Coming Back At This Point...

So i been thinking for a while now, i miss this game and i honestly would love to come back. especially see'ing all the new ***open up like abyssea, the end to WoTG missions and all the new gear and upgradable/augmentable stuff. to add on to this, i would have so much stuff to do see'ing as how I got to 75RDM only and quit shortly after due to RL ***. still would have to finish CoP and all the others.

with this i ask, is it even possible to keep leveling other jobs seeing as how the majority of people are all 80+?

I remember the level sync being implemented but... at this rate i don't want to get my hopes up and rebuy this later to /toss because i can't get any decent exp or able to party up. lol it's either that or level BST eh? (which i dont mind).

any suggestions?

What holds me back from jumping in again is dropping $30 for the add-ons, and then another $15 for the monthly fee. Leveling up itself would be a slow start just to get a feel for all the new content, but other than that aslong as you have a few friends that don't suck and are willing to redo a bunch of content to help, you shouldn't have any problems.

do you mean you want to start as a new character or reactivate rdm 75? at rdm 75 you probably won't have too much trouble getting to 90 in abyssea.

for lower level jobs, they changed the xp system quite a lot, so it's pretty easy to level up lowbie jobs with fov (quest where you kill mobs, get bonus xp). at 30 you can choose to leech in abyssea or you could keep leveling with fov.

story lines like cop and rank missions have had their level caps removed, so they're pretty easy now.

Just pick up or I should say order a copy of the Ultimate collection.It's dirt cheap now with all the add ons included.

I would recommend it. If you're a veteran you will be a bit put off by the new content, but after the shock you will love every minute of it.

Abyssea is probably not what you think. It isn't any endgame content that requires a linkshell etc. It might seem like a lot of information at first but really just get yourself started accumulating traverser stones (by opening the missions of the first Aby expansion) and go from there. Essentially, you get 200k EXP an hour in a typical PT. This is why you might be put off - it makes everything you did the past however many years worthless. But because of that, your worries about leveling up being difficult are also meaningless. You can take any job you've wanted to play to 90 by AFKing overnight should you find a group that lets you. This is looked down upon of course unless you actually know how to play.

Unfortunately there's less focus on storyline content like WotG missions, but CoP is now almost soloable because it is uncapped in all areas/battlefields.

tl;dr version: every worry you might have probably comes from misunderstanding and you should disregard it and get into the game as soon as you can. It's a new and amazing experience for those who have quit.

^^^

Yea I used to play on the Alexander server, had a 75WAR/THF/BRD/SMN/PLD
decided to quit then, restarted in Caitsith and only got to leveling RDM before RL struck again. 200k exp/hr is insane. I remember getting 40k merit burns were the ***. And now it seems like no one is after the usual Behe/Faffy/Ada. anymore. Ofcourse higher levels would equal more interesting fights and better gear. But it does seem like the game
has taken a change for the better.

@Lorzy, I'd definitely re-activate the 75RDM to have atleast an advantage out there.

@Soluna They usually have temporary offers that you can get the whole thing for like 4.99$ + ofcourse the monthly fee. Comes out of the blue every now and then.

to my knowledge they haven't yet offered a cheaper price on abyssea (though i could be wrong), but maybe they will soon. but quite frankly you won't be able to do much in the game without abyssea.

if what you're worried about is being able to catch up to everyone else, that's exactly what abyssea does, as mentioned above with 200k/hr xp. however, abyssea has also narrowed the amount of useful jobs down to about 7 jobs, but you can worry about that later.

I haven't tried this personally, but they have adjusted the exp you get for EP and DC mobs. Its around 80-130 now. I bet you could get a job to 30 pretty quick soloing EP mobs. Assuming its not brd or something that cant kill anything on its own.

Yea, I heard WHM came back into light. MNK is the ***, THF is still good, SAM will probably always be useful. PLD is now main tanking most the stuff as opposed to the old NIN over PLD routines. And I still haven't even taken a stab at the advantages of having your sub @Lv.45

A bigger question would be, how is gil treating everyone? Still inmensely difficult to make ends-meat? I've seen the price of alot of the stuff go down lately like Hauby, a couple abjurations, some synths, Hagun, Maneater, Dusk.

If you were told that, you were told wrong. SAM without Empyrean weapon (Relic v2 but better and much easier/less time consuming to get) will fall short against a WAR/MNK/NIN/THF/DNC/WHM (probably BRD too) in Abyssea, and PLD doesn't tank things. NIN, THF, MNK, WAR or any other DD tanks things (the aforementioned seem to be the most popular/widely used though).

I believe someone else will have that "How jobs fare" in Abyssea chart that shows the effectiveness of each job as DD's, tanking's a moot point now though because most/everything is either bloodtanked and killed (war/mnk) or eva tanked and killed (nin, thf, dnc).


EDIT: Back on track though, the game's worth checking out at least if you're coming back. It's changed quite a bit from the "omg need to sit here for hours on end" scenario into the stage where you can achieve a decent amount in a couple of hours with 2~3 people.

Beyond leveling gear, unless your a rng, cor or nin you don't really need all that much gil as all the gear is r/e from abyssea. That said it is very much a crafter's market at the moment, you can make some nice profit from crafts, but things do take longer to sell. Another way to make gil is to farm pop items for popular NMs in abyssea, those tend to sell well if you need the gil. Also while exping you can probably get some of the r/e items from gold chests in abyssea, those sell for 3-10k each and you can get a lot in a good abyssea party, wont make you rich but its enough to keep you going.

By blood tanking im assuming ***dies in abyssea fairly quick? And in abyssea time is limited? and wtf are atmas?

atmas are key items from mobs, you need to do the correct one of 13 elemental weaponskills to ensure the atma "drops". when you do this one of the random weaponskills when the mob isn't using a tp move or casting, it will get a red !! over it and the mob will be terrored for a bit. there's still a small chance of it dropping without the !! proc.

yes time is limited, you need to get time extensions to stay in the area longer than 120 minutes. time you can spend in abyssea is based on traverser stone key items, kind of like assault tags, but they can recharge faster depending on other key items you get, and a lot more can be stored... there's no cap i'm aware of, but many people have more than 200 stones stored.

the most useful jobs in abyssea are mnk war nin thf whm blm blu.

Things don't always die fast, but Mages have near-unlimited MP (this ties in with Atmas) and melee (hopefully) have ~3k+ HP.

Abyssea time is "limited", at first you may struggle to get "infinite" time, but after you get a few Key Items, you'll be able to enter pretty much whenever you want due to always having time to burn in there.

Atmas are basically "God mode" inside Abyssea. Mages can get Atma with Refresh, MND+, INT+, MAB+, MAcc+, Cure Potency+: Pretty much anything you could want.

DD's can get Crit Hit Rate+, Crit Hit Damage+ (major reason WAR/MNK/NIN/THF/DNC are top DD's inside), Triple Attack+, Double Attack+, STR+, DEX+, Att+, etc.

There's also "Atma of the Apocalypse", gained from mashing the "Mega boss" of Abyssea to pieces. Will give a whopping Triple Attack +15% (making it a good DD atma), "Quick Cast" which Chainspells a spell at random (apparently ~10% proc rate) and Auto-RR3 (so you get RR once every time you die).

For example:

My WHM typically uses:
Atma of the Minikin Monstrosity
Atma of Ambition
Atma of the Full Moon

This gives me:
Refresh:20/tick
Fast Cast+:Minor(10%)
INT+: +60
Magic Attack+: Minor (10)
Enmity -: Minor (Prolly like -10 or something)
Movement Speed+:Major(12.5%)


My WAR uses:

Atma of the Razed Ruins
Atma of the Voracious Violet
Atma of the Alpha & Omega

This gives me:
DEX:+50
Critical Hit Rate: +30%
Critical Hit Damage: +30%
STR+:+50
"Double Attack"+:+5%
"Regain":2TP/tick
Triple Attack+:+10%
Attack+: +50
HP-: -25%

While WAR gets Raging Rush (a critical based WS), it gets huge damage potential from Razed Ruins (+50 DEX, +Crit hit Rate/Damage).


On top of this, there are Stat boosts you can get inside Abyssea (I believe they too go to +50 of each stat?), along with +% based HP/MP, I believe they go to +100% (though I'm not sure).

Yea I saw a couple 2k-3k weaponskills on some threads. I'm sorry for terrorizing you guys with questions, but how do linkshells handle pops and stuff in abyssea now-a-days? Like ZNMs? Because I remember playing in the times of camping the main 3 behe/faffy/adamant and I felt like I was in more of a job than an actual game. Everything was just so time consuming, to get something minor accomplished took hours on end.

Hi Dipset, overall if you like the FFXI conent, Then yes worth comming back. I'm not much of an abyssea player due to still level a few subs and new mains. But if not mistaken, som NM are 15 min pop times, and other nm's you need first to kill a certain NM or NM's to obtain key items in order to be abel and pop the NM you want. And others Iam not sure if how long time the ??? will be up after killing the NM. But the abyssea content is pretty neat stuff and alot og the AF3 stuff have some nice tings on them. But A's Hit said, mostly DD's used for abyssea content. Not to many players dó older conent, wish my oppinion is a shame, because it still is some great events :)

But i am sure Pro abyssea players xan explanie alot more for you. But welcome back if you decide to dó that.


/Tessy

One of the major problems with abyssea is its has a time limit, u can only get 120 min max at once, at best u can get one 30 min stone per 8 hrs. Since most of the game is abyssea now eventaully u will run out of time and cant play.

Agree time limited yes, but not a problem. Do the pre-quest for enter Abyssea, then go and level any sub job or something for like a week. During this week visit the abyssea and store your 4 stones. And the rest Will go by itself.:) Just bare
In mind u get new stone every 8 hrs.



Well I'm off, have a god day everyone.


/Tessy

Not really. As long as you farm a little bit of time every time you're in, it would actually be hard to run out out of stones. The abyssites for faster stone regeneration and more minutes per stone really help too.
In fact, I rarely have to put in time, and when I do, usually only 1 stone.

I have a 6 person ls, me and my co-ldr farm most trigs duo, so time becomes an issue alot. I suppose with a bigger group u can do more.

When you look at it, its not really that expensive :x. 15 dollars is something most people would spend on a lunch. 30 dollars is just like buying a new game, would only have to pay that once anyway.

Fixed.


Personally, I don't have an Abyssea LS, so I can't say how the majority of them handle drops/items/etc (I assume it'd still run based on points/attendance in most cases). As you said, the 3 Kings was very time consuming (and in most cases for very very little reward). Abyssea's taken away the Time consuming part for the most part (assuming you're prepared anyway).

A pseudo "Treasure Hunter" is on every NM if you can trigger a weakness. As someone mentioned, Elemental Weaponskills will trigger a "Treasure Hunter" effect for Atmas (for Key Items in general to be honest).

Magic spells (BLM, RDM, BRD, BLU and NIN spells are all potential triggers) will increase the drops for AF3+1/2 and Synthesis Materials.

Physical Weaponskills (based on time of day) will trigger TH for Equipment, so actual gear has a better chance of dropping.


All 3 of these effects can be triggered on the same NM. All the Red (Elemental) triggers can be covered by a WAR + NIN (assuming they have all the skills).

The Green/Yellow/"Grellow" (Magic) triggers can be done by a BLM/BRD, BLU/NIN and RDM (WHM, BLM or SCH /RDM works well too because of their natural Enfeebling skill).

The Blue (Physical) triggers can be done with as few as a WHM and MNK during the right time.

With the right preperation, you should be able to do practically all of Abyssea with ~5 people.


Sidenote: I'm with Denore aswell, I rarely need more than 1 stone and I use maybe 2 a week.

I feel pretty cought up, it's all been great info. And see'ing the enthusiasm in your words and explenations honestly does help me want to come back and enjoy this game. By far I could say it's got me hooked. I check into forums every once in a while to see it's progress and even when SE updates and implements retarted gear that has no use for anyone I still smh with out the ability to even play at the moment lol. games fun and has great people/community.

i appreciate all the help and suggestions.

I duo/lowman almost everything these days. If you just take a couple minutes to cap azure (nuke a few ephemerals, or even azure kill your NMs) you keep your time up without even trying, ie. while farming your pop items/KIs. ^^
I guess it depends on what jobs you bring for KI farming. I've even had pretty good luck getting ruby lights, then grabbing the azure out of red boxes, and bingo! TEs galore!

A single Blue Mage can solo time and gold chests. Shouldn't really have any issues nowadays with TE farming.

Good. There really is a boat load of new things to grasp, system-wise. Fearing Abyssea required endgame LS type playing, I didn't start it for weeks back into the game (I had quit XIV b/c well... why do you think?) due to that, but I shouldn't have feared anything. At the very least, start it, because you'll begin accumulating traverser stones, and then do something else while you're getting a grasp on the game via talking to old friends etc.

As a tip you probably won't understand until you play again, with your first trips into Abyssea, go after abyssites of celerity (search "abyssite" on Wiki for a full list and info). There are three, obtain them immediately, or you just might be one of those who complains they're out of time and never accomplish anything. After accumulating 120 without even thinking I could burn 10 a day and not run out if I didn't enter Abyssea for even 3 days. It'll balance out when you find groups who can farm time.

Content-wise, as I said before, you should have no worries. NM respawns are 10 minutes, or their pop ???s appear in a minute after death. Various tasks seem daunting, but nothing as close to old endgame content, and really when it gets moving it actually gets moving - not standing there and looking side to side every 30 minutes of a 3 hour window a la kings. Mobs for that shiny +2 gear you probably think is the most difficult thing to obtain drop 2-3 of the 6 items required to get that, and a group of 4-6 decent players can farm pop sets for said NMs in under half an hour easy.

That's an example to illustrate just how little your worries and frustrations will matter; there are a lot more of the basics to understand, but it'll come so quick you shouldn't worry about it.

The problem is not all trigs are in the same zone, with only 2 ppl once we have the trig or its over camped we move.

Ah, yeah, I can see how time could become an issue when doing a get-in/get trig/get-out kind of run.