Finishing Heavensward

Trying to Break Me

KneeGoBoom When we planned this four day weekend of house manipulation…  I knew somewhere along the lines I would end up harming myself.  Now I have any number of minor injuries from the weekend including that time I sliced my finger open and bled all over the old PC I was pulling a hard drive from, or the time I got my arm pinched behind something and created a really strange bruise on my wrist.  However yesterday I took my self mutilation to a new level, as I was carrying the final box out to the car for the last Goodwill load of the weekend.  I went to set the box down carefully because it had something poking out of it… and I apparently lost my balance and wound up rolling down the driveway towards the mailbox.  The end result is that I have one exceptionally banged up and bruised knee that makes it hard to walk, a second banged up knee that is far better off, and a wrist that I am guessing I have tweaked a bit because I ultimately landed on it.  I am completing ignoring the piece of chat that seems to be embedded in my palm because in the grand scheme of things that one is just minor.

At this point I am trying to alternate between staying off my knee an getting up every so often and walking a bit to keep it from freezing up too bad.  At the same time I am keeping ice packs on it every few hours which seems to be helping.  The above photo is actually a massive improvement from yesterday when my knee cap itself was roughly five times its normal size.  Today it hurts a lot less to stand on my knee, but a lot more to touch it… so I am hoping that means most of the trauma is just as a surface level and not actually effecting the joint itself.  It seems like the pain in walking was mostly related to the swelling.  Today actually my bigger complaint is my wrist that hurts like the dickens when I twist it.  Thankfully nothing seems broken… except my pride.  More than anything I just feel stupid for falling.  I feel stupid that it happened on quite literally the last box… which in itself was an after thought.  I am just thankful that while I put myself in a bit of pain that it seems like I am still fairly sturdy.

Finishing Heavensward

ffxiv_dx11 2015-07-05 21-24-42-48 In similar fashion to 2.0 the end of the 3.0 story concludes in a series of group story content.  Thankfully however it seems they have learned their lesson and instead of making long eight player dungeons, they created a single four player story mode dungeon and an extremely fun trial encounter.  I won’t go into much detail about either because spoilers…  but this time around they managed to get the risk and reward equation just right.  I’ve now run the four player story dungeon I think four times, and will happily run it as many times as needed because at face value it is worth 80 Tomestones of Law, and when you factor in the “virgin bonus” as we have taken to calling it…  you get 120 tomestones for what is a relatively quick dungeon run.  Similarly while the trial only rewards 10 tomestones per run, it is fast enough and enjoyable enough that when we mentioned last night that we needed people to run it… folks jumped at the chance just to see it again.

Just like 2.0 the 3.0 credit roll resolves some of the current conflicts… but opens up just as many questions about our future.  As it stands right now I am completely amped to se what 3.1 brings, because things happened… and I am intrigued as to how they will resolve.  This is the thing that I love so much about the way Final Fantasy XIV expansions seem to work.  They end on this warm and fuzzy point… but at the same time feel like you just completed the games introduction.  You know that there is going to be twice as much content before you see the end of expansion credit roll.  The only thing I am finding myself really disappointed in is my class quests.  They felt disconnected and extraneous to the Heavensward content.  Now I hear that some quests especially that of the summoner is deeply connected to this expansion, however for the Warrior which is the class I took to 60 first…  it was a fun romp with axes but nothing more.  I remember having a serious difficult time with my level 50 warrior quests… and nothing that I experienced in this expansion class quest wise even caused me to break a sweat.

And my Axe, and This Dungeon

ffxiv_dx11 2015-07-06 08-18-55-05 At the launch of 2.0 getting Tomestones of Philosphy was a very painful grind, and as such it lead most of us to stop playing the game.  When we came back they managed to fix some of these problems and we were able to actually get into the end game content.  It seems like they have learned their lessons because the Tomestones of Law grind seems exceptionally easy.  In the very meager content that I managed to run, I gathered up the 570 I needed for my weapon.  Since I also had been running a significant number of Clan Hunts I managed to gather up the 395 seals needed to get the item to upgrade my 170 axe into a 180.  So far I am really liking the way this works, you do dungeon content to get tomestones to buy the gear… then do hunts to get the bits to upgrade them instead of relying on random chance at getting a drop from a raid somewhere.  My hope is that in short order I will be able to finish my law set and be in raiding form.  For the moment I will be focusing on my worst slots first, so that I can improve my viability the most… as quickly as possible.

ffxiv_dx11 2015-07-05 22-55-18-31 Last night I also managed to tank my very first level 60 dungeon, called the Fractal Continuum.  I have to say I like this dungeon already so much more than I liked the whole Wanderers Palace/Amdapoor Keep thing that we had at the launch of 2.0.  The other dungeon available is called Neverreap and I have yet to run it, but have heard it is similarly enjoyable.  I have to say it was plenty challenging, especially the last encounter but at this point we are in essence a raid experienced group of players and were able to rely on mechanics we learned while raiding to defeat the encounters.  I feel that the game set a pretty realistic starting gear place as well, in that you have to be at least ilvl 155 to run it.  There is a gear vendor out in the final zone that should help players “catch up” and fill out any slots they have serious deficiencies in.  I personally need to pop out there and check the vendor myself because I still have a few aging quest rewards. I feel like I am pretty happy with the state my next few months will be in as I gear out my jobs and level the ones that are not sixty.

6 thoughts on “Finishing Heavensward”

  1. I love Fractal Continuum. Probably one of my favourite dungeons ever. Mechanics are varied but easily discerned. Music is fantastic, and I feel like Square Enix is finally starting to tell a story via the environment a lot more than they have been in the past.

    Neverreap, on the other hand, can DIAF. The trash sucks as a tank, and the bosses are okay but feel a lot more gimmicky for lack of a better term. And seriously, the trash always feels like it has twice as much health as anything in Fractal Continuum.

    Still, it was fun to do at least once, but I definitely prefer FC.

  2. I’m sorry to hear about your fall, and I hope that you heal up quickly!

    I’ve done the final story dungeon, but haven’t done the trial yet, so I’m not quite there yet. I’ve also been using the Law Tomes to get my new weapon 1st, and then to upgrade my most deficient gear leveled items, so my average is up to 160 now and I’m feeling in a decent place. All that with just the weapon and accessories. Can’t wait to start getting the armor. Perhaps tomorrow…..

    My latest shenanigans

  3. I was just looking into what kind of group content there was at Heavensward end game for earning Law tomes, so this is encouraging to hear. I also got the impression the process wouldn’t be as bad to gear up, and I’ve been saving up hunt seals as I level! Looking forward to it.

    Congrats on beating the story!

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