Wisdom of Nym: What to do in Final Fantasy XIV during the 5.3 patch delay

Here we are in July, and we’re not going to get our next patch for about a month. Normally, this isn’t such a big deal, but this is an unusually long content gap for the game and we don’t even have a new expansion on the horizon to look for. (All right, yes, Yoshida confirmed there is a new one coming, but that’s not for another year and we know that.) So everyone finds themselves in a place right now wherein there’s a long gap of stuff to do… and not a whole lot of clear guidance about what anyone should do.

Obviously, I’m a fan of Final Fantasy XIV and have been for a very long time. I have played enough FFXIV that “go try some content you’ve never tried before” is basically not helpful advice for me. But there is some content you can take on now, projects I think a lot of people haven’t embarked upon or still might be well-served during this longer-than-expected delay. So let’s get to it.

Farm those Moogle tomestones

Normally, the Moogle tomestone events are… well, not boring or anything, but since they feature purely old content and aren’t terribly developed there’s not too much reason to care. If you really want these mounts, there are easier ways to get them. Why stress about it? Even the couple of unique rewards are fairly trivial.

Now, though? You’ve got a month to do this, people are going to be seeking out this content anyhow, and there’s actually tangible reason to take these things on. If you’ve never done the Ivalice series before, for example, now is the perfect time to do so… and if (like me) you’ve done it so many times you could probably clear most of the mechanics half-asleep you still have a reason to go back and queue specifically.

Some of this might even overlap; I’m willing to bet that most of the people reading this haven’t tried Hidden Gorge, for example. And there’s actually a couple tricks you can use to have a synced party that still farms some of these dungeons at breakneck speeds. But the point remains the same. If you’ve long thought that you kind of want some of these mounts or just like how easy it is to pick stuff up during the event? Go farm some irregular tomestones. You have a month.

Master Blue Magic and round out your Relics

Remember how I mentioned speed-running the specific dungeons? This is made a lot easier with Blue Mage. And you can do a lot with Blue Mage.

One of the big differences between Blue Mage and every other job in the game is that being synced down doesn’t change your abilities at all. Yes, your stats are lower while you’re in Aurum Vale compared to just walking around at level 60, but you still have a full suite of your abilities, many of which can often interact with one another in interesting ways. I’ve managed to successfully farm bosses for their abilities in level 60 dungeons because Aqua Breath and Northerlies combine to make most trash just not move. There’s a lot of stuff there to do.

But this ties into something else you can do during this downtime, and that’s finishing up your overall spread of Resistance weapons.

Poetics don’t have a hard limit daily or weekly, of course, but I don’t think most people have really bothered to farm up the Poetics necessary to have a full set. Blue Mage, though… your weekly targets for the Masked Carnivale give you a chunk of poetics (and money, to boot). You can also use it to run some other poetics dungeons at breakneck speeds. There’s a good reason to combine the two, especially if you can get a farm party going.

Hey, at this point, what’s keeping you? You might find Blue Mage a lot more fun than you remember it – and as someone who really liked it from 1-50, I think the 50-60 ride is more fun and gives better options.

Learn to play the markets

All right, so none of the above is really stuff you need or want. You know what you probably could use? Gil. Sure, you won’t be buying your endgame gear with gil (unless you’re getting a new crafted set) but you can still use an awful lot of it… and unless you already know full well how to make gil in large amounts, now is probably a fine time to learn how to play the markets in the longer term.

Playing the markets, of course, is complex. It takes time (which you have) and dedication (which you might). You need to be willing to hold on to some things for a while waiting for the chance to sell them. But you don’t need to craft in order to play the market by any means. Trust me, as someone who is a confirmed gillionaire many times over, understanding the markets and how to do this is a good idea.

Of course, every server is a bit different, even with cross-server visiting. But a good rule of thumb to keep in mind is that you are always aiming for a consistent income rather than a spike. Making 200,000 gil a day is better than making 1,000,000 one day and then nothing else for the rest of the week.

Level your trusts

Here’s the honest truth: I sincerely doubt that leveling your trusts to max level now will result in some major reward for the next expansion. So why do it? Well… for one thing, there’s the simple fact that you can do your Expert-level dungeons with Trusts as a result if you don’t want to deal with other people. That’s always nice.

But what if you don’t care about that in the first place? Well, there’s still a reason to do it, and that’s twofold.

First of all, it’s a great chance to get items you might want from the dungeons but don’t already have. While only some of the dungeons have unique outfits (specifically, Dohn Mheg and Qitana Ravel), some of them do feature gear that’s otherwise unavailable for specific jobs or specs. And running with Trusts also gives you a unique opportunity to practice with your job and get a better sense of how to optimize what you’re doing.

See, Trusts themselves are functional but not ideal. They don’t tend to be good with AoE or speed of pulls. They make runs a bit slower. But that actually gives you a great opportunity to help ensure that runs go faster because left to their own devices, the Trusts will clear the dungeon in a simple and workmanlike fashion.

You, on the other hand, can speed things up by knowing how to AoE properly, knowing how to use your DPS tools as a healer, how to tank and maximize output as a tank, and so forth. And it’s a slow enough process that it’ll take a while, but it’ll give you a good sense of these dungeons over time.

Feedback, as always, is welcome in the comments down below or via mail to eliot@massivelyop.com. Next week, I want to talk about something that I do see as an increasing struggle for the developers that’s definitely an issue with 5.3: optional content.