It’s been a long couple of weeks, with no end in sight until Christmas & New Years weekend as the nearest ETA unfortunately. Upon beginning my adventures through Eorzea today, while leaving EOCA HQ, I spot the moogle box had become illuminated stating there was new mail to take a look at. Upon opening it, it was a heartfelt letter from my dearest pink cat.
Thank you, Hun for such a wonderful letter and delicious espresso. I cherish and keep every letter I get from folks & frens through the mail system. It’s something I need to do more often and send myself; it’s always nice to see the mailbox at HQ light up with a letter, even if it’s just saying ‘hi!’ and nothing more. ♥
Episode III! – Every now and then, when our outfits for any given Fashion Report align identically or near perfectly, it’s typically Aikirees who will get the chance to snicker or fully run with the more silly ones. However, for this one, I was the one who got to get some amusement out of our predicament.
Due to our homeworld having a major incident this evening, my assistant and her cousin managed to escape to my twin sister’s homeworld for a spell until the incident had subsided. After accomplishing their tasks, they visited her Free Company’s home before returning back to HQ for a good night’s rest.
The Cousins relaxing in front of a fireplace in Tess’ FC House.
I hadn’t pre-planned any posts for this week as of yet, and I really do want to get back to my adventure through Super Mario RPG where I last left off as well as more Star Bunny. Over the past weekend, I was playing catch up and dealing with multiple RL objectives all while trying to get a model locomotive back up and running. An interesting incident happened to Aikirees on Friday evening. It was a very long day at work, got home, finally settled in for the evening, and we started off on our adventures to tackle our usual daily objectives in Eorzea.
As previously mentioned we’re leveling Dragoon and, as of this post, is sitting at level 55. We primarily are utilizing Alliance Raids (AR), Trials, and Frontlines(FL) roulettes to level said class. While not the fastest way possible, it is a nice slow burn of a pace and allows for acquiring Poetics: a kind of currency to buy goodies and gear. That and these are just plain fun as a nice relaxing (typically) contrast from Expert Roulette, which has somewhat evolved into a ‘go go go!’ kind of attitude. I could write up something about that, but this isn’t about ‘speed running’ dungeons.
Anyway, Aikirees is up for AR and gets Labyrinth of the Ancients, which is the first Raid in the Crystal Tower Series that everyone encounters and, along with the two after it, are now required to continue the main story. ‘Raid’ in Final Fantasy XIV is not necessarily mean the content is more difficult, it just means you’re running through a massive dungeon with mobs and bosses with 23 other folks divided up into three even teams. Aside from that, they’re pretty similar to a regular dungeon with four players, and slightly less mob groups. This raid, in particular, is considered very easy aside from one mechanic at the very end a lot of players try to speed through (and it usually doesn’t work).
We have been running Labyrinth of the Ancients on and off since late Stormblood, so I have seen how over that period of time tactics on certain bosses/areas has evolved and/or other Data Centers running it just a smidgen differently. All of this is perfectly fine and is the nature of any MMO that has been running for any given good length of time. The reason for stating that is this incident just seemed… peculiar enough to stick in my mind all weekend. Usually things like this I write off and move on, but there has been an uptick in these kinds of things happening: whether it’s directed at me, or another player.
The run is going pretty smoothly and then the Alliance hits an area where each of the three teams has to go down a different path and deal with a mini-boss at the end called an Atomos. The catch is there’s a pad of a different color representing a shield for another teams Atomos of said color that four players have to stand on to drop said shield while the other four players go smack the Atomos until it’s defeated.
The pathway where the three teams split up.
Aikirees gets to go smack said Atomos (or, poke it rather) instead of pad standing. The Atomos spits out adds every few moments and the party has to deal with it, and Aikirees decides to pull it to the pad folks so they’d have something to do while the others smack said Atomos. The tank didn’t like that and told her not to pull said mobs to the back pad. That’s perfectly fine, and there’s nothing incorrect with stating this. There’s also nothing inherently incorrect with pulling said mob to the back so those waiting there can have some fun too, and the adds are pretty weak to begin with. Regardless it wasn’t anything to fuss over and the section was cleared without a hitch. While heading into the next part, the tank blatantly explain how that section is supposed to be done. To me, especially in this raid in particular, felt kind of uncalled for: it went perfectly fine, and it is a tactic the party can use to make it a bit more entertaining (sometimes quicker, depending on who stays back) for folks on the pad.
After that, it was back to quietness with a few call-outs for adds and where the teams needed to move to, like the ‘A,’ ‘B’,’ and ‘C’ in the above image. At the end of the raid, there’s a bigger boss-like mob that everyone goes and wallops on. Said boss has a nasty 1-Shot Area of Effect (AoE) that can and will K.O. the entire raid if not countered by the teams running back to a safety pad to put a big shield up. Looks kind of neat when first seeing it.
Same tank says the above to the entire raid team. This really isn’t necessary to say, and similar comments have been made elsewhere while running content. This is the first raid a lot of newcomers are going to see, so while it’s technically possible to burn down the raid boss if said HP is at 10% or less, it could have been said a lot more polite or not at all. Shielding for the final AoE only adds an additional few minutes of time to the run and it’s a guarantee non-wipe if done. Newer players more than likely are going to head back anyway because it’s just new content to them. In this case, the damage output was way lower so it was irrelevant to even bring up to begin with.
Normally things like this never really get to me, but hearing it more and more it’s just…. I don’t know. Every character one comes across has a face on the other side of the screen, and maybe they were just having a rough day and didn’t want to deal with this sort of thing (counter-point to this is just not run the content to begin with). Just choose kindness is all I’m trying to get at; everyone is going through their own thing & personal battles, and we’re all playing this game to have fun, relax, and maybe make a friend or two along the way.
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.
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! ♥
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.
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!
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.
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.
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. ♥
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!
