Ascule's Adventures: April 2014

One of the new major changes that the FFXIV 2.2 patch brought was the addition of "glamours", aka the "vanity system" that is common in many different MMOs. This brings out lots of imaginative outfits and gives a good reason for going back to farm lower level dungeons.

Still... if you haven't quite figured out how your outfit should go together, you could end up in funny situations like tanking Twintania in this!

Ever have that dream where you go fight an angry dragon without pants?

Ok, so I was actually going for a Strike Witches cosplay look, but I don't think many people got it... still, it has the funny side effect of going through cutscenes looking like this

Have you seen my skirt?

Maybe it's over there :o

Oh, so... yeah, since the 2.2 echo buff kicked in, turn 5 of the Binding Coil of Bahamut has essentially become a farmable joke. You still need to know what you're doing and how to handle the mechanics, but it's become fairly easy even with just the initial echo buff. It should become even easier starting this week with the 2nd echo buff. Turns 1-4 are already a joke to tackle and I'm pretty sure that everyone will be farming everything they ever wanted from the first coil shortly.

LOLDRGs putting fire circles everywhere!

And one of... I stopped counting at 12 from the first night... wins for T5.

What else... so the easter event is around, which mainly consists of forming small parties and running around the major cities. There are a few silly cutscenes, but nothing to write home about. You get a barding and have to buy a few silly looking hats for this event.

Just a bunch of eggheads!

Other content is also progressing to be farmed now... Leviathan Extreme was the first to be cracked and is a relatively easy fight. More forgiving than Titan Extreme, and most newcomers can learn the basic pattern for their first win usually within 45 minutes.

Yet another mechanics fight

We just finished learning Thornmarch Extreme this past weekend. This fight with the Moogles has a lot more randomness to it with all the little mogs running around and potentially screwing things up, so winning here is not a sure thing. This is a healer & DPS heavy fight in terms of responsibility. I forgot to take screenshots of this one so you'll have to settle for this simulation instead!

Being surrounded by moogles! Basically the same as Thornmarch EX!

The only "real" content left that we haven't tackled is the Second Coil of Bahamut, aka "T6-9". I get the general feeling that everyone has been more than happy to just poke and farm the older stuff for the time being, to get geared up and prepare for the eventual wall that is T6-9.

I also feel that the 2.2 buffs/nerfs have taken some of the drive out of people. My feeling is that pounding our head too hard against the cutting edge content isn't really necessary as SE will probably be nerfing T6-9 in the 2.4 patch.

Consider what happened in 2.2. The first coil was made farmable at first, allowing people to do this as many times as necessary to get what they want. The first night we beat T5, we did it at least 12 times, probably more. We've gone back and farmed it many more times, much more than we could have done it before the lockouts were removed.

The echo buff also made it so that party finder groups can relatively easily win T1-4. It might even be that by the time the last echo buff is put into the game, T5 can be done with party finder. About the only thing that the echo buff did not help with is Titan and Ifrit EX due to actually needing to perform the mechanics to properly win.

So... for the 2.2 content, specifically T6-9 and the Atma/Animus quests... it feels like... well, even if we don't rush to take part in this content, when 2.4 comes out (probably around December), we'll just breeze through it easily?

Anyway... enough of that! The main reason for playing MMOs is to play dress-up anyway, right?!

Finally found my skirt!

And found a mini-tank dressed similarly to me! (Also, love that caster outfit in the background!)

I like the little emote additions that SE adds to the game, like the new /changepose

That's it for now! Short post!

The 2.2 patch for FFXIV is out bringing with it lots of changes. This is the "hardcore content" patch which brings with it an increase in ilevel, different grinds and more part of the coil. It also releases more main storyline, dungeons, sidequests and other fun features, just like the 2.1 patch before.

The fun features include:
- Glamours -- The ability to skin your outfits however you want
- Retainer Ventures -- Send your retainers out in SWTOR-like gathering missions
- Challenge Logs -- Get gil & exp just for doing stuff! Gil comes a lot more easily in this patch

The grind has changed as well. They've removed the myth cap for 2.2 and instead added a new tome to grind for i100 gear. They also removed the "one item per week" restriction on the Crystal Tower and entry restrictions for turns 1-5 of the Binding Coil of Bahamut. Unfortunately, this means that CT gear is obsolete unless you want it for vanity reasons since people can simply grind for myth or coil items.

Speaking of grinding, not only is the "2.0" style of grinding dungeons for tomes is back with the new solidarity tome, but SE is bringing FFXI-like grinds back with the "Zodiac Weapons". We're talking collecting multiple items with a ~0.5-1% drop rate, doing lots of work for small minor upgrades. It's kinda like the mythic weapons of FFXI, but not quite as extreme. Already people are reporting taking 12-20+ hours of continuous FATEs to start on the quest. Still, there are some people who have already completed their animus weapons the patch being out for less than one week, so it isn't anywhere near as bad as the FFXI relic or mythic weapon grind

Whee... ability to grind low-level FATES for days on end is now unlocked

This patch is definitely on the hardcore side, giving lots of grindy content and making people repeat dungeons over and over. Lots of the content is still gated and many people can't access it. For example, to do turns 6-9 of coil, you have to be able to beat turn 5. To even be eligible to attempt Levithan Extreme, you need to beat Ifrit EX (and many people are stuck at Titan EX). To gradually ease difficulty, SE is adding an "echo" buff that increases your stats by 5-50%. It's already there in the EX primals, and it'll be coming for coil which should make it easy to win... as long as you aren't losing to mechanics or latency issue.

I'm guessing that 2.3 will be the "casual" patch with more Crystal Tower, releasing gear at i95 to provide a bridge between the outdated "myth" gear and the new tome/coil gear.

On my own personal, I've hit level 50 on all crafting jobs! Yay! Just two more gatherer jobs to go before I can retire from FFXIV! The final level 50 quests for the crafting jobs were quite cute in many cases...

(Warning: Small spoilers follow in pics from now on!)

I knew we could use Lalafell as weapons!

Poor Mammet...

Raise works on automations?!

Aww... cute children fighting in the playground!

One of the cutest romances in FFXIV!

Why do Alchemists always try to raise the dead?!

She looks like she means business :o

Double barreled business!

The *other* cute romance in FFXIV!

So... after saving the world a half-dozen times, I'm cooking dinner?

Don't let her know I got take-out from the AH!

That's a big fish :o

The CTR house has really come together nicely since we bought it just over a week ago. Here's what it looks like now...

From the front (and me in my new cooks outfit thanks to Ark!)

Little campfire and mailbox (mogbox?)

And the newly added (as of 2.2) garden!

And romantic bench... with nobody else around ;;

Full service bar (with NPC vendors!)

Social area to hang out... (where is everyone?!)

Fireplace in the basement

And a hot tub!

A Tonberry guards this bedroom from unwanted visitors...

And I stuff the Lalafell intruders and put them on display!

And Marcux created a "multi-person" bed xD

Alright! That's enough of the personal and housing stuff... here's what you really wanted to see! The 2.2 patch content! Screenshots that follow may contain mild spoilers!

Obviously let's start with the most important parts of the 2.2 patch!

Guess who?

Yay! Hildibrand is back!

And making us do goofy things!

Still.. what's with the green chicken :o

And... what's that chicken looking at?

Incoming! O.O

Oh no! He caught Hildibrand!

Grrr! Scary pose!

Whee! Goofy pose!

Waiting waiting... what's the chicken eating? :o

That's a big bridge. I wonder what we're going to do there...

Oh right. This is a game where we fight people!

And the chicken is STILL around :o

No fair shrinking us!

Ribbit!

I'm pretty sure... that's not going to work

Best "Duty Complete" pose ever xD

That's all for this episode!

Next time in patch 2.3!

The Hildibrand quests are pretty much my highlight for this patch! The right amount of silliness, humor and... actually, that's mainly it! It's the perfect distraction from the rest of the grind and seriousness in FFXIV. It's just a pity that it's over relatively quickly and you have to wait another 3 months till the next episode.

For other fun FFXIV content... we have three new dungeons. One brand new one and two new hard modes. The dungeons themselves are pretty fun with some old familiar mechanics, some brand new ones and old friends. I try to make a point of going through the dungeons at least once with as little info as possible to figure things out with a fresh group. Still, they weren't much of a problem and we pretty much passed everything relatively easily.

The brand new dungeon!

Creepy spores... very "Nausciaa" like

This looks like it could be complicated!

You look familiar :o

It's now a gladiator arena!

I like how there are NPCs here. Too bad you can't buy anything xD

Those bears are huge!

Yay! Fan service :D

And more... erm.. fan service :o

Interesting overlay effect whenever this move is used.

More fun in goblintown!

And the goblins have toys now! O.O

So... what else... other minor stuff includes two new Beast Tribe factions to do daily quests. This means another ~45 days of grinding to get max reputation there to get their mounts/minions. It's a clear addition of more grindy content to keep people busy and give the perception of progress so that you'll keep your subscription until the next content release. However, it... actually works... It's still keeping my sub, the new beast tribe quests are actually faster and easier compared to the original, and they give venture tokens which you can use with your retainers. It really seems that Yoshi-P knows just how far to push people here to keep subs up.

The Sahagin are one of the two new tribes

And the goblins are the other. The purple goblins are... female :o

I'm not sure I'd trust these with my chocobo :o

Meanwhile I'm just happily dancing away~

That's enough of the side content! Just like the previous patch, this patch moves the storyline forward a little bit more. It's interesting that they're releasing this in almost episode-like chunks. It's kinda like FFXI's Wings of the Goddess expansion where they're releasing the content bit-by-bit, but unlike WotG, it doesn't feel as annoying as basically, they've released the whole story during the initial 2.0 release and now we're just getting additional content.

Anyway, here's some shots from the main storyline! (spoilers! obviously...)