final fantasy xiv Archives - Page 59 of 82

Restarting Inquisition

January 20, 2015 by Belghast

Final Fantasy XIV Downtime

The is something strange about knowing you can’t play something… that makes you want to play it. Right now this is happening for me with Final Fantasy XIV, especially since I knew that more than likely I would not really be able to sink my teeth into it until I got back from Pax South. It sounds from the early reports that World of Darkness is absolutely not the cakewalk that Syrcus Tower has come to be. Then again maybe at one point Syrcus wasn’t either… considering I have never actually been around when one of the 24 man dungeons was “new”. Both Labyrinth of the Ancients and Syrcus Tower were aging content when we came back to the game. So it will be interesting to see how it works out.

Pax is going to pretty much eat all my time starting tomorrow with the planning and packing. So I am not likely going to get to experience much of this patch until I come back Sunday/Monday. In the Pax front I have some exciting but scary news. I guess I totally have a media appointment with a game company. It started with a conversation over twitter and lead to a discussion over email and an appointment. It should be awesome, but it is a new experience for me so hopefully I won’t bore or annoy the devs too much with my questions. I might end up doing more of these but right now this is the only one I actually have scheduled. Its strange that my first convention, is in a way a working one since I will be covering the convention in part for a bigger site than mine.

Restarting Inquisition

When Dragon Age: Inquisition first landed it did so during a fairly bad time for me. We were starting raiding in Final Fantasy XIV and I was just then coming back to World of Warcraft for the impending Warlords of Draenor launch. To make matters worse I suffered some pretty crippling technical issues surrounding this game. Every six to ten seconds there would be a hitch in the gameplay, like a record skipping. There were numerous reports of this, and even more fixes but none of them seem to work quite right for me. A few of them made things better but this hitch happened on even the lowest possible settings. Finally I found the solution myself that involved playing the game in fullscreen windowed. However at that point I was just flat out pissed at the game itself and really wanted nothing to do with it. I listened as friends raved about the game but ultimately I would put it away for the time being.

With the force downtime in Final Fantasy XIV I used my day yesterday to restart the game fresh. I feel like this “better” mindset has made so much of the game more enjoyable. The first time I was trying to play the traditional “Belghast” character, aka a Human Sword and Shield Warrior. The problem with that is that once again the first companion you meet up with… is a far better tank than you will ever be for awhile. I wanted to be able to group with Cassandra, so on the second play through I opted to go for a Dwarven Two Handed Weapon Warrior. So far the choice has been a good one, and I am enjoying the game much better. The worst part about restarting is having to play through that section where it flips you into tactical mode. Everything about that mode feels horrible, and it took me a bit to figure out how to flip back to the normal combat. The first quality of life change I made was rebinding “search” from V to R making it significantly easier to hit while moving.

Faffing the Hinterlands

In spite of everything my friends have told me… I faffed about heavily in the Hinterlands. When planted down there with a blazing inquisition eyeball icon showing me the way I needed to go… I chose to go the opposite direction. This has always served me well in Elder Scrolls games and overall I think it was the right choice for me this time as well. It gave me time to get used to combat and explore the world a bit before being locked into more serious dialog again. I am very much a man of action, and the introduction to all games generally makes me deeply unhappy. I keep saying to myself “why won’t it just let me play the game!”. Dragon Age Inquisition was a fairly action oriented introduction, but still there were moments where I was more than ready to move past the talking about things phase. So I puttered around exploring things, picking up quests and figuring things out before the game actually intended me to learn things.

During this time I was thrown directly into the fact that the mages and templars were at war with themselves… and everyone that happened across their paths… including towns folk, the chantry, and the occasional farmer. It was also during this time that I started to embrace the notion that maybe I was in fact the chosen one. I think I did enough objectives to get to 8 or 9 power, closing several rifts before eventually meandering my way to my objective. Ultimately I did end up leaving the Hinterlands before getting entirely mired in them… but I did it in my own fashion without the feel of rushing through them. The game feels better to me now, or maybe I am just in the right frame of mind to be playing it. I’ve added several more companions to my crusade, including the very amazing Sera. So far the only one I don’t really like is Vivienne, but that really isn’t terribly shocking. What does amuse me is how much I actually like Solas, but then again I tend to get along far better with apostates than circle mages. I picked a poor time to start playing, given that I am just about to lose a weekend to Pax, but hopefully I have made it far enough into the game to have the storyline cemented so I can pick it up again later.

Lalafell Pirate Time

January 19, 2015 by Belghast

The Dust Ruffle

Yesterday ended up absolutely nothing like I expected. I had a super late night recording the double episode of Aggrochat. By the time I had edited episode one, and made my way to bed it was roughly 2 am. I knew two things needed to happen yesterday. Firstly we needed to deep clean the house so it would be nice for the neighbor coming down to check in on the animals, and so that we would also have a friendly home to come back to. So after finishing my blog post I went through a whirlwind of cleaning momentum. I cleaned the livingroom, organized all the loose paperwork deciding what needed to be kept, what needed to be shredded and what could just be pitched. It took about an hour of serious cleaning, some of which requiring both myself and my wife working together to accomplish. We also organized a few areas that really needed help like our “pantry” closet that is really not a pantry not a full closet.

I grabbed a monster and collapsed into my desk chair when finished with the flurry of activity, and my wife did the same out in the loft. I had just started trying to play something when pidgin the IM client I use, started blowing up with bings and bongs. My wife had sent me a few links to look at along with what would ultimately end up being an ominous phrase “(10:01:04 AM) : bwt, I want to go buy a bed skirt today”. For the record I hate bed skirts, and find them both superfluous and annoying when you try and make the bed… they keep getting picked up with your covers and inadvertently tucked places. To my wife however it is a key piece of a bed… and ours has been in pretty poor shape for a few years. Considering that I wouldn’t really get to enjoy myself with another trip looming over my head… I suggested we go shower and get ready and go in search of said dust ruffle.

The Storage Bed

There was another footnote to this story however. For weeks we have been throwing around the notion of a getting a storage bed. Both my wife grew up in the era of the waterbed, and it was pretty standard for those to have a number of drawers set into the pedestal base. This would be perfect for keeping things like socks, scarves, various sundry other bits that need a place to be. One of my wife’s friends mentioned a store in town that she had seen some at, so we started off our trip by going over there to look. One of the problems that we found is that right now for some reason most of these style of beds only actually have drawers in the front. The problem with that is we do not have a massive amount of space in front of our bed. In any case we looked around through the store, found nothing and meandered our way back to the mattresses. During fall break we had gotten pretty close to purchasing a new bed for us, because our previous one was purchased not long after we moved into our house in 1999.

For the most part we thought the whole “every eight years” thing was a marketing ploy… but in truth after about eight years your mattress has doubled in weight from the dead skin cells you have shed… making it a smorgasbord for dust mites. After the guy tried to set us up with a “Bellagio” bed, we snuck away and went on about our business of trying to find the dust ruffle. On the way across town we passed this giant Mattress Firm showroom and opted to stop in. We had a decent experience with the folks in our local store back over fall break… so we figured might as well see what the big location had to offer. After playing the “lay down on all the things” process we found a bed we liked that was the store brand. The person waiting on us was awesome, and a few customers came back in that had apparently talked to her before so she excused herself to go fill out the paperwork for their purchase. This left me to do what I normally do and open up my phone and start googling to see what I could find out about the model and the company.

What I saw I did not like at all. On Consumer Affairs the company as a whole had a one star rating, with huge stacks of complaints… and the final nail in the deal was the fact that on the BBB.org they have a F rating… and are unaccredited. While we had a really nice saleswoman… when I see something like that I back away very quickly. We excused ourselves and said we were going to go eat dinner. Which is not entirely a lie, because we did in fact go eat dinner… but we also started driving towards Denver Mattress. That is where our current mattress came from, and other than the fact that it is very old… we have loved it. While there we found a Mattress we liked, as well as the storage bed above. However after some deliberation decided not to do the storage bed… because it was pretty intense. I am 6’4” and I had to lift myself a bit to get onto the bed… so that would make life hell on my slightly shorter wife. So while we set out to get a dust ruffle… and finally did get that about 7 pm last night at Wal-Mart… we also purchased a new mattress that is being delivered today. As I started off this conversation… yesterday went nothing like we had planned.

Lalafell Pirate Time

When I finally did manage to get home, I opted to pop into Final Fantasy XIV because today there is the big 2.5 patch going on… and the servers will be unplayable. I figured I would run some Syrcus Tower in an attempt to get the rest of my set of bard gear. Sure enough after a 30 minute long wait to get in… my queue popped and I had a pretty relaxed run with no real issues. When it came down to the final boss Zande, there waiting for me was my hat. My friend Thalen I am sure is jealous considering he has run this place on a daily basis trying to get it for months. While I had not officially gotten every piece of gear, I at least had all of the cosmetic ones. The above photo is in me with the full Amon outfit… and I have to say it lasted maybe 10 minutes at most before I was glamouring the hideousness away.

ffxiv 2015-01-18 21-40-43-02

After sifting through my bags and looking on the market board, I settled on a set that I liked for barding. The Buccaneer’s Tricorne, Shirt and Boots are the basis for the outfit. From there I mixed in Foestriker Mitts because they matched and looked awesome, and the Lalafell Gaskins “went” with the outfit given their greenish grey appearance. I needed to shift to something after my recent holiday outfit, and I have to say I am pretty pleased with how it worked out. I am the most adorable pirate ever. After all the outfit shenanigans a guildie was complaining about the lack of luck she had with Garuda. At which point I volunteered to tank it for her, and within a few minutes we had assembled a guild group. Lesson learned for the night… Normal Mode Garuda is NOTHING like the other modes. It took us about four attempts to remember how the fight worked, but was a small price to pay to help out a friend. While the day went nothing like expected, it ended in a really happy way surrounded by friends in Final Fantasy XIV.

Pax Virgin

January 15, 2015 by Belghast

Finger Wiggler Bel

When I came back to the game during the tail end of Cataclysm, my account had been dormant for long enough to be eligible for that “welcome back” program that blizzard was running. One of the perks was to get a free level 80 character on the server that your friend recruited you back into the game on. Since I was recruited back by a friend in my own guild… I decided to spend the free 80 token on a character I thought I would never actually enjoy so I created a Worgen Priest. Over the course of Pandaria I managed to level it to 85, entirely so that I could park it at the silk fields for daily tailoring cooldowns. All of this time Belglorian has lived in this awkward place where he was essentially a glorified bag maker. One of the tasks I have been trying to do is to make sure I had every tradeskill represented in the Garrison system. Belglorian was the character that needed the most effort to get to 90ish and as such he was the last one to make it.

Over the course of the weekend I got him to 90, but as of last night he is now 92 pushing him higher than several of my other Draenor alts. I am not sure how or why… but I have actually been enjoying Shadowpriesting. This is like the least likely class for me to ever be playing, but I find myself having fun. Granted I hate the fact that I have no health and can take no damage, but the rhythms of the actual attacks are pretty enjoyable to me. At this point I have every class over level 90 apart from Warlock and Monk. More than likely those classes are going to be the next thing I try and push to Draenor levels. This expansion more than anything has been an odd case of me enjoying mechanics that I have not in years. I am playing Belghast my warrior as my main again, and Lodin my hunter is quickly becoming my chief alt. The other day when I was playing my Warlock I was really enjoying that as well, so who knows what I ultimately end up leveling.

Pax Virgin

By this time next week I will be in transit to my very first gaming convention. I have this mix of excitement and extreme anxiety about the concept of going to a big convention like this. Granted growing up I went to a few of the local sci-fi or gaming conventions… but never anything of this scale. For my readers and listeners that are savvy convention experts, what tips do you have for me? Right now I am starting to plan what all I am going to bring. As per my friend Ashgar, I plan on having my 3DS set to street pass so I can play the “collect the countries game”. Other than that I picked up a pretty badass messenger bag that I plan on carrying around the necessaries in. I’ve already been warned that food is going to be insane there so I plan on packing a few Cliff bars to tide me over until I can get “actual” food, similarly planning on having a water bottle handy that I can refill from a water fountain.

The biggest thing I have yet to sort out is what exactly I want to do. The schedule is a rather nebulous thing, but there are a handful of panels I know I will already be attending. Most of the events I am really interested in are happening on Saturday, so I am hoping Friday I can hit the floor before the big crush of people appear on Saturday since that day is completely sold out. While I am not a huge fan of Guild Wars 2, I am interested in attending their panel because the speculation is they are going to announce and talk about the expansion. There is even more speculation about what Riot might be announcing on the main stage later that afternoon as well. From what I understand Riot almost always shows up at Pax, but rarely has a main stage presence so it might be interesting. The other big thing that I have to see is the panel with Linda “Brasse” Carlson. Its got Brasse, Lum the Mad and Sanya Weathers in the same room… so it has to be epic right?

More important than any of this… I want to meet awesome people. I’ve put a few queries out to my twitter feed but had minimal results. I am hoping to meet up with various folks from my online connections. If you are going to Pax let me know, and what days you are going to be there. I want to at least do a drive by meet and greet if nothing else. My plan is going to be simple… I intend to post a picture of what I am wearing each day so that if folks see me, even if I don’t know them they can feel comfortable saying “Hi Bel!”. This conference is going to push me far out of my comfort zone. I am generally a deep introvert when it comes to face to face interaction. I psyche myself up that something is going to be awesome… and then right before the time to do whatever it is… I start feeling like it is the worst possible idea in the world. I am sure I am going to go through this cycle on Wednesday and Thursday next week but I am hoping I can power through it and be amped for Pax South.

Square Outage

One of the major frustrations over the last few days has been a series of rolling problems with Squaresoft and their servers. The symptoms seem to be at least partially localized around the server cluster that Cactuar, our server, happens to be in. As a result none of us have been able to log in and play. This has lead one friend to renew World of Warcraft, and live in complete and total denial that they actually have done that. For me it has been a nuisance since I actually have wanted to play. With the big 2.5 patch dropping next week it has me pumped about my member of the Lalafel Master race. Also there have been a bunch of new folks filter into our guild, and I want to hang out with them. I really hope they can get things sorted out soon because it is getting super frustrating. Right now I am not sure if this is another DDoS or something more systemic. In any case especially for my friends sake I hope it clears up before the weekend.

Before the Fall

January 14, 2015 by Belghast

A Good Night

While tensions were at times a little high, and a handful of people were on edge… I have to say last night in Highmaul was as close to a perfect night as we have seen. Everyone just did the things they needed to do and we started knocking down one boss after another. All told last night we cleared 6/7 normal mode bosses and 2/7 heroic bosses with some end of the night tries on heroic butcher. We still need to work on the specifics of that fight but I feel like we made more progress last night than we have in previous attempts on him. I also managed to have a decent night loot wise finally picking up some piece with Bonus Armor on them. Brackenspore dropped a significantly upgraded neckpiece, Tectus a significantly upgraded ring, and through the course of the night I picked up a trash drop cloak. So while I only actually gained a single ilevel gear wise… I gained significantly better itemization across the board.

The other thing that felt better last night was my dps as a whole. A few raids ago I switched to using Weak Auras, and it has honestly taken some getting used to in order to rely on them rather than watching my hotbar. Last night felt like I reached a point where I was mostly watching the auras and their timers. As such I did a much better job of making sure I kept Shield Charge up without overlapping it into the territory of a previous one. Additionally after some reading I started prioritizing Revenge over Shield Slam if both were up at the same time. The end result was a significant boost in damage output. On most fights last week I was doing between 18k and 19k depending on the circumstances. This week I was doing more in the range of 20k to 22k with cleave heavy fights of course giving me a damage boost. Essentially this gives me hope for the viability of Gladiator dps in the long run, since with some “proper” gear I am competitive.

Before the Fall

The other cool thing that happened yesterday was that in the morning Square Enix dropped the trailer for the “Before the Fall” patch in Final Fantasy XIV. In truth it looks like the patch is going to be a combination of three parts 2.5, 2.51 and 2.55 with various features coming in phases. The trailer was another one of their infamous ten minute long tours of all the content being placed in the game. First off in 2.5 we are getting three new dungeons including Hard Mode Wanderers Palace… where form the looks of it we might just be helping out the Tonberries. We are also getting a Hard Mode version of Amdapor Keep which looks like it is going to have more than a few rough spots. Finally we are getting a completely new location called he Keeper of the Lake as we fight what appears to be a ruined Magitek facility with some sort of god sleeping in it. The big bad boss at the end looks something like Leviathan, but crawling through my Final Fantasy ancestral memory I am really not sure who it might be. The only “snake” boss that is not Leviathan popping into my head is Midgar Zolom but I doubt that is it.

[Edit] upon posting this I just saw a post talking about who this boss is likely. Supposedly “The Keeper of the Lake” refers to the remains of Midgardsormr aka the god of the Dravinians from what I understand. So with the upcoming expansion set in Ishgard, and focusing on the war between that nation and the Dravinians, then it totally makes sense that we the players will unwittingly wake Midgardsormr.

Probably the portion of the video I am most looking forward to is the opening of the World of Darkness raid. For those not familiar with Final Fantasy XIV raiding, there are essentially two basic paths. You have the serious raiding core that is the “Coil of Bahamut” instances which are strict 8 man battles, and then you have the casual raids that are the “Crystal Tower” instances. I have it under the authority of Ashgar that all of these fights so far have been based on events, places and bosses found in Final Fantasy 3. As a result he hinted at the “World of Darkness” raid some time before they actually announced it. Right now Labyrinth of the Ancients, and Syrcus Tower are fun… but with World of Darkness we see a greatly improved ilevel available for casual 24 man raiding. The only hard part will be getting used to only being able to snag a single item per week. The other big bonus is that more than likely these will drop the items needed to “un-weather” the level 120 gear and turn it into level 130 gear. The hope is that they do in fact let us loot a single upgrade item and a single actual item per run like has been hinted at.

Enkidu Arrives

It is impossible to talk about this next section without at least dropping some spoilers about the Hildebrand quest storyline. If you have not done it and care about being surprised when people show up… you maybe shouldn’t read forward. Granted the Hildebrand quest storyline as a whole will only really make sense to folks who have played a lot of different Final Fantasy games. One of the characters you meet fairly early on in the Hildebrand storyline is Gilgamesh who is a fairly storied comedic character in the Final Fantasy universe. Generally speaking he is accompanied by his imp friend Enkidu. My personal first encounter with Gilgamesh was in the game Final Fantasy V but I am uncertain if that was his actual first appearance. In that game he plays the role of a major bad guy, but at the same time… comedic relief often times as inept as he is deadly. Enkidu often feels like the “straight man” in their act, the one that keeps Gilgamesh in line.

As you encounter Gilgamesh in Final Fantasy XIV he is alone which is explained when he first introduces himself to the character. But where are my manners? I have yet to properly introduce myself. I am Gilgamesh, and that is my companion, Enkidu! …Well, not really. It has been many moons since last I saw him, so to ease the burden of loneliness, I tamed a rooster and painted it green. So at this point we know Enkidu does exist in the universe, we just have yet to meet him. Now we zoom forward to this patch, sure enough when they are doing the Hildebrand quest line they show a character that looks very much in every way like the traditional image of Enkidu. So this likely means that we are going to see Gilgamesh in the storyline again, but more important than that… that hopefully we have yet another awesome boss battle to look forward to. While I have actually only done the Ultros fight once… it was extremely fun and serves for a nice diversion from our progression through Binding Coil.