Final Fantasy XIV

Morning Folks! I went down a brand new rabbit hole in Final Fantasy XIV… or at least one that was new to me. After being prompted by friends for the hundredth time… I unlocked the Island Sanctuary. This seems like it could be an all-consuming addition to an already all-consuming game. I would liken it to something akin to Animal Crossing or Stardew Valley in that Tataru gifted us an Island… only to do the hard work of getting it up and running and making it profitable for her wide-stretching enterprises. Essentially the early functionality has focused on gathering resources and building out a base of operations, fields to grow crops, pastures to keep animals, and a workshop to churn out tchotchkes to sell to tourists.

There seems to be a pretty hard limit on how much you can reasonably progress in a single day, but right now I have my second version of the lodge up and running, my crops and pasture upgraded to rank 2, and a workshop that I am starting to sort out how to schedule items to be produced. A lot of this involves retreading the same areas of the island and collecting resources to then funnel into further production similar to any game of this sort. Yesterday’s mission was to farm up enough resources to make enough nets and then run around the island capturing all of the Small-Net-Capturable animals that I could. While I failed miserably at the only Rare I was able to find… aka the Ornery Karakul I did eventually pick up all five of the baseline small animals.

The biggest project from yesterday was completing my first “landmark” for which I chose a big Tree House because I figured it would be cool to be able to climb up inside it and look out at everything. The other option was a Lighthouse which I am hoping eventually I can have both. I am very much in a phase of the island where I am not getting much in the way of directions. The quest objective is something generic like “develop the island”, but I seem to have built everything that I can reasonably build and the little mammet that has a quest is red with no clear indication of how to make it not be red. My guess is that this is probably a time-gating thing, so I will likely spend a bit of time gathering resources and making sure my crops and animals are doing well, but essentially wait for the next phase of the island to kick in.

On the job leveling front, I got my Samurai to level 90 over lunch when I was doing some quests and shifted gears to working on the Monk for anything that might gain experience. I also capped out my Wolf marks so I spent that down on some trophies for the house. I am not really focused on leveling so much as doing a little bit of a few things each day. Mostly I am doing my Hippo Rider quests to level that faction up and then queuing for a Frontline and between those two activities I am flying through levels pretty quickly. At some point, I will probably start queuing for dungeons and such but I am also not super worried about doing things quickly.

I am of course still tracking progress… because I like spreadsheets and data points… but I am trying to approach all of this in a fairly chill manner. I don’t really care if I get everything to 90 before the release of Dawntrail. I think setting that as a hard goal that I was working towards for Endwalker led me to push myself a bit harder than I really should have. To some extent there were a few other people that I felt like I was “racing” at least unofficially… and I don’t really want to get myself in that situation again. That said I do really like having all of the jobs at level cap, and gearing them all up… because it satisfies something in my soul.

At some point, I will return to the MSQ which I have largely stalled out on this week because I have been doing the thing where I listen to an Audiobook while I play. I am way more into the book than I have been in the games I am playing. I know this weekend I will be focused on the next Path of Exile event and trying out a Righteous Fire Chieftain to see how I like that as a prospect for “Bel League”. It still feels egotistical to call the private league idea I had that… but all the rest of the AggroChat folks are so I have also adopted that nomenclature.

Good Morning Folks! Just a heads up ahead of time I am going to be talking about some things in the MSQ in loose terms, so if you want to know NOTHING about the post Endwalker content then this might be a post for you to skip. I am not going to drop major spoilers but I will be talking a bit about the sequence of items. I have to say I have officially reached the point in the story where things are starting to get good. One of the big problems that I had with Endwalker is that it wrapped up the 10-year story of Final Fantasy XIV so tightly in a bow… that I found I didn’t really “need” more story to keep me going. We had resolved all of the major plot points that I was interested in and was probably fine to just walk away from the game permanently at that point. This is in part why I have not really played the game since early 2022.

I left some things lying on the table, for example, I had not experienced all of the role quests. Last night I started the evening finishing up the DPS role quest and with it came some interesting revelations about Gosetsu. I remember doing the tanking quest but given that I did not make it to another level 90 before bailing from Endwalker, I was not eligible to do more of them. I think overall I probably liked the post Shadowbringers role quests a bit better, but these were fun and ended up taking you to various places around Eorzea to complete them. The DPS quest was a nice recap on the events of Stormblood or at least catching up with that cast of characters in the Doman Enclave.

Where the Post-Endwalker quests have gotten really good however is that we are now visiting the Thirteenth… aka the world that fell to void for “reasons” that I won’t elaborate upon. This means we have figured out a way to cross over into the void world with teleporting the aether or the person and separating it from the body like was done during Shadowbringers for everyone but our character. While I am not sure if this would work for the other reflections due to the sequence of events leading up to this… it is very interesting to be back in the World of Darkness on our own terms rather than simply to fight the Cloud of Darkness as we did in the Crystal Tower sequence. Right now the zone exists in a sort of extended quest area and I wish that we would have gotten a proper questing zone here instead.

The coolest part about all of this is that we are taking down the Arch Fiends from Final Fantasy IV and working our way towards what I assume is a Golbez fight. In the second post-Endwalker dungeon we fight Scarmiglione and then reprise that fight later in the quest content officially taking him down. That means that I am also fully expecting to see Cagnazzo, Rubicante, and of course Barbariccia. Final Fantasy IV or as I played it… Final Fantasy II… was a huge game for me. I obsessed over this game so much when it came out and have played through it several times over the years. So seeing this ground tread upon again is compelling for me at least.

When I finished for the night I had gotten up to the point where I was going to be entering the domain of wind, and ultimately fighting Barbariccia… which means we are taking them out of order from FFIV if I remember that correctly. In my mind I remember doing Scarmiglione, Rubicante, Cagnazzo, and then Barbariccia… but that could just be me misremembering things. We’ve already been to the moon in this expansion, so I guess it makes sense that we are taking things a bit out of order. Essentially I had to call it for the night because I assumed the next sequence would take a bit and it was already nearing 11 pm. I should pick up tonight and get through the wind domain.

In addition to MSQ progress, I knocked out another item from the Fall Guys promotion that I wanted. Yesterday I talked about getting the rather gaudy rhino mount, and yesterday I picked up the first of two minions. Next up I will grind out the currency needed to get the mechanical penguin minion, and then if I do nothing else from this event I will be happy. I might pick up some of the clothing items, but I’ve never really been a big fan of dressing in modern clothing styles in a fantasy game. I tend to prefer to look like I am ready to go off into battle, not that I am going to be hanging out at the mall. Granted it isn’t that malls exist anymore but that would have been the GenX equivalent. That I guess poses the question… where the hell do kids hang out these days?

Anyways… the only thing that concerns me a bit from this most recent foray into Final Fantasy XIV is that some of my old instincts are beginning to kick in. Naturally, I want to make all of the numbers turn orange… and I found myself updating my old spreadsheet plotting my progress on leveling up the jobs. In the months leading up to Endwalker, I went on this mission to get every FFXIV Job from 50ish to cap them out at 80 before the expansion hit. While interesting and something to draw my focus… it was very much not good for my long-term health with the game as a whole. When Endwalker landed I was so burnt out from seriously focused leveling that I just needed a break from the game. It has taken me some 22 months to get back into the mood to play some more Final Fantasy XIV apart from logging in to either attempt to buy a house, or more recently reset my demolition timer.

So when I found myself updating the spreadsheets yesterday… it gave me a bit of pause. I am not sure if this is the healthiest thing for me to do when it comes to the longevity of me playing this game. Sure I like tracking data… but I am not sure that it is wise to set some sort of goal this time around. Before Endwalker I was pushing myself to make sure that I could level everything to the cap before that expansion landed. This time around… I am not sure if I care that much about having everything at 90 before Dawntrail. There is still part of me that wants it… because I will always want to make all of the numbers go up. However, I think I have learned my lesson that I do not want to force myself into a funnel this time around or set some unrealistic expectations.

Anyways… I am back in FFXIV and enjoying myself but I fully expect to fade away from time to time. I care more about Path of Exile for example than I do about this game, so as the new pre-3.23 events start up this week and we move into Bel League at the start of 3.23… I will probably be hitting the pause button in FFXIV. I am very happy though to have the friendly chatter of the Mastodon-based Frendedex to keep me company as I get my feet under me again.

Good Morning Folks! Last night I largely spent my evening in Final Fantasy XIV. The other day when I ran through Eureka Orthos with a friend, we managed to find four of the hidden treasures. When revealed at the vendor I managed to pick up a shiny new Innocence Barding for my Chocobo and the Wind-Up Weapon minion seen in the above screenshot. I realize that I probably could have sold these for a pretty penny on the market, but the collector in me wants them all. I am certain I am woefully behind in both the Mount and Minion collecting tallies since I have not seriously played Final Fantasy XIV in quite a while.

I’ve continued to throw myself at the Fall Guys event and managed to get enough of the currency to pick up the inflatable pink rhino mount. I can’t necessarily say when I will actually use this thing because it is rather gaudy but once again… the collector in me wanted to tick it off some imaginary list. The other two things that I want from the event are the minions and considering the mount is one of the most expensive items I went for knocking it out first. That tends to be my strategy for these sorts of things, go for the big ticket items first because I know my resolve will waver as the event rolls on and I will want to spend less time failing at Fall Guys.

I took the MSQ up to the point of doing the first post-Endwalker dungeon. I had a lot of fun in this place and once again I am super thankful for the existence of the Duty Support system. There is just something so nice about being able to run a dungeon with the relevant parties that you were involved with during the questline. Even if I had a ready group… I might still use the Trust/Duty Support system just for the narrative experience of getting all of the interesting comments as you go through the dungeon.

The highlight of the evening however was further down the quest chain when we entered the forbidden library at Sharlayan. The theme song playing in there is a unique version of the one that was playing in the Great Gubal Library… one of my favorite Heavensward zones. I kinda love thinking that maybe this is just what ALL libraries in Eorzea sound like. There is also so much serendipity that Y’shtola was the first Scion I really adventures with back at the launch of A Realm Reborn, and now that I am in the post content she appears to be the one that is most tied to driving the new storyline forward. She has always been my favorite of the scions so it always makes me happy when we get to do some “bad ideas”.

All in all, it has been far easier to slide back into the game than I originally thought it would be. Leveling the Mechanist helped quite a bit… as did having a spare million gil to throw towards some gear. At some point, I want to get back into the swing of Tanking and might rely on some of the #Frendedex from Mastodon in order to do some of that. I gotta say that has helped a lot over the last few days to have some folks that I already knew from Gamepad and other Mastodon servers to at least chit-chat with while I am doing some quests. I think on Friday I will probably at least play around a bit with the Krangle league, but for now I am having a blast in FFXIV again.