So, where did I leave off? Well, I am going to put everything I have already posted together in this one post to make it easier to use, and so it will make this post look longer than it really is! :) Oh, and Bg, yes, you aren't an end-gamer! LOL Just kidding, Bg pointed out that he has not completed the ToAU and thus by my definition would not be an end-gamer, so ok, there are exceptions whatever, my point is that you can either be gimp and accept it or you can try to equip yourself well and have some knowledge of the game. Bg is very well equipped and has a comprehensive knowledge of the game, so I am not too worried about him at all. Anyway, on with this dog and pony show. Oh, by the way, I have linked all of the gear that I have listed to the FFXI wiki, I would link it to the BG wiki but their equipment data leaves much to be desired. (And don't tell me that I should add the information myself, because I already redid the entire Salvage section and even added some maps, so blow me.) One final thing, I do want to note that there are other things that I didn't include, like Sea Torques and stuff like that, I based this essentially on the ease of acquiring the items if you have to do end-game events to get them. Sky is easier than Sea by far, just in terms of drop rates, even though I will admit that some Sea torques are more plentiful than others. The point is that this is a guide to get you from where you are to a level where you should be. It's help, not e-peen preening. :)
I have updated a few slots so check them out again for any new stuff I might have added.
The recap:
Ok, this is going to be a series of posts that I am going to do to help people that are new to jobs at end-game. This comes from experience and opinion, but in the end, it is what I believe is the best, easiest and quickest way to get to a point where you can start tweaking your gear instead of trying to get major items that you really need. Before I go into today's subject, Monk, I am going to go over a few things that I believe are prerequisites for this discussion to be of any help at all.
1. You can't be dumb. Sorry, if you are dumb, I can't help you. If you are the kind of person that hears something and then sticks to it no matter what, just quit now. If you can't adapt to changes in the game, quit. If you refuse to do something because you don't think that should be the play style of the game, then just fucking die in a fire. Flexibility is key, the more we learn about things in the game, the more we improve the play style and the more things change.
2. You have to really be an end-game player. I am not expecting you to have every title in the game, and have done ever mission everywhere, but I do expect you to have done main story-line content. This should be a goal of an end-game player at the very least. Zilart should be finished up to at very least Sky, CoP should be finished up until the end, and Aht Urhgan up until the end. If you don't have these, or at least most of it and trying to get to the end, then you aren't an end-game player, you are just lazy or your are just making pretend.
3. You have to be able to do some end-game events. I am not demanding that you be in a full-time HNM LS or anything, but you should have access to a LS that does at least some of those end-game areas/events. If you don't then you really aren't an end-game player, you are just a player with a job at 75.
4. You have to be willing to spend at least a little bit of gil. Sure, this series is called "On the Cheap" but it is not called "On the Gimp" so you will need to spend some gil getting some of the gear that you need. I am not going to tell you to get all HQ gear unless it is cheap, and I will also indicate expensive items that you will need anyway, or cheap items that are good replacements. This is like the Frugal Gourmet for FFXI. Yes, I know, none of you got that reference. :(
Ok, on with the show.
Now, Monk is a ridiculously fun job and I love it personally. It is, though, a very situational job, so I do not use it in all situations. If you are looking for a Chi Blast set-up, then you are looking in the wrong place because Monk is and should be about punching things, punching things hard and punching them fast.
Ok, the TP set up first.
Weapons. You definitely must have Destroyers, and honestly, this is much easier than most people think. Just get a couple of friends and do Double Dragonian, it is no where as hard as people make it out to be, because they don't understand how the Dragons work. The Dragons become much stronger after their two-hour, not when the other one dies. So a simple strategy is go sleep the Bard dragon, quickly kill the Warrior then go back and kill the Bard. If you have problems at all with this then just kite the second dragon while you are recovering. Until you get Destroyers, you can use Faith Baghnakhs or Wagh Baghnakhs in the meantime.
Ammo. Two real options here, but I definitely favor Tiphia Sting because of the additional accuracy, and accuracy is what makes and breaks a good Monk. A Monk you should by end-game always be eating meat no matter the event, so you want an good amount of accuracy to keep up with that, and getting it in cheap places like the ammo slot is never bad. I will of course directly contradict myself on this later, LOL. Another good alternative is the Smart Grenade too, but I favor the extra accuracy.
Head. Walahra Turban plain and simple. If you don't have one, get one. This is a no-brainer.
Neck. Now, here is an area that can be a little varied, but as a minimum I would suggest Spectacles. 7 Accuracy is very nice, and for Monk, the +3 STR from the Chivalrous Chain isn't going to overcome the Accuracy from the Spectacles. Remember here that the effect of one piece isn't as relevant as the cumulative effect of all your pieces. 2 Accuracy here, and 2 Accuracy there can add up pretty quickly.
Earrings. Earring selection is pretty weak for Monk, but the obvious first pick it a Brutal Earring. Though it would be expensive if you bought the coins but with enough time in Limbus it should be relatively easy to pick one up. For the other ear the Ethereal Earring is the best selection and its is free and relatively easy to get after you have completed CoP. Alternative options include a Coral Earring or two or the HQ version, the Merman's Earring.
Body. Now, this suggestion is going to be pretty expensive but it is worth every dime: Shura Togi. This is one of those items that you should just save up for and get it and smile. Accuracy and attack are the key component to Monk TP build damage. Sure it is a Kirin drop, but it is a very common drop and any Monk worth their salt should always be trying to get one. If you do not have access to get the abjuration from Kirin, then either you aren't really an end-game player or you are an HNM-only end-game player, either way I can't really help beyond that. As an alternative a Scorpion Harness or the Pahluwan Khazagand can fill the hole until you get a Shura Togi. Oh, I wanted to toss this in because I see it all the time and it makes me crazy, DO NOT TP IN A KIRIN'S OSODE. I have heard about some parse where a Kirin's Osode did well or something and I call 100% bullshit. The math just doesn't add up. The accuracy and attack from Shura Togi just blows away anything you would get form the Osode. Just don't do it.
Hands. This is another area where it could get to be expensive but it could also be free. Also the different options are pretty close in capability so any of these would be a decent selection, but from my own personal selection, and up until I got my Usukane Gote, I was using Melee Gloves. Melee Gloves are a Dynamis-Jeuno drop and not really that rare plus the city Dynamis zones in general tend to be rather giving. Not only do they have a large amount of attack but HP and also Subtle Blow which makes them rather sexy over the higher attack but lower evasion. This is just a personal preference of mine, but just as acceptable with varying levels of cost and difficulty to obtain are Ochiudo's Kote, Ochimusha Kote and Horomusha Kote.
Rings. There are many good options for rings, but free is always the cheapest so lets start with those. First is the Ulthalam's Ring which has decent Accuracy combined with decent Attack, but really shines in the place that Monk really shines, which is Salvage. For a Monk, I think this is a no-brainer, and a worthwhile investment considering the relatively less useful rings that come from the Aht Urhgan missions. And yes, the Aht Urhgan missions are easy, just get a couple of people together and do them, and yes Darkdawn, I will help you do them, just bug me about it sometime when I am free. :) For the other hand I would suggest the newly added Blood Ring which comes from Chigre which is a tier 1 spawn from the new ZNM system. The drop rate is high and it is very easy to get the pop item. The other ring alternatives I would suggest are the Sniper's Ring and to a lesser extent the Woodsman Ring. I favor the Sniper's over the Woodsman for the simple reason that the evasion is better than the defense. I would set these rings as the minimum that you should have for TP building, I would not go into the lower accuracy rings considering the simplicity in getting these rings. Some may suggest the Rajas Ring, but I do not for the simple fact that for a Monk it is only 2.5 Accuracy and 2.5 Attack, with the Store TP and Subtle Blow doing very little for a decently geared Monk because they will be attacking so fast. And I don't want to hear about fSTR and Crit builds, thats not your job as Monk. You want to hit things fast with high accuracy, thats it.
Back. There are some good expensive pieces in this slot but I would say that it is perfectly fine to pick up an Amemet Mantle +1 and be happy for a while. There are better mantles but they rapidly increase in price for comparatively little gain in performance.
Waist. There are only two options here, the first and the easiest is the Brown Belt. Camp Nue and camp Deadly Doodoo, then go do the very easy KS30 Contaminated Coliseum, where the drop rate on the Morbolger Vine pretty decent and the fight is very easy. The FFXI wiki has some pretty retarded strategies for this one, but all you need is a couple of /NIN DD and some healers, or some BLM and some healers, or really anyone that can figure out that when it starts prepping its death breath move they should GTFO and its an easy win. The second option is the Black Belt and getting one is a little bit easier than you might think. All of the Black Belt items come from KS99's, and most of those can be done by any decent end-game LS. The problem is that the drop rate on them is a little low, so it may take a while to get all three. Alternatively, you could go with any BLM burn group that does KS99's and get them that way. Also, if you have a friend in an HNMLS that is willing to help you get one from the one of the Zilart HNMs that is another path. Also, you can camp Adamatoise with just four or five people pretty easily, because most HNMLS don't even care if it is up or not. Whatever path you take, this is the one place where you should spend the most effort getting the items to make the Black Belt as it is simply one of the most amazing pieces of gear in the game.
Legs. Byakko's Haidate should be your immediate goal here. It is everyone else's immediate goal also, so that can be a bit of a log jam, but compared to how the case used to be, Haidates are much more available now than in the past. It may take a little while of Sky time, but if you have an end-game LS it should come inevitably. Just don't be a dick and get your Haidate and take off, I fucking hate people like that, and I am not making a guide for selfish, greedy douchebags, I am making for people that want to be good players. There are a bunch of decent but ultimately not as close options for the legs slot. I would guess they would go in the following order: Melee Hose because the Kick Attacks will speed your TP build, and they are pretty easy to get from Dynamis-San d'Oria. Next, Shura Haidate which are pretty expensive, but they come from Byakko, which you are going to be doing anyway, and are probably more available than Byakko's Haidate to start. Since you will need them for your WS build anyway, they are an investment you are going to have to make anyway. Finally, the Pahluwan Seraweels can fill the gap until you get something better and can double for WS gear, too. I would shy away from the Strike Subligar as the bang of the buck is pretty low and you will be getting rid of them inevitably.
Feet. The old stand-by has always been Dune Boots because they are free and easy to get from a Sabotender NM in Quicksand Caves. Just grab a person or two to get you into the area, kill the place holders until it pops then call a couple of people down to kill it. The Dune Boots are nice because they increase your kick attack damage by a whole lot, the problem with them is that they have no other stats like Haste or Accuracy that we cry for on MNK. Before Usukane though, Dune Boots were favored over just about everything else. There is a new interesting alternative now available though, from the ZNM system: Enkidu's Leggings. These leggings have decent haste and some Attack and other decent stats, I don't know if they are better than Dune Boots, but considering the easy in popping a Tier 3 ZNM and the high drop rate, it's worth looking into. Also, available are Fuma Sune-ate for haste or Hakke Habaki for Kick Attack rate.
And there you have a decent TP build. :) Remember this is just what I think is what it takes to be a decent end-game monk. You shouldn't be complacent with just this gear if you know there is something better! Also, I didn't include Tier 4 ZNM drops yet, because I don't know how easy or hard it will be for a mid-range end-game LS to kill the NM, so once we do a few of them and I can gauge the difficulty I might go back and add in a few items like the Enkidu's Harness as an alternative for the body slot.
Now it's time for the WS build. Now, you should in general be aiming to use Asuran Fists for the large majority to all of your WS's. The simple reason is that a good accuracy and attack build will get the best return for Asuran Fists over the rest of the WS's over time. Sure, you might get a double attack proc on Howling Fist or Dragon Kick, but your average over time is going to favor Asuran Fists. This is compounded by the fact that all the good melee buffs that a Monk can get will improve Asuran Fists comparatively more than it will improve other WS's. The sole exception I can think of at this time, and it is also the sole exception for the use of Footwork, which a decently geared monk should avoid at all costs (the loss of attack speed destroys the potential damage benefits for anyone with a half decent haste build) is using Dune Boots with Dragon Kick, because of the way the WS works now, but I will get into that below. Now, on with your Asuran Fists WS build. One last thing about Asuran Fists, there is a 10% modifier to STR and VIT, which means that in essence their is no modifier to it at all. You would have to add ten of each stat to get one WS mod bonus to your AF, this is why you stick to accuracy and attack. You want to land all 8 hits and you want those hits to be hard. Cheap tricks and chicanery wont help you here.
Since the Weapons won't change lets skip right to Ammo.
Ammo. This one is the same exact decision-making process as for the TP build. You want accuracy or attack and with few options the Tiphia Sting still seems the best, with the Smart Grenade coming in a strong second. I would favor Tiphia Sting even futher for AF because you are trying to get all 8 hits to land at once, but the choice is yours.
Head. Another rather simple slot to fill. The best piece used to be Optical Hat because it offered by far the most amount accuracy on one piece, which is critical for Asuran Fists. Hakutaku used to be something of a challenge back in the day but now it can be done pretty easily by a competent party or slight more. The new piece that has taken over for Optical Hat is the Hissho Hachimaki. It has just a small reduction in Accuracy for a decent chunk of Attack. I will mention that I think that a good Asuran Fists build will have too much Accuracy, so losing just a bit for more Attack isn't a bad thing. The Hissho Hachimaki drops off of a fun and relatively easy Tier 2 ZNM in Alzadaal Undersea Ruins.
Neck. Stick to your accuracy here again, and go with the Spectacles. Chivalrous Chain again falls victim to Asuran Fists lack of a real damage modifier. As a side note, since with a little concerted effort it is pretty easy to get the WS gorgets from sea (AF would use a Soil Gorget) I would say that you should still avoid them because it is unclear at this point how much accuracy is gained after the initial hit of the WS. Until a more clear definition of the effects that WS Gorgets have on accuracy, I would not recommend them for Asuran Fists.
Earrings. Let me state this first and clearly so there are no mistakes, double attack can not proc on Asuran Fists. The reason that this is true is because the most amount of attacks that can happen in one attack round is 8. This includes every effect in the game, including occasionally attacks X times weapons. So that puts the Brutal Earring right out of consideration. And that leaves us basically with attack earrings. I would tend to favor Merman's Earring for the obvious reason that they give more attack, but again the Ethereal Earring and Coral Earring are just fine as alternative options.
Body. A good investment is one that you can use for many different things, and that is why your Shura Togi is going to be worth all that gil. Remember, you are looking for accuracy and attack here so the Scorpion Harness or the Pahluwan Khazagand can still fill that role, and because as I mentioned before the stat modifiers on Asuran Fists are so low that using a Kirin's Osode is even more stupid than using it on TP build.
Hands. Hands for Asuran Fists are going to be generally the same as TP build, but I do want to mention that I have tested my Usukane Gote for AF, and I still favor the Attack hands that I use, the accuracy doesn't seem to do much to overcome the additional Attack that is gained. I will change the order a little bit here and place the highest Attack hands first, because the evasion isn't going to matter for the short time you have your WS gear on, and the Subtle Blow isn't going to matter because of the way that the game determines the amount of TP you give a mob on WS's. Because of this I favor the Ochiudo's Kote or Ochimusha Kote, then the Melee Gloves, then finally the Horomusha Kote.
Rings. Absolutely nothing changes here for Asuran Fists from your TP build, so stick with your Ulthalam's Ring/Blood Ring combo. And the alternatives are the same; Sniper's Ring and Woodsman Ring. Remember, avoid those accuracy rings that are less than +5, they are just gimp versions of things you should already have. And just say no to the Rajas Ring for the same reason you say no to the Kirin's Osode on AF, modifiers don't matter.
Back. Again, another slot where nothing changes, use that Amemet Mantle +1 and don't worry about anything else until you have money for a much more expensive back piece.
Waist. This one might come as a surprise, but if you have been following the reasoning behind these decisions, and are getting the philosophy behind Monk, then it shouldn't surprise you at all. You should use a Life Belt. Plain, simple, effective. It is best because what else are you going to use in that slot? Stats? No. Attack? Maybe, but in general I would say if you have a 1 for 1 trade off I would go with Accuracy over Attack, only once you get up to the 2 for 1 trade off do I think a change is justifiable (as I did with the hands slot above). This is so cheap, so easy to get, and so useful there really are no other alternatives.
Legs. Finally, a slot that has something different, but n. Again we are looking for accuracy or attack here, and the best source of accuracy is the Shura Haidate. After that things start to fall off a bit with the Pahluwan Seraweels coming in next, and after that, well, I can't even really think of much that is worth mentioning. Another reason why spending that money on Shura gear is worth it, because without it, you aren't left with much at all.
Feet. The feet slot sucks for Monk for the most part and until Usukane was introduced, it sucked for the entire part, and since we aren't even discussing Usukane in this guide, we are left with some sucky options. My first suggestion here is to go with Pahluwan Crackows because of the 5 accuracy on them, but I don't know if they are worth the 20,000 AP you would have to pay for them. I used to use Rasetsu Sune-Ate
because I decided that the Pahluwan Crackows just weren't worth the price. Finally, the new Enkidu's Leggings are also an option, with a little bit of Accuracy and some Attack, and they are free. But mileage may vary. Remember, don't use any Kick Attack gear for Asuran Fists or any Monk WS for that matter because Kick Attacks can not proc on a WS.
And there you have it, a guide to be a non-crappy Monk. If you follow this guide, you will at least not embarrass yourself when you are running around on Monk. And, don't think that just because someone else has better gear than you that they are some how smarter than you. There are no less than three full Usukane Monks on Odin right now running around with Chivalrous Chains and Rajas Rings. I also want to say that I don't know everything, and I still have a lot to learn, so if you have any suggestions, then feel free to post them! And I can't even take credit for this guide as I have learned from many other people, and have gleaned information from many different forums and websites to come up with all that you have read. On that note, I hope you listen and learn from what I have to say, and that even if your gear isn't perfect yet, keep working toward it and some day you will get everything you want. :)
Tuesday, June 24, 2008
On the Cheap #1: Monk.
Monday, June 23, 2008
Recovery.
I was out the end of the last week because I was sick, so I have a lot to cover since then. First, Versus stuff. We did another JoL, actually we were supposed to do two but another LS rushed to spawn one just so they could do it before us. It's the kindly people that really make this game great for me. LOL Anyway, just a Love Torque dropped which makes it the second most torques from one sea NM after Faith, I believe. orz Outside of that I have been doing quite a few ZNM as of late, well, at least been trying to do a couple more of them in my limited spare time. They are all pretty fun to do an the tier 3 ones definitely have some difficulty attached to them. I am looking forward to helping Iz get those Aurum Sabatons and some other gear that is pretty decent from the whole system. Apparently, there was a bug in the system that let you spawn a test mob that SE left in the game but that has been removed, and hopefully someone will be able to spawn the top NM if SE gives them their pop item back. The most difficult mob we have done so far has been Armed Gears. 
Let me rephrase, this isn't a difficult mob so much as a strange mob. It is a RDM caster but can use Mighty Strikes. It will cast en-spells constantly which determines its weakness of the element that is strong to it's en-spell. If it is dispelled it will move into either light or dark modes where it will be able to cure itself and become highly resistant to damage, even more so than normal. Normally, it is still very resistant to damage. Now the interesting things here is that it hardly ever uses TP moves even when feed a lot of TP, but I believe that we were able to determine that the Antigravity move was at least a partial hate reset. So we decided to kite it during these times to prevent the healer from taking too much hate. It also had another move called Heavy Armature which gave it a huge number of shadows and an Invincible effect for some time. Our basic strategy was to use skillchains and magic burst with the magic to which it was currently weak. Even with this strategy it is still a rather long fight just to get it to 50%. Once it is at 50% it will lose a gear and become slightly weaker in defense but not much in offense. Finally at 25% it will become rather weak to melee and magic and is pretty easy to finish off, unlike many other mobs in this game. Offensively, even though it doesn't use TP moves very often and they are generally pretty weak, it still hits like a bus. It was hitting a very well geared PLD/WAR for 200-300 per hit, but it doesn't hit very fast so it was manageable. Drops are generally very good from the tier 3 ZNM's, and the two times that we killed it we have gotten the Aurum Sabatons and the Oracle's hands, along with other grips. We have also done Nuhn on the third tier, which is also rather easy and is just a kited fight in general, with the only important note being that it spams Death Gnash (1HP left and hate reset) at low health, which turned out to be pretty good for us because it would use that on someone that pulled hate then switch back to the tanks. Good drops there too, including the Enkidu's hands and the Oracle's feet. Personally, I have gotten a Blood Ring 
an Insect Ring 
and a Hissho Hachimaki. 
This Hissho Hachimaki is now part of my Asuran Fists macro and I am quite happy with it overall. :)
I have done a myriad of other short but sweet events lately, including some relatively uneventful Salvages save for Crlmsonking getting a Marduk body 35 piece from one of the frogs in Zhayolm, while Hiryo is still waiting on his Usukane head 25 piece to complete his piece. I have completed the new Wings missions which were disappointingly short compared to what SE claimed they would be, but they were still amazing to watch and enjoy and I can't wait until we learn more about Cait Sith and the Walk of Echoes. I even got to level my WHM a bit even though it is still just 61 and get some more meriting done in my spare time. Also, I need to complete my rank up in the past because I will soon lose my current badge. I do like the new system for Campaign tags and I plan on using that on my WHM at least weekly to get more XP for it. I really feel like I should finish it up because there are other jobs I want to move onto now. :)
Tomorrow! The real return of On the Cheap for Monks! It should be concluded then too! And I will post it all together in one rather long post so that people can follow it there. :)
Wednesday, June 18, 2008
Some things I promised.
Here is your Zeni NM chart. I tried to be clear on the tiers and the drops since that is what most people wanted. Of course this is not any new information, but I think a simplified chart will help people get a better grip on the system and more importantly what they need to do to get to the drops that they want. Like I said there are better looking charts for the Zeni NM system but I think this one is more goal oriented. I tried to get the chart to show on the front page, but it is far beyond my skills. LOL
Things to remember about the Zeni system:
1. Zeni is obtained by trading in Soul Plates from the mobs that Sanraku is interesting in seeing. The best way to get points is to find the highest level version of the monster and to take pictures at the lowest possible HP. I prefer nothing more than 3% and 1% is optimal. Any requested mob that is level 80+ at less than 3% will almost always at least 98 or 99 Zeni. I believe that 99 Zeni is the maximum per soul plate, putting the most Zeni you can get per Vana'diel day at 990. If Sanraku requests a monster that doesn't have a version above level 80 then your maximum will be lower, and there isn't much you can do about that.
2. Don't worry about the special requests. They are too hard to get without having to do them anyway. It's a good idea to have your camera on you all the time in case you get to see an NM, but they are not necessary to participate in the event at all. Also, they do not break the 100 Zeni per soulplate cap so it's of even less interest to focus on these.
3. Tiers. The first tier just requires Zeni to purchase the spawn items, but for Tier 2 and 3 you will be required to bring a trophy item from a mob of the previous tier from the same branch. On the chart above they are all the ones on the same column. For Tier 4 though, you will be required to turn in all three trophy items from the Tier 3 mobs in the same column. So for example, if you want to spawn Tinnin (Hydra) you will have to hand in the trophy from Armed Gears, Dea and Gotoh Zha the Redolent.
4. Tier 4 mobs. Tier 4 mobs are spawned on the Stone Monument islands around the Aht Urhgan areas. Although only one person needs to have the spawn item, everyone will need a 500 Zeni salt to reach the island to participate in the fight. At this time I do not believe there is a limit on the number of people that can reach the island to participate in the fight, and I do not know if the island is locked out to new people reaching the island once the mob is spawned.
5. The drop rate on most items is surprisingly good, the rate at which you can gain Zeni and spawn mobs is surprisingly fast and the mobs you have to fight are surprisingly interesting and some are even quite difficult. This system is fun and fast, and the Tier 4 mobs drop enough items to make it very worthwhile to do this system repeatedly.
I hope the chart helps and tomorrow I am going to return to my "On the cheap" series. :)
Tuesday, June 17, 2008
As per your request.
A couple of people have asked about the new NM system, not so much about how the system works, but more about what the drops are and what path they should take to get to certain drops. So I am working on something for them right now, hopefully but doubtfully I will have it done before I leave for work. :)
Monday, June 16, 2008
Lack of focus.
I have been pretty busy with keeping myself not occupied with writing my blog as of late. I have a little bit of a writer's block I think, and after almost two years of sustained writing of this blog, I can understand that. Most of my opinions about things are already known, I don't know if I can bring anything knew to the world of FFXI that hasn't already been hashed and rehashed. I will keep writing, but I may lack focus for a little while, and honestly, I really like Sudoku right now and that is killing my writing time at work. :)
On with the show...
Haven't really gone over the new stuff in the update yet, and I do think this update is very, very good. I could add more platitudes to its greatness, but there is no reason to do so. I really like the new Zeni NM system, already dubbed the ZNM system for short. It has decent rewards, the battles are interesting and fun for decent sized groups even if some of the mobs are a bit over powered in some of their TP moves. The drops are mediocre to awesome, and getting to the next tier is not that difficult at all, just need the Zeni to support it. Getting Zeni isn't even that difficult if you know what you are doing. The only complaint I have heard so far is that grinding Zeni is hard, but that person was retarded and didn't understand how to do it correctly. Such is the case with people that do not understand things immediately, they reject it out of hand without a second thought then engage in crying and whining about it as loudly as possible.
Anyway, the point is that these are fun encounters that can be done in between events or as events, or anything in between. There are at least a couple of pieces of gear that I am drooling over already. And the materials from the bosses are legitimate, most importantly Cerberus dropping its hide, which will probably significantly effect the market for Cerberus Mantles. I like the fact that some of the upgrades on the lower levels are small but they are noticeable. For example Chigre drops a +5 Accuracy ring with some random resists on it, which can replace a Sniper's Ring even though the level is much higher, and it also drops a +2 Magical Accuracy ring, which is new. 
Though not all of the NM's have good drops, most have good situational gear or something that is a treat for some job or another. Lil'Apkallu is another good example 
a decent set of +healing MP boots and some Footwork feet for Monk, it is interesting because it runs around and uses TP moves afterward but isn't too difficult. The tiers are relatively easy to progress through and even the tier 3 mobs have great drops and the fights are very interesting or difficult or have some twist to them. For example, you have Wulgaru 
who is pretty devastating because it constantly uses TP moves that go right through shadows, that is until about 75% when its arm blows up, and it gets a little weaker, and then finally, well... its time to have some fun. LOL 
Have fun with these, I have done tier 1-3 but have yet to do a tier 4, which I am looking forward to. :)
Wednesday, June 11, 2008
If I hear one more word about the new relics I am going to stab people.
Ok, I got it, there are relics, new ones even. Yes, it is amazing, incredible, stupendous even.
Here is the thing you are missing, it's going to be hard as fuck to get them!
I would think that people would have learned by now that they are not going to make the new relics easier to obtain than the old relics. SE is not really that into making gear obsolete, though they do occassionally, but they absolutely aren't going to hand out devastating weapons willy-nilly. There are going to be bunches and bunches of people that really want these new weapons and they are going to be just like the people that collected Dynamis currency for months then just sold it all to buy other gear, some doing it out from under their LS's noses. I am sure we will have tons and tons of people pursuing these new relics, but its going to take time. And guess what, the relics aren't even in the game yet.
Yeah, if you hadn't figured it out by now, SE knows that we check the dats for the game, and the dats for the new relics, though there already, are obviously not the final weapons. It is impossible to complete a relic in the time given before the next update at very least. The first stage of requirements could be done before this patch was even released, which included having killed many of of the mobs in the ToAU areas. The second stage requires a bunch of very high collection requirements from Salvage, Einherjar and Nyzul Isle. Things like this new Alexandrite. 
No one even knows what the third stage is yet, and even the dialogue in the dats is unclear about it.
My point is, and I needed to get this out, that we don't need to know RIGHT NOW what the requirements for the obtaining the new relic weapons. I am much more interested in the currently doable like the new NM system which does have several rather good pieces of equipment scattered about from the mobs, and they are tiered. Also, it does require a little bit of effort but not much for people to help with the NMs even if they don't want to deal with the new system. Overall win/win I have to say. There are a couple of people complaining about the new system but honestly there are a couple of people that would complain about absolutely anything.
After a little bit more testing I have to say that I still think that Footwork sucks.
The real problem with it is that it is pretty much just a WS buff for decently equipped Monks, and an excuse for poorly equipped Monks to continue to be poorly equipped. Meh. Not a disappointment per se, but it's definitely one of those things that I know will cause dumb players to become even more stupid. :(
Tuesday, June 10, 2008
Ok, everyone please just shut the fuck up for a second.
Man, the unending speculation, the myriad of ideas, the ceaseless chattering. My head was ready to explode yesterday just reading threads about what people though of the update and what they did to many different things. New monsters, new gear, new abilities, new items, new quests, new everything. This update was ridiculously huge, and I will give you a run down with what I believe is a reasonable description of events without the hype, chattering, crying or whining.
There was a whole lot going on so I can see it becoming overwhelming to a point, but breaking it down into little chunks may be beneficial to help wrap our brains to wrap around the huge changes that were brought about with this update.
* New missions. I have no idea about these, but from what I hear there are not many of them. I am guessing they will probably be short and not reveal much to us. I really wish that this had been more of the content as they said it was going to be when they first announced the update, but with everything else that is going on in the update, it is not that bad.
* New NM's. The obvious first observation is that Dark Ixion is now prowling the past, and is very interesting. As it stands alone, it can be engaged but once it is engaged it will run off at a high rate of speed. Apparently, Stygian Ash which is a drop from Faeries in the past (not that uncommonly) is used to aggro it and a hit will allow it to be fought without it fleeing again. At this point information is known about it but it is without an HP bar so it may be taking damage but it is unknown if it is even killable at this point. There is probably another item that has to be used to make its HP bar appear. Interestingly enough, it seems that it can respawn in different zones at different times. Lots of information still needs to be gathered about this one. The second NM that appears to have been changed is Sandworm. Although Sandworm in the past did nothing, it appears that it now at a certain point it will use a TP move called Doomvoid, which will suck all of the players currently in the party with claim on the Sandworm into one of the three instanced zones in those areas, e.g. Everbloom Hollow, and there you will be able to fight Serket, King Arthro or Guivre (Guivre is in the dat files but not confirmed yet). These mobs are highly buffed versions of the ones in the present and there are no confirmed kills as of yet.
* New NM system. As word trickled in on this one, I thought it was going to suck, but it turns out to not be that bad really. You basically talk to an NPC, and that NPC will give you a specific request which is pretty hard to come by, and a more general request which isn't that bad. You then have to take pictures of the mobs with the Pankration camera and film then trade them in for points. The points are then traded for pop items for a plethora of NM's throughout the Aht Urhgan areas. These NM's appear to have 2 possible drops and can get to be very good items, and they also drop another item that is traded in for a future NM pop item. At some point along the way, you can get a pop item for an NM on the stone tablet islands around the main Aht Urhgan areas. To get to the islands you must get a 500 point item to trade to the stone tablet, then on the island is a ??? where you will likely trade the pop item. The mobs include Cerberus, Hydra and Khimaira and those are assumed to be the higher level pop monsters. It looks like everyone that goes to assist with these higher level spawned monsters will need salts to get to the islands.
*Einherjar. Almost everyone knows about the fixes so far, including normal mobs giving you ampules, not having to complete every single chamber to get Odin access and a new item for 100,000 ampules that I will get to later. They also slightly adjusted things to make it easier to pull, because the linking will occur normally instead of all mobs linking at once. There were a couple of complaints that for the higher tiers the linking helps to draw all of the mobs together faster, but I think this can be dealt with relatively easily for those that can already do it.
*Group 2 merits. Outside of a slight nerf to Overwhelm for SAM this appears pretty much as they said that it would. The tiers are now 3,4,5,5,5 so it is not as major of a burden as it could have been had they kept rolling up the numbers. I think that I will be shifting over to 5 Overwhelm and 5 Blade Bash for SAM and then just continuing what I already have for MNK. Two MNK with maxed Penance can now keep up the TP down effect in perpetuity. Waiting on Izman to test his new Iron Will effects, and if it doesn't work, waiting for Highlife to kill him. LOL
*New Job Abilities. Footwork sucks, as I thought it would, but its also not as bad for certain situations. The problems it has is that it is not effected by haste, spells or gear. Just a flat 480 delay. This means that well geared MNK will have next to no use for it, but for those that have marginal gear or are still working to get better gear. I will likely almost never use it, except for opening on an NM in Salvage. Since it does do more damage and you get more TP from Asuran Fists, I could open or at least use it for one AF then turn it off immidiately, like DRK do with Souleater. I will probably make a macro for that and carry my Dune Boots on me again, but I don't think its going to matter that much. I worked hard for all the haste gear that I have, I don't want to give it up! LOL Reprisal looks to be pretty good, but I am not a PLD, and the guy that sells the spell was captured last night so I didn't get to see any definitive testing. It does look like it makes a huge difference in block rate and the damage that is returned is half of the damage that is taken by the PLD before other adjustments are factored into the equation like Phalanx. The new BRD ability basically works as indicated, the BRD uses the ability, then targets a player with a song and only that player will get the song. Nice for PLD in XP and low MP situations, but nothing ground breaking.
Ok, that is just part of the update, I haven't even gotten to the new equipment or the new relics. But I will get to that tomorrow.
Friday, June 06, 2008
On the cheap 1: Monk part 2.
In continuance from yesterdays On the cheap post, he is part 2 on equipping Monk.
Earrings. Earring selection is pretty weak for Monk, but the obvious first pick it a Brutal Earring. Though it would be expensive if you bought the coins but with enough time in Limbus it should be relatively easy to pick one up. For the other ear the Ethereal Earring is the best selection and its is free and relatively easy to get after you have completed CoP. Alternative options include a Coral Earring or two or the HQ version, the Merman's Earring.
Body. Now, this suggestion is going to be pretty expensive but it is worth every dime: Shura Togi. This is one of those items that you should just save up for and get it and smile. Accuracy and attack are the key component to Monk TP build damage. Sure it is a Kirin drop, but it is a very common drop and any Monk worth their salt should always be trying to get one. If you do not have access to get the abjuration from Kirin, then either you aren't really an end-game player or you are an HNM-only end-game player, either way I can't really help beyond that. As an alternative a Scorpion Harness or the Pahluwan Khazagand can fill the hole until you get a Shura Togi.
Hands. This is another area where it could get to be expensive but it could also be free. Also the different options are pretty close in capability so any of these would be a decent selection, but from my own personal selection, and up until yesterday when I got my Usukane Gote, I was using Melee Gloves. Melee Gloves are a Dynamis-Jeuno drop and not really that rare plus the city Dynamis zones in general tend to be rather giving. Not only do they have a large amount of attack but HP and also Subtle Blow which makes them rather sexy over the higher attack but lower evasion. This is just a personal preference of mine, but just as acceptable with varying levels of cost and difficulty to obtain are Ochiudo's Kote, Ochimusha Kote, Bandomusha Kote and Horomusha Kote.
Sorry, thats it for today, part 3 on Monday!
Wednesday, June 04, 2008
On the cheap 1: Monk.
Ok, this is going to be a series of posts that I am going to do to help people that are new to jobs at end-game. This comes from experience and opinion, but in the end, it is what I believe is the best, easiest and quickest way to get to a point where you can start tweaking your gear instead of trying to get major items that you really need. Before I go into today's subject, Monk, I am going to go over a few things that I believe are prerequisites for this discussion to be of any help at all.
1. You can't be dumb. Sorry, if you are dumb, I can't help you. If you are the kind of person that hears something and then sticks to it no matter what, just quit now. If you can't adapt to changes in the game, quit. If you refuse to do something because you don't think that should be the play style of the game, then just fucking die in a fire. Flexibility is key, the more we learn about things in the game, the more we improve the play style and the more things change.
2. You have to really be an end-game player. I am not expecting you to have every title in the game, and have done ever mission everywhere, but I do expect you to have done main story-line content. This should be a goal of an end-game player at the very least. Zilart should be finished up to at very least Sky, CoP should be finished up until the end, and Aht Urhgan up until the end. If you don't have these, or at least most of it and trying to get to the end, then you aren't an end-game player, you are just lazy or your are just making pretend.
3. You have to be able to do some end-game events. I am not demanding that you be in a full-time HNM LS or anything, but you should have access to a LS that does at least some of those end-game areas/events. If you don't then you really aren't an end-game player, you are just a player with a job at 75.
4. You have to be willing to spend at least a little bit of gil. Sure, this series is called "On the Cheap" but it is not called "On the Gimp" so you will need to spend some gil getting some of the gear that you need. I am not going to tell you to get all HQ gear unless it is cheap, and I will also indicate expensive items that you will need anyway, or cheap items that are good replacements. This is like the FrugaL Gourmet for FFXI. Yes, I know, none of you got that reference. :(
Ok, on with the show.
Now, Monk is a ridiculously fun job and I love it personally. It is, though, a very situational job, so I do not use it in all situations. If you are looking for a Chi Blast set-up, then you are looking in the wrong place because Monk is and should be about punching things, punching things hard and punching them fast.
Ok, the TP set up first.
Weapons. You definitely must have Destroyers, and honestly, this is much easier than most people think. Just get a couple of friends and do Double Dragonian, it is no where as hard as people make it out to be, because they don't understand how the Dragons work. The Dragons become much stronger after their two-hour, not when the other one dies. So a simple strategy is go sleep the Bard dragon, quickly kill the Warrior then go back and kill the Bard. If you have problems at all with this then just kite the second dragon while you are recovering. Until you get Destroyers, you can use Faith Baghnakhs or Wagh Baghnakhs in the meantime.
Ammo. Two real options here, but I definitely favor Tiphia Sting because of the additional accuracy, and accuracy is what makes and breaks a good Monk. A Monk you should by end-game always be eating meat no matter the event, so you want an good amount of accuracy to keep up with that, and getting it in cheap places like the ammo slot is never bad. I will of course directly contradict myself on this later, LOL. Another good alternative is the Smart Grenade too, but I favor the extra accuracy.
Head. Walahra Turban plain and simple. If you don't have one, get one. This is a no-brainer.
Neck. Now, here is an area that can be a little varied, but as a minimum I would suggest Spectacles. 7 Accuracy is very nice, and for Monk, the +3 STR from the Chivalrous Chain isn't going to overcome the Accuracy from the Spectacles. Remember here that the effect of one piece isn't as relevant as the cumulative effect of all your pieces. 2 Accuracy here, and 2 Accuracy there can add up pretty quickly.
More tomorrow! :)
Big fat liar.
So, not only did I not have two posts on Monday, I didn't even have a post yesterday. LOL Ok, so going for two posts today. Monday and Tuesday were pretty normal actually, I have been doing a lot of farming, but with maintenance costs I am only gaining a little bit of ground, but it is nice to have over 100k on my person all the time instead of 5-10k. Lets see, Monday produced a good Zhayolm run, but no froggie drops and the boss didn't necessarily give us anything we needed. So no completed sets from that and Hiryo still needs to get his Usukane 25 head to complete his piece. Tuesday resulted in some good Sea farming and then another Zhayolm run with Rakuen with essentially the same results. Still loving Salvage. :)
Now, for some of the good news from today.
New Notorious Monsters (NMs) will be added to areas introduced in the Treasures of Aht Urhgan expansion pack in the forthcoming version update, with simplified access to their battlefields.
A Word from the Development Team
NM battles have been one of the most popular elements of FFXI since its launch. Nothing stirs the adventurer's soul quite the same way as cooperating with dependable comrades to overcome seemingly insurmountable odds, with rare equipment drops being the very tasty icing on the cake.
Thus far, however, getting the chance to battle NMs has been almost as difficult a task as fighting the creatures themselves. One often needed a lot of time and plenty more luck to successfully arrange an encounter with the creatures. In light of the ever-increasing number of fan requests for more opportunities to do battle against powerful monsters and reap the rewards, the development team has decided to implement some changes to make the excitement of NMs—even those of the same caliber as particularly infamous varieties inhabiting Tu'Lia and Al'Taieu—more accessible to all.
Overview of the New SystemCarrying out requests from a certain NPC will earn you points which, when accumulated, can be exchanged for NM trigger items. The cost of these triggers will fluctuate based on the corresponding NM's difficulty level and popularity among adventurers. A limit will also be imposed on the number of points that can be earned in one Vana'dielian day (one Earth hour). Even with the above conditions in place, obtaining triggers under this new system should be relatively pain-free, especially when compared to fulfilling the elaborate requirements of some existing NM battles.
*Please note that this point system is applicable only to select new NMs scheduled to appear from the June version update.
In order to maximize flexibility in participant numbers, in most cases the target to which you trade triggers in order to gain entry into battlefields will be located in field areas.
Rewards
Over fifty new types of equipment will be made available as exclusive drops for defeating these new NMs. Here are just a few samples to whet your ravenous adventurer's appetite:
This looks like something can at the same time be low-manned, done at players convenience and very little "staring at darters". Now, I am not necessarily for or against low-man events. I think that they can be good, but are more dependent on certain people showing up, and can easily get screwed up with differing levels of commitments of the players. The reason that I like them right now is because the Versus schedule is getting kind of crowded. Monday is Limbus, then Assaults, then usually Salvage, Tuesday is an event, Wednesday is an off day, Thursday is an event and then Limbus, and then sometimes Salvage, Friday is Salvage and Assaults, Saturday is Salvage, and Sunday is an event then Salvage. I need something that I can squeeze into the time remaining, not something that is going to take up another big block of time. This is especially true with the Einherjar update and that leading us back to try to fix it in the schedule. Heaven forbid they introduce a new end-game area/event that will have to fit into the rotation.
This leads me to new thinking on how we do events now. We used to have a strict rotation on the events we did, some days were Sea, some Sky, some pop NM's, etc, the problem was that the Sky events were not leading to anything new that people needed, and so we have become more flexible with the events that we schedule. For example, when we do Sky it is to get Despot first, then other NM's, because we need the most gear from Byakko, even over Kirin at this point. We have already become much more efficient, but we can still improve. :)
I am really looking forward to this update at this point. It is looking much better than at least the last several version updates. And it just keeps getting better.
Monday, June 02, 2008
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?
Friday, May 30, 2008
Salvage Hypotheses.
Salvage is weird, like many things in the Aht Urhgan expansion. It appears that there are many hidden factors, the largest of which is weather. Now, I do not know for sure on some of these because I do not know if they are necessarily Salvage specific or if they are mob type specific, and for the non-weather hypothesis if they are genuinely testable. Anyway, that preface was a bit without context so let me get right to the point to see if it makes more sense.
*Salvage Hypothesis 1: Wind weather and Windsday increases the detection range for Archaic Machinery.
Well, I know now that at least the Windsday part of that hypothesis is incorrect because we recently had a Bhaflau run where we pulled the Archaic Gear on the 4th Floor and they did not link from further away than normal. Wind weather does obviously still have the effect on the aggro range of the Archaic Machinery though, at least in Bhaflau. I don't even know if the other zones can get Wind weather, I don't believe that they can. Conclusion: Wind weather does effect Archaic Machinery aggro range, while Windsday does not. This is then not the same effect that happens to Puks and Crawlers in their respective weather conditions and days.
*Salvage Hypothesis 2: Killing the Archaic Chariot on the 4th Floor of Bhaflau weakens Long-Bowed Chariot.
Although the "proof" of this is still in question without definitive parser results apparently, there is enough anecdotal evidence for me to advance the theory. The first is the relatively higher damage per hit I noticed, with the same equipment and attributes unlocked, over when we have not killed the Archaic Chariot. The second is the relatively higher rate that enfeebles are landed noted both by our RDM and BRD. The third is the fact that a DRK using a Kraken Club has tested in both situations and it appears that there is in fact some kind of damage cut if the Archaic Chariot is not killed. We always go to the West side, but the East side Archaic Chariot is supposed to weaken LBC in a similar but opposite way. West side is supposed to decrease its defense, evasion and magical defense (resists at very least and probably magic defense too) while East side decreases its attack, damage and accuracy. Which made me think of something else to try, see below.
*Salvage Hypothesis 3: Ice weather and Iceday makes the Fomor in Silver Seas Remnants stronger and/or give the TP regain.
There is much less proof of this, and I haven't seen anyone else not this, but I have seen Fomors pulled in Powderkeg's room that when pulled immediately used TP moves. This happened more than once, and it only happened on Iceday. I suspect that this may just be the natural state for the Fomor in the Aht Urhgan areas, as it is with Puk and Eruca. I just haven't seen anyone else confirm this, nor do I know if it is a Salvage only thing or if it is for the whole expansion.
*Salvage Hypothesis 4: The triple gears on Bhaflau floor have some effect on Low-Bowed Chariot.
This one I haven't even checked. I don't know of anyone that has checked it, but I am going to check it this weekend and maybe even tonight. I suspect that eliminating all of the triple gears might have the effect of the opposite Archaic Chariot. Well, all we can do with that is see what happens.
Thursday, May 29, 2008
I cheat so much I might as well hack.
Now, there are times when pride is at stake. And mine pride is a vengeful pride. So I just wanted to point out that I beat Omoi on both of the parses that I did last night. One of them was even completely legitimate! The other one, well, I will get to that in a minute. The first parse, the one that I WON, was on Trolls. Honestly, it wasn't very long, but Omoi was even beaten by Iz on that one. :) 
Now, see what happens with you take out the piercing bonus? HMMMMM! We didn't stay very long at this camp, but I needed a neutral camp to prove that she wasn't always the best. LOL Now, the previous parse may have a little bit of an issue. 
If you see right there, I WON AGAIN! Now, that may or may not have been because Omoi died and we killed 3-4 more mobs before I stopped the parser, but HEY LOOK OVER THERE IT'S A FLYING PIG... This one was at Mamool Ja Staging Point, which have PUKS, which are weak to PIERCING.
Anyway, as you can see, I clearly have demonstrated my prowess at defeating Omoi in any parse that comes along.
Yeah...
Fucking Birds...
Wednesday, May 28, 2008
Omoi and I.
Omoi is my best friend and most favorite person in the game. She is pretty much amazing and we do so much together that when people ask one of us to do something they know that they are asking both of us, and we generally don't do something else we both can do it. Omoi is awesome in general, and specifically, is a great leader of Versus, has huge amounts of patience to do with the myriad of issues involved with that responsibility and is continually looking to support the LS in any way possible. She is also incredibly giving to the point that we have as of late force her to lot on stuff that she needs for her DRG. Her DRG is now, by the way, the subject of my pride for her and my consternation, as she has consistently been able to outparse my MNK. I think it may be time to break out the big guns the next time that we merit and bring my SAM, but she also likes to cheat, and keep Hasso up fun time. >.< I am going to have to do the same or just come MNK/WAR and tell the healer to just suck it up. LOL Anyway, my jealousy causes digression. Omoi is awesome, and makes me happy to just play this game and be able to talk to her and hang out with her every day. :)
Speaking of the big guns, I finally got around to doing Divine Might again. 
The fight was a little bit more messy that we have had in the past, took us 20 minutes to beat it instead of the normal ~10 minutes. I had dropped my Suppanomimi a couple of weeks ago so that I could get a new Bushinomimi. 
Now my SAM has one of the last key items that it needs, leaving only pretty much a Justice Torque. Well, I still need an Ace's Helm or Askar head, but those will come eventually. Also, I am considering if I should go with full Usukane whenever I get it. It is obviously not as good in haste but it is at least worth testing out.
I suppose I should mention the new update notes that came out today. 
Several adjustments to the battle system are scheduled for the upcoming version update.MNK: We will see. I am definitely hoping that this is just some kind of situational boost and not something that is going to be used full time as it seems to kind of defeat the entire purpose of the MNK haste gear. If its situationally good that is fine, but if I am going to use it full time, then MEH. It also depends on the recast of the ability and such.
Merit Points Group 2: Maximum Raised for Ability Increases
Adjustments to the Group 2 section of the merit point job categories will be implemented in the upcoming version update.
The current total maximum ability increase of 6 and the individual maximum ability increase of 3 will be raised to match the Group 1 values of 10 and 5, respectively.
New Job Abilities and Spells
In conjunction with the scheduled job adjustments, the monk, paladin, and bard jobs will be receiving new abilities and spells.
For monks, we will be adding a new job ability that allows them to restrict their attacks to kicks only. In exchange for a penalty to attack delay, the monk receives an increase to damage and attack power, as well as a bonus to the amount of TP gained per kick.
Paladins will be receiving a new spell that increases the rate of shield blocks, as well as reflecting blocked damage back to an attacker. As with "Blaze Spikes" and "Dread Spikes," this spell will only affect the caster.
Lastly, bards will gain a job ability that allows them to limit the area effect of a song to a single target.
For example, if a bard casts "Mage's Ballad" after activating this new ability, only the selected target will receive the effect of the song.
PLD: I think this is actually much better than most people I have seen say, and the reason is that it might actually let PLD sub something besides NIN, like WAR, DRK or RDM. I have no doubts that it will not be useful with shadows up. If it stays up when shadows are up, sure it will make tanking easier with /NIN too, but in many cases /NIN is not the optimal subjob but is still needed to reduce damage. Honestly, for HNM if this spell is strong enough then /RDM may become the best subjob available.
BRD: This will be pretty cool for leveling BRD with a PLD obviously, but also for DRK and BLU also. Of course it will depend on recast and usage, but it definitely seems like something that will help a whole lot.
Merits in general: This is a huge fuck yeah! I will definitely be boosting Overwhelm first, then Penance and Invigorate, then I am going to go back and put the rest of my merits into Blade Bash which should reduce its recast time to 5 minutes.
I wanted to mention one last thing, Rukenshin updated his live journal and if you are a SAM you should check it out. He suggests that SAM/DRG may actually be more beneficial than SAM/WAR. Now while this may be true for him, there are several reasons to believe that it might not be as beneficial to everyone else. The first is that even with SAM/DRG he believes that he is at or near the attack cap which is impressive, but it may not be true for everyone if they do not have equal gear. Also his math assumes exception gear for haste too. Since the benefits of haste increase with more haste the effect for his haste set up will be higher than those that do not have more haste. Also, he does not have a Bushinomimi so his /WAR gear is slightly less than optimal compared to his /DRG gear where he can use Brutal and Wyvern Earring. I am definitely not saying that /DRG would be better or worse just that using Rukenshin's example to base your gear selection may not be best for you.
Thats it for today, see you tomorrow.
Tuesday, May 27, 2008
Well, fuck...
Yeah, so what if I have been having crappy blog entries lately. What the fuck am I supposed to be writing about? I suppose I should get around to Ashhhhh's BLU macros for his Xbox 360 where I get to play the "what the fuck are the modifiers on the spells that you are using" plus the SE-induced "lets mock our players by having huge amounts of gear and only six slots to swap them around" game. Not that gear selection and optimization doesn't make me all giddy inside like a huge ice cream sundae or your first blow job (giving or receiving depending on sex, preference or sexual preference, of course). That reminds me of a joke my friend used to use on me whenever I was quite impressed with some high school accomplishment of some sort, in which he would simply state that he had sex in high school, and I will left without retort, well except that I did touch a boob in high school, but I don't know if that left me in a better position or worse. But I digress... Ashhhhh's day will come, and that day will be a glorious day, in which all names will end in a repetition of their last letter! But that day is not today, today is the day I say, GOD FUCKING DAMMIT I FORGOT TO UPLOAD MY SWEET SWEET PICS AGAIN! Well, fuck, indeed. And something good actually happened this weekend, besides the alcohol induced vomit-fest that was Saturday night. Indeed, on Saturday we had a fantastic run in Zhayolm in which the two froggies gave us one item each! The first was Usukane 35 hands, which I won the lot on, yay go me! The second was Morrigan 35 feet which Ashhhhh won the lot on. It was definitely one of the best runs we have ever had and promptly after the run I had to go out to a friends bachelor party in which I could talk about FFXI for fear of social ridicule. I almost exploded, LOL. I am King of the Dorks, but at least I can admit it.
To the point, lets just say that at least I have some fucking perspective on the level of dorkdom I have achieved playing this game. Some people think they are actually cool spending 10-12 hours a day playing a video game. To them, I say, there is always someone cooler than you, you are just a big fish in a tiny little pond. There is someone out there that had sex in high school for you too.
Randomness off for a moment, I do have some game related stuff I want to go over, because it has been a very good week or so. Lets do the non-Salvage stuff because that will be easier (and I actually have some screenshots from those events). Ok, so last Thursday, Versus did it's first TP burn Kirin by ourselves. We have done it before with another LS that isn't around anymore, but we had like 30-40 people there for it so it wasn't much of a challenge really. This time we did it with something like 25+ people, but we were very limited on DD's, with only 12 available, so we didn't really have anyone to sub in when people died. The rest of the people were there to be ready to kite Kirin if something went horribly wrong. LOL But nothing went wrong, and our first Kirin was faster than when we did it with more people. The first Kirin was, if I recall correctly, 2:43 or something like that. 
We are always looking for more W. legs and it was really nice to see the abjuration drop after such a good Kirin. Our second Kirin was even better, and we killed it in 1:58, which kind of blew my mind. We got another Shining Cloth from it and a N. Body which Raikoh finally got after a really long time of waiting for it.
Next we had an Omega run, and after farming Omega for gunpods we were able to get close to another set for Omega, only missing a Smalt Chip now. As with last time, I had everyone random to see who would open the chest, and because last time Achikasama won the random and Achi is horrible luck, I had the second highest person do it and we got a Homam Body, this time I did the same thing, and I didn't let the highest random open the chest, and again another Homam Body. 
Now this Homam body was supposed to go to Darkdawn, who is was locked on it, but they dc'ed right before the fight and they weren't able to get back on, so we had to do the fight anyway and adjust the lots. But in the small hope that Darkdawn would get back on in time, I didn't pass and we left a spot open for DD in case he got back in time. Well, he did, and he got into the alliance and was able to lot about 5 seconds before it finally auto-distributed. :) So congratulations to Darkdawn! It was pretty epic at the time and I kind of forgot who got the feet and head but Yay for them!
Finally, there was a lot that happened in Salvage. As I already mentioned we were able to get Usukane 35 hands for me, and Morrigan 35 feet for Ashhhhh (who I hear got an ear-full from Crlmsonking about that, and I even called it the Family Feud when I said they both could lot it), I have picks of those both for tomorrow, or later today. We still aren't able to complete Zhayolm remnants and kill both frogs right now. Yesterday, we were able to kill the 5th floor frog and the boss but we wouldn't have had time for the 6th floor frog too. Well, for yesterdays run we got Morrigan's 25 legs for Skurlover and Marduk 25 feet which went to Omoi. We will still need to get Usukane 25 head for Hiryo so that he can get his Usukane Somen but we also need to complete Akanea's Usukane legs and Iz's Skadi feet, from LBC, which hasn't been entirely friendly on the drops that we need probably because we found out something new. It's a total wimp.
Let me clarify here, because there is still some dispute about this, but the last two times that we killed 10/10 of the Archaic Gear and we killed the Archaic Chariot also, and we were able to kill LBC in under 5 minutes the first time and under 4 minutes the second time. 
We don't have any relics in our group, and we don't have any King abjurations either, we do have excellent players though and we have pretty decent gear. All that being said to be able to kill LBC in 4 minutes is pretty huge. The amount of time that it takes to kill the Archaic Chariot on the 4th floor is about 3 minutes, but the time trade off for LBC is for us something like 4-5 minutes. If that means even 1-2 more minutes in the 4F rampart then it is definitely worth it. Just to be clear, the Archaic Chariot, in my experience, though I do not have true proof of the effect, massive decreases LBC's evasion, defense and magic defense. It is very easy to hit, hit for more and land debuffs when the Archaic Chariot is killed. The next thing that I want to test is if there is an effect from killing the Archaic Gears in the room with the Archaic Chariot.
Well, tonight I have Salvage with Rakuen, and I can't wait. :)
Thursday, May 22, 2008
Whats up with Campaign?
I like Campaign, let me get that out of the way first, because if you came here looking for complaints then... well, you have probably never read my blog.
I like Campaign for what it should be, but I do still have problems with it, and it appears that SE is going to handle some but not all of the issues. I should start by saying that I think of Campaign mostly as Campaign battles and less of the other parts of Campaign like the Ops and Headhunting, and there is my real problem with Campaign. To illustrate this best I am going to compare it to Assault to get good parallel going. Assault has very well defined and easily compartmentalized missions, and each mission resulted in a set of rewards: chest drops, ??? items, Assault points and advancement for Assault ranks. Campaign on the other hand rewards with XP, Allied notes and a much less clearly defined rank up system. It is much more nebulous, and though more expansive than Assault does not require any alternative to Campaign battle to advance in rank. Campaign needs more structure and it needs it badly. It also needs an incentive to do the other Campaign related activities like Headhunting and Ops. At the current time the all flow into the same pool of XP and AN and have no effect on Campaign rank so there literally is no reason to do them. This is a disappointed state of affairs. It is almost maddening how disorganized the Campaign system feels at the moment.
This was the beginning of my post from yesterday, better post coming after lunch.
Wednesday, May 21, 2008
I had a dream.
I was on a mission with two other people. We had to go to an indoor garden/nursery that was shaped like an enlarged version of my high school friends basement. It was like the indoors portion of a nursery, with shelves of plants. We had to kill three people that were in animal suits (not like mascot outfits, more like anthropomorphic suits) who worked in the garden/nursery and take their place. Then we had to kill three more people in animal suits, but they were obviously more deadly, thus the chicanery with killing the first group. At some point, we had either done a practice run of this or had done it successfully before because I remembered how it all was supposed to go down but this time the second group of animal suits came in as we were hiding the first groups bodies. We managed to at least partially hide the first groups bodies, and they didn't notice at first, but while we were trying to attach silencers to our guns they were alerted to our nefarious intentions. We were supposed to kill them with silencers on the guns but since they showed up early and surprised us we had to kill them without the silencers and I was afraid that would alert people to our presence. They managed to shoot one of the members of my group (not me). The wounded member of my team then shot the last member a whole bunch of times, and I shot them several times in the back of the neck (I specifically remember thinking it should definitely kill him) but the whole while they were just laughing at me as they died. The only person that had any blood from the gunshot wounds was my team member. I woke up as we were trying to figure out how to escape with our wounded member.
And now on with our show.
I have been working on some Windower macros for Izman's BST, and I think they are coming out quite well. I used to be one of those people that swore off any level of windower besides using it for being able to alt+tab, but after a while the fundamental usefulness of some plug-ins (recast, light luggage and yarnball come to mind) and especially being able to use more than 6 lines just seems to be something that should already exist in the game, just makes me think it has a good place in the game. Of course, I would never approve of the use of a windower, at all, ever, but if you are going to use it, which I would never do, then using it for those most fundamental purposes doesn't seem like a bad idea.
If you are going to make windower macros, which I never do, then I have some simple suggestions to fundamentally make their construction and replication much easier. Some quick fundamental rules:
1. If you are making an equipment swap macro you should include all potential equipment slots even weapons. The reason for this is that is makes it easy to just hit a macro and have everything equipped again if you are stripped of gear. With mobs and events now limiting equipment or removing equipment you simply have to hit a macro to have everything you could possibly need on again. This is especially helpful in Salvage.
2. Use an indicator for what the equipment swap is at the end of the swap. This makes it easier to indicate that you are on the correct macro palette if you use multiple ones for one job.
3. Don't be afraid to make entire macro palettes for small variations. I have two different macro sets for day and night on NIN. There are now a huge number of possible macro palettes, don't be afraid to use them!
I will have more pictures and items of interest soon, but I am still getting into the swing of things from vacation, and we have been pretty event packed for the last couple of days, so don't expect much until probably Friday.
Tuesday, May 20, 2008
Why now?
SE has been adding in a bunch of things lately that players have been demanding for a long time. These are mostly convenience issues, and SE is doing a good job at fixing them, but why now? What about the game right now makes it important for SE to implement these changes? There are several lines of thought to follow here. Maybe they think that by fixing the things that people have been complaining about for a long time will prevent people from leaving the game. The problem with that logic is that the people that are still playing the game have already accepted its shortcomings. Fixing old things, and especially announcing them, doesn't really do anything by draw a target on the things and how long they were broken. Maybe they think that by fixing the old things that they will be drawing in new players because they are modernizing the game. The problem with this is that FFXI is an old game now and the whole game interface would have to be revised if they wanted to really draw in new players with an upgrade. In the end, I think they are just announcing these things because they have nothing else to announce. This is more negative than my normal statements about the game, but I don't think it is a systemic problem. I think it is more a development team problem. Apparently the same people that worked on CoP are the ones that are working on Wings. Now for storyline and mission purposes this is a really good things, but for game play it is obviously going to be a borefest.
Another Berticus interview has been posted, and while I do appreciate the work that he does in trying to get answers from the SE development people, I am beginning to think that we are asking the wrong questions. Everyone is always going to ask them how to beat AV, and everyone is going to always complain about Kings, and everyone is going to always complain about the XP grind, and the low drop rates on X, and etc, etc, etc. Why do we keep asking the same questions when we can already predict the answers? Why do we keep blaming SE for not giving us the information we think we need? Here is a shocking revelation for some, and a completely obvious observation for others. AV is completely beatable, as it exists in the game, right now. We just don't know how to beat it yet. SE wants the players to be the ones that figure out how to defeat it, and that is not a bad thing. If I was doing an interview, I would ask different questions, more subtle and less direct. Instead of asking how to beat AV, I would ask what the players are doing wrong. Are we missing something completely, or are we very close and just need to do one or two things differently? We need better follow up, like when we ask about Kings and they say that they are keeping them but they are going to provide alternatives, we need to ask about the alternatives and not about what they are going to be like in the game, but instead what about them is going to be different. We don't need to know specifics about the event and how it works in the storyline, we need to know how it is going to fix staring at Darters for 3 hours, or how it is going to fix horrible drop rates.
I would also like to know more about their decision-making process. Like how they came to the idea to do Kings, or when they decided to fix Sky or any number of development decisions that effect how the game is created. I think knowing this information would put many of the older questions into better perspective.
Anyway, we are getting new things, but I am less interested in what they are fixing and instead of the new things that are coming down the pipe. Maybe tomorrow.
#1 ~ Monk
#2 ~ Samurai
#3 ~ Ninja
#4 ~ Dragoon
Chaotic Pellucidity
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