I know I said last time we’ve officially entered Evercold, but you can take that statement even more literally with patch 7.56. The MSQ for this patch is short but sweet, taking the Warrior of Light, Alphinaud, and Estinien to the fourth. There, we’re trapped on a deserted island, attacked by some strange machines, and saved by what is no doubt a teaser for the new ranged job to be revealed at the Tokyo Fan Fest. I won’t spoil it here, but it looks cool even if it isn’t exactly what I wanted. (I wanted something using Vanille’s whip staff thing from FFXIII, but maybe next time.) There’s unfortunately no dungeon or trial this time around, just two instanced battles, but both are a good time and interesting enough to engage you. The outfit you get at the end of the MSQ this time is also fantastic, and I’ve been using it as my Beastmaster outfit.
The focus of my time with this patch instead has been squarely on Beastmaster, the new Limited Job. As one of the few who love playing Blue Mage, I was stoked to have something similar again, and it seems a lot more people are enjoying this new job than did Blue Mage. That’s for good reason, as Beastmaster seems to focus way more on solo, open-world content instead of needing to go through party finder to get a group together for a dungeon. There is still some of that here, but most of the monsters you can tame are out in Eorzea.
More than anything, it’s nice to have something to do in these old zones again. I’ve been hunting down monsters to add to my besti-beastiery, fighting random mobs for experience, and running FATEs with other random players. That part alone is a lot of fun, but Beastmaster has its own unique gameplay style unlike any other job, even back when Summoner was actually a pet class. The basic loop for Beastmaster has you summon one of your three chosen monsters, then you and your companion attack an enemy to build up your respective TP bars. Once one of you reaches 100 TP, you can use a special color-coded attack, which will then reset your TP back to 0. Every monster only has one color attack, while you have all four at your disposal. To do some real damage, you need to follow up the first attack with the next in the sequence, shown going clockwise on your job gauge. So if you do a green move, your monster needs to use red, for example. Either one of you can start or end the combo too, but you still need to go in clockwise order to gain any bonus effects.
You’re not just waiting around to build up these combos, as there’s still a lot to consider in the moment-to-moment combat, even if it is overall slower-paced than the typical jobs in the game. When summoning a monster to the field, you gain the One with Nature buff, which allows you to use either Borrow or Tempered Release. Borrow lets you gain a special action based on the monster’s species for the duration they are on the field, while Tempered Release has your monster perform their unique skill. You can only use one per summon, so you need to choose wisely. You might want to borrow a cool dodge move that also grants you evasion up for a bit to dodge some incoming AoEs, or you might want your monster’s special healing skill for some more survivability overall. It’s a cool system even if it’s difficult to keep track of all the moving parts.
That difficult to keep track of theme continues in Beastmaster’s special solo content, the Crucible of the Unbroken. This is something of a rogue-like mode, where you move between spaces on a board game, with each space representing an encounter. You can pick a number of Beasties to join you on a board, but again, only three per battle, and all HP persists between encounters. You need to consider what monsters in your party will do the most damage or be the most survivable, when to use special items that grant healing, revives, or special buffs, and what temporary equipment you want to equip. It’s kind of a lot, but having only gone through the first board so far, it's a lot of fun too.
Overall, I’ve been having a blast with Beastmaster. While it can be a bit tedious to level at times, I’d prefer this be something that lasts me a good long while rather than speeding to the current cap of level 50. This’ll probably hold me over until Evercold at least, which is great because I just got all my other jobs to cap after my raiding group disbanded amicably, and I need things to do. Hope you enjoyed the read, and I’ll see you again next patch.
