FFXIV

[Bebpo]

Hmmm, trying to find the merchant that is the your level every 5 levels for your job can be a little annoying.  Since I just hit lvl.25 with Rogue I'm looking around for lvl.25 gear in Limsa.  Aleport has 15, 20 and then jumps to 45 at the two gates.  Costa Del Sol is lvl.30 gear.  Gonna google where to find the lvl.25 merchant here.  Just did the lvl.25 Rogue Class Quest; was good stuff, actually pretty challenging.  Gonna go catch up on a couple of other Class Quests I still need to do (Gladiator lvl.20, Pugilist lvl.15, Thermaturge lvl.10) and then get back to the main story. 

I grabbed every job available outside the 3 Heavensward jobs, so now I can just switch between them on the fly which is nice.  I wish you could make your on-character armory larger because ideally I'd like to keep a weapon from every job in the game on me to switch between them, but that takes up like 24 slots and then I've got no room for loot.  I went and stored like have with my venture.  I'm just keeping gathering classes on me and cooking & fishing because those are fun and useful. 

I don't understand the botanist/mining classes.  How do I use them?  I go out into a forest/field of trees and I can't find any place to get fruit as a botanist.  I go into a MINE as a miner and I don't see any spots to mine.  I'm lvl.1 on both and have no idea how to use the classes.

Story-wise I'm about to meet the Sylph tribe around lvl.22 I think.

beps is this your first mmo?

that first mmo hit

Yup!  I swore them off because they seemed like time sinks and I generally avoid long rpgs (which is why I never played DQVII on PS1) since I'd rather play two 60 hour rpgs than one 120 hour rpg.  And FFXIV is a timesink, but it's still pretty fun so far 40 hours in, so I'm on bored unless I get bored/burnt out.

[Freyj]

That sounds a little higher than I remember. I did ROG / NIN from 1 - 60 without ever having done 2.1 - 2.5 or 3.0 in probably 2 months or so of a few hours a night. Maybe there's some 8 hour weekend days that I'm leaving out though.

This is very much an "enjoy the journey" game. Unless you want to join a static and raid, the end game gear grind isn't very interesting.

[Bebpo]

Finished the Sylph chapter.  Yeah I see what you mean about the fetch quests in the 20s, that took like an 8 hour day session and tons and tons of filler.  Like you get to the bar and the guy asks you to deliver an earring to an old worker and it sends you all around the map.  Was alright.  Had some good dungeon experiences with other players.  I've decided I'm not going to play as Tank the first time doing any new dungeon/boss because tank is the leader most of the other people in your party are on their 20th+ time doing the dungeon/primal, so when you're peeking into each room or figuring out puzzles everyone is speedrunning ahead.

First time through any dungeon I'm fine with playing my Rogue and following the Tank leader, then when I do duty roullete I play as my Tank since I know what to do.

Also the whole cutscenes in the middle of a dungeon are kinda bad because I'm watching the cutscenes since it's my first time going through but when I get out everyone's just been sitting and waiting for me to finish and I feel kinda bad about it.  I'm thinking maybe I should skip the cutscenes in dungeons and then go to an inn and watch them after.

That sounds a little higher than I remember. I did ROG / NIN from 1 - 60 without ever having done 2.1 - 2.5 or 3.0 in probably 2 months or so of a few hours a night. Maybe there's some 8 hour weekend days that I'm leaving out though.

This is very much an "enjoy the journey" game. Unless you want to join a static and raid, the end game gear grind isn't very interesting.

Yeah I've got no interest in endgame gear grind.   Also yeah, leveling is super easy.  I wouldn't be surprised if I hit 60 before I finish ARR 2.0.  The time is more do all the story quests.

[Positive Touch]

having cutscenes in dungeons was a shit idea and thankfully they mostly drop it after 2.0. the last two dungeons in 2.0 have like 45 minutes of cutscenes and so yeah you're gonna want to skip those and watch them in the Inn.

to use gathering classes, just use their ability that locates gathering nodes in the area. each map will only have a few sections to gather in, and those boxes will require a certain level needle you can see/use them. check your gatherers log to see what maps have low level nodes.

[Bebpo]

having cutscenes in dungeons was a shit idea and thankfully they mostly drop it after 2.0. the last two dungeons in 2.0 have like 45 minutes of cutscenes and so yeah you're gonna want to skip those and watch them in the Inn.

to use gathering classes, just use their ability that locates gathering nodes in the area. each map will only have a few sections to gather in, and those boxes will require a certain level needle you can see/use them. check your gatherers log to see what maps have low level nodes.

Ah, I'm guessing the lvl.1 needle I had wouldn't show me any spots in the areas like the mine in Limsa that has lvl.7-9 bats in it.  I gotta faq where the lvl.1 locations are.

In the lvl.1-30, it sure seems like just doing the MSQ gives enough XP for like 2 full jobs.  I switch back and forth between my Rogue and Gladiator and by the time MSQ hits 30 I'm pretty sure both will be 30 or above.  Which is nice, cause I enjoy the option of having a tank around to switchup from DPS stabbin.  I guess I'm going to take my Gladiator to Paladin.  I'd rather do a Warrior job from the job descriptions because it sounds like Warrior does way more damage than Paladin and my Gladiator already feels weak as hell in ATK, but that means bringing my Marauder up from lvl.4-30 (although I guess I gotta get it from 4-15 for Paladin, but that should be like an hour) and I don't really feel like taking a break from the story to bring another job up a ton.  So I'll stick with Paladin & Ninja as I go through the MSQ.  Might add in one of the new Heavensward jobs too since they start at 30. 

After I hit 60 with my Paladin & Ninja it might be time to work on some other jobs like Warrior and a Healer class.

[Positive Touch]

gotta be in Ishgard to unlock the three newer classes sorry bro

[Bebpo]

Noooooooooooooo

gotta be in Ishgard to unlock the three newer classes sorry bro

And you can't go there until you finish the MSQ for 2.5, right?

[Positive Touch]

yuuuup

[Freyj]

It's worth the wait / build up, story wise.

[Bebpo]

Yeah I don't really mind, wasn't set on any of those jobs.  Although it sounds like Stormblood's Samurai might be more what I wanted out of Ninja.  I'm still kinda bummed Ninja is dual-wielding.  Ninjas use ninja swords!  Not daggers!  At least everything else with a ninja seems cool.  And the Rogue class storyline is great so far, Captain Jack and his Rogue crew are more memorable NPCs than anyone in the main story so far.

[Freyj]

You'll get plenty of swords with Ninja. I can't remember the last time mine were more dagger than sword.

[Bebpo]

Figured out the mining/botany.  You know ideally I'd like to have these both running on my battle character while I'm cruising the world questing so if I see a botany/mining spot I just switch and grab it and then continue on.  I think I can do that since both prospect commands go under cross-skill traits though I lose two slots. 

Also I read about how the way to level these gathering classes is through leves, but since leves don't start until level 5, the early levels are both pretty slow.  Got Mining to lvl.3 and Botany to lvl.2, eventually will get them to lvl.5 and then do tradeleves.

Got to Southern Thanalan desert now.  I've started to do more and more of the "!" non-essential quests at each location along the way of the story because now that I'm getting a feel for the world I like how they flesh out each stop more.  Plus the XP ain't bad and they're quick and easy.  I really enjoy how many camps/small towns there are in the game.  At first I was worried with only 3 cities and a surrounding area for each the world wouldn't be very interesting or well populated.  But there's definitely a lot out there.  I zoomed out the maps and looked at the world map and now 50+ hours in I finally have an idea of how it all fits together into one big cohesive world.  Very cool.

[Bebpo]

New questions:

1.  A lot of times when I move out of the AoE attack that's incoming I still get hit even if I moved well before the attack started.  What's up with that?

2.  I know you said you can't make your chocobo move faster, but are there faster mounts I can get later?  Like the flying ones?  Also I'm guessing Chocobo Companion is a later story quest unlock because I can't use him as a companion right now.

3.  What's the best ways to get Ventures for your venture expeditions?  Buy them from the GC for 200 each? 

4.  What's the best way to make GC money?  Doing GC leves?  I take out the hunting log enemies wherever I find them.

5.  What should I be doing with my ventures?  It seems like they can only level as far as you've taken a job, so I have 1 venture as a rogue like me and doing field explorations and leveling.  The other venture I dunno what to do with yet.


Oh, I like how the challenge log resets every 10 days.  That's going to be really helpful for getting MGP in the Golden Saucer.  I'm up to 23 cards now in Triple Triad.  Trying to get to 30 so I get the next rank and can make better decks.  Might try playing humans at that point.

[Freyj]

1. The telegraph is generally the indicator of when you need to be out of something. When it disappears, if you were still inside or clipping its boundaries you are going to get hit. You have to factor in latency with that to a degree I believe, but just make sure you're well out of the telegraph before it disappears.

2. Flying stuff is HW. Companion quest is level 30.

3-5 dunno

[Bebpo]

Also do people actually run low on TP?  Because as a Rogue I've got this skill to restore 200 TP to a teammate but I've never used it as everyone always has full TP.  Does this come into play more in endgame?

[Freyj]

Happens with tanks more often than not. Throw Goad on them if you see them dip low and they'll appreciate it. Not something a lot of NINs worry about I guess.

As a NIN, you'll easily run low on TP AoEing and in long fights, but you should have Invigorate for self TP heal.

[Positive Touch]

you get gc seals from fates, hunts, pvp, and you can trade in unique gear for seals. fuck leves. you can get ventures all over; i never went out of my way to get them but I have a million somehow.

[Bebpo]

you get gc seals from fates, hunts, pvp, and you can trade in unique gear for seals. fuck leves. you can get ventures all over; i never went out of my way to get them but I have a million somehow.

Oh, I've noticed that Battleleves give Venture coins now.

Also btw, I noticed that when I do a Leve, sometimes there are treasure coffers with legit great loot on par with unique chests in dungeons at my level range.  My tank's helmet I've used for the last two days of play was from a treasure coffer on a battleleve in Eastern Shroud.  It's pretty cool and I wish non-leve questing had treasures spawn as well.

I dunno, endgame everyone harps on battleves are lame, bad and dumb, but 50 hours+ in going 1-30 battleleves are pretty good for me so /shrug

[Bebpo]

Got Miner up to level 8.  Grinding gathering classes to higher levels is really boring.  At least with fishing it's kind of relaxing if you like fishing in rpgs and just like the sim aspect of throwing down a line when you see a river, pulling up a chair and seeing what you can catch.  Miner is literally, hit button 200 times to level up since you get like 100xp per hit and even the leves don't give that much and are really boring to do.  I'm assuming Botanist is exactly the same.  Yawn.

Will hit lvl.30 tomorrow with my Rogue and maybe Gladiator.  They're 29/27 right now (I make sure to keep the Rogue at least 1 level higher so the Gladiator gets the +100% xp bonus).  Now getting to the lvl.30 story MSQ where I get to unlock my jobs might take 2 days, since I just arrived at Northern Shroud and MSQ is about lvl.28 now.

[Lucretius]

New questions:

1.  A lot of times when I move out of the AoE attack that's incoming I still get hit even if I moved well before the attack started.  What's up with that?

2.  I know you said you can't make your chocobo move faster, but are there faster mounts I can get later?  Like the flying ones?  Also I'm guessing Chocobo Companion is a later story quest unlock because I can't use him as a companion right now.

3.  What's the best ways to get Ventures for your venture expeditions?  Buy them from the GC for 200 each? 

4.  What's the best way to make GC money?  Doing GC leves?  I take out the hunting log enemies wherever I find them.

5.  What should I be doing with my ventures?  It seems like they can only level as far as you've taken a job, so I have 1 venture as a rogue like me and doing field explorations and leveling.  The other venture I dunno what to do with yet.


Oh, I like how the challenge log resets every 10 days.  That's going to be really helpful for getting MGP in the Golden Saucer.  I'm up to 23 cards now in Triple Triad.  Trying to get to 30 so I get the next rank and can make better decks.  Might try playing humans at that point.

1.  The ground indicator is what matters. If you're still in the INDICATOR when it disappears, you will be hit. The attack ANIMATION doesn't cause damage (with very few exceptions). This also means that (again with a few exceptions), once the ground indicator disappears you can go back to that area before/during the attack animation and you will not be hit.

2. Flying mounts are faster but only when they are flying.

3.  Buy them with GC Seals or from Leves.

4.  Best way to get GC Seals is by turning in extra loot you collect from dungeons.

5.  Use the ventures to level your retainers. Once they're max level keep sending them on exploration ventures and sell the stuff they bring back on the market board. I don't like crafting, so my main source of Gil is by selling stuff my retainers bring back. Stock up on unused ventures for later when you'll be wanting to use GC Seals to by other things.

[Bebpo]

Alright, got my NINja, that was a lot of work.  Also at first my ninja seems kinda weaker because I lose out on all the cross-class skills outside Puglist (most helpful was Marauders DEF+20% buff), and the only NIN thing I get at the start is a flaming ninja star that is just an ok little bit of extra damage every 20 seconds.  Some of the SP quests are getting kinda tough around lvl.30, the first Ninja quest was rough since I don't have a lot of heals/defense buffs.

I read up a little on jobs and it makes sense now, the jobs are basically lvl.2 upgrades to the classes that just require you to grind another class to lvl.15 as a hurdle.  Reading up on the jobs available most make sense but a few are weird.  Like why would someone whose playing an archer and really into attacking DPS from range want to necessarily change to a support spell job?  Doesn't seem to flow imo.  Also strange that Archanist gets 2 jobs it can transition to and none of the other initial classes get that.


Oh, what's the fastest way to increase my rank within my GC?  Because there's a Ninja weapon that's +4 or +5 over the best lvl.30 weapons you can buy and that's a pretty huge increase.  I have more than enough seals to buy it but I'm still the lowest rank and so I don't have access as it's greyed out.  Should I just grind some GC leves quick to rank up?

[Freyj]

The class to job thing is a 1.0 leftover that sort of makes sense sometimes but not always. Archer to Bard is one of those weird areas. Ranger is the clear missing job there.

The support / hybrid classes from XI and back are implemented sometimes in odd ways to make them work in a more traditional MMO trinity of clear cut tank, healer and dps roles. Red Mage will be similar.

[Positive Touch]

I'm trying to remember how to level up in a gc but I'm just drawing a big ol blank

[Bebpo]

Actually, I accidentally found it when I was at the GC desk.  There is a promotion option and you just buy it with seals.  So now I know what to spend my seals on.  Need to get to lvl.4 to buy the lvl.30 daggers.
On the "trade in stuff" for company seals, I have no idea where to get anything on the list so I guess you gotta just wiki it.

I tried dying my armor because it was fugly, but kinda annoyed that if your armor has 2 color schemes to it, as far as I could tell you can only change the color of one of the schemes?  So I died my armor from ugly brown to black but now it's black/brown still ><  Also, the marketplace board is so weird.  Some stuff is a little pricey (bought 30 buckets of black dye for like $20,000) whereas some stuff is like $300,000+ for dinky shit like jet black dye.  I've got about 100,000 gil now.  I think I'm saving up to buy a room at the FC for 300,000 and that's my next money goal since it's not like I need money for anything else.

Almost up to rank 2 in Triple Triad, have 27 unique cards now and need 30 get to the next rank.  Will try playing humans after that point.  Some of these NPCs are fucking ridiculous.


So I did my first dungeon as a Ninja (lvl.28 Haunted Mansion) and I got matched with a party of all first-timers.  It was the best.  Like it was such a different experience than any dungeon I've done to this point.  The four of us talked a lot, we had no idea where to go and explored all the rooms, we made strategies before going into a boss, everyone was super nice and it was a great time.  I feel like when I normally do dungeons and there's a couple lvl.60 people doing it for the 30th time on a daily roulette they're just speedrunning it and the only time they'll talk is "hi", "gg" or yelling at you if you mess up.  While I understand I'm 4 years+ late to this party, playing with people fresh to a dungeon/boss is really refreshing and I hope I get more of it throughout my FFXIV experience.

Hey PT, when I joined the FC some of the regulars were like "we have xmas stuff in the company chest" which I thought was like an invite to taking some items, but when I went to the company chest I don't have permission to take anything out only put stuff in.  How does it work?  Is the chest just to stack up an inventory of a billion things and not to actually help out any of the members?

Speaking of items, so many of the cool seasonal event items are like level 1 so they're useless.  Is there a way at some point to merge the stats of a piece of equipment to a different piece so that you can make cool looking outifts?  Sometimes I have real shitty outfits because stats.

[Positive Touch]

yeah our fc chest is set to deposit only for some reason. maybe they want people to ask before taking something? i dunno but I'll check.

 at level 45 or 50 you get the ability to make armor look like other armor so you can actually wear holiday stuff in dungeons and whatnot.

[Positive Touch]

Stormblood will also have samurai and ?.?? playable

[Bebpo]

Got Miner up to level 8.  Grinding gathering classes to higher levels is really boring.  At least with fishing it's kind of relaxing if you like fishing in rpgs and just like the sim aspect of throwing down a line when you see a river, pulling up a chair and seeing what you can catch.  Miner is literally, hit button 200 times to level up since you get like 100xp per hit and even the leves don't give that much and are really boring to do.  I'm assuming Botanist is exactly the same.  Yawn.

Will hit lvl.30 tomorrow with my Rogue and maybe Gladiator.  They're 29/27 right now (I make sure to keep the Rogue at least 1 level higher so the Gladiator gets the +100% xp bonus).  Now getting to the lvl.30 story MSQ where I get to unlock my jobs might take 2 days, since I just arrived at Northern Shroud and MSQ is about lvl.28 now.

The whole (kinda hidden) point of gathering classes is just leveling up and sometimes collecting materials that are your level for quick cash.

 The whole magic is getting a miner/botanist retainer and they'll fetch those materials for you for a cheap price and in huge sums. Depending on your level you can get materials faster (30 mins AKA ~a dungeon instead of an hour) or more plentiful. If you want to craft or make lots of $ you just level up and snag all the things you want /once/ and your retainer will end up giving you crystals/items that you need like crazy. Depending on the server, the market usually doesn't account for a few materials... so items can sell for a decent price and you do almost nothing but spend a very small amount of seals.

 You can make BANK doing that, and many people don't take advantage of that and rather do the more expensive, and a lot more risky and time consuming, explorations.

 It's a little known secret, at least on my server.
 
 There's money to be had in getting mats for early level and then you can work your way up to getting materials for end-game millionaires for dirt cheap.

  Another secret way to make money, that nobody takes advantage of and is usually kept hush-hush, is that you can buy expensive mat materials in your FC for 8-20 gil a pop and sell them for a couple hundred. Just make sure not to flood the market and ruin it for yourself/others, just do a single listing of x99 mats that you see are really profitable. It'll help you out early in the game.

 Not sure how it is on your server, but the market price of Bride/Groom gear is relatively cheap in a small shop in Uldah but it sells on the market for a lot. Throwing up a listing for a few items isn't a bad idea. Just make sure to click the "sales" button to see how often people buy materials for/for how much etc. to see when you'll make back your money and for how much it goes for... sometimes even the lowest price can be ridiculous and you can take advantage of it.

Thanks for the info.  At the point where I am in the game I really don't have any interest in making money.  Like I have a ton of crafting items but I'm just storing them all with my retainer in case I ever need them for crafting.  When I do sell stuff I just go and sell it at an NPC merchant.  I know I could make way more on the market but it's not worth the effort because there's nothing I really "need" that costs money other than teleport fees.  So I just keep saving up more and more.  I'll probably by a room just because I have nothing else to spend money on and it'll give me furniture and stuff to buy when I have money and nothing to spend it on.  I don't really care about having the best gear or anything, I'm just playing through the story.

And yeah people sell regular shit for crazy prices on the market cause I guess everyone is rich and don't care.  I needed a princess trout for my lvl 5 culinary quest so I thought the quickest way would be the market.  Looked and the cheapest was 20,000 Gil for like 13.  Then I went to the fish seller npc in town and bought it for 10 gil @_@

Got triple triad to rank 2, which should be helpful for beating all the npcs.  Went to the battlehall but there was no other players around.  I read online how the triple triad tournaments are busy because everyone cheats.  Guess I'll stick to beating the NPCs meta-game.  Though a lot of NPCs have bullshit decks beyond what a player can have.

Spent the rest of the night grinding my Maurader from lvl.4->12.  My Gladiator is almost at 30 and now that I have my Ninja next is getting my Paladin so gotta get Maraud to 15.  This kinda boring.  Requiring a second class at 15 is a pretty lame forced grind in retrospect.

Story-wise I'm at the going after Titan part.


Also my strange story for the night is when I was in Limsa Lomina fishing and overhear these public channel conversation where someone comes in and asks what Hyperion server is known for because they are thinking about moving their character to it, and someone says ERP and there is this whole conversation about harems on Hyperion and I had no idea what ERP was so I googled it and 

[Bebpo]

At this point I can definitely see how MMOs offer different experiences for people.  I can see how some people can role play, socially interact and live a virtual second life in an mmo.  Others I can see being a hang out location with friends in an FC.

For me, despite being an MMO, FFXIV is just another rpg I play, like the dozen others I play each year.  It's a bit slower, a bit more grindy, and the cutscenes are kinda weak, but it's got a cool fun dungeons with strangers system, lots of towns and quests and a good sized world to explore.

But I'm pretty much just exploring it on my own.  I talk to most NPCs, I do lots of little quests, I buy and sell all my stuff at the merchants or use leves.  I check off boxes with hunting & crafting logs.  I level up jobs out of curiosity to see how they play or for their class story lines.  Yeah I see people running around, but it feels more like a Dark Souls kinda experience for me where they are just background noise.  It's basically a single player rpg with multi-player dungeons that I'm cool with thanks to great match-making.  I don't really see that changing for me.  I'll go through the story, do a chunk of the side content, watch the credits and then call it a day and go on to the next rpg.  Then I'll come back for the next DLC or expansion and do it again.  I don't ever see myself hanging out and just socializing with people in it.  I have a hard enough time trying to juggle between moving on a controller and occasionally typing on a kb in dungeons.  I'm always doing something when I'm playing the game (either combat or triple triad or running to a location) so I never really have time to stop and chat.  But I'm glad FFXIV is built in a way to be both for online social gaming/mmo people and for people who just want to run through the story/explore the world&lore as a single player rpg with occasional matchmaking.

Game still feels about an 8/10 single player rpg so far.  I'm enjoying it.  Story & characters are kinda bland, world is good but it's no Xenoblade, dungeons & party-based combat is great, but solo combat is grindy & kinda bland.  Some great music but needs more tracks.  Excellent casino.

[Bebpo]

About to get my Paladin.  At lvl.30 and doing the class quests now.  Is Paladin going to be more interesting/fun to play as than Gladiator?  Because after doing 15 levels of Marauder, Marauder is way more fun than Gladiator because you're actually doing damage.  I feel like with my Gladiator I'm just a standing shield and it's kinda boring.  Otoh, I can see Marauder having difficulties staying alive, but glass cannons are more fun to play.  Then again, when you're supposed to be the leader tank for the party, maybe that's not such a great idea since if you die everyone gets fucked.

Hoping Paladin has a more interesting range of skills beyond just "grab all the enemies attention and stand there buffing and doing pidly damage", otherwise I might be really tempted to get my Marauder from 15->30 and be a Warrior job.  I enjoy playing Tank a lot, but Gladiator is just a fairly boring tank.

[Positive Touch]

i mean isn't that what a tank is in general? your damage sucks but you have amazing defense so you can take all the hits while other teammates kill the enemies.

[Bebpo]

But like,can't they make it fun? 

I mean if I play a Paladin in Diablo or a diablo-like or in a single player FF game, I got some cool shit.  Wasn't Cecil a Paladin in FF4?  And you didn't just stand still and absorb damage.

[Bebpo]

Also, I don't want to imply that Gladiator isn't fun.  I wouldn't still be playing one 60+ hours in if it wasn't, I'd be sticking to my Rogue/Ninja.  I like being the Tank leader grabbing all the enemies attention and fighting them all.  It's getting harder and harder to keep enemies on me because my allies are getting really strong so they pull enemies off me.  So it's a challenge and rewarding to keep everyone safe.  It's a thankful job as people appreciate it when you swoop in and pull an enemy off them. 

I just want to do a "little" more damage and have some more interesting support/offensive stuff.  Kinda hoping Paladin brings a little of that.  When I was googling I found this:

http://puu.sh/lUN4Y/7c008c9047.png

and trying to read that and understand it, it seems like Paladin gets some cool shit later on.

[Lucretius]

Paladin does the least damage of all the tanks. It's also the simplest to play. Like even at level 60, Paladin is stupid easy. Warrior is the Man Mode Tank and does the most damage of all the tanks.

[Freyj]

I've never played one but I've always heard Paladin was the less fun of the two.

[Bebpo]

So I found out the Paladin's requirements weren't lvl.30 Gladiator/lvl.15 Marauder like I thought I read early on when looking at jobs, but instead it's lvl.30 Gladiator/lvl.15 Conjurer -_-  So after spending all yesterday night getting Marauder to lvl.15 in Limsa, I spent all tonight getting Conjurer from 1->15 in Gridania.  And man, Conjurer is not a fun class to level up in those starting levels since it only has TWO attacks (Aero weak AoE, and Stone).  I did allllll the quests I could find under lvl.15 to get the xp from quests.  I'd have my lvl.32 Ninja go and kill all the enemies and then my Conjurer turn in and get the xp, but even doing that, the Rank 1 hunting log, the lvl.1 and lvl.5 and lvl.10 class quests, the two lvl.10 guildheists and most of the Rank 2 hunting log (the last few entries are lvl.21+ and fuck trying to beat those with a lvl.12-13 conjurer with only stone for attack)...I still had to pain in the ass grind a bunch of FATES (which were actually really fun when I found ones other people were doing) and a couple Levequests.

Was just a pain in the butt.  Looking at it, Conjurer has got to be the least fun job to level early on since it's essentially the weakest offense class, yet you can't level by like healing or anything so you gotta go and kill stuff and Conjurer sucks at that.  I think there's two ways to have made this better.  One is to have waited until I got my companion chocobo and then I could have it attack and help me out on low level fates as a Conjurer, Two is to have made friends, because when you're running Fates with other people it's easy and tons of fun.  But it's hard finding active fates in your level consistently.  I guess if I was in an FC that was bigger I could ask people online in the FC if they wouldn't mind coming and helping me level my Conjurer, but I dunno the etiquette about that stuff.  I did help out the FC me and PT are in because one of the members wanted to speedrun Palace of the Dead for pure xp grind so I joined him with my Ninja for a bit.

But at the end of the day got my lvl.15 Conj and my Paladin, so while I could level up Marauder from 15->30 to get the more fun & high damage tank that is the Warrior class, after taking 2 full nights and about a 10 hour sidetrack from the main story, I'm done fucking grinding for a while.  So I'll enjoy my Ninja & Paladin and I guess at this point all that's left is to finish up the MSQ and the remaining class quests for 2.0. 

[Bebpo]

Seriously, I'm sooooooooooooo over grinding low level classes right now.  At this point I have everything combat to 15 except Lancer, Archer, Archanist.  Maybe months from now when I'm doing the 2.1-2.5 content or Heavensward I'll do them as well since it only takes like a full evening/night to do each from lvl.1, but yeah I'm good.

See when you hit lvl.15+ and you can at least do guildheists and dungeons it's fun.  Because at the end of the day my takeaway from MMOs is that leveling is fun with other players and post-lvl.15 it's relatively easy to do a lot of that.  But 1-15 is rough.  At least I finally got to explore the early level locales in Gridania since all my jobs had been in Limsa and Ul'Dah and I'd only seen the Gridania higher level areas.

[Bebpo]

So I got my Chocobo companion and the quest talking about feeding the chocobo and stables got me googling the housing metagame.  From what I can tell, there's a bunch of useful stuff locked behind housing, however because you can buy a room in an FC, you can buy & access a lot of the stuff from within your room.  Like since you can't garden in our FC because we don't have permission to harvest, it looks like if you have your own room you can buy a flower pot and still grow feed for your chocobo.  Hmmm, also saw you can't buy your own room until lvl.50 and end of 2.0 story.  Will probably try to make that happen at that point so I have access to some of this metagame stuff like gardening and furniture.

Otoh, I sorta feel joining someone else's FC sucks.  They don't know you so they restrict all access to everything and basically you don't get to experience most of the housing stuff.  I feel like it'd almost be better to start our own FC and have a Bore house that we can all use with no restrictions.  I'm guessing that stuff costs a lot of gil so you need a lot of people contributing.  I'm kind of curious to check out some other FCs to see if they're all like the one PT & I are in, or if some of the other ones are setup differently and give you more access to the housing side.

I actually kinda like my Paladin.  It's nice for Fates or missions where my Ninja dies too easily.  Having a big hefty tank that can almost not die is sorta useful as the game ramps up difficulty a little.  Also now that I have chocobo companions I can have my chocobo attack for extra damage, or when playing ninja have my chocobo heal.  I'm also starting to grow fond of starting every Ninja battle with a giant flaming ninja star from a distance.  Definitely feel pretty OP with my 2 real jobs now + chocobo, blowing through the MSQ pretty quick and having a good time.  Still doing most of the small sidequests at each stop because hey why not.  Otherwise you're just in a place for a couple MSQs and then you never see it again, might as well do the small quests that give incentive to explore around a bit. 

Was thinking because of all the side-tracking that the MSQ is gonna take like 120+ hours, but idk, I'm going pretty quick now and I think I might finish it by 100 hours.  At 75 hours now, and MSQ is about lvl.32/50 but moving and ramping up levels quick.

Story in this game btw feels really light.  Like everything I hear about FFXV not having a lot of story, and mainly just being running around doing quests in big maps and monster hunts...sounds exactly like FFXIV!    The 75 hours of MSQ I've played so far would probably be like the first 20-30 hours of a normal story-based rpg (Start out, go on small quests, meet the Scions group, primal arc 1, primal arc 2, sidetracking masked dude, primal arc 3...)

[Positive Touch]

tbh i think you have more battle classes leveled than i so already lol!

[Freyj]

They had to focus in 2.0 on making a modern, accessible and fun MMO first. I'm not sure many expected them to be able to do so with how poorly 1.0 was received. The turn around of an MMO is almost unheard of. Most just slowly die.

The story beats improve a lot as the patches move on.

[Lucretius]

The story patches lead into Heavensward which is arguably the best FF story ever.
Also the story for the 2.XX raid (the Binding Coil of Bahamut) is way cooler than the main story.

[Bebpo]

PT helped me out tonight!  Was fun

Also at this point lvl.35 in the MSQ, the xp gain is starting to be not really enough through nothing but MSQ so uh I'm ditching my Paladin and doing my daily roulette with my main Ninja each day until I beat the MSQ, then if I'm still playing I'm bring my Paladin up from 32->50 with daily roulletes, quests and palace of the dead.

They had to focus in 2.0 on making a modern, accessible and fun MMO first. I'm not sure many expected them to be able to do so with how poorly 1.0 was received. The turn around of an MMO is almost unheard of. Most just slowly die.

The story beats improve a lot as the patches move on.

Yeah, this makes a lot of sense.

So uh, I'm still watching all the cutscenes in dungeons and they're getting longer and longer.  I feel kinda bad because everyone is just waiting there for me when I get out.  I probably should start skipping them now, post-Titan and watching them in the Inn, right?  Even though that kinda kills the actual progression of the story.

[Bebpo]

Had a really nice night session.  Did Qarn optional dungeon and had a great party and it was really fun and the puzzle bosses were cool.  We all wiped on the first boss because of its DOOM attack.  Then I went and hung out at the FC and had a nice chat with one of the FC leaders about various stuff, learned some good tips for fishing.  Did some fishing, some more fishing, got my fishing up from lvl.5->13.  Sometime in the night the FC gave me a promotion up a rank and now I have access to the item box which is cool.  Did some fates, a few quests.  Oh and finished the Maelstrom Rank 1 hunting log and got to Rank 4 in the starting group and got my lvl.30 Storm Sergant Ninja Blades.  Need 5,000 seals to get to the next group of ranks in the GC.

Oh and best of all I did the lvl.35 Ninja quest and got my FIRST AOE ATTACK and it's a huge fucking explosion which is absolutely rad.  Had a lot of fun running Qarn exploding groups constantly or sending lightning down on a single enemy for my strongest attack yet in the game.  Ninja is now AWESOME to play as.  Also got some nice lvl.35 Paladin loot in Qarn so when my Paladin gets up there that'll be nice.

But yeah, lots of fishing.  Fishing is great.  I wish Mining/Botany was this fun.

[Bebpo]

Alright, so getting near the 100 hour mark and at Cortheus I've started to enjoy the story and appreciate the world building a lot more.  I can't tell if it's more interesting or if I'm just much more into medieval (or modern/sci-fi) vs standard fantasy.  I'm enjoying doing lots of the small "!" sidequests and fleshing out the areas more.  I actually may end up doing every quest in the game outside the class quests because I have no plans to level every class to 60; After I "finish" FFXIV if the only quests I'm missing are the class quests I'll probably see if I can just youtube them because if I can watch a class questline on youtube for 30-60 minutes for the entire storyline rather than spend 20-50 hours powerleveling a class to 60, I'll go with youtube.  I'm planning on getting my Ninja & Paladin to 60 and maybe Fishing since I really enjoy it, but those are probably it until I get caught up with the current story. 

My Ninja's at 38 (MSQ just hit 37 so I'm safe there) and right now I'm picking my Paladin back up and doing all the lvl.31-35 sidequests in the areas prior.  At lvl.33 now.  I actually don't mind the idea of doing the MSQ solely with my Ninja so I never get behind, but then using my Paladin to do all the sidequests along the way. 

I definitely play a way better Ninja.  I'm actually pretty awesome at playing Ninja at this point imo; I kick a lot of ass and people seem to like it when I'm in a team.  Otoh, Paladin is tough.  In the 30s my allies are strong enough to continually be pulling mobs away from me and keeping all the mobs on me and centered is really hard when the only AoE aggro I have is the dumb flash move that doesn't even do any damage.  For 1 on 1 I'm fine, but big mobs are tough.  I'm noticing more people playing as Warrior for the tank when I play my Ninja and it seems to me like in the low 30s Warrior is easy to aggro enemy groups and keep them focused.

[Bebpo]

Hey, can someone give me a recruitment code before I subscribe for a few months?  We both get the +20%xp item if you do, right?  Will help for my lower level classes so might as well.

[Valkyrie]

Does it matter if we're not on the same server?

[Bebpo]

Doesn't matter.  You just get a code from your account services on mognet and then I enter it and we both get some items.

[Valkyrie]

Doesn't matter.  You just get a code from your account services on mognet and then I enter it and we both get some items.

I tried finding it, but it's not there. Maybe I can't do it since my own account is a part of an invite thing already? (I used my friend's code.)

Edit: Probably won't work since my sub ran out. lol

[Positive Touch]

I'll do it with you chubs

[Bebpo]

I'll do it with you chubs

Thanks.  I've got 10 days left on my free trial so I'll be buying a month soon.  I looked and since I never plan to make more than 1 character it seems like the "entry" sub for $12.99/month is the way to go.  I guess you can just like PM me the code when it's convenient.

[Bebpo]

Been starting to talk to people in the community about tanking and trying different things out.  Generally doing fine, but on a controller I find cycling enemies & allies just total shit to do quickly on the fly when crazy things are happening and I start to panic when I can't target the right thing real fast and it's getting away on aggro towards party members.  I tried out KB+M and wow, after like 100 hours on controller it's really hard to adjust.  There's lots of good benefits like tab button cycling through enemies and just clicking on what you want with the mouse, but I'm finding the WASD movement and CTRL+1/2/3/4 hotbars tough to adjust to.  After like an hour with KB+M I went back to controller exclusively. 

I think I can play a good tank with a controller is I can just get the hang of cycling enemies real quick, marking enemies quick, and switching to target allies to use COVER (only reason I'd need to target an ally right now).  Otherwise I can fit everything into a couple hotbars and it's not bad.

With the default controllers, to switch an enemy while I'm fighting multiple mobs (something I constantly want to do to even out the aggro across the enemy group) I have to hold L2 or R2 while tapping R1/L1 to cycle.  There's also tapping left/right on the d-pad but it cycles through everything including allies and objects which is not good.  I wish I could just cycle with L1/R1 without having to be holding down a hotbar with R2 or L2.  I'm guessing there's an option for this because the game is insanely customizable, but because it is so customizable and it has a billion option menus it's always rough figuring out where something is hidden in the options.

The other advice I got for my rank was to up my item level on the right hand equip column of necklaces/earrings/rings/bracelets.  At lvl.36, most of those were still lvl.1 items with +1 to each stat.  So my item level was like 26.  I went to the AH and spent like 70,000 gil on the best VIT items and got my item level to 32, but basically the best items at lvl.36 right now are +2 VIT instead of my lvl.1 +1 VIT.  So despite going from 26-32 item level, all I got was like +4 or +5 VIT  out of it, and I lost some STR by doing it as well.  Doees +4/5 VIT really make much of a difference?  When my total VIT is like 220 or something that just seems so minimal I can't imagine it doing much /shrug  I'm kinda hoping I don't have to spend a lot more money to get through the 2.0 MSQ because that's when I can buy my own room for 300k and I'm saving up to hopefully be able to do that once I get to that point.  Had 220k gil, but now down to about 150k again.

I actually have the most fun playing Tank right now.  Like I said earlier I usually play glass cannon builds in games because I like exciting challenging gaming with high rewards.  Tank is kinda like that actually.  The glass part is that it's challenging and intense trying to keep aggro of all enemies at all times, and if you mess up instead of dying like a glass cannon build, you get shit on by your teammates.  The cannon/reward part is that if you run a good tank and keep everyone off your allies, people treat you well and are more friendly.  So it's pretty intense job but pulling it off is rewarding.  For solo content it kinda sucks but at least you're basically invincible lol

It'd be cool if sometime maybe some of the Bore linkshell could run a dungeon or guildheist or something to help me practice my tank more (like enemy cycling & marking).

[Lucretius]

up/down on d-pad targets party members based on the order they're displayed in the party list, which you can change.  For instance, when I was main tanking Turn 13 (coolest fight ever) as PLD, there was a part I'd always use Cover if a particular attack targeted one of my two melee DPS team mates.  So before the fight, I'd move the two melee DPS members up on the party list to just below me.  So it was always either one or two taps down to target auto target them and then I'd initiate Cover.

[Bebpo]

Yeah, thanks, I actually figured that out a bit ago.  So I get in the habit of Down on D-pad -> L2 (where I have my buffs & healing) + Cover button -> Left or Right on d-pad to realign and find the right enemy (still having issues here doing this quick) -> R2 + Flash/3-hit Aggro sword combo.

How do you move which position players appear on the up/down list though? 


My lvl.36 Paladin strategy right now (since I don't have my tank stance yet as I read that's lvl.40), is buffs/debuffs -> shield lob -> flash group -> flash group -> concentrate on an enemy with 3 hit enemity combo -> cycle to next enemy and do 3 hit combo -> cycle to next enemy and do 3 hit enemity combo.   And if any enemy starts pulling away during that I do quick cycle to that enemy -> Provoke -> Shield lob to try to get them back and then usually a flash to try to keep the others still aggro-ing and then back to my 3 hit combos to each enemy to keep them on me.

The hardest part is definitely the cycling between enemies.  I really gotta mess with my targetting options in the menus.

[Lucretius]

To edit the order of party members on PS4:
Push the Options Button --> Party --> Select the party member you want to move and press X --> move the player up or down and press X again to finalize.

btw, if an enemy gets away from you in a dungeon, don't chase after it.  Good DPS should know to run TO YOU to bring the enemy back to the group.

Sounds like you're doing pretty good.  Here's a skill that will definitely become essential for any tank as you keep playing: Snap Aggro.  Often times, in later dungeons and in Raids, an enemy will spawn mid fight (an "add").  They like to aggro the healers or ranged DPS and can wreck a party quickly if you don't take control quickly.  So... if you know an add is coming up (or if you're in an 8-man raid and need to tankswap), use Provoke in conjunction with a charged Rage of Halone (the third move in your aggro combo).  If I know an add is coming, I'll do a Fast Blade --> Savage Blade (the 1 and 2 of your three-move aggro combo) on the main monster and save the Rage of Halone for the new spawn which will try and aggro the healer.  Provoke and immediately hit the new enemy with Rage of Halone to establish snap aggro.  A more advanced way is to actually hit the Rage of Halone before the Provoke.  This works because in FFXIV, the aggro does not establish until the animation for the move is finished.  Rage of Halone has a relatively long animation.  So if you initiate Rage of Halone and immediately hit Provoke, the Provoke will take effect before the Halone animation is done.  Provoke takes you to one aggro point above the current highest party member's aggro.  And then when the Halone animation finishes, the Halone will give you a shit ton of enmity lead over the second place member on the aggro table.

[Bebpo]

To edit the order of party members on PS4:
Push the Options Button --> Party --> Select the party member you want to move and press X --> move the player up or down and press X again to finalize.

btw, if an enemy gets away from you in a dungeon, don't chase after it.  Good DPS should know to run TO YOU to bring the enemy back to the group.

Yeah, that's what I thought but one time I had a DPS who pulled off an enemy and wouldn't bring the enemy back to me and then gave me shit about letting him take damage :|

Sounds like you're doing pretty good.  Here's a skill that will definitely become essential for any tank as you keep playing: Snap Aggro.  Often times, in later dungeons and in Raids, an enemy will spawn mid fight (an "add").  They like to aggro the healers or ranged DPS and can wreck a party quickly if you don't take control quickly.  So... if you know an add is coming up (or if you're in an 8-man raid and need to tankswap), use Provoke in conjunction with a charged Rage of Halone (the third move in your aggro combo).  If I know an add is coming, I'll do a Fast Blade --> Savage Blade (the 1 and 2 of your three-move aggro combo) on the main monster and save the Rage of Halone for the new spawn which will try and aggro the healer.  Provoke and immediately hit the new enemy with Rage of Halone to establish snap aggro.  A more advanced way is to actually hit the Rage of Halone before the Provoke.  This works because in FFXIV, the aggro does not establish until the animation for the move is finished.  Rage of Halone has a relatively long animation.  So if you initiate Rage of Halone and immediately hit Provoke, the Provoke will take effect before the Halone animation is done.  Provoke takes you to one aggro point above the current highest party member's aggro.  And then when the Halone animation finishes, the Halone will give you a shit ton of enmity lead over the second place member on the aggro table.

Thanks, yeah I read a guide that said provoke -> shield throw to put you on top of the enemy's aggro list & then add +1 aggro to get the enemy to come back to you.  It sounds like your Rage of Halone method is better because it probably adds like +3 or something aggro when the new enemy spawns.

I'm looking forward to the Raids when all this strategy comes into play.  I hear about all these epic moments and wipes and people watching videos to learn strategy for Raids, but like so far my experience with FFXIV up through almost lvl.40 has just been "run up to a bunch of enemies and bash them while the tank keeps them occupied" and you win.  Like there hasn't been much strategy besides Qarn where you're making the stone heads fall on spots to open doors or the first boss where you run on glowing spots to get rid of the Doom status.  Also people occasionally wipe (even I've died here and there) but we just respawn and take the shortcut and end up back in the same place so it doesn't really matter.  Like the game is so player friendly at this point still 100 hours in that there's no real deeper strategy wall.

But it sounds like when you get to the lvl.60+ stuff where the current endgame is, shit gets real.  Definitely looking forward to that, but it'll be a while still.  From what I understand the lvl.50+ 2.1-2.5 stuff used to be epic challenge shit gets real, but then with lvl.60 now it's easy.  And the current lvl.60+ 3.1-3.5 crazy challenge stuff will become easy once Stormblood is out in June and brings the levels to 70.  So hopefully I catch up and get to try the 3.1-3.5 hard challenging intense stuff before Stormblood nerfs it.

[Lucretius]

Yarp.  I don't really have time to raid these days.  But if you have the time and a good group of people to raid with, it can be super fun.

[Bebpo]

So as I'm getting closer the end of the original game, I'm wondering how the post-game works.  It seems like the whole thing is item level based after 50, right?  And I'm guessing that means you can't do dungeons/trials or turn in quests unless you are at the required item level just like you can't with normal levels in the main game.  Now my question then, is can you play from the end of 2.0 -> the current 3.4's MSQ storyline through without grinding with one character if you just want to enjoy the story, dungeons and trails?  Or at some point in that sequence you have to start grinding to get equipment to increase your item level so you can do the next MSQ?

I see lots and lots of talk in the FC about running dungeons over and over and collecting lore to use to buy items to increase item level.  I like FFXIV and I really want to play through all the MSQ stuff, but I really don't want to grind for long periods of time.  Hoping the grind is just for like hard/extreme mode optional stuff?

*edit* reading up on it, it seems like if you don't mind being 3-6 months behind the latest content, they make it easy to get the stuff that was previously time intensive to get 3-6 months ago, and that the big time grind is really just to get strong enough to take on the highest challenge stuff at the time of release until the next update.  If that's the case then I'm ok with that and I'm ok with always being 3-6 months behind.  Heck, I'm like 4 years behind on the content I'm on and still having fun.

[Joe Molotov]

Just realized that I bought FFXIV for the PS4 like two years ago and then never played it. Should I play it? I still have a free month.

[Lucretius]

You don't need to grind for endgame tomes (currency) if you're not going to raid. Once you hit level 51, you'll be able to get decent gear for free from chests in dungeons commensurate with your level. And at 52, you can start buying gear from merchants with regular old Gil.

That being said, the best level 50 gear (either farmed from the Final Coil of Bahamut or bought with Tomes of Poetics in Mor Dhona) is so good that it will be better than anything you can buy or get in dungeons until around level 55 or so. A lot of people will never upgrade their gear until level 60 if they've already got the best-in-slot level 50 gear.

[Bebpo]

You don't need to grind for endgame tomes (currency) if you're not going to raid. Once you hit level 51, you'll be able to get decent gear for free from chests in dungeons commensurate with your level. And at 52, you can start buying gear from merchants with regular old Gil.

That being said, the best level 50 gear (either farmed from the Final Coil of Bahamut or bought with Tomes of Poetics in Mor Dhona) is so good that it will be better than anything you can buy or get in dungeons until around level 55 or so. A lot of people will never upgrade their gear until level 60 if they've already got the best-in-slot level 50 gear.

What about if you want to do the raids but don't want to grind 

I'm guessing if I get up to lvl.60 from HW MSQ, I can do the lvl.50 raids?  Will I also be able to do Alexander normal?  I don't care if I'm locked out of hard/extreme.  But I do want to experience the raids.

[Lucretius]

Loot drops from the current level 60 Expert dungeons will give you high enough iLevel to enter the first two tiers of Alexander normal mode. The current (third) normal mode of Alexander has a minimum item level that will require at least gear from Lore Tomes or a combination of Lore gear and gear dropped from the most recent 24-man raid, which shouldn't take too much grinding to get. Basically if you're running enough dungeons to fully equip your character with dungeon loot drops, you should be swimming in Lore Tomes by then anyway since the expert dungeons give Lore generously.