The End of an Era (1.0 Recap) – Endgame

Oh, here we are again! As promised, I will be addressing today things related to endgame in FFXIV (1.0 exclusively). I won’t be making any references as to how it will be at “A Real Reborn” launch. Despite what many people claim, 1.0 had a bunch of end-game content. I must admit it wasn’t a whole lot, compared to other games, but with a game with such a crippling launch I can say that FFXIV held it up pretty well. I’m glad to say I got to do everything the game had to offer, and did it with all of my good friends.

After leveling some jobs, I joined Nibelheim. Nibelheim is composed to many Kiraboshi members, and I am glad to say all of Nibelites are my friends. In this linkshell I’ve made strong, lasting friends that I never thought I would. I’m talking about real people, with good intentions and good players. I was first invited to Nibelheim after doing some dungeon runs with them.When I refer to dungeon runs I refer to Aurum Vale and Cutter’s Cry. These two are dungeons where upon completing certain requisites, at the end show up different chests, witch each having a chance to drop a Darklight piece of gear. Darklight drop is pretty rare, unless you’re spamming every day, and even then, it is very rare. Drop rate is stingy… what else is new in an SE MMO, amirite?

Good thing is they’re enjoyable and thanks to speed runs, people try their best in order to succeed, separating the men from the boys.

Before joining their dungeon runs in a permanent way, we also did some Hamlet runs. Back then, before my break, they were doing their seals and I helped on a couple of occasions. With them I got a taste of what Hamlet actually is, and they showed me how to really do it.

Hamlet is still boring though, but it’s the bitter pill to swallow if you want to start your Relic quest. Speaking of which, I never thought I would start it before 2.0, but I got extremely lucky with my doublemeld. One of the steps in the Relic quest is that you have to submit a class-only expensive weapon with a unique set of doublemeld. I once tried Pixel to make my Avengers doublemelded, but sadly it failed (bear in mind, it’s an 18% chance, using the lowest tier IV materias). So one day, this happened:

That was one of the craziest things I’ve ever done. I only had enough for one try, and basically blew all my money by buying both the materia and the weapon itself. It felt so mother-fucking great! Best of all is I did it on my own, and on the weapon I would have tried from the start, if I was rich! So yeah, thanks to that I got motivated to start on my Relic quest. For that, it required that I obtain 9 seals dropped from Hamlet. I only had 1 from a RedDot run I did, and with the guys no longer doing Hamlet (and having done more than 150+ runs themselves), I went on a quest to get them before the final save day. Doing Hamlet was painful, but thankfully with the help of some friends wasn’t so bad. I provisioned during Rank 1 Hamlets, trying to reach top 1. I got really lucky because I was Top 1 for Hyrstmill, thus being able to complete that Hamlet. Then I focused on Golden Bazaar. It was Rank 2 and so I had to compete against the seals but managed to still get 2 in one day. On the last week, I got Top 1 in a Rank 1 Aleport Hamlet and managed to get the last2 seals from there. I had one thanks to Johannes Cabal, who passed it to me, on the last Rank 2 Aleport one day that I spent 14 hours trying for it (and nothing!). So counting again, I had H: 3/A: 3/GB: 2. At that point I was desperate, and Pixel offered to lend me 1 million in order to buy items to provision for the Hamlet. Luckily I managed to make it to Top 3, and thanks to everyone, it reached Rank 2. On my third run with a JP group, managed to get my last seal! Yay! (tl;dr: Hamlet sucks)

Before I focused on Hamlet, I joined some Garuda runs with RedDot. They had managed to work on a BLM-burn strategy. It involved PLD WHM BRDx2 BLMx4 and it was thrilling. With them I also managed to get Garuda’s Van (BLM) on my very first win! It was amazing, and many people hated my luck, haha. What can I say, I’m not the one to blame! We did many runs and I managed to get Garuda’s Talons (MNK), Garuda’s Scream (WAR) from the chest, and decided to trade in my 40 Vortex Totems for Garuda’s Beak (DRG). Here I am sporting some of them.

This was my happy face going 1/1. I had never been this lucky! (Note, this was before the Astrolabe doublemeld!)

Like I said before, dungeons like Aurum Vale or Cutter’s Cry are one of the main endgame content. Well, for the longest time I thought I would get to 2.0 without a single piece, but one day something amazing happened…

But like I’ve said before, gear is not what makes good MMOs, but the friends you make and the bond you make with them. That’s why the end of 1.0 event was so emotional. It was the last moment we had to play in this game with the friends we made, to enjoy every minute until the servers went down. That’s why I’ll have to say thanks to all my friends, and hope to see you in-game as soon as possible. Thanks for everything!

Non-pictured is Vod, who decided not to load on my screen. ):