It's not just the achievement grind, it's getting videos from you in a new perspective, getting your unique humour in ways we dont normally get, keep it up! Love the series!
I attribute your booming success with this series to 1: you just being an entertaining, cool dude and 2: there being a lack of long(ish) form, high quality, chill, laid back FFXIV content that these videos fill nicely.
He's entertaining and easily has the coolest voice of all the FFXIV content creators. I'm not even interested in achievement hunting and I love watching these. Plus I'll do anything to help make sure the next "Mad Because Small" episode happens.
It's a great type of video to drink a cup of coffee to. Mildly informative, chill, about something I enjoy and the entertainer Greatly enjoys. Perfect bite size for 1, maybe 2 sittings, and if I ever fall behind it'll be easy to catch up/I won't miss anything that's gonna be critical down the line.
watching these after i get home from work on friday has become the normal...at least for the past month. and thanks to you im now addicted to getting as many S ranks as possible. appreciate it! 🤣
i will actually never get tired of that death cry also ofc you're doing well, you have this thing the kids call... a 'personality'. and a good one at that.
Sadly, Achievement Hunting in FFXIV isn't as big as it should be due to the lack of rewards; personally I do like to see number go up. On another note; this series has motivated me to get back on the grind. Also, thanks for introducing me to Lalachievements.
I saw this video pop up and I got confused. I thought you were uploading these videos on Friday. I had a moment and then it dawned on me that it is Friday and I was filled with joy, I don't have to go to work tomorrow. Not only that, but I don't have to go to work for the rest of the year. Thank you CiderSpider, I can't tell you how much this means to me.
I do look forward to these every week, they're strangely compelling :D Worst toxic moment: just picked up RDM so ran a 50/60 roulette and got sastasha hard. Didn't know anything about rotations and used the AE spells to queue up dual cast. A group member asked in chat "why is this RDM using AE, idiot" and yeah, that smarted Worst WTF moment was THE most scuffed LotA run I've ever done, I got to see Phlegeton mechanics I didn't even know existed
The B rank in the north side of Yanxia (big namazu) is by far the fastest way to grind B ranks. Only like 6 possible spawns all close together and he only takes about half of a proper opener to take down each time. Keep up the grind! I love keeping up with this adventure you've embarked on, it keeps me motivated to keep doing my own grinds!
My worst experience in game happened around late HW early StB. Either the gold saucer challenge log wasn't a thing yet or i was too dumb and didn't know about it. I was relatively new to the game and I wanted the adamantoise mount from the saucer. I spent every single day in the saucer playing the tree chopping minigame for like 2 months earning the 200k MGP needed to buy it starting from however much you're allowed to exchange gil for. I still hear the saucer theme music in the darkest corners of my psyche to this day. Silver lining: I'm really really good at that one minigame now.
The hunt addiction is strong. I have long since finished all my hunt achievements and I still hunt regularly, including hunt train conducting. As a fellow achievement collector, I'm glad you've continued with this series.
The ishgardian restoration achievements are taking way longer than I thought, but they've led me to get into the (surprisingly popular?) fete events on my server. After what feels like endlessly grinding it's a ton of fun to take a break to chat with people/steal fourth Kupo/give facts about sheep/steal presents for engineers and merchants/emote spam and so on. I've also started keeping extra hq gatherer/crafter items on me so I can give them to people I see grinding those out in the world - works great with the starlight Santa glam.
Watching these has helped me find things to do in FFXIV. I was facing a huge burnout and these have inspired me to try Hunts and other old content. Thanks for all you do making these videos.
I cannot wait to be done with The Hunt achievements. Got 1k ShB S ranks last week, got 1k EW S ranks for xmas, and i am currently 15 away from 5k. Can finally step away from the aetheryte
Honestly not only are these all super fun to watch with your humor and editing, but they've been an inspiration to me to actually start trying to get extra achievements myself, so thank you for that!
I love these videos!! They've definitely revived my resolve to keep chipping away at the 'A Card in the Hand' achievement, I just hit 300/312 total the other day listening to your vids ♡
I'm glad to hear you'll be keeping this series going. You've definitely inspired me to get some achievements. I didn't think I'd ever get the B- or A-rank hunt achievements for ARR and Heavensward. It never occurred to me to go to Dynamis to try them. I did so and managed to get those achievements. And regarding the prompt, definitely my worst in-game experience has been grinding out an ARR relic weapon.
Yes, I agree! You've inspired me as well, to look at my achievements and actually chase some of them :) Currently working on completing the fishing log and working through 1-90 gathering nodes and the game opens up a lot once you create these kind of goals for yourself! Thanks for your work on these videos! I usually listen/watch while doing chores or playing the game myself, so the longer the video, the better!
As someone else suffering from escort leves -- I'm not sure if you have a specific Beckon macro, but if not: /micon Beckon emote /target /beckon I just focus-target the escort NPC at the start, and if I use that macro it'll automatically re-target my focus target and beckon at them. Makes it marginally easier to get back to beckoning after killing the local wildlife. Also -- joining in the chorus that this series has been a joy to watch. But if you do need to take a break, definitely take a break!
Honestly youve kept my love for 14 alive while i wait for the japan fan fest, so like thank you, and you mentioned this being something you have to build up, i bet thats true and i cant wait to see you at 1 mil views before dawntrail 🖤
I've always loved achievement hunting; it's practically ingrained in my DNA, especially since I first played the Xbox 360 and it was a concept I then understood -- and probably why I don't do too well when it comes to Nintendo consoles (they don't really have a similar concept). All that aside: you actually do an amazing job providing genuinely entertaining content and commentary, and I feel you're one of the top FFXIV content creators for it. Thanks for doing this and making it available to us.
I adore this series. I've been listening to the update as I drive around town getting a milkshake and bacon wraps, then rewatching as I eat and can actually see. It's become a nice routine for me. Today's plans were kinda FUBAR, but it's nice to still have some consistency. and even without that, your stuff is always good quality. I found you thanks to the first "mad because small," and I've looked forward to every upload since!
These videos have spurred friendly competition in Rivalries in my FC where were constantly comparing our Achievement scores and helping each other hunt for achievements.
Progress on achievements: I've been putting off the final step of the Skysteel tools for a while, because expert crafts are scary. I have all the ingredients in my inventory (because my retainers are all full), but I don't really understand how expert crafts work, and following the guide I found was *not* working out in trial synthesis, so I just tabled it. However, I found a macro on a site that alleged to guarantee full quality at a particular set of stat breakpoints, and with some testing, I found this to be reliable. And so began the slow process of actually doing the final step. I picked up Tool Order: Skybuilders' Frypan, Tool Order: Skybuilders' Alembic, Tool Order: Skybuilders' Needle, Tool Order: Skybuilders' Round Knife, Tool Order: Skybuilders' Saw, Tool Order: Skybuilders' Raising Hammer, Tool Order: Skybuilders' Cross-pein Hammer, and Tool Order: Skybuilders' Lapidary Hammer. Along the way, I also picked up Launch Party, I Made That (Worth Collecting) III, and Work Hard, Play Hard. While doing my weekly custom deliveries, picked up The Customer Is Always Right: Charlemend II. Paying better attention to S-rank relays, I picked up Bring Your S Game II. ----- Worst in-game experience: This was back when I first started playing (some time during 5.X). I was making my way through Stormblood, and was still enthusiastic enough that I was doing *all* of my roulettes every day. More than that, I'd turned on the "join in progress" option, in part because I liked the idea of helping people out (I may have even had my burger king crown at this point, though I wouldn't have qualified for mentor roulette yet), and in part because getting into a duty at the final boss and getting full roulette rewards was pretty sweet. More than that, I had already gotten my main, SMN, to 80 (the level cap at the time), and so I was doing these roulettes mostly on alt classes. In this instance, I was queued for Level 50/60/70 Dungeons roulette as BLM, and got a duty in progress with 20 minutes elapsed. "Huzzah!" I thought to myself, foolishly. "They must have had a DC at the final boss or something! This'll be easy." My party consisted of a WAR, a WHM, a SAM, and myself on BLM. So I get in, and it's Amdapor Keep (Hard). Strangely, there is no shortcut thingy. "Odd," I think to myself, but I'm still relatively new to the game, and ARR dungeons can be jank, so I start running. I find the others at the first boss, a dullahan. Now, this is an ARR dungeon, which means bosses tend not to have too many mechanics, but the conveyance of those mechanics can be a little wonky, and this dullahan is such a boss. The boss has three mechanics other than his cleaving auto-attack: first, a small circular AoE will periodically appear beneath a random player's feet, and they have a couple seconds to step out of it; second, the boss will target a random player with a charge, which is basically an AoE line that cannot be avoided by the target; third, the boss will mark a player, and then shoot a laser at them, and the laser will do a ton of damage *and* apply stacking vuln up debuffs for every second you're getting hit. Tanking that laser is death. It hits about 6 times, to my memory, and as a DPS I could survive at most 3 hits from it (why I was doing that will become clear in a moment). Now, there are four gargoyle statues in the arena, and importantly, if you stand such that one of these statues is between you and the boss, the statue will take the laser (the full 6 hits will kill the statue). However, the boss cleave and his other two mechanics *also* hurt the statues. Now, under normal circumstances, none of that matters. Gear scaling in ARR in particular is absolute trash, and so ordinarily, you blast through the boss so quick you see one laser at most, and who cares if all the statues die? But, assuming you were doing this at minimum IL or something, this is still an easy boss if you know what's going on. You tank the boss in the center, or at any cardinal, just anywhere where the cleave isn't hitting the statues, and the DPS just don't stand near the statues until they get marked with a laser, then you hide behind the statue. If it takes long enough that you see five or more lasers, you are doing something seriously wrong. Now, given 20 minutes have elapsed and their still on the first boss, I assume something is up. But I'm not going to start offering advice until I see what's going on. So we pull the boss. The SAM dies immediately; he was standing on the WAR and got hit by a cleave, but that shouldn't one-shot. The WHM doesn't bother to res him. We get a little further into the fight, and the WHM gets targeted with the laser, and just takes it straight to the face and dies. The WAR and I try stall as long as we can, but especially with me doing suboptimal damage (I'm still not very comfortable on BLM), we couldn't pull it out. We wipe. So first, I ask about the SAM. Turns out, at some point before I joined, all of his gear broke, and so he's not meaningfully contributing damage, he's just here for moral support. But, like, that's fine. The rest of us outgear this boss to a point where we should still be able to get through it. We pull again, and similar results. Someone else got the first laser, but the WHM got targeted with the second, and just stood in it. So now I'm explaining mechanics in party chat. Something along the lines of "okay, so when you get the marker above your head, run behind a statue to survive the laser". We pull a third time, same result. We pull a fourth time, same result. We pull a fifth time, same result. In between each time, I'm re-explaining this mechanic. I've started asking the WHM to please acknowledge in chat that they understand. No response. We continue pulling. At this point, we're basically hoping to get a run where the WHM gets targeted with the laser late enough in that we can finish it up. I ask the SAM to stay back because if he's alive, there's a 3-in-4 chance instead of 2-in-3 chance that the WHM isn't targeted by the laser. He acknowledges, but keeps getting clipped by cleaves. We get a couple of pulls pretty deep in, but now we have a new problem: we're running out of statues too quick. See, when the WHM is targeted by a charge, she runs behind a statue. In fact, she spends most of the fight standing near a statue, so they're getting hit by the cicle AoEs whenever they target her too. So now I'm explaining other mechanics in chat, like "don't stand near the statues except during laser" and "if you are targeted with the charge, don't hit a statue with it" and that sort of thing. WHM doesn't acknowledge or follow this advice. We continue to pull. At this point, if I get targeted with the laser, I'm using manaward so that I can tank 3 hits before hiding behind the statue, meaning that every statue I do this with can effectively take two lasers. We get a run that gets pretty close, probably within 10% before we run out of statues and wipe. At this point, the tank is tilted, raging at the WHM in chat, sometimes intentionally wiping the group. After an hour of pulls (on top of the 20 minutes they had before I joined), the tank calls a vote to abandon the duty, and the three of them all vote in favor. Honestly, the most galling thing was knowing that, had I been on SMN, the extra res would have meant we'd have easily cleared the dungeon.
This series has become one of the things i've been looking forward to every week, it makes my grinds less lonely having a new video to watch where somebody else grinds is nice. Also it helps that your voice makes me focus and laugh a lot
Personally I enjoy having these achievements videos in the background while doing grinds myself ingame. Your humor hits home as well, so that's a plus.
You're the reason I started going for some of the grindy achievements in general. Latest I did was getting all the mining achievements in the black shroud, and man there is like nothing to mine there lol. Ended up maxing out my wind shards for the mining 41-50 nodes 4,000 times and I'm now a Forestbreaker
The thing that got me through the deadness of 5.5 and 5.55 was the grind. Now that we're in 6.5 and 6.55 the grind is there to have my back once again. Also binding beckon to shiftQ is insane lmfaoooo. Gotta be a lot of pain behind that one
With as many duties as I've run I have too many horror stories to really pick a "worst" but some stand-outs include but are not limited to; -Eden Shiva in roulette, AST is wearing Cryptlurker accessories and *level 30 grey normal quality vendor trash* on their left side. Including the weapon. They had just above 1k HP total (I took screenshots because I was so floored). The SCH kept hard raising them and the other SMNs + tanks refused to wipe so we could kick the AST/the AST could equip gear. We somehow made it in one pull, but it was terrible. I think I remember the AST being apologetic and I'm not inclined to believe it was malicious, but that doesn't really change the fact that they apparently queued in on a non-combat gearset and sat on the ground the whole fight. -Shitty gil farming bots in Wanderer's Palace, tank and healer. I was still pretty new at the time and didn't understand how to kick or abandon a duty, so we were there a while. -That Dalriada we failed entirely because our tank on the top team refused to tank, then refused to die so we could reset and we timed out. We nearly had it without them, and I think that's the bit that still gets under my skin. -e12n card farming. Godspeed to you Cider, I hope you leave that til level 100 because the drop rate is a fucking lie. Ran it synced a few times cause filling a PF can be slower than queue-ing and generally it was a bit of a shitshow, but the Black Mage who cast lb3 during Titan Junction right near the end of the fight is an asshole who I hope steps on legos because we had to do the whole thing again. -and a funny one; Eden Ifrit/Garuda with 1 healer alive, the other dead, and some guy shrieking at me, a SMN, to rez them. idr what role they were, just that they were annoying and it was smack in the middle of one of the big movement mechanics in that fight. swiftcast had been used for movement at the start of the mechanic, the alive healer had a great handle on things, and we cleared soon after with no major hiccups but by god was i salty enough to make a "swiftcast is read in x.x" macro just for that one guy. i get a lot of positive use out of it but i always remember that it was born of spite.
Why on earth is the video series I'm currently the most invested in an deep voiced tiny potato getting achievements in a game I stopped played a couple years ago?! XD Love your videos Cider Spider, they are amazing! Keep them coming! 💖
i think i appreciate the most about these videos is the way you point out little tips and tricks to make things easier; like i do hunt trains every so often but i had no idea that thanalan as the smallest map had the densest spawn points when it came to b ranks which makes those achievements easier, so that's something i can keep in mind when i go for the hunting ones later. little things like that are super useful and super helpful, in addition to your unique brand of humor and the way you keep the videos engaging content wise even when you're doing something people may consider boring like grinding out mobs. also please remember to take some time to relax lmao waiting a week for a video won't hurt anyone if you need a break
I worked for several years just to get the Centurio Tiger mount and I'm lowkey dreading any future S rank achievement mounts that I actually really want because I *will* go insane trying to get it. I feel about the same in terms of preferring the solo friendly grinds like Diadem in part because hunts are cool in concept, and you can meet a lot of really great people doing them, but a lot of it was just....deeply frustrating. Diadem at least I'm just going quietly mad on my own terms, and shout is way more chill about everything now that the restoration is done. Restoration Diadem was....a Time. Not a bad time, just a really weird one. I loved being part of the big S rank day trains after a patch day, though, and once I figured that out the grind got a lot easier overall. A rank trains are silly fun times already, but S rank trains with so many extra people were especially interesting to be a part of and even if you're not achievement hunting I'd recommend trying to get in on one. Actually, I'm curious if CIder will have an s rank day specific video next patch, that's coming up shortly after JP fanfest right? That could be a fun chaotic video and probably explain it better than I will. Anyone going for the hunt mounts specifically who hasn't heard this yet; all hunt marks are reset during maintenance and S ranks will start coming off cooldown ~2 days out from then, pretty much all at once, so you can make a ton of progress in a short amount of time. it gets *chaotic* so I'd recommend choosing to focus on EW/ShB for the sake of being able to arrive before it dies. Plus the ShB ones are really easy to chain, you could get 3 or 4 pretty quick. And always double check for an SS rank spawn before teleporting out!
Another day to keep an eye on is the day before any server downtime. Hunters go out of their way to spawn as many S Ranks as possible because the server downtime resets all the spawn timers.
I seriously get so excited every time I see a new one of these. They're just... fun. Enjoyable watches. And I love that about it. Plus, it's just nice hearing you talk at length and narrate your adventure!
I do enjoy these videos and for my achivements I have been doing tribe quests in Shadowbringers. I also for some reason burned all my levequest allowence on carpenter large-scale levequest. Though that leveled me really fast. The worst experience was a community one in the form of a glam contest. It was a confusing mess because of the results and instructions coming from a mixture of discord, in game chat and a twitch stream. Had to leave early because it went on for way way too long.
Here's my worst experience in game: I queued into a 50-80 dungeon roulette with my partner. I was healing, he was on DPS, and we got Lost City of Amdapor. I'll be the first person to admit I do not remember how the last boss works all the time! I'm also not really the type of person to rag on mentors super hard. I have it unlocked, I just would rather not deal with how busy I am. But not everyone can remember everything and hey, we're all human. I cut people a lot of slack, and usually I try to help people and be supportive and all. But when I tell you that this mentor: all jobs at 90, crafters and gatherers maxed, everything. Levelled. And yet the dude would not mitigate. On top of it, we happened to get them and this other sprout DRG who would literally disconnect every 5 seconds at best. Most times they'd sit there disconnecting (but not fully leaving the game) for solid 30 second chunks, teleporting all over when they moved. Mentor would not use any cooldowns/mit. Not during trash OR for any busters or hard hits in bosses, and still big pulled the entire way through. We wiped probably about twice to trash pulls because the dude didn't mit and died because I ran out of MP and I spent the entire dungeon healing my ass off. At one point I asked them why they weren't using any mit, and they told me it was "For emergencies only when no one but me is alive" or something like that. Meanwhile me and my partner are sitting there in absolute shock of how someone with everything maxed can have 0 idea how to play tank correctly. I tried to still politely ask them to use just even Rampart or something, and they still refused. They also gave us crap for not doing mechanics in bossfights perfectly... We get to the last boss. We've been in there for at least 30 minutes. The DRG disconnecting means our DPS is horrible and everything is moving in slow motion. The tank using no mit means I'm forced to never use my actual dps spells because I'm smashing benefic so hard my keyboard is breaking, but hey, finally at the last boss. We don't remember what to do. We're waiting for the DRG to come back because they finally disconnected. I offer that uh, should we remove them? That internet seems pretty bad. The mentor reveals its one of his relatives, and they're dealing with bad internet. (My partner and I are even more bewildered going why even have them play if their connection is THIS bad?) Neither of us remember how to do Diabolos and are dreading it. The tank gives the worst explanation of mechanics I've ever seen and pulls before I can get any clarification or even bring up a page on it. We wipe 3 more times on Diabolos. During those pulls, the mentor tank finally used cooldowns... After everyone else had died. He tried to solo it at like, 70% health and prolonged the respawn significantly. Mentor got mad the boss was moving, and when my partner said that they could position the boss because they were the tank, they got mad and said 'I need to be maintaining aggro'. How do you have all tanks at 90 and think you need to actively do something special to keep aggro when tank stance is on? (And he did at least have it on). At one point, as I was spamming heals to try and keep everyone alive, he typed out "HEAL" in party chat. Got mad I 'let him die'. To this day it has been the only dungeon run I have ever deliberately quit out of. Me and my partner both left, and we were groaning and laughing going "Holy shit, good luck to whoever fills for them". Fastest blacklist of my LIFE.
I think the chill achiev farming, variety options for such a broad task + your infotainment-styled editing and commentary make for a very good series that I can see myself following for as long as it goes! We're all achievo-chasers at the end of the day, with varying degrees of madness, so I guess the videos resonate with more people than expected. Can't wait for the Relic gauntlet myself! I've been chipping away at Anima/Resistance materials with some of the quests permanently open, it'll be glorious to turn them all in once the time comes. And then we get to Dawntrail with its own new achievements to get!
You have reminded me that I have been neglecting my Mentor Roulettes. For my own shits n' giggles, I have been chronicling each Roulette I do. I've done 222 of them, and before it became an instanced fight, I did the Steps of Faith 3 times and Castrum (the Ultima fight one) is the one I've done the most at 11 runs. It's also gotten me into more than a few Guildhests. Unsurprisingly, outside of ARR content I see very few "Extreme" mode fights, but I have seen Thok-ast-Thok EX and the Pool of Tribute EX once in my runs. It's been interesting. I am planning on tallying up all the duties to see what % of ones I got over others and which duty I did the most to get my pony.
You have a really good narrator voice. Pleasant to listen to, but not boring in the slightest with your comedic mannerisms thrown in. Add to that a dry sense of humor that even if you go whole hog on it (like in your Mad Because Small episodes) doesn't get overbearing, and you got yourself content that's entertaining to watch even for someone who doesn't know the first thing about FFXIV (aka. myself). Would honestly be a waste if you didn't make at least _some_ kind of content, so I'm happy you've found a format that seems to work well for you.
I'll be honest, I'm watching these vids mostly for your humor, but also to live vicariously through you since I can't be bothered to go achievement hunting myself. It's just not my style of gameplay, but your excitement is contagious.
As an achievement hunter myself this series is becoming my favourite youtube series by far. i have over 5 years and 400days of gameplay(I started when SB was the current expansion), and am nowhere near finishing them all, so good luck!(Especially with the PvP ones). Also as someone active in the hunt community after 5 years i still didn't get my S rank hunt mounts...at least with leaves i know how many i need, and i wanna do every leves in game
My first toon was made a few months before the wow exodus. I rushed the msq and burned myself out (those damn space rabbits!) I made another toon about 6 months ago. I've been taking my time, focusing on the crafting/gathering jobs and it's been great! When you started this series I started logging in more. For some reason I hadn't realized I could add low impact achievement hunting to my low impact gathering/crafting meta. Anyways, thanks for this series!
Of all the editing gags I think my favorite of them is the death yell. I've heard it in game and it always sounds like that player dies in real life at the same time too. Plus Cider's voice is pretty smooth. Keep up the grind! You might inspire me to load up XIV to do a grind some day soon.
I forgot to say this in the last video: I am all for you making separate mentor roulette grind videos!! The more content like this the better, because it motivates me to keep grinding achievements myself and get back into the top100 on my server! Keep it up, love the content ❤
I've been watching these achievement videos over lunch for days as these are actually genuinely entertaining. I'm on a soft break from the game but you make we wanna resub to get back into the grind xD Thanks for these awesome vids Cider - stay hydrated!
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to you and yours Cider. My main obsession originally was relic hunting, deep dungeons, and crafting penta-melded gear for my 5 main jobs. But thanks to your videos I have now started paying more attention to leves and hunt trains when I have time to join em. I love your Mad Because Small series and I'm really enjoying your Achievement Grind series as well. Stay healthy and take a break whenever you need it, but you're doing a great job. Cheers mate.
You asked for worst experiences, and this doesn't exactly qualify as the "worst", but it's about the only bad one I've got in recent memory! This was ~3-4 weeks after Endwalker dropped, and I got Tower of Zot come up in roulette. I was Sage healing (and was pretty good at it, as it's what I'd mained through EW). We had a solid party going in... all except the tank. She was a DRK tank who: 1) never popped any mitigates; 2) kept wall to wall pulling... on those groups that have the big robot minibosses in them. After the first wipe, the entire group told her to pump the brakes, we had to burn down one group and miniboss before moving on to the next. She doesn't say a word and proceeds to do the exact same thing, wiping us a second time. The group reiterates again to do one pack of mobs at a time and she finally acknowledges it with a basic: "o ok". Then proceeds to pull every pack at once again. We wound up kicking her and getting an actual good tank and finishing the run with no problems. But that has stood out as the only nominally "bad" (or frustrating, at least) run I've had in recent memory, where the wipe wasn't due to someone not knowing the fight or making a mistake, but due to active ignorance.
Found this series a couple weeks ago, and it's been a great series to have on in the background, especially while going after my own goals :P At the moment, I'm working on collecting all the ARR relics, which don't have their own achievements, but they feed into the Anima weapons, so at least there's that! I'll definitely say, though, it does make me wish I had other people who were also interested in my friend circles for some friendly competition/cooperation, but videos like these definitely make some of these processes feel less lonely!
real talk I didn't think it will pop off at first too until I watched one of the videos and it was legit really good! I usually play it in the background when I'm either playing FFXIV or when I'm eating and I can't wait for the next episodes keep it up!!!
I'm absolutely achievement-hunting, but I started with the fishing ones because of spawn times. I'm down to 10 big fish left. I love your videos because it makes me feel like I have a hunting partner!
I really enjoy this series! Nice voice, good sense of humor, just very chill and relaxing ffxiv fix when I'm doing things other than playing LOL. Slowly grinding away at my own achievements and this series has gotten me curious about parts of the game I haven't touched (Bozja...........) So thanks!!
Since I finished all major quest, maxxed all my classes, achievement hunting is the main things keeping my interest in the game, and since your first video, I've been keeping up with my levequests. For the grand company turn-in, I crafted 10-15 sets of stuff each time I saw something I didn't have, and I just finished it yesterday
so long as you are asking for stories i've had two pretty bad experiences recently in game as i've been catching up on levelling alternate jobs, so i suppose i will tell these stories in chronological order. the first was during a run of baelsars wall, i was the tank for the roulette playing as gunbreaker and i knew from the first pull attempt that the run was going to go poorly, we wiped on the first pull and as i went more slowly through the rest of the dungeon i noticed that there was a lot of ice crystals appearing (i had spell effects on for some reason) and when i looked at the black mages cast bar i noticed that they would cast 6 blizzard spells at full MP during pulls, so the packs were taking far longer than usual, when i asked why they were casting so many ice spells the response i got was "i'm lazy", later in that dungeons second section, with the elevator that enemies drop into i held all the enemies down fairly normally, but i guess the monk player got hit by an AOE or something, who decided to say "if you didnt want to tank you shouldnt have queued as tank" i genuinely had no idea what he meant, tank stance was on, i held aggro for everything and that segment isnt something i can speed up due to the forced pack sizes. it was just a very off putting run of a dungeon i otherwise quite like getting in roulettes. the second was a sunken temple of qarn run where i was playing bard, the tank i got was a dark knight wearing augmented cryptlurker gear, during the first pull i asked them to put on their tank stance as they had not done it. during the second pull i asked them to turn on their tank stance because they had not done it. pull is perhaps the wrong word, as they would only attack a single pack at a time. the thing that really made it egregious was the fact that they would not use AoE abilities, only using the single target attacks. after the second boss they managed to die against an enemy, not sure if the healer just gave up, but i ended up having to tank a section of enemies as bard, its mostly just a classic awful dungeon run, but the fact that this player was playing dark knight, and wearing cryptlurkers gear really made me mad.
gonna be honest, I don't have much interest in achievement hunting myself. I just find you very entertaining and this series is a way that I get to hear more of you talk. Also it is cool seeing stuff in the game that I would never want to do myself but can instead live vicariously through you.
I am having a TON of fun watching and sharing the series with my FC. We are even planning on achievement hunting times ourselves because we figure we could have a ton of fun with it.
you having that little speech about people getting motivated by you doing your thing here; I am in that group, after your second video you had beuild me the energy to continue with my ARR relic, which I started doing back when I was still in ARR and never finished, I'm quite the busy man IRL so it's just slowly chugging along and isn't some weird speedrun, but I'm also doing the level 80 relic on the side, to get some differed content here and there. I hope you have the series long enough that I have the energy to finish the level 70 relic as well - cheers from one grinder to another.
Seeing you do some of these did get me to start them up again, especially going after some of the ones I'd gone "Ahh, I don't need 10 kills of X" before. Currently now #78 on Lich 😁 For "Worst FF experience", it's no contest. Watching my raid team fail week after week to clear phase one of P8S when i'd already done it in PF... It's not an easy fight, but after 350+ pulls I was losing my mind "Best FF experience" though, joining a novice learning group for Delubrum Savage, aiming to practice the first boss or two, and ending up clearing the whole thing in one lockout 🎉
As a fellow Crystal player and former achievement hunter (life's been getting in the way of the grind) Thank you for these videos. I can't wait to look back in a few years from now when you finally finish the grind!
This series have been real feels for many. We understand the pain and drain some of these achievements are. Such as once you join the Hunt, it's hard to get off the train. As well as encouragement for a lot of use who have fallen off the train and need a boost to get back on. And even on a slow/busy week, any progress is progress. There's a lot of variety to work with. So thank you sir!
I have to agree with others that watching this is good motivation to try and aim for more achievements, and just enjoy playing the game again. Thanks for putting this up, I enjoy watching every week so keep it up
Hello Cider, I've been following this series since the first video and personally as someone who is in the top 100 of my server with 63% of achievements obtained... The Diadem achievements were the absolute worst. Literally over 400+ hours of pure crafting and gathering (to get EVERY achievement, not just the mount). If you ever tackle this horrible grind, godspeed. At least hunts have variety. Lol Love these videos, keep it up!
take breaks when you need!! but yes I'm absolutely looking forward to the next one always :D I don't want to do /all/ the achieves bc some content is more stressful than fun for me, but stuff like the hunts and silly frontlines ones, and tank mounts hell yeah!! My friend also just got me into ocean fishing and I'm like oh gods I get it now. KHLOEE YOU LITTLE SHITEEE
As always, I *love* your content, and I'm always so excited when you choose to share it with us!! Just make sure you're not pushing yourself too hard, and are taking time for you too, you deserve it. Much love!
I've been sharing your vids with my other friends who play FFXIV. You make good stuff and you're doing things that most of us are sane enough not to attempt.
You have just unlocked some memories in me of my time as a sprout when I also used to have beckon on my hotbar, it's almost like that was in another different game.
13:18 the moment i was done with leve quests removing /beckon was the most satisfying thing. lalachivements also counting some minions and mounts to your score. so you know what must be done.
I do look forward to these weekly achievement hunt videos. There IS a set of achievements that I particularly look forward to: The ones where you clear Savage raids several times, and... Ultimates. Good luck c:
Much as I love the grind updates, it brings me such joy to know that each ultimate has an associated achievement--I look forward to the day that you're hunting those.
You've got the secret sauce for entertaining content, a voice we are comfortable listening to, and a common interest in ffxiv. Quite frankly you could probably just dub over DF runs and it'd probably still be a hit.
These videos are my absolute favourite. I can't wait for them every week! It feels like I have company while I work on my own grinds xd. Hope you had a wonderful holiday season! You deserved all the success of this series. Can't wait to follow your journey in 2024!
Your video made me realize I was on the TOP 100 of Diabolos and now I'm trying my hardest to stay on the spot, haha! Thanks for a reason to not just be a raid logger!
I really enjoy these videos. And as for many others, they really motivate me to work on my own completion. I often watch them while grinding for achievements myself :)
![SAFEPLANET - ดาวเคราะห์ [ THE PLANET ]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/4X1XL3I_k3c/mqdefault.jpg)
It's not just the achievement grind, it's getting videos from you in a new perspective, getting your unique humour in ways we dont normally get, keep it up! Love the series!
Yep, Cider Spider is an entertaining guy.
I've got no real interest in achievement hunting, but I know I'm going to enjoy the videos.
solid agree, well said
My worst FF14 experience was when my favorite bench in Limsa was taken. The nerve of some people.
I attribute your booming success with this series to 1: you just being an entertaining, cool dude and 2: there being a lack of long(ish) form, high quality, chill, laid back FFXIV content that these videos fill nicely.
He's entertaining and easily has the coolest voice of all the FFXIV content creators. I'm not even interested in achievement hunting and I love watching these. Plus I'll do anything to help make sure the next "Mad Because Small" episode happens.
That 3rd one for sure is a big part. It's so hard to find anyone doing chill FF content that isn't just PF spam.
It's a great type of video to drink a cup of coffee to. Mildly informative, chill, about something I enjoy and the entertainer Greatly enjoys. Perfect bite size for 1, maybe 2 sittings, and if I ever fall behind it'll be easy to catch up/I won't miss anything that's gonna be critical down the line.
@@cashman1228its crazy how hes not a famous voice actor with millions of subs lol. If i had money id pay 10k to hear him say daddy
Gotta love the holiday season! Did you get what you wanted this Christmas?
yes, I got a new cutting board and knife set, and also got two sets of dice for D&D. Very pleased
I got christmas twins x.x
i did not get a million dollars.
I got myself the Steam Deck OLED with 1 TB.
Yeah. I got a new ciderspider vid
Happy to be nominated for Namazu Chad of the week--looking forward to next week's competition! Happy hunting--love the series
watching these after i get home from work on friday has become the normal...at least for the past month. and thanks to you im now addicted to getting as many S ranks as possible. appreciate it! 🤣
i will actually never get tired of that death cry
also ofc you're doing well, you have this thing the kids call... a 'personality'. and a good one at that.
Sadly, Achievement Hunting in FFXIV isn't as big as it should be due to the lack of rewards; personally I do like to see number go up. On another note; this series has motivated me to get back on the grind. Also, thanks for introducing me to Lalachievements.
I think it's because of the near impossibility of actually 100%ing it so people don't bother getting achievements for the sake of getting them
You've inspired me to start working on achievements again. Thank you for being a good influence!
I saw this video pop up and I got confused. I thought you were uploading these videos on Friday. I had a moment and then it dawned on me that it is Friday and I was filled with joy, I don't have to go to work tomorrow. Not only that, but I don't have to go to work for the rest of the year. Thank you CiderSpider, I can't tell you how much this means to me.
I do look forward to these every week, they're strangely compelling :D
Worst toxic moment: just picked up RDM so ran a 50/60 roulette and got sastasha hard. Didn't know anything about rotations and used the AE spells to queue up dual cast. A group member asked in chat "why is this RDM using AE, idiot" and yeah, that smarted
Worst WTF moment was THE most scuffed LotA run I've ever done, I got to see Phlegeton mechanics I didn't even know existed
The B rank in the north side of Yanxia (big namazu) is by far the fastest way to grind B ranks. Only like 6 possible spawns all close together and he only takes about half of a proper opener to take down each time.
Keep up the grind! I love keeping up with this adventure you've embarked on, it keeps me motivated to keep doing my own grinds!
My worst experience in game happened around late HW early StB. Either the gold saucer challenge log wasn't a thing yet or i was too dumb and didn't know about it. I was relatively new to the game and I wanted the adamantoise mount from the saucer. I spent every single day in the saucer playing the tree chopping minigame for like 2 months earning the 200k MGP needed to buy it starting from however much you're allowed to exchange gil for. I still hear the saucer theme music in the darkest corners of my psyche to this day. Silver lining: I'm really really good at that one minigame now.
The hunt addiction is strong. I have long since finished all my hunt achievements and I still hunt regularly, including hunt train conducting. As a fellow achievement collector, I'm glad you've continued with this series.
The ishgardian restoration achievements are taking way longer than I thought, but they've led me to get into the (surprisingly popular?) fete events on my server. After what feels like endlessly grinding it's a ton of fun to take a break to chat with people/steal fourth Kupo/give facts about sheep/steal presents for engineers and merchants/emote spam and so on. I've also started keeping extra hq gatherer/crafter items on me so I can give them to people I see grinding those out in the world - works great with the starlight Santa glam.
Watching these has helped me find things to do in FFXIV. I was facing a huge burnout and these have inspired me to try Hunts and other old content. Thanks for all you do making these videos.
I cannot wait to be done with The Hunt achievements. Got 1k ShB S ranks last week, got 1k EW S ranks for xmas, and i am currently 15 away from 5k. Can finally step away from the aetheryte
Till summer
Honestly not only are these all super fun to watch with your humor and editing, but they've been an inspiration to me to actually start trying to get extra achievements myself, so thank you for that!
I love these videos!! They've definitely revived my resolve to keep chipping away at the 'A Card in the Hand' achievement, I just hit 300/312 total the other day listening to your vids ♡
I'm glad to hear you'll be keeping this series going. You've definitely inspired me to get some achievements. I didn't think I'd ever get the B- or A-rank hunt achievements for ARR and Heavensward. It never occurred to me to go to Dynamis to try them. I did so and managed to get those achievements. And regarding the prompt, definitely my worst in-game experience has been grinding out an ARR relic weapon.
19:50 That is the Rank 20 Island Sanctuary mount, it's also a 2-seater. I love my three wheeled motorcycle.
Welcome to the Hunting Community! As a fellow Achiev hunter, its nice to see someone getting into it and streaming their progress :D Keep it up!!
Yes, I agree! You've inspired me as well, to look at my achievements and actually chase some of them :) Currently working on completing the fishing log and working through 1-90 gathering nodes and the game opens up a lot once you create these kind of goals for yourself! Thanks for your work on these videos! I usually listen/watch while doing chores or playing the game myself, so the longer the video, the better!
As someone else suffering from escort leves -- I'm not sure if you have a specific Beckon macro, but if not:
/micon Beckon emote
/target
/beckon
I just focus-target the escort NPC at the start, and if I use that macro it'll automatically re-target my focus target and beckon at them. Makes it marginally easier to get back to beckoning after killing the local wildlife.
Also -- joining in the chorus that this series has been a joy to watch. But if you do need to take a break, definitely take a break!
Honestly youve kept my love for 14 alive while i wait for the japan fan fest, so like thank you, and you mentioned this being something you have to build up, i bet thats true and i cant wait to see you at 1 mil views before dawntrail 🖤
I've always loved achievement hunting; it's practically ingrained in my DNA, especially since I first played the Xbox 360 and it was a concept I then understood -- and probably why I don't do too well when it comes to Nintendo consoles (they don't really have a similar concept).
All that aside: you actually do an amazing job providing genuinely entertaining content and commentary, and I feel you're one of the top FFXIV content creators for it.
Thanks for doing this and making it available to us.
I adore this series. I've been listening to the update as I drive around town getting a milkshake and bacon wraps, then rewatching as I eat and can actually see. It's become a nice routine for me. Today's plans were kinda FUBAR, but it's nice to still have some consistency. and even without that, your stuff is always good quality. I found you thanks to the first "mad because small," and I've looked forward to every upload since!
I enjoy listening to your commentary. I started with your shorts, but honestly these videos keep me coming back.
these videos are the best part about sitting down for lunch on a lovely aussie saturday
These videos have spurred friendly competition in Rivalries in my FC where were constantly comparing our Achievement scores and helping each other hunt for achievements.
Progress on achievements:
I've been putting off the final step of the Skysteel tools for a while, because expert crafts are scary. I have all the ingredients in my inventory (because my retainers are all full), but I don't really understand how expert crafts work, and following the guide I found was *not* working out in trial synthesis, so I just tabled it. However, I found a macro on a site that alleged to guarantee full quality at a particular set of stat breakpoints, and with some testing, I found this to be reliable. And so began the slow process of actually doing the final step. I picked up Tool Order: Skybuilders' Frypan, Tool Order: Skybuilders' Alembic, Tool Order: Skybuilders' Needle, Tool Order: Skybuilders' Round Knife, Tool Order: Skybuilders' Saw, Tool Order: Skybuilders' Raising Hammer, Tool Order: Skybuilders' Cross-pein Hammer, and Tool Order: Skybuilders' Lapidary Hammer. Along the way, I also picked up Launch Party, I Made That (Worth Collecting) III, and Work Hard, Play Hard.
While doing my weekly custom deliveries, picked up The Customer Is Always Right: Charlemend II. Paying better attention to S-rank relays, I picked up Bring Your S Game II.
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Worst in-game experience:
This was back when I first started playing (some time during 5.X). I was making my way through Stormblood, and was still enthusiastic enough that I was doing *all* of my roulettes every day. More than that, I'd turned on the "join in progress" option, in part because I liked the idea of helping people out (I may have even had my burger king crown at this point, though I wouldn't have qualified for mentor roulette yet), and in part because getting into a duty at the final boss and getting full roulette rewards was pretty sweet. More than that, I had already gotten my main, SMN, to 80 (the level cap at the time), and so I was doing these roulettes mostly on alt classes. In this instance, I was queued for Level 50/60/70 Dungeons roulette as BLM, and got a duty in progress with 20 minutes elapsed. "Huzzah!" I thought to myself, foolishly. "They must have had a DC at the final boss or something! This'll be easy." My party consisted of a WAR, a WHM, a SAM, and myself on BLM.
So I get in, and it's Amdapor Keep (Hard). Strangely, there is no shortcut thingy. "Odd," I think to myself, but I'm still relatively new to the game, and ARR dungeons can be jank, so I start running. I find the others at the first boss, a dullahan. Now, this is an ARR dungeon, which means bosses tend not to have too many mechanics, but the conveyance of those mechanics can be a little wonky, and this dullahan is such a boss. The boss has three mechanics other than his cleaving auto-attack: first, a small circular AoE will periodically appear beneath a random player's feet, and they have a couple seconds to step out of it; second, the boss will target a random player with a charge, which is basically an AoE line that cannot be avoided by the target; third, the boss will mark a player, and then shoot a laser at them, and the laser will do a ton of damage *and* apply stacking vuln up debuffs for every second you're getting hit. Tanking that laser is death. It hits about 6 times, to my memory, and as a DPS I could survive at most 3 hits from it (why I was doing that will become clear in a moment). Now, there are four gargoyle statues in the arena, and importantly, if you stand such that one of these statues is between you and the boss, the statue will take the laser (the full 6 hits will kill the statue). However, the boss cleave and his other two mechanics *also* hurt the statues.
Now, under normal circumstances, none of that matters. Gear scaling in ARR in particular is absolute trash, and so ordinarily, you blast through the boss so quick you see one laser at most, and who cares if all the statues die? But, assuming you were doing this at minimum IL or something, this is still an easy boss if you know what's going on. You tank the boss in the center, or at any cardinal, just anywhere where the cleave isn't hitting the statues, and the DPS just don't stand near the statues until they get marked with a laser, then you hide behind the statue. If it takes long enough that you see five or more lasers, you are doing something seriously wrong.
Now, given 20 minutes have elapsed and their still on the first boss, I assume something is up. But I'm not going to start offering advice until I see what's going on. So we pull the boss. The SAM dies immediately; he was standing on the WAR and got hit by a cleave, but that shouldn't one-shot. The WHM doesn't bother to res him. We get a little further into the fight, and the WHM gets targeted with the laser, and just takes it straight to the face and dies. The WAR and I try stall as long as we can, but especially with me doing suboptimal damage (I'm still not very comfortable on BLM), we couldn't pull it out. We wipe. So first, I ask about the SAM. Turns out, at some point before I joined, all of his gear broke, and so he's not meaningfully contributing damage, he's just here for moral support. But, like, that's fine. The rest of us outgear this boss to a point where we should still be able to get through it. We pull again, and similar results. Someone else got the first laser, but the WHM got targeted with the second, and just stood in it. So now I'm explaining mechanics in party chat. Something along the lines of "okay, so when you get the marker above your head, run behind a statue to survive the laser".
We pull a third time, same result. We pull a fourth time, same result. We pull a fifth time, same result. In between each time, I'm re-explaining this mechanic. I've started asking the WHM to please acknowledge in chat that they understand. No response. We continue pulling. At this point, we're basically hoping to get a run where the WHM gets targeted with the laser late enough in that we can finish it up. I ask the SAM to stay back because if he's alive, there's a 3-in-4 chance instead of 2-in-3 chance that the WHM isn't targeted by the laser. He acknowledges, but keeps getting clipped by cleaves. We get a couple of pulls pretty deep in, but now we have a new problem: we're running out of statues too quick. See, when the WHM is targeted by a charge, she runs behind a statue. In fact, she spends most of the fight standing near a statue, so they're getting hit by the cicle AoEs whenever they target her too. So now I'm explaining other mechanics in chat, like "don't stand near the statues except during laser" and "if you are targeted with the charge, don't hit a statue with it" and that sort of thing. WHM doesn't acknowledge or follow this advice.
We continue to pull. At this point, if I get targeted with the laser, I'm using manaward so that I can tank 3 hits before hiding behind the statue, meaning that every statue I do this with can effectively take two lasers. We get a run that gets pretty close, probably within 10% before we run out of statues and wipe. At this point, the tank is tilted, raging at the WHM in chat, sometimes intentionally wiping the group. After an hour of pulls (on top of the 20 minutes they had before I joined), the tank calls a vote to abandon the duty, and the three of them all vote in favor. Honestly, the most galling thing was knowing that, had I been on SMN, the extra res would have meant we'd have easily cleared the dungeon.
This series has become one of the things i've been looking forward to every week, it makes my grinds less lonely having a new video to watch where somebody else grinds is nice. Also it helps that your voice makes me focus and laugh a lot
Personally I enjoy having these achievements videos in the background while doing grinds myself ingame. Your humor hits home as well, so that's a plus.
You're the reason I started going for some of the grindy achievements in general. Latest I did was getting all the mining achievements in the black shroud, and man there is like nothing to mine there lol. Ended up maxing out my wind shards for the mining 41-50 nodes 4,000 times and I'm now a Forestbreaker
The thing that got me through the deadness of 5.5 and 5.55 was the grind. Now that we're in 6.5 and 6.55 the grind is there to have my back once again. Also binding beckon to shiftQ is insane lmfaoooo. Gotta be a lot of pain behind that one
Ran into your channel on accident when you posted your first video and I've been impatiently awaiting them every week since
With as many duties as I've run I have too many horror stories to really pick a "worst" but some stand-outs include but are not limited to;
-Eden Shiva in roulette, AST is wearing Cryptlurker accessories and *level 30 grey normal quality vendor trash* on their left side. Including the weapon. They had just above 1k HP total (I took screenshots because I was so floored).
The SCH kept hard raising them and the other SMNs + tanks refused to wipe so we could kick the AST/the AST could equip gear. We somehow made it in one pull, but it was terrible. I think I remember the AST being apologetic and I'm not inclined to believe it was malicious, but that doesn't really change the fact that they apparently queued in on a non-combat gearset and sat on the ground the whole fight.
-Shitty gil farming bots in Wanderer's Palace, tank and healer. I was still pretty new at the time and didn't understand how to kick or abandon a duty, so we were there a while.
-That Dalriada we failed entirely because our tank on the top team refused to tank, then refused to die so we could reset and we timed out. We nearly had it without them, and I think that's the bit that still gets under my skin.
-e12n card farming. Godspeed to you Cider, I hope you leave that til level 100 because the drop rate is a fucking lie.
Ran it synced a few times cause filling a PF can be slower than queue-ing and generally it was a bit of a shitshow, but the Black Mage who cast lb3 during Titan Junction right near the end of the fight is an asshole who I hope steps on legos because we had to do the whole thing again.
-and a funny one; Eden Ifrit/Garuda with 1 healer alive, the other dead, and some guy shrieking at me, a SMN, to rez them. idr what role they were, just that they were annoying and it was smack in the middle of one of the big movement mechanics in that fight.
swiftcast had been used for movement at the start of the mechanic, the alive healer had a great handle on things, and we cleared soon after with no major hiccups but by god was i salty enough to make a "swiftcast is read in x.x" macro just for that one guy.
i get a lot of positive use out of it but i always remember that it was born of spite.
Why on earth is the video series I'm currently the most invested in an deep voiced tiny potato getting achievements in a game I stopped played a couple years ago?! XD
Love your videos Cider Spider, they are amazing! Keep them coming! 💖
i think i appreciate the most about these videos is the way you point out little tips and tricks to make things easier; like i do hunt trains every so often but i had no idea that thanalan as the smallest map had the densest spawn points when it came to b ranks which makes those achievements easier, so that's something i can keep in mind when i go for the hunting ones later. little things like that are super useful and super helpful, in addition to your unique brand of humor and the way you keep the videos engaging content wise even when you're doing something people may consider boring like grinding out mobs.
also please remember to take some time to relax lmao waiting a week for a video won't hurt anyone if you need a break
I worked for several years just to get the Centurio Tiger mount and I'm lowkey dreading any future S rank achievement mounts that I actually really want because I *will* go insane trying to get it.
I feel about the same in terms of preferring the solo friendly grinds like Diadem in part because hunts are cool in concept, and you can meet a lot of really great people doing them, but a lot of it was just....deeply frustrating. Diadem at least I'm just going quietly mad on my own terms, and shout is way more chill about everything now that the restoration is done. Restoration Diadem was....a Time. Not a bad time, just a really weird one.
I loved being part of the big S rank day trains after a patch day, though, and once I figured that out the grind got a lot easier overall. A rank trains are silly fun times already, but S rank trains with so many extra people were especially interesting to be a part of and even if you're not achievement hunting I'd recommend trying to get in on one.
Actually, I'm curious if CIder will have an s rank day specific video next patch, that's coming up shortly after JP fanfest right? That could be a fun chaotic video and probably explain it better than I will.
Anyone going for the hunt mounts specifically who hasn't heard this yet; all hunt marks are reset during maintenance and S ranks will start coming off cooldown ~2 days out from then, pretty much all at once, so you can make a ton of progress in a short amount of time.
it gets *chaotic* so I'd recommend choosing to focus on EW/ShB for the sake of being able to arrive before it dies. Plus the ShB ones are really easy to chain, you could get 3 or 4 pretty quick. And always double check for an SS rank spawn before teleporting out!
Another day to keep an eye on is the day before any server downtime. Hunters go out of their way to spawn as many S Ranks as possible because the server downtime resets all the spawn timers.
I seriously get so excited every time I see a new one of these. They're just... fun. Enjoyable watches. And I love that about it. Plus, it's just nice hearing you talk at length and narrate your adventure!
I do enjoy these videos and for my achivements I have been doing tribe quests in Shadowbringers. I also for some reason burned all my levequest allowence on carpenter large-scale levequest. Though that leveled me really fast.
The worst experience was a community one in the form of a glam contest. It was a confusing mess because of the results and instructions coming from a mixture of discord, in game chat and a twitch stream. Had to leave early because it went on for way way too long.
I love when it's friday and I'm getting ready for bed and this pops up in my feed. Such a comfy routine that heralds the weekend
Here's my worst experience in game: I queued into a 50-80 dungeon roulette with my partner. I was healing, he was on DPS, and we got Lost City of Amdapor. I'll be the first person to admit I do not remember how the last boss works all the time!
I'm also not really the type of person to rag on mentors super hard. I have it unlocked, I just would rather not deal with how busy I am. But not everyone can remember everything and hey, we're all human. I cut people a lot of slack, and usually I try to help people and be supportive and all.
But when I tell you that this mentor: all jobs at 90, crafters and gatherers maxed, everything. Levelled. And yet the dude would not mitigate. On top of it, we happened to get them and this other sprout DRG who would literally disconnect every 5 seconds at best. Most times they'd sit there disconnecting (but not fully leaving the game) for solid 30 second chunks, teleporting all over when they moved.
Mentor would not use any cooldowns/mit. Not during trash OR for any busters or hard hits in bosses, and still big pulled the entire way through. We wiped probably about twice to trash pulls because the dude didn't mit and died because I ran out of MP and I spent the entire dungeon healing my ass off. At one point I asked them why they weren't using any mit, and they told me it was "For emergencies only when no one but me is alive" or something like that. Meanwhile me and my partner are sitting there in absolute shock of how someone with everything maxed can have 0 idea how to play tank correctly. I tried to still politely ask them to use just even Rampart or something, and they still refused. They also gave us crap for not doing mechanics in bossfights perfectly...
We get to the last boss. We've been in there for at least 30 minutes. The DRG disconnecting means our DPS is horrible and everything is moving in slow motion. The tank using no mit means I'm forced to never use my actual dps spells because I'm smashing benefic so hard my keyboard is breaking, but hey, finally at the last boss.
We don't remember what to do. We're waiting for the DRG to come back because they finally disconnected. I offer that uh, should we remove them? That internet seems pretty bad. The mentor reveals its one of his relatives, and they're dealing with bad internet. (My partner and I are even more bewildered going why even have them play if their connection is THIS bad?)
Neither of us remember how to do Diabolos and are dreading it. The tank gives the worst explanation of mechanics I've ever seen and pulls before I can get any clarification or even bring up a page on it. We wipe 3 more times on Diabolos. During those pulls, the mentor tank finally used cooldowns... After everyone else had died. He tried to solo it at like, 70% health and prolonged the respawn significantly. Mentor got mad the boss was moving, and when my partner said that they could position the boss because they were the tank, they got mad and said 'I need to be maintaining aggro'. How do you have all tanks at 90 and think you need to actively do something special to keep aggro when tank stance is on? (And he did at least have it on). At one point, as I was spamming heals to try and keep everyone alive, he typed out "HEAL" in party chat. Got mad I 'let him die'.
To this day it has been the only dungeon run I have ever deliberately quit out of. Me and my partner both left, and we were groaning and laughing going "Holy shit, good luck to whoever fills for them". Fastest blacklist of my LIFE.
Aside from the horrific story though thank you for these! Really chill to have on as I grind for whatever I'm doing in game at the moment 🫡
I think the chill achiev farming, variety options for such a broad task + your infotainment-styled editing and commentary make for a very good series that I can see myself following for as long as it goes!
We're all achievo-chasers at the end of the day, with varying degrees of madness, so I guess the videos resonate with more people than expected. Can't wait for the Relic gauntlet myself! I've been chipping away at Anima/Resistance materials with some of the quests permanently open, it'll be glorious to turn them all in once the time comes. And then we get to Dawntrail with its own new achievements to get!
Came for angry Lalafel, got hooked on Firmalbert, and stayed for the endlessly entertaining content. Keep up the good work!
You have reminded me that I have been neglecting my Mentor Roulettes. For my own shits n' giggles, I have been chronicling each Roulette I do. I've done 222 of them, and before it became an instanced fight, I did the Steps of Faith 3 times and Castrum (the Ultima fight one) is the one I've done the most at 11 runs. It's also gotten me into more than a few Guildhests. Unsurprisingly, outside of ARR content I see very few "Extreme" mode fights, but I have seen Thok-ast-Thok EX and the Pool of Tribute EX once in my runs. It's been interesting. I am planning on tallying up all the duties to see what % of ones I got over others and which duty I did the most to get my pony.
You have a really good narrator voice. Pleasant to listen to, but not boring in the slightest with your comedic mannerisms thrown in. Add to that a dry sense of humor that even if you go whole hog on it (like in your Mad Because Small episodes) doesn't get overbearing, and you got yourself content that's entertaining to watch even for someone who doesn't know the first thing about FFXIV (aka. myself). Would honestly be a waste if you didn't make at least _some_ kind of content, so I'm happy you've found a format that seems to work well for you.
I'll be honest, I'm watching these vids mostly for your humor, but also to live vicariously through you since I can't be bothered to go achievement hunting myself. It's just not my style of gameplay, but your excitement is contagious.
As an achievement hunter myself this series is becoming my favourite youtube series by far. i have over 5 years and 400days of gameplay(I started when SB was the current expansion), and am nowhere near finishing them all, so good luck!(Especially with the PvP ones). Also as someone active in the hunt community after 5 years i still didn't get my S rank hunt mounts...at least with leaves i know how many i need, and i wanna do every leves in game
My first toon was made a few months before the wow exodus. I rushed the msq and burned myself out (those damn space rabbits!) I made another toon about 6 months ago. I've been taking my time, focusing on the crafting/gathering jobs and it's been great!
When you started this series I started logging in more. For some reason I hadn't realized I could add low impact achievement hunting to my low impact gathering/crafting meta.
Anyways, thanks for this series!
I look forward to this every week and it makes me happy to see someone engage in this content!
Of all the editing gags I think my favorite of them is the death yell. I've heard it in game and it always sounds like that player dies in real life at the same time too. Plus Cider's voice is pretty smooth. Keep up the grind! You might inspire me to load up XIV to do a grind some day soon.
I forgot to say this in the last video: I am all for you making separate mentor roulette grind videos!! The more content like this the better, because it motivates me to keep grinding achievements myself and get back into the top100 on my server! Keep it up, love the content ❤
I've been watching these achievement videos over lunch for days as these are actually genuinely entertaining. I'm on a soft break from the game but you make we wanna resub to get back into the grind xD Thanks for these awesome vids Cider - stay hydrated!
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to you and yours Cider. My main obsession originally was relic hunting, deep dungeons, and crafting penta-melded gear for my 5 main jobs. But thanks to your videos I have now started paying more attention to leves and hunt trains when I have time to join em. I love your Mad Because Small series and I'm really enjoying your Achievement Grind series as well. Stay healthy and take a break whenever you need it, but you're doing a great job. Cheers mate.
Rewatching this series yet again for mental health boost. Your commentary is so entertaining and funny. Keep up the great work!
Seeing this more relaxed(but still edited) ff14 content has soothed my need to play it since im unable to for awhile, so Ive been loving these videos!
I love seeing your updates! these videos have honestly helped me rekindle my love for the game and I'm gonna pick it back up in the new year
You asked for worst experiences, and this doesn't exactly qualify as the "worst", but it's about the only bad one I've got in recent memory!
This was ~3-4 weeks after Endwalker dropped, and I got Tower of Zot come up in roulette. I was Sage healing (and was pretty good at it, as it's what I'd mained through EW). We had a solid party going in... all except the tank. She was a DRK tank who: 1) never popped any mitigates; 2) kept wall to wall pulling... on those groups that have the big robot minibosses in them. After the first wipe, the entire group told her to pump the brakes, we had to burn down one group and miniboss before moving on to the next. She doesn't say a word and proceeds to do the exact same thing, wiping us a second time. The group reiterates again to do one pack of mobs at a time and she finally acknowledges it with a basic: "o ok". Then proceeds to pull every pack at once again.
We wound up kicking her and getting an actual good tank and finishing the run with no problems. But that has stood out as the only nominally "bad" (or frustrating, at least) run I've had in recent memory, where the wipe wasn't due to someone not knowing the fight or making a mistake, but due to active ignorance.
Found this series a couple weeks ago, and it's been a great series to have on in the background, especially while going after my own goals :P
At the moment, I'm working on collecting all the ARR relics, which don't have their own achievements, but they feed into the Anima weapons, so at least there's that!
I'll definitely say, though, it does make me wish I had other people who were also interested in my friend circles for some friendly competition/cooperation, but videos like these definitely make some of these processes feel less lonely!
real talk I didn't think it will pop off at first too until I watched one of the videos and it was legit really good! I usually play it in the background when I'm either playing FFXIV or when I'm eating and I can't wait for the next episodes keep it up!!!
I'm absolutely achievement-hunting, but I started with the fishing ones because of spawn times. I'm down to 10 big fish left. I love your videos because it makes me feel like I have a hunting partner!
It absolutely has motivated me to start going after potential achievement grinds I've left alone or half finished. Thanks for the videos.
I really enjoy this series! Nice voice, good sense of humor, just very chill and relaxing ffxiv fix when I'm doing things other than playing LOL. Slowly grinding away at my own achievements and this series has gotten me curious about parts of the game I haven't touched (Bozja...........) So thanks!!
Since I finished all major quest, maxxed all my classes, achievement hunting is the main things keeping my interest in the game, and since your first video, I've been keeping up with my levequests.
For the grand company turn-in, I crafted 10-15 sets of stuff each time I saw something I didn't have, and I just finished it yesterday
so excited for your fishing arc
(i've been on the ocean fishing grind for a few months)
This is possibly the best content on YT atm. Please never stop doing these.
so long as you are asking for stories i've had two pretty bad experiences recently in game as i've been catching up on levelling alternate jobs, so i suppose i will tell these stories in chronological order.
the first was during a run of baelsars wall, i was the tank for the roulette playing as gunbreaker and i knew from the first pull attempt that the run was going to go poorly, we wiped on the first pull and as i went more slowly through the rest of the dungeon i noticed that there was a lot of ice crystals appearing (i had spell effects on for some reason) and when i looked at the black mages cast bar i noticed that they would cast 6 blizzard spells at full MP during pulls, so the packs were taking far longer than usual, when i asked why they were casting so many ice spells the response i got was "i'm lazy", later in that dungeons second section, with the elevator that enemies drop into i held all the enemies down fairly normally, but i guess the monk player got hit by an AOE or something, who decided to say "if you didnt want to tank you shouldnt have queued as tank" i genuinely had no idea what he meant, tank stance was on, i held aggro for everything and that segment isnt something i can speed up due to the forced pack sizes. it was just a very off putting run of a dungeon i otherwise quite like getting in roulettes.
the second was a sunken temple of qarn run where i was playing bard, the tank i got was a dark knight wearing augmented cryptlurker gear, during the first pull i asked them to put on their tank stance as they had not done it. during the second pull i asked them to turn on their tank stance because they had not done it. pull is perhaps the wrong word, as they would only attack a single pack at a time. the thing that really made it egregious was the fact that they would not use AoE abilities, only using the single target attacks. after the second boss they managed to die against an enemy, not sure if the healer just gave up, but i ended up having to tank a section of enemies as bard, its mostly just a classic awful dungeon run, but the fact that this player was playing dark knight, and wearing cryptlurkers gear really made me mad.
gonna be honest, I don't have much interest in achievement hunting myself. I just find you very entertaining and this series is a way that I get to hear more of you talk. Also it is cool seeing stuff in the game that I would never want to do myself but can instead live vicariously through you.
I am having a TON of fun watching and sharing the series with my FC. We are even planning on achievement hunting times ourselves because we figure we could have a ton of fun with it.
you having that little speech about people getting motivated by you doing your thing here;
I am in that group, after your second video you had beuild me the energy to continue with my ARR relic, which I started doing back when I was still in ARR and never finished, I'm quite the busy man IRL so it's just slowly chugging along and isn't some weird speedrun, but I'm also doing the level 80 relic on the side, to get some differed content here and there. I hope you have the series long enough that I have the energy to finish the level 70 relic as well - cheers from one grinder to another.
Seeing you do some of these did get me to start them up again, especially going after some of the ones I'd gone "Ahh, I don't need 10 kills of X" before. Currently now #78 on Lich 😁
For "Worst FF experience", it's no contest. Watching my raid team fail week after week to clear phase one of P8S when i'd already done it in PF... It's not an easy fight, but after 350+ pulls I was losing my mind
"Best FF experience" though, joining a novice learning group for Delubrum Savage, aiming to practice the first boss or two, and ending up clearing the whole thing in one lockout 🎉
As a fellow Crystal player and former achievement hunter (life's been getting in the way of the grind)
Thank you for these videos. I can't wait to look back in a few years from now when you finally finish the grind!
This series have been real feels for many. We understand the pain and drain some of these achievements are. Such as once you join the Hunt, it's hard to get off the train. As well as encouragement for a lot of use who have fallen off the train and need a boost to get back on. And even on a slow/busy week, any progress is progress. There's a lot of variety to work with. So thank you sir!
I have to agree with others that watching this is good motivation to try and aim for more achievements, and just enjoy playing the game again. Thanks for putting this up, I enjoy watching every week so keep it up
Hello Cider, I've been following this series since the first video and personally as someone who is in the top 100 of my server with 63% of achievements obtained... The Diadem achievements were the absolute worst. Literally over 400+ hours of pure crafting and gathering (to get EVERY achievement, not just the mount). If you ever tackle this horrible grind, godspeed. At least hunts have variety. Lol
Love these videos, keep it up!
take breaks when you need!! but yes I'm absolutely looking forward to the next one always :D
I don't want to do /all/ the achieves bc some content is more stressful than fun for me, but stuff like the hunts and silly frontlines ones, and tank mounts hell yeah!! My friend also just got me into ocean fishing and I'm like oh gods I get it now.
KHLOEE YOU LITTLE SHITEEE
As always, I *love* your content, and I'm always so excited when you choose to share it with us!! Just make sure you're not pushing yourself too hard, and are taking time for you too, you deserve it. Much love!
Watching your achievement hunting videos has encouraged me to start finishing up some achievements of my own.
Started watching this as something to listen to while grinding levels. Great voice too.
I've been sharing your vids with my other friends who play FFXIV. You make good stuff and you're doing things that most of us are sane enough not to attempt.
You have just unlocked some memories in me of my time as a sprout when I also used to have beckon on my hotbar, it's almost like that was in another different game.
This is the first video I've watched of yours and I really enjoy it. I can relate because I am also trying to get every achievement in ff14!
13:18 the moment i was done with leve quests removing /beckon was the most satisfying thing. lalachivements also counting some minions and mounts to your score. so you know what must be done.
I love this content - you're a funny guy and it's engaging to watch because you're always doing something different. Highlight of the week!
i really enjoy this super chill content. watching you do whatever you want and go where the wind takes you is very relaxing.
Achievement hunting for its own sake is one of those types of activities that I would never want to do myself, but I love watching you do it!
I love these so much, they're so cozy - I look forward to a new one every week. Nice to watch your progress as I grind myself :)
I live vicariously through these videos, as I don't actually feel like playing atm, but dang, it's fun watching! Keep up the good work
I love the death scream edited in for every single kill of the video.
That kind of running joke makes me laugh each time for some reason.
I love my weekly cider spider check in! I hope you had a happy holidays! 💕💕
I do look forward to these weekly achievement hunt videos. There IS a set of achievements that I particularly look forward to:
The ones where you clear Savage raids several times, and... Ultimates.
Good luck c:
Much as I love the grind updates, it brings me such joy to know that each ultimate has an associated achievement--I look forward to the day that you're hunting those.
Genuinely have enjoyed this series. Made me try to raise up my score as well doing content and things I normally would ignore.
Honestly can't wait for a playlist of these videos in a year or so :), keep up the awesome grind Cider~
You've got the secret sauce for entertaining content, a voice we are comfortable listening to, and a common interest in ffxiv.
Quite frankly you could probably just dub over DF runs and it'd probably still be a hit.
These videos are my absolute favourite. I can't wait for them every week! It feels like I have company while I work on my own grinds xd. Hope you had a wonderful holiday season! You deserved all the success of this series. Can't wait to follow your journey in 2024!
Your video made me realize I was on the TOP 100 of Diabolos and now I'm trying my hardest to stay on the spot, haha!
Thanks for a reason to not just be a raid logger!
I really enjoy these videos. And as for many others, they really motivate me to work on my own completion. I often watch them while grinding for achievements myself :)