You are lucky today.

I am going to do two different posts today, the first is going to be the normal blog entry, the second is going to be a new series for helping new end-game players or people leveling a new job to 75 with setting up gear that is the necessary minimum for not being retarded, or for those with jobs that just want to maintain them without spending millions to maintain them. Well, before I start that, lets get to the weekend wrap up and today's new Einherjar info.

Ok, in the last 10 days, we have completed 5 Salvage pieces, and let me see if I can remember them all without my spreadsheet. Now, these are not completed pieces per se, they are the 15,25 and 35 pieces, after that it is on the players own to get their items collected and turned in. :) Ok, we had Ninjafox completing Ares's Body, Skurlover completing Morrigan's Legs, Izman completing Skadi's Feet, I completed Usukane Hands and finally and most recently Ashhhhh completed Morrigan's Feet! Congratulations to everyone. I know for fact that Iz, Ash and Skurlover have all already completed the pieces while Ninjafox and I are currently saving up to get ours, even though the amount for NF is much higher than for me. :) Salvage is going very well for Versus, and we are at the point were we know what we need to do for each zone to be able to get our goals done comfortably. *Bhaflau, right now we are doing second floor rampart, 10/10 gears, Archaic Chariot, as much time as we can in the fourth floor rampart, and then LBC.
*Zhayolm, I thought it was going to be easier to do sixth floor frog and the boss, but honestly the fifth floor frog requires a lot less time because you don't have to kill the first floor frog. I was also thinking about doing something new, and do 2, 2 and 3 South, porting to the North, do 5, then 6 and boss. This might take a few practice runs, but I think we can do it. I think that there is much more time lost doing the first floor frog than doing the third floor frog. For now though I think we are going to stick with just doing the 5th floor frog and the boss until we don't need more boss drops to complete the pieces.
*Arrapago, we are pretty much to the point where we can do all of the NM's and the boss. I am fine with how we do this. To make things the easiest on Bhoot, and how we generally do things involves is to have one WAR/NIN tank the runs and a MNK or two on stunning duty. Outside of that everything is fine.
*Silver Seas, yargh, I mean we are fine on it, but it is very hard to do turtle and the boss even when things go perfectly, and the drop rate blows. It's the easiest zone probably so, meh.

Enough about Salvage, LOL. Well, thats not true, because I do go with Rakuen also, and Myrrial is in that group and he finally got a Macha's Coat, and that was just a couple of hours after we did our Arrapago run, where we didn't have anything drop. Poor Elfie. :( Anyway, Hiryo got praise for his lucky killshot! :) There was even much celebrating happening after the run. LOL Ok, that really is everything about Salvage. LOL

Other events have been very good also, including another Faith Torque that went to Myrrial (lucky week for him!) but more importantly during the Faith run, poor poor Kallo had an unfortunate accident that Izman and I were finally able to use to our advantage. Oh, sweet sweet revenge, how sweet you are! Finally, while I was running around trying things to farm to generate the income I need to get my stack of Bloodwood Lumber for my Usukane Gote I saw this bastard which alluded us for a while when we tried to camp it, but we just gave up after a while because coordinating everyone for it was a total headache. Oh how I hate you, you evil bastard. Well, Goodrats was camping it, and I knew that we wouldn't be doing so any time so, so I passed on the ToD when it despawned.

So, the last thing for this regular post is a pretty long commentary about the Einherjar update note that come out today.

Adjustments to Einherjar (06/02/2008)

The next version update will contain a number of changes to the Einherjar venue.

A recent increase in the number of player suggestions and concerns received regarding Einherjar has led the development and operations teams to reconsider a number of that system's features.

Particularly, many players are of the opinion that the efforts demanded by Einherjar yield too little return, that the structure of layered challenges makes it difficult to introduce new members midway into a progressing group, and that players who may miss out on even a single chamber may find themselves unable to participate in subsequent runs with their group. All of this constructive feedback has led to a series of changes whose implementation will begin in the next version update.

Ampoules of Therion Ichor

Until now, the acquisition of ampoules of therion ichor has been contingent upon successful clearing of an entire chamber. However, this will no longer be the case. Instead, regardless of whether the chamber is cleared or not, players will receive ampoules in proportion to the total number of monsters they have slain. In addition, the amount of ampoules available per chamber will be increased. Defeating the final bosses, the so-called Guardians of Asgarth, will not yield additional ampoules.

Entry into Wings

Entry into all wings of Einherjar will be made less demanding for the majority of participants. The organizing player who obtains the Smouldering Lamp and reserves an Einherjar chamber will still need to fulfill all of the same requirements as before. All other players, however, will now be able to enter any of the chambers in Wings I, II, and III regardless of previous clears or valkyrie feathers in their possession.

Entry into Valgrind

At present, entry into Valgrind, the most remote chamber in the Hazhalm Testing Grounds, requires that all participants have cleared all chambers in Wings I, II, and III, and have the appropriate key item in their possession.
This requirement of clearing all nine wings will now apply only to the player making the reservation for Odin's Chamber. All other participating members now need only have cleared one chamber from each wing, and thus be in possession of a total of at least three valkyrie feathers.
Entry into Valgrind will still result in the loss of any and all related key items in all player inventories.

Rewards

Though we are still looking into ways to increase compensation and rewards, players can expect to see a number of new items added to the Einherjar lineup. More detailed information regarding how to obtain these new items will be released in the Topics post on the day of the version update!

First things first, I got into a big fight with Potpressure this morning about how good this is, and he did not like it. I just wanted to be clear to Potpressure that I <3 him very much, I just totally disagree with him and I think his reasoning is pretty clearly wrong. He complained that SE was somehow making Einherjar easier, which they clearly are not. Nothing has been changed about clearing any of the zones. The only thing that has happened, is that there is now a reward even if you do not complete the zone. This is ALWAYS a good thing, and one of the reasons that people do events like Limbus and Dynamis even after they have run out of the main items to get from those zones. The other complaint he had was that it should be hard to do Einherjar. The problem there was that the real problem with Einherjar right now is not beating the zones for most people, it is the planning involved around getting everyone the clears to go to Odin. And here is the key point, annoyance should never, EVER be a replacement for challenge. Einherjar is challenging as it is, but scheduling is not a challenge, and it is an awful reason for people to not be able to do an event or have to put it off perpetually. Also, for me this gets pretty close to being elitist, which for me is a bad thing. Honestly, if you want to do anything in the game, it isn't about what you can do alone, what really matters is if you can surround yourself with people that have similar interests and can figure things out. Then at some point you reach a critical mass where events become easier, but if you substitute one person for another, there will be no real change in the challenge. I definitely do not want to play an MMO which is based on the high school notion of one gang of kids being "cooler" because they can do an event because they give up real life commitments just to make an event. That is like LimitBreak circa 2005. Sure, I respect it, but I don't like the idea of a video game that excludes people because they have a dentist appointment or because they work, or any other list of inane activities that take us away from the game. Honestly, that line of thinking is why people think if they do Kings they are somehow better than other players, to which I call bullshit, you just bot more. You can do Kings no problem, and not everyone at Kings bots, but if you get gear from Kings, it is much more likely that you were assisted by a claim bot than not. The Kings system is pretty universally thought to be bad design even by those that do Kings. Making it so that people can play the game at their convenience instead of missing real life commitments is NEVER a bad thing. As for the idea that Einherjar is some how special because its name implies a battle of the dead, would these changes be better or worse if the event was called "Kill Fred"? No, it doesn't change the challenge, the event or the reward at all.

Sorry Pot, you are awesome as always, but this time you are just totally wrong. :)

My boss is gone today and my work is almost done, so I am going to save my On the Cheap series start for tomorrow, and head home early. Honestly, its better that way anyway, because there is always a bunch to write about on Mondays. :)

Yeah, yeah, I lied about two posts, blah, what did you really expect?