Killer Riffs

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Every so often I get something stuck in my head and am forced to push forward with it. This week it has been leveling more characters to 71, and the present fervor has largely been focused on the Bard. I spent an excessive amount of time in Heaven on High either solo or with some FC friends, and managed to finish off the ascent to 70 last night. I’ve been going around since then unlocking the various spells for the quests that I completely ignored during the process of leveling. This is a weird place to be in because the game will even let you drag an ability to the hotbar… but you can’t use the spell until you have completed the quest.

The other thing I have been doing an awful lot of is Main Scenario Roulette, which effectively is always going to be either Praetorium or Castrum Meridianum… aka the last two raid like dungeons required as part of the ARR main story quest. In both cases they have now disabled the ability to skip any cut scenes, which means you will be surrendering 30 minutes of your life. However this proposition becomes well worth it when you consider that doing this scenario at level 70 will pretty much make you instantly level 71. Even at level 79 when I completed this while working through a gap in experience to the next level… it was worth almost 75% of a level.

One of the things that Final Fantasy XIV is excessively good at is incentivizing content that no one wants to run. These were painful at level and continued to be a painful process to get through as a fledgling player who was trying to random queue for them. Now they become an experience in watching how players have figured out how to optimize the process to take the least possible amount of time in doing so. Sure the player gets to watch every single cutscene, but they also will get lost in a heartbeat if they are unable to keep up with the optimized routing through the place.

I did some experimentation and they are absolutely not chain running, as I maybe got 10% of a bar filled when I was not getting the Roulette bonus. This has become a ritual for me pretty much every night to get one free level on one of my alts and then go on about my business. I am absolutely now using this as a way of jumping across the gap at 60 or 70 to fix those missing runs on the latter that I talked about the other day. In truth I really liked both Praetorium and Castrum Meridianum because they felt extremely epic when we ran them with a full party of 8 players. Now it feels sorta like going back and soloing Molten Core.

Blaugust Stuff

As far as Blaugust goes… the sign-ups are starting to trickle in and I have been transferring them from the private sheet over to a more public listing. Additionally if you read this post early in the morning you may have missed that I added a Media Kit page that was requested. As time allows I will be moving some more of the event information over to that page so that it is kept in one spot. Additionally I want to go back and stub in data about the previous runnings of the event.

Blaugust 2019

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It is that time again, time for another running of the festival of blogging known as Blaugust. Several years back I had this idea of challenging other bloggers to do a full month without missing a post. However over time that has morphed and mutated and taken on other festivals that are no longer running… to turn into what was Blaugust Reborn last year a sort of one size fits all festival for blogging and all serialized content.

The why is pretty simple. We live in a time when blogs are going dark and the hope is to keep infusing the community with a fresh lease on life. Those of us who have been doing it for over a decade now can easily lose hope. It sometimes takes a fresh batch of whippersnappers to keep us engaged and interested in making sure that the community thrives. Blaugust lives on as the inheritance of so many other great initiatives that have come before like the Developer Appreciation Week or the Newbie Blogger Initiative. If you have a blog that is waning in frequency, or if you ever thought of creating one… this month is the perfect time to put those plans into action.

The Schedule

Last year we started this concept of having themed weeks as a sort of ladder to hold onto as you move through the journey. These are by no means mandatory participation, but do serve as a bit of a scaffolding to help you think of things to write about as we move through the month.

  • Blaugust Prep Week – July 28th – August 3rd: This is a time for those of us in the community who have sorta figured this blogging thing out to help get you started with some tips and tricks style posts. Additionally this is a time to sign up on the Discord and start mingling among the folks. It is designed to ease you into the month with some helpful advice.
  • Topic Brainstorming Week – August 4th – August 10th: This is a time to for mentors to throw out ideas for posts to help you when you run out of things to talk about. This is something that hits all of us and having some familiar topics to revisit often times helps to defeat the tyranny of the blank page.
  • Getting to Know You Week – August 11th – August 17th: Tell us about you and your preferences as a gamer or whatever it is you happen to like doing. This is the time to dip into the well of stories and tell us something interesting that has either happened to you or something about your specific footing in your real or digital life.
  • Developer Appreciate Week – August 18th – August 24th: This one is specifically targeted at the gamers among us, but could be re-purposed to talk about any industry. The idea is to give appreciation for some of the folks who have created the things that you love. In the past we specifically talked about publishers and game studios that create the games that we are enthralled by, but it could be authors or artists or anyone who creates something that you love. It is a good time to give some thanks.
  • Staying Motivated Week – August 25th – August 31st: The final stretch. The idea is to post some help to keep folks motivated as they run towards the finish line. Also some general tricks and tips on how you keep motivated if you are one of the more seasoned veterans of the blogging community. If you are fresh to the initiative you could talk about some of the ways you have kept yourself engaged and creating content.
  • Lessons Learned Week – September 1st – September 7th: A reminder that the goal is to refresh the content creators out there and not necessarily to run a sprint. Some folks are going to cross the finish line and immediately go dormant for awhile, and others are going to want to talk about the experience. Creating a space to hold those discussions and hopefully keep folks from dropping off the face of the earth immediately following the event.

The Awards

We are more or less keeping the same structure as last year for the awards because in theory I think they worked fairly well giving folks lots of different targets for participation. The daily blogging thing is not really for everyone, and even myself I have backed off to only doing week days… and even then allowing myself off a day here or there because life got in the way. It is perfectly okay to start out with gusto and try for the Rainbow Award but ultimately end up with a Bronze, because as you go through the process it may or may not be as easy as you think.

  • Newbie Blogger Award – You did it, you created a new blog and by god we are going to sing your praises for doing it!
  • Bronze Award – You made at least 5 posts during the Month of August 2019.
  • Silver Award – You made at least 15 posts during the Month of August 2019, go you!
  • Gold Award – You made at least 25 posts during the Month of August 2019, you are a badass!
  • Rainbow Diamond Award – You did it, you posted every single day during the Month of August 2019 and deserve accolades.

Mentorship

One of the benefits of having done this at least once before more or less in this same style… is that we have existing infrastructure! We already have a batch of mentors ready to help the process, but if you feel like you would be best served in that role we are always open to more. Ultimately mentors should have at least two years of blogging experience under their belt in order to gauge the ebbs and flow of content creation in front of a live studio audience. We aren’t expecting perfection, just a willingness to share the lessons you have learned along the way with fledgling participants. For those participating, Mentors will be clearly marked as such in the Discord and can likely share some sage advice along the way.

The Details

  • The Sign-Up form for Blaugust 2019 can be found here. Only those who have signed up will be given credit towards the awards.
  • The Invite Link to the Blaugust Discord can be found here. Participation in the Discord is entirely optional.
  • When you share your content please use the hashtag #Blaugust2019 for tracking purposes and to make it easier for those watching along to see new things.
  • Mingle with your other Mentors and Participants because this is a community event, and part of the fun is getting to know the community. These folks represent a social structure that you can lean on for advice in the coming years. I personally deeply value my ties with other bloggers that I have built up over the last decade of doing this thing.
  • Welcome to Blaugust 2019 and lets all have an amazing August creating content together!
  • If you want an archive of all of the various logos and such, check out the newly created Media Kit page which will be the final resting place of this content.

Missing Rungs

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I feel like I was busy all night long but didn’t really accomplish much. I think this is in part because I really did not do much if all on my Warrior. Instead I largely focused on leveling the Bard and the Samurai. I completed my daily hunts minus one mob on the SAM, which served to give me a pretty hefty chunk of experience. Combined with another run through Holminster Switch on Trust system managed to push that class up to 73.

Now begins the problem with the Trust system. I am ready to start running the 73 dungeon… but my trust party is still level 71 and will need copious amounts of grinding to get them up to the level needed to run the next dungeon. At this point I realized I needed more classes to soak experience from the first dungeon… which lead me to start working on my Bard which is likely my second favorite dps currently. The challenge there is I cannot yet start Heaven on High… as I am not 61.

This is the problem I foresee right now with the state of leveling alts, and I will break it down. Right now you have a ladder system with a few missing rungs. Once you have a character to level 17 or higher you can unlock the first of the two Deep Dungeons… Palace of the Dead. This provides a pretty fast path to level from 1-50… and then a considerably more grindy path from 50-60. At the low levels it takes one or two runs per level, and during that 50-60 grind it is something closer to six runs per level.

With Stormblood they added in a second Deep Dungeon called Heaven on High that starts at level 61. You can immediately see there is a gap that has to be traversed somehow, and I have yet to find a really great answer to this. No one is running FATEs anymore for anything but the highest content, so that method is largely out. The level 60 dungeons reward crap for experience because they were designed essentially for players who had reached the end game and were not scaled for such. You can continue running Palace of the Dead but it suddenly jumps up to taking around a dozen runs to get through that level.

I feel like the real answer here is that they need to drop the level for Heaven on High to 60. However I am open to ideas from my readers on how they bridged that 60-61 gap on their various alts? There will be another similar gap when I top the Heaven on High ladder at 70… as the Trust system doesn’t begin until 71. However on that side of the gap there is at least a pretty constant running of FATEs that I could deal with for a single level. Ultimately the challenge of Final Fantasy XIV is that they have nice systems in place now… but there are just some Everquestian Hell Levels to traverse to move between them.

Final comment of the morning… expect to see some news about Blaugust on Monday. I have a plan in the works and will make my traditional big post and start the sign up process then.

Cross World Traveler

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Last night was an evening of a bunch of competing objectives… most of which got completed or at least progress made towards them. The main and overarching goal was to make sure that my good friend Grace was able to run experts. I wound up running The Twinning and Incomprehensible Named Sad Robed People dungeon without her, and as such I wanted to make sure she got both unlocks last night. I am still not the biggest fan of The Twinning, because it seems like I just take way more damage than I do in any other instance.

However Grace healing it was a far better experience than with the previous healers that I had been in there with. Of the three 80 dungeons my favorite is the Sad Robed people one… which means I am likely going to have to learn its name. It has an art deco vibe that speaks to my soul… and reminds me of wandering around in Bioshock’s Rapture. The jazzy soundtrack is pretty freaking great as well, which made me realize how much Soken is experimenting with new constructs this time around. While I love his more metal boss themes… it is also nice to see him playing with a bunch of other genres as well.

Another side mission was getting people into the Linkshell… and dearest Rohiaux explained after making yesterdays post why the previous nights efforts were not working at all. It turns out that Square apparently blocks cross realm “tells” to players that you have not been in a party with before. Roh’s suggestion was to create a Cross Realm Party and then share out a password to everyone you wanted to invite… which makes an awful lot of sense but I also did not want to hamper myself from running content last night.

What I instead opted to do was to use the realm visit functionality to pop over periodically to Faerie, Gilgamesh and Jenova and from there I could send messages to people directly. It also allowed me to use the search functionality to see if someone was online in the first place. Essentially in lulls between content I would pop over to Limsa Lominsa and use the realm visit function on the main aetheryte. This allowed me to snag a Risa and a Leori… which gives me a beachhead on Gilgamesh and Faerie respectively. The next problem of course will be the relatively small size of a linkshell… buy that is a battle for another day… however we are already 1/3 full.

Lastly I spent some time working on my Samurai. I’ve swapped to doing as much in the way of the daily hunts as I can with the Samurai and then mopping up anything left over with the Warrior. I am also engaging in as many FATEs as I happen across while hunting for mobs. Lastly I am working on the Trust system and anytime I am not otherwise engaged I am running one with the SAM to both level the Trust NPCs and get some much needed XP. As a result I wound up finishing the night by running the 71 dungeon right before turning in and heading to bed.

What I really need more than anything at this point is the dungeon to actually start dropping striking gear and maybe even a samurai sword. I have a ton of caster and healer gear for classes that I will take forever to actually play… but my army of melee classes is starving a bit for modern gear. Everything that is available on the Auction House is at nonsense prices so I will not be going that route this time around. Instead I am hopefully going to keep running the dungeon until I can get some gear, which is also what needs to happen to level the NPCs. However I did manage to ding 72 which is progress!

I also feel like I need to start pushing some classes through Heaven on High so I have multiple characters that I can be running through the dungeon ranges as it takes so many more runs for the NPCs to ding than it does me. Long story short… I am super engaged in this game right now and loving it.