Monthly LP Update - October 2024

This is my monthly update post, cross-posted to both Patreon and my personal blog detailing the progress I've made on my Let's Plays. More below!

In Stars and Time

I have finally finished recording, editing, and uploading In Stars and Time. As epected, the finale left me sobbing. It's a little gross but don't worry, I left it in. The last two episodes ended up fairly long. The end of the game's main conflict is in episode 80 which is about an hour long. The epilogue is episode 81 and is 1 hr 40 min long. If you got invested in the characters at all (which is rather key to enjoying the game) I'd argue around 3/4 of it is mandatory, but it is technically nearly all skippable. As usual, I've tagged the different sections of the episode so if you really want to skip something you can.

Final Fantasy XIV

We did it. All 721 episodes of A Realm Reborn are now recorded. 2.5 years! It's done!

I greatly enjoyed it, but there are many things I would have done differently. Basically all of that I've already integrated into my recording process and will be carrying over into Heavensward. A couple of the big changes are more frequent breaks, even just 1 week long, as well as better organization of the post-game patches that comprise half of each expansion. We're also going to be gentler on ourselves with EX+ content, doing synced initially and going back later to do MINE as a bonus. Dungeons, normal trials, 8-player raids, and 24-player raids are staying MINE. Savage when it happens will be synced like Binding Coils.

Heavensward will begin going live on YouTube on January 6th, 2025! I've already planned out every episode of the base game and it will end in late December 2025. I expect the 3.x patches to take all of 2026. I am very happy that it seems like we'll be able to maintain a 2 year per expansion cycle from here on. Certainly better than A Realm Reborn's 2.5 years, and ensuring we don't fall further behind current content.

I will begin recording Heavensward with patch 7.1 goes live on November 12th, 2024 to ensure that Heavensward starts on the next graphics update.

Next Let's Play

With In Stars and Time finally done, there is a poll up on Patreon to decide the next game! The poll will remain open until 1 week after the In Stars and Time finale goes live on YouTube. In the meantime, there will be 3 episodes of the Sonic Adventure DX Chao Garden to fill time while I prepare the next Let's Play. You can find the poll here if you are a $1+ Patron of mine!

Final Fantasy XI?!

A bunch of my friends are trying out Final Fantasy XI's free trial over the next two weeks! This is in part because a ton of us have expressed interested in the older MMO, and in part because the new raid coming to Final Fantasy XIV is based on Final Fantasy XI so we want to have some context for it.

I am going to attempt to stream the game's free trial! There won't be a set schedule, just "when I can". You can find the stream on my Twitch channel here.

Miscellaneous

My raid group has been having some bad weeks lately. Mostly just stuff coming up that necessitates one or more of us dipping for a night. Despite the more sporadic schedule, we're still making pretty decent prog on Arcadion Savage blind! We got M2S to 36% HP and all the way to 3rd Beat. We're starting to have solutions for some of the more annoying mechanics. I think we're getting close to enrage and the point where we need to synchronize our bursts to start clearing. In other words, we're approaching M3S. It will... probably be a few more weeks I think. But we're getting there and that makes me excited.

Just yesterday I finished my final interview for a very exciting job opportunity. With a little luck, I will finally be employed again! I'll find out in the coming days and I have got my fingers crossed.

Finally, we got an absolute bombshell news drop in Xenoblade X Definitive Edition coming to Switch on March 20th, 2025. You bet I'm going to stream it, especially given we know there's going to be a post-game story now that follows up on some of the massive cliffhangers that game had.

Coming Up

The end of In Stars and Time comes this month! Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn ends in December! Three Chao Garden videos incoming Soon™️! Final Fantasy XI streams! More savage raiding as we approach M3S! I might have a job?????