Since I caught so much general shit from the Final Fantasy XIV for my continued assurance that Blue Mage was not a real job… I am in fact slowly working on leveling it. I still stand by my assessment that it is not a real job and literally does not count for any of the battle job achievements, but to quell the uprising I am going to try and make it be orange as well in my jobs list. While recording the podcast I pushed it up to level 55 largely through the repeated application of Choco Meteor which involves dropping a giant Meteor over and over on my targets. In theory if I could convince a friend to help me I can supposedly do this in a matter of minutes by fighting low level Shadowbringers mobs, but honestly I am fine slowly pushing up my levels through dropping big rocks.
Shocking to no one I have been spending most of my time in New World. Now that things have more or less stabilized I am focused on getting my character to level 60. There are a bunch of things that I have found out recently that has made me want to just push to the endgame. Firstly apparently leveling weapon skills becomes significantly easier post 60, because every mob that you kill is treated as though it were “on level”. Additionally there appears to be some sort of gold to xp conversion which means random world jobs are dropping something like 5 gold each. Yes I know it is technically “coins” in game but that sounds weird as fuck so I will continue to refer to it as gold. Lastly I am really looking forward to reaching a point where I am working on gear that is going to last me more than a few levels.
I did however get my first legendary drops, and I am wishing I had gotten one of them when it was actually relevant back around level 40. My friend Rob aka Grakulen released a video showing off a pretty easy and lucrative mob farm in Brightwood. This involves killing an Angry Earth tank named Meldue, Soldier of Blight and they have a pretty interesting static drop table including all of the items shown above. In about two hours of killing this mob I got all four of the items, a duplicate of the sword, and I believe twelve vials of azoth along with a slew of other BOE blues. I would kill Meldue and then hop the wall and kill one of the wood wolves. By the time I had killed and harvested it with logging to get Wyrdwood it would be time to kill Meldue again. If you are nearing level 40 and can handle the camp, then I would highly suggest popping over and getting some items. Sadly I have not figured out how to replace the gem in the necklace, so I hold onto an item I got from the Boar camp for when I am tanking.
My little hovel is coming along nicely, but I wish I had bought in Everfall instead of Windsward. It isn’t that Everfall is a better town for crafting, and more that Windsward is held by Team Green on my server, and Everfall is the entry to the Purple Empire of the North. Were Windsward to flip Purple this would all change, but it would be lovely to have access to all of my vaults in Purple territory from my main crafting hub. I am closing in on level 55 and have been slowly pushing up Furnishing. Warenwolf has this theory that when we craft multiple items at a time, we are not getting the full benefit of all of the experience gains so I am going to do some testing around that. As of last night I can mine Orichalcum so I am probably going to spend some time working on Engineering again so that I can make myself a full set of Orichalcum tools.
Good Morning Friends! I realize that for the last few weeks I have pretty much talked about nothing but New World, but that does not mean that I completely abandoned Final Fantasy XIV. In fact while I knew the launch of New World would slow me down, I wanted to keep making slow and steady progress on my goal. I am not exactly sure when I set it into my head, but at some point I decided that I was going to try and make it to level 80 on all standard jobs before the launch of Endwalker on November 19th. While this does in fact net you the Amaro mount that I am riding in the above screenshot, it wasn’t necessarily about getting the “CamelBirb”, but more that I just wanted to have leveled everything that Final Fantasy had to offer class wise. In fact without the sentimentality of having experienced Shadowbringers… the mount isn’t that spectacular… unless that is mine begins to talk to me.
I came back to the game on July 3rd of 2021 after a very long absence and the top chart represents where I was with all of my jobs at that point. I figured the easiest way to get back into the game was to start leveling one of my lower level jobs, and since I favor tanks… I started working on my Paladin and managed to get it to 80 in pretty short order. After that I noticed that my Red Mage was already 73, so I might as well invest a bit of time and work that up to 80. That sequence I guess triggered something in me that wanted to see just how close to leveling everything I could get before the next expansion dropped. It was some years ago, prior to the launch of Stormblood that I decided to get all of my characters to level 50 so I could begin to jettison some of the gear in my bank. I did this largely by “no-life-ing” my way through Palace of the Dead but it felt like a significant accomplishment.
It was part of the way through this process that I realized, I had been pretty regularly posting screenshots of my progress on all of my jobs. This made me decide that I should probably spreadsheet this to see how fast I was leveling. The above curve represents me taking all of these data points, and some that I specifically collected after that point and charting it. If my napkin math is correct at the point of dinging I had been back in the game one hundred and three days and in that time I had put on three hundred fifty three levels. That averages out to be a little bit more than 3.4 levels per day which sounds like a lot… but in truth I have simply been exploiting the daily bonus system to do a few things each day and earn several levels for doing it. If you are curious about this process you can check out my post on leveling alternate jobs that I made some time back.
There were a lot of these that I did not do every single day, but in the very least I tried to do three of them. The first of course is the Main Story Roulette, because it is such a huge boost in experience. More important than that however I tried to get Praetorium specifically, because the amount of bonus experience is just so much higher than Castrum. This means that there were days that I got Castrum bailed and then waited out the 30 minute timer for abandoning only to get Castrum again and wait through another timer. I tried to save things like my daily hunts as something that I could do during this time frame to make the wait a little less painful. On top of that I tried my best to always do the Faerie daily quests if I had a character that was in the 70s. Lastly the PVP Roulette is similarly important in that it is a very quick way to add over half of a level worth of experience. If I had time and patience left I would do the Alliance raid next but there were plenty of days that I neglected to do it.
What About Blue Mage?
Throughout this entire process, especially as I got towards the finish line… folks have kept asking what about Blue Mage. Blue Mage does not count, both literally and logically. Blue Mage is what they call a limited job which means that I cannot do any of the things that I have been doing to level it. There are no roulette bonuses because you cannot queue as a blue mage unless you are going through the party finder… with an entire group of other blue mages. Additionally Blue Mage is nowhere in the stack of achievements for leveling all of the Magic and Melee jobs or for the Amaro mount. Blue Mage is enjoyable in its own right, but it more or less involves a lot of grinding and I am not super concerned about getting it to cap. That said now that I am finished with over a month of time to spare, I will probably see what damage I can do in grinding out the last 20 levels of that job.
What Job Did I Like Least?
So another thing that people have asked is what my least favorite job was to level. The truth is there isn’t a single job that I found that I hated, and they were all interesting in their own way. That said… I thought for awhile that Black Mage might be the class that broke me. It is doing nothing that I want to do in an MMO because I have this long standing feud with “Finger Wiggler” classes, and as a result I tried to finish off all of my casters leaving myself a melee and a tank as the last two things I had left to level. Black Mage though… has no mobility… is squishy as fuck… and is basically the antithesis of the sort of class that I enjoy playing in a game. It does some really interesting things and I created a super sweet glamour for it, but there is never going to be a case where I choose Black Mage over Red Mage for example.
What Job Surprised You The Most?
Another thing that I have been asked is what Job I enjoyed the most, or what Job did I enjoy that I didn’t expect to enjoy. That crown goes to Machinist because I fully expected it to be a real slog to level. I had tried Machinist during Heavensward and hated it. However since then it has been reworked a number of times and the current version feels awesome. In fact this is very highly likely going to be my DPS main for Endwalker, or at least the first DPS that I push up to maximum level. I really like the mobility of the class and the animations just feel great. Additionally who doesn’t love summoning a literal robot to come fight by your side? Machinists are a bit disappointed that the Job doesn’t seem to be getting anything flashy and new going into Endwalker, but I think that is largely because they were in the best shape after their most recent revamp.
What Is Your Endwalker Main?
For years I had been a Warrior main in Final Fantasy XIV, and liked being the dude with the huge hitpoint pool and the ginormous axe. However over the last few expansions they have leaned more and more into the “Blue DPS” fantasy and honestly that has never really been my jam when it comes to tanks. I want all of the aggro and I want to be a massive bulwark against the oncoming storm. Leveling Paladin has made me feel the way I want a tank to feel and it plays more into my tanking fantasy than Warrior ever did. I am not sure why I shied away from Paladin early on in the game other than it was a pain in the butt to tank low level content as Gladiator and that they got their Aggro Stance late. However now that I have found Paladin in its most recent form, I am holding on with both hands and this will be my main going into Endwalker.
The embargo on the Endwalker influencer media tour has lifted and there is so much content now available to hype us up for the expansion. My personal favorites of these are the interviews with Yoshi P. He gives big kindly uncle vibes and I am so there for it. Listening to the way he talks about the game gives me so much hope for the future. While I am currently focused on getting to level 60 and gearing up in New World, I am also super ready for the launch of Endwalker and for them to punch me straight in the feels again. I am super glad I went through this little experiment and now with the launch of Endwalker I will have two new classes to level from Scratch and 10 more levels on every other class to add on. I figure I will be busy for quite some time to come.
Morning folks! Last night was a pretty rough evening. We were under a Tornado Watch turned Warning and that really started to escalate around what is normally our bedtime. So that meant a somewhat fraught evening of sleeping with the channel tuned to our favorite weather station. Oklahomans have developed this skill which is to half-sleep and half-listen to the weather report at the same time. I remember specifically waking up at various points in the evening when the meteorologist cut in with important updates, and then blending back into sleep… to the point where I am not even sure if I was actually waking up or if I was just dreaming about the weather? Whatever the case it is going to be a long day as I am pretty sure that neither my wife nor I got anything resembling restful slumber.
One of the positives and negatives about New World is how easily you can level just by doing pretty much anything. The positive is that the levels come quickly and it always feels like you are making incremental progress. The negative is that there really isn’t a way to actually slow down your leveling in an effort to let friends who started later try and catch up. For example, I spent the podcast on Saturday night fishing, since it was a pretty relaxing activity and wound up putting on most of a full level while doing it. Last night I was trying to catch up with my town reputation in Everfall and wound up doing most of a level as well in town board quests. Then there is crafting which always adds a not insignificant boost to your leveling. Suffice to say at this point whether or not I want to be… I am going to be level 60 and waiting on folks to catch up.
My crafting priorities shifted around a little bit last night when I noticed sitting in my bags the pattern for a Starmetal Storage Chest, or more correctly the Hope Storage Chest. I have been slowly working on my furnishing skill, and I guess I should spend a bit more effort trying to get it up to 145 so that I can start making these. I could have sold the pattern for a pretty penny on the market board, but in truth, I want to be able to craft my own furnishing so I guess this just gives me more purpose in leveling. I’ve reached a point where I am completely out of storage in both Windsward my main crafting hub, and Everfall my backup crafting hub. This means I will need to expand out further into another city… and I am trying to decide if I would rather do this with Brightwood or Weavers Fen. Both are currently held by my faction which would give me rapid (but costly) access to items from that bank.
One of the nights this weekend I happened into a group that was farming Rifts… aka Corrupted incursions or whatever this game calls them. I will always think of them as Rifts because they show up randomly, involve defeating a boss and then go away quickly rewarding you a chest in the end. The key differentiator so far is that Corrupted Rifts are way more rewarding than most of the tears were back in Rifts. I’ve pulled some decent gear from even the minor loot chests, and the majors give you the currency that you need in order to craft dungeon keys. I need to do this more often because it was rather enjoyable and also fairly rewarding.
Over in Final Fantasy XIV, I am working on my last job and have it up to 75 as of yesterday. I completely blew off maps night last night unintentionally. We were downstairs watching the weather and I was slowly prodding along in New World, and simply was not watching the time nor did I have any messaging clients active on the laptop. So I completely missed the message from Waren reminding me, and it wasn’t until we were shutting down for bed that I even began to realize that I had completely missed things. I feel bad, but also given the weather patterns I might not have been the most reliable group member last night anyway. I do need to make sure I make next week because I really do feel bad about completely missing it two weeks in a row.
Morning friends! It has been a few days since I talked about my core mission over in Final Fantasy XIV. This would probably lead someone to believe that I had given up on my goal of leveling all of the things to 80. However, what it really means is that I am mostly just doing the easiest and most beneficial leveling opportunities each day rather than grinding every possible drop of experience. Essentially I am logging in every day and at a minimum doing the daily roulettes for Main Story Quest, Alliance Raid, and Frontlines. Generally speaking, I also do the Faerie quests in Il Mheg while waiting in one of the above queues. Combined they represent more than a level’s worth of experience and through that, I managed to level to 80 on my Astrologian yesterday.
New World has absolutely slowed down my progress, but it did not halt it completely. You can notice that curve flattening out a bit but that probably looks worse than it is because I also got out of the habit of recording data points. Essentially there are now two classes left before I get my Amaro mount, and I have purposefully left two classes I enjoy quite a bit. I am now focusing on finishing off Dragoon which I got to 77 yesterday as well. That will leave me with a tank to level as my very last class, and given that it is my favorite style of gameplay it should be extremely easy for me to grind that out in dungeons if need be with near-instant queues. The ultimate irony… is me, who almost exclusively plays tanks and melee… maxed out all of my healers and magic DPS first.
On to New World… the queues seem to be dying away. Last night I spent most of the evening playing Final Fantasy XIV and the around 8:30/9ish last night I popped into the game and only had a 26 player queue which breezed by in a few minutes. I am not sure if this is due to the fact that the new smell is wearing off or the 24/7 tryhards are finally getting some sleep. There is also the possibility that a sizable amount of players manually rerolled on a lower population server. Whatever the case I am super happy to see Minda be something that you can realistically log into in the evenings without much gnashing of teeth.
New World is currently undergoing maintenance, but I did patch up my game and log in to see that we now have a code of conduct screen that players will have to agree to before entering the game. Given that a large chunk of the patch notes involved methods to detect and kick AFK players, it makes me think that we are only a few weeks away from a massive ban wave. So if you are doing anything untoward to avoid getting kicked from the game, I would highly suggest you halt that activity now. New World employs Easy Anti Cheat, which should in theory be able to detect pretty much anything that is running in the background. My hope is that they start acting upon some of the bad behavior I am seeing in chat because the community is pretty uncouth. I’ve been spoiled by Roleplaying servers for far too long, and most recently the very amazing community on Cactuar in Final Fantasy XIV. Having the waves of the obscene masses come crashing over me… has been a wake-up call to just how generally awful gamers can be.
Yesterday I managed to hit 37 and also wrap up one of my huge overarching missions in-game, which was to upgrade all of my tools to Starmetal. This means even if we do end up server transferring someplace else, that I should be in pretty good shape for the rest of the leveling curve. The biggest thing gained by Starmetal is that each of the tools has three perks instead of two, and they also do a much better job of chewing through things like Starmetal nodes and Wyrdwood trees. The skinning knife is so freaking quick when it comes to lower-level carcasses which admittedly is still a lot of what I skin as random cats and wolves attack me. Right now I am splitting time between Cutlass Keys, Brightwood, and Weavers Fen as I knock out some of the quests there. Still greatly enjoying myself but also very happy to begin mixing in more Final Fantasy XIV.
