The Adventures Of Pirotess: All Saints' Wake Halloween Celebration

Halloween is my favorite day of the year so naturally I was excited to check out the Halloween event in Final Fantasy XIV. The event called All Saints' Wake is a lot of fun for everyone and celebrates everything Halloween. All the towns in Eorzea and the Free Company neighborhoods are colorfully decorated for the event and it's great just to walk around town and see all the fantastic Halloween decorations.

The town of Gridania decorated for Halloween.

To start the event quest you need to be at least level 15 and must have completed the main story quest It's Probably Pirates. When you meet those requirements, you can travel to the town of Gridania and talk to the NPC quest giver, the Adventurer Guild Investigator at the coordinates X:10.4 Y: 8.4 and start your fun Halloween adventure. The quest is called, An Orthadian Wolfman In Gridania. You then talk to an NPC named Soga. After that, you then talk to an NPC named Impresario. Speak with Impresario a second time and this leads you to the quest The Adventurer Who Cried Wolfman. Then you go into your inventory and use the werewolf item. This gives you all the pieces for the werewolf costume which you need to equip and yes, you get to keep it forever. 

Grr! Pirotess in werewolf costume.

After you have your werewolf costume equipped, you speak with Impresario again and then speak with Soga to get the fun started. 

Talking to Impresario.

You now get to run around town and say, "GRRR!" in say chat to three specified people. Once this is done, you speak to Soga and then speak to Impresario to complete this quest. After that, you talk to the Adventurer Guild Investigator again to start the quest Mind Their Manor. When you speak to the Uncanny Illusionist and the Harlequin Guide, this starts the seasonal dungeon instance. You will get matched with others doing the event so you have a full party of four people. 

Pirotess is ready for the seasonal dungeon. 

The dungeon itself will feel familiar because it's pretty similar to the Haukke Manor dungeon except for the event it's called the Haunted Manor. Its atmosphere is spooky fun with the area being decorated for Halloween. In the upper right of your status bar you will see a sanity meter. This is where the teamwork begins. You must be careful and sneak around the monsters in the manor and not be seen. When your sanity meter drops to zero you fail the mission, so show off your stealth skills. 

Entering the Haunted Manor.

If one of the monsters sees you, your sanity meter drops and you get turned into a pumpkin for a couple of seconds. The objectives are randomized and you must complete four of them within the time limit. For example, there is one objective where you need to run around and search every room for a clue as to what numbers unlock a pumpkin safe. It's important to work together with your team so in the case with the safe, you have to call out the number you find: The first number is... in party chat in order to reach the goal and complete the tasks successfully together. 

Unlocking the pumpkin safe with the right numbers is one task.

When you are successful you receive three pumpkin cookies from a jack o' lantern chest at the end which can be traded for items from the NPC event vendor, the Alluring Peddler. 

Victory comes in pumpkin cookies!

There are six Saints' Wake items you can trade pumpkin cookies for to the vendor. Those items are: Magicked prism, ghost candlestand, pumpkin tower, pumpkin pie set, pumpkin pudding set, and All Saints' advertisement. 

All the items you can get from the vendor. 

I had so much fun doing this event because it has everything Halloween which I love and I had a blast doing it with my friends. That's one of the terrific things about the events in Final Fantasy XIV. It celebrates the importance of friendship and enjoying time with your friends. All Saints' Wake is a good time celebrating Halloween and a nice break from adventuring. Check it out with your friends and enjoy all the fun to be had. See you at the next adventure everyone!

Happy Halloween!

*Final Fantasy XIV is playable on the following platforms: PC and Playstation 4

The Adventures Of Pirotess: Patch 4.1 Brings Some New Things

Final Fantasy XIV patch 4.1 The Legend Returns arrived with some new things in the game. There is of course more main story content quests which adds a new dungeon, the Drowned City of Skalla. With challenging bosses and interesting areas to explore it's a fun run to do with friends.

Facing a boss  in the Drowned City of Skalla. 

There is also a solo duty that you can do that is part of the main story. It's an interesting development to the story. I do wish the main story content had been a little bit longer, but for what was there it was a lot of fun and I did like seeing more about some characters who were my favorites. 

Solo duty fight in The Legend Returns.

There is also a new raid to do, The Lost City Of Rabanastre which requires 24 people to run it. Honestly, this raid is quite a challenge on your first run because you're learning the mechanics for the different bosses. I did feel a bit frustrated with how much we wiped because there are so many wide area attacks to the point that you have to be constantly moving with no time for a break. It is just a game however, and games are meant to be fun. We kept going and we did successfully complete it. It was definitely an interesting run. 

Getting ready to battle a boss in Rabanastre.

There are new beastmen quests to do also with the Blue Kojin. This is a good way to gain experience points on job classes you're leveling as well as earning extra gil and items. These are fun to do and you can build up your reputation with the beastmen the more you help them. These are daily repeatable quests which comes in handy for level grinding.  

Pirotess helps out the Blue Kojin. 

There was a short Hildebrand quest which to me was disappointing because I love the Hildebrand quests. They're fun as well as funny. While I do understand it's basically setting things up for more Hildebrand quests, I do wish there had been a little more. It was fun however and it was cool to see a few familiar characters from the Hildebrand quests. 

The Hildebrand quest is rather short. 

There are some changes to the game also. With your squadrons in your Grand Company the level cap has been raised to 60 for them. Command missions have been added which means you can run dungeons with your squadron and earn experience points while doing it. There is also a new primal fight with Shinryu Extreme for those looking for a challenge. People are also able to buy plots in Shirogane now. Naturally the first day plots became available, it was quite the free for all. They have since stated that they will be adding more plots so people have a chance to buy a house in the new area. 

One of the things they changed which I'm really liking is the fact that you can now have your chocobo and your minion out at the same time. There is also a timer showing how much time your chocobo has to be out with you. This is definitely a nice change. With all these new things, there's a lot to see and do. It's a lot of fun, but even more so with friends. See you at the next adventure everyone!

Pirotess with her chocobo and a minion. 

*Final Fantasy XIV is available to play on the following platforms: PC and Playstation 4

The Adventures Of Pirotess: Botanist Helps With Many Crafting Jobs

As many remember in the last Adventures of Pirotess post, I tried out crafting with culinarian and found that I liked it. One of the big things for crafting of course is having the necessary materials to craft. This is where the gathering job of botanist comes in handy. Botanists can harvest a variety of resources from plants and trees. Since I use fire and water shards for culinarian, I do a lot of gathering for those in the various areas where they can be found. I also find a lot of ingredients I need in the different places such as sun lemons from trees or button mushrooms from fern plants.

The Botanist's Guild can be found in Gridania and you can join it by talking to the receptionist in the guild when you're level 10 or higher on another job class. You get a primary tool which is a hatchet for logging and a secondary tool which is a scythe for harvesting from vegetation. You have a harvesting and logging journal that gives you a list of things for you to harvest so that you get credit and experience points for them. 

Botanist also comes with some abilities that help you know where to search for things. For example, the ability triangulate activates automatically on botanist and allows you to survey the land so that you can find mature trees and lush vegetation. Stealth is a handy ability that allows you to conceal yourself from enemies. It reduces your movement speed, but it's a trade off to not be a tasty snack for nearby enemies.

There are two types of nodes you can gather from and they're shown on your map as two different colored feathers. We'll start with blue feathers first. Blue feathers on your mini map represent lush vegetation and for this you need your secondary tool. 

Mini map in the top right corner showing the blue feather icons for lush vegetation.

When you start harvesting, a list of items that you can gather from the node will appear and you can choose which one you wish to harvest. You can use the ability Field Mastery to increase the success rate of obtaining items. As you level, you get higher leveled Field Mastery abilities as well as a better luck rate.

List of items that can be gathered from the vegetation node.

For logging, the icons on the mini map are a different color. These are yellow feathers representing mature trees that you can harvest resources from. Just as with the vegetation, when you start harvesting an item list will pop up showing you what can be harvested from the tree and you can choose which item you wish to gather. 

Top right mini map showing yellow feather icons for mature trees.

I like botanist because it is incredibly useful. While it's not the most exciting job, it helps with many crafting jobs. For my culinarian it's been great to be able to gather the shards and ingredients I need because that is less money that I'm spending on the market boards for items. This is also true for a couple of other crafting jobs I started doing. Culinarian also helps my botanist job because I can craft meals that increase not only my experience points, but also my gathering and luck rate. That's quite handy to have when I need to replenish crafting items. 

It's also helped our resident Free Company gardener, Sekilini. I often find a lot of elemental light seeds such as firelight or waterlight which become fire and water shards something we need because of all the crafters in our Free Company. As I said before, botanist is quite useful. Usually, I pick a quiet night to do it and just chat with my friends in the game or watch a movie while I'm gathering. It makes the time go by a lot faster and before I know it, I have resupplied all the things I need for crafting successfully. That's a pretty good deal all around. See you at the next adventure everyone!

No doubt about it, botanist helps a lot. 

*Final Fantasy XIV is playable on the following platforms: PC and Playstation4