Gone away and come back again! But mainly a short discussion about Abyssea.

I know the day after an update is not a great time to go away for a couple of weeks, but it had to be done. :) I am back now, and several things have settled in the mean time. I have been trying to keep abreast of all of the changes, but I might have missed quite a bit, so bear with me and please leave comments if I leave anything out!

Lets get started with Abyssea, which may be the coolest thing that SE has added to the game since Salvage. It might even be cooler than Salvage itself! Abyssea is like a great combination of all the fun NM hunting already in the game all mixed up with a few twists thrown in. Essentially, it looks like there are three different kinds of NMs in the zone, but even those distinctions aren't exactly clean cut.

When you first enter your Abyssea zone, you will come across different groupings of mobs. They will all be named similarly, but will come in different sizes and they will con at various strengths, usually between DC to T. In general, these mobs can be killed to get a pop item which will spawn an NM of the same type in the area. The drops from these mobs are pretty good in general, with a little bit of SE's weirdness thrown in. They also can drop another set of pop items or key items depending on the mob that are then used to spawn a new tier of NMs, but that gets a bit weirder. In addition, some of them can drop a key item that gives some permanent benefit while in Abyssea. There are a wide array of key items that give buffs depending on the NM you kill. The second and third tier of NMs come from either several pop items or several key items depending on the NM you are spawning.

Wandering about the zone there are NMs that are already up, and some that spawn just from killing mobs in the area like a regular NM. These are kind of like the popped mobs in that they have there own pretty good drops and they drop key items or pop items that are used to spawn the next tier of NMs. It looks like they have a pretty fast respawn time, so you could get multiple NMs in the time you are in the zone. The mobs that are up and wandering around to begin with look to be pretty tough and have quite a few drops. The mobs that are spawned by killing their respective non-NM mobs aren't quite as hard (but they are not anything to be taken lightly) and it doesn't look like they drop as much loot, but things are still a bit unclear on drops.

Finally, you even have a VNM system in Abyssea. These are spawned just like the ones in the regular world, but at least in Abyssea-Konschtat they are Empty-type monsters. I have only experienced the first two tiers so far, but they didn't appear to be anything that difficult. I expect the third tier to be significantly more difficult though. When we did these we had our Abyssite upgrade on the first kill of both of our kills. I don't know if this means that these have a higher upgrade rate or if it was just dumb luck. We will have to see. It isn't completely clear yet, but it appears that the tier 3 will also drop a key item or pop item for the next tier of NMs in the zone.

Additionally, Abyssea has some interesting characteristics when it comes to what happens when you kill mobs there. Unlike the standard XP chain that exists in our timeline, Abyssea has a different forum of scaling XP. First of all, the amount of XP you get appears to be rigidly standardized. You start at a base amount of XP gained, and then you gain one point of XP per kill based on the way the last mob was killed. If a mob is killed by a melee hit, then you will get an additional point of XP the next time you kill a mob of the same type with a melee hit. If you kill a mob with a weaponskill it adds one point to that category, and the same with magic. The nice thing is that these can't really get that separated because they can only fall behind by about 10 XP points. It gets a lot more interesting as time goes on though. After time goes on, several different things happen. First of all, the mobs that respawn, and they start respawning pretty quickly, will start getting more difficult moving up from their starting difficulty until they are IT++ to level 80 characters. This will not change the amount of XP you get but what will happen is that the various chests that the mobs drop will start to drop more often and they will be more rewarding. There appears to be a tier system of some kind involved, with a bit of variation in the rewards, but the chests are the real key to the whole adventure. You can get temporary items or augmented items, which for the most part aren't incredibly interesting, but you can also get chests that give XP and Cruor in increasingly larger chunks. The most important chest though are the Time extension chests, which usually don't start spawning until you have been killing mobs for about an hour. A time extension chest will grant you 10 extra minutes inside of the zone. The reason that time extensions are so great is that the amount of XP you get increases over time so that at the end of your time in the zone you can get up to 360 XP per kill and 1000 XP per XP chest. That means that your XP per hour rises dramatically at the end of your run, and extending your time means more XP during the high-end XP time. That is not to say that going without getting Time chests is bad XP. Last night we got no time chests at all, and we had to run to camp at the beginning of our run, but in the 90 minutes we were in the zone we got 46k XP and 13k in Cruor. You can do this with basically any set of mobs in the zone, but some are better than others. The main problem is that if you kill a different kind of mob it will break your "chain" and you will go back down to base XP when you start on the mobs you were focusing on. So tell your pullers to be careful. Also, since the amount of XP you get per mob is predetermined, it doesn't matter how many people you bring with you. You can bring a party or an alliance. It's fun for everyone!

Abyssea is a lot to digest. There is a whole lot to do, and I only went over some of the NMs and XPing in the zone. There are still a huge number of quests that are available and monsters that are related to that. This isn't the last time I will be going over these awesome new zones!

I know the day after an update is not a great time to go away for a couple of weeks, but it had to be done. :) I am back now, and several things have settled in the mean time. I have been trying to keep abreast of all of the changes, but I might have missed quite a bit, so bear with me and please leave comments if I leave anything out!<br /><br />Lets get started with Abyssea, which may be the coolest thing that SE has added to the game since Salvage. It might even be cooler than Salvage itself! Abyssea is like a great combination of all the fun NM hunting already in the game all mixed up with a few twists thrown in. Essentially, it looks like there are three different kinds of NMs in the zone, but even those distinctions aren't exactly clean cut.<br /><br />When you first enter your Abyssea zone, you will come across different groupings of mobs. They will all be named similarly, but will come in different sizes and they will con at various strengths, usually between DC to T. In general, these mobs can be killed to get a pop item which will spawn an NM of the same type in the area. The drops from these mobs are pretty good in general, with a little bit of SE's weirdness thrown in. They also can drop another set of pop items or key items depending on the mob that are then used to spawn a new tier of NMs, but that gets a bit weirder. In addition, some of them can drop a key item that gives some permanent benefit while in Abyssea. There are a wide array of key items that give buffs depending on the NM you kill. The second and third tier of NMs come from either several pop items or several key items depending on the NM you are spawning.<br /><br />Wandering about the zone there are NMs that are already up, and some that spawn just from killing mobs in the area like a regular NM. These are kind of like the popped mobs in that they have there own pretty good drops and they drop key items or pop items that are used to spawn the next tier of NMs. It looks like they have a pretty fast respawn time, so you could get multiple NMs in the time you are in the zone. The mobs that are up and wandering around to begin with look to be pretty tough and have quite a few drops. The mobs that are spawned by killing their respective non-NM mobs aren't quite as hard (but they are not anything to be taken lightly) and it doesn't look like they drop as much loot, but things are still a bit unclear on drops.<br /><br />Finally, you even have a VNM system in Abyssea. These are spawned just like the ones in the regular world, but at least in Abyssea-Konschtat they are Empty-type monsters. I have only experienced the first two tiers so far, but they didn't appear to be anything that difficult. I expect the third tier to be significantly more difficult though. When we did these we had our Abyssite upgrade on the first kill of both of our kills. I don't know if this means that these have a higher upgrade rate or if it was just dumb luck. We will have to see. It isn't completely clear yet, but it appears that the tier 3 will also drop a key item or pop item for the next tier of NMs in the zone.<br /><br />Additionally, Abyssea has some interesting characteristics when it comes to what happens when you kill mobs there. Unlike the standard XP chain that exists in our timeline, Abyssea has a different forum of scaling XP. First of all, the amount of XP you get appears to be rigidly standardized. You start at a base amount of XP gained, and then you gain one point of XP per kill based on the way the last mob was killed. If a mob is killed by a melee hit, then you will get an additional point of XP the next time you kill a mob of the same type with a melee hit. If you kill a mob with a weaponskill it adds one point to that category, and the same with magic. The nice thing is that these can't really get that separated because they can only fall behind by about 10 XP points. It gets a lot more interesting as time goes on though. After time goes on, several different things happen. First of all, the mobs that respawn, and they start respawning pretty quickly, will start getting more difficult moving up from their starting difficulty until they are IT++ to level 80 characters. This will not change the amount of XP you get but what will happen is that the various chests that the mobs drop will start to drop more often and they will be more rewarding. There appears to be a tier system of some kind involved, with a bit of variation in the rewards, but the chests are the real key to the whole adventure. You can get temporary items or augmented items, which for the most part aren't incredibly interesting, but you can also get chests that give XP and Cruor in increasingly larger chunks. The most important chest though are the Time extension chests, which usually don't start spawning until you have been killing mobs for about an hour. A time extension chest will grant you 10 extra minutes inside of the zone. The reason that time extensions are so great is that the amount of XP you get increases over time so that at the end of your time in the zone you can get up to 360 XP per kill and 1000 XP per XP chest. That means that your XP per hour rises dramatically at the end of your run, and extending your time means more XP during the high-end XP time. That is not to say that going without getting Time chests is bad XP. Last night we got no time chests at all, and we had to run to camp at the beginning of our run, but in the 90 minutes we were in the zone we got 46k XP and 13k in Cruor. You can do this with basically any set of mobs in the zone, but some are better than others. The main problem is that if you kill a different kind of mob it will break your "chain" and you will go back down to base XP when you start on the mobs you were focusing on. So tell your pullers to be careful. Also, since the amount of XP you get per mob is predetermined, it doesn't matter how many people you bring with you. You can bring a party or an alliance. It's fun for everyone!<br /><br />Abyssea is a lot to digest. There is a whole lot to do, and I only went over some of the NMs and XPing in the zone. There are still a huge number of quests that are available and monsters that are related to that. This isn't the last time I will be going over these awesome new zones!

Soloing: The Good and the Bad.

Soloing has always been quite a spectacle. With the right gear, the right mob and a mountain of patience there are a huge number of kills that can be had by the right players. The reasons to solo mobs are pretty simple, all the drops go to one person, it is a better test of skill than doing it with more people and some of them can only be done with a certain gear requirement that other people you know may not meet. Additionally, some solo's just can't be done with more than one person because it would mess with the strategy, cause too many TP moves, or risk someone getting too close to a melee attack.

There are also a few reasons why soloing isn't such a great idea. The first issue with soloing is that though you can keep all the drops, you can't usually solo things that have decent drops on THF so you don't get access to TH. While some people consider soloing to be the pinnacle of skill, other people view it as casting DoT's and running with movement speed. While the concentration skills needed may be high, some question the actual player skill involved. This can be further seen with some of the new solo's that are happening with VNM mobs. I find it hard to buy that casting a spell and then moving one pace to abuse bad mob pathing is a real test of skill at all. The other problem with that is that the ToS pretty clearly states that abusing terrain is a no-no, and while I personally don't think anyone is going to get in trouble for it, I also thought that the Salvage dupers weren't going to get punished either. It is obviously not the same circumstance, not even close, but SE does have a penchant for punishing people and has proved they don't mind swinging the banhammer when they feel it is necessary. Finally, there is the issue of cock-blocking. Solo's obviously take a long time, and in some places, they can hold mobs for unreasonably long amounts of time. A good soloer tends to do their soloing in a time that usually doesn't effect most people (for example, I am pretty sure Kaeko avoids trying to do his stuff in any region's prime times), but in the end if you are soloing a mob, especially a mob that could be defeated quickly by a larger group of people and you are making them wait, then you are going to end up looking like a dick. It does beg the question of soloing though. If you are soloing to test things out and for the challenge then I can see that, but if you soloing because you are anti-social or don't have friends to help you, then you may be proving my point.

As you can probably tell, while I am not strictly against soloing difficult NMs, I don't really understand the motivation to do so after the first test of skill. I think the cons far outweigh any kind of benefit in the case of VNMs. If you do it right, then it really isn't a problem, but for every conscientious soloer out there, there are 5 that are willing to take an hour and a half to kill Krabkatoa or 2 hours to do a simple Limbus zone while people are waiting.

<a href="http://i236.photobucket.com/albums/ff151/ringthreetheicp/Solo.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img alt="" border="0" src="http://i236.photobucket.com/albums/ff151/ringthreetheicp/Solo.jpg" style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 250px;" /></a>Soloing has always been quite a spectacle. With the right gear, the right mob and a mountain of patience there are a huge number of kills that can be had by the right players. The reasons to solo mobs are pretty simple, all the drops go to one person, it is a better test of skill than doing it with more people and some of them can only be done with a certain gear requirement that other people you know may not meet. Additionally, some solo's just can't be done with more than one person because it would mess with the strategy, cause too many TP moves, or risk someone getting too close to a melee attack. <br /><br />There are also a few reasons why soloing isn't such a great idea. The first issue with soloing is that though you can keep all the drops, you can't usually solo things that have decent drops on THF so you don't get access to TH. While some people consider soloing to be the pinnacle of skill, other people view it as casting DoT's and running with movement speed. While the concentration skills needed may be high, some question the actual player skill involved. This can be further seen with some of the new solo's that are happening with VNM mobs. I find it hard to buy that casting a spell and then moving one pace to abuse bad mob pathing is a real test of skill at all. The other problem with that is that the ToS pretty clearly states that abusing terrain is a no-no, and while I personally don't think anyone is going to get in trouble for it, I also thought that the Salvage dupers weren't going to get punished either. It is obviously not the same circumstance, not even close, but SE does have a penchant for punishing people and has proved they don't mind swinging the banhammer when they feel it is necessary. Finally, there is the issue of cock-blocking. Solo's obviously take a long time, and in some places, they can hold mobs for unreasonably long amounts of time. A good soloer tends to do their soloing in a time that usually doesn't effect most people (for example, I am pretty sure Kaeko avoids trying to do his stuff in any region's prime times), but in the end if you are soloing a mob, especially a mob that could be defeated quickly by a larger group of people and you are making them wait, then you are going to end up looking like a dick. It does beg the question of soloing though. If you are soloing to test things out and for the challenge then I can see that, but if you soloing because you are anti-social or don't have friends to help you, then you may be proving my point.<br /><br />As you can probably tell, while I am not strictly against soloing difficult NMs, I don't really understand the motivation to do so after the first test of skill. I think the cons far outweigh any kind of benefit in the case of VNMs. If you do it right, then it really isn't a problem, but for every conscientious soloer out there, there are 5 that are willing to take an hour and a half to kill Krabkatoa or 2 hours to do a simple Limbus zone while people are waiting.