August 2017 Gaming Goals

I’m a few days late with this one since I’ve been AFK for most of this week. I had set a few somewhat ambitious goals for July and did a decent job on them. Let’s see what August brings!

July Goals recap:

FFXIV: Clear both EX primals.  Check! I still haven’t done this with a FC group, but I did at least get my kills.

Advance at least one of my Anima weapons at least one step. Nope. I dialed my play time back and mostly focused on current content.

Level my AST.  Not really. I did get a couple levels, but AST is still not 70. The problem here is that they fixed some of the problems with scholar, so I felt way less motivated to have the 2nd healer job.

Figure out how to buy a house. I do know how to buy a house now so I’ll count this as a win. I haven’t actually bought one because I’m still waiting for people to move out to the new zone so I can find open property in Mists.

Diablo 3: Complete the basic season 11 journey with a necromancer. Done! I haven’t gone much past the first 4 chapters but this is still a win.

Complete the challenge rift every week. Nope. I did attempt it every week, but last week’s build was really difficult and I didn’t manage to clear it under the timer.

Master all the crusader set dungeons. Done! I was an overachiever and got monk and witch doctor too!


August Goals:

FFXIV: Level my AST. I’m so close it really is silly that I still haven’t finished this.

Clear at least 1 boss of Omega Savage. This might be a matter of flinging myself at pugs until I smash through, but I’d love to get this done.

Diablo 3: Finish Barbarian set mastery. I’ve only got one barbarian dungeon left to master in order to get my fancy wings. It might mean giving up on much seasonal progress this time around, but I can do this!

WoW: Get back to the Robo-squids project. There’s an awful lot of dungeons left for our little undergeared, underleveled, undersized group to get through, and now that the new game shine is starting to fade from Stormblood I’m ready to jump back in.


I think these are pretty modest goals for the month, and they’re all things that I really do want to get around to. I can’t wait to post about my pretty new wings!


August 2017 Gaming Goals

AggroChat #167 – The Stormblood Show

Featuring:  Ashgar, Belghast, Grace, Kodra, and Tamrielo

aggrochat167_720

This week it is finally time to record the show for the AggroChat July Game Club Final Fantasy XIV Stormblood.  This is one of the smarter picks we have made thusfar as far as club titles, because we knew we would all be playing Stormblood when the expansion launched.  As a result we have held back when we talked about the game prior to this show a bit, thinking that we would unleash everything during this show.  We talk for almost two hours about what might be some of the best of Final Fantasy XIV.  This is a spoilery show so if you have not completed Stormblood I highly suggest you file this away for a later date.

 

Season 11 and Necro Wings

Season 11 started with a very relaxed pace since opening night was a Thursday instead of the usual Friday. By the end of the weekend, though, I had completed through chapter iv and a bit more besides. First things first: the Necromancer is a joy to play. I’m still not sure whether it is because it is genuinely fun or simply because it is the first truly new thing we’ve had in D3 in a long time, but either way I’m loving it. I’ve been using the Rathma set that came as the season journey reward, so I get to have swarms of minions and that’s definitely a play style I enjoy.

I got quite lucky and picked up some important cube items while leveling, and the scythe+shield set combo very early once I hit 70. That meant that over the course of the weekend I went from being carried by a friend to running T10 and carrying others in return. If Tasker & Theo would drop already then I’d have everything complete for the build suggested on Icy Veins. Even without it I’m getting close to GR60. One thing I don’t like about that build is there’s no room for a movement ability. So far I’ve been modifying it a bit so I can put a move ability on my bars because I find myself dying way too much without it. I’m pretty sure that my ability to push into higher GRs is going to be limited with this set because of that, so I’ve been collecting the other ones too. I managed to get the Trag’oul and Inarius sets already, so I can try those out and see if I like them better.

Season 11 and Necro WingsI am extremely happy to report that in addition to my season progress, I also picked up the Necromancer wings on Sunday night. They’re a pretty sweet black/red recolor of the ones that come with the Necromancer pack, and you get them by completing all of the Necromancer class achievements. Luckily I had leveled my non-seasonal necro through the story to test it out when I bought it, so I already had the 2 story-related achieves out of the way going into the season. Most of the achievements were fairly easy to get through normal play, although things like letting your skeletons kill 500 elites took a bit of time. There were a few boss-specific ones that required some more forethought, but they weren’t too difficult. The trickiest one was having to kill your shadow clone using simulacrum during the Diablo encounter. I found some good advice that suggested lowering the difficulty way down, removing any gear that has thorns or any legendary gems that have damaging effects, and using simulacrum + blood nova. It took a couple tries to get the simulacrum to have the killing blow but compared to the silly things I’ve done for set dungeon masteries it was a cake walk.

Speaking of set mastery, I did master the Rathma’s set dungeon. I’ll probably do a write-up of all the Necro dungeons so I won’t go into tons of specifics here, but I will say that it wasn’t too bad. Getting one objective for completion for the season journey should be no problem for most folks. Now that I have my necro wings I’m eager to get back to my barbarian and finish mastering the last couple dungeons I need for the REALLY fancy wings. I got randomly grouped with someone who had them while running rifts the other night, and now I’m even more motivated to get them.


Season 11 and Necro Wings

Daily Creative Thing

As usual I had a silly idea one day and decided to put it into action and see what happened. I wanted to do something in the spirit of Blaugust this year, but without the stress of having to come up with a complete, coherent post every day. I also wanted to get back into some of my creative hobbies that I’ve dabbled in over the years. Thus Daily Creative Thing was born.

The idea is very simple. Do something creative every day, and stay positive. The part that makes it work is that the bar for “do something creative” is set intentionally low. Did you doodle something cute on a post-it at work today? That counts. Did you sing in the shower for 15 minutes straight and annoy your roommate? That counts. Did you add a row or two of stitches to a bigger project? That counts. This endeavor is about recognizing all the little creative things we do, in addition to encouraging spending a bit more dedicated time on whole projects. The creative thing doesn’t have to be completed, finishing a whole project every day would be exhausting, and wouldn’t leave room for things like writing a story or knitting a blanket. It also doesn’t matter what kind of creative thing you do, as long as you consider it creative. Drawing some fan art, writing a blog post, baking a cake… you get the idea. It all counts!

The other key here is the “and stay positive” bit. It’s okay to be critical of your own work sometimes. That’s how we improve. But when sharing things for this project, I’m taking the stance of “if you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all”. Especially when posting half-finished things, the temptation is to apologize for it. Instead I want to celebrate that I made an effort and made something new in the world, and look for the things I like about it so I can keep doing those next time around. The internet is full of places where people tear themselves and each other down. I want this project to be focused on building things up. Stay positive.

That’s all there is to it. Keeping it simple means there’s at least a chance that I’ll follow through on it but making it daily means it is still a challenge and a change for the better in my habits.

If you’ve made it this far, I hope you’ll join me on this journey. I would love to have a network of people sharing their progress and cheering each other on. I also selfishly just want to see all the amazing things that you all will create when you get in the habit. Try it for the month of Blaugust and see if it sticks. Let’s create some things!

Daily Creative Thing

 


Daily Creative Thing