I am now officially in full swing of Nexus light farming and wound up spending my entire evening in Sastasha. In theory I could clear the entire place in roughly five minutes loaded in solo with undersized party. I had I had spent more of my time trying to optimize my route and my mob stacking… I could have potentially gotten it down to a bit lower. However for the uninitiated you might ask exactly why I spent two hours solid running the same dungeon over and over as many times as I possibly could squeeze into that two hour block.
Now some of this information comes from my friend Ashgar and other bits come from this Wiki page, but I am now in the step for the Nexus Zodiac weapon where I have to run a bunch of activities. Each activity produces a certain amount of light, and I have screenshot the table and placed it above. You effectively need to go from 0 to 2000 light to move past this step in the weapon grind, with different activities rewarding different amounts of light. So as you can see finding something that rewards Blinding Light for example is going to be way more effective than something giving you Feeble. Ash however suggested that generally speaking one of the early instances always rewards blinding light, and the trick is finding it.
The instances providing bonus light reset every two hours on the even hours… which doesn’t actually work for me when in truth they were on the odd numbered hours. So my bonus reset happened at 7 pm last night and I ground my little ass off until 9 pm getting in as many instances as possible with only a brief break to switch machines because I needed to call mom while grinding and wanted to move to where I could hook up a headset. I have no clue exactly how many runs I managed to get in but if you subtract about 15 minutes of the available time and bump my run time up to 6 minutes… you end up with me having run somewhere between seventeen and eighteen runs last night. In truth I think it was probably something in the neighborhood of fifteen to sixteen given where I wound up on the charts.
There is an in-game doodad that allows you to check how much light you have collected with a given weapon. Now I had run a couple of Frontlines that were both at Blinding Light, which is what leads me to believe that I was somewhere in the fifteenish range for runs completed. I started the night with the meter showing “No Activity” and finished the night with “Intense Aetheric Activity” as shown in the image above. In theory if I can happen upon another Blinding Light dungeon… in an absolute worst case scenario I am 5 runs away from completing. Alternately I could just run Sastasha 9 more times with no bonus and it would end up in the same result.
Whatever the case… I am apparently fully committed to this madness now and I have no clue what happens after I get the Nexus weapon. I have a feeling I will rapidly be entering a level of territory where it just isn’t worth it to keep pushing forward. Instead it is probably time to start another weapon if I so choose. Regardless this has done what it ultimately needed to do… give me a purpose for logging in every night and hanging out with the FFXIV crew prior to expansion launch next week.
I largely told myself that I would not do the thing I just did, in part because I thought it was nonsense. However if you have read this blog for long you know that I seem to be drawn to madness like a moth to a flame. I have done a bunch of really stupid things for very minimal amounts of enjoyment like creating accounts on Chinese Only MMOs. So the fact that I picked up where I left off in my Zodiac weapon quest really should not surprise anyone. The first step of course was to grind out a bunch of Alexandrite… for which thankfully I had a stockpile of Tomestones of Poetics to spend on treasure maps. Each map gives 5 Alexandrite… so 15 maps later I had the 75 needed to move to the next phase.
This is the step that largely held me in my tracks up until this point as it requires you to infuse 75 materia onto your weapon, starting with Rank 1 materia and shifting ranks roughly every 11 successful infuses. This is ultimately going to be a costly venture no matter how you go about it, but in my case I had been rat-holing Battledance and Savage Might materia for quite literally years, thinking eventually I would get around to doing this. I spent roughly 200,000 gil piecing together everything that I thought I might need. In many cases I had to buy way more than I wanted because only stacks were up on the board. I started liquidating everything I didn’t need in an attempt to recuperate a little bit of my woeful funding state and have gotten back 100k with several items still on the market. I was under 100k total gil for awhile… which didn’t feel super comfortable.
Another side effect of this entire process is I have officially done my first PVP in Final Fantasy XIV in the form of the daily frontline bonus. I’ve entered the Nexus step of the quest that requires me to do a bunch of stuff to gather 2000 points of light by doing “activities”. Most things seem to reward “feeble” light or 8 points at a time… but the daily Frontline queue rewards “blinding” or 96 points. I will of course make some more effort to do activities to farm light specifically, but for now I am casually queuing for frontlines every day. This also has the cool side effect of allowing me to start collecting some of the interesting PVP exclusive armor sets. Between the last two days I have already gathered up the full set of Bear themed armor that I had been eyeing for years.
So now we get to the title of this post, as I spent the majority of last night thrashing about with Amazon support staff. For the last few expansions Square Enix and Amazon have partnered to give some sort of an item leading into the expansion, this time around it is a Fat Black Chocobo mount. I figure that this is probably going to be something easy to do given that I already buy lots of stuff on Amazon. The problem is… this initiative is way more restrictive than any of the guidance would lead you to believe. If you go to the official Square Enix page you see the following wording.
Make a qualifying purchase of $19.99 or more on video games (excludes pre-orders) from the Amazon.com video games department to receive an item code redeemable on the Mog Station. Amazon will e-mail the Mog Station code directly to purchasers who qualify.
This offer only applies when purchasing qualifying items that are shipped and sold by Amazon.com.
If you go over to Amazon and manage to find one of the items that is specifically advertising the promotion you get a different but similar batch of text.
Black Fat Chocobo DLC. Purchase any qualifying video game with a Purchase Price of $19.99 or above and receive the Black Fat Chocobo DLC. Must be shipped and sold by Amazon. Amazon will email your code within 2 days of the purchase date.Limit one per customer‘. Here’s how (restrictions apply)
When you click through to the “Here’s how (restrictions apply)” link you get a different wall of text that again says some pretty similar things and outlines exactly which items should apply for this promotion.
Promotion Details
Offer only applies to products and digital content sold by Amazon.com or Amazon Digital Services LLC (look for “sold by Amazon.com” or “sold by Amazon Digital Services LLC” on the product or content detail page).
Offer good while supplies last.
Digital content and services may only be available to customers located in the U.S. and are subject to the terms and conditions of Amazon Digital Services LLC.
Items must be purchased in a single order and shipped at the same speed to a single address.
Shipping charges may apply to discounted and free promotional items.
Amazon reserves the right to modify or cancel the offer at any time.
Offer is non-transferable and may not be resold.
Offer discount will be allocated proportionally among all promotional items in your order.
If any of the products or content related to this offer are returned, your refund will equal the amount you paid for the product or content, subject to applicable refund policies.
If you violate any of these terms, the offer will be invalid.
Unless an Amazon Gift Card is the stated benefit of the promotion, promotional codes (including those placed directly in accounts) may not be redeemed for Amazon Gift Cards.
So over the last few days I made a couple of purchases thinking I would be perfectly fine. The first of which was a digital game on the Switch being fulfilled by Amazon Digital Services. The second was a physical copy of Bloodstained Ritual of the Night for PS4 being fulfilled by Amazon.com. If you are following along those are the entities specifically called out in the promotion details paragraph above, however I never received a promotional code in either case. This prompted me to get on chat with Amazon support and jump through a sequence of hoops bouncing between platforms and ultimately ending up in the same result each and every time.
My purchases were not eligible for the promotion. No one has been able to tell me why purchases that fit the pattern of the promotional text above are somehow ineligible and no one has been able to transfer me to a department that can ultimately explain it either. There is a bit flipped in a database somewhere that dictates which items do and do not get the promotion and it does not appear to have any semblance of relation to what the text of the promotion states. So I largely post this as a warning. The only items eligible for this promotion are the ones specifically talking about the promotion on the product page.
The challenge there is that there are very few products that actually talk about the promotion. I spent some time between chat responses scouring the site looking for them and I believe I found three different products that had them listed, with no real rhyme or reason as to what does and does not given that everything I looked at was either being sold by Amazon Digital Services or Amazon.com as per the offer text above. The only item that I found that reliably has the promotion is the 60 day Final Fantasy XIV time card, which seems to be how most people are getting theirs. Unfortunately there is no real listing of products that have the promotion that I was able to find. Previously I was able to buy just about any damned thing on the site and have it count but for whatever reason Amazon fucked this one up.
Ultimately if you do not see the little “Black Fat Chocobo DLC” box below the price tag of the item you are looking at, then you are not going to get the mount code. The other place to look is under “Special offers and product promotions” which also should list something to the effect of an item being eligible for the mount. If you do not see either of these then you will simply run up against the brick wall that is Amazon support given that probably all they can see is that a bit in the database is or is not flipped to allow this promotion. What I find frustrating is how obtuse this promotion has been this time around. With Stormblood it was more along the lines of “purchase literally anything in video games section and get a code”. This time around there are weird stipulations that largely make it so you have to buy one single item to get the code.
Ultimately I would appreciate you spreading the word about this to warn other people from making a similar mistake.
One of the nasty bits about the hype cycle surrounding a video game release is that by the time we finally get our grubby paws on it… we have effectively lived with the image of the game in our heads for one to two years. This gives our brain a lot of time to construct the game that we want to see, so that by the time we get the actual product the two rarely match. So I feel like it is worth taking note of the times when the final product meets or exceeds the mental image that I created for it. This is absolutely the case with Bloodstained Ritual of the Night, which released yesterday as what I can only assume was a purposefully timed birthday present.
When someone asks me what my favorite video game is, I have replied for some time Castlevania Symphony of the Night. It was this perfect vessel that concentrated so many things that I love about video games… RPG Progression, non-linear exploration, rock infused soundtracks, brooding gothic mood, and what was at the time the penultimate evolution of pixel based graphics. It was sort of a master class in how to make a game that Bel liked, and while there have been successors on other platforms… that was the last great non-handheld console Castlevania game. That is until now.
We are in this modern era of nostalgic games, that go back to the roots of something we loved from our past and painstakingly create that feeling. Bloodstained is something completely different because it not only brings everything that I loved about SoTN but also manages to push the genre along a very familiar path and in so creates a new experience. Firstly Bloodstained manages to take what I loved about the 16/32 bit pixel graphics era and creates that same look and feel with 3D models, which allows the game to go in a bunch of different places than would have been possible with 2D graphics. There are these jawdropping sequences where you are walking what appears to be a 2D path and then the game itself warps around you showing that you are moving in different ways than a strictly X/Y plane.
Bloodstained E3 Demo
Bloodstained Final Release
So often times the final product is lacking in some small way because compromises had to be made to meet a deadline. However Bloodstained is a weird example of the final release of the game going above and beyond and applying a sheen of polish to what already felt like a pretty great product. I have three copies of this game installed on my machine.. the first being a demo copy that just shows off the first level of the game that was released shortly after the Kickstarter campaign came to a conclusion. The second is an E3 Demo that they released in April showing what was effectively what I thought the final state of the game represented by the image on the left above. The last version is the release client represented by the image on the right above… which takes what I thought was already a great product and tweaks so many things to present amazing results. I tweeted about this yesterday and I was super happy to have similar screenshots to show off the tweaks that were made.
An aspect of Castlevania Symphony of the Night that was barely explored is the interactions you have with various NPCs that happen across your path. There are a few of these moments but they never seem to go very far and it always seemed like they were maybe experimenting. Bloodstained digs into this aspect hard and presents a lot of the common RPG tropes… like this woman who wants something to eat but cannot remember what she wants giving you hints and showing you the icon for the food she wants you to make for her. I cannot believe I have farmed mobs to get drops to feed this lady that always seems to be hungry. The game is filled with several of these little minigames including farming, avenging fallen villagers or collecting mementos to let other villagers rest in peace. There is a full crafting and cooking system in the game, and most items seem to be obtainable through drops, crafting, quests or through outright sale on the vendor at the town hub of sorts.
The game has a series of stained glass doorways that can be found as you explore and these rapidly become something you seek out along with the nearest save room so you can travel freely back to your makeshift base of operations. You can see the doorway rooms marked in green on the map, and there is the familiar heal and save room marked in red. This freedom of traversal is extremely nice and allows you to move around without worrying too much about backtracking the entire way between where you are and the destination that you really need to be at. I realize that Symphony of the Night had this functionality as well, but the placement seemed way less handy than they are in Bloodstained with almost every area of the castle having its own portal room.
Previously I wrote a piece about the E3 demo and spent a lot of time talking about the combat in the game and very little of that functionality has changed. You are given so much free reign over how you want to approach the game be it with weapon choices that feel absolutely unique. They also all have their own hidden special moves that you find out about by reading the various bookcases scattered through the castle… or through experimentation with fighting game style inputs. Additionally the shards that you pick up through killing monsters give you a wide range of attacks that can be improved over time by collecting materials and visiting the Alchemist in town. Then there is also the layer of gear customization which seems to be wide and plentiful… giving you a ton of different methods of tweaking your game play to suit your own needs at the time.
Last night I go far enough to collect my very first Familiar, which is a sort of summoned battle pet creature that follows you around. They are not extremely effective and have their own leveling system, but the floating ghost knight for example randomly stabs things with that spear. I’ve seen others like a disembodied weapon that randomly slashes at things, and that I am likely going to farm until I get it tonight. That is another aspect of this game is the ability to farm monsters over and over until they finally drop a shard for you as it seems like most everything has the capability of dropping something. This absolutely tweaks the center of my brain that used to farm the Colosseum in Final Fantasy VI just to see what all I could get from it.
Another great mini game is Todd the Killer Barber who can only be freed if he gives 666 unique makeovers. So this introduces the player customization system and you can visit him at any point to tweak your hairstyles, hair color, skin color, primary and secondary outfit colors and it looks like maybe other items later on. He asks you to collect books for him that will teach him new hairstyles to use, and late last night I managed to get one of these. Tonight one of the very first things I plan on doing is making my way back to him and seeing what happens when I turn in a book. This however is a perfect example of the quirky systems in the game that I find so damned charming.
This game just nails everything that I want in a Castlevania game, right up to the weird monster types that you end up fighting. This is some sort of a demon cat, that I feel is likely based on someone on the teams cat. There is a similar giant disembodied dog head that likely probably represents a dog from the team as well. Hidden somewhere in the game is apparently a monster type that is exactly Shovel Knight, that has the ability to drop a shovel that you can then use as a weapon. There are rumors that Shovel Knight will be added as a playable character at some point, and I have a feeling that the Save Rooms are a bit of an homage to Hollow Knight with their insectoid appearance. This game is just too perfect for words at times.
I am not really sure what else I can say at this point. Bloodstained has delivered on everything I had hoped it would be, and now I am just hoping it does well enough to be able to fund further games in this series. The point where it absolutely shines is the fact that this universe is already way more intricate and interesting than the Castlevania mythos ever was. Castlevania was effectively cramming as many Transylvanian/Dracula themed tropes into one game as humanly possible. Bloodstained presents a similar feeling universe but one with a way more subtle storyline about the Alchemists guild unleashing a horde of demons on the world, and you as a Shardbinder… one of their experiments are trying your best to right the wrong they created. There are interesting characters that you get to know through the course of the gameplay, and a direction that the game seems to be going as various story paths will likely eventually collide.
I would highly recommend picking the game up and giving it a shot for yourself. However I feel a little odd in doing so given that I have ulterior motive of wanting the game to do well. I may or may not have purchased it on Switch as well as the backer copy that I got on Steam. I’ve additionally picked up the PS4 copy in a physical form because I think this is something that I really want to have a physical edition for. The game is presently available on those three platforms along with Xbox One, so if anything I have said sounds like something you might enjoy then you can get a copy on your gaming destination of choice. Bloodstained was an amazing birthday present… thanks Koji Igarashi (and team of course)!
Morning folks! I am getting a very late start this morning because… well… it’s my birthday and I slept in significantly later than normal. However at this point I have had breakfast and piddled around a bit and decided to go ahead and blog. I contemplated skipping because I am technically on vacation. One of the lessons I learned early in my career is that it is perfectly okay to take your birthday off. Each birthday seems to have a different reaction for me… some of them are broody and introspective and others relatively happy. So far 43 doesn’t seem to be coming with any major negative side effects, so we are going to call it a good one.
Last night I continued my madness and managed to finish the Trials of the Braves. When I started down this road at least partially inspired by Ashgar I had no clue how far I was from the finish. It turns out that I was three books away and between the last two days I managed to knock those out. The other side effect of this process is it seems to have cleared my mental block against tanking as I spent at least part of my night tanking a dungeon for Lyle. For some reason soloing a bunch of dungeons has allowed me to get back into the swing of Warrior-ing and in essence prepared me for the expansion. Now the irony is… I will have to relearn everything as soon as the patch hits because Warriors change quite a bit.
So now I am on the step that is going to likely cost a bunch of money depending on how much I can get various materia for. Essentially were I doing this when it was actually relevant it would have cost an awful lot more. Now however I just need to research the number of materia that I need and then just buy whatever is cheap. There is a certain amount of pride in infusing the correct stats, but me… I don’t care at all and simply want a cool looking axe that comes from the end of the chain.
As far as today however…. I have already been playing my Birthday gift as I had a kickstarter backer key waiting for me in my inbox when I woke up this morning. It was awfully nice of Bloodstained Ritual of the Night to release on my birthday. I will say they have scaled up the difficulty a bit since the backer E3 demo and scaled down the loot drops. Also there is some weirdness where my Backer Demo character tried to transfer across… but did so poorly so it saved my progress but none of my gear making it extremely difficult to survive without any weapons or armor.
So far the game has improved greatly since even the Backer Demo, namely in the lighting and shading department. I am looking forward to playing some more of it, so I think I will go do that now. I hope you have a great day and I greatly appreciate all of the warm Birthday wishes I have gotten this morning.
