Go go go?

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After a very long wait Pokémon has finally released over here in most of Europe with the Netherlands getting added only yesterday. I had downloaded the US version on my iPhone with the help of a new US based Apple account, but with the wonkyness of the app in general and the huge security “bug” in the app on Apple phones I decided to uninstall and just wait for the official release here. Which didn’t actually take that long.
So yeah I’ve joined the Pokemon GO hype. Allthough I’m probably not as hardcore as some people I’ve already caught a neat bunch of Pokemon and am working on hatching eggs. I don’t necessarily go outside especially for this game, but I do take my phone with me if I have to go somewhere anyway and that way I’m slowly making some progress. It’s a neat little AR game and I’m mostly laughing at the Pokestops around my neighbourhood. Niantic really knows what to pick here and then and so far they have included a drawing on the wall of the school I live across and a specially painted school crossing on our nearby roads. With the lack of statues or actual symbols I guess this is the best they can do tho, otherwise people in the boring suburbs like me wouldn’t have a Pokestop anywhere!
As you can see from my screenshots I’ve chosen team Mystic (Articuno <3) and I’m only level 5 or so. And yes, I picked Bulbasaur as my starter Pokemon. Mostly a childhood nostalgia thing, when I was 8 and got Pokemon Blue I picked Bulbasaur as starter aswell. So I just went with it this time again. I’m slowly learning the ins and outs of the game and am keeping high CP Pokemon and transferring all the rest away. Basically I just keep catching everything I see, just for the candy fodder. I’ve not really come across anything rare yet, although for some reason a Ghastly popped up at my house this morning, so obviously I had to catch it.
So far I do still find the game incredibly buggy. I had a nice stroll of about 35 mins around the neighbourhood, going off into the park nearby. Unfortunately I didn’t notice that my phone was continuously trying to connect to the servers (spinny pokeball), so not only did nothing register for my eggs, absolutely no Pokemon popped up either. Oh well, atleast I walked a bit today!
I might even go out again in a few hours, since the weather is incredibly nice and it’s a shame to sit inside all day anyway.

Grinding dailies and racecourses
Next to the Pokemon Go hype I’ve been mostly engrossed in playing FFXIV and Mario Kart 7. I got the latter with a discount from the Nintendo e-shop thanks to “My Nintendo” and I’ve been having a blast playing the game. I finished 50cc and 100cc cups and am now throwing myself at the 150cc ones. I’ve been slowly unlocking all the wagons and accessories and with every 150cc cup I beat I also unlock a new character to play. I actually forgot how immensly I enjoy racing games and Mario Kart is no exception. I predict I’ll be done with the 150cc cups by the start of the weekend next week and after that it’s just perfecting them all to three stars, win all the cups in Mirror mode and grind out a retarded amount of coins if I want to 100% the game. Ohwell.

In the FF department I’ve been mostly busy with grinding items for my relic. I’m only 6 items off of upgrading as we speak and I hope to get two more by the end of the evening. If I have calculated everything right I should be done with my upgrade somewhere this week…
I can then finally start to focus on some other things like levelling my Monk and maybe some crafting classes.
I also hope to grind out the last two ranks of Brawler’s Guild I need on WoW before the patch hits on Wednesday. So far I’ve just been making silly mistakes on the bosses, causing me to ragequit here and then. I really do want that mount though, so I’ll have to suck up and just do it I guess.

 

Crafting Fever

It feels like forever since I had a chance to properly sit down and write up a blog post. With work being busy and me being upped to work 40 hour weeks I tend to neglect a lot of things I would otherwise spend time on. Blogging is one of them. But today I felt relaxed enough with my time to carve out a chunk of my evening to write a nice post that is actually longer than 200 words and mostly screenshots.

First off: I’m skipping the Gaming Goal list for July. Honestly I’m just working way too much to realistically set goals for a lot of games. Add up that in the weekends I’ll mostly be busy with either social activites and/or clearing out the house (oh my lord we have so much junk) and you can see how it seriously eats away at my already limited free time. Even though I might not formally make a gaming goal post I do have some things I want to have achieved by the end of the month, most notably upgrading my Ninja relic on Sandrian and getting my Monk on her to level 50 in FFXIV. I’m only 14 items away from upgrading the relic as of today so it should be easily doable. As for the Monk, she’s sitting at level 41 now so that should be doable aswell. Other than that this month is a complete free for all. I’ve recently started playing The Secret World and I really want to keep doing that for atleast one night a week so there’s that and in the meantime I guess I’ll be spending most of my time on my 3DS since it’s really the only gaming device I can pick up and just play. Oh and Pokémon Go… When it ever rolls out here in the EU. I will probably spend a lot of time on that.
Now what HAVE I been up to the past few weeks?

Crafting, Crafting and more Crafting
Since I get home really tired and often am not finished with dinner and everything surrounding it before 8pm I’ve resorted to doing stuff in FFXIV that is relaxing to play. So instead of stressing out over capping my Lore, gearing my characers or all that nonsense I decided to turn my attention to Gathering and Crafting on both my characters. Sandrian already has Weaver at 60 and all the other crafting and gathering classes above level 20 atleast. Sarella however was a different story. I never really got into crafting on her so I either had to make do with having to level from scratch or somewhere in the level 5-10 range. I can proudly say that all my Crafting classes are atleast level 15 now with some of them already being 20 aswell. The Ixali dailies have been most helpful with this and I’m enjoying myself, which is what matters most. Although the leveling goes in a fairly slow pace I’m still happy with the progress I’m making and I’m not worried about pressure at all. I know I’ll get all these classes to 50 and then 60 eventually, it will probably just take a bit more time than someone who pursuits the game in a more hardcore fashion.

Next to Sarella I’ve also been busy on Sandrian. As I’ve mentioned before I pushed Weaver to level 60 with the help of the Moogle dailies that were introduced with patch 3.3. As much as I hated doing the Moogle quests the first time around in the Churning Mists I have to say that the Moogle dailies aren’t a problem at all. They take about 5-10 minutes a day to do and they give a lot of experience to leveling crafters… plus a ton of items you can trade in for either Relic items or the old Blue Scrip gear to boot! With me being in relatively bad crafting gear the level 58 gear has been a real big upgrade. So much that I can actually start crafting up collectables so I can upgrade my gear even further to the Red Scrip level.
I’m not an expert crafter at all and I don’t know much about what the ideal path to gearing up is, but I would like to delve a bit deeper into the Crafting world so I can make myself nice outfits, pets, mounts and other goodies. Maybe if I learn to play the market I’ll even start earning enough gil to buy my own house! Instead of just owning a room in the FC house.
Plus, doesn’t my little Miqo’te look incredibly cute with her oversized crafting hat on?

World of Warcraft?
I have been playing a bit of WoW on and off the past weeks. I made sure I got both the toys from the Midsummer Fire Festival, moving my achievement up to 117/150 toys collected now. I know there are a lot of easy to get toys out there still but my focus hasn’t really been on there. I do want to get to max rank with atleast the Brawler’s guild though since I want that mount… And Blizzard will be shutting it down for a while, probably with the pre-Legion patch. I’ve also broken 100k gold for the first time since Cataclysm. I’m at 120k now and still steadily going up. I’m not sure if I want to use this eventually to buy game-time again or if I want to use it to buy ingame exclusive stuff like expensive mounts. For now I’m just saving up so I can start off in Legion with a decent amount of gold on my name. I can’t believe the launch is in less than two months already!

Lastly I’ve been spending most of my time on my 3DS. I have finished New Super Mario Bros 2. and am working my way through several other games. In Donkey Kong Country Returns I’ve killed the second boss and arrived at world 3: Ruins. In Pokémon X I’m well on my way to getting the thrid badge and I’ve added Mario Kart 7 to my collection where I’ve completed the 50cc races and am now slowly making my way through 100cc. And boy that is a leap up in difficulty. I really can’t wait to start doing 150cc and unlocking characters. But all things in time.
As you can see/read I am working on enough projects when it comes to gaming. Progress isn’t that fast as it could be, due to my limited amount of time, but I do get some things done and even get to finish games! For someone who has a huge backlog, that is mostly unfinished, finishing any game right now is a real achievement. Especially considering the amount of time I have to spend on games in general.

June Recap

A bit late, but I want to look back at June, my gaming goals, and what I’ve achieved from them.
I didn’t set that many goals for myself since I really wanted to take my vacation time to relax and I knew once I had to go back to work there was a big chance I’d be working for 40 hours a week… And I was right. That seriously cut down my gaming time, but well.
Let’s see what I’ve done!

MMO Goals

  • Level Machinist to 50 on FFXIV
  • Unlock all 3.3 content on FFXIV
  • Do the Golden Saucer event on both my Moogle and Cactuar character
  • Get 100k gold on WoW Alliance side (currently sitting on 83k)
  • Start working on the 300 toys achievement in WoW (currently sitting on 102)

Blizzard Games

  • Reach rank 20 in Hearthstone
  • Reach level 15 in Overwatch
  • Finish Chapter 4 of the Diablo Season
  • Play HotS and unlock another Hero (Lunara or Chromie)

Consoles and Handhelds

  • Defeat the second gym in Pokémon X
  • Defeat the 4th gym in Pokémon Blue
  • Play through chapter 8 and some side missions in Fire Emblem Fates: Birthright
  • Play through the House of Gales in Legend of Zelda: A Link between Worlds
  • Ratchet and Clank: PLAY IT!

In FFXIV I’ve made some decent progress. I’ve gotten my MCH to 50 and my WVR to 60! The introduction of the Moogle daily quests have boosted my crafter a lot and it’s the first one to 60 for me so I’m super proud of myself. I’ve also been working on my relic upgrade and am only 20 items off now! Just the final push left to finally being able to upgrade my daggers.

In other games, well I’ve done my rank 20 in Hearthstone and I have played some Overwatch, just not to level 15. I’m way over 100k gold in WoW and I have gotten some toys… Most notably from the Midsummer Festival.
Although I only defeated the second gym in Pokémon X from the list I’ve also finally managed to finish New Super Mario Bros 2 on my 3DS, one of the games I wanted to kill the endboss of this year! So I’m really happy about that and I’m also happily fighting my way through DKC: Returns on my 3DS aswell.

All in all I’ve gotten some stuff done and other stuff not so much. In FFXIV I’ll probably be mostly focussing on finishing my relic next month and as for the rest… I’ll have to think.

Sun, Games and Planning

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It’s always a sad moment when you find yourself sitting in your room, typing up a blog post when only two days ago you were still enjoying the amazing sun in Lisbon, Portugal. I really wanted to go down to southern Europe for a vacation or citytrip this year. Here in the Netherlands the sun is scarce and temperatures are often cold. We don’t really have a summer to speak of, not in the way southern Europe has so I never really get a chance to tan or enjoy the weather here. So way back in March I decided I wanted to go on a citytrip to Lisbon, dragged a friend along, and there we were.
I have to say it’s a seriously amazing city. The weather was great, even though we had clouds on our second day, the food was good and cheap and the people were nice and all spoke English very well, something a few other countries can learn from *stares at France*. The climate alone has me wanting to go back to Portugal for atleast a proper vacation. It’s a beautiful country and I really want to explore more of it, but that will be something for in the future. Now real life has started back up again and I’m only 4 days off going back to work.

Super Mario Time
I took my 3DS with me to Portugal and managed to get a lot of time to play New Super Mario Bros. 2. As you all may remember, or maybe not, one of my goals for this year was to finish that game since it’s one of the first games I bought with my original 3DS and I never really finished it. So 3 hours back and forth on an airplane would be an ideal time to atleast work through some of the levels… And I have! When I started out a few days ago I was still sitting at the first level of world two, now I’m halfway through world four! Which means I only have two worlds left to complete after this.
I’m not running a perfect game, when the big coins you get in every level are too hard to reach I just skip them, but I do try to obtain them wherever I can. Then there’s the issue of seeing hidden levels and not really knowing how to get there, not even to mention the two complete worlds that you need to access via a special way. I will look up how to get there eventually, but for now I just want to aim to defeat the last boss… And then go back to unlock additional stuff.
Next to Super Mario I’ve also spent a lot of time playing FFXIV. I have unlocked all the patch 3.3 content there is on my Moogle character next to being on time to finish the Golden Saucer event on both my characters. I also dinged my MCH level 50, so I’m quite a way in when it comes to my gaming goals for this month! I even switched over to Monk now and she is sitting at level 42. I hope I can push that to 50 aswell before the end of the month.
All in all my gaming comes along really nicely. Which brings me to my next topic…

Planning my life
I am hopeless when it comes to starting and completing things. A lot of my time is spent either staring into the abyss or lying on my bed feeling tired when I’m home from work. I have real issues deciding what I want to do on any given day, and when I have decided it takes me forever to get my butt into gear and go. I think the foundation of this lies in the fact that I’m a very chaotic person who on top of that is quite unmotivated to do a lot of things. So I decided to set things straight and start using Google Calendar to plan my days and sync said calendar to both my iPhone and my tablet. Although I don’t really plan every minuscule detail for every minute there is a bit more structure to my days now, which allows me to actually get stuff done. As example I “reserved” an hour to blog today (from 10-11am). I probably won’t use the entire hour this time, but sometimes when I have a bit of a writer’s block I do need an entire hour to blog, so that gives me some space to work with. It also helps me settle down and actually write instead of thinking “I should blog sometime today” and then just not do it.
The same goes for planning my gametime. I realise that sitting on my butt and gaming all day on my days off is just as bad as sitting on my butt in the office all day… So I’ve been hacking my gametime into 1 or 2 hour periods inbetween doing other stuff like chores, working out or appointments. I’ve also decided to already fill in those chunks of gametime because I know myself too well. If I don’t plan in advance what game I want to turn my attention to I will never play anything but FFXIV, and that’s seriously a shame. Obviously 1-2 hours isn’t enough to really get into the big RPG’s and thus I’m saving those for the weekends when I have more time to play and I can fill more blocks with one single game. Instead I’m choosing mostly platformers that I want to play and can play for an hour or so and then just shut down without feeling like I should be playing more or that I forget where I was.
This whole system is still more or less in a testing phase, but I do hope that I can start using my time better and actually feel like I’ve accomplished something, instead of now where I wish I had done a lot of things in hindsight.

A Good Vacation Start

Today kicked off my vacation and it couldn’t get off to a better start. I went to the gym first thing in the morning and have been feeling energetic all day. I played some WoW, some FFXIV and Pokémon X aswell as watch the last few episodes of Gotham I had left, which means I have finished the first season.
I haven’t felt this relaxed in a very long time and very motivated to game again. Funnily enough I decided to spend a lot of time on World of Warcraft yesterday evening and tonight. I have made some goals for WoW this month and I’m happy to report I achieved one of them today already! With a small stroke of luck I had gotten an Elixir of Rapid Experience and two Champion’s Honor’s from my missions. I sold all of those combined for about 20-25k gold and I broke the 100k gold barrier once again. I’ve been flooding the markets with a lot of other stuff I still have on my various toons (mostly crafting mats) and I’ve been raking in a lot of money. As of now I’m looking forward to getting another 800 gold just from selling Savage Bloods. It really proves that the economy on my server isn’t as dead as I thought it was. It’s certainly alive enough for me to make a nice bit of gold atleast!
100k gold! And selling more.For now I’ve mostly sent all the gold from my inactive alts to my Warrior, only really using my Priest and Paladin to generate even more revenue since they both have level 3 Garrisons and a lot of gold missions aswell as missions that give me more stuff to sell on the AH. All in all the gold flow is nice and I’m building up a nice little fortune before Legion launches.

Next to churning out gold I’ve also been doing some other things WoW related. I caught the rumour that Blizzard will be putting the Brawler’s guild on hiatus sometime before Legion launches so right now is the perfect time to start getting involved. As I’m typing up this post my Warrior is sitting on rank 5, which isn’t really that impressive. I aim to get to rank 8 in a considerable amount of time and also to complete the special brawls that I’ve unlocked by finding items throughout the game.  I really like the Brawler’s Guild so far because it makes you think about how you want to kill the bosses you’re faced with. Although some you can mostly get through with using brute force, others are a little bit more difficult and take more strategy to take down. As an added bonus when you reach rank 8 you can buy a nice Mushan Beast as mount for only 1.2k gold. Being the collector I am I obviously really want that mount so I will continue to grind on this as the month passes.

FFXIV and Pokémon X have gotten some love aswell with my MCH dinging 47 earlier today and I’ve reached the city for the second Pokémon Gym, so I should be able to cross two more goals off my list for June very soon. I’m unsure why but I’m really enjoying Pokémon X again over Blue and Alpha Sapphire. Maybe it’s because I’ve never actually finished the game so the story is fresh to me, maybe it’s because I like the setting and all the little quirks they put into the game. There are so many events and places outside of the regular “beat 8 Gyms and the Elite Four” story… You can really notice Nintendo and Game Freak wanted to show off this game as the first 3DS Pokémon game. I hope I can get to beating the second Gym and then continue on because I’ve never really gotten past it in my previous playthroughs so the game is mostly new to me anyway. It looks like I will though because I’m slightly hooked to my 3DS lately and it’s the only thing I’ve been playing outside of Blizzard games and FFXIV.

 

Gaming Goals: June

Today my vacation starts which means about 2.5 weeks of not having to even remotely think about work. I can finally turn my attention to a lot of games but also to cleaning the attic and other stuff in my room aswell as getting rid of a lot of stuff in the garden and shed. We have so much junk and it’s been annoying me since forever and now that my dad and his GF are on vacation for 5 weeks I really want to take the time to get things sorted.
I think one of the reasons I didn’t finish many things in May is because I just set goals that I wasn’t really believing in. Eventually I want to level everything in FFXIV yes, but trying to get so much stuff levelled up in a short time is just undoable. So for June I’m going to change things and focus on stuff I really WANT to complete, and not stuff I feel like I should complete.
So here is the list:

MMO Goals
Taking it a bit broader so going to share FFXIV and WoW under one category: MMO’s.

  • Level Machinist to 50 on FFXIV
  • Unlock all 3.3 content on FFXIV
  • Do the Golden Saucer event on both my Moogle and Cactuar character
  • Get 100k gold on WoW Alliance side (currently sitting on 83k)
  • Start working on the 300 toys achievement in WoW (currently sitting on 102)

Blizzard Games

  • Reach rank 20 in Hearthstone
  • Reach level 15 in Overwatch
  • Finish Chapter 4 of the Diablo Season
  • Play HotS and unlock another Hero (Lunara or Chromie)

Consoles and Handhelds

  • Defeat the second gym in Pokémon X
  • Defeat the 4th gym in Pokémon Blue
  • Play through chapter 8 and some side missions in Fire Emblem Fates: Birthright
  • Play through the House of Gales in Legend of Zelda: A Link between Worlds
  • Ratchet and Clank: PLAY IT!

This is about it. A lot less goals than in May even though I have a lot more time to play. I just really want to focus on the stuff that I enjoy right now and anything extra is a bonus. So yeah, let’s get started with June!

Weird Evening

Yesterday I went through my Twitter followers on a whim. I had noticed the bot spam and I figured I’d root out all the crap from my account. I swear Twitter bots are a huge annoying thing and count for about 10% of my follower list. I can only imagine the people with thousands of followers and how many bots are among those.
Anyway, I went through my follower list and got hit hard by a few people I still saw on there. I have been active on Twitter for quite a while now, I think since WotLK  in WoW, which is around the time I started to blog a bit here and there aswell. Let’s just keep it at 6 years of Twitter activity. Back in the early days there were a lot of WoW blogs out there, Righteous Orbs, Cynwise’s Warlock Manual and the Barrens Chat. I name these blogs for a reason seeing as I got confronted with still having Ercles and Wulfy among my followers. Ercles unfortunately passed away in 2010 and seeing his name again made me swallow hard. The same goes for Tiny Tori who passed away around this time last year and Cynwise who said goodbye to the gaming community in 2014. These are all people I have interacted with at one time or another. All good folk with a passion for gaming. And they are all a part of me one way or another.
I got quite emotional seeing some of these people who aren’t around anymore, and I wasn’t really prepared for this either. I didn’t know I’d be so impacted by things that were, but apparently the past comes up to bite you in the ass sometimes, and that’s ok. Ercles and Tori deserve to be remembered and a part of the community still misses Cynwise and the awesome guys from Righteous Orbs.

All emotional stuff aside, I’m quite looking forward to starting my training. I really hope that with some help I can reach my goals this time and stop feeling bad health wise and also about the way I look. I’ve also thought up a proper reward for when I do get close to reaching my goal: travel to Berlin for a weekend and visit the LCS studio’s. I really loved the atmosphere of the LCS playoff finals in Rotterdam and even though there are obviously less people in the studio, I hope to recapture that atmosphere again there. Plus it might give me some time to talk to some of the casters instead of just getting 20 seconds to take a picture and then having to leave again.
I’m a huge fan of the LCS and the whole show surrounding it plus I may or may not have a slight crush on one of the casters, so it would be awesome if I would be able to strike up a conversation with him. Seeing as I’m already more or less in touch with said person I hope he doesn’t mind some small talk IRL either.

FFXIV and Timezone Woes
I’ve been trying to reach my goals like a good little girl when it comes to FFXIV but I notice heavily that I’m slowly getting bored of the game again. Not that I don’t like leveling, but more that I don’t have anything to do besides leveling. And I’m starting to notice.

Due to not having a proper raidgroup on Moogle I just miss out on a lot of things. Not only progress wise, but also fun/casual wise. I haven’t touched a Pony Farm group yet and as DPS they are actually quite hard to find. Add up that my friends list is more or less barren and I can only really ask 2-3 people to come farm with me and you can see the issue.
I really wish I had some more motivation to keep on logging and playing. I’m missing the sense of community a lot and I feel a bit lost within my current FC. Although I have been around there since forever there has been such a huge flow of people coming and going that I never really get to “befriend” anyone within the timeframe that I play. I’d love to switch over to Cactuar and be more active in Greysky Armada, but the timezone thing is just seriously terrible. The hours the guild is alive there are the middle of the night for me and when I’m online during the week everyone is still at work. I guess during the weekends it’s not that horrible, but if the people you want to play with are 6-10 hours behind you timewise… It gets a bit tough. And it’s such a shame because I would love to play with Chestnut and Belghast to name a few examples… Bluh. Life isn’t fair I guess. It’s also one of the main reasons I never stuck around in Wildstar. All the awesome folk I want to play with are NA based and well, I’m not.
I guess it’s the bane of any person who is in touch with people all over the world. Maybe if I didn’t have a fulltime job I could turn around my sleep schedule, but alas, that is not going to work. So for now I’m just playing on EU based servers with EU based people… Atleast the ones that are still around.

Sun on Sundays

Spring has finally arrived in the Netherlands and seeing as we don’t have that much sun in our country, I felt like I needed to take the opportunity to enjoy the warmth and sun. So after spending yesterday walking around in the shopping area, getting my eyebrows done, shopping for new clothes and a new phone cover and picking up sunscreen for this year, I felt today was perfect to pick up my 3DS and sit in the backyard and play while trying to get some tan on my legs.
So I did just that and played about 2 hours of Pokémon Blue, defeating Misty in the second gym and talking to Bill to get my S.S. Anne ticket. The average level of my Pokémon is now 18, which isn’t too bad after gym number two. My team currently exists of Wartortle, Bellsprout, Pidgey, Nidorina, Geodude and Jigglypuff. I’m hoping to replace the Jigglypuff and Nidorina with a Fire and Electricity or Psychic type Pokémon, but for the third gym Geodude will be amazing, so I’m definately keeping him on my team.
Playing through the first Pokémon game I realize how easy the later generation games have become. Training Pokémon and beating trainers on Blue is significantly harder than it is on Pokémon X and Alpha Sapphire, the two latest installments I have from the series. It’s really nice seeing this oldtimer again though and I’m having as much fun playing through it now as when I had when I was 10 years old.
My coworker has picked up Pokémon Red and we’re kind of navigating through the game together, picking opposite things so we can trade Pokémon to eachother later on for completion of the Pokédex. Ofcourse there is no way to get them all without atleast a third person with a third game around, but we do our best.

Another game I’ve been poking around on my 3DS in is The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds. I bought this game heavily discounted thanks to My Nintendo and I have to say it’s a lovely game to play. Having only seen Majora’s Mask and The Windwaker so far this feels like a more real Zelda game than the other two. I’ve only just started so for now I’ve only seen the top-down gameplay, but it’s cute and simple and something I can see myself putting time into and even finishing within the considerable future. Together with Pokémon Blue though this takes up most of my “handheld” game time, leaving little room for other games to be played.

Progression in FFXIV
I gave my Miqo a new haircut. Normally I’m not fond of short hair, but this particular cut is super sassy and I love it on her. Pixie cuts are cute and if you have the right face for it they can look amazing, something FFXIV shows. I also am a huge fan of bubblegum pink hair so naturally I had to dye it that colour. Although the gear looks horrid (level 35 leather gear just doesn’t do it for me) I love the way she looks right now and I don’t think I will change it for a while.

So about that progress…
Yesterday I dinged level 40 on my Machinist. It’s kind of funny that the more skills I unlock, the more I seem to enjoy the class. It’s kind of what Bard was in the last expansion, only with more gadgets and more cooldowns to keep your eyes on. Playing Machinist is quite intricate, but if you play it well and use your cooldowns wisely you can pump out much more damage than meets the eye.
At level 40 you also get your first turret, the Rook variety. It has two forms, an attack form where it performs single target attacks on the same target you’re using weaponskills on. If you upgrade it, it turns into a TP restoring turret, which is really nice if you run with melee. I immediatly got to take the turret for a testdrive versus Svara in the Coerthas Central Highlands. Yes. That Svara. I’m not really sure why Square Enix raised her from the dead just for a Machinist quest, but I’ll take it.

We took her down as a bunch of Machinists and all was well.
Having my Machinist on level 40 means I can focus on the Monk a bit again and bring that to the same level. Although Monk as a class isn’t new to me, I’m still happy to play through the jobquests again and unlock the skills that turned Monk into the best Melee DPS in the 2.0 expansion.
All in all I had a really nice, relaxed weekend. I got to play through a bunch of Pokémon Blue and The Legend of Zelda and got some nice personal time in, which is about as important. I noticed that I can still lose myself in a game, I just need to actually sit down and play. And with that knowledge I hope to be able to push through a lot more stuff over the coming weeks.

Recap and Goals for May

So last weekend I had big plans for this week. Lots of stuff to do in FFXIV and try to make some progress in Pokémon Blue. Let’s see what became of that shall we?

  • Level Monk to 35
  • Level Machinist to 35
  • Level Armorsmith to 20
  • Level Blacksmith to 20
  • Complete Scholar Zenith Relic (2.0)
  • Get to and defeat the second Gym in Pokémon Blue (this will be my train game!)

As far as levelling went, I had a very succesful week. Both my Monk and Machinist made it to level 35 (and quite a way into 36 aswell) and I managed to get my crafters to level 20 aswell. I haven’t really had the time to pick up the Scholar Relic quest, but seeing as April isn’t technically over yet I could just start and maybe finish it tonight.
I did make some progress in Pokémon aswell, just not as much as I had hoped. With the arrival of both Tides of War and Illidan I’ve been reading much more than I have been playing games and thus booked less progress than I had hoped.
However tomorrow starts a new month, and as I’m happier when I have stuff scheduled to do I think I’ll make goals for the month of May and see how many I can actually achieve.

Goals for FFXIV

  • Level Monk to 50
  • Level Machinist to 50
  • Level Alchemist to 30
  • Level Armorer to 30
  • Level Blacksmith to 30
  • Level Culinarian to 30
  • Level Goldsmith to 30
  • Level Leatherworker to 30
  • Level Fisher to 30
  • Level Miner to 30
  • Finish Scholar 2.0 Relic Zenith
  • Finish Monk 2.0 Relic Zenith

Goals for Blizzard Games

  • Get rank 20 in Hearthstone
  • Finish second wing of League of Explorers
  • Unlock third wing of League of Explorers
  • Finish Diablo 3 chapter 4 for the season
  • Play Overwatch! (I got early acces to open beta)

Other Goals
Both Gaming and otherwise related, I want to do all of this aswell.

  • Finish reading Illidan
  • Finish watching Gotham season 1
  • Defeat second and third Gyms in Pokémon Blue
  • Play through two additional worlds/mission clusters in Ratchet and Clank
  • Wrap up some personal stuff related to University.

As you can see I have quite a list for May. Luckily for me a lot of these goals are “easily” attainable. For instance all the crafters in FFXIV I want to level are already above level 20, which makes me confident I can get atleast a few of them up to level 30 aswell.  Rank 20 in Hearthstone is something I aim for every season aswell, so nothing new there. I really want to get a bit more time in on Ratchet and Clank though and also on atleast one handheld game, hence I picked Pokémon Blue.
At the end of May we’ll see how far I’ve come with all of this.  I hope quite far! I do really love ticking things off my list…

End of April – Gaming Goals

We are almost 5 months into 2016 and I’ve decided to look back at the Gaming Goals I’ve set in January and how far I’ve come so far.

In FFXIV I’ve been making steady progress. I’ve leveled up my Bard to 60 and have turned my attention to some other classes aswell. Most notably my Astrologian made it up to level 52 and my Monk will probably sit very close to level 35 today after I’ve done my level and guildhest roulette.
In the old relics department I only really need Scholar. Monk and Warrior done still, which isn’t much at all. I’m planning on picking up Scholar somewhere this week and then it just depends on which classes I level up first to get those last two relics.
Next to my battle classes I’ve also leveled up my Botanist to 52 and I’m slowly but surely leveling up my crafting classes. I expect all of them to be atleast level 20 by the end of the weekend, with currently only Armorsmith and Blacksmith sitting sub level 20. Ixali dailies help a lot with this!

In Blizzard games I’ve opened up another wing of Naxxramas on Hearthstone and I’ve been commited to getting all the card backs for this year, not having missed out on one so far!
I’ve been barely playing Heroes of the Storm though and am unsure if I can make the goal of battling up to rank 1 (or as close as possible).

As far as all the other games go, I’ve only made real progress in Donkey Kong and Mario on my 3DS with finishing the first world in both of those games. All the rest have more or less fallen off the radar since I’ve been purchasing new games that have drawn my attention, like The Division and Ratchet and Clank.

So, what’s in store now?
For this week I really want to finish up a few things on mostly FFXIV. As  said in my previous post I want to get both my Monk and Machinist up to 35, but seeing as that goes a lot faster than I thought I’m adding a bit more gaming goals for this week to close out April with a bang! So here’s a small list of the things I want to work on this week:

  • Level Monk to 35
  • Level Machinist to 35
  • Level Armorsmith to 20
  • Level Blacksmith to 20
  • Complete Scholar Zenith Relic (2.0)
  • Get to and defeat the second Gym in Pokémon Blue (this will be my train game!)

As you can see, enough to do, but not too much for a week. I really hope I can accomplish this all before May 1st, but seeing as I expect to be able to level both the Monk to 35 and the Armorsmith to 20 this weekend it should be more than doable.