[Warframe] 1000 Days

1000 days isn’t even 3 years though…

Not really a big thing, but hit 1000 days milestone today.  I’ve missed a few here and there over the past few years, and probably 700 of them were literally “log in, collect daily reward to advance the counter, log out” but hey, I still hit it.

Now if only the nVidia drivers wouldn’t make my computer crash after about 6 minutes of play anymore…  3 updates ago it did it, but would restart.  Next driver update fixed it, the prior one to current was fine, but now the current one’s crashing again and badly enough that it sometimes won’t allow for restart/restore — one time I couldn’t even boot to safe mode, so I’ve had to do a couple of complete wipe/reinstalls.  Hopefully the next driver update fixes it again…..

[LotRO] Lag Silliness

It actually hasn’t been bad in a while, mostly. Just some occasional rubberbanding or slow responses in inventory for the most part anymore. Even so… I feel this video pretty hard…. Assuming the embed works. Becuz it says it can’t preview it in the editor. And if I go to the actual preview page it also doesn’t appear to actually be embedding the video, just showing a link.

Scratch that. Played with it a bit and now it’s showing in the visual editor, but not in the preview mode. Hopefully it stays. But if not, here’s the link — https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=324154468812338

Also, this new editor sucks. And the option to switch back isn’t in the menu where the articles says it’s supposed to be. Grrr…

[LOTRO] Trying It Out Again

Rivendell sure is pretty

A rather long time ago… late 2006 or early 2007, there was a beta release/playtest period for Lord of the Rings Online.  I took advantage of it and played with some friends who loved the idea of a game in Tolkien’s world, but at the time I was very heavily invested in EQ2 still, and to be perfectly frank, I liked the story of LotR well enough when I read it back in high school, but I’d also never felt the desire to re-read the trilogy, so the world itself didn’t really have much in the way of a draw for me.  I was single at the time and a raider in EQ2 with several characters capped out, so the thought of starting a new MMO didn’t have much appeal for me, so I played in the beta a few times, but didn’t end up buying the game or subbing to it, despite the entreaties of my friends who loved it and bought lifetime subscriptions.

After it went F2P I at least installed it, thinking I’d give it another look, but I was into other games at the time and what little I did try didn’t really “click” with me either.  I vaguely recall “working hard” to get a Lore-Master to level 14 to unlock the bear tank pet, thinking it would be a nice change from the raven pet you started with then, but then was disappointed in the bear pet and ended up deleting that character to make room for a minstrel.  I picked at the minstrel here and there over the years, but when I logged in and found it again, it was only level 12, so I obviously didn’t do too much with it.

That is a rather large statue. A colossus, one could say…

Anyway, this all leads up to with this summer and Standing Stone Games doing that “free quests” giveaway due to all the craziness in the world this year and Syp’s posts about it over the summer, I decided to give it another go.  Apparently in my prior attempt to get into the game I’d tossed some cash at it, as I had a decent stock of the cash currency in-place and I want to say I have a vague memory of having to pay to unlock the Warden and Rune-Keeper classes, so….  I logged in to the Brandywine server, as I recalled that name, and my old characters were there, but I didn’t really remember any of them, so I decided I’d just do a fresh start, so I moved over to the Landroval server instead.

My beef with the game before was that it introduced skills so slowly that no matter what class one picked, it still largely felt like “MMO #217” rather than anything unique, and since the world itself had no draw for me…  This time I researched the classes a bit more and found that I could level to the mid-teens in just a few hours (I remember feeling like leveling was a slog before), at least.  Still and all, the 1st little bit still played like “MMO #217” and didn’t impress me, so I decided to try each class and get it to level 23 (where the final Virtue slot unlocks and almost halfway to the original level cap of 50) figuring that should give me enough under the belt to get more of a feel for what’s unique about the different classes in this game.

I also subbed to the game as paying for 2 months gets you 3 and gets rid of a bunch of annoyances, 2 bonus character slots, and gives cash-shop currency equal to $20-ish in value, all for $30, so… seemed a good deal.  I also feel more inclined to play a game I’m subbed to in order to feel like I’m getting my money’s worth from it, so it may encourage me to stick to the game a bit more than before.

I’ve almost reached my goal of everything to 23.  I’ve actually got the Hunter to 33 (this was planned initially to be the “ez-mode main” before I got the idea of trying everything) and I was enjoying the questing enough on the Warden that I didn’t notice that I skipped past 23 to 26.  Oddly, enough this happened despite my not really caring for the warden much.

My Hunter

I tend to favor ranged/mage classes in any game anymore, and that seems to be holding true here also, as my 2 favorites are the Hunter (blue line, to allow mobility despite this being said to be the “bad” specialization) and the Rune Keeper (yellow line, to allow mobility and also said to be better than the red line anyway).  Lore-Master’s not bad and I note that the tanking bear is now granted at level 1 with the raven coming later.  I enjoy all the CC the class has got, but when solo questing it’s more about mowing through mobs and other classes do that better.  Minstrel’s fine too, but doesn’t seem to “do it” for me.

The melee classes are all “fine” but none really do much for me either.  I think I like the Beorning the best of them, though after a slow start the Champion really felt like it took off in the late teens.  Captain’s ok, but doesn’t quite “click” with me.  Guardian’s designed as a tank class, so even the red dps spec they gave it for solo leveling just doesn’t quite feel like it’s got the “oomph” I want, which is further compounded by the skills not being reliably available since so many rely on a defensive proc in order to be able to use them.  Warden’s got so many skills to use in order to create the gambits that the learning curve feels steeper than I’d like for “optimum play.”  It’s been fine mostly just using the base skills so far, but in reading up on it the rotation for use that goes from the various mastery skills to the basics and back seemed overly complex, so… meh.  I’ve never been fond of stealth/rogue style gameplay in MMO’s so I held the Burglar for last.  I’ve got it to level 18 now, so it’s got a little to go before I hit 23 on it, but shouldn’t be much more than another evening or 2.  But as it is, I’m thinking I’ll just continue with the Hunter as my main once I have the level 23 baseline established, with a possibility of doing the “RK” from time to time for a little bit of variety.

There’s a concert and dancing by the Prancing Pony in Bree on most nights, it seems.

Happy gaming out there!

[FFXIV] Job Progress Complete!

At least until the next expansion, anyway…  Yet another picture post —

First up — my new Dancer glamour.

Gunbreaker Artifact set

Dark Knight Artifact Set

Warrior Artifact Set

Finishing up Warrior got me the Soul of War title!

You’d think there’d be a title for completing “both sides” of the physical/magic jobs, but a mount is still nice!

My 1st ride on my new mount

And my amaro in flight too.

And, of course, I gotta have the “official summary screen” too 😉

Among the other leveling, I finished up my Qitari beast tribe too.

Now that all of my “leveling chores” are out of the way, I guess it’s time for me to actually finish up the 5.2 MSQ and start doing the expert roulette for the new gear grind.  Or maybe I’ll actually look in to Ishgard Restoration.  Or trying to finish up my Blue Mage spellbook.  Or… Or… Or…  So many choices still!

[FFXIV] Still more Job Progress

More pictures —

Monk level 80 Artifact Gear

Monk level 80 Facet gear

Red Mage level 80 Artifact Gear

Red Mage level 80 Facet gear

Red Mage Level 80 Neo-Ishgardian top

I made that last piece of gear myself. Might as well put that pentamelded crafting set to good use, right?

Black Mage level 75 “Ravel Keeper’s Set”

Black Mage Level 80 Artifact set

And BLM finished off the magic classes, so I got this lovely title.

When going through the MSQ it gives gear coffers for you. i saved all of mine figuring that tanks are most gear dependent when leveling, so now that I’m working on the tank jobs it’s times to crack those coffers open. This is the “Bluespirit” set usable at level 74.

Bluespirit again

The Zonureskin set at level 76

Zonureskin again

The Dwarven Mythril set at level 78. Makes me look like a giant dwarf. Oxymorons are the best!

Paladin level 80 Artifact set

Paladin in the Neo-Ishgardian fending set

After completing the last of the role quests, you get this title – and you may notice, I’m back with Greysky Armada. I missed the FC, so I joined back up!

Happy gaming out there!