[FFXIV] Ding 60!

Ding 60!

I’d thought to get to level 58 this weekend, with 59 being a maybe, but ended up putting more time in that I’d initially planned and well….. I’m level 60!  And now I need to learn completely new dps rotations becuz Fire 4 and Blizzard 4 both require the Enochian buff to be up and also that you’re in either Fire or Ice mode, but they aren’t like the other damage spells and don’t add/refresh the Fire/Ice mode buff, so it’s been a bit interesting trying to figure out a smooth rotation for them as of yet.  I’ve seen some ideas on the forums and on Reddit, but just in passing, so it looks like I might need to do a bit more study.  As it is, I don’t feel like my dps is bad using my more traditional “old method” where I just ignore those 2 new spells and just use Enochian for the 5% damage buff and I’ve been getting dungeon commendations for doing well on the dps front, so… we’ll see how it goes as I improve too.

I can fly in all HW zones now

My overall average gear level is 140 between the level 58 gear you get for doing the quests as you’re leveling being i145 and the occasional jewelry piece.  But with all of that, I’m still wearing my i110 bracelet, and 1 ring is still i130 from a leveling dungeon.  and I need i142 to be able to even enter the final story dungeon, so…. time to get me some Tomes of Law so I can upgrade that bracelet, at the very least.  ToL gear is a lot cheaper than Soldiery/Poetics was, but there are also fewer ways to get the tomes — you get 100 for a low-level roulette, 100 for a high-level roulette, and 60 for a trial roulette, and that’s it for a day.  That’s still up to 260 a day though, so it shouldn’t take terribly long to be able to get a gear set.  Interestingly enough, I queued for a low-level roulette after hitting 60 and got… the level 59 dungeon.  Got a slight upgrade on my boots, but it didn’t bump my ilvl above the 140 it was already at.  Such is life.  As it is, I should be able to get the 260 tomes tonight and a new bracelet is only 215, and ToL gear is i170 or 180 (I don’t recall now.  Bad me!), so that should easily bump me up enough to be able to do the story dungeon.

Fun mobs in The Vault dungeon

Something I’m wondering how it’s going to pan out is that when leveling from 50-60 on the 1st job, I did every last quest out there, did the daily hunt log missions, ran and re-ran dungeons, made sure to do enough FATEs for the challenge log and more besides, and I still ended up needing to fill in some xp gaps with leve quests.  Only 3 to get from 57 to 58 and then 2 more to finish up going from 59 to 60.  Overall time per level in this range seemed to be about 6 hours per level.  For future jobs coming up behind, without the big xp stream from the various quests, I’m wondering what’s going to shake out as the preferred “grind it up” method of fast leveling in the new areas?  I can’t imagine it will be FATE grinding, since even the level 59 FATEs were only giving about 24K xp for a gold victory, and when you need 3,888,000 xp for a level…. that’s not going to cut it.

What this means for me going forward until we figure out how to level up additional jobs is… I’ll be focusing on the BLM job and getting it geared out, then I’ll likely bring all the sub-50 jobs up to 50 since those actually go rather quickly with FATE grinding, but then for the 50-60 levels… I dunno.  After I’ve got the BLM geared out, I’ll probably use the duty roulette for the daily xp bonus, and just resign myself to bringing the other jobs up slowly over the course of months.  Time will tell.  Some quick leveling path will probably be found soon enough, after all.

I’m really not trying to say too much about the story since that would be spoilers and it’s still early days so that’s something to worry about, but in the screenie gallery below there will be spoilers, so… don’t scroll down if you don’t wanna see them.  Happy Gaming out there!

This was a fun fight

The goblins unblocked a barricade for me — by blowing it up!

I liked how this building looked like the flying buffalo from Avatar: The Last Airbender

Cool looking! And I assume someday we’ll find a way in…

I like the staff shaped like a hand, and the modelers dd really well on the NPC. Go go art dept!

The level 58 staff is a ladybug

It opens its wings when you draw it

I glamored it to look like this staff from The Vault, though.

The Aery from the outside

Flying up to the Aery on my new personal airship!

And here’s my other new mount — a beautiful dragon!

This dragon’s been imprisoned for a long time. Poor dragon 😦

The library dungeon exterior in the Dravinian Hinterlands

Attuning to the Sea of Clouds aetheryte in the beastmen area

Bismarck the Primal!

Naughty Imperials going after Bismarck

And using a MASSIVE battleship to do it too

Overall view of the Azys Lla zone

On the Enterprise Excelsior headed for Azys Lla

Firing up the aether ram

Contact!

We’re through!

Shiva makes an appearance

I thought this looked like a nice astronomy shot, even though that’s not what it is….

Arrival in Azys Lla

More Stargate SG-1 teleporters

Activating the telporter

Azys Lla has a pretty jungle area in additional to all the magitek stuff

This obviously is a magitek area

I love these Hydaelyn (sp?) scenes