This actually might be the first full week I don’t adventure around Eorzea – like at all. We all might do the bare minimum of weekly tasks over the weekend, but for the most part I’ve been either pre-planning this leg of the project for Saturday or playing Horizon II: Forbidden West, which is now reaching the 100th hour at ~65% complete. This game is huge to say the least, but it’s been really good and a lot of fun to be going through.
Hopefully it all goes (relatively) well with this part of the project, then it should give me at least a few weeks to rest up before the next phase, and that one is a doozy.
While I’d have liked to have a bit more active week here, this past weekend was just sideways progress all around. Parts of it were nice and relaxing, but a lot of it was trial and error with an emphasis on error. With the temperatures being a lot lower right now it’ll be good to do some more outside work this weekend, so probably a quieter week until I can get settled back further into a weekend routine.
This’ll happen as once this project is all paced out and done with, that will really help things, but it’s just a big undertaking. Aside from that, more Fallout Season 2 progress and a bit of the usual weekly routines.
Y’all stay warm, out of the weather, enjoy a nice roaring fireplace with a hot drink, and kick tails!
Aside from all the RL bonkerness and adventuring through Eorzea, been very slowly chipping away at a couple of other games in the meanwhile. I’m pretty sure both have been mentioned, which would be Sea of Stars and Horizon: Forbidden West. Sea of Stars is on the (almost) 3rd playthrough while debating if I want to go into the expansion story right thereafter – it’s a compelling idea since this is such a wonderful game to begin with. The other thought is to give it a little break and move on to another in the backlog for a spell and then return.
Horizon: Forbidden West has been one I’ve been slowly making progress on since around April of last year. Once Horizon: Zero Dawn was completed, I jumped right into this one the next day practically. The amusing thing is I’ve explored and side-quested so much that now approaching 100 hours with the base game of ~55% complete and max level at that. The world in this one is HUGE compared to the first one, but every little nook and cranny of it is worth exploring, and a lot of hidden little spots placed perfectly too. The story itself is pretty good so far, as since I’m only about halfway through, I know there’s still a lot to tackle.
Moar Spaaaaaaceee~!
During the holidays, I did dabble a little bit back into No Man’s Sky on PS5 this time. I actually played it right when it came out for a long while, and then shelved it as they continued to add goodies and content. So fast forward to now and I gave it a go again to much my surprise as to how much different (for the better) the game has gotten! I’m still fairly not-great at it, but it just plays and feels/looks so much better than it did back then! I’ll probably get more back into this once other backlogged games have been tackled, I wanna see if I can get a bunny helmet too (or at least one can hope!)
There is, of course, the various journeys and adventures that continue in Final Fantasy XIV, and will for some time assuming nothing awry happens. However, it’s good to take a breather from that and take a look at another world/story to break it up every now and then.
Almost the weekend y’all! Have fun in whatever world(s) y’all are currently adventuring through!
Heavensturn was a bit more of a mess personally than Starlight was. Due to how folks treat New Year’s week here (or lack thereof), we had to shoehorn it in just to get it done. The story itself about the little Unicorn that wanted to partake in this year’s event was absolutely adorable. It wasn’t super long of an event and no FATE to have to worry about – to me, this is fine, but I know some folks like those.
One of these things is not like the others~!
We all drew omikuji again this year, with (mostly) everyone getting pretty good fortunes. Poor Miss Lizz this year didn’t do as well, but she’ll be fine – she’ll probably just sleep it off on the couch like usual. The big moment this year was the proposal happening, so I know those two won’t forget that.
As for everyone out there, y’all have a really wonderful New Years 2026. I realize it’s getting really dark out there, and the light before the dawn shows up anytime now. Hang in there as best as you can, we’ll get through this.
Starlight of 2025 was marvelous as always. The Starlight stalls returned from last year as did a continuation of the story from last year as well. It was a bit longer with conceptualizing warm & cozy drinks from all three city-states, and mugs to match. The details on the mugs are really nice (I personally like the Limsa Mug the most, even from being a Gridania native). The emotes that came with them are rather expressive, even on us Vieras.
Adorkable sister will always be adorkable.
The quest/story included a minigame of handing out the appropriate drinks (no lose-scenario, only the dialog would change), which was a nice change from the usual just running around and chatting with the locales. As for the Starlight Stalls themselves, seeing them again in all their glory was lovely and some returning characters paid a visit as well and depending on how far one was in the MSQ and side-quests, would also see some other folks pay a visit too once the quests were all done.
All and all, a very enjoyable time with all of the festivities throughout the realm. We did sneak on over to Jeuno and pick up a very nostalgic song for HQ to play during the season as well – one from Aikirees’ first live so many summers ago now.
Hope everyone really had a wonderful Starlight season of 2025!
Finally got some home office work in, and it felt good. This week has some scheduled appointments, but it should be fine once it’s all done. One of them being an eye appointment that is well overdue as it’s getting a bit difficult to see accurately.
It really wasn’t a hugely eventful weekend for once, but that’s going to get back to it either this coming weekend and/or the following one: there’s only so many more cooler weekends that I’ll have access to before it starts to get warmer again. The bigger part of this project will have to be planned out and ideally done before April, otherwise it might be postponed again until 2027 – this project really needs to end this year as it’s been 9 years in the planning. Once it is done though, even if it’s the biggest/only project of the year, it will conclude the first decade’s planned projects; that alone will feel line a great milestone.
Aiki, Lizz, Laureine, and I having completed all of Arcadion late last week (and into the early hours of the weekend), it’s mostly just back to the usual routines until 7.5. That’s not necessarily a ‘bad’ thing and if we did address the eternal 9002 issues (I am really hoping) then we can also get back to working on more side & fun tasks like decorations and a certain submarine that’s been sitting in the workshop for I think a year or so now.
The Leporines, meanwhile, are having a far more interesting and adventuring time while attempting to finish up a lot of side-quests within A Realm Reborn before the two of them move on to beginning Heavensward together. They still have a bit of a ways to go in that regards – primarily to a certain Mail Moogle – but it’ll get done eventually. However, there was a pause to all that over the weekend for them to finally tie the knot and make it official (to the surprise of Reinylla that she accepted to begin with!)
One of these days we’ll actually do the new Monster Hunter trial and the class quests, but I think we’re going to do that closer or well into the 7.5 lull. Beastmaster we are still curious about as well, especially Aikirees coming from her first live in Final Fantasy XI.
Technical-stuffs-wise, some audio work and system work. My oldest PC has mysteriously lost some RAM, which seems to be the fault of the sockets themselves; so that’s going to be another Saturday afternoon to go and aggressively try and fix. Worse case I can’t due to age, but it’s worth a shot. Trains still idling, but that I’ll just plan for another weekend to fix and get all moving again.
That’s all for this morning, y’all have a wonderful Monday and kick tails! Y’all got this!
The cousins went and crushed the final tier of the Archadion last night, and it was excellent. This was a solid tier as all four battles didn’t feel oddly harder than the other. It tends (at least to me and my experience) that the 3rd one of all tiers tends to be the ‘cursed’ one which is either more difficult for some reason, or just always rough to get through. I’d rank Arcadion as a whole probably 2nd or 3rd favorite set thus so far – I mean, nothing is ever going to top Alpha and Omega. Battle-wise, I’d say and easy 1st, but for story, 2nd or 3rd. Give them a go if y’all haven’t the whole tier (overall) will not disappoint.
Aside from that, been dealing with a whole lot of perpetual disconnects, which has been a battle in itself. I know the onslaught of DDoSes has probably had SquareEnix put up some sort of defenses, which is great, but I think it might be affecting players just trying to play the game. Trying something out as a recommendation, so we’ll see if that helps (really hoping). Some more net upgrades are happening next week, so we’re hoping that helps a bit too. It has(had?) gotten to the point where I was just going to hang it up and go back to Horizon: Forbidden West full time for a while.
I mean… just look how gorgeous this is.
Which isn’t to say I’m still chipping away at the titantular game and its story. Hitting the 90th hour now at max level with only 55% of the base-game done so far. It’s been a grand time there for certain. This weekend will be a lot less work-intensive so I can rest, but still more office at home things to do ideally with more Fallout Season 2 as well so should be good.
Y’all have a Happy Friday and kick tails this weekend!
This week really started off turbulent, and the incline is still slanting a bit upwards even now at midweek. Was hoping for more posts and updates this week, but between working on something else and the whirlwind of tasks that has come through, it just didn’t work out.
Even aiming for the Cousins to start Arcadion last night didn’t work out as starting the evening later than usual and some connection issues, that has gotten delayed. I think what we’ll do is just plan for the back-end of this week and just go for broke to at least start them. That way if it goes into the weekend it won’t feel like such a daunting task. One of my PC’s seems to have lost the ability to notice a bit of RAM, so going to investigate as to why. The system is approaching 20 years old, so if it’s a hardware failure, then that’s okay but not great.
As from the post last week ‘What was to be Done,’ that marked the end of EOCA proper, but not the end of the FC itself. Kind of sort of been attempting to pick up some of the pieces left in the wake of the dissolving, but it’s taking more time than I’d have liked. It is getting there and is shaping up, but might need a bit more work. I needed to grief as it was a huge part of my Erozea life, and something I’ll never forget. As for the story about EOCA, well that’s probably going to be pushed into the lull between 7.55 and 8.0.
I think this weekend will be a lot quieter in terms of projects that require legwork, as I am still sore and tired from last weekend’s big project. Even if I were to get the materials ready for the next phase of the garage project, I’d put it off another week or so to take care of much needed other little things.
Argh! Okay. so. The planned project took EIGHT HOURS to do, so my whole weekend fell way behind. I think this weekend I’m just going to take a break and get some relaxing done and work in my home office instead for once. Every time I try and plan around something, it just backfires beautifully.
The actual project, as much as it was such a pain, went and works perfectly – so I am glad I did it, but boy howdy it was rough. After it was done, started the new season of Fallout, and that’s been a grand time thus so far. It’s already much better than the last season in terms of pacing.
Everyone got a good full week in Eorzea however, and that was nice to get back to that again. The community was pretty warm too, a warmth that I haven’t felt or seen in so long. It was really wonderful, and hope to see more of it. With the (possible) breather weekend coming up, might go ahead and finish off Arcadion as well… maybe. If not soon enough, or we’ll just weave it into the weekly routines.
Happy Monday y’all! Kick tails and have a wonderful one!
Well got a few additional posts done this week, which is good to get some momentum back, but still a far cry from the five I was able to accomplish before everything went off the rails.
Weekend outlook is another project that ideally will only take a hour or so depending, which then gives me the rest of the time to start to catch up in the home office. That in itself is becoming a little bit dire of a situation, let alone the poor trains that have been sitting for a few months now, and that’s really not good for them.
Hopefully soon the momentum will be back into full swing and I can start to bring about some really backlogged items here. I think Fallout will start tomorrow evening as well (assuming season 2 is out now?)
While in an effort to lessen the shoulder armors, Aikirees has been trying to figure out what to do for certain classes. Thanks to the 7.4 glam-break, she finally has the answer to her Dragoon utilizing the Monk’s Heavensward Tantra Chestwrap. The rest of her outfit didn’t really change all that much leaving a lot of dragon scales showing, especially on her legs. The final tie-in being the Gambler’s Gloves rather than what she used to use, which was one of the gatherer’s half gloves around level 40 or so.
I think she’s aiming for another outfit change in the near future, but at least for now she’s gotten more of her fuzzy charm out there while adventuring whether with me or on her own.
I kind of just got lost in time, standing there in the entryway to the office, staring at it all. Still piles of papers, letters, and notes all strewn across it. Flowers frozen in time and so many coffee mugs. It was always a mess, but it was my mess that I carried with me across three desks all the way starting back when I was still housed within the Aether Event Center’s manor.
Now it’s… all over, just a bunch of mostly fond memories. Ending the entirety of the map program was just simply bittersweet that had and continues to have even afterwards, unwavering support from a lot of the folks I’ve met over its 5 year run. I’d have never of guessed going to the Aether Event Center’s manor for that first big event would have led all the way to this moment, and here it is. It’s simply just over.
I really don’t know how long I stood there before I felt the brush of a horn on my arm. Had I not only not heard Miss Laureine’s approach and greeting, it wasn’t until she got my attention that it snapped me back into reality. I think she knew what had happened not even hearing the news directly. She knew I finally did it, and it was all from the way she interacted with me in that entryway. She gave me a side hug and really said nothing – a silent grieving moment between us within HQ. Aikirees was out and about and Lizz was fast asleep on the couch on the first floor (because of course), so it was really just us in that moment.
“…Thank you.” I finally said acknowledging Miss Laureine’s presence. This certainly wasn’t planned, and I really didn’t expect to linger there as long as I did. She nodded and turned to slowly head back upstairs to her tasks unknown to me. It sure was something, but now it all can rest, and I can adventure forward knowing for a time I was ‘uniting Eorzea, one map at a time.’
So there are holiday photos and posts incoming, but I’m still in the midst of trying to catch up on projects that have been weaved in where I can. Overall it’s been a really nice holiday and New Years, albeit incredibly busy – far more than years prior.
Finished season 5 of Strange Things, and cried something fierce: both because I’ve been watching it since it first came out when I moved to Florida and it was just a really good ending. Off to Season 2 of Fallout this coming weekend after another big project Saturday. Once these projects are all smoothed back out, then daily posts will return and I’ve missed them dearly.
Might be a really quiet week overall, but soon (if so) that should change.
Y’all have a wonderful first full week of 2026! Kick tails!
Happy Monday y’all! The weekend was good overall, but just felt.. sped up? Like, almost everything that was planned on getting done, did get done, but in such a turnkey it didn’t feel good. As predicted as well, the new Arcadian matches are delayed probably for another week with it all.
Going into the holiday weeks, it’s looking pretty good. I have a couple of items to get this evening to finish it all up, and then I can just worry about finishing up work before the holidays. What’s a little bit annoying is the fact that both Christmas and New Years are on Thursdays, the office is pulling a technicality and not closing on either Friday – for the last seven years I’ve been trying my darndest to explain the importance of R&R, but it’s becoming an over exhaustive fleeting battle at this point.
Holiday Duuuuuucks! From Placid Plastic Duck Simulator.
Sans the new Arcadian, we did do the new Starlight festive event, and place some ‘classic’ festive music on at HQ, but right now is just trying to keep up with weeklies/dailies and the daily DDoS attacks, for in which I cannot understand how/why these are so severe for a game this big. Like… even World of Warcraft during Wrath of the Lich King I can’t remember ever being knocked off due to such a thing. Guild Wars 1 or 2 neither had this, and the other handful of online games from both Blizzard and elsewhere in the past I just can’t recall this ever happening. Supposedly it did in WoW early on, but was squelched pretty quickly.
Just… *sigh* maybe we’ll hear something eventually explaining the situation. Would at least help explain why it’s so bad. I guess just in the meantime it’s one more thing I need to schedule into the evening routines until it finally ends. It makes me wonder how 8.0 and beyond will go with this. Getting kicked off only to come back to a 3K+ queue due to one of these is not going to make for an enjoyable time…
I know, shouldn’t end on a downer, just something that’s been growing into a major bother with everything else happening. It’ll be a good and fun week ahead, and I hope y’all have a wonderful one as well! Kick lots of tails and lots of love.
Aikirees and I blew through the entirety of the Main Scenario Quest last night. Overall this was a solid patch and hasn’t wavered in that regard (yet). The last set of Arcadian still needs to be tackled, but due to holiday scheduling, that might be delayed out a bit further than typical.
I doubt I’ll do or mention much in regards to the actual story progression at this point, but possible in 7.5 or 7.55; just depends on how I feel about all of the post patches as a whole once it gets closer to 8.0. it is better, but we’ll see. I am looking forward to Arcadian once we all get around to it, and there’s that Monster Hunter Trial we’ve yet to even unlock.
The cousins, even with some valiant efforts, did not fully Dawn the 7.4 Trail in one evening. It’s rare as the last time this happened was 6.3(ish), but got far enough at the very least. This is just a quick general thought in regards to the pacing and content – not the story.
I’ve disliked a large portion of Dawntrail after Shaaloani (even two things prior regarding the dungeons), and have my criticisms of 7.1 and 7.2 for one or more reasons, but starting with 7.3 and now with 7.4, this is starting to feel right again. I’m not talking story (as that’s a whole different container to talk about), but just the actual content: the new dungeon and trial in particular. These both are just a lot of enjoyable fun and not a lot of overcomplications that I haven’t seen really since Endwalker. 7.3 did address a bit of this, but this patch nailed it.
I’m not sure what the new Heavyweight fights are going to be like (probably bonkers like the last set in a good way – mostly), but in terms of the MSQ content, this is finally fun and enjoyable again. Now if only we can get the playerbase’s overall empathy back to where it once was.
The last full week of the year is upon us. The weekend was productive, and non-breaking of things; it didn’t go as planned per se however. The original plan was to just rest up a smidgen and get a little bit more 7.4 preparations in, but what happened instead was more catching up on tasks in the home office and holiday planning. So, good things still, but the catch-up is very real still. Lacking a solid day of writing isn’t helping things here either.
Next weekend is my big holiday one before the actual holiday, and with 7.4 coming out on Tuesday, will have to address some things prior that have come up. I got thrown a fairly odd curve-ball in relation to work that I’m still having to consider as I suspect it’s going to come up before the end of the year (or the department review) which could affect the future of just about everything I do. Not that’s necessarily supposed to sound ominous by any means, but there’s some weight to this decision making that echoes my first tenure in this industry, and was ultimately one of the biggest reasons I left initially.
Best not to dwell all that much on it right now, however – I’ve got a lot more experience and journeys under the ears at this point, so the outcome shouldn’t be the same again. Regardless of that, let’s make the last full week before the holidays and end of the year be stellar.
Last week went off the rails again, and still perpetually behind on planning practically anything for the foreseeable future. However, this past weekend was nice; the folks visiting Saturday evening – it was shorter than usual but nice nonetheless. The next time I’ll see them is Christmas and then New Years right thereafter.
Aside from the visit – most of the weekend was in a perpetual state of chasing catch-ups and not succeeding as well as needed. In the process, breaking another Linux system (albeit temporarily) once again. As much as I like Mint, the sheer amount of research required to do some of the more technical things is incredibly exhausting sometimes. I’ve been leaving myself a lot of text documents on the NAS though for when/if I need to reference these hurdles again in the future.
Last full week before Patch 7.4, and we’re basically ready for it, but just concerned with the amount of work hours how the first week is going to go. Ideally we’ll finish the MSQ the night it comes out and then plan getting to the new Arcadion (it’s going to conflict with the traditional holiday Rum Cakes baking). I know we have an ample amount of time to do these until 7.5, and this is the last tier of tomestones until 8.0, but would rather see the story sooner than later to avoid any unintentional spoilers.
Once I stop have self-inflicted technical issues (getting there!), planning out more story-driven posts will come back once again, and I am so looking forward to it.
Y’all have a wonderful Monday and week ahead! Kick some tails!
I hadn’t been planning on being absent for this long. It’s been a bit too overwhelming, even for me. The major issues that I was discussing back in August got addressed: new roof, all of the Windows 10 to 11 or Linux has been dealt with too. The bigger problem was hitting 6 days a week of work to deal with a large project that wasn’t planned or laid out well enough. This on its own caused a nasty bottleneck for everything else, for in which now we’re dealing with that fallout. By the end of this year, either this will be addressed fully or I’m arbitrarily taking back my personal time. I didn’t return to this industry for a 3rd time to do what I did in the 1st tenure that caused me to leave in the first place.
That being said, and with all of that happening, I did finish Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Season 3, Hazbin Hotel Season 2, and all of Helluva Boss. These were all great seasons, and I do recommend them. Wicked Part 1 was superb of a watch too. The audio server project is still making additional progress by the week, and my skills using Linux have increased (even with breaking a couple of systems in the process – oops). So it’s not all been a whirlwind of insanity, but I do miss sleep. Office got a nice small overhaul as well when the new systems went in, and it’s a lot more cozy in there too.
I’d like to get back to posting daily here, and I got enough to do so, but I still haven’t had enough time to sit down and plan getting back into that just yet. The little blurbs I was doing are probably manageable right now, but I need a few hours over a weekend to sort everything else out.
Eorzea-wise. I just announced the dissolution of EOCA’s discord at the end of the year. It’s a really somber feeling, but it’s way overdue. The FC will continue onwards, but my retirement of doing cartography for Final Fantasy XIV is all but done. The fact that I was part of the community for so long and with so many warm regards was such a honor and a privilege. It would never have lasted as long without so many wonderful folks and friends who supported me through it all. One of these moons, I’ll finish up the story about EOCA, but that rough draft is pretty… rough to say the least, and some things have changed since then.
Aside from that, barely keeping it together with such a loss of personal time. Aikirees and I are hanging in there, as are the cousins but it’s really been dialed back (Miss Lizz is happy about the extra nap time, however). Hopefully soon we’ll be able to get back to taking care of more side things as opposed to just weekly tasks. Doing some of those weekly tasks is getting harder as it feels the community in certain parts is feeling far more cold than it ever has, even so now looking back on almost 7 years of playing.
This will be fully completed by 2030.
Let’s see, Horizon: Forbidden West is still moving along as well, 50% completion according to the in-game statistics, with 70 hours invested. I’ve been having a blast but certainly taking it really slowly. Started Sea of Stars again on PS5 as well – it’s just too good and definitely a recommend for a great story RPG with minimal grinding. That might be it for this long post for now; still have lots to thimble through and organize here. The Vieras’ adventures still continue in the background with Reinylla slowly approaching Heavensward now.
I’ll wrap it up there before I ramble on forever. Y’all have a really wonderful Monday and week ahead. Only 31 days left of the year now, let’s make them absolutely stellar!
The rough was dealing with another roof leak, which was found & plugged as best as possible during a rain storm, and then losing nearly all of my work time in the process.
The good was just about everything else. Family evening was really wonderful, and getting everything else done went fairly well but just not a lot of downtime – just consistently moving between tasks. Some server work got done, but still have to add a few more that I queued up over last week, but that I can worry about this weekend.
It’s going to be a very long week ahead. Y’all kick tails and have a wonderful Monday & week!
