Ashs Adventures

Blog Posts from Ashgar on Ash’s Adventures website.

On Revenge

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Blaugust Post #7

I still don’t take enough screenshots.

FF14 recently added an option where you can go into dungeons as an “undersized party” which is the only way to enter with fewer than the required number of people, and also skips the level sync portion. In all honesty I’m not sure what the intent is, but we’ve used it for two things: Entering level 50 raids at 60 and soloing old content.

Into Darkness

Before I even properly leveled anything, one of the first things I did was go into Dzemael Darkhold on my warrior (at 50) and see if I could solo the thing. DD is a level 44 dungeon, and at the time I needed a relic drop from there and was quite tired of running it at the proper level.Turns out that except for the final boss, not only is it possible, it’s easy. The final boss is also possible, but considerably less easy. I always liked doing similar things in WoW, so I think this got me hooked on trying to solo things here.

On Revenge

Further Endeavors

Fast Forward about a month, and I have a level 60 Paladin, ready to try my hand at some tougher content. Still needing Relic drops, I decided to start with Amdapor Keep, one of the “starting” level 50 dungeons. This took a bit more doing than Dzemael Darkhold, especially because the final boss has a healing debuff. I’ve been working my way down the list since then. I haven’t had any success with Copperbell (Can’t keep up DPS on the boss and do mechanics), or Lost City (The first boss just eats you, which is fatal with no party members). I did manage to solo Wanderer’s Palace and Halatali. I still have quite a few to go, so we’ll see where the brick wall is. I suspect that if I run into issues as a tank, I could always come back as one of the Arcanist classes once I get to 60.

On Revenge

by

Blaugust Post #7

I still don’t take enough screenshots.

FF14 recently added an option where you can go into dungeons as an “undersized party” which is the only way to enter with fewer than the required number of people, and also skips the level sync portion. In all honesty I’m not sure what the intent is, but we’ve used it for two things: Entering level 50 raids at 60 and soloing old content.

Tam-Tara (Hard)

Into Darkness

Before I even properly leveled anything, one of the first things I did was go into Dzemael Darkhold on my warrior (at 50) and see if I could solo the thing. DD is a level 44 dungeon, and at the time I needed a relic drop from there and was quite tired of running it at the proper level.Turns out that except for the final boss, not only is it possible, it’s easy. The final boss is also possible, but considerably less easy. I always liked doing similar things in WoW, so I think this got me hooked on trying to solo things here.

goring blade

Further Endeavors

Fast Forward about a month, and I have a level 60 Paladin, ready to try my hand at some tougher content. Still needing Relic drops, I decided to start with Amdapor Keep, one of the “starting” level 50 dungeons. This took a bit more doing than Dzemael Darkhold, especially because the final boss has a healing debuff. I’ve been working my way down the list since then. I haven’t had any success with Copperbell (Can’t keep up DPS on the boss and do mechanics), or Lost City (The first boss just eats you, which is fatal with no party members). I did manage to solo Wanderer’s Palace and Halatali. I still have quite a few to go, so we’ll see where the brick wall is. I suspect that if I run into issues as a tank, I could always come back as one of the Arcanist classes once I get to 60.

On Ships that have Sailed

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Blaugust Post #6

It’s interesting seeing things about a game that I’m done playing. If you are unaware, WoW: Legion was announced today, with the addition of Artifact Weapons (among other things). With this, they finally, finally have a weapon that feral druids give a damn about because it looks cool. (Ok, there was one other.) The Druid relic weapon enables form customization for feral and guardian druids, something that has been a complaint since I started playing and was kind of, sort of, not really addressed in Wrath, with the addition of forms based on hair/skin color.


It’s taken me a while of not playing WoW to realize that I care more than I thought about how my character looks when playing MMOs, and going back to the same cat/bear forms is kind of a drag. The transmog system was a great step in the right direction, but no matter what my normal armor looked like, I still turned into the same bear. No matter how awesome that weapon upgrade was, I sure couldn’t see it in cat form. Really I’m glad that they’re doing something about this, but it’s maybe too little, too late.

On Ships that have Sailed
Other things they’re adding sound cool, like the class hangouts for all of the classes (Monks, Druids, and DKs pretty much already had these, but it’s nice to spread the love). The Artifact weapons look a lot like the weapon upgrades in Destiny (which despite my overall thoughts on Destiny, is a cool system) so I hope they work out here too. If MMO-Champion’s writeup is to be believed, they might even understand why 5-person dungeons are worth keeping around. It’ll be interesting to see where this one goes. WoW can be a successful, sustainable MMO even at numbers far below its current ones, so I think players of the game have a lot to look forward to. I just don’t think I’ll count myself among that number in the near future.

Also, I’m not sure anyone needed Demon Hunters.

On the Most Awkward Scene in Videogames

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Blaugust Post #5

Blaugust is pretty good at getting me to finish my drafts. This is a post about That Scene in Final Fantasy 10. It’s fairly early (a few hours in), and the game’s 13 years old, so this is all the spoiler warning you’re going to get. There is a scene fairly early on where Yuna is attempting to show Tidus how to laugh. It’s incredibly, unbelievably awkward, and it’s frequently pointed out as an example of bad writing, or localization. If you don’t believe me about this, see for yourself:

The thing is, I think this scene does exactly what it sets out to do, which is to demonstrate how Tidus is strange, and doesn’t fit in, and isn’t really adjusting well. Spira is not a terribly happy setting in FFX, and attempts to make it brighter are doomed to failure. In case you’re wondering, it’s also not any less awkward in Japanese. What might be worth arguing is the value of this. Tidus is the player avatar (for better or worse), I think and making him look stupid turns some players off the game. This is really part of a deeper JRPG vs. WRPG thing, but I won’t go into that here.