Tserof’s Return To FFXIV
Tserof in front of “The Fishing Hole”
I just recently returned to Final Fantasy XIV after over a four year absence. What brought me back was a trailer for the upcoming expansion. It was a beautiful trailer and made me think I should give the game another shot. I think the reason I quit back then was that I am bad about getting distracted from things and moving on. These days I only get to play on weekends and for the last two weekends I have had tremendous fun! The first thing I needed to do was spend some time configuring in game settings and hotbars. This may be an easy task on a PC but it is not on a PlayStation 5. It took a bit but I got things fixed how I wanted. I grew up mainly playing consoles so I prefer a controller over a keyboard + mouse. Most games like FFXIV are not setup well for controllers but FFXIV is an exception. It has magnificent controller support. Once you figure out all the button combos for commands it is like second nature. My first day back I was making a trade with Entropius and it took me 5 minutes to figure out how to initiate the trade and then another 10 minutes to figure out how to split in game currency into bigger units than ones. Now I can easily do that. I did however go out and buy a cheap bluetooth keyboard for my PS5 because this game requires you to chat sometimes and an onscreen keyboard is an awful slow way to do that. If we ever do ZB group nights I would still prefer Discord. I easily looked through my logs and recommendation list and started back on the main story quests. My beginning level was 40 and in 2 weekends I have made it to Dragoon level 51. Below I am going to list some accomplishments and observations from these two weekends.
There are short queues to get into the game now. I later found out that there have been problems with World of Warcraft and many are moving over to FFXIV.
Back in 2016 when i was playing there seemed to be more of a grind to level. Now I am having no troubles getting experience.
The FFXIV community of players are in general really nice and helpful.
I not only leveled Dragoon to 51 but I leveled fishing from 13 to 25
To catch the rarer fish you have to use a skill called “Patience” which is dependent on GP (gathering points. My GP are low so I run out of patience a lot. This is similar to real life.
When I left the Zen Bassmasters were building our own Airship. Now we have 4 Airships and 4 Submersibles. I am currently figuring out how to properly use those. I deployed the submersibles on missions.
The Free Company (Zen Bassmasters guild) has named our house “The Fishing Hole” and when you walk in be prepared for the wondrous sites and sounds you will here. There are all kinds of oddities and vendors and a jukebox that likes to play songs that sound like they came from “Nightmare before Christmas”.
Because it has a mailbox, a retainer bell, a company safe full of goods, merchants, stables, etc.. the house has become the hub for all that I do. When I want to relax our house is right on the beach!
I now meet the character level requirement of 50 but i don’t meet the Grand Company requirement. I am farming these things called seals (not the animal) so next weekend I hope to be able to buy a room in “The Fishing Hole”.
I completed the main story line of the base game! It was amazing. When you begin that last quest be prepared for a long sitting. It will take a while.
There is so much to do in this game!
I want to Stream on Saturdays and Sundays. Maybe next weekend.
When Endwalker arrives I sure hope the Zen Bassmasters can group up for dungeons.
Let’s do a fishing day in game where we all relax and catch fish and just chat.
I hate to end on a sad note but Christy’s room in “The Fishing Hole” is still there and you can enter it. She decorated it beautifully and left the lighting dim. When you enter you feel an instant feeling of grief but then there is a sort of relief knowing her suffering is over and she is in a better place.
I have enjoyed writing this and hope to do so more often!
Tserof - Dragoon Fisherman