[6.0] Endwalker: Post may contain potential spoilers.
Island Sanctuary
Its about time. A resort or “hideaway” is the place I been needing in these trying times. Whats funny is the literalness behind those words. This week so far has been one of the worst and best times as of now. From the driving/workshops and work in general to Final Fantasy XIV new update and soon to be arriving Steam Deck. It has been quite a week for me. I am even breaking one of my “loose” rules by taking a screenshot from an expansion that isn’t A Realm Reborn. In my defense. The inclusion of the Island Sanctuary has been a fairly significant update for myself. While I may have spent hundreds of hours in Stardew Valley, I never really looked at the Island Sanctuary as a form of replacement to it. Not even an alternative. To be frank, I saw it more as an outlet for my blogging ventures and a way to “have” something in an online game. While it may not be unique, but I still like the idea of ownership in some capacity. Especially, in a story/lore perspective.
Enough with introductions and reasons. For the rest of this week I’ll be taking screenshots specifically in the Island Sanctuary. As a way to show off some of the neat aspects of the Island and just a way to challenge myself in a way. The one aspect about this island is that it has some fairly bland aspects to it. Personally, I want to see if I can capture a degree of interest from those areas. I have a few ideas, but I’ll leave those for later.
Gameplay
In this little part I’ll roughly mention the overall gameplay that you can experience on the Island Sanctuary. To start things off. The main idea is to gather, craft and build everything from the resources from this island. As such all the necessary requirements to progress can all be found on the island. In fact, there appears to be nothing from the rest of the game that can even help you speed up the progression. A fairly interesting quirk almost similar to the Firmament in Heavensward.
One of the core ways of progressing on the Island is via the same three core aspects. From the looks of it. You will mainly benefit from the building and workshop aspects, but you could just grind and gather your way up the ranks. I wouldn’t advise that option. Assuming it takes you to gather one piece of material every second. Rank 4 would take you 3.75 hours of constant grinding and that doesn’t even consider the later ranks. Expanding your little hideaway area can easily put help you progress, but it does have time limitations behind them. Meaning, once you start building or exanding. It will take some time for those constructions efforts to complete. Sometimes in a matter of a few hours to what I assume could take nearly a day or more later on.
The Workshop is a fairly interesting fella. Essentially, you schedule out what items can be made on a daily basis and can even prepare as far as a week or two in advance. The crafters will make the items for aslong there’s material available and will sell them once completed. You don’t get gil out of the rewards, but a special currency for the Island Sanctuary itself. You can even combine certain items together to receive a bonus in quantity for aslong they are like-items. What adds a degree of complexity is the market board. The place has its own market board where there’s supply and demand you have to take into account. If there’s a higher demand you will get more money out of it and vice versa if its in low demand. Supply can even affect it as well. Essentially, it forces players to change their production to prevent a “meta” of sorts from creeping up. Of course, players will still find a way, but make it so that if you want to min-max your rewards. You gotta adapt to the market board. Don’t worry someone will make a website that will remove the need to decide on whats the best solution for every week soon.
Personally, if I am going to do that I’ll probably make my own little program than some other solution on the internet. Sounds more fun that way in my opinion.
Steam Deck Shenanigans
As of typing this post. My Steam Deck is currently out for delivery. I’m going to be hopping over to where it will be dropped off. It will be quite the experience and I’m not really sure on what I am going to do once I get it in my hands. Maybe I’ll try out Hades or something. Obviously, I am going to get FFXIV installed on it, but I don’t plan to do that immediately. I’ll think of something when I start messing with it. As such I won’t be talking too much about it till tomorrow most likely.
Driving stuff
While I was driving back from the “meetings”. I noticed some stellar cloud formations interacting with the sun. Sadly, I didn’t take any pictures of them due to me driving and borderline tired. Although, I wouldn’t deny that I was tempted to take some with my phone while driving. Unfortunately, I had no good locations to stop at to take pictures of it nor the rest stop that I could’ve stopped at had zero angles of what I wanted to get. Some time down the line I’ll due some photography out in the real world even if my focus is on screenshots for games.
Looks like thats going to be the conclusion for this post. Fairly hefty one today. I did consider on going to the extreme end and do 5000 words today, but I’ll do a Mother of All Posts another day. Then again it kind’ve felt like I did over 2000 words with this post. Hmm… Might have to change that for tomorrow then. Either way, there’s a lot to be said with everything I have going on all at once. Rather not spend it all in one spot.
May you folks have a rainy day. Atleast for those who need it.