Cosmic Exploration - Great for DoH, Stressful and Unpleasant for DoL

[Gokki]

lol DoL is easier! I'm gonna max out my DoLs first, i'm not sure maybe people are not reading the leve objectives properly?

[Rein_eon_Osborne]

Rather than restoring all GP and effectively making them "Crafter but running", I'd rather have more ways to restore GPs such as:

1. Triggering Gatherer's Boon doubles or triples GP regeneration.
2. Getting node integrities that you don't need? Convert them to restore GP.
3. Separate the diff kinds of Cordials CDs. Give a reason for the orange cordials to be used even when you have the Hi-Cordials and Watered Cordials.
4. Add an action—permanent or in CE only—to gain yields/GP the longer you chain a node. Combine this with suggestion #1 suddenly you open up more ways to ‘keep the gears oiled and running’.
5. Some weather interacting with resources etc.

Other than that, I'm one of those players who does DoL first over DoH. Suffice to say I wish the discrepancies between the research pts pace you get between the two sub-roles are adjusted because comparing myself with a friend who played around similar amount of hours but starts with DoH first just shows that doing Specialist DoH > Other DoH > DoL are far superior than the opposite.

I'm also fine to have some of these A ranks being "Hi come to me fully loaded and maybe I'll give you gold rate, tee-hee!" and I hope they make more of those.

Lastly, I think some wording correction is needed for Researchingway in Cosmic Research Information window because "By expanding your research into other specialities, you can increase your overall efficiency!" doesn't really tell that you have to FINISH them in order for the 'armory bonus' to take effect.

EDIT: Please do away with the gathering animation lock or at least improve them. As a high ping player, put me side by side with low ping player then have us both quick gather 4 times in a row, you'll see me finishing 5-7 seconds later because this lock seems to be ping dependent. Pair this with the DoL cosmic missions' tight timing, I've gotten into few occasions where I missed gold rating from missing those precious few seconds. It's just annoying.

[ForsakenRoe]

Lastly, I think some wording correction is needed for Researchingway in Cosmic Research Information window because "By expanding your research into other specialities, you can increase your overall efficiency!" doesn't really tell that you have to FINISH them in order for the 'armory bonus' to take effect.

I would imagine (not got there yet, cos I decided to do all the DOH first, maybe a mistake) that the intention from SE behind that line is 'oh hey, you know those missions for MIN/BTN where you collect some stuff, then craft it using a DOL? Yeh they give rank 4 research to both the gatherer you use for it, and the crafter!'

But the bonus to Research speed given by finishing a tool completely outweighs that (if said nuance even exists)

[Nadda]

I will say 2 minute time limit is very rough... X____x

[FuturePastNow]

It would be nice if the timer started when you interact with the first node, not when you initiate the mission.

[Besame]

Hate the DOL timers and the gather node lights and descriptions are hard to see on the bright moon. Passing now, won't go back after spending a cpl hrs.

[Daralii]

I'm an omnicrafter/harvester on main, I get it and understand etc.

What has me confused is the whole "not high enough level" I ran into on an alt's mining leveling. I had the correct gear on, both sides, however it was not high enough. I needed 72. I gained a level, put on another new piece, hit 72 but then was given 79 instantly as the new "not high enough" level. EDIT: ILVL not level, apologies

I don't understand. Are we supposed to do these in HQ gear? If so, they WHY are NQ gear sold at the moonbase vendor? No matter how high you are NQ wise, it's still going to be too low according to the Cosmic Exploration.

My daughter's toon is in HQ L96 gear, both sides, even she ran into that "too low" factor doing missions set to her level.

It's making leveling my new alt's mining rather difficult. After failing 11 missions due to just not being fast enough or bad spots in terrain I went back to usual leveling of leves back down. In the time it took to run leves and story quests, I had over 12 levels gained.

Am I wrong in assuming that you were supposed to be able TO level in the Cosmic Exploration? Or am I mistaken in that this is just something to keep end game DoH/DoL's busy until the next expac?

The warning telling you to buy from the base vendor is completely nonsensical, yes. I had it pop up on FSH at 91 or 92 while wearing scrip gear and 90 HQ accessories, but the vendor gear will only start narrowly edging it out at 97.

[Rsmeers]

I was having a very hard time progressing through tool upgrades as a DoL until I radically changed my approach. On my experience, Stellar Missions with high RNG (such as hitting Gatherer's Boon, which wasn't working very well for me even with 70% chance) to get you to higher ratings are a waste of time and GP. Instead, it is the mission I initially despised that has been the most reliable and helpful at the end of the day: the Aetherial Reduction/Aethersand one. There's a collectability bonus for having enough Gathering and you can easily hit Gold with just a couple of nodes using the role action and ~700 GP alone (or less if you're lucky).

Of course, you'll still have to complete other Stellar Missions in between until it becomes available again. But you consistently get a lot more Analysis Exp this way than focusing on missions that spend all your GP and can barely get you to Silver unless you're extremely lucky. In general, my impression is that the missions are lacking balance and haven't been thoroughly tested (as many have already mentioned). It's by far the most buggy state a new FFXIV content has launched on — being reward wrong grades during missions, Spongoi not disappearing after being broken during Mech Ops and other stuff. Tools aside, the rewards are not very interesting. It's not all bad, but I do think there's a lot of room for improvement and I hope the next planets are more interesting.

[Supersnow845]

I was having a very hard time progressing through tool upgrades as a DoL until I radically changed my approach. On my experience, Stellar Missions with high RNG (such as hitting Gatherer's Boon, which wasn't working very well for me even with 70% chance) to get you to higher ratings are a waste of time and GP. Instead, it is the mission I initially despised that has been the most reliable and helpful at the end of the day: the Aetherial Reduction/Aethersand one. There's a collectability bonus for having enough Gathering and you can easily hit Gold with just a couple of nodes using the role action and ~700 GP alone (or less if you're lucky).

Of course, you'll still have to complete other Stellar Missions in between until it becomes available again. But you consistently get a lot more Analysis Exp this way than focusing on missions that spend all your GP and can barely get you to Silver unless you're extremely lucky. In general, my impression is that the missions are lacking balance and haven't been thoroughly tested (as many have already mentioned). It's by far the most buggy state a new FFXIV content has launched with — being reward wrong grades during missions, Spongoi not disappearing after being broken during Mech Ops and other stuff. It's not all bad, but I do think there's a lot of room for improvement and I hope the next planets are more interesting.

There might be a breakpoint you are just missing on the gatherers boon one. I am mid tier pentamelded (mostly using materia from island sanctuary so no 11’s or 12’s) and for me all gatherer boon missions when they spawn 6 nodes 2 will be 100% if I use pioneers gift 1+2 and the other 4 will be 90% if I use pioneers gift 1+2. If you use nophica’s/nald’thal’s tidings on the 2 that are 100% chances then you basically gold that mission 100% of the time even with bad luck on the 90%

If you are only getting 70% you may just be missing a breakpoint you may be able to hit easily with really cheap food and those missions don’t need a lot of GP so if you use food to fall over the breakpoint line with low GP it shouldn’t negatively affect you

[AlexisLestrange]

Absolute pain and suffering! I just did my first Class-A Aetherial Reduction mission on Miner; the first time I completed one was a Class-B mission, and I successfully got gold on that one with no problem. This Class-A mission, however, is an absolute travesty. How is one simply supposed to get the Silver or Gold ratings in only three minutes?

The mission is called A-2: Alchemical Refinement Materials. You have 3 minutes to collect as many collectables as possible and reduce them to make up at least 25 Aetherial dust. If you get the bare minimum of 25, that doesn't even reward you with Silver, you need more than that! You have to sit down and manually reduce all the collectables you gathered, which eats up a lot of the mission time. You sit there praying to the RNG lords that you receive loads of aetherial dust, it is horrendously ridiculous.

Square Enix should change the time limit and/or possibly skip the aetherial reduction step or make it so you can reduce multiple collectables at once.

After completing all 8 DoH relics to level 9, concocting the best macros for specialist and non-specialist crafters and figuring out different methods to work on the progress and quality, DoL Stellar Missions feel like an absolute nightmare. The only gathering job in Cosmic Exploration I genuinely like is fisher. I've learned a lot in just the first 6 levels of the fisher relic - and I've yet to try the A-class missions for those.

Please Square Enix, if you're reading - make changes to the Miner and Botanist Class-A missions. Some of the timings are too strict and rely on a lot of RNG instead of skill to get the higher ratings.