Endgame Progression, Elitism and You

[XyleHarkyn]

Yesterday, someone asked in my linkshell if anyone wanted to do Garuda Hard Mode. My response was, "sounds good, how are you geared?" When they said full AF, I advised them to start running Wanderer's Palace and Ifrit as they were not even remotely geared for the fight.

I got the response that "I didn't come online for a lecture" and he was insulted that I wouldn't even try due to this person's present gear set up.

So why is this attitude prevalent in the game's early stages, why are people overshooting what they can do, and what exactly should people be doing once they ding that magical level 50?

This post, or series of posts depending on limitations, is going to explain my opinion on this mentality and the one true endgame progression guide, or at least how I perceive SE intending it to be.

I'm the Best Super Amazing DPS That Don't Need No Gear

There's a perception that people gearing for hard modes and endgame dungeons isn't necessary. There are two reasons why this exists. One with the leveling process within the actual game design and people that haven't played a MMO whose endgame progression is based on a gear treadmill.

The first point is easy to explain. If you took a class from level 1 to 50, were you ever stonewalled at a certain dungeon to the point that you couldn't clear it due to lack of gear, or where the group wiping was from simply not knowing the encounter to the lack of a basic understanding of not standing in the fire?

For 99% of people, this is most likely no, for two reasons:

-Progressing through the main story/quests/job quests gave the player gear relevant to thier level.
-The level progression dungeons are not hard. (Lack of a proper gear check.)

So why is this a problem? For new MMO players, this is a God send because they now have no need of the ability to worry about your character. The game is handing them their gear and upgrades essentially for free with a huge XP bonus on the side. So when they get their AF at 50, they feel like they have the best gear ever and can take on anything, where in actuality, the AF is designed to get your foot in the door and the rest has to be earned and fought for, which is contradictory to how the game has been teaching the player through the leveling process.

The second point, basically is aligned to how the dungeons typically run. You really don't get your first grasp of dungeons being challenging probably up until Brayflox and more notably at Stone Vigil. Even then, there really isn't a gear check to see if you are gearing properly, and why would there be? If you're following the standard leveling progression, you should have all the gear you could ever need. You can say this is a good thing because the game is taking away that pre-check in order to start teaching you boss mechanics and easing the player into dungeons, but as most of you know, that doesn't mean anything at endgame if you aren't geared.

You're So Elitist For Telling Me How to Gear!

There's that word again. I don't think it means what you think it means.

Being Elitist: OMG YOU HAVE ALL iLVL60 GEAR EXCEPT FOR THAT ONE PIECE OF AF! YOU ARE TERRIBLE AT EVERYTHING. /leave

Let's go back to that example in my first post. This person feeling like he/she did probably has more to do than how I worded what this person should be doing and this probably has more to do with me explaining this concept to people over and over again to the point where it becomes annoying. Read: It's my fault. I'm not perfect.

So why do people typically not have a clue on what they should be doing at 50?

Put simply, the game doesn't give any guidance on what they should be doing.

Everyone in endgame is basically saying to run AK forever as it gives the best rewards (specifically myth stones.) So the average person is going to think, "Yeah, that's what I should be doing," even though this person is in full AF and the first boss proceeds to faceroll the group.

Although no one mentions the fact that Palace drops gear better than their AF.

The ilvl restrictions on dungeons in 2.1 will help with this greatly by funneling players where they need to go in the duty finder, so this should become less of an issue, but this should have been there from day one. Core players are starting to hit 50, and this is going to be more of an issue until this gets implemented.

The Endgame Guide

Disclaimer: I do no claim to be an endgame expert/best geared/elitist/turbo nerd. These are just some of my own observations.

The Real Game Begins

-Ding 50 (Pat yourself on the back and get ready for the fun.)
-Finish Job Quests to get full Artifact equipment. Don't get too attached. This is all getting replaced eventually.
-Finish main story to start the endgame quest chains.
-Acquire Item Level (ilvl) 49 gear to fill out the remaining accessory and weapon slots.



-Keep in mind this is Item Level, not gear level. Item Level is a stat on gear generally denotes how better one piece of gear is over another and will be used as a metric to measure your gear for endgame dungeons from the duty finder in patch 2.1. Unless you have awesome stuff from Darkhold, you really shouldn't be running around in anything less than ilvl 49s. If you have loads of gil, get them materia melded with job appropriate stats.

The First Step is Always the Hardest

There are 3 instances you should be running right now.

-Run Wander's Palace for ilvl55 gear drops and Tomestones of Philosophy (50 per run.) This is flagged from the NPC Allene Behind the Waking Sands in Vesper Bay.



-Farm Ifrit Hard Mode for the weapon. You will get a quest to flag this after the main story. The hard mode primal fights are designed with 8 people in mind. The duty finder will match 2 tanks, 2 healers, and 4 DPS. They are much longer and are much more difficult then the story mode primal fights. Clearing them will get you a small amount of Tomestones and the group will get one random Primal Weapon drop. You should be farming these regularly to get the weapon for your class. Ifrit is the easiest of the bunch, so this is the best place to start.

-Run Castrum Meridianum for Tomestones of Philosophy (100 per run.)

The Glory of Tomestones

-When you start running level 50 dungeons. You will notice new item drop after you kill bosses called Tomestones of Philosophy and Tomestones of Mythology. These are a specialized currency that are used to buy your endgame gear. You can see how many you have buy going to the "Currency" tab in your inventory.



-These are traded in to an NPC named Auriana in Revreant's Toll in Mor Dohna for your gear. There are 2 types of gear acquired this way: Darklight (Philosophy) and Job Relic (Mythology.) The later of which being considered best in slot at the present time.



-She gives you a list to choose from. Choose the type of class and the type of currency you are trading in.



-Here's an example of the list for a Disicple of Magic Philosophy gear.



Your primary objective at level 50 is to acquire these pieces of Darklight gear and then Relic pieces. Some people like spamming Castrum Meridianum as it gives 100 Philosophy Tomestones, but that can drain on your soul very quickly.

Keep on Grindan

At this point you should have a few ilvl55 pieces from Wanderer's Palace and a couple of pieces of darklight. Time to get serious.

-Run Amdapor Keep for gear and Tomestones. This is flagged one of two ways:

-An NPC named Nedrick Ironheart in Vesper bay will give you the quest to run the The Aurum Vale and clearing that dungeon will lead to another quest from the same NPC to unlock Amdapor Keep.



-Grand Company progression. Occasionally, the high commander of your Grand Company will give you special quests. The first of these is to clear Dzemael Darkhold. Clearing this quest and getting promoted a little bit will unlock the quest for Amdapor Keep.

This particular dungeon is the most run in the game right now and for good reason. Not only does it have ilvl 60 pieces of gear and accessories for all classes, it also has a total of 80 Philosophy Tomestones and 40 Mythology Tomestones per full dungeon clear. This is the only dungeon in the game so far to give the later as a reward.

It's important to note that you are hard capped at this moment of a total of 300 Mythology Tomestones per week. Most people will attempt to run this dungeon about 8 times a week to cap it out and then run something else to acquire Philosophy Tomestones. This cap will reset every Monday at 8:00am PDT.

As expected, when you get to this point expect a long queue time in the duty finder unless you are a healer or a tank. Even then, reserving an instance might take 30 minutes or more if you have a full group! If time is limited, you might want to run another dungeon for Philosophy Tomestones or take the time in the finder to level another class.

Getting there!

Now you got a bunch of ilvl 55 pieces, ilvl 60 pieces and maybe 2 to 4 darklight to the point that most of your AF is in storage. The next steps are winning Garuda Hard Mode and beginning your relic weapon quest.

The Garuda weapon drop will hold you until you get your relic weapon done so its a good idea to start the quest line for it.

I found this to be the best guide on the subject. Read it well.

Titan and Beyond

Part of the relic chain is killing hard mode Titan. Make absolutely sure you are on this stage in your relic quest line before attempting him (acquire the hyperfused ore.) This is the largest brick wall in the entire game and your final test to see if you are ready for Binding Coil. There are several guides on this particular fight but it requires a different mind set then trouncing Garuda, so it's worthwhile to discuss here.

Firstly, you should be in mostly ilvl60 and darklight. Your AF should be in storage at this point and you should have your Ifrit weapon.

The fight will require perfection from your group. One slip up and the entire group will wipe. It is for this reason outside of practicing for the fight, that you should not use the duty finder. Get a static group and run it together.

Expect to attempt to get destroyed by Titan. It will probably take 30-50 tries before you probably down him. The good news is that you should only have to down him once to unlock Binding Coil and finish the relic weapon you are working on. There is no need to farm him as the relic weapon is a tiny step away from clearing Titan.

The best advice I can give:

-Get Geared.
-Get a static and practice, practice, practice.

And most importantly:

-Do Not Get Discouraged!

This is a wall you will overcome and you will be a better player for it. Don't be a scrub and buy a win. You won't be doing your FC mates any favors trekking into Coil.

After finishing Titan, acquiring mostly darklight, ilvl 60s, and your relic weapon/Garuda weapon, It's time for your first raid, well, the only raid in the game right now: The Binding Coil of Bahamut. The raid is a 5 part dungeon (each part is known as a turn) and you have a week to clear all 5 as it resets the same time that your Mythology Tombstone limit does. This raid drops the best gear in the game (on par with relic gear) but is the most challenging content in the game. It cannot be undertaken with the duty finder and will require a static group to clear it successfully.

At this point, you can also +1 your relic weapon. Refer to the guide above for details.

You can probably argue particulars of how many pieces of X do you need before trying the next run up, but this should give a great idea of where a player should be looking to go.

You Aren't Terrible. You Just Need to Gear More.

The one thing for us core players that understand gear progression in an MMO is to help other people understand where they should be in their post 50 progression, and doing that without being condescending. Trust me, its hard sometimes seeing that one fully AFed person in Garuda HM and wanting to rage at him after a 60 minute queue, we've been there. That's not going to make him a better player however. Try to take this person under your wing, or at least give him some insight on where to go or what to farm first. It will get better when the ilvl restrictions come into play, but until then, be understanding. Be radical to each other.

Unless this person is a derping rage spewing moron. Then feel free to blist him, but I'm sure this is a minority of people.

For the undergeared, try not to take the advice negatively. If the person is genuinely nice, he just wants to see you get better and that isn't going to happen while you're wiping for the 30th time on Hard Mode Garuda.

Back to Final Queue 14: The Re-queing.

If I'm off base with any of this, let me know. Discuss it. Let's try to make the end game community a little bit better.

I'm off to re-queue for HM Gardua for the millionth time.