Final Fantasy XIV - Dungeons with Penny

Penny and I have been playing a lot of Final Fantasy XIV over the past few months.  It got to the point that my wife decided (on her own with no convincing from either Penny or me) to join us as well.  She's a level 50 Bard now and slowly progressing through the post-50 story quests like Penny.

At some point I decided to record some of my dungeon runs with Penny.  What follows below are the first 3 episodes of our YouTube series Dungeons with Penny.

Episode 1 - Halatali

Episode 2 - Tanking Thousand Maws

Episode 3 - Haunted Haukke Manor

We don't really have a set schedule for when episodes get released simply because it was hard to find time to edit the videos during the school year and the last two months were super busy with end of year stuff.  However, with summer coming up I think Penny and I will be able to put out a more regular schedule.  Going to try 1 video a week so one Dungeons with Penny episode each week!

Anyways if you enjoyed any of them, please subscribe to the channel and comment on the videos!

Final Fantasy XIV - Family Adventuring

In my last post I posted a picture of my character Mialee Liadon in her new look as a Miqo'te.  Considering how much time and gil I spent trying to find a look I liked for her when she was an Elezen, changing her race was not a snap decision (see post 1, post 2, post 3, post 4 for the evolution of Mialee's look as an Elezen).

A few weeks ago Penny watched me play and then asked if she could play too.  She had made a character on my account when I first started playing and although she didn't get too far she remembered she had one.  The combat mechanics were too complicated for her as she was only 4 I think so she spent all her play time just wandering around looking at things (and dying to high level things when she found them).  Now I didn't want to give up my play time so she could play so I made her a trial account.  I figured why not since it wouldn't cost me anything and she would have plenty to do while on her way to level 35.

So she made a new character on my server (Exodus), a Miqo'te named Luna Khaleesi (named after our two cats, Luna and Khaleesi).  She was annoyed that my character was not a Miqo'te and kept wanting me to change to one.  Penny wanted my character to be the same race as hers so that she can pretend our characters were sisters.  I didn't think much of it at first but eventually I came to the decision that this might be funner for her so I surprised her during one of our gaming sessions with the new Mialee and she was very happy.  I think that simple change made Penny connect with both her character and my character better and as a result she seems to enjoy the game even more than before.  And, like me, she likes looking for nice outfits for her character.

Luna (on the left) and Mialee (on the right)

After trying out the Marauder first (mostly because that was my main class) she eventually settled on the Arcanist because it has pets.  She liked the carbuncles and when she made it to 30 she got access to the fairies which really made her like the class.  I ended up gettting her a 1 month subscription as a treat for doing well at a recent violin competition she attended and as of this post she's a level 40 Scholar.

I truly don't know if this was a good decision on my part or not but wow is it ever fun being able to share my Eorzean adventures with her!  She loves exploring all of Eorzea and because she's playing on my gaming laptop the scenery looks amazing and the gameplay is smooth (compared to my old bare bones desktop at least).  Penny especially loves night time in the La Noscea region as she can see the stars so clearly and often just wanders around at night following the stars.

One really neat thing is that she is learning how to play in a party and learning the different roles.  She's a fairly proficient healer but does spend most of her time DPSing and letting her fairy handle all the healing.  I have to remind her for tougher fights to pay attention to the tank's (me) health bar because if the tank (or healer) dies, so does everyone else.  It does help that I'm an experienced tank so there's a little more room for error but I am wondering how she'll handle the more mechanically intensive fights as she continues her adventure.

I guess only time will tell if this is a good thing for her or not.  In the meanwhile we get to enjoy a hobby as a father daughter tank-healer team!

Final Fantasy XIV - Revisiting Eorzea

First let me say that Facebook ads work (at least some of them do on me).  I think it was a Facebook ad that got me into playing League of Legends for the first time so many years ago (before Season 1) and it was a Facebook ad that rekindled my interest in playing Final Fantasy XIV again.  Can't quite remember what exactly was in the ad but it got me all nostalgic about when I used to play the game with my friends a few years back.  The last time I played FFXIV was when the Go Go Posing Rangers event was on back in 2016.

So I started up my subscription at the end of December and have been playing daily since.  I hadn't finished the main Heavensward story so that was my first goal.  To be honest I'm still not done that part yet.  On top of the main story in the original expansion, Square Enix added a few patches worth of additional main story since.  I just finished the 3.1 scenario "As goes light, so goes darkness" and now into the 3.2 scenario quests.  After the 3.2 scenario quests, I'll move into the 3.3 quests followed by the 3.4 quests and finally the 3.5 quests.

It's been a little slow as I don't want to outpace my healer friend who I convinced to resub and join me.  He's a dungeon or two behind me so while I wait for him to catch up I'm doing a bunch of side things.  Mostly crafting.  Prior to my return to the game I had 5 of the 8 crafting classes at lv50 so I started power leveling them to 60.  That task blew through a tonne of the gil reserves I had.  I think close to 3 million after all was said and done!  While doing this for my 5 main crafting classes I quickly realized I needed the other crafting classes at lv50+ as well so I could access certain reagents that they could make.  I could buy everything off the market board but that was getting too costly as my levels increased.  This also led me to pick up the botanist class and to continue leveling my miner so I could access more raw materials for my crafting.

So that's where I'm at right now in my journey in Eorzea.  Waiting for my friend to catch up to me in the story and spending gil leveling my crafting classes and gathering classes.

P.S.  Finally used my Fantasia potion and turned Mialee from an Elezen to a Miq'ote.  Why did I do that? Stay tuned and find out!

Mialee as a Miqo'te (with the Tidal Wave axe from Leviathan)

Final Fantasy XIV - Mini-Games!

The Golden Saucer was recently added to the game and boy is it ever fun.

For those unfamiliar with the original Golden Saucer, it was introduced way back in Final Fantasy 7 (and to my knowledge was never re-introduced in any other Final Fantasy game).  It was a giant amusement park and acted like one in the game with all manner of mini-games.  It also had some interesting rewards like Cloud's final limit break, Omnislash, in the Battle Square mini-game (fun fact, my brother managed to obtain Omnislash on the first disc of the game by grinding out 50+ levels in random encounters and then taking his super powered Cloud to the Battle Square to win the Omnislash manual).

Many of the mini-games recreated some of the sequences in the game like the bike battle (my favourite) or the submarine battle (also a favourite of mine) while others were more traditional carnival/amusement park games like basketball toss or strong man games.  And don't get me started on Chocobo Racing and breeding.

In FF14 the Saucer pretty much does the same thing.  It has lots of mini-games, a bunch of random events, chocobo racing and Triple Triad!  I never played Final Fantasy 8 so I had no idea what Triple Triad was other than it was a game within FF8,  It's fun and you get to collect cards and use your cards to win more Golden Saucer points (the currency within the Golden Saucer).

At the moment the rewards at the Golden Saucer are cosmetic items, chocobo racing items or Triple Triad cards.  I got lucky and managed to win 10,000 golden saucer points from a mini-lottery and bought a new hair style (only available at the golden saucer).

Then I spent the leftover points on racing feed (though I still have to actually race my chocobo).  I won another mini-lottery and will probably save the points for some of the cosmetic weapons for my other classes when/if I get them to 50.

Little things like this definitely make this game nicer than other MMOs I've played.

Final Fantasy XIV - End-Game grinding

I don't believe it but I'm actually playing the end-game game in Final Fantasy XIV.  All other MMORPGs I've played where I reached end-game I kind of stopped playing.  For example in WoW when I hit 70 in the Burning Crusade expansion I kind of just stopped.  I think I grinded out enough reputation and gold to be the first in my guild to get a dragon mount but I never did anything else of note (i.e. I did not go dungeon raiding).  Mostly because the raids and dungeons took so much time (at least 2 hours for a single dungeon and days for raids).  End-game WoW was geared towards hardcore raiders back then compared to now.

Similarly when I hit end-game in SWTOR I kind of just stopped too.  My friend and I attempted some of the end-game flashpoints with our NPC companions but some were too difficult to do and I didn't bother with any other end-game content even after the group finder was implemented.  I did pick up the expansion and finished the expansion stories but again I did not attempt any of the end-game flashpoints, operations or daily grind missions.  I think I might have tried grinding out some tokens for entry level raid gear but not enough to be too proud of anything.

However, in FF14 I've discovered that the end-game activities do not seem as much of a grind as the others.

Final Fantasy XIV - Mialee's Look Complete!

Recently I've replaced my morning LoL game with an equivalent amount of time playing Final Fantasy XIV.  No real agenda in the morning so sometimes I craft or level another class or run a daily duty roulette for additional tomestones or whatever.  This morning I decided to see how many Ifrit Hard Mode trials I could accomplish before getting ready for work.

I'm glad I did as I got some stuff that I wanted.

Final Fantasy XIV - Glamour System

I spend way too much time using the vanity system on MMORPGs that have them and I try to avoid the ones that don't. #GamingConfessions
— Mr. Arocena (@MrArocena) January 26, 2015

I tweeted this when I saw the #GamingConfessions hashtag earlier this week and boy is it ever true.

It all started on SWTOR and when I got enough Social points to get the first set of social armour.  I liked the top and since I could swap out the Armour piece, modification piece and enhancement piece I stuck with the same top for most of my leveling experience.

Once I hit end-game I had accumulated a huge number of social points and my social rank was fairly high so I had access to a lot of the social armour sets.  I bought a bunch of them and started mixing and matching to find a look that I liked (thankfully the social armour is cheap).  There were other pieces of customizable armour as well so I spent a great deal of money on the Galactic Market looking for interesting pieces.  This was made even more expensive by the fact that I could customize the appearance of my companions so I had 5 other people to customize.  Took a while and a lot of credits to give my main character and his main companion a look that I liked.

This extended to a lot of other games that have vanity systems like League where I've spent a large amount of money picking up skins that make my character look cool (or skins that are limited edition).  The skins have absolutely no practical purpose but they look cool.

So this brings me to Final Fantasy XIV.  A game with a really robust vanity system known as their Glamour system.  In some ways not as restrictive as SWTOR but in some ways more restrictive.

Final Fantasy XIV - Reborn Enjoyment of the MMORPG

So as I mentioned in my 2014 Year in Review, a friend had bought me Final Fantasy XIV - A Realm Reborn (FF14 for short) while it was on sale at Steam a few weeks (or maybe months now?) back.  Surprised me as I was going to buy it the same day he bought it for me.  Anyways, I didn't really play much of it for the first couple of days of my subscription because of school work and I think I was focusing on improving my League of Legends play as the season ended.

That changed once Christmas hit though.  I had no incentive to improve my League play until the next season started so I picked up Final Fantasy again.  At first I wasn't too impressed as the combat was identical to every other MMORPG I had played and there was no voice over in the cut-scenes.  SWTOR I think really set the bar for general questing as the voices added character to the quest givers makes the game that much more immersive.  Mind you there are some cut-scenes in FF14 that have voice-overs but they are kind of random and seem forced at times (not as good as the voice work in SWTOR in my opinion).  I stuck with it though as another friend picked up the game as well and we sort of leveled together, him a healer and me a tank (just as we did in SWTOR).

A couple of things stood out as I leveled.