I think I prefer Dynamis

Details on the new AF3 & what it takes to upgrade them are coming out. I think I prefer Dynamis to this new system they have cooked up.

Base pieces
There are three different ways to get the (generally useless) base pieces:
1. Buy the hat with Cruor (easy)
2. Buy the legs with Resistance credits (still relatively easy)
3. Possible rare drop from a large gold chest when you kill mobs (someone bomb SE headquarters)

The first two are easy... everyone has loads of cruor already, so getting the hat is a breeze (unless you're a DNC, in which case you might want to consider flying a plane into SE headquarters... too soon still?). The leg piece takes 1000 resistance credits, the new currency the added to the game. However, Bastion (the Abyssea version of campaign) comes frequently, and resistance credits essentially falls from the sky. Getting 1k resistance credits could be as fast as participating in one 3-minute battle.

#3 is the one which make me want to quit. These pieces of armor are possibly found inside the large gold chests that have a chance to appear after you kill mobs. However, to get these gold chests to appear, you have to:
a. Build up pearlescent lights so that chests will actually drop
b. Build up azure lights so that you won't get kicked out of Abyssea
c. Build up amber lights so that large gold chests will actually start appearing

Essentially, you're looking at at minimum of 90 minutes in Abyssea before things start to possibly drop. The appearance of the large gold chests with feet armor is pretty rare in the first place, so even if you do build up to this point, you might not get any drops.

So... instead of being a "casual-friendly" event like Dynamis where you spend between 2-3 hours with around 8-15 pieces of ready-to-use relic armor pieces dropping... you end up spending 4-6 hours grinding away and getting around 3-4 useless base pieces which still need to be upgraded.

On the flip side, you do get exp here... so... I guess there really will be no excuse to not have completely capped merits for all your jobs. I don't mind exping once in a while, but having to dedicate 4-6 hours on a regular basis on an event just for the chance of the base piece isn't my idea of a friendly game.

Upgrading to +1s
Almost all the base AF3 pieces are useless compared to other equipment in the game. The +1 pieces are where it starts to get interesting. So, what does it take to upgrade these pieces? Well, pretty simple... job & slot specific "seals" that you can get either by killing NMs or doing quests.

First, let's talk about the quests. I've encountered two types of quests so far:

Quest type #1: Clicking various spots
This quest is pretty simple... talk to a NPC, go to another area of the zone and click a ??? or similar spot, go back and talk to the NPC. Sometimes the ??? moves so you have to track it down, but with confluxes, transporting between them does not take too long. You can repeat the quests, but you have to zone out of abyssea and back in (and re-get visitant status) to do it. A single quest cycle takes about 2-3 minutes.

You get cruor reward, and a chance at a seal. My experience last night was that a seal be awarded approximately 10-15% of the time. Soooooo... figure that you'll be repeating this quest a few times

Now... the seal you get won't necessarily be for the job you want. There seem to be 4 jobs per different quest, so divide that % by 4 to get an approximate rate of 2.5% - 3.75% drop. This means that on average, you will need to complete the quest 26-40 times before you get one seal.

Oh, and you need 8 seals to upgrade one piece. On the flip side, if the quest reward is seals for multiple jobs you have that somewhat counters the fact that you're tossing all these other BST, PUP & DNC seals.

So, let's review.
- 8 seals needed
- Repeat quest 26-40 times per seal, or 208 - 320 times for one piece of armor
- Each quest cycle takes 2-3 minutes
- In total, on average, it will take 416 - 960 minutes, or 7 - 16 hours to complete one piece of armor using this quest method.

Finally, since this quest is a solo thing since nobody can actually help you do it, you're essentially doing boring data entry for all that time. You're not actually playing the game... there is no challenge, you're going through the motions typing on your keyboard/controller to repeat it over and over again. In fact, if you have a programmable keyboard, you can essentially do it with some code along the lines of:

(11:39:53 AM) Ascule: /target maw
(11:39:56 AM) Ascule: up, enter
(11:40:04 AM) Ascule: /target "cruor surveyor"
(11:40:06 AM) Ascule: /follow
(11:40:14 AM) Ascule: down down, enter, down enter
(11:40:19 AM) Ascule: /target Quest NPC
(11:40:20 AM) Ascule: /follow
(11:40:27 AM) Ascule: enter enter enter enter enter enter enter enter
(11:40:30 AM) Ascule: /target conflux #01
(11:40:37 AM) Ascule: right right enter up enter
(11:40:52 AM) Ascule: Wwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww
(11:40:57 AM) Ascule: /target logging point
(11:41:00 AM) Ascule: enter enter
(11:41:05 AM) Ascule: sssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssss
(11:41:09 AM) Ascule: /target conflux #07
(11:41:14 AM) Ascule: down enter
(11:41:16 AM) Ascule: /target NPC
(11:41:18 AM) Ascule: enter enter
(11:41:20 AM) Ascule: /target maw
(11:41:22 AM) Ascule: /follow
(11:41:28 AM) Ascule: enter up enter
(11:41:29 AM) Ascule: repeat


Of course, doing so would probably result in a perma-ban! I'm completely insulted that SE would try to pass this off as "gameplay". At least in Dynamis you were actually playing something, interacting with the environment, other players to do something. Here? This is data entry. This is something that should be automated, or out-sourced to other countries. Hell, even a trained monkey can do this! If I were running a RMT company, I'd start selling this as a service... $20 per upgrade completed for you by grinding out these quests.

Quest #2: Bring me items
The other quest I discovered so far (for BLU, PLD and other jobs) was to bring a NPC drops from a Murex.  We're talking about drops from a IT mob that casts fun spells like Aero V. Soooo... you need a party to get it, farm a bunch of them, then... you're still subject to the same probabilities as above. Instead of a 2-3 minute cycle, you're talking about... however long it takes for a party to gather and kill these mobs.

Supposedly the drops go on AH for 100k+ each... fun

NM hunting
The "group" way of getting the seals would be NM hunting. The NMs tend to be up especially since they have a short repop time (at most 1 hour) and they aren't really hunted, but there are some problems with it.

Last night, we went and hunted the Spider NM whenever we saw it up. Small group of what we had available... DNC, PLD, RDM, BRD, THF. Annoyances with the NM:
- Spams TP move including Silence-ga, Gravity-ga, Slow-ga making it a bloody pain in the first place to get shadows up, remove silence, echo drops, etc.
- Seems to be glitched in that it constantly uses draw-in even when everyone is sitting on top of it. This means that your camera is constantly messed up and you have to keep moving around to even try to hit it. Extra time wasted just repositioning and moving out from the mob's model. Draw in also ensures that mages will be hit by silence-ga and have to use echo drops
- Sickle Slash for about 2000+HP. Beelz took one on his cruor-buffed PLD85 that took him from full HP to about 100HP or so. I took a few for 200-400 thanks to Fan Dance(90/80% damage reduction). Keep in mind this NM spams AOE TP moves, so having Utsusemi up isn't something that can be relied on

I can't imagine any average group being able to tackle this NM with any consistency. The fight itself was relatively short, maybe 6-7 minutes but it did push our capabilities. And... each time it dropped two seals.

If you do the math, it almost doesn't make sense to hunt NMs. Let's say you fight and get the two seals each time. Let's also say that you don't have any time wasted waiting for people to gather, or time spent teleporting between confluxes, getting cruor buffs and only consider spending 6 minutes fighting the NM

Now if those 5 people were doing quests instead, in those 6 minutes, each person could have done 3 quests, or a total of 15 quests done. With the reward rate of about 10-15% for seals in the quests, you would end up with between 1.5 - 2.25 seals in the same time. With no risk of dying, no waiting for people, and everyone targeting the seals they want.

+1 Upgrade summary
Essentially, the seal rate is about the same no matter if you do quests or hunt NMs, so it comes down to this:
- Do you want to just do this solo?
- Can you stand grinding away doing boring data entry?
- Can you gather a party actually do a challenging fight?
- Are the people in your party willing to risk death?

I really doubt many people will want to take the NM path since it is relatively easier to simply go grind away at it on your own. This is why I'd rather go to Dynamis then do this quest. At least in Dynamis, you're actually playing a game instead of doing data entry. At this point... I'm seriously considering giving SE a great big "fuck you" and quitting.

Oh... and this doesn't even cover the +2 upgrades either. No concrete information on how to gather the items for that yet.