TwitchCon '22 in San Diego!

This past month was my most anticipated trip of the year: TwitchCon in San Diego (October 3-8).  It had been 3 years since the last TwitchCon, which is crazy when you think about it.  Covid was such a brutal virus that it knocked out life for a good two years and even major conventions were suspended for a 3-year hiatus.  We lost a good amount of our lives to that outbreak.

If you don't know by now, Twitch has become a big part of my life.  I spend roughly 30 hours a week streaming on the platform and many more countless hours watching others and hanging out in their communities.  I honestly believe you can make real friends off this platform, and TwitchCon helps solidify that belief when you finally get to meet these people in person.

This year, I had been planning the TwitchCon trip with my friend AlecAfterHours since March when the convention was announced.  Alec is a friend I met through Twitch because we both had a love for Fortnite, and we spend a lot of nights just playing Fortnite and talking about stuff going on around the platform.  We were both at the TwitchCon in 2019 but didn't actually get to meet that time, although chances are we were probably around each other since my friend Stapus was friends with many of his friends who were there.

For San Diego, we booked an AirBnB for 10 people, expecting to invite many of our friends to come party with us.  Because that's basically what TwitchCon is...a big party where you'll see several people that you've seen streaming or chatting on the platform.  I then bought a "3-day ticket + party" for the convention but was only planning to make it out there 2 of the 3 days.  Honestly, the convention itself is nothing too exciting and I usually spend more time meeting up with people than checking out exhibits and shows.

I got in on Thursday night and met up with Alec and everyone to grab some snacks and drinks for the AirBnB, which was a pretty nice space about a 10-minute drive away from downtown in Golden Hills.

Later that night, we headed over to the convention center to grab our badges.  A few of the girls staying with us are Partners on Twitch, so they went to the exclusive Partner Party while I met up with friends at the bar.  It was wild to meet so many friends that night that I had accumulated over the past three years.  I made it a game where I was posting in my Discord channel my location and if you found me, I would buy you a drink.  Needless to say, I did spend quite a bit of money this weekend, but I do like to treat my friends!

On Friday, we didn't make it to the convention until 2pm because we had stayed up the previous night until 5am hanging out and drinking at the AirBnB.  When we got to the convention, I literally didn't leave the Artist Alley because I ran into several friends and by the time that was over, I was ready to go to the Kappa Kabana for some bar games and drinks.  Tess and I challenged Alec and Kevin to a couple rounds of cornhole, which we would eventually split 1-1 and we never actually got to resolve that competition.  On Friday night, we had made reservations for 20 people at the Crab Hut.  Turns out we ended up having 25 people show up, which I was all for.  The more the merrier!  Just another example of how crazy TwitchCon can get and the number of friends you have the opportunity to hang out with throughout the weekend!

I spent most of the night barhopping until I eventually made my way back to the AirBnB to use the hot tub.  However, at 2am in the morning, we heard a large crash outside our AirBnB.  A drunk driver had hit another car and swerved into the fence of the AirBnB.  Fortunately no one was hurt, but it was clear those guys should not have been driving.  Eventually the cops showed up, but the main annoyance of the night was that one of the guys in the car that caused the accident got abandoned and kept pestering us for help.  He was apparently military and was trying to get back to his naval base, which would be a 40-minute walk down the streets of San Diego.  I tried to direct him how to get there, but after he walked one block he turned around and continued to ask us for help.  Eventually we caved in and arranged an Uber for him, which was not an easy task considering he had a concussion and was bleeding from the mouth.  I guess police did not feel it was appropriate to call this guy an ambulance.  It ended up being a really long night for us and I didn't fall asleep until 7am.

I slept in on Saturday and completely missed the convention.  It's a good thing I got a 3-day pass and I knew I was only going to go there on two of the three days anyway.  That evening, we made reservations for the Rustic Root to get those memorable tomahawk steaks that I loved from my experience 3 years ago.  We invited only the people from the AirBnB for a more intimate and private experience.  Later that night, we had a gathering at our AirBnB before heading out to Hillcrest, so we made it out there for an interesting but fun experience.  There was a club that was open past 2am (although you could no longer order alcohol at that point) and we literally danced in a crowded dance floor for an hour.  Even though I don't dance often, it was actually a fun time given the environment.  I guess you had to be there. :D

On Sunday I went back to the convention and made an effort to actually see the exhibits and the Expo Hall and I talked to several exhibitors regarding products and games that I had interest in.  I then went to the Old Spaghetti Factory for dinner to return for that Garlic Shrimp Alfredo I enjoyed three years ago, but they were out of that dish!  I was severely disappointed and ended up getting some mushroom pasta that I didn't even like and only ate half of. :( Oh well, it is what it is.  The rest of the night I would spend barhopping until I eventually got invited to a huge TwitchCon party in La Mesa.  This place was literally a mansion on a secluded hilltop.  Apparently it was an AirBnB that the renters paid their neighbors $500 each to prevent them from reporting noise complaints.  They also hired security to check IDs, ensuring no minors would be illegally underage drinking.  Someone even bought several taco boxes from Taco Bell at 3am to feed everyone.  Although it was a really big space that could've housed a 100-person party, there was only about 50 people there, which was kind of disappointing.  Regardless, it was a fun time and they did have a pool table where Alec and I doubled up to play anyone who challenged us and of course we did not lose (even though i don't think Alec made more than a ball a game haha).

On Monday, everyone had planned to leave in the evening, but we went out to Haidilao Hotpot in La Jolla for a long afternoon lunch.  This was actually a really good restaurant and probably the best hot pot experience I've ever had, and I don't even like hot pot that much.  I didn't fly out until Tuesday morning because the only direct flight from San Diego back to Tucson leaves at 10am daily and that would have been painful to do after a late night of drinking on Sunday night had I flown out Monday.  I got a hotel for the night at Wyndham Bayside, watched the Chiefs play and then called it a night.

TwitchCon 2022 was the best TwitchCon I had been to so far and I expect next year's to be even better!  I was constantly meeting up with people and pretty much met everyone I was hoping to meet up with, and I expect it to grow bigger and better over time.  Until next year!

Final Fantasy Record Keeper - End of Service

***I started this entry but never finished it and now it's been over a year since FFRK in the US was terminated.  Rather than delete it completely, I decided to just post whatever I had written.  Thanks for your understanding!***

Back in June, I blogged about how my favorite game on the mobile phone was coming to an end.  This is a game that I had played since release, I was so excited to hear about a game that featured all my favorite characters and battles from one of my favorite video game franchises of all time: Final Fantasy.  I was so saddened when I learned that the game would be reaching an end of service, with no ability to download and play the game offline.  Here is a dedication to one of the great games to ever hit the mobile platform...

Final Fantasy Record Keeper

Final Fantasy Record Keeper (or FFRK for short) was a turn-based game that featured battles of your party up to 5 characters against enemies bosses throughout all Final Fantasy games in the series: FF1-15, FFT, Type-0, even Kingdom Hearts and Brave Exvius made cameos in the game.  What made the game great was that there was never any ads, and the developers rewarded you with their in-game currency by completing missions or logging in during certain events.  For the entire course of the game, I only payed $30 once, mostly as a support to the game's creators.  By the end of the game, I had more resources than I could spend and I never felt handicapped in the game during the time I played it.  

Mythril was used for the relic draws, which basically determined what Limit Breaks your characters had access to.  Relic draws were typically 50 mythril each, with a chance to grab 1-3 Limit Break granting relics out of a set of 10.

Gil was mostly just use to upgrade characters and items, as you can see I had over 443 million by the end of the game, so I was never short on that resource.

Stamina basically allowed you to enter dungeons, costing anywhere from 1-60 stamina to play the battle with unlimited restarts.  If you left the damage, you lost the stamina, but you would gain one every 3 minutes.  The 275 amount you see below was the maximum possible, which would take half a day to recharge fully.   You could also spend Mythril or obtain Stamina Potions to recharge to max capacity.

Mythril, Gil, and Stamina

FFRK was also completely turn-based, but you had the option of an Active Time Battle (ATB), where the enemy would keep attacking you even if you didn't put in actions, or a Wait mode, where the time would stop until you took your characters' turns.  You also had limited actions: Attack, Defend, Ability 1, and Ability 2.  The simplicity made it easy to pick up, so the strategy came in executing Soul Breaks and whatever abilities you had access to.

What made FFRK great was that it encompassed all the games in the Final Fantasy franchise.  I collected all the characters and leveled them up to a maximum level.  Although there is an addition leveling system past Lv99 called "Magia Levels", which basically allowed you to assign points to various powerups like elemental offense and defense, hit points and magic points.

All 262 Playable Characters

Before I delve into the characters deeper, I would like to explain the missions available for players to embark on.  Each set of missions usually had it's own theme, some related to the Final Fantasy world while some where actually unique to the game's story itself (which involves the Record Keepers who are responsible for keeping records of all the Final Fantasy memories stored in paintings).

Realm Dungeons are where the game starts you.  Each realm has several dungeons that are memorable points in each Final Fantasy game, and the stages get progressively harder.  I still remember when I first started playing the game, I had so much trouble advancing through stages.  I would have to carefully plan my parties to survive the mobs on the way to the boss fights.  As I leveled up over time, these dungeons became much easier to the point were I could simply auto-battle and collect all the rewards at the end.  Regardless, they are important because they give you Stamina Shards, which are basically what allow you to play the game more frequently (unless you choose to refill stamina with mythril or a potion).  Each Realm had a Cassic side (normal mode) and Master side (more difficult, with additional challenges to complete), although I would argue these Dungeons were some of the easiest to complete.

Realm Dungeons

Record Dungeons was the game's story mode, although I'll be honest, I got a little disinterested and eventually started skipping all of it.  They introduce about 5 story characters: Keeper, Elarra, Dr. Mog, Biggs, and Wedge.  There's also Cid and Shadowsmith, but neither of playable.  The record dungeons bounce around a lot across all Final Fantasy realms, but what made it unique is that it actually recreated the stories via cutscenes.  There were even some dungeons that had explorable maps, although you could only click to move to a location, there was no free movement.  They only released two episodes for record dungeons and they forced certain characters into your party from each realm.  And finally, the characters in the Record Dungeons had separate levels from the rest of the game, which actually made some of the dungeons more challenging then say the Realm Dungeons.

"Prelude" Record Dungeons

"Canon" Record Dungeons

As the game continued to expand, they introduced methods to level up characters quicker and upgrade abilities and weapons faster.  There were multiple resources that achieved this:

Orbs were used to create and upgrade abilities.   Various abilities could be used across all characters, but some were specific to certain classes.  Most of the time, I spent my excess stamina farming orbs so that I could max out any ability I wanted to use in battle.

Growth Eggs were used to level up characters, but eventually I found these worthless once all my characters hit level 99.

Crystal Water was used when a character reached maximum level, but only gave a small boost to the key stats: HP, MP, Defense, Resistance, Attack, Magic, and Mind.

Adamantite and Scarletite were for upgrade weapons to a maximum level based on their rarity.  In addition, Rosetta Stones were something they added to try and make weapons slightly stronger once maxed.  However, I felt standard weapons via Relic Draws became worthless once Artifacts were introduced, which made both of these materials worthless towards the end.

Rainbow Crystals were used to upgrade Artifacts, the strongest weapons in the game.  So these had the most value.  There were more Artifacts than anyone could upgrade, so you had to really be decisive about what you wanted to upgrade, since the only way to obtain Rainbow Crystals was to destroy the items you obtained via Relic Draws.

Arcana was the only resource you couldn't farm in a Resource Dungeon, and these were used to upgrade Magicite.  Rat Tails were also unfarmable, and those were used to upgrade Historia Crystals.  Both of those I'll get into later.  I was able to max out all my Magicitie so Arcana was not really an issue, but rat tails were definitely scarce and it was very expensive to max out all your Historia Crystals.

Finally we have Motes, which basically were added midway through the course of the game to give even more bonuses to your characters and unlock classes, which gave the characters more abilities to choose from.  Motes were definitely the way to truly unlock a character maximum capabilities, since it also unlocked very powerful abilities specific only to that hero.  There was no way for me to unlock every character's maximum. 

My Collection of Resources

The most challenging dungeons in the game started with the Nightmare and Magicite dungeons.  Nightmare involved a ramp up to a difficult boss, usually with some special gimmick for the final boss in each.  Once you completed a Nightmare dungeon, you'd obtain a powerful ability to use in battle.  Unfortunately, the only ones that were useful were Curada, Valigarmanda, and Affliction Break.  Occasionly Reraise was helpful, but Soul Breaks with Last Stand were far better for Revive-on-KO.  Regardless, these were important to complete in order to unlock the more useful Magicite dungeons.  Magicite dungeons were all elemental based and my favorite dungeons in the game.  By beating these you'd be rewarded with Magicite, which was not only a summon you could call within battle but also increased your elemental damage.  And the more you combined your obtained magicite, the more powerful your party became.  I felt like Magicite dungeons were the most balanced dungeons in the game, where you really couldn't advance to the next level until you mastered the current level.

 

Nightmare and Magicite Dungeons Mastered

Like the Magicite dungeons, there existed Dreams, Torment and Cardia Dungeons (Dreambreaker and Dragonking), which instead focused on Realm synergy instead of an elemental focus.  So for example, instead of specializing on Ice damage, it was more important to bring characters all from the same Final Fantasy Realm to really boost your success.  Beating these dungeons required the use of Historia Crystals, which not only allowed a powerful summon to be called within battle but also boosted the power of characters from the same realm.  Again, beating the lowest levels of these dungeons made it easier to tackle the next, making for a progressive climb throughout the dungeon gauntlet.  Cardia dungeons were the hardest dungeons in the game to complete and unfortunately I could not master any of the Dragonking challenges, although I hoped that I would have eventually had the game service not ended when it did.

Dreams, Torment, and Cardia Dungeons

Magicite was definitely easier to obtain the maximum levels because it was in the game for longer, but I was unable to max out all the Historia Crystals given how late in the game they were introduced before the shutdown.

Magicite and Historia Crystals

The playthroughs of FFRK varied among each user, the strength of the characters mostly being determined by the Soul Breaks they obtained via the Relic Draws.  This is the fun of a gatcha game.  You spent your Mythril in hopes you'd gain the powerful Soul Breaks for the characters you liked the most.  In some cases, there were just some Soul Breaks that were so good, you just couldn't afford to pass them up.  In the remainder of this blog entry, I will go through each Final Fantasy Realm to describe which characters were the best in my playthrough, basically an ode to my strongest parties in each realm.

***END OF ENTRY***

Green Juice!

It's no secret that my diet doesn't always consist of enough vegetables.  I've been in talks with friends who promote "green drinks" to supplement a lack of vegetable source in a diet, so I am going to start drinking them on a daily basis.  At first they recommended I try "green powder", but I couldn't find it easily at my local grocery store.  What I did find was this stuff called "Naked", which has a couple of green juice options full of fruits and leafy vegetables like spinach and kale.

Honestly the stuff doesn't taste that bad!  My goal is to drink an 8oz glass a day and see how it goes for me.  I also bought some steamable veggies that I can make as sides with my heavy meat diet in an effort to be more health conscious as I grow older.

Yeah I know, not a super exciting blog post this month, but I didn't really have anything else to report lately!  Anyway, here's to living a hopefully more healthy life! :)

It's time for another Bowling Ball!

In 2018, I bought another bowling ball, the Code Red by Storm Bowling.  While things started out slowly, I eventually learned how to take my game to the next level.  I attribute a lot of it to a change in leagues.  In 2020, there weren't enough teams in the IBM & Friends league anymore to hold a league, so we were invited to play in the other league on Thursday nights at Bowlero (on Broadway / Camino Seco).  Not only was I more motivated to bowl against new opponents, I also had new teammates who were bowling well and pushed me to try harder.  Here are the averages for the past 4 seasons with the Code Red:

As you can see, 180 to 200 is a huge jump.  I've been a 190+ bowler before and my best season before 2018 was a 193, but I definitely had a struggle for a few years.  In addition to bowling motivation in a new and bigger league, I think a lot has to do with a change in my approach, which I've improved over the last two years.  I have a better understanding of where to start my approach and finish the delivery.  I'm also able to read the lanes better and tell if I'm hitting the pocket light or heavy when I leave a 10-pin.

My expectations of myself are now higher than ever.  These days, if I don't bowl a 200, something is "wrong" and I'm expected to be better.  I don't think the bowling ball really changes the results, but it certainly can help.  I'll be changing my bowling ball every 4 years now and next up is the Infinite PhysiX from Storm Bowling.  $200 for the ball and $40 to get it drilled.

Here's hoping I can keep up the string of 200+ averages!