End of Year Goals

Posted on October 29, 2018 by sandrian

As October is drawing to an end I find myself back in the world of Eorzea. World of Warcraft is slowly going on the backburner. I raid, I do my Emissaries but that’s it. My interest in the game is at an all time low and I mostly keep playing because of friends. One of whom is quitting at the end of the year himself and the rest are slowly burning out on the game aswell. So as my interest in one MMO wanes the other one waxes. I feel the motivation to level so much that I’ve managed to push my Black Mage from level 60 to level 63 in a single day. I’ve done every single roulette available, did my beast tribe dailies, caught up on all the job quests for Black Mage and dove headfirst into the Hallow’s Eve event.

All in all it feels good to be back in Eorzea. Good enough to set a rather ambitious “end of year” goal for this game. As you may have seen throughout the year I’ve been leveling my classes on and off. Right now I’m only missing seven more battle jobs at level 70, six of which are melee/tanks and one caster (the Black Mage in question). My goal for the end of the year is to have all of them at level 70 so that I can finally get rid of any sub level 70 gear from my bags. It’s a rather ambitious project seeing as I’d almost have to level a job per week to get this far. Add to that the fact that five out of the seven jobs I’d still need to level hover around level 50, meaning I’d have to do 20 levels instead of 10. The one big advantage is that I’ve saved my Tanks for last. They have the fastest queues thus probably the easiest time leveling out of all the jobs. As it stands I’m planning to level via Roulettes, Beast Tribe dailies and Palace of the Dead/Heaven on High. It’s the most reliable way to get experience fast and I should have the time to do this six out of seven days per week. I’m raiding in WoW on Wednesdays so that evening is kind of off limits.

Right now my progress is as followed:

Black Mage: 63
Dragoon: 60
Monk: 53
Warrior: 53
Paladin: 50
Dark Knight: 50
Samurai: 50

This is also the order I’m planning to level these classes in. I hope to have my Black Mage to level 70 somewhere next week so I can start working on Dragoon, which I’ll probably mostly play on my Playstation aswell as Monk. For some reason they just play better on a controller than on keyboard+mouse. As for my tanks, I’ll probably switch that up between PS4 and PC since I don’t really mind playing them on either. Samurai is going to be dead last purely because it’s the only job I’ve not properly played thus I will probably have to figure out how it works when I start leveling. I already apologize to the random groups that get my Samurai slotted in, I’m probably going to be terrible at it. Just like I’m slightly terrible at Black Mage, hence I just want to get that job out of the way as soon as possible. That it will also grant me the “Goddess of Magic” title is, of course, a bonus.

My ambitions for FFXIV don’t stop here however. Next to having my Armoury Chest cluttered with various sets of battle gear it’s also filled to the brim with gathering and crafting gear of different levels. That will be my big goal for the New Year: level up all my remaining Crafting and Gathering jobs. I have Botanist, Miner and Weaver at 70 so I can cross atleast three of the jobs off my list already. What remains is scattered between level 21 (Alchemist) and level 44 (Fisher). I’m planning to level up my Crafters simultaneously, meaning I want to get them all to level 30 and then all to level 40 and level 50 and so on. Ofcourse once I hit level 50 and can start doing Beast Tribe dailies and handing in deliveries things will speed up quite a bit. I’ll be quite happy to get to that point though, because the pre-50 grind is still agony.

For now though it’s running Roulettes and hoping I don’t get shitty fights on my Black Mage.

Loading Update…

Posted on September 23, 2018 by sandrian

I suddenly realized that it’s been 9 days since my last blog post. This has mostly been due to me focusing on other things, mostly games, and also because I didn’t really know what I wanted to write about. Well I do now!

First off, my two weeks of freedom. Unfortunately I’ve not been able to get myself motivated enough to join the gym again. I’m just way too insecure right now and I’m scared that if I go people will laugh at me. Instead I’m opting to cancel my gym membership for the time being and start/continue working out at home. We have a crosstrainer in the attic, I have weights to use for my arms and there’s a mat which I can use to do my exercises in general on. With the weather turning sour aswell this means I won’t have to brave the wind and rain to get to a gym but instead move up a staircase and do my routine there. I’ve printed out some stuff I can do by myself at home and I’m hoping some results will be showing in the coming weeks.
The other thing I wanted to do was eat more healthy and that has been a major success. I don’t have any junkfood in the house anymore and have been eating way more healthy things. I’ve started taking my own lunch to work again and now I’m just scouring a proper container so I can bring some yoghurt with me aswell. Dinner has been veggie filled almost every evening, even the nacho dish I made last night, and I honestly have started feeling much better physically now that I’ve banned all the high fat and sugar foods out of my life.

Unfortunately most of my free time has still been dedicated to playing games although I did make a tiny bit of progress reading my book. I’ve also been cleaning out my room vigorously getting rid of everything I no longer need and just making sure it’s very clean so that my allergies don’t bother me as much as they normally do. I still plan to take up my cross stitching again, maybe this week when I don’t feel like logging into my games.

On the gaming front I’ve actually been making good time on my September Gaming Goals. I’ve ticked off all the World of Warcraft ones except getting my reputations to Exalted and maxing out my Professions. In FFXIV I’ve finished leveling my Machinist and started to level my Black Mage while also doing dailies to get my Weaver up.
The solo game is still a thing I need to work on but I have maybe figured out a way to start tackling my massive backlog. What I’ve been doing is making a top three game list for all my consoles that I really want to finish and then pick one of those three to start working on. Once I’ve gone through the top three I can pick a new top three and just keep on going through my backlog like that.
My top threes currently look like this.
PS4
1. Crash Bandicoot “NSane” Trilogy
2. Horizon Zero Dawn
3. Final Fantasy XV

Switch
1. Xenoblade Chronicles 2 (excluding the Torna DLC).
2. Kirby: Star Allies
3. Octopath Traveler, alteast one chapter 4.

3DS
1. Professor Layton and the Mask of Wonders
2. Dragon Quest VIII
3. Epic Mickey

PC
1. Mickey’s Castle of Illusion
2. Tomb Raider
3. Rayman Origins

As you can see I’ve been trying to mix up RPGs with other genres. Doing RPGs back to back will definitely exhaust me as gamer so I’m trying to break them up as much as possible. As it stands now I’m playing the Professor Layton game on my 3DS during my commute to and from work. This gives me about 30 mins of play time per day, which is actually surprisingly enough time to make some serious strides in a game like this. At home I’m switching back and forth between Xenoblade and Crash Bandicoot, kind of depending what I feel like playing. Even though I’ve only obtained Crash recently it’s one of my top games to finish purely because of the nostalgia hit it provides. As far as the PC games go. I should be able to finish Mickey’s Castle of Illusion pretty fast. It’s a short game so an afternoon and an evening of playing may actually have me finishing this game. Tomb Raider isn’t that long either compared to some of the other RPGs I have on my list, especially Dragon Quest and Xenoblade.

All in all it comes down to me managing my game time better. I block hours to do certain things at work, I may need to start blocking hours for games aswell to get done what I want done. I’ll see. September is slowly crawling to an end and I have about 7 days to work on some of my goals still. See you next post!

Two weeks of freedom?

Posted on September 14, 2018 by sandrian

As I sit down to write this blogpost I’ve had a really long tiresome day. Having barely slept last night I could only think of my bed when I was at work but now that I’m home, and it’s actually time to sleep, my head is a bit too filled with random thoughts to really settle down and snooze. So instead I’m just going to write down what’s going on inside this messy brain of mine today and see if that will help me clear it.

We have a midyear evaluation at work and I had mine today. I tend to get the same comments every evaluation: you’re not professional enough and you lack some communication skills. So far I’ve taken the criticisms as they come but there has never really been a follow up to them. I tend to get told that I’m a bit blunt which may come across as me being bitchy at times but I don’t really see it that way myself. It may come with the fact that the moment I step foot into the office people start asking me questions within two minutes of me sitting down. I get a bit annoyed by that sometimes because I really would like the first ten to fifteen minutes of my work day for myself to make a planning, look at what kind of mails I have and just settle down before the questions are fired. I’m already not a morning person by any means so stuff like this just tends to get me irritable, which I then show in my answers to people. It’s not something that is completely concious but it happens nonetheless.
My manager has offered me to work with me on my professionalism and my communication skills and I’ll gladly take any chance to grow as a person at work. I’m just seriously curious what exactly I should do to make strides and grow, but I guess I’ll see in a few weeks when we have our first “session”.

In other news my dad and his girlfriend departed for Spain this afternoon to enjoy a two week holiday over there, leaving me alone in the house untill the 28th. I have to say that I’m kind of happy to have this time to myself because I was getting irritated a lot by them lately and I just really needed some space. I do hope that I can use the coming two weeks to start getting into the habit of going to the gym again. My weight has been bothering me for a very long time now and now that I’m able, for two weeks atleast, to spend my time the way I want to I kind of want to use to start setting up a gym routine again. Working out is healthy and even though the first few weeks tend to be tough I also know that it gives me energy and stamina, which translates into a better mood overall for myself. I may use the topic of gyms and workouts for my blogposts the coming weeks but that is yet to be seen.
For now though I want to reserve some time on the weekends, probably in the morning, and weekdays after work to go to the gym for 30 mins – one hour. I realise that I have to start from scratch again but that’s okay. I’m not setting the bar extremely high for myself. I just want to make sure that I’m going again and build a steady rythm of getting myself to go before actually pushing hard for weight loss goals.

Tied into the whole gym thing I also want to cook healthy for myself these two weeks. I have one pizza in the freezer for emergencies but as far as I’m concerned I want to cook myself healthy meals every day if I can. This probably means a lot of rice and veggies since that is what I enjoy. I’m also stocking up on stuff like yoghurt and fruit so I can take that as a snack during the evening/weekends instead of candy or crisps and I want to make sure I’m taking fruit with me to work every day. I have a new backpack incoming and an insulated lunch bag which means I could cut myself some fruit in the evening and put it in a plastic container in the fridge so that it can go into the insulated bag in the morning, keeping it more cool and fresh than it would be otherwise. I could also try to do something with the yoghurt that way but for now I’m a bit hesitant because it’s dairy and already kind of sour so I don’t really want to take it with me where it’s not properly cooled, because I probably can’t taste if it’s gone “sour” that way.

As far as games are concerned I want to cut back on time on those and spend that time on my gym stuff and some other hobbies instead. I am probably going to tackle Trine 2 with a friend and I will still be playing WoW probably on a daily basis but that will probably be it. During the weekends I will have a bit more time to do some more and branch out to other games like FFXIV or a single player game of my choosing but for the week nights it’ll be WoW exclusive.
I want to get back to reading my book and tackling an embroidery kit that I’ve started a few years ago but never finished. I also really want to build one of the Toy-Cons from the Nintendo Labo kit I scored for cheap a while back, probably the motorcycle one since I can use that with Mario Kart for fun and giggles. I will make pictures during my building process to post for my blog so definitely stay tuned for that!

At the end of the day though my plans for the coming two weeks are hopefully a foundation for a change that is more lasting. I want to step away from constantly gaming and work on my health. I also want to pick up some of my old hobbies and make myself less reliant on my PC/PS4/Switch for enjoyment or relaxation. The biggest thing is that I want to start having a more structured life where I am more calm and capable of getting things done. As for right now I feel like I’ve gotten off my chest what has been going on in my head, which means I can close down the house and get ready for a good night’s sleep.

Gaming Goals: September 2018

Posted on September 1, 2018 by sandrian

I’ve not done one of these posts in a while. So I guess I’ll bite the bullet and try to set down a set of goals for September. Most will probably involve Battle for Azeroth but who knows what I come up with as I write this post! Seeing as my Paladin just hit 120 aswell I can scratch out any leveling goals in WoW for now and focus completely on endgame content.

World of Warcraft

Finish off the remaining quests on my Rogue. I’ve gone through all the zone stories and I’ve done about 90% of all sidequests but my questlog is still quite full. I want to focus on tackling everything I can find and finish it up, even if it’s a “Wanted” quest in the middle of nowhere in Vol’dun. I also still have my War Campaign to finish off but that one ties in to my next goal.
Get my BfA reputations to Exalted on my Rogue. I will only need Revered to get the count in for the Pathfinder part 1 achievement but I want to aim for Exalted purely so I can unlock the sweet mounts and Dark Iron Dwarves
Finish off the last remaining zone story on my Paladin. I’ve finished Vol’dun and Nazmir so far which leaves me with Zuldazar. I’m not planning to tackle every single sidequest here just yet but I do want to do the story arc in the zone so I can unlock the Mythic dungeon at the end.
Gear my Paladin and get her ready to run Mythic+. This was a goal for BfA to begin with so I’m sticking to it. Luckily I have some friends who can help me get started with the gear grind so I should be okay there.
Get Alchemy and Engineering to 150 BfA skill. I’m pretty sure that Alchemy will go a bit faster but I’d love to get my Engineering leveled up a bit more aswell, I need to have the goggles!

Final Fantasy XIV

Level my Machinist to level 70 and do all job quests. This goal is slightly cheating because I’m already level 69 but it’s going on the list regardless.
Level my Weaver to level 70 and do all job quests. The Namazu beast tribe will hopefully help me with this and I really would love to have atleast one crafter at 70 to begin with.
Pick another Battle class to level and pick another crafting/gathering job to level after completing my first two goals. This one should speak for itself. I’m leaning towards leveling Black Mage after I’m done with Machinist so that I will have all ranged jobs at max level (and it will give me the Goddess of Magic title). As for the next crafter/gatherer I’m doubting between Carpenter, so that I can start decorating my house, or Fisher so that I will have all gathering professions maxed out.

That would be my MMO goals for this month. I’m trying to keep them small and doable because I will have a busy month ahead of me with lots of birthdays and a ton to do at work. I’d like to add a final goal to my list which would be:

Make progress in a single player game and blog about this. I’m not sure what game it will be yet but any game will do at this point. I really want to start tackling my backlog and setting this goal will hopefully have me start doing that while also providing material for my blog.

BfA prep: What do I still want?

Posted on July 24, 2018 by sandrian

So the battle for Azeroth is upon us in less than three weeks and I can slowly feel the hype building up towards a new expansion. With the Burning of Teldrassil event coming this Wednesday (I’m in Europe so we get it a day later) the real catalyst for the whole Horde versus Alliance War will start ingame. I have to say that due to reading “Before the Storm” I know that another major event happened before this one but I won’t spoil. It just made things a lot more interesting on the Horde/Forsaken part of the deal.

Going into Battle for Azeroth I have decided to reroll to the Horde side of things. Most of my friends are currently playing over there and I really like having people to play with so it was only a natural choice to go to the Red side for this expac. My main will be my Paladin Fiorentin and I am planning to tank on her.

Doesn’t she look badass? I’m quite happy with my decision and going protection means short queues and probably early Mythic + spots. I’m not really aiming to raid in BfA but if I can get into a PuG here or there I’m quite content. I do however want to try and push Mythic + a bit more for myself. I never quite got higher than M+13/14 or so and I do want to atleast get the +15 done, even if it’s only to unlock an extra artifact colour.
Speaking of those, I am immensly sad to see them go. It’s why I devoted almost all my gaming time into getting the Mage Towers done so I can have ALL the Artifact variations unlocked and ready for transmog. In the picture however I’m rocking the red version of the Hidden artifact appearance for Protection Paladin, mostly because it fits my transmog well.

Anyway, now that you all know what I’m going to main in BfA I also want to talk about what I want to do in the time leading up to release.

1 Class mounts! I still need class mounts on the following classes:

Shaman
Rogue
Mage
Warlock
Demon Hunter
Death Knight

I’m not sure if I can get all of them before BfA launch but I’m trying to tackle as much as I can during the evenings. I’m probably going to start with Rogue since I’m about to finish that Class campaign and this ties into it nicely.

2 Professions/Profession Quests. This mostly concerns my Paladin but I want to get her Legion Herbalism and Alchemy to 100/100 and clear out all the remaining profession quests that I have. I may look at some other characters aswell but for now it’s just the Paladin.

3 Emissary WQ’s and Honor grinding. I’m planning to do my daily Emissary quests still on Paladin and Warrior. Mostly because on Sandrian I have chances of getting the extra caches and on my Paladin I just want the extra rep and materials that can drop from these. Next to that I want to do as many Honor Worldquests as I can to up my Honor level. I’m currently sitting on 17 and the next reward is level 20. Because I know I won’t have the time to do it all every day I’m planning to tie them in with my Emissaries on Paladin/Warrior and then tackle more during the weekends on my other characters.

4 The Chromie scenario. I’ve never paid much attention to this one but it seems like a nice filler. I’m probably going to do this on my Warrior given that I’ve already started on her and I’d like to see where this takes me.

5 Level an Allied Race. Even though I’ve already given myself plenty to do the coming few weeks I’d like to chill down a bit and start leveling an Allied race. For now I have my eyes set on a Nightborne Warlock, seeing as I only have one Warlock now and she’s Alliance. It would be cool if I could get a few levels going but nothing too fancy. I know the level grind is rather slow these days so I’m not setting as goal to reach 110 before BfA hits.

There are a ton of other odds and ends that I can still do, but these are my main goals and guidance as we head into BfA. I hope things will go smoothly and faster than I think they will and I can just breeze through all of this. The only real returning grind is the WQ one since I’m quite far into my Profession Quests on my Paladin and the Class mounts should be doable quickly aswell. All in all I think I set some decent goals for myself that shouldn’t be too hard to obtain. I hope to go into BfA with a nice sum of gold (I should be up to about 100k on Alliance side) and well prepared enough to get a few levels in on launch day.

June 2018 Goals

Posted on June 3, 2018 by sandrian

Druid class hall flight form

I’ve had a rather active month in May. I started working fulltime in my new position. I’ve jumped back on the FF wagon since the new patch dropped. I’ve been chasing Mage Tower challenges (and am currently sitting on 10/36 done) and my most recent unlock in World of Warcraft has been the new flight form for my Night Elf Druid. You get this instead of a Class Hall mount and I have to say it looks really good!

Looking ahead at June I find my game time to be rather limited. I work 40 hour weeks now so I only have time to game after dinner really, cutting my evenings short to about four hours. I also want to make it a bi-daily habit to go onto our crosstrainer (respectively weekends, Tuesdays and Thursdays) effectively cutting short my gaming time even further since following a workout I would obviously need a shower. There’s a few single player games I’ve picked up that I want to finish, I’ve been rewatching Grey’s Anatomy from the start and I’m reading my way through the Farseer Trilogy by Robin Hobb. All in all I’ve started a lot of projects over the past month and I want to use June to complete some of them, be it game related or not.

Gaming Goals June 2018

World of Warcraft

Get Rogue to level 110 and finish the first leg of the Class Hall Campaign
Do Mage Tower challenges on as many class/specs as I can. The ones I really want: Guardian/Feral Druid, Elemental Shaman, Holy Priest.
Unlock more Class Hall mounts.

WoW looks to be basically continuing what I’m already doing. I’m still focusing on completing as many Mage Tower stuff as possible but seeing how Legion is only about 2 months away things are starting to look a bit dire. I’m hoping Blizzard decides to permanently enable the Mage Tower at some point but I doubt it. So I’m trying to double down on gearing up my alts and getting stuff done. Luckily getting to about 920 ilvl isn’t that hard anymore and most challenges are doable at that gearlevel even without optmized gear. I also want to finish up leveling the last class I need to 110 and inbetween unlock a few more Class Hall mounts.

Final Fantasy XIV

Get my Machinist to 70 and start leveling something else
Get my Weaver to 70 and start leveling another crafter
Play on my Au’Ra and progress through Heavensward story

I’m trying to keep my FFXIV goals light. Right now I’m just doing dailies and ex roulette for cap and that’s it. My Machinist is sitting on level 68 now though and I think I should be hitting 70 sometime next week if I continue on doing what I’m doing. The same goes for my Weaver. She’s dinged 64 today thanks to the Namazu quests and I’m hoping to push her to 70 this month. Then I will need to start working on another crafter, I’m probably going to go with Carpenter since that one is level 37 and I want to get it to Heavensward so I can take advantage of the Moogle quests.
You also may have seen me mention my Au’Ra on Twitter. My Moogle FC unfortunately has disbanded and moved, in large part, to Cerberus. Not wanting to transfer my Miqo I instead opted to bring over my Au’Ra. She’s still in the start of the Heavensward Story so my goal for now is to slowly push through that as Monk.

Other games

Progress in Mario+Rabbids
Progress in Monster Hunter Stories

Seeing as most of my attention is going into my MMO’s I don’t have that much time for other games. However Mario+Rabbids seems to have me hooked for now and I’ve already made it to world 2-6 in the mainstory. This is also what I want to focus on moving forward this month. I hope to be able to make it through atleast the rest of World 2 and hopefully a good chunk of World 3 aswell. I’m really enjoying the game and can’t wait how it turns out.
Monster Hunter Stories is one of those games that you really need to bite into for a longer time to understand the concept and to just get through the story. I’ve made my N3DS my Monster Hunter machine for now (save games are stored on the console rather than the card) and I’m planning to play this on the train and during any form of transportation/inbetween time. It’s a nice bright game and I do want to see how it plays out.

Real life and non game related goals

Finish the second book of the Farseer Trilogy
Clean out and rearrange some cabinets
Use the crosstrainer more

I’ve alluded to these goals at the start of my post but I want to start working on my health a bit more, so I want to use the crosstrainer we have on the attic on a more regular basis. Weekend mornings seem to be ideal for this and I want to take atleast two nights a week on the thing aswell. I may expand my routine later on with some strength exercises but for now some extra cardio to build stamina and start losing weight is the way to go.
Another thing I want to be doing over the course of the year is continue cleaning out our attic and more importantly start picking out things of mine that can go. I’ve been told that my apartment will be done sooner than expected (June 2019 instead of September 2019) and it’s time I start making lists of things I still need and things I already have and things that I want to get rid of. I don’t want to end up like my dad with a house full of stuff so I need to think long and hard about what I want to take with me and what not. As bonus perk this helps my dad aswell with getting rid of things from the attic, thus creating more new space.

Finally I’ve kind of found my reading vibe again and I want to continue that. I’m over halfway done in the second book of the Farseer Trilogy and I want to atleast finish it and hopefully start on the third. I’ve unexpectedly fell in love with the series and I know there’s more trilogies ahead for me to buy, which has me quite excited. However I have a bunch of other books that I still need/want to read first so I’m probably going to hold off on more books in the saga untill I’ve read all the other ones I still have.

All in all I’ve tried to keep my goals realistic. With me class hopping on WoW (and focusing on one class at a time) I can do most of the daily stuff there in less than an hour. The same goes for my Final Fantasy XIV dailies. That leaves me with 1-2 hours a night to spend on whatever else I want. I can read, I can play more of WoW/FF if I feel like it. I can choose not to game at all and just relax with my tablet and a show. I just hope that when July starts I’ve made a lot of progress in all the things I want because then I’ll have even less time to game due to vacation and more business at work. For now though it’s time I logged off and started cleaning my room. The dust seems to be everywhere! If you’re interested in more productivity tips and managing time effectively, consider checking out microstartups.org.

March Gaming Goals 2018

Posted on March 1, 2018 by sandrian

Wow, I’ve kind of straight up abandoned my blog somewhere at the start of February. I have no idea what exactly happened. Maybe it was writer’s block, maybe it was just a lack of willingness to sit down and type. Whatever the reason I’ve not looked at my blog at all the past few weeks and I do feel slightly guilty about it.
I want to take this chance though to look back at my gaming month and look ahead to the best month in the year, March!

February has been a mixed bag for me with a lot of MMO time and not that much time for anything else. I did make some progress here and there though and I guess I’d want to share this with you guys!

In World of Warcraft I’ve gone above and beyond the goals that I had set for myself. Not only did I level my Shaman to 110, I’ve also leveled my Horde Priest and Horde Monk to 110 and finished both of their Class Hall campaigns respectively. On my Monk I’ve gone even further and also made the push towards the Class mount because I really REALLY wanted that tiger. So yeah, I’m down to four classes that still need to be leveled to 110 and five classes that still need their Class Hall campaign finished. I’m currently working on finishing my Shaman’s campaign while also trying to level my Mage, who is sitting at 104. All in all I feel I’ve done a lot in WoW and I think the majority of my MMO gaming time will be spent there in March aswell.
In Final Fantasy XIV I’ve leveled my Summoner/Scholar to level 70 as I hoped I would. I’ve barely touched any of the other classes though, except for a few crafters that I’ve gotten up to level 30 (Armorer, Culinarian and almost Blacksmith). I’ve done my beast tribe dailies here and there and did the first wing of the new Omega raid but otherwise the game didn’t really keep my attention much.
In single player games I’ve not actually played that much. I’ve continued a bit of Yo-Kai Watch, dabbled a bit in Persona 5 and started Dragon Quest Builders on my Switch. For some reason my willingness and energy that I want to put into games is at an all time low so besides MMO’s I’ve not really played that much at all.
IRL I’ve not lost the weight that I wanted to lose. I had hoped that I would be able to go outside a bit more but especially the past week has been unbearable as far as temperatures go so I rather stay inside than go out and freeze to death.

What am I looking forward to in March?
Well first of all I’ll be celebrating my 29th birthday halfway during the month. I had kind of agreed to not wanting a birthday present, but maybe my Dad will surprise me nonetheless. I can also finally pick up my diploma at the University, an event which I’ve been looking forward to for the past four years or so. It finally closes a very stressful chapter in my life and I would love to finally feel stress free in that regard.
I’m also starting the search for a new job since I feel like I’m not really where I should be at work anymore. I’m kind of grumpy, do not enjoy my tasks anymore and don’t feel inspired by the people I work with. All signs that it’s time to move on and luckily I will get some help from one of my managers. I also really want to get on track with working out more so keep your eyes out for some fitbit news on my Twitter and maybe here on the blog.

Now to the actual topic: Games.

I want to keep up what I’m doing right now in World of Warcraft which is work towards getting Exalted with the Argus factions on my Warrior and gear both my Warrior and Monk so I can run high level Mythic + dungeons on them. I really enjoy doing them on my Monk and I actually predict that I’ll be getting to higher level M+ on her than on my Warrior. I also want to get my Mage up to 110 and finish the Shaman class campaign. I’m thinking of leveling one of the new Allied Races but I’m not sure yet. I’d rather focus on getting all my remaining high level characters to 110, which are Warlock, Rogue and Death Knight after I’m done with Mage.
In FFXIV I want to check out Eureka. The patch is coming in two weeks and probably (finally) has the Stormblood Relic weapon tied to it so I’m definitely going to check out all of that. I also want to level atleast another class to level 70. As it stands right now it will probably either Machinist or Black Mage or maybe even both. I’m also slowly nudging my Crafters up so if I could get all of them to level 30 atleast that’s another goal I can strike off my list.
I want to spend a bit more time on both Persona 5 and Dragon Quest Builders. I absolutely adore playing both games and I feel like I need a serious story game and a lighthearted one side by side right now and those two games fit the bill perfectly. I know that especially Persona can be quite long before I finish it but I still want to play it, it’s just that good. For the rest I’m unsure what I’ll do with my time games wise. I’ve picked up the latest Layton game recently and am hooked on all the tiny mini puzzles that you get as daily downloads, but the mainstory isn’t that appealing to me yet. I may pick it up as distraction from the more story driven RPGs.. I do like solving the puzzles.

All in all I mostly want to use this month to further my real life goals and maybe pick up some gaming on the side. I’m in a bit of a slump anyway and I feel like I should do other stuff than spend most of my free time playing games. It’s a phase that will probably pass, but for now expect a bit less gaming from me and a bit more real life stuff.

Gaming Goals: February 2018

Posted on February 1, 2018 by sandrian

Yesterday I caved and pre-ordered Battle for Azeroth. Unfortunately for me I could only unlock the Horde Allied races since I’ve not earned the proper achievements for the Alliance ones. This will be something on the list as goal in February, but I will talk about that a bit later on.
Lets look back at what I’ve done in January first!

In World of Warcraft I’ve gotten my Warrior to Prestige level 2, finally unlocking the PvP skins for my Artifact weapons. So goal done! I’ve also finished the Argus campaign (well technically I finished it today, but I’ll count it!) so goal done! I’ve cleared Tomb of Sargeras on LFR, but unfortunately didn’t clear Antorus. I’ve done the first wing but stalled out after.
I’ve not touched my Paladin at all this month and I think it’s a bit of a shame. However with little time to play I would rather focus on getting everything done on my Warrior that I want done so I’m not too disappointed by the whole not attaining goals on Paladin.
In Final Fantasy XIV I’ve leveled both my Miner and Botanist to level 70, so goals done! I’ve also brought up Fisher to 44 but kind of stalled out there. Instead of piddling around on my Machinist I’ve been leveling my Summoner. She’s currently level 63 and going to 70 slow and steady.
In other games I’ve not touched Xenoblade Chronicles at all unfortunately. I’ve been strangely captured by Yo Kai Watch 2 though and am slowly making my way through that game as we speak. I’m about 7 hours in and probably halfway through the story. I’ll see where that takes me.
In non gaming goals I have read “The Wise Man’s Fear” so goal done! I didn’t however manage to finish off Lie to Me or watch the new season of Black Mirror.

I managed to strike off a few things off the list for January for which I’m grateful. I didn’t accomplish everything I hoped I would but I’m getting there. Slow and steady. I did a bit more than I planned to do in FFXIV and a bit less in WoW. Let’s see how this balances out in February.

In FFXIV I’d like to get my Summoner/Scholar to 70. I also want to unlock and experience all the 4.2 content. I also want to nudge Fisher closer to 70 and, if I get Summoner up quick turn my attention back to Machinist to get another class to 70. I may also want to power my Black Mage to level 60 purely so I can get rid of the heinous level 50 casting set I currently run with.
In WoW I want to get Exalted with the Argussian Reach and Army of the Light on my Warrior so I can unlock the Alliance allied races. I also want to clear out my questlog and do the Antorus raid in LFR. I may want to level my Shaman a bit so I can start working through another class campaign, but I’ll see. Again this depends on the time I have available to me.
In other games I want to continue playing Yo Kai Watch and hopefully finish off the mainstory. I may dabble in Breath of the Wild aswell seeing as I have reconnected my WiiU.
In the non-gaming world I want to focus on getting back into shape again. My goal for this month is to lose atleast 2 kilograms (4 pounds ish). I am quite overweight for my length and I’m starting to feel the necessity to slim down again. Eventually I want to drop 15 kilograms (30 pounds ish) this year. If I can attain 2 kilograms per month I should be on this goal somewhere at the end of the summer. Hopefully it will go a bit faster than that though.

Again I’m making small goals for February. With work being crazy stressful I just don’t know how much time I will actually have to game, seeing as I tend to fall asleep when I get home. Most of my progress will come from days off and during weekends, which are also days where I have to do chores or make appointments. So yeah, my actual game time isn’t actually that much.
I guess we’ll see how far I’ve come when it’s February 28th.

Gaming Goals: 2018

Posted on January 21, 2018 by sandrian

I’ve been mulling about this post for a while. 2018 is three weeks old and I feel like I want to make a certain road map for myself with achievements that I want done this year.
I already started off well with leveling my Miner to 70 in FFXIV and completing my Class Hall campaign on Demon Hunter in WoW today. I’ve also completed my first Steam game of the year and I hope many more games in my backlog will follow suit.

So yeah without further ado let’s look into some of the goals I have set for myself for the coming year gaming wise.
First off: World of Warcraft.

I’ve been slowly getting back int WoW since about november/december and seeing as I no longer raid there I want to take the time to do other things. I’m a sucker for lore and collecting and I really enjoy the class campaigns so I’ve decided to spend the remainder of Legion finishing those off. I have done 5/12 classes so far: Warrior, Hunter, Paladin, Druid and Demon Hunter. The rest of the classes I will have to level to max and then trudge through the Class Hall campaign. Luckily for me of the seven classes left, four are already sitting at level 100 or above (Mage, Priest, Shaman, Monk). I have a Death Knight and Warlock sitting in the level 90-100 range and then I have a Rogue who is level 81. I know that Blizzard has changed how leveling works so I will probably save the Rogue, DK and Warlock for last.
I also want to get all the Class mounts after that. With only the Warrior and Hunter one done currently that will probably take a while but we’ll see.
Finally I want to chase weapon skins, specificall on my Warrior. I know that Blizzard will remove some Artifact skins with the launch of BfA and I really want to get my hands on the Challenge skin on my Warrior and the +15 mythic colour. I imagine I still have about half a year to go for that so I hope I can manage it.
So more than enough to do in WoW and I will have to set aside specific nights just to be able to do all of this. I don’t mind though, I will enjoy all the lore and will probably get my money’s worth from that playtime alone.

Secondly: Final Fantasy XIV
Now that I feel like I’ve found a steady and permanent home in this game I want to plant some roots for real. I want to get all my classes to level 70, this is both battle classes, crafting classes aswell as gathering classes. I have been making some effort on two of these fronts at least. I already have five battle classes on max level (Astrologian, White Mage, Ninja, Bard, Red Mage) and seeing as the rest is all level 50 or higher I don’t foresee too much issues doing this. On the gathering front I’ve made progress in leaps and bounds. Both my Botanist and Miner are already level 70 and I’m currently working on getting Fisher up there aswell (currently level 41). Even though I hit the part of leveling for Fisher where it tends to slow down, 40-50 really is a drag, I feel that if I can just keep on dedicating some time to this I will be level 70 in no time at all.
Crafting classes are a bit of a different story and will probably be the biggest challenge. I’ve never really picked up crafting properly except for Weaver, which is sitting at level 60. The rest of my crafting classes are a lot lower however. They’re varying in levels from 20 to 37 or so and even though I’ve gotten tips on how to level them fastest I’m still not really looking forward to it. Ideally I want to level all the classes together so I would start out with getting everything to 25 and then everything to 30 etcetera. It’s going to be a bit arduous to do it like that but I don’t have that much of a choice.
I predict that this will actually take me a lot of time but in the event that leveling goes faster than I anticipate I want to work on knocking out achievements to earn me some titles and some shiny glamour gear. But the leveling comes first.

Lastly: The Backlog
Oh boy. The Backlog is a thing. You see I really enjoy collecting games but I have an abominable track record of actually playing said games. I don’t finish that many at all and seeing as I want to use my funds towards my house this year will be the best year to actually start working through all the games I have accumulated over the years.
I have a ton of RPGs, a decent amount of platformers and then there are different types of games like Visual Novels, Point & Click puzzle games and “endless” games like city builders, the sims and stuff like FIFA 16 that I’ve bought but never actually took the time to play. I feel like I owe it to myself to play through atleast a few RPGs this year, most notably Horizon Zero Dawn, Xenoblade Chronicles 2 and Final Fantasy XV. I’ve started all of these games quite enthusiastically but never got around to actually dive deep into them and play untill the credits roll. Because that is my ultimate goal with this backlog playthrough: See the credits roll for as many games as I can. This means that sometimes a game will only last about 3 hours to play through but that’s not that important. I can always come back later to mop up trophies/achievement/completionist stuff when I want to.
It also doesn’t mean I’m going to rush these games. Especially RPGs are games that are slow going for me because I want to explore every nook and cranny, talk to every person and run around a lot in the game world. This will probably slow me down considerably completing the games but I don’t really care.
The same goes for platformers. I enjoy finding a lot of secrets on my first playthrough of a game and I will probably go out of my way to get some stuff when I can, but I’m not going to chase silly achievements that take specific actions to complete when they’re too complicated or when they slow me down to a standstill in the game.
I have made a start in this effort by slowly going through my Steam library. I’ve finished Botanicula and I’m going to start working my way through Castle of Illusion again (I really enjoy that one, it reminds me of my old Sega!) and then just drop down the list of games. Child of Light is on there and Ori and the Blind Forest but also the likes of Final Fantasy XIII and Stardew Valley. And even though a game like Stardew Valley doesn’t really finish well I feel like I want to give it some love and time and say that I atleast played it for a while.

On all of these things I hope to be posting more regularly than I’m doing right now. I currently have a Thursday & Sunday posting schedule and I will try to keep that up atleast and maybe squeeze in a Saturday post every now and then. This is because Thursday is my day off and Sundays are usually chore days for me so these days are perfect to use for blog posts. I hope I can keep up the trend of using more screenshots in my posts aswell, seeing as I can take seriously pretty ones on my PC again.

Anyway that’s a look in what I want to do gaming wise in 2018. I hope I can reach all the goals I’ve set for myself and maybe accomplish even more. It’s not the same as climbing Mount Everest or learning a new language but I enjoy playing my games and I enjoy setting goals for myself in said games. It might make me a bit boring but that will have to be that way then. All in all I’m quite happy with this. It gives me something to work towards and something to grasp when I feel like I’m lost with what to do.
See you next Thursday!

Gaming Goals: January 2018

Posted on January 1, 2018 by sandrian

First off all I want to wish everyone a Happy New Year and hope that 2018 will be 100% better than 2017 for everyone. I spent my New Years eve celebrating with one of my best friends. It was a day and evening filled with games, good company and nice food. Ofcourse I went to bed a bit too late which means I’m going to bed nice and on time tonight to be well rested for work tomorrow. I’m also happy I decided to clean my room before leaving. I’m now home and have a bed with freshly washed sheets and an empty desk to look at, which makes me happy.

Now before I want to start talking about my plans for January I want to look back at December and what I’ve accomplished.

In World of Warcraft I managed to get my Paladin to level 110 and completed the Class Hall Campaign pre Legionfall. I decided to stop there and focus on gearing up and clearing out the remaining quests that I had before pushing on to Argus and eventually my Class Mount. She’s sitting on ilvl 850 now and I’m slowly whittling down my quest log. I’m quite happy with the progress I made considering I was sick in bed for an entire week. I really have to mention that I enjoyed the Paladin Class campaign like no other campaign so far. I like how it tied in with the Priest one and how everything played out. Next to working on my Paladin I’ve also picked up my Warrior again. I finally finished the Legionfall campaign, got Exalted status with them and got my Class mount. I’ve decided to slowly work through Argus on her and do some LFR to experience the story of Tomb of Sargeras and Antorus but that’s it.
In FFXIV I managed to get my Astrologian to 70 early on in the month and had my Miner ding 61. I’ve stalled on my Botanist however, she’s currently sitting around halfway to level 68. I do want to make the push towards 70 asap on that and my Miner so I can clear gear from my bags and maybe so I can start making some money. I’ve also casually been leveling my Machinist, it’s 61, and I’m quite happy with that. Ofcourse I’ve also done the christmas Event on both my characters so I now own my very own flying bear!
In non MMO games I’ve not made that much progress. I’ve played a bit of Xenoblade Chronicles, some I am Setsuna and Puyo Puyo Tetris but otherwise I’ve not really touched any games. It’s a bit disappointing but inbetween the stress from work and buying a house and feeling sick it really can’t be helped. I did manage to level another hero to level 5 in HotS so there’s that.
On the non gaming front I read the book I wanted to read in less than a week. I really enjoy this series by Patrick Rothfuss and I’m planning to read the rest of the series aswell. In series country I just couldn’t get into the Punisher. I don’t know if it’s just Marvel overload or if I just can’t watch another action packed series but instead of watching that I’ve delved deep into the serie “Lie to Me”. I’m currently halfway through season 2 and I’m sure I’ll watch the rest by the end of January.

Looking ahead to January I still want to keep my goals small. I will have a very tough month ahead of me work wise and I’m still not quite over my cold so I don’t want to plan too much while I know I probably won’t be able to do what I said I would. But this is what I’d like to accomplish the next month.

In WoW: Get Prestige rank 2 on my Warrior, finish off Argus on my Warrior and clear out any remaining quests that linger in my questlog. Do Tomb of Sargeras and Antorus for story on both Warrior and Paladin.
On Paladin, push through the Legionfall and Argus story and get my Class Hall mount.
In FFXIV: Level my Botanist and Miner to level 70. Fiddle around on Machinist, no real level goal there, if I make it to 70 it’s nice, if not then no harm done.
Other games: play more Xenoblade Chronicles. Any progress is nice but I’d like to see a considerable part of the story before the month is over.
Non-gaming: Read “The Wise Men’s Fear” by Patrick Rothfuss. Finish watching “Lie to Me”. Watch the new season of “Black Mirror”

All in all this should be obtainable goals for the month. I have many more planned for the rest of the year and I’m planning to do a “goals for 2018” post somewhere this week. I don’t have big “real life” things to consider this year except for getting my apartment built so nothing should interfere with finally playing some of my backlog and having fun in MMO’s in 2018.

Aeternus Gaming

Tackling an evergrowing backlog of games. But I'm also just an MMO junkie.

Tag Archives: Goals