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

  • 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.

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:

  1. Before You Start:
    1. 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.
    2. 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.
    3. Materia-up your Kirin’s Osode or Vermillion Cloak.
  2. 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.
  3. From Pagos and up, these are the extra beneficial gear/setup that make the biggest difference sorted in order of greatest to least benefit.
    1. 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. +2 Elemental Gear & Physeos Weapon (Hydatos)
    3. Cassie’s Earring/Speed Belt (Pagos)
    4. Optical Hat is no longer any good compared to the +2 Head gear. Gear details here.
  4. 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:

  1. Put all your Magicite into one element of your Magia Board, until Baldesion Arsenal.
  2. Spin your Magia Board as needed, so you either have 5 offense or 5 defense.
  3. 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?)
  4. 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):

  1. Learn the Eureka Tracker
  2. When entering a zone “/shout Any Trackers?” or “/shout Any NM parties?”
  3. 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”.
  4. If an NM popped, you can tick the Tracker off. Don’t need to wait for it to be killed, I think.
  5. 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.
  6. Learn to use CTRL+Right Click on the map to share the Loc of the places to go to.
  7. 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:

Guides:


Eureka Gear

Eureka Anemos Set

Keyboard/Mouse Gameplay Tips (Helpful for ppl with small hands):

I have small hands and made a duty video so a friend could see in action, the extent of finger travel I was doing in fights.

This was to demonstrate how keybinds can be mapped to reduce finger travel. You can basically map your keybinds around the WASD (if you like), which allows reduced finger travel, rather than mapping them to 1234567890-=, then CTRL 1234567890-=, and ALT 1234567890-=, if your hand can’t reach that far.

The video shows my HUD, which I laid out to reduce eye-travel.

Finally, the mouse is good for quickly panning your camera (in the future, attacks will come from behind and all around) as well as allowing you to quickly target party/raid members for healing, as a backup if you forgot a party/raid members keybind.

Link to My Mechanical Keyboard Build

I use the MX Anywhere 2 by Logitech as my gaming mouse. It’s a good size for me, tracks on almost any surface, fast despite being wireless and reliable. The new MX Anywhere 3 looks nice. If anyone has it, leave a comment. I also own the dual joystick Lexip Gaming Mouse, but I prefer my MX Anywhere 2 over it. 

I think people with larger hands, have less issues.

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.

Official Heavensword Intro Site

The second expansion for Final Fantasy XIV is Stormblood, also known as 4.0

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/

Nameless