FFXIV Heavensward: Feels of Sorrow, Feels of Joy
Warning: May contain spoilers for Heavensward content!
I am so thoroughly enjoying my journey through Heavensward’s story right now. I can’t even express the feelings of wonder at every little twist, turn and revelation we continue to experience. I’ll just sum it up by saying that the writing team knew all the right elements that go into a classic Final Fantasy story, and they wove it into a world where my MMO character lives and grows.
Discovering the much-heard-about Idyllshire last night, I was suddenly swept up with the feeling that for the first time in a long time, I’ve found a MMO world that I want to call a virtual home. Everything about it from the setting, the mystery and the potential to rebuild something wonderful was exciting and welcoming. I also love the music – both day and night version!
Music Time!~♪
But I’m jumping ahead of myself now! Let me rewind to Friday night’s play session.
Times of Sorrow
With every good story, there comes a time of sacrifice and loss. If there’s no real risk and nothing to lose, it’s easy to become complacent in your duty of being the Warrior of Light. Just nod a few times and go stick it to some Primals.
Heavensward pulls us up short, reminding us that not everyone has the blessings of Hydaelyn, and showing us a moment of friendship and sacrifice that I never saw coming. Did I cry? Oh, you better believe it.
It was made all the more difficult because though Tai tried so hard to smile at the end, you could see he wanted to burst into tears right there. Man… the expressions on our characters have gotten so, so good.
Times of Whales
Lots of story-which-I-will-not-spoil prompted us to return to the Sea of Clouds, this time, to the other part of the area that we couldn’t reach up until now.
Here, we met up with the the Zundu Vanu Vanu, who taught us more about the Primal Bismark and confirmed the key to Azys Lla rests securely in the beast’s stomach. Gotta respect a whale Primal who eats islands whole.
Without any other choice in progressing, Zeb and Tai picked up some new armor and got ready to battle the Primal Bismark. This included borrowing a whole flippin island and baiting him to the battle. The island must have looked pretty yummy or something.
Sooo… that Bismark fight. Not a terribly hard fight, but you have to have the DPS and mobility to push through. Pretty intense. We failed 5 times before vote-quitting the first party. The second party was amazing when it came to DPS and we got through the first try.
I was pretty frustrated at the knock-off and stun mechanic in this fight, however. Twice, I wasn’t even standing in the orange AOE and still got knocked off the island. Thankfully, the DPS was strong with our second group, and they didn’t even need me in order to finish it off. It still sucked to be able to do nothing but watch the victory, though.
My final thoughts on Bismark?
Times of Fury
We get the key, but of course, our victory is short lived because reasons.
Was wondering when these guys would show up again.
Needless to say, Tai is not happy about this turn of events. He wants to feed certain individuals to the catbats.
Not much we can do, though, but watch this floating city be uncovered by bad-guys who will one day die in terrible ways for the thing they did earlier. I will make it so.
Tai fully agrees.
Meanwhile
Though we’ve made a lot more progress than this, this post is getting a little long, so I’ll leave that for tomorrow.
Just a quickie meanwhile on other progression, however!
I’ve reached level 20 on my Cactuar Au’Ra this weekend. She’s almost caught up on lancer levels – just 4 more to go – and then she can start moving forward in the Main Quest Scenario again as a lancer this time. I’m still having a lot of fun with Dragoon at level 59, so I’m confident I’m making a good choice in switching classes.
I also leveled Zuri to 53 Botanist, Miner and Bard. I undertook the level 53 gatherer quests, and was so very pleased to finally upgrade most of her armor so that both classes are using the same pieces. Man, what a boost in stats that was! I need to work on leveling Fishing sometime, but just have had too many other things to do.
Tomorrow we’ll see what happens when you try to force your way into hidden Allagan cities.