The Balance Force: Ffxiv Aetheryte Edition

Recently I have been playing #FinalFantasyXIV, I had a couple of friends that played Swtor asking me to try it out. That was about 3-4 months back, I was reluctant at first since I really didn’t know too much about the genre of #FinalFantasy. But since there is a free trial of the game, how could I really say no. And I’ll be honest I really had no idea that #SquareEnix made an MMO. So my friend said to me, “I think you’ll really enjoy this game.”. And like I said there’s the free trial. My friend took the time to explain to me what the jobs (classes) are and the races in the game.

I wanted to put out a review type of guide covering the basics of the game which I learned since I had started playing. But I don’t want to throw out too much information as to confuse anyone who might be new to trying FFXIV.

One thing to keep in mind it that the free trial is available on PC from the link here. The FFXIV Wiki is a good source of information aswell. Remember that if you’re on the free trial that there is NO TIME LIMIT, so you can take your time and enjoy all aspects of the game without feeling like you’re being rushed. But on the free trial you can go only to 35, but that means that you can level up all the jobs to level 35.

Races:

In the ARR (A Realm Reborn) free trial there are 5 races (6 in total):

• Hyur (Human)
• Miqo’te (Cat-like Human)
• Elezen (Elves-like)
• Roegadyn
• Lalafell (Gnomes-like)

*Au Ra race is available after purchasing the Heavensward Expansion.

Classes:

One important thing that caught me by surprise was the fact that I could play ALL the jobs of the free trial of “A Realm Reborn”, as I responded to him “Say what?”.

The term class differs in this MMO, I’ll try to clarify:

• Disciples of War (DoW)
• Disciples of Magic (DoM)
• Disciples of the Land (DotL)
• Disciples of the Hand (DotH)

DoW are your tanks and melee dps jobs. DoM are your healers and ranged dps jobs. DotL are your gatherers. And the DotH are your crafters.

Jobs:

In the ARR free trial there are 9 Basic jobs which once you level 30 you then can do the 10 advance jobs. Tanks in the game are always blue, DPS are red, and healers are green. Once you hit level 30, you can then go into the advanced job(s). Please keep in mind that you will start in one of the major cities: Ul’dah, Limsa Lominsa, or Gridania. Don’t forget to stop but the Adventurer’s Guild in the major cities and do the Novice training, it’s free experience.

Disciples of War are:

 Gladiator  (DoW~Tank, starting city: Ul’dah) | Advanced job:  Paladin

 Marauder (DoW~Tank, starting city: Limsa Lominsa) | Advanced job:  Warrior

 Pugilist (DoW~Melee DPS, starting city: Ul’dah) | Advanced job:  Monk

 Lancer (DoW~Melee DPS, starting city: Gridania) | Advanced job:  Dragoon

 Archer (DoW~Ranged DPS, starting city: Gridania) | Advanced job:  Bard

 Rogue (DoW~Melee DPS, starting city: Limsa Lominsa) | Advanced job:  Ninja

Disciples of Magic are:

 Thaumaturge (DoM~Ranged DPS, starting city: Ul’dah) | Advanced job:  Black Mage

 Arcanist (DoM~Ranged DPS, starting city: Limsa Lominsa) | Advanced job(s):  Summoner and  Scholar

 Conjurer (DoM~Healer, starting city: Gridania) | Advanced job:  White Mage

All this information is available on the main website here. Please note: that  Dark Knight (DoW~Tank),  Astrologian (DoM~Healer), and  Machinist (DoW~Ranged DPS) are in the Heavensward expansion. While  Samurai (DoW~Melee DPS) and  Red Mage (DoM~Ranged DPS) are in the Stormblood Expansion.

I added the icons as it took me a little while to know what was what. I honestly think that being able to take up all the jobs on a single character is amazing, that way you can try out what you like and if you don’t like like you can switch to a different job and continue with your journey in FFXIV. It eliminates having to delete your character and having to start all over. As we MMO players spend quite a bit of time on the character creation screen making the toon the way we like.

Disciples of the Land:

• Fisher (Located in Limsa Lominsa) (Map) (FFXIV Wiki List)
• Miner (Located in Ul’dah) (FFXIV Wiki List)
• Botanist (Located in Gridania) (FFXIV Wiki List)

In short there 3 gathering jobs, gathering jobs are a way of gathering materials and resources to help your crafters and/or to sell to generate Gil ingame. Personally, I quite enjoy the gathering aspect as it can be very relaxing, especially fisher in my opinion. Resources when gathered are either Normal Quality (NQ) and/or High Quality (HQ).

Disciples of the Hand:

• Carpenter (Located in Gridania)
• Goldsmith (Located in Ul’dah)
• Culinarian (Located in Limsa Lominsa)
• Armorer (Located in Limsa Lominsa)
• Blacksmith (Located in Limsa Lominsa)
• Alchemist (Located in Ul’dah)
• Weaver (Located in Ul’dah)
• Leatherworker (Located in Gridania)

There are many guides out there, and videos on Youtube. I enjoy the crafting in this game, it reminds of when I played Star Wars Galaxies where you had to the option to craft really good quality items base on the materials you gathered.

One of the ways for leveling up crafting is spreadsheets and guides that are out there. Mithrie Crafting post is one of them. And a spreadsheet that was given to me to help me out.

Now as I mentioned before the Normal Quality (NQ) and High Quality (HQ) materials used for crafting. Using HQ materials means that if you want to get HQ items (essentially HQ items with have a bump in stats/attributes to certain items), it will give you a bump in the quality of the item crafted. Decorations/furniture dont require HQ materials, so it doesnt really matter in deco’s/furniture.

There are some players that go with a couple of crafting jobs, I went with them all. I definitely want to try all aspects of the game. So my advice is you try to level them all up together, you will using items from other crafting jobs for higher recipes. Also a word of advice, for your crafting jobs, you will want to try and make sure that you have HQ gear for your crafters, it makes crafting a bit easier.

User Interface:

The interface is pretty simple, you can resize pratically anything, move windows, hotbars, hotkeys. Very customizable, I was able to customize it to how I had my UI in swtor.

World environment:

The world environment is amazing, the day and night cycles, shadows, ambient noises, weather system, water, it blew me away. It’s one thing to see it on stream and on videos but when you’re in the game, it’s superb. It suprises me how many screenshots I have taken.

Gameplay:

Now for some, like myself in the beginning it was a little slow, kind of hand-holding. But things definitely start to pick up at later levels, you will start to unlock dungeons at level 15 and up. There are many things to do ingame, questing, crafting, gathering, hunt, there are logs for everything, you get experience and Gil for completing certain things in your log(s).

Dungeons/8 mans/Raids:

Many of the dungeons each have their own personality, and what I mean by this is the environments are different from each other. You will be unlocking dungeons, 8 mans, and raids as you level up going through the main story quest (MSQ), but don’t forget to to unlock feature quests with this icon .

Main Story Quest (MSQ):

The MSQ will explain the story of Eorzea, backstory, your part in this world. So make sure that you follow it, it will have this icon in your log , or above an non player character (NPC). As I don’t want to spoil anything about the MSQ, I quite enjoyed the story arc’s.

Job Quests:

Every 5 levels you will want to back and visit your job guilds as they have their own stories aside from the MSQ, this includes crafting and gathering jobs.

Feature Quests:

As I stated before Feature Quests unlock dungeons, 8 mans, and raids, but they also unlock emotes, ingame features like retainers (bank storage), side dungeons, and more. So don’t skip any.

Character Creation:

I think most of spen quite a bit of time in this, with the fact that you can take on all the jobs on one character, you’re mosre than likely to be more vested in your one character, but it’s not to say that you may not have alt’s. There is quite a bit of customizability in the character creation.

Conclusion:

Now as I didn’t want to make this post too long and boring for the reader(s), it took me a while to really layout some of the things that I wanted to touch on. I honestly am having fun with this game, it has alot of traditional MMO aspect which I enjoy. Now at first when my friend approached me about this, I was hesitant, but in all honesty since it was a free trial it didn’t cost me anything to try it. If you’re on the fence about this, really what do you have to lose? And as I said I didn’t want to overload the reader with other aspects of the game but, there are mounts, minion (pets), outfit system (called Glamouring), housing, mini-games, relic quests, a refer-a-friend system, veteran rewards, cross-server queueing, seasonal events and the list goes on and on.

I really want to cover the intro-basics, I am still new to the game, and I’m constantly looking up things for what I am doing ingame. If any of you want a refer-a-friend code, please free free to email at master.liu@thebalanceforce.com. You’ll get a couple of ingame items and so will I.

Stay tuned to The Balance Force.