Final Fantasy XIV - Dawntrail Edition!

[azalea]

hello everyone! time to do what i was originally going to do like two months ago (lmao) and actually create a final fantasy xiv thread! this is where you can talk about your xiv adventures without it taking up space in the other thread if you’d like. c:

some things for discussion:

• what’s your character’s name/what world/server are you on?

• where in the msq are you? what are your impressions so far? please keep spoilers in spoiler tags here if possible!

• what job(s) do you main?

this isn’t an inherent list of discussion questions, feel free to come up with any on your own but i thought i’d get the ball rolling. c:

[Garrett.exe]

I play on Ultros (Primal).

I am an Elezen named Galdric (named for a key NPC in my DND campaign).

I have finished MSQ all the way up to having the first mission from Endwalker available but have been on a break for a good while now.

I play DPS exclusively because my friends need that as they play tank and healer. My favorite is SAM but I also have high levels in RDM, MCH, and DRG. I want to get into tanking I think when I next resubscribe.

It’s my favorite Final Fantasy but I haven’t really missed it on this hiatus. It’s nice to know it’ll be waiting for me when the time comes. Shadowbringers had to have been the best story ever in a Final Fantasy and the presentation was just beautiful for an MMO especially. I am endlessly amazed by all facets of the game and I have nothing but warm feelings towards it and the community.

For context the only other MMO I’ve played for more than an hour was Star Wars: The Old Republic. I thought it was cool but got bored at like 25 hours. Having played XIV since then I can now see that it really wasn’t that cool at all.

[connrrr]

Oh bbbbbbbbboy!!!

I am a thighlander named Connie Almond on Excalibur. I just got done first contact with the Sylphs, so I take it I’m very early on in ARR. Only clocked a little over 30 hours playtime.

I just got my first soul crystal and am now a Lv31 MNK, but also a Lv5 LNC. This is my first MMO so I’m not thinking about party compatibility, I just have always liked the monks and dragoons throughout the series.

I need a new outfit. Something with the stats but also style.

[Tradegood]

I’ve been thinking about jumping back into FFXIV, since I got the game to visit Ivalice and never actually made it there. I called it quits halfway through A Realm Reborn and only really saw the forest zone, the coastal zone, the desert zone, and the golden saucer. I liked fishing though.

Is now a good time to go back?

[joyousfrog]

Meatball Coolwizard on Siren server :-)
I finished Endwalker but haven’t started Dawntrail yet. Gotta finish FF7 Rebirth first, or there’ll be too much FF in my life.
I main White Mage and Black Mage, and also really enjoy crafting.

[Garrett.exe]

Because I didn’t include a pic initially

[sapphicvalkyrja]

I’m Alahra Valkhir on Balmung! My main has been Dark Knight officially since Shadowbringers and kind of since Stormblood. Before that I was Ninja, and then before that (since Ninja wasn’t available at launch) I waffled back and forth between Scholar and Monk. I still consider all of these “canon” in some form or another, but DRK is my most natural home since I always eventually end up a tank in every MMO I’ve played

I’ve been playing since the beginning of the relaunch, and I wrapped up the Dawntrail Main Scenario a few days into Early Access. I think it’s the weakest chapter of the MSQ thus far, but I also very much was not the target audience for this expansion, so that likely colors my view of it somewhat

With that out of the way I am mostly working a bit on getting my selection of jobs for each role to the new level cap, and I’ve so far been greatly enjoying the raised skill floor of the new battle content, which is something I’d felt the game had really slipped on for the last several years. I’m hopeful they stick to their guns on this new baseline, but I anticipate a lot of pushback from the playerbase once more people are at the level cap and regularly running content again, so I’m not sure they will

I haven’t done much in the way of screenshots this expansion yet, though I did snap this “vanilla” one during the process of taking Viper to 90 to get a feel for it

@Tradegood

Is now a good time to go back?

This is a tricky question. While Dawntrail is positioning itself as the start of a new storyline and so in some respects is a good place to come in, what Square Enix has yet to do is include free jump potions or anything of the sort for folks picking up the new expansion. That means you’ve still got to do several hundred hours of story to catch up to the present (unless you shell out the additional $50 to jump ahead)

I have a hunch they’re angling to do something about this for the next expansion, with Dawntrail serving as a proper new starting point in some form, but right now that’s just that: a hunch

That said, the story really is the game’s premier feature, so skipping it almost feels like a waste in any case, and if it’s something you’re interested in, there’s certainly a lot of good stuff in the pre-Dawntrail stories, and they have at least made the majority of the main scenario solo-able via the Duty Support and Trust systems as well as trimmed a lot of the fat from the most sloggy parts of A Realm Reborn

[freakscene]

Did they remove the jump potions? I used one to skip Heavensward way back in the day.

[sapphicvalkyrja]

No, they still exist. You just have to shell out $50 in addition to the latest expansion to be caught up with one. World of Warcraft bundles one with each new expansion now, which FFXIV has yet to do

[Tradegood]

@sapphicvalkyrja

they have at least made the majority of the main scenario solo-able

this is appealing to me! I also don’t really understand what MMOs mean when they say The Royal City of Rabanastre is a level 70 raid - does this mean I can only visit it during a specific mission, or will I be able to walk around it as a civilian and visit my friends at Migelo’s Sundries or in Lowtown once I reach level 70?

[Garrett.exe]

The Ivalice raids come with one small hub area that’s not really hang outable at all, and I think it’s more like an airship maybe? The raids are just you and some other players sitting down to kill a bunch of stuff together. No hanging, just running and fighting

[Tradegood]

Oh, that’s interesting. My friends who play say that each of the expansions is like a theme park and all the DLCs heavily reference the mainline FF games. I guess I interpreted that to be similar to the Gold Saucer where there’s an area you can hang out in that’s inspired by a FF game.

Are there any FF worlds you can really hang out in and explore, or do you only visit earlier games through missions and killing stuff with a group of 20 people?

[Garrett.exe]

You get the theme park aspect I guess in the fact that you get a huge new landscape to explore but it’s in the context of Final Fantasy XIV. There are a lot of Easter eggs and references to the series throughout the game, but in terms of what you’re describing, someone can correct me if I’m wrong but the raid series are the only times anything like that really happens.

[sapphicvalkyrja]

@Tradegood

My friends who play say that each of the expansions is like a theme park and all the DLCs heavily reference the mainline FF games.

@Tradegood

Are there any FF worlds you can really hang out in and explore, or do you only visit earlier games through missions and killing stuff with a group of 20 people?

In MMO parlance, “theme park” tends to refer to a type of MMO, in this case one where dungeons, raids, and other content (all usually instanced) are sort of like attractions or rides you can experience, and these things tend to make up the majority of the gameplay, particularly at the level cap. This is opposed by sandbox or open-world MMOs, which tend to feature much less instanced content

Most of the references to other games in the series for XIV tend to take the form of these instanced experiences, with different content having different group sizes (dungeons have 4 at the low end, with up to 72 for special end-game instanced zones that have exploration as a focus). Some of them are unique to this game, while others are recreations of places from others in the series

Most of the areas from other games you visit in the game come in the forms of instanced content like this, including the Ivalice raids. There are one or two zones in the open world areas that are drawn from other titles, with the most notable being part of Doma from FFVI, but that’s kind of an exception to the norm. Otherwise, XIV’s game world is more or less its own, and while places like Dalmasca exist in the lore and are referenced in the games, we’ve not actually visited them (yet, anyway)

[Tradegood]

Ahh I see, thanks for explaining that. MMOs have come a long way since Everquest!!

I respect that FFXIV has its own identity, world, and story to tell. I think observing it from the outside, hearing people excited that an expansion will be based on FF9 or FF4 or FF12 or whatever, it’s hard to contextualize that!

[azalea]

name: Chroma Luminia @ Sargatanas!

main jobs: i mainly heal! astro and white mage are my main jobs, while i’m still learning the ins and outs of scholar just in case i need to shield heal. in times where i need to dps, i was maining black mage up until this expansion, but i’m not… really a fan of the changes, so i switched over to being a melee, instead, and am now learning samurai. if i need to tank, i use gunbreaker. sooo i play a variety of jobs, but mainly heal!

msq? i’ve completed all of the dawntrail msq - honestly, i really liked it? people are going to say it isn’t shb tier, but i’m not sure that isn’t exactly a fair comparison considering shb had a TON of buildup to it beforehand, while this is moreso of a fresh start. for what it’s worth though i thought it was great.

what are you up to now? currently leveling my gatherers first to 100 and then my crafters afterwards. since i’ve got some of my battle classes to 100 already, i figure i should catch up my doh/dol classes there, as well. afterwards, i’m planning on leveling scholar to 100 and then dark knight. there are some classes i’m not huge fans of using (namely any of the phys ranged dps), so i’m hoping that beast tribes come out so i can spam exp on those and get those over with.

otherwise, i’m looking forward to the upcoming raid and what it has in store soon! it’s going to be an exciting experience (hopefully!) if the content so far is of any indication.

[christoffing]

i play on spriggan, on the chaos data center, as a lalafell warrior. my class has always been paladin, but they changed the class drastically in the midst of endwalker and i couldn’t be bothered relearning it.

i’ve been playing the game on and off since 2016, but only properly got a foothold in the endgame around the early days of shadowbringers. before that the game was this thing that fascinated me but that i couldn’t really wrap my head around, and the pacing of the msq meant i had to take long breaks. i did a lot of savage raiding during the pandemic, and ended up meeting a bunch of people that way.

i’ve beaten the dawntrail msq and: what a joy it is. i know i’m in the minority here, but i found endwalker to be a bit of a slog. the endless upping of stakes and the ever increasing weight of the msq and all the associated lore felt really suffocating to me. combined with the fact that the raid series didn’t resonate with me at all, and our static falling to pieces, i was about ready to stop playing altogether, but decided to pick up DT to reconnect with some people in the game, if nothing else.

but! i found the (very relative) levity and hangoutitude of this expansion to be a huge breath of fresh air, exactly the way they seemed to have intended it. i always enjoyed the bits of the story where the game slows down and there’s less plot machinations the most, and the first half of DT had that in spades. there’s also something about the maps… in EW, the majority of the zones felt very much like setpieces rather than places, and in this one i just wanna hang in pretty much all of them (barring the final two, which are very much those types of areas).

so basically i’ve fallen back in love with a game i had all but given up on, which is great! and now i can’t wait to get back into raiding again, which i never thought i’d say – that definitely felt like a pandemic thing to me.

[joyousfrog]

Oh this is super exciting for me to hear. I share a lot of the same thoughts on EW, and it’s a big reason why I haven’t been in a rush to pick up DT.

[freakscene]

Do I need to level a crafting class to play apex content in this game (raids etc) or are there ways of working around?

I’ve capped out three expansions now, but have lapsed on my sub because I kind of hit a cap on what I could play vs what I was interested in, and while the alliance raids were fun enough, particularly since I wasn’t in an active FC (and I mostly played solo which didn’t help) what I’d be interested in is the hard stuff , but I don’t like it being gated by subclasses.

[Gaagaagiins]

@freakscene

Do I need to level a crafting class to play apex content in this game (raids etc) or are there ways of working around?

Entirely unnecessary. The raid consumables don’t help that much to begin with, but you can just buy what you need on the marketboard anyway.