Featuring: Ammosart, Ashgar, Belghast, Grace, Kodra, and Thalen
Good Morning Folks! I am going to give you fair warning… this is a very Path of Exile episode. We pushed that topic to the very end of the show but once you hit it… it is pretty much an hour of talk about the upcoming Settlers of Kalguur League. We start off the show with some discussion about Last Epoch and the most recent market crash that banned exploiters… but left all the gold in the bloated market economy. From there we dive into Final Fantasy XIV Dawntrail and talk about the new Arcadion Raid. We then talk a bit more about Bel and Grace’s adventures in alting as they finish ARR and start into Heavensward. Finally, we do a dive into the massive meta-breaking changes coming with the Settlers of Kalgurr league in Path of Exile which drops on the 26th.
Hey Folks! Last night I did something… that I have not done since Heavensward. Yesterday was the opening day of the very first raid of Dawntrail, and Ace and I threw ourselves at the content. Sure we watched a few quick videos… for reference, I highly suggest the content from SamsonGrey because they are short and to the point. However, there is a big difference between watching a recap video of strategies and actually doing the fights. However more important was this is the first time I have thrown myself at the grist mill that was raiding with random people… as a Tank also potentially since Heavensward. I love to Tank but I have had this weird hang-up against tanking for strangers and while I have gotten over that for dungeons… effectively going into day-one raids when no one really understands the fights was a whole new pinnacle of experience.
Across the board the fights were phenomenal and I had a lot of fun learning them. The first encounter made me especially nervous because I hate “break the platform” mechanics in fights, but time and time again I wound up as the defacto main tank and managed to navigate us through all of the encounters. Unfortunately, that does not show in the comm department because I did not get a single one all night long. I am hoping they were tipping their healers and not just being jackasses and not throwing out comms period. Like it is okay not to commend someone if they just fucked up massively… I’ve done this before, but this nonsense of not throwing out any commendations is just a jerk move.
We one-shot the first encounter which felt really freaking great. Honey B. Lovely however the second encounter was easily the most difficult. I think we managed to get it on our third attempt. The third and fourth encounters both took two attempts. There was an asshole in the second encounter that was throwing out shade… but honestly… don’t do that shit on the first day a raid is released. Of course, it was a damned reaper and in my experience, they are the edgelords of the party so it isn’t like I was super shocked. Even with needing to take a few attempts per fight on average, the mechanics were super fun to play around with. I am not sure if we will ever find a static of chill folks to run with again, but I think it would be a lot of fun to tackle this content on savage.
My biggest goal for the entire night was to try and snag one of the accessory slot items. I had a level 99 ring because I had not managed to get one to drop from any of the level 100 dungeons. It was bugging me immensely that I had a single slot that was that low item level. For the entire evening, I managed to snag a 710 ring, two of the items that added up to a pair of 710 gloves. Then for my last piece of loot, I rolled on pretty much everything and got one of four items needed to get the 710 chestpiece. The highlight of the night loot-wise though is that I managed to pull the Black Cat Minion which is super adorable. It randomly runs off and pounces things when you are idle. You can see it beside me in the first screenshot of this blog post.
The highlight of the raid however is the addition of an announcer. I have to be honest, I was not sure how I would feel about the Arcadion as a whole. It is very much WWF/WWE-inspired and there is a running commentary as the fight is going on. There is some really cool tech where the commentary is based on actions that are happening in the fight. If you as the tank happen to soak a really big hit, the commentator will say something along the lines of “Oooo that was hard-hitting” or if one or more players die they will comment on that as well. There is another line about holding things together when you manage to stand everyone back up with rezzes. It makes the entire experience feel so dynamic and fun.
All in all, I am very much looking forward to throwing ourselves at this every week. Since I posted a picture of our alternate dare versions over on Kraken, I decided we needed to take a screenshot of our mains. I hopped up on these trashcans and Ace joined me… at which point we noticed there was a corpse sticking out of the open one. Man, it’s a shame when folks throwing away a perfectly good white boy. I’m having a blast still between doing more serious content on Cactuar and our bonanza of nonsense over on Kraken. After not really being wired for MMORPGs for a few years, it feels like I am having a massive resurgence.
Did you do the raid last night? What were your thoughts? Drop me a line below.
Good Morning Friends! I had a pretty early night last night and turned in around 8:30, so did not make a ton of progress. I did however get my Summoner to level 90 like I thought I would, and made it up to Titan on my Kraken Warrior which we will run first thing this evening. I like Summoner quite a bit, way more than I thought I would at this time. The only annoyance is the casting times, and needing to interrupt them in order to move out of things. I do wonder how the game would feel if they removed all casting times or allowed you to cast while moving. Most of the summoner rotation does not require a casting time and it is only really the Ifrit abilities that chain me into place, so in theory, if I know movement is going to happen I can just start my rotation at the other end with Titan or Garuda. After being used to dpsing while on the go with the Machinist, this has probably been the biggest adjustment.
One of the more notable aspects of the Kraken project is that mounts look so much cooler when they are not super tiny. I’ve been running around on my Fenrir bike as I am used to doing and it looks so much cooler when I can actually see the detail in it. This is especially notable as the mounts now bank as you turn lending a bit more realistic movement than they previously had. I am not saying I will give my the Lala life on my Cactuar main, but I appreciate seeing a bit more detail in all of the mounts and even the gear pieces. Catboy life is pretty great and I am happy I decided to roll with that racial choice. I’ve always dug the dark-skinned Miqo’te appearances. I wish they had more proper beard action going on but I will life with the tufts around my chin.
I also now understand why folks talk about the ARR MSQ being so rough around the edges. I know they have streamlined a lot of the content, but there are still chunks that seem to drag on forever. For example in the lead-up to Titan, there is this 20-step or so sequence where you have to learn about wine and recover a famous vintage. This is extremely tedious and while the payoff for all of your busy work is somewhat fun… it definitely feels like something that could have been trimmed back a bit. I think the Japanese appetite may be more into the mundane “day in the life” sort of content than the Western audience. I’m looking at you Persona series and all of your tedious running about to do social nonsense. Thankfully I just kept my head down and pushed through it and now can finally fight Titan.
Grousing aside… I have had a heck of a lot of fun exploring the ARR MSQ again with fresh eyes after ten years of playing this game. I have so many fond memories of this era for the game and the group of friends we played it with. Ace and I have lamented how far removed from that era we are. We were joking about our friend Mor yelling “Medica Twooooooo” each time he cast the spell… and that is sadly just a bygone era. It was after the late ARR/early HW era that folks migrated westward and time zones became a problem… and it just became impossible to agree upon a time that was early enough for the Eastern folks but late enough to not collide with work responsibilities for the Western folks. So really if we want to recapture some of that joy we are going to have to start from scratch and rebuild what we had.
It is on that note that I am starting to try and rebuild that friend group. I am not sure what the restrictions are these days but I know for certain that I can group with anyone on the Aether Data Center on my main, and Dynamis Data Center on my alt. What I am looking for is folks who can play in an Eastern timezone compatible range of hours on weekday evenings (not sure which yet), and play a wide variety of roles. What we have currently is a Tank (myself) and a Healer (Ace) and potentially a few others who might be interested in our FC/Friendgroup. So I am throwing out the request to my longterm readers out there… do you want to do some of the harder content in the game? At a minimum I want to do all of the Extremes and Normal raids… and would love to maybe work up to Savage content at some point. I am way more focused on having a fun group than a highly skilled well-oiled machine.
If this sounds like something you would be interested in, drop me a line on one of the MANY platforms you can contact me in, or just throw out a note in the comments below. We will be organizing over on the Super Dungeon Friends discord when things begin to pull together. So feel free to join.
Morning Folks! This is the point where I fess up to cheating on my beloved Cactuar. One of the cool things that came with this expansion is the ability to overflow onto less populated servers. We did this a few times over the first few days of Dawntrail and there were four of us who independently chose the Kraken server over on the Dynamis Data Center. There is no small amount of running inside jokes about unleashing the Kraken that I won’t go into, but suffice it to say we have a connection with that server name. So when Ace and I started kicking around the notion of creating some baby characters, it seemed like an obvious choice, and “Belghast Tho’catte” was born. The very first character that I created in beta testing A Realm Reborn was a Miqo’te and I figured that was a good choice for this project. Hilariously Ace chose to play a Hrothgar so we are running around as a Tank/Healer duo of Cat-adjascent folks.
Within seconds of my logging in for the first time I was asked to help a Free Company form by signing a charter. In short order, the leader found enough signatures and I was suddenly a member of Darkwraith. Disturbingly quickly I was an officer in this Free Company, and instead of doing our own thing Ace and I largely decided to roll with this. The folks have been nice and chill to chat back and forth with while we have been leveling, and as a result, I’ve seen no reason to not stay. They are well aware that these characters are our alts and are cool with that. However, there is a limited amount of easy progress we can make on Cactuar each day so as a result we are spending quite a bit of time poking around and experiencing the old content.
The most hilarious part of this entire experience is just how fast you end up leveling. We’ve been doing each dungeon as it unlocks and last night we did Aurum Vale and Wanderer’s Palace… but in the MSQ we are only up to Brayflox. So that means I am a level 53 Warrior with a full item level 90 artifact set, but am doing a level 30-something MSQ quest. I have no clue when we will hit 100 but I am figuring at some point during Shadowbringers if not sooner. I have contemplated doing some PVP just so I can get some Poetics and be able to buy gear upgrades that way since I can’t zone into Ishgard without having completed the MSQ. I legitimately understand why folks end up doing a story skip, just because you end up getting locked from doing a lot of the content in spite of your level being high enough.
Once we got mount unlocks, the leveling became way more enjoyable. I’ve also started farming up MGP in the Gold Saucer because there are some cool cosmetics that you can buy there. I need a nice-looking Axe because I can get by with the Warrior Artifact appearance for a long while… but it is a bit before any cool-looking weapons start dropping. It has been so much fun doing the content again with fresh eyes after a decade’s worth of time has passed. I’ve made alts before but never gotten anything this far. Generally speaking, I peter out around the time you do the three-dungeon tour at 15ish. I just unlocked Palace of the Dead so I might grind up some alt classes using that. We both go to Brayflox before the end of the night and plan on running it first thing tonight. After that, I think the next big thing is Titan.
Over on Cactuar, my Warrior is now fully decked out in item level 700 gear… minus one ring which is always the case. I wish you could buy two tomestone rings at a given level, and I’ve not gathered the fortitude to PUG my way through the two Ex Trials. I really wish I had a full 8-player group of friends to run harder content with. With the raid opening soon, I am going to have to start wading into the party finder waters for such things. I have a discord that I started with the purpose of trying to find people to group with, so I might start putting out feelers there to see if I can get a group going. The biggest problem is that with the server congestion, datacenter and server travel have been a problem. I’m in a few linkshells that I could potentially recruit from as well. We will see how much gumption I have towards such notions.
Then over on my Summoner, that project has been rolling along swimmingly. Weirdly enough I find myself really enjoying the class. I dinged 88 last night and should be able to push through to 90 today. I have a full set of 660 gear waiting to be equipped for when I hit there, and I will probably start doing a lot more FATEs given that the new zones are always active. I will probably focus on “Texico” since I want the Capybara mount that comes from a Boss FATE in that area. Given that I am not starving for tomestones I am probably going to keep running leveling and high level on my Warrior and then focusing on MSQ roulette and the like for my Summoner to get levels faster.
I am very much still in the honeymoon phase with Final Fantasy XIV and my return to the game. I think the babby alt project over on Kraken is keeping me way more engaged than I would be at this point after having leveled two jobs to 100. There is really only so much that can be done that feels like progress until the content deepens, so having 10 years’ worth of content to chew through on a brand-new character feels good.
