Nogamara

The last days I thought about what I wanna do before Endwalker launches (50 days left), so here’s an unsorted list:

• White Mage from 75 to 80, mostly MSQ duty roulette
• Dancer from 73 to 80, Pixies and duty roulette
• Machinist from 65 to 70, maybe 80, duty roulette
• Rogue/Ninja to 50, duty roulette
• get at least one Resistance weapon, investigate a second, this needs the Invalice Raids (1/3 done)
• level Red Mage via Heavensward Beast Tribe quests for rep
• catch up crafting job quests somewhat, maybe all to 60
• the NieR raids
• finish the Shadowbringers MSQ
• maybe work on Paladin (currently 62)
• farm the missing ponies from Leviathan and Garuda, I have 4 already

And here’s a list of things I’ve done:

• Bard to 80
• Warrior to 80
• all crafting and gathering jobs to 80
• catch up gathering job quests to 60
• did my first Wondrous Tails (working on second)
• check out some Alliance Raids
• Emanation EX with 3 people, mostly for Wondrous Tails, but also for the challenge (I know it’s been solod, shh)
• get all missing caster jobs to 30 (BLU, BLM, SCH, AST)

And finally a list of stuff that I am not planning to do:

• gear grinds
• powerlevel all the jobs
• trying to solo 60 EX trials with my bad gear any further
• start PGL/MNK or LNC/DRG or SAM

Thursday saw quite a bit of progress. After doing my duty roulettes on Warrior there was just a little bit missing so I spammed some FATEs (for some reason on my server Il Mheg is really good for this and no one does them in e.g. Lakeland) and got to 80.

Then I finally unlocked the Wondrous Tails and was a bit dumbfounded by the activities I should do. The 4 dungeons shouldn’t be a problem, but the rest were mostly Alliance Raids (of which I’d never done a single one) and Extreme Trials (which I had never done and not even unlocked most of them), so I set out to do some quest collecting. I had heard that you should be able to solo some of them so I tried just that. First was Shiva, where I even had the quest already (since 2019, actually). Killed her on the second try (80 Warrior with iLvl 406) and got a pony, yay. Then I went to Good King Moggle Mog, first try. Then I learned that the duty finder resets your “undersized party” setting if you disconnect, so I found myself in a Garuda Extreme party with 6 sprouts and one experienced tank. I told them I had misqueued but might as well try it. The other tank gave us instructions and we were successful after one wipe. Nice. Then I either needed Titan or was just curious, and it was unlocked after Garuda anyway. That one took three tries to get the positioning right, but there was another pony. So maybe it’s worth trying to get all the mounts now, if they’re soloable that easily.

I also need Ravana EX, but as it’s a Level 60 trial the guide suggested an iLvl of 460+, so I’m not sure I should try that already and I guess I’ll go for Alliance Raids on the weekend then, because I really want to finish this Wondrous Tails thing, preferably with 2 lines.

So overall I’m still confused in this game how some things seem to go so fast and some go so, so slow. Machinist from ~53 to 61 was quite a slog. Dancer from 60 to 70 felt so much quicker. MSQ is really fast, but why can’t I do the whole post-expansion stuff on a 79 job to not waste the XP? Meh.

Friday didn’t bring much, except Thaumaturge to 30 and starting Rogue, my first melee DPS class.

Today I queued for the Alliance Raid Duty Finder and again was very lucky, Labyrinth of the Ancients, so that’s two birds with one stone (actually three, Shadowbringers MSQ, Wondrous Tails, and bonus EXP for White Mage). Then I continued on through Cyrcus Tower and won Amon’s Coat, nice. Those two were near instant pops, World of Darkness took quite a while but again, no wipes or problems. Then on to Ramuh Extreme, 2 tries, no pony. Then Ifrit, first try, pony. Then Leviathan, 2 tries, no pony.

I “finished” the Dwarf and Pixie Beast Tribe quests insofar as I reached Sworn and got the mounts, we’ll see if if there’s any benefit in continuing.

Yesterday was the weekly reset and so I managed to get a few more Custom Deliveries in and this is the result:

Now I simply need to catch up 40 levels of job quests for the left side and 30 levels for the right side. Easy… Apparently I can get White Crafters Scrip for Deliveries at 80, which is good because I had no clue how to get better gear there. I’m going for a generic set for all jobs instead of weapons or specialized stuff. We’ll see if that works out until Endwalker, so I’d be prepared a bit better. No huge plans, but I’d prefer to have 80 gear and not 70 gear for leveling them up to 90.

For my battle jobs there were a few small milestones, Dancer is 70, Machinist and Dark Knight are 60, but I continued the quest for cleaning up my inventory and so Summoner/Scholar is at 30, I picket up Astrologian (at 30) and started and leveled Thaumaturge to 25 so far, and Blue Mage to 30. So just 5 more levels and I can get rid of all sub-30 caster gear, that should help a bit. Warrior is at 78 and that’s what I’m mainly pushing now, together with Machinist, who took over Ananta+Kojin Duty from Dancer.

Still haven’t had a look at the Wondrous Tails and I find the limit of 2000 Poetics a bit silly, I need a spreadsheet now to keep track of which gear sets I already bought because I need to store them at a retainer.

For the MSQ and post-Shadowbringers content, first I was blocked by item level (but that could be solved by buying 2-3 cheap-ish crafted items on the market board) and now I guess I need to run all Crystal Tower raids? I thought that was a recent change if you were finishing up ARR, not that it would come to haunt me in 5.3. Anyway, I still have 2 months to get through the story.

Oh, and I still need to read up if it’s feasible to get at least one Relic Weapon at 80, either for Bard or Warrior. I don’t want to invest a huge amount of time and Gil, but I think it’s an iLvl upgrade and if it looks cool… why not? At least the first step.

Again I’ve been trying to push my Beast Tribe Dailies and Duty Roulettes and GC handins and a few other things. Paladin to 60 today, Dark Knight sadly didn’t make the cut. Warrior is 75 thanks to the Pixies, Dancer is 68 thanks to some duties and Stormblood dailies and Machinist gets an odd level here and there. Hopefully tomorrow I can get rid of a whole set of pre-60 tanking gear.

Overall it still feels a little slow, but I’m pretty excited about the crafting jobs:

All at 77, on average, thanks to the Dwarves and crafting all the GC turnins myself every day. I don’t love Fishing, and the market board is bad with availability, but at latest when the DoH jobs reach 80, I’m gonna go out again for Leves or to grab the handins myself. Maybe next Sunday already?