I did my first trial last night, got my chocobo, and hit 30, so my next play session is going to be unlocking PLD and I’m very excited.
My current plan is pretty close to what @Sibylus was talking about - I’m going to level PLD to 50, and then try either RDM or SAM (how do we feel about both of those playstyles?), Work my way through 2.x and heavensward msq content until I can unlock DRK, and finish off my run to cap with that if I like it enough.
For what it’s worth: you can get an early idea of whether you’ll like a job at 50 by running Palace of the Dead. Your level progression within PotD is super accelerated and you can restart at floor 51 as a level 60 whenever you want once you’ve reached it, so it’s a great way to check out whether you like the core mechanics for a job once you’ve unlocked it.
(it is just DEATHLY dull trying to grind a class up to 30 for the job unlock, though, so it shines the most when you’re checking out MCH/AST/DRK, since those unlock at 30)
Not to mention having a core antagonist (and absolute piece of shit), Zenos call out every other nation on their own respective histories of benefiting from colonialism and erasure/subjugation of indigenous peoples. Despite the story’s occasional missteps, stuff like that does a lot to remind me that FFXIV’s writers seem like they want to be genuinely critical of the world they built (which is more than I can say about most other videogames, let alone other MMOs).
Y’know, for whatever reason, that thought hadn’t crossed my mind 'til now. What with the mysterious cabal of black hooded antagonists pulling political strings, the all white monstrosities coming in Shadowbringers, a fractured collection of worlds, something something the power of Light/Darkness, Riku Estinien shows up, and now “Nobody” vs. “Heartless” Zenos…I’m starting to think FFXIV might just be Kingdom Hearts without the licensing deals.
Red Mage is my favorite job. Not as complicated as it looks, building a balanced red mana bar from black and white is satisfying, it’s fun jumping in and out and swapping from ranged and melee, and you’ve got great utility with doublecast heals and rezzes.
@pupper You’re quite right! Palace of the Dead will definitely take you far past your level 50 (I don’t recall where the PoTD level cap is, tbh).
You guys I just stumbled across and excitedly joined the most fun Pride parade trekking to Gridania on Zalera and this game is taking over my LIFE
5.0 patch notes are up! Some good quality of life improvements are in there. I zoomed past the new zones, trials, and dungeons sections though because I prefer to be completely surprised.
Which new class are you most looking forward to trying? Vote and elaborate below!
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I’m also interested in hearing how you all have been “preparing” for Shadowbringers. A lot of my FC mates have been trying to grind all their classes to 70. And after reading Heather Alexandra’s piece on the misery of grinding multiple characters and jobs to cap I am wondering about burnout. It just seems…not fun?
I’m curious about what being “prepared” means to you all. What have you been doing?
I retired from being a completionist a long time ago. In FFXIV’s case, I have no need to level all the jobs to cap if I only mildly enjoy more than half of them and will rarely touch them afterwards. I stick to the ones I like and and am content to leave it at that. FFXIV makes it incredibly easy to stay up-to-date, so no need to complicate things.
The class/job quests are interesting, but I can easily watch a YouTube video for those. More power to those that actually just enjoy the grind. I never did, and I have no time to do it these days anyway, so it wasn’t exactly hard to not look back on that.
More pertinent to me is making sure my free company has everything they want to hit the ground running in the expansion. Organizing picture nights, fun-runs of old content, priming FC materials for all to use, etc.
I am so here for @mundanesoul’s immediate descent into complete MMO frenzy.
I’ve been preparing for Shadowbringers by leveling a bunch of jobs I had never touched before, trying to decide which one I’m going to main this time around. It looks like I’m going to settle for DRK…
Nothing too serious. As a wise man once said about FFXIV, “It’s just buttons!”
I hit ilvl 390 on my WHM a little while ago (and I didn’t feel like grinding weekly tomestones/doing Eureka/learning savage raids to push that up to 400), so I’ve been focused on leveling my second job, NIN, to something that won’t feel like a huge gap once I’m done with the next MSQ. I also tried to get my crafting and gathering professions leveled to something useful, but I’m probably going to be stuck in the mid-30s for a while as I focus on other things (though it is nice to finally be able to make my own glamour prisms). For today, I’ll probably just clear out my inventory and do other odds and ends so I can minimize UI headaches for Friday.
i got everything to 70 but thats somthing i just genuinely enjoy doing, but i did also make sure some of my tomestones were capped so i can get the rest of the ilvl 400 stuff i need for my tank when u can buy it with poetics
I played the game for a few weeks right when it came out (a Realm Reborn, though I did play the original briefly as well). I’ve been really thinking about getting back into it. Do people have suggestions for how to progress in a satisfying way? I think I was around level 30-35 Summoner. I don’t think I’ll want to level a second class. But should I just focus on going through story stuff? Is it worth it to just spend time poking around the world? The idea of exploring sounds very appealing, but is there stuff to find in the world that’s going to feel cool or interesting?
There’s general Stuff to do around the world that’s pretty fun on its own, but it usually exists for its own sake and doesn’t meaningfully progress your character level.
Focus on the Main Story Quest, it’ll contribute most of the XP you need to level your first job.
For me I have played exclusively Tanks since I started. So my goal was to get the current trio to 70 in time for Shadowbringers. Along with that I was preparing by doing Beast Tribe quest because the quests are always great and I love my turtle, bug, bird, snake, fish, salamander, fairy, furry, children.
Unfortunately I am accomplishing none of that as I haven’t had internet access for a few days and im too tired after the new job to get to said access.
So much like any resolution I make it half done and missing some bits but fudge it im still excited!
Honestly? Get through ARR as fast as possible. The story doesn’t get to what I’d call “good” until you’re around halfway through the second line of quests between that and Heavensward. And even going from where you’re at, that can still take a long time to get there. But if you do, everything that comes after is a lot less tedious and more immediately engaging. I spent most of the base campaign listening to podcasts as I played, and would probably recommend the same to help ease the tedium of going back to the Waking Sands for yet another unvoiced cutscene.
Just focus on the MSQ. If you have a Summoner, you’ll also have access to the Scholar job (which gets shared xp, which will be nice if you’re interested in trying out healing), but I’d just focus on those classes as you move through the story. And don’t sweat it if you miss something in ARR’s story. As long as you have an idea of the main beats and who the characters are, you’ll be caught up soon enough once the game starts going out of its way to onboard you to the world/lore/conflicts in the post-ARR campaign.
This was always a small blessing because hearing the old VO cast try to fake British accents never stopped being grating.
The cast change was one of the best parts of Heavensward.
That’s good to know, but fairly disappointed. I was hoping the story would be a bit better than that so I could more or less just enjoy a final fantasy game with my big strong nerd boy.
Oh thank god there’s a cast change I’m even more excited to get into the expansion content. Is there more VA in general?
Yeah, down the road there is much more and significantly better VA. Cutscenes get longer too. My favorite is when the game is like “YO, the following cutscene is hella long. Make sure you’re ready to hunker down cuz we’re about to go.”
The cast is truly so talented and their line delivery during key scenes is just mwah chef’s kiss
You can also change the language entirely if that’s more your jam. I sometimes go back to English VO, but I primary play the game with Japanese on.
Oh, once you get passed the initial stretch, everything from before becomes worth it. I should have edited my post since the ARR stuff isn’t that bad. The writing tends to be dry and the production value at that point doesn’t do the game any favors, but it’s rarely ever awful – just mediocre. I’d still say it’s absolutely worthwhile to play the game for its story if you can handle a significant amount of time with a campaign that doesn’t begin to compare to those that come after.
