Tips For Eorzea: Part 2

Good morning you happy people in internet land.  I had another wonderful night of not being able to shut off my brain… and as a result getting to sleep well after midnight.  As was posted as a comment yesterday, I had been considering Melatonin for some time… just was not sure if I wanted to cross that threshold yet.  However it is beginning to sound like something I need or want to do.  Sleep should not be something you have to struggle to get right?

Lowbie Dungeons

I have two friends that have just started out in the game recently, and have reached the point in the main story quest where they begin entering a series of three dungeons.  Lethbridge is playing a Gladiator tank, and Cylladora is playing a Thaumaturgist…  so since I almost always play a tank I needed something else to run with them.  As a result yesterday I pushed my Archer up to level 16 so I could ride along for the fun.  Essentially I have been trying to level Pugilist and Archer so that I could start getting rid of all the low level disciple of war gear that I had laying around and lining my vaults.  My hope is to push both up to 20ish soon, which will greatly reduce the amount of gear I have laying around.

Leth had already run Sastasha before, but to pick up Cyl in the chain we started back with that one again.  After that we continued the storyline into Tam-Tara Deepcroft, but as it was getting late we decided to save Copperbell until tonight.  All in all they were really smooth runs.  I snagged Warenwolf to heal and he decided to use the opportunity to push up his Arcanist a bit.  The gear that dropped seemed almost tailor made for our party, and both Leth and Cyl walked away with a ton of upgrades for their class.  Once again the Foestriker chest has eluded our groups, as to the best of my knowledge it has never actually dropped for anyone.

Tips For Eorzea

Yesterday when I was writing out the various tips it felt like I had a limitless font of them… this morning not so much.  Lets see if I can dig into my bag and find something worth sharing with the class.

Quest Sparingly

One of the awesome things about this game is that you can play every class, every craft, and every gatherer on the same character.  Meaning that while you are running this dungeon you can snap up drops for a class you might play later on instead of letting them rot.  The problem with this is however you have only one set of quests to get you through the levels.  As a result most of our guild is suggesting that you do as few quests as needed to get to your level.  Focus on the main storyline quest, and then supplement it with FATEs and Levequests to get through the levels.

This is an noble goal, and one I have not followed myself.  I am seeing the negative results of having absolutely no quests to support me as I level my various alternate classes.  The only problem is that in the late 30s and 40s this concept seems to completely break down.  There are simply not enough quests to level your character by quests alone throughout the Coerthas region.  So get familiar with FATE grinding, and do it whenever possible.

FATE Contribution

FATEs are random spawning world events much like Rifts or the events in Guild Wars two.  As a result you are competing with other players to receive a good contribution score.  You are ranked based on a “medal” system of Bronze, Silver or Gold.  There are all sorts of strategies you can employ to help out your chances of getting high marks.  Firstly if you have an AOE spell that tags lots of mobs at the same time… this is almost certain to result in a good score.  This is why Thaumaturgists seem to do so well with their spamming of Ice 2.

However Raw dps isn’t really the answer per say.  The Contribution score seems to be highly based on your unmodified threat values.  As a result, tanks and healers do extremely well in getting high contribution.  As a tank you can spam your AOE threat abilities and since Flash is cross class, it is totally a valid technique to add it to your bar as a dps that does NOT have a high threat AOE ability.  I plan on doing this for my pugilist since at low levels they struggle in FATEs quite a bit.  The caveat here is to make sure you can handle the attention.  I would only Flash spam a FATE that has high participation.

Main Story Locks Content

This is a concept I noticed early on.  Essentially if you are not keeping up with your main storyline quest, you will reach a point where you are unable to get any quest in an area other than Levequests.  Each storyline quest acts as a threshold to unlock a new set of zone quests.  The game intends you to do the three dungeon crawl of Sastasha, Tam-Tara Deepcroft and Copperbell Mines starting at level 15.  If you are past that level and you have yet to do those dungeons… chances are you are going to get content locked before long.  After completing that story arc, you will suddenly have access to hundreds of quests that you simply did not know existed before.  There will be multiple points in the storyline where this occurs.  Just be aware of it and stay always focused on the main storyline.

Quest Direction

It took me an awfully long time to figure this one out, and honestly had a guild member not pointed this out I would have never noticed it.  In the on screen quest tracker, if you click on the name of a quest it functions much like you would expect and opens your quest journal for that quest entry.  However if you click on the quest text it opens your map… and tells you exactly what zone you need to be in to complete the quest.  From this map screen if you drill down into the zones it will show you exactly which quest markers are related to the specific quest.  Additionally if a quest requires you to do something like use an item on an object in the world… there will be a little item use icon in the quest tracker as well.  You can target the item in the world and then click the icon in the quest tracker to use it.

Hunt Log

If you hit H in the game interface it will bring up your hunt log.  This is probably one of my favorite features in the game.  Every 10 levels of a specific class you get a new log to work on.  Essentially you complete your log by hunting specific critters scattered throughout the world.  The first two logs will primarily be in whatever region of the world you started, be it Noscea, Thanalan or the Shroud.  This will involve some searching because some of the mobs on the list are pretty rare or only found in specific camps.  However for completing each step in the log you get a massive experience boost.  I tend to use these as a way to smooth the transition between levels, as focusing on the hunting log is certain to provide a much needing xp boost.

Grand Companies

At a specific point in the storyline you will be asked to pick a Grand Company.  Each of the three major cities are represented by a Grand Company.  In Gridania you have the Order of the Twin Adder, represented above by the member decked out in yellow.  For Uldah you have the Immortal Flames, represented by the member in dark green.  Finally in Limsa you have the Maelstrom, represented above by the member in deep red.  While your starter city is determined by your class, you can freely choose which Grand Company you wish to tie your allegiance to and as a result which city you will be spending a large amount of your time in.

While you are get to Halitali before you open up your Grand Company… I would highly suggest against it.  Just like each class has a hunt log, so do Grand Companies.  A large number of the monsters needed for these hunt logs occur in dungeons, and the first entries of such seem to be Halitali for all of the different companies.  Additionally once you have joined a company you begin collecting seals, which are the currency for rank promotions and gear.  You can earn these by completing your companies hunt log events, by doing special grand company leves, or from random FATEs out in the world. 

Promotions are available in multiple tiers, with three sub promotions per tier.  Each tier unlocks access to a new hunt log, and a new level range of gear.  So make sure you are not neglecting your promotions as you level.  Grand company gear is some of the best gear you can get at any level.  The weapons tend to be 2-3 steps above a similar item that you could get from crafting or a dungeon.  If you are spending any amount of time doing FATEs you should have plenty of seals to go around and spend on promotions and gear.

FATE Grinding

Running FATEs back to back is hands down the fastest way to level.  When working on my Dragoon I managed to do 22 to 32 in a few hours time by hanging out in the South Shroud and hitting all the various FATEs that occur there.  The thing that you will learn is that not all fates and zones for that matter are created equal.  There seems to be certain areas that are simply better for running FATEs and as a result have a higher density of players running them… which in turn causes them to spawn faster.  Really solid FATEs are available in almost every zone…  and there is reason to go visit most of the zones because there is generally something special that drops in each from a fate… usually pets.  However here is a basic list of what zones you should be in if you are wanting to power through a good number of FATEs.

• 10-20 – Aleport – Western La Noscea
• 18-32 – Quarrymill – South Shroud
• 30-38 – Costa Del Sol – Eastern La Noscea
• 38-43 – Dragonhead – Coerthas Highlands
• 43-50 – Revenant’s Toll (Mor Dhona)

These are the zones that generally have the highest density of players.  There are various other zones that seem to have a really good FATE range… like East Shroud around Hawthorne’s hut… but it has the same basic level range as Aleport.  Additionally I have spent a good amount of time running fates out of Camp Drybone in Eastern Thanalan.  So please know that the above list is just a golden path, there are lots of other zones and lots of other fates that are worth doing.

Wrapping Up

Well I managed to ramble on at length again and fill up another list of tips about Final Fantasy XIV A Realm Reborn.  I am not sure if I have enough left in me to do a part three… most likely not immediately following these first two.  At this point I feel as though I have put on a ton of levels in the game.  Right now Belghast Sternblade is a 41 Warrior, 33 Dragoon, 23 Gladiator, 18 Archer, 16 Puglist, 8 Thaumaturge, and finally 10 Miner.  Currently my next mini-goal is to get Archer to 30 and pick up the Bard job as well.  I hope you all have a great day, and if you end up trying out the game make sure you try character creation in the morning.  The vast number of servers seem to be unlocked them, but locked during prime time hours.