Grand Experiment

Hopelessness of Odin

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Impending Patch

Last night was an odd evening for a handful of reasons.  For starters when I first got home I attempted not to get into anything terribly involved.  As such I did a random low level duty roulette and managed to get Haukke Manor.  I think overall it went really smoothly, especially considering we had a brand new White Mage that had never healed it before.  I attempted to explain all of the fights, and was shocked and amazed that my party requested a full clear instead of the normal abbreviated rush.  Everything went pretty smoothly all things considered as I took the time to explain the final fight and what I was expecting from each of the party members.  I’ve found that often times on fights with very specific mechanics, no one wants to admit to not knowing what to do.  If I simply give an abbreviated explanation, overall it tends to go considerably smoother.

When my wife got home we walked to dinner and hung out for a bit.  By this time I was absolutely starving, but to be fair she warned me exactly when she would be getting home.  I should have eaten a snack when I first got home or something, because by the time we hit the Mexican restaurant I was absolutely famished.  When we left the house it looked like it might open up on us, and originally we were headed to a BBQ place, but while walking it started sprinkling a little bit.  Thankfully by the time we got out of the restaurant any signs of sprinkles had disappeared and we walked home on an extremely gorgeous evening.  I love being within walking distance of several restaurants, because there is just something cool about being able to walk to dinner in an otherwise traditional car culture.

Hopelessness of Odin

ffxiv 2014-09-15 21-33-25-687 With the patch downtime quickly approaching, but the time I got back from dinner I had roughly an hour and a half of play time left before the servers went down.  I tanked another low level random, and then opted to start working on my Paladin Hunt log.  For various reasons I have shifted my focus from working on my White Mage to pushing up the Paladin.  As I said yesterday I went from 28 to 35 Sunday and managed to get 36 and almost 37 last night.  I was essentially minding my business and porting from zone to zone cleaning up sections of my hunt log.  When I zoned into South Shroud I thought the place looked really odd.  One of the cool things about FFXIV is that you can check the current weather conditions by mousing over a little icon on the minimap.  When I did that I started to get excited… the conditions were “Hopelessness” which is a unique weather condition when the Odin event has spawned.  I shifted to my warrior job and shouted into zone “WAR LFG” and within seconds I got an invite.

It seems that Warriors are the kings of cheesing out FATE contribution, so they are apparently highly sought after for fights like Odin.  It seemed like everyone was coalescing on Urth’s Gift, so I headed that way.  I had never actually managed to catch Odin in progress before, and by the time I got there someone had just pulled him.  I was not quite ready for the sight in front of me, which seemed to be roughly 200 players working away feverishly to get him down.  The above shot is from the battle, and pretty much represents what the experience feels like.  The entire area is a wash in spell effects, which makes his attacks extremely hard to see.  During the battle he periodically casts these massive AOE fields that you realistically need to run out of.  I avoided most of them, and with less than 3% of his bar left I finally ended up dying.  I rode out the battle before releasing and managed to get gold contribution, which means I earned 5 Odin Mantles.

jIKMXpjzantetsuken What is awesome about getting gold contribution is the fact that you actually get enough of the tokens to be able to purchase something right then.  Both Odin and Behemoth have a number of really cool items you can pick up for mostly cosmetic purposes.  You can get barding that makes your chocobo look like Odin’s mount, or you can get a helmet and chest graphic that makes your gear look just like his.  The item however that I was interested is the one that any Final Fantasy fan will immediately recognize…  Zantetsuken his insane sword.  While the stats on the blade are no longer that great, thanks to the wonders of the glamour system I can make any blade look like this.  My good friend Ashgar has had one for some time now, but I had to scrounge around this morning to find a picture of someone wielding it.  As soon as I get my paladin up to 50 I too will be rocking the blade of Odin…  which to be truthful is probably longer than my Lalafell is tall.

Winding Down

Sagacyte After the excitement of Odin I was wandering around, and popped over to Uldah to purchase more Ventures when I ran into the ever amazing Sagacyte Luxaloix.  It is always awesome to bump into twitter folk while wandering about the server, and it seems like last night was a night for doing so.  Earlier in the evening Sagacyte had bumped into the very amazing Spiral Sun and posted about it as well.  Thankfully the meetings were commemorated in picture, so I could totally use them…  as in my rush I absolutely forgot to take one.  I love bumping into folks I know while wandering about the server.  When doing Odin there were a bunch of folks from the Howling Moon free company in the thick of the battle as well.  I was pumped to find out that Ayla Noye also managed to get gold contribution from the event, so we will all be rocking Odin goodies in the housing zone.

On top of all of this it appears that the 2.38 patch that went in this morning has a ton of quality of life modifications to existing systems.  It seems they are focusing on making some tweaks to make 2.4 go more smoothly, including some visual changes to Limsa Lominsa… which makes me wonder if the new Thief and Ninja NPCs will be located in that city.  The biggest news for me personally from the patch is the new command to copy an existing hotbar.  One of the big frustrations is that when you switch jobs, most of your hotbars change with you.  That means when you switch from Gladiator to Paladin for example you have to reconfigure your hotbar, as it defaults to giving you ones filled with the abilities in the order in which you received them.  This command will let you copy one current hotbar to a new hotbar slot in a different profile.

Another big one for me which is kinda silly is I am pumped that they added a /hug emote.  In every MMO this has kinda been my default interaction with a player that I happened to meet out in the world.  Apparently the Japanese are not big huggers, because after a year of the game they still had yet to put that emote in.  As a result my default had been /joy which is what happens to be pictured above.  So I will be happy to be able to do drive by huggings in game soon.  Another awesome change is the ability to scale back the spell effects.  Maybe I would have actually been able to see what Odin looked like were this system in place last night.  In any case, the patch looks to be a great one and I look forward to delving into all the things they added like Personal Player housing.

#FFXIV

Dance of my People

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Enter the Jigglehats

ffxiv 2014-09-14 22-10-22-567 Yesterday the Breaking Brick Mountains event started in FFXIV which is a repeat of an earlier event used to commemorate the launch of DragonQuest X.  For those not terribly familiar with the Dragon Warrior/DragonQuest franchise, it has a rather distinctive art style.  So seeing that art style appear in Final Fantasy XIV is extremely entertaining.  The quests have this great Dragon Quest stylized “Quest Accepted” and FATE related text that just makes me happy to see in game.  The quest itself is rather simple.  You talk to Havak Alvak near the Central Thanalan gate in Uldah, which sends you to talk to the Beefy Businessman down by the Thaumaturge guild.  From there you have to find a specific fate called “Brick by Brick”.  This will lead into one of two other FATEs either called “Brick by Stone Brick” or “Brick by Gold Brick”, both granting you quest completion.

One of the things I love about Final Fantasy XIV seasonal and special events is that they are super easy to complete.  I used to hate how frustratingly grindy other games events were, in that if you did not participate every single day of a holiday you could not get all the prizes.  Even with the Lightning Returns event, and trying to collect all of the weapons… it essentially meant I had to farm 5 different FATEs and then was completely done.  This event in total took maybe 30 minutes, and most of that was travel time.  Completing the quest nets you a Thug’s Mug cosmetic helm and a Wind-up Brickman cosmetic pet.  Next to the Beefy Businessman there is a Toughie Peddler NPC that sells the amazing “Jigglehat” or more properly known as the King Slime Crown.

It has become common place for our guild and the members of Howling Moon free company to mingle around while waiting on things to happen.  The events of last night are pretty common, in that we each tend to hang around the market board just down from our house, which can be seen in the background of the above image.  It all started when Joren Noye started up with this amazing outfit that he had built around his Jigglehat, that was mostly comprised of a dyed to match vanya robe.  What happens when to amazing Lalafell meet?  Well we dance of course, and within moments the ever adorable Jade Taiga showed up as well.  Well it was not long before Ayla Noye joined in as well, and we had an impromptu jigglehat party.  You have to love any game that supports this sort of random dancing in silly hats.  My friend Tam is convinced that the entire point of this game is to collect ever more amazing hats.

Paladin Soul

ffxiv 2014-09-14 09-52-39-215 I spent most of yesterday working away quietly on my Gladiator turned Paladin.  I completed the final level 30 Gladiator quest, and went through the opening quest for becoming a Paladin.  So far the 30 and 35 quests that I have completed are significantly easier than most of the job quests that I have done on other characters.  I am guessing that at some point in the near future they will drop the floor out from under me with a quest that is significantly more difficult than the others.  I personally thought the final level 30 Gladiator quest was rather challenging, in that I seemed to fail it the first time for no apparent reason.  I was doing everything they had told me to do and then all of the sudden I got duty failed.  Upon trying it again this morning I apparently did all of the things that I was supposed to and then some because I passed, but still have no idea what I did the first time versus what I did the second time.

I started the day at level 28 and finished the evening about halfway to 36.  I have yet to really sit foot in a dungeon yet, and have been mostly doing the FATE grind.  First in Costa Del Sol and now I am out in Coerthas.  In part I guess I like FATE grinding because it is mindless and something I can do over and over.  Additionally I have really become addicted to the whole Quick Ventures system, and I view FATEs as a way to feed Venture tokens to my Retainers.  For those that are unaware you can buy 5 venture tokens for 1000 grand company seals at your grand company quartermaster.  So far I am digging playing the Paladin again, but in truth I am mostly leveling this so that I once again have a good class for grinding FATEs to get Atma parts.  I maybe made a mistake in going for the Atma weapon on my warrior first.  That is pretty much the ideal fate grinding class, and in order for me to get another one up with that sort of survival… I am going to have to play my paladin.

Moonwalker

Destiny_20140913141700 Other than playing quite a bit of Final Fantasy XIV, I spent the bulk of the rest of my weekend playing some Destiny.  At this point my Titan is level 10 and I am spending most of my time in the Moon Patrol zone.  While I was waiting for FATEs on Saturday to spawn for my Animus book, I was hanging out on the PS4 wandering around either the Cosmodrome or Moon Patrol areas.  This is pretty much the ideal play style for me.  I like wandering about doing mini quests and killing lots of Fallen and Hive aliens.  However if you listen to our podcast you can tell that several of our cast have a real issue with the fact that the game has very little tangible story.  The story that does exist is questionably written and even more questionably acted.  For me, it is enough story to keep me entertained, but we have already agreed that I need and more importantly want significantly less story than most folks.  Wandering around and killing things is totally enough motivation to keep me enthralled, especially when the controls feel so damned good.

Destiny_20140910225853 The weird thing for me is I tend to lose motivation to do the various missions whenever I actually unlock the patrol zone.  It is as though the mission only serve as a vehicle to unlock patrol and once I have done that I have no real interest in progressing further.  At some point soon however I should really finish clearing out the moon, but in the mean time I am wandering around the surface looking for interesting stuff.  I love it when I find a chest or a new place that I had overlooked previously.  I love exploring this game, but find it more than marginally frustrating when I encounter the “turn back now” wall around the outskirts of the areas.  At least with the Cosmodrome you have understandable boundaries that limit you to just being on this one island.  On the moon you can see forever, so it makes no sense why I cannot wander out in the open, as there are no logical obstructions.  In any case, I am still really enjoying the game and look forward to playing more of it.

#FFXIV #Destiny

Of Animus Books

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Destiny of Poppy

Last night we recorded the latest episode of AggroChat.  This week we were joined once again by Tam and the regular cast of AggroChat…  Asghar, Rae and Kodra.  I went into the night thinking we would end up gushing about Destiny quite a bit, but in truth it turns out we all have a some very valid complaints about the game.  We do in fact talk about the good points, but also we talk about the weaknesses of the story.  Moreso we talk about the fact that there really isn’t much of a story at all.

Apparently this week some craziness happened in League of Legends with the team Unicorns of Love.  It seems as though they broke one of the taboos of the game and played Poppy in competitive play  More so than that they seemed to dominate a match with her.  We talk about the ramifications of this and get into an offshoot discussion about what happens when something is toxic for a game.  When a game changes the class or mechanic that you love, what do you as the player do?  I know a good part of why I wont be playing Warlords of Draenor, at least not at launch is the fact that Blood Deathknights “feel wrong” in ways I cannot quite quantify.

Of Tidal Bardings

ffxiv 2014-09-14 10-05-52-018 Since the last three days have been spent working on my Easing Into Eorzea guide series, I have not really posted much that was actually about me or my endeavors.  In fact this morning it feels more than a little weird to not be working on the next segment of that guide.  I guess in part I wanted to get some of the most basic information out there especially since I have a good number of friends either just starting the game or considering starting it.  One of the problems with Final Fantasy and just how content dense it is, is that it has so many different systems that it just expects you to know how to use.  I remember when we first started playing, it took me weeks to figure out what everything did and even to this day I am still finding systems that I knew nothing about.  So my goal was to try and flatten this learning curve by discussing things from the perspective of a player who is used to playing traditional western MMOs.

However this does not mean that I stopped doing things while writing these guides.  One of the most exciting things from the past week is that I managed to get Tidal Barding.  The entire reason why I was going for Turquoise color with my chocobo, was that it would match the Leviathan bardings perfectly as seen in the picture above.  Leviathan has been my favorite summon since Final Fantasy IV and as a result I knew when I saw this that I would have to get it for my chocobo.  The problem is that it involves getting a rare drop from Extreme Mode Leviathan, when I have not done any of the Extreme primals leading up to that.  The other issue is that it is a three star armorcrafting pattern, meaning it takes an extremely well geared crafter.

This is the point at which my good friend and awesome cosplayer Spiral Sun rides in to the rescue.  It turns out her Free Company leader could make the barding, so I shopped around on the market and managed to piece together all the bits needed.  All told I think I spent around 150,000 gil to gather up the bits, which is a significant discount over what the completed barding had been going for on the market boards.  Last night I checked it was still floating around the 500,000 mark.  So thanks to Spiral I am now sporting my spiffy barding, and with the Turquoise color it works almost perfectly.  The barding and bird kinda meld together perfectly and it feels like I am in fact riding around on a tiny Leviathan.

Of Animus Books

ffxiv 2014-09-14 10-23-09-943 The other thing I have been working on in Final Fantasy XIV is my Animus Weapon.  Late last Sunday I managed to wrap up my Atma grind and I was able to convert my Bravura Zenith into a Bravura Atma.  The problem is the Atma step is basically a “half step”.  While the weapon is in fact ilevel 100 instead of ilevel 90…  the stats of it remain the same.  You power up the Atma weapon by completing a series of books, each one giving your weapon a stat boost.  To complete the weapon you have to do this 9 times.  Each book costs 1500 tomestones of mythology and requires you to kill 100 mobs (10 each of 10 types), run 3 specific dungeons, complete 3 specific fates, and complete 3 specific guild and company leves.  Throughout the day yesterday I knocked out all of the steps for my current book other than the three dungeons.

So today at some point I plan on running the three dungeons which are…  Tam-Tara Deepcroft Normal, Stone Vigil Normal and Lost City of Amdapor.  I figure I will ask in guild to see if anyone needs these dungeons before running them, because I would far rather complete them with a guild group.  After turning in the book I will get +2 strength to my current Atma weapon and it will put me one step closer to the finished Animus.  Then it begins the process all over again of grinding up 1500 tomestones of mythology for the next book.  My guild thinks I am mostly insane for this, but at least Cylladora and Warenwolf are doing it with me as well.  I believe Cav is maybe on the same step also.  Essentially the fastest way to get the mythstones is to grind hunts, and as of yesterday Waren is now in the most popular of the hunt groups, so hopefully that will help things out a bit.

Easing Into Eorzea: Advanced Leveling

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Advanced Leveling

Yesterday I covered a whole bunch of options you have while leveling, but I left out one of the more interesting but unusual systems.  Today I am going to delve into the “Log” system as well as provide some guidance for dungeons from the lowest levels all the way through the current content and how to unlock them.  Once again it is my goal to make this information far easier to find for new players.  Each of us has spent quite a bit of time crawling various sites to gather information about this game, and my hope is to lay things out plainly with the western MMO player in mind.

Logs

There are several very similar systems in Final Fantasy XIV that are collectively grouped in the logs menu.  Each of them involve you somehow exploring the world and performing the tasks mentioned in the logs.  In all cases they are worth significant amounts of experience and often times gil as well.  Similarly completely them can often times have other rewards as well which I will go into in a bit.

Hunting Logs

EIE_HuntLog When you talk to your class guild master and accept the introduction quest, you will gain something called a hunt log.  The hunt log can be seen on the right hand side of the page, and is a collection of various mobs out in the world that you need to kill along with a number that you need to kill to get full credit.  Each time you accomplish a step you are rewarded with a boost of experience.  When you complete the entire log for a given level range you get an even larger experience reward.  As you move through the game you will get a new set of logs for each 10 levels and you only get the next 10 when you have both leveled into that next range and completed the previous one.

When you join your Grand Company of choice you will get an additional log.  These however are less level range based and more based on your rank within the Grand Company.  Hunt logs in general only require you to fight encounters in the open world.  The Grand Company logs however often times include encounters in dungeons.  When you have gained enough rank with your Grand Company and are eligible for a promotion, you will often have to have completed a specific log step before being able to promote to the next rank.  As far as hunting logs go, when you have completed all of the hunts for a given class you are rewarded with an ilevel 70 class specific ring.  While you are going to upgrade out of it pretty quickly, it definitely helps in getting your ilevel up for later content.

Challenge Logs

EIE_ChallengeLog In the 2.2 patch they added a whole new log system into the game, and for the most part many of us missed it for awhile upon returning.  It was not until a guild member talked about waiting for the challenges to reset, that we really grasped what he was talking about.  Upon completion of your level 14 main scenario quest, you can go to the docks of Limsa Lominsa and get the quest called Rising to the Challenge.  This unlocks the challenge log system which provides a series of relatively simple challenges that reward a significant amount of gil and experience for completion.  The challenges are good for a week, and reset each Tuesday morning at 1 am PST.  Generally speaking I manage to get a few of the steps completed each week, but it has not been something I have really gone out of my way to accomplish.  The Companion steps however are extremely beneficial for leveling purposes.  These involve fighting mobs of your level range while having your companion out… which is something you are likely going to be doing anyways.  When you complete a step both you and your companion get a much needed experience boost.  Since I mostly level through running dungeons, you can see that my dungeon challenges have already been completed, and I am getting very close to reaching my beast tribe dailies.

Sightseeing Logs

EIE_SightseeingLog Another interesting system that arrived while we were not playing the game is the Sightseeing Logs.  This system is unlocked by completing the level 20 quest A Sight to Behold.  While technically not a “leveling” system it is one of the log systems so I thought I would go ahead and mention it.  Essentially you are given a block of text as seen above and from there you have to figure out WHERE in the world that location is, as well as what time of day and weather conditions you need to be in.  When you find one of these locations you are prompted to use a /slash command generally /lookout but various ones will require various commands.  When you perform the action you get credit in your log.   There are 80 entries in total, and when you have completed them all you unlock the Fledgling Apkallu pet as well as bragging rights for having completed it.  Even if you are using some sort of a guide, getting all 80 locations is a labor of love given they are time and weather specific.

Beast Tribe Dailies

As you move through the world you will encounter various beast tribes that hold fealty to one of the primal forces.  Generally speaking these are bad people, that you want to shoot first and ask questions later.  However within in each of the races there is a rival faction that is friendly to players.  After completing an introduction quest you unlock the ability to do daily quests for them allowing you to gain favor with their tribe.  There are many reasons why you would want to do this, but the most obvious are that they unlock interesting pets, mounts and cosmetic gear.  Each player can only complete six daily quests per day, and these reset around 11 am CST from my experience.  At the lowest rank with each tribe you can only complete 3 quests per day, but upon unlocking the next rank you start receiving the full compliment of 6 quests.  Currently I am working on the Sylph tribal quests myself for the ability to get my own Goobue to ride upon.  Here is a quick rundown of the various tribes, and the location and start of the quest chain.

As I mentioned as a footnote above on the Ixali quests, they are almost entirely crafting level dependant.  I believe you need to have a combat class around 40 to gather some of the materials needed for the quests, but for the most part they are going to require you to craft various things.  In any case the beast tribe dailies are an excellent way to boost your leveling post 41 by completing some quests worth a decent chunk of experience.

Dungeons: In Depth

As I have said a few times, my personal favorite way to level is through dungeons.  For me at least it is the dungeon content where this game really shines.  The encounters are interesting and difficult, and at the same time highly rewarding in both gear and experience.  The vast majority of the dungeons are gated through the main quest line, however there are a number of dungeons that are considered “optional” and unlocked through other means.  My hope is with this list to compile in one place how to get into each of the dungeons and what their level range is.

Leveling Dungeons

  • Sastasha Seagrot (15-18) – main scenario
  • Tam-Tara Deepcroft (16-19) – main scenario
  • Copperbell Mines (17-20) – main scenario
  • The Bowl of Embers (20) – main scenario
  • Halatali (20-23) – Hallo Halatali in Vesper Bay
  • Thousand Maws of Toto-Rak (24-27) – main scenario
  • Haukke Manor (28-31) – main scenario
  • Brayflox’s Longstop (32-34) – main scenario
  • The Navel (34) – main scenario
  • The Sunken Temple of Qarn (35-37) – Braving New Depths in Vesper Bay
  • Cutter’s Cry (38-40) – Dishonor Before Death in Uldah
  • Stone Vigil (41-43) – main scenario
  • The Howling Eye (44) – main scenario
  • Dzemael Darkhold (44-46) – Fort of Fear in Coerthas
  • The Aurum Vale (47-49) – Going for Gold in Vesper Bay

Max Level Dungeons (Level 50)

  • Wanderer’s Palace (50) – Trauma Queen in Vesper Bay
  • Castrum Meridianum (50) (8 player) – main scenario
  • The Praetorium (50) (8 player) – main scenario
  • Amdapor Keep (50) – Ghosts of Amdapor in Vesper Bay (must complete main scenario)

Hard Mode Dungeons (Level 50+)

Wrapping Up

Hopefully that gives you an idea of some more leveling options.  In a later post I will get into raiding and how the various gearing systems work for end game content.  For the time being I am going to close off this post for the day.  I am hoping you are finding them useful, and please let me know if there are other things you would like to see.  Tomorrow will be a normal Aggronaut post and I will likely be taking a break from this guide series until later in the week.  Thanks for reading!