Roguepocalypse

Awesome Overload

Yesterday was seriously one of the hardest days to get through I have experienced in a very long time.  When I troddled off to work the Final Fantasy XIV servers were up and back from maintenance, and as I worked all day long I would see little tid bits of information here and there about just how great this patch ended up being.  For the uninitiated yesterday was the release of Patch 2.4 “Dreams of Ice” which introduced a ton of new content, not the least of which is the Shiva primal encounter that the patch is named for.  It is truly staggering to think about the amount of content that has been released for this game since launch.  Roughly every quarter players get a major patch the size of 2.4, that generally introduces 1 to 2 new primal fights, 3 new hard mode dungeons, new main story quest chain, new Hildebrand story chain, new gear, new glamour bits, new hair styles and in this one they even introduced a brand new class and job combination in the Rogue and Ninja.  On top of that we seem to see at least one minor content patch each month, the last one added personal housing so still no slouch content wise.

So when you contrast that with other games that can go six months to an year without any new content, it is phenomenal.  This patch however is not with its controversies.  Up until this point everything that has been available in game has either been earned doing in game things, or through subscription rewards.  The game has some pretty insane subscription rewards that include tons of interesting mounts, pets and cosmetic items.  This patch however introduced the cash shop, and they sprinkled a few really awesome items on it, not the least of which is the Slepnir mount you can see me on in the above picture.  There is so much gnashing of teeth over the fact that this mount is $24, and the mini-pets on the store are $5 each.  At this point however a cosmetic shop just seems like the status quo.  One of the more interesting things they are doing with it is that each year there are unique rewards for completing holiday events.  To allow players to get previous items they are putting the older items up on the cash shop for a minimal fee.  Thankfully I have managed to pick up most of the holiday items I might want, but it is nice knowing that I could potentially get the items I missed during the Christmas events.

Focused Gameplay

Though out the day yesterday I thought about just what I would try and tackle that night when I got home.  My focus was going to be on unlocking the three new hard mode dungeons so I could be ready to run them as the rest of my free company became available.  I could always queue for the dungeon finder and take my chances with strangers, but I would really rather experience this content fresh with a guild group.  There is something awesome about having to reason your way through the fights for the first time as a team, even if you fail to make the 90 minute timer.  Even with my laser focus…  there are certain things any proper Lalafell must do.  While wandering around Uldah I bumped into Sagacyte Luxaloix and before I knew it we were dancing the manderville as is Lala tradition.  Moments later we were joined by a friend of his Lirrianna Darkholme and there in the middle of the streets of Uldah we had an impromptu Lalafell dance party.  We were all very busy, but traditions must be observed and social graces administered.

For those looking into unlocking the new content, there is an excellent blog post from a Lalafell blogger I just stumbled onto this morning talking about the start of each of the new content items.  After we finished with our customary dance party, I went on about my business of unlocking the dungeons.  Both Sastasha Hard and Sunken Temple of Qarn Hard were relatively simple to unlock, with fairly straight forward go and talk to this guy then go to the dungeon style quests that start in Mor Dhona.  For Snowcloak however it is yet another quest tied deeply into the main storyline.  So I set forth beginning that chain and two and a half hours I had reached a point where I was standing at the gates of the new Snowcloak dungeon.  When they put in new story content… they put in a lot of story content.  This however is what makes the game so damned phenominal, is that they keep moving the story forward and giving you a reason to care about the characters you meet.  As a friend said last night, it is not so much that your character is the “big damned hero” but more that your character is the social glue that keeps all of the good guys working together.  You are the one person they trust due to past interactions, and the lubricant to make things happen when something goes wrong.

Roguepocalpyse

I did not actually intend to start a rogue last night, but I ended up picking up a new quest in Limsa Lominsa near the Aetheryte crystal that just happened to lead me to the guild.  I figured while I was there what was the harm of going ahead and unlocking the class.  The server has quite literally gone insane for Rogues and Ninjas.  The above photo is a scene from inside the Rogues guild in Limsa Lominsa, and there are even more folks milling around outside of the place.  The Fisherman’s Guild port has never seen this much activity ever, and really the guild does a pretty piss poor job of disguising itself with all these people swarming around it.  So while I picked up the Rogue I had no plans to level it until I got bored waiting around on a group to happen.  Last night myself, Tam and Ash hatched a plan to make the guild some money that we could stockpile for our guild airship.  Wanderers Palace is the bottleneck for the Relic weapon quest, in that you need a bloody weapon component to craft the precursor weapon for the entire quest chain.  For most classes these are common enough that you can pick up a high quality version of the weapon for 20-30k gil and just be on your way.

This means that all of these newly minted rogues will need one eventually so that they can start down the Relic quest chain.  As you can see there are only two currently available on the Cactuar market system and they are holding steadily at 300k gil each.  The finished weapons are holding steadily at 500k gil a piece and both are in high demand.  So we thought we could run Wanderers Palace a few times and if nothing else stockpile some blades for the guild, and at best pick up a bunch to sell on the market while the demand is high.  We struggled to find a fourth, as there were a handful of folks available… but they all appeared to be either AFK or in a duty already.  So while we waited around for something to happen… I decided to start working on the rogue.  Overall the class is really damned fun to play, and in part it is the animations that make it so enjoyable.  You feel like a whirlwind of death as pretty much every attack is some sort of a spin move.  Additionally the way you hold your daggers… makes me actually kinda like wielding daggers.   They feel brutal and swift, instead of awkward stabby weapons like daggers feel in so many games.

  The only problem is that everyone is playing a rogue.  This is what every fate looks like practically anywhere in the game right now.  An army of rogues, their chocobos and a blinding flurry of circular slashes as far as the eye can see.  As the second shot shows, some rogues have taken to putting Flash on their bar and run around gathering up all of the fate mobs while the rest of us hopelessly chase after them trying to do as much contribution as possible.  I remember fates feeling like this at launch, and in reality it is like we have returned to that post launch period at least a bit.  Additionally there are a ton of folks out there doing the fates as well trying to farm their Atma pieces, and it seems that the drop rates are in fact reasonable now.  I’ve heard tales of folks completing a full set of atmas in a single evening, but I still feel you need to be lucky to make that happen.  While I don’t so much care about my rogue, I plan on riding the FATE gravy train with my monk to see just how many levels I can squeeze out.

Broken Roulette

The influx of rogues has lead to some serious madness.  I have not actually tried to queue as one, but I saw this tweeted awhile back with someone being stuck in the queue for over 120 minutes.  DPS queues previously were 15 to 20 minutes on my server, and the low level roulette queues last night were reporting around an hour.  Thankfully none of this madness has hit Syrcus Tower yet, as my dragoon queue there was still near instant last night.  I feel like non-ninja dps will have a better shot at getting into dungeons, especially ranged dps since the game tries to match a ranged and a melee for each four man team.  In any case if you have a tank or a healer that you plan on leveling, right now is the ideal time to do it.  You will get instant queues and probably get the extreme gratitude of the ninjas inside the instance who have been waiting anxiously to do a dungeon.  This reminds me of the way Ifrit and Titan were shortly after launch.  My friend Tam used to queue doing “community service” as he called it.  One time he ran into a poor black mage who had been sitting waiting on Ifrit for 3 1/2 hours.  I am not sure if I will do it tonight, but I plan on working on my White Mage to help with the influx of folks queuing for things.

#FFXIV #Rogue #Ninja