Eorzean Evening Post: Gold Saucer Incoming! .

New month, new live event! Today marks the beginning of Valentione’s Day in Eorzea, so it’s time to help Lisette de Valentione to spread love and passion throughout the realms. I’m a bit saddened by the lack of of a vanity pet for this event – I still feel the sting of the Heavensturn sheep – but I guess the wonderful Chocobo barding will have to do. It looks like it’s all in one piece, which kinda sucks. That heart-hat would look great with heavy armour, clearly.

The event is running from today, February 3rd, until the 16th. I wonder how many have booked their eternal bond-ceremonies for the 14th? Anyway, if you want to get started, head over to the amphitheatre in New Gridania and pick up the “Where Did Our Loves Go”-quest. If you, like me, missed previous Valentione-events, the old rewards are now available at the Mog Station for a couple of dollars if you’re so inclined.

 

A Wild Yoshi P Appears

A surprise this weekend was the sudden appearance of one of Yoshi P’s live letters, held at Tokaigi Game Show in Japan. One piece of happy news from that letter was the fact that Patch 2.51 is coming on February 24th! As someone still struggling to find the time to play 2.5 properly, it’s slightly stressing – but at the same time, there’s so much nice side-stuff coming in that patch that I can’t, in any shape or form, complain.

We can expect 2.51 to introduce the next stage of the Zodiac quests, probably the last one before Heavensward, but the big thing in the patch is, of course, the Manderville Gold Saucer casino. Fans have been waiting for what seems like ages for it to finally arrive, and the hype is on. If it has a summoning bell, which I doubt it will, many of us would probably set up a more permanent shop there – life in Eorzea has never been more glamorous before!

 

Mini-games galore

The Gold Saucer comes with a bunch of stuff to do, some more time-consuming than others, to distract us from our regular business killing mobs and saving the world. There’s a bunch of mini-games to play – Monster Toss, Cuff-a-Cur, The Moogle’s Paw and Crystal Tower Striker. According to the letter, these won’t give any substantial rewards, but will offer something to do while we wait for duty queues to pop or our statics to form up. Hopefully they will be entertaining enough that fun will be its own reward.

Right, it’s an MMO. That never tends to work out. “No rewards, no deal!”, as they usually say.

There’s also a lottery we can join – one daily, one weekly – and win some neat prices. A really cool reward is a Setzer Gabbiani costume, for all us Final Fantasy VI-fans. There’s also a Playboy bunnyesque costume, which I’m guessing will be as popular among tanks as the swimsuits are now. Nothing says “immovable object” like sexy underwear, as we all know. As a Miqo’te, I need to at least get the bunny ears so I can have a dual set of animal ears on my head. There’s also the amazing Fenrir-mount and a cool, but not Fenrir-cool, Adamantoise to get.

To help us get these prices (or at least some of them), we have the so called GATEs – Golden Saucer Active Time Events – which will include variations of musical chairs and Simon Says. I expect madness.

 

Ready… Set… Race!

There are two major time-wasters coming in patch 2.51 and the Chocobo racing is one of them. I’ve mentioned before that I’m a bit nervous that the usual MMO mechanics will get in the way of the racing becoming everything it deserves to be, which still stands. At the same time, there’s a couple of things that do sound promising.

Racing our Chocobos will give them experience points, as expected. They will have a bunch of attributes, which we can increase by giving them different forms of special foods – which we’ll probably get from our gardens (or in the case of farming noobs like me, buy from the market boards). There’s also a bunch of different abilities we can get for our Chocobos as they level up.

The real fun begins when we retire our current racing Chocobo (remember, these are seperate from our regular mounts) and we start breeding – the offspring will retain some of the aspects of its parents. This part of the game sounds like it could be a lot of fun, even if I’m sure some people are having terrible flashbacks to trying to get the gold chocobo in Final Fantasy VII (I got mine on the first try, by the way – just wanted to rub that in).

Triple Triad

The second time-waster in the patch is Triple Triad, another one of those features that players having been clamoring for for ages. 80 cards will be available on day one – either bought from the Gold Saucer, dropped in dungeons or gained from challenging NPCs – and more will be introduced in future patches.

So far, only three rulesets have been announced – Random, Same and Open All. Data miners have found a long list of others though, including Roulette, Sudden Death, Reverse, Order and Chaos. Exactly if all of these will be available out of the gate is uncertain right now. When playing against others, the challenger chooses the ruleset the match will use.

I expect a lot of people just standing around in urban areas, challenging each other to games of Triple Triad. I’m also hoping for community run tournaments and events. There is just so much potential to this minigame.

You could be this cool. Or well, at least try to be this cool.

Clouding the skies

The last few revealed veteran rewards have, in my mind, been kinda lackluster. But no more! In 2.51, the two year veteran reward will be introduced – Cloud Strife’s costume from the (pretty decent) Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children-film (no Aki Ross costume, Square?). The two year anniversary of Final Fantasy XIV is still some ways off, but you’ll get it straight away if your bought game time exceeds two years. So if you really, really want this costume as soon as possible, buy six months of game time six months before that anniversary and you’re set – if you’ve been playing since launch, that is.

With three weeks left until patch 2.51, you have ample time to dig out Final Fantasy VIII and start getting your Triple Triad-skills up to snuff. Personally I’ll just focus on getting that damn patch 2.5 storyline out of the way so that I can, with good conscience, pause everything and not leave the Gold Saucer for a few weeks. See you there!