My adventures in final fantasy xiv
Fights, dungeons, raids and even housing… in a vast world featuring near peerless story with old (and new) gamer friends
As many of my good friends know, I am a lifelong gamer…
I have many great favorites, but thus far there is this one game that I am finding myself talking my friends into joining (not on purpose), constantly researching, constantly going back to/thinking about a lot, and most all I find the at-large player-base to be the most friendly, helpful and welcoming that I have seen in any online game (including WoW). I’ve made many friends in-game already and enjoy playing with them.
So I will list my favorite resources here, because I often go back to look things up, or I am constantly recommending to my friends because they have questions/need help. Here we go!
FFXIV Gameplay Resources
- List of housing furniture/decor: http://en.ff14housing.com/
- Community submission of home designs: https://housingsnap.com/
- Gardening: https://www.ffxivgardening.com/
- Favorite timers to use when farming timed nodes: https://www.garlandtools.org/
- Best Fisher resource: https://en.ff14angler.com/index.php?
- Teamcraft: Create and reference lists for gear progression
- Skyteel Tools: Shows you the name and qty of mats needed to get Skyteel and its upgrades
- 5.3 Aethersand List
- 5.4 Aethersand Rotations
- 5.4 Collectible Gathering: “With at least 700 GP and RNG on your side, I have found that Scrutiny > Brazen > Solid Reason / Ageless Words > Scrutiny > Brazen takes care of most of it to get level 80 stuff to 1000 collectability. Using Meticulous to finish grants a chance to not use another gather attempt.”
- 5.4 Levinstrike Aethersand Nodes
- Tegrees Guides: of my favorite youtubers who have quality guides on how to play your class/job properly
- WeskAlber Guides: another favorite guide maker that makes things easy to understand even for completely new players
- The Balance Discord: If you are no longer a newbie, this is the reference you want to use to improve your skills. Many theorycrafters staff the Balance community and they crunch the latest numbers to figure out the most efficient/effective combos, openers and style for you to be your optimal best.
MTQCapture is my favorite youtube resource for learning about the next upcoming dungeon/raid that I have to face. I often watch it before I queue up for the first time.
For the Baldesion Arsenal raid, refer to the Eureka section below.
This Chocobo Companions and You: A Guide post has some very useful stats on training your combat chocobo. I used their recommended stats and my chocobo has proven to be a very strong partner during our fights.
From the Chocobo Companion guide above, I use the All-Rounder build. If you want the Attacker, or Defender, or Healer build, login to the forums and read the full post.
If you don’t want to login to see the post, here is a snippet of the All-Rounder build below:
- +Rank 1(1 SP) – Rank 1 Healer (HoT) [0 SP remaining]
- +Rank 2(2 SP) – Rank 1 Defender (Enmity WS) + Rank 1 Attacker (WS) [0 SP remaining]
- +Rank 3(3 SP) – Rank 2 Healer (MND Trait) [1 SP remaining]
- +Rank 4(4 SP) – Rank 3 Healer (HP Trait) + Rank 2 Attacker [STR Trait] [0 SP remaining]
- +Rank 5(5 SP) – Rank 4 Healer (Cure) [1 SP Remaining]
- +Rank 6(6 SP) – Rank 3 Attacker (+HP Trait) + Rank 4 Attacker (DoT WS) [0 SP remaining]
- +Rank 7(7 SP) – Rank 5 Healer (Acc Trait) + Rank 2 Defender (STR Trait) [0 SP remaining]
- +Rank 8(8 SP) – Rank 6 Healer (Crit Rate Trait) [2 SP remaining]
- +Rank 9(9 SP) – Rank 7 Healer (+Potency Buff) + Rank 3 Defender (HP Trait) [1 SP remaining]
- +Rank 10(10 SP) – Rank 5 Attacker (Acc Trait) + Rank 6 Attacker (Crit Trait) [0 SP remaining]
Gather Together FFXIV: This is the only podcast that I listen to and enjoy for FFXIV. It’s light-hearted, keeps me up-to-date with what’s going on with the game and the presenters come across as very decent and kind human beings.
Bozja
Good Bozja Guide from AhkMorning
Eureka
Having completed Baldesion Arsenal and all 4 zones of Eureka, I can say that the journey has been great fun. It’s a series of 4 zones with one end-game raid. Eureka feels more like a traditional mmorpg whilst FFXIV can often feel like a single-player game outside of grouping up for duties/trials.
To Set Yourself Up for Success In Eureka
Gear/Setup:
- Before You Start:
- Get 2 Cryptic Seals (Tank/DPS) or 3 Damascene Cloths (Healers/Casters) from the MB. Compare the MB prices across all the World Servers in your Datacenter.
- Turn them in to the Nostalgic Fellow (Pier #1 in Kugane) for your appropriate chest piece. This chest piece will last you from Level 1 all the way to the Eureka End-Game Raid, Baldesion Arsenal.
- Materia-up your Kirin’s Osode or Vermillion Cloak.
- For the rest of the gear, it’s been said if you have ilevel 406 or more, you are maxxed until you can get Elemental +2 gear and your Physios weapon.
- From Pagos and up, these are the extra beneficial gear/setup that make the biggest difference sorted in order of greatest to least benefit.
- Get the 6th and/or 7th Magicite (Pyros & Hydatos)
- If you got them: Put 5 in Offensive & 1/2 in Defensive
- If you don’t: For BA put 4 in Offensive & 1 in Defensive
- +2 Elemental Gear & Physeos Weapon (Hydatos)
- Cassie’s Earring/Speed Belt (Pagos)
- Optical Hat is no longer any good compared to the +2 Head gear. Gear details here.
- Get the 6th and/or 7th Magicite (Pyros & Hydatos)
- Logos Actions (Pyros & Hydatos)
- Hydatos: Expand your Logos Action window from 3 slots to 6 slots using Aethertight Flasks from Hydatos Bunny Fate.
- BA: Always have multiple Spirit of Remembered actions ready if you are new to BA
Leveling/Battle Strategy:
- Put all your Magicite into one element of your Magia Board, until Baldesion Arsenal.
- Spin your Magia Board as needed, so you either have 5 offense or 5 defense.
- Locate the Elemental every chance you can get for Haste, Regen and Exp buff. (Elemental is also called Fairy. In the zones, players often /shout Anyone seen Elemental? or /shout Anyone seen Fairy?)
- For leveling do your Weekly Eureka Challenge Logs (ashkin means undead that come out at night), keep up your XP chains and join NM groups when appropriate (/shout Any NM parties open? or /shout Any leveling parties open for lvl ##?)
NM Strategy for Crystals (for relics):
- Learn the Eureka Tracker
- When entering a zone “/shout Any Trackers?” or “/shout Any NM parties?”
- If no Trackers, create one and “/shout What NMs have been killed so far?” and tick them off your tracker. If yes, “/shout Inv for NM party pls”.
- If an NM popped, you can tick the Tracker off. Don’t need to wait for it to be killed, I think.
- NMs are listed in order from low to high level in the Tracker, as well as what you need to kill to spawn them, and weather/time of day.
- Learn to use CTRL+Right Click on the map to share the Loc of the places to go to.
- Pulling: The NM party usually announces they will pull the NM at 28:00 or 27:00 ish to give other players a chance to make it over.
Handy Tools:
- Relic Weapon/Armor Tracker: Make a copy of this Google sheet so you can tick off your progress.
- Pyros and Hydatos Logo Tracker: Use this webpage directly to tick off your logograms
- Primal Forays Discord: For those of you on the Primal Datacenter, this is the essential discord to join if you want to do the Baldesion Arsenal raid, as well as getting support/help throughout Eureka.
Guides:
- Anemos Map
- Pagos Guide and Pagos Map
- Pyros Map
- Hydatos Guide and another Hydatos Guide
- Baldesion Arsenal Visual Guide with videos
- Baldesion Arsenal Text Guide (older)
Eureka Gear
Eureka Anemos Set
- FFXIV Lodestone is the official SquareEnix news/resource site for the game.
- Nova Crystallis is a good source of FFXIV (and other) game news
- Masters Beginners Guide to FFXIV: This assumes you have experience and knowledge with other mmo’s or WoW, specifically.
- Collection of all the official side stories of the game that gives you more background into the realm, the characters and what’s happened.
- Watch Dad of Light on Netflix, a good intro to the game.
ASTRO Meld: Pumpkin
Gatherer Meld: High Tier
Crafter Meld: 6.05 Optimized Ay’s Set
Foxy Lady
FFXIV Game Trailers and Documentary
Documentary on the very original Final Fantasy XIV Game (FFXIV 1.0) that no longer exists. The game now starts from A Realm Reborn (FFXIV 2.0) as the base starting game.
Now the base game of Final Fantasy XIV.
The first expansion released for Final Fantasy XIV, known as FFXIV 3.0, and as of 2020 has become part of the base game.
The second expansion for Final Fantasy XIV is Stormblood, also known as 4.0
Revolutions Music Video
Benchmark Trailer – Download the Benchmark program here to see if your system can run the expansion
Shadowbringers Trailer
Patch 5.1
Patch 5.2 – Echoes of a Fallen Star
Patch 5.3 – Reflections in Crystal
Patch 5.4
Creation of Shadowbringers
FFXIV Misc.
Check out the FFXIV Infographic Collection
Umm… that’s a lot of links. What exactly is FFXIV?
FINAL FANTASY IS A SERIES OF GAMES BY SQUAREENIX (FORMERLY SQUARESOFT), STARTING FROM FINAL FANTASY 1… ALL THE WAY UP TO AND BEYOND 14. THIS PAGE FOCUSES ON THE FINAL FANTASY 14 GAME, SPECIFICALLY.
https://www.finalfantasyxiv.com/