Final Fantasy XIV

So I guess so have finished the ARR content of the original game in a bit of an anticlimactic way by coming years late to the party. The last 3 main story quests happen in 8 man dungeons (aside: funny that at Level 49 you finally get an explanation why a 4 man dungeon group is called Light Party) which are a little heavy on the cutscenes (not a problem) but are made really, really trivial by apparently not downscaling higher level players (enough or at all). The groups I had didn’t have anyone say hi, explain tactics or do anything other than focus DPS the boss down with maybe the offtank grabbing some adds. Or not, or just doing a bad job, couldn’t really tell. The evil Garleans set up for all these levels definitely felt a bit like cannon fodder and kinda wasted, but maybe those were epic battles when the content was current.
All in all a bit of wasted time, for example like sending a 6x group in TBC equipment into UBRS. Smash and grab, just without any loot. I guess it’s good the higher level players get poetics as a reward so us newbies don’t get blocked on the quest, I only had to queue for ~33min as a DPS, on a weekday in the early evening just after work.
Also maybe it was me or maybe the game, but after that I found myself wandering aimlessly for the first time. Sure, I did continue the MSQ, but I saw these “unlock quests” with the partially blue symbol at 50 everywhere and tried to follow a few, but they didn’t all seem to end up in something meaningful. In the progress I unlocked more beast tribe quests and dungeons, sure. But why do all these quests only pop up at 50 despite being high 40s. I don’t believe I missed ALL of them earlier, or maybe I did?
Also the amount of XP I got for all this running around seemed a bit low on Level 50/51 but maybe it was just a lot of breadcrumb ones and I was playing lower jobs too much in the last two weeks. Or maybe Heavensward does start a bit slow and it’s not me, we’ll see.
This may sound overly negative so maybe I just had a bad day, but the anticipation was kinda spoiled. The Praetorium definitely felt worse than the 2 8mans before it, which I did in the last days. Oh, and while it’s nice to know I am already eligible to start the quest for an epic purple bow I’m 90% sure it’s only good as a transmog now, if at all, but researching so far has proved inconclusive if it can later be upgraded or stays at 50.

Waiting it out paid off, yesterday I checked the Square Enix store like every few days and lo and behold, Stormblood was on sale for 15 EUR. So I grabbed it, cheered in /g and went on to play WoW for an hour until it had patched.
Then I could finally hand in my Level 50 Bard quest and kill 5 mobs to finish the Archer Hunting Log. I hate wasting XP. The rewards for the Job Quest were a bit weird IMHO, the chest for your blue Level 45 set and then a full 50 set as a recolor. But I won’t complain… Checked the AH for a cheap 50 bow, neck, bracers, ring, and earrings and got all except the earrings for cheap. Now to just finish the last 2-3 steps of the ARR MSQ.
So if you started playing recently, grab your discounted expansion.

Just when I thought this game didn’t have /played I learn that it’s /playtime. And yeah, 4d 20h – after 25 real days, that makes 4.6h per day on average. But to be fair I let it run a while because I thought there was no /played.
Warrior is finally shaping up to do a bit more damage. So I’m kinda glad I don’t have the expansions yet, so I can focus at the low level stuff for a bit. Although I would really like to finish the final bard quest and do some stuff but it’s wasted XP and I’m not doing anything either. Short term goals now are some Kobold beast tribe dailies and getting to 44 with the Warrior to get some dungeon + quest out of the way.
What really annoys me a little right now that my Duty roulette has been Sastasha for 3 or 4 days straight now. Bah!

Wow, I know 3 gathering + 8 crafting professions looked like a chunk of work, but maybe I underestimated how much it really is.
When I last posted I had the 3 gathering ones at 16/17 and Culinarian at 16. The next night I brought the remaining 7 ones to 10/11. All in one evening. It was a very long evening though.
Now I invested a little more time.

• 25 Fisher
• 21 Miner + Botanist
• 21 Culinarian
• 16 Carpenter
• 15 Leatherworker
• 11 Weaver + Alchemist
• 10 Blacksmith + Armorer

So the current plan is to get the gathering ones to 25, incl. quest and then all the others to 15 incl. quest – then I’m “done” for now. Until I want to continue, of course…

Small update in FFXIV (ah well, who am I kidding, I guess I played a lot):

• Warrior at 35
• Conjurer at 18
• Arcanist at 10
• Botanist at 17
• Miner at 16
• Fisher at 17
• Culinarian at 16

Warrior solo isn’t as fast as I had hoped, let’s see if there are some more good DPS skills coming, but I’ve been dutifully (haha) doing my daily Duty Roulette and Guildhest. Apart from not knowing the way (should get better by time) all the lowbie dungeons aren’t especially hard to tank. Except that slime boss in Copperbell Mines…
Despite what I wrote about Botanist, Gathering doesn’t seem to be so hard, at least in the early levels. Do a few levequests between the class quests, grind a bit, done. Fishing is actually kinda relaxing, watched some YouTube videos on the second screen and then it’s better than WoW fishing and can be done with audio and glancing over alone.
What I read from several people that players tend to level all related professions in bursts, as to be able to get rid of old gear and synergies between the Jobs and what not. So I got to 15 now on all 3 but I’m not seeing it, except getting rid of 2 pieces of sub-15 gear. Also no way I’m leveling 7 different (other) crafting professions to Level 15 now. My inventory is exploding in cooking mats and food already just from the one profession. I might try Weaver or Alchemist though.

Doing the daily Duty Roulette and Guildhest was pretty nice for the first 20 levels as a Marauder but somehow at 25 it started to stall. Mobs didn’t die so quickly anymore, some levequests are actually hard and I died to random mobs in the wilderness.
I’d hit 27 and had a quick look at Palace of the Dead. It’s a bit weird but seems ok. Half a level in 15min is definitely faster than soloing. Then I did 2 more and a few quests and am 30 now, yay. And a Warrior, of course.
Because I somehow like the holy trinity (except in SWTOR?) I also put a bit of time into the Conjurer. Level 17 now and it’s kind of fun.
I also made my first foray into gathering in FFXIV and started to level Botanist up to 10. It’s kind of involved, coming from WoW and SWTOR where it’s just run around and stop every once in a while to harvest something. I mean it didn’t take ages, but just the level 1/5/10 quests are somewhat time consuming already. This system really seems quite different than in other games.
Finally I discovered the Sightseeing log but I guess I won’t bother for now. The first one in Gridania was already kinda non-trivial and didn’t give a reward.

Some random thoughts after playing FFXIV for a little over a week:
Many of the MSQs are a bit silly (not in the “haha, funny” sense). I don’t mind the contents per se, it’s better if it’s not “please kill these 10 rats, my children have nothing to eat” all the time – but it’s really a lot of “go there, go back, go there again, go back again” – I am SO grateful that Aetherite Teleport only costs a little money and it’s not a Hearthstone on a 15min cooldown. Argh.
So many dungeons! But they are usually quick and doable, and the wait time so far hasn’t been longer than 20 minutes. Well ok, I had to abandon Titan on the first try (nice feature: people can vote to disband to avoid a penalty) because while it doesn’t seem to be a complicated fight, people died before the first big bang already. I don’t think the healer was really good. I hate to blame it on the healer, but even when I stood in nothing I just died to environmental AoE (after the tank was dead…) Worked flawlessly on the second try 3h later.
Also I’m not sure how happy I am that the dungeons often block progress. Sure, as I wrote it’s often not a big deal – but if I need to do this Duty now, it’s 20 minutes wait + 20 minutes for the dungeon, so I can’t get up for 45 minutes – yes I’m a spoilt solo player these days I guess. Also I can only use the downtime for FATEs and levequests and then I hate it if my Duty pops before I finished one. Meh.
Also there are a lot of phases of “omg, so much to do” and then “omg, I have nothing to do and need to search the map for FATEs every 30s…
I’ve hit 40 today and stopped the MSQ thing for a short bit, going back to do my 40 Bard quest first the next time I play. Also I did my first Duty finder random thing today (forgot the exact name, of course) and it was Ifrit, nice and short. Also I’m kinda curious about a tanking class, but I didn’t enjoy leveling my second class from 1-10, so it will only get worse with every new class? We’ll see.

Oh wow, that was a little unexpected. I know I had written about how I had wanted to play FF XIV for a while, but I never came around to it. I was in luck though and Gazimoff posted that FF XIV (the base game) was on Twitch Prime, and I had totally not seen it. So I grabbed it on Friday and installed it this morning and so I guess I have a month of play time now.
It’s fun! And pretty. And kinda colourful. A bit heavy on kill quests, but otherwise I had a ton of fun with it today, while stumbling through things. Everything is kinda nicely explained, you just need to memorize everything.
There’s only a very small amount of annoying things:

• the UI for comparing if a new piece of gear is an upgrade is horrible or I’m using it wrong
• running around with horrible hot pants for the last 5? levels because nothing was a real upgrade
• not being sure if I should keep those spiritbound? low-level pieces because I can apparently disenchant? them into materia?
• no mount

But apart from this it’s nice.
I chose a female Miqo’te and started as an Archer. I’m level 16 now and according to the NPCs kind of a VIP already.
Combat is a bit weird, I’m running in circles and kiting stuff. It works quite well though, but it’s just like with a WoW hunter 😛 I think I’m holding off with any other job until I am Level 30.
 

This day was a bit odd though because I also did a few quests in WoW and did the weekly Conquest in SWTOR with my guild. 3 MMOs on a single day is a bit much maybe. Might be a bit hard to juggle 3 MMOs in a month, especially with WoW being really fun and now this new one also trying to grab my attention