Posted in IRL

Hurricane Florence Passes

Posted on by Aywren Sojourner

It’s going to be a busy week for me with a trip coming up in two days, but I wanted to drop an update about seeing the other side of Hurricane Florence pass on through. I tell you what, that was a slow-moving storm! Even though it got down-graded in power once it made landfall, it really did wreck up some stuff because it just lingered so long.

Folks north of us got the brunt of things, so to be quite honest, I can’t really complain at all. We did lose power over Friday night for a little over 12 hours. I was completely shocked when it came back on Saturday afternoon — I didn’t even expect the power crews to be out there while the storm was still going. Granted, it had lessened to an extent that it wasn’t super dangerous by that time, but still.

Flooding is going to be the major thing from here on out as this storm dumped a whole lot of rain in the area. We’ve still to see the total effect of this where I’m at, so hoping people keep safe and don’t take any chances.

Aside from that, I’ll be on a plane on Wednesday, as long as everything at the airport is sorted. I’ll be back in town late on the 23rd, so I probably won’t be posting a whole lot here until I’m home. Just wanted to let folks know we weathered the storm and didn’t take anywhere near as much damage as I was afraid we would… at least, where I’m at.

Posted in FFXIV, Gaming, MMORPGs

FFXIV 4.4 Preliminary Patch Notes Highlight

Posted on by Aywren Sojourner

I’m off from work today, watching and waiting as Hurricane Florence slowly moves into our area. So far, power has held, but I know that won’t be for much longer. So I may as well try to blog about what made me excited by the 4.4 Patch Notes that were released today! Hopefully I’ll get to post this before things go down!

Continue reading “FFXIV 4.4 Preliminary Patch Notes Highlight” →

Posted in IRL

Hurricane Incoming

Posted on by Aywren Sojourner

I’d wanted to write a bit about The Rising event in FFXIV this week, but never quite got around to it. People in my area have been bracing for the incoming storm, and it’s really been first and foremost in people’s minds right now.

I don’t usually get concerned about hurricanes because quite often, they lurk around, make all sorts off people fret, but don’t usually hit us. This one may be different. It’s still hard to tell, but pretty stressful, especially since the forecast says that the storm will remain in our area for three days (and of course, it would be over a weekend).

This means we’ll be without power and possibly water for days, possibly longer. That’s not including the kind of damage a storm of this magnitude is going to do. And as much as I’d like to be preparing, I’m stuck at work until the last possible moment… which is also stressful.

On top of that, my vacation trip was supposed to be next week. And who knows what’s going to happen with that.

So, basically, I’m probably going to go dark for a while. I hope I’ll be updating sooner rather than later, but nothing promised. Please keep all the folks in the storm’s path in your thoughts and prayers.

 

Posted in FFXIV, Gaming, MMORPGs

FFXIV: Crazy Speed Leveling Weekend

Posted on by Aywren Sojourner

Being off for a three day weekend (hope everyone who had some time off had a good one!), Syn and I were hitting FFXIV hard and heavy. Though I have a whole server full of unleveled alts, Syn doesn’t tend to roll and level alts — especially since you can be everything on one character in this game.

However, my RP exploits over the past couple of months seem to have had some sort of impact, and she decided to roll a new character for RP purposes. We’d talked about this in the past, but it was only this weekend that she dove in. And boy did she.

I had an alt that I’d re-purposed for my RP story whom I was slowly leveling Scholar/Summoner on. My goal was basically to unlock Scholar and leave it at that. However, when Syn rolled her new character and started down the path of speed-leveling, she quickly caught up with my level 24 alt.

Spurred on by this, we started working through the MSQ, and burned through it all the way to level 50, which we both reached last night. We still have the last two dungeons to complete for 2.0, and sometimes we did have the help of an unsynced level 70 to jump queue, but still going from 1 to 50 (in her case) was pretty amazing.

For me, this included finishing all job quests for both Scholar and Summoner, and getting the first tier of artifact armor, too.

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I’ve gone back and forth on what I want to do this month, and I think I might not write up official goals for September. It’s going to be a hugely wonky month since I have a trip out of town, starting the day after the new FFXIV patch drops, even.

So this is going to be one of those get-done-what-you-can months. I’m still wanting to clear out some job quests on my main and continue leveling some of her jobs, but a lot of my focus remains on more creative and community/RP stuff right now. A lot of that doesn’t belong on this blog, but I’ll be writing about what I can.

 

Posted in Blaugust, Blogging, FFXIV, Gaming, MMORPGs, Uncategorized

#Blaugust2018 Tally & August Gaming Goals in Review

Posted on by Aywren Sojourner

Tally Tally!

Yesterday, I wrote a farewell post to Blaugust a day early, noting that while I posted 18 posts here (including this one) on this blog, I did the majority of my writing on my creative RP Tumblr this month. I didn’t think that counted, but the comments I got said the contrary.

So! I’m going to leave that in poor Bel’s hands (or whomever is doing the judging for the Blaugust awards this year). Here’s my Tumblr archive for this month for proof of crazy fiction and RP writing! 🙂

Based on fiction alone, I wrote a 7-part short story called “Chocobo’s Tale” and another 7-part series called “Decent“… along with about 6 more chapters that are in reserve to post over the next week or so.

I’m not really overly worried about the award, but just wasn’t sure what counted. I had a blast writing for my fiction/RP blog this month, and that’s really all that matters!

FFXIV Leveling Goals

  • Level Culinarian to 70 ✓
  • Level Dragoon to 70 ✓
  • Level Astro (maybe?)

Not only did I finish leveling Culinarian to 70, but I leveled ALL of my remaining crafting jobs to 70 and finished ALL of the job quests associated with them, too.

I was a tad lazy at the Alliance Roulette this month, so I’m about halfway through level 69 on Dragoon. But tonight should probably get level 70, or pretty close to it, so I’m going to mark it as a done deal.

Still haven’t touched Astro, but that’s something I’m going to be working on now that all of my crafting leveling is out of the way and I have more time.

FFXIV Cleanup Quest Goals

  • Summoner – Lv 60-70 Quests
  • Ninja – Lv 50-60 Quests
  • Culinarian Quest catch-up ✓

Again, I failed on finishing job quests… for everything except my crafters. BUT, I’m going really make an effort do work on these now that crafting leveling is done. I’m pretty confident I can knock some of these out finally next month.

And that was August in a nutshell!

Posted in FFXIV, Gaming, MMORPGs

A Farewell to Blaugust (Almost)

Posted on by Aywren Sojourner

I feel a tad bad that for as much as I wanted Blaugust to happen deep down, I really didn’t do all the participation that I would have liked to in the event. It felt like there were tons of great bloggers out there keeping things exciting, though, so hopefully no one noticed that I’ll be ending up this month with only 18 posts (once I write the next one).

The thing about this is that it’s not that I wasn’t writing. It just that I was absolutely consumed by fiction writing for my RP blog. Just about every bit of creativity I had this month went into that, and I was having an absolute blast!

So, technically, I was writing far MORE than I usually do in a given month. It’s just not obvious when you only look at this blog.

I don’t know if that counts towards Blaugust? But, hey, I’m not going to feel too bad about it. When you’re inspired to write something in a specific way for a specific audience, you’ve got to take that inspiration and run with it. No buts about it.

Right now, I’m still heavily engaged in that blog, but I still have some topics I want to post up here in between things. I want to talk about our FC airships and, once I actually run The Rising, I want to blog about this year’s anniversary event.

I also have new goals to try and set for next month — we’ll see how far I get with those! The one thing I do know is that my interest and time in FFXIV has increased significantly, and I do not regret the choice I made to make a change in how I play.

I mean, what other server can you just be standing in your apartment, minding your own business, and get robbed?

wantedposter

Posted in FFXIV, Gaming, MMORPGs

FFXIV: Goddess of the Hand Achieved!

Posted on by Aywren Sojourner

The end of last week was rather quite blogging-wise because I was caught up writing fiction and because all of the important things happening in FFXIV weren’t going to pan out until the weekend. That’s exactly what happened.

As of this weekend, not only have I leveled every crafting and gathering job to 70, but for the first time in the near-5 years I’ve been playing, I have also completed the corresponding job quests for all of them, as well. This completed one of my main gaming goals of 2018, too!

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This required me to go back to the level 50 quests for Blacksmith this weekend and work up from there. I was already sitting at level 68 when I did this, and really didn’t want to miss out on the chunk of experience the quests gave (it jumped me up a full level), so I buckled down to finish them all up this weekend.

I still have lots of upgrades to get for all of my jobs, including scrip mainhands, but it’s super odd not to need to log in for Namazu quests daily anymore. I’m kinda going to miss that!

I also admit that some of the crafting job quest lines were unexpectedly hilarious. From the taste testing culinarian who apparently “died” and went to heaven after eating some of the food I crafted for a cooking contest…

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…to an overprotective blacksmith father who isn’t happy with the prospect of his daughter falling for an Eorzean smithy.

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I know this is FFXIV, so I shouldn’t be surprised when things like this pop up in quests, but it still sometimes catches me unaware. In the middle of a long quest chain for crafters, this sort of thing is greatly welcome!

Anyhow. Now I can focus on leveling my battle jobs, figuring out desythesis a little more and building up our Free Company airships, which is something I’ll be posting about tomorrow!

Also, the Rising for the 5th year anniversary of FFXIV is up and running. I’ve not done it yet, and I’m staying away from spoilers where I can, but I’ll be writing about that soon!