Final Fantasy XIV

With the WoW flying thing done I spent a little more time in Eorzea. I “finished” Yanxia and The Ruby Sea (including unlocking flying) and just dinged 65 on Bard and will continue the MSQ in the next zone. So far the pacing is perfect. Finishing up the flying quests brought me to 10% shy of the next level to continue, let’s see how this evolves.

Didn’t manage to hit 62 on Warrior but haven’t tanked anything since coming back. White Mage is 53 though, so I did a daily healing roulette + trial most days. I wiped on the last boss of Palace of the Dead so I need to retry this at some point so I can have a look at Heaven-on-High.

Finally my gathering jobs are all at 43 and besides Leatherworker at 29.7 all other crafting jobs are 30-31 (Culinarian 41). Did quite a few GC turnins and also a few more days of Ixal quests. If only I could craft with ingredients from Retainer inventories…

Overall I really want to push through Stormblood right now, although (because?) I’m loving it and then get to Shadowbringers. No real plans for a new job but lost interest in Arcanist and Paladin a bit (and didn’t like Red Mage at all). I’m keen to try Samurai because I’ve not played any melee DPS (except bad Warrior DPS) – but from a gear and overload point of view Dancer would be more reasonable… We’ll see… 1 of each DPS/Tank/Healer is good enough right now, I just need to catch up on White Mage.

Rainy weekend, time to play games.
I’ve finished the first part of Stormblood (Level 61-62 quests) on Bard and have cool looking outfit now. So far I really liked Stormblood and can’t wait to continue.

Other than that I pushed White Mage to 49 with Palace of the Dead and daily roulettes (got some sweet Level 50 gear waiting) and Miner to 43 because I wanted to continue to level my Miner Retainer. Didn’t touch Warrior or Paladin really since the break, but it’s ok.

Yesterday I finally managed to drag myself to continue FFXIV’s MSQ. First I had to do an 8 man trial then some running and some cutscenes, today I had to do a normal duty and a solo thing. But after a few hours I finished Patch 3.4 (Soul Surrender) and now only have like 8 quests left until Stormblood. I know, one expansion late, but at least I’m continuing with hardly any XP as a reward.

Also didn’t get to do my WoW dailies to unlock flying today because of this but as I’m not enjoying them so much anyway this was some welcome distraction. Still feels grindy to be caught between patches, so I kinda just exchanged one grind for another. Such is life as an MMO gamer.

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!

So far my plan to chip away at the FFFXIV ARR Level 50 content slowly but steadily seems to work out, I’ve found a bit of the fun again. Today I queued up for The Whorleater (Hard) and started doing some crafting dailies, after that I finished the Patch 2.2 content (Through the Maelstrom). Tomorrow I’ll probably start with 2.3 (Defenders of Eorzea) and try to do at least 1h of quests. This wiki page has been very helpful so far, actually the whole wiki is awesome. The Leviathan fight was fun, but again too easy due to gear and people I guess. I did watch a quick tactics video before though…

Sadly I’m not in the mood for tanking right now, but we’ll see, maybe I’ll queue up for a random again in the next days before doing my quests.

For crafting I’m a little undecided if I want to bring all of them to 30 or Culinarian to 37 first. One higher level to craft the daily stuff is kinda nice (better gear) and apparently there’s a good skill at CUL Level 37, according to this extensive guide.