FFXIV: Back to the Raids Again

When I rolled and transferred a bunch of characters into a RP setting, the goal was to relax a bit in FFXIV and not worry about progression. I’d do all that kind of content on my main, so there was really no need to duplicate effort. In fact, I’ve tried before in the past and struggled to maintain more than one character at end game.

But of course, that didn’t end up sticking.

For a very long time, I was content with my ilvl 340 gear on Amon, which I got from trading Centurio seals from hunts. Those were pretty easy to get, and they carried me through the Burn, which was as far as story got at that time.

Talking About Ilvl

In fact, it wasn’t until over the holidays when Syn started to poke me to run some of the larger content on Amon. I’d given up on Lighthouse on my main, and had sworn off 24-main raids for the time being, but she kept telling me they weren’t as bad as they were before. So I unlocked them on Amon, and did very casual runs – I’m talking once a week things.

Between that, doing some alliance, running PotD and HoH, Amon began to slowly accumulate Tomes for gear. By the time the new patch dropped, he’d reached ilvl 360 — which is just enough to do the newest dungeon and unlock Expert. So, it was sorta lucky that I did start to run stuff or he’d be locked out of the newest content completely.

However, that’s not enough to run the new 24-man raid. I was successful in nudging my main up to ilvl 365 upon finishing the MSQ, however, Amon is going to be held back by his ilvl 340 weapon. This was part of the reason I was working on HoH — to get a better weapon. But the truth is, there are faster ways of doing the same thing.

Fluff Gating

I told Syn not long ago that if they want me to run raid content, they need to give me something that I really want to make that happen. Gear upgrades are nice, but give me fluff and then you have my attention. Someone must have heard me because they dangled a pretty hefty carrot this time around.

The new hairstyle requires completing the new 24-man raid. And they added new housing items – Level Checker – that requires Deltascape Crystalliods (automatically won each time you beat 4.0). I really want a bunch of Level Checkers for some of the housing ideas I have. And while they are tradeable/sellable, Exdeath isn’t too bad a fight — it was one of the few parts of the raid I ran several times back when it was new.

So these things all worked to finally break down the wall of “I’m not ever planning to run Omega on my RP alt” that I kept touting.

Spoils of the Raid: Level Checker and Exdeath minion

So, last night I rush unlocked Deltascape, and with Syn’s help, cleared all the fights. Now there’s a few of these fights that I’ve not done since I cleared them back when they were new. I’m not a fan of a number of Deltascape bosses (aside from Exdeath). But despite having a number of other new folks in each, and me having to take raid cues from Syn over voice chat, we did just fine.

In the end, I even rolled a 99 on the Exdeath minion (so rare for me to do!) and got my first Level Checker — will go back to get a few more, but it’s a start. I’m just a tiny bit grumbly that I’m “tricked” into raiding again, but I guess the rewards are worth it. And once I get the weapon from the Kefka Crystalloids, Amon will be much closer to the gear level I need for the next raids.

You’ve won this round, S/E.

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