Final Fantasy XIV

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?

Last night I finally managed to finish the last MSQ of the original .0 patch, aptly named “Shadowbringers”. The story is actually good, but my final verdict is still that I don’t understand why people would say it is so much better than the original ARR MSQ. I found them both excellent, Stormblood was a little worse and for me Heavensward was the weakest of the four, but that one was still ok! I guess tastes are different. Also I didn’t say that the MSQ was fun at all times or perfect. But compared to WoW, everything has been kinda excellent.

I was pretty annoyed with the Shadowbringers “role quest” though, in my case ranged physical DPS. The story was a good one, but the implementation was kinda horrible, although I am partly to blame by doing it all in one sitting at 80. But it was literally “port all over the Norvrandt map, then fly/ride to your quest spot, and after a minute port back to the Crystarium”. It wouldn’t have been half as bad if it had been close to an Aetheryte Crystal but this was like 15 minutes just wasted on flying and porting. I am not used to this level of inconvenience in FFXIV. And what I already lamented on Discord, the final solo duty seemed bugged for me. You have one NPC aiding you, but in my case he didn’t really. First try on normal difficulty, very late in the fight I got one of these “gather together” markers after being stunned (and I didn’t notice standing in anything), he didn’t run to me, we died. Second try, very easy, as I didn’t enjoy it the first time already, he simply died a minute into the fight and there’s nothing I could have done to prevent it. Third try everything finally worked, I was stunned at the exact same moment, but this time he ran to me and we lived.

Anyway, another peculiarity. You unlock a quest giver in the last zone and he just hands out 430 gear after you finished this role quest. I missed this at first and couldn’t queue for the last duty until I went to research and found this out pretty quickly. I then remembered I was actually told he’d have gear for me, but I thought this was just the game telling me where to hand in future currency that I don’t have yet, not that I would’ve just had to click on him and grab my stuff…

So the next logical quests would be the so-called Post-Shadowbringers MSQ, but not sure I need to rush those like I just did. I actually want to look at a few other things first, mostly Beast Tribe dailies and pushing Machinist and Dancer.

Also I am at a point where I am completely out of ideas on what to spend my poetics on. Bard, White Mage, Warrior have 70 gear (so that’s ranged physical, healer, tank), every class I play has their 70 weapon (in use or pre-bought). I even started stocking up on some 70 gear for jobs I don’t have an immediate plan of leveling. Also I think I have the 60 Tank gear, and for the Machinist I definitely don’t need it. Or maybe I missed the forest for the trees and I can actually buy something useful at 80, that’s a thing I need to research.

After a weekend with a lot of FFXIV I got Bard to 80 today and I should be only 5 MSQ steps away from finishing the original Shadowbringers content. And 1 dungeon and 1 trial.

So I actually managed to give in to the urge to progress Warrior and White Mage, unlike two years ago. I did do some stuff on other jobs, but only thing I wanted to do anyway, for example Beast Tribe dailies on Dancer, duty roulette on Paladin, Dark Knight, and Machinist.

The next step is finishing up the MSQ, then looking into Beast Tribe dailies for crafting, as I want to get those to 80. Or, to 71 first and then buy some gear to replace my Level 50 crafting greens from… I don’t know, maybe the Grand Company. Machinist needs a few levels so I can slowly get rid of the gear, same for the sub-60 tanks. I am a little curious about Samurai or Rogue/Ninja, but for now I’m waiting.

And I bought a Level 71 set of crafter gear in the Crystarium, it’s 22170 + 36950 + 16795 + 22170 + 36950 + 22170 = 157205 Gil. (6 pieces, left side, no jewellery) Main and off hand are 40398 Gil each and I did not buy those yet, but the gear is shared. Also found one cheap 71 HQ earring on the marketboard, that needs to be enough for now.

It’s Blaugust again and this is post number 15, which means I have earned my silver badge, and I even have 2 days spare!

I bought Endwalker last night and today I properly started with the Shadowbringers story, leaving The Crystarium for the first time. MSQ is cool as usual, and I’m halfway to Level 74 already (Bard). Meanwhile I tanked some duty roulette, as I wanted to bring Warrior to 70, then going back to Paladin (54) and Dark Knight (55). I’ve also dutifully continued my Ananta Beast Tribe quests and continued the Kojin ones I apparently already started 2y ago. And then I started the Namazu ones to push my crafting jobs a little, I’m 63+ on most and 62 only on 3, so I’m gonna continue to do whatever is currently the lowest, in addition to GC handins.

I was very much relieved that the Square Enix Shop website has improved, this time it was only riddled with minor nuisances, where I think I spent half an hour trying to buy something two years ago. Something that should literally be 3 clicks…

Having said all that, so far I’m not particularly happy with the Shadowbringers MSQ, Eulmore was a little annoying, Amh Araeng wasn’t great and I don’t like the Exarch. But it is what it is and it’s still a great game, but so far I don’t know why everyone praises Shadowbringers so much. I don’t see how it’s miles better than the rest.

It’s Blaugust again and this is post number 10.

It took longer than I had hoped (free thingy ran out on July 30th), but today at noon I finally resubbed to FFXIV, including my one missing retainer (which I faintly remembered had a lot of gear).

Took a while to get that sorted, but with all the jobs I had leveled already I could free up a ton of space. Then I continued selling crafting mats clogging up retainer number 1 and 2, so maybe I can get rid of the cost for number 3 in a month again.

Waited ages half-afk until tanks were needed for the Duty Roulette and not just healers, got Praetorium…

Wasn’t in the mood for anything really today, so I did three beast tribe quests and a few crafting handins.

It’s not that I already regret resubbing… but today just wasn’t a good day for being really productive. Didn’t want to do MSQ, didn’t want to do dungeons.

Well, would’ve done something as Dancer DPS I guess.

Also still on the fence if I should preorder Endwalker now for the new XP earring or if I should try to get through Shadowbringers a bit first… Last time I preordered Shadowbringers “too soon” and then it fizzled out before I reached the content.

It’s Blaugust again and this is post number 9.

As I wrote last Saturday, my free login time has ended and to my (huge) surprise every day I actually wanted to login to FFXIV and play. I don’t even remember when the last time was that I felt this strongly about not being able to play. I think there were times in the last year where I’d rather play than work (how unsurprising) but not really this “I really want to play NOW.”

So there’s a good chance I’ll pull the trigger on Friday, we’ll see.

Oh, and I stumbled over Zepla’s YouTube channel and it’s pretty awesome. Helpful content and the best puns.

It’s Blaugust again and this is post number 3.