Sunday Night Strolls - Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn - Copperbell Mines - Level 17

Welcome to the Sunday Night Stroll where I take you through one of many dungeons inside one of the many MMOs that I play and teach you how to heal through it! This week we're going through the third dungeon, Copperbell Mines, unlocked through the main quest story line in the newly released MMO Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn. And most importantly, this weeks video is actually in 1080p HD quality now that I've finally given up on Fraps and started using XSplit to record offline!

Copperbell Mines definitely steps up drastically in difficulty because word on the street is that the higher the level the more difficult the dungeon is and it starts with this one. This dungeon has a lot of new boss fight mechanics that can throw a group who has never done it before through a loop.

Kottos

The first boss unfortunately (or fortunately depending on how you look at it) is almost boringly simplistic. Almost to the point where there's nothing to do. The fight starts off with the room constantly spawning adds into the room. You'll kill at least 30 before the big boss actually spawns, it starts off slow but they begin to start spawning 5 at a time. However, if your DPS have any bit of AoE they'll go done relatively easy. Then the boss will spawn, he doesn't do anything special, not even any conal or AoE abilities. The other thing he does is gain a buff periodically that increases his damage reduction by a significant amount which does nothing more than drag the fight out.

Ichorous Ire

This boss is very interesting and will definitely throw your group for a loop if nobody knows what they're doing. The boss takes virtually no damage from players but there are Blasting Cap adds that spawn when you use the the Improvised Blasting Lever. DPS needs to focus down the add, once it gets to 25% health it will do an AoE that will kill anyone inside of the circle and split the boss into pieces, the tank must have the boss next to the add before it gets to 25% so they can run out in time for the explosion which happens quickly. If the tank tries to run the boss into the circle they will either miss it or they will die. There is a timer on the lever so if you miss an explosion you'll have to wait before you try again. Other adds will spawn periodically that will attack the Blasting Caps so you must be mindful to either dps them down or pay close attention to the Blasting Caps health. Your best best is to stack the Blasting Caps and the boss together as soon as he spawns. You will need to do this three times before he splits into enough little pieces to be killed off.

Gyges the Great

Another difficult fight that takes very keen timing and constant attention by all members of the group. There are boulders spread around the room that block off tunnel entrances. The boss will pick the east side boulder and destroy it. Once it is destroyed an add will emerge from the tunnel and immediately go to the west side of the room and attempt to break the boulder. Your group must attempt to slow down the add and kill it. If your dps is to low another add will spawn before your finished or the add will break the boulder and you'll have two adds to deal with. If you do not dps the adds at all you will eventually be over run. The group must switch between the adds and the boss. The group in the video stopped killing adds at 50% and I tanked about 6 adds before we killed it. I personally like to wait a little longer. I like to kill as many adds as possible until the boulder breaks and we have two and then we switch. Either way works as long as the dps is good enough. Once the second boulder breaks and you have two adds is when you have to switch to the boss regardless because the group is not going to be able to kill two adds and dps the boss. Other than that the boss does an AoE cone ability which shouldn't be a problem since the DPS will mostly be out killing adds. As well, he gains a buff periodically that increases his special ability damage by 50% which is his conal ability which is small and easy to dodge.

Congratulations on your kills! May the loot drops be every in your favor! Next week, we go over the first Trial Bowl of Embers.

Sunday Night Stroll (Weekly Healing Instance Guide) - Final Fantasy XIV - Tam-Tara Deepcroft

Welcome to the first edition of Sunday Night Stroll. This is a weekly article that will guide you through an instance inside one of the many MMO's that I play. This will be one of three weekly articles I will be producing every week in the foreseeable future! This week we're going through Tam-Tara Deepcroft an instance within Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn.

Tam-Tara Deepcroft is the second Dungeon players will unlock during the main story quest line in Final Fantasy XIV. You must complete all of the main story line quests before you are able to unlock the dungeon in the Duty Finder. A minimum level of 16 is required to enter the dungeon.

Anyone who ran Sunken Temple before it's condensing in World of Warcraft will find the concept of this dungeon familiar. The objective of the dungeon is to run around the outer edge and activate four orbs protected by mini bosses to unlock the final boss.

First Two Orb Rooms

The first two rooms that contain orbs are identical to one another. Each room will contain one mini boss called a Damund Priest and two adds called Gravediggers. Your group will want to dps the small adds down first because once you kill the Priest another mini boss will spawn so getting the adds down so you no longer have to deal with them and to reduce the tanks damage taken is the best course. Since these foes are mini bosses they don't do anything special. Once the Damund Priest is downed it will spawn an add called the Void Soulcounter. This boss doesn't do anything special either as he is also considered a mini boss. Once you have cleared each room you must remember to interact with the orb to unlock the final boss.

Final Orb Room

The last two orbs are inside the same room and are locked behind a smoke wall. You'll have to initially pass the room to go into the adjacent room to find Beads that will calm the Smoke Monster from Lost so you can click the final two orbs. Since there are two orbs next to each other that means that there are a few more adds to deal with. There is one mini boss and four adds, everything pulls at once as soon as you aggro something so you must pull everything in the room. Even though there are more adds the fight is the same as the previous rooms.

Galvanth the Dominator

Galvanth has quite a few abilities that you need to watch out for. First, he will do a large AoE around him that does a moderate amount of damage. As a healer, always make sure you are standing in ranged to be sure that you don't need to move from it. He will periodically tether himself to an Inconspicuous Imp, while he is linked to the add the boss will be immune to damage so you must kill the add before you can progress. Most of the time he will only link himself to one Imp but once he reaches below 25% health he will link himself to two Imps and you must kill them both. His final ability is spawning two random add monsters modeled after things you have seen out in the world. The adds don't do anything special but it is still best to kill them as soon as possible as they can pile up and wreak havoc if left unchecked.

All in all, the instance is still teaching players the general mechanics but the difficulty level has slightly increased from the first dungeon. Next week, we will cover Copperbell Mines which is a significant jump in difficulty and took my group quite a while on some bosses to figure out the mechanics! Thanks for reading and have a leisurely Sunday!

Sunday Night Stroll - Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn - Dungeon Guide - Sastasha - Level 15

Sastasha is the first dungeon of three you will receive in quick succession. You must be level 15 and completed the main plot story line quests where it sends you to the instance entrance and instructs you to use the Duty Finder to complete it. Unlike the following instances, there aren't any objectives you must complete to get through the areas of the dungeon, it is very linear and difficult to get lost in.

Chopper

Chopper is the first boss in this instance, he is a dog like creature that hits the tank like a truck. Previously, in a separate room in the instance, there will be a piece of paper that says "The Captain likes his seas blue". This is a clue on how to make Chopper spawn as there are three different colored coral in the room (red, green and blue), interact with the blue coral to find a switch which will cause Chopper to spawn. You have a bit of time to run before he aggros so your tank as time to pick him up. Chopper is a tank and spank with very few abilities however if your tank is under-geared (and since this is the first instance he probably will be) he will take A LOT of damage and constant heals will have to be pumped into them to keep them alive. Chopper also does a small AoE ability that does a significant amount of damage if you are hit by it.

Captain Madison (Version 1)

Captain Madison is sitting in the room with two adds. Ideally, the tank will be able to hold aggro on all three mobs (which in my experience, probably won't happen, because aggro seems to be difficult to generate against the healer to new tanks) and they will start taking high amounts of damage. The group needs to dps down the adds before they kill the tank. Once the adds are down, and you realize you can't kill the annoying parrot, the boss will need to be dealt with. Most of the damage in the fight comes from the adds so healing will seem much more lax. Once Captain Madison reaches 50% health he will giggle and run off but don't worry, you'll see him again.

Captain Madison (Again...)

You must kill a mini-boss who drops the keys to the captains quarters [we won't ask why HE had them ;)] to proceed. Captain Madison is again beside his two buds who you must kill before you go after the boss. At about 50% health Madison will call out four Scurvy Dog adds that the tank will need to pick up. The adds don't have a lot of health and can be dps'd down fairly easily or you can attack the boss. Either way, Madison will run off at 25% and the dogs will remain so you have to kill them either way.

Denn the Orcatoothed

Captain Madison will finally get his but not at the hands of your party, instead he will die at the hands of a giant fishman. Justice has been served. Denn is a pretty simple boss fight that can become incredibly complicated if the group doesn't know how to deal with him. Denn himself only has one ability which is a frontal cone ability that has a small radious and is very easilly avoided. The meat of the fight comes when the boss periodically makes the four grates around the room bubble. There doesn't seem to be a set amount that bubble, it sometimes was only three and sometimes it's all four. It takes long enough that one person can interact with two grates and the tank doesn't take enough damage that the healer can't help out. It is important that you try to lock at least two of the grates as adds can pile up very fast. If you do happen to get adds (we didn't in the attempt I recorded because the pugs knew what to do) they are easily killable and you should get them down as quickly as possible.

Congratulations, you just completed the first instance in Final Fantasy XIV! Enjoy your loot!

The Weekly Innervate - Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn - An Unfair Turned Into a Sort of Fair Review

(Author's Note: I am a level 18 Conjurer at the time of this article so I am reviewing the early part of the game.)

Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn is a new MMORPG produced by Square Enix that has been highly anticipated by the general community despite the failed attempt of FFXIV the original. I personally have never played any of the Final Fantasy series before FFXIV and had no personal interest in the game but got swept up by the hype train of everyone elses excitement. I was selected to play in the Beta around Phase 4 but since they had an odd Beta schedule I was never actually able to play the Beta.

Launch

To say that Final Fantasy XIV had a bad launch would be an incredibly large understatement. FFXIV has had the worst launch for a AAA MMO we have seen for a very long time. I'm usually a pretty understanding person when it comes to downtime for patches and launches since it is a giant undertaking but for me this was pretty inexcusable because this could have easily been prevented with a little bit more testing. FFXIV had only one stress test that I remember right before it's launch and it was a two day event that ended early because one of the servers literally had a melt down. FFXIV also had no open beta except for the Open Beta they had for a few days shortly before their Early Access period. I was unable to participate in the Open Beta event because I couldn't find where to re-download the game after I uninstalled during the Closed Beta because it was giving me errors that I wasn't in the Beta but when I tried to sign up it said I was already in the Beta. Even after all of this, the hype was enough to make me pre-order the game. 

Square Enix had their pre-order numbers (which I believe was probably around 1 million or so) and they only had about 8-10 US Servers open at launch. At least 5 different errors occurred during their Early Access Period, there were no Server queues, no AFK kick mechanics and once the servers were filled you couldn't even make characters on the servers. This made it so you had to make and log-in to your character at about 5am if you wanted to play at all during Prime Time. I wasn't able to actually play the game until the 26th which was only one day before the actual launch of the game.

Needless to say, myself (and many others) were not at all happy with the game's launch and I saw some people even just quit over the debacle. There are a lot of different things that could have prevented this from happening. Having more than one open beta or stress test would have helped out a great deal as well as having more servers open at the time of launch for NA/EU players or a login queue for servers would have made it so more people could play. 

Early Leveling

Once I was able to finally get access to the game I was extremely disappointed with my experience personally. Personally, it's my opinion that even though SWTOR wasn't seen as an overall success among the general MMO community, I think it definitely raised the bar on what a questing experience should be. Final Fantasy had a large story element to it with both the class specific story lines and the Main Arching story line but a lot of it was lost on me due to not having hardly any Voice Over. It wasn't necessary for SE to do VO for each individual player character but the Main Story line NPC's having voice over work would have made the Main Story line much more unique and enjoyable. Instead, they sprinkled random VO here and there and left the rest for quest text to be skipped. Another thing that really annoyed me is that if you and another person you plan on playing with pick different classes you won't be able to quest with each other until around level 15 where you're able to go to the other starting areas. 

The questing by itself is extremely tedious and boring. It takes two steps back towards the World of Warcraft model of questing with kill X and gather Y, two quests at a time and run back to the original quest giver to run back out to the same spot you were at to do it again. They did however, make it so that quest objectives are open to everyone so they do not despawn and respawn in a given time so it doesn't take as long to get through gathering quests if lots of people are in one area.

As with most MMOs now a days, the early levels are to be quested through until you hit 10 or 15 where you can then do PvP or PvE dungeons. However, there is currently no PvP in FFXIV which I feel really is a determinate, not only to the community but also to break up the monotony of leveling which can be boring at the early levels and doing anything except questing can help people push through the game. I actually had to stop playing the game for several days and nearly just cancelled everything the questing was so dull I wanted to go play anything else. However, people on Twitter urged me to at least get to level 15 in my first job and do the first few dungeons before I make a final decision. This review would have been MUCH different if I had written it at level 10 like I originally planned last week.

Alternatives To Questing

There are a few things that you can do outside of just questing. Fates are open world bosses that can be found throughout the world, similar to Rifts in the liked name MMO, and you gain experience and Gil based on how much you participate so leeching exp is pretty impossible. You have to be exactly in the level range of the Fate however, even a level or two under can significantly dwarf your exp. I wasn't able to find a lot of unique same level Fates while I was questing but a lot of people say that farming Fates is very good exp if you can find them. There are also small Duty's that you unlock as you level which are almost like WoW Scenarios that can be done with 2-4 people and can be queued for. They take between 3-10 minutes to complete and give great exp the first time through but the exp decreases heavily thereafter.

Dungeons

This is where the game truly begins to shine except there is one large annoyance. You HAVE to complete the main story line to unlock your dungeons. Most MMOs you simply have to get to level 15 and you can simply just queue up for them. I hit level 15 and was unable to queue until someone in my stream chat told me I had to do the main story line to get them unlocked, I was level 17 by the time I caught up in quests since I picked up all side quests as well while I was leveling. This is annoying to me because this makes it so players HAVE to quest to do other content and forcing players to do content they may not necessarily wish to do just to do other content is never a good thing to me. However, once I was able to actually get into the dungeons I was pleasantly surprised. The dungeons are extremely linear so it is very difficult to get lost and the trash has a high amount of health and each individual trash pack takes about 45 seconds to 1 minute to be cleared. Even early dungeons are not flattering for new tanks, if you don't have decent/up to date gear before you go in you will be hit incredibly hard and the healer will have to pump out constant heals. Aggro also appeared to be pretty difficult to hold for some tanks in some of the runs that I did if I had to AoE heal the group it was very easy for to get and hold threat.

You get the first three dungeons between 15-17 and each dungeon is radically different in scenery. The boss mechanics grow increasingly difficult with the final boss in Copperbell Mines wiping my pug group at least 3 or 4 times before we were able to complete it. The dungeons are honestly the saving grace of the game for me as I like multiplayer content and the dungeons have a lot of neat mechanics and are said to only get more difficult as you get higher in levels. The dungeons are the first thing that have made me want to continue playing the game to see more of as so far nothing in the low levels are exactly exciting or innovating.

All in all, with so many MMOs on the market to me, it is very important for games to captivate you within the first 10 or so levels as statistics show that a majority of people who try MMOs unsub or stop playing at around level 10. SWTOR is the first game in recent memory that has made the questing experience enjoyable and captivating and made you want to keep playing as you got invested more and more into your character. With SWTOR doing such an amazing job with questing/story content I feel as though all games should step up their leveling content to keep players interested. But the dungeon content is definitely what makes this game shine. If you're wondering whether or not you want to play the game or not, I would say at least pick it up. Digital standard edition is only $32 after taxes and you get 30 days free which is more than enough time for you to determine if the game is worth playing after that. And the subscription fee is only $12 for 1 character (which is all someone like me will need) with a Free to Play model on the way (from what the rumor mill is saying anyway).