Four Job Fiesta 2019 Wrap-up

This past weekend marked the close of my third Four Job Fiesta campaign! Once again, I managed to finish the game in even less time and lower levels than in previous years. Here are some highlights:

• This year's Name My Butz charity auction was our most successful yet! The top bidder donated $20 (US) to Child's Play and selected the name "Waffle" for our party leader! As a special thanks to our generous donor, I let her pick which class Waffle would be assigned next whenever she was watching the stream.
• At the Wind Crystal, I rolled a Thief. Considering this class can only use knives, it had decent physical damage output but without the ability to equip heavy armor, their toughness left a lot to be desired and made for some very tough early boss battles. The Steal and Mug abilities proved to be very useful, however.
• My Water Crystal job was a returning one from my 2017 campaign, Red Mage. As is typical of Red Mages, they were valuable in the earliest parts of the campaign, primarily for healing but became obsolete about halfway through. After that, I got a little more utility out of them for their rod-breaking ability (i.e. sacrificing an elemental weapon to cast a higher level offensive black magic spell) during a few key boss battles.
• The Fire Crystal delivered a blessing in disguise: Bard. I initially thought this class would be a dud but it proved to be extremely useful. Particularly, Bard's ability to put regular enemies in a sleep/stop state made random encounters so much easier. The Bard also has some very useful full-party buffs for boss battles. I'm really glad that this year's Fiesta gave me an opportunity to learn this previously overlooked class!
• At the Earth Crystal, we had another repeat: Chemist. Even more so than last year, the weight of the last few dungeons almost completely rested on the Chemist's slender nerdy shoulders. Since I lacked any strong physical attackers this year, the Chemist ended up being my primary damage-dealer, using various Mix! formulae to attack bosses ("Holy Water + Dragon Fang = Holy Breath" was easily the one I used the most). Thankfully, the Thief in my party was able to steal plenty of reagents for my Chemist to use.
• The battle against Exdeath was quite difficult this year since I was almost entirely reliant on buffs and chemistry to keep me alive and deal damage. After several failed attempts at level 35, I backtracked a bit to grind up to level 40 and gather more chemical reagents. While on paper, Waffle was my Chemist, everyone else in the party was still making use of the Mix! ability nearly every turn. After using buffing mixtures like Dragon Power (temporary +20 to level), Goliath Tonic (temporary double HP), and Turtle Guard (Shell + Protect) in the first phase of the final battle, it was just a matter of mixing up as many Holy Breaths (Holy elemental damage) as possible while keeping everyone's HP up. I ended up taking down Neo Exdeath with all four party members still alive!
• Between donations from the auction, Twitch viewers, and my own contributions, $60 went to Child's Play this year. While I didn't beat my previous record, I'm still happy with this result and very thankful to the generosity of the donors! Next time I do this, I'll try to come up with more interactive ways to encourage people to donate (like the auction) since that seemed to get the biggest response. 

While I had fun with this year's campaign, I found it a little harder to keep motivated this time around. This was due to a combination of having two returning classes, which made the campaign less varied than before, and my work schedule being a lot more hectic, making it tougher to schedule streams than years past. I was glad that I played the mobile version of Final Fantasy 5 this year, so I could still make progress even when I wasn't able to stream. Thus, I may take a break for next year's Fiesta depending on my schedule. I will also be a little quicker to reroll if I get repeat classes going forward.

All that being said, I wanted to extend a heartfelt thanks to everyone who donated or tuned into my streams!

Four Job Fiesta 2019

It's almost time for one of my favorite annual gaming events, the Four Job Fiesta! I am very excited to announce that I will be participating once again this year! For the uninitiated, the Four Job Fiesta is a charity event in which participants play through Final Fantasy 5 and raise money for Child’s Play. The Fiesta uses a bot to randomly assign character classes to each player’s party which ups the difficulty and makes for some fascinating improvised strategies. For this year's campaign I'll be playing the mobile version of FF5. This will allow me take care of the grinding during my lunch break at work and then stream the bigger game moments once or twice per week on my Twitch channel using my brand new capture card! I will also be writing periodic blog posts on my Fiesta campaign progress, especially whenever I get assigned a new character class.

Leading up to my first stream of the Fiesta on June 18th, I will be holding the 3rd Annual "Name My Butz" charity auction! The highest bidder at the end of the auction will get the privilege of picking a new name for my player character for this year's campaign! (I'm sure you can come up with a better name than his default name, Butz.) By the time this post is up, the auction will be open. To submit a bid, send me a DM on Twitter with the amount you'd like to donate. The winner of the auction and new name for my character will be announced at the start of my Twitch stream on June 18th. This stream will feature the beginning gameplay of FF5 and we'll also find out which class the bot assigns to me first! For my charitable contribution this year, I will donate a dollar for each hour it takes to complete the campaign.

Last year my campaign raised $75 for Child's Play. This year, let's shoot for $100!

Four Job Fiesta 2018 Wrap-up

Last night, my second Four Job Fiesta campaign came to a close and it was a wild ride! Partly because of my increased familiarity with the game, and partly due to the classes I rolled, this Fiesta went much more smoothly than the last. Here are the highlights:

• My first job was Blue Mage. Compared to last year's White Mage, the early going was much easier. Once my Blue Mage learned some basic attack magic and the Vampire skill (i.e. draining enemy HP), I had my bases covered both offensively and defensively from the get-go. It also helped that Blue Mages can use light swords and shields, so they made for serviceable physical characters as well. The only downside was that having to hunt for the correct monsters in order to learn new skills was a bit of a chore. I generally don't like classes that require doing "homework".
• Berserker was what I rolled next. I was initially concerned about giving up control of one of my party members, but this worked out really well. Having one character devoted purely to raw offense at all times allowed me to focus on using my other characters strategically. Later on, thanks to having Reeses (formerly known as Bartz/Butz) mast the Ninja job, I was able to equip a Berserker with two weapons, making him a physical damage-dealing machine.
• The one job I had in common from last year was Ninja. This is an awesome class! With a weapon in both hands and the ability to throw swords and shurikens, a Ninja is a great offensive character. When physical damage doesn't cut it, equipping them with the Blue Magic ability also yields good results since they have better magic stats than most other physical attack classes.
• My final class was the most interesting: Chemist. I was uncertain at first about how to best make use of my Chemist, but once I figured it out, she became the cornerstone of my late-game strategy. Her ability to buff my characters and serve as an item-based healer proved to be invaluable in the last few dungeons, and especially against the final boss. I had some concerns about gathering enough crafting supplies to use her to abilities to their full potential, but by the end of the game, I had more than enough Dragon Fangs and Dark Matters without having to worry about farming for materials.
• The final showdown against Exdeath went far more smoothly than I ever could have imagined! I had Cara set up as a Chemist and Lenna as a Blue Mage with the Chemist's "Mix" ability. In the first phase of the battle, I had these two ladies of science and magic whipping up all manner of buffing concoctions so that my whole party had Shell, Protect, and Reflect status as well as double their usual HP capacity! Meanwhile, Reeses was a Berserker and Faris was a Ninja; each was in the "berserk" state and equipped with a weapon in each hand. These two just whaled on the boss nonstop. Since all the chemical buffs I used carried into the second phase of the boss battle, everyone was more than capable of withstanding whatever Exdeath could throw at us. It was only a matter of time before my two berserk characters beat him into submission!

  Overall, this was a really fun campaign that encouraged me to use skills and classes that I had previously never even considered! I also finished the campaign faster and at a lower level than last year: 35 hours and at level 42. Regarding the charity side, between my contributions and those from Twitch viewers, $85 (US) went to Child's Play! I want to give a big thanks to everyone who watched or donated this year, and I'm already looking forward to next year's campaign!

E3 & Four Job Fiesta 2018 Coverage

With E3 now than less than a week away, June is a huge month for gaming! On top of the spectacle of the industry’s biggest conference, this month also marks the kickoff of several smaller gaming events including one of my personal favorites, the Four Job Fiesta. I covered both events in this blog last year and that tradition will be continuing this year. Here are some details regarding my coverage for each:

E3

In 2017, I rounded up all my personal highlights for the whole event in a single post. This year I’ll be changing up the format, with a smaller roundup for each day of E3 (June 10 - 12) and then a closing thoughts post at the end of the whole event if time permits. I managed to get both Monday and Tuesday off from work, so I will also be giving some running commentary on my Twitter page as I watch each conference live. If the mood strikes, I may also do something E3-related on Twitch or Discord.

Note: Since EA is doing their conference a day earlier than everyone else, on June 9th, I will probably not be watching it live. If there is anything noteworthy to cover from it, I will roll it into my post for June 10th along with Bethesda and Microsoft.

Four Job Fiesta

One of the highlights of 2017 for me as a gamer was taking part in the Four Job Fiesta. I am very excited to announce that I will be participating once again this year! For the uninitiated, the Four Job Fiesta is a charity event in which participants play through Final Fantasy 5 and raise money for Child’s Play. The Fiesta uses a bot to randomly assign character classes to each player’s party which ups the difficulty and makes for some fascinating improvised strategies. While last year, I streamed all 40 hours of my playthrough on my Twitch channel, this year I will be playing the more mundane parts of the campaign (especially the grinding) offline and saving the bigger game moments for a stream or two per week. I will also be writing periodic blog posts on my Fiesta campaign progress, especially whenever I get assigned a new character class.

The Fiesta officially begins on June 19th, but prior to that, I will be conducting a charity auction similar to last year. The person who donates the most to the Four Job Fiesta will get the privilege of picking a new name for my main character! By the time this post is live, the auction will be open, so please contact me on Twitter if you are interested in placing a bid. The winner of the auction and new name for my character will be announced on a Twitch stream tentatively scheduled for June 14th. This stream will also feature gameplay up until earning the first job in FF5. My first character class will be revealed on my next stream on the first official day of the Fiesta. For my charitable contribution this year, I will donate $2 for each hour it takes to complete the campaign.

If you would like to participate in the Fiesta, donate money, or just find more information, check out the Four Job Fiesta’s homepage: fourjobfiesta.com

DragonCon 2017

This past labor day weekend, my wife and I attended DragonCon for the first time and really enjoyed it. While the Con covers a huge variety of fandom topics and doesn't really focus on gaming, when you get over 80,000 nerds together in one place, you can pretty much guarantee there will be video gaming happening somewhere. Here's a synopsis of the gaming-related things we saw at the Con:

Japanese Arcade

One of the exhibit halls was set up as an arcade stocked with imported (and mostly untranslated) Japanese arcade games. Best of all, the cabinets were all set to free play mode. I worked in Japan for several months a few years ago and found the selection at this DragonCon exhibit to be a pretty good representation of the modern Japanese arcade scene. In my experience, non-redemption Japanese arcade games generally fall into 4 categories: fighting, rhythm, mech battle, and button-mash/novelty. I’ve included some photos and brief description of the games I was able to try.

Reflec Beat – A touchscreen-based rhythm battle game. Notes are fired as projectiles downward by an enemy at the top of the screen and they must be tapped in time with the music to reflect them back.

Gundam Pod – A first person mecha battle arena with enclosed cockpits. Each cockpit features a panoramic curved screen and controls with a combination of joysticks and foot pedals. The screen between the pods allow spectators to watch the battle in 3rd person. The game is 100% in Japanese (which I can’t read a word of), so I had to make educated guesses when navigating menus and monitoring the HUD. I was most excited to be able to play this game at DragonCon. I played it briefly when I was in Tokyo, but at ~$10/play, my prior experience was fairly limited. That being said, my limited background knowledge was enough to give me an edge and wreck most of the other players during the match.

Upend The Tea Table – This is where things get weird. The player pounds on the table until a meter fills and then flips the table over (it’s attached to the cabinet with a hinge). On the screen, the table is sitting at home plate in a baseball diamond and then gets launched into the air. Players compete to see who can launch the table furthest.

The Bishibashi – A collection of competitive minigames that are all based on button-mashing. Each minigame features cute animations and objectives such as trying to hit the button exactly 100 times within a time limit.

Cosplay

I saw a lot of fantastic cosplay at DragonCon. The most popular game used as cosplay inspiration was definitely Overwatch. I’m generally not into competitive multi-player games, but seeing the passion people have for the characters definitely has me more interested in trying it. One of the top-ranked cosplayers in the DragonCon masquerade contest was dressed as D.Va:

Photo credit: Crescent City Cosplay

However, my personal favorite video game cosplayer, was this dedicated gentleman cosplaying as Beedle, the shopkeeper from The Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker. “Oh, thank you!”

Accessible Gaming Demonstration
We attended an interesting panel about the inovations and challenges involved with creating specialized gaming equipment for players with physical disabilites. We saw everything from controllers meant to be used with one hand to those that could be controlled with the tongue. This panel really gave me an appreciation for how gaming can be an important recreational and social outlet for people with disabilities. For more information about this topic, check out Able Gamers.

Hololens Demonstration
This panel was hosted by some developers that are working on software for the upcoming Microsoft Hololens augmented reality (AR) platform. While the tech definitely has some cool applications, it was very clear from the live demonstration that we're still in the very early stages of AR. I didn't get a chance to try on the headset myself, but from what I was able to observe watching the developers use it, the performance of the equipment looked rough compared to the heavily produced presentations seen at events like E3.

Four Job Fiesta Wrap-up

 My Four Job Fiesta campaign came to a close last week and I can say that the experience has cemented Final Fantasy 5’s position as one of my favorite games of all time. The game is already tough, but playing with the Fiesta rules has pushed me to become not only a better Final Fantasy player but a better RPG strategist as a whole. Here are some developments from the last segment of the game:

• Initially, having a white mage based party meant having a team full of cream puffs. That all changed once I acquired the Holy spell. This turned my once docile healers into savage damage dealers, especially Lenna, who had also learned Dual Cast from having been a Red Mage for most of the game. During late game boss fights (including the final boss battle), she became my primarily offensive character, dealing over 8000 damage per turn.
• As I had mentioned in a previous post, the importance of using defensive buffs to improve character survivability cannot be understated. As a fairly grinding-averse player, properly leveraging Protect, Shell, and Reflect was often the key to victory. It’s hard to imagine what I’ll do next Fiesta if I don’t end up with access to White Magic.
• While I spent most of the game using the Elven Mantle accessory to help my characters avoid physical attacks, switching these out for Hermes Sandals in the late game was the right move. Having everyone in a perpetual state of Hast” allowed me to do more damage while taking fewer enemy hits. It also made it much easier to recover if a boss used a devastating attack that hit the full party.
• Partly for nostalgia’s sake, I frequently consulted with my “Final Fantasy Anthology” guide book that I used for my original play-through of Final Fantasy 5 back in 1999. While the dungeon maps were still somewhat useful, the Fiesta rules coupled with the higher-level strategies used by modern players have largely made this book obsolete. In some cases, using it slowed me down because having full dungeon maps made me feel compelled to get every single treasure chest even though most of the items in these chests would end up being gear for classes other than those I was assigned. Thus, I think I will allow this guide book to enjoy a much-deserved retirement on my bookshelf next year.
• It took me a while to warm up to it, but I ended up really liking the PC version of Final Fantasy 5. The higher resolution graphics make spotting small objects easier, and the auto-checkpoint system it uses prevented unexpected party wipes from resulting in a significant loss of progress.

I had a great time revisiting Final Fantasy 5 and participating in the Four Job Fiesta. I already find myself thinking about next year’s Fiesta and what challenges a completely different set of classes might bring. I’m also considering trying out a mobile/handheld version of FF5 next time so that I can fit multiple shorter play sessions into my schedule rather than relying on longer sessions on nights and weekends to progress through my campaign. As a result, I’ll probably be reducing the number of Twitch streams I do for future campaigns (I streamed nearly all 42 hours of this year’s campaign) and will instead focus on streaming a handful of major events/battles in the game. Quality over quantity.

Regarding the charitable side of the Fiesta, my campaign raised $50 between myself and Twitch viewers, while the Fiesta overall raised over $18,000 for Child’s Play Charity! Thanks so much to everyone who participated, donated, or tuned into the streams!

See below for the stats of my end-game party:

 

Enjoy your retirement, trusty old guide book!

Four Job Fiesta Update: Week 4

Now that I'm firmly into World 3, preparing my crew for the final push is the name of the game. Most of my characters have all mastered their original jobs and have moved on to new ones. After some experimentation, here's what I've come up with for my team:

• 1st Faris (formerly known as Bartz): After mastering Ninja, I've switched him over to Dragoon and equipped the Ninja's Dual Wield skill. Armed with a lance in each hand, 1st Faris comes down for some serious damage after using the Jump command.
• Lenna: She's the only one that hasn't changed and is thus still working toward earning the Red Mage Double-Magic skill. She probably won't have the necessary amount of ability points until right before the final battle. In the meantime, she'll be breaking some rods.
• Krile: Once she mastered White Mage, the only logical choice was to switch her to Ninja. With a twin lance (which is inexplicably a ninja knife and not actually a lance) she's a capable physical attacker that serves as a backup healer with access to level 6 White Magic. The boost to her magic stat she gets from her white magic skills also means she deals extra damage when using ninja scrolls and magic shurikens.
• 2nd Faris (aka actually Faris): As White Mage with Dragoon mastery, 2nd Faris is the most unusual mixture. While I could give them the Dragoon's Equip Lance ability, I think I would get a best, a mediocre backup physical attacker. For now, I have Faris with the Lance ability which allows them to drain HP and MP from enemies, which is useful since high-level white magic eats up MP really quickly.

In my next play session, I'll be acquiring the first few legendary weapons. While Holy Lance and Assassin's Dagger are pretty clear choices for my first two draws, for the third it's a tough call between Ninja Blade or one of the rods/staves for my mages.

Four Job Fiesta Update: Week 3

Now that I have all four of my character classes and my party structure is fully established, Week 3 was all about traversing World 2 and taking on several challenging bosses. In general, World 2 seems to represent a bit of a difficulty spike that required more strategizing, but occasionally some grinding as well. A big part of this is finding a roll for each of my classes to fill. So far I've observed the following:

• My Ninja continues to be my highest damage-dealer, however, his weapons alone are often not enough since some boss battles require the ability to quickly do a lot of damage in only a turn or two. My solution: throw absolutely everything! Previously I had only been using the Throw ability for shurikens and elemental scrolls, however, the Ninja can also throw any spare weapons in the inventory to do an impressive amount of damage. Since I can only use a fraction of the weapons I find due to being limited to four classes, I have a supply of powerful ammo that I originally was just selling for cash.
• In addition to healing, I've gained an increased appreciation for my White Mage's ability to buff my characters using Shell and Protect. Since the overall damage output of my party is lower than would be the case in a typical FF5 play-through, boss battles tend to last longer, so increasing my characters' ability to take hits is key to keeping everyone alive during prolonged engagements.
• My Red Mage is the character I'm having the hardest time finding a role for as the game progresses. Her limited black magic and healing abilities have mostly become obsolete at this point, leaving me with a mediocre physical attacker that can also cast Raise. Also, rod breaking has become useful as fewer bosses have straight-forward elemental weaknesses. Thus my Red Mage is by no means worthless, but I still feel like I can find a better use for her by combining her skills with another class's. However, I haven't gotten quite that far yet. For the time being, I'm considering having her work toward the Double-Magic skill to see if that makes her more valuable, though it'll take a long time to gain the required amount of ability points.
• The Lancer (aka Dragoon) has been the most consistent of my classes, but also the least interesting so far. Her role continues to be to just to use Jump every turn to stay out of harm's way and then come down to deal a moderate amount of damage. Of all my characters, I think she has the most untapped potential. It'll be interesting to combine her skills will other classes once she masters her last Lancer ability.

Before this week is over, I'll be working my way through World 3 and taking on some even tougher enemies. From a character building perspective, this is where things will get really interesting as each character will have mastered at least one class, so there will be a lot of potential for mixing and matching different abilities. I'm definitely looking forward to experimenting with unusual combinations that I never would of thought of outside of the Four Job Fiesta setting!

As an additional note, at the time of writing, the Fiesta has raised over $17,000 for Child's Play Charity; we're less than $1000 away from this year's goal! Thanks so much to everyone that has donated, and if you haven't donated yet, there's still plenty of time to make a contribution!

Four Job Fiesta Update: Week 2

In the second week of the Four Job Fiesta, I managed to make it through the Earth crystal and unlock my fourth job: Dragoon! While this is one of the more generic classes that I could've unlocked, it may end up making my life my easier as I finally have access to a character that can equip heavy armor and shields. Also, the "Jump" command is useful for keeping a character out of harm's way when a boss uses an attack that targets the whole party.

Now that I know what my final party composition will be, it's just a matter of shuffling the classes around to give each character a complementary set of skills. For the time being, I'm having the two Farises (i.e. Bartz and Faris) focus on physical attacks as Ninja and Dragoon, and having Lenna and Galuf stick to magic with White Mage and Red Mage. There are some interesting possibilities going forward such as having a Dragoon who can hold a lance in each hand by using the Ninja's dual-wielding ability.

Other than unlocking my last job, the rest of Week 2 was just about tackling the succession of bosses standing in the way before entering World 2.  I made it through but found that often times my whole party was getting wiped out except for the Dragoon (thanks to having a shield and jumping). Thus I did some grinding once I entered World 2 and am now ready to press on through the tougher dungeons ahead.

Four Job Fiesta Update: Week 1

I’m one week into my Four Job Fiesta campaign and am having a total blast. So far I’ve unlocked three of my four classes and have hosted four Twitch streams. I’m also proud to announce that to date, the Four Job Fiesta has already raised over $14,600 for Child’s Play!

Here’s a recap of my campaign so far:

For starters, I want to give a special thanks to Data_Error for placing the winning bid in my character-naming auction. He elected to change Bartz’s name to Faris… and thus I now have two characters named Faris in my party. Thankfully, in the PC version of Final Fantasy 5, character portraits are displayed during dialog, so it’s usually not too confusing to figure out which Faris is speaking. However, in some cases, there are text-only character status messages that take some context clues to figure out.

At the Wind Crystal, the job I unlocked was White Mage. This made for some slow going initially as my characters had very limited offensive capabilities, causing some boss battles to take up 30 minutes to slowly chip away at the boss’s HP. On the bright side, one of the dungeons I went through was filled with undead enemies and I was able to steamroll them with healing spells.

At the Water Crystal, I was really hoping for some sort of class with heavy-hitting physical attacks… so of course what I ended up getting was Red Mage. While not ideal, at least this allowed me the ability to equip swords and do a small but respectable amount of physical damage. The real boon here, however, was being able to use a technique called “rod breaking”. Rod breaking (which I just learned about recently) allows my Red Mages to sacrifice one of their rod weapons in order to cast level 3 black magic (e.g. break a fire rod to cast level 3 fire). This early in the game, a level 3 spell is devastatingly powerful and there have been a few bosses I’ve been able to annihilate in only a few turns using this technique.

I closed out my first week of the Fiesta by reaching the Fire Crystal, which is where I finally unlocked a class that can do some real physical damage: Ninja. This is a class I don’t have much experience with, but I was happy to find that they can hold a weapon in each hand. This means that Bartz (aka “first Faris”) is now doing over 300 damage per turn as opposed to 150 as a Red Mage or 60 as a White Mage. I’m definitely looking forward to experimenting more with weapon combinations using this class as my run continues.

While the classes I’ve unlocked haven’t always been the easiest to use or the most ideal, I’ve really been appreciating how they’ve caused me to come up with completely different strategies from those I used when I originally played Final Fantasy 5. For my fourth class, I’m hoping to get something really outlandish so that I get to learn how to play a completely unfamiliar class.

Four Job Fiesta

I am very excited to be participating in the Four Job Fiesta this year. It's a charity event benefiting Child's Play in which participants play through Final Fantasy 5 with a specialized set of challenge rules. Since FF5 is one of my all-time favorite RPGs, I couldn't be more thrilled to revisit it while also supporting a great cause!

The Gameplay:
Normally in Final Fantasy 5, each time the party reaches one of the four elemental crystals (Wind, Water, Fire, and Earth), a new set of character classes is unlocked. Effectively mixing, matching, and swapping classes is a major part of the strategy, and that's where the rules of the Four Job Fiesta throw in a monkey wrench. When playing for the Fiesta, players are restricted to using only one randomly selected class per crystal. Being limited to using only 4 of the 21 possible classes throughout the entire game radically changes the way players approach battles and increases the difficulty. Fiesta participants have from June 19th through August 31st to complete their runs through the FF5.

The Charity:
The Four Job Fiesta benefits the Child's Play Charity. This organization seeks to improve the quality of life of children in hospitals and domestic abuse shelters by providing them with games and toys. The Fiesta raises funds for the charity in three ways:

1. Players pledge an amount of money based on certain conditions of their play-through(s)
2. Supporters and spectators can pledge money to sponsor the participants of their choosing (similar to a charity marathon)
3. Players who find themselves in a bind with their randomly selected character classes can re-roll their classes in exchange for a donation

My Participation:
I will be starting my run on June 19th and periodically streaming my play-through on Twitch. I will also be posting status updates and screenshots on Twitter and this blog throughout my run, especially after major in-game milestones.

For my charitable pledge, I will be donating $1 per level of my highest level character when I finish the game (e.g. if my strongest character is level 50 when I beat the final boss, I will donate $50). In the event I fail to finish the game before the end of the Fiesta, I will donate double my strongest character's level (e.g. $70 if my strongest character is level 35 at the end of the Fiesta).

My Auction:
As I announced last night on my Twitch channel, I am auctioning off the naming rights to my player character (whose default name is Bartz). If you would like to place a bid to be the one to name my character, please send me a tweet. I will close the auction and contact the highest bidder at 11 PM EDT on June 18th. Opening bids start at $5 US. Upon confirmation that the donation to Child's Play has been made, Bartz's new name shall be whatever the highest bidder desires!
After the end of the auction, anyone who donates or pledges to sponsor my run will be added to the Special Thanks section of my Four Job Fiesta blog posts. Of course, donors are welcome to remain anonymous if they'd prefer.

Note: I won't be able to accept blatantly profane names since the character name will be appearing in screenshots and on my Twitch stream, but other than that, I invite whatever humorous, unique, or creative names the auction winner can think of.

 For more information, to sign up to participate, or to make a charitable donation, please visit fourjobfiesta.com. If you have any questions you'd like to ask me directly, please contact me via my  Twitter page.