I’m still around. We’ve been in lockdown for some weeks now, expect a few more before the curve starts dropping again. In my city, they check wastewater which gives a sort of 1 week or so window into what’s coming. Right now, we’re on the downslope. We had 3x the cases (while they were still measuring) but only half of the hospitalizations, which is really quite good. This version was less severe, both in the virus itself and the fact that over 90% of the city is vaccinated. The province though… that’s another story. The hospitalizatio – curve is still going up, and it’s already double the April/May peak. So clearly my city is doing a hell of a lot better than others. That said, if this is becomes endemic (like the winter flu), there’s no way for our hospitals to take anything close to this load. Something’s gotta give. Our joint mental health kinda depends on it.

FF14

So apparently they are going to start selling the game again later this month, which is an odd thing given that queues are still around. Last week I was still seeing 2,000 person queues on Cactuar. Last night it was 700, which was a very odd thing… perhaps due to the server reset on Tuesday. It’s better, certainly, but I can’t see any new player wanting to spend an hour+ per day just trying to login. And new NA servers won’t be around until August. I guess we’ll see.

At last pass I had completed the MSQ with my WHM. Since then I’ve leveled all my gatherers to 90, and my retainers just hit 80. Hopefully that will work itself out. I’ve also leveled my crafters…which let me tell you is a very expensive undertaking.

I followed this guide to do so and the total cost from 1-80 was about 5m gil. That’s with server hoping to get better prices elsewhere, which probably saved me close to 2m gil. The good news is that a significant portion of this time is spent in the Firmament, where crafting gives you lottery tickets. Some of the items you can win are worth 100k to 500k each, which kept me going for some time. Still, it’s very expensive.

The journey from 80-90 is pretty simple and figuring out what items sells for which craft is a hell of a dance. I would need to juggle some crazy spreadsheets to sort it all out. Some things that were worth a lot last week have nosedived to 10% of their value. It’s still a fun mini-game.

Also have spent some time leveling a Reaper. This is how melee classes should behave in a game full of AE attacks. Mobility as a melee has always been a pain in my butt, and this class just shines at it. Now, the downside of leveling any job in FF14 is that you’re going to see a lot of the same content, and dungeon queues past 80 are not pleasant for DPS. Bozja still gives a stupid amount of exp, but prevents from queuing in other content. I’ll figure something out.

Winter Game Sales

I didn’t pick up much else. Disco Elysium is still only a few hours in. Cyberpunk 2077 was ok. Wildermyth is a lot of fun on the story aspect, but the difficulty spikes aren’t super pleasant. Death’s Door is a pleasant surprise, great art and controls. The level design is hit or miss to my tastes but it is consistent. Risk of Rain 2 I picked up for like $2, which I may have overpaid for. I don’t mind rogue-likes, truly, but I need a progression system of something other than player skill. Hades has simply spoiled me.

Fitness

I hurt my arm/elbow last spring and it never seemed to get much better. It stopped me from lifting any serious weights, which in the middle of a pandemic with no physical activity, well that didn’t do well for the brainpan. I’ve started up again, trying to fit it in my lunch breaks. So far, so good. Hopefully hockey will open up again and I can get exercise some demons on the ice.

Blog

I should be back to some semblance of “normal” posting schedule. Let’s see how that goes about…