
Good Morning Folks! Yesterday was of course a holiday here in the United States and as a result, I did not blog. Going into yesterday I had managed to push my Machinist up to level 99 and was able to equip the full set of artifact gear. Through some tribal daily quests and a few roulettes I easily finished off level 100 and now have my second job ready to go for Dawntrail. This means that I should speed up my tomestone acquisition as I was largely avoiding a handful of the roulettes because I did not want to tank them. Generally speaking I only do Trial and Alliance Raid roulettes as a DPS, and then the rest of them as a Tank. For now I am going to let this job languish in its level 99 gear until I finish decking out my Warrior in the ilvl 700 items.

I’ve also now completed both the Tank and Physical Ranged DPS role quests, which were pretty straightforward. I did not grok that all of the relics were connected until I noticed the similar designs between the Narwhal and “Steelhog” aka Armadillo relics. I think that leaves me Healer, Magical Ranged, and Melee role quests in order to do the full set… and get another round of quests to unlock the dyeable versions of the level 99 artifact gear. Largely my choice of jobs to level next are going to be aligned with something that can run each of these quests. Machinist however is likely going to be my DPS “main” as it was in Endwalker, and most of the things I am leveling are just to make all of the jobs go orange in my profile.

I’ve got it in my head that I really want to finish out my mentor qualification during this expansion. Essentially the requirements go up every single expansion drop, but once you have unlocked it you seem to have it for the life of your account. Do I think that I will actually do Mentor Roulette once unlocked? Probably not. I’ve watched Cider Spider through his process of running 10 Mentor Roulettes at a time, and while I find the process hilarious… I can’t see myself actually following in his footsteps. So why do I want it? I guess because it is there. I will likely never actively run with the mentor flag up because I am not sure I want the responsibility of folks thinking I have a damned clue what I am doing. I guess that is probably an ironic statement given I spend most of my time tanking lately… and being the de facto party lead but whatever. I still can’t do Mathbot… so never trust me.

All of this said… my goals are aligning so that I am planning on leveling Summoner next which will give me access to Healer and Magical DPS role quests along with being able to finally unlock Mentor roulette for the expansion. Mostly I want to finish off this quest before they bump the commendations up to 2000, which I do not quite have yet. This however means that at least on the most basic level I need to figure out how the fuck to play a summoner. More than that… I am pretty sure there are a bunch of job quests that I never completed because while I have Bahamut on my hotbar… I can’t seem to actually use it. In any case… this is now going to be my side mission for a bit as I take Summoner and by reference Scholar from level 80 to level 100. Admittedly I have always kind of liked the summoner thing in other games so I am interested to try and half-ass my way to victory.
Anyways! Hopefully, you are having a blast in Dawntrail. Ace and I were ahead of the curve in our Free Company but more folks are starting to catch up and ding level 100 and also near the end of the MSQ. That means I will likely be called upon more often for roulette shenanigans as I help folks catch up. I am hoping that the 7.0.1 patch whenever it drops comes along and makes some of the expert dungeons a little less painful.
You do have to re-certify as a mentor every time the level cap goes up, but because all of the other requirements are static it’s just a matter of leveling a healer, tank, and DPS.