[FFXIV] A week with a new game

A particularly impressive story-line cutscene, I thought.

About a week ago I realized that I’ve lost interest in ESO for now (if not forever), so I canceled my sub to it.  Due to being on the 3-month plan, I’ve got about a month left where I can log in, if I so choose, so… time will tell, but for now, I’ve got FFXIV taking up all my gaming oxygen.  I’ve played enough MMO’s that for the most part I don’t really research them anymore before logging in, just go on what I’ve heard and the control schemes are usually the same with a few keybinds here and there being different.  FFXIV is in this vein, but there’s just enough different that I actually have gone out to look a few things up here and there.  Oddly enough, I’m having a hard time finding the answers to many questions though.

I still can’t take the Lalafell seriously. This is supposed to be the ruler of a city, and I just see a small child playing dress-up.

For example, since I bought the CE of the game, I got 2 free mounts in the mail when I started.  But if I try to use them, I am simply told “You aren’t authorized to call a mount.”  The mounts don’t have a tooltip or anything, so I have no idea if there’s a level requirement for them or what.  Add in that I see lower level people than me running around with mounts and it gets a bit confusing.  So off to search the interwebz. . . . . and a plethora of “You have to  do the ‘My Little Chocobo’ quest” answers.  And that’s it.  No mention of how to get that quest, if there’s a level requirement, etc.  Semi-useful answer in that I at least know that I need to do a quest, but useless in that I still have no idea what I need to do in order to obtain said quest.

I found Marvin the Martian!

Except I did finally find a forum thread today that indicates that it’s a story quest that you pick up around level 20-ish.  Only took me 4 days of looking to find that out. . . . . and I figure that people level up enough to get the mount and then since it’s unlocked they can change to a lower-level job and still have the mount, explaining why I see level 7 people running around with them too.

One of my archer outfits

As far as progression goes, I’m more or less locked in on my Roegadyn Thaumaturge as my favorite looking character, and since 1 character can do everything, I’ve only played that one since my last post.  I’ve gotten Archer up to level 15 in order to meet the requirement to become a Black Mage once I get the Thaumaturge class to 30.  Really don’t care for the archer either.  Damage is really low for a supposed dps class.  Though high enough that in any group situation (occasional guildhests and FATE bosses) I tend to be the tank due to having too much damage.  Which is pretty sad since my kill time for an even-level mob is about 18-20 seconds.  Damage avoidance seems to be done by circle-strafe kiting melee mobs, and for ranged mobs you just have a duel until one of you drops.

My height vs a standard human and an elf. Except I think they call them Hyur and Elezen in this game.  Not sure if I spelled those right. . .

Conversely, when playing as a (level 17 now) Thaumaturge, it’s generally 3-4 casts for a kill, so 8-10 seconds.  Of course, you can’t circle-strafe with a THM (unless you use the low-damage Scathe spell after you get it level 15-ish).  But since you can open with a cold spell to snare the mob, then swap your affinity from ice to fire and then launch 2-3 fire blasts and the mob is dead before it even gets to you, you don’t much care.  I can see it being a problem in movement-heavy dungeons in the future, perhaps, but while solo it makes for easy-peasy questing, at least.

Weaving in the forest. Except I’m using a spinning wheel, so I dunno how it’s weaving instead of spinning

I looked up a guide for Black Mage leveling, and it suggested taking Botanist and Weaver as good supporting crafts for the class, so I began looking into that as well.  I went with Botanist 1st, since it seemed to be the class that would gather the plants to use to weave.  Except you start on wood, not plants, so after getting a lot of wood and leveling up to 11 Botanist before finally getting a scythe and the ability to harvest plants, I added Carpenter to me class repertoire.  It worked out since I could make myself a bow for my Archer, wand and shield or a 2H staff for my THM, plus a few interesting pieces, like clogs for my feet to improve my gathering, or a wooden mask for my THM to use as headgear.

The residential zones are all pretty. This is the one in Gridania

Anyway, since I could finally harvest “lush vegetation” I went off looking, but didn’t seem to find anything other than food ingredients, so I headed to the Weaver’s Guild and joined up in order to see what I’d even need to make cloth stuff.  Moko grass, eh?  Back to teh interwebz for a node locations guide and hey, it’s just outside Horizon where I happen to have my home point set.  Nice!  Though since it was so cheap to buy off the NPC vendor, I just bought enough to blast through crafting 1 of everything for the xp boost until I made it up to cotton.  Though over time I have harvested a lot of moko grass and cotton bolls, in addition to lots of maple, ash, and elm logs now. . . . . . I’ve also gotten to level 6 in most of the crafts since there’s a lot of cross-dependency built into them and I like to be self-sufficient.  And since the crafting gear applies to any craft, keeping them all close in level range will let me use a single gear set for all of them (once I catch them up to CRP and WVR, anyway)  instead of having to worry about various sets of the same stuff for each class either.

My current class list.  “Cowl” robe style counts as head also, and I could swear that I’d bought an earring.  Gear management is a pain with all the jobs, even with the nice set list you can create.

All that time spent crafting (which reminded me of Vanguard’s crafting with your skill points, chance of failure, need to improve the item before running out of points, etc so I quite like it) is why I’m still “only” level 17 as a THM.  The plan for this week is to work it up and try to make it to BLM.  I also discovered cross-class skills in the course of my play, so I grabbed a few Arcanist levels in order to get the heal from it so that I can do some limited self-healing to boot, so that should help my survivability on those “duty” missions that you have to solo but that have FATE-strength mobs in them.  And maybe if I end up dps tanking in a group situation too.  We shall see…..

Happy gaming out there!