Sunday Summary: Jan 29-Feb 4

I wanted to blog yesterday about some of the issues I have with WiiU games being ported en masse to the Switch. However because of a hiccup with my host my blog wasn’t accessible so I’ll save that particular post for a later date.

Alpha

I’ve had a quite productive week this week, both in and outside of gaming.
I’d like to start off with my real life endeavours because they are much more important, and interesting, than my gaming ones. So this week I finally was able to fix the last things for Uni and I can finally apply for my Master’s degree now, making me an official MSc! It’s taken me a while and some of the things weren’t necessarily my fault. For instance I handed in my Master’s thesis at the end of November (November 27th to be exact). It took untill December 20th to get my grade for that and then it took my Uni untill January 25th (YES THAT LONG!) to actually submit the grade into the system. It’s all been a very frustrating ride, especially since I knew I had to switch Master tracks because I accidentally entered the wrong track in September. Yeah that was my own fault. However this has been solved and after a very, very, very long wait I can finally say I’m done with that. So big party for me! Sort of. I guess I’ve celebrated by getting the Battle for Azeroth pre-order. I’ve also been working a bit more this week and it’s been a bit of a weird week over there. Basically I’m still uncertain what will happen to the department where I work for. I have a contract untill July 1st and no idea how things will look after that. I’ve also talked to my interim manager a bit and she’s given me some advice when it comes to improving my communication skills. I will take this advice to heart, especially when I may be in the position where I have to apply for another job. All in all I’ve had some breakthroughs this week on a personal level and for the first time in ages I finally feel at ease.

In games I’ve been mostly bouncing back and forth between FFXIV and World of Warcraft. I’ve been leveling my Summoner aswell as trying to unlock all the 4.2 content. I’ve played through the mainstory quest and I have the quests to unlock the new ex-roulette dungeons. I’ve also unlocked the first part of Sigmascape but I don’t really feel like queueing up for that just yet. I know I’ll miss out on the first reset of new tomestones but I’m having so much fun on my Summoner that I have a hard time tearing myself away from the leveling stuff.
I’ve also gotten myself the upgraded yellow scrip weapon for Botanist. I’m not actively chasing Botanist and Miner gear but the weekly hand-ins from M’naago allowed me to buy the Botanist weapon and upgrade it in one go.

Windwalker Panda Monk artifact weapon

As a surprise I’ve been spending more time in World of Warcraft that I thought I would.
I’ve unlocked both the Nightborne and Highmountain Tauren and made one of each race on Draenor (my main Horde server). So now I have a Nightborne Warlock and a Highmountain Shaman that are standing by to be leveled somewhere before Battle for Azeroth launches. I’ve also been playing a ton of Warrior just so I can try to get my Argussian Reach and Army of Light rep to exalted. Unfortunately I’m only honored with both so it will take a while yet.
In the screenshot above you see my Monk getting her Windwalker Artifact weapon. A friend of mine is on the same quest as I am: do all class hall campaigns before BfA. He had a level 100 warrior, I had a level 102 Shaman. We’ve decided to team up and right now I’m sitting halfway to level 107 and I should be able to get close to 110 tonight after we finish Stormheim and maybe Highmountain. Playing Monk again has been a blast. Windwalker has turned into a really fun spec to play and I can see myself spending some time on this after I ding 110. Mostly because I really want the awesome Tiger Class mount they get. For now thought I’m slowly working through the Class Hall campaign and hoping I will ding 110 sooner rather than later. Atleast I have a buddy to level with and who boosts my queues since he plays Protection.

Inbetween the leveling frenzy in my MMO’s I’ve also been playing through Yo Kai Watch bit by bit. I’m about 7 hours into the mainstory now and I feel like I’ve only started to scratch the surface. It’s a more in-depth game than I imagined and much less of a Pokémon clone than I thought it would be. I’m still not really sold on the whole battle mechanics but the story is nice and I find myself returning to it again and again. It also helps that I can play it in short bursts on the train.

All in all I’ve had a nice week. I made progress in real life things. I gamed quite a lot. I’ve been trying to be more healthy. I’ve tasted sushi for the first time and I’m having fun playing WoW again. The only thing to make this even better if I can find some time to play either my WiiU or Switch a bit. Maybe next week.

Gaming Goals: February 2018

Sylyndra: Nightborne Warlock

Yesterday I caved and pre-ordered Battle for Azeroth. Unfortunately for me I could only unlock the Horde Allied races since I’ve not earned the proper achievements for the Alliance ones. This will be something on the list as goal in February, but I will talk about that a bit later on.
Lets look back at what I’ve done in January first!

  • In World of Warcraft I’ve gotten my Warrior to Prestige level 2, finally unlocking the PvP skins for my Artifact weapons. So goal done! I’ve also finished the Argus campaign (well technically I finished it today, but I’ll count it!) so goal done! I’ve cleared Tomb of Sargeras on LFR, but unfortunately didn’t clear Antorus. I’ve done the first wing but stalled out after.
    I’ve not touched my Paladin at all this month and I think it’s a bit of a shame. However with little time to play I would rather focus on getting everything done on my Warrior that I want done so I’m not too disappointed by the whole not attaining goals on Paladin.
  • In Final Fantasy XIV I’ve leveled both my Miner and Botanist to level 70, so goals done! I’ve also brought up Fisher to 44 but kind of stalled out there. Instead of piddling around on my Machinist I’ve been leveling my Summoner. She’s currently level 63 and going to 70 slow and steady.
  • In other games I’ve not touched Xenoblade Chronicles at all unfortunately. I’ve been strangely captured by Yo Kai Watch 2 though and am slowly making my way through that game as we speak. I’m about 7 hours in and probably halfway through the story. I’ll see where that takes me.
  • In non gaming goals I have read “The Wise Man’s Fear” so goal done! I didn’t however manage to finish off Lie to Me or watch the new season of Black Mirror.

I managed to strike off a few things off the list for January for which I’m grateful. I didn’t accomplish everything I hoped I would but I’m getting there. Slow and steady. I did a bit more than I planned to do in FFXIV and a bit less in WoW. Let’s see how this balances out in February.

  • In FFXIV I’d like to get my Summoner/Scholar to 70. I also want to unlock and experience all the 4.2 content. I also want to nudge Fisher closer to 70 and, if I get Summoner up quick turn my attention back to Machinist to get another class to 70. I may also want to power my Black Mage to level 60 purely so I can get rid of the heinous level 50 casting set I currently run with.
  • In WoW I want to get Exalted with the Argussian Reach and Army of the Light on my Warrior so I can unlock the Alliance allied races. I also want to clear out my questlog and do the Antorus raid in LFR. I may want to level my Shaman a bit so I can start working through another class campaign, but I’ll see. Again this depends on the time I have available to me.
  • In other games I want to continue playing Yo Kai Watch and hopefully finish off the mainstory. I may dabble in Breath of the Wild aswell seeing as I have reconnected my WiiU.
  • In the non-gaming world I want to focus on getting back into shape again. My goal for this month is to lose atleast 2 kilograms (4 pounds ish). I am quite overweight for my length and I’m starting to feel the necessity to slim down again. Eventually I want to drop 15 kilograms (30 pounds ish) this year. If I can attain 2 kilograms per month I should be on this goal somewhere at the end of the summer. Hopefully it will go a bit faster than that though.

Again I’m making small goals for February. With work being crazy stressful I just don’t know how much time I will actually have to game, seeing as I tend to fall asleep when I get home. Most of my progress will come from days off and during weekends, which are also days where I have to do chores or make appointments. So yeah, my actual game time isn’t actually that much.
I guess we’ll see how far I’ve come when it’s February 28th.

Sunday Summary: Jan 22-Jan 28

I’ve been doing some new things since the new year that I’m very pleased with. One of them is stop eating at restaurants when I’m actually full. I used to eat untill my plates were empty, three courses long, because I felt it would be a waste of money otherwise. Now not only do I feel the need to empty out the table/plates, I also don’t order three courses anymore. I feel like it’s much worse to come home after having a really lovely night and spend the time in bed in agony because of feeling nauseous or having stomach cramps from overeating.
Another thing I’ve been doing is taking general notes of what I’ve been up to during the week so I can translate that into a blogpost. Most of these things tend to be gaming related, since this is a gaming blog after all, but I also take note of significant real life things so I can incorporate that into my Sunday Summaries aswell.

So without further ado, what have I been up to this week?

In MMOs
I’ve been leveling a lot in both World of Warcraft and Final Fantasy XIV. After dinging my Miner 70 I’ve picked up Fisher and leveled it up to level 44 this week. I’ve hit a bit of a rough patch, namely the 35-45 levels but I hope I can get through that next week and push my Fisher up to level 50 atleast. From what I can tell the level 45-50 bit is already less painful and in Heavensward if you just fish for the Leves the leveling shouldn’t be too bad either.
Since I got a bit bored with Fisher though I’ve turned my attention to some battle classes again, and mostly Summoner. When I picked her up this week she was sitting just shy of level 59. Right now I’m halfway through level 62 and steadily making my way towards level 70. As added bonus my Scholar automatically levels along with it, meaning that when I do hit 70 all my Healing classes will be max level. When I’ve had some downtime inbetween running roulettes and beast tribe dailies I’ve picked up my Black Mage to run some Palace of the Dead. She’s currently level 51 and I really want to get her to 60 fast so I can get rid of the level 50 set. All in all I feel like I’m picking up the pace of leveling in FFXIV again and this makes me very happy. However this week also marked the official death of my static group, meaning I probably won’t raid in the next patch. Or atleast not cutting edge. I will probably try to pug some groups and see how that turns out. For now though my focus is on leveling mostly.
In World of Warcraft I’ve not done that much. I’ve been doing some dailies on my Warrior and logged my Paladin here and there. I didn’t even do any of the Timewalking Dungeons yet this time around and I’m not sure if I will before reset. I have however picked up leveling my Shaman again and she’s currently sitting on level 102… Where I’ve stalled out due to having to do the quest for the Enhancement and Restoration Artifacts. I know I will have to bite the bullet at some point and I probably will… If only to be able to continue with the Class Hall Campaign.

In Other Games
I’ve not played that much outside of my MMO’s to be honest with the exception of Yo Kai Watch 2. Even then I’ve spent maybe 2.5-3 hours playing it so it’s not that big of a deal. However in console land there have been some changes. I picked up the N2DSXL Pikachu edition which has gotten me more hooked than I would have initially thought. Maybe it’s also nice to not have a home menu littered with games that are distracting and maybe it’s due to the fact that it’s new and I adore it but I’ve been spending all my Yo Kai Watch time on that handheld as opposed to my 3DS. It’s also because I have to change the system language to English to be able to play it properly (Yo Kai Watch in Dutch is awful) and I don’t want to switch back and forth on my main handheld all the time. Making this Pikachu edition an ideal middle ground.
I’ve also taken the time to reinstall my WiiU. It’s currently sitting in a corner of my room, close to a power outlet, and I’m planning to mostly play on the gamepad. Seeing as I like lounging on bed in the evening anyway it’s a perfect solution and I will finally get to work on that backlog a bit, starting with Breath of the Wild.

In Real Life
It’s been a busy week for me last week when it came to real life stuff. They have officially started building the apartment complex where I will be living on Wednesday and they had a special event with all the buyers of the apartments. It was a nice little gathering, slightly ruined by the rainy weather. We’ve buried a treasure chest with messages from people in it so that when these apartments eventually get torn down and they start digging they’ll find messages from 2018. I loved the idea and my message is certainly in there.
On Friday after work we had a dinner with the department and a ton of ex-colleague’s as a sort of goodbye for everyone who left the past 6 months. It was also the official goodbye dinner for my old manager. We had a really nice evening filled with good Mexican food and laughter and afterwards a few of us relocated to a bar to have some drinks. We all greatly enjoyed seeing eachother again and we’re planning on making these dinners a bi-annual thing. Just to see eachother again, hear what everyone is up to and because we have such an amazing atmosphere in this team it’s really a joy to meet with them.
This also meant I was home late and quite exhausted. I wouldn’t have missed it for the world though.
As for the weekend. I’ve been doing my usual chores and I’ve written down my planning for next week. I’ve gotten a bunch of gaming magazines from one of my ex-colleagues on Friday and I’ve been reading them aswell. Other than that I’m following the LCS and am slowly picking my way through all the things I own and cleaning them out. It’s an ongoing project and one that needs doing because 1: I own too much stuff and 2: I don’t know where half of the stuff I own is. It also helps me in narrowing down the stuff I still need to buy in the coming year for my apartment, so it’s a win/win situation overall.