The best starting area of FFXIV

Okay, so I got some questions about what the best starting area is, so let's discuss that!

As for me, I started in Gridania. I had no idea about the options, so I just thought "fuck it" and picked one. I ended up in the woods.

By now, I have visited all three cities. They differ in some significant ways, primarily in that each city houses different guilds and merchants. For instance, Gridania seems to lack a weapons merchant, meaning that if you start there, you'll have a really hard time changing your class.

I don't really know why that is. I mean, one would think that all types of shops would develope in each city in a marketable location. Like, hello? Stupid. Of course Gridanians want to buy weapons too!

For this reason, above all else, I would recommend Limsa Lominsa as the starting city. It has a weapon shop that's easy to find. Yeah, that's right. Cool. If you start the game as a fisherman and figure out just how gay this is, and that you actually want a weapon, this is by far most accesible in Limsa.

Aside from that, my personal favorite is actually Ul'dah. I think that Ul'dah has the nicest and most logical layout and it seems to have developed a natural player-based marketplace near the front gate, which is pretty nice. It just has these open areas and feels more like a city and less like a labyrinth (like Gridania and Limsa does - parts of these cities are just labyrinths of paths!). Ul'dah has this "wheel" feeling on the layout reminiscent of the World of Warcraft alliance cities like Ironforge, which is very nice and accesible.

So, I would advice you to pick Limsa Lominsa in first hand (for the accesible and easy to find weapon shop) or, in second hand, Ul'dah for a better and more logical layout of the city, which will make it easier to find the things that are there. Also, another thing that speaks for Limsa is that the mobs in the starting area seems to drop somewhat more useful items for low-level crafting, like rat pelts that are used in making animal glue (essential!).

As the picture of the day, enjoy this screenshot of me (Vivacia Yuuki) with my real-life fiancée, Hikkhammer Yuuki. If you see me in the game, he will often be around to... err... heal me when I run head-first into huge mobs and get us both killed.


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Travel in Final Fantasy XIV

Now for a note on travel.

I started out in Gridania and ran all the way to Ul'dah. That was a seriously long run, but not so bad. I mean, the trip between Ironforge and Darnassus was way worse before they added the Wetlands - Aubergine ship route, so you had to run across the entire continent...

At least in FFXIV, you can just teleport if you have enough anima, as long as you have been somewhere before. But anima is limited and it regenerated slowly, so it encourages you to plan your game sessions and your travels. I think I like this aspect. If you dart around on the teleport you'll soon run out of anime so that you have to run... but if you plan your travels and use the teleport only once in a while, you'll have anima left for when you want it.


From Ul'dah it was a fairly short run to the Limsa Lominsa ferry. A few notes on this:

When you board the ferry, you will be placed on board a ship for about 10 minutes. There is nothing to do on this ship, except fishing, trading with your fellow travellers, and possibly crafting. But beware! If the ship docks while you're crafting, you'll automatically botch the synthesis! I would recommend that you stick to fishing or go get a cup of whatever real life brew you're into. In my case, coffe.

For travelling in the wilds, you can either run or teleport between the crystal gates without using up anima. That's pretty neat - especially since the teleport gates are not right at the camp, so you still have to travel a little bit. Again, you need to plan your travels to make them efficent. I like the realism of that.

Finally, there is the classic "death teleport". I used this a lot when I played Anarchy Online. There, you "saved" your character in a computer bank in one of the cities and went off to the Temple of the Three Winds to grind bosses for wierd scifi tech components, and when you were done you got yourself killed and reloaded at the city. This was convenient since the Temple was in the middle of fricking nowhere, about 30 minutes run from anything else, and had no save point of its own.

Final Fantasy has the same possibility, unlike World of Warcraft where you had to run back to your corpse. In FFXIV, you are "saved" at the latest crystal that you touch and if you die, you respawn at the crystal. This is useful if you want to go out farming metals or plants and want a quick teleport back to town: simply touch the crystal in the city, teleport out to the farming area and when you are done, strip naked and aggro the biggest monster you see. You'll respawn in the city!

All in all, I'm fairly happy with the systems for travel. I especially like that the map is semi-transparent, so that you can look at the map while keeping an eye on your character.

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The scenery of FFXIV

One thing that's really cool about this game is that a lot of effort has been given to the scenery. There are some drab areas, yes, but there are also a lot of places that just seem to be made for you to stand and gaze out into the distance. And I've only seen the beginner areas so far! I appreciate that kind of attention to detail. Once the creators figure out the user interface and gameplay problems, I think that it is moments such as this that will really make the game worth playing and will eventually make it feel like a real and inhabitable world.


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Desert adventure

Today I was hanging out in the woods around Gridania, just crafting the usual stuff, when I met a nice fellow who helped me rid the forest of some more evil mushrooms and then showed me to a repair vendor in the city of Ul'dah!

Ya-tta! The vendor gladly repaired my underwear for a few handfuls of gil (well worth it!). He also offered to repair my harness for about 10 000 gil, but I was like... dude... I can get a new one for less than that! Or a better one...

So, with everything repaired except my wierdly pricy harness, I am my new friend Silvari headed out into the wilderness around Ul'dah. This was quite a difference from Gridania! The Black Shroud is basically a forest layrinth with very few vistas... it's green tunnels with some mushrooms and squirrels and lots and lots of rain. However, the area around Ul'dah was quite amazing. It has fantastic views over this desert-like plateus and steppe-inspired vegetation with awesome mountain silhouettes in the distance. When the sandstorm faded it revealed spectacular colors, especially at sunset.

At Camp Horizon, Silvari introduced me to his friend Noelle and we decided to celebrate our meeting by assassinating some dodos. Dodos are bloated huge hen-like pinatas that (for some reason) transform into imps when you smash them. Ugh. Okay. Apparently imps are intestinal parasites in Eorsea. I must remember not to eat imp eggs! Or wait, arn't they mammals?



Anyhow, after finishing with the dodos we attempted some cactoid... and man, was that a bad idea! They have this special attack called "1000 needles" that shredded us to pieces in a single outburst. But were we discouraged? No! We tried again. And again. And again. And again. And then we gave up.

Curse you, wierd cactoid invasion!

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