Final Fantasy XIV

FFXIV has another 4 days of free game time and I checked back in. Apparently there was a 7.1 patch I’d missed and the new Alliance Raid is in. As those seem mostly for gear catch up and I’m not really interested in that… nah.

But I did some of the usual duty finder roulette dance and SMN/SCH is 95 (up from 92 or so) and I got 2 levels in Mining and 2 on Dragoon. It’s decent fun this weekend. If you did lose track, there’s quite a bit to catch up though. I mean, I have 8 jobs at 90 that I didn’t touch when Dawntrail launched and then the lower ones, and have not even unlocked the two new ones at 80.

Ah well, with WoW winding down, maybe a month of not only playing EVE would be something?

I just clicked the button and thus have only 4-5 days left on my FFXIV subscription. One month was enough time to finish up the old MSQ, play through everything MSQ-related in the new expansion, take a 2nd job to 100, craft a few things, hand in the Wondrous Tails once, and in general I am happy with the outcome.

I was on the fence if I’d stay subbed but atm I am not interested in the raid or grinding gear. Leveling a couple more jobs would be interesting, but right now there is so much to do. The WoW expansion, a new Diablo IV season, and I’ve not really done anything in EVE for a week.

No, 2 MMOs at the same time are simply my limit, and I’m kinda curious about WoW now.

In the past I’ve said that FFXIV doesn’t waste your time and maybe I am unfair here because I opted out of raiding and gearing, but I’ve hardly ever felt that I had achieved “enough” after a month of a WoW expansion, especially if I was playing so relatively little. One job got to 100 with 90 of the MSQ, another job was swiftly pushed up with the sightseeing log, daily duty roulette, and a couple more things. In WoW I am faster at max level, but I don’t get handed a set of pretty nice artifact gear that is totally fine to start raiding (or going expert, if you want to compare to Heroics). But right now I just don’t want to spam dungeons to level every day, and that’s the quickest method for alternative jobs.

I will try to make an effort to resub for a month when the Alliance Raid comes out though, and play for a month again, but we’ll see how that will work out when the time has come.

After a day off I just finished the Dawntrail MSQ, I think it was a bit anticlimactic. Basically after you enter the last hidden zone there are a couple of neat things, but nothing major anymore. I wouldn’t say boring, but those 4 subzones were a bit much. The Level 100 trial is kinda hard if you’ve not seen it before.

So Warrior is 99 as well, I’m about to continue on the tank role quest because I want to hit Level 100 as well.

Other plans? Get a couple of levels in on Scholar/Summoner with duty roulette, level my two retainers, and unlock flying in the penultimate zone (did the 5 others). Oh, and I’ve kinda did the sightseeing log for the first time, just missing one zone there as well, that’s some good XP.

The “I want to do all the things” seems to have kicked in now.

I’ve not finished the MSQ, but my Bard is Level 100 and I just got my Artifact gear. I still have a couple of 99 MSQ steps left so I investigated if I could get the Warrior to 99 “quickly” and do that on that class. Grabbed the Wondrous Tales, did some duty roulette, and was 93. Also finally had a look at Aglaia, the first of the Endwalker Alliance Raids. After a second day of duty roulettes it’s 96.

Spent my Poetics on healer gear for Scholar (I prefer White Mage and Astrologian, but this gives a free caster job, and vice versa) and also did a bit of Mining in order to be able to level my Mining Retainer.

10 days of sub left.

I think I’m close to 2/3 done with the Dawntrail MSQ (looking at the length of the quest list on the wiki), at level 96.6.

I’ve only had the big reveal a bit ago (at least that’s what I think it was).

Overall I like it, but either I’m just not in the right mood or it’s absolutely not as great as Shadowbringers or Endwalker. Not on a quality level, really. It’s fun, it well-made, but it feels… a bit like a generic MMO expansion and not like an awesome FFXIV expansion. Maybe the last two were actually too good to be surpassed that easily.

The first two zones were fine, but a little forgettable.

My main gripe is the music. Again, it’s not bad, but I’m missing the bangers of the zone music. I didn’t play SB or EW for very long and yet I instantly recognize most of the zone music with the first few notes. DT doesn’t have that.

Anyway, continuing on and wondering if I will make it through the MSQ and whether I will have enough time to level a second job, because with the looming WoW expansion I doubt I’ll play more than a month.

Being down to 6 steps in Endwalker MSQ left, digging it at slowly whenever I had time this week.

Had to actually buy a couple of pieces of gear now to clear the 620/625 threshold for some duties.

Today I finally checked my currencies tab and to my delight I noticed I could still convert all those Tomestones (Causality and Comedy) and White Scrip.

Also if I can finish the last raid duty of the expansion as a random without dying, maybe it is too easy?

Anyway, with this done I can now decide if I want to buy Dawntrail or do some other stuff for my 3 remaining weeks of the sub.

Resubscribed to FFXIV today, haven’t bought the expansion yet.

According to the wiki I was on the first quest of Patch 6.4, so 19 MSQ steps until I have finished the “old” expansion.

The free login campaign is pretty good, I’ve been playing most days since I started. Got about 7 levels on Black Mage and not really having a ton of fun, but I want to progress…

Made about three levels on Dragoon, it’s more fun but not the focus, mostly Tribal Quests, and finally some levels on Sage, which is not my favourite healer, but the last one below 90, and it’s okay. closing in on Level 80.

Also spent my tomestones on the Warrior Relic Weapon (Tier 1) instead of upgrading the Bard’s Bow, but grabbed a couple cheap iLvl 640 weapons from the market board.

Not sure if I am missing something but leveling seems hard. I don’t like the deep dungeons so it’s just duty roulette and a few FATEs. Not so quick and not so fun, but it’s working out at a steady pace.

Again, not really sure if I want to continue after the free login campaign is up – although it’s been really fun. But if I’m trying to think about what I like about this game… it’s apparently not “bringing the last few jobs up to max level” and it’s also not “gearing up via Alliance Raids”. I think I’ll make time to resub a week or two before the next expansion launches, get to max level in my own pace, hopefully play with my FC, and do the normal raid, then level 2-3 more jobs I actually like. (I suppose this is BRD > WAR > WHM/AST > DNC > PLD/DRK > GNB).

FFXIV has another free login campaign, this time 14 days, until the end of the month.

I last played in November last year, that should have been patch 6.2 and before I saw this yesterday I didn’t think about it too much, and had also ignored Fanfest and hadn’t even thought about what they might have announced. Turns out the next expansion is not planned for exactly 2 years after the last, but for next summer, Kaylriene has a blog post about it.

So, for some reason I am interested and I might just take them up on the offer, there are patches 6.3 and 6.4 to look at.