Final Fantasy XIV

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.

So, my 14 days of FFXIV have come to an end and apparently I miscalculated or missed the starting day because today I can’t login anymore, I thought I still had today 🙁

Anyway, I do plan to subscribe soon[tm], but probably not this weekend, which is a bit of a shame, but I’ll probably use the time to get my TBC Classic Druid to 70, and come back in a week or so.

I am quite happy with all the things I managed to get done in these 14 days, despite flailing wildly at the start and not really knowing what to do, so thanks to the people in Discord and the Novice Network on Omega. It’s fascinating to see the exact names as mentors as 2 years ago, when I started playing. Too bad I didn’t notice when I got booted from my Returner status, I had wanted to say thanks.

In my case I think the free “come back and remember how awesome this game is” has definitely worked, I don’t see any reason not to resubscribe in August.

So, what did I achieve?

Story progess: First of all, I made it to Shadowbringers content. I finished the Stormblood MSQ and then all the Post-Stormblood quests, and then I even did the starting quests in the new city, although I already forgot the name. Did not manage to continue the Hildibrand questline, but finished the Make It Rain seasonal/limited time thing.

Level progress: If only I’d written this down, but I think I did:

• Bard 68 -> 72
• White Mage 65 -> 70
• Warrior 65 -> 66
• Paladin & Dark Knight 50 -> 52
• Machinist 33 -> 52
• Dancer 60 -> 63
• –
• Most Disciple of the Hand Jobs 50-52 -> 55-62

First I pushed Bard with Stormblood MSQ, and side quests. Then once I had seen the MSQ roulette dungeons again I healed them, then I also tanked them. In the end I was tanking “Leveling” and “Level 50/..” dungeons and queued for Trials as Dancer.

I think my next “goals” are: Shadowbringers MSQ on Bard, to get to 80, more tanking and getting all to 60 to be able to throw away some gear. Catch up Machinist to Dancer and continue to ignore melee 😛

I really still love the Bard and plan to keep it as my main job, although the opening rotation is a bit nuts. Dancer is also really fun, but a bit lacking. Machinist started really boring at 30, but now at 50 it’s a lot better. Although the gauge mechanic is a bit weird in a dungeon, you kinda struggle to get your resources to full before the first boss because you’re usually only AoEing, which doesn’t build them.

Gear progress: I did a lot of duty roulette, MSQ and Level 50 most days, Leveling and Trial on many days. I have a full (minus 1-2 parts where I had 385, rings/earrings) Level 70 iLvl 400 set for Bard, White Mage, and Warrior now.

Currently the day doesn’t seem to have enough hours for all my plans.

First of all there’s TBC Classic, while we’ve started a summer break on our group for now due to people going on vacation, there’s still the Druid/Hunter duo. I got to 68 on the weekend and learned flying, but I’m not really motivated atm as I don’t have any real goals at 70.

Trying to get the dailies done in Retail on my main, that’s 15-30 minutes, and I’m probably not gonna be able to squeeze an M+ in this week, maybe after the raid tomorrow. In any case I’m happy I’m not raiding 3 days per week anymore. 4h + a few minutes before is really nice.

Then there’s the war in EVE which seems to be pumped up again as of the weekend, at least there should be stuff happening in a few days.

But mostly my time is spent in FFXIV atm, although it warned me today that I had only 5 of my 14 days left, but I’ve been a busy bee. Daily MSQ roulette has yielded me the Level 70 Healer set already (after the ranged DPS one), Warrior is nearly 67, Machinist is 51, Dancer is nearly 63, and I got White Mage to 69 today and started handing in crafted mats to the Grand Company again, trading Gil for XP if the stuff is available for cheap. Also I did the intro quest for Gunbreaker but I’m not sure I like the playstyle. I think I’ll stick to Warrior and try to level Paladin and Dark Knight. And I slowly continued on the Level 70 post-Stormblood MSQ.

When I started to play 2 years ago, the release of Shadowbringers was imminent and I didn’t manage to get to 70 before it launched. This time Endwalker is imminent, so I really want to be there at launch, but that means I need to catch up quite a bit. I hope the autumn is long enough that I can do that.

So FFXIV will end in a few days, then I need to decide if I will instantly resub. WoW Retail can be put on the backburner a little, I’m not 100% happy just raidlogging and doing dailies+weeklies, but that’s a plan for a few weeks at least. Classic needs a two level push then I can probably dial that back a bit as well, unless I am renewed in my interest to run dungeons at 70 (and prepare to be able to do Heroics for the Epic Druid Flight Form quest when it is coming). EVE is a wild card atm, day to day maintenance is currently low, but we’ll see how August shapes up…

But yeah, I guess that’s a good problem to have.

Yeah, I can’t really believe it, but 7 of my 14 days of the free login campaign are already up and I guess their plan worked out, because I’m having a blast. Nothing I have tried so far was blocked or paywalled (I do own Shadowbringers, after all) and I think I might sub again when this 2 week thing is up. Actually thinking about pre-ordering Endwalker to get the 30% XP bonus to 81 via the new earring, the one I have was only good until 71, and I reached that on Bard already.

Today I managed to bring Machinist to 40 and then catch up on 4 class quests I hadn’t done. Machinist at 35+40, Paladin at 50, and White Mage at 65. For now I switched my MSQ Duty Roulette to White Mage until I am 70/71, then probably gonna use Warrior. The Leveling Roulette for the Machinist for now, and the 50/60 dungeon one for Dancer, although the XP doesn’t seem to be awesome for that one, but I want the 70 White Mage set for Poetics, having completed the Ranged DPS one already.

So I seem to have a steady pace of 2-3h of content per day, but not a lot more. I dug out the Challenge Log (I think it’s weekly) and filled up a few bars for extra XP there, which meant doing a few Levequests, but I’m not keen on grinding those out. Same for dungeons, really.

I also stumbled upon the Restoration of Ishgard quest line and did a bit of that.

My main problem right now seems to be differentiating between quests with a blue mark which are interesting (like the Restoration), which are completely useless or not interesting (Extreme Trials), and which are important (no idea, maybe none?).

But yes, overall I’m very happy. And I can’t wait to get familiar with the dungeons again so I can tank and heal and not just DPS.

Oh wow, so much to do and so little knowledge left in my WoW-contaminated brain.

What I managed to do today:

• Run Duty Roulette (MSQ and Dungeons) for Poetics, got to 71 on Bard
• Run Duty Roulette (Leveling), got Machinist to 35
• Double checked all my bars and keybinds for all classes (I am so glad that all the roles share a few skills and I have the habit of having roughly same skills on the same keybinds anyway)
• Bought iLvl 400 gear for Poetics: Bow, Chest, Gloves, Belt, Pants -> iLvl 345 for now, saving up for Helm and Boots, then maybe accessories
• cleaned out the 7 left side parts of the Armoury Chest, 5 right side are a TODO
• sold a lot of stuff on the market board

And then there are a few things I deliberately didn’t do:

• played Tank or Healer
• continued the MSQ
• figured out how to level Machinist. Probably Duty Finder, Levequests, FATEs, Palace of the Dead?
• Crafting. Oh wow, had I forgotten how complicated that was. Did one Trial Synthesis and gave up. I need to read up a few things. First of all, what to craft (IIRC crafting an item for the first time gives an XP bonus), then how to craft (omg, so many buttons), and then there are the Ixal and Kobold quests. Not sure Ixal is still good at 52-56. Would be nice to get them all to 60 though, but this is not an immediate goal
• start a Melee DPS class

And then a list of things I actually want to get done in these 14 days:

• finish the whole pre-Shadowbringers MSQ
• get Machinist to 50 or preferably 60
• try to run some duty roulettes regularly
• try to play Dancer a little bit
• maybe try Gunbreaker
• maybe get Paladin and/or Dark Knight to 60, but I guess that is stretching it