Nogamara, Author at Battle Stance

Level 80 and MSQ progress

Nogamara / 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.

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!

Level 80 and MSQ progress Read More »

Ninety million

Nogamara / August 27, 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.

Ninety million Read More »

Staying motivated, 2021 edition

Nogamara / 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.

Staying motivated, 2021 edition Read More »

Sanctum of Domination, week 6+7

Nogamara / August 25, 2021 / Leave a Comment / WoW

It seems I’m really bad at this, I wanted to post a weekly recap and again, I forgot.

So in week 6 we were still missing a few people, after all August is summer vacation season here, so we didn’t kill anything new, but cleared normal again and the first 2 bosses on Heroic, including a first kill on The Eye, but I don’t have the wipe count, meh.

This week we did KT+Sylvanas, then the first 2 on Heroic on Sunday, then actually killed The Nine after 4 wipes and yesterday we worked on Ner’zhul for a bit until he fell on the 12th pull, then 4 wipes on Dormazain. So these 2 were the first that didn’t just fall over, now it’s getting a bit more interesting.

I’m starting to slack off and skip the Korthia dailies more often than not now, it’s kinda pointless. Working on Tier 5 of the second faction, but not even sure why. Raiding is fun, the rest isn’t, really.

It’s Blaugust again and this is post number 12.

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Random MMO stuff

Nogamara / August 23, 2021 / Leave a Comment / Final Fantasy XIV, WoW

Yesterday was a bit of a weird day. Home alone, it was raining all day. Got up, did some EVE stuff for an hour or two, then logged into FFXIV. First some professions stuff, then journeyed to Norvrandt again to continue the story. Not sure why I didn’t really enjoy the first part, but everything yesterday (up until the first quest hub in Il Mheg) was pretty cool. Managed to get Warrior to 70 and all DoH jobs to 65ish. Doing Beast Tribe Dailies on Dancer, but those 6 per daily don’t seem to progress much.

Current status of enjoyment for WoW Korthia dailies: Good enough for a 20min DPS queue duty finder wait in FFXIV. Meh.

Raiding was good though, I didn’t need to tank, and we killed The Nine on Heroic on our first night there despite missing a regular healer, but we were 21 for the first time in a while, not only 14. Now let’s see if we manage new first kills on Tuesday.

It’s Blaugust again and this is post number 11.

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Shadowbringers started

Nogamara / August 21, 2021 / Leave a Comment / Final Fantasy XIV

I bought Endwalker last night and today I properly started with the Shadowbringers story, leaving The Crystarium for the first time. MSQ is cool as usual, and I’m halfway to Level 74 already (Bard). Meanwhile I tanked some duty roulette, as I wanted to bring Warrior to 70, then going back to Paladin (54) and Dark Knight (55). I’ve also dutifully continued my Ananta Beast Tribe quests and continued the Kojin ones I apparently already started 2y ago. And then I started the Namazu ones to push my crafting jobs a little, I’m 63+ on most and 62 only on 3, so I’m gonna continue to do whatever is currently the lowest, in addition to GC handins.

I was very much relieved that the Square Enix Shop website has improved, this time it was only riddled with minor nuisances, where I think I spent half an hour trying to buy something two years ago. Something that should literally be 3 clicks…

Having said all that, so far I’m not particularly happy with the Shadowbringers MSQ, Eulmore was a little annoying, Amh Araeng wasn’t great and I don’t like the Exarch. But it is what it is and it’s still a great game, but so far I don’t know why everyone praises Shadowbringers so much. I don’t see how it’s miles better than the rest.

Yeah I know, not a typical Dark Knight, but I don’t glamour a lot, leveling too fast

It’s Blaugust again and this is post number 10.

Shadowbringers started Read More »

Resubbed to FFXIV

Nogamara / August 15, 2021 / Leave a Comment / Final Fantasy XIV

It took longer than I had hoped (free thingy ran out on July 30th), but today at noon I finally resubbed to FFXIV, including my one missing retainer (which I faintly remembered had a lot of gear).

Took a while to get that sorted, but with all the jobs I had leveled already I could free up a ton of space. Then I continued selling crafting mats clogging up retainer number 1 and 2, so maybe I can get rid of the cost for number 3 in a month again.

Waited ages half-afk until tanks were needed for the Duty Roulette and not just healers, got Praetorium…

Wasn’t in the mood for anything really today, so I did three beast tribe quests and a few crafting handins.

It’s not that I already regret resubbing… but today just wasn’t a good day for being really productive. Didn’t want to do MSQ, didn’t want to do dungeons.

Well, would’ve done something as Dancer DPS I guess.

Also still on the fence if I should preorder Endwalker now for the new XP earring or if I should try to get through Shadowbringers a bit first… Last time I preordered Shadowbringers “too soon” and then it fizzled out before I reached the content.

It’s Blaugust again and this is post number 9.

Resubbed to FFXIV Read More »

Sanctum of Domination, week 5

Nogamara / August 11, 2021 / Leave a Comment / WoW

So I had to tank again yesterday, we skipped Fatescribe and did Kel’Thuzad, Sylvanas, then went to Heroic. I wiped the raid for the first time, on our first KT try of the night. First I thought I had understood the mechanic, then it looked wrong, I did something wrong and then I killed the main tank and myself. Second try went nearly flawless. Sylvanas had the weird bug again on our first try, then we had a normal wipe, then we finished. So I tanked 9/10 normal now and only one wipe that was my fault. That’s fine.

Then we went to Heroic, oneshot the Tarragrue and then wiped 3 times on the Eye. Proper raiding!

But overall I’m still mostly busy with EVE and I definitely need a small break after this week, when I wrapped up some stuff. Too much moving for my taste.

It’s Blaugust again and this is post number 8.

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Taking a beating again

Nogamara / August 9, 2021 / Leave a Comment / WoW

Apparently we were a tank short last night so I got asked if I’d do it again. And it seems to help if you have an officer friend who trusts you, but then again it was only normal, but more like: people knew I was tanking Heroic Nathria progression, and it wasn’t as if I had begged to tank.

Gear in Shadowlands is really, really weird. At first my 213 items were selected for best damage, as we progressed in the tier on Heroic and I was tanking more, some enchants were switched. Now all my 226 SoD gear is pure dps again and so I just swapped out two two-hand weapons to 1h + shield and the trinkets. My 226 DPS gear is still a lot better than my few pieces of 213 tanking gear. I’m not complaining, but it’s a little weird.

Anyway, nothing bad happened, I didn’t mess up, we killed 7 bosses, I think we had no wipes. Might have managed 8 but the start was a little slower than usual and we were missing some key players. I know I made a few errors but I noticed and it wasn’t major, so for once I’m actually happy with my performance there and my fear that I was a big part of the problem why we didn’t kill Heroic Sire was alleviated a little. I basically never feared for my life, even with tank busters, in my 225 ilvl gear (maybe a tad overgeared, but not overly so) compared to my 217ish on the 220 iLvl boss in the 213 instance. But mechanically the fights do seem to be a bit easier than Nathria. A taunt here or there, some mitigation at times, and a lot of (easy) positioning. No running through mirrors at least.

I still hope we have our 2nd tank back on Tuesday as I really need to work on my dps numbers and I’m currently basically only raidlogging and doing 15mins of dailies, with all the EVE stuff happening.

It’s Blaugust again and this is post number 7.

Taking a beating again Read More »

Final Fantasy plan averted

Nogamara / August 6, 2021 / Leave a Comment / EVE Online

Yeah, that went great. Had the plan to sub to FFXIV this weekend and then… EVE happened. I’ve not been that active for months. After all we’re moving and there’s other stuff to do. Hopefully this settles down soon because right now I’m losing sleep. Mostly because I’m hyped, but also because there’s so much to do.

I will never understand why you can’t view caps in station…

It’s Blaugust again and this is post number 6.

Final Fantasy plan averted Read More »