There wasn’t anything big this week in my travels through Final Fantasy XIV. I have been progressing slowly but steadily through the main storyline in Heavensward. I have been spending more time doing some side stuff that I’ve been wanting to do but put to the side due to focusing on the main storyline in “A Realm Reborn”. Now that is done I am back to being my usual ADD self.
On the adventuring side, I got Machinist to level 40. Playing a ranged DPS job has been a pretty interesting experience, specially since it is a gun-using one, something that isn’t all that common in MMOs. Something that I noticed, and I commented this on Twitter, is that whatever they did to Machinists seems to have been pretty well received. Before the latest expansion release I only grouped with one machinist ever. And there was a lot of dungeons I did either to progress through the story, to get XP via Duty Roulette or just traipsing through Palace of the Dead. Since 4.0 though I have partied with at least 4 Machinists in about one week. This is between Dutty Roulette and Palace of the Dead. So it seems I am not the only one enjoying this Job. 🙂
I also went crazy and finally unlocked Astrologian. Healers class for me in MMOs are always something I have mixed feelings about. Either I feel scared of the responsibility or start to feel a god-like complex since I get to decide who lives or who dies. In this game it was more of the fear. I tried to do Palace of the Dead to build some confidence but that didn’t work all that well as I had barely anything healer-like to do. Still it allowed me to test the placement of my spells on the hotbar which was nice. Then I tried a Duty Roulette and ended up on Sastasha. It went well overall but there was still a couple of deaths near the last boss. I felt bad for it but nobody else seemed to mind as it wasn’t a total wipe. Regardless I think I will take some time off from this Job and focus on other ones.
Dragoon is the Job I will probably be focusing on this week. I am still just level 33 at it but I really want to see how their storyline unfolds. Specially because Dragoons are so tied to Heavensward story and lore.
I also unlocked Dark Knight before I was planning to test a theory: If you used a Jump Potion to unlock Heavensward if you could also unlock Dark Knight or if you needed to have at least on Job at level 50 to do it. Turns out you can accept the quest to unlock Dark Night at level 20ish but you do need a Job level 50 to actually finish it. Fortunately I do have a couple of Jobs at level 50ish so I was able to do it. I haven’t finished their first Job quest though since I was in a bit of a hurry, didn’t read too much of their skills descriptions and took me to long to figure what I was supposed to do so the duty failed. I will get back to it later.
I haven’t unlocked Red Mage yet but I will probably do it tonight as I really want to continue with the Hildbrand questline and the side quests in Ishgard. That and I am curious about how the Job plays.
Crafting, Gathering and Beastmen Tribes
Crafting was something I really felt bad about neglecting. It is just something I like to do in games so I can make my own gear or other items I might need. So after finishing with “A Realm Reborn” storyline this was something I immediately got back to.
Right now all my crafting levels are at least 30. Culinarian is at 37 as I was trying to get “Steady Hands II” as it was supposedly a good skill to help raise the others. But either I am doing something seriously wrong (which is quite possible) or I am just not noticing what the big advantage it brings. Either way I seem to have figured out a good skill rotation to make HQ items. It isn’t infallible by any stretch of the word but it has allowed me to finish the crafting quests that are now asking for HQ items.
All Gathering jobs are at least level 32 and progressing smoothly.
As for the Beastmen Tribes, I will probably hit Trusted with 4 of the 5 tribes from “A Realm Reborn” tonight. Only the Ixali will be left out as I believe I need crafting level 40 to do their quests. But maybe I will test that info tomorrow.
Speaking of which, I unlocked the quests for the Vath Tribe, one of the Beastmen in Ishgard. I don’t know if their system works the same as their counterparts in “A Realm Reborn” so that is another thing I need to check out this week. That and find the other Beastmen Tribes from Heavensward.
Anything else?
Hm. I am not sure if there wasn’t anything else noteworthy. I did get finish the 50th floor of Palace of the Dead somehow. It was me as a Machinists, two Red Mages and I don’t remember if the last one was a Bard or a White Mage. All I remember for certain is that the fourth person died in the middle of the fight and me and the Red Mages somehow survived. Or maybe I died too. Whatever happened we completed it. After that I only went up to floor 70 so I could get my Aethergear upgrade to +30, got my Padjali weapon for Monk and just started over again from floor 1 to experiment with Astrologian.
So, that was my week in Final Fantasy XIV. How was your gaming week?