I remember the first time I played Final Fantasy XIV. I’d sunk 100 hours into the game before finally completing A Realm Reborn, and another 100 more working my way through Heavensward. My goal was to catch up with current content before Square Enix dropped Stormblood, and so I toiled away. For months, FFXIV was the only thing I knew.
Now don’t get me wrong. FFXIV is an excellent game, and I was more than happy to lose myself in it. At some point, though, once you’ve finished the main story quests of an expansion and you get into patch content, the game becomes significantly grindier. After reaching the level cap for an expansion, it becomes all about the weekly and daily grind, where you farm Tomestones and clear weekly raids to get better gear. When the new patch drops, the required item levels for the new dungeons and trials typically go up, as the game assumes you’ve been somewhat on top of the grind. As someone who was working my way through all that content for the first time, that meant having to put a pause on the story and grind out some Tomestones before I could progress.
When I finally caught up with the latest patch content and was all ready for Stormblood, I told myself I’d never let myself fall behind again. That is, until Dawntrail happened.
Dawntrail is my least favorite FFXIV expansion to date — an opinion that I’m sure is shared by many fans and critics alike — and unlike with Stormblood and Shadowbringers (and Endwalker, to a lesser extent), I found myself much less compelled to keep up with the grind. Slowly, I stopped keeping up with the Arcadion raids. Eventually, I started ignoring the new patch quests altogether. I wondered if I was finally done with FFXIV after sinking nearly 2,000 hours into the game. Of course, I came back. I always come back. The problem was that I was at least two patches behind, which meant there was plenty of content to grind through. And let me tell you, there’s no worse feeling than getting reinvested in the story, only to have your progress grind to a complete halt because you don’t meet the item level requirement for the next mandatory story dungeon.
When that happens, you’re forced to grind through your daily roulettes for Tomestones so you can buy better gear. If I were younger and unemployed, I might’ve had no issues sitting at my computer all day repeating the same few dungeons and trials for a handful of Tomestones to get all the gear I need. But because I am older and actually gainfully employed, I’m finding that I have much less time for grinding, which means I’m only able to do a couple of roulettes each day before I get bored or want to move on to something else. So that’s what I did, and it ended up taking me a couple of weeks after Into the Mist‘s release before I finally got caught up.
If it was just about the content grind, things wouldn’t be so bad. But because I am also anxious about weighing my party down and feeling like deadweight, it’s difficult not to feel at least a bit of pressure when I’m going into content two weeks late and everybody else already knows the mechanics. As someone who’s always enjoyed learning content on release day, it can be real discouraging to pop into the Duty Finder queue and get grouped up with a party that’s already cleared the encounter multiple times and have it on farm. Prior to Into the Mist‘s release, I had resolved to get myself caught up so I could do the final Arcadion raids on launch day. I didn’t make it of course, due to a lack of time and unforeseen internet issues, but I do finally have it on farm as well.
All of this is to say, falling behind with FFXIV content has never not felt bad for me and I cannot express the relief I feel at having finally caught up and being able to queue for duties confidently. We’re still a few months away from the next patch drop and the final Alliance raid for Dawntrail, but when it drops, I’ll be ready. I’ll never let myself fall behind again. Now where have I heard that one before?
