**OFFICIAL** FFXIV:ARR Thread

[KIAman]

I'm so sick and tired of Ifrit runs, I ended up buying an HQ Champion's lance so I can complete AK to finish out my damn story. The silver lining to the zillions of ifrit runs is that I was able to buy couple pieces of darklight gear.

Just gotta beat titan to get my relic weapon.

http://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodestone/character/2834114/

 

[pontifex]

damn, trying to do some of these fates is like a waste of time. the mobs die before I can even get a spell cast.

 

[robvp]

Yeah they are a pain solo, you gotta join a group for the good xp

 

[hellfire88]

Finally got a copy since they resumed digital sales (GMG has it for 25% off if anyone is interested).

So what server are most people here on? I'm thinking of joining Behemoth, Leviathan, or maybe Gilgamesh based on limited research of server popularity. I'm looking for a med-high population server so all the zones have plenty of people to interact with, and hopefully I won't have to hit the login queues too often. Thanks.

 

[nanobreath]

damn, trying to do some of these fates is like a waste of time. the mobs die before I can even get a spell cast.

Unless you are an archer/brd or thm/blm, which have their own AoE abilities, I recommend leveling GLD to get flash, it's a level 8 ability, which is really fast to get.

I personally prefer not to really farm fates. I'll go to a zone, do some quests/leves and if I see a fate, I'll go do it. Otherwise, queue up for a dungeon, guildheist etc.

 

[pathos]

damn, trying to do some of these fates is like a waste of time. the mobs die before I can even get a spell cast.

Usually when I do a fate, I'm usually solo. It can be a bit trying to get anything done with the rate the mob dies.

I can generally get gold's for completion of those, as a monk. You do have to use your tab key, and hope it actually targets a mob close to you so that you can hit it a few times before it dies though. Having ae skills do help a good bit, though.

On different note, there is something I'm curious about, but considering the length of time my dungeon que's take up, I'm unwilling to experiment with it.

I'm sure this is a stupid question, but I'm going to ask anyway. Can anyone confirm that the dungeon duty finder, and leve's dont interfere with each other? As in, up till this point, when I que up for a dungeon, normally I'll have my character just stand around, and I'll pull out my tablet and just browse the web. I'd rather do something productive, however

So, I started just running around killing random mobs, and doing fates when they show up. But, that gets old fairly quickly. So, I wanted to throw in grand company leve's to ease the boredom just a bit. But, I've always been a little afraid to, with the way those actually work. If the game made me wait until I finished the leve before I could enter the dungeon, I'd generally be screwed, since the healers and tanks generally give dps 15 seconds or so, before they start dropping the group to reque.

 

[nanobreath]

So, I started just running around killing random mobs, and doing fates when they show up. But, that gets old fairly quickly. So, I wanted to throw in grand company leve's to ease the boredom just a bit. But, I've always been a little afraid to, with the way those actually work. If the game made me wait until I finished the leve before I could enter the dungeon, I'd generally be screwed, since the healers and tanks generally give dps 15 seconds or so, before they start dropping the group to reque.

I honestly have never tried this as my queues are so instant, I have to make sure I'm ready to enter a dungeon before I even enter queue. If nobody else can answer this before then, I can try this tonight when I get on. I'll start a leve and enter queue and see what happens. I am actually having trouble right now using up my leve allowances. So I won't even mind wasting one of those.

 

[PowerYoga]

I'm a tank so my queue's instant but I never drop to queue into another group faster. I wait around and generally it's the 1-2 dpses that we're waiting on.

Yesterday's lag was just complete horrid though. Did sunken temple and wiped twice once on the first boss, once on the final boss. Cleared it anyways @ 20 minutes to spare.

Why do people say this is so hard? There's not a whole lot of mechanics that are complicated. We did it with a SCH healing which forced me to self-heal at times (not his fault, we didn't have CC and I took some big hits) but the temple's not difficult at all.

 

[darkewaffle]

I know you can queue, change class and level/craft/whatever during the queue, but when it finally pops the window only gives you 45 seconds to go back to your 'first' class and accept it. I feel like you either probably wouldn't be able to finish the leve that suddenly (and risk it expiring, I'm not sure if that means you can re-do it or not) or it might not let you accept it/queue at all, dunno.

45 GSM. The last two tiers of leves seem to involve an inordinate amount of red coral; which is somewhat pricey and a little hard to come by. They are convenient recipes though since they require almost no other ingredients, hopefully more of it's posted tonight.

I'm going to go ahead and say materia grade does not improve bond rate. A HQ mythril ring of crafting with 3x grade 1 materia vs one with 3x grade 2 materia reached 100% spirit bond on the very same craft. I don't think that would change with grade 3/4 materia either. Two other pairs of items I'm using (some of my carpenter gear) have also not shown any difference in spiritbond gain either, they're just not to 100% yet.

So, in short, dump junk materia in anything and everything you want to Assimilate into materia later and it'll go significantly faster. Given price of trash grade1/grade 2 materia I'd say it's at least worth putting 3 pieces in an HQ for anything you want to spirit bond which will basically make it go twice as fast as an NQ piece. I've been cycling gear as much as possible while levelling GSM and have churned out a number of grade 2 crafting materia, all of which are worth something like 8-15k each on my server.

I've disenchanted almost ten different item level 55 crafting pieces (counting Aetheryte rings) though and still haven't gotten any grade 4 materia though. They do seem in very short supply on the AH but I can't tell if that's because the chance to get grade 4 is especially low or maybe it's only sourced from higher ilvl (DoW/DoM) gear in some way. Though I feel like it's unlikely given that ilvl 55 gear is max for crafting equipment (as far as I can tell) and crafting materia seem only to come from crafting gear. Either way, grade 3s are pretty good as well and worth more than the mats for any of the pieces I craft myself at least.

 

[PowerYoga]

That's pretty nice, I might dump some junk ice/water/element materia into some NQ pieces to turn them into nice things. I'm done with all my lvl 20 (sans culinarian) quests so there's no further use for any of these materia. I think cobalt gear melds into the lvl 3 materias, but I think only ilvl60+ pieces turn into grade 4s?

What did you level off in the lvl 15-20 range on culinarian? I feel like steady hand 2 is a must now...

 

[darkewaffle]

I think grade 1 materia is item level 1-29 and grade 2 is level 30-44. Past that it seems to get fuzzy. I think grade 3 is... 45-54? 59? It's hard to say. On one hand, that would explain why the ilvl 55 crafter gear does not create grade 4 crafter materia. On the other, that would mean that those grade 4 materia are somehow being created by non-DoH gear, which contradicts how it's worked up until that point. Could go either way.

15-20 I think I made Cider Vinegar and then turned it into Cottage Cheese. Stacks of Faerie Apples should be quite cheap and you can buy the Mineral Water (and later the Aldgoat Milk for the cheese) from NPCs for very little. Plus the crafts only take 1 shard each.

I don't think either of those items are particularly useful but Cider is an ingredient in cottage cheese at least, and the cheese is a 60 or 70 dura craft which I find are much more efficient/enjoyable to XP with.

 

[PowerYoga]

vinegar -> cheese... got it. I'll probably just pop the cheese while I craft for the little 3% exp boost. but the cider vinegar yields 5 per craft... seems like that'd stack up really quickly (like my pie crusts that are collecting mold on my retainer)

I made a bunch of apple pies because I mined a lot, but it just took too many ingredients... but it's a great food for gatherers. Might revisit them since i'm running low on pies too...

 

[robvp]

thats what i hated about cooking in ffxi, recipes with so many ingredients made it hard on my inventory

 

[PowerYoga]

but it looks so delicious. I went out and bought an apple pie after I made a batch of 10 on my culinarian. >_>

 

[robvp]

i spent last night farming alumen for xp, made some brass rings on gsm and turned the hq ones at the leve to get me to level 24, might do some storyline quests to advance my DoW now, getting burned out on gathering/crafting but i have been making slow and steady money so i might just go out and mine again, need some carbonized matter to meld shitty materia onto gear

 

[darkewaffle]

Well, the cider would stack up quickly but I would focus on XPing off of the cheese personally since iirc the cider is a 40 dura craft and cider is 60/70, I forget. It's a matter of preference but the one thing I dislike about crafting is churning out 40 dura items, I can do 'real' items all day however. Basically while levelling cooking I'm just looking for cheap/low ingredient high durability items. Crafting the cider vinegar and getting the XP for that as well just happened to be the easiest way to get some of it at the time.

 

[pontifex]

Unless you are an archer/brd or thm/blm, which have their own AoE abilities, I recommend leveling GLD to get flash, it's a level 8 ability, which is really fast to get.

I personally prefer not to really farm fates. I'll go to a zone, do some quests/leves and if I see a fate, I'll go do it. Otherwise, queue up for a dungeon, guildheist etc.

I'm not farming them either. just do one here and there if i run into one while questing.

 

[tedrodai]

ilvl 55 crafting gear can make t4 crafting materia, according to multiple people on the BG forums. One guy said he had spent ~200k in mats (to craft the gear) before he got his 1st t4 though. So it's probably a relatively rare chance. Also the materia themselves have an ilvl associated with them. DoH/DoL t4 is ilvl 55, DoW/DoM is ilvl70 according to something I read this morning, so it could very well be possible that different ilvl gear is required to make DoW/M materia t4s vs DoH/L t4s.

Lord knows why they can't just structure all materia tiers the same way.

 

[darkewaffle]

Well hopefully I'll get one soon enough to confirm. Most of my lw/bs/crp gear is slowly creeping towards 100%.

 

[pathos]

I'm a tank so my queue's instant but I never drop to queue into another group faster. I wait around and generally it's the 1-2 dpses that we're waiting on.

Normally, when the box pops up to enter, even when I'm que'd up as a dps, its usually the other dps we are waiting on, heh. Normally after 15 seconds or so, either the tank or healer drops, and i go back in the que. And, then a few seconds later, when whoever dropped reenters, I'm still first in line for dps, so I go right back into the new group, so I've never really minded the tanks/healers doing that.

I do wonder though, if it's reque'ing me instantly, its probably reque'ing the other dps as well, the one making us wait. So, probably not accomplishing much by doing that.

Unless, the ding noise you get from the box that pops up suddenly awakens them from the nap they fell into waiting on the que

 

[PowerYoga]

Well hopefully I'll get one soon enough to confirm. Most of my lw/bs/crp gear is slowly creeping towards 100%.

speaking of materia cap:

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...eria-setup-for-crafters?p=1273980#post1273980

 

[darkewaffle]

I want more CP but really feel like I have no need for additional control or craftsmanship beyond the 2* requirements. I think I'll just spread out the 'required' materia (15 control and 5 craftsmanship with +30 craft food as needed) across my jewelry (so it can be shared across all my crafts) and load up the real gear with junk or maybe grade 1/2 control/cp. I'd rather assimilate my gear than not be able to by loading it up with expensive materia.

I'm tempted to go all out on my Aetheryte rings and just keep them around forever though since assimilating them has been so non-rewarding so far.

 

[PowerYoga]

I generally don't convert stuff that's already HQ and melded while I'm leveling, since the gear all give worthless lvl 1/2 materias. I might consider melding lvl 2 equipment if I'm not short on mats though.

I forgot to ask: did you do any leves to help level up cooking?

 

[darkewaffle]

I obsessively converted level 30+ crafting gear while doing GSM recently and I'll do the same with WVR next I think lol.

And judging by the cooking leve list, not until 30? I XPed high 20s on Millioncorn -> Cornmeal which can be turned in for a 30 leve and then Acorn Cookies (35 leve) which got me up to 42. At 40 I think the best option is Apple Juice.

Prior to that I think I just crafted a bunch of cider/cottage cheese, noble grapes -> dried prunes, and at some point grilled aldgoat or something since our FC had a ton of the mats sitting around.

I'm real stingy with my leves since I plan to 50 all crafts sooner than later and find that with rapid synth/byregots/waste not I can reliably HQ crafts a few level higher than me for quite good XP up into the 20s for my low crafts without burning leves, just a matter of finding the right recipe (high durability and cheap/simple mats). Works especially well with rested XP and the GC buff you can purchase; can crank out a level in 10-20 minutes at times.

Actually I'm pretty sure I did some Chicken Stock at some point as well to do that 25 leve once or twice. Not much though.

 

[PowerYoga]

yeah I've saved up most of my leves and don't want to waste them. I only want cooking to 37 for the time being for steady hand 2 (so I can HQ more consistently on other classes), so I'll hold off on anything above that.