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The Mog Log: Final Fantasy XIV's buffet of foodstuffs
Final Fantasy XIV and Final Fantasy XI are the two games that make me hungrier than any other. It's not because I associate Final Fantasy XI with sitting in my dorm room and eating takeout, although that is also true. It's because these games are veritable buffets of in-game foods. Other games have stepped on the idea of buff food before and since, but in both Vana'diel and Eorzea, a cook can be the centerpiece of your character build. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that Final Fantasy XIV had one of the best food systems I've ever seen at the time that its first version shut down. There was subtlety, there was grace, and above all else there was a lot of tasty stuff for everyone to eat. So let's talk about all of that wonderful food, from miq'abobs to bubble chocolate, and let's look back at the state of food from the game's beginning up until the fall of Dalamud. (Or the shutdown in November, if you have no poetry in your soul.)
Insider Trader: The very best buff food
The opening of Noblegarden, and its corresponding real-life holiday, means one thing around my home: food. And this holiday was no different, as about a half-dozen friends and family all gathered around the kitchen to enjoy a spring-time feast. It was good times, of course, with a lot of light hearts and happy faces. And then when the festivities were over, everyone went home, got online and we raided Icecrown Citadel. Obviously we all knew that we were going to be raiding in the evening, so as we sat down around the dinner, there were more than a few jokes. "Fish down!" "Who's got pig?" My non-WoW family didn't really get the jokes, but the raiders surely did. We don't cover cooking here in Insider Trader a whole lot, even though it's a fairly universal skill. Since it's a secondary profession, it's one that every character could have, if they took the time to level it. It's also a pretty important secondary skill, compared to its two compatriots, fishing and first aid. Cooking provides a wide combination of buffs as well as the ever-useful health and mana. Take a look behind the jump, and let's do a tour of the some of the most popular foods used in the end game.
Spiritual Guidance: Food, flasks, and potions
Every Sunday (and the occasional weekday) Spiritual Guidance offers holy and discipline priests advice on how to wield the holy light and groove to the disco night. Your hostess Dawn Moore will provide the music. I'm the fish girl. I never wanted it to be this way. I never wanted to be that girl. You know, the fish girl: the woman in the raid who takes it upon herself to make sure all her fellow raiders are eating right by supplying Fish Feast after Fish Feast. Sure, sometimes it's a fish guy (in fact, just the other day my heal captain joked that he had brought Capri Sun and orange slices for the raid) but usually it's a woman. I guess it's a maternal thing, or maybe it's wanting to save time by always going in with max buffs. Whatever it is, I wasn't always like this. In fact, I used to wonder why my raid leader's wife would so willingly spend her feasts on our raid as we wiped all over 3-drake Obsidian Sanctum. I admired her generosity, particularly because I felt they were going to waste on stupid mistakes, and her efforts deserved better. Then one day, after I had moved onto another guild, I found myself surrounded by raiders who were lacking vital nutrients in their diets. That's how it began: first I was helping with the fishing, then I started spending my own precious spices. The first day I laid a feast in a raid, I felt my feminist side cringe. But before I go off on that tangent, let me clarify that this article isn't about fish (not exclusively anyway), it's about the various consumables available to priest healers.
