More Elder Scrolls Online Than Normal

I've been playing more Elder Scrolls Online recently than I have in a long time.  After a bit of a burst late last year, I've gotten a little tired of leveling alts in World of Warcraft.  I also realized that Elder Scrolls is the only game I play regularly where I don't have an alt of each class at max level.  So, I've started to work on that.

I have an Arcanist at level 27 and a Sorceror at level 33.  The Sorceror is one that I had already started a long time ago, but I also picked up Arcanist recently.  As the most recently introduced class, it seems a bit overpowered at the moment, so I figured it would be good to level it while that was still the case.  I'm just running home faction main story quests and the daily dungeon queue on the Arcanist.  

For the Sorceror, I went to Vvardenfell and picked up that expansion content, just for something different since that class is the same faction as the Arcanist.  Both are fun to play and have been relatively easy to level.  I'll probably try a stamina-based build with something like Warden next, just for something different.

In Final Fantasy, I'm essentially logging on each day to fill up my workshop queues.  I'm about 3/4 of the way through level 19, so I anticipate having my Island Sanctuary at max level in the next day or two.  There's new content dropping next week, so I will shift some time from ESO to Final Fantasy for a little bit.

In World of Warcraft, I'm working on leveling my mage, who is currently at level 64.  After that, I just have the Evoker to finish up, and I'll have a character of each class at max level, which will be the first time that's happened since Battle for Azeroth.  Beyond that, Joar is basically fully geared, and I'm just working on finishing up Renown with the Niffem guys and the Dream Wardens.

I'll have a decent chunk of play time next week, and then I'm traveling the following week, so my play time will be minimal.

That's it for now.

Cheers,

Joar

Gaming Goals for 2024

A lot of new content is coming out this year that will keep me busy on the gaming front.  While we don't have specific release dates for most of it, there are definitely going to be a few more content patches in Guild Wars 2, a new minor content patch and a new expansion for FFXIV, several new content patches and a new expansion for World of Warcraft.  I'm also assuming there will be something new for Elder Scrolls Online, but all they've announced so far is a big in-person event in the Netherlands in April for their 10th anniversary.

The first piece coming out is the 6.55 patch for FFXIV, which is expected in the next week or two, followed by the new content patch for Guild Wars 2, scheduled for late February.

In the meantime, I plan to level my various World of Warcraft alts.   I'm also finishing the Niffem and Dream Walker renown on my main.  Once that is done and his gearing is done, I may also work on gearing up the hunter.  

Since leveling alts has gotten a bit tiresome only 10 characters in, I've also decided to level some alts in Elder Scrolls Online.  It's the only game I play regularly where I don't have a character of each class at maximum level, so that seems easy enough to rectify.  I've started with Arcanist to power through that while it still looks overpowered.  After my normal Magicka Templar, I have a Sorceror at level 30, but everyone else is basically just starting out.  

My other commitment for this year is to get closer to posting something once a week on this blog to have more consistency, but we'll see how that goes.  Last year was the highest post total since 2015, so I'm coming around a bit.

That's it for now!

Cheers,

Joar

2023 Year In Review

My wife and I managed to get a few days away on a cruise this week, so I initially thought this post would probably wait until 2024, but I find myself with a bit of time in the evening, so I figured I'd at least get started on it.

The early part of 2023 started with me splitting time between playing World of Warcraft Dragonflight and still working through Final Fantasy XIV, with time reasonably evenly split in the first few months of the year.  

By March, after getting 6 characters to max level in Dragonflight and working through more renown, I got tired of that again, so I returned to FFXIV and even started picking up some Elder Scrolls Online.  In ESO, the main goal was finishing up Caldwell's gold, which I did by the end of the month.  

In April, I decided it would be fun to knock out a Skyscale in Guild Wars 2, so I also jumped back into that game.  All during this time in ESO and GW2, I was still working on leveling more jobs to max level in FFXIV.  

In May, I started working on World Completion on my main in GW2 and also started working on leveling a character of every class.  I got the World Completion done in June.  I also began working on the new ESO content, Necrom, when it came out and continued with the FFXIV leveling.

In July, I finished leveling every class in Guild Wars 2 to max and unlocking at least one Elite spec on all of them.  Meanwhile, I was down to just 3 jobs to go in FFXIV to have them all maxed out.  

August brought the launch of the new Guild Wars 2 expansion, which took quite a bit of my time as I ran through that content on two of my classes.   By mid-September, though, I ran out of steam again on Guild Wars 2, so I switched back to Final Fantasy XIV for the final push on those last few jobs.  I finally managed to get the Omni-90 done in FFXVI and so switched back to playing World of Warcraft.  

November and December saw me returning to my Island Sanctuary in FFXIV to get caught up on leveling that, continuing to work on leveling alts in World of Warcraft, and trying to knock out those last few Renowns.  

Next week, I'll try to pull together a preview of what's planned for 2024.  

Cheers, 

Joar

Thoughts on Amirdrassil LFR and WoW Leveling Update

I managed to run through the last two wings of LFR earlier this week, including the final wing with Tindal and Fyrakk.  As a casual LFR hero, I must say that I'm much happier with this LFR installment than I have been in a long time.  These fights are challenging without being overwhelming.  Fyrakk is the first end-of-expansion boss in a long time where I've come out of the fight NOT saying "I will never do this fight ever again."  For me, LFR should be about getting to see the content and potentially getting some rewards that are basically on par with what you can get from World Quests and other events.  I think they've hit that balance nicely with this last raid.  The fights are challenging and interesting.  You have to understand the mechanics and adapt, so it's not just a face roll, but it's not so difficult that you'll be pounding your head against a wall for hours waiting for 10 stacks of determination.

I did have one odd thing happen this week.  I had a tier piece drop for me, and I had another warlock in the group absolutely beg me for it, saying it was the last one he needed for this 4-piece set bonus.  

I happily gave it to him because I already had 445 gloves in that spot (just a purchase from the Dream Wardens), and I hadn't been to the Catalyst yet to switch the last two pieces to tier pieces.  Is it possible that there are folks out there doing raids and such who aren't aware that you can use the Catalyst to convert any gear to a tier piece?  /shrug

Anyway, this person was thrilled to death that I gave them the tier piece, even though it was way less of a big deal than they probably thought.  So glad I could make someone's day.

Also, the final series of campaign and post-Fyrakk kill quests are beyond sappy (tree pun fully intended).  So ensure you're prepared for overdone attempts to tug at your heartstrings. 

Beyond that, I'm still doing Niffem and Dream Warden world quests on Joar for rep until I get those maxed out.

In leveling news, I did get my Demon Hunter to level 70 using the Timewalking event and anniversary bonuses, and I'm now working on Shadow Priest, who is currently at 69.  After that, I'll be working on the Rogue.  I've always hated leveling rogues since they got rid of the Combat spec, so this will probably be another one where I just try to chain-run dungeons to get it over with.

In Final Fantasy XIV, I've primarily been working on my Island Sanctuary, which is now at level 17.  I unlocked the final area of the cave, got a new set of tools to use in said cave, and also upgraded my Cozy Cabin to something large and ridiculous-looking, which I think is the final upgrade.

I had no activity at all in Guild Wars 2 or ESO this week.

Cheers,

Joar

Using the Anniversary Event and Timewalking Dungeons to Level Alts

 As was true with my last update, I'm spending most of my time right now on World of Warcraft, using both the anniversary event XP bonus and the current week of timewalking dungeons to go back and level a few alts that I had sitting at level 50 that never got touched after the end of Battle for Azeroth.  I've used this to get my rogue, monk, and mage to level 60.  I also plan to use the last few days of the event to finish getting my demon hunter and priest to 70.  For those, I'll obviously be using regular dungeons, not the timewalking variety.  After that, I will return to doing normal stuff on my main with off-time focused on leveling the alts again.  

At the end of Battle for Azeroth, I had 43 max-level characters, including one that was a boost with the pre-purchase of Shadowlands.  I only leveled three characters to max in Shadowlands initially before my 18-month-long departure from WoW.  I did three more when I came back near the very end of the expansion.  Currently, I have six max-level characters: 2 that are sitting between 60 and 70 and three that have now been leveled to 60.  That leaves me with 34 level 50s and a level 60 and level 70 boost.

I won't level at anywhere near that pace again, but I may see what progress I can make.  Mainly, if things come around again, offering decent bonuses.

Yikes.

On the FFXIV front, I'm primarily working on my Island Sanctuary.  I've gotten it to level 16 now.  I don't know what level 16 triggered, but by the time I looked up from doing the latest installment of the Tataru questline and opening the new cave section, I was already halfway to level 17.  So that won't be long.  

Further Progress in World of Warcraft

Last week, I had very little play time because of some work stuff, and then some travel with the Joarlings for swim meets.  I'm back to it this week and have been mainly focused on World of Warcraft.

First, in FFXIV, I've been logging on daily to work on my Island Sanctuary.  I've now gotten it to level 14 and have upgraded all 3 of my Workshops to level 4.  The Island is back running reasonably well on its own, so it's not taking a massive investment of time each day to keep it humming.

Most of my time has been spent in World of Warcraft.  I did end up finishing the Iskaara Tuskarr rep, so I'm now just focused on the Niffem and the new Dream Warden faction.  My Niffem guys are sitting at level 11 and the Dream Warden's are still relatively early.

I also ran both wings of the new raid.  I had a ton of gear drop for me, mostly because there were hardly any casters in my groups.  Lots of hunters, but very few casters.  I found the first two wings to be pretty fun.  The bosses were challenging; you had to pay attention to the mechanics, but they weren't too ridiculous.  I'm looking forward to seeing the rest of it.  

Gear is pretty plentiful, which is excellent for late in an expansion.  I'm not sure I want to spend much time gearing up any alts, but I may take a look at it eventually.

I'm still playing as Destruction, but after looking at the Tier Set bonuses, I may switch back to Demonology, as those seem more fun.

I've also started leveling some alts again.  When I stopped playing Dragonflight, I had stopped on my Demon Hunter, so I'm picking him back up.  He's sitting at level 65 now, so halfway there, although still in Waking Shores.

I've played a bit of Guild Wars 2, doing a chapter or so of LWS4 now and then.

That's it for now.

Cheers,

Joar

A Busy Week for MMO's

 This is a busy week for MMOs, at least the ones I play.  We have new content dropping today in both Guild Wars 2 and World of Warcraft.  There was also an expansion announcement at Blizzcon last weekend and some faint signs that WoW might be getting some of its mojo back.  

I'll start with the not-new and shiny stuff.  In FFXIV, I've mostly been working on my Island Sanctuary, which is now level 13.  I recently finished upgrading my Cozy Cabin and both of my Granaries.  Beyond that, I'm doing Expert roulettes every day for tomestones and for gear to upgrade some of my alt jobs.  

In Guild Wars 2, I returned to working my Engineer / Machinist through the Living World Season 4 content.  I'll do the latest story content drops on both my Engineer and my Necromancer and then go back to working on him.  Once I get the Engineer caught up, I'll probably go back and do the Ranger, then pick another class to work on.  Maybe either Mesmer or Revenant.  

In World of Warcraft, I've been primarily working on finishing up the Iskaara Tuskarr rep, which I'm very close to completing, and then continuing to work on the Niffem folks.  I'll probably finish up the Guild Wars 2 stuff before starting on the new story stuff for Warcraft, although I want to make sure I'm geared enough to try the new wing of LFR when it releases a week from now.  

Of course, the new expansion was the other big announcement in the past week.  I have to say, I've always felt a strong personal attachment to both Thrall and Anduin, so that trailer really got me in the feels.  In a way they probably haven't since Legion.  

As an altoholic, I really like the idea of shared renown.  Hopefully, that's something they'll push back to old expansions eventually.  The hero point thing looks fine.  You know there had to be a thing like that.  It sounds like you'll also get dragonriding capabilities on pretty much all of your old flying mounts, so that could be fun too, although I'm not sure the Pandaria sky dragon things won't make me a bit ill.  As with most new World of Warcraft content, I'll definitely give it a try, and if it's not for me, I'll unsub for a bit as I've been doing lately.  But it seems I'll pretty much always give them a chance.

That is the update for this week.

Cheers,

Joar

All FFXIV Jobs at 90

This happened over a week ago, on October 9th, but I finally hit my goal in FFXIV and now have all of the regular jobs to 90.  Basically everything except blue mage.  With that done, I've mostly gone back to working on my Island Sanctuary, and am also running a few roulettes every day for tomestones.  I'm using the dungeon drops from the Expert Roulette to try to gear up my non-primary jobs, which is working out just fine so far.  Once I cap out on tomestones, I can also start using those for gear upgrades.  I've also been knocking out some of the hard-mode dungeons from ARR and Heavensward that I had unlocked but not completed.  Wanderer's Palace, Fractal Continuum - stuff like that.

As a result, I've been playing more World of Warcraft than I normally would.  I still don't have those last few faction renowns maxed, although I'm very close with the Centaur people.  Only about halfway there with the cave people.  I finished the Blue Dragonflight quest, which tugged at the old heartstrings.  I almost feel bad for killing all those blue dragons back in Wrath.  

Beyond that, I've also dived back into Guild Wars 2.  I still want to run my necromancer through the current expansion content, so I've also started on that.  I like the machinist, but the necromancer has basically 100% map completion everywhere, so there's something satisfying about that.

That's about all of the update for now.

Cheers,

Joar

Initial Thoughts on Patch 6.5 and Other Weird News (**some spoilers**)

On the release day, I managed to run through all of the MSQ content for Patch 6.5 and the new Alliance Raid.  I loved the story and thought it was an excellent wrap-up to the Endwalker expansion. The new dungeon was challenging but generally doable.  I'll benefit from watching a few videos before grinding it out regularly.  

The new Alliance Raid was an exciting story.  I'm still not sure what I think about the ending, but I'm not sure the gods were really getting all that much accomplished anyway.  So I suppose we'll be just fine without them.  As long as they're leaving some swirly gold AI-type thing to solve all our problems, I feel like we're probably in good hands.

The raid itself was extremely challenging.  I could catch on to the first two bosses pretty quickly, but I spent a lot of time tanking the floor on the last two.  I got one piece of healer gear from the whole routine, which was nice.

Beyond that, I'm back to leveling the Dragoon, who is sitting at level 85, so there is only a little longer to go on him.

In weirder news, I've started playing World of Warcraft again.  I was getting tired of ESO and Guild Wars while waiting for the new FFXIV patch, so I went ahead and started playing and getting caught up a bit.  It's odd how comfortable it feels getting back to my warlock.  

I did manage to get caught up on all the latest campaign quests and went through most of the Aberrus raid.  Got a couple of nice drops from there, and we'll see what shows up in my vault.  I have not tried the Sarkareth fight yet, but I might give that a try right after reset next week.  

I still need to finish up Renown on the Iskarr and the Centaur folks plus the new folks down in the cave, so that'll give me some other stuff to work through.  And I haven't quite figured out what this Dreamsurge crap is yet, so that's another thing.

That's about it for now.  

Cheers,

Joar

Back to Working on the Dragoon

I returned from my trip to the Netherlands last week and am working diligently on leveling my Dragoon.  Since my previous update, I managed to finish the Dark Knight, so the Dragoon is the only one left of the regular classes I still need to get to 90.  Note that I'm saying normal because I technically still have a Blue Mage that I need to get from 50 to 80, but I'm not looking forward to that.

The Dragoon is currently sitting at level 76.  I finished up the job story quests, which were really quite excellent.  I'm not traveling again anytime soon other than the typical weekend at water polo tournaments with the youngest, so I should be able to knock this one out quickly.

I should get the Dragoon to max level just in time for the launch of the next patch, which will bring a bunch of new content and a new alliance raid.  I can use that as a chance to gear up all of my various jobs, along with running daily experts.

Besides, I've been wondering a bit about how to keep myself busy.  I've been thinking about resubscribing to World of Warcraft just to get caught up on the content there.  I also need to finish the new expansion content in Guild Wars 2 on my Necromancer.  Beyond that, I've just been doing daily crafting scrips in ESO to slowly level up the various crafting professions I haven't already done - primarily alchemy, provisioning, and jewel crafting. 

That's it for now.

Cheers,

Joar

Finished Secrets of the Obscure

It's been a while since I've posted, particularly after the flurry of Blaugust.  At least a flurry relative to my normal pace of posting.  Things have been busy with real life for the last week or so - my youngest son's high school hosted a big water polo tournament this past weekend, and as the finance guy, a lot of behind-the-scenes work running the tournament ended up falling on me.

Things have also been pretty busy at my regular day job.  

Today was the first time since last week that I've had any play time.  I have finished up Secrets of the Obscure since the last I posted.  I may run through it on my Necromancer and then go back to getting my Mechanist caught up on current content.  Then I'll need to decide if I want to try running my Ranger through stuff.

On the FFXIV front, I've continued to work on leveling both the Dark Knight and Dragoon.  The Dark Knight is at level 82 and the Dragoon is around 65, so they're both in very good shape.  I've gotten two new mounts out of the Mogstone event, and I hope to get quite a few more once my play time frees up a bit.  

Next week, I should be able to invest a bit more time, but then the following week, I'm going to be out of the country all week, so there won't be anything happening then.

That's all the update for now.

Cheers,

Joar