Gearing Up The Rest Of Patch 6.3

I'm still living in a hotel, but due to a sale at Best Buy I now have a computer that is less than five years old. With equipment that reliably connects to the WiFi network, I started working on gearing up my character in Final Fantasy XIV.

The big angst amongst the community, or at least content creators, is the ease of completing the second phase of the Manderville relic weapon. After years of reading and listening to complaints of how grinding getting relic weapons are, people are complaining about the ease of acquiring the Endwalker relic weapon. The second phase, like the first, consists of two steps. First, complete the Manderville quest line up to the current time. Next, acquire three McGuffins at a total cost of 1500 Allagan Tomestones of Astronomy. Finally, turn in the McGuffins and receive prize. Easy peasy.

I'm not going to say the process doesn't involve a grind. All one has to do is run Lapis Manalis about 15 times using the Trust/Duty support systems and do a few treasure maps and a player can get the weapon playing solo. I'd estimate the total time at around 10 hours, although people who don't mind playing with others can obtain the tomestones much faster. I already had over 1000 tomestones, so I was able to complete the latest stage in less than a week.

I have the weapon, rated iLevel 630, but what about the rest of my gear? I'm still using the iLevel 610 gear I crafted for myself. I guess I could keep running the dungeon over and over since I need to turn in the drops for ventures to keep my army of retainers active. I have enough Allagan Tomestone of Causality to get the chestpiece, but that's about it. Or I can concentrate on gearing up my crafters and gatherers for the patch 6.4 meta.

I don't need the Indagator crafting set (iLevel 620) right now. I pentamelded the Pactmaker's set (iLevel 590) and that will see me through until patch 6.4 drops sometime in May. But if I want to be ready for May, I need to start making the crafting set now. No more spending time decorating my cottage for the foreseeable future.

I do need to upgrade to the Indagator gathering set now, though. I will need to start preparing to gather the next tier of materials for the next tier of craftable combat gear. I also need to pentameld my gear in order to have the stats to gather the items. Pentamelding is expensive in time and/or gil. I have enough gil to buy enough materia to complete the process, but I perfer to grind away doing things instead.

So my plan is simple. First, craft the Indagator gathering gear and pentameld the gear to achieve the stats for patch 6.4. Next, craft the Indagator crafting gear, but don't pentameld the gear until patch 6.4 drops and I know what stats are required to craft the next tier of gear. And while I do all of that, continue running dungeons to get the drops required to keep my retainers active and supplying me with gil and raw materials.

Oh yeah. And while doing all of this, I still need to find time to do things like work on the Loporrits' tribal quests, finish decorating my cottage, and finish the patch 6.3 MSQ (I'm almost done, honest!). Maybe some players are out of things to do. But this casual FFXIV player still doesn't have enough time to do everything I want to do in the game.