**OFFICIAL** FFXIV:ARR Thread

[darkewaffle]

I definitely notice little touches here and there that look better with DX11, I wouldn't say it's a huge leap or anything. But nice.

The new zones are incredible. They're huge and gorgeous and loaded with great looking new enemy models. I think they really put some exceptional content into HW - and I am genuinely enjoying the story. It's no longer "well I have to do this to get to the next part" but rather "holy crap that was cool" and wondering what will come next. Learning about the history of Ishgard and the Dragonsong War has had a number of great moments.

Flying around the Churning Mists might be the first time I ever looked at a game and thought "Maybe I actually do want to upgrade my PC", it's a bit over 5 years old at this point with a gpu from 2-3 years ago. Part of me wants to be able to crank everything up now.

Also did a ton of crafting. I think I should hit 60 LTW tonight and everything else is 51-56, I love this shit lol. IMO don't skip your GC turnin daily and the 10 cost 'grand leves' are a waste of leves.

 

[PowerYoga]

lvl 45 crafting leves got nerfed. Gives 3k exp if you're> 50 as opposed to the 20k it used to.

I'm just pretty overwhelmed right now. The story is notably improved: the old/original story had very little sense of urgency and everything is "ok, lets gear up to fight the bad empire!"

lvl 59 right now on war, going to hit 60 today and finish MSQ. The zones are big and gorgeous and I've actually found myself snapping screenshots here and there. Big huge zones are something I sort of miss and don't miss.

The new armor is beautiful too, just the normal crafted pieces. Cant' wait to see what the i175 pieces look like.

And they just fixed guildworks so I'm no longer getting RMT tells, yay.

 

[darkewaffle]

I've gotten far fewer RMT tells and none of the friend requests since HW. Whatever they did/are doing is working well.

And yeah the new armor is pretty great. They not only added some really sweet looking new models but made some of the cool looking pre-HW stuff available to more classes through a lot of the new crafted gear. I'll be keeping my healing robe from Aery as a glamour piece for a long time to come.

Bigger inevitably carries the cost of travel time/bother with it but I think there's a good balance of Aetheryte/Chocobo Stone access and a solid sense of accomplishment when you finally get all the Aether Currents and flight is ridiculously fast.

 

[PowerYoga]

They'll adjust their bots soon, I'm sure of it. I've gotten 2-3 tells yesterday alone.

A lot of the tank pieces come from the old i70/80 gear sets redyed, I think it's the lvl 56 set? The lvl 58 set looks completely new though and the lvl 60 is new.

I'm trying to skill up my 2nd desynth now so I can get rid of all the weaver shit i'm keeping around. I desynthed all my i100 and i110 goldsmith stuff and ended up only getting a level. Kind of sad.

 

[darkewaffle]

Yea, desynthing pre HW stuff is not especially rewarding. I basically took some Tinkers Calm and Bacon Broth to some NPC shops to get started. Your success% starts pretty low but the skillups are huge for a while as well. Also worth checking if whatever you want to desynth is available on the MB - all those HQ quest rewards end up there and can be really inexpensive and I've gotten a lot of cheap/easy leve completions and desynths (and materials) with them.

 

[PowerYoga]

I've not done much with the MB. Just focused on finishing the story and then I'll be able to start gearing up and lvling my crafters.

Hit 60 yesterday and looking forward to finishing the last few MSQs and unlocking the last dungeons.

 

[pathos]

level 54 at the moment, taking my time.

I will note that since my gear was pretty bad, on account of my not playing for a long time, plus I'm failry casual, so the gear you get from quests has actually started becoming upgrades...and.....

The pugilist quest gear is pretty hideous. I'd glam it, but its base gear that I'll only wear for a day or two before replacing it. But, wow it's ugly.

Also, I did forget to switch for the dx9 to dx11 version until Monday, i think. And I do like the small upgrade it brings. But, since I did, the game doesn't want to shut itself down. End up having to force it closed every time I try.

edit - can't get my level right. I am working on the expansion, honest

 

[darkewaffle]

Eh, I'm pretty sure glamour prisms are dirt cheap now with them dropping randomly from dungeon chests. Looking good for a day or two is worth it to me lol.

DoH progressing very well. Scholar not so much as a result

 

[PowerYoga]

the clear ones are on sale in the NPCs for 200 a piece, so there was never a "cost" associated with it. As far as I can see the quests give grade 4 prisms (market crashed), but the other types are still selling decently.

Beat the main scenario. I'd have to say that last few legs were intense and is part of the drive for me to rush through the story... I haven't felt like that for a RPG in a while in general. The story was definitely very interesting and riveting for the lvl 58-60 quests, which is more than what I can say for the 2.0 storyline (up to and through praetorium).

Time to lvl my miner and botanist! Need my retainers to hit 52 so I can toss the new better-than-supra-vendor-gear on them.

Also gearing up my main with law gear. Part of the problem with being a warrior main is the need for both STR and VIT gear...

 

[darkewaffle]

Yeah, there was never the same sense of urgency with the original or 2.x lines. I just don't think the Empire was a very compelling antagonist and then in the content patches I think they felt obligated to give the players all the 'base' primals but as a result you knew what everything was leading up to in many cases. Whereas I'm just about to clear the level 57 dungeon for the story but can't rightly say I know what to expect going forward. That's definitely been one of the biggest step ups in HW, I really hope they maintain that level of quality going forward.

Though I just did Praetorium in story roulette the other day for the first time in like... almost 2 years and it actually is a pretty cool instance in it's own right.

 

[PowerYoga]

I agree completely. The whole "empire is attacking and we need to get ready!" plotline in the original 2.0 storyline is weak and boring. The whole rosy hollywood happy-end and "all the good guys win! yay!" didn't help.

The plot needed more intrigue and that's exactly what they added later on in 2.1 and 2.2, and so on and so forth. It all culminated in heavensward which still leaves some plot holes for future expansions and patches as well.

 

[cbrunny]

Getting really fed up with Square Enix continuing to just dump all over AMD users. They've "confirmed" that FFXIV does not support multi-monitor, even though it does on both AMD and Nvidia in 2.0 and continues to in 3.0 on nvidia. SLI works, but not crossfire. Just dump dump dump.

It's one thing for a new game to have issues but this is an expansion. They've literally removed features for their expansion. It makes no sense at all. I'm furious about it and I'm cancelling my subscription.

 

[PowerYoga]

you mean eyefinity or something? FF14 never officially supported it and you always have had to use some 3rd party tools. This is not news. SLI has its fair share of problems outside of FF14, just because you're having problems doesn't mean SE is biased. A lot of the problems (in general outside of FF14) is due to chronic shitty driver support on AMD's part and not really SE's fault.

I'm personally not going with another AMD card the next iteration. I've been using their stuff since 2001 and I'm tired of how their shitty driver support has become a tradition as opposed to a one off deal.

 

[cbrunny]

I've never had to use 3rd party tools. It's even listed on AMD's Gold Status page http://support.amd.com/en-us/recommended/eyefinity-software#k=#s=61

FFXIV is Gameworks.

 

[pathos]

got 55 yesterday, and cleared zavana (or whatever he was called) and sohm al. So far, I've enjoyed both dungeons. Don't care for that one primal though. I'm actually in a guild now, but it's such a habit, I still just duty find everything...and that primal was no fun doing duty finder.

Well, even if I say that, it only took 2 tries. But, we barely pulled it off on the 2nd try. I understood probably more than half of the mechanics, but even after the 2nd time, there were still quite a bit that puzzled me.

But, as a monk, with all the movement I have to do, and skill spamming, and ae dodging, I tend to miss alot of party chat and cast bars that pop up further up screen. So, not really surprising.

edit - oh, the glam things aren't THAT expensive, usually going from anywhere from 6-25k on our server per, with no rhyme or reason between the different pieces, or levels. But, since I haven't been playing all the way though,(just came back to the game after a long break) I could probably be considered quite poor. I'm almost up to 900k, which is more than I've ever had, but I assume most people would consider that quite broke. Especially as seeing some fairly crap level 50 weapons sell for 1 million or more.

If I were to start paying 15-75k every level or two to change the way my armor looks I'd be completely broke in no time.

 

[darkewaffle]

For some reason I thought they plummeted, that actually sounds about normal. Maybe I was thinking of something else.

Ravana is a pretty good primal imo. The visual effects throughout it are grand and I like that it (and Bismarck) are not entirely foolproof, you can definitely fail them a few times first. Plus that music that kicks in for the second phase suits him very well, Ravana has a great style/theme.

 

[PowerYoga]

I've never had to use 3rd party tools. It's even listed on AMD's Gold Status page http://support.amd.com/en-us/recommended/eyefinity-software#k=#s=61

FFXIV is Gameworks.

By 3rd party tools I mean you have to enable eyefinity outside of FF14 (use CCC or something). It's always worked but I don't believe square ever outright said they supported eyefinity. You can certainly use it but it's not their priority to configure FF14 for eyefinity users.

As always it's always been glitchy right after a big patch and last time 2.2 dropped it broke SLI/XFIRE for a lot of people. microstuttering is a problem but newer AMD drivers fixed it for me.

For some reason I thought they plummeted, that actually sounds about normal. Maybe I was thinking of something else.

Grade 4 prisms plummeted on my server since they give those away as quest rewards now. all the other ones are the same price.

 

[IEC]

I have to say, the main story quest got a whole lot better/interesting with 2.5. Just finished it last night and just wow. They dropped hints but I didn't believe it until it happened.

In Heavensward (3.0) now and it might be the first time in a long time I feel like paying full retail for a game was worth it.

 

[pathos]

Just finished Bismark this morning. Took 2 groups. First group gave up after 5 fails. 2nd group took 3 tries.

First group only had 2 people that had done it before. 2nd group still had a few new people, but at least more than half had done it before.

Bismark seems to be just a dps check. And, if anyone dies, you've pretty much lost. The 2nd party seemed to have much better dps than the first, so even when we lost, it looked like it wasn't impossible.

Oh, before that, I had actually bothered to read the patch notes....and found out I had not been doing the 50+ monk quests. Kind of sad that it's taken me a week to figure out that I need to be doing them. Got through the 58 this morning.

I must say though, the first skill I earned the one that switches between forms, I can't see much use for. It isn't that much faster than just using an attack to switch forms. And, the attacks will be doing damage in the mean time. Perhaps I'm just missing something.

 

[PowerYoga]

On the contrary, you want your greased lightning up as fast as possible instead of cycling through 2 separate forms just to get to it. The attacks you're doing is dealing less damage and your GCDs are resetting slower until you get 3 stacks of it up.

On some bosses it lets you keep your 3 stacks up where as you'd lose it normally because you have to cycle through 2 other forms. It's situational but you can use it on almost every pull.

Hit 60 miner this weekend and I'm just farming scrips. The lvl 55 gatherer gear is so nice looking though, I glamored it over the trailblazer stuff (cept the vest).

 

[PowerYoga]

Some notes: it's extremely easy to get law, the centurio seals are the limiting factor for the urushis and whatnot. Hunts are back big time (law + seals), A ranks drop in less than 1 minute and S ranks in 2-3. Instances make it difficult to hunt, if you're not in the zone when the A/S ranks pop (especially in churning mists where you don't get a zone in) don't bother.

Fending gear is pretty ugly, reminds me of the onimusha series though. Very much sengoku-era inspired.

The new patch dropped tea leaves, salt, mistletoe and something else into a vendor for around 1k each. There goes the market.

 

[darkewaffle]

Yeah I can't say I find most of the Law gear or primal weapons to be that attractive. Though this is the 'darklight' tier stuff and darklight was pretty fugly as well, maybe that's intentional lol. At least there's loads of good looking dungeon stuff. I love the "Baldur" weapons and my healing robe from Aery.

Some of the crafted-only appearances are really nice as well, even if they aren't going to be that practical. I love the Chivalric healing and maiming armor pieces and it's awesome that striking/scouting gives those classes access to the Kirimu Coat look.

 

[pathos]

well, finished up the main story line, and had enough tomes and centurios to buy and upgrade a weapon to 180.

The last dungeon and primal were actually pretty fun, and not to difficult....with a good group. With bad groups, both are quite painful

Well, now comes the tome and centurio grind. I don't mind it so much, since it's stuff that I find interesting.

Also, I never had a chance to run any hard mode dungeons, since I was busy trying to get the story caught up. I did go ahead and run copperbell hard, but thats pretty much it. Suppose I could go ahead and start running those, so at the least, I could clear out those quests filling my journal.

On that note, I never did gilgamesh or ultima either.

 

[PowerYoga]

ultima is one of the most fun fights imo. Ravana EX right now is the most fun/dynamic fight I've seen in a while, it's like titan + shiva + ifrit + garuda all smashed into 1 fight.

I'm about 1/4 through lvling my crafters, 55ish on most of them. The new crafts are so fucking hard to do.

 

[cbrunny]

Oh pathos you have some catching up to do! Worth doing each of them once at least but I don't think they need to be spammed by any means.