The end of the year is nigh, and it marks a year and a half when I started playing FFXIV as my major MMO. For the whole year of 2022 it’s been the game for me where I spent most of my time, and it’s something where I’m always ready to login and eagerly await the frequent new patches, as they never disappoint.
As for combat jobs, I leveled them until October. I have three alts, one of which (femroe) was rolled mid-July. I split all the combat jobs equally between three alts for roleplay and game reasons, and each of them has almost all armor types.
Well, with a few exceptions, like Scouting is obviously on one alt, Maiming on two as they don’t have more jobs, and Fending/Healing’s 4 classes each can’t be split among three alts without being doubled, but all in all they don’t overlap. For example, I have aiming armor type’s Dancer, Machinist and Bard on different toons, so I can enhance the job fantasy in glams without thinking about glam plates or inventing a style that will fit them all.
Alright, so I’m caught up and in a happy place with combat jobs. They keep up with the story, they are equally gear-updated, and they hop into the new raid and farm it as soon as it goes live – and I’m playing them all.
My gear map is complete in the current Abyssos Normal, I have Mandervilles for every job, so I’m totally ready for 9.3. There’s one more reset, so I’ll get one more piece of gear before patch, but I don’t think it’s that important already. All in all – I’m delighted how well my raid farming iteration of 6.2. turned out :)
I plan to spend a couple of days and cap Astronomy Tomestones – just in case – before 6.3.
I’ve finally dived into crafting and gathering this Autumn, and it’s super immersing and exciting to level them, so it takes most, if not all of my time (except for raid reset evening). My initiate idea of splitting jobs between alts, as I did with combat jobs, very quickly proved ineffective. Professions are highly reliable on each other, and require crafted mats from all jobs, so it’s best to level them all. I don’t see why I can’t do it on all alts, so this is what I’m doing.
By the end of the year, after a month and a half of active leveling, here we are:
Lolo and Styrgeim are past-ARR and stationed in Ishgard, selling outdated items, and waiting for my attention. Sanya, as my main, takes all the burden of learning how things work in every next expansion, where the quests are, where to gather everything, what are all the new hotbar abilities and all. As you see, I’m almost through Stormblood on her. Before the New Year, I plan to level the remaining few levels to Shadowbringers and craft the top-level gear from Stormblood for Crafting/Gathering sets (I mean, molybdenum, twinsilk and all, the common mats). This will be a nice closure for the year.
In 2023, as the 6.3. story will come and pass in the first week, I’ll be left with raiding on reset day, so I’ll continue exploring trade jobs. The primary goal is obviously leveling all 3 alts to level cap, then I’ll spread into side stories (like moogles in Zenith), and well – finally making gil instead of just spending it :) Even if I’m gathering and making most of mats myself, even if I’m actively selling stuff (both of my retainers are with 20/20 market duties at all times!), I’m still pretty broke, as I tend to buy crafts for alchemy/cooking grand company leves and some rare mats for common crafts (which are not worth the trip and effort). Besides, all the teleport jumping for profession leveling is quite taxing. But I’ll be there.
So – the beginning of the year will be about MSQ, raid and trade, and we shall see where the path will take me.
Gnomecore 