Category Archives: Gaming

Nearing Completion

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Character in field of flowers

I’m so, so terribly close to getting all my battle jobs to level 80 in Final Fantasy XIV that I can almost smell it. Right now my Gunbreaker is just shy of level 78 and I need to do most of my roulettes still this reset, which I’ll probably do tomorrow since it’s already past midnight and I’m really sleepy right now.
I’m hoping I will be level 80 by the weekend, get my Amaro mount and then drop the mad grind that I’ve been on for the past two or three weeks. Granted I could have gotten this milestone a lot earlier but I’ve been on hiatus in FFXIV a bit so it didn’t happen when I originally tought it would.
Being in the middle of the first week of another two week holiday though means I have ample time to get this done while also steadily working away at leveling my crafting jobs with the “new” Dwarf beast tribe dailies. I’ve gotten my Carpenter to 80 so far and my Weaver isn’t far behind. Seeing as I never really enjoyed the whole Ishgard crafting grind I’d rather opt into leveling my crafters this way, slow and steady wins the race right?
I also need to find a new sort of “daily” routine when I don’t have any more battle jobs to level. I think I may just stick to doing ex-roulette for now and the weekly clears next to the crafter dailies. I want to gear up my jobs and the only way to do that is to get through the latest content. I may do a bit of level roulette on my tanks for the achievement but I’ll see when I get there.

Next to completing a long standing goal in FFXIV, I’ve also been making more progress towards filling up my Pokédex in Pokémon Sword. I’m now down to needing only 38 more Pokémon for the base dex completion and I’m going over to my best friend tomorrow who owns Shield and trade a bunch of version exclusives with him. Which then leaves me with only a handful of Pokémon I still need to catch on my own. Yay! After that I’m going to turn my attention to the Isle of Armor and the Pokémon there so I can get my awesome crown and be ready for the Crown Tundra DLC that’s not too far away now either.
If I manage to complete this Pokédex it will be the first time I’ve completed a Pokédex in a Pokémon game ever. The closest I came to achieving this feat was when I was still a kid and playing my copy of Pokémon Blue. I was up to 146 Pokémon caught for the dex but for some reason I resetted my game after that, much to my regrets. Afterwards I’ve never come close to completion again, with the best try on Pokémon Black but that were just so many Pokémon.. That I basically gave up after over 70 hours played.
In Sword I’ve clocked in around 65 hours now, making it the game I’ve put the most hours in on my Switch by far. I dare take it even further and say that if I cross the playtime I had on my copy of Pokémon Black with Pokémon Sword it will be the single player game that I have spent the most time on of all time.

Finally I’ve been slowly working through my backlog again. The latest title that I’m working on is Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze. Me and my best friend both own a copy of this game, me on my WiiU and he on his Switch. I figured it would be nice to go through the game at the same time so we can share our triumphs and frustrations. Little did I know that he would be way more frustrated than me. Even so frustrated that he has switched from normal mode to Funky Mode so that the game was doable for him. I don’t have this luxury on the WiiU and as such I’m playing the game on the original difficulty level. I’ve made it up to the boss of the fourth world, meaning I only have two more worlds to go after I defeat it. I’ve not really been doing a completionist run so there are a lot of levels that I have yet to unlock and a lot of collectibles to get. However my main goal is to just see the credit roll so I’m not really fussed about skipping these. I just want to stripe another game of my backlog. And with the tempo I’m going that should be doable by the end of the week aswell.

All in all it feels nice to be completing so many things at once. It’s mentally rewarding and it gives me the chance to set new fresh goals afterwards! But first it’s time for some much needed sleep.

Sandy’s MMO Sunday: FFXIV Galore, August 30th 2020

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Newest Yo-Kai mount

Whew. A lot of stuff has happened over in MMO country the past few weeks. The new MMO from Amazon is being tested as we speak but for me the focus always lies on my main two MMO’s, so those are the only things I’ll focus on in my blog posts. I mean, I can’t write about something I have no interest in, right?
We have gotten a release date for Shadowlands in World of Warcraft, October 27th. Final Fantasy XIV had patch 5.3 drop, aswell as the Moonfire Faire and Rising events and the Yo-Kai watch event renewed.
Since I’m more or less on a break from WoW, after basically gaining all the stuff I wanted to before pre-patch would hit, I’ve gone straight back to playing a lot of FFXIV. It also helps that my WoW guildies have more or less moved there aswell for the time being so I have more people to play with again but I’ve always kept up with FFXIV on the side, especially when the newest patch would hit. So this was no different with 5.3

First thing’s first: I finished the 5.3 mainstory. I’m not going to spoil anything about it here because I would hate to get spoiled myself so I won’t do it unto others. The only thing I have to say, once again, is damn you Square Enix for getting me to care about this world and the characters inhabiting it. On more than one occassion FFXIV has managed to make me cry and the latest patch has not been an exception to that. What kind of tears they were I’ll leave up to you to find out yourselves if you play the game and have yet to go through this part of the story.
Next to the mainstory there were a plethora of other things to unlock, with the most important for me the new “beast tribe” in the form of the Dwarves. It feels kind of weird to see them as beast tribe since they are basically the mirror race of Lalafells but in a way it makes sense. I’m in love with the music that plays in their little area in Lakeland and I can’t wait to unlock the mount you get from them: an actual battle tank. It’s also helping me to level up my crafting jobs since I bounced kind of hard off of the whole Ishgard restoration. I’m not sure why but I just really didn’t enjoy it. Maybe I’ll get into it again at some point but for now I’m happy to level up my crafters with these dailies and so far it has gotten my Carpenter to level 80 and my Weaver to level 75.
I have yet to unlock the new 24 man raid, Puppet’s Bunker, but I’m sure I’ll get around to doing that next week.

As mentioned there were also a few events going the past few weeks and I’ve partaken in all of them. The Moonfire Faire has gotten me a lovely outfit, as seen in the screenshot above. The Rising gave us the Wind-up Ardbert and the Yo-Kai event came back with a vengeance with new minions and weapons to get for the classes added in Stormblood and Heavensward and, after getting all of those, a new mount also pictured above. I decided to try and get this done as soon as I possibly could seeing as the first two weeks of an event like this the FATE farm trains are going strong and the longer you wait the bigger the chance that it comes down to having to solo the lot which isn’t something I would recommend.
It’s really nice just getting these things done, especially events like the Rising that come with a message from the development team every year. For now though I will have to wait untill the next event which will probably be in October around Halloween.

Level 80 Dark Knight ding

Next to doing the new 5.3 content and the various events I also doubled down on leveling up the last remaining battle jobs I have left. As of this morning I managed to ding level 80 on my Dark Knight, as pictured above, and now I only have Gunbreaker left. I unlocked the job and did the level 60 beast tribe dailies aswell as the level 60 job quest so far. I have to get used to Gunbreaker a lot after playing Dark Knight. There’s more buttons to press for damage since you basically have two single target and one AoE rotation with their respective cooldowns. Then there’s the whole ammo mechanic that I’m still learning but all in all I can see how people like this class and I can’t wait to get it to level 80 and finally get that coveted Amaro mount afterwards. If I keep on playing FFXIV like I’ve been doing for the past weeks I won’t have any doubts that I will get to that level 80 within the next two weeks.

Together with getting level 80 on my Dark Knight I also finished off the final 15 FATEs that I needed in the Tempest to hit rank 3 FATEs with all the zones. I now have access to all rank 3 vendors in the zones aswell as the special vendor in the Crystarium. I see that they sell a lot of stuff that I still want and for that I will need to farm more FATEs, but for now I’m content with not doing any untill my Gunbreaker gets into Shadowbringers content. It’s been quite a dull grind and I’m happy that I was able to complete it. Another notch on my belt so to speak.

Other content consumption
Next to dedicating a lot of time to FFXIV I’ve also been busy with consuming other types of content.
Lucifer dropped the first part of season five last week and I’ve been slowly going through that. I only have about two episodes to go now untill the mid season break and there have been a few interesting plot points so far. Tom Ellis is putting on a top notch performance and I’m happy to see it back on screen and I hope the second half will come out sooner rather than later.
I’ve been reading a lot of Robin Hobb books, that centre around the realm of the Elderlings, the past months and I’m finally down to the last book of the entire series. This means that I’m basically on book 16/16 right now. It’s been quite a ride and honestly the worldbuilding she does is amazing. I really want to know how the series ends but also don’t want it to end at the same time. It’s quite a conondrum. Right now I’m reading 2-4 chapters per day and I’m about 1/3rd of the way into the final book.
Finally my time has been consumed by watching a lot of League of Legends. All of the big regions are in play-off mode right now and I feel like my TV has been on with LoL for the past 48 hours. I’ve been catching games from Europe, North America, China and Korea. It’s a great way to spend time but also nice to have on as “background noise” while doing other things. Next week are the finals everywhere and I can’t wait to see how things play out in both Europe and North America specifically.

All in all I’m pretty happy with the progress I’ve made in FFXIV and I hope I can continue this streak next week. Maybe I’ll hop back into WoW again aswell, even if it’s just to clean out inventories in preparation for the pre-patch and maybe run some old raids now that we’ve not all been scaled down to level 50 yet. I guess we’ll see. For now though the match between Rogue and Mad Lions is only 30 mins away from starting and that will probably keep me occupied untill well in the evening.

Blaugust Promptapalooza #28: Content Content Content

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Wow, I can’t believe the Blaugust Promptapalooza is almost at an end. We are currently on day 28, since we started one day early, and it’s my turn!
If you’ve missed it, yesterday’s prompt was hosted by Telwyn over at GamingSF where was discussed which piece(s) of technology would be the hardest to live without.
For a full list of participants please head over to aggronaut.com.

So today it’s my turn and Bel thought up an interesting topic for me, one that I’ve been pondering over since last night:
What are some of the things that you wish you knew before you started creating content?

When I first started blogging, way back in I think 2010? I don’t really remember but it was around Wrath of the Lich King in WoW, I kind of rode the hype train surrounding the World of Warcraft Blogging Community. I was a college student at the time with way too much time on my hands and after reading a few other people’s blogs, most notably “The Barrens Chat” and “Righteous Orbs” I felt like I could do the same and write about a lot of things that were WoW related. I don’t think I have the blogs from my beginner days anymore but I do remember kind of hitting the same wall that I’ve been hitting untill today: lack of consistency. Which is the biggest thing I wish I would have prepared for when I started blogging.

I’m sure that Mr. Peril over at Contains Moderate Peril has mentioned this in one of his posts about blog writing but if you want to build and keep an audience that will keep on reading your blog one of the key things is being consistent and being predictable. Have your posts come out on the same days. Choose a layout for your posts that is easy to read and in this way build familiarity for your reader base. And have them coming back to reading your blog every time you post something.
I’ve been inconsistent in both ways from the start. I can go weeks on end without posting a single blog entry, mostly because I’m a really bad planner and I just simply forget to put blogging in my weekly “to do” list. I’m also inconsistent in the layouts of my posts, although I do try to start most of them with a screenshot from one of the games I’m playing. The one I’ve used for this post is in no way affiliated to the topic but I just wanted something to look at besides a wall of text. Which is also something I’m inconsistent with, remembering to take screenshots from the games I’m playing. Usually I’m so immersed in whatever I’m doing that I completely zone out and forget to take screenshots which I then can write my posts around… Can you see the cycle I’m in?

Anyway, consistency basically requires making the time to blog on a regular basis. Like all other activities in life it’s best to set aside some time each week, dedicated to writing a blog and then actually sitting down and writing it. I’ve always been bad with planning and sticking to planning and it has been the bane of my existence as blogger but also as functional human being to begin with. Creating content, or in my case blogging, is best not done on a whim like I seem to be doing. Instead being aware and making time on your schedule for content creation is key and one of the big things I wish I had known before I dove headfirst into the fray.

Maybe someday I will get the hang of planning my blog posts and pushing them out on a more consistent and predictable basis, who knows. But to anyone thinking of creating content I will tell you this: schedule it. Make the time, stick to it, be consistent and the world will be your oyster. And that’s all I have to say on this topic.

Tomorrow’s promptapalooza post will be hosted on Endgame Viable by UltrViolet, don’t forget to follow the train to it’s next destination!

Sandy’s (non)MMO Sunday: Melting Melting Melting!

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There’s a heatwave absolutely terrorizing northwestern Europe. It’s one of those things that has become the new “norm” with climate change but unfortunately my country especially isn’t trained enough yet to deal with this. We’ve been so used to having a mild climate, cool summers, gentle winters, that these obscenely hot temperatures are throwing everything into disarray. The worst part isn’t even the fact that it’s 30+ degrees for over a week, it’s that our houses are built to keep the heat in. So once they heat up, they’re almost impossible to cool back down. It’s horrendous and one of the reasons I’m keeping most, if not all, of my electronics turned off. My computer and consoles all just generate way too much heat to use and with this heat lasting atleast another 3-4 days I think the only times I can get a bit of MMO time in is either really early in the morning, or not at all. I’m blessed enough to be spending a few days at the office while enjoying airconditioning, so there’s that, but otherwise it’s grin and bear it and wait untill the heat breaks.
On top of the heat it’s also prime insect time and there are way too many flying bugs in my house right now and it’s giving me the creeps. I have had to catch and release atleast two moths that made their way in and I’ve been trying to chase out flies and other winged insects while trying to keep as much as I can out. I’m doubting if I want to install some screens in my windows to keep everything out, but outside of a few weeks in summer I don’t really have that many insects around so I’m still doubting whether or not I should.

Anyway, that’s the current state of things and as such I’ve had to rethink how I spend my free time. Obviously playing a lot of World of Warcraft and/or Final Fantasy XIV is out of the question since I’d either have to use my PC or PS4, both of which generate a lot of heat. Added on top of that I’m kind of burned out on WoW anyway so I don’t really feel like logging more than two times a week to keep up with emissaries on my Warrior. FFXIV is releasing patch 5.3 next week though so I may jump into that, once temperatures have come down again (hopefully) at the end of the week.

So instead of playing MMO’s I’ve been reading a lot and playing on my Switch. Book wise I’m working my way through the Rain Wilds Chronicles by Robin Hobb and I’m at the final book now. Games wise I’ve been putting a bit of time in Fire Emblem: Three Houses and finished off the first official mission. There’s a lot of things to take into consideration by playing this game, especially with the whole “daily life” aspect that happens in between the battles. It feels like there’s always so much to do and not enough points to spend to do everything. Of course this will change the further I get into the game but for now I’m slightly annoyed that I can’t do everything I want… But oh well.
In Pokémon I finally picked up where I left off on the Isle of Armor and took my Kubfu to the Tower of Water so it could evolve into Urshifu Water form. I’m kinda sad to see the cute little fellow evolve but I know it was one of the big goals of this DLC so I did it anyway. Now I’m working on the questline to unlock Dynamaxing for it, but I kind of abandoned that for a bit to chase more Pokémon to fill up my Pokédex with. I’m currently sitting on 330/400 Pokémon caught for the Galarian Pokédex and I made a list for my friend who has Shield, I have Sword, of exclusives that I still need. Those add up to about 18 Pokémon which means I still need to catch around 50 on my own. So I’ve been working on that and it’s slightly annoying since most of the Pokémon that I still need now are either a very low encounter chance, 1-5%, or only appear during certain weather types. I’m super close though, I’ve never been this close to completing a Pokédex since I was a kid and had 146/150 caught in Pokémon Blue.

All in all I foresee a lot more reading and playing Switch games this week aslong as temperatures stay the way they are. As for the rest of today… The final regular week of the League championships in Europe and North America are happening this weekend and a lot of things are still at stake so it’s a really good weekend to watch. I need to do some light chores still, folding some laundry, taking out the trash, cleaning up my tables and of course there’s the matter of cooking dinner while trying not to melt.
So yeah, this is what my days look like right now. What are you guys up to? Let me know in the comments!

 

 

Chasing Completion

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I’ve alluded to it multiple times but I feel like I’ve done pretty much everything I wanted to do in the World of Warcraft. As such I’ve been trying to come up with new things to keep me occupied in the game, rather than taking an (extended) break. So when all else fails, or better when I don’t want to do challenging group content, I return to my completionist roots and start working away on earning achievements again. One of the more notable ones that I was close to was to get 100 reputations to Exalted. I think I only needed 5 more before the weekend. I found out that I could get two “free” reputations to Exalted by going back to Desolace and finish a, for some reason, resetted questline involving two centaur clans. After completing said questchain I got awarded with both their reputations being set to Exalted. The next reputation that I managed to get up, with the help of Timewalking, was the Sha’tari Defense reputation from Warlords of Draenor. For some reason though that one didn’t count towards my 100 so I had to think of other reputations to grind.
And that’s how I spent two to three hours of my Sunday grinding out Gadgetzan, Ratchet and Everlook reputation by committing pirate genocide in Tanaris. I got lucky with another player seeking to do the same and we grouped up, making the farm twice as fast. At the end of that grind I walked away with all those reps to Exalted, the achievement completed and a mount and title earned. There’s not many reputations that I’ve not touched now. I think three PvP ones are most notable, Silverwing Sentinels from Warsong Gulch, League of Arathor from Arathi Basin and Wrynns Vanguard from Ashran. I doubt I’ll ever get those to Exalted since I’ve not been interested in running battlegrounds for a long time now.
As far as PvE reptutations go… I still have Ravenholdt on Neutral and if I really wanted to I guess I could go for Insane in the Membrane, but I’m not that crazy yet. There’s Chromie rep to get and a variety of fishing reputations aswell as Draenor Garrisson bodyguard stuff. Nothing that is very appealing to me right now. I’m also still steadily working away on getting Exalted with the Rajani, I’m done with Uldum Accord, but that rep is limited to the assaults and dailies that I can do. I’m currently sitting around 17.5/21k though so I think I should be done with them around the weekend.

I’ve also started to do achievements that are specifically tied to Battle for Azeroth. Killing all rares in the various zones. Finding all treasures. Read scrolls and ride rickety planks or find grey items that are hidden in plain sight, if you know where to look. Eventually I’ll get to the harder to get ones and back to Nazjatar and Mechagon meta achievements, if I can keep interested until that.
There’s also some older “group” achievements that I’m eyeing to do. They mostly evolve around raid/dungeon achievements that also give a mount and I see that I’ve basically stopped doing them around Mists of Pandaria. Since that is all outdated content now I’m going to try to do as much as I can on my own and maybe ask a friend or two to assist me with the rest. That should keep me busy for a while atleast.

I’m also maybe planning to casually level up some Allied Race toons, if only to unlock their respective heritage armours and get those achievements out of the way aswell. Leveling is pretty braindead right now and fast enough to keep me entertained while also getting reasonable progress when I play for an hour or so. I’ve been poking around on a Lightforged Draenei Paladin and a Zandalari Troll Monk. Seeing as how I play tank and healer respectively I get pretty fast dungeon queues and when I don’t feel like doing dungeons I can just switch to a dps spec and quest my way up. By no means is this a big time consumption for me and I’m not going to make it some sort of “must do” goal but it’s nice to sometimes play a lower level toon and not have to think about too much.

Anyway, before this post turns even more rambly that’s what I’m mostly up to in WoW these days and I don’t see it changing anytime soon. I’m also still playing FFXIV and leveling my Dark Knight there now, but that also limits itself to doing the pixie dailies and a random dungeon when I feel like it. I feel like summer is kind of taking away my will to game and instead I’m trying to be more outside. Be it in an active way or just lounging on my balcony while reading a book, it feels good to be in the fresh air and about instead of staying cooped up in my apartment the entire day. Especially now that my vacation is over and I’m back to work I feel like I need to make use of my free time to get away from my house, before the walls start closing in on me.
And inbetween that I’m satisfying my completionist urges. Let’s hope those can tie me over untill the Shadowlands prepatch.

End of Vacation

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They say that time flies when you’re having fun. It’s not a wrong saying but time seems to fly by in general these days. I blinked and my two week vacation was done. I went to my cabin in the woods. I’ve relaxed. I did a small project that was sort of related to work but not really and I’ve slipped back into the habit of reading a bit every day.
I managed to get my Warrior to level 80 in Final Fantasy XIV and I’m turning my attention towards leveling Dark Knight now. Being a tank aswell I’m sure I’ll have that up to 80 in no time and then it’s just Gunbreaker left.
I’ve been poking about in World of Warcraft the most on my Warrior. I’ve been diligently doing my dailies on her and managed to get the Uldum Accord reputation up to Exalted, which means I can drop doing those dailies (yay!) and only have the Rajani reputation left to get to Exalted… I’m only 5k reputation off that so I think I can get to it next week maybe.
With working on these reputations I realized I wasn’t too far off the 100 reputations to Exalted achievement. I went back to Desolace to bump up the centaur reputations to Exalted there and I’m working on the Sha’tari Defense reputation now that we have Warlords of Draenor timewalking up. If I can finish that up and get Exalted with the Rajani I only have one more reputation left. Unfortunately that one will require some grinding on my end since it’s one of the goblin town reputations (Gadgetzan) and I’m about 5k off there aswell… And the only way to get that up is to repeatedly kill pirates in Tanaris that give 5 reputation per kill. I kill them pretty fast but it’s 200 kills for 1k rep so that means that I’ll have to kill around 1000 mobs to get where I need to be. I could sit down for a day and grind it out but I’m not that masochistic so I’m taking 30 minutes here and there to dedicate to that grind.

I’m not sure how to feel about these two weeks off. I did what I wanted to do in regards to taking a weekend away from my house and I managed to read through two full books, but on the gaming front and on the relaxation front I’m not that happy. I do feel more relaxed than I have been in a long time, but I’m also still somewhat restless and dreading to go back to work on Monday. In the gaming world I’ve been mostly hopping back and forth between games but never sat down to play through something properly. I spent most of my time poking around on WoW and chasing silly goals and I did a light leveling bit on FFXIV but that’s mostly it. I didn’t touch Ratchet & Clank and I didn’t touch the Final Fantasy 7 Remake.
I didn’t even manage to keep up with my weekly planner, something I have been doing since I got it and it kind of stings. Luckily I’ll have a rematch next week which I will be planning out tomorrow.. But it still doesn’t sit quite right with me.
If anything it shows me I’m still far away from forming good habits and having a clear structure to my days. Going back to work may help a bit in that regard but I struggle with making “optimal use” of my free time. I tend to spend a lot of time just lounging on the couch and staring into the abyss or the tv while time ticks away and it annoys me. I want to be more productive and I want to have more fun doing things after work but I’m just struggling to motivate myself to get there.

For now though it’s time that I get a good night’s sleep and then have my final day of no work that’s probably filled with doing chores tomorrow… I can’t wait till my next two weeks off.

Cabin in the Woods

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Vacation has been treating me well. It’s taken a few days to wind down and not feel completely exhausted, 5 to be precise, and I’ve been enjoying the stress free life. A part of me is curious how my team is doing without me but I need to learn to let go, so I’m doing exactly that.
I’ve been spending a lot of time sleeping, doing as little as possible and gaming. Especially World of Warcraft has seen a lot of love the past few days with me kind of abandoning the gold grind for a bit and instead hunting achievements on my Warrior. The army of alts that I’ve been using to grind gold have kind of worn me out and as such it was nice to put that on hold and just play my Warrior and not worry about running EVERYTHING because I feel like I have to. We still do our weekly heroic Ny’alotha clear and I’m helping people with some Mythic+ keys but overall I’m noticing that my playtime has gone down significantly and my focus has shifted to other things.
Like playing Final Fantasy XIV! The next patch, 5.3, is due to land on August 11th. I managed to get the Ixion mount that I had been wanting from the Moogle Tome Event today so I’m essentially done with that for now. My Warrior is sitting at level 78 and I managed to unlock two more Relic Weapons for my Dragoon and Bard respectively. I love that they only take 1000 Tomestones of Poetics to unlock since you kind of get those passively if you do roulettes anyway. After my Warrior gets to level 80 I only have Dark Knight and Gunblade left and then I’m done with all my battle jobs. I may turn my attention back to crafting instead then to get all those jobs from 70 to 80 and then I really only have Blue Mage left before I’m officially done with leveling everything.

However those plans need to be put on hold for a few days since I’m leaving for a cabin in the woods tomorrow for a long weekend. I have my bag already packed. I’m taking my Switch and an e-reader and nothing else. I just have to check the air in my tires before I go tomorrow and do a few groceries and then I’m all set. It’s going to be so nice to escape my apartment for a bit and have a “vacation feel” for real, even if it’s only for a few days. I’m planning to keep my phone off for most of the time when I’m there since I just really need to disconnect from social media and everything related to that for a bit. I’m planning on doing some nice walks and maybe dip into the local swimming pool but otherwise it’s just relaxing to the max. The cabin I’m renting is a bit of a luxury one which comes with a bath that also doubles as jacuzzi and a sauna and I’m going to use both. I even finally get to use some of the bathbombs I’ve taken home with me from work!

I’ll come back on Monday afternoon and then I still have the rest of the week off to enjoy untill I go back to work. For now though I’m going to get a good night’s sleep before I do the final round of apartment cleaning tomorrow morning and head off for a few days.

What are you doing this weekend?

Sandy’s MMO Sunday: July 5th, Big Milestones Time!

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Warrior on Black Serpent of N'zoth

When there’s progress and you know it clap your hands!

What a long strange trip it’s been for the past few weeks. I’ve been writing drafts, deleting them and then starting new ones without actually finding it good enough to post. I don’t know how many semi finished posts have ended up in the trash but it’s been more than I intended to have.
As I’m writing this I only have one week of work left and then I’ll be away from having to work from home or in the office for two glorious weeks. I’ve been looking forward to this for quite a while now, I can feel it’s been a while since I had more than a long weekend off. It’s summer here in the Netherlands and as a good Dutch summer pertains we had a few days of seriously hot weather followed by rain, wind, and more rain. As I’m writing this post it’s sunny out but also very windy so I can’t really have all my windows open because the wind is making them slam shut. Instead I’ve opted to open my balcony door, which is pretty securely fastened, and then try to cool down my house a bit that way. So I figured now was a perfect time to attempt another blog post, in the hopes that this one will make it to published status.

So to start off: I’ve been extremely busy in the World of Warcraft. I’ve been working on many different things and am close to accomplishing a few of the bigger goals I set for myself in this game.
First off I managed to complete both a Stormwind and Orgrimmar 5 mask Vision run. Both were brutal in their own way but I’m glad I did it nonetheless. Since I completed them solo I got a nice Feat of Strength achievement, which came with a shiny title, and I was one step closer to getting the meta-achievement to get a mount. Today I managed to finally complete the last step I needed for that and obtained the mount as shown in the screenshot, the Black Serpent of N’Zoth. I’m so pleased! This means I don’t really have to do difficult Visions anymore but instead I can just relax and start grinding out currency so I can buy another mount and a backpack transmog item, the first one in the game. This was one of the things on my big “I have to complete this before Shadowlands comes out” so I’m happy to be able to cross it off the list.

Another big goal I was working towards getting is timing every single dungeon on a Mythic+15 level. For a quick explanation, dungeons in WoW are for 5 people. As you level up you unlock the “Normal” version and once you hit max level you unlock “Heroic” version. Things start getting interesting from “Mythic” version and upwards. Seeing as you can just queue up for Normals and Heroics they’re usually pretty fast and easy to use to gear and level up your character. For Mythic (and Mythic+) you need to assemble a group yourself, like in ye gooden olde times. You can still use the Looking for Dungeon tool but it’s not as easy as queuing up. Now the + in Mythic+ comes from the fact that you can “level up” Mythic dungeons by the use of keys. In theory these keys can level up infinitely but there are some major breaking points to be had. With every level the dungeon goes up the mobs in the dungeon increase in health and damage done. Next to that there will also be special affixes to the dungeons. The very first one is one that is active from Mythic 2 and up and it is one that boosts either Boss health or Trash health, then at Mythic 4, Mythic 7 and Mythic 10 another affix is added to the dungeon making it much harder to attempt. The affixes can be many things and for a full explanation of them I would like to refer you to this guide on WoWhead.
I’ve gotten to the point that I’ve been sort of smoothly tackling Mythic level 15 and above. I’ve done every single dungeon on level 15 except for one. Which is kind of a bummer since if you do all of them at level 15 or above you get a nice Feat of Strength achievement and a mount. Which is obviously what I’m after most. I’m hoping that I can get into a group for that final dungeon somewhere this week because the affixes are relatively easy so it shouldn’t be to hard to get. Once I do that’s another big goal striped off the list!

Warrior in Uldum for daily quests

Feeding a little monster

With the above two goals being (almost) completed it means I have to look for something new to keep me occupied in WoW. I’m still working away on leveling up my Rajani and Uldum Accord reputation, whenever I feel like doing the dailies. I’m also doing a daily quest chain in Uldum which will eventually reward me with a mount, but I’m not quite there yet. Other than that I’ve kind of given up on leveling more alts for the time being since I don’t want to burn myself out even harder on this game. Instead I’ve decided to be insane and try to farm enough gold to get the 5 million Brutosaurus mount before it disappears in the Shadowlands prepatch. I’m currently sitting on 600k gold so I still have quite a ways to go, but I’m hoping I can get there. I have 4 max level characters which I can use to farm old raids with, who I’m doing all Emissaries with and who I use for crafting various gear items to sell at the vendors. All in all I’m making around 50-100k gold per week just from “farming” gold. If I could start playing the Auction House in addition to that I’m pretty sure that I will be able to make that 5 million gold in time. But only time will tell.

All this focused attention on WoW has unfortunately meant that I’ve barely played anything else. I did a few sessions of FFXIV over the past weeks but didn’t really make any progress. I should really play a bit more though because I still want that Ixion mount before it’s gone. I have untill August 11th though but I don’t want to do it last minute.

As for the rest of my gaming time.. Well I have picked up a new hobby that has nibbled into that. I will probably do a blogpost on that somewhere this week so keep an eye out for it! For now I’m going back into WoW and grind out some more gold.

Sandy’s MMO Sunday… Err Tuesday? June 16th 2020

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I realized I didn’t do my MMO Sunday this week and the week before. While I have actually been pretty busy in, mostly, the World of Warcraft. We’ve been steadily clearing Ny’alotha heroic every week. Last week I joined on my Hunter and we managed to down all 12 bosses in one raid night. I’ve also been more active doing Mythic+ on my Warrior and have gotten 3 +15 dungeons done now. My aim is to get all of the dungeons timed on +15 before the season ends.
I’ve managed to get all the loot I need from Ny’alotha heroic, meaning I finally replaced my shield and my one hander and even managed to snag the N’zoth two handed weapon that comes with a rank 3 Twilight Devastation corruption. So gearwise I’m pretty much done untill Shadowlands. We may tackle a few mythic raiding bosses but that’s still up in the air. But when it comes to raiding content we can pack up and wait untill Shadowlands hits. We’ve actually been allowing alts into the raid and I’ve run Ny’alotha on my Hunter and gotten a few sweet pieces of loot from it to boot.

I’ve also been trying to do a solo 5 mask run in the Visions of N’zoth and got really frustrated with trying to do Stormwind. The Mage Quarter is a nightmare to begin with but with Leaden Feet as affix it was just undoable. So I gave up on trying that and waiting untill the next round of Stormwind and hope the affixes are better. I do hope I can do a 5 mask run in Orgrimmar this week and see how that turns out. Otherwise I have to say I’m kind of “burned out” with WoW and don’t really feel like playing anything else besides my Warrior. I’ve almost gotten every Essence and up to rank 3. I only miss the regular and rated pvp rank 3’s and the one from Nazjatar World PvP. I’ve kind of decided to not even start pursuing that last one because World PvP is annoying enough without having to do it in a dead zone. So I’ve been toning down my goals and spending less time online and instead am focusing more on my single player games and getting back into FFXIV.

Speaking of FFXIV, I’ve not given it the love it deserves. I still need to get the Ixion mount and my Warrior is still stuck at level 74. I think I’m going to take time away from WoW and put it towards playing more FFXIV instead so I can get stuff done there. Maybe I’ll start doing that this week.

Otherwise I don’t really have much to talk about when it comes to my MMO’s. So this was a short and sweet update.

 

Summer of Platformers: #1 New Super Mario Bros U

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Sparkling Waters world, before the worst platforming nightmares

It’s a time! For the review of my first game of my Summer of Platformers. And really, would there be any surprise if I kicked off with anything else than the icon of platforming himself? Yeah I didn’t think so either.
To say that this game has been one of the most frustrating experiences I’ve had in a while would be an understatement. I’ve cursed and raged and almost threw my WiiU gamepad across the room. Nonetheless I finished the game today and it’s been a wild ride.

Initially I thought I had picked an “easy” game to start out my Summer of Platformers with. I mean, Mario is generally a kids game right? There is no way that I’m bad at a game aimed at kids. Hell I think my best friends’ seven year old kid would probably have a good time going at this game. Boy was I wrong.
I’m not sure if it’s the WiiU controls, you’re kind of forced to play it with the gamepad as single player, or if I’m just this rusty when it comes to platformers but I seriously considered just putting down the game and not look back at it instead of pushing it through to the end. I had one game over, which means I managed to go from over 30 lives to 0 somewhere during the final few worlds of the game, and I actually used the “Super Guide” function to play through two levels that were just so frustrating that I couldn’t do it myself. As such I have slightly cheated in finishing this game but what’s done is done. I have skipped getting a lot of the star coins and I’m definitely not touching the super special world that opened up after I defeated Bowser. I’ve watched some gameplay of that on Youtube and immediatly noped the hell out. I mean, I can’t even get through all the regular levels without help from the Super Guide, imagine me doing levels that require super clutch platforming skills.

Capture from the ending credits

It took me roughly 10 hours and 30 minutes to defeat Bowser. I’ve never once gone back to do a level when I thought that I wanted to get a coin that I missed and I didn’t necessarily stop and do all the Toad Houses for bonuses either. There’s definitely two hidden levels that I haven’t unlocked that I know of and probably even more. As such I consider this playthrough a “main story” run only. Looking at the numbers on howlongtobeat this puts me an hour above the average game time for people that only beat the “main story”. I’m putting this in quotes mostly because it’s a Mario game and as such it doesn’t really have a story beyond “go save Peach.. again”.

I can’t be all negative about this game. For a game from 2012 (God has it been that long?) graphically it still looked pretty fine. I forgot that the WiiU wasn’t necessarily a piece of junk hardware and the games that Nintendo developed for it look pretty decent still. It was a true Mario game with tons of colourful characters and silly music. I do always feel bad that I have to beat up all of Bowser’s kids before I get to kick his ass, then again they are in cahoots and are making my life difficult so in a way they deserve it right? I also have to say that I enjoy the flying squirrel suit and the levels where I could take advantage of that were more of a breeze than the ones that required really tight platforming. The Yoshi levels were interesting aswell, especially after I found out that Yoshi will eat almost everything when it comes to enemies, significantly reducing the difficulty of some of those levels because of it. On the flipside the moment something would touch me that shouldn’t Yoshi would chicken out, causing me to have to run after him and getting myself killed in that process more than once. Wuss dinosaur.

All in all I’m happy that I picked this game to start off my challenge with. It’s definitely on the harder side compared to a Kirby or Yoshi game. It felt immensly satisfying to finish it though and I’m already thinking about what I want to tackle next. It also helps that I finally feel less guilty about owning a WiiU after beating this game. I’ve had it for a while now and it’s finally getting the love it deserves. For now though this game is going on the “completed” pile and I doubt I will return to it anytime soon. Maybe when I’m drunk and every other game I own in my library has somehow been deleted.

Peach has been saved. Bowser has been sent off.
Number of games completed for my Summer of Platformers challenge: 1.