Zel's Weekly Digest

Week 4 - December 5 - 11, 2023

Screenshot from FFXIV. Zeb and Zel are standing facing each other. Zel is holding a leaf umbrella over her head.

A pretty fun week! Hung out with friends and actually remembered my Island Sanctuary and Frontlines! Most days.

PVP Progress

Zel doing the Humble Triumph pose with a gold Halo around her. She is showing off the B-1 Tactical Gear outfit in its default red and black coloring. It consists of modern, sporty looking streetwear with sneakers, pants with lots of zippers, a metal half face mask, and a varsity style zipped jacket.

Rank 16-19!

Frontlines wasn’t too awful this week. Managed to pull of some pretty sick assists.

Also got the whole B-1 Tactical Set! Here’s a couple of cute pics of it. I’m not sure I’ll use it for anything. It’s hilarious that the “gloves” are...sweater sleeves that were clearly inspired by Nomura with just how many zippers there are. Just. Just Why.

Zel in the middle of the Black Ranger pose while modeling the B-1 Tactical Set.

Here they are with the Pactmaker's set for contrast.

Zel showing just the sleeves, which count as the gloves of the outfit. They are jacket sleeves that stop just above the elbow.

Was just short of getting the Cloud Nine’s framer’s kit this week.

The Blue Miqo’te Group

Zel and Xarale as blue mages, and their chocobos Cecily and Setsuna.

Finally got around to leveling Blue Mage! This most recent patch, they added more Blue Mage content, increasing their level cap to 80 as well as adding lots of Shadowbringers spells for them to learn and play around with. It’s some of my partner’s favorite content, so I was looking forward to leveling this with him.

There were only three overworld spells this time, which is disappointing. I love overworld spells.

First things first though, we decided to level, because it would be not only difficult but awkward to take underleveled blue mages through content to get spells.

I’m lying. Blue mages are overpowered.

We still decided to prioritize leveling first, mostly because I have a ready-to-go melded set of Augmented Cryptlurker gear and I’d like to actually use it and turn it into a proper gear set so I don’t accidentally desynth the gear or hand it over to the grand company.

I found a pretty decent grinding spot for the first few levels. After we grabbed the overworld spells and headed to Il Mheg, running back and forth inside one of the caves made for the Nu Mou tribe quests. Enemies respawned pretty quick, had a good density for Chocobo Meteor, and weren’t terribly strong.

Cecily and Setsuna were a big big help, of course. Shout out to our lesbian murder chickens. Choco meteor rocks.

Zel and Xarale as blue mages, and their chocobos Cecily and Setsuna. There is a big red Chocobo Meteor crashing down on the mobs they are attacking.

We managed to get to 75 this week, Hopefully we’ll get to 80 next week.

Sil'dihn Subteranne

Magris and Zel after defeating the Silkie boss from Sil'Dihn subterrane.

I think it’s safe to say at this point that Variant dungeons are some of my favorite content in the game. I adore them so much. The fact that you can run them undersized easily makes them that much more enticing, and adds more things to do with less than 4 people that aren’t deep dungeons or instanced content like Zadnor or Eureka. This makes it possible to do the content as a couple/duo (hence why I always prog them with Xarale,) which is an area where this game is sorely lacking.

Adventurer portraits for Zel Lumei and Magris Ashenford

I’ve been telling my FC that I’m more than happy to guide them through the dungeons, and this week Mag took me up on that offer. I mentioned to him at some point that there’s a sick trench coat glam you can get, so of course he was game.

Dialogue between Magris and Zel. Magris: hmm...right turn at gate this time I think for the wheel. Or left turn right lever? idk lol Zel: Do you want me to tell you? Magris: lol naaa XD I'm sure I'll just randomly press things atm.

We’ve been making our way through Sil’Dih, with me giving no input and just letting Mag pick whatever, giving hints when needer or letting him know when we couldn’t proceed on a certain path due to lack of clues. It's been really fun! I like seeing what people do and how they figure out the same puzzles that stumped me.

Dialogue between Zel and Magris. Zel: Mag don't squish the popoto! Magris: was trying to make the bridge fall. but guess not as frail as she thought. Zel: LOL

Dialogue box from Nanamo Ul Namo: I specifically requested no rocking, bouncing, or jouncing! Gods above I was almost pitched over the side...

Gotta watch out for all those spider webs, your grace!

Dialogue box from Nanamo Ul Namo: Ugh! Pfbt! Thome of id fell in by bouth... Is adventuring always this disgusting?!

Dialogue between Zel and Magris. Zel: poor nanamo lol Magris: ewww hate when webs get in ya mouth

And of course, it was fun to just hang out and joke around.

Zel, Magris, and Nanamo standing on the transportation pad after correctly solving the ore sack 'two eyes' puzzle.

And there's the obligatory screenie at Nanamo's mom's picnic table.

Magris and Zel sitting at the table and chairs at the end of the left path of Sil'Dihn Subterrane

We finished off with 8 of 12 endings done. Good progress for just a couple of days!

Zel and Magris squaring off against the Gladiator of Sil'dih

The Relic Grind Continues

Zel's hand grasping the Lodestar Raising hammer

Back to the Lodestar grind! Some super frustrating moments. How does a skill have a 50% chance to succeed and then fail 6 times in a row?! Heartbreaking, I tell you. I even had fails on Centered, which increases success chance by 25%.

Still, I do enjoy expert crafting, I just wish they weren’t so RNG dependant, and that were were other viable options for the progress phase than just spamming Rapid Synthesis. The higher level expert crafts can be a little more bearable if they have the Malleable condition because then Careful Synth becomes much more usable. I think that’s a major thing that makes or breaks your expert crafts, sometimes literally. I have absolutely just slapped Rapid Synthesis until the craft broke and still had not even a single pixel of progress made. It’s the only real thing keeping expert crafts from being more fun.

Anyway, I managed to get my goldsmithing hammer, and am hammering along at the blacksmithing one for next week.

Gosh these things are pretty.

And that’s all for now! See you next week!

Zel sitting on the throne of Sil'dih. Magris is barely visible lurking behind the throne.

Posted 2023/12/13