Final Fantasy XIV Archives - Page 120 of 129

Mayhem in Mathosia

October 3, 2013 by Belghast

Just a Gigolo

Last night I was feeling fairly antisocial. I logged into Rift for a little bit, but was feeling overall meh about the game, especially since I knew the bulk of the guild would be in FFXIV anyways. I still feel bad about the fact that almost all of the Rift guild moved rather abruptly to Final Fantasy… but that just kinda happens with recent games. Since I was not super amped about doing things with people… I decided to run around as a Bard and grind FATEs. I have been working up the class so I could have something dpsy to play when we had too many tanks and not enough other things. I had originally intended this to be my Dragoon that is sitting at 32…. but as I started to play the Bard it just leveled so much faster.

At level 45 in FFXIV you get a series of quests that give you four of the 5 pieces of your archetypal class look armor. This is commonly referred to as the Artifact gear and through the first series of quests you get every slot but your chest piece. This often leads to some bizarre looks, but honestly I am not sure the bard set COULD look goofier. I am somewhere between a rockstar, a gigolo and a movie style gypsy. In no case does this make me feel epic and awesome… and in the matter of a single quest I went from looking like the Dread Pirate Roberts to David Lee Roth.

Vanity Slots to the Rescue?

Supposedly there are vanity slots on the way… and they seriously cannot get here soon enough. I am mildly depressed to think I will have to wear a pair of pants that look like they were crafted from a circus tent until then. The above image is the set I loved to wear… Foestriker. This comes from the first three dungeons… and I have been slowly gathering the rest of the pieces of the outfit. Everything about the look seems epic to me… and I felt like the elite archer I was supposed to be. The bard outfit on the other hand looks like I am 5 years old and got to dress myself for the first time.

Apparently I am not alone in this assessment, as most of the major forums have at least one “wtf is wrong with the bard gear” thread. Overall most of the other class outfits I have seen have been amazing looking. Dragoon looks like everything you would expect it to be, as does Warrior, and Paladin looks very much like the defensive tank that they are supposed to be. Even Scholar with its quirky “I bought this jacket at an army surplus store” looks pretty cool. So right now the bard outfit seems to be the “Moon Moon” of the crowd. Which is kinda sad… considering just how amazing the bard class as a whole really is. If I knew just had bad I would end up looking… I might have focused on leveling up the dragoon instead.

Server Shuffling

Yesterday it was announced that Final Fantasy XIV A Realm Reborn would soon open up server transfers. In an attempt to reunite friends and loved ones… the first five days of server transfers will be completely free. This is generally an extremely good thing… since there were a few Stalwarts who were not patient enough to play the “get on Cactuar” game that usually involves creating characters at odd hours. The only negative is that if you look at the list below… our realm is specifically flagged as one of the three US realms that are extremely highly congested.

As a result… the opening of server transfers may make our server queues even worse. Essentially every night there is a very small queue when we attempt to log into the server, the hope is that even if the queues increase we will never have to go back to using our login macros to get through the sea of 1017 errors. As a guild we would consider moving elsewhere, but it would mean starting over from scratch and moving separately. It feels like they planned this poorly in that they did not offer a guild move option. Currently we have essentially maxed out our guild, and all the frenetic questing of the first few weeks in part is what pushed our level up to where it is now. Without the assistance of the quests… it would likely be far harder to reach.

Additionally we have almost maxed out our faction with the Immortal Flames… which means we could consider switching factions and starting the process of leveling our reputation there. So the prospect of having to discard all this progress and start from scratch just does not seem like something we would want to do. We have very few people on other servers, so for the most part it is not a huge ordeal. I imagine that the folks transferring TO Cactuar however will have to do it during off peak hours, which could be a bit tricky since there is only a five day window to get that free transfer in. No word yet has been posted as to when the server transfers will begin.

Mayhem in Mathosia

I think this week why I have been so focused on trying to push up the Bard is that I know I will be spending most of my weekend playing Rift. Last week they announced a brand new server event called Mayhem in Mathosia. The goal of the event is in essence to get Rift back to its roots… massive large scale invasion events spanning multiple zones. During the event there will be unique planar drops that include new colors of Hellbug Mount, a unique Kirin, and some cosmetic gear. I want it all… I want it now.

The schedule looks a little something like this…

Phase 1: Friday, Oct. 4 – Saturday, Oct. 5 – Silverwood / Freemarch
Phase 2: Sunday, Oct. 6 – Monday, Oct. 7 – Gloamwood / Stonefield
Phase 3: Tuesday, Oct. 8 – Wednesday, Oct. 9 – Scarlet Gorge / Scarwood Reach
Phase 4: Thursday, Oct. 10 – Saturday, Oct. 12 – Moonshade Highlands / Droughtlands

RIFT_POSE_CinderHellbug_02

So I will likely be spending most of my time over in Rift this weekend and most of next week trying to gather up all the goodies. I will of course be popping back into FFXIV if someone needs a high level dungeon run, or to help out with instances as needed. We have been trying our best to be available anytime a guild member is on high center due to needing to do a specific dungeon run. I still would like to get my rogue to level 60… but the 50+ leveling just feels like a tedious process. Which is a bit disturbing considering I am right now playing a game where I am forced to level unaided by quests. By completing enough of the various invasions you can win the unique appearance Hellbug above, so that will be what I am working towards.

Sponsors Unite

October 2, 2013 by Belghast

Class of 2013

Yesterday the 2013 Newbie Blogger Initiative officially kicked off and the new blogs are starting to trickle into the forum. Yesterday I updated my blogroll to include the five blogs that had signed up to date, and over the night another two have joined the fray. Here is hoping that the effort will continue to grow throughout the month. Last time we ended up with I believe 110 new blogs starting the process, so we have a long ways to go before we see those numbers.

I will update my blogroll accordingly later today… but currently this years crop looks a little something like this…

Check them out and give them some link love.

Sponsors Unite

Similarly, yesterday kicked off quite a number of “advice” posts from the sponsors. Like always these varied in topic greatly covering general tips, where to find inspiration, and various technical tidbits. I am sure in the coming days we will be seeing a lot more of these posts but so far here is the run down of topics that were posted as of this morning.

I am sure as the month rolls on, we will see quite a few more sponsor posts as well. I think for the first day, the program was pretty well represented. My goal is to do a short daily synopsis of what all has been happening on the days I am not posting an advice article myself.

Heroic Characters

A few days ago I had posted about the fact that October 1st was the beginning of the ability to create a free Heroic Character in Everquest 2. Most of us initially thought this was for subscribers only… or in EQ2 nomenclature “Gold Members”. However yesterday Stargrace of MMO Quests pointed out that ANYONE can log in and create a free level 85 character during the October 1st – October 15th period. Additionally they have once again tightened the reins of the free to play restrictions. Previously it was extremely frustrating to play a free to play character, because you could not equip Legendary or higher items… which meant that essentially you could not equip anything that came from a dungeon or most world drops.

With the introduction of Heroic Characters, all of these item locks are gone… as are the various items that were sold on the store to unlock the ability to equip them. Additionally as of yesterdays patch… much like they did in the past with other expansions… Destiny of Velious is now included for free. This gives you access to content up to level 95, and covers all of the newer zones added into the game. They have also broken up the Age of Discovery features into bite sized chunks that allow you to gobble up only the pieces you want, for example you can buy access to mercenaries only, or just the beastlord class. Since they are removing some of the appeal for remaining a gold member, they have added in a permanent +15% coin loot bonus and +10% mount speed bonus to all existing gold members. They have also mentioned they will be adding more perks into the equation to keep maintaining gold level a valuable thing.

The Swash and Berserker

Wanting to take advantage of the free promotion, I logged in both of my accounts last night and created and or upsized characters on each. For some time I had been trying to level a dps character on my main account, and had created Belgrifter a Ratonga Swashbuckler. Namely the Swash is a very high survival dps, and I was having a decent time leveling him. Ultimately I ran into the same roadblock I ran into with all of my characters however. Once you have had flight in EQ2, you simply do not want to level a character without it. So essentially I was stuck with a decision… either grind up tradeskills or grind up levels. I managed to push him up to 55 before something shiny caught my eye and I abandoned the effort.

Since I could not really see myself returning to playing him until I had flight… I decided to go ahead and use that accounts token to super size my Ratonga. The gear that they give you is extremely nice… far nicer than the gear I have ever started velious content in before. I seriously doubt if I will replace any of it during the Othimir quests, it seems to be on par with that level of item. The weapon choices were a little wonky, giving me a sword and a mace… but I can live with that. The big problem is I have NEVER used a mace on my rat… but they auto leveled all of my weapon skills for me… so that really is not a problem.

If you look at the image from the above paragraph you will see Belglaive my new 85 Iksar Bezerker. On my second account I mostly had support classes, as I used to regularly dual box before the release of Mercenaries. As a result I really did not have anything “tanky” on that account. If I ever wanted to dual box again, I figure it would end up extremely handy to have access to a tank, and Bezerker is the one I have never really played to high levels. I have a very small dwarven one on my main account, but I think he is somewhere in the 30s. The best thing is… the changes give me full access again to my Dark Elf Warden, since I had stopped playing him due to the item restrictions and not wanting to maintain a second subscription.

Wrapping Up

The ability to create a free level 85 character is an extremely amazing offer. If you have ever considered playing EQ2, I highly suggest you make an account during the 1-15 period and create a level 85 even if you do not intend to play it right now. You can do a lot of cool stuff with an 85, and even use it to feed lower level characters items. I have always loved EQ2, and I will admit the prospect of fresh high level characters has gotten me pumped about playing it some again. Just not sure how often I will do so… given my current addiction to Final Fantasy XIV. If you do end up rolling characters, I highly suggest Antonia Bayle the Roleplaying server. It has probably the best community I have seen in any game… other than potentially Landroval in LOTRO.

Sea of Spell Effects

September 30, 2013 by Belghast

Good morning you happy people of the interwebs. Yes that is right… the top greeting block is back with a vengeance. I had been trying to wean myself off of it, because really the top block and wrapping up blocks are both crutches. However this morning I feel all groggy and discombobulated and I am crawling back to the greeting block like a warm blanket of sanity. This morning I feel somewhat like Frankenstein as I move around the house through my routine much like a reanimated corpse. Additionally I have a cat that keeps trying to help me write this… and she really is not taking no for an answer.

Sea of Spell Effects

Essentially by resurrecting the greeting block, I am delaying the inevitable… which is that I don’t really have much to talk about this morning. It is not that I didn’t do a lot yesterday gaming wise, because I totally did. First off I got up, blogged, cleaned up the house, changed the ferret cage, ferret playpen, and scrounged for food… only finally then settling down to play some FFXIV… all before noon I might add. So I feel like my morning was super productive, and this honestly lead way into an afternoon of productivity in game as well. At the point at which I blogged yesterday morning, I had just hit 30 on my Archer and completed the Bard quest chain.

Yesterday I decided to continue working on my Bard because quite frankly… I have been enjoying it far more than I have my Dragoon. First off… for those not familiar with the FFXIV bard class… it is quite likely the least bardy of all bards I have ever played. It is essentially a bad-assed ranged class that just happens to have songs they can play every now and then to add a group buff. The way the songs work in FFXIV is they consume mana while they are up, in order to give your group some sort of a regeneration of defensive buff. The first of these makes you every healers best friend, because you can play mana song.

Since at any given time yesterday we essentially lacked the perfect combination of characters online to do much of anything productive… I ended up getting into FATE groups and leveling at a shocking pace. The second character really does go so much faster. I started the day at 30 in Costa Del Sol and ended the day at 40 in Coerthas Highlands… just about to switch over to Mor Dhona. Before I know it, I will be 45 and decked out in part of a suit of amazing gear. At this point since I am making a lot of progress, I figure I will finish leveling the bard before I play anything else. I was the second 50 in the guild, so I am essentially playing a waiting game as folks catch up.

My rush to level a DPS is in part because our most stable group of players that are online on the time seems to be two tanks, one dps and one healer. So with me being able to switch hit to a dps… this gives me a lot more flexibility for making a viable group happen. At many times last night, had I a DPS we could have gone off and run Aurum Vale for fun and profit. However instead there was no real viable way to make a two tank party work. Though…. quite frankly this is something we probably should try with one of the warriors just not throwing up defiance and pretending to dps. I wonder if the dpsy warrior will strip aggro even if they are not using defiance… I guess this is something we should try to see how well it works.

Free 85

I believe that tomorrow is the day that existing subscribers in Everquest 2 receive a free Heroic Character. Essentially a “Heroic Character” is something they are adding to the store that allows you to create an instant level 85 character with 280 aa points… the needed amount to start on the newest content in the game. For awhile they have offered 280 aa catch up baubles that came with the last expansion, but they are taking this one step further and letting you create a level 85 character from scratch, or take an existing character and level it up. At this point I am slightly torn on how I feel about this.

On one hand, there is no way in hell I will miss this opportunity to create something and apply some miracle grow for free. I figure I will use it to push my little Ratonga Swashbuckler up to 85, I had intended to use the 280 aa catch up bauble anyways on that character. I have always struggled to level any DPS characters in EQ2, so he was my attempt at doing that… since Swashbucklers tend to be a more sturdy dps. Even though I already have him at around level 55, I have stalled out because I simply hate not having flight. After a point you get tired of grinding tradeskills to 85 just so you can use wings on your characters. If they offered some form of a flight license on the store I would have snapped one up in a heartbeat.

The other hand I really dislike the way this feels. Essentially it feels as though they are saying that all content before level 85 is just not important anymore. They have made so many strides to improve the leveling process and while there are still some dead spots that never got reworked… the whole thing overall flows nicely. I just hate the whole leveling without flight thing. But as several friends pointed out… this is not really for me… someone who has time to level a character from 1-85. This is for my friends who have not been able to stick with any game that long… it lets them catch one character up to within a few levels of their friends and jump starts them into doing fun content already.

Try Before You Buy

I think the neatest thing that this is adding into the EQ2 experience is a “Try before you buy” concept. Essentially you will be able to create a new level 85 character, with gear and 100 AA points, and play them until level 86 to get a feel for whether or not you like the character. This is extremely key since so many EQ2 classes do not really come into their own until you have a bunch of levels behind you. For the most part all character play similarly from level 1-10 but it is not until the 40-50 range that most of them really come into their own as truly unique experiences. Being able to jump start a character and see if you like how they feel at level 85, should give players a better way of gauging if they like what their class will become.

There is nothing more frustrating than having spent many hours leveling a character that you ultimately decide you don’t really like. From what it sounds like in the FAQ you can play this character indefinitely until you hit 86… then it becomes progression locked. To prevent problems that this might cause, it is for the most part locked out of all public channels. It can’t sent tells, or trade, or do any of the things that might let a malicious player annoy others in the game world. Upon deciding to purchase the character you get a number of perks.

A set of Level 85 weapons
Level 85 jewelry
Level 85 armor
20 Food and Drink
Ammunition for Fighter and Scout Ranged Weapons
6 24-slot bags
Variety of Potions
A Pegasus Mount
Renaming potion for your character (Upgraded or Purchased Heroic Characters only), just in case!

Now comes the bad part… this process is rather pricey. To create a new 85 character or upgrade an existing one… it is 3500 station cash. While there are various dodges and ways to get station cash cheaper… at face value this is $35 of cold hard cash spent to instant level a character. Essentially I feel like this is going to completely destroy the current Grey Market of Power-levelers… and quite frankly this is probably going to have really positive effects on the community. Right now almost all of the major public dungeons are rife with characters zipping through the corridors and pulling everything in sight… making it extremely difficult to complete any quests. Each time I have had to do the Sanctum of the Scale it has been a mind numbingly frustrating process because I simply could not get the spawns I needed.

I guess if it is perfectly fine for World of Warcraft to give you a free level 80 character for coming back to the game… then I can’t really say much against being able to create a level 85 in EQ2. Both games are extremely aged, and anything that keeps players playing them… and allows their friends to play with them… is likely going to be a positive in the long run. Now I am just trying to decide if I want to level an Assassin or Ranger from scratch, or to boost up my little Swashbuckler. I want a viable dps class so I feel like I should probably do a bit of research to determine which class I should settle in on. Part of me wants to go in a completely different direction and level a warden, since I miss access to my melee warden from my second account.

Wrapping Up

It is that time again, and once more I have squandered a perfectly good blog post by talking about nothing. I have a lot of things to get done today, so here is hoping I can remain focused and power through them. Tonight I hope to get my Bard up to 45 so I can get the majority of my ancestral armor. At that point I can start helping out in various dungeons like Dzemael Darkhold, and eventually Aurum Vale. I hope you all have a great day, and it is the beginning of a really awesome week.

Zombie Infestations

September 29, 2013 by Belghast

Black Helicopters

This morning is a bizarre morning here in Tulsa. I woke up groggily to the sounds of my wife taking a shower, which was essentially a signal to myself that I needed to get up as well. So I rolled out of bed, showered, threw on some clothing and stepped outside with the purpose of getting some food. What greeted me was this eerie fogscape that felt like it was straight out of The Secret World. The sun was up already, which is usually the death of any fog in the area, but this fog seemed to be persisting.

By the time I had gotten to QuikTrip for my normal morning breakfast of a sausage roll… it almost seemed like it was getting worse. As I pulled in, I noticed that the building was ringed in Crows, with a little semi-circle of them gathered on the grass. This definitely did not help the odd feeling… and the last thing I wanted to do was go step into the middle of the semi-circle. Pretty sure if I had a Revenant would have spawned… and I had left my shotgun at home. So I made it home safely, and nothing really far from the norm happened… but the world definitely feels like it would be flooded with Draugr.

Zombie Infestations

Yesterday I played quite a bit more State of Decay, and since Marcus was in a tired state, I had to switch things up and break out Maya Torres. One of my biggest frustrations with this game and Dead Island as well is the whole “melee weapons break” construct. I have always been a melee centric player, and tend to gravitate playing someone I can beat shit down with. As a result when you throw me into an open world game… I tend to gravitate towards the melee weapons. One one exception to this is the fallout franchise… where I tend to stick with the combat shotgun indefinitely.

So as a result of this fetish of mine… my entire gaming experience seems to be a search for new melee weapons. This is not really kosher when it comes to the flow of State of Decay. Immediately you think… open world game… explore all the things and gather up the loot. While this is a viable play mechanic… the world is not a static thing. There is a whole meta game going on behind the scenes of trying to keep the morale of your survivors up and protect them from the badness outside the church gates. In my search for things to beat zombies with… I noticed a series of messages showing up announcing that such and such location was infested.

I didn’t think much about this at first… but the infestation kept spreading to a new location. Once there got to be three infestations up… my survivors started to lose morale. So I had to go on a mission of cleaning out each of the houses. This was not the easiest task in the world… because each and every one had a half dozen to a dozen zombies in it… and at least one or two of the red eyed “super” zombies. Each time I cleared out an infestation I got back the lost morale and then some.

I Do Bad Things

The coding of State of Decay is frustratingly brilliant at times. The rule we have learned from watching the various zombie movies… is that while zombie eyesight is pure shit… their hearing is pretty amazing. Gunshots draw more zombies to investigate the noise… and this mechanic annoyingly well. Essentially if you decide to go out guns a blazing… you will have to fight an endless string of zombies. I know eventually you can attach a muzzle suppressor to dampen the noise but I have yet to find one… or figure out how to do it. The above shot is the beginning of my foolish attempt to shred a horde of zombies.

During the gameplay there will be roaming hordes of zombies that will wander around town and have the potential of attacking your base. There was one heading up the road towards home… and I got radio’d about it while out and about. I finally managed to kill enough that I could run into the safety of the base…. which kept them from spawning more. Yes I know I am abusing the shit out of that mechanic… but I was running out of ammunition by the time I had taken down a handful of them. I got a huge morale bonus for taking out a zombie horde, but it greatly hurt my ammo stock and weapon durability doing it.

The biggest problem I have with gunplay in State of Decay… is that I still suck at aiming a weapon with a controller. I feel like I will be far more confident sniping zombies in the head… once the mouse and keyboard controls are available. Right now SoD PC is a direct port of the xbox version, and as a result there are some goofy graphical glitches at times and you have to rely entirely upon your controller. The gameplay mechanics work well for a controller, and the game performs a smooth 60 fps for me at max graphics.

Bard is Born

Yesterday I also played quite a bit of Final Fantasy XIV A Realm Reborn. Since I got my main to 50… and I am the second in the guild to do so… I figured I would work on my Bard a bit as the others caught up. I managed to take it from 26 to 33, and at level 30 I completed the sequence of quests to pick up the Bard job. The odd thing about it… there is very little change in the way the class feels between Archer and Bard. With the Warrior and the Dragoon… in both cases I picked up a massive quality of life ability, whereas with the bard you pick up an ability that makes you more attractive to other players…. but not much of anything you can really use yourself.

It feels as though the players have congealed at the upper levels, and as a result the lower level FATE grind spots have become more sane. I had quite a bit of fun in Costa Del Sol doing the various fates there and managed to get extremely good contribution which has pushed me up in level quite a bit. If I play this morning I will likely go back to Costa and work on getting to 35 so I can do Sunken Temple. I think we have a back of guild members that are at that level. I know Lethbridge still needs Haukke which I can do with him now… that was my ulterior motive for leveling yesterday.

Additionally I really need to work on my pugilist to get him caught up with archer. That way I can get rid of a ton of low level leather gear without fear of it being needed by someone else. The inventory management meta game has become a real thing for me, with both of my retainers almost completely full… and my gear store hovering around 20 per slot. I need to push up all my melee classes so that I can free up room by deconstructing it. I am still having quite a bit of fun with the game, but I am really hoping they open up some questing options in the upcoming patches.

Wrapping up

Well it is that time, and I need to wrap this up. I really need to clean the house because it is a pit… and I think it is adversely effecting the moods of both myself and my wife. Also it would be nice to start the work week with a clean house, and anything I do today will save me scrambling Monday night to gather the trash. I hope you all have had a great weekend, and I hope that the start of the week is equally great.