Weekend Highlights: On a FFXIV Spree, Troving Again & Secret World Mounts

It’s funny how only a few weeks before the FFXIV Heavensward expansion the Fate Train in Coerthas is really ramping up. I was in the mood for some open-world frolicking, so I jumped on board with both feet with my left-behind White Mage while Syn was leveling Lancer and Marauder for the final Dragoon transformation.

I don’t know why Fate running is one of my favorite things to do… as long as there’s enough people out there to do them. I find it strangely exciting to follow a huge group of people from one event to another around the map, just burning down mobs and bosses. When there’s a big enough group running out there, experience really flows, and I was able to bump my White Mage from 34 to 39 over the weekend. This made me happy since I was a bit grouchy with the time I spent leveling Scholar to 38, since I’ve decided to main White Mage as a healing class.

Since I did put the effort into leveling Archanist to 38, I went ahead and unlocked Summoner and picked up the Ifrit and Titan Egis. I don’t know that I’ll ever play Summoner that much as the playstyle of the DPS mages in this game don’t mesh with me well, but I may as well do something with it!

Unlocking Summoner

On the crafting front, I’m still slowly getting my crafting classes to level 50. I was stoked to finally make it with my first class – Weaver – with several lingering in the level 49 area. After taking the advice of a high-level crafter friend, I dropped a bunch of gil on the beginning of gear upgrades. I poured over some guides and learned how to unlock the Master books, as well as the books for crafting my own glamours (yay!).

I now have the cute chocobo apron, but discovered that now I need to meld some materia into it. I’m not sure if I’m willing to put that kind of money into this gear, especially with Heavensward soon to be released. From what I understand, there will be new crafting gear and a less grindy way of achieving it once the expansion hits. So, as long as I’m able to do decent crafting, I’ll be content with the gear I have.

I also managed to score another 10K cactpot yesterday, which gave me enough to purchase the Gambler Boots for Zuri. Her outfit is coming along! And now that I can start crafting my own glamours, it’s not nearly as expensive to get the look I like.

Almost the whole Gambler set!

Other than that, I broke out the Tai-tank to assist with a Garuda normal mode run for a FC member. It’s been months since I’ve actually attempted to tank something, but I’ve been piecing together some tank gear for him. That’s when I noticed that the Paladin ilvl 55 pants are nothing but white boxers…

These are Tai’s tanking boxers. Any questions?

Need to get those replaced! XD

At this point, I’m actually considering leveling Dark Knight on Tai come Heavensward. I’m not sure if the playstyle will fit what I enjoy, but it sounds pretty cool from what I’ve heard. A tank that can DPS and leech for MP (and possibly some heals)? Heck yeah! I can see myself soloing some of the old dungeons just for the fun of it.

Trying Trove Again

I picked up Trove back when they had a $5 alpha package sale in August of last year. I’ve dabbled with it every now and then, playing when they released in Beta and a few times here and there out of curiosity. I’ve been struggling with a personal goal in the game, but was encouraged to try the game again by Ironweakness’ Trove article series at Waiting for Rez.

Preparing to fight a boss

With the game launching officially tomorrow, I thought it was worth a time to make good on my $5 purchase and explore through Trove some more. Even since the last time I’ve played, the game has changed quite a bit. With a stronger tutorial, more small and large dungeons on maps, larger maps with new and unusual biomes, and many new classes to work towards, I certainly feel like there’s more to do in the game than when I left it. I also crafted the deconstructor for the first time and stepped into the wide, wild world of collecting styles (which I never understood or unlocked before).

This game is geared for casual collectors, builders and explorers, with a bit of battle on the side. While I don’t think Trove would ever be a main game for me, I’m totally enjoying putting a little more time into learning what it has to offer. More articles are likely to come!

Dark Days in TSW

Somewhat inspired by my recent motorcycle get in The Secret World, Syn and I decided to visit Transylvania this weekend for a little while. We actually haven’t played the game since before the new player revisions, so it’s been a while. We were happy to discover that a quest that was previously kicking our tails before the changes has been toned down just enough that it still provides challenge while not slaughtering us. This was pretty encouraging, and we managed to round up a number of smaller quests and get those cleaned up.

My new bike!

With Heavensward early access coming on the 19th, we’re in that state of pausing end-game activities while trying to finish up lower level stuff at the same time. Going to be exciting times very soon, though!

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