These mounts are quite easy to get. Just about 3 weeks doing Ananta Beast Tribe Quests after finishing Stormblood. These quests take about 10-15 minutes each day, except for the special quests when you Rank up. Only one of the quests is at all challenging. There is a solo duty along the way that requires some care in the battle. The first mount available is the Marid Elephant.
And then at Bloodsworn you can get the Griffon.
Of course there are other Bird mounts in the game, but personally, I like the griffon. The Lanner [Falcon] mounts are nice and usually have glowing effects, but they are “birds” and so run on two legs, which is a little jarring on the ground. The griffon runs on four legs and so has a smoother ride on the ground.
I suggest you complete Stormblood and get flight in Gyr Abania before starting these quests, then just leave your character at the Peering Stones crystal to do the quests each day. The terrain is much easier to traverse on flying mounts, so waiting until you can fly in this zone will save a lot of time.
Check your market board, I’ve seen prices as low as 1000 gil, but other worlds show prices in the 17K gil range. So check and maybe use Wandering to get a better price. Anything at 2000 gil or less sounds like a bargain to me.
Mount Quickly Using Hot Keys
Maybe this is obvious. But you might want to use a Hot Bar to allow you to quickly use the mount of your choice. I have several mounts that I sometimes choose. For speed of mounting I typically bind the middle mouse [M3] button to a tool bar, like the Right Most button of the second Tool Bar. But I wanted a system so I could easily choose a water, land, flying, or a mount for more than one person. In Guild Wars 2 where choosing the right mount is more important, the hot keys are on the num pad. So I set that up in FFXIV too.
I use some Tool Bars to the right of the screen. Notice Tool Bars 10, 9, 8 at the bottom right. I bind the Num Pad to these keys. You cannot bind Enter on the Num Pad, because that’s the same key as the normal Enter key, and you need that to open the Chat Window. Notice the little symbols in the tool bar that indicate they are bound to the keypad. So I can choose among the Multi-player Whale mounts, the Ray mount for use under water and the Lanner mounts for flying. Where I can’t fly yet I can easily use a land mount. While all the mounts can fly, of course, I like a Terrestrial mount when I’m not flying and a Ray when I’m swimming.
I ran into an issue with an error message when I tried to bind Enter on the numpad. The issue is that the game requires binding three of the keys. You can find the ones that are required in the System section. But if you unset the Num Lock setting for the keypad, then you’ll be able to bind the keys to the tool bars.
You might like to do this. I first used a similar scheme in Guild Wars 2 where the different mounts behave differently and the choice of mounts is really more important, but I’m liking it here in FFXIV too.
While doing some events in a Sand Storm in Dry Top, I was opening some Buried Lost Chests, I found an Adventurer’s Spectacles. When I looked them up I found that they can be used to craft a better looking Adventurer’s Mantle. I was afraid I would have to grind more chests in Sand Storms or pay a lot of gold to get them, but nope. They are cheap on the Market Board.
As you can see, a set of 3 Specs, and Scarfs doesn’t really cost that much. I guess the drop rate is pretty high from the chests. Also there are the pictures of the Light and Heavy versions. They all look the same actually. These parts are all dye-able.
So you can craft the mantles if you have Tailor, Leatherworker, or Armorsmith at about level 400. Follow the links in the Wiki for crafting instructions and use Discovery for the Recipes.
I have the Amaro mount, at long last. I started the long climb for the Amaro mount right after I got Skyscale in GW2 back in January 2021. To review, to get the Amaro, you need to level 17 jobs of War and Magic up to level 80. Not including BLU mage. It took about Eight Months. Much Much longer than the few weeks that it took to get the Guild Wars 2 Skyscale Mount.
Another thing to note is that Mounts in FFXIV are “Per Character” except for a few mounts purchased from the Store. So to have this mount on the rest of my 10 or so Alts, I would have to do the Eight Months work on each of them. Not going to happen any time soon. The last few weeks, I’ve been playing a lot of Guild Wars 2 while I logged in once per day to do Pixie quests and one run of the Main Scenario Roulette.
Not sure what’s going on. The ship stays around for a few seconds and then disappears, but appears later. Not sure the schedule or how long it really lasts.
I recently ran across a Youtube video where someone was complaining about the long effort to get a Griffon in Guild Wars 2. Griffon is the first flying mount in GW2. I won’t link the video as I’m sure he’s moved on and is now struggling with the many times longer process to get a Skyscale mount. I starting working on getting Skyscale in November 2020 and finally got it in January 2021.
As we know, different MMOs have different requirements for the use of Mounts. Let’s review:
I’m not saying that they copied each other. But it’s odd don’t you think? Shadowlands vs Shadowbringers? End Walker vs End of Dragons? All the game companies are listening to their competitors’ leaks?
Two New Jobs In New Expansions
And FFXIV Sage Barrier Healer vs GW2 Mesmer Elite Spec Virtuoso. Both with daggers and ranged attacks. Links to the video reveals on the next page, but let’s look at some images first:
GW2 Virtuoso Elite Spec for Mesmer
I wonder if the GW2 folks are going to change their virtuoso icon the same way that FFXIV needed to change the Sage Icon? The video reveal of the Virtuoso shows all the skills and animations. Compared with Sage, the Virtuoso daggers are transparent and glowy. But there’s more work to do, maybe the graphics will change before release.
FFXIV Sage Barrier Healer
Here are some pictures of the Sage Job.
We’ve seen nothing so detailed for Sage as we have for GW2 Virtuoso. But FFXIV does not tend to reveal that kind of detail before release. And there are no public beta’s. We’ll just have to wait until November 2021 for the release of End Walker. So far all we have is a visual overview with no detailed commentary.
I’ve mentioned that I’m working on the Amaro mount, which requires all the War and Magic jobs to level 80. At this point I’ve been using MSQ Roulette and Deep Dungeons to get all the jobs to level 71. This level is required both to do Shadowbringer’s dungeons and the Bozjan Southern Front. I’ve tried several strategies to level my jobs beyond 71.
The Bozjan Southern Front
The Bozjan Southern Front unlock quests required a whole day to accomplish.
The Wikis for FFXIV are a little confusing about how to unlock the BSF, but the quest chain requires at least level 80 and starts in the Kugane Markets with an NPC who starts the Return in Invalice quest line. This quest line is long and will take you into three 8 man RAIDs, but don’t let this deter you. These are basically just long 8 Man dungeons and if you have decent gear on a level 80 character, you are good to go. This is a very interesting quest line and if you study Youtube walk-throughs for the Raids before you go, then they are quite interesting. I did them as a DPS job to avoid the pressure of Tank or Healer, but your mileage may vary in this regard. And after you get to the BSN, there are two things:
You can purchase nice purple level 80 Relic Weapons for tomes.
You can level up any character above level 71 toward level 80.
There are lots of folks doing this content. Unlike my previous experience trying Eureka – another similar area at a lower level. But the leveling is hit and miss and the content is brutal. I was able to get to resistance level 9. But I have given up using the BSN to level my characters.
I saw some very interesting glamour in Heaven on High this morning and it took a while to track it down.
I found some of the pieces in the Eorzea Gearset Collection. The boots and gloves appear to be the Deepshadow Casting set from the Crystarium Nuts collection. I believe Nuts are a reward for Fates in the Shadowbringers areas.
The jacket is an Arachne Bolero – Crafted by Master Weaver II. Level 50 ilvl 110 for casters. I found on on the Market board. To achieve this look, dye it “Ink Blue” or “Soot Black”. It comes with white sleeves.
It’s time to order the Pre-Order for the Final Fantasy XIV Endwalker Expansion. The expansion is coming in November and whichever pre-order you purchase you can get some good items to help with leveling. As always, the process or ordering in the Square-Enix Store is confusing. Unlike other games, for some unknown reason, purchasing games and upgrades is very confusing.
For me, the important part of the Pre-Order is the Leveling Earring. Minions are nice, but not that important to me. This earring adds 30% XP for all content up to level 80 and is account wide. You’ll get this from the Delivery Moogle for all your characters.
Windy Weather 