Final Fantasy XIV (Guide in first post)

Couple of questions regarding HW:
1) Any point in doing the x10 levequests, besides maybe speed ? I feel like the reward (exp, cash, items) is worst, like you would get at least twice more doing 10 levequests separately
2) I get the feeling that mobs in zones (i.e. not in dungeons) aren't dropping anything (I think I got one skin drop during a levequest, after killing dozens of mobs around). Am I wrong ?

Speaking of cutscenes, I got to Som al (or w/e) last night and was immediately told to skip the cutscenes by the tank. I kindly told the dude why he was a tool and just dipped as the que was almost instant and I was sleepy anyway. I don't know how lengthy the cutscenes are in that zone, but the xpack has been out 8 days officially. Are you really in that much of a hurry? Some people just love racing to a red light.

StoiCynic_sl said:

Speaking of cutscenes, I got to Som al (or w/e) last night and was immediately told to skip the cutscenes by the tank. I kindly told the dude why he was a tool and just dipped as the que was almost instant and I was sleepy anyway. I don't know how lengthy the cutscenes are in that zone, but the xpack has been out 8 days officially. Are you really in that much of a hurry? Some people just love racing to a red light.

Click to expand...

The cutscenes in Sohm Al are short, that guy can blow you.

Anything new to do with GC seals? After barding and such?

Needless_sl said:

hmm.. seems like people are saying DRKs are quite bad at 60 compared to PLD and WAR? perhaps i should just do a healer as an alt lol. I wanna spam holy on aoe packs!

Click to expand...

Holy got nerfed. 10% less damage for each additional mob up to 50% dmg on 6+

It's still good to pop it 3x (insta-cast the first for the quick stun, then DR kicks in hard on the second/3rd) because it is still a decentish AE, just not pure god-mode like before.

I'm not sure what's up with Drks, but even chain healing them with mind'd/blessed cure 2s(with regen on them), they have a bad habit of dying on that 4 bee/tree pull, and then you normally need to benev so they don't die before the walking dead thing wears off.

But it's not every drk, and I'm not sure what the difference is. I know the final sting shit is retardo-balls, but literally no other tank seems to have that issue on that pull, and I'm in full 170 gear with 4 pieces of 180 including weapon so plenty of healing throughput.

Not class specific really, but player mentality specific. Full white gear level 60 drks who pull as many mobs as they can gather and then wonder why their 13k hp and taking 9k every 2 seconds is difficult for a white mage to keep up for extended periods of time. Oh, and not popping their defensive cooldowns either. Haven't seen this nonsense on either other tank, just fresh 60 dark knights. I think the name has attracted a lot of tanking bads.

So I'm in Heavensward now. Any tips for getting up to speed? I know do the hunt quests every day(does this include the old world hunts?). I'd like to be geared enough to do Alexander next week when it patches.

Malkav_sl said:

Fuck the Churning Mists' moogles and their endless "find my friends" side quests.

Click to expand...

After doing all of that Churning Mists shit, then hitting the level-lock wall while leveling up, right when I hit 59 and unlocked Alyz Lla, what's this I see? A letter for me from the Moogles requesting my assistance in Churning Mists again? YOU KNOW WHAT, FUCK YOU MOOGLES.

Does this expansion feel rather empty to anyone else? 2.0 wasn't exactly bustling with things to do, but at least it had the start of the relic weapon series for people to work on. Original primals gave the low/medium tier players some semblance of progression, etc. Whereas Bismark was a really dumb encounter, at least Ravana was well designed and made up for it.

I understand that normal mode Alexander is coming next week, but from what the developers have said it'll be CT style difficulty or slightly harder. The decent groups will probably have it cleared within a few hours if that really is the case.

If you got rid of the 15~ hours worth of bear ass collection this expansion feels more like a content patch, smaller than the 2.X ones.

Naj_sl said:

Does this expansion feel rather empty to anyone else? 2.0 wasn't exactly bustling with things to do, but at least it had the start of the relic weapon series for people to work on. Original primals gave the low/medium tier players some semblance of progression, etc. Whereas Bismark was a really dumb encounter, at least Ravana was well designed and made up for it.

I understand that normal mode Alexander is coming next week, but from what the developers have said it'll be CT style difficulty or slightly harder. The decent groups will probably have it cleared within a few hours if that really is the case.

If you got rid of the 15~ hours worth of bear ass collection this expansion feels more like a content patch, smaller than the 2.X ones.

Click to expand...

Alexander opens next week, Savage mode two weeks after that.




As far as "content" goes, I think we got far more than a content patch.

.1 New Race (Au Ra)
.1 New Raid: Alexander (Normal & Savage modes); Separate loot system between Alexander Normal and Savage.
.1 New Frontline PvP Map
.2 New Trials: Ravana & Bismarck (Normal & Hard modes)
.3 New Classes (Dark Knight, Astrologian, Machinist; Leveling starts at lv. 30)
.8 New Instanced Dungeons
.9 New Zones (50%-100% larger than 2.0 zones)
.50+ hours of New Story Content
.60 New Level Cap (Hand, Land, War & Magic)
.DirectX 11 Client
.Flying Mounts (Flying enable in all 3.0 areas; Build Free Company Airships; flying mounts run at 90% the speed of ground mounts and fly at 200%.)
.Expansion of the Duty Finder (Syncing to lowest IL, New roulette types/conditions, smaller parties)
.NEW: FATEs (Highlevel & Largescale), Levequest, Mounts, Quests for New Jobs (lv. ??-60), Quest for ALL Existing Jobs (lv. 50-60), Elite Marks, Unique Job Limit Breaks, Allagan Tombstones (Law & Esoterics), Specialist system, PvP Rewards, House Furnishings, Retainer Ventures, Expanded Sightseeing Log, Triple Triad Cards, Free Company Workshops, and more.

Click to expand...

Xaxius_sl said:

Alexander opens next week, Savage mode two weeks after that.

As far as "content" goes, I think we got far more than a content patch.

Click to expand...

I mean, yeah, that's great. We get the CT difficulty version of the first raid in a week. But all the bulletpoints in the world don't change the fact that I'm standing in Idleshire what, two weeks after release? With absolutely nothing to do to tangibly advance my character after roughly 30 to 35 hours of playtime and my friends list completely offline due to the same reason. I suppose if I approach it at a dollar/time ratio I've purchased worse.

It could just be that the game simply isn't for me, which is perfectly fair.

Yeah, for top end raiders who play one class and don't do crafting/gathering and put in an above average amount of time since early access, it's more like a content patch with a lot of stuff they don't/won't use. Honestly really similar to the lapses between coil increases, since nothing else was theoretically as hard as that, and those were beaten within days of their patches. For the extreme hardcore single job players with statics, it's generally a one and done deal. They'll add Savage mode to the primals, the hardcore raiders will beat them in couple of days, and be bored until the next top end challenge put in. Just the cycle of mmorpgs these days. Honestly, it's not having a cap on law that makes the progression seem super fast. Would have been better to put a cap at 350 if they wanted to stretch the current content out a bit. Every other top end token (law is currently the top end, even though esoterics are what, next week?) had a cap on it when first introduced. Artificially gating the super hardcore a little bit keeps them from getting bored.

Otherwise, they expanded on the content in the game in every possible way, so for average players there's a lot of stuff to do. The 8-9 hours a day crew are going to run out of content fast regardless, though.

edit: and thinking more on it, the top end tokens were always like... 5-20 per dungeon as well, up to what, 35? Not 80 a shot. And the roulettes certainly weren't passing out 100 at a time. I think they are trying to even out the player power base, and some people just hit cap way faster than others. The information about it has been out there for awhile, so it's not a surprise what happened.

Gilgamel_sl said:

So I'm in Heavensward now. Any tips for getting up to speed? I know do the hunt quests every day(does this include the old world hunts?). I'd like to be geared enough to do Alexander next week when it patches.

Click to expand...

Level to 60 with whatever method you like (since you just hit the expac from playing a lot, you probably don't have multiple levels worth of rest xp) and hopefully you are tanking/healing to get super fast lower level dungeon queues. Do your roulettes, work through the main quest and get your currents in each zone. Do the daily hunt deals at 53/56/59, and just stay queued for the highest dungeon you have unlocked. Oh, and if an A rank mob spawns, go help kill it if you can get to it before it gets wtfpwned. When you hit 60, between finding a group to chain the expert tier dungeons, join a hunt LS and hit every mob that spawns, spending your centurion seals on one whetstone/spend law on weapon and combine them to get an i180 weapon. Then just upgrade your gear as you get law/seals. Complete the main story quest (you sort of have to to get to the experts/having flying in all zones) and you'll be basically done like Naj.

The A/S rank mobs in 2.0 land give law and seals as well, just not as many as the ones in the new zones.

Oh yeah, and do bismark and ravana extreme, bismark once to move past it to Ravana, and do Ravana how ever many times it takes to get your hive weapon. Once you have that and have upgraded all your gear with the seals (depending on class, you have a really good chance of having one ring at 180 and one at 170, because it is lore. I'm sure tanks can get around that by grabbing the str melee ring, though) you are effectively as topped out as you can be two weeks into the expansion, and theoretically ready for alexander. If they release another tier of gear with it (some are assuming it is when the AF 2.0 gets added, probably esoteric gear) they might bump the difficulty of Alexander fights to require that gear, so potentially more grinding once the next patch lands. Otherwise, that's basically all she wrote if you aren't into the other facets of the game.

Rezz_sl said:

I'm not sure what's up with Drks, but even chain healing them with mind'd/blessed cure 2s(with regen on them), they have a bad habit of dying on that 4 bee/tree pull, and then you normally need to benev so they don't die before the walking dead thing wears off.

Click to expand...

You can pull 2 of those bees separately, which I think your supposed to do. You can't outheal 4 of those bastards trying to get off Final Sting or whatever it is.

Needless_sl said:

Is there a good spot to get 10-15 on a new class? this area seems to be kind of shitty before you can start dungeon queueing. Any good leves or something to make it go by quickly?

I want to get swiftcast as a thaum so i'm going back and grinding that quickly to 26ish~

Click to expand...

Ive been doing fates at Aleport