Sanctum of Domination, week 9+10

By / September 15, 2021 / Leave a Comment / WoW

This time I didn’t forget to post last week, it was simply too unexciting. For some reason we didn’t do a lot. Bad setup, many people missing, no prog. Went back to only do KT+Sylvanas on normal on Tuesday and called it early.

This week was good though. Despite some people missing we killed the first three pretty quickly, then had a few wipes on Ner’zhul, we still mess up positioning there. Then we killed Dormazain on the third pull. I think it were 20+ overall, spread over quite a few days. Today we went for KT+Sylvanas normal first, then on to Painsmith Heroic, with a warning that this could be hard, as we had wiped a few times on Normal before we got him down, but the first try looked really good and then he died on the second pull. That was a bit of a surprise. So we had enough time for Guardian of the Old Ones, where the first try also looked quite promising. In the end we killed him on pull number 8, the last one of the night. Oh, and all this while I was tanking the whole week as our offtank was on vacation.

So we’ve jumped from 4/10 to 7/10 Heroic this week and I’m really happy. Could use a few more drops though, 228 in tanking gear and 230 in DPS gear.

Some progress

By / September 13, 2021 / Leave a Comment / Final Fantasy XIV

Again I’ve been trying to push my Beast Tribe Dailies and Duty Roulettes and GC handins and a few other things. Paladin to 60 today, Dark Knight sadly didn’t make the cut. Warrior is 75 thanks to the Pixies, Dancer is 68 thanks to some duties and Stormblood dailies and Machinist gets an odd level here and there. Hopefully tomorrow I can get rid of a whole set of pre-60 tanking gear.

Still only one at 80

Overall it still feels a little slow, but I’m pretty excited about the crafting jobs:

Getting there

All at 77, on average, thanks to the Dwarves and crafting all the GC turnins myself every day. I don’t love Fishing, and the market board is bad with availability, but at latest when the DoH jobs reach 80, I’m gonna go out again for Leves or to grab the handins myself. Maybe next Sunday already?

MMOs are multiplayer games. Maybe.

By / September 9, 2021 / Leave a Comment / About this blog, Games

As I was just standing in the kitchen on a short break from work, making a coffee, I had some sort of epiphany. Not the grandiose kind that would make me rich and famous, but this sort of personal insight.

In our EVE Slack there recently was talk about cohesion and people not going on stratops (we don’t have mandatory anything in BRAVE) and I noticed that while I noped out of the war, since we declared a loss I’ve been doing a lot more, including undocking. So my playstyle has shifted from “purely solo” in the last year to “mostly group activities” again.

And I noticed the same both in WoW Retail and Classic. I log on to Classic once per week for our group and don’t feel a lot of excitement otherwise, and I log on to raid twice a week in retail and maybe a bit more, but only for chores like weekly/dailies or opening the vault and sorting enchants for the next raid. Nothing solo.

In FFXIV it’s a bit of a weird mix. This week I focused on crafting and my Beast Tribe Dailies and a little bit of story progress, and I mostly lump in duty roulette and random LFG activies as solo play. I say hi, I might write or read a few sentences about strategies, but I’m not engaging. This is not my guild/FC or a group of friends, just temporary allies for 20 minutes. They could be bots, I don’t care. But it’s fine like that.

I’m happy to have one game for solo play and one or two or three for group play. I guess from the point I started BfA until I planned to start raiding again with Shadowlands launch, I was playing WoW Retail as my solo game. I talked to my guild in guild chat, but I’m not sure I went to voice chat more than twice in those 2 years. When Classic launched it was a mix of solo and group activity, separated by which toon I played.

Not a huge epiphany, but I think doing “group and solo” only works when I am 100% engaged in a single game, I guess Shadowlands launch counts, leveling up solo, doing dungeons in groups, then raiding in groups. Then solo leveling all the alts. But in general, it’s either group or solo.

TBC continued

By / September 3, 2021 / Leave a Comment / WoW

It’s been quite a while since I wrote about the TBC Classic group, but that’s because one member was on vacation for 3 weeks and none of us logged in in that time, it seems the general mood is a bit unenthusiastic.

But last night we got off with a late start due to work, then figuring out what to do. We had stopped questing in Terokkar, so we flew to Stonebreaker Hold, grabbed some quests and went to work. Gladly the flood of people seems to have died down and except for one of the Arakkoa settlements it was chill with no people snatching your mobs. But of course we still have the worst quest of them all, the 12 wolf pelts per person. Also I had forgotten to empty my bags and was full all the time.

After around 2h we called it a day, 3 of 4 having dinged 65 and one being very close. So I need to check if I can continue with Blacksmithing to use up the mats clogging my inventory and maybe clean up the bank until next Thursday. And then we wanted to check the Auchindoun instances and run them once, our level permitting.

Overall not too excited, but it was fun enough to continue. Also my Druid is still at 69 and being 1 level from the maximum always annoys me a bit, but the 4 week break was welcome and maybe now is the time to divert a little time to Classic again.

Sanctum of Domination, week 8

By / September 2, 2021 / Leave a Comment / WoW

Finally there’s one week where I don’t forget to post, but then I have other posts and no time.

Anyway, last raid week was a bit weird. On Sunday I had to tank again, first we did the last 2 on Normal (1 wipe on KT), then the first 3 on Heroic. One wipe on Tarragrue (weird), then three wipes on The Eye (also weird), then oneshot The Nine.

Tuesday our main tank was back, and we had a big group again, 21 or so, and one of our raiders brought 3 friends, supposedly Mythic raiders and for some reason nothing really worked. Ner’zhul died on the third pull but the first two already felt weird, then we had 10 wipes on Dormazain. Yes, this is the boss we haven’t killed yet but it seems doable, just that nothing seemed to go smoothly that day, and then one of the mythic people started to smartass and shout stuff between our calls and then there was some arguing. Not a fan of the outcome, or the whole night. But apparently I wasn’t the only one who felt like that, so maybe they’re not coming again.

Blaugust finished

By / September 2, 2021 / Leave a Comment / About this blog, Blaugust, Final Fantasy XIV

Belghast already put up the postmortem, I have officially reached silver with my 16 posts in August. Thanks to Bel for organizing it again and thanks to all participants for giving me lots of reading material!

There are many badges like this, but this one is mine

Today I didn’t push a lot in FFXIV, but I got all my DoH jobs to 71, so I can finally equip the gear I bought. Then I went to the marketboard and instead of spending 80k per job for a Level 71 MH+OH combo I sorted by level and went down the list until I could buy an MH+OH combo for around 10k per job, usually landing me Level 65 or 68 items. Good enough of an upgrade over the Level 50 stuff and I will probably replace it at 80 anyway.

Also after a lot of searching I managed to unlock Custom Deliveries and already used it to get some Crafting XP. Pro tip: Actually try to speak with the NPCs mentioned in the guide, they might have a second “blue” quest and then you won’t notice on the minimap. Ask me how I know…

Finally I took the time and linked some glamour plates to gear sets, something I’d put off for a while, and I don’t even know why. WHM had the glamour, but unlinked. PLD got one of the job armor sets, DNC got the Miqo’te starter gear, for ARC, MCH, DRK I made custom ones. And maybe I forgot a class, but I need to make screenshots anyway.

Shadowbringers MSQ finished

By / August 31, 2021 / Leave a Comment / Final Fantasy XIV

Last night I finally managed to finish the last MSQ of the original .0 patch, aptly named “Shadowbringers”. The story is actually good, but my final verdict is still that I don’t understand why people would say it is so much better than the original ARR MSQ. I found them both excellent, Stormblood was a little worse and for me Heavensward was the weakest of the four, but that one was still ok! I guess tastes are different. Also I didn’t say that the MSQ was fun at all times or perfect. But compared to WoW, everything has been kinda excellent.

I was pretty annoyed with the Shadowbringers “role quest” though, in my case ranged physical DPS. The story was a good one, but the implementation was kinda horrible, although I am partly to blame by doing it all in one sitting at 80. But it was literally “port all over the Norvrandt map, then fly/ride to your quest spot, and after a minute port back to the Crystarium”. It wouldn’t have been half as bad if it had been close to an Aetheryte Crystal but this was like 15 minutes just wasted on flying and porting. I am not used to this level of inconvenience in FFXIV. And what I already lamented on Discord, the final solo duty seemed bugged for me. You have one NPC aiding you, but in my case he didn’t really. First try on normal difficulty, very late in the fight I got one of these “gather together” markers after being stunned (and I didn’t notice standing in anything), he didn’t run to me, we died. Second try, very easy, as I didn’t enjoy it the first time already, he simply died a minute into the fight and there’s nothing I could have done to prevent it. Third try everything finally worked, I was stunned at the exact same moment, but this time he ran to me and we lived.

Anyway, another peculiarity. You unlock a quest giver in the last zone and he just hands out 430 gear after you finished this role quest. I missed this at first and couldn’t queue for the last duty until I went to research and found this out pretty quickly. I then remembered I was actually told he’d have gear for me, but I thought this was just the game telling me where to hand in future currency that I don’t have yet, not that I would’ve just had to click on him and grab my stuff…

So the next logical quests would be the so-called Post-Shadowbringers MSQ, but not sure I need to rush those like I just did. I actually want to look at a few other things first, mostly Beast Tribe dailies and pushing Machinist and Dancer.

Also I am at a point where I am completely out of ideas on what to spend my poetics on. Bard, White Mage, Warrior have 70 gear (so that’s ranged physical, healer, tank), every class I play has their 70 weapon (in use or pre-bought). I even started stocking up on some 70 gear for jobs I don’t have an immediate plan of leveling. Also I think I have the 60 Tank gear, and for the Machinist I definitely don’t need it. Or maybe I missed the forest for the trees and I can actually buy something useful at 80, that’s a thing I need to research.

Level 80 and MSQ progress

By / August 30, 2021 / Leave a Comment / Final Fantasy XIV

After a weekend with a lot of FFXIV I got Bard to 80 today and I should be only 5 MSQ steps away from finishing the original Shadowbringers content. And 1 dungeon and 1 trial.

I hate that orange here

So I actually managed to give in to the urge to progress Warrior and White Mage, unlike two years ago. I did do some stuff on other jobs, but only thing I wanted to do anyway, for example Beast Tribe dailies on Dancer, duty roulette on Paladin, Dark Knight, and Machinist.

The next step is finishing up the MSQ, then looking into Beast Tribe dailies for crafting, as I want to get those to 80. Or, to 71 first and then buy some gear to replace my Level 50 crafting greens from… I don’t know, maybe the Grand Company. Machinist needs a few levels so I can slowly get rid of the gear, same for the sub-60 tanks. I am a little curious about Samurai or Rogue/Ninja, but for now I’m waiting.

And I bought a Level 71 set of crafter gear in the Crystarium, it’s 22170 + 36950 + 16795 + 22170 + 36950 + 22170 = 157205 Gil. (6 pieces, left side, no jewellery) Main and off hand are 40398 Gil each and I did not buy those yet, but the gear is shared. Also found one cheap 71 HQ earring on the marketboard, that needs to be enough for now.

It’s Blaugust again and this is post number 15, which means I have earned my silver badge, and I even have 2 days spare!

Ninety million

By / August 26, 2021 / Leave a Comment / EVE Online

And another milestone, the last one was in May. My EVE main is now at 90 million SP. Before extra login SP it was kind of easy to calculate the cadence, if you didn’t use injectors. Now the amount you get every day may seem small but over the months, if you claim them all on one character, they do add up. Conveniently I spent most of my unallocated SP this week to train a few skills from III to IV, so now it’s actually 90m spent and I don’t have to wait to post.

Skill category             Points     No. of skills
===================================================
Spaceship Command         22,799,402  61 *
Gunnery                   10,358,264  36 *
Drones                     8,859,375  18
Missiles                   8,390,514  24 *
Navigation                 7,327,839  13
Engineering                6,842,040  15
Subsystems                 4,096,000  
Fleet Support              3,843,169  12 *
Shields                    3,198,119  12
Electronic Systems         2,863,220  14 *
Targeting                  2,575,530   8
Armor                      2,547,805  11
Scanning                   1,899,374   7 *
Resource Processing        1,039,545  14
Neural Enhancement           778,275   5 *
Rigging                      679,060  10
Science                      502,275  13
Social                       434,510   6
Planet Management            394,040   4
Trade                        359,530   8
Production                   276,743   4
Structure Management          24,040   1
Corporation Management           250   1

* = changes since last time

Skills at Level 5:   110 (+17)
Skills at Level 4:   128 (+5)
Skills at Level 3:    45 (-12)
Skills at Level 2:     1 (-1)
Skills at Level 1:    27 (-4)
Skills at Level 0:     4 (0)

And for some reason the login SP has made my alt lose progress even more, standing at just shy of 46m.

It’s Blaugust again and this is post number 14.

Staying motivated, 2021 edition

By / August 26, 2021 / Leave a Comment / About this blog, Blaugust

Every time this topic comes around for Blaugust (or elsewhere) I feel torn.

On the one hand, this blog is more of a diary of stuff that happened in games, mostly as something I will come back to, but with a little bit of commentary on issues sprinkled in. For this I don’t really need to feel motivated. I want to write it down, so I just need to find a little time to actually do it. Not a huge problem.

On the other hand I set myself a tentative goal of getting 15 posts in for Blaugust, which is just an arbitrary number. If I do 3 posts a month it’s fine, if I do 20 it’s fine. The only thing is that I don’t let a month lapse without a post and a very quick look tells me that the last month I didn’t post was May 2018. So this is my low bar for motivation, don’t let it look as if I had abandoned the blog. I had some breaks in the past and that’s also fine, but I try to get in at least one post per week, and this works out most months.

Will this help you? Probably not, but if you don’t feel like posting, don’t post. But this is not a blanket statement, just a temporary solution.

Also I have no numbers to back this up, but my consumption of other blogs is also very sporadic. I used to read 1h per day when commuting via subway. I often don’t read more than 10 minutes per day if I don’t have time. And sometimes I’m not even in the mood. But if I like your blog and you post once per week, there’s a very good chance I will catch up, even if it’s a month late because I only read your handful of posts in one sitting. I also don’t remove blogs from my reader if they’ve gone silent for a while, it costs me nothing and I’m happy if you come back after a year. Or three. But other readers might be different. And if your sole reason for blogging is to reach a big audience then I can’t help you, because that’s not what I do and so I can’t give any advice.

It’s Blaugust again and this is post number 13.