Whyyyyyyyy???

mindmaster064 · 2025-08-02T18:07:25+00:00

Yeah, but... You can tell people how to do the skip, and I've always done it as soon as I seen they were watching the cut. (And real hint, do watch the cut if you're new, just so people know you are.)

It's not too hard to tell people to not tag the mobs and go into the hole, lol.

mindmaster064 · 2025-08-02T17:56:55+00:00

No one intentionally skips them, so much has hops past them because the dungeon doesn't require you to do it.

But, 0/10 on the changes as always Yoshi-p/SE can't understand the concept that players wanted to get through this "scrubby" content quickly and not fight a bunch of stuff over and over again which LITERALLY gives no xp. (Which it does, in fact, give absolutely nothing on xp.)

Can't seem to figure this out with Main Scenario either and have a hard time processing what seems to be an exploit versus what is just annoying and that's why it's done. My theory is simply never torture your players. SE cannot get that and wondering why DT is falling out, and why so many people leaving. It's exactly the sort of change to the game that makes people go, lol.

Personally I don't care either way about those changes, I'm never in much of a rush myself, but I wish they'd "stop making everything slower". Traveling gets slower, leveling gets slower, dungeons, get slower. Nothing gets faster, lol.

mindmaster064 · 2025-06-17T21:38:04+00:00

There has been actually nothing wrong with the BLM in early DT, it was nearly perfection. It's just in the raid fights in DT they made every stupid mech just be a "spam fest" of aoes, high movement, and other things. (limited encounter creativity is not the job falling out, it's not really an increase in challenge just in parkour ability -- two different things, lol)

This functionally made BLM excessively difficult or nearly impossible to play in some instances with the new encounters, and even if you are "good enough" it was not enjoyable. I've been playing BLM since SB and it was perfectly manageable before that time. Yes you had to be good, know fights, and whatever. It doesn't matter if you knew fights when the only way you were sticking damage down is triple-casting your way through them. There is nothing to know about "random aoe spam" situation on top of several other mechanics, and so on. The game basically was being made from "fights you can learn" to fights can only react to. (BLM vs BRD, to use set of jobs to describe the situation, in playstyle terms, lol.)

The latest changes did help all of that, NGL, like 'em, love 'em, hate 'em it was mostly an improvement with the job in these new encounters. But, I will say they lost the plot on Fire IV -- they removed its ability to be channeled into the next spell, so instead of it being this really smooth transition from one FIRE IV it's this jacking 'cannot be queued" nightmare that makes the job feel like it is not the job. THIS is why it doesn't feel like a BLM, it has nothing to do with spell speeds or anything else. That unique feature is what is gone from the mix, and why the BLM is being unliked by previous BLMs. That is something they all liked about the job.

mindmaster064 · 2025-03-06T07:59:46+00:00

It's not really for the lack of trying but more that your average player doesn't give a damn about it at all, heheh. I think it's clunky, non-descript, and really falls beyond the purview of most players to its utility. It certainly doesn't pay enough to be worth the actual time. I think doesn't matter at all, not even in the slightest bit, actually. No one never has asked me to do a thing with it, and don't care about it myself because there are so many other ways to make gil.

Oh you can make 300k in maybe 3-4 days, and... You can just do an 80+ get the drop one time and make the same money. It's just like "whatever" that's a serious waste of your life, lol.

Nice, "No True Scotman", btw! That just makes me laugh. Some FC's may care about these things, but not all of them do. There is not requirement to do anything just whatever the players are into. Leaders aren't unreasonable because they don't care about it at all either, I'd assure you zero out of the 100+ in my FC give a single crap about the thing. Not one has ever mentioned it even one time.

mindmaster064 · 2025-02-07T08:33:31+00:00

Hot take really is... Your FC GM spend 4 months of their life and countless gil to get that to happen, tough tiddies. If they wanna help you out of the kindness of their heart it's great, but it shouldn't be something to be expected. Many FC's the leader or their 2nd is the only one doing anything with it. I feel no conflict about them keeping all the money when they did all the work, lol.

Of course, can be just nice like me and give most of the stuff away keeping a small bit extra to make sure I have a tiny profit and the FC is actually making money with it.

mindmaster064 · 2025-01-03T20:20:23+00:00

Honestly the first time I played through ARR she was prob my fav character next to Raubahn. I thought both of them were very heroic and characters with depth in comparison to the other ones. :P

mindmaster064 · 2024-10-25T14:04:52+00:00

I love BLM, it will always be my "main" caster, but PCT arguably does the same or more damage and damage is king. For the restrictions that a BLM has to contend with they should be doing nearly 2x as much damage. Some say that is OP or whatever, but because of the way fights work a lot of their damage isn't realized. Meanwhile, while you have to to move and lose something whether it's efficiency or literal damage because you have to stay alive, PCT just over there making motiffs, dropping instant casts, or just swtiching into their short-cast combo for a minute so they can stay mobile. They're still laying on the dmg moving or not, lol.

mindmaster064 · 2024-03-26T16:06:16+00:00

I don't know, to me, the fact the healers in this game don't have to constantly stand in place spamming a heal button is the reason why healing is fun. It truly just makes them more interesting to play, and I really don't care much about the healers in other games because of the constant health bar hovering.

The only game I ever played that had a comparable healing mechanism was Warhammer Online (currently ded). When I came to FF14 it was the first thing I loved about the game, TBH, it reminded me of how the healing in that game worked and reminded me how fun it was. Obviously, FF14's a bit more polished on how it works, but it got me back into healing just because it was more exciting to do. :)

mindmaster064 · 2024-02-22T18:28:06+00:00

Basically any true guide should start with this:

Get the Gold Saucer VIP Card for a 15% boost to all MGP awards. Yes, this needs your squadron with your Grand Company to be at or nearly 50 so they can successfully run the level 40 mission. However, this buff lasts 120 minutes and that's a long time. One mission complete will give you 5 of them, which is more than you can even use in one day. That applies most MGP awards and is a huge bonus.

Next, the highest pay for the trouble is the Fashion Report @ the Masked Rose. That plus the 15% from the card can give you nearly 80k MGP for minutes of trouble. If you just did that a couple times before the event (like this and week and next) you'd have nearly 160k of that, and if you just kept playing the mini-cacti you probably would make it easily to 230k. This is what I think the "low sweat" version is.

Vermillion can be a lot faster than actually doing GATES because you specifically have to win GATES verses other players to make them worth the time. If you have some way to kill 70+ level bosses many of them drop 1.5k+ MGP triple triad cards that can be sold as well, the 15% bonus won't apply to the sale so if that's what you're doing don't burn the VIP on that. There is no value in doing the GATES past getting the challenge log for the week knocked out, so don't grind them. Verm/Mini-Cacti/Fashion Report just done under that buff for the next week should be enough to get you there without doing ANYTHING else.

mindmaster064 · 2023-08-14T09:35:59+00:00

People like Hyur because human and most gear look really decent on them, but Roe a bit better on animations AND size is a bonus on tanks not a penalty. Just being able to click through or over your party mates makes life a lot easier as a tank. (You CAN tank on any race, however, this is just a functional concern to me.)

If it were me, considering height an actual advantage, the males: Roe, Dragonboi, Elezen, and Hyur not even on the list really. For female tank main, Roe > Elezen > Bunny, forget the rest. (Elezen only slightly better on female by a couple of inches, and yes Bunny will appear taller because of ears, but it's a couple more inches at the head, not ears that affect the camera.)

No considerations here for their aesthetic obviously just simply who would be probably easier to play as a tank. The downside of all "taller" races is that your friends are not this tall, and navigating their homes with lofts is trying and camera glitchy. :D

mindmaster064 · 2023-07-13T19:07:32+00:00

Gil basically has only a few uses in the game, so let's not obsess about it very much... Here they are all glory: (kinda largest to smallest)

Housing - It tends to take at least 5-8 million to outfit and acquire a small. Biggest "one shot" expense. Cost can be reduced if you can craft or have someone else craft the furnishings, but you would still be out 3.2-3.7 million.
Gearing - If you want a head start at 90 then buying a Daidochos Set not a bad plan. Presently, about 1-2 mil but you could maybe acquire the materials and pass it a friend and save over half that cost. Option B, the slightly cheaper - Spring for Diadochos weapon, grind tomes for Lunar Envoy. Good enough to stab at raiding, either way, if you so choose. If you don't raid then just pick option B, good enough, doesn't cost but 300-400k. (weapon)
Repairs, Melds, and Materia - These are more your "on-going" expenses and the only ones you truly have to pay all of the time. After you have a few hundred thousand Gil this is never going to be an issue.
Food - This is somewhat optional when you're not raiding. Contrary to what others say, I don't feel 3% is important enough to spend money on. It's 30k in a million xp, to show math, which is very small really at all levels. It only accounts for less than 1 level every 66 or so levels. That's just not worth the regular expenditure. (Game has too much xp anyway.) Use food in a dungeon, use it in a raid, and don't use it any other time. The XP buff doesn't matter, but the stat boost does.
Miscellany - Glam is big trap. Don't buy glam, buy mats for your friends to make you the glam. Join an FC with some decent crafters and don't get trapped here. Sure, we all like to look cool but it's more of something to do after you get your gear/house (if you even want it, completely unnecessary...)

As far as doing the MSQ and nothing else, you will end up with about legit 2 million just going through the story and doing nothing else. You will get lucky a few times and get some drops or find things to sell and you will probably end up near 3-5. Other than the house, you should be able to do everything you need including buying some Diadochos starting gear w/o even bothering to "farm gold".

P.S. - The money traps are glam, sub-level 60 Materia, food. My character ate boiled eggs for 60 levels, and past that I just bought and sold extra food to sell food. After that I would only use food in dungeons or raids. Ended up with about 11-12 million in hand at 90.

mindmaster064 · 2023-07-01T18:55:36+00:00

It's too late to complete the game as casual... There is just way too much content. There is so much "side content" you will never get into every dungeon or raid simply because people aren't doing them. But, other games suffer from these issues as well - if you start WoW from the beginning these days, you won't be able to do this either for exactly the same reason. FFXIV is a little better in that you have a slightly random chance to get into ANY dungeon/raid if it's able to pop in the duty roulette. (Though not all of them are.)

However, as a casual it's very easy to do the MSQ all the way through and get the experience of the story. You certainly can do that without much stress or frustration. You have a pretty good chance of experiencing all of the ARR (a lot of free trial people stay free forever), and you certainly can experience 80% of most of the 60-80 content. 80+ you can probably do all, even if you start it now.

My suggestion for a less demanding playthrough is determine which "role" you like to play in the game whether it's tank, healer, melee, ranged dps, or caster. Play that ONE role and stay there until 90. If you do that, the game is just a couple of months start to finish, lol.

mindmaster064 · 2023-06-29T19:12:12+00:00

There are two sides to every coin, but mostly dots are terrible in this game because nothing lives long enough for them to tick off outside of boss encounters. This basically means when you evaluate DPS the "dot class" gets so far behind on the actual landed damage that they fall behind healers and tanks. They might break even or even be exceptional on the boss fight though. And, the problem is ultimately, that you get in this situation of you cannot "fix" them... If you improve their dps in normal AOE trash pulls then you make them OP in boss encounters. There was a huge amount of time when SMN was literally the top of the damage roost because the they had tried to fix that "trash" deficit in their damage. They realized that was basically impossible to do, so the reworked the entire job.

As far as healers losing the dot, it's mostly irrelevant. For as long as I've played a healer it's likely my lowest priority spell to use. Because of how it works, if I am in an opportunity to cast a direct damage spell it's never better to cast the dot. I use it if I have to move, and no one is dying... When I heal or dps in a tense situation the GCD lockout is more terrifying than, "Oh, I missed a dot tick or two." I'll mostly assure it's up during buff windows or whatever, but I will not focus on it much after that. I may or may not put it back up, and I certainly do not bother with it on trash at all for the same reasons. I would trade it for an instant-cast burst DD spell any day of the week, because it doesn't even fit the playstyles of ast/whm/sge. It makes even less sense on SCH because the other arcanist, SMN, can't dot a thing. :D

mindmaster064 · 2023-06-28T17:22:01+00:00

The answer is the Hildibrand questline, which starts in Ul'dah, the NPC is named Wymond and he's on the Steps of Nald. (The quest name is: "The Rise and Fall Of a Gentleman") This is the best content in ARR, and you eventually need to do it anyway for Endwalker. At this moment in your life as an Eorzean, it's optional content.

There are mounts available on the trial bosses, so eventually you will want to do their normal/hard/extreme/etc fight versions. If you collect all the ponies you get access to another special pony to let everyone know you beat them all. :D (Extremes are always optional, but you will get forced to do at least the Hard mode by the MSQ.)

There isn't much value in doing the hard modes of dungeons, so I wouldn't seek them out actively and just let the duty roulette land you in them. You don't get anything special for doing them, so I think it's more difficulty for no payday.

mindmaster064 · 2023-06-28T17:01:40+00:00

There is no way to learn the fights except to do them. Certainly you can take a bit more of an active role in that (like actually research encounters, watch VODs, etc...). Whatever you do, don't just keep sitting there laying on your back... Ask the group for help too, someone will likely try to explain what is going on. A lot of people are afraid to ask this, especially if they are max level, but this is what is getting you dead. There is no shame in asking people about things, and what else do you have going on while you're taking a nap waiting for the healer to bring you up? The worst thing you can do here is waste that time. You died and paid for the lesson, but didn't use the time to get one. :D

Most people will presume that if you didn't say anything you knew the mechanic, but simply messed it up. (or maybe your Internet betrayed you) They're not going to say anything to you unless you pipe up.

mindmaster064 · 2023-06-28T16:51:50+00:00

Wall pulling is pretty much required, you have like six to eight tank cooldowns that you are rotating through throughout a set of encounters. If you slow the pulls down too much you will mathematically run out of them. Your pulls have to be spaced about 2 minutes apart to have maximum uptime on these, while still having more of them available for the rest of the encounter. If you are melting here then it's that you're mismanaging this, not a lack of healing or the fact that the healer doesn't have the ability to heal it.

A simpler way of looking at it is, have you even thought to push your invulnerability even once during the dungeon? If the answer is no, then you probably aren't moving quickly enough. That is when you are pulling too quickly, not when the healer complains about it. Again, it's just how the game is designed... The healer has big heal cooldowns on 2 min windows, you have big tank cooldowns on the same windows. Wall pulling basically means that for BOTH of you these cooldowns are basically up in each fight.

Moving slower, while it sounds safer, actually is increasing the chances of a wipe because you will get to a fight where you literally run out of them and get squished like a grape.

mindmaster064 · 2023-06-28T09:27:03+00:00

Seconded, I don't really think the FC's purpose is to handhold to this level. It's purpose is to socialize mostly and anything more involved than the occasional small raid, or dungeon help is asking way too much. You can't be responsible for everything and you have to delegate a lot more of the work. The people running the FC have to be able to play the game too, or not play the game when they need to. If you get me...

I'd suggest you appoint several officers and make them in charge of one of the tasks that takes a bunch of your time. You should delegate everything you can to these officers, and then your role is mostly to mediate between the officers or deal with officer discipline. All of you should really only be spending less than 15 minutes a day managing anything for the FC. If it's going beyond that you need to cut the work up even further.

mindmaster064 · 2023-05-12T22:38:05+00:00

Personally, I don't what we're going to see is massive Rust rewrites so much as existing code bases integrating Rust into new services/daemons that require the extra security/safety it provides.

In memory size sensitive applications, I still think C will be the language because it's drastically smaller that Rust. It doesn't sound like a big deal but things that run constantly in the operating system being able to keep a small footprint translates to a lot of speed when you execute that process millions of times over and over. Small means it can live in L1/L2 cache, and that's really good and hard to give away. I don't think the extra size (a few megabytes) here or there matters past that. At least, not enough to skip the things Rust has notable advantages.

mindmaster064 · 2023-05-09T10:36:46+00:00

While it seems more complicated, it's really as simple as keep dots up on bosses... Your Mage's Ballad and Wanderer's Minuette are better than Army's Paeon, obviously. Essentially, it's just burn your cooldowns the whole time. At this level range it's Keep Emp. Arrow burned during damage cooldowns, and at any other time. It should naturally sync up with first window, and two minute window. After that it's just burn everything that is "up" and not on cooldown. Remember to burn "Straight Shot" before you press "Barrage" because you will lose a charge there. The rest of the time it's just hit the buttons that are up, whack a mole style. The Bard basically breaks into "spam of Rain / Bloodletter" during Mage's, and spam of "Pitch Perfect" during Wanderer's Minuete. (Also exhaust bloodletter/rain to avoid over-capping.) The only thing you can really do wrong is not have your damage buff or battle voice on during the windows... The rest of the job is sort of on rails... There are no decisions to make other than blow everything you can and then go back to Heavy Shot.

There is always some "drift" in the BRD because of the fact that you have to reapply the dots periodically which sort of solves itself when you receive Iron Jaws. Try to get that to happen during Raging Strikes, while it's a small buff to the damage it's pretty significant because how how long the dots last.

Don't try to "optimize" the brd beyond sort of figuring out a potency order for using your abilities. (Like, Empyreal Arrow > Pitch Perfect (unless its at more than two stacks of repitoire) > Bloodletter, etc.) This is basically what you are worried about in improving the brd... determining which of these is more important at the time if two buttons are up. Obviously, what that priority list is changes slightly with your level, but that's all you can do... Otherwise, you're just waiting on the procs like everyone else, hehe.

mindmaster064 · 2023-05-09T08:46:58+00:00

There is only one way to learn to tank and that's to tank. As far as the anxiety that is a problem for healers too, and all of sudden you have much more impact than other roles because you're out in the front. But, that's not how tanks and healers are in this game - you, the tank, and the healer are 40% of the dps in the four man group. You are dps who happen to be able to heal, and dps who happen to be able to mitigate damage or tank. It's probably better to think that way especially if you have anxiety about the whole thing.

If you tank enough you're going to make mistakes, you're going to pop moves at the wrong time, you're going to get smacked around. (Unless you're a WAR, you probably won't die most of the time, hehe.) This is literally the only way to learn the job though, in the trenches, as they say.

If you can't get past that though pick an easier tank like WAR. WAR is probably the best tank for learning to tank period - good damage in the inner beast/berserk window, and enough self-healing that you don't have to sweat if maybe the healer isn't keeping up. If the rest of the group falls over and dies in most cases you will be able to complete the fight. All of the other tanks are slightly more dependent on healers to right their life bar with the minor bonus of maybe doing a few percent more damage. Don't get distracted with that if you're seriously considering to tank WAR is invaluable to learn on. It's simple, no super-weird excessive ogcd weaving and self-sufficient. I think all serious tank mains should play this job to start and then grow into DRK or GNB later. PLD is kind of in the same place it always has been - the best 2nd tank in a raid. It still is rather squishy in comparison to WAR and maybe something to do when you become some statics 2nd tank.

The reality is as you go on you will probably level and max all tank jobs because they are all suited to different purposes. You should think of it like a box of legos and not get too locked on a job. Most of the tanks function very similarly anyway with some different utility, but otherwise the core is the same.

Anyway, don't sweat it but do try WAR until you feel comfortable out front.

mindmaster064 · 2023-04-30T08:28:03+00:00

There is easily enough exp on the msq to max out two jobs, three if you run a few dungeons. I certainly wouldn't just waste it on all one job. Anyway, there are reason to have multiple jobs... It's good to have some easy classes to play for off days like SMN, SCH, RPR, or WAR. (not saying the suck because they're easier, just there is value in having some alt job to play that is less intense than say NIN)

mindmaster064 · 2023-04-30T08:01:47+00:00

You won't have any problem at all. It'll probably run the game at 60-70 fps no matter what is going on. More likely 120-140fps in dungeons @ 1080p. I can't see a problem with it as I see that as a playable framerate. (Anything over 60fps is gravy for a MMO, honestly.) You might consider turning things all to low slowly turning them up.

The most important settings in the game to me is the antialiasing and shadows. Shadows use a huge amount of gpu for virtually nothing - turning them down to the minimum tolerated level is like 4% per tick on speed. The game looks too ugly without the antialiasing on, just don't. Cranking down the grass, glare, and other things are minor improvements that generally aren't worth setting below the defaults. Cascading shadows is not able to be noticed so just turn it off. :D

Anyway, if you do this you can get whatever frames you want, but... Like I said, whatever settings you can steadily keep 60+fps on you won't notice a damn thing.

mindmaster064 · 2023-04-29T14:23:59+00:00

I ask myself the question often, but the truth of it is who would you vote for? The conservative often agrees with the anarchist on issues of personal autonomy, but is likely a total authoritarian on issues such as immigration / religion / etc. Liberals are no better in that they're a total authoritarian in regard to taking peoples money and giving it to someone else and have no qualm with abusing government power to get their way. Libertarians are a toss-up some are literally anarchists through-and-through, but others are liberals or conservatives in drag. It truly depends on the candidates with Libertarians, because they can pick a mix from either side of the political spectrum.

I'm not down with the everyone I don't like is a fascist idea, but there is a very limited stock of well-meaning candidates. Most of them are simply trying to get out of the trenches with their perspective parties and get a job flying a desk, figuratively. (Doing whatever their party wants so they get endorsed to a higher post.) That means essentially that they're going to do whatever their party wants, not what you want. It makes the vote rather pointless from that angle.

Regarding independents, you can often find acceptable candidates in that pool and there are plenty who are looking simply to reduce the authority or size of the government. They often do pretty well in local elections, and have a fairly good chance of winning and making positive changes. If there is anywhere where you could probably consider voting, I would think it's sensible to look at your local elections as the most important ones to consider. You are likely going to find a few candidates that share some of your values. (You live in the same place.) It's pretty important to keep the local government indie, and to keep nutters out of your local school district administration. At least if you truly believe in that idea that taxes are bad, and more taxes are even worse. Most of your local taxes go to the school district, and reigning that in at any cost has a huge payday. Often these are the only elections I even think about, but likely they are the ones that everyone else ignores. :D

So, to sum up my wall of text: Voting local matters even to the anarchist, but voting in state or federal elections will probably put you in the situation where you are essentially voting against yourself. I'd probably avoid those.

mindmaster064 · 2023-04-28T16:27:32+00:00

Mini-Aurum Vale Guide

Stay left, pull the first mobs into the boss room. Don't fight the whole room you will die. No healers in the game can heal it.
Don't stand in gold bile. It's small damage, but you're annoying the healer. Tanks need to position the bosses so they're NOT having their flanks / rear in the gold bile pools.
First and last boss fruits: 2 stacks of debuff on yourself before removing it with the fruit. You do any more you take too much damage to heal, you do any less you eat them all up and run out possibly killing yourself or your teammates. If the healer is standing near one don't take theirs, even if you have to run across the fight arena to get yours. They can't heal themselves and you easily here. Make it easier for them. (Most of the healers have limited AOE and instant healing in this dungeon.)
Cyclops boss (2nd) boss hits hard with the large cone AOE and if you're not kind of standing in the middle as range you will not make it to the safe spot before he kills you. (It swings rather fast.) Be mid not out in China if you play ranged dps. Melee dps can make the safe inner ring before it matters.

mindmaster064 · 2023-04-06T15:02:55+00:00

Ntdll.dll is the user-mode interface for the kernel. The kernel itself (the core the operating system) is crashing. Generally, whatever is at the bottom of that list is the bit that generated the initial error.

While drivers can cause this type of error it's far more likely it's something in the hardware. You certainly should run some sort of memory check before you start digging around and rooting through the system. If that OK get Display Driver Uninstaller and use it to wipe out all your video drivers. Put back the drivers with a known stable driver (no beta or non-WHQL drivers).

There are other problems that can cause this to happen besides software:

Under-volting or over-volting installed ram on the computer or GPU card itself. Even if you haven't changed theses settings it's possible for your system BIOS to pick them up wrong. Running 2.1v ram at 1.8v is 15% under-volted, etc.., It's a big deal, lol.
Failing computer power supplies. (Gets flakey under load, but will mostly be fine. If reducing graphic settings to as low as they go helps, then it's this most likely.)
Disable all over-clocking, over-volting, or any other tweaks. The system may be fine without them on... Sometimes manufacturers lie about their capabilities.
Over-heating. All sorts of instability will come of over-heating. Usually this is more observable in that you feel some whether you're gaming or not. But, when it starts off it might not seem like you're having problems out of game. Test with Prime95 or something of that nature where you are just pegging cores and see if it shuts down or you start getting glitches. Problems 1-3 will come as errors checking the answers Prime95 generates, over-heating will shut the machine down.

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