So I was looking at an infographic about eyes (what can I say, I find them interesting after growing up with eyes that are both unusually colored and not willing to let me see more than a few inches in front of my face) and I realized something.
I've never once in my life read or heard anything say that giant squid eyes are anything other than the size of dinner plates.
This is not a unit of measurement!
How do I know that the people who came up with this have the same size plates I do? Plates come in a variety of different sizes. Sometimes I eat off of a small plate because I don't want to use one of the giant plates. When I go out to restaurants, my plate is usually the size of whatever thing they're serving me. Is there a standard size for dinner plates? Because it doesn't seem like it.
And what if dinner plates change size over time, like how when you visit buildings from hundreds of years ago all the doorways are small because everybody was shorter back then? What if people keep getting bigger and we start eating off of bigger plates? Or what if we get so diet-conscious that we make all dinner plates small so that we'll eat less? People will have a very inaccurate view of how big giant squid eyes are.
So I looked it up, and the largest one measured was 27 centimeters (10.63 inches) across.
You're welcome.
Thursday, January 21, 2016
Monday, January 18, 2016
Things I wish FFXIV explained when I first started playing:
1. Inventory: There's an option under Character Configuration -> Control Settings -> Character to expand your inventory interface to show all four bag panels at once with the quest items on a second panel. Way easier than having to click between the four tabs all the time. I don't understand why this isn't the default.
You can right-click any item in your inventory and select "Sort" to have your bag organize itself. You can customize how it sorts things, and there's an option to have this sort items into different bags based on item type (like it might use your first panel for equipment, the second for consumables, the third for other stuff) but I think by default it just lumps them all together and puts all the empty space at the end.
If you're having trouble with bag space, stop hoarding stuff you aren't using right now. The majority of low-level crafting materials (especially niche items dropped from mobs like bat fangs and beastkin blood) can be purchased from the market board for vendor price, so there's no reason to carry them around.
2. Interface: There's a system menu option to rearrange your UI the way you want it. The game does not tell you that you can also resize each element between 70% and 140% by pressing Ctrl-Home to cycle through the sizes.
3. Quest Items: If a quest asks you to use a quest item on a world object, the quest item will be clickable on the quest list on the right, so you can just left-click target the object and click to use the quest item.
If a quest asks you to turn in a quest item or even a regular item, you can right-click on the box in the turn-in window and it'll let you select the item right there. No need to go find it in your bags.
Non-repeatable things like class quests don't care whether you use regular or high-quality items, while levequests and daily Grand Company turnins will give you double EXP for giving a high-quality item. You can turn a high-quality item into a regular item at any time via the right-click menu, useful for those times when a quest wants you to turn in three of something and you've got two regular items and one high-quality one.
4. Retainers: You can buy items from the market board (Auction House) whenever you want, but your ability to sell items is tied to your Retainer, who also acts as your bank. You can have two retainers for free, and that's generally enough as each one can hold seven bag panels for a total of 175 item slots. These can be unlocked after completing the level 17 main story quest. When your retainer sells items for you, they hold on to the gil they earn, and you have to collect it from them.
Later on, your retainers can start leveling in a combat or gathering class, and you can upgrade their equipment and send them on missions to get items for you. Be aware that your retainers cannot surpass your level in a particular class, so make sure you set them as a class you intend to level to 60. Switching their class starts them over at level 1, so it can be pretty time-consuming. Also, since your retainer is not a member of a Grand Company, they cannot equip Grand Company items.
5. Teleporting: If you sell things on the market board regularly as you level up (especially materia from disenchanting your gear), it's not unusual to have millions of gil by the time you're max level (I'm sitting at 8.5 right now and I have no idea what to spend it on besides collecting minipets). Teleports might as well be free compared to how much you're earning, so use them whenever it'd be more convenient. Chocobo porters exist to cheaply run you to places that don't have aetherytes in them, but don't really go faster than your own mount (it's just a convenience so you can go do something else while the game runs you there).
You can also set one location (probably a city, I choose Gridania because it doesn't have any confusing vertical levels) as your Home to "hearth" back to it every 30 minutes. Three additional locations can be set as Favored to get a discount on teleporting to them, generally just pick whatever places your quests send you to often.
6. Dungeons: They have a timer, but it only exists so that people won't bash their heads against the same thing for hours when they're obviously failing at it. Dungeons are typically completed in about 30 minutes, more like 10 minutes for single-boss trials.
Also, you're only able to roll Need on something if your current class can equip it, so people typically expect others to roll Need whenever they can. Feel free to roll Need on any pets or mounts or crafting materials that drop if you want them, because anyone else who wants them will be doing the same.
As is the case in any other MMO, tank queues are nearly instant, healer queues take a bit longer, and dps players can be waiting for quite some time. If you're a dps, try to make friends with tanks and queue together, but this won't help with the daily dungeon roulettes that typically require you to queue by yourself.
7. Side Quest Unlocks: A wide variety of game features are unlocked via side quests that become available after completing certain main story quests:
You can right-click any item in your inventory and select "Sort" to have your bag organize itself. You can customize how it sorts things, and there's an option to have this sort items into different bags based on item type (like it might use your first panel for equipment, the second for consumables, the third for other stuff) but I think by default it just lumps them all together and puts all the empty space at the end.
If you're having trouble with bag space, stop hoarding stuff you aren't using right now. The majority of low-level crafting materials (especially niche items dropped from mobs like bat fangs and beastkin blood) can be purchased from the market board for vendor price, so there's no reason to carry them around.
2. Interface: There's a system menu option to rearrange your UI the way you want it. The game does not tell you that you can also resize each element between 70% and 140% by pressing Ctrl-Home to cycle through the sizes.
3. Quest Items: If a quest asks you to use a quest item on a world object, the quest item will be clickable on the quest list on the right, so you can just left-click target the object and click to use the quest item.
If a quest asks you to turn in a quest item or even a regular item, you can right-click on the box in the turn-in window and it'll let you select the item right there. No need to go find it in your bags.
Non-repeatable things like class quests don't care whether you use regular or high-quality items, while levequests and daily Grand Company turnins will give you double EXP for giving a high-quality item. You can turn a high-quality item into a regular item at any time via the right-click menu, useful for those times when a quest wants you to turn in three of something and you've got two regular items and one high-quality one.
4. Retainers: You can buy items from the market board (Auction House) whenever you want, but your ability to sell items is tied to your Retainer, who also acts as your bank. You can have two retainers for free, and that's generally enough as each one can hold seven bag panels for a total of 175 item slots. These can be unlocked after completing the level 17 main story quest. When your retainer sells items for you, they hold on to the gil they earn, and you have to collect it from them.
Later on, your retainers can start leveling in a combat or gathering class, and you can upgrade their equipment and send them on missions to get items for you. Be aware that your retainers cannot surpass your level in a particular class, so make sure you set them as a class you intend to level to 60. Switching their class starts them over at level 1, so it can be pretty time-consuming. Also, since your retainer is not a member of a Grand Company, they cannot equip Grand Company items.
5. Teleporting: If you sell things on the market board regularly as you level up (especially materia from disenchanting your gear), it's not unusual to have millions of gil by the time you're max level (I'm sitting at 8.5 right now and I have no idea what to spend it on besides collecting minipets). Teleports might as well be free compared to how much you're earning, so use them whenever it'd be more convenient. Chocobo porters exist to cheaply run you to places that don't have aetherytes in them, but don't really go faster than your own mount (it's just a convenience so you can go do something else while the game runs you there).
You can also set one location (probably a city, I choose Gridania because it doesn't have any confusing vertical levels) as your Home to "hearth" back to it every 30 minutes. Three additional locations can be set as Favored to get a discount on teleporting to them, generally just pick whatever places your quests send you to often.
6. Dungeons: They have a timer, but it only exists so that people won't bash their heads against the same thing for hours when they're obviously failing at it. Dungeons are typically completed in about 30 minutes, more like 10 minutes for single-boss trials.
Also, you're only able to roll Need on something if your current class can equip it, so people typically expect others to roll Need whenever they can. Feel free to roll Need on any pets or mounts or crafting materials that drop if you want them, because anyone else who wants them will be doing the same.
As is the case in any other MMO, tank queues are nearly instant, healer queues take a bit longer, and dps players can be waiting for quite some time. If you're a dps, try to make friends with tanks and queue together, but this won't help with the daily dungeon roulettes that typically require you to queue by yourself.
7. Side Quest Unlocks: A wide variety of game features are unlocked via side quests that become available after completing certain main story quests:
- Retainers
- Ability to dye most armor, and later to transmog your armor to change its appearance entirely
- Guildhests
- Aesthetician (barber who lets you change hair and other temporary customizations like face paint and au'ra limbal rings)
- Materia (You can turn equipment into materia, attach materia to equipment that has slots in it, and also combine materia together to get higher-level materia)
- Chocobo mount and later the ability to summon it as a combat companion
- PvP arenas/battlegrounds
- Gold Saucer
- Certain emotes, especially dances
- MANY optional dungeons
- Even more stuff: Full List
8. Crafting and Gathering: These are really fun, and can earn you some serious gil (even while leveling) but can be really time-consuming and take your focus away from the main story. If you're serious about crafting, the cross-class skill system makes it so that you really have to level all of them to be effective, and this can quickly lead to burnout.
Other players are usually happy to craft leveling gear for a newbie (I had someone whisper me out of nowhere and give me a full set of high-quality gear when I was level ~15), and you'll have way more money to put towards gathering/crafting once you're max level anyway.
9. Jobs: Even focusing on one class (for example, Thaumaturge), you will need to get one secondary class to at least 15 (in this case, Archer) to unlock your Job (in this case, Black Mage). The game doesn't do a great job of telling you what class this is, so this page has a handy table. While it was possible to still be effective as a class when level 50 was the max level (you lost some job-specific skills, but you had the freedom to take cross-class skills from anywhere, while jobs were limited to two specific classes), jobs are now mandatory since you get zero new skills from your base class past level 50.
Depending on your job, your tertiary class probably has a really useful ability around 26 that you'll want to level that class to get eventually. (For example, while all healers CAN resurrect other players during combat, it's nearly unusable without getting the "your next spell has no cast time" ability from level 26 thaumaturge.)
10. Levequests: Basically like daily quests that you can spend on whatever class you want. You get a certain number of them per day (6 I think?) and they keep stacking up to 99 if you don't use them. They're not as efficient as FATEs for getting experience on your combat classes, but they're excellent for leveling crafting and gathering since you don't have a lot of other ways to get exp other than grinding (the only one I can think of is a once-daily turnin for your faction). I always have way more leve allowances than I know what to do with.
11. Guildhests: Your tutorials for specific scenarios commonly encountered in group content, like dealing with adds that show up when you tank a boss, not standing in AoEs, and focusing down the enemy healers first. They're not mandatory, but they usually only take a few minutes, and every time you complete one for the first time on a particular class, you get a chunk of bonus exp. You want to do each one at least once as you level a new class to get that bonus. Past that though, you'll get a roulette to run one at random for a nice bonus once per day, so there are always players willing to queue for them.
12. Consumables: Aside from healing potions on classes that can't heal to use in a pinch, potions are pretty much useless. Mana-based classes have mechanics that make sure they don't run out of mana if they're playing correctly, healing amounts are pretty tiny, debuffs are usually short enough duration that it's not worth using a potion to cure them (except for maybe paralysis). The Alchemist class is really only useful for making caster weapons like wands and books.
Food is really nice though because it gives you +3% experience for 30 minutes, and usually a small stat boost besides. Vendors sell common foods, so you shouldn't need to spend a lot to buy them from the market board.
13. Sprinting: It costs all of your TP and its duration is based on how much TP it uses. Magic classes can and should use it all the time even in combat, because they don't use their TP for anything else. Physical classes need TP for all of their abilities, so sprinting should be saved for serious emergencies or long-distance travel.
14. Grand Company: The quests are almost completely identical, and no further Grand Company content has been added with the Heavensward expansion, so it ultimately doesn't matter much which one you pick. The only real differences are:
15. Chat: You can type <pos> to insert your current coordinates into chat. If someone else does this, it'll be highlighted in chat and you can click on it to open up a map with a flag marking that spot. <t> inserts the name of your current target. If you start typing and press Tab, you can insert auto-translated words and phrases into your messages (that's what the words surrounded by green and red arrows are).
Yell is a localized channel that is near your character but farther away than Say (much like Yell in WoW), while Shout is the zone-wide chat channel. It's easy to switch between channels using Alt, for example Alt-R replies to a Tell, Alt-S is Say, Alt-P is Party, Alt-F is Free Company, Alt-H is Shout, etc.
That's all I can think of at the moment, I'll probably come back and add more in the future. I also probably got distracted halfway through one of these paragraphs, so let me know if there's a sentence in here that just trails off without finishing.
Edit 1/29: Added Chat section.
Other players are usually happy to craft leveling gear for a newbie (I had someone whisper me out of nowhere and give me a full set of high-quality gear when I was level ~15), and you'll have way more money to put towards gathering/crafting once you're max level anyway.
9. Jobs: Even focusing on one class (for example, Thaumaturge), you will need to get one secondary class to at least 15 (in this case, Archer) to unlock your Job (in this case, Black Mage). The game doesn't do a great job of telling you what class this is, so this page has a handy table. While it was possible to still be effective as a class when level 50 was the max level (you lost some job-specific skills, but you had the freedom to take cross-class skills from anywhere, while jobs were limited to two specific classes), jobs are now mandatory since you get zero new skills from your base class past level 50.
Depending on your job, your tertiary class probably has a really useful ability around 26 that you'll want to level that class to get eventually. (For example, while all healers CAN resurrect other players during combat, it's nearly unusable without getting the "your next spell has no cast time" ability from level 26 thaumaturge.)
10. Levequests: Basically like daily quests that you can spend on whatever class you want. You get a certain number of them per day (6 I think?) and they keep stacking up to 99 if you don't use them. They're not as efficient as FATEs for getting experience on your combat classes, but they're excellent for leveling crafting and gathering since you don't have a lot of other ways to get exp other than grinding (the only one I can think of is a once-daily turnin for your faction). I always have way more leve allowances than I know what to do with.
11. Guildhests: Your tutorials for specific scenarios commonly encountered in group content, like dealing with adds that show up when you tank a boss, not standing in AoEs, and focusing down the enemy healers first. They're not mandatory, but they usually only take a few minutes, and every time you complete one for the first time on a particular class, you get a chunk of bonus exp. You want to do each one at least once as you level a new class to get that bonus. Past that though, you'll get a roulette to run one at random for a nice bonus once per day, so there are always players willing to queue for them.
12. Consumables: Aside from healing potions on classes that can't heal to use in a pinch, potions are pretty much useless. Mana-based classes have mechanics that make sure they don't run out of mana if they're playing correctly, healing amounts are pretty tiny, debuffs are usually short enough duration that it's not worth using a potion to cure them (except for maybe paralysis). The Alchemist class is really only useful for making caster weapons like wands and books.
Food is really nice though because it gives you +3% experience for 30 minutes, and usually a small stat boost besides. Vendors sell common foods, so you shouldn't need to spend a lot to buy them from the market board.
13. Sprinting: It costs all of your TP and its duration is based on how much TP it uses. Magic classes can and should use it all the time even in combat, because they don't use their TP for anything else. Physical classes need TP for all of their abilities, so sprinting should be saved for serious emergencies or long-distance travel.
14. Grand Company: The quests are almost completely identical, and no further Grand Company content has been added with the Heavensward expansion, so it ultimately doesn't matter much which one you pick. The only real differences are:
- Color scheme and symbol of basic chocobo barding and equipment (the gear isn't really better than crafted stuff or dungeon drops. Can be a nice perk when leveling, but ultimately not important unless you want to use it for transmog to show off your Grand Company pride)
- What faction you fight for in PvP (so if you've got friends you want to fight alongside, join their GC)
- What city you visit to turn in items for your Grand Company (so you probably want your Home teleport location to be in the same place)
15. Chat: You can type <pos> to insert your current coordinates into chat. If someone else does this, it'll be highlighted in chat and you can click on it to open up a map with a flag marking that spot. <t> inserts the name of your current target. If you start typing and press Tab, you can insert auto-translated words and phrases into your messages (that's what the words surrounded by green and red arrows are).
Yell is a localized channel that is near your character but farther away than Say (much like Yell in WoW), while Shout is the zone-wide chat channel. It's easy to switch between channels using Alt, for example Alt-R replies to a Tell, Alt-S is Say, Alt-P is Party, Alt-F is Free Company, Alt-H is Shout, etc.
That's all I can think of at the moment, I'll probably come back and add more in the future. I also probably got distracted halfway through one of these paragraphs, so let me know if there's a sentence in here that just trails off without finishing.
Edit 1/29: Added Chat section.
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