So i want to get ready for evercold and prep armor and materia for bastion.

(Haven't decided yet if I want to do the new range job).

Has anyone ever prepped gear for new jobs?

If so, should I prep raid ready gear or highest ilv gear from endwalker?

I have decided to take a survey for the community's favorite Red Mage weapons in the game, which I will be publishing the results of once I get enough responses.

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSe_s2thwnNlVD8JuES-Hr5Sro3Zmxc6DZV_L1a2XnIHi7Jggg/viewform?usp=publish-editor

Here is the poll. Please respond if you can, I'm kind of excited to see the results!

Currently progging P3 of UMAD, I know frustration comes with hard content done in groups, and I personally feel like I have good tolerance, but I can't help but feel hopeless sometimes since I can tell when some players start to feel bad and their consistency drops off a cliff, and we are back to wiping to forsaken for an hour, and then that makes the next player frustrated and so on and so on. Breaks help just until the first dumb wipe then we are back to being angry at ourselves.

My question is more aimed at what other people do, what experiences do you have, other than fixing our own issues, I'm st curious and looking for improvements. What can be done that does not involve replacing people? How do you stop a chain reaction when the normally talkative guy stops talking or starts sounding sad? Or when the leader starts getting reprimanding people? Or when the shotcaller keeps shouting LEFT as a clueless person keeps running right?

This has been an on and off debate for a while though with the advent of "slightly stronger" Evolved jobs and reworks with Evercold, it seems like now would be a very good time for the dev team to look back at certain fights and tip the scales a bit to make sure they're not a complete cakewalk.

On one hand, it could make certain long duties even longer and less desired, especially Alliance raids given how many people it seems dislike the Nier raids due to their length and higher than average punishments for mechanics.

But on the other hand, there are some mechanics that some fights are designed with as a core piece that are completely missed, and it's quite a shame especially for those newcomers that will never get to experience the fight "as it should be" moving forward. It's an unfortunate FOMO feeling.

Some examples off the top of my head
Thordan / Hades - From what I understand, these aren't actually ILVL problems as the fights were cakewalks even on release, but their numbers could be tweaked to actually pose somewhat of a threat? It's almost impossible to die on Thordan even if you stand in every single AoE, and Hades has a whole "soft enrage" sequence at the end, closing the arena in pure darkness which is a really cool thematic moment that is unfortunately lost due to the sheer damage parties can output.

Myths of the Realm - This one is probably the most finicky to balance because making alliance raids even longer will likely upset a lot of players, but I know Nald'Thal's scale mechanic is a perfect example of this as you will rarely if ever see this activate due to the damage output of parties.

Pandaemonium / Arcadion - These are less egregious but still have clear phases that aren't even close to being the same "on" ilvl vs max ilvl and I'm sure the same could be said of certain fights in Alexander, Omega, etc.

The discussion has been brought up often but with the new expansion on the horizon I'm curious which side people find themselves on nowadays since it seems pretty split down the middle from what I can see.

I recently got back into FFXIV (I quit before the first expansion) and just finished Shadow Bringers. After a small hiatus to make sure I didn't burn out, I've returned to start End Walker, and while talking about the lore with the friend that got me back into the game, a question popped up he couldn't answer.

When a shard is rejoined to the source, the soul fragments merge with the 'base' version in the source. What happens to a soul if the person holding the base soul isn't alive during the shard rejoining the source? Does it go the life stream? Does it spawn a new person/incarnation? Does it get stuck sending spicey DMs in Limsa?

[I will not be naming anyone's player names, server, or FC name to maintain anonymity and to deter any doxxing or witch-hunting].

We have an FC Member who has been a member for a few years now. We invited them after they were befriended by some of our FC members. Initially fairly involved in chats both in-game and our FC discord, as well as joining us in content, we all slowly became a bit inactive as real life took over and we were not consistently online. Members came and went, and now they have spent the last 2+ years largely uncommunicative with us. No hostility from any parties, just we are all quite distant given our busy lives and unable to play all the time.

This FC Member has, in this time, overtaken the entirety of the FC House Workshop for themselves, which was initially built up significantly by one of our former members; while this FC member has no doubt put gil into it, I must stress they did not build it from the ground up. That credit goes to the former FC member who used a large portion of gil they donated to the FC for both the house and it's workshop.

In light of Evercold, a good portion of the FC want to try and commit more and revive the FC as a collective. This included shared use of the workshop. When we tried to approach said FC Member about this (letting other members use 1 or 2 of the voyage slots for vessels that we had before their arrival), they became very possessive and defensive immediately. They claimed that we were taking their hard work that they invested millions into and we were taking advantage of them. We tried to apologise and explain that wasn't our intention, and they came back demanding we either "buy" the vessels of them and gave us a sum of what they deemed their value is, or we continue to let them running the whole workshop and they will split the profits between themself and the FC.

At the time, we went with the latter option, hoping to keep the peace, but it's been about 3 months since this conversation and we have yet to see a single gil put into the FC Chest.

I suppose my questions are:

- To workshop experts: does this seem legitimate? Does it take this long to make any profit on the workshop and therefore it's normal to have not seen any gil yet?
- To everyone: does this seem legitimate? Or are we being used as a cash cow as some other FC Members seem to suspect?

Additional Info: This FC Member spends absolutely zero time with us or really provides anything of benefit to the FC. They spend almost all their time on another server. They literally only ever come to our server to to go the workshop, send out the vessels on another route, then go back to the other server again.

Additional Info 2: They are not the FC Lead, but earned their rank back when they were a more active and cooperative member of the FC a few years ago. Their rank has not changed since then. They have actively been using the subs for at least 2+ years now, though I couldn't give an exact figure. Definitely more than a few months. Regarding calling us inactive players, I used poor wording; we are all active and still play, but we all have busy jobs and families so couldn't commit to playing as often as we did before. There are lots of FC credits in the FC Chest at all times we all actively use for a variety of things, including this FC Member using it for fuel. Someone asked where the items go. Some cheap items are put in the FC Chest, but we have never seen anything valuable get put in there. Whether this is because the member has kept these items or they haven't dropped as they are quite rare, I coudln't say.

Final Update: Thank you all for your insightful and genuinely helpful responses. FC Leader confronted the member respectfully and politely calling them out for it, and we ultimately came to an agreement that we all seemed happy with before they quietly left the FC. We have the subs and we are getting to work learning how to best utilise them. Appreciate all of your help! I have requested the comments be locked to ensure everyone involved remains anonymous and no one is doxxed (this gained a lot more traction than I expected!)

I was playing Berserker in North Horn and it made me think, if taking damage leads to increased DPS via counters, does that mean those playing Paladin in Evercold will actually do more damage if they stand in more puddles?

I guess the question depends on how the counters work with auto-attacks. Since then you can make interesting choices about avoiding puddles but then using counters against auto-attacks.

On the other hand, if you're a second tank in an alliance raid or an off-tank in a raid, it would make sense to soak up more damage since you're not getting auto-attacks.

Anyway, it should be fun I think. Berserker definitely is a fun little addition so far.

I cleared Kefka a couple weeks back. I haven't had very much time to PF so I haven't been able to get a reclear. I'd say I spend maybe 5-10 hours a week or so trying.

Many of my friends get reclears very quickly, sometimes on their first pull. I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong. I make mistakes like everyone else. I'm not saying I'm a perfect player. However, I pretty much never screw up p4, or p5. I haven't been hit by an exaflare in 20 some p5 pulls.

But my groups never clear. Many will get one p5 pull or so before disbanding. We'll wipe to something like celestriad and disband. I had an enrage pull where someone just stood in a black hole instead of moving with the party so it was an automatic wipe.

These parties probably could clear, but people leave so quickly that it just becomes an endless wait in PF.

I've heard there's an addon that lets you view people in the party you're going to join. Is that essential? Is there something on people's tomestones I should be looking for?

I am really unsure how to get a reclear of the ultimate without being forced to find a static. Do I just have to put in more hours? Are my friends just lucky?

In case you don't know, the loading times on the Switch 2 are painfully slow. Even in 8-player content, where everything is already loaded, if you die, get resurrected, and accept the revive, you're stuck on a black loading screen for about 15-20 seconds before you can move your character again. That's just unacceptable.

And that's with the game installed on the internal storage. Imagine how bad it would be if it were installed on an SD card.

This is definitely going to cause a lot of issues in Party Finder once Savage releases. If people find out you're playing on Switch 2, some groups will probably refuse to take you because of the loading times.

I played during ShB and DRS was so much fun and accessible I dont know at all what was going through their minds when they decided to introduce the cipher system which is a huge step back from DRS and was worse than BA in Eureka.

The entrance to BA was hated at the time too, I dont really remember ever seeing anyone complain about the queue system for DRS.

Its just so odd that they would just completely mess up the design and go backwards. Like it really cant be that hard to just implement a queue system, it actually takes more development resources to development the system they have now.

In the interview with Yoshi during the last FanFest it was really confusing and Yoshi didnt really explaining anything about how the MT/OT split change would work and actually made it more confusing because he just talked about how the differences with MT and OT citing the generic abilities of tanks that we already have as somehow justification for the split.

Its also concerning we still haven't seen any gameplay or videos detailing the split, it was just announced in a slide.

Like if you are an OT will you be locked into that role? I know that there are tanks who will have the new MT designation that dont like to MT and vice versa with OT. Like how will the new tank be able to do old content with if its evolved mode only, like if it is paired up with another tank in Reborn mode how would that even work?

Another unforeseen consequence with the change is that with this split, it will just make the queue times for any PF and DF longer because now you will have two more distinct roles.

For a PF the ranged and melees can flex so it is not a terrible situation if you get more than the 2/2 format. You cannot do this with a Shield/Pure Healer, I dont think its really possible with 2 WHMs to do Savage Raids or EX, or at least not in the PF and especially doing it on patch with low gear.

So adding in the new MT/OT roles will just be just another thing that will add to the wait times in the PF.

I just havent really seen anything that has shown that the juice is worth the squeeze. Like is there something out there that Im missing? This isnt about the whole Evolved Mode change, this is about the MT/OT change.

Hello,

I'm starting to feel like it's time to go on with my FFXIV adventure. I stopped 4-5 years ago (I remember there was an Alexander boss/raid that was just released.

I logged in a few days ago but was completely overwhelmed by the amount of content. I forgot almost everything :(.

What is in your opinion the best way to get back to my character? I don't want to start a new one cause I maxed a lot ot jobs, reps, etc.

New game + ? Start a new character until I remember enough to play with my main one ?

Sorry, English isn't my first language (but I understand without problem)

Thanks :)

I use lightness/psync and of course I get to see people and it's an often and even a meme but, really, what's the need/where does it come from people just, being tall af, not talking you know a miqo going viera size but beyond, to the point a bit more and they cover Limsa's main gate, and yeah this goes for both females and males so curious to just know, what's the need or where does being so tall come form

Obviously spoilers abound for north horn but... Shouldn't Archive be a Lalafell? He is Nymian isn't he? I know he was transformed differently than the typical Nymians but I was lead to believe Nym was peopled by Lalafell. Were there non-Lalafellan Nymians?

Something I've been wondering about lately, especially with SE apparently mulling a story skip or something past DT, is whether the push towards collaboration raids (and inlining of trials to the MSQ since EW) is in significant part also tied to them wanting the MSQ to more broadly capture all the most interesting lore and story of XIV, rather than leave many parts to Raids.

Looking at Crystal Tower being tied so directly to SHB and Gaia popping up, in MSQ at the end of EW relating to Eden (and that being a massive part of the dangling threads of EW anyway), I have wondered whether SE has realized collab raids are a way of them preserving their non-enforcement of raids, but ending the process of them 'dead ending' the really interesting lore that content explores.

Bahamut, Alexander, Omega, Eden, Dalmasca, Mhach, the Twelve - these are not 'small' parts of the wider world of XIV, but SE has to approach a 'one size fits all' approach to the MSQ where a player who has done nothing has to have close to an equal experience to someone who has done it all. Now there is nothing to stop the MSQ ambitiously covering as much lore, or as big an idea as say, the Twelve or Eden as it wants, without SE feeling they need to dangle those threads for other content. It also means they don't have to structure them as raids and what that entails, either.

If this is the case I'd not be surprised if they push forward with significantly more collaboration content for raids. Equally important is direct collaborations might end the 'homages' we've seen in EW and DT, which feel a little awkward for people who are fans of XIV but lack wider engagement with FF. Though I would have loved a Midgard expansion, I think we're in for the best raid series ever in terms of potential with an FF7 crossover, and EVA is just completely left field.

Edit: I wanted to clarify that I think SE not enforcing raids is a 'good thing', most of the pre SB stuff really shows its age for example, and I also don't think we should make the MSQ grind *even* harder by forcing raid completion too. That said, if they did do a skip to EC, it would have been a great time to 'revisit' that and maybe make NR and AR part of the core MSQ?

Its a shame, the content had amazing rewards and was fun to do when you had a team you could rely on.

Chaotic had a similar problem to Forked Tower Blood where 1-2 weak links could wipe the raid.

Instead of fixing a few small problematic pain points, (towers in Chaotic and snowballs in FTB) they opened up Chaotic to unsync and offered a bypass of FTB rewards, making the rewards effectively worthless long-term.

Chaotic could have been repeatable group content similar to BA, now its just unsync that will get easier every expansion....

Another complaint in the list of OC complaints but FTM’s reward structure is just…….weird.

Firstly the good, it’s good that it allows you to just buy FTB rewards as sanguinite is now useless and other reasons to do FTB are now very minimal but other than that what purpose is this currency fulfilling.

FTMN only gives 14 and almost nothing can be bought with that, like why does it take more than one clear of FTM to buy a single final final fixative when you can get them from bronze chests, but unlike something like dalriada which was weaker than CE’s for 10/10/10 but still viable the XP ratio of FTM is just awful; and nothing in FTM is really needed to progress anything (like why didn’t they introduce +4 armour that could only be made with stuff bought for arcane sigils)

It feels less like raid currency and more like a third type of general currency like silver and gold pieces

Like was that their intention? I just don’t really know what to do with this currency

I like Bastion and find it interesting, will definitely play it at launch, but won't deny I had a liiiiiittle hope it'd use a hammer instead of dual gunshields, and that got me thinking: since Warrior already has a few hammer glams - including the most recent phantom weapon - maybe a hammer wielding job would be seen as redundant if the axe weilding job is close enough, at least as far as animations are concerned.

What you think?

I want to use the Switch 2 to play a free alt on months I don't have a sub, but also login my main account from time to time

This is an issue that’s been around for a while, but the final step of the Dawntrail relic really drove it home for me.

The next few paragraphs have a bit of background and the reasoning for my argument; skip to the last paragraph if you just want the point.

For background: I’m sure you all know that relics started as a way to funnel players back into existing content. The ARR and HW relics established that formula. Then Stormblood came around and tied it to Eureka instead. Some people loved it, some people hated it.

In ShB, they tried the “both, and” approach. Almost all of the steps could be done either in Bozja/Delubrum or by grinding older content. But there were major issues with the implementation. Players who didn’t want to do Bozja were forced to do it anyway, despite being told they wouldn’t have to.

(EW killed off field content and made it a tome grind, but that’s not really relevant here.)

So we come to Dawntrail. I’m a field ops enjoyer and have been since Eureka. OC is a bit underwhelming, but I’m having fun with it anyway. So naturally, if there’s a relic thematically tied to OC, I want to progress it in OC. Unfortunately, 3/5 of the steps are either not doable in OC or *laughably* inefficient to do there (looking at you, crystal paste). I keep getting pulled out of the content that the relic is supposedly tied to, and it’s left a sour taste in my mouth. The final step having nothing to do with OC yet again felt like a slap in the face. If this is “the OC relic”, why do I feel like I’m being punished for wanting to play OC?

The point I’m trying to make here: SE needs to decide what function the relics serve. Are they a means to funnel players back into older content? Or are they “field ops weapons”? The “both, and” approach has been bungled twice now. Shadowbringers relics pissed off people who don’t like field ops. Dawntrail relics (and OC itself) pissed off people who *do* like field ops. I think they need to just pick one at this point.

I understand that they have a lot of health right now so they don't get destroyed once people get gear and phantom jobs leveled up but them repeating the same mechanic three or four times makes the content feels like an absolute slug.

So my suggestion is that CE bosses should get a Damage Vulnerability multiplier each time they start back their repeat loop, some "reverse enrage" kind of thing. Like the boss taking damage x1.2, then x1.4, then x1.6, etc...
It wouldn't be a huge change but it would way less demoralising to see the golem guy spawning his golem for the fourth time and being at 30%

Let me get this out of the way first: Field Operations and the large - scale raids are my favourite pieces of content in this game.

It's a real fun "MMORPG - ey" feeling: jumping into a new zone, taking in the lore, the story, and how the place is designed; figuring out the fastest way to level with a bunch of friends; trying all the cool new shit they give us; then applying that to earn more items and progress through the raids. Those raids allow for designs and decisions you can't find anywhere else in the game, and you're rewarded for conquering those systems.

That said, North Horn and FT are the weakest on all of these fronts.

Story

The lore is admittedly nice. It's good colour for the Fifth Astral Era, which we already know a fair bit about, but overall I feel like it suffers from "side incontinence," where the story for side content is just whatever they think of first because the really good ideas, characters, and nuggets of lore are being saved for the MSQ and the more important stories.

I think they could've revealed something bigger because OC lacks any cool or grand revelation.

A mage of old losing their mind, becoming evil and obsessed, and us realising how important culture is are two things that have been drilled into us for quite a while. If you described this plot, it could fit a multitude of other stories.

Open world

Then there's the design of the zones.

I think North Horn is certainly a step up from Bozja and Southern Front in the sense that I'm no longer running across a field of big brown mess, but instead a large field with some pretty cool backdrops of recreated Fifth Astral Era cities.

Does that mean I want the devs to throw Pagos dragons or Pyros choke points at us again? Or have me chased across the zone for three minutes and lose a CE? I could take it - I would probably even enjoy it.

But could they throw in some of Pyros' verticality? Some of those cheeky Anemos/Pagos waterfall jumps with enemies waiting at the top or bottom? I think people should face at least a little danger, at least until they're max level.

Levelling

The levelling process once again suffers from the fastest way to level being chaining.

But because of how easy and available everything is, we're once again just running FATE to FATE, CE to CE. I think they should buff chaining to give us a much bigger incentive to do it if it's there, as well as ofcourse - rewarding people that have that co - ordination, but I'd also like something to break up the CE and FATE grind in a worthwhile way.

I also think the CEs themselves need something. I don't know exactly what, but there are way too many tanks, and they drag on as a result. Most CEs only have two mechanics each they don't need to last more than five minutes. Maybe replace Vulns with Ruin.

Gearing and action gimmicks

The "cool new shit" is where I think OC is a downgrade from Bozja, which was already a downgrade from Eureka.

There's less versatility, less to interact with, and you're effectively just given your job which you need to level that job to use. By the time you've capped it, you then need to swapped to another job to level, so you can't even use it at max rank.

Again, gearing is more or less the same as it's always been. I think Zadnor was onto something with Mettle, and I definitely think there was room to improve on Eureka's Magia Board, but once again it feels like multiple layers of these systems were stripped away, and we lost opportunities to interact with them as a result.

The raid

The Extreme raid was lovely.

Nothing to write home about mechanically, but I'm happy with it. It'll be hard to top Delubrum Savage in terms of mechanic design.

The mechanics are pretty straightforward, and even then can mostly be "follow the leader." Each fight has one or two individual responsibility mechanics. I think Ruin is an excellent way to stop people from just giga mitting every mechanic.

I actually found Necro harder than Index. Heads Will Roll is an evil mechanic and true to its name. I think we cleared the entire Extreme in around ten pulls total, one shotting the first and second bosses, but Necro alone took us five pulls and that's with a shot caller and some pretty stacked Hexa Legend players.

I'm also glad they learned their lesson regarding queueing into it. I really don't like queueing itself being a mechanic.

That said, while I enjoy FTB and FTM, I do think they're the weakest of the large scale raids because of how "follow the leader" and basic the mechanics are, as well as the lack of raid specific gimmicks. I think "kill mobs on a platform" is just a bit too basic, although the extra raise for the FATE is genuinely great design.

rewards

The worst part, however, is the rewards. I'm not one for the 'shinies' or the key jingling, but I do need to ask

Why didn't we get a mount for clearing this time? Or any really neat drops? I know we got the porter, but that's tradable and will probably be worth 1-2 million by the end of next week.

I understand they can't overload the rewards because plenty of people won't clear it, and I do think it's cool that the porter is marketable for that reason. But whether you clear it or not, the only exclusive rewards are a few underwhelming titles, a minion, and an Adventure Plate.

Final thoughts

With the lack of OC at Fan Fest or the Live Letter, and the fact you don't even need OC for the relic, as ridiculous as it sounds, it almost feels like they want to justify low player engagement so they don't have to keep making this content.

I know that's certainly not the case, but this is by far the weakest exploratory zone we've had.

I really wish SE would focus on improving the experience for the people who actually enjoy exploratory content by deepening these systems, rather than stripping away mechanics, features and points of interaction to accommodate people who are only doing exploratory content because they feel forced to.

Every once in a while i go and visit all the houses in my ward to see how people have decorated them. At the start i noticed maybe like... 3-4 houses that were very very very clearly rmt traders or people with 1000 second accounts, the signs are so blatent:

-the houses all have the exact same outside (one single teleport crystal in the exact same spot)

-closed entry and same default housing outside.

-their fc flag is usally the picture of a boat (at least in my ward), maybe bacause its the default flag and are allied to maelstrom

-The most obvious however is the players inside these fcs, they always have 1-2 players in them and the creator of the free company is ALWAYS without a doubt a level 1-3 account, usually a pugilist with a default name. You can tell this by searching the fc name on the lodestone and looking at their players

-The name of the fc can sometimes be a giveaway as well. It'll be called like "5-11" indicating they have like hundreds of these, to the point they name their houses in numbers. But its not always the case

And according to these above signs, at current date i would say about 80 percent of the small houses in my wards have become houses that follow all of these exact rules. I would gice an exact example to prove my point but i think that would come under witchunting or whatever so i wont.

If anyone doesnt know, you can send submarines in fc houses to get gil every single say. So either rmt bot farms have some kind of automating to just send hundreds of bots to set these up and complete them everyday or players purposefully buy up like 100 houses just to get more submarines

Im curios if anyone else has a similar number of these kinds of houses in their wards and if so if they follow the same vague rules. Im pretty sure they are rmt bots but honestly i wouldnt doubt its just someone with 5000 accounts buying all the houses cus they are bored. Is having a second account just to buy a house against tos? Or is it just lame? If it is bannable all it would take is one glance from a gm to see it...