Nogamara

Patch 8.2 woes

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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

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Back from gaming-free vacation

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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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Levels were gained

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There wasn’t exactly much exciting stuff happening last week, also was out of town for 3 days. Some toons gained a few levels though:

  • Human Rogue to 120
  • Blood Elf Warlock to 120
  • Pandaren Monk to 107
  • Undead Death Knight to 105
  • Dwarf Hunter to 89
  • Mag’har Orc Rogue to 43
  • Kul Tiran Mage to 36

Well ok, maybe 2 new 120s are a little exciting. I’m not exactly pushing to gear them, just grabbing the easy upgrades from WQ, running a Warfront once, and so on.

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Goodbye MMO Fallout

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It’s kind of rare (I think) that blogs have dedicated “Goodbye” posts, most linger on without updates (guilty as charged) only to be removed from RSS readers after years of inactivity.

In line with the more professional tone of the website, I nearly missed the announcement that MMO Fallout is shutting down. Why did I miss it? It’s one of those blogs I don’t check very often – I’ve been reading it regularly for years, but only checking what happened in a burst once or twice a month. I also might have mentioned that I mostly read MMO blogs where I follow the authors – no matter what they’re playing at the time – more than a single game. Connor was an exception insofar (as hinted above) as there wasn’t much “Let me tell you a story what happened ingame last night” but writing about topics I *usually* don’t really care much about (lawsuits, financials, Runescape :P), but MMOFallout was always interesting, so thanks for that!

Hat tip to Wilhelm where I read about it (as I often do) because in the summer months when I don’t commute by public transport, my MMO blog reading goes down significantly compared to the winter.

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Heavensward

/ / 1 Comment / Final Fantasy XIV

Hit 60 on Bard today and already managed to do the first of the end-of-expansion dungeons, but not the second. First I was a little letdown as I hadn’t expected to be blocked by the gear wall (needs iLvl 142, I had ~127) but then I remembered to update my gear, 5mins after dinging 60 – I had already bought 5 pieces of Idyllshire 230 gear, which easily catapulted me to 181, so I was even downleveled 1 iLvl for the dungeon. Oops.
Warrior is 58 and, like Bard, caught up on Job quests for now. I’m trying to do one 50-60 dungeon roulette per day and not catch up to Bard again. Not sure if the XP bonus now works or not.

I’m still a little mixed on how I liked the Heavensward MSQ. Parts of it were great, parts of it were kinda weird and seemed out of place. I think I liked the ARR MSQ story better, overall.
From a gameplay perspective, I didn’t like Ishgard at first, but this improved a little. It’s still ugly as hell and boring and grey. The zones are all too big and with too few Aetheryte Crystals, until you are able to fly, that is. But once I was able to fly in a zone, I was basically done there. We’ll see how often I need to go back in the post-expansion quest line. The ones I kinda dreaded in ARR. According to this page there’s only 25+19 = 44 though, and not over 70? like in ARR. Also I want to learn more of the Scions’ fate, dammit!

I also pre-ordered Shadowbringers last night and am enjoying my +30% XP earring already. And I did a few Ixal quests again, so Weaver is 30 now, Blacksmith is 29.5 and there’s only Armorer at 25 and Goldsmith+Leatherworker at 26 to grind out until 30.

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Rested XP and many alts

/ / Leave a Comment / Final Fantasy XIV, WoW

Right now I’m not dead set on playing a certain character, or even a certain game. FFXIV is a lot of fun, sure – but I’m right at the end of leveling in Heavensward (Bard is 59 now) and I have the feeling that you need to grind out long stretches every time you need a level to continue the MSQ. It was a little painful to reach 59 already, and now I need a dungeon run in some library and then… a quest gives ~40-50k XP and I need like 4m to 60. That’s about 80-100 quests. Dungeon runs are a little better XP per time, but for that I need rested XP.

Switch to WoW, I’m not participating in any endgame stuff or even trying to gear up my toons any further (iLvl 394 on Alliance and 390 on Horde is plenty, without really trying), but somehow leveling is really fun right now. I also have quite a few toons with rested XP, so here’s what I managed to do in the last week or so:

  • Kul Tiran Mage to 30
  • Mag’har Orc Rogue to 37
  • Dwarf Hunter to 85
  • Human Rogue to 115
  • Draenei DK tp 64
  • Blood Elf Priest to 110

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Heritage armor revisited

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When I wrote about Heritage armor a month ago I assumed something which I now think is wrong (see last paragraph). So let’s assume the requirements are “Level 120 and Exalted with your faction”.

  • Horde
    • Orc (not ingame) – Exalted: 120 Rogue, 120 Shaman, 111 Hunter
    • Troll (not ingame) – Exalted : 120 Warrior
    • Tauren – Exalted: 102 Druid
    • Undead (not ingame) – Revered: 102 Mage (-18600), Honored: 102 DK (-30100)
    • Blood Elf – Exalted: 111 Warlock, Revered: 110 Priest (-9300), 102 Paladin (-17000)
    • Goblin (not ingame) – Revered: 86 Warrior (-73, really)
  • Both
    • Pandaren (not ingame) – ???
  • Alliance
    • Human (not ingame) – Exalted: 114 Rogue
    • Night Elf (not ingame) – Exalted: 120 Warrior, Friendly: 120 DH (-38000)
    • Dwarf* – Revered: 120 Paladin (-10300), 82 Hunter (-20000)
    • Gnome (8.1.5, soon) – Honored: 90 Rogue (-26000)
    • Draenei (not ingame) – Friendly: 61 DK (-36500)

*: The 120 Dwarf Paladin started at Honored today, but I invested like 3h and brought her to 10700 Revered, doing all of Dun Morogh, Loch Modan, and 90% of Wetlands for a total of nearly 25k. Also one run of Gnomeregan for the quest rep, and all this with the +10% Darkmoon Faire reputation buff. The first 18k went smoothly at ~8-9k per hour, Wetlands wasn’t so fast, that was only 6-7k in one hour. Still not complaining. Not sure if Arathi makes any sense now or if I should spam dungeons with my Ironforge Tabard, but I really want to get this armor as I’m really annoyed that I don’t get any for my 3 most played Horde characters, which by chance happen to be Orc, Orc, and Troll.

I will probably level one of the 110 Blood Elves soonish, probably the Warlock anyway, so this should be no problem. The Human Rogue will again be 120 without armor available. For the Tauren Druid I’m sadly in no hurry, and the Gnome is lacking 30 levels and a ton of rep and is also not on my main server, won’t happen soon 🙁

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Quick FFXIV update

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Friday: Going afk for a few days so might as well post a progress update before that.
Sunday: Of course scheduling didn’t work, but unexpected downtime, checking other people’s gaming blogs and noticing it…

WAR and BRD are both at 56 (poor planning on my part). Did some 50/60 duty roulettes as a DPS. Planning to do more of them as a tank when I saw them once. Also caught up with the MSQ, didn’t finish the Level 56 ones, but those were the reason I soldiered on to 56.

I also unlocked flying in the first 3 zones after a dungeon and some running around to find the remaining Aether Currents and some easy quests. Kinda painless compare to WoW.

In lowbie news, the WHM is nearing 40 and the GLD is now a Paladin, at Level 30. Culinarian is 38 (37 would’ve been enough) and I’m already kinda sick of the Ixal dailies. Ah well, fine if you’re waiting in a DPS duty queue…

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