Guestblooms and Hearthblooms

One of the cool new things in the housing aspect of the game is guestblooms and hearthblooms.  These are items that you place in your studio, house, mansion, etc. that give you a gift after a certain amount of time. 
There's a difference between the two.  Hearthblooms are personal,  that is,  they can only be used by you,  once daily,  usually for about a week of time.  They give things like construction fluxes,  manastones and AP relics as a daily gift.   Guestblooms,  on the other hand,  can be "fed" or "watered" by your friends.
Guestblooms need a certain amount of feedings.  You can feed your own guestbloom, and the cd is 3 min.,
but they were designed to be visited by other players,  hence the name.  Most guestblooms require a minimum of 30 feedings,  and the more advanced ones that give better gifts can require as many as 400!
If you own a studio,  this is where it's good to have a big list of friends.  Studios can only be visited by friends,  whereas houses and higher can be visited by friends and  random visitors who might be walking around the neighborhood where the house is located. 
In order to feed a guestbloom,  you need fertilizer.  This can be gotten from the butler in your studio from a daily lvl 21 quest.  He'll give you a sack of both hearthbloom and guestbloom fertilizer in case you need some of each. 
Every time you feed a guestbloom,  be it your own or someone else's,  you receive a friendship bundle.  Open it and you get a guestpetal.  Collect enough guestpetals and you can exchange them for gifts
at the store in the main village.  I won't ruin the surprise,  go see for yourself!
Guestblooms yield some good gifts and can be bought in Oriel Village at the housing supply store.  You can buy a guestbloom that will give any level of coin in the game.  This really helps when alot of coins are needed
and you don't have alot of time to do repetetive coin quests.  I have one set up in my studio for my alt and its very convenient.  Other guestblooms give dye petals,  supplies for certain classes and general goods supplies.   Each level of housing has a limit on the number of blooms that can be placed. 
Studio: 3
House: 4
Mansion: 5
Estate: 6
Palace: 7
Special blooms can be acquired through quests or the running of an instance.  More on that in a later article.
Whatever type you decide to buy,  they're a great way to stock up on needed items without having to quest
or shop at certain times.  And it's always nice to get a gift!

3.0 Final Stigma Slot Quest

The launch of 3.0 brought with it one extra,  final stigma slot.  This is especially important to those of us who were lvl 55 at the time of the 3.0 update. We want to be as geared as possible and an extra stigma skill is a
good thing to have. Many players think the quest is a lvl 60 one,  but it's actually a lvl 58 quest.  The quest for the final stigma is given by an NPC in Kamar named Bariunos,  who is situated in the Kahrun Guard Headquarters.


Talking to Bariunos

 He gives a quest called the Stigma Master's Challenge,  which earns you a Mysterious Stigma when completed.  You are given a choice of 2 paths to earn the stigma:  1.  Defeat 10 opponents in the Crucible
arenas,  or,  2.  Participate in fort sieges in Tiamaranta


Picking up the Stigma Quest

 I chose the Crucible path quest,  called "Ten to One Odds",  and I just completed it today.  Here are some pics I took of my quest completion.


Turning in the Ten to One Odds Quest



Finishing the Mysterious Stigma Quest

And there it is!  Final Stigma slot enabled!

 I was ready with my stigma stone because the NPC can equip it.  I chose good ol' flurry,  which I've missed for a long time. 


Yay! I got flurry back!

 And that's it.  I hope you found this helpful.

The Nomad Shugo Quests Part 2 - Finding the Audria Ore

In my last post I spoke about the nomad shugos and the quests they give.  In this post I'm focused on completing the quests by gathering the necessary Audria ore around Oriel.  Yesterday I queued in for T dredge and toured around Oriel to find the needed ore.  After awhile of looking around I found something called "sweltering audria".  I had to hit it rather than gather it,  which was a bit surprising.  It's very much the same as the janustones quest for the Alabaster Order in that way.  I kept looking around and came across another type of Audria,  this time "rain audria":

Discovery of the Rain Audria

Looting the Aether gem for the quest after bashing it

It's counted towards my quest

I've got a ways to go to finish the quest (I need 25 of these and 2 other items) but I've begun my collection
towards completing a quest that'll yield a hanging letter for decorating studios with.  More on this as I go along...