Monthly Update - December 2024
Hey all! Welcome to my monthly update covering my Let's Plays and other projects, cross-posted to my personal blog and to my Patreon. Read on to see what I've been up to!
Let's Plays
First up is the progress on my Let's Plays which are posted to YouTube and Patreon.
Final Fantasy XIV
A Realm Reborn has officially come to an end! 721 episodes and we have covered just about every little thing that came out in the base game. This was a truly massive project and I am so happy it is finally complete.
Heavensward is well under way! I have as of this writing recorded 48 episodes of the Heavensward expansion and uploaded 16 of those for Patrons. The public release will begin on January 6th, 2025 on YouTube. Going to keep moving along!
I think my plan is to cover the first third or so of 3.0 during the current 7.1 patch, the second third during the 7.2 patch which I expect will be coming in late March/early April, and the final third during the 7.3 patch which I'm expecting to come in mid to late summer. This will give me a few natural spots to take breaks which will be nice. I'm also excited to see the next portions of the graphics update release in those patches!
Let's Play #016
The next LP set to follow In Stars and Time is a nice and short one! All 6 episodes have been recorded and uploaded for Patrons and the public release will begin January 6th, 2025! Not going to say anything more about it here since it still hasn't been publicly announced.
Let's Play #017
The LP set to follow that currently has its Patreon poll running which will be closing this week when I begin recording! You can expect this one to begin releasing publicly for YouTube on February 3rd, 2025! The options I have available are more short games because honestly I need some short games in my life at the moment, I've been doing a lot of long games lately.
Twitch Streams
Next up is what I'm doing on Twitch!
Final Fantasy XIV - EX MINE Grind
My raid group is trying to clear all of the A Realm Reborn EXs on MINE ("Minimum Item level, No Echo buff") difficulty! Our primary stream days are Mondays at 3pm US Pacific/4pm US Mountain/6pm US Eastern, with occasional secondary streams on Saturdays at the same time. Our first stream was this past Monday where we started with Ultima EX. We did synced at first to "warm up" and start learning mechanics, and when we inevitably cleared that in under 30 minutes we moved on to MINE difficulty and managed to get it down to <10% HP with 7 people. Next time we run assuming all 8 people are available we will almost certainly be clearing it!
Other Projects
Next up are miscellaneous other projects I'm working on!
Game Development
I started working on my game this past month after years of just Thinking About Working On It. It's off to a decent start. I have progress on a game design document, a rough outline of the plot, and loose plans on how I am going to proceed. The current thing I am trying to finish is a world map which will help guide what regions need to be developed and how they will look and be designed. I know roughly what everything is, I'm just trying to get it out onto paper in a concrete and practical form.
One thing I very much need to work on is creating concept/reference sketches for characters so I can start turning those into the 3D models. I know the rough art style I want to aim for, but again I need to simply get it out of my head and into a concrete form. I'm not a particularly artistically-inclined person so this will be a struggle, but it's something I'm willing to learn how to do! At some point I will likely need to find someone who is artistically-inclined who can assist with this, but for now I'm going to try to do it myself.
If we're lucky, I'll be able to include some proper images of what I've been working on in the coming months!
Coming Up
Let's Play #016 and Heavensward both begin January 6th, 2025! I will begin recording Let's Play #017 in January as well! Twitch streams will continue on Mondays and occasionally Saturdays as my raid group works on EX difficulty content! Game development begins!