FFXIV: A 2025 Progress Check In
Posted on January 7, 2025 by Aywren
It’s been far too long since I’ve written about where I am with FFXIV and where I’d like to go with the game. While I still maintain a silly number of alts, I’ve cut back on playing most of them in order to focus on just a few characters since Dawntrail’s release.
It’s not a secret that Dawntrail has been a divisive expansion for the FFXIV player base. I am no exception to this.
While I don’t want to write a post with too negative a slant, Syn and I have discussed at length how we both have felt the newest story hasn’t been up to previous standards. While 7.1 has improved slightly, and I am giving the team the benefit of the doubt, this, along with the lack of new content for more casual players like myself, has resulted in me struggling for motivation to play.
Yep, I’ve done the “play other games” thing in the meantime. However, when it comes down to it, I want to love FFXIV. I want to play FFXIV. I want to set goals and feel like I’m making progress for FFXIV. This post is part of how I hope to do that.
I did get a good fortune this year, so let’s hop that’s a good sign!
Let’s Celebrate the Little Wins!
One thing I’ve decided to do in 2025 – something I think I mentioned in a blog post last year – is spend more time celebrating the little wins using my blog. What do I mean by this?
Well, back in the earliest days of this blog, every little achievement – a piece of gear upgrade, a new minion, leveling to cap – was something I recorded and celebrated as a milestone in this blog. Over the years, this has faded as I’ve moved towards just dropping something on social media as a quick way to celebrate a win. Or… sometimes, I just don’t do anything at all and it goes unnoticed.
My hope is that if I spend more time acknowledging and focusing on the positive things in my blog, that my overall feelings for FFXIV will also improve. I’m inspired by those who consistently play with goals in mind – Cider Spider and his achievement hunting videos are a good example.
While I don’t want to get too goal oriented – I learned that setting monthly goals feels a little stifling – I do want to keep better track of what I work on and what I complete. Plus, that’s more content for this blog, so it’s a win-win.
Fresh Update for 2025
What I want to do in this post is establish where I’m starting for the new year. As I said, it’s been a long time since I wrote a post that just dropped an overview of where my main character is at, and what I want to eventually work towards.
This will include some things for my RP alt, Amon, as well. He’s the only other character that’s finished Dawntrail at this point, and I do have a long-term project I want to complete on him, too.
Aywren
To start, here’s my slow-going progress of leveling all jobs to 100 so far.
One of the first things I did in Dawntrail was work towards leveling both Pictomancer and Viper to 90 so that I could share gear and every job would be starting off from 90. Then, I worked on leveling one of each role type to 100 so that I can knock out the role quests for those and get dyeable gear – something I haven’t done yet, but is on my want-to-do list.
Now that I’ve got that done, I’m free to level jobs up in any order I like. I’m utilizing Society quests (it’s so hard not to call them beast tribe quests) and Frontlines roulette to do this for the most part.
My crafting and gathering jobs are much better off.
I’ve been working on this steadily through weekly custom deliveries. I’m looking forward to finishing this up because there’s a couple of mounts you can get with orange scrips, and when you’re leveling, you can’t get orange scrips.
Speaking of Frontlines, I also want to finish up the newest series for the cosmetic rewards.
I took a break during the holidays, but I know if I don’t get back into gear, I’m going to regret it. I usually only run one Frontlines a day – that’s for the XP – so I don’t want to get too far behind and feel like I have to grind as the series comes closer to an end. Right now, I have plenty of time still.
Other than that, I’m just working on weekly elite hunts to earn nutsy sacks for the newest mount. I already picked up the previous mount and the minion, so I’m not super far behind on this. I know I could join a hunt train and knock this out much faster, but truth is, trains seem to be running when I’m at work or not around. Soooo… it’s slow and steady for me.
Amon
I’m working on similar things for Amon as I am for my main.
He only has a few jobs unlocked and he’s on his final job that I want to level to 100. I’m doing this the same way as I am on main – Society quests and Frontlines.
Amon is also working towards the cosmetics for the Frontline series. He’s about the same spot as my main, so no need for a screenshot here. Additionally, he’s about 7-8 wins from getting the Yellow Allagan Node mount, which is a major milestone for him! I’m shooting towards getting the Red Allagan Node mount one day – that will require 200 wins – and getting the Yellow means he’s halfway there. I’ve only been PVPing (casually) with him for two and a half years so far and… well.. it’s going to take a while. I don’t overly mind Frontlines, but it’s also not something I can commit to every day.
His major goal, however, is to finish all the shared FATES in Shadowbringers because he needs the Exarchic Tower framer’s kit for his adventure plate. Only problem is, I’ve never worked on FATES with him at all (though I did finish this years ago on main).
This means I need to buckle down and work on FATES consistently. This took me a good while to complete once, so I have a good idea how long it will take me the second time. But that framer’s kit is huge motivation for me to get it done.
Other Alts
While I did say that I’m not playing my other alts very much, I do have one goal I really want to achieve for my alt, Zuri. This requires her to make it through Dawntrail MSQ to the point where you unlock the new artifact gear.
Because it looks amazing on her, and she really needs it! What do you think?
I have started Dawntrail on Tad and poked around a little bit, but I don’t have any driving ambitions to get other alts through it just yet. That doesn’t mean never, it just means I have enough on my plate as it is!
This is my starting point for FFXIV in 2025. While I don’t expect to blog every little detail of what I do this year, I want to capture more here. Even just writing this post has hyped me up some to play again, so thanks for reading. Let’s see where this leads!