Wow, February has already come and gone. Hopefully that means there’s warmer weather in store for folks out there.

It was also Febhyurary, where I took part in posting a picture a day of my Hyur (like the one above). You can find that collection at my Spot of Mummery RP blog or my Instagram if you want to take a peek!

Now on to the goals for this month! I’m pretty happy with how they turned out.

FFXIV Goals

• Work on crafting relics ✓
• Clean up Rak’tika quests
• Finish up to patch 5.4 on Tai ✓

I did work pretty diligently on my crafting relics for my main – I still have two left to go from last patch, but that was gated by need of yellow scrips. However, in seeing what I have to do for the final step of relics, I don’t think I can get any further, which is rather disheartening seeing the amount of time I put into them this far.

I don’t think I have the melds, for one. And for another, they’ve locked it behind this new Expert crafting rotational stuff that I don’t understand one bit. Sadly, this means that I probably won’t finish these relics until I outgear them next expansion. I’ll still finish up the step I’m on now, but man, it’ll be a pain to have to stash all of them until level 90.

I struck out the clean-up quest goal this month because after the FFXIV announcements, I realized I’d have two more jobs to level from 70-80 that could use the experience when the new expansion hits. So I’m holding off cleaning up quests to earn something from them on new jobs.

The announcements also fueled my motivation to push Tai through to patch 5.4 this month. Seeing that we might get a reaper/scythe-wielding type job in the expansion, which is perfect for Tai, I want him to be in a good spot when Endwalker comes out.

MISC Goals

• Switch: Progress on Link’s Awakening ✓
• Play at least 1 new Steam game a week ✓
• Play at least 1 Xbox Game Pass game ✓

I also did really well on these goals! While I didn’t complete Link’s Awakening like I hoped, I did make progress. I’m now working on finding the bird key to open the shrine. I think I have a couple shrines left to go.

I’d like to get this finished up because there’s lots of Switch games on the verge of release that I’m interested in this year. I can’t justify picking new stuff up until I finish some of what I’m in the middle of playing right now.

Even with Valheim rocking into my weekends, I still managed to play 1 new Steam game each week from the “Clear” list. This is a list of games that I picked up as part of bundles, were left unfinished in development, or just somehow ended up in my backlog that I feel like I won’t invest a lot of time into. I’m “clearing” them to mark them as played, which means I sit down with it and play it for a bit of time just to see if it’s something I actually enjoy. If not, I’ve “cleared” it from my list and move on.

So far, I’ve been pretty correct about the games I wouldn’t generally care to play. The one exception to this list is Beat Hazard 2 – I’m curious about it, so I’ll put more time into that one before I clear it off. But what makes me happy about having met this goal is that it’s actually moving me forward towards my overall backlog progress goal of 60% played by the end of this year.

I started out at 54% played in January, and as of now, I’m currently at 57% played! What a big jump!

Of course, eventually, I’ll run out of games on my “Cleared” list – which is actually a goal anyhow. All I’ll be left with are games I actually want to spend time with and try out. So backlog progress will slow down significantly at that point.

I’ve also been pretty good at putting time into Xbox Game Pass games. For example, I spent quite a few hours trying to muddle through Crusader Kings III this month, which I wrote about here. Sadly, I’m still having no luck with it… and seeing I have more games than I know what to do with, I can’t justify throwing yet more time at a game that keeps defeating me. I also realize I already own CKII which I played a bit of long ago… so I’m going to shelf CKIII for now.

However, the fact that I was able to play CKIII through Game Pass saved me about $40, if I’d bought it at full price on Steam. So, I’d say that Game Pass is working out for me as I just got billed for it the first time this month – I had a three month free trial up until now.

I’ll be picking up another game next month for sure. I really want to play Spiritfarer, but the launcher seems to be broken on Game Pass, which is a shame. Waiting to see if they fix that. For now, I’ve downloaded a game that was at the top of my wishlist on Steam to try – Yes, Your Grace.

Got a good month coming up! See you in March!