Valence

Can confirm that most people I talked to that were above 500 in line at release didn't get any chance to see non snatched plots (I was 600).

More info on the Skysteel if you need: Stephaniven's taking over, I don't remember when exactly, but in any case machinistry is brand new and just starting to spread in Ishgard.

I find it unlikely that Sui-no-Sato would accept any stranger in their village as citizens seeing how reclusive they can be. Except very special cases like that fisherman that married the kurenai princess back then... It's hard to tell in fine. Maybe? But unlikely. We have no other example of full Raen communities: the rest is always about Raen being integrated into the Doman society and living there among their Hyur buddies, working for their Hyur Daimyos. There is the other way around though, where Xaela communities accept Raen into their ranks:

That was sloppy indeed.

Ah ok so your weapon is the i110 from the MSQ... Upgrading to ironworks will not save you. The difference will be tiny. Don't take gear upgrade for the holy grail, unless there is a huge amount of difference. You should be able to run everything thrown at you by the MSQ perfectly fine with what the MSQ hands you out. ( this is not to say that upgrading isn't a good idea though! just take your time and go at your pace, the gear isn't the problem here )

You should be perfectly fine at 117. The difference with 130 will not cut it unless you fail every time by a tiny inch. More importantly though, what ilvl is your weapon? Every item displays both the required class level (lvl50 here) written in small just below the jobs that are required to equip it, and the item level is written in big on the header just above those two. If you are bard make sure to never let your straight shot drop as it increases your crits and procs, use your songs (mage's ballad if you use dots to bring up bloodletter procs, and then paean when the first one is done). For what to focus in priority, you don't really need to know their names and which class they are supposed to refer to, just look at their weapons really. If it's a mage, kill it first. Then attack the DPS ones (ranged first if any with bows, then spears, etc).

With most jobs, except a few like machinist/DRK/Samurai, and even then... they are often restricted to one single teacher and/or a very recent opening (like AST). Else, you just have to go the hard way and learn it yourself through arduous studies looking for often forbidden texts and books in libraries and whatnot. It's not that some jobs are impossible to roleplay, it's mostly their various degrees of uniqueness.

Well since a Noxius is forced to fight in the Bloodsands, out of debts or penniless, or out of past crimes or accusations (like Raubahn that was taken for an imperial spy), I suppose that a son could feel some resentment about it, unlike a gladiator son that might to the contrary feel a certain pride. I was also thinking about calamities and serious events that took place in Gridania, and besides the Calamity itself and the Greenwrath, there was also the Creeping Death pandemic that killed a third of the hyur there (no elezens though, it's just a hyur disease), but the main issue is that the two main accounts ingame are contradictory: one NPC says it was not so long ago, while the other says it was long ago actually. Hard to make an accurate sense of time here, but maybe Sounssy knows more?

Out of curiosity, was his father a Noxius in the bloodsands? Or just a professional gladiator? This could change a lot the outlook a child would get of the thing I think. Also if it can help, getting healed in Ul'dah doesn't come off exactly cheap. 1.0 portrays that in a very grim manner when the Phrondale doesn't accept to heal a refugee child because she has no money (and they ask a pretty juicy amount). Maybe his mother was wealthy enough with her job though. In any case, it's another possibility in Ul'dah. Well yes, that's why I took him as an example of elezen living somewhere else than in Gridania or Ishgard. Really? My mistake then, that's what happens when you don't have played through 1.0 and have to relay on second hand videos and wikis... So yeah, he just tried to play necromancer then... Makes way more sense.

All races have similar lifespans yes, except the elezens that tend to spread a little longer over the years. They get out of their teens a bit past twenty for example. You can find Wildwood and Duskwight elezens in the Shroud yes, but also Ishgardian elezens in... Ishgard/Coerthas. Their ancestors left the Twelveswood 1000 years ago, which was before the Pact of Gelmorra, so before any distinction could be made between wilwoods and duskwights. They are thus, I believe, a "subrace" of their own now. This doesn't mean that they all live exclusively here though. For example, Carvallain is one of the famous and powerful captains in the Thalassocracy of Limsa, and he's elezen. Another somewhat influential elezen, Niellefresne, was a necromancer and lived in Ul'dah, and was the lover of F'lhaminn (Minfillia adoptive mother). So, reasons can be pretty common for people to move around the world really. Magitek has existed for over 50 years now when Garlemald invented the Ceruleum engine. Thing is though, it was exclusively found in garlean hands until Cid Garlond defected just before the Calamity, so pretty recently. The arrival of Magitek in Eorzea proper by other means that garlean invasion and the subsequent magitek/industrial revolution is just starting, with airships rivaling each other and all manner of Garlond made magitek contraptions. Machinist is an extremely new and specific job created by lord Stephaniven, the heir of House Haillenarte in Ishgard. He created for that purpose the Skysteel Manufactory and tries to spread that new art all around Ishgard (often as a mean to tip the balance between the knights of the aristocracy, and the proles of the Brume and/or commoners). Machinist however is specific and requires the use of a Magitek aetherotransformer to process the body excess aether into levin aspected energy channeled directly into the gun to create various pyrotechnics and whatnot. Guns though, have existed for ages, way before Magitek was even a thing. Most were flintlock and are widely used, especially by the pirates and scoundrels of Limsa (but are illegal to carry in the city). The NPC trainer for the machinist job, Rotsnstahl, is a flintlock specialist roegadyn experienced in that regard. Another thing to note is that the musketeer guild is a thing in Limsa, and was briefly portrayed in 1.0.

Meridianum and Praetorium, but got to admit that the latter got very stale and tedious very fast after a while. With speed runs though, it spoils everything out of the fun. I still have a lot of fun in Meridianum with jobs that can send nukes everywhere though... But. The real deal is running them min ilvl with cutscenes. That's something else. Edit: well if we are speaking about raids, then all Coils blow everything else out of the picture for me.

All evidence I have seen seems to point in the direction that it's formal combat. It's not about slicing the throat of the nunh during the night. The Mole tribe quests in SB portray a young Tia constantly challenging the nunh, and he does it formally every time, which ends up in combat. The Drake tribe (U) quests are less direct about it, but the two Tia competing for nunh constantly try to improve their martial prowess and leadership skills in order to challenge the nunh. It's unclear how exactly this has to be handled here though.

I think the probability of players using support skills is inversely proportional to the utility of said skill. Which explains why everyone uses fucking Peloton for some reason. Instead of actual useful skills like Palisade, Goad and manashift and whatnot.

It mostly depends on if your characters live a tribal life or not. In sunseeker tribes there is not really any eternal bonding since it works under harem structures organized around one or several males (nunhs). The eternal bond is just a social construct like a wedding is IRL. Now then you also have numerous miqo'te that actually don't live in tribes (and I'm starting to suspect it might even be a majority from the portrayal we see ingame), and those seem to flow more freely regarding traditions. A lot of them are integrated into the daily lives of other races in cities and seem to have forgotten partially or totally about Sunseeker harems. I recall a few examples like in Ala-Ghiri during Stormblood (which is the most recent memory of it I can remember, but hardly the only one) where several ala-mighan sunseeker females are shown to live in your standard family, or even pledge to live their lives with a single partner (cf the quest with the Garlean centurio sheltered in that same city). In short, whatever you choose to do can potentially be justified by lore if your sunseeker acts outside of a tribe. Some might still follow tribal traditions and harems, some might comform to more hyuran customs, or even local ones! Unfortunately I don't have many sources or don't recall well how weddings or eternal bonds are handled all across Eorzea and if a partner takes the last name of the other one, or not. The main issue being that most NPCs ingame are rarely portrayed with their last names, or at best, with titles. And actual married couples are even rarer. Keep in mind that if you want to play a tribal sunseeker, there can sometimes be several Nunhs in tribes when those are large enough (above 10 females per Nunh or so). In any case, naming conventions seem to only cover the case of children so...

Hahaha I did a little crash course for my friend on French pronunciations of words (i.e. why Haurchefant is pronounced like "Ow-she-von" and not "Hor-che-vant"), and they eagerly said, "So it's pronounced like shy-rue-jhio', right?" No... no it's not. (It's kye-roo-jen.) More exactly pronounced "Ore-che-fan", where ore is pronounced exactly like the mineral (but with a strong R, not an english one), che like in 'chevrolet' and fan just doesn't exist in english pronounciation, it's the contraction of A and N into a specific sound. Closest you would get is like in 'elephant' but the last T is silent. Chirurgeon being itself an english word based on french roots, it definitely doesn't pronounce like its french equivalent though.

It's even funnier when it's not your native language.

Don't sweat it too much, off tank is the most relaxed job of the universe. Just do your DPS rotation until adds show up, swap to tank stance and grab them. Then back to DPS stance and DPS mode.

Well to start I think it's good to point out that there is no absolute black and white with access to jobs in the lore, and it ultimately boils down to personal suspension of disbelief and how far you as a roleplayer is ready to thread. First white magic or succor is a lost art, like most jobs, that has been closely kept by a few chosen padjals. As you know only the WoL seems to be the exception that eventually got taught by Raya and A'Runh through the soulstone of A'Towa Cant. So it's probably rhe hardest job to get into, but then, isnt't there any other amdapori soulstone left somewhere? One that your character could have won the lottery at and found in what's left of Amdapor? Or maybe they just loved learning about forbidden arts in libraries, maybe Sharlayan or Ishgardian... ? Providing they are talented enough to follow it or just access to the soulstone knowledge in the first place? As for black magic, which is also restricted by being highly illegal, can be cast by anybody with enough power and knowing its arcane spells, as seen in the HW blm quests... At the expense of cooking yourself from the inside or be hunted by various law abidding people like the Stillglade Fane 'police'. Unless again, you somehow manage to stumble on one of those rare Mhachi soulstones, a gem of Shattoto. Red Magic is ultimately not much different. It thrived before the Mad King and the Garlean invasion, but seems to have disappeared still, long ago. It was revived by the Rdm trainer and his friend Lambard to be used as a weapon for their Crimson Duellists. Well, only that trainer seems to have survived so... Going through him is a possibility of course... Or like for the two other magics well... It's possible to learn about it by yourself in libraries, since we know that red magic has texts about it in Ishgard, possibly Sharlayan as well, and that the monolith pyramid in the Peaks used to be a repository for red mages, albeit plundered and left abandonned by now (and infested by flesh eating qiquirns). So, your options for all 3 magics are here. It's up to you if they feel too specific or special to your taste or not, really. Also red mages can very well use aether from the land and Hydaelyn if they choose, much like blm and whm, but they chose not to morally is all.

Not all aetherial arts require similar mediums to conjure magic. While thaumaturgy requires a focus AND a gem, conjury only requires a focus while arcanima demands a focus (ink) and signs. Then you have monks that probably use their own bodies and chi as focus and energy, bards that just use songs, or even gladiators with the tip of their swords... Mudras are just another way to summon magical powers, and the way they seem related to kami (eastern elementals here in the nin questline if i remember correctly) makes me think it is an unique way of using elemental magic through the standard elemental wheel (fire with katon, thunder with raiton, wind with huton, etc).

Hello, What you describe is exactly how soulstones work, which is as repositories of memories, and sometimes the persona of people that came and used the soulstone before the current user. It also has a certain kind of security/access if you will, because not everyone can access a soulstone content and powers, only the ones with the necessary basic knowledge of the art stored inside, or deemed worthy enough by the stone itself. As for your idea with the minion, I'm at work and don't have access to material to paste her, but you might want to look at the Anima questline for Heavensward. It is exactly what you are after and the basic premise is to create a living weapon out of aether. This aether is condensed into soulstones and you basically spend your time upgrading the vessel (the weapon) and the soul (the soulstone), thus making the Anima always more sapient and growing everytime until she becomes a full fledged personality. In your case, the only difference is that you already have a persona to imprint on it, saving you a lot of the trouble seen in the Anima quest where the characters have to start from a blank state (so essentially skipping some of the first steps). Keep in mind though that what they do is cutting edge technology and prototypes here (with a lot of Allagan shenanigans and whatnot). But at the same time, Ardashir (the quest NPC giver) is financed by Rowena, and her aim is to sell replicas of the Anima to wealthy people. Ardashir is also eager to prove his lifetime work to be workable, and I don't see it impossible for this technic to slowly spread in very select milieus and be progressively more available to wealthy people. As you will see if yo take a look at that questline in any case, it's a very long and arduous process requiring so many rare materials that it's not exactly given to anyone... but! What saves you here is that in your specific case what will mostly interest you is the very end of the questline, where the Anima/soulstone is transfered into a minion (the Anima minion). You can glance over the rest to be honest, which is more about the creation and upgrade of the soulstone/weapon itself.

Background is of course important, but I think one of the main defining concepts for a character will always be the archetype/trope you will create for them (not speaking about overdone or over the top clichés, just generic tropes), and a few keywords that can define said character. Now that you have a better idea for your background, I think one of the main things you want to tackle is precisely that. A background is only secondary when it comes to what defines a character. It will sure be what shaped the character in the past and brought them here, but it doesn't really say how that character behaves, what personality they have, etc. Most sucessful characters in stories or roleplay often leave an impression and people can remember them because of specific traits or tropes that make them stand out. The trap is of course not to fall into the usual edgy clichés. While a background can offer a few RP hooks for others to catch, those are inevitably centered around yourself. What a personality and character concept/trope can offer however, is the other way around: roleplay support for other players. One common mistake when starting RP is in my opinion to focus too much on convoluted backgrounds and not enough on what makes a character stand out. You will not bring your background at every opportunity in most roleplay sessions (don't do that though!). What you will bring is your character and how they feel and act and what are their manners and how they react to things. This is what always needs most of the work. Roleplaying without a background is not unfeasible. Roleplaying without a personality is. A bland/blank character will never work. Bringing on the table a well fleshed out character with its strong trope - you will never play a politician like you play a scoundrel, or a knight, or whatever you fancy - will always go a great way to interact with others and create the RP shenanigans you are after.

So it's a different language that is almost indiscernible from the Eorzean tongue in the Japanese version? I didn't see where it specified written text only but then again does it matter? If it's written one way then it's spoken that way too, right? This is why I'm just washing my hands of it at this point. I just plan to RP this out in the way that my partners and I are comfortable. I don't even count the number of movies, films, or anything else depicting other nations or situations where other languages are involved, and that are just straight up english (or whatever the language the translated version is for) for the sake of convenience. I don't see why it would be different here. There is a huge difference between script language (for the audience) and lore language.

I just found a line of the questline that brought me to think a lot more and can bear a lot of implications on a larger scale, and not only for red magic: Which seems to imply that Ishgardian libraries have records of red magic. Of all the places... Why not. That guy eventually happens to write the Nightkin book stored in the Gubal Library. Which means that when the art was active, it was probably not totally secret and ended up there (could it be the case for other lost forgotten jobs? Interesting in itself). Anyway... Yes in any case, it's pretty obvious that red mages were a thing before the Duelists got their own identity, since the art was already alive a century ago, way before the King of Ruin. I also don't dispute the fact that you can learn most arts and disciplines with enough material from it at your disposal, and a fair amount of time and dedication when you don't have a soulstone. Okay, some jobs require soulstone as safety or for it to work, but otherwise... Thing is though, the ziggurat has been left derelict and trashed by all manner of people, ending with the meat eating quiqirns. But at the same time some texts (probably not the whole extensive art but... who knows?) about red magic seem to have been stored in Ishgard. So many in Sharlayan too? Why would it only end up being in Ishgard? Hard to tell either way. So all in all the last quote/image you showed is actually what I was looking for. It really states that red magic was a thing in the past and vanished or faded off at some point, and X'rhun and Lambard digged it up and made it alive again, under the guise of the Crimson Duelists. That's objective. Now then... Is there other red mages left around? Perhaps, who can say. Is there any Amdapori white magic practitioners somewhere? Maybe. So yeah, SE doesn't really say why RDM disappeared, or what happened. The simple fact though, that X'rhun says that they had to "revive the art of red magic", and while it can be biased or out of him not having all the facts about possible living red mages, and while people can probably learn a thing or two about the art in old records, makes me think that the true red mages might actually be very much located in X'rhun, Lambard (rip), the WoL, and newbie Arya...

Disclaimer: so I know i'm opening a can of worms here, and please bear with me. I would hate that to turn into a flamewar on how true to the lore it is to play a red mage or not. This is not necessarily the point of that post. I really want to investigate further to see what we can find about that peculiar point. With that said, SE chose deliberately to stay very ambiguous with both words, Crimson Duelist and Red Mage, and followed the story of the last survivor of the Crimson Duelists (who are red mages). So I parsed through the quests and lines and couldn't see any mention made of any group of red mages, since when red magic is mentioned, every time it's about the art of the red mage more than the remaining or current red mages in existence. It's always about the Crimson Duelists and how they were all betrayed by one of their own, Lambart (a servant of the voidsent Lilith). And that X'rhun, the red mage NPC senpai, is the last one of those duelists that opposed the King of Ruin. People often chose to interpret it as the Crimson Duelists being a special group of red mages that chose to rise against the King, but... I didn't find any true mention of that anywhere. It could also be that all the red mages decided to take the mantle of Crimson Duelists too. What I'm looking for is clues that I might have missed that can swing the balance in one way or the other, and if the Duelists aren't all the red mages of Gyr Abania, then do we have clues or hints on what has become of them if so? I mean here, all the ones that wouldn't be duelists in that hypothesis? Which leads me to think about in what state is the red magic art left exactly? Is X'rhun the last one of them if we consider that the red mages all embraced the duelist rebellion? We know that he fled to Sharlayan and teached Alisaie a bit about it, but again, no mention of any other red mage besides Lambert and all the dead duelists. And then, even if there were survivors, how did they fare against the Garlean invasion? Like the monks (but the monks seem to have at least a handful of survivors, not just Widargelt though)? They seem to share a very similar fate, and it's hard to tell how many are left, if any, besides the NPCs we know of. I know it touches the very basis of the viability of that job in roleplay, but I think that like most jobs, there will no matter what be a certain degree of uniqueness and "hard to find/become", so I don't consider that problem to be that relevant.

Take it with a grain of salt of course, but when you try to play and portray a liar for example, it's usually better to be a good liar, or at least have enough confidence in what your character says that it will work perfectly fine. When you want to play a politician, it's usually best not to be too shabby at politics. Want to play a knowledgeable scholar and teacher? Better to know at least a bit of the lore you are trying to cover. I think to play a grey or assholish character you have to firstly be very good at separating IC from OOC - and not just the usual way, you also have to enjoy seeing your character creating conflict, at least a bit, and if it's not your thing, well, it's okay - and secondly be able to portray a realistic one. I mean, I like creating conflict, but I also know my limits: if it starts painting my character in a corner or just make it look awful OOCly when she doesn't deserve it, I might start to not like it. So yeah, know your limits and all. Ultimately I say, nothing better than a few trials perhaps? With friends and people you know at first, that you will have told beforehand? It's not because you aren't necessarily fit for a certain kind of role that you have to close yourself to it. I used to play relatively introverted characters before, or erudites, militants and whatnot. It was more or less safe territory to me. But it was also a reflection of some of the traits I had IRL, at least in part. I decided at some point to try other types of characters. I have tried an old mentor, I have also tried the scoundrel/rogue type (which I still more or less follow right now), which implies a decent amount of extroversion and a general outlawish outlook that generally runs counter to the righteous or true neutral archetypes I used before. Well the short answer is, I couldn't have been able to tell if I could portray such characters faithfully or not before I tried. So I tried, and it worked out. I'm generally more or less confident in my skills (unlike my social abilities IRL which are kind of the opposite angst), so it's not too much of a problem for me, and I guess it can boil down a lot to that too. It's also a normal thing that the first sequences you play for a new characters to be or feel sloppy. A new character will rarely fit like a glove at first.