Final Fantasy 14 Shadowbringers Log One: There’s A Dancer In My Bunny

14 Shadowbringers launched in early access this week, and as it is with every FF14 expansion, players are of two minds. Half are flooding into the expansion's new area, The First, eager to begin their journey as the Warrior of Darkness. I'm with the other half, a rolling horde of Gunblades and Dancers, rapidly levelling the expansion's two new job roles before tackling the new lands.

After a couple of years as a Miqo'te (kitty person) Red Mage, my character, Clan Destine, is reborn once more. My first stop after launching 14 post-expansion was the city of Limsa Lominsa, the starting point for the quest to become a Dancer.

Unable to handle the pressure and responsibility of tanking as a Gunblade, I opted to stick with my specialty — causing damage from afar. The Dancer is a job that mixes buffing party members with ranged combat using circular, Xena-esque throwing blades.

Becoming a Dancer is as simple as watching a cutscene and saying yes to a revealing gold and maroon dress.

Along with two new jobs, Shadowbringers adds two new playable races to Final Fantasy 14: The rabbit-like Viera and the powerful lion-like Hrothgar. Both races are gender-locked, meaning Viera can only be female and Hrothgar can only be male.

This bothers me, but I spent around $15 in the Square Enix online store for a potion to change my race, and it would be a pity for it to go to waste.

Behold, my new bunny Dancer.

Note the she isn't wearing the hat she was before I changed her race. That's because the two new races don't have headgear modelled for them yet. Every other race in the game can wear whatever on their head, but it was too complicated to do all that for a pair of rabbit ears. That's ridiculous. I mean, they could have at least made the hat for the new job fit, right? Bah.

Rather than starting over at level one, like some of the other classes, Dancer and Gunblades start at level 60.

Unlocking a whole new job at such a high level is daunting. When playing a job from level one, players slowly unlock new abilities. New skills unlock gradually, giving players a much greater sense of how everything comes together than, say, dumping more than 20 fresh skills into a group of hotbars and letting them have at it.

From what I have figured out through playing a couple of hours and running through a short tutorial battle, Dancer combat has two phases.

First there's the actual dancing. That starts by hitting the “Standard Step” skill. There are (initially) four additional dance skills that activate at random once the Standard Step is pressed. This mid-steps amplify the effects of the dance.

The “Standard Finish” ability ends the dance, doing damage to the player's enemies and a 60-second damage-increasing buff to the player and their chosen partner. A partner is a party member designated as the recipient of the Dancer's buffs using a skill called “Closed Position”.

In between dances, which each have a 30-second cooldown, the Dancer uses combat skills to do damage from afar. There is a chain of combat skills for single opponents and one for groups of mobs.

It seems pretty clear cut, but I might be missing some nuance. There are some utility skills I've not used yet, such as a group shield and group buff, and there's a nifty dash the Dancer can do to manoeuvre out of danger quickly. I need to get some more dungeon time in, but for now I'm cautiously pleased with my leaping lapin.

As I said, Dancers start at 60. The new story content for the expansion starts at level 70, leading players to the new level cap of 80. That means in order to enjoy the new content as one of the two new jobs, players have to grind 10 levels. The best way to do that looks like this.

Some of the fastest experience point gain in Final Fantasy 14, outside of running random dungeons, is participating in FATEs (Full Active Time Events). These are special events that pop up across adventuring zones at regular intervals, requiring large groups of players to complete and rewarding large amounts of experience points. Players can form parties and travel from one FATE to the next.

In situations when a substantial fraction of the game's player base finds themselves at level 60 needing to make to level 70 as fast as possible, the organised chaos is gorgeous. Enemies spawn in massive waves only to be rapidly wiped out in a hail of special effects. Pulling the camera back a bit reveals it isn't quite as hectic as it seems.

But where is the fun in that? Look how beautiful this mess gets.

That's where I am as I embark on my Shadowbringers adventure. Or that's where I was before I disconnected and tried to get back on and started getting lobby connection errors. I managed to make it halfway to level 62 in my rolling mob of Dancers and Gunblades. I'm sure it'll still be there when I get back on.

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