I'm getting so close to unlocking Heavensward content, I can taste it. It is a taste that I can scarcely describe, since of course I am tasting nothing and this is a poor metaphor that I'm regretting having made in the first place. Even so, I'm really close, unless for whatever reason I'm going to hit a series of lengthy dungeons in the tail end of post-A Realm Reborn content that I'm not aware of. We've recently undertaken the Snowcloak dungeon, which I wrongly assumed would have been a climactic encounter with Shiva herself. It ended up being something similar to a snowy Sastasha, with tougher bosses. I imagine the tank chain-pulling groups throughout the entire instance contributed to that belief, though.
I'm also very close to hitting level 52 on my dragoon. I'm now realizing that my original goal of cycling over to samurai after the fact probably was never all that realistic. These quests, originally intended for capped-level characters, don't provide a lot of experience in a world where three expansions have been released. The dungeons provide a fair amount of experience, but of course these are fairly infrequent. Snowcloak is the only one that we've done in quite some time other than a run through hard mode Sastasha, but of course we did challenge Leviathan and Ramuh, stand-alone trials against classic Final Fantasy summons reimagined. I imagine I will reach 52 on dragoon, but I'll probably just power through the remaining quests after that, cycling between it and ninja as necessary.
Another really exciting thing that's happened is that I've finally acquired new gear for my dragoon! Technically, she's been rocking the same black-and-purple armor since 2014, when I originally played through the main story. Although the iconic dragoon outfit is awesome, I was never a fan of the huge abdomen cutout on the chest piece. Sure, it's a work of fantasy and armor doesn't have to make sense, but it never really worked for me. My new outfit is a lovely bronze and gray affair with wings appended to the headpiece. I took the opportunity to visit the aesthetician to grow my character's hair out again too, to complete the "holy Valkyrie" look.
It's a shame that in picking the dragoon quest rewards for those story quests, I missed out on some potential new ninja pieces. Still, my dragoon was in much direr need of an update, so it's a sacrifice I'm more than willing to make. The (again) black-and-purple chainmail and gnarly ninja hood/helm rewarded by the level 45 and 50 ninja job quests are really cool already, so I'm happy to keep those for awhile.
I'm realizing now that these descriptions don't do those armor designs much justice, so I'm going to take the time to take some screenshots tonight and add them into this blog post. I really miss including pictures on this blog in general, so I'm going to try to work something out to where that can be a regular thing again. I imagine I just need to get more in the habit of doing it. It'd be cool to compare some old screenshots I have with what my character looks like now, too. Since Final Fantasy XIV allows any one character to assume any job class available in the game, I see no reason to ever create new characters, so I've been playing the same one ever since the beginning!
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