Grace

I finally managed to slowly claw my way out of the item level valley I was stuck in with FFXIV. This was about equal parts hard work grinding tomes, generosity from my FC fellows, and the dumb luck of having enough tokens from Alex section 2 to put toward a weapon upgrade. Without all of those things I’d probably still be griping about how all my friends were having fun without me. Instead I got to see 2 new dungeons and one new raid and finish up the available MSQ.

It was actually weirdly frustrating to see ilvl 245 gear dropping like candy from the new expert dungeons. Yes, I’m happy that I’m getting lots of upgrades but it is so unsatisfying to immediately replace gear that I spent so much time grinding tomes for with green dungeon drops 15 levels higher. I accept that some amount of gear resetting is a fact of life in MMOs but FFXIV’s gear progression and gating seem incredibly uneven. Gear complaints aside I did enjoy the 2 new dungeons, although I like fighting dinosaurs much more than fighting people and mechs.

The thing I spent the most time on since getting my gear sorted out has been random non-progression activities. For instance I spent several hours farming old dungeons for the quest to upgrade my Nexus weapon, then hit a wall because nobody on Cactaur is selling the “tailor-made eel pie” I need. Gross. I also somehow found renewed interest in leveling up all my alt classes, and after this weekend all my combat classes are at least level 23. It felt good to throw out some of that low-level gear I had been hanging on to and it was just fun to spend a few hours figuring out different classes. I’m looking forward to getting everything up to 30 and unlocking jobs for all of them. The only down side is that I haven’t played some of these classes in so long that I had no idea what was happening in their class quests. Sorry GLD lady, I have no idea why you’re so mad at this other guy, please just give me my new ability and/or weapon upgrade, thanks.

I’m really happy I’ve gotten back into the swing of things in FFXIV again. It feels good to play with my friends there and it has been fun catching up on the story that makes the game so strong and endearing. I hope my newfound interest in alting doesn’t send me down the road to fast burnout. I suppose it could be worse, at least I haven’t jumped into the black hole of crafting classes…yet.

Last night all my friends were about to do silly things in FFXIV and I suddenly decided it was time for me to join them. After some complications with my credit card and getting resubscribed that made me yell a lot, I managed to log in. I had tried to play using the free 4 day trial SE sent me over the holidays, but I mostly just looked at my quest log and full inventory, shrugged, and logged off. This time I had my friends around to goad me into doing things.

The thing ended up being Weeping City, which I had not yet set foot in. I had apparently done the quest to unlock it before I left though, so we could queue right away. Everything I had seen about the place called it “wiping city” or some variation, and I had definitely heard some tales of woe. Since I barely remembered what my buttons did I suspected we were in for a bad time. Instead it was the most ridiculous fun I’ve had in ages, and possibly the silliest thing I’ve ever seen in an MMO.

The first boss was fine, I barely remember what even happened. The second boss, the zombie guy, was by far the prize of the night. I had absolutely no idea what I was doing, and was trying to navigate by listening to my well-intentioned friends try to call out mechanics as we went along. Mostly I was failing, and since I was healing that led to various deaths and battle rezzes. At one point the majority of our alliance was down, and the others weren’t doing a whole ton better, but the boss was at maybe 20% health. Eventually our whole alliance was dead. Luckily our Limit Break 3 had just filled, so when one of the other alliance’s healers rezzed me I got to hit my shiny LB3 button and save everybody.

In a story about someone who knew what they’re doing, this would be where everyone pulled it together and won. Instead, I immediately died again and we continued to do pretty badly. I lost count of how many times I died and was rezzed. But we kept going, rezzing when we could and keeping maybe 5-10 out of the 24 people in the raid alive at any given time. Somehow, unbelievably, we actually won anyway. I didn’t keep track but I suspect every single person in the raid died at least once, and likely several times. I know I died at least 5 times and probably a lot more. If ever a raid fight deserved to be set to clown music it was this one. The whole thing probably would have gone twice as fast if we had just wiped and tried again. When we won I laughed harder than I have in ages. Thank you friends and random strangers in that raid, I needed that laughter more than you know.

Honestly the rest of the place passed in a blur. We wiped once on Ozma, but did fine the second attempt. That fight seemed neat. Then the last boss had some weird hair or something??? and we 1-shot her without much difficulty. We technically got through the whole place with only the 1 wipe on Ozma. My only regret is that I didn’t stop laughing long enough to take any screenshots!