Mother Gamer Plays Warframe

A friend of mine suggested that I check out the game Warframe. They thought I would like it since I like games like Phantasy Star Online and Mass Effect. Warframe is a free to play co-operative third person shooter game. It's a science fiction futuristic role playing game. You can play Warframe on the PC, Xbox One, or the Playstation 4. Unfortunately there is no cross platform play with this, but at least you have a choice about which one you want to play on.

You play as a member of the Tenno, a race of ancient warriors who have awoken from cryosleep and find themselves at war with a race known as the Grineer who appear to be human clones with metal mods and the Corpus a corporation with robots and laser technology. I found that concept pretty intriguing and decided to check it out on my computer.

There are three starter warframes to choose from; Mag, Volt, and Excalibur. I decided to go with Mag and started my adventure in Warframe and named her Pirotess Dragontamer like my Final Fantasy XIV character. The introductory tutorial is quite helpful which gave me a chance to get used to the battle controls. I also liked that you can change the colors of your warframe and customize it to your tastes.

My Mag warframe is pretty cool. 

There are so many missions you can do on each planet ranging from rescue missions to spy missions. You can do these missions solo, but it's definitely easier to do them with friends. The max number of people on a team is four and it does make a mission go a lot faster when you have a full team. Finding a team is fairly easy as you can make your match settings public and the game will match you with people who are doing the same mission.

Pirotess doing a mission with her friends.

I'm glad I tried Warframe out because I love it. It's a lot of fun to play and the story is very interesting. The graphics for the game look great and the voice acting and music is really good as well. It's hard to believe it's a free to play online game because there is so much content and so many great areas to explore. 

You can also do crafting in the game and it isn't boring. In many of the missions you get blueprints for weapons and different warframes which you can build in your ship. Level grinding is not boring at all because of the variety of the missions. You also have solo missions for ranking up your warframe. The max level for a warframe is 30 and you can level up your weapons and pets as well. 

Pirotess on her Frost warframe.

My husband Ron plays Warframe with me as well and he's really enjoying it also. It's a lot of fun playing the game together and with our friends. Having a good clan helps too because they can help you get missions done as well as helping with getting blueprints and items you need for crafting and modding equipment.

I'm also looking forward to the new expansion for the game, Plains of Eidolon because it looks fantastic and there's going to be even more things added including a new warframe. Warframe is so much fun and I love just exploring and doing all the events and missions with everyone. It's fast paced and fits in my wheel house for sci-fi space games. Now, I'm off to explore more of the galaxy!

Hanging out in our clan dojo. 

*Warframe is available to play on the following platforms: PC, Xbox One, and Playstation 4

The Adventures Of Pirotess: Crafting Fun With Culinarian

When I played Final Fantasy XI I never really bothered with crafting. I just never had any interest in it and was busy doing other things in the game. Now, with Final Fantasy XIV I've enjoyed all the different things that can be done such as Fates, exploring dungeons, PVP, and beastmen quests. There is also crafting. I had unlocked the crafting jobs, but never really tried them out. I did do a bit on Botanist which I liked, but I got busy doing main story quest content. I decided I wanted to try out culinarian which is a cooking job so I asked people in my Free Company about it and a few of them had done culinarian and were giving me pointers on it and how to get started.

I went to Limsa Lominsa Upper Decks where the cooking guild is located and started the first culinarian quest. Once you've joined the cooking guild you can get many of the basic ingredients from the vendor there to start your beginning recipes. You also need fire and water shards for cooking. This is where my botanist came in handy because I could go to different areas in Eorzea and gather the shards and ingredients I needed. Botanist and culinarian complement each other really well.

Pirotess begins her journey as a culinarian.

I found that I loved culinarian. It's a lot of fun to do. It's easy to navigate in the user menu which is nice. There is a crafting log, so you can make a recipe and get credit for it as well getting experience points for it. You get more experience if it's a dish you are making for the first time. 

The crafting log for culinarian gives you a list of recipes to make.

You have abilities on culinarian to help ensure that your crafting doesn't fail. Steady Hand for example improves your action success rate by twenty percent for the next five steps of your crafting. Maser's Mend is another useful one because it restores item durability while you are crafting. All of these actions require control points, so you need to be aware of how many control points each action takes in order for your crafting to be successful. If you do it right, you can even craft high quality dishes. Craftsmanship is a little more subtle, but just as important. The great thing with culinarian is you can cook up some dishes that increase your crafstmanship for a set amount of time and you can cook up a storm.

Pirotess cooking a dish. The hotbar shows the culinarian abilities.

When you start crafting on culinarian you get a job class quest every five levels. When you're at higher levels, it's every three. With these quests you have to cook a specific dish for the quest and turn it in. It gets a bit more challenging at higher levels because then you have to make a specific dish that has to be high quality. My culinarian is now level 47 and when I had to do one of the more challenging quests it was a tad frustrating, but I was determined I was not going to give up until I got it right. I finally managed it and was pretty stoked with myself for sticking with it because it paid off. 

Pirotess turns in a dish for her culinarian quest.

For me, culinarian is a crafting job that is a lot of fun for me. I like creating all the different dishes and it's something helpful I can do for the people in my Free Company. I've made a lot of dishes for the tanks, the mages, and the damage dealers. I've also made dishes that help with crafting for all the folks that do crafting jobs. The fact that botanist goes hand in hand with it is also very cool because when I see that I'm running low on ingredients, I can just go gathering and get everything I need. My Free Company has a lot of great people in it also who do really nice things like send me ingredients for my culinarian while they're out adventuring. They know that I love culinarian and that I am constantly crafting so it's a win win for everyone. 

I'm also grateful to everyone who gives me tips and pointers on how I can get the most leveling in while crafting, suggesting foods I can use to improve control and crafstmanship, and letting me use things from our house garden for my crafting. Seriously, you guys are awesome and I appreciate you.

I'm glad I tried out culinarian because it turned out to be something I really like and when I'm taking a break from adventuring, I can just craft to my heart's content.  See you at the next adventure everyone!

Pirotess and Snuky, culinarians crafting together!

*Final Fantasy XIV is available to play on the following platforms: PC and Playstation 4