Reconnecting through Dreamwidth

officially halfway through the year. it doesn't feel like i've made that made of these posts, but considering i've been numbering them purely based on what the last week's one was numbered, it seems that time has, in fact, marched on...

...actually i just checked and today is the start of week 27. hmm. it seems i made the first post for the year on the 7th. i guess i'm writing about the past week so it still works? i'm not changing the numbers at this juncture :')

main struggle this week has been pain. my left knee, which is not the one i injured in april, is very unhappy with me. my best guess is that i've been overcompensating for the injured right knee (which feels a lot better) and so now i'm even more lopsided. i'm getting by, but oof. take care of your knees, folks.

checking in on my 2025 project list that i posted last december:

• i have posted exactly one fic and have otherwise not been working on it at all. i've been trying to get back to it, but no luck yet.
• i've written 61,307 words of original work! 🎉 this i'm pretty happy about, since it's been years since i've written this much about my ocs. i really missed writing about them, even if it's almost entirely unpublishable mess.
• the first two site goals i did in january (wol site and crystarium.net), otherwise i've made no progress. i do finally have a clear idea of what i'd like to do for the fanlisting collective revamp, but it's hard to sit at my desk for too long with my knee this fucked. was planning to start on it this week, though. redcrown revamp is... tbd. i did write a bunch of content for an unreleased site but i'm stuck on the layout.

in any case, i have once again shot for the moon and landed somewhere more reasonable. still, i'd like to work on the website stuff in particular. lately i've been browsing a bunch of personal sites and i'd like to refresh redcrown.net to be more reflective of me, since it's my primary space on the web. sometimes i think about making a "real" blog but i like dreamwidth a lot for this purpose (hence this post).

as usual, i've been playing too much final fantasy xiv, although i have been reducing that lately to play trails sc instead. (i'm on the final chapter and boy will i have thoughts once i finish). will probably complete trails sc this week, so that'll be nice.

we cleared aloalo savage last night! and because i liked it so much (and it's sort of an ultimate-lite) i want to talk about it. (most of us didn't play these jobs, though; i just don't like the red mage weapon.)

aloalo island has three versions: variant, criterion, and criterion savage. variant is casual content for 1 to 4 players; the enemies scale based on how many players are in the instance. i did aloalo variant when it came out, and about a year later with a friend. variant dungeons have 12 different "routes," although in practice there's just three different paths and the things you do along those paths lead to slightly different boss mechanics. it's a neat idea, but unfortunately there's very little longevity to the content: once you get through all 12 routes, there's little reason to go back unless you're farming cosmetics or collectibles. (i had to redo the secret route of aloalo about 10 times to get the last triple triad card i needed from it... which was a real pain in the ass, because the secret route requires doing very specific actions to proceed.)

criterion, on the other hand, is more difficult content intended for 4 players. curiously, it cannot be outclassed with better gear: you're locked to the level it was when it came out. this means that it's still got teeth, even an expansion and a half later, and you have to do it right. additionally, resurrection is restricted: each player gets one rez per boss fight that they can use on a fallen player.

the structure of criterion is a couple of add/trash pulls between the three bosses. the adds here do NOT fuck around: they're mini-bosses in their own right, with mechanics you have to respect lest you die. there's also environmental hazards — the first add pull of aloalo has tornados moving through the arena that you have to avoid while you're fighting the adds.

all that said, once you clear each boss you get a checkpoint, so you can work on each one at a time. and since you do have one rez per player, it's fairly forgiving; you can screw up and still progress. since it's only 4-player content, the mechanics aren't overly complicated... in theory.

in the savage version of a criterion, however, you cannot rez. at all. you must clear all 3 boss fights and all add pulls without anyone dying. additionally, you only have a set amount of time to finish, so you can't stop between encounters.

now, to talk about the bosses...

( Read more... )

anyway, we're going to try and clear a few more times tonight, so wish us luck! aloalo is the only criterion savage with decent rewards (shiny weapons) so we started here, but we're hoping to go on to the other two. rokkon terrifies me and i haven't even stepped into it yet...