Good Morning Folks! I am reading a lovely story about my murder faerie on this rainy day in Limsa Lominsa. I wish that it were actually rainy in the real world because maybe it wouldn’t be targeted to get upwards of 115 degrees Fahrenheit today. I managed to push my Summoner across the level 100 line on Friday which means I also have a lovely companion level 100 Scholar. Not that I have a clue what I am doing and had to go button by button on my Hotbar trying to find Esuna when it was required in a quest. I’ve not finished the healer role quest but my intent is to do this thing… and then make myself a Mentor because it is funny. The only hesitation I have is that I am not sure if I can hide my mentor tag once I have it… like I can do with my Commander tag in Guild Wars 2.
All of that said… the main reason why I have not finished any of this on Cactuar… is that I have been spending almost all of my time on my babby Warrior that lives on Dynamis/Kraken. Am I switching mains? Fuck no. This is just a really fun project and quite honestly all of the grouping I have been doing with Ace lately has been deeply beneficial to my mental health. At this point, we have finished the Main Story quest for A Realm Reborn, and it has been hilarious doing all of this content as a sprout that understands most of the mechanics. Truth be told I think most of the folks on Dynamis are rerolls because significantly more folks seem to just automatically understand what to do. Every so often you run into a proper sprout and it is delightful when you see one. I love the paternal instinct we seem to get around new players, and that is honestly one of the best things about starting FFXIV.
The best aspect of all of this however has been experiencing this content with the understanding of where things are going in this story. Once again fair warning for spoilers in the rest of this post. I feel like Square might have retconned a few things, but we are seeing the echoes of the end of days all the freaking time. They essentially split Praetorum up into two different dungeons, and a solo duty, and now during the Lahabrea fight he casts an attack also called “end of days”. More than that there are so many weird plot threads that are out there that we know get wrapped up before all is said and done. It is REAL hard to interact with “Urine Jar” knowing what a fucking heel he is at so many points during the story. More than anything it has been awesome to rewatch some of these cutscenes like our Carebear Stare that ultimately destroys Lahabrea.
One of the coolest aspects of the flow of modern Praetorium is you are left with this weird photo op moment after finishing up the first dungeon, but before fighting Ultima Weapon where you can sort of just roam around in the space and take screenshots. I am sure you can do some truly dumb things with gpose, but I am a noob and do not know how that system works in the least. I just took a few shots staring up at the big snake-dragon-taur. The lighting is especially awesome on the Ultima weapon fights because this used to look pretty matte black and now has shiny bits glinting in the light and the glow of all of the red greebles.
It would not be Ace and me if we did not engage in some complete insanity. This means that not only did we complete the storyline… but we also started down the path of unlocking our Zodiac weapons. It all started with an innocent enough conversation about whether or not we were going to run the Hard mode versions of the primals. I said that if we were going to do that… we should probably just start the Zodiac weapon chain because we would have to do them all anyways during that. This led us to roam around like mad on Saturday morning doing all of this in the period of about two hours. We now have a shiny Zenith weapon to show for our efforts and are now unlocking the Extreme versions of the fights… and contemplating going down that rabbit hole as well.
When you finish the ARR MSQ, you unlock a truly stupid number of dungeons… and again… being us… we had to run all of them. Between Saturday and Sunday, we have completed every single one of these dungeons and I have to say… the Hard modes still do occasionally deserve their name. Trying to teach folks how to do mechanics that the large chunk of the player base has not seen since this left Expert Roulette was definitely a thing. There were a few cases where we ourselves had to look things up because we did not remember how to stop dying to certain mechanics. The worst was absolutely Pharos Sirius where we had a troll Viper who kept running several rooms ahead of us and chaining shit back on top of us. The first time I tried to save him and wiped the party. The second time I just let him die four rooms away from where we were currently. At that point Ace decided not to rez him… and the game would not let me kick him… so thankfully he called us all noobs and left the party allowing us to get a fill from a lovely monk player.
All of this said… I do sort of wonder if this is going to be the case going forward any time we stray from the path and do content that is not absolutely required by the Main Story quest. Really all told there were really only two extremely rough spots, the second being Tam Tara Deepcroft Hard. Most of the dungeons have gone pretty easily. We saved Wanderer’s Palace Hard as our last dungeon of the sequence because it was one that we both knew extremely well and understood all of the possible pitfalls. We essentially guaranteed ourselves a smooth landing from this nonsense. We’ve now moved on to doing the Crystal Tower series of Alliance Raids. We did Labyrinth of the Ancients last night and it was a bit rough around the edges… but we got through it and will probably progress to Syrcus Tower tonight.
Throughout all of this nonsense… a dare happened. You have to understand that I am notorious for playing a Lalafell character, and Ace is pretty renowned for being a dedicated Roegadamme. Given that the game just seems to throw Fantasias at new characters… and I had four of them… a scheme was hatched where each of us was required to swap races. So after the podcast on Saturday, I ended up swapping over to a Roegadyn and Ace over to a Lalafell. This has felt extremely bizarre if I am being perfectly honest. I feel so fucking slow… and I have no clue where the hell Ace is half of the time because I am not used to looking for a Lala. We are mostly still rolling with it out of spite and our strong desire to not be the first one to break and Fantasia back to something else. Like there are no true stakes in this contest… just honor is on the line.
I had to shift up my glamour to something more sufficiently tanky, but all in all, I think I am pretty okay with this. I feel like it is not going to be me that breaks first. I went with the shortest possible Roe, but it still feels like I am playing the Incredible Hulk. I’ve always loved the look of this chestpiece so I decided to build something around it. I have the matching legs but not the matching arms… so decided to go with the Sentinels set for the time being. I mostly did not just want to run around permanently in the Warrior artifact gear set. Anyways… alting in FFXIV is way more enjoyable than I ever expected it to be. I will probably continue to share updates on our progress as we tackle more content.
Featuring: Ammosart, Ashgar, Belghast, Grace, Kodra, Tamrielo, and Thalen
Hey Folks! We are back in fighting form with the entire crew. We start off discussing SGDQ or Summer Games Done Quick a massive speedrunning community event. From there we talk a bit about the Path of Exile 3.25 Settlers of Kalgur spoilers and some of the changes that are being made. Then we roll into Last Epoch Cycle 2 which has so many amazing gameplay and polish improvements. Lastly Bel and Grace talk about their nonsense mission to replay all of the FFXIV content and some of the experiences from running old content with perfect understanding of where the game story is going. Bel has traditionally played a Lalafell and Grace a pretty dedicated Roegadamme… and they have dared each other to swap races. Last night after the show that happened and the show card shows the end results. Lastly Bel talks a bit about Blaugust which is coming up in a few weeks.
Topics Discussed:
SGDQ
Path of Exile 3.25 Spoilers
Last Epoch Cycle 2
So many improvements
Amazingly polished experience
Revisiting FFXIV A Realm Reborn
Redoing Old Content with Full Understanding of the 10-Year Story Arc
Good Morning Friends! It is that time again, time for another Blaugust. Last year represented the tenth running of the event and it was an extremely successful time. It was the first time running the event in our currently deeply fractured social media landscape. Blaugust was an event born largely on Twitter, and it was a little weird entering a post-Twitter world where while the platform still exists… folks like me have spread out and adopted other platforms. Things seemed to move forward without a hitch, and I think in large part this is due to our thriving Discord community that we have cultivated over the last decade. I am hoping in part for this year’s Blaugust to be a little bit more low-key, at least in the amount of stress that it places upon me. It’s been a busy year and as such I have not actually created new assets yet for some of the things like Blaugcheivements. That said as always I am extremely excited to see who all decide to participate this year.
What is Blaugust?
For anyone arriving here for the very first time Blaugust is a month-long event that takes place each August which focuses on blogging primarily and has started to include other forms of serialized content over the last several years. The goal is to stoke the fires of creativity and allow bloggers and other content creators to mingle in a shared community while pushing each other to post more regularly. Above all the goal of Blaugust has always been to prove to folks that they can in fact sit down every day and create something fresh and then share it with the world. Posting regularly builds a community and in this era of AI-slop content, our voices are needed even more than we ever have been at any point in the past. Our hope is to create a nurturing environment where Veteran bloggers can help those just getting started and the cross-pollination of ideas can create something truly spectacular. Your blog gives you a permanent foothold on the Internet that you own and have complete control of, and that is a really good feeling in the midst of shifting trends.
Why Blaugust?
In April 2013, I made a decision that would ultimately dominate the fate of this blog for the last decade. I decided that I would force myself to write something and post it every single day. It wasn’t necessarily an easy challenge but for roughly three years I posted something every single day without pause. This forced me to get over some of the self-doubt that had kept me mired for years. I started this blog in 2009, but would often go upwards of six months without a single post. Each time I would lapse… it felt like I had to do something really special when I started blogging again or at least apologize for my absence as though there was some imaginary person out there disappointed in me. Forcing myself to “just hit publish” got me past a lot of those hangups and now I can bang out a post in my sleep… and often do consider I write around 6 am each morning. Blaugust came about originally because I wanted to share this revelation with other bloggers, that forcing yourself to write something every day can be liberating.
So I hatched the idea that if I challenged folks to make 31 posts during the month of August, and called it Blaugust… it might help others get over their own fear by immersing them in a pseudo-competition. The thing is… I learned that this maybe wasn’t the brightest idea in the world. For some folks writing 31 posts is a rather daunting feat and failing to accomplish it was just one more setback in a line of setbacks that were keeping them from blogging. So nowadays the original concept is still there, but mostly I just want folks participating to focus on “blogging more” not necessarily conforming to some mad schedule I devised. After three years of daily blogging… I needed a break and eventually landed on the schedule that I have now of trying to knock out a post every single weekday. Even then there will be times when I give myself a pass because I am just not feeling it… but the key is to get back on the schedule as soon as you can.
The Core Challenge of Blaugust
Blaugust at its heart has always been about celebrating the creation of content on a regular schedule. The original challenge was to post 31 times during the month of August which is 31 days long. This can be posting every day or doubling up on some days to make the schedule a bit easier. However, we also want to award anyone who starts down this path, because deciding to blog in the first place is a victory in itself. As such we give out awards based on the number of posts that you manage to knock out during the month of August. Again the idea is to spark creativity and get folks to create more content, not necessarily grinding them to dust on the millstone of some lofty goal. Here are the guidelines for each of the awards that we give out as part of this original challenge:
Newbie Blogger Award – You did it! You joined Blaugust for the very first time and we are extremely happy to welcome you into this raucous community. As a result, we are going to recognize your efforts just for signing up.
Bronze Award – You made at least 5 posts during the month of August 2024.
Silver Award – You made at least 15 posts during the month of August 2024.
Gold Award – You made at least 25 posts during the month of August 2024.
Rainbow Diamond Award – You beat the original challenge and posted 31 times or more during the month of August 2024.
The First Post of Blaugust
Something this year that I am really wanting to focus on is the community aspect of Blaugust even over the number of posts that are being made. That is the piece of Blaugust that lasts long after the final day of August has finished and all of the posts have been tabulated. We have created this community of bloggers and it gives us an interesting group of folks that we can rely on. In order to support this effort this year I am creating the “First Post of Blaugust” initiative. The idea is that for your very first Blaugust post you take a bit of time and introduce yourself and your blog. Granted this can feel a bit odd if you are one of us who have been doing the same thing for a few decades, but realize that not everyone knows who the heck you are. While I am not going to make you wear nametags to orientation, it would be lovely if you spent some time with that very first blog post to introduce yourself and the kind of content that you create.
Scaffolding for Success
Over the years we have added a bunch of features of Blaugust and the goal behind all of them is to create a structure that folks can lean upon when the well of inspiration runs dry. These are of course completely optional activities and only serve as some general guidelines that you can follow if you feel you want a bit more structure. Everything from this point forward until the recap below should be considered voluntary content. I will be honest there are folks who seem to thrive on this structure and then there are folks like myself that completely ignore it. Which path you take is entirely up to you.
Weekly Themes
These were created many moons ago, and the idea behind them was to template out some general themes for blog posts. As Blaugust outlived a number of similar initiatives I adopted some of the focus of those into themes and began publishing them each year. Generally speaking August spans five weeks and as such we have five different broad theme categories. Again no one should feel under any obligation if they do choose to write about the themes, to actually make an entire week’s worth of posts. Here is a quick rundown of the idea behind each of the themed weeks:
Welcome to Blaugust Week (August 1st – August 3rd) – The idea behind this week is to give a specific time to be actively talking about Blaugust and welcoming new members to the fold. This could also count as promoting Blaugust for the “Spreading the Madness” achievement. The hope is that drumming up some heavy activity of talking about the event might allow us to pick up a few more stragglers.
Introduce Yourself Week (August 4th – August 10th) – The idea behind this week is to have some structured time around getting to know the other bloggers. I realize that those of us who are veteran bloggers might have already written half a dozen introduction posts by now, but it is a great time to share anything interesting you might have in your arsenal.
Creator Appreciation Week (August 11th – August 17h) – Developer Appreciation Week or the D.A.W. was an event that took place in the blogging community independent from Blaugust but eventually died out. The more modern idea is to show appreciation for the things and creators that we love. This could be authors, musicians, developers, artists, or even other bloggers, with the focus being on sharing something that we love so that maybe others might appreciate it as well.
Staying Motivated Week (August 18th – August 24th) – As we get towards the end of the event, the activity can often trail off a bit. The goal of this week is to share some of your own tips surrounding how you keep motivated and stay focused on creating content. If you are new to the event, you might share some of the things that have helped you stay engaged during Blaugust.
Lessons Learned Week (August 25th – August 31st) – This week is a reminder that the goal of Blaugust is to refresh the content creators out there for the coming year, and not to burn them out in the process. Some folks are going to cross the finish line and immediately go dormant and others will want to process their thoughts about the proceedings. This space is reserved as a bit of a cooldown lap so that you can share your own experiences.
Prompt List
2020 was a weird year in which we technically ran two different Blaugust events… largely as a way to distract ourselves from the awkward locked-down state of the world. The Promptapalooza event that took the place of the normal Blaugust, was a bit of an abject failure. However, it did create a list of topic prompts that I have recycled and moved forward to help anyone needing inspiration. This is absolutely optional content, but feel free to grab one of these topics and write about it when you find yourself particularly low in inspiration or motivation.
In 2022 I wanted to spice things up a little bit and add something new to the mix. Some folks are deeply motivated by achievements, specifically in video games. I have one friend who obsessively tries to 100% every single game. I am not one of these people. However, in an effort to create new objectives for folks to focus on in order to make their way through a month’s worth of posts, I introduced “Blaugchievements“. These represent a series of optional objectives for you to check off, and with them comes a little toast image that you can use on your blog if you are so motivated. I’ve not created brand new ones yet this year, but who knows I might feel particularly creative before the month is over. You can find the full list and images associated with them over on the Blaugchievements page, but here is a quick rundown of what they entail.
Reading the Manual – Read the introductory blog post with the rules of the event.
Grats if you are reading this blog post you have already gotten your very first Blaugchievement.
Welcome Wagon – Write a blog post based on the first week’s theme of Welcoming Folks to Blaugust.
Introduce Yourself – Write a blog post based on the second week’s theme of Introducing Yourself.
Creative Appreciation – Write a blog post based on the third week’s theme Appreciating the works of some Creative or Company.
Staying Motivated – Write a blog post based on the fourth week’s theme of how you have managed to Stay Motivated.
Lessons Learned – Write a blog post based on the fifth week’s theme explaining some of the Lessons you have Learned through Blaugust.
Going Platinum – Complete All of the Blaugchievements for Blaugust 2024.
The Recap
That my dear friends is a rundown of what Blaugust is and all of the associated kitsch involved with it. I feel like it is very important to state that Blaugust is what you make of it. If you want to sign up, make a few blog posts, maybe participate in a few threads on social media… and call it a day, we are absolutely cool with that. You should not feel the need to go for 31 or more, because there will absolutely be someone this year that does something silly like 60+ blog posts. Over the years I have de-emphasized the competition aspect because really this should be way more of a collaborative event than a zero-sum experience. When this event first launched Gold was the award for 31 posts, and I eased up considerably on that concept to make it a bit more liveable… then of course added in Rainbow to recognize anyone who really went for the gusto.
Anyways for anyone who is prone not to read all the things like myself… here is a quick recap and “call to action”.
The Sign-Up Form for Blaugust 2024 can be found here. Since logging in with a Google account has been a source of consternation for some, I have removed that functionality. If you still cannot for whatever reason sign-up but want to participate please let me know. Only those that I am tracking will be assigned awards.
The invite link to the Blaugust Discord can be found here. Participation in Discord is entirely optional but also a great way to bounce ideas off the existing community.
If you feel inclined to do so please use the hashtag #Blaugust2024 for tracking purposes and to make your content easier to find for those watching the proceedings.
We also highly suggest that you utilize the Share Your Content” channel in the official Discord.
We have an official Blaugust social media account over on Gamepad.Club a Fediverse/Mastodon server that I help admin. During the event, I will be watching the above hashtag and boosting all of the posts.
Mingle with the participants of Blaugust 2024. Get out and see the blogs, read the posts, and comment frequently! These folks represent a social structure that you can lean on for advice in the coming years. I deeply value the ties I have made with other bloggers and started this process as an attempt to cement those and build new ones.
If you are so inclined there is a “Gaming Together” channel on Discord for those impromptu grouping activities. I believe there was even some discussion of doing a one-shot D&D adventure this year.
If you find yourself getting stuck at any point feel free to rely on the weekly schedule or the prompt list for inspiration or you can hop on Discord and talk through your issues.
You can also check out the new Blaugchievements list for anything that might spark your creativity and check one of those off.
Welcome to Blaugust 2024. As always if you have any questions please feel free to ask. My door is always open but I might be slow to respond because I have a bad habit of idling on pretty much all the social platforms at once.
If you want an archive of all of the various logos and such from this year or past years of Blaugust, please check out the Blaugust Media Kit page.
The Official Social Media Account
Last year we created an official social media account on Gamepad.Club who is run by a Blaugustan named Gazimoff. I help Gaz administer the server and fellow Blaugustans Scopique and Aywren are moderators. So suffice to say Gamepad has some seriously deep Blaugust roots and as such it made so much sense for me to standardize on that server and platform. If you are on the Mastodon or any other Fediverse platform you can follow the account and I spend most of the event heavily promoting the #Blaugust2024 hashtag through it. However this year we have a few options that make things a bit more tantalizing.
Bluesky
If you are on BlueSky I am utilizing the Fedy Bridge and syndicating everything from the Blaugust Mastodon account over to the BlueSky Network through this @blaugust.gamepad.club.ap.brid.gy. If you are on BlueSky you can follow that account and see all of its content. If you follow @ap.brid.gy it will allow you to create a bi-directional communications path with the Blaugust account and everyone else on the Fediverse. This will essentially give folks who are most comfortable on BlueSky full access to everyone on the Fediverse and I will be able to promote blog posts on both networks through the bridge.
Threads
Threads is a little less than ideal, but technically it also has connectivity to the Fediverse. It is an opt-in service and you will have to go into your profile and enable Fediverse Sharing. Once you have done so you should in theory be able to follow the official account over on Gamepad, and I will be able to follow your threads account and promote your posts. The communication is read-only, unfortunately, but at some point, I believe Meta is planning on making this bi-directional.
Everything Else
You are of course more than welcome to use any Social Media platform of your choosing. I am focused on the Fediverse and the things that have connectivity with it. I will likely not be actively promoting posts on any of the other networks, because I just don’t really use them often enough.
Final Thoughts
I said this last year, but without you, Blaugust would be nothing but a weird word that I smashed together in my head. It still rings extremely true as I sit down this morning to make the annual post… that always seems to overstay its welcome. If you’ve made it this far in the post I commend you, because these just seem to keep getting longer. Blaugust is a lot of things to a lot of folks. If you just want to sign up to participate in a community of bloggers, that is absolutely cool even if you make zero posts throughout the event. If you want to grind away and try and complete every blaugchievement… that is also absolutely a way to experience this event. Blaugust is what you want it to be, and I hope you have as much fun during this event as I always do. You have all of my love and gratitude for keeping this as active as it has been over the last decade.
Morning Folks! Since I spent all day yesterday talking about my Summoner, I figured this morning I would talk a bit about our progress on Kraken characters. Fair warning for this older content I am going to be pretty open with story spoilers as I talk through it. This is ten-year-old content so you had your chance to play through it. When last I talked about our adventures, we had finished Brayflox and were hot on the tale of a rumble with Titan. Fighting the giant rockboy was as always a fun experience, and even though it went super smoothly we had plenty of time to bask in the great music. This however led us through the Coerthas phase of the MSQ… which is a heck of a lot longer than I remembered it being. The next major destination was Stone Vigil and we mostly kept our heads down until we were able to get there.
I thought that maybe after returning to the game I would find the Ishgardians less insufferable given that I understand the people and their motivations a bit more now. This was not the case. Haurchefant is a great boy as always, but the rest of them can largely die in a big fire. Now that I have actually met Halone… I have so much less patience for their bullshit. The whole paranoia in dealing with the Dravinian threat is equally tiresome, especially after having spent much time hanging with Dragons at this point. Ishgard is so very in the wrong on most of these matters, and it only feels more obvious on a second play-through. The whole business with the Inquisitor and not being able to get into Stone Vigil was a pain in the ass and made me just want to murder everyone until they stopped annoying me.
Last night we pushed through and fought Garuda, and it is hilarious doing that fight in the four-player version. So many muscle memories came flying back to me, at which point I realized just how many times over the years I have done that fight. I remember feeling like it was a real challenge back in the day, but now she mostly just falls over. We wrapped this up by starting on our course to Castrum Centi in Mor Dhona and an attempt at saving our magical pals. It seems like the next big thing we are going to do is a raid on Castrum Meridianum…. many many quests from now. We are sort of in that final grind to finish out the original ARR MSQ. I’m honestly looking forward to doing the patch content because really that is the part of the game that sold me properly on Final Fantasy XIV as a story.
It has been wild seeing scenes that I had long forgotten. I can probably regurgitate the cutscenes of Praetorium like a 5th Grade Class drone through the pledge of allegiance, but there are many scenes I have only ever seen once. For example, I did not remember the whole bit where Baelsar indicated that he was going to get down and dirty with Livia when he ordered her to his room in an hour. The Garleans seem so freaking laughable at this point because I have been making them fall over time and time again for years as I leveled my characters through Main Story Roulette. I remember thinking they were freaking cool the first time I experienced all of these cutscenes. Even Darth Vader though would lose his novelty and fear factor if you made him fall over in minutes every single day for years. I still really want Square to release some of these outfits as cosmetics. I would kill entire zones just to get hold of Nero’s hammer as a Warrior weapon transmog.
Back on the other side of the fence over on Cactuar, I pushed my Summoner forward a bit in levels. I dinged level 96 and in theory, should be able to get another two levels tonight. If I grind really hard, I might be able to hit level 99 and equip the artifact set of gear which would be slick. I really need to clean out my Armoury Chest a bit in order to figure out what gear I actually need in there. Right now I have stuff strewn out between that and my inventory and am pretty sure I have broken a few of my gearsets for other jobs in the process. I’m basically living in Shaaloani now doing FATEs between queue pops of roulette. I’ve yet to get any of the bits required for the “Guinea Big” mount, but I want it badly. Its a fun zone to hang out regardless though because of the phenomenal soundtrack.
Anyways! At some point, I need to check out the new Last Epoch cycle, but I have been so focused on FFXIV that I have barely given it the time of day this week. In the coming days, I am going to get a bit more serious with my recruitment of folks to do some raiding in the game. Since Cactuar is sort of hell to travel over to, we might choose a neutral ground in order to meet up and do the content.
