Category: Final Fantasy XIV

The Uber Bird service, widely known as Chocobo Porters, are present in every city and most outposts. I recommend that you sign up at every one you see, so that you can return to them. These bird-rides are like Smart Cars, which we don’t have yet. They are at least as quick as running on your own mount, but you don’t have to steer, or worry about getting hit as you pass the bad guys.

Uber birds are most convenient as a way to return to the nearest major city. As a side benefit you can watch the scenery go by without worrying about hitting any obstacles or other players.

:ww

 

My toes are dragging. My little Lalafell has no trouble with this Carbuncle mount, but anybody else is too big for this mount.  These mounts are very nice, and it’s great that they glow. But, all the other mounts come in several sizes to fit the races. Looks like three sizes based on what we recently saw with the Holiday Bears.

 

The Lalafel on the left and the Au Ra on the right both fit their bears.

Also notice how these Chocobo mounts fit their riders:

 

The shot in the barn shows me riding the largest one since I’m Au Ra, and the fellow next to me is a Lalafell with his mount out as a companion. Looks like the little mount is about 1/2 the size of the large one.

And this wolf mount with a Lalafell rider came in some other size for a larger race. And, notice how the Carbuncle does fit the Lalafell rider.

 

 

Wonder if they will fix the Carbuncle Mount to fit all races.

:ww

Don’t forget to check out some of the side quests. While you don’t actually need them to level, even if your world is not on the “Road to 60” list, there are some that give interesting gear rewards and they aren’t nerfed like other games. In Tera, after a few changes, only the story quests give good rewards. The Zone Quests and Vanguard Requests in Tera used to give great XP, but now the Zone Quests give about 20% of a story quest and Vanguard Requests give very little XP, but give tokens that are good for gearing up. I’ve never seen what I would call Story Quests in Wow, so the quests in a zone pretty much give all the same level of rewards. Which is fine. No complaint here. 7-20 quests per level depending on your place in the game. Although, like I said, all that may change with “Level Scaling”. sigh.

Near Camp Drybone here in FFXIV, I ran across a side quest that rewards a nice weapon of level 20 for very little work. And side quests give about 1/2 the XP of the Story Quests, so two quick ones now and then can help a lot. I’ll keep my eye out for them when my gear is getting stale. Since I’m leveling pretty fast I’m not really psyched to learn and apply Materia to my gear. I’ll get back to that when I get high enough that the gear will last some time.

Continue reading “Side Quests, etc.”

Here’s some more detailed reactions to FFXIV after a few more hours playing the trial.

I’ve played all the classes available to the Trial except Rogue and Pugilist. None of them seem over powered, but they all survive fine to solo the content up to about 20 – which is as far as I’ve played. This content contains lots of quests, solo instances and several dungeons, so the game play is quite varied early on as you level.

After sending Tank, DPS and Healers through the Novice training, I found it quite useful. It concentrates on party play, which prepares you for the four man dungeons. So not only do you get nice looking gear from the tutorials, but you get some valuable lessons too.

Continue reading “Good and Bad News After Some Play”

I’m finally getting around to trying this game and I waited too long.

FFXIV was released in 2013, so it came along after the other titles, which means it can be better looking and doesn’t have a low rez legacy. Wow was released in 2004, but got new models for characters with Pandaria in 2012. Tera was released in 2011. As you can see from those character creation screens, the models are beautiful and varied.

After the nonsense with Level Scaling showed up in Wow PTR, I looked around for something else to play and FFXIV has a free trial. The trial is limited in the standard ways: no cash shop – not clear why Trial’s shouldn’t spend money on the game -, no mail, no making parties, no private chat unless they chat you first, no friending unless they friend you first, and so forth. But you can play as long as you like with up to eight characters up to level 35. So here I am.

I don’t need to do a full-on review. There is plenty of youtube footage out there and plenty of detailed reviews. But here are my general impressions.

Continue reading “Final Fantasy XIV”