Final Fantasy XIV

Grinds Are Not a Spectator Sport

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I feel like I thoroughly squandered my evening in a delightful manner, as I have done for most of the recent nights. The problem with grinds is that they don’t exactly make for exciting reading material. I closed out the night just a little ways into 57 on the Red Mage. I am still somewhat shocked and amazed that I am enjoying the class as much as I am. However I really have not found a single class design in Final Fantasy XIV that I did not enjoy at least on some level. Probably the ones that I like the least are Ninja and Monk, in part because they also seem the most “fiddly”.

Then again I have not touched either of them since Shadowbringers and I probably owe it to myself to do that. Dragoon used to be on the list of fiddly classes, but the recent changes have greatly improved the flow of combat for that class. Maybe Monk and Ninja got similar tweaks… but I have a feeling that I will still have to memorize a bunch of attack patterns on the Ninja to keep from getting a bunny on my head. Possibly the least fun to play in Deep Dungeon content is the Summoner which generally speaking throws up dots on something and then gets to do nothing with them because it dies instantly to some melee dps.

I am in this weird mode where I just sorta want to level all of the things. I am greatly enjoying the flow of Deep Dungeon, and by that I mean both Palace of the Dead which will take you from 1 to 60 with relative ease and Heaven on High which picks up at 61 and drops you off neatly at 70. The only thing I can really relate it to is Diablo, because it occupies a very similar space in my brain as that of doing Nephalem Rifts or Bounties. I pop in and focus on something largely mindless while being treated to the always amazing soundtrack of the game. It is the perfect level of mindless engagement that I need to clear away a day worth crap from my brain.

All of that said… I am also keeping my eye on the horizon. I know that around August 27th the gates open on World of Warcraft Classic. I’ve more or less stopped playing the beta in preparation of the eventual grind to come. There is no sense in leveling characters that will ultimately just go away when that leveling process is anything but trivial. Right now the target is to level up an Undead Warrior, in part because I know my friend Grace will be leveling something Undead and that makes life a little easier on the connecting and running content together side.

Quite frankly due to the wild success of Shadowbringers I have no clue how many other people we will have with us along for the ride. Had Shadowbringers bombed or largely been a forgettable experience, I figure everyone would have jumped on the Classic boat just for something to do. On a similar note I am not entirely certain how much time I will be devoting to the experience myself. I figure I am going to need a little something less hardcore to keep swapping over to in order to sorta dull the pain of the grind.

I guess at this point… I am curious. How many of my readers plan on going down the dark path that leads to World of Warcraft Classic? I’ve already decided for the purpose of tracking, I am going to treat WoW Classic as a separate game from World of Warcraft given that it will be a vastly different experience. Right now for example I am not touching WoW Live at all and have not been for honestly longer than I realized. The last time I played WoW Live with any regularity was in November some seven months ago. Hell that alone probably is one of the longer lapses in gameplay I have experienced since Cataclysm.

Once again I am posting the most up to date version of the list. There have been a few people who have signed up since yesterday and our totals are up to 41.

Here is a quick summary of the Blaugust 2019 Links as well.

Passport to the Crags

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This past weekend was a weird mix of extremely busy periods and extremely languid gaming stretches. On Friday itself we went through a whirlwind of activity where we got a ceiling fan installed in the bedroom, went and got copies of our birth certificates, found a place to do passport photos on zero notice and managed to talk an appointment only passport application location to see us as a walk in because they were thankfully not busy. However the whirlwind of activity meant that I will not have to take a day off work in the future to try and wrap things up. I personally found the whole process of applying for a passport to be exceptionally stressful given that neither of us have had one before.

Saturday I managed to get in on a run clearing Eden with nearly a full free company group, and I joined while downstairs which means I was not on voice chat. That is probably not something I will repeat again because I more or less felt lost the entire time. However I managed through it enough to finish… with Meca-Titan and Hydra-Leviathan being the hardest fights to adjust to. I do think it is sorta badass that we are seemingly on a path to repeat much nastier versions of all of the Primals we fought before. I also think I will be trying to get in on a guild group on the night this opens from now on, rather than waiting as late in the week as I did.

My main project for the weekend was getting the Dragoon leveled to 71 so that I could start doing Trust content with it. It is weird the way I think of the various jobs as though they are different characters, even though technically it is all the same Lala Bel each time. Through all of the running of content I managed to collect enough poetics to deck the Dragoon out in most of a full set of Scaevan gear, and the pieces that I didn’t pick up on the right side of the gear screen were augmented by items picked up in the first Trust dungeon.

Another side note is that I managed to pick up another full set of barding, this time the Expanse barding originally from Bismarck. I actually managed to pick up two full sets of it, and the second of which I gave to Ashgar who happened to be standing there at Heaven on High as well. I mean I could sell stuff on the market place but would ultimately rather find most of it a home amongst my friends. Some of the things that are dropping in the dungeon have to have wreaked havoc on the prices as all of the Thavnarian gear seems to drop there as well. It is a nice bonus incentive for leveling in this fashion however to pick up previously hard to get items.

I should have in theory taken the Dragoon as a win for the weekend… but instead I started pushing up the Red Mage in Palace of the Dead. It is weird going from Heaven on High bad to PotD, because it is very clear that they learned several lessons between the two designs. PotD seems actually a much harder dungeon experience than HoH, and I actually managed to wipe out completely on the third floor of a run last night. In part this is due to a bunch of tanks starting to try pulling everything to the portal and waiting for folks to burn it all down… which sorta works at times in HoH but does not work at all in PotD. It is still a much better leveling experience for dps than pretty much anything else available in the game. Largely I like the fact that I do not need to give a shit about gear in the least, and I get to run dungeons while listening to random tracks from the amazing FFXIV musical back catalog.

It was a good if not busy weekend, but we got a lot accomplished in the real world as well as me ticking a bunch of boxes in the virtual world. On the Blaugust front people continue to trickle in and we are up to I believe as to the time of writing this 34 entrants. There was apparently a problem with some of the links on the previous list. They came directly from the sign-up sheet and a handful were missing the scheme part of URI… aka the https:// bit. This should be updated and the new list of folks looks a little something like this.

Once again a reminder that you still have plenty of time to sign up and participate in this years running of Blaugust. Here again is the summary of links with pertinent information related to that.

Nerfed I guess

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Last night I could have done a bunch of things, but instead of doing something productive… I piddled around on alts. Timing and a last minute run to Walmart made me unavailable to run content for Thalen which bums me out a little bit. My focus was largely to get the Dragoon to 61 and capable of starting in on Heaven on High. I noticed that Main Scenario Roulette even had DPS as the bonus role, so I decided to roll the dice and give that a shot again. What I ultimately needed was just a little over half of a level to hit 61.

Since I talked about this yesterday, this time around I managed to pull Praetorium and even with adventurer in need bonus… I just managed to get slightly more than half of a level. I am thinking at some point they stealth nerfed how much experience this was giving out during the 5.01 patch making it significantly less rewarding. Maybe they saw the numbers that told them that people like me were using it to fix gaps in the MSQ while leveling in Shadowbringers and they wanted to nip that in the bud. Regardless it is still a viable way to bridge the gap but it now takes two days worth of runs instead of a single day.

I will likely keep doing this thing given it is a really low pressure way of getting across that chasm. Sadly I think I am out of level 60 characters apart from the Gunbreaker, and I am doubting that I want to tank Castrum/Praetorium on a class that I have barely played at all. I could in theory start up a Dancer and push it across to Heaven on High levels. More likely I will start mixing up HoH and PotD runs and pushing some of my 50s to 60s to start this process all over again. I have no clue at all why I am suddenly obessed with leveling all of the things, but I apparently am.

As far as Eden goes I still have not touched it. Right now I know Warenwolf and Thalen both will need it and we are tentatively making plans for Friday night pending on a bunch of variables. Today is effectively my Friday this week, as I am taking tomorrow off to deal with a bunch of errands that need to be taken care involving locations only open during the 8 to 5 window. So in theory I probably will have some time to push characters between those activities. We had an installer reschedule us for 8:30 in the morning so it is my hope that we have our afternoon completely free.

As far as Blaugusty things… we continue to pick up steam as we roll towards the official start in a little less than two weeks. Timing this thing is always a challenge because I don’t want to make the announcement too far ahead of the event that we lose steam before it has officially started. Last year I posted on I believe the second week of July which seemed maybe a bit too early. I effectively waited a week later and so far it seems to be providing enough of a reminder and catalyst to get people engaged.

So far we are up to 29 official sign-ups with still a few more who will likely be buzzer beaters that I know are planning on participating.

I will also likely keep providing a daily summary of links for latecomers to have a quick way of onboarding.

A Little Poker

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First off we are going to start with a bit of a retraction. I am not sure if it was me, or a situation of circumstances or the difference between two dungeons. Yesterday I said that Main Scenario Roulette was a great way to jump across the gaps in Final Fantasy XIV. Yesterday we also had a patch, 5.01 with some tweaks applied. Yesterday I said that Main Scenario Roulette should be worth a full level, and that had been my own experience when I took my Bard from barely into 70 all the way to 71 in a single run. However last night… it was not my experience.

There are some variables at work that might account for it. Firstly I have been getting Praetorium a lot more than Castrum Meridianum of late which is a longer and more major boss laden dungeon. All of my “oops a full level” experiences that I recall were with Praetorium and last night I drew Castrum from the hat. The end result is that my fresh level 60 Dragoon only managed to get just shy of a half level. Still worth the time, especially considering that Castrum is a way faster run than Praetorium… however I was really hoping for that full level so I could start Heaven on High. I will of course be running it again tonight and will report back the results if I manage to pull Praetorium.

The big thing that went in with the patch was Eden in a new location called The Empty, which I went through the motions of unlocking last night. This is supposedly the Alexander/Omega style raid made of up four parts. I had a fairly shitty day yesterday and didn’t really feel like I had raiding in me, and as such I lost out on running with the rest of the Free Company. I will likely pug this either tonight or later this weekend to gather up at least one piece of gear for the week.

I have no earthly idea where the above image came from, so apologies for the lack of attribution. However it seems as though Eden has a fixed drop pattern which is a huge improvement over a specific boss being able to drop a handful of things but a random assortment each time. Next it seems like Eden is way more generous with 8 fixed drops each time you run a given floor. For reference you need the following pieces to turn in for a finished piece of gear.

  • Helm – 2 Items
  • Chest – 4 Items
  • Gloves – 2 items
  • Belt – 1 item
  • Legs – 4 items
  • Boots – 2 items
  • Accessories – 1 Item each

What is interesting about this system is that never before could you get your chest piece or your legs in a single week. However with this… that is absolutely doable pending you keep holding your roll for a specific floor and only spending it on a specific slot. This could get super grindy, but would allow you to have more specific control over which items you are getting rather than hoping on random chance to complete something.

I mostly spent the night screwing around on the Bard again, and even if Main Scenario potentially got nerfed… it is still an excellent source of poetics. You get 600 of them in a single go from completing the duty, which I have been using to kit out the Bard in gear… which in its upgraded form lasts quite a ways into the Shadowbringers content. I am one run away from getting my Trust their first level up, which still seems like a nonsense amount of time needed to level them. I feel like it is worth my time considering the vast stable of alts that I would like to push up so I can piddle with them as well.

On the Blaugust front we are up to 20 sign ups and I know of a handful more people who intend to but have not actually filled out the form. One thing I thought I would address is that the form collects your email address, not because I intend to use it for nefarious purposes but I have had situations in the past where I needed to reach out to a participant about something but had no stable means of doing so. We’ve had scenarios where companies have ponied up prizes to be distributed, which is not necessarily something I have actively courted… but just in case it happens again I feel like I need a reliable method of communication.

The list of participants is currently looking like this:

You can view the full post if you want details but for those not wanting to bounce back and forth a bunch here comes a quick summary.