Discouraged somewhat...

Hello All

Since some days, I'm in a phase where I'm at same time confused and discouraged and it makes me slowly lose the fun.

My situation as is now:
- Summoner level 59.
- Original MSQ completed + following quests up to Lab of the Ancients.
- Fisher 62, Botanist and Miner 59.
- All crafting disciplines above 30, out of which Weaver, Goldsmith and Alchemist above 40.

And for now, I don't progress anymore because each activity has it's own roadblock for which I find no solution. For example:
- I'm a fisher level 62. I need more GPs to be able to reach !!! fishes. So, I repeat leves again and again, but it's soooooooo slow...
- Story quest line is stuck by the mandatory alliance raids. OK, but how to get them done? Nobody ever join the alliance raid(s) I need.
- Roulettes don't help because it's very rarely the dungeons and trials I need to complete quests, so OK, I earn something, but I can't finish quests. And if I try to apply for those I need, I never get enough players to get it done. I usually withdraw after 1 hour waiting time.

So, you see, it's not very nice for me for now. I have to say: I find especially unfair that the story quests are locked behind completing those 24 persons raids that nobody seem to be doing anymore.

Any ideas to help me regain some energy and positivity? :D

So in regards to the 24-person raids, if you queue for them, it should work but it can take a while. Back when I started the game, the average wait time for 40 minutes for any duty. There is an Alliance Raid roulette and in it, the most common ones to get are the 3 required for the story. It's possible that not many are doing it since Tuesday due to the patch, which has most players busy with the new content release, but it should settle back to normal soon. It could also be affected by the time of day, since more people play in the evenings after work or at weekends.

Some things that could also help:
- Open Duty Finder, click the cog wheel on the gold bar at the top, and make sure your Language setting includes all 4 languages. This will make sure you can match with players who speak all languages: English, German, French, Japanese. As the EU region has multiple languages, it could make it harder to match otherwise. We don't have this issue in the NA region because virtually everyone speaks English, but it can be a problem in the EU if English/German/French isn't selected and a problem in JP if Japanese isn't selected.
- Queue as a DPS because there are more DPS slots in an alliance raid than there are tanks/healers.

For fishing, if you want to level, another option is Ocean Fishing, which is unlocked at Limsa at the Fisher Guild. The boat leaves every 2 hours and you can board at Limsa Lominsa. It's great for leveling fisher fast. It's quite challenging to do it perfect, but sometimes there is a player there doing callouts for what bait to use and you can buy the bait from the NPC on the boat. It gets easier as you level up, due to actions like Identical Cast, Double Hook and Triple Hook.

It can get difficult when you haven't progressed the story for sure. For example, further fisher class quests might be unavailable until you progress enough. That's why I always tell people that the story "gates new areas and its associated content", because when you stop to do side things you can eventually run into that "need to progress story" issue.

On your Gatherer jobs, as you are of mixed level and the level crosses an expansions (L60 and under is Heavensward, L60 and above is Stormblood) you are likely using an older gear mix on your Fisher.
There is a big difference in Item Level between L60 Heavensward gear and L60 Stormblood gear.
As such the L60+ Stormblood Fisher leves and fishing holes will then be higher Item Level than what your Fisher gear totals are, hence you running out of GP.


Go ahead and grind your Botany and Mining jobs to L60, then hit the Stormblood merchants, the ingame Market board, or find a crafter to get high quality L60+ gatherer gear and tools.
The High Quality versions of the gear and tool will provide more stats and GP that the Normal Quality versions.
That should help greatly as far a Gatherer jobs, as these jobs are gear dependent.

My guess is that the language trick Jeeq mentioned will fix the alliance raid problem for you, and might help with quest clearing as well. Last i knew(if this is wrong, someone feel free to correct me) the Leveling roulette(Sastasha - Aurum Vale in your case) is programmed to ignore language selection for matching purposes, but the others all try to match you with people who you can for sure communicate with(as far as the game knows). So this would lead to slower matching for alliance, along with slower matching for the various level 50 dungeons you might have quests youre clearing out. So try the language trick and see if that helps with your progress.

Gathering classes get most of their GP from the accessories, so if you can find a way to upgrade those pieces it might help. And yes, Ocean Fishing might be a good move for getting some extra levels in.

Next bit of advice. If youre trying to get instanced stuff(dungeons, trials, raids) done but not super particular about what order you do them in you can que for up to 5 at a time. So you could select your alliance raid along with 4 of the dungeons you need(using the language trick), and the game will keep trying to match you to all of them until it finds you a group.

Final bit of advice. You did mention you dont get the dungeons or trials you need. There are a few specific trials that dont play nice with the matchmaking system. These are anything with the words "Minstrels Ballad" in the name, anything with (Extreme) in the name, and(im fairly sure but not positive on this last one) Urth's Font. Those trials dont pull people from the Trial roulette, and thus are much harder to get matched in to. The reason is that these are higher difficulty fights then the trials roulette is aimed at. So if you specifically want to challenge these fights your best bet is to use the Party Finder tool instead of the Duty Finder. At no point does the game teach you about Party Finder, so heres a quick explanation. Party Finder lets you set a target(such as doing a specific fight), write out a description of what you want, and form an open group that other people can join. The tool also lets you see the open groups other people have made and decide if you can and/or want to help them too. For those harder trials i mention most people run them via the Party Finder tool, and additionally most people do them with the "Unsynced Group" flag set. This lets you do the fight without setting your level down to that of the fight. So your Summoner would stay level 59 while fighting the level 50 bosses(and if the people who join via Party Finder are higher they keep their levels too - all the way up to potentially level 100). This makes these harder fights significantly easier(if not free), and would let you clear out your to do list that much faster. If you instead want to fight those trials "as intended" then you can still use Party Finder to get a synced group together, but if this is the case make sure you mention this in your Party Finder message(otherwise you might get people joining who only want to help if its the easy way). Also keep in mind a synced group will usually take longer to fill, whereas a single level 80+ character could get you through any of those fights unsynced.

Bonus thing i thought of: I cant guarantee itll help with energy and positivity, but if you havent already keep an eye out for a questline that starts in or near Ul Dah that starts with a quest called "The Rise and Fall of Gentlemen". Its a light-hearted set of story quests. Not everyone likes them(so no guarantee itll be for you), but the people who like them tend to really like them. Might help, might not. Couldnt hurt.

Good luck!

Thanks All.

I immediately used the trick with the language, what is no problem for me at all since I speak the 3 fluent (native French, working in English, daily life in German!). With it, I already got 2 tasks covered. I was sooooo happy!

Regarding "The rise and fall...": yes, I started that a while ago and have fun at it. Yesterday, I was finally able to do the battle bridge so that now I can keep following up those quests.

Regarding ocean fishing: I had no idea that it's a good way to go. I will certainly give it a try.

I will also level up miner and botanist to 60 as recommended.

Thanks All really. I feel clearly better. <3

Quote:

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Originally Posted by LuSnow

Thanks All.

I immediately used the trick with the language, what is no problem for me at all since I speak the 3 fluent (native French, working in English, daily life in German!). With it, I already got 2 tasks covered. I was sooooo happy!

Regarding "The rise and fall...": yes, I started that a while ago and have fun at it. Yesterday, I was finally able to do the battle bridge so that now I can keep following up those quests.

Regarding ocean fishing: I had no idea that it's a good way to go. I will certainly give it a try.

I will also level up miner and botanist to 60 as recommended.

Thanks All really. I feel clearly better. <3

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Best case scenario .you should enable all languages even if you don't know or don't speak that language