I’ll be upfront in saying I’ve barely scratched the surface of Patch 3.2. My main character is still working on finishing some pre-3.1 questlines, so I’ve yet to see the bleeding edge of content.
That said, however, Patch 3.2 appears to be bringing a lot of people like myself back into the game – people who love Final Fantasy but grew tired of or weren’t particularly fond of Patch 3.1’s content, such as the Lord of Verminion or the Diadem, which I’ve called problematic in the past.
If you want to know why it’s bringing folks old and new into Eorzea, I’d have to say it’s the quality of life changes that came with the patch.
The Hall of the Novice
Despite being a long-time player, I’ve never really healed in this game because I didn’t know what healing classes entailed. Needless to say, the Hall of the Novice is perhaps the friendliest and most rewarding addition to teach people about the roles they’ve chosen to play.
New players who are going through the “It’s Probably Pirates” quest are also going to be instructed to visit the Hall of the Novice. In it, players can undertake a series of training exercises to better understand tanking, DPS, and healing roles. Established Players can also accept the quest near the inns of the respective cities by talking a “The Smith” NPC and undertaking the quests remotely.
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The best part is that after completing 7 exercises, you are granted a special ring that increases experience gain by 30% when you are level 30 and below, which make certain parts of the slog through multiple classes so much more bearable.
Mentorship is a mixed bag
If you’ve seen people with a crown beside their name, it’s because they’ve supposedly played enough FFXIV to know the ins and outs of it, and are willing to mentor other people so those can become better and more productive.
Sadly, depending on the server it’s starting to become a status symbol rather than a badge of helpfulness. Some people leave the badge on despite not wanting to actually help people out. There are also reports that the mentorship chat channel can sometimes be filled with mentors and new players… except the new players appear to be gilsellers rather than people who are really looking for help.
I think Square Enix will want to tweak this further moving forward, but as it stands, it’s a mixed bag that has a lot of potential usefulness.
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The Vath Beast Tribe Quests
I enjoy these side trips to do the beast tribe dailies because of the rewards and the storylines of the various tribes. To wit, I’m enjoying the Vath storyline just as much as I did the Ixali beast tribe quests.
The story begins with an unnamed Vath who has yet to find his place in the Vath tribe, and in shadowing you, he finds his purpose and wants to become an adventurer (no arrows to the knee for this guy) and calls himself Deftarm.
As a result, the Vath questline corresponds to the creation of a Vath adventurer’s guild outpost where players can take on odd jobs and eventually learn more about the future of the Vath as they try to settle and become independent from the Gnath Onemind.
Like the vanu Vanu beast tribe quests, the challenges for the Vath quests scale to adventurer levels, so you’ll be enjoying a smooth ride and grabbing some sweet experience as you level.
As you can see, I’ve only scratched the surface of the 3.2 patch, as I’ve yet to get into all the new dungeons and whatnot. Rest assured that I’ll be doing my best to get up to speed, and I’ll also be crowdsourcing opinions regarding patch 3.2’s dungeon and trial content.
If you have your own opinions on Patch 3.2, feel free to note them below in the comments. I’ll be reading through all of them and seeing if they can be published for the next column! Cheers!
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