Tag Archives: Goals

January 2020: A look back

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Is it February already? Where did the time go? It feels like January only lasted two weeks this year. Maybe it’s because I’ve been extremely busy at work and dealing with emotional turmoil due to my friends’ illness. Maybe it’s because I’ve taken up working out again, making some of my evenings and weekend mornings fly by aswell.
All in all it’s been a chaotic month for me and on the work and personal front it seems like that’s not going to end anytime soon. But I don’t want to look at my personal stuff in this post, but instead look back at the goals in gaming land I set for myself and see how I fared…

In FFXIV:

  • Get more battle classes to level 80. I have 6 to go, with Ninja currently being 77. I hope to get Ninja and atleast two others to 80 by the end of the month.
  • Work on getting my first crafting classes to 80. With Ishguard restoration this shouldn’t actually be too hard. My Carpenter is 77 as we speak so that should be able to get to 80 fast. Ideally I want 3 Crafting classes to 80 by the end of the month. Let’s say Carpenter, Weaver and Leatherworker?
  • Level up Fishing. I’m currently sitting on level 64 and I want to get atleast to level 70 this month.
  • Level up Blue Mage. I want to hit atleast level 20 by the end of the month.
  • Complete all the side quests that are still up in the First
  • Work towards rank 3 FATEs in Ahm Araeng and the Tempest. Preferably I’ll have both done by the end of the month

Wow. I really thought at the start of the month that I would be able to do this. However because of work and other stuff I’ve actually barely logged on to FFXIV the past month. I’ve been slowly chunking away at leveling my Bard, she’s level 75 right now, with Trusts. And I have to say that leveling Trusts is boring and grindy and probably the reason why I’ve been logging less than I wanted to. I did the New Year’s event, Heavensturn, and will probably do the Valentione Event somewhere this week but man. Maybe I should just drop this whole leveling Trusts thing for now and just focus on doing stuff I enjoy while leveling up instead. I did get Ninja to 80 at the start of the month so there’s that. I really need to think long and hard about what I want from FFXIV in February.

In other MMO’s:

  • Make progress in LOTRO. I’m level 3 and at the absolute beginning of the game. I have no idea about the layout of this game yet and how zones and other stuff works so I just want to head out and explore and see where that ship strands.
  • Finish off the current zone I’m in on my character in Guild Wars 2.

So I discovered this month that I just really don’t have the time or patience to start from scratch in a new MMO. Just having to relearn everything from the bottom up is not something I’ve enjoyed. So my little experiment with LOTRO will end here. Maybe when life isn’t as chaotic and I’ve found my perfect gaming rotation schedule I will put this back on the menu. For now though both LOTRO and GW2 will be put back into the closet. I may break out GW2 on occassion to atleast unlock the episodes of the living story but that’s it.
On the other hand I started playing WoW again. I want to see the new 8.3 content and start working on the Legendary cloak. Instead of picking up where I left off on my Rogue though I’ve decided to take my Warrior to 120 instead and play her. I missed the Warrior too much in the end and I want to do the Legendary stuff on her for now. I managed to get to level 120 a week ago, with the final level solely on doing Archaeology digsites, and now I’ll have to focus on gearing up so I can start the 8.3 content. I’m still very casual and basically only play on the weekends for now but atleast I’m enjoying myself!

In single player games:

  • Finish the Pokémon post-game questline
  • Get 200 Pokémon registered in my Pokédex (atleast!)
  • Pick Spider-Man back up for my PS4 and play through/finish the game

I actually rocketed through Pokémon and got both the goals ticked off pretty fast. I actually had a blast doing it aswell! I’ve been keeping up with the Max Raid events that they have been releasing. I’m also hoarding up Pokémon that evolve through trading so I can trade my friend when he comes over and fill up my Pokédex even more. I’m definitely putting this game back on the menu for my February goals because I want to keep working on my Pokédex. Now if only I could finally catch a Ditto…
Spider-Man has been a bust. I’ve barely played on my PS4 to begin with this month and all the time I did play on it either went to FFXIV or, last week, to playing the Kingdom Hearts 3 Re:Mind DLC. Instead though I’ve started playing through Cat Quest on my Switch and having a ton of fun doing that instead. It’s a short game and if I play like I’ve been doing I’ll probably finish it somewhere this week. Because it’s such a short game I think I’m actually willing to try for 100% completion. Even though the Switch version has no trophies like the PS4 version I will have to use a guide for it, but that’s fine.

All in all I got a few things done, which I’m happy with, but less than I had planned. I dropped one MMO in favour of another and I once again realised that my moods are heavily influenced by what goes on at work and in real life. It is how it is, better luck next month?

Pokémon Sword “Finished” and January 2020 Goals

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I figured I would start the New Year with a bang and as such have spent some time grinding away on the Pokémon storyline untill I saw the credits roll. Spoiler, it happened after I won the championship (shocker!). It took me about 22 hours to get through the story and when I was finished I had 86 different Pokémon species registered as “owned” in my Pokédex. I managed to do almost all of the content with a team of Galar only Pokémon but I have to admit that I had to swap in an Ice-type not from Galar at some point to defeat the Dragon Gym-leader, since I didn’t have anything that was effective against Dragons before I captured one of the two Legendary Pokémon that you can capture in Pokémon Sword/Shield.
I’m pretty happy that I’ve managed to finish this game in under two months from getting it and for now the focus will go out to completing the post game storyline so I can get the other Legendary Pokémon and slowly filling up my Pokédex. I’ve actually started that part already and I am now up to 106 Pokémon registered. Only 294 to go!

I also took the time today to finally do the World of Warcraft anniversary raid event before my sub would run out (it has less than two days to go at this point). I did the raids, they were fun, people suck at the Plague Dance for Heigan and then I got the Deathwing mount so all is right. I know that I could run the raids more often so I can get some gear from them but for now I’m satisifed. I think I’m going to let my subscription lapse for the time being, seeing as how I’ve not really touched the game ever since I unlocked flying and got Exalted with the Mechagon and Nazjatar factions. Maybe I’ll come back when they release the next patch or a bit before Shadowlands so I can gobble up a bunch of the story content that I’ve not done yet but for now I’m taking another hiatus.

So, with that information out of the way let’s look at what I want to do in the first month of 2020! I predict Final Fantasy XIV to still be my main MMO so I will set some goals there first. I think it’s the game where I will put most of my time so I want to set a generous amount of goals!

  • Get more battle classes to level 80. I have 6 to go, with Ninja currently being 77. I hope to get Ninja and atleast two others to 80 by the end of the month.
  • Work on getting my first crafting classes to 80. With Ishguard restoration this shouldn’t actually be too hard. My Carpenter is 77 as we speak so that should be able to get to 80 fast. Ideally I want 3 Crafting classes to 80 by the end of the month. Let’s say Carpenter, Weaver and Leatherworker?
  • Level up Fishing. I’m currently sitting on level 64 and I want to get atleast to level 70 this month.
  • Level up Blue Mage. I want to hit atleast level 20 by the end of the month.
  • Complete all the side quests that are still up in the First
  • Work towards rank 3 FATEs in Ahm Araeng and the Tempest. Preferably I’ll have both done by the end of the month

In other MMO’s:

  • Make progress in LOTRO. I’m level 3 and at the absolute beginning of the game. I have no idea about the layout of this game yet and how zones and other stuff works so I just want to head out and explore and see where that ship strands.
  • Finish off the current zone I’m in on my character in Guild Wars 2.

In single player games:

  • Finish the Pokémon post-game questline
  • Get 200 Pokémon registered in my Pokédex (atleast!)
  • Pick Spider-Man back up for my PS4 and play through/finish the game

All these goals should be easily doable. Especially the FFXIV ones. One of the things I want to (again) start doing is pick a game from my massive single player games backlog and just play through it in a month’s time. Some games are shorter or longer than other games but I want to start making a dent in my massive collection. I also don’t have any plans to pick up full games this year for now. I’m probably getting the Kingdom Hearts 3 expansion and the new expansion for World of Warcraft but other than that I have nothing on my radar that I desperately want to get. But let’s start with Spider-Man for now!

Gaming Goals: November 2019 In Review

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So. In a whim I’ve decided to shake up my monthly goal posts. Even though I really enjoy setting myself some longer term goals I feel like they’re just summaries of all the things I didn’t achieve lately. So instead I want to turn these monthly posts into “reviews” at the end of the month with a short focus on expectations for the coming month instead.
No more detailed goals, no more frustrations over me getting to the goals or not but instead a positive focus on all the things I did manage to accomplish. So let’s start out shall we?

In Final Fantasy XIV…
I’ve had a very productive month. I’ve leveled my Blacksmith, Armorer and Leatherworker all up to level 70/71. This was helped by the crafting/gathering overhaul that patch 5.1 presented and I have decided to take my focus off crafting for the time being since I have achieved the goal that I wanted to at the start of the month. I’ve also completed all the associated job quests for these classes, allowing me to focus fully on those last ten levels when I feel like it.
In a moment of realization that levequests have also been boosted significantly experience wise I managed to take my Fisher from level 48 to 64 in a single hour by just buying fish off the Market Board and handing them in to the levequest people. I’m a bit stuck now though and instead am catching up on all the job quests that I’ve skipped. I’m sitting on the one for level 55 right now which I’m actually trying to complete on my own. I have unlocked Spearfishing aswell and I’m quite curious to see that in action once I’ve caught up on all the job quests.
On the battle jobs front I’ve taken my Monk and Paladin up to level 80 and my Samurai to 77. I’ve deviated from my original plan for this a bit but it has paid off in the end. I finished the last remaining class questchain in Shadowbringers, the Tank one, and opened up the final quest that ties all those class quests together. I’ve gone back and done the level 80 Monk, Paladin and Astrologian quests and enjoyed all the small stories they told.
I’ve also done all the new content that was added with patch 5.1, I unlocked the new deliveries (Kai-Shirr), did the Copied Factory and caught up to the Mainstory. I think the only thing I haven’t properly touched is the Ishgard Restoration but that will probably come up once I turn my attention to crafting again. As for the Pixie dailies.. For all intents and purposes I’ve finished off their story. I am currently not exactly max rank yet but I have the achievement for finishing the “story” and I am the proud owner of a flying pig.
On my White Mage I’ve been slowly getting back into the habit of doing ex-roulettes again so I can start gearing up my other classes and I’ve finished another book for my Animus weapon.
I notice that I tend to play a lot of FFXIV on my days off because it’s just very nice to sit down and get stuff done that way than when I’m tired during the evenings.

On my Nintendo Switch…
I have kind of abandoned Link’s Awakening. I managed to get the key to the Angler’s tunnel but I’ve not yet figured out how to get into the dungeon itself. This was around the time that Pokémon released so I shelved the game and instead turned my attention to Pokémon.
In Pokémon Sword I’ve made it past the third badge. My Pokémon are all between level 28-30 and I’ve been sent back into the Wild Area. I have a choice now to backtrack and catch any Pokémon that I missed previously or soldier on to the next town, Hammerlocke, and continue the story and challenge the fourth gym. This is kind of where I left off last week and I’ve not picked the game up yet because I’ve been busy with work and FFXIV.
I am immensly enjoying the game though, in spite of all the negativity surrounding it. I know a lot of hardcore Pokémon fans are really unhappy with a lot of things like a lack of national Pokédex or a very short post game story. Personally I’m just enjoying what the game does have on offer and I am tackling it on my own pace. I do want to aim to complete the Pokédex of this game in earnest so I know I will sink a lot of hours into it the coming months.

In my personal life…
I’ve had a really rough month. Work has been an absolute nightmare with me working a lot of overtime and experiencing a lot of stress due to things beyond my control. The only big positive thing was getting my new car last Friday which was everything I hoped for and more. I love the colour and the way it drives. Now I just need to plan a few longer trips so I can take it for a proper spin instead of just driving it around town.
I’ve been watching a lot of tv and reading books. I decided to re-read the Harry Potter series in tandem with the movies that have been showing here every Monday evening. I’m currently halfway through the final book and am rediscovering a lot of things that I had forgotten over time. So a lot of my evenings have revolved around being a couch potato and just staring at the tv, being too tired to really do anything else. I hope the worst has passed though and things will get better from here.

Looking ahead to December…
It will still be a busy month at work and we have holidays to boot. I don’t really have a real vacation to speak off, but I did manage to get the two days off between New Year’s Day and the weekend so there’s that. My Christmas is already booked so I don’t have to worry what I will be doing then and I think I’m going to spend New Year’s Eve at home by myself to enjoy welcoming the new year in my own house for the first time.

I think I will still put the majority of my gaming time into FFXIV to level up more classes and slowly start to gear them up aswell. I really want to find some time to dedicate to World of Warcraft and their anniversary event and Guild Wars 2.
I will definitely have made progress in Pokémon Sword, I may have even defeated the champion if everything goes well.
Maybe the Kingdom Hearts 3 expansion will come out this month aswell and if it does I will set some time aside to buy it and play through whatever they added to the game, even if it only takes me an afternoon.
Other than this everything is up in the air. I realize that I want to blog a bit more often so I may start taking daily notes of what I’ve been up to and turn those into 2-3 weekly posts per week. I guess we’ll see.

Gaming Goals: November 2019

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October has come and gone and with it my Dad’s birthday, Halloween and a pretty big cold at the start of it. I head really big plans for the month of October but unfortunately I managed to way less than I set out to do. Let’s take a look shall we?

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

So I’ve been pretty busy in FFXIV and WoW but didn’t really play a lot at the same time. Usually I would just log in to do my dailies and then log back out and do something else instead. As such I’ve not done that much besides level my crafters and get exalted with Mechagon and Nazjatar. As sidenote, my Blacksmith is sitting at level 68 today and my Monk on 78 so I did come close to atleast striping those two goals off.
I’ve actually not spent that much time playing Link’s Awakening, something I want to rectify in November. I also didn’t touch Guild Wars 2 but instead played a lot of League of Legends during Riot’s 10 year anniversary celebration. I still log on every day to do an ARAM for fun and World Championship coins. All in all it was a bit of a weird month with some progress on some fronts and 0 progress on other fronts. As such I’m going to port over some goals to November, where I’m sure I’ll get them done, especially with the implementation of the new Beast Tribe dailies and the boost to crafting experience.
As far as my WoW goals.. My Warrior is currently sitting at level 115 so I did do some levelling, just not enough to push to 120. I haven’t touched LFR though and I do want to get that out of the way, even if it’s only to unlock the Wrathion questchain

So without further ado here are my gaming goals for November 2019

MMO Goals

  • Level Monk and Samurai to level 80 in FFXIV
  • Start leveling Dragoon to level 80 in FFXIV
  • Level Blacksmith, Armorer to level 70 in FFXIV and do Job Quests
  • Finish atleast three Animus books on my White Mage in FFXIV
  • Level my Warrior to 120 in WoW
  • Defeat Aszhara in the Eternal Palace LFR on my Rogue WoW
  • Do the Wrathion questchain in WoW

Non MMO Goals

  • Finish Link’s Awakening
  • Finish the mainstory in Pokémon Sword

This month Pokémon Sword and Shield come out and I’m getting Sword. I really want to play through the “mainstory” and defeat all the gyms to become the champion of the new region. I always really like the Pokémon games and franchise so I don’t doubt that this will be an easy goal for me. Before that though I need to finish Link’s Awakening so that is exactly what I’m going to focus on for the next few weekends.

As far as the MMO goals go, they should be easily doable. My crafters are rocketing through the levels since the 5.1 boost to experience and my Monk is as good as 80 aswell so that just leaves Samurai and Dragoon for this month. In WoW I just really want to finish leveling my Warrior and see more of the content on my Rogue so I’m going to be focusing on that.

What does your November in gaming look like?

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?

End of Year goals

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Mechaspider mount

The weather has turned here in the Netherlands and Summer is officially over. Where last weekend we still had 24-25C degree weather we’ve had a week full of rain wind and cold last week and it seems it will be like this for the forseeable future. We are slowly moving towards the “dark days before Christmas” as we say in Dutch and this has gotten me thinking about what I want to achieve before the year is over. I know we are still three months out but time moves very fast so it’s Christmas and then New Years before you know it. As such this is really my last “chance” to set some more long term goals.

It’s been an odd year for me so far. I’ve moved out into my own home at the end of April, although I began moving at the start of that month, and I’m still trying to find my routines for many things. Adjusting to living alone has gone more smooth than I hoped although sometimes I do miss living with my dad and just the general company of having other people around. At the same time I got a steady contract and, a few weeks ago, a promotion to a more demanding position at the company. This has left me with less energy the past few weeks but I’m slowly getting settled again and I’m not as exhausted anymore as I have been.
Due to this I’ve not really played as many games as I would have liked to this month. When I do my goal post for October you’ll notice that I’ve barely met any goals I set for myself in September, but as the French say “c’est la vie”. With this post though I want to outline my future gaming (and real life) plans untill the end of the year to provide myself with a roadmap for the coming time and something to look to when I’m in an indecisive mood.
So without further ado, let’s set up my End of Year Goals!

Final Fantasy XIV
I’ve actually not spend as much time in FFXIV as I hoped this month. I’ve barely leveled anything except maybe Culinarian and a bit of Monk. Last year I had a massive race against the clock to get as many classes to level 70 before the New Year. This year I’m actually not setting the bar as high. These are my plans for FFXIV untill the end of year.

  • Level Monk, Samurai, Dragoon and Ninja to 80 and complete associated Job quests
  • Level Blacksmith, Leatherworker and Armorsmith to level 70 via Beast Tribe quests.
  • Level Fisher to 80
  • Complete the White Mage Animus step for the ARR relic
  • Clear Innocence Ex and maybe farm for mount from both that and Titania Ex
  • Clear out remaining quests from my log

I think all of this should be doable in three months time. All the battle classes I’m describing are level 70. I’ve chosen to just level up the Melee group next because I already started Monk and I would be doing Samurai next any way. I might aswell get Dragoon and Ninja out of the way then aswell and close that part of leveling. After that I only have the ranged jobs and tanks left. I’m currently nudging Blacksmith through the Ixali dailies while my Culinarian is about to enter Namazu territory. If I just keep doing Ixali dailies on the regular I don’t see how I wouldn’t be able to get my three remaining crafters through this part and into the easier zones that are Moogle and Namazu dailies. As far as Fisher goes.. It’s sitting at level 48 and is the only gathering class not at max level. I just have to sit down and get to it.
The rest of the goals aren’t that big. I’m already doing Animus books on my White Mage. I don’t think I will have much issues clearing Innocence Ex when I just sit down and find a group to do so. I have a few outstanding quests that I want to tackle, and a ton of sidequests still left in Shadowbringers. Ideally I want to just get them all out of the way so my maps don’t have any quests left on them.

World of Warcraft (Classic and Retail)
With Classic launching a few weeks ago and me going back into Retail a while back WoW is fully on my radar again. I foresee myself spending time in Classic mostly during the weekends when I feel like it and more time in Retail because there is specific stuff I actually want to get done there. Here are my end of year goals for the World of Warcraft!

  • Get a character to atleast level 40 in Classic
  • Do all the raids/dungeons I’ve not yet done in Retail, this being the Battle of Dazar’Alor, Mechagon, The Eternal Palace and Crucible of Storms
  • Level my Warrior to 120 in Retail
  • Level my Void Elf Hunter to 120 in Retail
  • Finish all the Rare killing and Treasure achievements in BfA
  • Get Exalted with Mechagon and the Nazjatar faction

In Retail my main focus will be catching up with content. Even though I’ve done the War Campaign I’ve actually not touched a single raid after clearing Uldir. I really want to do the raids just so I can see the fights and cutscenes I’ve missed. I will also be able to clear those quests from my questlog (yay) and feel like I’ve truly caught up. I’m also still needing to do Mechagon as a dungeon so I can finish off that questchain.
After that I want to turn my attention to leveling some characters. My poor Warrior has been glossed over for this expansion and she needs some love. I also want to unlock the Void Elf heritage gear so that means I should pick up my Hunter again and level her up. Other than that I want to chase some achievements and work on reputations.
On the Classic side of the coin I want to get atleast one of my characters to level 40. This is basically the mount level and it would be awesome to get there. Why not push for level 60? Maybe I will but for now I’m just not feeling Classic that much and I can only take it in small amounts or whenever the mood to play it strikes me.

Other Games

Of course I don’t want to spend all my time in just FFXIV and WoW. There’s other game to play that deserve playtime aswell. I’m still determined to get through my backlog aswell so I want to focus on single player games next to my standard two MMO’s.

  • The big goal here is that I want to have finished 3 games before the end of year. These don’t have to be epic big games like Persona 5 but I would like to be able to scratch stuff off my backlog. If I’m able to tackle more than that fine but the minimum is three. This tallies down to one game per month. Right now the first game on that list is Link’s Awakening which I’m currently invested in. Another game will be Pokémon Sword since I’ve already have that on preorder and it’s a game that I’ve been actually excited for. The third game is undecided as of now but I’m looking at something to play on my WiiU since that has been my most neglected console and it deserves some love.
  • Guild Wars 2. I’ve logged it occasionally the past few weeks, mostly to get a ton of anniversary gifts on my older characters. Some have been around for 6 years already and if I didn’t go on a delete spree a long time ago I would’ve had an original old character aswell. Oh well. I’ve been logging my Ranger again since it’s the class that I enjoy playing the most. She’s somewhere inbetween level 25 and 30 and my biggest goal is to just start getting through zones and getting some levels. Maybe do a dungeon. But atleast make some sort of progress.

Offline Goals

Next to gaming stuff there’s a few offline goals I want to work on aswell. These mostly pertain to my physical health but I also want to get out of the house more. I need to be around people more than I am now and I just want to experience new things in general. So these are things I want to work on or get a start in before the end of the year.

  • Visit my cousins in their new homes. We’ve been semi close growing up but ever since we’ve gotten to adulthood we’ve drifted apart. I want to visit all three of them and just have a nice day to look back on.
  • Go to a city I’ve not visited before. Dutch infrastructure is great and it’s easy to get everywhere by train. I want to visit a city in the Netherlands where I’ve never been before and walk around and take pictures and have a nice day.
  • Set up a healthy sleep schedule. It’s still all over the place. I know that I will feel much better when I just get enough sleep so that’s quite high on my priority list.
  • Set up and maintain a gym schedule. I’ve recently bought new sports bra’s and sports clothes in general. Now it’s just to get my ass to the gym itself. I’m a candidate for breast reduction surgery that gets fully or mostly covered by my insurance but one of the stipulations is that I lose some weight since I’m currently on a BMI of 32 which is 2 points above what I need to be to qualify for surgery. In reality this means that I need to lose around 7kg atleast to get to that point. That will be my starting goal weight and I will see from there.
  • Finish decorating my house. There’s a few things that still need to be done and most of it is hanging up shelves and a coat rack. I want to get this done sooner rather than later.

So there you have it. My end of year goals. I will try my best to actually get most of them, if not all of them, done. It’s a nice roadmap for me to look at when I’m a bit lost and it helps me move forward. For now though it’s time for some Timewalking.

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?

Flying unlocked (again)!

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A day before I thought I would I unlocked flying once again for all my characters in the new expansion. This speeds up so many things in World of Warcraft, especially when it comes to doing quests and gathering. No longer will I have to do everything by ground mount while dodging half a zone worth of mobs, yes I’m looking at you Nazjatar. Honestly I’m still not sold on the whole “pathfinder” achievement and that flying is an unlock way later in the expansion than it’s been since Mists of Pandaria. I do understand how it ties in to keeping people playing by not handing everyone stuff on a silver platter but still. I rather go back to the “buy this tome to unlock flying” and Blizzard actually use their resources to add more dungeons or other content than this silly content gating by achievement.

With this out of the way I can dial back my gameplay of WoW again, like I’ve done with Final Fantasy XIV, and maybe finally spend some time playing Final Fantasy 8. I’ve set up the game via Steam and played for an hour or so but other than that I haven’t really touched the game, and I do want to start making progress there. I will probably also aim to get a few hours of Guild Wars 2 in while I’m at it and maybe during the weekend play Spider-man on my Playstation 4. I’m still determined to complete more goals on the list I set for myself this month but ticking off the whole WoW flying thing has been major for me. I’m also pretty chuffed with the mount you get as you unlock flying, a bright yellow mechanical parrot, and will probably use it as mount of choice on my Rogue for a bit as I delve into other content than just grinding out dailies. I have Mechagon to do as I’ve just unlocked the quest to go there and defeat the final boss with achieving Revered reputation. I want to do the Zuldazar and Aszhara raid and I want to work on leveling Engineering.

Was it worth gritting my teeth and grinding this out? Probably. Would I do it again like this? No. I rather just casually play and unlock flying in a more natural way than grinding for 2+ hours every day just to unlock it as soon as possible. This would probably be the case if I had kept playing the game instead of taking a break. Oh well. Lesson learned.

Establishing routines

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The above screenshot has nothing to do with the topic of my post. But I thought it was pretty so I put it as top image. This post will not be very much gaming related but more personal and real life rooted.

I realise that I kind of skipped over the whole “getting to know you” week in Blaugust. I’ve seen some posts here and there telling people’s “life stories” and gaming history. I don’t really feel the need to regale about my life on here dating all the way back to my childhood. Mostly because my childhood was pretty rough and I don’t really enjoy talking about it so yeah. Instead I want to focus on the me of the present and a few big crossroads that are coming up in my life right now.
So where do I begin…

I think the biggest part is that I’m trying to teach myself new habits. Over the last 6-7 years my physical health has been slowly declining. Back in 2012 I was pretty active at University and I was in a dedicated relationship and happy. I had a sidejob that consisted of me being a mail(wo)man which expanded during the summer as I picked up the areas for people that were going on vacation. During that time I was very healthy and very happy with who I was. I wasn’t overweight and I was happy with how I looked as a whole. Fast forward to now and I’m around 30kg overweight (about 66lbs for my US based readers) and it’s weight that I need to shed. It’s bothering me because I can’t wear the clothes that I like, it’s causing me all sorts of minor aches and most importantly I just don’t feel like my normal self. So I’ve been trying to break some old unhealthy habits and replacing them with newer healthier ones. For instance I make sure to go on a brisk 30-40min walk every day after dinner. This helps me digest better and makes sure I don’t become a couch potato for the entire evening after I’ve already had a day of sitting down at work. As added bonus I’m slowly building up stamina in preparation for my Japan trip next year and I can feel the burn in especially my legs when I come home. Next to this I’ve banned sweets and savory snacks from my home during the week aswell as soda pops. I have a weakness for Diet Coke and Coke Zero and even though they are without sugar they’re still bad for you. Because I’m only human after all I indulge myself with a liter of Coke of choice and a snack that I can drink/eat during the weekend. Anything that is left over will go under lock and key untill the next weekend and I have to say it’s surprisingly easy to just not touch anything food related after I eat dinner.
Another thing that I’ve picked up is doing around 10 minutes of yoga in the morning to wake up and stretch all my muscles. It’s just a quick way of getting centered and prepped for the day and I notice that I arrive at work much more awake than normally. Both of these things mean that I’ve had to adjust my morning and after work routines which now look something like this:
Morning: Get up > yoga > breakfast > wash up > dress > do hair and make-up > leave the house
Evening: Come home > cook & eat > walk > do dishes > shower > blog > game/hobby till 22.45 > go to bed
I’ve only started this routine last week but I hope to be able to keep this up for as long as possible. It’s still nice weather out for evening walks and in the weekends I tend to go during the day on Saturday and Sunday is my “lazy rest day” where I skip both the walk and yoga.

Another thing that I need to start thinking about and start making decisions on is where I want to head career wise. I’ve applied for a senior function within my department a few weeks back and I will hear back about it next week. I’m fully taking into consideration that I won’t get the job and then I really need to do some soul searching on what I do want to do then. I’ve been a bit stuck in my department on a job that is becoming less fulfilling over time for a while now. I have my Psychology degree but I don’t really want to pursue a career in that field. Alternatively I can just sit out my time here since I have a steady contract with the company and maybe do some courses or evening school for things that I enjoy. The big question is what is it that I enjoy. As with games I tend to get bored fast of jobs in real life. Once I learn how to do something and am at peak efficiency for said task I get bored and need a new challenge. I’m noticing that I’m just not really having fun showing up at work anymore… And that’s not really a state anyone should be in.

Finally after I lose some weight in the coming months I may want to dive headfirst back into the dating game. Being alone isn’t everything and although I don’t really seek anything serious or long-time right now it would be nice to have someone to share certain things with. I’ve been putting this off since I’m just so unhappy with how I feel right now that I don’t want to burden anyone else with it.

The coming few weeks/months will be crucial for my physical and mental wellbeing and I can only hope everything turns out for the best. If not, it won’t be because I didn’t give it my all!

First level 80 gatherer achieved!

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I’ve been ticking off a lot of boxes in Final Fantasy XIV over the past few days. I’ve gotten my Culinarian to 50 and caught up on job quests. After that I got my Alchemist to 70 and caught up on job quests there. Today I sat down for a few hours and decided to grind out the final few levels I needed for both Botanist and Miner. As of right now my Miner is a little over halfway to level 80 but my Botanist made the finish line and is now max level! The Crystarium hand-in quest at level 78 helped a lot with that, seeing as it propelled me all the way to 79 after hand-in. This meant that I had an entire level difference between Botanist and Miner but oh well. I bought a few scrolls to help me level faster and after 2-3 rounds of levequests I finally hit that sweet maximum level, meaning I have one less job to do. I’m fully intending to also get my Miner to level 80 tomorrow… Which should be doable in 4-5 levequests.

Unfortunately I’m now on the gearing part. Seeing as I don’t have any max level crafting jobs (yet) and I’m a poor poor little lass, I own barely 5 million gil in FFXIV, I’m kind of relegated to farming white scrips to gear my Botanist/Miner up with. I can easily get the 240 scrips per week from the weekly turn-ins at Zhloe but, as I found out today, my gear is woefully inadequate for regular white scrip farming. It may have something to do with the fact that I’m still rocking an entire level 70 accesories side… That I can only upgrade with crafted gear. So I may just take it easy and farm the scrips via weekly turn-ins… Which would only take me 10-15 mins each week to do.

With ticking off these two jobs at 80 I’m actually quite close to completing the goals I’ve set for FFXIV this month, not counting the weekly tomestones and relic one. Grabbing them from my initial Blaugust post I really only have one left.

  • 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

So with FFXIV I’m mostly turning my attention to leveling my Red Mage, which is sitting at level 72 at this moment, and capping tomestones on my White Mage. I actually got all the upgrades I need from Eden when it comes to healing gear so I can now freely roll on every item when it drops again so I can start gearing up my casters. I picked up healing boots and a ring from the new tomestones and I think I’m going to keep on picking up the smaller pieces of gear first, just to boost my item level. I’m not sure if I want to get the weapon yet since it will cost me 1000 tomestones and I’m not sure if it’s worth it seeing I already have the Titania EX weapon. Once my Red Mage is 80 I need to decide what class I want to level next… I’m leaning heavily towards Monk because I’ve always loved the playstyle of the class and I really want to level something melee based after leveling only casters for the first few months of the expansion. I’ll see. For now the goal is Red Mage and White Mage stuff.