Continued Prime Weapon NA Review

Epeo might take 6 months, but thats solo half an hour of easy tasks every 4 days. Almost none collects 30k Alex by themselves, but even assuming you do, my friend did it in less than a month, running 15min Salvage solo every hour.

Point is most of the EMA grind is buyable, you can farm Odyssey, Ambuscade, Omen solo for an hour a day total and get any R15 EMA way faster than Prime stage 4.


Even assuming you would torture yourself by doing that instead of finding a group to unlock it, you can't compere R0 EMA to not having any EMA at all. Many of the EMA are functional at R0 and R15 is just further boost.
What do you assume then? That Prime stage 4 is better than R0 EMA, but worse than R15 EMA, so its placeholder between those ranks? Very specific and narrow assumption.

Lets presume someone IS farming 30k alex by themselves.

Realistically, someone could do 2 Zhayolm runs in about 30 minutes without pre-buying any KI provided theyre doing the initial purchase sometime after 18:00, and they just do this once a day. These two runs should net 60 singles, 2 cotton (avg 12 per pouch = 24 alex), 2.3 Linen (%15 drop rate from NQ boss, at 75 per pouch = 161 alex). Getting 245 Alexandrite per day, doing two Salvage runs back to back in about 30 minutes (might be a bit longer, its been a while), 30000 / 245 * 122.4 days, or about 4 months.

That is still less than it takes to get a stage 3 prime weapon if you're not in a group pulling in 60k+ per run.


Also calling it a "placeholder to EMA" implies that its inferior to EMA.

Theres many ways this could be done such as if a prime stage 3 + is in room their resist rank changes from absorb to 5%. Resist ranks are not hard locked from mobs considering you have mobs like aita who change them constantly ect.

For my first mythic, I farmed all 30k Alex by myself. I started farming it in August of 2016 and I didn’t complete it until early December of 2017. I ran Arrapago nearly everyday, but sometimes I wouldn’t always get a linen pouch. Sometimes I would also run Bhaflau for a linen pouch on the same day but sometimes not. I would also frequently have bad runs where I got less than 30 alex. It’s certainly possible to do, but I never did it again like that. I wasn’t aware that Ambuscade was more efficient. I do think a solo player could eventually get enough muffins for a prime weapon but I don’t think it would be efficient.

Even solo players can get a stage 4 in under a year. This stage makes the weapon good anywhere. While this might seem horrible the worst part to me is it uses the same currency needed to upgrade empy armor. Each job you want full +3 is 400k gall... get ready to add over a month to grind time for each job you want armor on.

That doesn't add up. Linen is 100% and there's a second linen at ~25%

Average salvage 2 was >99 unless you're very clueless and miss all cottons and farm zero gears rushing to the boss. (or got killed by the boss... I guess)

It was <250 runs to 30k

If by "engaging" you mean requires you to grind 1hr a day every day for years rather than, eg, saving up imprimaturs and doing coalitions once every few days/a week whenever you have time, then yes, it's more engaging.

Then you screwed up because it's literally 100% from HQ boss.

I think most annoyed of progress of prime weapons are Gill Buyers, sorry to be frank, not pointing any fingers.

Hi, Frank.

The only thing that bothers me about Primes for example is same currency as empy+3 and no ability to save at least one KI on char. Going every single day when you work and have family is a serious problem. I still think it's awesome in general. Especially that stage 3 seems to be already amazing to farm next stages.

Agreed. The Emp+3 is a real kick in the balls and every night is a drain.

The event is fine (too much running) but the rewards could be tweaked or add some extra incentives while in sortie. Like people just skip as much as possible to get to the bosses. I've never even killed a basement formor etc.

I look at it the other way. 3.5mil is just the empy +3 upgrades for 10 jobs going 5/5. Most people had 5/5 +2s before the cap increased. By the time you did 10 jobs you could have had a Prime Weapon that can be used outside of Sortie. Most +3s are not drastically better than +2s outside of WSD and JA silly pieces.

Once you have Stage 3/4 open then you can start working on the stones for stage 4/5, if that is a future stop gap(It's a MYSTERY). How many jobs do you really need 5/5 +3 that help you farm/unlock your current objectives?

How many jobs are you going to want the potentially best Weapons on?

So the idea that this is so much to do when you can literally have 6 different people working on 6 different weapons at the same time just doesn't fly. This is the easier REMA process so far at release, at least up to Stage 4. Stage 5 is going to be terrible and also unnecessary unless you require completionism/elitism.

Btw my guess for stage 5 is also 25 psyche. Just enough so you get last 5 in December and can make one this year if you have Galli :)

Assuming I'm right and stage 5 is also 10M Galli, then optimal Galli per run would be around 57k. Everything beyond that would let you buy empty or skip some runs.

You’re absolutely right—I did screw up sometimes. Sometimes because he killed me. I ran it primarily on my (at the time) undergeared Dancer.

If you assume something like that you would need to assume screw ups in Sortie too and missed runs etc. Then Prime stage 4 solo would take 2years+

As for the *drite stones.
We got 13~ Octahedrite over the course of the 1mil galli.
Mischief got 1 Hexahedrite on the first run after upgrading, and we got 2 more last night. So 3/3 over two runs.

It really isn't and people shouldn't be thinking about it that way. Prioritize your armor upgrades and you'll still get your weapon finished in the same amount of time.

I think this is dismissive of legitimate concerns about the process.

I don't have any issue with a non-tradable or buyable currency to finish the weapons. What I take issue with is the amount of time required on a daily basis to do Sortie combined with how dull I find the content. I don't like the process because I largely don't like Sortie and, after doing it a fair bit, am already burned out on it.

I don't mind doing segment farms nightly, it's faster paced and there are more rewards for the time spent. It's over in 30 minutes. You don't spend a lot of the time running around between areas. If you could finish Prime weapons doing segfarms for 6 months, I would probably do it and not care that much or complain. I find Gaol fights are interesting because they bring interesting strategies and job comps, so time well spent with good rewards for both of these. You can stack KIs, do two back to back runs in an hour, make almost 3m gil, and get enough KIs for ~5 amped boss fights. If I'm short on time, I just do one segrun and go to bed, if I miss one, it's not a major time commitment the next day or whenever. The content has its flaws but is easier on time, more rewarding, and faster paced. There's also a reachable end goal, finish v25, cap your gear, it's not a fast or easy process but it seems reachable.

OTOH Sortie is an hour commitment. The building KIs over time thing means you have to miss a lot of days in a row to make the KI. When you do get another one, it's a two hour commitment out of the day to do it and the rewards are mediocre in comparison. The shared currency issue has been beaten to death, but that's also a problem for people who want to +3 a bunch of pieces (I don't consider sticking with +2 really viable for most jobs that have good +3 gear). You spend a lot of the run running between areas, even with bolters roll, it takes forever and is boring after a while. If the zone was more condensed or the time commitment less significant, I wouldn't care as much, I can do something I don't like in game for 30 minutes and slog through, I have no desire to dedicated an hour regularly to do game content I don't like or am already burned out on.

None of these have anything to do with people wanting to RMT, buy the process, or whatever. Maybe you love Sortie and that hour is engaging for you, that's fine and for people who do, they don't hate this process as much. Those of us who don't like Sortie find the daily time commitment combined with the content annoying.

Your p
I'm Sorry that you don't like latest content that has been released, which is fun for many players, Also it has two option to play either melee or mage setup, however require players to coordinate objective and get better each run to reach higher Galli, but if it brainless gather 30 mobs and kill and run with anxiety to touch end for the reward, for 30min is your thing I can't blame you, you like this kind of content, that you have been doing for maybe three years.
Everyone enjoy something in FFXI, Such as crafting, Fishing and Mog Garden etc, but don't mean everyone has to do them.

What percentage of the playerbase do you think finds sortie engaging and fun. The majority of the event is spent running through unnecessarily long corridors with bolter's roll up. It would be far more engaging and fun if you spent more time actually fighting stuff and less time mindlessly running from point A to point B.

The question you were looking for is how many do it despite it being unfun. It does not matter how many find it fun.

So if one doesn't like doing the same thing every day, that makes them gil buyer?
i buy gil and enjoy sortie
paradox. brain go brrr

Did not say all of them for sure, bro :D

Imo most of the game would quit if gil wasnt buyable in the hundreds of millions.

Sortie can be somewhat fun and engaging. It even has some interesting things in it.
But having to do it daily, having to follow pretty much the same route every day, having to do the same objectives every time... and not getting any reward for it except the slowly increasing galli amount (since you pretty much can't do any reforge anymore, and earrings +2 system is infuriating and it's probably best to consider they don't even exist)... that's what's making it extremely annoying.

It's a decent event, ruined by how they handled the Prime weapons upgrades.

Really if you dont like it, don't do it, simple as that, SE don't make content to please everyone, FFXI always has been grinding a game.

I'm not the only one, if you read through both threads and the original Sortie thread, you'll find many with the same sentiments.

I like Odyssey for the reasons mentioned before. The Gaol fights are certainly not brainless and I'd argue efficient segment farming groups isn't either.

I don't particularly like Dyna-D, but I don't need to do it frequently and even if I did, it's more tolerable because of the lockout. Being 18 people also opens up chances of bringing suboptimal jobs in and a bit more variation. I can tolerate it even if I don't love it. It's also a good way to earn gil

I find most Ambuscade somewhat enjoyable depending on the strat, but obviously it starts to wear it outs welcome after doing the same fight 30 times. Then again, you can do enough in a short span of time to make it tolerable or break it up however you want. The rewards are also worthwhile and it's not super high commitment or consequence.

Omen is more engaging with the different bosses, but also because there isn't so much time spent running around. Again being alliance content you can bring off meta jobs and the run isn't hinging on 6 players with a short list of jobs.

I just used Odyssey as an example. None of these systems are perfect, but I find them all (and even other older 75 era content) more enjoyable than Sortie is.

None of this really matters, though, the original point was that distilling all the complaints about Sortie into "you just want to buy it" is dismissive of the reason people don't like it or like this process.