Blaugust 2024: Preparing for War Within and Update on FFXIV

I've made some fairly decent progress in FFXIV recently.  All of my DOH/DOL jobs are now at level 100, so I can mainly focus on leveling and on knocking out the latest set of raid gear on my main.  I finished leveling Samurai and have started on both Paladin and Pictomancer.  The Paladin is at level 93, but not really much progress on the Picto yet.  

In World of Warcraft, I did manage to get my Alliance Druid to level 70 before early access dropped to War Within.  I'm not going to do any spoilers here, but I did manage to play a decent amount of War Within on Friday and got my Warlock to level 73.  A few general comments:

• I did the one initial delve that it has you do as part of the storyline.  That seemed fine, and I'm looking forward to trying more of those.
• I also did my first follower dungeon, which I really liked.  I didn't even have the tank set up to lead the party, so I was setting the pace for the group, which worked fine for me.
• So far, I'm enjoying the story and the content that I've seen to this point.  It's engaging enough that I probably won't spend much time in FFXIV for now.  

My play time for the next few weeks will be very limited. Over the course of September and October, we're doing a whole bunch of official college recruiting visits with the youngest Joarling, which will involve traveling Thursday through Sunday for about seven weeks straight. On top of that, my company has gone from allowing folks to work from home as much as they'd like to mandating a minimum of three days per week in the office, which is taking a big chunk of commute time out of my life.  On the upside, I'll probably be more caught up on the podcasts I like listening to.

That's it for now.  This Blaugust has been slower than usual for me with all the college recruiting prep for the youngest, but I'm hoping to pick up the pace with my posting a bit in September and October.  

Cheers,

Joar

Blaugust 2024: Updates on Warcraft and FFXIV

 In Warcraft, I got yet another character to level 70 using the Radiant Echoes - this time my Alliance Paladin.  That makes my 18th character at max level.  I'm running my Alliance Shadow Priest through the same process next.

After playing the pre-patch for a few weeks now, while I like the concept of warbands generally, especially as a massive altoholic, I'm not a big fan of the log-on screen itself.  I enjoyed having my characters organized by server rather than all together in one big mass.  It cut them up into much more manageable chunks.  Of course, this is from the perspective of someone with 49 different alts, so you're dealing with a much smaller group of characters, it's probably a lot better interface.

In Final Fantasy, I have only played a little since my last update.  I've gotten busy with work and then was out of town over last weekend for a water polo tournament with my youngest.  I have kept current on the new raid, and all I have left gear-wise from that are legs, one more accessory, and the weapon.  Then, I can just focus on leveling until the alliance raid comes out.

All my DOH/DOL jobs are at least level 97 now.  I have two at level 100 - Leatherworking and Goldsmithing, so I can do all my own melding now, which is good. 

Once War Within launches in a couple of weeks, I will take a break from FFXIV for a while. We'll see how long that keeps me engaged. I'll likely focus on that until the first raid tier is done, but we'll see how that goes.

That's the update for now.  I'll try to knock out one more post on Friday!

Cheers,

Joar

Blaugust 2024: Radiant Echoes for Leveling

I'm still primarily playing FFXIV, but I wanted to talk about using Radiant Echoes for leveling because I've tried it for some of my alts that are stuck at level 50.  I didn't try the event when it was first released, so my commentary is entirely based on the more cleaned-up version that's out now.  I've been finding it to be insanely fast for leveling.  It's taking anywhere from 3-6 minutes per level from 50 to 70, meaning you can get that entire stretch done in an hour or two.  

The bad news is that it is incredibly tedious, and you won't be at all geared by the time you get to level 70, but if that's not a big concern for now, it's a reasonable way to try to push a few alts over the finish line.  I have more than a few to go, and while I could theoretically knock them all out before War Within launches, I'm not going to.  While I currently have 17 max-level characters, after dinging 70 on my Alliance Warlock yesterday, I still have 27 alts sitting at level 50, two at level 60 (including an Alliance Paladin that I started working on today), and 3 that are below level 50 (mainly allied race characters that I started but never finished).  But I will probably get a few more knocked out just for fun.  We'll see how many it ends up being.  The Echoes in a zone that involve killing some kind of boss (not the final boss for the zone) seem to give more xp than the other ones, so it seems better to focus on those.

On the FFXIV front, I've been running the new raid regularly and am starting to accumulate a decent amount of gear.  I also have been continuing to level the Samurai, currently at level 98.  Most of my focus over the last couple of days has been making the level 97 crafting and gathering gear for my DOH/DOL jobs.  I'm getting close to finishing the intermediate crafting steps, so I'm probably only about an hour or so remaining to get it all knocked out.  I'll then restart my leveling and see if I can use that gear to get scrip gear once I hit 100.  Otherwise, I'll probably wait and work on the level 100 crafted gear later.

That is the update for now!

Cheers,

Joar

Blaugust 2024: Intro and Updates on FFXIV and World of Warcraft

For those of you who may be reading my blog for the first time because of Blaugust, I figured I'd start with a bit of an introduction.  I've been blogging about video games for over 15 years now.  This blog started as a way to talk about plans that I had for leveling a bunch of alts in World of Warcraft, as well as leveling strategies.  It has eventually expanded to cover quite a few other games I play, but it still tends to focus on casual gameplay and leveling alts.

If you'd like a little bit more detailed history of the blog, there's a pretty decent version that I did for Blaugust back in 2022:  https://wowaltaddiction.blogspot.com/2022/08/blaugust-2022-evolution-of-wow-alt.html

Since the last update, more than two weeks ago, I have been continuing to slog through alt jobs in Dawntrail and working through the new raid.  I finished leveling my Machinist and am sitting at level 96 on my Samurai.  Paladin will be up next.  I've also been working pretty hard on the various DOH / DOL jobs and have them all sitting between 95 and 98 (except Fishing, which is at 94).  So I'm making good progress there.  I continue to just use the Grand Company turn-ins each day for leveling.

I missed one raid cycle of the new raid because of vacation, so I'm a bit behind. I've got a lot of tokens at this point, but it's been pretty spread out, so I haven't really upgraded much gear yet.  

I also finished the Caster, Healer, and Ranged DPS role quests and will knock out the physical dps role quests once I'm done with Samurai.

I'm still mostly enjoying Dawntrail, but I am running out of steam with this expansion. So, I may switch back to World of Warcraft on and off, particularly once the new expansion launches there.

On the World of Warcraft front, I haven't done much other than get the pre-patch up and running. I'm still working on the Alliance Warlock, and if I get the chance, I may try leveling him using Radiant Echoes. He's around level 61.  

Beyond that, I'm still logging on every day to do an enchanting writ in ESO to continue to level that last profession. It's sitting around 44 now, so I'm getting close.

That's it for now.   More soon!

Joar