[PoEt] [TSW] [FFXIV] A Nomadic Weekend

Rogue group early on — PoEt really doesn’t lend itself to screenies very well

Well, only did 3 games, but that’s 2 more than normal . . .

For Pillars of Eternity, I wandered about a bit with my monk’s group, but it was really just dinking around looking for named bandits to capture,and it got old kinda quick, so I think I need to start pushing the story forward again, else I may get bored.  Which seems odd, since the game’s enough of a challenge to be intensely satisfying after every well-fought battle.

For TSW, a small part of my not wanting to log in much lately (a very distant 3rd to “skill wheel’s full” and “gear’s good enough for me so don’t care to do NM grind for better gear”) is that lately it’s been fairly laggy for me.  But I’d read somewhere that using DX9 instead of DX11 can fix a lot of that, so I logged in to swap from DX11 to DX9 and…… instant 20 fps jump, and London is completely lag-free again.  So I turned my settings up a bit from how low I had them before trying to alleviate some of that lagginess and went to Tokyo.  And it was very jumpy there.  If i stopped and let the area I was in load, then I was fine, but even trying a simple run across the zone from the Agartha Portal to the Pachinko Parlor there was a lot of stuttering that I’ve never had before, so…. looks like I need to turn some settings back down.

So far as I can tell, my ae-focused solo build has lost no efficacy in spite of the reduction in AE damage with the recent skill changes.  I assume it’s due to the fact that so much of its damage comes from procs from the passives, which appear to if anything to have had their damage increased a bit.  Slow The Advance has a lovely new graphical effect and a lingering dot that it didn’t used to have, so it’s a lot more fun to fire off at a swarm of mobs too.  Much cooler looking.  so, once I get the lag in Tokyo figured out, I’ll probably jump back in and finish up the issue 10 story and see how I feel about things after that.

Yes, it’s really that big. You spend most of the fight under its belly trying not to be stepped on.

For FFXIV, I did the seasonal event quest and it was every bit as fluffy as one would expect an Easter event to be.  I also worked through the story to the completion of what was added in the 2.55 patch this past week, as well as doing the Letter Carrier missions.  I did the LC missions as WHM to give myself something a little different, but I did the story missions as BLM.  One fight was kinda challenging, but since I have sleep and could simply sleep the hard-hitting mob and heal myself back to full in the 30 seconds it bought me, it didn’t end up being a big deal.  The new Trial was pretty fun.  I watched a video in advance that explained the basic mechanics, but it wasn’t a “here’s the whole fight” thing either, so it wasn’t a complete spoiler.  And watching a video and doing it in-game are 2 completely different things……  We failed pretty badly the 1st time, but that gave all of the newbies to the Trial a chance to see how it all worked, and we did it on the 2nd try in good order.

Thing about the story though — mild spoilers here, so you’re warned — is that according to the story I’m now persona non grata in Ul’dah, but there’s nothing in the game itself that reflects this — I can still walk freely in the city, use all the services, use the Immortal Flames area, etc.  so that’s a bit of an immersion breaker — everything that happens in Ul’dah is pretty dramatic, as well as the escape from the guards, and yet after the story’s told the game itself completely ignores it.  Such is life.  But, I’m also very looking forward to the new areas in the expansion now as a result of how the story is set up

Success!

I ran a couple of dungeons with FC mates to help them in their moving through the story, and I even remembered to hit up the Gold Saucer and check on the Jumbo Cactpot lottery.  It’d been a while since I’ve been in there, and one of these days I’ll let myself get lost in Triple Triad, but for now, the MGS is a nice side diversion, but I’m still more focused on being out in the world.  For a couple of FATEs in Coerthas and one of the FC dungeon runs I played with my Bard and found myself wanting to work on it some more again, so….. I’m going to try to at least do a low-level roulette per night this week as a bard and see what that does for me level-wise.  I seem to get about 1/2 a level on a roulette bonus run each day, plus several challenge log entries also give bonuses for doing 3 and 5 dungeons, plus handing out commendations and those 3 entries seem to be good for another level as well, so in theory just 1 dungeon a night could get me 4-5 levels per week without hardly trying so….. we’ll see.

Happy gaming out there!  And more screenies follow and might be a bit spoilerific for the next part of the story, so… don’t scroll down if you don’t want spoilers….

Easter quest giver

Spriggans are kinda fuzzy bunnies, so… makes sense to be a spriggan for Easter!

Doing the Easter-quest FATE

Drakes flying to attack Ishgard

An anti-dragon cannon on the path to Ishagard

The bridge…

She casts the spell —

And tosses it high —

And down comes the bridge’s ward!

Which means inbound dragons!

One big dude there

The dragon’s close-up

Fighting under him. He’s so big he just kind of ignores us, and calls adds to deal with us while he knocks down even more wards now that he got a foothold on the bridge

But we beat him, so the drakes flee!

Self-portrait 1

Self-portrait 2

Self-portrait 3

Don’t mess with a monk!

Or a conjurer. . . .

No really… don’t mess with the conjurer!

Lady Yugiri took her mask off

I still really like this airship-cart concept