Final Fantasy XIV

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.

With WoW being in a real lull (we officially stopped raiding and we kinda stopped M+) I took the liberty to get at least a month of FFXIV in and catch up a bit.

Resubscribed a week ago and the first thing I did is empty my 2 free retainers of all the glamour gear. The next day I paid for retainer number 3 and 4, so I could empty at least number 4 and cancel that one for the future. My glamour dresser is now at around 680/800 – not bad, as I’ve collected quite a bit of Endwalker gear already, so this should at least be ok until the next expansion.

I managed to do all of the 6.2 MSQ very quickly (it was really good), including the trial. I noticed I had done 6.1 already just before unsubscribing at the start of the year, just the one 6.1 trial is missing.

As usual it took a bit to get acquainted again with all the currencies and what to do, but I already traded in my old tomestones, bought some 610 crafted gear on the market board (Bard is 594 now, just as WAR was with raiding Savage in 6.0) and started trying to cap the 450 Tomestones of Causality for the week, and it has worked out for both resets. Not sure what to buy yet. For now I’ve reverted back to my old main job, Bard, because I didn’t want to tank the new stuff last night, but already healed some Alliance Raid stuff, we’ll see.

WHM and RPR are at 571 iLvl, so there are some easy targets for gear and spending my old 6.0 tokens.

Main priority after grabbing some tomestones was SMN/SCH – which I had left at Level 87 – and then there’s a ton of content I need to check if I’m interested in doing.

Was a bit surprised to find this draft from day 2, so I had to rewrite parts of it. SMN/SCH was 90 pretty quickly and the last week I’ve been doing a duty roulette or two most days and got Red Mage to 67 already. My main focus is the Hildibrand quest line now, and I have finished the ARR part.

Overall it’s fine but I’m not having awesome fun. I didn’t touch the new Deliveries, I have not checked Tataru’s quests and I only briefly visited the Island Sanctuary. It’s an ok use of my time but I’m not desperate for a second month at the moment. I’ll see that I progress the things I care about but not overdo it. I guess it’s my typical way of needing goals, I can’t just subscribe to an MMO and look at the sandbox and find spontaneous fun.