Posted in FFXIV, MMORPGs

FFXIV: 5.25 Relic Begins

Posted on by Aywren Sojourner

While I have worked on several relics throughout the expansions of FFXIV, I’ve never actually finished one all the way through. I have many that are in various stages of competition across 3 characters, but eventually the grind turns me away in the end – I just have too many other things to do to work on relic.

Last expansion’s Eureka was a neat idea, but the forced grouping and the grind were elements that I couldn’t get past, so that relic remained fairly much unstarted. And while I’m not going to hold my breath that we won’t eventually get a grind for this relic, I must say how it all started out was refreshing.

I won’t give any spoilers, but I’ll just say that players are tossed into a neat little story experience revolving around the Bozja resistance against the Empire and their history. It also ties in some of the story of the Ivalice raids and a good bit of background with Cid.

Best of all, it’s all done solo, but also unlocks an EX trial if you yearn for something more intense. Once you’ve unlocked the first relic, each job relic is 1K Poetics after, which isn’t that hard to come by. So it all starts out very easy and story-oriented, which is my preferred type of content.

I know that it’ll probably ramp up with a grind of some sort after this. But overall, the weapon is a nice one for non-savage players, with 5 open slots for materia, too. You do have to finish the Ivalice raids to access this — I only have two characters who have done this, but it was no sweat to unlock relic on them both in one night.

Posted in FFXIV, Gaming, MMORPGs

FFXIV: Bunnies Everywhere!

Posted on by Aywren Sojourner

And I’m not talking about Viera.

This year’s Hatching-tide event kicked off in FFXIV yesterday, and everwhere you look, you see people dressed in bunny outfits.

The event itself is pretty quick to complete, and actually requires you to wear the outfit in order to do the FATE to progress. While dressed as a bunny for the FATE — which has the goal of capturing chickens running wild — you have two skills: One for netting the chicken and one for throwing sticky stuff on the chicken to slow it down.

Get a bunch of people dressed up in bunny suits running after wild chickens with nets and… well… I think that paints a good enough picture of the event.

This is the first of two parts to the event — they’re breaking up the story quests like they did at Valentione’s. So something else is coming on April 5 to finish up the event as a whole. But even if you’re late to do the event, part 1 will still be available when part two releases. So that’s nice.

It didn’t take me all that much time to finish this up for all my alts, but it is a fun little FATE with an… interesting glamour and cute housing items. I’m all for some light-hearted fun right now, for sure.

Posted in Gaming, Nintendo Switch

Animal Crossing: New Horizons – Bringing the Smiles

Posted on by Aywren Sojourner

I know that a ton of people have picked up Animal Crossing: New Horizons lately, myself being one of them. I’ve played AC through out the years, ever since the original came out on the Game Cube in 2005. So I’m no stranger to the ways of Nook.

But what makes this release so different is the timeliness of it all. Right now, we can use more smiles, a place to chill, and a way to connect with people when it can’t be done IRL. AC:NH has been a way to do that.

My sister and I (pictured above) both preordered the digital game with the intention of playing together before all the work at home started for me. I got the word that we’ll be out of the office until the end of April now. This doesn’t bother me a whole lot as I’m usually a homebody. But I have to admit that it’s nice to have a social outlet.

The two of us hook up over Discord, sometimes including other friends and family, and we explore our islands and all the fun things Animal Crossing offers together, yet separately. Sometimes we visit, but a lot of our time is spent doing our own thing while just being on the other end of voice chat to talk about what changes have happened and what we’ve learned.

Oh, and those fun trips to islands of never-ending spawns of tarantulas. I’ve been there twice now. They’ve helped pay off house loans quite a bit.

I haven’t done anything super fancy with my island, Sojourn, yet. I’ve mostly been moving through the “story” and racking up the Nook Miles. Unlocking things and paying for larger house upgrades. Seeing who moves in, and learning to try to like the personalities, even if none of them are Kid Cat yet.

I’ve never been one to plan out my towns in the past, and don’t really have an idea for what I want to do with my island. I’ve seen a lot of very clever and creative use of space visiting the AC Reddit, so I may come up with something eventually.

The game is everything I loved in older Animal Crossing games, merged with a bit of survival-game crafting and the ability to decorate outside like never before. While the graphics aren’t hyper-realistic (this is AC…) there’s been many times the serene beauty of my island has struck me, especially as the sun gradually sets over the ocean.

This is pretty much all I could have wanted in an AC game, and I’m having a blast!

Posted in Blogging

Blapril Cometh – A Call to Bloggers

Posted on by Aywren Sojourner

I have been terribly out of the loop in the blogosphere lately, mostly because work (despite working from home) has super ramped up for me lately. When you write for work, and you’re putting all your energies into that, it’s not as easy to scrape off the left-over energy to write for fun.

That has effected my blogging, sadly, and my creative writing lately. I know this won’t last forever, but for the foreseeable future, I’ve only been posting when I find a topic that I can handle in a smaller scope.

But for those creative souls who have a lot more time on their hands lately, there’s a stirring within the blogosphere. Similar to Blaugust (blogging in August), I’d like to introduce Blapril (blogging in April).

How To Get Involved

Check out the official info post here to sign up for the event. Also, take a gander at the overview of the goals, the how-tos, a suggested schedule, and other fun things there.

If you want to jump in and meet other bloggers, bounce ideas for posts, ask questions, or just be social, you can also join the Blaugust Discord.

In the past, I’ve served as a mentor during Blaugust, and I’ve done my best to drop some informational posts during last year’s event. I’m afraid I can’t commit to it this time around – this one sprang up out of the blue (understandably) to encourage folks who are stuck at home to dust off the blog and find a helpful outlet during these times.

I think it’s a great idea, but as I noted, I’m way in over my head with work right now. I just can’t see myself being able to participate in the event in the capacity I’d like to. I’ll be cheering folks on from the sidelines, however, and I encourage anyone who wants to give blogging a try, or has an existing blog, to check this event out!

Posted in FFXIV, Gaming, MMORPGs

FFXIV: Making Level 80s

Posted on by Aywren Sojourner

Though I haven’t talked about my alt, Tai, very often lately, I haven’t forgotten about him. He’s smack dab in the middle of the Shadowbringers MSQ right now, somewhere in the level 76 quests.

In terms of story, this zone was not one of my favorite (the upper-half of the desert) especially since you have to duke it out with Ran’jit yet again in a role play as Thancred. I haven’t failed this fight yet, but I’m always worried that I will.

The reason I’m talking about Tai is that over the weekend, I finally leveled him to 80 on Dragoon (his main). Yes, he’s not done with MSQ and I’ve leveled him to 80. The power of beast tribe quests is strong!

Because I can now craft the facet gear (at least in normal quality), I’ve been piecing together a set of 480 stuff for him. This should put him in a really good spot to finish up the MSQ and push on into the patches after Shadowbringers. It’s been a long time since I’ve had him relevant and caught up on the story — thank you Trusts for making this much easier in Shadowbringers.

I still have far, far too many alts stuck in Stormblood or even further back that I need to move forward. But I wanted to at least finish up one character before I pushed on with another.

I also finished up leveling my bard to 80 on my main over the weekend. It’s the first non-casting DPS I’ve gotten there. This job was already hanging out at level 78 when I finished leveling my white mage, so a few more days of beast tribe quests got that done.

Next up, I’m working on Machinist with the goal of moving to consolidate all of my aiming gear. I really need to be taking Gunbreaker through Trusts to level my final group through the series, but I just haven’t been motivated to run more dungeons. I know it only takes about a month to get the job done, but I’m meh on the idea.

Anyhow, still making progress on things, even though it just takes some time. I’m not sure if I’ll be able to snag the amaro mount before the next expansion comes out or not. But in my defense, they keep adding new jobs to level! XD

Posted in FFXIV, Gaming, MMORPGs

FFXIV: Ranking with Ishgard Restoration

Posted on by Aywren Sojourner

Though most of my weekend was spent in Animal Crossing, one thing did happen in FFXIV that I wanted to note.

As I’ve posted before, I was pretty active around the Diadem and in leveling my final crafting jobs on my alt, Amon, during the release of the new phase of the Ishgard restoration. I wasn’t there for an actual event, but I sure did my part through leveling and farming Kupo of Fortune. I even leveled another alt from nothing to 50+ on a couple of crafting jobs while the Diadem drops were still dirt cheap to buy off the marketboard.

I was active, but only at night when I was home from work. I also was active across several different characters, though most active on Amon.

That’s why it surprised me when I got a message in the in-game mail…

So one of the things they added to the Restoration this time around was a ranking and leaderboard system. I hardly paid much attention to it, though I could hear by the chatter in the Diadem that some folks had farmed hours and hours to earn a top spot.

I considered what I did pretty casual. Again, I spread it across characters, and there were some nights I didn’t even go out in the Diadem! But still, somehow, I managed to rank in the top 100! Go figure!

The title is a little… interesting… but it was a pleasant surprise overall!

Posted in Uncategorized

FFXIV: Fun Diadem Weekend

Posted on by Aywren Sojourner

Most of this weekend was spent hanging out in the Diadem and working on the Ishgard Restoration. As before, leveling crafters is crazy-fast, though leveling gatherers still takes a bit more time.

My major focus was to get my alt’s final three jobs leveled from 70 to 80. Despite the time spent gathering, and being bottlenecked by tiger leather on two jobs (ugh), I was able to do this pretty quickly over the weekend.

This also gave me all sorts of opportunities to play the new Kupo of Fortune. I had a bit of luck here and there, and ended up with more dhalmel whistles than I could use, so I gave some away to FC members.

I also won the Coffer of Kupos, which gives you that spiffy outfit that Amon is wearing above. Along with the new paissa minion, several parasols, lots of bread emotes, and some orchestrion rolls.

These things are currently not too difficult to come by, so the price has severely tanked on the market board. As has the price of all the materials people have been gathering in the Diadem. This makes for some super cheap and fast leveling of crafters.

I got another alt from level 1 to 50 in the space of a few hours – which included some time gathering in the Diadem. I figured out that it was just faster to buy the mats (and at a lower gathering level, Diadem doesn’t give enough scrips to be worth it).

I also spent much time working on earning scrips on Amon so I could get him the new sheep mount.

I still have a bunch of stuff to earn with scrips, so I don’t foresee myself stopping now that Amon has all his crafters leveled. I also have to go back and do much of this on my main, as well.

That doesn’t mean that I’ve been ignoring other things, though. I finished leveling White Mage to 80 on my main this weekend, which means all of my healers are sorted and I could toss out a lot of leveling gear. I also got to Bloodsworn rank with the Stewards — the new gathering beast tribe. I’ll finish that up on Amon today, too.

I was good and finished up all of 5.2 MSQ on Amon, as well. So that puts me even with both of those characters. I just need to continue to progress on my third character – Tai – through Shadowbringers.

I’ve also been working on crafting the 480 gear for Amon, slowly but surely. Right now, that’s bottlenecked by the items you need to buy with tomes. Eventually, I hope to craft gear for Tai once he hits level 80. But that’s a matter of actually getting him there. 🙂

So, there’s still a ton to do for me in FFXIV.