achievechamp

A blog for tracking my achievement hunting progress in FFXIV, plus giving to charitable causes for every achievement, uh...achieved.

[achievechamp]

Achieving for Good

What is this?

In winter of 2023, I started getting really into achievement hunting in Final Fantasy XIV. I also wanted to get more involved in giving to charitable causes since the world is, you know, how it is, but since I already volunteer with two non-profits and don't have a lot of money to spare for donations, I didn't really have the energy for any more volunteering and I can only donate in small amounts.

Thinking about how much time I've been spending achievement hunting lately, that gave me an idea: create a system to gamify giving and use that system to ensure I'm only gaming as much as I can afford to give to charity.

Thus: AchieveChamp.

What is this system?

Each month, I'll select a charitable organization to give to and pledge a certain amount (subject to change from month to month, depending on my finances and whether I'm working on long-term achievements) to give per achievement I gain in FFXIV. I'll update my progress here weekly and donate at the end of each month. If I find myself achieving more than I can afford, that's a sign for me to put the game down for a while and do more work (I'm self-employed, so the amount I earn is directly tied to the amount of work I do) until I have more money to give again.

Can I get involved?

If you'd like to get involved as an achievement hunter, you can DM me or submit your progress to this blog. If you don't want to do achievement hunting or don't play FFXIV but want to match donations, you can follow our tags, post receipts of your donations (remember to black out identifying personal information!!), and reblog and share our posts.

While this blog is mostly an accountability tool for myself, I'd love to see more people get involved too. When you can only make small donations to good causes, it can feel like you aren't making a difference, but a collective working together for a cause can do great things, even if we can each only individually contribute a little bit (life lessons from FF, tbh).

Is this like a charity drive?

No, more like an accountability system. Even if other people want to play along or match my donations, I don't intend on ever handling anyone else's money but my own. So, if you decide to get involved, you can rest assured your donations are passing directly from your hands to the benefiting causes.

[achievechamp]

December Report

A few days late, but here is what will be my final AchieveChamp donation for a bit, at least until the ~economy's~ impact on my personal finances becomes more certain (in a positive direction, obvs).

I've only got 20 this month, and part of that is because of that "With Saw in Hand VII" achievement and all its horrid little siblings. Those Heavensward large levequests are, perhaps, one of the worst concepts ever introduced to the game, and I've been spending months trying to knock them out of the way, and I think I still have at least one month to go.*

*as always, not counting what I need for Culinarian and Fishing once I eventually pick those up. I need to clear out my inventory first, though, which means getting rid of all this ding dang Heavensward crafting stuff.

Anyway, that's $20 (plus fees) to charity.

I think overall this has been a great project for helping me manage my free time and disposable income, so I hope to dive back into it someday. Until then, it will be nice not to have to take all these screenshots of my Lodestone page for a while.

[achievechamp]

Efnisien's report for November will be a couple of days late this month while I get some financials in order.

[achievechamp]

Quick update!: I know I'm going to have very, very few achievements for November, so I'm instead going to roll October and November's giving up together. I will also, in my tradition of donating to Indigenous American causes for Thanksgiving as a form of micro-reparations, be looking for local Indigenous groups or projects to receive November's donation.

[achievechamp]

omg I'm still late but here are my October and November cheevies

I've definitely been playing less lately (Mostly because of Veilguard. And burnout.) so it's only a meager 35 between these two months, which is $35 for charity. As I mentioned, I have an annual tradition of giving to Indigenous causes in November, so this month the charity in question is Future Generations Collaborative, which does Native advocacy, education, and community outreach in the Portland metro area. Also, my PayPal receipt there just about gave me a heart attack with the total number I've donated this year down there, when I just glanced down at it without reading the "so far this year" part.

Going into December, I will be thinking about whether I want to put a pause on AchieveChamp going into 2025. I'm not giving from a place of enormous financial privilege, and the economic forecast in the US for 2025 looks, uh, pretty bleak, so I will likely need to tighten my purse strings for the rocky road ahead. Speaking of roads, I also need a new car. So December is likely going to be my final AchieveChamp month, at least for a while, and unfortunately, it isn't likely to go out with a huge bang.

[achievechamp]

Efnisien's report for November will be a couple of days late this month while I get some financials in order.

[achievechamp]

Quick update!: I know I'm going to have very, very few achievements for November, so I'm instead going to roll October and November's giving up together. I will also, in my tradition of donating to Indigenous American causes for Thanksgiving as a form of micro-reparations, be looking for local Indigenous groups or projects to receive November's donation.

[achievechamp]

Efnisien's report for November will be a couple of days late this month while I get some financials in order.

[achievechamp]

Monthly Update - September

I'm already late on my usual monthly post, but the full details of my achievement hunting will be coming along later since I've been under the weather the past couple of days and I don't really have the energy to do my usual full post atm. I did want to get my donation in before we're too deep into the month, though.

This was my quietest month so far, with only 19 achievements, totaling $19 (plus transaction fees) for charity.

[achievechamp]

Emmy Weeks 31(2)-35 (8/1-8/31) Report

I'm not late, you're late... Okay I'm really really late this month... But to be fair the start of my month had me doing a lot work, then I spent a weekend at a convention, then last week I broke my ankle... So yeah, it's been a busy September. Let's see what August looked like.

Week 31(2) (8/1-8/3)

Week 32 (8/4-8/10)

Week 33 (8/11-8/17)

Week 34 (8/18-8/24)

Week 36 (8/25-8/31)

Such a mixed bag of stuff. Treasure maps, fishing, triple triad, and so so much Bozja. I finally went back and finished the plot for Bozja and started working on the resistance weapons. I now have finally beat all of the Triple Triad NPCs (that'll show in September's wrap-up) so that's cool! I'm currently working on the achievement for having cards 1-312. I'm only 4 away!

Here are my August totals:

Week 31(2) (8/1-8/3) Total: 2 Achievements Week 32 (8/4-8/10) Total: 10 Achievements Week 33 (8/11-8/17) Total: 15 Achievements Week 34 (8/18-8/24) Total: 18 Achievements Week 35 (8/25-8/31) Total: 10 Achievements August Monthly Totals: 55 Achievements

That's $55 for August. Here's the receipt:

I ended up adding in some processing fees as well. But I wanted a nice round number. And here are my stats as of 9/17

Total Achievement Points: 16,445 Brynhildr Rank: #306 Global Rank: #21,525

I already know September is going to be quieter. Unless I decide to just start pounding out new achievements in the next two weeks... We'll see I guess!

[achievechamp]

Monthly Report - August

My new scholar glam ended up accidentally very matchy-matchy with my chocobo.

Remember when I said I'd probably be scaling back my achievement hunting this month?

Me neither! That's 43 achievements, and now that I'm out of the MSQ grind, and I'm back to $1 per cheevie, so that's another $43 for charity!

Plus processing fee. Idk why, but this time it routed me specifically to UNRWA's US branch. You can give too at UNRWA if that's within your financial means.

Anyway, as you might have seen from my achievements, there's a lot of purple in there. I've been doing a lot of relic quests--both for splendorous tools and resistance weapons. Why those, specifically? I don't know. I guess because they're currently taking up the most space in my inventory with all the materials they need. But splendorous tools is a pretty easy endeavor now that Dawntrail is out, so I can knock those out pretty fast these days.

My achievement score on Lodestone is now 12,455, and I'm now ranked #1,027 on Brynhildr. According to Lalachievements, I've completed 43% of all available achievements, which is where I was before Dawntrail--the addition of new achievements in the new expac knocked me back down to 42%, and now I can keep climbing. September will probably be more relic weapons & tools, plus leveling some more of my classes up to 100.

[achievechamp]

Emmy Weeks 26(2)-31(1) (6/27-7/31) Report

And of course I'm late. To be fair, I was working on a presentation about music in Ulitma Thule for the past week.

So Dawntrail... I have many, many thoughts on it. And I will not be sharing them here. However, I can say the graphical update has been amazing! Here's a pretty similar picture to one I took a while ago. If you haven't been to Ultima Thule after the update, I suggest you do! The sky is beautiful!

Here's what I did during Dawntrail and the rest of July:

Week 26(2) (6/27-6/30)

Week 27 (7/1-7/6)

Week 28 (7/7-7/13)

Week 29 (7/14-7/20)

Week 30 (7/21-7/27)

Lots from DT, lots of crafting and gathering, a number of raids because they were on my Wonderous Tales and I was close to finish a couple. And the one I'm most proud of currently!:

I've now caught every Big Fish from ARR, HW, and StB! I have 5 Big Fish left in the game (until they add them in DT), 2 in ShB and 3 in EW. I'm currently taking it pretty easy in game. Just crafting, gathering, and sometimes going battle content (I really gotta finish leveling classes so I can do the role quests...)

Here are my July (and end of June) totals:

Week 26(2) (6/27-6/30) Total: 6 Achievements Week 27 (7/1-7/6) Total: 25 Achievements Week 28 (7/7-7/13) Total: 20 Achievements Week 29 (7/14-7/20) Total: 15 Achievements Week 30 (7/21-7/27) Total: 13 Achievements Week 31(1) (7/28-7/31) Total: 0 Achievements July Totals: 79 Achievements

That's 79 achievements at $0.50 per achievement, rounded up to $40 for the month. I'll be back to $1 per achievement for August.

Here are my Lalachievement stats (as of 8/5)

Total Achievement Points: 15,925 Brynhildr Rank: #348 Global Rank: #24.267

[achievechamp]

Monthly Report - Dawntrail Early Access & July

Hmm, well, regardless of my feelings on the quality of Dawntrail's MSQ, I certainly did play through all of it and then some. And, as expected, picked up a fair amount of achievements along the way. Whoo boy.

If you notice any of those are out of order, no you didn't. To spare you the effort of counting them all yourself, that's 69 cheevos (nice). Most of them are Dawntrail-related, but there's a couple of PVP and Custom Deliveries achievements peppered in there as well, plus *squint* a hunt log? Look, I've been having a weird time with this game since Dawntrail came out.

In the future, I expect my achievement hunting to slow down quite a bit, at least for a while. I'm thankfully starting to get my health a little more wrangled again, and that has me wanting to do more activities that involve me, uhhh, not sitting at this computer. The surprising drop in quality with the MSQ writing has also got me kind of burned, and I'm not really champing at the bit for the next patch story-wise (I am excited to see the new gameplay additions, though--DT's combat has been stellar). All that together, and my focus might be more on other projects for the next while, although I still intend to keep this going for as long as I'm earning achievements with Efnisien.

Anyway, onto to the giving.

69 achievements at $0.50 per achievement means a total of $34.50, which I'm just gonna round up to $35 for simplicity's sake. Once again, I'll be putting that money toward UNRWA to support their efforts providing on-the-ground aid to Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank.

Oh, I nearly forgot to update on my current achievement standings too! My achievement score on Lodestone is now 12,080, I'm ranked #1,104 on my world, and my new rarest achievement is "With Axe in Hand VIII" for completing 125 unique botany levequests (which is all but 5 of the botany levequests in the game). Considering how that one requires doing some of Heavensward's very annoying large levequests, and how unpopular levequests are in general, I don't imagine that one's getting dethroned any time soon.

[loonstar256]

Emmy Weeks 23-26(1) (6/1-6/26) Report

Here we go! One last look to the horizon with the girls. Emmy is ready for some fun summertime adventures! Not pictured, her new summery adventure outfit!

In less than 24 hours, Dawntrail will be out and I'll be happily playing, locked in my bedroom for the next 2 weeks (not true, we're going to a concert next weekend), living my best FFXIV summer vacation life! I'm so excited!!!

Now I set my monthly amount to $0.50 per achievement, partly to account for early access for Dawntrail, but also because I knew I was going to do the Yo-kai event and that's something like... almost 40 achievements from one event? Anyway, here's how the weeks have gone so far:

Week 23 (6/1/-6/8)

Week 24 (6/9-6/15)

Week 25 (6/16-6/22)

Week 26(1) (6/23-6/26)

Besides the Yo-kai event what I did was fishing. Lots and lots of ocean and Big Fishing! Also some gathering and crafting, and I made it floor 100 of Palace of the Dead finally! On the topic of Big Fishing, I made some awesome new friend and we've all celebrated our various wins and commiserated over time zone issues keeping us from getting to certain windows (I see you Ealad Skaan, 8:40 am on early release day. Not gonna happen...) It's been really fun and I highly suggest starting it if you haven't because Big Fishing people are some of the nicest I've met! I'm missing 11 Big Fish between ARR and EW, one is Stormblood (cure you Ruby Dragon!), two in Shadowbringers (Ealad Skaan and Lancetfish. I did not have time to be in Lancet jail..) and 8 in EW (all the fish added in 6.55, plus Vidyutvat Wrasse and Dudina Fish). Just in time for a whole new slew of fish to get!

You know, I had plans to get ready for Dawntrail, instead I fished. No regrets honestly :)

Here are my June running totals (pre-Dawntrail):

Week 23 (6/1-6/8) Total: 27 Achievements Week 24 (6/9-6/15) Total: 28 Achievements Week 25 (6/16-6/22) Total: 8 Achievements Week 26(1) (6/23-6/26) Total: 9 Achievements Current May Total: 72 Achievements

That 72 achievements at $0.50 per achievement for $36 for chariety!

Here are my Lalachievement stats (as of 6/27)

Total Achievement Points: 15,110 Brynhildr Rank: #393 Global Rank: #27,111

I have a new rarest achievement! Specters of the Ruby Sea for catching one of every type of fish present during a Spectral Current on the Ruby Sea. According to Lalachievements it is the 56th! rarest achievement!

Now onto Dawntrail! As we know, Our Journey Will Never End :)

[achievechamp]

Monthly Report - Pre-Dawntrail June

The last known image of lofi Efnisien. Ready to head out on the next adventure!

But first, while maintenance in underway, let's count my cheevies for the month so far. It's been a fairly quiet month for two reasons: 1) I clocked in some massive long-term achievements, so while there aren't a lot, they are impactful; and more significantly 2) I finally got around to playing Baldur's Gate 3, so...that's been my spare time lately. Hopefully I can finish my current run today or tomorrow, because I don't imagine I'll be picking it up again for a while once Dawntrail comes out.

Anyway, onto the achievements.

That's 21 achievements for $21 for charity, which is still no slouch, but there are some big-ticket items here I'm really excited for, namely those last gathering ones. With those out of the way, I am DONE* with ALL** crafting- and gathering-related achievements in ARR. I never have to craft or gather at the ARR level ever again***.

*except culinarian

**and fishing

***until I do

I also finally got around to finishing Hydatos yesterday, to ensure that I was all caught up on Krile-related story content before Dawntrail. I got a nice little achievement for that, but eventually I will have to go back for the long grind of relic weapons.

Anyway, let's get to giving, then I'll talk more about Dawntrail plans. I'll be again donating to UNRWA for their work providing life-saving support to Palestinian refugees.

As for the plan here for Dawntrail, as I mentioned last time, I'll be scaling back my commitment to $0.50 per achievement to account for the fact that I'm not really sure what my achievement-earning pace will look like playing a fresh expac. I'll also be cognizant of spoilers, so while I'll try to make sure I'm not posting screenshots of anything that hasn't already appeared in promotional materials, I'll still be tagging for Dawntrail spoilers with the tag "#dawntrail spoilers" for any post that includes any Dawntrail content until, idk, probably at least October. For the achievements themselves, while I think they're generally designed to be spoiler-free in their descriptions, I'll still keep an eye out for anything too spoilery in achievement names or icons and censor them accordingly.

Finally, and unrelated to achievement hunting, I leave you off with some pics of Emmy and I at a Pride Parade that marched through Brynhildr the other week. Happy Pride, Free Palestine, and see y'all on the trail :)

[achievechamp]

Emmy Weeks 21-22 (5/19-5/31) and Monthly Round-Up

Ultros, nice of you to show up to the Make it Rain Campaign at the Gold Saucer! This second half of the month has been filled with one main thing: Big Fishing. Lots and lots of Big Fishing. And mostly failing at it. As of the time I'm writing this (6/1/24 evening) I am missing a total of 6 Big Fish in Heavensward and Stormblood (2 in HW and 4 in StB). I stayed up late last night just to get a chance to get the fish at the Mercantile Dock in Yanxia (it paid off, I did catch it!) Also, ocean fishing. I have been doing a good amount of ocean fishing. It's lots of fun :) And then yesterday I did a bunch of individual treasure maps. It was nice to do something with a guaranteed reward... Here's how the rest of May turned out:

Week 21 (5/19-5/25)

Week 22 (5/26-5/31)

Yeah all I basically did the last couple of weeks was fish. Ocean or otherwise. It's a nice thing to do in game, cause work has been a lot this month and it's nice to not have to think too much!

Here are the May Totals:

Week 21 (5/19-5/25) Total: 2 Achievements Week 22 (5/26-5/31) Total: 11 Achievements Final May Total: 40 Achievements

40 achievements at $1 is $40 for May

Here are my Lalachievement stats (as of 6/1)

Total Achievement Points: 13,950 Brynhildr Rank: #467 Global Rank: #29,621

Like Efnisien, I'm going to bring my amount per achievement down to $0.50 for June (and probably July. Depends on how fast I'm going through Dawntrail!)

[achievechamp]

""Weekly"" Report - It's Has Been May

I'm still dealing with chronic migraines and each med my neurologist prescribes me is worse than the last, BUT I have discovered that if I'm suffering from certain migraines symptoms and not others (mainly: can't focus my right eye but unimpacted by Needs to Be Horizontal Mode) then I can still do the content in this game that doesn't require quick reactions or a lot of reading. Which is good, because I spent last month in a desperate race to clear out all, ALL*, of my ARR crafting-related achievements so I could clear out unneeded materials from my retainer inventories before Dawntrail.

*except Culinarian, which I have still not picked up at all

The effect of all this means I got a LOT of achievements this month:

As you can see, aside from a strong showing on the PvP end, a bit of Eureka stuff, and lots of Gold Saucer stuff thanks to the Make It Rain Campaign, it's mostly been crafting and gathering. ARR has some tall crafting and gathering orders--too tall, some might say. I am saying. Those orders are too tall. Crafting 3,000 level 41-50 Alchemy recipes is fully unreasonable, and there was no justification for making an achievement like that at all, but by golly I hunkered down and did it. Of the ARR crafting and gathering achievements, I only have 2 gathering ones left**, level 41-50 botany in Thanalan and level 41-50 mining in Black Shroud, both of which I'm halfway through. I'm in less of a hurry to finish these, though, because I can gather crystals from these nodes, which don't take up normal inventory space and I'll need for future crafting achievements anyway.

**I haven't picked up fishing yet either :(

All of this is to say that, minus the DoH and DoL classes I haven't picked up at all and plan to leave until after Dawntrail, I am entirely finished with ARR crafting achievements and nearly done with ARR gathering achievements. Which means for June, most of my time will probably be spent cleaning out my inventories, which there is tragically no achievements for.

Aside from that, it's worth bringing up my Dawntrail plan, since early access is now less than a month away. I never really paid attention to the pacing of earning achievements while playing through expansions normally, so I don't know what to expect in that regard. I also plan to take Dawntrail pretty leisurely, but I also told myself that about Endwalker, so pffffft. All this is to say that for June, I'll be dialing my commitment back to $0.50 in anticipation of earning more achievements than I expect to.

But let's get back to May. I clocked in 57 achievements last month, which is a honking $57 for charity, just barely beating out April's record!

For my long-term achieving numbers, my total achievement points in game is now 11,245, and I'm ranked #1,219 on my world. I also have a new rarest achievement: An Alchemist's Life for Me, earned by completely ALL of the "crafting X amount of alchemy recipes level y-z" achievements for ARR, beating out my previous rarest achievement, With Needle in Hand IV (complete 80 unique weaver levequests). I'm moving up in the achieving world!

[achievechamp]

Emmy Weeks 18(2)-20 (5/1-5/18)

Well just over halfway through May is close enough... I've been busy, then I got sick, so my start of May has been a trip! Have a picture of Alpha and Omega when I found them in Old Sharlyan. And didn't fix the lighting... Here's the breakdown for the first two and a half weeks of May:

Week 18 pt 2 (5/1-5/4)

Week 19 (5/5-511)

Week 20 (5/12-5/18)

Overall there's a lot of variety going on here! Treasure maps, custom deliveries, fishing, and crafting. A very good snapshot of what I've been doing the first half of the month. With Dawntrail on the horizon, this is probably what everything will look like for the rest of the month.

Here are my May running totals:

Week 18 (5/1-5/4) Total: 4 Achievements Week 19 (5/5-5/11) Total: 12 Achievements Week 20 April (5/12-5/18) Total: 11 Achievements Current May Total: 27 Achievements

Here are my Lalachievement stats (as of 5/20)

Total Achievement Points: 13,760 Brynhildr Rank: #467 Global Rank: #31,555

[achievechamp]

Emmy Weeks 16-18 Report (4/14-4/30) and April Wrap-Up

Another month done! I've just finished up a run a play I was in, so I've had a pretty busy month overall. Which is why my wrap-up has been late. Here are my weekly breakdowns for the second half of April.

Week 16 (4/15-4/20)

Week 17 (4/21-4/27)

Week 18(April) (4/28-4/30)

These past weeks have been filled with many, many levequest achievements. I can now saw I have completed every "do X unique levequests" achievements in the game so far. Just a couple months shy of a new batch being added... Well, that's future me's problem! I also got a bunch of titles from the Disreputable Priest at the Wolves' Den Pier, so that added a few!

Here's my 2nd part of April running and final totals

Week 16 (4/14-4/20) Total: 17 Achievements Week 17 (4/21-4/27) Total: 14 Achievements Week 18 April (4/28-4/30) Total: 4 Achievements April Final Total: 41 Achievements

That's 41 achievements at $1 per achievement for UNRWA. Here's my donation record:

Even with many hours devoted to play practice and performances, I still managed a large amount of achievements (helped by all those PVP ones).

I realized I was going to add my Lalachievement stats as a look at how I'm doing. Since I have a few from May already, my rank might differ a little then what it should be. All data is from Lalachievements (cause my actual achievement points in the game include all the event achievements)

Total Achievement Points: 13,515 Brynhildr Rank: #498 Global Rank: #33,504

Ooh I broke 500 on my server! Cool!

[achievechamp]

""Weekly"" Report - Literally all of April

Thanks to some health problems, I'm behind on a lot of stuff, most especially posting here. But! I still found time to game--not as much as when I don't have migraines, but regardless, I slammed out more than 50 achievements this month. (It just kind of lined up that way.)

That's 55 achievements! I know I didn't state my commitment at the beginning of the month, but I don't see any reason not to stick with $1 per achievement toward UNRWA, so that's a donation of $55 this month!

Normally this is the part where I would muse about what I got done this month and what I hope to achieve next month, but I actually do have a migraine at the moment and my very last unique S rank is due to pop in a few minutes, so I'll leave it off here for now!