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Oh!  Hi there, friend!  Glad you decided to drop by!  I missed you, buddy.

It’s been a little while since my last post, nothing much to report.  Haven’t done anything but level Fisherman, which is now at level 38.  Getting excited for the expansion to drop…sorta.

*Sigh*

I’m gonna be brutally honest here, I don’t really know what I’m doing with this project of mine.  Am I really going to get what I want out of this game and this blog?  Do I even know what I want?

Sometimes when I feel lost, I like to make lists.  Here is a list of things that I currently want:

1) To have fun playing FFXIV.

2) To make some cool new friends while playing FFXIV.

3) To write this blog.

4) To have others read this blog.

5) A pet elephant.

I think that just about covers it.  I am very concerned that I will never get items 2, 4 and 5 on the list.  Maybe I should just be content items 1 and 3 and hope the rest come to me somehow?

Or maybe I need to be more proactive.  Here comes another list, this time of things I can do to get what I want:

1) Keep playing FFXIV.

2) Join a FC and make an effort to chat with them while I play.

3) Keep writing this blog.

4) If appropriate, tell my FC about my blog.

5) Win an elephant as a gag prize from a radio contest, as seen in episode 17 of season 5 of The Simpsons.

Hmm.  Those are some good lists.  I feel better.

Thanks again for stopping by, buddy, I guess I’ll see you next time – per item 3 on the above list.    

Good morning, internet!

Nothing much to report today, didn’t get to play much over the weekend.  Spent most of Saturday at Ikea shopping for furniture with the wife, and most of Sunday assembling said furniture.  It really blows my mind that there are folks with kids that seem to be able to play on nearly a daily basis.  How do they do it?  It feels like there aren’t enough hours in the day, but maybe I just need to be more assertive about how I allocate and spend my free time.  I have noticed that I tend to kill a lot of time in-between chores, just browsing on my phone or staring off into space.  Maybe I just need to really focus on getting my shit done without those little breaks so that I can convert all of those little chunks of downtime into a couple hours of gaming time. 

I am closing in on 50 with my White Mage.  I ran Dezmael Darkhold (sp?) through the leveling roulette, which took me to 47.  The more I get reacquainted with these old dungeons, the more excited I get to play through Heavensward/Stormblood.  I am really looking forward to progressing through the story and experiencing all of the new content, because ARR doesn’t really offer much more than a grind for me at this point.  An awesome grind, like, (Trump voice) the best grind, but a grind nonetheless. 

Speaking of grinds, on the Brave Exvius front I have been grinding the Bahamut raid and the new Type-0 event.  My two priorities for FFBE are ability crystals and trust moogles; in particular, I want to upgrade Lightning’s Crushing Blow and I want Shine’s TMR.  In general though, I am not stressing super hard about being efficient with FFBE.  I went through a phase where I was checking the app constantly to make sure I was spending all of my NRG, orbs, etc., and it started to stress me out a bit – because it never ends!  As soon as you have milked an event for all of the goodies you can get out of it, another one pops up in its place.  On the one hand, I think it is amazing that a mobile game is constantly churning out fresh content, but it also can wear you out if you let yourself become too invested.  Now, I just pull up the game and do a couple of things when I have the chance, without worrying about “keeping up” with it. 

With both MMOs and these mobile gacha games, it is easy to fall into the mental trap of “keeping up” – as if somebody is keeping tabs on you and judging your progress (or lack thereof).  In reality, all of that content is (usually) there for you to enjoy at your own pace, and unless you have a static group of friends that need you to be on par with them, the pressure to stay on top of things as they roll out is entirely in your head.  This is why I decided not to buy Heavensward separately from Stormblood; I know the Heavensward content isn’t going anywhere and I am refusing to buy into the mental pressure to “catch up” on content before the release.  FFXIV is such a strong, well-developed game, I am sure it is going to be around for many years to come.  I have time to experience everything at my own pace. 

Which is glacially slow.  Damn you, Ikea!

Dear internet friends,

Is it endearing that I address you as if you actually exist, when really you are a figurative entity through which I address myself?  Or is it just sad?  Maybe a little of both, like reading the diary of a middle-school girl that is ashamed of her braces?  In any case, I hope you like me and that you still think my smile is cute.

I had a great weekend, our first free weekend since we started planning the wedding – well, almost; we did have to spend some time putting together thank you cards.  Anyways, I managed to get in some game time before the maintenance kicked in.  I now have my White Mage at 44, Miner at 46, and I also started Fisherman and got it to level 9.  I am actually really excited for fishing since I have level 50 Culinarian, maybe I can make some money off of my fish-dishes.

I also tried Palace of the Dead for the first time with my White Mage.  I did floors 1-10, and then 11-20; these early floors were kinda fun, but also kinda mindless.  Maybe the dungeon permutations become more interesting and challenging on the subsequent floors, but at these beginning levels it was just a lot of running around and blasting quickly through enemies.  I do like that you get to level up so quickly, I guess this gives players a good opportunity to survey the skills of a class before actually levelling it up in Eorzea – but at the same time, the pace is so quick that there isn’t really time to configure your hotbars as you go, especially on PS4.

 

After PotD, I did my leveling daily roulette and ended up in a Thousand Maws group where the tank refused to provoke.  This might frustrate most players, but for me it was kind of a fun challenge.  Usually, these low-level dungeons are really boring for a healer, but with the dps characters taking so much damage I actually had to keep on my toes.  I got a little bit cocky and started juggling some dps into the mix too, which was fine right until the last boss where I was too slow to save our black mage.  We still beat the boss, but the black mage gave me some lip about not healing him – which I found kinda funny, since nobody even mentioned that our tank put zero effort into keeping aggro.  Kinda sucks that my first description of social interaction in the game has to be so negative.  But what can you do?

Make some new in-game friends maybe?  Still trying to figure that one out.  I don’t know if I really spend enough time in-game to really form a bond with anyone that way.  I think I would rather have something akin to a gaming pen-pal that I can occasionally meet up with, but mostly we would just correspond about our game progress and our lives.

 

Right now, that person is you, phantom reader, except you don’t write back because you don’t exist.  Bummer.  You should try existing so that you can write back to me.  And do other fun things that you can only do if you exist - existing is fun, trust me on this.  

Hello, phantoms of the internether.  Just wanted to a post a quick update; haven’t had any time to play FFXIV, so no progress to report there, but I’m back from the wedding!  It went pretty well, better than expected actually.  It feels a little weird to finally be done.  I am really pretty introverted, and not at all used to being the center of attention.  All of the outpouring of affection, praise and gifts…it was a lot to handle!  Now I feel pretty fried.  It reminds me of that feeling you get right after wrapping up a school year, when all of your finals and projects are finally done but it hasn’t really sunk in yet that you have a whole summer of freedom ahead of you.

I did get a chance to play a bit of Final Fantasy Brave Exvius (FFBE), and I think I might want to use this blog to discuss those exploits as well.  For those unfamiliar, FFBE is a mobile “gacha” RPG with an original storyline that also incorporates characters from the entire Final Fantasy franchise.  It’s really fun, and I highly recommend it to anyone who is looking for a JRPG for their phone…as long as you don’t have a gambling problem!  Unlike with FFXIV, I am actually what you would consider an “endgame” player in FFBE – I started at the game’s release, I have a few top-tier units, some good gear and some of the “trust mastery rewards” that take a good deal of time to obtain.  I really love this game because it is very casual friendly, while still having a deep-end to dive into.  Plus, the story is surprisingly good!  I actually look forward to each chunk of story they release so that I can find out what happens next to the main characters.

During our travels, I managed to beat the Gilgamesh trial after just a couple tries.  My line-up was Refia (with Dual-cast), Cecil, Ling, Lightning, Luneth, and a friend Noctis.  The mechanic of the fight involves “sealing” Gilgamesh’s moves by hitting him with corresponding elements, the most important elements being fire, lightning, wind and holy.  I failed the first couple times because I didn’t realize that Lightning’s Sparkstrike move wasn’t sealing Gilgamesh’s lightning attack for some reason.  Once I realized that, it was just a matter of grinding through the very long fight, which was made even longer by having only three damage dealers.

Well, I guess that’s it for now.  Cheers!

Oh!  Hi, I didn’t see you there!  Have a seat, can I get you something to drink?

 

Just kidding, you’re reading a blog, you aren’t physically visiting me so I can’t offer you beverages.  Someday that will be a thing; you will come visit my blog, click a little button and a drone will buzz over to your house and drop a cold beverage on your lawn.  But if you order a drink through my blog, you can only choose from what I typically keep in my fridge, e.g. cans of cheap beer, a bottle of cheap Sauv Blanc that has been open too long, almond milk, or some orange juice.  Nevertheless, you would be welcome to it.  Mi casa es su casa.

I had a good, productive weekend on both the life and game fronts.  I got my Miner to about 37 and Conjurer past 40.  I had an embarrassing moment with my Conjurer on Friday night; joined a party to run Qarn through the Duty Finder, and was asked why I wasn’t a White Mage yet.  I didn’t have a good answer, other than that I totally forgot that I was supposed to tackle the job quest at level 30.  Oops!  I have forgotten a lot of very basic stuff about this game, but I guess it’s good that I am refreshing my memory with all of this low-level content.

And in life news…this weekend is the big wedding!  Both my wife and I really can’t wait to just get it out of the way.  At dinner last night, we were both joking about how it felt like we have been married to the wedding for this whole year instead of each other.  So much planning and effort soaking up our free time for so long, and so much social pressure and expectations from friends and family…all for one fleeting day, which I am sure will fail to live up to the hype.  Will it be worth it?  I don’t know, maybe?  I’ll let you know when I am on the other side of it, looking at it in retrospect.  I am already thinking that I should have tried to convince my wife to throw the wedding in Eorzea.  Oh well, maybe we can do that for our anniversary :P

Here’s a quick, mid-week update, just ‘cause.  Shut up, I don’t have to explain myself to you!

…I think the longer I keep this blog up without any actual readers, the more schizophrenic I am going to become.  I am okay with that.

Anyways, my free log-in period under the current returning player promotion is just about up, so I have been thinking about the best way to start spending money on the game.  For a while I had been trying to decide whether to buy Heavensward now, or wait and just get Stormblood once it releases (it comes with HW); as excited as I am to play through the HW story quests, I am leaning towards the latter, it is just too cost effective to pass up.

I was also on the fence about whether to re-sub immediately, or wait about a week for my wedding to finally be done, and allow my bank account to recuperate after all of the wedding spending.  At first I was going to wait, but then SE announced its Amazon promotion with the new glamour items and cloud mount.  Dammit SE, just shut up and take my money! 

I thought I was going to have to pass up the promotion because I couldn’t justify spending the money, but to my surprise one of my work supervisors gave me a $50 Amazon gift card for completing a big project we had been working on together!  To be honest, I feel a little bit weird accepting gifts for the work I am already getting paid to do, but at the same time I was really excited to use the gift card to purchase some game time and also get the promotional items.  And the only thing more awkward than receiving the gift would be rejecting it, so I guess I should just make sure to thoroughly express my gratitude.

I am a very lucky person.  I was raised by a good family; I was given enough advantages to be successful, but not so many advantages that I never learned how to be self-sufficient; I am healthy and (relatively) young; I am not just employed, but on an actual career path with room to grow;  I am in a healthy relationship with a beautiful woman who is willing to spend the rest of her life with me…these are all the things that run through my head and actually make me feel a little bit guilty when even more good things fall on my lap, such as an unexpected Amazon gift card.  At least I know I am not taking all these things for granted.

Hello again, reader!  Not sure who you are or why you are reading, but I am willing to bet that you are a very cool person.  Let’s be friends, mkay?

Sorry, that was cheezy, but I like the idea of addressing the “reader” in the same way that Mr. Rogers used to greet his television “neighbors” after changing into his sweater.

Anyways, I was able to log-in and make my grand return to the game on Thursday.  Allow me to introduce to you Ixxiana Ikslawok, this blog’s main protagonist:

As you can see, I have already made a good deal of progress with her, so it won’t be as if I am starting with a 100% fresh character.  My overall goal with Ixxiana is going to be “horizontal” progress rather than “vertical” progress, i.e. I will be trying to reach the level cap for every class rather than becoming a max ilvl raider with one or two classes.  In that sense, I have a good start here.

My first day back in the game was spent picking the main questline back up where I left off, which was after completing the Leviathan trial.  I ran through some quests until I was able to beat Ramuh, or rather I got carried through Ramuh by a DF party :P.  I did a bit of research and found out that you should really save these main story quests until after acquiring the expansion, so that the experience you gain isn’t lost on a character that has been capped at 50.  Since HW is included with SB, I will probably wait for SB to drop before resuming the story quests.  Or at least I am going to try to be patient, which might be hard because the story is actually really good and it provides a really nice break to the grind.

After setting aside the story quests, I decided to level Conjurer for a bit.  I ran a couple levequests to warm up, and then tried to run Thousand Maws with a DF group.  Unfortunately, I got hit with a disconnect right in the middle of the boss fight and didn’t get credit for completion L.  I hope that won’t become an ongoing issue for me!

Now that I have this initial dabbling out of the way, I think it is time to set some hard goals that I can work towards.  I think my two main goals will be maxing Mining and maxing Conjurer.  For Miner, rather than grind leves I think I would prefer to actually farm mats that I can sell on the market board as I go.  I am going to want a big nest egg of gil to spend on mats and gear when leveling the other crafting classes.  I really love crafting in this game, even if managing items and storage is a bit of a slog.

On a separate note, I was browsing the FFXIV subreddit and I found a post from a player who was looking for music to listen to while grinding their gathering classes.  I absolutely LOVE listening to music and building playlists, so I put something together for them and sent them a link.  They never replied, and even though they are a total stranger to me I was kind of disappointed.  Is that weird, to be invested in what some total stranger thinks of me, or to even want to do that for them in the first place?  In any case, here is the playlist if anyone else wants to listen to some sweet tunes while they play:

https://open.spotify.com/user/1229395444/playlist/5adbg8Vr0OJFKOK0AHmdXo

Also, my dear phantom-readers, if you are ready to coalesce into existence and reveal yourself to me as a concrete being, please let me know if you would like me to build a customized playlist for you!  I listen to literally every genre under the sun, and I love trying to tailor playlists to a person’s tastes or personality.  Just one more way, besides playing MMOs, that I like to try to virtually connect with people.