Final Fantasy XIV

You also have to have cleared floor 50 of POTD

Heaven on high will be the same thing as palace I bet

In before there's a Magia Board and elemental typing.

They have explicitly stated that it's the same as palace, yes

That must have been something I missed, I recall when it was still an idea in theory they mentioned it being different from Palace in some ways. Which I guess is technically true since casual content ends at 30 and not 50/100, but they made it sound like new mechanics.

Ah well, still a good chance to play around with jobs at 70 to see which I'd like to stick with.

As an aside, the Warrior of Light/Jobs character page seems to be locked. Did it hit the page limit or did it just get caught up in the chaos of these upgrades to the site?

I'm sure it was caught in the mess because I tried to edit the Mario Tennis page and that too was locked.

From what I remember, all Deep Dungeons have the same base gameplay (randomized floors, bosses every 10, each dd having its own weapon progression). But Ho H should also have some special summoning, plus you can find the Reisenjima guys occasionally for buffs.

Heaven-On-High is pretty enjoyable so far, I think I can tolerate it a bit more than Palace. I think of lot of that has to do with the shift into Scenery Porn compared to Palace being just caves and some stonework.

The magicite is pretty fun too, On higher floors you can even get Odin, if you use it on a boss he Zantetsukens it for a One-Hit Kill, no Contractual Boss Immunity at all. I don't get the point of the massive opens rooms though, someone mentioned it's loaded up with traps and really dangerous, but I never hit one even going through several runs (granted out of paranoia we usually use a magicite for them, I don't know if the magicite destroys traps too).

Gives about as much XP as a 50/60 roulette does, so not great XP, but it's a better steady income than farming FATEs once you've cleared all your daily roulette runs. And you can start from 21 and go to 30 on fresh runs, so you can rush right to the final boss to get the Potsherds and guaranteed arm/armor ups.

I really want one of those unique monsters as a mount though, the ones that look like an Axolotl crossed with a manta ray.

Edited by NaraNumas on Jul 4th 2018 at 4:39:18 AM

Massive rooms are just big rectangles, so it's quite easy for an idiot/troll/oblivious party member to pull a ton of crap. Large rooms also have multiple exits and all but one are fakes that are sometimes traps. Since it's the biggest room, it's perfect for the Fortune + Magicite combo.

patrification is fun to use in the large rooms too

Yesterday, I learned that I really like playing Ninja in the Deep Dungeons. Largely because Hide works on many enemies, and opening treasure chests doesn't break my Hide status. Which menans that I can stroll on in to a room with a bunch of enemies and a treasure chest, loot it, and get out without alerting the monsters.

Of course, that's not foolproof. There's a bunch of monsters with advanced senses (don't try to sneak past spirits or the undead), and luring traps/bomb chests are a thing to consider. Still, when it works, it's a lot of fun to just loot the treasure for my team without pulling a huge group to fight.

I've recently been playing the free trial of this, maybe moving to the paid version down the line. Apparently they removed the 14-day time limit ages ago, which happily means I can take my time a bit more than I originally thought I could. Was originally planning on playing as a Lalafell with mutton chops but I couldn't take my arms seriously, so I went the other way and tried to be very tall. Now I can take myself seriously, but less so everyone else. It is good to be tall.

Initially trying out White Mage, or Conjurer for now. I know this is kind of an MMO thing, especially when you're playing a class geared towards healing but don't really have any proper need for grouping, but of course it's a bit slow right now. Not many abilities, combat's a bit mundane. I wouldn't mind so much if the main quest didn't have, like, this big, long cutscene, filled with voices for the first time, and then immediately follow that up with 'Hah, you know what you should do? Kill 4 elks. I don't even have a proper reason.' And so began a long period of mindless 'Kill X monsters' before the plot did anything.

Although at this point I've personally killed enough beasts to 'thin the population' that I can just imagine everyone standing around after I'm gone, wondering how, overnight, all the animals died. We had such overpopulation, they'll say! Slowly, one will raise their hand. 'Well...', they'll begin, 'I knew we had a bit of overpopulation, so I just asked this adventurer to just deal with a few...' Then one by one, more and more raise their hand, admitting they made that same request.

I feel like the Conjurer story has been a bit weak so far. I realise I might be jumping the gun there, but it's also probably a bad fit for me. I don't go around beating up trees or anything, but the nature worship elements don't really appeal to me. Maybe it'll go somewhere with whatshername, the girl who just wants to heal, damn it.

Edited by Lavaeolus on Jul 7th 2018 at 3:01:33 PM

The start of the ARR story is pretty slow. I heard recently that they are planning to condense a lot of the meaningless busywork quests at some point, so it's a problem they're aware of.

Also, sorry to say, there's going to be a lot of nature worship in the conjurer/white mage storyline. Perhaps pick up Arcanist when you get to Limsa Lominsa, it's more interesting DPS-ability-wise and still has the option to become a healer if you want.

Edited by LittleMako on Jul 7th 2018 at 7:10:50 AM

HOPE YA LIKE TREES

A big problem XIV has is that every class is only one role, so Conjurer and even White Mage - who's primary roles are to heal - are both very poorly suited to solo play until you pick up Holy, a fairly late into ARR spell.

CNJ/WHM is going to be extremely boring at the first few dozen levels, but by level 40 or so, you're gonna get the really good stuff and the skills past level 50 make it even better. Just think of the entirety of ARR as a training ground because until you hit level 50, everything is going to be introduce to you in a slow drip. The story starts to pick up once you're past the 2.0 story.

I've moreorless completed my starting city, I think. Walked out of there maybe higher level (20 or so) than I realistically should've been — note to self, just save some sidequests for later / other classes — and I'm in Limsa Lominsa. I've stopped to try out Arcanist a bit and probably also Rogue. I tried a bit of Archer too, but for the moment I've left Lancer and any other non-crafting job for later. Some more first, immediate impressions.

I've seen some more voiced cutscenes now, so I think I can firmly state the vanilla voice acting is a tad odd, eh? I'm told later on they change studios for the English dub. I think partly it's just that it reveals that, well, the English translation is already kind of weird. It's got a lot of slightly stilted, archaic language, when it's not dipping into outright faux-ye olde English. Couple this with either a lack of direction or a set of VAs who were zonked out of their minds. I recognise Jean Gilpin (Meredith in Dragon Age, among other things), and she's probably a good example: while she doesn't sound as out-of-it as some, she mostly retains the same harshness and tone regardless of whatever she's actually saying.

The cutscene style is kind of interesting. Obviously you have bits where it is just text, and that's fine, but there are plenty of scenes that are shot with, you know, a standard cinematic style — to the point the initial lack of voice acting took me out of it for a second. Not a problem either, of course, but I thought I'd note my initial response anyway. It does makes the PC's muteness come across as a bit off sometimes.

I'm told the opening main stories for each area all hit the same beats, albeit with different flavour between them. Ultimately I found Gridania probably more interesting on paper than I did in practice. It's an insular community that's nervous of outsiders, formed by a group of different races that had to petition beings of nature for permission to settle, and both of those elements feel like they could've led to a more interesting dynamic than it actually ended up being. It probably would've helped if after a while I didn't start zoning out and mindlessly killing whatever I had to do. While you're traipsing around, it's a very beautiful foresty area, but it doesn't feel that fresh or unique. Perhaps there's more if I delve into the Archer or Lance storylines; evidently there's some tension between the others and the one guy who thinks my archery is the worst thing he's ever seen. Hell of a stark transition between it and the sudden appearance of the clearly high-tech, sci-fi-ish Empire, though. I'm warming more to the Conjurer storyline now that I'm past just doing generic trials, but I'm really hoping level 25 does not involve 'here's some tainted land, go there and beat up something'.

Edited by Lavaeolus on Jul 8th 2018 at 11:08:12 AM

To be honest, all the job quests are always going to be "go beat up/kill this thing". Well, most of them anyway. As for the voice cutscenes and lack of them in 2.0, blame budget. From what I heard, voice work can be damn expensive, so the devs are only going to use voice acting for the more important scenes.

I'm fully expecting the next quest to involve killing something; chalk it up to the limits of most MMO quest design there. What I do not what to do is be told, 'A patch of land is infected, click on it and kill a singular, slightly tougher guy'. I think last time they pulled that one they varied it by having me do it thrice and bring along a small child, which did admittedly put a bit more context to it all.

I don't really have a problem the lack of voice acting. I just thought the mix between outright cinematic style and text was interesting.

Edited by Lavaeolus on Jul 8th 2018 at 5:11:03 PM

Each class has a pretty uneven burden of how interesting its story is, for the most part they pick up after level 15, but I think overall White Mage doesn't have an interesting storyline until Heavensward. Bard is pretty weak throughout all of it.

Dark Knight for spoilery reasons is probably the best one though, from level 30 where it starts all the way to level 70, I've known people who were meh on the job leveling it to 70 just for the story.

I've never been a fan of White Mage's story, speaking as a WHM main - none of its bosses or story beats are particularly gripping. Dark Knight is the undisputed king from 30 - 50 at a bare minimum, but that won't be an option for you until you completely finish ARR.

I haven't finished Ninja, but the 30 - 50 experience was the second most fun I'd had with a Job.

I think the WHM quests in SB were the best for the job compared to HW and ARR

Hello, fellow Elezen.

The thing about the Conjurer story is that it's Square Enix basically beating you over the head with the fact that you should use your elemental (re: damage dealing) skills to assist in battle when you get the chance even though you're a healer.

And yeah, the Archer guy is probably the only example I can immediately think of in regards to Gridania's isolationist attitude. Every other guild is pretty chill. Assuming you aren't a Duskwight.

Edited by Hobgoblin on Jul 8th 2018 at 3:11:50 AM

If you're not a fan of the Conjurer "kill the corrupt nature" beats

tough. That's all there is. At all. Even once you're a White Mage.

If anything it just gets worse in HW.