**OFFICIAL** FFXIV:ARR Thread

[robvp]

managed to play a lot on saturday/sunday, got leatherworking to 17 before it got bored and went to level gs from 14 to 22, then stopped and will go mining for silver tonight

 

[PowerYoga]

I'm in a similar position, except I need to mine about 15 boatloads of mythril. Just hit 31 miner and god it's by far the most monotonous thing ever. There's literally nothing besides running to the node (invis if you see angry things) and hit numpad 0 until it runs out, maybe pop a cooldown which regenerates at a snail's pace.

To think I need to do this until I can farm electrum... which I need for lvl 40~ crafts in both GS and weaving. About a 2 levels a day in mining is all I can stomach before trying to kill myself. Not to mention nobody buys half of the stuff you mine up...

 

[redrider4life4]

I find if I mine in between dungeon Que's it isn't so bad, dps so long waits

 

[robvp]

leveling the crafts is quite boring, i made brass ingots for about 7 levels then made some brass rings (couple of hq ones) and turned them into the leve person to brake it to 22
leatherworking was pretty much the same, made hard leather for most of the levels, then made aldgoat leather, the leve for 3 pieces of hard leather was pretty good, i think there is one for aldgoat leather as well which i will take advantage of, whatever alumen i mine will go towards making hq aldgoat leather

 

[PowerYoga]

The raw materials are useful and you should avoid handing them in for leve credits. The most useful leves I've found at the low levels (until you can start doing the 3x3s) is to do a leve that's either low in mat cost, or something you haven't crafted yet.

By crafting something you haven't made yet, you get an extra boost of bonus exp. Then you can try to HQ some leve repeatedly, preferably something that doesn't take 5 things to create. Alumen is farmed north of camp drybone and it's a lvl 15 node I think, I was there until lvl 21.

 

[darkewaffle]

Mostly true but while levelling LW I definitely did the "boar leather" turnin at one point because it was the only one at my level (probably 30/35?) that offered multiple turnins and wasn't obnoxious. Around that level quite a few LW crafts include high level cloth bolts which can get pretty pricey in volume. After that though there was a Boarskin Harness leve that I moved onto iirc.

 

[PowerYoga]

Mostly true but while levelling LW I definitely did the "boar leather" turnin at one point because it was the only one at my level (probably 30/35?) that offered multiple turnins and wasn't obnoxious. Around that level quite a few LW crafts include high level cloth bolts which can get pretty pricey in volume. After that though there was a Boarskin Harness leve that I moved onto iirc.

actually at that level the costa del sol (3 goat leather chokers x3) offers 17500 x 200% + 11 boar leather skins as reward (sometimes). You can literally do this until lvl 35 and it offers you a great start on boar skins. I've been eyeing this but I've been spending my leves on alchemy to try to get it to 43 first so I can have comfort zone for my other crafting classes. I imagine this would be a worthwhile leve to keep turning in as aldgoat is a fairbit cheaper than boar in any way shape and form.

After 35 I don't know, not that far yet on LW.

 

[pontifex]

got my thaum to 21 and started working on the archer class. got to like 12 or 13 and ran out of quests...where do i get more quests or do I just have to do fates and levequests at that level?

Can't do story quest because thats up around level 20 where my thaum is.

 

[KaOTiK]

got my thaum to 21 and started working on the archer class. got to like 12 or 13 and ran out of quests...where do i get more quests or do I just have to do fates and levequests at that level?

Can't do story quest because thats up around level 20 where my thaum is.

Fates and Leves, but mainly fates. Also your hunting log helps some. You'll have enough quests for 1 class just about. The rest you grind, but thankfully with FATEs/chain linking/+ the higher exp bonus you get for having a higher level make it pretty easy.

 

[robvp]

Or you can go to another town and get the quests you didn't do

 

[pontifex]

Or you can go to another town and get the quests you didn't do

I'd have to go to Limsa lominsa I guess.

 

[Reckoner]

This game is so damn aggravating at times. Where the hell is the broken weapon to start the relic quest? I talked to Gerolt and finished the main storyline quest, but I cant find any broken weapon in u'ghamaro mines. Pissing me off to no end.

 

[pandemonium]

I'm enjoying going through the storyline and picking up DoH leves at each city as I pass through them.

Finally fought Ifrit! It was funny, because for a split second I thought it was supposed to be a 3-man fight, then I realized one of the DPS didn't join the instance, so we were down one. We decided to do it anyways, and barely failed the first time. Second time around we got it. Pretty awesome little challenge doing that fight for the first time on a CNJ.

 

[darkewaffle]

Or you can go to another town and get the quests you didn't do

There's a full 'set' of lowbie quests in each town and the camps surrounding it. And then as you level up a number of those low/mid level areas will retroactively unlock new quests as you reach up into the 40s. I know Quarrymill and Drybone both have some, and around the 48/49 story quest there's like four NPCs in the Waking Sands that unlock and chain into some small quest nodes throughout the world. One of them takes you to West La Noscea iirc and it actually has a lot of quests.

Materia and HQ definitely make a big difference to spirit bond rate. If you consider NQ with no materia to be a 1.0 rate of Spirit Bond increase, HQ with 5x Materia appears to be about 2.5x, HQ with no materia 1.25x, NQ with one materia 1.25x, and HQ with one materia about 1.5x (I think, notes are at home). I'm going to keep testing to see if I can determine how much of a 'multiplier' each additional materia (so far it seems like a flat .25 would fit best) makes and try to find out if materia grade or whether a materia is socketed or not makes a difference as well. All testing noted here was done on Brass Rings of Crafting, items with only one socket.

 

[PowerYoga]

Well, didn't realize comfort zone is a lvl 50 skill. So I have to put that off on hold for the time being and level other stuff... Don't have access to other quest hubs yet so I can't do some of the better turn ins. Poison potions are great (71820 x 3 exp) but I don't want to be making those to lvl 50.... probably will make them till 45 though so I can try to HQ linolian at whitebrim.

 

[pontifex]

so are all abilities and spells supposed to be on the SAME timer? This game seems so backwards compared to other MMOs. USually in other mmos, you have different spells on different timers so you aren't just sitting there with your thumb up your ass waiting for a spell to reset.

 

[PowerYoga]

so are all abilities and spells supposed to be on the SAME timer? This game seems so backwards compared to other MMOs. USually in other mmos, you have different spells on different timers so you aren't just sitting there with your thumb up your ass waiting for a spell to reset.

they're not. There's a bunch of off-the-cooldown abilities you can pop, most defensive abilities come to mind. And which games have different spells on different timers? In every single mmorpg I've played there's a GCD you have to deal with, if not the GCD then the attack animation and frames are the limiting factor.

The timer is used as a game mechanic; slow greatly affects that cooldown, and adding weapon skill speed helps make it less. It's not a "global cooldown", it's part of the mechanic that you have to strategize around.... at least that's what it feels like at lvl 37.

 

[redrider4life4]

I agree the global CD is kind of long, in most games it is .5 secs or 1 sec, not 2.5

 

[PowerYoga]

I'm pretty sure +skill speed reduces it by some factor, not sure what though. +8 skill speed made a noticible dent in my GCD, like .25 seconds or some such. But i'm sure it hits diminishing returns.

edit:

great guide for crafters and harvesters.

http://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/comments/1mh6um/crafting_guidetheorycrafting_dont_let_crafters/
http://www.bluegartr.com/threads/118238-DoH-DoL-Leves-Dyes-Material-Tiers

 

[pontifex]

they're not. There's a bunch of off-the-cooldown abilities you can pop, most defensive abilities come to mind. And which games have different spells on different timers? In every single mmorpg I've played there's a GCD you have to deal with, if not the GCD then the attack animation and frames are the limiting factor.

The timer is used as a game mechanic; slow greatly affects that cooldown, and adding weapon skill speed helps make it less. It's not a "global cooldown", it's part of the mechanic that you have to strategize around.... at least that's what it feels like at lvl 37.

all your attacks are on the same cooldown, some are longer though.

Maybe I'm mis-remembering other mmos, but I thought stuff like instants were usually on a different cooldown timer?

 

[robvp]

No, i have a couple of attacks on archer that are off the global cooldown

 

[PowerYoga]

all your attacks are on the same cooldown, some are longer though.

Maybe I'm mis-remembering other mmos, but I thought stuff like instants were usually on a different cooldown timer?

I can't remember any mmorpgs where any instants are not on a cooldown. Even in wow stuff like shield bash/kick/interrupting stuff is still affected by the GCD. It's just the GCD might be shorter (.5 seconds in wow i think) so that you don't really notice it. But there's no game where everything's instant, since that results in you making one single macro and spamming the shit out of it to hit every single ability at once. There's always some sort of limiting factor, like animation or a GCD or a built in GCD that you don't notice.

Check your abilities, you'll notice most self-buffs are off the GCD but they're somewhat limited by animation. (0.5 seconds is what I count)

 

[robvp]

I'm pretty sure +skill speed reduces it by some factor, not sure what though. +8 skill speed made a noticible dent in my GCD, like .25 seconds or some such. But i'm sure it hits diminishing returns.

edit:

great guide for crafters and harvesters.

http://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/comments/1mh6um/crafting_guidetheorycrafting_dont_let_crafters/
http://www.bluegartr.com/threads/118238-DoH-DoL-Leves-Dyes-Material-Tiers

great links, bookmarked for later

went to mine silver last night but i did not know it was a lvl 25 node, at 21 i was missing roughly 6 out of 10 swings, i decided to just forget that and went to drybone where i turned in an hq brass choker at the levemete for some gs experience and seals, then went off to mine for alumen for a while, will probably do the same until i hit 23-24 miner for more efficient silver mining
hoping to hit 25 or 26 gs before i start leveling my main DoW again, i havent gotten a single accessorie from quest rewards so having gs to make them and meld materia on them is pretty useful, this is the main reason i settled on gs instead of lw for main crafting right now but i eventually want to level all the crafts

 

[PowerYoga]

a good rule to follow is that even though you can mine the next level of stuff @ 21, 26, 31, etc etc... at that time your success rate is ALWAYS around 60%. Pop food and cooldowns if you really need those new mats, but it's actually faster and more efficient to be mining stuff at your old place for 100% success rates until the next level, or hopefully when you can equip a new pickaxe.

I just hit 31, so I plan to gather a stack of mythril ores to use and then just head back out and hit lvl 32 on either siltstone of wyvern obsidian.

 

[TheUnk]

The more I play this game the less I like it and start realizing it's just a very watered down version of SWTOR, even at release.

There are only 2 things I can see that FFXIV has done better. One is the Duty Finder, SWTOR didn't have anything like that at release (does it now?). Second is the multiple jobs on 1 character. However, this feature is severely crippled IMO due to the awful lack of efficient methods to level additional jobs. FATE trains? No thanks.

Probably crafting too, but not all that interested in that myself so I can't say.

It has inspired me to load up SWTOR again though. From the looks of it they moved me to another server, the only reason I quit in the first place was the ghost town my server became. I imagine there is a boat load more content added since I quit too.