The current state of end-of-life FFXI

I'd consider FFXI "end of life". There is a clear replacement game for it out right now (even if it does suck), the development team for FFXI was transferred to it, and there aren't any announcements or even hints of further content coming to FFXI. WoTG content is complete, Abyssea content is complete, there's nothing else coming down yet. Some people are saying that there will be another level cap raise to 99 since the devs promised so... but there isn't necessarily going to be any new content.

Furthermore, the game has been changed to be as new-player unfriendly as possible right now. A new player trying out WoW for the first time has more than enough content to be entertained solo for a good... 2-3 months at the very least, and a path to the level cap. A new player joining FFXI has enough solo content to reach level 10, after which will be completely stuck unless they know someone who can help them to level 30, most likely through 1-2 Astral burn sessions. Upon reaching level 30, the gameplay of FFXI will consist of opening chests and solo skilling up to the level cap.

Basically, there is no chance in hell FFXI will be getting any new players. The game was never newbie friendly, but with the changes that Abyssea made to the game, it locked any chance of someone brand new to the game of actually staying interested. That leaves existing players, and possibly returning players. The existing player base can only go down as people lose interest in the game and quit, sometimes with notice, and other times without. That leaves only the returning players. In this blog post, I will lay out what the current state of end-of-life FFXI and let those who have left comment on whether what they see is interesting.

Current gameplay / endgame mechanics
As I stated in many previous blog posts, Abyssea is the new endgame. Previous content (Dynamis, Einherjar, Salvage, Nyzul, etc.) is all obsolete and nobody ever does it anymore except as a break from doing Abyssea. With Abyssea, the following is true:

Gil is irrelevant
Almost everything worth getting in Abyssea is Rare/Ex. There aren't really any items that can be sold on AH that are worth anything. About the only reason why you would need gil is to buy pop items so that you can pop the NMs to get those rare/ex items instead of spending 5-500 minutes farming them. It even shows in crafters as there are fewer and fewer people actually crafting anymore. This is kinda amusing as it leads to expendables such as food and ninjitsu tools increasing in price, but it also means that they are less necessary. Food isn't needed anymore. Ninjitsu still is, and to an extent, Shihei is still needed, so any gil that I get from selling pop items basically goes into funding shihei.

You can low-man anything
Mobs in Abyssea are easy. You can low-man just about anything, which leads to lots of people doing so. A NIN + WHM, DNC + BRD, or BSTs & SMNs can take out any mob. I don't even use shihei on DNC/NIN unless it's a serious boss since I know that I will be generating enough TP to instantly cure myself up to max HP at any time, or be doing enough damage to a mob that no matter how much a WHM cure-bombs me, they won't pull hate. And for the mobs you can't low-man, you can simply use the cheat code of a Primeval Brew. This of course, leads to lots of people standing around waiting for an slow pair of people to finish a mob. Wiping is nearly unheard of now that you can get instant Reraise 3.

JP button is back.
Claiming NMs or the ability to pop NMs is all about latency. The sooner you see something pop on your screen, the faster you can claim something. It's back to the FFXI of erm...2004 I guess? Except this time you don't have 24 hours between windows so it doesn't seem as frustrating until you sit around for an hour waiting for that low-man NIN & WHM pair to finish fighting a mob that will take you ~3 minutes to kill. There are no more instanced areas where you can do things undisturbed, or unaffected by latency. Even the Shinryu fight, which is technically a BCNM, suffers from this as it only has a limited number a instances, and everyone wants to enter the fight during a specific time. The JP win claim even over BCNM zones.

Job discrimination is back.
Look at any forum. All you need now are the following jobs:
* NIN -- Tank, red proc, blue-proc, green-proc
* WAR -- Red-proc, blue-proc
* BLM -- Green-proc
* BRD -- Green-proc
* WHM -- Green-proc, healer
* BLU -- Green-proc
Let me explain a little about "proccing". In Abyssea, in order to increase drop rates of the items that people want, you have to perform specific actions on them. Each mob has a weakness to two different weapon skills, one elemental, one non-elemental, and one magic spell. The FFXI community has, through lots of trial & error, determined what the specific weapon skills and magic spells needed for these different procs.

If you really want more details, Rooks(Kelhor) has put together a nice chart at http://track.probablyworks.com/proc.html which details the various skills needed. The above jobs are exactly what you need to be successful.

The following jobs are completely obsolete and are no longer needed: COR, DRK, DRG, BST, SMN, PUP, SCH, SAM, RDM, PLD. The following jobs have some use, but aren't completely necessary -- DNC(properly equipped as a tank), THF(TH still comes into play, though the effectiveness is much diminished with proper procs), MNK(good tank due to high HP + Counterstance) and RNG(occassional blue-proc)

Battle mechanics have changed
I've described a bit about how the overall picture has changed. Let's say you win despite the JP button, or find a NM that isn't completely camped at the moment and manage to get claim or pop it. How has gameplay changed?

Well, now it's all about proccing, then killing. This is basically how combat goes now:
- Tank engages, holds hate (easily, it's not even a challenge now).
- One WHM might actually cure the tank, or if it's a DNC tank, simply haste the tank
- Depending on what we are after, the rest of the alliance will do the following:
  * BLM, BLU, NIN & BRDs -- Cast the appropriate spell as per the proc table on the mob and hope for a colored !! to appear on the mob
  * NIN, WAR, and if present, MNK, RNG, THF, DNC -- Perform the appropriate "blue-proc" weapon skills
- Keep in mind that proccing involves going in, casting or weapon skilling, then running out. You don't stay engaged to the mob as doing so will cause it to die too quickly. You don't even need to pull TP mobs due to the Regain atmas and abilities in the game. You can simply stand around and wait for your turn
- Once all the necessary procs are complete, go for a "red-proc". This will put the mob in a state of terror for 30 seconds where it cannot do anything. At this point, zerg the mob down and kill it.

So, battle mechanics is really reduced to
- Tank engages, fights
- Rest of you stand around and wait for TP
- Terror the mob, kill it.

There is almost no need for a stun rotation (in fact, stunning is frowned upon as it prevents proccing), no strategy requiring Bard rotations, or even for that matter, Bard buff really. Holding hate is no longer an issue. Everyone caps hate at some point, and if you pull hate, you simply become the tank and move up. With high hit points, BLMs are about the only ones who might be in risk of dying, and even then that rarely happens. Dying is a joke anyway since you'll cap exp with the next mob kill, especially with NMs giving anywhere from 1250 - 6000 exp per kill. Many people have been capped on limit points and exp for months already. Old strategies of kiting, or needing sac-pulls, or complicated things such as skillchains/magic bursts are completely unnecessary.

So, that's what gameplay is like in FFXI right now. What other MMOs have people been playing and how do they compare?


FFXI Content
I'll talk briefly about the actual content that exists. I generally think of FFXI content as being split into two different categories: Missions & Quest, and "Getting stuff"

Missions & Quests
Abyssea content has all been released. The actual plotline and cutscenes are pretty weak and basically ends up being an alternate ending to CoP. No big deal really. Abyssea finishes with the big Shinryu fight I covered in my last blog post.

WoTG has supposedly been completed, but so far nobody... I mean, seriously, nobody has really talked about going to do that. It'll be easy now at level 90, but nobody has really gone to the past zones in months except maybe to go after some VNMs. The stupid idea of splitting up the country questlines means that it is nearly impossible to get anyone together to do WoTG missions. Finally, there simply isn't any interest. The reward at the end is worthless compared to Abyssea gear, and the whole thing has taken so long to be released that people like me who like storylines have lost interest. I barely remember the premise behind WoTG anymore!

There was a very brief surge of interest in original nation missions after the release of the 2nd Abyssea expansion and people realized that there were rewards for completing missions. During that time, I managed to complete rank 10 in Bastok & Windurst. However, since then, interest has died down again as people have discovered that the rewards for finishing those nation missions is no longer relevant with new upgrades.

So.. basically there's really no interest in the remaining community to do missions and quests.

Getting stuff
Getting stuff is basically doing either Abyssea as described above, or magian trials which I've described in previous posts. Both of which are highly repetitive and do get boring fairly quickly. There isn't really any challenge left in FFXI. The only fighting you're doing is against probability with drop rates, and latency with the JP button. If you can pop a mob, you can definitely kill it. There is virtually no challenge left in the game.

Personal response
On a personal basis, I'd actually like to complete the WotG missions to get some closure. I know this is nearly impossible to organize, but if I can get 4-5 like-minded people together...

Basically, the challenge is this: If you're interested in finishing WotG, focus on the Sandy quests and we'll work on them together. Kelhor, Vanh and myself are currently at the Blood of Heroes Sandy quest, which according to the wiki, is between WoTG missions 26 & 27. If we can get another 1-2 people to meet us at this quest, then set up a regular time to meet up, we can plow through the rest of these missions and complete WoTG. The reason why I've chosen Sandy is... well, that's the only questline I've found that actually has people relatively far along! If you are up for it, leave a comment or send me a /tell. Vanh is currently on break, so if you see this Vanh, think about coming back in March... send me an IM though to make sure we can set this up. I'm considering using Sunday afternoons/evenings to finish up WotG.

"Getting stuff" wise, I'm down to 5 items that I'd actually like to have, but truthfully, even those 5 items would be such a minor incremental increase in performance that... well... if I finish WotG and there aren't any more content announcements for FFXI, I might just skip over them and consider FFXI "completed". Soooo... this may be one of the last blog posts I make!

Meanwhile, here are a few pics to entertain you.

First, this is how stupidly crazy DNC has become in terms of attacks/round. This is solo, no additional buffs beyond what DNC normally has. I'm also in evasion gear instead of haste gear:

Low-manning what used to be a tough mob:

New variety of taru! Or is it rarab? Or some form of cheerleader?

Schoolgirl look has been replaced by a professor look for SCH:

For Talint: This is what male Dancers look like now:

For everyone else: This is what male elvaan look like now:

End of 2010 pics!

Wow, has it been a month already since my last post? Lots happening in FFXI, most of it fun. I figure this update would mainly be for those who stopped playing so that they can get an idea of how things have changed.

The main changes would be... the level cap is now 90 and that the Abyssea content is now finished. The level 90 cap pretty much makes any old-world content a joke and everything significant/fun is in Abyssea now, including almost all the gear. About the only thing that isn't purely Abyssea that is 80+ are the magian weapons, and a good number of their trials do require items from Abyssea.

So... anyway, I've been working on my magian dagger, the "occasionally attacks twice" high damage version. The good news is that since finishing the initial VNM step, and the two "get drops from NMs" piece, the dagger has become fairly easy to maintain, just using points from various new battle systems that popped up (bastion & Dominion)

The armor everyone is after now is what people have been calling "AF3", the job-specific armor. The base pieces are fairly easy to get, with some work needed to get the +1 pieces which is where they start to become useful. The +2 pieces are where the job specific armor really shines, and we've just barely started to work on getting those pieces for everyone. Here's a pic of my DNC +1 set

New armor & weapons mean newer mobs to fight, right? Exactly! Bigger, meaner battles including this one!

Raja is one of the more fun tanking fights I've done on DNC. Lots of large AoEs, gives silence, amnesia and more. Basically I'm the only one engaging it/tanking it with the rest of the alliance spread out to support me and come in to do damage when possible. Abyssea NM fighting also requires more attention compared to fights in the past. Now we have to perform specific weaponskills at specific times, cast certain BweaponsLM/BRD/BLU spells or even turn away from the mob when it does certain moves. Many NMs now absorb physical or magical damage depending on the situation or move that they make. A single person not paying attention could end up healing the NM for thousands of HP.

One new game mechanic that was added with Abyssea was the concept of "atmas", buffs that you can get inside of Abyssea. These include things like more HP, regain, additions to attributes and more. There are some funny ones like Auto-Reraise III, and significantly increase the damage of everyone, especially 1-handed jobs like THF, NIN and DNC, which leads to funny weaponskill damage like this:

All three Abyssea expansions have been released now. These mini-expansions have a plot of sorts, though the story itself is much shorter and more straightforward compared to even the previous mini-expansions like the moogle and Shantotto ones. At the end of it, you get to fight this:

and meet some old friends:

After everything is done, one of the things you get is the ability to buy the Primevel Brew, an item that gives you +999 stats, +9999 HP/MP, crazy amounts of regain, regen, refresh, etc. for 3 minutes for 200k cruor. It's basically the cheat code for FFXI and lets you solo anything inside Abyssea. You can WS constantly, and with Chainspell, RDMs can nuke down anything in the time.

I'm still figuring out the optimum way to use the brew myself... my weak DRG managed to do this:

but this is really weak compared to what other people have done, or what my DNC can do xD I still have to figure out how to best use the brew.

Finally, some more random pics! Seems like this is the new DNC uniform as I'm seeing tons of us running around like this!

Kelhor(Rooks) & I went to do more WotG quests... Interest for WoTG is at an all-time low even though they.. i think they actually finished releasing it all? Anyway, it's been so long since the last time anyone did anything in WotG that I've forgotten most of the details of the storyline. There isn't any significant rewards at the end, and the way they split the questlines up makes it nearly impossible for people to cooperate in WotG. I consider this expansion to be the most well done story & cutscene wise, and the biggest failure of FFXI simply due to the game mechanics and how long they took to release it.

Anyway, here is a pic that I'm calling "attack of the clones"

That's it for now! Happy New Year!

Long time no post

Been a while since my last post... mainly because of RL stuff. I've taken a new job with more responsibility and better opportunity. It also takes up more of my time so I don't have time to put together blog posts at work. FFXI itself hasn't really been that exciting either, just the usual gear acquisition with minimal challenge except for the randomness of drops or claim competition. Abyssea is the only "real" thing going on now, with the magian trials for those who have multi-hours during the day to spend their time.

At this point, I'm not quite sure how much longer I'll keep playing myself. It seems that there are people who want to step up FFXI activities to the point where events are held for multi-hours for most days of the week... Kinda weird for nearly 9 year old MMO game, and... well, I'm not sure if I want to commit that kind of time. I don't mind spending a few hours every other night playing, but nearly every night, and during the day on weekends? A certain South Park episode comes to mind...

Anyway, for those who don't play anymore, here's a little pic of my latest WS gear for DNC!

The new FFXI

I figure that since there are a quite a few people actually reading this who are no longer playing FFXI that I should put up a post summarizing the changes to the game. If you left or cut down on playing FFXI before the latest series of "Abyssea" expansions, I think you'd be in for a huge culture shock if you ever started playing the game again.

The new level cap
The highest you can go now is level 85. Now remember that most of the original hard mobs were around level 85 or so back when the level cap was 75 and you'll see the problem. Basically, all the old content has become easy. Just about anyone can low-man or solo older stuff, anything released pre-abyssea. Missions of all sorts, including the previous 3 expansions (Shantotto, Moogle, etc.) are now a joke instead of being a challenge. As long as there is no level cap on the fight, you almost always duo or solo it do it.

Exp
There is no more exp outside of Abyssea. You may see a few people out doing some FoV, or some random sub-30 parties around, but basically, Abyssea has taken over everything, and with good reason. Since you can easily get around 50-80k, maybe 100k+/hour with the proper setup, exping outside of Abyssea is just plain inefficient. You can enter Abyssea starting at level 30, so once you hit 30, you can start going in to "leech" exp. However, even leechers have a purpose, that is, to open chests that the people doing the real work of killing mobs can't do. For an exp alliance of 13-18 people, you might have 1-2 leechers just along for the ride.

Exp has also changed from a "get together a party and go at it" for anywhere from 30 minutes to 3 hours, to a "the longer you're at it, the better the reward" endurance session of at least 3-4+ hours. Our typical exp session on Sunday mornings (yes, mornings... people are setting alarm clocks JUST for exp) runs from around 9am - 3pm at the very least, 6 hours of exp, and that is followed by a couple of hours of NM hunting. Near the end of the session, the exp rate does easily hit 100k/hour, but that is also around the time that people are hitting both level cap, and merit cap

Soooooooo... for people entering Abyssea at level 80, they can expect to leave at 85 plus capped merits after a full session. Many people have leeched jobs from sub-60 easily to 85 in a couple of sessions. And yes, exping that quickly means that you leave a session with horribly underleveled skills no matter how much you put in it.

Colibri camps have never been more open for skillups.

Older content
Old content is obsolete. There is no real reason to go do anything that isn't Abyssea anymore. Dynamis, Limbus, Sea, Sky, Einherjar, all the old content is neither a challenge, nor is it rewarding. We took a group in to Dynamis last Thursday, barely 14 people and completely wiped the zone... twice. Relic armor is a joke and basically everything went freelot. I guess there are some people still working on relic weapons since the coins still sell, which is kinda amusing since the relic weapon trials to upgrade those relics is something only an insane person would do.

About the only thing that SE added to make old content somewhat relevant was that they reward people who completed the mission stories, that is, the expansion stories, the original 3 nation quests, and the various expansions like CoP, Zilart and Aht Urghan, with "atmas" which can be used in Abyssea

Abyssea & Atmas
Atmas are "power ups" that you can earn inside Abyssea. You can get them through quests, killing certain NMs, finishing mission lines, etc. They can give you power-ups like extra strength (+50), extra HP & MP(my PLD has over 3000 HP), or gives you certain things like Refresh(+10/tick), Regain and others.

And the way you get Atmas are from doing certain things to NMs in a certain way. For instance, using specific elemental weaponskills on NMs depending on the day, under very specific conditions (mob must not be casting or doing TP skills). You can also increase the drop rate by casting specific elemental magics on the mob as well. (rendering TH obsolete to an extent?)

Now we have a random assortment of jobs being brought into Abyssea simply for the reason of using their elemental weaponskills, or casting elemental magics of various kinds. I'm not just talking about BLMs here to nuke, but we also need to bring BLUs for their (lol)magical spells, SCHs for their Helixes, etc. I'm amused that they haven't found a way to work PUP into things, and I'm wondering if the COR Quick Draw cards might come into play here.

Soooo... Abyssea has broken the crown of the usual SAM+BRD combination and people are essentially free to bring whatever they please if they aren't part of the core group of WHMs, RDMs and to an extent, PLDs.

Abyssea NM fights
With all the atma buffs, as well as exp being a joke to get these days (you actually GET exp from killing NMs, anywhere from 500-5000 per kill), most NM fights become a free-for-all where everyone just goes all out. If a DD gets killed, it's no big deal, throw a Raise out there and put him on the bench for 5 minutes. All the buffs out there makes it pretty hard for a PLD to keep hate unless the DDs hold back. There aren't many fights that actually require PLDs now, only the zone bosses and a few tough NMs. I'm sure by the time we're level 90(or higher since SE said that 99 would be the final cap), these would be easily low-manned by a group of DDs.

Essentially, everything now is either a simple free-for-all that is done in less than 5 minutes (with a few random people dying along the way) or a kite fight where it's mainly on the nukers (BLM, SCH, and even RDM). Rarely do we actually need to bring out real tanks. People not paying attention is the norm, judging on how many times we have to shout on linkshell for people to actually do thing properly. (You'd think that they would pay attention since the objective IS to get things for them... at least bidding has people's attention after a few people lost out on things that they wanted because they didn't bid properly in the 20 seconds and hopefully taken more seriously after Mday lost 2000 points bidding on a random item that nobody wanted)

Current Content
With all old content essentially obsolete, the new content is mainly focused inside of Abyssea itself. The only things I've seen people do in the old zones is either Magian Trials (the kill 2000-10,000 of various mob families under specific days/weather conditions/killshots/proccing of addititional effects stuff that takes months to do), or people doing missions specifically for atmas (Crystal prices are going for anywhere from 1500-3000/stack since nobody exps anymore -- there is a huge shortage of crystals since people are using them for rank points)

In Abyssea, the content is essentially quests, NMs, and popped NMs.

Quests
There are around 8-9 quests per Abyssea zone, some of which are repeatable for seals. This is the super-low seal drop rate method of getting seals required to upgrade the "AF3" armor to be useful. I estimate around a 5% drop rate, and you need 8 seals to do a single upgrade of a single piece. I spent 4 hours on Friday night to try to get just the final 2 seals I need for my DNC feet and the only thing I had to show for it was a loss of 4k exp.

This is the "solo" content that SE promised us. Yes, it's possible to solo. It's mind-numbingly boring. With a 5% drop rate, on average you'd have to do 20 repeats, or 160 repeats of the SAME quest in order to complete one of your AF3 pieces. If you're lucky like me and can actually repeat the quest in a reasonable time of around 5 minutes, that's only 13 hours of grinding a quest and on average, you'd be able to finish a piece. Of course, that only the average... I'm already waaaaay past the average for this quest.

And if you're not lucky and have a quest that requires items from IT mobs... well, I'll be surprised if you actually succeed with this method.

NMs
Around all the zones there are various NMs that drop some good items. Some drop seals for AF3, giving another method of obtaining them that doesn't involve mind-numbing grinding, while most drop some sort of gear that is useful, including various job-specific accessories, some crazy pieces like the mage piece that has +100 HP & MP, and gives Refresh & Regen. Most NMs also have Atma.

The respawn time of these NMs is actually fairly decent, around 30 minutes after they are last killed. The bad news is that with the drops being so desirable, people are low-manning them and taking forever to kill. Since dying isn't a big deal anymore, reraise, doing some damage, and getting killed isn't a big deal anymore so people are low-manning them and taking forever to do so... Glitching of the mob's paths is unfortunately common and requires a GM call every time.

Popped NMs
Most of the exp mobs drop pop items to pop various NMs that also drop seals and various items. The pop items themselves are pretty common, and can be sold on the AH. The good news is that the ??? that pops the NMs has a short, 3 minute repop. The bad news is that there are also tons of competition for these since, well, they are just about the only thing to do. It's fairly typical to walk up to a ??? area and find another group already doing it, or have another group barge in on you as you're working through pops. Most people are generally polite and either move on when they see another group there, or work in an alternating schedule so that people take turns to pop. However, there are lots of jackasses out there too who won't communicate or cooperate.

My blacklist is unfortunately full :( I need to talk to a GM about increasing it!

Oh, and the Abyssea "storyline" consists of... building to and fighting a high level NM(about the only time a serious alliance with a tank party is needed) and a bunch of crappy cutscenes.

Sooooooooo... that's FFXI right now. Quests, NMs, and occasional exp. Oh, one more thing. While a typical "old school" event like Dynamis would end up with people losing exp, the Abyssea mobs all have exp and give them out generously. 500 exp tends to be on the low side per kill, with 5000 exp being easily possible. Typically you'd leave an Abyssea NM hunting session with 4-6 merits, with the highest I've ever done was going in with absolutely 0 merits or limits and coming out fully capped.

With only 300 merits left to cap all my jobs, even the ones I never use... well, DO said it best that exp is no longer relevant.

Long time no post

Hmm... does anyone still read this? Hello? Hello?

Well, just for those of you who still do read this... I figure I owe an explanation of what is going on.

No, I haven't been been caught up playing FFXIV... in fact, if I were playing that more, I would probably have more posts showing off the world (it's very pretty!) FFXIV is as bad as the reviews out there say it is. I haven't played it in over two weeks at this point. I think I have until the end of November before the initial "free trial" ends, at which time I'll most likely shut off my account.

Instead, I've been playing more FFXI, ironically... The Abyssea atmas have finally got me started on doing the nation quests, getting rank 10 Bastok, working on Windy right now and I hope to finish Sandy by the end of the month. I've also been doing a LOT more in FFXI then I had planned, partly because of the way Abyssea is structured where the longer you stay in, the higher the rewards and... well, wanting to beat the silly time stones things.

I've gotten a lot of good gear from Abyssea and stuff so far... including the Pluviale, lots of seals for DNC, SCH, and even completing my DNC "AF3" set (though I still need two more feet seals). Big thanks to DO and everyone else who stayed after exp last Sunday to farm these. I know that DO was capped merits like me and was just there to try to get drops.

So... now for the good... or bad news, depending on how you look at it. I just accepted a new job at a very fast-paced company, so... it'll take me a few months to build things up to the point where I can automate my job. Which means... no more weekday events before 7:30pm for the most part. Or just assume I'll be late. This is pretty much the same schedule as when I was in grad school!

Which should be fine since FFXI is dying, right? ;)

First FFXIV post

So, while there are tons of problems with Final Fantasy XIV such as a pain to get it working smoothly and lots of other minor issues, I'll say that one thing they did do right was how pretty they made it. Even in the alpha I thought that FFXIV was a beautiful game.

So... this post is going to be about some screenshots I took in FFXIV last night :)

(And yes, I gave in to the pressure that stupid Fuuji and others put on me to get XIV :P )

Meet the new Ascy:

Started out on the "Pugilist" job, though I keep wondering when I'm going to get the "Screwdriver" WS. I have no idea what the acronyms for the jobs are, but I'm sticking with PUG for now!

Special ability: Float

Soooo... looks like they haven't fixed the problems of models interacting with the models quite right. That's one of the starting cities, Ul'duh in the background. I take no responsibility for any spelling mistakes. It's their fault for choosing such weird names.

Impressive rendering

First view upon stepping out of the city is incredible. I stood here for a few minutes looking out... that is, once the weather cleared out. The sandstorms are also incredible, very realistic!

Running around the city at night

If your graphics card can't handle it, running around and movement becomes very jerky and disconcerting. IMO, it is better to reduce the load on the card and get a smooth framerate. I'm using an ATI 5870 and I can't even play this game on the highest settings and had to drop down to merely "high" and shut off some features

Beautiful in-game cutscenes (and mi'quote)

One of the main storyline NPCs for Ul'dah. Also apparently also one of the reasons why some people start here! I wonder if each strand of hair is rendered separately...

That's it for now. Still looking for people who are supposedly on the Kashuan server. Tasya, or now known as Aenea gave me a linkpearl to her erm... HNMLS. I hope I'm not supposed to be camping Fafnir or something... especially since I saw Fafnir Nidhogg spawn right in front of me when I spawned. (He's a tiny lalafel, so should be easy prey!)

Low-manning NMs/farming NMs & seals

I'm not sure how the upcoming release of FFXIV will affect things... It sounds like there are quite a few people who intend to start playing FFXIV when it comes out this week. (Wednesday I believe?)

The next couple of weeks should be interesting at least. With Kelly taking a break, the release of FFXIV and well, the latest Abyssea expansion completely changing expectations of FFXI again, who knows who will be around after the shakeout is done.

In any case, I'm still around and intending to poke things. All jobs are 85 now in record time (2 weekends of Abyssea exp -.-) After looking at things, I'm currently left with 2 1/2 jobs left to get up to 49, and about 250 merits left to completely cap all jobs. That's about 13-14 Abyssea exp sessions at the very most, and while having more merits on my jobs would be nice, it isn't something that's too high of a priority for me, especially since I intend to mainly focus on DNC in the first place xD The bad news? AF3 feet being gold chest pops... considering the super-low drop rate and the difficulty(annoyance?) from building up Amber lights enough for it. I'm not sure how to structure an event to farm AF3 feet... We'd pretty much need people to be on their "A" jobs and be willing to focus on getting giant gold chests and forsaking exp/merits for hours at a time.


In any case, yesterday evening the VNM prep crew (Fuuji, Vanh, Ghiren, me and... Val) went to low-man some NMs with some success. Beelz joined us later. Setup was:
- RDM - Fuuji - Haste, backup heals + lots of enfeebling
- SMN - Ghiren - Hateless DD, -na spells with /WHM
- SAM/THF - Vanh - TA DD
- DNC/NIN - Ascule - Evasion tank
- THF/... SAM - Val - TA DD, bait, TH
- PLD/NIN - Beelz (joined us later in the night)

Which... pretty much describes my default low-man strategy. Get a tank + support capable of holding the mob indefinitely, then add in as many DDs as you have available people to take it down to speed things up. TH if possible, though at the end of the day, the core of the strategy is a tank + support.

This seemed to work well against the VNMs, plus last night we tackled Khalamari and Gieremund. We tried the frog NM, but that one ended up killing us as it spammed Waterja and Water-ga x.x

The other low-man tactic I've seen executed is... well, nukers ping-ponging hate, kiting the mob around until someone else can pull it off. Works especially well among NMs who have slow movement speed, or if you have enough room to pull the kite, but is highly risky if you're fighting something that hits hard or has many AoEs.

I'm hoping to continue low-manning NMs to get some gear for people, or seals, whichever it may be. I try to avoid the "dying" types of fights where you use damage-over-time attacks and either die & reraise, or run until the mob deaggros simply due to the time it takes to do these fights

Farming seals/Which NMs?
So... the big question is which NMs to hunt, and when to hunt them... I'm hoping to make this a regular thing on Sunday nights, but... we'll see... too much in the air right now.

So far the list of possible wants are:
Ascule - DNC stuffs
Fuuji - RDM stuffs
Ghiren - WHM or SMN stuffs
Valharin - THF stuffs
Vanh - SAM, THF stuff, BRD feet

I'm looking to build a list of NMs that people want to kill and figure out how to kill them. So far my list is:

Khalamari (Squid - Konschat)
- Wanted by: Ascule - Charis Necklace
- Other drops: Varangian Helm - Str+12, Accuracy -20, Attack+24
- DNC evasion tanking, has some heavy hitting moves, Utsusemi + full time Fan Dance a must
- Success - Probably can be duo'ed or trioed

Gieremund (Hound - Attohwa)
- Wanted by: Ascule - DNC seal: Head
- Other drops: WAR, DRG, THF head seals, Yoshihiro (magnus stone GK)
- DNC evasion tanking, has heavy hitting moves that go through Utsusemi. Howl causes Paralyze and needs to be removed ASAP
- Success - Possible trio, better with 5 or more

Ironclad everything (all new zones)
- Drops: Various job-specific accessories, some nice body pieces
- In theory, nuke-kiting should work, just be sure to ping-pong hate. Movement speed atma or gear would help
- Doable? Possibly... half-assembled remnants of an exp alliance was able to kill this twice, so a coordinated low-man effort should be possible

Seps (Puk - Vunkrel)
- Wanted by: Fuuji - RDM seal: feet
- Other drops: SCH seal: feet
- No further info on Wiki at this time. Probably can get away with evasion tanking. Probably has AoE moves

Iktomi (Spider - Vunkrel)
- Wanted by: Fuuji - RDM seal: feet
- Other drops: SAM, PLD, THF feet seals
- Sickle Slash goes through shadows, double attacks frequently. PLD/NIN tank possibly?
- Probably best to test with DNC & PLD tanks

Gukumatz (Peiste - Misareaux)
- Wanted by: Fuuji - RDM legs, Ghiren - WHM legs
- Other drops: SCH, BLM legs, magnus stone Great Axe
- Lots of annoying moves, gaze attacks, knockback, lots of ignoring shadow moves and plague
- Probably can do ping-pong nuking with this. Face away from the mob to avoid gaze attacks. Would need at least one person WHM or /WHM to remove plague & erase bind

Wherwetrice (Cockatrice - Attohwa)
- Wanted by: Fuuji - RDM seal: head, Ghiren - WHM head
- Other drops: SCH, BLM, Divinus Grip
- Popped NM. Has Sound Vacuum which causes mute AND en-amnesia. Sounds like a pain to fight... I think I'd rather go after the Peiste

Pallid Percy (Worm - Attohwa)
- Wanted by: Fuuji - RDM head, Vanh & Val - THF head
- Other drops: SAM, PLD head, Incantor Stone
- Popped NM. Has draw in, AoE damage, lots of -ga spells like Silencega, Slowga, Graviga, Aeroga, Stonega. Probably a pain to fight

Granite Borer (Wamouracampa - Attohwa)
- Wanted by: Ghiren - WHM head, Ascule - DNC head, Vanh & Val - THF head
Other drops: COR head, Volley Earring
- Popped NM. High movement speed, casts Firaga IV. No fast cast
- Might be doable. Covers a lot people's jobs. Bring a stunner for Firaga?

Whiro (Eft - Attohwa)
- Wanted by: Ghiren - WHM head, Vanh - SAM head
- Other drops: DRK, BLU head, Fluid Crossbow
- Conal stun, AoE damage, AoE dispel. Can spam AoE damage moves. Sounds like a pain.
- Probably skip this one and find easier sources

Npfundlwa (Rabbit - Misareaux)
- Wanted by: Ghiren - WHM legs
- Other drops: WAR, COR, DNC legs, Quire Grip
- Popped NM. Don't rabbits have that evil AoE move that one-shots most people? Mmmm... Wiki only has Dust Cloud listed as the ability, might be worth checking out... or waiting for more info to be posted

Mmmm... that's enough NM checking for now... still many more to list/check.

If you have a NM or specific seal that you'd rather prioritize, let me know so we can check to see if we can fit a strategy to it. If the quest is SOMEWHAT reasonable to do (as in, you can get all 8 seals in like... under 6-8 hours), then it is probably better to just do the quest method.

Oh, also, if there are other NMs that drop things people want, like job-specific accessories(like Khalamari), let's check them out as well