Pad Thai and Samurai Shenanigans

Last monday my Samurai hit level 80. It was actually pretty fast as far as leveling up went, faster than I expected. I’m quite happy that it’s over because overal I’m not a huge fan of Samurai as a class. I kind of miss the logic in the class. The self buffs you put up don’t really time out like the Monk and Dragoon stuff does so you’re not really forced into a steady pattern of attacks, besides activating the right stuff so you can use Midare Setsugekka. I also find that Samurai has a lot of skills outside of the global cooldown and they’re kind of hard to manage. It just doesn’t make sense to me and I doubt I would enjoy this class playing it fulltime at 80. I had the same thing with Black Mage and like Black Mage I will probably put Samurai in a corner and won’t pull it out again unless I’m extremely bored or untill the next expansion drops, either one.
This sentiment may change over time though and I might just do some shenanigans on it but for now it’s another notch on the level 80 belt and I’m moving on to my next class, which is Dancer. I’m kind of enjoying the class, although the scope of it is limited since I’m only level 62. I hope I can level it up decently fast so I unlock more skills and steam to 80 before the month is over. I also decided to grab some nice gear for my Dragoon and take that through atleast the Pixie dailies every day to start slowly leveling that up to 80 aswell. Since I’m max rank with the Pixies that’s actually a nice amount of experience every day.

In real life work has not really let up that much. I’ve worked overtime most days again but I managed to connect with an old friend I met through World of Warcraft this Thursday. He had to be in the area for work and messaged me if I wanted to go out to dinner and catch up. I accepted and we wound up at a local Thai place where I ordered the Pad Thai and was kind of blown away by the true mountain of food I had on my plate.
For reference, Dutch portions are quite small usually. I can order an entree and a main course and be full from that most of the time, with very rarely having room for dessert. These are decent plates of food, nothing to extravagant but enough to fill you up properly. This Pad Thai though was of another level. I ate about half of it and took the other half with me to eat at home today and it was still a full plate of food. I don’t think I’ve ever gotten such a big portion anywhere and it was the first time I actually took food back home. Meeting up with my friend was nice though and we dredged up memories of the good old days of raiding in WoW and the guild we were in. It made me realise that my life looked very different 8-10 years ago and that I’ve grown as a person a lot in that time. Sometimes I miss those days where I had a tight knit community of online friends that I would play with almost every night but life does its thing and you end up getting out of touch with many people over the years. I don’t think I could do the 4-5 days a week raiding schedule anymore now that I have a fulltime job and other obligations and I salute anyone who can. I’m firmly in “casual” gamer mode these days and in some ways that’s probably the best thing that has happened to me.
For now though I’m looking forward to a nice relaxed weekend filled with gametime again and taking my car for a spin, if the weather allows it.

Dietary Restrictions and PS4 Time

Last few weeks I’ve been slightly pigging out when it comes to food. March is a ridiculous month when it comes to birthdays so every weekend I was stuffing my face with all types of snacks, crisps, cake and other shit. Obviously this is bad when you’re trying to lose weight, so I’m putting myself back on some dietary restrictions. Trying to eat healthier (get some fruit instead of candy) and just eating less in general. I’m aiming for eating around 1200-1400 calories a day, mostly because 1200 is the minimum amount you  need to eat to keep on feeling healthy, and I don’t want my body to go into starvation mode.
Next to dietary restrictions I’m also trying to set some rules on my money spending habits. I’ve been spending a LOT of money on my new Wii U and getting games for it… So I should lay low for a while and stop spending. I’ve given myself a budget of €100 to spend each month on games and/or make-up. Seeing as Ratchet and Clank comes out in a few weeks that’s already some bucks gone, so I really need to think about what I want to buy next to that.

Seeing as it’s Easter, and I managed to get 5 days of free time due to lucky scheduling, I’ve been spending a lot of time just playing games. I can finally sit down for a longer time and get stuff done, instead of getting 2-3 hours of playtime in on a weekday where you can barely do a dungeon or mission in a game and then you need to start watching the clock to log off. I’ve also taken the opportunity to binge watch my way through Daredevil season 2 (which I loved) and start watching Jessica Jones (which I don’t nearly love as much). All in all I’m really using this elongated weekend to relax, play and get some “me” time in.

Sandrian Noble 19/03/2016 13:59:22

PS4 Shenaningans
I’ve been spending a lot of time playing on my PS4 in various games. Mostly FFXIV and The Division and I’ve been making some steady progress in both games.
In FFXIV I finally managed to get my hands on the Vath flying mount and oh my god it’s adorable. I really like the didgeridoo type of sound when it makes as I’m flying everywhere and it just reminds me of a really weird seahorse.
The Vath itself have been a silly but cute beasttribe. It reminded me in many ways of the Borg in Star Trek, and Square Enix did it’s best to incorporate some clear references to them aswell. I’m kind of sad that the Vath and Vanu Vanu appear to be the only beast tribes for this expansion, although you never know with Square Enix and maybe they will let us rank up with the Moogles aswell? Who knows.

Tom Clancy's The Division™_20160314230045

Division seems to be the hot game of the moment right now and ofcourse I couldn’t stay behind in playing it. Although I might not be as fast as most people playing, I’ve been making some steady progress. I really love roaming around in New York discovering stuff. I like taking my time and going into buildings and alleys and collecting all the random little lore bits, instead of just rushing ahead through the story without giving other things a second look.
I’m currently level 15 and roaming around in the Clinton District. I won’t deny that due to the nature of the game I’ve almost thrown my controller through the room in frustration multiple times. Shooters aren’t really my main genre and even if this is a more tactical one, I die a lot and am pretty bad in weapon handling.

The only real downside to Division for me seems to be the female character creator and the fact that lady characters absolutely look godawful if you give them a headpiece to wear. I’m really disappointed about this. Although Ubisoft clearly tried to attract a wider audience with this game, I wish they would actually not just give us variations of butch lesbian haircuts to choose from. Not to mention the seriously weird ass options you have for Caucasian female faces.
Ohwell.