September 2014 - Page 7 of 8 - Tales of the Aggronaut

Finally Turquoise

September 6, 2014 by Belghast

A Stronger Message

Yesterday various things happened, and it left me feeling like I needed to present a slightly stronger message about my feelings regarding issues. I still stand by my statement earlier in the week that everyone simply needs to be excellent to one another, and that would go a long ways in fixing issues. Since then some things have happened and I feel like I need to make a blanket statement about a few things. First off I support equality and diversity in gaming and in pretty much everything else in life. I tend to think of myself as a Humanist, and I would like to think that I give everyone out there an equal shake. I believe human beings are infinitely wonderful things, and that we should treat each other with respect.

Similarly I like that gaming is slowly becoming a more inclusive place. I am almost 40 years old at this point, and I’ve watched gaming come in and out of acceptance several times and I figure with the influx of mobile devices, it isn’t much more different than every family owning an Atari 2600 or a Nintendo Entertainment System. Gaming has no less meaning today than it did when those events happened. So I feel like there is room in gaming for anyone who cares to pick up a game and play it. As such I totally support all sorts of games, even the games that folks have been calling “non-games” like Gone Home an Depression Quest. I come from an era when games didn’t have graphics, so I don’t see something like Depression Quest being all that different from a text based adventure game like Zork, and without it… and MUDs you all would not have the games that you likely love today.

Finally I feel like this most recent controversy is a deeply confused situation. I feel like there are most definitely people who in earnest believe that this is a fight about journalistic integrity. The problem is there is so much *ism being thrown into the discussion by folks supposedly supporting the cause that any sane and cogent discussion gets pushed out. So far the best run down of the entire issue is in this topic, where someone interviewed a bunch of members of the movement trying to find a thread of commonality. I highly suggest you give it a read, because I found it informative and coming out of it I have a better understanding of the intent. The problem is based on a huge informational dump that came out today… the noble members of this movement apparently were in fact being played by the very same folks they claimed not to support. It seems as though the woman for whom their outrage started this entire thing, really was a Social Justice Rogue… and I use that term with ultimate respect in what she managed to pull off.

#IStandWithGanondorf

Finally Turquoise

Now that I got my statement out of the way, and feel that I have underlined and bolded my views on the situation. On to really important things like the fact that I finally… after spending like 60k buying fruit and then growing my own batch and using almost all of it… managed to get to Turquoise. I have to say it is absolutely glorious to behold, and now I just need to either farm Leviathan for a barb and collect all the mats to get the Tidal Barding crafted… or hope the market prices go down to a place where I can afford to buy it. It does make me exceedingly happy to scamper about on the mount while grinding FATEs for my atma bits. At this point I have three more zones left: Middle La Noscea, East Shroud, and North Shroud.

The method that finally managed to get me there was in fact the spreadsheet. The problem is the method is not infallible. I think this is in part due to the fact that you get slightly randomized bits of color per fruit fed. So instead of hitting Turquoise green on the first try I hit Apple Green. I used the sheet to figure out the colors I needed to add to that to get to Turquoise and then BAM! I finally worked. Generally speaking there will be a 2-4 fruit spread where the sheet will “guess” that you will arrive at the color you want. Initially I was feeding the bare minimum to hit the color, but it seems safer to overfeed a fruit to hit more in the middle of that range. If you don’t play FFXIV and the chocobo dyeing game… this all sounds like madness… and more often than not it is. I hit my goal color and am supremely happy for the time being.

Nightmare Tides

I have not really played much rift for the better part of a year now, but once again it is expansion time and I find myself eyeing the game. Storm Legion more or less was a bust for me. It featured a couple of extremely interesting early zones, and a whole slew of extremely grindy later zones. I realize this is odd to hear me complaining about grinding when I am so happily grinding away for an Atma weapon. The problem with Storm Legion however is it felt much like the Veteran ranks in Elder Scrolls Online feel… grinding without purpose and progress. It took an immense amount of time to push through the levels from around 56 to 60, and while I have made it through on two characters… I have lacked the drive to do it again on either my Cleric or my Mage. This expansion however drops the 10 level grind to a 5 level one, and I am hoping that it becomes more manageable. I know I will likely be playing this, as I am far more interested in it than I am say Warlords of Draenor.

I don’t really plan on having a big rallying cry to get folks into the game. Quite honestly I would prefer if everyone stuck in Final Fantasy XIV and playing it happily. I want to stay playing FFXIV regardless of away missions out into Destiny or even Rift. I am of the opinion that had I not worn myself out doing NaNoWriMo I likely would not have left Final Fantasy XIV in the first place, and never ventured back into World of Warcraft. That might just be my brain revising the facts of the time, but it seems reasonable. I remember very much being unable to get into the game after a night of writing hard and fast to hit the goals. Anyways in any case… I would prefer Final Fantasy XIV to be my base of operations, and not Rift. That is not to say however that I am not intrigued by the content. I still have a whole bundle of good feelings about the game and the company behind it. I guess time will tell if I plunk down the money to play it, but I feel like October 8th the announced release date will be here before we know it. Also I feel like it is pretty damned brave to be releasing against the Warlords juggernaut.

#Rift #FFXIV

Night of the Atmas

September 5, 2014 by Belghast

One Last Try at Turquoise

Yesterday the fruit that I planted in our guild hall garden ripened and I suddenly had 36 Mamook Pear (+green) and 36 O’ghomoro Berries (+blue) to play with. So last night I thought I would try and jump around the less than accurate flowchart by feeding my Chocobo 10 each still in an effort to get to turquoise. This morning once again I was excited to wake up and see the progress, only to find that once again I had simply jumped from Celeste Green to its next door neighbor Sky Blue. I am afraid I will be stuck in a rut where I jump back and forth between those two colors indefinitely. The problem is… Celeste Green is just too light for what I really want. My ultimate goal is to eventually get the tidal barding, and Turquoise will match with that so much better.

My friend Ash had mentioned a simulator of sorts that allowed you to pick a start color and a target color and add fruit until you get your end results in the “Current Guess” column. So this morning I dug the spreadsheet up and decided to make one last attempt at Turquoise. If I can’t hit it after this I will just live with Celeste Green or honestly whatever color of green I end up with. If you are curious what all of the Chocobos look like dyed in a certain color… I also have this nifty link that gives previews of each. As you can see to the left side, that is the target color I am going for… as it is significantly richer and more vibrant than the washed out Celeste green. According to the simulator by feeding 20 pears at a time I should hit my desired color. Here is hoping!

Night of the Atmas

This ladies and gentlemen represents my haul for the night. I went into the evening with five Atmas and excited with a grand total of eight, and a good number of beast tribe currency as well. At this point I am definitely too close to give up before I hold Bravura Atma in my hands. Honestly who is kidding, after I got my second Atma there was honestly no return for me. After Warenwolf finished his in a weekend, it ultimately sealed my fate and meant I would be grinding out the rest of mine over the coming nights. Currently I have Central Thanalan, Eastern Thanalan, Southern Thanalan, and Western Thanalan so all of Thanalan is officially done now. Additionally I have the fluke drop in Central Shroud and have then started working on La Noscea having Outer, Western, and Lower so far. Currently I am working on Upper and Middle La Noscea to complete my sweep of that area before starting in on the Shroud region.

I started my evening like I had several nights by porting out to Southern Thanalan. I had originally chosen Thanalan as it had some of the more annoying zones to traverse. About the time I got out there a guildie of mine Cav showed up both on teamspeak and next to me at a fate so we joined forces and ground FATEs for a significant amount of time. Luckily we managed to get the Atma of the scorpion off the same Fate, so we opted to take a brief break and continue on in Lower La Noscea. While on break we were joined by Ashgar and we continued our FATE grinding machine, and moments later I got the Atma from that zone. Originally I was just going to break the party and leave the two to their grinding… but they opted to follow me instead. We made our way out to Outer La Noscea and spent the next hour or so running all around that zone. As you can tell by the haul of Kobold quest items, we got at least five different boss fates down in the mines region.

When I got my Atma the two of them decided it was time for them to call it a night as well. I feel horrible that I was the only one who managed to get any Atmas other than Cav also getting the Scorpion. That said however I am only four away from the weapon turn in. Granted I am sure I will probably grind out an Atma weapon for my dragoon as well, but I have a feeling I will be putting some space between the two Atmas by finally working on my White Mage. I already have the precursor for the relic weapon crafted and the materia melded to it and everything. Honestly after all of this FATE grinding I could definitely use the slower pace of leveling a healer. The one massive positive about all of the FATEs is that I am getting tons of Grand Company seals… which I can then turn into Vetures for my retainers. That is a fun little minigame that tends to either reward really interesting stuff, or fish glue… with no real middle ground. Last night I got a level 50 conjurer staff, fish glue, and some cooked accuracy fish.

Dodo Earrings

As of yesterday the Tokoyo game show is under way and I am hoping we see some more information about the 2.38, 2.4 and beyond patches to the game. Unfortunately it seems as though most of the Square events are not happening until Saturday and Sunday, the two public days of the convention. One of the cool things happening this year is that much like the previous year they are having a raid challenge. Anyone who goes to the show can join together with a random group of strangers to complete the Lord of Levin encounter… aka Ramuh. Each time someone defeats the encounter they pick a random server and then ALL players on that server get a bonus item. Last year they gave away Cactuar Earrings for each server, and then when ALL servers earned the reward we got a bonus set of Bomb Earrings.

While they don’t seem nearly as cool as say a Cactuar… it is still pretty damned cool that they are doing them again. Being a loyal Cactuarite I thought it was pretty cool that the reward last year worked with our server. I makes me wonder what exactly the bonus reward might be this year, as generally speaking given the popularity of this game… every server should reasonably see this reward. Especially given that at this point most players have done the Lord of Levin encounter more than a few times. The information I think we are all waiting for is more news about the Rogue class and Ninja job. All signs point to the Ninja being another dps, but in truth I would love to see the Ninja be another tank. This game like so many is constantly in a desperate need of tanks, and you can turn a tidy profit by tanking random dungeons and getting nonstop bonus rewards for doing it. In Final Fantasy XI the Ninja ended up being an evasion tank, but they never actually intended for it to be one. As such I think more than likely they will make it a proper dps this time around.

Similarly I want to hear about other jobs that might be coming down the pipe. I really want to see Dark Knight and Samurai go in, as those are two of my favorite jobs from other Final Fantasy games. Ashgar theorizes that more than likely the Dark Knight will be the DPS class for the Marauder job, and quite honestly I am completely fine with this. Similarly the Samurai could be the tank job on the rogue class. More than anything I would love to see more Jobs get fleshed out since currently only the Scholor/Summoner combination have the 2 jobs per class theme that they had originally intended. In any case I am hoping for good news to trickle out of Tokoyo this weekend. Unfortunately with the time shift it means that more than likely I will find out about the Saturday news on Sunday, and the Sunday news on Monday. I feel like at some point Saturday evening though we will start to see earrings showing up in the mailbox.

#FinalFantasyXIV #FFXIV

Be Awesome Human Beings

September 4, 2014 by Belghast

Rough Week

This morning as I was getting ready I was happy and in a pretty good mood. All the while I went through my normal morning routine I thought to myself “well at least it is Friday”. Then it hit me like a ton of bricks… it is not in fact Friday. I have no clue why I got it into my head that it was Friday, especially considering it is a short week for us here in the United States. In just two days the week has seemed like a lifetime, and I am really hoping that today is far more manageable. For starters my anxiety has been through the roof as there are a number of changes going on in my work environment, that while they have not actually directly effected me… have a high potential for doing so. So my brain has gone haywire with playing these catastrophic what if scenarios, always managing to pain the worst possible picture.

Tuesday morning my wife’s vehicle had a flat tire, so I sent her on to work in my vehicle and took it around the corner to our tire place. This caused me to get a late start on the day and throw everything off kilter. Yesterday on the drive into work in my vehicle something felt off, like my wife had adjusted my seat in a strange way or something. I fiddled with the controls trying to get it back in order, only to find after getting to work that my seat was quite literally broken. After six years of wear and tear a piece on the side had broken causing the entire seat to somewhat veer downhill to the left. To make matters worse I got distracted yesterday morning while writing my blog post and I never actually published it. While I ran home at lunch to correct this, it set the entire day off once again.

Be Awesome Human Beings

So it really doesn’t help things that parts of the internet that I care about are in a war right now. I’ve tried my damnedest to remain blissfully ignorant about what is going on, because quite frankly I try really hard to limit the amount of negativity in my life. That said I have checked the hashtag a few times and what I have seen is nothing that I want to be associated with. These folks are not just being poor gamers… they are being horrible human beings. I won’t even get into the rant I probably have spun up in me about the practice of attaching “Gate” to something to make it seem like a grand conspiracy. There is no controversy here, no conspiracy… just a bunch of folks being “shitbag douchehead to people” to quote a friend of mine when I asked for an explanation of part of the present climate.

I don’t consider myself a Social Justice Warrior, or a crusader of any sort. I don’t brandish about the title of ally or feminist, even though I tend to align pretty heavily to both of those causes. I like to think of myself as moderate, even though I skew fairly heavily to the left side of the equation. What I do however try and do is be a good human being, and part of that is respecting others and treating them like I would want to be treated in return. “Be Awesome To Each Other” is a pretty damned good mantra to live by if I do say so myself. When I meet someone new, I try really hard to view them as a potential best friend, and not as some stranger to fear and distrust. At almost 40 years I am confident enough in myself to be willing to accept in the thoughts of others without the need to push them out. I seek out diverse thoughts, because they will do one of two things. They will either reaffirm my own beliefs, or cause those beliefs to evolve and become more rich. I am not interested in living in an echo chamber, and so long as people are respectful to each other they have a seat at my internet table.

Life is Nuanced

The biggest problem I see coming along with all of us is this artificial binary mentality that folks seem to impose on the world. Things are rarely ever one of two things with no middle ground between them. I do not divide people into social avengers and knuckle draggers, because we are not cartoon characters with one single overriding trait that defines everything about us. Reducing people to these red versus blue sketches also reduces their humanity in the process. As a result just because someone supports this one thing, doesn’t mean they immediately support everything attached to that one thing. For example I personally have chosen not to be religious, but that does not mean that I hate everyone who has deep religious views and traditions. It doesn’t even mean that I view religion as a horrible thing that we should all rebel against, I just made a personal choice that it wasn’t for me. Dealing in absolutes causes you to miss all of the wonderful subtle shades in between.

Additionally I feel like it is important to be nice to the folks in your life that you don’t have to. You obviously have to be nice to the people who hold sway over you, and you also likely have to be nice over the people you want to influence. However as we go about each day we pass by so many other people that we have no involvement in at all. I find myself judging people the most in the way they treat these people, the ones they don’t have to be nice to in the least. It could be as simple as smiling and saying “Hi” as you pass someone in the street that you don’t know, or offering to open a door for someone who is heavily burdened. I’ve had so many good things happen to me over the years mixed in with the frustrations, that I try my best to pay this kindness forward. The problem is I feel like this overriding sense of debt to the world around us is lacking. If you felt like it was your responsibility to help other human beings… you’d find it impossible to act the way folks treating each other in relation to this whole issue. Ultimately this is not a male versus female issue, or a gamer issue… this is a human issue. When you diminish any part of that humanity regardless of influence… you end up diminishing all of it in the process.

Unintended Post

Many times when I sit down to write in the morning I don’t have any form of an agenda. Today was more or less one of those days, but the issues surrounding our community have been weighing heavily on my mind. So I started typing and all of this came out as a result. I don’t intend to be a crusader or any cause other than that of basic human decency. So please as you go about your day today… be awesome to each other. It sounds silly, but it is a pretty simple tenet. Try your best today to go out of your way and be nice to someone you don’t have to. Open a door for someone, let someone into traffic in front of you, or hell even tip a bit more than usual to that beleaguered wait staff at lunch. Just try and do something today to make the world a nicer place to live in, instead of making someone else’s day worse.

The Atma Weapon

September 3, 2014 by Belghast

Hat For All Occasions

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

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

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