faff Archives - Tales of the Aggronaut

MooCowadin

March 2, 2015 by Belghast

Bel Folks Stuff 5 – Evening with Qelric

We are going to put on our timey wimey stuff hats and pretend that this show is being released during the month of February, as it was originally intended. When I record a Bel Folks Stuff I tend to give the victim as much time as possible. So I approached Qelric back in January to talk about this show… and she every so graciously accepted. The problem is that life happened in the time between, with her getting an absolutely horrible case of chicken pox towards the beginning of the month, and me dealing this this insane bronchitis mess towards the end. The result is we recorded the “February” episode in March… and that I supposed is just fine so long as it came out in any form.

Qelric is quite literally one of the only youtubers I watch with any regularity because she brings to her craft a style that you don’t generally see on youtube any more. She presents extremely content dense videos in a news like format, making them far easier for me to digest without the rambling exposition. If you are not familiar with your videos, I highly suggest you check them out. On top of this however Q is just a downright interesting person, and we have interacted for what feels like years. I had a delightful afternoon/evening sitting down to record this episode. Before we knew it a couple of hours had passed and we had a mammoth hour and a half long show. The awesome thing is… even after the mic stopped recording we wound up talking for another thirty or forty minutes. I love it when the conversation is natural and flowing. Hopefully you will all enjoy this as much as I did recording it.

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Moocowadin

Yesterday was a surprisingly busy day, with dealing with the publishing of two different podcasts and a normal blog post. As a result especially while waiting for Qelric to get online, I wanted to play something but did not want to get too terribly engaging. With the introduction of the Heirloom system and the 6.1 patch, it has greatly increased my desire to alt. My number one frustration while trying to level a character is trying to make sure I have level equivalent gear. I realize that gear is never as important as I seem to make it, but I like to have at least as good of a weapon as possible while pushing through the levels. Now previously I had some heirlooms, but I had to choose which character would get to use them. Even with the ability to send them cross realm, it became a mess trying to track who had what and I was constantly afraid I would end up losing heirlooms in the mail… because I have done this before. The new system however is pretty much ideal for me, since I can generate copies of heirlooms on any and all characters.

When The Scryers server merged with Argent Dawn I set about creating eleven place holder horde characters, since I did not know how the actual merger would work. It makes me extremely happy that I can have 11 Alliance characters on Argent Dawn and 11 Horde characters on The Scryers… and use them to play with my AD Horde friends. I have always been one of those players that tried to span the faction divide whenever I could and through various community efforts I developed just as many bonds on the red side as the blue. I always feel like a louse however for never really spending much time leveling a character on the “other” side. As a result I started working on Belgrace my Moocowadin yesterday while waiting for Qelric and while recording the podcast. As of this morning I am now level 18 and starting the Ratchet area. It is insane just how fast the levels come when you are completely kitted out in heirlooms. The only slot that I do not have is the ring, and I am simply not a good enough fisherman to get that.

A Confidence Boost

Over the last few weeks since the launch of the Final Fantasy XIV 2.5 patch I have greatly tapered off the amount of time I am spending in World of Warcraft. It has become a Tuesday/Thursday experience for me largely which means simply showing up in time to raid. Now granted I am logging in periodically throughout the week to run garrison missions but in the grand scheme of things that takes ten minutes or so at a time, and I am really not online that long. I’ve felt kinda horrible because one of my long time friends has been slowing improving her ilevel gear wise on her priest. Every so often she would give me an update and yesterday she told me she had hit ilvl 626. I knew the answer before I asked it, but I asked her if she had managed to do any LFR yet? As I suspected she said no, that she was wary of raiding… and didn’t think she was ready for it. I hopped on Lodin my hunter, that could still use gear from Highmaul LFR and offered to queue with her for moral support.

Finni had raided before during the early days of World of Warcraft, and as such the bulk of her experience dated from the 40 man era. So when she thinks “raid” she equates it to super serious business. Fortunately and unfortunately at times… Looking for Raid is anything but serious business. Within what felt like fifteen minutes of queuing we were through the first section, and she got a much needed confidence boost… and thankfully a little bit of gear. I remember the first time I queued for Looking for Raid upon coming back during Pandaria. I was scared as hell because the concept of a raid for me too was “serious business” time. Thankfully we have this wonderful system that allows players without the time to dedicate to at least be able to get in and see the fights in one form or another. She ended up walking with a few upgrades, and I did as well… and can now queue Blackrock Foundry on my hunter. I think we both benefited from yesterday equally, because it seems like she won’t be quite so frightened of the LFR queue.

#WoW #Paladin #BelFolkStuff

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Gadgetzan Bound

March 20, 2014 by Belghast

Obligatory Update

Yesterday while I was in training I got a text from my mother. It seems as though the lasix is doing what it is supposed to do and my grandmothers kidney function is improved. At this point they are talking about maybe taking her off the ventilator today, and trying to wake her up completely. For the last several days they have kept her sedated with propofol aka “the Michael Jackson drug”. This has been allowing her to rest and hopefully heal. As always I want to thank you all for the support. I am not sure if I want to hope that things are turning around yet or not, because I really don’t want to jinx things. If they can take her off the ventilator that means she moves out of ICU and up to something called a telemetrics floor. Which I believe means all the monitoring of ICU, just without the critical nature. I of course will report in with what has happened one way or the other tomorrow.

Gadgetzan Bound

Last night I did not get a ton of playtime but the time I did get I continued working on my Night Elf Mage. At this point I am 45 and sitting in Gadgetzan, having more or less completed Thousand Needles. Tanaris feels much the same, even though it has changed massively since when I was first out here leveling my Hunter back in 2005. The flavor of the zone is still there… namely the conflict between the goblins of Gadgetzan and the south seas pirates. While not as hard hit as thousand needles, the zone has lost a significant amount of dry land during the Cataclysm. In many ways this has made some of the places more enjoyable. I especially liked the shallow lake full of sea giants.

Back in Everquest, the iconic “dangerous” mob was the Sand Giant, and Sea Giants have that same sort of feeling. I remember the first time I encountered one, and I also remember it completely kicking my ass. So while it feels odd that I am openly hunting them during a kill quest, it also feels cool to know that I can now take them down. Additionally you might notice that I finally got off my duff and made some glyphs. I have to say the “unbound” elemental is so much cooler than the stock frost elemental. On top of that it has a much more soothing sound as opposed to the default “water boiling” noise.

I only managed to put on a few levels last night, but mostly because I was not feeling up to pugging. There are days I can deal with the frustration and stress and there are other days I cannot. Last night I just wanted to wrap up in my cocoon on the sofa and vege out for a bit. I ended up going to bed fairly early, which I am sure is something my body needed. I still feel like I am half coming down with something, half allergies going haywire. According to fitbit I managed to get over six hours of sleep last night, which is pretty damned good for me. Traditionally I barely get five hours on the best night.

Out of Touch

The oddest thing about being in a serious training class, or at least one with the word “bootcamp” in the title means that I really am disconnected from the world while doing it. This has been odd, I am so used to knowing about everything happening within minutes thanks to twitter and google plus. Being disconnected has created this sense that I am missing something important. Yet instead of trying to catch up last night, I mostly just kept ignoring it. I guess my mind is going into weekend mode when I really don’t check into stuff much at all. Training has been good, but it was one of those situations where I did not realize quite how much I already knew about the software. Day one was pretty much just a review of concepts we already knew.

Hopefully today we will get into the hardcore nuts and bolts of tearing stuff apart and reassembling it in a fashion we want. The instructor is pretty hardcore, in that I guess at one point he was over the hardware division at Microsoft, as well as other things. Nice guy, seems to know what he is talking about. The time has gone extremely quickly, and I think it helps that I am taking it with two other co-workers. I guess right now it just feels like I am in this bubble that is not entirely “the real world”, but instead some odd “training world”. Oh well just today and tomorrow and then we are back to normality.

The Gospel of Faff

March 18, 2014 by Belghast

The importance of pee

I just thought the sub heading would be humorous, but really it heralds some good news. Yesterday my Grandmothers kidneys started working again. Apparently when the body is dehydrated they completely shut off. The body is all “nope!” no one can have any moisture at all. This apparently was the last crucial step before she was mostly out of the woods. She is still in pretty bad shape, but they have been waking her up periodically to make sure she is responsive. They are keeping her mostly sedated however so she will sleep and rest. All of the hospital staff have been impressed with just how much of a fighter she is.

So I want to thank all of you for your thoughts during the last few days. This is the woman who at least gets half of the credit for raising me to be the person I am today. I didn’t go to daycare, I went to Grandmas house, because she was local and available… and more importantly willing. We’ve always known she is strong, but this whole episode just proved that to any shadow of a doubt. So while we are not in the “all clear” yet, we are probably up to a 70% chance of her making it out of this little episode unscathed. I am sure she will need some therapy after laying in bed for several days immobile.

The Gospel of Faff

This word has been in my vocabulary since I believe high school but I don’t really know how exactly I picked it up. So when I encountered the Godmother of Faff, I latched onto it with both arms to represent a certain game play style. However the more I use it, the more it seems to draw confusion among my friends. Sometimes it gets misread with a certain “self flagellating” connotation, or if you are Scary you apparently read it as some kind of shorthand for flatulence. So I thought I would spend a bit of time this morning clearing the air about all things faff. Since this is essentially British slang, I felt we had to go to the official source… the Oxford dictionary.

So there is the definition, copied and pasted via greenshot from the oxford dictionary website. The thing is… this leads one to believe that it is a bad thing. I tend to take a much more zen approach. “Faffing about” is just another in a long line of words used to describe enjoyable but often purposeless activity. I’ve used many versions of this over the years. I’ve “piddled” and I’ve “dinked around” and occasionally “goofed off”. I had a bit of an odd childhood, in that my mother to some extent lived vicariously through me. She wanted me to do all the things she always wanted to do… but never could afford. So as a small child I was drug through a series of activities like piano practice that I had no real interest in, but felt no less obligated to do.

As a result I felt like I never got to just be a kid, without purpose or direction. When I was allowed that time I savored it. Now as an adult, I am really cautious about anything that places undue burden on my “free” time. While I feel like Godmother and I probably use the term “Faff” in different ways, our viewpoints are very complimentary. For me “Faff” represents a play style of allowing myself to get lost in the minutiae of little things that happen along the way. It is a freedom of not having to have a goal or a focal point for the evening. That I have permission to log into a game and “mess around” for awhile without necessarily having a tangible reward at the end.

So as I have begun to stream my game play when possible, I have brought this same idea there as well. I am not doing something important or grand, but instead just doing what I always do. I log into mumble, into a special channel called “Bel is Streaming” and then proceed about my normal business and what happens… happens. Sometimes I do something really interesting, other times I just piddle around leveling. Last night for example I recorded one of my normal Onyxia and Tempest Keep clear nights, where I run through characters through Onyxia and the two that can solo Tempest Keep all in search of mounts. Sure there is purpose there, but it is not the kind of big overarching and soul crushing purpose that you feel forced to do it. Before last night it had probably been three weeks since my last mount farm night… and I am perfectly okay with that.

As is the way with Faff

I had every intent last night to play some more Heroes of the Storm, however that simply did not happen. Sometimes you get caught up in doing the things you are doing and next thing you know… it is bedtime. Part of the “Gospel of Faff” is accepting that this is going to happen and being somewhat okay with it. Some people thrive on goals, and lord knows I have a bunch of little ones. But for me it is the journey that is so much more important than the destination. I think in part that is why I have enjoyed The Elder Scrolls online so much. The game presents before me a whole bunch of rabbit trails that I can get hopelessly lost following. It is arranged in a way that keeps me from being able to “quest efficiently”. WoW has made me really good at gathering a bunch of quests, and doing them all before returning to the hub to get more.

The freedom to wander around and get lost in the process of leveling is a really awesome thing. While World of Warcraft is a really on-rails experience most of the time, I am trying to embrace ways to play it where the objectives don’t matter nearly as much as the journey. This is far more about my mental state while playing, than what I am actually doing. However I am trying really hard to always endulge the rabbit trails. If my addon alerts me to a rare mob in the vicinity… even if I am on my way to some important objective I try and pull myself from the path to try and track the foe down. As a result I end up seeing things I may have never seen before in the process. I had spent most of my time playing WoW trying to avoid the quagmire that is Kalimdor, and now I feel like I am trying to embrace it.

Sneaky McSneakybits

January 29, 2014 by Belghast

Persistent Stuff

It has been quite a while since I last talked about Trove on my blog. For a bit I had been recording regular segments of me exploring the world, then after roughly six of them I just stopped. Namely this coincides with me getting super into World of Warcraft raiding for a bit. I however have continued to explore the game each time they add a new build. At this point it is hard to remember exactly what the state of the game was when I last talked about it. Currently we have fully persistent cornerstones, and you can see mine on the right-hand side of the image above. It is still very much a work in progress, but essentially I was trying to maximize the space available and still look like something I could pick out at a distance as “mine”.

Currently there are four levels above ground and two below ground, the first of which below has my workbench and block transmuter thingy. One of the cool things that they added in within the last few patches is the ability for your crafting inventory to survive between server resets. This means I finally have a real reason to mass harvest materials for use later, since I am not constantly losing everything each time a patch goes in. My biggest wish however is that we could craft some weapons to replace the starter crap. Each time the server resets I rush around trying to get decent enough weapons to leave the first tier zones. In this present patch it feels like maybe they nerfed the drop rates a bit, as I slaughter a few dozen ladybugs and bees this morning and have gotten nothing at all but cubits… the crafting currency.

Another cool thing they are doing is replacing the in game weapon drops with ones created by players. When you get an item, it now says who the weapon was created by. It was pretty cool the other night when I got a nifty rapier drop and noticed it was created by a friend of mine CaptainCursor. Since the community is relatively small at present, this adds a whole new level to the game since you are constantly running into things created by names you recognize. You can check out the latest patch notes over on the Trove reddit.

Sneaky McSneakybits

Yeah I have no clue why I named this subsection and the blog post this… brain does things sometimes. Last night my most important mission was to finish leveling my rogue to 60, and consume all of the various loot boxes I had gathered up along the way. At some point they made it so that you are guaranteed a lockbox of some sort from your weekly patron gift. Since my warrior Belghast is already fairly well geared, or at least well enough to begin raiding… I figured I would stockpile them to give my rogue a quick gear boost upon dinging. Turns out it worked pretty well at doing just that. Between the lockboxes and about 50 plat in select purchases I was able to get well past the 300 hit requirement for expert dungeons. I did not however get to run one as we spent a good chunk of the evening out and about last night.

In theory the queue should go pretty fast since I am equally comfortable Barding it up as support or going dps as either my Marksman spec or my Nightblade primary dps one. Going back and playing rift has made me realize just how much I love the Rift Rogue and truly dislike playing a WoW Rogue. While I got Gloam to 90, and I am extremely happy I did so that I could do the living steel transmutes I needed to craft my Sky Golem… I really don’t think he is going to get much play. Quite simply put… Belgarou my feral druid is a better rogue than my rogue is… or is at least a more interesting one. I have just come to realize I don’t really like the way rogues in wow play. Not sure what it is about the play style but it just isn’t for me anymore, especially now that I feel other classes like Retribution Paladin do the rogue combo point thing better.

Ultimately my key frustration with WoW rogues is that combo points are built in the target instead of a buff that stacks on the rogue itself. Warhammer Online got this right initially with the Witchhunter class, which was by all purposes a “better” rogue. I realize at this point the combo points on target thing is tradition, but it simply does not work that well. While saying the Rift rogue is better, is a bit disingenuous since it is essentially a wow rogue, hunter, druid, and a few other classes that don’t exist in wow rolled into one. I think the main reason why it “works” better is that the combo point mechanism is on the rogue, not the mob. This adds a bunch of interesting gameplay elements like building your combo points on the boss, and then using your combo dump to execute weaker encounters. It is just at this point that the WoW rogue seems so much less interesting than the other “Rogue like” combo point classes.

Onyxia Mount Patrol

After the time in Trove and Rift, I settled in for a little bit of Tuesday raid reset madness over in World of Warcraft. For better or worse, there are several raids that I solo each week on multiple characters for an attempt at the various pets, tansmoggy bits, and every elusive mounts. The start of each week tends to be me making the trek out to Dustwallow Marsh to beat up on Onyxia. First off I have to bitch a little bit, because post Cataclysm they have made it a royal pain in the ass to get to Onyxia for Alliance players. The fastest route I have figured out is fly straight south out of Stormwind, hop the boat at Booty Bay, and then fly to Dustwallow from there. All of that involves flying across several zones and hoping that you happen to arrive at Booty Bay just in time to land on the boat.

Of course like normal she didn’t drop me a mount, or anything else of interest for that matter but at this point I can easily solo her as Retribution Paladin and Frost Deathknight, so I do this little interchange twice a week. I need to cycle through some of my other characters and see if I can build a spec for them that can bring her out of the air in phase two. I might be able to gather up enough timeless isle gear to make a passable Boomkin spec on my druid, and I think in theory I could probably do it on as Enhancement Shaman. I do not think however that my Rogue or Warrior will be of much use in my quest for her mount. I need to check with my friend Rylacus and see if he has any master tips for dropping her out of the air. The one time I tried to do the fight as a Blood DK it literally took 30 minutes for my diseases/icy touch/deathcoil to do enough damage to get her back on the ground.

The highlight of the evening in WoW however was me flying over to Ahn’Qiraj on a whim. Turns out that I now have enough physical damage to solo the Twin Emperors fight. This had long been a stumbling block for me when it came to soloing AQ40. The other big hurdle was viscidious, however since I dual wield frost… I simply switched my razorice enchanted one-hander to my main hand and that seemed to do the trick for shattering him. Past that howling blast was more than enough frost damage to freeze the big blob. I am still missing two pets from this place, so I can see adding it to the weekly faff farming rotation. I did not really have time to do my BWL run on my paladin, I am still missing a few pieces of judgement… so I am sure over the next few days I will be getting that in. Since the eggs are a pain in the ass on anyone other than my Deathknight, I generally grab a random person from the guild who needs transmoggy bits before venturing into the dungeon. My hope is to find a time when Scarybooster can be online, and drag his butt through with them.