Tag Archives: Pokemon

Pokémon Holidays

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So Christmas came and went and it left me with a nice sore throat. It’s not a constant painful feeling but whenever I yawn, cough, sneeze or swallow it kinda hurts. Unfortunately no pain meds will actually work so I’m just going through the motions and waiting till it subsides on its own. This ofcourse has sparked some arguments at home because “oh my god why don’t you just take pain meds even though you said three times over they don’t work”. Apparently hearing her own opinion is more important than my autonomy over what actually goes into my body. I’m so happy to be moving out in less than four months.

Now onto the fun stuff! Due to being “forced” to socialize I’ve actually gotten a lot of time into Pokémon LetsGO during the 25th and the 26th. Apparently being social just means being physically present and not actually engaging with people so that’s fine by me. As you can see in the above picture I’m past Lavender Town and the Pokémon tower. I really wanted to screenshot this moment because I think it’s rather beautiful and a good indication of the storytelling in Pokémon LetsGO. Even though I’ve played through Kanto multiple times and can dream up the story by now I’m still quite surprised by how much I actually enjoy this installment.
Right now I’ve beaten Gym number 5 and am working my way to number 6 while catching as many Pokémon as I can along the way. Partially to start filling up my Pokédex and partially to help level up my existing team. I’m rolling with Eevee, Alakazam, Pidgeot, Venusaur, Charizard and Blastoise right now and I’m fine with that setup. I may actually ditch either Pidgeot or Alakazam at some point for the Dratini evolutions but all in all I’m happy with the team I now have. Even though I didn’t plan to play as much Pokémon as I have I atleast made a decent few steps in the game and am every so slowly moving towards the endgame.
Next to this I’ve also picked up Pokémon Go again. I don’t really walk around with my phone much but I make sure to catch atleast a Pokémon every day and spin a stop since I can do both from the comfort of my own home. I should probably go out more but my phone is in a state where I can’t put too much strain on it or the battery will just run dry, even after replacing it. I’m patiently waiting to move out before buying a new phone though because right now getting furniture for my house is more important than a new phone.

I’ve also poked my head back into WoW on Christmas Day. I opened the yearly Winter’s Veil gifts and set out to do the two scenario’s I wanted to do: Tyrande’s Ascension and the complimentary black Night Elf eyes and the Blood Elf Heritage quests as pictured above.
I like having a bit more lore to chew through and I was pretty engaged with both activities. The Blood Elf heritage quest is rather interesting. It basically tells you about the fall of the High Elf empire by the hands of Arthas and the subsequent loss of Sylvanas Windrunner, Anasterian Sunstrider and the Sunwell. It also shows you why the Sunwell was destroyed and the impact it had on the society. I’m pretty chuffed with the racial armor aswell so all in all that questline was a positive experience for me.
I really enjoyed Tyrande finally taking destiny in her own hands aswell. It’s been a long time coming that the Night Elves start to kick ass again and I’m happy to see the no-nonsense that is now empowered Tyrande + Malfurion. I really hope Blizzard can somehow maintain this storytelling and I’m quite curious where the Night Elf story goes after this.
I also have to report that playing on Draenor and Silvermoon, two of the biggest EU servers, has become an absolute pain in the ass due to extreme server lag. I’m thinking about going back to Dragonblight and my Warrior partly because it’s simply less laggy there and partly because I have some friends coming back to WoW and their characters are there. I guess I’ll see.

On the FFXIV front progress has been slow but steady. My monk is probably going to ding 67 tonight or tomorrow morning and I’ll hopefully be 70 somewhere during this weekend. This means I only have my Dark Knight and Samurai left to level. With Blue Mage supposedly coming out on January 15th I can see myself picking that one up after finishing off the traditional jobs. All that remains after is clearing out all the outstanding endgame quests, gear up my White Mage (and possible other jobs) and start leveling my crafters. All in all I still have plenty to do in FFXIV and I’m sure I will carry on the playing streak well into 2019. All in all I’m getting some good game time in during my holidays. Now I just need to find some time to fit in FFXV…

November update: Progress on multiple fronts

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Level 70 Paladin skill

It’s odd how time works sometimes. I could swear it was only the start of November a few days ago and yet here we are with less than a week left this month. It’s gone surprisingly fast, even accounting for the fact that last week I was sick and mostly bedridden which of course skews your perception of time even more.

If you’ve been keeping up with my blog and Twitter you have seen that I’ve been making steady progress in my FFXIV leveling endeavours. My Paladin sits at 70 and as of writing this my Dragoon just hit level 64 and is firmly on track to be 70 this week. After that I’m switching to my Warrior so I can have fast tank queues again before settling down on Monk. All in all I’m quite happy with how fast the leveling is going. I’m pretty sure I won’t actually make the whole “get all battle jobs to 70 before the new year” goal but I’ll get very close. As I’m estimating it now I’ll probably be somehwere halfway in leveling up my Dark Knight and then I only have Samurai left. Again I’m not really accounting for the extra playtime I get from my week holiday so I may actually be left with only Samurai in the new year.

Next to leveling I’ve also been tackling a lot of unattended end game stuff. I’ve never actually touched the second part of the Omega raid, Sigmascape, so I’m slowly working my way through the normal raids for the story. I’ve done part one with the ghost train and part two with the painting and enjoyed both fights. They’re not necessarily hard but you can and will die if you don’t follow the proper mechanics. I’m staring down the “Guardian” next and then Kefka afterwards. This will allow me to open up Alphascape which I will run not to only close out the story but also in search of some gear upgrades for my White Mage.
I’m also planning to queue for the Ridorana Lighthouse this week as I haven’t done that one either yet. I’m almost one hundred procent positive that tomorrow will be the best evening to run this particular instance since it’s reset day and then most good people run it to get their weekly drop.
Now I just need to tie up some sidequests here and there and I’m pretty sure I have another primal to unlock in the form of Suzaku. I’m also on the final set of quests to rebuild Doma, which I’m pretty happy with.

Final Fantasy however isn’t the only game I’ve been spending my time with the past few days. I’ve also played about nine hours of Pokémon LetsGO and made it as far as Lavender town/Celadon City. I’ve wasted about an hour trying to force shinies to spawn with something called the 31 catch combo chain, which I’ll talk about more in a later post. For now I’ve decided to mainly follow the story and beat the elite four as soon as possible. I’m really liking this game and I’m pretty sure it will stick for the forseable future.

Lastly I finally made some true progress in reading the final book of the Farseer Trilogy. I’m almost halfway done now (page 400 out of 912) and I have to say I really like this particular set of books a lot. So much that I’ve acquired all of the other books that take place in the same realm. Which means I have 13 more books to look forward to in a story that is actually finished. Unlike some of the other sagas I’m following, and yes I’m looking at GRR Martin, Parick Rothfuss and Scott Lynch as I write this particular sentence.

All in all the two games and the book should keep me busy for atleast another two weeks or so. I hope to have made considerable progress in Pokémon by then and hopefully have started reading the first book in the Living Ships trilogy.

As always I’ll keep you guys updated.

Common Cold

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Zurvan

Seems like I captured the Zurvan fight at just the right time. I always like the intermezzos that Square Enix builds into their trial fights and Zurvan is on the more epic side of said trials. I opted to not main tank this fight though since I’m not really familiar with it plus the other tank had like 10k HP more than I have (Warriors are filthy cheaters I tell you).
The progress on leveling Paladin has been slow but steady. I hit 68 tonight which means I should be 70 on Friday night and tick it off as another class done! In the meantime I’m enjoying tanking on Paladin a lot again, post 50 the job has gotten much more interesting with many more buttons to press than previously.

Being knocked down by a cold this week I didn’t really feel like doing much of anything. However yesterday during the afternoon I attended my very first live orchestra performance in the Concert building in Amsterdam. It was an orchestra plus choir from Eastern Europe and they performed music from various movies with the final hour being dedicated to music from Star Wars alone. It was a magnificent thing to attend and while I don’t necessarily enjoy classical music in general hearing an orchestra perform songs I know was something I felt I needed to experience. Even though when I came home I had a fever flaring up I’m happy I went. This did result in me calling in sick to work today after barely sleeping last night and dealing with all the discomforts that the common cold brings. I’ve thus recovered enough to try to attend work again tomorrow, even if it’s only for a part of the day. Despite the setback of falling ill, experiencing the live orchestra has sparked my interest in music again. Perhaps during my recovery time, I’ll explore other musical pursuits, such as online piano lessons, to further enrich my appreciation for music.

Other than my cold and the concert I don’t really have much to tell right now. Being unwell kind of makes your days boring and mostly spent in bed. I’ve been in too much of a funk to really game a lot so apart from the progress on my Paladin I’ve not really touched anything else. I am planning to play a bit more Pokémon LetsGO as I start feeling better, and to change from playing FFXIV only to also playing a single player game on the side.

FFXIV, Pokémon and Sabrina

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It’s been an odd week for me. Pokémon LetsGO finally got released and I picked that up yesterday evening. I’ve been leveling my Paladin, although I’ve allowed myself to take a night or two off from that aswell and I’ve started watching the Chilling Adventures of Sabrina on Netflix.

With the new expansion announcement of FFXIV, Shadowbringers, I realize I’ve taken the decision to work on leveling my classes on just the right time. Blue mage is coming in patch 4.5, which probably means somewhere in Q1-Q2 of next year, and if all goes right I should be up for leveling a battle class again by then. Even though Square announced that the newly announced class will work a little differently.
I wasn’t surprised at all to find out that we were going to Garlemald, the current expansion has done it’s best to set up that premise. I’m also not too surprised that Yoshi P. hinted at Viera as the next race and I’m quite curious to see how they look. What did surprise me is the announcement of a “New Game +” mode. I may actually be quite interested in that, assuming it’s done properly. I also really hope that they’ve learned of the mistake that is Eureka and bring back the relic weapon in a more traditional way in the new expansion. All in all there is a lot to look forward to concering this new expansion and if all goes well I’ll be playing it at my own house when it comes out.
On the leveling front in FFXIV there’s not that much progress to mention. My Paladin sits at level 65 and thus is only 5 levels away from reaching the cap. With near instant queues for almost all roulettes and the ability to queue up for on-level dungeons this has got to be the fastest class to level up together with Dark Knight and Warrior. I’ve also diverted some of my time this week to take a stab at leveling my crafting professions and working a bit on the Heavensward Relic for Dragoon.

As mentioned before I picked up Pokémon LetsGO (Eevee) edition last night and so far I’m really enjoying the game. It’s really rather casual to play and even though I was a bit sceptical at first I actually really enjoy the new gameplay mechanics. Not having to wander through tall grass hoping this or that random encounter turns into the right Pokémon to catch is really refreshing and the interaction between your character and your partner Pokémon is just straight up adorable. It’s a game that you can easily pick up and play for an hour or so and it doesn’t really require much thought to play. I’m hoping that for once I can atleast complete the Pokédex on here, next to beating all the Master Trainers that are in the game.

Finally I’ve started watching a new show on Netflix: The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina. It’s basically a more adult retelling of Sabrina the Teenage Witch, a show that was a big part of my childhood/teenage years. It’s a bit more gory and horror like but so far no real scares. I’m about halfway through, I think episode 6 out of 10 and I’m probably going to finish watching it next week. After which I’ll have to find yet another new show to watch, but that is a decision for future me.

Sunday Summaries #4

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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.

Gaming Goals: January 2017

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Seeing as I’m finishing off some IRL stuff I can confidently start setting goals in games again per month. So let’s start with January for now.

I’m planning to play a lot of FFXIV and WoW so the biggest part of my goals will be tied to those two games.

First off FFXIV!

  • Gear up AST with Lore gear
  • Level MCH to 60
  • Gear up NIN with Scripture gear
  • Do the Heavensturn event on Sandrian and Sarella
  • Work on Ninja relic

My Astrologian dinged 60 today and I do want to be able to dungeons on her to shorten queue times and to have something besides DPS to play on. So my main goal is to get her into Lore gear atleast, before using said Lore to power up my Ninja relic. The scripture gear I want to invest on Ninja, since it’s still my main job. Next to that I’m focusing on my next class to level 60 which will be Machinist. She’s already level 53 so that shouldn’t take me too long.
Lastly I want to focus on doing the Heavensturn event on both my characters, which again shouldn’t take that long!

Then onto WoW

  • Level up Arms Artifact weapon on Warrior to level 34
  • Max out Fury Artifact weapon on Warrior
  • Max out MM Artifact weapon on Hunter

WoW is plain and simple and mostly about leveling up my Artifact weapons. I do hope to complete Trial of Valor heroic aswell before Nighthold comes out, but that’s more of a guild thing and not something I can do solo. With me getting Artifact Knowledge level 25 tomorrow on my Warrior leveling up my Arms weapon and getting close to maxing out my Fury weapon should be a piece of cake. I know I’m still quite far off, my Fury weapon is level 35 right now, but every point spent counts for something! I also want to focus on getting my Hunter’s Marksmanship weapon up to par. I’m sitting around level 31 now which is good, but not good enough yet. I do give this less priority than my Warrior weapon though, so I’m not too fussed if I don’t rank up that much.

Then as final goal..

  • Finish Pokémon Moon

As of writing this post I’m at the last trial of the second island. I really want to make some progress in this game and defeat the Elite Four and whatever postgame content there is before I turn my attention to filling up the Pokédex. For now I’m happy to just defeat the Elite Four though, so that is what my aim will be for this month.

I’ve tried to keep it light and easy on myself. It’s going to be a busy month and I want realistic goals that I can actually obtain.

I Fucked Up

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Sunday evening as I was frantically running around Eorzea trying to get my Yo-Kai medals I realized I had fucked up. And not just a small fuck up. No a big one. Huge one. A fuck up that hasn’t happened to me in a very, very long time.
What am I talking about you mean? Well, I’m talking about the fact that I cannot, for the life of me, manage my time correctly.

I was super excited about the Yo-Kai event. Even though I’ve not played the games themselves (I tried, but felt too much like a Pokémon ripoff), I think the pets and the weapons that you could get were very cute. Being the collector that I am I set my mind to get all the pets, weapons and both the mounts on not one but two characters.
Boy did that turn out wrong.
I made a decent start with farming. I had gotten my first three weapons on Sandrian really fast. I was working on my second weapon on Sarella and everything seemed to be going fine. But then Legion launched and I completely lost track of anything else I was doing. In the back of my mind I knew the Yo-Kai event needed to be done at some point, but Legion has been all-consuming for the past month so I kept postponing it, like I do with almost everything in my life. Untill last weekend panic struck. I only had three days left to farm 9 weapons on Sandrian. I had given up on the notion of getting more than the two weapons I had obtained on Sarella.
In truth I was slowly getting back into FFXIV earlier. I had farmed a bit here and there and played with the idea to log a few nights, farm medals and breeze through the event in the last week. It should have been easily doable, were it not for the fact that I chose to sleep or play WoW instead.

I fucked up and I have no one to blame but myself. I finished the Yo-Kai event with 11 weapons on Sandrian and 2/3rds of the way to number 12. If only I had gotten started sooner, if only I could have sat down to farm. If only my head wasn’t this chaotic mess that completely lacks any commitment to plans I make.
It sucks but it’s a learning experience. With all the ingame events going in WoW, FFXIV and others I will really need to learn to plan, prioritize, schedule and stick to it. I may let some things go because I’m not that invested into a game but FFXIV is special to me and I’m heartbroken that I let WoW take over my life completely.
It’s hard to manage so many things next to having a fulltime job. It’s hard being an adult. But I guess I’ll have to suck up and learn. The days where I could carelessly do what I want because I had seas of time are over. I work with way less hours than I’m used to and I’m letting everything slip because of it. Even my blog has been completely unused for the past month. I’ve just not had the time or inclination to sit down and write up untill now. I guess I’ll have to make some sort of schedule for that aswell seeing as raiding has started up on WoW again which leaves me unable to do anything but play that on certain nights after I get home from work. I have been trying to schedule more things in my agenda and installed the Wunderlist app to make sure I get certain tasks done on certain days. It has been a bit helpful, but for me the problem isn’t really scheduling my time, it’s actually sticking to that schedule…

The Good News
I haven’t been idle over this past month. As I said Legion has sucked me in completely. I think this is probably the best expansion Launch WoW has had in a while. We are now over 6 weeks in and there is still plenty to do. I’m finally able to start considering leveling an alt to max level (I picked my Hunter who is comfortably sitting at level 105 right now) next to keeping up with everything on my Warrior. I’m almost exalted with the Nightfallen, only 2.5k off actually, and then I can turn my attention to the other factions. Seeing however that I’m currently enjoying the first week of a two week holiday and the first weekly event in WoW happens to be increased faction rep I hope I can make quite some strides in getting my rep up with all the factions, but mostly Highmountain and Valarjar. Since they have the rank 3 Blacksmithing recipes I want. Next to that I’m still lacking all the level 3 mining recipes so I’ll be working my way through that aswell as trying to level up my Cooking, First Aid and Fishing AND getting that elusive Fishing artifact. Enough to do for now!

I have also changed my blog a bit. The purple was starting to hurt my eyes so I reversed it to plain black. I’ve also adjusted my sidebar to give an accurate view of what I’m playing right now. As you can see it’s only three games. WoW is sucking up the biggest chunk of my time, but I’m also planning to reserve atleast one evening a week to play some FFXIV. I really miss that game and I haven’t seen any of the 3.4 content yet so I feel like I should make some time for that.
As for other games.. I want to focus on completing one game at a time next to my MMO’s. I have so many games that I’ve started and never finished because I started another game halfway through. The only game I finished in one go lately has been Kirby: Planet Robobot and that’s probably because I actually didn’t let myself play anything else on my 3DS while I was playing that. It paid off though since I completed the main story + all the cubes in about 20 hours. I still think the final bossfight in that game was epic and I do plan to 100% it at some point… But not now. Seeing as Pokemon Sun/Moon are coming out somewhere in November I feel like I have to finish up the previous gen games atleast. I’m about 6 badges into Alpha Sapphire and 5 badges into X. I really didn’t care which one of the two I wanted to tackle first, but considering I know the story of ORAS, I own all the original GBA games from that gen, I decided to go with X and complete that story instead. After that I will probably pick up AS where I left off and finish that, including the Delta episode. From there I’m not sure what I want to play, but I’ll tackle that when the day arrives.

As you can see I’m full of plans again. I’m just hoping that I can stick to them this time.

Gaming Goals: June

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Today my vacation starts which means about 2.5 weeks of not having to even remotely think about work. I can finally turn my attention to a lot of games but also to cleaning the attic and other stuff in my room aswell as getting rid of a lot of stuff in the garden and shed. We have so much junk and it’s been annoying me since forever and now that my dad and his GF are on vacation for 5 weeks I really want to take the time to get things sorted.
I think one of the reasons I didn’t finish many things in May is because I just set goals that I wasn’t really believing in. Eventually I want to level everything in FFXIV yes, but trying to get so much stuff levelled up in a short time is just undoable. So for June I’m going to change things and focus on stuff I really WANT to complete, and not stuff I feel like I should complete.
So here is the list:

MMO Goals
Taking it a bit broader so going to share FFXIV and WoW under one category: MMO’s.

  • Level Machinist to 50 on FFXIV
  • Unlock all 3.3 content on FFXIV
  • Do the Golden Saucer event on both my Moogle and Cactuar character
  • Get 100k gold on WoW Alliance side (currently sitting on 83k)
  • Start working on the 300 toys achievement in WoW (currently sitting on 102)

Blizzard Games

  • Reach rank 20 in Hearthstone
  • Reach level 15 in Overwatch
  • Finish Chapter 4 of the Diablo Season
  • Play HotS and unlock another Hero (Lunara or Chromie)

Consoles and Handhelds

  • Defeat the second gym in Pokémon X
  • Defeat the 4th gym in Pokémon Blue
  • Play through chapter 8 and some side missions in Fire Emblem Fates: Birthright
  • Play through the House of Gales in Legend of Zelda: A Link between Worlds
  • Ratchet and Clank: PLAY IT!

This is about it. A lot less goals than in May even though I have a lot more time to play. I just really want to focus on the stuff that I enjoy right now and anything extra is a bonus. So yeah, let’s get started with June!

May Recap.

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The month of May is over today and it’s time to take a look back at what I’ve actually achieved this month.

Goals for FFXIV

  • Level Monk to 50
  • Level Machinist to 50
  • Level Alchemist to 30
  • Level Armorer to 30
  • Level Blacksmith to 30
  • Level Culinarian to 30
  • Level Goldsmith to 30
  • Level Leatherworker to 30
  • Level Fisher to 30
  • Level Miner to 30
  • Finish Scholar 2.0 Relic Zenith
  • Finish Monk 2.0 Relic Zenith

Unfortunately I spent a lot less time playing FFXIV than I would have thought. With work being seriously overwhelming, me starting a new training regime and picking up a few new and very addicting games I actually only completed one goal this month, and that is level Goldsmith to level 30. I have barely touched any other crafters unfortunately, but I did level my Monk and Machinist. My Monk is currently sitting at level 40, where my Machinist has dinged 46 yesterday. All in all I made some progress and actually am not that far off level 50 on atleast the Machinist. Seeing as I have a nice vacation coming up I think I’ll be spending a bit more time in FFXIV so I’ll keep the goals I set for May and just push them over to June.

Goals for Blizzard Games

  • Get rank 20 in Hearthstone
  • Finish second wing of League of Explorers
  • Unlock third wing of League of Explorers
  • Finish Diablo 3 chapter 4 for the season
  • Play Overwatch! (I got early acces to open beta)

Other Goals

  • Finish reading Illidan
  • Finish watching Gotham season 1
  • Defeat second and third Gyms in Pokémon Blue
  • Play through two additional worlds/mission clusters in Ratchet and Clank
  • Wrap up some personal stuff related to University.

I got rank 20 in Hearthstone pretty fast with the release of the Old Gods expansion and also took the time to play through the second wing of LoE so that’s done. I’m still trying to unlock the third wing, but all in good time. I played less Overwatch than I thought, mostly due to being seriously tired. I did get some time in and am played about 5-6 games since launch. I’m still trying out a lot of the roster available and am mostly playing one or two games inbetween other activities as a sort of distraction.
I started out strong in Diablo last month, but unfortunately fell into the “I’m bored of grinding” after only a day or two. I do want to complete chapter 4 for the goodies, so I’ll try to focus on that next month.
As far as my other goals go. I read through Illidan pretty fast and really enjoyed the book. I’m way past the Third Gym in Pokémon Blue now (yay for playing on the train) and I’m over halfway with watching Gotham so I have been doing a lot outside of games. Unfortunately I was just too tired to do much of anything else so a lot of these goals will probably get dragged over to June aswell. I’ll see. I’m looking at what games I’m currently playing and enjoying and probably frame my June goals around that.
I’m a bit disappointed by the fact that I couldn’t do nearly as much as I’d hoped, but well, feeling tired a lot kind of takes away from gaming.

Setting a Baseline

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So I went in for the first session with a personal trainer yesterday. Initially it was only meant to be an intake conversation but due to him having enough time, and me being there anyway, we decided to do the first session right then and there… And boy was I sore all over. Today the muscle aches and pains seem to have subsided a bit, except for my shoulder area which still hurts quite a lot.
To establish a baseline for me to work from he needed some info about my age, weight, height and ofcourse the resulting BMI. I’m on a BMI of 28 which means I am overweight, but not obese. It’s not the worst out there but ofcourse I want to be closer to 23 or 24 which is more or less ideal. After talking for a bit, establishing what I wanted from him and why and how, we started doing some exercises so he could see “how I move”. I found this to be a bit of an odd term, but now I understand it completely.
Basically it comes down to seeing how I use the muscles in every part of my body and from there see which are the problem areas that need the most work. He asked me what personally bothered me the most and for me it’s the area right below my shoulderblades. Due to excess weight hanging in the front I always need to “compensate” my stance with my shoulders and I definately noticed when he started poking and prodding the area there. Next to that we found out that the muscles in my left leg are much stronger than in my right and that I have “core muscle” problems, like most people that sit all day do, which means my back, butt and hips are much too weak to offer proper support. What was also an uncharacteristic issue was the fact that the muscles in my calves are always tensed, even when I’m not actually tensing them. He was unsure what caused this, but it would explain why I often get pain in my calves when I walk for a while.
All in all I think I had a good evaluation and we ended with doing some exercises that train about 70% of the muscle mass that is a problem area for me. Now that I’m sitting at home though I can really feel the fallout of this “light” training, and although pain and soreness is usually a good sign, I worry if I’m able to get out of bed tomorrow!
My next training appointment is in a week and then we are really going to establish a routine for me to follow that optimizes both muscle growth (and thus make it so I burn more fat) and fat reduction at the same time. No this doesn’t mean I aim to get ripped, but muscle mass makes it so you burn more calories during the day. Which is good when you want to lose weigh

Catching up on Pokemon
So I’ve been playing a lot of Pokémon Blue lately but I also have other games in the series that I have left unfinished. As you can see in my widget bar I am trying to finish atleast Alpha Sapphire right now, but I’m quite lost as to where I should go. I am 6 badges and about 12 hours play in and I know I need to teach Surf to one of my Pokémon so I can advance and start working towards getting Kyogre. I’m kind of bummed though because I already picked a Water Pokémon as my starter, which kind of renders Kyogre useless. I could reset if I wanted to, but with all the promotional Pokémon I have obtained over the past two years I really don’t want to, so I’ll just chug along the game and not use Kyogre in my team I guess.
I know there are ample guides online for almost every game in existence, I prefer playing without them though. I like figuring stuff out on my own, even if it means not 100% completing a game. It’s how I’ve always done things, the trial and error way. However in this case I think I’ll look up an Alpha Sapphire guide and retrace my steps a bit, just so I can advance in the game and the story again.
I really want 2016 to be a year where I actually finish off games, instead of just expanding my collection and not touching half of the things I own. So I’m working towards a lot and use guides and tools a bit more to help me along the way. Ofcourse I want to do most of it on my own, but sometimes a little help is needed. I’ll keep you guys updated on how my playthroughs of various games go! It might not be a separate topic for me to write on, but I will include it in some of my posts.