I meant to do this shout out last week once it was initially posted, but derped out with everything else happening (sorry!!) Over the course of 2023 on Mastodon, we started up a community that is wholly within the social media platform for all of us who adventure around Eorzea and beyond. It’s a fairly loose and very low pressure community with no mandatory obligations of any sort; we just gather from time to time for social events and getting together to do group content as well.
Bearmine, the wonderful artist and good friend behind the work above, suggested creating a Cross-World Linkshell (CWLS) to make it easier to keep in touch while in-game. The group of us agreed and made some remarks that adding our friends to the CWLS would be akin to collecting everyone in a Pokedex from Pokemon. Nearly moments later, I chimed in with the comment ‘Frendedex!’ which became the name of the CWLS and our little (at the time) community.
A little bit later on, I decided to create a logo for our community for folks to use in various things: whether it was for posts, flyers, blogs, etc., and I got feedback from everyone in regards to the design. After a few revisions based on said feedback, the logo was completed soon thereafter. Bearmine asked for a vector copy to do something with it, and what came of it is that absolutely beautiful scenic rendition!
I highly encourage y’all to check out their work, and the link directly to the Tome of Frendedex with higher resolutions renditions is right here!
I mentioned in our Endwalker milestone accomplishment post that we were leveling Dragoon. As are the Dragons and my assistant very early one decided to become one with her interest in everything Allagan related. After many Frontlines (mostly the daily challenge roulette) later, she was able to acquire the entire Late Allagan Maiming Bodysuit. She could also have done and/or gotten the head-mask piece, but glasses. The lance is out of The Binding Coils of Bahamut: Turn 5’s weapon coffer that she acquired to complete the look.
What makes the bodysuit so neat is all the little details: from the Kevlar look, the mechanical armor & joints of the limbs, and the metallic reflective ability of the suit itself! If one looks closely, one can see the photo studio from EOCA HQ being reflected off of it. The amount of care and detail that went into this is just so awesome. If y’all PvP and acquire Wolf Marks on the regular, I very much highly recommend looking into this set for any/all class. Personally I think the melee DPS class ones look the best, but they all have their unique look and charm too.
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.
While not necessarily a ‘bad’ thing to be in a perpetual state of busyness, both in and out of RL work, it does tend to make the ears a bit on the heavier side sometimes. Ah well, the holidays will be here soon and they’ll be some nice downtime then. In the meantime, just need to rest when I can, and hopefully soon. Hope everyone out there is doing well! ♥
This is more of an interlude between the ending of ‘Star Bunny,’ and ‘Star Bunny II’ since I had no idea where to squish this in before I started to document my interstellar travels across the galaxy in Star Trek Online. During this time from level 1 to 10 as a whee rank of Lieutenant, I flew around the galaxy jumping from sector to sector taking on intro missions, some story missions, side-missions, and just plain trying to figure things out.
Fairly quickly, I got the general understanding of space combat, which is a lot of fun! Ground combat, however, is a smidgen wonky. It’s not bad per se, but it’s just not well worked into the MMORPG aspect as much as it could be. There’s two modes to ground as well: Standard, and Shooter; shooter makes it more in line with a FPS whereas standard is more in-line with MMO’s – just click/target an enemy and pew pew. Standard was giving me trouble early on, so once I learned about shooter mode, I swapped over to that for ground portion of missions only. While running around doing more casual things, I leave it in standard mode; the nice thing is it’s just a quick toggle at the push of a keystroke.
The original U.S.S. Astera
I mentioned in Episode 1 that one can sometimes be able to do mission series out of order, and the missions just scale to your level (or that’s how I believe it works). Somehow while doing all of the early side-missions, at around level 5 or so, I gained access to the Terran Gambit story line missions. I started up the first one, and after a few minutes into it somewhat realized that I probably wasn’t supposed to see this yet as it was showing and mentioning characters I have not yet encountered.
One thing I forgot to mention in the prior Episode is that the missions are mostly voiced and a lot of the original cast from the various Star Treks reprise their roles as their characters from the shows, and it’s absolutely wonderful! The tutorial mission for Starfleet has Admiral Janeway explaining what you’re doing, and the Starfleet general things is narrated by Leonard Nimoy just as two examples. Back to the Terran Gambit, I got through the first mission fairly well and somewhat felt quick (mission lengths vary from 20-30 minutes to sometimes near a hour or more), and decided to just keep going with them since it was fun and I liked where the story was going after the first couple of missions.
The second one tore me up big time. I was still trying to learn ground combat and also blew up my ship a few times in the process. It was a little frustrating to say the least, but I persevered and made it through it, but it took well over a hour to complete! I believe right around that time, along with another couple of side-missions, I was able to obtain level 10 and rank of Lieutenant Commander! The Rank-Up quests immediately come up on the screen and you’re able to accept/warp immediately back to Star Base to claim the new ship for said rank (up to a certain rank). I warped myself back to Earth, and collected my first ship upgrade: The Constitution II (or Refit, depending on your reference point). Initially, once first acquired, it looks like it flew right out of the Star Trek movies, but is capable of a lot of customization choices.
I spent a good hour or so fiddling with the customization options for it, and landed on something that looked like a Mini-Sovereign Class, but with a Galaxy Class styled bridge. Thus the U.S.S. Astera II was christened; I used the same registry number and added an ‘A’ to the end of it, but the names can’t be identical if keeping the previous ship, so I just added a ‘II’ to the end of it and all subsequent ships thereafter.
The newly christened U.S.S. Astera II in space near Earth Space Dock.
With all of the affairs taken care of, and back out in space, it was time to see what she could do! Since I was already fairly deep into the Terran Gambit story line at this point, I decided to continue on that, and then figure out how to get back on the right track for the story to be done in proper order.
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.
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.
Character Creation in Star Trek Online is such a joy!
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.
The original U.S.S. Astera just after customization and in orbit outside Earth Spacedock.
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!
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.
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.
The Intro Area: Bowser’s Castle trying to save Princess Peach.
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.
The Title Card after the intro level (also the one from the SNES version minus the tagline: Legend of the Seven Stars).
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.
The System Menu highlighting the battle controls, and Toad recalling ‘The Good Old Days’ from the SNES version.
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.
Mallow running around the Mushroom Kingdom after Croco to get his coin back.
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.’
Belome and the exit from Kero Sewers
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.
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. ♥
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.
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!
