All Saints Wake

Path of Madness

For the most part I have willfully ignored the crafting systems in Final Fantasy XIV.  By all accounts it is a black hole that is easy to fall hopelessly into.  The reason behind this is that pretty much every craft… relies on every other craft.  Blacksmith might require something from the Goldsmith, or Leatherworking require something produced by Alchemists.  The folks in my guild who have fallen deep into the system, have ultimately ended up leveling every single craft.  As a result we have at least two “Omni-crafters” as they seem to be called in the community.  Over the weekend while watching the live stream I started tiptoeing down this path by working on Mining.  I figured raising Mining to 50 would be a good entry point, and needed to gather materials for pretty much everything else.

As of last night I am closing in on 30, and I figure that now is when it actually starts to become difficult to push forward.  The positive is that  the fruit of my labor actually sells really well.  For a bit I was grinding ore nodes near camp drybone for Alumen, because I could sell it on the Market Board pretty much as soon as I posted it.  This apparently is needed badly in leatherworking, and since it is crazy easy to get I won’t mind gathering it up again later as I actually need it.  I am finding that you can actually level crafting professions pretty quickly using leves, but unfortunately you have a limited number of these available at any given time.  Thankfully I started with a stack of 99, and am slowly depleting them as I push up mining.

Level All The Things

When not working on mining, I have been working on my pugilist.  Since they announced that the Rogue and Ninja would be Dexterity based, I have been wanting to level the Monk so that I can get rid of all of the low level strength gear I have clogging up my bank.  This is the last of the Disciple of War jobs I have left to level considering I have a level 50 Paladin, Warrior, Dragoon and Bard.  Granted on the 28th this will no longer be the case with the release of the Rogue/Ninja but I can work on that eventually as well.  I have this goal that I am setting out before me, to try and level all classes to 50 before the expansion hits next spring.  Right now you can see on the little image to the right what I have left to level.  My intent is not only to level the battle classes but also the Disciples of the Hand and of the Land.

Of course this is going to take a lot of effort and a lot of time, but I am just crazy enough to do it.  As such I feel like I am mostly going to focus on this game.  I will of course go off on tangents and play other games like I always have, but this is something I would really like to accomplish, so that I can be ready to push up any class I choose come expansion time since all of them are getting upgraded to level 60.  Not only do I want to level all of my classes but I would like to gear out all of them as well.  Right now I already have the relic starter for my White Mage, but it is my intent to get that started for the others as well.  Not to mention as soon as Syrcus Tower unlocks from its single item per week limit, I expect to be in there a lot soaking up gear for various classes.  Quite honestly the idea of leveling all of the battle classes doesn’t really phase me… I was going to do this anyways.  What worries me is if I will lose my sanity trying to level all of the crafting classes.  Mostly I just want to be self sufficient.  I am tired of buying things off the Market Board… and even more so I am tired of having to inconvenience other players to craft things for me.  In World of Warcraft I had max level crafters of ever type in Mists of Pandaria, and I really liked being able to take care of whatever I happened to need… and I really want to get to that position here.

All Saints’ Wake

Tis the season for Halloween events in games, and generally speaking these are my favorite events.  By far the king of Halloween events is the Nights of the Dead over in Everquest 2.  If you have never experienced that one, you should totally fire up an EQ2 account just to do it.  My intent is to do it over the weekend in honor of the holiday proper.  In Final Fantasy XIV, this will be my second year doing All Saints’ Wake which is their version of this venerable tradition.  One of the cool things I am finding about FFXIV is that each year they change the events completely.  This is both a positive and a negative.  It is positive in that you have a whole new set of rewards to collect and brand new quests to keep you entertained.  This is a negative in that you can no longer get the past years rewards, so players new to the game are at a disadvantage… at least from a nifty cosmetic baubles perspective.

However during the Fan Festival they announced that they planned on offering the previous years items on a limited time cash shop, allowing folks to buy the ones that they had missed.  The two ghost costumes from last years event are among the first two items on the shop, and I believe they listed the price of each as $5 which is reasonable if you actually want that item badly.  I personally missed the Christmas events, so I am more than likely going to use the cash shop to catch up on the previous years goodies.  In any case…  things are still attainable, but the individual quests can only be completed during a specific years event.  This year the All Saints’ Wake runs from Monday, October 20, 2014 at 1:00 a.m. (PDT) to Monday, November 3, 2014 at 6:59 a.m. (PST).  Which should give players plenty of time to get in and do the quest chain that starts in Old Gridania, but ends up winding through all of the cities finally finishing with a FATE that occurs in Uldah.  One of the highlights of the event is that you get illusions cast on you by the NPCs, and among them are all of the various city leaders as well as Minfilia.  You can see me above doing the manderville as the ever adorable Nanamo.

The rewards for doing the entire quest chain is the costume that the NPC is wearing in my first screenshot.  It is a really cool looking traditional witch costume, which works perfectly for casters.  These of course are cosmetic items and can be glamoured over pretty much any item.  To get the other rewards you are going to have to do a little grinding.  The FATE in Uldah is a parade, where you have to cast a seasonal cheer buff on Citizen NPCs that appear along the parade route.  You have to avoid casting the buff on the Thaumaturges, or they will dispell your illusion.  What makes this a little challenging is that the Citizen npcs run around in a specific area, and the buff is a ground targeted AOE.  The purpose of the fate is to collect Demonic Cookies which are then used as currency to buy the last two rewards.  Getting Gold in a fate earns you 6, silver 3, and bronze 1.  The two purchased rewards are the Eerie Barding as pictured above, and the demonic Pumpkin Earrings.  Both of which are really cool so it is worth the time spent doing the fate, to get both items you need a total of 16 cookies which really isn’t all that much “grinding” at least nothing compared to the various grinds for WoW Holiday items.