FFXIV: A Realm Reborn

[Haar]

My tank levels are 24, 24, 30 because I hate it. I can't tank dungeons for the life of me, which makes me mortified about dungeon farming because I know everyone I go with will hate me forever. I've only gotten the levels to where they're at with levequests and I haven't tried Dark Knight after I unlocked it, which in itself took me at least 4 tries.

[Sajiri]

I usually spread out levelling a lot further, but there's not much to do right now. Two ex dungeons, Alex, and ravana. Bismarck doesnt have much use once you've cleared it once for ravana access.

If there's one thing I dislike about this game, it's how each new patch makes the previous one's content obsolete. I know that was to be expected with heavensward, but 3.1 there will be no point in doing the current ex dungeons, primals or alex unless you want glamour. I am looking forward to these FC airship islands and Void Ark

[Farix]

Finally got around to grinding out 56-57 rather than leveling my alt and then story happened.

Spoiler: The Vault (Heavensward MSQ spoilers)

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Damn you game, why must everything I love die.


Yes...yes I will

On a completely unrelated note this game really does have the best costume design.

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[lesser_minion]

At this point, you should probably read the Tales from the Dragonsong War on the official website. Particularly 'Vows Unbroken'. No particular reason. Honest. Note that these short stories shouldn't be read by anyone who doesn't have a manacutter.

[Sajiri]

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Gotta say Im not so fond of these now they've been rendered ): Maybe its just the particular models they used, those are some of my lest favourite face options. I sure hope they make the styles that actually had the most votes from the contest at a later date.

So live letter last night. I only watched the first half then went back to bed. Airship explorations looks like a lot of fun. Im glad my FC has 4 maxed out airships, but we're going to have to get people from LS to go with us. My FC is technically small, it just has a few really active and productive members in it. The Anima weapons get a headstart if you already had a zeta, and it turns out you can trade in zeta for any job. Makes me wish I'd finished one now so I could use it to headstart DRK. Im disappointed I've seen no mention of Hildibrand yet ):

And I really hope that pegasus mount isnt hard to get

[Talderas]

I'm still working on the push to i180 myself (gotten to i174 so far).

Bis Ex does seem to be the new Titan Ex. I've only attempted it a couple of times myself. I've yet to have a group destroy the carapace on the first go, and then half the party will rage quit. I really don't get how people expect EXTREME fights to be cake walks, particularly with a pug ><

BisEx is a pain because it's just a gate keeper fight. There's literally no reason for people to go back and do that fight. To date I've only cleared it 7 times. Meanwhile I've cleared RavEx about 30 times (I have 4 hive weapons and 10 tokens at this point [PLD, DRK, DRG, SCH]. I cleared it within 7 days of early access going live and when I did it I had a mix of i170 and i180 and I was wearing i110 crafted accessories.

That sounds accurate. Bis Ex is one of the tightest fights I've ever seen, granted I didn't get too far into Coil back in ARR, but I've yet to have total success with that fight. I'm just glad I main DPS so all I have to do is punch the right thing and not have to worry about tank swaps and the like.

In the times I've bothered to help party finder groups I've found that it's almost entirely DPS that cause the fight to fail. The DPS are barely there to complete the fight and losing one DPS is typically enough to cause the slow spiral into defeat. The DPS usually die and fall off arena because they don't understand Bismarck's back mechanic and die while attacking the corona, which they end up falling to their doom when he flies off, fail to jump off the back, or they get knocked off from the yellow weather.

And I really hope that pegasus mount isnt hard to get

Based on my understanding it's another recruit a friend reward.

[Fri]

Look at my new desktop wallpaper.

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[Hunter Noventa]

Look at my new desktop wallpaper.

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How Gentlemanly of you!

In other news, 3.1 is out...and I'm stuck at work all day. I just want to fly on my magitek armor and raid the void ark but noooo, stupid bills to pay.

[Sajiri]

3.1! New hairstyles are a bit odd. Some come from the gold saucer prize vendor. THe contest winners come from a seperate GS npc...who only sells you the one for your gender, meaning there's a vendor for a single item. Gives me hope they intend to add more.

Cleared void ark, it was fun though felt easier than previous Tower raids.

Poked around Diadem hard. The enemies themselves didn't hit too hard but they had a lot of HP. Could easily go in with one tank and just need more parties with dps. We managed to spawn the big dinosaur HNM with about 20 minutes left, but since we only had a single party, and we spawned it in the worst spot imaginable we weren't able to kill it before timing out. Didn't help one of our healers kept standing behind me after I'd positioned myself as close to aggro as I could without actually getting aggro, to give the rest of the party more room, only to have him run behind me and aggro it all himself. Seems you get the pegasus from in there with 99 bronze pirate spoils or whatever they're called, which you get for turning in gear you collect from the chests. i150 gear exchanges for 1 bronze, 180 was for 2 bronze I think. We didn't get any 210 gear, I assume that came from the HNM.

[Sajiri]

So I must admit, the FFXI crossover event has made me really miss XI. And there just happens to be a sale on for it right now, I might get it and mess around in it soon.

As for FFXIV itself, feels like this patch is kind of lacking. Diadem's enjoyable when you go with a full group of friends, but when it comes to DF or, sometimes, PF, Im hearing nothing but complaints. Mainly centered around the fact you cant kick people from it. Feels like nobody's really interested in the game right now, but the fact Fallout 4 released the same day as 3.1 could have something to do with that

[Wookieetank]

As for FFXIV itself, feels like this patch is kind of lacking. Diadem's enjoyable when you go with a full group of friends, but when it comes to DF or, sometimes, PF, Im hearing nothing but complaints. Mainly centered around the fact you cant kick people from it. Feels like nobody's really interested in the game right now, but the fact Fallout 4 released the same day as 3.1 could have something to do with that

I want Diadem to be fun, but when you stand in one spot for 90 mins just killing mobs, it gets rather boring quick. And the new dungeons aren't much to write home about either. Ended up falling asleep during Arum Vale 2.0 first time through.

[Sajiri]

I want Diadem to be fun, but when you stand in one spot for 90 mins just killing mobs, it gets rather boring quick. And the new dungeons aren't much to write home about either. Ended up falling asleep during Arum Vale 2.0 first time through.

Usually when I've gone in (with friends) I try to mix it up. After everyone's unlocked flying I give them a bit to explore/gather while I fly around looking for a decent spot to camp or chests, then have everyone switch back to battle jobs and we run through a cave or join up with another group. The last 15 minutes I let them gather again while I fly around look for V - star ranks. It's not that optimal but it keeps it from being boring standing in one spot I guess.

The first night it came out we managed to pop the brachiosaur and in the worst possible spot (on a narrow landbridge between aggro) Didn't manage to kill it because our whm kept aggroing other stuff- the whole group cleared out mobs on one side behind it where they could all fight, I was standing as close to aggro as I could on the other side without actually aggroing anything. He kept deciding for some reason he wanted to stand on that other side far behind me and constantly aggro everything then run it towards me or the group.

I'd like to do it more since I want the pony, but people dont seem to care much anymore. Each time I look to PF it's always i195+ with specific jobs listed, and the two I meet that ilvl on are always taken ):

[Rising Phoenix]

Unfortunately the patch was not enough to save the game and I have officially quit.

The diadem is basically hunts 2.0 (which are boring). Not only that but by dropping 210 gear it has killed one of the reasons to do savage
The new dungeons are meh.
The new extreeme primal uses 100% recycled mechanics.

TLDR; recycled boring content.

The two years where they managed to keep it fresh was nice, but that's that.

[Hunter Noventa]

So I went a little bit crazy while on vacation for Thanksgiving, and abit afterwards. i've been working on my Relic Weapon from the 2.0 content, because it'll give you a leg up for the next one. They added a lot in 3.1 to make it easier to do. Light values were increased, Tomestone costs of various pieces reduced. Shame they didn't really do anything about the tedium of the Zodiac Brave books or the crafted 'Perfect' items that are more expensive than ever because no one needs them

But I'm on the last stage where I just have to grind out the Mahatmas, and the tomestones to buy the rest of them.

Then I will have my Kaiser Knuckles Zeta.

[Sajiri]

It took me around 6 months to get my atmas because I had the worst luck. I spent about 2 months going out to south thanalan each day, there was one that took me even longer though I forget which one. After I got past that, even with the changes, I just havent been able to be motivated to finish a single relic.

I may have started a bad(?) trend. It seems most people are just bored to death in XIV now, thanks to lack of meaningful content and no real motivation to do the existing content since there's nothing to progress to afterwards, I decided to reactivate my FFXI account which I stopped playing back in 2012 and make a new character. Several people ended up following me, and after only a day at least one of them cancelled her XIV sub. Gotta say though, XI has copied several things from XIV to make it more convenient (so glad about that), now I wish there were just some things XIV copied from XI...like maybe not making content obsolete with the very next patch.

[Hunter Noventa]

It took me around 6 months to get my atmas because I had the worst luck. I spent about 2 months going out to south thanalan each day, there was one that took me even longer though I forget which one. After I got past that, even with the changes, I just havent been able to be motivated to finish a single relic.

I may have started a bad(?) trend. It seems most people are just bored to death in XIV now, thanks to lack of meaningful content and no real motivation to do the existing content since there's nothing to progress to afterwards, I decided to reactivate my FFXI account which I stopped playing back in 2012 and make a new character. Several people ended up following me, and after only a day at least one of them cancelled her XIV sub. Gotta say though, XI has copied several things from XIV to make it more convenient (so glad about that), now I wish there were just some things XIV copied from XI...like maybe not making content obsolete with the very next patch.

Yeah 3.1 wasn't the best patch. Void Ark is fun and all, but eh. New relics are coming with 3.15 at least, that'll be fun. And I still have a ton of other classes to level up, I've only gotten Summoner/Scholar to 60 in addition to Monk.

[Rising Phoenix]

Yeah 3.1 wasn't the best patch. Void Ark is fun and all, but eh. New relics are coming with 3.15 at least, that'll be fun. And I still have a ton of other classes to level up, I've only gotten Summoner/Scholar to 60 in addition to Monk.

Hahahaa...grinding is fun...haaaa.

There is 0 reason to do void ark since the diadem exists and since the diadem is glorified, boring to death hunts there is no reason to play the game...

The only thing that could possibly bring me back to the game is if they released more pvp...but that's not a priority.

[Sajiri]

I enjoyed Diadem the first couple times I went with friends where we roamed around, but thats not 'optimal', so now its resorted to as usual, people joining PFs and standing in one spot with 2-3 other parties killing the same thing over and over again.

Void Ark was fun..the very first time. After that I just really dont care for it, there's always someone trolling the run. The game does have a lot of content, but the way its handled there's not much point to do any of it really. I really hope Yoshi does go with what he said might happen, and they start just doing one type of raid in between savage and 24man raid difficulty. The hardcore crowd is the vocal minority by far, but the 'casual' content is far too easy. They'd be better off just making one difficulty, and producing more of it, than splitting it up and only giving each group one thing to do.

[Hunter Noventa]

Hahahaa...grinding is fun...haaaa.

There is 0 reason to do void ark since the diadem exists and since the diadem is glorified, boring to death hunts there is no reason to play the game...

The only thing that could possibly bring me back to the game is if they released more pvp...but that's not a priority.

I've never liked MMO PvP, but to each their own. I don't mind Void Ark, though I don't do it that often. The worst is when you're the only member of a class in the party and more than one piece of loot drops, but you still can't get it.

At least the new Anima Relic Weapons come out this week. A shame they won't turn you into an Omnigear though.

[Wookieetank]

Started in on the Anima grind last night, and I must say, its not too bad. Found 4 of the crystals (out of 18) in a 2 hour period and was able to work on leveling my machinist at the same time. So win/win (other than running around as a level 40 in level 50+ areas).

[Hunter Noventa]

Started in on the Anima grind last night, and I must say, its not too bad. Found 4 of the crystals (out of 18) in a 2 hour period and was able to work on leveling my machinist at the same time. So win/win (other than running around as a level 40 in level 50+ areas).

Yeah the first two parts aren't too bad. It's when you get to the next part that requires weeks of grinding Tomestones/Beast Tribes/Hunts/Maps, concurrent with acquiring 16 HQ semi-rare specialist-crafted items that have specialist-crafted items in their own recipes that you stat to run into the real grind. Definitely not something you'll do in a couple weeks. gives me some impetus to level my gatherers, because hopefully you can find someone to craft the things for you because seriously, crafting sucks, and they will not be cheap.

And I already spent my money getting a Zeta weapon to skip that grind. Ha.

[Sajiri]

So it sounds like its only going to be two dungeons again come 3.2. This alone says a lot to me about to game as a whole these days. 3.0 having two dungeons was understandable, because it was a whole new expansion. 3.1 was a weak excuse, saying it was because an entirely new type of content (diadem) was added, even though there was a 5 month wait and they always released 3 dungeons with new content in the past.

I suppose at this point we just accept 2 dungeons per patch is going to be the norm now- it really does feel like the game is getting less and less to do thanks to the constant replacement of content from 1 or 2 patches previous :/

Im sad my LS that at the start of 3.1 had 50-60 active members on at a time has now dwindled down to about 10-20, most of whom are afk, because everyone is just getting so bored of the game. Not to mention all my officers for the LS and FC are cancelling their subs. Im paid up until march I think so there's no point in cancelling, and I hoped 3.2 would add something more interesting, but it doesnt sound like it will.

At least the next alex savage they will be adjusting the difficulty, but I dont think that alone will bring a lot of people back.

[lesser_minion]

I've actually managed to mostly dodge the content drought. Partly by spending some time with some other MMOs, and partly because I ended up rerolling and starting over completely from scratch with a new character.

The reason I've heard for the 3.1 delay is that whole swathes of the teams were half-dead from exhaustion after all of the work they had to put in in order to ship 3.0. As for future releases being smaller, I can think of a few possible non-cynical reasons.

[Sajiri]

I've actually managed to mostly dodge the content drought. Partly by spending some time with some other MMOs, and partly because I ended up rerolling and starting over completely from scratch with a new character.

The reason I've heard for the 3.1 delay is that whole swathes of the teams were half-dead from exhaustion after all of the work they had to put in in order to ship 3.0. As for future releases being smaller, I can think of a few possible non-cynical reasons.

Yeah they all took a vacation after heavensward release, which is perfectly fine they deserved it. But the 'we took a vacation so there's less content' excuse doesnt really fit when there was an extra 2 month delay to the schedule to make up for that time.

I would start a new character but I already have two of them

[lesser_minion]

Yeah they all took a vacation after heavensward release, which is perfectly fine they deserved it. But the 'we took a vacation so there's less content' excuse doesnt really fit when there was an extra 2 month delay to the schedule to make up for that time.

They also had a lot more bugs and iteration to deal with than they would have had after a normal content patch -- machinists, astrologians, and bards all had changes made after the expansion landed, and I think the consensus from Reddit is that all three of those jobs still need more work, as do paladins (as I understand it, taking an AST over a WHM is expected to add 31,714 milliseconds to the time spent on a typical A3S clear or something like that. A fair bit of the maths sounded dodgy to me).

As for the anima complaints, my main issue with what they're doing is that the original relics were about obtaining distinctive weapons with their own history and significance to the story and the world. That is precisely what "relic weapon" implies, and at no point was this really anything to do with getting gear with good stats.

Anima weapons should improve upon that by telling your story, perhaps even starting off with you going back to your original guildmaster to reclaim your class starter weapon, and possibly featuring Minstrel's Ballad variants of stuff like the climactic battles from the prologue (Swiftperch for ACN/MRD, Everschade for CNJ/ARC/LNC), the Breaking Boundaries job quests, and perhaps even The Minstrel's Ballad: The Parting Glass. You could run X number of unique instances and then pick one or two (or even change which on the fly) to determine cosmetic aspects of your weapon.

[Hunter Noventa]

They also had a lot more bugs and iteration to deal with than they would have had after a normal content patch -- machinists, astrologians, and bards all had changes made after the expansion landed, and I think the consensus from Reddit is that all three of those jobs still need more work, as do paladins (as I understand it, taking an AST over a WHM is expected to add 31,714 milliseconds to the time spent on a typical A3S clear or something like that. A fair bit of the maths sounded dodgy to me).

As for the anima complaints, my main issue with what they're doing is that the original relics were about obtaining distinctive weapons with their own history and significance to the story and the world. That is precisely what "relic weapon" implies, and at no point was this really anything to do with getting gear with good stats.

Anima weapons should improve upon that by telling your story, perhaps even starting off with you going back to your original guildmaster to reclaim your class starter weapon, and possibly featuring Minstrel's Ballad variants of stuff like the climactic battles from the prologue (Swiftperch for ACN/MRD, Everschade for CNJ/ARC/LNC), the Breaking Boundaries job quests, and perhaps even The Minstrel's Ballad: The Parting Glass. You could run X number of unique instances and then pick one or two (or even change which on the fly) to determine cosmetic aspects of your weapon.

Yeah, I'd plowed through to a Zeta weapon and kind of regret it now, even though I have my new Anima weapon on step 2, the sudden HUGE jump in needing HQ crafted items from every crafting specialization is just...ridiculous. Though i suppose Zeta had a stage like that...you just didn't need 16 of the items. And 40 of another set of items. There are a lot of better ways they could ave done it, and I'm probably going to wait for them to dial back those requirements.

[Talderas]

So it sounds like its only going to be two dungeons again come 3.2. This alone says a lot to me about to game as a whole these days. 3.0 having two dungeons was understandable, because it was a whole new expansion. 3.1 was a weak excuse, saying it was because an entirely new type of content (diadem) was added, even though there was a 5 month wait and they always released 3 dungeons with new content in the past.

ARR was one new dungeon and one old damage that was prettied up with a few new things. That's a rather important distinction because the effort required for creating a new dungeon is much higher than redoing a dungeon, especially since many of the assets created for the dungeon originally can be reused and the simple fact that you can't reuse dungeons at a rate exceeding the creation of new dungeons unless you're going to step to doing something like Brayflox Longstop (Extreme). If they ran 2 hard modes each patch then they would have nearly exhausted all the dungeons that don't have hard modes that they can do (original 1.0 dungeon they have stated they weren't going to do).

--

They also had a lot more bugs and iteration to deal with than they would have had after a normal content patch -- machinists, astrologians, and bards all had changes made after the expansion landed, and I think the consensus from Reddit is that all three of those jobs still need more work, as do paladins (as I understand it, taking an AST over a WHM is expected to add 31,714 milliseconds to the time spent on a typical A3S clear or something like that. A fair bit of the maths sounded dodgy to me).

Dark Knight is fine. Most of the complaints are from people not liking how certain skills interact rather than any defect in the job itself. People still try to throw out the argument that Gordias Savage was built to cater to dark knight, based on A4S, but they kind of ignore that the evolution of boss encounters move away from pure physical situations and towards more and more magic damage. Machinist could use some love as they haven't received any buffs and they're still not favored due to being a high effort job that can easily underperform compared to bard. Astrologian can't really be judged too accurately right now. The buffs to it came too late into the raid cycle so Midas will be a better judge of astrologian.

[Wookieetank]

ARR was one new dungeon and one old damage that was prettied up with a few new things.

It was actually 1 new and 2 HMs of old dungeons.

Pharos Sirius
Haukke Manor HM
Copperbell Mines HM

Lost City of Amdapor
Halatali HM
Brayflox's Longstop HM

Hullbreaker Isle
Stone Vigil HM
Tam-Tara Deepcraft HM

Snowcloak
Sastash HM
Sunken Temple of Qarn HM

Keeper of the Lake
Wanderer's Palace HM
Amdapor Keep HM

With the single HM of Heavensward's first major Patch being a remake of an ARR dungeon, its not very encouraging for future content.

[Fri]

Just want to rant.

This is ridiculous. I've been running Gubal Library non stop for a while now, at least a couple of times a day. I use all my free time to do it, ignoring other dungeons or gameplay. Just because I want to dragoon coat. The library doesn't give me anything else, no xp, no tomes, and I don't need any other piece of loot there. I just need the coat.

I just finished my 25th run of the dungeon now (I actually counted it) and you know what? No DRG coat at all. I've actually completed my collection of the other coat, I have every other coat other than what I need, and I've passed some coats a couple of times already now.

If I used the time to do roulette, or level 60 dungeons, I'll have complete eso set already now. And if I actually used it to level my SCH, it'd be high level enough to actually wear the SCH coat.

You can't blame me if I think the RNG is totally bugged.

[Sajiri]

Just want to rant.

This is ridiculous. I've been running Gubal Library non stop for a while now, at least a couple of times a day. I use all my free time to do it, ignoring other dungeons or gameplay. Just because I want to dragoon coat. The library doesn't give me anything else, no xp, no tomes, and I don't need any other piece of loot there. I just need the coat.

I just finished my 25th run of the dungeon now (I actually counted it) and you know what? No DRG coat at all. I've actually completed my collection of the other coat, I have every other coat other than what I need, and I've passed some coats a couple of times already now.

If I used the time to do roulette, or level 60 dungeons, I'll have complete eso set already now. And if I actually used it to level my SCH, it'd be high level enough to actually wear the SCH coat.

You can't blame me if I think the RNG is totally bugged.

I wonder if it is, or will be possible to get it from retainers and quick ventures. Long ago I was running stone vigil non stop for the shadow bow and it was never dropping. Literally the same day I ranted in my LS about it and announced I was giving up and never wanted to do that dungeon again, my retainer came back with the bow for me. I havent gone in specifically to farm coats, but anytime people needed someone for library I'd offer to go in as tank because I wanted the tank coat and never got it