The aftermath of the Garuda fight and the emergence of the ancient, god-eating, Ultima weapon left us more than a little discouraged. All this, and the Garlean Empire was just going to cause another Calamity to match the first one, just out of spite. Some problems are just too large to solve, and all you can do is solve the little ones and hope the big ones take care of themselves.
Maybe we wouldn't have a chance against Ultima, but we could save Minfilia, Tataru, Biggs, Wedge and the other remains of the Scions of the Seventh Dawn. And, more importantly, grab us some of that Magitek Armor, the two-legged personal tanks I first remember seeing in Final Fantasy III-slash-VI, when the Empire was in pursuit of Espers.
Unfortunately, even though Kasul and I had to gather the materia to FIX the thing in the first place, it was handed over to Cid's assistants to use. Grrrr. That was MINE. It even pretty much loves me. Whenever we saw it using its Magitek Vision, it gazed lovingly on me. My Magitek. Mine.
Gunblade gauntlets. Magitek armor. The Empire has all the COOL TOYS.
The daring excursion into the Garlean citadel was all I could have hoped for, except for it being solo only. One of the things I like best about these story nights is sharing the story with someone else, but for most of the night, Kasul and I were forced to play apart. Omuro offered to help out, but since he'd done the story, he'd only be able to join in on any potential dungeons.
He'd logged out by the time we finally got to the first group content, the trial of Cape Westwind. This was only our second time in a Full Party — eight people. Most of the content before now has been in a Light Party — four people. The last Guildhest is a full party, some of the PvP stuff is full party, and now this. The fight was a simple tank and spank, and more set up, I think, the sort of waiting you'll be doing for a full party than any sort of special mechanics. A couple adds spawned that I was supposed to offtank, so I did.
Completing Cape Westwind let us continue the story to the gates of Castrum Meridianum, which sounds like a fairly lengthy full party raid. Kasul wasn't to level 50 yet, so we were obliged to stop there for the night.
Still having fun with the story. I do worry, though, that doing any of the pre-expansion full party content (these mini-raids, the pvp) is just going to mean frustrating waits. Last night, I could not get the pvp to fire. I did a guildhest roulette (the one with the goblin bombers) as dragoon, and then a low level dungeon roulette (Cutter's Cry, a favorite) as paladin for the tomestones. Did a hunt for a few alliance seals, but then I looked at the alliance seal rewards and there was nothing much there to want. Maybe some of those minions. Any job high enough level to use the alliance seal armor will be high enough level to get ilvl 50/90 armor from their job quest.
It's likely that most of the pre-expansion high level content is pointless. But, Kasul and I are locked at 50 for now. We still really have a lot of stuff to do.
Um, just so you know, pre-expansion dungeons and trials can be done in an undersized party (at least two) with no level sync if you make a premade party before going into it.
Just a warning, the first patch of content is…eh. They didn’t find their stride until the second one and really started to hit consistanty after the third.
I’m not sure if the “main scenario” roulette is being consistently run anymore, as I don’t think it rewards Tomes of Law. It used to be heavily farmed since it gave 120 soldiery tome with a possibility of 100 bonus tomes if a newbie was along, but tbh I haven’t run it at all since HW dropped. I’ll have to check the DF tonight and see if it offers anything to a 60 to be able to guess if it will or won’t have decent queue times.
Too bad you didn’t roll on Cactuar and join Bel’s guild of bloggers. We’d have jumped at the chance to run you through so we could read your post about it the followign day, but nooooooooooooo 😉
Couldn’t resist.
FWIW, the level 60’s looking for Law tomes will be running all of the leveling and level 50 dungeons (including all the “hard modes) in their roulettes, so those shouldn’t have bad queues, at least.
@Dan — Meh. I already am getting tired of the dungeons we’ve run ’til now. I don’t know if I want to make special trips down into them. Although it is interesting seeing them as different jobs. I did Qarn as a Dragoon for the first time last night, and it was a very different experience than the time I tanked it.
@Pk — Funny thing about that. We went to Brynhildr because Kasul said we could join the FFXV free company that his WoW guild had set up. But we’ve seen nothing from those guys, and have joined some random FC. So we might as well have joined a blogger guild 😛
The PvP popped fairly quickly last night, less than half an hour. We also needed to try Cape Westwind again, since Kasul crashed during it last time, and that popped immediately. I’m not sure if that bodes well or ill for Castrum Meridianum, but I guess we’ll see soon enough. Kasul made 50, so we’re good to go to see the rest of this first story.
@Tipa I mean you can do it underleveled your first try.
Ah. I can’t see that going well 😛