It was my birthday last week.  One year older, though in truth the date itself never means much to me in that fashion.  It’s nice to see family mind you, but it’s not like I move the hand on some death clock.

It’s also an interesting fact that as you get older, it gets a ton harder for people to figure out what to get you as a gift.  I would say that time and a solid experience are the best things, at least in the grand scheme of things.  I don’t need another mug, but a day off? That’s sweet.  A night out?  Great too.

Of course, there’s always cash.

Impulse Buys

I’d been thinking about getting a couple items for a while, and with the birthday cash, I picked up my tablet and made the buys.

First, a top end coffee maker from Bonavita.  I had tried coffee from a friend’s place who had this machine and it was by far the best home brew I’d ever had.  I had bought a Tassmio single brewer a while back, and even though that was good, it was costly and wasteful.  I’m not a coffee snob, I’ll have a cup of freeze dried at 5am to help wake up but I also like to have a great cup from time to time.  Plus, I wanted something that can serve more people too, as my 10 year old $20 machine was horrible.

Second, in the winter I had seen Star Wars: Imperial Assault in a local game store.  Miniatures + board games + cooperative play?  And add Star Wars?  Hell yes.  Apparently it’s a slight upgrade and skin job on Descent, which I already own and is pretty darn good.  Looking forward to setting it up and playing a few rounds with the little ones.  Oh, and some paint jobs on the miniatures will be fun too.  Did I mention STAR WARS?  Just checking.

I guess that’s not really impulse, since I put some thought about it for a while.  Truth be told, I usually spend a LOT of time researching something before biting the bullet.  This one was pretty quick.

Even more quick was the delivery (that is such a poorly written sentence).  It took 3 business days to get to my door, direct from Amazon.  I do not understand how brick and mortar stores work anymore.

ARR is Complete!

First, the quests in 2.55 are just face painting.  It’s like the entire patch was just cinematics, and a LOT of cinematics.  The last 2 quests, I’m sure that was 45 minutes of in-game cutscenes total before I was able to set foot in Ishguard.

There were certainly highlights in those scenes but in traditional FF fare, there turncoats, smug bad guys, dead bad guys, an escape by the heroes and potatoes just standing around.  Of all those things, the potatoes are the most irksome.  (Side note, FF14 doesn’t have blood or death on-screen.  Which makes it hard to cut a guy in two, but they did it.)

But what’s a potato have to do with anything you ask?  Ok, you probably didn’t ask that but here goes.  A potato is a character who provides next to no value in a given scene, outside of frustrating/confusing the audience as to why they are even there in the first place.  It’s like a combination of a Red Herring and Chekov’s Gun.  It’s just a lot of SMH – but hey, that’s what FF does best right?

I made it off to Ishguard and tried unlocking the 3 jobs.  I started the 2 quests for Machinist and Astrologian but they require me to visit the old lands for some stupid reason that makes no sense in the context of lore.  They hate the other side of that gate, why would they send me there?  Dark Knight I unlocked though, even if it wasn’t terribly obvious how to get it started.  Neat intro to the line too.  I’ll have to spend some time on the market as all my lower level gear is meant for magic-users.

I think that’s about 2 weeks of playing, to get from 43 to Heavensward.  If I’d hazard a guess, it would be 2 weeks or so to get to 43 in the first place, maybe a bit more depending on your love of cutscenes and the duty-finder timer.  All mandatory content for anyone buying HS today without an existing character.  I can certainly see that as off-putting.