final fantasy xiv Archives - Page 45 of 81

Botany Mastered

May 10, 2015 by Belghast

A Very Cardgamey Show

It seems when I think we have nothing to talk about… we end up talking for two hours finally having to force ourselves to stop talking to close out the show. Last night was one of those night as I was joined by Tam, Kodra, Thalen and Ashgar. Sometimes a clear theme is presented and last night inadvertedly this happened. As we rambled through the various things we have been playing, it turns out that a lot of us had been playing card games in one form or another. We got this interesting peak into the secret underground gaming scene of Seatle that Kodra has now apparently gotten his ticket into. He recorded this weeks AggroChat on a quick jaunt away from this all day gaming event that was happening in a nearby hotel. The kind of event that isn’t advertised, and that you apparently have to know someone to get into. This is not starting to sound like fight club at all is it?

Other than that I shift things around a bit in the show and I actually go first. Usually by the time we get around to the games I have been playing my co-hosts are bordering on being asleep so I opted to talk about my stuff first. Which was a large course of Echo of Souls, and beating Wolfenstein The Old Blood which is an absolutely enjoyable but exceptionally short version of the original Wolfenstein game redone in New Order style. Machinegames has somehow created this magical mix of the glory days of the 90s era shooter mixed with the narrative power of modern gaming. Ashgar once again is going through his DS collection and playing things that he had not beaten before, this time jaunting down a time travelling avenue. Thalen extolled the joys of Hand of Fate, and Kodra rediscovered Heroes of Might and Magic 3. More than that however we talked a lot about card games and board games in general. Was a fun and chill show to record and hopefully that comes across in the production.

Botany Mastered

Last night while recording the podcast and editing it I spent my time in Final Fantasy XIV working on Botany. For some time I have been working on pushing up the two critical harvesting abilities Mining and Botany before actually starting the Disciple of the Hand push. I figured having the ability to go out into the world and gather things would be beneficial when making the push to level all the other things. The Disciple of the Land classes also gave me a bit of a buffer to psyche myself up for diving headlong into the pit of madness that is crafting. At this point begins the money grind and thankfully I am up to almost 2 million gil to help support this push. I guess the first order of business is to level all of the professions to 15 so that I can get the best cross class abilities to help with the rest of the grind. My original thought was to take everything to 15 in no particular order, and then start walking them up 5 levels at a time. So take everything to 20, everything to 25 etc. This also allows me to convert all of the crafting gear along the way hopefully keeping my vaults from overflowing.

Another thing that I really need to start doing is working on my beast tribe daily quests. One of the things that Ashgar talked about on the podcast was the interesting quest that comes at the end of maxing each of the factions. There is apparently a storyline that somehow joins up all of the rebellious beast tribe factions into a “Justice League” of sorts. I would really love to see this storyline before Heavensward launches, but at this point I have right around a month to accomplish all of this. I am not sure if I have given myself enough time, especially given that I keep dinking around in other games at the same time. I am starting to feel under the gun with wanting to accomplish so many things before I officially say goodbye to “A Realm Reborn”. So far FFXIV 2.0 has been an amazing ride and I am amped about what Heavensward and 3.0 has to offer. I guess tomorrow night the 2.57 patch will be going in, and I am wondering what exactly it will bring as well. I would be extremely happy if they uncapped Poetics gains… but I somehow doubt that will be the case.

Bad At Shadowrun

Yesterday I spent a good chunk of time working on Shadowrun Dragonfall and I have decided that I need to just start over. I spent too much of my time on my main character too focused on a specific tree. I was planning on going all melee all of the time and quite frankly that is a poor choice to go with. I spent most of combat running around the room chasing down mobs that would move away from me and attack from ranged. Additionally I am going to have to throw out some of my instincts because I straight wiped my party trying to stay and fight against unwinnable odds. All of that said there are aspects of the game I am really enjoying, but right now I am just pretty horrible at actually doing it. I also need to learn to save far more often because this game will straight kill you at times with a smile. It is going to be an interesting show when we ultimately talk about this game but I am really wanting to make it further than I did with the previous games. I would love to beat this one because in many ways the gameplay reminds me of the Fallout series.

The thing is the game gives you one of every classes so I guess what you end up playing is just for flavor. I will probably go Street Samurai once again because that was always my favorite character to play in the actual Shadowrun campaigns I have been in. I didn’t really care that much for the little dwarf I rolled so I will probably go something more generic like a human this time around. All in all I was a fun several hours I spent yesterday, and as it is raining insanely outside… I plan on going downstairs and hanging out on the sofa all day while watching Netflix. Shadowrun is precisely the perfect kind of game for a day like today. So I will either be doing that or be working on tradeskills in final fantasy. In any case I have a gloriously lazy Sunday ahead of me. These are the types of days that gaming was made for. This massive lung infection has gotten me out of having to travel for Mother’s Day so right now we are planning on having a re-roll there next weekend when the world is not actively trying to kill us. Hopefully you have an awesome day too.

Night of Primals

May 6, 2015 by Belghast

Juggling Games

One of the challenges for me during the Newbie Blogger Initiative is determining which days I should make NBI related posts and which days I should do my traditional thing. It is a bit of a juggling act because I want to keep pumping out articles in support of the initiative but I also don’t want my blog to stop being… well “my blog”. As always I am juggling a silly amount of games. Right now as it stands I raid Tuesday and Thursday in World of Warcraft, Monday and Saturday in Final Fantasy XIV and for the time being I am also filling in on Wednesday nights with another free company static group. I would not mind staying with them indefinitely but I would love to get to a point where I am more optional than the current tank role that I am playing. Finally on Friday nights I have been trying to join in the festivities with the Black Dagger Society as I play some Wildstar. Other than this I am also trying to juggle playing Marvel Heroes and some Rift… and needless to say I feel like there is always something I want to be playing.

Last night was a WoW night and we once again stepped into Blackrock Foundry. I did not place the sign above but I was wondering if it was going to foretell my evening. At the beginning it did seem like maybe it was prophecy, because we had a rough start. We wiped several times on heroic and tempers were flaring a bit. Our raid leader made the right call and took us back outside flipping the difficulty to normal. From there the night got significantly better. I was once again being frustrated by Flamebender Kagraz not dropping pants or a sword for me, but that has now been par for the course so I really wasn’t that upset. Last week we made serious progress on Furnace encounter so I was extremely happy when our raid lead said we were heading that direction. Apparently we had not forgotten the progress we made because in a single attempt we downed our first new boss since March 19th. While heroic difficulty is where we will find upgrades, there is a huge part of me that wants to be able to say we cleared at least normal difficulty before the 6.2 patch. We are now two bosses away from being able to say that.

Night of Primals

One of the things our Monday night group has decided to do is to spend no more than two nights in a row on any one encounter. It has felt like we have ground our faces against turn nine for awhile now, so it is refreshing to get to see something else. Monday night was our first “off night” in this rotation and we opted to get the folks that missed Leviathan Extreme their kill. This fight went smoothly and by the numbers and other than some of the folks who were new to the fight struggling to stay on deck, we were able to make some serious progress. I want to say it was on attempt four that we managed to push through and defeat Levi Ex unlocking Ramuh for a large number of the folks, and getting a nifty summoner book. From there we moved on to Odin as our group had not actually downed it before. We made one night of attempts but then got enthralled by the push for Turn 9 never to return. We shifted things around a bit this time and had me tanking it and Ashgar dpsing, hoping that my insane health pool would help soak the horrible Sangital attack.

The assumption seemed to be correct as it would take me down to around half health instead of almost killing me. The thing is… we have gained a lot of gear since when we last tried this fight so I am pretty sure Ashgar as a Paladin would have been fine as well. We managed to take out Odin and get a piece of the armor set. I believe it was the gloves, but I really want to take this guy down more because I need to be a Lala-Odin. From here we opted to take on Titan Extreme in part because it was standing in the way of us working in Ifrit Extreme and finishing the first set. When we downed Titan before we were missing a significant number of the folks that we had on last night. This fight has been the bane of our existence for awhile because it is precisely the kind of fight we are generally bad at. If a fight requires us to adjust to conditions on the ground, then bam we are on top of that. If it is a fight that requires us to do the exact same thing over and over with laser precision… went tend to fail. Fortunately we managed to catch up to speed quickly and on I believe our fourth attempt we downed Titan once more keying a whole new batch of players for Ifrit. It was one of the most enjoyable nights of raiding I have had in any game, because each of the primal encounters were so drastically different.

The Old Blood

This game I honestly forgot was releasing yesterday, that is until in the middle of the raid I had someone message me over the steam client asking me if I was having trouble with the game. After the raid I opted to boot it up and give it a look see. I have agreed to play this game in part to let Kodra know if I think he would be interested in it. He and I both loved Wolfenstein: New Order… but completely different reasons. I loved the game because it felt like a throw back to the 90s shooter era, and he loved it for the complex character interaction and development. It was awesome that the game supported both things so completely, and by the looks of “The Old Blood” it seemed like the 90s shooter part. Essentially this game is a loving reworking of the classic Escape from Castle Wolfenstein game that I spent so many hours playing during High School. If it is nothing more than Machine Games redoing that game… I would be completely fine with this.

While I have only played a few minutes of the game right now, I have to say I am amped about it. The game is just as gorgeous as New Order, and seems to have the exact same kind of dialog between characters. The problem being that I have a feeling there is a much smaller cast given that the entire game takes place inside of Castle Wolfenstein. This next bit is going to include spoilers because the introduction is pretty short, but still extremely fun. Essentially the start of the game centers around this plan between you and a British agent to sneak inside Castle Wolfenstein and steal the blueprints to Deathshead’s compound… aka that thing you are storming at the beginning of New Order. The problem being that when you get into the offices of occultist Helga Von Schabbs, the plans are missing. There is nothing in the safe in the wall, and you and Wesley quickly draw unwanted attention and a firefight ensues. While trying to make your escape you are captured by Rudi Jager and thrown in the cell that you in theory begin the original Wolfenstein in. From there you have to escape the castle… and quite honestly I did not make it much further. The game is rather short, supposedly only two chapters, but for the price that seems more than reasonable. I think I am going to love this game, but I still question if there is enough story in it to appease Kodra.

Marvel Heroes Binge

May 4, 2015 by Belghast

A Truly Amazing Day

One of the huge positives about where we live is that we are close to an awful lot of things that are within reasonable walking distance. Over the last year or so we have tried to take advantage of this fact by walking to dinner more often. This weekend however I did something I should have done a very long time ago and walked to the movies. There is a theater literally less than two blocks away from my house, but I’ve never actually walked there before. Granted when walking to dinner we walk past it all of the time. Sunday I decided to go to the 10:30 am matinee and watch the new Avengers movie. The movie itself was pretty great, and i feel like I need to watch it again to really take in all of the sights the movie had to offer. This is a very “busy” film packed with some absolutely insane action sequences. I feel like it is a toss up between the Hulk and Black Widow as to who stole the show, but I have always been partial to both of them.

As I was exiting the theater I texted my wife to let her know that I would be on my way home. However when I poked my head out into the light there she was waiting on me. She walked down hoping to surprise me, and then the two of us walked over to get lunch. It was a really beautiful day, and she is constantly telling me that I need to get more sunlight. While I am still not the biggest fan of the sun, she is probably right because I feel better today after having done all of this yesterday. We had some errands to run, but by the time we got back to the house we both decided it was nap time. After getting back up we ran to target really quickly and then she went outside to read in the rocking chair, and I played games. It was a pretty great day, and I am hoping to take advantage of the movie theater being so close in the future. There are a lot of movies that I want to see that she has no interest in. Walking down makes it feel less of a hassle for some reason, and also serves as some exercise.

Marvel Heroes Binge

It was probably because of the awesome Avengers movie, but when I got home I ran a quick expert roulette and then logged to play Marvel Heroes. This game has really grown on me and I am feeling like a massive failure for not giving it a chance before now. Normally the whole Diablo thing is a bit of a turn off anymore, but for whatever reason the combination of Super Heroes and Diablo works well for me. I have been accumulating a lot of various boost potions, because they give you plenty of them as part of the daily login reward system. Yesterday I opted to take several of the various 2 hour boosts and see what all I could accomplish. I pushed Captain America that has become my main from 22 to 27 almost 28 over the course of those two hours. Right now there are a lot of things working in my favor since there is an event happening that gives Avengers a boost. The only bad thing is that the cosmic gear I am wearing has yet to be replaced which bums me out slightly. I guess I might have to try my luck again at the cosmic boxes from Adam Strange.

I am just starting the Savage Lands which according to my friend is one of the more frustrating areas of the game. I personally found that the tail end of Stryker’s camp to be extremely frustrating with Sentinels dropping on me every five seconds. I keep feeling like I should probably play other characters up since I now have this whole synergy thing unlocked… but really I am still having a blast playing Cap. His skillset is almost perfect suited for my particular play style. I can charge through a bunch of mobs taking them out, and then when I get into the center of a pack twirl my shield around taking all but the blue or better mobs out. Then I just mob up with shield throws or punches and repeat. It feels very enjoyable, but I am actually looking forward to seeing what the new heroic difficulty that I unlocked is like. There are absolutely times that the game feels mindlessly simple, so I would be curious to see if Heroic is like hard is for Diablo 3… aka the new “normal”.

Closing in on Botanist

Another thing I worked on last night was pushing Botanist up a bit more. I really want to finish leveling this to 50, and have felt the need to do just this before really starting in on crafting proper. I realize this might be a bit strange of logic but it works for me. I spent my evening catching up on Game of Thrones and Silicon Valley, both shows that I had not really watched for the last few weeks. While doing this I ran a whole slew of Botany leves and managed to push from 35 to 45 which hopefully means I can finish off the leveling process at some point this week. I will be happy to have finished leveling the two harvesting professions that I am going to need to most while leveling my other crafters. Right now however I have to collect 20 high quality mistletoe to turn in to the quest giver. This is going to be a fairly daunting task, given that I cannot simply buy my way through it. It seems HQ mistletoe is in short supply as there was absolutely none on the market board. As a result I will be spending the next little bit in the Whitebrim area harvesting like mad trying to complete the 45 quest.

The other thing I really want to do soon is push my Arcanist from 22 to 30 so that I can become a scholar. If I manage to do that I can get to 50 relatively easily doing the fast healer dungeon queues. Depending on how many leves it takes me to get to 50 Botanist, I might follow this interesting guide posted on the FFXIV Reddit. Ashgar pointed this out, and it seems like a perfectly reasonable way to level. I actually like chain running leves because it is also a decent source of retainer tokens. I would love to see myself level a few more classes to 50 before the expansion, because I have 100 level weapons waiting on them. I have been dumping my excess soldiery into buying the various weapons, and just have one left to purchase, which admittedly is a little insane. The problem is… what else was I going to use that soldiery on? I am actually right around the point where I need to buy the final weapon, which makes me feel like a slacker for not leveling all of those classes to 50. Final Fantasy XIV has way more content than I could ever hope to do… so at times I just feel overwhelmed by the sheer number of things that I want to be doing.

Enjoying Wildstar

May 3, 2015 by Belghast

AggroChat 55 – Calling All Bloggers

This week I start off the show, and even title it with a pretty massive plug for the Newbie Blogger Initiative. What is the NBI you ask? Well this is the time of the year when Veteran bloggers support new folks wanting to get started in this madness. This year we are making an extra special push to try and help new podcasters, youtubers, and streamers along with the bloggers. Additionally I myself am making a special push to try to rekindle the fire in some of our wayward bloggers who are no longer as regular as they used to be. The entire month of May is dedicated to helping folks get started and find their niche, and since most of the AggroChat crew have participated in the past, it is time to get the word out.

As far as the rest of the show we had myself, Tam, Ashgar, Kodra and Grace. As always we spent a good deal of time talking Final Fantasy XIV since we are all still heavily playing it. Right now Greysky Armada our Free Company is back holding the bronze medal again for being the third most active Free Company on our server Cactuar. This week also saw myself and Grace spending some more time playing some more Wildstar. The Black Dagger Society the guild I am connected to has been having a guild night on Fridays and as such I have started joining in the festivities. Additionally there was talk of Marvel Heroes, Diablo 3, Ashgar returning to his Gameboy Advance roots, Tam winning his first Infinity tournament since the move, and similarly Kodra beating VVVVVV for the first time in his new place. Since this month is devoted to Shadowrun for the Gameclub we are also starting to play some of this. It was a fun show in spite of being in that pre-E3 gaming doldrum.

Making Progress

I’ve been down a bit on raiding lately in my posts so I wanted to take a moment to give a bit of an update of sorts. The Tuesday before last was very seriously one of the worst nights of raiding I have had in a very long time. It really made me question if I wanted to keep trying to raid in World of Warcraft, and I posted this long discussion about it. It seems like I actually gave voice to some of the same feelings that many of our raid had been having, but for whatever reason had not actually talked about. As a result a dialog has started among some of the members, and I have to say I think things are starting to improve. Tuesday this week was still a pretty rough night, but it felt at least somewhat better. Thursday however on the other hand felt really good. We were a much trimmed down group due to some absences but I also felt like we were working better as a team. We lowered the bar slightly and worked on normal content again, clearing everything we had ever cleared before in a single night and putting in some serious work on the forge encounter.

If we had another hour of attempts I feel like we probably could have downed the encounter. Things were flowing so much better than they ever had before. We were getting through to the second phase, and then approaching it with a sense of direction and purpose. We were alternating between burning down the Elementalists and focusing down the waves of adds. We managed to push through to the final phase, and if we were at our full numbers we might have been able to defeat it. I think we learned a lot of good lessons that we can hopefully apply this Tuesday. The thing is… I am feeling something that I have not felt in a very long time… the desire to get back in there and give it another shot. I am actually looking forward to raiding in World of Warcraft this week, and that is a pretty awesome thing. Maybe just maybe we can make the changes necessary in the raid to make it a better experience for all of us. At this point I am glad I said something, and started the discussion. I guess the truth is if you are not having a good time, chances are you aren’t the only one.

Enjoying Wildstar

Similarly this week I have been enjoying quite a bit of Wildstar. I am still taking it nice and slow, but at this point I am level 16 with just a short ways to go to 17. I have officially finished the Algoroc zone and will be moving into the next area. The Black Dagger Society has been awesome to me, and I am super thankful to Chestnut and Chaide for giving me a friendly home to hang my hat in. It turns out that Friday nights are somewhat of a guild night for grouping, and they have been working on lower level content. Currently I do not have any other commitments Friday nights, so I am going to try and make that my Wildstar day. This week they ran me through the earliest Protostar dungeon, and it does a pretty great job of teaching you what you need to do to succeed in a Wildstar instance. Honestly I wish that this would have been the first dungeon when we were playing at launch, because I feel like it would have cleared up a lot of the frustrations had by many players.

The group we went into Wildstar with was made up of some pretty disparate points of view and skill levels. For some the extremely frenetic pace of the dungeons was a point of frustration especially as we were trying to learn “on the fly” all of the various things we were supposed to be doing. This dungeon eases the player in teaching them the various mechanics and then building upon them as the phases go, finally culminating in a boss fight that is fairly representative of what I saw in the “real” dungeons. While the dungeon is essentially a giant tutorial, it is still extremely fun and when a random stranger asked me if I wanted to join them… I happily ran it again. The other big switch I have made is previously I was focusing entirely on tanking as the warrior and now I am starting to build out my dps abilities as well. In most games I level as tanky as much as anything else in an effort to be as survivable as I can be for fighting the named encounters. In this game I feel almost more survivable playing DPS as I do as a tank. Essentially the amount of damage I deal more than makes up for the extra damage I might be receiving. I am still pleasantly surprised that I am enjoying Wildstar as much as I actually am. Pretty happy I decided to give it another shot.