My First MMO: Tet's Eorzean Adventures [FFXIV]

[Tetsujin]

(THERE WILL BE SPOILERS THROUGHOUT THIS ENTIRE THREAD on the off chance someone who hasn't played this finds this)

Welcome to my FFXIV journal~
As mentioned in my other thread, I decided to create this to log my experience in FFXIV while staying mostly clear of the main thread because it's filled with years worth of story spoilers.

As the thread title indicates my experience with any MMORPG is 0 since I don't really like online gaming much and playing with other people gives me as much social anxiety online as it would in real life (and of course there are subscription costs to consider)
But Square Enix decided to give away A Realm Reborn for free for a limited time so hey, here I am.

That being said, I had been considering giving XIV a try for a while now. People have been singing its praises for the story for a good, long while now and I wanna know why, darnit. Additionally, this game has always held a fascination for me for its history. I mean it's literally one of the absolute worst Final Fantasy games not just by the opinion of players but even by official admission from Square Enix - remember when they said that it had damaged the FF brand? And that has somehow turned an absolutely staggering 180.
The fact they coupled this complete revamp of the initial FFXIV with an event that would explain the change in-universe made the story super intriguing for me. I had actually been looking up all I could about the story and history and watching cutscenes of XIV 1.0 months prior. None of it is really required for A Realm Reborn as they pretty much recap what has happened and it's supposed to be a new beginning anyway - but still, I find 1.0 endlessly fascinating.

The fact that this world-altering event is an homage to FFVII is a bonus.

As bad as 1.0 apparently was I almost wish I had been around to experience those final moments of the original Eorzea. This is actually kind of haunting:

At this point I'm pretty familiar with the ongoings of the 1.0 story, the empire's machinations, characters like Nael van Darnus, Meteor, Bahamut laying waste to everything etc. all the while staying clear of anything beyond in case I might give XIV a go.

So anyroadway, the interest had been there for a while but it took me this long to finally pull the trigger. I mean, they gave away ARR for free on PSN so might as well, right?

(crap why is this introductory post getting so long; who am I, X-SOLDIER? )

AND SO MY JOURNEY BEGINS.

Getting into the character creation, the choice was pretty clear. You give me the option to be a cute cat girl, I'm gonna be a cute cat girl.

Enter Tets'yana Mountraven:

As for coming up with the name: The first name and the play on the name Tatyana is fairly obvious - I wanted a female name but still be "Tet" or "Tets". Of course I could have also been Tetyana but I just had to be ~extra~ (ꈍ ᴗ ꈍ✿)
As for Mountraven: This one's a reference to where I'm from - which used to be the County of Ravensberg in the middle ages. Mountraven is simply an anglification inspired by how the British royals are related to the German Battenberg family but changed it to Mountbatten at some point.

As a starting class I chose the Gladiator - mostly because

I was later informed by Lex it's a Tank class which honestly I didn't consider any of that DPS, Tank, Healer stuff. Shows how much of a n00b I am

And so the adventure begins as a chocobo wagon carries me to the city of Ul'dah~

(to be continued in another post because jesus why did this get so long I mean reading through it all the post isn't that long but writing just takes forever also it's 4am and I am tired please bear with me ≦(._.)≧ )

 

[Wol]

you could have gone with Titsyana as well.

lol a Tank class, good luck with your anxiety, thats like the most anxious-inducing role but somehow the most rewarding. I also didnt know about the Tank, DPS, Healer thing, I went to my first dungeon as a Lancer with Healer gear lmao good times.

try the Novice system, it'll teach you the basics of all roles. As a Tank you are the leader, you walk at the front and the objective is to keep the enemy's attention on yourself, away to the party. Tank has more vitality and defense so the party will rely on you to take the damage for them. For that purpose, you'll have access to specific skills that maintain the enemies "distracted" on you, with that DPS and Healer can do their jobs efficiently, DPS will mine most of their HP and Healer will heal when needed. That's the gist of it.

obs: you are in no way bound to play the initial role you chose.

 

[Roger]

Good luck, Tets! Hit me up if you need to do a dungeon or trial or whathaveyou. :-)

 

[The Twilight Mexican]

Why wasn't this thread entitled "Bill and Tet's Eorzean Adventure"? =(

Anyway, looking forward to seeing what you think. Good luck and enjoy.

 

[Keveh Kins]

Tets is givin' me the itch to get back into XIV again, I barely scratched the surface before

 

[Tetsujin]

Why wasn't this thread entitled "Bill and Tet's Eorzean Adventure"? =(

...why didn't I think of that

Maybe if someone volunteers to be my Bill throughout this journey

you could have gone with Titsyana as well.

Alright, so. First impressions.

In a word, overwhelming. Not in a good way. At first, I felt hopelessly lost in this maze-like city. Even using the Aethernet crystals to teleport around, I still get a bit lost in Ul'dah to this day.
The huge amount of menus and options also seems overwhelming. The whole experience immediately intimidates me. The controls take time to get used to. This has gotten better by now but at first it was like "what the hell am I even doing, how do I open this menu again, how do I find that quest on the map, what do all these icons mean HALP"

The first thing I struggled with was customizing the HUD. It felt incredibly cluttered to me and in addition to that playing on an OLED there is a risk of burn-in which I am always a bit paranoid about so I want to minimize the amount of static elements on screen.
I was pleased to see that you can literally customize every single HUD element individually, make them more transparent, change size, move them anywhere you want on the screen or disable elements completely if you don't need them.
That's all very cool although it did take time to get used doing this with a controller. I have since connected a USB mouse to my PS4, don't know why I didn't think of that before. The game lets you choose between controller and KB/M mode but regardless of that you can use both at any time. Neat!

I decide not to get too much into all the options and such at first though and just let the game take the reins, go on the first missions and just let the various aspects of the game come to me.
The first few hours of the game are kind of what I expected from an MMO. It's...a bit of a slog. You start out as just another adventurer and you do the typical beginner quests a la "please kill five giant hornets, three venomous squirrels and four dickwolves, thankyouverymuch"
Only a little bit of interesting stuff is sprinkled in throughout these beginner missions. I get a weird crystal vision and run into some masked medieval Org.XIII looking dudes summoning some kind of unholy monstrosity (voidsent, was it?).

But for the most part, I am still an errand girl. But it's okay, I take my time to get acquainted with the world. The time for escalation and eventually punching out dragons and gods will surely come.
(I have read that ARR really does take a while to get going and has a fair bit of tedium - apparently the next 5.3 patch is supposed to streamline this and even remove some of the more boring fetch quests but it looks like I'm a bit too early for that and COVID-19 has further delayed it)

Despite the story not having gotten interesting yet, I slowly find myself getting invested in this world. One thing that troubles me occasionally is some of the terms used, like levemetes, guildhests etc.
As a non-native English speaker I find myself having to google what the hell everything is. Leve? Mete? Huh? Hest? As in, behest I guess??? I wonder if native speakers fare any better with these. Not a big deal however.

Being in a world populated with a lot of actual player characters is interesting, if not immersion breaking every now and then. Walking through a medievalesque fantasy world only to have some random dude roll up to you in Cloud's Fenrir bike from Advent Children or the Regalia from FFXV feels a bit odd - especially when people drive these straight into a bar on the side of the road. Rude.
That one time I stood in this bar just minding my business and suddenly this huge-ass gorilla looking thing came crashing through the door only to turn into a normal dude and his chocobo.
...the FUCK is happening here I'm scared

And then there's this guy:

...let me try to break this down. Uhhh, Jetstream Sam from Metal Gear Rising wearing a bunny head riding Goku's flying nimbus from Dragonball?
...is that what's going on here????

I also notice a lot of people seem to have some kind of pet or minion follow them around. I'm not sure if this is something I care about much but then I see it:

Look at what that Falafel Lalafell is carrying on their head!!! LOOK.

A RED PANDA.

MOTHER.

FUCKIN'

RED PANDA!!!

It's so cute I wanna cry T____T
Immediately I get irrationally excited about a frickin animal companion because I love red pandas so much I mean

just look at them

there's a reason why I have that Aggretsuko avatar because red pandas are the best animal ever and if I die before I get to pet one then my existence was for naught
I resolve to work towards getting a red panda. Nothing else matters anymore. If I save Eorzea from some kind of evil empire or false god or whatever it was not out of the goodness of my heart
it was not for the land or its people
it was for the pandas
do not pay me in gratitude or gil
pay me in red pandas or suffer my wrath

...uh, anyway.

Oh yeah, there's spambot characters too. People with names such as "aogrbmsbwihsn" standing in the towns' market places yelling about selling gil on websites for real money. Seems to be a big enough issue that it warrants them having a report feature specifically for real money transactions.

Moving on from this weirdness, I of course know of Free Companies and that TLS has one on the server I joined so I ask Lex how this all works. I let him know where I am and he rolls up to me in a Regalia, being a tall dragondude at max level decked out in the fanciest, shiniest armor. My lvl. 11 catgirl looks like a baby next to him. He's ready to give me the grand tour through Eorzea. I immediately feel reminded of this image:

I get invited to the FC. I can teleport there but the fee is 250gil and I mention it seems a bit steep for me at this point. Cue Lex just dropping 20K gil in my lap.

So he drives me around Eorzea, I get to attune to all the Aetherytes meaning I'll be able to teleport to all the major locations in the future (with the exception of La Noscea as it's an island and requires story progression before you can go there). I don't get to see much of the world as it was night at that time but we did drive through some scary looking place with like, level 50 mechs or some shit. Just one of the fuckers sneezes in the wrong direction and I'll be a goner. Somehow I end up not dead. Ironically the thing that almost killed me was Lex driving off a cliff which took off 80% of my health
I struggle a bit with the chat mechanics as using the on-screen keyboard with the controller is slow and kinda sucks. Should I do anything that requires communication in the future, I'm just gonna plug my keyboard into the console.

During our tour I notice a Cactuar variant called Sabotender. Sabotender is what Cactuars are called in Japanese so I wonder if this variant is then called Cactuar in the JPN version

I get to check out the TLS house which is in this very Japanese-looking neighborhood. It seems this is from an expansion so teleportation is literally the only way in and out for me at this point.
I don't know what benefit this FC business brings yet but I check out the mansion and see that it is possible to get private chambers there eventually, so that's neat. There was a sidequest I did before that introduced the housing mechanics to me - something that seems unattainable at this point though not just because of me not having enough money and not meeting other requirements yet but also because there seems to be a housing shortage in Eorzea.
I notice training dummies outside the mansion. They are lvl 50, 60 etc. I try to punch one but every hit misses
The dummy seems to mock me.

I also try out Guildhests for the first time - short quests that team you up with other players as a party to kill some monsters. Playing with randos gives me anxiety but the only available quests so far are essentially tutorials. Short and easy, nothing anyone can yell at me over so I can manage

The main scenario quests have not yet required me to do anything with a party. Surely this will eventually happen. I get a bit nervous thinking about this and hope I'll have TLSers to team up with instead when the time comes.
So far however, all the mandatory stuff has been pretty much a singleplayer experience.

Looking at all my gear I wonder whether I get to have decent stats but still look fashionable. A lot of high-level people walking around all fancy looking or in cute dresses, surely there must be some gameplay mechanic. It was soon after that when I bumped into the NPC introducing glamours and dyes. So that is a thing that exists but at that point the quest is locked to a slightly higher level. I make sure to remember that NPC because this is a JRPG and I don't wanna look practical and sensible, I wanna look cool

Eventually I reach the final MSQs for Ul'dah. I get to a be an envoy and talk to the Grand Company higher-ups in Limsa Lominsa and Gridania. The Grand Company dude from Ul'dah wants to hold some kind of memorial for the fifth anniversary of the battle of Carteneau, where Dalamud came down and Bahamut revealed himself.
They give me an expensive airship pass so I can reach these cities. I get to Limsa Lominsa. The city looks beautiful but it lacks Uematsu's glorious theme from 1.0, oh well.
Next stop is Gridania. Again they put me on an airship. I do not need the airship for this as Lex already took me there and I can just teleport at any time but I don't want to be rude so I take the airship

All the Grand Company leaders seem on board with this memorial thing.
I wonder what a Grand Company even is. There seems to be a gameplay mechanic involved with them as well and I noticed TLS FC is affiliated with one of them.

Anyway, instead of moving on with the story I decide I want to try something different. I end up joining the Rogues' Guild in Limsa Lominsa. Instead of a tanky Gladiator, I am now a sneaky and stabby dagger person. Back to level 1 I go!
The game informs me of increased EXP gains for when you start a new class which seems dependent on your highest level class. I am grateful for this feature as it doesn't take quite as long to get the Rogue class to where I was as Gladiator.
something something sidequests fast forward and I am now lvl 15 as a Rogue
This will likely be the class I'll use until the end as experimenting with other classes seems best left until after the story stuff is complete seeing as you go back to level 1 everytime you switch.

I want to continue with the story but I am currently literally getting Sidetracked by the Gold Saucer.

So for now, y'all are caught up with my shenanigans over the last three or so days.

 

[ForceStealer]

As a non-native English speaker I find myself having to google what the hell everything is. Leve? Mete? Huh? Hest? As in, behest I guess??? I wonder if native speakers fare any better with these. Not a big deal however.

I'm sure native speakers have an advantage in a lot of the old-timey dialogue, but as for these kinds of terms, no I don't think they mean anything to any of us either. They are just these things in the game. Personally I'm still not sure if "leve" is supposed to be pronounced with a long E or not.

 

[Obsidian Fire]

Native English speakers have as much trouble with the terms. A lot of the Eorzea-specific terminology is actually hashed out in English first (this is what happens when the localization head is also on the world-building team) and then is ported into Japanese, German and French.

The place the story picks up and you stop feeling like the "errand girl" is around... lvl 13-15. Which is when you'll do the quests that opens up the rest of the city states. Once you get past that point, you'll pretty much never have the "errand girl" feel again, at least in Eorzea.

Note about the UI: You will want all those hotbars with your actions on them somewhere very visible in at least one UI slot for combat. The action icons display things like cooldowns and other things you will want visible at all times. You'll frequently see people throw all the actions that have long cooldowns into a second bar so they will not loose track of them. Zooming the camera all the way out for combat is very normal and highly recommended to see all the incoming AoE indicators. What you can do is scale most UI stuff down so it takes up less room.

I'm... definetly on the opposite end of the "there is too much information on my screen" spectrum though... so my screen is usually like this in combat... granted, having a 2K screen helps with screen real estate a lot.

 

[Lex]

Yeah was gonna say Tets, I don't know if you turned off your cross hotbar for the screenshots you took but you'll need them to map your skills and learn your rotation. Rogue/ Ninja is a great class to play, feels very snappy and I think is probably the right choice for you over Tanking while you learn the ropes (DPS is the least anxiety inducing because it's far less noticeable when you make mistakes). Remember to map the limit break button to your hotbar though (it's under Character - Actions and Traits - General), as a melee DPS you're expected to use the limit break on bosses (limit break is shared by the group in group content and melee LB does the most damage).

You can play around with the size of all HUD elements by going into the HUD adjustment menu and pressing down either L3 or L3 to cycle through percentage sizes. I play at 3440x1440 and I sit quite close to the screen so all my stuff is quite tiny:




I did play on PS3 then PS4 prior to PC and yeah, the default is a very large, cluttered UI. I still use controller on PC. Over time you'll develop a UI layout you like. One thing worth noting is that the chat window is not adjustable in the HUD menu, but you can adjust it using the software cursor (with your touchpad as though it's a laptop mousepad) and clicking and dragging the top right of the chat window. Text and element sizes are also adjustable for the chat window if you click the little gear at the bottom of it.

Communication is pretty essential - I always plugged in a USB keyboard but I know there's also a way to use your phone's keyboard with FFXIV on PS4 (I think through the PS App?), so that's a nice compromise if you CBA with an actual keyboard. Having a mouse really helps with things like adjusting your UI elements and much later, inventory management (although I'm actually faster with controller in most cases).

Also I've been watching this person's videos recently and I tend to agree with a lot of what she says, you might get some value out of this (it's spoiler free):

I'm more than eager to help you out if you've ever got any questions or whatever but I know this game takes a fair amount of learning/ muscle memory to get used to at first. Just don't be sitting letting something get in the way of your enjoyment because there are boundless options to customise your play, it's just that the options aren't always obvious. You can turn off regular battle music and mount music for example. I prefer to let the area music do its thing these days rather than have it be interrupted.

 

[Tetsujin]

I have indeed disabled my cross hotbar, it appears when holding down the shoulder buttons though so basically it's up every time I'm in battle and gone when I don't need it.

 

[Keveh Kins]

It legit warms my heart to know Lex is still acting as everyone's Gandalf when they first sign up to XIV TLS is the best

I found the PS4 UI very cluttered and intrusive as well, had to fiddle around with it a lot but eventually you find some system that works well for you.

Loving these write ups Tets, it's refreshing to read someone completely new to MMOs give their first impressions of one

 

[Tetsujin]

Haven't made much progress because I keep getting sidetracked

Been taking the tour through the Gold Saucer but decide not to indulge in the minigames for now.

I return to Limsa Lominsa for my lvl. 15 class quests. The Rogues' Guild and I stab some pirates who thought slave trading was a good idea. I learn new techniques and can now throw knives and mug people. Neat.

I decide to check out the Hall of the Novice quests that introduce me to my role. As overwhelming as everything was in the beginning, the game really tries its darndest not to leave you hanging with anything. Plenty of tutorials and explanations come up as you progress to explain all the concepts and systems in minute detail. I feel myself getting into it more and more.

So I finish these tutorials and they actually give a decent amount of EXP too, as well as shiny new gear. My character looks presentable now!

Speaking of presenting, yes, the guy in the background just stood there like this...the entire time...just posing........o.o

Spoiler: Some screencaps I took while exploring

^ I don't know what happened here but it looks cool

The Shroud and Gridania are so beautiful btw I wanna live there ;__;
Gridania in particular gives me kind of a Rivendell from Lord of the Rings vibe:

And just as I think about how LotR this is, the music turns into what sounds a bit like Soken tried to do a royalty-free version of Concerning Hobbits. I look up Youtube videos and check out the comments to see that I'm not alone in thinking this!

As I teleport into Gridania I notice a bard standing at the side actually playing music, to no one in particular. They play a classical song I recognize although I cannot name it. I decide to listen to them for a while.
After their performance I applaud. They turn to me and bow twice. I enjoy this little interaction and wonder whether people in this game use this feature to perform actual concerts and such.

The next story quest is here in Gridania but once again I get sidetracked just wanting to explore the place so I wander through the Shroud and the Lavender Beds and take in the scenery~

Spoiler: more screencaps

I envy the people who "live" here. ;__;
I feel myself getting sucked into the spirit of MMOs, wanting pointless glamours and housing for the endgame

After doing some more sidequests I decide to finally trigger that main quest in Gridania...which then promptly sends me back to Limsa Lominsa anyway. Apparently there's some more shady pirate business going on or whatever.
The game sends me to the Hall of the Novice again. I've already done these tutorials in advance of course but it's clear now where this is heading - it's time for the first instanced raid!
Outside of the tutorial quest guy this hall also has a log book explaining more stuff about the multiplayer aspect and terms like DPS, aggro etc
Again, I give kudos to the game for explaining all these things in detail to newbs.

As I move towards Sastasha dungeon, I see they put the tutorial guy in front of the cave as well - they really want you to know your shit, lol

As it was late I decide to log out here. I don't know what to expect of this dungeon but next time I log in I guess it's time to take my raid virginity.
Playing with randos should be fine but if a TLSer wants to accompany me there (which I assume is possible, yes?), feel free to do so

 

[Wol]

First time on Gridania:
Where the hobbits

Turns out they are called lalafells in this world, obviously I was horrified when I first saw them.

Those crystallized spirals have to do with the calamity depicted at the ending of 1.0, they are pure solidified aether. They're like scars/marks of that event.

 

[ForceStealer]

Love Gridania. It is, in fact, where my character lives
All the Black Shroud themes are the most nostalgic for me as I remember jut running around and exploring as a bb lancer in the Beta back in 2011. I didn't go anywhere else "ahead of time" from when the story sent me there. So it was really the whole world to me for awhile.

 

[Tetsujin]

The first dungeon is now done.

We beat up some pirates and then we beat up a Sahagin boss or something.

I think there might have been some light puzzle mechanics there but I had no idea because everyone seemed to already know where to go and what switch to flip and what key to pick up because I was probably the only newbie.

The game gives me those pop-up tutorial windows again. They explain how the loot system works. Everyone rushes ahead and I don't wanna keep anyone waiting so I decide to read it later. People 'cast their lots'. I have no idea what this means.
At the end I get some loot. I have no idea why.

A short cutscene played before the boss. Once it was done, I noticed everybody had already jumped into battle.
So I assume if you don't skip cutscenes you'll just get left behind. That could be a problem. I have read that the final dungeons are actually quite cutscene-heavy? I'm scared the way this is handled might compromise getting a coherent narrative experience (yes, one can watch cutscenes in the Inn. One can also not play the game and just watch on YouTube but that would defeat the point now wouldn't it )

My current assumption: Now that everyone is just doing speed re-runs of these old dungeons they will most likely be the least enjoyable experience of the story for newbies who wanna take everything in.

 

[Wol]

The first dungeon is now done.

We beat up some pirates and then we beat up a Sahagin boss or something.

I think there might have been some light puzzle mechanics there but I had no idea because everyone seemed to already know where to go and what switch to flip and what key to pick up because I was probably the only newbie.

The game gives me those pop-up tutorial windows again. They explain how the loot system works. Everyone rushes ahead and I don't wanna keep anyone waiting so I decide to read it later. People 'cast their lots'. I have no idea what this means.
At the end I get some loot. I have no idea why.

A short cutscene played before the boss. Once it was done, I noticed everybody had already jumped into battle.
So I assume if you don't skip cutscenes you'll just get left behind. That could be a problem. I have read that the final dungeons are actually quite cutscene-heavy? I'm scared the way this is handled might compromise getting a coherent narrative experience (yes, one can watch cutscenes in the Inn. One can also not play the game and just watch on YouTube but that would defeat the point now wouldn't it )

My current assumption: Now that everyone is just doing speed re-runs of these old dungeons they will most likely be the least enjoyable experience of the story for newbies who wanna take everything in.

Inform the party you are a first-timer doing the story right at the beginning.

You can also create a private party on Party Finder specifying its a story-run for newbies.

The least ideal option is to skip cutscenes in-dungeon and watch them on the Inn Room record book whenever you feel like, but I wouldn't personally recommend it for an immersive first-time experience.

Congrats on clearing the first dungeon!

Looting system is based on luck/the gear dropped. Just cast Need on everything you want, and pray to RNGesus. If X role gear drops, and a member of that role casts Need, he gets the priority.

 

[ForceStealer]

I've always felt bad for people that weren't able to play the original final dungeons when they first comes out. Your best bet for the two last dungeons will probably be to get a party of us to go with you so that we won't skip the cutscenes and you'll get to play it for realsies. There are a lot of cool moments.

As Wol said, saying you're a first-timer can work well for regular dungeons, also, after you get out of ARR stuff, they got a lot better about putting most of the cutscenes after the dungeon ends so you can watch them in peace.

 

[Tetsujin]

Is that so? Well technically I only have ARR so there's no getting out of that for me at this time

(I also did some digging - I have read they have made those final dungeon cutscenes unskippable now? )

 

[Obsidian Fire]

ARR has some... growing pains to get though... since the FFXIV team was working on it and the last few patches of 1.0 at the same time. There's some annoying things in ARR dungeons that quickly got phased out. Cutscenes in the middle of dungeons is one of them.

The last two dungeon of ARR have unskippable cutcenes. You can't exit out of those when you do them anymore. So don't worry about that for now. One you get to 2.1 dungeons and afterwards, the issue never really comes up again.

The Loot system checks if you're the class that can equip that gear (if it's for your class/job). If you are, you can roll "Need" with gives you a number between 99 and 1. If you can't equip the gear (not for your class/job) then the need button is greyed out and you'll have to roll "Greed" instead. Need rolls always have priority over Greed rolls. After that, the game compares all the numbers that got rolled and whatever player rolled a higher number gets the loot. In lower-level dungeons, no one usually wants the loot anyway because it's useless to them, so just roll Need/Greed on everything and you'll often get it.

 

[ForceStealer]

I thought that was the case now (unskippable cutscenes in the final dungeon), but I wasn't sure so I didn't want to say it.

 

[Lex]

Outside of the tutorial quest guy this hall also has a log book explaining more stuff about the multiplayer aspect and terms like DPS, aggro etc
Again, I give kudos to the game for explaining all these things in detail to newbs.

Hall of the Novice etc was all added after 2.0 launched - I don't remember what specific patch it came in but it might have been during Heavensward. This is just to say I'm glad the game explains these things now, because it sure didn't in the beginning

And yeah re: cutscenes in dungeons - just watch them. Most players will wait for you Tets, because most dungeons only have a cutscene for the final boss which is quite short. It's a cunty thing to do for them to just go and pull before you're ready, but it does happen a lot. Don't feel the need to skip them though, if the arena closes you'll get an option to just warp in

And the final two story dungeons are incredibly cutscene heavy, but they recently made it so that nobody can skip the cutscenes (all the text auto-advances, so everyone moves on at the same time). They buffed the EXP massively for this, and they're in their own roulette called "Main Scenario Roulette". So it won't be a problem for you, but it was for players who played before they implemented that. I played it while it was current so I was lucky enough that most people were new to it at the time.

Something you might not know aswell, there's a thing in the game called "The Unending Journey" - it's a desk you can interact with in Inn's, but we've got one in the FC house. You can use that to watch any cutscene you want to re-watch, or missed. But don't skip any for the sake of other people in content, most people will wait for you.

 

[Tetsujin]

Two more dungeons done, the...Sam-Sara...Deepdive and the uh, Copperfield Mines or something. I've been up all night my brain isn't working
While Roger previously helped out at Sastasha (Romanenko, author of in The Darkness of Shadow Moses I NEED SCISSORS61)), Lex tanked and took the lead with these two.
I forgot to put the Limit Break command into the hotbar for Tra-Lala Deepfake lol
look it's all been solo content until now I never needed this before lmao :'o

Anyway, Shangri-La Deepstate was the hideout of some Dalamud death cult that summoned some kind of DnD mind flayer called Galavant ("And people called him Gaaaaaaa~laaaaaaa~vaaaaaaaaaaaant! ♫" no one will get this reference because no one watched Galavant and that's why it was cancelled after two seasons you bastards =< )
so naturally

we weren't having it

Did the other one right after as these dungeons were all pretty much back to back in the story

no problems with the Cumberbatch Mines either except during the boss fight I went after these cave people minions and only saw too late the message in chat to just ignore them and focus on the boss
whoops
its all a bit much too take in for me with all the effects and numbers flying around and chat and hotbars and ((-__-))

Anyway so the big cave people boss was like, enslaved by people hundreds of years ago and then they sealed them in but now the miners accidentally let them out and the big cave people are pissed and rightfully want justice, so naturally

we weren't having it

wait hold on is this right i mean what are we, cops?
wait
cop is short for copper
copperbell mines
I am on to something here.

I used the limit break on this one, it feels odd having the limit gauge shared by the entire party because it makes me more hesitant to want to use it but like, the bar was full, the boss was there so he gets the limit break
Which was called Braver btw so +1 for the VII reference

anyway excuse my delirious no sleep brain rambling

the story continues and it's slowly getting a bit more interesting as this dude Thancred invites me to this exclusive club of people whose super power is to get visions at plot convenient moments

 

[Tetsujin]

Tried to enter the Ifrit boss battle, withdrew after no party formed after 20 minutes :') At one point a second DPS and a Tank showed up in the duty list but they withdrew so I was just left waiting...and waiting...
I guess that's what you get for trying to do story battles that require a party at 1am on a Monday on an EU server
Will try again tomorrow, preferrably when people are online

For someone who's never played online RPGs before, this is an entirely new obstacle/annoyance that'll require some getting used to.

 

[Theozilla]

Tried to enter the Ifrit boss battle, withdrew after no party formed after 20 minutes :') At one point a second DPS and a Tank showed up in the duty list but they withdrew so I was just left waiting...and waiting...
I guess that's what you get for trying to do story battles that require a party at 1am on a Monday on an EU server
Will try again tomorrow, preferrably when people are online

For someone who's never played online RPGs before, this is an entirely new obstacle/annoyance that'll require some getting used to.

Also FYI while DPS have an easier learning curve/less responsibility, the trade off is that queueing for duties as DPS takes longer than Tanks and Healers do.

 

[Lex]

Yeah as Theo said, you will be looking at 20 min queues routinely as a DPS (though it's normally around 10 mins). While you wait, it's a good idea to do things like your hunting log, or participate in some fates/ do some exploring. Pick up any quest on the map that's blue and has a + symbol, this all unlocks other content. By doing this, you won't notice the queues.

There are simply way more people who play DPS classes. The way it works is that players who have completed the content are matched by queuing up for their daily levelling roulette (this covers any levelling dungeon from 1-80, and any story trial from 1-45), and you are far less likely to get people doing levelling roulette at that time. You can insta-queue by playing as a tank or a healer (though even then you might have to wait a bit, depending on the content), or by partying up with one. The other solution is to party up with a tank or healer. So just pop it in the FC chat if someone else is online and I'll be happy to hop in with you.

I'm working from home today. I officially finish at 1630UK but I'd be happy to take a 10 minute break at any point during the day to help you out if you're online before then