Tiny Conjurations

Failure to Launch

Right now to be truthful I am having all manner of issues with my machines here at the house.  With my gaming machine I think I have narrowed it down to the power supply, and plan on replacing that tonight.  My laptop however I think was bit in the ass by the same nvidia driver issue that seemed to start everything.  I am not sure what is wrong with Nvidia Driver 340.52 but both machines started having issues shortly after installing it.  It might all be unrelated, but I likely would skip this driver for the time being because I wouldn’t want to wish my issues on anyone.  Thankfully I was able to roll back to a system state on my laptop before the driver, so here is hoping that fixes things there.

As far as my desktop when I attempt to power it on, things flicker on for a brief second before immediately stopping.  The fans won’t even make a full rotation, and based on all reading this is likely a PSU issue.  Now in the past when my PSU has gone south, nothing at all happened, so this is new ground for me.  However I am willing to try it since a PSU is a relatively cheap component to replace.  Otherwise I would be something wrong with the motherboard… and I really don’t want to go down that avenue unless I absolutely have to.  The problem is that I am running out of machines… worse case scenario I can try and get this machine my spare in gaming condition.  I think it would run most of the things I might want to run, just not as well.

As far as me, I have been feeling like crap as well.  The stress of having my machines in various states of “down” combined with allergy season wreaking havoc on my sinuses and lungs lead to me deciding to take a day to mostly rest and collect myself.  My lungs have not been behaving well for the last couple of days, and the constant sinus headache has been causing me to eat ibuprophen like candy.  So here is hoping by the end of today I will have all of my machines up and running smoothly as well as me doing the same.  If not I guess we have to explore other avenues, and if I don’t get to feeling better soonish I guess I will have to run to the doctor.  As a result of all of this my morning post is delayed.  I did not really get a chance to post a big rundown of the blaugust folks either…  but I guess at this point things are rolling along smooth enough that hopefully everyone is already reading the incoming posts.

Tiny Conjurations

Last night before all the computer issues started with my laptop, I decided to work on the conjurer job.  At this point I have a 50 warrior (tank), 50 bard (range dps) and 50 dragoon (melee dps) so the only thing I am really missing at this point is a healer.  All of the available healers require various levels of conjurer, so I figured it would be a good starting place.  I am still not certain if I will be going White Mage or Scholar as far as healers go, but in any case I am slowly working on the levels.  Conjurer I think has to be the hardest thing to level to date, mainly because all you really have to kill the mobs with is Stone and its various derivatives.  Even in cleric stance, which is surprisingly enough the dps stance…  you can’t really burn down mobs that fast.  My plan is to mostly level through dungeons, but the problem with that is that I have to actually get to 15 first to do it.

Last night I tried my hand at healing Guildhests since those start at level 10.  The main problem there is that folks don’t really seem to have a handle on tanking.  I healed a total of four, and in each of them the tanks made zero effort to try and pull any mobs off of me.  This means in the first one I ended up dying horribly, and in the later ones I mostly focused on healing myself… since I apparently was heal tanking.  Guildhests really aren’t worth the frustration experience wise, so I went back to grinding near Horizon.  I have a pretty massive stack of leves built up, so I opted to work through some of those.  At the point my system troubles started, I was just shy of 15, which hopefully means I can jump straight into healing dungeons instead of grinding on my own.

Feels like Home

Yesterday afternoon Tam and I were talking about how much like home this game is feeling.  I think in part it is due to the fact that Greysky Armada the free company is a thing uniquely created by the group of players that played FFXIV at launch.  House Stalwart is very much a creation of my own, and it feels like my guild.  White Masks is very much a creation of Tam and it feels like his guild.  Greysky Armada is this wholly different thing that incorporates the best of each of us into something totally different.  I think that is why coming back to it is so comfortable, because its an us thing not a me or him thing.  Not sure if any of that makes any sense at all, but the folks that mostly do the AggroChat podcast have all been hanging out on voice chat for a few years now, and the FFXIV guild is 100% rooted in that little group.

Now that is not to say that everyone else isn’t welcome, but we kinda lead the guild as a team and not as a monarchy aligned under any one of us.  On top of all of this is feels really awesome to see everyone back in Eorzea.  I like this game a lot, and things just seem to work for me.  Especially now that I went ahead and embraced the adorable making myself a Lalafell.  At this point I am really hoping that the magic will last for awhile, and that we can all enjoy this space for more than a few months.  Ultimately that is what I keep looking for… a place to set down roots and settle down.  The problem is each of the games either has problems that bother me enough to where I don’t want to play it…  or it lacks the people to make a comfortable environment.  My hope is that FFXIV will be the game we all can agree on, since for the most part we all pined for it a little.

#Blaugust #FFXIV