5 Ways My Son And I Continue To Explore Eorzea Differently

My oldest son and I continue to play Final Fantasy 14: The Hunt for Good Glamour. He has played countless hours grinding up most of his classes to 80 and completing the most recent content; I have beaten the main storyline of the Shadowbringers expansion but have yet to explore many of the bonus dungeons and raids. All in good time, I suppose.

Oh hey, our races changed a little bit. My oldest son went from Demon Girl to Elf Girl, and his reasoning was rather interesting – he got tired of how the Au Ra tail looked and how it clipped with his favorite armor sets. My character, on the other hand, went full on cat girl. My experience suggest this is because I secretly enjoy it when random players hit me up for sexual RP and when I turn them down and claim I’m leveling they’ll throw me a line like “Forget about grinding for levels, I’ll give you something even better to grind against!” God I wish I were kidding there. I dunno, the idea of having a better haircut for my character seemed fun at the time I had the option but I get harassed a little bit too much now and it makes me wonder.

In my last article, I listed 7 ways that my son and I approached this game differently. A few things have changed since then, so I thought it would be fun to revisit. He agreed, and here we are.

Least Favorite Dungeon

My son is not at all a fan of The Vault. This is a level 57 Heavensword Dungeon that he claims he’s had one too many party wipes during. “The bosses are all of a sudden hard now, and people have to do the mechanics or they die. Since level 57 isn’t the highest level in the game, people tend to underestimate the importance of doing the mechanics or worse yet not realize there ARE mechanics, and this results in lots of wipes and sometimes broken gear.”

My least favorite dungeon, by far, is Haukke Manor, the level 28-31 dungeon that to this date holds the infamy of being the only dungeon I’ve ever force left a party on. I’m not at all kidding.

As a pre-30 dungeon, it forces players to not have full access to their arsenal, which sucks. But it’s also a dungeon that encourages players to join without having their advanced class gemstone, which isn’t much of a dealbreaker in and of itself but often younger players that haven’t bothered to get this also haven’t bothered to keep up on their gear. This dungeon is also so tediously long. It’s the only dungeon I know of in the game where players reach a point where they cast /return on themselves to go back to the beginning because this is easier than to run the whole way back. It isn’t a difficult dungeon per se, but it is exceptionally tedious.

By the way, my son continued to run that dungeon that I left with the AFK Bard and the “brand new Dark Knight with no jewelry and caster gear.” To his credit, though, he beat the darn thing.

Least Favorite Character

My son answered this quickly: “Most of them.” He finds most of that characters to be boring. They don’t really mesh with him well. This is not a sentiment I feel, but I understand where he is coming from. Some of the stronger storytelling elements of this game pull from earlier works, especially earlier Final Fantasy games, and these are easily lost on a newer generation.

My son says “When I started the new story in the latest patch and the first cutscene I saw had Lyse in it, I was extremely sad. I feel she should die horrible, to Xenos, maybe tripping and falling and taking Minfillia with her. And I know, Minfillia is dead, but I expect any moment she’ll respawn and expect me to pray return to the Waking Sands, so maybe a pre-emptive killing is in order.”

I feel him on Minfillia.

I haven’t started the newest patches yet, hell I just recently finished The Ivalice Raids, so a lot of my opinions on characters I don’t like are still marred by that. That said, is there anyone else who plays this game who actually LIKES the Ascians as characters and don’t feel that they are at best poorly utilized?

Favorite Class

My son still is rocking the Dragoon, which he claims is “the best DPS job in the game, and the only one that can tank the ground so the party doesn’t have to.” That said, he has grown to love Red Mage as well, claiming “In a good party it helps make it a best party, and in a poor party it helps keep it up by spamming Verraise.”

I still have Warrior, but I also recently got Scholar to 80. Scholar really shined in the last several levels with access to faerie magics. That said, the level grind between about 50 and 60 are a bit of a chore. We’ll see if I ever grab a more traditional healing class. I continue to explore classes to see if there is something there I might like.

Boss Fights

My son states that his favorite boss fight is the new Emerald Weapon. He claims “It’s got good music, lots of stuff going on to keep you on your toes but it all makes sense and it isn’t too bright and flashy.” He claims his least favorite is “The slime from Copperbell Mines. It’s slow and three of the roles are totally useless. It just isn’t fun.”

I would argue my favorite fight is going to be the Gilgamesh fight tied to the Hildabrand quests. I mean, the fight itself is fun loving enough, but everyone is in a fun mood when that one pops on roulette. No one ever goes “Man, I’m tired of getting Gilgamesh and his chickens” or “Why did we get Gilgamesh again!?”

I don’t know if I have a least favorite fight, in and of itself, but I will say full stop every day I get Castrum Meridianum instea of Prae’ is a bad day. Although it can be fun to wipe an entire full party by pulling a certain group of mobs too early. I am bad and I should feel bad, but I don’t. I believe there is an argument that Castrum results in slightly more experience points than Prae’ in less time played, but Prae can be played while reading a good book or watching a good show. Also, people who are in Castrum with me have to listen to the same joke over and over again: “Time to enter the disposal chute/because that’s where the trash goes!”

Goals

My son left the Free Company we both had been in to join up with some new group that’s “more in-game= focused” and I’m trying to be more supportive of him, even if his choice makes it harder to trash talk parties the two of us are in. Now, instead of using Free Company Chat, we have to shout across the house. “Did you see the armor THAT guy is wearing?”

My son is super excited he got the mount from the Crown of the Immaculate Extreme fight in “just” 39 tries. Only 39. Just a small number of 39. Now he can focus on playing the game! He likes to help other people out, do extreme trials, and go mount and minion hunting. I don’t understand this, since you literally can only use one mount at a time. Go unlock flying in the zones you haven’t yet instead, kid.

My goals are a lot more laid back. At some point, I need to knock out the Nier raids, maybe complete 5.1? I also started work on a Heavensward Relic, or “Anime Weapons” which I think go “Kawaii Desu Ne” every time you swing them or something I dunno. Now that all of my crafting classes are 80, I need to get better at making money actually crafting. As an aside, my Chocobo is level 14, which is one step closer to having a companion at 20! I’d also like to have more classes in the 70 range for Bi-color gem farming.

Maybe I’ll drag my son into a Palace of the Dead run. If I do, I’ll need two other dumb people to come along, AND I’ll have to record it. If you know anyone, feel free to leave a comment below.