Bunny Fail Tank Returns

Bunny Fail Tank Returns

I’ve talked about this a bit in the past, but I have struggled with Final Fantasy XIV since finishing the Stormblood main story.  I am not exactly sure why, but after leveling my Warrior through the questing process…  and then grinding up a Samurai I bounced.  When I say I bounced… I bounced hard.  I just stopped logging in entirely and even didn’t care enough to log in for most of the major holiday events that have gone on.  At one point I made an attempt to get back into the game and pushed through the new MSQ content right up until I reached the Drowned City of Skalla.  I could not bring myself to tank that with a random group and I told myself… I would wait until I had friends around to run it with me.  That event never happened and I got distracted by a bunch of games in the meantime.

The problem with this is that it sort of set up an artificial barrier between me and the content.  It was as though I had some sort of a mental block preventing me at just throwing myself at content the way I used to be willing to.  I knew I needed something severe to get me off high center and back into caring about what was going on in Final Fantasy XIV.  There used to be a time when I willing to log in each night and run experts with completely random groups of players from the roulette system.  However I developed some sort of barrier against doing that… one that I think was slowly chipped away given how freely I am willing to do my “SOS Roulette” nonsense in Monster Hunter World.

Watch Sleep Deprived Bel tries to remember how to Fail Tank in FFXIV from Belghast on www.twitch.tv
As a result last night I used the presence of an audience as a bit of a kick in the butt to get me back into Final Fantasy XIV and doing dungeon content again.  I streamed for a little over two hours and in that time I believe I ran four dungeons and made some progress in the MSQ afterwards.  In truth were it not for the MSQ slowing the pace down significantly…  I might have streamed longer throwing myself at more dungeons for gear currency.  I managed to pick up a chestpiece with tokens and now feel like maybe I can do this thing and catch my gear levels up to something reasonable.  At the start of the night I was 313 item level and by the end I edged it up a bit to 315.  Skalla and the next set of patch dungeons all drop gear that is an incremental upgrade, as well as some tasty tasty currency.  Basically at this point I need to reach a state where I can start doing expert roulette again to play catch up.

Bunny Fail Tank Returns

After taking a break from streaming and FFXIV I hopped over to Monster Hunter World for awhile and spent some time running nonsense with Grace.  I have been mostly running hammer when we are doing stuff, because it is a weapon that I like quite a bit… and one that I want to get better at using.  There are definitely times when I am fighting something that it feels like having something more than a longsword in my arsenal would help greatly.  We took down a Squirrel Blimp and I managed to unlock the third of my elder dragons while she ran around trying to find the Great Girros.  I was not in terribly long as I was already in a fairly sleep deprived state from the previous nights fragmented sleep schedule due to the launch.  All in all though it was a pretty great night and I want to thank everyone that stopped by to tune in and chat with me.  Also huge thanks to Solaria who actually joined my discord and hung out with me while I eased my way back into Final Fantasy XIV.  It’s fun lobbing comments at text messages scrolling across twitch chat, but it is even more fun when you have someone hanging out in chat to talk to over voice as well.

AggroChat #192 – Essentials of Grind

Featuring:  Ashgar, Belghast, Grace, Kodra, Nephsys and Tamrielo

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This week we went a little off course from our normal show.  In truth we are all largely playing the same games we have been playing for the last few weeks.  Instead Ashgar proposed a topic where we discussed what makes a grind work in a game.  This eventually devolves into a discussion of mostly Monster Hunter World because it seems to have a really great grind mechanic.  We also discuss traditional JRPG grinding, MMO grinding, and a bit about why the Destiny 2 grind isn’t really working out.  Tune in and grind your faces off!

Topics Discussed:

  • Grinding in Games

AggroChat #191 – Insect Glaive is Vega

Featuring:  Ashgar, Belghast, Tamrielo and Thalen

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Generally speaking when I think we have a short show…  we end up recording a two hour long epic of nuance and random commentary.  This is not one of those situations.  We are still very much in a Monster Hunter shaped hole that may or may not be the footprint of the monster we are tracking.  That said we do talk a bit about DragonQuest Builders on the Switch and Radiant Historia on the 3DS.  However like clockwork we did in fact dig right back into the Monster Hunter goodness as we somehow managed to get Thalen to buy into this nonsense as well.

Topics Discussed:

  • DragonQuest Builders
  • Radiant Historia
  • Monster Hunter World

AggroChat #190 – Vegetarian Apex Predator

Featuring: Ashgar, Belghast, Kodra, Tamrielo and Thalen

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This week we record our 190th episode and for whatever reason each time we tick off a 10th episode it seems like a big deal.  Last week during the bustle of getting ready for a show I completely missed a topic so we are leading off with that.  Thalen talks a bit about the early access deck building game Slay the Spire.  From there we talk a bit about our continued addiction to Monster Hunter World in spite of its flaws on the group interaction side.  We talk a bit about our new D&D 5th Edition Campaign set in a custom game world of Tam’s design.  Kodra talks a bit about bouncing off of Warframe and that leads to a discussion about games and accessibility.  Tam and Ash describe Night in the Woods…  and it begins to sound an awful lot like Bel’s experiences with his own home town.  From there we attempt to close out the show but get into another discussion about Monster Hunter World before actually succeeding.

Topics Discussed

  • Slay the Spire
  • Monster Hunter World
  • Fallout: The Board Game
  • D&D 5e Campaign
  • Bouncing off Warframe
  • Accessibility and Games
  • Night in the Woods
  • More Monster Hunter