Good morning you happy people out in digital land. The last two days have been pretty horrible, at least in the way that I have felt. However at roughly 2:30 yesterday afternoon something “broke”, and I started feeling a bit better. I shifted from being shivering and piling on as many blankets as I could find with no real appetite.. to being hot and having a ravenous appetite. While my allergies are still going more or less haywire… I think whatever bug I had has moved on and I will be well on the mend. I am super thankful it is Friday however, as everything I seem to do just wears me out right now.
Dragoon Get!
After getting level 30 on my marauder and switching over to Warrior, I immediately set my sights on catching up my lancer. One of the key design flaws in this game appears to be a severe lack of quests. Essentially there are enough quests for you to level ONE class, but each additionally class you want to push up has to grind their way through the content. Every 5 levels you can get a class quest that will upgrade your weapon and armor, but essentially other than that you are on your own. There are of course leve quests but they are not really that good experience wise, and you are limited on the total number of those you can do a day. Right now the best and fastest way to level is to grind Fates.
Fates are essentially a cross between the events in Guild Wars 2 and the Rifts in Rift. They are random and sometimes player kicked off events that spawn in a zone. They have a time limit to complete the objective, and players are rewarded based on contribution. Unlike some games this one seems to be entirely based on the unmodified threat table. As a result healers and tanks seem to have an easier time getting “Gold” ranking than say a single target dps. There are certain zones that have become hubs of sort for Fate running, and roaming groups ping pong around the zones picking up credit.
Fate Grinding
This is essentially how I pushed from level 22 to 30 on my lancer, but running fate after fate. Sure it was super repetitive… but there are a few advantages. Firstly… Gil the currency is really hard to come by. It is only awarded by doing quests, leves and fates. There is no way to earn it from just killing random mobs. As a result Fates become one of your best repeatable sources of money. Additionally Fates reward grand company seals, which you can then use to upgrade your rank in your chosen grand company or buy some really nice gear upgrades.
After all my fate grinding I was able to bump my rank up several steps and buy a nice level 30 axe for my warrior and spear for my dragoon.. as well as a really amazing tanking hauberk that is pictured above. Additionally there are certain fates that reward various nifty things from getting maximum contribution. The fates are generally puns based on pop culture or songs… so the localization team had a lot of fun with them. In Costa Del Sol there is a fate called “It’s Not Lupus” where you fight a boss named “Cancer”… which is a House reference… and if you get maximum contribution it gives you a little crab pet to follow you around.
Gold Sinks
One of the things that really concerns me going forward with the long term health of the game is the huge number of gold sinks, and relative lack of ways to actually earn money. Always in the past my defacto answer for needing money was just to go farm mobs until I got the amount of cash that I needed. I have always loved mindless slaughter… however in FFXIV it has lost some of its luster since npcs out in the world NEVER drop loot. That is just not a thing this game does at all… essentially your only sources of loot are dungeon chests, leve chests, quests and occasionally fates. This leaves you with relatively few opportunities for money making.
Other than grinding fates over and over… the next best way for money seems to be running Guildleave quests. The oddity about these however is that you only earn 6 allowance a day. Now these allowances stack up until you have 99 of them, but if you are using them as a way to get money or to gain experience you can burn through them really quickly. While the game is amazingly fun, and I really love the freedom of the whole multiclass concept… I can see how very quickly we are going to enter a territory of currency micro management.
In theory I am guessing all of this is to make the crafting that much more valuable, and force players to create a market economy. That is all well and good but right now I would far rather dump my materials on our most seasoned veteran crafter to push him up in ability… than to try and sell items on the auction house to regain some of my lost gil. The market also is completely unreasonable at times. Gear seems to be dirt cheap overall, since you can gain it in multiple places… and there is really no functional difference between quested and crafted drops. However all the other things… are way out into the stratosphere as far as cost. Lord help you if you want black dye for example.
I am hearing of level 50 characters needing start alts just to run through the quests to steal money from them. That is going to be a sad activity if that ends up being the way MOST level 50s pay for their repair bills. Right now that seems to be one of the bigger money sinks. Everything has durability, and everything you do damages it somewhat. Ultimately this is going to be the thing that pushes me to level a crafter, so that I can end up repairing my own gear. There has been talk of adding in dailies and other ways to earn currency, but we will just have to see how heinous these end up being. If they are similar to the leve quests, which give me a random chance at really nice gear upgrades… then I might be completely fine with them.
Back On Track
Last night I finally got back to leveling my main class properly once more. After dinging 30, getting the Warrior job I took a bit of a break from the main storyline to level a bunch of other things. Right now I currently have 32 Warrior/Marauder, 30 Dragoon/Lancer, 22 Gladiator, 12 Pugilist, and 6 Thaumaturge. As I said the other day I ran up the 12 Pugilist because it has some of the most powerful cross class abilities… namely the amazing “Second Wind” which equates to a free potion when used. I seriously could not have passed the level 30 lancer quest if I did not have this ability… so far the toughest encounter I have faced in the game.
Leveling Lancer to 30 and picking up Dragoon was purely a “want to” not part of some broader scheme. I have always loved Dragoons in the Final Fantasy universe. There is just something about the jump command that mystifies me. The ironic thing is… I dinged 30, finished the Dragoon quest… but have yet to actually fight anything and USE the jump command. I immediately switched out my gear to my level 16 gladiator set and started leveling it. My goal there was to hit 22, so that I could get the cross class ability “Provoke” which is literally one of the only snap aggro abilities in the game. I figured this would greatly help me in the ultimate goal of my Warrior soul… tanking instances.
Essentially I am at a point where I have the low hanging fruit from both of the cross classes that feed into Warrior… namely Pugilist and Gladiator. So I feel as though I finally have a full range of abilities at my disposal for being the best possible Warrior tank I can be. Ultimately I will level my Gladiator at some point, because I would really like to have both a max level Warrior soul and a Paladin soul at my disposal. Each of the tank classes functions vastly different, and I am sure there will be cases where either one will be far superior. Normally I favor sword and board, but quite frankly… the weapons that gladiator gets look horrible for the most part… which is greatly destroying my enjoyment.
As of last night I am up to the next major dungeon in the storyline, Brayflox’s Longstop… so here is hoping we can get a group together tonight. Quite frankly myself and the other tank have been the bottleneck in the ability to run dungeons. The dps seem to always be far ahead of us in the quest line and they are waiting on us to catch up so we can tank the instances for them. The only problem is… in order to effectively tank you need all of the sub abilities that feed into your class. In both cases, myself and the other tank have been spending a lot of time picking up those sub class abilities. Now that I finally have my set, I should be fine with mostly focusing on the main storyline from this point on.
Wrapping Up
Well it is once again that time, and I need to wrap up this post and get on with my morning. I hope you all have a great weekend ahead of you. For me I am hoping that I finish mending from whatever crap I have gotten, and that the allergens in the air die down a bit so I can live normally. It is bad enough that my wife has even been bothered by her allergies… and she rarely if ever is. Is it too much to ask for a cold snap so that everything will die out?