Learning to Fly

Coerthas Distractions

ffxiv_dx11 2015-06-19 08-15-59-02 All I really wanted yesterday was to sit in one spot and play Final Fantasy XIV all day long.  While that did not happen as I had originally envisioned I did still manage to get a fair amount of play time.  The biggest interruption came early on when I was trying to work on my blog post, and the air conditioning company called to tell me they were on their way over.  Firstly I had completely forgotten that I had scheduled our twice a year maintenance for Friday thinking I would be off from work anyways.  Secondly…  the guy who came over seemed relatively new and manage to take an hour and a half doing what normally takes the guy fifteen minutes to finish.  So that was ultimately why I ended up posting so late.  By the time that finished we needed to run a few errands, and I spent until roughly two doing that.  Finally when I got home however I had a solid block of play time and also a mission set out in front of me.

ffxiv_dx11 2015-06-19 16-03-31-09 Tam had apparently been playing since quite literally the servers went life at 2 am pst.  As a result he was anxiously waiting on us to catch up so that he could run the very first dungeon.   While Dusk Vigil is not entirely gated by the main story, it does require you to have gotten far enough into the story to unlock a specific camp of NPCs.  Previously I was getting easily distracted by every single FATE I came across…  which was pretty much an endless feedback loop since at any given moment there are a dozen different FATEs up in Western Coerthas.  Instead I had to shift to being laser focused on completing the quests.  This batch of storyline however deserves some time to slow down and savor it a bit as you quest through it.  They have done something that no other MMO has done…  picked up the storyline moments after the last quest of the previous expansion.  Over the course of “A Realm Reborn” they learned how to extremely effectively tell compelling story, and this expansion just continues that trend.  I feel like I am only a little ways in and they have already dropped several big bombshells on me.

Dusk Vigil

ffxiv_dx11 2015-06-19 21-48-23-26 Normally I would have told them to go with another tank to Dusk Vigil… even though I love the act of clearing a dungeon that very first time.  Problem being at the moment I am the highest progressed tank in the guild and likely the only one who has unlocked it.  Around 8:30 last night my wife and I decided to go for a walk down to the local shaved ice place, and I told them that I would run the dungeon when I got back.  Upon coming back the new renters across the street were out in the yard and it felt awkward not to go over and say hello.  People think it is strange that we don’t really know anyone in our neighborhood…  but I have to say this is 0 for 2 when it comes to introducing ourselves to new people.  This new one is just as insane seeming and clingy as the last one…  now the positive is that there was an Xbox 360 set up on the living room floor with Lord of the Rings movies and Dragon Age Inquisition scattered around it.  So maybe just maybe they are going to be cool people?  After making them wait half the night we eventually go away from the neighbor and I went upstairs to fight the login boss and get back in game.

ffxiv_dx11 2015-06-19 22-19-25-94 Surprisingly I managed to log in immediately and get straight into the server, and got my group invite and we were up and running.  The big take away from the dungeon is that much like the overworld…  the mobs hit extremely hard.  I am an ilevel 128 Warrior, and that first trash pack I pulled was a bit of a wakeup call.  The coolest thing about the dungeon however were the bosses which were in essence a remix of mechanics we have seen in some of the raids, but assembled in a manner that felt fresh.  I imagine at some point we will have a gear level where we can ignore the mechanics but for the time being…  folks have to pay attention.  The layout of the dungeon was extremely cool as well and had both a Coerthas flavor and a stone vigil flavor the deeper you got into it.  The background music and boss music were both amazing as well… with the zone music sounding like a remix of the Heavensward theme with Snowcloak.  The dungeon also dropped some really nice level 110 items that had unique graphics, so I hope to pop back in and try and collect more of it.

Learning to Fly

ffxiv_dx11 2015-06-19 23-32-49-86 I have no clue how far a Yalm is, but over the course of yesterday I think I travelled thousands of them hunting down Aether Currents.  For the uninitiated Final Fantasy XIV gives you a brand new Black Chocobo just a few quests into the Heavensward Storyline.  Also for the uninitiated Black Chocobos old a special place in the Final Fantasy pantheon of being the only breed of Chocobo that can actually fly, and while they often look more purple than black…  the one you get in Heavensward is officially a jet black chocobo with pretty cool barding.  When you get yours you also get this device called an Aether Compass.  In order to fly in a zone you need to track down a certain number of the Aether Currents, and in Western Coerthas this is 10 scattered throughout the zone and 5 that you get from doing quests.  If you have ever played a game that has a tracking system the compass works pretty much like this.  You click the item and it tells you the direction and distance away the next Aether Current is located.  This appears in your quest items tab, but I highly suggest moving it to a hotbar because you will be clicking this thing constantly.

ffxiv_dx11 2015-06-20 00-19-29-65 As a result you have to not only try and figure out how to traverse a zone that is extremely difficult to traverse do to some extreme elevation changes, you have to do this while interpreting messages like “381 Yalms to the South East”.  Most of the Aether Currents are found as a result of some jumping puzzles, that can either be extremely difficult to get to…  or relatively simply if you figure out the path they intended you to take.  The worst feeling is jumping down off something and seeing an Aether Current on the way down… that you could have gotten if only you know it was there ahead of time.  Once you have gathered up all of the currents you can fly around the zone on your Black Chocobo… and I have to say it feels amazing to finally be able to do this.  Sure the whole Aether Current thing is frustrating, but it did an amazing job of teaching me the layout of the zone and it is really the sort of thing that I did not finish until I was already MOSTLY finished with a zone.  This is a great compromise for allowing players to fly, but not feeling like you are somehow cheapening the content in the process.  Other games should really take note of this system going forward, because it feels like you are really earning your ability to fly each time.

White Mage Soul

The Best Intentions

Yesterday I read a post by Missy Mojo lamenting just how “un-fun” Blaugust has become for her.  I fear that there are a lot more people out there feeling the same.  I hear the same sort of lament in Kodra’s voice each night as he says he really needs to do his blog post.  The idea behind Blaugust was simple, to challenge people to do the same thing I do and write something, anything every day.  The thing is that the challenge grew legs of its own and sucked in a lot of newly minted bloggers along with the veterans.  I figured I might have five or so veteran bloggers take up the challenge as I did a year and a half ago.  The thing is I didn’t get there over night, and in fact had been blogging for around four years before I decided to post regularly.

This is probably the worst kind of event for someone new to the craft to start under, and we had huge participation by folks who started just for this even or started under the Newbie Blogger Initiative.  I promise my intention was not to grind people down with daily blogging, but instead to fill the gap that often happens in later summer for content.  In many ways it has worked better than I could have imagined, and tragedy in my own life has caused me to fall behind in the reading department.  My biggest fear is that this whole experiment will cause large lapses in content for the newer folks like Missy.  If you are doing this every day and not enjoying it, then it kinda defeats the point of blogging in the first place.  I give you complete permission to drop out of the contest with no hard feelings or lamentation.

White Mage Soul

ffxiv 2014-08-27 06-41-19-389 The primary goal of yesterday for me was to get my conjurer to 30 so that I could become a White Mage.  Since I already have a 50 tank, 50 ranged and 50 melee…  I felt like I needed some sort of max level healer at my disposal as well.  As far as healers go, I have enjoyed my time healing dungeons on the conjurer far more than I have enjoyed any healer in a long time.  The style just feels natural and I can usually land in a relaxing rhythm during each dungeon.  I figure the healing will get more complicated as I get more tools at my disposal but for the time being I am enjoying myself.  I had leveled Arcanist to 15 over the weekend in preparation for nearing 30 conjurer, since White Mage is a combination of the two.  I might return to leveling Arcanist at some point so I can become a scholar, but I feel no real pressing need to either.

The thing I found funny was that the level 30 Conjurer quest was far more difficult than the quest to actually become a white mage.  Even moreso I found it odd that in order to do my quest to get the unicorn mount I had to shift back to Conjurer as well.  In any case I finished both and am now an up and coming white mage ready to take on the world.  After coming home from the rosary last night I worked my way up to 32 so that hopefully someday tonight I can start running Brayflox for gear.  I have two pieces of the battlemage set but I would really like to get the rest of it, or at the very least the robe.  Additionally I would not mind seeing the white mage ring drop either.

Gearing the Warrior

ffxiv 2014-08-27 06-51-03-594 Since it is pretty certain that I will be needing my Warrior for when we start Binding Coil of Bahamut hopefully soonish, I opted to start rolling on Warrior gear in Syrcus tower.  Yesterday Tam and I decided to queue together for our weekly loot run.  Unlike other games you can run Syrcus as often as you like, but you can only take a single piece of loot from there each week.  The nice thing is this allows you to keep running it in the hopes of getting that one item you need.  Since most of the people  in there are after the item to craft their weathered weapon almost all of the gear rots, or at the very least it isn’t terribly contested.  The run started off really smoothly, and our group had a warrior tanking… which to some extent made my heart sink a little.  My goal going into the place was the pick up some warrior loot, but I brought my dragoon just as a backup in case something phenomenal dropped.

The first boss went extremely smoothly, and I was feeling like our tank was doing an amazing job.  On the first boss the warrior gauntlets dropped and moments afterwards the tank was asking for us to pass or roll so he could equip them.  We all did as asked and the moment he got the loot he dropped from the party.  This was the first time I had seen this happen, but apparently it is a frequent occurrence in Syrcus.  The awesome part though is that he was replaced by a really well geared Gladiator, and on the very next boss the Warrior chest piece dropped, allowing me to pick it up easily.  So that combined with picking up the soldiery tome ring takes my Warrior to 91 ilevel and more than ready for the Coil.

#FFXIV

Carried to Greatness

Some days are harder

There are some days where the magic just doesn’t seem to want to happen, even when you feel like you have a lot to say.  This morning I have been sitting around for the last twelve minutes doing everything I could to avoid opening LiveWriter and begin banging away on the keyboard.  Sometimes it happens and this is perfectly okay.  Yesterday there was a series of tweets that I was party to about what happens when you decide you want to go in a different direction than you started.  You would be shocked and amazed at just how many times I start in one direction and then decide that it is not in fact what I want to say.  There have been so many paragraphs sacrificed on the altar of mood swings, and I am here to tell you that this is perfectly okay.

In fact I would go so far as to say this is entirely expected as part of the daily writing ritual.  There are going to be days you struggle to find meaning from your cluttered mind, and it is completely fine for you to jettison one idea in favor of another.  Please do not ever feel obligated to complete a thought.  Just because you get two sentences down on the page, does not mean you have to follow up with the rest of a paragraph.  If you can have sketches in the margin of a notebook, you can surely also have room for the same thing to be happening with your writing.  There are so many things that Blaugust is “about” but one of them definitely is about being comfortable with your own words, and knowing when they work and when they do not.  Not everything you write has to be a masterpiece, and some things are destined only to be pushed out the airlock.

Carried to Greatness

ffxiv 2014-08-07 21-02-33-014 One of the things I have been avoiding doing since coming back to the game is wrapping up my Relic weapon quest in Final Fantasy XIV.  Before we left we had completely a number of the steps as a group.  I went through the extreme cost of getting the base weapon, and getting the two materia fused to it.  Then as a guild we conquered both the Chimera and the Hydra.  Finally I was up to the three Hard Mode primal fights of Ifrit, Garuda and Titan in that order.  A week or so ago I managed to get through Ifrit but I figured that was a fluke considering just how easy of a fight it is.  I also had intimate knowledge of that fight considering we had legitimately downed him as a guild.  The only problem is when we did it as a guild, I was using my bard job and not my warrior one… and did not get credit for it.

Garuda scares the shit out of me.  This was a hard fight for us to learn as a four man team at level, so I could not image just how frustrating and painful it would be as a tank.  I watched as my guildies that were not tanks queued for it and got it taken care of without issue, but still I was pretty gunshy.  Had it not been for Ashgar queuing up as a tank last night and talking about just how easy the encounter was… I likely would still be waiting.  Sure enough upon queuing I ended up getting dumped into a group with lots of folks that were in raid gear, and essentially I became the groups mascot.  Before I knew it we had downed Garuda and I was moving on to the next step in the quest chain that involved a good deal of running around.  All of my nerves were literally for nothing because at this point in the game…  folks have progressed so far past the hurdle that was hard mode Garuda that it became manageable without really knowing the fight myself.

ffxiv 2014-08-07 23-19-55-252 Titan on the other hand was still a challenge.  Once again I was the mascot of the group and really served to give no benefit other than miniscule dps.  The problem with titan is there is so much that goes on between the attacks that knock you off the platform, the attacks that can one shot you, and the crazy exploding rocks that can make you into a venn diagram.  It took my team three tries to get through the encounter, and with each wipe we gained a stack of echo…  which works much the same as the determination buff in World of Warcraft.  After all of the nervousness I was sitting there with all the components I needed to finish my Bravura.  While this is no longer the be all end all weapon… it still feels like a big deal to me.  I honestly questioned if I would ever complete it, so now I am absolutely pumped to be holding it in my hands.  I still need to farm a few more “bookrocks” before I can upgrade it to the next step, but hopefully I will get those tonight.

Nostalgia Crit 9999

Gearing Up to Celebrate 10 Years of World of Warcraft

Something I have been meaning to talk about for a few days is the recent announcement of the World of Warcraft 10th anniversary events.  Firstly lets get the fact that they are announcing them in August when the anniversary is not until the tail end of November out of the way.  I guess they need some good news to be honest considering how most of the community expected to be playing Warlords by now.  For those who have not followed the information they are doing a number of interesting things for the anniversary.  For starters anyone who logs in during the event is going to get a new pet in honor of it… the Molten Corgi.  When I first heard about the pet I honestly thought I had misheard some bit of information and it was related to Rift instead.  It feels weird to have two different MMOs obsessed with the adorable stub legged puppies.  That said it is exactly that… adorable and fiery and sufficiently epic to announce the 10th year of a game.

Keeping with the theme they are bringing back Molten Core, and making it a max level dungeon… and making it a special 40 man LFR.  Anyone who manages to make it to the end of the dungeon will earn a special Core Hound mount.  I have not heard if this is going to be complete-able with a guild group or not, or if this is going to only be an LFR thing.  I honesty feel like LFR is a decent simulacrum for the way actual 40 man raiding felt.  The amount of random fuckery that went on during most 40 man raids as 20 people carried 20 warm bodies to victory, seems like it could only be simulated by the LFR system.  It makes me wonder what all sorts of callbacks will they have.  Will there be a new version of Thurderfury for example?  The updated Quelserrar for example was something I hotly sought after, because I loved the look of that blade.

If all of this were not enough they are bringing back the one and only time that world PVP actually worked…  Southshore vs Tarren Mill.  They are apparently creating a special 100 vs 100 battleground to play out the epic battle of town versus town that used to play out on a nightly basis.  This is seriously the only time in WoW history that I actually willfully participated in PVP, and so many friendships grew out of it that I still keep in touch with today.  This era of wow was one of those lightning in a bottle moments, and I can’t even remember why it stopped.  I am sure it was in reaction to something that blizzard did to screw with the mix, but I remember by the time Ahn’qiraj rolled around no one was actually doing this fight any longer.  Maybe the battlegrounds were the nail in the coffin?  At this point I honestly cannot remember.

All of this sounds awesome and is loaded with so much nostalgia it is like a sucker punch to the veteran players face.  The problem is… we remember these events from the past of WoW as being so much more epic and enjoyable than they actually were.  For years we have viewed the early days of wow through rose colored lenses of a time when “things were right and good”.  When in reality they really were not that great.  The amount of lag that happened in Southshore for example made most of the deaths absolutely random.  The amount of drama and bullshit that accompanied Molten Core and the loss of three hours of your life every week to run it was equally insane.  These are not exactly moments to be heralded as the way things ought to be.  They were us making the best out of a bad situation and enjoying what game play we could find where we could find it.

I came in late to Molten Core after my raid had already broken its back doing the hard work to get it on farm status.  I was carried to my full set of Giantstalker, and then proceeded to run the dungeon every single week until pretty much the end of Vanilla.  I still have large sections of the pulls in that place memorized, as I geared up first my hunter, then my paladin and my warrior running the place for various people who needed able bodied fill-ins.  None of my “good memories” of this time in Vanilla have anything to do with the actual places we were running.  It was the people I happened to be running them with.  You cannot reassemble the raid I cleared Molten Core with, or the social channel that we ran Southshore versus Tarren MIll out of.  Those players have all scattered to the wind and a bunch of random socially inept strangers are a piss poor substitute.

Liore made a post earlier this week about that you can’t go back home, and it is true.  While everything about this event is laced with the drug that is nostalgia…  none of it is real.  How we feel about that time in World of Warcraft is an accumulation of everything that was happening at the time.  It was the people and the places and the fact that there was literally nothing else to do at the time, because WoW was the only game on the market that offered anything vaguely close to this.  No amount of wishing is going to actually turn back the clock and recapture the joy and experiences you had back then.  Don’t get me wrong… I will probably log in during the event to get my shiny trinkets… but I go into it knowing this is a pale comparison to the way things actually were.  There is no such thing as going home, because both you and the place you are going have changed in the process of getting away from it.

Writing Prompts

Now for a few more writing prompts.  I wondered if this would end up being useful but based on the fact that a handful of people have been drawing from them I guess it is a worthwhile cause.  Today’s prompts are all laced with the venom that is nostalgia.

  • What period in a game or game do you wish you could return to?  What is that thing that is now gone that you wish you could be playing again?
  • We all accidentally get rid of something that we end up wanting later on.  What have you deleted/disenchanted/sold that you later kicked yourself for doing?
  • We have all left something unfinished in our effort to move on to something new.  What achievement have you never completed that you always wished in the back of your head you had?

#Blaugust #FFXIV #WoW

Tiny Conjurations

Failure to Launch

ffxiv 2014-08-04 22-12-56-31

Right now to be truthful I am having all manner of issues with my machines here at the house.  With my gaming machine I think I have narrowed it down to the power supply, and plan on replacing that tonight.  My laptop however I think was bit in the ass by the same nvidia driver issue that seemed to start everything.  I am not sure what is wrong with Nvidia Driver 340.52 but both machines started having issues shortly after installing it.  It might all be unrelated, but I likely would skip this driver for the time being because I wouldn’t want to wish my issues on anyone.  Thankfully I was able to roll back to a system state on my laptop before the driver, so here is hoping that fixes things there.

As far as my desktop when I attempt to power it on, things flicker on for a brief second before immediately stopping.  The fans won’t even make a full rotation, and based on all reading this is likely a PSU issue.  Now in the past when my PSU has gone south, nothing at all happened, so this is new ground for me.  However I am willing to try it since a PSU is a relatively cheap component to replace.  Otherwise I would be something wrong with the motherboard… and I really don’t want to go down that avenue unless I absolutely have to.  The problem is that I am running out of machines… worse case scenario I can try and get this machine my spare in gaming condition.  I think it would run most of the things I might want to run, just not as well.

As far as me, I have been feeling like crap as well.  The stress of having my machines in various states of “down” combined with allergy season wreaking havoc on my sinuses and lungs lead to me deciding to take a day to mostly rest and collect myself.  My lungs have not been behaving well for the last couple of days, and the constant sinus headache has been causing me to eat ibuprophen like candy.  So here is hoping by the end of today I will have all of my machines up and running smoothly as well as me doing the same.  If not I guess we have to explore other avenues, and if I don’t get to feeling better soonish I guess I will have to run to the doctor.  As a result of all of this my morning post is delayed.  I did not really get a chance to post a big rundown of the blaugust folks either…  but I guess at this point things are rolling along smooth enough that hopefully everyone is already reading the incoming posts.

Tiny Conjurations

ffxiv 2014-08-06 06-10-03-54

Last night before all the computer issues started with my laptop, I decided to work on the conjurer job.  At this point I have a 50 warrior (tank), 50 bard (range dps) and 50 dragoon (melee dps) so the only thing I am really missing at this point is a healer.  All of the available healers require various levels of conjurer, so I figured it would be a good starting place.  I am still not certain if I will be going White Mage or Scholar as far as healers go, but in any case I am slowly working on the levels.  Conjurer I think has to be the hardest thing to level to date, mainly because all you really have to kill the mobs with is Stone and its various derivatives.  Even in cleric stance, which is surprisingly enough the dps stance…  you can’t really burn down mobs that fast.  My plan is to mostly level through dungeons, but the problem with that is that I have to actually get to 15 first to do it.

Last night I tried my hand at healing Guildhests since those start at level 10.  The main problem there is that folks don’t really seem to have a handle on tanking.  I healed a total of four, and in each of them the tanks made zero effort to try and pull any mobs off of me.  This means in the first one I ended up dying horribly, and in the later ones I mostly focused on healing myself… since I apparently was heal tanking.  Guildhests really aren’t worth the frustration experience wise, so I went back to grinding near Horizon.  I have a pretty massive stack of leves built up, so I opted to work through some of those.  At the point my system troubles started, I was just shy of 15, which hopefully means I can jump straight into healing dungeons instead of grinding on my own.

Feels like Home

ffxiv 2014-08-04 20-41-26-78

Yesterday afternoon Tam and I were talking about how much like home this game is feeling.  I think in part it is due to the fact that Greysky Armada the free company is a thing uniquely created by the group of players that played FFXIV at launch.  House Stalwart is very much a creation of my own, and it feels like my guild.  White Masks is very much a creation of Tam and it feels like his guild.  Greysky Armada is this wholly different thing that incorporates the best of each of us into something totally different.  I think that is why coming back to it is so comfortable, because its an us thing not a me or him thing.  Not sure if any of that makes any sense at all, but the folks that mostly do the AggroChat podcast have all been hanging out on voice chat for a few years now, and the FFXIV guild is 100% rooted in that little group.

Now that is not to say that everyone else isn’t welcome, but we kinda lead the guild as a team and not as a monarchy aligned under any one of us.  On top of all of this is feels really awesome to see everyone back in Eorzea.  I like this game a lot, and things just seem to work for me.  Especially now that I went ahead and embraced the adorable making myself a Lalafell.  At this point I am really hoping that the magic will last for awhile, and that we can all enjoy this space for more than a few months.  Ultimately that is what I keep looking for… a place to set down roots and settle down.  The problem is each of the games either has problems that bother me enough to where I don’t want to play it…  or it lacks the people to make a comfortable environment.  My hope is that FFXIV will be the game we all can agree on, since for the most part we all pined for it a little.

#Blaugust #FFXIV