Final Fantasy XIV

Unlock the Namazu quests. They cover gathering and crafting.

As for Ramza being a dick, keep playing. All i can say without spoilers.

yeah the namazu quests are a godsend for leveling up and gearing up gatherers/crafters in SB

Great! I'll check them out.

Namazu quests and gathering leves is how I leveled Botanist.

Namazu are best. Yes, yes.

Whatever it is they have planned to make me suddenly like him they went way overboard making Ramza a jerk.

There's a certain point where you don't care if a character turns their personality around and I'm well past that with him.

Edited by Hashil on Mar 3rd 2019 at 9:13:42 AM

Well he isn't likable at the end per se, but it's a better option than being full twat. I think his dad does explain why his son is a douche nugget so there's at least some context and not having him being a jerk for the sake of it.

When you think about it, he's sorta like what Alphinaud used to be in ARR; haughty, know-it-all, and condescending. Both are also teenagers as well, so of course they were arrogant. Either way, I rather deal with those two than to deal with that fuckwit of a lalafell from the Eureka story. Hell, that ass's reason for being a jerk is massively petty compared to Ramza (and Eureka's story sucked balls anyway).

I don't know who Ramza is, but Alphinaud at least was earnest about it; he thought he'd learned everything he needed to know in school. That just happened not to be the case. Of course, Alisaie getting a bigger role in the story and Krile sharing stories from their school days did a lot of work to tug his nose down from up in the air.

Also, thank you for recommending the Namazu quests for me. They're so easy to do, and they give a great chunk of EXP for it.

Alphinaud was a bit of a know it all but it was pretty clear he meant well. Ramza's a racist, arrogant prick and 70% of his dialogue is insulting everyone around him from his sister to his father to you.

There isn't even a hint of a decent person underneath all of that.

Edited by Hashil on Mar 3rd 2019 at 10:21:59 AM

There's two Ramza(s?) in XIV. The first is a teen who is based on Ramza from Tactics and likewise named after him. He's got a superiority complex due to being Garlean, but gets over it with time. Unfortunately, he spends all of the cutscenes for Rabanastre and Ridorana being a massive asshole to everyone, including his own sister.

The second is the actual Ramza from Tactics who was a Warrior of Light in the past that fought against the main Raid villain, Ultima (who is not Jesus Christ in this universe).

I feel like Ramza's character development isn't even really that good.

He just kind of changes after touching the other Auricite you find post-Ridorana, and just seems to... become nicer after he falls comatose. I feel like maybe he witnessed Ramza's memories and it imprinted a bit of the righteous person the historical Ramza was, but it came from an outside source, and happens so fast it feels like a whiplash, so how much of it can you say is really him learning a lesson?

Yeah, I was under the impression that WOL!Ramza was possessing him or something. But then he wasn't. And it's just like "Oh, okay, I guess he's just magically not an asshole now."

Okay, I realize I've sounded like a broken record on this topic for days now, but how the hell are you supposed to make money in this game? I just halved my life savings buying 70 gathering gear I will never make back my investment on, because it's numerically impossible to even lick the soles of yellow scrip's boots if I don't have ilevel 290 gear, so I pay 200k or I give up gathering. I sell koppranickel sand, it doesn't sell. I sell levequest fish, they don't sell. I know I must be doing something wrong, but what the hell is the right thing? How do people have 15 million gil to drop on goddamn Eureka cosmetics?

Edited by RedSavant on Mar 4th 2019 at 7:56:56 AM

Crafting, as far as I have heard. Raid food, crafted gear, furniture.

x3 and x4: There's a bit of easily missed dialogue from one of the people aboard the Prima Vista (I want to say it's the Wandering Dramaturge but I'm not 100% positive, and didn't expect it to completely go away after the series finished) right before the Orbonne Monastery unlocks, where he basically says that the sort-of-a-decent-person Ramza is actually how he used to be - the one that we players get to deal with is the result of Powerleveling in Jerkass from the combination of going on the run from Garlemald, having pretty much everything that his childhood education instilled in him turned on its head (and as such, having to come to grips with the fact that, yes, the country of his origin is the Evil Fucking Empire), then his father going missing and all the bullshit with the Auracite.

Not that I don't still kinda want to pimpslap him to within an ilm of his life, mind you, but at least the urge isn't as overpowering after seeing that.

With the ability to switch classes at will, the game seems to be designed around being able to be completely self-sufficient if you so desire. So if you are able to craft yourself everything you could possibly need, people who aren't able have to contend with inflated market prices.

Apparently the market is much healthier on Japanese servers because more players are into crafting there.

Yeah, I think I'm probably mostly just going to use it to supply my crafters while I work on that, and just get gil and stuff from roulettes. I just don't have the time, patience, or smarts to play the market the way you would have to; I'm the 'run maps and hope for a windfall' sort.

That said, crafting high-level gear in this game is stupid. I had a look at what goes into the 320 gathering set, and it's all yellow scrip items (several days' worth of collectible turnins), legendary gathering node goods (2500 red scrip just to unlock each one), and so on. No wonder people get away with charging so much - you can't supply your own materials.

Edited by RedSavant on Mar 4th 2019 at 10:46:25 AM

Thankfully, I'm just level 40 so I don't have to deal with all of that yet. :D

(I'm a very slow leveler because I'm leveling everything at once)

All my money comes from treasure maps, however I always and only do it with my FC and we have a rule of "Your map, your loot", which is a quick way to turn things toxic if you try to pug map groups with that rule instead of a free for all. It only takes one lucky item to make 300-500k+ gil, and even on a bad run of luck, I sell my crafting crystals and clusters (I don't craft) and it leads to a lot of very small things selling for a lot of money at once. At the very least, I at least make the money from actually buying the maps back so it's only ever a neutral trade.

Edited by NaraNumas on Mar 4th 2019 at 4:49:07 AM

Yeah, I like running maps. Like I said, I'm the type to bank on a big windfall when it comes to MMOs, and getting something like a Sephirot tree or a minion I don't want is a great way to bank up. Unfortunately my guild doesn't run maps very often.

Reminder: from 50 onwards, collectibles make levelling MIN/BTN a cinch. I pretty much haven't even touched gathering leves for lv60-70 MIN/BTN.

Yup, I finally hit Goddess of the Land yesterday. Now I can start the process of yellow scrip - which custom deliveries make surprisingly easy. I went straight from a 68 hatchet to the ilevel 350 hatchet, and I'll start working on the armor as soon as I can.

That said, I feel like the 350 set might not be the best choice? I don't know a ton about high-end materia melding and whatnot, but I do know that lacking slots isn't a good thing. That said, I'm not looking to get super competitive here. I just want gear progression that will give me a leg up for the first steps of Shadowbringers gathering progress.

At this point in the patch cycle, it's better to save your materia and just get the yellow scrip gear. It's almost as good and will definitely work fine to get you all the current gathered items there are. The entire point of crafted and overmelded gear is that those of us who have it won't have to worry about upgrading our gear come 5.0 until about level 75.