Tag Archives: Sunday

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!

 

 

Sandy’s MMO Sunday: May 10th progress, progress, progress!

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Two posts in one day? Why not! I feel the writing bug so I may aswell take advantage of it. Plus my earlier post was supposed to go up yesterday but I forgot to hit the publish button so… Whatever I guess.
I rebranded my older “Sandy’s Sunday” to “Sandy’s MMO Sunday” since MMO’s are still my most played genre and I want to have one day a week where I specifically talk about my (personal) progress on that front aswell as talk about what I’ve been struggling with the past week, if there have been struggles or anything else I need to get off my chest.

So first off, I have made a ton, and I mean a ton, of progress on my World of Warcraft and Final Fantasy XIV goals the past week. I’ve gotten two reputations to Exalted, Storm’s Wake and the Waveblade Ankoan. They were both surprisingly easy to get and I even managed to three Paragon chests for both reputations together already. Mostly because next to getting Storm’s Wake reputation up I also finished the zone quest wise. I also finished off Drustvar so I can stripe that goal off of my list. I can’t say how soothing it is to get rid of all the quest markers on a map and slowly emptying out my questlog as I go through a zone. Right now I only have one questchain left in Stormsong Valley and two Dungeon quests that are related to the zone stories so I may tackle those next week.
On the profession front I’ve been able to get Kul Tiran Blacksmithing to level 175 with a little help from the Darkmoon Faire. I’m also well on my way to crafting the 455 ilvl belt, I need like 9 more Expulsom or so, after which I unlock the 470 recipe which is something I aim for! After that I’m probably going to focus on doing the same for the pants seeing as the chance is slim I’m going to get 470 ilvl gear from anywhere else.
Next to my personal progress we also managed to down two more bosses in Heroic Ny’alotha bringing us to 10/12 bosses downed total with a 10%ish wipe on Carapace of N’zoth. I’m pretty sure we’ll get to 11/12 heroic next week, maybe even 12/12 if we don’t wipe too much on bosses that we’ve already downed. All in all a pretty good week in WoW!

In FFXIV I’ve taken last Tuesdays’ reset to finish off Eden. I had three fights left and even though I managed to die in all three of them I did clear the instance, so I can scrape that off my list aswell! Leveling on my Machinist has been steady and I’ve hit level 75 today. I’m also slowly whittling away at FATEs in Ahm Araeng and only need to do 14 more of them to get to that rank 3 FATEs cleared. I’m pretty sure I can bang those out the coming week and hopefully get my Machinist a lot closer to level 80 aswell. After that I can set my eyes on FATEs in the Tempest untill my Machinist is level 80 and I can get rid of all the sub level 80 Aiming gear and start working on the final cluster of jobs that I need to level: my tanks. I figured I may aswell start with Dark Knight first and then pick up Warrior after before unlocking and leveling the final job I need: Gunblade.

Next to all this nice progress I’m also struggling a lot with the overwhelming amount of content that is available to do in, mostly, WoW. Right now I’m focusing on the goals that I have set for myself and I’m pretty good at keeping myself restrained to them for now but when I look at all the activities I can partake in the situation just gets to be a bit overwhelming.
There’s obviously the two raid nights per week where I’m logged on and all the dailies I’m doing every day to get up reputations and earn other things. Then there’s Mythic+, Visions of N’Zoth to level up my legendary cloak, chasing the rank 2 and 3 upgrades for the essences in my Heart of Azeroth necklace, which come from a lot of different sources. The weekly assaults in Uldum and Vale of Eternal Blossoms. And don’t even get me started on chasing mounts, pets and achievements. Something I love to do but need to put on the side for a bit so I can focus on the more “important” stuff that needs doing. It’s really hard to be able to do everything given the limited amount of time I have to spend now that I’m an adult with a full time job. I really don’t want to invest every waking moment that I have into WoW and as such I’ve had to make decisions on what I really want to do. Setting goals for myself has helped enormously but seeing the speed at which I’ve been fulfilling said goals I may need to find another set of goals pretty soon before I become directionless and start doing more than I should and burn out.

All in all though I’m pretty happy with my progress. If I keep up this pace I may even need to set some new goals for myself by the end of next week. For now though I’m going to keep doing what I’m doing and hopefully not get too sidetracked with shiny content.

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!

Sandy’s Sunday: Pokémon time

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Last Friday Pokémon Sword and Shield finally launched worldwide. I had pre-ordered the dual pack version which contains both games, a steelbook and apparently a special code together with a friend. I already picked Sword, he picked Shield and we did a coinflip for the steelbook case, which I won.

So far I’ve been having a blast. I’m about 4 hours into the game and am on my way to the first gym. The Wild Area is amazing and terrifying. I wandered a bit too far and suddenly got matched up with Pokémon way beyond the levels of my own team. The Dynamax encounters are actually pretty neat and they drop a lot of useful stuff like experience candies. The story so far is okay I guess, but that’s never really been the highlight of Pokémon games. My rival, Hop, is annoying as usual and the game is still quite hand-holdy but you can opt out of a lot of explanations and just progress through the game at quite a nice pace.
The region is set in Britain this time and it shows. From the absolute weird Pokémon names, a fox called Nickit, to the generally British terms for things that are quite obvious. Hell even team Yell, who are sort of the bad guys?, are a sort of punk-rock style opponents that you can only expect in a British themed game. You can cook curry’s with your Pokémon at your campsite and the towns have a thorough British feel to them. So far I’m really enjoying this, more so than X and Y or Sun and Moon who were supposed to mimick France and Hawaii respectively.

Apart from latching onto Pokémon Sword for the last two days I’ve been feeling a bit detached from gaming. I’ve still not explored everything patch 5.1/5.11 have to offer in Final Fantasy XIV. I’ve not touched anything Warcraft related except to pick up the anniversary pet. The only game I’ve been putting time into has been League of Legends. I’ve been playing a lot of ARAM’s so I can complete the Worlds missions that are still open. I have been having a blast doing this so I guess I can’t say it’s a waste of time.
I have been putting a lot of time into re-reading the Harry Potter series however. This was mostly spurred on by the fact that they’re showing all the movies on TV here and I’ve been watching those on Monday evenings. Tomorrow they’re airing the seventh movie or the first part of book seven. Coincidentally I’ve just started reading that so I’m in full Harry Potter mode for the time being.

So yeah. I’m still feeling very detached from the whole blogging stuff right now. I can’t seem to get myself to write anything besides these weekly mini-updates. I’m also still very much not reading other people’s blogs, sorry! I really should get back into that but I’m just not in the right mindspace right now.
As far as games go, I really should start checking out the Ishgard content for crafters because apparently it’s an amazing source of experience. I’m sitting at all my crafters at level 70 right now, with only Leatherworker at level 50. On the gathering side only Fisher isn’t 80 yet so I hope that Ishgard can assist in that. It would be so nice to just get everything to level 80 for completion purposes. I also really need to do the mainstory content… I may just hop on today and make my way through that.

Sandy’s Sunday: November 10th 2019

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A lot has happened since I posted my November goal post. Blizzcon has come and gone, patch 5.1 has launched in Final Fantasy XIV and I’ve made the decision, and started the process, to buy myself a car. I’ve been pretty busy with real life stuff so gaming has gone onto the back burner a bit right now. Having said this, I still managed to find time to churn through tons of crafting dailies and take advantage of the hefty experience boost that Square Enix has implemented with the latest patch. As such I’ve gotten both my Blacksmith and Armorer to level 70 and my Leatherworker is currently somewhere in the 40-50 range. I’ve also managed to get my Monk to level 80 the past week so I’ve been dutifully working through my FFXIV goals. Instead of picking up Samurai straight after I decided to level my Paladin instead, purely because I want to see the tank story line from Shadowbringers. As a friend of mine put it I’m “bumrushing” the process and am currently sitting at level 73 after two days of doing the new Pixie beast tribe dailes, a ton of FATE’s and roulettes which provide me with very nice instant queues. I may even push to 74 after this post goes live and I do Mainstory roulette.

On the flipside there is the World of Warcraft where I’ve basically stalled out the moment I got my Mechagon rep to Exalted. Right now the 15 year celebration is going on ingame and I will probably poke my nose in and get the nostalgic raids done, purely so I can get the mount and then scoot out of there again. I may also do the PvP event but I’m not sure about that yet. As far as other WoW news goes… I’ve seen the trailer that announces Shadowlands and I should be hyped but for some reason I really am not. I guess Battle for Azeroth kind of soured my enthusiasm for WoW and I’m pretty skeptical about what is going to happen next. Sylvanas being the big bad isn’t surprising but I really wish Blizzard didn’t go that route. I will most definitely get the expansion, seeing as I’m still a big enough fan to play the game but I’m noticing that I’m enjoying myself more in FFXIV right now than I do in WoW.
In related fashion I’m also not terribly hyped for Diablo 4. I mean, I poured a lot of time into Diablo 3 when it launched and through all the changes and the expansion and DLC but for some reason I just can’t seem to get back into the game on my PC or my Switch. The “looter” genre isn’t really appealing to me right now so maybe when we get closer to launch I start feeling a bit more hyped but for now I’m not even sure if I want to get the game to start with.

As for my blogging right now. I’ve not really felt the urge to write or read anything for the past few weeks. My Feedly is kind of exploding with unread posts but I’m mostly just scrolling through them and not really reading what they say. I’m not sure why it’s like this and it’s probably a temporary thing but for now I’m not that engaged with the blogging community as I would like to be. I’m also a bit sad after seeing the League of Legends World Finals today. G2 has been the team I’ve been rooting for the entire season and it seemed like they were well on course to grabbing that very sought after World Cup. Unfortunately it wasn’t meant to be. I can’t imagine how devastated these players must be feeling right now and I can only hope the team will take this as a learning experience and come back stronger next year.

Next friday the new installment in the Pokémon series comes out, I hope that will trigger my need to blog a bit because I will probably be all over that game. Untill then… Stay tuned I guess?

Sandy’s Sunday: Picking up the pace

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As you can see in above screenshot I’ve obtained the Alabaster mounts that Blizzard made for WoW’s 15th anniversary. I got the code with the 15th anniversary collector’s edition box which I pre-ordered the moment it was announced. It was a bit unfortunate that it arrived right around the time Blizzard made a fool out of themselves with the whole Hong Kong controversy but alas. I hadn’t really foreseen this and I wasn’t planning to cancel the purchase since it was already paid in full.
The box is sitting in a corner of my room next to my tv and everything is still neatly boxed up except for the mount code and the mousemat. All in all I’m happy with this box although I don’t really have the room to display the massive Ragnaros statue just yet.. It’s pretty heavy and takes up more space than I thought it would.

This week I’ve been playing a lot of Final Fantasy XIV. Finally getting back into the rhythm of doing my crafting dailies every day and also doing some stuff to level up my Monk again it really feels like I’ve been picking up the pace there. My Culinarian is sitting at level 67 and my Blacksmith at 48. This means I will probably hit 50 around the weekly reset on my Blacksmith and can start Moogle dailies there and then start pulling Armorer through the Ixal ones. I forgot that as I get higher and higher in levels it’s not as easy to level up with beast tribe dailies anymore. I hope my Culinarian will be 70 before next weekend after which I can also do all the job quests between 60 and 70 that I’ve been neglecting for now.
As far as the Monk goes, she’s sitting at level 75 right now. I’ve been doing some FATEs in Raktika Greatwood as I’m waiting for queues and I actually got lucky and stumbled across my very first S-rank hunt: Forgiven Rebellion. As most hunts, or big FATEs it was extremely crowded in the zone and especially around the S-rank area. As we were engaging it my framerate dropped drastically and I was happy I could get a few spells out, I was on Red Mage, and I only died once. I wasn’t too impressed with the rewards from killing it but I think I have enough Sacks of Nuts, the current hunting currency, to get one of the two pets they have on offer for it. I’ve also been doing Main Story roulette where I can to get that chunk of experience but also the Moogle tomes. Even though I’m still undecided as to what I actually want to spend them on. I think I have two more weeks of this untill patch 5.1 hits and I can focus on all the new stuff that brings. I really want to continue the Shadowbringers story and see the Nier Automata based 24 man raid. I’m also really curious about the crafting overhaul and the New Game + thing so I think I will lose a lot of time there.

In World of Warcraft (retail, I’ve not touched Classic this week) I’ve been making steady progress on my Nazjatar (Waveblade Ankoan) and Mechagon reputations. I’m only 1.2k off Exalted with the Waveblade Ankoan right now and brought my first companion to level 10, Farseer Ori. I’ve chosen to once again focus on one or the other and not doing both in one day. So far it’s been working and I hope I can ditch Nazjatar dailies and world quests by Tuesday and then just focus on Mechagon. I’ve also put in some time on my Warrior and she’s sitting at level 114 as we speak. I’ve not finished Tiragarde Sound as zone yet and if I keep going like this I wonder if I will be level 120 by the time that I do. I don’t think so, but you never know.
It’s nice to go through the zone again and to do the first steps of the War Campaign again. After a while things tend to slowly fade from memory and it’s nice to get myself reacquainted with the quests and NPCs again.

Finally I’ve made the decision to buy Ring Fit Adventure for my Switch this week. I’m having a really hard time going to the gym, especially when the weather is as it is currently and I have to bike through the rain, and so I hope some home exercise will do the trick instead. I’m really curious about this game and I hope it lives up to the expectations I have for it.

All in all I had a decent week when it comes to gaming. I’ve made progress in WoW and FFXIV and am close to scratch off a few goals for the month October already. Now I just need to get back into Link’s Awakening..

Lazy on Sunday

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Today I’m having a lazy day. I’m quite content with just lounging in my room, getting an hour of gameplay in here and there and otherwise just doing a whole lot of nothing. I tend to do my cleaning on Sunday because it’s usually the day we don’t have anything to do. With severe allergies towards dust mite it’s quite important that I vacuum and dust my room regularly. Especially since my bedroom is also a mini living room. I spend most of my time up here playing games, reading, watching shows and just doing my thing in general. It’s not that I don’t like spending time with my Dad and his girlfriend, it’s just that I’m often very tired and just want to be left alone. Plus they have their own schedule with watching certain shows on TV and basically completely ignoring me once I do spend time downstairs with them.

I used to have the mindset that time spent doing nothing is time badly spent. I always felt like I had to do something. Be it cleaning, working on a hobby, reading. Anything. Going outside, sporting. You name it. As I get a bit older (I’m nearing my 30’s what the hell) I realise that sometimes doing nothing is the best thing you can be doing. I don’t recover as well from colds anymore, I’m very low on energy due to work and house buying related stress and I’m plagued by headaches, tiredness and random shivers. All signs that I just need to take a step back and rest up a bit more. It feels weird to be okay with living in about 6 square meters when I’m moving to an apartment that will be 50 square meters. I will actually have a living room all to my own. I can plug my consoles into an actual big TV instead of one shared with my computer. I can’t wait!

Next week I don’t really have anything special planned. There is a friend coming over on Saturday but that’s it. With some luck work will be less busy aswell and I can actually use Thursday to rest up and relax instead of going into town and driving through half the country. I probably have some time to actually dive into games a bit more than last week and I hope I can get a little bit more done in FFXIV and maybe Yo-Kai Watch. I will definitely finish off Botanicula. Point and click adventures are a very nice way to relax after a long day of work, so I can see myself finishing it in an evening or maybe two.

All in all I don’t have that much to say today. I’m in a very relaxed mood. It’s nice and quiet in the house and outside (although people are coming home as we speak). My room is cleaned, laundry is done. Fresh bedsheets and a clean pajama are waiting on me when I’m going into bed tonight. All in all I feel content today. I hope I can take this feeling with me the coming week.