FFXIV: My Long Term Goals… and Genshin Impact?

I’ve defined my road map for FFXIV activities, and it looks like it takes me at least until Summer – which is good :) Let’s break it by activities.

Weekly: Raid Clearing. Obviously, I’m going into Euphrosyne every week upon reset, as it’s my primary gearing up and combat thing. I’m not excited about glams, as they’re dull silver mail outfits, but well, it’s item level that holds value. Besides, no combat for me yet that I need to do apart from raid, so I need to keep all my battle jobs honed and on toes.

Professions: my main has reached 90 level cap yesterday on every job, so it’s a yay! I studied many options of how can I push forward from here, and I think I’d like to farm and settle with 590 purple scrip gear, materia-meld it and be happy. I’m not pushing to master recipes, I can earn gil through tons of available options before that, so I intend this to be my ilvl cap. I do not know yet if Endwalker tools thing in 6.35 will require me some better gear – hopefully it will be enough!

My alts are catching up, and all I need now are leve allowances. I figured that I need to engage into crafting twice a week – about 20 allowances is great to make a difference, not to scratch out a level or two daily on a single job. Anyways, they’re very close too.

Manderville Weapons: in 6.35, there will probably be some combat farming activity. They’re weapons, after all.

Daily: Leveling Retainers. Retainers are your bank and market board/auction managers, with these options available right after creation. But they also can bring in free gold and extra trade mats if you send them on a mission, and for that you need to level them, so they could cope with your current level enemies and bring current mats. I’m slacking to provide them gear, they’re approaching level 50 and still have level 30 items, which doesn’t allow them to engage into current level missions. I’m scraping level 50, then I’ll update their gear with every 10 levels. It will take some time.

Daily: Reputations. Yet again, I have 12 years of reps to catch up with, and it’s gonna take some time. The good thing: you can work for 4 reps at once (there are 3 per every expansion), and every tribe’s daily batch doesn’t take you more than 5-10 minutes, so basically you’re done in 30 minutes, and have a reason to login every day. Another good thing: obviously, it’s rep goods (like mounts, pets, dyes, portrait features, etc etc), but also a cool story which is updated with every reputation rank, and a cool update for some spot in the open world. You start from a dump, and eventually build something very magnificent which you can revisit later and be happy for your efforts :) These all are very palpable and engaging lures for myself, so I’m grinding them all.

Although Sworn reputation rank seemed like a climax of tribe story, I’ve already reached Bloodsworn with a couple of tribes, and it’s also worth farming, despite being the longest streak. More goods from tribe vendor, and good ones, and more story awaits you – albeit it’s lighter in mood and just adds some flavor to previous Sworn closure. Of course, I’m doing them all through.

It will take me until Summer though, as I’ve yet to go through all expansions’ tribes, and one more will be added in 6.35, the final one for Endwalker.

Weekly: Custom Deliveries. These are simple crafting quests: make 6 items and make a story/lore character happy by giving them in. So far, I figured I can work simultaneously on 2 characters – as I deliver 6 items for Ameliance and 6 for Anden, it doesn’t allow me to give in more things for others. So, it’s purely time-gated, and it will take some time to circle around every past expansion. The pace is great though, it’s just 5 reputation ranks, and you go through one with every week. Not a time sink at all, and a great story, with a prize in the end. Besides, it’s a great help for craft – you could save a couple of levels grind on a job of choice. Personally, it’s leatherworking for my alts – as skins are expensive and exhausting to farm.

So, my goals list is long, especially if you consider it’s three alts on the move, and yet it’s rather timeline stretched than time consuming. I complete a raid reset in 2 hours on raid nights, and for the rest of activities it’s barely an hour – an hour-and-a half for all alts. Before Manderville weapon farming kicks in, I have plenty of time released once I’m done with crafting/gathering leveling (and it happens very soon).

I turned my eye to Genshin Impact once again. The trigger was an awesome 50-minute long video from a Czech streamer, who just started playing in 2023, spent there maybe 30 hours, and cobbled up a thorough review which explains how this all works, what are amazing features, and what’s the catch. He answered all my initiate concerns and questions so perfectly, that I decided to give it another roll.

It has a great story – so far, so it’s my primary lure in every game. It has layers and layers of lore – even food and weapons have its own lore.

It has a unique visual style – it’s bright, beautiful, and looks like a 2D cartoon in 3D, I don’t think I saw anything like that before. I’m attracted to cartoonish and anime in particular visuals, so it’s definitely my piece of cake.

It has a unique combat system – you’re leading a squad of 4 characters with unique abilities, you see and operate only one of them at any given moment, but you’re bound to swap between them in a click to combine the elemental perks and enhance damage. For example, you launch a fire arrow with your fire character, swap to a wind character, and her wind ability will spread the burning fire across the whole enemy camp! Or you can make enemies “wet” with water spell character, then swap to lightning character whose lightning spells work better on drenched enemies. For these reasons, you also use terrain: for example, if enemies stand in water, they’re “wet”, or if you see a powder barrel in the midst of enemy camp… you probably know what to do. This is insane, and not like anything you meet in an RPG, at least not in a real time, not turn-based combat.

My initiate beef was that the main story is heavily level-gated. You spend maybe an hour of following it, and you’re 3 “adventure levels” short from proceeding further. But it’s not a bad design, it’s a feature. The game encourages you to engage into a ton of activities: side quests, doing dungeon trials, completing events, and exploration. It’s an open world you’re bound to explore. There’s a treasure chest in every corner, and often you need to solve very diverse and unique riddles to get them. For example, eliminate an enemy camp, or follow a spirit, or activate totems with your elemental abilities (again, figure which character to use!), or climb a mountain (yes, actually climb – like in Assassin’s Creed), or glide down to surpass a barrier – the options so far seem endless.

The last, but not the least: many MMOs today lean into solo gameplay, with groups required just to beat raids, and maybe socialize if you feel like doing it. Genshin is basically a solo RPG. You can co-op with your friend and do some activities together, but you don’t see other players around. You’re one man (and many character) army, it has all features of an MMORPG… without multiplayer-part. It’s you and the world, and probably that’s the coolest part for me: playing a solo mmo, with all the genre perks, but with no one to bother. Of course, it’s cool when community is vibrant, especially that awesome as in FFXIV, but having an adventure all to yourself is also precious.

And yes, it’s a gacha-game, which means it’s free to play and monetizes itself from random loot boxes, but it’s not obligatory. I already have a strong setup just a couple of hours into the story, and I think I’ll get more very soon. Basically all you need to beat the game is characters of all 7 elements, to combine and apply them for certain enemies and situations, and you don’t need gacha system for that, same goes with weapons and stuff: it’s just cosmetics. I’ll tell more as I advance, but so far I intend to progress as far as I can without spending a cent, and I think it’s quite possible.

So far, I feel like the game wants me to “stay awhile and listen”, to explore at my lesiure and never run forward, and in general – have an adventure. This feeling is precious, and it’s cool not to be driven by goals once in a while, but just… be. Especially in a world so beautiful, unique and fun. I’ll be there in my spare time. Genshin it is, I’ll return when I have played more of it :)

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