FFXIV Info - Fan Site and Database

Square Enix have been posting a series of articles about the upcoming December update that is designed to add more content to the game for players who have reached the level cap and may have become bored. The content will be in the form of Notorious Monsters (NMs) which were a common feature in FFXI. The creatures that will be added to the game will come in the form of guildleves and free roaming NMs, although we are uncertain of how many of each.

What Square Enix have been revealing is the names of the NMs, some background story on them and what kind of loot will be available after defeating them. Players who successfully defeat them will be rewarded with special items called Allagan runestones which can be traded in for pieces of loot at an NPC. It’s an interesting system and takes the focus off the loot itself at the point of the kill. We don’t yet know whether free roaming NM loot will work in a similar way. Information on these will be available at a later time.

The three NMs announced so far can be seen below. Clicking the source under each will allow you to see the information released about it so far, including the back story and the loot available.

Deadeyes

Source: The Lodestone

Tarbh Uisge

Source: The Lodestone

Zanig’oh

Source: The Lodestone

The large November patch we have all been looking forward to is now live. This brings about changes and improvements to just about every aspect of the game. The majority of the changes are things we had all hoped for or expected, while others are needed balancing changes to certain abilities. There are some adjustments which are sure to disappoint people such as changes to certain crafting tools but we hope this does not affect those crafts too much. The amount of content in the patch is simply too large for us to post all of it on here, but we will provide a link at the bottom of this article. We have picked out the changes that we feel will have the biggest impact on the game or what players will notice the most.

Quests

Several new regional guildleves for Disciples of the Land have been added.
The difficulty setting for certain guildleves can now be lowered after they have been activated.
Leve linking players will now receive experience and skill point bonuses.
The following adjustments have been made to levequest targets:
* Physical/magical accuracy and evasion rates have been lowered.
* Maximum HP has been increasd.
Experience and skill point bonuses are now awarded by behests.

Battle

The amount of skill points required to attain ranks 11 through 31 has been reduced.
The chart below shows the new levelling curve.

The manner in which skill points are awarded through combat has been changed and now operates in the same manner as experience points.
The rank range that allows for bonus skill and experience point within a party has been expanded from ±5 to +5/-10.
Physical and magic accuracy calculations have been adjusted. Attacks are now easier to land and more difficult to resist.
The influence of the VIT attribute on HP and the MND attribute on MP has been adjusted.
New enemy types have been added.

Enemy populations in all areas have been increased and reorganized.

Our comment: The skill point changes will be very welcomed by the players as the random skill point gains were one of the biggest complaints. You will now be awarded a set amount when you kill a monster. You will also be able to party with people up to 10 ranks below you and still get the party bonus, although they will only get the party bonus on members within 5 ranks above them. Many class abilities have been adjusted, including the Thaumaturge skill Punishing Barbs which many felt was over-powered. Not all of the adjustments to classes were negative, it is worth checking them out.

Items

Player inventory capacity has been increased from 80 to 100 slots.
Smallclothes no longer suffer wear, and therefore no longer require repairs.
Stack capacity for the following items has been increased from 99 to 999:
Bronze Arrow, Iron Arrow, Silver Arrow, Fang Arrow, Shell Arrow, White Coral Arrow, Obsidian Arrow, Warped Arrow, Flint Arrow, Blue Coral Arrow, Red Coral Arrow, Bronze Swallowtail Arrow, Iron Swallowtail Arrow.
The following ashkin (undead) no longer drop equipment:
Rotting Corpses, Fallen Soldiers, Fallen Pikemen, Fallen Captains, Fallen Mages, Fallen Wizards, Skeleton Soldiers, Wight Warriors, Wendigo
The number of steps required to initiate synthesis have been reduced.
The effects of each synthesis type (normal, bold, rapid) have been adjusted.
New synthesis recipes have been added.
Several existing recipes have been adjusted.
The number of crystals required for nearly all existing recipes has been reduced by 20%.

Our comment: Archers are going to be very happy with these changes, as will crafters. As well as the increase in inventory capacity, monsters will no longer drop +1 or +2 items. Instead +1 drops will be normal quality drops and +2 drops will be +3 drops. What this means is we will see more NQ and HQ3 items in our loot.

There is a whole other section on the changes to synthese recipes, which I recommend reading here. There are some disappointing changes if you are a goldsmith, armorer or culinarian as some of your tools have lost some attribute points.

Changes to the disciple of land scanning abilities have been made so that they will now only scan areas within their own grade. This means you can no longer search for grade 2 mining/logging/fishing spots with the tier III abilities for example.

System

Reponse time of the user interface (UI) has been improved.
Attributes & Gear has been split into two options on the main menu, Attributes and Gear.
When playing solo, loot now automatically enters a player’s inventory. If a player’s inventory is full, the loot will be placed in the loot list.
A Loot option appears in the Interactions menu whenever one or more items occupy the loot list.
Mousing over gear now displays item details.
Selecting a slot now displays only gear that may be equipped in that slot.
A party invite feature has been added to the Friend List.
Locations of the player and other party members are now displayed on the map in real-time.

Our comment: Many changes have also been made to the chat logs, chat filters and keyboard settings.

Others

The amount of anima required by the Return command has been reduced from 2 to 1.
The amount of anima required by the Teleport command in when traveling to a city-state’s aetheryte plaza has been reduced by half.
By paying a small fee of gil to an aetheryte camp’s gatewarden, players can now register the location as one of their Favored Destinations. Up to three locations can be registered in this way.
Teleportation to a favored aetheryte requires only half the anima of normal teleportation.
The number of inventory slots available to retainers has been increased from 80 to 100.
Retainers can now be made to “model” their wares by equipping items in their bazaars.
Prices will now be displayed next to individual items in retainer and player bazaars.
Bazaar text for Seeking, Selling, Damaged, etc. has been replaced with icons.
The font color for a bazaar item’s quantity and price now changes depending on the item’s status. Items sold in stacks now have parentheses around the stack quantity.
When cycling through targets with the Tab key, priority is now given to those targets located in front of the player.
When engaging multiple enemies, a player now automatically targets the next enemy when one has been defeated.
If a player with no target is targeted by an attack or spell, that player now automatically targets the attacker or caster.
The door to the Adventurers’ Guild in Ul’dah is now always open.

Our comment: As well as these, many bugs have been fixed including the macro problems with +1/2/3 items and the aetheryte gate problem where it would disappear too early after completing a leve quest and returning to camp. There are some known bugs that Square Enix have made note of and will fix in the near future. These are listed below.

Players possessing 100 items may sometimes receive an error message when attempting to exchange items with a retainer, preventing the trade. Should this problem arise, players should reduce their inventory to 99 items before opening trade with the retainer again.
Auto-targeting of engaged enemies after one is defeated may not function correctly.

Our comment: We recommend you just go to the Lodestone and read it all yourself there as we can only tell you so much. Final Fantasy XIV has not seen a patch on this scale since the change from alpha to beta and even that may have been smaller.

Source: The Lodestone