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February 2023 Goals

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January was all about Elite, Elite, Elite. I didn’t play much else and I defiantly did not write about anything else. Last month I started my career as a Commander, I took a trip out to the Eagle Nebula and found a prison colony, I talked about some third party tools I’ve been using, took a detour to on my way home and stopped at a few more nebulas, and supplied my home station with literal tons of landmines.

Top Played Games of January 2023

Game TitlePercent of Total Playtime
Elite: Dangerous80%
7 Days to Die13%
Pulsar Lost Colony2%

It’s not often that I fall down a gaming rabbit hole quite this hard. There’s just something about it that has captured my imagination in a way games haven’t in a long time. As I’ve gotten my bearings back and I’m getting more established in the game I feel that initial excitement plateauing but that was bound to happen. I don’t feel like I’ll be dropping it anytime soon but I may find some time to play something else this month just to switch it up.

I haven’t written to much about my ongoing 7 Days to Die game with Brother. We’re on Day 23 and are just becoming self sufficient on food and medical supplies. I can’t believe we’ve been playing every week since November and that I’m still having fun with it.

Pulsar Lost Colony

The squad decided to play Pulsar last weekend which I hadn’t played since February of last year. I forgot how much fun it is as a multiplayer game and we’re looking to play it again soon.

February 2023 Goals

Unlock the Engineered Detailed Surface Scanner: If I had posted this yesterday, getting the Engineered FSD would have been a goal too but I just unlocked that last night. The engineered detailed surface scanner is the last module I want before I go on another trip out into the galaxy. It increased the scanning radius per probe which will make mapping planets faster and more efficent. This should be a quick goal to complete. I only have a few more raw Niobium to gather before I’m able to unlock it.

Travel Outsided the Inner Orion Spur: The Inner Orion Spur is the region of the galaxy where Earth and the rest of the Bubble are located. There’s 42 regions in total but I don’t think I want to go too far from our home region. Maybe a region or two away to do some exploring. The only thing I still have to figure out is do I want to go towards the galactc core or away from it.

Participate in this month’s Humble Bundle Community Review: I kind of missed the ball on this one last month and forgot to sign up. I ended up picking up the bundle anyways because I’ve been wanting to play Grow: Song of the Evertree for a while now since it’s from the same developers as Yonder

Read Two Books: My interests between reading and gaming fluctuate every few months where one takes over the other. I feel like I’m in the middle of that interest transition where I want to do both and sometimes I just don’t have time to do that. February is a short month but I think between audiobooks and reading I can knock out two this month.

November 2022 Recap

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November was a busy month for me but not so much for the blog. We had visitors every weekend and despite that I found quite a bit of time to game and didn’t take much time to write. I’m going to try to rectify that this month.

I’m still participating in the Humble Choice group review effort which gives me at least one post a month. This month I took another look at Raji: An Ancient Epic and found it had changed since the last time I played it. I didn’t get too far the second time around. After reading everyone’s posts, it appears November’s Humble Choice didn’t have much to get excited about. I know I ended up skipping it.

Top 5 Games This Month

  1. Phantom Brave PC
  2. 7 Days to Die
  3. Labyrinth of Refrain: Coven of Dusk
  4. Dark Pictures Anthology: Little Hope
  5. Generation Zero

I finished Labyrinth of Refrain: Coven of Dusk which ended up being one of the longest games I’ve played in a few years. Then, I decided to follow it up with yet another long game Phantom Brave PC. Whether that was a good idea or not remains to be seen. I’ve crested the 40 hour mark and I’m nearing the end of the main story.

Though I didn’t write about it this month, I have gotten back in to 7 Days to Die with Brother. After many years away, it’s become our go to game again. We’ve tweaked some settings to make things more enjoyable for us since we’ve already done the whole default settings thing before. The biggest improvements have been increasing player block damage to 200% so breaking high durability chests and safes takes a reasonable amount of time and increasing the 24 hour cycle to 2 hours so we have way more time to explore before preparing for a horde night.

We also finished up the alternate play through in Little Hope at the beginning of the month. The Curator’s Cut is shorter but you get to play different characters and make different decisions. We tried our best this time to keep everyone alive and see another ending and we “succeed” at both.

December Goals

  • Finish Phantom Brave PC: I’m only a few episodes away from finishing this game so I’m confident I can finish this one up by the end of the month. Who knows, I might even write about it!
  • Get to Day 14 in 7 Days to Die: With the 24 hour cycle set to two hours we average about a day and a half per play session. I think we should see day 14 by the end of the month. With the holidays at the end of the month we’ll see if we end up playing enough sessions to get there.

August Recap

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It’s September which means it’s time to decorate our house for Halloween and buy all things pumpkin spice. Some might say it’s too early, there’s still some summer left, but I say nay! It’s pumpkin spice time!

Of course, August was dominated by Blaugust. I was able to post more and had more gaming time last month than I have in the last few. I made the 25 post cutoff for the Gold Award this year and am quite proud of it. I’m looking forward to slowing down here this month

Sadly, last month I had to reinstall Windows which means I lost my Manic Time/ ActivityWatch data for the month. I didn’t even realize this until I went to write this post…I reinstalled ActivityWatch on my D: drive this time to prevent the data loss in case there’s a next time. It’s a lighter weight than Manic Time and does exactly what I need it to do without the extra bells and whistles.

Top 5 Games This Month

  1. Melvor Idle
  2. The Elder Scrolls Online
  3. Aliens: Fireteam Elite
  4. Generation Zero
  5. TemTem

Melvor Idle is probably going to remain in my top game slot for a while. Between checking in on my phone and PC daily, it’s going to be hard for another game to overtake it in terms of time spent. I’ve also been enjoying tracking my progress in my new This Week In Melvor Idle series. I don’t see a need to discontinue it on Saturdays just because Blaugust is over. Their so fun to write!

High Isle is pretty!

I’ve been racking up some time in ESO this month. It was a game that’s been on my mind for a while and I wanted to give it another good try before shelving it. It’s a game that I’ve spent more time playing than posting about but I’m looking to fix that soon.

The whole Fireteam is here.

Aliens: Fireteam Elite has been taking up the majority of my co-op time with friends. Brother and I have been playing it about once a week since we bought it at the start of the month. We’re currently on the 3rd set of campaign missions and even recruited SuperToast to play with us. It’s been a blast to play with three people though I do worry our excitement might fall off once we complete all of the campaign missions. There is the new Pathogen Expansion so that’s always an option if we get bored.

Generation Zero has been the squads go to game on Saturday nights. I still don’t really know what’s going on story wise but blowing up big robots sure is fun.

When we’re not playing Aliens, Brother and I have been making some progress in TemTem. The issue is, in order to do the campaign together we can’t get too ahead of each other. We’ve been sitting in a spot during the week to level up our TemTem before we play again. This is getting boring though so we might switch up how we progress when we’re not together.

July 2022 Recap

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The summer is in full swing which means there’s a little less time for playing games and a little more time spent outside. It’s been super nice here in North East Ohio this month and we’ve been getting out to enjoy the weather whenever we can.

It’s sad to see July go since we’ll only have another few weeks of summer. But it’s always exciting to see August 1st roll around with the kickoff of Blaugust! I’ve got 2 posts scheduled and the rest I’ll be winging.

Top 5 Games in July

  1. Melvor Idle
  2. Summer in Mara
  3. Generation Zero
  4. Farm Together
  5. Fallen Earth

July was all about two games for me: Melvor Idle and Summer at Mara.

After finishing up Yonder in June I was looking for something like it that I could dive into. Apparently I hadn’t quite had my fill of fetch quests. Summer at Mara came highly recommended from the internet and I was able to scoop it up just before the Steam Sale ended. I managed to beat the game a few days before the end of the month. I figured I’d save my Backlogged post on it for Blaugust!

Melvor Idle quietly suck it’s way on to my top 5 games in June after I remembered it was on my phone. I hadn’t played in months and I started slowly getting back in to it. Now it’s become a daily game for me to check in on periodically. This month I’ve been tackling some of the earlier dungeons and working catching my Ranged and Magic skills up to my Melee skills.

The squad picked up Generation Zero in the Steam Summer Sale. We played it a few times this month and it is a blast. The game itself isn’t bad but I’ve been having so much fun running down robots and beating them with a baseball bat. Sure there are guns, and sure it’s suppose to be a stealth game, but it’s so statisfying. Also if you hit a car enough times with a baseball bat you can blow up all your friends. We’ve even got a video of our first play session here.

Good times.

June Gaming Goals

I’m still deciding on whether to keep including this goals section but it seems wrong to leave June’s goals hanging.

Play My Turn in the XCOM Succession game: I did this at the last minute, and by last minute I mean yesterday afternoon. I was really trying to knock this one out in the begginign of the month but wasn’t able to. The post for it will be up tomorrow!

Continue playing Cozy Grove daily: This hasn’t exactly been a daily thing for me like I thought it would be. It’s more of an every couple day thing. It’s the perfect game for the Steam Deck but it also feels like the only game I’ve been playing on the Steam Deck so I was trying out some other games when I had the chance. I’m still looking forward to playing more of this but I’m not sure how much more right now.

Write 6 posts: Well I didn’t quite make this one. My post count for July was 3. No worries though, I’ve got a whole month of potential blogging ahead of me.

July 2022 Gaming Goals

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June Recap

June started with the delivery of my Steam Deck. I tried a whole bunch of games on it but eventually settled in to playing Yonder: The Cloud Catcher Chronicles. I thought I would be using the Steam Deck as a stand alone device for certain games but mostly I’ve been using it as an extension of my PC. I’ve been getting the maximum use out of the Steam Cloud Save feature which isn’t something I can say I’ve ever thought of as a feature of Steam.

I did finish Yonder this month and even stuck around long enough to get 100% of the Steam achievements done.

This quarters Steam Next Fest took place earlier this month. I had written a post about the demos I was excited to try but never got around to writing about them. I did try a whole bunch but only a few made it to the wish list with the expectation that they would probably “launch” in early access. So I’m sure I won’t see them popping up in my wish list for quite some time. My favorite demo this time around was Glitched.

Top 5 Games of June 2022

  1. Yonder
  2. Melvor Idle
  3. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder’s Revenge
  4. Trove
  5. Summer In Mara

No surprise here, Yonder took the majority of my gaming time this month. Manic Time clocked 13 hours in total but that doesn’t account for the several hours I spent playing on the Deck. Unfortunately, I haven’t found a good app that I can install on the Deck to track activity. I found ActivityWatch, which is an open source alternative to Manic Time with a Linux version. The only problem is installing on the Steam Deck is a pretty involved process and with the nature of Steam OS it’ll get wiped every time there’s an update. I suppose I could track my time manually but I’m more likely to guesstimate the hours.

We ended up playing Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder’s Revenge a few times this month. The first play through I completed with Greg. We ended up playing it again with the whole squad later that week. That time we took advantage of Remote play to get the other guys in who didn’t buy the game. There was a little lag but it wasn’t unplayable. 4 players was hectic enough, I can only image no one knows what’s going on when there’s 6 people playing!

Trove actually had a fairly big update at the end of the month. I spent some time checking out the new difficulty and biome and will probably put together a post about it soon.

July Gaming Goals

I’ve been considering doing away with the goals section of this post. I find myself playing less games where I feel like I can set long term goals. We’ll see how July shakes out but this may be the last of the goals for a while.

Play my turn in the Xcom Succession game: It’s over to me to step back in to the role as commander and hopefully not kill anyone…I’ll for sure be knocking this one out soon to keep the game moving!

Continue playing Cozy Grove daily: I picked this one up in the Steam Summer sale and it’s been the perfect game to play for a short bit in the morning before work. Time passes in the game in real time like Animal Crossing. So once all the quests are completed for the day I can put it away until the next day. Right now I’m 11 days in and each of my sessions has taken an hour or less.

Write 6 posts: I had a lot to write about in June and would like to continue that momentum in to July.

February 2022 Gaming Goals

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Aha! We have arrived to the month I can never spell correctly on the first try. Like a lot of things on the blog lately, it’s been a while since I’ve done one of these, so it’ll be a short one. I’ve noticed other bloggers adding books, TV, and other things to these sorts of monthly recap posts. While this one will be mostly gaming related, I like the idea and might try it out for myself next month.

January Recap

The last couple of months and really the whole of 2021 were a bit light on blogging. I’m usually one to start a project and get really into it for a few weeks before I quit. I’m still suprised this didn’t end up being on. Even so, I think I just needed a break from it last year. It wasn’t the lightest year of posts but it was close. It also didn’t help that I seemed to have replaced checking Feedly to scrolling on Reddit….

But, I have returned with a strong desire to write, as I always do. I’m excited to get back to it!

The tail end of January saw four whole posts, more than 10% of last years total posts! Keeping up with the XCOM 2 Blogger Succession game has helped keep me engaged at least a little bit more than I otherwise would have been.

Top 5 Games Played in January

  • Hero Siege
  • No Man’s Sky
  • Chimeraland
  • Monster Hunter Rise
  • Diablo 3

I got in to VR this month. I was thinking there would at least be one VR game in there but there’s not a single one. No Man’s Sky technically has VR but most of my play time has been outside of the VR mode. I have been putting off playing with it until I got myself a new router that could handle Air Link and wireless PC VR better. My total time between all my VR titles seems to be around 9 ish hours which would put “VR” as a whole in between No Man’s Sky and Chimeraland.

I started playing No Man’s Sky with the squad this month. We’ve only played it together one weekend this month but I did start up a separate save because I was eager to play more. That desire lasted for about a week and my brain has moved on to chasing other things.

Speaking of my brain, I’ve been looking for games where I can turn it off for a while which lead to Hero Siege making a triumphant return to my game rotation. The last time I picked it up was apparently April of 2020. I also remembered I owned Diablo 3 on PC so I was playing a bit of that as well.

Coming out of nowhere to take the third most played game is Chimeraland. I’ve only played a few sessions but I have a feeling I’ll be spending a lot more time with it in February

February Gaming Goals

Reach Level 100 in Hero Siege

Everytime I play Hero Siege something has drastically changed. Whether that be how the classes work, how loot works, or how the entire game works. There’s always something new added. Considering it’s almost 10 years old at this point, it’s kinda suprising. We’re in Season 14 now and I have my doubts about the new leveling and experience changes but I want to push through to the max level so I can see if the end game is any better.

Spend More Time with VR Game

I’m already starting to build a backlog and I’ve head the headset for less than a month. Like I said, I’ve been waiting to upgrade my router so I can take better advantage of the wireless capabilities of the Quest 2. This month’s budget allows for such an upgrade.

Some games I’m looking forward to playing in VR this month are Dead Effect 2 VR, Dagon, Star Wars Squadrons, and Elite Dangerous.

Play more Chimeraland

It’s a vague goal, I know, but I’ve only just begun my journey there. I don’t know what kind of goals I can have in the game. I do know that I’ve really enjoyed my 6 or so hours with it so far and I want to continue learning more about the game.

Write At Least 5 Posts

Let’s keep the momentum up! I feel confident I can publish at least 5 posts this month even though it’s a short one. One’s done already…

November 2021 Gaming Goals

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Wow it’s been a looooong time since I’ve done one of these. The last one was in March of this year which tracks. This year has been very light in the posts department. In fact, this will be the 33rd post this year which is way down from last year’s 88. I just didn’t make time for it, even though one of my goals was to do exactly that!

But I’m feeling the urge now to write and I’m hoping to keep it up. How many times have I said that over the years? It also helps that I’m super excited to write about Fallen Earth now that it’s back. This month is going to be pretty light on goals since I don’t see myself playing much else besides Fallen Earth.

November Gaming Goals

Reach Sector 2 in Fallen Earth: I’m not sure how long this is going to take to do. I don’t think it will take all month but with the way I’m playing currently it might. I’m still stopping to read and pick up all of the quests and I can’t stop myself from clicking on every, single, gathering node on my travels.

Work on some more Steel Path in Warframe: I played a lot of Warframe in the last few months here. New World, vacation, and now Fallen Earth caused me to lose the momentum I had with the game. While I don’t think I’ll be playing on my own anytime soon I am hoping to work on getting through more of the Steel Path mode with friends when they want to play.

March 2021 Goals

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Last month I didn’t commit to any goals because I didn’t know what I wanted to play. So, I started this month poking around a few games. At the beginning of the month I was all about NIMBY Rails but I didn’t play it much more than those initial first weeks. There were two games that took hold of my interest this month and have not let go since: Final Fantasy XIV and Melvor Idle.

In FFXIV, I spent my time this month starting a new character and going through A Realm Reborn again. I decided to only level one class and only go through the MSQ without stopping for side activities. Now my Black Mage is level 55 and has just started the Patch 2.4 quest line. I’ve thoroughly enjoyed my time here this month and plan on continuing my journey in March.

Melvor Idle has captured my attention for much longer than it has any right to. Usually, I’ll get into an idle game for a week or two at most. Once the initial dopamine hits wear off and the real waiting begins I’ve checked out. But I’m still checking in to Melvor everyday on multiple devices. I’ve maxed mining this month, collected 5 pets, and have just started getting in to the combat system a bit more. I’ll be continuing this one in March as well.

March Gaming Goals

Reach Heavensward in Final Fantasy 14: This one should be an easy one as long as I continue to play the game

Obtain the Bone Necklace and Amulet of Looting in Melvor Idle: Both of these will help progression in combat in Melvor. The Bone Necklace will automatically bury bones and give 2x the prayer points which will make training Prayer easier. The Amulet of Looting will collect look automatically making idle combat training more of a set it and forget it kind of thing.

Play more NIMBY Rails: I really like this game and have some ideas for some projects to work on. I’ve been so focused on Final Fantasy XIV this month that I haven’t played much else

Non Gaming Goals

Read for at least 20 minutes before bed: Too much screen time for me lately before bed. I find it’s much easier to sleep when winding down with a book instead of TV or my phone

Make time to blog: Too often, I think of a post idea and then sit on it. By the time I’m actually motivated to write I’ve lost interest in the idea. This month I would like to find a daily time slot to write here that’s consistent and works for me. I think some time in the evening would work best. I’ve been trying to force the morning for a while but most of the time I don’t feel like writing in the mooring.

February Goals 2021

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I guess it’s February now? January must have passed by without me noticing it. But at the same time, when I look back at January’s Goals post it feels like it was a loooong time ago. Almost like I was a different person altogether.
 
I wasn’t gaming much in January. I started the month out strong with all these lofty ideas on what I would do and what games I would play next. And here we are in February and I don’t think I completed a single goal…and that’s OK. I spent most of January reading and finished 4 books. I’m a slow reader so that’s quite an accomplishment there.
 
My interests seem to swing from gaming to reading around this time of year. It usually hits in November when I realize I have X number of books left to reach my Goodreads goal for the year. I guess I caught the reading bug late this year
 
When my interests swing back to gaming there tends to be a bit of a reset in my gaming interests. I was all about the sprawling, open-world, games at the beginning of the month. Now, nothing I listed here sparks my interest at the moment. Well, that’s not entirely true, I’m still spending a few minutes here and there in Immortals: Fenyx Rising.
 
With all that said, I’m taking this month off of goals. I’m sure I’ll be poking around before I find something to hold me for a while. I don’t know where or what I want to spend my free time on right now.
 
 

January Goal Wrapup

 
You know how I know that I wasn’t gaming as much in January? ManictTme lists Google Chrome as my top application for the month…
 
Complete CyberPunk 2077: I had this whole lengthy post in my head detailing why I didn’t finish this game. Then I realized I wasn’t interested enough in the game to write about why I was no longer interested in the game. Long story short, I got 30 incredible hours out of it and I don’t need to be in that world any longer. It has since been excommunicated from my SSD. It will now be resting in my “Games I’ll Never Finish but Will Think About Starting Up Again Someday” pile in Steam (and now I need to go make a collection with that exact name).
 
Finish Athena’s Zone in Immortals: Fenyx Rising: I’m going to give myself half credit for this one. I’ve done a lot of the Vaults of Tartaros, chests, puzzles, and constellations. I’ve only done one or tow of the story quests. I’m still booting the game up here and there to knock out some map objectives.
 
Craft Thallasion, Shaper of the Currents: It turns out I cannot play Trove part time. I’m either all in with a patron pass or I’m not launching the game for months on end. I tried to remember to log in every week to fill up my dragon coin tomes, I did. But I found logging on and only doing that was underwhelming. It felt more like work than fun so I haven’t touched it since.
 

January with the Squad

 
The little bit of time that I did spend gaming this month was with the boys over at Welpsqaudtv. We’ve been playing GTFO again and raging a little bit less. There’s a chance we’re actually getting better at the game! We also played Sea of Thieves as a 4 man group a few times. It’s been fun learning to use the galleon together.
 
Greg and I started playing Tera together this month. I’m actually enjoying it more than I thought I would. I started out playing a berserker but I’ve since leveled a priest up to where we left off. I’m having much more fun playing the priest.

January 2021 Goals

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As far as I’m concerned, January is the actual start of winter. There aren’t any holidays to look forward to, it’s cold, and, at least here in Cleveland, it’s grey skies until May. But at least 2020 is over right? Here’s to hoping for a better year to come!

December Goal 2020 Wrap Up

I played more Trove this month than I was planning and was able to get two additional Dragons. I’m actually surprised I was able to get enough dragon coins for 3 dragons this month. That’s 900 dragon coins…I got real lucky on daily dragon caches to say the least. I crafted A.T.M.O.S – D-R4C which was a new dragon released this month. I also crafted Tannenbomber, The Harbinger of Tidings mostly because the winter event was going on and it’s the only way to get the crafting materials. I figured I ‘d get the materials at least but ended up with the whole dragon!

Complete the Moonwing Dragon: Got the Aura, got the dragon, and that’s the last Dragon Soul Dragon I needed to complete the badges.

Craft Typhandir, the Sundered Sheild: I was a bit worried about this one. Typhandir takes Chaos Cores to craft and so does Charl the Chaos Dragon which was released this month. You can only get Charl’s fragments from Corruxion who’s in the hub every 2 weeks and you can only buy 10 at a time. So I bought the first 10 and then realized I was short for Typhandir. When you’re looking for chaos cores they seem to be in short demand….luckily, through chaos chests I was able to scrounge up the remaining cores and craft this dragon. Now time to save up cores for Charl.

Craft Shaoran, Sage of the Eastern Ranges: This one was easy since he didn’t need any dragon coins. The Sagely Blue Scales are found in the Forbidden Spires biome from world bosses and dungeon bosses. It was a matter of running around normal U-9 worlds and finding the right biomes on to get the rest of the fragments.

Get into Shadowlands: Nope this did not happen. I did get my mage to level 44 but haven’t gotten much further. I’m don’t regret buying Shadowlands. I kind of figured this would happen but it’s there when I have the WoW itch again

Continue playing through The Legend of Heroes Trails in the Sky: Technically yes, I played more of this than I thought. 4 hours this month so I did continue it but it isn’t my main game. That’s thanks to CyberPunk 2077 coming out this month. I’m still interested in finishing it though.

January 2021 Goals

Complete Cyberpunk 2077: Currently I’m in Act 2 and have about 30 hours in the game. I’ve been splitting my time between this and a few other games recently but I would like to put more of a focus on completing this game this month. I’m not sure how much longer I have and depending on how much side content I want to do this is going to be quite a large goal.

Finish Athena’s Zone in Immortals: Fenyx Rising: I picked this game up in the Epic Store winter sale and have been playing it heavily. I already have about 20 hours into it and just finished up Aphrodite’s zone. I want to pull back from it a bit this month to leave more time for Cyberpunk so I’ll focus on just completing Athena’s zone this month.

Craft Thallasion, Shaper of the Currents: I don’t plan on playing a lot of Trove this month but I do plan on logging in every week and filling up my Dragon Coin Tomes and buying dragon coins with whatever cubits I get doing that. I already have the fragments so as long as I can get the dragon coins I need this will be a pretty low effort goal.