Good Morning Friends! It is the Tuesday after a weekend, which seems to be when I sit down and have a big ole catch-up topic. Shocking to no one I spent most of my weekend playing Final Fantasy XIV as I continue down this mad quest to level everything to 80 before Endwalker. It always feels like I am at a standstill until I do one of these posts and realize just how much progress I have made since the last one. Based on my quick napkin math, I have 70 days until Endwalker launches, however, I have been calculating this wrong all this time. The Endwalker early access period begins on November 19th, which means I actually only have 66 days worth of pre-expansion leveling time. I have a grand total of 96 levels to get in various classes so that means I need to get at a minimum of one and a half levels each day in order to meet this goal.
Essentially leveling alt jobs in Final Fantasy XIV is a bit of a hurry up and wait game. There are easy levels to be gained by completing the roulettes for the day and getting the bonus experience associated with them. Then that drops down to slow leveling, which is the more grindy method of either queuing for the highest dungeon available, doing the deep dungeon, or going out and doing Bozjan front. Since we last reviewed my job levels I have finished Dark Knight and pushed it to 80. I’ve also put on nine levels of Monk, ten levels of White Mage, and one measly level of Black Mage that I did last night. Not that it really counts towards the goal, but I did gain three more levels of culinarian through Ixal quests. I am focusing on White Mage a bit more than Monk at the moment because Monk has more options available to it for gaining experience, and with White Mage… it is always a bit of a struggle for me to level as a healer and I am trying to get it out of the way. Black Mage however is probably going to be a bit more of a challenge than I originally thought, because at this very moment it is very much not feeling like my jam.
One very important note for anyone out there also playing Final Fantasy XIV, or inclined to return… the Final Fantasy XV crossover event is happening again. From the 13th through October 18th you can complete the quest chain and unlock access to buy the Regalia 4 seater car mount, Noctis’ outfit, and hairstyle, as well as a number of orchestrion scrolls. So far with these crossover events, we have gotten it twice… and then never again. We got the Final Fantasy XIII event exactly twice, the Yokai Watch event exactly twice, and my fear is this might be your last chance to get the mount. The FFXIII stuff did eventually make its way to the MogStation store, but if you have the ability you might as well earn this legitimately rather than have to pay the premium for a multi-seater mount later. The big gotcha however is that the items are sold with MGP, the Gold Saucer currency… which means in order to get the mount you will need 200,000 mgp which is no easy feat to gather during the time the event is running.
In other news, I spent a bit of time over the weekend participating in the Open Beta for New World. The game feels extremely solid and has gone through so many changes for the better. Some of the last fit and finish things seem to have been working on the character creation system. I don’t have any specific data, but it feels like there are just a bunch more options than there were before. Additionally, I am super happy that scars have been split apart from the face selection, which means I no longer have to keep playing with that one facial model that had the scar. Combat feels really good and it feels a little less punishing than it did previously if you miss a block. I spent some time playing around with the two-handed axe, which was new to me. I still think my overall focus is going to be the more tanky sword and shield but focusing on strength as my primary stat allows me to swap out to either of the two-handers for a backup weapon without having to split stats. Right now every level up I am putting one point into strength and another into stamina and it seems to be working pretty well.
I don’t really want to get distracted from my FFXIV goals, but I do expect to be piddling around in New World when I have exhausted those easy levels each day. I am going to have to watch myself though because I am known for going obsessive about a single thing at a given time. I successfully played FFXIV and Destiny 2 at the same time, so hopefully, I can do the same with FFXIV and New World. They really are wildly different experiences, and I can’t see myself really going hardcore into the settlement war system, so being a casual crafter/tank might be a chill way to finish out the evenings.
[Edit] – I completely misread the Regalia event, and it is October 18th, not September 18th that it closes so you have roughly a month to gather the 200k MGP.
My FF XIV goals are to get to current content in time for Endwalker. I’m currently at the beginning of Stormblood, so I doubt I’ll make it. There’s always a chance though…
Also, the FF XV event runs through October 18th, so you have over a month to get everything.
Have you considered dipping your toes back into Destiny 2?