So Questions about returning...just when I thought I was outFollow

I did the first 5 turns but I haven't touched 6-10 or the last ones at all...

I'll just PF it to get a solid group

I'm leveling up really slow compared to before...I assume the quests start giving more xp in the heavensward content? not that I mind just wondering

Aside rested bonus and armory bonus (basically a bonus for having a maxed out job) there's no other boosts beyond food (since unless you're in a FC with constant exp buff, the only immediate drop off would food/armor bonus). HW quests give "more exp" but your xp to next level is also insanely bloated, so it's about the same as ARR quests, but HW will be enough exp to get one job to or near 60 if you do all the quests.

Edited, Dec 31st 2016 8:34am by Theonehio

Just did the 4 free days, have one left. I caught up on the story, got my 235 weapon from PotD, did all of Normal Alex, and finished of Containment Bay P1T6. Is there anything else in terms of casual content that you can do to gear up beyond 230? I know I can get a higher level weapon through PotD, but good god it's beyond mundane doing that event. Though I guess it's better than trudging through the Anima trials.

I know there's all the extreme/savage stuff, but I'm probably undergeared and don't need to waste people's time for one day.

To put this in context...

I have a content static, we're able to meet once every two or three weeks. We tackled Sophia Ex for an hour a few weeks ago. We spent two hours on it this Monday, all the same people. We managed to get her down to 34 percent health on our best attempt, though we were probably going to hit the enrage timer even if we hadn't died.

We're all pretty good players. Casual, yes -- but we're all quick learners who keep our cool, use voice chat and work well together. And we'd all watched videos.

So... whether you call Sophia Ex "casual" is completely up to you. I say it's midcore. Regardless, now you have an accurate measure for how the fight compares to the rest of the game, where pretty much anything outside of savage raids/extreme primals can be downed with no previous knowledge or practice.

Edited, Jan 4th 2017 2:36pm by Thayos

Ya, that's the nice thing about giving you the whole month to use up your 96 consecutive hours. You can choose a few days where you don't have much going on and just play away.

So you can level any job through PotD and still trade in the weapon for any job you want?

The way they set things up doesn't really encourage re-subbing (for those who don't do endgame). I figure by the time the next free campaign rolls around, The Creator will not have a weekly limit. So you can gear up decently quick, keep up with the story and do which ever other dungeons were added. I'll want to keep up for Stormblood, but if it's anything like Heavensward, all gear will be obsolete in ohh, 5 minutes.

I have no problem with gear going obsolete. It's just a tool to see and fight through new content. I mean, the way XI did it was cool too but that was a different game.

Edited, Jan 5th 2017 11:09am by BrokenFox

Sadly, the biggest challenge of 101-200 is finding a set amount of people if you don't have enough interested people in your FC/LS, the floors themselves are a non issue (basically think switching from "Normal Mode" to "Hard Mode" in single player games that add more hp/higher damage output etc) just a full wipe (everyone dies) is game over and you have to rebuild to floor 101 again, there's no do overs. So you really only want to do it once you have 99/99 PoTD stats and a good team to go through it. For example it's basically the same set of bosses but you actually won't be able to carry through certain mechanics that were clearly meant to wipe you (Meteor/Explosions/Snake gaining haste and damage up in the puddle etc.) That's why I've said if they did PoTD 101-200 but with 8 man as well, then it'd be a nice alternative set of content, since they're going back towards crafted gear being relevant again, so things are actually in a VERY weird place until the expansion.

The biggest problem of moving more into this format is handling the raid content and ex primals. While it's no secret some people don't care for raid content and want it to be removed from the game, even the dev team stated moving Creator to Coil difficulty ontop of the Raid Finder introduction hugely increased participation and clear rates, so they'd have to balance out what you gain from PoTD vs what you gain from Raids. Throw in the fact they're tossing in Jump potions that people will be buying, if they do ever re-evaluate this game's setup, it's definitely going to have to be a lot sooner than 5.0. With new designers handling Stormblood's content, there's actually good chance for new progression setups to happen, like it should have been with 3.x, so who knows.

PoTD (Reward wise) largely is designed to only compete with the ex primals (weapons only atm) so if they do go towards an armor set from PoTD and not just Eureka in 4.x it's likely a low man alternate to the alliance raid content. Though it would require them to move back towards the Coil era where ex primals offer not just weapons but also accessories. So with Zurvan is a good chance because it's going to be harder than Sophia, so the next update to PoTD in probably 3.55 or 4.01 can offer accessories/armor ontop of the weapon as 3.5 is the final (easy to obtain) ilvl gearset of 3.x and introductory ilvl into 4.0. So offering 265/270 weapon and accessories similar to Shiva would put players in a good spot, since unlocking Creator in 3.55 won't really do much with so much easier alternatives this go around.

That's why I enjoy PoTD... it makes it much easier for casual players to pursue relevant weapons that can make them useful in current-tier content. Plus, it's kind of fun. A round of PoTD + a leveling roulette is a great way to level a job each day. Or, running through a set of floors on a paladin is a great way to farm tomes without the coin-flip roulette.

I'm also somewhat hopeful about the dev team's plans to incorporate the exploratory zone into the relic weapon quest chain. I do the relic for my paladin, but the grind isn't remotely interesting enough to do twice. If the grind were more interesting -- and if I could maybe get some tomes on the side -- I'd definitely invest more time in questing for two or three relics. So I'm hoping that's done well, but we'll see... the Diadem flopped so hard, I'm waiting on this with extremely cautious optimism.

For that matter, how cool would it be if the relic weapon quest were completely different for each job? Different storylines, dialogues, etc., to really drive home important themes for each job. That would be a great way to build depth into the game. If only.

Totally agree, which is why the talk of using exploratory zones makes me hopeful. We will still need to grind, but hopefully the grind is a bit more unique to the task at hand.

But that's just not true. We saw in the 2.x relic line that content could be kept alive without the reason for it being tomestones. The reason for keeping old content in the mix is so that new players can get it done. I had an absolute bear of a time trying to get A5-8N done precisely because nobody needs it anymore and there's no reason to run it. If it were gating off the main story I'd be completely screwed.

We had lights, we had animus books, we had dungeon atmas... all these things kept old content alive and full of people without being strictly about the tomestones (I do realize animus books cost tomestones, but that wasn't the entirety of that step).

I'd be happy if they got rid of any RNG involving relics. I wish certain parts would involve, clear an unsynced Coil Turn 1-4 twice! Clear Alex Normal 1-4! As long as I know I'm progressing, I don't mind it too much. To run certain FATEs, dungeons, etc with the CHANCE of having a drop to help you advance just drives me nuts. Heck, it made me avoid the relic line entirely for Heavensward.

You can still keep this thing casual and have a decent time requirement but make it fun in the process. Did people really have fun spamming the crap out of HM Garuda over and over, or repeating Coil T4 over and over? They have more than enough old content now to rid themselves of the RNG and just add more steps.

Very few if anyone enjoyed the HM Garuda/Shiva spams for those particular steps, which is why Yoshida said 3.0 relics will be a lot more quest focused rather than "spam content" >.>