i had another FFXIV-related dream last night and miraculously it did not involve Aurum Vale to any extent. i must have ran it over 40 times over the course of a couple days in the grind for my relic weapon, since it's the shortest dungeon. it wasn't even a lot of time really, i've done far worse video game grinds. [ok i'm back to finish this paragraph now i had to take a quick shamebreak while i thought about my RuneScape account] anyway i'm not sure what made it seem like a particularly worse grind than usual, maybe it was having to repeatedly consciously start a new run mixed with it not being totally mindless

i did enjoy pulling the whole entire damn dungeon then mowing everything down at the end though. why hasn't there been a final fantasy musou

it's hard to describe the unique fear i felt when i read this upon finally completing the Book Step after six years. the next part wasn't so bad, just a bunch of treasure hunts that were slightly fun. slightly. but after that i spent, pretty much the whole day? collecting grade 1 and 2 materia. i wish i'd known how expensive it was nowadays. i've sold so much cheap baby materia to vendors lately. i guess the relic grind is their only use anymore, and evil rich players playing the market doing the mr burns finger thing know this all too well

as a weapon this bow is useless. it don't shoot good. relics are purely for glamour and achievements nowadays. and even though i knew this to be the case i still hesitated throughout this step, where i had to affix different materia to it that would determine its foreverstats, with annoying confusing rules as to what grades i can use

i don't know if i've ever had to grind for tomestones before. apparently a vital part of that is doing the daily MSQ roulette comprised of two (2) story dungeons with long, unskippable cutscenes. i knew this roulette existed; i did not know people actually did it, and that they do it every day. both times i did it there weren't even any new players, and i think when that's the case the group should be able to skip the cutscenes

i didn't realize how much i would have to spend on this stupid glowbow!! whenever i heard the process was expensive i assumed it was because people were buying materials instead of crafting them, and i have been trying to craft things when i can. but no the second-to-last step requires spending hundreds of thousands of gil on garbage, and then gambling even more on other garbage in the hopes that desynthesizing it will give specific garbage loot. i must have spent 700-800k total. and THEN it does THIS

this is a joke. apparently if i'd said no the blacksmith would've told me to grow and pair then went ahead and done it anyway. twisted game

it pains me to think what people had to go through when this was new. from what i can tell the steps themselves have also been nerfed, and as well as not being able to one-shot everything it sounds straight bananas. it's obvious they just wanted to create the Ultimate Endgame Grind, except there have been four new, even end-ier endgames since then. an oversight that's also apparent in "do thing X amount of times" achievements, where the ARR-specific ones are always significantly grindier

i'm surprised they bothered on the story front. at first it was mostly overly-long-winded fantasy-sciencebabble. i don't need to know the hyperspecifics of how "soulglazing" my weapon works since i know it'll never ever come up again just put the magic glow juice in there

there we go. when this happened it played the classic Final Fantasy "you got the thing" fanfare i don't think i've ever heard in this game, so i guess this is a big deal or whatever. truth be told i'm not even that big on how it looks. when i saw i could dye it i was hoping that meant the glow would change too, but it doesn't. well time to do this all again for the remaining nine weapons

just kidding i would rather actually die. i been messing around lately, doing pretty much anything that isn't progressing the main story. i was in Kugane last night, slightly inebriated, and realized i'd never noticed that "big parkour tower" i've seen people talk about. whatever it was however tall i don't care i can take it

pfftthttpftp wasn't so bad only took me like th[muffled]y minutes. what's crazy messed up is the next part though....see there's this small lamppost in Kugane with a sightseeing vista on top of it, and i always wondered how you were supposed to get onto it. looked it up and turns out you jump from the top of da freakin tower!!!

you know i be watching multiple videos on this one jump to make sure i got it right. apparently there's a way to cheese it as a Blue Mage where you kill yourself then someone already on top of it revives you and you just end up on there too. let the record show that i did not resort to this, because i am good at final fantasy and because i didn't feel like figuring out blue mage again even for one spell

i know that last year i went through leveling every base game job to 50, but what i don't know is why i did that. i don't remember how any of them played (aside from the fact i didn't like Black Mage at all) and in the end i just went back to being a harpman. so now i've downgraded to believing i should know at least one of each role, instead of trying to cram in absolutely everything, u know what they say.. jack of all trades. master of gun

all the other tanks are too tanky. aesthetically i mean, i don't wanna be a big bulkster with the big axe. i want to be with like my guy Radovan here swinging his goofy swordgun around. saw a lot of people saying Gunbreaker is the most fun tank as well and i was immediately having fun with this quest

this has always been my favorite dumb FFXIV lore fun fact: that "gunblades" are not guns with blades attached, but rather "guns" are gunblades without the blades

now i'm not saying the biggest reason i want to play other roles is for the player commendations. but now in this sentence i am saying it, it is the biggest reason. though i've come to learn there may be a much easier way of earning them even as a DPS. people will commend the person they actually recognize playing alongside, and no one talks during duties aside from a hello or a gg. so all i gotta do is sprinkle in a single joke during the duty and suddenly i'm "oh yeah the guy who made that joke"

it keeps working. i will keep you all posted as i may be onto something. if this stops working and the gunbreaker thing ends up falling flat then i don't know i'll fantasia into a girl and start using cutesy ascii art macros in chat, anything to keep me from having to become good at the game

speaking of getting good, i got Bard to level 90, so going purely by numbers i am now as good at the game as i could possibly be. i mainly did it for my retainers, and so that i was eligible for the top Wondrous Tails reward. it's incredibly rare but if i somehow won it but was only level 80 due to not having Endwalker and i couldn't claim it i would never let myself live it down. that i was too stingy about spending real money on the expansion so that i could win lots of fake video game money

ran into a band of Small Guys touring with FF music. the news about Toriyama just came out so someone asked for Dragon Quest music but they played DragonForce instead

had another FFXIV-related dream the other night, this reminds me. i suddenly realized, six years since moving here, that the town i live in is called Gridania (it's not). and i was like waiiit that's like in the video game that i play...that's crazy.. anyway i gotta start doing other things in my life soon