FFXIV: Holiday Weekend Highlights

With a four day weekend for Thanksgiving, I actually achieved a significant amount of randomness in FFXIV. As I wrote last week, I finally leveled Zuri to 50 White Mage. After a round of hunts and beast tribe quests, I pushed that to 51.

I’ve come to determine there’s a huge difference in soloability between White Mage than there was on other classes I’ve played at 50 (Dragoon, Paladin and Bard). Maybe it’s because she’s outfitted in only ilvl 100 gear – though that’s pretty much the equivalent of what you could buy from armorers for level 51.

Where Paladin was soloing lvl 59 mobs at lvl 53 (granted he did have a few pieces of upgraded ilvl 130 gear), my White Mage was lucky not to get her butt handed to her at level 50 trying to take on a level 53 mob. It makes for far slower leveling, but I’ve also been practicing my healing by helping FC members out in leveling dungeons this weekend.

Free Company Fun

I’m not sure what happened this weekend (some FC members noted there was a large Black Friday sale for FFXIV), but recruitment that was almost non-existent last week suddenly ramped up this week. We’ve added four new members with a perspective fifth, which is more than we’ve seen in a long time.

The result of this is running learning and practice dungeons for new folks or those who just feel the need to get better at their role and listen to offered feedback. These are really rewarding because there’s nothing better than seeing someone start out uncertain (I know the feeling) and really “get it” with their class by the end of the dungeon.

When we formed <Guard>, it was all about doing these sorts of activities for our members. Now that we have a good group of experienced and high level folks, I think many of them are ready, and even looking forward to, assisting new people who are just starting out.

A great shot of our two Lalafel Ninjas – Ro and Achilles. Credit to Achilles.

This makes me very happy with where the FC is sitting currently. We may be a smaller group, but the chemistry between members is good. I’m seeing friendships between members forming, which is rewarding to me. We have more spontaneous group running and voice chatting, even when Syn and I aren’t around. We also have people taking initiative to recruit and organize runs.

Back to Crafting

I’ve been working so hard on leveling on Zuri that I’ve not had much time to work on my crafting or gathering. Since 3.1 has made the crafting interface much easier to work with thanks to a new search function, I knew that I’d be returning to crafting again soon.

With me working on leveling casting classes, being able to craft some gear for them would save a lot of money on my part. This is especially true when it comes to accessories, which I haven’t seen on any normal merchants aside from the one in Ishgard. So, I sat down this weekend and started leveling my Goldsmith, which I left at level 50 right before Heavensward launched.

When I switched to my Miner to gather the mats I would need for leveling, I was shocked to realize that both my Miner and Botanist were level 55. I knew I’d worked on leveling them a little bit a few months back, but I forgot that they were that high. Between the gathering of mats and one GC turn-in, I pushed Miner to 56.

I know there’s some sort of Scrip thing that starts at 56, but I don’t know much about it. I’ll probably look into it later, but yesterday, I was just focused on gathering and crafting.

Once I got all my materials, I started working through the leves in Ishgard. Aside from some leves I ran to level my Black Mage on Zuri, I still had over 80-some to use. So, I crafted up a storm and did a lot of turn-ins and Zuri is now sitting at halfway through level 53 Goldsmith now. This isn’t bad at all considering I didn’t spend any gil and was able to gather all the materials I needed for myself.

On top of that, I learned how to make crafting macros to make the whole process much more bearable. Not that I don’t enjoy crafting, but crafting little things (without the risk of auto synthesis), is really redundant. Some macros helped speed up the process and freed me up for chat and other interactions.

Alexander, Part 2

I’m slow. Until last night, I still had not cleared beyond A1 normal. Honestly, 8-man raiding still isn’t my thing… no matter how many times Syn asks “That wasn’t so bad, was it?” No, it wasn’t bad, but it also isn’t going to be something I choose to do over other activities. :p

A2 has been in my quest list for months. The only reason I did finally run it last night was a combination of things… I promised a FC member, Achilles, that I’d run it once he leveled Ninja to 60 – the deal was that he would run the Gobwalker for the first time if I ran A2. He did a great job gobwalking, btw.

The other was plain old FC peer pressure. It’s kinda hard to say no to something when 4 other people are nudging you into it. And you made a promise you had to keep sooner or later.

So I did it. Aside from me being disorganized about what order to kill things, it went fine from a DPS perspective. Still not my favorite thing to do, and still rarely ever get a drop from Alex. 😛

Seeker of Truth

The last thing of note that I accomplished was unlocking Zuri’s Black Mage. This was something I’ve been meaning to do for a while, if nothing else, for the Seeker of Truth title.

Black Mage is a class I really need a lot more practice with. I keep forgetting to switch out of fire to ice, and sit there wondering why pushing a button is not casting a spell. I guess I need to shake myself out of White Mage mentality where attacking is essentially just Stone, Stone, Stone, Stone. XD

Anyhow, did you have any adventures over Thanksgiving? 

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