April summary and May gaming goals

Magen Sisen Leave a comment

A weird month comes to an end, the first full month at home. I’ve been 50 days confined at home, the first 4 days voluntarily as a precaution, and then 46 by the alarm decree.

And that means, of course, that my routine has changed. I have been gaming a bit more, but not as much as I expected at first. After an initial rush during the first week or so, I’ve toned down. I spend more time reading, watching videos, or just sitting on the couch.

April

April gaming summary

I’ve been part of the Animal Crossing: New Horizons crowd, and I’m certainly enjoying it. I wasn’t so sure about this game when it was announced, but as confinement came, I thought that this could be a game for this “Take 10-30 minutes of mindless gaming and let it go” moments, and that is exactly how I play it. I haven’t finished my home, haven’t got a concert yet, but I am enjoying grabbing it a couple of times a day (or none in a few days) and just collecting fruits, talking with the neighbors, or just buying clothes. Obviously they hadn’t planned it like that, but the timing was perfect for Nintendo.

On the MMO front, I’ve been wandering from game to game without making my mind about which one to make my main game.

I restarted on Uncharted Waters and was having fun for a few days, but the grind became too much too soon. I’ll come back, but not now.

I’ve devoted a couple of sessions to Guild Wars 2, but… I don’t know what I have with this game. I like it, but I can only play it for 3 or 4 days before I want something different. Back to the fridge.

Given that there was a bonus XP campaign, I went back to WoW to level a new char. My first rogue. Didn’t get to level 30.

I bought Project Gorgon in February, and I have it installed. I’m thinking about playing it, but I haven’t felt like that yet.

And finally, I reactivated my FFXIV account. I have a level 80 White Mage (healer) and ~70 Black Mage (DPS). So, obviously, I switched to my level 23 Marauder (tank). After a couple of minutes reading the skill tooltips, I launched my Leveling Roulette and did a Copperbell Mines run. It went… eeeemh… we didn’t wipe (that’s something, isn’t it?). Seriously, it wasn’t the perfect run I would like, but it wasn’t catastrophic, either. Especially being the first run for the healer, and me coming back to the game just that day. Nobody died and we got to the end.

My May Gaming Goals

  • I think I’m sticking with FFXIV for the moment as my main MMO game. I plan to level the tank up to level 50 via dungeons. When I feel like playing solo, there is still a lot to do in the gathering and crafting fronts.
  • I will try to get into a guild too. Preferably a Spanish-speaking guild, because oral English is still a bit stressful for me and I don’t feel like putting the effort right now.
  • Of course, I’ll keep playing Animal Crossing. No goal here beyond play and enjoy it.
  • I’m going to try taking more screenshots. I always end up launching games while I’m posting because I can’t find a single screenshot, and I would prefer to just browse among the ones I’ve taken while playing.
  • Assuming I’m going to play some other game, because only 2 may be boring, I am debating between Project Gorgon and The Outer Worlds.
  • And, finally, about blogging… I’ve been writing less than my goal from April, so I don’t want to become too ambitious. I will try to get two posts each week. That would make 8 post during May, but if I get to 6, I would consider the goal acomplished.

Testing the (Uncharted) Waters again

Magen Sisen 1 Comment

Sometimes I like to play some less known MMOs, and one that I played for a while was Uncharted Waters. The premise is that you are an adventurer during the discoveries era. So you start as a captain in one of the European powers and gradually gain a reputation, either in combat, trade or exploration; usually a mix of them. You level the three branches independently and tons of skills on top of that. It becomes really grindy but, having so many different activities, you can mix and match to avoid boredom.

During years, playing only a few days each time I got myself to a pretty decent spot. Not even close to the “endgame” level, but I had my own colony, permits across al Europe, Asia, Africa and parts of America, some decent skills… and then, the game was sold to a different publisher and all the progress was lost. Maybe active players got to transfer their characters or got some kind of compensation package, but I didn’t. I wasn’t playing at the moment and, if some email was sent to warn me, I missed it. So, when I tried to come back and found myself without my character, decided that I was done with the game.

(Goes to black. Transitions to present time)

Right now, the game loop of this game is precisely what I want. I can set a course and travel semi-AFK for a few minutes, or I can mindlessly grind a skill. So here I am, slowly leveling my Spanish captain.

Char info
Here I was, at the academy

It seems that they are still adding content, but I see less active players than the other times I played. there are lots of AFK players on the big cities, but across the sea, not as many ships as I remembered. Maybe they are on higher level zones, mind you, I’ve barely traveled to Africa yet, but even high-level traders tend to come back to Europe, and I don’t see a lot of them. But even if the game may not be long-term viable, I’m enjoying it right now, and that’s enough for me.

Right now, I am at levels 14 (adventurer), 13 (merchant) and 7 (maritime). I own port permits across all Europe, Far East, and the western Africa coast, and my main focus is on improving fame to get permits to go to Asia when the sailing times really start to become long. The game comes as a rate of 1 real-time minute per 1 day in-game sailing time.

Disguised character
Disguised to visit Beirut