Grand Experiment

Hards for Cards

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Feeling Mostly Human

I guess for better or worse the second day of medication trick worked again.  Round about the time I took my fourth dose of prednisone I started feeling more or less human again.  Today I am feeling significantly better, but I am going to try not to push myself terribly hard.  The goal will be to simply take things slow and do what I can.  I got out long enough to go to the grocery store yesterday, as my wife suggested I get some vitamin C in me… and simply walking around long enough to gather up a few items damned near killed me.  So here is hoping I can successfully navigate my way to work and back home again.

I want to take a moment real quick to thank all the folks who have been constantly checking on me.  I log in each morning to a barrage of “feeling any better yet?” and I have to say it makes me feel really damned lucky to have some awesome friends.  This has legitimately been the worst I have felt in a really long time.  Largely I have kept people in the loop so they don’t expect miracles from me during this period of time.  I missed the raid on Monday completely, and barely made Tuesdays.  Time will tell if I make it through today with enough energy to be able to make the one tonight.  Largely I figure there is nothing I do in any of them that could not be missed for a week if I absolutely had to.  Mostly right now I am dreading going back to work after being away for a day and a half.  But I will struggle through with at least a feigned smile.

Hards for Cards

ffxiv 2015-02-25 20-48-46-39 We have decided to copyright the term “Hards for Cards” because while it sounds a little rude… it accurately describes what we largely did last night.  There are many ways to earn triple triad cards.  The two primary ways revolve around either repeatedly dueling NPCs hoping to get lucky, or repeatedly running dungeon and raid content…  also hoping to get lucky.  I have to say though, given the two options I would far rather run the dungeons and raids, because at least then I am also gaining tomestones.  I started off solo queuing for Trial Roulette, giving me a random assortment of whatever trials that folks seemed to be running.  For the most part all of the primal trials have a chance of dropping their Triple Triad card equivalent.  Before long we had a small team of us running Trials, and towards the end of the evening a full eight man.  Through all of the content I ran last night I managed to get the Ultros/Typhon card and the Good King Moggle Mog card… which are both far better cards than anything I had managed to earn through an NPC Triple Triad duel.

ffxiv 2015-02-25 17-50-03-53The other big accomplishment last night was through through an influx of tomestones from all the random trials… I was able to purchase the 110 weapon for my last 50.  Granted I have a slew of classes that I have yet to level to 50, but as of now I have 110 weapons for WAR, BRD, DRG, WHM and as of last night PLD.  This also means that since all of my gear is currently WAR/PLD that both of my tanks are sitting at ilevel 116 which makes me pretty  pleased.  I am not sure how much action my paladin is going to actually get however, since I have a definite preference towards the warrior style of tanking…  but I would like to at least bring it out of mothballs now and then for duty roulette.  I really need to psyche myself up to tank more for the duty finder.  The community is pretty great most of the time, and there is really nothing but my own anxiety keeping me from doing it.  I just greatly prefer tanking for friends… and last night I tanked several instances and really enjoyed myself.  I just need to push myself to do it more with strangers, considering I would definitely not mind the constant gil bonus for queuing as a tank.

The Little Things

Wow-64 2015-02-26 06-24-11-65 I have essentially bankrupted myself in World of Warcraft purchasing all of the heirloom items that I had access to, but had yet to pick up.  The majority can be purchased in the museum in Ironforge, however a handful can still only be purchased on the guild vendor.  Thankfully these have all had their cost lowered to the 500g for the level 60 step.  In the course of picking up the last few items I noticed a doodad for sale on the vendor that I had not seen before.  The item was called “Garrison Guild Banners” and did precisely what the name said.  I think this is probably a testament to just how few heroics I actually ran in this expansion given that apparently you get one from an achievement earned by completing all of the heroic dungeons.  I am guessing it is upper blackrock spire that I never actually completed.  The item was cheap, 100g but man has it added a lot of enjoyment to my garrison.

Wow-64 2015-02-25 09-41-58-79 Another little thing I can check off my list is that I finally have the level 2 Menagerie unlocked.  I was never one of those people that really had much issue with the fact that the Pet Menagerie was essentially a dead spot in my Garrison.  I simply never had leveled a pet to 25, and as a result was not able to participate in the quest used to unlock the Menagerie in the first place.  I always felt kind of bad that as much as I like mini-pets…  that I had not really spent much time playing WoW Pokemon.  However with the 6.1 patch they introduced a simple quest that allows you to earn an Ultimate Battle-Training Stone…  which in essence boosts one pet from level whatever to level 25 the current cap.  This is available to every level 100 character you have with a tier 3 Garrison, so I managed to build a team of three level 25 pets shortly after logging in on Tuesday.

I did no research at all, and instead went with three of my favorite pets…  which is a fact that I am sure will make my life more difficult.  I went with the Terrible Turnip largely because its special ability should make the capture of pets more easy…  which is the main reason why I wanted a level 25 pet in the first place.  After that I chose to level my next two favorite pets…  Mini Thor from the Starcraft II Collectors edition, and Murkalot which was a Blizzcon bonus item.  Currently the team makes me happy… but I doubt I will be wrecking much face anytime soon.  If nothing else they should allow me to power level additional 25s with greater ease.  With my heirlooms, and my new pet army… I am poised to start working on my Horde alts.  So that is likely going to be one of my many downtime activities in the near future.  In the meantime…  keep being awesome readers, and I will see you all tomorrow!

#FFXIV #WoW #TripleTriad

Triple Triad Anyone?

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Miserable Defined

KenzieWithMe I am getting my morning post out extremely late today, because I have been attempting to sleep.  Since last Thursday I have been fighting something and going into crazy coughing fits.  Finally yesterday I went to the doctor and it turns out it is a bad case of bronchitis they are worried may turn into pneumonia.  As such I am resting as much as I can, but I am in this odd state of limbo.  They gave me a Z-Pack of antibiotics and some prednisone, but there are times the cure feels worse than the problem.  I grew up a sick kid, and constantly taking doses of prednisone to get over whatever issue I happened to have at the moment.  I am not sure if this is an all people thing or just the way my body metabolizes the drug, but it puts me in this state of being ravenously hungry, unable to sleep, and alternating between freezing cold and burning hot.

My blog post is happening so late because I thought I would try and get as much sleep as I could this morning.  Unfortunately the moment after I got to bed in earnest…  I went into the regular course of coughing fits.  I really need to find a way to sleep standing up comfortably.  I’ve never been one of those people that could actually sleep in a recliner, though as I type this I am at least attempting to rest on the sofa.  I am hoping today is the day when things start to turn around.  Generally speaking the second day on prednisone starts with you feeling considerably worse and then by that evening life is starting to get better again.  In the mean time my kitten is being adorable beside me on the sofa and keeping my company.

Triple Triad Anyone?

tripletriadwin Yesterday was an insanely huge day for MMO patches.  In Final Fantasy XIV 2.51 was patched in unleashing upon the world the greatest time sink ever…  Triple Triad.  When Final Fantasy XIV came out, it was during the heyday of collectible card gaming.  So I was floored when I saw that they had their own deviously simple card game inside of a game.  I remember farming monsters to get gold, to buy better cards… to ultimately get a better deck so I could duel NPCs…  and win better cards.  It was one giant feedback loop that kept me enthralled for months as I tried to collect all of the cards in the game.  I was so into this game that I tracked down physical cards and purchased a handful of extremely expensive for the time imported packs.  Nowadays single packs are selling on ebay for upwards of $60… I think maybe I paid like $5 a pack at the time… which I thought was highway robbery.  Now I can play the game inside of another game I already love… and so far I have not really left the Golden Saucer other than to duel npcs out in the world.

ffxiv 2015-02-24 11-26-02-04 Though honestly… as amazing as the Manderville Golden Saucer is… who would want to go anywhere else?  I know there is more to this patch than this one attraction but I feel like this is the part that I have been waiting on since it was first announced.  I puttered around trying out each of the minigames, and so far the one that is easiest to increase your Manderville Gold Points, the currency needed by all Golden Saucer games, is the strength tester.  It costs a single MGP to play, and if you can press the hammer at exactly the right moment you can get 5 MGP in return.   This will take forever, but should be able potential way to earn enough money safely if you so choose.  Triple Triad on the other hand has significantly better payouts, so my hope is that I can build a good enough deck to regularly dual the King and win.  There are already videos online with some strategies for winning against the king with the default deck.  Right now however my priority as always will be to win more cards..  because that is the part of the game that is interesting to me.

Heirlooms for Everyone

Wow-64 2015-02-25 09-54-41-32 heirlooms Not to be outshined, yesterday was also the release date of the 6.1 patch in World of Warcraft.  With it came a number of quality of life changes like the brand new heirloom system.  One of the coolest things about it, was the fact that any heirlooms that you owned, got bumped up to level 90 preemptively.  For the most part heirlooms seem to be around 500g for the level 60 version, 1500g or so for the upgrade to 90, and then 5000g or so for the upgrade to level 100.  All of which seem really reasonable to me.  The best feature is that you can have the same heirloom on as many characters as you like.  As such my army of horde alts are now fully kitted out in heirloom gear for at least level 60.  To make the process a little easier they introduced a new currency called Misprinted Draenic Coins that actually give us a proper reason to do a daily heroic!  You can turn these in for the items used to upgrade your heirlooms.

Wow-64 2015-02-24 21-34-55-22 In other news, last night I limped through the raid even though I likely should have done so.  I performed pretty shitty all night long, but I did well enough to keep from screwing anyone else up.  We started the night with Gruul, moved to Hans and Franz and then Darmac before starting in work once more on Oregorger.  We finally either reached a point in gear where we could handle the damage and healing, or we simply got better at moving… but whatever it was we managed to finally defeat Oregorger removing what had become a physical and mental wall.  The other night when we tried Kagraz it seemed like we could get that fight down without much more effort.  Similarly I think we will be preparing to play with trains and Operator Thogar.  My hope is that we can get back our momentum and get closer to clearing the instance on normal at least.  My hope is that soon we will give at least Gruul a poke on heroic.  We have that fight pretty well under control, so I can’t see as how we should not be clearing the first bosses of each wing on heroic before too much longer.  In the meantime I am hoping my medication kicks and I can return to live as normal… because being sick sucks.

Final Fantasy XIV Minion Guide

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I Love Mini-Pets

ffxiv 2015-02-22 10-52-44-08 One of my favorite things in any game is the collection of mini-pets and in Final Fantasy XIV they have a truly silly amount of them.  In talking to a guildie today I realized just how contorted it is to try and figure out how to get each of them.  They come from vendors, achievements, quests, an random raid and dungeon drops.  I thought for today’s post I would attempt to pull together a rudimentary list of where you can obtain which minions.  This will likely not be a complete list, but it is a good first attempt.  I will try and update it for new data as I find what I am missing.

Purchased Minions

This is probably the least complete of the information I have, but if you really want to find out how to get each of the minions, click the link and follow up to find out where the vendor is located.  Some of these require you to complete certain FATEs to get the vendor to show up. Anything marked Special event means it is from a holiday event or similar limited time happening.

Beast Tribe Purchased Minions

This next batch are vendor purchased, but require you to gain a certain amount of faction with a given beast tribe to access the minions.  It looks like each faction has two different minions.

Crafting and Harvested Minions

This category of minions is obtained either through a crafted pattern or through harvesting.  Click through to the minion to find out specifically what it takes to obtain each.

Quested Minions

There are a number of minions that can be obtained through the completion of quests.  Here is a list of those that I know of, as well as the quest that goes with them.  Be warned looking at the quest might be a bit of a spoiler at times.  Anything marked Special event means it is from a holiday event or similar limited time happening.

Achievement Minions

There are a number of minions that are associated with the completion of an achievement.  I’ve attempted to link the achievement to help you figure out what it takes to get each one.  Some of them are extremely involved.

FATE Minions

There are a number of minions that are obtained through the completion of specific FATEs.  Generally speaking these require you to get gold completion on the FATE in order to earn the minion.  These drop each time you get gold, meaning they are often extremely cheap on the market board.

Treasure Map Minions

With the introduction of the treasure map system, there are a number of extremely rare and highly sought after minions that come from completing these maps.  From what I understand it is a sub 1% chance of getting one of these minions, because of this… they go for millions of gil each.  Good luck!

Gardening Minions

When the housing garden plots were introduced, there are a number of minions that can be in essence grown.  Each of them requires you to do some truly contorted things to get a rare seed… that will then grow into the minion.  I don’t know the specifics but hopefully you can research how to do this elsewhere.  I am just providing a list of minions.

Retainer Venture Minions

Similar to the Treasure Map minions… there are minions that have an exceptionally rare chance of being returned from Retainer ventures.  Most of these come from exploration ventures of specific gathering types.  The rarity causes them to generally be priced in the millions.  Hopefully you will have some extremely good luck.

Dungeon Drop Minions

There are a number of minions that can be found as somewhat uncommon drops in various dungeons.  Several of these started as 100% chance drops, but as the market was flooded, Square decided to dial back the drop chance making them significantly rarer.  The best option for these is to farm them by running the dungeon multiple times.

Raid Drop Minions

A Number of the raids and trials drop minions.  Generally speaking when a trial drops a minion it is dropped every time you successfully complete it.  When a raid drops one, there is a chance it may or may not drop the minion.  The problem with raid drops is you are having to roll against potentially 24 other players… which means you need to roll exceptionally well to have a shot at walking away with it.

Veteran Reward Minions

Final Fantasy XIV has easily one of the best veteran rewards programs, rewarding players for subscribing to the game with various items.  At each step you get a minion, so I have jotted down the minion and the number of days subscribed you have to reach to earn it.

Mog Station Purchased Minions

Recently Square Enix introduced a number of RMT minions available through the Mog Station.  Each of these runs roughly $5.  So far these are limited to the various scions apart from Minfilia that comes from the yearly anniversary event.

Final Fantasy XIV Merchandise Bonus Minions

There are a handful of items that can be purchased that have a pack in code for a specific minion.  These are all exclusive and cannot be obtained through other means.

Eternal Bonding Ceremony Minion

Finally there is one other very specific minion that can only be obtained through attending an Eternal Bonding ceremony.  Having not actually done this myself yet, I am uncertain how this process works but I would assume it becomes purchasable after you attend.

Thats All Folks… for now

ffxiv 2015-02-23 21-43-30-57

That ladies and gentlemen is all of the minions that I happen to know about.  As they add more to the game I will try and keep this guide updated.  Tomorrow the 2.51 patch lands and with it I am sure more minions.  Also if there are other minions not included in this guide that you know how to get, please let me know and I will copy over the information.  Hopefully someone out here will find this information useful.

#FFXIV #Minion #Guide

Tech Pedantry

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Roguish Charm

ffxiv 2015-02-23 06-12-46-67This weekend was one of those where we stayed inside for the majority of it.  For starters I still feel like crap, with whatever bronchitis type thing that I have.  I think it might be getting slightly better, but still feeling drained from all the coughing.  For the most part I spent my weekend in a blanket cocoon on the sofa catching up on the show scorpion and playing an awful lot of Final Fantasy XIV.  While some of my time was spent with the guild running group content, a far greater amount was spent working on leveling rogue.  The class is really starting to grow on me, primarily because of the extremely well done animations.  Even though I essentially only have four buttons that matter right now, the animations feel important and it feels like I am the master of dagger based combat.  I started the weekend at level 18 and ended the weekend at level 26 so I am pretty happy with that.

For the longest time I had struggled with what to level next.  My monk was the closest to max level at 33 but really there is just something about it that does not excite me.  I’ve never really liked unarmed/fist weapon classes in games.  At high levels you can get some insane looking claws which I am sure improves the enjoyment…  but in general I have never actually liked monk characters in the Final Fantasy franchise.  Tifa, Sabin, Yang, and Zell all got a minimum of use in my parties, always favoring other jobs for my melee classes.  So I guess for me I don’t have this fond nostalgia for the monk and as such it just feels like a less interesting dragoon.  Rogue and I am hoping ninja on the other hand feels like this blade master that moves swiftly and delivers fast attacks on their target.  I can see leveling both at some point, but I think for the time being I will be “yet another ninja” waiting in the party finder.

Tech Pedantry

mpc-hc64 2015-02-23 06-18-44-52 The other aspect of this hibernation was watching all sixteen episodes of the show Scorpion to catch me up to date.  For some time now my wife has been telling me that she thought I would enjoy the show.  Some people are pedantic about grammar or spelling… for me it is about technology.  If you show a technology used in an inappropriate way it grates on my nerves and I struggle to get past it.  The logo for the television show is stylized as </scorpion>  which is an ending html tag…  and it drives me insane that they did not instead use the appropriate syntax for a single tag which would be <scorpion />.  Anyways at some point I pushed past this frustration when I kept hearing from friends how good the show was.  It took me a few episodes to start caring about the characters but right now I think I am officially hooked.

The strange thing about the show is that for the most part they do get technology right.  When they go into a nuclear reactor they talk about SCADA based systems, which are an actual protocol that for the most part runs all major infrastructure.  Other elements have a bit of science fantasy applied, but still the vast majority of it checks out in theory.  The only question is just how much of the show is based on the real Walter O’Brien and how much is made up for the sake of Hollywood.  The hacking NASA thing is supposedly true, but I feel like much of the show is romanticized for the sake of the screen.  I am just happy to be watching a show that does a pretty fair job of representing tech, and doing so as close to reality as probably any other show has managed to get.  Sure it suffers from the same “goofy interface” issues that any other show does, but I have connected enough with the cast of characters to get past that.  All I have to say is that Happy Quinn is a badass, and so long as she continues to be an interesting character I will probably keep watching.

Best Shoes Ever

starwarsvans I have this strange attachment with Vans, Airwalk and Converse shoes.  There is just something I like about canvas low tops that make me happy… especially the slip on varieties.  I would not say that I collect them but I definitely have more than a handful of pairs that I swap back and forth between.  The other day my wife stumbled onto the above pair of shoes and thought I needed them.  That is how cool my wife is, that she found something like this on her own and suggested I order them.  Granted for size 13 shoes they were a bit more expensive than I originally thought, but damn are they worth it.  Today is going to be the first time I wear them, and I am sure I will get some goofy looks…  but fuck it… they are amazing.  They did have some really subtle Darth Vader shoes that I contemplated getting, but I only wanted to get one pair… and the choice was obvious.

sunningcats While I am posting pictures, I figured I would drop this one on the blog as well.  This is one of those rare moments when all three of our cats are getting along.  It is a great size comparison picture that shows just how insanely huge Chloe is compared to Kenzie and Allie.  As I write this I have Kenzie the kitten sleeping on the top of a computer case on my desk, Allie picking at a box on under my desk, and Chloe sprawled out blocking the exit to my room.  They feel like they should be fed apparently, and are going to guard me until I make it happen.  Every time I stop typing the look around anxiously as though I am going to bolt from the room and try and shake them.  Living with my fuzzy menagerie is definitely an interesting existence, especially when at the same time both ferrets are demanding attention.  These are all the reasons why I often am late getting out the door in the morning, but I would not change it for the world.