I feel like I am winding up my commitment to FFXI. I’m barely playing and FFXIV is around the corner and far more casual friendly. I may not have much time for that with my evening classes at college!

There are a lot of memories in these posts, good and bad. The first post http://wp.me/proJH-4 on it was on Sep 3rd 2007 but I didn’t write much for a couple of years.

August 29th 2011 was my most popular post with 4,423 views with 1800 views each coming from Guildwork and Bluegartr.com. On that day I published a bunch of stuff from the test server about dynamis and new spells etc. The posts start here http://eldelphia.wordpress.com/2011/08/29/test-server-dynamis-tavnazia-screenshots/

Other popular posts include http://eldelphia.wordpress.com/2009/05/17/why-dont-you-work-it-out-for-yourself-instead-of-waiting-for-a-sackholder-to-wipe-your-backside/

and http://eldelphia.wordpress.com/2010/07/14/want-nms-give-us-blm-xp/

My top commenters have been Anexya, Evilpaul and Shaorankun.

Various linkshell dramas have caused a great deal of interest (as you’d imagine) but I’d just like to mention some of the hundreds of people who have made the game fun for me over the years.

It’s a very long time since Gilraen and I played together but we were an ace team and I’ve always missed you and your crazy BLM sidekick Beebo.

Over the years, a lot of people stuck by Serendipity and Fortuna and I’d like to thank every single one of them! Yes, even you.

I can’t list everyone and I’d offend a lot more if I tried but especial thanks to Doyler and Niamh who were there from the beginning.

Thanks to everyone who has read this crap over the years.

Thanks to all the peeps I static’d with for CoP, Assaults, Salvage, Nyzul Isle and more. Salvage especially was enormous fun.

Thanks to all the idiots who pulled for us in Dynamis and Einherjar!

Some of the people who have made this game more enjoyable include Martinius, Erestor, Anroga, Eiden, Carpenter, Rotx, Levander, Vykos, Athenaa, Dellos, Silkxiv, Kazgoroth, Slaanesh, Xan, Bergi, Shao, Berdysh, Kd, Hasi and loads more. There are so many people I think fondly of, I can’t possibly list them all.

I can’t finish up this post without at least mentioning Clevan (RIP honey). C was an awesome guy who became a great friend. When we first heard about his sickness I sent a whole heap of well wishes to him from the guys in Serendipity and Nova (our dyna shell). I stuck them in a huge card and posted it to him. It made his day and made him cry. C was pretty much universally liked, was the funloving counterpart to all my srs bsns and I miss him a lot.

Who knows what’s around the corner but I have a feeling this is the last time I’ll blog about FFXI. Enjoy your gaming!

Matsui: Follow up on Level 99 Relic, Mythic, Empyrean, and Coin Weapons

Hello, it’s Matsui. Thank you for all of your opinions about Relic, Mythic, Empyrean, and Coin weapons (hereafter, RMEC). They were very helpful.

After reading all of the varied opinions, we have decided that rather than unlocking the weapon skills specific to each weapon, a reworking of RME weapons would be more effective (for coin weapons, more information will be provided later, but we plan to allow these to unlock the dedicated weapon skills).

I have written and reorganized this in various ways and it has become quite lengthy with examples. After you have gotten a chance to look over it, please let us know if you have any further opinions.


Content Level

We received many questions about the parameters of Adoulin equipment. Because this is an important part in order to be able to understand the reworking of RME so you can provide your opinion, please allow me to repeat the explanation for content level and growth in Seekers of Adoulin.

In Adoulin, the basic design is a repeated play cycle where players become stronger and stronger as they align themselves with equipment obtained from challenging content which, in turn, allows them to take on even more challenging content.

By aligning themselves with this equipment, players will continue to grow even without leveling up.

The content level of Adoulin content is set as follows:

[[Info below is much better formatted in a table on the original post.]]

20: Delve (Boss Monsters) (Current)
17: Wildskeeper Reive (New Additions) (Next Version Update)
14: Delve NMs (Tier 2) (Current)
13: Skirmish (New Additions) (Next Version Update)
11: Delve NMs (Tier 1) (Current)
6-9: Colonization / Lair Reives (New Additions) (Next Version Update)
7: Wildskeeper Reive (Current)
6: Skirmish (Current)
1-5: Colonization/Lair Reives (Current)

The strength of the equipment that can be obtained, rather than the level of the equipment, will be dependent on the content level. The equipment to be added later in Adoulin will of course be equippable at level 99, but the level of the equipment parameters would be even higher to match the content level (for example, similar to what level 110 or 120 equipment might look like).

While the strength of the monsters which appear is determined to match the content level, in order to fill out the hierarchy between content to some extent, we have designed monsters of variable strength. The parameters of the equipment that can be obtained in Adoulin is set by determining the parameters that would be necessary to compete with those monsters.

The level of current and planned content is set to minimize the gaps between content level, but we may also insert additional intermediate content if the jump between levels remains too high.

In some cases, content variations will cause content to cover multiple levels. We also plan to enhance the amount of content available horizontally at individual levels, rather than just vertically over the content level range.

The content in the next version update will be added with this in mind.

Referencing the “next version update” items above, it will be possible to add new colonization and lair reive equipment purchasable for Bayld in the level 6~9 range (which currently includes Skirmish and Wildskeeper Reives). In addition, we will be inserting new content at levels 13 and 17.

Also, one part of smoothing out the content level will be adjusted in a maintenance to be carried out of the end of this week: we will be adding a fixed probability to obtain the items needed to enter Skirmishes (Simulacrum Segments) from Lair and Colonization Reives. (This adjustment is unrelated to the current rules associated with coalition assignments, gathering, and Soul Pyres.)

By making this adjustment, the assumed progression will be:
1. First, take on lair and colonization reives.
2. As a result of those battles, obtain Simulacrum Segments.
3. Combine the segments in order to enter Skirmishes.


Reworking RMEC

Please excuse my lengthy explanation above. I’ll now return to the topic at hand.

First off, since it is necessary for the development staff to further consider the implementation, we cannot guarantee the timeframe as far as whether it will be included in the next version update.

Regarding the types of parameters that would be reworked, special abilities such as Aftermath and Afterglow will remain, while parameters such as the DMG rating, attack, and accuracy will be set to match the content level post-rework.

Since the parameters will be reworked to become aligned with high content difficulty, we do not intend to rework it in small intervals such as with the previous method of Trial of the Magians.

Prior to now, RME were considered the strongest weapons, so I think there will need to be some change to this viewpoint. For those who have RME, you may not require the other weapons, but there now be a choice among other comparable weapons.

If you are worried about how these weapons will be able to be used, for example, against Delve boss monsters, here are some parameters which we are looking at for the reworking. This is just for RME one-handed swords as an example:


Excalibur
DMG:73 Delay:233 Attack+40
“Knights of Round”
Additional effect: Damage varies with HP

to

DMG:121 Delay:233 Attack+60 Accuracy+20
“Knights of Round”
Additional effect: Damage varies with HP


Burtgang
DMG:73 Delay:264 Enmity+18
Physical damage taken-18% Reduces Enmity decrease when taking damage
“Atonement”
Aftermath: Increases Acc./Atk./Occ. attacks twice or thrice

to

DMG:131 Delay:264 Attack+20 Accuracy+20 Enmity+18
Physical damage taken-18% Reduces Enmity decrease when taking damage
“Atonement”
Aftermath: Increases Acc./Atk./Occ. attacks twice or thrice


Almace
DMG:70 Delay:224 DEX+20
“Chant du Cygne”
Aftermath: Occ. deals double damage

to

DMG:114 Delay:224 Attack+20 Accuracy+20 DEX+20
“Chant du Cygne”
Aftermath: Occ. deals double damage


Since coin weapons were originally just intended to be used for Empyrean weapon skills, based on the concept, I believe that instead of reworking them, they can be used to open the dedicated weapon skills (with certain level and job restrictions). We are currently considering the adjustment procedures necessary for this..


In conclusion

I’ve gone on for a while, so considering the reworking for level 99 Relic, Mythic, and Empyrean weapons as well as the unlocking of dedicated weapon skills via Coin weapons, please let us know your opinions. We will read through your thoughts one by one to make sure we understand your point of view.

Note that this is a large departure from the original plan. Considering the feasibility of scheduling this change, the development may take some time.

I apologize for keeping you waiting on my response.

Thanks in advance!

What has happened (in short) is that Square Enix has released weapons in the new Seekers of Adoulin (SoA) expansion which have considerably higher DPS than any pre-existing weapon in the game.

Not only have they done that, they have not definitively indicated that they are going to provide routes for upgrading pre-existing RMEC weapons.

In other games, this wouldn’t be that unusual but in Final Fantasy XI, it breaks the mold. Relic and then later Mythic weapons have always been held up as a pinnacle of achievement. When SE decided to raise the level cap, they could have chosen to leave them behind. Instead, they brought out empyrean and coin weapons AND trials to upgrade existing relics and mythics.

These were upgraded further. They’ve hit 99. The level cap has not been lifted even further. The first wave of weapons released with SoA upset people until the maths was done and they realised that there was still room for the existing RMECs. These weapons were introduced through Skirmish and Wildskeeper Reives.

Square Enix however seems to have changed its tune though because within a month of releasing Skirmish weapons, they have been utterly eclipsed by weapons achieved and upgraded via the new endgame content, Delve.

In the process, these weapons also eclipse R/M/E/C… Now let’s look at why so many people are furious about this…

Financial cost:

• Relic weapons: 175-180 hundred pieces, 5 umbral marrow, 250 umbral marrow
• Empyrean weapons: 1500 Heavy metal 90-95, 60 Riftdross, 3000 Riftdross (99 afterglow)
• Mythic weapons: 30000 alexandrite, Mulcibar’s Scoria x3, Mulcibar’s Scoria x150

These are the bits you can buy. Somehow you have to make the cash for these or make time for the farming.

Up until level 90, I don’t think Empyrean weapon wielders have any rights to moan. If you have a good weapon at 90, great but it’s not until the 90-95 stretch things go nuts.

Relic holders are a weird bunch because there are those who upgraded back before it was easy to do so. Those who made shells for the sole purpose of upgrading. They were the Kings of FFXI weaponry for a long time. These days they are comparatively easy to achieve until you hit the last stage or two but they are still months of work for the average player and a lot of money either way.

Mythic weapon holders have my sympathy the most honestly. Partially because I still hanker after a Yagrush but more because the amount of work for a mythic eclipses most other things. You need to have gained Captain rank to even start one. You need to have beaten Nyzul Isle and have the KI. You then need to beat 4 Salvage bosses, Odin, 3 Beastmen kings and then the craziness starts.

Having beaten all assaults to get Captain you have to go back, beat them all again. You also have to do enough Nyzul Isle to make 150k tokens and enough Einherjar to make 100k ampoules. The best bit of course is the 30000 alexandrite you have to collect… But it doesn’t stop there. You need to beat all the arms of the Zeni NMs to get 3 items to fight for your weapon. Oh and then, upgrade it from 75-99.

The time invested doesn’t in many cases reflect in what you end up with but for some they were still the best out there at 99. Which considering the sanity loss you have to endure to get them, seemed fair.

So… if Square Enix hadn’t wanted the relics and mythics to endure they’ve had various points in which to stop them and move on. Unfortunately as Slaan (and others) point out, they set a precedent by making them upgradable via Magian trials. And making them very, very expensive.

There has been an entire industry around generating heavy metal, alexandrite and dynamis currency. People actually made money from each other. You could muddle along feeling quite comfortable and only really having to farm a lot when you were working on something in particular because those markets were fairly strong.

To be fair, the price of alexandrite has always been a headache. Hitting 20k per piece when you need 30000 is just crazy money.

So, if you’ve managed to get a mythic from 90-99 and paid out… between 300,000,000 and 600,000,000 gil in alexandrite and 30,000,000 – 45,000,000 gil in scoria… you have a right to be pissed.

With relics, you’ve paid 5-15k per currency piece 89,000,000 – 269,000,000 gil and then 50,000,000 – 75,000,000 gil for marrows

With empyreans you’ve paid 70-120k per heavy metal which is 105,000,000 – 180,000,000 gil and then 12,000,000 – 24,000,000 for the dross.

So the final bills come in roughly at :

• 330m – 645m for a Mythic
• 139 – 344m for a Relic
• 117m – 204m for an Empyrean

All to 99 but NOT to the Afterglow (final)stage. And there are lunatics who have gone for the afterglow…

Most people will have farmed for months and years to get either the money or the various currencies involved.

Putting that amount of gil on a credit card couldn’t be viable for many people surely? Not that I advocate it but I’m sure people have done it.

You might be lucky and have an effective group to support you. It will make things like scoria and marrows more accessible. You may have friends who donate currency and time. It still adds up.

Allowing the R/M/E/C weapons to be upgradable was a mistake honestly and it’s one that kinda screwed over the economy.

I’m sure SE is looking at how much money people were making from Voidwatch, Dynamis and Salvage (let alone blinkers) and decided they didn’t like it.

I think they made a mistake back then honestly and should have moved away from the R/M/E models when the cap went up.

So now, the Delve weapons (which beat R/M/E/C) are imminently possible. They’re not ‘easy’ to get but in comparison are so much less of a commitment either in time or in gil and they beat every other option. Including things like the magian trial staves for mages.

SE may offer R/M/E upgraders an olive branch. I wouldn’t expect them to stay on top though.

I’m pretty bitter about Mythics anyway. I have a lot of the prerequisites but the Mythic club is the only R/M/E which makes a difference to my job. However, much as I’d love one, it has never, ever been worth 600m and that much time to me. If alexandrite continues to drop, we’ll see.

SE has stated that they want players to do the older content to gear up for doing Skirmish and then Delve. Players won’t do that unless they have to. What’s obvious is that R/M/E/C weapons make it easier to do the harder NMs for Delve but it’s not impossible without.

So why bother with Dynamis, Salvage or trials anymore when you can jump in and get a Delve weapon with relative ease?

We live in interesting (FFXI) times.

You earn 50 corpuscles of meya plasm per NQ mob. Airlixirs can drop from any NQ mob. You can kite bosses away but they will path back. and the Megaboss is FUGLY!

I went back to Adoulin and found I now have 2550 corpuscles but nothing I can spend em on except Airlixirs. The NPC involved is Forri-Porri close to the Inventors’ Coalition. All the Delve gear is summarised nicely here on BG wiki

On the Wildskeeper Reive front I’m about 20k bayld away from getting my first KI having bought various bits of bayld armour from the Peacekeeper’s Coalition. I’m not sure if just one KI is enough or whether that’s just enough for that area of Delve. I’m kinda assuming the latter.

The first thing the group tried was popping a Scorpion NM in Ceizak Battlegrounds. The idea being you kill the NM outside the Delve fight and get some item or key item which you combine with your pop to enter Delve proper and that NM will be removed from the dungeon.

The scorp NM was going down steadily until we were there for 20 mins or so and it simply seemed to be impossible to reliably hit it. Each one of these NMs seems to have a gimmick or need a KI or something to enable you to kill it in the time before it soft rages. SE have certainly hinted at it. I think the group got it down to 46% (ish).

Then we had a go at the Delve dungeon. The one from Ceizak looks like Cirdas. There are a bunch of ‘trash’ mobs who vary in irritating quirks. Crickets who spam cast Silencega, butterflies who cast paralyga etc. We met some beetles, diremites and crawlers too.

You get various alarming messages when ‘walls’ in the zone come down and basically allow access to more mobs.

Our scorpion friend was quite near the beginning but we didn’t get a chance to try him because we got stuck on one of the ‘trash’ mobs. I’m 95% convinced it was a situation where you needed to change damage types but it was hard to get people to try it our systematically. It was a cricket mob and it downright seemed either impossible to hit or incredibly resistant to most damage. Occasionally ice nukes seemed to go through. I tried rotating the element I nuked with but ice was definitely above the rest. I think it might have developed resistance to most of the damage types we were using and we needed to use blunt on it. We had a relic ranger missing with Namas Arrow and 2 of us tried swinging with staves and hit easily (admittedly for low damage). Not conclusive proof obviously but it was hard to get the melee to focus and try it out.

Perhaps the mob resists the damage of one type (slashing, piercing, blunt etc) if you predominantly spam one. Or has some mechanic where you need to do x amount of damage or use x type of damage to get it to drop its DT buff. Who knows. To try these things out you need to work through things fairly systematically and that just wasn’t going to happen last night.

So we farmed a bit but didn’t get very far. In the last minute or two a couple of us went for a run around. There were several NMs up including a scorpion, a moth, a gnat and the giant Bee.

The zones are fairly big and there’s a lot of mobs to potentially farm. It was a really interesting experience and I learnt a ton from it.

I think I would take a real variety of damage. You need to be near cap at least on skill for these things. No more Aby-onry DD. I’d take a couple of BLMs and I’d set up skillchains. I did suggest when we worked out that ice was doing well that we try some darkness sc + MB. I wouldn’t rely on one type of damage. DD’s might want to come /THF but I think it’s more likely that there are ‘tricks’ for each mob or zone and they’ll come out in time.

I did the whole thing on RDM which was interesting. My skill is almost capped and I have merits and good gear. I don’t have Macc magian but do have Matt for nuking (as BLM and SCH get used way more often). I was useful and enfeebles would land but dispel simply didn’t on the Scorp outside.

I’m wondering if some of the KI’s you can buy from the NPCs in Adoulin might prove useful.

Anyway, I’m sure there are some tricks to unlock here. Ways to remove the DT caps. Make sure you are skilled, take a variety of food and don’t be an idiot. Should be able to farm the plasma stuff well from the lesser mobs. The NMs on the other hand are going to take a while.

Meebles is fairly accessible content. Especially if you want to farm marks. What we’ve found is that all of the rewards we want from the SC arm are from the last two bosses but from Batallia they’re almost all from the marks rewards.

So what happens? Well you pick up a grimoire from a galka in Upper Jeuno and get ported out to the Burrows. Each mission lasts 15 mins and the more of you in the mission (up to 6), the more marks you get. You ‘pay’ for the missions with pheremone sacks, which are like assault tags.

We started doing the SC ones a while before Christmas but took a break for six weeks or so when one of our static members was away.

Meeble Burrows shares some other features with assault. You start at a low rank. Whilst it is possible to jump around a bit, you need to complete the missions for each rank, to get the key items to access the Mega Boss fight. At least the first time.

So we worked our way through Sauromugue Champaign missions, killing the bosses for each rank and collecting the key items needed to access the Mega Boss fight.

For both sets of missions, the penultimate boss is the worst. By far and away. Don’t underestimate Urmagrhk or Melisseus  (Mel is easier) but Samursk and Svaha are worse. Square Enix seems to be fond of mobs which spam Magic Defense down at the moment just before nuking you from orbit. Or maybe that’s just me, having killed Kutharei a couple of times.

What we found in general is that the lower tier missions are pretty straightforward. There are some minor twists for a few of them but on the whole they’re mini assault missions and kinda fun to do. You don’t need a particular setup for most of them, just good communication and players who have half a clue. Aside from the last couple of bosses, I think this content is far more accessible than Neo Nyzul isle for most people so I’m surprised more aren’t doing it.

There are (just like in assault) a couple of PITA missions for each zone. It is possible to clear the 1 star objective for every mission easily by anyone I’d think but to get total completion and open up some of the nicest shinies you need to complete the 3 star objective in each mission.

In SC the bitchy mission to complete at level 3 was Instructor level 1 where all party members have to get from the start to the end in 5 mins. Through a large zone where certain paths are blocked off and you don’t know which will be until you get to them.

Get all the movement speed you can and pray for a nice route through. Unfortunately the random number generator can screw you and we narrowly missed it 2-3 times before we finally completed at 3.

In Batallia, having completed SC we have one mission outstanding to complete at 3-stars and that is Instructor 3. This is where you have to cause 10 bombs of various types to self destruct. We made it to 8/10 the first time and only just scraped 4 the second. If we’d have had more pheromones we would have stayed and tried again.

It’s easy to feed the bombs TP, aided by the Djinn mechanic of getting 100 tp if you hit them with the element of the day but you can’t make them use Self-Destruct. You must also make sure another bomb uses Self-Destruct which we found easier…

Anyway, no doubt we’ll get it but outside of low damage tp feeding, using the right enspell and low level nukes there isn’t a whole heap else we can do except try until we get lucky.

Unfortunately that means that whilst we have access to Researcher Emeritus gear we don’t have total completion for Batallia until we go back and get the level 3 objective cleared for that mission.

Still, we’ve now cleared all of the bosses and will probably farm up more marks in Sauromugue whilst we build popsets for Samursk and Urmaghrk.

My only grumble with the system is how shitty the droprates are. Even with a full TH thief, bonus to spoils and treasure hunter inscribed on our grimoires we have to date mostly seen a bunch of crap. What we’ve seen so far doesn’t inspire me to want to spend millions (even if I had it) on rebuying the boss key items because honestly you could almost pay for a relic in the process of kitting everyone out.

Now that we’ve cleared all missions in SC we can spam through them for boss KI and perhaps we’ll buy the odd KI but we need to spam Samursk and Urm to get key pieces for the group.

I think I probably wasted some marks on Hieros mittens which are a haste piece for SCH and a general healing piece which means until I farm up some more marks I’m sitting on everything I still have for a Taubran cape. I picked up Erlene’s Notebook (so did half the group!) from Batallia and really want a Sublime breastplate for fun but the cape is really, really good so it’ll have to wait. Hopefully we can finish up the full clear soon so we can grab some of the shinies from BT full clear rewards and get some of the stuff people still want.

Put your registration code here

Been asked this several times today. Login, go to Services and Options > Select Service > FFXI. You should then see the above…

Right, there’s so much excitement right now, I’m going to try to pull together ‘useful’ posts and threads here so people can find out more. I hope to do some exploration once off work tomorrow and I’ll be posting screenshots as soon as I can!

• Seekers of Adoulin Questions and Solutions thread: http://www.bluegartr.com/threads/115356-Seekers-of-Adoulin-Questions-amp-Solutions-Thread Bluegartr thread helping people buy, download and install the new expansion. Covers cross region hassles too.

March 27th Version Update 

• Patch Notes: http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxi/threads/31310-March-27-2013-%28JST%29-Version-Update
• BG wiki New Items & quests: http://wiki.bluegartr.com/bg/March_2013_Version_Update_Changes
• FFXIAH new items list http://www.ffxiah.com/new-items/2013-03-27

Seekers of Adoulin:

• Details about Runefencer (RUN) and Geomancer (GEO) including traits, JA and spells : http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxi/threads/31402
• Location of item for RUN quest http://www.bluegartr.com/threads/115351-Seekers-of-Adoulin-and-3-27-2013-Update-.DAT-Mining-Discussion?p=5650672&viewfull=1#post5650672
• GEO findings and mechanics: http://www.bluegartr.com/threads/115380-Geomancer-Findings-and-Mechanics
• Gathering GEO__ spells http://www.ffxiah.com/forum/topic/37140/gathering-geo-_____-spells
• RUN findings http://www.bluegartr.com/threads/115399-Rune-Fencer-Findings
• Colonization: Reives, assignments and Ionis http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxi/threads/31417
• Skirmishes: http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxi/threads/31416-Otherworldly-Skirmishes
• Skirmishes finding and information http://www.bluegartr.com/threads/115417-Skirmish-Findings-and-Information
• Old spells accessible by RUN and GEO http://www.bluegartr.com/threads/115351-Seekers-of-Adoulin-and-3-27-2013-Update-.DAT-Mining-Discussion?p=5650953&viewfull=1#post5650953

DAT mining

• SoA and Version update: http://www.bluegartr.com/threads/115350-Seekers-of-Adoulin-and-3-27-2013-Update-.DAT-Findings-NO-DISCUSSION
• Models on Wilddragonchase (Spira): http://wilddragonchase.blogspot.sg/2013/03/ffxi-seekers-of-adoulin-dat-mining-26.html
• .DAT mining information regarding quests http://ffxi.allakhazam.com/forum.html?forum=10&mid=1364387240210486625 

Coming in early April, this new smartphone application will allow players to generate one-time passwords. We highly recommend it to our users as a quick and easy way to enhance the security of your Square Enix account with your iOS or Android device.

http://www.playonline.com/ff11eu/index.shtml

New gear and lots more information!