It sounds like blasphemy mentioning WoW but I love the community site of wowhead. Is there something similar for FF14 to read up on boss mechanics and just looking at a database?
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It sounds like blasphemy mentioning WoW but I love the community site of wowhead. Is there something similar for FF14 to read up on boss mechanics and just looking at a database?
I don't think XIV has an "all in one" website like WoW does and has several specialized websites for different purposes including extreme/savage encounters.
Depends on what version of the site, old Wowhead was useful for finding stuff and information.
New wowhead is literally article upon article "This is the meta specs you should play" "Here's why X is meta and broken and everyone plays it" "Top 10 broken meta specs" "X way to abuse/do thing faster" "Why your spec is weak/bad compared to meta" which makes the community's tryhard metaslaving even worse but hey, they got their clicks and that is what it seems they mainly care about these days.
Though tbh the game does a way better job at explaining things compared to WoW so i had definitely had less need to check external sites outside of finding stuff about questlines/mob locatiosn etc
It's usually not kept up to date, but there is consolegameswiki. Gamerescape is closer to being a database with accurate information such as potency, tooltips and so on, but doesn't necessarily go over mechanics much like consolegameswiki.
They both come up at the top on Google so just google whatever you want to know and they will usually answer it.
Nothing as good. FFXIV has pretty terrible community resources if you compare it to other big games. Maybe the Japanese have good sites, I don't know.
I think the issue is that nothing is centralized. The individual parts are all amazing and work really well, Garlond Tools is a life saver as is SkyWatcher and all the community driven guides on singular pieces of content, but no one group is interested in consolidating. Which I can't really blame them for recently as a LOT of it is behind discord servers like The Balance and copying everything to an actual website would be a pain. That said it's never been much of an issue in my experience because the tools that ARE there aren't too hard to find and are usually just a google search away.
That said OP:
The Balance Discord - Your one stop shop for progression and class mechanics.
Garland Tools - Item database. Has several other functions but it's absolutely a life saver.
Consolegameswiki/gamerescape/lodestone - Jeeqbit and Anhra covered these.
Skywatcher - Tells you the weather in game. Very useful for fishing.
FFXIVCollect - VERY useful for when you're hunting down specific titles and items.
LuckyBancho - Keeps tallies on server populations and achievements across said servers. Not as useful day to day but very useful if you want to check the health of any given server.
Youtube - Check out MrHappy and MTQ for encounter mechanics. Both of them have videos going back to ARR and both are really good about staying on top of current content. MTQ takes longer but her guides are usually more concise, but MrHappy is usually a good quick alternative these days.
Eorzeacollection - Glamour for days.
Everything else you can generally find via the Reddit as I can almost guarantee someone has made a gigantic google doc for whatever you're curious about.
I'd also add:
1) teamcraft.
While not really a database it's a great tool for experimenting with crafting rotations and stats aswell as creating crafting lists for a neat overview of all the materials needed and how to acquire them and setting an unlimited amount of alarms for timed nodes with node locations precisely listed.
2) ff14housing
A database for alll things housing with a picture of how each item looks ingame and data on how to acquire it
Other ones besides those already mentioned that I have in my bookmarks:
FFXIV Crafting / Crafting as a Service: Recipe builder. Lets you build a block of things to craft and tells you exactly what you'll need to make it
Cat Became Hungry: Fishing database
Ariyala's Toolkit Hunts: Hunt tracker for each server
ARR Triple Triad: Like XIV Collect, but focuses on the TT cards
Lalachievements: Achievement tracking per server based on Lodestone data. Also tracks some collectibles like XIV Collect.
And loads and loads of discords for this and that as well..
The decentralization is likely due to the sudden death of one of the big info sites towards the end of HW(?). At that time there existed a site (XIVdatabase?) with a very large and easily searchable database of gear, FATEs, instances, quests, mobs and NPCs than most of the western playerbase used heavily. One day the owner of the site stopped updating it, sold it to someone else and the new owner quickly shut the site down. Since that happened the information support portion of the playerbase has been a bit wary of going all in one basket.
Yep I remember that. There's been other attempts since then like the Moogle Post, which imploded because one of the creators had some serious allegations levied against them, but almost all of them have gone up in flames in some way or another. Given how it's happened more than once and just how many people are content running individual sites for specific niches I doubt we'll ever get an all-in-one website for this game. Not without significant efforts.
That has to be one of the best game website names I have ever come across. :cool:
I think this is a big reason why we don't have a website like Wowhead for FFXIV. It's simple to set up and every discord is free publicity for S.E.
Meanwhile, Wowhead is an organization. It has employees and their business is the website. Would S.E. be willing to work with an outside company who wishes to run an encompassing website along the lines of WoWhead for FFXIV? Honestly, I'm not sure.
It takes a lot of time, money, and passion to build up the trust such a collaboration requires. The individuals running the informational game website would have to be people of the highest caliber. Individuals like Perculia don't grow on trees.
I've mostly abandoned the aforementioned website for fishing purposes and instead rely on the fisher's discord and the Carbuncleplushy fishing tracker (Which lists basically everything you'd need to know about every fish including availability windows) for my fishing needs.
The sheer amount of ads they've been running lately has made it rather slow to utilize.
I remember when Thottbot and Allakhazam were revered when Everquest was the only PvE MMO, both of which I think were rolled into Wowhead later.
My guess is that youtubers are to "blame". Blame in quotes, because I generally find their information more useful.
But I also like gamerescape.com and https://ffxivcrafting.com/ aka "Crafting as a Service", which reminds me that I should pay "Crafting as a Service", since they are ad free.
You get what you pay for, either by ads or direct payment.
Apparently, no one has considered it profitable to make an Allakhazam/Wowhead for FF14.
Edited Note: Ironically, "Crafting as a Service" is not available at the moment. I hope it's not because they've decided it's not profitable without ads.
Crafting as a Service is alive for me at https://ffxivcrafting.com/
Edit: There is a comment that his web host had some issues yesterday that got resolved.
The primary reason there's not an FFXIV version of Wowhead is because of Discord, which didn't exist for most of WoW's lifetime.
The other reason why sites like Thotbott, Elitist Jerks, Icy Veins and Wowhead exist or existed was because WoW classes used to have a lot of diversity and a variety of builds for players to customize specifically for any given content or activity. There were farming builds, PvP builds, battleground builds, arena builds, PvE solo builds, PvE raiding builds, PvE dungeon builds, etc. The list went on and on. That's not the case anymore with all the classes being greatly pruned and homogenized. At least it was when I stopped playing a few years ago.
FFXIV by contrast doesn't really have builds. There's materia but that's different than leveling up and having to decide where you're going to spend a talent or skill point. And personally, I prefer FFXIV's way. It's more straightforward and cuts to the chase, because in reality, all those WoW builds I mentioned earlier would always come down to a cookie-cutter build that everyone was expected to have. In this game, you have the three major roles, and jobs to fill those roles. Period.
As far as other non-combat stuff, like where to find certain things, how to get certain titles or achievements, glamour, etc. those have been mentioned by others in this thread. For me, I just google whatever it is I'm looking for and usually the first thing that comes up is Consolegameswiki/Gamerscape and they usually have the answer.
Failing that, I head to Discord.
Like someone mentioned, garland tools imo is probably best data base browsing site, there are others that cater to gardening, fishing, crafting macros, YouTube tends to have the video guides.
IIRC, there is an official phone app that allows you to browse gear/items.