Aywren Sojourner: Gaming and Geek Life

I feel like I should make a bigger deal of this than I’m going to since I finally finished some goals that have been a long time coming. One of them is even a goal I set for my yearly gaming achievement.

It felt like pulling teeth, but last night, I finally finished leveling Astro to 60. I got to the point where running the Vault with squads was the best solo option. I even did it… once. It’s certainly not the cakewalk the lower level squad dungeons are, but it’s not impossible, either.

No matter, I just didn’t feel up to running Vault (a dungeon that’s not my favorite by any means) the number of times it would take to get me from 57 to 60. So, I did the actual best thing – I called on Syn to be my co-healer and pushed the rest of the way using Alliance roulettes.

Whenever I heal actual content, I’m reminded that while I’m not a terrible healer, there’s a lot I don’t know about the game from a healing perspective. Astro is not a good fit for me when it comes to healing as I either focus on healing or focus too much on cards… and one or the other suffers.

However, I got it done! Now, I’ll proceed towards 70 on beast tribe quests and regular quest clean up… cuz there’s no way I’m running the level 60 alliance raids on a healer. XD

I can also finally start focusing on the next job in line – Warrior. Unlike healing, I really don’t have the courage to try to tank these raids. I know it’s probably not terribly hard, but I’ll stick to squads and beast tribe quests for now.

God of the Hand

Not such a great title for a pretty great achievement.

I also finished leveling my final crafting job on my alt. So, every crafting/gathering job is at 70 and fully kitted out in scrip gear. What started out as me just messing around with gathering and crafting on an RP alt turned into full-on leveling a second omni-crafter.

It took me a bit over half a year to complete, once I got to seriously working on the progression. With an expansion just around the corner, the level cap is going to rise again, but I don’t really plan on rushing into it on this character. I’ll probably level my gatherers, but I tend to wait for the crafting beast tribe quests to make my way up the level ladder. I’m just not a fan of leves.

Maybe with the Ishgard reconstruction feature coming there might be more to do to level crafters and gatherers this time around. That would be very nice!

For now, I have a few other things I want to work on with Amon – namely Hildibrand quests and ranking up with non-crafting beast tribes. Using up all my daily beast tribe quests for crafting means I did almost nothing with the other tribes, and that’s something I want to remedy. There’s too many nice emotes, mounts and dances I still want to get for him!

I’m certainly not at a loss for things to work on until Shadowbringers, that’s for sure!

This isn’t actually a new-new room for our FC house, but one I just put some final touches on, making it ready to post about. I still think there can be some additional wall decor added, but I’m holding off to see what the new expansion releases for housing before investing a whole lot more.

Here we have a rec room – there’s an attended spa to get you in a chill mood. 

Lots of reading nooks, including one under the loft. 

Up top, is a couch perfect for arts and crafts, a musical moogle and a peaceful little aquarium. 

There’s also a cushioned window nook and an art corner with another aquarium for inspiration. 

A number of of comfy napping spots and cushions are included for your enjoyment. 

If you’re on the Crystal Data Center, you can visit this and any of our other themed rooms here: Mateus – Shirogane – Ward 14, Lot 14.

If you stop in, please let us know in our Guestbook – located on the counter of our main room right near the front door. We appreciate the Likes and the comments!

I don’t talk a whole lot about my side RP alts, but I did set a few minor goals for one this month. I had two things in mind for my Lala Mocho – I wanted to finish leveling his SAM to 60 and to finally unlock PAL (which is supposed to be his main job when it comes to the RP story I’m writing).

I’ve been running alliance roulette with his SAM the past weeks, and finally hit 60 over the weekend. Pictured above, the white-bought level 60 gear… since Mocho has not completed enough MSQ to get to Idllyshire and buy tome gear.

After that, I switched goals to running squad dungeons to get him to 30 on his Gladiator. That… was a lot of Toto-Rak. The worst part of it was that my squad healer couldn’t keep him alive from time to time, even though she was above level 50, and I was not speed running the dungeon. Not sure what’s up with Squad AI lately, but I don’t remember having this many wipes on my other tank jobs.

Finally, I pushed through leveling, the lvl 30 Gladiator job quest, and unlocking Paladin. I’m holding back getting through MSQ (he’s stuck in ARR 2.1 stuff) until I get his PAL to 50, so it’s going to be slow going for a while. But the big goals for this month are complete!

Over the past weekend, I was inspired to work on another design for a personal room in our FC house. This turned out to be a sparring/training room, which was actually a suggestion that Syn gave me.

This fit well because I chose to use Tai’s room to do this, and he’s all about battle training and staying in fighting shape. That’s also the reason for the dark blue, which is his signature color.

As seen above, the room is built around an open central area with practice mats. I also recreated one of Tai’s retainers to be a stand-in practice dummy.

There’s a trophy display of an Ixion horn in the back corner.  Just for a little color.

Next to that, we have some lockers for changing, and a curtained-off shower station. Gotta wash that training funk off after practice! 

Lots of windows to brighten up the otherwise darker room. And a scuffed-up PotD floor which lends to the feeling that it’s seen better days.

I still feel like there’s some more I can add to this room as new housing items come out – it was only in Eureka that we got the chainmail hangars and the crossed halberds (which aren’t listed at the FFXIV Housing site!). Why don’t we have more weapon displays? It’s hard to make a convincing sparring room without some weapon racks.

If you’re on the Crystal Data Center, you can visit this and any of our other themed rooms here: Mateus – Shirogane – Ward 14, Lot 14

If you stop in, please let us know in our Guestbook – located on the counter of our main room right near the front door. We appreciate the Likes and the comments! 🙂 

This post will come as no surprise to anyone who saw my goal review post a few days ago, but considering this achieved one of my 2019 Yearly Goals, I wanted to give it a repost.

Over the weekend, I finally finished leveling my main’s Ninja to 70, which means all of my DPS jobs are now max level (for the time being). I know it’s pretty crazy that it took me this long to do. A smattering of alts tends to pull my attention away… not to mention there was a time when I had decided if I wasn’t going to main a job, I wasn’t going to level that.

It wasn’t actually until Stormblood that I decided to go ahead and just level jobs. That’s why I still have three jobs lingering around the 50-60 levels. That’s a post for another time, though.

Right now, I’m just happy to have this much done before the next expansion hits.

Okay, yeah, I still also need to level Blue Mage. That’s not hard to do, and it only goes up to 50. So that might be a June project.

Crafting Achievements

Alongside that, I also hit level 70 on Amon’s Weaver.

It’s been a long, unexpected road to bring up yet another omnicrafter to all 70s, but it’s almost done. All I have left to complete is Blacksmith. The picture below shows that at 60, but it’s actually 63 as of last night.

Namazu beast tribe quests will make short work of that. They’re super fast and not very painful at all… compared to Ixali stuff. So this should be a chapter I close out in a few short weeks, if that.

I’m not looking forward to leveling two omnicrafters/gatherers come Shadowbringers, but if I could pull myself up to full 70s on two characters, I can make it to 80. Right?

Oh, and I’m happy to say that I spent about half a day pushing through all the crafting job quests for Amon as well. So, aside from Blacksmith, I’ve finished all of those.

Welcome to May! Hard to believe we’re already here… and that we’re in the month before the Shadowbringers early access! This month, I have a series of more focused goals to work on, mostly just getting things in order before the expansion drops.

FFXIV Goals

Aywren

• Finish Job quests ✓ (MCH, WHM)
• Level Astro to 60 ✓
• Level Warrior

Amon

• Level Blacksmith to 70 ✓

Mocho (Very casual goals)

• Level SAM to 60 ✓
• Unlock PAL ✓
• Work on MSQ

Most of my focus is really going to be on my main character, who needs to finish a million job quests. I also want to finish the final three levels of Astro (and maybe take that beyond 60 with beast tribe quests).

Amon is almost completely done with all of his crafting leveling. He’s 62 Blacksmith, and will just be hitting the Namazu daily quests to get this done. That’s really all I have for him this time around.

Mocho is another RP alt that I haven’t talked much about here, and I do have a few very casual goals for progress with him. Since Syn requests Alliance Roulettes almost every night, I’ve decided to take Mocho in those and work on leveling his Samurai to at least 60. He’s only cleared the ARR MSQ, so he’s got a ton of quests to do before hitting Heavensward, despite his level. I also want to use squad runs to level his Gladiator and get Paladin unlocked (and potentially leveled).

So, that’s what I’m looking towards this month! Happy May everyone!