Haven’t blogged much in the last few weeks as had a bit of a detour and with that, I also took the time to chill which is always good too. But a few weeks back I had to do some traveling for work which is a routine thing. Around that time I had just started making the effort to load all my music CDs and Movie CD Collection onto my Media Drive on my Desktop PC. When I built my PC which was mainly built for gaming, I had installed several extra drives of SSD’s and a large HD drive for Media Storage of several TB’s. Media drive being separate from my Windows Drive which is just exclusively Windows only. I was also backing up everything, Music & Movies I had on my iTunes account onto that Media Drive as well. With all the downloading it was going to take a while at around the clock downloading on my cable internet for maybe two weeks.
I had to travel for work and so I left my PC on to chug along at all the queued downloading via my iTunes account to store it all to my Media Drive. When I returned home at the end of the week my PC was off and had no idea what had happened. Power Failure we do get from heavy winds with trees on power lines routinely so that’s a normal thing living in Pittsburgh, PA. But no idea really why the PC was off. On reboot, I got that infamous blue screen of death with a Windows error that a Windows Update had failed to properly install. And to that as well the PC was doing what seemed a continuous loop of reboots to the blue screen of death and back. It had some kind of a Windows Kernel error. Maybe Windows had updated while the PC was chugging away at the media downloads and something happened that caused a reboot or shutdown and Windows didn’t update properly. Maybe it had a power failure around that time, who knows. Regardless I had a blue screen of death issue on the PC and it would just keep looping a reboot unless I interrupted it to shut it down.
I did get it to start in safe mode, but it wouldn’t start in normal mode. Nor could I do an effective Windows Restore from a good saved date. I tried it once and I couldn’t use a further backdate as that date restore didn’t fix the issue. After a few hours of frustration and I decided to wipe out Windows!!! Wipe It and Reinstall It! That decision wasn’t too hard as my few PC Games were loaded on their separate drive as well as all other media. So just backed up my documents onto a USB and proceeded to wipe and reinstall Windows. That decision took me for a detour reinstalling Windows, reinstalling other programs, driver updates as well finishing all the media downloads that never finished which consumed almost a week. With all that happening, I just decided to chill out and not worry about gaming much. But that was all a detour. Eventually, I completed all my iTunes media download as well as manually loading a whole bunch of physical media music and movie CDs only my Media Drive as well. In the end, I backed up the music onto 100 GB USB Drive. The Movies and TV Shows took up over 1TB.
But Windows Kernel errors on an update that messed up threw a wrench into the thing and sent me on a detour. Gaming and Blogging were on a hiatus for a while.
VALHEIM
Got back into the game and roamed The Plains for some adventure exploring with all the adventures you can have roaming about there in and out of camps.
Fun times! Found myself also in need of both Silver and Iron and so was back to the Snow Mountain and the Swamp for some mining for upgrading things. Not too much of a hurry to really go anywhere in Valheim as pretty much at the end of the game without having killed the last boss but sitting on the trophies. It’s little by little just improving things around the new ocean pyramid base. I’ve enjoyed my time in Valheim and still do. Everyone who plays the game is patiently waiting for the big update, myself included. But I try to spend at least an hour every few days at least to keep things going so I remember what I was doing in-game to keep things moving along in some way. Even if it’s just farming the Turnips, Carrots, and the Barley planted on The Plains.
FINAL FANTASY 14
I started getting back into FF14 after the detour of playing Valheim. It’s always tough for me mentally to juggle playing multiple games. I started playing FF14 almost exactly 6 months to the date of today on December 23rd last year. So I’ve been continuously subbed to the game since. I had started the free trial and on day two of the trial was enjoying it enough that I converted it to a real game account with a subscription and full game access.
When Valheim launched in early February this year It also hit my radar as a kind of game I liked and wanted to try out. I tend to like strategy and simulation-based games as well as MMORPG games. So I bought and played Valheim and have enjoyed it and look forward to the future big game update. However, it was also time to return to FF14 on my adventure with my lvl 61 Paladin. In the detour of playing lots of Valheim for a few months, I had forgotten quite a bit how to play my Paladin in FF14. As well I was MSQ locked with one singular quest to complete that was also a dungeon in Heavensward. It was hard to just jump back into the game forgetting how to play my Job Paladin and jump into a dungeon.
So logged in over a few days and just practiced on the target dummy outside the city in Ul’dah and practiced my Paladin rotations until I remember what each spell/talent did and how to use them. Did some Levequests to just get back into the swing of things and fighting stuff. I was MSQ locked in having to complete The Avery Dungeon in Heavensward. I had felt I best be prepared. So I did.
Completed “The Avery” dungeon and MSQ’s and moved on, all of which was a great story. I’ve really enjoyed my time in Heavensward and Ishgard even with the break-in between playing Valheim last few months. Breaks are good in gaming.
Today I completed the actual MSQ for “Heavensward” at lvl 64 and that was just a mind-blowing doozy what happened there. It was the completing story quest for the Heavensward expansion.
That was one epic story that blew my mind! And though the entire arc is yet not done, there is a series of MSQ quests I’m sure to complete before my journey into Stormblood as I feel I’m close with the lvl 60 MSQ’s.
No one who threatens this warrior ever lives long to tell about it! Say I’m Sorry……
Your gonna be real sorry after this battle with me and my friends! No one threatens The Warrior of Light and his friends!
You could have said you were sorry. Sucks to be you! The end of this epic dungeon, journey and story is just about at an end for Heavensward.
Looking Ahead
As I look down the road for my gaming and fun times, come August I expect to try out New World when it launches. I have been anticipating playing that new game since last year and have bought the game already as well before it launches. There may be other games to try in the latter half of 2021 but so far that’s the new game much anticipated on my horizon.
Ardent Defender 