Final Fantasy XIV (Guide in first post)
- Thread starter Guzrog
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Guest, it's time once again for the massively important and exciting FoH Asshat Tournament!
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Yeah I did similar stuff when I leveled all classes to 70, although sometimes you get "fucked" because of an early queue pop, I remember it happened every now and then on those stupid mount quests in Dravanian Highlands, queue pops halfway, then you come out of the dungeon without the quest mount so you have to fly back to the beast tribe village, grab another and redo the quest. But overall it wasn't so bad at all yeah, there's a fair amount of content to do inbetween.
That's mainly why I think I'm not going to bother touching the SB beastmen quests until 5.0 hits. I'll use them to lvl my classes to 80 or whatever the new cap is, it's a nice thing you can do daily and goes well with leveling alt classes, queue daily roulette, do your beast tribes(even if they're from the previous expansion they still gave good xp), enter dungeon and clear it, queue either another roulette or the highest dungeon directly, finish tribes in another area, enter dungeon and clear it, queue again, grab all the centurio seal bounties and plot a course with the website and clear these, clear the dungeon that popped. This generally took like 2hours iirc and get you a level and a half or so then you can just queue again and do some FATEs or go afk to grab something to drink/relax a bit, and you should get your 2levels a day like this.
That was a lot of what I was doing back then, then go play with my main for a bit, do expert roulette or just stop playing for the day. It's not lightning fast and for some classes I just kept playing and doing more stuff and what not, like doing potd on other classes that were low lvl but it's an efficient way to clear out most of the daily stuff you want to do anyway while weaving in dungeons for your lower classes and not have to just wait the entire time. Doing some crafting/gathering can work too if you're into that, although I tend to level these first(after my main to cap that is) since early on is the best time to make money. I didn't even remember I made that much money at the launch of SB when I logged in the other day.
Yeah Steam prices are pretty bad for this, and they get sales a lot less often. And if you want to pick a new expansion when it comes out, you can buy non Steam on sites like GMG for 15-25% off while Steam is always full price. Only reason to use Steam is if you have a lot of steam bucks to burn to pay with or issues to pay through the mogstation so you can pay with steam cards instead(a bunch of SEA and eastern european countries for example).
Cybsled
Naxxramas 1.0 Raider
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What throws off people is it is based on the direction Omega is facing and it flips around for the 2nd usage.
But ya, that fight is super rough for pubs atm. 4th fight felt 10x easier lol
Noodleface
A Mod Real Quick
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On my journey to 50 is there anything I should be doing that I might forget - for instance, are there class quests I should be doing? Anything with the GC?
Kriptini
Vyemm Raider
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For anyone interested in raiding (Aether data center): I run weekly Savage raids with a group of players, but we're first-come-first-serve not a static so it's great if you have a flexible schedule. This week we are clearing O9S tonight and progging O10S and will hopefully clear O10S on Thursday. We will be starting at 7:15pm PDT and have room open for a PLD/WAR, SCH/AST, and a magic DPS. PM if you want in. (It's fine if you haven't cleared O9S yet because it's easy with our callouts and people on this forum are way above the average level of skill in PF).
Job quests are every 5 levels from 1-50. From 50-60 they are every 2 levels. After that, they are at 60, 63, 65, 67, and 70 IIRC.
Try a ping booster service like Mudfish or WTFast. They both have free trials and I think they have really cheap plans too, something like 99 cents a month. I play a Chinese MMO on the side where my ping is normally 700 but with a ping booster it cuts down to 250. Those services work great and if you can get your ping down to even 150 it will be a massive difference.
Job quests are every 5 levels from 1-50. From 50-60 they are every 2 levels. After that, they are at 60, 63, 65, 67, and 70 IIRC.
Try a ping booster service like Mudfish or WTFast. They both have free trials and I think they have really cheap plans too, something like 99 cents a month. I play a Chinese MMO on the side where my ping is normally 700 but with a ping booster it cuts down to 250. Those services work great and if you can get your ping down to even 150 it will be a massive difference.
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Cybsled
Naxxramas 1.0 Raider
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Class quests, yes. Some of your skills are tied to them as well, so you need to make sure to do them. The quest giver will have an indication at what level you should return and I think they updated the UI so in the top right it will let you know if there is a pending class quest. Some of them are better than others. Up until 35, the monk one is pretty good (Hamon Holyfist is basically Master Roshi from Dragon Ball based on personality).
GC just sort of unlocks at level 35 I think? You basically get a quest to join a GC during the MSQ. They come to the Walking Sands (Scion HQ) and all present their case. Honestly they are all the same, the main difference being cosmetic appearance for gear and the appearance of some housing items. Later on you can join other GC, so you aren't locked forever. I just picked the Immortal Flames because I started in Uldah and had my inn room there (which you unlock early in the MSQ, you get that before your get the chance to buy a house, which is tied to the GC ranks).
The game does a fairly decent job of tethering some of the side stuff to the MSQ, so as long as you do the MSQ, you won't miss out on most of the game functions.
GC just sort of unlocks at level 35 I think? You basically get a quest to join a GC during the MSQ. They come to the Walking Sands (Scion HQ) and all present their case. Honestly they are all the same, the main difference being cosmetic appearance for gear and the appearance of some housing items. Later on you can join other GC, so you aren't locked forever. I just picked the Immortal Flames because I started in Uldah and had my inn room there (which you unlock early in the MSQ, you get that before your get the chance to buy a house, which is tied to the GC ranks).
The game does a fairly decent job of tethering some of the side stuff to the MSQ, so as long as you do the MSQ, you won't miss out on most of the game functions.
Kriptini
Vyemm Raider
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Also for grand company, what you want to do is roll greed on all dungeon gear then submit it to your grand company delivery dude for seals. You'll be able to make a lot of money and rank quickly that way, and for some reason people let dungeon gear drop to the floor so you can always get a lot of it.
I don't think this feature is unlocked at the start though, it's called "expert delivery" so keep an eye out for when you unlock it.
I don't think this feature is unlocked at the start though, it's called "expert delivery" so keep an eye out for when you unlock it.
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Argarth
On the verandah
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Doubt I'll ever see better than ~220 ping. Resources I've looked into seem to suggest it's pretty much the best achievable, given the distance.
I have fibre to the house, and where I live in Brisbane on the east coast of Australia, it's 13ms south to Sydney (that's the ping I have to Blizzard's server btw). Then it's straight out under the ocean for ~12,000 kilometers to the SQEnix servers on the US West coast. Not much to get in the way really, except maybe the giant squid.
Can't really complain. After quite a bit of mucking around in the trial, everything feels rock solid and stable so far, totally unlike my experience 4 years ago.
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Argarth
On the verandah
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Well I'm back in. Going to boost a Warrior to 60, and then unlock Red Mage and Samurai straight away. Really looking forward to trying out the Red Mage in particular, looks tasty.
I'm TORN on which MSQ skip potion to use though; just can't make up my damned mind whether to skip Heavensward story and go straight to Stormblood or not. Most of the feedback seems to suggest HW is so much better than the ARR Story... and then others say it's just another slog, not worth the time anymore, and SB is the go... lol!
Weird fucking position to be in, I just can't decide how much of a hurry I'm really in to get to the endgame. WTF! Think I'll have to sleep on it.
I'm TORN on which MSQ skip potion to use though; just can't make up my damned mind whether to skip Heavensward story and go straight to Stormblood or not. Most of the feedback seems to suggest HW is so much better than the ARR Story... and then others say it's just another slog, not worth the time anymore, and SB is the go... lol!
Weird fucking position to be in, I just can't decide how much of a hurry I'm really in to get to the endgame. WTF! Think I'll have to sleep on it.
Fennin
Golden Knight of the Realm
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Well I'm back in. Going to boost a Warrior to 60, and then unlock Red Mage and Samurai straight away. Really looking forward to trying out the Red Mage in particular, looks tasty.
I'm TORN on which MSQ skip potion to use though; just can't make up my damned mind whether to skip Heavensward story and go straight to Stormblood or not. Most of the feedback seems to suggest HW is so much better than the ARR Story... and then others say it's just another slog, not worth the time anymore, and SB is the go... lol!
Weird fucking position to be in, I just can't decide how much of a hurry I'm really in to get to the endgame. WTF! Think I'll have to sleep on it.
My advice is to use the potion on the ARR quest line, the story is pretty uneventful until the late 2.3-2.55 quest-lines and even then its tough to get through the older content without help. HW story was pretty well liked by the community, Stormblood is more mixed, but overall still pretty decent. Heavensward is worth playing through if you enjoy storytelling, but if you skip cut-scenes, or you are focused on the endgame skip HW as well.
If you are starting a new character I would recommend picking one of preferred realms listed here; Regarding Character Creation Restrictions and Statuses of Congested/Preferred Worlds | FINAL FANTASY XIV, The Lodestone
By creating a character on a preferred world, you get the "Road to 60" buff which gives you 100% bonus exp 1-60 on all jobs. This stacks with the armory bonus as well. The first time you get a character from 1-30 on a preferred world you get 1,000,000 gil and 15 days free playtime. You keep the Road to 60 buff for a minimum of 90 days from character creation, if it goes beyond 90 days you lose it when the server you are on loses preferred status. The only stipulation is that your character is locked from transfer for 90 days. Make sure to pick a preferred server that is on the datacenter you wish to play on.
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I wouldn't skip HW, it's kind of a waste, and you can use the base story to level up at least. Problem if you skip it and then want to do it later, is you'd have to roll a fresh character and go through vanilla MSQ again, which is a pain in the ass especially since you've already done it.
Also while HW will take some time, it won't take that much(a lot less fillers and shit in 3.1 to 3.5 compared to vanilla), and you'll get xp past 60 which should help evening out the 60-70leveling without having to do as much side content/dungeons, so you're not really losing that much, I think(xp from MSQ past cap isn't great though iirc).
Also worth noting in terms of rushing to cap, there's no real hurry anymore. We're approaching the end of this expansion cycle, the current endgame is going to be the same endgame for the next 9months or so, unless they decide to do something drastically different than usual with the expansion. Basically we're on 4.4 which saw the 3rd and last part of the current 8man raid cycle(the hard stuff with the good gear) and the switch to final tomes. The main things coming still are more Eureka for the quest weapon upgrades, and in 4.5 they'll add the 3rd and last 24man dungeon in the current expansion cycle which will drop gear equivalent to the current weekly capped gear(with upgrades) and the current raid gear. They'll have more eureka in this patch to upgrade the weapon even further, but that's it after this, only things left are story patches to lead into 5.0 and uncapping various stuff to make it easier to catch up, but the max ilvl in the current patch and the max ilvl before next expansion are the same, whatever current raid gear is.
Because of this, there's really no hurry to reach the cap unless you can't afford to sub another month or whatever. None of the current content will be outdated until next expansion and people will keep doing it constantly for the next many months.
Also while HW will take some time, it won't take that much(a lot less fillers and shit in 3.1 to 3.5 compared to vanilla), and you'll get xp past 60 which should help evening out the 60-70leveling without having to do as much side content/dungeons, so you're not really losing that much, I think(xp from MSQ past cap isn't great though iirc).
Also worth noting in terms of rushing to cap, there's no real hurry anymore. We're approaching the end of this expansion cycle, the current endgame is going to be the same endgame for the next 9months or so, unless they decide to do something drastically different than usual with the expansion. Basically we're on 4.4 which saw the 3rd and last part of the current 8man raid cycle(the hard stuff with the good gear) and the switch to final tomes. The main things coming still are more Eureka for the quest weapon upgrades, and in 4.5 they'll add the 3rd and last 24man dungeon in the current expansion cycle which will drop gear equivalent to the current weekly capped gear(with upgrades) and the current raid gear. They'll have more eureka in this patch to upgrade the weapon even further, but that's it after this, only things left are story patches to lead into 5.0 and uncapping various stuff to make it easier to catch up, but the max ilvl in the current patch and the max ilvl before next expansion are the same, whatever current raid gear is.
Because of this, there's really no hurry to reach the cap unless you can't afford to sub another month or whatever. None of the current content will be outdated until next expansion and people will keep doing it constantly for the next many months.
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Argarth
On the verandah
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I had looked at this, but thanks for the extra detail regarding the timeout period. More important to me though is the number of Oceanic FCs on each world, and Behemoth is far and away the better choice for an Australian player. Doubt it will ever be preferred, and several large Aus/NZ FCs have been there since the start.
Argarth
On the verandah
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Compelling arguments indeed! Really appreciate the back and forth.
Probably the final thing that bothers me is that SB won't be available to start until I fully finish HW. I'll be really annoyed if I don't enjoy it and then feel cock-blocked by the gating. Yeah, first world problems! I really do enjoy a good story though, and you're right, I won't get to do it again... Anyway, enough of this nonsense. Thanks for the advice. =)
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Well the thing is, it's XIV, everything is gated behind the stories anyway. If you don't like HW, you're not gonna like SB either, but you'll have to do all the SB story to get access to most content. I guess you "only" have to finish the 4.0 story to get access to 8man raids but a bunch of the 4man and primals are gated behind the MSQ too, so you'll have to run it for that.
Worst case you don't like it and skip all the cutscenes/text and you don't lose a whole lot of time, just have to run a few of the 60 content that's part of the MSQ but it's going to be a few hours versus 10bucks or whatever.
But eh it's your money and time, you do what you want, if you want to skip straight to SB you definitely can, was just saying imo it feels like a waste, I probably wouldn't be playing XIV much over the years if there was no story to it, mechanically it isn't particularily amazing, content wise it's fairly similar to wow although there's more small dungeons and less expansions obviously and ultimately it's not really anything special overall if it wasn't for the nice continued storyline and characters.
skylan
Trakanon Raider
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What?! You can turn in any dungeon loot?? Count me as one of the morons that just passed on everything
Cybsled
Naxxramas 1.0 Raider
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Pretty much. If the dungeon drop has a vendor price, then you can trade it for GC seals. The price scales with the ilevel, so the newest dungeons are worth like 1400 or something each piece you trade in.
You find the most people passing on raid roulette stuff, so that tends to be the easiest shit to snag. Even the ARR raid stuff is worth about 300-400 seals per piece. Ditto for lower tier dungeons.
Useful as hell, especially if you craft since some of the GC trade skill items cost 1500 a pop and you need a bunch for a single craft. Can also easily buy ventures to use on your retainer (200 GC seal per venture).
You find the most people passing on raid roulette stuff, so that tends to be the easiest shit to snag. Even the ARR raid stuff is worth about 300-400 seals per piece. Ditto for lower tier dungeons.
Useful as hell, especially if you craft since some of the GC trade skill items cost 1500 a pop and you need a bunch for a single craft. Can also easily buy ventures to use on your retainer (200 GC seal per venture).
Argarth
On the verandah
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Well I gave your suggestion some more thought, and after reading up on a ton of user feedback I decided to give Mudfish a try.
Really surprised; it's consistently knocking ~50ms off my ping, so I'm down to a steady ~ 170ms now. The built in graph also appears to be telling the truth, as it's producing the same latency numbers to the FFXIV servers that I'm seeing in Win10 Resource Monitor.
Very impressed I must say, and cheap as dirt to run. Thanks again!
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Yeah those tend to be pretty good for AU/NZ play but also in general when playing mmos because you never know when some fuckers will decide to not repair lines or route everyone in the evening through the same shit and basically make it unplayable. I'd say in modern times, having a VPN available is almost a requirement to play mmos. Don't need it all the time, so my solution was to use one that sells bandwith rather than have a monthly payment and it works great since gaming takes so little bandwith. Obviously in your case it's a more permanent thing so makes more sense to go with a montly plan, I only use mine when I'm getting packet loss/lags, especially when it's during the evening since I know it's just routing garbage. Can also use it for downloading torrents "safely" although in this case you want to use more specific VPNs, most of the gaming ones save info on traffic and shit so it wouldn't really help.