the trick is to keep breathing

aaaaaaaaaaand it's Mobile Game Monday again, where we occasionally lose interest in everything on our phone!

yeah, i had a rough week w mobile games. just wasn't interested; i even skipped some dailies (UGH) cause i just was not feeling it. so there's not much of an update this week!

[FFBE] - let's see. i took Lightning to 7* for the MK event, cause why not. I got another Ramza, so I could 7* him if I want, but haven't yet. Need to level Wilhelm. Still need to do the entire story event but it means preparing my "can hit any condition" party again w all the equipment swapping and i'm kind of just liek ugh today. spending stamina on the very easy FFXIII raid just to make sure i pick up all the tickets, some of the mats, and those trust moogles - 20% TM would be awesome. i'm doing the equipment augment dungeon at least once a day; i know i should be more on top of it, but see for reference, blah.

[FFRK] - yeah, i'm behind. i think i missed an entire event because i'm a loser. where's my motivation? where has it gone? look at all the fucks i give; look at them, anakin.
gotta get back into this. it needs to be fun again; i've put too much work into my characters to abandon them now.

[LN] - yeah again i'm barely logging in this week. i suck. i just have NOT been up for much of it.

how about you? how do you stay motivated to keep up with your games -- what do you do when you're in a bit of a game funk -- cheers for being a filthy casual -- what's new?

welcome back to the only series that hates to love ya but loves to hate ya! today's mobile game monday is brought to you by Rosa, who has been trying to save my ass in RK and failing miserably, and my stupid fuckchild step-son cat Imp playing Playstation games.

[FFRK] i decided that to get back into the game (i've been feeling a little bored and unmotivated lately) i was going to make myself focus on 4* magicites. I have already torn apart the Earth 4* magicite, Midgarsormr, so I went on to the Lightning magicite, Ixion, who is weak to earth. (The magicites are set up so that proceeding clockwise, if you can, means that the magicite drops you gain and equip are useful on the immediate next stage -- ie Midgarsormr drops magicites like "increase earth damage" which you then equip to take out Ixion, who is weak to earth damage.)

yeah so Ixion sucks. he is a bag of electrified dicks. I have tried with a mage earth team; i have tried with two different physical earth teams; i have tried with 2 entrusters; i have tried with 1.5 healers; i have tried the Physical Blink strategy; I have tried adding magic blinks to that strategy; i fucking hate this horse ass.

the thing is that i can get REALLY CLOSE but then i run out of either hones or buffs (which then mean i start dying very much), so i think my strategy(ies) is(are) okay and maybe it's just RNG? My mage attempt focused on Maria, who is L99 and has full dive, with BSB and OSB to dish out damage, using Mog for buffs and support heals with Rosa/Relm as main healer, and with Edge spamming his PBlink as much as possible due to An Entrust Bot (in my case, Shelke). it gets super close and still has hones, but just can't survive for whatever reason - and there's really only 1 damager, because Edge takes the earth ninja skills but with no buff to increase his damage. My physical teams have cycled through Orlandeau (USB, Earth Saber), Dorgann (USB, Earth Saber), Bartz (USB, that 4 hit earth spellblade), and Edge with the earth ninja skills, but these teams suffer from not having super dedicated support and running out of hones & dying.

I think I need to move on to another one, but I'm so angry at sparkyhorse that i'll probably try again tonight, fail, and get very angry. wooo!

[FFBE] first exciting bit is that i beat the (whatever the name of the star ocean event thingy is) boss -- usually I don't even try them because i always feel like i'm a tier below that kind of content, but i read my lady Althea's post on it and decided to give it a go. so that made me feel pretty cool in the grand scheme of things.

second exciting bit is that I pulled Squall from the current FF8 event! oh ff8, i will always love you and your amazing awful characters and your nonsensical story. you are precious. obviously i'm now telling myself not to keep pulling for another Squall (7*, baby!) or a Rinoa to complete the set, but i totally wanna. I'm leveling Squall up now and I'll probably put him up as my friend unit - I had Olive for the Raid, but there are now a thousand million 7* Olives taking over the FList so probably nobody needs mine.

fucking Onion Knight is at 99.9% trust master but just will NOT drop that last 0.1% and i am so angry! Fryevia is at like 99.5 so i may just do some trust farming tonight to wrap those up because i get angry every time i look at Onion's stupid face.

BE focus for this month is to keep up with events but ALSO get through Chapter 2 of the story, because it seems if i complete it before September I get a nice tasty trust moogle.

[LN] stupid love nikki and it's stupid suits! I REALLY WANT THAT DEER, but i'm out of diamonds FROM THE LAST EVENT so i am just sadly plodding along and buying rando animal parts from the collection. i'm at a point in the story where i need to farm a certain suit to proceed, and i keep using my stamina up elsewhere & forgetting to farm it, which sucks.

i literally do not understand the source code event. maybe something is broken in my app because i don't know what the fuck i should be doing.

so those are my horrible frustrations!! (despite the snide tone of this post i am obviously enjoying some of the challenges, i'm just a whiner today because what is instant gratification.) how about y'all? weekend udpate, gaming update!

and now it's time for New Tunes Tuesday, where we will be playing Retro Day in which i rec you music that's old to me but, who knows, it could be new to you??? aka: i haven't found anything too new lately, still on the hunt, so enjoy some stuff that lives close to my heart.

Artist: Garbage
Everybody remembers Garbage from the 90s, right? stupid girl, queerest of the queer, only happy when it rains? that's not new. but have you kept up with any of their more recent stuff? i don't listen to the radio anymore so for all i know this is hugely popular and i am wasting my time, but if not: if you like punk-pop-rock,, 90s style vibe, with electronic accents and a voice made of literal liquid sex, try the following:
Songs To Try:
- Not Your Kind of People - "Automatic Sytematic Habit", "Blood for Poppies", "I Hate Love", "Sugar"
- Bleed Like Me - "Why Do You Love Me", "Metal Heart", "Why Don't You Come Over", "Happy Home" (this is an album i foudn while watching Gundam Wing, so Metal Heart will always be 1x3 and Happy Home is 3x4)
- Strange Little Birds - "Sometimes" (a take on Fiona Apple), "Even Though Our Love Is Doomed"
Listen When: you need to get pumped up for something, you need a pick-me-up, working out, singing out loud in the car with the windows down

Artist: The Black Keys
i have to give this shout-out to a local band (i think most people on this journal know i live in Akron, OH), not only to represent the AKR, but to change it up a little for y'all. The Black Keys are grungy raw blues-rock, down to the very core of blues rock, which is where a piece of my heart lives. They're a two-man show, guitar and drums, which you don't think about until you listen to it and wonder how one guitar is making all those sounds. they started doing a lot of blues-rock covers, which they still pepper in to their original stuff, if you like that kind of thing.
Songs To Try: just start with Rubber Factory; it will tell you whether you like them or not. unless you want to start with Blakroc, which is the Black Keys' collab with a bunch of hip-hop artists (Ludacris, Mos Def, etc) and is absolutely fascinating but not the Black Keys' core sound at all.
Listen When: you're driving down the highway at 80mph, you're in an angry mood and need that garage blues sound, you're ignoring people in public

and that's the wraps for today, folks; tag me back with something old but new!

Mobile Game Monday and New Tunes Tuesday were stolen from you this week by a sad flareup.

this is my 4th or 5th week gluten-free, and it does seem to be helping - with some things. it hasn't helped with the pain yet at all. however, i do feel like my mind is clearer overall - less of the exhausting brainfog that usually hits me after a day at work and saps away my 1800-2100 mostly. that's a big improvement and if it continues i may get part of my evenings back after all.

it's harder than you'd think. it takes extra energy to manage my groceries for the week - ordering from online where costs are cheaper, ordering from my grocery delivery for fresh produce, stopping at the stores where gluten-free fad has made more products available but they aren't exactly cheap. planning my lunches at work and packing them the night before, cause all my easy lunch options have been eliminated. not being able to come home and generally snack or eat a fancy gourmet frozen burrito. not being able to order pizza OR chinese anymore. it's a lot of work to manage, so far, and i'm not doing a great job - but i'm still gluten-free, and i'm getting better at it.

i think a lot of it will be building a diet-friendly pantry, which i'm working on. making sure all my staples are gluten-free so that i can still choose nachos for dinner if i need.

otherwise, yeah. work is being interesting - more on that later.

anyway that's enough of THAT, let's talk about MOBILE GAMES????

[FFRK] - i was v busy last week and had a family holiday this weekend, and thus I ACTUALLY MISSED 2 EVENTS. sob! that however leaves me with stamina for those Torments which close in approx. 3 days. fuck. go me and my time management!

as usual after a fest, i've ended up with new tools i need to figure out how best to use (and which tools are kind of useless), so i've been working on creating a spreadsheet to capture my useful SBs. Right now i have both Physical and Magic listed by Element, as well as Healing, (half of) Buffs, and (half of) enElement/Imperil by Realm. I'm really hoping this being organized bit helps me plow through some 4* magicites, as well as focusing on hones. plus, it will help me identify candidates for mote diving and MC3, since i have plenty of both at the moment.

[FFBE] - I did miss some stamina time this weekend but did my free daily pulls of course! i haven't gotten anyone new and exciting yet, though. the MK event is fun since I have CG Lasswell, CG Fina, and a friends list full of 100% bonus units! come to me, all expensive things!

i'm really hoping i can pull CG Sakura, Nichol, or Lid, probably in that order. i'm still rather low on tix though, although i may pick up enough lapis to be able to hit the Lid/Nichol banner.

i also am busting through the last parts of chapter one in the goddamn story (it is on chapter 3),

i really need to start getting my shit together in this game to start on trials, espers, and the hard shit -- i just look at people's clears and it looks so annoying

all my other games have no real progress to report, as i've been so busy i could barely keep up with these two!

How are your games? Any other big ~festivals~ going on in other games that are fun?

riiiiiiight, here's sev again to run you through the details you don't care about on my mobile game monopoly! let's get this started, cause it's fest time all over, which means goodbye all my resources and time to hide my wallet!

[FFRK]
Summerfest is still ongoing, and my prizes have been sporadically good and bad. i've been pulling once on each banner, and while i've landed some useless stuff, i've also landed stuff like Tidus' ASB, Rikku's BSB2, Snow's Ice Chain, and Ramza's holy chain 150 if i didn't mention that before. it's nice to have all the power-up dungeons open, so that i can run that and near-immediately learn the new soul breaks.

i've been really at a loss as to what to focus on, though. originally i was going to focus on magicite farming & motes, since they're half-off-stamina, and that's what i should be doing - except that they require attention, so i've instead mostly been using my stamina to autobattle orb farming. i really need to organize some targets and work towards those, but at this point, who knows.

i also need to pay attentions to the date! i have 1 stage left in the FFI event (ends 04), two left in IV + four left in twins + jump starts (ends 09), all 12 left in dissidia (ends 07), AND I STILL HAVE TORMENTS (ends 12)! plus the summerfest dungeons: the Weapons, the quiz & music stuff (ends 17)! Sev needs a nice focus list with things to cross off, or i'm le doomed.

so far i've still only beaten the one 4* magicite (earth), so the next goal (loolol aside from all the shit above) is to move on to another 4*.

[FFBE]
2nd anniversary fest is going on here! my character gains have mostly been bad - other than last week's Trance Terra, i think the most remarkable friend i've gotten is Seabreeze Dark Fina (who is apparently not too bad and also helps fill out my 5-Fina team for Fina Arena shenanigans). She was from the step-up pull, which I did for the Mage/Tank banner. They aren't actually as great as you think going in; save your lapis.

I'm sitting on some good tickets, too, but I want to wait until that Just Cause III banner goes because IDGAF about those characters at all.

i have been using half-price-stamina to RACE through a lot of the story, and i am having SUCH FEELINGS because of it. Lasswell needs to confess his love for Rain. Raegen in flashbacks calling them both his children. Sakura needs to join up with Citra. Jake needs to decide whether he wants to hit on Nichol or Lid. Did I mention Rain and Lasswell are aaaaaaaaaaaaa? Plus the ends of all the Veritas, the way they're all no longer really antagonistic and most everyone ends with honor and pride. I'm severely dead. I'm in the Crystal Tower thing, which I think is near the end of Chapter 1, which means i'm nearly out of Ch 1 lapis to haul (i don't do expeditions at work due to the attention they require walking characters around, so there's still some there) and i spent most of it on that step-up. oh well, there's always Chapter 2!

that's about all that's going on there, until/unless we get something new for 2nd anniversary.

[Dissidia OO] - just noting that i have to log in this week to get Ashe because waifu reasons

[LN] - i blew my diamonds on the Mirage suits because I loved them and Wasteland is apparently my Jam. otherwise, i'm working my way through Princess now because i need to farm some shit from Princess, especially the special stages which i usually skipped cause lazy. need to build my diamonds back up just in case. nothing else really going on.

[Mobius] - should probably log in here as well for FFXII event, which i haven't yet done; i have enough going on with these fuckin festivals haha

that looks like about it for me; tune in next time when i'm probably still making no (0) progress in anything. what have you done this week? what are your fun milestones?

IT'S MONDAY, MY DUDES: this week's discussion is brought to you by Iggy! let's forget how much we hate our jobs and talk about mobile games instead!

[FFRK]
Summer Fest is upon us!! First, let's talk about the lead-in: I pretty much pulled dupes only on the 5 mythril "Realms On Parade" pulls, but hey, stat sticks are cool and it was a cheap fun thing. Between the Lucky Draws and the banner starting yesterday, here's what I have that's new:

• Sazh USB (MAG and DEF/RES boost, Hastega, and Astra): this is BOSS. First, because I love Sazh and if you don't you're wrong; second because it's a great buff to layer with other MAG buffs and Sazh is a rocking support with some shooter abilities too. I have his BSB and SSB boosts as well, so Sazh might have just become my second-main buffer, and may need a mote dive.
• Ramza's Holy Chain: Ramza is already my primary buffer but this means all he's gonna be doing in my party is Wrath/Lifesiphon constantly to spring SB after SB. I have a great Holy team so this is p sweet. And Ramza is super flexible (he's my main buffer), so he can fit on a lot of teams.
• LMs for Noctis & Ignis - these will be useful in realm
• Relm USB (instant heal + stoneskin@30% + instacast) - can't wait to put this into play and test it out
• Braska USB (damage, add fire/lightning free chase) - who doesn't love Braska? I think Braska and Sazh should be friends. NEW CANON.

The rest were mostly SSBs for characters I don't have a lot else for, which usually means I'm not going to pay that much attention to them, sorry guys. I have learnt them all, however, for future in-realm missions.

My goals for the Summer Fest are pretty straightforward:

1. Use half-off stamina to grind the 4* mote dungeons and 3* magicites. Goal is >200 of each mote left after fest, plus working towards L99 magicites to break into the 4*s.
2. Use open dungeons to grind orbs and EXP. Leveling magicites takes a lot of EXP, but I have a lot of characters who could use levels, so that works out. I need Power, Black, Dark orbs like nobody's goddamn business, so I may use some stamina potions there. I have a list of abilities I want to hon eby the end of the fest, but THEN i looked ahead and saw we are getting more 6* abilities, so I may have to grind the crystal levels for each type and just fuse into MOs.
3. Make sure events get completed on time too
4. I have enough mythril saved for 1 pull on each banner. That's awesome! And it's all I'm allowed.

Happy Summer Fest, FFRK players!! Let me see the goodies you've gotten!!

[FFBE]
FFBE is gradually ramping up to its anniversary festival, which I am looking forward to, and therefore saving lapis like a crazy person. however, that's secondary, because i want to point out two great ass things first:

• TODAY I FINALLY PULLED TRANCE TERRA!! I have wanted TT forever because Terra is a fave character of mine, and ALSO because I am still fairly weak in the absolute-DPS-mage department. I was so happy to see her. Fuck I need money and crysts galore to enhance her and I can't wait.
• I fully enhanced Fryevia! Everything to +2 level! She's up as my friend unit for my fellow chainers, although she's nowhere near ideal state: I need the 100% moogle for her TM sword, I'm 99% to L&A from Ingus, and I have Kunshira's TM to farm as well. BUT SHE'S ENHANCED. In her full glory!

So those were this week's big successes. Otherwise, I'm grinding away at the raid, and focusing my stamina right now on the cryst-specific dungeons in the story event. They are amazing. Don't bring a joke team, but do bring Lara Croft and enhanced Xon for cryst drops galore. That's how I got Frye done, that's how I'm gonna finish Olive today, and then that's how I'm gonna grind for TT enhancements, shoot my face.

Currently farming: OK's TM sword, Ingus' L&A, Vanille's TM accessory, Crowe's TM
Currently leveling: Trance Terra, Merc Ramza, Wilhelm, Rosa, Emperor Shera, Bran
Currently enhancing: Olive, TT, deciding on a breaker to go in on

[LN] I'm loving both suits in the desert mirage event which means happy un-diamonds to me, but oh well; that style is my aesthetic and i wants it, precious.

i've sort of stalled out on story because i have to go back and do a bunch of bonus rounds i didn't do for farming crafting, and for some reason my brain is all like eeehhhhhhhhhhh so i spend stamina farming for evolutions instead. i really need to go back and clean them all up. i have super powerful pieces now!

I'm working on crafting Lunar Spell and Yanila Pirate, for the record. But to do that I need to make it to Princess Ch 13 for farming purposes. That sounds like a good thing to do during an afternoon break, yes?

[other] i don't have any other games atm, but i'm considering mobius again because of the FFXII event and my desperate love for XII. Other games I have downloaded on recommendation are Reigns: Her Majesty and DragonVale although I haven't gotten into either yet.

[cat] The real star of the show today is Iggy Usazi Alton Brown Marmalade (Dragomire). He's a shorthair grey marble - instead of the usual tabby stripes, he has dark and light grey marbling in his coat. it makes him incredibly cute. he's the social brother, a little bit of a troublemaker, and a real sucker for belly rubs.

Alright, New Tunes Tuesday it is, and I have a couple things to toss out at you ....

Artist: Lights
Album/Song to Try: Skin&Earth, Intro/Skydiving, New Fears, We Were Here
Style: somewhat ethereal alt-pop
Thoughts: Spotify threw me a Lights song on one of my radio channels, and I was immediately intrigued at the similarity to Ellie Goulding, who still holds a special place in my heart. Lights' Skin&Earth is sort-of like Ellie's first album Lights (hilarious!), which has this amazing ethereal-crystalline feeling to its complex lyrics and strung-out harmonies, met up with Ellie's disappointingly-trite pop-dance thing she called a third album, and created a child. Lights' lyrics are nowhere near the intricate depth of Ellie's first album, and her feel isn't quite as layered or deep, but there are echoes of that amazing album throughout Skin&EEarth, which just has a really cool feel, and has brought me back to it over and over this last week.

Artist: Gin Wigmore
Album/Song to Try: Gravel & Wine, "Black Sheep", "Man Like That"; Blood To Bone, "New Rush", "Nothing to No One"
Style: uniquely gravely-expressive voice spins rhythm over a combination of folk, pop, rock, dance
Thoughts: I don't know how to describe Gin Wigmore's voice other than awesome. She goes for it like few artists are able, and manages to wrangle around a dozen different styles - sometimes in one song. Obviously I like her more ragged, driving song with a beat and a purpose, but she hits soft and winsome often enough. Almost everything I've heard of hers is just plain good.

So far your suggestions have been GREAT - keep 'em coming. Let's talk tunes!

so it's another week of review with the Overlords, aka 8 hours straight of just meetings, aka shoot me. i had a two hours meeting this morning which, by the time the meeting had run over, we had just decided... what the meeting was going to be / was supposed to be about.

this is the shit i hate.

anyway: Mobile Monday and New Tunes Tuesday are gonna be freeform this week, as in just share anything cool you've done and we'll be back at it next week.

woooooo

here we are - another Monday morning, another bar of stamina, another extended lunch break where Sev writes on DW...

FFRK
As it turns out, I have until the end of JUNE to finish Torment CMs, which was quite the relief - although I made it all the way up to FFIX Torment in record time. (If anyone needs tips on Torments, I'm happy to help!) I had to rush through the FFVI event, but I managed to clear the realms, the Jump Start, and half of the Multiplayer (by myself) before the event ended, so that suits me just fine.

In terms of deadlines there's a challenge dungeon leaving first, then 3rd Anniv dungeon, then FFXV event, then Crystal Tower. However, I'll probably tackle Crystal Tower earlier, to get the motes. In between that I still have 7-8 Torments left, and I need to grind my 3* Magicite dungeons, to make tackling the 4* ones easier.

I've made some good progress though: I fully legend-dove Orlandeau (I have his USB and it makes him a powerhouse), Yuffie (have her Glint and ASB, plus diving ninjas with double-cast is always a great idea), and Mog (IDGAF, he has been CLUTCH MVP for me in so many fights; plus, his LD2 is chance of medica after dance, which is awesome; PLUS IT IS ADORABLE). Most of those 5* motes came from the Torments I completed. I also honed the water ninja skill to R3 (6 uses), which is only significant because fuck dark and ice orbs - I want to get all the top ninja skills to R3, at least, but then I have to work on knight skills and heavy abilities, not to mention I should make some decisions about a Dark Team and finally work on them.

I am ALSO sitting on like 300 mythril, because I haven't really been tempted by any banners lately AND we have been getting a metric fuckload of myth from various things in the last month. I'm pretty sure there's a fest coming up at the end of June, so I'm trying to save it rather than, say, going in again on the XV banner for realm coverage, because........ reasons?

FFBE
I was hoping to make this post saying "I beat the giant rat", but I didn't beat the giant rat, although I did get it down to 15% health. My team was Ayaka (heals & esunagas), Roy (breaks & buffs), Cagnazzo (provoke tank), WoL (cover tank, also breaks), and my Fryevia + a friend Fryevia. My Frye is still pretty undergeared, resting at around 500/500 ATK/MAG, but I do have FFB +1 and thought hey fuck it why not. so chaining FFB Frye does a tonnnnnn of damage, it was pretty cool.

I just lost the fight when damage and paralyze just became a bit overwhelming - Ayaka had to spend turns removing paralyze, and when it hit Cag or Roy it worked like a cancel of whatever they were doing, so things started falling apart. I need to look up items for paralyze resist and, possibly, gear to make an evading WoL. I'll try again when I have a chance for a break this afternoon - it could just be RNG. I also have Mystea I could sub in for someone; i think she has some kind of status effect skill.

I'm "finished" grinding the Raid (meaning I got that last 4* ticket) but I'll still run raid orbs when bored to get materials -- I could probably use a couple of those EXP boosting hats for fun or expeditions. When that's done I'll probably go back to story - I want to clear Mysidia finally and keep working for that 100% moogle! - as well as TM farming, and farming Wilhelm's dumb limit break before I awaken him to 6*. Oh, and farming crysts to better awaken Frye -- so much grind!!

Love Nikki I was sort of phoning it in on LN last week; after Memorial Day weekend with nieces and party and family and stepfamily and aaaaaaa well my brain was pretty easily exhausted. This week, I picked some suits to work towards, which means I have to grind through some story so that I can open up some of the levels I need to grind. Ha.

I'd like to have a completely automatic (Finish ASAP button) Stylist's Arena, because I am a lazy ass, so I'm going in to each theme and upping my entry in the hopes of getting them all above about 55K points. That way I can watch my opponent, reset until I'm higher, and the only way I'll lose is if momo lies (MOMO LIES, THO).

otherwise, just plugging along. I have my share of wedding stuff so I'm honestly picking up the background/foreground stuff mostly, haha.

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What about you and your Monday? and your Games?