End of an Era

I didn't get too see a whole lot of the final event but I got a last look at Dalamud.

My entire LS kept logging in and and being kicked back off but we did get to fight some of the troops around Mor Dhona.

It was two frustrating hours of trying to stay logged in but once it was over we got to watch the most fantastically awesome video. Lots of people wept like children, including me.

I didn't make it to the live letter so hopefully they post it and I can see what I missed. I read the translations later and I can safely say I am more excited than ever to  play A Realm Reborn. 

Now we wait.....

A few pictures

A few more achievements

Logging in I saw what I had been reading about all day:

I was instantly excited and then slightly depressed. Oh well!  So much to do, so little time!

Slow night

But I still managed to get stuff done.

That boys and girls, is Lasthold. It was a lot easier to get to with the help of a friend.  I now have a shiny new title.  Its not a huge thing but I really wanted to have it done.

8 Days left!

Still playing most days. Still running whatever needs running with my endgame linkshell, Smokin' Aces. Still gathering up the lost sheep who need a LS and trying to help them out.We are still on the seemingly endless mission to gather up Darklight gear. I have previously been involved in Miser's Mistress punching but I was asked to gear up my monk for more flexibility when doing Aurum Vale. I'm broke now but it was nice to do it with bigger numbers.

SBXIV’s Pumpkin Crafting Contest!

The podcast that I co-host is having a pumpkin crafting contest!

Fall has arrived in the northern hemisphere and Halloween is right around the corner. Help us celebrate the most orange and black of holidays.

How To Enter
Step 1: Obtain pumpkin
Step 2: Craft pumpkin into something Final Fantasy related
Step 3: Take picture of your pumpkin masterpiece
Step 4: Email your picture to podcast@zantetsuken.net

For all the rules and other details visit SBXIV’s Pumpkin Crafting Contest!

The End Is Nigh

I've been very busy last few weeks trying to get everything done my LS mates and I want to do before the servers come down.

Smokin' Aces has been farming darklight in AV and CC and farming Garuda totems. Some of us have had up to 3 weapon drops already. Not me of course -_- Heck, I even ran out of the vortex thingies and had to go farm more when at one time I thought I had more than I could ever possibly need.

Last night a couple of Smokin' Aces guys and I gave a hand to some of the newer players from my other LS. They needed some of the NMs killed for quests. Then we did some vortex headdress farming and more imperial hat/tricorn farming until I was almost asleep on the keyboard.

With only a couple weeks left I am both excited and sad. I have a few things I would like to get done in 1.x like make it to Lasthold and Rivenroad (Hard Mode). I probably should have worked on my relic but it will still be there in 2.0.  

I'm not sure what I am going to do with myself during whatever length downtime there will be before 2.0.  I know I'm not going to log on to FFXIV after the 11th.  This blog will probably go even more silent than it already has been.

I've also been doing the weekly SBXIV podcast and lots of Twitter ^^

When you think of Final Fantasy...

Someone in the official forum started a thread and asked us when we think of Final Fantasy just what is it we think of.  Here was my quick and dirty reply:

---

I think of a story that starts out as a personal one and grows to include the fate of the world. A wide open world and a sense of adventure and danger.

I think of NPC's that say clever things, dancers that twirl around the tavern and homes where I plunder potions from pots. Saving my gil because I suspect I'm about to get to a new town where I can buy my next oversized sword. 

I think of princesses and love stories and the bad guy that gets in the way. Getting stuck and talking to every npc in a town to find my way. Exploring caves, castles and ruins to get this or that item that some NPC needs. 

I think of wandering too far out and being squished by ogres. Secret passages and time travel. Head-scratching plots and epic boss battles. 

Also, fantastic music, chocobos, tents, canoes, ships, airships, crystals, summons, magic, Cid and all the usual suspects.

---

What do you think of when you think of Final Fantasy?

Wherefore art thou Wandering Minstrel

1.23a patch has dropped and while my LS was scheduled to run Aurum Vale we ended up doing some of the new quests instead.

The following contains spoilers, you have been warned.

The dauntless raven rises up.

Like many of my fellow adventurers I have been spending some time battling Legatus Nael van Darnus. It took a few tries but I blame the plague of disconnects and my PC overheating on most of the tries. Once we knew his moves it was pretty straightforward.

It was a very fun fight and the zone, the CS and the music were very, very good.

I give it an A+ ^^

(Gather Together) (Gridania) 

Here we go!

Of course then Cid wanted to have a word with us. 

Wow, would have never figured out to talk to him without the giant ! over his head...

I used the seals awarded to buy a spiffy new Gridanian Officer's Overcoat. I like how it goes with the yellow feather in my cap ^^

We decided to do a little skirmish and new faction leaves.  If you don't know already the new faction leaves reward you with some pretty skimpy armor.

Cannot be unseen...

Obviously the threat isn't over as there are menacing looking ships being spotted all over the place.

I have a bad feeling about this

More random stuff please!

What if...

I believe that a lot of the current ingame content could be spiced up by the relativity simple addition of random events/mobs/whatever. SE could hang quests and achievements off these random encounters. It would give us one more reason to revisit older content.*


How much more exciting would a behest be if a random NM would spawn once and awhile with a somewhat rare drop? Bonus points if the drop is something you can actually use.


What if actually killing mobs in DH gave a % chance to pop a Imperial Garlean Captain?   Say our new captain's capture or defeat would satisfy a new Grand Company quest requirement!


Not every event needs to reward us in equipment either. I would be thrilled at seeing a cutscene furthering a storyline or unlocking a new questchain/map/shady npc.


Now I have to  admit that FFXI and the ferry ride is one of my favorite FF memories.  The sea horror on my first ride! Attacked by pirates! Arriving dead on the dock on the other side!  Raising people smashed by the sea horror on the other side! The quest that had me riding the ferry back and forth waiting for pirates.  Switching from my fishing rod to my weapon when I hear that unforgettable music!


And no, I don't want to go back to FFXI or to copy everything from that game, I just want this one to be at least as fun as that one was.  If anything I want FFXIV to be way more exciting and dynamic than FFXI ever was with lots of brand new ideas and fresh content. But nothing wrong with using a formula that works for some things. Wheels are still round after all, no need to reinvent them....


*Good call SE, making the raid drops trade-able for GC seals!

New 2.0 art

There is some exciting 2.0 art available for our hungry eyes to devour and it is truly tasty stuff!


Check it out here.


We have a concept art of a Chocobo Ranch, some sort of Aquatic Town, some armor, what looks like snow on the Environment details pic. Also arguably the largest breasts we have ever seen in a FF game (but they are Succubus breasts so that makes sense), equipment, more mobs, and Odin Forest!


We also have what looks like CS and actual ingame screen shots of battles, with a blm casting on  mandragoras!


We can start getting more of a feel of how the new UI is going to look, and it looks sexy. As does the new character creation!

The shot of Dalamud is now my desktop wallpaper, it is even more awesome looking than I thought it would be!


More than a couple people shed tears of joy when they saw the Delivery Moogle! I actually like the new text box look and I hope it is easily changed for those who don't care for it.


So what do you think?  Love it? Hate it? No longer care?

Returning players

It has been so fun the last few weeks with all the returning players. Especially all my friends from Almost Heroes!  I haven't gotten to play with them as much as I would like since Luminaire keeps me busy when I am on*. But I have been chatting in Axon and answering questions and just generally joking around.


Most of them are working hard getting up to speed as they almost all quit well before Jobs were released and many were gone months before that. Hopefully in the coming weeks they will all be ready to tackle all the high level content.

Even dying with them was fun

I'm having such a good time in the game, with all my old friends and new ones. Sure the game itself is fun to play and I enjoy all our various events but in the end it really is the people who keep me playing ^^


* Not that I am complaining! :*

Still playing, still having a good time!

I haven't actually posted in a while, but I have indeed been playing.  1.22 has been fun, even if I have probably spent more time doing older content than the new stuff.




Got monk to 50 and got my AF. Thank you Luminaire, you are always all a ton of fun to play with ^^

I make this look good!

Luminaire!

Also, did the 40 Garuda fight, it was over pretty fast and then Cid wanted to have a talk with me

Cid, still lookin fine!

I did some hamlet defense, I really need to do more before I decide what I think...

Hamlet defense complete!

Got a little star for my trouble...

 Probably best of all, old friends returned for the welcome back campaign! 

Almost Heroes!

The Garlean Empire has decided to attack very close to home and adventurers have responded.

The Garlean Empire brings all the boys to the yard

Additionally, I did a ton of runs in AV and CC. Many, many shouts in Ul'dah were answered by me and I ran all over Eorzea helping people which is my favorite thing to do.

I've also been doing weekly SBXIV podcasts you can listen to over at http://zantetsuken.net/.


My legacy member email came so I am locked in at the discounted price for the life of FFXIV!  I certainly hope 2.0 is worth it.  I'm starting to get anxious for some 2.0 info.  We could really use some teasers....

I'm not even here...

Shhh its date night so you don't see me, I was never here...

There is some freaky crap going on with that moon...

When I logout from the bed I crawl up on it and lay down!

1.22 incoming!

Is anyone else totally excited to play 1.22?  I really need to get back to work instead of reading the 13 posts worth of patch notes over and over ><;


We get quests, a new primal battle, hamlet defense, new GC ranks, reduced party size requirements to get into AV and CC, the armoir, ability to set inn as additional return point, battle adjustments, materia adjustments, medicine adjustments, ability to request materia meld, synthesis adjustments, display of weapons dps, sanctions, Mercantile Houses allowing buying and selling cross-city, LS changes, etc.


There are so many awesome changes I cannot possibly go into them all here but I plan on covering my reaction to them in an upcoming post. Perhaps Kariri will be seduced into trying out the new changes and share her thoughts!


I was surprised that the Garuda battles were for level 40 and then the hard one is 45 as the Ifrit one was 25.


I'm a little confused about instanced hamlet defense and the 8 man pt's as I was thinking this would be something in the openworld you would go do when you didn't feel like building a party. However server limitations probably won't allow it to go smoothly and if pick up groups form at the hamlet easily I am all for it.  Now we just need a little dot by our name visually showing that we are seeking ^^

Yelta's exciting podcast news

Those of you who already listened to this week's show already know, for everyone else there is news!


I am no longer a guest host on the SBXIV podcast, I am now a permanent addition! They couldn't get rid of me, like a bad rash I will keep coming back week after week.


Listen to the latest podcast here where my cat makes her second appearance as a background noisemaker ><;

Disturbing...

You look at Khamis Touq and panic!

I don't know what that was all about, but I laughed pretty hard!

Hatching-tide: Scrambled Eggs

Much like last year, we hunt down Spriggans and slaughter them for their fancy eggs and then we are given egg related hats and rings.

The egg warmers intrigue me, there are a few different stages and the eggs inside are wiggling around O.o

I wonder if they are going to hatch into anything interesting?  I wont get my hopes up though, last year we were all ready for something to happen and nothing did.

Durandal here we come!

Apparently Durandal is some type of sword* 

The servers are now down for an 8 hour maintenance. When we next log in we will be on the Durandal server and have our 1.21a patch.  Here is hoping it all goes smoothly and none of us lose any data!

We are very much looking forward to our new, bigger population and hopefully making a lot of new friends to murder pixels with.

*but Yelta wouldn't know since she doesn't play with the  pokey type weapons much.

*Kariri says STABBITY!

Ifrit finally dropped Yelta something!

And it is something I can actually use:

1.21 continues to be fun!

Why hello Mr. Toad!

Boy, it has been another fun week in the world of FFXIV! My anima is slowly creeping back up to a less panic inducing level. I have found that it doesn't really take that long to run to Halitali to do leves, and then down to Broken water to do more... The anima shortage has made me realize I have been being even more lazy than I thought I was!

Update 1.21: First Impressions

Just starting out and Yelta is already sleepy..

 This weekend we headed back into Eorzea to try out some of the new features released in patch 1.21. This patch is the biggest release so far for Final Fantasy 14's new vision, and it's enormous. Jobs, quests, chocobo barding, accessory fixes, af, inns, rested bonus, and two new raids.

Only now, drained of anima and sporting some sexy new AF are the Sumausu Sisters ready to take a break and tell you all about it!

Yelta guest hosts over at SBXIV again!

I am really enjoying this podcasting thing ^^


Check it out here.

This Vs. That - Thoughts and Opinions on Various Things

When it comes to FFXIV, there is a lot of this versus that debate.  We have a better question: why can't  we have both? Going further, why can't we have it all? We think there's room in our world for everything. Let's talk about these versus options, and why we can make them all work.

Friday Roundup!

So, a lot has been going on and I have been slacking!
Here are some of this weeks highlights:

Letter from the Producer
Not much new here that wasn't already covered in individual dev posts but worth a read if you don't follow the forums. He did firm up the patch date as Friday, March 9 and includes some more job screen shots to drool over.

Class requirements to unlock Jobs
We now know what class combos unlock which jobs. Most of them make sense, others not so much. The ones that don't are probably a product of the jobs being tacked on and not part of the games original design.

Risk Factor. Can I have it?; A re-post from the SE forum.

I've been reading this thread with interest the last couple days and felt my response needed to be echoed here...

---

I don't want to throw my controller across the room or to delevel if I die but I also don't want everything to be a cakewalk where I can be watching a movie on my other monitor and half the party dying barely slows us down. Both extremes are no fun for me.

We need some activities that fall somewhere in the middle of that. Something where one death in a group won't be the end of the world but a couple of deaths would be a major setback. I want all 8 people to have to pay attention and be on their toes. To have to equip appropriate equipment and come prepared with the right food and medicines.

I want these activities to be dynamic where people have to actually think and react to things to succeed. Something where a couple of screwups would be noticeable and may even cause you to fail the activity.

Please notice I wrote some activities above, I also want activities that I can do in a more leisurely fashion in addition to the above. Heck I want them to also add things even harder and more brutal than what I describe above for those who would enjoy it. We need activities for every playstyle.

Valentione's Day Love Letter Contest Entry

I tried to be serious and failed. Here is what I ended up posting:


To Netmaster Wawalago,

Those rumors you have heard about me are vile and vicious LIES! I do NOT have a massive crush on you! I do NOT think your mustache is dreamy! I may have liked you at one time but since you made me dance to the damn fish at The Barrel I learned what a utter JERK you are.

No Love!
-Yelta


However it is a secret crush and whenever I see him it looks like this:

Dreamy!

Valentione's Day is here!

The Valentione's day event was cute, but a little bit frustrating. My biggest problem was I didn't bother to do it until everyone else had already done it.

This event involves chocolate, blowing kisses, necklaces, and 9 NPCs with 5/6 menu options each...

Hear Yelta on the Sequence Break XIV podcast

Last week I was asked to guest host the Sequence Break XIV podcast over at Zantetsuken and I couldn't hardly type "Yes" fast enough! Somehow* I managed to get past my natural shyness and you can listen to it here.

The whole thing was tons of fun and I would happily join them again!

* Probably the wine

Letter from the Producer, XXIV (01/30/2012)

If you have not already you can read the letter here.

The bad news is the patch will be delayed 2 weeks, the good news?  EVERYTHING ELSE!

This patch looks like a biggie! We have been waiting for this one for a long time now so hopefully it will be as cool to play as it looks on paper(err screen?).

The biggest addition is the new Job System.  We will be getting quests for unlocking the jobs themselves, learning job abilities, and acquiring artifact armor. Each job will get unique attributes and actions including combos. It appears that we will be getting a new equipment slot where we will equip the job stone.

Auto-everything, a mini-rant.

All served up on a silver platter

We dislike automatically getting everything handed to us. We want a sense that our hard work is causing our characters to grow by obtaining spells, abilities, recipes and maps in addition to equipment. There should be stuff that is easy to learn, extremely rare, and everything in between. We also want zones that you can only visit if you have done something to unlock them.

This earning can be questing, buy with gil, buy with GC seals, exploration, mob drop or any other route. Something awesome could have 4 pieces of a scroll spread out among several drops or quests but once all the pieces are assembled you can learn it. Perhaps we can trade some and others are U/U.

At this point we would not ask anything to be changed currently in-game but we are really hoping that going forward we have to actually take action to obtain these things.

It sounds like we will be questing our abilities/JSE for the new jobs so perhaps this will partly fulfill our request. And we read in a dev post that in 2.0 "recipes that can only be obtained from Leves and quests will be added to your list upon receiving them." which gives us some hope that obtaining things will be something you actually have to do.

How do you feel about auto-gaining everything? Love it, hate it, or indifferent?

Say hello to my little friend!

Love 'em or hate 'em, the Goobbue mount is here. 

The sit pose is cute but I think we really should be holding onto the flowers for dear life:

Front

Back

I love his mossy top ^^

There are a lot of upset people on the forums but honestly as soon as the chocobo barding announced here comes out I will only pull this bad boy out for laughs. Also, I cannot believe that the implementation of this mount held up other content by very much...

GM Kipih Jakkya sighted!

I was wandering through Ul'dah and saw my first GM.

Kipih Jakkya waves to you.

Kipih Jakkya: I am up to the usual business of finding any information about strange stories or rumors going about Eorzea.

We discussed cults, kidnapped people, the growing moon and the moogle king.  It was really cool to stumble upon her insted of the NPC version I saw this weekend.

Moving interrupting spellcasting

There is a note in the 1.2 patch notes that states:
* Moving will be made to interrupt spellcasting at a point in time between patch 1.20 and 1.21.

There is quite the discussion on the official forums about this, some love it, many hate it. There are many theories about why they are doing this and what impact this change will have on the game.

My number one issue is this: please don't make the slightest wiggle cancel my spell, if the server has not figured out you are standing still your spell won't cast even though you might be standing dead still on your screen.

Holy crap! Dalamund is huge!

After hearing from others about the increase in Dalamund's size I decided to check it out myself.

We're all gonna dieeeee!

Between that and the rumors of cultasts who call themselves the Lambs of Dalamud, things are getting pretty scary around here!

I spent some time looking for Addison but no luck so far. And yes, that is a Malevolent Mogwand :D

Things the game is still lacking

FFXIV is still in many ways an inferior game.  There is still a list of things wrong with it and while it has improved in the last 20+ updates, there are still things broken/missing that make us scratch our heads and wonder if anyone tested this....

Billing has begun & Looking to the future - 1.21 and beyond

No one wants to have to start paying for FFXIV but it probably is about time.  The game was free for a good long while.  We are a little surprised they didn't wait for 1.21 as that seems to be the patch that will make this a real Final Fantasy game.

With 1.20 and 1.20a out and while they had some good stuff they were more of "fixing things" patches than content patches.

We wanted remind ourselves and our readers of the new content they promised us before 2.0 in the Final Fantasy XIV Roadmap:

·Early February 2012 - Patch 1.21 (and subsequent hotfixes)

Creation of Private Rooms (Inns, etc.) / Hamlet defense PvE content
The job system (7 jobs plus related quests and gear) / Personal chocobo gear
Two new instanced raids

Daydreams About 2.0

We wrote a post and decided to make it a page so we can update it as our minds wander further. This is our current list, what are you daydreaming about for 2.0?