Tales of the Aggronaut

Certification Get

March 9, 2018 by Belghast

This morning I really do not have much to talk about so you are getting a super non sequitur image. Last night I came home, ate some pizza we ordered in, messed with this image for my twitch profile, played a little boy band simulator, and then finally crashed around 9 pm. This entire week has been odd for me because it has felt like nothing was quite normal. Monday was a super meeting packed day because I knew I would be in training from Tuesday to Thursday and today will also be a super meeting packed day because anything I could not do on Monday I shifted to Friday.

My key focus for the last few days has been trying to cram as much information as I could about the ITIL framework into my brain in preparation for the certification exam that I took yesterday. Originally the plan was to take the exam shortly after lunch at 1:35 pm giving me a little bit of time to chill but also largely be in a very fresh state for the test. The problem is when we first tried to sign me up for the online proctoring the site was having a lot of issues. It turns out that while we got a voucher to pay for the exam… they didn’t actually book it and as we started trying to log in to take the test it turned out I still had yet to lock in a time. The soonest time available was at 4:15 giving me several hours to just kill.

Luckily the training company was a home converted into office space and with it a couple of super comfy couches that I proceeded to chill out on for a few hours. During that time the trainer and I got to talking and found out that he too was mostly an MMO gamer and was also a long time raid tank. So for roughly three house we shot the shit and talked about the things we enjoyed playing, and our experiences in raiding and how they ultimately translate to the business world. Guild leadership and raid leadership were ultimately the things that convinced me that I could in fact handle the fact that work kept pushing me closer and closer to management, so it was a super interesting conversation. I am wondering if maybe it would be something worth talking about on AggroChat.

The mishaps did not end with the timeframe shifting however. When you take one of these online proctored tests they have you download this client that ultimately ceases control of your machine while you are taking the test. Apparently it also monitors like every aspect of your system, and about halfway through the test the proctor warned me that my laptop was about to lose power and that I should pause and plug it in. Thing is… it was plugged in, so I had to scramble and try a bunch of different wall outlets until I found one that was actually working. Thankfully I finished with plenty of time to spare allowing me to go back through all of the questions a second time before finally submitting my answers.

The ITIL certification requires that you get 65% and on a 40 question exam that ends up being that you can ultimately miss 14 questions and still be fine. I ended up missing 5 questions giving me an equivalent percentage grade of 87.5%. However upon finishing the exam… I damned near had a heart attack because the first number I saw was 35… for the number of questions I got right. However my brain immediately assumed that was my percentage and that I had failed completely. The other person going through training at the same time as me apparently missed 4 so that means both of us passed easily. Largely all I cared about was passing because my predecessor failed his first time and I did not want to return from class in that state.

It’s weird when your entire week has been consumed with one activity… and then it is finally over without a whole lot of fanfare. I largely came home and collapsed on the sofa and spent a good chunk of the evening fighting drowsiness. When my wife said she was about ready for bed around 9… I opted to follow her and while I had intended on sitting in bed and playing Monster Hunter 4U on the 2DS XL I was asleep before the news came on at 10. I also slept solidly throughout the night and woke up about 10 minutes before the alarm went off. In theory I needed the rest because it was a crazy ride of a week. Next week however I promise that this will in fact return to being a gaming blog.

Moogle Charro Suit

March 8, 2018 by Belghast

Last night I had all of the intent in the world to come home and stream some Monster Hunter World nonsense. Wednesday is likely going to be one of those days I stream because it is a relative dead spot for the rest of the Moogle’s Pom team. When I got home from training however I was just mentally toast and was not sure if I could handle non-streaming interaction… let alone being “on” while playing something. As a result I slipped into the comfortable chill of Final Fantasy XV. As you can see I have decided to go with a completely different outfit for Noct because the Mariachi Charro suit with a Moogle Riding a Chocobo on the back is freaking amazing. I’ve always thought the classic Mariachi attire looked classy as fuck, and since FFXV is sorta this weird homage to the Americas it sorta fits. I also swapped the Regalia paint job for a classic two tone with black/gold rims and the black and white interior.

This is mostly going to not be a post about Final Fantasy XV but I had some screenshots to break up the blocks of text so I am using them. I’ve been in ITILv3 certification classes and it is simply a lot of information to consume and remember. What is making things more difficult is that some of our practices at work go against the norm and even attribute completely different meanings to some of the terms I am going to have to be tested on. Some of my peers talked about just being mentally toast when they got out of class each night and that is precisely what I am going through. We’ve taken six quizzes, a 40 term vocabulary test, a bunch of brain dump review sessions… and today is the day. We have a handful of study activities and a practice test… and then finally at 1:35 to be exact I take the online proctored certification test.

I spent some time reading last night and watched a few study guide videos… but I could tell that no more data was going to fit into my brain that evening. Its almost as though there is some maximum buffer of learning that I have reached each day and only sleep manages to come along and clear it out. At this point we have covered probably well over 100 specific terms that we are going to need to understand and differentiate from other super similar terms. It is not like my job is on the line if I don’t pass… but I will catch massive hell because my predecessor did not when everyone else that went through a giant class together did. So far I have made roughly 80% on all of the quizzes so I am trending to be able to make the minimum of 65% needed to pass the test and get certification. Ultimately I will feel better once I have taken the practice exam and seen how I do on that.

In the meantime… I am ready for some normalcy to return to my week. I’ve been in training each day since Tuesday with my entire focus being absorbing as much raw information as I can. Coming back to work Friday and doing normal tasks is going to feel super odd given that I have been holed up in a classroom for the last three days. It honestly may not be until the weekend that I have decompressed enough from this experience to be able to interact with other human beings on a regular basis. I have stuff that I ultimately want to do in both Final Fantasy XIV and Monster Hunter World, and I have not even had a chance to check in and see what the weeklies are this time around. I know the Wiggler quest ends soon, and then shortly after that the Anjanath Horizon Zero Dawn quest. I need to make sure that everyone I know has the bits from that quest they still need before it poofs.

On the Final Fantasy XIV front I need to burn through the rest of the main story quest so that I can unlock the rest of the dungeons needed for Expert Roulette. I would really like to get into a comfortable pattern of coming home and doing the few daily roulettes for bookrocks in order to catch up gear wise. I would also really love to grab some people I trust and run through Rabanastre so I can get some quick explanations of the fight before I start tanking it on a regular basis. I could in theory run it as Samurai, but I am not sure if my gear is good enough to get in there on that class.

Finally last night I spent a little bit of time downstairs in bed playing around with my 2DS XL. Firstly I have to say how much better I like using this than the 3DS XL. For whatever reason the screen on the 3DS always screwed with my eyes. I could never actually see the 3D paralax effect and as a result everything just looked fuzzy even with the 3D settings flipped all the way to the lowest settings. As a result the 2DS screen looks so much crisper and as a result every game just feels better. The other awesome side effect is the fact that it is so much lighter, and also qualifies as a “New” device meaning I can finally put some of my favorite SNES games on it. I managed to catch Monster Hunter 4U on sale for $8… but sadly at the time of posting this it has gone back up to its full price. I started that game and already like it more than I did Generations, and I managed to defeat the Well-Done Steak boss on my first attempt because of figuring it out from World. These games feel so fresh and new… and I have to think a lot of my reluctance to play them had to have been how much the screen frustrated my eyes.

One Big Download

March 7, 2018 by Belghast

Last night was mostly an evening filled with frustration… at least the tail end of the night. I’ve talked about this before but I have a slightly different setup from most people in that all of my gaming stuff is upstairs in my office with both consoles and my real gaming pc hooked up to my 4k television up there. My wife needed to grade last night which is traditionally a downstairs activity and after about an hour and some change I felt sorta bad being upstairs while she was downstairs… when I was technically playing something I could play on the laptop. So I stopped the stream and headed downstairs to in theory chill on the sofa.

The core problem with that idea is that FFXV is a 75 gigabyte download which took legitimately a couple of hours to download over the wireless. However once we reached what I thought would be the end of the download… it stalled out for thirty minutes with zero activity. In the past when this has happened I have paused downloads in steam and restarted… and then things wake the hell up and finish up. That was not at all what happened this time however and the game decided to start downloading everything again. So when I finally gave up last night we were about 40 gb into download number two… and I have zero clue if it actually finished over night.

According to Steam I have spent 72 minutes playing Final Fantasy XV and for the most part it feels great and looks amazing as a PC game. There are some weird hiccups where the game would freeze but I was not sure if that was part of the whole combat engine or not. It would always happen after I did a big attack so maybe this is something that also happened on the PS4 that I am simply not remembering. As far as the actual feel of controlling the game with mouse and keyboard… it feels amazing other than the menu interactions. What it seems like you would logically do is select the menu item with your mouse, but that is not at all what happens. Instead you have to sort of scroll through the menus with WASD or a super awkward move the mouse in a general direction to pick an option scheme.

Combat however feels way more fluid for me using a mouse and keyboard than a controller which is ultimately the mode of the game I am going to be interacting with the most. This is one of those times that I am super thankful that the game is constantly prompting you which button you should push when, because it allowed me to drop right into the game and start playing rather than trying to memorize the keybindings. The biggest thing that just feels instantly better thought is basic sword attacks because I always felt like I was never quite dexterous enough with my fingers to do all of the interactions I needed to do. I was constantly missing blocks and parries which are things that I just sorta now do instinctively with a mouse.

I didn’t make it super far into the game because of the nonsense I tried to do with the laptop, but I did make it to Gauldin Quay which moves the story forward a tiny bit. That said I was absolutely more into doing the side quests than I ever cared about the main story. All in all I am happy I wound up picking this up for PC and look forward to making it further than I did on the console. This is mostly going to be a downstairs and chilling game for me, and the demo performed well on my laptop. Sure it lost a lot of detail that I get on the full gaming rig, but it will be fine for running around and slashing things to death.

Wiggle Wiggle Wiggle

March 6, 2018 by Belghast

Last night was all about Monster Hunter World as I had made plans ahead of time to run around with Grace and do the various events. First out of the gate we worked on the Wiggler quest that grants this truly questionable helm. It truly is the stuff of nightmares and honestly would have been a pain in the butt had we not realized that you could register multiple wiggler catches at once. We quickly fell into a pattern of sneaking up on the wigglers and getting one in our sights… then coordinating over voice a 3, 2, 1, GO! to capture both at the same time. Sure it took three shots at the quest to get all of the tickets needed to craft this monstrosity but here we go… I have a goofy helm that I wasted some zenny on crafting and will likely never actually use.

From there we spent some time doing the “The Proving” quest that involves killing a fairly beefy high rank Anjanath. We ran into all sorts of problems with PSN connectivity which made it significantly more challenging than normal. Throughout the night I kept getting disconnected from the quest with a “Left Quest” message. At first Ash suggested that Grace was just going off and leaving us… but I think it was more than that considering Ash and Mor both got punted out of the mission after having successfully joined with no ability to get back in. We struggled through two kills and called the process done for the moment moving on to other things.

Grace is in that awkward in-between step where she is officially a High Rank player… but still is using a significant amount of low rank gear. Considering her next quest is the Pink Rathian, that is probably something she needs to fix and as a result we farmed Zorah Magdaros a bit for parts. I am still to this day wearing the Zorah gloves for the hidden element ability, and honestly its an easy farm considering the event mostly just finishes itself. Now when I was farming this I SOS Rouletted my way into full groups that allowed us to quickly complete the event which for those who need Zorah bits is a completely viable option. The biggest challenge I ran into… and why I kept running it was that Zorah is super stingy with gems which are unfortunately needed for the gauntlets.

As far as starter High Rank gear goes… I am way more in favor of the Alpha Bone set because it has a lot of good stuff as well as 10 fire, 10 dragon and I believe 10 lightning resistance. All total to craft the full Bone Armor set you need… 12 Quality Bone, 10 Monster Bone +, 2 Warped Bone, 3 Monster Bone L, 3 Boulder Bone, 3 Coral Bone, and 3 Ancient Bone. Basically you need to kill a few big monsters and run amok harvesting bone piles in most of the zones to get it. The end result gives you a set with Health Boost, 3x Attack Boost, 3x Entomologist, Slugger, Horn Maestro, and Master Fisher. Not all of those are winners… but Entomologist can be super useful if you are farming bug parts. All of that said I still think its a great starter set for High Rank shenanigans.

The highlight of the evening however was getting a Tailrider Safari with Grace’s Neutrino and PizzaMaid’s Aria. Normally I just send Tailriders out from my room back in Asteria, but for this combination I made the trek to the Research Base so I could get the cutscene. I am also realizing that I need to trade cards with Pizza and Grace because neither of them are actually using these outfits anymore. The PS4 always has a bit of a delay when you attempt to take a screenshot so I am super happy that I was able to catch a decent one of this party going out to fight.

Tonight however I am thinking about kicking back and streaming some Final Fantasy XV on the PC… all depending on how well today goes. I will be in training and in theory will have homework tonight because I am going through one of those cram session courses. As a result my brain may be too broken to do anything interesting.