Mixtape Mondays: Now That’s Nonsense

Good Morning Friends! I have managed to make it to another week and with it comes a new mix. For those who might be new to the blog, each Monday I present my readers with a collection of tracks that I assemble into a Mixtape. Granted physical media doesn’t exactly translate to the internet terribly well, and as a result, I serve them up to you using YouTube and Spotify. Along with this mix, I create some fake album art, some of which is more creative than others… and I have to admit today’s is sort of a low effort showing. The goal is to create an album that plays nicely from start to finish and makes you maybe a bit nostalgic about making your own mixtapes. I absolutely was a kid that made them constantly and distributed them to my friends… and now do the same with you, my readers.

Now That’s Nonsense

During the late 90s and early 2000s, there was a string of infomercials advertising a mega compilation of pop music called “Now! That’s What I Call Music”. Each album compiled a number of Billboard top 200 chart songs, into a vessel of pure poppy nonsense. However, I am coming to find out that apparently, this series got its start over in the United Kingdom in the 1980s. Most of the music I listen to on a regular basis likely never actually got any radio airplay other than alternative and college rock stations. However every so often there is a slice of the pop pie that interests me. This morning I assembled my own “Now” album made up of a lot of alternative adjacent songs that got significant radio play and in many cases appeared on a wide number of movie soundtracks. Basically, this is an album that proves I still regularly dip my toes into the top 40 pond from time to time.

Track List

  • Radioactive – Imagine Dragons
  • Pompeii – Bastille
  • Chandelier – Sia
  • Wake Me Up – Avicii
  • Can’t Hold Us – Macklemore & Ryan Lewis feat. Ray Dalton
  • Tightrope – Janelle Monae feat. Big Boi
  • Sail – AwolNation
  • I Love It – Dylan Summer
  • Royals – Lorde
  • Titanium – David Guetta feat. Sia
  • We Are Young – Fun feat. Janelle Monae
  • Pumped Up Kicks – Foster the People
  • Viva La Vida – Coldplay
  • Counting Stars – OneRepublic
  • The Fox – Ylvis

Listen On Spotify

Listen On Youtube

With that, we bring the seventeenth Mixtape in the series to a close. I am going to be honest, this entire process started because I really like Sail, Chandelier, and Radioactive and wanted to create a pop-themed mix around those songs. The result ended up with me digging out a large number of those guilty pleasure tracks and compiling them into something that is extremely easy to listen through. If you are brand new to this feature and want to catch up on some of my other mixes, you can check out the archive below. The post Mixtape Mondays: Now That’s Nonsense appeared first on Tales of the Aggronaut.

AggroChat #356 – Wildermyth

Tonight we start off with the travails of Belghast attempting to heal things on Scholar.  Kodra chimes in with his own experiences in the same class.  Bel talks a bit about getting to the bottom of the weird obsession that seems to be taking place with hitting +99/+99 aetherpool as fast as humanly possible in Palace of the Dead.  This leads to some discussions of WoW mindsets showing up in FFXIV players.  Bel and Ammo talk a bit about The Diadem and super chill leveling gatherers.  We talk at length about Wildermyth and how it does an excellent job of replicating the tabletop RPG experience in a digital interface.  Finally, we talk a bit about Art Software and Ash’s explorations of what works for him with Ammo and Bel chiming in a bit towards the end.

Topics Discussed:

  • Bel Trying to Heal Stuff
  • Gotta get 99/99 Fast
    • WoW Mentalities in FFXIV
  • The Diadem
  • Wildermyth
  • Adventures in Art Software
The post AggroChat #356 – Wildermyth appeared first on Tales of the Aggronaut.

Ninja to the Max

Good Morning Friends! I come to you with a glad heart because I have once again finished another new job. For the past week I have been working on Ninja and last night I managed to push it across the line and ding level 80. I’ve not spent a significant amount of time gearing it, but I did grab the artifact gear set and snag the resistance weapon from Gangos. This puts me somewhere in the neighborhood of 450ish with the gear I currently have equipped, which is not phenomenal but good enough for the moment. When I started down this path I did not fully appreciate Ninja as a job, but over the course of the last thirty levels, I have come to appreciate just how good of a class it can be. Granted I am nowhere near as competent as your average Ninja Main, but I took to heart some advice that I should focus on debuffing the target. The thing is… that seems to make a massive difference in how fast targets go down.
If we go to the character sheet that means I have finished leveling all of the classes that utilize dexterity as the main stat. This means that not only can I get rid of any unneeded Bard/Machinist/Dancer gear but that I can also get rid of any dexterity-focused jewelry. This leaves Monk and Dragoon as the last physical dps classes that I have yet to finish. I’ve largely left Dragoon open as a soak for any available clan hunts that I happen to have on a given day and am in no real rush to push it across the finish line. Monk is going to be an interesting journey because I do not love positional combat. What I feel like I need to work on instead is some of my healers because of all of the jobs in my list, those are going to be the largest lift for me on a personal level.
Something that you need to understand, is that I began my life in MMORPGs as a healer. I played a Dwarven Cleric main pictured above in Everquest, and technically this is the second rendition of this character after rerolling on a brand new server. Playing a cleric in Everquest left some permanent scarring I am afraid and I am not sure if it was the complete heal rotations, not being able to progress other than slow prodding root and nuke gameplay, or the fact that I would quite literally get called at all hours of the night to log in and come resurrect someone so they would not lose a level. Whatever the case I have avoided playing healers in any game moving forward apart from a brief stint in Everquest 2… also playing a Cleric, more specifically in Inquisitor.
A good portion of my time back in Final Fantasy XIV has been about breaking down mental blocks. Over the years I had built up this mental block against tanking for strangers, but the difference there is tanking is a role that I knew in my heart that I was good at. Healing is one of those things that I have long decided I was shitty at, and have thus been unwilling to put myself in the position of having the lives of the party in my hands. Granted as a tank I also very much have the lives of the party in my hands, but for some reason it feels differently. I’ve thusfar leveled Scholar through Palace of the Dead but in order to make my way through the level 60 plus grind… I am going to need to be willing to do the thing that I have been avoiding. That is queuing to heal random strangers. I know once I put myself out there I will do fine and start to feel my “sea legs” as it were, but it is really hard taking that first step. So my goal for the weekend… queue for leveling roulette and try and make that work. The post Ninja to the Max appeared first on Tales of the Aggronaut.

Flawed Mindset

Good Morning Friends! I am not doing super well because my lungs have conspired against me. however, I am still going to post today especially given that the lack of internet kept me from doing one on Tuesday. This friend is Quarrymill in the South Shroud and it is more specifically known for being the location that you queue up for Palace of the Dead one of two Deep Dungeon systems in Final Fantasy XIV. At the time of taking this picture, it is roughly 6 in the morning CDT and there is already a fairly decent crowd of people gathered here. I’ve spent a lot of time hanging out here and putting levels on alts, more specifically the 1-61 level range. Generally speaking, running 51-60 over and over has been a pretty relaxing way of putting on those early levels for alternate jobs.
However more recently I have encountered a different style of player, some working on their very first job grinding away fervently at Palace of the Dead. The Palace uses an alternate leveling system that increases by getting Aetherpool upgrades via the blue and silver chests in the dungeon. This caps out at +99 to armor and +99 to the weapon, and it is something that I have been capped at for several years now. I gradually got it there while leveling all of my jobs to 50, and the gains are extremely slow given that it was designed to gain levels as you descended through the depths of the dungeon. Folks specifically run 51-60 for experience gain efficiency, and if you are looking for fast Aetherpool gains you need to keep descending towards 100 which is considerably harder to find a group for.
That said I have encountered a number of players recently that are absolutely obsessed with getting to 99/99 as fast as they can. There have been several cases where their lust for those blue and silver chests has damned near wiped the party. Most specifically I have been seeing a lot of characters that have boosted and are now playing a Samurai or a Red Mage and attempting to grind them up through Palace of the Dead, with that character being the only one they have of any sufficient level. I’ve talked about this a few times and could not figure out what was going on, and why my super chill dungeon run game was filled with these annoying “tryhards” all of the sudden. So last night while idling in South Shroud I encountered someone pestering the fuck out of chat trying to get tips on how to level faster, so I decided to have a conversation. After that I talked to a few others and now have a pretty good idea of what is going on.
You need to understand that both Palace of the Dead and Heaven on High have a leaderboard associated with them ranking players based on solo and group play. As you progress in your save game you are given a score based on your performance and then this score is charted against other folks in your data center. Soloing Palace of the Dead specifically is considered to be one of the most challenging feats in the game and by clearing all of your way to level 200 on any job you gain a specific title… The Necromancer. More specifically you have to clear floors 1 to 200 solo without wiping and if you take a death past floor 100, that save is locked and you can progress no further forcing you to reset and start over again. Similarly, if you clear 100 floors of Heaven on High you are given the title of “Lone Hero”, and that dungeon’s point of no return is floor 30.
Now we move to the specific information that I found out, more specifically let’s talk about the above thumbnail. Roughly a week ago Zelpa one of the most popular creators in the FFXIV sphere released a video called “10 Most Prestigious Things to FLEX With in FFXIV”. More specifically the second item discussed in the video is getting the Necromancer title from Deep Dungeon. The first person I talked to was new to the game, a WoW Transplant, and was chasing the Necromancer title as a way of flexing and showing how cool he was. When he heard it was super rare and something that you could get without even having a character to max level, he set forth to make it happen. Given how many of these folks I am encountering, I am guessing this video or similar discussions lit a fire under a new crop of players to make life miserable for those of us who were just wanting a chill leveling experience.
However, it goes deeper than just chasing something rare. Another player that I talked with was going after the Necromancer title because they were always frustrated that they never managed to get “The Undying” title in World of Warcraft. This specifically was a title that existed during Wrath of the Lich King and involved completing the entirety of the Naxxramas 10 player raid without a single player taking a death at any point. World of Warcraft has had this history of taking things away from the players, and when the 4.0.3 patch landed with the release of the Cataclysm expansion the title was no longer available to players. The player I was talking with was afraid that they might miss their chance to get this title in Final Fantasy XIV if they didn’t hurry up and get it… not understanding that the game has a completely different design ethic associated with such things.
I am hoping given time that these folks chill out, but one of the things that need to be understood is that Final Fantasy XIV is not World of Warcraft. There is a completely different design to the two games, and nothing in FFXIV ever truly becomes irrelevant. Getting to level 200 in Palace of the Dead is still a massive challenge and it went into the game during the midpoint of Heavensward back in July of 2016. At this point, it is over five years old content and it is still as relevant today as it was the day it went into the game. It is highly unlikely that the Necromancer title will ever be removed from the game, largely because that just isn’t the style of the development team.
The other day I was guilty of making a tweet thread that gained more traction than I expected. However, I stand by those statements. I wish I could shake some sense into these players that are grinding FFXIV as they ground WoW… this will only end in you eventually burning yourself out. I know I’ve also tried to play Final Fantasy like I played Warcraft, and eventually, I would end up getting stuck in a grind and losing interest. This game will answer your desire for grinds and present before you and an endless buffet of tedium if you let it, but also at the same time reward you greatly for instead playing a little bit at a time. This mindset of doing a little bit of a lot of different things has been a revelation for me, and once I realized the game was actively trying to resist my grinder ways… I adapted and have been significantly happier as a result. Getting some achievement just to prove to someone that you can… isn’t really going to impress anyone in the manner that you are hoping. Having fun and focusing on whatever brings you joy, and generally being a positive member of the community however will get you a long ways in this game. The post Flawed Mindset appeared first on Tales of the Aggronaut.