Playing Catch Up

Battle Bards Episode 45 – Rock On!

This segment is going to be a little bit odd, because at the time of me writing it the episode has not officially gone live.  However I only post once daily, and as such I really would like to get a plug out there for the show.  In saying this, the links I am about to post will not go live until 9 am so I will be embargoing my post this morning which is an odd experience for me.  On February 7th I had the privilege of sitting in as a guest host on the Battle Bards podcast with the illustrious Syp and Syl.  To make things even kookier, they told me that I needed to pick a topic.  I went back and forth on a few topics and finally landed upon rock themes in MMO games.  Traditionally MMOs seem to have the same auditory palate of instruments and themes.  Every now and then however there is a soundtrack that abandons the traditional and brings in some rock guitar.  Over the course of the show we focused on these tracks, and I believe it was Syp that finally gave the show its title of “Rock On!”.

I had an absolute blast recording the show, and would be more than willing to step in again if they ever had need of me.  Now onwards with the show information.

• Follow Battle Bards on iTunes
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• Follow Battle Bards on Player.FM
• Episode 45 show page

Episode 45 show notes

• Intro (featuring “Blue Turns to Grey” from Tabula Rasa, “Battle on the Big Bridge Reborn” from FFXIV, and “Prologue” from Castlevania SOTN)
• “Titan Battle Theme” from FFXIV
• “Alonewolf” from Rusty Hearts
• “Toko” from Granado Espada
• “Character Select/Map Load” from Heroes of the Storm
• “New Conglomerate Main Theme” from PlanetSide 2
• “Malicia’s Finale” from DDO
• “Lucid Dreaming” from Aion
• What track did we like the best?
• Mail from Akiranon
• Outro

Listen to episode 45 now!

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• Special thanks to Tesh for the Battle Bards logo!
• Battle Bards is part of The Gaming and Entertainment Network of podcasts

Giving Levels Away

Last night I managed to hit level 71 in Guild Wars 2 and absolutely thought I would never actually get there.  In truth I would not have gotten there were it not for the fact that the game seems to be giving away levels every time I turn around.  At some point they added the Tome of Knowledge into the game, and double clicking them item grants you one instant level.  I am not sure if I am exceptionally lucky, but I seem to be pulling these left and right out of various bags and containers.  Last night from my daily login reward chest I pulled two of them for example.  I think my meteoric rise in levels is really two fold.  First they keep giving me levels, but secondly it seems like everything is quite simply worth a lot more experience.  I did a level and a half over the last few days dinking around and completing a level 5 starter zone.  I still have about half of the objectives in that zone to go, so I am enjoying the fact that it doesn’t actually seem to matter what I am out in the world doing…  just that I am doing something.

At this point I can honestly picture getting up a few more characters, because right now this game seems to be the ideal winding down practice for me.  We finished our Final Fantasy XIV raid around 9:30 pm, and I played Guild Wars 2 for another thirty minutes or so after that.  At which point I felt relaxed and ready to go to sleep, which has always been a problem for me after any raid experience.  When you have been doing exciting things, you have this surplus supply of adrenaline flowing through you, and for me at least I need something much more relaxing to work through all of that.  While Guild Wars 2 may never be destined to be my primary game, I am really appreciating its worth in the role it is playing.  I am curious to see what life at 80 is going to be like, but I have a feeling that ultimately I will just end up switching to an alt so I can continue the slow paced progression.  If nothing else I think it would be pretty awesome to 100% the map.

Playing Catch Up

Monday night is traditionally our more serious raiding night in Final Fantasy XIV with Saturday being a sort of anything goes experience.  However since last night we had a number of players hung up on key steps to the main story and other things… we opted to do a grand “catch up” night.  We started the evening by knocking out the Battle of Big Bridge for Neph, which is always an extremely fun experience.  That is one of those fights that I happily do every single time anyone needs it because getting to play with Gilgamesh is always a treat.  From there we knocked out the Dhrome Chimera fight because that was the step Neph happened to be hung up on for her Relic.  I remember the first time we did this fight, it took the full raid timer, because quite honestly back then it was a massive challenge.  However since then a method of pulling the Chimera out of the cave has become popular and this makes the fight immensely easier.  Also the fact that I am insanely over geared helps as well.  In any case we got the fight completed quickly and Neph moved on to the next step in her relic chain.

The bulk of the evening was spent working on the Chrysalis trial.  This is the road block placed in the path of completing the 2.5 main story arc addition.  I don’t want to go into too much detail about the fight, namely because I don’t want to provide any spoilers.  There are a couple of places in the fight there where things shift drastically, and you have to begin dealing with a new mechanic.  In truth the fight felt like a bit of a remix of some of the raid encounters.  There were elements of several fights from the Crystal Tower series especially.  I think it took us about five tries to get through the encounter, but I have to say the whole experience was extremely fun.  That is one of the best things about Final Fantasy XIV is that their boss encounters are extremely solid.  After defeating it, and each of us making it through the cut scene we had around twenty minutes left to do something.  As a result we grabbed Solaria and opted to help her get through the Leviathan primal encounter.  It was a night of lots of objectives being checked off, and a night of many fun battles.

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