FFXIV and Learning to Dye

These are by far the cutest ugly toads I have ever seen.

Most of my weekend was eaten up by FFXIV, which doesn’t come as that much of a surprise to me. I played the 1.0 version of the game and enjoyed it quite a bit but grew frustrated with how difficult the learning curve was (personally). This time around things are going MUCH better, but again it still has a bit of learning that has to be done.

For example, dye. Apparently you can just right click a piece of gear, and then you’ll have a ‘dye this item’ option, and once you’ve gotten that far a nice interface will open up explaining things to you. OR there’s a quest NPC out in a higher level area (think 15+) who will explain how it is done. The quest involves orange juice.

Then there’s the interface. I learned a few handy tricks to getting it placed the way I want. First of all, the main chat window moves by dragging the ‘general’ tab along the bottom. You can’t move it when you’re adjusting the hud like you can every single other window. Think your windows are too large? When you are adjusting the hud (hit escape, and then go to HUD layout) you can select a piece (mouse click it) and then use contro + home to re-size it between a few options. You can drag the hotbars around by the numbers in the front, and you can turn off or on any piece you want by staying in HUD layout and right clicking on each piece.

Pretty simple, right?

Combat is what we’ve been playing for years now, and the game isn’t new if that’s what you’re looking for. You’ll be going to public quests, dungeons, even raids. You’ll run courier missions ad nauseum. The truth of the matter is that I’m not looking for a game that provides any of these things in a new or unique manor. In fact FFXIV is probably exactly what I’m looking for because of one key feature. It’s a world I have never explored with a backstory and lore that I’ve never delved into before.

Don’t get me wrong, I love pretty much every single MMO out there, and I’ve played a LOT of them. This isn’t putting those games down at all. I’m just saying that sometimes I want to go out and play a game that feels familiar but is still brand new to me. Crafting is a lot like Vanguard (but less complicated). You’re given some points, you spend those points to try to raise the quality of an item, before you run out of the durability.

Everyone can be everything and so far I haven’t done much more than work my pugilist to level 15 along with a LOT of crafting. You change “jobs” by switching out your primary, whether it’s a sword, a needle, or a hand to hand weapon. You can save gear sets (thankfully) and while I do wish there were better ways of organizing my collection of “stuff” it’s not a game breaker.

Because I was a 1.0 player I do get to play for a few weeks without subscribing, and we’ll see at that time if I’m going to keep going. I know a lot of friends are facing errors when it comes to logging in but my weekend has been bug-free. Hopefully all of the issues get solved before things go live on the 24th (early access) and 27th (release date). As always, happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself!