Final Fantasy XIV - Coming to Terms with Endgame Content

I had a bad first taste of what I thought the endgame would be like when I first ran Castrum Meritorium and the Praetorium, two level 50 dungeons that serve as the capstone to the main story of the FFXIV: ARR base game. They are very cutscene heavy, and the groups I was with both times just "carried" me through the dungeons, basically killing all the bosses without me and just letting me watch all the cutscenes. By the time I was done watching them all, I was the only one left in the instance, along with a Free Company member named Zant, who I appreciated because he helped guide me through when everyone else was several rooms ahead of me (Meritorium in particular is really confusing on your first playthrough, because the party spends a decent amount of time backtracking through areas they've already been to, so you're going in loops thinking "I've already been here. This can't be right!).


I was upset because the game had done such a good job of teaming me up with other players who were around the same level as me for all my Duty Finder situations to that point. I felt like I contributed to every dungeon and boss fight (and as the sole healer for those fights, it'd be hard to argue that I didn't). Then I get to those final dungeons, all the cutscenes are treating me as a member of the fabled Heroes of Light, and in between cutscenes, I'm just running past piles of dead bodies to trigger the next one. It was just this weird anticlimax because everyone else was overgeared and could steamroll everything.


But, having done both dungeons a few times each again through Duty Finder roulette, I'm okay with the game in general. I do like the dungeons, but it's pretty easy to tell that if everyone that were playing them were all fresh level 50s, they'd be a bit of a slog (easily 50 minutes plus each run, if I had to guess, assuming no party wipes). Which would be fine if you could still gain levels there - gaining experience and leveling up is fun, but since you've hit the cap by the time you reach them, it'd be kind of pointless. So I'm actually kind of happy that I'm able to quickly fly through those dungeons now.


The rest of the endgame content is pretty weird, though. The game doesn't do a very good job of telling you what you can do and where to do it. Mor Dhona is obviously the current end of game area for now, which you can tell is the case as soon as you arrive there. When you start running endgame dungeons after you've beaten the main story, you start getting Allagan Tomestones, which are an endgame currency that you spend in Mor Dhona to buy very high level gear for your level 50 class(es). Outside of the Duty Finder roulette, though, the game doesn't tell you where to find these (and the Poetry stones, I still don't know where to reliably get them, as I get 5 of them per roulette, and I need like 375 of them to buy even a ring. I have 45 of them currently). There are treasure maps you can find that will net you some stones, but those seem pretty rare and have to be found using a gathering class. Running the endgame dungeons, which you unlock as you find various NPCs, will yield those stones, but I'm hesitant to run them because they yield like 20 stones, whereas the daily roulettes yield 100 for low level and 120 for "main scenario."


The game also clearly wants you to level crafting/gathering classes, as upgrading your class's ultimate weapon forces you to meld materia during the first endgame quest. You can have someone else do it, of course, but I kind of want to do it myself, so I haven't really upgraded my weapon yet.


I also haven't even run the Crystal Tower yet, though I have unlocked it. I'm waiting for my friend to get to the endgame content for that, though I'm sure he'll get pissed off just like I did about how you have to unlock it. There are two specific FATEs that you have to beat when you get the quest to unlock it, but what sucks is you have to wait for them to spawn and they are deep in high level enemy territory, so it's not really safe to do alone, though I suppose since he's a BLM, he would have an easier time just doing tons of damage to the bosses of those FATEs. It just sucks having to wait for the FATEs to spawn just to advance in endgame content. I'm told there's more of that while upgrading your final weapon, too, which I'm not looking forward to.


Though I have to say, what exposure I have to new endgame dungeons has made me pretty happy. There's a neat dungeon involving Tonberries, those classic Final Fantasy enemies, that I ran for the first time last weekend that was pretty neat (and kind of scary, which is not something that's common for FFXIV, though if you know what a Tonberry is, you know why that dungeon is scary).


There does seem to be a lot of content, though. And with the expansion coming out in a little more than a month, that will continue. Good god, I love this game.