Zel's Weekly Digest

Week 5 - December 12 - 18, 2023

Screenshot from FFXIV showing two japanese style snowmen. The one on the left is small and has a smile, and the one on the right is larger and is wearing a top hat and a tartan red and green scarf. It is holding a round blue gift box with a red bow.

A busier week than I realized! A bit late putting this up as I've been under the weather lately.

Starlight, Starbright

Zel and Xarale posing in front of a Starlight Sentinel tree with Xarale's carbunlce and kuroshiba minion, and Zel's Chewy minion

It’s the winter holiday season, which means the ever popular, Christmas coded Starlight celebration! It’s one of Mikey’s favorite events, so we had to do it. This years’ reward was a ~~Santa~~ Saint of Nymeia outfit. With beard! It’s pretty nice but I’m definitely not using the hat and beard.

The event itself was super cute! You help a little kid who just moved to Gridania from Ul’dah as he adjusts to his first Starlight away from all of his old friends.

There was also a little repeatable quest where you could talk to various NPCs from throughout the game.

Zel talking to Magnai. Magnai's dialogue: Hmph. Your denial is futile. Somewhere hidden in this wood is my gentle maiden of dusk, my ethereal dancer in the morning mist. I am certain of it.

Magnai, stop. You’re embarrassing yourself. You don’t even know how to talk to women.

Mountain Hike

Zel and Magris wearing the Noir Longcoat

Dialogue from Zel: This would be an excellent glam for machinist with the summer sunglasses. Matrix.

Remember how I was talking about that sick trenchcoat from Sil’dih? Well, since Mag finished up the last few endings on his own, he had enough potsherds for his coat. So I threw mine on too, and in our new detective drip and we decided to investigate Mt Rokkon.

Dialogue between Zel and Magris. Zel Lumei: But which of us is the arrogant but brilliant detective and who is the well meaning assistant? Magris Ashenford: LOLOL.

Wait…If I’m the healer, that means I’m Watson doesn’t it? I’m okay with that, John Watson is an overlooked badass. and he was a doctor, so it's fitting. Can't really see Sherlock as a DKR though. Well, maybe Robert Downy Jr's redition of him could be. Anyways!

It was nice seeing Yozakura again. I’m so tempted to make an alt of her, but I hate playing ninja, and I already have one Undead RP alt with Edda.

Adventures with Naoh

Naoh posing with the Spectacles emote, with Zel using the show emote.

Unfortunately my good friend Naoh still hasn’t finished up the MSQ yet since they’ve been a bit busy offline, so I helped out with the most honorable (and my second favorite) of Golbez’s fiends, Rubicante.

It was a fun fight! We co-healed while they complained about Astrologian and how it was better in Stormblood, and all they needed to change was the Spire card as they were removing the TP stat. And I completely agree! One of the biggest reasons I could never really get behind Astro is because when I had started learning it in SB (its peak, in my opinion, the class has been reworked again and again since Heavensward), It was already late in the expac, and the Shadowbringers changes were right around the corner.

Sadly Astrologian (and Naoh’s main, Dark Knight) was kinda gutted in Shadowbringers and never quite recovered. I still see plenty of DRKs, sure, but every single one of them is way squishier than every other tank.

Anyway, we decided to do a leveling roulette, so they could level dancer, and…I really wish I had taken a screenshot because this tank’s gear was bad.

We got Tower of Babil and the tank was still in SHB gear. Now, I could forgive if he had a set of Augmented Cryptlurker’s. That actually will take you up to Vanaspati (where you’ll then have to start upgrading). But this guy had High Durium gear that wasn’t even HQ. This man wasn’t even using good crafted gear from the last expac, and on top of that wasn’t even using the HQ variants. He had no business even being outside of Shadowbringers with that gear.

I should not have to use Cure 2 in a level 83 dungeon. I should not have to blow multiple lilies to heal a tank that’s just eating damage like halloween candy.

That left a sour taste in our mouths, so we decided to do some Aloalo!

Beach Bunny

Zel standing on the beach on Aloalo, admiring a rainbow.

While doing other stuff in Thavnair, Naoh ended up accidentally unlocking Aloalo. I couldn’t let this opportunity pass so I dragged them in!

Zel and Naoh running on the beach towards the boss arena

Only 2 endings so far, and we still need to do more Rokkon.

Blue: the Magening

Zel and Xarale, with their chocobos Cecily and Setsuna, fighting molmanders

Guess who hit 80!

Xarale and I decided to grind a bit in Ahm Araeng before heading to the Tempest to finish up those last couple of levels.

Zel and Xarale, with their chocobos Cecily and Setsuna, fighting an amphisbaena

I had a set of melded Augmented Cryptlurker’s waiting and ready to go, of course

Zel, Xarale, and their chocobos standing in the tempest.

I’m gonna keep using my masked harlequin glam for a while, but I’m currently on the lookout for new outfits. I had originally planned to just dye the Cryptluker stuff but it doesn’t really look that good to me. I’ve got the Omega Jacket of Casting, and it looks pretty good, but it doesn’t really scream “Blue Mage” to me. Would be fantastic for Black mage though.

Zel posing with her Blue mage outfit consisting of the Wyvernskin Mask of Casting, Evenstar Coat, Valentiones tights, and Valentiones Pattens. She also has blue pixie wings.

Really wish the Scylla casting dress was dyable! I’d love to pair that with the wyvernskin mask which is essentially a dyeable Behemoth mask.

I also got a couple of spells! Mag noticed a party finder group aiming for the Titania Blue mage spells, so we joined up.

A party of blue mages that have just defeated Titania. The blue mage Action Learned text is on screen.

At first, we were fighting her unsynced. I was lucky enough to get divination rune, but several of us were still missing Being Mortal, so back to the grind we went. Except there’s one problem. If you beat a trial or dungeon synced, you have a 100% chance to get the spell. We were not synced, which made this take waaay longer than it needed to. Eventually the party realized we should be doing this synced, so we did.

At this point, I was tired and needed to get ready to go do things offline. I dont really know what possessed me to used final sting. To be completely honest, I forgot that you dont learn the spell if you’re dead. But someone was able to get me back up in time and I got the spell.

Weeb Adventures

An alliance standing at the Entrance to the final boss arena for Copied Factory. On the right side of the screen there are waymarkers spelling out D1C BA3 (for screen readers: Dic Bae)

Managed to catch both Naoh and Mag online at the same time and dragged them to Alliance Roulette, getting a not-too-cursed run of Copied Factory. It’s probably my favorite of the Yorha raids, but that’s not a high bar to clear.

Naoh, Zel, and Magris standing beside Hancock in Mount Rokkon

Afterwards, I asked if they’d like to go climb Mount Rokkon.

Naoh, Zel, and Magris standing in the Untouched Spring

I love running these with other people so much. Mag caught on quick to one of the trickier routes in Rokkon, and Naoh brought their full weeb levels in as well.

Th party fighting three Shishu Chochin, with a large lily from Holy 3

The two of them seemed to get along really well, talking about Dark Knight while I was trying to get back online after my PC crashed while I was trying to take screenshots.