Belghast

Good Morning Friends! I am not doing super well because my lungs have conspired against me. however, I am still going to post today especially given that the lack of internet kept me from doing one on Tuesday. This friend is Quarrymill in the South Shroud and it is more specifically known for being the location that you queue up for Palace of the Dead one of two Deep Dungeon systems in Final Fantasy XIV. At the time of taking this picture, it is roughly 6 in the morning CDT and there is already a fairly decent crowd of people gathered here. I’ve spent a lot of time hanging out here and putting levels on alts, more specifically the 1-61 level range. Generally speaking, running 51-60 over and over has been a pretty relaxing way of putting on those early levels for alternate jobs.

However more recently I have encountered a different style of player, some working on their very first job grinding away fervently at Palace of the Dead. The Palace uses an alternate leveling system that increases by getting Aetherpool upgrades via the blue and silver chests in the dungeon. This caps out at +99 to armor and +99 to the weapon, and it is something that I have been capped at for several years now. I gradually got it there while leveling all of my jobs to 50, and the gains are extremely slow given that it was designed to gain levels as you descended through the depths of the dungeon. Folks specifically run 51-60 for experience gain efficiency, and if you are looking for fast Aetherpool gains you need to keep descending towards 100 which is considerably harder to find a group for.

That said I have encountered a number of players recently that are absolutely obsessed with getting to 99/99 as fast as they can. There have been several cases where their lust for those blue and silver chests has damned near wiped the party. Most specifically I have been seeing a lot of characters that have boosted and are now playing a Samurai or a Red Mage and attempting to grind them up through Palace of the Dead, with that character being the only one they have of any sufficient level. I’ve talked about this a few times and could not figure out what was going on, and why my super chill dungeon run game was filled with these annoying “tryhards” all of the sudden. So last night while idling in South Shroud I encountered someone pestering the fuck out of chat trying to get tips on how to level faster, so I decided to have a conversation. After that I talked to a few others and now have a pretty good idea of what is going on.

You need to understand that both Palace of the Dead and Heaven on High have a leaderboard associated with them ranking players based on solo and group play. As you progress in your save game you are given a score based on your performance and then this score is charted against other folks in your data center. Soloing Palace of the Dead specifically is considered to be one of the most challenging feats in the game and by clearing all of your way to level 200 on any job you gain a specific title… The Necromancer. More specifically you have to clear floors 1 to 200 solo without wiping and if you take a death past floor 100, that save is locked and you can progress no further forcing you to reset and start over again. Similarly, if you clear 100 floors of Heaven on High you are given the title of “Lone Hero”, and that dungeon’s point of no return is floor 30.

Now we move to the specific information that I found out, more specifically let’s talk about the above thumbnail. Roughly a week ago Zelpa one of the most popular creators in the FFXIV sphere released a video called “10 Most Prestigious Things to FLEX With in FFXIV”. More specifically the second item discussed in the video is getting the Necromancer title from Deep Dungeon. The first person I talked to was new to the game, a WoW Transplant, and was chasing the Necromancer title as a way of flexing and showing how cool he was. When he heard it was super rare and something that you could get without even having a character to max level, he set forth to make it happen. Given how many of these folks I am encountering, I am guessing this video or similar discussions lit a fire under a new crop of players to make life miserable for those of us who were just wanting a chill leveling experience. However, it goes deeper than just chasing something rare. Another player that I talked with was going after the Necromancer title because they were always frustrated that they never managed to get “The Undying” title in World of Warcraft. This specifically was a title that existed during Wrath of the Lich King and involved completing the entirety of the Naxxramas 10 player raid without a single player taking a death at any point. World of Warcraft has had this history of taking things away from the players, and when the 4.0.3 patch landed with the release of the Cataclysm expansion the title was no longer available to players. The player I was talking with was afraid that they might miss their chance to get this title in Final Fantasy XIV if they didn’t hurry up and get it… not understanding that the game has a completely different design ethic associated with such things.

I am hoping given time that these folks chill out, but one of the things that need to be understood is that Final Fantasy XIV is not World of Warcraft. There is a completely different design to the two games, and nothing in FFXIV ever truly becomes irrelevant. Getting to level 200 in Palace of the Dead is still a massive challenge and it went into the game during the midpoint of Heavensward back in July of 2016. At this point, it is over five years old content and it is still as relevant today as it was the day it went into the game. It is highly unlikely that the Necromancer title will ever be removed from the game, largely because that just isn’t the style of the development team.

The other day I was guilty of making a tweet thread that gained more traction than I expected. However, I stand by those statements. I wish I could shake some sense into these players that are grinding FFXIV as they ground WoW… this will only end in you eventually burning yourself out. I know I’ve also tried to play Final Fantasy like I played Warcraft, and eventually, I would end up getting stuck in a grind and losing interest. This game will answer your desire for grinds and present before you and an endless buffet of tedium if you let it, but also at the same time reward you greatly for instead playing a little bit at a time. This mindset of doing a little bit of a lot of different things has been a revelation for me, and once I realized the game was actively trying to resist my grinder ways… I adapted and have been significantly happier as a result. Getting some achievement just to prove to someone that you can… isn’t really going to impress anyone in the manner that you are hoping. Having fun and focusing on whatever brings you joy, and generally being a positive member of the community however will get you a long ways in this game. The post Flawed Mindset appeared first on Tales of the Aggronaut.

Hey friends, apologies for the lack of a post yesterday but I had issues. At roughly 3 pm on August 16th, we lost internet and did not regain it until roughly 10 am yesterday some 19 hours later. I have no clue what happened but during that 19 hours, I received 4 notices that we were being impacted by a current outage and 4 notices that the issues had been resolved… three of these were a lie. Whatever was going on seemed to impact a pretty wide area because one of my co-workers some 20+ miles away was also impacted and had their internet magically come back at the same time as I did. During the outage, I learned that I could in fact that I could function pretty normally while tethered to my mobile phone, including but not limited to attending conference calls, remoting into work, and even playing some Final Fantasy XIV.

Something that I have come to a bit of a decision on, is that Housing Savage is not for me. Over the last several days, I had been following a housing discord and going over to whatever plot happened to be open at the time. There were a few things that I have learned as a result. Firstly housing plots are open way more often than I ever realized, and two that milling around and clicking a sign over and over was actively harming my enjoyment of the game. We have a lovely Free Company house, and this affords me the luxury of a very cheap room that I can decorate. Getting a small house would effectively give me twice as much space, along with the ability to control the exterior but it would not actively change my gameplay experience. I already have access to pretty much anything I COULD have access to, through the Free Company house.

For those unfamiliar with the current system, if you have not entered your home in 45 days the plot is reclaimed and all of your stuff is dumped on the Resident Caretaker along with 80% of the value of the plot. When a plot is reclaimed an invisible timer is started before it actually becomes available on the market, and with this, the waiting begins. There are a number of theories as to how long this timer is, but based on what little hard information I could find it seems to be between 30 minutes and 36 hours and anywhere in between. During this time folks hang out in the housing, district clicking on the sign, and a number of individuals have figured out how to bot this process. What I had done recently was hang out there while waiting on instance queues to pop and periodically click the sign in a vague attempt to get a property.

The entire process of trying to care about getting a home though was bringing me down. I would far rather be out in the world doing things, than milling around with a bunch of bots trying to win the fastest fingers first race with an indeterminate starting line. When the housing district opens in Ishgard, there is supposedly a lottery system being introduced into the game that will allow someone to plunk money down on a property and let RNGesus choose who actually wins it. This would be so preferable to the current experience. I would happily go visit a plot, throw down my earnest money, and then walk away and continue playing the game hoping that maybe just maybe the randomizer is kind to me. My fear however is that this lottery is only going to apply to Ishgard, and as much as I do not love that town… I will absolutely go for a small property there. Once you get a single small, it becomes much easier to relocate to another property. I am still on my mission to level all of the things to 80 before the launch of Endwalker. Right now I am largely focused on Ninja and Scholar. Currently, I do all of the easy progress activities on the Ninja, and when I feel like I am down to just no-lifer grinding activities, I switch back over to the Scholar and do some Palace of the Dead. Dragoon is also fairly high up there, but is largely there to soak Faerie dailies if I don’t have any other 70 somethings available to level through them. I don’t love Dragoon nearly as much as I once did, so I am fine with letting it sit there in limbo and level extremely slowly. Scholar is being worked up largely because it knocks two off my list when I get it to 80, given that summoner is a freebie associated with the Arcanist base class.

This also means that I spent a good chunk of last night working on the Heavensward class quests for Scholar. That is one word of warning for anyone that is leveling multiple jobs. They changed the way this worked starting with Stormblood, but for ARR and Heavensward you will absolutely be missing key abilities if you did not do your job quest chain. In Stormblood you just automagically get the new abilities and the same is true with anything gained during Shadowbringer. Essentially the first quest for Heavensward on each class is going to start at your trainer from A Realm Reborn, and then often times move into Heavensward zones from that point forward. In most of the cases there has been a bit of a hand off to a new NPC, but in the Scholar quest it continued the story of Wanderer’s Palace.

I’ve also periodically spent some time over on Catghast when the Palace of the Dead grind gets to me. I just managed to get him through Thousand Maws of Totorak, and I have to say tanking right now is in the best state it has ever been in FFXIV. All of these dungeons that used to be a pain in the butt, are a breeze given how easy spamming a multi-target threat ability is. I am probably more engaged with Final Fantasy XIV than I have been since the release of the game, and I am riding this high for as long as it lasts. I am sure the shine will start to tarnish eventually, but for now I am having a blast. The post Housing Savage Failed appeared first on Tales of the Aggronaut.