Character

I'm writing this blog entry in bed at night around 9:30pm Eastern time. I've spent the day playing the game and like most days I've had a good experience. The difference tonight is that because of my depression and mental health problems I've recently had to quit my job. I'm spending more time at home now and I have more time to play this game. I had a few ideas for writing a journal or possibly a book about my time spent with the game but I've decided to go with a daily journal entry choice instead.

So welcome to my first entry, I hope you will stay a while and follow my adventures in Eorzea!

-Wednesday Feb 8-

Today I spent time learning to craft and seeing if I could make any gil that way. Unfortunately I wasn't able to make anything of value as my character is still fairly new to crafting, but it was a good experience all the same. I've been inspired to reach for the goal of owning a house in the game and so I've started collecting gil and begun exploring options to make money. The old way of making gil still works for me, and while it costs me real life money to do I still find it to be the easiest and most passive way of making money. I will explain all of my secrets to you and hopefully you can make some gil as well.

I discovered that it is possible to collect and sell wind shards while I was searching through items that my botanist on another character could find. I had a book and a pen and I would write down details of every item that I found and the price ranges on my server when I took them to a market board. Ultimately it was a fruitless endeavour as I discovered that most things that I could gather were only worth pennies for the amount of time spent gathering them. Considering my options, I noticed that the shards I collected from accepting crafting job quests could actually be sold. When gathering with my botanist I found that I could collect one or two shards at a time from a mining spot and with enough crystals I could make a small profit.

It was around this time that I discovered that retainers could be used to go out into the world and collect items for me if they were instructed to do so and had the right equipment. Starting with basic mining or botany gear they could collect 60 wind shards every hour. I quickly equipped my retainers so that they would all be able to collect shards this way and found the retainer service subscription plan on the Final Fantasy 14 website too. I used that website to subscribe for seven additional retainers so that I would have a total of nine retainers on hand to collect shards for me. Surprisingly, crystals and clusters were worth roughly the same or less than shards, so it was easy to establish my little mining empire and have my hired hands go out and collect valuable prizes for me to sell on the market place.

Later, I found that if I had mining or botany levelled up to the 30s or 40s, and had my retainers join me at that level range, I could equip them with better gear and they would bring me 80 shards every 40 minutes. Presently that is where I am with shard farming. I was able to find out that with a higher perception level, they would be able to bring me more shards each hour, but the amount of perception required jumps from 164 to over a thousand, which means I won't be getting more than 80 shards any time soon.

Flash forward to today and I tried gathering with my mining class to see if I could level up past 50 or 60, but was dismayed to find out how slowly I was levelling up that way. Breaking rocks in the hot sun wasn't getting me where I wanted to be, and unfortunately I can't purchase a level skip on the website for mining. For the next little while I will have to be content with gaining 3 or 4 levels a day until I can increase my shard yield for my retainers.

I've also been spending a lot of time and effort on clothing for my character. I really like the portrait system and the ways you can show off your character to other people. I like how the portraits show up in dungeons now, not just on the adventurer plate. To be honest, I am nervous to examine other players and view their adventurer plate because there is no discrete way to do this. They will know they are being targeted and looked at and that makes me anxious.

It is also great to have a goal of raising enough money to buy a house in the game because it fights my depression and gives me something to do each day. I have an apartment and I have spent time on it to make it comfortable, but I think a house would be a better personal expression of who I am as people can see it from the outside and even go inside if they want to.

I want to keep writing and let you know what else I discover and find out about the world, so please look out for my next entries if this is something you enjoy reading.

Before I go, I want to also mention that I've been anxious about what main character class to play recently. I've been trying out every class that I can get hold of to see which I like the most. I've also been listening to music from the Ghost in the Shell TV series and it makes me wonder if I can find a class that really fits my style and attitude. One of the chief problems is that I have to pick between a tank or a healer most of the time, and I'm not very comfortable in dungeons. I was thinking that I might spend some time with crafting and gathering and see if it is possible to make money that way, rather than fighting bosses in dungeons.

A side note about the wind shards and retainer gathering techniques from earlier in this post: You need to use venture tokens to send your retainers out on errands for you. The easiest way to collect ventures is to level up your grand company status to the point where you can undertake expert delivery missions. This allows you to trade in green or blue items that you find in dungeons or buy from the market board in exchange for company seals. Company seals are a form of currency you can use to buy venture tokens with, so I really recommend that you do what you can to level up your rank in a grand company. Doing so will lay a great foundation upon which to make money. You also need a high rank in order to have an apartment in the game. I don't know if you need a high rank to get a house but it is something worth considering.

Thank you for reading and I hope you have a good day!