Prepping for Titan

The relic quest looks pretty simple on the surface... get a weapon melded, defeat Chimera, run AK, poke a few mobs, kill Hydra, kill Ifrit, spend 900 tomes and done. In practice, this isn't quite as easy as that. As more people in the FC hit level 50, I figure it's time to put together a guide to get people ready for Titan.

Think of FFXIV as education
- 1-50+story -- This is K-12. The tutorial section
- AK, Ifrit, Garuda -- This is college. Still learning, room for mistakes, but most people can get through it
- Titan -- This is the Ph.D. Bang your head against this, hard work and many will give up before finishing.

You have two options for Titan:
1. Farm, or buy the gil to pay for a win
2. Learn the fight, gear up, and bang your head against Titan's rocky wall

I *HIGHLY RECOMMEND* people who want to keep their sanity do #1. Even at the 600-700k prices people are charging on Hyperion, it would only take about 6 hours of CM farming to get the gil necessary to pay for the win. Do that, and you're good to go, having gotten your relic and can move on to the Binding Coil of Bahamut!

You can then skip the rest of this post! See you next time!

...

If you're still reading, then you're either slightly insane, or like me where using any sort of "cheat code" like paying for a win or buying gil will almost definitely make me lose complete interest in the game. If you're still with me, then let's talk about the prep work you need to do for the Titan fight!

Get used to seeing this if you plan on tackling Titan!

Unlike Garuda, Ifrit and other challenges, Titan is another step up in difficulty. You need 8 well equipped, skilled and well connected players to simply survive, much less win. Unlike Garuda/Ifrit, there are 5 distinct phases with different attack patterns that you have to learn. Your own reaction times and your ISP are also a factor in this battle. Titan is also different from other fights in that if any *one* player dies at any time, it's pretty much a failure and you have to start from scratch.

To take on Titan and possibly win, you have to:

1. Check your network & computer
Yes, this has nothing to do with FFXIV or playing the game itself. To take on Titan successfully, you actually need a solid Internet connection and good computer. Lag is one of the top reasons for dying during Titan. There are many moves in which you have about 2.5-3 seconds to move out of areas to avoid death, and it takes 2 seconds to move out of the danger zone. With average human speed being between 150-300ms, and Internet latency between 50-300ms, this gives you between nearly no time to definitely no time to get out of danger zones.

If you've ever seen something like this happen: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G5g4TM1fkCg, you have a network issue that needs to be fixed. The NA/EU servers are physically located in Montreal, Canada, so if you're on the US East Coast chances are good that you have a decent connection. People on the west coast might want to consider moving to the east coast when the shouts start coming out requiring specific ISPs. People in other countries... well... you can probably buy a win?

To check your latency, follow the instructions on this guide: http://www.daevaofwar.net/index.php?/topic/196-how-to-check-your-na-server-ping/
For the technically minded people, this is simply doing a "ping 184.107.107.176", one of SE's servers in the data center. If your ping time is over 150ms, you're going to have a bad time. I'm on the US west coast and have a ping time of 100ms, barely acceptable for Titan.

How to fix issues
Alright, let's say you do run into some issues and have bad latency. You can't move to Canada (and why wouldn't you want to? It's easy to migrate there and they have better healthcare!) and for some reason, don't want to switch ISPs. Here are a few things you can do:

- Try the "Leatrix Latency Fix"
This was created to fix latency issues for WoW. It basically turns off some bandwidth saving measures that Windows has in order to have your computer respond faster to the FFXIV server. This has no ill effect except for using slightly more bandwidth and might help with lag times.

- Use a VPN designed for fixing ping issues
There are a number of products designed to "improve ping" by routing traffic through a VPN and via their servers, more quickly to gaming servers. In theory, this will bypass some of the inefficient routing that your ISP may be using, so it might help for people with bad ISPs or in foreign countries. Some examples are:
Battleping - http://www.battleping.com
WTFast - http://www.wtfast.com/
Lowerping - http://www.lowerping.com/
I haven't used any of these services but some people (especially those in Australia/New Zealand) claim that they help. Kurai Kaze used Battleping when his ISP was throttling FFXIV connections and it fixed his constant 90k disconnection issue

- See into the future
Titan's moves follow a fixed pattern. He always does them in a specific order, and you know which ones you  may have to move. If you start moving (and continue moving) during one of the moves you have to dodge, that gives you a greater chance of moving out of the danger zone. Start moving *before* the move goes off to avoid damage.

Of course, this requires knowing the pattern so that you know when to move! You also need to keep an eye out for your other team members so that you don't accidentally move into an area that will be dangerous for them, or run into one of their danger zones.

- Improve your reaction time
Methamphetamine, or "speed" is known to increase activity, wakefulness, concentration and might be able to shave precious milliseconds off your reaction time. There are unfortunate side effects like increased libido, increase heart rate, blood pressure, temporary hyperactivity, insomnia and tremors. You can find more information about this at http://www.drugs.com/speed.html

This may allow you to speed up your reaction times to be able to take on the Titan fight. However, be aware that you will need lots of practice on Titan before you can actually get a win, so you have to balance the cost of this drug and potential addiction vs. simply buying gil and using that to buy a win.

(The above is 100% a joke. Please don't do drugs! Ascy does not endorse the use or sale of any kind of drug! Except for coke! If you need coke, please contact Ascy or Teven! Or Mega-Potions! That stuff is awesome!)

2. Gear up & learn your job!
If you hang around Mor Dhona you will probably see shouts for Titan spelling out specific requirements like "main attribute 410+" or "Full DL + Ifrit/Garuda weapon" required. This may seem like an elitist attitude (and it kinda is for the CM/Prae/AK runs where this gear would maybe shave off 1-2 minutes out of a 30 minute run), but for Titan, it makes a *huge* difference.

There are a couple of reasons for this:
- Full darklight gives you a significant amount more HP. You need, at minimum, 3200+ HP to even survive Titan's unavoidable attacks. This HP amount should be before you are in a party (since being in a party with a tank gives you the VIT bonus). In the later parts of the fight, Titan will do up to 5 AOE attacks that cover the whole battlefield and cannot be avoided for 600-700 damage per attack. Full darklight gear brings your HP up to around 3400-3500 HP which allows you to survive long enough for a healer to cure you. This is also why if any *one* person in the party dies at any time, they are basically out of the fight. Even if they are raised, the raise weakness with the reduced HP means that they will die with the next series of unavoidable AOE attacks. Tanks have a higher requirement of at least 5200+ HP while in party simply due to the targeted attacks Titan will do on the tank.

- The requirement of having a main attribute of 410+ is mainly to filter out those who are not properly geared. In full darklight and an Ifrit's Bow, my dexterity is 420 outside of party. To get to 410, you probably need 80-90% of your gear to be darklight or better.

- The Ifrit/Garuda weapon (ilevel 60/70) is only to help with the damage dealt and amount healed per heal. In my opinion, this isn't a firm necessity, but it does make it easier to get up to the necessary damage. The reason for the high damage level is that at the 50% point, there is a solid DPS race were you have to take down Titan's Heart in a fixed amount of time. If you fail the check, it's an automatic failure.

(Side note: Many of the pick-up groups start off a a Titan fight by "building up the LB bar" by not taking any actions and only using auto-attack. The idea behind this is to make up for a lack of damage from the DDs by having a higher level LB ready to go for Titan's heart. Groups that rely on this strategy are most likely going to fail from a lack of damage over the entire fight, making it drag out to a point where the healers can't keep up with damage. The longer the fight goes, the more damage Titan does with his unavoidable AOE attack. A limit break is definitely not needed to defeat Titan's Heart and a set of good DDs can kill it with just regular damage. Besides, it's doing actions which build up the limit break, not auto-attacks!)

For the DPS check, you really have to be able to sustain a high level of damage for an extended period of time. For those using parsers, I'd say at minimum you need to sustain an average DPS of 120+ to be an effective contributor to the fight. Anything less and the other DDs have to make up for the shortfall in damage. This comes back to learning your job and playing it at full effectiveness. Some people (hi Vanh!) can put out better than this level of damage even with a GC weapon, but that does take real skill!

3. Learn the Fight
To win at Titan, you first have to lose to Titan. That's not quite zen, but more of a description of reality. You need to fully learn the fight, all 5 phases, and know how to dodge the attacks. You will make mistakes, die multiple times as you memorize the patterns, and die to other people's mistakes until you get the perfect moment when everyone executes the fight perfectly.

To learn the fight, first start with this video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I3S8w0yT6no

Second: Memorize this pattern of moves:
http://i.imgur.com/UbacDrh.gif

Third: Just go try it!

If you're properly geared, chances are you won't get immediately booted from a party. If you use Duty Finder, you can at least get some experience with the fight, what to see, what to expect, what the moves look like and practice avoiding them. Most groups can barely make it to the heart (4th) phase and most wipe immediately after it. Keep at it, bash your head against the rock wall that is Titan until you have experienced all 5 phases, have learnt all his moves and can avoid ALL of them without fail. At this point, you will be ready to actually fight Titan.

To actually win
Alright, now that you've done all the prep work, know the fight, you can win the fight and get your relic, right? Well, Titan is an 8-person fight! You need 7 other players with the right jobs that have put in the time to learn the fight, are geared up and are willing to work together for a few hours until you get the perfect combination of no mistakes, no lag, and perfect execution. *IF* you can get that team together, you have a chance of pulling off the win.

Besides requiring perfect execution on your own part in terms of avoiding moves, you also need to work as a team -- when to come together for an AOE heal, when to split apart to avoid killing other people if you ar targeted by Titan's moves, when to break someone out of a granite gaol. Many of these decisions need to be made on a split-second basis, but as you get practice, you'll learn and figure out what to do.

Also, keep in mind that the final phase of the fight is where the healers have to virtually heal the entire party from close to death up to full health, while avoiding all the attacks at the same time. If the heart phase is what the DPS have to pass, then the final phase is where the healers have the toughest job.

Conclusion
If you're still with me after reading all that... to conclude, you can either:
1. Go buy a Titan win
2. Wait for 2.1 or later patches when this will likely be nerfed
3. Bash your head against the wall if you want to do this the "legitimate" way

Now for a few slightly more fun screenshots!

Arrrr matey! (Thanks Ark for the pirate hats!)

Trying for the "pink Yda" look xD (Another of Ark's ideas!)

Close up of one of the Scholar fairies :o

My favorite hiding spot in Mor Dhona! Can you find me?

I got my Garuda bow last night... which probably means I'll be MPKing more parties soon ^^

What to expect when you're 50

I'm half wondering if the search engines will find this page and present it to people turning 50 years old. That might make for an amusing read!

We've recently brought a few groups through the final two dungeons of the main story, completing the game while protecting them from the "speed run" mentality of duty finder groups which can really spoil the atmosphere of the final cutscenes of the game. We still did it pretty quickly, but we had fun doing it! I also know that it can be a little overwhelming going from the normal 4-person dungeon to the 8-person craziness with tons of AOEs flying around!

Whee, completion for the first group we brought through!

Now after the end credits have finished (all 45+ minutes of cutscenes and credits!), you may be wondering what to do next. If you simply follow the questline, you'll get directed to start on your relic quest, take on Ifrit hard mode (HM), and if you're up-to-date on your Grand Company quests, you may be directed to Amdapor Keep (AK). Well, the truth is that the game until now has just been the tutorial. At this point the gloves come off and you have to start playing a grindy MMO.

Endgame in FFXIV is different from FFXI. There is a progression of content you have to get through to be appropriately geared before you can take on the next tier, similar to WoW, SWTOR and other MMOs, and unlike FFXI where you can jump into Limbus and Dynamis being a fresh 75.

There are three main components for success:
1. Boss mechanics -- a.k.a. player skill or memorization (surviving)
2. Maximizing your class -- Figuring out the best way to use your skills  (executing)
3. Gear -- The "item level" or ilevel of your equipment (farming)

Boss Mechanics
In the various dungeons coming up, you've learnt a lot about the different mechanics that are out there. You'll also see that if you know of the mechanics before hand, or have experienced the mechanics a few times in the past, you can easily handle the fight by moving out of the way or taking counter measures to prevent damage. All the endgame activities essentially follow the same rules -- learn the mechanics and execute. As you go to the harder fights, you have less and less room for mistakes and all 8 players have to execute the mechanics perfectly to win.

To learn the mechanics, you have a few options. You can go with a group willing to talk you through the mechanics. You can try Duty Finder, though with the "first time" warning that pops out, most people simply drop out of the Duty Finder instance instead of putting up with trying to teach someone new. Or you can watch a video guide on what to expect.

For the video guides, my advice here is that you watch it to learn about the mechanics of the boss fights, what to avoid, where things will pop, what they look like and what to expect. However, take the strategies that the guides tell you to use with a grain of salt. There are many different ways to do these fights, and you should talk it over with the lead what to do. Sometimes, the guides also get things wrong or make bad assumptions. (A couple of examples from SheepheadCG's guide: He says that the Garuda HM slipstream attack cannot be dodged. Crothay dodges it consistently. He also says that you have to save your Limit Break for the Demon Wall. My group never limit breaks for the entire AK dungeon.

Here are a few links to some of the boss mechanics:
Amdapor Keep - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=laOUldaIpMU
Ifrit HM - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XiT5WRb5ATM
Garuda HM - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O7o9CJ5j4Rg
Titan HM - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I3S8w0yT6no

Maximizing your class
Getting from 1-50, you've either been mostly playing alone doing quests, or grinding out FATEs. You may have done a few dungeons, but for most of those, you could get away with only using half your abilities. In many cases, some of your abilities would seem hard to use, or not worth it given how short some of the fights are. (For example, the "Heavy Thrust" ability from LNC/DRG needs to be delivered from the flank of a mob to get the higher potency and 10% damage bonus. While this is hard and doesn't seem worth it for shorter fights, for longer fights, keeping that buff up makes a significant impact.

If you are a damage dealing job, you might want to take a look at your skills and see how you can make the most of the abilities. You also get a number of new traits as you neared level 50 which do change how you may want to use your skills. Review these, and possibly talk to other people for ideas on how to maximize your damage. (If there is interest, I could do an article about BRD. PLD I'll leave to people who have played more on the job)

The big reason for why you need to maximize your class is that in many of the boss fights from now on, there are significant DPS checks where you have to do a certain amount of damage in a short amount of time or else you will lose the fight. It's like the Ifrit and Titan story fights, except at a larger scale.

For gear, simply put, in many of the dungeons, there are gear checks in terms of either needing to do a ton of damage in a short time (DPS check), having to survive a big hit (HP check) or having to heal up a ton of damage quickly. In some cases, the Limit Break can make up for some deficiencies, but for the most part, you pretty much need to get the appropriate gear to progress through the different tiers.

Gear
This is where the "progression" part of FFXIV comes in. In order to do one part of content, you essentially have to get enough gear from a lower tier before you are capable of passing the content. SE actually acknowledges this and plans on implementing ilevel requirements to queue up for dungeons in an upcoming patch. Until that happens, you run the risk of getting into a bad Duty Finder group where people aren't appropriately geared.

To get started as a fresh level 50:
- Your AF serves as a good starting point
- Pick up your accessories, the level 48/49 items. These should be available on the AH for relatively cheap
- You may want to pick up one HQ ring. There is a limitation of only using one Darklight item of each type, so you can't use two of the same Darklight rings. I have a crafted HQ ring melded with materia for my ring slot.
- For your relic quest, you need to turn in a materia infused ilevel 55 crafted item. Since you need this item anyway, my advice is to obtain it and use it until you get a replacement

For getting the relic item, you can either buy it directly from the AH, or farm the materials and have one of our crafters help you out here in crafting and melding it! You *can* turn in the HQ version for credit in your relic quest, so don't be afraid to spend a bit extra here.

Progression
Now that you have the basics, you can start farming some gear up. With the basic AF + ilevel 55 weapon, you can probably do some of the following activities.

Castrum Meridianum(CM) / The Praetorium speed runs -- These reward 100 Tomestones of Philosophy, which can be exchanged for ilevel 70 Darklight gear for all slots. This is also probably the easiest and most mindless one to just grind away. An average speedrun of CM takes between 30-40 minutes to complete, depending on the gear and competency of the group. You've just completed both dungeons so you know how it goes, except this time you're skipping all the cutscenes and progressing to the end. You'll also see shouts for speedruns at Mor Dhona, which are usually set up as 1 tank, 2 healers and 5 DDs.

Aaaaaaand... sometimes we get goofy when farming!

Wanderer's Palace -- This 4-man dungeon rewards 50 Tomestones of Philosophy if you complete the entire dungeon. It also drops ilevel 55 gear, including weapons, and is about the only place to get a good shield before you complete your relic shield if you are a PLD. The chests in this dungeon drop white weapons that crafters use to create the items you need to turn in for relic quests, so they sell fairly well on the AH. It's a fairly fun dungeon, with some interesting mechanics including avoiding a wandering mob that makes positioning your fights and situational awareness important. The final boss does have a small DPS check mechanic where you want to kill the boss before things start getting too crazy!

Hi there! If you're lucky, you might meet this guy!

These two dungeons give you a good start on your gear. With the tomestones that you've gathered from just doing the story quests, you should almost have enough for your first piece of darklight gear. Darklight is ilevel 70 and covers all slots except for the weapon. In total, you need about 6000 Tomestones of Philosophy to completely gear yourself out with full darklight and for your relic quest, but you don't have to do it all in one shot. (Trust me, you do NOT want to do it all in one shot!)

Alternatively, you can also craft your gear. You can craft ilevel 55 gear which should be better than the Wanderer's Palace gear if you also meld it with materia. You can also craft ilevel 70 gear, but from what I read, this gear actually requires crafting materials that are purchased with tomestones of philosophy anyway, so it is actually harder to obtain compared to simply using darklight.

Once you have a few pieces of ilevel 55 gear, and a couple of darklight, you should be able to move up to the following:

Ifrit Hard Mode -- This is an 8-man trial. While you can win this trial with new-50 gear, it's probably best to pick up a few pieces of ilevel 50, 55 or Darklight gear before you attempt it. The two keys to winning are to execute the mechanics of the fight well (where to stand, how to avoid damage), and to win the DPS race to take down the nails at the halfway point. It's possible to do this fight and take almost no damage except for the unavoidable AOE right after the nails stage if you are a healer or tank. The reward from this fight are small amounts of tomestones, and a single ilevel 60 weapon drop.

Ifrit weapons glow! (And yay for Austin, Teven and others for the completely random drop bow drop!))

Ampdapor Keep (AK) -- This 4-man dungeon is the first one to really throw out a challenge for people in terms of mechanics and gear. The 2nd boss in this dungeon has a timed DPS check. If you don't do enough damage fast enough, you'll lose the challenge. Gear helps to make it easier to pass the DPS check, but it's really a matter of how well you play. You need to not only execute on your job, but also dodge all the boss moves thrown at you. AK gives you 80 tomes of philosophy but also 40 tomes of mythology. You will eventually need 900 mythology tomes for your relic, and after that, the "AF+1" gear. Both of these are ilevel 90, and you are limited to collecting up to 300 mythology tomes a week. The counter resets every Monday at 8am US Pacific time. AK is also where the ilevel 60 armor drops, so if you can run this regularly, you'll gear up fairly quickly. Completing AK will also let you get your Grand Company promotion so that you can simply buy the ilevel 55 weapons!

Due to the limited content, AK is really the only place for you to farm mythology tomes. As such, even if you form a full party of 4, you might still encounter a wait while the game "reserves an instance". Mondays is especially bad after the reset as everyone wants to get their quota of tomes, with waits of 20-150 minutes just to start the dungeon.

You'll need to do AK at least 8 times a week for 3 weeks for the necessary mythology tomes to upgrade your eventual relic to a +1. If you want the ilevel 90 job-specific gear, well, keep doing AK for now. It takes about 5 months of continuous mythology farming to complete a full set.

What next?
If you're at a point where you can succeed in doing Ifrit and AK consistently, you have a few different things you can do next.

1. You can make progress on your relic quest once you get a replacement weapon. 
There are a couple of 8-people fights that are actually not in Duty Finder. Either get the FC together, or look for a shout group. The two fights against Chimera and Hydra are actually not hard at all, just a matter of learning and executing the mechanics.

The fun way to finish a fight!

2. Continue on to Garuda & Titan hard modes
If you are appropriately geared, you can move on to perform the next two hard mode trials. You will need these for your relic quest progression anyway. Like before, it's mostly a matter of learning the mechanics of where to move, and having the necessary damage output to pass the DPS checks. For Titan though, you do want a significant amount of HP to survive the unavoidable AOEs.

3. Prepare for the Binding Coil of Bahamut
This is currently the final content available in FFXIV. It drops ilevel 90 gear and is quite difficult. To even start on it, you need to have finished Titan HM. It appears that full darklight and at least a relic weapon, if not relic+1 is recommended for this area. It's not only instanced, but you're limited to doing each "turn" or section of the dungeon once a week.

It feels like there is some content missing between Titan and the Binding Coil of Bahamut. There is a jump between ilevel 70 and 90 which seems to indicate that there should be ilevel 80 gear which you could go after finishing Titan HM. Hopefully this is coming out in the 2.1 patch.

In the meantime, work on AK, work on Darklight, and grind your way up!

As a side note, if you need help in learning AK, let me know. If I'm free, I don't mind helping people learn the fights and if necessary, figure out what needs to be done to help you pass these dungeons. Also, look out on the LS channels for farming runs for CM, Ifrit, and even relic quests!

Ok, here are some random pics!

You can see the Gridania airship dock from outside the city!

Some of the results of our first Ifrit farming run!

Demon Wall -- 2nd boss of AK and first real DPS check in the game.

Sometimes it takes a little prayer to win! (Healer LB to recover from a Chimera near-wipe)

Ya, we're totally underdressed for Ferien's final dungeon!

Dramatic CS is dramatic! (Plus that's not my bow!)

BRD4LIFE!

It's been a week since I finished FFXIV on Paladin. Since then I've mainly been toying around with Archer/Bard while waiting for other people to catch up to 50 so that we can start farming the endgame activities. (For those who aren't playing FFXIV, you start the game as a "class" but at level 30, you get the ability to unlock specific "jobs". For example, the Gladiator class unlocks to become a Paladin, the Arcanist class can unlock two jobs, Summoner and Scholar. The Archer class unlocks the Bard job)

As expected, since I did all the quests the first time around. for Archer/Bard, the main way I got exp was through FATEs. With FATEs, you average about 1 level every 45 minutes or so, so if you play intensely, you can probably get from 1-50 in about a week's play.

Together with Kuraikaze, Zurar and A'sanya, we decided to also throw in some dungeon farming for some loot. Specifically, the Brayflox dungeon (level 32-35) as the gear at this dungeon pretty much lasts until you start to get your AF pieces at level 45.

Plus, the design on these armors are unique! This is the "Infantry" set which is used by all physical DDs

Specific dungeons have sets with unique looks. Like the Foestriker set from level 15-18 dungeons or this Infantry set from level 32-35

The FFXIV community is still extremely toxic, people throwing names at each other, shouting insults, dropping from duty finder, etc. Turning off shouts and ignoring the rest of the community is quite advised, at least until the toxic people leave. I'm guessing that this will start to happen at around the end of the year as they finish up the content, get bored, and other MMOs start to be released.

Meanwhile Archer, or Bard has been a lot of fun and a different change from tanking. It's a ranged DD (and technically support) so it has mobility, isn't in a lot of danger, and can put out a sustained amount of damage. Being able to shoot while moving is a huge advantage as well, so unlike all the other DD jobs, I'm not as hindered by needing to avoid boss moves. I never thought I'd say this, but I'm probably going to stick with Bard for the long-term.

In any case, while playing around with other jobs, I also played a lot of Marauder and Lancer. This was mainly to get them up to use their abilities as subs for other jobs. Of course, along the way I also used them for dungeons, and also did some of their class quests!

AXE SMASH EVERYTHING! CART! LITTLE BOY! GIANT RAM!

A dyed scale armor set ~level 30

Oh, SE also released the "Moonfire Faire" event, which mainly consists of a simple FATE and buying swimsuits! The towns were filled with people running around in "fire resistant gear" on Tuesday, feeling much like a festival!

Fireworks too! Lots of fireworks!

By Thursday, the towns were completely deserted again... making the decorations look very sad.
Anyway, here are a few other random pics!

I want this Miqo'te's outfit... looks like a real Archer!

It's pink! (Also, my current UI layout. I'm finding that I've been using the "Recommended" section a lot to see what quests or hunt mobs I have available when I enter a zone)

Ascie Lotte on Excalibur! It's a mini-me! (though I haven't tried contacting anyone on Excal yet)

Old guy teaching me how to use a... bow-harp? What do you call those things that Bards use to shoot and play songs! It's like a gunblade but is a bow that turns into a harp o.o

More recently in the week, I've been farming the Dzemael Darkhold (level 44+) dungeon with Zurar, Kurai, Vanh, Fuji, even Val and Rooks at various points. The first boss of this dungeon drops a few... unique model armors for mages and DDs.

It's Kurai the clown!

And Fuji coming on to a cat not in heat!

Vanh and Fuji having a moment...

And here's the crowd! (Yes, Fuji *is* wearing the mage gear drop. Vanh's just wearing the male swimsuit from the Moonfire Faire xD)

Of course, I also got a set too...

Bikini Fighter! (Seriously, this is a level 44 armor set from FFXIV. The body piece is good till 50 ~.~)

Side note, that's a METAL top, so they don't bounce :P

The 4th Forge: A Craftsman Reborn

The Journey Begins!

Since Ascy is the bloggy side of the blog, I'll refrain from commenting on login issues and try to stick to my crafting. I've already surpassed my Arcanist's level with half of my crafts -- even my botanist -- marking my transition toward being a full-time craftsman. There have been happy times, proud times, sad times, and times when I did an angry crab dance after failing a 98% chance to HQ an item -- aka I was flipping off my monitor -- but so far it has been enjoyable.

Furrow your brows, the crafting battle begins!

 Current Goals for FFXIV

1. Level cap all crafts/gathers before leveling combat
2. Obtain full artifact armor for them
3. Obtain all luminary items for them
4. Make pretty things for Ascy... and others, I guess

Of course, I already leveled Arcanist to the appropriate level for Grand Company access and chocobo riding; if I didn't have those, it would be a giant hassle -- you need to be level 10 to craft anyway, so forget a pure craft character with no combat at all. Sad.

I want to craft to there.

 Random Observations

Quick synthesis is particularly punitive because of its decrease in base experience, loss of quality bonus experience, failure to craft items that couldn't be failed manually, and decrease in overall high quality results. I'm sure that quick synthesis isn't so bad if used later in the game for luminary hunting or even on low items that you can secure an HQ on even when using normal materials, but currently I just try to one-button macro my way through stacks of materials -- not because I aim to make HQ items but because a secured 250% bonus to experience is better than a 50% decrease by quick synthesis.

Hempen chamises don't do that to every girl. Sigh.

They removed dark matter from gathering and it kind of irks me since it seems to be a vendor-only item now. The repair NPC fee is dependent on current condition, so even if it might be cheaper to buy dark matter and repair, it is more effective to do so when the condition is around 10%. This is just from what I have noticed in the low to mid levels, where you can save a couple gil by repairing -- I'm guessing you can save more later?

How come our FC Lalafell are always up to no good?

Gathering achievements can be quite silly. I was mining for the 300 gathers between level 11-20 in the Black Shroud and noticed that there was only one item? So I had about 260 gemstones that weren't really worth anything and the other 40 I just decided to get crystals. Basically, not all achievements are created equally -- some zones just have gathers that are more worthwhile. Do I need to harvest 1,000 food ingredients because the area doesn't have lumber?

**As a follow-up, I decided that crystals were the way to go. Weaver really destroys my lightning crystal supply.

Pretending to be Bane. Lalabane? Sounds pretty weak.

There was an awkward moment when I hit level 25 on my botanist and gained the ability to acquire a high-quality item without failure if I reached a fourth chain, but a problem arose when nodes were reduced from six gathers to four. That meant that this ability was absolutely useless; I even tried to use an additional gather ability on one of the already +1 gather nodes, but because they couldn't stack I still couldn't activate the 100% HQ -- I never reached the opportunity to use it. I'm hoping this wasn't some oversight when they decided to reduce the number of gathers and I can use it during higher levels.

Not really what I thought I was going to fish up.

Something unexpected during my crafter/gatherer first playthrough happened when I wanted to bleed off some leve allowances as I was approaching 100. Due to having no combat class over level 25, I was unable to continue unlocking outpost leves, which are the only kind of leve that gathering has. So I've been forced into leveling solely through node farming; while it does follow into my goal of one day getting all the luminary tools, it certainly wasn't the optimal way I wanted to reach gathering level caps. Regardless, I'm hoping that it continues to provide me with a more than adequate material pool through this method of leveling -- I'd be surprised if it didn't!

Always looking for the next fashion trend!

Level progress as of 8/31/13:

Carpenter -- 26

Blacksmith -- 22

Armorer -- 21

Goldsmith -- 24

Leatherworker -- 23

Weaver -- 27

Alchemist -- 24

Culinarian -- 26

Miner -- 22

Botanist -- 25

Fisher -- 19

I'll post my level progress again for the end of September.

It's been quite entertaining to play this way and I'm looking forward to trying combat classes when all these crafts are said and done. If you have any questions or comments, feel free to leave them! Also, suggest a topic to write about! It makes it easier for me!

See you next time!

Fate Fantasy XIV: An Anti-Social MMO

I finished PLD50 on Sunday and finished the main story, watched the credits, etc. Sooo... chances are that this post will have some spoilers, read on at your own risk! Side note: There are much too many people who worked on this game. Pretty sure that most are contractors or temps as I can't imagine a product that pulls at most $140-200M/year could employ that many people long-term.

Anyway, having "beaten" the game, I can't help but draw direct comparisons between FFXIV and Star Wars: The Old Republic. It feels like a shorter, less social version of SWTOR. This especially rings true for the state of endgame. Let's pull some direct comparisons:

* Standard quest + hub system -- This is identical to any other MMO out there, SWTOR, WoW, Tera, etc. all follow the "main story brings you to a new town where there are sidequests". The sidequests are identical too, the usual kill X mobs, fetch Y items, do /dance to NPCs, go to THIS side of the map to fight a NM, then go to THAT side to talk to a NPC. I'm highly amused that late in the game, they get blatant about it too, not only telling you to your face that they are just giving you busy work, but literally asking you to go to a different town and repeat exactly what you just did.

* Individual "main stories" and content -- The class/job quests, hunt logs, etc. are all meant to be tackled for you alone. You *could* bring a friend along for some of it, but generally it's single player content. Oh, one funny thing is that I think the AF reward was adjusted down to level 45 at some point just before launch. After getting 4/5 AF pieces with the level 45 job quest, I still ran into side quests in the 47-49 range which had gear rewards that were clearly outclassed by your AF gear. The level 44 dungeon gear becomes obsoletely nearly immediately and is probably just for looks now.

Yes. Yes I am.

* Instanced dungeons -- Flashpoints in SWTOR, dungeons in FFXIV. The nice thing is that they got matchmaking working from the start (Duty Finder) instead of having it be something introduced later. Good for optional gear along the way, and you don't have to do it more than once.

* Endgame consisting of "hard mode" encounters -- All done with the game? Alright, here's Ifrit, Garuda and Titan v2 for you to fight... oh, done with those too? Well, don't worry, Yoshi-P has said outright that in version 2.2, there will be a new level of Titan, Garuda and Ifrit for you to fight. He just hasn't decided whether to call it "super", "hyper", or "ultra" yet. I'm going to suggest Super Hyper Fighting Turbo edition! SWTOR called these "hard" and "nightmare" modes.

* Progression-type gating -- In order to do content from dungeon B, you have to grind content from dungeon A before you can proceed. If you try to look at the content from B before you finish grinding, you can't do it at all. This comes with hidden gear checks in the boss mechanics so you have to either read about it, or figure it out yourself. At least in SWTOR it actually rates your gear and tells you outright that you can't even attempt certain content until you finish grinding instead of making you waste your time and gil.

The whole thing really felt like a rehash of SWTOR at some points, even down to the voiced cutscenes. FFXIV however, has a lot less content as well. Voiced cutscenes are limited (and seem to be badly added to the music -- all the voice simply came from my center speaker and sounded exactly like someone speaking into a microphone). The storyline is slightly better compared to most SWTOR stories, though it really is classic Final Fantasy and pretty predictable. Ironically, the *main* difference is that there is significantly less content in FFXIV compared to SWTOR and it goes by much faster. I think it took 1 1/2 months of fairly intense playing to go from 1-50 in SWTOR. In FFXIV, it took less than 10 days.

The Anti-Social MMO
Unlike SWTOR, FFXIV seem to actively discourage any sort of social interaction as well. In SWTOR, I had a bonus for doing things in a party with someone else. Not only were there quests which required 2, sometimes 4 people to complete, but there was also a bonus for just partnering with a friend and going through the quests. You can even do your class quests with the help of a friend for fun, and they get to see some of your story.

FFXIV actively forces you to play alone for not only class quests and job quests, but your Grand Company leves. You can't even play with a friend for leveling content if you want to. About the only thing you can do with friends is repeating dungeons and FATEs.

Now FATEs are an interesting concept. Initially I compared them directly to the dynamic events in Guild Wars 2, or rifts in Rift, but the frequency and rewards of FATEs have lead people to select this as the new "exp party grind" for FFXIV. The fact that dungeons don't give as much exp (but are good for gear) and that levequests give a pretty crappy time/reward ratio(and are more useful for crafting/gathering) mean that in certain zones, you have massive mobs of people roaming around simply doing FATEs.

Typical FATE view. Get used to seeing this if you intend on leveling more than one job.

The funny part is that unlike FFXI, everyone is welcome to a FATE party. It doesn't matter who you are, what job you are on, just that you're in the party and hence, whatever you do increases the experience of everyone in the party. Joining a party is as simple as shouting in the appropriate zone "LFG FATE" and you'll automatically get an invite at this time. Unfortunately, due to the nature of the one-time quests, and that there is only one set of quests from level 20-50, if you want to play more than one job, you will spend most of your gametime simply roaming around in quiet, wordless FATE parties. Even if you are only leveling one job, a certain amount of grinding is necessary to make up for the lack of exp from quests.

A not-so-typical FATE view. Can you tell the difference? The main one is that in this case, the mob you're attacking rarely pops up so you probably can't target it!

The toxic community
My experience in going through the content from 1-49 was generally very pleasant. In dungeons, we talked at first, admitted to being new to a dungeon and experimented to see what new dungeons had to offer. Sometimes we learnt things and failed, only to retry and come to a win. My Garuda fight was a full team which had never done it before, but we went from having no clue to figuring the fight mechanics out and pulling off a win. During one of my high level quests (around level 47 or so), I had to kill some mobs for a quest, but there was a level 50 PLD there clearly farming them for crafting items. When I showed up, he would claim a mob, then turn and not attack so I could do enough damage for credit for the quest. He got his drops, I got my credit and moved on.

That all changed at level 50 with an incredibly toxic community. To finish up the storyline, you have to reach level 50 and do a few 8-person dungeons. Unfortunately, these dungeons are also the exact same ones that you need to farm for "tombstones" (one of the currencies for endgame gear, including AF+1 and darklight gear)  so what you end up with is a group of impatient douchebags screaming at people to skip through cutscenes, running ahead of everyone, triggering mobs, not explaining fights and making the experience generally miserable for everyone. In some cases, SE actually put cutscenes right in the middle of fighting masses of mobs, so you'd be fighting and engaging mobs and suddenly the cutscene would start without warning. Highly annoying, and supposedly people have died to this. As tank, I skipped these cutscenes to make sure that nobody died, but the entire experience is very jarring.

The fights for the final dungeons are pretty easy too so people would go ahead and start fighting while others are in the middle of cutscenes. It's VERY noticeable as even during the cutscene, you can hear the sounds of the boss that is being fought trash talking. It's very silly that the final boss of a Final Fantasy game is already dead by the time you come out of a CS because some assholes decide to go ahead and start fighting with half the team.

This sort of toxic behavior also carries over to the post-story content. In a few instances in duty finder, I've seen people drop out without another word when one person admits that they've never tried the content before. I've also seen cases of people berating others for having a low DPS from running FFXIV-APP and immediately quitting. In all cases, I've reported them to the support desk for harassment, but I'm pretty sure that the GMs in this game are as useless as other games.

This general feeling from the FFXIV community has lead me to ignore endgame activities until more friends catch up. I'm not too surprised, just disappointed that a community that was so friendly could turn so toxic so quickly.

Will FFXIV be successful?
I've stated often in previous posts that the long-term success of FFXIV really depends on their endgame content. Having experienced it briefly, and investigated what needed to be done, I think my answer to this is that it will not be as successful as people think it will be. It shares most of the characteristics as SWTOR, is incomplete in some ways (no PvP, making promises of player/guild housing, like SWTOR promised guild ships) and has vague promises of future content ("Good King Moogle Mog", harder mode of primal battles and other primals). The tiered progression system also discourages casual play at endgame, given that to get from the first tier to the next, you basically have to repeat the same 60-90 minute dungeons a good 30-40 times. Just like SWTOR, you are essentially locked out of some content until you farm the initial content, making it frustrating for casual players.

Unlike SWTOR, the content for FFXIV moves along a lot faster. Not only is the leveling process really fast in comparison (basically FFXIV has maybe 1/3 of the total quest/story content compared to SWTOR), but the farming process has no barriers. In SWTOR, you were limited to 2 operations per week due to lockouts. FFXIV has no lockouts so people can (and have been) farm the dungeons constantly. I expect that people should have full AF+1 and relics before even the basic trial periods are complete.

The tiered progression system is one I am not a fan of and was afraid would actually come to FFXIV. Unfortunately, my fears did come true and in order to see content, you have to go through the grind. Compare this to FFXI where you could select from the different endgame activities to do and do any, or all that you wanted to with the gear that you had when you reached level cap. You could do Dynamis without having to camp the kings, or do Sky without having to touch Dynamis. Or do all at the same time. New events that were later added -- Limbus, ZNMs, Nyzul, Campaign, etc. could all be done with basic gear, without having to do one or the other. Of course, having better gear made things easier and faster, but you could experience all the content and decide which ones you wanted to pursue. Amusingly, about a year after the SWTOR release, they started giving away the first tier of endgame gear to anyone who reached level 50 so that people could jump ahead of outdated content. Will FFXIV do the same?

The tiered progression system also punishes people who want to be helpful and flexible. If you want to be prepared for various roles, after grinding your 2nd or 3rd job up to 50 through FATEs, you have to do double or triple the amount of grinding at the various tiers to gear up your various jobs. It would be simpler to just stick with one role.

I think the player base will split into 3 parts:
1) The hardcore which will be done with content before even the first month is up (possibly being able to actually return the game without entering a code if they pre-ordered and use the early access & new trial +7 days? or maybe they still need to enter a code to get the +7 days to the trial), complain that there is no content and leave.
2) The casual which will finish the story and quickly realize that they don't want to grind through the same thing over and over again.
3) The fans that will actually stick to the game even on the downhill. There are people like this on SWTOR that still raid and do operations. I expect that a large number of similar fans will stay around for FFXIV. Ironically, I think this will end up putting the final nail in the coffin for FFXI as most of the fans are probably current players for FFXI.

My guess is that FFXIV: ARR will peak very quickly in the first 3-4 months, after which it will lose players rapidly, settling down in the 500-700k range of steady subscribers. This is exactly what happened to SWTOR, except it happened over about 6-8 months. Unlike SWTOR, there is less content in FFXIV, and no artificial tethers to slow people down. I actually think that this is also what SE expects given their initial launch of 50 total servers. As I recall, each server can handle a max of 4,000 concurrent connections, but is expected to host about 12,000 players, making for an estimated max of 600,000 subs. I do hope that SE isn't overbuying servers with tonight's maintenance. If they open up too many new worlds, that would just end up with server merges in a few months (which is what happened to SWTOR, which also signaled the failure of a MMO to the public). 600k subscribers is still a decent number, and I believe is about what FFXI had for a good portion of its lifetime.

How about AlphaPrime/Impact/CTR?
Now this is where it gets interesting... This is the first time we've had the whole group from FFXI back together since... well, I think people started dropping off at around 2010-2011? It's really nice to see everyone back together again, though truthfully, we haven't really played together much at all. We've done a few dungeons together, but very little outside of that. FFXIV just isn't a social game in the leveling process. There was even one time when I got into a random FATE party with one other (brand new) CTR member but he didn't even notice me saying hi to him on linkshell chat -.-

I'd like to think that we might end up playing together for a while, but I'm not optimistic as to how long it will last. I'm fully expecting some people to get bored and leave fairly quickly (myself possibly among them), while other people will feel that we're moving too slow and join a "real" FC to progress faster (which has already happened). Personally, I've switched to playing on ARC so that I can join in with some friends as they go through the various dungeons, though it's quite boring on the 2nd job due to FATEs being the only real way to exp.

As for the future of CTR, well, we have a stupid number of PLDs right now. Last I counted, there were between 8-10 of us. That's too many tanks for 30 people, and I'm not even counting the WARs yet! It's mildly ironic that we have very few DDs. Every time someone asks for help in a dungeon, I can't offer it because they're also leveling PLD. For events, I'm not entirely sure what we can do... perhaps some farming runs for currency? 8 people at a time? While it might be fun to do this as a group, it would be almost as easy to just use Duty Finder for it. The same for the hard mode primal fights for a chance at the weapons. We'll have to see what happens as more people get to 50.

What do you think? Leave comments below.

Anyway, here are some pics! Quite limited due to me not wanting to spoil things too much for people, but there *ARE* spoilers...

Despite my complaints, it's still a really pretty game. Wonder how DX11 will make things look

And there's some surprisingly skimpy clothing too, like any MMO I guess

I'm a ghost!

Please make sure your Lalafell is wearing goggles before you practice tossing them!

Generic FF battle scene!

It's a bird! It's a plane! (Yda really has short shorts :o)

Whee, the whole group of Scions

And Ascy on ARC. That bow is as tall as I am o.o