Draiko's journey from Gridania to Ul'dah (Part 2)

So! continuing from where we last left off. I had just made it into Mor Dhona. The map was the first thing I just had to check right now.












My best bet was to make my way west to Camp Revenant's Toll and work my way down from there.

As I started to step out into the unknown my map was picking up a mob, I thought "Oh great, it's going to be some huge beast blocking my path". I turned the corner and low and behold!












A Toadstool, yep that's right! Well atleast it put me at ease, and I simply snuck passed it in peace.

The deeper I stepped into this land the more beautiful it became. I came across this very mysterious tower and wondered what could be inside it!












My first encounter with an Headrip Ogre, just taken one look at this guy I knew I had to stay well clear. But temptation got the best of me and I had to get a closer look of one.












Ok, so I think we all knew this guy was going to hit hard right? but maybe I took it a little too far when I drew my sword on him!












One word, ouch!. Well I'm not afraid to say I did not regret this action. I got what I wanted, A better look at this cool guy, and an ass whooping!













He claims he's kill, and oh look! he had back up encase he could'nt take me on! ha!

Moving on swiftly, I had finally made it down to the bottom. I had now reached the south part of the lake. I was even closer to this mysterious tower. One day, I will find a way into that place, oh yes!












Another check on my map was needed, I could see the exit to Thanalan. But I needed to save my progress at another checkpoint. Who knew how far the next one would be in Thanalan!? So I took a lot of risk and decided to take a detour.












With a lot of dipping, ducking and diving I made it to Camp Brittlebark. Now I just had to work my way back. I drew up another route and decided it looked promising.












No encounters with mobs down the norrow route and I was almost home free!

North Thanalan, This was the hardest part to get passed. I had already died 4 times trying to creep through. In the end I called for back up. Luckly a friend from the LS had already been here. He was able to teleport me to a camp nearest to the City of Ul'dah.












In the end, I was told that there was another route I could of taken....., I will spare myself the epic embarrassment and just say that I enjoyed the journey I had. I saw some really nice scenary and mobs.

I will now leave you with the rest of my pictures of the amazing lands of Thanalan. Enjoy!
















































In the end, I finally got to Ul'dah and I took in the great site of the city.
This calls for a rest underneath the stars with my fellow Twelves!

Open Beta set to end on September 19th

Open beta has been announced to close September the 19th at 5pm PDT. Servers set to close down at 1am on the 20th GMT. Remember you will have your name reserved on the server you create your character on. This is three days before the collectors edition of the game.

So with just over a week left of open beta for those of you playing in beta enjoy yourself and look forward to the real thing in little over a weeks time.

We will organize the setup of the linkshell nearer to the launch day to make sure we are all in the shell from as early as possible.

Here are a few screen shots from my brief open beta sessions.

Draiko's journey from Gridania to Ul'dah

First off! I would like to introduce myself, My name is Draiko Arkadies. I'm a new blogger and I will be sharing my experience with you guys!

Last night I decided to travel from Gridania to Ul'dah. I had heard you could buy a new shield there and an opportunity to take on some extra leves! But never did I know the journey was going to be a long and hard one!

My first steps were into the region of Corethas, I was taken back by the scene.












One of my first encounters was with a Maned Wyrmhound, kind of like a dragon/lizard type mob! As I ventured further in land I noticed a lot more! soon it just turned into a dragon fest!












I had finally made it to one of the first checkpoints, seeing these were like a God send!












After this I had ran into a lot of trouble, many mobs were blocking routes I needed to pass! and they were really everywhere you looked!

I was stupid enough to approach these Antelope Stags, I mean.....they looked friendly enough right? But anyway! it was a one hit kill and I ended back at the last checkpoint. We all learn our lesson!












As I moved on I came across a very funny site, Toad in Hole! These guys looked like they were having the time of their lives! But I just had to take a screenshot of this.












With much running and many deaths, I had finally made it through!.....If only I knew what waited for me on the other side of those rocks......












My first impressions of Mor Dhona, this place did not look friendly! The music kind of adding that effect. One of the first things I did was take a look at my map. It looked simple enough, two ways around and the exit to Thanalan was just down the bottom.












To be continued!..............

Most epic name so far.

That's one epic name.  But I think it's an epic fail because sending that guy a /tell is going to be a nightmare if you want to be quick.  It's like those people that have those obscure Japanese names because they think they look cool but you keep having to look how it is spelt.  I'm waiting to run into John Smith, I'll give anyone called John Smith a Linkshell invite!

Doing a Local Leve

Today I decided to take on a Local Leve quest that involved creating a new knife for a chief in the town.  If you have not tried the Local Leves yet, then this post should act as a guide on how they are done.

 So I went and found the person that was going to supply me with the materials I needed to create this knife.  I found the NPC at Camp Bentbranch just like it said in the Leve description.

As with all these things I selected the NPC and selected the chat option for the Local Leve quest.

The the NPC starts to jabber on about some crap before handing over the items I'll need to make the knife.

Finally after giving me the stuff I need I can actually get to work on getting the job done.  I bring up the crafting menu and select the 'Requested Items' option.  I missed this the first time I tried to do a Local Leve and was puzzled why the NPC wouldn't take the items I had made.

Anyway next I get asked which Leve I am creating the items for, so I select the knife one.

After selecting 'OK' in a few more windows I selected the item I am making and get to work.

I made the knife on my third attempt and then the game decided to tell me that actually I had to make more than one knife, i had to make two to pass the Leve.  So I failed, but I did mange to get to rank 2 on Blacksmith so it's not all bad.

Guild Leve cool downs changed?

As anyone noticed that they are able to take on more Guild Leves since the last patch?  I'm going to have a good go tonight when I get back from work and then post my findings on it.

These nice people have actually made a nice site.

I got an email from the guy that is running a FFXIV database website asking for a little bit of promotion for their cause.  Normally I would delete such emails but I checked their site out and its actually rather nice.  No adverts, clean style, good content and actually a site I'll probably use when playing FFXIV.  They are small and just starting out but I like what they are doing so I told them I'll give them a shout on here and help them out, so here we go.

http://ffxiv.yg.com/ - Go there for all the information you need for FFXIV like recipes, items, maps, etc.  I'm gonna stick a link on the side so yuo can always find it should you not bookmark it for some reason.

Azarus Nova's Trip

 Azarus Nova (aka anubismedia from the forum) sent me some pictures and a story of his epic trip. Here is his story in his own words.

So yesterday I teamed up with this random guy and we couldn't find any mobs so we decided to try a zone we saw. This zone led us to another and to another and 3 hours later we where in "Ul'Dah" lol now this was no easy trek and I died so so so many times lol, but it is possible. 

The things I saw was amazing and the graphics really are amazing. I can tell you that all mobs are WAY high they all hit for about 5K so cant fight anything and lots argo. 

The most interesting thing I found was that in the town of Ul'Dah the economy is another world! Lighting shards there are 20gil - 100gil and wind goes from 600 - 1000 gil. 

Also the weavers guild is there so most everyone has leveled cloth craft and sells armor way cheep. You can also to leves there that have nothing to do with the ones in Gridania.

So you can do 4 leves there then warp to Ul'Dah and do 4 more. Im not sure if they will fix this in the final release. For the time being I would keep this under wraps with only trusted members because it is a real good way to make money. Buy lighting low in UlDah and sale high in Gridania vis versa with wind and earth.

I plan to make the trek to both towns first thing when the final release comes out and just do this; Can also buy armor and resale. Oh and your retainer can be called there as well. ^^ again not sure if they will fix this later

EDIT - anubismedia sent me a follow up email.

Either they changed this or I was just wrong about the leves. I did 3 leves in one town then traveled to another and did 3 there. I then took a ferry across to the 3rd town and tried to do those. They popped up but when i tried to except it said i had none to exchange. I went back to the 1st city the next day and tried and the same thing happened. They pop up but I can't except. So my guess is the last ones I did in the 2nd city have to reset. This still works out good though because you can pick out the 1 good one with armor and gill from each city as long as they do not exceed 4 in 48 hours I guess. Anyways just thought id tell you before I get a bad rep as a liar lol. It did let me do 6 in a row though. But it could be a glitch like the NPC saying in all three cities 'here is a hundred gill' like in closed beta but they really give you a thousand. Or when you Finnish the main quest and it says you get 10k only to find you have 20k but eh i need to go back to work. Lol

 

Here come the mainstream, GET READY!

As you may remember I posted that I was writing a FFXIV article for CVG who are the biggest British video games website.  Well I sent my finished document over to their editor on Monday night and today I received this:

"Hey Simon,

Thanks so much for the piece – it’s great. I’m going to stick it up when our Forums have returned (!) so we can kick off a bit of conversation.
Some great insight in here – really appreciate it.
As promised, we’ll prominently link over to your site.
Cheers,
Tim"

I'll link to the article once they publish it which I think maybe be around Thursday/Friday.

Windhurst all over again.

I havent updated in a few days so I thought I'd put something up today.  First of all a screenshot from the new menu in the open beta showing the friends list and helpdesk options.














I done a few Guild Leves today to start leveling Jeffery.  The early ones seem to focus around killing fungus monsters for different reasons.  The forest music started to sound kind of freaky after a while so I headed back into Gridania.  While I was there I couldn't shake the feeling that this was Windhurst all over again, not a bad thing I suppose though, but the lack of a blacksmith guild is frustrating.

I saw Ark while in the town and I asked is he had seen Kylep online at all,or I had just missed him when I have been on.  Maybe because of the time difference, but either way I created a Twelve LS myself becuase it seems that no one but kyle could invite people which is not much use when he is not around!

I'm back baby!

That's right!  Jeffery McWild is back in FFXIV, and here is how I started.

I start at the character selection screen.  It appears that now different races and clans have different stats right off the bat.

You can see the different clan stats just by looking at this and the last screen shot.  Same race, different clan, different stats.

Now we can start in any of the three main cites,  I choose Gridania on Besaid server.

Jeffery McWild is born!  The opening cut scene is pretty cool, so lets see it.

Looks like some flying ship is in trouble, I had better go and check that out.

I find two NPC's on the floor, they seem to be hurt.  I speak to the Lalafella twice and the game keeps rolling.

The Lalafella has a really strange voice for such a tiny guy.

Oh crap!  A crazy tree monster is pissed off with me, run Jeffery, RUN!

The crazy tree monster knocks everyone up into the air, this looks bad for everyone involved.

Suddenly Moogles everywhere!  It looks like we could be okay after all.

Turns out the Moogles are working with these guys.  They are some sot of forest protection gang, looks like I lucked out.  These guys say they are going to take me to Gridania, which is nice.

Looks like the people in Gridania can't spell.  Thats not how you spell "Should".

Anyway, I turn up at the adventures guild and it looks rather nice here.  Although one look at the map and I think I'd rather be back in Limsa.

Well it does look a lot nicer than Limsa, but I don't have any more time to play really.  It's Saturday, I'm going out the drink bye bye!

Linkshell created!

If you have created you character on the Besaid server along with the rest of us, feel free to /tell me (Kitty Cat) to get a linkpearl for "Twelve". And be sure to wish Only777 a happy birthday! Happy Birthday, yay!

Open Beta and busy weekend.

I've had real troubles getting an open account (the server keeps crashing, see the picture below), so everyone follow Kylep to the Besaid server and the forum poll pointed that most people would liek to start next in Gridania, so I'll see you there!


The next thing is I might not be online at all this weekend (I will try!), but that's because it's my 30th Birthday on Friday and I probably won't even be able to see for a few days!


Also the last thing is that the editor of CVG has asked me to write a 500 word article about FFXIV!  if they publish it I'll put a link here so you all can go and see it.  I have not wrote it yet, I'll do some tonight and the rest Sunday when I am not as drunk from my birthday!

:3

By the way, Garland wasn't on the server list. So I'm on Besaid with a character in each of the 3 cities.

Open Beta is On Again!

[Edit: I'm in, on Besaid server.]

"Along with the completion on investigation and correction of the critical issue, we have decided to begin FINAL FANTASY XIV Open Beta Test on Sep. 1, 2010 at 19:00 (PDT).

Starting on Sep. 1, 2010 at 19:00 (PDT), acquisition of registration code required for FINAL FANTASY XIV Open Beta Test will be available.

We are looking forward to your participation in FINAL FANTASY XIV Open Beta Test!"

Taken from http://entry.ffxiv.com/na/index.html - go to http://entry.ffxiv.com/ and select your region for relevant information.