Patch 4.5 (Part 1) is here and it is fascinating...

Indeed, the patch arrived as scheduled on Tuesday January 8th and I have to admit that I had amazing fun with the update to the MSQ, the new Seiryu battle and the new 24-man raid at the Orbonne Monastery... I got loads of screenshots of the battle with the bosses and the cutscenes at the end are a MUST for every Final Fantasy Ivalive and Tactics fan.

The graphics are excellently done and the battles mechanics are dynamic, involving, amazing and truly engaging.   Thunder God's voice and subsequent cues while unleashing his moves are simply awe-inspiring.

What is truly brilliant is the way that the Dev Team have fused together a lot of the lovable characters from the Ivalice, Tactics and Vagrant Story lores into a phenomenal tale that leaves me fervently hoping some measure of it will continue in Shadowbringers.  It is a very worthy conclusion to Return to Ivalice Scenario -- Yasumi Matsuno  and all the Devs who worked on this are now the stuff of legends in my book and should have permanent seats at FFXIV's development table.

In the meantime, here are a very few non-spoiler screenshots...

More incoming later...  need to run the new custom delivery errands for Adkiragh.  By the way, for those who were wondering and asking me in-game, the sparkstones that he requests can be found in Hell's Lid in Ruby Sea (south westwards of the map-- or slightly northwest when you come out of Kugane).  The Malleable Still Material item is in Yanxia at the The Gensui Chain-- use the Namai Aetheryte.

And for those wondering about how to find a good guide for the new Doman Mahjong game implemented, check HERE

I also need to get this mount...

Once I get a moment, I'll make another post with more images but until later, be well.

Happy New Year... 2019 Arrives! Its been 10 Years!

Happy New Year everyone... we usher in 2019 with great aspirations and happiness.

Warm regards as well to all of you and all your respective families, friends, significant others, and loved ones.  Thank you as well to everyone from around the world who kept contacting me both by email, discord and in-game to give interesting comments, exciting discussions on a bevy of things, and solid words of excellent encouragement.

It's been almost 10 years since I started this blog and it is truly incredible how much people continue to give me encouragement on here, via emails and in the game.  I have met the most interesting people from around the world and was also able to maintain contact with most of my closest friends from FFXI in Japan, Europe and Canada.    The blog gets quite a huge number of hits from around the world now and again, so to everyone who found something here that piqued your interest, thank you so very much for your continued support.

I initially started this blog in 2009 after Sony's announcement for FFXIV at E3 as a method of creating a lasting chronicle of all news, information, artwork, music, patch updates and my adventures within the game.   Another interesting thing I realized when Stormblood was released what that when I first started the game during 1.0 beta in 2010, I was the only "Atreides" I could find whenever I searched the playerbase... now there are over 1000 players with the illustrious Atreides name spread across 17 servers.  I thought that was a interesting tidbit to note. 

Furthermore, in early 2011 when Amelia got injured in London, I added some of her favourite music onto the blog so that she had something to listen to on her hospital bed while she caught up on FFXIV news.  It is amazing that today, she's back to running every morning three times a week.

Once again, I say... Thank you everyone.

And below are just some random images from around the game and also from the new Heavensturn event that just commenced... by the way SquareEnix, I need that white kimono shown below.

Yes I do.

By the way, also take time to read Yoshi's brilliant New Year Message.  As always, he has yet again thrown us a cryptic message for us to decipher and I'm already having some interesting speculations from a handful of my friends.

And that is obviously the Drak Knight's armour that Yoshi has on as his garb in the image... Hmmmm.   There is much more to discuss on this.  I keep going back to the various cutscenes from 2.0 and 3.0 regarding the Ascians, seeking clues and I do believe there are several of them....








I'll be posting up more items and stuff later on (mainly for laughs), but in the meantime, I have intentionally posted the last image below as a way of saying we all need to remember... we are one world, one people; both in game and in real life.