Final Fantasy XIV Endwalker Update
1,521 words.
I continue to play Final Fantasy XIV every day as if I’ve been doing it all along, and didn’t ignore it and all MMORPGs for a solid four years. How long will this strange pro-MMORPG phase last?
I can’t be bothered to edit my blog posts into coherent prose anymore, so they’re mostly just raw information dumps at this point. Here’s another one. If you want easier-to-digest content, you can always use the AI summary feature of all the RSS feed readers out there.
Main Bard in Endwalker
I previously gave up on leveling a brand new character to 80 to play through Endwalker, and went back to my main Bard. Here’s the gist of the story so far.
The enemy for this expansion is the Telapheroi, a “tempered” army created by Fandaniel and the deposed, resurrected Zenos. (I think: All opinions about FFXIV story subject to change because it’s very inscrutable.) They’ve built a bunch of towers around the land which are going to … I don’t know, destroy the world, or something.
First we arrive in Old Sharlayan and get a tour of the city. I did that four years ago. I don’t remember much.
Next I had a choice to go to Thavnair or stay in Sharlayan. Four years ago, I picked the option that seemed most non-standard and went to Thavnair to investigate the Tower of Zot, which is the wrong choice according to all the Internet guides. I can only assume they split the MSQ to divide the player base at launch time.
Anyway, out in Thavnair, a local alchemist named Nidhana built some devices to protect everyone from the Tower, but on testing it, Fandaniel rudely kidnapped her and stuck her into a tower wall, while I watched and did nothing despite all my Chosen One Hero Powers.
(FFXIV is thick with obvious plot holes you have to ignore. The amount of times that people are saved by some deus ex machina offscreen magic or people or not saved because your character conveniently fails to act are innumerable.)
Then I returned to Old Sharlayan for some good old-fashioned library research and politics. The Forum and the twins’ dad are up to no good and working on some secret project down in Labrynthios. In the end, the Scions are banned from conducting any further research in Old Sharlayan. And we met the twins’ mom.
So the Scions returned to Thavnair and assaulted the Tower of Zot, destroying it and rescuing all the elephant people who had been kidnapped. That was the first dungeon instance of the expansion, which I of course did with the Trust (solo) system. On the final boss, it had quite a challenging set of dance mechanics for a leveling dungeon, and it took two tries.
Instead of attacking each tower individually, the Allied commanders decide to relieve Garlemald and attack the Main Big Evil Tower, so off we go to one of the most inhospitable places in the game, weather-wise. (Though there are no mechanical detriments to the cold.)
The twins, Alisaie and Alphinaud, try to force their help on the locals, with dire consequences. (I’m almost positive the exact same thing has happened before–they never learn.) Then the twins are taken prisoner by the shattered remnants of Legatus Quintos and the Garlean 1st Legion, who really hate us, and try a sneak attack without any soldiers, food, or heat, because compromise is unthinkable. But then they’re forced to surrender and Quintos can’t handle the shame of it.
Last night I left off with Strange Bedfellows, the one which unlocks the Aetherite in Broken Glass and unlocks a ton of side quests for Aether Currents. It’s numerically about 1/3 of the way through the 6.0 Endwalker quests.
I figure if I can do three MSQ quests a day, I’ll be done with Endwalker in, oh, a couple of months? Whew. The MSQ is soooo long now. Each one takes 20-25 minutes when you read everything out loud and don’t skip anything. And frankly, you don’t do much of anything, except run from place to place, read dialog, and watch cut scenes.
Machinist Leveling Continued
I continue to level my new Machinist character in my off time, mainly when I don’t feel like reading dialog out loud. Maybe I’ll switch over to him when I get to Dawntrail. (Except the thought of running through Endwalker a second time is rather appalling.)
The bottleneck from 50-53 continues.
52-52. The Keeper of the Lake (50 ilevel 90). 52 -> 52 3/5.
52-53. The Keeper of the Lake (50 ilevel 90). 52 3/5 -> 53.
Level 52 job quest.
The bottleneck eases up once you reach level 53. Levels 50-53 is a bit of a slog.
53-55. Sohm Al. First Duty Support dungeon with the familiar Scion NPCs. Felt like it took forever.
Incidentally, the recommended gear button now keeps changing my gear to lower item level gear so I can’t get into dungeons, which is pretty annoying.
Level 54 job quest.
55-56. The Aery.
Level 56 job quest. Ended up about 56 1/2.
I like the “feel” of the new character. The lion dude has pretty good animations. (My affinity for an MMORPG character depends a lot on how good the model’s run animations are. You spend like 95% of your time staring at your character’s back while they run, after all. If they have an odd gait, it’s a real turn-off.) The Machinist is kind of a fun DPS class.
The Hunting Bottleneck
With some ways to go to reach 57, I thought I’d take on some Clan Hunts in Foundation. And this is when I ran into a huge road block, because they weren’t unlocked yet. It’s something you don’t get with a Tales of Adventure MSQ purchase.
In order to unlock the Heavensward Clan Hunts, you need to have unlocked the A Realm Reborn Hunting, and in order to do that, you have to increase your Grand Company rank to Second Lieutenant.
And that’s a lot of Company Seals you have to gather. Second Lieutenant is eight promotions, which start at 2,000 seals and go up by 1,000 each from there.
So how do you get Company Seals quickly? Great question, with unsatisfying answers. You can start with your Grand Company Rank 1 hunting log, which got me a couple of promotions.
Then, a huge road block: The Rank 2 hunting log requires you to achieve a rank of Sergeant Third Class, which is two more promotions, or about 9,000 company seals.
By my calculations, the only way to gather these Company Seals is to grind FATEs. You can’t do Expert Deliveries until you reach the rank of Sergeant Second Class. Supposedly there’s a daily Random Duty that gives out a ton of Company Seals but ugh playing with other people, no thanks.
I explored a bunch of different places to find a good balance between simplicity and seals rewarded, to maximize seals/hour. For example, low-level FATEs are super easy and fast, but don’t reward many seals, so you have to do tons of them. The FATEs around Revenant’s Toll are slower, but still easy, and reward about 200 seals each. At level 56, the ones around the first zones of Heavensward are soloable (except the bosses), and reward nearly 300 seals each.
So pick your poison. No matter which you pick, it’s a boring grind. Or maybe you like that kind of thing. You just turn off your brain, listen to a podcast or something, and suddenly it’s an hour later. But you still can’t get a promotion because you need a lot of seals.
It’s horrible, but I think it’s also necessary. You really need to unlock Hunting. It’s a vital source of XP. Wish I’d thought about it earlier.
56-57. I gained a level just running around doing FATEs. Most of that XP came from two FATE-related achievements.
57-58. The Vault. Very close to 59.
The level 58 job quest(s) got me to 59.
59-60. The Great Gubal Library.
When I finally gained enough Company Seals from FATEs (I was in the Dravanian Highlands) to buy my way to a promotion to Second Sergeant, that’s when things finally opened up and I could get things rolling to unlock the Hunts. The Rank 2 Company Hunts unlocked, which quickly got me another promotion.
Then the Expert Delivery missions unlocked, and I could dump a ton of excess dungeon gear to the vendor for a bunch more Company Seals.
Then I did a couple of company quests, which involved a couple of dungeons, which I needed to do to unlock the ability to get more promotions. After it all I reached Second Lieutenant, the goal I’d been trying to reach after all the grinding.
Then the coveted Let The Hunt Begin quest, which unlocked the Let the Clan Hunt Begin quest over in Foundation. Also, a few other Hunt-related quests could be unlocked, since I was already level 61.
Finally off to Kugane to unlock Stormblood 1 Star Veteran Clan Hunts.
And now I’m ready to level through the Stormblood levels.
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