VanaFest Coverage (now with actual LiveBlog)

[Pergo]

major props on adding dnc/sch relic so soon. also the amount of content coming in this next patch seems to be exciting.

a little disappointed at the new expansions though... i think relatively cheap download-able add-ons are a great idea; think having smaller mission-type side-arcs are a great idea; although i don't know how long they plan to keep wotg going for but, if this is their future plans for the next year and a half, i hope those expansions will include at least a few areas and some concept additions.

[fusionx]

Getting ready to record with Elmer and Corinth, lots of awesome stuff to discuss!... very surprised that SE updated POL and the dev blog so fast though lol

I'll link back when the audio is up ^^

[Corrderio]

Head... pounding.... but must watch.... for.... updates....

[Hyan]

The 3 new expansion thing really was a shock... One side in me feels they want all of our money from us with this, but... 3 story based expansions? This is what I've wished for since CoP ended! And they'll all cost 30 bucks together so not more than a normal expansion

[Lyramion]

Welcome to episodic Gaming Mr Gordon Freeman !

[Tomino]

"Fields of Valor is a new in-game system which has been a long time in the coming. [...] This may prove the perfect small-scale endeavor for players waiting for a party invite, or mayhap on those occasions when you might not have quite enough time to join a leveling party, but still want to spend a little time having fun."

this has oh so much potential. even more, combined with Level Sync.
and I appreciated how they specifically pointed out to people not having time for a long party.

[gairaiden]

is it just me or does anyone else think the pic of the one mini expansion looks like tavnazia and child aldo. god we can only hope they let us see tavnazia lol

edit: shoulda scrolled down more. but still tavnazia, yes please lol

[Vajra]

is it just me or does anyone else think the pic of the one mini expansion looks like tavnazia and child aldo. god we can only hope they let us see tavnazia lol

edit: shoulda scrolled down more. but still tavnazia, yes please lol

It is Aldo, and his sister, and some of the people in the opening movie who fought in combat.

[Jkun]

Awesome read. Can't wait for the new Tuxedo and PUP AI fixes, fuck yes~! Thanks Elmer and Cori :3

[Spoony Bob]

Can't wait for Dissidia now... Huge thanks to everyone involved keeping us all up to date with the latest info from the event.

[Vajra]

What exactly are "Treasure Caskets" does this mean we can get Temp Items from ALL mobs now in ALL zones? along w/ random items in chests???

[Destinye]

During the Fields of Valor stuff iirc.

[Frenzy]

What exactly are "Treasure Caskets" does this mean we can get Temp Items from ALL mobs now in ALL zones? along w/ random items in chests???

Looks like mobs have a chance to drop chests now, which are called Treasure Caskets. And it seems that it's not all zones now, but that they intend the possible zones to expand as time goes on.

[Jkun]

Items such as RR scrolls, potions, elixers, etc would be incredible, like in most other RPGs, would really bring people back to their roots instead of dicking about with keys and respawn times. But yeah if it's during the FoV event then it would only be a mini-win.

[Vajra]

During the Fields of Valor stuff iirc.

o i c, (Incomming my interpretation of SCH stuff, (i'm 75 SCH just so u know anyways)),
btw SCH Group 2 Merrits, that pwn are Enlightenment and Storm Surge,

Enlightenment
Optimizes both white and black magic capabilities and allows access to both addenda for your next spell. Recast: 10min.

Stormsurge
Storm-type spells grant a bonus to attributes associated with their element.
Initial bonus value: +3.

I hope merriting Enlightenment can reduce recast by 1 minute 30 seconds per upgrade or something , but im sure it'll be like Elemental Seal recast, and each upgrade increases potency/effect of the next spell (since it'll only work on one spell cast).

It'll be nice to erase while under addendum black while subbing rdm (just pop Enlightenement). Or u can just be under light arts(without addendum white up), pop accession, and then use Enlightenment and u can erasega party w/o wasting strategem to turn into addendum white, lots of uses for this ability,

and im sure each upgrade wont allow lower recast, just increased potency or something maybe, but it'd be nice if it does lower recast...

It'll definitly be nice to cast thunder IV while under addendum white w/o having to waste a strategem or change arts mode to cast it.

Altruism
Light Arts Stratagem (requires two charges).
Increases the accuracy of your next white magic spell.

Focalization
Dark Arts Stratagem (requires two charges).
Increases the accuracy of your next black magic spell.

Tranquility
Light Arts Stratagem (requires two charges).
Your next white magic spell will generate less enmity.

Equanimity
Dark Arts Stratagem (requires two charges).
Your next black magic spell will generate less enmity.

The 4 new strategems look like suck balls though, unless you're a pussy >.>, plus they cost 2 strategem charges each -.-, maybe useful only during 2hr (combine ebullice + focalization with teir IV's to kill something difficult very quickly). Or it can be used when u are spamming aoe debuffs w/ Manifestation.



Btw if SCH AFv2 adds "Enhance: Accession" or "Enhance: Manifestation" these might come in handy man. If "Enhance: Manifestation" Allows us to -ga certain spells we couldn't before (elementals) then Focalization will come in handy. (i.e. using Addendum Black + Manifestation + Focalization + Ebulice (5 charges LUL) => Thunder IV to get Thundaga IV like Alhehid(sp).

I hope AFv2 also increases the max capacity of charge storage to 5 or 6 too...especially w/ new strategems costing 2 charges.

Alruism will be handy only for paralyze slow and silence sticking really, it's hard to land these spells on even light arts mode sometimes (magic acc really helps cause in Nyzul i couldn't land it on a quirin rat NM w/o oracle's drink i found in a chest (para and slow that is))

[Guppy]

Bleh, Altruism is junk...what white magic spell does SCH use that requires accuracy?

Silence. Also Repose, but that doesn't apply to SCHs of course.

[Elmer the Pointy]

This thread was a lot of fun to read :D

Glad to see people enjoyed the Live Blog. VanaFest was awesome and it looks like there's even more info to come for FanFast. I'm sure you've all seen that most info is on Creator's Voice Z in English. We're talking with Fusionx now about the festival, and trying to discuss all the stuff the blog may have missed. As the week goes on, some press interviews should pop up too, and I'll get those on the site.

Thanks so much for reading and putting up with the mundane build up to the event :D

Speaking of which, I'll get some more (interesting) stuff from the mook up on the site too. There's an interview about ZNMs and other various things to sift out.

[Naash]

Wow, only a few hours after the end of the show and already 17 pages.


Allow me to write some impressions, although it's not live coverage

They asked us to come at 4:30 PM even though it was only starting at 6. We were afraid we'd have to line too long in the cold, but we got to enter rather fast. There was one WHM cosplayer outside, but she didn't seem to be lining up. I was surprised there were a few foreigners, I'm wondering if we maybe saw Elmer and Corinth from far away (Corinth, do you have long curly hair?).

They gave us Tarut cards as a present, we all had 2 different pairs (we all had had Deaths and Kings). As soon as I opened mine after entering and said out loud, "are we supposed to exchange them or something? haha", someone lining before me offered to exchange and the next minute someone else got me the 4th card. It was much quicker than in game! :D Before the break, they told us to "shout" near the resting areas if we wanted to get the complete set. It's a nice present and the cards are pretty neat without looking "cheap" like merchandises sometimes do.

They showed various commercials (including the Free trial videos) before the starting time, and the warnings mentioned. It was kind of funny they started by saying "no pictures/videos or sound recording" and the next warning was "no flashes" (because they know people will take pictures anyway?). Also they mentioned people shouldn't use cell phones to put information on message boards etc. and should wait until they go home to do that


I'll write here a few tidbits I remember from the talking parts of the show. I've read quickly but I can't seem to display Elmer's coverage so maybe I'll say some things that were already mentioned. Now I regret I didn't take notes or something... This is only what I remember from the show and please forgive me if I'm not 100% accurate, lots of new information during the 3 hours.


- They said DNC AF2 and merit points will be unveiled at the Fan Fes in America. (someone asked in thread but "Relic" means AF2 and IIRC, it's the way the game refers to AF2). They will be obtained in Dynamis.

- Town moogle shield is a 25%+ speed effect (like Mazurka) on PT members when used in town and when used in the field, it doubles the duration of food. But sometimes (low chance they said) it '"misses" and you get changed into a moogle and you can't do anything which is the "moogle's trick". I wonder if the effect lasts long?

- They showed a video of Shantotto in Dissidia. She looked more girly and quite pretty. She had a command menu that opened with ancient magic (I think I saw freeze and burst in a glimpse) and the menu's layout/color looked a lot like the FFXI menu. The chairman said "you can play that while waiting to enter Nyzul" (because Nyzul is terribly crowded at JP hours) which made everyone laugh.

- Glory crown, it improves sanction effect. (I don't think they said the effect was limited to Besieged, IIRC they just mentioned besieged to explain about the number of times the city is defended.) This caps at 8 degrees.

- They said finishing the Serpent general quests will give access to an event called mercinary something, which sounds like one they had in a previous festival (or TGS?).

- SMN, they said they'd already decided which new avatar(s) will be added but they need to do some more testings because the model(s) are (is?) big (?) and there may be issues with displaying so it will take some time.

- They will "do something" about WHM and BST. WHM they will add more abilities as it has few abilities in the first place, or something.

- One of the SCH merits was said to be "like a short version of the 2H abi" like someone commented here. (I don't remember the name...)

- When talking about banned accounts, they said the accounts banned for this last time were 328k accounts and that they fished up an equivalent of 49 Lu Shang rods. :D

- They said they may increase mannequin storage.

- About Tidal talisman, they said the first design they'd come up with was very pretty and looked unacceptable as a lvl 1 gear. So they had the graphic person rework it to make it "boring".

- The wedding tuxedos will be obtained in the same way as the dresses, 50000 gil when applying for weddings. I wonder if already married characters can still get it?

- The guy writing those 3 new stories came on stage, and he mentioned he wanted to put a conclusion to the story of Aldo and the girl in the opening movie. Hmm... sounds interesting.

- We picked the wrong chocobo for the race! The red one was too strong! It avoided "our" chocobo's pepper cookie. Oh well wish they'd have made it so everyone gets something.

- The battlefield thing on stage was pretty interesting! I regretted we didn't win, although it must've been terrible to be watched by everyone like this.
But it was lame 3 machines crashed (or game closed or something? screens went back to desktop) and some people didn't get to play much because they couldn't get them back on, I felt sorry for them. Some people played on keyboards and some on the official controllers.
Then they asked the players for their impressions. The only woman in the first group (who I think had the hume WHM with the Nyzul relic/KraClub and that DD mail) said it was fun for her to hit monsters as she was always playing backrow jobs. A guy said he was playing a BLM for the first time ever. Another said he felt very nervous because everyone was watching them play and their "player skill" would be judged. All the characters had pretty good gear (Askar, Morrigan...) and they were provided with some items like high-reraiser. On the second round, the hume WHM died and nobody was nice enough to thow a raise
The monsters all had different conditions and specific reactions which they explained more or less, the bombs would self-destruct when provoked for example. Some died with just one hit (on crit?). But it was a bit messy and it was hard to read the log from where we were.


Anyway, it was a very fun event overall (althought I wish they made it start/end earlier! we were all sleepy and hungry when it ended at 9:30). I can't wait to try the in-game stuff, although it seems the code can't be used until the next version up.
I'm glad I got to attend this event once, and I can't wait to read the reports from the one in America as well

[Thistle]

Thanks so much for reading and putting up with the mundane build up to the event :D

Heck, the "mundane" stuff was fun to read, too! I laughed at the whole McDonalds part. :D

Thanks again for posting all that!

[shukuffxi]

Usually i'm the most negative person to post in threads like this, but the Summoner thing has me excited. Larger avatars, maybe things like "auras" people talked about, where positioning them and keeping them out, will have a worthy benefit, toss in some useful BPs for them, and I just MIGHT be able to play my Summoner again.