FFXIV

[Bebpo]

Definitely brush up on the 1.XX story (and rewatch the 2.XX opening cinematic) before you start the Binding Coil. Binding Coil has the best storyline in 2.XX. It explains what that giant red moon is that fell down at the end of 1.XX.

Yeah, I'm good on 1.0's story.  Read up on it early on at the start.  More interested in the gameplay changes from 1.0->2.0

[Bebpo]

Sunblade, are you on hyperion?

[The Legend of Sunblade]

Sunblade, are you on hyperion?

I'm the one who made the linkshell you got invited to. Its literally my last name there. 

[Bebpo]

Oh, yeah I remember now.  Asha Sunblade or something?  Sorry I only remember people I've seen online a lot like PT.  Also since I joined the FC I never check linkshell or friend list I just check FC members online usually.

[The Legend of Sunblade]

Asha is SpeedStats, I'm Onix. But yeah, you can hit us up for help any time either of us are on. Always willing to help out with stuff~

[Lucretius]

Primal music is some of the best in the game. My fave is still probably Ramuh.

[Positive Touch]

shiva fight is top 10 boss musics easily

[Bebpo]

Hit level 50.  I feel like hitting the max level (at least for the original retail game) of your first MMO is a life achievement sort of thing.  So

 

Got to the actual duty finder for the final 2 dungeons.  Going to do my lvl.50 job quest first then do the dungeons.  So yeah, I totally forgot that my lvl.45 job quest gave me lvl.50 gear, which it turns out is actually level i90 gear so I'm already at ilvl 60   The lvl.50 job quest will fill out the rest of the outfit on the left side equip with i90 gear.  Not sure where the best place to get my first lvl.50 weapon is?  The easy ones are at the Grand Company (I got to the final 2.0 rank, but need like 7,000 seals to buy the lvl.50 weapon now) and Gold Saucer (20,000 MGP is nothing...at the start of each challenge log period when I can get 15,000-20,000 MGP in like 30 mins).  Or I could try the PvP stuff and buy a i70 weapon for what seems like not a lot of wolf marks.  Hmmm, I'm probably not going to have a lvl.50 weapon doing the final dungeons though since it'll take me probably 2 days to get 7k seals from dailies & turn-ins + fates. and challenge log doesn't expire in the gold saucer for another day or two. 

What's the deal in the duty finder with the weird glowing yellow/gold symbol?  I unlocked Wanderer's Palace (lvl.50) but haven't done it yet.  Figure I'll save it for after the final dungeons as a post-MSQ thing but it has that weird wavy gold symbol on it.

Also did Aurom Vale again with my daily for the day.  Had a lot of fun, I actually like the dungeon quite a bit.  Had a good team again.  Since I've gotten most of the story dungeons multiple times at this point in dailies, I think the only one I don't like is the Brayflox Longstep.  That dungeon is super boring outside the cool Dragon interrupts boss bit.  I think Stone Vigil is the only dungeon I've only done once.  I'm looking forward to doing it again because the boss was kind of fun.

Ok, guess it's time to go beat the game.

[Positive Touch]

the question about the gold symbol is a good one bc I have no idea what the fuck it is

[The Legend of Sunblade]

Check the market board. You can straight up buy i115 weapons/armor for cheap that you normally get from Ishgard for cheap, and is equippable at level 50.

Also, at 50, you gain the ability to use glamour prisms and unlock FFXIV's true endgame content: assembling tons of clothing pieces to look cooler than everyone else. 

If you mean this symbol: http://i.imgur.com/qqIeM2q.jpg, it's item level sync. If you queue to do the dungeon with gear that's a higher item level than its cap, it'll be synced down to the max.

[Positive Touch]

but wait aren't all dungeons like that?

[The Legend of Sunblade]

but wait aren't all dungeons like that?

All ilvl synced dungeons are level synced, but not the other way around. Both Castrum, Praetorium and all the non-50/60 leveling dungeons don't have an ilvl sync, they just lower you to the highest possible item level for dungeon's level (i130 in Castrum and Praetorium's case).

[Bebpo]

Credits are long...

The final dungeon gameplay ended for me at the magitek armor part.  After that it was just cutscenes for the last hour.

Would want to do the final stage again and actual experience the boss fights but the queue times were nuts for Cape Westwind and the last two dungeons.  Easily double or triple wait compared to everything before it.  I hope this doesn't mean everything 2.1-2.5 is gonna have a long ass queue for DPS. 

[Bebpo]

Wait a second, you can't sleep in your own bed?

I've been looking forward to reaching lvl.50 and saving up gil to buy my own room so instead of always going to the inn to log out I could have my own private room at my FC estate where I could do that.  After the credits ended I went and bought my room and then went to the AH and bought a bed and put it down and...you can't interact with the bed??!?  You still have to go to the inn every time to log out?  Noooooooooooooooooooooooo

Noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

Alright, I'm totally over housing in that case.  The only advantage it seems is if I can buy a pot and grow my own chocobo feed?  Since I don't have gardening privileges at the FC

[Bebpo]

Alright, bought a table and 2 flower pots and some soils and seeds.  Now I've stuff planted so my 300k room is now worthwhile.  I should figure out which seeds create actual useful items like chocobo stat raising stuff.

So uh, story-ending-wise 2.0 MSQ...was ok?  Kinda generic.  I felt like the story stuff in Mor Dhana where you're doing the rescue mission and the aftermath with the 3 GCs meeting regarding the ultimatum was definitely the story high point after some good stuff in Coerthas.  Then the end was like "ok, go fight the final dungeon and beat the bosses and yay the end".  Characters like Nero in the red armor felt really undercooked.  I'm wondering if this is because the empire storyline was a leftover from 1.0 and some of the character development for characters like Nero and Gaius was back in 1.0 because this totally did feel like jumping into a sequel without having played the original when it came to the empire story stuff.  The other stuff was fine though.

Overall the journey was fun and the game and world of Eorza grew on me a lot.  I find it a nice world to go around and fish, talk to npcs, go on quests, gamble, relax, do fates.  The 2.0 MSQ kinda feels like a Trails in the Sky FC game, like here is the basic kinda boring tale that's only the beginning of a much larger story.

Will start sifting through the lvl.50 stuff at this point.  Will check out all the optional things before getting back to the 2.1 MSQ.  I might buy a stupid $2 third retainer as I'm really running out of space.  My first retainer holds all my craftable items and my second retainer holds all my gear & materia but both are basically full and I don't know what stuff I should keep or sell since I actually plan to level up my crafting jobs so I might want some of these items either for GC turn in, levequest turn in, or for crafting.  On the gear I'm kinda hesistant to get rid of gear since I'll probably take other classes from 1-60 some day and even the sub lvl.30 gear could be useful.  Also my fishing stuff takes up a lot of room with all my catches.  I'll see how long I can manage with just these two.  Or maybe I'll stop being a hoarder and just sell my whole inventory since at this point I doubt any of my items are worth much.

Another random thought is that I do enjoy the complexity of playing a good Ninja at lvl.50.  Like I was worried that single character combat would be boring and shallow, but it's complex enough at the high levels that it keeps it interesting and fun.

And my total game time at this point is 133 hours but I took my time.  I can imagine that if you only leveled a single class/job and didn't spend so much time fishing or playing triple triad you could probably get through the 2.0 MSQ in like 80-100 hours.  133 hours puts it about on par with the longest rpg I've ever played which was Xenoblade which was basically an offline MMO.  After that is FFXII at around 110 hours which again was basically an MMO and then Persona 5 at 103 hours which breaks the trend by not being an offline MMO and just being a long story game.  But yeah, these offline/online MMO games can be pretty lengthy with all their quests and big worlds.

[Lucretius]

You are now ready for the best side story questline in any game ever.  FFXIV's single best contribution to FF lore.

Talk to Wymond at Ul'dah - Steps of Nald (x9, y8)

Accept the quest called "The Rise and Fall of Gentlemen"



Seriously, take a break from MSQ and whatever else you think you like about this game and do the Hildebrand side story quests now.

[Positive Touch]

yayyyy you beat the intro! welcome to the real game man

[Bebpo]

Btw, is there any loot in the final 2 dungeons of MSQ?  Because even when it jumped back to gameplay I never saw a loot notification once in either dungeon.

Also for all the talk about the mess of cutscenes in dungeons, it really wasn't a problem for the 2nd to last dungeon.  I was able to join all the fights and watch all the cutscenes.  I feel like I got the whole boring experience (that dungeon was super boring and even the cutscenes were super boring).  It's the final dungeon that yeah is a fucking mess and I should replay it and do the fights. 

[Lucretius]

no loot in final MSQ dungeons

[The Legend of Sunblade]

The only reason to run those two dungeons again is your new main scenario roulette, which gives you experience towards level 60 and tomestones of poetics: currency that you can trade at mor dohna for i120 gear you can use at level 50.

[Bebpo]

If I do daily roulettes and get to 60 before I even start heavensward, is that gonna kinda OP the MSQ?  Wondering if I should do my daily roulette with my alt Paladin at this point so I don't get too strong prior to Heavensward.

Also, with triple triad once you play an NPC once the marker over their head goes away, even if you didn't get their unique card they drop.  Is there anyway to easily located NPCs you can play triple triad with after the first time?  Because I probably played every npc with a symbol over their head once, but I didn't play them enough to get their drops and I probably need to do that to get to 60 cards.

So with Chocobo Racing, when I register for a race and get the commence pop up thing, am I actually racing against other humans or is it npcs?  Because I keep getting first place in chocobo races and I can't tell if I'm good and beating other humans or whether I'm just racing easy npcs.

Just did Wanderer's Palace tonight (was ok, bosses seemed kinda simple, was expecting more scary Tonberrys) and mostly casino stuff (got the casino lvl.50 weapon).  Also sent my adventurer squad off on their first mission.  Do you get any good rewards from doing adventurer squad missions?  *edit* yeah I just read a bunch of pages on adventurer squadrons online and none of them say what rewards you get.  If it's going to cost GC seals to send these guys on missions to level up...what do I get out of it?  Because right now GC seals are precious for me and I never have enough.

[The Legend of Sunblade]

You arent going to get to 60 before you reach 3.0. Not unless you do nothing but roulette every day without actually progressing in the MSQ. Even then, dungeons will level sync you to their appropriate level when you do them, so you aren't going to be overpowered for anything. If else, it'll put you ahead of the curve so you can do all of 3.x without having to wait to level up.

There is no way to get the npc icons back for triple triad. It's kind of annoying. Best to use a third party site that lets you log in with your character so you can keep track of your card collection.

In chocobo racing, if the racer has a green name, it's an npc. If it's blue, it's another player. You probably won't get many players until you reach the higher tiers, which is where the 5 people that still do racing are.

You can get good rewards from your squadron, but it's probably not worth investing in right now for you. Later dungeons drop gear that you can turn into thousands of GC Seals at a time, so raising your squadron and buying stuff with them becomes less of an issue.

Wanderer's Palace and Amdapor Keep were the two original endgame dungeons for level 50 players. The former isn't as scary anymore due to being out geared (the expected Ilvl for that dungeon is i55, but newbies are given free i90 gear now), but the stalker tonberry used to one shot anyone that wasn't a tank. Amdapor Keep's second boss used to be the fight that separated good parties from bad parties, but it's since also been outgeared AND nerfed to not be a total headache.

Make sure you go back to the Waking Sands at some point. You'll have unlocked the hard mode versions of certain primal fights, as well as the extreme difficulty once you beat /those/. But not before doing what lucretius said and checking out that quest. 

[Bebpo]

Thanks for info!  Yeah, I was wondering about that whole free i90 gear set with lvl 50 job quest amd if originally that was not the case because it does seem like a pretty big free jump and makes certain stuff kinda irrelevant (like the i70 gear in PVP).

Speaking of PVP, I tried getting in the queue to try it out and haven't actually had it pop yet.  Estimated wait times are huge.

[Positive Touch]

pvp is really only doable in evenings and weekends. even then it's really just the frontline roulette. I think to do stuff like the feast you need to queue with a party of four.

[Lucretius]

Originally, the i90 gear you get from your class quests was only i50 gear (and slightly different in color).

And seriously, stop doing PvP and Chocobo racing (I've never even tried racing!) and go do the Hildebrand quest line... like... right now.

[Bebpo]

Yeah, yeah I'll get to it :p
Better not hype it up too much, I've seen some good comedy quests in rpgs in my days (Tales is good for that).

I don't care about pvp but as I content tourist, since I did the GC quest to unlock it, I want to try it at least once to see what it's like.  I try to check out everything possible system in the game to see how it is.  Like I tried Lord of Vermillion and it was the worst thing ever in the game so I will never do that again.  And I bought some pots and planted some seeds to check out gardening.

But you should try Chocobo Racing.  It's actually pretty fun in a janky ps1 game throwback way.  I only race like one race every few days when I'm hanging in the Casino (which is my favorite place in the game to chill at), but I'm having fun and I keep getting first (though I guess against all npcs lol).

As for overleveling, I mainly asked because I'm already hitting 51 and I haven't even started 2.1.  Like I'm taking a break from going to the Walking Sands and starting the next MSQ for a bit as I sift through all these new "+" quests and dungeons that have unlocked + still doing dailies.  But yeah it's fine.  I'll stick with my NIN until 60 and then I'll give my Paladin my dailies for the xp instead at that point.  I mainly do dailies for GC seals since I don't need the xp, but 2k seals a day is nice.  And now that I'm chilling more I'm doing my daily turn ins at the GC the level all of my crafting/gathering classes without having to actually play as them.  It's just like a half level per day, but it's helping.  And I'm starting to use the Ixali daily turn ins for leveling crafters as well.

Yeah if I run my 3 daily dungeon roulettes, my 3 mini-cacpots, my GC turn ins, my Ixali turn ins, water my plants, check on my ventures and send them on new missions, now do the same with adventurer squad, that's like 2-3 hours of stuff to do before I do anything each day.  Not they I do all that every day, but usually do some as I do other stuff.  It's why the game's gonna take me a while :p

Can you craft your own housing furniture?  Like with Carpenter?

[The Legend of Sunblade]

Almost every crafting job has its own housing tab with stuff that they can make. The big brunt of it is on carpenter though, yeah.

[Bebpo]

That's cool.  I'm not really inclined to spend Gil on furnishings since they're just visual and I can use money now for equip & leveling crafters through leves.

But if I can build some stuff for my room that'd be fun.

[Positive Touch]

you can also use gc seals to get some furniture too

[Lucretius]

The Hildebrand quests unlock three 8-man trials which are pretty fun, especially if your a fan of SNES era FF games. You also get a couple minions from the Hildebrand trials.

[Bebpo]

you can also use gc seals to get some furniture too

I need my seals though

Keeping up with GC seals has been the hardest grind so far actually.  Still don't have enough to get the lvl 50 weapon yet.  Maybe tonight after dailies.

I got the lvl 50 weapon from casino, but GC one is better.

[Positive Touch]

what are you spending them on? just new gear?

[Bebpo]

what are you spending them on? just new gear?

Upgrading to the next promotion.  Each time costs more and more and if don't keep promoting then the items will always be behind my level.  So to even have stuff at my level available for purchase I need to always be at max rank GC at the time, which is tough.  Next promotion is like 9K+ seals.

[The Legend of Sunblade]

Three more things to note:

1.The 2.x MSQ progression was altered so you are now handed new gear sets as you do the story. So long as you keep up with the MSQ, you won't have to worry about gear: you can either replace it with HQ stuff from the market board or Tomestone of Poetics gear to replace in Mor Dohna.

2. Talk to Wiscard in Mor Dhona (x22,y6) to unlock Glamour Prisms. They're the best way to get rid of any ugly sets of clothing you might run into.

3. Make sure to pay attention to the average item level for any new dungeons you unlock. You pretty much have free reign to the entire gammut of level 50 2.X dungeons, but obviously not all of them are made equal. You'll have an easier time tackling them once you reach that average.

[Bebpo]

Ok, I had a half day off today so in the past 4-5 hours I went around and grabbed every single lvl.50 "+" quest I could find in the world and followed the questlines until they hit a duty finder dungeon/trial so I could get all that stuff unlocked and then just do them when I feel like it.  This included starting the Hildebrand quest and I also started the 2.1 MSQ and did the first quest just to get started (and grabbed the Ifrit (hard) trial in Duty Finder).

The entire time I was doing this I had the duty finder looking for a PvP match on The Fold.  As you can see by this screenshot, the only PvP available to me is a matched party on The Fold and Frontlines.  I know I can get into Frontlines no problem because of the daily roulette so I'm saving that for later.



Now at the end of my session, I still never got into The Fold ^^;  Here is my wait time:



At this point for "The Fold" I think I'm just gonna youtube a video of it to see what it is and why there is not a single person playing it across 10,000+ people on every server   


But yeah, now that I think I unlocked everything available I've got like 10+ dungeons  to jump into, ~7 being hard modes and ~3 new ones.  Also have the Ifrit (hard) trial and a few more steps to get the Crystal Tower raid.  Also on my way in Hildebrand and the Relic Weapon quests.  Definitely got a lot of stuff!  This should take me a week or two for sure at a casual pace and then I'll do the 2.1-2.5 MSQ.

Oh, got the GC lvl.50 Ninja weapon which is i70.  My character is like i74 right now I think after I bought a lvl.i120 ring with my poetic tomes in Mor Dhona + job gear.

Btw, I like some of these "sequel" stories for the dungeons (hard).  I thought it'd just be like "here's a hard mode version", but it's like a continuation of the plot event from the first time you went which is cool.  My favorite story of them so far is the followup to the newbie adventurers in Tam-Tam where the guy got decapped and the girl kept his head and now we're following up on what happened to them with this hard mode version.

[The Legend of Sunblade]

You will never get into the Fold. That was the first PVP arena, a small tight circle limited to only 4 on 4 teams, and has since been completely replaced by The Feast, which is a significant improvement. No one queues for it because you don't get anything out of it anymore: there's not even a tomestone reward for participation like there is for the other modes.

Tamtara hard mode features one of the best told stories in all of Final Fantasy. Enjoy it. 

[Bebpo]

I get that The Fold has been replaced, but The Feast is a lvl.60 thing so that locks PvP behind lvl.60.  Not a big deal, I don't even like PvP, but I just wanna check out what it's like and I guess I'll see that at 60 or in Frontlines.  Frontlines roulette will probably be the first one I do next time I do roulettes.


OH, how do hunts work?  I accepted all the hunts I guess, and throughout the game I've run across lots of hunt-enemies lvl.50 unique mobs.  Most of the time there's no one there fighting them.  Like 99% of the time that is the case.  The only time I ever saw someone actually fight a mob was when I went to do a story mission and Mashes was there and bunch of you guys were fighting him.  I saw Mashes like 5 other times in the story all alone.  So since I don't have a big group to coordinate hunts with, can I do them with just me & my chocobo?  Like the B-rank hunts at least?  Or do I need to get into a party finder hunting group or something?

[Lucretius]

I've been playing this game for like three years and have never gotten into The Fold.

[Positive Touch]

the fold is just a simple deathmatch mode.  most rounds are over in under 3 min and then it's back to the queue

i can try and introduce you to this hunt linkshell im a part of, although it might be full. tbh it prolly wouldn't be very useful to you now since most ppl hunt 3.0 monsters. in general you can solo a b rank monster, prolly will need help with an a rank, and you'll need a huge party for s ranks but you'll see half of eorzea flood the map when one of those pops. 

[The Legend of Sunblade]

Hunts are separated into 3 tiers:

B rank - They're the smaller unique mobs that don't aggro unless attacked. You don't get a reward for killing them unless you get the weekly alliance hunt assignment at your GC station. These can be solo'd once you reach ~i100, maybe even earlier. They respawn minutes after you kill them.

A rank - These are like Maahes, whom you know. They're bigger, and they aggro on sight even when unprovoked. Impossible to solo at level 50, but you can do so at 60 with a high enough item level, though they still have a lot of hp to whittle away. These have a 24 hour respawn timer after they're killed.

S rank - These are huge monsters that have to be killed in parties, not soloable at all. They require specific spawn conditions and triggers that are sometimes controllable by players, sometimes random. These have a much longer respawn timer, so you'll usually see the area chat spammed with INVITE PLEASE if someone spawns it.

Both A and S ranks give tomestone rewards and allied seals for killing them. Joining a hunt party at level 50 isn't recommended because they'll often be zipping around to Heavensward areas, which feature tougher level 60 Hunts to kill.

Also, I keep telling you, but go check a marketboard out to get a new weapon. You don't have to rely on GC gear at all and can easily outfit yourself in i115 gear that'll last you up until you start getting poetics gear to replace it.

[Bebpo]

the fold is just a simple deathmatch mode.  most rounds are over in under 3 min and then it's back to the queue

i can try and introduce you to this hunt linkshell im a part of, although it might be full. tbh it prolly wouldn't be very useful to you now since most ppl hunt 3.0 monsters. in general you can solo a b rank monster, prolly will need help with an a rank, and you'll need a huge party for s ranks but you'll see half of eorzea flood the map when one of those pops.

Ok, I'll try to solo the B ranks and I will ask people in the FC for help if I need it on A ranks.  When I get to S ranks someday I'll figure something out.  I like our FC but the only problem if there's usually like 3-8 people online max.  I think there's definitely some advantage of being part of a huge active FC with 100+ people online at any given time since if you need help on a hunt or something you can just ask in the FC and there's a good chance someone out of those 100 people will come and help you out.

But if there's room in your hunt linkshell yeah I'd appreciate an invite

Both A and S ranks give tomestone rewards and allied seals for killing them. Joining a hunt party at level 50 isn't recommended because they'll often be zipping around to Heavensward areas, which feature tougher level 60 Hunts to kill.

Well, I probably won't be using this for a bit then.

Btw, how do you area chat?  Like if a see someone with a cool chocobo and I want to say "cool chocobo" with specifically telling that person, do I use "say" and type it out and people in the vicinity will see it?

[The Legend of Sunblade]

/say is limited to your immediate vicinity. This is the default option when you don't change your chat options.
/shout sends the message to everyone in the zone.
/yell is... the same as shout but in a different color. I dunno, I've never used it.

[Bebpo]

Cool, thanks for the chat explanations.

Also, I keep telling you, but go check a marketboard out to get a new weapon. You don't have to rely on GC gear at all and can easily outfit yourself in i115 gear that'll last you up until you start getting poetics gear to replace it.

I don't really want to go and buy i115 gear right away.  That kind of takes away from the intended progression through the 2.1-2.5 content imo.  I'm fine being at ilvl.70-80 and slowly going up as I complete the dungeons and MSQ and get new pieces that bring me up to that level.  Being at i115 would just make these lvl.50 dungeons even more of a pushover than they already are at ilvl.74.  For me getting to the highest level and having the highest ilevel gear isn't something I'm interested in, like a lot of people seemed focused on "how does this help me get the strongest armor/weapon/xp for the best maxed out character?" and so they don't do activities in the world like fishing and stuff because unlike crafting it doesn't really have some endgame min/max efficiency.  Like even with crafting, most people I've seen just do it for the $$$ farm, but when I craft it's because it's cool making something.  Not really interested in selling stuff on the marketplace.  I'm more in it for the casual content tourist stuff, no rush to get to the top ilevels.  At ilvl.74 I'm already above a good chunk of the average ilevel for lvl.50 dungeons and by doing them I'm sure I'll get above the rest.  No rush.

Also I'm not using my GC seals on gear, I just wanted the lvl.50 weapon and it was pretty cheap at 7k seals.  I'm planning on using my extra GC seals for my Adventurer Squad and the crafting/gathering books that give +50xp for a couple hours.

[Positive Touch]

yell is for spamming messages when you want to annoy the shit out of people

[Bebpo]

Came down sick this week, so since I don't feel up to multiplayer I've been working on my crafting & fishing.  Got fishing to 26, learned all about the dreaded Mulch and double Mulch and I will be market buying all those fish that require that.  On crafting, got my Goldsmith to 18, Culinarian to 15.  Looking forward to getting materia melding at 19.  Gonna get the rest of my crafting jobs to 15 to get their cross-class skill.

So now that I'm into crafting/fishing heavily, yeah I think they need one more interesting gameplay system for leveling.  Because they live, breathe and die by levequests.  Like between every 5 levels when there's a new class quest there's doing the same 3-4 levequests over and over, the same handful Ixali craft dailies over and over, GC daily turn ins and Ixali turn ins and that's it.  Actually crafting/fishing gives way too slow drip of xp gain so it ends up being repeating the same 3-4 leves over and over for an hour or two per 5 levels. 

Now crafting & fishing are still pretty fun and kinda useful, but they could really do to add a fates like thing to give another way to get xp after dailies.

And don't get me started on levequests for mining/botany.  Those are not fun at all and the reason I'm never gonna get those two classes up too high.  They really should've been item turn in quests like fishing & crafting.  Not this "spawn a bunch of nodes, go pick them for 2-5 mins" zzzz time waster stuff.  Like with fishing you can fish whenever you want and then a lot of times you'll have what the leves ask for when you start them, it's convienent.

[Bebpo]

So while I'm fishing I'm in the queue for the daily roulette for Frontlines so I can try it out once.  I figure since it's a daily roullete it should be easy to get into.

55 mins and counting now...

[Positive Touch]

weird. it usually takes about 15 minutes for me

[Bebpo]

Hmmm, at 80 mins now.  You think it's a level thing since you're 60 and everyone else these days is 60 and I'm 50?

[Positive Touch]

if it's anything, it's prolly that

[Bebpo]

Yeah after 2 and a half hours I gave up on Frontline and just did normal roulette and it went fine.  I guess I'm fine never checking out PvP.

[Bebpo]

Did Ifrit (hard) and that was fun!  Had a lot more attacks and was way more interesting than the original fight.  Went in blind and still did fine.  Does the character model for Ifrit change between the difficulties?  Looks more on fire in hard mode version but it might just be me seeing things.  I felt like the original Ifrit fight was not very Ifrit-ish and he looked more like FF8's diablo.  If he gets more and more on fire each difficulty that's cool.

I also won the loot and got a lvl.60 conjurer cane.  Should I just trade it in for some GC seals or can I like give it to some one who might want it?  I traded in my silver chocobo feathers for a lvl.120 Ninja weapon so now I'm at i84 job level.  It seems like the easy access to i120 everything makes all the loot pre-120 useless?

I'm doing the questline now to unlock the crystal tower raid so I can check out my first 24 man raid.  Pretty fun questline so far.  I kinda feel like these large amounts of beast tribe overworld dungeon bases have been totally unused in the main game, so it was fun going through all of them.

Also I don't really get how the hunt system works.  Like I find the hunts on the map and they have a little red man over their head which means they are a hunt.  But like do I have to accept the hunt at the GC first?  And can I accept multiple hunts at a time or just one?  I tried fighting some lvl.50 hunt mobs and died with just me and my chocobo ><

[Positive Touch]

basically yeah.

and trade in that Ifrit weapon for seals bc it's useless as a weapon

[Bebpo]

Ok, I think I get hunts now.  The tough part is finding people to help kill them.  When I find one on a map that's an "A" rank, should I shout/yell it's location and wait a few mins to see if anyone shows?  Also so the "B" rank stuff is basically every week there are like 5 "B" hunts and I go and kill them with the little red man icon over their head and then I cash in after I get that.

What's a daily hunt?  How does that differ from the weekly hunts posted on the board at the GC?

Oh, I think I get it.  So the B mark hunts are posted daily and you have 1 day to kill all 5 of them and get the reward
And the Elite "A" rank hunt is posted weekly and you get seals/cash if you kill it that week

And then on top of this, those B and A ranks exist and spawn around every area, so even if they aren't your weekly or daily posted hunt, you can still run into them and fight them if you want.  And the red person icon over their head is how you differentiate the ones that are on your daily/weekly hunt list vs all the lvl.50 marks that are not on your list.

[Bebpo]

Ok, now I'm reading conflicting stuff that says the A rank mob is a daily?  So what's the weekly then?  For instance what I'm seeing in Loma as an Elite Mark is Melt the flying bee.  I looked him up and he's listed as an A rank.  The normal bills are like normal B rank standard enemy mobs.

Doesn't help that most of the google results I'm seeing about hunts are from soon after patch 2.35, so I'm guessing things have changed a bit since.

[Bebpo]

Hmm, I'm also seeing something about some of the B rank mobs being FATES bosses?  I think I may have killed one this evening in a fate but I figured it wasn't a hunt because it was a fate.

Also I can't wait until my chocobo gets cure, as a DPS it's hard to solo stuff because my DEF isn't great and I can't really heal.  My chocobo levels sloooooow.  I've been fighting with him for like a 100 hours and he's only rank 2 and getting closer to rank 3.  All he can do is cast regen on me and get a few hits in on the enemy   When he starts curing me I'll be able to do a lot more solo for sure.

[The Legend of Sunblade]

I posted the explanation at the top of the page.   

The hunts with the red marks are A ranks. The red mark is there to show you that it will aggro on sight. The ones that you can kill 5 a day of are just daily marks (some of these can be fate bosses), they aren't ranked hunts. There's a separate weekly hunt for the actual B Rank hunts that you can actually solo, whom all have blue, passive icons next to their name.

Ok, now I'm reading conflicting stuff that says the A rank mob is a daily?  So what's the weekly then?  For instance what I'm seeing in Loma as an Elite Mark is Melt the flying bee.  I looked him up and he's listed as an A rank.  The normal bills are like normal B rank standard enemy mobs.

Doesn't help that most of the google results I'm seeing about hunts are from soon after patch 2.35, so I'm guessing things have changed a bit since.

Melt is this thing:


That's an A rank hunt. The B rank Bee hunt is this thing:



Weekly hunt bills will only ever ask for B ranks. You don't need them to get rewards from a and S ranks.

The reason you're not getting a queue for Frontlines is also probably your level, yeah. There's like three different frontlines maps, with two of them being level 60 only, so queueing at 50 means you're waiting for only the one map to fill up. Frontlines queues are long enough as they are.

[Bebpo]

Oh, ok yeah so that was a B rank stinging sophie that I saw.

Alright I'm still kinda confused.  What's the difference between the "5 marked bills" hunts and the "elite bill" hunt is the elite bill is a B rank?  Aren't the 5 marked bill enemies also B rank?  The difference is that the 5 part one are easier?  And they are daily?  Whereas the elite bill is a weekly? 

So then all of the bills on the hunt log at the GC are solo B rank or below?

Does this mean there are no "bills" for the A rank/S rank hunts?  You just see them and then grab a group and go kill them and get loot?


And I did read and re-read your post on the top of the page along with like 10 google hit pages.  I feel like this is not really well explained. 

[The Legend of Sunblade]

Yeah, the daily things you can kill are not ranked hunts. They're just generic mobs you can kill for easy spare seals. It's always three generic enemies and two fate bosses among those.

Rank B hunts like Sophie don't give rewards at all unless you have the weekly mission for them. Rank A/S hunts give rewards based on how much you contributed to killing it, no bill required.

[Bebpo]

Got it.  Thanks it all makes sense now.

So like I'm trying to go after a white bill (FATE) for daily that's in raincatcher gully (small area, should be easy to find) and I spent like 20 mins running around it and never found it.  Do the fate ones have different timers than the every 5 mins timers on the non-Fate three dailies?

Also I redid the final two dungeons of 2.0 skipping cutscenes and playing the whole thing with the teams.  The one before the final dungeon was more fun with a team this time.  I still never figured out how to launch the cannons.  On the final dungeon, was fun as a team, especially the magitek armor ride part.  But jeezus we melted everything including every boss in under a minute.  The only boss that gave some trouble was the final form Ultima Weapon with the tons of blue magitek lasers shooting around making it hell for DPS, but we still won with no deaths.  The final final boss after that...uhhh was that supposed to be just a "everyone gangs up on him and kills him in 20 seconds" fight?  From the cutscenes I kinda thought he'd be some epic final fight at the end but it was the total opposite.

[The Legend of Sunblade]

FATEs aren't on a timer, but there is a max to the number of fates that can spawn in an entire zone, with some FATEs taking longer to respawn than others. If you aren't actively doing Fates in the area, it can take a while for the specific one you want to pop (cause you're waiting for all the others to time out).

Yes, Lahabrea is a complete joke. It's more like the relaxing downhill slope after the real "tough" fight that is Ultima Weapon, with Hyadelin herself backing you up. The bosses for those dungeons were never particularly tough, they just took longer cuz the average Ilvl at the time was i50 (though Nero was fun cause he knocks everyone around the electrified arena).