Dawntrail Diary - Early Access And Launch

I decided for Dawntrail to try writing about my game experiences once a week. Since early access for the expansion began on a Friday, the end of the week is when I'll make my posts. The only spoilers going forward might be zone names, but for this post I'll refrain from naming zones. I don't want to spoil the story for anyone and at this point, heavy self-censorship is justified.

I won't run through a day-by-day breakdown of my experience. Instead I'll just put down my feelings on certain subjects.

Login and stability issues - FFXIV's Producer and Director Naoki Yoshida took what happened during the launch of Endwalker badly and as a personal failure. The steps he took over the last two years, and especially for the launch of Dawntrail, showed how important a repetition of Endwalker did not happen again.

I'm happy to report on a personal level I had a much better experience. The biggest login queue I faced was on the first day of early access at a little over 2600 and I got into the game within 15 minutes. I may have experienced a 750 player queue on the second day, but I forgot to record the length. For the rest of the week, including the official launch day, I never experienced a queue of over 80 and was into the game within 5 minutes.

I don't want to claim no issues occurred on launch. especially players on XBox. But I think Yoshi-P needing to hand out 2 days of gametime to affected players is a vast difference from Endwalker, where he handed out 3 weeks of gametime and stopped sales of the expansion.

Two channel dye system - Let's face it, an adventurer needs to look their best for all the cutscenes a FFXIV expansion offers. I wound up picking out a simple outfit and both the tunic and boots had two dye slots. I fumbled around a bit but the system is pretty simple. Most importantly, I was able to take a grey and black piece of equipment and give it the white mage colors of white and red.

Right before accepting the first quest

I actually wound up using ruby red dye and the texture of the cloak turned the color into what I wanted. And for those who have not entered the capital city of Tuliyollal, bright colors fit right in.

The graphics upgrade - Creative Studio III took full advantage of the capabilities of their new graphics engine. I finally bought a new computer after 6 years or so because of the promised graphics upgrade and the increase in system requirements for FFXIV, along with the increasing requirements in EVE Online. While my rig doesn't meet the recommended system requirements for Star Citizen, what I have is far from a toaster. And what I have to say is, "Oh my!"

The devs decided to show off the new engine on the ocean voyage from Old Sharlayan to Tuliyollal. I have never seen a video game look so gorgeous. Admittedly I don't don't play a lot of video game, but this was special.

The lighting in a cutscene

What really impressed me is the increase in the distance objects are drawn at in the game. The below shot is from a ocean voyage cut scene, but the same occurs during normal gameplay.

I was so excited when I spotted my character

Perhaps most important, I am not running any type of graphics enhancement programs. Perhaps on older systems something like ReShade is still needed, but I'm not finding the need.

The MSQ without spoilers - I am not a player who demands lots of combat, but I found the start of Endwalker very slow. So slow that I decided to time how long it took to receive a quest involving killing anything in Dawntrail. The answer was 5 hours and 10 minutes, and that was taking out all time not spent running the MSQ.

The MSQ itself, as is the norm since Shadowbringers, split into two optional branches in order to manage server load before reuniting into a main branch. I have finished up the content of one zone and am into the second zone. As a judge of levelling speed, I am at level 93 on my white mage job.

Just as a personal opinion, I was not a fan of the female Hrothgar seen in the Dawntrail trailer, Wuk Lamat at the end of Endwalker. The story, as I should expect by this point from the FFXIV writing team, isn't as simple as Wuk Lamat was made out at in our brief introduction to her. At one point in the story, I even shouted out "I knew it!" in real life.

Role quests and the Wachumeqimeqi Deliveries - Without giving out spoilers, I want to say I like the timing on when the devs introduced both role quests and the Wachumeqimeqi group of quest giving NPCs. Basically, the Wachumeqimeqi Deliveries are the crafting and gathering equivalent of role quests. For hard core levelling and grinding a level quest giver is located between the inn on the docks and the Wachumeqimeqi district of Tuliyollal. Thanks to the natural break in the story, I chose to start both the healer role quest and the first two deliveries for each of the five quest givers in Wachumeqimeqi.

The inn - Oh my, the inn located at the docks in Tuliyollal. A five-star establishment! And the worst thing is I can't find all the screenshots I took. The inn is two rooms with a wonderful balcony views. I might write a stand alone post just about the inn room in Dawntrail.

Alpacas are not just for Johnny Depp - Up until now the most I'd heard about alpacas was in connection to the Johnny Depp/Amber Heard trial. But without spoiling the story, I can report that alpacas make an appearance. Remember in A Realm Reborn when chocobos were used for transportation? Alpacas are the same in Dawnwalker. 

Alpacas are a common site in one of the starting areas

A lot more happened, of course. But for brevity reasons I'll end here. Oh, and next week I'll definitely post pictures of the inn room. I kind of want to redo my cottage in the Lavender Beds in Tuliyollal style now.