Eight Man

Invasion of Fuzzy

Last night when I got home my mind was entirely on getting everything done so I could go participate in the game that must not be named. As a result I rushed inside, changed the ferret cage, started dinner etc without really being super observant. So by the time my wife got home, I was completely oblivious when she asked “what is up with all those fuzzy worms?”. I threw back on my sandals and went outside and sure enough… we were being invaded by dozens of large black furry caterpillars. They were climbing all over the garage door in groups of up to a half dozen or so. Seeing my photo this morning reminded me to do some research.

Turns out these are Walnut Caterpillars, and they normally forage for food in September/October in the south central region of the United States. The odd thing is… we have no Walnut/Pecan trees which are the only things they eat. So at first I was wondering why exactly they decided to try and find food in my front yard… then shortly thereafter I remembered… over the summer months I helped a neighbor haul out sections of a large tree. I am wondering if it was a Walnut, and by chopping it down he starved out these little guys. They could be desperately foraging trying to find any food source in the area… which lead them to spill out into my front yard. It is odd how cute and both creepy the experience of seeing them roam around my garage door was.

Stone Vigil

Lately I have been piddling big time in Final Fantasy XIV in an effort to let some of the new crop of players catch up a bit. As a result I have been leveling both the pugilist and archer quite a bit, and yesterday for awhile I focused on the gladiator and managed to get it to 25. However since the game that must not be named was not really cooperating… I noticed we had just the right number of people on for the next dungeon Stone Vigil. I had been hung up in the main storyline until I completed this dungeon, as had Rae so it would be good to get past it so we can continue on. As I have said before, every so often the game locks you at a story element and you will not receive further quests until you have completed it.

For going into the dungeon relatively cold… it could have gone a lot worse… however it also could have gone a lot better. There was one complete group wipe, and then another time that we lost me and Dallian our black mage. However the only times we actually struggled were on the completely egregious trash pulls. We managed to oneshot every boss in the dungeon so I can console myself with that thought, when I think about the rougher spots. It feels like the trash difficulty ramped up significantly. I don’t want to give any spoilers that you cannot already see from the dungeon preview video… but let me tell you… dragons are assholes in the Final Fantasy world.

The game has a series of encounters called Guildhests, that essentially try and teach players how to function in larger grouping dynamics. They educate the players in how to get out of bad things, how to focus fire the worst targets… various necessarily lessons that they will need to participate in larger dungeons. There are two hests every 5 levels after level 10, and they provide a ton of experience the first time you complete them. This is something I had almost completely ignored until recently, when the guild made a concerted effort to try and catch everyone up on them. The reasoning… the second level 40 hest… is the first 8 man content you can encounter.

Most of the dungeons and hests we had run, were 4 man groups… otherwise known as a Light Party in Final Fantasy lingo. The basic group composition is 1 tank, 1 healer, and 2 dps. These are pretty simple to fill and get started. Eight mans on the other hand have a comp that is essentially two light partys… 2 tanks, 2 healers, 4 dps. The problem with two tank encounters generally is that you have a “main” tank, and an “off” tank. As we went into this scenario I think both myself and Ashgar the other tank were really hoping that was not going to be the case here.

Much to our enjoyment the encounter was balanced in a way so that one tank was constantly tagging off between a fighting a boss and gathering trash role. Essentially we got attack from both sides at the same time forcing us to split up into two parties to handle the encounter. There was a lot of shifting of resources back and forth as the dps burned down one encounter while the next tank gathered up and got solid aggro on the next incoming encounter. I loved the synergy of the fight and the way that both tanks and both healers had to work in unison to cover each other. If that was any evidence of what the 8 man raids will look like, I think I am really going to like endgame content in this game.

Wrapping Up

I have to say the more I get into Final Fantasy, the more I am enjoying it. I went into this with an overwhelming meh feeling, but the longer I play it the more it has sunk its hooks into me. The leveling of alternate specs needs some work, as once you run out of quests you pretty much just have to grind fates…. but I feel they are working on this. I hate to say it but this is a game that could definitely benefit from daily quests other than the leves. I know this sounds odd coming from my post yesterday about game jumping, but I really hope this is a game we can stick with for awhile. I am really enjoying myself. I hope you all have a great weekend, and that you get accomplished whatever you need to.