What FFXIV Gives to Softcore Gamers: Beast Tribe Quests
In a previous post I discussed reasons why I shouldn’t be playing FFXIV, being the softcore gamer that I am. Obviously, somewhere along the line, the good within the game has outweighed the bad for me, because I keep logging in and haven’t lost my desire to make progress.
In this series, I want to highlight some features or mechanics that I feel FFXIV provides to more casual and softcore gamers. This post concentrates on the Beast Tribe Quests and my thoughts on why these are a good addition to end game options.
What are Beast Tribe Quests?
In FFXIV, the beastman tribes are races of creatures who are often at odds with the player character races. Some of these are hostile and outright attack you, while others can be reasoned with and even become allies. The most dangerous thing about beastmen is when they summon their primals, which they worship as gods. However, even within hostile beastmen tribes, there appear to be those whom seek help from the players for one reason or another. That’s where the Beast Tribe Quests come in.
These are repeatable daily quests that are fairly short in nature. I can generally sit down and finish all 6 allowed dailies in less than 45 minutes. They tend to be quirky, and often teach the player a bit about that tribe’s culture. Completing the quests awards you with reputation, experience, ventures and (most importantly) Tomestones of Mythology.
Before you groan at the idea of faction-based dailies, let me note that not only are these quests quick to finish, but they have random elements within them. First, the game assigns you random quests per day, so you never know which one you’re going to get. Some of those quests also provide random placement of objectives, so you can’t just memorize locations of all quests to get them done. This helps you feel like there’s a variety to choose from. If that’s not enough, with patch 2.2, there are now 4 different beastman tribes that offer quests, so if you get bored of one race, you can work on quests for another as a change of scenery.
Eventually, you can earn stuff from the faction vendors, including special mounts. But that’s not what makes these quests so awesome for softcore gamers.
What Beast Tribe Quests Give to Softcore Gamers
Since you can’t start the Beast Tribe Quests until you’re level 41, these are aimed at a pre and post endgame player. The important thing is that they give Tomestones of Mythology, which you can exchange for high level armor.
Now. Beast Tribe Quests are capped to 6 per day. So this means that at 5 Tomestones per quest, you can make a total of 210 Tomestones per week from the lowest level daily quests alone. As you unlock reputation, the advanced quests give more, but not a ton more. For some, this may be very, very slow going. For me, a person who stresses out at the thought of spending endgame running dungeon after dungeon… and who doesn’t have time to do that kind of running even if I wanted to… this is a fantastic option!
In fact, I got quite excited when I realized that with time and dedication, I could earn my ilvl 90 armor as a solo player. Of course, this will take much longer than it would take someone who doesn’t mind running dungeons. I think it’s a fair trade-off considering the non-difficulty of the Beast Tribe Quests as they stand.
So is this the idea way to get this done? No. I’m just pleased the option is there for players like me who are dungeon-shy. It gives me a long-term goal and I don’t mind waiting for my rewards.