FFXIV

[Positive Touch]

yep. hs has a smaller, more memorable cast, a more focused story, better quests. only thing i wish it had more of was some well-animated cutscenes. has a lot more than arr, but still looks like ps2-quality animation most of the time. still a fantastic game ofc. and I can never stress enough how much I love the hs maps. seriously some of the coolest maps I've ever seen in any game.

[Lucretius]

My setup right now.

[Positive Touch]

the ff11 screenshot made my eyes bleed

[Freyj]

Told you to stick it out!

You'll like HW a lot I think.

Also, XI is the perfect second monitor with Netflix game. 

[Bebpo]

Just spent like 30-40 mins and did Ramuh Extreme with a pf.  We had a lot of people come and leave and many wipes until we found a winning team (the pf was for farming ponies, I passed on the ponies because after winning the Ifrit pony and trying it I'm like why the fuck do I want a pony?).  I went in blind because it said newcomers welcome and a couple people taught me the fight.  I googled on my phone after a couple of wipes and they were actually telling me the wrong things but I didn't tell them that   I think when people haven't done a fight in a while they forget a few of the mechanics or remember them differently.  But eventually got the hang of it and one time made it to the end alive, so pretty satisfying.

It's a neat fight, the only tough parts are keeping an eye on whose been targeted in your team so lightning off the seduction, and otherwise don't combine too many lightnings and when killing the adds it's a bit tougher with melee cause you gotta get out of the water every time a lightning comes down or your dead.

Now just gotta find a party for Lev & Shiva Extremes.

Oh and I hit i128 or i129.  The only thing missing is I have one i120 ring since I can't upgrade it to the i130 version because you can only have one at a time.

[Bebpo]

Alright, Lev Extreme down.  Got in an unsynched WT party that went in with 5 people so it was still kinda a challenge.  The no-rails part is fucking fun.  That's a good fight but it seemed a lot easier than Ramuh Extreme.  Now just gotta find a Shiva Extreme party.

[The Legend of Sunblade]

Ramuh is probably the hardest of the 2.X Extreme trials, just because he has a lot of soft enrages that cause the fight instantly if you hurt him too much too fast, which is the bane of every unsynced WT party. Levi is mostly just killing the wavetide adds before they make you fall off/not getting knocked off yourself.

[Lucretius]

At level 50, i130 Ramuh was the only trial you couldn't just face roll.  With orb management, tank swapping, main tank rotating the boss during adds phase and tethers in final phase it was the primal that required the most coordination either through voice chat or through callout macros.  I still have my Ramuh main tank macros "DPS Clean up orbs!!!"  "Leave orbs for tanks!!"  Now all those mechanics can totally be ignored and the only thing that really causes party wipes is DPSing Ramuh too fast before you kill the adds... I mean, leaving DoTs up during that phase is usually enough to cause a wipe.

[Lucretius]

XI is the perfect second monitor with Netflix game. 

I can actually play both games at the same time pretty well.  Farming some Huge Wasps for Bee Pollen in XI while waiting for a Party Finder to fill up in XIV to complete Wondrous Tails.
Also, although the population isn't nearly what it used to be, XI is still very much alive.  In fact, I had to log off early tonight because they're doing a version update tonight to add new content!

[Bebpo]

So on Second Coil Savage, are there new patterns to learn?  Or did they just modify the stats (hp, damage, etc...)?  I doubt I'll ever play it either way since no one plays it, but if there was new stuff to it I'll probably youtube the guides for the stages when they came out to see what it was like.

[The Legend of Sunblade]

Kinda? You do require different strategies to tackle them cause they don't go down the same way, since some of them have entire mechanics that got srubbed out before releasing it to the public. Second Coil Savage is basically the easliest working version before they fine tuned it to actually be clearable by people

[Bebpo]

Just logged in and checked my retainers and fuck, I sold like 300k of stuff!  2.6 million
No idea what I'm saving up towards or what point is a "safe" point to stop saving and have enough gil for endgame, but will keep putting a ton on sale every night before I log out.

I guess if I hit 10 million+ I can probably buy a house from someone, especially after SB comes out and there are more houses on the market?

[Positive Touch]

remember that you lose your house if you don't visit it every few months, so it's only worth getting if you plan to stay subbed long-term. also what are you doing to get so much money so fast?

[Bebpo]

I sell stuff from vendors across the world for like 2-4x.  I keep note of what items sell for 3-10x and go for that.  Also when I'm crafting sometimes I'll run across materials you can't buy/harvest and you have to craft yourself, these usually go for a lot on the MB, like 2-4k, so I craft a whole bunch and sell them in batches.

I follow the markets pretty closely though.  Like I try selling every item I get in the game and see what goes for a lot and then I see if there's a quick way to get lots of those and sell them.  I'd be more specific but I dunno who is reading this since a couple of my big markets with iron ingots and marlins have totally tanked due to flooded markets.  Marlins went from 250k to 20k ><  Iron Ingots were selling 40k for 99 and now sell for maybe 8-9k for 99 and the cost is like 6k so there's not much profit anymore.  I can pm you some specific items on hyperion that go for a lot and are easy money.


Also, CUL is a pain in the ass to level after like lvl.20 or 25.  Every other crafter you need a couple of materials you go gather them.  CUL every recipe has like 5-8 items and half of them have to be crafted from low level items and it takes forever to make a goddamn pie.  CUL was one of my first crafting classes and ahead of the others, now it's basically last place and at most I buy my turn-ins for the day cause making them is a pain in the butt.

[Bebpo]

Finished the last ARR Hildebrand quest.  The whole series of quests were...cute.  Some funny bits, and the 2nd Gilgamesh fight was legit exciting good.  Ultros fight kinda sucked/was annoying and the stories were alright.

So now if HW didn't exist, I'd be done with every "+" substantial quest outside:

-Beast tribes
-Postmaster quests
-All job quests
-Zodiac weapon quest (no thanks)

Beast tribes I do here and there but now that they're left, thinking about it they're kinda shit design?  I mean forcing you to keep redoing a handful of the same basic quests over and over to get to the next real quest is a terrible design concept.  With Ixali it's fine because I just use the turn in quest to get some extra crafter xp, but with the other beast tribes I've done the intial quests all once and...I have no desire to do them a bunch more times, get to the next level, then do the next 3 quests a bunch of times.  Meh, I'll probably slowly go through these along the way and maybe one day when I'm caught up I'll finish them all, but no rush.

Postmaster Quests I've got to rank 5 or 6 now and I really like them.  Since I still plan to log in daily to do my GC turn-ins I'll probably do my turn-ins and then do a postmaster quest or two.  Probably will finish them all before I start HW.

So yeah, around 290 hours now, will hit lvl.55 when I do the trial roulette tomorrow (just need a tiny more xp), up to around 3.4-3.5 million gil, i129, ~150k MGP.  Feels like a pretty good place to take a break.  I'm watching Lancer/Dragoon job quests on youtube and up to Lancer lvl.25 so making my way through that prior to HW and everytime I've done a boss I've been watching the guide videos afterwards so the next time I do the fights I know what I'm doing.  It's fun getting back into fights in the trial roulette and this time I'm helping people out.  Like I got Titan (hard) today and along with a couple of others I helped carry the team.

Also for some reason Cape Highwind comes up A LOT on trial roulette.  I guess that makes sense since people are going through the story and need teams for it.

Oh and tomorrow my adventurer squad will FINALLY meet the stats do succeed on the lvl.40 quest and unlock the 41-60 quests.  Will be satisfying since this took fucking forever! 

I'd jump in party finders more often for fun just to do cool fights/coils but so many people put an average ilevel requirement on pfs for coil/extreme unsync and they're all going off lvl.60 item levels so it's like i225 required.  Blah.  Also I saw a pf that said "unsync clear run - NO WT" and that makes no sense to me. 

[Freyj]

I've never viewed the Beast Tribe stuff as anything more than something to grind while people wait on new content. XIV isn't the best at that kind of content. I've heard there's a neat questline or two at the end of ARR's Beast Tribes, but no thanks.

[Positive Touch]

I've done a few of them and the stories are fine but nothing special. tbh the best reason to finish them is bc you'll get access to some nice mid-level crafting stuff. the tribes in hw are better bc you only need to do three max a day instead of up to 9 in arr, and flying makes them much easier. honestly I wouldn't have bothered with any of them except I was leveling different classes.

[Positive Touch]

just remembered the arr beat tribes only gave out like 5 progress points for each quest at the starting rank until like summer of 16. that was the other main reason I didn't touch them.

[Bebpo]

now they give 10

150 points just to rank 2 

[The Legend of Sunblade]

Not just 5 points, you only had like 6 allowances per day. It was /really/ limited.

[Bebpo]

Maybe they were trying to save people, who wants to do more than 6 beast tribe quests a day    :'(

[Bebpo]

It's kinda a shame because from what I've seen at the start (and further into the Ixali one) I do like the real questlines for each tribe.  Does a nice job giving them character.  Just a shame it's a boring grind between.

[Bebpo]

Anyhow, been listening to the 2.0-2.1 OST and 2.2-2.5 OSTs and here's my favorite tracks from 2.0-2.5!  One of these days I need to make a playlist of just this stuff since there's like a billion songs in between the ones I love on the osts (but it's all pretty solid):














(2nd half guitar is fine, but the vocals are pretty bad)





and of course, Answer is an excellent FF title theme song that harkens backs to the FF8-10 days of great vocal core themes.



I know a lot of people like the Shiva theme and on its own it's a good TWEWY song, but I'm not a huge fan of stuff that doesn't fit.  Like the jrock song in the Shiva battle would be great in a game like TWEWY but it feels really out of place in a medieval fantasy game boss fight against an ice primal.

Ramuh's theme is similar in that it's totally different vibe and feels like a 1990s anime song by Yoko Kanno, but to me that fits because that kind of stuff would go to fantasy anime like Escaflowne.  Also I think without a doubt at this point Ramuh's theme is the best boss battle song.

Also Battle on the Big Bridge is fantastic, but it's just battle on the big bridge which is always one of the best FF battle themes.  Coil as good music but there's no track in particular that sticks out to me like the Crystal Tower themes.  They're all good though, especially the arrangements of Answers.

[Bebpo]

ffuuuuuuck adventurer squad 

[Bebpo]

So as I'm getting gil I'm realizing that A) I have zero interest in Vanity outside my headpiece and I'm fine with just a pair of glasses (I mean if I get some armor that is fugly I'll change it with glamor), B) I have zero interest in buying a house or decorating, my private room is completely empty still outside a bed and a desk with two planter pots, so basically uh I have no use for gil.

Like I keep saving up because it's easy, so if I pop on and see something sold for 10x the price, I'll go buy another batch of 99 and put it back up.  But, not really sure what my long game is.  If I have tons of money can I skip the scrip grind and just buy gear?

[Positive Touch]

hrmmm.. you could buy some nice stuff from the mb, or get a crafter to make you some good stuff. not sure how hi the ilvl on that would be tho, bc I think the current best gear is untradeable stuff from raids.

[Lucretius]

Current max item level is 270.  You can purchase crafted i250 gear from the marketboard if you have tons of gil

[Positive Touch]

wait max is only 270 now? what's up with all the trolls that use party finder set to min ilvl 300?

[Lucretius]

wait max is only 270 now? what's up with all the trolls that use party finder set to min ilvl 300?

they're either trolls or dumb.

[Lucretius]

Current max item level is 270. 

* the weapons from Creator Savage are i275 and we anticipate one more step in the relic quest to upgrade the relic to i275 before Stormblood.

[Bebpo]

Hmmm, the rewards for the lvl.40+ missions in adventurer squad are alright.  Like getting 5 survival manuals for a 2,000 seals mission or 5 crafting manuals is decent since I actually use those when I'm leveling gatherers/crafters outside of just GC dailies to get the +50%

But yeah, was totally not worth it.

[Bebpo]

Current max item level is 270.  You can purchase crafted i250 gear from the marketboard if you have tons of gil

So theoretically if I hit lvl.60 by whatever part in the MSQ requires you to grind scrips a bit to get i180 to move forward I can just buy i250 gear (or cheaper i180-250 gear).  Hmmm, like since I'm already lvl 55 should I start buying gear off the mb or should I wait until I start HW because I can buy lvl 55 gear from NPCs for cheap?

Have about 4 million gil now.

[Bebpo]

Got it.  Yeah took a look at the market board and until lvl.60 the equipment isn't much better than what I have on right now at i129.  But once I hit 60, looking at the prices I can definitely gear out up to i180 no problem by spending maybe 2 million.  Can even buy a i250 weapon if I want.  This is good, means if I ever get to a spot where I need to grind I can just spend my gil instead and skip the grinding up through mid 200s.

And yeah, the only time I use gil is for mats for my crafters so far.

I'll try not to gain too much more xp before starting HW so I'm not overleveled too much.  Then again I've never found any of the single player combat scenarios good, they always seem junk and sometimes you lose because your npcs are fucking dumb.  Combat should be saved for mp.

[Bebpo]

I think my biggest incentive for getting caught up is just to be able to instantly join in a party finder for fun battles & loot.  Because as is, I'm locked out of 80% of the parties since they're HW battles and the other 20% that are ARR Extreme bosses or Coil stages, 80% of those are average item level locked at 220 or higher so I can't even get in those which sucks.

[Bebpo]

lol, just got an email with early access code for Stormblood, code doesn't work on registration site 

What's the point of early access anyhow?  Does it let you play through the entire game's MSQ before the game even comes out?  Or is it just like access to roaming around the map?

[Lucretius]

I'll try not to gain too much more xp before starting HW so I'm not overleveled too much.  Then again I've never found any of the single player combat scenarios good, they always seem junk and sometimes you lose because your npcs are fucking dumb.  Combat should be saved for mp.

Don't stop leveling. The HW MSQ dungeons and battles and job quest battles will level-sync you appropriately so you won't be able to faceroll them.

[The Legend of Sunblade]

lol, just got an email with early access code for Stormblood, code doesn't work on registration site 

What's the point of early access anyhow?  Does it let you play through the entire game's MSQ before the game even comes out?  Or is it just like access to roaming around the map?

There's an early access period where players who pre-ordered can play the full expansion before the official launch date. I did all of HW's MSQ before it actually came out during its early access. 

(I did like a 24hour marathon tho, something I def can't do anymore)

[Bebpo]

Isn't that kinda bs though?  Because then the people who do that will be ahead of all the rest of the players. 

How early do early access periods start?  Like for HW?  Is it like you get the game 3 days early?  Or is it like you get the game a month early?  I guess I gotta figure on finishing 3.5 before that starts!

[The Legend of Sunblade]

Well, sort of. Early access players get a leg up on the MSQ and shit, but for Heavensward, the new endgame raid wasn't made available until like a week or two after launch. So you won't get "ahead" on anything too important~

Heavensward EA started on June 19 at 2:00 a.m. (PDT), while the proper release was on June 23. In a way, its also a stress test so they fix any unexpected bugs, adjust server load and make any fixes necessary before the full floodgates open. Heavensward actually had multiple instanced zones (like say, having multiple versions of Coerthas Central Highlands to actually let people get into Heavensward without the server crashing) to acomodate all the players at the same time, so I expect the same thing to happen for Stormblood.

[Lucretius]

It's one of the benefits of pre-ordering.  Also, if you're pre-ordering a physical copy, they won't ship it to you until the day it releases generally.  So the early access code lets you play until your physical copy arrives and you activate that code.

For Heavensward early access lasted four days before the official release.  I think I finished HW's MSQ before early access was up.  My FC was pretty hardcore back then and most of us powered through.  My FC had teams get world 3rd Bismark EX and world 5th Ravana EX clears... all before early access was up.

I don't really see how early access is BS just because it allows you to be ahead of the rest of the players.  It doesn't give you a competitive advantage.  HW PvP wasn't released with 3.0, and when it was released, the level cap was i150 so any early start you got didn't matter.  Other than the two extreme primals, there was no raid tier at launch and no weekly-locked-out tomes.

[Positive Touch]

so is early access for everyone that pre orders? bc I haven't done that yet

[The Legend of Sunblade]

Get to it then! 

[Positive Touch]

square got me hooked on their overpriced collector's editions and I need to scrape some extra cash together before I can afford this one!

[Bebpo]

Just realized my Encyclopedia Eorza order from a week ago is still pending...but they took my money since I paid through PP.  Not sure if I should leave it and hopefully when they get their next stock in it'll automatically fill out of that order, or if I should cancel it... hmmm....

[Positive Touch]

they'll ship it when they make more. same thing happened to me; i emailed a week after they took my money and they said to hold tight till they send me a tracking number. took... three weeks to get it after I paid, I think?

[Bebpo]

So I had to work from home today because I was dealing with some insurance stuff over the phone and I had long periods of waiting for calls or being on hold so since I couldn't do much else I played FFXIV and there wasn't much to do prior to noon GC turn-ins so I did the first HW quest and got into Ishgard.  City seems nice, but now there's a zillion things to do so I'm like nope, and back to just doing my GC dailies and postmaster quests for now.  If I start on HW proper and do my Ninja/Fishing quests, start Dark Knight, MSQ, etc... never gonna get to any other games for another 100-200 hours.

they'll ship it when they make more. same thing happened to me; i emailed a week after they took my money and they said to hold tight till they send me a tracking number. took... three weeks to get it after I paid, I think?

Great, this is what I was hoping would happen

[Bebpo]

Damn, why do some orchestration rolls go for 1gil and others for insane amounts?  I joined a random PF the other day for Turn 5 to help someone out and I got the music roll.  Turned out it was going for 500-600k and I just logged on and I sold mine for 575k or something   I'm like 1 item sale away from 5 million gil now.

Also sold a drop from Ramuh extreme for like 70k last week.  Seems like joining party finders for extreme/coil can bring in some $$$ quick

[The Legend of Sunblade]

Basically cause some scrolls drop pretty much every time the content gets done, while others like T5/9/12/13's are actually fairly rare drops.

[Bebpo]

Anything worth buying at the poetics trade in after your i130 and don't need carbontwine/coats?  Starting to rack up a bunch of poetics from party finder or daily trials.  If not I guess I can stock up on twine/coats for future characters.

Also if someone says accepting reasonable offers on a house, what are they talking about these days?  Is 2 million too low for a reasonable offer?

[Bebpo]

Fuck it, maybe gonna start playing through HW tonight.  Idk, hard to get back to other games when I'm still logging in each day and doing daily GC turn-ins and random pfs.

[bluemax]

Tempted to buy this on PS4 even though I have it on PC because I almost never want to sit at my PC after work.

[Akala]

Buying expensive top level gear now is kind of silly. SB will be a soft reset gear wise. I was gathering a bit and saw the hassle of getting the turn in gear and NOPE. looked at MB gear and it's like 1mil/piece. You'll likely get better just leveling on to 70.

Played a good but these past few weeks, scrip would be only upgrade on most everything. Still need to finish Alex final and do void ark series, after that AM likely pretty much done till SB unless I go in on another job or something.

[Bebpo]

Buying expensive top level gear now is kind of silly. SB will be a soft reset gear wise. I was gathering a bit and saw the hassle of getting the turn in gear and NOPE. looked at MB gear and it's like 1mil/piece. You'll likely get better just leveling on to 70.

So I'm wondering when I get to HW endgame if it makes more sense at this point to wait until SB comes out and then do HW endgame in the first month SB is out when gearing out for HW endgame is suddenly made 10x quicker.

For now will just keep saving up money.  The one nice thing about being over 5 million gil I'm less penny pinching on buying small stuff when it's helpful.  Like 17k for 250 earth crystals because I just hit 0?  Sure?  Spending 50k on Alumen so I can turn all my skins into leathers when needed?  Sure.  Need an ingredient to finish cooking my daily turn in and it's 3k?  Sure.  Stuff under like 20k doesn't phase me anymore.  I'm guessing the people buying my 99 stacks for like 150k feel the same way because they're at like 50 million+ or something and 150k is nothing to them (150k is still a lot to me!)

[Lucretius]

I'd save that Gil. Going into a new SB with lots of gil is going to be better than going in with crafted 250 gear. The newest 24-man raid gives you a 260 piece once a week for free.it also drops an item to upgrade Scripture gear to 270.  If they do what they did before HW, they'll drop that weekly lockout and let you farm those drops before SB releases.

You can get a full i235 gear set and weapon if you do one evening's worth if PVP farming for Wolf Marks.. The Garo PvP gear is super cheap. That's the item level you need to get into Dun Scaith (the newest 24-man raid). You can also get free 250 by turning in drops from Alexander Creator Normal Mode (this used to have a weekly lockout but no more). In the process you'll be getting enough Scripture tomes to get some 260 pieces.  I think spending a million+ gil on outdated crafted gear is a mistake.

[The Legend of Sunblade]

I would not recommend getting pvp gear for pve use. It's PVP gear for a reason: it doesnt have any accuracy because PVP doesn't use that stat. You'll be missing 90% of your attacks otherwise.

You don't need to buy gear with gil because HW has 50 thousand ways to gear up that aren't locked behind wait timers. Just play as you like.

[The Legend of Sunblade]

Found my long term glamour for Monk thanks to the Dun Scaith chest. Instantly assembled a set for it.

[Bebpo]

If I was a monk or scholar, I'd always be rolling Moogle Glooves or Moogle Book because they are amazing.

[Lucretius]

I would not recommend getting pvp gear for pve use. It's PVP gear for a reason: it doesnt have any accuracy because PVP doesn't use that stat. You'll be missing 90% of your attacks otherwise.

Well, mostly wrong anyway.

Although PvP gear does not have accuracy, PvP does have accuracy requirements.  PvP accuracy cap is low but around 30-50 above the base stat.  Most plays will need at least two accessories with accuracy for PvP.  This will also give you enough accuracy to do all the Expert Dungeons as well as all the 24-man raids.  The i235 from the new Garo crossover event PvP gear will also allow you to meet the minimum iLevel to get into Dun Scaith, which drops i260 gear (many pieces of which DO have accuracy).  You'll definitely want more accuracy when you start doing the Savage raids and the Extreme Primals of Heavensward.

I use my best-in-slot PvP gear set (all Crit/Det, no Skill Speed, and only two PvE accessories with accuracy) for anytime I roulette into level-synced content.  Minimal (but enough) accuracy, all Crit/Det, no Skill Speed... makes me a beast at level-synced content.  I also use this gear set when running Heavensward's Aethereochemical Research Facility and Great Gubal Library (Normal Mode) since although they do not level-sync you, they item-level-sync you to i180 and i150 respectively and have very low accuracy requirements. I never miss, even as tank.

Do you want to meet the i235 iLvl requirement to get into Dun Scaith and start getting i260 gear the same day you turn hit level 60?
Do you want to do this without spending millions of gil on the market board?
You can get a full i235 Garo set in one evening by doing PvP.
You'll eventually get rid of some pieces and want to get up to accuracy cap for the ex primals and Savage, but some of the PvP pieces will basically be best-in-slot for level-synced (and some item-level-synced) content.

HW does allow for multiple ways to gear up though.  Just trying to save you some time and gil.  But play how you want.

[The Legend of Sunblade]

So "accuracy doesn't matter in PVP". 

I've never really bothered to check for acc requirements for raids or dungeons cause I only ever use pve gear. It must have gotten adjusted at some point, cause I know there was a patch or two where I used to miss when doing the new tier of dungeons. Still wouldn't recommend it for him as to not pulverize the dungeons he does as a newbie, like he did with the 2.X fights.

[Lucretius]

If I recall correctly, they lowered dungeon acc caps in HW at some point because healers were all accuracy-starved with the then-current gear and couldn't DPS for shit in dungeons.

As you said, there are tons of ways to gear up.  I enjoy PvP.  And the Garo gear, in addition to being cheap, is fun for glamour.