FFXIV: catch all

Yeah, I'm still definitely at the "overwhelmed" step.
I basically don't do any gathering or crafting, save that I send my retainers out on gathering quests, because they can come back with some pretty valuable materials for the AH.
Still don't have a character of high enough level to get me past Ishguard, though. Tried going back to Red Mage... died. Sigh.

I've been maining Red Mage lately so let me know if you have any specific questions. I also made the mistake of attempting the level 60 job quest while wearing level 50 gear, so hopefully you aren't doing the same. But I also found some of those instanced duties to be kind of obtuse, and didn't care of them overall.

Started the blue mage stuff the other night. I honestly thought the blue mage job was going to be a sort of add-on type thing, where you can mix it in with any other job. It's a little odd getting the new spells, and I'm not sure how you would get them all without a guide, but so far, it's fun.

I'm nearly done the 4.4 main story quests. The Burn dungeon was really cool looking. Overall I'm intrigued with where the story is going now that they seem to have wrapped up Stormblood. I'm looking forward to hearing more Shadowbringers info from the Paris fanfest tomorrow.

I still have some primals and the last Ivalice raid to do as well. I never finished the Alexander raids in Heavensward either, so I'll probably go back and clear those while I'm at it.

I've got 6 crafter classes leveled to 16 or 17. At some point this weekend I'll go back and grab the other two, then start trying to level them all together. I suspect focusing on them exclusively will be a quick way to burn myself out on the game, but they're good when I want to watch some numbers go up while not doing anything too strenuous otherwise.

Decided to just bite the bullet, pick a class, and try to push through the Heavensward story.
And the class I picked, despite my grousing, was red mage. And you know what? I'm glad I did. I stuck with it, unlocked a heal skill, and now I feel like I have some survivability. Enjoying playing through, hopefully I can stay in front of the level requirement.

I put an app in for the group today, thanks!

I want to get back into this, but I have no idea how to. I doubt I know how to play my class anymore, both because it's been so long and because I'm sure it's changed. I don't recall where I left off in the story; somewhere between Heavensward and the next expansion. I don't know if I should just roll up my sleeves and try to jump back in, or if I should roll up an alt and start over.

You can start by hopping into low level dungeons and working up to your current level. You’ll be synced with that dungeon’s level and don’t have to recall all your abilities all at once. You could also keep your current character and just level a new class and job from the beginning rather than try to recall your current job.

This is a decent recap of ARR’s story, and links to a Heavensward recap. See if that doesn’t jog your memory.

I just saw the Viera announcement. Will there be male Viera?

ClockworkHouse wrote:

I just saw the Viera announcement. Will there be male Viera?

They’re being annoyingly coy about it. The answer is “probably” but they haven’t confirmed it yet.

You might have a Fantasia potion in your inventory that’ll allow you to change your race when the time comes. Not sure if there are other ways to obtain one if you’ve already used it.

I resubbed last week after playing for only six months right when Stormblood came out. My main class was Monk and so far I've found it really easy to get back into combat. The game kept my hotbars and i used a controller, so a little muscle memory and a little reading tooltips got my main rotation close enough.

The part I'm not looking forward to relearning is the ancillary equipment stuff. Crafting materials of different qualities and materia and glamours and tomestones and now there's saddlebags and what gear to keep if I'm going back to some other classes...

Dryden wrote:

I resubbed last week after playing for only six months right when Stormblood came out. My main class was Monk and so far I've found it really easy to get back into combat. The game kept my hotbars and i used a controller, so a little muscle memory and a little reading tooltips got my main rotation close enough.

The part I'm not looking forward to relearning is the ancillary equipment stuff. Crafting materials of different qualities and materia and glamours and tomestones and now there's saddlebags and what gear to keep if I'm going back to some other classes...

If you are used to playing monk I would say give Samurai a try if you have Stormblood. It is a similar type of class and shares gear with monk.

Materia really isn't absolutely required unless you are getting into really high-end content and tomestones just come pretty easily with normal playing. As far as gear for other classes, it is usually pretty cheap to gear up till you hit 50 or so (and after that you can rely on tomestone gear for a while).

I noticed twitch prime was giving the starter edition away, so I gave this a try, spent the entire evening playing, got a level 9 archer now.

Welcome to Eorzea, Fastmav347! We've got a free company (guild) that you're welcome to join if you happen to be on Midgarsormr. It's not super active, but we've got a nice little house and a few of us are on every day.

There's also a Linkshell you can join (like a global chat channel) for Goodjers. It'll connect you to some that are in other guilds for questions or assistance.

I'm thinking about jumping back in, but I never did get Stormblood. Has there been an announcement of any kind of price drop for Stormblood, or a bundle that includes it? Or will it be integrated into the base game?

Nevermind! I should have read the product description on PSN more closely. It looks like buying Shadowbringers will also give access to Stormblood (and Heavensward, which I already have).

On PC, preordering Shadowbringers doesn't give you access to the previous expansions until June. I haven't been able to confirm if the same is true on PSN, but if you haven't ordered it yet, I'd hold off until you know for sure how it works there. Of course, if you don't think you'll get to Stormblood until June, it's a moot point anyway.

Edit: Seems this is also true on PS4.

That's good to know. Thanks!

Squeenix Sale on Steam, you can pick up the base game and all current DLCs for $39.98, or just the base game for $19.99 (not on sale)

Also a reminder for those new or who don't know, when it comes to the PC version, that if you bought the game from SE's store, you can only buy the expansions from there. If you bought the game on Steam, you can only buy the expansions on Steam. You can't mix and match Steam with non-Steam licenses.

I finally finished the Stormblood (just 4.0) MSQ last night. I wasn’t a big fan of the story, but I thought the ending was okay. I look forward into getting into some of the level 70 content. Sadly, I’m in the Primal data center, otherwise I’d be interested in joining the linkshell if it’s cross-world.

Have they said anything about the macOS port of FF XIV? I’d been playing on PS4, but I recently switched back to Windows since we got a new iMac last month. I checked the requirements for macOS version of Shadowbringers out of curiosity, and they indicate the macOS client will need to be reinstalled because it’s now 64-bit. That has me wondering whether they found a different wrapper or finally did a proper port.

doogiemac wrote:

Welcome to Eorzea, Fastmav347! We've got a free company (guild) that you're welcome to join if you happen to be on Midgarsormr. It's not super active, but we've got a nice little house and a few of us are on every day.

I actually am, I looked back a few pages and noticed couple of you were on Mitgarsormr, so I picked that, I'm playing fairly casual at the moment.

Full Shadowbringers trailer

New Hrothgar race announced

The Hrothgar are a male-only race, and the Viera are confirmed female only.

New Dancer DPS class announced as well.

Already pre-ordered!

I've got no major PS4 games releasing in April to pick up, so I decided I'll be dedicating that month to trying out Final Fantasy XIV. I purchased the vanilla version a few years ago and am downloading now, so it should hopefully have all the updates by time I try it tonight or tomorrow.

Any recommendations for a first time player? I tend to prefer fighter-type characters with higher speed/dex in my table-top and action RPGs, though being an MMO I imagine this one controls different. The last MMO I played was PlanetSide, which is a shooter, so... really curious to see what the mechanics are like going in.

I imagine there will be a lot of single player content to start, but I'm hoping my Destiny buddy/ies will be able to join me. If I recall, people said they were on Midgardsormrererlkjererlkj? Or are they not separating servers like that anymore?

Midgardsormr is where the GWJ Free Company is, though there's not much activity. At one point Midgardsormer was full, though I'm not sure if that's still the case. As long as you're on the Aether data center, you should be able to do instanced content with other GWJ folks on Midgardsormr though.

You'll mostly be playing it like a single player RPG, with occasional group content (dungeons and trials). There's no quest sharing, but you can party up with friends for that group content.

Generally, stick to the main quest and you shouldn't have too much issue leveling. Do the Hall of the Novice quests when they become available. They teach you how to do group content, and you get a good set of gear for completing them. Any blue quest markers with a plus sign unlock something, so they're usually worth doing.

Also don't be afraid to try a few different classes. A character can play all jobs in the game, so there's no need to make alts or start the story from the beginning. All classes feel very slow starting out. Since they rebalanced everything with Stormblood, the early leveling experience can feel like a slog, where you don't have all the abilities in your toolkit. Jobs start feeling more complete around level 50 or later.

My character on Midgardsormr is Mehenilda Payne. Feel free to pester me with questions if you see me online.

ccesarano wrote:

Any recommendations for a first time player? I tend to prefer fighter-type characters with higher speed/dex in my table-top and action RPGs, though being an MMO I imagine this one controls different.

Pugilist/Monk
Rogue/Ninja

Both of them are more fast paced than say Lancer/Dragoon Marauder/Warrior. The time between needing to press a button and react.

You change classes around level 30 from say 'Rogue' to 'Ninja'. That's why you got two names. Ninja got more buttons to mash and situations/rotations to adapt with. Monk is a bit more straight forward once you figure it out. I play pretty much all the classes at endgame. Right now I like Monk more because I enjoy punching stuff.

Rogue/Ninja certainly fits the bill then, though I may try Lancer/Dragoon later due to having a love of that character class.

As long as you're on the Aether data center, you should be able to do instanced content with other GWJ folks on Midgardsormr though.

So what, exactly, is an Aether data center?

ccesarano wrote:

So what, exactly, is an Aether data center?

Servers are grouped by data center. Currently, North America has two data centers: Aether and Primal. Within each data center are the individual servers.

From this link (apologies for the small picture):
IMAGE(https://img.finalfantasyxiv.com/lds/h/M/wfVt3HlBHVdTYHoovYENGPTXqo.png)

You can see in the top left of that image how various servers are grouped under the two North American data centers. Choose one under Aether and you should be good to go.