Good morning friends. I have to say our Medium beach front home in Shirogane has grown on me in my time back in the game. For the longest time, I was deeply nostalgic about our original FC home, but I think more than anything I was nostalgic about that era in the game when I was so engaged with it. The house simply became shorthand for explaining my feelings, and I put way more importance on that one location than I really should have. Now that I have been back in the game and have actually reached out to begin meeting our neighbors, I have come to realize that we are still in a pretty phenomenal neighborhood. Yesterday morning while I was blogging I taught one of our neighbors the joy of hanging out on the roof of our home and the amazing view it provides. There is a bit of a process to get up there, but I spend enough time that the neighbors are finding their way up there as well.
The highlight of yesterday is represented by another roofline shot, this time of me in my level 70 gathering gear set. I usually glamour this stuff, but I have to say the base appearance is pretty adorable. I’ve been spending a not-insignificant amount of time in the Diadem and been focused on trying to get at least one level per day on all three of the gathering professions. I need to catch Fishing up at this point, but right now I have Botany and Mining both at level 71. Ultimately the reason behind this push is twofold. Firstly I want to be able to contribute more than my single solitary map each week to Maps night, and that requires a high-level gatherer to get those level 80 maps. Secondly, I figure having a max level gatherer will make leveling all of my crafting all that much easier because I can make my way into the Diadem to stockpile the materials I need for the Ishgard Restoration stuff. For now I am putting most of those materials gained on the market which serve as a pretty reasonable way to gain a little cash quickly.
The other big activity that I knocked out last night was starting the process of catching up on the YorHa Alliance raids based on Nier Automata. I had started the precursor quest some time ago, but like so many things in my quest log never quite got around to finishing it. I ran The Copied Factory and The Puppet’s Bunker last night, and at the end of the night unlocked the final of this triad of raids The Tower at Paradigm’s Breach. This area of the game is way more detailed than I expected, allowing players to basically roam around the areas represented by each raid in a sort of exploration mode. I am pretty certain that The Copied Factory is straight from the beginning of Nier Automata, or at least is very similar to what I remember from the beginning of that game. Side note I really need to get back to that and finish it at some point.
My favorite visual from the raids is when the entire alliance queues up at a checkpoint and then takes the pods down to the next area at the same time. It ends up looking like a roller coaster as everyone glides down in unison. I was apparently extremely lucky last night because, on the second raid, I managed to get bot the 2B and 2P minions, and then after the raid Rae ended up mailing me two of the hairstyles that she got from her own run. There was a lot going on, but I like this series far better than I do the Void Ark sequence from Heavensward or the Ivalice sequence from Stormblood. There are a few mechanics that are not messaged like FFXIV normally are, but I adapted. I did however take several deaths to stupid things as I was learning. I really want to farm a set of gear from this series of raids, maybe for my dancer because it seems fitting.
All told I am extremely impressed by the level of the content and am also realizing that I need to dive back into the Eden raids and finish those out. I think I only actually did the first set of them, but they were pretty enjoyable. I need to tabulate the results of my raiding survey and try and zero in on both a group of 8 players and a timeslot to start trying for more focused raiding attempts. The Scholar is still progressing and I managed to get another two levels on it, and finish off a level on the Dark Knight. I have a lot of different balls in the air but so far juggling them is providing me with a good amount of enjoyment. The only thing that could potentially derail this is me getting distracted by another game… and I am afraid that might be happening soon.
Yesterday there was a Bungie Showcase event that I believe tied into the larger Gamescom show happening this week. During it they revealed the trailer for The Witch Queen expansion, and the new seasonal content that started last night. I miss Destiny 2, and I am feeling the subtle tug as some of my friends are engaging with it again. For a long time I managed to play both FFXIV and Destiny 2 at the same time, and given that they are wildly different experiences I might be able to make it work. So at some point over the next few days I expect to dip my toes back into D2 and see how well that concept works. My core focus remains FFXIV, but there are times I could go for something a little more visceral.
The post Rooftop Magic appeared first on Tales of the Aggronaut.
Because I generally have my Mixtape Monday thing going on at the beginning of the week, Tuesdays have turned into a bit of a “Catching Up On the Weekend” day. I am still solely devoted to Final Fantasy XIV in my game time because I have a whole slew of goals to complete before moving into Endwalker. The biggest of these is that I want to try and hit level 80 on every single job before the expansion drops. Over the weekend I wrapped up the Ninja and got it to 80 and geared to a reasonable state. This means that I have shifted focus to Scholar, that I had been sorta low key working on in the background. Leveling through roulettes and all of the bonus experience activity that I mentioned in my Alt Jobs post, meant that on many days I ran out of things that were effective to be doing. So when that happened I would grab a character that was next in line and start working on their leveling in Palace of the Dead or Heaven on High.
So essentially I have many things moving at once. Dragoon sitting at 74 has largely been my Faerie/Hunt soak for when I am working on a lower level character and still wanted to do those Shadowbringers activities. I am not in a super rush to level it to 80, and as such, it is sitting there slowly gaining levels when I have time. Scholar has been my core focus and I managed to get it up to 72, which admittedly opens up Bozjan Front as an option. I still don’t really love that content but I might do some more of it as a healer because there are just certain activities that I do not want to do as a healer. Right now I am doing MSQ Roulette, PVP Roulette, Faerie quests in Il Mheg, and Alliance Raids on a daily basis, which adds enough experience to gain roughly a level and a half each day. This is good enough for my tastes and keeps me from having to heal more stressful content. For Alliance Raids I am absolutely dropping if I end up getting randomized into the harder content because I am a fairly shitty healer.
For the daily dungeon roulettes, I have shifted over to working on the Dark Knight. Tanking is my jam and this is probably going to be worked up slowly similar to Dragoon as a soak for any content that I don’t want to partake in on a given focused character. Once I get the Scholar up and gear, I will probably start running up another DPS. So that leaves either Monk or Black Mage, both classes that I find enjoyable in their own way but I do not love. Black Mage is very immobile and wants to stand still and cast spells which I find distasteful. Monk on the other hand has the opposite problem of being very mobile and needing to move around the target so that you can fire off specific positional attacks focused on either the back or sides of the mob. Neither is really my jam, but I am rapidly running out of things to level up that is pure joy for me. I enjoy Dragoon and I enjoy tanking… so I am rationing those classes as a way of making the rest of the grind feel a little better.
In other news… I said I was quitting the house search and I apparently lied. I am continuing to low-key chase houses as they open and the truth is something is opening up almost every day. Generally speaking, I go hang out near the placard while queueing for activities and then click it while waiting on the queue to pop. I still feel like I don’t have a shot in hell at getting a home prior to Ishgard’s opening and the lottery system going in. The problem there however is that it is highly unlikely that Ishgard will open in the Endwalker launch patch. What is more likely is that it will come with the 6.1 patch that usually lands three months after the launch of the game. That means the .1 patch is likely going to land sometime around February putting the Lottery system roughly six months away. This at least gives me a chance, albeit a very slim one.
We have been doing this thing where on Sunday nights we gather up all of the level 80 maps that we have access to and then run through them for prizes. These can be extremely lucrative, and this past Sunday for example I cleared about 500k gil in cash drops alone. We still struggle a bit in organizing the people and getting everyone online in a timely manner, but we have been shooting for starting around 7 pm CDT. If you happen to be on the Cactuar server at that time hit me up and we may have an opening. This past week we only had one map NOT open a portal. We didn’t make it terribly deep into many of them, and our best attempts were booted on the 4th step, but we did manage to fight a large number of Elder Summons. This meant we got a few more people the Frog minions and several of us walked away with the paint emotes. I love this chill activity at the end of my week.
In the last bit of news, it seems as though the server congestion has gotten to the point where Square has completely shut off the ability to create new characters within the Aether data center. That means if you were hoping to either move to Cactuar or roll an alt there, your window has closed and I am doubtful it will open again until well after the Endwalker launch. Over the last few weeks a number of friends have relocated to our server, but for now, it appears that is completely off the table. The end result is that we are going to have to ultimately wait for world travel between data centers before anyone can hang out with us Aether folk again. I do greatly appreciate the way that Yoshi P addresses the players and if you want to read the full statement you can check it out here. The positive is however it seems that all of the Crystal data centers has been flagged as preferred and that means buffs until you reach level 70.
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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.
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.
