Tag Archives: WoW

Enjoying the casual

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One of the best things I’ve done so far is stop being commited to a steady raiding crew or group in World of Warcraft and/or Final Fantasy XIV. Although I really enjoyed raiding a lot, and still do up to a point, I just can’t really set aside multiple nights a week for it anymore. When I come home from work I want to be able to sit down and relax, not rush my dinner and showers because a group of 7 or more people are waiting for me to show up. I guess it comes with being an adult and having a fulltime job. I guess it also comes with having raided on and off since 2008 and at some point you’ve kind of seen it all. Even though the developers think of new and interesting mechanics every raid boils down to the same thing: don’t die and make sure you get the boss’ health to 0. And then pray for loot. It’s a gameplay loop that I’m not really interested in anymore. I rather see a raid for the story once and then move on.

Not commiting to raiding has allowed me to enjoy my evenings my own way and has allowed me to take up other projects like leveling all my battle jobs to 70 in FFXIV or chasing after all the Mage Towers in WoW a year ago. Content I enjoyed way more than the raids of Legion. Not being committed has also made me feel less guilty for not logging into games. No one is pressuring me to stay on top of gearing, I don’t have to keep playing to not get sloppy on my classes. I don’t have to log on constantly to stay on the curve. If I don’t want to log on I don’t. If I do log on and decide to spend my time just running around leveling an alt then that’s fine aswell. I have no expectations from others, only the ones that I put on myself.

Not pushing myself to participate in the gearing/raiding loop also exposes how much stuff there is actually to do in an MMO. There are various collections to attend to like mounts, minions and glamour/transmog gear. There’s achievements to be had that come from all types of content. On WoW for instance while I was leveling I made it my mission to complete the “Kill all rares” achievement for zones, or atleast get as close as I possibly can. In FFXIV there’s achievements for logging/mining/fishing X amount of times in a zone. There’s achievements to craft all items available for a given profession. There’s sightseeing, PvP, FATE’s and more. I could choose to lose an hour of my time logging into all my high level characters in WoW and just kill Onyxia over and over again untill she drops her mount, which is the last one I’m missing for an achievement. I could head back to old raids alone or with a friend to get gear for transmogging or to just get achievements and mounts that I’ve missed over time. I could farm ponies, birds and dogs in FFXIV or I could pursue the Big Game Fishing quests and related achievements. All of this these things are obviously designed to make you log back in again and again. When I was raiding that was the thing that kept me coming back and now it’s all the other stuff I can do.

Next to opening up MMO content I’m also free to just drop my MMO’s altogether when a game like Kingdom Hearts 3 comes out and play that instead. There’s more time for other (single player) games, there’s more time for shows and books and other hobbies. I don’t have to stay up until X time because the raid isn’t over yet. I can keep my own sleep schedule going and decide for myself if I’m going to call it an early night or not. All because I choose to be commitment free when it comes to games. All because I choose to be a “filthy casual” as some people would say. Do I miss raiding? Do I miss interacting with a group of people on a regular basis? The answer to both of those swings between absolutely and not at all. Do I feel bad for giving it up? Never. I’m going to stay casual for as long as I want to and enjoy time the way I want to spend it.

A final note. The screenshot at the start of my post doesn’t begin to do justice to the gorgeous game that is Kingdom Hearts 3. But it’s pretty nonetheless so I felt the need to share it here.

Almost done

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This screenshot basically means the end of the level 50-60 journey for Samurai. As of right now I’m sitting at level 63 so I hope to be done with my big level journey by next weekend. Samurai is finally starting to click as I level up, so I’m having way more fun already. This also means I will have all my battle jobs to level 70 then and I can breathe easier untill the next expansion drops somewhere (probably) in June. It also means that I have been able to rid my bags of most of my leveling gear with only a few 60-70 Striking pieces remaining. It’s going to be so satisfying to go down to only seven gear sets in my bag total instead of the scattering of gear that I’ve been holding on to all this time. All things said and done the end of this project is in sight and then it’s time for me to focus on other aspects of the game and other games aswell.

As of right now I spend most of my evenings running every roulette possible, doing beast tribe dailies and working my way through the daily hunting logs just to push up my alt jobs to 70 as fast as possible. This usually takes about 2-3 hours of my evening meaning I rarely have time to play or do something else. When I finally reach that final job to 70 I’m going to dial back on FFXIV a lot. The plan is to log in and get capped on tomes throughout the week on my White Mage so I can continue the story and level up the itemlevel on that job. I want to finish up all the sidequests that I missed aswell but I’m going to turn that into a weekend-only type of engagement because then I just simply have more time. As for the leveling… Now that I’ll be done with battle jobs I’m probably going to turn my attention to my crafters. I don’t want to put in tons and tons of effort there so it will boil down to just doing beast tribe dailies every day. I see a lot of Ixali quests in my immediate future. I may do some Grand Company deliveries when I feel like it but for now it’s just going to be dailies all the way. With this I’m hoping to cut down my FFXIV times to around 45 mins to 1 hour a day at most. This leaves me with a ton of room to focus on other games and with Kingdom Hearts 3 dropping next week I think it’s the perfect time to focus on that in February.

I’ve been finding my way back into Azeroth, spurred on by reconnecting with some online friends and some IRL friends jumping back into the game. For now I’m keeping it very casual, just playing an hour here and there. I’m character hopping a lot and am currently bouncing back and forth between leveling my Nightborne Mage (77) my Void Elf Hunter (25) and my Alliance Demon Hunter (101). I have a vague idea of what I want to do in the game and leveling Allied races is a part of it. It’s just really nice to be able to log on, play for an hour or so and log off again. There’s no pressure and there’s people to talk to so that’s always nice. In that hour I can fit in a dungeon and some casual leveling in zones I enjoy. I’ve gone to Sholazar Basin on my Mage and am now roaming around in Nagrand in the hopes of getting to 80 in the next week or so. That will enable me to jump to Mount Hyjal and from there probably one of the Pandaria zones although I enjoy Deepholm aswell. All this leveling just to unlock the Heritage Armour and the accompanying achievement. And all only as long as I’m enjoying myself.

As for the rest.. I’m currently so focused on just pushing through in FFXIV that I’ve sadly not really felt like playing anything else. I pushed through the sixth gym in Pokémon LetsGO a while ago and need to go back and beat a ton of trainers but haven’t really done that yet. I haven’t even touched the second Spyro game unfortunately and I don’t think I will this month because I’m going to be too busy losing myself in KH3 in a week. So even though I’m happy with the major progress I’ve made in FFXIV, I’ve kind of ignored the other games that were on my “to play” list this month. I hope I can spend a bit more time in Pokémon letsGO over the weekend as I finish off leveling Samurai though and see how far I’ll get.

Goals: January 2019

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After my big yearly look forward post here comes the smaller monthly one. I’ll keep it short and sweet.

My Gaming Goals

  • Level Dark Knight to 70 in FFXIV and complete all Job quests
  • Level Samurai to 70 in FFXIV and complete all Job quests
  • 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

I want to finish off the big level race I started somewhere in October. I only have Dark Knight (lvl 55) and Samurai (lvl 50) left and I’m positive I can level up both jobs before the end of January. Blue Mage will get introduced into the game aswell and if I finish up leveling these last two jobs I will probably have a jab at that. I still have my leveling buddy for most evenings so chatting away while we do roulettes should, in theory, make time fly by.
As far as the Nintendo and Playstation games of the month go I gave myself some slack to get started on this. I’m well over halfway in the Pokémon game and Spyro shouldn’t take me more than 10-15 hours to complete just like the first game.

Other Goals

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

I’ve started reading Roger Daltrey’s autobiography and I want to finish it this month. My dad is an avid Who fan and has ingraineed this into me growing up. The book is actually a quite fun read and I am zooming through it with relative ease. I highly recommend people to read it if you have any affiliation with the Who as band.
A show that has been on my radar for a while now is Luther. I’ve never actively followed it when it was being broadcast over the past few years but now it’s on Netflix I may aswell watch what they have to offer. I am planning to watch all seasons this month simply because they don’t have that many episodes so this should be a walk in the park.

I could end up doing more than is on my goals list since I’m giving myself a lot of slack this month but who knows. Maybe this month will be busier for me than I think in advance.

Looking Forward: 2019

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2018 is at an end and 2019 has started. The year has flown by with me accepting a new job, watching my house get built, ramping up my working hours and finally getting the contract I was hoping for. I’d say 2018 has been a quite succesful year on many fronts and I hope to carry this positivity over into 2019 in both my real life and the gaming world.
I don’t really want to make a big “look back” post but instead a big “look forward” one with what I hope to accomplish in 2019.

First off: Live a more healthy and happy lifestyle
I am the first one to admit that I’m lazy. I don’t really enjoy working out and any task I do I will take the route of the least amount of effort. It’s been eating away at me so I want to start changing this step by step so I will be calmer, healthier (both physically and mentally) and more ready to take on life and anything it throws at me. Starting now I’m going to work on the following things:

  • Seriously start losing weight. Right now I weigh in around 81kg (178,5lbs) and I want to drop down to 55kg (121lbs). This is my ideal weight and something I want to strive for to achieve and maintain. This means that I will need to really start working out and eat healthier. The second part should get much easier starting in April because by then I will be moving out and will no longer be on the junkfood heavy diet my dad maintains in his household.
  • Take better care of my skin. I have seriously dry skin almost all of the time. I tend to slack with maintaining skincare and it’s something I should step up on.
  • Plan my days better at work and at home. I tend to take things as they come which means I’m very disorganized. I want to plan my days better so that I know what I want to do on set days. It’s a way to optimize my use of time but also to help me create order in the chaos that is my brain.
  • Learn to do more with make-up and hair. Right now I basically wear mascara and do nothing with my hair except brush it. I want to do more and have different looks for myself. I like looking the best I can so I want to make work of that.

Secondly: Have a succesful move into my own home
In April it’s finally happening, I’m moving into my first self-owned home. This requires preparation on multiple fronts. I need to pick out all the furniture that goes in aswell as start sorting through my stuff here at home. Anything that I deem I don’t need anymore will either go into the trash (when it’s broken, discoloured or just plain too old), donated to either goodwill or friends or maybe sold when it still fetches a decent price. I want to take a few hours per week to focus on this and leave behind as little as possible when I move out.
Ofcourse I’m also planning a few days to pick out furniture, curtains and other necessary stuff aswell as look at insurances, internet providers and electricity companies. All in all I have a very busy time ahead with this.

Books, series and other hobbies
I want to make a goal to read atleast one book a month. I’ve set up a goodreads account and will enter this goal there aswell. I’m probably going to be focused on the Robin Hobb books for completing this but it’s whatever tickles my fancy really.
The same goes for series. I want to watch more Netflix just so I can justify paying for it. I want to discover new shows and movies and maybe blog about those a bit instead of games.
Finally I want to pick up embroidery again and finish a few pieces that I’ve started. I want to assemble all the Nintendo Labo stuff that I bought and be more creative with things in general.

Games
This is where the big focus lies beyond trying to change my lifestyle. There are a few major goals to be had for me this year:

  • In FFXIV I want to level all the available jobs to 70 before the expansion hits early summer. I only have two battle jobs left and then it’s focusing on crafters. I’d really like to be able to just dump all my old gear before the new expansion so I will probably focus a lot on this particular goal for the first six months of this year.
  • In WoW I want to play with my friends and help them at endgame. I want to level atleast one Allied Race to max level on Alliance Side and I want to give my Warrior the love she deserves. I’m sure I will post smaller goals for WoW throughout the year but the big one is to just connect and have fun with people again.
  • Nintendo: I want to pick one game per month on one of my Nintendo consoles to play through. This can be on my 3DS, Switch or WiiU. I own so many games spread across those three systems now that I just really want to start tackling the backlog. For the first few months it’s going to be either a Switch or 3DS game since my WiiU is not plugged in but after I move I want to add the WiiU to the rotation. This means I want to have atleast 12 Nintendo based games finished by the end of the year.
  • PS4: Same as Nintendo really. I want to pick one PS4 game per month to play through and hopefully end the year on 12 games finished. When it comes to games like Spyro or Crash Bandicoot I’m not counting the entire trilogy as one game but the games in the trilogy as separate games.

With bouncing back and forth between two MMO’s and taking a serious jab at my backlog I feel I should have enough material to write about each month and finally feel like I’m getting my money’s worth out of my backlog.

All of these goals will help me get a more structured year in where I can actually tell peple that I’ve made progress in life. I want 2019 to be the year where I become a better version of myself both online and offline. I want to get stuff done and I want to aim for happiness.
And I have 365 to accomplish this.

Pokémon Holidays

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So Christmas came and went and it left me with a nice sore throat. It’s not a constant painful feeling but whenever I yawn, cough, sneeze or swallow it kinda hurts. Unfortunately no pain meds will actually work so I’m just going through the motions and waiting till it subsides on its own. This ofcourse has sparked some arguments at home because “oh my god why don’t you just take pain meds even though you said three times over they don’t work”. Apparently hearing her own opinion is more important than my autonomy over what actually goes into my body. I’m so happy to be moving out in less than four months.

Now onto the fun stuff! Due to being “forced” to socialize I’ve actually gotten a lot of time into Pokémon LetsGO during the 25th and the 26th. Apparently being social just means being physically present and not actually engaging with people so that’s fine by me. As you can see in the above picture I’m past Lavender Town and the Pokémon tower. I really wanted to screenshot this moment because I think it’s rather beautiful and a good indication of the storytelling in Pokémon LetsGO. Even though I’ve played through Kanto multiple times and can dream up the story by now I’m still quite surprised by how much I actually enjoy this installment.
Right now I’ve beaten Gym number 5 and am working my way to number 6 while catching as many Pokémon as I can along the way. Partially to start filling up my Pokédex and partially to help level up my existing team. I’m rolling with Eevee, Alakazam, Pidgeot, Venusaur, Charizard and Blastoise right now and I’m fine with that setup. I may actually ditch either Pidgeot or Alakazam at some point for the Dratini evolutions but all in all I’m happy with the team I now have. Even though I didn’t plan to play as much Pokémon as I have I atleast made a decent few steps in the game and am every so slowly moving towards the endgame.
Next to this I’ve also picked up Pokémon Go again. I don’t really walk around with my phone much but I make sure to catch atleast a Pokémon every day and spin a stop since I can do both from the comfort of my own home. I should probably go out more but my phone is in a state where I can’t put too much strain on it or the battery will just run dry, even after replacing it. I’m patiently waiting to move out before buying a new phone though because right now getting furniture for my house is more important than a new phone.

I’ve also poked my head back into WoW on Christmas Day. I opened the yearly Winter’s Veil gifts and set out to do the two scenario’s I wanted to do: Tyrande’s Ascension and the complimentary black Night Elf eyes and the Blood Elf Heritage quests as pictured above.
I like having a bit more lore to chew through and I was pretty engaged with both activities. The Blood Elf heritage quest is rather interesting. It basically tells you about the fall of the High Elf empire by the hands of Arthas and the subsequent loss of Sylvanas Windrunner, Anasterian Sunstrider and the Sunwell. It also shows you why the Sunwell was destroyed and the impact it had on the society. I’m pretty chuffed with the racial armor aswell so all in all that questline was a positive experience for me.
I really enjoyed Tyrande finally taking destiny in her own hands aswell. It’s been a long time coming that the Night Elves start to kick ass again and I’m happy to see the no-nonsense that is now empowered Tyrande + Malfurion. I really hope Blizzard can somehow maintain this storytelling and I’m quite curious where the Night Elf story goes after this.
I also have to report that playing on Draenor and Silvermoon, two of the biggest EU servers, has become an absolute pain in the ass due to extreme server lag. I’m thinking about going back to Dragonblight and my Warrior partly because it’s simply less laggy there and partly because I have some friends coming back to WoW and their characters are there. I guess I’ll see.

On the FFXIV front progress has been slow but steady. My monk is probably going to ding 67 tonight or tomorrow morning and I’ll hopefully be 70 somewhere during this weekend. This means I only have my Dark Knight and Samurai left to level. With Blue Mage supposedly coming out on January 15th I can see myself picking that one up after finishing off the traditional jobs. All that remains after is clearing out all the outstanding endgame quests, gear up my White Mage (and possible other jobs) and start leveling my crafters. All in all I still have plenty to do in FFXIV and I’m sure I will carry on the playing streak well into 2019. All in all I’m getting some good game time in during my holidays. Now I just need to find some time to fit in FFXV…

End of Year Goals

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As October is drawing to an end I find myself back in the world of Eorzea. World of Warcraft is slowly going on the backburner. I raid, I do my Emissaries but that’s it. My interest in the game is at an all time low and I mostly keep playing because of friends. One of whom is quitting at the end of the year himself and the rest are slowly burning out on the game aswell. So as my interest in one MMO wanes the other one waxes. I feel the motivation to level so much that I’ve managed to push my Black Mage from level 60 to level 63 in a single day. I’ve done every single roulette available, did my beast tribe dailies, caught up on all the job quests for Black Mage and dove headfirst into the Hallow’s Eve event.

All in all it feels good to be back in Eorzea. Good enough to set a rather ambitious “end of year” goal for this game. As you may have seen throughout the year I’ve been leveling my classes on and off. Right now I’m only missing seven more battle jobs at level 70, six of which are melee/tanks and one caster (the Black Mage in question). My goal for the end of the year is to have all of them at level 70 so that I can finally get rid of any sub level 70 gear from my bags. It’s a rather ambitious project seeing as I’d almost have to level a job per week to get this far. Add to that the fact that five out of the seven jobs I’d still need to level hover around level 50, meaning I’d have to do 20 levels instead of 10. The one big advantage is that I’ve saved my Tanks for last. They have the fastest queues thus probably the easiest time leveling out of all the jobs. As it stands I’m planning to level via Roulettes, Beast Tribe dailies and Palace of the Dead/Heaven on High. It’s the most reliable way to get experience fast and I should have the time to do this six out of seven days per week. I’m raiding in WoW on Wednesdays so that evening is kind of off limits.

Right now my progress is as followed:

  • Black Mage: 63
  • Dragoon: 60
  • Monk: 53
  • Warrior: 53
  • Paladin: 50
  • Dark Knight: 50
  • Samurai: 50

This is also the order I’m planning to level these classes in. I hope to have my Black Mage to level 70 somewhere next week so I can start working on Dragoon, which I’ll probably mostly play on my Playstation aswell as Monk. For some reason they just play better on a controller than on keyboard+mouse. As for my tanks, I’ll probably switch that up between PS4 and PC since I don’t really mind playing them on either. Samurai is going to be dead last purely because it’s the only job I’ve not properly played thus I will probably have to figure out how it works when I start leveling. I already apologize to the random groups that get my Samurai slotted in, I’m probably going to be terrible at it. Just like I’m slightly terrible at Black Mage, hence I just want to get that job out of the way as soon as possible. That it will also grant me the “Goddess of Magic” title is, of course, a bonus.

My ambitions for FFXIV don’t stop here however. Next to having my Armoury Chest cluttered with various sets of battle gear it’s also filled to the brim with gathering and crafting gear of different levels. That will be my big goal for the New Year: level up all my remaining Crafting and Gathering jobs. I have Botanist, Miner and Weaver at 70 so I can cross atleast three of the jobs off my list already. What remains is scattered between level 21 (Alchemist) and level 44 (Fisher). I’m planning to level up my Crafters simultaneously, meaning I want to get them all to level 30 and then all to level 40 and level 50 and so on. Ofcourse once I hit level 50 and can start doing Beast Tribe dailies and handing in deliveries things will speed up quite a bit. I’ll be quite happy to get to that point though, because the pre-50 grind is still agony.

For now though it’s running Roulettes and hoping I don’t get shitty fights on my Black Mage.

Getting Exalted

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I’ve been dutifully slaving away at my reputations on my Rogue the past month and it has finally paid off. I’m now officially exalted with all the Island Reputations in Battle for Azeroth AND the 7th Legion. Which means I’ve unlocked all the magnificent horse mounts Alliance gets and the Dark Iron Dwarves as playable race.

The Dark Iron scenario was fun. I got sent to Blackrock Depths, Molten Core and Firelands and the story surrounding that was okay. I don’t want to spoil much more than that because other people may still need to unlock this particular race. I also immediatly made a Dark Iron Shaman to play, although I don’t think I will be leveling her anytime soon. It’s nice to see she’s there on my character list though. Even though I don’t particularly enjoy the Dwarves as a race the Dark Irons are a bit more badass and thus I’m okay with leveling and playing one at some point in the future.

With these reputations maxed out I’ve been making a few big steps on my goals for this month. I only have the Tortollan Seeker and Champions of Azeroth reputations to go, for both I’m about 6000 reputation away from Exalted. Again I’m in no real rush to see this finished purely because getting those particular reputations to Exalted doesn’t net anything extra. My Paladin is doing well. We’ve been slowly pushing our way through heroic Uldir and are now sitting at 5/8 bosses cleared. Zul proves to be a real pain in the ass though so hopefully we can get some progress on him next week. Other than that I’ve not really made major progress in WoW. I’ve been cutting down on the number of hours I play the game and instead am opting into reading more and watching shows on Netflix.

All in all I’m starting to notice that my interest in WoW in general is slowly starting to fade. I still play and I still raid but I notice that my interests are declining. Battle for Azeroth isn’t as fun as expansion as Legion was with little to no incentive to level alts and no real endgame besides grinding Mythic+ and doing your Emissary quests. I’ve noticed that farming transmogs is being made difficult by the Legacy Loot mode system and farming anything else just takes up way too much time. Right now I’m mostly logging in to just get my Emissaries done and that’s it. Maybe it’s just a temporary slump untill I figure out what exactly it is I want to do in this game. Maybe it’s a build up to a longer break where I step away from MMO’s in general. I guess only time will tell.

My Own Plan

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Looking out over Tiragarde Sound

It’s been a bit of an odd week for me. I found myself slipping back into casual raiding on my Paladin. At the same time I’ve been trying to take a bit more distance from WoW and immerse myself a bit more into FFXIV, single player games and making sure that I have a healthy sleep schedule. I’m aiming to be in bed by 23.00 every night except Saturday because obviously I have a bit more time to sleep in over the weekend and as far as things go I notice that It’s having a good effect on my general mood.

The lack of clear focus in my MMO’s has me reconsidering what I want to do in them for the rest of the year. In FFXIV I’m quite certain that it boils down to leveling as many classes as I can. I’m slowly bumping up my Black Mage, while also catching up on gear with my White Mage. Unlocking Heaven on High, the Stormblood version of Palace of the Dead, will help me a lot with my leveling ambitions and will provide me with decent weapons for all my jobs. Being able to tick of level 70 on my remaining jobs will be very satisfying and I’m not really looking into doing anything else there right now.
Well that’s not completely true. I’m also busy unlocking any content that I may have missed from this patch and the last while supporting Doma with the rebuilding of the Enclave. Seeing that city grow and getting all the cutscenes has been very fun and satisfying. Plus it’s a gil income that I can definitely use.

In WoW my focus is slowly shifting away from traditional progress (raids and dungeons) and more to personal progress. I’m working on getting the BfA reputations Exalted on my Rogue while also completing the Battle for Azeroth achievements that are easy to obtain. This means I’m wandering around the world a lot looking for items, treasure chests and creatures to kill. I’m also slowly picking up the transmog farm again and have been running the T11 and Wrath of the Lich King raids to complete or start working on transmog sets. This has led me to discover that the Legacy Loot rules are atrocious and I’d much rather Blizzard reimplement the old way of running outdated content with group loot and a need/greed system for when you buddy up. Nonetheless I’ve been able to obtain a complete T11 set on my Paladin and one of the pets from the Raiding with Leashes IV achievement. I’ve stated earlier that I want to make an effort to level up one of the Allied races but for now that’s a weekend only project. I want to narrow my scope to my Paladin and Rogue mostly so that I don’t get overwhelmed with content and to make sure that I don’t spend too much time playing this game when I could be doing something else. This also means putting my Mythic+ ambitions on the backburner, but honestly with how the game plays right now I’m alright with that. Trying to get a weapon upgrade for my Protection spec has been atrocious and I’m not really content with the whole way Azerite Gear works either. So I don’t want to put too much energy into it where I can use it on things that are more important.

In real life I’ve gotten some very good news from my job. Up untill now I’ve been working as a “temp”. The rules are a bit confusing here in the Netherlands but it boils down to whether the company you work for wants to hire you on their own or via a temp agency. A lot of companies work with the latter because it’s easier to fire people that way and because it’s limited. You can only work a maximum of five years for a company via a temp agency after which you’re usually dismissed and have to look for a new job. I’m in my third year right now and didn’t have that much hopes on obtaining a normal contract but my boss surprised me last Friday with the announcement that they are working on it. This means a much better contract for me with a lot more vacation days that I have now (45 vs 20), a bonus that’s decided on how much profit the company makes, an extra month of salary paid with a 1099 nec form generator. Seeing as my current temp contract runs until April 1st next year I’m hoping they’ll transfer me then which would be perfect because it lines up with me moving to my new apartment around that time aswell.

All of this has inspired me to pick up the slack in other areas of my life. I’m eating more healthy (no more candies and crisps) and trying to be more active when it comes to exercising. I’m picking up the courses that I started ages ago again and I’m generally in a more stable and happy mood than I’ve been in a very long time. I’m also trying to be less chaotic at work with how I do my job and be a bit more organized in my private life aswell. I’m going out more and planning a lot of fun things for the coming few months. I’m not quite where I want to be yet, I’m still full focus on losing weight, but my life finally seems to come together slowly. I can’t wait for 2019 and all the amazing things it will bring. I just need to make my own plans and stick to them and I’m positive that things will then work out in my favour.

Gaming Goals: October 2018

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Before I start about what I want to do in October, I want to look back at September first.
I did really well on my goals this month so I hope to be able to push that further!

World of Warcraft

  • Finish off the remaining quests on my Rogue. Done! I have one dungeon quest left and one regular one which I’m not attempting for now.
  • Get my BfA reputations to Exalted on my Rogue. Nope, I’m stuck on Revered on all of them but it’s a work on progress.
  • Finish off the last remaining zone story on my Paladin. Done!
  • Gear my Paladin and get her ready to run Mythic+. Done!
  • Get Alchemy and Engineering to 150 BfA skill. Nope. Stuck on 125 Engi and 118 Alchemy.

Final Fantasy XIV

  • Level my Machinist to level 70 and do all job quests. Done!
  • Level my Weaver to level 70 and do all job quests. Done part one, still need to do 70 job quest.
  • Pick another Battle class to level and pick another crafting/gathering job to level after completing my first two goals. Done! Started leveling my BLM and am going to pick up Carpenter.

Make progress in a single player game and blog about this. Nope unfortunately.

Next to these goals I’ve also started to seriously level an Allied race in WoW with a friend. I’m currently sitting on level 53 on a Nightborne Mage. Even though I’m not in a rush I would like to keep on leveling this character and maybe start leveling another one just so I can unlock all those sweet Heritage Armors.

Now looking forward, what are my goals for October 2018?

World of Warcraft

  • Keep hammering away at the reputations on my Rogue. As you can see in the above screenshot I have them all on Revered atleast and I want to really start getting things to exalted.
  • Clear heroic Uldir on my Paladin. I have a raidteam now so I can see it happening soon.
  • Keep pushing Mythic+ on my Paladin. Not a set goal but I want to start getting higher than +2 and +3.
  • Level my Nightborne Mage. Not sure to what level but I want to keep pushing her up.

Final Fantasy XIV

  • Level my Black Mage to 70 and finish all job quests.
  • Level my Carpenter to 70 and finish all job quests.
  • Work on gearing my WHM
  • Finish up opening up all the content I still have to do.

Other Games

  • Finish one of the three games in the Crash Bandicoot N’Sane Trilogy
  • Make progress in Xenoblade Chronicles 2
  • Make progress in Professor Layton and the Miracle Mask

Again I’m trying to keep my goals decent. The biggest challenge will be leveling my Carpenter in FFXIV since it’s only level 37. I’m pretty sure that once I hit 50 I can easily level it up with collectible hand ins and beast tribe dailies so once I hit that golden mark I’m good. In WoW I’m mostly putting my Rogue on the backburner when it comes to any content but reputation. I’ll probably just make sure I do my Emissaries every day and see from there. I should be able to make it to a few reputations exalted atleast.

 

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I suddenly realized that it’s been 9 days since my last blog post. This has mostly been due to me focusing on other things, mostly games, and also because I didn’t really know what I wanted to write about. Well I do now!

First off, my two weeks of freedom. Unfortunately I’ve not been able to get myself motivated enough to join the gym again. I’m just way too insecure right now and I’m scared that if I go people will laugh at me. Instead I’m opting to cancel my gym membership for the time being and start/continue working out at home. We have a crosstrainer in the attic, I have weights to use for my arms and there’s a mat which I can use to do my exercises in general on. With the weather turning sour aswell this means I won’t have to brave the wind and rain to get to a gym but instead move up a staircase and do my routine there. I’ve printed out some stuff I can do by myself at home and I’m hoping some results will be showing in the coming weeks.
The other thing I wanted to do was eat more healthy and that has been a major success. I don’t have any junkfood in the house anymore and have been eating way more healthy things. I’ve started taking my own lunch to work again and now I’m just scouring a proper container so I can bring some yoghurt with me aswell. Dinner has been veggie filled almost every evening, even the nacho dish I made last night, and I honestly have started feeling much better physically now that I’ve banned all the high fat and sugar foods out of my life.

Unfortunately most of my free time has still been dedicated to playing games although I did make a tiny bit of progress reading my book. I’ve also been cleaning out my room vigorously getting rid of everything I no longer need and just making sure it’s very clean so that my allergies don’t bother me as much as they normally do. I still plan to take up my cross stitching again, maybe this week when I don’t feel like logging into my games.

On the gaming front I’ve actually been making good time on my September Gaming Goals. I’ve ticked off all the World of Warcraft ones except getting my reputations to Exalted and maxing out my Professions. In FFXIV I’ve finished leveling my Machinist and started to level my Black Mage while also doing dailies to get my Weaver up.
The solo game is still a thing I need to work on but I have maybe figured out a way to start tackling my massive backlog. What I’ve been doing is making a top three game list for all my consoles that I really want to finish and then pick one of those three to start working on. Once I’ve gone through the top three I can pick a new top three and just keep on going through my backlog like that.
My top threes currently look like this.
PS4
1. Crash Bandicoot “NSane” Trilogy
2. Horizon Zero Dawn
3. Final Fantasy XV

Switch
1. Xenoblade Chronicles 2 (excluding the Torna DLC).
2. Kirby: Star Allies
3. Octopath Traveler, alteast one chapter 4.

3DS
1. Professor Layton and the Mask of Wonders
2. Dragon Quest VIII
3. Epic Mickey

PC
1. Mickey’s Castle of Illusion
2. Tomb Raider
3. Rayman Origins

As you can see I’ve been trying to mix up RPGs with other genres. Doing RPGs back to back will definitely exhaust me as gamer so I’m trying to break them up as much as possible. As it stands now I’m playing the Professor Layton game on my 3DS during my commute to and from work. This gives me about 30 mins of play time per day, which is actually surprisingly enough time to make some serious strides in a game like this. At home I’m switching back and forth between Xenoblade and Crash Bandicoot, kind of depending what I feel like playing. Even though I’ve only obtained Crash recently it’s one of my top games to finish purely because of the nostalgia hit it provides. As far as the PC games go. I should be able to finish Mickey’s Castle of Illusion pretty fast. It’s a short game so an afternoon and an evening of playing may actually have me finishing this game. Tomb Raider isn’t that long either compared to some of the other RPGs I have on my list, especially Dragon Quest and Xenoblade.

All in all it comes down to me managing my game time better. I block hours to do certain things at work, I may need to start blocking hours for games aswell to get done what I want done. I’ll see. September is slowly crawling to an end and I have about 7 days to work on some of my goals still. See you next post!