housing

Digital Nesting

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Good Morning Folks! Right now, I am all over the place in my gaming, and cannot seem to land on any particular title as my main grind. I know this is going to rapidly change because we are two weeks out from the drop of a new Path of Exile league, and I am certain I will be devoting all of my time and attention to the 3.28 Mirage League. However, for the time being, I am playing a game for an hour or so and then flipping to a different game. I wish I could mainline Dune Awakening, but the combat is way too focused for me to spend much time in it. I need games where I can turn my brain off, and this is not that game. I am still enjoying myself, but doing things in the world requires too much attention and cannot really be chained with something else like an audiobook. There is a weird bug happening right now where I will consistently log in on top of my base, so I made a rooftop entrance to solve this problem quickly.

The biggest achievement for the weekend is that I expanded my base, made my craft floor two floors high to accommodate some of the larger crafting machines like the vehicle fabricator, and made my very first buggy. We talked a bit about this on the podcast this weekend, but each vehicle that you acquire feels like a massive quality-of-life improvement. I am still working on unlocking the research needed to get the mining rig, but once I do so, I will be taking this out into the desert in hunt for more materials, and rapidly speeding up acquisition. Right now, I am more gated by levels and research than pretty much anything else. I need to really buckle down and focus on taking out some of the bandit camps, especially since I just upgraded to the slavers stillsuit and have a bit more armor. I need higher damage weapons, but that is going to require me to craft a weapons fabricator… which again needs more research points. I might bip over to the Anvil and see if there is anything I can buy there that might help me out.

Tam has a really good base in the North, so I think I might be keeping this one for a while. At some point, I will abandon my Hagga South base, but I have left it up and running because there are still some folks down in the south questing. I know Mor found my base yesterday, and it serves as a great staging location for both the shipwreck and the testing station. Really, I need to push the main story quest forward a bit and need better weapons. I might research where the really good legendary crafting patterns drop in these middle zones and set out to get some of those. I also might flip the style of my base from the standstone dormitory to one of the other appearances. I really like the existence of the “replace” tool for this purpose.

I spent a fair amount of time in Enshrouded, roaming around and unlocking crafting NPCs for my current save file. A lot of this has centered around climbing up to some high point and then gliding long distances since I have one of the really nice legendary gliders. I need to spend some time looking for resources on this game, because surely by now someone has created the equivalent of POEDB for it. I really want to know where some of the good farms are now, and then set out to maybe get a good weapon with a rune socket in it. My armor seems fine, but not having a rune socket means I am missing some critical functionality. It feels like, at least for the short term, that sibling time is going to be in Enshroude,d and I like being overgeared for content.

In the continued focus of trying to find games for us to play together, I reinstalled Wayfinder to give it another spin. I remember us having fun with this, but since we last played it has transitioned from being a server authoritative online service, to a peer-to-peer buy-the-box sort of experience. Legitimately huge kudos to Airship Syndicate for doing this because when they realized it would not function as a live service, they pivoted the game design to being something that can be enjoyed evergreen by players. I wish more games would do this. I spent some time roaming around the world and did a dungeon, and it is still quite a bit of fun. The number of systems in this game is staggering, and I completely forgot that it had housing and mounts and all of that nonsense. It could definitely be fun to check things out further and see how deep this particular rabbit hole goes.

Unfortunately, the art style… and the existence of the housing system… made me want to check out the new World of Warcraft housing system. I’ve kept my World of Warcraft account active for years, without really ever playing it. I reactivated it around the time The War Within launched, could not really get into that expansion… and then just never turned it off. I made an attempt to play during the Legion Remix and bounced from that as well. I will probably be talking a bit more about the current state of World of Warcraft in another video, but this morning I am largely going to talk about housing. I have to say… so far, I think this feels like a much better version of the Final Fantasy XIV housing system. At least at face value, it seems like it has gone back and added a bunch of new housing drops into older content, effectively making those evergreen. Giving players a reason to experience older content feels like a massive boost to the game in general. While this is still World of Warcraft, it feels like they are learning lessons from other games out there, and the fact that you collect appearances for your house and do not have to juggle physical objects… immediately puts this a world ahead of FFXIV.

I was surprised that there were still housing plots available in the House Stalwart neighborhood. Essentially, the Alliance gets a bunch of human-inspired housing areas, and I bought my plot in the area that is like a baby Duskwood. I have no clue what the Horde version of this looks like, but I kind of expect there to be areas that represent a bunch of in-game zones similar to how this one is. I seem to already have a massive amount of items unlocked through the content that I have already played through. I spent some time roaming around the housing area, and so far, the best-looking house is probably Kylana, the current Guild Leader of House Stalwart. I handed off to Elnore, Elnore handed off to Rylacus… Rylacus briefly handed it back to me during Pandaria, and then Rylacus got it back and made the very wise choice of handing it off to Kylana, who, to the best of my knowledge, has been the leader since at least Draenor. Ky was always a stable hand at the wheel, and I greatly appreciate him keeping active this thing that I so thoroughly abandoned.

As I said, I will probably talk a bit about my experience of getting back into World of Warcraft in a future post, but so far… thing seeem really well maintained. The new user interface system is shockingly good, and so far at least seems to be a cromulent replacement for all of the addons that I had been using. I purposefully installed the game fresh on my new computer and did not take any time to install addons because I wanted to see what the stock experience looked like. I am honestly also enjoying the single combat button thing, which seems perfectly reasonable for brain-off grinding. I need to spend some time logging in my plethora of characters because each one I have done so has unlocked additional cosmetic appearances and housing tat. All in all, I am pretty impressed with what I have seen so far.

Visions of Eternity Early Thoughts

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Good Morning Folks! Yesterday about mid day the Visions of Eternity expansion dropped in Guild Wars 2, giving us access to new areas and new elite specs. I’ve not made it past the first zone, but I have to say that Shipwreck Strand is freaking gorgeous. Probably the most interesting thing about the zone so far is how much of it was designed explicitly for the skimmer, and more specifically the ability to use the skimmer underwater, because there are giant swaths of caves believe the surface. Essentially we head to the new far flung locale of Castoria, a sort of rumored island that is shrouded in unnatural fog. I won’t go into too much detail as not to spoil the experience for anyone, but I found the whole navigation sequence of finding our way to the island interesting.

I am not sure if there are some tangible upgrades to the engine for this expansion, or if they are just using artistic flare in new and interesting ways… but the zones look freaking amazing. Specifically the ocean itself looks more alive than it ever has, as it swells and drops in very believable ways. There is this bioluminescent foam-like texture in the water that collects around these tidepools that just looks so good to watch play out in front of you. It feels like they have really pulled out all of the stops of zone design to make something that really looks new and interesting. Greebles are normally a term that is used to describe surface texture… but the sky itself feels like it is greebled with motes of magic and such everywhere, making the entire scene look absolutely enchanted.

I migrated my housing to the new island and that was pretty straight forward. You just talk to the NPC who then warns you that any customization will be reset and that your decorations will be placed in storage when you do so. This was fine for me because while I placed items in my house, I didn’t really do anything specific or intentional with them. I was largely running the default state of the previous island. The only customization that I carried forward was using the aurora borealis themed sky, which really blends nicely with the overall look of the zone. This one feels way more detailed than the previous homestead zone, and honestly there are a few places where I would like to try and erect some custom structures. I’ve not really spent much of any time decorating my homestead and maybe the new island will change that. The default structure feels way less of a “complete” thing as it did with the bearkin area.

Now all of this goodness aside… there is a really frustrating bug at play. Essentially very early on in the quest chain, you are given a collection to finish for an NPC named Pete. It feels bad to halt your progress for this unlocking the wavehawk quest sequence, but I remember them doing something similar for the warclaw in Janthir Wilds. However this time around, I thought they had learned their lesson because I was able to progress past the quest once I had filled the renown heart in the area. DO NOT DO THIS. Currently if you progress your quest past the point where you are given the Wavehawk quest chain, you will no longer be able to complete this chain. This harms you later down the line because you are halted from progressing the story because you do not have a Wavehawk mastery as a result. I’ve tried resetting my quest progress back to this chain to essentially zero luck. I am certain they will resolve this issue at some point, but right now… if you move forward with the quest line called “Solid Ground” you will brick your quest progress sequence seemingly permanently.

The only reliable advice that I have seen on this problem is to break out an alt and progress them up to the point where they receive the Wavehawk quest chain, and then complete the collection on them. This should then in theory unstick your entire account, because mastery unlocks are shared at an account level. Effectively when you are in this broken state, the items just do not spawn in the world that are needed for the collection. Anyways, at some point today I intend to starting this content with my Necromancer, and will be bringing him out of retirement. This is not that big of a deal, given that it has been ages since I have played this character and they were effectively the character that made me fall in love with this game universally.

I threw together a very rudimentary Power Galeshot build and it felt pretty good. I don’t love the disengage shot, but it lives on the same slot as the stealth ability from Longbow, so I was already not in the custom of hitting that button most of the time. Essentially I was able to maintain almost 100% uptime on quickness, 12 stacks of might, and have Aegis up more often than not. This seems like a good kit, and way less selfish than my normal Power Longbow build. I need to play around with it more to get used to it, and probably should also keep tweaking the build a bit to improve it. Nothing much is out there so far for Power Longshot other than a PVP focused build. Hopefully the buildcraft geniuses will come up with something beautiful in the next few days. However for the time being this works well enough to keep rolling and questing with it.

Other than this one egregious game breaking bug… I am pretty happy with everything I have seen so far from Castoria and Visions of Eternity. That said, I am not engaged enough that it is going to stop me from going fully degen mode on Path of Exile come Friday. I’ve done the first zone meta twice, and it is fine… but mostly just felt like a giant bag of hitpoints making the entire thing drag on a bit too long. I had more than enough points on the Necromancer to fully spec out the Ritualist tree so I might see what is available for that before I start questing. I tend to prefer GuildJen over Snowcrows or Metabattle because it seems to favor way less sweaty meta builds, and more general purpose things. I don’t care to run multiple builds for multiple purposes, so am always just looking for something that is fun to play that does “good enough” in most content. GuildJen sort of feels like the spiritual successor to Dulfy now that she has “passed beyond memory” or at very least retired from updating a guide site.

Anyways. Have you played any of Visions of Eternity? What were your thoughts so far? Drop me a line below.

The Crysta Boss

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Good Morning Folks. Yesterday was a local holiday and as such I got the day off work, and did not really feel like blogging. Of all of the battles that I have had in MMORPGs… by far the toughest that I have ever experienced is the Housing Boss in Final Fantasy XIV. The main problem with this boss however… is that once you have beaten it… you have to keep beating it every few weeks to keep your plot from being repossessed. Thing is… my current plot in The Mists is my SECOND time beating the housing boss. However as is often the case… life got away from me at the end of 2023 and I went two months without logging into FFXIV and my house was demolished. When I finally managed to get a house again around the launch of Dawntrail, I vowed to never let that happen again no matter what I had to go through to keep logging in. I started a weekly ritual of logging in at a bare minimum to play the Jumbo Cactpot, and at that time checking in on my house.

So as a result Sunday morning I had a minor panic attack when I tried to do my log in ritual and encountered this screen. The Credit Card that I had on file had expired, and I apparently did not get around to updating in before Final Fantasy XIV was set to bill me again. This created a whole spiral of frustration as I attempted to renew my card information only to be met with the deeply obtuse “Card Unavailable” error message. There are entire threads on the FFXIV forums talking about this particular error message, and in most cases the answer is either to buy timecards every few months or rely upon the even more obtuse Crysta system. The entire financial processing wing of most Japanese companies seems to be stuck in the 90s, because I can remember jumping through all of this dumb hoops when trying to add money to my SEGA JP account before Phantasy Star Online 2 went to North America.

I remember the Streamer Zepla running up against similar issues of not being able to subscribe to the game, and also not really getting much in the way of resolution. The forum threads are all seeming the blame the issue on Debit Cards, and since I only have one Credit Card and a few Debit Cards… I was really concerned about not being able to dig myself out of this particular hole in time before my house got repossessed again. I was legitimately desperate enough to go down the Crysta rabbit hole… but neither Paypal or Amazon Pay… the two options that were available to me were failing. Thing is… both of those options are also tied to the same Credit Card that was failing out with the subscription. In an absolute last ditch effort I tried entering one of my Debit Cards and it worked. Then I had to go through the process of renewing both my extra Retainers and the mobile app separately. Legitimately dealing with the financial processing boss is far worse than Housing Savage. I think the crux of it is that at some point Square stopped taking my main credit card, but never went through the process of updating all of the information. Because some screens show it as being accepted, and others do not… so I am guessing they swapped processors and they now only reliably take Master Card and Visa. I was legitimately to the point of going down a rabbit hole of trying to set up a virtual credit card that billed back to my main credit card.

My lovely little home is now safe again… at least for a several years. It is now up to me to continue the login tradition and keep checking in on things every week. If you are ever in my neck of the woods swing by and sign my guestbook I am in Ward 28 Plot 3 on Cactuar/Aether. I am yet another one of those folks who only half-assed their home. The front room is nice and cozy… but there is absolutely nothing going on in the basement. The yard is also pretty great, and I am proud of it. Mostly I just did not want to be one of those folks who camped out a home and then never did anything with it. At some point I need to spend some more time and effort decorating the basement, but I am not really sure what to do there. My general idea was the top floor is a store to sell all of the things I have gathered from my adventures, and the bottom floor would be a Lalafellian scaled apartment.

Since you sat through my panic attack… I figure I will share some actual useful information for anyone who does not know this trick. Essentially there is a pattern that I use each day for the Mini Cactpot, that yields the most predictable results. The Cactpot card asks you to reveal specific squares, and then pick a row to submit for the prize. If you punch your card in a Y pattern shown above on the left side, it gives you information about every single slot on the card. Essentially I am mostly gambling on which slots have the greatest chance of either producing a 1/2/3 or a 7/8/9 since they are the biggest payouts. You are always fighting randomization and there are going to be cards that have no good options… but this structured approach feels like I at least have a fighting chance of hitting the big pulls whenever they are available.

Anyways! Now that my home is secured I am way less panicked. I don’t really talk about FFXIV very much, but that is not for lack of me still poking my head into it from time to time. At some point I need to get serious about catching up on the story.

Cactuar Landed Gentry Again

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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.