Farewell Flower

First Casualty

One of my big concerns about our trip last weekend was not so much the long lag in blog posts…  but the lack of ability to take care of my “flower babies”.  I have become oddly emotionally invested in the lives of our flowers, and while our animals are super hardy and resilient…  flowers seem to constantly teeter on the brink of death.  Some of our more thirsty flowers I had been watering morning and evening just to make sure they were nice and happy, and unfortunately it is an insane request to ask someone else to do that.  So we left Friday hoping everything would be fine, and my flowers would survive until I got back.  For the most part things are fine but we have a few of these “c word I cannot pronounce” plants… I think it is something like Catharanthus.  We got them as hanging plants… and the purple/pink mixture and yellow/orange mixtures are still thriving.  However over our disappearance the red/white mixture started to struggle.  In fact the entire red plant withered and died, and in truth given how happy the others seem to be I don’t feel like I can really blame it on the care.

The plant probably would have struggled even if I was there babying it along.  However it still is a little sad to see it… and while we removed as much of the dead plant as we could…  and by dead I mean spaghetti brittle stems…  the white half of the planting seems to be struggling as well.  My hope was that by removing the dead plant it would give the thriving plant more room to spread out.  The other awkward problem we are having is… it is raining constantly and it is hard striking a balance of when we should and should not water ourselves….  and when the rain water is good enough.  I realize the plantings that we have currently are annuals and at some point they will all die out, but I am not looking forward to seeing it.  Of the two of us… I am definitely the nurturer, and I just want to take care of the flowers so that they live forever.  Even thought I know that is not something that is actually going to happen.  The other flowers are lovely however, and if the white half of the planting does die as well we will likely replace it with something else in that planter.

Senor Sabotender

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As far as gaming goes, last night I split time between Destiny and Final Fantasy XIV.  I feel like I am still getting into the swing of things after returning from our trip, and as a result I have wound up getting super tired significantly earlier than normal.  I am sure the extra sleep isn’t hurting me either, so I am largely indulging in the earlier bedtime.  As far as Destiny goes I spent a bit of time piddling around on my Hunter and running strikes to knock out some quests.  On both the Warlock and Hunter I have really done very little of the post level cap missions that the game throws at you, and as a result I don’t have legendary artifacts on either of them.  This is the single slot that is dragging down my gear score the most, so I attempted to solo some Court of Oryx.  Unfortunately I kept getting the twins, which for whatever reason is very hard for me to solo as a hunter.  I initially summoned thinking that folks were actively running court, however as soon as I popped the coin I saw the familiar animation of them going to orbit.  I did however knock out several strikes towards the “run 5 strikes” quest.

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As far as FFXIV goes I decided I should probably spend my evening working on the current event that is going on in the Gold Saucer.  There is a murder mystery that ends up rewarding you an /eureka emote that makes you look like the stereotypical MMO quest giver with an exclamation mark over your head.  Instead of showing you this emote however I am showing a picture of Memusu Tsuuma who I happened to log into the game the other night standing right beside.  I love seeing orange names while I am out running around, though so many of them I cannot remember exactly where I knew them from.  That was not the cause with Memu however, how I have absolutely abducted into all of my regular multi-game shenanigans.  Something I noticed about hanging out in gold saucer…. random people come up to me and give me a hug.  I am guessing it is the Bunny Samurai thing, which has become sort of my trademark look.  As far as the questing went, it took a long time to gather up all of the evidence needed for the mystery… but thankfully the game will tell you when you have found all ten of the items with a little message saying that you cannot find anything else of use.  Now I just need to devote some time to finishing out the 3.2 story line to be ready for when 3.3 lands on supposedly the 7th.

Leopard Print Paladin

Susceptible to Grind

Destiny_20140920104852 This weekend I played a good bit of Destiny because it is the perfect game for those moments when I don’t feel like I am get into something terribly detailed.  I play this game much in the same fashion as I play Diablo 3, in short bursts with the ability to jettison out if needed to go do something else.  As such this has become in many ways the game I play when I know we are going to be leaving the house soon.  I am never more than just a teleport to orbit away from safety, which makes me consume the game voraciously in small doses.  As such I have mostly been running the game in private mode with my fire team locked down to keep people from popping in at random.  I feel like I don’t want to deal with the expectations of others when I am playing a game in this fashion.  Generally speaking I am either moments from leaving the game, or playing the game while camping something in Final Fantasy XIV…  and in either case I am not exactly responsive enough to be a proper group mate.

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The bulk of my gameplay has been doing either patrols on the Cosmodrome or on the Moon.  I finally got a blue engram to drop, but unfortunately it was for my class item… which is essentially just decoration.  Instead of the traditional “flag football” towel, this one is a series of 3 banners that hang down from my waist.  One of the things I am learning about myself is that I am deeply susceptible to grinding.  I find it super easy to zone out and just wander around aimlessly in an area.  I seem to be able to get infinite amounts of entertainment value from simply wandering around killing Fallen and Hive on the moon and accepting the little mini-quests.  As such I was level 16 before I actually finished the Moon this weekend and got the quest chain sending me to Venus.  I am sure I will be 20+ before I finish Venus, because as soon as I unlock the next patrol zone… that is more than likely what I will be doing quite a bit of.

Destiny_20140920112437 I think part of the problem with Destiny is the fact that it has relatively little to go with as far as Story goes.  As such I find absolutely no sense of urgency pushing me forward to keep completing missions.  In a game like Mass Effect 3 I felt like I was moments away from doom at all times, so I just had to keep pushing forward and trying to turn back the tide in a war larger than myself.  In Destiny they have failed to infuse the narrative with any of this.  Sure things are going horribly wrong out in the galaxy, but we have this last city that seems completely immune to the effect of what is happening.  Sure The Traveler is “dying” but I don’t feel this happening, I feel like that is generations away and I have just been drafted into essentially a science fiction stalemate.  So I have zero issue wandering about and taking time to smell the “helium coils” as it were.  The moment to moment gameplay are what keeps me engaged with this game, and the story line and as such story quests could not exist at all and I would still be happy.

Leopard Print Paladin

ffxiv 2014-09-22 06-44-52-320 At the beginning of the weekend I was a level 40 newly christened Paladin of Uldah.  Over the course of the weekend I managed to push my way through to 46 and get the first of my spiffy gear.  For those who are not familiar with Final Fantasy XIV, at 45 you complete a class quest that will reward you four pieces of “Relic” gear that represents the defacto look for your class.  This means you get a full set of gear minus two slots.  The belt is not terribly important because no belt really changes the look of something drastically.  However the other missing piece is the chest piece and it is essentially the item that always ties a class set together.  On the Lalafell the paladin “short shorts” look is minimized by the total lack of height, however of anyone else it looks like you are wearing white boxer shorts without the chest piece that gives you the plate skirt that is so characteristic of a paladin in this game.

There is a full set of gear that drops in the dungeon Dzmael Darkhold, that rarely sees much use since it is level 44, and at 45 everyone gets their class set.  However the one piece that is extremely useful is the chest, which thankfully in all of my journeys I have gathered up a few of these.  The problem is that for pretty much every class there is something goofy going on with this set.  For the tanks the set features an inexplicable leopard print inlay, with no way to “dye” the pattern away.  So as a result for the last few levels you end up looking a bit goofy until you finally ding 50 and get that class chest piece.  Thankfully for me I also managed to pick up a nice pink quality chest for 47 that should make the outfit look a little bit more put together for the last few levels.

Red Bunny Samurai

ffxiv 2014-09-22 06-46-10-323 The other thing I am realizing is just how much of my other gear will work for Paladin.  Almost all of the dropped pieces and jewelry from the endgame levels worth for Marauder, Warrior, Gladiator and Paladin.  The problem with this is that I have several of the pieces glamoured to look like the Warrior class set.  Apparently this will not show as such when I equip them however, and quite frankly the Syrcus tower set looks like crap for plate wearers.  So I am wondering what set I am going to glamour to that can be neutral and work for both classes.  The most important thing after all is that I still have a proper bunny hat.  While I freely admit that I stole wearing this helm from Tam, I think I have more than made it my own… since it was clearly designed to be worn by a Lalafell.  He tends to favor the white one with the full face mask, where I am enamored with the red one that allows my full face to show through.

My goal for the coming days is to push the paladin to 50 and get it fully geared in 90 or better items.  I’ve been stockpiling hunt marks to be able to do this the moment I ding, but I am really not sure how many pieces I will actually need to buy.  All of my jewelry is dual class, as well as my chest, belt, and boots.  That just leaves three pieces of gear that I actually need to purchase, and then again I will need to spend the requisite 1125 tomestones of mythology to get the zenith weapon and shield.  Right now I have a dilemma I suppose in that I am really close to being able to purchase my next Animus book, but I am also really close to 50 at this point.  I don’t have the tomestones to do both.  In theory I can get the book and the process of simply getting my relic weapon should give me more than enough tomestones to be able to at least craft the relic.  Then I can deal with grinding out the rest as a paladin if I so choose.  In either case I should have another animus book and a 50 paladin soon enough.  Then I suppose my focus turns to finishing off my White Mage.

#FFXIV #Destiny

The Atma Weapon

Hat For All Occasions

hatforalloccasions A few weeks ago my friend Tam stumbled onto a hat in his inventory that he has picked up somewhere.  It seems he played the game significantly longer than we did, and it seemed to come from some event, or at least that is the impression I got.  It was a cute white bunny samurai hat and he used it with his cavalry armor to create a rather unique looking tanking set.  This lead me over to the market boards to see what other interesting hats existed, and I stumbled on a very similar hat but it was red and black, and instead of having a closed in mask the visor was completely open.  I managed to pick it up for only 1500 gil or so, and immediately I noticed it fit perfectly with my Warrior relic set.  So I glamoured it onto the item and started my life as a bunny samurai tank.

Shortly after that I noticed that it also seemed to work pretty well with my Dragoon armor since it also had a lot of black and gold in it.  So once again I glamoured the item over my helm and began another life as the bunny samurai dragoon.  Tonight I finished getting my Bard job up to ilevel 90, and as I was re-glamouring my pieces to the foestrikers gear set, I wondered just how well the bunny helm would work there too.  Turns out I like the look since the Foestriker set has a lot of red in it already.  So basically I am a bunny samurai for all occasions.  I think Tam is a little bummed that I took his style idea and ran with it…  but seriously…  it works amazingly well for a Lalafell.  Sadly however I don’t think the bunny samurai thing will work quite so well for my caster sets.  I can’t really see a bunny samurai healer being a thing… but damned if I won’t try and make it happen.

The Atma Weapon

ffxiv 2014-09-03 06-25-58-043 I’ve talked a few times in the past about the Relic weapon quest chain in Final Fantasy XIV.  Essentially for those who are not familiar, it involves a long series of quests and battles to forge a weapon and then harden it while doing battle with the three original Primals.  The end result is your relic weapon, which then can continue to be upgraded through additional quests.  The first “Zenith” step is extremely simple in the grand scheme of things.  It involves purchasing three Thavnairian Mists from a vendor in Mor Dhona for 300 tomestones of mythology each.  So to get this step you literally just need to run practically any of the endgame content be it dungeons or raids, they all reward decent chunks of Mythstones.  Once you have your items you simply take them back to the same vendor that originally forged your weapon and by using the forge yourself you can perform the upgrade.  This takes the original ilevel 80 item to ilevel 90, and at this point I have the Zenith step on Warrior, Dragoon and Bard.

The next step is significantly trickier, but last night my friend Warenwolf managed to complete his, so I have renewed focus in finishing mine up.  Essentially the Atma step is a tricky way of making players revisit old content.  You get the various Atma parts by grinding FATEs in twelve different zones.  Kodra noticed that the zones that are missing… are the ones that were traditionally FATE grinding hubs at release.  So gone is South Shroud and Costa Del Sol as well as the later hubs of Coerthas, Mor Dhona and Northern Thanalan.  The final list looks a little something like this.

  • Southern Thanalan: Atma of the Scorpion
  • Eastern Thanalan: Atma of the Bull
  • Western Thanalan: Atma of the Twins
  • Central Thanalan: Atma of the Scales
  • Central Shroud: Atma of the Maiden
  • East Shroud: Atma of the Goat
  • North Shroud: Atma of the Archer
  • Upper La Nocea: Atma of the Water Bearer
  • Middle La Nocea: Atma of the Ram
  • Outer La Nocea: Atma of the Lion
  • Lower La Nocea: Atma of the Fish
  • Western La Nocea: Atma of the Crab

Upon doing some research last night it seems that there is an equal drop chance for all zones that never actually improves over time.  In fact you don’t even have to get Gold completion, you can get an ATMA to drop on bronze, silver or gold just so long as you have participated enough to actually get credit for the event.  Supposedly the drop chance for an ATMA is somewhere between 1% and 10% depending on who you talk to.  I have managed to get four drops so far, but some of my guild members have ground for upwards of six hours and never seen so much as a single one.  I feel like this is the sort of thing that is best done in passing, however with Waren getting his it has lit a bit of a fire under me to go ahead and grind out mine as well.  Sure there are other paths to upgrades, but at this point I feel like I want to do this.

Western Thanalan

2014-09-03 06_40_53-Western Thanalan - Final Fantasy XIV _ A Realm Reborn (FFXIV ARR) Database The zone I have been hung up on for the last three nights is Western Thanalan.  I have been trying to knock these out in a single region before moving on to others.  Western Thanalan might just be the bane of my existence, and probably one of the hardest zones to habitually FATE grind in.  As you can see from the map the zone is broken into three four sections divided by a series of pathways connecting them.  This means it is extremely tedious to cross and often times by the time you get to a FATE a different group of adventurers will have whittled it down to nothing.  Now that I at least know that Atma parts can drop on bronze contribution I am far less stressed.  Previously I knew I needed to get to a FATE before the 50% mark to be able to pull enough aggro to earn Gold contribution.  Now I simply just need to touch it, or hit a few overpowers to get credit at all.

I could move on to another zone, but I feel like this is probably the most difficult of them all.  I might as well get the worst one out of the way so I can move onto other zones that are easier to traverse.  I feel like more than likely Southern Thanalan will be another problem child, however you can pretty much live in the north or the south either one and grind plenty of FATEs since that zone is so diverse level wise, there is not a ton of overlap between the events.  Additionally it seems like there is almost always a FATE up in the Amalja Beast Tribe daily area.  Here is hoping  that I will manage to get this ATMA tonight and be able to move on, while still keeping some of my sanity.  However my mission is set, and I will get my damned Atma relic upgrade.

#FFXIV #RelicWeapon