It might not be a Wednesday, but that doesn’t mean I can’t write about Final Fantasy 14! Not that I’ve got a lot to report, to be honest. I mean, I finished the base portion of the Shadowbringers expansion a couple weeks ago and spent, like, two hours a night for three nights in a row crying (good) on and off as so much great storytelling happened. I don’t know how to write about that, yet, since I’m just starting the patch content for Shadowbringers and have quite a bit of stuff left before the whole thing wraps up [I’ve finished most of it now, as of the day this posted, and am ready to talk about it all]. Not that I think it needs more storytelling to properly stand, just that I want to be able to fully couch it in all of the context the full expansion will give me when I write about it (like I did with all the other expansions). I just have been taking longer to get back to it because of the brain fog and being under the weather. I don’t want to play through this important, impactful expansion at a time when my brain isn’t working terribly well. It would be a shame to forget anything. Instead, in the time since I wrapped it up, I’ve turned my attention toward some of the other measures of progress I’ve been ignoring while I sped through the Main Scenario Quests. I’ve done a bunch of leveling of some of my classes, started working on some personal market projects to augment my income, leveled some crafting jobs, worked on some weeklies, and tried to get more invested in the roleplaying side of things. Which means I’ve made a lot of progress taken as a whole, but not a huge amount on any individual metric.

It’s not like I’m rushing to run out of things to do in the game, though. Or like I’m terribly at risk of that. I just have been feeling restless and unfocused (which, in retrospect, as I’ve dealt with this brain fog from withdrawal from an antidepressant that wasn’t working for me, makes a lot of sense) so I’ve been jumping from one thing to another. Or making spreadsheets to track things I can’t just keep in my mind with any reliability right now. Plus, doing a wider variety of stuff is more fun than just grinding through one thing at a time and I need to keep this fun and light rather than turning it into an exhausting grind or else I’m going to exhaust myself and probably burn out on the game. I mean, I’ve been so tired this week that I almost went 48 hours without playing the game! I was too tired on Monday to even think about playing it and if I hadn’t been too tired to go grocery shopping and fold laundry on Tuesday, I’d have gone a second night without playing it. Which would have been a first in… I don’t even know how long. I genuinely can’t think of the last time I took more than a single night off from the game, but I think that’s more of a reflection on my current mentally foggy status than on my relationship with Final Fantasy 14. I mean, I distinctively recall having a huge amount of well-rested XP that it took me multiple days to burn through from taking two, or maybe even three, nights off the game, I just can’t remember when that was. Definitely sometime in the last four months, but that’s basically the entire time I’ve been playing the game… [all of this is very funny to me because, as I’m editing this the day it goes up, I’m also considering a brief, three or four day hiatus from the game to let my brain reset a little bit].

Anyway: wide progress, not narrow, which means I’m slowly working on getting all my heavily-armored jobs leveled up at about the same pace so I can get rid of all of the armor specific to them that is cluttering up my inventory. I’ll be doing the same thing with my other jobs sometime soon, I’m sure, since I really want to get rid of that junk. I gotta make room for all new junk! A.K.A. all the additional armor sets and everything that I’ll need for all my jobs as they continue their relentless march toward 100. Sure, there’s basically only five types of jobs and most armor or clothing fits one of those job types, but having at least one of those jobs at each gear tier means I’ll have thirty pieces of gear just for the combat stuff, not to mention all my crafting and gathering gear which is going to need at least space for two tiers of armor since my leveling isn’t even. Plus, you know, gear that’s just for fun. Also, leveling some of the lower-leveled jobs to the point where I can do my dailies with them will help me slow down on just how quickly I’m getting to level 100. I don’t really want to hit that point until most of my jobs are at least close to it. I know the game changes a bit when you get your first class to the top level, so I want to put that off for as long as possible. I’m sure I’d be able to keep doing stuff just fine if I get one job there sort of early, but I am doing my best to avoid the potential for complication I’m not ready to handle. No reason not to take my time, given that I’m already five levels above the patch content on the job I’m using to do it…

Beyond that leveling and inventory management stuff, my only other metrics are in my quest journal and that baby is stuffed to the gills with quests that require me to do specific content that I’ve been putting off for a while. That and my income, but I’ve got enough money that I’m not feeling terribly pressed to earn more. I’m doing income projects mostly as a little something to work on between other tasks. I’ve got a long-ish term project worked out that’s just for me that I can work on in pretty small chunks, so I’ve been carrying the parts for it around with me and filling the spare few minutes I’ve got while waiting for a dungeon or whatever I signed up for to start. When I’m not doing that, I’m working on some of the roleplaying side of things (conceptually, for the most part), but there’s no good way to really measure that progress. I usually have a goal or something every time I start doing some kind of work on that front, but it’s just an immediate goal for what I’m trying to accomplish in the moment and my work overall is the sort of nebulous “develop a character and learn how RP works in this game.” Heck, I barely even know where to start on that stuff, though I’m sure I could ask people and get some suggestions from them, but I’m mostly saving this work for when the brain fog and fatigue goes away. Social interaction stuff is some of the most exhausting stuff for me these days and all the RP stuff is social by it’s very nature, so even a single evening of light RP can leave me exhausted and wiped out. Hell, even just talking about it with people in a focused manner can be exhausting.

Anyway, I’ve got a busy weekend planned with my friends to start making some progress on a few of the raids and stuff that I haven’t done yet, along with some MSQ progress so I can unlock other things. Hopefully I’ll be able to get it all done without exhausting myself, but I’ve got a four day weekend so I should be able to rest up once it’s all done even if I do push myself a little too hard. Ugh. I really need this withdrawal crap to finish up so I can stop feeling this awful and exhausted from just playing video games and talking to people…