Gracie Status Update

Gear Valley Woes

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I’ve been happily poking at FFXIV over the last week. It doesn’t have its claws back in me super deep yet, but I have at least been enjoying myself. Part of what’s keeping me from fully embracing my return to the game is that I am once again stuck in a bit of a “gear valley”. By this I mean that my gear isn’t good enough to do the newest content yet, but it is good enough that doing the highest level content I can will only net me marginal upgrades at best.

I’m aware this is often an issue in MMOs but it feels more pronounced in this case. I’m not sure whether it is because my fastest option for gear is Weeping City, which is painful compared to its 2.0 counterpart, or whether it is the fact that the more fun options like Alex have prohibitive queue times. Anyway after playing for a week I’m only a couple points away from being able to run expert roulette. I know it isn’t the end of the world to have this delay but I want to be able to play with my friends and also see the new story stuff that’s such a key part of the game.

To prevent myself from burning out running the same two dungeons over and over for “bookrock” currency I also made a tiny alt. Alts in FFXIV are a terrible idea, since you can of course be every single class on one character without having to start the whole story over. On the flip side, seeing the beginning of the story again after several years has been pretty fun, and wandering around the woods outside Gridania has been surprisingly soothing even if it is full of gross bugs and fungus. It’s been forever since I spent more than 10 minutes at a time just questing in FFXIV, and it has been good for my enjoyment of the game. I’ll probably try to fold things back into my main and maybe spend some time leveling one of my lowest classes like lancer, but for now part of the fun is going back to the start like re-reading a beloved book. It is a nice way for me to remember how much I enjoy the game when I’m not slamming my head against a gear check wall.


Gear Valley Woes

Yet another return to FFXIV?

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Last night all my friends were about to do silly things in FFXIV and I suddenly decided it was time for me to join them. After some complications with my credit card and getting resubscribed that made me yell a lot, I managed to log in. I had tried to play using the free 4 day trial SE sent me over the holidays, but I mostly just looked at my quest log and full inventory, shrugged, and logged off. This time I had my friends around to goad me into doing things.

The thing ended up being Weeping City, which I had not yet set foot in. I had apparently done the quest to unlock it before I left though, so we could queue right away. Everything I had seen about the place called it “wiping city” or some variation, and I had definitely heard some tales of woe. Since I barely remembered what my buttons did I suspected we were in for a bad time. Instead it was the most ridiculous fun I’ve had in ages, and possibly the silliest thing I’ve ever seen in an MMO.

The first boss was fine, I barely remember what even happened. The second boss, the zombie guy, was by far the prize of the night. I had absolutely no idea what I was doing, and was trying to navigate by listening to my well-intentioned friends try to call out mechanics as we went along. Mostly I was failing, and since I was healing that led to various deaths and battle rezzes. At one point the majority of our alliance was down, and the others weren’t doing a whole ton better, but the boss was at maybe 20% health. Eventually our whole alliance was dead. Luckily our Limit Break 3 had just filled, so when one of the other alliance’s healers rezzed me I got to hit my shiny LB3 button and save everybody.

In a story about someone who knew what they’re doing, this would be where everyone pulled it together and won. Instead, I immediately died again and we continued to do pretty badly. I lost count of how many times I died and was rezzed. But we kept going, rezzing when we could and keeping maybe 5-10 out of the 24 people in the raid alive at any given time. Somehow, unbelievably, we actually won anyway. I didn’t keep track but I suspect every single person in the raid died at least once, and likely several times. I know I died at least 5 times and probably a lot more. If ever a raid fight deserved to be set to clown music it was this one. The whole thing probably would have gone twice as fast if we had just wiped and tried again. When we won I laughed harder than I have in ages. Thank you friends and random strangers in that raid, I needed that laughter more than you know.

Honestly the rest of the place passed in a blur. We wiped once on Ozma, but did fine the second attempt. That fight seemed neat. Then the last boss had some weird hair or something??? and we 1-shot her without much difficulty. We technically got through the whole place with only the 1 wipe on Ozma. My only regret is that I didn’t stop laughing long enough to take any screenshots!


Yet another return to FFXIV?

A Quiet Start to the New Year

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I’m doing my best to keep this place from being abandoned this year but lately I’ve had more to say in my book posts than anything else. There hasn’t been too much exciting going on in my gaming life to talk about. I’ve been mainly playing old staples like WoW and Diablo 3. Then there’s Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc which I have a lot to say about but need to wait so I can talk about it on the podcast instead. I’ll still give a quick status update here since the blog must go on!

First up, WoW. I’m definitely hitting a boredom stage with Legion now. I got enough artifact traits on my main class and spec to unlock the 5% boost and then promptly lost all interest in doing world quests. Or much of anything to be honest. I’ve been poking at alts but since there’s a much higher amount of effort, and specifically group content, needed to progress professions in Legion I haven’t been that motivated to care about my alts as much as I used to. Raiding has also reached an awkward plateau where we can fairly easily clear normal EN and ToV and heroic EN, but anything past that seems like too much effort for not much reward. I took a mini break from raiding over the holidays and was hoping to come back energized but instead I got the opposite. Now I’m looking forward to Nighthold being released next week(?!) so we’ll have a new challenge. If that doesn’t re-energize me then I suspect it will be time for a short break from the game.

In D3 news, oh hey it’s season 9! I’ve been enjoying this season far more than the past few, even though there’s not really much new to speak of. The anniversary event was small but a fun distraction at the start of the season. I think the big thing that has drawn me in this time around is that I’m not playing a demon hunter. The past few seasons I’ve stuck with demon hunter because it made life easy for completing the season journey. While I don’t actively dislike the playstyle like I do for melee classes, it still ranks below casters in terms of general enjoyment for me. So swapping to a witch doctor has been a breath of fresh, plague-and-spirit-filled air. While wizard is always going to be my favorite in terms of raw power and player fantasy, there’s something incredibly fun about the silly abilities of the witch doctor. My only regret is that I chose to play this class in a season where their free set bonus emphasizes dots instead of pets, so I don’t get to have swarms of zombies and such following me around while I throw piranhas at things. Anyway my initial plan for this season was just to get far enough to unlock the cosmetic stuff, but it looks like I might keep pushing the season journey a bit farther than that.

Last but not least, my reading list is still looming over me. I set my goodreads goal for this year at 12 books, which seems very reasonable. I don’t have a timetable for my reading challenge other than trying to get through at least one a month, and I have a lot of other books outside the challenge that I want to get through as well. That said, the review for the next item on the list may have some delay. The Mars Trilogy by Kim Stanley Robinson appears to be the first time in this challenge that I’ve encountered a series that I actually want to keep reading, so even though I have finished the first book I will be holding off on my review until I decide if I am going to read all three.

So that’s what I have been up to. Nothing exciting but nothing bad either so I can’t complain. I hope the new year is treating you well so far!


A Quiet Start to the New Year

Scattered

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The holidays are approaching fast and my brain is scattered in a billion directions trying to plan presents and decorations and cooking and travel. It is no wonder that I’ve been a bit scattered when it comes to gaming lately too. I’ve still been playing WoW. In what must be approaching a record for recent years I’ve been playing solidly since just before the pre-expansion patch. My interest is definitely starting to taper down now. The past few weeks I haven’t run any mythic+ dungeons and have barely been able to motivate myself to show up for raids. Most days I log in for my emissary quests and then wander off. I’ve gotten some mileage out of alts, but once they hit the level cap and have to run dungeons for professions quests I lose interest fast. I was hoping to get alchemy sorted on my newly-110 hunter, but the thought of having to do a quest in Vault of the Wardens stopped me cold. My next project may just be leveling things to 110 to see the class hall stories but it is frustrating that one of my key motivations for alting is so gated behind content I don’t like to engage with on alts.

Scattered

What I have been playing a ton of is Justice Monsters V. This is a minigame within Final Fantasy XV, which has been given a full mobile game treatment. It’s part pinball, part Puzzle and Dragons, and entirely fun. Individual games are on a timer so at most they can take 2-3 minutes which makes it perfect for a quick distraction in between holiday chores. It has a frustratingly bad pricing scheme for in-game purchases, but I’ve been playing for almost 2 weeks straight and haven’t felt like I needed to spend any real money to progress anyway. The game starts out very easy but the tables get progressively more interesting and the enemies get much stronger so it does have enough challenge to keep me from getting bored. Like PAD there’s obviously a lot of grinding to do to be able to upgrade and evolve your monsters. Unlike PAD, the method of leveling up is way less opaque. Also, I enjoy the pinball enough that it doesn’t feel like a grind yet. I’m genuinely enjoying playing monster pinball for its own sake and I get the occasional bonus of being able to power up my monsters every once in a while. The monsters you collect are all straight from the Final Fantasy universe, and while you don’t need to know anything about Final Fantasy to enjoy this game, it is a treat to see those recognizable creatures if you are a fan. It’s not the most complex and engaging game ever, but it is quite fun in quick bursts and  worth checking out for free.


Scattered