[FFXIV] Back after a long absence

Wow, last post was August 11?  I’ve very much gotten out of the habit of writing here…

A brand-spanking new Level 1 archer

That said, I’ve not really felt I have much to say in the gaming space.  I’ve mostly just been letting “Idle Champions of the Forgotten Realms” run, plus a friend got me started on the mobile game “Raid: Shadow Legends” and that was more or less all the gaming I was doing for a while.  I’d log in to Warframe to advance the daily counter, but then usually log right back out.  When the Atlas Prime frame came out I bought it, but then I didn’t even bother ranking it to 30 until a couple of weeks ago when the new Grendel frame came out.

Level 15 in the “Brand New” gear from the tutorial quests

In my quest for novelty, I even went so far as to buy an ArcheAge Unlimited “box,” in spite of a) not having cared for the original game back when it 1st came out and b) not liking open-world pvp games in general.  I made it up to about level 41 before it just got old.  There’s no penalty for dying in a pvp battle, so it’s really not a big deal, but by the same token I haven’t figured out what benefit there is to doing pvp either, so I just don’t see the draw for the various gank squads that were out there.  I mean, sure, I saw that there was some “honor” points awarded for wins, but I have no idea what that’s for.  The game is frustratingly opaque and I felt I was spending more time alt-tabbed out looking for info on it than I spent actually playing.  SO after a bit over a week, I just stopped, as I wasn’t looking forward to logging in each evening.

Since glamour is now unlocked at level 15 instead of 50, I decided that I liked the racial top and boots, while using the “Brand New Skirt” as the leg appearance instead of the racial bikini bottom

As a result, I’ve been on more of a Netflix kick lately than a gaming kick.  And somehow I’ve gotten in to their Bollywood selections.  I’m not big on subtitles, but the films have been cute and engaging, and even a bit silly, and just plain entertaining all around, so…  There you have it.

And then I dyed it “snow white” for a more “white rabbit” type of appearance

But this weekend I decided to go give FFXIV another go.  I’ve wanted a bunny.. er Viera character since the expansion, but Gotter Dammerung won’t use fantasia to change.  She is who she is — immutably.  But character creation was closed with all the people playing for the expansion, so I couldn’t make a bunny either.  I could this weekend, though.  I’d planned back in the day to name it “Petra Leporidae,” (Petra = Peter, of course, and “Leporidae” is the Latin word for “rabbit,” so I thought it’d be a good joke) but in the moment of character creation I forgot that, so Chyarra Lefey was the name I picked instead.  Chyarra was more or less random, but Lefey has been a last name I’ve used since EQ2 launched as a way of having alt characters be recognizable to friends.

Another angle

Anyway, the plan is for it to be a dancer, but I gotta get to level 60 to unlock that, so I went with Archer as my intro class so that as I leveled it I’d be gathering the right jewelry for when 60 rolls around.  I’ve made it to level 41 in 2 days of play, so it’s coming right along.  As I recall it, I was quite bored with the Archer back in the day until I made it up to the upper 20’s.  With the simplification of skills that has been SE’s goal with the ShB expansion, well…  I was really only using 3 buttons until I hit 30 (granted, there’s a macro I wrote that consolidates 3 into 1, otherwise it would have been a whole 5 buttons).  Even with hitting 30 and becoming a bard, it’s still really only added 2 more buttons in the last 11 levels, and in looking at the skills that will be coming later, a lot of them are simply straight upgrade/replacements for existing skills, so I really don’t see a whole lot changing there, especially as most of the new skills are long cooldown with a high priority, so I can just add them in the to existing 1-button macro I’ve written.  We’ll see how it goes.

Since I took my main to 80 on Dancer, I suppose I could focus this character completely on Bard to 80 for a bit of a change too.  But I probably won’t.  I’m weird like that.

I got a blind invite to a Free Company and figured “eh, why not?” so I joined up. This coffin was in the FC house and made for a silly image, so of course I had to take the screenshot.

So,  I’m back in FFXIV, at least for a while.  I stopped back in July when I realized I just didn’t care about the boss fights and trials and whatnot.  I looked up the guide for the final trial of the expansion and found myself thinking “that looks annoying” and not looking forward to it as a fun challenge, so, if that holds true again, I may not last too long on this run either.  OTOH, I may look up the video on the final ShB trial again and finish that, then get Gotter and this new bunny through the new 5.1 patch’s MSQ and everything will be all hunky-dory too.  Who knows?  Plus I really ought to unlock all the new areas for my daughter to fly around on her Miqo’te.  It was fun to do before, so perhaps it will be fun to do again, right?

Happy gaming out there!