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

[Tetsujin]

where the hecc do I get a chocobo

 

[Wol]

where the hecc do I get a chocobo

you need to join a Grand Company, if I remember right. Its a 20-ish quest.

 

[Tetsujin]

Ah that's the quest I just accepted so I guess I can get one soon then.

my virtual feet hurt

 

[Obsidian Fire]

You're going to be lucky... We're getting patch 5.3... soonish... which will have flying in ARR zones. Which is way faster then mount ground travel is!

There are only four tank classes and three healer classes in the game while there are ten DPS classes. So you get a lot more DPS trying to get queue slots then the tank and healers are. This is when it's really nice that there's so many other things to do while waiting for queues to pop. Like all those gold-saucer mini-games. Or doing side-quests, etc.

 

[Tetsujin]

Some updates on my journey so far:

I have not been neglecting my class quests, been returning to the Rogues' Guild every time I get a new quest. Because of that, Limsa Lominsa feels more and more like "home" even though I started in Ul'dah. The Rogues and their pirateyness (that's a word right?) are kind of endearing.
V'kebbe's pretty cute, let me flirt with her or something

"So, like, got any plans for Friday night....?"
"STABBIN' THE CUR WHAT TOOK ME SANDWICH, AYE."
"oh, that's cool" *frantically looks up the word "cur" in the dictionary because I want to fit in with my new pirate friends*
"ah yes, them bloody curs and coves and uh, scallywags or something AMIRITE please accept me you guys are cool"

At some point soon I should be able to upgrade from Rogue to Ninja...which seems like a weird transition to go from all that pirate business and swashbuckler lingo to a far-eastern assassin type. Does this mean I'll get no more quests with my crew?

While in Limsa Lominsa, I recognize that bard I encountered previously in Gridania, once again kind of just playing tunes for themselves. I briefly consider saying something but feel too shy and move on

Another time I found myself listening to a different bard that had attracted a small crowd for about half an hour.

They played a bunch of classics such as this one (wait for it ):

I don't think I'll ever be into stuff like the dungeons and raids and shit but this type of stuff I love.
I generally enjoy walking into a city and seeing tons of adventurers out and about, admiring their outfits, seeing what weird pets they have and all that. It's kinda charming!

Anyway, so

wait hold on

LOOK AT THIS FUCKING GUY

Dude just came bursting in with his dumb Chocobo head, struck a pose and ran off again. I don't know what it was about that but I had a laughing fit for about five minutes. It's not even anything special, just a dumb fat chocobo head but y'know, sometimes the simple things just GET YOU.
Anyway uh. Maybe you just had to be there.

As mentioned earlier, I had made it to the first Primal battle, Ifrit. I did this one with three randos. The fight itself was fairly easy. Just move out of the way when the ground starts glowing, destroy the infernal nail when it appears (I don't know what happens if you don't but presumably nothing good) otherwise just beat the crap out of Ifrit.
The cutscene that played before the fight was not too long but still had more dialogue than I thought it would. I found myself skimming most of it and trying to go through it faster than I normally do because I felt bad about keeping people waiting.

Also I am beginning to understand why people are like "so here's the fastest way to get to the Waking Sands" because...they just love making you go back there between missions, don't they? That woman literally gave me a magic earpiece comm device thing. WHY MUST YOU SPEAK TO ME IN PERSON ALL THE TIME!?

I think the Scions are just trolling me at this point.

....yyyyyyeahhp.

So the story now wants me to join of the Grand Companies.
I end up going with Maelstrom because a) it's in Limsa Lominsa which I feel is now "home" b) Merlwyb seems kinda badass and c) TLS Free Company is affiliated. No clue what benefits this has though

It's a little ridiculous how many organizations my characters ends up joining lol
I mean: Adventurer's Guild, any of the Class/Job Guilds, Free Company, Grand Company and the Scions of the Seventh Dawn.
I'll probably end up forming a political party and run for mayor or something too

Also, that outfit I got from doing the Hall of the Novice tutorials has carried me through the last 12 or so levels and I still haven't found anything better except a pair of aetherial bracers. I don't know if I'm doing something wrong or whether the equipment they give you is just that good, lol

Oh, and I got my own Chocobo now as well

 

[Shademp]

Dumb-Chocobo-Head Warrior is the most metal thing I've seen in all of gaming and nothing can convince me otherwise

*"Through The Fire And Flames" intensify*

 

[ForceStealer]

Also I am beginning to understand why people are like "so here's the fastest way to get to the Waking Sands" because...they just love making you go back there between missions, don't they? That woman literally gave me a magic earpiece comm device thing. WHY MUST YOU SPEAK TO ME IN PERSON ALL THE TIME!?

Haha, yesssss. Almost nostalgic to hear those complaints again after we whined about them for like 4 years.
And I found the best was to sail there from Limsa, I was annoyed that I hadn't known about that route sooner.

At some point soon I should be able to upgrade from Rogue to Ninja...which seems like a weird transition to go from all that pirate business and swashbuckler lingo to a far-eastern assassin type. Does this mean I'll get no more quests with my crew?

Huh, yeah that is interesting. I never leveled Rogue or Ninja so I don't know how it's handled. But I think I could guess what they might use as a natural transition. You'll have to let us know. In the other class/job quests I've done, you do often move onto to new characters but the original ones can sometimes still come into play, not always though.

 

[Obsidian Fire]

At some point soon I should be able to upgrade from Rogue to Ninja...which seems like a weird transition to go from all that pirate business and swashbuckler lingo to a far-eastern assassin type. Does this mean I'll get no more quests with my crew?

For various reasons... the Rouge Guild characters and the Ninja characters are going to join forces in later expansions. The Ninja job trainer characters are really memorable too and funny to watch.

Also I am beginning to understand why people are like "so here's the fastest way to get to the Waking Sands" because...they just love making you go back there between missions, don't they? That woman literally gave me a magic earpiece comm device thing. WHY MUST YOU SPEAK TO ME IN PERSON ALL THE TIME!?

So the lore reason for this is that Linkpearls are a very insecure method of communication. There are ways to prevent signals from getting though and it's rather easy for people to listen in on them. Mainly because Linkpearls aren't radios. They're mini-aetherites that send audio signals through the Lifestream to whatever mini-aetherite/Linkpearl they're supposed to get to. This... is also an issue if something is majorly effecting the aether in the area (Linkpearls don't work at all) like when Dalamud fell and totally wrecked both the Linkpearl network and the teleportation network at the same time.

The reason Vesper Bay doesn't have an aetheryte will end up being a plot-point later... and the long walk to the Waking Sands will be made much shorter for various reasons. So don't worry, the game is aware this is a problem.

that outfit I got from doing the Hall of the Novice tutorials has carried me through the last 12 or so levels and I still haven't found anything better except a pair of aetherial bracers. I don't know if I'm doing something wrong or whether the equipment they give you is just that good

That equipment you get from the Hall of the Novice is just that good. After you outgrow it, you'll probably want to replace it every... 5-10 levels depending on the gear you find it dungeons and how much gil you have. Don't bother replacing it every time you level up, as the stat-increases are too small to be worth it.

There's two levels on gear. The level the gear can be equiped, and the item level of the gear. Early on in the game, those two levels more or less match, but you can find gear with a higher ilvl on it then the level. Green-teir dungeon gear just about always has a higher item level then it's equip level for instance. So the equipment from hall of the noivce has a very high ilvl for it's equip level.

Limsa Lominsa is the city alot of RP people hang out in. The Market Board is right by the Aetherite (teleport crystal) so you constantly get people hanging out there. It's easily the busiest starter city... which means anyone of any level can access it.

 

[ForceStealer]

So the lore reason for this is that Linkpearls are a very insecure method of communication. There are ways to prevent signals from getting though and it's rather easy for people to listen in on them. Mainly because Linkpearls aren't radios. They're mini-aetherites that send audio signals through the Lifestream to whatever mini-aetherite/Linkpearl they're supposed to get to. This... is also an issue if something is majorly effecting the aether in the area (Linkpearls don't work at all) like when Dalamud fell and totally wrecked both the Linkpearl network and the teleportation network at the same time.

The reason Vesper Bay doesn't have an aetheryte will end up being a plot-point later... and the long walk to the Waking Sands will be made much shorter for various reasons. So don't worry, the game is aware this is a problem.

This is all very true and also doesn't make it any less annoying

 

[Obsidian Fire]

TBF, they are trying to minimize that a lot when they are restructuring the 2.0-2.5 quests, so you have to go to the Waking Sands as much as possible.

 

[Tetsujin]

ooo, I can wear the TLS company emblem now

Forgot to mention, loved the references during the Grand Company intro mission with the airship that got shot down being called Tiny Bronco. And of course it was manned by Biggs and Wedge.

 

[Lex]

^This whole game is almost literally just a massive reference to everything from FF. There are references to obscure bits of NPC dialogue from almost every FF game in completely random places. It's one of the things that makes it so endearing to long time fans.

As mentioned earlier, I had made it to the first Primal battle, Ifrit. I did this one with three randos. The fight itself was fairly easy. Just move out of the way when the ground starts glowing, destroy the infernal nail when it appears (I don't know what happens if you don't but presumably nothing good) otherwise just beat the crap out of Ifrit.

1. If you don't defeat the nail in a certain amount of time, the party dies (this is almost impossible now due to damage changes, players used to do a lot less and battles used to be far longer)
2. Until very very recently, if you left the nail and kept attacking Ifrit, it would trigger the phase change meaning the party dies, because the nail wasn't dead. This was far more common to see, in particular with the recent damage changes because if even one party member kept going ham on Ifrit, it would trigger the phase change before the nail could be killed

They changed it in a recent patch so his HP locks at a certain percentage until the nail is killed. Much better tbh.

Don't forget you have The Unending Journey (available in the FC house, or in any Inn room) if you want to recap on cutscenes. I understand feeling guilt/ pressure for people waiting, but don't let it impact your experience of the story . There aren't any overly long cutscenes that are going to keep people waiting longer than a minute or so, other than the last two level 50 story dungeons where everyone is forced to watch the cutscenes anyway!

 

[Obsidian Fire]

FFXIV has been described as a "theme park MMO" when it comes to references to other games in the FF series. You can't go more then a few feet without stumbling on one. At the same time they're aren't so slavishly references that they feel like they were just dropped into the world of FFXIV without some tailoring to fit either. The references are also pretty thoroughly taken from the entire FF game series, so there's always something fun to find.

 

[Tetsujin]

Btw I unlocked a few optional dungeons, Halatali (I think) and the Palace of the Dead. Is that anything I should concern myself with? Is there any interesting story or lore locked behind any of these?

 

[Obsidian Fire]

Palace of the Dead is a werid dungeon that isn't like any of the others. It has it's own leveling scheme and it's own style of conlfict. You can get a lot of good EXP from it, but it's very grindy. I would focus on the MSQ for your first job, as it pretty much throws Exp at you. Also, Palace of the Dead really requires that you know how to play your class very well and know how combat in FFXIV works rather well. I wouldn't go into it until you want to start leveling some of your other classes.

 

[Wol]

Btw I unlocked a few optional dungeons, Halatali (I think) and the Palace of the Dead. Is that anything I should concern myself with? Is there any interesting story or lore locked behind any of these?

Palace of the Dead has its own mini-arc, the cool thing is that it takes a few elements from another game and has some NPCs appearing that you may recognize during the main adventure... I wish some of its dungeon mechanics were used on regular dungeons, the unpredictability leads to a fun experience.

Its not essential and I wouldnt focus on it at the point you are.

 

[Kratos]

This has been such a cool thread to read. It's always neat to read peoples' first time through the game - I just had a couple friends join, so New Player Adventures is a real mood right now (they BLASTED through the MSQ, and just hit lv50 endgame. After a week. We're all in awe).

What server is TLS on, anyways?

 

[Obsidian Fire]

The TLS free company is on Chaos, Cerberus.

 

[Wol]

FFXIV has been described as a "theme park MMO" when it comes to references to other games in the FF series. You can't go more then a few feet without stumbling on one. At the same time they're aren't so slavishly references that they feel like they were just dropped into the world of FFXIV without some tailoring to fit either. The references are also pretty thoroughly taken from the entire FF game series, so there's always something fun to find.

yeah, they always make an effort to organically mesh those references with XIVs lore and world. It doesnt feel cheap or forced, but fresh and sometimes even original.

 

[Tetsujin]

Even after fighting an epic primal I am now back to doing errands for little green forest fairy folks and it's so booooooring

 

[ForceStealer]

I hate those Sylphs, and their area of the Shroud is the worrrrrrst

 

[Lex]

Btw I unlocked a few optional dungeons, Halatali (I think) and the Palace of the Dead. Is that anything I should concern myself with? Is there any interesting story or lore locked behind any of these?

Always do the dungeons. You get good EXP for dungeons close to your level and they're also unlocked in the roulette - dungeons that aren't part of the MSQ tend to have their own little story. As others have said though, Palace of the Dead can be ignored until you're levelling other jobs. It's kind of a separate thing from the main XIV experience, though if you want to give it a go feel free.

 

[ForceStealer]

I first played Palace of the Dead long after it came out. I was actually surprised by how much I enjoyed it. I don't think I'd enjoy it with randos, but while voice chatting with friends, it's a good time.

 

[Tetsujin]

I now have to track down the Sylph elder. And of course that little shit ran off into a dungeon.

Will do Toto-rak tomorrow.

 

[Wol]

Its a fucking maze, isn't.

In general all the beast-tribe lands are messy, but Sylphlands is the worst. I can't count how many times I died because I rushed in with a mount (nothing like getting heavy status).

The fact the aethercrystal is far away doesn't help either.