While my last party to push to 75 was a level sync party to 57, we had both Lesser Colibri camps open to us by the leypoint. We managed to hit 20k/hour without any exp bands doing infinite chains with Corsair's Roll up. 3 hours of this was enough to push me from 73 to 75 :)
This exp party also marked my highest pull chain so far... Previously I could only manage 20ish chains on DNC simply due to having to time the pull correctly. Since I can't sleep on DNC, I have to pull late enough that the party would kill the mob before I get killed, and early enough for the mob to reach camp in time. Pulling on COR is a little different... My gun is a lot slower compared to the throwing weapon on DNC, but I can pull as long as I have Quickdraw charges ready since I can sleep the next mob at camp. It really becomes just a matter of managing the Quickdraw charges.
Well, COR is done now... and I've unlocked the main merit abilities: Fold, Snake Eye and Loaded Deck. I actually use Random Deal quite a lot on COR, mainly to get Phantom Roll up faster so that the first round of buffs go up quicker, though sometimes I also use it to try to get Quickdraw ready earlier. Ghiren also helped me unlock Leaden Salute for COR already, so now I just need to skill up the last few points of Marksmanship before I can get the WSNM quest.
Update Stuff
Server merge is complete, and looks like I'm still Ascule... so I've changed the blog title back from the temporary "Ascoo's Adventures" that I had up for a while xD Not sure how many people actually noticed.
The merger did screw up a few things... like... the shell color for ZeniBailout ~.~ I thought I had the right color, but it ended up coming up with too much blue in it... It looks like the old Xwinds shell color now... I'm debating tossing it and remaking, but right now the linkshell vendors are completely sold out of linkshells. Maybe this baby-blue color would be okay... Xwinds is not being recreated, so the color wouldn't clash xD
Meanwhile, I've been going through the discussions and findings from the new content added from the update... Here are my early conclusions:
New Avatars:
- New Alexander & Odin summon quests are going to be annoying. The Alexander quest has one part that needs you to mine 3 things from Mount Zhayolm. Lots of people mine there for the chance at Khroma Ore, so... I guess this means a ton of pain for those who want to do this quest. The Odin quest requires you to farm a Rare/Ex item from Shades, and even then, there is a chance that your item won't be accepted
- The SMN rewards themselves aren't that good either unless you're a SMN main since they can't be used at low level. I don't know about the effectiveness, though if you are a SMN main, you'll be going after them anyway
- However, the other rewards are really good... Odin has an Aesir Torque which gives +7 to elemental and dark magic skill, which is equal to the elemental torque, and it gives +10 on darksdays. He also has an Aesir Ear Pendant that gives Attack +7 & "Conserve TP +3" and a mantle that give Attack +8 & Double Attack. Alexander has an earring that has -1% physical damage, a mantle that has -2% magical damage, and a torque that has healing & enhancing magic
Voidwalker NMs (aka Abyssea NMs):
- Easy to start... 1k gil to a NPC in Ru'Lude Gardens to get a "Clear Abyssite" key item to start, which is a ton better compared to the annoying ZNM startup
- 5 different paths, 4 tiers each, with the 4th tier being the same for each path
- Easy to do... all you need to do is go to a zone and /heal with the key item and you'll get a pointer to head towards the NM. Once you /heal close enough to it, it'll pop and you can fight.
- However, annoying to farm since you have to kill the tier 1 & 2 NMs a random number of times before you can pop the Tier 3 NM.
- These mobs have annoying effects... like mute, moves to strip & encumber you so that you're naked and can't put gear on, -40/tick poison that can't be removed and more
- Tier 3 & 4 NMs are a pain, requiring an alliance or more of people to tackle
- The mobs themselves drop some nice gear, including an ammo item with HP+30, the rings with +dex & +accuracy, haste
- The T3 mobs drop stuff that is necessary for the "Trials of the Magian" weapon quest
- Would require another "event day" to tackle, kinda like ZNMs... Go out with groups of 3-4 to farm T1 & 2s to get your crystal upgraded to be able to pop the T3, then gather an alliance and go beat it up
- Overall... I think this may be the new event that... well... gets people somewhat excited about. I'm already finding a few items that I want from this, including the new Choreia Earring that has "Increases Step Accuracy". The interesting part is that the mob that drops this is a pixie-type dancer NM, which might make it the first Dancer mob in the game :O
Trial of the Magians
- This is the new "enhanced weapons" questline that you can take. The good news is that at least the weapons themselves are free, and you can start multiple weapons at the same time. For people with relic or mythic weapons, they can also upgrade their weapons, though the requirements are *really* steep
- Requirements for upgrading even the basic weapons can be pretty steep... from "kill 100 aquan type mobs" to "kill 300 lizard type mobs during rainy weather" or "kill Argus 10 times". It also seems like if you want the very best "occasionally attacks twice" augment, you have to do VNMs and get 10 drops from the T3 VNM...
- There is a "solo" path available for people who just want to kill mobs, and don't want to compete for NMs or do any of the VNM stuff. You end up with a slightly inferior weapon, but you still get some of the good stuff
- However... this seems to be designed to be a complete timesink ~.~ killing 100 of a single mob, even an Easy Prey mob... I don't know... doesn't sound like fun to me. Much less doing the VNM climb multiple times to get the drops for the nice augmented forms.
Maybe I've just been burnt too much on the Synergy armors... part of me wants to do this for a nice double attacking dagger for DNC... another part of me is wondering what the point is, especially considering that this is obviously some sort of beta-test for the features of FFXIV
Overall... I have mixed feeling about this whole update. On one hand, the content looks interesting... on the other hand, it looks like yet another multi-month, if not YEAR grind to get some marginally interesting gear. VNMs would require yet another event to be added to the schedule, which means that something has to give. With the level cap raise coming up, I'm not even sure I want to keep bothering.
FFXIII progress
I'm in chapter 11 of FFXIII... which as some of you may know, is the "wide open exploration" part of the game after 10 chapters of straight line corridors.
Except... this game isn't really good at that... you get dumped out into a wide open field, with mobs that can easily one-shot you. If you take on the optional side-quests, you'll find that they are basically simple NM hunts that have you spending hours running through... long linear corridors... fighting lots of mobs, many of which can one-shot your party if you don't shift paradigms at exactly the right time. The side quests are stupidly boring, and the amount of exp(CP) you have to grind to get your new level stuff is... well... it makes meriting in FFXI look attractive.
I've put in about 5 hours in this "open" area so far. If not for Kuraikaze telling me about the Blitz -> Ruinga trick that basically stun-locks most mobs, I would have given up on XIII in frustration hours ago. After nearly 30 hours of hitting auto-battle, they expect us to actually use the ability and technique menus?! As it is now, I'm merely very frustrated with this game. Especially the last Eldion fight which really is... stupid with the trick that you have to use to win -.-
Right now, I'd give FFXIII a 3/10 overall. 9/10 for story, graphics and characters, 1/10 for gameplay(or lack thereof). Highly, HIGHLY recommend that if you have not yet purchased FFXIII that you simply go to Youtube and search for "Final Fantasy 13 cutscenes" and watch them there. Alternatively, simply watch the FFXIII movie here: http://finalfantasy13ultima.com/ (Japanese with english subtitles. English dub coming!)
4 comments:
I did also tell you there's a repeat button right? So you only have to select blitz -> ruinga once?
also my verification word was snalexac. don't the french eat that?
ya, you told me about the repeat button... but that is also a ton more button presses compared to "Auto-battle"!
yeah, I found myself not even looking at the screen for most battles just randomly pressing X the entire time. SE is going to owe me a new controller.
With no micromanaging from FF12 this game pretty much plays itself harder than 12, especially during the end of the game you'll either spam the same buffs/spells from menu, or you just press auto attack over and over, I got sick of the game starting at chapter 11 because the only hard thing is doing the exact same crap but doing them faster.
Bosses just gets more HP and spam attacks more, with you only being able to control just the lead character, there's little to nothing to do other than esuna esuna, heal heal, attack attack, aoe, aoe. blahblahblah tidalwave /vesperia style. Spam magic, stagger, press auto attack while enemy is in the air for 10minutes, rinse and repeat.
My main beef I have with the game is while the first 10 chapters were tolerable, they were the "best" part of the game -_-;
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