Sunday and chores

It’s a bit of an odd day today. As I realized that I hadn’t post anything since Thursday I figured I’d get back on the Blogging horse. I had set a goal to write a post everyday during Blaugust but unfortunately real life has gotten in the way and I’m okay with that really. I may schedule a few extra posts to see if I can make up for the days that I’ve missed but I’d have to check how many posts I actually have up so far and I’d have to come up with ideas for posts and well… My brain seems to be a bit too tired for that to happen right now.

I’ve been spending most of the morning going back and forth between World of Warcraft and cleaning the bathroom and my bedroom. I usually do my “chores” on Sunday because I like having a clean room when starting a new week on Monday and every now and then I add the bathroom to my routine aswell. I’m guessing as I move out and really have my own space I’ll clean a bit more often but for now I’m happy with my weekly dust and vacuum sessions. It also makes the day not completely about gaming, which is nice. I feel the need to “descreen” a lot these days and cleaning helps do just that. It lets me zone out and relax while also getting important stuff done. It may not be a favourite pastime but atleast the bathroom smells like lavender now, my sheets are fresh and clean and there is no more dirt and dust on my bedroom floor.

I mentioned swapping between gaming and cleaning and as far as gaming goes I’m making some strides on my Rogue to finish up the Alliance side of the expansion story so far. I’m finally doing the “Pride of Kul Tiras” quest chain after finishing up the last two chapters of the Stormsong Valley quest achievement yesterday. I’d expected to be dumped in a scenario of some sort but so far I’m actually in the middle of a gigantic questchain that spans all the new zones and three separate dungeons before leading up to the final dungeon, which is apparently a Mythic only one. With my item level being only 303 I’m still far away from clearing that one but atleast I’m making progress!

I’ve also dipped into FFXIV this weekend to complete the Moonfire Faire event before it would go away today. It was a nice short questchain and rather fun to do. I know a lot of people did the extra jumping puzzle to get on top of the event tower but I passed on that one. I was only interested in getting the new emote and the new outfit on both my characters so I did that and logged back out.
I did make sure to visit my house on my Moogle character since there has been a bug going around that you lose your house way faster these days. It would be such a shame for me to lose my home now that I was finally able to buy a small plot after borrowing money from a friend. I hope to get a bit more time into FFXIV the coming months (preferably until the end of the year) and start decorating my house and level my remaining classes. I’m so close to getting Machinist to 70… I really should hop back into this game again.

New Year, New Theme

I figured it was time to throw a new theme on my blog. The one I had was nice but it didn’t really give me many options in relation to the header and for some weird reason it wouldn’t let me choose where to place images in my posts. This is reflected by the fact that everything that wasn’t a fullscreen sized screenshot just defaulted to the left, something that annoyed me very much. So now I have a fancy new theme with a fancy picture of my FFXIV character at the top (I really love that screenshot of her) and I’m hoping I can take my blog in a more active direction with this. I also really want to start posting more screenshots on here, especially now that I’m getting a new PC on Thursday… I should be able to snap some pretty pictures.

I’ve been trying to make notes in my planner every day with the activities I’ve done for the day. Be it gaming related stuff, reading, watching TV or simply just sleeping a lot. I do this so I can have a look of all the stuff I actually do during the week and what are really bad days for me to plan things because I know I will be super sleepy or unmotivated to do things. So far I’ve been making some progress in various areas when it comes to games, reading and watching shows.
I’ve done the entirety of Tomb of Sargeras in Looking for Raid in WoW on Sunday on my Warrior. Kil’jaeden wiped our group three times before we got to finish him off and I was rewarded with the epic cutscene where Illidan basically transports Argus to Azeroth, or was it the other way around? I’ve also dabbled in Antorus but I feel like I should finish off the story on Argus before I move on in that raid. It would probably make more sense to do that so I’m hoping I can stick to that plan. I’ve also been doing my Honor dailies every day. This has accumulated in me only needing 2 more ranks until I hit Prestige rank 2 and finally unlock that damn skin for my weapons. Especially the Prot Warrior skin is cool for PVP so I definately want to unlock it as soon as possible.
I’ve not really touched my Paladin yet this month, focusing completely on my Warrior for the time being. This is also due to time restraints and the fact that I’ve been taking care of a lot of IRL stuff instead of gaming.

In FFXIV I took to finishing the Heavensturn event. It’s a cute little quest and on my alt (pictured above) it’s the fifth consecutive Heavensturn I’ve participated in. I was a little disappointed with the rewards this year, two dog helmets and a stuffed dog housing items, but the quest was short and charming and a little perverted as usual. I’ve ressed a few people doing the Mochi Pounding FATE who didn’t figure out fast enough what they were supposed to be doing so there’s that. I’ve also dinged my Botanist level 70 earlier and am slowly working my way through the 61-70 part on Miner. After that I guess I’ll have to figure out what the best way to earn Yellow Scrips is so I can atleast replace my main hand weapons with more decent ones than I have right now. All in all I’m enjoying a leasurely pace in FFXIV and it’s suiting me well. I get to make up my own little goals and work towards them and this is something that makes me extremely happy.

As for other things. I’ve watched a few more episodes of “Lie to Me” and have finished season two which leaves me with only season three left. I also got some time into watching Black Mirror. Even though I enjoy the episodes and they get me thinking about stuff I’ve noticed it’s not really the show you want to watch when you’re already in a negative mood, something I had a little exchange on Twitter about with Jaedia. So instead I’m focusing on watching Lie to Me and reading “The Wise Man’s Fear”. I’m already halfway through that book aswell. As it stands right now my e-reader is my faithful companion to and from work every day and it’s astounding how much reading you can get done in about 15 minutes time. The story is still gripping me and I’m severely disappointed that the third book is taking so long to come out. Then again I’m also still waiting on the sixth book of A Song of Ice and Fire so meh. If all else fails I can fall back to the Gentleman Thieves series which I enjoy a lot aswell.
I also managed to grind out the remaining rewards of the Winter’s Veil event in Heroes of the Storm yesterday evening. Inviting a friend and just battling the AI on Beginner level was something I really needed. It makes the game light and easy and you can try your hand at champions you’ve never played before to see how their kit works and how they handle in general. I played a few games as Sylvanas, Zagara and Li Ming. Mostly to get the level ups but also because of quests and, in Li Ming’s case, because I really enjoy playing the character. This resulted in me going to bed a bit later than I had planned but atleast I had a fun evening.

Even though I’ve had an absolutely terrible day at work I feel happy to come on to this blog and write about gaming related stuff. It helps me take my mind off things, even though I technically don’t have anything interesting to say and most of my posts seem like rambling. I just don’t want to have a constant negative mood and writing always helps. I really hope I can take more screenshots from now on and tell more stories as to why and how they were taken. It’s just a real shame I can’t take screenshots on my 3DS since it seems to be my favoured system to play on outside of my PC. I’m really deep into Yo-Kai Watch and am enjoying it way more than I thought I would. I may actually finish it before the month is over… But that is something for another post.

Events Galore?

About two weeks ago I made a post about all the events that are going on in August in the games I play. There’s an Overwatch Olympic event, the Legion pre-patch stuff on WoW, Moonfire Faire and Yo-Kai event on FFXIV. And then I haven’t even looked at Wildstar or Guild Wars 2 yet.
Although I very enthusiastically tried to participate in all of them, I have to admit defeat and say it’s just too much. I’ve had a very unlucky streak in Overwatch with opening boxes and even winning games so I didn’t get near as much loot as I hoped I would. This is a real shame because some of the Olympic skins are seriously amazing and I’m sad I didn’t actually get more than two of them so far. I got footballer Lúcio and Track&Field Tracer but that’s it. It’s a shame Blizzard won’t let you buy the skins with currency either, so if you don’t obtain them now, you’ll never obtain these things again. I did get some stuff obviously, victory poses, sprays, icons, the same damn Tracer Highlight 3 times (really Blizz?). But by far not enough. I guess you really need to have Overwatch as your maingame and spam it everyday to even get close to obtaining everything there is to have. Alas. I’ll have tomorrow during daytime and Monday evening to obtain a few more levels and hopefully a few more event chests. I really really hope I can get the Mercy skin since she’s one of my most played champions, together with Lúcio and Soldier 76. I guess we’ll see.

In WoW I’ve been using and abusing the shit out of the invasions. It’s gotten my Shaman to level 100 and fully geared (ilvl 704!) and I’ve gotten a few transmog items. I’m still chasing the Bow on my Hunter, so I’ll probably be focussing mostly on her for the invasions untill the actual Legion launch.
I’ve really been struggling to pick a “main” for Legion. I thought it would be my Warrior first and foremost and although I’m still on that train of thought I’ve been really into my Shammy again. I love the Elemental specc and the damage output right now is just insane. Maybe I should just let the whole idea of  “main” fade and just play what I enjoy at that moment. I mean I do the same on FFXIV, so why not do it on WoW? I know that I’ll spread out my achievements and everything but well. Achievements are account bound and it doesn’t really matter which character earns it, aslong as it’s earned. So far the classes I enjoy playing are Warrior, Shaman, Hunter and my newbie Demon Hunter. I’ve not really looked at anything else yet. I’ve burned out on Priest play over the last expansion and although I love Paladin gear, I’m just not really digging the class right now. Warlock, Rogue and Death Knight are all classes I’m not even looking at right now which leaves me with Mage, Monk and Druid. I have all of these characters at level 100 but honestly I just really can’t be arsed to log them right now. I might change my mind later on and level up another batch of alts over Legion, but I’m starting with two cool Alliance characters and two cool Horde characters first and foremost.

As for FFXIV… I’ve not really done much of the Yo-Kai event anymore. I know I’m close to getting my fourth weapon on Sandrian but that’s it. I’ve been mostly focussed on upgrading my relic and this weekend on running PotD. I’m really close to getting my first weapon (+22/+23) and I think I’ve decided to use it on my Astrologian. I really love healing on that class and she’ll be the only one without a decent weapon otherwise, so that’s more or less settled too. I know most people already have a few weapons but my time on FFXIV is being replaced with WoW and OW for the past weeks so I’m just taking it nice and slow. I don’t think I’ll max out my stats from the 41-50 run that my Ninja is currently on, but I hope I can get as close as I possibly can and then not have to run that godawful place for a while.

All in all it’s been quite busy gaming wise. Having so many events going on at once is seriously sucky when you already have limited gaming time and when you’re feeling a bit meh about gaming in general. I hope my mood improves soon. Not sure why I’m feeling like this. Maybe it’s just the weather.

The Summer Is Magic

After a more personal post yesterday I want to return to games and gaming today, I mean that’s the whole reason I’ve started this blog in the first place anyway right?
Today’s topic covers a magical summer filled with all sorts of lovely events taking place in many of our favourite games. I’ll start off with FFXIV and the second big event that’s taking place in Eorzea next to the craziness that is Yo-Kai medal farming.

I present to you the official art for the Moonfire Faire of 2016! This time Square is preying on our nostalgia and introducing the Power Rangers into our Eorzean lives. I’ve personally not started the quests yet, but I know you can obtain armor, emotes, furniture and an orchestion scroll. I’m absolutely planning on completing this event on both Sandrian and Sarella but reading about a lot of bugs going on right now I think I’ll just wait a few days before throwing myself into the fray. Atleast there will be enough to do next to Yo-Kai farming, my weekly Crystal Tower raids and trying to cap Lore. I already did Weeping City and Void Ark for this week luckily, so I don’t have to worry about those.
Next to that I’m slowly levelling up my alts with all the FATES that I run for the Yo-Kai medals and doing Crystal Tower on my level 50ish characters. So far it’s netted me one level on my MCH, one on my AST and one on my MNK. So I’m slowly heading to 60 on everything!

Next to events in Eorza there’s also a lot of things happening/about to happen in the Blizzard universe. The Legion invasions will start somewhere this coming week so I’ll be on WoW a bit more, soaking it up and experiencing all of it. I have the game pre-ordered, but not via Blizzard so I can’t dive into the Demon Hunter experience yet, and that’s fine with me.
Next to WoW shenanigans a new season has kicked off in Diablo 3 aswell. To be quite honest, I’ve not touched D3 in a very long time and I don’t think I will spend any time playing this current season. I’ve fallen out of love with that game a while ago, mostly because the people I normally play with have all quit… And the constant grinding of the same stuff over and over is starting to get really, really boring. Even the seasonal rewards don’t have me coming back to the game. So unless Blizzard is going to make a major announcement at Blizzcon about Diablo, I think for me that’s a closed chapter for now and I won’t be returning to Sanctuary for a long time.

An event that has caught my attention is the summer games event in Overwatch.
I’ve not played Overwatch that much since launch, but I can never pass up goodies in a game, especially since I can earn them for free! So I’ve strapped on my Overwatch boots again and have about five games under my belt today, and opened a few loot boxes that made me very happy. I got one of the valkyrie skins for Mercy, who is by far my favourite champion, and one of the Summer Games highlight clips, more specifically the one for Tracer. I’m really enjoying myself playing Overwatch for now. Although I end up mostly playing supportive characters like Mercy and Lúcio, I also know my way around on Soldier 76 and Tracer. I hope I can play enough to unlock lots of lootboxes and earn lots of the Summer Games stuff before the event ends on August 22nd.

The last big thing going on is the new Adventure for Hearthstone. Apparently we are getting a partied up version of Kharazan to dawdle around in and I’ve been slowly saving up gold so I can start unlocking the wings as they come out. Blizzard made a tiny prologue to the adventure that is free to play for everyone, so I’m curious to see how that turns out. aswell.

All in all August is going to be a busy month with plenty events, releases and other stuff going on. And I haven’t even mentioned No Man’s Sky or the actual Legion launch yet!