DRG relic completed, Abyssea exp, job stuffs, FFXIV

I guess Dynamis probabilities worked in my favor last week!

6/6 on DRG relic armor. That's the 5th complete set of relic so far with BMO/CTR and more importantly, +4 inventory spaces! Currently missing the PLD body and back pieces for my last job. I'm also missing only a couple of pieces for WHM, BST & PUP, all jobs that I would have considered leveling if not for the level cap increase.

I'm not too hopeful of being able to complete the PLD set given the stupidly low drop rates of these items, especially considering that we've been going after these items in every Dynamis for as long as I can remember.  I'm also not very hopeful of completing my DNC relic +1 pieces. Funny thing is that I'm only missing the relic -1 feet & hands which are not the super-rare Tav pieces.

In any case, Dynamis seems to be wrapping up as an event. With almost everyone at level 80 now, the event itself is becoming a joke at how quickly we plow through the mobs. Unfortunately the drop rate for the things we need is also a joke since we're barely getting any drops at all now (yes, with TH4) and rarely anything people actually want. With new events and new items popping up now with Abyssea and Walk of Echos, I wouldn't be surprised if interest in Dynamis started to taper off. Unfortunately, there are still lots of items in Dynamis that have attributes that can only be obtained via Dynamis. Many of the newer jobs like SCH & COR for example, have job-specific buffs that can only be found on relic armor.

Abyssea exp
Nice part about Abyssea exp is how quickly you can finish a job... The bad part is that it really requires a dedicated amount of time to do.

This past Saturday, we did yet another Abyssea exp alliance... 9am - 3pm Pacific time. I managed to take SCH from 17k into 75 to capped at 80 plus two merits in that time. This was the 3rd job I took to 80 (or near 80) using Abyssea, and 2nd last job that I have to complete. My COR is my last sub-80 job at level 77 and will likely be completed next weekend during another Abyssea exp session.

The draining part about Abyssea is simply the time it takes to do. Even in a properly executed Abyssea exp alliance, you're still looking at spending at least the first two hours getting into a proper chaining position where you can expect chest drops and time extensions, as well as the exp rate to increase to a reasonable amount. It really makes it tiring to actually do one of these sessions, but the alternative -- spending many more days exping in various parties in different locations -- is even more painful to get a job to 80.

Still... I can't imagine doing this all over again for all 6 jobs for the next level cap increase.

Job Stuffs
Since getting more jobs to 80, my perception on my jobs has changed somewhat.

* Dancer
Still overall my favorite in terms of soloing and healing capability. The ability to do heal people outside my party has made this job even more powerful, though I am disappointed that Healing Waltz does not work. The changes to the job itself haven't been really that useful -- I rarely use Presto and Climatic Flourish is amusing, but overall not something I would really use for damage. The biggest change has really been Sekkinoki since that gives DNC/SAM a lot more damage dealing potential. DNC/NIN still wins for overall survivability and damage reduction in nearly all situations.

* Paladin
Native Phalanx and that new Divine Emblem job ability have really enhanced the ability of a PLD/NIN to tank. However, the nerfing of the RDM enmity spells has also severely crippled a PLD/RDM's ability to hold hate. PLD is no longer my #2 favorite job simply due to this, though I still like tanking in PLD/NIN situations.

* Blue Mage
BLU was my first job due to the flexibility and capability of the job, going from anywhere from heavy DD to magical nuker, debuffer or even a full-time support job. The main reason why I avoided playing BLU was due to the support that it required in terms of Refresh. This update gave the spell Battery Charge, a 4MP/tick Refresh that lasts for 150 seconds. Yes, that is higher compared to the RDM Refresh spell, and pretty much means that I almost never run out of MP on BLU anymore.

BLU also got some other interesting spells, including a new full-strength Haste spell that lasts almost twice as long as the normal Haste spell, a new healing spell that also increases attack & magical attack, a regen spell and some more magical nuking spells. Furthermore, BLU/RDM gains the ability to Convert, meaning that a BLU could effectively go on forever. However, I haven't dared to actually use BLU/RDM for anything yet given the amount of hate BLU already pulls simply from doing damage and casting healing spells

Since the update, I've actually been pumping my merits into BLU. Just one more upgrade to Assimilation, then I can move on to completing Enchainment, Chain Affinity Recast and Physical Potency. BLU may end up being the 2nd job I actually finish meriting!

* Dragoon, Scholar
Both of these jobs are now 80. Neither has really gained much from the update. The most I can say is that DRG/SAM can now WS a little more often, and SCH/RDM can now Convert and never run out of MP.

FFXIV
The Final Fantasy XIV beta has started up, and I popped in for a quick look. Pretty much nothing has changed. It's still just as laggy and slow as before. It's also just as pretty as before, graphics looking like they are taken out of a CG movie. However, gameplay is pretty horrible and boring still, with no direction for plot, no guidance and... well, considering this is the second time I played through the opening sequence and it *still* took me about 20 minutes to figure out how to get out of the very beginning area... (it's not obvious and there's a gate preventing you from running directly out) You should see the shouts of people asking basic things like how to fight or form parties! (actually, how do you form parties? I still don't know how to properly do this)

Except for the opening cutscene, there really hasn't been any real NPC dialog, with everyone I talk to so far giving very generic, forgettable statements. It's as though someone turned off the storytelling element that SE used to be good at? Also, I thought that SE added a "new player" tutorial/set of quests in FFXI recently... years after the game launched... You'd think that they would be applying the lessons they learnt to their new game? I haven't seen anything resembling a tutorial or anything to teach you how to do anything in XIV. Keep in mind that this game is supposed to launch in less than 2 months.

Still.. it's amusing to see hundreds of people camping rats like NMs :)

Abyssea - Current impressions

I'm sure that by now everyone actively playing FFXI has already discovered the craziness that is Abyssea, so this is mainly a post for those who have retired from XI, or are taking a break :)

Abyssea & the level cap
Back when the level cap increases was first announced, the first thought I had was how painful it would be to exp all my jobs to cap, and that I'd probably end up dropping most of them in favor of my favorite one or two jobs. The 60-75 stretch is the most painful for me simply due to the high amounts of exp required. The amount of exp for 76-80 does increase, but at a reduced rate. In total, you end up needing almost 200k exp to get from 75 to 80. By previous merit party standards, this is still a long time, about 9-10 hours assuming an average 20-24k/hour rate.

Well, Abyssea pretty much turns exp around and makes it a simple one night/afternoon affair. This is how it works:

Abyssea has an initial time limit of 90/120 minutes depending on entry conditions. Killing mobs inside Abyssea gives you the possibility of dropping chests which may give exp, temp items, augmented items, cruor (the currency used in Abyssea) or more imporantly, time extensions. There is a semi-hidden "chain" factor in play here -- the more mobs you kill that are the same type, the higher the probability that a chest will appear. There are also other factors at play here, such as how the mob is killed (WS, magic, or something else). As you kill more mobs from the same family, your exp/mob killed will also increase. Initially you might get about 80-120 exp per kill, but as you kill more and more, this will go up gradually. For CTR's initial run, we peaked at 610 exp per kill, and yes, we were killing at merit party rates of one mob every 20 seconds or so. Also, the amount of exp you get isn't affected by the number of people.

Yes, this means that exping with a full alliance is what happens inside Abyssea. In fact, it is ideal since more people = faster kills.

The trick to Abyssea exp is that it takes quite a long time for you to "ramp up" in experience, chest drop rates and time extensions. The first time we did this, it took about 70 minutes before things started to noticeably improve. However, once they started improving, things really took off. We were in zone doing this for about 4 1/2 hours when I went from 17k into level 75 to 16k away from level 80 on BLU. That's about 48k/hour including the initial 1 hour ramp-up period, and we could have kept going except that it was already nearly 2am Pacific and people on the east coast were starting to see the sun rise. People have gone for 9+ hours, and many people have already capped all their jobs and merits in this system. One Abyssea exp session would bring you from 75-80 easily, and I can see this being the way people level all the way up to level 99. However... I also wonder about people being in Abyssea for 9, 12, 24 hours... wasn't there an article about how FFXI makes people physically sick some time ago? Is someone writing Yahoo! about this new development?

The only downside to Abyssea is the time it takes to ramp up. While this is awesome when you have 5, 6, 10, 12 hours to exp a bunch of levels, if all you want is 10 merits, or if you don't have that much time to spend in game, Abyssea simply wouldn't be worth it. The initial ramp-up time would cut down on your exp/hour since the really good exp only comes from when you've been doing it for a few hours. If you're capping merits, taking a break to go spend them would mean that you're resetting your Abyssea exp "chain" and have to ramp-up again. The other possible downside is that if you join an Abyssea group that isn't successful, you'll lose your time for the day and have to wait for more entry stones to pop.

Still... if not for the discover of Abyssea exp, I probably would not be considering leveling my other jobs. Right now, I've gotten DNC & PLD to 80, COR to 77 (through traditional means), BLU to 79, nearly 80 through Abyssea and plan on taking DRG & SCH through weekend Abyssea sessions to hit 80.

Abyssea & armor
Cruor is the new type of currency inside Abyssea. You get it by simply killing mobs or opening chests. As you can imagine, cruor is extremely easy to get with exp alliances, with a single session easily netting over 40k cruor.

There are three sets of armor that can be purchased with cruor, one for light melees, one for heavy melees and one for mages. These are all level 78 pieces and each piece is relatively cheap, 3k for most pieces, 5k for the body piece. And... most of these pieces easily replace almost all reasonably obtained level 75 gear in the game.

Yes, we're talking about Askar, Denali, Goliard, Enkidu, most Hachiryu, Homam and other pieces being basically replaced by gear that can be bought cheaply with easily earned currency. You can even buy these pieces off the AH too! Yes, there are people who will argue that such-and-such piece has 1 more str, but for most people, this basically levels the playing field. Someone who hasn't played the game for years can simply pick up the expansion and be on 90% equal footing to someone who spent the last few years collecting endgame gear. I'm guessing that future expansions will contain gear that will blow these pieces away, making the old "endgame" pieces obsolete unless SE makes up some funny new system to accommodate them. (Trials of the magians for armor anyone?)

The funny part is that many people are complaining about the design of the new armor.. I don't see anything wrong with it! I think it looks cute! See!

(This is the Aurore Doublet set, light melee for DNC, BLU, COR, THF and others)

Abyssea & NM drops/time management
On a side note, Impact has been poking some NMs in Abyssea too, most notably the Thew Bomblet NM. This is an ammo item with Str+2 and Attack+8. It was surprising easy to get with a relatively high drop rate and fast repop time for the ??? to pop the NM. However, it still sells for quite a bit of gil, which is a little surprising when you first look at it.

The thing about Abyssea is that there are tons other NMs, as well as quests and other things to do. By limiting us by the amount of time we can actually spend in Abyssea(30 minutes every 20 hours, stackable), SE has put an artificial limit on how much you can get out of the expansion. Do you want to go farm NMs? Go explore? Go learn BLU spells? or go exp? It's really an ingenious method of controlling how much people get out from the expansion. People are basically encouraged to go do other things between their Abyssea sessions.

In theory, this will also let SE stretch FFXI out over a longer time since... well, we're basically rationed by SE how much time we're allowed to spend in Abyssea.

More update impressions, glitches

Update has been out for a while... here are some randomish pictures and impressions.

One of the new job traits that came out of this release is "skillchain bonus" which is given to DNC & SAM. This happens when one of the jobs close a skillchain, and the resulting extra damage shows up. Here is an example of me closing a darkness skillchain for more than what my weaponskill did. In this case, it was a 16% increase in damage compared to normal.

Abyssea is buggy! If you level sync inside abyssea, you'll get some additional exp compared to spreading the levels out, but the difference isn't that much. We're talking about a 10-15% difference between a level 80 person and a level 75. However, the funny thing is that if you do level sync, for some reason whenever you kill a mob, you might get the level up animation completely at random. In this case, none of us were actually leveling up to level 76. I think I was actually level 77 at this point and we were synced to 76.

This one is funny... I R0'ed and DC'ed right in the middle of a MMM session. It was enough of an R0 to kick me out of FFXI, but I managed to get right back in from POL instead of having to quit the game. However, once I was in, my auto-translate was completely screwed up and everything that was in auto-translate came out with the same Japanese phrase

Now this is a fun one...  inside Abyssea, you can sometimes get chests that will appear after you kill mobs. Some of these chests are huge, such as this one over here that is much, much bigger than a taru! It can probably hold 3-4 tarutaru bodies!

This is what I call cutting it close :)


Other Impressions
So far, I'm finding that I'm liking the Abyssea aspect of this update a lot... I guess we're kinda getting what we paid for here. The time/stone constraints aren't that big of a deal really. 1 1/2 hours for an event is a significant time, enough to make progress, but not enough to really burn out on doing it like Dynamis. The rewards from this event are interesting too, making it a possible exp area, as well as a good point system that allows you to buy armor like Einherjar instead of hoping for lucky drops.

The level cap raise to 80 hasn't been quite as painful as I feared. Managed to get DNC up to 80 fairly quickly, and of my other jobs, I've gotten PLD to 78 and COR to 77. Allied Rings help a lot, and the new potential places for exp have helped, plus of course, MMM.

What is kinda annoying, however, is how the new equipment is basically making a lot of older gear obsolete. The Enkidu armor set that I got through ZNMs is basically going to be completely replaced by the Aurore Doublet Set. The Perle Hauberk set would be good for DDs, and replaces Askar as a much easier to get set of armor. With the level caps going higher up in the near future, I'm wondering if it is even worth doing events for the generically good pieces of armor?

I mean, there are certain situational pieces that will always be good... for example, I don't see them making a replacement for the RDM hat or THF gloves, nor do I see them putting "enhances jig effect" on a generic piece of armor... (though wasn't there talk about an "AF3" line in the higher levels?) However, multi-job pieces that have the usual suspects... accuracy, str, haste, MP, cure potency, recast time, etc. such as Hachiryu, Homam, Nashira, Enkidu, Askar, Goliard... I wouldn't be surprised if there would be an easy to obtain level 88 piece that blows them away, making it pointless to do those events.

Another interesting thing is the "trial of the magians" developments. As expected, they expanded the paths even further. However, what disturbed me was how they changed. If I had actually spent more time on this, I would have been aiming for the Athame with "occasionally attacks twice" through the VNM route. However, the "solo" route which "merely" involves killing thousands of mobs develops into a dagger that "occassionally attacks 2-3 times" which is a much better dagger for DNC. Given that these daggers are only at level 80, would this mean that the future weapons will change even more? Could someone spend weeks, months on one of these trials only to end up with the wrong weapon?

Surprisingly, FFXI has gone from a fairly static place where you know what you'll be getting to... well... having a lot of uncertainty and... to an extent, excitement. Definitely a strange time to be playing XI, and who knows what the future brings.