Amon’s Pants

Bel Folks Stuff Episode 2

Since I was sick yesterday I decided to go ahead and wrap up the last bits of editing needed to push the latest episode of Bel Folks Stuff out the door.  While editing I had this strange trip into the past, as I had recorded the podcast a few weeks ago.  We talked about news…  in speculative terms that have long since been resolved.  So my important lesson is that I really should not sit in a show as long as I have with this series.  The end result feels a little strange, like we are looking into the past and seeing what our thoughts were like on a subject a couple of weeks ago.  In any case it was an enjoyable episode to record, and I am fairly proud of this side project as a whole.  However it is causing me to rethink my plans to record the next episode now… that I wouldn’t actually release until mid December.

In this episode I am joined by the illustrious Rowan Blaze of the I Have Touched the Sky blog and a frequent guest on the Beyond the Veil podcast covering The Secret World.  In an interesting change to the format of the first show… we also had a second guest with us… thought due to some technical constraint she was not extremely chatty.  Scooter is Rowan’s awesome wife and constant companion both in game and out.  Since one of the more interesting tidbits of his blog is the fact that he is almost always chronicling their adventures together rather than apart.  He suggested we include her in the discussion, and I think it turned out to be a fairly brilliant idea.  Once again there was not a really strict format, and as I said before… some of the information is a bit dated now…  but in any case I think it was a good effort well worth your time.

Amon’s Pants

ffxiv 2014-11-14 21-27-51-829 In the weeks after the release of the 2.4 patch, I have been spending most of my time in Syrcus Tower.  On the average night I have been running it between 2 and 5 times an evening.  At this point I can literally run the place in my sleep… and on more than a few of the runs I am pretty sure I dozed off at some point around Sylla and finally woke up when we were taking down Amon.  I’ve been running the raid for several reasons… but primarily to complete the ilevel 100 dragoon set.  I started off with extremely good luck, gathering up most of a set within the first few nights.  This all had a side benefit of also gathering up quite a few Sands and Oils and enough Unidentified Allagan Tomestones to outfit an army of alts.  I reached a point where all that was left were the pants, and that had been the state I was in for the last three weeks.  I managed to see them drop a few times, but in all three of those occasions… there was another dragoon and the RNG gods decided to smite me.

Normally speaking Syrcus Tower goes extremely smoothly, as most of the server has reached a point where they are using it as a way to farm oils and sands… and the occasional piece of alternate job gear.  In truth most of these runs are actually rather friendly, with folks willing to lend a hand to those just learning.  This particular run however was the exact opposite of the spirit I normally experience.  For a moment I thought that maybe I was in another game, because I saw the same sort of petty name calling and infighting that I had experienced so many times in the World of Warcraft Looking for Raid tool.  It took us no less than four times to finally be able to beat Amon… and when we did there sitting in the loot window were my pants.  This time however there were no other dragoons in my party to ruin my day.  Never again do I have to run Syrcus Tower as a Dragoon…  but that just means I will likely start running it as a bard and working on that set of gear.  I might have an issue with grinding things.

Garrisons are Great

WoWScrnShot_111414_175514 I reached a point last night with my Garrison where I finally decided it was a pretty amazing thing.  Not that you can really clearly make out what I am doing in the above screenshot…  but this is Belghast my Warrior Engineer Enchanter…  mining ore.  For years I have struggled with my decision to level both enchanting and engineering on the same character.  The lack of mining has always been something I have struggled with…  but there is a long story behind how I ended up in this predicament.  Primarily Belghast started his life as an Enchanter/Tailor because that was a combination of trade skills that I was missing.  Then I got serious about raiding… and hit a drought when our raid was clearing Tier 5 content in Burning Crusade.  I could not for the life of me get a helm upgrade… and there sitting on the crafting table was the insanity of engineering goggles.  At that point they were Tier 6 equivalent… so I made the decision to gather up all the resources and in a single afternoon I dropped tailoring and leveled engineering to the then cap.

WoWScrnShot_111414_181358 While the mine respawn seems extremely long… it still gives me access to gather ore and slowly progress my engineering a little bit while I level.  Additionally I am finding the follower missions to be extremely enjoyable.  Last night I managed to reach rank two with my town hall, which allowed for a larger selection of plots.  As such I now have placed an Engineering plot, Enchanting Plot, replaced the Barracks with a Dwarven Bunker, and kept the Inn with the hopes of upgrading it to rank 2 and recruiting random followers.  Essentially on Belghast I am pretty much trying to go with all the “killing stuff in the world has interesting effects” buildings.  Since well… I like charging around the map killing things.  My hope is that with things like the Dwarven Bunker giving me an increased chance of getting Rares and Epics… I will actually get some stuff I can use.  I feel like I have a much larger post entirely devoted to Warlords of Draenor in me, so I will save further information for tomorrows post.  Needless to say I am enjoying myself.

That Dad is Okay

I really did not talk much about this next thing, but today I am thankful that my father made it through surgery fine and seems to be improving.  For the last several months my father has had a rather scary condition that they originally thought was causing his eyeball to swell up in size.  After much investigation, and a slew of specialists it was determined that what was actually happening was that his eye was being pressed forward… giving it the appearance of growth.  As it got worse however, he lost his ability to do most things like drive… as ultimately he was always trying to manually reconcile the two images he was seeing at all times.  He tried not to let on that it bothered him, but as the months drug on you could tell he was absolutely miserable.

Finally this week a specialist provided a plan of attack, and he went from having a consultation on Tuesday to having full blown surgery on Thursday.  Thankfully everything went as planned and to the best of anyone’s knowledge there were no complications.  I talked to dad over text this morning and his vision continues to improve.  In fact I was shocked that moments after the surgery he was able to see normally again and read signs.  It has been a scary time for my family, not knowing quite what was going to happen.  As such I am so thankful that things turned out well.  One of my biggest fears is the loss of my sight, and I know my father shares that fear.  While he never wanted to let on just how frightened he was… I am sure he must have been.  I am also thankful that once again we get to share our love of books.

6 thoughts on “Amon’s Pants”

  1. Scooter is not the chattiest person online even without technical issues. 🙂 I am glad she was game enough to participate. My own concern is that I tended to dominate the conversation, myself. I get on “rants” like that on Beyond the Veil, too. But other times I don’t feel like I am contributing much.

Comments are closed.