Blaugust 2023: Regular Updates and Thoughts on FanFest

 Guild Wars 2

I'll start this week's update with Guild Wars 2.  I've been working on getting my Mechanist caught up on current story content.  I'm almost done with Living World Season 3, so I will be ready to head off to the Path of Fire expansion soon.  I thought about catching up on this character before the next expansion drops, but I don't think there's even remotely the time to do that.  Plus, I'm still enjoying leveling my other jobs in FFXIV, so I'm not quite willing to walk entirely away from that yet.  

I've also been working on additional zone completion on my Necromancer, who is coincidentally also working through the Living World Season 3 zones.  

Elder Scrolls Online

I've been working through Murkmire on my Magicka Templar.  It's a piece of additional content that I never did, and I enjoy spending a little bit of time back in the Elder Scrolls world.  

FFXIV

In Final Fantasy, I've been working on leveling three jobs - Dark Knight, Dragoon, and Fisher.  I noticed that I'd never bothered finishing up Fisher, so I'm using the Omicron quests to knock that the rest of the way out.  I'm probably only 2 days from being done.  

I'm enjoying both Dark Knight and Dragoon so far.  The Dark Knight is about to hit level 60, and the Dragoon is at 54.  The Dark Knight quests interest me, but the quest guy for the Heavensward thread isn't the sharpest knife in the drawer.  

"Well, this is terrible.  The temple knights will never stop trying to kill her now!  OK, let's go back to Ishgard."

"Wait, what?  Um...hey...Captain Dark Genius?  If the temple knights are never going to stop trying to kill her, maybe we could pick a hang-out spot....I don't know...maybe anywhere in the world other than Ishgard?  Just a thought."

I also watched the keynote address from FanFest last week.  Everything is obviously very short on details at this point, and I'm not sure we've seen enough to tell if this is the beginning of a new overarching storyline or if this is intended to just be an interlude. However, it feels like more of the latter.  

For me, FFXIV is more about the stories, the characters, and an interesting setting.  I don't really need it to be some massive heart-pounding endeavor.  I'd probably be fine watching Zero and G'raha freak out about tacos between various dungeon runs.  So I'm generally optimistic about what I've seen from Dawntrail so far.  

I'm curious what the two new jobs will be, and the general roles described are ones that I enjoy playing, so that would be great for me.  I'm looking forward to the next FanFest and hearing more.  It seems like I have plenty of time to accomplish my in-game goals before it will be released, which is also a relief.

That's it for now. 

Cheers,

Joar

Blaugust 2023: It's Not You, It's Me

This is my fourth or fifth time participating in Blaugust.  In previous iterations, I didn't always include the note in my post titles, so it's a little hard to tell.  I've been writing this blog for over fourteen years now.  The first several years were definitely my most prolific, with the first full calendar year of the blog having a total of 77 posts, almost 30 more than the next highest output total, 2 years later with 49.  All that being said, I've always managed to keep up a pace of at least once a month, with 21 posts being my lowest total ever in 2021.  

When this blog started, it was exclusively about World of Warcraft.  I was a relatively new player at the time, but I had a plan to try to level a character of each class to the maximum level. I started playing during the original Burning Crusade expansion but developed this plan during Wrath.  It took me around a year and a half to complete the goal.  That goal then expanded to a character from each class from each faction and then got completely out of hand during Legion when I ended up with over 40 max-level characters.  

As I worked through these goals, I would diligently track my leveling time for each character and sometimes write about which leveling paths I found to be the fastest.  At some point, because I'm a financial guy in real life, I also started writing analyses of Activision-Blizzard's earnings releases and conference calls, back when you could actually glean meaningful information about World of Warcraft from those.

About two years in, I start also playing and writing about other games, starting with RIFT but eventually expanding to include Wildstar, SWTOR, FFXIV, Elder Scrolls Online, and Guild Wars 2.  I tend to keep this blog very gaming focused and rarely post anything personal here, although that has changed a little bit in recent years.  Generally, it tends to be a weekly or bi-weekly update on what I've been doing in the games I play.

The blog is intended to be more of a personal journal for me than something I expect to be widely read or utilized.  It's a way to document my gaming journey and a nice distraction to sit down and regularly write stuff that has nothing to do with finance or accounting.  If the only writing I ever did was accounting memos and financial statement footnotes, I don't think that would be great for my personal development or mental health.  

On Thursday of this week, I'll publish my regular update on how things have been going with the various games I play and my initial thoughts on the FFXIV Fan Fest.

Cheers,

Joar

Elite Specs and Paladin Done

 Guild Wars 2

I will start with Guild Wars 2 this week.  I finished getting to max level on all the professions and also was lucky to find a couple of regular morning Heart of Thorns Hero Point trains, so also got the elite specs unlocked on all of those professions.  Everyone is basically geared up and ready to go at this point.

In terms of playtime, now that is all done, I've been mostly working on playing back through story content on my shiny new Mechanist and his big green robot friend.  So far, Mechanist has been a lot of fun.  We'll see how far through the story we can get him before the next big content drop in August.  I tried the Daredevil Thief a bit and wasn't really feeling it, but will probably try a few of the other professions in just general open world meta event type content and see how they all end up feeling.  

I may work on leveling up some crafting professions after this, at least trying to get them all to 400, but we'll have to see on that one.  

FFXIV

I finished getting Paladin to max level and am now focused entirely on Monk.  That job is sitting around level 74, so I do not have far to go with that one either.  I'm usually hesitant to level tanking or healing specs using either the leveling or alliance raid roulettes because I just don't have the confidence to do either of those well in situations where the group is clearly depending on me to not screw things up.  However, I may give it a try for Dark Knight once Monk is complete.

I don't know how Monky this is, but I think it looks good!

A Belated 14th Blogoversary

I have a huge amount of respect for those that can crank out decent blog updates almost every day.  I try to post updates every week and usually don't come close to achieving that relatively modest goal.  After a while, the slow, steady progress across 2-3 different games just doesn't seem much worth discussing.  

The 14th anniversary of this blog passed last month, as usual, without me even noticing.  If this blog was a child, it would know everything and be an absolute pain in the ass.  My child that is closest in age to this blog, has been struggling a bit for the last few weeks after having dislocated his knee-cap about two weeks ago.  Like the middle Joarling, he is also a competitive swimmer, so the injury has ended his competitive summer swim season.  His recovery so far has been going extremely well, and he's already doing well with physical therapy and is back in the pool on a limited basis.  He's also finally out of the massive full leg brace he started in and into something more manageable.  We hope he will be in good shape for this High School swim season, which starts in November and is fairly important to his college recruiting prospects for swimming.

On the gaming front, the past week has seen me splitting my time between FFXIV and Guild Wars 2.  I'm continuing to work through the Paladin and Monk in FFXIV and running the raid instance for gear on my Summoner.  I hope to finish that in the next week or two.  After I get the Paladin and Monk to level 90, Dark Knight will be up next and finish the Omni-90 parade off with the Dragoon.

Most of my time has probably been spent in Guild Wars 2, where I am working on leveling the last two professions that I don't already have at max - the Guardian and the Mesmer.  My Guardian is at level 74 so that one is almost done.  I've also been working on gathering hero points for elite specs for the other various characters that I've gotten to 80 recently.  I finished up Spellbreaker on the Warrior as well as Herald on the Revenant.  Next up will be Thief, who I will unlock Daredevil on, and then Engineer, although, at the moment, I'm undecided between Scrapper and Mechanist.  After those two, it will probably be Mesmer, Elementalist, and Guardian.  I have a pretty good path through the End of Dragons zones, so it's easy to farm up the 250 hero points needed.  After that is all done, I'll start working characters back through the various expansion and living world storylines unless the next patch for FFXIV comes through before then.

That's the update for now.

Cheers!

Joar

Still splitting time between ESO, GW2 and FFXIV

I've been splitting time pretty evenly this past week between ESO, Guild Wars 2, and FFXIV.  So we'll go in reverse order from last week's update.

FFXIV

My in-game activity has consisted of running the new raid for those last few leg tokens.  I just need one more to drop for me next week.  I've also continued to work on leveling the paladin and the monk.  The paladin is at level 78, and the monk is at level 62.  

ESO

I finished the Necrom chapter last week and then looked at what is still to be done on my character.  Going back through story collections, I realized I never did the Murkmire chapter, so I've started on that.  After that, I may do either Thieves Guild or Dark Brotherhood for something different.  I'm not sure about a glowy Magicka Templar as an assassin, though, so that might be odd.

I've also been working on leveling my sorcerer through the Dungeon Finder, which is working fine.

GW2

The big news for the week is that a new expansion is coming for Guild Wars 2.  Secrets of the Obscure will drop on August 22nd, representing the first post-dragon content.  Based on what I have seen so far, I'm excited about it and looking forward to playing through it on a few different characters.  The combat and weapon specialization changes look fun too, and I'm interested in running some kind of  Greatsword / Pistol combo on my Reaper.

I decided to use all the boosts, tomes, and xp writs that I've accumulated to see how far I can get with having other classes at max level.  By purchasing the expansion, it gave me one free level 80 boost as well.

The argument that I always see is that you shouldn't do that and should learn to play the class by leveling it up the old-fashioned way.  However, I feel like Guild Wars 2 is a little different because you can still go out there and do plenty of open-world stuff at level 80 to help you learn the class.  Plus, if you're planning to play as an elite spec anyway, which generally makes the most sense regardless given the incremental power of those specs, the ability set that you'd use while leveling is likely not the one that you'll end up using once you're done getting to 80.  

I'm not a long-term Guild Wars 2 player, but I still amassed a decent-sized collection of tomes, boosts, and other xp writs.  Using those, I got my Engineer and Thief to 80 and used the boost with the new expansion to get a new Elementalist to 80 (because who really wants to level one of those anyway).  That leaves me with my Guardian and my Mesmer right around 40.  In retrospect, it was probably a bit nuts to leave the Mesmer at 40 rather than the Thief or Engineer.  I may try crafting to level the Mesmer some chunk of the remainder.  

Once done, I plan to unlock a good Open World elite spec on all of those, gather hero points in POF and EOD zones, and then be ready to run them all through the new expansion when it drops.

That's it for now.  Cheers!

Joar

Diving Back Into ESO for Necrom

ESO

Since my last blog post, and in the previous week or two, I decided to dive back into Elder Scrolls Online to take a spin through the new chapter - Necrom.  So no spoilers at all on the story, but I found it engaging.  The new zones are well put together, and there's a lot of good content there.  The story itself was pretty typical ESO fare but still very engaging.  For reasons I don't entirely understand, I'm not an altoholic when it comes to ESO, so everything gets played through on my normal Magicka Templar, which handled all of the content without much trouble.  

There is also a new class to try - the Arcanist - which is closely linked to the new content.  I've also gone back and cleaned up my quest log in ESO, finishing up many quests that I started but never finished, so I now have my main in a pretty clean place and ready for the next batch of content when it releases.  It makes me wonder if I shouldn't try some of the other classes.

FFXIV

In FFXIV, I continue to run through the new raid on my Summoner and am down to only needing 3 more leg tokens to complete the gear set from the new raid.  And, of course, the 7 weapon tokens, which aren't possible at this point.

I'm also continuing to work on leveling my last few jobs.  My paladin sits at level 72, and my Monk is at level 59.  I'm enjoying them both.  Dark Knight and Dragoon are the last two before I am an Omni-90, so those are obviously up next.  Ideally, this would all stretch out until not long before the next expansion releases, but we'll see.

Guild Wars 2

I managed to get the Warrior to max level and have now started working on leveling a Mesmer, who is already at level 35.  With the Warrior done, that gives me 4 characters at max - Necro, Revenant, Ranger, and Warrior.  I haven't unlocked any elite specs on the Warrior or Revenant, so that's also on the to-do list if I hit a dry spell in other games.  After the Mesmer is done, I think either Thief or Engineer is next, but we'll have to see on that one.  

That is the update for the last few weeks.  It's a bit light because we went on a family vacation to Virginia Beach the week of June 12th.  It's the first vacation we've been on with both Joarlings that are still at home since before the pandemic, so it was nice to get away with everyone.  My wife and I got engaged in Virginia Beach, but I don't think we've been there since, so it was nice to return.

Guild Wars 2 Map Completion....Complete

Since my last blog update, I managed to get 100% map completion in Guild Wars 2 on my Necromancer.  I also knocked out the first two zones of Heart of Thorns along with Dry Top and Silverwastes and at that point decided to go back to leveling alts.  I found using BlishHUD and it's pathing module to be pretty critical to completing this efficiently.  

On alts, my Warrior is now level 62, so in the home stretch for him.  Not sure which one I'll do next - possibly Mesmer.  Although I had quite a few that I had started that I enjoyed.

Through doing all this World Completion stuff, I also managed to get enough hero points to fully unlock the new Harbinger elite spec, but I have yet to try playing it.  I considered setting it up and maybe knocking out some zone events.  I still need to farm up some trade contracts for the jackal mount, so that might be a good thing to try out while doing that. 

In FFXIV, I've done a couple of runs through the new raid to gather tokens for all the latest gear.  So far, I've enjoyed all the fights quite a bit.  I struggled with the 12th circle a bit the first week, then didn't have any issues at all on week 2.  I managed to grab enough tokens for a chest piece pretty quickly, so I've started to piece together the gear look, at least.

Beyond that, I'm continuing to work on the Paladin and Monk, sitting at levels 64 and 54, respectively.  

Switching to World Completion in GW2

First, my interest in the new patch for World of Warcraft lasted only briefly.  I did knock out the first wing of LFR.  The bosses were good, but no loot drops for me (although I will get something out of my vault at least).  I may keep at it a little bit more, but with the new FFXIV patch dropping next week and me still having a pretty high level of interest in GW2, I don't see myself spending much time on it.

GuildWars 2

So I decided to switch from leveling alts to working on World Completion on my Necromancer.  I've also started working on crafting a bit on them as well and have gotten Tailoring up to 150 or so.  I didn't really spend anything other than on thread from the vendor at this point because everything else was sitting in my material storage.  One of the advantages of never having done any crafting I guess.

The World Completion bit is going a little bit better.  I'm starting with the original zones first, and I just have the Charr areas and the whole Orrian area to knock out before I have that done.  After that, I'll just work through the expansions in order.  Because of the way I leveled this particular character, I have more of the zones done from more recent expansions, so these older zones are where most of the work is for me anyway.  In most of them, I only have a waypoint or two.

I'm at 72% right now, so I'm in pretty decent shape. The next few weeks will mean a reduced amount of play time because of some real-life things.  Combine that with the FFXIV patch next week, and it may be a while before I make significant progress on this again.  I've gone from around 31% to 72% in about 2 weeks, so that seems pretty decent.  I'll need to find a HoT Hero Point train at some point too.

There are so many things that I'm still trying to figure out about this game - it may be another blog post to list the questions I have in the hopes that someone is reading!  And one of these days, I'll figure out how to clean up my bank and other bag space.  There's a ton of stuff that I'm saving, and I've got no clue if I need any of it.

FFXIV 

So despite probably being my "main game" at this point, I haven't touched it much in quite a few weeks other than logging on periodically to make sure I don't lose my house.

I'm looking forward to the patch next week though and will definitely be setting everything else aside for that and for the new raid each week.  I may go back to leveling the last four jobs if I get caught in that FFXIV mood.

 

Leveling Alts in GW2 and Warcraft Patch 10.1

GW2

I finally managed to complete my Skyscale last week.  After completing the saddle, which I discussed in my previous post, the rest was pretty simple.  It involved a lot of running around the world but was not overly complicated aside from that.  With that task done, I've started leveling alts again.  I currently have a Necromancer, Ranger, and Revenant at max level.

For the next profession to level, I tried all of them, but it came down to a choice between Warrior, Thief, and Mesmer for what I wanted to do next.  I picked Warrior and now have him up to around level 51 or so.  I'm playing a Charr, which I haven't done before, so that aspect has also been interesting. 

It's been a while since I did the basic leveling process.  I don't know if the Adventure Log in the Achievement pane is new, but there is undoubtedly a ton of experience available from getting those things done, plus it's all things you should sort of be doing as part of leveling anyway, so I've found that to be a helpful way to go.  The extra experience it grants also removes the need to constantly hunt for hearts to complete.  At Adventure Log Level 2, each one also requires the completion of a world boss from the zones of those levels, which also grants a ton of xp, so both of those things have really helped move things along without feeling like I missed out on learning the character like I would if I just used Tomes.

After the Warrior, I will likely do either Thief or Mesmer next.

World of Warcraft

So despite some brief considerations of unsubscribing again, I downloaded the latest patch and started playing around with it a bit.  The story so far is at least interesting enough to probably keep me engaged for another month or more, so I will likely stick with it a while longer.  I still need to finish up renowns on the original factions, and there seems to be quite a bit to do in the new zone.  And, of course, I'll also give the new raid a look.  This will likely continue to be on my warlock as I remain uninterested in returning to my altoholic days with WoW.

FFXIV

With everything else going on, FFXIV is the game that has been suffering an altogether lack of attention at this point.  I only have four jobs left to have absolutely everything at 90 - Paladin, Monk, Dark Knight, and Dragoon.  I think part of the problem is that none of those four really excite me.  I could see myself knocking out the dps jobs, but I'm just not that interested in tanking to feel motivated for the other two.

However, when the new patch comes out later this month, I will dive back in with both feet.  At least enough to gear up my Summoner and maybe to work on some of those dps alts a bit.

That's it for now.

Cheers,

Joar

Continued Adventures In Skyscales

 For the last couple of weeks, I've been playing Guild Wars 2 almost exclusively, working on finishing up the requirements to get a Skyscale mount.  It's a long grind, but I've really enjoyed the process.  

I will comment on the various collection pieces I've done since the last blog update, but really in reverse order.  

Skyscale Saddle

I just finished purchasing the Skyscale Saddle, which required getting components from various vendors.  In addition to about 35 gold and some volatile magic, it also required 250 of the currencies from each of the Living World 4 / Path of Fire zones and 500 Trade Contracts.  

250 Kralkatite Ore - Domain of Istan
250 Kifluorite Crystals - Sandswept Isles
250 Inscribed Shards - Domain of Kourna
250 Lump of Mistonium  - Jahai Bluffs
250 Branded Mass - Thunderhead Peaks
250 Mistborn Motes - Dragonfall

When I started the process, I had almost none of the zone currencies but had about 280 or so Trade Contracts, so almost halfway there.

You would think that grinding out all of those currencies a bit of a time would take forever, but after a considerable amount of research, I discovered that there is an Achievement in each of these zones that awards - wait for it - 250 of each currency.  The achievement is called "Return to [Zone Name]" for each zone and generally requires you to do, or have done somewhere between 6-9 things in each zone.  The easy part is that in each zone, three of those things are harvesting, gathering lumber, and mining - generally 15, 30, and 30.  When you mine something and get 3 ore from a particular node, that counts as 3 for purposes of this achievement, so it doesn't take too long in each zone. 

For about half the zones, having done the story quests and then these three gathering pieces was enough to get the achievement.  In a couple of zones, I also had to do a race of some sort - just complete it - not win.  In Thunderhead Peaks, I also had to open 3 Dwarven Chests, which are pretty much all over the place, and there were a couple of zones where I had to kill the end boss for one of the metas - which was easy enough with a group.

I also found a shortcut for getting the Trade Contracts.  Getting 100% map completion in any of the Crystal Desert zones awards 50 Trade Contracts.  So you'd think I'd need to finish at least four of them, but as it turns out, I managed to pick up enough by opening chests or as rewards for other things that I was doing as part of the map completion, that I only ended up having to do the map completion for two zones to go from 280 to 500.

Skyscale Lost

This collection happens right before the saddle and involves finding your Skyscale at the end of 21 different jumping puzzles around the world.  There is a shortcut available where you can purchase Extra-Pungent Skyscale Treats that will bring the Skyscale that you're hunting to you as long as you're in the general area of the jumping puzzle.  I could easily complete about half of the jumping puzzles, so I only purchased 9 of the Treats to circumvent the rest (you get one for free at the beginning of the series).  There are two that involve a Jackal mount, which I don't have, two that include defeating World Bosses, and one that consists of a meta event that doesn't seem to get a lot of attention, so there were only 5 puzzles that I couldn't get through.

Saving Skyscales

This is the one that comes right after the searching for eggs phase that I mentioned the last time.  It basically involves running all over the world and doing various things with your Skyscale egg.  There are a lot of guides out there with decent descriptions of the most efficient order to do this in (I used the one on Metabattle, which seemed okay).  The only piece that was complicated was that you had to have unlocked a bunch of doors in Derelict Delves to get a few of the pieces for this one.  I highly recommend watching a video to get through that if you haven't already unlocked all the Runestone Doors in Derelict Delve.  The other two pieces that are a bit complicated on this one are that getting into Joko's palace in the Desolation can be a bit challenging (use the spiral stairs way off on the right), and you have to complete the Path of Ascension event in Elon Riverlands for another portion.  A bunch of people were doing this one, so it wasn't bad once it started.

After all that (and all the stuff in Dragonfall that I described in my last blog post), I only have one set of collections left - sealing 21 different rift tears with a loaner skyscale - again, probably scattered all over the place.

FFXIV

While I haven't been playing much, there is an update on FFXIV.  I finished getting my Black Mage to max level and have started working on the Paladin, which is currently at level 56.

Dipping Back Into Guild Wars 2 A Bit

It has been three weeks since my last blog post, so I apologize for the delay.  There's no reason other than laziness, and maybe not too much to write about, although the list below would call that into question.  So here is the update:

Guild Wars 2

With the release of some new content in Guild Wars 2 recently, I decided to dip my toe back in a little bit.  I finished up the storyline to date in the new zone, and after doing that, I decided it might be an excellent time to work on getting a Skyscale mount.  Getting around some of these newer zones is easier with one, and participating in some of the groups for large meta-events almost requires it now.

For those unfamiliar with Guild Wars 2, the skyscale is the closest thing in the game to an actual flying mount.  It's more like one of the dragonriding mounts in World of Warcraft in terms of actual mechanics, without anywhere close to the speed or the range.  There's a Griffin mount also, but it's more of a glider than anything.

Acquiring a skyscale mount is a reasonably grindy endeavor, requiring you to complete 30 zone events, grind up a bunch of currencies, and complete many different collections that involve flying around various maps collecting stuff. However, you can't fly yet, so getting around to all of this stuff can be a challenge.  

I'm still in the early stages.  For those of you familiar with the grind, I just finished up the Injured Skyscale part, which I think means I'm about to start collecting eggs next.

World of Warcraft

I also spent some time in the new Forbidden Reach zone in World of Warcraft.  It's an interesting zone, and the campaign storyline through there was pretty decent, but at least for me, there's not much in the zone to keep me coming back.

I am getting even closer to having all the various factions at maximum renown.  I'm only one level away on both Dragonscale Expedition and Valdrakken and at least in the single digits on the other two.  That puts me behind most people, but I figure it's not bad, given how little I've been playing.

FFXIV

I don't know why I'm putting this piece of the update last since FFXIV continues to be the game I play the most.  I did manage to get my Sage to max level, which now means I have all of the healer specs maxed.  I think Scholar and White Mage are still my favorites.

I'm in the home stretch on the Black Mage, sitting at level 86.  I should finish that job up this week, at which point it will be on to the Paladin.  The Black Mage has been fun to play, but I still prefer Summoner of the casting classes.  Black Mage will give me all the casting classes done (except Blue Mage, but /shrug)

I've continued to also beat my head against the wall each week in Euphrosyne.  I've now had so much bad luck on caster gear that I think all of my other play specs have an equivalent amount of Euphrosyne gear as my main (I'm greeding on whatever drops on the last boss if there is no caster gear that I need that drops on that boss)