Well, actually I don’t know why I put Crystarium Splendorous tool shot as a post cover :) I visited the capital of the First to check out what’s going on. This shard’s version of a top artisan is a lot more pleasant than the one from the Source, and Mowen is also better in character traits than Rowena. My toon’s facial expression to their interaction was to die for :) And that’s about all I would glean from the questline, because I won’t follow it.
As expected, crafting a single tool is a merciless grind. Yes, you can buy the basic 570 versions for scrips, but once you’re on a quest to upgrade it (next upgrade: ilvl 590, the same as I already bought for purple scrips), you’re bound to craft insane number of items. They require basic open world mats, mats bought for white scrips from vendor, and elemental clusters. And crafts, of course. I looked at it all, calculated how much work I need to perform for a single upgrade of a single tool, and – well, I have better things to do with my time in this game and other games. Moreover, I’m not aiming for some high end crafting: my current gear level is quite enough to earn gil and complete Loporrit quests, for example.
So… yeah. Splendorous tools are a hard pass for me, and so I consider my crafting/gathering journey and gearing complete for the expansion. From now on, it’s gonna be just earning gil for crafts and mats, tribe dailies and custom deliveries.
Mandeville weapons are a go! I’ve already acquired six before the end of the first week, just the pace I expected:
It’s great to be back for intense duty runs. Raids are cool, but it’s 40 minutes of combat a week on a selected job, and it’s nice to dive in active, varied everyday runs – at least to remember which end of a stick pokes the enemy :) Besides, it’s extra and sufficient gil – and, not obvious, but I also roll for gear that I will use for my leveling retainers.
Retainer gear is such a headache, it appears. I need to update it with at least every 5 levels, the whole range, and it takes time and gil which are precious resources among my current activities. Now I’m rolling all the items from leveling and endgame dungeons that I may use for them later, and – a super late thought – I’ve capped poetics tomestones several times, so I’d better go and spend them on retainer gear too. I really need a spare evening to arrange their gear map across all alts. So far it’s a total mess, they’re undergeared, and neither can accept a highest level available exploration assignment.
Manderville weapons’ second iteration is not my piece of cake considering glams. These versions are darker or bleached, the two extremes, and I’m not a fan of the whirling added glows. So far, I’m using the previous versions’ looks. Another unconvenience is that you have to take off a weapon to hand it in for an upgrade. But weapon in FFXIV defines your class/job, so you can’t just do that – you have to own at least a temporal replacement in your inventory. In my case, I’m dragging along a number of glam options, so not that big of a bother, but still quite annoying.
My main was the first to complete Arkasodara tribe reputation, and now I can jump on Loporrits. The elephants were the worst tribe so far. The quests gameplay was quite cool, but I didn’t like the story at all, and felt absolutely no attunement to the characters. It was just super boring, and nothing really interesting or moving happened.
Loporrits aren’t that hilarious as I expected, but I’m enjoying their cause, their room and interaction with them. Quests are… well, quests. Can’t wait to finish with moogles – it seems that 60 and 50 rep points per quest aren’t a big difference, and yet it is. I’m quite tired even by the end of 60-point tribes questlines, and it seems that I’ll never leave moogles in my life. That’s a lot to handle, really, and one simple twitch of rep points from Square Enix to level them with other tribes would be a great QoL improvement.
Ok, back to duty runs now :)
Gnomecore 