The 3rd Forge: Guildleves

What are Guildleves?

A new mascot has a appeared! -- Introducing Nyaascy!

Henceforth known as "levequests," they are an alternative means of acquiring experience points and lesser rewards for all the disciplines and are naturally unlocked through the main storyline at the same point in which crafting and gathering become available. A few details on leves:

• 3 levequest allowances are renewed every 12 hours*
• A maximum of 100 levequest allowances can be held
• Up to 16 levequests may be taken at a time
• A player will reach 99 levequests after 16.5 days (396 hours)

Shot of the in-game timer.

*To avoid confusion on what time your allowance is renewed, they've included a nifty timer menu (Hotkey: Ctrl+U) that displays when the next batch becomes available.

Where Can I Obtain Them?

Hello miss Mi'qote! One leve, please!

In the starter cities' adventurer's guild there will be an NPC who will prompt you to pick from the three categories of levequests: battlecraft, fieldcraft and tradecraft. We'll focus on the last two since this is a post on crafting after all. Aside from the starter cities, there are occasionally levequest NPCs located in some sanctuaries throughout Eorzea; these providers will give some additional quests for each leve's level bracket that are not given by the cities' NPCs.

The normal prompt you see from Levequest NPCs.

Something that I noticed, which may or may not always be the case, is that you must be in the respective guild's country in order to acquire the levequest; in other words, a miner picking up a levequest for mining will need to speak to an NPC somewhere in the Ul'dah region.

Doing A Levequest

For this example, I'll be using a level one field quest for botanists that I picked up in Gridania.

Leve information presented in the Journal menu.

After picking up the quest, players can see the starting location summarized in their journal, in case they forget, and also a red area designating the gather area. It should be noted that it makes sense to already be in the red area when you start a fieldcraft leve because you receive a bonus reward for quicker completion.

When confronted with multiple circles, usually means one gather per.

Now that we've arrived in the area, we'll find that there is nothing to harvest yet. To start the quest we need to enter the journal menu, select the appropriate quest and click the initialize button; this is so players are able to store the quest until they're ready to attempt it -- Usually harvest quests take two to four minutes, by the way. Once initialized, you'll notice that the quest proceeds in the same fashion you would do any harvest, but each point will be designated with a leve icon above it.

Standard harvesting procedure; now in two flavours.

The first thing we'll probably note, if we don't see a sparkling harvest points immediately, is our objectives that come up on the right side of the screen. This is the easiest way to see your tracked progress, and can infer whether you need to raise or lower your difficulty; if you've taken 8 minutes to gather 40 items, then you'll probably want to change difficulty, etc. 

Wrong quest, but the right kind of information. One of the few quest you can fail too.

Much of the early harvesting, even in the levequests, have no aggressive monsters around but later on they'll be more prevalent so familiarize yourself with the quest area beforehand or at least expect some bumps on your first attempt of each quest -- You never know what you might run into while wandering the wilds in search of materials.

Get outta my way, FATE frog! I need my harvest nodes!!

Typically after finishing the harvest, you'll find the turn-in NPC in the same area you obtained the quest. If you've completed multiple fieldcraft leves, you'll collect all the rewards in succession -- You won't be able to choose to finish one quest at a time like tradecraft.

Only works for tradecraft since you have to hand over items for each quest.

Normally a quest is always finished with a difficulty bonus because the leves start at a flat level and must be scaled up to your level; e.g., if you take a level 1 quest and are level 4, then you'll probably have taken difficulty +3 recommended or you might even take +4.

Regular reward and bonuses are shown separately for transparency.

For the most part, these are the two bonuses you'll almost always receive.

Sometimes, you'll receive a bonus for speed and excellence. Speed is a straightforward explanation but excellence, I've found, occurs only on the evaluation quests when you have received an exceptionally high score such as 400 points or more. 

Optimize your harvests to get really high evaulation scores! You might even get 20%!

The same works for tradecraft and turning in an HQ item for a bonus!

Why Should I Use Them?

This is one of the tougher questions to answer but I'll try to give my thoughts on it anyway; keep in mind there is no right or wrong answer, I think. I found that as I did crafting or gathering, things became very monotonous -- This was after a couple hours of straight crafting. I was building the same items from the ground up each time and though the experience points for trying to make high quality goods is exceptional, it becomes very repetitive to mass produce ingots, cloth or whatever you're trying to create. This is normally the time you want to break monotony by hitting stuff in the face with your spells and weapons, but for a crafter who has no interest in that, the options become more limited.

No more harvesting, please! I don't want to work in the mines anymore, boss!

So one of the solutions is to change the pace and receive a quest reward for doing so -- Don't you want to spend your leve allowance anyway!? The argument I have against that is efficiency; Why should I use my leve when I can make a few ingots and receive the same experience? Why should I harvest items that won't help further my crafting later?

I've got a secret... There is no one answer.

I personally look at tradecraft leves as a means to augment your craft. Sometimes you are going to produce an item that has little or no demand and that's just the way it goes, but you can then turn in some of those items for experience, gil and more crafting components such as crystals or raw materials by completing a levequest. Similarly, if you just harvested for materials and only leveled off the chain experience, you'd likely end up with a giant surplus of items. The fieldcraft, at least by the current numbers, provides a faster route to leveling and thus quicker entry into higher tier components.

When Should I Use Them?

Sometimes it's like asking, 'How do I get my kitty down from there?' Hmm.

For levels 1~10 of crafting and gathering, I didn't find them very useful because you'll be passing through that range so quickly, but after that it is really up to the player when they want to spend their allowance. I think that the best time to use them is when the monotony becomes too great or when you are really wanting to bolster your experience points. Keep in mind that it does take some time to cap your leve allowance, so think about how often you play before you start spending them. How fast would you level the class without using a leve? Those might be better spent on a higher tier of levequest; just food for thought.

Closing Thoughts

I didn't really think that levequests for gathering and crafting were very interesting, but I think that it is a nice little augment to crafting in general. I ask myself, "What would crafting or gathering be like without any levequests? Would having them level faster make it more fun or less fun?" I'm not really too sure how I'll feel about them in the long run, but for now I plan to use them mainly on harvesting because the current leveling pace felt pretty low in comparison to crafting. Does it really add variety to leveling or is this just another rested experience mechanic to encourage players who can't play as often a way to "catch up"? Either way, I hope that they'll add to the flavor of the game and hopefully come out with some that are genuinely fun and interesting to play.

I made two spreadsheets with some basic levequest data for my own benefit:
Fieldcraft - Disciplines of Land
Tradecraft - Disciplines of Hand

I don't know how beneficial they are to other people, but I'm using them to optimize my leve selection and hopefully to remind myself what the quest was like in case another player asks me for levequest advice.

Anyway, please feel free to post comments or questions or whatever! Next post might not be for awhile and I haven't really decided what the topic will be. Bit tough to write anything when the game isn't available for source material... Hope you all stay sane while we wait for the next phase of beta!

See you next time! Nyaa~

End of a (2.0) beta

The end of the FFXIV 2.0 beta phase 3 came yesterday morning at 2am Pacific time. This weekend brought a few surprises, including the return of my favorite Galka Wutang Warrior! Yaaaay!

Now for the agonizing 2-3, maybe even 4 week wait for beta phase 4 to start up. In many ways, since the next phase actually leads directly to release, this beta 3 ending really was the end of beta and it certainly had the same feel.... jumping around poking FATE NMs for fun, helping people wrap up dungeons, and exploring places we have no business being!

So here's a final picture dump from beta 3!

Scary Magitek stuffs!

I thought these dragons belonged in snowy regions?

I also experimented with using FFXIV-APP, a 3rd party parser tool. It tracks things like damage done, block rates, parry rates, etc. and even has a supposedly dynamic translation function. Unfortunately, the last will probably never get used due to the split of servers. I really doubt we'll see anyone speaking Japanese again outside of maaaaaaaaaybe Duty Finder.

Anyway, here's some example output:

*Pretty* sure this isn't against the ToS?

You can get some interesting stats here... Lots of things that can be used to see how effective your play is, or how different gear affects how you're doing. In this case, I only had a 11% crit rate, so I wasn't using the PUG ability "Internal Release" as much as I could. Gladiators might be especially interested in the shield block rate vs. block effectiveness from the different types of shields.

Of course, this kind of tool can be open to abuse, though I hope people don't use it that way. Using this knowledge to improve yourself should be how something like this is used!

Anyway, now for some crafting pics!

Need to look good when crafting!

Yes! Even crafting has overwhelming special effects!

Yes! It's a shield... No, I won't make one in your size. It's a buckler for you.

So I went a little overboard on crafting for the beta... I got to level 20 Armorer and thanks to Vanh, managed to infuse a piece of materia to a skillet for a quest. The materia infusing process really requires dedication, requiring a level 19+ craft plus a high level gathering skill for the catalyst to actually infuse the materia.

Anyway, I'm not sure crafting will be for me in retail... basically, to do almost any sort of crafting properly, you kinda need to do all the crafting and gathering classes... carpentry for handles for armoring, some leather pieces, mining and botany for shards and materials... then again, I guess the same could be said for the combat classes.

Back to random pics!

On LNC, I can finally use limit breaks!

Slash slash slash with a big sword... Hey! Where'd my spear go?!

I'm *pretty* sure that's the wrong way to hold a sword... That's what happens when you give a Lancer a sword!

Limit breaks are a little weird... There are 4 types of limit breaks, one for tanks, one for healers, one that does small AoE damage, and one that does a larger amount of single target damage. So far, I've almost never seen a reason to use the tank one, and rarely do you need to use the healer one. Most of the time you use one of the damage ones, usually single target if you can, in order to finish a boss fight faster. Kinda disappointing compared to the 2-hour abilities of FFXI.

First time I've not-tanked this dungeon. What's this weird bubble thing? :o

Dramatic swing to... mmm... looks like I'm preparing to swing into empty space. Have you noticed how far you stand from large mobs? :(

During this last few days of beta, I mostly played around on Lancer since my Marauder was at the level 35 cap. I managed to get from ~22 all the way to 30 (including that 26-29 level jump). This did teach me a few things, including how important Invigorate was for any Discipline of War (the level 22 LNC ability). Due to the way cross-class abilities work, I think you basically have to level virtually all jobs to the 22-26 level in order to be fully effective in whatever high level class or job you want to use!

I liked the special "protect" effect that pops up when a mob attacks xD

I kinda completed the level 32 dungeon armor set. I didn't get the helm, and I preferred using the Maelstorm skirt since it had better stats and looked better!

Filthy immigrants trying to enter Limsa! They'll let anyone in these days!

Carbuncle will come and get you if they sniff out any drugs!

My attempt at creating a Lalafell character xD

Until I realized how tiny they are :o

Glowy armor effect... the environmental effects and graphics are quite impressive for such a smooth game!

I'm not sure *how* this special effect was done, but... it's dramatic?

Example of the massive scale of some FATE NMs. If my camera angle is zoomed in as normal, I can't see what I'm supposed to be fighting -.-

Big angry crab

In the final hours of the beta, Fuji, Zurar, Cao, me and guest Hector went exploring all around the world, getting in trouble with level 48+ mobs, causing trains and trouble all over the place! Here are some pics from that adventure.

If you look up at the night sky, you can see the stars twinkling and moving! Oh, and this is a very sharp chocobo, unlike Zu's very horny chocobo or Cao's very... erm... featherheaded chocobo?

NPCs will react to you as you approach them... like this creepy Roegadyn wouldn't stop staring at me. Maybe he wanted to cook me :o

We found a sealed off door near the desert with lots of 48+ mobs around. However, we found a way past the door by jumping up on the sides. Behind it, the area was completely empty and deep inside a cave, we found what looked like... a beastman Aetheryte crystal?

Forgotten Springs -- Just a generic outpost, but very detailed. Almost like a place you'd go for vacation if not for the the constant sandworms

Can YOU feel it?

A beastman outpost... fun to run through on chocobo, just watch out for running off cliffs when you're trying to avoid getting killed by all the mobs after you!

Found a pervert leering at some innocent Miqo'te!

Good thing they can defend themselves!

We found a long tunnel far past some Sahagin beastmen. There was an outpost here which reminded me of Norg with pirates and stuff. Unfortunately, the pirates weren't friendly

Near the Sylphlands, we found the Hall of the Gods... I mean, Sanctum of the Twelve! This entrance was closed during beta 2 so I didn't try coming here till now!

I thought the water effects were very impressive... though I think Lalafell should have a /drown emote xD

What do we call this? A flock of chocobos? Gaggle? Brood?

Ok heroes, pose dramatically for the camera... hold it... hold it... ok, now jump!

The abandoned onsen resort! Or did they  just forget to add the NPCs?

The group relaxing... or... maybe too relaxed in case of Zurar >.>

Starting to doze off...

That pink hair is gets so much attention!

Then we went to crash the party of a certain Lalafell hanging out with all the girls in swimsuits!

And a certain male Miqo'te decides to join in the dancing...

You can *almost* sit properly in these chairs

A Lalafell trying to hold back the end of the world!

See you next time!

Overall, I think I explored about 90% of the map. There were some places that were blocked off from access, like the Sylphlands and the giant wall preventing us from getting to the enemy cities... There were still many places which looked like they could be populated with NPCs for new outposts or quest areas, and tons of mobs above the level 35 beta cap, all the way up to level 50. I'm still wondering if the world map as we know it is complete, or if there are more areas that they haven't shown us yet.

That's the end of beta 3! Next time, we're playing for keeps! Oh, and for a preview... long hair won the vote, so... here's a look at phase 4's Ascy! (assuming the appearance import works!)

Ascy 2.0!

Like? Dislike? Let me know! Oh ya, thanks to Zu for a shot of him dancing along with his favorite BOUNCIES!

See you on Hyperion in a few weeks!