Featuring: Ammosart, Ashgar, Belghast, Grace, Kodra, Tamrielo, and Thalen
Hey Folks! It is that time again when we pull together our list of favorite games from 2024. In theory, we each get three primary choices and an almost unlimited number of honorable mentions… which causes us to divide the show into two packed episodes. In this case, we have 36 games on the list divided into two shows of roughly 18 games.
So it is no longer morning… but also feels really weird not to start a post with “Morning Folks”. I am still on the mend and struggling a bit, and Covid brain fog claimed me this morning and kept me from making a post. Instead, I thought I would do a bit of storytime because I find this funny. Shortly after the release of Dawntrail, my friend Ace and I started baby characters on the Kraken Dynamis Server. The new Path of Exile League came out which caused me to want to take a break, but at some point, I am sure we will return and pick up where we left off at the end of Heavensward. It was a heck of a lot of fun, and weirdly… it was weirdly enjoyable to actually be playing on a server where everyone was newbies either by new accounts or by fresh transfers.
Moments after logging into my character for the very first time on that server, I got an invite to sign a Free Company Charter. I thought sure… I have been that person trying to get my guild started before and would help out with this process. I half assumed that the moment it got started, I would get kicked out… but that was not what happened. Instead, I was promoted to an officer and later drug Ace into the madness just for funsies. We did not really have any plans to make a Free Company for our shenanigans, but having a few genuine new players around was rather charming. Based on our interactions… it was VERY clear we were the wizened elders of this group, but it was still fun to hang out while we were pushing the content through its paces.
We got busy doing other things, some of them on our mains… others in other games. The thing is, I kept logging in periodically when I thought about it to do the daily MGP grind just to get a reasonable base of currency built up on that character. While I was not actively playing, I was actively checking in on how things were going. There were a lot of fresh recruits that eventually left the Free Company leaving us down to just me and Ace who were logging in regularly, and then a trio including the originator of the FC that had not logged in within two months. I didn’t think much about this because Free Companies come and go in membership. Even our primary Greysky Armada goes through large blocks of time when Sol is pretty much the only person reliably logging in.
Late last week I logged in and saw a message that I had been promoted to the leader of the Free Company. So I guess I have now inherited Darkwraith… a super edgy named FC to keep up and running. I made a few tweaks… firstly I renamed the primary role to Leader, because “Master” squicks me out something fierce. I went with a Leader > Officer > Veteran > Memeber > Recruit naming scheme for the ranks because it felt less awkward and also sort of clearly delineated what each role was for. The only other thing that I am contemplating is shifting the Allegiance from Order of the Twin Adder to Maelstrom… because who the fuck ever wants to be part of team piss yellow? Mostly I plan on keeping the lights on and even inviting anyone else who wants to play on Dynamis. This is still 100% an alt project that I am never going to give my full attention to, but it is weird how this FC that I didn’t even intend on joining fell into my lap.
I am not going to lie… there is at least a large chunk of me that wants to rename this to something involving “Robosquids” given that Free Company renaming is a thing you can do easily. I am pretty sure the original owner of the Free Company is “gonezo”, given that he largely popped over to the server to get housing… and has also long since had that demolished. So at this point, the Free Company is essentially what we make of it. If you have alts on Kraken hit me up, because apparently, I lead a Free Company now. I have another group of friends who randomly ended up on the server so I might snag them to at least get the guild leveling at a decent pace.
Good Morning Folks. I hope that I am coming out of the worst parts of Covid hell. Today is the first day I am going to attempt to put in a full day’s work. What is so fucked about this illness is how wildly it impacts different people. Essentially my wife brought this home to me from her workplace and for her it just seemed like a generic cold with touches of allergies. For me… it started out that way but then essentially knocked me on my ass. I’ve spent so much time coughing that my entire torso feels like it is bruised. Each day has gotten a little better, but it was yesterday and today that I actually started to really begin to feel better. My focus has been scattered as hell, even seeing me attempt to revitalize the Engineer that I worked on unlocking Mechanist with but did nothing afterward.
I honestly had a pretty freaking great day in Guild Wars 2 and I will probably talk more about some revelations that I made yesterday in a longer form post tomorrow. However, I essentially figured out how to make the whole meta-train click. Yesterday I managed to catch Dragon Stand, Chalk Gerent, Auric Basic, Aetherblade Assault, Kaineng City Blackout, and then Echovald Gang War back to back. I could have ridden the train for as long as I would have liked, arriving in the zone just as the next event was ramping up, but I needed a break after that much excitement. That is the big thing I am noticing right now is I can only handle so much focused activity before I get drained. Essentially I will share these dark secrets tomorrow, but if this works as well as I think it does it will absolutely breathe new life into the game for me.
I am continuing to make slow progress in World of Warcraft as I push through The War Within on my Pandaria Remix Dark Iron Dwarf. If nothing else it has given me quite possibly my new favorite transmog. I’ve started the second zone which is considerably cooler than the first one was. I dig the Dwarven-adjacent storyline of the Earthen and this is legitimately quite possibly the best World of Warcraft has been in years. The problem is… it is still World of Warcraft. It lives in this sort of messy middle-ground between Final Fantasy XIV and Guild Wars 2 for me. The combat is nowhere near as tightly structured as FFXIV and at the same time does not feel as fluid and fast-paced as Guild Wars 2… so it just sort of feels loose and messy all the time. It does not help that they removed Titanic Throw which was easily my favorite ability from Dragonflight. I miss having something as good as the Paladin shield throw, and I absolutely feel like I need it when moving around the tightly packed corridors to group everything up.
Since I cannot seem to be pinned down to focusing on any one thing… I of course went off and created a new Ruthless character in Path of Exile. A lot of the streamers have been exploring Ruthless mode, which of course made me interested again given that the Settlers town gives you easier access to gear than normal in this mode. I rolled a Duelist with the purpose of going Bleed Gladiator and am mostly just running around with splitting steel and the only two supports that I have found to this point which is Added Cold Damage and Chance to Poison. Not a combination I would ever use together… but when you are limited in your options you use whatever you can get. Add to this some bleed chance that I am getting from the passive tree… I can mostly zip around pretty well in Act III.
What is most interesting about this game mode is the way that it makes re-evaluate items that you might have considered trash drops previously. It isn’t like I have never used a Tear of Purity before, especially if it drops while I am leveling, but I also would not have considered it godly. However, in Ruthless, a game mode where you are unlikely to see access to Purity of Elements or any other auras save for Vitality/Clarity/Precision… this is a game changer. I got this from my very first shipment of goods and it has made all the difference in the world for me given that I now have a decent amount of elemental resistances while leveling and the ability to just entirely avoid all elemental ailments. On top of that, it is a needed source of life and intelligence. So I get why folks enjoy this mode because it makes you really scrutinize the drops to see if you can squeeze any benefit out of them. If normal Path of Exile is well constructed Magic The Gathering… Ruthless is trying to play with the old-school starter deck and nothing else.
I also spent a bit of time this weekend working on my home in Final Fantasy XIV. I raided the private room from our Free Company house and started migrating some of my miniatures over on the shelves behind the counter and vendors. I also brought over my Ahriman furniture set that I picked up from my retainers years ago. I am kind of going for a storefront/showroom vibe for the upstairs and then will build out the downstairs to be more of a bedroom/readyroom thing. If nothing else the home looks a little less barren. If you are on Cactuar, feel free to pop by Ward 28 Plot 3 and sign my guestbook. I will continue to tinker with things because I figure this is going to be a long project, not something I finish in a weekend.
Lastly, while I am squirreling out of control… I am starting to look forward to the Cycle restart in Last Epoch on the 19th. I did not really play that heavily when this cycle started, and will probably come back and start something fresh again. Likely going to spin off the type of character that I was playing in this cycle and see if I can build it a bit better. I really like Warpath and the Spin to Win gameplay style, and more specifically I liked the dual wield torch/smite sword thing. Largely I like this build because it works perfectly fine without the right gear and just gets better as you add the key pieces to it. However, I could throw a last-minute monkey wrench in the system and play a Necromancer again because it has been a while since I have done that. Whatever the case I am looking forward to having the mental bandwidth to give this game some devoted time again.
Basically, I am still spinning out of control right now, but I am hoping as I continue to mend I will be able to focus on individual things a bit better in the coming weeks.
Good Morning Folks! Today was a rather fortuitous day… that quite honestly I was not expecting. At the beginning of this year, I lost my first home in Final Fantasy XIV. I got busy with Christmas and the New Year and just was not logging into the game… and apparently completely missed the email warning me. I was more than a little heartbroken, but I played it off as best as I could. There was something always weird about that plot of land though, because specifically, I went after plot 13… aka the plot that we used to have as a Free Company in The Mists before we upgraded to a Medium in Shirogane. There was a lot of cognitive dissonance however because my mind expected it to be our old home… but no matter what I did it never would be again. Nor did I have a fucking clue at all what various options we had set because Solaria the Guild Mom took care of all of that.
Pretty much every week since coming back before Dawntrail I have entered the housing lottery. What shocked me was just how much turnover there is on a server like Cactuar in the Aether Data Center. There was never a week where I did not have at least two or three different plots in different wards to choose from. I can only remember one week when there was nothing available on The Mists, aka my ward of choice. Hell, there were even three times that a version of Plot 13 came open again. I had been hitting this Timer website periodically to tell me if a new period opened or if it was time for me to check to see if I had won. Yesterday I was completely out of it and thus missed the opening of the results period. So this morning I logged in expecting to get a refund of my downpayment but instead… I had won the plot.
As such I have spent most of this morning getting things set up to where the home is functional again. The inside is extremely bare bones, and just has the necessary vendors and amenities like a guest book, summoning bell, and aesthetician… all of which I saved from my previous home. The outdoor furnishings are starting to get there, but I am sure I will continue to tweak and add little details. I’m in Ward 28 Plot 3 of The Mists on Cactuar, which is right around the corner from the Apartment building. This creates this funny situation where I have a market board to both sides of my home and an Aetheryte across the street from it. The neighborhood is really well built up, and so far I have seen zero signs of any nightclubs… so hopefully it is a chill relaxing place. There are a few nearby Free Company homes with extremely nice setups. One of which has all of the Gold Saucer machines in the basement… but alas I think only the FC members can play them.
I’ve had assorted visits from Free Company members this morning as they logged in to check on various things. They’ve also checked in on me to see how I was doing, given that I am still very much in the deep recovery mode with COVID-19. I am not doing much better, but I am also not really doing any worse so that is something. Here is a nice shot of me and Ammo hanging out on the roof… because being able to stand on your rooftop is really important for player housing. I have a phenomenal view of the entire district. I had to place some of the things just right so that I could jump up there since I did not have a nearby roof to drop down from above as I have had in other setups. More importantly, I have now set up a recurring calendar notification to remind me that I need to log in… with plenty of time to spare. When I get extra stressed out I can lose focus on pretty much everything in the world.
Now that the outside is starting to feel nice and cozy, it is time for me to begin to sort out what exactly I want to do for the inside. Speaking of cozy… ignore the fact that I am sitting out in the pouring rain on my stargazing deck. Essentially my game plan is to build out the downstairs as sort of a bedroom/training room/gear warehouse sort of feel befitting a warrior. Then the upstairs is going to be more of a public area with all of my vendors and maybe a bunch of bookcases and such. It will come together over time, but the outdoor features are always the most important so that I don’t stick out like an undecorated eyesore in my neighborhood. I am not going to try and do all of it over night, but I do want to keep poking away at it. Maybe this is what will finally drive me to finish training all of my crafting professions so that I can start making things rather than buying them.
Anyways… on the health side. I have two more days of this steroid dose pack of Prednisone, so I am hoping that today I will start to turn the corner. If not I will reach out to the doctor and maybe try and get either an extension or some other course of treatment. I am not doing any worse, but I certainly don’t really feel any better yet.
