#looking at this leve quest so hard | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

honeydazai · 3 years ago

Note

hello oh my goooood i saw u playing mayoi too and i just started playing too! tbh i played it back then but did not quite understand how you the game works so i uninstalled it 😭😭 so if u dont mind, can you pls explain how that game works? pls everything with bsd is so hard to understand t_t thank u sm in advance!

welcome to mayoi hell, anon! though i don't know what exactly you're struggling with, i'll try to explain the basics as best as i can under the cut!

so basically - it's a gacha game. that's what makes mayoi attractive; the gameplay in itself is quite boring. (or at least i think so?? 😭)

if you don't know what the point of a gacha game is; it's that there's banners you can pull on using ability stones (the rainbow coloured moons) and you can get SSR cards - if you're lucky. like these of Fyodor, which I desperately want and crave:

they're gorgeous. also, is it just me or is that last card of the Dead Apple trio hot? unholy thoughts....

you can also set your favourite cards as your mayoi homescreen in game and they have like little bits of dialogue and everything. 🥰🥰

so that's the purpose of the game: get ability stones to pull on your favourite characters' banners.

in the beginning, you start out with some R Atsushi card i believe, though i think there's one free pull for beginners with a guaranteed SSR, which will definitely help you move through the levels.

then, the actual gameplay is - well, you try and shoot those funny looking bubbles with your marble. the more you destroy, the better, i guess, since destroyed bubbles equal damage to enemies.

your cards have elements - the R Atsushi you get at the beginning is red for example, so if you destroy red bubbles, he'll deal damage to your enemies. so always destroy bubbles that are the colours of your characters.

OH, something i wrongly thought was that those bubbles with the skull on them hurt you. that's not true. destroy them when possible since they raise your enemies' attack.

your cards also have skills which you can active through tapping on their little icons, though only once in, like, 10 turns or more.

for the skills, i recommend choosing the ones that deal direct damage, or maybe healing skills for difficult stages for your team. if you've got that many cards to choose from, that is.

there's also two banners which use friend points and scene points - one for scene cards which you can choose to give a bonus to your team (ATK UP for example, etc.) and one for power up materials, which you use for, well, levelling your characters up so they get stronger.

the rarer, the better, of course - it's N < R < SR < SSR < UR

there's also those EX cards, though i'm not sure hat those really mean - i think they're just special cards that sometimes get banners? anyway;

you can't get URs through pulling for them on banners, you need to complete stages to level certain SSRs up to URs - those stages can be found under quest -> event -> daily -> awakening materials for character xy

they change daily! there's also stages to get more power up and evolution materials there.

there's more game modes like the “limited” one, where there's events that are limited to a certain amount of time. i recommend doing those since they give great rewards and aren't there forever compared to your normal story stages.

there's the floor conquered thing, which you need to have really many cards for, since you can only use them once - i think? i haven't done that one yet!

the academy and memories section basically are like events, though not time limited - play them for more ability stones, a new story in a high school AU and SR cards like Dazai in a school uniform.

i recommend reading or skipping the story since each chapter gives you one ability stone, btw.

there's login bonuses daily and also daily tasks, which include shining the marble for Ranpo, collecting rewards from the office, scouting with friends points and playing three ability stages (not events!).

for the office - you can level each section of it up using power up materials like crêpes etc, though i recommend focusing on Dazai and Kunikida since those are most useful.

i also strongly suggest to not spend ability stones on marble shining or the office. it's not worth it.

ability stones are really difficult to get in the late game, which is why i suggest saving them up for characters you really really want.

more on banners;

you need 25 ability stones for one pull, 250 for 11 pulls. sadly you're not guaranteed to get even a SR card at 11 pulls like with other gacha games 🤧🤧 you are, however, guaranteed a SSR after 100 pulls. this sadly doesn't mean you'll get a limited SSR, though.

there's a banner yearly on each character's birthday which focuses on, well, said character. increased chances for their cards.

i don't recommend pulling on the standard banner at all - only pull on the limited banners. you occasionally get scouting tickets which you can use as one pull on the standard banner. that's all you basically need there.

there's also limited scouting tickets for, well, the limited time banners.

when you use cards, their, uh, friendship level (?) rises and you get rewards. check those out and collect rewards by tapping on the card in the character menu and then on the arrow that'll slide their menu to, like, the right. if you've earned a reward, there'll be a little exclamation mark on the arrow. you'll find it, i'm sure, and if you don't, ask me again and i'll explain that more thoroughly!

if you sell characters, you get bungou points, which you can exchange items for in the shop. shop -> bungou pts shop

that's a good way to get scouting tickets, AP drinks to fill up your stamina bar and more. the shop refreshes, uh, monthly, i think?

you can also buy skill beads there, which you can level up a character's skill with. these are mainly useful for characters with a special image that you unlock at skill level three, like this Fyodor card below. when you first get the card, it'll look like the first picture, and once you reach skill level three, it'll look like the second one. you also unlock more rewards in the friendship thing i explained above, as well as new voice lines for the homescreen.

if you prefer the old looks of the card, you can switch back to it, don't worry.

[you can also level up the skill if you have the character more than once.]

when you play stages, you'll be asked to select someone else to join your team as friends or guests. don't worry, they won't get a notification or whatever. just choose someone. they only work as, like, a fourth team member for you with a card you don't own!

sending friend requests is something i recommend doing a lot, seems useful. if you get achievements, your friends can react to them using stickers - and the other way around. you get friend points for both! to do that, click the button on your homescreen next to the one where you collect your rewards.

to make your profile look appealing, go to menu -> my profile and set a personalised memo and your best/favourite card. that's the one other people will be able to "use", btw!

this is all i can currently think of! if you have more specific questions, feel free to let me know and i'll try to explain! 🥰🧡

#�� mail

7 notes · View notes

zahra-kha · 4 years ago

Text

Dear Diary 9

[The sound of running water ceases in the otherwise quiet apartment. Behind the red curtain fabric rustles and a soft sigh of relief can be heard. Bare feet pad against wood flooring and then the curtain is pulled back, revealing Zahra in little more than silver thin silk shorts and a towel draped lazily around her neck. Her short hair is still damp, small water droplets trickling down occasionally onto the crimson fabric that was giving her some semblance of modesty.

In the low light of her little abode, her sharp gaze shifted over toward her living space. In particular the glittering clusters sitting in the corner of her seating area. With another sigh she raked her hand through her damp tresses, steps feather light as she quickly closed the distance and flopped down onto the floor. Her dairy laid before her and she reached out, but not before flexing her fingers with a little wince. Inspecting her hand, the blisters now stood out clear as day along her palm now that the dirt and grime had been washed away. She leaned back and reached over for the book and a sharpened piece of charcoal.]

It’s been a long time since I’ve been mining. It took an entire week but I finally finished the last bit of it all.

When I was younger, I’d go out with my dad to the mines. The Kouris family have been miners for generations, but it’s a bit complicated. They originally came from Corvos and bought land and a noble title...somewhere along the way they lost the title and most of the land. When dad started taking over, that changed. He regained the title and all the land. He’s made the house what it is today, and while I never really wanted to be a miner, and I wasn’t good at appraising, he taught me a lot - the little bit I wanted to learn. He also expanded the business, so we have several jewelry stores now.

I’m so rusty - but I feel some gifts are more meaningful when you have a hand in them. I may have gotten carried away, I dug around for something for Tamala too. I was even able to get something for the team captains, Tala and Vin.

These stones need appraising, I have to take them to the goldsmith, but I know what I want. A tourmaline pendant for Jasper - tourmaline is a grounding stone. It’s also good for relieving stress, and I feel he needs that haha. Rose quartz for Tamala, it’s a stone of peace and healing - and it symbolizes all forms of love and friendship. I think they’d make good earrings. Sunstone for Tala, in a bracelet - it dispels negativity, fear, and it radiates health, happiness, and good fortune. Maybe it’ll keep those weird cultists off of her. For Vin, I managed to find some fluorite. It’s good for the tech savvy, it increases self-confidence, concentration, and decreases stress. I’m going to have it shaped as a brooch.

Hey, my dad talked a lot about this stuff, okay? Plus, I was really curious. You’d be surprised, gems and minerals do more than just look pretty!

I may have also went to Kugane after the game and walked around the shops a bit. I picked up some things.

Anyway! That was so exhausting but worth it. Since arriving in Eorzea I’ve met so many amazing people and they’ve done so much for me. I can’t give back nearly as much as I’d like so at the very least I can do this.

I’ve also finished the final preparations on my outfits for the performances. Fitaan helped me, it’s been a while since he’s been able to since I’ve been in and out of the encampment.

I also went on a leve for the first time. I admit I don’t know much about leves, I’ve mostly just snagged whatever quest listings were up and ran with them. It was a weird one though, I followed some rumors about a weird leve and ended up in an area I’ve never been too. Almost got lost, trying to find it, too!

There are ruins back home, but Eorzea is weirdly...saturated. Is that a good word to use? It’s hard to explain how I see the world when no one else sees it the way I do and it’s not something I can talk about. It’s like...everything has a strange layer over it, I guess. Some people’s layer is stronger than others, and everyone’s layer is unique. Forgotten Springs was like...lots of things had a really odd filter over it. Sometimes it was eerie, sometimes it was ethereal and beautiful. I think I could have stayed there all day just looking at it.

Anyway, the group went on to investigate and we began to head towards the ruins of a place called Wanderer’s Palace. We could sense something pulling us in, but I couldn’t see anything. It was so strange.

A mist rose, a mind reading mist! I think it was confused, maybe because it was old and drawing on our memories or something. It took a mix of names from our minds - I wonder if it was pulling from me? I doubt it, it wasn’t like I could have been the only person thinking about uh- people on our team. Even if it was me, I wasn’t thinking anything bad - I was thinking about...well the mining trip.

Anyway! We managed to cross that weird hurdle and moved on! Finally we were able to get some clues and the scholars of the team nerded out. They reminded me of my mom. There’s definitely more to be discovered and I’m intrigued! I want to know what was pulling at us, and I think we’re going to a library to find more clues! Eorzea is so full of adventure and wonder. I love it!

#ic #Zahra's Diary

3 notes · View notes

hasty-touch · 6 years ago

Text

Tips for leveling DoH & DoL

I am fondly known by my friends as "that guy who's obsessed with crafting and also Ishgard", so I'm ecstatic about getting to enjoy both those things in Shadowbringers. And I've been hearing a lot of my friends excited about the latter wanting to catch up with the former so they're ready to participate! I love crafting so much I've capped classes on 4 alts... so having leveled multiple times, I thought I'd share some of my thoughts and tips -- not a detailed how-to guide (though maybe I'll try to write one of those someday), but broader opinions about what strategies to take. This is geared more to DoH than DoL (which is more self-explanatory IMO) but I'll include thoughts on DoL too.

I learned how to craft back in the 2.5 era from GameFAQs and from ffxivguild -- though I can't easily recommend the latter anymore because their ads and autoplay videos have gotten really aggressive. If I find a good, current guide I'll add a link here.

Other resources well-loved by me or friends are Crafting as a Service for shopping lists and leveling planning, Ariyala for gearing, FFXIV Teamcraft for their endgame-invaluable simulator, and Garlandtools Bell for unspoiled nodes.

So let's see. What would my general tips be for people who are picking up DoH and DoL now in anticipation of Shadowbringers?

Your leveling options

There are lots of different ways for you to level your DoH and L, so if you hate one there's sure to be another option. Some of them, and my thoughts on the pros and cons of the different methods:

Class Quests. I strongly recommend doing your class quests as you unlock them! They give nice lumps of experience, shards/crystals for DoH, and gear (albeit NQ gear, so inferior to what you could make yourself). You should especially do 60-70, Stormblood era quests as you unlock them, as they give you powerful new traits and abilities. Of course, you have to fill the gaps between class quests with something:

Grinding. Just makin' stuff from your Crafting Log or gathering from your Gathering Log, or hanging out at a level-appropriate fishing hole and fishing. Potentially boring, but can actually add up to nice chunks of EXP, especially under Rested and with the aid of Engineering Manuals/Survival Manuals. (More on them later.)

Leveling DoH through grinding is probably your most expensive option, not only in terms of gil spent on the MB but retainer space used to store those materials.

Synthesize (manually crafting) gives more experience than Quick Synthesis -- if I understand correctly, the more steps you use in a craft the more experience you get, up to a point renofmanyalts says you get more exp the more you fill your Quality bar, which makes a lot more sense!

You can recover some of your gil by selling the items you make, so a little time researching what you can make at your level that sells well may be profitable in several ways.

Leveling DoL through grinding, on the other hand, is potentially a way to make money, if there's a high-demand item in the right level range.

You'll get more experience for HQ items and by maintaining a chain (i.e., not missing an item).

Since you can start and stop grinding whenever you want, you can use it both if you have lots or limited time to play. But I wouldn't recommend it as your primary method!

Grand Company Supply and Provisioning. One item requested each day for each class. You get a very nice chunk of experience, doubled if HQ, with a further bonus to starred items.

I like the GC as a leveling method. They usually take the length of one food buff (<= 30 minutes for all eight DoH classes, plus an additional <= 30 minutes for all three DoL classes), which is a manageable amount of chores per day. You get GC seals, which can be spent on manuals, Cordials, squadron missions, etc., to further help you.

You are limited to one item per class per day, so once you've handed in your day's items, you have to find something else to do. It's great if you play every day, but if you have a lot of playtime on just a few days of the week you may not be able to take the same advantage.

You do have to buy and store the materials, and since the assignment each day is random, it may take up a lot of retainer space.

Levequests/guildleves. While technically limited by your leve allowances (which can be checked at the bottom of your journal), you get 3 allowances every 12 hours and you can store up to 100, and you've gotta really grind leves to spend 100 leve allowances. They give nice chunks of experience, doubled for HQ.

"Levekits" are bundles of items sold by higher-level crafters and fishers which, when handed in to levemetes, get you enough experience to bump you up to the target level (50, 60, etc.) They're an option -- and if you really must be level 70 today, they're your only option -- but I don't really recommend them. If you learn to craft yourself while you level, you'll understand how the abilities work together and won't be overwhelmed by buttons at cap. Even if you intend only to craft at cap using other people's macros, a little bit of knowledge will help you troubleshoot and improve them.

If you take advantage of DoH leves, I would recommend you make the items yourself instead, gaining experience both for the crafting and for the turn-in. You will have to buy/gather the materials, but since you can decide what leves you're going to target in advance and just get materials for those, storage is not as problematic.

MIN and BTN leves send you to a location to gather key items that are handed in at the end of the leve, sometimes with special targets (changing what actions you'd spend your GP on). For the time invested you get more exp than just grinding, but you don't have items to sell at the end of it.

Large-Scale Temple Knight leves (marked with "(L)" in the levequest name) are generally considered not worth your time because they take 10x the allowances and only give 3x the exp.

You can do as many leves as you want per day as long as you have the allowances, so you can take advantage if you've got a lot or a little time.

Beast Tribes. You can get DoH exp from the Ixal (intended for level 1-50) and the Moogles (50-60), and either DoH or DoL from the Namazu (60-70). You're limited by Beast Tribe Daily Quest Allowances (12 per day for any beast tribes of your choice) and the number of quests that tribe offers (Ixal start with Deliverance, which is sort of like a bonus daily GC supply mission + 3 dailies, and progressively more are offered as you level up; Moogles and Namazu normally gives you 3 a day, but you get a bonus 3 on days your Reputation ranks up.) They give nice, moderate lumps of exp.

One of the great advantages of beast tribes is that you are given the materials for the item(s) required by the quest, so you only have to pay for crystals -- and you're often rewarded crystals for completion, making them free aside from teleport and repair costs!

Ranking up unlocks more items at the tribe's vendor. The Ixal have a wonderful selection of lumber, and you can buy the Adept and Trailblazer (level 58) sets from the Moogles with Carved Kupo Nuts, etc.

Unlocking Ixal only requires the level 41 MSQ "In Pursuit of the Past". But you gotta unlock the Moogles and the Namazu not only through MSQ (respectively, level 56 "He Who Would Not Be Denied" and level 66 "In Crimson They Walked") but through sidequest chains. The Moogle unlock chain is long and starts with "A Pebble for Your Thoughts" in Moghome (and then after "Trouble at Zenith" you gotta pick up "Into the Mists" from the Pillars). The Namazu require two short chains from Yanxia, starting with "Courage the Cowardly Lupin" and "Perchance to Hanami".

The Ixal daily "Deliverance" will take items you bought off the MB, but otherwise you must do all beast tribes tasks yourself.

The tasks given to you in the Moogle and Namazu DoH quests are really easy -- as long as you grasp the barest basics of crafting, you can succeed at them (and you can retry as many times as you like, only losing crystals). The Ixal dailies take away your hand slot gear to begin with and slowly add challenge with increasing restrictions such as cross-class ability lockouts. They're not hard, per se, but you have to puzzle over it a bit more than usual.

You can cheat and do Moogle dailies on a higher level class than you hand it in on. You can’t with Namazu -- you have to complete the quest with the same class you picked it up with.

Though quick, they do take a little bit of time, most of which traveling between quest points. Denisot's round today of 3 Moogle dailies took 5 minutes, but if you get one that involves repreated trips it can take longer. Still, they're good if you can play every day even if only briefly.

You might get asked to type "free kupo nuts" in /say.

Collectables (Rowena's House of Splendors). After (IIRC) level 50, after MSQ "The Better Half", you can unlock collectables via the quest "Inscrutable Tastes" in Revenant's Toll. You can then hand in collectables to the House of Splendors (via kiosks at the main cities, Revenant's Toll, Idyllshire, and Rhalgr's Reach) to receive experience and scrips. Like GC supply and provisioning, each day the requested items change. Also like the GC, there's a chance the requested items will have a star next to them, giving bonus scrip and exp. It's always the highest-level turn-in available to you that has a chance of a star.

Collectable crafting works exactly the same as regular crafting. You just toggle on Collector's Glove (an action you can get from your actions window and/or put on your hotbar) and craft as if you were trying for HQ; your HQ chance is converted into collectable rating.

Collectable fishing is AFAIK essentially the same as fishing for HQ. Again, you just toggle on Collector's Glove and try to land a big/HQ fish.

Collectable MIN and BTN, on the other hand, is its whole own little mini-game added on to the normal gathering minigame. You'll want to look up a guide on how to do collectable gathering -- I don't have one handy at the moment. It's not hard, necessarily, but it's a new system to learn!

Rowena's House of Splendors is truly unlimited, and you can hand in as many collectables as you want each day. The experience isn't great, though, even for starred items, so I would recommend against going crazy and doing these all day long. LOVE YOURSELF!

The amounts of scrip rewarded isn't great to begin with, so grinding for rewards will be pretty miserable until you get up into the mid-high 50s. However, if you must have the full Adept's set today, it's an option!

Red Crafters' Scrip (the current common scrip) can be traded for a variety of items, such as manuals, level 60 gear (via Rowena's Token (Blue Crafters' Scrip)), Soul of the Crafter (for changing specializations after your free choice of three from Alderan), IV-V materia, old mats, etc. Red Gatherers' Scrip can also be traded for gear and materia, more valuable old mats (like Pterodactyl), and good fishing bait like Brute Leech and Silkworm.

Collectables are not tradeable, so you must do them yourself. You can't buy the items or get a friend to make them for you.

For DoH, you do have to buy and store the materials, as with Grand Company Supply, unless you exclusively do:

Custom Deliveries. The first client is Zhloe Aliapoh, unlocked at level 60 with quest "Arms Wide Open" in Idyllshire. These tasks take collectables, like Rowena's House of Splendors, but are limited to 6 hand-ins per week per client and 12 hand-ins per week across all clients. If you do them at level cap, you get valuable yellow scrips, but you can also use your allowances for leveling classes below cap.

The materials for DoH Custom Deliveries are sold by vendors in town (Scrap Salvager in Idyllshire, Material Supplier in Rhalgr's Reach, and Blue Merchant in Tamamizu) They're cheap, and you're awarded gil at hand-in, so DoH Custom Deliveries are almost-free-to-profitable to do. DoL, as usual, cost only teleport and repair costs.

The time required is generally very little -- FSH probably takes the longest because of RNG. And you can do them whenever you have time during the week.

If you're using them for leveling, the experience is only modest. But it is a very easy, low-effort way to get red scrips and experience (if you do them below cap) and yellow scrips (if you do them at cap).

AFAIK, Zhloe only requires you unlock Idyllshire level and be 60 in one DoH or DoL class. M'naago requires the MSQ cleared through "Return of the Bull" (SB 4.1). Kurenai requires you to have unlocked M'naago and finished the quest chain that starts with "The Palace of Lost Souls" (including quests not currently marked with a blue unlocky !).

For DoH, like with Moogle dailies, you can craft the collectable item on any class, then change classes before handing it in.

Challenge Log. Don't forget that you get lumps of experience each week for crafting NQ and HQ items, melding materia, gathering NQ and HQ from nodes, and fishing NQ and HQ fish. The quantities are modest, but they're a nice bonus if you choose to level through a method that involves crafting/gathering items yourself (GC Supply/Provisioning, levequests, grinding, etc.)

Overall, my recommendation would be to try a little bit of every leveling method and find out what's enjoyable for you and fits nicely into your budget and schedule. We have a half-year until Shadowbringers, so if you start now you can take a relaxed pace -- no need to rush, grind doing stuff you hate, and burn yourself out.

Engineering and Survival Manuals and similar buffs

There are a variety of buffs that will help you level, giving you more experience per craft or gather. For DoH, you want Engineering Manuals (the yellow ones); for DoL, it's Survival Manuals (the green ones). You can get these from all sorts of sources -- all the ones I remember are:

Rewards from doing your class quests. Another reason to stay on top of em! These Commercial * Manuals give a 150% boost and last 60 minutes or up to 300,000 exp. You can buy more from Rowena's House of Splendors with red scrips.

Bought from your GC quartermaster (Grand Company Seal Exchange). The strongest ones available are Company-Issue * Manual II (+50% for 180 minutes or for 100,000 exp) for sergeants. Company-Issue * Manuals do not stack with Commerical * Manuals.

Free Company actions. "Helping Hand II" and "Earth and Water II" can be bought from the OIC Quartermaster and give 10% more experience to DoH and DoL respectively. The more powerful III versions are charged on an Aetherial Wheel and provide a 20% bonus.

Rewarded from Squadron Priority Missions. You unlock your GC squadron, IIRC, at Second Lieutenant rank, and unlock Priority Missions by completing the level 40 Flagged Mission. The Squadron * Manuals (+20% for 120 minutes, no limit) you can obtain once-a-week from Priority Mission manuals do not stack with Free Company actions.

Company-Issue/Commercial manuals DO stack with Squadron manuals/FC actions.

The recruit-a-friend reward, Friendship Circlet, can be worn while crafting and gathering for 20% more exp when level 25 or below. Same for the Stormblood preorder(?) reward, Ala Mhigan Earrings, which gives 30% more exp when level 50 or below. Brand-New Ring is wearable only by Disciples of War or Magic, so you can't use that.

While it's not an exp bonus, the crafting facility furnishings (Woodworking Bench, etc.) grant a nice 60 minutes of bonus CP to DoH of level 60 or lower, AND THEY CAN NOW BE PUT INTO STORAGE!!! \o/

And of course, don't forget to eat some sort of food while you're crafting or gathering for the 3% exp bonus.

Which DoH should I level up first?

The correct answer to this question has been, and continues to be, everything at once; omnicrafting is the best way.

In the eras of 2.0 and 3.0, the cross-class abilities you gained from the classes were essential to being able to craft HQ items. Not just at endgame -- having those cross-class abilities while leveling makes your life much, much easier. And because the recipes of each class take components from other classes (e.g., WVR recipes always want a bit of leather and metal), leveling everything up together made you self-sufficient and less vulnerable to wild mark-ups on processed materials at the Market Board. Therefore, I join the majority of crafters in continuing to recommend leveling up all your DoH together.

However...

In 4.0, Stormblood, the designers' vision for DoH changed. From levels 61-70, all classes learn the same abilities, which are stronger (but more expensive) versions of the old cross-class mainstays like Careful Synthesis, Manipulation, and Hasty Touch. Nowadays, if somebody slogged through levels 1-60 on one DoH with no cross-class abilities, they would actually be able to craft at level 70 almost as successfully as an omnicrafter. Since the developers have stated that they're very happy with the crafting system right now, it's reasonable to guess Shadowbringers will be similar.

Additionally, not all cross-class abilities are equally valuable. Whenever a new tier of crafting difficulty is added, the endgame meta shifts slightly, but right now, cross-class abilities like Waste Not and Flawless Synthesis aren't really used.

Therefore, while I do recommend you level up everything together, if you really don't want to, you can get away with abandoning some classes along the way. If Ishgard Reconstruction turns out to be similar to beast tribes, you might get away with having just one capped DoH. On the other hand, the developers have teased exclusive challenges for endgame crafters somehow connected to the Ishgard Reconstruction content, so if you want to be ready for whatever that turns out to be, you should at least get all your cross-class abilities.

My tentative recommendation for DoH leveling priority is something like this:

Get anything to 10 to unlock Quick Synthesis.

Get everything to 15. For example:

WVR 15 (Careful Synthesis)

ALC 15 (Tricks of the Trade)

GSM 15 (Manipulation)

CUL 15 (Hasty Touch)

CRP 15 (Rumination)

ARM (Rapid Synthesis), BSM (Ingenuity), LTW (Waste Not).

CUL 37 (Steady Hand II)

WVR 50 (Careful Synthesis II)

ALC 50 (Comfort Zone)

CRP 50 (Byregot's Blessing)

ARM 50 (Piece by Piece)

CUL 50 (Reclaim)

BSM 50 (Ingenuity II)

GSM 50 (Innovation)

CUL 54 (Muscle Memory)

If you MUST skip one DoH entirely, I'd pick LTW, since the Waste Nots are generally inferior to the Manipulations.

You COULD drop CUL after 54's very useful Muscle Memory. And since CUL doesn't correspond to gear, it doesn't help you repair or meld materia, and other classes generally don't need materials processed by CUL.

Various classes' level 54 Name of [Element] cross-class abilities aren't that useful at present -- they're sometimes used in endgame rotations. GSM's level 54 Maker's Mark is also not currently that useful, though it was OP a couple patches back.

Still -- I think it's safest, and for me less annoying, to level everything together.

Should I craft using macros?

Yes -- I think macros are great for relieving the tedium of the repetitive crafting tasks, which you’ll often have while leveling. (Wish I could tell you where to look for good macros, but as I mentioned, I learned years ago, and I just write my own macros these days!)

However, I think you should spend some time manually crafting as well. It will help you understand when and why you use certain abilities, how not to overcap Durability and CP, why you might or might not take Tricks of the Trade, etc. That skill and knowledge will help you even if you plan to primarily use macros at cap, since it will enable you to tweak those macros to be even better for your stats, teach you when you should cancel a macro and take over, etc. Nevermind that macros are very vulnerable to server congestion and lag...

And once you know how to craft, you will almost always have a higher potential quality manually crafting than using a macro -- your ability to respond to changes in Condition can get you precious more stacks of Inner Quiet or CP for upgrading Touches. I often use macros for putting together components but manually craft the final product to be sure I get the highest possible quality.

Other tips for leveling DoH?

I think you'll find one of the most invaluable resources for leveling baby DoH is access to a house or apartment with a Material Supplier. Your friendly FC (or apartment) Material Supplier will take care of practically all your materials needs through level 20 or more.

There are other useful Materials Suppliers scattered around -- in addition to the those in main cities and each of the guilds, check out the ones in the marketplaces out in residential districts.

I also strongly recommend unlocking every 2.0 A Realm Reborn beast tribe because even at mere Neutral standing the tribe vendors offer materials like Undyed Velveteen and Mythril Ingots that you’ll be using in quantity.

Don’t forget to upgrade your gear as you go, even if you’re just putting on new NQ gear from your class quests. DoL is particularly sensitive to gear -- you can really feel the difference when you upgrade a piece.

And really -- like in all aspects of the game, please be sure to pace yourself and make sure you’re enjoying yourself as you go. We’ve got plenty of time.

If you’ve leveled your DoH and DoL recently, what lessons have you learned you wish you’d had at the beginning? Or if you’re leveling right now, what questions do you have? I’m happy to opine or give basic pointers!

You may find my guide/checklist for DoH and DoL class quest items useful, if you haven’t already seen it. And as I mentioned, I may work on a more detailed, how-to-actually-craft-the-things guide in the future, if there’s interest.

Please, don’t be shy and get in touch! I am so excited to work together to rebuild Ishgard with you!!

#ffxiv #ffxiv crafting #ffxiv gathering #crafting school //

112 notes · View notes

eorzean-capitalist · 6 years ago

Text

FFXIV Marketboard Guide.

AKA: How to level up your crafting classes and make a little money on the side to support said leveling.

About the author of this guide: I have over 150 million gil at the moment, and am lazily working my way toward 200 million. I am an omni-crafter, all crafts and gatherers at lvl 70. When I bought my large house in Shirogane, my highest level crafter was 53. I had 85 million gil at the time. I know what I’m doing, I know how to succeed.

There is no one way to succeed. Consider this guide really a set of tips to help you get a jump on leveling your crafting and gathering. This guide assumes you’re starting with everything at level 1 and goes from there.

It takes work, a lot of work on your part. But it’s quite rewarding as you watch your classes level up and your bank account increase at the same time. If you’re hoping this guide will help you get rich quick with no effort on your part, this is probably not your guide.

ONE: The first thing you need to do is gather shards. You are going to need a shit ton of shards. You can buy them off the marketboard if they’re cheap, but if they run up over 100 gil each, don’t bother. Farm your own.

Set your retainers to botany and mining. Equip them with a pick and an axe, and start sending them out for shards. (You can buy ventures with GC seals, and Allied Seals. Stock up on them, as many as you can.) It is worth it to gear them up as they level (ever 10 levels after the retainer hits lvl 20 is my recommendation). Eventually they’ll be able to bring you back 60 shards every 40 minutes.

When you hit 9999 shards, shake off the excess onto a retainer and keep sending them out for shards. Now you’re ready for step two.

TWO: Level up all your crafters to lvl 20. Do this by crafting items at the starting stages and turning in class items. (Most of the items you need are buyable from the vendor at the crafting area.) When you hit 10 on your first class, you’ll unlock Quick Synthesis. This is ungodly for leveling. You only need to synthesis something once, and then you can set your character to create 99 of that item and let ‘em go while you go get coffee or do laundry or something.

Tips:

Don’t bother with crafting leves at this stage of the game. It’s not hard to get to lvl 20 without touching them. It’s time consuming, but not hard.

You’ll get all the starting gear you need from your class quests. Don’t bother buying gear at this stage. If anything, you can make whatever you need as you go.

These classes will all provide shards at the first quests. Make sure you have room for them. If you already have 9999 shards, you’ll just lose these extras. Offload around 2000 shards onto a retainer’s inventory so you have room.

If you have the Ala Mhigan earrings, wear them. They work for crafting and gathering just as well as war and magic classes.

THREE: Take stock of what you can make. By level twenty, these items either are now available to you or are very close.

Carpenter: Walnut Lumber (Lvl 25, a bit of a risk but worth it.)

Blacksmith/Armorsmith: (Iron Ingots lvl 16 and Iron Rivets, lvl 18.)

Goldsmithing: Silver Ingots (lvl 23)

Leatherworking: Aldgoat Leather (lvl 17)

Weaving: Dew Thread (lvl 23)

Alchemy: Mortar (lvl 20) and eventually Natron (lvl 25).

Cooking: Grape Juice. (Lvl 21, has only one ingredient, easy to mass produce to get levels.)

SOME of these items are great to sell on the marketboard. Others are not. I can tell you right now I had great experiences selling the following: Walnut Lumber, Silver Ingots, Dew Thread, Mortar and Natron.

Four: Now go farm up the mats you need that cannot be bought off a vendor.

Walnut Lumber: Gather up at least 300 logs to turn into 100 lumber. Go nuts with this, the more you have the better off you’ll be.

Silver Ore or Effervescent Water: Effervescent water sells great on its own if you want something to just mine up and sell as is. Or you can turn it into Natron for a bit more profit.

Limestone. I’ve found Limestone always sells high. Mortar is particularly popular for making furniture items.

Noble Grapes: Check the marketboard for these, it may be worth it to just buy them if they’re cheap rather than waste time gathering them when you could be gathering more walnut logs.

Aldgoat Skin: Check the MB for this too. It may be cheap enough to buy rather than gather. Since gathering takes you going around killing aldgoats near camp drybone. (If you do gather them, save any aldgoat horns you get, they’ll come in handy later.)

Alumen: Necessary to make aldgoat leather.

Diremite web: Pain in the ass to gather yourself. Buy off marketboard or run Toto-rak over and over again and hope you get some.

At this point, you should have enough shards and your retainers should be high enough level to gather other things for you. Send botanists out for walnut logs, and miners out for silver ore, alumen, limestone or effervescent water.

DO NOT BOTHER FARMING FOR IRON ORE. IT IS BOUGHT OFF VENDORS EASILY. WASTE OF YOUR TIME TO UNLESS YOU JUST REALLY ARE A PENNY PINCHER AND ENJOY GATHERING.

TIPS:

Put on an audiobook to listen to, or have the TV nearby playing a movie or binge watch your favorite show while you gather. Makes it less tedious.

Take breaks. Get up and get something to eat, stay hydrated. Walk away and do some how chores for a bit. The gathering part takes time.

Set a limit for yourself. Like you’re only going to get 300 walnut logs and then go do something else for awhile. Or, set a timer like you’ll farm for 30 minutes and then take a break. Run a dungeon, play another game, do housework, something to mix it up a bit.

This stage of the game is different for everyone. Some people like the grind of gathering, other people find it boring and tedious. Don’t feel like you’re a failure if you can’t spend more than a short amount of time on this. Pace yourself, do what you can, and then stop before you burn out.

Five: Now for the crafting part. Start working on everything you have gathered. Make walnut logs into lumber, turn silver and iron ore into ingots, diremite web into dew thread, aldgoat skin and alumen into aldgoat leather, noble grapes into grape juice, limestone into mortar.

Once everything is made, head for the market board and price your items. See what’s selling decently, what’s selling low. Also be sure to check what the history is on the item in question. How much has it sold for in the past? How often does it sell?

This is where your marketboard savvy should begin to take shape. If you need to, keep track of sales trends on a spreadsheet. Very useful in the beginning as you are learning the ropes, and will likely become intrinsic later.

Start putting up auctions on your vendors of the items you think are most likely to sell. Don’t put up stacks of 99 if you can help it. Some people like big stacks like that but others may just want a few of an item. (Also you can possibly sell it for a bit more than the lowest price if they have stacks of 99 up and you’re selling a stack of 20.)

Tips:

Make sure you check the history of the item in question. Look to see how often the item sells. Is the last time it sold back a month ago? Probably not a hot item right now. Check the next item in your bags. Your auctions are prime real estate, you want to occupy them with items that sell relatively well. Reserve your slower moving items for times you’re low on the fast ones.

Always have your retainers full. When you go to bed, they should each have 20 auctions up. Soon as something sells, put up something to replace it.

Keep an eye on the going rates. If it normally sells around 600 gil a piece, but there’s none up right now? Don’t get greedy, selling it for 5000 gil each will just get you undercut pretty fast. Try something like twice the last going rate to start with. So, in this example, something that was selling at 600 gil a piece, put your auction up for 1200 a piece. This is trial and error and every server is different.

A watched auction never sells. Don’t obsessively check your auctions to see if you’ve been undercut every 5 minutes. Put them up and WALK AWAY.

Know prime shopping times. If it’s early in the morning, there won’t be as many sales. Don’t bother undercutting just yet. When you get home from work, great time to log in, check auctions and undercut as that’s the time people are getting home and logging in and buying stuff. Don’t bother with it again until you go to bed.

And that’s about all I have time for right now. I will try to put up a part two on how to Marketboard tomorrow. Good night and good sales!

#FFXIV #Marketboard strategies

171 notes · View notes

bonejigglerunlimited · 3 years ago

Text

i differentiated my play experience into 2 characters since i unconsciously characterized my eye candy too cold to hold my feelings, and now they’ve both kinda gotten away from me. oops

dragging the self-insert through DRK quests, and they felt DRK 45 stronger than i did

"Stupid merchant," a Miqo'te stomped up to her shared home. "Stupid Qiqirn taking the stuff, stupid Fray taking the bait, stupid me not stopping him," she struggled with her keys for a moment ("Stupid lock-!") before slamming the door open and hustling in.

"You look like shit."

Q'khyu's ears flicked in annoyance, and she absolutely did not turn around and make eye contact with the Au Ra who could read her better than either of them could read.

"And what makes you say that?" she sniffed. "I've barely gotten through the door!"

A shuffling behind her. Was he getting up? "I've known you long enough to know that slump, even in your bulkiest armor." He paused. "And I heard some scratching at the door just before you came in. I suppose that was you fumbling with the key?" Tch, damn conductive hearing. He was probably leaning against an outside wall, the bastard.

Q'khyu took a steadying breath. "These gauntlets are new; you try using small keys with stiff gloves." She turned to face Ryosen, eyes still red despite her stalling. There was her lizard, arms crossed and using the two heads of height he had on her to loom and looking very disappointed indeed; except she could see his eyes widen and his arms loosen and damn it, don't look at her like that, stop looking so concerned.

Q'khyu looked away. “Just another request that should have been a leve. I swear, no one knows how to submit jobs; they’ll just wait and hope and whine when their hope doesn’t want to help,” she huffed. An expectant silence. “..I helped. A little fighting is quicker and easier than listening to people beg.” She shook her head, dispelling the roughness that had crept into her voice “What have you been up to?”

“Weaving.” Ryosen hummed as he stepped up to help Q’khyu out of her armor. “A colleague likened shaping aether into spells to spinning thread from loose fiber, and I was intrigued.” Off came the pauldrons, then the breastplate. “Always useful to have a new perspective.” He glanced at her and frowned at the salt on her cheeks. “This isn’t the first time someone refused to leave you be. What was different?”

Q’khyu grabbed his hands as he went to unclasp her gorget, and looked at them for a long moment before answering. “It.. wasn’t really about the request, this time..” she shuffled from foot to foot, looking as if every word pained her. “I was with someone else. The requester didn’t find our performance acceptable, and demanded recompense, and the person I was with got so mad!” she giggled wetly. “He tore the requester a new one and stormed off, and when I went to go find him he said-” Q’khyu was crying now, in great hiccuping sobs that shook her whole body. She pressed Ryosen’s hands to her forehead as if they could steady her, curling in on herself, penitent. “He said we could just leave..! Abandon it all, be free, leave you all to your fates, and I wanted to! I wanted to just -- to let you all-” Ryosen pulled his hands away, and Q’khyu stilled, still breathing hard. He set them on her shoulders.

“Is this your goodbye?”

She flinched out of his grasp at that. “No! I don’t- I don’t want to leave you, to loose you! but I-”

Ryosen closed the distance between them, enveloping Q’khyu in a hug that would be crushing for anyone less, and she writhed.

“Let go of me!” she screamed, kneeing him, pounding on his back. “You’re always like this! You listen to my problems and help me with adventuring and let me do this and I don’t do anything for you! I can’t- I don’t deserve-” and Ryosen only held her tighter.

“My friend has many burdens as the warrior of light, and there is little I wouldn’t do to ensure she isn’t crushed under them.” He pressed a horn into her head. She sobbed brokenly. “I know you. You are kind; excessively so. I agree with your friend - you should be more selfish - but I know it would hurt you to do so.”

Ryosen held Q’khyu until her sobs were naught but hiccups, then smoothed her hair out of her face. “If no one else will show the gratitude you deserve, then I will. Now then,” he flicked her nose before moving towards the stove, tugging her along. “I don’t know when you last ate, but combat and crying are both tiring business. Drying, too. Warming some soup should take just a moment, and you should finish taking your armor off before sleeping.”

She huffed at that. “I bet you just want me to taste test a new recipe for you.” She followed nonetheless, and started to unbuckle the rest of her armor.

“You got me; I received a recipe for an Ishgardian soup, and I’m not used to any of the ingredients. I think the radishes have turned to sludge”

Q’khyu laughed, clear and warm, if a little thick with tears. “Something about high-altitude vegetables, or northern vegetables? I’m sure it’ll be fine either way. Tell me about the weaving?”

“Alright. To start with, it’s actually quite a process to get the fiber in the first place..”

0 notes

2ells2tees · 4 years ago

Text

A year after the uprising, we have a responsibility to look at where things stand today, in terms of revolutionary counter-power on a national and local scale. In the immediate wake of the Uprising, there seemed to be endless possibilities- the steady march of capital, white supremacy, and the state seemed ruptured, and in the opening, we began to try to construct some alternative visions of life. The last year has seen an incredible counter-offensive by forces of repression and recuperation. Where have they succeeded in foreclosing on the horizon of possibilities that opened in the wake of the uprising? Where have they been pushed back?

In the wake of the Uprising, the City Council promised abolition of the MPD and its replacement with a department of public safety. It now seems evident that there is no serious impulse towards this, and that the debate is going to be between a community accountability board (which the MPD already has, but this one is modeled more like the one the CPD operates under), an amendment that would allow for the future defunding of the police, and a resurgent call for more policing in the wake of highly publicized violent crimes. The media has certainly done a blitz around violent crime in the Twin Cities, and a narrative has been - falsely- spun that it's because the MPD has been somehow defanged or defunded. In reality, the MPD is still lavishly funded, and very active and brutal. They just never had the ability or the interest in stopping violence in the poorest neighborhoods. Revolutionary movements have to find answers to this interpersonal violence and the roots causes behind it- not so much as a quest to take political legitimacy from the state, but because it is a pressing human need in our communities. This is part of a program of abolition from below- and these answers can only come from the communities most impacted by the violence.

The most important consideration after an uprising, is to ask- to what degree did oppressed and working class people come together and form new organization, new relationships and practices, and maintain these through the "trough" that follows the wave? Here we have a wealth of examples- new young Black revolutionary and progressive organizations, new community defense organizations like the Rock Steady Alliance or the resurgent Workers Defense Alliance, copwatch programs such as the one here in Whittier, and so on. Many of these hold a revolutionary or abolitionist perspective. There are also other groups which have been successfully recuperated, often because they were not built on a revolutionary perspective at all- such as "defense" or "de-escalation" organizations which have accepted government money to police protests. The usual way that governing systems try to digest social movements, is to recuperate whatever they can, and then leave the rest of the new formations isolated and feeling powerless until they either accept their own recuperation, get repressed, or disband from despair. It's crucial that we build mutually supporting ecologies of revolutionary organizations, and resist encirclement and isolation. One of these tasks of support is solidarity with the prisoners of the uprising- many of whom have been forgotten or been misrepresented in the media as "outside agitators" in a crackerjacketing counterinsurgency scheme.

What of the reactionary counter-offensive? The police and the state more broadly are feeling largely re-legitimized now that Trump is gone and Biden is in charge, bringing back that veneer of "normalcy". The city was forced to actually launch a competent prosecution of Chauvin as a concession to the people. His conviction assures liberals that justice within the system can be done, while firing up conservatives to view him as a martyr, "cancelled" (the greatest of Red atrocities) for life for practicing his God-given American freedom to murder. The conservatives themselves appear to be re-living some of their Obama year experiences- once again in the opposition, fearful that the Democrats are going to finally cancel America and install a regime of queer critical-race-studies Marxist-globalist Sharia. As they lick their wounds, the fascist fringe tries to reach out to them to re-grow, to bind to them more tightly, and to re-emerge in the next crisis having radicalized more of the Right. At the base and at the top, fascist inroads into the American right remain strong. Antifascist vigilance is still essential, but it's hard to keep them away from the mainstream with a levee built of shame and stigma when they've already burst that levee, left a lake in the conservative polder, and the Right has forgotten how to feel shame.

Meanwhile, the question of shop floor organizing and tenant organizing remains a weak point for revolutionaries here. Let's not claim an easy victory and pretend that a market dynamic driving up wages is a "de facto general strike". Let's not delve so deep into a fetish of spontaneity that we see worker collective action in the invisible hand of the market. The conditions are ripe for shop floor organizing, but so far our most militant offensives tend to be localized, and directed at smaller shops, or are rank and file driven actions within the larger workplaces and unions. The defeat in Bessemer is just one example among many of the failure of the union officialdom to be able to fight and win up and down the supply chains and industries of today's globalized firms. A similar story can be told in housing struggles- many small offensives, no coordinated breakthrough. We're a class struggling through an imposed amnesia, learning to walk before we can remember how to run.

One thing that we absolutely need to understand, is the difference between mobilizing and organizing. This last year started with an immense mobilization of people who wouldn't take it any more, and as the months wore on, the people mobilizing dwindled down to resemble more and more the "usual suspects"- including a new generation of usual suspects, but not generally reflecting the broader community even of those who had mobilized in the uprising. Many of the mobilizations in recent months were large marches or other demonstrations of outrage making demands on the state. These demands typically haven't been met, and won't be met through marches, because the people in power understand marches to be a spectacle, not an actual threat. If we want to build counter-power and hold it against offensives by the state, we need to build deep rooted relationships in our communities through day to day acts of resistance, building relationships and joint work around which we craft organization, and coordinating that work to escalate from small acts of resistance over our grievances to greater ones which challenge the causes of those grievances and strike at the foundations of power.

https://www.facebook.com/259251571496690/posts/969539153801258/?d=n

—-

It’s worth noticing that, while for white folks in the US it can feel like we’ve progressed, if you look at statistics, support (in all possible ways — from positive responses on opinion polls out to money and legislative action) from white Americans for Black lives and racial justice broadly is about HALF what it was last April.

Yes, really. It’s measurable. Many things have changed for the WORSE, and only a tiny fraction of the motion for change that has been announced in the past twelve months has materialized.

We need to learn to keep seeing it. It’s our white people homework: the minimum effort required to try not to be complicit in ongoing genocide.

0 notes

aurimeanswind · 7 years ago

Text

Cold Breeze—Sunday Chats (11-19-17)

Another week, another Sunday

It’s been a long week for me. Not in actuality, because I’ve slept an average of 10 hours a day every day this week, which is both a good and a bad thing. It’s good because I’ve been sleeping crazy well. It’s bad because it reminds me of my Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, of my sometimes inability to drag myself out of bed to do anything. It’s also a common habit I fall into when I know I’m depressed, and while I push back as much as I can against that overwhelming feeling, it’s still there. Ever-present. And it sucks.

It helps to know that the ExtraLife team, now disbanded, is definitely full of the melancholy. We all miss each other. Some more than others, assuredly, but there is just so much love an affection there. I think taking that step back in the aftermath of ExtraLife, the distance, the pride fills me more because of the tight bonds that were just driven home over that week.

It’s full on Persona-style bonds. Maxed social link meters and unbreakable relationships that serve as tentpole and standing memories and gifts that we all cherish, equally. It’s a comforting feeling, in the sad/loneliness.

But I digress.

It’s been very good for games! And I’ve sunk my teeth into some big ones this week.

What’s On Tap

Assassin’s Creed Origins

This is the really big one. I’ve spent about 25-ish hours with this title this week.

I love this game, which is super surprising. I wrote a big long thing about all the wild changes they made on this blog, so I’ll refrain from repeating myself here.

One thing I really love in this game is Bayek, the main character. The relationship with him and his wife Aya is just so good. They just fucking love each other so much and its disgusting but sweet and kind of nice. it’s this central bond that the plot swirls around and it’s really strong, unlike other AC games.

I also think the side quest quality in this game is remarkable. It reminds me a ton of The Witcher 3. While I don’t think the voice acting is quite up to that same par, it’s astoundingly excellent.

I dont’ have many complaints about this game. I really just adore it. And I’m thankful to my friends Barrett and Youssef for recommending it.

Destiny 2

I’ve only been playing a bit here and there, with another playdate with Tony and Greg tonight. It’s been fun playing the game again though, and I’ve excited for the new content coming early next month.

Overwatch

I just wrapped up playing some Overwatch just now, trying out Moira.

Moira is excellent. She is exactly what the healing team in Overwatch needed, a new on-the-ground healer. I feel like Ana is just not an effective healer at all, at least on console where aim and precision is not as strong.

What I love about Moira is that healing is a resource for her, she needs to tap into it, and if you run out, you can’t heal anymore. It means you need to use her primary energy drain weapon, get out there, and be aggressive in order to be able to support your team.

It’s a lot like Doomfist’s shield, which he generates for using his abilities on enemies, and it requires him to use his skillset to then be a better and greater asset to his team.

Moira also heals herself with her attack, so she benefits herself and her own play style by being aggressive.

I really like her. She may take top spot as my primary healer, but I am also incredibly fond of Mercy’s new ultimate, so it’s a toss up. Much like all the many characters I play in Overwatch, it’ll depend on the situation.

Questions

Remember to look for my tweet on Sunday afternoons with the hashtag #SundayChats in it. Reply with your question, and you’re in here.

Let’s do this.

On a personal leve, because I don’t think 2018 will hit the same highs for me, I want there to be more surprises. Again, this is for me, because I think there were huge hit surprises this year for folks like PUBG, but I just didn’t have quite so many hits.

On that note, I hope those surprises come from smaller, indie games. Like I think that was a collection of titles that got lost for me this year because of the stellar AAA games that took the spotlight, but those weird and nuanced and special indie games are some of the best experiences I live for, and I hope with more room in 2018 I’ll be able to get lost in them.

Personally I just use the Twitter app on my phone, and I’m happy with it. Most folks I know swear by Tweetbot, but I’ve never really gotten to use it myself.

As for Desktop, it’s all about Tweetdeck. You can tweet from multiple accounts, and have just multiple timelines open it it. On mine I have a news story feed for games, my timeline, my mentions, my notifications, and then the IP notifications too. It’s the way to go, in my experience.

It was the greatest thing I’ve ever been a part of for about a dozen different reasons.

I’m excited to be able to relive it in the archived videos.

I’d love to visit Hyrule castle town either from Breath of the Wild or Twilight Princess. This is all pre-apocolypse, of course, but especially in BotW it seems like such an incredible and bustling place. I’d love to see the different peoples and cultures of that world melted together in that supreme beauty.

Another one is Hengsha from Deus Ex, because it’s the two-layer city, kind of like Midgar from FF7. I’d just love to see that in person. That’d be more of an architectural look, just to see that crazy design in person and up close.

Another would be Inaba from Persona 4. Just because that place is like a second home for me. I’d love to finally see it in person.

Hrm, that’s tough. I have a lot that I just need to boot up and get through at this point, so it’s likely the ones that I just know I’m not going to get. A big one is Night in the Woods. I’m determined to make Edith Finch happen, but Night in the Woods seems like a really special game that I’m just not going to get to.

That list of indie games is depressingly long for me too. Pyre? Probably won't get to it and I want to play that so bad. Steamworld Dig 2? I may not get to that this year. I’ll definitely play it but probably just not this year, and that’s such a massive bummer for me since I loved the first one so much. The Housemarque games this year too, since I loved all the times I played them in preview settings.

I do still have some time, and I plan on getting through a few good things between now and the end of December. We’ll see what doesn’t make it.

For me its a handful of titles that maybe Nabeshin has thrown out to me. I’d like to try Red Dead Redemption at some point. And 999. Those two are huge standouts, but outside of that, it’s hard for me to think of some franchise that I haven’t dipped my toes into at least a little bit with the given time.

I should probably play Tokyo Mirage Sessions someday but we’ll see. Still have it sealed in the plastic wrap.

Man, this is so hard. Ideal is tough too, because maybe that implies I’ve been there?

The place I’ve always wanted to go my whole life is Ireland. Its the motherland right? It calls me back. That, and Japan. I’ve wanted to take the journey to the land of the rising sun since I was old enough to barely mutter JRPG. Those are the two places.

Let’s go.

So, for context, I saw Justice League last night and... I really loved it? Like, I loved everything about it?? I feel crazy, like I’m Greg Miller defending Batman V. Superman??

But I think if I saw it again or I took the step back, I could totally see why people dislike it so vehemently. I was honestly shocked because it... well, it felt like Justice League to me. It felt like it was out of an entirely different DC Cinematic Universe. And maybe my expectations were so low? I don’t know.

But anywhere, there are going to be spoilers in my response here, because Liza deserves the best response I can muster for this, since we’re JL believers.

YOU’VE BEEN WARNED.

Boy when Superman shows up and is just straight up like, good, smiling, wise cracking Superman (again, a totally different character than he has been up until then, but I didn’t care because fuck I miss good Superman) I was just grinning ear to ear. They managed to tap into Henry Cavill’s charisma and make him shine as someone I could actually believe is Superman. And just seeing him work with a team and work with other heroes, like, that’s Man of Steel I know and fucking love, and they just nailed it in this movie. It made me so happy. You have no Idea. It’s like I’ve waited my whole life for that.

So yeah, he was my favorite, but I liked everyone! Any second Wonder Woman was on screen was perfect. They made Batman feel so much more like Batman here it was ridiculous. I liked Cyborg a lot, and I feel like they gave him a great arc from self hatred in the beginning to “wanting to live” in the end. Aquaman and Flash were just a ton of fun.

For me it’s just under Wonder Woman since I thought they just nailed Wonder Woman so well, but I really really loved it, as I’m sure you could tell. I was just a happy kid grinning that my heroes were finally on screen together, and it was rad.

Haha oh my god okay I don’t think I can pick ten different fingers, but I was thinking about this when I grabbed the question. Probably like, someone who’s fingers have powers, like Emperor Palatine or something? I guess Cole McGraff would be the real world video game equivalent, but someone who would let me shoot lightening out of my fingertips. If I could just choose one then one of theres and then the others from all the characters in Until Dawn.

Because why not

#AgentOfChaos

Eh.

It’s fine.

Honestly, the lesson you shared with me Tyler has been a really great one. For folks curious, it’s about Mountain Tops. It’s a great analogy to the higher moments we find ourselves in in life.

https://twitter.com/acegiak/status/924762544383782912

That and one I’ve taken to heart over the last two or so years, which is just to listen, and to care, and to pay attention. You don’t need to interject your opinion in every controversial topic, and far too many people do. But that doesn’t exempt you from paying attention.

We don’t have anything concrete in the works, but we have a lot of ideas. I think PAX East is something to expect us at, and I think more written work in the future is something to anticipate soon too. Not more from who is there, but more and new voices. Exciting voices too, if we can muster it.

I’d totally be down to play Overwatch for 24 hours. I just love the loop of that game. I’d probably hate myself and it at around the 18 hour mark, but I think I could still muster it.

Least willing to do would probably be something best experienced in short bursts, like a Spelunky, or a Flint Hook, or a Cuphead, Some games require breaks and I think those fit into that fine. Doesn’t make them worse or bad by any means, but when you can walk away and come back better rested, those are good picks.

The Checklist

I have been essentially off reading stuff, but it’s worth shouting out a thing my best friend Jazz wrote today, about ExtraLife 2017.

http://brazenbebop.blogspot.com/2017/11/extra-life-2017.html

She is getting into the writing of the content, and I’m excited to support her and see what she comes up with.

I am tired again, but excited to finish some things I’m working on.

Thanks for sticking with me, and for the unending support.

And for taking care of me.

Much love.

Keep it real.

#video games #gaming #extralife #assassin's creed origins

2 notes · View notes

disneydreamlights · 7 years ago

Note

So, I've figured out how you'd obtain Moogle of Glory in the MMO. After clearing Beast's Castle, you'd get a cutscene of Donald and Goofy crashing in Daybreak Town. After seeing this cutscene, if you enter then exit the Moogle Shop Menu. Doing that will trigger the cutscene where the Moogle's Keyblade scheme falls through, and the Keychain attaches itself to your Keyblade. Then you can complete the Moogle 'o Glory quest chain.

PLEASE ANYTHING IS FUCKING BETTER THAN THE MOG QUESTS.

I want to max out Moogle of Glory so bad. I literally need a Power Magic medal after pulling every Foreteller but Gula (and guilting Aced and Invi) but the MoG questline is so bad...and only easy to do in 0 AP. I hate it.

You'd actually obtain the Power Bangle after receiving the "Where's Chirithy?" Quest, upon entering the Fountain Square. You'd then get a Guilting tutorial. You'd get a hint that the Chirithy you were talking to isn't your Chirithy when you speak with your own Chirithy after completing the Guilting Tutorial and they have NO idea where you got the Power Bangle (with some foreshadowing since they have a minor, subtle freakout upon seeing that you have it). So yeah, there's that.

Tbh that foreshadowing should’ve been in the actual KHUx now I’m salt.

The Moogle Shop Menu would have buttons for each shop menu, one for Medals, one for Items, one for Furniture, and one for Spirit parts. There'd also be be a button for selling Medals, and a button for selling Keyblade Materials. The Spirit portion of the shop would have two banners that are always there where you can buy Rainbow parts for the Pupstar and Kitstar, plus the limited time banner for other Spirit Parts.

So, the Spirit would be unlocked through simple means, progress past a certain point in the story (not sure where yet, other than it being before Beast's Castle), then head to Daybreak Town. Cue obtaining the new Pet feature. As for the room? You'd unlock it in a Story Quest, after completing the first three Disney World arcs and returning to Daybreak Town, you would get the key to your room. Why a key when you have a Keyblade? To discourage you from abusing the Keyblade's unlocking powers!

Combining these two into both parts because they’re both pet things. I love the idea of a shop where I could buy the pet parts individually. Perhaps do the banners in the same manner as limited edition shop items, with the rainbow items being available for Munny (because let’s face it when you’re at the point I am in the game where you have quite a few million of it, Munny is useless) and having things worth spending Munny on besides evolving medals to guilt them would be nice.

Also the Daybreak Town thing is adorable and hilarious with the key, and if you ask me you actually should hold off on giving the pet until beating the Keyblade War. I think in the MMO since it’d probably go through KHX and KHUx that it would make most sense to not give the pet until the Union Leaders create it in the Unchained Realm.

So uh, I was thinking of an idea for a SUPER RARE Guilt Medal that's used to roll/reroll traits. While Fusing two of the same Medal would still be the best way to go, these SUPER RARE Medals would be an alternative for Medals you don't have duplicates of. It would cost more Guilt and maybe some Munny to use, however. Additionally, I don't know if it should be Phantom Aqua, DiZ, Robed Ansem, Sora's Heartless, or some other villain from the series. Do you have any ideas?

Hooded Ansem. It should be a character not represented yet but still significantly important and powerful within the series.

So, okay, when the Foreteller Deals arrive, everyone would receive a free Medal corresponding to their Foreteller. Each banner would have the "guaranteed in 5 draws", plus the chance of pulling one of the other 4 Foretellers (and Luxu, whom wouldn't have a banner). Luxu would be another Speed Medal. Sharing any of these Medals would change the music in the Player's room to "Dearly Beloved (Back Cover vers.). Players would be able to borrow Friend Medals for single-player portals.

Nonny you’re speaking my language I wasted over 40k jewels for Ava and granted, I got her, that’s 42k jewels I could still have an be well on my way to saving sixty for that Roxas out right now or the Xion dropping in a few weeks.

Okay, so I'm kinda torn on how I want the "Proud Mode" Keychains to be obtained. One way I was considering was having them be available in the "Item" portion of the Moogle Shop, where you can pull a random Keychain from the pool of the "Keychain" Banner. The other way was having Avatar Boards you unlock as you level up where you unlock them with Avatar Coins. I'm kinda torn between the two of them for obvious reasons

So, I think I figured out how I'd like the whole "Proud Mode" Keyblade thing to work. Basically, what if every Story Battle had a "Proud Mode" or something along those lines? I mean, that's pretty close to how canon does it, but seeing as how I've never beaten the first Shadow of the Proud Mode quests... But yeah, what if the first time you clear choice Story Battles in Hard Mode, you got one of the "Hard Mode" Keyblades?

I mean that’s basically how canon does it, but I think having them pull from a banner might be slightly better than just being avatar coins, so long as one Keyblade is guaranteed, but I think it should be available with Event Coins. We have so many event coins left at the end of every event (mine are in the thousands typically) it’d be nice to have something I can throw all those extra event coins at so they’re not wasted.

I also had an idea for the Organization XIII Medals inspired by the AWFUL "Organization XIII Revival" 1 day event. Basically, on the first day of every month, you'd be able to obtain Xemnas from Event Quests. On the second day, Xigbar, and so on and so forth until the fourteenth where you can get Xion. Shorter timeframe? Yes, but it's much less stressful than "Only thirteen days starting from the thirteenth with only ONE CHANCE ever!" Plus, Roxas and Xion medals from the monthly event!

I’d like that if only so I could guilt Xemnas and Xigbar since I failed to do it both times, but I feel like the event will come around again. This is a rerelease of them from the first time after all. Xion medals from any event are also very good to me. XD (Course I more want Xion’s hair but still)

Getting long so throwing the rest under read more for this group.

So, Anniversary Art #6 would depict Nightmare Chirithy in its boss form front and center with Maleficent and Pete at its right and left respectively and two robed figures standing behind them. Anniversary Art #7 would depict Phantom Chirithy in the Background with Maleficent and Pete standing in front of it, and three masked figures (whom players would later learn to be the brainwashed Union Leaders) standing before them. Both would be Reverse Medals.

NIGHTMARE CHIRITHY ART YES.

So yeah, in Unchained X (three whole years after players witnessed their plush companion freak out over the Power Bangle), we'd get a cutscene explaining why the NEW Union Leaders would allow the Power Bangles since they'd probably have learned what Guilt really is. The idea? Use the Medals to imprison darkness with the Guilting Process, and the Nova Attacks are a sort of exhaust to purge dark energy. Now if only they didn't task the TRAITOR with collecting and containing the purged darkness.

So yeah, the plan with that cycle was to keep the darkness from being able to take tangible form so that the Union Leaders could use the Lux the Dandelions collect to turn their dreams into new worlds, void of darkness. Seeing as the series happened, you can guess how well that turned out. But yeah, Lauriam collects all the Darkness and uses it to create Nightmare versions of the Spirits. Speaking of the Pets, as cool as the bottle animation is, spending Jewels for random parts is just, no.

Putting this under gameplay since guilting is a mechanic, but it does make a surprising amount of sense and explain a lot of the reason why the Union Leaders would actually think it’s okay to allow the Power Bangles and guilt in the Unchained Realm.

As somebody who wasted 3000 jewels just to get a full piggy set because she loves pigs and skipped the bunnies because she needed jewels, fuck yes. Do not charge me for my pigs, I don’t care if it’s cosmetic offer at least basics without premium currency and different unique colors for the jewels.

So, I'd probably make it so that you'd use Munny for more than just Fusing Medals. I'd have it so you have to spend Jewels to purchase Items, Medals, and SOME Avatar Boards, sure, but I'd have it so you spend MUNNY on Decorations (furniture), and MAYBE spend both Guilt and Munny on the random Spirit Parts because Spirits are Dream Eaters and those are made of Darkness (the Union Leaders think that they're turning Darkness into Light when they make Spirits. They're not) so continuity nod there.

YOU’RE LITERALLY TELLING ME THINGS SQUARE SHOULD’VE DONE YOU’RE MAKING THE DREAM KHUX HERE WITH MYNNY FOR DREAM EATERS. (How would you sell Guilt given how the mechanics work?)

So, looks like the "Rainbow" parts were exclusive to the Bunstar instead of being a third color type like I thought. So, no "rainbow" Pupstars and Kitstars in the MMO AU. But I probably would still have a permanent banner of some type in there, be it Chocostars or Frogstars or something. Maybe both? Anyway, the purpose of the Spirit is to eat Nightmares that might emerge from the Guilted Medals, with the ones that raise your Spirit's Rank the most being what Brain deems high-risk.

I think they might exist in JPUx, but who cares, do them anyways, they’d be cute. Also frog dream eaters would gladly have me throwing money at jewel boxes.

So yeah, I was thinking maybe Guilt Prizes would look like the Guilt Symbol, you know what I'm talking about, with each "level" of the symbol corresponding to one point of Guilt. like, Prizes that look like the level 1 symbol would reward 1 Guilt, the level 2 symbol 2 Guilt. The counter would use the Level 7 Guilt Symbol, however. Additionally, Guilt prizes would be inside the bottle in the "Blind Box" Spirit Part purchase animation, until the 3 lights fly in and turn them into a smoke cloud.

Honestly anything that could help with guilt would make anybody more likely to buy those pets blind boxes. XD Only reason I will spend more money on pets is dragon. I got reindeer and fox, that’s good enough.

So, in the MMO AU, the more powerful the attack, the more gauges it will cost. There wouldn't be any 0 SP Medals. As such, Kairi EX's REALLY broken Special Attack would be USELESS in a single player situation, since it would cost 15 SP Guage and only return 5. In Multiplayer, or when using Namine or the Special Attack Guage 2 Skill, on the other hand.

Actually, Illustrated Kairi EX would Coat 10 Guages, restoring 5. Regular Illustrated Kairi would cost 15 Guages and restore 10. They would still have the Canon affects, save for the damage since they would be Team Targeting Medals. Figured that would be more balanced.

Listen I like being broken but anything would be more balanced than what’s currently in the meta with Kairi EX. I actually literally only have my iKairi2 on Treasure Trove just because I don’t have anything better to put there. Actually that’s every Keyblade but Lady Luck now. XD

#MMO Anon #Anonymous #Heather Answers

1 note · View note

how2to18 · 6 years ago

Link

THEY SAY literary novelists can’t do genre. This is perhaps most acutely felt with mystery and noir, which has fascinated and occasionally defied postmodern eminences from Pynchon to Auster and beyond. Antony Lamont, antihero of Gilbert Sorrentino’s incredible Mulligan Stew, stands out as the funniest case study, albeit fictional. A fading, minor experimental writer immersed in an awful fusion of the new novel and a noir potboiler (the same sort of novel it seems Paul Giamatti’s character is working on in Sideways — his “Robbe-Grillet mystery”), the pompous Lamont’s tilt is equal parts cynicism and desperation — his radical approach really just a bald-faced cash grab, so smugly assured is he that the dark ambience, gratuitous sex, and abrupt violence of his meandering and largely content-free novel will finally nab him the hit he deserves. This is not, thankfully, the sort of novel that Jonathan Lethem gives us in The Feral Detective. Though you can be forgiven for imagining otherwise if you’re not familiar with his work, Lethem is no stranger to noir, or genre fiction in general — he came from genre, and is, in fact, a genre writer, especially when he promiscuously blends genres together as he’s been doing since his fantastic Philip K. Dick-meets-Raymond Chandler debut, Gun, with Occasional Music. In short, Lethem is a master, the sort of master for whom narratives about genres, as opposed to genres themselves, are the quarry. That he’s reached a high degree of mainstream success within the genre of literary fiction only burnishes his bona fides as a master of form.

The Feral Detective follows Phoebe Siegler, a thirtysomething New Yorker and former Times staffer who has traveled to the West Coast to track down Arabella, the missing daughter of her friend Roslyn. Arabella, a freshman at Reed College, stopped answering Roslyn’s attempts to contact her a few weeks into her first semester, and Phoebe — newly liberated from her job — decides a trip to Portland to pay the girl a wellness call is just what she and Arabella need. Arriving to find her gone and school officials oblivious, Phoebe digs in and discovers a slim trail of several-weeks-old credit card transactions leading down the coast to Los Angeles’s Union Station and finally, cryptically, to a travel plaza purchase in an unfamiliar corner of San Bernardino County, where the lead goes cold. Because she is worried about Arabella, and because she loves her friend — Roslyn is herself a mother figure to Phoebe — and because she is not ready to go back home, Phoebe decides to extend her vacation. The reason she is not ready to face New York — the reason she quit her job — haunts the novel from its first pages:

Blame the election. I’d been working for the Great Gray News organization, in a hard-won, lowly position meant to guarantee me a life spent rising securely through the ranks. This was the way it was supposed to go, before I’d bugged out. I’d done everything right, like a certain first female nominee we’d all relied upon, even my male friends who hated her, as a cap on the barking madness of the world. Now she took walks in the hills around Chappaqua and I’d checked into the Doubletree a mile west of Upland, California.

The Feral Detective is not only a novel of the Trump era, it is a novel largely about it — specifically, how the Trump era has felt for a certain set of us who woke up on November 9, 2016, with a newfound appreciation for the arguments of reality simulation theorists. If noir is at its core fundamentally the cruel stripping away of illusion, there could hardly be a better subject than a liberal coping with the Trump era. So thoroughly and suddenly was the narrative of Hillary Clinton’s inevitable victory evacuated, so traumatic was the puncturing of the optimistic Obama-era bubble, and so bizarre and even nightmarish have been the subsequent years that it’s easy to think of the whole world as having taken a noir-ish turn: worst timeline confirmed, doomsday clock ticking ever closer to midnight. For Phoebe, it is all too much to take:

My room reminded me of a gun moll’s wisecrack, in some old film I’d seen, on entering an apartment: “Early Nothing.” I was left with Facebook, where my friends had responded to the election by reducing themselves to shrill squabbling cartoons. Or I could opt for CNN, where various so-called surrogates enacted their shrill hectoring cartoons without needing to be reduced, since it was their life’s only accomplishment to have been preformatted for this brave new world. Television had elected itself, I figured. It could watch itself too for all I cared. I read my book.

There is, in her quest to find Arabella, more than a little self-interest — it is also a quest to find, if not the fictional world she thought she inhabited, a way to understand the one she never knew she lived in all along.

Her guide in this is Charles Heist, the eponymous feral detective, so called because of his penchant for tracking down lost, troubled, cult-brainwashed, and otherwise disappeared or off-the-grid kids. Working out of a nondescript strip-mall office in Upland, Charles Heist takes Phoebe’s case with a typically non-committal “no-promises” sort of attitude, but also with a decidedly nontypical disinterest in any sort of upfront payment. Other unusual details include the presence in Heist’s office of a wounded possum, which Heist is doggedly though unsentimentally nursing back to health, and a ragged, mute young girl named Melinda, apparently recently and quite literally feral herself. Phoebe is nonplussed but also, she must admit, intrigued — and Charles is a looker in a flinty, sunburnt sort of way:

He resembled one of those pottery leaf-faces you find hanging on the sheds of wannabe-English gardens. His big nose and lips, his deep-cleft chin and philtrum, looked like ceramic or wood. Somehow, despite or because of all of this, I registered him as attractive, with an undertow of disgust. The disgust was perhaps at myself, for noticing.

His services are retained. With nothing to go on except the travel plaza purchase, and a hunch that Arabella — a devoted fan of Leonard Cohen — might have ascended nearby Mount Baldy where the late, great songwriter frequented an isolated Zen retreat, Charles sets out and Phoebe returns to her hotel to brood on the case and the mysterious dashing man onto whose broad shoulders she’s laid her last, best hope.

These introductory chapters are incredible — it truly is a lot of fun to see Phoebe fall so quickly and so hard for Heist. Making Heist the honest and unapologetic object of Phoebe’s post-Obama rebound fantasy is a delicious complication of the femme-fatale tradition, and it’s great to see her unapologetic voraciousness respectfully, even somewhat meekly, received by the terse but game Heist. Lethem wrings plenty of comedy out of the improbable culture-clash romance that rapidly develops between the two, but there is something troubling that develops, too. For a writer who is normally so good with voice and so adept at playing off types while still imbuing his characters with enough specificity and depth to keep them from becoming cartoons, Phoebe begins, as the novel progresses, to feel at times much too broad — a weird gestalt of awkward comedienne, working girl, and other tropes whose presence isn’t entirely exorcised by cheeky self-consciousness:

I’d go home with a California story or two in my back pocket. No, sorry, I didn’t ever set eyes on the ocean or the Hollywood sign, but did I tell you the one about the porta-potty levee? The trailer park blowjob? Oh, what a Manic Pixie Am I! I pictured telling this over late lunch at Elephant & Castle.

Through Phoebe, Lethem means to implicate himself and by extension the whole cohort of urbane, liberal, upwardly mobile folks too assured of victory and too preoccupied with themselves to imagine the failure of their certainties in 2016. But although Phoebe’s preoccupation with what Heist thinks of her, for example, is funny, it began to worry me. On the one hand, it is great that Lethem allows Phoebe to be shallow — as he does — and to seem at times to forget about the search for Arabella while daydreaming about her new gumshoe boytoy — as she does — but is this an unvarnished caricature of complacent white feminism of the sort that both the left and the right now routinely flog for predictable results?

The plot, depending on how well the conceit works for you, congeals, or thickens — it is discovered that Arabella is caught between two warring cultish groups of desert dwellers, the feminist “Rabbits” and the boorish “Bears” and some genuinely funny moments, striking passages, and typically excellent walk-on characters follow. Each band is a primal caricature of the current partisan divide and not much more nuanced than what you’d get from reading Daily Kos or The Daily Caller. It’s mostly burlesque, but there are hints at a deeper reckoning. Phoebe, who spends much of the book in sidekick mode, gets a memorable “flower-pot” moment. The gesture — which Phoebe names after the belated contribution of a corseted heroine in a half-remembered Western she used to watch with her dad, which involved the woman throwing a flower-pot down on the head of a villain from a second-story window — kicks off an extended denouement that pleasurably complicates the existing dynamic between Phoebe and Heist. By the novel’s end, most of my doubts were, if not totally expunged, at least leavened by the complex affection I’d begun to feel for Phoebe.

Heist, a kind of subterranean Trump foil — a paragon of non-toxic masculinity — is the more lovable character, but Phoebe is ultimately more interesting. The feral detective, true to form, spirits Phoebe away from the old assurances and dead narratives to which she reflexively, repeatedly, retreats, even, in the end, the old one about the guy getting the girl, and she realizes ultimately that learning to live in the new world means letting go of the old.

Perhaps the ultimate truth of noir is that no matter where you’re standing, there is always another floor to fall through. If there is a central lesson of The Feral Detective, it might be simply to embrace this fact; as the Cohen-head Arabella might quote: “You want it darker.” Yes, and for a reason. Darkness can be a renewal, death and inversion driving out the old to make space for the new.

Seth Blake is a writer from New Hampshire living in Los Angeles.

The post Always Another Floor to Fall Through appeared first on Los Angeles Review of Books.

from Los Angeles Review of Books http://bit.ly/2WD7hbA via IFTTT

#Blogger

0 notes

robbiefarlow-sidequestfitne-blog · 8 years ago

Text

New Post has been published on Side Quest Fitness

New Post has been published on http://sidequestfitness.com/thanos/

Chaos, Your Death Drive, & Fighting Thanos

Do you remember your first breakup?

And I’m not talking about the time you broke up with the Jenny in third grade so you could go out with another 8-year old girl on the same playground.

No, I’m talking about the first breakup that left you crumpled on the floor, tears flooding out of your eyes, and howling at the moon. You know, the one that hit you so hard you didn’t want to live anymore?

Yea, I’m talking about that breakup.

As the incredibly awkward high school nice guy who made it far too obvious he had a crush on you, I was, for the most part, single throughout high school. So my first real relationship didn’t happen until my sophomore year of college. Unlike some of my friends, I didn’t lose my virginity until I was 19.

Maybe it was because of the rose-colored glasses I wore, or a head full of naivety, or you could blame it on my youth and inexperience, but some part of me thought this girl, my first true girlfriend could be the one.

Not because she was the first girl I’d had sex with (alright, fine, maybe a little bit of that) but because at 19-fucking-years-old, I didn’t know the difference between love and the bubbly, oh-so-good feelings my brain and dick kept ricocheting between one another.

So, yea. I was getting laid — a lot — and for a kid who had gone pro as a third wheel for the last six years, I was finally in the big leagues. I was in a relationship (one that involved getting my penis touched).

Life couldn’t get any better heading into summer break.

And Then…

With both of us heading home for the summer of 2006, I had plans laid out for taking long weekend trips to see her in Delaware. And, sure, it would be awkward getting used to sleeping alone again and not having sex (nearly) every night, but the summer would be over soon, and we’d both be back on campus in no time.

I drove up for my birthday weekend in June and spent half a week in her hometown and sneaking in as much sex as possible while staying at her house. Everything felt fine. It felt like nothing had changed since we’d departed for summer vacation.

All of that started to crumble a few weeks later.

Shortly after the 4th of July, I noticed that something felt off during our conversations. Our typical late evening AOL Instant Messenger chats had stopped, completely. And our nightly-before-bed phone calls morphed into me leaving a voicemail saying, “goodnight, I love you.”

Still, for some reason, I felt a small disturbance in The Force — a stinging sensation in my gut, as if my stomach knew something my brain didn’t: “Robbie, she’s acting strange…I think she’s gonna break up with you.”

Nah, she loves me. I love her. We’re weeks away from being back on campus; our love is all that matters (stupid stomach, shut up).

Then it happened. Like a sucker punch to the back of the head.

“Robbie, I don’t think we should date anymore.”

In an instant, it felt as if she’d performed Kano’s famous fatality by ripping out my heart, throwing it on the ground, and walking away.

Dazed and lost in shock, I sat at my computer motionless, unable to think. Then, minutes later, with a gaping hole in my chest cavity, came the hot sting of molten agony.

I spent the next few days secluded under the covers in the fetal position, nearly choking on tears, and sucking at the teet of a bottle of whiskey while Dashboard played as loud as possible.

You can last two or three days on a steady diet of junk food, Domino’s pizza, booze, and the salty taste of your tears. But then it all changes; the bender morphs. Tears dry, anger builds, resentment envelopes you with its soft cloak. And revenge — the darkest and most dangerous of all emotions — begins to coalesce in your soul.

Until recently, I didn’t have a name for this period of darkness and time of constant self-destructive behavior. But as I re-read through some old comics, I realized that moments like this (and a more recent one I’ll touch on further below) puts us in direct touch with our most chaotic elements. Or what, thanks to one Marvel comic series, I’m calling: Thanos Moments.

Thanatos and Our Desire for Death

In Ancient Greek mythology, Thanatos was the personification of death. Millenia later, Sigmund Freud would theorize that all humans have two drives: Eros, or our life force, and a death drive, which leads us down a path of death and self-destruction. It was one of Freud’s early pupils, Wilhelm Stekel, who decided to refer to death drive as Thanatos.

Jim Starlin, in 1973, created one of the most iconic and destructive comic book characters of all time. Who, ironically enough, had a brother named Eros and not only brought about massive amounts of death to the universe, but worshiped Marvel comic’s own personification of Death aka Lady Death.

First appearing in an Iron Man comic, The Mad Titan Thanos is one of the most powerful characters in the Marvel Universe. For over 50 years, he’s found his way into numerous storylines (including the MCU) and in 1992-1993, he was the chief protagonist of one of the most iconic comic book storylines ever: The Infinity Gauntlet.

I could spend an entire article breaking down the Infinity Gauntlet series and the comics that led to the event in 1992. But, for those who haven’t read this required nerd reading, here’s what you need to know about Thanos:

He’s a miscreant, an outcast, a mutation of his perfect race (The Eternals) and since his introduction, he’s been hell bent on acquiring absolute power.

In most of the comics, Thanos has had but one goal: acquire the all-powerful Cosmic Cube. An ancient weapon that allowed whoever wielded it the ability to reshape reality around him. Meaning that anything its holder could think of was possible.

An instrument that you wouldn’t want in the hands of a nihilistic, nefarious, narcissist like Thanos.

Okay. Now that I’ve given you a brief look into who Thanos is, here’s why his quest for power is relevant to a gut-wrenching breakup.

Do It For The Ladies

The end goal for Thanos is to acquire enough power (the more infinite, the better) so that he can prove to Lady Death how much he loves her. Though there are many different storylines where Thanos shows up, what you need to know is that he fails multiple times to acquire limitless power and at one point is turned to stone.

Lady Death revives Thanos, endows him with more power, and leads him to believe that the universe is unbalanced between life and death. And that it’s his duty to restore said balance.

While peering into The Infinity Well, Thanos discovers that there’s still a way for him to prove his worth to Lady Death. And to do this, he must acquire The Infinity Stones. With these stones in his possession, Thanos is certain, this time, he’ll be able to prove his love, and worth, to Lady Death.

But there’s one problem.

Acquiring all of these stones makes Thanos the controller of reality, time, space, soul, power, and mind. Granting him complete omniscience, omnipotence, and omnipresence, which in turn, makes Thanos a more powerful entity than Lady Death.

This, Lady Death cannot stand for and refuses to accept Thanos’s love.

You’re as Subtle as a Brick in the Small of My Back

Unrequited love is an impenetrable fortress that drives the greatest of men and warriors straight into the bosom of insanity.

When Lady Death first tells Thanos that she cannot accept his love because he’s more powerful than she, he breaks. And it’s at that moment that he decides, with all of his acquired power, that he will destroy half the universe with a snap of his finger.

So think back to your first breakup. How much did you plead for that person to take you back? Did you promise to change for them?

Did you do tell them you’d drive 14 hours to talk to them in person? Spill your heart out and say words you’d never said out loud but only thought, all in a last-ditch effort to convince them to not breakup with you?

For awhile, you refuse to accept reality. It’s over. Done. Your once peaceful and ordered life has been thrown into chaos.

Where it All Leads

By now you’re probably wondering why I’m talking about breakups and Thanos.

So to prevent myself from going too far into the comics and dissecting them, let me (briefly) share what sparked all of this.

At the end of October, in less than 48 hours, I lost half my clients. Gone. Like a snap of Thanos’s fingers, half my income was obliterated.

Like those dark moments after a breakup, I began to question my worth. I began to doubt my skills and wonder if this was the moment where life was telling me to throw in the towel. It felt as if a levee had broken and fear, doubt, and the pain of failure began to surge forward.

My livelihood and business had been thrown into chaos and my first thought, like the first days after my first gut-wrenching breakup, were to engage in self-destructive behavior.

Like Thanos, this jump into chaos, into self-destructive tendencies, happens because we feel we need to take some form of power back. Immediate and intensely gratifying actions provide us with a short lived reclamation of power.

The terrifying downfall of all of this happens when we go too far, and we lose ourselves in the dark abyss of chaos. Something that isn’t uncommon after your heart is shattered.

The Hole You Need to Get Out Of

It could be a load of bullshit your friends tell you when you’re in your twenties and going through a breakup. But I’ve heard it a few times in my life: “The time it will take you to get over your relationship is equal to the total time you spent together.”

(Little did I know until my wife told me, but the above quote actually comes from an episode of Sex and the City.)

There’s a bit of truth in that line, though. Within those seven months of being single again, I opted to ignore my feelings and stuff them inside, and I threw myself full force onto a path of self-destruction.

�� I drank more than ever

Allowed malice, anger, and dreams of revenge to fuel my thoughts

Started smoking cigarettes

Smoked more pot than ever before

And I stopped caring about my actions towards other people

Full of spite, hatred, and contempt, I attempted to drown away and leave forgotten in the depths of my vacant heart all these painful feelings; I wanted everything around me to suffer — I became Thanos.

How to Know You’ve Become Thanos

Life isn’t easy. It’s a struggle. But so too are relationships. And breakups cloud not only our judgment and emotional state, but we often forget that another human being, who has their own feelings, emotions, and life goals are involved in this predicament.

But, as human beings, we’re selfish. And when chaotic moments arrive, and break our ordered lives into a million different pieces, it’s easy for us to place ourselves in a victim mindset.

You’ve seen the signs of someone trapped in a victim mindset before, they’re:

Self-absorbed

They feel entitled

Unwilling to take action to alleviate their situation

Easily paranoid that others are out to get them

Believe others are fundamentally happier, more talented, better off than they are

Any of this hitting home for you?

Who hasn’t been through a breakup (or another chaotic/traumatic event) and months later find themselves still absorbed in their own pain or rejection and unable to move past it?

How about the time you didn’t get that job and felt because of your skills, education, or knowledge that you should have gotten it?

“Yea, well since so-and-so has more money than me, I bet they’re happier. They never struggle like I do.”

“My friends are happier because they have girlfriends. I’ll never be happy if someone doesn’t love me.”

“I know I should get over him/her, but I can’t. I just can’t do it. I’m too hurt.”

The last bullet point above is one I know without a shadow of a doubt, that we’ve all thought, felt, or said out loud at some point.

Escaping a victim mindset isn’t easy. So please, don’t assume that I’m saying you’ll wake up the morning after an Earth-shattering event and everything will be fine and fucking dandy.

It probably won’t be. Depending on your situation, the next day might feel like the worst day of your life. And we’ve all (and if you haven’t, you’re an anomaly) felt those first moments the next morning where we try with all of our might to convince ourselves it was only a dream.

I’ve said it before in a previous post, but I believe pain is the harbinger of truth; and truth, like change, doesn’t come when you’re happy. You only make changes or discover the truth in your life because of pain. But too often than not, when these Thanos moments happen, most of us retreat and hide from our pain.

The thought of facing our problems is too much. And it’s here, hiding within the walls we construct in our minds, where we chain ourselves to a victim mindset.

The longer we avoid and the longer we numb, the more painful it will be when we finally do confront our issues. – Mark Manson from “The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck“

But wait, Robbie, the comics make Thanos out to be a brooding, nihilistic, morose, psychopath from childhood. That’s true, and you may be an upstanding member of society, but the point is: you can still become a destructive force like Thanos — if you allow a victim mindset to take control of you.

If I’d Known What I Know Now

In the days, weeks, and months that followed my first breakup, what drove me deeper into the dark nether realm of my soul was the same demon, dragon, or being that I’ve been terrorized by my entire life: the feeling of not being good enough.

The victim mindset I found myself in during those seven months settled like concrete. I hardened this mindset by allowing my demon to whisper that I wasn’t good enough. Or that I wasn’t:

Adequate in bed

Didn’t listen to her enough

Wasn’t smart enough

Didn’t meet her “standards” (my family was too redneck)

Wasn’t as talented

To put it bluntly: she could do better, and I was a fucking loser.

During high school, I would have retreated within and stuffed these feelings of inadequacy deep in my heart — hidden all my pain — only letting it out while singing Brand New as loud as possible alone in my car. But this time, things were different.

Love, sex, and vulnerability were involved, and never before had I put myself out there with another human being; never had I felt what I thought was true love, until her.

For the next seven months, I allowed the dark ravenous emotions of chaos — resentment, jealousy, malice, and hopelessness — to gorge on my soul.

Why wasn’t I worthy enough of her love? Why couldn’t this be? How could she go from loving me to not?

Though he may have been a brute, I assume many of these questions swirled in the cranium of the Mad Titan himself when Death rejected his love.

The First Cut is the Deepest

It’s cliche, but it’s true: time heals all wounds. My first steps out of the shadow of chaos may have come seven months after that breakup, but my final departure from the outskirts of that land took a lot longer than that.

Much of the self-destructive behavior I started after that breakup remained with me for years in the form of smoking, drinking, and, because I was too afraid to be vulnerable and let down my defenses, I more or less became a bit of a dick towards women.

The Eternal Battle Between Order and Chaos

Dr. Jordan Peterson, a Canadian clinical psychologist and tenured professor of psychology at the University of Toronto, has spent much of his academic career (and now rising YouTube fame) talking about the delicate balance between order and chaos, and how going too far into one or the other leads to oppression or hopelessness.

Using the imagery of the Yin and Yang, JP (for short) believes that to have a balanced life, we must have one foot in order and one foot in chaos, precariously balancing between the two.

See the opposite colored dots in each section? There’re a hundred different ways to interpret those small dots. But in the case of this article, there are two that stand out to me:

There is life in death (or order in chaos). And there is death in life (or chaos in order)

If we are to believe as JP says that, for a balanced, virtuous life, you need one food in chaos and one in order, then those dots would mark where your feet must be placed.

This concept, or battle between order and chaos, goes back to the beginning of time. It’s a war that’s been waged since the first single celled organisms evolved into multicellular lifeforms.

Evolution introduced chaos through mutations, while natural selection played, and still plays, the role of establishing order by weeding out the weak and allowing the strong to survive. And evolution’s gift to humanity is the ability to make conscious choices, to feel pain and remorse, pride and joy, love and hate.

Revolution’s Effect on Evolution

Evolution is a slow progression. But change, whether in nature or our minds, cannot happen without some bit of stimulation; and ultimately, this stimulus must come from revolutions. Or as we often call it in the term of the mind, revelations.

Derived from the Latin word revolutio meaning “a turnaround;” revolutions (or revelations) are our Thanos moments: the time where chaos has suddenly, and many times, uninvitingly, entered our lives — leaving us with the choice of either improving and evolving, or stagnating and regressing.

Our biological processes are always looking for homeostasis. But the human body, if it’s one thing, is resilient and adaptable; but to become more resilient, you need some form of chaos introduced.

Autophagy is the process by which our cells (thanks to induced stress that comes during exercise, caloric restriction, or fasting) break down cellular components and rebuild.

Dr. Yoshinori Ohsumi won the Nobel Prize in Physiology in 2016 because of decades of research into the phenomenon of autophagy. As detailed in the press release for Dr. Ohsumi’s award, autophagy was described as: “[a process that can] rapidly provide fuel for energy and building blocks for renewal of cellular components, and is, therefore, essential for the cellular response to starvation and other types of stress.”

Exercise and restricting calories are both stressors on the orderly state of our bodies. Both of these throw our energy systems into a chaotic state where they’re forced to respond.

(At the same time that eating less is a stress on your body, following a structured set of rules in how much you eat, or if you practice intermittent fasting when you eat, helps provide your body with some sort of order within the stress (chaos) of a calorie deficit. See, one foot in order, one foot in chaos.)

So why did I just take a hard right turn out of the heartbreak hotel and start talking about yin/yang and an evolutionarily crucial biological process?

Well, like the opening scene from Die Hard where a guy tells John McClane to take his shoes off and make fists with his toes in the carpet, sometimes you need an extra scene that doesn’t look like it means much so that later on, the rest of the story makes sense.

The point for the right turn is this: where order provides us the rules or a roadmap, chaos is the autophagic process that helps reorder and improve our lives, business, relationships, and ideas.

Through the Mind’s Eye

Everyone reading this has at some point experienced the pain of rejection. And like Thanos, when something Earth-shattering happens, we catapult ourselves further into the realm of chaos. And for some, we lose a bit of ourselves in its dark abyss.

Like the small dots within the Yin/Yang, there is life in chaos: lessons that we can learn and take with us to become better. But those can only happen if we choose to face our fears, instead of hiding from them.

A Hidden Truth in a Comic Book

**Side note: I reached out to Marvel to get permission to post 3 images from the comic I reference below. They denied my request. And since I didn’t want to taint the spirit of the piece by drawing stick figure art, if you have Marvel Unlimited you can check out the comic I reference. If not, I’ll do my best to describe the panels below.**

As I dug deeper into the history of Thanos, I discovered an issue of Captain Marvel from 1973.

Hidden in this issue, issue #29, is one of the most profound life lessons you could ever learn. One that stopped me dead in my tracks. (and since I can’t post the image from the comic book, here’s my description)

The entity known as Eon whisks Captain Marvel away from Earth and into his domain. Once there, Eon explains to Marvel the story of Thano’s race and what Thanos is after (The Cosmic Cube).

For Captain Marvel, he feels he’s being tortured by this creature (Eon) while he’s educated on matters that terrify and shock him to his very core. And then Eon say this:

Knowledge is torture, and there must be awareness before there is change.

What Eon says to Captain Marvel is no different than what I said above:

Pain is the harbinger of truth; and truth, like change, doesn’t come when you’re happy.

It’s easier to remain blissfully ignorant. And when faced with a Thanos moment, we run, hide, and choose to ignore the problem. Thinking that if we give it no credence, it will go away; but it doesn’t; because the consciousness that you know you must accept at some point, is the torture you dare not face. And without facing it, you’ll never change; and you’ll remain stuck, possibly forever, in the realm of chaos.

As Eon shows Captain Marvel the errors of his ways, Captain Marvel has his own mental revolution, and he realizes his mistakes and what they’ve cost him.

Eon tells Marvel that he’s physically capable of handling the most daunting of issues. But explains that Marvel’s greatest challenge can only be dealt with once he becomes conscious and accepts his mistakes as a chance to grow and evolve — a process that can only happen mentally.

In the following pages of artwork, Captain Marvel defeats The Ravagers, which, for this article, we’ll call: Doubt, Fear, Failure, and Pain. For you as a reader, these are entities that after any traumatic event, like a breakup, ravage our minds and spirits.

Or as Dr. Jordan Peterson said:

What lurks underneath comes up to swallow you.

When you allow those ravaging emotions of doubt, fear, failure, and pain to lurk underneath, you allow those emotions to rob you of not only growth, but fulfillment, joy, happiness, and hope.

You Are Your Own Worst Enemy

In the final two pages of this Captain Marvel comic, a truth is revealed, one that echoes through all of life and rang out to me. After defeating The Ravagers, Captain Marvel is told he has one more task. He must face his inner demon.

Or, as Eon explains to Captain Marvel:

“This is your cancerous other self. He is your hostility, your battle lust, the side of you which loves destruction, perpetuates hate, and seeks death. He is your personal Thanos. To truly live, you must overcome this within yourself.“

Death and rebirth are a common theme among ancient myths and even comics today. But they’re there for a reason.

For you to improve, in any way, some part of yourself must die. And through this death, only then, if you decide to face your inner Thanos, can a rebirth become possible.

There is, and will always be, order and chaos — yin and yang; Thanos and Eros; Mario and Bowser; Link and Ganon; you and your demon. And until the day you die, you will continue to battle with your innermost Thanos.

What I want you to take away from this piece is that to grow and be your best, physically or mentally, you need the occasional Thanos Moment.

If you’re too ordered, too focused on rigid rules, or try to be too streamlined all the time, so that you avoid hardship(s), you’ll never improve or evolve. Too much order breeds atrophy and apathy.

But catastrophic events shake us up and force us to make changes we otherwise would’ve never made. Because without these events, we’d never find ourselves evolving, growing, and working towards our highest self — or as the Ancient Greeks called it, apotheosis.

Man Becomes God

Nassim Talib’s idea of a modern Stoic, as outlined in his book Antifragile, is this: “[a] modern Stoic sage is someone who transforms fear into prudence, pain into information, mistakes into initiation, and desire into undertaking.”

Thanos did none of that. And I doubt he ever had a single Stoic bone in his body.

But when a Thanos moment happens to you, whether it’s a traumatic breakup, losing half your business, death, or being hurt by someone you care for, what good will revenge, or the immediate, gratifying feelings of a vitriolic response, or the drowning of your pain in a bottle of whiskey accomplish? What growth or self-evolution comes from that?

A balanced life, with one foot residing in the realm of order and the other in chaos, is more than likely, unattainable. But striving for that balance, as daunting and intimidating as it may seem, will lead to a far more virtuous, joyful, and meaningful life than one where you reside under the shadow of chaos, or hidden behind the veil of order.

We’re meant to carry loads heavy enough so that when we carry it, we can have some self-respect. But people do everything to try and lighten their load. The problem with this approach is that then you have nothing useful to do. And if you have nothing useful to do all you’ll have around you is meaningless suffering. – Dr. Jordan Peterson

**There would be another clip from the 29th issue of Captain Marvel here but since I can’t post it, here’s what happens. Captain Marvel is fighting his inner demon as Eon says:

“To live is to strive! To strive is to seek! In this sphere of existence….only one thing is worth seeking….that which gives life meaning…”

A Life of Ease, or a Life of Struggle?

On our way back from Christmas in New Orleans, my wife, as she is apt to do on long road trips, decided to probe me with a few “fun” questions. Including this one:

“Would you rather live to 100 and struggle all your life? Or would you rather live half that time with relative ease?”

To my wife’s surprise, I chose a life of strife. Because even though I could live with ease, without struggle, without a fight for something, what would it all be worth?

Thanos moments don’t knock on our doors and greet us with an effervescent singing telegram when it enters our lives. No. It rolls in shooting flames from the tailpipe of its eardrum demolishing monster truck that then proceeds to treat your life like a dilapidated 1995 Buick Century.

But when we hear the rumble of chaos’s engine, we run. We hide. Whether that hiding is done via drugs; alcohol; sex; or spending seven months consumed by anger and hate brooding with your broken heart in your hands, hiding from what we fear gets us nowhere.

Chaos is a chance for us to grow: to ascend to new heights.

Like the biological process of autophagy, Thanos moments allow us to reexamine not only the trajectory of our lives or business, but they’re instrumental in helping us reframe our beliefs or course correct our goals. And then, once we’ve become conscious, and faced that which we fear most, only then can we restructure and redirect ourselves towards rebirth.

I still vividly remember the moment I realized after seven months of heartache that it was time to start moving on. I remember standing on the stairs that went to my roommate’s room, listening to him groan about his current relationship issues and what he should or shouldn’t do. And then, out of nowhere, it came. Clarity. Epiphany. A revelation. A small part of the truth I had been looking for, finally, came to me and I took my first steps out of the shadows of chaos.

To Strive is to Have Meaning

The first few words of this article started as an exploration into why we commit acts of self-destruction. Why, when half my business and income vanished in the snap of a finger, were my first thoughts about getting drunk? What good would that have done?

“We control our reasoned choice and all acts that depend on that moral will. What’s not under our control are the body and any of its parts, our possessions, parents, siblings, children, or country—anything with which we might associate.” – Epictetus

Like Thanos, man’s greatest folly is that he desires to be God. And it’s easy to feel like God when things are in order. But throw in a little chaos, something that was not in our plan(s), and the first thing we’ll do is jump on the anger train and ride it into self-destruction town.

As I’ve been listening to Dr. Peterson, flipping through pages of comics on my phone, and compiling notes and thoughts about this concept for the last three months, what has stuck out to me is the importance of Thanos moments — moments that shake us to our core and challenge us to improve.

We have them every day. Every day some part of you dies and has the possibility of being reborn. It happens with red blood cells, hair cells, skin cells, but it also happens with our ideas, thoughts, and beliefs.

Man is meant to be God. But not an omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent being that rules over others. No. You must be God of your own mind. Ruler of your thoughts and actions. And if your actions are leading you towards killing half the universe with the snap of your fingers, or in a non-comic book sense, punching a wall with your fist because your heart is broken, is that initial self-destructive action worth it?

#conquer #habits #health #life #lifestyle #mindset #motivation #nutrition #strength #success #Articles

0 notes