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FF XIV: One Week Later.
11 years ago
General
Remember this? http://www.furaffinity.net/view/14065681/
I need to tack another one on there now...
So yeah, its a fun one. I'm enjoying it enough to plonk down $25 on the full version. Its downloading on Steam as I write.
Some more fun discoveries I've made since I started playing it:
Class Changes: Much like The Secret World, this game lets you swap around your play-style without having to make a whole new character, but with some other added bonuses.
My character started out as a Thaumaturgist, which is basically like a black mage, and while he can pewpew fire, lighting, and blizzard with the best of them if he gets hurt his only option is to either quaff a potion or, if that's on cooldown, run like hell... at least thats how it was anyways before he became an Arcanist for a bit. Arcanistry is very much like the traditional Summoners of FF lore mixed with a good dose of WoW Warlocks in that your main attack plan is to summon a pet, send them in to bite the enemy's ankles, then stack up the DoTs and watch your foe shit themselves to death.
Here's the neat bit. One of the early spells you learn as an Arcanist is called Physick, which is a healing spell. When I swapped back to Thaumaturgist I found that I could still use that spell even though I wasn't an Arcanist anymore! My squishy mage now had the ability to heal himself with magic instead of relying on items. After some time as a Conjurer (white mage of sorts) he also has Aero for a second damage over time spell (Thunder does DoT) and Protect to make himself slightly less squishy. There is a limit, for every five levels you can have ONE additional spell you've learned from another class, for example my guy is level 20 as a Thaumaturge so he gets four other spells, but if you switch to a class that's lower level the number goes down as well (If I were to swap to Conjurer, which is level 8 for me, I can only have one extra spell).
Not only that, but there's a very important reason to swap classes. Above I said that my Thaumaturgist is 'like a black mage'. Truth is, he's not just like one. He will BECOME one! After you get a class to level 30 you can get a quest to obtain what's called a soul crystal. This crystal, when equipped, will unlock an advanced class for your character with new spells, new abilities, and a big boost to their stats!
The class unlocks go as follows:
Gladiator -> Paladin (some healing magic, big boost to defense, gains ability [Hand out Chick Tracts])
Marauder -> Warrior (SMASH CHOP KILL BLEED!)
Archer -> Bard (Support your party members... or just sing Freebird so they'll shut up about it)
Pugilist -> Monk (50 hit combo! K.O.)
Lancer -> Dragoon (Wendy! I can fly!)
Conjurer -> White Mage (Healy magic, or just blow enemies up with Holy)
Thaumaturgist -> Black Mage (I shoot magic into the darkness!)
And the Arcanist actually gets TWO that it can become.
Summoner (summon big bruisers like Ifrit and Titan) or Scholar (healing magic, summon a fairy companion).
Finally, they're not out yet, but apparently Squeenix is getting ready to release two new classes.
Rogues for all those who are really really really whining that there's no rogue (and this being an MMO there most certainly are) who eventually learn how to flip out as Ninjas.
Now to get this quest you need to have leveled at least two classes. For example, when the time comes to earn my pointy hat on my Thaumaturgist I'll need to have at least fifteen levels as an Archer too (I guess I need to know a lot about ranged combat). Its different for each class, but it encourages players to experiment and find combinations that suit them.
Levequests: By now I bet you're thinking this all sounds very grindy because of how you start each class from scratch and have to level them up. Well to that I have this to say:
WHAT THE HELL DID YOU EXPECT!? Its an MMO! They're grindy! It comes with the territory.
Oh sorry I wrote that wrong... I meant to say "Well go visit the Levequest guy!".
Levequests are basically dailies of a sort that you can do whenever you feel like. They're timed mini-quests that you activate when you get to the area they're intended for. There's ones for battling, ones for tradecrafts, and Guildeleves which you can do with a group if you feel so inclined or are helping out a friend/guildmate.
These actually work rather well for grinding up your weaker classes quickly. You can usually get four appropriately leveled quests at once and you can even adjust the quest's difficulty if you're overleveled for it (within five levels, a level 10 levequest can be upped to +5). You get bonus rewards based on difficulty and speed of completion too, as well as other factors. Finished that sucker in under five minutes? Way to go, here's some bonus experience and money! You say you found a really nasty monster that was a 'bounty' and you took it down? Great job! Big bonus for you!
I can grind up one of my characters from 1 to 10 in under an hour this way.
Also...
Tradecrafts and Professions: At first I really disliked this idea because, as it turns out, crafting requires yet another class change. A Thaumaturge can't just learn alchemy, he has to become an alchemist with a whole new gearset, crafting specific abilities, and so on.
However, once I got past my initial frustration I found that it actually makes for a rather deep crafting experience.
When you craft you need to use your abilities to create the item you're trying to make. There's your basic crafting ability that works to fill up the completion bar, as well as others that you can use to refine an item, give you more time to finish it, or improve it overall.
Your MP bar turns into a CP (Craft Points) bar when you're a crafter class, and all abilities but the basic one take CP points which don't regenerate until after the item is finished. It can make crafting a real challenge too. Should I just work on making a new book for my Arcanistry or should I try to improve it and risk ruining it before it's even made?
I haven't had much time to work with the crafting classes, but here's what I've gathered so far:
Alchemists craft, what else, healing items. They can also make wands and books which are used, respectively, by conjurers and arcanists as weapons.
Tailors make cloth armor, worn by the magic using classes, and can also make clothing for the crafting classes which increase craft stats like Control and such (oh and by the way, your stats change when you're a crafter).
There's others too. Goldsmiths, Blacksmiths, Leatherworkers, Epicurians, and more. Since these all count as individual classes you could theoretically have one character do all of them if you don't mind having your inventory so overloaded that your back snaps in half.
Ontop of those there's the gathering classes. Miners, Lumberjacks, Botanists, and so on. These guys gather the raw materials for your crafting. You can buy the items you need from vendors or from just beating up monsters, the more common ones anyways, but if you want the rare stuff (or just to save some Gil) you'll have to get your hands dirty.
I gotta admit, I was impressed. I'd heard all the horror stories about Final Fantasy XIV from before they had Bahamut blow up the world, but apparently a dragon-induced apocalypse is just what this game needed to fix it right up. I'm enjoying myself and if you're a Final Fantasy fan you probably will too (and if you are why don't you have this game yet anyways?).
I need to tack another one on there now...
So yeah, its a fun one. I'm enjoying it enough to plonk down $25 on the full version. Its downloading on Steam as I write.
Some more fun discoveries I've made since I started playing it:
Class Changes: Much like The Secret World, this game lets you swap around your play-style without having to make a whole new character, but with some other added bonuses.
My character started out as a Thaumaturgist, which is basically like a black mage, and while he can pewpew fire, lighting, and blizzard with the best of them if he gets hurt his only option is to either quaff a potion or, if that's on cooldown, run like hell... at least thats how it was anyways before he became an Arcanist for a bit. Arcanistry is very much like the traditional Summoners of FF lore mixed with a good dose of WoW Warlocks in that your main attack plan is to summon a pet, send them in to bite the enemy's ankles, then stack up the DoTs and watch your foe shit themselves to death.
Here's the neat bit. One of the early spells you learn as an Arcanist is called Physick, which is a healing spell. When I swapped back to Thaumaturgist I found that I could still use that spell even though I wasn't an Arcanist anymore! My squishy mage now had the ability to heal himself with magic instead of relying on items. After some time as a Conjurer (white mage of sorts) he also has Aero for a second damage over time spell (Thunder does DoT) and Protect to make himself slightly less squishy. There is a limit, for every five levels you can have ONE additional spell you've learned from another class, for example my guy is level 20 as a Thaumaturge so he gets four other spells, but if you switch to a class that's lower level the number goes down as well (If I were to swap to Conjurer, which is level 8 for me, I can only have one extra spell).
Not only that, but there's a very important reason to swap classes. Above I said that my Thaumaturgist is 'like a black mage'. Truth is, he's not just like one. He will BECOME one! After you get a class to level 30 you can get a quest to obtain what's called a soul crystal. This crystal, when equipped, will unlock an advanced class for your character with new spells, new abilities, and a big boost to their stats!
The class unlocks go as follows:
Gladiator -> Paladin (some healing magic, big boost to defense, gains ability [Hand out Chick Tracts])
Marauder -> Warrior (SMASH CHOP KILL BLEED!)
Archer -> Bard (Support your party members... or just sing Freebird so they'll shut up about it)
Pugilist -> Monk (50 hit combo! K.O.)
Lancer -> Dragoon (Wendy! I can fly!)
Conjurer -> White Mage (Healy magic, or just blow enemies up with Holy)
Thaumaturgist -> Black Mage (I shoot magic into the darkness!)
And the Arcanist actually gets TWO that it can become.
Summoner (summon big bruisers like Ifrit and Titan) or Scholar (healing magic, summon a fairy companion).
Finally, they're not out yet, but apparently Squeenix is getting ready to release two new classes.
Rogues for all those who are really really really whining that there's no rogue (and this being an MMO there most certainly are) who eventually learn how to flip out as Ninjas.
Now to get this quest you need to have leveled at least two classes. For example, when the time comes to earn my pointy hat on my Thaumaturgist I'll need to have at least fifteen levels as an Archer too (I guess I need to know a lot about ranged combat). Its different for each class, but it encourages players to experiment and find combinations that suit them.
Levequests: By now I bet you're thinking this all sounds very grindy because of how you start each class from scratch and have to level them up. Well to that I have this to say:
WHAT THE HELL DID YOU EXPECT!? Its an MMO! They're grindy! It comes with the territory.
Oh sorry I wrote that wrong... I meant to say "Well go visit the Levequest guy!".
Levequests are basically dailies of a sort that you can do whenever you feel like. They're timed mini-quests that you activate when you get to the area they're intended for. There's ones for battling, ones for tradecrafts, and Guildeleves which you can do with a group if you feel so inclined or are helping out a friend/guildmate.
These actually work rather well for grinding up your weaker classes quickly. You can usually get four appropriately leveled quests at once and you can even adjust the quest's difficulty if you're overleveled for it (within five levels, a level 10 levequest can be upped to +5). You get bonus rewards based on difficulty and speed of completion too, as well as other factors. Finished that sucker in under five minutes? Way to go, here's some bonus experience and money! You say you found a really nasty monster that was a 'bounty' and you took it down? Great job! Big bonus for you!
I can grind up one of my characters from 1 to 10 in under an hour this way.
Also...
Tradecrafts and Professions: At first I really disliked this idea because, as it turns out, crafting requires yet another class change. A Thaumaturge can't just learn alchemy, he has to become an alchemist with a whole new gearset, crafting specific abilities, and so on.
However, once I got past my initial frustration I found that it actually makes for a rather deep crafting experience.
When you craft you need to use your abilities to create the item you're trying to make. There's your basic crafting ability that works to fill up the completion bar, as well as others that you can use to refine an item, give you more time to finish it, or improve it overall.
Your MP bar turns into a CP (Craft Points) bar when you're a crafter class, and all abilities but the basic one take CP points which don't regenerate until after the item is finished. It can make crafting a real challenge too. Should I just work on making a new book for my Arcanistry or should I try to improve it and risk ruining it before it's even made?
I haven't had much time to work with the crafting classes, but here's what I've gathered so far:
Alchemists craft, what else, healing items. They can also make wands and books which are used, respectively, by conjurers and arcanists as weapons.
Tailors make cloth armor, worn by the magic using classes, and can also make clothing for the crafting classes which increase craft stats like Control and such (oh and by the way, your stats change when you're a crafter).
There's others too. Goldsmiths, Blacksmiths, Leatherworkers, Epicurians, and more. Since these all count as individual classes you could theoretically have one character do all of them if you don't mind having your inventory so overloaded that your back snaps in half.
Ontop of those there's the gathering classes. Miners, Lumberjacks, Botanists, and so on. These guys gather the raw materials for your crafting. You can buy the items you need from vendors or from just beating up monsters, the more common ones anyways, but if you want the rare stuff (or just to save some Gil) you'll have to get your hands dirty.
I gotta admit, I was impressed. I'd heard all the horror stories about Final Fantasy XIV from before they had Bahamut blow up the world, but apparently a dragon-induced apocalypse is just what this game needed to fix it right up. I'm enjoying myself and if you're a Final Fantasy fan you probably will too (and if you are why don't you have this game yet anyways?).
