Time to Loot Journal: March 2022

I’m not even sure where to start this journal but a full quarter of the year has already been and gone. *shakes head* Madness. Time has been flying by. The Oscars happened. Not a fact I would normally note or even be aware of. Except, you know, this time the thing happened.

Gaming wise, still Lost Ark and Elden Ring almost exclusively. Vampire Survivors was the only other thing to get even a small look-in. I’m glad it did though. It is an incredible game vs. the price, only a few dollars even in NZD and it’s not only in a very good state already but is also in a period of fairly rapid development.

Looking Back

One Year Ago

Looking back to March last year reminded me that it has been a while since Kim of Later Levels went on a break. An indeterminate one as it turned out, as the domain is now pointing back toward the wordpress.com site and flagged as private. *sniff* I was reminded though by the fact that I participated in the #MaybeInMarch event wherein you selected a game that’d spent overlong languishing in your backlog that you were once quite excited to play… And then actually play it! Last year for me, that game was The Evil Within 2.

• Aside from that, I also kicked off a plan to Play to a Schedule. In the end, it wasn’t for me — but I am glad I gave it a go. It resulted in 15 parts recounting my journey in Dark Souls: Remastered. I tried out a few different methods of recounting my adventures and I’m not sure I ever quite landed on a style that I could’ve run with over the long term but the issue was more cementing myself into a particular game at a particular time. I had issues never quite balancing out being able to play as much as I wanted, when I wanted, to feeling obligated to play when I wanted to play something else!
• The Blogger Civilisation VI Succession Game, ‘Long Live the Queen’ came to an end. At least, my part of it did. Those were my last turns (and the second to last set of turns played in the game as a whole) before Paeroka went on to achieve a Cultural Victory for us the following month.

Two Years Ago

Two years ago as a community, we were in preparation mode for Blapril. Belghast decided to bring forward the event from it’s usual spot of August in response the growing spread of COVID-19 around the world. Incidentally, it was also March 2020 that COVID-19 started feeling real to me.

• I ended up getting my first electric car! Although I confirmed when I got it in this post, which is.. Uh.. March’s Humble Bundle post. I made some very interesting choices on post content structure back then.
• Division 2’s Expansion, Warlords of New York came out and I played a bunch of it. I could do with another one of those please! Although it seems like perhaps it wasn’t exactly a resounding commercial success as shortly after the release of this Ubisoft decided to shelve further work on the franchise for a while.

Gaming Goals

March’s Goals

• Lost Ark: Reach ilvl 1100 and Do the Story Content of Punika
  I’m at ilvl 1040 or so already, so I don’t imagine this is going to be too demanding. On the other hand, I know I’m reaching the more difficult phase of gearing where success chances go down and the easy sources of materials have been consumed. Still- finishing Punika I think will give me the necessary breathing room for…
• Elden Ring — Beat First Legacy Dungeon Area
  Yep – bringing this goal back. Still going to consider it something of a ‘stretch’ goal though, almost entirely dependent on how late into the month I achieve the Lost Ark goal — or whether I even do!

Well, I’ll be! I got both of those. And then some!

Lost Ark I made it through to ~ilvl 1356. Elden Ring I have done, I would say, three of the legacy dungeons and then several of the more moderate size zone scale dungeons. I still don’t really have a good idea of how much of the game is left though! Even so, I think it might be reasonable to put it forward as this month’s goal to finish my first playthrough. :)

April’s Goals

• Elden Ring — Finish First Playthrough of the Game
  I will continue going through the game in full-explore mode as I have been. I know there will still be dungeons and hidden areas to find in future playthroughs, but I’m OK with that. :)
• Lost Ark — Reach ilvl 1370
  I’m less sure about this one, but I think it’s manageable. I’ve actually stepped back from attempting honing every day to only doing it once per week when I have a decent batch of materials to go on. I won’t make this in the first attempt at honing this month, but depending on how that goes… Maybe second or third?

Games Played March 2022

Given how many games I had to leave on the wayside over Feb and March (Dying Light 2, Horizon Forbidden West, Shadow Warrior 3, etc) I’m really surprised I haven’t had even the slightest itch to move on from these games.

If it was Lost Ark on its own, or if I was playing it without the benefit of friends, I probably would have moved on from that. But Elden Ring has held me firm throughout. Even with Dark Souls III I went and completed it in two chunks and that was much shorter than this. FromSoftware has really outdone themselves with this one.

Books Read March 2022

I think this is the first month since I started tracking what I was reading by way of the blog, that I didn’t finish and book and instead, was still reading what I was reading before. I guess jumping gaming time up so much will do that! The time has to come from somewhere, after all.

One of my main reading times is right as I’m going to sleep. Going to bed late has meant I turn off like a light, with barely a few pages read.

The fact I didn’t finish the book is definitely putting my 15-books in the year Goodreads goal at risk! So my aim is to finish it this month and see if I can’t start making that group up again with whatever I choose to read next.

… Given I’m writing the rest of this post at 3:30am-ish after having been out for a bit doesn’t bode well for this goal, however. ;)

The Blog

The last time I only published 6 posts in a month was December 2020. Back then, it was Shadowlands’ launch which so captured my attention away from my more bloggerly pursuits.

This time around, it was of course the one-two punch of Lost Ark and Elden Ring.

The total number of posts published on Time to Loot now (including this one), is 544.

Most Viewed Posts

1. The Variable Difficulty of Lost Ark Abyss Dungeons
2. Lost Ark to Launch in Oceania on Release After All
3. Difficulty with the Difficulty Debate
4. Lost Ark by way of Screenshots
5. Lost Ark – Month and a Half On

Perhaps unsurprisingly, most of the popular posts this month were Lost Ark orientated. Four out of five were, in fact. And the one that wasn’t was relating to Elden Ring, albeit somewhat indirectly.

I’ve held off writing too much about Elden Ring for the time being but once I’ve completed a playthrough, I’ll open the floodgates on it a little more. Still appropriately spoiler warning tagged though, of course!