meatball-headache

[meatball-headache]

Far be it for me to play a new game, but I'm going to try this one out. It just came out the other day but it's got great reviews. It looks like one of those princess-maker type things, but with elements of turn-based RPGs, visual novels, deckbuilders? Not really sure. The aesthetic in the screenshots looks really keen, though. I dig it. Might be a scary game in disguise? We'll see, we'll see.

But, what really sold me was, I looked at the reviews, and the top review opened with this:

So... yeah :D

Anyway, I'll try the demo and let you know how it goes.

[meatball-headache]

maybe the real beast tribes were the allied societies we made along the way

hey? can someone send me a screenshot of an ixali with a bow? i'll give you ten bucks please

[meatball-headache]

Congrats to Sikas the tree, who, after 871 hours, became my second character ever to successfully meet Pax Klanq, and the first to deliver Q Girl's plans! (The other time, the data disk got rusted to death. Oops.)

So, progress at last!

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hey? can someone send me a screenshot of an ixali with a bow? i'll give you ten bucks please

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@magitekconveyor is correct! There are no Ixali archers :)

I needed one for reference for reasons, so I checked wikis, and all the pictures has swords/shields, axes, spears, or were magic-users. So I went in game and went to the hot spots, too, and nope, no one's got a bow.

If you want to be a silly billy, you can ask yourself: so who actually shot us in the opening cutscene? :p

This has been your Final Fantasy Fun Fact of the day.

hey? can someone send me a screenshot of an ixali with a bow? i'll give you ten bucks please

[meatball-headache]

hey? can someone send me a screenshot of an ixali with a bow? i'll give you ten bucks please

[meatball-headache]

Bunny hats

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I witnessed greatness, I kicked its teeth in.

[meatball-headache]

LETS FUCKING GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOooooooo (takes breath) OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOoOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

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Well, it's finally time! Below is a link if you'd like to get a physical copy of this exclusively FF14 oracle deck.

THE WARRIOR OF LIGHT'S ORACLE

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The Scions were in Dawntrail?

Well, then since the Dawntrail Scion vs Scion storyline went nowhere and lasted exactly one (1) dungeon. I vote, that next expansion the Scions should fight for our hand in marriage. You know...as a treat.

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chaos conductor

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Spooky Crossaint has seized my attention and fully pulled me away from Caves of Qud, hence I haven't posted much in a while, because there's less to say about XIV's scripted experiences compared to the wild frontier of Qud. But, unfortunately, I'm still human, with a desire to be heard, even though I have nothing to say.

The Live Letter's tomorrow, and they're addressing the "feedback" regarding OC, and it seems everyone's got some strong opinions—not without merit, mind you. The silver and gold grind is real—but, that's the goddamned point, it's supposed to be long-term, casual content. If you want to burn through it in a week and get everything, they already have Savage for that. And before anyone says you can't get everything in a week, yes, but once you git gud you can do your reclears in an hour and unsubscribe until next Tuesday. FATE scaling is busted, I'll grant you that, but, meh. Square Enix a small, multi-dollar indie company, so what can you expect? :p At any rate you don't get anything special from FATEs so if you can't make it in time, just run CEs, they're back-to-back, anyway.

Getting into Forked Tower is fucking stupid, though. You have this Savage-tier content that requires coordination across 48 people with special jobs, phantom jobs, party assignments, and whatnot—and then you have this RNG system to not only get into Forked Tower, but to even get everyone into the same instance! What if for Savage you just had to queue in DF solo and hope you got put into the same instance? Or what if you queued for Savage and got into a party with five tanks and three vipers? Then you quit and requeue and it's the same party again. Then quit and requeue again and again until you get in the right party... then you have to wait half an hour for the boss to show up. And then once you pull, it kicks you anyway because someone else was standing in some random spot and the server just rolled dice to pick who.

I mean, it certainly makes the experience an... experience. I've spent three hours to get one five-minute attempt at the Demon Tablet before, and it sucks on paper, most of it sucks during the experience, and it sucks to reflect on it afterwards—but some small part of me is sitting back and laughing, going "Haha, man, what a night!" A small part.

I feel like they'll probably adjust silver and gold drop rates, probably add a big pile to clearing FT. That might be in a 7.28 hotfix or something. They might redesign the queuing system for FT, too—that certainly wouldn't be before 7.35, though, that's a whole Programming thing, and they can't even figure out how to put a hat on a rabbit. (Just let the ears fucking clip, I'll find one I like where I don't mind it!)

What I think is the biggest issue is... there's nothing to do. Like, I got knowledge 20 on the first day, and I did burn the candle at both ends, sure, but even a pretty casual attempt would only take a few days to do it. And I pushed hard to get all the PJs and level them up, too. Now what? I could get the gear, but—I haven't seen the numbers, but I'm pretty sure that's pretty optional, didn't they get their world firsts before everyone was decked out in full +1? I have all the +1 for tank, though. So, all I'm doing now is farming up gold and silver to buy ciphers for FT runs, and then getting backup gear I won't use for alt jobs. There's nothing in between the mindless, casual grind—which doesn't even have interesting NPCs joining the FATEs, or even multiple FATEs or CEs up at once so you have to decide what to do—although I figure someone would just take over shout and steering the group, so it'd be basically the same zerg we have now. That, and the hardcore Forked Tower, which you need to sign up for days in advance, have specific jobs, study strats, and so on. Also, I have all the rewards. The only unique thing from FT is a shitty mount; the shark guy that costs 99 sanguinite just drops from regular chests, even. Desperately yearning to be blessed by RNG in Dalriada for that one note you're missing was a lot more fun than easily capping everything, guaranteed drops in the Big Fight, and too-common chest loot. People must've complained that it was too grindy in Bozja, so they made these things guaranteed, and now the whole charade is pointless.

No, but, the biggest problem, which they can't correct, is: there's just no story. There's some lore, backstory, history, something, something that happened, but there's nothing happening. It's like, people say Dark Souls has a great story—no, I disagree. Dark Souls has a great backstory. The story is that you go around and kill everything you see. It's like a mystery, unraveling the secrets of what happened here—except the method of "how" you unravel it isn't interesting, it's just some kind of generic combat, and then lore is revealed. It's like reading a textbook rather than a novel.

All the battle content is stellar, though. All the CEs and even the FATEs have nonstop, punishing mechanics constantly happening to everyone. We're not up against bags of hitpoints here, you have to actually perform. I saw a complaint where they said if you get hit by the mechanics, you lose more than half your life in one hit. And I'm thinking... yeah? Damage can kill you, is that unusual? I know you're used to dungeon bosses and landscape FATEs where nothing means anything, but sorry, you have access to the phanton job system, so take something that can heal or defend yourself, be a tank that's designed to take hits, or join a party to support each other. "I got hit for 79k!" Wow, sounds like you shouldn't've gotten hit, then. Besides, there's 59 people doing this fight, they can pick up your slack. I get the frustration if it's a dungeon and there's only four of you, so if you constantly die then you're out half your damage or all your healing, so the whole thing is screwed with one death, but in a large-scale fight like this, we frankly don't need you. And this is a good thing. Getting hit matters—to you, but the fight is so big that if big hits keep going out and culling the weak, there will still be enough left to recover, or to struggle on. I've only seen one CE ever actually fail—Calamity in a fresh instance when we only had 6 people in it and we couldn't hit enough seals to physically clear the mechanic.

Man! I've got a lot to say for someone who just said they don't have much to say :p I guess I just wanted to blow off some steam? Anyway, bottom line? Turn off shout, you'll be happier that way.

[meatball-headache]

Trinculo, the sixth mermaid, has perished in Qud, several strata deep under some ruins, after an unlucky teleport incident that left her at the mercy of many chainguns, and also the game forgot to give me my "Your HP has fallen below 60%" warning.

Also, all my other completed runs are gone? :( Very disappointed. I was collecting those, I enjoying skimming the list and reminiscing on this or that character. Meeeemories... ♪♫

[meatball-headache]

*crawls out of the south horn*

I have knowledge 20. Demiatma complete. Four phantom weapons and counting. Acquired all pajamas. Mastered all pajamas. Complete set of healer gear. Complete set of +1 tank gear. I have joined *and led* gold farms (take *that*, anxiety!). I've seen every hairstyle, glasses, mount, minion, and emote that can fall out of chests. Forked Tower progress: Dead Stars enrage at 3.7%. I am running on 90 minutes of sleep cumulatively over the past two weeks. This game is great.

In case you were wondering.

*crawls back into the south horn*

[meatball-headache]

Currency and Farming

While we're all farming FATES for Gerolt (again), it's helpful to remember how to track currency without opening the currency menu, especially to avoid over-capping.

The currency menu is usually a helpful keybind or console menu option away, but please note the little cogwheel icon in the upper right, marked in the image below with a yellow box and arrow.

Opening that menu we get the option to set cycled default currencies of our choice, up to 5 we would like to track.

In the below example, my first slot is for Gil, and my second has a drop down menu opened, here currently selecting Storm Seals.

I also want to draw attention to the instructions at the bottom of the submenu, in the below screenshot boxed in yellow:

The above currency will display on the HUD by default. Right-click on the currency icon to cycle through currencies in your rotation. The order in which they display can be changed via the arrows to the right of each rotation slot.

This means that the little currency tracker on your HUD, usually around your inventory and character pane HUD options, can be cycled to track various currencies without having to open the menu.

In this case in my screenshot here, I set it to show my Bicolor Gem totals while I farmed FATES in Yak'Tel:

If I want to check on my tomestones as well, I just rotate to see what my tomes are at. In this case, because I am using a mouse, I right-click on the icon for the currency (the gem itself) and get to my tomes:

So go forth, farm to your heart's content, but without accidentally over-capping cuz you're not keeping the currency menu open!