Nogamara

Blaugust 2019

Although I had a lot of fun doing Blaugust last year – I did 31 posts in August and 52 consecutive days in total, I guess I’m gonna sit out this year. I’m not hyped for anything, I’ve nothing new to say about WoW (continuing to play, even winding down a bit after getting flying, no plans to raid) and FFXIV (ok, it is new to me but everyone else is already finished with Shadowbringers already ( well, everyone except Naithin) and I’ve a few goals but am in no rush) and no new games planned. The SWTOR expansion is supposed to launch soonish, but it’s still too far off to commit.

This wasn’t really a great year overall and I’m not in the mood to commit to anything, although Bronze might be easily doable even with traveling for a few days. Maybe I’ll change my mind last minute as I often do 😛

Anyway, here’s Belghast’s full post and I wish everyone participating good luck and hopefully as much joy as I had last year.

Blaugust 2019 Read More »

Crafting, Crafting, Crafting

Didn’t have too much time but spent a bit of time crafting. All crafting jobs are now 31+ (nearly 32+) and all gathering ones are 45+. I’ve stopped doing Ixal dailies and am doing only GC handins for now. If only the inventory management was better… then this would be a lot more fun. Also I’m trying not to lose too much money with this, I’ve tried to stay above 2.7m, but today I dipped down to 2.63m. (I know, peanuts, but I really don’t want to spend all my Gil for crafting and so I’m only spending what I’m making while leveling up.)

Making progress

Speaking of leveling up. BRD is 65 and doing the MSQ in the Azim Steppe, Warrior is 62.5 and I did tank again. WHM is 56.5 and I’ve been doing at least one duty roulette per day, except today.

Still a little unsure about getting crafting gear or if it’s kinda useless pre-50. So far I just spent as little money as possible, only buying upgrades for < 10k per slot and I only spent 2k per materia today for my 4x gathering main hands, before that I only had materia in the shared gear for gathering/crafting. Need to do the 40 and 45 miner quests now for another 2 free Level 45-46 upgrades (got the gloves already).

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Stormblood continues

With the WoW flying thing done I spent a little more time in Eorzea. I “finished” Yanxia and The Ruby Sea (including unlocking flying) and just dinged 65 on Bard and will continue the MSQ in the next zone. So far the pacing is perfect. Finishing up the flying quests brought me to 10% shy of the next level to continue, let’s see how this evolves.

Didn’t manage to hit 62 on Warrior but haven’t tanked anything since coming back. White Mage is 53 though, so I did a daily healing roulette + trial most days. I wiped on the last boss of Palace of the Dead so I need to retry this at some point so I can have a look at Heaven-on-High.

Finally my gathering jobs are all at 43 and besides Leatherworker at 29.7 all other crafting jobs are 30-31 (Culinarian 41). Did quite a few GC turnins and also a few more days of Ixal quests. If only I could craft with ingredients from Retainer inventories…

Overall I really want to push through Stormblood right now, although (because?) I’m loving it and then get to Shadowbringers. No real plans for a new job but lost interest in Arcanist and Paladin a bit (and didn’t like Red Mage at all). I’m keen to try Samurai because I’ve not played any melee DPS (except bad Warrior DPS) – but from a gear and overload point of view Dancer would be more reasonable… We’ll see… 1 of each DPS/Tank/Healer is good enough right now, I just need to catch up on White Mage.

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Battle for Azeroth Pathfinder, Part Two

Probably quite a few days after most people that are actively playing, but I don’t care. I know I was slacking, but I can finally fly in BfA, 3-4 weeks after it went live – not too bad, considering the fact I only got the Draenor one while in Legion and not getting the Legion one at all (yet).

After reaching this goal I can dedicate a bit more time to FFXIV – and get to leveling my BfA toons which I had put on hold until this was done. There’s still a Mage, a Monk, a DK, a Hunter, and a Priest to get to max level.

Finally I started the 3rd Allied Race toon, my Highmountain Tauren Warrior. Full rested XP was a near perfect match for tanking 2 dungeons, getting from 20 to 24 in the process. Maybe not the fastest way to level only while fully rested, but I have time – and too many characters. The Rogue is 53 (and was recently killed for the first time because of War Mode, in Felwood) and the Mage is 46.

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Heritage Armor: Ironforge

No huge progress in WoW but I’ve been chipping away at the two 8.2 factions to unlock flying. Paladin is at 8.1k/12k in Nazjatar and Rogue is at 8.2k/12k in Mechagon.

Also did a Heroic Warfront with my guild before they were raiding yesterday. Was fun to play with them (instead of only talking) for a change and I also got a nice 430 Helm, but overall… it was like an easy and annoying raid boss. Not a fan.

  • Worgen Druid now had 75 Mining/117 Herbalism thanks to flying some circles near Stormwind (prep for Darkmoon Faire quests next month) – also why are there so many more Herbalism nodes?
  • Dwarf Shaman finished WoD and is 100 now
  • Finished the Gnomeregan rep grind on the Gnome Rogue and the Ironforge rep grind on the Dwarf Paladin (Shadow Labyrinth + Hellfire Peninsula dungeons ftw) – now just 20 levels to go for the Rogue…
  • Unlocked my 2nd Heritage Armor: Ironforge

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Hello Stormblood

Rainy weekend, time to play games.
I’ve finished the first part of Stormblood (Level 61-62 quests) on Bard and have cool looking outfit now. So far I really liked Stormblood and can’t wait to continue.

Other than that I pushed White Mage to 49 with Palace of the Dead and daily roulettes (got some sweet Level 50 gear waiting) and Miner to 43 because I wanted to continue to level my Miner Retainer. Didn’t touch Warrior or Paladin really since the break, but it’s ok.

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Back in Eorzea

Yesterday I finally managed to drag myself to continue FFXIV’s MSQ. First I had to do an 8 man trial then some running and some cutscenes, today I had to do a normal duty and a solo thing. But after a few hours I finished Patch 3.4 (Soul Surrender) and now only have like 8 quests left until Stormblood. I know, one expansion late, but at least I’m continuing with hardly any XP as a reward.

Also didn’t get to do my WoW dailies to unlock flying today because of this but as I’m not enjoying them so much anyway this was some welcome distraction. Still feels grindy to be caught between patches, so I kinda just exchanged one grind for another. Such is life as an MMO gamer.

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Quantity over quality

Another week gone by and I haven’t found my way into FFXIV again, which is a shame. Also wasn’t at home many evenings, but enough for some WoW progress

  • Darkmoon Faire profession quests on 19 characters (hmm, a bit much maybe?)
  • Tauren Druid to 110
  • Undead Mage to 110
  • Dwarf Hunter to 100
  • Mag’har Rogue to 49
  • Draenei DK to 70
  • Gnome Rogue to 100
  • Quite a bit of Gnomeregan reputation grinding on that Rogue
  • Created a Zandalari Troll Paladin and Dark Iron Dwarf Monk
  • Draenor Cooking 1-100 on Monk and DK
  • Fishing 1-75 on Monk

So I now finally have every class at 110 (Mage was missing, DK and Monk only dinged recently) and 5 of 12 classes missing to 120 (Mage, DK, Monk, Hunter, Priest). Also 2 Horde classes missing at 110 (Paladin is 101, Demon Hunter doesn’t exist) and 6 Alliance classes missing to 120 (Shaman/Hunter: 95-100, DK/Priest: 70/73, Mage: 4x, Monk: 20).

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Patch 8.2 woes

At first I was pretty excited about WoW’s 8.2 Patch. Two new zones, stuff to do, and so on. Now I’m not so excited anymore, and I’m not sure why.

Well ok, I’ve never been a fan of dailies, I much preferred WQs. Nazjatar has dailies, the mobs hit hard, I don’t like the zone layout. Also somehow the reputation grind for the BfA launch factions was kind of… ok? A whole new expansion! New questlines. Level how you want. OK, so maybe I’m just too focused on levels these days and can’t enjoy a good reputation grind for the sake of it. There’s even some gear! Hm, my two main toons were iLvl 395 and 394 when the patch came out, so maybe I’m not interested in gear either. The quest lines so far have been ok and to be fair Mechagon was a lot more fun than Nazjatar – maybe I simply don’t like underwater and Nagas and vertical zone layouts?

Anyway, here’s a list of stuff I did today instead of trying to get as much Nazjatar rep on my Alliance Paladin and Mechagon rep on my Horde Rogue (but at least I progressed a little with the story and the dailies on both, just not both zones on both characters):

  • Emperor Shaohao rep to Exalted (was only an hour or so)
  • Fishing 0 to 75 for the Darkmoon Faire quest: 4x (110 Undead DK, 101 BE Paladin, 120 Worgen Druid, 97 Dwarf Hunter)
  • Cooking to 75 for the same reason: 2x (97 Dwarf Hunter and 73 Worgen Priest)
  • Dwarf Shaman from 93 to 95
  • Tauren Druid from 103 to 105
  • Created a Nightborne Priest to start collecting Rested XP

That sounded really negative, but I think it boils down 90% to the zone design of Nazjatar, Mechagon looks cool. Also maybe I’m just not in the mood to do dailies right now. I am working on getting the Heritage armor on my Gnome Rogue (98 now, 3rd Rogue to 120, typical me) and Tauren Druid (I had forgotten how fun Feral DPS can be, also saved the group from a wipe with a well-timed Battle Rez in Eye of Azshara today). Otherwise I’m rotating through toons every few days to take advantage of Rested XP as good as possible. The Monk still has the +10%XP DMF buff, so maybe I should use that up before DMF comes again, and then I might also quickly grind out the 75 Fishing skill, as that’s the only total blank in regards to profession on all my Horde toons that were started before BfA. There are a few Alliance toons with zero professions, but I can live with that – since Legion (or MoP really, and WoD retroactively) I’ve not managed to max out stuff anyway. So maybe a little TODO list of short- to midterm goals is in order, so I don’t run off into the weeds again and may have time to dive into FFXIV again:

  • Unlock Flying in BfA, so grinding out Nazjatar and Mechagon rep
  • One of every class to 120. Missing: Hunter (111/97), Priest (111/73), Monk (110), DK (110/68), Mage (104/44)
  • Heritage Armor for Tauren, Dwarf, and Gnome
  • Heritage Armor for Kul Tirans and Mag’har

Patch 8.2 woes Read More »

Back from gaming-free vacation

Busy week ahead, WoW Patch 8.2 is supposed to happen in 3h (start of downtime) and FFXIV’s Shadowbringers expansion will be out in a few days as well. Kinda looking forward to the WoW thing more because I am still not finished with Heavensward and still need to do all of Stormblood and again I am a little disheartened because I can’t see the shiny thing and maybe all hopes of starting in February and rushing through base game + 2 expansions while being completely new to the game were ridiculous in the first place, once I kinda breezed through Heavensward I had high hopes it could be done. But the Heavensward post-story (without gaining levels in a meaningful way) somehow killed the flow. Yes, I fully admit that level dings seem to hugely motivate me to continue.

So I just came back from summer vacation and didn’t play anything except a few rounds of Picross (Two Eyes in this case, get it, it’s nice and looks awesome) on my phone. Regarding this post’s title: It’s not that I actively don’t count mobiles games as games, but I don’t count my 5 minutes of solving a level of Picross mobile gaming.

Played a few hours of WoW today (Gnome Rogue to 98, Mag’har Rogue to 47, Undead DK to 110, ground 1.5k of Shaohao rep) but nothing breathtaking, just chilling and work starts again tomorrow.

Also for some reasons I’ve been watching Warhammer miniature painting videos half the evening, I blame AggroChat ~254-257 for mentioning the GW contrast paints. Maybe I should take up mini painting again, it’s been quite a few years.

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