Final Fantasy XIV (Guide in first post)

spronk · Oct 22, 2019

alienware is/was giving away a 30 day starter key on PC

FINAL FANTASY XIV Starter Edition

Take part in an epic and ever-changing FINAL FANTASY as you adventure and explore with friends from around the world. The starter edition is perfect for newcomers as it includes the award-winning FINAL FANTASY XIV: A Realm Reborn experience and lets...

na.alienwarearena.com

i have a long since dead FF14 account, it let me activate the key and create a second starter account which I promptly deactivated, it says now I can reactivate and play 30 days free whenver I want (on a new subaccount). I dunno if I'll ever replay, but at least i have the option to check it out

Pyros · Oct 25, 2019

Prelim patch notes for 5.1 in case of people didn't see it:

Patch 5.1 Notes (Preliminary) | FINAL FANTASY XIV, The Lodestone

Patch 5.1 Notes (Preliminary)

eu.finalfantasyxiv.com

Crafting changes look like it'll be oversimplified for sure, but it doesn't look too bad, will need to see it in action though it's hard to tell exactly how things will work. They might also have to rescale every high end craft? I'm not sure how you're supposed to craft all that stuff without Piece by Piece and Ingenuity(the old one) tbh, they added a bunch of synthesis stuff but on hard crafts progress is so fucking slow that's why the level reduction and % based progress were so good. I do like quicksynth and desynth changes a lot though. Same for the autogather, that shit's like 6years late though.

BLU changes are kinda interesting, seems more damage overall for single target, less for big aoe and a bit less burst.

Merrith · Oct 25, 2019

Pyros said:
Prelim patch notes for 5.1 in case of people didn't see it:

Patch 5.1 Notes (Preliminary) | FINAL FANTASY XIV, The Lodestone

Patch 5.1 Notes (Preliminary)

eu.finalfantasyxiv.com

Crafting changes look like it'll be oversimplified for sure, but it doesn't look too bad, will need to see it in action though it's hard to tell exactly how things will work. They might also have to rescale every high end craft? I'm not sure how you're supposed to craft all that stuff without Piece by Piece and Ingenuity(the old one) tbh, they added a bunch of synthesis stuff but on hard crafts progress is so fucking slow that's why the level reduction and % based progress were so good. I do like quicksynth and desynth changes a lot though. Same for the autogather, that shit's like 6years late though.

BLU changes are kinda interesting, seems more damage overall for single target, less for big aoe and a bit less burst.

Yeah much more pruning of making a lot of the cross class stuff for all classes, and stuff with multiple increasing versions getting trimmed to just what the current highest version is by the looks of it. Ingenuity is still there, it's just not a cross class anymore. With elimination of Steady Hand abilities (and the need for it since everything going to 100% success), we'll actually get to utilize all 5 stacks on actions now instead of losing one to casting/refreshing steady hand.

Cybsled · Oct 25, 2019

Not surprised they removed almost all the specialist stuff. One odd thing, though, is they added reflect as a base skill, but the tooltip says it still needs initial prep, which is a skill they removed lol

Desynth change is good...anyone can desynth, but higher levels get better/rarer stuff

Malakriss · Oct 25, 2019

I'm not happy they lied about desynth a bit, you still WANT to level it up but they made it sound like you didn't need to bother at all when they announced it a couple months ago.

At least you can desynth every drop out of a trust run next week.

Pyros · Oct 25, 2019

Merrith said:
Yeah much more pruning of making a lot of the cross class stuff for all classes, and stuff with multiple increasing versions getting trimmed to just what the current highest version is by the looks of it. Ingenuity is still there, it's just not a cross class anymore. With elimination of Steady Hand abilities (and the need for it since everything going to 100% success), we'll actually get to utilize all 5 stacks on actions now instead of losing one to casting/refreshing steady hand.

Ingenuity is still there but it's fairly different, it kinda does the same thing(also does the same thing as Innovation now apparently), but it's unclear how it's scaled but I doubt they made it do the same as using it at max level difference(like when doing the 4star shit or whatever from patch x.4) so it'll be heavily nerfed. You'll also waste stacks when using both Innovation and Ingenuity, which sounds kinda dumb still.

Malakriss said:
I'm not happy they lied about desynth a bit, you still WANT to level it up but they made it sound like you didn't need to bother at all when they announced it a couple months ago.

At least you can desynth every drop out of a trust run next week.

I thought they said you just could desynth everything with 100% chance, not that you didn't need to level it anymore. Anyway it seems fine to me, you'll probably get more clusters/crystals/items and HQ versions with skill, but since you can desynth everything even with lvl 1 skill, it's not a big issue, it'll be leveled eventually. Also it says they're boosting how fast it levels, and that's already fucking fast if you start desynthing lvl 80 items at lvl 1 desynth, that's gonna be like 2points an item or some shit, maybe even more with bacon broth+tinker's calm. I bought a bunch of high lvl fishes to desynth, rest I'll just do from desynthing leveling gear and venture stuff and what not.

Malakriss · Oct 25, 2019

Mother F you just reminded me we'll have to level fish desynth too now. And this is when they literally said "no need to level up skills"

Letter from the Producer LIVE Part LIII Update Thread - Page 5

At the start of the broadcast, we'll be using this thread to post the summary from the Letter from the Producer LIVE Part LIII! Watch the stream live on Twitch and YouTube. As we'll be updating this thread throughout the show, make sure to reload every so often! We'll be posting the Q&A...

forum.square-enix.com

Q43:
I feel like the amount of time/effort required to level desynthesis and the returns don't match. Do you have plans to make major changes to the desynth system?

A43:
Will be making large changes to Disciples of the Hand and Land-related systems in 5.1. Desynthesis rates will be changed to be 100% guaranteed, no need to level up skills. Desynthesis will be something used when you have a surplus of something. That’s the plan we have in mind. I’ll provide more details on this when we’ve solidified the details.

Click to expand...

Merrith · Oct 25, 2019

Pyros said:
Ingenuity is still there but it's fairly different, it kinda does the same thing(also does the same thing as Innovation now apparently), but it's unclear how it's scaled but I doubt they made it do the same as using it at max level difference(like when doing the 4star shit or whatever from patch x.4) so it'll be heavily nerfed. You'll also waste stacks when using both Innovation and Ingenuity, which sounds kinda dumb still.

Yeah I don't like that we don't know exactly how Ingenuity will be scaled, although the reduced level part of how it works now wasn't very clear just from the tooltip how much it did, either. I'm assuming Ingenuity will have a greater effect than innovation, probably costing more CP (maybe still 32 like current Ingen 2). Also lasts 1 step longer than Inno. You always had to worry about wasting stacks of ingenuity for the most part when you were doing stuff that required Steady Hands since that would burn a stack or force you to refresh SH on the last stack.

The Muscle Memory change is interesting, b/c if gives a bonus for 5 steps after.

Pyros · Oct 25, 2019

Malakriss said:
Mother F you just reminded me we'll have to level fish desynth too now. And this is when they literally said "no need to level up skills"

Letter from the Producer LIVE Part LIII Update Thread - Page 5

At the start of the broadcast, we'll be using this thread to post the summary from the Letter from the Producer LIVE Part LIII! Watch the stream live on Twitch and YouTube. As we'll be updating this thread throughout the show, make sure to reload every so often! We'll be posting the Q&A...

forum.square-enix.com

Oh yeah I see. The way I understood it when I watched the stream was just that since it's 100%, you don't NEED to level it, but I wasn't sure it meant they were doing away with levels entirely as a result. And CUL desynth should be pretty easy, I went and checked fishes that were like 410+(max currently is 420) and found a few that had stacks of 50+ for cheap and bought like 300 or 400 total in 4 types of fishes(to not have a bunch of shit in my inventory). Might need more but I still need to do my fishing log for ShB anyway so figure I'll just desynth that shit later. Honestly it's a lot harder for alchemy still, unless the skill gains aren't related to ilvl anymore(but I doubt that). Luckily alchemy is also fucking useless as desynth but it's basically books, and a few weird crafted items(best SB desynth was some housing furniture, potion rack or whatever).

And yeah on the crafting there's a lot of unknowns for now. We'll see how it goes, I do like some of the changes for crafting old gear and what not though, quicksynth is faster, can HQ better, doesn't fail, you can 100% crit anything 10lvls lower with a manual craft(instead of the weird 30-70% one before). Same for gathering some nice qol, perma stealth(after they added a shitton of vit on the gear lol), auto repeat gathering, always reveal stuff instead of having to remember the fucking slots(fucking hated that).

Merrith · Oct 25, 2019

Quick synth being faster and guaranteed once you hit crafting requirement is the best thing ever. Makes a good bit more than just alch viable for white scrip grinding.

Malakriss · Oct 25, 2019

Random question came up while i was talking with Merr. The Quick Gathering change along with "Overall gathering rates for all gathering classes has been increased." does this mean non-star level 80 stuff will have a base 100% to pick instead of 95%? Cause that would be an awesome change as well along with the quick synth.

Can old fishing stuff be 100% catch now? No bullshit where spawning Theda cause a green fish is not 100% despite 2000 stats and 30 levels over and instead it's guaranteed now?

Malakriss · Oct 25, 2019

Clarifying changes:
Innovation now gives +20% to ALL synthesis and touches for the next 4 turns
Great Strides only gives +100% additive to the next touch meaning a 300% byregot would only be 400% and a prep touch goes from 200% to 300%. AKA significant nerf
Ingenuity's wording uses "effectiveness" instead of efficiency like Innovation which implies it is still recipe level based. Unknown if a nerf or the exact same.

Outright nerfs/removals:
Comfort Zone removed (less CP to work with)
Reclaim removed (no longer can cheeze Reuse)
Master's Mend II removed
Advanced Touch (150% touch) removed
ALL Specialist actions (except the new RNG fisher one)

Incentivizing RNG:
Rapid Synthesis is a fixed 50% success (but will be 500% at 61+)
Hasty Touch is a fixed 60% success
Patient Touch is a fixed 50% success (but will now double your IQ stacks)
Precise Touch buffed from 100% to 150% efficiency on Good/Excellent
Intensive Synthesis (300% on a Good/Excellent) CP cost reduced from 12 to 6.
Tricks of the Trade on Good/Excellent is now the only CP regen tool.
- Careful Observation (Specialist): "Do nothing for one step, preserving the status of any actions presently in effect. A crafter's delineation is used upon execution. Can only be used up to three times per synthesis. " - this effectively is fishing for Good/Excellent up to 3 times without consuming any buff stacks.

Effective no-changes to abilities:
Basic Synthesis at level 31+ is effectively Careful Synthesis II
Careful Synthesis III (renamed only)
Manipulation II (renamed only)
Waste Not
Waste Not II
Focused Synthesis
Focused Touch
Delicate Synthesis

TL;DR might be making the top end crafts harder, but CP is now ultra premium and CP food / materials may skyrocket.

Pyros · Oct 25, 2019

I'm not sure CP materias will skyrocket, you already melded for max CP pretty much always. Same for food, the best food since pretty much forever have been whatever gives the most CP(Seafood Stew, Bouillabaisse, Tempura Platter, Matcha for some of the ones I can remember). CP was a prime ressource to begin with, so no real change there. Hell CZ was "only" like 28CP anyway(unless it was a really long craft), nice to have but it wasn't like a massive amount either.

The CP changes have to be put in perspective too, you don't steady like 3-4times per craft anymore, that's A LOT of CP you're not using up anymore. A fair bit of it will probably go into Innovation/Ingenuity but kinda need to see how that works, they cost less than Steady II though especially if Innovation spam is the new thing(even accounting for only covering 4steps). Hell one of the Steady was almost always completely wasted and only used for Byregot at the end, granted it was a SH1, but that's still 22CP saved every craft more or less(sometimes you'd SH2 and slip in an additional touch before, but that's still virtually 20CP).

Master's Mend II loss isn't too relevant since it's been pretty much phased out entirely anyway with Waste Not II/Manip II(especially with no Steady refresh to ruin some stacks), and for leveling Master's Mend I was made a bit better to it should even out until then.

Malakriss · Oct 25, 2019

You shouldn't be using 3-4 Steady's right now, probably twice max (the second being a SH1) because Delicates are 100% already. Straight up that's 42 CP saved but 28 lost due to CZ and the rest is for the raised cost for Prudent and Prep touches.

So given roughly the same base CP the task becomes which of the two openers, Muscle Memory or Reflect, will be best and then we have to make a more efficient rotation with the same resources to compensate for the Great Strides loss and possible lesser boost from Ingenuity.

People will be using food, and I have thousands of shrimp and oysters for it (TY fishing retainer). On the first day of the savage patch I maxed out at 12,000 per selling those so here's hoping for at least 10k times thousands for food materials alone.

Pyros · Oct 25, 2019

Malakriss said:
You shouldn't be using 3-4 Steady's right now, probably twice max (the second being a SH1) because Delicates are 100% already. Straight up that's 42 CP saved but 28 lost due to CZ and the rest is for the raised cost for Prudent and Prep touches.

So given roughly the same base CP the task becomes which of the two openers, Muscle Memory or Reflect, will be best and then we have to make a more efficient rotation with the same resources to compensate for the Great Strides loss and possible lesser boost from Ingenuity.

People will be using food, and I have thousands of shrimp and oysters for it (TY fishing retainer). On the first day of the savage patch I maxed out at 12,000 per selling those so here's hoping for at least 10k times thousands for food materials alone.

Oh haven't crafted since lvling in 5.0, didn't know people used Delicate now, so yeah no Steady then other than the byregot one. But people always use food, and as I said pretty much always CP food. Matcha was good money at the end of SB, and Tempura early on(even though you can buy NQ from the shop). I just can't be bothered crafting food for money shit just takes way too fucking long imo, I'd rather craft 5 accessories and be done for the day. I think I have 400 oysters somewhere from fishing ventures too, should probably dump a bunch of them once the patch hits.

I probably won't bother doing much crafting regardless until Ishgard restoration starts and I can see what kind of shit you can get from that, if it crashes the materia market or offer new BiS stuff or whatnot, before I craft my stuff. I'm taking it easy since I have 0 desire to actually craft for money anymore, I have "enough" that I don't think I'll ever need money again and I barely spend any since most of the glamour shit I'm generally eh or I can wait a while for the prices to drop. At this point it's just 6.0 leveling and 5.3 beast tribe preparations only already for me.

Malakriss · Oct 27, 2019

edit: FFXIV Teamcraft - this is projecting that the muscle memory 100% boost is MULTIPLICATIVE which may or may not be accurate. If it is then for 3-star crafts you would probably try to get a Good/Excellent after the Ingenuity to use Intensive Synthesis 300% -> 600% and that would nearly max the progress with that alone. 2500 craftmanship would have MM 1218 then a Ingenuity Intensive Synthesis would +4878 to 6096 / 5654 and finish a 2-star. That's freakin' massive and can't be right.

new 2-star are higher than previous recipes - edit

moonarchia · Oct 28, 2019

I'll wait for new macros to be worked out and go from there. I just finished up my 2177craft/2020control/541cp set this weekend. Made a set of healing jewelry hq for fun.

Flight · Oct 29, 2019

Patch landed.

Gathering wise two new items - Sandalwood sap shares a node with existing Sandalwood Log and Beryllium Ore shares a node with existing Prismstone, so no new nodes. Nodes are no longer hidden even if you haven't discovered them previously. Everything so far has also been 100% chance instead of 95% to successfully gather.

Fishing wise the hot ticket will be the new item Sweetmeal Mussel. Not sure where this is landed yet but I notice it is in new 2 star recipes for a gathering food and a crafting food. The gathering one also needs existing recipe squid ink which is crafted from Spearhead Squid so grab them if you can.

No new recipe books was a surprise. All in the existing Master VII books, so you get them automatically. They use existing Aethersands, including the Scuroglows and the Chairoglows.

White crafting scrips are needed to buy the new 'Sublime Solution' which is used in a lot of crafts including in the new Alumina Whetstone, 3 of which are needed for each main hand and offhand crafted ilvl 460 crafting and gathering tools. Sublime solution is also needed along with 3 new Sandalwood Sap to make Pliable Glass Fiber. It takes four of those for the new crafting/gathering jackets/legs and 3 for gloves/feet/hands. I think this is the only new bought item.

Basically a lot of grinding white scrips to buy a shit ton of Sublime Solutions, though thankfully they are only 125 each.

The easy crafting got even easier. I put the following together for lvl 76-80 35dur grinding, 100% HQ from NQ. 389 CP even if reuse procs. ..... :

/ac "Reflect" <wait.3>
/ac "Manipulation" <wait.2>
/ac "Delicate Synthesis" <wait.3>
/ac "Delicate Synthesis" <wait.3>
/ac "Prudent Touch" <wait.3>
/ac "Prudent Touch" <wait.3>
/ac "Prudent Touch" <wait.3>
/ac "Great Strides" <wait.3>
/ac "Byregot's Blessing" <wait.3>
/ac "Reuse" <wait.3>
/ac "Careful Synthesis" <wait.3>

Add more prudent touches if you need to as well as Innovation for tougher stuff. Haven't tried the new ilvl 460 recipes yet so can't comment on that.

Reflect is an action and does a quality synth as well as adding three stacks of IQ - it also gives you IQ so you don't need to use that too. First step option is either Reflect or Muscle Memory, obviously. MM first step finishes off lvl 76=78 crafts on its own so careful trying that out.

Haven't noticed a single Specialist recipe.

a_skeleton_02 · Oct 29, 2019

Making thaaaaattt monneeeey

Malakriss · Oct 29, 2019

Crafting openers are basically: do 6-7 delicates get you to 90% progress and you can focus on maximizing quality? Use Reflect. But come 5.2 when we're in 2-star gear crafting 3-star combat armor we will likely switch to Muscle Memory for progress and then make up the quality with the HQ material bonus.

There is going to need to be some creative Waste Not / Preparatory Touch usage to combat Delicate dominance in the future because 32 CP for 200% is obviously better than 40 CP for 200% and a penalty of 20 durability per. The only advantage would be Waste Not saving 10 durability instead of 5.

Final Fantasy XIV (Guide in first post)

FPS noob

Golden Baronet of the Realm

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