I recently returned to Final Fantasy XIV’s Eorzea after a few months of running around playing other games and leveling my Writing tradeskill in-real life. The one thing I really wanted to play around with in FFXIV – Personal Housing – hadn’t arrived yet, and I figured I could support some other titles for a little bit..
Of course, personal housing isn’t here yet, but it will be soon enough. The impending arrival of the Defenders of Eorzea patch was a good reason to get reacquainted with my character. I could continue leveling tradeskills, push through more of the story content, and set aside a hefty load of gil for the first round of personal lodging meant for free companies with houses.
To that end, I’d like to welcome back the Final Fantasy XIV column to MMORPG.com by getting everyone up to speed with Patch 2.3: Defenders of Eorzea and some of the additions that have come in since Patch 2.1. With 2.3, we have quite a lot of new activities to enjoy, a fearsome primal to defeat, Moogle and Hildibrand goodness to experience, and personal chambers to decorate with awesome crafted goodies.
The Rundown to Defenders of Eorzea
Before we get to a discussion of 2.3, I thought it might be good to briefly discuss the additions to the game since 2.1 came about. There’s a great Reddit thread made by TimeBoundary on /r/ffxiv that is updated to patch 2.28 and is the basis for this rundown of some of the bigger additions to the game’s featureset that I’ll be explaining.
Here’s are some new things you can now do in the game:
1. Build a Free Company House and kit it out (Patch 2.1 onwards): Assuming you have a few million (not kidding here folks) gil and head a free company, you can actually go ahead and build a house in the residential districts in the home cities. These can be decorated with chairs, beds, and other furniture that you can craft with the various Disciple of the Hand classes or earn as rewards. You can also set up a useful base of operations by hiring vendors (from patch 2.2).
2. Hunt for Treasure (Patch 2.1): Level 40+ nodes drop can drop treasure maps that you can use to find hidden treasure in the world. You’ll need a party to defeat any enemies guarding some types of treasures that come up, so be ready!
3. Befriend the Beast Tribes (Patch 2.1 and 2.2): Beast Tribe daily quests can be undertaken to raise your standing with a particular tribe, as well as earn favor with them to buy mounts or minions. As of 2.2, you can befriend members of the Sylphs, Amalj’aa, Sahuagin, and Kobolds for various rewards.
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4. Undertake Challenges (Patch 2.2) You get a weekly resetting list of activities you can undertake that provide experience, gil, or Grand Company marks. Basically, it further incentivizes doing what you normally do in-game every day of the week with more rewards.
5. Level up your retainers and get them to Venture (Patch 2.2): Doing leves or trading Grand Company marks for Venture coins enables you to commit your retainers (you bank and auctioning buddies) to undertake ventures and level up! Your retainers can be equipped with gear from any class you choose (using a class you’re maxing out is best) and they can be sent out to gather materials or random items from these ventures.
6. Go Sightseeing in Eorzea (Patch 2.28): The Sightseeing Log is a new activity (activated by completing a new quest) that tasks you with solving riddles, going to a particular vista of the world during a particular time of day and weather pattern, and then performing an emote. This adds some flavor to the world as each completed sightseeing log gives you some new lore about the location you visited.
7. Fight new enemies, fight your friends and level up weapons (Patch 2.1 onwards): Each patch introduced a new dungeon or primal you could tackle to earn loot. For instance, new primals include Good King Moogle Mog and Leviathan. You can also fight your friends by undertaking PVP, basically through 4-on-4 arena fights. These activities allow you to earn new gear or upgrade existing gear, so you can take on harder versions of existing fights or new dungeons and further portions of the Binding Coil of Bahamut.
