I talked about Main Story Roulette some time back and it being one of the best ways to casually level a character. Last night I encountered the problem with this system, and weirdly one I had not encountered at any point prior in the process of pushing the Samurai to 80. The challenge is that when you queue for MSQ Roulette you are ultimately hoping to get Praetorium, because it is worth a significantly larger chunk of experience than the other option Castrum Meridianum. I’ve managed to pull Praetorium more times than not, and as a result when Castrum comes up I curse my fate… but largely play along nicely.
Apparently I hit a streak of people who are not willing to waste their daily bonus on Castrum. It took me roughly fifteen minutes to get through the queue each time, and when I got the first group within seconds all but four of us had bailed on Castrum. You can’t really run the place with four players reliably so I bailed as well and re-queued. Another fifteen minutes later I drew Castrum once again… and this time one of the two tanks refused to move until someone dropped from the party. Again once one person left there was a cascade of leaves until I opted to bail rather than run it down over half of the people.
A third time I sat through the queue and a third time I drew Castrum… and once again before I had even loaded in fully we were down a handful of people. The problem there is that no one queues for MSQ Roulette with the party in progress box checked. There is no reason to do this given that you would in theory be missing out on a bunch of experience that comes from the various boss kills. Again I returned to the queue a fourth time and finally this time it was Praetorium and everyone happily powered their way through it.
Unfortunately that does not stop the fact that Square has a problem on their hands, where a Roulette can produce one of two results and one of them is so disliked that folks are willing to take the 10 minute debuff that keeps them from queuing rather than deal with wasting their bonus on it. In theory they should probably buff Castrum to be able to reward the same amount of experience that Praetorium does. However if they do that… it will swing the balance in the other direction given that Castrum takes about half as long to run as Praetorium. There aren’t any great answers to this conundrum, but seeing as I encountered it three times in a row last night… it is a problem.
Belghast the Undead Warrior on Bloodsail Buccaneers NA-PVE RP server
The other thing that I took care of last night was reserving my character names on Bloodsail Buccaneers the PVE RP server that we plan on rolling on. As a result Belghast the Undead Warrior now exists there and is ready to start leveling when the gates open later this month. I also reserved a Belghast on Mankrik as a back up, but I doubt I will be using it. I don’t have a lot to say on this point other than the fact that if you are wanting names, you might want to log in and do this thing yourself. Several of my friends have already missed out on their chosen character names which is frustrating.
It seems as though I have steered a good number of my Horde side guild Facepull towards this server as well. So in theory we should have a decent number of people around at launch. Largely I just want to be able to field guild groups for dungeons and such. I fully expect to be running a bunch of Ragefire and Wailing Caverns. The only negative about playing a Forsaken is that they are so far away from everything. However the pull of having a second fear break is too great not to roll Undead.
One of my favorite things to do in XIV is mess around with housing. While the housing system isn't perfect, it's certainly not the worst and over the years several handy 'bugs' have been discovered, leading to a larger variety of ways that decorating enthusiasts can design their homes. Many designers feature their newest builds on their blogs, and even offer their services to other players. I enjoy checking out some of those blogs for random inspiration, and try to design cozy interiors fitting of my characters. I'm gonna show off some of Isalenne's house today with a small screenshot spam...
Plot 36, 12th ward in Mist on Cactuar. Isa's house is still a WIP - I was lucky enough to snag a medium a month or so before Shadowbringers. I managed to get a lot of it done, but there are a few rooms and areas that I haven't finished yet, but I do like what I have so far.
The yard is ... I haven't really figured it out yet, but at least this corner has a nice view of the beach.
Still playing around with the main floor... right now this leads to a comfy room with a fireplace on the left, and an unfinished kitchen on the right.
I've probably spent the most time in the upstairs library ... lining up a bunch of lofts, windows and planters. It was frustrating at times, but I'm really happy with the end result. I was inspired by the popular false ceiling look that a lot of designers have been using, and I wanted lots of light and plants. There's also the bathroom, master bedroom and guest bedroom up here, but only about two of those are finished.
I decided on a small bar/recreation room theme for the majority of the basement. The corner next to the bar has some couches, and the loft above it has seats, too. On the other side of the fountain is another fish tank and some musical instruments.
The sewing room is in the back and also the dreaded junk storage area - please don't look, it's a mess!
Feel free to stop by Isa's place, hopefully I'll be finishing up the last few rooms and details soon~!
I’ve decided to try a new series of sorts called “Weekend Update” (name shamelessly stolen from SNL) since my Monday morning post tends to just be a rundown of what happened over the weekend. Right now it feels like I have a bunch of competing projects that I have theoretically been juggling reasonably well. At the very least they all appear to be making progress at the same time, which is I guess the master plan behind the juggling.
One of them has been getting a second 80 in Final Fantasy XIV, and this process has largely involved me logging in every day and running the Main Story Roulette. This means that I have seen an awful lot of the cut-scenes surrounding Praetorium and Castrum Meridianum. While it isn’t the same voice actor… every time I hear a Gaius cutscene it reminds me of Dracula from Symphony of the Night. I seem to be the only one because when I type “what is man but a miserable pile of secrets” in party chat I just get confused responses.
As of last night I am just a sliver into 79 and have been taking this opportunity to clean up a bunch of the side quests that I never got around to doing. I’ve finished cleaning up the Dwarven and related areas in upstate Kholusia. I moved over after that to the secret zone that you end up at around 79, and it has a ton of quests to knock out. In theory if I pull another Praetorium I might luck out and get close enough to 80 to be able to ding off of a Trials roulette or something similar. Then begins the process of doing a bunch of dungeon grinding to gear it!
Destiny 2 – PC
On the Destiny 2 front I have reached a point where I just can’t bring myself to push any further. During this weeks TWAB, it was announced that they were lowering the total number of EAZ Miniboss kills from 100 to 50. This means in theory if I just wait for the Tuesday patch, I can log in that night and get my purple armor set without a bunch of mindless grinding. As a result I have spent my time either working on the Hunter to get her the blue set, or working on various other things I have neglected like the loaded question quest. This is why I am rocking a double fusion rifle loadout above.
After I upgrade the armor I will need to sort out what exactly I can do as far as the masterwork quests. However I have heard that these will be something you could complete after the Solstice event is over. I don’t really want to risk it however so I am going to try and knock out what I can while it is going on.
World of Warcraft – PC
I don’t have a proper explanation for this one. I had not logged in since October of last year and then suddenly this weekend I found myself patching my addons up and logging into what had been my main when I was last actively playing. One of the things that I dislike about World of Warcraft when you are several patches behind, is that there is no real way of knowing what content you should be doing short of scouring WoWhead. The main story quest is a point of frustration for a lot of people in Final Fantasy XIV, but I love that there is zero risk of me doing things out of sequence.
I absolutely blindly accepted the quest that the game was trying to send me to… and apparently unlocked Nazjatar instead of all of the content I had seemingly missed between now and then. I guess this makes sense from a World of Warcraft perspective because it is a game that is constantly abandoning what has come before for the new and shiny future. I am going to blame this on the fact that we spent a lot of time this weekend talking about WoW Classic, and on that front we are going to be rolling Horde side on the PVE RP server Bloodsail Buccaneers. If you have interest in this nonsense let me know.
Featuring: Ammo, Ashgar, Belghast, Kodra, Tamrielo and Thalen
Tonight we have a show where we clean up the trello card and run through a bunch of stuff that has largely rolled over from other shows. First up we discuss Games Workshop finally putting the pre-Age of Sigmar world to bed and cleaning up the factions. From there we discuss Kodra’s experiences with the very early access Gloomhaven Computer Game. Kodra talks a bit about Gencon 2019 more specifically the Stellaris Board Game and True Dungeon. We discuss Pathfinder 2nd Edition, and a very brief discussion about Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3. Bel really wishes someone else was reading House of X and Powers of X so he could discuss it. Lastly Thalen talks a bit about the Gundam Mobile game and how it is still better than New Gundam Breaker. Topics Discussed:
