Time to Loot Journal: November(ish) 2025

Yes, I DO know it's almost January. I said 'ish' after all!

Merry Christmas, everyone!

… Look, I know this is the November journal… Novemberish, and… Yeah, that ‘ish’ is doing some hefty lifting there. This is almost late enough that I could just wrap it into a double-feature journal posting for December.

Which I did consider doing.

But I figured I was late enough without procrastinating even further. Between flagging energy levels in the run up to the end of the work year and then getting sick as soon as the end was reached, I figured I’d procrastinated enough as it was, even by my standards.

Which is really saying something!

Gaming Goals

November Goals

• Where Winds Meet: Clear the main story quests of the game’s first region.

I did it! Not only the main story, but all but one (I think) of the ‘hidden’ main quests as well.

I really enjoyed my time with Where Winds Meet. Somewhat surprisingly, it is everything it claims to be. My largest disappointment has been the lag in multiplayer. The developers noted they had some issues with region matchmaking placing some players into the wrong server group.

This was an issue slated to be fixed early December, but I haven’t tried it again to confirm.

I’ve played most of the way through the story content available in Kaifeng and would like to get a bit more of a story content backlog available before I jump back in again.

December Goals

Given there are only literal days left of December, seems silly to set a goal at this point.

So I won’t!

But… Wuthering Waves 3.0 is out, complete with a new region to explore, a new Threnodian to defeat, and new characters to meet (and eventually gacha pull for).

I haven’t gone too far with it yet, but I’m intrigued by the direction the story is going, particularly the fact that questions dating back to the game’s start might be getting answers. I’m somewhat certain the full conclusion of which won’t come until later in the 3.x patch series, but hey, I’m there for it!

Games Played November 2025

This list feels somewhat weird to me given it is practically a month over due, when last week feels like another lifetime at this point. Hah.

I’ve already spoken a little about Where Winds Meet, I think the other standout of November, only not reflected in hours because it doesn’t demand that sort of time from you, is Dispatch.

The final episodes came out in November, and I loooved it.

I’ve since heard that in the early days — pre-Covid — Dispatch was envisioned as being live action rather than animated, and only Covid coming in and complicating things drove them to the animated route instead.

I cannot even imagine this game as live action at this point, the animated style just worked so well.

Bring on Season 2!

Books Read November 2025

The urban fantasy kick continued. Spoiler: It didn’t stop for December, either.

I put a brief pause on reading through Dan Willis’ Arcane Casebook series in order to read Benedict Jacka’s third entry in The Inheritance of Magic series when it came out, which I quite enjoyed, but also wished the books were longer and covered more ground. Particularly in the context of having to wait so long between entries.

In any event (including my December reads), I’m currently 23 books read out of my 15 goal for the year. That 15 goal was set with books of a length more typically associated with epic fantasy and under that lens was a bit more ambitious as a goal than it has ended up being.

Not sure what this means for my 2026 goal just yet! I think adding two new (to me) authors to my UF rotation is enough for now, and it might be time to dip back into the fantasy landscape again.