The much anticipated patch 3.4 had finally dropped and boy there are really a lot happening in this patch. So far I have only taken advantage of a few things but I couldn’t wait to share my initial thoughts for the patch.
First up is the main story quest. With the close of the Heavensward Dragonsong War storyline it is back to the Ascians and the Warriors of Darkness (snooze). I might be too quickly to judge but I think they did make it a bit more interesting that the main quest is now in some way tied to the Binding Coil of Bahamut (yes, whether you finished the Binding Coil of Bahamut will affect your story here). So I would expect the Coil scene to be lit up a bit again, and also time to farm those coil outfit crafting materials.
Unsurprisingly there are two new dungeons one with the story (not going to mention anything about this to avoid spoilers) and the other in the form of The Great Gubal Library (Hard). The Great Gubal Library has always been my favourite in the original Heavensward expansion but I was a little bit surprised that this fan favourite dungeon got a make-over so soon. Luckily for me the dungeon did not disappoint and I quite enjoyed my experience running through it the first time. I particularly like the name of the quest that unlocks the dungeon – Let me Gubal that for you. And also the mentioning of an upcoming Final Fantasy XIV publication within the quest itself is an ingenious product placement.
The Alexander storyline is also coming to an end with patch 3.4. In this patch we can finally take a look closely at this unique elder primal and understand its relationship with the world of Eorzea. As usual as soon as you finished the normal mode you can unlock the high end raid Savage mode. It seems that Square Enix had really toned down the difficulty or changed their Savage mode design this time round with the Savage mode being cleared quite quickly already. Alexander Savage was notorious for breaking a lot of raid groups leading to the dying down of the high end raid scene. Looks like Yoshida-P is determined to get these players back with the Creator Savage mode. Judging from the normal mode fights, the Creator section of Alexander is purely mechanics heavy. Also from a friend I understood that the damage per second (DPS) check is not as demanding as the previous two sections. Looks like the high end raid scene could be re-ignited again with Creator Savage.
The other new fight is from the Warring Triad storyline with Sophia the Goddess as the new elder primal after the exhilarating Sephiort. For me the fight initially looks tricky but once you understood the mechanics it was quite straight forward. After I cleared it for the first time I ran into is again in Duty Roulette Trial but this time round I did not have any difficulty staying alive at all. The Extreme mode of this fight is similar but added a few more mechanics that mixed up the patterns, making it a bit harder to manage for pug groups initially but once everyone has a bit of experience it will not be an issue to clear.
On top of that we have the more light hearted storylines with Hildibrand and Scholasticate, which I personally have not done. I did the Hildibrand quests in one burst back in the A Realm Reborn era so I didn’t need to wait for patches story bit by bit. So I intended to do so again with this one.
One of the things I did do was purchasing an investment apartment on my own hoping to sell it at a profit later. However, from what I was told by my Free Company friends, Square Enix will increase the number of apartments when required to. So it seems my investment plans have fallen apart before they even came together.
The other item I have unlocked quickly was the Wondrous Tails that requires you to accomplish certain tasks to unlock goodies related to the completion of those tasks. I found it quite a good way to actually get users to go back to earlier contents so new players can get help from experienced players. Square Enix has already implemented the mentoring system, which I think is quite good, but with Wondrous Tails I hope the queue time for new players for older contents can be significantly shortened, encouraging new players to soldier on, even when they are playing on their won.
In this patch they also implemented the Squadron system with the Grand Company, which in my opinion is quite an overdue addition to the Grand Company system. The system seems to work like the retainer system but in a Grand Company way. So far apart from the initial three recruits that came with the unlocking of the system, I have failed to attract any new recruits to my enlistment papers, so really can’t tell much. But I look forward to explore this further.
So far from the contents that I have touched on in the last two days, I like this patch a lot and hopefully this patch will draw back a number of players who went on leave. I do think this patch has strong potential to draw back high end raid players who had left the game because of the super high difficult level inflicted by the previous two Savage raids. If any player is thinking of coming back to the game, this could be a good time.
