At this point we have seventeen days until the launch of Heavensward, and all throughout the Final Fantasy XIV community players are in various states of preparedness for what will ultimately be a significant change in their world. I personally have planned to take a few days off from work so that I can hit the ground running as the expansion launches and work on exploring the brand new content. There is a palpable tension in the air however as each of us realizes there is simply a limited number of hours that we have left before we finally step through the Steps of Faith and into Ishgard proper. Many players find themselves creating bucket lists of content they are hoping to be able to complete before the expansion lands. While I realize that I will not actually accomplish everything on my personal “bucket list”, I still think it is good to set up a roadmap for these remaining hours. As such this morning I thought I would share with you my own personal bucket list, in hopes that it spurs you to action in figuring out exactly how you want to spent your last few hours in Eorzea before it changes.
One of the mixed blessings of playing Final Fantasy XIV is that there is a truly silly amount of content. While the main storyline and the comedic Hilldebrand storyline both get mentioned regularly there is another story that often goes overlooked. This game has somehow managed to take the concept of a delivery quest and turn it into an adventure that helps flesh out the nooks and crannies of Eorzea. Moogles are inherently lazy and it turns out that they rely on the player characters to help sort out lost and misdelivered mail. The quest starts near the main Aetheryte crystal in Limsa Lominsa with the “Of Errand Epistles” quest and continues through a long sequence of quests eventually rewarding players with a pet and a Post Moogle cap item. I started this quest sequence some time ago, but never actually returned to it. Before I set foot in Ishgard I would really love to have finished this quest sequence.
With the recent doubling of the Tomestones of Poetics weekly cap it has become much easier for players to finish out getting their Ironworks gear sets. The first expert roulette of the day rewards the player a total 75 tomestones of poetics, but you can continue running expert dungeons for 40 poetics per instance. When the World of Darkness dungeon was released with the 2.5 patch, it offered a quick and easy path to level 120 items and I took it. The problem being that while Ironworks gear is also level 120, it can be upgraded to 130 through the use of items gained through a weekly quest. For most of this patch cycle I have been content with the 120 chestpiece and belt that I had gotten from the World of Darkness raid. However it is rumored that level 130 gear should hold players until at least level 55 in the expansion. In an effort to make sure I am ready for the new content my goal is to finish out my poetics set so that I can use it on all three of my tank classes as they level through Heavensward.
Crafting in Final Fantasy XIV is one of the most detailed and rewarding systems I have experienced in any game. It somehow strikes a middle ground between the systems that feel like they are playing you, with reactive abilities like Everquest II, and the “click and forget it” bulk crafting systems like World of Warcraft and Rift. The tradeoff however is that it is extremely intricate and time consuming. Each crafting profession relies on items created by other professions and the most optimal way of being a crafter currently is to quite literally level every single one. As a result I set out on this mission to level every disciple of the land five levels at a time. At this point I am level 21 in each and realizing that I simply do not have enough hours in the day to finish leveling all of them to 50, at least not without also quitting my job and playing Final Fantasy XIV full time. Since that is not something I can actually do, I have decided to set a more realistic goal of getting each of them to level 30. This means they would all be at the “halfway point” to the new level 60 cap, so that I can hopefully finish off the leveling process after the expansion lands.
One of the strongest draws to Final Fantasy XIV for me is the fact that you can level all of the classes and jobs on a single character. This allows me to indulge in my altaholic behavior without also limiting my access to all of the items I have already earned. This has been a great experience for me personally because it means while running my free company members through Tam-Tara Deepcroft for the 300th time… I can at least have a shot at picking up gear that I can use on my alternate jobs. It was on one of these many instance runs that I managed to pick up the Good King Moggle Mog Ninja weapon, and that act set my sights on finishing the leveling process. With all the work on crafting I needed something that I could do that would offer a way to escape that particular “event horizon”. Over this last weekend I managed to push my Ninja from 28 to 34 largely through running FATEs in the Costa Del Sol region. My hope is that I can push into Coerthas Highlands quickly which provides a much more constant source of FATE experience. I realize I have limited hours between now and the expansion, but I would love to go into it with another Disciple of War at the current level cap.
Amazing Player room by Covenant of the Phoenix called the Morbol Library
When myself and my friends came back to Final Fantasy XIV last July, our first official activity as a free company was to pool our resources and purchase a house in The Mists housing zone. This opened the door to a good number of things, not to mention exposed us to the excellent neighbors that spend time in the houses surrounding ours. On a personal aspect this opened access to personal rooms in our house, and as soon as I saved the 300,000 gil cost I obtained one. As I started running Retainer missions I quickly acquired a stockpile of furniture and my room simply became a dumping room for anything I got to clear it out of my limited inventory. One of my missions before the expansion is to spend an afternoon working on turning it into an actual showplace for the many adventures I have had in game. My intent is to either donate the leftover items to my Free Company mates, or sell them on the market. In either case my hope is to unclog some retainer space and end up with a place I actually enjoy spending time in.
One of the more unique aspects of Final Fantasy XIV is that your “bank space” is managed by a series of retainers for which you control their appearance and personality. Each retainer adds an additional 175 storage slots, and they also act as a brokerage service for selling items on the market boards. By default players can have two different retainers, and through an additional monthly service fee you can add up to two more for a grand two of four, or 700 spaces of “bank storage”. I tend to be a horrible packrat when it comes to MMOs and quite frankly my retainers are overflowing. My goal is before the launch of the expansion to spend an afternoon organizing my bank space and devising some scheme for what a given retainer is holding. With the Heavensward expansion they are adding two additional retainers for players to use, but even with this infusion of 350 more spaces, it will not be long before I am back to “stuffing” items on whichever one has free space. It is my hope that I can get my virtual clutter under control so that I can walk through gates of Ishgard knowing I will have enough room to store whatever treasures I might find there.
While I realize that I am not likely to actually accomplish every single thing on the list above, it is a good start. Over my years of playing online games, I feel at my happiest when I have a mission that I am constantly working towards. Currently the entire Final Fantasy XIV community is going through this phase of preparing for the new content. Many of my Free Company are desperately trying to catch up on the main storyline so they will be able to actually step foot in the new areas on the 19th when Head Start begins. Other players are trying to wrap up the raid content, or make sure they have finished all of the Extreme Primal encounters. For me, I have more straight forward goals as I look forward towards the future. As you approach the launch of this new area of the game, what goals are you working on? Drop us a line below to let us know what your “Bucket List” items you have been completing.
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