Nogamara

Raiding Amirdrassil – week 13, 14, AOTC

Week 13 was uneventful, Sunday and Tuesday full of good tries and bad.

But today we killed Fyrakk on Heroic and have our third AOTC achievement in Dragonflight, on the 68th pull, it somehow a little anticlimactic with a 21% wipe as the first try of the evening and finishing on the 6th pull. After that a raid break was announced quite unisono, because no active raiders were missing (which is good) but I’m a little sad we’re not reclearing even once.

AOTC: Fyrakk the Blazing

After that we did two more +20 (one timed +1, one 80s over time) to fill out the Vault slots, kinda ironic that it’s not helping as my goals on this char are done. Also got to 2700 rating, my all time best, and just one +20 timed missing for the port. Guess I have 6 weeks to get that now and maybe focus a little on the shammy and trying to heal anything over +14.

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More M+ After All

Thanks to my awesome guildies I managed to get to 2500 rating last night with a chill +17 Murozond’s Rise, so that’s my 2nd season with Keystone Hero.

After that I switched to the Resto Shammy and healed a few more. +13 and +14 were a little spicy at times until our tanked remarked “Oh, you’re only at 435 iLvl, that explains a lot” – but yeah, I need one more item in the correct slot to be able to use the 4 Tier Bonus. And finally I did 4 +2s for the weekly on my Beast Mastery Hunter after midnight, then basically fell asleep in my chair.

Good times though, just a little more practice with healing.

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Diablo IV’s Lunar Awakening Event

First event in Diablo IV, at least for me, iirc. It has 10 tiers of rewards and you complete them by doing shrines in the open world that are marked purple. Didn’t take too long, was easy to spread out over several days, was fun. Nothing much to add, not a grind like WoW’s events and also not a nobrainer 30min affair like FFXIV’s.

I’m 53 on my Sorceress and now that the event is done, I unrelatedly finally got all Altars of Lilith and 100% map completion, and so we’ll go World Tier 3 next, I think.

In other news, still having fun with the game (when taken in moderation), but I’m skipping this season.

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Raiding Amirdrassil – week 12

The Sunday raid included a whole lot of wipes on Fyrakk and not much else. On Tuesday we got to phase 3 for the first time, like 2 or 3 times, best try was 20-21%. Not bad, 40 wipes in.

M+ was mostly uneventful this week, I managed to get 8 of them in until Monday evening, 4 of them 18 or higher, but no new timed 20s.

But I’m at least very close to 2500 rating (aka Keystone Hero) thanks to a +20 Murozond’s Rise “just” 6 minutes over time. I’ve not timed it at all on Tyrannical, so a +11 would probably be enough.

And then I managed to heal 5 low ones on the Shammy, that one +8 was quite some work. Bad gear, no one kicking anything, but it worked.

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Raiding Amirdrassil – week 11

The Sunday raid had us extend for the first time, and then quite a few wipes on Tindral. Best one was about 12% I think.

After the raid we timed a +20 Atal’Dazar and a +18 Throne of the Tides in Tyrannical, which was nice. I still kinda need some 11-15s now for some Wyrm crests, what an odd problem to have. We also did a +20 Atal’Dazar and a +18 Everbloom on Saturday with 2 different people and it didn’t go quite so well, still some good practice for me, and probably what gave us the win in Atal’Dazar today, as I didn’t die on the last boss, unlike on Sunday.

The Tuesday raid went really well, killing Tindral on the third pull (probably around 15 wipes overall), then we we wiped 9 times on Fyrakk, mostly in Phase 2 with those damn ghost adds. That fight might take a while, especially being low on healers next week.

My newly found and loosely defined M+ team didn’t want to run after the raid as originally planned, so I pugged 2 quick +11s for some points (and to get the third choice in the Vault), which means I’m now at 1900 rating, so if I do a +10 or +11 Murozond’s whatever next week, I’ll be at 2000, yay.

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Server move, again

Just like in April 2021 instead of upgrading I switched servers and if you can read this the hamsters are running.

I hope the performance will be a bit better and I was also running out of space.

Nothing fancy happened, but please holler if you notice any oddities.

  • Hoster: Hetzner Cloud
  • Domain: staying with namecheap.com
  • OS: from Ubuntu Focal to Debian Bookworm
  • PHP: From PHP 8.0.30 to PHP 8.3.2
  • WordPress: staying with the rolling auto-upgrade method
  • Theme: staying with Astra

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Raiding Amirdrassil – week 10

Had quite a few people signed off for Sunday, some coming late but in the end we did manage to start with 12 people and end with 14. Easy kills of the first 6 bosses despite some of our top DPS missing, but we called it 15min earlier instead of doing Glimmeron again.

Then I got dragged into a +20 Darkheart Thicket and we only missed timing it by 19 seconds, which is wild because I’d never seen it in M+.

Still no drops from the raid, but at least from the Vault and I could upgrade some stuff.

I was asked if I’d be on on Monday for more M+ and I said yes, not really knowing what to expect. We met and timed a +20 Atal’Dazar, then followed up with a +18 Black Rook Hold (also never seen this one on M+) and so we’re aiming to get a fourth one in after the Tuesday raid for the Great Vault. I suppose if this works I’m already halfway to Keystone Hero, might as well get the mount.

Tuesday, many tries on Smolderon and then he finally died, and I got the trinket, yay. Then a quick Waycrest Manor +18 and the week is over.

I’m kinda salty that playing Fury in M+ is fun, while the single target spec is not. And I only notice this 10 weeks in.

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Raiding Amirdrassil week whatever

Long time no post, a mix of not in the mood and not even thinking about it. The good news is that we’re 6/9 and have killed Nymue twice already. The healer I mentioned wanting to quit has unquit, added some WeakAuras and feels like he can play, that’s very good. Also got a few ok tries in at Glimmeron, but that’s a tough cookie.

I’ve finally caught up a little with gear, now I’m 469 which is only a full tier behind our top M+ performers at 482, but on Sunday I managed to grab the #3 spot on dps a couple times, so I’ll take it. (Yes, two key DPS were missing, shut up – we still killed 6 bosses in 2h).

At the start of the year I was sick and actually forgot to log in to raid, I hadn’t been sure when we’d been starting again after the holiday break and apparently there was a raid on the 2nd but I was already not feeling well that evening and then got stuck in bed the next days. So I guess that was week 6 and this is week 9, even if we canceled another raid on a Tuesday, probably last week.

Still haven’t done any more M+ but maybe I should really pester some guildies to take me on another 16 so I can upgrade my weapon but I’m really not feeling it at the moment. But I have 12 of 15 of whatever level of whatever the currency is called, so would be a waste to not use it on my main hand.

And even if this whole thing may sound like I’m not especially having fun… I am having fun, for exactly 4 hours a week, maybe adding an hour for the weekly + world boss if I have a moment, but not more, and not M+.

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Ten years of reviewed years

Happy New Year! While writing yesterday’s post I noticed that it was the tenth of its kind, mostly focusing on expenses, so if you find that boring, I can’t help you.

Let’s start with the easy numbers:

Overall Expenses

  • 2014: 450 EUR
  • 2015: 355 EUR
  • 2016: 374 EUR
  • 2017: 298 EUR
  • 2018: 176 EUR
  • 2019: 467 EUR
  • 2020: 976 EUR
  • 2021: 916 EUR
  • 2022: 535 EUR
  • 2023: 400 EUR
  • 2024: 236 EUR

So 2018 was an outlier due to unknown reasons and 2020+2021 were outliers due to Covid 19 and me not going outside a lot, but other than that it seems to be safe inside 300-550 EUR bracket, which means 25 to 45 EUR per month, so less than 1 AAA title per month. I can live with that.

MMOs I paid for:

  • WoW:
    • 2014, 2016, 2017, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023
    • about 72 out of 96 months (not counting two years with zero game time)
  • EVE:
    • 2014, 2016, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023
    • as of 2020 it’s three accounts, only one before that – too hard to count I think, but I guess it’s between 105 and 120 months, (out of 120 months) so accounts number 2+3 for the last 3 years make up the time I was not subscribed
  • WildStar:
    • 2014, 2015
    • less than 12 months of subs
  • SW:TOR:
    • 2014, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020
    • about 21 months spread over 5 years
  • FFXIV:
    • 2019, 2021, 2022, 2023
    • about 20 months spread over 4 years (only one free month in 2023)
  • Marvel Heroes:
    • 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017
    • no sub, bought some packs and ingame currency
  • Guild Wars 2:
    • 2015, 2017
    • basically buying expansions with diamonds included

I suppose any statistics about other games are moot, there were some I played a lot, some I played from time to time, some were free and some were bought. Nothing spectacular in a 10 year review I guess.

Hardware

Hardware costs could be another interesting breakdown but I’m not sure I’ll manage to meaningfully break that down, but I’ll try. My gaming PC from 2019 was about 1500 EUR, then a monitor for 400, some more SSDs (let’s say 300), my old graphics card (maybe 300), another monitor (let’s say 300) and some peripherals. That would be about 3000 EUR in 10 years. Sounds low, but even with a bit of research I think I got most of the parts and might not be missing a lot. Taking notes helps.

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