Can't Progress

[JoeyD]

Hoping someone can help me out.

I'm up to the bit where I have just done each Goddess' individual arc, and now have to go to the Affimax base to continue the story - judging by the cutscenes just before, and the event exclamation mark over the newly appeared Affimax base icon on the map. All signs are pointing to that being the next objective.

Problem is, it's impossible to get there. The Affimax Base icon is not connected to any route, it just exists on it's own nearby to Reload Grasslands, and there's no new routes to be built either. So I thought okay, maybe I need to do some quests, since I have largely been ignoring the horribly grindy Guild quests - go to X place and loot 20 of Item Y, 20 of Item Z and 20 of Item A is not my idea of a good time - but there was no quest that indicated it would advance the story. So I tried doing the rank up quests, in case it unlocked another quest. Nope. I got all the way up to Rank C I think, and the next rank up quest takes place in Affimax Base...the place I can't get to.

The hell is going on?

I have no outstanding events. Nothing.

[Starlit]

The route has to be made from planeptune iirc. Are you doing it from there? I can confirm that there's nothing to do with quests

[NightmareHollow]

Go back to Planeptune and pay for route building

[JoeyD]

Hmm, I know I've tried route building, but I can't remember if I've specifically tried route building from Planeptune...so I'll go have a quick look and see.

[JoeyD]

Originally posted by Starlit:

The route has to be made from planeptune iirc. Are you doing it from there? I can confirm that there's nothing to do with quests

Originally posted by NightmareHollow:

Go back to Planeptune and pay for route building

That certainly did the trick. Finally. I've been trying to nut this out periodically for two months. I don't remember having to be in a particular city for routebuilding before...or maybe you did, and I just didn't notice. Anyway, problem solved, thanks lads. Now I can get on with the story.

[Starlit]

I guessed straight away that it was this since I made the same mistake though in my case it cost me a few minutes due to encounters and not several weeks xD.

The reason it's not obvious is that this is the first time the game makes you build after the character arcs iirc. In the character arcs you only had access to the right section anyway. There are a couple of other things that are unique by town btw. Items, particularly clothes but some more important ones too.

[JoeyD]

Ah thanks for the heads up, I'll keep an eye on it. Pity backtracking to towns is such a pain in the butt with the random encounters along a given route. I know there needs to be something, but random encounters has been a pet peeve of mine since FFX. I think I just don't like having my progress interrupted for trivial reasons, I mean, it's not likely anyone is going to die to a handful of Dogoos is it?

[Starlit]

Originally posted by JoeyD:

Ah thanks for the heads up, I'll keep an eye on it. Pity backtracking to towns is such a pain in the butt with the random encounters along a given route. I know there needs to be something, but random encounters has been a pet peeve of mine since FFX. I think I just don't like having my progress interrupted for trivial reasons, I mean, it's not likely anyone is going to die to a handful of Dogoos is it?

you can turn it off when you hit new game+ but I agree. It's one thing in FF games where generally I think the encounters were around your level. Here there's no relevance to them from an early stage.

[JoeyD]

Originally posted by Starlit:

Originally posted by JoeyD:

Ah thanks for the heads up, I'll keep an eye on it. Pity backtracking to towns is such a pain in the butt with the random encounters along a given route. I know there needs to be something, but random encounters has been a pet peeve of mine since FFX. I think I just don't like having my progress interrupted for trivial reasons, I mean, it's not likely anyone is going to die to a handful of Dogoos is it?

you can turn it off when you hit new game+ but I agree. It's one thing in FF games where generally I think the encounters were around your level. Here there's no relevance to them from an early stage.

That's true, I'm not sure what the dev's intended with them, probably thought they would add some spice to travelling the map, but from the player's perspective, it's just pointless and tedious. Nothing worse than moving one space on the map, to be thrust into a random battle. Sure, you can escape, but that takes just as long as just fighting, so what's the point?

It's a bit of a no-win situation. If they had tougher same level random encounters, then it would become truly infuriating, since each battle would take several minutes. Imagine just trying to get from Planeptune to Lasation and then being forced to waste ten minutes in relentless random encounters. So they made them easy, well, again, that's just pointless and tedious. There's no challenge to be had, XP is token, you really can't lose. So...what's the point of having them then? It's just roadblocks for the sake of having roadblocks at this point.