After getting sick and tired of Bahamut’s shit (and him blocking my view most of the time and not attacking if I have to dodge an AOE and getting out dpsed by nearly everyone…etc..etc…) I decided to finally try out Red Mage. I’ve been hesitant about it because all the videos of it looked so confusing, and the skills on my hot bar made absolutely no sense to me. Looking up red mage guides led me to weird shit like this and I was about to just give up and not bother. Fortunately my husband sat me down and showed me how it works in an ELI5 method and I was able to place everything on my hotbars neatly to get a flow of things going.

The thing is, Red Mage begins at 50 and because I hate Palace of the Braindead with the firey passion of 1000 suns, it’s off to the dungeon grind, and daily hunts I go! Apparently somehow I really love this job because after about 2 days I got Red Mage from 50 to 60! It took many grinds of the Aery, The Vault, Google Library and some fates and challenges. Still, I enjoyed the dungeon grind because (despite rumors) DPS queues were only 15 minutes at most. That’s right, 1 hour DPS queues do not exist!

It’s interesting that despite it seeming like there’s a lot of BAD in DF, there’s also a lot of “ok” and a few “fun” people you encounter. For example I had a tank who forgot tank stance and then went tehepero ;P and was silly the rest of the run. On the contrary, I had a new tank in Gubal Library who forgot tank stance, and despite the rest of the party yelling at him to put it back on as the enemies ravaged our healer, he ignored us …until I spammed him with sound effects to which he finally switched and responded “I was on the phone”. Wow bruh, you  can pull 2 packs without tank stance and ignore us but you can’t press 1 button to get back into Defiance. (눈_눈)？ Then you have DPS wearing NQ gear for some reason that’s ilvl 70 despite the fact that the starter red mage quest gives you at least a full set of i115 NQ gear ? 🤔 Then you got the usual healer wipes us in the vault cause “I don’t really heal often” etc. Overall I only had maybe 1-2 ACTUAL terrible runs while the rest were mediocre or “well we’re halfway through the dungeon who even cares anymore”.

Most of the time it was usually the tank….because a bad geared DPS isn’t gonna wipe the group. A bad tank will pull too many enemies, not put on tank stance etc….all things that would cause group wipes. Obviously the defense is “well maybe people should git gud” but it’s easier for a tank to adjust to the group’s skill level than for the group to adjust to the tank pulling the entire floor. So if people wonder “why does everyone always blame the tank” because well it seems like 90% of the time it’s the tank’s fault. Also as a tank on my alt I never pull a lot unless it looks like the healer’s ready to handle it. Most often than not, if you pull small, the healer can DPS and the stuff dies faster than if you pull a lot and they just stand there healing you. But thank god, all my healers are now 70, so now I just DPS and quietly feel sorry for the healers who have to put up with these shit tanks who are obviously only tanking to get materia rewards. I know there are good tanks out there, and I’ve had smooth runs and those are the ones who get my commendations.

Anyway after a “variety” of runs completing my Red Mage quests up until 60, I set off for a spam of Sirensong Sea until I hit 63 which allowed me to finally finish doing the side quests in the Ruby Sea. There’s weirdly a large amount of side quests for levels 62-63 in that area, especially 63 that I actually didn’t finish them on my sub jobs until now (which is weird seeing how this is now my 3rd sub job I am leveling.) My favorite side quests are the ones in Sui no Sato – the underwater village full of Au Ra Raen. One particularly great quest is the one that gives more insight and lore on the Shisui of the Violet Tides dungeon and the story of the Ruby Princess.

I don’t want to spoil it because I think it’s best done on your own but if you don’t have a chance to do it, here’s my favorite screenshot from the side quest. Also, a selfy ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°).  The other quests in the village are basic get item and bring back to us one time quests. One of the quests also revealed the Au Ra Raen cannot drink sea water so they still need to get water from the ocean to bring back to convert to drinkable water.

Some of the children in the village also have been living there since they were born and never saw the outside world. Apparently the angry red turtles have kept most people inside this village so it’s rare for any of them to ever come out. There’s gotta be Au Ra Raen somewhere else though, and maybe it could explain the lore behind our own characters. I was never a huge lore person until I took Koji’s encyclopedia to the knee.

Will be spending the rest of the week leveling my Red Mage to 70. With crafted weapons now available, that will be an easy i320 weapon soon as I hit max level. Most likely, unless somehow the 70 rotation changes a lot, there’s a possibility I may end up maining Red Mage. If SE doesn’t properly fix summoner (and I mean do more than just shrink Bahamut) then I’ll have no reason to go back to it other than once in a while getting a weapon for it because my retainers are stuck on the jobs I no longer wish to play ~_~.

Omake:

I did a fate in Ruby Sea which had 2 parts and somewhat of a story. First there was some girl who said there’s a Samurai who wants to fight some gaijins here. So after he nearly killed me, I finally solo defeated him (because thanks to SE’s great idea of instances there’s like 20 people or less per map now.)

Following his defeat, a bunch of angry turtles came over and attacked the little girl. The samurai is like how dare you attack this child and decided to solo them. Unfortunately he got his ass owned  while I soloed the turtle man and finished off the fate.

The little girl did not appear to care that her Samurai hero was KO’ed. 😂 Curious what would happen if the Samurai dude didn’t die or if there would be any extra dialogue from her or him so I’ll have to find someone else to do this FATE with me next time it pops!