FFXIV: catch all

I've run a ton of end game instances of CM and Ifrit using the duty finder, and the vast majority of the groups are fine. The problem is when the group is bad in terms of attitude, it is really, really bad.I ran into the same thing in Star Wars: The Old Republic when I played last month.

The good news is we have several healers and at least one tank running the end game content now. I know we can put together a 4 person team. If we get a few more DPS we can start doing the 8 man content by ourselves. I don't mind the duty finder queues -- even when people are mean, I just ignore them -- but I can see how they'd be a huge turnoff for most people.

I ended up rolling anew on another server to play with some people I know. I think that ended up being a mistake. Once the server transfers open up I'll be moving the new toon over. I'm only level 27 right now, but I'm a gladiator. With any luck I'll shortly be a paladin. I'm sure I'm some ways from 50, but I'll be useful soon. Promise.

The key is to avoid pugs when you can. AK is a 4 man which you can farm for your myth and darklight.
Start building a friends list of players that you respect outside the FC. If you need a tank send them a tell and you might get lucky.
I'm not in GWJ FC, but if you ask on the LC I will be happy to help run content. Main reason I stayed with Grievance is because I didn't think we'd have enough players for this game that requires grouping for the content. Even with 250+ players on Griev we do manual searchs for healers and tanks occasionally. Maybe form a LC with players that you like run with that are outside the FC.

It takes more work but you can run later end content without playing russian roulette with the Duty Finder.

I've now gotten a few steps into my relic quest and I've now run into two steps that I wasn't expecting. Both times you have to do an 8 man boss-fight. No biggie, I've been running those against Ifrit and Garuda on hardmode like crazy. The surprise though is that you can't use the duty finder so instead I find myself standing in a zone shouting for a group. Awesome. One of the things I really like about the duty finder is that I can queue up as my monk, swap over to one of my other jobs and level that up for the 30-45 minutes it may take me to find a group. With this I'm just standing in a high level zone watching spam until we can get an 8 man group together. Just seems an odd point to change the formula for finding groups.

I found that frustrating as well. That was one of few we did a healer search on the server and randomly asked them to help.
Took about 15mins to put a group together.

Don't forget to equip your relic :).

Aristophan wrote:

I just finished my third failed run, where we ran out of time.

*twitch*

Farscry wrote:
Aristophan wrote:

I just finished my third failed run, where we ran out of time.

*twitch*

To be fair, the reason we ran out of time is because the tank wanted to try out a "theory" on the second boss. We tried that three times, then tried two more times the normal way before we got it. Then we were on a mad dash to the end, and if we had beat the final boss the first time, we would have done it. However, we wiped at about 20% with 3 minutes remaining. No hard feelings from people - nice group, but definitely sub-optimal.

The fourth run worked like a charm. No wipes whatsoever.

Perfected Titan HM last night that was extremely satisfying. Almost got my relic weapon huzzah.

I'm still trying to find a Hydra group. :/ Every time I've gone by the actual zone in there's been maybe 2 or 3 people there and nothing going on in zone shouts. Looks like I might have to wait till the weekend to give it another shot unless I get lucky with a crowd in the area.

In the meantime I've been working on getting all of my combat classes to at least 15. That 50% bonus is really helping the lower levels fly by. Usually by the time I complete the class quests, do the first tier of the hunting journal and hit whatever fates are nearby I've gotten them to 10. I've gotten 3 to 15 and I think I'm going to keep going for a summoner next. At least at these early levels the playstyle seems very similar to the necro I used to play in EQ2 which was my raiding toon. Send in the pet, let them build aggro, stacks the mob with dots and keep your pet alive. I actually enjoy that style of play.

Having spent some time with all of the classes I can certainly see how some people complain about the combat being slow. The requirement for casters to stand still while they cast can make many fights seem like you're doing nothing more than standing still and pressing the same button over and over while you watch your cooldowns. The monk, on the other hand, is constantly moving during fights and you're building combos and buff stacks. Definitely more fast paced and action oriented as opposed to the casters.

Helpful tip for gatherers/crafters ; your grand company sells survival manuals and engineering manuals (gather and craft respectively) which give 50% bonus to xp (sadly it does not seem to apply to leve xp, but still very useful).

For example;
Survival manual 50% bonus xp on gathering up to a max of 20 000 xp (or 3 hours, whichever comes first)
Survival manual II 50% bonus xp on gathering up to a max of 40 000 xp (or 3 hours...)

likewise for engineering. Great way to burn off some of those seals and you can use it in conjuction with leves even though the leve xp itself wont get a bonus.

caveats;
-I'm not sure if the xp limit means total xp gained from use or total bonus xp
-no idea if the 3 hour timer will continue to count down should you log off: ETA - it does still count down sadly, but I find other than last night I've always hit the xp cap before the time cap.

I am like 5k from 49! Almost there....

Once I hit it, does anyone have any tips on what to hit first. I do not even understand the "relic" terminology. I have kept up with my story quest and all instances this far. I have finished Aum Vale twice now (I needed to go again for the company quest).

I'll just give you my experience after hitting 50.

The first thing I did was finish my job quest and then finished the main story. After that I started the relic quest since it leads you to the vendors who sell the end game Darklight gear. I would then queue up for Wanderer's Palace, Amdapor Keep and Ifrit Hardmode while levelling up some other class. The WP and AK runs will give you tomes of philosophy and mythology. The philosophy stuff allows you to buy the equivalent of tier 1 raiding armor and accessories. The mythology tomes is for the tier 2 stuff. After I got my weapon drop from Ifrit I then starting queuing for Garuda harmode instead. I just got that weapon drop last night so the next hardmode would be Titan but that has been an absolute pain and I'm starting to doubt that I'll be lucky enough to beat it with a PUG any time soon.

For some perspective, I believe a full set of darklight gear is a little over 5k tomes and, unless it's changed, I think a full AK run gives you 100 philosophy and 50 mythology. Oh, and since they cap you at 300 mythology per week, it's going to take you a while to gear up. You can also get some armor drops from WP and AK that are a good step up from your job gear but slightly below the darklight stuff.

In regards to the relic quest, the relic weapon you get at the end of the quest chain is going to be the best weapon for your class unless there's something in the deeper levels of the coil of Bahamut that I don't know about. It's a huge investment though, so be prepared. In case you don't want to know the basics of the relic quest...

Spoiler:

First you'll have to buy a specific crafted weapon that's made using a drop from WP or AK. You'll then have to meld a couple of level 3 materia to that weapon and turn it in to the quest giver as a "base" for your relic weapon. I just bought everything and ended up spending about 90k gil including paying the crafter to meld the materia for me. Sprinkled in amongst these are several "go here, kill x of that" kinds of quests. You then have to put together an 8 man group, that you can't queue for so be prepared to stand in a zone shouting, and kill the Chimaera. You'll then have to do the same thing to kill the Hydra. After that you have to kill Ifrit Hardmode, which is fairly easy, Garuda Harmode, which is also fairly easy, and Titan Hardmode which I have yet to beat. After that, if you want the final form of your weapon you'll have needed to save up 900 mythology tomes to buy a tempering liquid that the quest giver will use on the weapon.

So Aurum Vale is kicking my ass. I've run into the timer 3 times now on the last boss, it's just a really frustrating experience. Anyone have any hints on taking that guy down?

The biggest hindrance on that fight is ending up in a group without a bard or black mage. Big AOE damage is practically a must for that boss. The basic strategy is eat a fruit at 3 stacks, 4 stacks is pushing it, and as soon as the boss moves to drop the ring of pods around himself everyone immediately unloads their biggest aoe's on them to kill them before they change. It's a pretty straight forward fight with good aoe but without it you're in for a struggle.

I can not seem to find anyone to help with dhorme chimera, looking at guide he is most definitely a party boss but you can not use the duty finder to get a group for him since he's just in the world.

Yeah, I wish both Chimera and Hydra were available through the duty finder. It took me a couple of nights to find a group for Hydra.

was able to get it actually, apparently i now need to grind stones for more dl to continue on the relic quest :/

I hit my first patch of quests drying up at 43. I'm about halfway through the level, but I need to get to 44 before the next story quest opens up. I thought I could just work on my Maelstorm hunting log, but those only reward seals (and also I have to go back into the Sunken Temple ...grrrr). Time for some Leves and Fates.

I thought I could just work on my Maelstorm hunting log, but those only reward seals (and also I have to go back into the Sunken Temple ...grrrr). Time for some Leves and Fates.

The mobs still give exp, a sunken temple run should give you about half a level of exp.

Or, as mentioned before, join a group for the Dark Devices fate chain near camp bluefrog, seems to be about the fastest way to do 42-50 unfortunately.

Not sure if we had this yet, housing video:

Finally got my relic weapon this weekend so now I've been leveling up some other jobs. Fate grinding in a group is amazing xp but mind numbingly boring and you don't learn how to play your class at all. What I've found myself doing is fate grinding a few levels with a class and then I'll either work on the hunting log for a bit or go into a dungeon. I can only imagine some of these poor guys fate grinding all the way to 50, jumping into an end-game dungeon and then going "Okay.... so how do I play this class?"

I also love the fact that as a healer I'm only in queues for dungeons for 5 minutes, tops, and most of the time it's instant. That's a refreshing change from the 30-45 minute waits I was having as a DPS class.

You are a lot luckier of a healer then me. My wait times or usually 15-25 minutes. (Low levels they were instant)

I got everything on my relic wep done up until Ifrit Hard Mode... so I am chugging along. I need to find a static CP/AK group for farm my points for the week. I know GWJ Guild seems pretty dead most of the time, any more active guilds or you all pug everything?

Up until last week or so I'd been doing nothing but pug's for the most part. Since the GWJ guild seemed to be losing steam I went ahead and swapped over to the Grievance guild which I'd played with in Neverwinter. At the moment they have somewhere around 300 members and it's normal to have 20-30 players on at any given time, sometimes more on the weekends. Doing an all FC group with them was the only way I was able to finish Titan on hard mode. I'd probably banged my head against that fight a good 30 or 40 times with PUGs until I just gave up and realized that wasn't going to get me anywhere.

yeah as seems to usually happen in mmos it looks like the goodjer presence has really dipped

In general, we don't make it past the three month point at best; more often the 30 day point is where interest dies off.

Sorry, I've been slowly trying to get THM to 30. It's really slow going, since I did way too many quests as an archer. I also have a sizable DS pile right now.

I too am slowly going along, but I play mostly at night, and since I'm on the West Coast, usually not many people are on. I finally hit 45 and did my Summoner class quest, which got me four new armor items with excellent stats. I guess blue is the new purple.

Oh no, there are purple items too.

I'm gonna be transferring over to play with the GWJ folks tonight.

Currently I'm a lvl 50 SMN, although I'm a just a blink away from unlocking SCH. Currently I'm pretty much geared with Wanderer's Palace gear (ilvl 55) and I've got my Ifrit's Tome. If I'm needed as a healer I've got the Scholar Tome from Ifrit as well, so I should have some versatility, though it wouldn't be optimal since I've put my points in INT as a summoner. I'm a lvl 50 weaver, carpenter, botanist, and soon to be culinarian. I have the gear and cross class skills to make the Vanya's gear, although I haven't tried it yet (mine will be the first...I'm going to rock the hat and robe instead of Darklight, since the spell speed on it sucks for SMN).

I'm on my relic quest- I've beaten the dhorme chimera and just need to finish Amdapor Keep. I think I'm geared and capable, I've just been focusing on other things at the moment. Just giving you guys a heads up :).

My character is Niels Bohr, unless for some reason I need to change names. I'll try to get ahold of one of you guys when I get transferred over.