#Eureka Anemos

[n3rd-qu33n-ffxiv]

Gettin' Things Done!

I've never really experienced Eureka or Bozja as I didn't start playing until mid-to-late Shadowbringers. In preparation for Dawntrail's version, I asked a friend to teach me the mysterious ways of Eureka. So far, we've cleared Anemos!

No, we did not dress like this on purpose...

I FINALLY GOT THE RED MAGE BARDING! I feel like a REAL Red Mage main now!

[avampyone]

I mostly finished up in Eureka Anemos yesterday and acquired the first BLM relic. It's so pretty! Curious to see how it'll evolve the further I go.

[photosfromeorzea]

The Baldesion Arsenal

[windupaidoneus]

they sdhouldnt have put grindy things in the videogame. you are never seeing me again

[glacierbash]

so far, eureka is some of my favorite content in the entire game. finished up anemos, onto pagos! really looking to get elemental armor, but i've heard you have to complete the relic weapon too (and if not, then. oh well. the RDM one is VERY fucking cool.)

[impossible-rat-babies]

honestly the ARR relics are a grind, but the eureka relics are a time sink

[xecat]

ok. eureka is scary to get into at first. but it is fun. and i wish i had a constant entourage of party members to spawn and fight fates with

[thecoolnauta]

NIGHT IN MOND WITH THE HEART WARM

That night, Jean didn't expect to actually talk to the little new problem.

A kid, with big curios eyes and very far from home, hopefully waiting to get back.

How she could know that a lost child could call her like that. Like a charming spell, calling her name to make her fall into a trap, and she did. She fell into a trap.

The trap of that youthful smile waiting to be heard by thousands. The voices of millions of children laughing at the same symphony with them.

Oh, how she couldn't fall into that trap?

"So, don't you hate me?" they asked, eyes with no worry, but concern.

"Hate you? Why would you ever though I hated you? Do I act like I hated you, I'm so-" they shush her, laughing as Mondstand wasn't sleeping.

They covered their mouth, the fine cape they get from the trash covering that fragile body from the cold of the wind.

"Sorry! Your reaction was like REALLY funny, your face was-" they continued laughing.

Jean knew that she should have felt offended or at least concerned. But she couldn't.

The warm on her heart filled her, no room for any other feeling than warm happiness.

"Still, my apologies should be first, as the Great Master from the Knights of Favonious, it's my duty to make you feel comfortable and cared.." she felt a bit bad, does she was doing her duty right? Maybe more people felt she hated her, that was making her duty right?

"Oh no! I thought you hated me because the wind is always feral with you"

What?

The wind?

"Do… do you mean my vision? Anemo?" she asked, taking her vision to show the teen the magical object.

"Eureka! That is it!!!" they claimed, stars she only saw on the sky on their eyes, "I thought it was just a fashion item, you can control the wind with that?"

"Yes, this was a gift from my Archon, Barbatos… do you-

"Yeah i met hi- I MEAN, I saw his statue… I liked his body by the way-" they acted awkward, talking about the sculpture with a bit too detail, making Jean hide a chuckle.

She saw them, so transparent but still, so…

"Can you use the wind like him?" their question almost make her jump, their big eyes meeting with hers.

"O-oh, yeah"

And then, she connected some of her power on a little bubble of air on her hands, controlling the small glowing anemo by the dark.

Her powers were always that… brilliant?

"THAT LOOKS AMAZING, INCREIBLE!!!" they shouted, looking mesmerized the magic concentrated on the woman's hands, taking all they had to held their hands just to not touch it.

And then, the warm in her heart made sense.

The teenager in front of her, with their curious but lost soul, managed to connect with hers, almost as it were they place all along.

She felt right, a true smile on her lips, just like when she was a kid.

When she met the traveler.

When she felt you.

IM SO SORRY, I FORGOTTED THAT I HAD AN ACCOUNT ON TUMBLR, this is just a quick draw because a bomb exploted on my mind with a lot of new ideas but.. I seriosly don't know how to put them on words..

Still, sorry for the very bad grammar, I made the draw myself and know my hand hurts like hell.

Have a nice week, don't forget you are enough! Seh ya :V

[aotopmha]

Occult Crescent a week in:

I live here now.

I saw someone call it bland/lacking in personality/just thrown out there because "they had to" and I couldn't disagree more.

The CEs like the trade turtle and the army of stone men are another element that really reminds of older games; be it asset reuse or just the developers wanting to have some fun, a lot of older games had surreal encounters disregarding "logic" so to speak, a sort of full lean into game logic I think the focus on "photorealism" buried.

Why not have a bunch of Black Chocobo spawn out of thin air?

Why not have a AoE spam clay doll just plop in an arena?

How about those bipedal sharks?

I think it's super charming.

Some of the Phantom Jobs interact with the main jobs in really cool ways.

I think it's awesome Red Mage can dualcast all of the Time Mage spells and all of the casters can use Swiftcast to cast the Time Mage spells.

I finally got Quick and I think it's awesome with Dark Knight because your weapon is a giant sword and now you can just use it super fast for a bit, along with a general speed boost to your movement – so you're just basically temporarily "shredding" through everything.

I don't know how "good" it actually is in DRK context, but it sure is fun! At the very least Slowga is super nice in tanking context and in particular for mob farming.

I also imagine Quick being awesome for caster bursts.

In fact, I love it to the point where I feel like it would be awesome if you could eventually gain an ability to cut down on the general cooldown of an OGCD (with perhaps another Phantom Job), so I could press Quick more.

The ability to combine multiple Phantom Jobs sounds like a natural enough evolution for the system I feel like they might actually go in that direction earlier than we think (perhaps already with the job update planned prior to the second half of Occult Crescent added later on in the patch cycle).

Dark Knight + Phantom Monk is super fun because of the added damage and movement options (it really does feel satisfying to maintain those buffs and use that proc ability).

And Dark Knight + Ranger does just really fun crit procing, with Unicorn being an awesome complement to the tank kit, especially if you have a group.

The next in line to these three I've chosen to master is Geomancer and I already love the damage stack and weather-specific ability there, too.

It's just 4-5 abilities per Phantom Job, but each of these give you a fairly distinct style of play, which confirms what I've always sort of felt like about the notion of "complex" jobs needing a lot of buttons: it's not the number of buttons that gives the complexity, it's how substantial they are.

There are still so many combinations I haven't truly gotten a chance to try, too.

At the very least, I now have all of the Silver and Gold jobs unlocked, with only two from the CEs left to get.

I said I'm going to level them all to mastery and I think I still stand by that.

At this point I think I can make a more in-depth comparison with Eureka, as well.

Since this is the equivalent of the first half of the content, I think it's super nice I made through Anemos and up to Pagos (I made it up to lvl 35ish before I stopped, I believe) because I feel like they are the relevant areas for the comparison as they basically should be the respective counterpart to this area of Occult Crescent.

And to me this is a whole bit better than anything in Anemos and Pagos, mostly because all of the encounters in Eureka are bland target dummies.

The mobs, I understand, but so were all of the spawned NMs I managed to catch. Fighting them involves a couple of minutes of standing there and dodging the occasional AoE.

The elemental wheel seemed promising at first, but then you learn you can automate it and it basically means nothing.

I hear people praise the Logos Actions, but Anemos and Pagos didn't have them. I think this was the first element that made me put Eureka on the backburner: these zones are basically the same as any MSQ ones without any Solo Duties or dungeons to break them up. It's just FATE farming with a less involved narrative.

The narrative concept is awesome (and I really appreciate it for being payoff for ARR), but on the island proper, I was invested in the story for Krile and not necessarily the Isle of Val itself. Now that I think on it, I *was* interested in its mystery and what happened with it, but not really the "world" on it itself.

And that's fine, in fact, I think character-centric storytelling is probably the strongest storytelling in FFXIV. I saw someone else play through the entire story of Eureka and I'm happy with it, but the world was not the star there, though I feel like it was "intended to be".

So, the biggest element that made me put Eureka aside was the fact that I didn't care for actually exploring it.

I didn't mind how the story "disrupted" everything else, but what I did mind is the need to go and replenish the elemental wheel. It felt like artificial gameplay depth.

Yeah the zones opened up via the levelling system and were "difficult" to traverse, but I got no sense of discovery from it. It was "chill", a timesink for when I felt like advancing in it.

Dying to the next "block point" didn't lead to a stronger wish to explore more nor was it challenging or exciting, it was annoying.

And I basically got nothing for those levels but more training dummies to fight.

So Eureka is on my backburner to eventually finish.

Everything above sounds fairly negative, but I really did enjoy my time with Eureka when I was in the mood for some "second monitor" content.

In comparison, I get a new ability every time I level up a Phantom Job in Occult Crescent. I immediately get something that adds depth to or switches up how I play and an immediate substantial reward for levelling.

The lockbox rng could give you some fun stuff, but it wasn't enough for me to keep going for a months-long grind to complete everything in the zone.

(This is also why I put Cosmic Exploration lower on my priority list as well. I much prefer CE over Eureka, as well, but it also essentially just has a simple prize pool going for it. Good for a fun chill time, but not for long-term motivation like a levelling system with built-in rewards is for me. It's also why I'm planning to spread out leveĺing all of my Gatheres and Crafters between all of the upcoming zones.)

The narrative of Occult Crescent is much the same in that it uses a fairly underexplored bit of story (which I'm also fascinated by), but the Survey Points and notes actually encourage to go out there and at least take a look at all of the areas (in Eureka these items were Magicites, which were a motivation to explore for better damage/smoother levelling, but not necessarily to learn more about the world), so OC bolsters its own intention of environmental storytelling instead of undercutting it and to me introduces this type of storytelling into FFXIV much more gracefully.

If you aim to do environmental storytelling, actually lean some of your gameplay systems on it.

Yes, the area itself is "not as dangerous" and you can get everywhere fairly easily, but I'm much more curious about the world itself as a result of these small tweaks and added lore bits; it very much helps that I feel like the landmarks are much more strongly distinct, as well.

It's a more interesting landmass visually to me, though Eureka was also very pretty.

Finally, ending where I started with Eureka, the actual encounters aren't target dummies, they're Dawntrail-styled dungeon bosses.

The FATEs lean more into being minibosses, but some of those can catch you off guard, as well.

There is actual encounter substance here.

And yes, they will be played to bits, but I much prefer a collection of dungeon bosses to target dummy mobs.

All of this said, I think I can pretty confidently say I very much prefer Occult Crescent to at the very least the first two zones of Eureka.

I think I liked Krile as a central character more than any of the cast of OC so far (though I'm very much in Archive and Iris protect mode, adore them and think the OC unlock quest is super charming and compelling).

But the Phantom Jobs and much more complex fights offer a much better gameplay and leveling experience, which is only bolstered by details like party level sync and the ability to earn tomes.

The systems are super easy to interface with and there is at least some purpose behind every element.

If you couldn't tell from this or any previous posts, I'm really digging OC.

Now, it would be very nice if I got those final two Soul Shards from their respective CEs.

[run-on-lightning]

i haven't really posted much about my time playing ffxiv until recently. so i figured since my 2nd anniversary is coming up, i'll share some screenshots of my personal highlights and milestones from the past two years of playing.

they're all under the cut

^ very likely the first time i saw and fell in love with Pharos Sirius

^ my first attempt at gpose after learning what glamours were

^ i made the mistake of doing this quest as FSH to avoid the random overworld mobs. i didn't realize the npc was going to fight me, so i ended up slapping him into submission with my fishing rod

^ the moment i fell so hard for Y'shtola because omg why is she so hot in her HW card

^ my first flight with the Blackjack after grinding mgp for 3 months. my irl best friend (who is also my ffxiv mentor) also got the Bahamut mount around the same time, so we did a quick photoshoot together

^ some of my early attempts at landscape gpose. this game is so beautiful, even before the graphics update

^ my first clear in Heaven-on-High with my mentor. i gave her so many heartattacks with my recklessness and greed during that run

^ i promised my best friend we'd level up in Eureka together, but i was too excited to explore the new area. so i kept my promise and explored at the same time by sneaking around the mobs to avoid pulling them. it was good practice for deep dungeon sneaking, plus i got to see and absorb the cool sights at the same time.

i ended up unlocking the whole map of Anemos without killing a single mob. Eureka pacifist run.

^ my current PB in solo Heaven-on-High. i still haven't gotten back to the grind yet.

^ one of my favorite moments when my mentor and i attempted to score run together for the first time. we cleared that run and got 36th place in our data center at the time (as of writing this, that run got bumped to 41st place).

btw the Heavenly Yuki mob looks like an Enderman from Minecraft, that's why we call them Ender-chan.

^ but the real reason we cleared was for the gpose opportunity ;)

^ winning a Rinshan Kaihou (tsumo after a kan) is such a rare treat.

i reached 1600+ ranking at some point this year, but then i lost so many games soon afterwards that reclimbing became too difficult. i was forced to reset my mahjong rank back to the default 1500 and novice.

^ the moment i finished getting all 80 vistas of the ARR sightseeing log. they were such a pain to get and some of them don't even have a clear view of whatever the thing was supposed to be about.

i very much prefer the more organic vistas of HW and StB. but i also don't need vistas from the sightseeing log to find places with a good view, since i like exploring and taking in the sights.

^ some of my latest landscape photos/gpose

suffice to say i'm enjoying this game a lot.

[aethernoise]

A few weeks ago, I decided I wanted dyable Constellation pants for my AST glamour, and went back into Eureka Anemos for the first time in over two years. Then, tonight I cleared Baldesion Arsenal and got my very own orb to ponder.

For multiple expansions, I had kinda given up on Eureka. I stopped at level 21 - just entering Pagos - when it was current, and wistfully watched others progress through the 4.x patches without me. It just started to seem like something I'd probably never go back to because it had "been too long" and I didn't have a dedicated group to go with. It seemed exhausting and intimidating.

But then something in me kinda just went "fuck it." I did it, and mostly alone. I relied on pickup groups and the friendliness of familiar faces along the way, and ended up joining CAFE for a newbie-friendly run of BA once I was finished with my new shiny weapon.

Moral of the story is: Do It Scared. Do It Anyway. Just get in there and shout.

[miqo-tales]

If anyone wants, here's all the recent FFXI related stuff I've made. Save you a minute searching.

Primer part 1

Primer part 2

Trailer breakdown

Stuff in the raid

More stuff in the raid

Also, here's some I made back when Eureka first released. So they only talk about stuff in Anemos. But they do mention some general FFXI stuff too.

Eureka and FFXI part 1

part 2

part 3

part 4

[terramythos]

it's not the specific eureka skin i'm going for but the early anemos relic does look poggers champion. also there's a crab

[photosfromeorzea]

Klauser's Peace

[windupaidoneus]

mentally im there

[mages-ballad]

hello my fellow ffxiv players. i want to finish eureka before dawntrail for krile but i must ask: how the hell do you do it without being in agony and pain. i finished anemos and it wasnt too bad but pagos just makes me want to explode i dont know why it feels so much more grindy??