[MMO] Final Fantasy XIV (we get to be cats!)

The very first time I went into PotD I went in solo. All you have to do is have a blank save, and say "fixed party" (not matched, and obviously don't be grouped) and you can go in solo. I doubt you'll survive to 50 though with most classes if your weapons/armor are at level 1 as well.
I have two saves. I think I need to delete the lower group save.
 
Had to take an almost 3 week break because of school, but I finally hit 70. I made a little albumn of my favorite moments so far. Guess I won't get to enjoy this too long with the level cap going up, and school is about to get really hard.


 
Had to take an almost 3 week break because of school, but I finally hit 70. I made a little albumn of my favorite moments so far. Guess I won't get to enjoy this too long with the level cap going up, and school is about to get really hard.


Very cool Terrik. A few things are out-of-order (you have a shot of Doma near the Moongates fairly early for example) but generally it's a great job of organizing stuff relatively in-order. Brought back a lot of memories for me as well.
 
My MSQ is now completely done :)

I’m now working on unlocking the Namazu dailies and the Doman Enclave (I love the pink trees and fake windows). I’d like to get at least my botanist and weaver to 70 before early Access.
 
Namazu dailies are unlocked and I’ll try to do them every day.

Thé Doman Enclave is as far as it’s getting this week.

Both weaving and botany are to 68 (my app says 67 for botany lol). It’s a bit tedious at this point. I’ve got 1,500 red gatherer scrips as well and no idea what to do with them.
 
Namazu dailies are unlocked and I’ll try to do them every day.

Thé Doman Enclave is as far as it’s getting this week.

Both weaving and botany are to 68 (my app says 67 for botany lol). It’s a bit tedious at this point. I’ve got 1,500 red gatherer scrips as well and no idea what to do with them.
Buy the "folklore" books in Rhalgr's Reach. That'll unlock nodes that you can't even see without them.

And then use it to buy the ones for Heavensward in Idyllshire.

And make sure you've unlocked the Custom Deliveries. Pre-70 you should be able to unlock Zhloe in Idyllshire: https://ffxiv.gamerescape.com/wiki/Guide:Heavensward_Progression_and_Level_Locked_Content (search for "Custom Deliveries" there).

Then at 70 you can do the Stormblood ones: https://ffxiv.gamerescape.com/wiki/Guide:Stormblood_Progression_and_Level_Locked_Content Most of the SB ones are easy, but you have to do at least 1 of the side-quests in The Azim Steppe to unlock one of them. It's at Reunion, so not like you need to do a lot.

Custom deliveries is THE WAY to get scrips. Only 12 turnins per week, but LUCRATIVE.
 
Awesome! I’ll check it out. What colour scrips? The two Botany Unspolied thingies I’m working on now are super easy and I’ll be maxed out shortly after getting on tonight. I can get between 3-4 collectibles each node.
 
Awesome! I’ll check it out. What colour scrips? The two Botany Unspolied thingies I’m working on now are super easy and I’ll be maxed out shortly after getting on tonight. I can get between 3-4 collectibles each node.
IIRC it never gives any color scrips until you max level (gives you exp instead). But that could be wrong.

After 70, delivery gives you BOTH yellow and red. And cash.
 
Personally, my recommendation for your first week of Red Gatherer Scripts is much simpler: buy a shit-ton of Hi-cordial. That will make gathering in future weeks much faster. Folklore can wait until future weeks.

@Squidleybits If you're that high with weaver and botany, Namazu will get you finished in a few days. Just remember you can do both gathering and crafting with them through the same person.
 
Very cool Terrik. A few things are out-of-order (you have a shot of Doma near the Moongates fairly early for example) but generally it's a great job of organizing stuff relatively in-order. Brought back a lot of memories for me as well.
Heh thanks. Imgur was giving me some real trouble keeping those in order.

I'm looking forward to the x-pac. Still need to finish the stormblood msq's though.

Sooooon.
 
My botanist is level 70 and I’ve unlocked Custom Deliveries with Zhloe and M’Naago. I’ve done my 12 for the week and have enough yellow scrips for my first blue gathering armour. I think it makes sense to get the stuff that works for all three rather than class specific. I’m using all my red scrips for book tokens now.

Can I do 6 deliveries with all the custom delivery people? Or 12 in total each week no matter the source? It looks like there are other custom delivery people than the two I unlocked.
 
My botanist is level 70 and I’ve unlocked Custom Deliveries with Zhloe and M’Naago. I’ve done my 12 for the week and have enough yellow scrips for my first blue gathering armour. I think it makes sense to get the stuff that works for all three rather than class specific. I’m using all my red scrips for book tokens now.

Can I do 6 deliveries with all the custom delivery people? Or 12 in total each week no matter the source? It looks like there are other custom delivery people than the two I unlocked.
Yes, get the Landking/Handking sets, not the individual sets. This is the best gear you can get outside of the Ornate Onishi stuff that Khloe can give you for gold tickets from doing her Wonderous Tails. Just get a full set of clothes, accessories (two rings, they aren't exclusive) and then the main and offhand items for the classes you get to 70. It'll last you a good amount into Shadowbringers.

It's 12 period. You'll want to max level each person, but the main purpose of having more people to deliver to is so you have more chances of getting a "bonus" item to turn in, which is worth more script and xp. So you can unlock more people (one is a Tamamizu, the other requires you to do the flowers quest for new chief in Reunion to unlock their line in Idylshire) and it's worth doing, but it's mostly to get more script each week.
 
I'm doing this pretty rushed as I only knew about collectables recently. And I only started on the yellow ones today once botany was 70. I got fishing to 65 earning money for my house and doing the Ishgard class quests.

Between a day or two of Namazu and catching up on weaving quests, I should be able to get weaving from 68-70 without making anything lol.

Next up are Goldsmithing and Mining.
 
I'm doing this pretty rushed as I only knew about collectables recently. And I only started on the yellow ones today once botany was 70. I got fishing to 65 earning money for my house and doing the Ishgard class quests.

Between a day or two of Namazu and catching up on weaving quests, I should be able to get weaving from 68-70 without making anything lol.

Next up are Goldsmithing and Mining.
Also, Kurenai should be available in Tamamizu in The Ruby Sea, but you MIGHT need to do the "finishing" quests that are after Shisui of the Violet Tides dungeon (it's an optional lvl 63 dungeon, hopefully you unlocked it. The quests to unlock it were plus quests). There's a couple of side-quests to fully resolve that questline, and without spoilers, that makes sense to need to do those prior to the delivery stuff. They're in Sui-no-sato, but they're NOT plus-quests. Just find the princess and complete whatever she has for you. Eventually she "moves" to Tamamizu and you can do her deliveries.

As @AshburnerX said, it's the "flowers" quest in Reunion in the Azim Steppe for the other delivery. Once you're done that line, then the guy in Idylleshire unlocks. There's 4 total, so once you've got them all unlocked, turn in 3 each and that's your week.
 
After a long weekend and an evening: level 77, about to go into the 4th dungeon.

Impressions so far:

Wow is Summoner different. Like a LOT different. Still fun, but very different. A lot of "management" of your pet's cooldowns. I was always somebody who had the pet on "automatic" so I don't consider this better. But different in that there's essentially 3 "phases" of DPS for summoner now, the Trance phase, the Bahamut Phase, and the firebird trance phase, with some "interphase" between the 2nd and 3rd, and after the 3rd before trance is back up again. Definitely far different than before.

Dungeons have been nice. The Trial is pretty hairy with everybody "not that geared." Probably will be cake with half 80s in the group.

Zones and story is nice. I don't know what in particular to say about that.

Still having fun is the main thing.
 
I’m not a huge fan of what they did to our class. I had to respec my Chocobo to be tank and honestly, he’s terrible at it.

I enjoyed having my pet on auto and enkindling/buffing as needed. This new system isn’t the best.

I love the first zone. It matches me as well :) @Dirona and the new bunny I made.

That first trial was rough. My first group wiped 4-5 times and sent out a vote to abandon. I had never seen that. One dude edge quit after two wipes. He needed to lighten up. Otherwise though, no one was salty, we just realized that specific group wasn’t getting it. My next group sped through the problem area.

I’m hoping to get to 80 and finish the MSQ before I leave for my trip. Fingers crossed!
Post automatically merged:

I just tried to post a few pictures, but no go.
 
Oh and if you need to level gatherers (and presumably crafters) remember your weekly custom deliveries, as well as the new "role-based" deliveries. Mad exp from both of those things. New leves work decently well too, but nothing like the custom deliveries. Those are just insane for low effort, even if once a week. I'll keep ahead of my retainer though (one is my main (Summoner) and the other is a Botanist), which is the most important part.
 
SCH got hit really hard. I had a friend ask me to heal Aurum Vale and I was constantly running dry because MP regen is limited to 1k MP from Aetherflow every few minutes, Lucid Dreaming, and Ethers. Immediately logged off without a word after. It's worse in PVP: You have to use Broil to get Aetherflow stacks now, ensuring I'm ether always out of stacks when I need them, letting the team die because I can't heal while getting stacks, or unable to deal with a spike because I spent a bunch of MP trying to keep someone up. AST doesn't have this problem, then can ALWAYS do their big heal.

I kind of want to strangle someone at the company at the moment. Not only did I lose all my fun DPS stuff, but I lost most of healing potential with the MP crunch.
 
Ding! Ding! Ding! Lvl 80! (note: NOT done MSQ) But still - lvl 80!

The second trial... could have been worse. Even I got the movement mechanics.
 
My opinions on the expansion. No story spoilers, I'm being non-specific. Some spoilers for Stormblood (previous expansion) in story section.

Story:

All the feels. As others have said around the internet, they made the villain a sympathetic one who isn't a tragic villain either (well, kinda, but not really). They actually really do believe what they're doing is right, and their reasoning isn't complete bullshit either. Unlike Yotsuyu, while you might have had sympathy for her completely crap deal in life, you didn't think what she was doing as a result (she had pain, make all the people feel her pain) was a good idea. This guy? It's not a completely unsympathetic plan. It's still not good but it's understandable as "good" to him.

Also here's a big thing: DO the crystal tower raid series. It's the 50 alliance raids. Just do them. You (almost) don't need to know ANY mechanics because scaling doesn't work right, so it's a stomp-fest for most of it. You'll be happier you did pre-expansion. Supposedly it opens up some dialog options too, since the expansion is literally centered around the Crystal Tower being in The First, but I had it done, so I don't know what others might be missing.

Interface:

Doing this separate from the class discussion, because it's related, but not the same thing. First of all, charges on skills are great. Good idea, I like it. Changing icons (different pet summoned, different icons) is good too.

My big pet peeve is that they did a partial overhaul to the way the skills work in the interface, but they didn't go the whole way, which sucks a lot. What they should have done is go full Aion on the chain skills interface, but they didn't. What I mean by this is that in Aion, if you have a skill which chains into another, the 2nd doesn't need to be placed on your hotbar, as the 1st ability turns into the 2nd one when the chain triggers. If there's two options, you need an extra button for the "branching" option, but otherwise, you can one-button through your chain. IMO they should have been doing this for years. What frustrates me most is that they did it sometimes but not other times, and it makes NO sense whatsoever IMO.

Example of them doing it right: Red Mage. When you cast the final part of your "enchanted melee combo" and can cast verflare or verholy, the verthunder and veraero spell icons TURN INTO those spells (job guide link). That means that you don't ever need to allocate hotbar space for them, they turn into the spells you "need" right when you need them.

Example of them not doing it right: Red Mage again. The Riposte -> Zwerchhau -> Redoublement combo. Why is this 3 buttons? There's literally no reason for this. They already turn into their "enchanted" versions, so why can't one turn into another? There are a myriad number of examples of this, from the Doom Spike -> Sonic Thrust -> Coerthan Torment combo on Dragoon, to literally every other class that has a "Combo" section in the Job guide.

With the exception of branching, they could have far fewer buttons. Why don't they do it? They already do it sometimes, so they're not against the concept, but for some reason just don't! Frustrating!

Another aspect of icons that could be better: why don't the summoner and scholar abilities just SAY what they do on them? Their icons even change, but they still just say "Executes BLAH ability on the pet" on them. You KNOW what it does game, just let it be in the mouseover! I shouldn't need to go into my actions menu and correlate. Sure over time it becomes less of an issue, but it's still nonsensical, especially since the icons change now.

I also think it's a "we can solve this" problem so that the cooldowns are tied to the active pet correctly, so you don't need a different key for Consolation for the Seraph pet for the Scholar, when it's "really" another pet-specific ability, like Fey Blessing is. All the other "pet control" buttons "just work" for both faeries and your seraph pet, so why couldn't you make this one work too? I understand it's because that ability has two charges, and Fey Blessing doesn't, but can't you just track that in the background when you turn one ability into another? This is a solvable problem, and I don't understand why they didn't.

Class Changes:

Comments based on 80 Summoner/Scholar (though I main Summoner), 72 Dragoon, 70 Pally, 70 Red Mage, 65 Astro, 54 Bard, 52 White Mage, 35 Black Mage, 32 Dark Knight, 80 Botanist.

My Scholar hurts. Like physically hurts trying to do DPS now. In particular, snatching both Bane and Miasma II (ae DoT) from me hurts. I haven't healed a LOT with it yet though, so I'm not sure if it's better/worse than before. I do like the "shielding" indicators on the UI. Makes my job FAR more precise.

Summoner definitely feels REALLY different. It's now a rush to Firebird trance, rather than to Bahamut himself. I actually wish they'd kept Bahamut as "the big summon" for Summoners, as it's more consistently thematic as we've been going up. Something else being even better feels... well not awesome. Mechanically though, seems pretty decent. I just wish our "regular" nuke didn't feel so much like a peashooter. I also wish that they had put Physick on intelligence like Vercure is. It isn't, so it's not even on my hotbar. What's the point of a 900hp heal at level 70? I haven't even tried it at 80.

Dragoon feels pretty much the same. Just QoL improvements, but mine's only 72. I like the lack of TP though. Great change. Feels a bit "behind" the new Dancer though in DPS in instances, which is odd considering how much higher risk melee dps is at.

I haven't tanked much yet with either Paladin or DK, but on paper looks decent. I just wish that Paladin got their "charge" ability in the 30s or 40s.

Red Mage is interesting. I'm glad they made the AE rotation more like the single-target with black/white magic, but my comments above about combos would have made the expansion of abilities less. Still, it's a ton of fun.

Botanist is basically the same as it was. If there's changes, they're minor. I don't think the new 70-80 abilities are that great, particularly the "stacks both harvest chance and HQ chance" isn't worth it, since it does NOT stack with the other HQ increases. So what's the point really?

My Astrologian has similar DPS issues to my Scholar, though my lower-level astro has at least 1 more AE DPS option (earthly star) than my 80 scholar, which is VERY weird (considering how it was definitely the reverse before). I also think that if they were going to make two sets of cards completely the same, just make it 2 cards, with a random "3 symbol" for Divination, rather than retaining 6 cards. Yes the whole card thing needed streamlining, but IMO I think it went too far. Somebody with a higher and/or main Astro could probably comment better though.

I need to try out Bard and White Mage to see how they're doing. I hope the Bard revamp made it more fun, as I wasn't a fan of the Stormblood version. Too much DoT maintenance. Again, something like Bane would be awesome for them. But if it just doesn't work, I might join the dance, and/or new Machinist crowd. @Dirona mains White Mage, so her comments would mean more there, as I've arranged hotbars, and that's about it for a 52, not a 70 or 80.

Quests & Misc:

I'm glad the quests scale, but I wish that they still listed their "base" level so you knew which zones you could really do them in, as you can't really do the quests in eastern Rak'tika at 70 while dodging much higher level monsters. Because of MSQ and FATE level you kind of know this, but it's just annoying IMO.

I wish beast tribes had been at launch.

Gathering facet was neat, but not impactful.

Role quests seem nice. Done healing and magic DPS so far. Very different tones.

Summary:

I liked it. I'm glad I've played through it, and I'm still having fun with the game.
 
Interface:

Doing this separate from the class discussion, because it's related, but not the same thing. First of all, charges on skills are great. Good idea, I like it. Changing icons (different pet summoned, different icons) is good too.

My big pet peeve is that they did a partial overhaul to the way the skills work in the interface, but they didn't go the whole way, which sucks a lot. What they should have done is go full Aion on the chain skills interface, but they didn't. What I mean by this is that in Aion, if you have a skill which chains into another, the 2nd doesn't need to be placed on your hotbar, as the 1st ability turns into the 2nd one when the chain triggers. If there's two options, you need an extra button for the "branching" option, but otherwise, you can one-button through your chain. IMO they should have been doing this for years. What frustrates me most is that they did it sometimes but not other times, and it makes NO sense whatsoever IMO.

Example of them doing it right: Red Mage. When you cast the final part of your "enchanted melee combo" and can cast verflare or verholy, the verthunder and veraero spell icons TURN INTO those spells (job guide link). That means that you don't ever need to allocate hotbar space for them, they turn into the spells you "need" right when you need them.

Example of them not doing it right: Red Mage again. The Riposte -> Zwerchhau -> Redoublement combo. Why is this 3 buttons? There's literally no reason for this. They already turn into their "enchanted" versions, so why can't one turn into another? There are a myriad number of examples of this, from the Doom Spike -> Sonic Thrust -> Coerthan Torment combo on Dragoon, to literally every other class that has a "Combo" section in the Job guide.

With the exception of branching, they could have far fewer buttons. Why don't they do it? They already do it sometimes, so they're not against the concept, but for some reason just don't! Frustrating!
Branching is sort of the reason why. For example, WAR has more than one conclusion for it's Heavy Swing -> Maim combo. PLD has more than one conclusion for it's Fast Blade -> Riot Blade combo. MNK has TONS of variations, as does DRG and SAM. There are also reasons not to want to progress in a combo... for example, I might not want to go into Mythril Tempest from Overpower while tanking as a WAR. I might just want to spam two or more Overpowers. It's a concious design decision, because in PVP they just do exactly what you want and turn it into one button for the whole combo because you only get one combo anyway.



Class Changes:
Comments based on 80 Summoner/Scholar (though I main Summoner), 72 Dragoon, 70 Pally, 70 Red Mage, 65 Astro, 54 Bard, 52 White Mage, 35 Black Mage, 32 Dark Knight, 80 Botanist.

My Scholar hurts. Like physically hurts trying to do DPS now. In particular, snatching both Bane and Miasma II (ae DoT) from me hurts. I haven't healed a LOT with it yet though, so I'm not sure if it's better/worse than before. I do like the "shielding" indicators on the UI. Makes my job FAR more precise.
SCH solidarity here; it hurts to play now because all we do is spam Broil and Bio/Bioalysis with an occasional AOE. The MP crunch made healing much harder too; I tried to heal Aurum Vale after 5.0 launch and I couldn't keep up; I didn't have enough charges to Lustrate thru spikes and you can't just Adloqium spam ether. I've heard it's better post 76 but FUCK.

My proposed change is basically to ether give healers a role action that lets them drain MP from foes (Osmose) or to let Ruin/Broil occasionally proc an ability you can hit if you do it on an enemy suffering Bio/Bioalysis (Fester) that gives you Aetherpool/Lillies/whatever. It's just really hard to keep up now.

I haven't tanked much yet with either Paladin or DK, but on paper looks decent. I just wish that Paladin got their "charge" ability in the 30s or 40s.
DRK and WAR both feel fine. DRK has traded Dark Arts spam for Flood/Edge of Darkness spam (when off-tanking anyway) but otherwise it's just way less busy.


Botanist is basically the same as it was. If there's changes, they're minor. I don't think the new 70-80 abilities are that great, particularly the "stacks both harvest chance and HQ chance" isn't worth it, since it does NOT stack with the other HQ increases. So what's the point really?
If you were undergeared, you'd get it: it gives a flat 20% to HQ versus +HQ% based on a formula for the level of the material you're trying to get vs your perception, helping to HQ stuff you might be a little under geared for. The 10% find rate is just a bonus.

The "finds crystals when you search for other stuff" move means you aren't wasting a timed node on getting clusters versus literally anything else AND it stacks with crystal bonus things, which is nice.

I need to try out Bard and White Mage to see how they're doing. I hope the Bard revamp made it more fun, as I wasn't a fan of the Stormblood version. Too much DoT maintenance. Again, something like Bane would be awesome for them. But if it just doesn't work, I might join the dance, and/or new Machinist crowd. @Dirona mains White Mage, so her comments would mean more there, as I've arranged hotbars, and that's about it for a 52, not a 70 or 80.
Pretty much everyone agrees that WHM is a little over-tuned right now for dungeon content. It's not unusual for WHMs to just throw Regen out and Holy-spam because it's the most effective means for DPSing dungeons now.

Quests & Misc:
I'm glad the quests scale, but I wish that they still listed their "base" level so you knew which zones you could really do them in, as you can't really do the quests in eastern Rak'tika at 70 while dodging much higher level monsters. Because of MSQ and FATE level you kind of know this, but it's just annoying IMO.

I wish beast tribes had been at launch.

Gathering facet was neat, but not impactful.

Role quests seem nice. Done healing and magic DPS so far. Very different tones.
I echo beast tribes.

My primary issue with the Facets is that you can't DO anything with them once you've finished them. Which means the primary purpose for them is to level ONE class from 70-80 for each facet, which is helpful but not engaging. We've effectively lost XP gain with this; previously, each DoH/DoL class gave gear and XP as you went along, but now it's only one class and a free level for that class (assuming HQ turn-ins). Thankfully, Landking/Handking gear is plenty to go from 70-80, but it's still frustrating to not get progressive gear for crafting and gathering as you level up. They COULD have given you gear boxes.
 
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