Initially, I was going to post about being excited that a weekly crafting/gathering turn-in questline rewarded a really cool mount. It’s nice to see crafters/gatherers getting cool rewards!

Previously, the weekly deliveries mostly gave rewards in the form of scrips and experience, culminating in allowing you to dress up the NPC you were delivering items to. Let me note that while this is a neat little feature, it does require both the glamour crystal and the item of glamour in your inventory to dress up the NPC. Therefore, I’ve never bothered with it.

Getting an actual mount… now there’s a nice and unexpected reward! And while this is limited to level 70+ crafters and gatherers, really, it’s not just a reward for the delivery quests. It’s more a reward for having invested time into the entire Ishgard Restoration as a whole.

The quests that appear in the Firmament, and rebuilding the area for the Ishgardian lower class citizens, are an evolution and continuation of the final chapters of the end of the Dragonsong war.

Sure, we got the overarching storyline closure back during patch 3.whatever years ago. But there’s still a lot of unanswered questions dangling out there.

Okay, so dragons and people aren’t at war anymore. But how do they find a common ground? Or do they?

What about the people left with almost nothing in the ruins of a city besieged by the dragons? Now that the war is over, how is Ishgard picking up the pieces?

Many years later, some of these topics are touched upon in the quests you’ll find in the Firmament. If you have any interest in seeing the development of Ishgard’s story, I highly suggest checking into them.

Two major quest lines feature a little dragonling named Ehll Tou. Her curiosity for the life of people in the city drives her to come and live in the Firmament. There, she becomes the a student of crafting/gathering and desires to bring this knowledge back to her peers in a way that might encourage them to make connections with the people of Ishgard, too.

I won’t say any more about the story, other than it was an enjoyable surprise. Enough time has passed since Heavensward that it’s believable to see this exchange of knowledge and culture between people and dragons. I felt it was done well.

The fact that it ends with the gift of a dragon friend (mount) and the title “A Dragon’s Best Friend” is just icing on the cake. In the middle of the big epic that was the end of Shadowbringers in 5.3, I’m so happy that small tales like this were told and experienced.