August has been ... not a great month, IRL.  I'm not going to delve into things, but it's been the sort of "not great" that causes me to basically withdraw from and not be around as much in certain places.  Unfortunately, that means Blaugust was sorted into the pile that I couldn't mentally deal properly with, but hey - I've got a few days left, and the blog won't be self-destructing and deleting itself off the internet come September 1st, so let's forge onward.

A pair of my favorite in-game events in XIV happened this month.  I was glad to see the return of the Eorzean Nimble Warrior jump puzzle for Moonfire (and with the new 'hoofin' it' debuff that barred all Behemoths from entry).  I didn't even bother trying to get allll the way to the top of the 'extra' puzzle, but the little deck on the side was a cute touch and another great spot to chill with pals and watch the fireworks.  Allowing players to get tokens with fishing and cooking again was great, and very welcome.
The above screencap is from The Rising, and it's only been out for a day or two, so no spoilers here, but once again the devs managed to make me get a little emotional with the clever use of minions and heart-felt words from the XIV team.  I can always feel how much Yoshida and his crew care for the world and players every year with this event, and I'm grateful for this place they've given us.
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Meanwhile, I also managed to complete the achievement for the Raigo whistle - 60 wins in Frontline battles (the non-ranking PVP zones) while wearing a special Garo title.  I nearly gave up hope on this out of general frustration, but a few days of landing in good groups that really wanted to coordinate and I was well on my way to finishing.  I will never use the title "Makai Summoner" title ever again.  Phew.

One of my favorite things to do in XIV is mess around with housing.  While the housing system isn't perfect, it's certainly not the worst and over the years several handy 'bugs' have been discovered, leading to a larger variety of ways that decorating enthusiasts can design their homes.  Many designers feature their newest builds on their blogs, and even offer their services to other players.  I enjoy checking out some of those blogs for random inspiration, and try to design cozy interiors fitting of my characters.  I'm gonna show off some of Isalenne's house today with a small screenshot spam...

Plot 36, 12th ward in Mist on Cactuar.  Isa's house is still a WIP - I was lucky enough to snag a medium a month or so before Shadowbringers.  I managed to get a lot of it done, but there are a few rooms and areas that I haven't finished yet, but I do like what I have so far.

The yard is ... I haven't really figured it out yet, but at least this corner has a nice view of the beach.

Still playing around with the main floor... right now this leads to a comfy room with a fireplace on the left, and an unfinished kitchen on the right.

I've probably spent the most time in the upstairs library ... lining up a bunch of lofts, windows and planters.  It was frustrating at times, but I'm really happy with the end result. I was inspired by the popular false ceiling look that a lot of designers have been using, and I wanted lots of light and plants. There's also the bathroom, master bedroom and guest bedroom up here, but only about two of those are finished.  

I decided on a small bar/recreation room theme for the majority of the basement.  The corner next to the bar has some couches, and the loft above it has seats, too.  On the other side of the fountain is another fish tank and some musical instruments.

The sewing room is in the back and also the dreaded junk storage area - please don't look, it's a mess!

Feel free to stop by Isa's place, hopefully I'll be finishing up the last few rooms and details soon~!

... aka, oh my goodness, it's August.  Which means it's also Blaugust!  And this year I'm joining in with the fun of making the effort to blog more.  This is, of course, all Bel's fault, and if you'd like to follow along with the host of these bloggy shenanigans, here's the main post full of informative words.

Before Shadowbringers arrived, I'd made a shortlist of things I'd hoped to get done in XIV.  I actually got a decent amount of them done, but not all.  Now that I'm through MSQ on both characters, I'll be back to crossing things off that list and adding some new stuff, too.

Isa needs to finish her beast tribes.  I'm in the home stretch for the Vanu Vanu and Vath, just the final tier of rep to go.  Once those are done, I'll do all the uniting of the tribes quests.  She also has some crafting jobs stuck in the 60s, and I'd like to get those up to 70.  With MSQ out of the way, I don't mind going back and doing beast tribe quests... when I remember to.  Next, I'll do her healing role quests on scholar and work on getting red mage to 80, because I still prefer doing endgame stuff on that job.  I don't expect to get all of this done during the month, except for the beast tribe stuffs.

Aluze is a little bit better, his crafting jobs (other than culinarian) are all over 70 - and it's been rather easy to level with the new facets and leves, the main problem is just having all the mats on hand.  I keep running low on gems from FATEs because I keep buying materials, but with retainers catching up that will help a lot (plus generous FC mates have been a blessing).  The main goal other than crafting is getting the last nine wins for the Garo pvp mount before it's gone.  I've been sitting at 51 of 60 wins for weeks, and now that more people are queuing for pvp again I should hopefully be able to finish this.  His astrologian is nearly 77, and I should have enough goetia to gear that job up at 80.

I've been fortunate to have a decent streak of casual commission work, and I'm taking this week off to draw for myself.  I haven't drawn any "big" pieces of art for myself for awhile, and I also haven't made any of my timelapse videos lately.  I go through random phases where I have no problem drawing for others, but I get artblocked drawing for myself, and I'd like this month to not be one of those cases.

​I guess we'll just see how it goes.

This past week has been a bit stressful IRL, so the XIV escapism has been very welcome.  I knuckled down and got the rest of my ten wins in PVP for Isa's Ginga Pipe, and she now has her fancy metal pony.  I can now happily remove her "Makai Astrologian" title and put on "Kingsglaive" forever.  She's also in the home stretch with her HW beast tribes, and even if she won't be done with them before SHB, they'll all be allied Soon.

This week on Exodus, our little primal farming group put in extra time fighting Seiryu (now that we're clearing him consistently), and most of us are now proud owners of the pretty blue wolf.  This was the last wolf several of us needed, so we also now have the final SB Primal mount reward for collecting one of each whistle.  We thought we'd still be farming Seiryu into SHB, but that happily will not be the case, although we will most likely be helping a few members with their collections.   But for the most part we'll be tackling fresh story content and re-doing all of our houses with the new batch of decorations coming our way in just a few days...

This week during E3 Yoshi-p's been spending some time on the NA datacenters... Mostly being surrounded by phasing hordes of Eorzea's finest, waving glowsticks and standing on his Lalafell's adorable little head.  I tried to see him on Aether, the first DC he visited this week, and barely arrived before he was consumed by the /shouting, /emoting mob.  A few days later he was on Primal, and at least there someone gave a few handy tips that I should've considered earlier.  Basically, turning down your character limit to minimum in system settings, target the Lalafell, and then stand back to enter Gpose.  While it doesn't produce perfect results, with some futzing I did manage a few amusing screencaps with Aluze.

Lately on Primal, a group of friends and I have taken a serious shot at Palace of the Dead and Heaven-on-High... we've wiped both now, but made it to 183 in Palace and 78 in HoH.  Both wipes were a mix of miscommunication and panic, but we're going pick it back up and try again with a few lessons learned.

My To-Do list from last post is still moving along... slowly, as I've had another surge of inspiration with decorating Isa's house.  However, I have made a dent in her beast tribe reps and also got through her HW scholar quests.   A few weeks of coffer farming in Diadem has finally produced the pegasus mount, and the minion is just 2-3 days away as long as the coffers continue to flow.  At this point, all I'm really aiming to get from the Treasure Trove event is the Answers music scroll, and that finish line isn't too far away, now.

Okay, so I'm done with MSQ on both characters.  Check.  I have a loose plan in mind for Shadowbringers Early Access.  Good.  My quest journal should be .... not as full as it currently is.  Yikes.  Time to clean some things up...

​Crafting.
I leveled crafting on Isa and Aluze.  Much of it was with leves, lots with beast tribe quests.  However, I neglected many of the crafting job quests.  A quick look at Aluze's jobs showed me that I was at least through ARR with every job except goldsmith, who still had the level 20 quest waiting.  Isa's probably better off, as her leveling was much slower over-all, with fewer leve turn-ins before ARR and all of her jobs raised within 2-3 levels of each other (with the exception of weaver, which I pushed to max so I could easily do scrip turn-ins).  Needless to say, I have plenty to work on for both of them, and thankfully the SB crafting jobs give you the quest mats, making it so much quicker and mostly less frustrating over-all.

Beast Tribes.

Having finally finished Ixal a few weeks ago, Isa's down to Sylphs for ARR.  Today she finished the Vanu Vanu in HW, and with a little work the Vath will soon be finished.  Stormblood tribes have been finished for months, and I'm waiting to do the final quests to ally the beast tribes once I'm done with everything so I can do all three in order.
Aluze has finished SB and HW, and I'm in no rush to kill myself by doing the ARR ones again any time soon.

Jobs.
I should really, really finish Isa's Scholar quests before SHB.  I don't dislike scholar as a job, I just never really spent enough time with it to get the full use out of all the tricks.  I healed a few raids and primals with Aluze before getting AST to 70, and while I did fine I'm sure I wasn't as efficient as I should've been.  The changes coming in SHB sound interesting, and I may make sch my healer for Isa to work on.

PVP misc.

With the Moogle Treasure Trove event going on in XIV, I decided it was finally time to finish the Crystal Tower series on Isalenne.  I've also been wanting to work on her bard, which has been stuck in the 52-ish range for quite some time.  Getting Irregular Tomestones along the way is a nice bonus, but I don't think I'll try to grind all the way up to 100 for the Namazu earrings.  After three days she's gotten a good three or so levels, so I'm quite happy with this.  I need to unlock World of Darkness for her yet, but I'm content with speedrunning Syrcus Tower for now.

This also led to the happy side effect of seeing Amon's hat drop, and even better yet - winning the roll on it against 2-3 other bards.  It's quite ridiculous, and I love it.  I'll have to get a good glamour outfit for it eventually, but a few dyes and a new bow certainly work for the time being.

It's been refreshing to play a non-magical job, as I'm usually red mage or summoner with a side of astrologian. I should easily hit 60+ by time the event ends, and hopefully she'll be close to 70 by the time Shadowbringers drops.

I'm back to give blogging another go and I've moved to the ol' dotcom for a fresh start. 

I've decided I'm going to attempt to chronicle some of my adventures in Final Fantasy XIV, and probably other games and so on along the way.  The coming of the Shadowbringers expansion is the perfect time to kick this off, so...

The benchmark.​

I ran both of my characters through it, and my pc handled it well.  As always, the benchmark is a nice teaser of things to come early on in the expac, and it was fun to see my characters as (high-level) dark knights.