And yet another minute…

Well, I think we answered the question I asked in my last post about whether I’d actually keep posting or not since I was out of the habit after having my pc crash when I played games for so long, and that answer is a big fat no.

Quick summary of what’s happened since last May is .. holding pattern with the occasional Warframe mission or FFXIV roulette. Tried out Guild Wards 2 for a few months but it never quite hooked me. the classes were varied and interesting and yet somehow none of them ever quite seemed to “click” with me.

I did about 1.5 months in New World when it released. I really didn’t plan to, as I was in an early test alpha — so early that all we had for weapons was the sword/shield. We got spears toward the end of that test. I think we might have had hatchets too. No “special skills” it was all about movement, heavy attacks vs the light combo (which made mobs stagger on the 2nd hit so you could actually get your 3rd hit off), and dodging or blocking. We could even build our own forts in claimed lands and build farms and whatnot in them so we could do all our harvesting in safety. Except for metals and oil. Still hadda run out and find those. You ran faster in light armor and faster still with your weapon sheathed, so anyone wanting pvp couldn’t catch you went with that. Inventory space was all about weight then too and a higher STR attribute increased carry weight, so me trying to be a miner/blacksmith put all my attribute points into STR and CON like a tank, despite running everywhere in light armor so i could outrun anyone trying to chase me and steal my ore….

Anyway…. reminiscing aside, I didn’t really care for the game in the test alpha, and even after they announced after it that they’d be adding pve elements instead of making it a pvp-only survival sandbox, I didn’t think there was enough game there to make it successful. But when it came out and people were talking about it and the pve actually sounded somewhat interesting I jumped on the bandwagon. Having more weapon choices was kinda fun, and a questline with a story was at least semi-interesting, but the inability to build your own base seemed like a big loss. Taking out the stagger that player hits caused so you can’t get your combos off anymore, while the mobs still stagger you felt like a huge step backward in combat fun. The revamped attribute system is better, especially with removing the inventory connection to the STR attribute. Making you not have to spend valuable leveling points in mining and blacksmithing so that you could just focus them on combat stats instead is also a plus.

And I’m still rambling about it….I didn’t feel any differently about the released game than I did the alpha. It was all right, but not great, nothing I wanted to keep playing, so… yeah. Done with that.

FFXIV released Endwalker and I really haven’t cared about it either. I enjoy watching “Lulu’s Highlights” of streamers playing it, but for myself… I read 2-3 books a week, and if FFXIV’s story was a novel, then I’d rate it decent to good, but that’s about it, so I’m definitely not one to fall all over myself about “the amazing writing” or anything like that. It find it to be enjoyable, but that’s really about it. Even so, I find myself disliking trials so very much that I tend to roadblock when a story trial appears. For Endwalker I’ve pushed to the end, but still have the final dungeon and trial to do before finishing the 6.0 MSQ. Despite that, I’ve got all the magic classes to 90 and am working on the ranged physical. Bard’s done, and I think I finished Machinist, but I’m not sure (showing you just how little I care…), and I still need to do Dancer after that either way. But I find myself just picking at the game here and there, playing an MSQ roulette maybe 4 or 5 times a week for leveling purposes and that’s about it.

And of course the new hotness is Lost Ark which I’ve been going at pretty hard for the past week or so. I bought a founder’s pack and got in the early access, but just picked at it then either. It wasn’t until last weekend that I decided to push at it. I got a sorceress to 50, but wasn’t quite feeling it. I’ve got a bard to 50 now also and am enjoying it, but it’s still not quite “clicking” either. I find that I tend to prefer ranged classes to melee anymore, so I’m thinking maybe a sharpshooter or a gunslinger to try next? We’ll see. I still have a lot of unlocks I need to do, so I think I’ll stick with the bard for a while yet and just focus on finishing through the story and working up my gear and the roster-level things first.

An early screenie of my sorceress in a cutscene

The sorceress at level 50 using the “Destructive” skin set.

The bard using the .. dala skin? I don’t recall what it’s called. it’s currently the only one available for a bard, anyway.

The festival in the sorceress’s honor after she won the big tournament as part of the MSQ in her mid 40’s.

And so… yeah… I finally made a new post. Yippee, I guess.

Happy gaming out there!

[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…..

[Warframe] You Have a Railjack

“You have a Railjack” it says. The grind wasn’t even that bad. Now for the wait until I can actually fly it….

A picture post —

The empty hangar

Phase 1 begins with the “repair” of a fuselage segment

As it’s being built, one can jump up on to it to explore the exterior

The beauty shot of the finished product

Quest complete!

1st look at the interior

It’s so nice to have a window out the top of the orbiter now and not feel like that low ceiling in the back parts is so claustrophobia-inducing

Another view out the top, this time in the Void

Unlocked my 1st Kuva Lich. Haven’t fought him yet, but he taunts me all the time now.

In an odd quirk of RNG, 3 rivens all wanted some form of “maintain a certain evel of combo multiplier vs level 30 mobs for 30 seconds.” One wanted a Hobbled Dragon Key equipped, but the other 2 were “vanilla.” Still and all, it enabled me to do 3 rivens in a single mission.

[Warframe] MR27

I used a max-range build on Mag, while using the “Greedy Pull” augment.  This made it such that every time I hit my #1 that all the mobs within 70 meters of me got knocked down and thus couldn’t shoot at me, while all of the “point orbs” that one needs to pick up for the test within that same radius got pulled in.  3 quick circuits around the maps was all it took for me to turn in well over the 100 points needed.

Go me, I guess… 😉

I did the water gun arena event that’s currently running.  There wasn’t much to it — no weapons other than the provided super soaker, nor abilities nor mods are in play, so the frame and loadout one takes in is simply cosmetic.  The level ranges supplied by the event navigation page are a lie — the 4th “mission” had mobs with the same levels and difficulty as the 1st.  I got at least 30 “soaks” on each run, so I didn’t have to repeat any of the runs, so I didn’t know that was a possibility until a friend ran it and didn’t get 25 “soaks” and thus didn’t get enough event points to move on the the next round.  So if you’ve not run it yet, if/when you do, try to get at least 25 kills each round.  😀

Happy gaming out there!

[FFXIV] [SWTOR] [Warframe] I bounce around, what can I say?

Corellia’s skyline is quite nice

In re: SWTOR — My 2 month non-renewing subscription that I bought expired… a while ago?  Not really sure.  But I also haven’t played the game in about a month.  I took a trip and had some back problems, so sitting in a chair was painful so I just didn’t play on the trip… and then never resumed play when I got home either.  I completed 7 of the 8 class stories (I only had 2 done when I began, so that was 5 more) and was pretty close on the final one, but.. well…   I mean, the game’s fine, if a bit lackluster/too easy in the combat department.  But that’s just it — it’s “fine” not “great.”  And the much-vaunted stories are actually very short and not really anything special.  I saw people in fleet chat comparing the better or worse stories, and just kept thinking to myself “Have none of you ever actually cracked a book?  These stories are serviceable, but not really good or bad.”  So anyway…. I had an itch, I scratched it, and … it’s not itching anymore.

A customized smuggler companion named Risha

In re: Warframe — I’ve mostly been logging in to advance the veteran counter, but not playing.  Wukong got a rework, so I did a little with that this morning.  He’s quite tanky without using his abilities anymore, and using his (now) 3rd ability (was 2nd) is a 5s invulnerability that then more or less kills everything in a circle around you when it’s done and gives you an additional 1500 armor making you just that much more tanky for the next 45 seconds or so, and then you just do it again.  It’s a little annoying that using the 3 turns off his sprint, but it’s not hard to turn back on, so it’s not too big a deal.  His #4 exalted staff now does a lot more damage than before and has nice combos, so that’s pretty nice to use.  Solid rework, but nothing that makes me go “now I’m a Wukong main” or anything either.

Pegasus get for my daughter’s character

In re: FFXIV — For the past few weeks since returning from my trip I’ve been picking at it a little here and there.  Mostly I’ve just been grinding out runs of Copperbell Mines and the Tam-Tara Deepcroft so that I could get the moogle stones and finally get the pegasus mount for my daughter that she’s been wanting me to get for a good long while now.  Since she’s got scholar and healers get instant queues and those dungeons tend to take at most 20 minutes…. that’s why I just kept running and re-running those.  It was still quite tedious, but I didn’t do more than 3-5 runs a day, so while it took a couple of weeks it also meant that I didn’t get low-level burnout too badly and my back could handle the hour-ish in the chair.

I like my pirate-y look as a Gunbreaker

The Shadowbringers expansion early access began on Friday.  I logged on in the morning before work and grabbed the unlocks for Gunbreaker and Dancer, but then I had to go to work.  In the evening I decided I’d focus on the “GNB” 1st, so I equipped the starter gear the unlock quest gives you and ran that quest.  The running battle up until the finaly boss was fine, if a bit slow, but then the final boss was simply a massive HP sponge.  He also has an uninterruptible high-damage skill that you just have to absorb and try to self-heal in between everything.  But with my overall gear level being 197 when the game says it should be more like 250 for that quest (and the actual gear level was lower becuz all of the i130 jewelry was caster, not tank, so it might as well have been 0 — disadvantage of having all my jobs at 70 except for the Blue Mage at its cap of 50 — I don’t have lower level gear anymore….), well, I lasted about 6 minutes but then the big hit took me out.  I spent the rest of the evening dusting off my crafters and making myself a high quality weapon, belt, and jewelry.  The armor you’re given shows as standard quality but actually has the same stats as high quality i255 level 60 gear, so I didn’t need to build that.  Not that I knew that beforehand, so of course I made a full suit of armor. 😉  But yeah, it gives you a weapon, helm, chest, gloves, legs, and boots — but no belt or jewelry, so I had to make those at the very least.

On the bright side — Raubahn Savage was avoided. On the other side — that’s a long queue with a blank background where I couldn’t do anything else.

That filled the evening, so I didn’t get to re-try that quest until the next morning.  And I got put in a queue.  To join a solo instance.  At least it avoids the problem of “Raubahn Savage” I suppose.  After an 11.5 minute wait, I got in.  The trash mobs in the running battle died faster, and then the final boss mob… it’s still an HP sponge, but I was able to do more damage to it and take less with the better tanking stats from actually being i255.  I did some roulettes to get to 61, then started spamming out the SB dungeons.  Since I had a full rested XP bar, the levels came fast and furious and I made it to 70 on Sunday evening without ever having completed a full dungeon gear set becuz I didn’t have to re-run the dungeons often enough to ever get me to fill out a set.

A Viera in her racial outfit. My daughter might have me use a fantasia on her Miqo’te to make one. We shall see. For my own, nope — she’s a Roegadyn forever.

What to say about Gunbreaker?  It’s, well… an FFXIV tank.  While I’ve not played any of the “prior 3” since the 5.0 changes, I’ve at least looked them over and since TP isn’t a thing anymore and there’s no damage reduction from using your aggro stance anymore either, any of them can just spam out their AE combo on trash mobs and be assured of holding aggro.  Versus bosses you can use your single-target combo.  There’s no “aggro combo” anymore — it’s all just dps.  The single-target one does higher damage to the 1 mob of course, but I found that just spamming the AE combo on trash was enough to make it so that a Black Mage and a Dancer going full AE burn didn’t even show on the aggro meter, so… tanking was never “hard” to hold aggro before, but now it’s just that much easier, so it’s really more about positioning and knowing when to use the defensive cooldowns.  The biggest differences now seem to be more how the combos play out.

I saw some weird samurai-looking Lalafell running around.

For Gunbreaker (from 60-69, at least) you have your base 3-hit combo which grants 1 “cartridge” resource which you can use for either a 4th hit on the single-target combo, or you can use it to begin a 2nd 3-hit combo that does higher damage than your base combo but also a 30s CD on being able to be done.  Rotation seems to be 3-hit combo, 2nd combo, then 3-hit plus bonus 3x while waiting for the 2nd combo to come off CD, then repeat.  There is a DoT skill on a 60s CD you can use at the beginning, and an OGC extra hit on a 30s CD that you can use on the pull to get a solid aggro start, then use on CD during the fight also, but mostly it’s just the “4-hit combo” with the occasional 2nd combo thrown in.  Easy peasy.  At 70 the skill reads that as you use the initial 3-hit combo that you can do a bonus hit after each skill, so it will actually be a 6-hit combo.  Unless I read it wrong.  I’ll see tonight when I get home from work, I suppose.

This is the level 68 crafted gunblade. Quite ornate, doncha think?

Paladin no longer has an “aggro combo” versus a “dps combo.”  You simply have your typical 3-hit combo but with 2 possible finishers — Goring Blade and Royal Authority.  Goring Blade applies a DoT so you use it 1st, then you use Royal Authority on subsequent combos until the DoT needs to be applied again.  It’s still got its single-target spell it can use during burst phases also, and there’s also an AE version of the spell too.  But really, that appears to be it.

I haven’t really looked at WAR or DRK yet.  No one’s mentioned WAR that’s I’ve seen, but in guild chat people were saying that DRK is an AE monster now.  I don’t see how, since all the tanks now appear to have an AE combo, but… I’ll get around to DRK eventually since I’ll eventually be leveling every job to 80.  “It’s a moral imperative” to quote that silly movie…

This dropped from the level 69 dungeon. Too bad I dinged 70 while running the dungeon so never actually got to use it…

They’ve added a vendor that sells the i390 top-tier dungeon gear for Poetics, so I’ve got a full tank set using Poetics now and I’ll probably just tank my way through the rest of the Stormblood MSQ and then move on in to Shadowbringers.

I played a touch on my daughter’s character as a Summoner.  With the new expansion out now, people in the new areas have “extra gear” that they’re dropping on the market board for really cheap, so I bought her a full set of HQ i385 caster gear (nice boost from the i322 she was at…) so I’ll be able to easily move her through the MSQ after I do it on my own character.  I’m sure my daughter’s going to want to fly around the new areas, after all.  Summoner is vastly changed now.  Some of the skills that used to need Aetherflow stacks no longer do, they’re simply on cooldown now, and you get Aetherflow stacks by using Energy Drain or the new AE Energy Siphon skills.  Your pet has its basic attack that it does on its own, but you have to manually tell it to use its 2 bigger attacks.  Those are now set with 2 stacks.  You can use the stacks back to back if you want, but there’s a 30s cooldown on building a stack.  Those skills are what trigger your Ruin 4 now, so you definitely want to use them in your rotation and not think of the pet as simply bonus damage that you just put on sic and then ignore it.  I’m not used to it yet, and haven’t figured out a comfortable way to re-do my hotbars yet either, but that will come with time and familiarity of how it all works.

So anyway… even though I’m not even in the new areas yet, I’ve enjoyed the past few days with Shadowbringers so far.  People in my guild are saying that the story line is simply amazing, so… we’ll see.

Happy gaming out there!