Final Fantasy XIV Stormblood
Stormblood is FFXIV's second expansion that continues the story after Heavensward. This expansion will let you level between 60-70. This expansion opens up new maps on a eastern continent where the Asian style areas are located. These new maps will have the ability to fly in them and in this expansion you will learn to dive underwater. There is also a new housing area!
The story quests in this expansion is a bit more than Heavensward. I wasn't that into the story, but I do try to pay attention to it. It does pick up in the latter half. There is also the epilogue which ties the story for the next expansion. I enjoyed the epilogue part much more!
Like with Heavensward, its important to keep up your leveling but even more now as there's a lot of experience needed to level up. The story quests and even the side quests just don't give enough experience points so doing leveling roulettes is the best way to level up. I was able to do the main story quests while queuing for roulettes, and was able to meet to level requirements as I progress. For the epilogue part you need to have your gear at certain item levels to get into the dungeons. This part took me a bit because the gear in the market cost me all my gil so I had to take the time to do some crafting to sell at the market board to earn for the gear.
You won't unlock Diving till around half way through the story. Luckily you don't have to find or collect anything to use it! These new areas do have flying option so you do have to still find the currents and do the sidequests and one dungeon to unlock them. Some of the new areas you won't have access to the rest of the map till later in the story so you're not be able to get to fly there for awhile.
This expansion's dungeons introduces some new mechanics so as always look up guides. I accidentally did one of the trails blind because it came up in my trails roulette before I got to do it. Luckily it wasn't too difficult, but one of the mechanics was new and had to be explained as I wasn't doing it right.The main thing about the dungeons in this expansion is having more AOE attacks that you need to handle and dodge. Its quite hectic and stressful to have so many AOEs and other mechanics going on at the same time. I definitely got caught in alot of AOEs and died a number of times. Its definitely more difficult than Heavensward and it makes me scared of what the third expansion will bring. The solo duties are definitely difficult as well and they change it up a bit in this expansion so that was refreshing for me.
Overall this felt a bit long and was rather difficult in some areas. I still like Heavensward better, but the map and area design in Stormblood is better.
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