Goals for Endwalker

With my WoW sub cancelled for the time being, FFXIV is now the de facto MMO taking my game time, and with the lull we have leading into Endwalker (just a smidge over 3 months now!), there’s a lot of time to accomplish some preparatory goals and get powered up and ready for the expansion.

Given that I sort of stopped playing for a bit around the time I started pushing keys in WoW more seriously, there’s still a good amount of stuff on my list to do, and so, for day 2 of Blaugust 2021, let’s break it down!

Gearing: All Jobs to 510 Item Level

This one is sort of easy/conservative to hit, but a goal all the same, and given that balance in FFXIV tends towards keeping item levels on a relatively flat curve as you level between expansions, being near the upper bounds of the current gear should be a good goal to aim for. 510 average isn’t particularly a challenge – in fact, I already am there on my healer jobs – but doing this for all jobs will be a big help, given that I’ll need to level each of them to 90. The gear squish may impact this slightly, but if done correctly by the dev team, this should still represent enough power to roll in and take on the expansion all the way until the later levels of story content at launch. Also: when I say all jobs here, I mean all jobs. I don’t maintain unique sets per job, instead opting for a role set (given I’m not a savage raider, it doesn’t really matter that much), but I stress that because I also mean crafter and gatherer sets up to 510 average (I may need to relent slightly for Fisher, since the weird scaling of the spear slot means it’s often behind). Because this is my first expansion launch in FFXIV where I’ll have every job at level cap going in, I’m excited to be able to min-max right away!

Also Gearing: Maiming and Healing Level 70 Sets

I plan on leveling both Sage and Reaper close to launch, if not even right away (I’m debating going Reaper main, but also maybe staying healing and going Sage), and while normally, you get a pretty decent set of level-appropriate job gear when you finish the quest to unlock the job, I want to do a little extra prep to keep my power high. I’m already most of the way to a full Scaevan maiming set, so just a few pieces of that left and then I can turn my attention to the healing set!

Crafting and Gathering: Finish Unlocking Shadowbringers Recipes/Regional Folklore

This is the very first expansion where I’ve had any level of crafting or gathering in the game open and available, so I have some catching up to do. In the patch 5.2 lull, I did a lot of recipe unlocking and started working on Regional Folklore for Norvrandt, but I did not complete all of it, and while I spent a chunk of 5.3 going hard on gathering especially to get the Gil for my house (which worked, hooray!), I sort of gave up on it immediately thereafter. If I finish Shadowbringers recipes prior to the launch (which is very possible with Scrip return rates), I’ll turn my attention to past expansions’ recipes and Folklore.

Market Board Dreams: Stash 5 Million Gil

Right now, after buying up tons of Exarchic crafted gear for my various jobs, I’m only at 500,000 Gil. I’m still setup very well from the house pursuit, in that I have a ton of Dark Matter for repairs, can meld my own Materia, and still have Aetheryte tickets in small supply, so my Gil expenditures are quite slim, but I would like to get a stockpile going prior to launch for a few reasons. Firstly, I suspect between restocking some of these items and managing a full stable of jobs, I’ll be spending a fair amount to get where I want to be. Secondly, I want to be on the cutting edge of the market board in the expansion, including leveling a crafting job to 90 quickly at launch in order to start working on crafted gear, consumables, and the like. Thirdly, if the housing lottery opens a chance for me to get a Medium plot in the Firmament, or anywhere else as people move around, I’d like to up-size my personal house if I can pull it off. 5 million won’t be enough for that, but given that housing-related stuff opens later anyways, it’s a good nest-egg I can spend judiciously from to invest in making more Gil and eventually getting that 16-20 million for a medium plot. Lastly, I expect to run out of Aetheryte tickets very soon and at 999g a teleport, 500k won’t cut it for serious play.

Retainer Goals – Stockpile To Venture Cap, Gear Retainers to At Least 485 Item Level

I’ve been slacking on Retainers and Ventures since getting my house, including not having stockpiled any Ventures since then, so once I spent my last few, I’ve just been using my Retainers as banks. That’s fine enough because…well, that’s their main purpose, but Ventures were a good way to stockpile extra crafting materials and to make some spare Gil, and I’d like that avenue open during the launch window explicitly because I’ll have a strong need to get my hands on as many raw materials as possible to get my market aspirations up to snuff. I have a mix of combat job retainers and gatherers, so I’ll be waiting to level a fair few of them for a minute as I bring my jobs up at launch, but they should be able to at least run the base Endwalker level 80 Ventures for new materials as I work towards getting them leveled up.

Bozja – Finish A Resistance Weapon, Any One

Bozja pushed me out of wanting to play FFXIV, coupled with the Shadowlands launch over on the WoW side of the fence. So in a way, this goal is tempting fate, but I think if instead of trying to fan out and get every possible weapon upgraded, getting a Resistance Weapon finished would be a good goal. In all likelihood, it’ll be the White Mage one, since that is the one I have made the most progress on as-is. I’ve never done a Relic quest to completion, so I’d like to finish Bozja while it is current and see the large-scale raid fights that are sprinkled throughout.

Level Blue Mage to 70

I haven’t touched BLU since the job capped at 60, and I had a lot of fun with it. I won’t set a goal to finish the spellbook or be a regular completer of the BLU log, but just getting to 70 and throwing some Scaevan casting gear on would be fun, I think!

Contemplate Finding A Savage Raid Team

This one is something I had strongly considered doing in Shadowbringers, but I got cold feet and gave up on it. It would be the most me thing ever to take a struggle I have been decidedly not enjoying in WoW post-gquit and to then replicate it in FFXIV, but well, I kind of want to see Savage content first-hand and current. My Free Company does already have a Savage team, but it’s constantly full and my attempt to join at the start of Shadowbringers was ignored as a result. Savage progression is a different beast compared to what I’m used to in WoW, and I expect it won’t feel as fulfilling, but I think it would be a fun way to add in some of what I prefer in WoW to my FFXIV experience!

Miscellany

Most of these are stretch goals, as I would look at them – nice-to-haves that I’m not pushing hard for. I’d like to finish the Heavensward birds from EX trials, and the doggos from Stormblood. Maybe even do the EX trials from Shadowbringers and get the mecha-dragon? I’d like to fill in most of my fishing log, and do Ocean Fishing at least a few times to see if I can get the flying shark mount. I’ve thought about going back through old expansion content and doing all the side quests – I believe I’m pretty much done with them in Shadowbringers, and with all jobs at 80, there’s no need to hold them for alternate job leveling. I’d like to finish capping out the Shadowbringers beast tribe quests – I have the Qitari and a smidge of Dwarf left, and then I’d probably work backwards to Stormblood and before to cap out the ones I have less progress with. Aside from all of that, I dunno, maybe the Sightseeing log?

Shadowbringers brought so much interest to FFXIV, both in general (as we’ve seen lately) but for me from day 1 (or since early access, I guess day -3?), and I am so glad I invested in this game, as it scratches a different itch for me in a very satisfying way. I’m excited for Endwalker in a way I wasn’t for Shadowbringers, mainly because now that I am fully integrated into FFXIV, there’s little left undone at a basic level and so I can really throw myself into the game when Endwalker launches!

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