Magic Fencer Report

It’s been a while since I blogged here, hasn’t it?

Since last July, I’ve waffled between FFXI, FFXIV, and Guild Wars 2, which I picked up on release date. GW2 was fun at the start and I actually enjoyed doing some PvP as a Guardian. I quickly got a little tired of it, however, once work trips returned, so I answered Vana’diel’s siren call once more in addition to logging into FFXIV on occasion.

In XI, I ended up joining what Petezag@Phoenix had created as kind of a new HomingMissiles, Neosutra@Phoenix’s LS, comprised of members from HM and a few people like myself who knew people within HM from ages ago and had returned. We started hunting ADLs and doing other events. The ADLs were late in the evening, around 11pm my time, so most days I was up far too late and had started going to work tired like back in ’06 when I was a Kings Hunter. Eventually things came to a head and I decided to just log out in between ADLs and go away from the LS.

At that point I basically decided to just play offline games and occasionally pop into XI to hang out with a friend and her LS, slowly working on the VNM phase of Almace and the fire trials for the STR Shikargar, both of which still lie incomplete, though the latter is on the gil-sink phase.

I’d deactivated XIV once I got Legacy status in anticipation of 2.0. I actually liked the game and the graphics are truly amazing, but while playing it I had this urge to overclock my CPU… Not really the best idea with the stock cooler. Plus I felt like I was too far behind to get things done like AF, job quests, and a Relic. I’d chosen Paladin as my job as Red Mage doesn’t (yet?) exist in XIV, and I suppose I’ll go back to that once 2.0 comes along.

Somewhere in the past few months, however, I reinstalled WoW and found out my old friend Yael@Ragnarok was playing Alliance on Runetotem, so I decided to roll a Death Knight there and goof around. I moved my Paladin over as well, but once I got to Zangarmarsh in Outland after the always fun DK intro, my friends from Phoenix XI had finally convinced me to give the Mass Effect Trilogy a shot, which I did in spades.

I’ll say that the Mass Effect Trilogy has one of the best stories of any game series I’ve played in quite a long time. Plus, Tali is insanely cute. One vote here for renaming straws emergency induction ports.

So here we are 8 days into the year that wasn’t supposed to exist: 2013. What’s on my agenda for this year? First and foremost is the soon arriving A Realm Reborn: FINAL FANTASY XIV Closed Beta, Phase 1, which as a Legacy member I am eligible for. I am quite pumped for this and can’t wait for the client to be released.

This will be a great year, I’m certain!

Apologies to J. R. R. Tolkien for mangling “There and Back Again” for this post’s title.

By the end of March, after a few weeks of slogging through Vana’diel mostly on my own or with a couple of friends, relegated to being RDM or a rather gimp non-relic DRK, later on a very underequipped, underskilled, and missing-many-spells BLU, I decided that I wouldn’t log in for a bit. I played other games through April, including The Old Republic, which while fun was plagued by a very low population and a rather unexciting battle system.

I decided to go back to Eorzea and give it an actual shot. I had been somewhat having fun but by the end of May, my life clock rolled over to the thirtieth year, and my mood returned to the general doldrums I’d been in since January.

Then an old friend of mine from high school told me exactly what I’d needed to hear, and I returned to the perpetually happy person I had been years before. I proceeded through in Eorzea, acquiring Paladin and basically having a good time, but I still read the information on BG from Vana’diel and wondered if maybe I wanted to go back.

Finally, a friend linked me an interesting character that was being sold: it was her old linkshell leader. I inquired as to where she was hanging out now, and by this point I’d read Prothescar’s BLU guides on FFXIAH‘s BLU forum and thought “Why the hell not?”

I joined up with ProjectVoid, and so far I’m having a good time. It’s a good group of long-time players like myself, and I feel like I fit in somewhat.

Anyway, it’s time for “what Jukor has been doing in Vana’diel since returning!”

BLU lacks 26 spells and has all the proper “solo” spells for /NIN and /RDM both as well as for /DNC. I need to get /WAR to 49 so I can abuse BLU/WAR and for DRK as well. Finally on the support job front I need to get SCH to 49 for RDM. I’m working on building out Charged Whisker, but until I get my AF3 hands and feet to at least +1 I’m not sure how my numbers will be.

Magian trials are progressing very slowly. I finally got the 15 Light Geodes for Surya’s Staff +2 last night, picked up another Side-sword to make the AGI Shikargar, and my STR Shikargar is stillborn as I need to round up a bunch of Aquans on a Firesday in the future. Almace is on Ratatoskr, so I’ve still got a ways to go.

I compiled a list of what +1, +2, and accessories I need for my jobs and the list is staggering. I should level another job to 99, but until I get my existing 90+ jobs finished out equipment-wise, not to mention merits, I shouldn’t try to equip something else.

Until next time!