MMO Juggler – Playing multiple MMOs and trying to keep sane.

Dune – Break, Restart, or End

Well I’ve been dragging my feet writing this… I hit a series of unfortunate events in game and am facing a choice: take a break, essentially restart, or quit. This was a little over a week ago, and all I’ve done since is log in after the various recent patches, to check if my missing vehicle has re-appeared (it has not).

TLDR: I’ve lost everything and am also lacking the motivation to essentially restart. So, I’m taking a break. I’ve got a long games backlog so I’m looking there.

What happened?

It started with me following the quests: as mentioned earlier, I had finished up Hagga Basin.

Got all the intel (to spend in research tree).
Crafted every upgrade I could (Hallower Stillsuit Mask, Emperor’s Wings, Kaleff’s Drinker, Aren’s Vengeance, Hajra Literjohn, etc. Granted all this stuff was the best available stuff for tier 1, so undoubtedly all this gear would soon be replaced.
Got 4 quests to the next zone: the storyline quest, a delivery quest (deliver vials), two faction quests (talk to Atreides, talk to Harkonnen)

So, time to travel to Vermillious Gap!

The storyline has you abandon your starter base, move to Vermillious Gap, and make another base. There is an item in the research tree, the Solido Replicator, which you can use to store a copy of your base (basically a blueprint) that you can use to re-create the base.

So I did that, loaded up my backpack, hopped on my sandbike, and set out for the next outpost, to the north in Vermillious Gap.

But, I read the map wrong and drove my sandbike into quicksand.

I didn’t know what to do, having never hit quicksand before. I tried to leave but couldn’t move much at all, sinking a bit lower every few seconds, ending in death. It was a lengthy sequence, and it felt like your were supposed to be able to escape somehow (otherwise, why such a long sequence?) but I couldn’t figure out how to do it.

I died and respawned at the trader outpost.

OK, partly on me, but on the other hand, this was the first time I encountered quicksand and I don’t remember any info, in game, on what to do. So that was annoying but at the same time I get it, survival/crafting game penalty.

I tried to pull out my sandbike to retry, and avoid the quicksand, but it wasn’t there anymore in the vehicle tool.

Normally when you die you drop a few items (your “backpack”) and can go back to your corpse and recover those items.

I figured, ok I need to get back to my corpse to recover my sandbike! Right? That’s the way death(s) have worked before…

So I ran out towards my corpse, hugging rocky areas but eventually crossing the open desert. I notice the worm meter turning orange then red and getting really jagged. I’m almost to my corpse/bike…

But the worm gets me. There’s an animation where I get crushed/consumed.

Dead again.

This time I get a dream sequence, with an elder talking about how the worm has looked into my soul and decided to give me a one-time free gift – parts to a sandbike. Cool!

Except after respawning, I notice I’m naked.

I check my inventory – everything is gone. Except for the parts of sandbike (the worm’s gift, a welding tool, and a vehicle storage tool).

Nothing else: No armor. No weapons. No gear (literjohn, cutteray), no ammo, no crafting materials…

The solido replicator is gone and even if it weren’t, I have zero materials (if those are needed, and they probably are) to rebuild. I don’t even have a cutteray which lets me gather materials! (Materials are generally split into a small chunks, which you can gather by hand, alongside a larger desposit, which you use a cutteray on. For example, granite and copper are found as a few rocks alongside a larger boulder/deposit. The rocks you can pick up by hand, and the larger deposit yields a lot of granite/copper after using the cutteray on it).

So I’ve been punted back to a soft restart – pick up loose rocks, so I can craft the basic gathering tool, the cutteray, so I can keep gathering stuff to craft another sub-fief console (so I’m not homeless in game), and then remake everything. I can’t go into scavenger camps for materials because I have no armor, weapons, or ammo.

In some ways, the path ahead feels worse than restarting with a new char. At least by restarting I get some basics given to me following the storyline. The situation I’m in now I have to gather on the edges of camps, avoiding combat since I have no gear. I don’t have a literjohn or access to a water supply so I have to hug the rocky areas surviving off dew from plants. Without my base I can’t refine materials, construct anything, access water, etc.

It was late and I decided I would check back later. So I logged off, after doing the only thing I could: weld a sandbike together with the stuff I received from the worm.

So I did that and stored my sandbike.

The next time I logged in, I decided to take stock of things and see about starting the gathering process. I went to retrieve my sandbike…. and found it was missing. Straight up gone, 0/10 vehicles available!

I know the game has a bunch of “missing items/vehicles” bugs, in fact several recent patches and hotfixes are addressing these various problems.

I’ve logged in after each patch to see if my vehicle is back, but no luck.

So that’s where I am – I went from having finished up Hagga Basin with all the best stuff available to me, to losing everything.

All from getting stuck in quicksand once. And then some unfortunate followup decisions – attempting to retrieve my sandbike/corpse, leading to a worm death, leading to losing everything, and then a bug which took the one-time sandbike I received from the elder/worm.

I get the penalties are harsh in a survival/crafting game, but usually you get a short tutorial or warning the first time experiencing something. Losing my sandbike the first time I encountered quicksand seemed harsh, but the real issue was the followup death trying to retrieve it.

I think the game should warn you about quicksand, but let you out the first time. Or tell you straight up, do NOT try to recover your body if it is too far out in the desert. I also get the worm death is harsh, but stripping you completely is very harsh – especially, the first time I died via worm. And of course, a bug where even the replacement sandbike disappears basically makes me not want to keep playing.

I enjoyed my time in the game, but I need a break and may return some time in the future when inventory bugs are under control. I will know to avoid the quicksand and mitigate worm death by keeping an extra stock of crafting materials, so if I’m even reduced to nothing I can at least quickly craft some weapons, ammo, armor, and basic gear.

I figure I might try either Enshrouded, or No Man’s Sky, for a similar. I’m also interested in getting back into Deep Rock Galactic, or Monster Hunter (Rise/Sunbreak or World/Iceborne). Or something else off my lengthy backlog, like picking up my Cyberpunk 2077 or Persona 5 Royal games which I drifted away from midway.

I’m just not in the mood to forge ahead in Dune Awakening.

Dune – Ready to Move North

I finished up everything I want to do in Hagga Basin and am ready to move north to the next zone, Vermillious Gap.

I last intel I needed was in a small base, so I went in and raided it.

I had some tough fights because one enemy had a Holtzmann shield, making them resistant (invulnerable?) to projectiles. I could see the telltale faint blue glow as they ran towards me. So I had to fight them using my knife.

After searching the base I found my intel easily enough. (Intel is used to unlock more tiers of the crafting tree. It also requires spending a certain number of points in a lower tier, and is also locked by storyline progress).

I also crafted fancy upgrades to my gear, if they were available. So rather than the usual knife, I made myself Kaleff’s Drinker; I replaced my automatic rifle with Aren’s Vengeance. The upgraded items aren’t too overpowered, but they do give an extra effect.

I’ll likely be replacing this stuff soon, because I’m sure the next zone and story progress will unlock the next tier of crafting. However, I might as well be as upgraded as possible when entering the next zone!

ESO – Inventory Juggling

After subscribing to ESO+ for 4 years or so, I decided to let it expire and see how playing is without it.

ESO+ offers many benefits:

Access to all DLC, except the latest released one
Monthly crowns
Unlimited craft bag
Double bank space, double housing space, double transmutes
Increased progression speed (10% bonus to xp)
Costume Dyeing
Crown Store deals, exclusive items

All are useful, but some have diminishing value to me:

I buy the DLC as it is released, rather than wait for it for a year to come to ESO+.
I’ve bought all the DLC (often on sale!), using my ESO+ crowns. So I can access all DLC without the ESO+ subscription.
This is the meat of this post – I’ll expand below.
I can feel the loss of bank space, but not so much house space or transmute crystals. And one way to look at increased bank space it is just means I’m holding on to more junk that I really need to. ESO+ subscribers can get a furniture vault to hold stacks of furniture – I got mine and put a few things in before my sub expired.
Increased progression… well I have a bunch of level 50 chars so not that useful. I have 2 master crafters, and don’t plan on researching traits to make more.
Costume Dyeing? I don’t really do that. I do wear costumes but am lazy and take the default color scheme.
The Crown Store deals often are discounts on cosmetics, which I rarely get, or free housing items, which I collect but don’t really do much with.

One exception to #7 are that two recent companions were ESO+ exclusives. This is useful since companions have passives after you max their level and possibly do a few more achievements. Zereth-Var helps you see heavy sacks. Tanlorin extends the lock-picking timer.

It may sound like I’m down on ESO+ and that isn’t the case. I just figured I could save the fee IF I could deal with the most noticeable advantage – the almighty infinite craft bag. If I’m not using most of the perks, then why subscribe? I’d still buy the chapter or season content or whatever they’re calling it these days.

My plan is to get by without ESO+, but take advantage when they have the occasional “free trial” period – to stuff things into my craft bag and furniture vault.

So… about playing without the craft bag. Here is what I’m doing.

First, I had to scrub inventory, get rid of the pseudo-junk items that every character was carrying. Things like the free housing list, various potions and items from leveling up (spellcaster elixirs and warrior elixirs – the most useful potions are the generic restoration potion; bound scrolls of research or experience or skill/attribute changing). For the elixirs, I just got rid of them. For the scrolls, I collected them into the bank.

I made some chars mule certain extras like companion gear, survey reports (blacksmithing, enchanting, woodworking), and a small number of fun things like festival cosmetics (mud pies to throw, fireworks – items given out during festivals).

With that out of the way, I started the second phase of organization: use add-ons, in particular, Personal Assistant (PA).

PA is easily a top 5 must-have add-on. It does many things that I’ll get into shortly. Before this experiment, I was using PA to automatically help me keep a certain number of items in each character’s inventory. I had it deposit gold above 50K; deposit all writ vouchers, tel-var, and alliance points; keep one stack of crown restoration potions and soul gems; a minimum of 50 empty soul gems, 20 repair kits, 5 crown repair kits, 20 lockpicks; 10 each of various foods, etc. All of this can be done by hand but it is so much more convenient to have this handled every time I open a banker!

Later I also configured PA to automatically repair armor when a piece was below 10% durability.

For this no-ESO+ experiment, I additionally configured PA to help me consolidate items – auto deposit various item categories – Recipes, deposit all. Craft materials, deposit all. Survey reports, treasure maps, motifs, intricate items, and on and on – deposit all.

Then I created profile for certain characters, to override these settings. For example, my crafter automatically withdraws all materials. My main character withdraws all treasure maps and survey reports (well, the alchemy, clothing, jewelry ones).

So after spending some time configuring PA, I basically play as normal, and every time every character interacts with a bank, several transactions occur to help organize my inventory.

This worked well but there was still one problem: materials (trait items, crafting materials). If you aren’t familiar with crafting in ESO, the numbers of these items is… immense.

For example: let’s take blacksmithing, making heavy armor. If you look at the refining info halfway down the page, there are 10 different levels of materials, from iron ore to rubedite ore. But you have to refine those into ingots to make anything – so that means there are 20 blacksmithing materials.

To improve blacksmithing items, you use different materials called tempers, and there are 4 of those. So 24 blacksmithing materials.

To give blacksmithing items a trait, you’ll need to use yet another set of materials… all the materials involved are listed on the Blacksmithing Materials page, Clothing Materials page, Jewelry Materials page, or Woodworking Materials page.

It gets worse, if you want to craft a certain “style” (motif in ESO terminology), that’s another material. There are 131 and counting motifs… another style material for each one.

Wwe haven’t gotten into the dozens of alchemy materials, provisioning materials, enchanting runestones, etc.

The most common complaint of the crafting bag is that is it solves a problem that the devs have created – managing the absolutely incredible number of materials associated with crafting.

I am tackling this issue with another feature of PA – marking items as junk, and auto-selling junk. Basically, every item in my inventory or bank has to justify its presence by selling above a threshold, which I currently define as 50 gold. That is, the item must sell for 50 gold, or 10K per stack of 200. If it is less, I have PA auto-mark it as junk and also auto-sell junk every time I open a merchant.

So for my crafter, I further configured PA to auto-withdraw crafting materials (style, provisioning, enchanting, blacksmith, clothing, jewelry), and auto-mark them as junk as appropriate. Then when I visit a merchant, it auto-sells it.

This part is still under construction – as I find items below the threshold, I add a rule.

What PA does on a typical visit to a banker:

So without ESO+, my day-to-day play is roughly the same. I loot all the containers I normally would (chests, some but not all heavy sacks depending on how much of a hurry I’m in), get quest rewards, deconstruct items, etc. When I finish playing a char I would usually clean their inventory a bit – I did this before since I have a bit of OCD – visit a merchant, sell junk, visit a bank.

All of that is the same. The major difference is when I’m on my crafting characters, I’ll spend some time updating rules – going over items and make sure the materials I’m holding can justify their value. There are too many materials to dump in the bank, so the crafter is holding the enchanting, provisioning, and style items. General clothing, blacksmithing, woodworking items remain in the bank.

After much scrubbing and rules fiddling, my bank is typically between 180 and 200 items, where the max for non-ESO+ subscribers is 240. My crafter’s inventory is around 160-180, and the max is 215. The other chars are fine for space, typical inventory is around 100. The exceptions are the mule chars holding companion items or the other resource surveys I’m not doing; they are around 150 inventory.

It’s been about 5 weeks and so far it is going well. Yes it isn’t as convenient as having ESO+ but something slightly annoys me about subbing when the sole benefit I’m using is managing the crazy number of crafting items. When the next free ESO+ trial period rolls around I’ll be happy to have these items swept from my inventory into the craft bag, and I will also pack up extra furniture from various homes into the furniture vault.

Dune – Finishing up Hagga Basin

Before leaving Hagga Basin, the beginning area, I wanted to scoop up the few remaining intel points. I need those for research so it is worthwhile getting them.

According to the map, I’ve visited 6/8 of the locations, but 4 of them say I haven’t collected the intel (if I hover over the icon)! If that isn’t a map visualization bug, then it means I visited a few sites but missed getting the intel.

2 of the locations are in the upper NW of the Hagga Basin, towards the exit to Vermillious Gap. Two are a bit closer but it is still a fair amount of running…

… except now I have a sandbike which moves a LOT faster.

The sandbike is noise and/or creates a lot of vibrations (orange squiggle) showing me it is higher sandworm danger. However I move faster and spend less time in the open desert so that’s got to be an advantage.

Anyway, I picked a base which has intel I haven’t obtained, one of the two nearest the next zone. And ouch it was tough!

If an enemy kills you in this game, you have a chance to heal yourself and continue. However, incoming damage fights against the healing meter, so it is possible to lose that battle and appear at a beacon. I did that once or twice, coming back to the site and recovering my backpack, only to become overwhelmed again.

The mix of enemies included one wearing a Holtzman Shield, obvious from the blue glow surrounding them. These enemies are resistant to pistols/rifles and have to be killed using a heavy attack from a knife. The problem was that enemy plus the 4 or 5 other shooters, forcing me to fight both melee and ranged at the same time.

Eventually I beat the base by shooting the ranged enemies and/or throwing gernades at them, and when the shielded enemy ran towards me, shifting to my knife and concentrating on killing them. After rezzing then I could pick off the stragglers. I eventually cleared the base and grabbed the precious intel.

That took longer than expected so I rode my sandbike back to my base and spent a few minutes crafting more supplies. I was low on healing kits, plus my automatic rifle was nearly broken (seen above in the lower right corner of the UI, the rifle with a little bit of health left). I also needed a new cutteray, and more ammo.

So I crafted all this stuff – fortunately I had enough materials sitting around, but now I need to pay more attention to gathering again as I finish up in Hagga Basin.

Next time I plan to visit the 3 remaining bases that have intel for me. Then on to the next zone!

Dune – Crossing the Desert

The “New Beginning” story missions have you moving back and forth across the desert, learning to survive. It’s an extended tutorial of sorts, showing you how to build a base, craft gear, fight bandits, watch for sun exposure, and keep hydrated.

While running across the open desert, you’ll trigger a vibration meter after a while. The more jumpy (and red) it gets, the closer the worm. One time I crossed I stayed too long and could tell a sandworm was getting near – so I spun the camera around and waited for it to show. It was exciting and at the same time I ran to the edge of a rocky outcropping for safety.

One creepy lesson was learning how to suck the blood out of bodies… to later deposit in a purifier that takes in blood and produces water. Well, this is a desert planet, I need to drink to survive, plus I’m wearing a stillsuit that recycles… bodily fluids. No wasted liquids here!

I explored around and eventually found a trading post, for the “Touch of Civilization” mission. I accepted a side mission for the Trooper trainer, which involved disposing of 2 rivals – once completed I returned and unlocked the Trooper class.

Trooper has a very nice skill that is basically a reusable grenade – every 15 seconds, I can throw one. Maybe the cooldown lowers by spending skill points – I’ll have to spend some time looking over the skill tree. The other handy skill Troopers get early is “shigawire” which is a bit like Spiderman’s webshooter – you can shoot a line out to pull yourself.

My progress in the Mentat skill line is preserved, and I can switch classes easily – literally just pull up the screen and select which class you want current.

Later, in the “Across the Gap” mission, I was tasked with exploring a botanical lab and recovering some materials. However I explored to the top of the mountain first, and found another class trainer – the Planetologist. This was good for me because he wanted some information from the same lab I was already going into!

The exploration of the lab was quite fun. I would have taken some screenshots but it was dark inside and none would have looked good.

Along the way you can interact with recordings and help fill in a back story about how something went very wrong in the lab and the scientists aren’t quite themselves. There was some stealth, a lot of shooting with my assault rifle, and some knife fights as well.

I recovered all the goodies, unlocked Planetologist, and gained a few new crafting recipes (storyline unlocks).

So I returned to my home, where my essential machines are, and began crafting the new items – it seems I’m building a sandbike. I’m all for that, running across the desert is dangerous and I could use some faster transportation.

Unfortunately, after building the small chemical refinery, which fit neatly into one corner of my base, I need to gather more fuel cells to refine. I’ve picked up plenty of those at various bandit camps, but deposited them all into my generator to power the base (and I can’t split out the few I need for the refinery).

So I left off and next time will scrounge up some fuel cells in order to complete the current mission.

Dune – Awakening

I got distracted by the new shiny and bought Dune: Awakening. I really enjoyed the recent movies and various videos about the game also looked great. I read the first 3 in the series when I was younger, but it’s been quite some years – I do remember enjoying them.

When a few friends from ESO said they were going to play… well that was the tipping point for me.

I haven’t been able to play much, basically I’m partway through the tutorial (“A New Beginning”). I placed my base in probably a terrible area and am thinking of relocating. Before I do that I’ll check with my friends who are further along and see what they recommend. For all I know there isn’t a need to relocate, for various reasons.

The “Shelter and shields” quest had me advancing through a cave, avoiding a bright eyeball, and learning more about this mysterious world at the finish. I suppose that is how we players will receive bits of lore to flesh out the game world.

So far I’m really enjoying it, even if I struggled big time at the “Echoes of the Past” quest where you had to explore a cave and the craft a stillsuit – for some reason I kept crafting the wrong piece of gear; I had to make four pieces and kept crafting extra gloves instead of completing my suit with boots and a mask.

I’m not sure what happened other than perhaps (?) the way I dragged my cursor accidentally selected the gloves again (it was at the top of the list). I finally got it by paying EXTRA attention, which seemed ridiculous but I finished it and advanced.

Now I’m up to “A Touch of Civilization”, and will get to that later.

The game is the classic “gather stuff to craft stuff to research stuff” survival-crafting loop, with added Dune/Arrakis-themed environmental dangers, such as:

Hydration: after some time you feel parched, and need to drink. The water purifier (fueled from blood I withdrew from enemies) is the best, but there is also dew from plants. I just crafted a stillsuit so maybe I’ll have more hydration options now.

Sun: there is a meter which measures sun exposure. I scurry to the shade before it maxes out – so I’m not sure what happens when that happens but I’m sure it is bad for you.

Worms: there is a vibration meter when you cross the open desert. I’m just starting so the open desert stretches are short. However, it rumbles enough to draw a sandstorm and deeper into the game you might attract a sandworm!

I hope to meet up with my friends in-game soon, once I catch up. Part of advancing in these games is suffering a bit, to figure out game systems, how to get and craft gear, the research tree, etc. I see competing for valuable resources on the horizon.

ESO – Notable Homes

I own 5 Notable Homes in ESO: 4 came from in-game events or giveaways, and 1 I bought with crowns that I saved up from my ESO+ subscription.

Hall of the Lunar Champion came from doing the Elsweyr zone story, and I also opened up the 3 wings (various in-game achievements). Sword-Singer’s Redoubt came from daily rewards; Doomchar Plateau came from buying items via event tickets; and the most recent Grand Gallery of Tamriel came from Golden Pursuits.

The one I bought with crowns is the Moon-Sugar Meadow, a Khajiit themed outdoor space.

At various points, all of these were my main home (except for the Grand Gallery of Tamriel, because it is so new I haven’t had a chance to move in yet).

I used the Hall of the Lunar Champion for months, but eventually moved because I got tired of the internal zones. The three wings were zone transitions from the central chamber, and I got tired of loading screens inside my house.

Then the Doomchar Plateau was my home, but after a few months I wanted some scenery that wasn’t… a hellscape.

So I bought the Moon-Sugar Meadow which I really liked. It is outdoors, pleasant looking, large and open, a nice lake, no internal zone transitions.

I stayed there until the Sword-Singer’s Redoubt came out. It’s a nice home as well, with an extensive underground cavern and oasis. No zone transitions. It is my current main home, and I have all my crafting tables and other decorations out (music box collection).

Now I’m thinking of moving to the new Gallery, because it is enormous and has an interior space (zone transition, unfortunately) that would be good for displaying various paintings.

Geez my screenshots come out so dark… I’ll have to fiddle with the settings or wait until it is daytime in the game and try again!

FF14 – Monk

Even though LoTRO is (might still be) my favorite MMO overall… I decided to concentrate on ESO and FF14. That’s entirely because both are controller friendly and that’s the situation I’m in… 20% of the time, sometimes more.

Anyway, I decided to start with Monk this time. I remember ages ago doing Pugilist and Lancer, back when taking a job meant leveling 2 classes, one to 30, one to 15. I don’t recall making it to Monk or Dragoon… maybe I did.

Another time I started as Arcanist and then Scholar/Summoner, and I enjoyed the efficiency of leveling one class but getting a second one “for free”. And I dabbled all over that time, trying Rogue/Ninja, Dancer, Samurai, Warrior (didn’t get far enough for Marauder).

This time I’m going to focus – Monk, following the MSQ, and later branch out. I’d like to eventually take a tank job, a healing job, and a caster job.

Doing Arcanist -> (Scholar & Summoner) would get me the healer and caster and the efficiency of the combined leveling – but I remember not liking summoner all that much. Scholar was fun, and I liked wielding a book… I also liked Astrologian even if the tarot card class mechanic felt random and half the time I didn’t bother with it. I see Pictomancer is really hot, which makes sense – I feel like when an expansion rolls out, the newest classes/jobs have to be a little overpowered (e.g. see Arcanist in ESO) which helps sells boxes.

I mean, it’s a game but also a business. Having a class/job show up that does 15% less damage than other existing classes/jobs, would negatively affect sales of an expansion.

As far as tanks, Warrior -> Maurader and Gladiator -> Paladin are up for consideration.

And of course, since Blue Mage is so unique, I’ll probably play around with that again too. Supposedly another limited job is coming as well, the Beastmaster.

Ugh, I’m interested in Monk, Warrior or Paladin, Scholar or Astrologian, Pictomancer, Blue Mage, Beastmaster… well at least that’s only about a third of the available jobs! Some start at a higher level as well (Astrologian, Pictomancer).

But before taking a healer or tank job, I need to sort out targeting with the controller. Up/down and left/right seem to be the way to do it, but that gets me a “soft” focus – at least as a DPS, the focus will shift away after a single ability unless I also select with X beforehand.

I suppose I can just queue for Sastasha over and over (as a healer or tank) until I get comfy – even if I flub half the targeting, the DPS will probably defeat the monsters anyway. 😉

ESO – Subclassing

Update 46 is bringing subclassing to the game, which is an enormous change to how your character will play. Each class has 3 skill lines unique to that class – e.g. Dragonknights have Ardent Flame, Draconic Power, Earthen Heart. What subclassing will do is let you replace one skill line with another from a different class! Possibly up to two if they are from different classes – that is, you can’t subclass 2 skills lines from the same other class; your original class can’t be outnumbered by 2 from another class.

In some ways, this will be more like the single player games, where there weren’t really classes and you just trained up and used whatever mix of skills you wanted. It will let players make crazy builds.

But… I can’t help but feel this will be a mess of an update, due to balance issues.

1st, ESO does have classes, with skill lines theoretically “balanced” within that class. The PTS already has various nerfs to various skills and passives because said skills/passives might be too strong when mixed with others skills they weren’t originally designed to be with.

2nd, MMO players are notorious min-maxers. After a few weeks when a few of the serious content creators figure out the optimized mix of skills, the group content will converge to the optimized builds.

This is already happening to an extent. Look at any build on skinny cheeks and you’ll see the same skills over and over – almost half the skills are already shared between classes! A few updates ago, ZoS hybridized magicka and stamina builds (originally mag skills scaled off your magicka pool, stam skills scaled off stamina; now those skills scale off your highest resource), and as a result the min-max crowd figured out crit chance was the best way to increase damage, so dual-wield daggers and medium armor is the way to go for both melee and ranged dps. Divines trait on the armor, bloodthirsty on jewelry… so much is the same already.

3rd, those nerfs hurt “pure” characters. If you don’t intend to subclass, skills/passives from your class are getting nerfed in case other players subclass and use them.

I think there’s a fair chance that somebody will discover the optimum main tank, off tank, group healer, kite healer, and dps builds and trial groups will all be clones. Heck, one guild I’m in already want 6 arcanist dps for every trial, with the 2 others being supports. A few months into this update I can see it’ll be 8 arcanist/templar dps, where some players will take a 3rd skill line and that’ll be the new generic group composition.

We’ll see how it plays out. I don’t want to subclass but I’m also resigned to being forced to for doing trials.

FF14 – Fix and Playing

I fixed my account problem(s) with FF14!

By fix I mean that I abandoned all my earlier accounts and started a new one, HOWEVER I am able to install/run on Linux. And that Linux was key because my ultimate goal is to install/run on the Steam Deck, which runs a Linux variant (arch linux). Why I can’t be normal and install on the Steam Deck using Steam is because I lost access to the Steam account version of FF14 due to 2FA issues.

What I did is use a 3rd party launcher named XIVLauncher, which is also available on Flathub. This acts just like the Windows launcher in that it will download and install the game on Linux. I tested this on my 2nd gaming computer¹, which runs Bazzite, and it works fine. So that gives me great confidence it will work on the Steam Deck.

One benefit of starting over so many times (not intentional, I swear!) is getting the free trial again.

This time I started a Mi’quote, named Zara after my real life cat, and am having some fun working through the early ARR MSQ.

I made it back to Sastasha, stopping at the Hall of the Novice first to do the tutorials and top off my gear (as far as gear goes for the level 18-19 character).

My plan for this character is to work along the MSQ (obviously) as a Pugilist and eventually change into a Monk, and then swap and level Arcanist (for Scholar and Summoner) and Marauder (for Warrior). That will give me a tank, healer, melee dps, and ranged dps. And later on, take up Blue Mage.

¹ When I get a new gaming computer, I take the old one and turn it into a linux box. I settled on running the Bazzite distro since it comes with graphics drivers, steam, and is setup for gaming.