kraken

Accidental Free Company

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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.

For The Cat

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Hey Folks! Last night was a bit of an odd night. We got started a bit later than normal and I also did not sleep for shit Tuesday night… which put me in a bit of a funk. I came close to just begging off of shenanigans but I am very glad that I did not. Going into last night we had seven dungeons to run and Alexander… which I honestly had forgotten about. I am glad that Ace kept that in mind because quite honestly that was probably my favorite bit of the evening. We attempted to legitimately queue for Alexander but given we are on Dynamis… the queue was not moving at all and I did not really want to force an entire group of mentors to do it with us. So instead we duo’d the content which was a heck of a lot of fun. We greeded everything and I know I walked away with enough bits to get to pieces of gear, not sure what Ace managed to pull.

Alexander was the very first raid that I was there to participate in on day one. As a result, it means a heck of a lot to me, and experiencing it again on brand new characters was amazing. The best part of this place is the music. It is just so damned good and honestly… the fights are pretty amazing as well. It was this wild trip down memory lane that was priceless. We cleared the first four parts of Alexander and unlocked the second part… which I think leaves us three dungeons to potentially run tonight. Friday night I will be mainlining Path of Exile, so before we ultimately take a break in this journey we are absolutely going out on a bang. The top shelf absolute bestest part though… the cat that lives on top of the Illuminati leader’s hat. On some level, I had completely forgotten about that.

Before all of this though we churned through Neverreap, Fractal Continuum, Saint Mocianne’s Arboretum, and Pharo Sirius Hard. Yet again we encountered another Reaper who could not stand still and kept standing in front of the boss while ping-ponging around the fights. I have been told by my reaper compatriots on Mastodon that this is not normal behavior but… I keep encountering it over and over. Like I am used to Bards and Machinists going willy-nilly because they don’t have to stay still while attacking but Reapers seem like this game’s Demon Hunter. I remember really hating Neverreap when it first came out and I am not even sure why. There are a few pulls that are bigger than normal, but between my cooldowns and Ace’s expert healing, it was no big deal at all.

This entire experience of going back and seeing things with fresh but wisened eyes continues to be so much fun. If you have a friend that you could convince to participate in this sort of nonsense, then I highly recommend it. Honestly, even if you just want to solo your way through Eorzea, it is probably a great experience. For years I have thought Alting in FFXIV made zero sense because nothing was account-wide and you would be essentially resetting all of the progress you had made to that point. In fact I absolutely remember chiding Ace about it once before when they created an alt because I could not see giving up my stable of high-level jobs or any of the kitsch that I had unlocked along the way. I was wrong… I was so very wrong. It is worth it for the experience of getting to pretend you are seeing it all for the first time again.

Legitimately… the last decade has been extremely rough. I’ve aged far more than ten years… and chipped away bits and pieces of my mental fortitude and well-being. However, going through this experience has honestly been healing. I had convinced myself that there were all of these things that I just couldn’t do anymore… that I was not equipped to do anymore. I am sure this sounds somewhat dumb… but mental barriers are real things and they are hard to push past. I feel younger today thanks to the nonsense we have been getting up to than I have in a very long time. I also feel more equipped to capture the joy in day-to-day life than I have been in quite a while. I am not saying that playing an MMORPG is the key to happiness… but doing so with a close friend sure doesn’t hurt.

Anyways! Tomorrow I will probably be on my Path of Exile nonsense but I am looking forward to one more night of doing fun content before we take a bit of a break.

Clearing ARR and Optional Dungeons

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Good Morning Folks! I am reading a lovely story about my murder faerie on this rainy day in Limsa Lominsa. I wish that it were actually rainy in the real world because maybe it wouldn’t be targeted to get upwards of 115 degrees Fahrenheit today. I managed to push my Summoner across the level 100 line on Friday which means I also have a lovely companion level 100 Scholar. Not that I have a clue what I am doing and had to go button by button on my Hotbar trying to find Esuna when it was required in a quest. I’ve not finished the healer role quest but my intent is to do this thing… and then make myself a Mentor because it is funny. The only hesitation I have is that I am not sure if I can hide my mentor tag once I have it… like I can do with my Commander tag in Guild Wars 2.

All of that said… the main reason why I have not finished any of this on Cactuar… is that I have been spending almost all of my time on my babby Warrior that lives on Dynamis/Kraken. Am I switching mains? Fuck no. This is just a really fun project and quite honestly all of the grouping I have been doing with Ace lately has been deeply beneficial to my mental health. At this point, we have finished the Main Story quest for A Realm Reborn, and it has been hilarious doing all of this content as a sprout that understands most of the mechanics. Truth be told I think most of the folks on Dynamis are rerolls because significantly more folks seem to just automatically understand what to do. Every so often you run into a proper sprout and it is delightful when you see one. I love the paternal instinct we seem to get around new players, and that is honestly one of the best things about starting FFXIV.

The best aspect of all of this however has been experiencing this content with the understanding of where things are going in this story. Once again fair warning for spoilers in the rest of this post. I feel like Square might have retconned a few things, but we are seeing the echoes of the end of days all the freaking time. They essentially split Praetorum up into two different dungeons, and a solo duty, and now during the Lahabrea fight he casts an attack also called “end of days”. More than that there are so many weird plot threads that are out there that we know get wrapped up before all is said and done. It is REAL hard to interact with “Urine Jar” knowing what a fucking heel he is at so many points during the story. More than anything it has been awesome to rewatch some of these cutscenes like our Carebear Stare that ultimately destroys Lahabrea.

One of the coolest aspects of the flow of modern Praetorium is you are left with this weird photo op moment after finishing up the first dungeon, but before fighting Ultima Weapon where you can sort of just roam around in the space and take screenshots. I am sure you can do some truly dumb things with gpose, but I am a noob and do not know how that system works in the least. I just took a few shots staring up at the big snake-dragon-taur. The lighting is especially awesome on the Ultima weapon fights because this used to look pretty matte black and now has shiny bits glinting in the light and the glow of all of the red greebles.

It would not be Ace and me if we did not engage in some complete insanity. This means that not only did we complete the storyline… but we also started down the path of unlocking our Zodiac weapons. It all started with an innocent enough conversation about whether or not we were going to run the Hard mode versions of the primals. I said that if we were going to do that… we should probably just start the Zodiac weapon chain because we would have to do them all anyways during that. This led us to roam around like mad on Saturday morning doing all of this in the period of about two hours. We now have a shiny Zenith weapon to show for our efforts and are now unlocking the Extreme versions of the fights… and contemplating going down that rabbit hole as well.

When you finish the ARR MSQ, you unlock a truly stupid number of dungeons… and again… being us… we had to run all of them. Between Saturday and Sunday, we have completed every single one of these dungeons and I have to say… the Hard modes still do occasionally deserve their name. Trying to teach folks how to do mechanics that the large chunk of the player base has not seen since this left Expert Roulette was definitely a thing. There were a few cases where we ourselves had to look things up because we did not remember how to stop dying to certain mechanics. The worst was absolutely Pharos Sirius where we had a troll Viper who kept running several rooms ahead of us and chaining shit back on top of us. The first time I tried to save him and wiped the party. The second time I just let him die four rooms away from where we were currently. At that point Ace decided not to rez him… and the game would not let me kick him… so thankfully he called us all noobs and left the party allowing us to get a fill from a lovely monk player.

All of this said… I do sort of wonder if this is going to be the case going forward any time we stray from the path and do content that is not absolutely required by the Main Story quest. Really all told there were really only two extremely rough spots, the second being Tam Tara Deepcroft Hard. Most of the dungeons have gone pretty easily. We saved Wanderer’s Palace Hard as our last dungeon of the sequence because it was one that we both knew extremely well and understood all of the possible pitfalls. We essentially guaranteed ourselves a smooth landing from this nonsense. We’ve now moved on to doing the Crystal Tower series of Alliance Raids. We did Labyrinth of the Ancients last night and it was a bit rough around the edges… but we got through it and will probably progress to Syrcus Tower tonight.

Throughout all of this nonsense… a dare happened. You have to understand that I am notorious for playing a Lalafell character, and Ace is pretty renowned for being a dedicated Roegadamme. Given that the game just seems to throw Fantasias at new characters… and I had four of them… a scheme was hatched where each of us was required to swap races. So after the podcast on Saturday, I ended up swapping over to a Roegadyn and Ace over to a Lalafell. This has felt extremely bizarre if I am being perfectly honest. I feel so fucking slow… and I have no clue where the hell Ace is half of the time because I am not used to looking for a Lala. We are mostly still rolling with it out of spite and our strong desire to not be the first one to break and Fantasia back to something else. Like there are no true stakes in this contest… just honor is on the line.

I had to shift up my glamour to something more sufficiently tanky, but all in all, I think I am pretty okay with this. I feel like it is not going to be me that breaks first. I went with the shortest possible Roe, but it still feels like I am playing the Incredible Hulk. I’ve always loved the look of this chestpiece so I decided to build something around it. I have the matching legs but not the matching arms… so decided to go with the Sentinels set for the time being. I mostly did not just want to run around permanently in the Warrior artifact gear set. Anyways… alting in FFXIV is way more enjoyable than I ever expected it to be. I will probably continue to share updates on our progress as we tackle more content.

Ishgardians are Still Awful

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Morning Folks! Since I spent all day yesterday talking about my Summoner, I figured this morning I would talk a bit about our progress on Kraken characters. Fair warning for this older content I am going to be pretty open with story spoilers as I talk through it. This is ten-year-old content so you had your chance to play through it. When last I talked about our adventures, we had finished Brayflox and were hot on the tale of a rumble with Titan. Fighting the giant rockboy was as always a fun experience, and even though it went super smoothly we had plenty of time to bask in the great music. This however led us through the Coerthas phase of the MSQ… which is a heck of a lot longer than I remembered it being. The next major destination was Stone Vigil and we mostly kept our heads down until we were able to get there.

I thought that maybe after returning to the game I would find the Ishgardians less insufferable given that I understand the people and their motivations a bit more now. This was not the case. Haurchefant is a great boy as always, but the rest of them can largely die in a big fire. Now that I have actually met Halone… I have so much less patience for their bullshit. The whole paranoia in dealing with the Dravinian threat is equally tiresome, especially after having spent much time hanging with Dragons at this point. Ishgard is so very in the wrong on most of these matters, and it only feels more obvious on a second play-through. The whole business with the Inquisitor and not being able to get into Stone Vigil was a pain in the ass and made me just want to murder everyone until they stopped annoying me.

Last night we pushed through and fought Garuda, and it is hilarious doing that fight in the four-player version. So many muscle memories came flying back to me, at which point I realized just how many times over the years I have done that fight. I remember feeling like it was a real challenge back in the day, but now she mostly just falls over. We wrapped this up by starting on our course to Castrum Centi in Mor Dhona and an attempt at saving our magical pals. It seems like the next big thing we are going to do is a raid on Castrum Meridianum…. many many quests from now. We are sort of in that final grind to finish out the original ARR MSQ. I’m honestly looking forward to doing the patch content because really that is the part of the game that sold me properly on Final Fantasy XIV as a story.

It has been wild seeing scenes that I had long forgotten. I can probably regurgitate the cutscenes of Praetorium like a 5th Grade Class drone through the pledge of allegiance, but there are many scenes I have only ever seen once. For example, I did not remember the whole bit where Baelsar indicated that he was going to get down and dirty with Livia when he ordered her to his room in an hour. The Garleans seem so freaking laughable at this point because I have been making them fall over time and time again for years as I leveled my characters through Main Story Roulette. I remember thinking they were freaking cool the first time I experienced all of these cutscenes. Even Darth Vader though would lose his novelty and fear factor if you made him fall over in minutes every single day for years. I still really want Square to release some of these outfits as cosmetics. I would kill entire zones just to get hold of Nero’s hammer as a Warrior weapon transmog.

Back on the other side of the fence over on Cactuar, I pushed my Summoner forward a bit in levels. I dinged level 96 and in theory, should be able to get another two levels tonight. If I grind really hard, I might be able to hit level 99 and equip the artifact set of gear which would be slick. I really need to clean out my Armoury Chest a bit in order to figure out what gear I actually need in there. Right now I have stuff strewn out between that and my inventory and am pretty sure I have broken a few of my gearsets for other jobs in the process. I’m basically living in Shaaloani now doing FATEs between queue pops of roulette. I’ve yet to get any of the bits required for the “Guinea Big” mount, but I want it badly. Its a fun zone to hang out regardless though because of the phenomenal soundtrack.

Anyways! At some point, I need to check out the new Last Epoch cycle, but I have been so focused on FFXIV that I have barely given it the time of day this week. In the coming days, I am going to get a bit more serious with my recruitment of folks to do some raiding in the game. Since Cactuar is sort of hell to travel over to, we might choose a neutral ground in order to meet up and do the content.