BfA: Almost There

Another day and another BfA themed post. I want to say I’m sorry but I’m not. I’m spending all my free time playing through the expansion and I’m getting close to some important steps.

My first “almost there” is Mining. I’m currently sitting around 137 Kul Tiran skill. I’m enjoying the fact that I get quests from my trainer instead of from random drops from nodes. This means I already have a ton of things at the two star level. I probably will get to max level Mining tomorrow as I finish up Tiragarde Sound. Which brings me to the second “almost there”. I’ve been running around Tirasgarde Sound for the past two evening and bar some sidequests I only have two main quest lines left for the zone achievement. I’ve also worked my way through atleast half of the rare encounters throughout the zone and earned the exploration achievement, so there’s that. I’m kind of curious to see how things will tie together in the end. I know who the big baddie is for this zone, it wasn’t that much of a surprise, but I’m curious to see how we’ll unmask her.
Also Flynn (who is clearly taken from Cpt. Jack Sparrow) is hilarious. Plus I got to drink milk from a skull mug, as you can see on this screenshot in the upper right corner.

The last “almost there” is me being halfway to level 119. I’m kind of expecting to be 119 as I finish up Tiragarde Sound which means I’ll ding 120 fairly early into Stormsong Valley. Seeing as I’m not really in a rush to gear and start doing tons of dungeons I’ll probably opt to finish off Stormsong Valley before I dive into the amazing world that is endgame.

On the first character I level through an expansion I try to do every available quest and I don’t think this time will be different. I love sucking in all the lore and quirky sidequests that Blizzard offers us. I also notice that I’m wandering off and exploring much more stuff than I did in Legion. It’s how I’ve been killing all the rares and finding a lot of treasure chests and hidden sidequests. Nothing punishes me for just going where I want to go while also completing all the main storylines. Although with unlocking my last foothold in Zandalar (the one in Nazmir) I tried to shy away from exploring and just getting my quest objectives done because man, that zone is hella creepy. Drustvar was “horror tropes witch covens” creepy but I enjoyed that. Nazmir is “cannibals in a swamp” creepy and I’m not digging the vibe at all. Which will be interesting when I level up a Horde character through that zone… I can already imagine the nightmares.

BfA: Day Two

A part of me wants to go to bed and a part of me feels like I should atleast write a short blog about Bfa day two. Yesterday I’ve done all of Drustvar in one day and I wondered how long it would take me to finish up Tiragarde Sound. It seems to be an overall smaller zone with less quests and less space to cover. However I’ve already discovered tons of sidequests and finished off a few of the amazing mainquests the zone has to offer. All in all I think Drustvar still has the edge when it comes to storytelling and atmosphere but Tiragarde introduces us to many unique characters aswell. We also get a taste of the Old Gods influence and I got to perform in a jousting show on a horse.

The best part though was this adorable little hunting dog that was bringing me the birds I shot out of the sky during one of many sidequests Tiragarde has. I imagine it’s sort of modeled after a Jack Russel Terrier although I’m not quite sure. He was kind of difficult to get a good screenshot off, especially because it was rather dark in game when I did these quests but the one above should give you a decent indication.

The darkness thing is something that caught me a bit off guard aswell. I don’t think any of the zones get as dark as the ones in Kul Tiras have been getting. I think Blizzard may have amped up the weather or, and that’s more likely, I’m noticing it more now that we are running about in zones that are more open and feel more natural than the Legion ones.

All in all I’m still having a blast and I’m starting to find my way through Boralus as city aswell. I’ve been completing a few Mining quests, I’m really happy these come from the trainer now instead of randomly dropping from nodes, and I’ve been pouring all the ore I’ve been mining into leveling up my Engineering aswell. Although I’m only on 25 skill level at the moment. There’s so many little details that I could go on and on about but honestly it comes down to the fact that Blizzard once again made an amazing zone with beautiful landscapes and good lore. Even the War Campaign makes sense next to the questing in Kul Tiras. I’ve established two camps over at Zandalar right now and I’ve unlocked my Island expeditions. They seem like mini scenarios where you race the opposing factions to get to 500 Azerite per island first. Unfortunately I’ve not really gotten the time to figure that out yet but I will. For now I’m going to focus on finishing off Tiragarde and moving on to Stormsong Valley the next few days and hopefully ding 120 around Friday evening.

Gathering up a Storm

Since yesterday evening or so I decided it was time to start working on my gatherers and crafters in FFXIV to break up the monotomy of just running roulettes and doing beast tribe dailies. Since both my miner and my botanist were the most advanced in level (next to weaver) I decided to tackle them first. I had gotten both of them leveled up to level 56 somewhere before Stormblood hit and then kind of let them rot. I never really got into the crafting and gathering game and the whole scrip farm blew right past me. I have no idea what Fokelore books are or when to buy them, I have no idea about Best in Slot or whether or not to pentameld and I certainly have no idea how to combine everything into becoming a crafting and gathering “god”.

Gathering a spider?

Gathering a spider?

So yeah. I bit the bullet and started leveling both classes again and I have to say everything goes better than expected. I have already brought my botanist up to level 62 and my miner is sitting just shy of level 58. I really want to get this Heavensward part of the gathering process out of the way, mostly because it’s quite tedious and it’s old content. I know there are probably some materials still useful from there and if I would do a bit of market/markeboard research I’m sure both mining and botany can be turned into quite profitable jobs to have. But for now I do none of this, I’m focussing on attaining level 70 first and foremost and after that I’ll see. I still have all my crafting classes to get up and also fisher, but I don’t really want to think about that.

One of the ways that I’m making this leve grind, because that’s the route I’m taking right now just spamming levequests, bearable is doing it to good music and making sure that I take regular breaks. Repeating the same levequest 3-4-5 times over is really boring and I can notice I’m zoning out hardcore as I’m doing all this gathering… And that’s just the leves. The classquests that Square Enix throw at you at certain levels are an even worse nightmare. I have to admit that I bought the items that I needed for the level 60 botany quest off the marketboard. I really didn’t want to spend that much time waiting for a specific node to pop and then praying that I can get HQ items from said node, which is never a guarantee. Especially when you’re sitting in shitty gear like me.
The shitty gear is something that will be staying for a bit because I’ve never done endgame and I’m just really dependant on whatever happens to be on the vendors and at the mercy of the crafters in my guild. Luckily they’re nice people and they whipped up a few gathering accessories for me that should last me a while..

I’m really wondering how the gearing process looks like for gatherers at max level. I saw that you could essentially buy a level 70 set of the vendors but I’m sure that scrip gear is better. M’naago should really help with this seeing as she’s the new Zhloe. Not having a weekly cap on scrips is also extremely helpful so in theory you could be geared in “no time” when you ding 70. I just hope that I can stay interested in this gathering spree untill then.

Another thing that I would like to do (even though I’m waaaaay to late really) is work on the various gathering related achievements. The rewards may be outdated but a golden pickaxe and botany tool still look really pretty so I might just do it for the glamours. It really comes down to just doing the gathering log for both classes and spend a ton of time gathering in the old continents. At heart I’m a collector and achievement hunter and it would fill me with immense accomplishment to just start ticking off “easy” to obtain achievements. Because while logging 1000 times from 21-30 nods in the various regions seems like a huge task, it’s really just tedious. I can’t really be attacked by wildlife anymore because I simply outlevel them, it’s more a question of careful planning and executing. Going for 1000 gatherings in one sitting is pure madness so I figured I’d break it up in chunks of 40. The average amount of gathering attempts is 4 and you’d have to do 10 nodes to get to that number 40. This way I can just keep track of what I’m doing and decide when to take breaks. Every 10 or maybe 20 nodes. Just to keep myself from going insane.
Next to that I want to “complete” the gathering log for both miner and botanist. Again this awards with a slightly outdated primary tool, but it’s pretty and it’s an achievement to work towards. This one will be a bit more difficult seeing as some of the stuff is locked behind timed nodes and I will have to figure out how everything works exactly, but I’m sure I’ll get there.

With dedicating even more time into FFXIV I will probably not be working on my backlog after all. I’m making this choice conciously right now. I just can’t seem to find the motivation and time to really play anything else anyway and the only game I’m really enjoying besides FFXIV right now is Super Mario Odyssey, which has turned into a “find all the moons” grindfest aswell. Maybe the release of Pokémon Ultrasun next week will change my mind, but for now I’m 100% focusing on FFXIV and obtaining as much as possible in there.

Sunday Summaries #4

Hmm. I skipped my weekly sunday post last week. I had a terrible weekend where I was feeling absolutely crap so I couldn’t get myself motivated to do anything, let alone write a blog post about what I’ve been up to.
So instead I’ll just continue telling you about what I’ve done this week, in games and in real life and what I’m planning to do the next.

So first off… Life
Yeah I normally rather talk about games but right now I’m going to take the chance and talk about some IRL stuff. I’ve been having a bit of a hard time the past two weeks. I’m in one of my more depressed moods and thus I can’t handle a lot of things very well. Part of it is caused by continuously feeling tired/sick and part of it is caused by stress over my thesis. I’m still not done yet although I have been taking some steps towards finishing it off. Tonight I’m going to send my final research proposal and then turn my attention to the beefy stuff: results. I downloaded and installed SPSS and it really shouldn’t take me more than a day to grind the numbers.
Next to my thesis I’ve also started an online course teaching me the basics of HTML5, CSS and Java. Seeing as I’m somewhere in no man’s land concerning work and I’ve always had some sort of attraction to IT I decided to bite the bullet and just enroll. It’s a five course specialization that in theory takes place over about 6 months time. However you can work ahead if you want and finish up the courses faster, earning yourself an official certificate from the University of Michigan. Which in turn looks good on my resumé and linkedin. I really feel like I want to head more in the direction of IT and being able to understand atleast the basics will help me with this. I’m not sure if I’d want to be a full time programmer, but it’s nice to know how stuff works atleast. I might even experiment with some things on my blog, who knows.

Now to the more interesting part… Games
This week has seen a mix of various games on my part. I played FFXIV and raided on Sunday and Wednesday. I also committed myself to Bard and finally managed to get her to 70. Due to the class sharing accessories with Ninja I instantly reached ilvl 320 as I dinged, which is quite nice. I also won the Susano bow yesterday evening in an FC event so I’m all ready to play Bard! I really like the AF3 gear so I’m totally going to use it as glamour. I may default to Bard a bit more for my roulettes aswell since I really miss the ranged gameplay and the class is just seriously fun.
Next to FFXIV I also reinstalled Guild Wars 2 this past week and got playing. Due to me being completely out of the game I rolled up a new character, Norn ranger, and just headed off into the Wayfarer Foothills. Which by the way is a really pretty zone. I think this is an ideal game to just run around in a few hours a week for some casual and story driven gameplay when I get overwhelmed or bored with FFXIV. A post with some GW2 screenshots and a post with my Bard to 70 screenshots will probably appear later this week.
On the non MMO front I’ve finally finished Ducktales Remastered and I’ve started a new adventure in Pokémon White 2, which I talked about a bit already yesterday. It’s probably going to be my go-to game on the train next to some fiddling around in the Pokémon Moon postgame. I also jumped in on the I am Setsuna sale for the Switch and may break that out after I finish the whole Pokémon grind. I’m not 100% sure though but we will see.

All in all I’ve done a lot of gaming related stuff this week, which mostly revolved around FFXIV and GW2. Next week I don’t plan to deviate from this a lot except I will have to find a new class to level in FFXIV. I’m doubting between Dragoon and Red Mage purely because I’ve been getting Dragoon gear from my Savage runs and Red Mage is just an exceptionally fun class to play. I know it’s another DPS after I’ve already leveled two, but I don’t really care anymore at this point. The queues are manageable and during the time inbetween I can easily farm FATEs and hunt marks for additional experience. It’s how I did it on Bard and it worked out just fine.
I will also poke around in GW2 a bit to get my ranger up. I want to finish atleast the Wayfarer Foothills this week, which shouldn’t take me too long. I also want to make some progress in Pokémon White 2. Not sure how much time I’m going to spend on it but I hope to be able to beat atleast the first gym there.

In real life I’m going to focus on my thesis and on the IT course. I’m not sure how much time I will actually spend on it but the pressure is starting to really turn on to get this stuff finished and I’m really motivated to do so. It’s about time I’d be done with Uni once and for all.

Mapping the Future

Afbeeldingsresultaat voor planner

Yesterday a plan started to slowly take shape in my head. I’m really bad when it comes to planning things and when it comes to MMO’s I’m usually very overwhelmed with all the things I can do that in the end I mostly end up doing very little or unsubscribing.
I really don’t want this to happen with Final Fantasy XIV. I’ve found an amazing free company and some of my oldest friends are still playing the game. I want to make this my permanent new main MMO and I want to be a bit more serious about the way I play it. To make sure this happens I have come up with a “Roadmap for Stormblood.”

Now I’m not really sure how this roadmap will develop over time, but I had to start somewhere. Right now I made a two stage spreadsheet mostly involving leveling and gearing my battle and profession classes. As I’ve mentioned only my Ninja is currently level 70. I have a few other battle classes level 60+ (Dragoon, Astrologian, Bard, Machinist) and the rest is sitting somewhere between level 50 and level 60. On the gatherer and crafter side of the spectrum only my Weaver made it to level 60, the rest is below.

My first goals in Stormblood, and the first phase of my roadmap, centers around leveling all these various classes to maximum level. Initially my goals is to get everything to 60 but if I enjoy a class or if it’s already 60 I can take them to 70 aswell. For now the goals is to get atleast one battle class and one gathering/crafting class to 60 per month. I know that leveling sometimes goes faster than you know, hence the “atleast”. I’m not going to be so strict to myself that I have to attain this goal every month. I know that sometimes RL will get in the way or that I will have less time due to Savage and Ex-Primals raiding on my Ninja.
Seeing the queues as they are for mostly DPS classes I will probably abuse PotD for those that aren’t level 60 yet to get there. As far as Healers/Tanks go… There are enough roulettes to do that have quite low queue times and it will be a break away from the monotony that is PotD.
For gathering/crafting I mean to make full use of the leves, collectables and GC hand-in system, next to the beast tribe dailies that are available. I will probably focus on my gatherers first, mostly miner and botanist, before I take my crafting back up again.

The second phase of my roadmap will revolve around gearing all my classes. In a way with gearing Ninja I’m automatically also gearing Bard and Machinist up to a point. I want to have decent/BiS gear for as many classes as possible and the fact that a lot of gear is shared will probably help me a lot there. This gearing will most likely happen simultaneously to leveling any class. I will have more tomestones than I can use on my Ninja anyway (I’m already rocking BiS tomestone gear on her) so I will automatically pick up other things as I progress through endgame content.
Crafting and gathering gear are a different beast. I’ve always found crafting in this game to be very complicated, but I want to really make an effort this expansion. Again I will probably focus on gearing my gatherers first, they will be the first that reach 70 and work on scrips so my crafters won’t really be gearing untill I get one or two to max level to begin with.

I know that there are meriad other things to do in FFXIV besides leveling and gearing my various classes. I will probably expand on my roadmap as the expansion goes on and the focus on leveling is less. There are a ton of mounts and minions that I still want to get. I’m also eyeing the possibility to slowly work my way through all the relic weapons from Heavensward and get the last three I need from A Realm Reborn. These are all minor things that I still need to shape into a proper mold for planning and they’re all projects that I can pick up at a later time when I feel like it.

For now my plan is to focus on doing small weekly tasks, and incorporate these into bigger monthly goals. Taking things one step at a time and making sure I don’t burn out and feel accomplished is my major goal here. Due to the shift in focus from monthly to weekly I will try to make a post every Sunday evening with what I have planned for the week as whole (inlcuding IRL things, work things and game things) and then at the end of the month I can see how far I’ve gotten. It’s a bit of a different format than what I’ve been trying to do earlier on the blog and I’m quite excited to try it out. I hope you guys enjoy going on this journey with me and I hope it will make me blog more regularly.

Now seeing as I’m already writing anyway, my plans for the week looks as followed:

  • Work on Miner in FFXIV. I’ve started to level it before I left on vacation and got my miner from level 30 to 47 in about 4 days time. I’d like to continue this growth and see how close I can get to 60 over the course of the week.
  • Work on Red Mage in FFXIV. I’ve picked up the class and am quite enjoying it. She’s level 51 at the moment and I will do PotD when I feel like it. I’ve gotten an offer to do roulettes with someone who is leveling a tank so I might just take advantage of that and see how far it gets me.
  • Work on my thesis. I need to test a few more subjects, churn results and hand in my first version. I also need to hand in something else which I need to work on today so I will get little game time in.

For the rest of the week I have 4 days of work planned and two nights of going out to dinner. My father and his partner (I refuse to call her his wife) are celebrating their partnershipday on Wednesday with going out to dinner with me and one of my uncles. Saturday evening I have another dinner with work colleagues to say goodbye to one of them who is starting work at another company. I’m also hoping to make a bit more progress of rearranging our attic over the weekend but I’m not making that a “must do” thing because I’m honestly not sure how my time will be spent. So yeah. I have a busy week ahead of me with proably not as much gaming time as I’d like to have. Nonetheless I want to progress as much as I can in FFXIV and take it from there.