Episode II! – Half Vanu, part Miqo/Viera, and an interesting style choice of boot. I have no idea of what to make of our predicament, but my dear younger Sister is having the time of her life from this weeks’ outfit.
Kosmikros Sisters
Dragon Tails: Happy Holidays!
My Assistant and her Cousin wishing y’all a Happy Holidays and December ahead! EOCA’s tree has been put up for all of the festivities! Wishing the absolute best to everyone this wonderful holiday season and Years’ End ahead! ♥
An Endwalker Mission: Complete
A little over 2 years ago, in the twilight months of Shadowbringers, I was playing pretty ‘aggressively.’ What I mean by this is I was maxing out weekly tomestones, all 12 custom deliveries, Wonderous Tails, and acquiring all three raid coins for gear augementation (+10 iLvling a piece of equipment for slightly better stats), all within the span of two evenings. I had maxed out both Caster and Healer sets in doing this, but never got the relic past the 2nd part as I never liked Bozja and still do not; I know a lot of folks that do like Bozja, but it was just not content I enjoyed.
Around this point Aikirees was on her own account, I was shifting more into being known as the Kosmikros Sisters plus a bit more Roleplay, and I very much wanted to take her along for the ride in Endwalker for both of us enjoy the story & beyond as Sister’s proper. However, I needed a plan for this as well as making late-game not cause severe burnout or over exhaustion.
Looking at what I had done in Shadowbringers, and realizing I never actually ended up using the Augmented healing set, nor had any other class I would usually use anywhere near late-game aside from Black Mage, decided to just focus on Black Mage primarily all throughout Endwalker. As for the raid coins, I’d hold onto those until the very last raid and then start to augment in lieu of getting ready for the next expansion. As for Tomestones, I wouldn’t worry about maxing them out at all. The remaining classes I had would just level and gear as a secondary task.
Everything else was just sprinkled in as necessary for a much more reasonable plan with a nice slow burn in the process through all of the post-patches. After almost two years of adventures in Endwalker, last night this plan ended in complete success! It may not sound like a big milestone to a lot of folks who do more things, but to plan out this and see it come into fruition for both of us (not even counting the Dragon’s and their own adventures!) this was an absolute wonderfully exciting moment!
From Dusk to Dawn(trail)!
So, where do we go from here? Well, we still have all of the Endwalker Role Quests, we’re in the midst of leveling Dragoon, there’s Island Sanctuary, and a handful of other little more relaxing things to look forward to up to the launch of the next expansion, Dawntrail. Sure, there’s still Custom Deliveries along with other weekly tasks to do still, but with the one huge 2-year plan completed, it should be a smooth boat ride from here till then.
…okay I’ll stop with the Dawntrail puns (maybe).
Star Bunny: Episode 1
Far back in April of this year, I finally delved into watching Star Trek: Picard. Upon finishing the first season and, I believe, the second season, I decided to look into some Star Trek games. I remember a few articles that Massively OP did on Star Trek Online, as well as some things about it on YouTube, so I decided to give it a try.
I don’t have much in terms of well-done record keeping at the time, but I do know I spent about 2 hours in the character creation making my character since I wanted her to not be one of the standard ones to pick from. It’s very extensive as to what one can do to their character if they choose to spend the time on it.
I picked Starfleet in Modern time for my faction. There’s three different Starfleets to choose from: Modern, TOS, and Discovery; aside from those, there’s Klingon, Romulan, and Dominion. After the character creation and the faction, it’s off to what is basically the tutorial mission. It’s a rather thorough tutorial explaining the games basics and mechanics off the bat, which is really nice! Once the tutorial mission is completed, one is free to explore, customize, socialize, and do missions at their leisure. The customization for the starships are so nice and really in-depth as well! Starfleet starts with a Miranda Class straight out of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, but I was able to make it look like it was more so out of the 24th Century instead.
Two large things to point out; the Missions (Episodes) can kind of be done out of order, for in which I wish I knew that beforehand, but it somewhat worked out. The other thing being a lot of the actors and actresses from the Star Trek Series make guest appearances in Star Trek Online, giving it a really nice depth to it all as well.
Anyway, from here my decision was to get to level 10 quickly, as that was the next rank up for a new ship. The game does a fairly decent job at easing one into more difficult content, but there are some difficulty spikes along the way as well. Each Rank does up the difficulty, but if you’re somewhat prepared, it doesn’t seem too rough at least not yet.
Thus the voyages of the U.S.S. Astera began all across the Galaxy! The name ‘Star Bunny’ came about as I’m a Viera in Final Fantasy XIV, so it felt appropriate for that to carry over. The voyages have been mostly a lot of fun, but not exactly sure what the hoobers we’re doing!
Dragon Tails: EOCA versus Bahamut
About a week or so ago, I inquired with my FC, Eorzea Cartographers (EOCA for short), about getting our beloved black cat, Juli, through The Binding Coils of Bahamut for the first time. It was tentatively set for Black Friday, and I tasked my assistant on leading the charge.
The Binding Coils of Bahamut are 13 dungeon/fights for a party of eight, and they were once the hardest content in Final Fantasy XIV. The story helps in filling in some gaps as to what happened between Legacy FFXIV and A Realm Reborn. They’re so absurdly hard and/or ridiculous that they’re not even included in the Duty Finder – so if one is to seek out and tackle The Coils, they either need to force it in Duty Finder, set up a Party Finder, or solo it at max-ish level via the ‘Unrestricted Party’ setting that unsync’s it. Their accessible fairly shortly after completing ARR’s MSQ and then beating Ifrit (Hard), Garuda (Hard), and Titan (Hard), which then unlocks the quest ‘Primal Awakening’ all from within The Waking Sands.
With the day and my Assistant known of the task at hand, said moment finally arrived and they all set out to take them all on in own big swoop! Running them unsync’d for the first time takes about 4-5 hours to complete, and that consists of the dungeons themselves, the cutscenes, and general running around to unlock the later sets. There’s 3 sets total: the first set has 5 dungeon/fights, while the other two have 4 in them each of similar dungeon/fights.
Overall the experience went very smoothly with only the infamous T9 (Second Coil of Bahamut – Turn 4) being the only real tricky one. That being said, T9 is really the only obnoxious one of the bunch, where as the rest of them can have some odd mechanic (or none at all depending), but usually can be breezed through without much concern at higher levels.
Once the 12 were triumphed over, all that was left was Bahamut Prime himself in the 13th one, and that went off without a hitch. Juli got all her clears, saw all of the Coils of Bahamut, the missing story pieces that help connect Legacy and ARR a bit, and all of the hidden lore locked away in their depths! Congrats again, Juli!
I highly recommend trying to take on The Coils of Bahamut if one has not, even just doing them unsync’d solo is a very fun time!
Sisters’ Fashion Report Adventure
The one that started it all so very long ago. The two of us not very sure what to make of the week’s outfit results. The Fashion Report in Final Fantasy XIV is a weekly ‘challenge’ that is given in the Gold Saucer and gives the award of 60,000 MGP if the score is 80 or higher. Typically the outfits created by them are rather comical, and so I started making an adventure series for the ones that were either fun, comical, or both.
Super Mario RPG: A Wonderful Re-Telling
About a week back, I began Super Mario RPG on Switch, which is an absolutely true and wonderful retelling/remake of its Super Nintendo predecessor. The story and everything is nearly identical to the original, but with everything getting a gorgeous makeover with some nice Quality of Life adjustments as well to make things easier and/or quicker.
So after a quick romp through Bowser’s Castle to save Princess Peach, the save is abruptly interrupted with a massive Sword falling from the sky and penetrating Bowser’s Castle throwing Bowser, Mario, and Peach out and far away from it.
From there, Mario crash lands back at his house: Mario’s Pad and is greeted by Toad trying to escort Peach back to the Mushroom Kingdom, only to find out she’s been Kidnapped by Bowser – again. After some quick optional tutorial lessons from Toad, Mario is off to Bowser’s Castle again only for the Sword, that is part of the Smithy Gang, to destroy the bridge losing access to said castle. Mario flees back to his pad to tell the tale to Toad. Thus leading both of them off to the Mushroom Kingdom to tell the Chancellor of what has all happened.
Real quick shout out to the menus. It’s nice that the battle controls can be changed back to the SNES version, which allows for selecting and executing the different options with A, B, X, Y, instead of hitting say X, and then hitting A to execute it. For us older players, this can be confusing who are used to the old controls. So it’s really nice this option exists. Another thing is allowing to change the difficulty at any time too for folks who just want to see the story and not worry about all the RPG elements.
Once the tale is explained to the Chancellor, Mario goes off to meet Mallow, a ‘Tadpole,’ who is chasing after a feller named Croco that stole his coin. After a fun new cutscene, Mallow and Mario join up and they seek after Croco. Originally in the SNES version, when Mario used Fire on Croco, a text box would simply come up saying ‘YEOUCH!’ hinting his weakness. This version his tail catches on fire and is ‘stunned’ for a turn, giving the player a free hit. It’s a nice change to make the early levels a bit easier.
Upon returning to the Mushroom Kingdom, it’s being overtaken by some of the Smithy Gang. Claymorton (originally named Mack in the SNES version), being the leader of this part of the gang that Mario and Mallow have to take on. The fight is fun, and afterwards, Mario & Mallow are awarded the first Star Piece, along with being told to go to the Kero Sewers and forwards after that to Tadpole Pond to meet Mallow’s ‘grandfather.’
Kero Sewers is the first major ‘dungeon’ in the game, but it’s not too rough with a cat-like boss named Belome at the end of it. Belome likes to eat a lot, and certainly shows it in the fight with some other debuff mechanics to try and slow Mario & Mallow down. Once defeated, the gate opens, a lot of water comes through, and the two are off to the Midas River! This concludes the first whole area of Super Mario RPG, the next part starts off with a fun mini-game course before heading to Tadpole Pond.
Dragon Tails: The Duality of Cousins
The Maknaryden Cousins, or simply The Dragons or The Lizzers, achieving level 50 Dragoon and starting to splinter off into their own looks has been a marvelous milestone for them after all of this time. One in full Allagan – specifically the Late Allagan Set from Wolf Marks that is purchased in Wolves’ Den (she loves everything Allagan and even Garlean), while the other starts to take on some more inner dragon feelings using mostly the Tortoiseshell Scale Male Armor.
Meanwhile, in Radz-at-Han
While traveling the world, there’s always fun sights and scenes to see, and things like this I absolutely love to come across. It makes the world all the more special while adventuring through it. ♥
What a Week
Survived the week before Thanksgiving, it’s typically pretty bonkers and this one was no different. Looking forward to the weekend now and playing a lot of Super Mario RPG for Switch that got released today! Here’s to a nice relaxing one with a wonderful holiday week after that!
Also think I got all of the elements either up and running where I want them or, at they very least, in place to expand as more things go up in time. Haven’t done this in quite some time, and since a lot has changed over the years, it’s been a bit of a learning curve. Glad to be doing it though.
Hello y’all!
Welcome to my/our little corner of the world. Been wanting to do this for a long while now, and with me taking a breather from Social Media for a spell, figured it was a good time to get it going! Along with that, two of my dear friends: Bearmine, and AceAttVeg having their wonderful blog sites, it got me even more inspired to finally get this moving as well! ♥
Albeit still in the process of getting all of it up and running, but I think it’ll just all fall into place as I post more & more adventures and stories. Thank y’all for stopping by, and let’s see where the stories & adventures take us!