Year Behind and Loving It

AggroChat 46 – Hards for Cards Extreme

Last night we once more recorded an episode of AggroChat and this time as one might expect our episode was almost entirely about Final Fantasy XIV patch 2.51.  The patch introduced so much casual content to the game it is just silly.  The primary addiction for our free company however has been the search for Triple Triad cards.  While for some this has meant the constant dueling of NPCs to win specific cards, for me it has been doing hard content in the hopes that maybe just maybe it would drop a card.  Yesterday Tam did some quick math and realized that over the course of the week I had completed more than 90 hard mode trials.  Each of these trials rewards 5 poetics, and I capped almost exclusively through chain running them to get various primal cards.  There are still a ton more that I need but so far I have managed to gather up Ifrit, Garuda, Gilgamesh/Enkidu, Ultros/Typhon and Good King Moggle Mog.

What I find amazing about this patch is the way that each of us has reacted to it slightly differently.  Some of us have spent time racing Chocobos, others playing the catcpot lottery, and even others doing the various GATE events scattered throughout the golden saucer.  Last nights show was overwhelmingly about our love of Final Fantasy XIV, but we did manage to slide a few other topics in.  Tam and Kodra talk Elite: Dangerous and their recent missions to go asteroid mining.  Kodra talks a new game that he has started called Deer God, and how it is not quite ready for primetime… but still charming.  It was a fun show to record, and it is rare that all five of us are so completely enthralled with the same content at the same time.

Year Behind and Loving It

One of the things that made last nights show so damned entertaining to record, is we were essentially basking in the afterglow of a big raid win.  Saturday night for a couple of hours before the podcast we have been doing this impromptu raid thing as a way of allowing some of the folks that cannot make our normal Monday night raid get some action.  We alternate between doing serious content, and doing whatever eight man content one of our free company mates needs to get them off center.  So as such last night we started off with the Chrysalis, the 8 man trial added with the last bit of storyline.  It took us a bit to learn this fight but I was really pleased to see we could step in after a week and essentially down it in our first attempt.  There was a bit of an intermission as we had to let Warenwolf catch up on the cinematic, but after that we set our focus on Titan Extreme.

For awhile we have had the awesomely named “Quake me up before you O’Ghomoro” sitting in our quest logs taunting us.  This has been one of those things that I think all of us wanted to put behind us… but quite frankly Titan Extreme is one of the most demanding fights I have experienced in awhile.  It requires the entire raid to move with confidence and precision, and there is a really slim margin of forgiveness.  As we talked about on the Podcast it also does something really interesting, in that it makes you relearn your instincts.  We died so many times because it is my tank instinct to run back in after a knockback and turn the boss.  However in this fight there are reasons why that is the wrong decision, and it took awhile last night for me to get past that urge.  Sure it is a year late in us beating this content, but damned does it not feel amazing that we did it… and that content that is over a year old is still relevant.

Faffing with the Mandervilles

This has become my new favorite screenshot, that I took on a whim the other night in the Manderville Golden Saucer.  Before last nights raid, I opted to glamour my axe to the very awesome and very fitting Malignant Mogaxe.  Most of the Good King Moggle Mog weapons have a bit of a silly side to them, but this one is just a very brutal looking axe with a Moogle pattern inlaid into the blade.  It happens to match colorwise with my hair and my current chest piece nicely.  This has been the best part about chain running Hard Mode Trials is the fact that I am picking up so many of the awesome primal weapons for Glamour purposes.  I talked about this a bit last night, but since I have 5 level 50 classes… I have taken to collecting my Triple Triad Cards through running content because it kills two birds with one stone.  There is always the chance of getting the cards that I want to drop, but at the same time all the while I am trying to get it I am stockpiling tomestones of soldiery that I can then use to buy gear for my army of classes.

Over the course of the weekend I managed to get Warrior and Paladin to 116, Dragoon to 110, White Mage to 100… and now I just need to catch up my Bard that is still sitting at 95.  While it might seem tedious to run the same primal fights over and over… for me I guess it is much the same as soloing old school raid content in World of Warcraft.  The fights and zones just feel epic, and I am happy to repeat them over and over.  That has been one of the best things about having a fresh influx of new players… I am able to play “big kid” and run the old content with people seeing it for the first time.  There is nothing quite like re-running content that never actually gets truly trivial.  What I like the best is the fact that my chosen way of playing the game… is not the only one.  Each of my free company mates has figured out their own particular style of play… and all see to be happy doing it.  Nothing quite like being in a group where everyone seems to be happy.