Tag Archives: Super Mario Bros

Sun, Games and Planning

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It’s always a sad moment when you find yourself sitting in your room, typing up a blog post when only two days ago you were still enjoying the amazing sun in Lisbon, Portugal. I really wanted to go down to southern Europe for a vacation or citytrip this year. Here in the Netherlands the sun is scarce and temperatures are often cold. We don’t really have a summer to speak of, not in the way southern Europe has so I never really get a chance to tan or enjoy the weather here. So way back in March I decided I wanted to go on a citytrip to Lisbon, dragged a friend along, and there we were.
I have to say it’s a seriously amazing city. The weather was great, even though we had clouds on our second day, the food was good and cheap and the people were nice and all spoke English very well, something a few other countries can learn from *stares at France*. The climate alone has me wanting to go back to Portugal for atleast a proper vacation. It’s a beautiful country and I really want to explore more of it, but that will be something for in the future. Now real life has started back up again and I’m only 4 days off going back to work.

Super Mario Time
I took my 3DS with me to Portugal and managed to get a lot of time to play New Super Mario Bros. 2. As you all may remember, or maybe not, one of my goals for this year was to finish that game since it’s one of the first games I bought with my original 3DS and I never really finished it. So 3 hours back and forth on an airplane would be an ideal time to atleast work through some of the levels… And I have! When I started out a few days ago I was still sitting at the first level of world two, now I’m halfway through world four! Which means I only have two worlds left to complete after this.
I’m not running a perfect game, when the big coins you get in every level are too hard to reach I just skip them, but I do try to obtain them wherever I can. Then there’s the issue of seeing hidden levels and not really knowing how to get there, not even to mention the two complete worlds that you need to access via a special way. I will look up how to get there eventually, but for now I just want to aim to defeat the last boss… And then go back to unlock additional stuff.
Next to Super Mario I’ve also spent a lot of time playing FFXIV. I have unlocked all the patch 3.3 content there is on my Moogle character next to being on time to finish the Golden Saucer event on both my characters. I also dinged my MCH level 50, so I’m quite a way in when it comes to my gaming goals for this month! I even switched over to Monk now and she is sitting at level 42. I hope I can push that to 50 aswell before the end of the month.
All in all my gaming comes along really nicely. Which brings me to my next topic…

Planning my life
I am hopeless when it comes to starting and completing things. A lot of my time is spent either staring into the abyss or lying on my bed feeling tired when I’m home from work. I have real issues deciding what I want to do on any given day, and when I have decided it takes me forever to get my butt into gear and go. I think the foundation of this lies in the fact that I’m a very chaotic person who on top of that is quite unmotivated to do a lot of things. So I decided to set things straight and start using Google Calendar to plan my days and sync said calendar to both my iPhone and my tablet. Although I don’t really plan every minuscule detail for every minute there is a bit more structure to my days now, which allows me to actually get stuff done. As example I “reserved” an hour to blog today (from 10-11am). I probably won’t use the entire hour this time, but sometimes when I have a bit of a writer’s block I do need an entire hour to blog, so that gives me some space to work with. It also helps me settle down and actually write instead of thinking “I should blog sometime today” and then just not do it.
The same goes for planning my gametime. I realise that sitting on my butt and gaming all day on my days off is just as bad as sitting on my butt in the office all day… So I’ve been hacking my gametime into 1 or 2 hour periods inbetween doing other stuff like chores, working out or appointments. I’ve also decided to already fill in those chunks of gametime because I know myself too well. If I don’t plan in advance what game I want to turn my attention to I will never play anything but FFXIV, and that’s seriously a shame. Obviously 1-2 hours isn’t enough to really get into the big RPG’s and thus I’m saving those for the weekends when I have more time to play and I can fill more blocks with one single game. Instead I’m choosing mostly platformers that I want to play and can play for an hour or so and then just shut down without feeling like I should be playing more or that I forget where I was.
This whole system is still more or less in a testing phase, but I do hope that I can start using my time better and actually feel like I’ve accomplished something, instead of now where I wish I had done a lot of things in hindsight.

End of April – Gaming Goals

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We are almost 5 months into 2016 and I’ve decided to look back at the Gaming Goals I’ve set in January and how far I’ve come so far.

In FFXIV I’ve been making steady progress. I’ve leveled up my Bard to 60 and have turned my attention to some other classes aswell. Most notably my Astrologian made it up to level 52 and my Monk will probably sit very close to level 35 today after I’ve done my level and guildhest roulette.
In the old relics department I only really need Scholar. Monk and Warrior done still, which isn’t much at all. I’m planning on picking up Scholar somewhere this week and then it just depends on which classes I level up first to get those last two relics.
Next to my battle classes I’ve also leveled up my Botanist to 52 and I’m slowly but surely leveling up my crafting classes. I expect all of them to be atleast level 20 by the end of the weekend, with currently only Armorsmith and Blacksmith sitting sub level 20. Ixali dailies help a lot with this!

In Blizzard games I’ve opened up another wing of Naxxramas on Hearthstone and I’ve been commited to getting all the card backs for this year, not having missed out on one so far!
I’ve been barely playing Heroes of the Storm though and am unsure if I can make the goal of battling up to rank 1 (or as close as possible).

As far as all the other games go, I’ve only made real progress in Donkey Kong and Mario on my 3DS with finishing the first world in both of those games. All the rest have more or less fallen off the radar since I’ve been purchasing new games that have drawn my attention, like The Division and Ratchet and Clank.

So, what’s in store now?
For this week I really want to finish up a few things on mostly FFXIV. As  said in my previous post I want to get both my Monk and Machinist up to 35, but seeing as that goes a lot faster than I thought I’m adding a bit more gaming goals for this week to close out April with a bang! So here’s a small list of the things I want to work on this week:

  • Level Monk to 35
  • Level Machinist to 35
  • Level Armorsmith to 20
  • Level Blacksmith to 20
  • Complete Scholar Zenith Relic (2.0)
  • Get to and defeat the second Gym in Pokémon Blue (this will be my train game!)

As you can see, enough to do, but not too much for a week. I really hope I can accomplish this all before May 1st, but seeing as I expect to be able to level both the Monk to 35 and the Armorsmith to 20 this weekend it should be more than doable.

 

A New Rythm

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I’m trying to find a new rythm that works for me blogging wise. I’ve figured out that when I postpone my blogging to after dinner I’m often either too tired to blog or I’m being taken up by some sort of game that will last untill I go to bed… Prompting me to forget to blog again.
So today I’ve decided to take the 30 minute window I have untill dinner is ready to blog instead. Seeing as I type fast and I usually know what I want to blog about in advance this should give me plenty of time to put out a post AND make sense.

Evaluating August
First off I want to start with evaluating August as a gaming month for me. I have set some goals and I have attained a few of them:

  • Get rank 20 in Hearthstone. I did this one on two accounts actually. It’s a quick and easy goal and I have to admit that it only took me one evening to do this.
  • Unlock first wing of Naxxramas in Hearthstone. I have defeated all the bosses by now and unlocked some really nice cards. The only thing left open is the Druid Class Challenge which I have some issues with figuring out.
  • Finish the Garrison campaign on my Priest (Sarelly) in WoW. I basically took one evening to just grind out all the quests that were still up in Tanaan. So an easy goal to attain.
  • Level my Draenor Hunter (Aylanna) to level 30. Again, I just put a nice relaxing evening of levelling in and was level 30 before I knew it. I think I’m actually sitting on level 35 right now, without putting in a lot of effort.
  • Finish World 1 in New Super Mario Bros. 2 for my 3DS. Did this one while travelling to a friend. It’s fun to play on the road and I was done with the world before I knew it!
The goals I didn’t attain:
  • All my FFXIV goals. I have barely played FFXIV the past month. I will probably set some new goals for this game, but not as many as in August.
  • My GW2 goals. The moment I got a job I completely stopped playing Guild Wars 2. There’s just not enough hours in the day. I might pick this up when my schedule has a bit more room again.
  • Mickey’s Castle of Illusion Act 2. Same story as GW2. Didn’t look at it at all!
  • Level to 30 on Destiny. I haven’t actually touched my PS4 at all in the past few weeks. I feel so sad! But time is money and all that stuff. Just didn’t really have the time or energy to work on Destiny on top of everything else really.
Project Heroes
I really want to prioritize this project in September. I want to finish up my 100 games on Valla (I’m somewhere around 15 at the moment) and pick up a new champion to master. It will probably be Kharazim, but I’m not 100% sure. For now I will probably make friday night my Heroes night since I have other obligations during the other evenings of the week. Other than that I foresee my schedule getting a bit more room the coming few weeks so I will have a bit more time to play Heroes overall. 
Blogging involvement
Another thing I want to try to do is read more blogs. I’ve really only got 3 on my Feedly at the moment and click on a few posts here and there that interest me, but I would like to get more involved into the blog-o-sphere. There are a fantastic bunch of people involved there and I would really like to be a part of it more than I have been so far. So I will probably be more active on Anook, Twitter and Player.me
As for now I’m wiping my to-do list clean and starting over for September. On which I will post more tomorrow.

Fun in the Sun – Blaugust day 8

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It’s a bit of a slow day today for me. I went out to visit a friend and we went shopping. Or well I went shopping and dragged him along haha. Gaming wise I didn’t do much today. I took my 3DS with me, since I had to be underway for about an hour, and played through the first world of Super Mario Bros!
Another thing on my gaming to do list to scratch off. The problem I have with the Mario Bros game is that you don’t really complete it by just finishing the game. You see every level has three big star coins hidden throughout the level that you need in order to unlock secret bonus levels. I have not been collecting all of them, I’ve been more focused on just playing through the game, but I intend to go back and grab all of them and “finish” the game that way aswell. Some are really impressively hidden so I’m sure it will take me some time to actually find all of them.
And then there are hidden worlds you need to unlock via special cannons… I’ll probably read up on that after I played through the main storyline. Because unlockable content is cool!

Mostly though I’ve enjoyed being outside today, let my skin soak up some vitamin D (ofcourse with sunscreen on) had some nice munchies and generally relaxed before work starts on Tuesday. I have gotten my roster and boy am I in for a treat! I’m starting earlier than expected so I guess I’ll have to get used to getting up at 7, instead of 9.30-10.00 that I’m getting up now. Atleast I’m rostered for 32 hours a week so the pay should be nice. I don’t think I will get much done in the way of gaming though. I expect to be seriously tired and will probably go to bed around 22.00 the first week because I will lack sleep otherwise.

To end the evening, and before heading to bed and completely passing out, I’ve played through some Lara Croft and the Temple of Osiris with a few buddies. It’s a 1-4 player game and it was free through Playstation Plus this month. We quite enjoyed ourselves. I might write about it in a bit more detail today. For now I’m heading to bed.

I know I’m about an hour too late with posting this officially for Blaugust. But it’s still considered to be my post for the 8th!

See you guys tomorrow!

PC Woes and stuff to do! – Blaugust Day 3

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The
Bad
I
had initially planned a post today about how I upgraded to windows 10
last week and how glorious it was running on my pc with no errors at
all. How I had to get used to having the start menu button back,
instead of swiping along the right side of the desktopscreen to get a
popup to shut down my computer. Alas it wasn’t meant to be.
Due
to a critical bug when switching resolutions in a game I had freshly
installed there was a conflict between Windows 10 and my Nvidia
Graphics drivers. I tried reinstalling them after getting my PC to
boot in safe mode (which by the way is almost impossible without a
recovery disc) but to no avail.
Queue
frustrated gamer lady and an unresponsive PC. I have had to reinstall
Windows 8 from scratch (which is the OS it originally came with) and
have spent yesterday evening and today updating everything and
upgrading it to Windows 8.1
Luckily
for me I still have my rusty old laptop. It might not play games, or
run streams but it has open office installed which allows me to type
atleast and a working Mozilla Firefox so I can upload my text into
the Blogger text field. So with no further ado, here is my Blaugust
day 3 post!
The
Fantasy
Due
to my pc issues I finally managed to get some time in on FFXIV again.
I play it on my Playstation 4 but haven’t really done anything with
it after returning home from Sweden. Seeing as I’m way behind on
farming Esoterics already I should be more active about logging in
and getting my cap, but for some reason I don’t really feel the need
to.
Don’t get me wrong, I still enjoy FF as a game immensely. I
love my Dragoon and I’m in the process of levelling up my Bard
(mostly for retainer purposes) and my White Mage because I want a
healer up for shorter queue times. I have always loved the White Mage
more than Scholar, mostly because White Mage reminds me of Holy
Priest. The healing is simple and reactionary, or atleast it was up
untill level 50, and the job gear at the time looked seriously
pretty.
I
think I just need to get back into my routines of doing ex-roulette
and trial roulette for esoterics and low level and guild hest
roulette to level my White Mage.
My
Bard I intend to level on high level roulette and low level hunt
mobs. That should give me enough experience to work my way up to 60
steadily. I’m also really curious about the new Bard abilities. I
have mained the class throughout a chunk of Coil progression and
ranged shooty classes will always have a soft spot in my heart. Hence
my plans to get it to 60 aswell.
The
Gaming Schedule
Seeing
as how I’m starting a new job within a week I have had to think about
making some goals for my gaming and how I’m going to schedule this.
Running roulettes on FFXIV is rather time consuming (it can easily
take two hours) and I don’t want to be spending all my time on that
game alone. So I’ve made a list with gaming goals that’s pinned to a
board and which outlines what I want to work on for now. Seeing as
it’s also more or less one of the writing prompts I’ll share the list
here for now and let you guys know when I have worked through most of
it.
The
List
  • Get esoterics capped
    on FFXIV each week
  • Do Low Level and
    Guildhest roulette on my WHM untill level 50 (current level: 37)
  • 100% Complete Kessex
    Hills on my Ranger in GW2
  • Complete level 20
    personal story on my Ranger in GW2
  • Do Hearthstone Dailies
  • Get Hearthstone Rank
    20
  • Play through Super
    Mario Bos 2. on my 3DS; World 1 to start with
  • Play through Mickey’s
    Castle of Illusion, world 1 and 2 to start with
As you can see the list
mostly involves doing dailies (Hearthstone, FFXIV) and play through
some games I’ve had in my possession for a while now but haven’t
really done anything with. Since platformers are usually no brainers
I figured it’s easier to set goals for them. The gameplay is basic
and usually easy to pick up after not playing a while, unlike RPG’s
where I completely lose track of what I’ve done and what I’m supposed
to do after not logging in for an extended amount of time.
The
Laptop
Seeing as I’m not sure
when my PC will be fully up and running again, and since this used to
be my university laptop and it’s really nice to type on, I might keep
writing my blog posts on here. I can always add screenshots later if
I want (right?) And since it’s a small laptop (Asus Eee-pc) I can
take it with me and work on the road. Win/win! For now it allowed me
to not miss out on day 3 of Blaugust, so we atleast have that.