Lately, while working on the usual weekly things, we’ve been taking on each type of Role Quest series that Endwalker has. Unlike Shadowbringers, Endwalker has five role quest series that consist of one for each of the different classes that are playable: Melee Physical Damage, Ranged Physical Damage, Tank, Healer, and Magical Ranged Damage. Prior to this in Shadowbringers, Melee and Ranged Physical were one quest series as opposed to two separate ones.
Just as a general note, I’m not going to be talking about any story specifics for the Endwalker nor Shadowbringer Role Quests, aside from very generalized feelings towards them.
If one completes all five sets, a bonus quest series appears to ‘conclude’ them. Shadowbringers’ ones were incredibly good and the bonus quest series upon completing all four of those was just as incredible if not better for bringing them all together especially.
The five all picked up at Radz-at-Han
Since we just completed getting Dragoon to 90, it was now the perfect time to take them all on at once without interruptions! Each quests does give a pretty nice chunk of experience as well, but we just wanted to experience the entirety of them without having to pause and catch up in levels. Each series has 6 quests, so to complete all 5 is 30 quests overall. Each one also has an instance battle at 90 which, to me, feel very varied on enjoyment thus so far.
One’s mileage will vary for each of the stories as well, the Tank one personally was my overall favorite thus so far from the ones we’ve completed. Physical Range started off kind of rough, but ended on a very nice high note whereas Physical Melee was kind of just there with a really fun finale fight. Don’t get me wrong, regardless they do add some more fleshed out parts of the story and add in past story elements too, so they’re still fun and worth it to take on. If one is wanting to dye the Endwalker artifact armor sets, they must be taken on regardless per the role for the armor wanting to be dyed.
Progress as of now!
We’ve taken on three of the five series thus so far, only leaving Healer and Magical Damage remaining. The really nice thing about these this time is each series stays in one region and will keep staying there until after the 90 quest is completed. Only then, will it request to return to Radz-at-Han to conclude the series, get a New Game+ unlock, Achievement, and the ability to dye all of that Role’s artifact armor!
I’m curious as to what the last two have in store and if they can change my mind about how I feel about the current ones we’ve already done.
Over this past weekend, the long journey of us going from just a whee Lancer all the way to jumping and diving our way across the battlefield has come to an end. I’m so glad this was the melee class that I was recommended to start out with coming from being a caster main, but by no means would I ever main play this class.
Melee range to me is such a foreign thing along with making sure I’m in roughly the right area of the enemy to make sure the damage is correct for that part of the combo. The final combo, albeit long with a number of abilities/proc’s, felt good and thanks to the cooldowns each one has, it gave me a moment to think about where I am in the chain of abilities and what to do next.
The four of us early on as Lancers.
Paralleling acquiring new abilities for the combos was also learning and acquiring all of the jumps and how they worked was so fun to do along the way. To this day, since Peloton is located in the same spot on Bard, I still Evasive Jump instinctively thinking it’s Peloton only to either be slightly embarrassed in a Duty or some awkward part of a town that we were simply just trying to get to our destination a bit quicker.
A ton of the early leveling was using Frontlines, so learning PvP and understanding how that worked along the way was a nice added bonus aside from the obscene amount of experience it gives in lower levels. Laureine was planning on wearing the Late Allagan set, so this really helped her acquire that well before any of us were even able to plan outfits!
All of us after attaining 50 Dragoon
Side thought, running Frontlines from 30-50+ every day kind of burned me out from wanting to do them, so we all ended up taking a break from it starting in the mid-50’s and just focused more on Poetic acquisition to keep gear up to date easier. Aside from that, Frontlines is still a lot of fun in moderation and I do recommend it to anyone unsure if they would like PvP or not – just be sure to visit Wolf’s Den to set up the PvP crossbar for it!
Story-wise, the Lancer story was fun and pretty good. The climatic ending to it I liked a lot as was the fight. Becoming Dragoon at 30 and heading up to 50 had a good tale to tell as well, which also ended on a really fun battle. It was nice to see Estinien so early on too and get more of his back story. Never really knew much about him before we ever got to Heavensward proper. Speaking of that, the Heavensward section was the absolute highlight of the whole story; it was just so good!
The Level 60 Milestone
The Stormblood section was alright, but nothing real memorable until the final battle. Each section really did have a fun and memorable battle of some kind for certain! Leveling-wise, Aikirees and I, along with the Cousins, wanted to keep our levels fairly synced up as we took the journey together. Early on, this was fairly simple to do, but once we all reached 60 and the range of raid choices opened up, that was where it became a bit more of a challenge.
In some cases, it was fairly easy depending on say Aikirees got World of Darkness and I got Syrcus Tower. It would only be a matter of a Tribal Quest or two to address the difference. However, if one of us got something like Dun Scaith and the other Labyrinth of the Ancients, then the catch-up was a lot more comical to figure out! Aside from one misstep, it went pretty smooth.
Celebrating the 70 Milestone
I mentioned earlier that going from Caster Main to melee is a rather jarring adjustment, especially in Raids. Trials and Normal Raids, it wasn’t too bad as we all could see the battlefield fairly easily even with all of the effects. Sages and Summoner’s did make some of the Normal Raids even at 60 a bit challenging to see if we were poking and prodding the right spots though. I believe by the time we all were reaching the NieR raids, this was a lot easier to understand and moving around to avoid certain mechanics had become significantly easier.
On the annoying-side were melee mechanics where we would have to wait it out until it was over not being able to do a whole lot aside from possibly using our buff, or just hurling spears comically (seriously, where do we put all of those?!) Trial Bosses that were facing-only still kind of puzzle me if we’re doing the right thing with positionals, but it seems to always go alright. These are mostly just nit-picks though from someone who is usually just sitting in a corner lobbing Fire IV’s everywhere.
Level 80~!
We did have to do a rework of some abilities on the crossbar once we approached the 80 tier as some of the abilities’ combos started to get a bit longer than I was expecting, but really helped the flow going further. Approaching up to and obtaining level 90 is just a blast with nearly having all abilities at one’s disposal and just continuously jumping and diving all over the place! Raiden Thrust is so darn pretty and reminds me of a certain saga of a Two-Headed Dragon from another Star and I will always see it as that.
This is certainly a class we’ll happily continue to run around and adventure with for the foreseeable future taking on odds and ends or for a different change of pace/view. As for the Role Quests, since we did the Shadowbringers one as a Bard since it was before physical damage was split into melee and range, we’re looking forward to seeing the melee role quests as a Dragoon. As for post Endwalker, well now that all those levels are behind us, getting it up to 100 will be just like the rest of ours and we are very much looking forward to more fun as Dragoon in Dawntrail!
The End – Level 90
Thank everyone over the past few years that has recommended Dragoon to us. I adore this class, and very much pass that recommendation along to anyone wanting to start out as a melee job in their adventures through Eitherys!
This is a smidgen late, since as of this post we’re fast approaching 85, but we hit the Level 80 milestone on Dragoon! It has certainly been a wild journey looking back on starting out as a little Level 1 Lancer all the while ago. This job has been really really fun and every ability that has been added later on just makes the flow all the more enjoyable!
Don’t get me wrong, even at lower levels with the lack of the combo-chains and procs that can be done, it’s still a really enjoyable job with a pretty good balance between speed and damage. I’m still really glad we all picked it as our first foray into melee, but not something we’d be maining anytime soon though.
Level 80!!
Getting so close to the finish line now, and looking forward to it! Soon thereafter, we’re all off to finally start and complete all of the Endwalker Role Quests!
After finishing up all of the tasks for the week, I caught up with Aikirees in Labyrinthos near Margaret’s place on a rainy evening. We coincidentally finished our running around for the week in the same location and gave her some much needed cover from the rain.
While not much for small chatter, as we tend to a lot while adventuring as well as just being plain exhausted, I simply looked down at my dear little sister smiling. She looked back up and flashed a tired smile herself. I was only able to muster one thing before both of us returned to HQ for the evening.
~”I know the winds are changing, and we’re heading Westward soon to a new land. You’re growing up so fast and becoming so strong now. No matter what happens in the future, you’ll always be my Little One, dear sister. I shall always be there to protect and look after you.”~
The other day, while Aikirees was hunting down the weekly elite mark, she stumbled upon a gorgeous sunset over Western La Noscea with Pharos Sirius nearly on the horizon. It’s been a very long while since either of us had a moment to just enjoy a sunset while adventuring, so this was a very lovely treat to behold.
After completing the Hildibrand Manderville 6.55 story, Aikirees and I set out to finish up our relics… only to realize we were a smidgen behind on tomes to acquire enough of the material needed to complete them. After a number of roulettes on my part, and only a couple on her’s, we were finally able to complete our relic weapons for Endwalker!! Quite the exciting moment and they look pretty neat as well.
I very much doubt we’ll ever complete another relic in the game unless they return to being more quest-driven like this series was in the future as opposed to large zone-related tasks like Eureka and Bozja were, but it was a very fun thing to have said that I did at least once.
There’s usually two camps when it comes to Hildibrand Manderville and his adventures/investigations: one either loves them or completely dislikes them. Then there’s another camp within the one for loving them: either loving all of it unconditionally, or liking specific sections. I personally fall into the camp of loving all of it unconditionally.
The Hildibrand Manderville stories are a set of side-stories that are typically accessed after completing a major part of the Main Scenario Quest (MSQ) and are usually just absolutely hilariously bonkers. I very much understand not liking nor enjoying these style of stories, but it makes for a very nice complement to the (usually) far darker/sadder/heavier stories and adventures that the MSQ itself tends to throw at us. Anyone who has completed up to and including The Vault, everything that involves Patch 5.3, and even completing of Endwalker in Patch 6.0 will very much understand what I mean by these being a nice complement.
So here we are at the end of Endwalker with Patch 6.55 and the finale portion of Hildibrand Manderville’s Endwalker escapades, and it was hysterical! Kind of like how the MSQ for 6.55 was a smidgen on the shorter side, this was as well but with the bonus addition of a Trial fight.
Disclaimer, I kind of sort of recall what was going on last as the prior quest was 8 months ago now, and minor spoilers as this will be talking about Patch 6.55 Hildibrand’s questline including images.
I see what you did there!
It starts right where we left off still looking for our alien friend’s, Master PuPu, missing friend and spaceship. We discover a lead in the case and quickly head out to meet up with everyone and begin investigating. From a local fisherman, we find out who is truly behind it all, one of his old friends risen to becoming a wealthy merchant, Vanhudi. What comes about after this is hilariously absurdly bonkers! Doctor Lugae appears on a large battle body, some comical dialogue happens about blatantly saying he’s there to cause trouble at Yedlihmad. Before being able to act upon said trouble-causing, Godbert Manderville comes out of nowhere to instantly stop him.
ALL OF A SUDDEN, GODBERT!
It took me a moment to register what just happened and about that moment it did, several Doctor Lugae clones appear only to be comically thwarted by Julyan Manderville with a colossal frying pan. Meanwhile the original Doctor Lugae back onto his feat only to throw a spiky bomb towards Yedlihmad. Julyan tosses her frying pan over to me and hit the thing like a baseball!
The crowd goes wild!
Doctor Lugae throws yet another one, which I end up missing; only to have Hildibrand leap and catch it in time…
Nashu just causally walking away from the detonating bomb.
…only for it to explode in his face. Nashu casually walking away while everyone else ran was pretty hilarious. The Doctor decides to throw one more as a fast ball with me getting ready for the big throw. He throws the pitch and I send it careering back at him. It was great, even including a dramatic freeze-pose and all when I made contact with the mine itself.
Taking on Doctor Lugae’s Fastball & aftermath.
The crew cheer and we head off with all of the information we’ve gathered prior to this comical incident to confront the person behind it all, Vanhudi. We’re given a personal flight to his rather massive and fancy villa to be greeted by the man himself. After telling him we know all about his dasterly deeds, he asks me to join him to be cloned by PuPu’s Friend’s spaceship and take over the world. I decline such an insane offer (there is another dialog option agreeing to it, but I didn’t choose that one), and he goes about summoning a Primal to deal with me, Asura.
I got this!
Everyone retreats from the battlefield and the Trial is unlocked! The fight with Asura is really fun; not overly complicated (except one mechanic that kind of can be), but very enjoyable none the less. After Asura is taken out, PuPu’s friend recovers their ship, joins the fray to thwart Vanhudi from escaping. The two aliens are reunited and everyone retreats back to Radz-at-Han to finish up and conclude the story. One thing of note is during the climatic final bout betwee PuPu’s friend and Vanhudi, PuPu’s friend’s ship becomes unstable and before exploding Brandihild (Hildibrand’s ‘flawed’ clone) comes to the rescue and gets the ship far away. Presumed gone after the explosion, but once the credits role on concluding the story, come to find out that Brandihild survived the explosion! I let out one hoobers of a cheer upon seeing him alright.
This was so gosh darn fun and such a hoot as always. The whole baseball reenactment scene was the main highlight for me in this part of the story. Loved the Trial lots too and look forward to it coming up in Trial Roulettes down the road once a certain Dragoon level reaches said point.
Hildibrand flies away on PuPu’s UFO into the unknown at the end, so we’ll see you next time in Tural, inspector~!
We all have finally attained level 70 Dragoon!! The 60-70 adventure was mostly pleasant overall, and understanding the several rotations that the class has up to 70 hasn’t been all that rough either. The story was enjoyable too, but I personally liked the 50-60 one a lot more.
The full screenshots of us celebrating Level 70 Dragoon
Once the Dragon Gauge was unlocked at 70, the rotations and combo’s become absolutely bonkers! It all makes sense, but upon first seeing it was a bit overwhelming especially when we main Black Mage. All in all though, we’ve been really enjoying Dragoon so very much. It’s fun and balanced between speed and what should be executed next while moving around the battlefields.
This was also really gratifying to see happen upon hitting level 70 as well. It might look really awful jumping from 60 to 70 gear, but we really only stuck with roulettes that kept us around 60 or below all of the time. I can’t believe were only 20 levels left. Here’s to those and more adventures ahead!!
Aikirees and I caught up the other evening after finishing up all of our objectives for the day under the Ruby Sea. This moment was so serene and just relaxing after a haptic day/evening.
Also recently acquired the Major-General minion that had this absolutely amazing item description.
The little feller is an achievement-based minion from ocean fishing. Anyway, we’re quickly approaching Dragoon Level 70 now as well!!
We had such a wonderful time with this year’s Heavensturn. The story was so gosh darn cute & emotional with it telling tales of the “Ryu” or Dragon for us Eorzean’s that eventually leads into a Far Eastern tale that intertwines with the Four Lords story from Stormblood. I love absolutely every moment of it.
The aftermath with a certain NPC relating to the Four Lords.
What was also neat is the aftermath and the return of getting one’s fortune taken again! This was from the 2023 Heavensturn event with its own story and was so delightfully fun!
Some of us ended up fairing better than others.
While I and my poor assistant didn’t fair so well, Aikirees flourished and Lizicus did. One can always request a re-draw, but we tend to stick with what we get for the year. Regardless, it’s a nice fun little thing that I am glad they brought back. It sets one back 100 Gil per draw, so very low-cost to keep drawing if one wants to.
The Cousins in their Heavensturn attire.
May everyone out there have an absolutely wonderful Heavensturn and 2024 ahead! Let’s make it a stellar and ‘zee awesome’sies’ of a year!!
Normally for New Year’s Eve, I spend the evening with my folks and we celebrate ringing in the New Year with them. However this year, they were not feeling well, so I spent the evening with my beloved FC. While we went to catch up on Dragoon quests, Juli arrived and mentioned she wanted to go Ocean Fishing.
Ocean Fishing is an event that happens only ever 2 hours, and it’s a fun time on a boat catching a bunch of fish while gaining an absurd amount of experience in the process. We decided to join her for the last boat ride of the year. It was an absolutely wonderful and relaxing time.
Shortly thereafter, we hit midnight and celebrated the new year, while having friends come to visit and chat with us until the whee hours of the AM celebrating not only our New Year’s but for friends in Central, and Mountain times as well.
It really and truly was a wonderful night that I won’t forget. ♥
It took some time, and some setbacks, but we all finally managed to reach Level 60 on Dragoon over the weekend! This has been a fun melee class to tackle being the first one we’ve done ever. Only 30 levels to go now!!
It’s been a long couple of weeks, with no end in sight until Christmas & New Years weekend as the nearest ETA unfortunately. Upon beginning my adventures through Eorzea today, while leaving EOCA HQ, I spot the moogle box had become illuminated stating there was new mail to take a look at. Upon opening it, it was a heartfelt letter from my dearest pink cat.
Thank you, Hun for such a wonderful letter and delicious espresso. I cherish and keep every letter I get from folks & frens through the mail system. It’s something I need to do more often and send myself; it’s always nice to see the mailbox at HQ light up with a letter, even if it’s just saying ‘hi!’ and nothing more. ♥
I hadn’t pre-planned any posts for this week as of yet, and I really do want to get back to my adventure through Super Mario RPG where I last left off as well as more Star Bunny. Over the past weekend, I was playing catch up and dealing with multiple RL objectives all while trying to get a model locomotive back up and running. An interesting incident happened to Aikirees on Friday evening. It was a very long day at work, got home, finally settled in for the evening, and we started off on our adventures to tackle our usual daily objectives in Eorzea.
As previously mentioned we’re leveling Dragoon and, as of this post, is sitting at level 55. We primarily are utilizing Alliance Raids (AR), Trials, and Frontlines(FL) roulettes to level said class. While not the fastest way possible, it is a nice slow burn of a pace and allows for acquiring Poetics: a kind of currency to buy goodies and gear. That and these are just plain fun as a nice relaxing (typically) contrast from Expert Roulette, which has somewhat evolved into a ‘go go go!’ kind of attitude. I could write up something about that, but this isn’t about ‘speed running’ dungeons.
Anyway, Aikirees is up for AR and gets Labyrinth of the Ancients, which is the first Raid in the Crystal Tower Series that everyone encounters and, along with the two after it, are now required to continue the main story. ‘Raid’ in Final Fantasy XIV is not necessarily mean the content is more difficult, it just means you’re running through a massive dungeon with mobs and bosses with 23 other folks divided up into three even teams. Aside from that, they’re pretty similar to a regular dungeon with four players, and slightly less mob groups. This raid, in particular, is considered very easy aside from one mechanic at the very end a lot of players try to speed through (and it usually doesn’t work).
We have been running Labyrinth of the Ancients on and off since late Stormblood, so I have seen how over that period of time tactics on certain bosses/areas has evolved and/or other Data Centers running it just a smidgen differently. All of this is perfectly fine and is the nature of any MMO that has been running for any given good length of time. The reason for stating that is this incident just seemed… peculiar enough to stick in my mind all weekend. Usually things like this I write off and move on, but there has been an uptick in these kinds of things happening: whether it’s directed at me, or another player.
The run is going pretty smoothly and then the Alliance hits an area where each of the three teams has to go down a different path and deal with a mini-boss at the end called an Atomos. The catch is there’s a pad of a different color representing a shield for another teams Atomos of said color that four players have to stand on to drop said shield while the other four players go smack the Atomos until it’s defeated.
The pathway where the three teams split up.
Aikirees gets to go smack said Atomos (or, poke it rather) instead of pad standing. The Atomos spits out adds every few moments and the party has to deal with it, and Aikirees decides to pull it to the pad folks so they’d have something to do while the others smack said Atomos. The tank didn’t like that and told her not to pull said mobs to the back pad. That’s perfectly fine, and there’s nothing incorrect with stating this. There’s also nothing inherently incorrect with pulling said mob to the back so those waiting there can have some fun too, and the adds are pretty weak to begin with. Regardless it wasn’t anything to fuss over and the section was cleared without a hitch. While heading into the next part, the tank blatantly explain how that section is supposed to be done. To me, especially in this raid in particular, felt kind of uncalled for: it went perfectly fine, and it is a tactic the party can use to make it a bit more entertaining (sometimes quicker, depending on who stays back) for folks on the pad.
After that, it was back to quietness with a few call-outs for adds and where the teams needed to move to, like the ‘A,’ ‘B’,’ and ‘C’ in the above image. At the end of the raid, there’s a bigger boss-like mob that everyone goes and wallops on. Said boss has a nasty 1-Shot Area of Effect (AoE) that can and will K.O. the entire raid if not countered by the teams running back to a safety pad to put a big shield up. Looks kind of neat when first seeing it.
Same tank says the above to the entire raid team. This really isn’t necessary to say, and similar comments have been made elsewhere while running content. This is the first raid a lot of newcomers are going to see, so while it’s technically possible to burn down the raid boss if said HP is at 10% or less, it could have been said a lot more polite or not at all. Shielding for the final AoE only adds an additional few minutes of time to the run and it’s a guarantee non-wipe if done. Newer players more than likely are going to head back anyway because it’s just new content to them. In this case, the damage output was way lower so it was irrelevant to even bring up to begin with.
Normally things like this never really get to me, but hearing it more and more it’s just…. I don’t know. Every character one comes across has a face on the other side of the screen, and maybe they were just having a rough day and didn’t want to deal with this sort of thing (counter-point to this is just not run the content to begin with). Just choose kindness is all I’m trying to get at; everyone is going through their own thing & personal battles, and we’re all playing this game to have fun, relax, and maybe make a friend or two along the way.
A little over 2 years ago, in the twilight months of Shadowbringers, I was playing pretty ‘aggressively.’ What I mean by this is I was maxing out weekly tomestones, all 12 custom deliveries, Wonderous Tails, and acquiring all three raid coins for gear augementation (+10 iLvling a piece of equipment for slightly better stats), all within the span of two evenings. I had maxed out both Caster and Healer sets in doing this, but never got the relic past the 2nd part as I never liked Bozja and still do not; I know a lot of folks that do like Bozja, but it was just not content I enjoyed.
Around this point Aikirees was on her own account, I was shifting more into being known as the Kosmikros Sisters plus a bit more Roleplay, and I very much wanted to take her along for the ride in Endwalker for both of us enjoy the story & beyond as Sister’s proper. However, I needed a plan for this as well as making late-game not cause severe burnout or over exhaustion.
Looking at what I had done in Shadowbringers, and realizing I never actually ended up using the Augmented healing set, nor had any other class I would usually use anywhere near late-game aside from Black Mage, decided to just focus on Black Mage primarily all throughout Endwalker. As for the raid coins, I’d hold onto those until the very last raid and then start to augment in lieu of getting ready for the next expansion. As for Tomestones, I wouldn’t worry about maxing them out at all. The remaining classes I had would just level and gear as a secondary task.
Everything else was just sprinkled in as necessary for a much more reasonable plan with a nice slow burn in the process through all of the post-patches. After almost two years of adventures in Endwalker, last night this plan ended in complete success! It may not sound like a big milestone to a lot of folks who do more things, but to plan out this and see it come into fruition for both of us (not even counting the Dragon’s and their own adventures!) this was an absolute wonderfully exciting moment!
From Dusk to Dawn(trail)!
So, where do we go from here? Well, we still have all of the Endwalker Role Quests, we’re in the midst of leveling Dragoon, there’s Island Sanctuary, and a handful of other little more relaxing things to look forward to up to the launch of the next expansion, Dawntrail. Sure, there’s still Custom Deliveries along with other weekly tasks to do still, but with the one huge 2-year plan completed, it should be a smooth boat ride from here till then.
While traveling the world, there’s always fun sights and scenes to see, and things like this I absolutely love to come across. It makes the world all the more special while adventuring through it. ♥
Welcome to my/our little corner of the world. Been wanting to do this for a long while now, and with me taking a breather from Social Media for a spell, figured it was a good time to get it going! Along with that, two of my dear friends: Bearmine, and AceAttVeg having their wonderful blog sites, it got me even more inspired to finally get this moving as well! ♥
Albeit still in the process of getting all of it up and running, but I think it’ll just all fall into place as I post more & more adventures and stories. Thank y’all for stopping by, and let’s see where the stories & adventures take us!
