The Seventh Umbral Era Looms! Let's Play FFXIV

Because one MMORPG Let's Play is never enough! This Let's Play will cover all of the pertinent pre-2.0 story content to bring everyone up to speed on what's going on in the land of Eorzea. I started taking these images back in late January, so even in those seven months' time there have been quite a few tweaks and changes that I'll try to touch on as I go along.

Follow me on Twitter! Updates are announced there.

Part 0 - The Basics

• Character Creation
• Guildleves
• The Path to Gridania
• The Slow Boat to Limsa Lominsa

Part 1 - These Bits Are Mostly Worthless: The Vestigial "Main Storyline" (Complete!)

• Goobbue Attack
• Tedious Mission Run-around Part 1
• Tedious Mission Run-around Part 2
• Ul'dah Missions 3
• And So The Story...Trails Off... aka "The Echo"
• The Path of the Twelve is Longer than Expected
• Parley: So Bad Its Gone in A Realm Reborn
• Crystal Farming
• The Flames of Ifrit
• The Ala Mhigan Resistance
• So Long Path of the Twelve

Part 2 - The Grand Companies of Eorzea and the Seventh Umbral Era (Complete!)

• The Immortal Flames, Cid and the Seventh Umbral Era
• Dungeon Diving
• Deja Vu, Part 1
• Deja Vu, Part 2
• Meet the Leaders of the Grand Companies
• New Ride
• Of Course It Kills With Fire, Duh
• Imperials Get Serious
• Doing the Bad Guy's Work For Him (Again)
• The Black Wolf Bares His Fangs
• To Turn Back the Falling Moon
• The Final Showdown
• Twelve Protectors of Eorzea
• Dalamud Awakens

Archived Thread: (future proofing Photobucket policy changes)
Page 1
Page 2
Page 3
Page 4
Page 5
Page 6

8/17/2012 - Character Creation

FFXIV has five available races. They may have new names and slightly different appearances, but they're almost 1:1 with FFXI's options:



The Hyur, boring old mainstay and my personal favorite.



The Elezen, snooty as always.



The Lalafell, the requisite "cute ones."



The Miquo'te, because you can't have an MMO without cat ladies I guess?



And finally the Roegadyn, known for their bulky brawn.



In addition to the races you then get to pick which sub-region of people you'd like to play as. Midlanders are the more "normal" choices, whereas the Highlanders are more barbarian-esque in stature.



Like FFXI you don't get very many options to customize your character beyond the race and gender.



Rather than be based on a traditional job system, FFXIV gives you a series of "disciples" to choose from. What you choose here really makes little difference, though, because you can buy the starting weapons (which dictate which class you currently are) for a pittance in your starting town. Disciples of War and Magic are your regular fighting / exploring classes and Disciples of the Hand and Land are your harvesting and crafting options.



My preference for class is always HUGE DAMAGE HUGE AXE, so I go with Marauder. Once again, this only effects what weapon I start with.



Next you choose your birthdate and guardian. These seem to have no effect in-game from what I can tell.



Carrying forward my name from FFXI, this time with the matching family name.



FFXIV has three starting cities. Limsa Lominsa is isolated on an island to the west and is home to a bunch of pirates and the worst city layout in the game.



Gridania is the forested hippie magic town in the middle of a maze of a forest. Not a bad town layout, but the most unfriendly adjacent maps.



Ul'dah is my personal favorite and the player-chosen "best" city as it serves as the central meetup area for most events. The most useful things are laid out in a compact section of the city, and the area outside feature open areas and scenic vistas.



And with that, I have my character!

8/17/2012 - Goobbue Attack!



We begin our story with Kurow riding into the city of Ul'dah via a chocobo carriage. All of the cutscenes are in-engine, but feature full voice acting. Of course your character doesn't talk at all.



You get a few establishing flyover shots interspersed with random small talk between the townspeople.



"Hear...feel...think..." says some disembodied voice to us as we exit the carriage.



And then we have a catastrophic vision of Ul'dah in flames!



Just kidding! Its really just some fireworks. This kid and her father are somewhat important to the story eventually.



For now though they'll just be our NPCs for this tutorial.



Unlike FFXI, FFXIV gives a pretty in-depth look at all of your menu features and the way to get around in the game.



Not only that, quest logs are extensive and actively update as you complete portions of them. Using the "Map" button in the bottom left will even show you exactly where you need to go for the next leg of your quest.



The entire interface can be rearranged however you feel like it, as seen here in this image.



The quest section of the tutorial done, we're treated to a parade through town. It seems that a local group has gone and captured a wild Goobbue for exhibition in the town's coliseum.



Dude! You just totally jinxed yourself!



Flower cat-girl in the background there is another important NPC in this not even half-finished story.



As are these two here, the right one being the captain of the town's gladiators. He's actively protecting the parade in case of foul play.



The flower lady gives the soldiers a flower "as a precaution."

She gives one to the little girl as well (though here it kind of looks like she's punching her in the head).



In exchange, she puts the kid to work.



She then goes to work putting on a show atop the cart delivering the Goobbue.



This guy is also an important story NPC. They really pulled everyone in altogether right from the start.



Of course shit goes wrong and the Goobbue goes berserk!



He breaks free with such ease you wonder what use the shock collar thing even was.



The townspeople handle it as well as can be expected.



The cat lady took the first hit and is down for the count.



Goobbue is out for some snacks now, though...



Everyone seems to be too terrified to do anything about it.



The mysterious stranger decides to take a stand and I get roped into it since I didn't run like everyone else.



Here comes the controls / battle tutorial! Xbox 360 controllers are supported out of the box, so that's what I go with here. Pressing the RB button draws your weapon. You then select the target by pressing left or right on the d-pad and then press A to engage.



The scale is a bit different (and there's no skillchains), but weapons skills work the same as in FFXI. Hit the enemy to build TP and then use that to do a more powerful attack.



Here I am executing Heavy Swing on the Escaped Goobbue.



And with that the monster falls. Surprisingly weak if it can be taken down (mostly) by a level 1 Marauder. I get zero experience points for my efforts.



He seems to think foul play is involved with the escape.



Oh hey, there's why I didn't get any exp maybe? The goobbue has a bit more life left in him.



See ya!

The gladiator captain and his two Lalafell assistants decide to join up in the pursuit.



Surprisingly, the townspeople didn't bother to head inside or leave town when the thing went on a rampage a block over.



Of course it goes straight for the little girl. Her father makes a heroic dive in an effort to save her.



It works out poorly.



I manage to grab one of the cat girl's flowers off of the defeated goobbue.

Well, enough of that! Off to the adventurer's guild!



Ul'dah music

This will be our main NPC liaison for the original story bits of FFXIV.



Word travels fast in Ul'dah.



Thancreed shows up and takes all the credit for saving the town from the goobbue.



He's quite the pimp.



He seems to be concerned that that Garlean Empire will find the resources of Ul'dah irresistible and stage an assault in the near future. Momodi isn't concerned about Ul'dah's defensive capabilities, though.



Momodi seems convinced that the rampaging goobbue was the work of a Garlean spy.



This news of potential convinces Thancreed to stick around in Ul'dah for the time being. Well, that and his insatiable need to hit on every woman within reach of his voice.



"Oh yeah, doing a tutorial. Right, right."



Never mind the fact that as of this patch guilds no longer exist as anything but buildings and sparse equipment stores!



Our first task is to run outside of town and attune to the nearest aetherite point at Camp Black Brush.

Aetherite points are used in fast travel around Eorzea. They use a pool of points called anima that accumulate slowly up to a maximum of 100. Most aetherite cost between 3 and 6 points per teleport, so a real heavy weekend of playing can usually expend most if not all of your supply leaving you with no other options but to stop playing or hoof it out on foot to wherever you're going.



Our destination is just a little ways north of town.



Oh Momodi, you're so sassy.



In addition to the regular linkshells used to communicate with players, FFXIV introduces NPC linkpearls used to communicate with single quest NPCs. These are used to give a little extra guidance when out in the field completing a quest.




Central Thanlan music

Central Thanlan Battle Music

Rather than complete the quest right away, though, I run outside and kill a few monsters instead.



I did manage to get to Camp Black Brush before finishing for the day, though.

Next time: Guildleves and Stupidly Boring Main Quests

I played the open beta for this and didn't like it at all, but I'll give it another chance with 2.0 (when's the "release date" for that, anyway?). Especially since I think I'm about done with FFXI. So I'm looking forward to reading all about the stuff I'm missing by waiting.

Also, I spy a familiar name in that last shot...

This is cool. It'll be nice to see how the apocalypse stuff goes down before 2.0 begins!

oh man, i showed up in the first episode of the lp... even if you didn't introduce me >;p ill be interested to see the uldah guild quests since i went to gridania

What's with the races?

1. How many dumb ways can you possibly spell "human" already, seriously
2. Why do they not even attempt to hide the fact that these are pretty much renamed FFXI races (plus a catgirl maybe)?
3. You've got a perfectly good set of Ivalice races that you're ignoring for the online games; this is a real missed opportunity to make this feel more like a mainline entry. (But given their dumb class naming scheme, treading all over series tradition seems to be de jeur here.)

ON THE OTHER HAND: Gee, this is a pretty game.

That's not a catgirl, it's a mixiote.

You lost me here. Are you saying you want to eat her? ("That's not a fish-man. It's pescado.")

Uhm, they are the races from XI, catgirls (Mithra) and all. Just with new names.

And these seem to be the 'Online MMO' races SE likes. Ivilace has some cool races, but I learned the hard way when I ran a pen and paper game there that no one ever makes a Nu Mou or Seeq. It'd be mostly humes with the occasional Bangaa/Viera/Moogle.

And in this very first update you pretty much covered everything I managed to play through in FFXIV before I put it down.

It'll be neat to see where the game actually went from here though.

You're not the only one who gets to poke fun at the races' new names

I've seen a few people play Nu Mou. No Seeq, though, cos the Returner Games' FFRPG 3e doesn't have Seeq.

I'd play the heck out of a Seeq. Sign me up for Jolly Fat Lizard times.

And yeah, I forgot about Mithra. So why not just call them the same names???

My golden Age of Ivilace group had:
Hume Black Mage (alternate GM/NPC)
Hume Red Mage (alternate GM/me)
Hume Divine Knight
Hume Fell Knight
Hume White Mage
Viera Ninja
Moogle Orator
(Blind) Bangaa Monk
Bangaa Dragoon

Rrrride ze shoopuff?

I'm still playing FFXI (actively with the TT LS) at the moment and a brief forray into Star Wars: The Old Republic proved to me that two MMOs is not really a good idea for me.

So is 14 like 11 but pretty and less obtuse and confusing?

More or less. But it has its own wrinkles in its systems still too (gear degradation! where it has to be 100% "fixed" to sell but you can only restore it to 99% via an NPC without leveling up the particular craft). But I'll get into some of those later.

You're lets playing THIS too? SL you so crazy

So, like, what happens if you start this game as one of the harvesting or crafting classes? Is that just a stupid move, and you have to go buy a sword so you can actually survive while trying to farm mats, or what? Seems like those are classes only for using later in the game?

Before the initial release S-E promised that you'd be able to participate in all story content regardless of your class choice. From what I understand they were pretty quick to 180 on that stance because as of now all of the missions require a disciple of war or magic.

The harvesting classes eventually gain abilities to at least be able to sneak around while gathering, but they're only effective versus monsters at or below your current level (caps at 50). And their only means of combat is to throw rocks. So if you want rare materials hidden in areas with lv80+ monsters (because there are plenty of those around) you've got a pretty good chance of getting killed in the process. At least you don't lose exp on death like in FFXI.

I played a little bit of this back when it first came out (I, foolishly, paid the $70 to be able to play early), played maybe a total of two hours, and haven't touched it in almost two years.

Hoping this Let's Play and the updates Square-Enix plan on implementing will encourage me to get back into the game I paid $1,200 to build a new computer for. Kind of disliked that they moved away from traditional classes, though, I was all for them making soloing something that was actually feasible, so I guess it's somewhat of a fair trade. I've been trying to get into FFXI for years, but my not knowing anyone in the game and the difficulty I always had finding a party made it a very miserable experience. I just wanted to be a dark knight!

(The Highlander Hyurs are so rad-looking, it's the first time I was ever tempted to create a human character. I've always just made Elvaans when I played XI).

8/23/2012 - Guildleves



Unlike FFXI, which for the longest time required you to team up and grind in popular camping locations to level up, FFXIV is very very solo friendly. This is done through a quest system called Guildleves.

Guildleves start at a very low number and accrue and the rate of around ~10 a day (not sure of the exact number) up to a cap of 100 leves. These can be traded in at the adventurer's guild for small quests that reward significant experience and gil, as well as the occasional item, upon completion. I guess supposedly in the early days of FFXIV they did not allow you to build leves and instead forced you to log in every so often to horde them which sounds unbearable.



Once you have a number of leves in your possession you turn them into their corresponding Aetherite (in this case, Camp Black Brush) to use them. As of the newest patch update the Aetherites are labeled as such, but for the first year and 1/2 of FFXIV they were simply labeled as "???" This particular leve will require my brother, Prince Laharl, and I to defeat 6 Naked Mole type monsters.



Leve Theme (Thanlan)

When doing a leve all of the monsters are essentially instanced to just you and your party. While the rest of the players can see that you're engaged with them, they can not run up and steal any of your potential targets nor can they assist you in battle. Each camp has a base level for the monsters (in this case level 1) and you can ajust the difficultly level up +3 up to a maximum of +12 levels. This here is a level 2 star difficulty, thus the monsters are level 4.



Unless you're really hardcore into crafting, leves are the number one best source for gil in FFXIV.



At these low levels with less abilities to choose from, a 4 level gap between you and the enemies can be disastrous.



Especially against these fly swarm type enemies, that have incredible evasion versus physical attacks and absorb HP upon each of their hits. Thankfully, there is no exp loss upon death in FFXIV and you can use the return ability to warp to the current camp from whence you started your particular leve. Once there you can adjust the level down to a more manageable level if you get in over your head.







A sample of a few of the other available targets at Camp Black Brush.

Desperate Leve Theme (Thanlan)

One of the other interesting things about Guildleves is that in the middle of the battle the targets can change without warning. A cornered, "final" enemy can run off and pull in reinforcements that can sometimes significantly change the flow of battle.

8/24/2012 - Tedious Mission Run-around Part 1



Continuing where we left out with Momodi's mission.



First step is to sell off that flower I picked up at the Goldsmith's guild, for whatever reason.



Niellefresne (henceforth referred to as "Niel") from the goobbue fight shows up. Turns out he is the master goldsmith and is interested in appraising the flower that I'm trying to pawn off.



He offers us 2,000 gil for the flower after being surprised that the plant has yet to wilt in the slightest. It seems that even though they aren't indigenous to the area, the current partnerships with Gridania has made flowers much more abundant in the local markets than in the past.



This doesn't stop the guild merchant from saying the exact opposite, that the prices are rising because of current conflicts.



Next stop on my extended busy work is the gladiator arena.



Despite what he says, the gladiator arena was never fully implemented or was removed at some point for anything beyond this particular mission. This was supposed to be the eventual destination of that goobbue that was being carted through town.



I try to sign up for colosseum, since that's what Momodi told me to do.



Greinfarr rules over the proceedings. He was part of the finals during the previous tournament.



Conveniently, someone has lost their nerve so we can register at the last minute and take his place.



The opponent gladiator is a huge pushover and can barely lay a finger on me.



But its a stupid story mission where you can never win. Its balanced for this being the first thing you did after the goobbue scene rather than running around grinding guildleves like I did.



Eventually I'm "defeated" when the 5 minutes expire.

I'll get right on that whenever Square-Enix ever implements it dude.



Pssh, yeah right. It was me and that spoony bard and the nerdy goldsmith.



We find Greinfarr boasting to Niel about how he beat up all the monsters at the parade so he rigged some matches to make things more exciting. I guess he's the real explanation for the invincible gladiator.



Blah blah politics blah "mummer's farce."



The two of them bid each other farewell, saying they'll reconvene at "the gathering." Thancred of course shows up and mumbles to himself, wondering where they could be meeting up.



Contacting Momodi on the linkpearl for more mission information. She says we got ripped off by Niel in regards to the flower and was shocked that we couldn't even win one round in the arena. She then sends us off to the mining guild for whatever reason.



*Miner's guild not implemented.



For whatever reason the miner's guild doubles as the town saloon. We find the guy who was driving the goobbue cart getting into trouble for sneaking around in one of the mines without a permit.



F'lhaminn (bless you) decides to help him, dragging me along for the ride.



Emote tutorial! You just have to do whatever action she does at the dudes causing trouble.



It works about as well as you could imagine.



It eventually makes a bit of a breakthrough, though...



And then two random lalafell miners knock the dudes out.



I guess they're the sons of the mine owner? Regardless, they drag the two troublemakers off.



It seems that Corguevais has fallen on hard times after his failure at the parade.

He's concerned that he will be banished from Ul'dah for his failures as a thumaturge at the parade, but F'lhaminn promises to help fight to prevent that.



Could it be that there's something suspicious going on? </ominous foreshadowing>



For the second time this mission I'm tasked with traveling to Camp Black Brush. This time its an escort mission, though.



Did you not realize that was the first task in this quest line, to walk there?



F'lhaminn has a circle around here and she moves slowly forward toward Camp Black Brush. Moving outside of this circle will abort the mission and force you to restart from the gate. Periodically super weak monsters will run inside the circle and you have to kill them before they defeat F'lhaminn. Honestly, though, if she kept walking I think she could make it to the camp before these things killed her.



Eventually we make our way through the half dozen squirrels to our destination.



We find the girl from the intro seriously injured and lying prone in the camp. The people claim she was attacked by a giant beast (again?). Corguevais stands nearby, not suspicious at all...



Despite being the equivalent of a black mage, he somehow revives her.



Immediately after waking, she gets pissed at Corguevais.



Thancred shows up fashionably late, only to be accused of being the girl's irresponsible father.



It seems he had given the girl directions to this camp and that she was trailing one of her father's enemies.



She blames Corguvais for the injuries at the parade that put her father into a coma.



Thancred promises to return the girl to Ul'dah, but doesn't know what he's going to do with her beyond that since her father was the only family she had in the entire city.



Afterward, we try to educate the camp warden on the severity of mine trespassing, but he says that he'll only listen if there's some kind of an official proclamation instead of from the mouths of a dancer and an adventurer.



With that, we head back for Ul'dah.



Returning to the miner's guild, F'lahminn expresses her gratitude and awards me with 3,000 gil.

Checking in with Momodi, she suggests I go attempt to profit off the injured from that mine cave-in.

Next time: Tedious Run-around Part 2

This game seems like it's really unfinished, somehow. You sort-of wonder what they were actually planning to do, and why they didn't.