What time I had to play this weekend, I spent mostly helping others and figuring out what to level up next. I did want to get capped on Phantasmagoria tomestones, and that happened, in part because of an impromptu maps party with free company friends and a couple more friends from another server, to try and see the new Dungeons of Lyhe Ghiah. Figures that I’d forget to get a couple screenshots, but you’re a fan of the Lost Canals/Hidden Canals/Shifting Altars of Uznair, you know how this one goes too. But it’s still fun to do with friends, potentially lucrative, and the first time we saw how we went from one room to the next, we were all delighted and typed in our various ‘OOOOH’s into party chat.
I’ve only leveled red mage and black mage to 80, and right now I’m splitting my time between a few jobs before picking one to focus on. I’d like to get Dancer up to 70, both because it’s fun so far, and also to keep the Aiming leveling gear floating around to a minimum, as I’ve got Bard and Machinist at 70 already. I do feel like I should glamour the level 60 Shire tomestone gear for it, as of course it wasn’t designed with the feel of Dancer in mind. But it just feels off, visually… unless there’s a Gene Kelly-equivalent on Hydaelyn I haven’t run into yet.
The 5.05 patch notes mentioned they’d adjusted the XP rewards for Trust NPCs, and I took white mage out to see by how much. The previous reward for a run of Holminster Switch was 2.5 million, and now it’s up to 6.25 million. Before, I’d read (and agreed with) a few folks saying leveling everyone up through Trusts again was going to be too much of a pain to be worth it, so this greatly helps and is something I can do in quieter times.
One other thing I noticed was that Y’shtola’s spells are all named “_____ of the Seventh Dawn,” which seems handy to point to in case any sticklers for details start asking why her rotation doesn’t seem to fit with anything like player black mages.
One thing I wish they’d adjust is the dungeons you get in Leveling roulette when you go in with a full party. Higher-level groups always seem to get lower-level dungeons. This time, with some folks from the free company, we had a complete party of four with everyone in the 60s or 70s, and we got… Sastasha, the first dungeon in the game, syncing everyone down to level 18. The only saving grace is that at this point, it’s ridiculously fast.
I spent a few runs leveling Gunbreaker and Dark Knight closer to 70, which would put all my tank jobs there. And this evening, we got a couple new folks through the first two Eden raids, which is always a good time. The second one has a particular mechanic that, without spoiling what it is, still no-one can seem to explain in a non-confusing manner, myself included, and that led to a lot of cross-talk and despair in voice chat, which is hard to navigate.
