Tuesday June 23rd marks the official release of Heavensward the first true expansion to Final Fantasy XIV A Realm Reborn. However a large number of players have been actively playing the game since Friday June 19th due to the games pre-order Head Start program. As one of those players I have been reveling in the amazing new content, and spending every waking moment trying to push forward into this brand new story. There have been some things to get adjusted to however, and I thought I would talk about some of the things you should expect going into Heavensward.
One of the key issues over the last few days since the head start is that if you happen to play on the Aether Data Center like I do, you should expect to have some issues getting logged in. I hate to lead off this article with something negative, but more than anything I want to prepare players for this possible eventuality. This morning there was a minor hotfix, but in reading through the notes I did not see anything that specifically addressed this issue. Essentially the issue that is currently happening is upon trying to connect to the Aether Data Center, due to congestion that connection times out while waiting on an empty spot on the login server. The end result is a 2002 error which ultimately closes the client to the desktop, forcing you to log in again. My sincere hope is that they have managed to create a fix for this, but since we had to deal with this all through head start I am ultimately expecting to experience it tonight with the official launch. Sadly the only remedy is to keep trying until you manage to get into the character select screen. Generally speaking if you see your character you have “won” at defeating the “login server boss”.
Traditionally when an MMO announces a new expansion they have it riddled with features that you will only get, if you purchase a copy. The goal generally is to make the content appeal to all players, not just the maximum level ones. Heavensward on the other hand is something slightly new, and is quite possibly the first “optional” expansion I have seen since the early days of Everquest. Square Enix made the somewhat unusual decision of not only requiring a player to be maximum level, but also requiring them to have completed all of the main story content through the last patch 2.55. As a result everything but the new Au Ra race requires players to have completed the previous content. To make life a little easier for players they’ve made some effort to streamline some of the quests as well as scattering some significant gear rewards through them so that once a player reaches the end they have sufficient gear to be able to survive in the cold North. If you are still new to the game however, you can ultimately put off the purchase of this expansion until you have reached the end of the current content, and Square Enix seems to be perfectly okay with this.
What this unorthodox approach has managed to purchase Square is that the content feels far more relevant than most expansions do. Traditionally in an MMO expansion there is a reset, not only of gear but also of the current state of the story. As a result everything the players achieved during the last expansion are whisked away in favor of starting them back at square one against a new conflict. This is not how Heavensward works, and in fact the quest chain begins exactly where the previous one left off. It has been a while since 2.55 so just to remind you, you will need to return to the room in Coerthas at Camp Dragonhead in order to talk to the NPCs contained within and begin the new story content. The result is a very rich experience as the game continues seamlessly with the conflicts that were in place at the end of “A Realm Reborn”, and forcing you to deal with those while at the same time pushing forward into this undiscovered territory.
One of the key problems with traditional expansions is that they often take place in a vacuum. Upon stepping through the gates of the new area, there is little to no reason to return to the old world other than to take care of a bit of commerce. Since “A Realm Reborn” and “Heavensward” are so tightly integrated you will be asked to return to the places you visited in the past to continue dealing with the conflicts and issues that arise there. One of the excellent things to date with Final Fantasy XIV is that they seem to have a desire to make content continue to matter, regardless of where the players are in their progression. As a result the old cities like Gridania are still bustling with players, as well as the brand new cities like Ishgard. The introduction of three new classes that begin the game at level 30, helps greatly in making sure that folks are still running the older content. This however has had a strange result, largely that as a tank my queue times are now fairly long due to the influx of brand new Dark Knights, and for DPS the queue times are seemingly instant as Machinist has not proven as popular as the Ninja was.
One of the things that is less than obvious in this expansion is that your Class quests pick up essentially where they left off. Upon purchase of the expansion you will have a level 50 quest waiting at your previous class trainer that will ultimately take you through to a new trainer that will serve you through the course of Heavensward. The location of these varies just as greatly as the location of your original Job trainers did. After your level 50 quest, you will need to return every two levels to complete another quest which will reward you a new ability. For example my Warrior gained the brand new DPS stance Deliverance at 52, and then the first ability to use stacks of Abandon at 54. Each class gets new and exciting abilities every two levels, as well as a decent chunk of experience. Once you get knee deep in the storyline, it is easy to forget about these so just remember that every even level you will need to return and complete a new class quest.
One of the features of the game that has been extremely anticipated is the ability to take flight on the back of a chocobo or other mount. In the Final Fantasy franchise the Black Chocobo is known for being the only member of the normally flightless species that has the ability to take to the skies. In Heavensward they continue this tradition by giving you a Black Chocobo mount early during the story content. The problem being that in order to fly in a given region you have to master the Aetheric Currents. In order to do this you have to collect a sequence of Aether nodes scattered throughout the zone, and locked behind quest content. Some of these nodes will be located behind jumping puzzles, and others will be placed in plain sight. In order to help find them they give you an item called the Aether Compass that tells you the location and direction of the nearest node to your location. The reality is that in order to find them all you will have to explore every crevice of the zone and complete a good chunk of the zone content. In each of the zones I have progressed through, I have learned to fly just moments before moving to the next zone. This means that essentially your first time through a zone you will be grounded, but on subsequent characters you will be able to zip around the area freely, striking a solid balance in the normal “flight system” dilemma of allowing players to “skip” content.
During all of the content leading up to the launch of Heavensward we have seen pictures of the very first dungeon called Dusk Vigil. However this dungeon is not tied directly to the main storyline like so many other dungeons were in “A Realm Reborn”. This has lead to some confusion among myself and some of the other players pushing through the new content, in trying to figure out what the requirements are for unlocking it. Essentially there are two separate constraints, firstly that you have reached a certain point in the storyline as to unlock the “Camp of the Convictors”. The second constraint is that you have to have reached level 51 on your current battle class, which should allow you to see a side quest called “For All the Nights to Come” from the NPC Wealdtheow. Completing this quest will open up access to Dusk Vigil, and completing the dungeon will give you what is likely to be your last Aether Current for the zone. For point of reference the dungeon drops level 110 items, with unique graphics making it well worth your time to run multiple times.
This should be enough information to get you started in Heavensward, but I thought I would make a few closing remarks. One of the quirks of Final Fantasy XIV is that you have a limited number of quests available in the game. As a result I have taken a very specific strategy to doing content in this expansion that I wish I had during the last. Essentially in the main storyline you will reach a point where you cannot progress further without reaching the next level. Generally speaking until I reach this point, I only do side quests that allow me access to Aether Currents, or reward gear that I am going to use immediately. When I reach one of these level gates I then do a combination of FATEs and side quests until I reach the next level allowing me to progress forward. So far this has worked pretty well for me, and is also going to leave me a significant number of side quests to help along the next job I plan on leveling. The awesome thing about this expansion is that the storyline is what is ultimately driving me forward. Since we are just continuing the story from the last area, I am still extremely invested in my party and as a result want to know what is going to happen next. It reminds me of reading a really good novel that you just cannot put down, because I want to keep pushing forward into the next area so that I can learn what happens next. I sincerely hope you will find this expansion as compelling as I have thus far, and next week I will try and address more issues that I happen to find along the way.
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