Tag Archives: FFXIV

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… 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.

 

Gaming Goals June 2020

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No MMO Sunday today but instead my gaming goals post for June. Since you know, the new month actually starts tomorrow. I have a lot of expectations for this month, especially since I’m starting my Summer of Platformers this week and I’m finally finding the time to play more than just World of Warcraft again. Lots of exciting stuff happening next month, but first, a look back at May.

World of Warcraft (Warrior)

  • Get the following reputations to Exalted: Waveblade Ankoan/Rustbolt Resistance/Storm’s Wake/Champions of Azeroth/Tortollan Seekers/Rajani/Uldum Accord
  • Finish all quests in Drustvar and Stormsong Valley
  • Kill Rakhastan and finish the associated quest
  • Level Blacksmithing to 175
  • Level Cooking to 175
  • Finish miscellaneous quests in my questlog
  • Bonus: Level my cape to rank 15
  • Bonus: Work on getting all my Essences to rank 3/unlock all my Essence

Final Fantasy XIV

  • Finish Eden
  • Level the following jobs to 80: Machinist/Dark Knight
  • Finish the shared FATEs in Ahm Araeng/The Tempest

Other Games

  • Finish atleast two chapters per weekend of Final Fantasy 7 Remake. I will be at chapter 13 then by the end of the month. Anything more is a bonus ofcourse.
  • Get 10 villagers on my Animal Crossing island and work towards getting terraforming.

All in all it’s been a good month in my MMOs. I managed to get all my WoW goals done except for getting the 8.3 reputations to Exalted. I’ve kind of underestimated what a pain in the ass that actually is. Basically you get your weekly assaults which give 1k rep respectively to both factions per week. Next to that you have dailies that give between 375 and 500 rep on average per day. Although this isn’t actually that bad the grind is just awful. You can rack up around 4k rep per week per faction and honestly doing both is just mind numbing. So I’m going to chart a new course and work on one rep at a time. I will do the assaults every week but I just can’t deal with the dailies. They’re just so slow and time consuming and ugh. Yeah no fun to be had there. Otherwise I’ve managed to do everything I set out to do and the only other thing that is left open is to work on getting my final few Essences and level those up.

In FFXIV I had a bit of a surge with the Moogle tome event. I managed to get my Machinist to level 80 and finish the shared FATE stuff in Ahm Araeng. I’m halfway done with the Tempest aswell on that front so that is nice. Instead of Dark Knight I opted to start leveling my Warrior though and she is sitting on level 73. I finished all wings of Eden at the start of the month so I can stripe that off my list aswell.

Single player games seem to have fallen to the wayside a bit. I actually haven’t touched either FF7R or Animal Crossing in a few weeks. I just couldn’t find the time/energy to start up the games and play just like in theses new games that allow you to take advantage of sports betting legality. Hopefully I can combine FF7R with my Platformers, I think I’m just not gonna look at AC for a bit because I’ve just bounced hard off the game in general

Now… What are my plans for June?

World of Warcraft (Warrior)

  • Work on getting up reputation with Rajani and Uldum Accord
  • Work on Mythic+ keystones. Get everything on a +10 and try to push for a +15
  • Work on unlocking/upgrading my final Essences

Not that much for WoW this month. Dailies will be a thing and I want to run a bit more Mythic+ dungeons. I’m comfortably pushing up untill +13/+14 but the +15 remains a challenge. I really want to break that boundary though and just do them. For the Essences I will essentially have to bite the bullet and do PvP. How much I’m willing to do I don’t know yet but we’ll see.

Final Fantasy XIV

  • Level my Warrior and another class to level 80
  • Get Ixion mount from Moogle Tome Event

Not many goals in FFXIV either. I want to keep on leveling and I want the Ixion mount from the Moogle Tomes event. Not much else to see here

Other games

  • Start Summer of Platformers
  • Finish FF7R
  • Get daily rewards in GW2 and try to level up my character a bit
  • Explore Phantasy Star Online 2?

Here is where things get interesting. I want to finish up FF7R this month and start my Summer of Platformers. I actually cheated a bit and started one of my Platformers today. I will probably do a write-up about that later in the week. Let’s just say I’m pretty rusty so I wil expect a lot of deaths in this first game before I find my groove again.
I’ve also gotten into the habit of logging into Guild Wars 2 for the daily reward and, since I’m logged in anyway, I’ll do a heart or two when I’m there. It’s short relaxing fun and something I want to keep on doing.
Finally I’ve installed Phantasy Star Online 2 and I want to run around in it and see what it has to offer. So far I’m not very much blown away by the game but that’s mostly because I have no idea what I’m doing. I’m on Ship 1 if you’re interested!

So that’s it. Keeping my MMO goals for June pretty light and instead want to focus on my single player games. I’m really curious how I’ll enjoy my Summer of Platformers aswell. Let’s find out together!

Sandy’s MMO Sunday: May 24th Tomestones Galore

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A still of Thordan fight

It’s been a rather eventful week in MMO land for me. We’ve had some guild drama, which I’m not going to expand further upon but it happened, the Moogle Treasure Trove event started in Final Fantasy XIV and Blizzard announced changes to Corruptions, Visions and Cloak leveling. Especially this latter news was music to my ears. Getting my cloak to rank 15 on my Warrior suddenly became a much more obtainable goal and one that I plan to grind out before reset because we’re currently on the vision of Orgrimmar… And that’s the easier of the two.

As for last week. I kicked my ass into gear when it came to farming tomes in FFXIV. I’ve chosen to mainly focus on making sure that I run the Main Scenario Roulette every day since it can either contain the Praetorium or Castrum Meridianum which are good for 10 or 7 tomes respectively. So far I’ve been “lucky” and I’ve been getting the Praetorium constantly. Sure it takes a while to complete but afterwards I get out with 10 Tomestones and a big chunk of experience towards my next level. With this tactic I’ve managed to push my Machinist to level 80, finally, and started working on my Warrior next. I know I was planning to do Dark Knight but for some reason I felt like picking up Warrior and I need to level both anyway so it doesn’t really matter which one I pick up first in that regard. So far I’ve managed to get my Warrior to level 72 and I picked up the Susano Ex mount, the first one of the dog mounts that I own. I remember lightly farming it in Stormblood together with the one from Lakshmi Ex but I never managed to obtain them. So now I’ll just grab it with this event! The next mount on my list to get is the Ixion mount and after that I need to see what else the Moogle has on offer with it’s Tomestones. I may pick up some Orchestrion Scrolls or alternatively some MGP cards so I can start getting mounts from the Gold Saucer. Anyway I’ve been dutifully running this content and I’m quite happy so far.
In other news I’ve also been pushing FATEs like a madman last week. I managed to finish up the Rank 3 FATE step in Ahm Araeng and am halfway through finishing the Rank 3 FATE step in the Tempest. Which means I’m 30 FATEs off of doing the lot. Not that bad for a week of gaming!

In the World of Warcraft it’s been a lot of the same stuff I’ve been doing the past few weeks. I’m still ranking up Essences on my Warrior and I’m still doing dailies and still raiding and attempting to do Mythic+. For some reason though I’ve gone into a bit of an alt frenzy because I want to experience something else than just Protection Warrior tanking all the time. So I rolled up a new Demon Hunter on my server and I picked up my Paladin on the Horde side again to see if I can get a kick out of that. Otherwise I’ve been poking around on my Hunter, getting her cloak ranked up and running Mythic+ with friends who play tanks themselves. I’m starting to do some mean damage on said Hunter and I’m really enjoying the gameplay. I also realized it was a pretty overpowered class to run Visions on and I’ve been pushing it to the limit when it comes to cloak upgrades. I’m only on rank 6 but I can comfortably do two bosses and kill Thrall with no real issues. The more I rank up, and unlock usefull skills with Mementos, the more I can push on that character. If this keeps up I will probably be able to solo the 5 mask stuff on my Hunter easier than on my Warrior. But we’ll see when the time is there.

As for next week there won’t be many changes. I’m still raiding on my Warrior and I will still be pushing for Tomestones on FFXIV. I hope I can get my cloak to rank 15 sooner rather than later and I hope my Warrior will be a lot closer to level 80, if not there, by next weekend. After that I need to start thinking about my MMO goals for June and how I’m going to let them exist next to my Summer of Platformers challenge. For now though I’ve got a whole week of MMO madness ahead and I can’t wait to dive back in.

Moogle Treasure Trove is back!

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Afbeelding kan het volgende bevatten: mogelijk herkende tekst: Moogle Treasure Trove The Hunt for Law From Monday, May 18, 2020 at 1:00 a.m. (PDT) until the launch of Patch 5.3

Another round of the Moogle Treasure Trove has kicked off in Final Fantasy XIV.
Once again you are rewarded for doing low level dungeons, especially Castrum Meridianum and the Praetorium. Queueing up for main scenario roulette as DPS during this time isn’t nearly as painful as other times and I’m definitely taking advantage of it on my Machinist this week.

As for what I’m chasing personally. I think I definitely want to get the Ixion and Susano Ex mounts. The shiba necklace looks super cute aswell.

So if you’re playing FFXIV please check out what the Moogle Treasure Trove has to offer and get queueing for those dungeons!

Sandy’s MMO Sunday: May 17th I Need New Goals

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I really like taking screenshots of my mount collection. I have more than enough to show off and the one I’m using in this screenshot is the one you get for collecting 300 mounts so I guess you can see where I’m at with my collection. I didn’t even make a concious effort to get to that 300 mark. It kind of happened naturally. I realized I was only three mounts short yesterday and bought them off the reputation vendors in Stormsong Valley, Drustvar and Tiragarde Sound. Of course I’m well away from the next two achievements for obtaining 350 and 400 mounts respectively. I don’t think that will change anytime soon since hunting down mounts is not really high on my priority list right now.

What is high on my priority list is the fact that I need to find new goals in the World of Warcraft to tie me over untill the end of the month. I have actually completed almost all goals on my list I made at the start of the month. Mostly because I’ve been no-lifing on WoW way too much this past week and dropping whatever else I intended to play. It tends to happen that when I get back into “serious” MMO mode I get sucked into the game and then suddenly spend most of my waking hours outside of any real life obligations in said game. I guess there’s worse ways to spend your time but it also means that my progress in Final Fantasy XIV and 7R has kind of stalled and I haven’t touched my Animal Crossing island in about two weeks. Oops. Oh well. It is how it is. As such I need a few new goals to focus on so I don’t get overwhelmed.
As of right now I have a few goals left that I’m still working on that I can’t really speed up because they are mostly tied to doing dailies and/or World Quests. This mainly concerns the reputations that I still have left to do. Another is battling my questlog which I’m doing slowly but steadily. I’ve killed Rakhastan in LFR, completing the associated quest, and my guild as a whole managed to kill N’Zoth on heroic difficulty this week effectively having us “beat” the current raiding content. I got my achievement and mount and I could stripe off the final quest of the Black Empire campaign aswell. So when I look at my WoW goals list it kind of looks something like this now:

  • Get the following reputations to Exalted: Waveblade Ankoan/Rustbolt Resistance/Storm’s Wake/Champions of Azeroth/Tortollan Seekers/Rajani/Uldum Accord
  • Finish all quests in Drustvar and Stormsong Valley
  • Kill Rakhastan and finish the associated quest
  • Level Blacksmithing to 175
  • Level Cooking to 175
  • Finish miscellaneous quests in my questlog

The reputations and quests will disappear organically. It’s just a question of doing dailies, World Quests and the assaults in Uldum and Valley of Eternal Blossoms. Nothing new there and it will keep me on the daily cycle for a bit. Seeing as you can get 500 rep per day with Uldum Accord and Rajani for doing dailies, plus bonus rep for completing an assault. It’s around 4-5k rep per week. I’m honored with both factions as of right now so I think I will hit revered by the end of the month. And then it will take me roughly another month to get to Exalted. It’s a really slow burn. As for the Tortollan Seekers. I’m around 1k rep off hitting exalted with them and I’m pretty sure that if the double reputation buff is still up tomorrow I can hit Exalted from doing 3-4 World Quests for them. So yeah. That basically gives me a ton of “free” time apart from doing dailies. So to fill that up I want to add the following goals to my list:

  • Level up my Legendary cloak to rank 15
  • Obtain and rank up Essences for my Heart of Azeroth necklace

Yeah it’s only these two. However these goals cover a bigger area than one might think. The Legendary cloak one is pretty straight forward and just involves me putting time into running Visions of N’Zoth. I’m currently able to solo 3 chest runs without masks and I hope I can get up to 4 chests now that my cloak has hit rank 15. Eventually I want to start doing runs with masks aswell but for now I’m not feeling that confident yet. Getting my cloak to rank 15 will be time consuming enough.
As far as the other goal goes. There are a lot of essences to obtain that one can slot into their Heart of Azeroth. I obtained a lot of them but not all. Especially the PvP related ones I’ve not bothered with yet but I would like to. Of the essences that I have obtained the majority is only rank 2. They become the most powerful once they hit rank 3 so I still have a bit to go to rank all of them up. Some again will come more naturally from doing Ny’alotha raids, Visions and Mythic+. I think I’m pretty close to unlocking the rank 3 from Island Expeditions one aswell. Others are harder to get. They require you to run dungeons, (outdated) raids or straight up grinding materials to obtain them. So yeah. It’s actually a bit of a meta-goal and one I’m pretty happy to tackle.

This should also hold me over untill the end of the month and it should allow me to put more time into FFXIV and my single player games. I’m still leveling up my Machinist and I should be done with the Ahm Araeng FATES this week aswell. As for FF7R I’m still at chapter 8 and I know it’s a bit of a freeroam chapter with a lot of side content and I really need to take some time to sit down and play through it properly. With a four day weekend coming up I think I will do just that and hopefully earn a bunch of trophies along the way. I’m still aiming to get the Platinum trophy for FF7R because I think it’s an awesome game and deserves all the time I can sink into it but for now I just need to find a moment to just sit down and play.

Let’s hope that happens next week.

Sandy’s MMO Sunday: May 10th progress, progress, progress!

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Two posts in one day? Why not! I feel the writing bug so I may aswell take advantage of it. Plus my earlier post was supposed to go up yesterday but I forgot to hit the publish button so… Whatever I guess.
I rebranded my older “Sandy’s Sunday” to “Sandy’s MMO Sunday” since MMO’s are still my most played genre and I want to have one day a week where I specifically talk about my (personal) progress on that front aswell as talk about what I’ve been struggling with the past week, if there have been struggles or anything else I need to get off my chest.

So first off, I have made a ton, and I mean a ton, of progress on my World of Warcraft and Final Fantasy XIV goals the past week. I’ve gotten two reputations to Exalted, Storm’s Wake and the Waveblade Ankoan. They were both surprisingly easy to get and I even managed to three Paragon chests for both reputations together already. Mostly because next to getting Storm’s Wake reputation up I also finished the zone quest wise. I also finished off Drustvar so I can stripe that goal off of my list. I can’t say how soothing it is to get rid of all the quest markers on a map and slowly emptying out my questlog as I go through a zone. Right now I only have one questchain left in Stormsong Valley and two Dungeon quests that are related to the zone stories so I may tackle those next week.
On the profession front I’ve been able to get Kul Tiran Blacksmithing to level 175 with a little help from the Darkmoon Faire. I’m also well on my way to crafting the 455 ilvl belt, I need like 9 more Expulsom or so, after which I unlock the 470 recipe which is something I aim for! After that I’m probably going to focus on doing the same for the pants seeing as the chance is slim I’m going to get 470 ilvl gear from anywhere else.
Next to my personal progress we also managed to down two more bosses in Heroic Ny’alotha bringing us to 10/12 bosses downed total with a 10%ish wipe on Carapace of N’zoth. I’m pretty sure we’ll get to 11/12 heroic next week, maybe even 12/12 if we don’t wipe too much on bosses that we’ve already downed. All in all a pretty good week in WoW!

In FFXIV I’ve taken last Tuesdays’ reset to finish off Eden. I had three fights left and even though I managed to die in all three of them I did clear the instance, so I can scrape that off my list aswell! Leveling on my Machinist has been steady and I’ve hit level 75 today. I’m also slowly whittling away at FATEs in Ahm Araeng and only need to do 14 more of them to get to that rank 3 FATEs cleared. I’m pretty sure I can bang those out the coming week and hopefully get my Machinist a lot closer to level 80 aswell. After that I can set my eyes on FATEs in the Tempest untill my Machinist is level 80 and I can get rid of all the sub level 80 Aiming gear and start working on the final cluster of jobs that I need to level: my tanks. I figured I may aswell start with Dark Knight first and then pick up Warrior after before unlocking and leveling the final job I need: Gunblade.

Next to all this nice progress I’m also struggling a lot with the overwhelming amount of content that is available to do in, mostly, WoW. Right now I’m focusing on the goals that I have set for myself and I’m pretty good at keeping myself restrained to them for now but when I look at all the activities I can partake in the situation just gets to be a bit overwhelming.
There’s obviously the two raid nights per week where I’m logged on and all the dailies I’m doing every day to get up reputations and earn other things. Then there’s Mythic+, Visions of N’Zoth to level up my legendary cloak, chasing the rank 2 and 3 upgrades for the essences in my Heart of Azeroth necklace, which come from a lot of different sources. The weekly assaults in Uldum and Vale of Eternal Blossoms. And don’t even get me started on chasing mounts, pets and achievements. Something I love to do but need to put on the side for a bit so I can focus on the more “important” stuff that needs doing. It’s really hard to be able to do everything given the limited amount of time I have to spend now that I’m an adult with a full time job. I really don’t want to invest every waking moment that I have into WoW and as such I’ve had to make decisions on what I really want to do. Setting goals for myself has helped enormously but seeing the speed at which I’ve been fulfilling said goals I may need to find another set of goals pretty soon before I become directionless and start doing more than I should and burn out.

All in all though I’m pretty happy with my progress. If I keep up this pace I may even need to set some new goals for myself by the end of next week. For now though I’m going to keep doing what I’m doing and hopefully not get too sidetracked with shiny content.