Aywren Sojourner: Gaming and Geek Life

It’s been a pretty tough weekend on my end, mostly because I’ve been dealing with a family medical emergency that’s had me up at the ER and hospital most of yesterday. Things are stable, but I know that I’m going to be in and out of hospital visitation most this week. So my blogging will probably be in shorter form this week, I apologize.

Before all of that, though, I actually manage to knock out a few of my goals in FFXIV on Saturday.

First, I FINALLY finished the Ninja job quests up to level 60! My ninja has been 60 for a while, and because I didn’t want to be a bad party member without all of my level 50-60 skills running Alliance roulette, I had to put any further leveling on hold until the job quests were done. I finished them up and got the spiffy armor set pictured above.

Second, I FINALLY finished leveling Dark Knight to 50. This is part of one of my major year-end goals (to get all jobs to 50), and leaves only Warrior to complete. It’s taken over five years, but once that’s done, I’ll have all jobs to 50, as well as a good number to 60 and 70.

I am going to see if I can focus on pulling Warrior through before the end of this month. It just depends on time and motivation level. It really won’t take that long, but I tend to get distracted.

I’m also pushing through levels on my Monk, though much more slowly. I started at level 61 this month, and while I haven’t been good with keeping up on Alliance roulettes, I have been doing beast tribes pretty regularly. Last night, I hit level 64, so that’s moving along.

I’d also like to set aside time to work on Summoner job quests if possible. I still have a ton of job quests to finish across most the jobs I got to level 70. So even though I hit my goal for this month, there’s still a lot to do!

On top of this, I’ve also reached goals on my RP alt as well. I’ll write about that tomorrow, though! 🙂

Despite having played FFXIV for as long as I have, as often as I do, there’s still a bunch of content I’ve never seen, or I’m just not fully familiar with.

One example of this is the large boss FATEs that were added in the Stormblood zones, such as Foxy Lady and Ixion. I know they exist, I have an idea of what the rewards are for completion, have an idea that they’re on hugely long timers and (Foxy) spawn under a certain FATE chain and circumstance. I’ve just not put a lot of effort into camping them.

The one time I did complete the Foxy FATE was completely by accident. I just happened to be there and see that it had popped, so I did it for the rewards.

A similar story happened over the weekend.

It was late Saturday night and I was out in the Lochs clearing side quests for Amon. Suddenly, I heard the sound of a FATE pop nearby. Not just a regular FATE, but those epic trumpets that signify a boss has spawned. I look over, and there’s Ixion.

I flew over to investigate and saw one other guy doing the same. I didn’t know if I needed to alert someone about it, but pretty soon, other folks started to gather. As soon as a party finder announcement went up, I snagged a spot.

Much like the Foxy battle, this was a FATE with several repeating mechanics that can kill folks if it catches them off guard. Despite a slow start, we downed Ixion with plenty of time left on the clock, and I was rewarded 6 horns for a Gold clear.

It was only at that point that I looked up the rewards and saw that the mount required another 6 horns. Bummer. Well, I’m halfway there, but I’m not sure if I’ll be lucky enough to catch this FATE again without actively spending time in the Lochs.

Needless to say, I’m keeping closer watch on this now!

 

I had a few major goals I wanted to reach with Amon in terms of getting him where he needs to be for his RP story. There were only two jobs I wanted to level with him — Bard as his main and Red Mage on the side.

Syn also had a goal to get Scylla through up to at least the 4.0 story line. These were goals that we both met over the weekend. Pictured above are Amon and Scylla after the (surprisingly smooth) Shinryu clear.

When I went through this with Amon, not only did we have a 20 min wait (even with a healer in the queue), but we had a number of first timers that came in blind. This resulted in a couple of wipes, though we did eventually make it through — I don’t think anyone wanted to drop that and get hung back up in the queue.

So, I was somewhat dreading going into this fight again, but we rolled right on over it and got it done. Now, Scylla’s already up to Lighthouse and working on gearing up. Syn’s a lot more enthusiastic about end game gearing and raids than I am.

As for Amon, I stuck with hunts and Lost Allagan gear, which was enough ilvl to get him through the 4.4 content. I did that for Bard, and I almost had a fully upgraded set for his Red Mage when I finally reached 70 this weekend.

Not only is it nice to finally have the only two jobs I wanted to focus on leveling for him done (minus the crafting and gathering), but now that frees up my roulette time to go back to working on my main’s battle classes.

This post isn’t about my main, but I am happy to note that I’ve been diligently working on leveling Dark Knight with my squad, making progress through job quests (!), and leveling Monk through beast tribes and roulette again. So, there’s progress all around.

I will miss running the CT roulette on Amon, though. It was fun when Scylla and Amon were both in a group and we had someone in the alliance take note. This often happens when running Syrcus Tower (where the inspiration for these characters came from).

That’s when things like this happen:

Between that and our joint RP story we’re writing, it’s been a fun time.

A lot of different small and exciting (to me) things happened over this weekend. But each of them really deserve their own little post, so that’s what I’m going to be doing this week. I’m starting with the larger one — we finally built the Odder Otter Walls for our Shirogane FC house!

Back in May, patch 4.3 brought the Odder Otter walls to FFXIV. When I saw this, I knew I had to have it. This was the first themed house that I felt was a good balance between cute and tastefully designed. One that would be right at home in Shirogane.

These walls require a recipe made of items only the FC airship can bring back — you can’t buy these items on the market board. You also must craft the walls within a FC workshop, and the material list required can get quite extensive, especially for bigger houses.

At the time this first came out, I was still back on Midgardsormr and had a personal house in Shirogane. Our FC house had the large castle walls, which the crafters had worked so hard to make, so I knew we wouldn’t be changing from that. Instead, I unlocked the recipe for the FC, and focused on gathering what I needed to make the walls for my own personal house.

Only… for some reason, I never got around to finishing it before I transferred to Mateus. I had almost all of the materials required, with the help of Amoon, and could have easily knocked it out months ago. But I hesitated for some reason and just didn’t do it.

What did that mean?

Well, when I transferred servers, I brought all those materials with me. But it didn’t occur to me that we’d need:

• A FC house
• A workshop in the FC
• At least one airship in the workshop
• The materials from the airship to unlock the recipe

When that dawned on me, I realized we had a long, long road ahead of us. Amoon and I got to developing our first FC airship as soon as we unlocked the workshop. But this ship needed to be upgraded and leveled. We also had to discover the sectors in which you can gather the materials needed to unlock the recipe.

Then, we had to endure the RNG for weeks, hoping a single ship would bring back the materials. We were down to needing two last synthetic resin this week, and the ship just refused to bring them back day after day after day.

This required drastic measures…

Well, last night was the night. The ship brought back not two, but five resin. And much to my excitement, Amoon was on board to help craft the combines we needed to get the job done. It was easily something a single max-level crafter could do, but it made it much better with two max-level crafters.

We knocked the crafting out in about an hour or so. The actual building part took a good chunk of time as well. But when it was done, we finally had our otter house (only after six months of wanting one).

Now we can focus on upgrading the airship further and sending it out farther. We also started gathering what was needed for our first sub. I think Amoon has some interest in the Shirogane walls for his personal house, so there might be some more airship missions to unlock that.

Now that the walls are up, I can think about outdoors decorations and yard layout — something I’ve been putting off until I saw the finished house. I’m really pleased with how it looks — our location is fantastic, nestled between staircases on either side, a market board, bell, and aetheryte in our street. Nearby neighbors who are all tastefully decorated as well.

It may be a small house, but on this server, even that’s lucky to get! We remain a small Free Company with no real ambitions to grow or develop beyond what we decide to do as a small group of friends.

And while I sometimes miss the support of having a larger group to do content with for things like clearing trials and raids, we’ve gotten by as a smaller FC. Syn and I have been doing a lot of writing and story role play. She’s made real progress with her own RP character, whom she just rolled only a few months ago… and is now at end game already!

While I won’t be going to Fan Fest this year, I did get next Friday approved for a day off, and will be watching the stream. I’m eager to hear what the next FFXIV expansion will bring, and I knew that I’d be no use to anyone trying to work with the Fan Fest happening next week. So there’s that to look forward to.

In fact, I’ve really had a lot of positivity toward this game the last few months, which I attribute to making a shift in the way I play and integrating creative endeavors into the game. Not everything is perfect, but for my style of gaming, I think I made the right choice.

It’s the end of the month, and that means it’s time to look back at what goals were reached this time around. I’ve been really lax on my main character because most of my progression has been focused on crafting/gathering on my RP alt. But I did get a little bit done this month.

FFXIV Goals

• Level Astro to 50 ✓
• Gear up Red Mage ✓-ish
• Finish Ninja Job Quests up to Level 50
• Level Monk ✓-ish

The most important goal — leveling Astro to 50 — was knocked out pretty early into the month. I have two jobs left under level 50, and it’s a year-end goal to get all of them to at least 50, so that’s going to be my major focus with this character from here on.

I did pick up a few upgrades for my Red Mage. Some of them were dungeon drops from the new Expert, but I did also upgrade my chest piece to the new Tome gear. We were running Expert pretty regularly at first, but we haven’t in a while, so my upgrading progress has stalled out. Still, I’m a higher ilvl than I was when patch 4.4 dropped, so it’s some progress.

I really haven’t been on the ball with leveling Monk at all. I picked up like… one… level. I just haven’t been in the mood to Alliance Roulette on the job (I’m not very good at playing it), and the risk of getting a couple raids I’d rather not do (WC, DS) puts me off from pushing through.

I guess I could be doing beast tribe quests if nothing else. But I’ve been spending a significant amount of time running crafting beast tribes on Amon. Moogle and Namazu quests are quick and easy. Ixal quests, on the other hand, chew up a ton of time. But they’re still one of the better ways to level crafters under 50.

And, as always, I ignored job quests. I may just have to buckle down and dedicate a month to focusing down job quests in general. I just keep making excuses for why they don’t get done, and I hate seeing them lingering in my goal list unfinished every  month.

If you look at Amon’s progress, it’s been pretty crazy, even if I haven’t set any goals for him. I’ve got:

• Level 70 botanist (Earning gear through weekly turn-ins)
• Level 50+ Miner and Fisher
• Level 50+ Culinarian (First 50+ crafter – unlocked Moogle quests)
• Level 68 Red Mage — working on hitting level 70

So, I’ve been getting things done, just not on my main.