FFXIV: Coil Confirms that I’m Not a Raider
Yeah, Alphinaud. That’s what I’m feeling, too.
Despite the title of this post, I actually spent most of my time this weekend in FFXIV like this:
I’m wondering if after patch 3.4 will Alexander disappear from this spot? Would be kinda a bummer not to see him out there while I’m fishing.
I’ll get back to the topic of fishing in a moment. But first, breaking news!
Confirmed: I’m Not A Raider!
So our FC is working their way through the various turns of Coil, unsynced. I want to say up front that my feelings on raiding have nothing to do with the people I ran it with (I’ve had different groups at different times). But it has confirmed what I suspected — I am not a raider.
Keep in mind that previous to this, I’ve only run the 24 man raids and Alex normal, and that was unusual for me in any MMO (where I rarely do group content). However, I feel these raids are pretty easy in comparison to even unsynced Coil in terms of mechanics. We started on Final Coil this weekend. Beat T10 on the first shot, got pretty close to beating T11 before folks in our group needed to head off for the day. The story is pretty cool, and I could get really neat screenshots like this…
However, here’s what I’ve learned about myself in the meantime.
Can I understand raid mechanics? Yeah.
Can I usually perform mechanics once they’re understood? Yeah. Sometimes I need some practice. But I usually learn these pretty fast.
Am I patient enough to keep trying if we wipe several times? Yeah. I understand wiping is part of learning. I’m okay with it as long as there’s not other folks in the party who are impatient and grumpy.
Do I enjoy the feeling you get when you complete something you’ve spent a long time to beat? Sure. I’m sure most people do. I don’t get high off it or anything… it’s more like relief: Yes, I’ve done it. Now I never have to do it again!
Is this form of content fun for me?
Not really.
I want to clear Coil to see the rest of the story (though I already watched it on YouTube years ago thinking I’d never run this), and to just earn the clear.
But would I ever do this for fun? No. Nope. Nada. Not a chance.
Kicking Back in Eorzea
Aside from the short stint in Coil, I actually took it pretty easy in FFXIV this weekend. I think a lot of us are while waiting for the next patch. I didn’t even log in on Friday night (gasp) and spent most of Sunday playing Pokemon X.
I’ve actually found myself motivated to work on crafting and gathering again. Part of this is due to the fact that the current step of Relic I’m working on requires Sands, which I can fish for fairly easily. After spending quite a bit of gil to upgrade my gathering gear, I started to look at ways to make my money back.
This led me to understanding the Tomes of Fokelore system (I’m very, very behind). Basically, these are timed gathering nodes that you can’t even see until you buy the tome to unlock it. Naturally, the stuff gated behind these nodes are pretty valuable to crafters. But the grind looks something like this:
So essentially, each book costs 99 Blue Scrip Tokens. Each token is 50 scrips. I can (on average) earn 50 scrips per Illuminati Perch I fish up.
I also need to put some blue scrips into buying the Brute Leech bait, which makes life much easier when fishing for Illuminati Perch. So… in a stack of about 50 bait, I can usually earn at least 6 Illuminati Perch… which is enough to restock my bait and buy 5 Tokens. Or sometimes I get super lucky and have a haul like this:
Any way you look at it, I’ve accepted the fact that each tome is going to take many hours worth of fishing. I’m okay with this, though. It’s a new goal.
New Crafting Gear & Cleaning Inventory
I’ve also started to spend my whole life’s savings on buy the newest set of Ironworks crafting gear… piece by piece. So far, I have the chest and the feet.
This has been confirmed as the final set of crafting gear before the expansion. So, while I’m spending everything I’ve got just on the gear (not even counting materia), I won’t have to upgrade again for a long time.
Though I haven’t melded anything to it (waiting for the patch to hit first), the stats are already better than my previously melded gear was. It makes working on blue crafting scrips for those crafting books I don’t have easier. And hopefully I’ll be able to figure out high level crafting eventually.
I now… just have to find ways to make gil again. I’ve started by doing a vast cleaning of all of my retainer bags. I’ve been hanging on to 3 years worth of crafting materials thinking that one day “I might need this.” After reorganizing and clearing space… check this out:
Materia, dye, prisms, consumables, important stuff all organized in their own bags! So many open spaces!! Oh my gosh, you just don’t know how beautiful this is. And this is just one retainer!
I can’t say that I’ve been sitting on a gil mine or anything. A lot of the stuff I had stashed away wasn’t worth much of anything… which is all the more reason to vendor it. But it feels good to actually have some storage space again.
Now, back to fishing!