Friday Fantasy Alpha! - Logs from Eorzea Entry II
The day for me started around 1am when I realized oh no, I missed a test day. DAMNIT, I said. Then realized HEY! IT'S THURSDAY! I didn't miss the extended test! YAY!!! I finally log in, character selection is kind of laggy but not as bad as usual. Come into the world of Eorzea, and omg! There is no lag. They fixed something in 1 day time, completely blown away I speak to the first person I see, which by chance stopped right next to me when I spawned. I said Hey! And she responded Hi ^^!
We ended up grouping together along with a RoeGalkan(lol) for most of the day. Got lots of levequests done as well as learned much more about job changing, levequests/partying. Which, coincidentally, are the topics of todays logs.
Job Changing – No more running home to change job and resurrect your failtank when you don't have the level requirement or a proper healer with raise.
It is as simple and clean as opening the Menu>Status and Equipment(I think)> and swap weapons. Instantly you transform from a BLM to a MNK, or a DRG, or whatever you want! Now most of you may have heard this before, but here is where the really nifty part comes in. You have your normal rank as a character, then your sub rank of whatever class specified by the weapon. Your personal Stats, such as AGI, STR, MND, don't change with your class. They stay the same, so spend your points wisely(topic for a later date). One of my party members changed mid fight to cure us, as I was taking too much damage for my Conjurer self and in fact almost died if it wasn't for her. Depending on what skills you use, will determine your growth in that particular subrank. Most of the day I was a Conjurer, but I did dip my fingers in Pugilist a bit. That was REALLY fun, especially since I could do it might fight, mid levequest. Running out of MP, and not having any pots to refresh that was a problem, so to resolve it, I switched to Pugilist. P-P-P-POW! I was right-hookin' those small furry animals into next week.
LeveQuests – Finally a way to make some gil and get some minor gear by the horrible death of millions of little critters.
A LeveQuest is a subcatagory of something called BattleCraft. Basically, you go to the Adventuring guild, pick up some quests, and off you go! Kind of like in FFXII with the Daily monster hunt thing, I forget what it was called. FFXII was a disappointment for me, but I still got the Collectors Edition and plan to play it some day for longer than a week. Anyways, the quests are based off your Main Rank. You start at 0~, so you get some easy peasy quests. Kill 6 rats, kill 6 beetles, whatever. The point in the matter is, that it is fun when partying. You all have your own levequests, but you can share with your team members if they don't have it. So they get a reward too if they have the levequest active. The main point of sharing, is so you can choose a higher difficulty of said quest, and go together to gain XP, Gil, and party fun. When activating your levequest, you get to choose the difficulty of the monsters for that particular quest. Solo(1Star), Band(2Star), Party(3Star), Troop(4Stars), and Legion(5Stars). I seem to remember a sixth option but I don't recall the name now, so I will have to come back and put it in later when I get another test date.
When using the levequests, on your minimap/compass(top right of the screen but moveable), will highlight spots across the map showing you were the monsters for your particular levequests have spawned.
Sometimes, when you are too far away, it will have an arrow pointing in the direction you should be going, on the minimap. That little function is helpful as Eorzea is huge, and the mobs tend to spawn somewhat far apart from other spawn points. No, it doesn't DIRECTLY point it out to you, it gives you a sphere of gold where it could be and you still must hunt it down. 
On the flipside of things, there is also something called FieldCraft, which is basically your catchall for all forms of crafting. Now I haven't tried this yet myself, but I plan to in a test or two. What I can tell you is that it is the same with the tools as is for classes such as Pugilist and Marauder. You remove your weapon, and swap in your Pickaxe or Hatchet. Instantly, you have a new subrank. Instead of killing monsters, you go out by taking mining quests or what have you, and get yourself some ores. As mentioned earlier, I plan to do this soon, so be on watch with the on coming blogposts.
As far as an update concerning my opinion of when the Alpha 1 test will be done. It's still too soon to tell. What I can say is that this is the first of many extended tests I foresee. Mostly because the server stability, which has improved in leaps and bounds. As soon as I step a few feet away from Camp Bearded Rock(First camp you go to for levequesting), you're lag free. Also it seems they implemented some kind of a tunnel vision type of thing? You get a sort of sphere that you don't notice unless you really try of what is being rendered in real time. As you move forward or turn, outside that sphere, you can see it going from standard texture to oh WOW that is gorgeous textures. That seems to have helped with rendering every bit of everything around you, which has decreased server load as well. A nifty little code they put in a couple tests back, actually force NPC's(including mobs) to stay in plain sight, even if PC's haven't loaded yet, and is very helpful in crowded area's. More and more they will be testing twice a week, then 3 times, then Beta. Forget Alpha 2, lets go straight to Beta and launch the other 2 Nations!
With that, this is Wicked, signing off from Eorzea. See you next week!
p.s. I do have video, but until I figure out how to 'edit' it properly, you won't be seeing it. If you'd like to help, drop me a line at Wickedamu42@gmail.com
p.s. I do have video, but until I figure out how to 'edit' it properly, you won't be seeing it. If you'd like to help, drop me a line at Wickedamu42@gmail.com
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Nice info so far.
One thing, though. You said you can "switch weapons/classes mid-fight". So that means you can change even if you engaged the enemy? Sounds a bit odd...
Also, how would armour work in that case? If armour has requirements depending on your job level, does that mean switching to another job that doesn't meet the requirements unequips all your items? Meaning you'd have to replace your entire wardrobe to switch jobs. :x
Very good questions!
No, you would have to disengage, take a few hits if you're being hit, switch weapons which hopefully you've hotkeyed, and then resume fighting. Also you must not be in battle stance, which is basically having the weapon at the ready. All in all it takes about 20 seconds with a hotkey switch.
Armor is variable, there are pieces which are based off Rank only, Sub rank, and Rank/SubRank combined. On the armor itself, it states what class can wear that armor, and you must be wearing said weapon/Class to put the armor on. Yes this can be an issue, but from what I recall they will be making a full gear swap option so you CAN do all that in one blink. I remember hearing about that before even Alpha was released. I'll look into it further this coming week, but I have not seen it in Alpha myself. I suspect that they will be adding it later if anything or during Beta since its not a root game feature. It screams add-on.
Thank you for your questions and I look forward to more :D