A Gaming Diary
Archive for January, 2006
World of Warcraft
Jan 19th
So, time and a router reboot seemed to help sort out my downloading problem and I got the patch down in an hour or so.
Restarted WoW, which then decided to download another (thankfully smaller) patch.
Restarted WoW again, which then decided to download yet another patch.
And now I’m finally up to date… and my server’s full so I’m in a queue to play.
Remind me why I voted this my game of 2005 and my seventh favourite game of all time…
Final Fantasy IV
Jan 19th
Hmm, this is tricky. Tricky, tricky, tricky.
You see, there are these Yellow Jelly monsters that appear in groups of four. They don’t do much damage, but they can only be hurt by magical attacks. There’s only one person in my party who can do that sort of magic and she’s only got a limited number of magic points to spend.
Normally in a Final Fantasy I’d stock up on Ether, which recovers magic points, and we’d be all set. But there’s only one town I can get to this early in the game and it doesn’t sell Ether.
So I’m getting so far into the dungeon and these slimes appear and I’m all out of magic and there’s nothing I can see to do but turn off the Micro and try again. There doesn’t even seem to be any way to run away from a battle. That might be possible with a long button press, or something, but I’ll have to wait until this evening and check the manual to find that out.
Still, makes the bus journey fly by. Nearly missed my stop because of some pesky goblins this morning.
World of Warcraft
Jan 19th
Last night I got homesick and decided to just turn on WoW and have a potter about before my sub ran out.
So I booted up the PC… and found I’d have to download a 316MB patch before doing so. I used to have problems with Torrent type stuff, but I sorted those out. Well, I thought I had. The Blizzard Downloader complained about not being able to connect to the tracker. And then, later, that I was behind a firewall. So I set up the firewall and port forwarding on the router, even though the downloader used to work just fine.
Then I did a trace route and it seems there might have been a routing problem in Telia.net. Maybe. I’m never sure if tracert problems always show real problems or whether it shows problems with tracing the route.
Anyway, I tried again this morning and I’m still getting time outs when running tracert and the Blizzard Downloader is still complaining.
I hate PCs.
(I know I could trying downloading the patch from a mirror, but I’ve had so many Torrent problems in the past I wanted to check this is working okay.)
Animal Crossing: Wild World
Jan 18th
Well, Nook was buying turnips for 122b just now so I took the safe option and sold up. I could have held on for a bigger profit, but I didn’t think it was worth the stress.
Lily from Smyrna has moved today now that Robin has finally left. She says “lmnop” at the end of each sentence, which is… different.
Planted a few more fruit trees, this time in old apple spots. I think I’m going to make the east side of the river an apple-free zone, but I’ll check there is at least one apple tree on the west side beforehand. I don’t want my local fruit to become extinct.
Animal Crossing: Wild World
Jan 17th
Made loads of money today. Spent twenty minutes picking, carrying and selling foreign fruit. Did a load of fishing, including a stringfish capture. Got some duplicate fossils and sold them.
Productive day.
I’m still much less than half-way to paying off my current mortgage though.
Final Fantasy XI Beta
Jan 15th
Ah, the glamorous life of an adventurer.
I started this evening in my home city of Bastok, so ran straight out to kill things. Which wasn’t very easy, given the entire geek population of the earth had decided to do the same thing. I found enough things – worms mostly, the odd bat – to get me up to level three… and then I got killed by… oh, this is humilating… by… by a Walking Sapling. Yes, a tiny, baby tree salughtered me. It did it with ease, too. And while I was trying to run away.
So when I reincarnated myself back in Bastok I sold everything I could and bought a sword. A cheap, bronze sword worth half as much as a simple potion – yes, even potions are well out of my financial league right now – but a sword nonetheless. I felt better straight away. A sword is always going to be better than a dagger. I don’t care about stats, it’s better because it’s bigger and longer.
Yes, I have issues. Sue me.
Anyway, I ran out into the world and picked my way through the massive crowd and found a vulture. I readied my new sword and… died within seconds. Again I ran out into the world and after five minutes or so I found a rock lizard and I readied my sword once again and… died with seconds. Again I ran out into the world… and stuck to any worms and bats I could scavenge until my sword skills had reached level one and I’d reached level four.
And then I stopped playing. Level five seems a long way away, I’ve got no money and so no hope of saving up for any new clothes or anything. I’ve still not got any new spells. I assume you have to buy them, but I’ve not seen a magic shop. I bet they’re not cheap, either. I still don’t know why there’s a question mark before my name.
And I still haven’t talked to anyone. I did see a familiar name run past – Beertiger. I would have said hello, but I couldn’t be bothered to reach for the keyboard. Maybe if there had been some sort of voice chat…
I don’t feel like an adventurer. I feel like a slum dweller who has to survive each day by going to the rubbish tips and hoping to find trash worth selling before the million other people there do. It’s really not a life of high excitement and great deeds. It’s frequently boring, full of annoyances and yet… and yet… I played it for a good hour and a half this evening.
Animal Crossing: Wild World
Jan 15th
Well, Curly’s moved out, but Egbert from Teacozy has moved out. He remembered me. I’d forgotten all about him.
Bought 350 turnips at 97b each. Now I’m going to be chained to my DS for the next week. I really shouldn’t have bought any. It turns Animal Crossing into something a lot closer to work than I care for.
My trees didn’t do too badly. About a 70% success rate, it seems, so I won’t be complaining too loudly. At least not until it starts taking me half an hour every day to collect fruit to sell.
Final Fantasy IV
Jan 15th
It was in my Gameboy Micro waiting to be started.
I couldn’t resist.
It’s excellent, but it’s too late to explain why.
Bed time now, most definitely.
Final Fantasy XI Beta
Jan 15th
Well, I’m going to give up. At least for this evening.
Things started well enough. I found the person I was meant to deliver the report to and completed my mission… but things started to fall down a bit at that exact moment because as far as I can tell I didn’t get any experience, money or items for completing it. Very odd. I then started mission two, which seems to involve me going to a dangerous area and… er… waiting for some paper to change colour. Or something.
I’m pretty sure that’s beyond me for now.
I talked to a few more computer-controlled people, but didn’t get any quests. Not that I seem to be able to do much right now. If I stray more than a hundred yards from the town gates the enemies are too strong for me.
I didn’t get any experience from that mission I did. If there are any quests that I can do there’s no easy way for me to find them in this huge city. And who’s to say if they’d give me experience if the mission didn’t.
The only way I can see to level up is to go out and fight the monsters just outside the city gates, who I can kill pretty easily. Or, rather, I could if there were any. This being a new beta, six billion other people have got the same idea and there simply aren’t enough monsters to go round. I got lucky and managed to tag three in about twenty minutes of wandering around. All of them in a two minute period where I found myself in the eye of the storm for a moment. An oasis of calm in the sea of adventurers.
Still, I’ve now got an annoying white blob on my screen that means I’m fighting for my country, or something, and have got some items – Flint Stone, Bat Wing, Zeruhn Soot, Wind Crystal, (another) Bat Wing, Beastman’s Seal, (another) Wind Crystal and Insect Wing. No idea if I’d regret selling them, so I’m keeping them for now.
Maybe I need to wait a few weeks until I’m the only newbie left in the village and see if I can level up by killing monsters then. Unless anyone knows any other ways for a solo red mage to get some experience points…
