Final Fantasy XIV (Guide in first post)

I've liked HoH, solo pretty fun as a monk.. the group version is very mehh(Odin magicite more often please), I've liked Weapons Refrain(albiet we haven't cleared it yet, have gotten him to 50% summer has started most of my friends are off on vacation)... yay more solo HoH

Every time I think of coming back to this game the quest fatigue talks me out of it. Clicking through the story line quests are almost as frustrating as looking at my 13 ability bars in EQ2 (that might be a bit excessive). Anyway, I still stand by the fact that this game has probably been the best MMO since WoW to be released. The game looks and sounds beautiful. Classes are fun and feel very true to those who like the traditional FF franchise type games. I'm not quite done with Agnarr yet but if I were to pay a monthly sub for a MMO, I think FFXIV is probably the best experience you can ask for if you can tolerate the story questing.

The one thing I do like about their story style questing is you have this build-up where you basically start as a nobody and by the time of SB, you're a world famous godkiller superhero pretty much. WoW sort of tries the same thing to a degree (all the main characters know you/think of you as a friend), but FFXIV goes out of its way to make you really feel like the main character of a story. It even spills into some of the later crafting quests where people are in awe you're a badass, but also can craft amazing things lol

I still hate that the different versions must all be purchased. I have a gaming PC but my work computer is a MacBook and then of course we have a PS4. After all this time, why do they make you purchase every stupid version of this game?

Just out of curiosity, for someone who hasn't played in years, I believe since the first expansion, how long does it take to get back into the swing of this game? How is the housing compared to EQ2? (be generous ) I really enjoyed EQ2 house. It was a fun side MMO hobby. I don't think I ever raided on FFXIV but do we still have a presence on Gilgamesh?

If you played through (or through most of) Heavensward, then it isn't very hard to get caught up. The MSQ between HW and SB isn't nearly as bad as ARR to HW and a far better story.

I never played EQ2, so I really can't compare the two systems. However, I am extremely familiar with FFXIV housing, so I can at least comment on that. I'll toss up some pictures of my house in a bit.

Housing is non-instanced, with the exception of apartments. You can buy a house as a personal house or as a free company (guild) house. You are limited to one of each per account, although if you are in a guild, you can't buy a guild house if you aren't the guild leader/your guild isnt a high enough level. There are small, medium, and large sized plots and houses and currently 4 different housing districts (Goblet: A Desert Canyon spot, Mist: Beach/Mediterranean style, Lavender Beds: Forest based, and Shirogane: Japanese style housing). You can customize the appearance of your house. Some appearances are locked to the zone (ie, a Goblet style house appearance cannot be used in Mist), but there are also universal housing skins that work on any house. However, you don't actually "build" your house in a mine-craft sense so the outer model is just going to conform to the skin/appearances you are using. The way the game is setup, you cannot directly sell housing to players, so this has kept the gold bots away (unlike Archeage where they grab land for the purposes of reselling). Once you buy a house, it is yours so long as you enter your house once every 45 days, so there are no taxes. After 45 days, I believe you get a house demolition warning and the house eventually poofs, allowing others to buy the plot (your poofed house+items appear on a NPC and stay there for 30 days so you can get most of your gil back and your housing furniture).

If you have an actual non-instanced house, you can decorate your yard (10/20/30 items based on land plot size). If you buy a mini-atheyrite (from the grand companies), you can teleport directly to your house. There are a variety of outdoor only items you can use and you can even have your retainers appear on your property (they act as stores if you put items on them for sale, so in theory people can buy directly from them vs. the marketboard). You can also garden outside, which is used to get some valuable items for crafting (mostly through crossbreeding plants). The number of garden plots are limited by plot size (1/2/3). You can also stable chocobos if you build a stall, which is mostly used if you want to breed chocos for racing at the Golden Saucer casino or level them as a combat pet.

Inside the house you have an item budget of 200/300/400 items based on land plot size. Small house is 2 floors, medium and large are 3 floors. Besides furniture, you can customize the ceiling lighting, floors, and walls on a per-floor basis. Where you can place certain items in the house may be restricted unless you use glitches. SquareEnix doesn't fix the glitches because they have publicly supported what players do with them. The only glitch they fixed was an Aquarium clipping through another Aquarium one that caused game issues and also "void zone building" glitch which let you place furniture in a black void outside the house with no limits, which caused some strain on the game. Using glitches you can float certain items or place items on "illegal" surfaces that the normal game placement will not let you. Most of the nice looking houses at the housingsnap website below use these glitches (my house does as well)

If you want to get into housing, I would strongly recommend you level crafters. Even semi-low level crafters can make a surprising variety of items. Making furniture is a shitload cheaper than buying it. Retainers on missions can bring back furniture, though, including expensive items. A lot of the HW housing items have also crashed in prices. I used to be able to sell a moogle shaped shrub for 1.5mil last year, now it is 15,000 lol.

For additional info:

FFXIV Housing = This site contains a database of all the current housing furniture items and where they come from
FF14ハウジングSS投稿・共有サイト = Japanese site with images of houses people have made to give you a better idea of what you can do ingame

Here is my current house. I'm not very good with the ingame photo tool so my character is in a few shots



My original small house

Most class rotations are a very specific order.

Ya, jumping to high levels is a bit overwhelming because you aren't sure about the new abilities or how all the abilities interact.

I had actually never done POTD before, but doing the 50 floors so I can go to Heaven on High.

Black Mage is fine for everything but the top tier of raiding. That's when heavier mobility comes into play and why a lot of BLM's complain that they should just make the job able to cast while moving otherwise it will never be progression viable. It would take autistic levels of timing for each encounter plus already knowing the fight mechanics to do bosses anywhere close to optimally.

Is there a cross server linkshell on the Aether data center?

Fennin said:

Is there a cross server linkshell on the Aether data center?

Click to expand...

I wanted to start one with Jaen since the Gilgamesh one is just the two of us.

Kriptini said:

I wanted to start one with Jaen since the Gilgamesh one is just the two of us.

Click to expand...

Toss me a message if you do end up making one.

Malakriss said:

Black Mage is fine for everything but the top tier of raiding. That's when heavier mobility comes into play and why a lot of BLM's complain that they should just make the job able to cast while moving otherwise it will never be progression viable. It would take autistic levels of timing for each encounter plus already knowing the fight mechanics to do bosses anywhere close to optimally.

Click to expand...

I don't follow the current meta. I remember in the first coil BLM was top dps on a lot of fights. Even with moving and such. When I came back and did Heavensward stuff I wasn't on the cutting edge but was doing current raids and we had a BLM who was perfectly acceptable doing current content. Are they really no longer viable or is it just the autists who needed carry groups to get through Titan EX still in Heavensward for the mount farms complaining?

I main a Black Mage, and for cutting edge progression like Ultimate, its really hard to learn the fight and fit black mages turrety style of play to it with all the movement. For progression they don't bring any utility to raids, such as raise like Red Mages and Summoners, or any raid buffs.

They are perfectly capable of clearing all content, they just arent "meta" right now, and PUGs tend to follow the meta to the letter without truly understand why, and shun BLMs (and SAMs) because of it.

BLMs are totally fine for Savage. In fact, I like BLMs in PuGs because it usually means enrage won't be a problem. (They are definitively the highest DPS class.)

They make Ultimate progression a bit harder because as Neuad said, if you have a BLM you don't have a DPS that can Raise in your party which may make the progression process slower. But Ultimate is something that not even 1% of players are able to clear so it's hardly a consideration.

I've only done o5s and o6s, with a bunch of practice pulls on o7s and I haven't had any issues so far as a BLM. Savage definitely isn't an issue, especially with some of the new movement tools they gave them in Stormblood.

As far as rotation goes, BLM is pretty simple from the little I've ventured into other classes so far. It's learning the fights and how to maximize uptime that gets tricky.

I just finally hit 70 after spending 3 months going through aar hs and sb. I'm super casual however. I posted a while ago about whether to play a ninja or samurai and thought I read that ninjas were more preferable because they add some utility to groups. I haven't played Sam and maybe I'm just bad and haven't realized what it is but what does ninja bring to a party besides damage and some mobility, that Sam does not?