FF14 - Free Trial thoughts of an advanced N00b

[cashew]

I finally finished the base game (A Realm Reborn) story, got through the very long end credits, and started futzing around on other jobs and unlocked BLUE MAGE! (I wuv Blue Mage. Ahem.)

I'm also puttering around doing side stuff because I'm waiting for 6.2 patch to come through to add NPC parties to story dungeons. It's one of the things I've been doing, because I don't like doing dungeons with other people. Other than the enforced daily PUGs through daily roulette, I'm sticking to using NPC helpers. I wish they'd implement NPC helpers for all of the game's dungeons, that way I can avoid having to go into any of them blind. But...them's the breaks, I guess.

My current job levels are as such: Paladin 60, White Mage 60, Scholar/Summoner 35, Marauder (later Warrior) 25, Blue Mage 24.

I tried to level my crafting jobs equally, but Weaver shot ahead of everyone else and now I'm doing dailies to try to bring the jobs back on even footing. It's...taking a while.

So since I'm testing out all the jobs now to try and figure out which DPS class I want to take through the MSQ, here are some of my more advanced N00b tips, tricks, and general thoughts:

1. The class system is a bit wonky in FF14, but think of it like this: Class is pre-level 30; Job is post-level 30; and Role shares equipment.

2. Role equipment breaks down to the following:

   • Tank: Usually has the "Fending" tag in the armor name.

   • Healer: Usually has the "Healing" tag in the armor name.

   • Casting DPS: Usually has "Casting" tag in the armor name. BLUE MAGE uses casting armor instead of healing armor, despite having healer stances.

   • Ranged Physical DPS: Usually has "Aiming" tag in the armor name.

   • Melee DPS: This is where things start to get complicated. There are three types of melee physical DPS gear, which are Maiming, Striking, and Scouting. Maiming is for Dragoons (nee Lancer); Striking is for Monks (nee Pugilist); and Scouting is for Ninja (nee Rogue). In later expansions past the free trial, Samurai shares gear with Monk and Reaper shares gear with Dragoons.

3. All dungeons in the roulette requires the following ratio of roles: 1x Tank, 1x Healer, 2x DPS. In higher level dungeons (8-man, 24-man) the ratio remain the same. For example, an 8-man dungeon would need 2x Tank, 2x Healer, and 4x DPS. ETC.

4. The class-job divide only matters with one class: Arcanist. Arcanist splits into Scholar and Summoner at level 30 and the two share the same XP pool, which means if you level Scholar or Summoner by themselves, the other job will also level up. They also share equipment and weapons up to level 50. It results in weirdness when playing the Scholar job, because the Arcanist was clearly designed to turn into Summoner, which leaves Scholar a bit...um, janky.

5. Jobs in the same role plays fairly similarly. I haven't touched Melee DPS just yet, so I'll get to it later, so for now I'll touch mostly on Tanks, Healers, Caster DPS and Ranged Physical DPS.

   • Tanks: Hit tank stance, use AoE to generate aggro, grab as many mobs as you can and hit mitigation skills on cooldown. Try not to move unless you absolutely have to. If you can survive the dungeon mechanics without moving, just hit mitigation and stand still. Plant yourself like a tree and don't move. Ahem.

   • Healers: Healers split into reactive and proactive healers. White Mage and Astrologian are considered reactive healers, AKA spells make HP go up, and are considered easier to play. I haven't gotten to Astrologians yet, but with White Mage you mostly use Medica (I or II depending on level) for party wide healing and Cure (I or II depending on level) for single target healing, and put all the rest of your time into spamming Holy (or whatever damage spell you have). Starting at level 50 you start getting off global cooldown heal skills, at which point you replace the cure spells with these new skills while continuing to spam as much Holy as possible.

   • For proactive healers (Scholar and Sage), you have to pay a little more attention. Pre-proc shields on your team right before a party-wide damage dungeon mechanic and let regen take care of the rest. Then spend the rest of the time running through your damage rotation. In the case of Scholar (because no access to Sage in Free Trial), start a fight by placing the fairy in the middle of your party spread (or next to tank) for constant passive healing, cast shield on tank, and then you can pretty much forget stuff until level 50 dungeons.

   • Caster DPS: Summoner is the mobile caster while Black Mage is the turret caster. Black Mage needs to pick out the correct place to stand to move as little as possible. Summoner have many instant cast skills, but need to prep them at the start of battle. Once summons are prepped, they can be unleashed whenever. Over all, Summoner has higher DPS uptime with lower skill investment. BLUE MAGE is a "limited job", which means it can't enter dungeons normally or enter story instances. Best to check out this Blue Mage guide for how to effectively use a Blue Mage. Blue Mage is designed to be the so called "cheese" job, meant to cheese difficult dungeons with special monster skills. Having soloed on Blue Mage while level synced, I can assure you it's not nearly as easy as running through them with a Tank.

   • Ranged Physical DPS: I've only played Bard so far. The basic concept behind Bard is activate a song (party-wide buff that lasts 30 seconds), then cycle through damage skills as they trigger. Bard has a bit of RNG associated with the damage cycle (as skills are activated via crits), so you gotta keep an eye on the bar to see which skill pops up next. Dancer, I hear, is even more RNG, while Machinist has a combo system that's more akin to melee DPS at the cost of having no buffs for the team.

6. A quick note about the Summoner-Scholar split: You can tell that Summoner is the natural extension of Arcanist, as all your pre-level 30 Arcanist skills remain intact when you upgrade to a Summoner. Ruby, Topaz, and Emerald Carbuncles are then upgraded to Ifrit, Titan, and Garuda. Meanwhile, when you upgrade to Scholar, all your pre-level 30 Arcanist skills get replaced by completely new skills. It's just...not a well thought out job. It's quite a shame, because the aesthetic of Scholar is quite fun and their job quest ties into Tonberries, but...ugh. The mechanics are just bad.

7. Job quests (which are usually picked up at your guild although later quests can end up somewhere else) reward key skills and have some fun narrative.

   • Personally, I found White Mage (nee Conjurer) quest narrative to be really boring. As a Conjurer, the story is basically "Girl refuses to use damage spells and can't do job, go show her how it's done at this tainted place". White Mage story up to level 50 is "the White Mages don't think you have what it takes so you have prove yourself by purifying tainted places". And unsurprisingly, you win them over at the end.

   • My favorite story is Blue Mage. Story's basic premise is that a Blue Mage is trying to set up shop and sell this new fangled "Blue Magic" to the denizens and keeps running into trouble with the locals, be it law enforcement or moneylenders, and you, as his newest disciple, have to keep bailing him out of the troubles. The dialogue is snappy and fun, and the PC is clearly exasperated by the shenanigans, but can't in good conscience leave the idiot to suffer the consequences of his very poor business decisions.

   • My second favorite story so far is the Black Mages (nee Thaumatergist). The characters are funny and they're obviously some kind of weird cult of chaotic neutral. They cause a bunch of problems out of sheer curiosity, but at least have the decency to clean up their messes afterwards.

   • I hear that the Scholar and Summoner story becomes interesting, but the Arcanist story is really meh. The script also changed heavily from the original Japanese script, which suuuuuuucks. In the original, the senpai character is a traumatize catgirl who was originally a sex slave that was liberated by the Arcanist guildmaster. The guildmaster taught her how to be an Arcanist and, after facing down her previous enslaver, she finally overcame her trauma. It's...not really how trauma works, but at least it's nice to see her triumph over her abuse? In short, it's a bit shounen. The English script makes things worse because they changed the origin story from originally being enslaved to being the rescuers of the slaves, which apparently was an event that traumatized her...and that makes no sense in context so now her motivation is all weird and shit.

   • I'm actually kinda fond of the Paladin (nee Gladiator) story, despite it getting a lot of flack. The Gladiator part involves the guild leader and her ex-boyfriend/love interest with an interloper. Her ex-boyfriend/love interest got into match fixing with the interloper that caused her guild (which was headed by her father at the time) to fall into disrepute, then the two idiots hared off leaving her with the debt and task of rebuilding the guild. The story involved a lot of her cursing out the ex-boyfriend/love interest and said ex-boyfriend being a complete chauvinist. Meanwhile, the Paladin story involves the world's worst paladin trying to fake it until he makes it and failing spectacularly. You keep moping up after him despite him trying to stand on his own two feet until he begs you to just let him die and you, the Paladin, is all "No, a Paladin will protect you whether you want it or not!". Is very Captain America. Probably why I'm getting so attached to the Paladin job.

   • Warrior (nee Marauder) has a pretty bland plot, but the characters are hilarious. The sister of the Guildmaster is a White Mage (I think) and she's constantly exasperated at her brother's attempts to teach new Marauders how to hit a stone really hard with an axe and tells you to just play along because Marauders are dumb as bricks. The quests themselves, unfortunately, mostly involves hitting rocks with axes. A lot. I think it's stupid by design.

   • The Bard (nee Archer) plot is one of the most disparate plots. As a Ranger, you get to witness some ugly racism happening in the guild, where the Elf man constantly denigrates the catgirl. It also turns out the cat people have no land to call their own, so they're kind of hated by the land owning races. Unfortunately, this resolves in a pretty simplistic "and then racist man learns to be less racist", which isn't that great. Bard story follows a retired archer who tells you stories about how the war veterans all have a hard time reintegrating into civil society, so many of them become mercenaries because fighting is the only thing they know how to do and the trauma leads to some unsavory practices and a lot of them die an early death. And then you kill some goats to prove yourself because.... 😒 Yeah, the game mechanics and the story are a bit disjointed. I hear later Bard stories turn into a gay love story between two guys and you just kind of play the third wheel for the duration of their courtship.

That's it in terms of combat stuff, so let's get to the crafting and gathering!

1. So far, the crafting jobs seem to have more story than the gathering jobs, although they do try very hard.

2. Gathering jobs are pretty generic: collect x amount of y, usually with some kind of in-story lore to justify the reason for needing the item. For botany, the story is about festivals and cooks that need ingredients. For mining, it's...um, you're apparently in some kind of mining competition with another miner who doesn't acknowledge your mining skills. Yeah, it's a bit weird.

3. Crafting job stories are a bit more fleshed out, with each guildmaster being a bit of a character. For example, the Weaver guildmaster is a neurotic mess and has very high classed clientele. The leatherworker guildmaster is constantly putting you down and telling you that you're not good enough. The alchemist guildmaster keeps forgetting you're part of his guild and makes you his personal gopher. The goldsmith guildmaster is running some definitely questionable businesses and her minion constantly insults your work. The carpenter guildmaster is deeply involved in providing the military with all sorts of equipment and gear, so you get second-hand information on the ongoing war that Gridania is waging. The blacksmith and armorsmith share the same guild hall but have branched out into different areas of interest and are supplying pirates with weapons.

4. I haven't done the fishing or cooking stuff yet. I'm saving that for when I get the other jobs to level 50.

5. One of the best ways to progress crafting and gathering jobs is doing daily missions in the grand company. You can buy most of the required craft items up to around level 40 off of NPCs. After that, you'll need to craft some stuff yourself. Meanwhile, for gathering, you only need to turn in 10 of each, so it's pretty quick.

6. One of the reasons people recommend waiting until you clear the base game MSQ (story) is because you get access to flying. Flying is really helpful when you're running all over the world collecting materials to turn in for the grand company quests. It also makes beast tribe quests much easier to do because you can fly over a bunch of stuff and make your travel faster.

So, that's about it on the crafting and gathering. Finally, some general miscellany thoughts on journey to level 50.

1. The story: The base game mostly serves as a primer for the world, so it's a bit thin on plot and heavy on lore. The purpose of the story is to get you traveling around the world and learning each starting city's politics, along with some other cities that will come into play in later parts of the plot. It honestly goes by pretty fast all things considered, but there's no real need to rush through. Level 1-15 is mostly to establish your relationship with the starting city (Ul'dah, Gridania, or Limsa Lominsa). Level 16-40 introduces you to the politics between each starting city and their surrounding beast tribe neighbors. You're definitely supposed to get the feeling at this point that there might be a lot of hypocrisy going around. During this period, your main guild (the Scions of the Seventh Dawn) get attacked and is split up and you spend a good chunk of time getting the team back together. Finally, level 41-50 involves tackling the most immediate arm of the encroaching evil empire. There are a few reveals here, but most of the villain dialogue is to state that "you are not so different" and imply that there's more to this empire thing than meets the eye.

2. What you've got to understand about FF storytelling is that a lot of it is allegorical. The Eorzean politics is reminiscent of how European colonial powers squeezed out the native/aboriginal tribal civilizations, marking them as other or "beastly" to justify their wholesale genocide campaigns. The starting cities are doing something similar, but it's couched in terms of "progress" or "development". Of course, the big evil empire is justifying their aggression by pointing to the smaller nation's own aggression and saying that they need to stamp out these aggressive acts so that world can finally be at peace. If that sounds like it echoes a certain super power in the world right now...hm...

3. Even the pointless fetch sidequests have some really interesting connections to the overall politics of Eorzea. For example, there's one sidequest where an NPC asks you to get rid of some kobolds, because the citizens of Limsa Lominsa signed a treaty with the kobolds that gave the treasures in the land to the kobolds while the treasure in the sea belonged to the surface dwellers. However, the kobolds have been venturing into the farmer's lands and the farmer sees that as a breaking of the treaty...for some reason. I, as the player, am definitely questioning the logic, because it sounds more like the farmer's the one breaking the treaty by growing crops on kobold lands. Hm... 🤔 So sprinkled into the sidequest are a bunch of little nods and world building scenarios that fleshes out the world of Eorzea.

4. I'm not sure how much I like the "evil cabal of Ascians that's pulling strings". It's very conspiracy theory territory and I'm not sure it has a place in such a sociological story. I guess we'll see. FF does have a tendency to fall into the trap of "the real evil is a secret society of manipulators" BS. I think only FF7 really avoided that particular trope. (Maaaaybe also 6, probably why so many fans like it.) Like, it can be well done (a la FF10), but most of the time, it sucks (a la FF2, 4, 5, 8, 9, 12, 13, 15, Type 0) and kind of ruins the story.

5. Gold Saucer, I'm at 800k coins now. I've taken to being very, very casual, only mostly tuning in for weekly rewards and daily cactpot. Unless you're one of those "I must have everything immediately" types, it doesn't feel grindy at all. I honestly don't know why people are so intent on trying to grind MGP when they really should be doing it as a quick break from combat/story.

   • Funny coincidence, I dropped by the Gold Saucer for a quick gambling break before continuing the story and that was the part of the story when the HQ got attacked by the evil empire. So the scripted narrative is that I was late due to the length of travel. The gameplay emergent story became I was a bad Warrior of Light who spent too much time gambling and wasn't there to save the guild members during the attack. Why do the Scion still trust me to do anything?

6. FFXIVLauncher is like the best thing ever. It's pretty easy to set up (download and launch Setup.exe from the launcher page), then select which plugins you want. I use the combo plugin to free up my hotbars, a simple UI tweak that hides the gauge meter out of battle, the cactpot solver and Triple Triad solver, so now I can just brain dead Triple Triad. Whee! I don't bother with any of the shaders plugins, because I think the regular game looks fine as is. Oh, also the chat plugin that gives names different colors so it's easier to read. Very helpful. The only drawback is that after each patch, there's downtime as the plugin coders check to make sure their plugin doesn't break the game. Going from FFXIVLauncher hotbars to native hotbars can throw off muscle memory a little bit.

And that's...about it for now. In short, FF14 has a lot of fun stuff even on a free trial account. But, as entertained as I am, I'm not convinced subscription is worthwhile. Since not only do you have to pay for the expansions (although they do bundle up the expansions into packs so that you can get them at a discount), you'll need to shell out a monthly fee, and the game has a cash shop. I just feel like the monetization is a little too heavy. Either make the game subscription or buy to play. Not both. And it's especially galling to see a subscription game with cash shops.