Lalafell Rescue Squad

Rubber Snake Attack

Instead of coming home and gaming like normal last night, I actually went out and did something sociable with actual living and breathing people!  I know it is a shock to the system to fathom the ramifications of that statement.  Several months ago a group from work attended the live RiffTrax showing of the Matthew Broderick Godzilla and it was an absolute blast.  I have been a fan of Mystery Science Theater 3000 since college, and RiffTrax is essentially the same folks doing the same sort of thing…  without the robots and a guy trapped on a space station construct.  During that they previewed the next movie and at that point we decided that we had to attend again so we could see Anaconda…  a movie that I did not remember being as cheesy as it actually was.  Thankfully we learned a lot from the first time, and arrived at the theater considerably earlier.  Last time none of us actually got to sit together, but instead ended up having to pair up to get us all seated.  Last night we at dinner at a restaurant in the same parking lot as the theater so we were able to walk over and got there well before they even opened up seating.

Anaconda…  was seriously worse of a movie than I remember, and even at the time I thought the snake looked nothing like an actual snake.  The cast was disturbingly “star studded” for as bad of a train wreck as it ended up being.  You had Jon Voight, Eric Stoltz, Owen Wilson, Ice Cube and I believe this was the movie debut of Jennifer Lopez.  At the very least it was before I was actually aware of who she was, as I don’t think she had released her first album yet.  There were just so many cheesy things about the movie… like the fact that every single time that we see J-Lo on screen it is apparently super cold in the Amazon because they make a point of lingering on some massive nippledge going on.  Aside from the snake being horrible…  it looked like they recycled a ton of footage.  The Rifftrax guys pointed out a moment near the end of the movie where the waterfall is going backwards…  as they quite literally just reversed a shot from earlier in the movie.  Similarly they seem to keep passing the exact same snake idol a half dozen times.

I did not however attend to watch the movie, but instead listen to the RiffTrax crew tear it apart.  The Godzilla show was great but this one took it to all new levels.  In fact I would have to say this is probably going to go down as one of their better performances.  There was just so much to make fun of in this movie, and the fact that it had both J-Lo and IceCube in it…  basically gave them free reign to mix in lots jokes about their careers as a whole.  This is starting to become a regular thing that we do as a group.  They previewed the next show coming up December 4th which is a strange rendition of Santa Claus from the 50s.  The trailer bits they showed looked absolutely insane…  Santa Claus in space…  fighting and army of dancing devils.  Hopefully we can once again muster the troops and go as a group.  Not sure we get much “team building” done, but it is a really fun time nonetheless.

Lalafell Rescue Squad

ffxiv 2014-10-30 21-57-36-339 This RiffTrax overall seemed a bit shorter than the last one, and as a result I ended up getting back home at a decent hour.  I decided to pop into Final Fantasty XIV for a bit and see what all was happening.  After milling around a bit in the housing district a few of us pulled together a run for the new Sunken Temple of Qarn Hard mode.  This was one of those dungeons that we avoided like the plague because of its frustrating “one shot death” mechanics, so I think as a whole we were at the least concerned when we saw it would end up as a hard mode.  Thankfully the mechanics are not that cheap this time around.  Not to spoil this for anyone, but there are no bees this time around.  What is there instead is a continuation of the original story.  When we cleared the dungeon the first time, it apparently made the place safe enough for groups of adventurers to begin exploring it.  However a group of tomb robbers triggered yet another trap, and you are going there at the bidding of a brother who wishes you to go rescue his sister.  Adorable Lalafell needing rescuing…  that sounds like as noble cause as any…  my people need me.

ffxiv 2014-10-30 22-28-29-285 I am not as geared as I could be, but I am no slouch overall.  The bare minimum for the dungeon is ilevel 80 and I went in there last night with 103.  Overall I think I was managing the damage pretty well, but it definitely put our healer through a workout.  I think in part he was just used to healing Paladins with their significantly smaller health pools.  With group buffs I was over 10,000 hit points, and a comparable Paladin would be around 6,000.  So when the final boss hit me for 2,000 it really didn’t feel that significant, however with a paladin that would be 1/3rd of their available health pool.  I think Tams complaint was that it felt like his heals weren’t doing much, but that is primarily because a percentage of my health bar is quite a bit more hit points than a percentage of someone else’s health bar.  In any case we made it through the dungeon without any wipes and only I believe a single death.  The content is hard enough to be challenging, but not so hard that it becomes punishing.  I feel like Pharo Sirius is still a rougher dungeon than this one for example.

ffxiv 2014-10-30 22-39-49-231 At the end of the day we finished the run, beat the big bad end boss and saved the adorable Lalafell Adventerer.  I feel like it was a good way to end an already awesome night.  One of my favorite things about the new dungeons is that they drop these tokens that can then be turned in for any ilevel 90 class piece of armor.  So while they did in fact remove these from the Tombstone and Hunt vendors, you can still get the gear.  The fact that they shifted it to  a token system means the mobs have a more shallow loot table, and as a result each individual piece is more useful.  I feel like I will enjoy picking up a level 90 set way more by running these three new dungeons than I ever would by simply grinding tombstones or hunts until I had the necessary currency.  This is fine and dandy for experienced players, but I still feel like this patch and its changes made it significantly harder for a brand new player to gear up.  Granted maybe they did that on purpose, so players would have to spend a bit more time running dungeons before leap-frogging into end game content.

Dimension Goodies a Plenty

rift 2014-10-31 06-55-10-080 With all the Final Fantasy XIV goodness, I am still playing some Rift Nightmare Tide… it has just taken a back seat.  At the very least I am logging in a few times a day to make sure my minions are running the 8 hour long missions.  These reward some crazy stuff, and so far as a result of all of my minion missions I have literally three 28 slot bags full of nothing but dimension stuff.  At some point I need to sift through it all and see what I can actually use.  You get a pretty broad mix of things from basic building blocks to intricate items like the Infernal Dawn Cannon.  The 8 hour long dimension missions have a chance of rewarding these chests that each have half a dozen items in them…  so it feels like buying those grab bags off the store.  I really like the Rift dimensions system for player housing, so at some point I really should work on building a proper home.

Rift is more than likely going to be a weekend game for me as I do laundry and watch stuff off netflix or the DVR.  The pace works well there and the fact that I can pop to the guild dimension when I afk, and return exactly to the point where I last left off is a really nice feature.  The content in Nightmare Tide is significantly more enjoyable for me than Storm Legion was.  At some point soon I want to try out one of the new dungeons.  I dinged 61, so have made some forward momentum, but still have not really touched even half of Goboro Reef.  While there may only be three new zones, each of the zones is absolutely massive in scale.  I’ve not actually done any of the instant adventures, mostly because it seems like an excessive amount of area to try and cover rapidly.  In any case I am still enjoying the game, but just playing it as a side venture with Final Fantasy XIV being my primary focus.

#RiffTrax #FFXIV #Rift