Final Fantasy XIV – February 2023 Update

So after the last few months, lots of runs, content and work I have hit level 90 on almost everything. Sufficed to say everything will be fully levelled before the expansion hits. Aerian has become a powerhouse in every aspect of the game. Which is more than can realistically be said for me! I still actively avoid tanking, having levelled Warrior entirely through PvP.

Of course with arrival (at long last) of the XBOX folk to XIV, I can essentially play how I like where I like, which I quite like a lot. Course it means I’ll have to invest in a Series X and a new copy of Final Fantasy XIV, which will be the 4th time I’ve bought the game! And the 3rd generation of console! I started on the PS3!

So it’s been mostly working on the levelling of classes. I’ve levelled Gunbreaker and Warrior using PvP, honestly the Roulette XP returns are worth it! Never discount the Daily Roulette bonus’ they are worth a small fortune. Running Daily Roulettes can easily net you a single or two levels per day. I’ve also got complete relic weapons for Summoner and Bard, with Red Mage underway.

But on the upside I’m as solidly prepped for Dawn Trail as I’m going to get now. So its been a lot of playing with glamour’s and working on finishing the Blu Mage stuff,.

Final Fantasy XIV October 2023

So here we are October 2023, and progress since July has actually been huge. My primary goal at the moment is to start laying groundwork to be prepared for the Expansion next year. This requires me to grab the high tome gear and ensure I’m geared up correctly for the expansion, usually Tome gear will allow for at least progress through around a third of the expansion unhindered. Added of course to the Manderville Weapon whose final piece will arrive with 6.55.

But as you can see, in terms of current progress all my healers are now 90! As are all my Range DPS, and Magical Ranged DPS. So the next task is to level the Melee DPS and Tanks. It has not proved easy and Dragoon was a very painful experience. I find I’m much more comfortable if I have a decent set of AoE attacks. It takes about 2 weeks to level a class the way I’m currently playing, I suspect it would be faster if I sank more time in. But if I had to class is disliked then I’d definitely have to say Dragoon is my least favourite.

Also at 90 are every Disciple of Hand and Disciple of Land class, though the DoL have been 90 for a while now. And of course I continue to try to make progress toward the Platinum trophy on the PS5. With everything done that matters even into the new 6.5 patch we simple wait until January for the final part of Endwalker and the prequel to Dawntrail.

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  Farm Girl

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  Aerian in Wonderland

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  Scholars in Session

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  A Little Japanese Flair

It is oddly amusing how somehow this game has become a bit of a fashion game for me, as I craft outfits to amuse myself, I’m most proud of my Sailor Moon and Alice in Wonderland ones. While some can prove costly it’s all in good fun.

Of course I try to keep Aerian within her original narrative as the cocky girl with a big heart. The rebellious natured side comes out during playing healer, trust me folks never make a healer work harder than they have to! But mostly I stick with Summoner and which ever class I’m levelling. At the moment those are Samurai for general Duties and Gunbreaker for PvP.

Tales of Dentarius

While this is far from finished and still requires a lot of in between tweaks I finally have a base for all of the main characters that are active over on Elcarus Mansion.

Aerian is likely the only character that doesn’t require anymore major tweaks, most of her work is done now, though I need a Genesis 3 version, but mostly she is complete. The rest still need a lot of work but I still need some more resources like the male morph kits and things. But at least you guys can finally start putting faces to characters.

Daz3D Progress – Character Updates

So it’s been a rather expensive month, well no that’s not really true, as Daz3D provides offers and content on sale all the time as well as freebies monthly as well so I’ve come off quite well in terms of new content, but I have purchased a fair bit over the last few weeks at least a couple of pieces a week.

Anyways here are a few new renders. So I got the body and face morph kit for Genesis 2 females which allowed me to finalise Aerians physical characteristics, she is now leaner and her body more defined. She still needs work on her face to bring her that youthful look that she will have due to been half vampire and half angel.

Yes the big secret to Aerians heritage is that her mother is indeed a fallen angel from the nether realms. And for those who’ve been following on Elcarus Mansion should have caught this major reveal. Aerians clothes are also far from finalised but this is what she is decked out in her more recent renders, far better than the sci-fi gear she was first sporting a few short weeks ago.

It’s likely she will find her way into some Elven inspired fantasy style gear to fit both with her character and the realm in which she lives. For the moment I’m keeping her in this set, her hair also tends to flick between two styles but I prefer the colouring on this one more than her alternate one.

With an awesome promotion I was able to pick up the Victoria Pro bundle for just $12! And in doing so it has allowed me to bring Ascondia Exaltia to the frame, the Queen of the Everlands though reverting to her original blondes as opposed to the newer darker colours she has in the new world, a correction I will make at a later date, for the moment she is another character brought to the world.

I think the hardest part of Daz3D for me is more the finer points of posing, getting pieces of the body not to blend into other body parts is a real time sink sometimes, that’s not to say Daz3D makes it difficult in fact the system is seriously flexible and I’m truly glad I picked it up, but it can cause a bit of a headache if you’re trying to position a single part and it just wont go the way you want.

I have also created prototypes of Jade and Hades though these will require a lot more work, and a few more props and clothing kits before they are ready to be shown off. Of course Hades and Kane will be inter changed as they are twins though the differences will be visual of course, both the boys have had hugely different lives.

Virra also comes to life courtesy of the Victoria pro kit, but more for her leather gear than anything else. She too will eventually sport a younger face to the one she has and I need the Genesis 3 morph kits to perfect this all out. So for the moment that’s the progress of that particular project.

Of course if you haven’t kept up with events in the Everlands then I suggest you go check out our sister site over at Elcarus Mansion and read through the last year of events with more on the way. So that’s pretty much what I’ve been working on aside from a new story that I am going to post up here completely free to read.

I have also done a couple of none character based models including an Elven Girl named Lola.

The Elven Girl is also done using my abandoned hospital kit, not entirely sure why other than I needed something for her to sit upon and the hospital desk was the best thing I had at the time.

A beach based render. Which basically shows off the Genesis 3 female with a water effects renderer as well, giving that wet flesh look.

And a Sci-Fi based scene render as well.

I did update the Sci-Fi render with the scenes own lighting but having been over worked my system shutdown due to heat stresses. I think only running 1 bank of ram isn’t sitting too well with my new build at all, it is of course supposed to run dual banks as most systems do these days, but the single bank was cheap and the quickest way to get me up and running.

The rest of the month has been spent either working on the Risa Event of Star Trek Online or beginning to start getting some work done on Final Fantasy XIV, as a result there will be no monthly update for FFXIV this month, literally I’ve done nothing since last month as I let my sub lapse, also my PS4 been out of commission hasn’t helped in any way shape or form on that front.

Progress Update November

So as you guys can see I’ve updated the site a little added a quick link to Elcarus Mansion on the side bar, this is where I do alot of roleplay writing with my writing partner, right now we have alot going on and the realm of The Everlands is truly experiencing change once again. As you guys know by now I have alot planned in the future for this universe so expanding it by the means it was created has been awesome for me.

All the stories we’ve created are available right now and for free, there’s alot too so happy reading.

So this leads to the Vampire Legends game right now I’m rebuilding the games framework and alot of under-the-hood work is in progress to build a better more robust and less laggy game. So keep your eyes peeled for future updates on that front.

So on to what I’m upto gaming wise I recently buckled and bought a 30 day pass for PS Now, I enjoyed the free trial but it left me with unfinished business so I set about sorting this and I’ve been diving my time between Final Fantasy XIV and Ratchet & Clank : A Crack In Time.

While A Crack in Time is going well I’m a little stumped with the mini game My Blaster Runs Hot, it’ll come eventually but it’s frustrating to say the least! It kinda bugs me that Sony don’t tie our PS+ accounts to PS Now in some form so we have access to our PS3 back catalogue I mean we pay for PS+ what more can they ask of us, we aren’t going to ignore years worth of games and then fork out an additional subscription on top that’s just nuts! Aso it’s bull crap they can’t do backwards compatible on the PS4 because PSNow is effectively a PS3 emulator!!!

Anyways now I’m done ranting, Final Fantasy XIV, oh my god I’ve made insane progress since last months update, I was at ilvl139 and after just a week of Duty Roulette and a few runs of Fractal Continuum and Neverreap I’m now at a tasty ilvl170, leaving me access to Alexander, which last night I made it through A1. Got to say it’s far less painful than it was getting through Binding the Coil. I have a full set of Law gear with my eyes now on the Law weapon, let’s face it I have nothing left to spend Law on right now. I’ve also a added a new Final Fantasy XIV playlist to my Youtube channel. And as ever I can be watched on Twitch most evenings.

Alot of the Youtube videos in the playlist are dungeon runs of Final Fantasy XIV, including Alexander A1, hopefully updating it as I move along.

So the last order of business is my game design, as ever Devils Inc Studios are busy working on a title, for the moment I wont be revealing too much except to say my role is a little different with this one as I’m pulling double duty as a level designer too!!

October Updates

So been a little lax this last week with the release of PSNow I decided to grab a quick Plat and take care of another Telltale Games game the Wolf Among Us. I found this game real enjoyable, a twisted fairy tale detective story happened to be right up my street. A great experience delivered well much like The Walking Dead games, if your a fan of those I recommend The Wolf Among Us. I also picked up Ratchet & Clank a Crack In Time to clear off some of those trophies too, these are those kind of games I just find fun much like Crash and Spyro before them they have the same humour and it keeps me entertained while I play through them. This one is a pure trophy hunting expedition though so not much to write home about there. So this has kept me away from Final Fantasy XIV not that I have nothing to report there but that will come in next months update post. So gaming wise things have been pretty straight forward for me. I’ve also been doing some quick drop in and drop outs of Star Trek Online as ever.

So from a personal stand point I’ve been busy with my companies next title. This seems to have taken us back to our original IP. So this takes us back to How Long. But with a new approach we have 3 titles for this planned and right now this is a working prototype. But I have been very busy with level design so it’s been a tonne of fun. The reason for the change from working on Zombies Ate My Neighbours is due to licensing. I would hate to put in so much work only for Disney to shut us down. That’s not to say we wont try again in the future.

So that’s my actual work, I’ve also found a great role-play partner and we’ve been busy turning out multiple entries in the Dentarius saga over on Elcarus Mansion. We are numbering somewhere around 30 entries in what is now a rewritten version of Dentarius from the Dragon Wars onward. While Stacy (A New World) will figure into the world later things have changed and the stand alone saga with her now is no longer cannon in the universe. If you like stories written by multiple authors then check this place out. Also if your looking to try your hand feel free to reach out we are always looking. And speaking of my Role-play background and heritage I’m reworking the old Role-play Universe Site after an error took the old site offline, be sure to keep an eye on DI2015 for future updates.

TVL : The Game Plans

So it’s been like two years I’ve been tinkering with this idea, a game based in the Dentarius Universe, and after some work and some failures of the older versions, as well as finding animated models and one thing or another, bear in mind I’m doing this alone as a sort of learning project while I will NEVER be an artist world creation and coding I’m getting on with quite well.

So the game will feature a story centred around Aerian Elcarus. Right now it’s something along the lines of her father has disappeared and she must figure out why before the world around her comes crashing down.

The game will also be an RPG style game with many RPG elements such as questing and inventories. For the moment I have a purchased model that I will use for Aerian, I just need a new character controller and camera system that will replace the old broken ones from the Unity 4 version.

The game of course will be built using Unity 5 Personal as this is the engine I am now most comfortable using. The game will be broken in to areas to lower loading and graphic issues that arose from the older open world version.

These will be Riverfield, Dentarius, Elvera, All Hallows Wood and a couple of underground areas. I will also be using the new systems in place that help with how Unity handles lighting and post processing, this should all help those old performance issues.

Right now I’m in the process of learning to build editors to make inventory and object easier when I begin building these smaller more focused environments. I plan to have a melee combat system with random enemy encounters. Various enemies that will hunt and group up against the players so the AI is going to be fun to build later.

May aim to build something that has an almost Neverwinter feel to it as this is the game I originally begun building the Dentarius Game with so many years ago. So for the moment just know I haven’t given up building this game I’m just trying to get to grips with the adjustments Unity 5 brings as well as try and build a more solid code foundation that makes level design and building easier in the long run. The reason I’m doing it this way is that later  may decide to add more story and content from the world and this will give me an almost modular approach in been able to do that.

There is also the financial commitment to this which is going to be slow right now, I will be buying new asset packs and such as time goes on. Of course there is the ability to donate should you wish to support this project the links can be found on the Elcarus Game site.

So finally its worth noting that this is a learning project and early builds will be free to download and play, later versions will of course not be but the game will be built by tutorial videos and updates to code from myself as I deepen my knowledge of C# coding in Unity.

Elcarus Mansion & TVL The Game Updates

So I’ve spent part of today revamping the site I hold for Elcarus Mansion, adding in content to the blog and website side of things to get everything in one place for the potential community. I have included pieces from the stand alone site which I probably won’t be updating much any longer as it takes more time and effort than I have nowadays.

The current state of development is that I am preparing to repair some of the damage done in the Unity 5 upgrades and rebuild the game from the ground up to hopefully build a sleeker better all round game.

There are also links to the 2 brand new books by yours truly that reboot and hopefully will revitalise the universe in which I love to write the most. Though I am currently editing through them to remove some of the less than clear bits and pieces of plot and excess content. So far I’ve added more than I’ve taken out but it is indeed for the better.

There is also links to make donations should you wish to, I’m not begging for money but you never get if you don’t ask as I was once told. I’m also of course still looking to reboot the Role-play and expand the platform of the Elcarus Mansion site overall, if you’re interested feel free to jump across and check it out.

Most of this has occurred due to not been able to get any hours of gaming in due to a little bad luck financially, hey we all have money woes, even myself! But it has allowed me to get some other bits and pieces done which is always a good thing. I will update my Twitch schedule with future dates and times as soon as other things are dealt with and hopefully will be able to return to streaming soon.

Final Fantasy XIV : End of February

So it’s a little late for the end of February review, but as I mentioned my subscription expired so I couldn’t get this done for the actual end of February. So just over a fortnight ago I returned to Eorzea, the 5 million subscriber free event was a nice bonus for me.

So I figured I would focus on levelling what I could as fast I could in a week, this fell into the Lancer for me, I want the cross class skill Blood for Blood, this works well with Bard so it’s my main focus right now. I also decided to open up some end game content, it’s pretty much a given that even once I get the plat I will stick around Eorzea, and Final Fantasy XIV.

The other thing the free trial allowed was me to access the new Gold Saucer. This is something I can say I have looked forward to since I found about it, I spent many hours in the Gold Saucer on Final Fantasy VII. So I headed there as soon as I loaded into the free week. Great to see they used the Original gold Saucer Theme, this pleased me, it just wouldn’t feel right if they hadn’t used the same theme. It’s in 4 grids and that’s about as far as I have been. I looked around grabbed my racing Chocobo and left choosing to focus on more important things. This been levelling my Lancer, unfortunately this meant I had to also level up Marauder, first lesson I learnt is I am a HORRIBLE Tank! Second thing I learnt is I don’t like been a Tank.

I hit the end game stuff as well this allowed me to open up the Crystal Tower storyline and then dive into Labyrinth of the Ancients and Syrcus Tower as well, my first real jaunt into a 24 man raid, and my experience was by enlarge, not too bad, it’s hard to watch some of the more experienced players chew out the newer players the lack of patience in the “hardcore” variant of the community is a little too much to stomach sometimes, but I maintain they are the best online community I’ve had the pleasure of playing with.

The hardest part of these raids is staying on top so as to not offend everyone, if you study the patterns you can pick up the fights quickly enough. Thankfully for me I had my Free Company at my back to guide me through, I got through the first two sections pretty much unscathed, just World of Darkness to do which until last night I couldn’t access due to a low ilvl, my has been sat at the mid 80’s for a while and finally yesterday I was able to push to ilvl 90.

I have learnt alot of Final Fantasy comes down to studying the runs., once you have them figured out it’s not too bad, I run Duty Roulette Random Low Level everyday so have gotten quite adept with the regular story tier dungeons. I also enjoy the Ifrit Hard Mode fight as well, still hate Garuda though my Artemis Bow makes that fight ALOT easier than when I first hit all those months ago.

So as the week ended this is pretty much where I ended up. As you can see I didn’t get to where I intended to go, I did however level up my Arcanist, this was fun and I’m fairly sure I will continue to do so at a later date, I also got the 1000 synthesis trophy for Alchemist. Another one off the list, my 100 instance raids trophy followed fairly shortly after this as well. The issue with these trophies is that to do them naturally it takes twice as long and if you do them the quicker way by using the market it gets damn expensive.

The week following that I renewed my subscription and have been hammering away at Lancer and Marauder since, though I’ve now done that, I have also levelled up my Carpenter to Level 50, the fastest levelling for crafting classes I can give is that using the Guildleve system is far faster than trying to do it any other way, the XP return is simply better. I’ve also started the 2.2 story system and have just hit going up against Leviathan, that should be fun!

So in conclusion I’m still going, and there is so much to do that it’s actually quite hard to stay focused on something, it’s also addictive in the fact I wont be leaving the game any time soon. The only other game I have picked up in 4 months is Resident Evils Revelations 2. My review of episode One can be read following the link. The game provides plenty to do both during the main story and post game as well. My future with the game is set as  I now look to solve the World of Darkness and Leviathan stories, and continue working on the Platinum which is and will remain my real primary goal for the game. The other big change is I used my Fantasia and decided to switch race, merely for the animations been “sexier” I am as of a few days ago now Miqo’te.

A New World – Volume 2 : Free Sample

So as with yesterday I thought I would share Volume 2’s first chapter as well, a follow on from the first and see’s the world turned upside as it heads for what could another war in The Everlands, it also introduces a couple more of the older characters, the story follows the path as the realm prepares for the next big nightmare.

It also has a darker edge than before with Stacy finding herself kidnapped and locked away in a dungeon, the entire book is a test to just who Stacy will finally become when the trilogy finally completes. A New World Volume 2 is available now on Smashwords.

Chapter I – Birthday Gift

It had been almost a year now since she had come to a new world, a winding road to find her place and a transformation from Human to Aasimir, a rare super natural race with a lot of power, but this was her world now. While she still largely lived at the Mansion, had her evening meal and still had her wardrobe, Kane had built her a standalone cottage on the edge of the grounds, and this was where she now spent a large proportion of her time, aided as always by the faithful Annie as her trusted assistant.

Her world had changed not by choice but largely by design, her cottage had a room that was stocked with supplies, talismans and poultices and served as her office for her work as the Realms healer. While others could heal and stem illness, she was the only one charged with truly helping the sick and unwell, she had in her time already aided in preventing a sickness which ripped through Dentarius killing almost a dozen people before she was able to find an end to it.

The village also now had a large building toward the back that served as a hospital, here three white mages worked full time and would call on her if things more drastic were required. She was happy in her life and thoughts of her human life were becoming much less frequent now.

Today was a special day however and so her mind was indeed on the mortal realm, today was her birthday, she had been keeping track of the days with a calendar that Kane had gotten her a month or so after she arrived, it seemed in Dentarius the world was less inclined to care about the days but it was the one thing she liked, it brought a sense of order to her life helped keep her focused on a day to day basis, but it had only just occurred to her that birthdays probably had less relevance here.

The warm scent of the gardens blasted through the room signalling a visitor was now in her office and so she closed her diary and made her way to the door a smile immediately breaking over her face.

“Well hello stranger, what brings you to my humble cottage?” She grinned

“I would like you to join me by the lake, just you and I for a picnic; I will pick you up in about an hour?” Kane smiled softly and immediately her brain melted into a mess of passion and happiness

“Oh, yes of course I can’t wait” Stacy replied softly

“Good, don’t worry about dressing up, it’s only the two of us” A wicked smiled crossed his face and he was gone.

Stacy stood for a moment thinking it through then turned only to collide with Annie who was sent back to the floor on her ass.

“My apologies mistress” She smiled up from the floor

“None needed Annie, I was a little preoccupied, and how are you this morning?” Stacy replied

“Very good mistress, I will be heading to town soon to deliver supplies to the hospital for you, is there anything else we need?”

“No, not today, Kane and I are going for a picnic so I won’t be home when you get back OK” Stacy smiled softly, Annie grinned and nodded as she now proceeded to pull herself back to her feet.

The hour passed without much more to it as she finished getting herself ready, even without a need to dress up, for Kane she did anyway, a lighter top that showed a lot of her breast and lower stomach, pants that clung to her body in every way, as she watched herself in the mirror she couldn’t help but smile, she liked the way things were with Kane, a relationship that actually carried little pressure or conflict, she now largely came and went as she desired and he watched over her as always, thankfully she had no more rough experiences since the events in the market and that was good for her.

“Ready?” Kane asked he popped his head through the door of her room

“Oh yes!” Stacy squealed in both surprise and happiness

“You look fantastic” He added and that was that they headed out of her cottage and to the stables, in the stable was a brand new elegant white horse saddled and ready as he handed the reigns to her smiling softly.

“Meet your new mere, yours and yours alone the first of your gifts today, trust me when I say she is to be looked after” The last part of Kanes words were oddly cryptic but Stacy grinned like a child anyway

“I will, oh of course I will, Thank you Kane” She eyed the horse slowly in thought before she clapped in glee “Allure”

Kane mounted his own dark grey horse sliding his sword into its sheath at the horse’s side and they were off.

They never spoke a word as they trotted through the forest, her new horse so fluid in movement as if it knew her and so made her ride infinitely more gentle than she was used to, the bad thing about horseback was the sore butt from been slapped about the saddle, but she had gotten used to things over the past couple of months, they emerged from the forest into a clearing that ran down onto the lakes shoreline, a tree trunk had been carved into a bench and another section into its table, a nature made picnic table, this was where they sat together.

He pushed a box in front of her, tall and wrapped in some form of silver paper she suspected he had actually been to the mortal realm to retrieve both the box and the wrapping paper as she had yet to see anything resembling that kind of thing here.

“What’s that for?” She asked softly

“Your birthday” Kane replied softly “While it’s a rather mortal concept I know for you right now it would be a big thing, and so I decided to give you a gift, and help you celebrate this occasion”

“I’ve never seen anyone else celebrate a birthday here” She mused softly

“We do, the young ones at least for a while, they tend to count less after 150 or so” Kane shrugged softly with a smile “Even less when you get to my age”

“How did you know” She asked gently as she eyed the box a moment

“I’ve been watching you long enough to know” He replied softly then pushed the box closer “Now come on open it”

Slowly she peeled back the paper and the box was an elegant wooden box, much like the one she now kept her Grimoire in in her room at the Mansion, as she opened the box there was a necklace, elegant silver and jewelled, the chain was of pure silver she simply knew, it then peaked with a silver bar that was inlaid with jewels, diamond among them others she didn’t know but were just as bright and beautiful, a soft smile curled her lips.

“It’s beautiful”

“I’m glad you like it” He smiled taking it and helping place it round her neck, the jewels hung hover just above her breasts; the chain simply seemed to fit another of those things the realm was good for, if it didn’t fit when you put it on a few moments later it usually fit fine.

She leaned up kissing him gently and he returned her kiss. A lingering long kiss before she settled back into the bench.

“So where’s the picnic?” She grinned

He simply smiled and lent into her neck, a long lingering kiss against her neck which sent shock waves through her, it was always amazing to her just how hard such a small act upon her body had the biggest effect.

“Right here” He breathed against her ear, as his drew her to him and she laid sprawled out over his body, her eyes looking deep into his.