Final Fantasy XIV - Kiwi Free Company

Whatever the "Action Focused" option at the start is. I haven't used any of the ez mode accessories that affect combat, just the one for more gil. I even tried out that difficulty mod on the Nexus for the last couple quests I did and all it accomplished was making the attacks of enemies I already thought were fine into oneshots while doing nothing of note to the trash since you can still stunlock them with a combo.

I know there's also an unlockable hard mode for NG+ but as far as I can tell from reading about it, it's just "more enemy health/damage" with no AI changes and a level cap for Clive(which I don't think I'll hit on this difficulty before DLC anyway) so I doubt it'd make common enemies any better.
It's just, the way you're describing the gameplay doesn't really track from what I've seen of the harder difficulties, and I watched a friend stream all of XVI start to finish (save for some of the sidequests). You do get Eikonic abilities further into the game which makes some of those basic fights easier, but it never once seemed like a simple "1-2-3" combo wins a lot of the basic fights, and you do get plenty of stagger bar type things thrown at you. My buddy is also very "unga bunga, press buttons and potion spam" if given half the opportunity and even he had to figure out how to git gud to clear a lot of the game's fights.
 
It's just, the way you're describing the gameplay doesn't really track from what I've seen of the harder difficulties, and I watched a friend stream all of XVI start to finish (save for some of the sidequests). You do get Eikonic abilities further into the game which makes some of those basic fights easier, but it never once seemed like a simple "1-2-3" combo wins a lot of the basic fights, and you do get plenty of stagger bar type things thrown at you. My buddy is also very "unga bunga, press buttons and potion spam" if given half the opportunity and even he had to figure out how to git gud to clear a lot of the game's fights.
Eikon abilities and other things like the charged attacks definitely make them easier/faster but when the end hit of a combo throws your target in the air 100% of the time and you can stand still in front of a common enemy for ages before they even try to attack you, there's just not much more that you need beyond the basic attacks. I stopped using the Garuda dodge counter(Rook's Gambit) entirely because I'd have to intentionally stop moving or attacking to use it against anything that wasn't a boss, instead of as the reactive counter move it clearly wants to be.

If there are increasing numbers of big enemies with stagger bars later though, that sounds great because that's where the combat is actually good. I'm not sure exactly how far I am into the game overall, I just made an estimate with the "halfway" comment because I have 4 eikons on the skills page and I know 1 of the empty slots is dlc, so half sounded about right.

Also to keep this at least a little on topic for the thread, while I'm playing 16 or WoW I've had 14 on in the background to camp fates for the ARR relic books. I've got 2 relics all the way through this step now and I just wanna say fuck whoever designed "Surprise." I missed it 3 times in a row because I couldn't tab over in the ~30 seconds after it spawned and the npcs died.
 
We've reached levels of over previously not thought possible

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Oh, if only it were. But no; There's still a lot left for us to do I'm sure. Even skipping most of the cutscenes hasn't gotten us free of The Cat's grasp yet and I don't doubt our little cowboy zone excursion with Erenville will involve her at some point. At least the dungeons have been enjoyable enough so far.

I did laugh pretty hard though when tranny cat attempted to 41% by jumping off the fucking 20 story building during the ceremony. Shame she stuck the landing.

Also someone get poor Erenville a stiff drink, he's as miserable as the two of us players at this point.
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Oh, if only it were. But no; There's still a lot left for us to do I'm sure. Even skipping most of the cutscenes hasn't gotten us free of The Cat's grasp yet and I don't doubt our little cowboy zone excursion with Erenville will involve her at some point. At least the dungeons have been enjoyable enough so far.

I did laugh pretty hard though when tranny cat attempted to 41% by jumping off the fucking 20 story building during the ceremony. Shame she stuck the landing.

Also someone get poor Erenville a stiff drink, he's as miserable as the two of us players at this point.
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Erenville gets it worse later on
 
You know what I’m actually enjoying the ancient ascians after playing EW. I know people complain a lot about them but they’re more interesting than what currently goes on in the plot. I can’t believe I’m actually feeling bad for Lahabrea in Pandaemonium. I’m more invested in all the crazy shit and family drama of that raid than I am in the entirety of the post EW patches. While I can see why they’re divisive I can also understand why they were a big focus in EW. They’ve been fucking shit up since day one, ARR and HW beat us over the head with how a lot of plot points boil down to them, EW was the conclusion to the whole ARR saga, so it makes sense they’d get one more big push before wrapping up and continuing onto the next ten year saga Yoshi keeps going on about.
 
The toxic positivity in this community was bad enough and now Dawntrail has cranked it up to degrees never seen before. The amount of people getting violently defensive over the story, the insane victim complexes coming from those who enjoy it, and attacking others over the most mild of criticisms straight up killed whatever chance I would have tried to give Dawntrail. Unsurprisingly it’s coming from the same people who stan Stormblood complete with the exact same criticism shut downs and accusations they threw at others who disliked that expansion pack (racism for disliking the zones, sexism for disliking the female lead characters, etc.)
 
The toxic positivity in this community was bad enough and now Dawntrail has cranked it up to degrees never seen before. The amount of people getting violently defensive over the story, the insane victim complexes coming from those who enjoy it, and attacking others over the most mild of criticisms straight up killed whatever chance I would have tried to give Dawntrail. Unsurprisingly it’s coming from the same people who stan Stormblood complete with the exact same criticism shut downs and accusations they threw at others who disliked that expansion pack (racism for disliking the zones, sexism for disliking the female lead characters, etc.)
Hey don't group Stormblood enjoyers with these people. I am one of those faggots who actually liked Stormblood and even the dumb shit they did with post Endwalker (mostly due to FF4 being my favorite) but Dawntrail is so bad that for the first time ever I can say I actually really hated the plot for once.
 
Yeah to be fair looking back on my previous posts about the SB playerbase I admit I was rather too harsh on them. I just remember a lot of discourse on it being frustrating and it returned in full force when DT came out. I have a very complicated love hate relationship with the SB msq itself and I don’t despise it.
 
I was so sure the train bit in Dawntrail was going to be a dungeon. Or at least a neat solo duty. Wasn't even questioning it; Saw a train with a big flat top surface and gun turrets. Characters discussing phases of a plan and set objectives. I allowed myself to get excited thinking I'd actually get to do something fun in my game after hours of tedium. Instead I was greeted to an overly long cutscene of my character and party basically playing through a solo duty without me.

I should have known better than to hope. Hope does not exist in Tural.
 
Mogstone event in a few days. I hope everyone gets enough to buy what they want from the event and that no-one's retarded enough to get the Alte Roite prism.

I'm going to have a few free trial bots farm Prae 24/7 and get as many Seemingly Special Timeworn Maps as is physically possible.
If it takes 30 minutes a run, that's still 48 Prae runs a day, or a total of 1,344 Mogstones a day.
This is apparently going to last 4 weeks, so that's around 37,632 Mogstones in total or 2509 Maps at the end of it.
Maybe it was a bad idea to let free triallers into Stormblood?
 
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What makes that even worse is that there's a shooting mini game in the gold saucer that would have been perfect for that section.
That was exactly my thought when it became clear this wasn't going to be more than a cutscene. What a waste.

They even gave us clearly defined duty objectives in the pre-cutscene talk:
- Defend the Cereuleum tanks! (main objective)
- Don't let enemies shoot the shield/lightningrod crystals! (secondary objective)
- Watch for reinforcements from above in waves! (situational awareness check)
- Make sure you time your jump from the train at just the right moment! (QTE at end of duty)

Mogstone event in a few days. I hope everyone gets enough to buy what they want from the event and that no-one's retarded enough to get the Alte Roite prism.
So this will be the first mogstone event for husband and I. We have no clue what to buy, are the Seemingly Special Timeworn Maps the most valuable thing we should shoot for? The armor set looks like ERP faggot bait and aside from maybe a couple of the mounts (kamuy maybe?) nothing else on the list immediately grabbed our attention.
 
That was exactly my thought when it became clear this wasn't going to be more than a cutscene. What a waste.

They even gave us clearly defined duty objectives in the pre-cutscene talk:
- Defend the Cereuleum tanks! (main objective)
- Don't let enemies shoot the shield/lightningrod crystals! (secondary objective)
- Watch for reinforcements from above in waves! (situational awareness check)
- Make sure you time your jump from the train at just the right moment! (QTE at end of duty)

Excuse me, you were expecting a minigame in a Final Fantasy game?
 
We have no clue what to buy, are the Seemingly Special Timeworn Maps the most valuable thing we should shoot for? The armor set looks like ERP faggot bait and aside from maybe a couple of the mounts (kamuy maybe?) nothing else on the list immediately grabbed our attention.
Donut Earring and Great Serpent of Ringa are exclusive glamours.
The Gwiber and Kamuys are pretty easy to farm through PF, you won't even need PF for the Lunar or Euphonoius Kamuys.
Buying dungeon gear or housing items is never worth it because they don't put Ultimate BiS sets in there, and getting triple triad cards is almost never worth it (It was for the Warrior of Light card, but that's a special case.)
The Drake and Laurel Goobbue also aren't really worth it, just deal with the beastmen for a few weeks to get them.
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This is the hairstyle. If you don't want it, it's still worth selling for a fat stack of gil.

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This is /malevolence aka Ballroom Etiquette - Dark Entreaty.

I don't have a picture for /scheme but that emote is a lot harder to get because Eureka hates you in particular.

The Twice Stricken orchestrion roll is from E5N.

Alte Roite isn't worth getting because it's a guaranteed drop from something that was soloable in around 4 minutes as a Warrior last expansion.

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If you actually care about Bardings, you might want to get this for your Chocobo. Remember that we once Kweh-d.

The real prize for every single Irregular Tomestone event are the Seemingly (Gazelleskin), Ostensibly (Zonureskin), Potentially (Kumbhiraskin), and Concievably (Ophiotauroskin, has not shown up in any event so far) Timeworn Maps.
They cost 15 Mogstones each, and have two key differences from their standard counterpart.
They're stackable, and they have a 100% instead of ~50% chance to open a portal.
I'm getting the Seeminglies because they're the level 70 ones and Gazelleskins are considerably more expensive than any other kind of Timeworn Map (Unless it's week 1/2 of x.0, x.05, or x.3)
 
The Gwiber and Kamuys are pretty easy to farm through PF, you won't even need PF for the Lunar or Euphonoius Kamuys.
Thanks for the detailed breakdown! I really appreciate it!

Yeah, we'll skip the Kamuys then. Maybe pick up the barding and a couple copies each of the hairstyle to resell later and then just grab as many of the Seeminglys/Ostensiblys as we can.
 
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