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

[Obsidian Fire]

Fully upgraded equips from the last expansion will last you around... half the next expansion I want to say. So... fully upgraded Ironworks Gear will last until the Lvl 55 HW dungeon gear starts having better stats than it. It does save you gearing trouble early on.

The Regalia is from the FFXV event. I know the FFXIII event was done a few times over until it was retired. And even then the items were put on the FFXIV Online Store. The FFIX event has been done several times over and those items still aren't up on the store either. So... the FFXV event probably will get another run at least? I know Yoshida has said he wants to do it again, it's just that the event schedual is really compacted at the moment because of the two month delay, so he doesn't know where/when to stick it in the line-up.

 

[Tetsujin]

I'm still doing the Hildibrand stuff, I'm taking it super slow :')
These types of quests are what I need more of in my Final Fantasy.

At some point I should probably do that Binding Coil and Crystal Tower business. Can't advance to HW anymore without Crystal Tower anyway.
Is there anything else in-between ARR and HW that seems worth doing or otherwise interesting/important/fun?

 

[Wol]

I'm still doing the Hildibrand stuff, I'm taking it super slow :')
These types of quests are what I need more of in my Final Fantasy.

At some point I should probably do that Binding Coil and Crystal Tower business. Can't advance to HW anymore without Crystal Tower anyway.
Is there anything else in-between ARR and HW that seems worth doing or otherwise interesting/important/fun?

Relic quest, at least the first step, can be fun and leads you to a series of cool trials.

Trying to beat Titan (hard) was a journey in itself, so nostalgic.

 

[Tetsujin]

What's a relic quest and where do I find it and what does it do?

 

[Wol]

What's a relic quest and where do I find it and what does it do?

search for Geralt, he'll tell you everything you need to know about Relics and booze.

If I remember well, he's on the North Shroud in a small village.

Relic is the signature weapon of your job (featured in trailers and artworks), there are way stronger weapons available at this point, its not mandatory.

Its also a weapon that keeps evolving through quests, I would do just the first step and skip the rest to be honest.

 

[Tetsujin]

What counts as the first step here because I looked it up and there is an absolutely ridiculous amount to do here that doesn't seem worthwhile

 

[Roger]

What counts as the first step here because I looked it up and there is an absolutely ridiculous amount to do here that doesn't seem worthwhile

yup

 

[Obsidian Fire]

Relic quests are pretty much glamour weapons at this point (very shiny ones at that)... and the requirements to get them used to be worse! If you're on a schedule, don't get them.

If you're a glamour whore (guilty) you often end up picking up a couple...

 

[The Twilight Mexican]

This is the first time I've seen @Obsidian Fire say "[blank] whore" and I don't know what to do with it.

 

[Lex]

I won't hear complaints about how long relic weapon quests take these days because I've done all of them while current and spent actual human weeks grinding fates in 2.x for a 0.000000000000025% chance that one out of twelve atma would drop... and that's just one of the first steps. These days you can bang through an entire ARR relic in a day or two if you're well organised.

You youngins just don't know

*cries in gae bolg atma*

 

[Tetsujin]

I feel like the game throws a bunch of shit at me and I'm like, I don't know, does anything here give me cool lore or story or is it just old endgame content for the fanatics that like to get their shit kicked in and nothing else
There's Hard mode primals and Odin and weird dungeon shit and relic quests and uh, I'll just go back to the MSQ, I guess

Speaking of MSQ, I finished 2.1 and I looked at what you had to do originally in those quests.
Like, it was more of that annoying filler errand crap that made me dislike the ARR story.

Like, you have to kill random monsters and find ingredients so F'lhaminn can make her perfume and only then will she go with you. And when you move to Mor Dhona, the dude there will give you a whole bunch of quests that are "go here, kill that thing, go there, fetch that thing" and then it makes you run an optional dungeon (I guess it's not so optional by that point), most likely even if you have already unlocked and done it before? And previously you even had to run a bunch of Guildhests or something?
And then you go back to the Waking Sands and Tataru wants to make frickin tea and you have to go get ingredients?
I would have raged

Meanwhile, my experience was "find F'lhaminn" *finds F'lhaminn* "So, you comin' with us? "yeh" "cool"
"Let's move to Mor Dhona!" *moves to Mor Dhona* "Aight, I'mma give ya a bunch of shit to do HAHA jk the papers are in order you're good, get back to the Waking Sands"
*gets back to Waking Sands* "Crazy Moogle shit is happening, go beat them up" *immediately gets to beat up some moogles to a copyright-free version of This Is Halloween*

Just from looking at the previous list of quests and the stuff you needed to do I'd say this at least saved me anywhere between 1 - 2 hours of boring busywork. Glad I waited for the patch. While not much has happened in 2.1 it felt far better paced than some of the 2.0 stuff I experienced.
I remember even before the final dungeon I had to stop to get ingredients for a soup and then make it myself for a bunch of random soldiers.
(I checked, that too is a quest that has been removed for 5.3)

Speaking of moogles, Thornmarch is where I experienced my first wipe. I don't know what happened...but a bunch of fluffy catbat creatures with pom-poms have brought me down and I feel humiliated :')

Also, why is it called Thornmarch (Hard)? To my knowledge, there isn't a "normal" Thornmarch, right?

 

[Obsidian Fire]

In ARR, (Hard) is more like a difficulty level... with "normal" only being applied to the 1st three primals in the MSQ... which would have three versions of difficulty. This got dropped in HW for just normal and extreme trials.

It's entirely possible to skip some end-game content. However... just about all the end-game content has it's own stories, that the MSQ does sometimes reference and call back too. The only ones that really can be skipped are... the ARR Extreme Primals. The rest... I would do if you can. The 24-man raids have some of the most spectacular set-peices in the game and since so many people do them, they tend to be pretty forgiving in difficulty.

The 8-man raids are usually good. The Bahamut raids only have one difficulty, but the other ones have two, so you can just do the normal ones to get the story done. The 8-man trials aren't as necessary. But they have two difficulties too. Most stuff in this game is pretty accessible to do once, if just for the story. Doing the really hard stuff (Savage and higher difficulties) never has story tied to it and you'll never need the gear from that content so bad.

If you're a glamour whore (guilty) you often end up picking up a couple...

This is the first time I've seen @Obsidian Fire say "[blank] whore" and I don't know what to do with it.

The only reason I felt remotely comfortable typing it was because I was describing myself...

 

[The Twilight Mexican]

The only reason I felt remotely comfortable typing it was because I was describing myself...

Oh, don't hesitate to about whomever. XD It was just one of those rare moments you scroll up to make sure you read the username right. XD

 

[Wol]

I feel like the game throws a bunch of shit at me and I'm like, I don't know, does anything here give me cool lore or story or is it just old endgame content for the fanatics that like to get their shit kicked in and nothing else
There's Hard mode primals and Odin and weird dungeon shit and relic quests and uh, I'll just go back to the MSQ, I guess

Speaking of MSQ, I finished 2.1 and I looked at what you had to do originally in those quests.
Like, it was more of that annoying filler errand crap that made me dislike the ARR story.

Like, you have to kill random monsters and find ingredients so F'lhaminn can make her perfume and only then will she go with you. And when you move to Mor Dhona, the dude there will give you a whole bunch of quests that are "go here, kill that thing, go there, fetch that thing" and then it makes you run an optional dungeon (I guess it's not so optional by that point), most likely even if you have already unlocked and done it before? And previously you even had to run a bunch of Guildhests or something?
And then you go back to the Waking Sands and Tataru wants to make frickin tea and you have to go get ingredients?
I would have raged

Meanwhile, my experience was "find F'lhaminn" *finds F'lhaminn* "So, you comin' with us? "yeh" "cool"
"Let's move to Mor Dhona!" *moves to Mor Dhona* "Aight, I'mma give ya a bunch of shit to do HAHA jk the papers are in order you're good, get back to the Waking Sands"
*gets back to Waking Sands* "Crazy Moogle shit is happening, go beat them up" *immediately gets to beat up some moogles to a copyright-free version of This Is Halloween*

Just from looking at the previous list of quests and the stuff you needed to do I'd say this at least saved me anywhere between 1 - 2 hours of boring busywork. Glad I waited for the patch. While not much has happened in 2.1 it felt far better paced than some of the 2.0 stuff I experienced.
I remember even before the final dungeon I had to stop to get ingredients for a soup and then make it myself for a bunch of random soldiers.
(I checked, that too is a quest that has been removed for 5.3)

Speaking of moogles, Thornmarch is where I experienced my first wipe. I don't know what happened...but a bunch of fluffy catbat creatures with pom-poms have brought me down and I feel humiliated :')

Also, why is it called Thornmarch (Hard)? To my knowledge, there isn't a "normal" Thornmarch, right?

If you are craving for lore,
Bahamut Coil is that way - - >

Beating Primal on hard modes is one of the steps to get the first relic.

 

[Tetsujin]

I actually don't know what unlocks the Bahamut stuff

I'll also need people to do that shit with me at some point so uh, any volunteers?

 

[Lex]

Happy to assist whenever Tets.

"Hard" primals are just versions of the primals with 8 people, and some more mechanics. They're not actually difficult. They just needed to distinguish the 8-man Titan, Garuda and Ifrit from the MSQ ones, then it stuck for whatever reason. There are "extreme" versions of every primal - those are tuned to be fairly challenging when they're current.

 

[Tetsujin]

So I ended up getting my relic weapon after all mostly because the majority of stuff you need to do (fight the hard mode primals for one) is necessary for unlocking the Binding Coil as well. So I guess I got my shiny ninja glamour stabbers now

Titan on hard actually wiped the party :')
I'm ashamed to say I was the first to get knocked off the platform, lol
I reviewed the footage and for whatever reason I decided to stand in the red zone instead of just barely outside it. Whoops. o.o
Well, as the fight progressed at least one or two DPS and one tank got knocked off as well. The tank looked like they were just outside the Landslide indicator but it got them anyway. It all went downhill from there.
Is Titan known for being a bit of a mess? Literally the first thing that was said in chat when the fight began was someone going "OOF" I thought it was pretty fun though, lots of stuff going on, the music is pretty intense and kinda rocks and I actually appreciate that some of the fights turned into chaos because everything so far has been super smooth sailing.

I also have the Odin quest unlocked, how's that trial? Worth doing? Hard, not hard?
Speaking of which, recently when going through the Shroud the weather turned all weirdly gloomy and the weather status was "tension". I looked it up and this is apparently related to an Odin FATE that randomly appears every now and then? I had no idea that was a thing! Why is it both a trial and a FATE though?

I have now completed the 2.2 quests as well and I'm kind of getting more invested in the story now. The whole politics thing with the Scions relocating to stay on neutral grounds, the appearance of refugees from Doma etc, the Ascian emissary showing up. It helps that I can actually feel the effects of the streamlining. The pace is so much faster now! And suddenly there is a ton of voice acting. I feel like I had almost as many voiced cutscenes in 2.2 as the entirety of 2.0
Speaking of the Domans, there is this whole thing where they comment on Yugiri's ninja fighting style being unusual and her getting introduced to the Rogues of Limsa and all that...I assume that was essentially the formal introduction to Rogue/Ninja then? Like, "hey, here's a teaser for a new class you'll be getting in the next patch!"
It's a bit awkward as this has obviously been my main job the entire time and I'm standing next to the Domans in full weeb gear and everything and no one comments on that

Yugiri herself also seems like the first canon appearance of an Au Ra?

Anyway, the Binding Coil of Bahamut is now unlocked so I definitely wanna do that soon. Seems kind of important to know what the heck happened to Bahamut after the calamity.

 

[ForceStealer]

I think the Odin trial can still be pretty tough.

I didn't think the Odin FATE was still a thing, but the FATE came before the trial. I remember hurrying to go watch the fight whenever it came up to watch all the high level people rush him and see like 100 people get wiped with Zantetsuken It was pretty awesome. It seemed kind of like the original plan was for the real BIG NAME summons, FATEs that alter the open environment were going to be the way they approached it before giving everything a trial.

And yeah, Yugiri was the tease for Rogue/Ninja.

I never got around to finishing Binding Coil myself...oops. After Twintania I just never had the desire to go any further, though I'm sure it's a lot easier now.

 

[Wol]

So I ended up getting my relic weapon after all mostly because the majority of stuff you need to do (fight the hard mode primals for one) is necessary for unlocking the Binding Coil as well. So I guess I got my shiny ninja glamour stabbers now

Titan on hard actually wiped the party :')
I'm ashamed to say I was the first to get knocked off the platform, lol
I reviewed the footage and for whatever reason I decided to stand in the red zone instead of just barely outside it. Whoops. o.o
Well, as the fight progressed at least one or two DPS and one tank got knocked off as well. The tank looked like they were just outside the Landslide indicator but it got them anyway. It all went downhill from there.
Is Titan known for being a bit of a mess? Literally the first thing that was said in chat when the fight began was someone going "OOF" I thought it was pretty fun though, lots of stuff going on, the music is pretty intense and kinda rocks and I actually appreciate that some of the fights turned into chaos because everything so far has been super smooth sailing.

I also have the Odin quest unlocked, how's that trial? Worth doing? Hard, not hard?
Speaking of which, recently when going through the Shroud the weather turned all weirdly gloomy and the weather status was "tension". I looked it up and this is apparently related to an Odin FATE that randomly appears every now and then? I had no idea that was a thing! Why is it both a trial and a FATE though?

I have now completed the 2.2 quests as well and I'm kind of getting more invested in the story now. The whole politics thing with the Scions relocating to stay on neutral grounds, the appearance of refugees from Doma etc, the Ascian emissary showing up. It helps that I can actually feel the effects of the streamlining. The pace is so much faster now! And suddenly there is a ton of voice acting. I feel like I had almost as many voiced cutscenes in 2.2 as the entirety of 2.0
Speaking of the Domans, there is this whole thing where they comment on Yugiri's ninja fighting style being unusual and her getting introduced to the Rogues of Limsa and all that...I assume that was essentially the formal introduction to Rogue/Ninja then? Like, "hey, here's a teaser for a new class you'll be getting in the next patch!"
It's a bit awkward as this has obviously been my main job the entire time and I'm standing next to the Domans in full weeb gear and everything and no one comments on that

Yugiri herself also seems like the first canon appearance of an Au Ra?

Anyway, the Binding Coil of Bahamut is now unlocked so I definitely wanna do that soon. Seems kind of important to know what the heck happened to Bahamut after the calamity.

Try Titan Extreme before talking about "chaos"

;(

Told ya that doing the relic quest would be a fun ride

 

[Obsidian Fire]

Yugiri was called for in the story before the Au Ra models were done. So she's really a heavily modified Miqo'te model. You can tell by looking at her emotes in the 2.x patches vs her emotes in the 3.x patches and forward.

The introduction of Rouge/Ninja really... impacted the raid scene... to the point the developers said they would never add a full job mid-expansion ever again.

 

[Tetsujin]

Impacted how?

 

[Lex]

It's complicated but basically there's what's called a "meta" in FFXIV, which is the theoretical strongest combination of classes for the highest DPS output or dealing with certain boss mechanics. For example in 2.x Warrior was very broken (it was terrible for damage mitigation, which is very bad for a tank class), to the point where it was more beneficial to take two Paladins even though having two of the same class limits the rate at which your limit break bar fills.

This kind of thing only matters when you're raiding, because raid fights (when they are current) are tuned to be very difficult mechanically but also have enrage timers, meaning at a certain point the boss will just kill you if you're not doing enough DPS. They are tuned so that if a party is not performing well throughout the fight, they die a lot or the players aren't doing their rotations properly, the group will be unable to clear. Even in this situation though, any combination of classes can clear the content. The "meta" is just desirable.

Important sidebar: all raid fights are now accessible/ may be easily completed by casual players, and difficult raid fights are referred to as "Savage" versions of the same fights (with more punishing mechanics and entirely new phases). However, the distinction didn't exist when coil first released. Original Coil was as challenging (or more challenging) than current level savage content. It was designed to be the most difficult content in the game at the time. Raids from Heavensward on have a normal version and a savage version. Coil has only ever been coil, but there is a "savage" version of some of the coil fights (which is even more punishing). All of it is now very easy to do unsynced, and I'm happy to run it with you. I raided coil while it was current.

Anyway, the "meta" got fucked with when Ninja was released basically. I don't specifically remember why Ninja impacted the raiding scene in 2.x, but I can tell you that for a long long time Ninja was considered an essential raid team member because of Trick Attack which increases the entire party's damage done to the boss. I've read developer commentary on how they had a lot of difficulty tuning Ninja for the savage fights which were ongoing at the time.

The classes are a bit more homogenised now compared to 2.x. There was only Paladin and Warrior, and they were very much designed to be main tank/ off tank. White Mage and Scholar were designed to be reactive/ proactive, so on and so forth. The only real utility class was Bard (the only physical ranged at the time) which had MP refresh for healers - essential for coil when it was current. These days everything is viable but the general rule of thumb is if you have a lot of utility (i.e. party buff moves), you do slightly less damage. Black Mage is the main example of this - it typically does the most damage but has no party buffs other than the role skills shared with other casters. All casters are actually like this now (though I suppose Red Mage and Summoner can revive, which is utility). Same goes for the melee. They balance the combat as best they can, and tend to make major changes to the system every couple of years. For example as a Ninja right now you have access to a role skill called Second Wind - this used to be a Pugilist/Monk exclusive move, and you had to level monk and then choose it as a cross class skill to use it. Tanks used to be able to cast protect etc.

To summarise all FFXIV content only because it might help you navigate it in your head a bit better:

Dungeons (4 Man content except Castrum and Praetorium)

Dungeons (Hard) are not actually difficult, they're just tuned to max level with new bosses and layouts. They're completely different from their normal counterparts.

Trials (8 man content - primals etc except the 3 ARR 4-man content)
Trials (Hard) aren't actually hard
Trials (Extreme) are supposed to be challenging, and indeed are when they're current

Alliance Raids are 24-man content that is very casual, but normally with unique and interesting mechanics
Raids are 8-man content similar to trials
Savage Raids are designed to be very challenging
"Ultimate" is the most difficult content in the game, they only started doing these in Stormblood.

I realise that's all still probably very confusing but this is stuff that'll make more sense as you do it and then ask questions about it. Explaining raids is difficult because they've changed so much since ARR. Now they're just 8-man fights, but Coil and the HW raids had dungeon-ey intros. And from Heavensward they're split into normal and savage, but ARR's Coil was only ever tuned to Savage difficulty, but ALSO there is a Savage Coil, which was kind of the proto-ultimate, but ALSO savage coil is only the middle tier, so fights referred to as T6, T7, T8 and T9.

The bottom line is that the two of us can do coil together unsynced and you can watch the cutscenes lol. But when it first came out it took months to clear fights because you were only allowed to go in once per week and the fights are meant to be punishing.

 

[ForceStealer]

I wouldn't mind seeing the rest of Binding Coil... when might you guys be doing this?

 

[Tetsujin]

@Lex Thanks for the explanation.

Even after 130+ hours, the world of MMO feels slightly confusing and weird to me

Like this scene:

There's just a bunch of people hanging out in mid-air and I'm like..."wha?"
And then everyone just keep saying LFG in chat
And then suddenly the entire group storms off at once. I followed them to see what's up and it was just a generic low-level FATE? Is there some valuable random rare drop to be gained from this? Oo

 

[The Twilight Mexican]

LFG

"Let's Fuck [with that] Guy."