Here’s another quest helper map. Writhing in the Dark is a level 50 Main Sequence Quest near Revenant’s Toll to lure and kill some Cobras. The problem is hunting around for the Cobra Nests. Here they are:
Enjoy,
:ww
My toons are level 50 plus and I’m farming “Main Sequence Scenarios” for Ironworks Gear for all my jobs. For some of the jobs, IronWorks Gear is very stylish. Paladin’s for example get nice looking black gear with blue highlights, like the rest of Ironworks gear. But Healer Gear looks like a Habit, and it’s a real drag for a man. So I decided to study up on Glamorizing my gear. In this article you’ll see that Glamours have changed. When first introduced to the game, there were three types of crystals, one for each Armor type – Cloth, Leather and Plate. But since path 4.2, it’s a much simpler system, and more accessible too. Glamour prism crafting used to unlock at level 50, but now you can unlock prism crafting at level 15, and in practice you can craft glamour crystals with two professions at about level 20, and at least one DPS job at about level 40 to farm the Wind and Ice Crystals is needed. More details later.
All the popular games have the ability to change the look of armor while leaving the stats alone. Wow calls it “Transmogrification” and Guild Wars 2 calls it Wardrobe. In Tera, there used to be a system similar to Transmog, but they removed that system and now you just wear a “Costume” that changes the look of your entire set of armor, or weapon. I guess Tera went big into “Selling” costumes to monetize the game. FFXIV sells “Costumes” too of course, they are just level 1 armor sets that can be Glamourized to any armor. You may have gotten a “Strife” armor box when you created your character.
There is a Main Scenario quest called Recruiting The Realm.
Unlike most quests in the game, it’s not obvious how to find the folks that you need to visit. Except for Alphi, who is well marked. For the other targets, only the general areas are marked on the map, and especially in Limsa Lominsa, these folks are not trivial to find. There is a page for the quest with a list of the targets with their coordinates, but this is not that easy to use either. So what I’ve done is taken a picture of the mini-map for each of the targets.
I mentioned in a previous post about what happens at level 50 and running the Castrum and Praetorium for Ironworks Armor. And I probably mentioned that it takes 30 or more minutes to queue up for this each day because I played Red Mage or Bard, which are DPS. Well, Silly Me. Healers only wait 5 minutes for these events. Duh.
I have tank jobs, but after you run this, you see that it takes a while to learn the ropes, even as a DPS. There are apparently no shortage of tanks that want to “be in charge” to run this. If I were going to run as a tank I’d need to make a map of the place and have that on another screen. The Castrum is a flat area so that would be easy, but the Praetorium is a multi-level maze, so you really need to learn to run it. I can easily keep up as a DPS or Healer, but I’m not sure I’m up for leading. Anyway, Healer’s don’t wait very long.
Once you approach level 50, your job gets a couple of quests that given them better gear. A quest at level 45 gives all the major armor pieces except the chest and the job quest at level 50 gives the chest piece.
At level 50, the Main Scenario Duty Roulette gives you access to a repeatable quest that gives Tomestones of Poetics, usually referred to as simply Poetics. These Poetics are exchanged in Revenant’s Toll for Ironworks Gear, which is item level 120, and is the most easily attainable powerful gear at this level. Each run takes about a 30 minute wait followed by 30-45 minutes for the run. The cutscenes cannot be skipped. Also each run gives a large amount of XP – usually enough to grant a level – and either 200 or an additional 200 if any member is doing the duty for the first time.
But what about the Main Scenario Quests – Heavensward expansion quests- beyond level 50? Don’t those help level? As it turns out, no, not at all.
Ok. You’ll see that this is my RANT on Professions in FFXIV. I don’t claim to be an expert and maybe I got something wrong. So what? I’ve played a lot of MMOs and if it’s so opaque and so difficult then stuff it. RANT ON.
A couple of days ago I spent most of the day leveling mining and only put 3 levels on my miner. What a waste of time. There are 70 levels in each profession. How is this not a colossal waste of time and effort for so little payoff? Just a reminder of what we are facing in professions. [Cuts from other websites are done to avoid the images disappearing when other sites change. All cuts are done with the sites name to give them credit.]
Eight Crafting and three Gathering professions. And all level to 70, presumably.
Lets start with gathering. What’s wrong?
Here are some tricks I’ve learned while leveling professions:
First, set up a cool toolbar to switch professions. I saw this one in a youtube video. Go to character options / hot bars and choose bar 7. You may like another one, but this is the one I saw used and it’s the most convenient for me.
Once you have the hotbar, then drag the items from your gear list into the hotbar and you can switch instantly between professions / jobs.
So you already have a high level job with gathering gear, right? That’s the best way to gather mats of course. And you’ll see that apparently you have to kill a few of whatever mobs before anything drops, so be patient. Odd. Never seen that described, but I didn’t get Yellow Yarzon Legs for about a dozen kills before they started dropping.
While leveling my Alchemist above level 20, I ran out of things to do. But then I found some “Housing” items.
I haven’t yet worked out how to get Guildleves which apparently are special quests for your profession. These are referenced in some guides I’ve seen, but the guy that was supposed to have them wouldn’t talk to me. More research required there.
But these items require mats that you’ve seen before except for the Dungeon Seedling from The Thousand Maws of Toko-Rak so sometime I’ll have to watch for those. Given the strangled state of housing in FFXIV, I’m not sure how these items will sell on the Market, but you get decent experience from crafting them anyway.
Oh, final tip. Use Stealth when fishing, even if you don’t think you need it.
I was fishing at Fools Falls and after a while the level 25 Fate Monster snuck up on me and killed me. Once something attacks, of course, you can’t change to your level 50 whatever and kill it since you are “In Battle”. Luckily some nice person responded to my shout and came by for a rez.
Happy Trails,
:ww
In case you haven’t tried FFXIV crafting yet, here is what it looks like. So there are a few things to note about crafting:
As you level up, and get your achievements, you get the opportunity to purchase some goodies including a sweet mount – at least I think so – and some minions and Barding for your Chocobo. By the time you get to 40-50, you’ll have enough for the mount and a minion or two. To cash in on your Achievement Certificates for the sweet rewards, see Jonathas in Old Gridania. If you are interested in Barding, look carefully before you purchase. There are some, IMHO, dumb choices like the Black Mage barding where the Chocobo is wearing a really dumb looking hat. I particularity like the Wild Rose Barding pictured below. It’s colorful and stylish rather than grotesque.
There are lots of choices for cute minions too, and based on the Wiki pages, it looks like some minions in this game actually help you fight. I have yet to see that happen, but I keep an eye out.
The Magitek Death Claw mount is actually quite nice and only costs 6 Achieve Certs, which is about 300 Achievement points. BTW, you don’t lose your points when you spend the certs. It keeps track of which points you’ve spent, but doesn’t reduce your total. Anyway, I like the mount because it’s smaller than many of the other mounts so it’s less in your way of seeing where you are going. It does make an annoying buzz while flying. And someday in a higher level area, I’m hoping it does actually fly. We’ll see.
Yes, I admit that it looks strange to be hanging from your shoulder blades under the mount. But honestly, it doesn’t hurt a bit and the ride is quite smooth.
Enjoy,
:ww
Another race/class combination has just been released for Tera – Human Male Brawler. As you may remember, Brawler was introduced as a Human Female only in keeping with the recent Gender Locked classes starting with Elin as Reaper. A few weeks ago we had an Elin Gunner released.
This practice of Gender Locking classes in Tera stands in stark contrast to Final Fantasy XIV where all races can play all classes – actually each and every character of any race can play all the classes and all the professions. In Tera of course, like most MMOs, you chose your class when you create your character and that’s it.
I started a new Brawler this evening named Charlie Nash after a Street Fighter character. Surprisingly, the Street Fighter character names are available in Tera. I would have guessed that folks would jump on those names for Brawler characters.
So if you’ve been waiting in Tera to be tough guy, now’s your chance.
Updates:
Windy Weather 