Tag Archives: Gaming

Extensions and Expansions

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Yesterday Blizzard announced they’re extending the 100% bonus experience buff untill the prepatch for Shadowlands. A lot of people were really happy with this since it meant they could invest a bit more time in getting up the classes and races they wanted, mostly to unlock Heritage Armours but maybe also to try something out they haven’t played yet.
Personally I’m not that excited about it. I’ve leveled enough for now and am focusing on catching up on Battle for Azeroth things on my Warrior instead. That’s why I was happier with the other announcement Blizzard made, that they were doubling reputations gains for a month with Legion (meh) and Battle for Azeroth reputations. Seeing as I’ve been playing my Rogue for most of this expansion my Warrior is woefully behind on every reputation. Which means this 100% buff to all reputations gained is actually something I’m very welcoming of. It gives me the time to level up all the reputations twice as fast as I’m doing now so that I can unlock more mounts and other stuff! The only reputations that are excluded are the ones that they added with the latest patch, which isn’t very strange since it’s current content and still relatively new.

Our raid team for Shadowlands is slowly starting to take shape. I will be one of the tanks together with a friend who will be playing a Deathknight. Maybe it’s not ideal to have two plate wearing tanks but we complement eachother on resistances, with me being a bit better against physical damage on my Warrior and him being better against magical damage. I’m not really looking at all the stuff that is being datamined and gained through the Shadowlands Alpha right now, mostly because I want to go into the expansion and the story fresh. I know that the Covenants will be a thing and for min maxing you probably won’t really have a choice when it comes to that. But I’ll tackle that once I’ll get there. I really like the look of the Kyrian armours though, so I’m kind of hoping that they will be the best Covenant for Protection Warriors. I guess we’ll see.
For now we’re trying to tackle a bit of normal Ny’alotha and hopefully some heroic aswell before Shadowlands hits. I’m also wanting to do a bit more Mythic+ and maybe get a +15 in. Warriors seem to be OP for Mythic+ dungeons this expansion and especially the Night Elf variety thanks to their Shadowmeld ability. I just need to get a group together and start tackling it, which is easier said than done. I still have some time for this though so I’m not too worried.

All in all I’m quite happily settling back into Azeroth. I’m doing my dailies on my Warrior and Warlock. I’ve transferred over my Priest from another server and turned her back into the Draenei she originally was. I’m poking about in world PvP, especially when there is an assault up and I’m running content I haven’t run in a while like Island Expeditions and raiding. It’s been fun and relaxing and also taking my mind off the whole COVID-19 situation. With a group of people to actually play with now I think I’ve found my MMO home again for the time being. And it feels good to be back.

This post was the third one of Blapril 2020

Animal Crossing is crack

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So with almost everyone getting their copy of Animal Crossing: New Horizons today I can finally spill the beans about what I think about the game so far for myself. I managed to get my copy two days early due to the chain where I ordered it having to close shops. Why close shops? Well unless you’ve been living under a rock… This particular chain decided to close to protect their employees from the COVID-19 virus. Since they allowed everyone to pick up their physical copy from the store two days earlier they also decided to do the mailing two days earlier. As such I ended up with my copy on the 18th and I was pretty happy to once not get the short end of the stick.

So far I’m really enjoying the game. It’s a bit like crack in that I’m instantly addicted and I keep wanting to do more and play more whenever I take a bit of a break because I need to do something else.
It really plays like any other Animal Crossing game. You start out with a tent which you can then upgrade to a, progressively bigger, house. Tom Nook is there with Timmy and Tommy and they run the island shop. Blathers is there aswell and I’m currently working on the museum stuff. I have two inhabitants, Hammlet and Lydia, and I’m running around collecting various materials and catching fish and bugs. Oh and planting flowers.

This game is one for the long haul. Obviously I want to unlock everything as fast as I possibly can and be able to expand on my island and make it look pretty. The native trees on my island contain oranges but I’ve also planted a few cherry trees. The graphics look smooth and pretty while still keeping that familiar Animal Crossing vibe. I want to start posting screenshots from my island soon but since I don’t want to spoil things too much I’m just sticking to this short post for now.

Happy playing everyone!

On A Roll

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I texted my best friend earlier this week how for some reason I’ve been feeling more relaxed than I have in a very long time. Even if I did get called out of bed in the morning by a delivery driver. And honestly? It’s the truth. I feel like some sort of calm has finally settled into my erratic brain and because I’m not forcing myself to do anything now that I have a few days off I can finally focus on doing fun stuff instead. I still got some adulting done though, but not with as much pressures as I normally have when I have my regular weekends where I need to fit everything into two days. So with this stated I can proudly say I’ve been on quite a roll gaming wise these past few days.

For starters I sat down for a bit and moved my way through the Pokémon Sword post-game questline. All in all it took me a little under two hours to complete, with a lot of traveling back and forth and a lot of battling. I finally caught Zacian (the Sword Legendary Pokémon) and unlocked the Battle Tower in Wyndon. I’m not sure when I will be checking that out though, seeing as I spent quite a bit of time hunting a shiny Magikarp yesterday because of a special event. I managed to get one on the last max raid I did during the evening, so I am the proud owner of a shiny red Gyarados now. I also managed to catch a Lapras and a Gigantamax Butterfree aswell as start working away on evolving all the Pokémon in my bank.
All in all I’m quite content with how much time it has taken me to get to this point in the game. Granted, the game feels rather short compared to some of the older entries. I have over 70 hours clocked in Pokémon Black for instance and am not nearly finished with filling up the Pokédex there. It’s the one big flaw of the game for me, except the lacking of a National dex and all available Pokémon. It feels like with every new entry into the Pokémon series the stories have been getting cut shorter and shorter and the post-game has been made smaller aswell. Gone are the days where you’d have an enormous post-game riddled with mysteries and interesting ways to catch multiple legendary Pokémon. Now it’s a questline which opens up the Battle Tower after you’re done… And that’s it. Granted, I still need to fill up my Pokédex so that will take some time. However, unlike many die-hard Pokémon fans I’m going to stop the moment I have all the Pokémon registered in my dex. I have no interest in keeping a “living dex” where you have every single Pokémon as captured Pokémon in your boxes. I’m also not a huge fan of hunting shiny Pokémon. I think I’ve managed to capture two in my lifetime, not counting the shiny Magikarp of this event. One in Pokémon Black, a Golbat, and one in Pokémon Moon, a Rattata. Not the most thrilling Pokémon to have as shinies but I got them nonetheless. I also have a few shiny Pokémon from distribution events, but those don’t really count. So yeah. Right now I’m on about 33 hours played, mostly caused by the hunting for the shiny Magikarp, and I’m quite curious where the timer will be on once I manage to fill up the dex.

In Final Fantasy XIV I’ve been making a ton of strides in clearing out sidequest content and leveling my Ninja. Not only did my Ninja hit 80, before that I managed to clean up all the side content in Raktika Greatwood, earning me the Ronkan Serpent minion aswell as finishing up the final quests I had in the Tempest. I also took some time to do some FATEs in the Tempest untill I had my “do 10 FATEs” challenge from the challenge log done. Luckily for me there were a few other people doing FATEs there aswell so we had a nice little train going. I even had a shimmer of hope that we could spawn the big boss FATE at some point seeing as how we got to the final prerequisite FATE but alas, the chain reset. It’s the one FATE achievement from Shadowbringers that I’m lacking. Maybe I should join a hunt discord or ingame channel seeing as how they usually keep tabs on the big FATEs and S-Rank hunts.
Speaking of hunts. I’m slowly working towards getting the mount from the Shadowbringers hunt clan. I don’t actively participate in the A-Rank and S-Rank hunting but I do try to do my daily hunts atleast. Doing those every day gives 110 seals a day, which isn’t actually too bad. Maybe I should look into doing the weekly B-rank aswell. For now though, if I keep going like this, I should have the mount by next week!
Finally I’ve started working way on my Bard. I’ve chosen to go the Trusts route here though. I want all my Trusts leveled and I only have a few classes left where I can do that on. So I’m taking my Bard through the motions with one team and one of my tanks with the other team. I’m probably going to keep it down to one Trust dungeon per day, mostly because running the same dungeon over and over gets tedious fast. Even if they upped the experience the Trusts get. Pixie dailies and cleaning up the remaining sidequests are also on the agenda for Bard, but I will skip roulettes for the time being.

All in all I’ve been diligently working away at my gaming goals. Having the extra time off has really given me a bit of motivation to push trough and get stuff done. I may even need to set some new goals at this pace!

Final Fantasy Fever

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Today is always a weird day for me. 18 years ago my Mum died on this day and I’ve made a habit of taking it off every year. I never know how I am emotionally. Some years I have a bit of a breakdown and I spend most of the day crying and listening to the wrong songs and other years I feel quite calm and centered and able to enjoy my day. Today has been the latter, but I’m glad I took the day off nonetheless. It’s given me a bit of respite from work and allowed me to have a day to relax and get back into a calmer state of mind. I made sure I did all the stuff I needed to do in the morning and as a result I’ve had most of the day to catch up on a ton of things in Final Fantasy XIV.

I’ve not really been into a proper gaming mood during my evenings after work but that has made me even more eager to pick up my controller and play during my days off. I made a ton of progress last weekend on my Paladin, which I managed to ding 80 Monday evening, and that has set me up for a nice session today. I did roulettes on my Samurai, climbing up to level 71.5. I finished up a lot of job quests that I hadn’t done yet after getting to max level, Paladin, Monk and Astrologian, and I finished up the Tank class quests from Shadowbringers. By doing so I opened up an extra questline that only becomes available when you’ve cleared all the class quests. It ties the stories together neatly and shed light on an unexpected character.. And that’s all I’m going to say about it. All of this though tends to take up quite a bit of time and it was nice sitting down and just getting all that stuff done and getting bits and pieces of additional story and lore along the way. It’s one of the many things I love about this game and seeing as I still have a ton of jobs to level I’m sure I will get to see much more awesome story bits for the coming few months.

As it stands now I still have to level 9 battle jobs. Three tanks (Dark Knight, Warrior, Gunblade), three melee (Samurai, Dragoon, Ninja) and the ranged physical DPS classes (Bard, Machinist, Dancer). I have started on Samurai because it shares gear with Monk and it means I can get rid of all the sub level 80 gear once I’m done leveling. After that I may switch to a ranged class to keep things a bit more interesting. I’m really digging Dancer right now so it may actually be the class I’m going to focus on after I’m done with Samurai instead of Dragoon which was the original plan.
Next to my battle jobs I’ve also made leaps and bounds in leveling my crafters. Right now Leatherworker is the only job that isn’t level 70 yet, but I’m sure I won’t be too far off. Right now it’s sitting at level 66 and about two-third of the way to level 67. All my other crafters are level 70 or 71 and I’m quite content with that. Once my Leatherworker hits the level 70 treshold aswell I may start looking into the whole Ishgard crafting thing while simultaneously doing the quests in the Crystarium for the massive experience boosts that they give. After that the only classes/jobs that I still need to level are Fisher and Blue Mage and I think I will get to those in due time. Fisher is sitting at level 48 and Blue Mage at level 10.

It may sound a bit odd but having all these leveling goals is what is making me have so much fun in the game right now. I may be a bit of a machine when it comes to leveling, I get very single minded and focused on getting things to maximum level but for some reason this helps me relax and wind down. It also helps that the game rewards you with titles and gear and apparently mounts for getting everything to maximum level so that’s an extra boost to my motivation. Sometimes it feels like I’m feverishly playing the game. Pushing myself to my limits in how much experience I can cram into one session and being exuberant when I get to where I want to be. I may even label myself as a bit obsessed sometimes, especially on days like today where I play for hours straight to get things done. I don’t consider it a waste of time though since I gain so much satisfaction from my play sessions, and that is what is enjoying your hobby is all about right?
I have thought about what I want to do once I do get everything to level cap. I guess the next thing in line is to gear up all these jobs by running ex-roulette, raids and primals. I feel pretty confident in my ability as White Mage to dare to join pick up groups and it’s nice to kit out all my classes in the best gear possible. I think I also want to start doing crafting and gathering related achievements to earn even more titles and gear. Then there are tons of things that I’ve not actively participated in yet. Golden Saucer stuff like Chocobo Racing and Triple Triad, PvP, getting one of the Stormblood relic weapons. There’s just so much to do!

For now though I’m going to end my post here and boot my Playstation back up. All dailies have reset about an hour ago and after spending some time cleaning and typing I feel renewed for another session in the lovely world of Eorzea.
Untill next time!

Gaming Goals: October 2019

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September has flown by. I can hardly believe tomorrow is October first. Where did my final weeks of summer go? Fall has arrived and with it colder weather, the need for house slippers and blankets. It’s dark out much earlier and everyone is slowly looking forward to the holidays. The weather has turned aswell and it makes me feel way less guilty about staying inside and game and that’s exactly what I’m planning to do this month.
But first… How did I do with my September goals?

MMO Goals

  • Level my Monk to level 80 in FFXIV. Start leveling my Samurai afterwards?
  • Complete the level 80 job quests for Botanist and Miner
  • Level Culinarian to level 70 + job quests
  • Start taking either Leatherworker, Armorer or Blacksmith through Ixal dailies towards level 50
  • Work on White Mage relic
  • Work towards getting Exalted with the Nazjatar reps on WoW retail
  • Play some GW2
  • Play some WoW Classic

Non-MMO Goals

  • Play through/finish Oninaki
  • Pick another game to play on Switch

I’ve not done as well as I hoped. Even though I put a bit of time into both Guild Wars 2 and World of Warcraft Classic it has not been enough to really enjoy the games. I have made some progress towards reputations on WoW Retail but again not that much. I picked up Blacksmith to take through Ixal dailies but I’m only at level 35. As for the rest of the goals… I got my Culinarian to level 60 and my Monk to 73 but that’s it. I’ve not spent much time on games at all this month.
The only things I’m happy about is that I finished Oninaki, earlier than I thought, and I picked up a new game on my Switch: Link’s Awakening. I want to rinse away the taste of September and all the stress I had during that month and look to October to redeem myself. So here are my goals for October!

MMO Goals

  • Level my Monk and Samurai to level 80 in FFXIV.
  • Complete the level 80 job quests on Botanist and Miner
  • Level Culinarian and Blacksmith to level 70 + Job quests. Level Armorsmith to 50.
  • Finish atleast three Animus books on my White Mage.
  • Get Exalted with Nazjatar and Mechagon in WoW
  • Level my Warrior to 120 in WoW
  • Defeat Aszhara in the Eternal Palace LFR on my Rogue
  • Complete the zone my Ranger is in currently in Guild Wars 2

Non-MMO Goals

  • Finish Link’s Awakening

I’m going full force MMO’s this month. I’ve already picked my non-MMO game and I’m quite confident I’ll be able to finish that. Otherwise I mainly want to focus on levelling all the things in FFXIV and some WoW shenanigans. I also want to give GW2 a bit of love so I want to play through atleast the current zone where my Ranger is in and 100% complete it.

All in all I think these goals should be doable as long as I keep logging on to play. What are your plans for October?

Gaming Goals: September 2019

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Man, I can’t believe it’s September already. August has flown by in my perspective and with that the summer has come to an end. Everyone at work is slowly returning from their vacation. Sunscreen is being heavily discounted and all the kids are back in school. For me August has been a bit of a mixed bag when it came to gaming, as I’ve said in my post yesterday. Nonetheless it’s time to let go of the past and look ahead to what September has to offer. But first a quick look at what I’ve actually achieved in August goals wise!

MMO Goals

  • Cap weekly on the new tomestones in FFXIV and get healing gear upgrades
  • Level my Black Mage to 80. Level my Red Mage to 80
  • Level my Alchemist to 70. Level my Culinarian to 50. Level my Botanist and Miner to 80
  • Poke away at the ARR Relic chain for the White Mage weapon. I really want more transmog options… I’m currently at the Atma step.
  • Play through Nazjatar and Mechagon content in WoW and unlock flying
  • Play some GW2

As far as my MMO goals go I actually think I did pretty well. I managed to get all my Final Fantasy XIV leveling goals done. I also managed to get from the Atma to the Animus step on my White Mage relic so there’s that, I’m on my second book. I unlocked flying in World of Warcraft and I managed to keep up with capping tomestones untill this weeks’ reset. The only thing I didn’t do is spend some time in Guild Wars 2.

Non-MMO Goals

  • Play through and write about FFVIII, not necessarily finish it though
  • Play through and write about Spider-man on the PS4

Unfortunately I didn’t get any of these done. Partly because I couldn’t bring myself to sit down and play, partly because of the weather that left my apartment to be quite warm and thus I didn’t want to subject my PS4 or my PC to long gaming times in that heat.

With that out of the way, let’s look forward to September

MMO Goals

  • Level my Monk to level 80 in FFXIV. Start leveling my Samurai afterwards?
  • Complete the level 80 job quests for Botanist and Miner
  • Level Culinarian to level 70 + job quests
  • Start taking either Leatherworker, Armorer or Blacksmith through Ixal dailies towards level 50
  • Work on White Mage relic
  • Work towards getting Exalted with the Nazjatar reps on WoW retail
  • Play some GW2
  • Play some WoW Classic

Non-MMO Goals

  • Play through/finish Oninaki
  • Pick another game to play on Switch

At first glance it looks like I’m setting a lot of goals for myself but in reality this is actually a quite relaxed month for me. I’m not forcing myself to cap tomes on FFXIV anymore. I’m only setting a goal for one battle class this month and the rest of my time will be focused on crafting, which is mostly completing beast tribe dailies. Also working on the White Mage relic is pretty casual. The books are much easier to do now with the exception of the FATE requirements.
In WoW I just want to get those two reps to exalted, which should be easily doable now that I’ve unlocked flying. In addition to getting those two reps up it will also mean I will get the “80 reputations Exalted” achievement as secondary motivation.
I’m still keeping some space to play Guild Wars 2 and/or WoW Classic although I’m reserving both of those games for the weekend.

On the non MMO front I’ve already been playing a lot of Oninaki (see above screenshot) and I’m planning to finish it in September. For some reason my Switch seems to be the preferred console right now so I want to take advantage of the fact that I’m playing on it a lot. After I finish Oninaki I want to pick a game from my backlog back up that I started but never finished. I’m quite enjoying the action RPG genre at the moment so I expect to either jump back into Xenoblade Chronicles 2 after I finish up Oninaki or Ys 8, both great ARPG games with the Japanese visual style that I so enjoy.

All in all I’m keeping things light for myself so that I can easily skip a few days of gaming and still achieve all the goals that I’ve set. How will your September look like gaming wise?

The final day of (BL)August

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Well I guess we made it to the end. It’s the 31st of August and with this the final day of Blaugust. I set out to try and do a post per day for the entire month but got burnt out about two thirds of the way through. Just coming up with something to write about every day proved to be more difficult than I had foreseen so I took a step back and decided not to blog for a couple of days. I’m not sure if I’ve regained my mojo yet, I happen to post for three days in a row now, but I’m not pressuring myself to write anything when I don’t really feel the need to. Right now however I’m waiting for Final Fantasy XIV to update on my Playstation 4 and thus I figured I might use this time to write a bit of a summary of the month August for me in general, before launching a new goals post for September (in which I will also look back on my August goals).

As a whole August has been a pretty weird month for me. I got back from a two week break right into the chaos that is my job. For some reason it’s been extremely busy for the past 4-5 weeks and it has taken a bit of it’s toll on me when it comes to energy and mental fortitude. On top of that we had a reorganization in the department with a few new jobs opening up where you could be promoted to senior. I applied before I had my two week holiday back in July. They waited to tell us who actualy got the jobs untill last Thursday. As that day approached I got more and more nervous even though I really had nothing to lose. Fortunately I managed to snag the job and I feel like a bit of a weight has left my shoulders. Not that my new job will make my life much easier, on the contrary it will probably mean even more responsibility and stress but it’s something I’ve signed up for.

On the gaming front I managed to get back into retail World of Warcraft and unlock flying for all my characters in Battle for Azeroth. The grind wasn’t exactly enjoyable but it took a bit shorter than I had initally anticipated. It means that when I go back to play now I can so much easier get everything done. No more having to pull half a zone worth of mobs just to get from point A to point B but mount up and fly over everything. It felt liberating and I’m happy I pursued it before the Classic launch… Which has been a huge part of my gaming routine for the past week or so. I’ve seen a lot of friends and online people have their love for WoW rekindled with the Classic servers but unfortunately for me it hasn’t been the event that I was hoping it would be. I’ve resigned myself to be a bit of a “weekend warrior” where I’ll probably log this game during the weekends when I feel rested and have more time to play intermittently than during the evenings after work. I initally started a Warlock but have since swapped to a Druid who I find much less of a hassle to play. Maybe that also has something to do with the fact that there are just less people around the Nightelf starting zones so it makes questing a lot easier. I still can only do 1-1.5 hours of play before I have to log off though so there’s that.

Due to all of this I’ve let my playtime in FFXIV slide a bit over the last weeks of the month. I still managed to get all the leveling goals done but I’m already getting iffy on getting the tomestone cap every week. I’m not really sure why but I guess the massive playing of the game at expansion launch has finally caught up to me and I need to step away for a bit so I can start enjoying the game again without burning myself out hard.

I never did get around to playing Final Fantasy 8 or Spider-man. Part of that was due to the extreme heat we’ve been seeing the past two weeks where I didn’t want to subject my PS4 to the demands of the Spider-man game and it was seriously sucky to sit down at my PC and sweat my ass off. Instead I bought Oninaki for the Switch and have been playing that off and on over the past two weeks. I’m really enjoying the game and the fact that I can get half hour sessions in and still feel like I’ve gotten somewhere. I’m on the fifth mission/map of the game and have unlocked four daemons as of now. I may write a post about this game later on this week to give my impressions, what I enjoy and how far along I’ve gotten. Up untill then I hope I can make a bit more progress and finish up atleast this fifth mission. As I’m playing on Switch I also don’t really need to worry about trophies or achievements, something the PS4 and PC versions do have. I do try to be thorough in my playthrough and make sure I kill all the mobs on the map and loot all the chests where possible and pick up/do sidequests where and when I can. I’m currently sitting at level 15ish and I’m quite curious as to what is to come.

All in all I can look back on an August that has been both disappointing and rewarding at the same time. I’m pretty sad that I couldn’t write my 31 Blaugust posts but such is life. At the same time I’m slightly disappointed that WoW Classic hasn’t turned out to be the awesome thing I hoped it was. On the other hand I managed to snag a job promotion, unlock flying in WoW retail and get all my leveling goals done in FFXIV so I guess there’s that. Tomorrow September starts and with it my first month in my new job, new goals to set for my games and hopefully the announcement that I’ve finished playing Oninaki.

Blogging Burnout?

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My last blog post was around 5 days ago. I’ve done one attempt since at writing a post and then deleted after I was done with it because it was just utter trash and not worth publishing. I have to admit I’ve been in a bit of a blogging burnout this week. I’ve expressed this on the Blaugust Discord and have gotten some tips on how to beat this and I guess just sitting down and writing about why I haven’t been writing seems like the best answer. And hey, maybe this post won’t turn out so bad as I think it will in my head right now.

I think the biggest reason for me not writing anything is because I feel like I don’t really have anything interesting to say. I’m playing my two MMO’s, World of Warcraft and Final Fantasy XIV, and am quite on track to tick off the goals I’ve set for myself for the month of August. I’ve not really touched Final Fantasy VIII or Spider-man at all this month and I’m just going to let that go. I just couldn’t get myself to sit down and play both of those games and I don’t want to force myself to play just because I said I would. I play games because I want to have fun, not because I feel like I need to. In lieu of this I don’t have much to talk about. Of course there has been some progress, especially in FFXIV, but I don’t really want to post an update every day with “look at what I’ve done in this MMO!”. Mostly because I feel it’s not that interesting to read. Or maybe it is. I don’t know.

I have picked up Oninaki on a whim for my Switch and have been playing enough to form a first impression but I’m not sure how to translate it into a blog post right now. I just want to play the game and not write about it. If that makes sense? It’s also not like I’ve been playing for hours on end, it’s been my “commute to/from work” game and the “I’m waiting in queues or watching League of Legends on the side” game. As such my play sessions are very short, which is actually one of the perks of owning it on the Switch. Of course picking up a new game means some of my other games, who deserve playtime aswell, get put to the wayside. And this is how my backlog grows.

So yeah. This is kinda how my life/days look like right about now. My life isn’t that interesting. I work. I eat. I sleep. I game. I don’t play that many games, truly I’m an MMO addict with a preference for what I know without trying many new things. I just can’t do the “play a ton of games at a given time!” thing like Syp and Belghast can. Maybe that’s fine though. I don’t know. Maybe I should just stick to progress posts for games that I enjoy. I mean it’s still better than a post like this right? I have some thinking to do and as such I’m not sure how many posts I will throw out this next week. Mayb WoW Classic will be the inspiration I need, but untill then I may just step away from blogging for a bit, take a breath and focus on what I want to do and want to be as blogger.

Something old, something new

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It’s really funny how I can be totally engrossed in other people’s blogs and their gaming stories and then feel like whatever I write up will never come anywhere near to that and I possibly can’t be that interesting to follow. I do have a steady amount of visitors on my blog every day though so I assume that whatever I write up must be interesting to some people atleast.

I had an awesome night last night to kick off my vacation with. I’ve recently discovered the joys of film and game themes being played live by orchestras and have had the privilege to attend Star Wars and Final Fantasy themed concerts so far. However yesterday was even better. Yesterday I went to see Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back at the Dutch Concertbuilding in Amsterdam. Basically it’s the Star Wars movie being played with the soundtrack replaced by a live orchestra and honestly I don’t think I can ever watch any movie again without a live orchestra now. The sound was simply amazing, the atmosphere was great and I have to say it was money well spent. Next year they will do Episode VI and I will definitely attend again. In the meantime I will keep an eye on the concert agenda for more movie and game related stuff that they may do that I want to attend.

In Final Fantasy XIV I’m still hammering away at leveling various jobs. My Summoner/Scholar is sitting at level 75 as of this morning after doing a few roulettes and grinding out some FATEs in Rak’tika Greatwood. I happened to stumble on the big FATE chain that eventually leads to the FATE achievement for the zone and decided to sit that one through to the end. I love how those FATE chains all tell a story one way or another and seeing as how most people are still actively doing FATEs right now I figured I would take advantage of that fact and just try to get all of the achievement ones done. So now I’m only missing the one in the Tempest which is of the same calibre as Ixion/Foxy Lady. I’ve not seen it spawn yet but I may just take a bit of time, now that I have time off, to hang around in the zone in the hopes stuff will spawn. As added bonus you can get a pet and a costume from killing the big boss FATE because it drops tokens and I’m eyeing the pet atleast. As far as the Kholusia one goes.. I managed to kill it once, earning me enough tokens to get the pet. If I want the mount however I need to go back and do it two more times.. Something I’m not really sure of if I want to do just that.

On the Gatherer/Crafter side I’ve been making some way on my Miner, Goldsmith and Alchemist. Doing the Namazu and Moogle beast tribe dailies take little to no time at all so I’m happy to just get those done. I’m leveling up my Miner with levequests though and that is going a bit slower. I hit level 73 this morning which means I’m only one level behind Botanist right now. I’m hoping I can get to 74 somewhere this weekend and then swap gear sets so I can start tackling the level 74+ levequests with a bit more success at gathering. Another reason I’m leveling up Miner and Botanist simultaneously is that apparently you need both at some point to make your way through the Crystarium hand-in quests.. So I might aswell bite the bullet and level both classes at the same time. I’ve not really touched any of my level 70 crafters to level yet (although that’s only Weaver and Carpenter for now) seeing as I want to focus on getting everything else to 70 first before submitting myself to the torture that is craftiong levequests.

Finally I’ve hit the part on my White Mage where I’m steamrolling through dungeons with even mediocre tanks. Unlike many people I know I don’t actually mind running Duty Finder groups, especially as healer. I know that I can keep people alive 99% of the time and now that I have decent gear it’s even less of an issue. Even so some people seem to just make things difficult which in turn can lead to hilarious situations.
Like me rescuing a tank out of the lasers on the last boss of the Twinning only for him to run away and get hit by them anyway. Left me speechless that one. Luckily he didn’t actually die from them but I had to powerheal him up before the next auto-attack would kill him. Keeps me on my toes, stuff like that.

For the rest of the weekend I’m going to try to get a kill on Innocence Ex and grind out some treasure maps with people from my FC. Let’s hope I get some shiny stuff!

Three day gaming weekend

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This weekend it’s Pentecost, meaning that most people in the Netherlands have a three day weekend instead of a two day one. Seeing as how I find my weekends always a day too short, it’s quite nice to have this extra day off to spend as I please. It means I can spread out my cleaning/other chores over a few more days which leaves me with more time for my hobbies or meeting up with people.
Seeing as how I’ve been really tired the last two weeks I’ve decided that this weekend I’m just going to be indoors and game and make a ton of progress everywhere by doing so. Of course I had to go get groceries for these three days and of course I’m not going to be a total hermit but my main activity for the weekend will be playing games.

So far I think I’ve made good on my plans to spend time in single player games during the weekends. Yesterday I’ve had two long sessions of Kingdom Hearts 3 as I’m making my way through the story. I picked up where I left off last time: Arendelle, the Kingdom of the movie Frozen. It’s really cool to see how Square and Disney have collaborated on this game. Although in all the levels you’re following the story of the movie that the level is based upon, some are a bit more literal than others. Arendelle was one of them. You literally see segments of the Frozen movie, including the entire Let It Go song, as you go through the level. The interference by Sora & co in this level is therefor much smaller than say in the Monstropolis or Caribbean worlds, which I will get to later. I did enjoy Arendelle. I liked the Ice Labyrinth level and the “final” boss fight of the world was interesting aswell, even though I was sure I was going to die while fighting. After I was done with the main story of the world I went back to do the Frozen sledding mini game. Even though I’ve yet to discover all the treasures on the course I did manage to get over the 600k point cap you need to obtain the trophy so there’s that. I’ve not found all of the Lucky Emblems yet so I’m definitely going back for those with the help of a guide. I think I also missed out on a Classic Kingdom mini game but I’m not sure. All in all there’s still enough to do there to have me go back after I finish up the main story.

After beating Arendelle you are sent to the Caribbean where you team up with Jack Sparrow once again. The gameplay in this world reminded me a lot of Assassin’s Creed 4 where you are master of your own ship and sail from island to island and have to defeat boats along the way. During the mainstory of this world there is a race segment versus one of the people from Organization XIII. It was actually quite a bit harder than I thought it would be and I had to redo the race three times because I kept losing at the end constantly. After you defeat the mainstory you can go back and roam around on your boat, exploring islands and finding treasures and more. There’s also a ton of navy battles to do and if you kill enough ships you get a trophy, if you level up your boat enough you get a trophy aswell. I may want to go back and do that at some point. My boat, the Leviathan, is sitting at level 8 now and is already one-shotting all the smaller ships when they show up in the waters, I only struggle with the bigger ships because they hit a lot harder. The amount of treasures on this world is insane, but then again it’s Pirates of the Caribbean so I would have expected nothing less.

To end my session yesterday I went over to San Fransokyo, the world from Big Hero 6, which is the final Disney movie world of the game. The recommended level is level 38 but with me going back to other worlds, especially the Caribbean, I’m well over leveled for this world now. I think I’m sitting close to level 40 and I’ve barely touched San Fransokyo. I’m really curious as to how the story is going to play out here and I’m hopefully going to find out later today when I resume my playing. Right now I’m about 25 hours in with still San Fransokyo and whatever comes after left to finish. Hopefully I can get towards the end of the game by the time the weekend is done but we’ll see. For now I’m really happy with the progress I’ve already made and the fun I’ve been having playing the game.

Next to Kingdom Hearts I’ve also steadily been putting time in on FFXIV. My Goldsmith is closing in on level 55 and my Alchemist is sitting on level 37. I’m not sure how far I can push these up the rest of the weekend but I hope that by next weekend my Goldsmith will be in the 60’s while my Alchemist should be closing in on level 50. It’s slow and steady going but it’s progress so I’m happy with it. I also need to spend a bit of time farming up Moogle tomes so I can get the Pegasus mount and Namazu earrings. I’m actually quite close to get the mount but the earrings are going to be a pain… Next to that I still have a few quests to finish off so I may focus on doing that aswell.

The one thing that is really nagging at me though is the fact that I’ve still not fully leveled up Blue Mage. I guess the concept was fun on introduction but in reality I think Square completely missed the mark on this one. There’s simply not that much fun to be had from leveling the Blue Mage and getting all the abilities. I guess there is the Coliseum but that’s it. I find it a shame really because I think they could have done so much more with this concept. The same goes for Eureka and the Relic Weapon. I never took to the grind and so I have inadvertedly chosen to skip out on this part of the game. Which saddens me because I had a maxed out Relic in both A Realm Reborn and Heavensward and I’ve actually been working on a second Heavensward one. However the Stormblood one was a major disappointment and I really hope they won’t implement a similar mechanic for the Shadowbringers one.

All in all though I can say that I’m finding my fun in gaming again and as result I’m making some actual progress on my backlog and in my MMO’s. Now I just need to figure out how to combine this with getting healthier…