Final Fantasy XIV

Jo-Jo the Man Faced Dog #Blaugust2016

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Now that I'm back playing Final Fantasy XIV, I will of course be participating in any limited time game events that come along. Of course there are the holiday events that we get every year, the next one of which starts tomorrow and has a Super Sentai theme this time around. But right now, there is a collaboration event going on with Yo-kai Watch. And I love it.

Okay, so the event itself is pretty much just a long FATE grind. Earn new Yo-kai minions by grinding FATES wearing a Yo-kai Watch, then earn weapons to use for glamouring by grinding more FATES with those minions summoned. The event runs a little over two months, and that's good because it'll take a lot of FATES to earn weapons for every class. So far I've got the Bard, Summoner, Scholar, and Paladin ones and am working on Machinist.

Each minion is a character from the Yo-kai Watch games; there are a number of cat spirits, a couple that I believe are bears, a nine-tailed fox spirit, and so forth.

And then there's Manjimutt.

Gaze upon his awesome countenance and be humbled

Yokai are Japanese spirits, some of which were once living beings. For instance Jibanyan, one of the mascot Yokai, was a normal cat that got run over by a truck. Manjimutt was a salaryman who died alongside a poodle, resulting in the two being merged into a single Yokai. He's actually based on a Japanese urban legend, the jinmenken. This is the kind of fascinatingly weird Japanese mythology I just love.

So that's what I've been up to in FFXIV when not raiding. Collecting weird ghost pets and weapons associated with them. Manjimutt is probably going to my go-to pet summon for the near future, because he's just hilarious. And as I discovered when learning more about him to write this post, he's also quite the dancer.


Activate Interlocks! #Blaugust2016

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Last night was, I believe, the fourth night of our recently reconstituted raid team's journey through the content that has been added to Final Fantasy XIV in our absence. Having made our way through the 5th through 7th stages of the Alexander raid we found ourselves facing what most of our group referred to as Voltron. I know who he really is though. He's Bruticus.

Activate Interlocks! #Blaugust2016
He's formed by Onslaughter, Brawler, Blaster, Vortexer, and Swindler
Unlike the previous couple of stages, this one was entirely one long fight against the robots. First Onslaughter, then the remaining four in pairs, and finally all five combined into the mighty Brute Justice. It took us a few tries; first to get DPS focused or split in the right places at the right times and then to tighten everything up so we could finish the fight before getting steam cleaned to death. We did it though, and I hope we go back and beat him up some more in the future because it was a fantastically fun fight.

Activate Interlocks! #Blaugust2016
Cool adventurers never look at the explosion
After we were finished with that we wrapped up the night with some attempts at Extreme Ravana, the boss we had been working on when most of us drifted away from the game. We were quickly reminded that better gear only gets you so far in this game; mechanics are still king. The whole fight involves a lot of movement and in the second half it turns into a complicated dance to direct attacks where you want them and not get anybody killed. We came pretty close though, and I'm certain we'll finish him off next time. After that's done I suppose Extreme Thordan would be the next step along the way? It's been far too long since I faced off against the Knights of the Round.

Activate Interlocks! #Blaugust2016

by
Last night was, I believe, the fourth night of our recently reconstituted raid team's journey through the content that has been added to Final Fantasy XIV in our absence. Having made our way through the 5th through 7th stages of the Alexander raid we found ourselves facing what most of our group referred to as Voltron. I know who he really is though. He's Bruticus.

He's formed by Onslaughter, Brawler, Blaster, Vortexer, and Swindler
Unlike the previous couple of stages, this one was entirely one long fight against the robots. First Onslaughter, then the remaining four in pairs, and finally all five combined into the mighty Brute Justice. It took us a few tries; first to get DPS focused or split in the right places at the right times and then to tighten everything up so we could finish the fight before getting steam cleaned to death. We did it though, and I hope we go back and beat him up some more in the future because it was a fantastically fun fight.

Cool adventurers never look at the explosion
After we were finished with that we wrapped up the night with some attempts at Extreme Ravana, the boss we had been working on when most of us drifted away from the game. We were quickly reminded that better gear only gets you so far in this game; mechanics are still king. The whole fight involves a lot of movement and in the second half it turns into a complicated dance to direct attacks where you want them and not get anybody killed. We came pretty close though, and I'm certain we'll finish him off next time. After that's done I suppose Extreme Thordan would be the next step along the way? It's been far too long since I faced off against the Knights of the Round.

Blaugust Strikes Again #Blaugust2016

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Another year has passed and Blaugust has come around again. Another opportunity to try and get in a habit of regular blogging. I made it a good few months keeping at least a weekly schedule after Blaugust ended last year; perhaps I'll be able to keep it going longer this time around. I would like to pick up the ongoing D&D and book review features I was doing and get them going again. I haven't decided yet if I want to go back and review books I've read in the interim, or just start fresh. The latter is more in keeping with the spirit of the thing, but a couple of those books are ones I'd really like to talk about. Maybe I'll just catch up on them by doing additional reviews during the week.

Part of the reason I started posting less is that I fell out of playing MMOs and stopped having those as a source of content. For whatever reason most of us who play Final Fantasy XIV together stopped logging in altogether and went to do other things either singly or in groups. Warframe served as the primary group game for a few of us for a while but ultimately it got repetitive and stopped being a daily thing. We tried out Archeage and Blade & Soul, at Tamrielo and Belghast's urging respectively, but neither really grabbed me beyond the early levels.

Within the past month or so, though, pretty much all of the Aggrochat group have jumped back into FFXIV and been getting caught up on it. We played up through the end of the current expansion and defeated the final boss, Nidhogg, and have made Monday a regular raid night to work on the other raid content that either we didn't make it through before we left (Extreme Ravana, mostly) or has been added in the meantime (More floors of Alexander, Sephirot, and so on). It was pretty cool how quickly we all got back in the swing of it and were able to take on new (to us) content. We don't know yet how long it'll be before the next Expansion hits, but I feel like there's enough to do to hold us most if not all of the way to it.

Not Sephiroth. This is a different guy. He lives in a tree.

When not raiding, I've been working on getting additional combat and crafting jobs leveled up using the Beast Tribe quests that were added since last we played. Just like with the Ixal quests in 2.0, Moogle crafting quests are a quick way to level otherwise grindy crafting jobs, and the Vath and Vanu Vanu quests scale to the level of the class you do them as and award a good chunk of XP. I finally got Paladin to level 60 and can theoretically tank now, though I don't have the necessary item level to run current content with it. That's easily fixed with tomestones though, I just need to collect enough. Next up is Summoner / Scholar so that I have a healing job available if needed.