Morning Folks! Since I spent all day yesterday talking about my Summoner, I figured this morning I would talk a bit about our progress on Kraken characters. Fair warning for this older content I am going to be pretty open with story spoilers as I talk through it. This is ten-year-old content so you had your chance to play through it. When last I talked about our adventures, we had finished Brayflox and were hot on the tale of a rumble with Titan. Fighting the giant rockboy was as always a fun experience, and even though it went super smoothly we had plenty of time to bask in the great music. This however led us through the Coerthas phase of the MSQ… which is a heck of a lot longer than I remembered it being. The next major destination was Stone Vigil and we mostly kept our heads down until we were able to get there.
I thought that maybe after returning to the game I would find the Ishgardians less insufferable given that I understand the people and their motivations a bit more now. This was not the case. Haurchefant is a great boy as always, but the rest of them can largely die in a big fire. Now that I have actually met Halone… I have so much less patience for their bullshit. The whole paranoia in dealing with the Dravinian threat is equally tiresome, especially after having spent much time hanging with Dragons at this point. Ishgard is so very in the wrong on most of these matters, and it only feels more obvious on a second play-through. The whole business with the Inquisitor and not being able to get into Stone Vigil was a pain in the ass and made me just want to murder everyone until they stopped annoying me.
Last night we pushed through and fought Garuda, and it is hilarious doing that fight in the four-player version. So many muscle memories came flying back to me, at which point I realized just how many times over the years I have done that fight. I remember feeling like it was a real challenge back in the day, but now she mostly just falls over. We wrapped this up by starting on our course to Castrum Centi in Mor Dhona and an attempt at saving our magical pals. It seems like the next big thing we are going to do is a raid on Castrum Meridianum…. many many quests from now. We are sort of in that final grind to finish out the original ARR MSQ. I’m honestly looking forward to doing the patch content because really that is the part of the game that sold me properly on Final Fantasy XIV as a story.
It has been wild seeing scenes that I had long forgotten. I can probably regurgitate the cutscenes of Praetorium like a 5th Grade Class drone through the pledge of allegiance, but there are many scenes I have only ever seen once. For example, I did not remember the whole bit where Baelsar indicated that he was going to get down and dirty with Livia when he ordered her to his room in an hour. The Garleans seem so freaking laughable at this point because I have been making them fall over time and time again for years as I leveled my characters through Main Story Roulette. I remember thinking they were freaking cool the first time I experienced all of these cutscenes. Even Darth Vader though would lose his novelty and fear factor if you made him fall over in minutes every single day for years. I still really want Square to release some of these outfits as cosmetics. I would kill entire zones just to get hold of Nero’s hammer as a Warrior weapon transmog.
Back on the other side of the fence over on Cactuar, I pushed my Summoner forward a bit in levels. I dinged level 96 and in theory, should be able to get another two levels tonight. If I grind really hard, I might be able to hit level 99 and equip the artifact set of gear which would be slick. I really need to clean out my Armoury Chest a bit in order to figure out what gear I actually need in there. Right now I have stuff strewn out between that and my inventory and am pretty sure I have broken a few of my gearsets for other jobs in the process. I’m basically living in Shaaloani now doing FATEs between queue pops of roulette. I’ve yet to get any of the bits required for the “Guinea Big” mount, but I want it badly. Its a fun zone to hang out regardless though because of the phenomenal soundtrack.
Anyways! At some point, I need to check out the new Last Epoch cycle, but I have been so focused on FFXIV that I have barely given it the time of day this week. In the coming days, I am going to get a bit more serious with my recruitment of folks to do some raiding in the game. Since Cactuar is sort of hell to travel over to, we might choose a neutral ground in order to meet up and do the content.
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