this arrived yesterday. i am furthering my useless knowledge of fake video game worlds. i was surprised the second volume is exactly the same size as the first one since i expected it would mostly only cover Stormblood stuff but i guess not. there's a whole section in there on why the term "beast tribes" is bad

you tell me it doesn't matter now?? after i just spent like $80 on giant lore tomes, in the hopes that i wouldn't forget so much of the story this time around!! it's funny that it's at the point i'm trying to avoid re-spoilers for the game i've already played before, so i haven't dug into any Stormblood stuff in the second volume yet. i truly do not remember what the hell goin on

for example i could not remember what was up with Urianger, all i remembered was that he seemed secretbad for a while but then he was good. maybe if he talked normal. also what's the deal with Arbert. isn't it Ardbert, in Shadowbringers. the Guys of Darkness say they're from the First so i would've thought it's the same guys but where the 'd' at. well they gave up their bodies to travel to the Source so i suppose by extension that would include the d haha alright up top

i can't believe it dude no way...this is da craziest plot twist i ever saw in games.... later on there's optional dialogue with Aymeric when he's just standin around and he says he never should've told us to throw the eyes off the bridge. the Holy See managed to keep an eye safe and hidden for a thousand years but we couldn't last two patches

i'm gonna find out at some point Papalymo isn't really dead, just like it took me years to find out Louisoix wasn't dead after smiling like that but with better graphics. speaking of there is a part where Alisaie mentions speaking with him back during the Coil raids and whenever something like that happens i look up what they would've said otherwise. that's another reason i wanted to do all the content in order, for the secret bonus dialogue sprinkled throughout

i've rewatched some cutscenes online, with english audio. and i will say the voices are a lot better now than in ARR, but i am shocked to hear how they pronounce some characters' names. papaLEEmo? EMmeric? luSIa?? well that one makes more sense than the japanese actually which is "lukia". but the one i will absolutely never budge on is Urianger. they say it all frenchly and i simply reject it. i reserve the right to pronounce french names and words however i please

i've only just learned places like Revenant's Toll and Idyllshire went through massive changes across patches as they were being built up, and now i'm bummed i never got to see them. wish they'd kept the different phases for each patch so everyone would see how they progress, and also so that this line would make sense

i bought Endwalker today. i figured if i wanna play it before Dawntrail, the earlier i buy it the less it'll feel like a waste of money since it'll become included in Dawntrail. but more than that, i'm getting to a point in the story where i'm not super feeling like an unstoppable world-shattering god capable of destroying anything with a single arrow? so i could use that increased level cap. 10 more levels doesn't sound like much but 130 more item levels certainly does

ya i'm thinkin it's rebellion time...

i thought Zenos was a really boring villain my first time playing through. he just comes in here and beats me down me like it's nothing which i do not buy at all after the fight with Thordan. "pathetic" *walks away and doesn't kill me even though him and his guys killed everyone else here* if his whole deal is "not killing the protagonist so he can watch them grow and then victory would be all the more sweet" i'm checking out on that front already. bored of Zenos can we go to japan already

sweet dude. before, this game just stuck with me as a blur of visiting lots of varied locales and then eventually there was a climax but i'm remembering what it is now. it's a lot of trying to encourage people from different areas to rise up against da empire, which involves mainly winning them over with boring fetch quests, while, once again, continuing to act like being self-aware about it excuses it

they kinda made a big deal out of adding swimming and diving as i recall, but it's such a nothing feature. during the MSQ a turtle man uses his turtle magic on us, enabling us to breathe underwater forever from now on(?) which is a goofy way of going about it but whatever it's video games. then there's a very un-subtle transitionary loading screen whenever i go above or underwater, which might be a bigger deal if swimming as a whole actually added anything to the game

for personal reasons i needed something mindless to do last night, so i dove into Triple Triad hell for a while. it doesn't initially sound mindless but when playing the same NPCs over and over for a specific card drop, it's easy to get into a rhythm because they don't change up their moves much, if at all. years ago i spent 1 million+ MGP trying to get the Warrior of Light card, then recently they held an event where you could get it easily. and i assume that's just a taste of what hardcore raiders feel when a new expansion comes out and all their work is immediately nullified

today i'm chipping away at my ARR relic weapon. apparently i have spent six years on The Books Step. every now and then i decide i'm gonna finally finish it, then after completing one book i get another, open it up, and immediately decide to take another year-long break. but today i did it....i had three books left to do and i did them. my bow now has the glow

the past two days have been relic days, and it brings me great(?) joy(?) to say i now have my completed superbow. everybody always singled out "the book step" as being particularly painful, so i assumed the worst part was over. maybe it would've been if i'd had a lot of gil to spend, or my crafters were leveled higher, or i just decided to do something else entirely

at first i was going to make some quip like oh Stormblood is a lot of boring busy work too so how would it be any different if i started working on this instead haha. but now i am extremely excited to go back to the MSQ. i know tensions are high with the whole war thing but i just had to make my weapon really glowy real quick. no it won't help me kill imperials quicker, this thing was outclassed as soon as the first expansion came out but trust me the glow is important. and yes i can buy an even glowier and also better-looking weapon from the market board for a fraction of what i ended up spending, but you don't get it. i'm stupid is the thing

i'm 16 pages into writing about this stupid game so at this point i have to assume anyone who's stumbled onto this site and made it to this point also plays FFXIV, and generally knows "the deal". maybe not with the relic grind specifically, but insofar that i could write a whole paragraph of just abbreviations and technical terms and people will go mhm yes i understand so true zephie you are so sexy. anyway since i'm currently very tired from being determined to have this weapon finished today, and am an no mood to vent about the process at length, all i will say about it for now is (and sorry to non-FFXIV players who don't understand this): it sucks