Nogamara

I know it’s a silly coincidence, but I just learned the /battlestance emote in FFXIV, which I didn’t even know existed. That is all.

PS: Thanks to Shintar calling me out in the comments I finally installed OBS again so I can do videos. And I replaced the screenshot with a better one 😉

Hit 60 on Bard today and already managed to do the first of the end-of-expansion dungeons, but not the second. First I was a little letdown as I hadn’t expected to be blocked by the gear wall (needs iLvl 142, I had ~127) but then I remembered to update my gear, 5mins after dinging 60 – I had already bought 5 pieces of Idyllshire 230 gear, which easily catapulted me to 181, so I was even downleveled 1 iLvl for the dungeon. Oops.
Warrior is 58 and, like Bard, caught up on Job quests for now. I’m trying to do one 50-60 dungeon roulette per day and not catch up to Bard again. Not sure if the XP bonus now works or not.

I’m still a little mixed on how I liked the Heavensward MSQ. Parts of it were great, parts of it were kinda weird and seemed out of place. I think I liked the ARR MSQ story better, overall.
From a gameplay perspective, I didn’t like Ishgard at first, but this improved a little. It’s still ugly as hell and boring and grey. The zones are all too big and with too few Aetheryte Crystals, until you are able to fly, that is. But once I was able to fly in a zone, I was basically done there. We’ll see how often I need to go back in the post-expansion quest line. The ones I kinda dreaded in ARR. According to this page there’s only 25+19 = 44 though, and not over 70? like in ARR. Also I want to learn more of the Scions’ fate, dammit!

I also pre-ordered Shadowbringers last night and am enjoying my +30% XP earring already. And I did a few Ixal quests again, so Weaver is 30 now, Blacksmith is 29.5 and there’s only Armorer at 25 and Goldsmith+Leatherworker at 26 to grind out until 30.

Friday: Going afk for a few days so might as well post a progress update before that.
Sunday: Of course scheduling didn’t work, but unexpected downtime, checking other people’s gaming blogs and noticing it…

WAR and BRD are both at 56 (poor planning on my part). Did some 50/60 duty roulettes as a DPS. Planning to do more of them as a tank when I saw them once. Also caught up with the MSQ, didn’t finish the Level 56 ones, but those were the reason I soldiered on to 56.

I also unlocked flying in the first 3 zones after a dungeon and some running around to find the remaining Aether Currents and some easy quests. Kinda painless compare to WoW.

In lowbie news, the WHM is nearing 40 and the GLD is now a Paladin, at Level 30. Culinarian is 38 (37 would’ve been enough) and I’m already kinda sick of the Ixal dailies. Ah well, fine if you’re waiting in a DPS duty queue…

Big news in the last week. I did finally manage to finish all the ARR content and I’m now finally in Ishgard. Because of this slog I was also busy doing quite a lot of other things. Ishgard is… grey. But the quests aren’t bad so far, but also not really awesome. Let’s see.

In reverse chronological order I finished the FFXV crossover event last night, and Hatching-Tide a few days ago.

Then I finally did some crafting again, although I had stopped doing the Ixal dailies every day. But 2 jobs are over 30 now, next is Culinarion to 38 for a new skill. Also the gatherers got some love

And finally I did gain some levels on the normal jobs

• 54 Warrior – trying to stay ahead now because of Armory XP
• 53 Bard
• 36 White Mage – and the trinity is complete
• 25 Gladiator – more tanking!
• 15 Arcanist
• (50 Red Mage) – just a quick glance, this seems weird 😛

It’s not that I’m not having fun in FFXIV, but I was really enjoying the game before I hit 50. I tried everything the game had to offer me as a beginner (as far as I know): a DPS class, a tanking class, a healing class, crafting, more crafting, gathering, beast tribe dailies, random duty roulette – everything was fine in moderation. And new. And fun.

Then I hit 50 (with the MSQ) and had to do all the story end-game content in the original game (ARR). This page shows my struggle, but it’s misleading. Each of those quests can have 3-7 steps with trips to several towns.

• Patch 2.1 (A Realm Awoken) – DONE
  • 19 quests, 1 dungeon
• Patch 2.2 (Through the Maelstrom) – DONE
  • 19 quests, 1 trial (hard)
• Patch 2.3 (Defenders of Eorzea) – DONE
  • 19 quests, 1 trial (hard)
• Patch 2.4 (Dreams of Ice) – DONE
  • 19 quests, 1 dungeon, 1 trial (hard)
• Patch 2.5 (Before the Fall – Part 1)
  • 8 quests…
  • no wait, go back to 2.4 – the page is missing something:
    • 1 trial (hard)
    • 1 trial (hard)
    • 1 trial (hard)
• Patch 2.55 (Before the Fall – Part 2)

And worst of all, they are sequential – it would be a lot better if you could just queue (30 mins as dps for the first one today) for all of them at the same time. But no, that’s probably 2 hours where you have to be available for up to an hour, so a planned session. Meh.

As I wanted to get this stuff done (the above was written last night) I queued for Garuda (Hard) and waited in vain for an hour. Two awesome people in the novice network offered to help and while I was confused at first I learned something new: you can queue up unsynced and the 2 70s made quick work of Garuda and Titan (at Level 50, Hard) and not 15mins later I have this step done. Thank you, random strangers helping new players out!