BDO: Holidays, Wizards & FFXIV: Scripture Gear Complete!

FFXIV Goal Completed

So, after several months of running Expert roulettes and capping just about every week, I finally upgraded my last piece of Scripture gear for Zuri’s Dragoon. Well, aside from that one ring, which is an Alexander stand-in, since you can’t have duplicate Scripture gear. Now, the only thing holding me back is that darn Relic weapon! *grumbles about Umbrite*

I haven’t decided what gear I’m going to work on next, if at all. I’m certainly going to take a break over the holidays since I’ll be heading out of town tomorrow on my yearly road trip to friends and family.

Sometimes I still have issues with deciding which DPS I want to play in the long run… but that’s a conversation for another post. In fact, I’m hoping that Red Mage will be announced as the next DPS job at the Japanese Fan Fest on Christmas morning… that would be a wonderful Christmas present to me! I do fully intend to play Red Mage should that be the case!

Black Desert Online: Return

It’s been a while since I’ve logged into Black Desert Online. I’m honestly not sure why I put the game down, as I still did enjoy breeding my horses. Now, so much more content has been added, and the game is absolutely massive. I’m so far behind in terms of knowing what all is there… but hey, there are horse races now! I just have to get up the courage to try one.

Since I last logged in (back when they released Ninja), the servers have consolidated, a ton of new land and content has been released, all the class Awakenings have happened, and they’re being super generous in trying to help newbies catch up.

In fact, I discovered that since I’ve been gone for so long, I have access to the Olvia channels. This is for folks who haven’t logged in for 30 days, or new folks. This channel gives massive experience boosts — 200% — in order to speed up leveling.

Not that I really am in any rush to hit level cap because… you know… PvP stuff.  But it would be nice to finally level my little Tamer past 22, so I might put some time into it to boost her.

Update: I just found out that they’ve changed the level at which PvP flags on a character. Now, you have to be level 50 before you can PvP.  Also, the only way to get to level 50 is to finish a quest players call the Belmorn Quest. So, as long as you never do that, you can be a level 49.99999999 carebear forever in BDO! Woo! Time to level!

So what really caught my attention with BDO? Well, they’ve finally added the option to roll a young looking Wizard in the wake of the Wizard Awakening.

Yep. You heard me. “Young Wizard face option” is what it took to catch my interest.

So, I quickly updated my client, logged in and spent forever working on my Wizard alt, Ben. He doesn’t look all that much like Ben, but whatever. Young Wizard.

To tell you how accelerated the XP gain is on this channel, Ben was level 13  by the time he finished the handful of quests that make up the tutorial. It’s pretty crazy, but I’ll take it. I have a few other low-level alts that could do with some boosting.

Not to mention this game is just throwing stuff at you left and right, most of which I don’t even know what it is.

For example, this is my rewards claim box:

Check out the cute snowy UI theme. It’s really well done!

I have a million bundles in my mailbox that were supposed to make up for down time and unexpected maintenance. There’s so many that I can’t claim them all because I simply don’t have the room to store the stuff anywhere.

The one thing I did find a bit interesting is how BDO has changed their daily login rewards. Instead of logging in and earning the reward, you have to log in, remain logged in for 30 minuets, and then you can get your rewards. Granted, the rewards are much more lucrative than just Loyalty Points now days. Plus, if you stay logged in for an hour, you get an extra reward, it seems. Pretty crazy.

Anyhow, it feels nice to dip back into a sandbox MMO for a bit, even if I won’t have much time to play until after the holidays. And it’s really, really cool to see it snow in the BDO cities!

Oh, and the price of the BDO starter packs are only $5 right now. So if you’ve been interested in trying it, it’s super cheap B2P! I’m considering picking up a second account even…

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