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February Goals: Shaking Things Up

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January passed like the freight trains passing my house at night. Quietly and fast. I feel like 2021 so far is just a continuation of 2020, but with more riots everywhere. And with everywhere I mean everywhere, including my own country. It’s been an interesting time, compounded by a lot of real life things not really going the way I hoped they would. I’m lowkey hoping that February will bring a bit more calm and stability back into my life, mostly so I don’t feel so stressed out all the time anymore and I can actually enjoy my time off with more than feeling pure exhaustion all the time.
I guess one of the things I should start doing is going to bed earlier (11 instead of 12) because I’m already noticing the major improvement in my mood from that extra hour of sleep I’m catching.

Anyway. I figured I’d give the whole “goals post” another try since I managed to use it succesfully before and also to give a bit of an insight into what I’m up to this month. As usual this post will be mostly gaming focused, I will discuss my real life goals in a broader post somewhere at the end of March. It needs less checking up on because they are less concrete than my gaming ones.

What do I want to achieve in February?

League of Legends

  • Transition from Support to ADC. I’m not enjoying myself playing Support right now, but I’m enjoying myself a lot as ADC. In the end I should play what I enjoy. Right?
  • Get my ADC account to level 30. I made an account to just play ADC specifically. It’s level 11 at the moment and I want to get it to level 30 and make it my “main” account for the time being, mostly so that I have two accounts to my disposal. One where I can test new things on and fuck around in solo Q and another where I can “try hard” and actually climb the ladder.

MMO’s

  • Gear up my Mage in Mythic/Mythic+ in World of Warcraft. I’ve been sneaking some time on WoW again here and there and I’m mostly playing my Horde Mage. I’m at the point where I can’t really get that much gear from doing Heroic dungeons anymore so I’m wanting to make the tradition to Mythics and Mythic+.
  • Catch up on the mainstory in FFXIV. I’ve not properly played the game in forever and there’s a lot of story to go through, aswell as the final part of the Eden raid. I want to see this and will take a few evenings just playing the game and catching up.

Other games

  • Finish Crash Bandicoot
  • Finish Ni No Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch

Pretty ambitious goals but, with the pandemic still raging, I don’t really have much else to do in my spare time next to gaming. I have enough time for all of it, if I keep a decent sleep schedule. When I’m not terribly exhausted I should easily be able to get a few good hours of gaming in every day. I also realise that February is a tad shorter than other months, but I’m sure I can make it work. It’s time to get myself out of the stressy and depressed month that is January and look forward to fun times in February. I hope I can take all of you on that journey with me!

Nearing Completion

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Character in field of flowers

I’m so, so terribly close to getting all my battle jobs to level 80 in Final Fantasy XIV that I can almost smell it. Right now my Gunbreaker is just shy of level 78 and I need to do most of my roulettes still this reset, which I’ll probably do tomorrow since it’s already past midnight and I’m really sleepy right now.
I’m hoping I will be level 80 by the weekend, get my Amaro mount and then drop the mad grind that I’ve been on for the past two or three weeks. Granted I could have gotten this milestone a lot earlier but I’ve been on hiatus in FFXIV a bit so it didn’t happen when I originally tought it would.
Being in the middle of the first week of another two week holiday though means I have ample time to get this done while also steadily working away at leveling my crafting jobs with the “new” Dwarf beast tribe dailies. I’ve gotten my Carpenter to 80 so far and my Weaver isn’t far behind. Seeing as I never really enjoyed the whole Ishgard crafting grind I’d rather opt into leveling my crafters this way, slow and steady wins the race right?
I also need to find a new sort of “daily” routine when I don’t have any more battle jobs to level. I think I may just stick to doing ex-roulette for now and the weekly clears next to the crafter dailies. I want to gear up my jobs and the only way to do that is to get through the latest content. I may do a bit of level roulette on my tanks for the achievement but I’ll see when I get there.

Next to completing a long standing goal in FFXIV, I’ve also been making more progress towards filling up my Pokédex in Pokémon Sword. I’m now down to needing only 38 more Pokémon for the base dex completion and I’m going over to my best friend tomorrow who owns Shield and trade a bunch of version exclusives with him. Which then leaves me with only a handful of Pokémon I still need to catch on my own. Yay! After that I’m going to turn my attention to the Isle of Armor and the Pokémon there so I can get my awesome crown and be ready for the Crown Tundra DLC that’s not too far away now either.
If I manage to complete this Pokédex it will be the first time I’ve completed a Pokédex in a Pokémon game ever. The closest I came to achieving this feat was when I was still a kid and playing my copy of Pokémon Blue. I was up to 146 Pokémon caught for the dex but for some reason I resetted my game after that, much to my regrets. Afterwards I’ve never come close to completion again, with the best try on Pokémon Black but that were just so many Pokémon.. That I basically gave up after over 70 hours played.
In Sword I’ve clocked in around 65 hours now, making it the game I’ve put the most hours in on my Switch by far. I dare take it even further and say that if I cross the playtime I had on my copy of Pokémon Black with Pokémon Sword it will be the single player game that I have spent the most time on of all time.

Finally I’ve been slowly working through my backlog again. The latest title that I’m working on is Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze. Me and my best friend both own a copy of this game, me on my WiiU and he on his Switch. I figured it would be nice to go through the game at the same time so we can share our triumphs and frustrations. Little did I know that he would be way more frustrated than me. Even so frustrated that he has switched from normal mode to Funky Mode so that the game was doable for him. I don’t have this luxury on the WiiU and as such I’m playing the game on the original difficulty level. I’ve made it up to the boss of the fourth world, meaning I only have two more worlds to go after I defeat it. I’ve not really been doing a completionist run so there are a lot of levels that I have yet to unlock and a lot of collectibles to get. However my main goal is to just see the credit roll so I’m not really fussed about skipping these. I just want to stripe another game of my backlog. And with the tempo I’m going that should be doable by the end of the week aswell.

All in all it feels nice to be completing so many things at once. It’s mentally rewarding and it gives me the chance to set new fresh goals afterwards! But first it’s time for some much needed sleep.

Summer of Platformers

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I am an avid Reddit browser. I enjoy the petty drama over at some subs and I think some of the gaming subs are okay aswell. As such I can keep myself entertained for hours on end just scrolling through hundreds of posts in the evening. It’s also the reason I shouldn’t take my phone to bed with me anymore because this is simply what keeps me up at night.
Anyway. On the Nintendo Reddit someone wrote a post about wanting to do a Summer of Nintendo challenge where they would tackle their Nintendo backlog this summer and it would span every Nintendo console they owned. This looked like a really good idea to me but looking at the games I own for all my Nintendo consoles (WiiU/Switch/3DS) I would never be able to fit all of that in a single summer. I have multiple long RPG’s to play through and those alone would take me forever to finish. Case in point me taking months to finish up the Final Fantasy 7 Remake.

However I did want to start tackling my backlog and as such I was suddenly inspired to tackle one of my favourite gaming categories: Platformers. I own a lot of those. It was what I grew up with on my SEGA when I was little, and I enjoy the genre till this day. I have numerous platform games both physically and digitally and for now I want to focus on completing my physical games. There are some that I have completed (and with that I mean I have seen the credits roll) and as such I have excluded them from this challenge. I purely want to focus on all the games I haven’t completed yet and bring those to a credit roll. Again, I’m only tackling my physical games for now since they’re just easier to keep track of than all the stuff I own digitally. So without further ado here’s a picture of all the games I’m planning to tackle.

This may not seem like that many games but according to Howlongtobeat completing all these games will take me roughly 200 hours in total. For this estimate I’ve used the metric of Mainstory + Extra’s since I do like to go off the beaten path and grab all the extras in a level when I can. It’s not a priority and I’m not going to go back specifically to get coins or crystals or whatever when it takes too long or is too frustrating but I do like to find most of the hidden stuff when I can. My main objective in all of these games is to defeat the “final” boss and see a credit roll. For some games it means that the game actually ends there but for some games it means bonus worlds are opened up to conquer afterwards. Depending on how much time that takes and/or how difficult it is I may tackle those aswell.

For now the plan is to start going through this backlog once I’m finished with the FF7R. I expect this to be somewhere in June which is also when summer starts. My goals is to get through all of these by the end of summer, which is September 21st. All in all this would mean I would have to complete a game per week. With the average game time per game being somewhere around 12 hours that’s not actually too bad. Furthermore there are a few games here that I already started to play and, if I still remember enough of the game, will pick up where I left off. Most notably these are Yooka Laylee and New Super Mario Bros U. Thus shaving off a bit of gametime there. For the rest I will probably start fresh and work my way from there.
Together with playing the games I will also aspire to make a blog post about every game I’ve beaten. They probably won’t be professional type reviews but mostly posts about what I thought of the game and if I enjoyed it and how long it took me to beat it. So I will have something to look back on later!

So yeah, this is my plan for this summer. Let’s see how it turns out!

Taking a breather

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Thanks to the COVID-19 virus I’ve been working at home for the past two weeks. Next week though I’ll still be at home but not working.
I was looking forward to a four week vacation at the start of the year. Three of those weeks I would be spending traveling around Japan from Tokyo to Kyoto and then ending at Nagasaki. That vacation has obviously been cancelled due to everything going on in the world. However I felt that I needed some time off still since I’ve not had proper time off since last september. I’m quite exhausted and in severe need of some mental reset time, especially when it comes to work. My manager offered I could take two weeks off but since the country is as good as on lockdown it’s no real use taking that much time off when I can’t really go anywhere to enjoy it. So a week it is and I’m hoping that during this week I can get back to a bit more relaxed level and be ready to tackle work again for a while once the week is over.
I can honestly say though that the whole working from home thing has gotten to me. I feel crazy isolated, even more than normal. I managed to completely ruin my sleep schedule in a single week and I’ve been struggling with cooking healthy meals or eat at normal times. I’m trying to undo this damage now and atleast my food times have gone back to normal but I’m still battling major feelings of loneliness and depression right now.

As you’ve undoubtedly seen on other people’s blog this year we’re not doing Blaugust but Blapril. Mostly to give people some social interactions during the very daunting month that is looming ahead of us. I think the idea is great but I’m still on the fence about participating. As I said I’m in a really bad headspace right now and I don’t want to vent too much about it on here. I want to keep my blog a mostly positive space where I can write about what I’m up to in my gaming life and not all the anxiety that I’m experiencing on a daily basis right now. And I can’t seem to write a post without exactly that seeping through, as this post is a good example off. So I will definitely participate as bystander and cheer people on from the sidelines but I doubt I’m going to commit to anything myself.
My mood may change though so I’m not going to pin myself on anything yet, but for now I’m happy to not add extra pressure on myself to maintain any kind of regular blogging schedule on top of trying to fix everything else that has gone awry for me in the past two to three weeks or so.

One of the things that has helped me get through the days has been Animal Crossing. It launched at exactly the right time for a lot of people and I’m one of them. I’ve had the pleasure to visit a few friends’ islands and I’ve tried opening up my own island to people aswell but it seems like whenever I do no one is really online. Oh well.
I’m taking a very relaxed stance towards the game, playing for about an hour every day, sometimes two. I go around my island every day to dig up fossils and catch some fish and some bugs. I also make sure I always harvest all of my fruits and I’ve had my first bridge expansion done. Which also lead to three more villagers joining my island so now I have five goofy animals running around instead of just two. My villagers so far are Hamlet, Lydia, Alfonso, Pinky and Fauna. I enjoy all of them and I actually invited Pinky myself from the island I found her on.
Today the little tent that Tom Nook occupied finally got built into a visitor’s centre whichs means I’ll get Isabelle back on my island aswell. I can’t wait!
From here I kind of want to start getting some of those surprise island tickets to see if I can get to the fabled tarantula island but mostly so I can get off my own little island for a bit.
All in all I’m enjoying myself and the game is helping me relax at the end of a busy day of work so that’s always a good thing. Right?

Now for my week off I have a few specific things in mind that I want to get done. I’ve already gone through my clothes closet today and made a bag for donations which I will probably drop off in a special bin tomorrow. Next to that I took a ton of stuff with my from my dad’s house that I couldn’t really decide on whether I still used it or not. Seeing as most of the stuff has been in one of my drawers under my bed for almost a year now and I’ve not had to use any of it leadse me to think that I may aswell get rid of most of it because right now it’s just taking up space. So that is exactly what I’m going to be doing this week. Get rid of stuff I don’t use so I have space for other things that I do use or that are now sitting around in a bag somewhere waiting to be stored in a better place, like my christmas decorations.

I also have some plans when it comes to gaming. I’m still leveling my Void Elf Warlock, she just hit level 90 about two hours ago, and I want to get her up to level 120. And then maybe start on a new character after that. I also want to get back into FFXIV to tackle all the new content and do the Easter event. I’m not sure why I’ve bounced so hard from that game but for some reason I have and I want to get back into it and get my few remaining battle classes to level 80 and catch up on the story and tackle the new raids and dungeons.

Finally I’m going to finally take a decent shot at playing through either Final Fantasy XV or World of Final Fantasy as preparation for the Final Fantasy VII remake that is coming in about two weeks. Both games have been sitting on my shelf for a very long time and it’s about time I start playing through them. I’ll probably start anew because I have no idea where I left off in my last save game and I’m sure with an entire week off I have enough time to actually get a decent way into the story of either one of them.

For now though I’m going to back to leveling my Warlock the rest of the evening while half watching some League of Legends streams. What are you doing this weekend?

Sandy’s Sunday: What A Long Strange Week It’s Been

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As predicted in my look ahead post from last week the training week at work absorbed a lot of my time this week. We had a program every day, although some days the program was only 2-3 hours and some days it was all day. It sure didn’t help in feeling less tired since I managed to get home exhausted everyday with the lowest point on Wednesday where I literally fell asleep after dinner. I guess I needed it.

In spite of all of this I managed to finish off the main “story” in Cat Quest on Monday evening. Now I just need to tackle all the remaining dungeons and the few side quests that still remain in the game. And get to level 99 of course. I really enjoyed this game for what it was. An RPG-light with lots of fun jabs at other games and so many amazing cat puns. Now that I finished the main story I unlocked New Game+ and “Mew” Game, which is a game type where you can set certain parameters like not being able to wear armor or not being able to level up and play the entire game at level one. Even though this sounds very interesting, and I’m sure many people are thrilled about this type of stuff even if it is just for the exclusive rewards that come with it, I don’t think I’ll go back and play those game modes. I tend to be one and done once I finish a game and I may go for 100% completion if the mood strikes me within a single game mode but I just don’t like replaying the exact same game but on a higher difficulty setting. I guess this is why I don’t care for trophies that require me to play through a game multiple times on my PS4. So yeah. Cat Quest was fun and adorable and a game I can scratch, pun intended, off my backlog.

Playing through Cat Quest on my Switch has also kind of reinforced the belief that it has become my preferred console for single player games. Being able to play on my big TV but also take it on the road with me has helped so much in completing games that I otherwise wouldn’t have. Even though I also use my PS4 a lot I notice that I’m just having much more issues finishing games on there compared to on my Switch. I guess we’ll see this year how many games I actually finish on what console. For now I need to look for another game to sink my teeth in and I’m still deciding what it will be.

Next to Cat Quest I’ve also been spending some time playing World of Warcraft this week. I did the Timewalking Dungeon event before the reset on Wednesday and got a nice trinket upgrade on my Warrior. I also did a +2 Mythic to open up a chest and I managed to unlock and get through a big chunk of 8.3 quest chain this morning. As such I have the legendary cloak unlocked and can start working on upgrading it so that I can tackle more challenging content in the horrific visions. I realize that my Warrior is kind of shitty geared still so I will need to work on that if I want to make a serious push in that content.

All in all I’m happy that things will go back to “normal” the coming week, even though I have my annual review tomorrow and I’m preparing for it to be not as stellar as previous years. Oh well.

Gaming Goals February 2020: Thinking long and hard

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Two posts in one day?! Why yes. I guess it’s an exception. Mostly because I wanted to get this goal post out before I forget to publish it and we’re already a week into February… You catch my drift.
This month I’m actually dialing back a bit on the goals. I have an exhausting training week coming up at work next week and a bunch of weekends that are filled up with visiting friends and family and as such I really need to squeeze in gametime when and where I can. I think my main focus for February will be catching up in World of Warcraft on my Warrior and finishing off leveling the final two DPS classes in Final Fantasy XIV. Next to that I’m still pretty much hooked on Cat Quest and with the Re:Mind DLC I’ve also kind of been drawn back into Kingdom Hearts 3 so I want to spend some of my time in that game again aswell.
For now my goals for February look like this.

Single Player Games:

  • Finish Cat Quest
  • Fill the Pokédex to 300 Pokémon in Pokémon Sword
  • Go back to Kingdom Hearts 3 for trophies and grinding for the super bosses in the DLC

World of Warcraft:

  • Catch up my Warrior to 8.3 content
  • Start working on the Legendary Cloak on my Warrior
  • Catch up to current Raid content on my Warrior

Final Fantasy XIV

  • Get my Bard to level 80
  • Casually work on Trusts? I’ll need to see how this pans out
  • Get my Machinist to level 80

So yeah. I’m keeping it light. I think I will have finished Cat Quest by the end of the week. I think I’ll need some guides if I want to finish it 100%. With that I mean having defeated all dungeons, done all sidequests and leveled up to 99. I’m currently level 47 so almost halfway there! After that the plan is to dive back into Kingdom Hearts 3 to grind away on some trophies that I’ve not yet obtained and level up Sora so I can start doing all the Super Bosses that have been added in the DLC. Finally I want to go back to Pokémon and fill up my Pokédex to 300!

In MMO’s I’m mostly going to focus on playing catch up on my Warrior. I want to get decently geared and start working on my Legendary Cloak. There is a Timewalking event up right now which is providing me with some catch up gear right now and otherwise it’s just grinding out World Quests. I’m pretty sure I need to work my way through the Nazjatar questline before I can get to the 8.3 content so I’ll see how fast that goes.
In FFXIV I just want to get done with Bard and Machinist. Then I can get rid of all the “low level” aiming gear that is still cluttered in my bags and I will only have the three tank classes left. I’m still not sure if I want to push through with Trusts. I’m not really enjoying the grind but then again doing one Trust dungeon max on a given day isn’t actually that horrible. I need to see how that pans out.

All in all these should be smalls attainable goals. Anything extra is a plus here, I never know when the gaming mood takes me and has me finish up way more than I thought I would.
What are your plans for February?

January 2020: A look back

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

In FFXIV:

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

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

In other MMO’s:

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

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

In single player games:

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

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

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

Sandy’s Sunday: Sore all over

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As I’m sipping on a cup of coffee (okay okay, it’s a latte) I feel slightly guilty for not going to the swimming pool today. Honestly though I could barely get myself out of bed this morning. I’m hurting all over, especially my legs, and the idea of taking my bike up to the pool and then having to exhaust myself even further was the one thing I didn’t feel like doing today. So instead I’ve decided to take the day “off” so that my body can properly recover from all the workout stress I’m putting on it and then instead go to the pool tomorrow night and still get that swimming half hour in.

Because of this decision I had my morning opened up to do some other things. The first task on my list was log into Guild Wars 2 so I could unlock the proper episode of the Icebrood Saga for my account before it moves on to the next one somewhere this week. My account is littered with randomly unlocked living world episodes, kind of depending on when I logged in. Since I still want to sort of make some progress in Guild Wars 2 I figured it would be a good idea to atleast log in on time to unlock all the living world episodes, so that’s what I’m intending to do. I also teleported my Ranger to Divinity’s Reach for the Lunar New Year event and will check that out somewhere later today to see what it’s all about. So far the only thing I’ve noticed it’s that it’s doing horrible things to my graphics, probably something to do with the constant shooting of fireworks and the crowd of people amassing on suc a small spot in the town. Oh well.

I also took the time to push my Warrior closer to level 120. When I logged off yesterday evening I was sitting on about 40% into level 118. I started up the quests in Drustvar, after completing everything in Tiragarde Sound, and queued up for Tol Dagor since I had a quest for that aswell. I have to say that queueing up as DPS isn’t as painful these days as it used to be around launch. I think I waited a max of ten minutes for this dungeon to pop this morning? The same held true for Freeport which I ran yesterday, I almost got an instant queue to pop there which really surprised me. I did both dungeons without too much effort and could hand in both quests that helped level up my Azerite Necklace aswell as give a big chunk of experience. Because of that, and the Horde assault that took place this morning in Drustvar, I actually dinged level 119 pretty fast. So that’s where I’m at right now. I’m not sure yet if I want to push to 120 today since I have to do a lot of chores still and having a clean house and stuffed fridge take precedent over leveling an avatar up in a game.
What I am going to do though is play a bit of FFXIV to get my Bard through the daily Trust dungeon and Pixie stuff aswell as download the DLC to Kingdom Hearts III so I can start playing that. I remember how happy I was when I finished KH3 but also that the ending was rather unsatisfying. I hope this DLC can give me a bit more closure on that front. I will most likely do a post about it once I’ve played through it.

For now though it’s time to get dressed and get to cleaning!

On A Roll

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I texted my best friend earlier this week how for some reason I’ve been feeling more relaxed than I have in a very long time. Even if I did get called out of bed in the morning by a delivery driver. And honestly? It’s the truth. I feel like some sort of calm has finally settled into my erratic brain and because I’m not forcing myself to do anything now that I have a few days off I can finally focus on doing fun stuff instead. I still got some adulting done though, but not with as much pressures as I normally have when I have my regular weekends where I need to fit everything into two days. So with this stated I can proudly say I’ve been on quite a roll gaming wise these past few days.

For starters I sat down for a bit and moved my way through the Pokémon Sword post-game questline. All in all it took me a little under two hours to complete, with a lot of traveling back and forth and a lot of battling. I finally caught Zacian (the Sword Legendary Pokémon) and unlocked the Battle Tower in Wyndon. I’m not sure when I will be checking that out though, seeing as I spent quite a bit of time hunting a shiny Magikarp yesterday because of a special event. I managed to get one on the last max raid I did during the evening, so I am the proud owner of a shiny red Gyarados now. I also managed to catch a Lapras and a Gigantamax Butterfree aswell as start working away on evolving all the Pokémon in my bank.
All in all I’m quite content with how much time it has taken me to get to this point in the game. Granted, the game feels rather short compared to some of the older entries. I have over 70 hours clocked in Pokémon Black for instance and am not nearly finished with filling up the Pokédex there. It’s the one big flaw of the game for me, except the lacking of a National dex and all available Pokémon. It feels like with every new entry into the Pokémon series the stories have been getting cut shorter and shorter and the post-game has been made smaller aswell. Gone are the days where you’d have an enormous post-game riddled with mysteries and interesting ways to catch multiple legendary Pokémon. Now it’s a questline which opens up the Battle Tower after you’re done… And that’s it. Granted, I still need to fill up my Pokédex so that will take some time. However, unlike many die-hard Pokémon fans I’m going to stop the moment I have all the Pokémon registered in my dex. I have no interest in keeping a “living dex” where you have every single Pokémon as captured Pokémon in your boxes. I’m also not a huge fan of hunting shiny Pokémon. I think I’ve managed to capture two in my lifetime, not counting the shiny Magikarp of this event. One in Pokémon Black, a Golbat, and one in Pokémon Moon, a Rattata. Not the most thrilling Pokémon to have as shinies but I got them nonetheless. I also have a few shiny Pokémon from distribution events, but those don’t really count. So yeah. Right now I’m on about 33 hours played, mostly caused by the hunting for the shiny Magikarp, and I’m quite curious where the timer will be on once I manage to fill up the dex.

In Final Fantasy XIV I’ve been making a ton of strides in clearing out sidequest content and leveling my Ninja. Not only did my Ninja hit 80, before that I managed to clean up all the side content in Raktika Greatwood, earning me the Ronkan Serpent minion aswell as finishing up the final quests I had in the Tempest. I also took some time to do some FATEs in the Tempest untill I had my “do 10 FATEs” challenge from the challenge log done. Luckily for me there were a few other people doing FATEs there aswell so we had a nice little train going. I even had a shimmer of hope that we could spawn the big boss FATE at some point seeing as how we got to the final prerequisite FATE but alas, the chain reset. It’s the one FATE achievement from Shadowbringers that I’m lacking. Maybe I should join a hunt discord or ingame channel seeing as how they usually keep tabs on the big FATEs and S-Rank hunts.
Speaking of hunts. I’m slowly working towards getting the mount from the Shadowbringers hunt clan. I don’t actively participate in the A-Rank and S-Rank hunting but I do try to do my daily hunts atleast. Doing those every day gives 110 seals a day, which isn’t actually too bad. Maybe I should look into doing the weekly B-rank aswell. For now though, if I keep going like this, I should have the mount by next week!
Finally I’ve started working way on my Bard. I’ve chosen to go the Trusts route here though. I want all my Trusts leveled and I only have a few classes left where I can do that on. So I’m taking my Bard through the motions with one team and one of my tanks with the other team. I’m probably going to keep it down to one Trust dungeon per day, mostly because running the same dungeon over and over gets tedious fast. Even if they upped the experience the Trusts get. Pixie dailies and cleaning up the remaining sidequests are also on the agenda for Bard, but I will skip roulettes for the time being.

All in all I’ve been diligently working away at my gaming goals. Having the extra time off has really given me a bit of motivation to push trough and get stuff done. I may even need to set some new goals at this pace!

Pokémon Sword “Finished” and January 2020 Goals

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

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

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

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

In other MMO’s:

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

In single player games:

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

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