The 66 Day Grand Company Grind - Getting Every Achievement in FFXIV #21 

Cider! For the pimp your ride achievement you only need to buy the 3 sets of barding from ONE grand company, not every barding from every grand company

Careless Whisper is the best squad member and the best Fem Roe name.

I will mourn the day Child Labor is no longer on the screen.

fun fact about jonathas: he's also where you get certain achievement-related adventurer plate framing kits, such as the ones for the World-Class Troller and Grandmaster Caster achievements. the devs have found a new use for him!

Haukke Manor isn't French, it's a straight-up typo. In Japanese, it's Hauketa Goyoutei and should have been translated as Hauketa Manor, but in the whirlwind of rushed development that was 2.0, someone passed the name along to the localization team without the 'ta' at the end, and no one caught the mistake until much later. Koji talked about it in a live letter several years ago.

Cider this series is the reason I've started playing again and grinding out my own achievements. Though I still dread the Leve and Grand Company ones.

Are you in Maelstrom - the correct grand company - or one of those lame ones?

Speaking of Ungurmax there was a notable bug when Command Missions were first released in 4.1, Urgarmax could be used in any content if you used the text command for it instead of the button. This included UCOB and at the time there was a lot of controversy about people using the bug to clear it. One of the funniest Letters of from the Producer followed where the dev team confirmed that lol we know about the bug, we are banning people who used it in UCOB and also no one who tried that got past Twintania. This is the funniest result of that controversy.

A little about Jonathas : As you said he originally was the NPC where you could claim your achievement rewards. However, the stuff in the Achievement Certificate Shop were originally never achievement rewards. They used to be Veteran rewards that you got for subscribing a certain number of days (30,60,90 etc.) until Square decided that some rewards were basically unobtainable for newer players. Nowadays you get the last Veteran reward (the Leonhart Attire) at 330 days subscribed. Back then the last reward was the Tantalus Attire at 1080 days subscribed before they rolled most of them over and the Tantalus attire was moved to 150 days.

13:10 Zlatan jumpscare warning

My most scuffed dungeon run was The Keeper of Lake, it was my first time healing a level 50 dungeon and i had no clue what i was doing. We wiped at almost every pull, and wiped multiple times at every boss while i tried to figure everything out. Thankfully, the party I was with was very nice and giving me tips where they could (there were no healer mains in the party). We finally finished the dungeon with 15 minutes left on the timer. I got all the comms, and I'm convinced it was out of pity. I'm a healer main now lol

Cider definitely shows some rare experience that I rarely hear anymore. Command Squadron is insane for leveling alts. I leveled almost all my jobs to 60 starting from the first dungeon. Just asked a friend to mob tag some shadowbringer mobs to get them all in dungeon range in minutes. Arcanists are by far the best for commanding. The AI literally has no idea when to use AOEs or single target, so most jobs will just randomly use a single AOE in their rotation The lingering AOE from arcanists is the only long time AOE damage and with offensive mastery, it shredds groups of enemies in seconds. Arcanists are also just better healer than the actual healer. Since the AOE attack and even the carbuncle will constnatly do damage, they can heal all the time without actually losing too much damage. The real healer is just absolutely terrible in healing and will more likely let you die than a DPS arcanist. The OP part about squads is, that you can do most dungeons literally AFK, no matter the role. As tank you can use DEF or OFF mastery for arcanist depending on dungeons and let them tank. They will just slowly kite enemies back and kill them. As healer you can simply run through the dungeon and let the tank hit every mob at least once and you don't even need to heal, beacuse the arcanist will usually keep the tank alive. A tank with DEF Mastery 5 is insanely hard to kill and they will use their death save in case the heals come in too late in a huge trashpack pull. Avoid dungeons that SYNC your ilvl, like the 50 dungeons. From my experience, the squad will underperform and the dungeon itself gives very little exp. Otherwise, every dungeon on the list has good spots where you can even go AFK during boss fights and eat mechanics if you find a good place to stand.

The effort put into high quality Glam for the videos is appreciated!

Correction for 10:12 - Grand Company chocobo bardings, "Pimp Your Ride" Achievement: EACH Grand Company offers 3 bardings of their own. Like most Grand Company things, you can only USE the items related to the Grand Company in which you are currently enlisted. You still keep the items from other Grand Companies that you may have earned or bought, but you will get errors when trying to use them (bardings and glamours). The "Pimp Your Ride" achievement does not requiring transferring to other Grand Companies at all. You DO need to be "Chief _ Sergeant" rank to access the third and final barding, and 18,000 total seals to buy all 3 bardings if you haven't purchased any yet. Talk to the Quartermaster in your Grand Company lobby, and go to the second shop option (the 4 Sergeant ranks), and then to the Materiel category. The 3 bardings are: [City-State] Half Barding (4,000 seals, Sergeant Third Class required) [City-State] Barding (6,000 seals, Sergeant Second Class required) [City-State] Crested Barding (8,000 seals, Sergeant Chief Sergeant required)

Roughest dungeon run: I once ended up in a Dzemael Darkhold w/ my Mom. She'd never been to the dungeon before, and while I'd run through it before, I'd never really learned the mechanics. Turns out neither of the other two randos who got stuck with us had either. We were basically blind proggins a dungeon LOL. We wiped and wiped and chatted a bit and wiped some more, but eventually we worked it out and it was so cool. I was terrified that the others would be annoyed or frustrated, but no, everyone just pulled together, and we pulled through! It was AMAZING. When we finally cleared it we all cheered waved and bowed and it was a legit amazing. Never experienced anything like it before or since. I've had a few rough runs where we'd wipe a bit, but nothing like that DD run. Side note, I've only had like 1 bad dungeon experience where someone was being a dick because we were doing it "wrong". Its one of the things I love about this game. Anyway, I'm loving the series. Hope you can make the whole content creator thing work! Have a nice day!

Longest I've spent in a dungeon in recent memory was an Amaurot dungeon towards the end of SHB in 5.5. I got newbies, and they struggled with every boss. This caused the DPS to leave again and again. I was the tank. I think it wound up taking around 48 minutes. I had intended to do my under the desk cycle for the dungeon duration as well. I'd expected a 30ish minute run. In all my xiv years though? Hmm. There was a very dramatic Toto-rak where a healer got upset with me for pulling two packs at a time. He got really upset and nasty about it, and I simply responded with, "If you need me to slow down, just say so. I will." And he flipped out and went back to the start and just stayed there walking in circles. He wanted us to kick him so he wouldn't get the dungeon penalty, so I told the other party members who were having a real one with him in chat that we shouldn't kick him, so that he has to stay longer than the penalty would be. So we continued on. Just a tank and two DPS at a level where basically you are gonna have a rough time without a healer in a dungeon with poison everywhere. This was OG Toto Rak, of course. We opted to get every side room for experience points. Every time we built LB, the healer back at the start would use it. Iirc it took around 62 minutes.

I haven't had many scuffed dungeons I can think of, but I've had a LOT of scuffed Trials. The first time I fought Seiryu I got a guy named Eternal Conqueror who shouted "ETERNAL CONQUEROR" in party chat, forced himself into Main Tank position, and then went out of his way to get hit by literally every mechanic. We wiped three times. Also just the other day I had a Nidhogg run where everyone kept dying, I (one of the healers) died to getting a stack marker when practically no one else was alive to split it, then the other healer full-cast rezzed the Dancer while we had LB3 right there. One of the tanks tried to tell them to use LB3, they didn't, and then after we wiped they said "I don't have LB3 I play on PC not controller". That was fun. My achievements this week: - 100 unique Goldsmith leves - Level 90 Alchemist, Level 80 Reaper and Sage - Desynthesize 500 Items - 48 Deliveries to M'naago - Level 80 all Shadowbringers Trust NPCs

Longest dungeon run was Amaurot.I was a sprout healer, going for my very first clear for MSQ progression. We zone in and find a dark knight, my white Mage and two dragoons. The Dragoons never used skills. Only auto-attacked. But we got through it, because the tank was good and I was doing my best to keep everyone alive! Until the final boss. The DPS *could not avoid mechanics.* We wiped twice, until the tank said "focus DPS, I can self-sustain", which I took to heart - and focused on healing them. He meant focus casting Glare; I focused healing and rezzing them, which meant the two DRG were actively reducing our party damage output. >.> The final boss in that dungeon has a very soft enrage, so there was a limit to how long I could stay alive. We finally cleared on probably the 4th pull when the dark knight soloed the remaining 40%, after the boss started one-shotting me and I ran out of mana to raise the dragoons. The DRK stayed after the dungeon to talk, we had a nice chat, he reassured me it was not my fault. Was actually a good experience - even though it took us nearly 45 minutes to clear a story dungeon, and it would literally have been faster with just the two of us, because I would have cast more damaging spells instead of healing and rezzing.

The Zlatan shade never ceases to amaze me

My worst dungeon run was the old Keeper of the Lake, where you'd have to activate the shield device. It was me and two other first timers, and a dragoon who had not run it in some obscene amount of time. After narrowly making through the first boss and the trash, we got to pyrocopter. We had no idea how to handle the flame pathing and subsequently found guilty of witchcraft. 3 attempts later, by fate or sheer luck, we dismantle the ship and press on. The trash died quick and we faced down big boss, eager to leave this already long dungeon. Each mechanic sent us through the ringer, our healer sweating out pure lucid dreaming and 50% debuffs passed out like Oprah. It took 4 attempts to figure out the device and the long walks back felt like miles. The dragoon watched a guide and we cleared with 7:19 seconds left. It still haunts my nightmares.

Ironically, this video came up hours before the Live Letter and the 14-hour broadcast, CIder. You are impeccable in timing. XD Also, I hate to break it to ya, but I am a member of the Immortal Flames, Cider, so tough luck. ;p

The Aetherochemical Research Facility was also mine and yeah the final boss is a sprout killer, though I totally get why. I think it's the first real boss that punishes people for not going into the mechanics that just went off which is 90% of various flavors of what you'll be doing in the MSQ moving forward when you boss fight. In a way its a good fight because of that, but a wall non-the-less.

My worst dungeon was an Aurum Vale. Tank was level sync'd but no jobstone, the healer was in level 32 gear. It took 50 minutes... I have ptsd from it.

The "Child Labor" quest sitting on the left side of the UI is the cherry on top

3:16 "selectively Lazy" ... love this.

I'm glad to see I'm not the only one that's lvled alt jobs with command missions. Besides getting a lot of XP from 15 to 60 for around 6-7 of my alt jobs, I've also curated my squadron to include all of the male Miqo'te, including the rare Kehda'to Moui, 2 female miqo'te - J'ludaba and E'ptolmi and 1 Au Ra female called Khorchi. I've had them for the past 2 years and I wouldn't change them for the world :3 It's not hard to keep the squadron in check, it's literally just 1 button, it's just that some of the lvl 50 dungeons are a drag to do, if you plan to do them with squadron because you gotta do some mechanics correctly.

The two fisher related adventurer plate sets are from Johnathas. Tied to getting Final Fish and World-class Troller.

I used the Squadron Command Missions for Bitter Memory farming a little while back, it was really interesting to see all the weird things you can get away with that'd get you killed in a trust

5:26 Used a whole ticket to fast travel 500 feet, now that's efficiency

Thanks again for these videos. your voice is amazingly calm for listening to while powering through my coursework.

Squadrons had a glitch early on where spamming attack would have them keep using their openers with no cooldown outside of gcd. Another thing it took me too long to realize is that the retreat command makes them all group up for stack markers

Til sea swallows all.

Once back during heavensward being current, I was in a sunken temple of Qarn and we timed out at the first boss. No one would listen to me about cleansing the doom debuff and we tried and tried until the instance booted us. It's the only dungeon I've ever lost before!

Jonathas actually was updated recently, that's where you can get the fisher adventurer plate stuff after you unlock the big fish and 3M ocean fishing achievements.

6:30 fun fact : Tsai tou Vounou in greek means mountain tea(ironwort)

Immortal Flames, now and forever.

I miss when Toto-Rak had that sludge on the ground that would make you slower and also had that labyrinth section with the magitek photocells. Really added character to the dungeon.

Another note about squad missions: if you don't have an fc or your fc isn't running max exp boot for some reason, squads can get you ten +15% exp scrolls a week that last 2 hours each from the infiltrate and rescue mission. They don't stack with the fc buff, but they're good if you have a reason to use them.

40+ minute Aurum Vale run! The healer was playing for her husband while he was working to level up scholar, but didn’t know any of the buttons and didn’t even have Eos on the Hotbar. Queue arguing and an eventual rage quit from dps, but the tank and I stayed the whole time and bonded from it afterwards 😅

9:30 They added a framer's kit for big fishing achievements just a while ago! Jonathas is semi-useful again!

You've pulled further past me this week. I'm 80 lalachievement points behind :D This week I had a real craving for extreme, so I finally cleared and farmed the newest ones. I got pretty lucky with my mount rolls and got them all (plus apocryphal Bahamut), so my mount collection has boosted significantly higher!

I always thought the GC squadron was rather dated. Thanks for showing that they can be useful. Really enjoyed this weeks content.

zaltan jumpscare is a wonderful thing

Its surprising how many people overlook 'I Make This Look Good'. It can be obtained incredibly easy and early in anyones ARR journey

All of those items you can get by trading achievement certificates used to be Veteran Rewards that you got for being subscribed for a certain length of time. If I create a new character I get basically all of them mailed to me immediately. It's something like 54 mails.

Love the silhouette of Zlatan there at the end. Made me yell out “Zlatan!” And shake my fist. 😆

BASED AND MAELSTROM PILLED

Cider Spider! Til Sea Swallows All! Like damn the first time I played FFXIV I felt a surge of Patriotism from the Admirals Speech. I feel more patriotic towards Limsa than I do my own country.

Your Wanderer's Palace run went about as well as every squadron command mission I have ever tried to do.

I am 320 Mentor Roulettes in. It is definitely an interesting diversion, though slightly lonely. Can't wait for you to get to this grind. I know you will be chronicling every dungeon/guild hest/trial/raid. The spread sheet will be glorious. Welcome to Praetorium.

Damn, can't believe I missed the stream dancing. I should check out the stream more often.

10:18 Cider!!! You only need to purchase ONE grand company’s chocobo barding!!! The three sets refer to the head piece, body piece, and feet armor!!! Get those five points!!!

I love your videos, Spider. For entertaining and educational, haha

> Maelstrom > Best Grand Company Best joke on this channel so far

The Ascian Prime fight took almost an hour for a team of all noobs that had never done it. All four of us knew absolutely nothing about the mechs.

My longest dungeon was Lost City of Amdapore. All 4 of us were sprouts and this was before the dungeon rework. We only had 5 minutes left on the clock.

the longest time I've seen in a dungeon in Toto-Rak or maybe Tam-Tara (Hard). We had a Sage who refused to use Kardia which lead to them and the mentor in the roulette (IIRC they were a ninja or a monk?) arguing with them for a solid 45 mineuts, then the sage alt-f4rd to try and make them think they DCed, and because of the mentor, we waited for them to come back and they fought for another 10 minuets before the sage gave in and used Kardia on the tank. I tried to calm it down a bit wile agreeing wiht the mentore that the sage needs to use Kardia and that's where a good chuck of their healing comes from.

Aetherochemical Research Facility and Lapis Manalis…with the latter one of the new players kept making people quit while we were perpetually stuck on the second boss. Spent most of the time explaining stuff to them…

25:17 - Not a dungeon but a trial. I was on an alt and running Endwalker MSQ to catch up to content. The first trial comes around and we ended up spending just under 40 minutes in it - clearing on the 5th pull. I mentioned to the healers to "please heal through Styx as it's a multi-hit stack marker" and even had to put the danger dorito on so people would know where to run. I can't imagine how horrible that run would have gone were I a true sprout Oh yeah I was the only "newcomer"

The longest I've been in a dungeon was the First Coil of Bahamut, Turn 5. We had one person who'd done it legit (I did it being _hard_ carried by level 90 FC members just for the story) and we timed out. We did get it within 10 minutes of the next run but, man, we sure did die to that dragon thing _a lot._

A few years back I had a long conversation with a guy while playing overwatch that he should be a voice actor or streamer with a voice like his. Yours reminds me of it enough to bring up that memory. If it’s you bro, I knew you were angry with my tall cause of small and these vids are great lol

The last dungeon of EW 6.0 for MSQ…. Got stuck in that dungeon for about 50 minutes or so. Had a WAR sprout (skipped all the way to 90) so they didn’t have the experience to dodge mechanics and I couldn’t out heal the amount of damage they took as a WHM. Plus one of the DPS knew the mechs but they had internet issues coming up and would die from the lag. We wiped like 3-4 times at least on the first boss alone. That was the longest I think I was in a dungeon

Was not expecting a Sultans of Swing refernce ;)

Command Missions are how I'm leveling all of my sub 60 dps classes because I'm not putting other people through that lmao plus the queue times D: Biggest concern is 60-70 leveling (gonna have to abuse the fc for that I think).

Aetherchemical Research Facility was also where two of my worst dungeon experiences were in recent times and it was because of the last boss, same as you LOL. The first one we finished near 50ish minutes left because the returner other dps kept messing up the timing for the AoEs and the second one also ended near the same time but the healer was the one who couldn't get the timing down. Everyone including me were gigachads and didn't lose faith and kept offering helpful advice to try and help with advice. I also have terrible luck with Temple of Qarn dungeons when I get that in roulettes, something bad always happens in that one for some reason.

22:00 New lala sub-race race, the tomato. :O

Not the longest, but was close to being way too long. Doing Ultima Weapon today. Nothing special until the second phase where one of the DPS just. stops responding. eats a stack marker by themselves on the very edge, dies, and does not accept a revive, twice. So the rest of the second phase goes super slow until Ultima when--and at this point I start to wonder if there was malicious intent involved--the guy leaves as the other DPS is using LB3. The LB just gets eaten. And down a DPS with no free LB3, we start actually pressing up against the enrage. But whoever the party leader must've mashed recruit members cuz a summoner joins with like ten seconds on the countdown and we clutch it out.

That bit about the retainer reminded me that I've got the Nothing Ventured, Nothing Gained this week

cutter's cry was the worst. 3 brand new sprots

I just had a Final Day with 6/8 players new to the trial, it was pretty miserable. At least one of the tanks knew the fight.

I got Jade Mast pretty early on, before even finishing ARR. It's still my rarest achievement 15 months in. I knew that I was never going to want to grind any gatherer, and after falling in love with crafting, I still decided that culinarian was a problem child (read: inventory clogger). Luckily, they were all the cheapest ones to level through S&P, and so that's what I did.

My longest dungeon run was an hour and a half Fell Court of Troia run with the Trust NPCs. It took FOOORRRREEEEEVVER.

Swinging harder than your average sultan.. Nice Dire Straits reference.

I'm almost done doing the grand company turn in grind myself, its been a long time coming, and I wroked my retainers to the bone to keep the mats above 100 of each base material, even sometimes had them grind crystals for me. Soon it will be one less daily thing I'll have to worry about. I'm in the home stretch.

It's fun to think about the possibility of one day seeing a "Getting the last achievement" video

I believe that retainers grab from a pool of items when sent out based on their level and then item level of gear you have them equipped with. so if you want the good stuff gotta get them leveled with cycling them ventures. And then give them old poetic gear to last them each 10 level step from 50 and at 90 I gave my combat retainers the radiant gear from the hunt venders since I had little use for the currency after doing all the hunt trains I was on.

+10 more points for the Dire Straits reference 🎉

i hate the grand company squadron, i spend 1 year looking for Khorchi every week and my friend got her in his 1st visit to the gold saucer

I spent almost an hour in Baelsar’s Wall because The Griffin’s Jail mechanic always targets the healer (me) and the entire party just ignored it every time until I eventually had to call it out for them

The first time I ever tried to tank Paglthan, I was so bad at the Lunar Bahamut boss that we had seven minutes left on the timer when we cleared.

There something so delightfully hilarious about charity ordering around stupid glamazon huntresses @19:28

The worst dungeon run I've ever had was when I was going through Shadowbringers on my second character. While trying to level her Summoner for role quests, I went into Malikah's Well. The party was constantly struggling throughout the whole thing. We ended up kicking the healer who went offline for a solid ten to fifteen minutes around the time we finally made it to the final boss. This was also the run where I learned that you can't add any new players with only ten minutes left on the clock. We ran the clock out without killing the final boss. Pretty sure I went to bed immediately after, as I don't recall queuing up for it again.

84 year old Cider Spider, announces his last achievement tab...Deep Dungeon...then in despair tosses his computer off the bow of the ship and titanic theme starts playing.

I had no idea you could see the items needed for the day in the timers menu, thats a game changer!

Most botched run was a Copperbell Hard I did at 3am; I was finishing roulettes before logging off. The healer was beyond drunk, the tank hadn't slept in 52 hours, and the black mage decided they'd follow along without ever actually doing anything, whether it be damage or literally just walking the snackies into the Abyss Worm enclosure. I was a sprout playing DRG and desperately trying to keep us together and get things dead before they caused problems while the tank decided to no brain wall to wall the walkway boss 6 times in a row. I was too new to know how to leave :'(

For me it was Pharos Cirius I think, the light house with Siren at the top. It was the first time I ever considered giving up on healing as SCH because I was that sprout healer. Never has a dps deserved a comm so hard for sticking with me through it all.

The weekly squadron mission is also just 18hrs the way I usually remember it is to do that and gather a map which is also on an 18hr timer as is what you said the retainers ventures so you can just bang them all out at the same time once you have them on the same resetting time frame hope that helps.

Wasn't a dungeon but my longest runs of content was definitely Weeping City when it came out. People could just not understand what to do on Ozma, so I eventually just made macros for the pyramid/cube phases to tell people to get out or in respectively.

I actually spent the time grinding for specific squadron members. It took a while but I got eight lalafells, and now I call them the lalavengers.

Zaltan looks like his Grand Company is the Twin Adders.

With all the talk about Grand Company-specific achievements, I'm surprised that the PvP GC achievements weren't mentioned.

Good ol' Jonathas! He used to hand out Ozma mounts to people and he will be missed by the BA community

The one thing that makes me sad about the new Toto-Rak is, much as the old one sucked to do I really enjoyed making the "Tainted Louse is my favourite song by Soft Photocell" joke

25:18 Ran down the clock in Dead Ends when EW was pretty fresh still. We ended up making it to the final boss but only had enough time for one attempt. Had to basically teach the other 3 guys what the mechanics were, but as a DNC I couldn't do much when the healer and other DPS started dying. However, it was a lot of fun slowly watching them learn, genuinely fun, despite spending 90 minutes there.

My inventory was filled with shit for the better half of a year with all the gathering turn ins as well as basic mats to craft everything quickly, saved some money while also progressing a small chunk into the 10k HQ Crafts Log

Not a dungeon but there was a Lost City of Mhach that a bunch of my friend and I were doing where we were 100% sure that the other healer was a bot. They didn't say a thing, didn't respond to anything we said in chat, only hit Regen for the tank and the occasional Medica 1. No rezzing. I was the poor newly-minted Sage who had to act as essentially the sole healer. Maybe halfway through the Ozma fight they actually spoke up, just to say that we were being mean calling them a bot and that it was too hard to resurrect someone in the middle of a battle because it's too stressful. Needless to say, we wiped several times and we all got drinks once that was finally finished.

Just an FYI: You can get HQ with a single click if the recipe is 10 levels below your current crafter level. The skill is called "Trained Eye" and will make your craft instantly HQ and then you just have to make it from there. Happy crafting!

A late but, The Chrysalis, mainly because someone didn't get or learn that you have to save lb3 for one part, or tanks are the one that soak the meteors. We wiped three times on the fight and kicked them after the third time and everyone just left.

before the achievement certs the rewards were tied to your subscription length. they were introduced to make it fair for newcomers to get those things. it did receive updates here and there but yeah it's since been abandoned. kind've like a double spit in the face to those that enjoyed being rewarded for being subbed for a long time.

I was once that sprout healer who couldn't get my head around ARF. I was so bad it was cringe, then someone explained it to me in baby language and it clicked. It's fine if the tank and healer know the fight and a bonus if there's a summoner is in there. It gives a lot of poetics so I've done a lot of grind in there and it's always fun