Final Fantasy XIV (Guide in first post)

Cybsled said:

Basically like classic WoW before Blizzard revamped them in Cataclysm. Except Square never bothered to change the old zones. Thankfully, the old zones aren't as large as the HW/SB ones, so the lack of flying isn't as bad.

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I mean it's not Cataclysm happened right away either. Cata was 5-6years after WoW release. Which technically would be this expansion, but yeah. Also did flying in old zones really add much? I haven't played wow in forever but can't really think it'd be that great other than to get your ass to Silithus faster or some shit, and since XIV has instant teleports everywhere, that'd be super redundant. You couldn't seamlessly fly from western la noscea to outter la noscea either like you can in wow since the game is designed with zones, so you'd still have to teleport everywhere.

The only zone I could see it being useful would be Coerthas since it's so large and only has one aetheryte in a corner but quests often send you to 2 other corners, but even then it's of limited use. The fast ground mounts are generally enough too, it's just sucky at low level, once you get the first mount speed upgrade it's pretty reasonable and once you get the 2nd, the distances don't mean much anymore, since you move at flying speed, just have to avoid mountains and shit.

I'd rather they rework the quests than bother reworking the old zones to add flying to them. Shit would be a waste of time.

Cybsled said:

Them adding an Aetherite to the Walking Sands would solve most of the issues, TBH lol.

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Meh it would solve a few issues but not that many. I've redone ARR recently and honestly it's not nearly as bad as I remembered, especially since once you advance the MSQ a bit now you get mount speed, which makes the run from Horizon actually pretty quick(fast than Limsa boat in general due to triple loading versus one loading). They should definitely cut a bunch of the filler quests, speed them up and shit, but it would take some work to redo and I guess they don't want to bother.

If they get Trusts to work at low level though it'd help a fair bit with one of complaints I keep seeing, how DPS trying to queue for MSQ trials/dungeons at 6AM have to wait "too long". Like yeah motherfucker that's going to happen at 6AM playing the most popular role, but eh.

WorryPlaysGames said:

So without having read the past 850+ pages, is this a game a new player could get into or is it too far gone to ever “catch up”?

Looking for something to play until at least WoW classic comes out.

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It's like wow, each expansion is a reset and within an expansion you can always catch up from scratch in a few weeks.

The newest and last major patch of the current expansion releases tomorrow. There will be another patch with more story stuff added in 2months or so, and then nothing much until the next expansion next summer. So that's like 6months to do all the stuff you'd want to do before the next expansion. Alternatively you could wait for the next expansion and start then, although starting from scratch at that point would put you several weeks behind everyone else due to how the leveling process is locked into the story and the story takes a fucking long time to get through(I mean could be less than weeks depends on how much you play and all but count like 30-40hours per expansion just to get to the next with the original taking a bit longer).

Cybsled said:

4.5 patch notes

Patch 4.5 Notes | FINAL FANTASY XIV, The Lodestone

Blue Mage quests will be next week.

One cool thing for housing decorators is it looks like they've added loft floors and stairs that you don't have to use glitches to work. Be interested to see if they allow floor furniture placement on them or if they are still restricted to table top items only like the troupe stages/etc.

Alphascape is also uncapped reward wise and weapons are 4 instead of 7 tomes, so easier to get your other jobs.

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Not just BLU quests, the class itself is locked until next week, they announced that several weeks ago during the live letter, they're making sure people have time to do their MSQ/Ivalice story stuff before they dive into BLU leveling. And Alphascape is only uncapped drops but the crystalloids are still 1 a week, so still need 4weeks for weapons(although you need 3weeks for the genesis anyway so not a big problem). This is a slightly interesting deviation from HW though, in HW you needed 7gears all the way until 3.57 when they removed the weekly limitation on them too. Also unlike HW you can get i390 crafted with the augmented system so it's much easier to catchup/be close to ilvl cap earlier.

a_skeleton_03 said:

So does this mean you can run 9-12 unlimited times a week and get gear for every slot if you have a group masochistic enough?

Still trying to understand raid loot.

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Alphascape normal now yeah, works like any other dungeons, you just need on everything you want and RNG decides if you get shit or not. It's only 380 gear mind you, same as crafted, same as Eureka Pyros, lower than unupgraded genesis and new 24man and savage loot.

Savage will be uncapped later, probably the last patch of the expansion. They'll slap some Echo in there too(when you wipe you get 5% more life/damage, stacks up to 5times).

This only unlocks the armor/accessories though, weapon item(crystalloid) is still 1 per week, although you only need 4+1000genesis now to make a genesis weapon, while before the patch it was 7.

Assuming no Eureka/relic and no full crafted gear, currently the best way to gear up from scratch would be 70job quest > centurio(hunts/bounties) > dungeon gear+mendacity+genesis whatever you can buy into alphascape normal, spam that until full 380 other than weapon. Buy a 380 crafted weapon(you could try to do suzaku ex but honestly with a new primal release it's going to be very hard finding groups that don't only accept people who have cleared for dog mount farming) then do seiryu EX for a better weapon. Keep capping genesis every week and buying gear with it, I'd ignore the weapon until later. Also run the 24man to get one 390 drop a week(armor only but same ilvl as uncapped genesis) as well as the coin+2 other 24man coins for an upgrade item for genesis gear to i400.

Could probably hit 385 in a week or so if you play a bunch from 0, and since you're not at 0 it should be a lot shorter. Then you'll slowly increase every week from getting 1-2pieces of i390(genesis+24man) and upgrading genesis pieces to i400 with 24man coins. But at 385 you'd be ready for savage fine anyway, which could speed it up in various ways(can buy i400gear from guaranteed page drops or just get a straight drop instead, as well as upgrade items for genesis).