Tag Archives: Reading

Sandy’s (non)MMO Sunday: Melting Melting Melting!

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There’s a heatwave absolutely terrorizing northwestern Europe. It’s one of those things that has become the new “norm” with climate change but unfortunately my country especially isn’t trained enough yet to deal with this. We’ve been so used to having a mild climate, cool summers, gentle winters, that these obscenely hot temperatures are throwing everything into disarray. The worst part isn’t even the fact that it’s 30+ degrees for over a week, it’s that our houses are built to keep the heat in. So once they heat up, they’re almost impossible to cool back down. It’s horrendous and one of the reasons I’m keeping most, if not all, of my electronics turned off. My computer and consoles all just generate way too much heat to use and with this heat lasting atleast another 3-4 days I think the only times I can get a bit of MMO time in is either really early in the morning, or not at all. I’m blessed enough to be spending a few days at the office while enjoying airconditioning, so there’s that, but otherwise it’s grin and bear it and wait untill the heat breaks.
On top of the heat it’s also prime insect time and there are way too many flying bugs in my house right now and it’s giving me the creeps. I have had to catch and release atleast two moths that made their way in and I’ve been trying to chase out flies and other winged insects while trying to keep as much as I can out. I’m doubting if I want to install some screens in my windows to keep everything out, but outside of a few weeks in summer I don’t really have that many insects around so I’m still doubting whether or not I should.

Anyway, that’s the current state of things and as such I’ve had to rethink how I spend my free time. Obviously playing a lot of World of Warcraft and/or Final Fantasy XIV is out of the question since I’d either have to use my PC or PS4, both of which generate a lot of heat. Added on top of that I’m kind of burned out on WoW anyway so I don’t really feel like logging more than two times a week to keep up with emissaries on my Warrior. FFXIV is releasing patch 5.3 next week though so I may jump into that, once temperatures have come down again (hopefully) at the end of the week.

So instead of playing MMO’s I’ve been reading a lot and playing on my Switch. Book wise I’m working my way through the Rain Wilds Chronicles by Robin Hobb and I’m at the final book now. Games wise I’ve been putting a bit of time in Fire Emblem: Three Houses and finished off the first official mission. There’s a lot of things to take into consideration by playing this game, especially with the whole “daily life” aspect that happens in between the battles. It feels like there’s always so much to do and not enough points to spend to do everything. Of course this will change the further I get into the game but for now I’m slightly annoyed that I can’t do everything I want… But oh well.
In Pokémon I finally picked up where I left off on the Isle of Armor and took my Kubfu to the Tower of Water so it could evolve into Urshifu Water form. I’m kinda sad to see the cute little fellow evolve but I know it was one of the big goals of this DLC so I did it anyway. Now I’m working on the questline to unlock Dynamaxing for it, but I kind of abandoned that for a bit to chase more Pokémon to fill up my Pokédex with. I’m currently sitting on 330/400 Pokémon caught for the Galarian Pokédex and I made a list for my friend who has Shield, I have Sword, of exclusives that I still need. Those add up to about 18 Pokémon which means I still need to catch around 50 on my own. So I’ve been working on that and it’s slightly annoying since most of the Pokémon that I still need now are either a very low encounter chance, 1-5%, or only appear during certain weather types. I’m super close though, I’ve never been this close to completing a Pokédex since I was a kid and had 146/150 caught in Pokémon Blue.

All in all I foresee a lot more reading and playing Switch games this week aslong as temperatures stay the way they are. As for the rest of today… The final regular week of the League championships in Europe and North America are happening this weekend and a lot of things are still at stake so it’s a really good weekend to watch. I need to do some light chores still, folding some laundry, taking out the trash, cleaning up my tables and of course there’s the matter of cooking dinner while trying not to melt.
So yeah, this is what my days look like right now. What are you guys up to? Let me know in the comments!

 

 

A short book review: Tales of Lunis Aquaria

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Tales of Lunis Aquaria as shown on narratess.com

So I don’t think I’ve ever done a proper book review. Mostly because the books that I’ve read are all bestsellers in their own right and I don’t think the authors really need a gaming/hobby blog like me to shower them in praise. They received that enough. However after reading this book I feel compelled to write a post about it. So let’s start with the basics.

Book title: Tales of Lunis Aquaria
Author: Tessa Hastjarjanto
Publishing date: 8th of April 2019
Genre: Fantasy
Book type: Short stories
Format: E-book (but there is a paperback available aswell)

Tales of Lunis Aquaria is a bundle of nine short stories set in a fantasy world. Each story involves different characters although there are a few reoccuring ones. It’s an entry book in what will be a bigger universe expanding on the introductory short stories written in this book. There are a few main characters, the ones depicted on the cover of the book that play a big role in the universe. They are however only featured in two (or maybe three if my guess is correct) of the short stories.
It’s a relatively short book, only 104 pages long in the e-pub format that I use on my Sony e-reader and as such I was able to read through it in a relatively short time. The fact that I didn’t put it down once I started reading it should say enough about the quality of the stories. I was immediatly sucked into the world that Tessa has crafted with her writing. All the stories are very pleasant to read through and are short enough to fit into small reading sessions for when one is traveling or when you want to read something before going to bed. I enjoyed all of the separate stories, enough so that I can’t wait untill the continuation comes out for all of them. I don’t want to spoil too much of the stories but I can definitely say that the one titled “Moonflower” was my favourite one. The premise is as followed (as written on narratess.com): To win the heart of a girl, a young man sets out to find the most beautiful flower there ever was. He faces the dangers of the mountains, looking for a flower that might not even exist. The tale has a twist at the end and I so want to find out what happened! All of the other stories are written just as well but specifically this one has me hungering for more.

As mentioned the flow of the book is good. Tessa crafts a very compelling world and everything fits together nicely. I’m quite curious as to how the stories continue. With setting up nine different ones she’s given herself quite the task of expanding this world. If anything that’s the one thing I may nitpick on. The introductions are written so well that I really can’t wait to read how they continue. Seeing as how this is only the entry in a far bigger series I expect a ton more books to come out and patience isn’t one of my strongest virtues when it comes to things I enjoy. I hope she can write a compelling universe with this as starting point and I can’t wait for the next book to come out.

If you’re looking for a light book to read during some travel time or a saturday afternoon sipping a cup of tea and you like fantasy this is the book for you. But know that if you’re hooked you might have to wait a bit to see the stories continue!

Tales of Lunis Aquaria is available at Amazon, Kobo, Nook and Smashbooks and if you’re Dutch you can get the e-book from Bol.com or the paperback from boekenbestellen.nl

Reading blogs

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With Blaugust 2019 well under way I had the pleasure of adding a lot of blogs to my Feedly, which is the medium I use to read blogs. Since I work fulltime and have a bit of travel time I prefer to read stuff on Feedly as I travel to and from work. It’s a nice reader, I can easily add (and delete) feeds from it and because it’s cross platform I can read on my PC, my phone and my tablet without issues. I love that it works that way and I don’t really see how I used to read blogs without the help of a feed app.

Of course a feed reader like this has it’s downsides. It’s literally a reader only, so if I want to comment on someone’s blogpost I will have to actively go to their website and comment. One of the other downsides is that for some people’s blog I don’t get full posts on Feedly but only an excerpt with a redirection to their website to read any further. Because of the way that I’m using Feedly, namely to just catch up on blogs during some downtime, I remove those blogs when I come across them. I know it sounds a bit harsh but unless I see a really compelling reason to constantly open a blog seperately to read it I just don’t put in the effort. Especially with so many people posting due to Blaugust right now it’s just a step that I’m not willing to take.

As for the rest. I consider myself to be mostly a blog lurker. I enjoy reading what other people are up to and have a few blogs that I’ve been following for years now and that are big examples to my own blogging. Tales of the Aggronaut, Bio Break, Aywren Sojourner and Contains Moderate Peril are a few of them on that list. Although I’m not always interested in the specific topics they write about, I don’t play most of the games the reference on their blogs for example, I do always enjoy reading every blog post they put out. They are able to make things interesting even for people who have no clue what the game entails. I like their writing personas and I have a huge respect for all of them because they’ve just been around for so long. I mean I’ve been blogging for a good chunk of time myself, my archives here date back to 2013 but I’ve been blogging for longer than that, but I still don’t think I’m anywhere near their level. I feel like my writing persona is all over the place and I use my blog more as a sort of diary than anything else.

Anyway. I do enjoy having added all these new blogs to my daily reading routine. It is a bit overwhelming to keep up with all of them but I’m trying my best to do so. Now I just need to nudge myself into the comment game and interact a bit more with my fellow bloggers instead of being the lurker that I have been over the past years.

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.

Gaming Goals: March 2019

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February came and went and now we are already in March. Unfortunately for me I got the news last monday that my move will be delayed by a few weeks. There are issues in the bathrooms that need to be fixed and due to that I can’t move in when I want to. It’s left me rather pissed off and disappointed but alas it’s not something I can help. I just have to keep my head held high and plow through untill moving day.
So with that out of the way let’s see what I did in February goals wise.

February Goals

  • Playstation GotM: Kingdom Hearts 3.
  • Nintendo GotM: Pokémon LetsGO
  • Get all my crafters to 30 in FFXIV and complete all job quests upto and including level 30.
  • Level my Nightborne Mage in WoW
  • Book of the month: Ship of Magic (Liveship traders book 1)
  • Show of the month: Luther/Designated Survivor

I want to start off with the stuff I consider “done”. I’ve finished reading my book of the month so yay for that! Especially this last week I’ve made headway in the book due to having a week off and therefor more time to read than usual. It also helped that I’m in a major gaming slump and reading takes my mind off things so there’s that. I’ve also gotten a long way with leveling my Nightborne Mage. She dinged 110 and got her Heritage Armour as I’ve told a few posts back. I’m now sitting at level 114 and am slowly working my way through all the quests in Zuldazar. It’s been easygoing and I’ve been enjoying my time back in Azeroth.

Now for all the stuff I didn’t finish… As mentioned before I’m in a major gaming slump. I’ve not touched my Switch for the entire month. I’ve managed to level my Alchemist to level 29 in FFXIV but that’s it. I’ve spent 10 hours in Kingdom Hearts 3 before stalling out in Rapunzel’s world. I’ve also opted to not continue with heavy shows like Luther for the time being since I’m already burned out/depressed and the tone of those shows is just wrong for me. So even though I did get some stuff done it wasn’t nearly as much as I hoped it was.

With March starting though I want to kick myself out of this black hole I seem to be in and find my enjoyment in games, reading and working out again. I have some leftover time off that I may use to work a few half days, time that I can then use to put into games and other activities.
So without further ado here’s my goals list for March 2019.

Gaming Goals

  • WoW: Level my Nightborne to 120 (currently 114) and catch up to current content
  • WoW: Level my Void Elf to 110 (currently 47) and unlock Heritage Armour
  • WoW: Attempt to get the Onyxia mount, the only mount I’m missing for my achievement.
  • FFXIV: Complete Little Ladies Day on both my characters
  • FFXIV: Level Alchemist and Leatherworker to level 30 and complete their job quests
  • FFXIV: Level Carpenter to 50 and complete all job quests
  • FFXIV: Gear up WHM and catch up to current content
  • PS4/Switch/3DS: Complete a game of choice
  • Steam: Play atleast one game from my library

As you can see I’m setting a few more goals for myself this month. All of these goals should be relatively easy to obtain. Leveling in WoW is mindless and the levels fly by. Leveling the crafters in FFXIV is a bit more of a chore but again, not really that hard. Catching up to current content is a different thing though and I hope I can stay engaged enough to do this. I also really want to complete a game on one of my consoles and I want to atleast play one of the games in my Steam library because buying games without playing them feels bad enough already.

As far as other goals go… I want to keep on reading the Liveship Traders trilogy and I hope to finish atleast the second book this month. I’m not going to commit to a show this month since my Netflix/TV watching habits are all over the place right now. My final goal is a weird one but I’ll share it anyway. I’ve been given exercises to stretch the muscles in my calves and my hamstrings. This should help me with walking a little easier and with less pain and tension in my legs. If I succeed in doing my daily exercises I should be able to touch the floor with my fingertips while keeping my legs stretched. I really want to get as close to that as I possibly can.

So these are my goals for the month of March… Do you readers have anything you want to achieve this month?

Gaming Goals: February 2019

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I can’t believe January is over already. Time seems to fly by these days, even if I’m spending significantly less time in games and more time watching Netflix and relaxing. Not playing as much games has also caused me to bit a bit more relaxed in my head and has gotten me going to bed earlier and fall asleep faster. The past week I’ve only played for an hour or so each night and it’s been great. I’m sure that at some point I’ll get back to gaming a bit more again but for now the game time is low and other activities time is high. I’ll see where it heads since I am going to formulate a few goals for this month. But first lets look back at January.

Gaming Goals

  • Level Dark Knight to 70 in FFXIV and complete all Job quests DONE
  • Level Samurai to 70 in FFXIV and complete all Job quests DONE
  • Nintendo GotM: Pokémon LetsGo. Technically cheating this one a bit but I want to finish it up in January
  • Playstation GotM: Spyro 2: RIpto’s Rage. I’m aiming for 100% completion and the platinum trophy here

So I’ve accomplished two of the goals on my list being the FFXIV related ones. I’ve actually spent a lot of time in January to getting these goals done and it’s taken up most of my gaming time. It’s also caused a bit of a gaming burnout to the point that I’ve not touched Spyro 2 at all and I’ve put in the bare minimum in Pokémon LetsGO. I did manage to get the 6th badge but I stalled out afterwards, which I’m actually quite disappointed about. I’m not sure what causes me to put down games and just not return to them but it’s a thing I want to stop doing.

Other goals

  • Book of the Month: Roger Daltrey – My Story (Thanks, Mr. Kibblewhite!) DONE
  • Show of the Month: Luther

So I finished up the book really early in the month and it has been a nice read. I watched the first season of Luther in full and am now halfway through season two. I have been watching other shows on Netflix however and finished “Tidying up with Marie Kondo” and “Consumed” in full so I got a bit more worth out of my Netflix for the month. I even managed to jam in “Carmen Sandiego” which I thoroughly enjoyed aswell.
All in all I’m quite happy here even though I didn’t get to finish the show I wanted to.

So now that we have January out of the way let’s look forward to February!

Gaming Goals

  • Playstation GotM: Kingdom Hearts 3.
  • Nintendo GotM: Pokémon LetsGO
  • Get all my crafters to 30 in FFXIV and complete all job quests upto and including level 30.
  • Level my Nightborne Mage in WoW

So ofcourse the game of the month for Playstation is going to be Kingdom Hearts 3. I’m about 5 hours in and I want to play through this game so much. I love the worlds, I love the fighting, I love the story. I’m itching to explore more of it and to get it completely played through by the end of the month. I’m lifting Pokémon LetsGO over to February so I can work on completing that aswell. Again I made it to the 6th gym and I really just want to get to the Elite Four atleast.

In MMO land I want to keep my goals light. The only thing I really “want” to achieve in FFXIV is to get all my crafting classes to level 30 and have all the job quests up untill that point completed aswell. I’m currently sitting on level 27 Blacksmith, level 24 Leatherworker and Level 21 Alchemist so that’s the three jobs that need to go up. I go up about two levels when doing all the Ixali dailies that I can and to complete those I only need an hour or so… So it should be a very doable goal.
As far as the leveling in WoW goes. I just really want atleast one Allied Race to max level. My Nightborne Mage is sitting at level 78 now and I’m not really setting a goal for myself level wise but I would like to be over 78 at the end of the month. Maybe I’ll get all the way to 120, maybe I’ll only make it to 85, I don’t know. I just want to spend a bit of time leveling and enjoying some of my favourite older zones again.

Other Goals

  • Book of the month: Ship of Magic (Liveship traders book 1)
  • Show of the month: Luther/Designated Survivor

I’m starting a new book and a new trilogy all in one go. It’s the second trilogy I’m going to read that’s written by Robin Hobb and it takes place in the same world as the first one only with different characters. I’m really curious how these books are compared to the ones I’ve read so I’ll report back as soon as possible when I’ve finished the book.
On the shows front I want to finish watching Luther and then start watching Designated Survivor again. I started that show at some point but kind of trailed off after ten episodes or so. I like the show and I want to watch more of it so that’s the plan.

All in all I’m mostly going to focus on the big game of the month which is Kingdom Hearts. Since I’m in a minimal gaming jam right now I’m trying to keep my goals light and attainable and will probably focus on doing other stuff instead. I guess I’ll see how far I’ve come at the end of the month!

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.

Birthdays, books and bringing down the chaos

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As I sit down to write this post another weekend has gone way too fast. Granted it’s “only 19.30” as I’m writing this and I still have a few hours of evening to fill. However it feels like the two days respite you get inbetween the five days of hard labour seem to last shorter every week. Somehow the more stressful work is the faster the weekend goes. Normally I could attribute my short weekends due to sleeping in late but not this time. I woke up around 9.00 both yesterday and today and I didn’t really stay in bed for long after waking up either. This has caused my mornings to be filled with World of Warcraft and consequently freeing up my afternoons for other things.

Yesterday the weather was nice and I really needed to get my eyebrows back in shape so I decided to go into town to walk around a bit, poke my head into the “Used Products” shop we have and get my eyebrows done. I probably should have picked a different Saturday to do this because this weekend was the last holiday weekend for the country before schools and normalcy starts up again. Our city center was absolutely crawling with people and there were lines for everything. Success was had though! I bought a used copy of “Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire” for the Nintendo DS for only €10. I remember owning that game for my computer back in the day and even though I may still own the disc, I doubt I can get it to work on my current PC. The DS however is still going strong so I figured I would pick this up and enjoy it 13 years after release date. I also managed to get my eyebrows plucked and cut, after an hour wait, but decided against getting my hair done due to the fact that it was already late and I had to be home on time for the big event of the evening: My uncle’s 50th birthday!
I’m not sure how big of a deal this milestone is in other countries but here in the Netherlands we celebrate it in a big way when a man or woman turns 50 with set traditions and usually a very big party. So that’s where I spent my Saturday evening, dancing with my family and generally having a good time. A lot of my coming weekends will look like this since September seems to be the birthday month. It drastically cuts down on my time but it’s nice to see my family and friends and celebrate life.

As for today I decided to slowly start getting rid of stuff I don’t use or wear anymore. I wanted to start small so the thing I’ve tackled today was my jewellry box and my rack of earrings. There was a period of time where I owned over a 100 pairs of earrings. After getting rid of everything that wasn’t real silver, I’m slightly allergic to “fake” silver earrings, I’m now down to a total of 20 pairs of earrings/earbuds and I’m happy where I am. I’ve also gotten rid of a lot of cheap, bulky bracelets which in turn opened up some space to store my watches. All in all it was a very satisfying task and it will save me the headache of having to do it when I move out next year.

Finally I managed to get started in a book again for the first time in a few months. Last April I discovered Robin Hobb as writer and the amazing books she has written. I’ve bought the entire Farseer Trilogy and am currently a little over halfway done in the second book. I’m really hoping to finish it off in September and start reading the final book in the trilogy after. It atleast gives me something to do that doesn’t involve a screen and reading also improves my writing so it’s a win/win situation overall.

As for the rest of my Sunday though. I still have one or two chores to do and I really want to get atleast the Beast Tribe dailies done in FFXIV so my Machinist will gain a bit more experience. Otherwise I predict some more time in WoW to get the emissary quests done on my Paladin and an early night so I can be fresh for work tomorrow.

June 2018 Goals

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Druid class hall flight form

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

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

Gaming Goals June 2018

World of Warcraft

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

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

Final Fantasy XIV

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

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

Other games

  • Progress in Mario+Rabbids
  • Progress in Monster Hunter Stories

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

Real life and non game related goals

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

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

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

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

New PC, More Gaming?

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Botanicula Moon wish

Last Thursday I picked up my new PC. My old one was completely and utterly done after five years of abuse. It worked marvelously in the beginning, letting me play WoW on High settings again (after playing it on the lowest for ages) and enabling me to play games like Tomb Raider and Assassin’s Creed III and IV. However everything deteriorates over time and I had come to a point that I once again played all my games on the lowest settings and with some effort besides. I’d dip down below 20 fps frequently and even though I could still play games like WoW and Heroes of the Storm I would notice huge rendering issues and simple animation lag caused by the fact my PC couldn’t really handle things anymore. I think the real final straw was when I couldn’t play Diablo III after buying the Necromancer pack. My old computer simply couldn’t handle the armies of dead I was summoning and it put me off playing the game alltogether.

So now I have a new PC. Specs wise it’s not super top notch. With me buying an apartment I can hardly afford a top of the line €3000 PC so I put my budget around €1200 and see what it would net me. I decided on buying the thing locally and had it sort of custom made. I say sort of because you would pick out a base model computer and then added components as you went. So right now I’ve ended up with a PC with an MSI motherboard, I5-7500 CPU and an Nvidia GTX1060 (which was a huge upgrade to the GXT650 I had). I have 8GB ram, a 256GB SSD and another 1TB HDD. I changed the power supply for a more powerful one and I got Windows 10 along with it. All in all I’m quite happy. I’ve never had my PC or my games boot as fast as they do now. I decided to put both WoW and FFXIV on my SSD and all my other games on the regular HDD. This is because I don’t have that much space and it’s really the two games that I spend the most time on. I’ve already been taking more screenshots than I’ve been doing the past few months and I’m really enjoying the fact that I can play with pretty graphics again.

To celebrate this newness of computer I have started to go through my Steam Library, starting at the top game in my list, which also happened to be a gift: Botanicula. It’s a bit of a silly game and it’s mostly point and click. You guide a set of five little creatures around a tree to save it from dark spider like things that are sapping the life out of it. There is quite a big map to explore and a lot of strange things to encounter (see screenshots above). The game encourages wandering about and discovering as much of the map as you can, which I’m doing gladly. It’s one of those games where you have to click everything you can just to see what it does. I’ve only done two levels of the six available and it’s really a game that you can play through on a rainy afternoon given that it takes about four hours to complete. It’s whimsical and silly and the sound are amazing. I can’t wait to finish it and then tackle more of the games I’ve accumulated over the years in my Steam Library. Now that I finally have a decent PC again I may even want to take another jab at finishing ACIII or Tomb Raider.

Next to picking up my new PC I also got to pick out my floors, bathroom stuff and a kitchen for my apartment Thursday afternoon/evening. Because it’s a part of a project and because they will built the apartment in such a way that I only really need to move in furniture and hang up curtains they want to know what we want in advance. This also means that options to choose from are limited (unless you want to pay a shitton more money). In the end I managed to settle on floors and tiles and bathroom equipment. I also got a kitchen designed and it’s all coming together. Too bad the actual building of the apartments will still take a year and a half or so but still. It was a really nice experience and I’m happy with what I picked.

As for the rest. My weekend is booked. I’m off to a birthday in about 45 minutes or so, taking my 3DS with me for the car ride there (it’s about an hour) so I can get some Yo-Kai Watch playtime in. I managed to finish reading “The Wise Man’s Fear” today and will probably read “The Slow Regard of Silent Things” next and then I will have to wait for the final novel in the Kingkiller series like everyone else. I have to say though, Patrick Rothfuss tells a really damn good story. I’ve been sucked in by it and enjoyed it a lot. I can’t wait to see how Kvothe fares in the last book and I sincerely hope that he won’t be killing him off or having him die an old man. I hope he goes back to Felurian in the end like he promised, but only the author knows.
I’ve also finally managed to reach rank 2 Prestige on my Warrior, opening up another Artifact skin. I’m quite happy witht his because I think the PVP skin for Fury weapons look amazing and I hope I get to unlock a bit more colours before the next expansion drops. As far as FFXIV goes… I’ve picked up Miner and am sitting on level 62 right now, a level I don’t really enjoy purely because of the fact that leves are in Ruby Sea and they are super annoying to do. I hope I can get past that part fast and bump her to 70. Other than that my gaming has been rather quiet over the past week. I’ve been tired because of work and stress about the whole apartment thing so the moment I get home I really just want to sit or lie down and do as little as possible.
As an ending to this post though I’ll leave you with a picture of the Warrior and her seriously awesome new weapons.