FFXIV: Alt-stravaganza
I was in a strange and restless mood this past weekend, and the Hatching-tide event encouraged me to dust off my alts to get the new mount. So, I found myself making progress on various alts instead of doing much on my main.
Hedgemouse
I’d left Hedgemouse off at the point right before you choose a grand company and start working on unlocking the company chocobo. I’m not sure why I lost steam at that point, but I did last month, and just haven’t worked on her much since.
So, I picked back up and got the chocobo unlocked. She’s a happy Lala now.
I remember hearing that the chocobo quest was severely nerfed a while back, but this was the first time I took an alt through it to see these changes. It used to take 2,000 GC seals to unlock the chocobo voucher. That has been nerfed to 200… which only takes 2 Grand Company Leves to earn.
I’m not complaining, mind you, but it was still a bit of a wake-up call. No matter. A chocobo is a chocobo. I’m taking it!
Tai
It’s been a while since I’ve talked about Tai. I haven’t done much on him since I finally made the choice between him and my main as to who to progress with. I think that was sometime last year back when I was still trying to run Weeping City for two characters every week, and simply got burned out.
But I thought it was a real shame that Tai was left lingering two patches behind to not finish the 3.0 story… mostly because his ilvl wasn’t high enough. He’s still got a number of ilvl 210 pieces, with an assortment of Weeping City, Lore and Alex gear… if that tells you how neglected he is.
I didn’t have the desire to grind for tomes for him, especially since expert was out of reach until he got to ilvl 230. And while I could have run PotD for a weapon, I didn’t have the resolve to do that either.
What Tai did have on him was over 4 million gil… from whatever. I have no idea, since he wasn’t a crafter (until this weekend). My real crafter still can’t touch making the ilvl 250 stuff yet. So, I ended up breaking down and buying Tai’s way to a proper ilvl.
I’d already bought a couple of 250 accessories, and it was not cheap. But then I saw that there was a HQ Heavy Metal Lance for sale for under a million on the AH, with an ilvl of 250. Seeing that my weapon was 210, I snapped it up and that pushed me up from ilvl 228 to 233. Which was enough to finish the 3.0 story (the final dungeon requires at least 230).
So, now Tai is a bit more broke, but has successfully completed the 3.0 story. One more Lore accessory later, he’s only one point shy of making it into Dun Scaith… but I’m not sure if I have the motivation to start running that again weekly. Those promised 270 accessories would be really nice, though.
I also started being crazy and began leveling my crafting and gathering jobs on Tai as well. I’ve considered doing this for a while to have an alt that specializes in jobs that my main doesn’t. I’m not sure how far I really want to go down that rabbit hole, though.
I just felt like leveling something this weekend, I guess, and it wasn’t my black mage, like it should have been. It still felt nice to zoom through the lower level stuff — I have four crafting jobs at level 6 now and working on my gathering jobs, too.
I also put a good chunk of time into Black Desert this weekend, but that’s info for another post!
