and Red Mage) so that helps aswell. All my tanks share gear aswell so the odd job out is White Mage, which apparently is getting changed for the worse in Stormblood.

As for my Ninja Anima relic. I’m on the Light grind stage right now and I’m pretty sure I’ll devote a few evenings to just farming A1S to get to the second to last stage of the relic. Unfortunately for Ninja it’s a downgrade looks wise. The Spurs just look amazing compared to the Lux… Oh well.

With Stormblood inbound in only two weeks I will have enough to do ingame… And outside of it. I caved and picked up a Switch after I got a call that my pre-order came in. I had been thinking of just calling it off and waiting to get it since I have a ton of WiiU games to play still but in the end I decided to get it. I’ve not regretted this for a minute. With Shovel Knight and Mario Kart 8 Deluxe I’ve spend quite some time playing already. These are both games that I want to get the max out of so I’m not really planning to get anything else anytime soon. Even though Arms looks really good, it comes out on the same day as Stormblood early access and I know myself well enough that I will be playing FFXIV over the weekend.

As much progress I’ve had in my games, I’ve not had a nice streak IRL. My health still isn’t what it should be. I’m tired a lot and my asthma is giving me a hard time. Especially now that I’m back to working full days again I notice that my days off are spent mostly in bed recovering. My body is just kind of done at the moment and I can’t do much more than just give in to it’s need for rest. I’ll have a checkup this Tuesday where they will look at my lungcontent and if I need to stay on asthma medication for a longer period of time. I really hope that isn’t the case but I’m fearing the worst. Next to my health problems I’m also seriously struggling with uni and the project I need to finish. People are not sticking to their word and things are being stretched out way more than I thought they would be. It has gotten me stressed out… which in turn exaggerates my already serious health issues. I’ll be so happy when I’m done with all that stuff so I don’t have to worry about that anymore ever again.

All in all I try to stay positive. I’m in a nice FC on FFXIV, I’m going on vacation at the end of the month and my work contract got extended till January. If I can just finish up this Uni business I will just have to deal with my health… and how to live with asthma.

Progress!

Posted on by
Reply

Warrior dinged 50 and with that I earned a whole slew of Achievements. Go me!

So that is one goal I can scratch off my list. I’m currently working on Dark Knight who just dinged 40 today, so there it’s only 10 levels left aswell!
I’ve also found a friendly FC and a static group for Stormblood. I will be maining Ninja and I hope to be able to tackle the content again like I did in A Realm Reborn. Other than that I’m working on getting my Astrologian weapon from Palace of the Dead upgraded and also still working on my Ninja Anima weapon. I’m halfway through the Umbrites stage now, with about 4-6 Umbrites a day earned that’s not too shabby at all!

 

Health Issues part 3

Posted on by
Reply

My third health issues post in a very short amount of days. Damn we just keep on going don’t we?
Today I spent about 4 hours in the hospital after my doctor saw some weird values in my blood. Long story short: my mum’s side has issues with blood cloths. Two of my uncles have been treated for ones in their legs, my mum died of one when she was 45 and I have atleast one aunt who has had multiple strokes. So yeah, blood is an issue in my family. Apparently they can tell by a certain value in your blood that you may or may not have these same issues. The value in my blood indicated something was up, but not really what. So the thing to do was pack my things and move to the hospital where I would get a CT scan to see if anything serious was up.
I can tell you, being in a hospital with nothing to do but wait is seriously annoying. Atleast I got lunch there otherwise I would’ve been extremely hungry aswell. After all was said and done it appears that my lungs are clean and I don’t have anything major life threatening health issues… But I still feel off.

I’m still out of breath easy. I still start coughing whenever my asthma medication wears out. I personally think I’m having a rather intense allergic reaction to something which is causing me to feel this way, but only time will tell. For now I’m still at home sick, giving me ample time to game and do other things that I’ve been neglecting.

Speaking of games…

I’ve been getting back into Destiny next to FFXIV.  It took me forever to get on top of that stupid mountain, but I made it and got the SIVA fragment as reward, plus this nice screenshot. I worked my way up to 390 light on my Warlock so this in theory makes me ready to raid. Now I just need to find a group to do said raid with.
I know this week is Iron Banner and I think I want to dip my toes in that aswell, just to get the ranks and see how the gamemode is. I’ve missed out on a lot of things in this game so I’m working very hard to try to do and see everything it has to offer before Destiny 2 launches. This mostly includes finding all the collectables, doing Crucible, doing strikes and weekly missions and try to clear as many quests from my log as I can on the Warlock atleast.
I’m also leveling my Titan and Hunter up so I can clear their respective sections in the Age of Triumph book. And earn some of the trophies I’ve been missing still. But most of all I’ve been having fun with friends, and that is what really matters at the end of the day.

Bonus screenie of my warlock in a silly snowglobe hat:

FFXIV Race

Posted on by
Reply

With Stormblood not that far off, 6 weeks, I’ve found myself slowly getting back into Final Fantasy XIV. During Heavensward I’ve not really played as much as I did during ARR. I started out great, got my Dragoon up to 60 really fast, geared her and then my interest waned. I didn’t raid anymore, hell I didn’t do any endgame content at all and leveling other classes wasn’t one of my interests straight away. So Heavensward for me has been a cycle type expansion where I play for a few weeks, level something up, clear out my quest log, do the new dungeons/encounters, work a bit on my Relic and then I disappear for a few weeks again.

I’ve tried out all the new jobs with Astrologian quickly becoming my favourite healer. I’ve always regretted not spending more time on this game to get atleast all my battle classes to max level. I’m a lorebeast in any MMO I play and the class/job quests are some of the most interesting things Square Enix has put into the game. So right now I’m trying to make up for that by getting atleast all my battle classes to 50 before Stormblood launches and make some sort of sprint to 60 for a few more. Right now the only two classes I have below level 50 are Warrior and Dark Knight, which is cool in a way because they’re Tanks which means I have no issues chaining dungeons to level if I want to. Instant queues for the win. My Warrior is now level 43 and Dark Knight is 36 so getting them both to 50 before Stormblood shouldn’t be an issue at all. Just doing the challenge log + level/guildhest roulettes and finishing up the hunting log nets you a lot of experience and it isn’t as mind numbing as spamming Palace of the Dead over and over again. If I play it right I might even be done with this particular goal in less than two weeks, freeing up the last few weeks to tick off a few other things…

Most importantly my Anima weapon. I’m still stuck on the Umbrites step and I really want to finish atleast one Anima weapon before Stormblood hits. I was in the same frenzy with Heavensward release but again, in theory it should be doable. I have enough time on my hands now that I’ve slowly pulled myself away from World of Warcraft. I still log there every now and then to do a few World Quests and work through the Broken Isles weekly quests, but that’s mostly it. Since the raiding has stopped the game itself has completely lost my interest and the only reason I’m still playing at all is because my game time is paid up untill June 13th. I’m fully planning to cancel that sub so I can focus on Stormblood. But yeah, back to the Anima weapon. I have a decent amount of Sands sitting around to be used and it’s really the Umbrite farm that is holding me back. Which is really silly because 150 Lore is nothing and if I just do my roulettes I should be up to speed in no time.
It’s just a bit of a chore dividing my attention between the Relic farm on the one hand and levelling my remaining classes on the other hand. Add to that fact that I’m still unsure what I want to main in Stormblood and my FFXIV time is a little chaotic right now. I was intent on continuing with my Ninja but seeing as Square is adding 2 more DPS classes I predict DPS queues to be hell on earth the first few weeks of the expansion. So I’m thinking that I want to focus on maining a Healer or Tank at first instead and then level up a DPS class as secondary. Seeing as how I really enjoy playing Astrologian, and I’m actually quite decent at it on my PS4 which is the game version I’m getting, I think I might focus on that class. I really have to see what they do with the “new” gameplay though because that’s more of a dealbreaker than anything else.

For now though my last few weeks of Heavensward will look a little like this:

  • Level Warrior and Dark Knight to 50
  • Finish up Anima weapon for Ninja
  • Level Machinist to 60 (I’m only 3 levels off…)
  • Level a tank to 60 (most likely Warrior)
  • Decide what to main for Stormblood!

Let’s see how far I’ll actually get!

On Shocking Shows and Regional Rigging

Posted on by
Reply

Wow. It’s been a while since I took the time to sit down and write out anything resembling a proper blog post.
After logging on I had to dust the corners, do the mandatory updates and clear out the shitload of spam in my pending comments list. I really don’t get why there are so many spambots online or what they think to achieve with random comments on small blogs, but well. The reason why I’ve sat down to write today is mostly because 1: I have an official national holiday and thus finally have some extra time off that I can spend however I like and 2: I’ve bingewatched 13 reasons why recently and I felt like I wanted to give my opinion on the show. So let’s start with that shall we?

Shocking content
First off, I stumbled across this show through 9gag. Yeah it sounds silly. I’ve never even considered the show as a thing untill I saw the jokes online and figured I’d have to watch this. I really don’t regret watching it at all. I think it took me about 2,5 days to get through all 13 episodes. I was fascinated from the start and didn’t really want to put my tablet (my primary Netflix machine) down untill I had seen the end. And what an end it was. Spoiler alert incoming, if you have not watched the entirety of the show yet turn away now!
Showing how Hannah Baker exactly killed herself in detail is something that you really need to prepare for. I understand all the fuss around this particular scene caused by psychologists and psychiatrists all around the globe. It’s not a pretty scene to watch, you literally see how she slits open her underarms and lies down to bleed to death, but I feel like for this show they needed to put it in. Just like the rape scenes weren’t pretty to watch, but they were needed.
We are a culture that sees the most gruesome things online these days and I feel that shows like 13 reasons why know this and step in and say “we can now publish more shocking things ourselves”. Although I don’t really agree with this train of thought I do agree that we are all adults and we should be able to see these things for as they are. Gruesome, shocking, anger inducing and saddening.
I’ve read many opinions about the show and how a lot of people feel like Hannah is being put on a pedestal and suicide is being romanticized here. And a part of me has to agree. But a part of me sees past this and to the core of the show itself. I don’t think this show was envisioned to be something to promote suicide. Instead it envisioned showing how our new, changing “always online” society is having an impact on people in their most vulnerable age range. Puberty is already a tough cookie to deal with with all the hormones changing in your body, your brain developing and having to go out there and rely on yourself instead of your parents. Couple this with kids always being online, in touch and not really having an “off switch” anymore and you exaggerate all the changes that are already going on. It shows how much of an impact social relationships have on humans in general, but on teenagers even more so. It shows how out of control things can get over a very short period of time. With fulltime working parents most kids are left to their own devices (in more and more cases literally devices!) and that doesn’t always turn out for the better.
Of course it’s only a show and an US show at that so things are probably more dramaticized than they are normally. But I still think it’s something we as society need to be aware of. Social media has brought us great things, but everything has a darker side. 13 Reasons Why portrays this darker side to the extreme.

Regional Fuckery
Now for something completely different. I remember the first time FFXIV did a partnership with Amazon for promotional goodies. It got people the Maid Attire and the Fat White Chocobo. At first this was only a Japan and US thing. They rolled it out in some European countries aswell but it never came to the Netherlands, causing me to miss out on something I actually would have wanted to have. Square Enix received a lot of backlash on this, especially from their European community. It’s nothing new that our region is left out. There are many goodies from game companies that are only on the markets in the US (I’m looking at you specifically here Blizzard) and we as Europeans either have to import stuff that costs us an arm and a leg or just give up on trying to get stuff at all.
Now what raised my bristles this past week was that I learned of yet another FFXIV x Amazon promotion… That was again US only. So seeing people post about how they got their Nimbus Cloud and showing ingame screenshots of it while again EU is being completely left out just baffles me. How can such a big international gaming company just completely ignore one of their gaming regions? Why is it always EU that feels like the middle child, the one that gets the least attention, that has to make do with what they have while the eldest and youngest both get spoiled beyond belief? It’s really frustrating to feel that once again our region doesn’t count for anything. Now there have been rumours that we as Europeans can buy the mount off the Mog Station instead. Personally I feel that’s not good enough. Give us a nice promotion aswell! Don’t make us spend money on it while others get their code ‘for free’ while purchasing something else. It’s just plain disgusting, angering and insulting to loyal fans of a franchise, who put money into that franchise every month, to just get the middle finger like this just because they happen to live in a different region. It’s bullshit and it’s stuff like this that makes me want to just cancel my sub and stop playing the game.

I had hoped that Square had learned from the last time they pulled this stunt, but apparently my hopes are in vain. Welcome to living in a part of the world that apparently doesn’t exist for gaming companies.

Ultra Beasts Caught

Posted on by
Reply

As the title says, I’ve done the Pokémon post game and caught all of the Ultra Beasts. It’s been a bit of a weird experience, seeing as you need to catch multiple of one type.
In the end you get to catch Necrozma, who isn’t an Ultra Beast but technically the Mewtwo of Alola. I saved my Master Ball for him and am now officially done with that part of the game.
Ofcourse the post game entails much more than just catching the Ultra Beasts. I still have two of the Island Guardians to catch. Tapu Koko and Tapu Lele are mine, but Tapu Fini and Tapu Bulu are still on my “to catch” list.
I’m also nowhere near completing the Aloladex being on about 140/301 Pokémon caught. So I still have a lot of travelling and catching to do to really finish up the game. Next to that I know there’s also still a ton of items to get still, most of which involve helping you get certain Pokémon evolutions. And then there is the Battle Tree which I still need to find… Aka, lots of little things to still finish up.

Pokemon Moon finished!

Posted on by
Reply

Apologies for the really bad picture but Pokémon Moon doesn’t really do ingame screenshots and I wanted to share my epic achievement.
I have defeated the Pokémon League in Pokémon Moon and effectively “finished” the game. I’ve seen credits rolling and everything, celebrating me becoming the first ever champion of Alola. And I loved every minute of it. Next to being happy that I was finally able to finish another game in my backlog it’s also the first Pokémon game from the 3DS generation that I’ve properly beaten. In both Pokémon X and Alpha Sapphire I’ve made quite some way into the game but never reached the Pokémon League before getting bored or switching over to a different game and forgetting about the game entirely. I do have to admit that this also kind of happened to Moon but last week I finally got the itch to play again and had set the goal for myself to beat it before my birthday so I could completely focus on Zelda.
This didn’t really happen.
Instead I dedicated last night to finishing off the game as I was on the Elite Four’s doorstep. My team at the end existed of Lunala, Decidueye, Arcanine, Magnezone, Marowak and Greninja. I almost lost out to professor Kukui but my team managed to pull through and I won.

Ofcourse beating the League doesn’t mean I’m actually done with the game. I know there’s quite a bit of postgame that I can still push through and, of course, there is this little matter of filling up my Pokédex. So far I’ve managed to catch Tapu Koko and picked up a lot of easy Pokémon that I was still missing like the two Fossil Pokémon and Type:Null. My Pokédex is currently on 105 out of 305 Pokémon caught so that’s not really too bad either. I’m training up all the Pokémon that I’ve caught so far so that I can redistribute them over the boxes of my PC and so that I can slowly work my way towards the big Ultra Beast and Tapu hunt that is the postgame. Plus it’s a nice break to just run around and level up Pokémon instead of having to beat a ton of hard to beat trainers and legendary Pokémon.
The one thing I’m kind of cranky about is that they didn’t give Sun/Moon a national dex, basically making it so that I don’t really feel the need to bring over Pokémon to those games just yet. I have Moon, X and Alpha Sapphire registered to Pokémon bank though and they have a national dex tied into that application so I can see how many Pokémon I actually own in total.

Anyway, I’m super happy that I’ve actually managed to finish this game within <6 months of buying it. It didn’t take me super long (25 hours played) but I’m guessing by the time my Pokédex will be filled I will easily be on double that number. If not more.

I’m in Love

Posted on by
Reply

So. Seeing as how it was my birthday yesterday I finally got my hands on Breath of the Wild.
I actually wasn’t planning to buy this game at all. I was going to wait untill I got a Switch later in the year and then buy it, but plans change. My dad needed a gift for my birthday and seeing as Nintendo has this habit of not really letting prices drop on their games well… I opted to ask for Breath of the Wild. And I’m extremely glad I did.

So far I’ve been really enjoying the game. I’m now (only) 6 hours in and already made my way to Kakariko village. I have had some distractions along the way. I’ve seen the Game Over screen more than enough already thanks to trying to swim in tar, icewater, getting killed by guardians and accidentally blowing myself up with bombs. Yet I love every minute of it. I love the weapon diversity, I love the bow and arrow gameplay. I like the fights and I already tamed my first horse! Yay for me!
All the little side things like taming horses, cooking, blowing up ore, picking herbs, catching bugs… Hell I even apparently activated a fairy thing. It’s all very well made and it will probably keep me busy for quite  some time. The map of Hyrule is seriously big and I’ve only touched upon a tiny fragment of it so far… I can’t wait to see what’s around the next corner!

P.S.
I also found out how to take screenshots on my WiiU. It’s a bit of a hassle but the result shows at the top of my post I guess. And yes my game is in Dutch.

It’s… March?

Posted on by
Reply

Wow. I’ve been bad with gaming this February.
I’ve put so many goals on my list and I’ve only managed to knock off three, in a game I actually wanted to play less. Go figure. It doesn’t really help that I was effectively knocked out with the flu the last week of February so that took a lot of time away from gaming aswell. Trying to get anything done with a fever is almost impossible. I’ve not raided in WoW since I’ve gotten ill either. I just feel terrible when I try to focus on a screen for longer than 45 mins at a time. Still I’ve dusted off the blog a bit to talk about what I did do last month and what my plans are for March.

First off:

  • Get my Arms artifact to 35
  • Work through the Illidan quesline
  • Work through the Artifact questline

I’ve been busy in World of Warcraft. All the goals I’ve set for this game have been met and then some. I finally got the “Balance of Power” achievement meaning I have now unlocked 3 out of 5 possible skins for my Fury Artifact weapon (I have 4 out of 5 for Arms thanks to the hidden appearance). The only ones I can still get are the PvP appearance and the hidden appearance. Seeing as I’m not a big fan of PvP I don’t see that one coming anytime soon and the hidden appearance requires me to grind Halls of Valor in hopes of a drop from God King Skovald.. Something I’ve not yet been able to motivate myself to do.
I’ve also leveled my druid to level 110 and am currently working on finishing the class campaign so I can unlock my 3rd relic slot on her. I’m happy to have a max level healer again and I do plan on playing her for Mythic+ content, but for now I’m slowly tackling content. I’ve yet to finish all quests in Highmountain and I’ve not even looked at Suramar yet so enough to do there! I have reached ilvl 815 so far so I hope to be slowly able to build that up to a level where I can start running some LFR and higher Mythic+ content. I guess we’ll see.

As for the rest of my February goals… They’ve all failed. I have not been spending much time on FFXIV at all, only really leveling my Dark Knight a bit (she’s level 35 as we speak!) and picking up the rewards from the fanfest stream that I bought. I’m not that enchanted with the High Summoner attire, but that can also be due to low resolution on my PC. I used my Au’Ra to model since I just happened to log in on her to pick up the pieces to begin with.

Looking Ahead

Looking ahead to March I’m unsure how much gaming time I can actually get in. I’m still feeling rather unwell and there are a lot of things happening this month. My free days aren’t actually that “free” so most of my gaming will happen during the limited free time I do have and during the evenings after work.
That being said I’m shoving aside FFXIV and any other game but WoW for raids after March 17th since that is my birthday and I’ll be getting The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild as a gift (the WiiU version). I’m really excited about this since it looks to be a very awesome game. Especially since it’s a gift from my dad and I’ve not gotten a game from him since childhood I really want to make this special and enjoy it to it’s fullest. I do realize it’s a huge open world game and it will take me a lot of hours to actually complete it. Nonetheless I want to play it as much as possible.

Other than that I don’t really want to make goals for this month mostly due to being too busy to actually get major stuff done. I might put some effort into leveling some more alts in FFXIV and probably gearing my Druid in WoW but that’s it really.
I do hope to write a bit more on the blog, especially when I receive Zelda, but I can’t promise anything.