FFXIV

FFXIV-I Want to Be an Interior Designer

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With the drop of patch 3.4 in Final Fantasy 14 came the addition of apartments and aquariums. Since I still haven’t gotten past the 2.XX content there doesn’t seem to be a whole lot else to be excited by in this patch for the time being. Unfortunately I can’t even do that. While I do have 1 character at 50 I’m nowhere near the Grand Company Rank to be able to purchase an apartment.

Now I understand why this is the way it is. Once again there are a limited amount of these things to go around so might as well make people work to get them so they’re not all gobbled up quickly. To be honest I haven’t ever been that interested in player housing in MMO’s in the past, I guess I just had other things to do. However, I love player housing in single player games, I played a lot of animal crossing as a kid. But it intrigues me now in FFXIV, especially when a lot of craft-able items are pieces of furniture that I previously had no use for. As for aquariums, it gives me even more of an excuse to spend my time fishing, for some reason I love fishing in game. The list of fish that can be placed is kind of small but there’s always room for improvement.

I guess this will give me another thing to work towards while I continue to level my Dragoon to 50. I’m sure it won’t be that bad, I just hope they’re not all gone by the time I can get one. Though from what it sounds like, if I’m reading the patch notes right, there should be plenty to go around.

 

 

 

FFXIV-Another Dragoon is Born

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Kluwes A'llond 09/21/2016 10:27:40
Kluwes A’llond 09/21/2016 10:27:40

I buckled down and actually got the Dragoon Job Crystal this week. Last week I was so excited that my lancer finally hit 30 and I’d be able to move on to the Dragoon life but apparently I hadn’t leveled my Marauder up to 15 yet. Which is weird because I could have sworn  I had every class to at least 15 most of them to 20. So I took up the axe and finished getting all the medals for the Yo-Kai event minions and slowly but surely getting to level 15.

It’s always fun to change job titles. Dragoon just sounds so much better than lancer,and now I can jump around like a mad man. The best part of not being a lancer anymore is that the lancer class story is over. I mean, it wasn’t terrible but compared to some of the other class quests it was a little boring. Just a lot of go show me some courage, courage is super important for a lancer, and this guild is pathetic I’ll give you a real challenge and so on and so forth.

 

The quest to get the Dragoon job crystal doesn’t give me much hope for the Dragoon job quests having a better story. Actually when I completed the quest I was kind of wondering whether i really wanted to be a Dragoon after all. The quest has you gather information about a thief and this thief turns out to a mysterious Black Dragoon who is apparently the best of the best when it comes to Dragooning. I’ not so sure that I want to join an organization who’s best member is a their it seems a little shady….good thing poking monsters with spears is so much fun.

On a side note, Heavensward finally arrived from good ol’ Amazon. It took a little longer than usual but it’s here now. The problem is I want to take the dragoon through it because I feel like a DPS is going to be more fun than a healer to do Main Scenario Quests with. I guess I could always get the last 2 levels on my Bard but I’ve heard not so great things about the job after Wander’s Minuet. Decisions, decisions.

Playing the Waiting Game

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I resubed to Final Fantasy 14 last week and ordered a copy of Heavensward from amazon. It’s a little silly that the physical copy of the game is half the price of the digital version. Lately I’ve been Alas, that’s not the case and here I am a week later still waiting for it to arrive.

It’s not that bad though I’ve decided that as much as I like my white mage, I don’t want to take him through the Main Scenario Quests anymore. Throwing rocks at things over and over with the occasional Aereo thrown in is getting old. So I decided I’d like to play a dps class. Now of course I could just take the time to level my Bard to 50 I wanted to try something new and shiny. So this week I’ve been running around learning how to poke things with a stick as a lancer. I actually got him all the way to 30 bright eyed and bushy tailed, ready to go on a quest to be a dragoon when suddenly I’m informed that I have not leveled my marauder up to 15. I have every other class to 15 or higher but I guess I forgot about the marauder.

Instead of taking the time to levels into it I decided to try out the pugilist. I’ve been working my way to level 20 with it and I’m not enjoying it as much as the lancer. Though there is something satisfying to punch things to death and if nothing else I really like the class quest story line a lot more than the lancer’s. But the lancer has such flashy animations and for whatever reason I’ve always been partial to classes who have spears as weapons. Either way I want to take both to 30 and get their respective jobs before I make a decision.

Hopefully in the next few says Heavenward will be arriving  and I can at least put it on my account. The jury is still out on when I’m actually going to play it and who I’m going to take through it.

September Goals

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This months list of goals is pretty short. September is going to be a very busy month and I know I won’t get in as much gaming time as I’d like to.

FInal Fantasy 14 Goals

Get Dragoon Soul Crystal

Get Monk Soul Crystal

Decide between Playing monk or Dragoon

Complete the 2.XX content and get into Heavensward

Backlog Goals

Defeat the fourth boss in Furi

Get to the next system in No Man’s Sky

Complete Unepic

 

Creature Creator

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A few weeks ago my friend Jay decided that he wanted to play Perfect World International. He had heard from someone that it was actually not that bad and that he should get into it. I was surprised the thing was till running but I said I’d download it and check it out with him. All I really knew about Perfect World was how prevalent it’s micro transactions were throughout the game and that it was the epitaph of Pay to Win.What I didn’t know was how great it’s character creator was.

In general, character creators in games leave you with a bunch of options to make strikingly beautiful people with no flaws. Even if your character has a nasty scar running through his face it just looks badass instead of the remnants of a gaping wound. If it lets you choose a body type it’s usually a choice between Large  Musclebound Meathead, Medium I’m in Shirtless Movie Star Shape, or  I run 5 miles a day before breakfast skinny.In a lot of MMO’s I’ve played, even if there are sliders, it’s pretty hard to make something look ugly whether it’s because there are preset faces you choose from or the sliders don’t change anything drastically enough to make you look anything less than perfect.

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Of course there are exceptions. I’ve seen some horrifying things people have made in Bethesda games. I also really enjoy the character creator in Dark Souls 2 where I can be a green skinned mustachio’d bandit. And then there’s Perfect World International whose character Creator enables you to make very “unique” characters. After 10 hours of running through the game before we go bored, I never quite saw another character that looked like me. It was actually so much fun making characters that I put another couple of hours into my steam play time just fiddling around with it.

Elder Scrolls Online is another game with an interesting character creator. Unfortunately the face sliders don’t do as much damage as other Elder Scrolls titles but the body sliders are different. If you put them to the maximum or minimum, the character looks pretty unhealthy. I have an Argonian sorcerer with a beer belly who looks like he can hardly jog for more than a minute. I also have an elderly Nord Nightblade who looks like he hasn’t eaten in weeks.

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I’ve always played the weirder looking races in games if I can. I If I’m playing in a fantastic realm I don’t want to be a boring old human. I’d much rather play an Asura or a Charr in Guild wars 2, I’d rather be a pink thing with horns or half an orc in Neverwinter, and I’d rather be a sentient talking cow or a space alien in WoW.  But no matter how weird they look , I can’t bring myself to be a lalafell in Final Fantasy 14 so I’ll stick to my giant mountain of muscle.

 

MMO Events Stress Me Out

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I love events in MMO’s especially holiday events. It’s always fun to see the game’s spin on holidays and events within their world. Events also tend to be a little more light hearted than the rest of the game. But man, do they stress me out.

Whether it’s a stroll through a questline to get a special emote or grinding for hours to get some special items there are always seems to be limited time rewards attached to participating in the event. Limited time items are something I love to collect, at first when the event is on going or has just ended everyone and their mother has the item or emote. After a while though, it becomes less and less common and when you whip it out it’s like a badge, an “I was there” symbol. It’s especially fun when events are location based and you see so many players in one place.

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I have a love hate relationship with event rewards. The limited time nature of these events make it a little stressful. If you can’t grind all the things or can’t log in everyday to get your rewards you miss out. Then the item is either forever unattainable or some guy will sell it to you for way to much. At the same time because it’s a limited time event it makes it all that more special to have.

My favorite event items are ones that look really out of place in the game. For example Guild Wars had a Jack’o lantern head for a Halloween event that looked so silly and out of place. Or the Yo-kai’s in Final Fantasy 14 they’re from a completely different IP. Actually the Yo-Kai Watch event in Final Fantasy is the first time I’ve seen a cross promotional event in a game. Its really cool how they managed to sort of blend it in to their own lore. I’m going to be honest here, I want to collect the rest of the minions since I ran out of sub time.

Dinging 50

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Last Sunday, right as my free time in Final Fantasy 14 was coming to a close, I hit 50 on my white mage. It was a weekend full of running Stone vigil more times than I care to count to hit 49. I wanted to be able to continue and maybe finish the Main Scenario and it’s a long gap between 46 and 49.

I’m actually glad it worked out so well, I didn’t think it would. When I logged back on Thursday my White Mage’s was level 44, a lot lower than I thought I left him. Every time I ran my daily roulette the bonus either leveled me up or nearly leveled me up. Running Stone Vigil so many times showed me the good and the bad of the Duty Finder. I ran into everything from helful chatty groups, to disconnecting tanks, to DPS’s pulling aggro, and of course the bickering between hot headed party members. But it was all good fun. I love healing in this game and didn’t run into too much trouble in the Duty Finder.

After hitting 49 I ran as many of the Main Scenario Quests as I could. The story was just getting good and building up to a climax when I got the dreaded red text saying I couldn’t complete the quest until I was level 50. It was late Sunday night, I was 3/4ths of the way to level 50 and I was tired of running dungeons. So I decided to check out the Yo-Kai Watch event and see how much  experience that would give me. 10 fates and Yo-Kai medals later I dinged 50 and could no longer gain experience.

After this weekend, I see rresubbing and purchasing Heavensward in m near future. I really want to see how the story will end for 2.0. Plus I just discovered the Golden Saucer and that seems like a whole game itself. There’s so much left to see aand do in the game and this weekend reminded me why I played it so much in the first place. But hey, I guess that’s the point of these free even’s right? I

Relearning All the Things

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Last night I had the chance to start playing Final Fantasy 14 again. When I logged in things were not quite how I remembered them. My classes were a little lower than I originally thought with my Bard sitting at 47 and my White Mage sitting at 44. I also had a lot more inventory space than I thought. I went ahead with my plan to clean it up still and now I have a whole bag and a half left.

I was feeling like I’d forgotten a lot of the controls and the skills so I took the time to reorient myself with what every thing did. Slowly but surely I got my footing back as I waited for Jay to do his Main Story Quest. I was planning on helping him get through the story dungeons he needed until he caught up t me. I also ran my White Mage class quests which I apparently hadn’t done in a while because I had 3 to do. After finishing them all up I’m now the proud owner of Holy.

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I had forgotten exactly where Jay was in the story, when he said he had hit a dungeon I thought it was going TO be Brayflox’s Longstop. Instead when i hit commence on the queue I found my self in Haukke Manor, oh how I hate Haukke Manor. I don’t know what it is about this dungeon but I’ve never liked running it. It’s not that its hard, it seems to take longer than some of the other dungeons and the bosses aren’t all that interesting. Since it was the first dungeon I ran in a while I was bit rusty. Jay, our tank, died a few times as I was trying to figure out the right balance between Cleric Stance DPSing and healing the tank. Thank goodness for Swift Cast + Res. Surprisingly, neither of the DPS’s we were with left and after our 30 minute struggle we emerged from the dungeon victorious and Jay had some new gear for his Gladiator.

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It was getting late so we decided to run the roulette and end the night. Being a tank and healer combo the queue popped immediately. As the loading screen faded we found ourselves in Haukke Manor once again. We both groaned, but this time we were prepared and the other two people in our party were super nice. They gave us some tips and good conversation. We made it out of our second run a lot quicker than our first and no one died, a rousing success.

After all was said and done, we ended the night with Jay starting his Paladin class quest and my White Mage leveling up to 46. I can’t wait to play again tonight.