Tag Archives: Progress

Heavensward Mount Bonanza

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Gobbiewalker!

Last weekend a friend asked if people were interested in farming some of the Heavensward primal and raid mounts. I jumped at the chance and said yes because I still miss quite a lot of mounts from that expansion. Other people said they’d come as well and in the end we had a party of 4-5 people to tackle old content with.
We did both Alexander part 4 Savage mode and part 12 Savage mode and killed it as often as was needed to get everyone their mounts. This didn’t last that long luckily since for both wings the mount is a guaranteed drop when you kill the boss. There were a few one-shot mechanics that we needed to deal with but once we figured out those it wasn’t to difficult to get some kills in.

Next to the savage Alexander raids we also tackled a few primals and I walked away with the Bismarck ex bird (dropped at the first kill and I was the only one who needed it) and the Sophia ex bird (again dropped on the first kill). We kept farming Sophia and Zurvan ex for mounts for other people but unfortunately nothing else dropped for the evening. All in all I only need two more bird mounts from Heavensward primals now: the Nidhogg ex one and Sephiroth ex. Maybe we will do another farming party later on this week or in the weekend and be a bit more lucky with mount drops from people.

In other news I’ve managed to crank my Culinarian up to level 50 yesterday and I will probably get my Alchemist to level 70 tomorrow after reset. I’m also fully decked out in Eden healing gear for my White Mage so I can start rolling on tokens for caster gear. It feels like I’m getting my goals in Final Fantasy XIV completed much faster than I do in World of Warcraft. I guess because the grind is a bit different and I’ve figured out an optimized route to do most things with. As it stands now I’m going to take a bit of a break from the Ixal daily quests for the coming week and probably only do ex-roulette and some leves to get my Botanist and Miner leveled up. The rest of my evenings will be spent in WoW doing all the dailies to unlock flying.

Speaking of WoW, in about an hour and a half you can start reserving names on the Classic servers… I’m going to roll Alliance on the EU Mirage Raceway server so if you want someone to talk to when Classic hits you can find me there!

Schedules and ponies

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So today is officially the first day of my “new” schedule for Blaugust. I’ve roughly made up my mind and settled upon the following for weekdays after work.

17.30-18.00: Come home and wind down a bit. Maybe head over to the store for dinner or something else.
18.00-19.00: Dinner time! This spans cooking, eating and doing dishes
19.00-20.00: Blogging time. I’ve carved out an hour mostly so I can start a bit later if needed but mostly so I have enough time to sit down and write a proper post.
20.00-22.30: Activity for the night. This will mostly come down to gaming but I’m also planning to take more walks and get exercise so whatever goes really.
22.30: Shut down and get ready for bed.

By sticking to this time schedule I’ll get enough time in to play the games I want, have time to cook/eat and still have time to blog and go to bed at a reasonable hour. Let’s see if I can make this work!

All the pretty ponies!

Throughout my years playing FFXIV I’ve never managed to get any of the primal mounts when it was current content. I was really happy to land in an FC that did a few farm nights leading up to Stormblood and I got a few ponies and birds then but never really pursued it any further. While I was doing my crafting dailies yesterday I figured that now that we are level 80, soloing the original primals in A Realm Reborn content should be a piece of cake now and seeing as I only needed the Shiva and Ramuh ones I decided to set an hour aside to farm those.
Shiva was peanuts for my Summoner. I barely took damage, especially with the shielding that the Titan egi provides and I managed to get the mount to drop there in two runs without dying. Ramuh was a bit trickier since he does the tankbuster move. Once I figured out how to survive that, it killed me two-three times, I managed to down him pretty easily and to my surprise the mount dropped from that first time I killed him.
This meant that I finally had all the ponies and could do the quest to obtain the Kirin mount, earning that achievement in the process. The quest itself was okay. You go to the Yoshida guy in Mor’Dhona who has a quest for you once you obtain all the primal mounts. He then gives you a whistle that only one worthy can blow and asks you to do this at an overlook so you can make pretty screenshots as Kirin appears before you. It was simple and short and you walk away with a badass looking mount in the end. I think the scene I captured above was one of the better ones I could get with all of the ponies gathered around.

I’m quite happy that I finally got all the mounts with all their awesome primal music. I think the Shiva one will be my go-to for a bit now since I absolutely adore the music from it, but really I could put all of those mounts on my favourite roulette and not be disappointed by whichever would come out.
The next step will be figuring out how many people you need to get the birds from the Heavensward fights. I’ve already obtained a few there but still need the ones of Bismarck, Sophia, Sepiroth and Nidhogg. If it’s doable with two or three people I may just convince a few buddies to tackle those fights in the coming weeks.

Tonight I will probably turn my attention back to leveling though. My Black Mage hit level 74 yesterday and I want to get it to level 80 as soon as I possibly can, purely so I don’t have to play it anymore. I honestly really don’t enjoy myself on this job and I want to be done with it sooner than later. I just don’t understand how I can fit in Flare and Freeze in my rotations, not now I’ve barely figured out how Blizzard and Fire 4 work. The numbers are pretty but I’m way to distracted with not letting Enochian fall off and having to move in the middle of my casts to really enjoy it. So I’m gonna just grind through the levels, do the 80 quest when I get there and then call it a day and start leveling my next job.

A hot mess

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Today is the final day of the heatwave we’ve been dealing with here in the Netherlands (and a big part of Europe). It’s really weird how our country is divided in two at the moment with the south having enormous thunderstorms and rain and a 21 degrees Celsius average and the northern part sunshine and still 29 degrees average during the day. But now it’s finally dropped to a nice cool 22 degrees here aswell so now I just need to wait for the temperature in my house to go down as well (currently still sitting around 27 degrees).
All this heat has seriously fucked up our sleep schedules here so I wasn’t too surprised to be falling asleep after my guests left and only waking up about two hours later. I’m still kind of groggy as I’m writing this and I’ve skipped dinner altogether because I just couldn’t be arsed with cooking but atleast I’m no longer sweating when I move my big toe so there’s that.

I can’t believe it’s almost August. It feels like the month of July has flown by faster than any other month so far, even with two weeks off in the middle of the worst heatwave we’ve ever seen here. And people still claim climate change isn’t real. Unfortunately due to this silly heat I’ve not really been able to do much of anything that I wanted to. I’ve been mostly hanging out on my couch, watching a lot of Netflix and trying not to melt into a puddle of oblivion. On the plus side this has allowed me to finally finish Lucifer season 3 and 4 and I’ve started watching “The Good Place’ which so far is a hilarious show. I’ve also spent a bit more time using my 3DS and playing Theatrhythm Final Fantasy Curtain Call, seeing as it wouldn’t heat up house as much as using my PS4 or PC would. But mostly I’ve just been listlessly sitting on my couch and lying on bed hoping for the heat to go away.

Next week I’m going back to work and with that I also hope to go back to a more normal routine. I want to make sure that I’m getting back to a healthy sleep schedule and that I’m setting myself to a healthy eating schedule aswell. I may not be perfect with what I eat but I want to eat at steady times and not have snacks after dinner anymore. I’m also going to plan my gametime again seeing as how I’m done with most of the FFXIV rush of the expansion and I’m back to simply leveling all my jobs/classes again. This means I can spend less time on there and more time playing other games like FFVIII which I’m going to use for Blaugust and I may want to poke my head back into WoW and GW2 again aswell. I might even pick up Spiderman on my PS4 again now that it’s cooled down since I really enjoyed the game before FFXIV launched.

All of this should lead to me having more than enough to write about during Blaugust, I just need to get myself to sit down and write… Which I’m going to put into my daily planning.

Blaugust is coming!

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You’ve maybe seen it go around the blogging community but this year we are once again going to have Blaugust, as usual started up by Belghast. I’m participating again this year as a participant. Even though I’ve been blogging since forever I don’t think I’m the correct person to mentor other people. My blogging track record is shady at best and I don’t really want people to use my blog as an example of how to run things. Hell even I still don’t know how to run my own blog properly so it’s usually a small miracle if I’m able to pump out more than one post every two weeks.
Anyway, this year there are a ton of people participating again, for a full list I’d recommend going over to Bel’s blog. He’s posting a list of people under every post he’s writing right now so you will have the most up to date list of people participating.

As for me and Blaugust.. I’ve decided to pick up FFVIII to play during this time so I can write a small series about it. Why number 8? Well, no reason actually. I could’ve picked any of the Final Fantasy games (except 14) and write a series about it because, gasp, I’ve never actually played a Final Fantasy game from beginning to end. I’ve not even touched a lot of the iterations. So I figured I would pick one of the games that I bought during a big steam sale and start playing that and write about it. So FFVIII it became.

I’ve played a tiny bit of the game so I could create a save file to work off of, but I’ve already hit my first wall in doing so. For some reason I can’t seem to run the game in fullscreen mode. It will either be a tiny ass window (when I have fullscreen checked) or it’s a windowed fullscreen mode where the bottom bit is falling off when I don’t have fullscreen checked. I don’t seem to be able to find a fix for this.. All the suggested things have come up with no results for me. So I will probably have to make do with the whole windowed fullscreen game and see from there.
I’m also still struggling a bit to learn the keyboard scheme but I guess that’s just a matter of getting gametime in.
I know that FFVIII is a bit different when it comes to the leveling and magic experience but I want to see that for myself. Maybe by playing this game I will propel myself to play more of the entries in this series but I guess we will see that later. For now I want to make an honest effort into playing this game and writing about it and hopefully take everyone with me on the journey to completing my first standalone Final Fantasy game.

In other FF related news.. I managed to get my Astrologian to level 80 yesterday meaning that I’m officially done with leveling my healers, yay! This also means that I could finally get rid of all the healer gear that was accumulating in my bags and I basically have all my healers on a high item level now so that’s nice aswell.
The next class I’m focusing on is Black Mage and I managed to get that almost to 71 by spamming FATEs so I’m sure it won’t take me that long to get that to level 80 either.
I also managed to get my Alchemist up to 63 and my Culinarian to 36. My Miner and Botanist are both sitting halfway to 78 so it’s been progress all around!

The garden of Eden?

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Not what I would imagine Eden to look like..

Now that I have my house to myself again it’s time to get back on track for my blogging schedule. I remember vaguely that I said I would blog on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays. So I guess it’s time to stick to that rhythm. I may actually blog more in August seeing as Belghast is doing another round of Blaugust this year but I will elaborate on that in another post. Today I want to talk about the new 8 man raid in Final Fantasy XIV: Eden.

I have cleared this raid twice now and of course I’m not immune to the ton of biblical references that are going on with this quest chain, and in FFXIV in general in this expansion. From the bible the garden of Eden was the place where Adam and Eve lived and it was paradise.. Untill they ate the apple and got banned for all eternity. I’ve heard this tale more than once growing up seeing as how I attended a Christian school in my youth. I’m not Christian myself but I respect the religion, as I do with all others. As long as no one is trying to convert me I’m cool with whatever you believe in. I wonder if we are creating a paradise in FFXIV though, even if that is the inspiration for the story.

So yeah, the Eden raid. As far as the fights go I have an obvious favourite already, namely the first wing. I really love that first fight with it’s anime feel and all the pretty colours and the music. After the first wing I think I like the Neo-Leviathan and Neo-Titan fights about equally and I hate the second wing fight the most. Luckily people have pretty much figured out the mechanics for that one so we don’t have fuckups like we had in the first week.
All in all I’d say that Square has delivered a solid 8 man raid again when it comes to the fights themselves. I’m ridiculously pleased about the new loot system aswell. Having 8 items drop in these raids has been a massive improvement over the old system. You basically only have to run the raids once per week now to get an item and since we’re still early in the lifecycle all the tokens are useful. I personally lucked out on the final wing and got the pet last week on my first run aswell so I don’t have to roll on that anymore either. So far I managed to pick up an accesory, the belt and the gloves for my White Mage and I hope to be able to pick up the helm and chest piece next week. Or atleast make some progress towards that.

Seconds from being blasted into space

As far as the story goes, I’m more invested in this 8 man raid than I’ve been in the Heavensward and Stormblood ones. The story, like the mainstory for this expansion, is solid and I can’t wait to see what we’ll get with the next iterations. I’m assuming we are going to be fighting all the original primals in a sort of “new form” and I can’t wait to tackle Ramuh and Garuda specifically. Of course there will have to be some other fights aswell since we basically “only” have four primals left to reimagine but I’m sure that Square has some pretty neat stuff for us in store. As far as Savage goes… I’m not sure if I will be doing that. I may opt to pug as I don’t have a steady raid group right now. I mean it worked out for downing Titania Ex and I’m sure I can pug Innocence Ex aswell so pugging the first wing of Eden on Savage mode should be doable aswell right? Especially with White Mage being in the awesome position it is in now, I’m sure to be able to secure a spot somewhere.

All in all I’m quite happy to run this piece of content on a weekly basis and (slowly) gear up my classes with loot from here and from the new tomestones that are coming out next week. With the updated loot system and the fact that people get better and better at these fights as time goes on I’m quite confident this will remain enjoyable content untill the next raid comes out.

A small vacation update

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Seeing as how I’ve been hosting a friend for the past week I’ve not really felt like blogging. But I’m going to do it now anyhow since I want to give a small update on my progress in FFXIV.

First off I’ve finished leveling my Summoner/Scholar and have picked up Astrologian next, which is already sitting at level 76 aswell. Just doing roulettes for this one since the damage output on AST is horrible and because of that doing hunts and FATEs is just really time consuming. It’s still more fun to play than Scholar though, especially now that I’ve kind of figured out the new card mechanics.
I think I’m going to start leveling Monk next where I can do some sidequests and FATEs inbetween waiting for queues to pop. This also means I can pick up another class quest since I did the Caster one with Summoner. I can’t wait to see what the melee/ranged dps quests look like! I’m also planning to tackle Innocence Ex before my vacation comes to an end, since it’s the only endgame content I haven’t cleared yet. I did Eden the day it came out and really enjoyed the fights and the new loot mechanics.. I even won the pet from the last boss!

On the Crafter front my Goldsmith has hit level 70 (and almost 71 after finishing off all of the job quests) and my Alchemist is now firmly in Namazu dailies territory at level 61. This means I can start working on my Culinarian again and drag it through the Ixal dailies next. That’s currently sitting at level 33 by the way so I still have quite a decent way to go. I still have a goal to get all my crafters to atleast level 70 since that’s easily obtainable with the beast tribe dailies and the grand company turn-ins. Once I hit 70 on all though I’m not sure what I’ll be doing next. Maybe level them up to 80 via levequests or maybe wait untill the level 80 crafting beast tribe comes out…

On the Gathering front both my Botanist and Miner are level 76. The Crystarium hand-ins combined with the easiness of the levequests have made levelling these classes a walk in the park. I firmly believe that I can get both of them to 80 by the time the weekend rolls around since my friend will leave tomorrow so I will have more time to play. Then the only Gathering class that is behind is Fisher. I’m not really sure if I want to spend time leveling that one up yet. It’s sitting at level 48 now though so I may want to push it up to 50 and see from there.

On non FFXIV related news: I’ve bought Taiko no Tatsujin during the Nintendo E-shop sale. I love rhythm games and even though I don’t have the proper drums to play it’s still a blast so I think I’ll be spending a bit of my off time on that. I’m really tempted to pick up the Persona 3 and Persona 5 dancing games off the Playstation summer sale aswell… I still have about two days to decide on that though.

Shadowbringers Mayhem

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I kind of fell off the face of the planet when the early access for Shadowbringers launched, like a lot of people surrounding me who were going to play aswell. I have posted a Twitter update here and there but didn’t really got around to get myself to sit down and blog about this entire experience. Now that I’ve hit a wall in endgame though I figured it was time to drag my attention away from my console and the game and write a blog post instead. I will give a heads up now, since the game has been out for well over a week there will be some spoilers in this blog post. If you don’t want to be spoiled don’t read any further!

So at this point in time not only have I finished the Mainstory, I’ve also gotten all the tome gear for Healers and I managed to beat Titania Ex and get the White Mage staff. The only endgame content that I haven’t finished yet is Innocence Ex but I’m probably going to tackle that somewhere during the weekend with a few people from my FC and then wait for the raid to drop next week.
Seeing as I’m done with the big “get my White Mage geared” grind I’ve already started leveling my next battle jobs: Scholar/Summoner. They’re sitting at level 74 now and with the roulettes that I’m doing I get about a level a day. Add to that the fact that I can do hunts, FATEs and sidequests to level up these classes and I’m sure they will be level 80 in no time, after which I’m going to pick up Astrologian and get rid off all my sub level 80 Healer gear.

All in all I can say that Shadowbringers has been one hell of a ride. I have thoroughly enjoyed the story with all it’s twists and turns. I’ve laughed and I’ve cried. The ending with Emet-Selch was really well done and although I’m not exactly sympathetic to the Ascians mission I can get where they’re coming from.
From start to finish the story had me enthralled. The zones were amazing with the highlight being the music in Rak’tika Greatwood and Upper Kholusia and the remade Ascian city in the Tempest. I loved seeing Graha’Tia again, even though he was not the one from our timeline. I love how the relationship between me as Warrior of Light and the Scions has developed. It really feels like we are a group of friends and that you’re completely accepted among them as WoL. The fact that we’ve said a final goodbye to Minfillia was really emotional aswell and I felt especially sorry for Thancred. All in all this expansion so far has managed to tug on a few heartstrings and I can’t wait to see how Square Enix will expand on the story and how the Scions will eventually return to the Source.

As far as the grinding at endgame goes… As I mentioned before I managed to get all the gear I need on my White Mage fairly quickly. Due to this I’m able to scale back a bit and start focusing on other things like picking up levelling my Crafters again and slowly levelling up my Botanist and Miner to level 80. The Crystarium hand-in quests are interesting but unfortunately only a one time only thing. So I can either choose to use them on my Botanist or my Miner but not both. For now I’ve chosen to level Botanist first and catching up with Miner via levequests. As far as my Crafters go… My Goldsmith got up to level 66 today and my Alchemist should be level 56 tomorrow. I’m a bit unwilling to set any particular goals when it comes to leveling those seeing as I have two weeks off the next two weeks and I have guests coming over so I probably won’t be playing much of FFXIV at all.

Anyway with me slowly coming out of the expansion high I expect to be posting a bit more again about what I’m up to in FFXIV and other games. I’ve attempted to make a bit of a weekly schedule where blogging is set to happen on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays. I just hope I have enough to write about for that schedule to really make sense. I guess we’ll see!

Three day gaming weekend

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Kingdom Hearts progress… Finally

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With it being tropical humid temperatures outside I’ve spent my Sunday so far bunkered down in my house, playing games and just not really doing anything that would make me sweat. I’ve done enough of that yesterday when I went into town to do some shopping/get my eyebrows done and cleaned my house before my uncle and aunt came along. So today it’s a day for some relaxation, gaming, and doing not much of anything in general. Which is good because it has allowed me to put a few hours into Kingdom Hearts 3 again.

Last time I played I was about halfway through Monstropolis and still in monster form. I’ve finished that world now, and got the keyblade from it, and moved along to Arendelle with a sidestop in the 100 Acre Woods. It’s a small adorable world that consists of mini games to get through. As added perk you earn fruit/vegetables from playing said minigames so I see myself going back there again to earn more ingredients for the whole cooking mini game. Before I went to Arendelle I went back to Olympus to find all the King’s Emblems (imprints or shapes that look like Mickey Mouse’s head) and take some pictures the Moogles asked for. It’s really fun to go back to these worlds after you’re done with them. In Olympus you see Thebe being rebuilt and areas that were previously inaccessible are now free to roam. There’s still Heartless spawns to consider though, you can’t just run around the world without being attacked.

All in all I’ve spent around 3 hours playing and I feel like I’ve been making decent progress again. It’s the start of what I’m planning to do more on weekend days where I don’t have any other plans. Although I need to watch that I take regular breaks when playing and that I don’t forget to eat and drink, which has happened today. I’m not sure how long it will take me to finish up Kingdom Hearts 3. From what I’m aware of I still have atleast three more Kingdoms to play through: Arendelle from Frozen, San Fransokyo from Big Hero 6 and The Carribean from Pirates of the Carribean. I’m sure there’s more to explore after that and I can always go back to collect stuff from the older worlds when I don’t feel like advancing the mainstory. I think there’s a “true” ending as well, although I’m not sure how to get to that just yet. For now though I’m happy to get a few hours of play in, make a bit of progress and then put the game down untill next weekend when I have time to devote to it again.

As part of my goals set for this month I’ve also started up a game on my 3DS again: Detective Pikachu. It’s a game I had for a bit but never really touched up untill now. I’ve seen the movie two weeks ago and even though I know it’s inspired by the game, it’s quite a bit different from the game itself. I’m also of the opinion that, so far, the game is really hand-holdy and kiddie like in how it plays. I’m only 1.5 hours in, finishing off the first chapter, but I hope it becomes a bit less easy as the game comes along or that the story gets interesting enough that I don’t really mind the gameplay. I guess the main thing bothering me is the fact that the game forces you to go through things in a certain way, even though you’ve figured out the “case” early on. I guess it adds flavour and story to the game to do it like this but I also feel this game may have not really been for people like me who see the answers immediately and still have to go through the motions.

As final bit of news. I dinged level 70 on my Carpenter in FFXIV yesterday and managed to finish up both the level 68 and the level 70 job quests, so I can honestly say I’m completely done with that crafter.
If all goes well my Goldsmith should hit level 50 after reset rolls around today… Meaning I can move her along to Moogle dailies and start Alchemist on the Ixal ones. I’ve come to realize that the Ixal dailies can be done quite fast if you just ignore the fishing ones and pick up  everything else. It may sound silly but I just really, really dislike the fishing ones so I dodge those when I can. It’s made the Ixal dailies much easier to deal with for me personally so I think I’ll just keep to this strategy as I level more of my crafters.
Finally I’ve started to partake in the Moogle Tomestone event that is going on in the game from now up untill Patch 5.0. My goal is to get the Pegasus mount atleast and maybe the Namazu earrings. I’ve chosen to run Labyrinth of the Ancients for now because I want the tank set from there for glamour purposes. Once I get that set I will probably move on to Syrcus Tower so I can get the healing set from there. Unless I’m really lucky I think a bunch of runs will be in my immediate future just to acquire all the pieces of these sets alone. Since these particular instances only reward two tomes per completion I’m aiming to run multiple of them during week nights after I finish my crafting dailies. I’m not really sure yet what I’ll be running when I get both the sets, but I’ll see when I get there.

For now I’m happy with how this weekend is turning out for real life stuff and gaming stuff, and I can’t wait untill it cools down tonight so I can open all the windows and my balcony door and let in the cold.

A weekend of wrapping up

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The past week and weekend I’ve been solely focused on finishing off a lot of things. I’ve been making a ton of progress in FFXIV, I’ve been playing my Switch again and I’ve been reading on my e-reader more than I have before.

My first “big” achievement is that I’ve finished off the main objective in Yoshi’s Crafted World. I gathered all the gems and defeated Bowser Jr. who made a pretty interesting end boss. It took me a bit over 10 hours to get this done with me pushing through the levels and ignoring all the bonus stuff for the final part. I really enjoyed some of the levels and world and overall there were only one or two levels that I didn’t really enjoy. With having seen the credits roll I’ve opened up a few new things aswell. First off there’s the bonus levels which turn out to be really hard on normal mode. After dying a ton of times on the first level I decided to throw in the towel and go down to easy mode just to get through the level. I’m quite happy with the fact that I just pushed through and finished off the main thing though since I usually don’t even do that. I’m planning to play through the bonus levels atleast so I can get to the secret end boss. I also want to leisurely go back to levels that I’ve completed and do flip sides, get all the red coins and any flowers that I’ve missed. Again I’m probably going to do this on easy mode so it’s easier to find all the collectibles and to keep it a relaxing experience.

In FFXIV I’ve finally finished off the level 70 Weaver quest, something that has been in my quest log for a very long time. I’m also done with the 65 Carpenter quest, my Carpenter is at 67 as we speak, and the 40 Goldsmith quest, who is level 41 as we speak. All in all it’s nice progress on multiple crafters and I’m still planning to push them up untill the expansion comes out. I don’t think I can get all my crafters up to level 70 before Shadowbringers, I simply have too many in the level 30 range, but I want to make an honest effort to get as many up as I can. I’m hoping to get my Carpenter to 70 by the end of the week and then my Goldsmith should be close to 50 aswell. Which means I can move that one up to Moogle quests and use my Ixal quests on Alchemist, which I want to level up next. It’s a long journey, with tons of irritating Ixali dailies but eventually I’ll get there.

Next to gaming I’ve also finally finished reading the Liveship Traders trilogy. It was interesting although I found the story to hit a slow stretch somewhere in the second book and I had to struggle to keep reading. All in all I’m happy I’ve finished it and I can move on to the next trilogy in the series: The Tawny Man trilogy. Robin Hobb has created a wonderful world and I’m really excited to see where the stories in that world go.

So all in all I’m quite happy with myself. I’ve finally finished another game. I’m making steps in FFXIV, I’m reading again… Now I just want to pick up some of my other hobbies again and start figuring out a workout schedule. It’s baby steps but just being able to finish a game again in an enjoyable manner has been a huge step for me and has motivated me to do more. With my dining table coming in next week I will also finally have access to my computer again and I hope I can start blogging in a more regular manner again aswell. For now though this week will be focused mostly on work, cleaning, people coming over and a bit of gaming on the side.