This was a long time coming. My first experience of savage raiding was in Endwalker and my experience taught me a lot about raiding and how to play a couple of jobs on an ‘okay I can clear savage’ level which really just made extremes and normal content a bit more straightforward for me. I was never able to finish a tier. Some of that was my own lack of skill, some of that was group dynamics and my complete rejection of raiding in party finder and some of it was just bad luck. However, at the launch of Dawntrail I was introduced to a new group who were currently farming the extremes and that lead me to joining them for learning and clearing an ultimate.
When the Cruiserweight tier was launched with FFXIV Patch 7.2 I was invited to join as a phys ranged player for the four savage fights and we cleared the first one really fast which gave me high hopes. M5S Dancing Green is a pretty nice start to savage. The fight is pretty fun, mechanics aren’t too challenging and clearing on, I think it was the second week, felt pretty nice.
I originally started the tier as a MCH because its my preferred phys ranged job but it was, as usual, neglected and had damage output reduced and it felt really rubbish to play as the raids went on. The damage check on M7S felt really tight and there were a few times when we had almost flawless runs with no deaths or damage downs. I switched to DNC which, was a steep learning curve, as I’d never played it other than levelling content before. The biggest adjustment was lining up buff windows as Dancer offers a lot more support than Machinist does (and should, Machinist SHOULD be a selfish DPS job but it doesn’t do enough to qualify as one, frustratingly) but I managed to learn it and we were able to clear.
M6S felt like its own entity with add phase and I struggled a lot with orientating myself to be thrown across the arena in the correct direction. We maybe needed a few Tank LB’s to survive. With that being said, despite my not great abilities people were pretty patient with me which I really appreciated.
Getting to clear M8S for the first time felt really good. The adrenaline was going hard and I was pretty focused and pretty stressed. Others had cleared it already and wanted the reclear and I was just so desperately wanting that first clear. To finally get it after many weeks of progression and practice felt really satisfying. I was feeling super burned out from raiding, my health has been pretty bad lately which has made it harder to stay focused for any period of time and I really felt like I was being a burden on the group and was so ready to say to clear with someone more competent than me as I just didn’t think I could. But I did. I’m never going to be the most optimal player, but I can clear content unrestricted, even if it takes me longer than others.
FFXIV UWU – The Weapon’s Refrain Ultima Weapon has been cleared by your local Lizard Lady. I did it! I cleared an ultimate raid in Final Fantasy XIV and I am feeling pretty damn proud of myself. It may not be the current or even a recent FFXIV Ultimate but it’s still an Ultimate. My experience of progressing this fight and eventually getting that all important first kill is a pretty positive experience all around. I am super grateful for the team that had me join them and come along despite the many memes and deaths along the way. I did manage to film the clear and have uploaded that onto YouTube.
The Weapon’s Refrain: Ultima Weapon
Currently there are six Ultimate raids in FFXIV and The Weapon’s Refrain: Ultima Weapon (frequently shortened to UWU) was launched in the Stormblood expansion with patch 4.31. It’s an eight player raid that is level and gear synched to level 70. You need to first clear the Savage Sigmascape V4.0: Kefka (which you can do these days unrestricted for very low effort) to be able to unlock Ultimacy in Kugane via The Wandering Minstrel. You can then recruit other players via Party Finder or form a static group of 7 other people that also want to progress, clear and potentially farm the fight. As a reward you get the achievement Ultimatum which grants you The Ultimate Legend title, and with every kill you get an Ultima totem which can be exchanged in Rhalgr’s Reach or Kugane for a weapon. There are a total of 15 weapons available for UWU, so to have them all, you need 15 kills.
Once you’ve found a committed group of people that want to go for it or if you feel confident to clear in party finder with randoms it’s just a case of planning time to go and do it. For some people this could be a few hours and for others it can be weeks. There’s no real time to say exactly how long it will take you to clear. The group I was progressing with got their first clear during week 9 after 2 or 3 weekly 2 ish hour sessions. The two biggest blocks were Titan Gaols and getting the positioning for those right alongside Ultimate Suppression which is a non-dps mechanic of the fight close to the end which requires each player to do their thing consistently well, but it’s RNG based so knowing what to do with which debuff, marker and dealing with all of the AOE chaos at the same time is a lot. I really struggled with this mechanic in particular so I’m very grateful for the patience of the party I cleared with. These two guides are particularly helpful to see the entire fight and each phase. I referenced them a lot to help me learn the fight.
Gear and Party Composition for UWU
I didn’t have BiS gear for a Machinist during this fight because I couldn’t be bothered to farm it. I used Dawntrail raid buffs such as Grade 8 Tinctures of Dexterity for my potions and Moqueca raid food because that is what I had available to use. I used potions twice in the fight I think, at the start of Ifrit and at the start of Ultima. You can probably line these up more but I didn’t really care to do that. Those two phases were the easiest to use potions for.
Below is a picture of my current MCH Dawntrail gear which is not BiS for anything because I’m not currently doing savage raiding. These were my MCH stats and attributes of the gear I used at the time of my first clear on 16th December 2024. The Balance discord probably has the BiS gear if you want to go for that. I read that the BiS weapon was the Shadowbringers relic with your chosen jobs optimal substats but I didn’t use it. I started progression with the Skyruin Extreme trial weapon and then changed to the tome weapon when I could buy it. You are synched down to 375 for the level 70 raid and it helps to know your jobs level 70 rotation very well. The level 70 alliance raids are a good way to practice this because, despite their being some downtime between boss fights, the length of the alliance raid and the level sync will solidify that rotation in your mind. Also they are without a doubt the best alliance raids in FFXIV with no exceptions.
In terms of party composition you need one player per job and you absolutely must have a caster DPS and a Melee DPS for the beyond limits LB phase. This is for the caster to take care of magitek bits with Caster LB3 and for the Melee to take care of Lahabrea when he appears. It is helpful to have a second ranged player to deal with certain mechanics like eruptions during Ifrit and Ultima phases of the fight. I played Physical Ranged DPS because that is what I have played in most difficult content and is the job I am most comfortable with at level 70. Red Mage would have been the other DPS I might have considered playing but I enjoy playing MCH a lot more so it made more sense. I can’t say what the most optimal jobs are for UWU because I don’t really pay much attention to it (Its not going to be MCH) but having two different tanks offering their unique partywide mitigations – Shake it Off from WAR is a very nice help for healers and giving shields to avoid Vulcan Burst knockback during Ifrit phases and two unique healers – A Regen and a Shield healer will just help keep the party protected and alive during heavy hitting raidwides. That is pretty standard practice for most raids in FFXIV anyway.
Is UWU an easy fight?
This is completely dependent on personal experience and what you, as a player, find easy or challenging. I’m sure when it was current it was much tougher and trickier and took a while to clear and clearing in 7.1 is likely a very different experience. UWU is still an ultimate raid so whilst it may be the ‘easiest’ of the six ultimate raids currently available in FFXIV mechanics still need to be respected. Raidwides and mistakes will kill you. It is a very fast fight and takes alot of mental energy to learn, progress and eventually clear. As I said above for some players this will likely be done in just a few sessions depending on how confident you are at your job, your ability to determine safe spots fast and retain mechanic information for the entire fight. For others it will take longer. The fight itself mechanically, I think, feels more like an extreme, but faster. The difficulty for me came from the length of the encounter with no down time. It is more a test of endurance, and, your reflexes, you might say, than having the absolute best DPS. I would know, because I play a job with considerably weak DPS and no ability to buff anyone. I am selfish and I will continue to be selfish in FFXIV until I unsubscribe.
Doing an Ultimate raid was never really something I planned to do, it was on the off chance that other people were going to try it and they needed an 8th person to fill in. I wasn’t sure if I would last but I did and I have two lovely new weapon glamours to show off.
I first starting playing FFXIV in May 2021 so technically it’s been over two years since I began and my character has been through a fair amount of changes during that time. I have been through a fair amount of changes in that time in my personal life as well so it’s been kind of a mixed bag. FFXIV was never a game I was really interested but being one of the lucky few to manage to secure getting a PS5 back then and in the midst of a global pandemic I thought it would be a good idea to try.
I’ve written a few blog posts on my time playing FFXIV because in those two years this game has taken up a huge portion of my life. I’ve tried to do a lot of things from doing the obvious main scenario quests to joining FC’s to housing, crafting and raiding. Some of that has been more successful than others. The biggest difference was someone like me, a usually solo gamer that had a lot of love for other Final Fantasy games, trying to play an MMORPG. The social aspect of the game was daunting enough for me to google ‘how much can I solo whilst playing FFXIV’ and it turns out quite a lot.
Playing FFXIV as a Sprout on Louisoix
I had no idea why I ended up on Louisoix as my server of choice but I am glad that I did because it’s what has allowed me to make the friends I have made whilst playing FFXIV. Originally thinking I wanted to play as a Viera because of Fran from FFXII and finding a very limited amount of hairstyles actually lead me to creating my character as a maximum height AuRa because they looked like small dragons. She had pink hair and my starting job as an arcanist dictated my starting city as Limsa Lominsa which I have since learned has a reputation for being a place for a lot of very interesting conversations.
I knew absolutely nothing about this game at all. I was playing FFXIV on console and found the controls to be confusing. I didn’t know how to access other parts of my UI – the chat box for one – and I didn’t really know what to do. This lead to me basically opening up a lot of quests at once and becoming very overwhelmed. I thought why not try and level my character out in the wilds of La Noscea when I was quested with killing some ladybirds for my job role quest but didn’t understand how job specific abilities worked for a long time and instead would just press ‘square’ and then ‘attack’. Auto-attack damage in this game is not very good, your abilities actually make quite a difference I have since found out.
I remember one morning at about 11am I was trying to enter the first dungeon which, at the time, didn’t have duty support and I had absolutely no luck getting in to it as an arcanist DPS player. So I once again turned to google of which the answer to beating dungeon queue’s was to do so as a tank or a healer. Healing still to this day does not appeal to me and so my option was left to tank. More googling leads to ‘Marauder’ is a tank class in FFXIV which also started in Limsa Lominsa so I went back and I picked up that job and I decided okay well I guess back to levelling again which meant back to killing ladybirds. Although, not auto attacking. I did thankfully do that with my abilities.
Tanking gets you into dungeons faster but maybe learn what that means first…
I will say right now, as a non-sprout and official holder of a burger king mentor crown that I am in August 2023 a fairly competent tank. I say this because potentially some of the below will instill fear and terror as you read what I was like and that I truly understand to my very core what Tankxiety is like when playing FFXIV. I know what it is like to be put off tanking and I feel like I should offer some reassurance that, whilst I make mistakes plenty of times, I am now confident enough to tank most content in this game, that I did get better. We all, however, start somewhere and this is how my decision to beat dungeon queue’s didn’t go as well as I would have liked at first.
My knowledge of being a ‘tank’ class was literally they have more defense than others. It wasn’t ‘I should be leading the charge’ in a dungeon and taking all of the damage and excuse me but what the fuck is emnity and why do I want it? Did I do the ‘hall of novice’ quests before attempting any dungeons? No…absolutely not. I didn’t even have half of my abilities because I didn’t know they were locked behind job quests until I eventually went back to them towards the end of A Realm Reborn were I was well over level 40. I even did the unthinkable shame inducing thing of entering a dungeon without having my jobstone saved on my gearset.
There were, I think, three very specific occasions that taught me to be a better tank on my then chosen main class which started as Marauder and then specialises into Warrior at level 30. The first was the gauntlet for any sprout tank or healer known as Aurum Vale in which some very kind and helpful player literally told me how to use tank stance and what I was supposed to do as a tank in a non condescending way. The second actually was one of the things that lead me to stop playing the job and seriously looking for a DPS class to change to instead and that was being told how stupid I was for using Holmgang at the start of the fight. To which, yes, it is retrospectively a stupid thing to do. Because what I was doing was just pressing ALL my mitigation buttons on cooldown. That was, indeed, not correct.
The third occasion was when I was finally confident enough to learn how to play Warrior properly and try again after finishing the MSQ at level 80 and going on to play my favoured and main job now, Machinist -which has become a running joke to myself really I do play well enough to sometimes steal enmity and thus, tank without any of those defensive buffs, or if a tank dies, I am often high enough on the enmity list to be the next one to unintentionally provoke the boss. Anyway, the third occasion was what I fondly think of as a Warrior masterclass from someone in my free company at the time that did actually know what they were doing and spent a good portion of an afternoon helping me.
Speaking of joining a Free Company…
I have now been in four free companies since I started playing FFXIV. The first one I was in for well over a year, if not around 14 months after a randomly thrown invite way back in my ARR days. I remember accepting the invite and then seeing welcome messages popping up in the chat box which before then had been silent and kind of ignored so I didn’t know how to type in it and didn’t really ever say anything but did start seeing the same names creep up often enough that I began to get a sense of familiarity. Eventually, I think about two weeks later, I accidentally pressed the gamepad button on my controller which did get me into the chat box and I saw I was able to bring up a keyboard and did say hello and explained that I didn’t know how before and which probably made me come across very scatterbrained.
I used many a wrong abbreviation for things when I thought people were talking about things but they actually weren’t. One occasion being asking for help with DR – because I thought that meant ‘duty roulette’ not ‘Delebrum Reginae’ which is something that was relevant at the time and something people did weekly that I didn’t know about or even have unlocked. Three people agreed but it wasn’t until it clicked with someone that I wasn’t asking for actual DR content who explained to me what delebrum reginae actually was. Two of those people did stick with me and do a levelling dungeon because I was trying to get my machinist levelled enough to carry on with the main scenario quests at that point. The other person promptly left which is completely understandable but did leave me feeling pretty embarrassed.
There were several other occasions like this. I was eager to do a lot of content and events that the Free Company I was in put up but I didn’t really know how to be a competent player. I didn’t know how to play my jobs. I had not, in fact, read my tool tips. I think my incompetence but willing to join in kind of nature sort of gave people the impression that I was a bit ditzy and maybe even made people feel a bit sorry for me. The thing is at the time I didn’t know I was doing the wrong things and when someone did tell me I was horribly mortified. Eventually though I learned a lot from the first free company I was in and I did a lot of fun things.
I did current level extreme trials and I was there experiencing all the hype with everyone during Endwalker’s release. I made friends, I attended in game weddings, I was invited to social events and in game parties. I had my own in game wedding too, which was a lot of fun. My friend and I decided to gift everyone with Morbol Seedlings which involved us chasing people around the chapel to give them something no one wanted. I was able to get my first taste of savage raiding with an FC static and I will tell you savage is an entirely different ball game to other content in FFXIV. I even lead my own events as an experienced player to help other people get clears on particular content.
Leaving an FC can be a really hard thing to do…
In the end, however, I did decide to move on from that Free Company. Initially I didn’t have much of a desire to join another as by that point I had joined a different static to do savage raiding with and I was kind of content to have some time away from an FC. However, one day out in the wild I was approached by another FC leader and did decide to give it a go. I am in that free company now and have been for some months but in the interim between joining last October and now I did end up changing servers and being part of my statics FC on Spriggan for a month. I then came back with the desire to start my own FC with some friends but it just wasn’t really the right thing for me to do.
I still have that FC on my Alt so I do get to learn how to do FC workshop stuff and still have everything set up so if we decided to give it another go in the future we could do. However I ended up returning to the Free Company I am part of now and an officer in so I have a level of responsibility and do get to join in and put on my own events.
…But I hope I’ve made some lifelong friends
There are people I speak to on a very regular basis and feel I’ve got to know well. As someone that was incredibly nervous about the social aspect when it came to playing FFXIV I’m glad I have tried to make friends. What may have started as helping out over time became gradually getting to know others better and in some cases has given me a chance to find other games through recommendations. It’s been fun just hanging out in game and showing off glamour to each other, it’s been nice to just have a chat amongst the content.
So what now?
I remember the launch up towards Endwalker really fondly and reading about everyone’s theories and excitement gave me a real buzz as a first time experiencing an expansion release. With FFXIV Dawntrail now being confirmed as releasing in Summer 2024 I do feel like it would be good tidy up a few things and step back a little so I can come back into the expansion feeling a lot less burned out. I wasn’t expecting such an emotional ride both in terms of gameplay and friendships. I wasn’t really expecting any form of personal development either which probably came alongside my Autism and ADHD diagnosis alongside the friends I’ve made who have been there for me.
So for now I’m going to step back from doing savage raiding and focus on the Endwalker extremes, a little bit of older relic farming and finally getting my Master Culinarian achievement.
Final Fantasy XIV is an online MMO available on PC and Playstation. It’s been a year since I started the game and I wanted to take the chance to reflect on some of my memories since I began.
My current FFXIV PSN playtime is 1,815 hours.
This time last year after having a PS5 for around six weeks I decided to try and give Final Fantasy 14 a try. I didn’t know what to expect other than the fact it was an MMO so there would be other players but being a fan of other final fantasy games it was one I had considered trying. I believe I purchased a multipack of all the expansions up to Shadowbringers for around £50 which included a 30 day free trial and then the subscription would be £8.99 per month. After the free trial ended I decided to preorder the next expansion, Endwalker, which was at the time due to come out in November 2021.
Avalon Lefae – My Current Favourite Machinist Glam – my chosen DPS role
Starting Jobs in FFXIV
I created my character, Avalon Lefae, as a female Au’Ra and started my game as an Arcanist as magic user has been my go to in video games. I remember googling ‘Can FFXIV be played solo’ and found that most of the game could be and everything was going fine up until my first dungeon. I’d spent all this time doing the MSQ hitting things with my book until I realised that wasn’t actually the way you should attack things and running around with my little Carbuncle murdering ladybirds only to be faced with my first obstacle. DPS queue times. Another google told me doing the job as a ‘Tank’ or a ‘Healer’ would speed things up. I knew a ‘tank’ character was one with high defence but I didn’t really know the expectations of ‘Tank’ players. I did however feel incredibly intimidated of the prospect of trying to keep everyone alive in a dungeon of players I didn’t know so I instead decided to try the class Marauderer.
After finally levelling it up enough I was able to go in my first dungeon and I had no idea what I was doing or what was expected of me. It was not good. I was constantly turning my stance on and off thinking it was an attack, I didn’t know about facing enemies away and I just made many, many mistakes. If you had told me last summer I would be progressing the current Savage raid tier as a tank I would have laughed and laughed in shock. There was however a lovely group of players that helped explain things to me my first time doing Aurum Vale which made the world of difference. I ensured my job stone was equipped as a Warrior, I kept stance on in dungeons and I was able to make my way through boss fights.
Avalon in her current WAR glam
I remember getting to Shadowbringers and really struggling as a tank still which really stopped my enjoyment of the game but it was the only job I had levelled. I originally changed jobs again and started levelling Black Mage and did end up getting it to level 61 but I was still so far from the MSQ stories where my Warrior was, I think, level 77. I became super disheartened and actually, in the end, I decided to buy a ‘job skip’ for a DPS role so that I could get closer to the point I was at in the MSQ and continue playing. For some reason I went with Machinist. I didn’t know much about it other than it had guns and I was like yep, this is the job for me. As I job skipped it took me to level 70 and with a week or so of roulettes I eventually got myself to the same level as my Warrior and was able to continue with the rest of the story.
A Thank you to my FC Solheim
I loved the story for FFXIV but what really made me love this game is joining the FC I am now, I hope to think, a valued member of. I was invited randomly at low level when wondering around La Noscea during my time playing A Realm Reborn. I remember seeing a whole host of ‘Welcome’s in the chat box appear but I didn’t know how to select the box and type. In fact the first time I did it was purely by accident and I remember saying that I had only just worked out how to type as I was on console. I still kept mostly to myself but occassionally joined in with content with others and then joined the FC discord server after asking my daughter to show me how to use it and set up my in server nickname as my ingame name.
I remember the first time I joined on voice chat was for a quick session doing the Wonderous Tales sticker book where the leader of the FC was talking through how to complete it. It was an hour or so of fun and chatting to others which I was pretty nervous about at first but thankfully everyone was nice and approachable. Over the summer I joined in with a few mount farms for others which was fun but the real turning point in how I interacted with everyone and how I got better at the game was in the Autumn. The FC were running regular events to farm the dragon mounts from the Shadowbringers extreme trials and had got to Emerald Weapon. I was nervous but finally had it unlocked and a Machinist at the right level and ilevel so I signed up to join and it was incredibly stressful.
Playing with FC members and doing fun challenges like a Min iLevel run of Cape Westwind before the changes has been so much fun
Becoming Avalon 2.0
I know my damage wasn’t really high enough compared to others and I was struggling a lot with positioning. In fact at that point I mostly played the game with the camera over my shoulder as I didn’t know how to zoom out. It wasn’t until that weapon fight that another console user told me which buttons to press and finally I could see the entire screen. It was the first time clearing a hard extreme trial and I ended up getting a mount drop too which was very cool. I then felt a little more confident to sign up with other FC events and put myself down for the next fight which was Diamond Weapon and it was horrible. We didn’t get one clear. I was so, so disheartened. I felt like I’d let everyone down because I just wasn’t good enough to be doing harder content. I stopped signing up for events and I actually didn’t log on very much for the following week. I didn’t really engage with anyone at all.
However, after a week I signed up for the next trial, The Seat of Sacrifice, and it completely changed how I played the game. Firstly because one of the other members of the team offered to show me how to play the game as a Machinist and gave me tips on improving my rotation, thus improving my damage. And as another team member said once “after that we got Avalon 2.0” and that lead me to getting all of my dragon mounts and then getting the confidence to pick Warrior back up and start tanking again.
Making fun glams is so much fun in FFXIV and I’ve collected so many glamour pieces now and changed my characters appearance a little along the way
Endwalker Expansion
The release of Endwalker was equally exciting for everyone and I remember logging in that day and getting straight into the MSQ. It was great experiencing this with the FC and seeing everyone’s reactions as they progressed. It was a lot of fun joining in for the first ex trials with the expansion with everyone and then the raids when they dropped. However, one of the biggest turning points for me was attempting the savage version of the newest raids which I am still trying to progress through now. We’ve had some set backs and changes and where I started the raids as a DPS I’ve now moved over to being the Off Tank during the raids which is a new way of doing the fights and things I’ve had to learn again.
I main Gun in FFXIV – just need to master and level Sage to have all three ‘gun’ jobs at max level
The social side of the game is something I didn’t expect to enjoy but I’ve now gained what I hope are long term friends that I spend a few nights each week raiding with. We do casual content during the day like farming fates or helping with dungeons, we get together for the new alliance raid to pick up glamour pieces and do treasure map runs for money and to do something chilled out and casual. Listening to other peoples theories and take on the lore of the game is always super interesting too and has made me look into things differently. It’s lovely having my ‘video game’ people too.
Getting Married in FFXIV
I couldn’t do this piece without mentioning my ingame wife who introduced me to more of the social side of gaming like going to parties and nightclubs in game, the stress of buying and decorating a house and arranging our very own wedding. It has been so lovely making such a good friend to do content with and learn raids and fights together. We wanted to get married because you got a mount for it and it gave you a chance to have a fun evening with friends which we did and then proceeded to do the treasure maps in our wedding outfits. It was a lot of fun.
My in game wife and I hanging out by our Limsa rock
Levelling Other Jobs
I am now, I’d like to think, a much better and more confident player. I’ve got a max level job in each category which I didn’t think would happen. I levelled all of my tanks and found a new favourite in Gunbreaker. I even levelled a healer, properly, by doing content and dungeons and can, semi confidently play Astrologian. I still love playing as a ranged DPS and with always love playing Machinist. I’ve also levelled all my crafters and gatherers, bar fisher which has been on level 87 since December. I had a lot of fun playing the new job Reaper which has become my chosen Melee DPS job. I’ve also got a few other jobs to 80 so that I can use them to do the new Beast Tribe quests when they are released in patch 6.15 – Bard, Red Mage and Dragoon.
I’ve also changed race for a little bit to Lalafell. I fully intend to go back to Avalon the Au’Ra but for now I’m happy playing as Lalavalon and will stay as a smol character until I’ve got my clear on P3S. She is super cute, I’m sure you’ll agree.
Lalavalon sipping tea serenely on the extreme raid progression bench in the Lavender Beds just outside our FC home
