New or Returning Players Discussion (Or Anything Old FFXI Then Vs. Now)

[Beave]

BLU and BRD are good because they are used to proc grellow !! to make seals and +2 emp armor items drop. SMN is pretty much only used with Alexander for perfect defense -- it's great for niche situations and seems to be the most widely used means of defeating AV. In short, BLU or BRD should be your first 90 if you are only interested in those jobs.

[Cymmina]

Hey, i'm a returning player on Siren, and starting from scratch. My favorite jobs when I quit were BLU and SMN (and to a leser extent BRD), and I was wondering if either of them were considered worthwhile to hit 90 first with.

BLU has a spot if your group is doing "grellowing" inside of Abyssea. They can easily farm boxes once they get higher level spells like Thermal Pulse, Leafstorm, and Charged Whisker. I duoed BLU inside Abyssea at 68 with meh gear and did alright (Ifrit's Blade, Republigar).

SMN is not very useful inside of Abyssea. Perfect Defense still has its uses outside of Abyssea. Voidwatch benefits from hate free damage, but it isn't a very popular event at this point in time.

BRD is BRD. No one doesn't love a BRD, but it isn't 100% required all of the time inside of Abyssea. Still want one for non-Abyssea content.

If you had those 3 jobs in my group, your time would probably be spent 50/50 between BRD and BLU. My group doesn't do much content that benefits from a SMN.

[Spira]

SMN has been really marginalized at lv90, especially in Abyssea. In abyssea, its still a nice job that can be tweaked using atma to deal devastating damage, but its majorly held back by the BP timer especially when a DD job can do like the same amount of damage in a matter of 5~ melee hits. Still, it feels like a playground for SMN because you can get a wellspring of MP that virtually never runs out.
outside, where most things are <T now, their DD ability diminishes because everyone else can competently outdamage them safely.

but in Voidwatch, which is one of the few places where NMs are actually challenging outside of Abyssea, SMN shine very well. Their ability to dmg on command, albeit on timer, reliable damage against the NMs, ability to pseudotank, zombie, stay out of range from harm.. makes them very very useful.

[bruice]

I'll be returning shortly again myself this coming weekend but some of this shit confuses me lol. All this procing Grellow, Blue!!, etc. How does that exactly work? And from the past couple of posts if you are looking to farm anything, BLU/BRD are best for it to proc Grellow? Of course THF helps as well.

[Spira]

NMs in abyssea work on a stagger system which helps to increase the drop rate of various things they may drop.

Theres red (officially called ruby), blue (officially azure) and grellow (offiicially amber). Proccing them once increases their drop rate chances, but more than that it'll give a negative result.

red is for key items that drop from the NM. Atma, trig, abyssite
blue is for regular drops like weapon and eq
grellow is for empyrean upgrade items, like job seals and coins/jewels/cards...

Each type of proc has a different set of possible moves that proc it.

Red is only through magic-based ws
Blue through higher-level ws
Grellow through spells

you can check out http://wiki.ffxiclopedia.org/wiki/Stagger for the complete list of these procs and how they're assigned.

note also that neo-dynamis and voidwatch also utilize stagger systems, but theirs are entirely different.

[bruice]

Yea. I knew that it increases drops but had no idea one set was for a certain thing. I still trolled BG for the 3years when I quit, just looked at the drama and pics, never studied the updates as I thought I'd never come back lol. Looks like I got some reading and studying to do. Thanks

[Lordender]

Ah well, I give up, I can't get past the 60257 error, bank tells me its SE, SE tells me its my bank, not playing that game. Don't have access to ps2 or xbox 360 to bypass the BS, What a waste of money.

[Valisk]

Ah well, I give up, I can't get past the 60257 error, bank tells me its SE, SE tells me its my bank, not playing that game. Don't have access to ps2 or xbox 360 to bypass the BS, What a waste of money.

Hello, prepaid debit card?

[Ebonics]

Greetings, comrades. I'm debating picking up the game again with two other friends. However, I'm kind of hesitant to play the game when it seems like absolutely everything is Abyssea now. I'll be starting from scratch so I really don't want to grind out all of those levels if the only thing left to do is to farm Abyssea in order to get more shit to farm Abyssea with. Are there still challenges in other areas of the game or has most of it been trivialized by the new level caps?

[Mercilessturtle]

the only thing left to do is to farm Abyssea in order to get more shit to farm Abyssea with

Take out the word abyssea and you described how ffxi has always been. If you don't like farming gear to farm gear, then ffxi isn't a good choice. If you are ok with it, then what does it matter which event is currently popular? Most of the old content was already trivialized at 75. Now you do the 6 man fights with 2-3, and the 12 man fights with 6. The only old content they actually deleted was city/northlands dynamis.

[Ebonics]

Take out the word abyssea and you described how ffxi has always been. If you don't like farming gear to farm gear, then ffxi isn't a good choice. If you are ok with it, then what does it matter which event is currently popular? Most of the old content was already trivialized at 75. Now you do the 6 man fights with 2-3, and the 12 man fights with 6. The only old content they actually deleted was city/northlands dynamis.

I see what you're saying, but in the past it felt like SE scattered most of the best items around the game pretty evenly. You kinda needed something from everywhere to get your character where you wanted it. It seems pretty one dimensional if everything you'd ever need was in Abyssea or is that not the case?

And about dynamis... I was debating playing a THF, so I was kinda curious how much of a pain it would to get my hands on a pair of Assassin's Armlets. Is getting Xarca access / farming the drop, something I could do with just the three of us friends or am I going to need external aid?

[Mercilessturtle]

Getting armlets you could do just fine solo, getting the beauc win is the only issue. I don't think 3 would do it, I think he still does chainspell death.

[Gwynplaine]

Ah well, I give up, I can't get past the 60257 error, bank tells me its SE, SE tells me its my bank, not playing that game. Don't have access to ps2 or xbox 360 to bypass the BS, What a waste of money.

What does that error code mean is it the secure code thing? If so did you check the work arounds thread link posted in the OP?

[Jimmyus]

So I started on Siren and been playing this week, but actually there are almost no people I still remember who still play, and the game kind of sucks solo after a while. Anybody willing to take in a ward? Mostly just for the company of fellow returners

[Sirenia]

So I started on Siren and been playing this week, but actually there are almost no people I still remember who still play, and the game kind of sucks solo after a while. Anybody willing to take in a ward? Mostly just for the company of fellow returners

I have thought of playing again, but ya with so many who have quit I imagine it would be best to make some new friends.

I have WHM, RDM, BRD, SMN at 75. Would I focus on WHM first now since it's awesome? (I also have BLM and DNC at 58 that I'm interested in leveling.)

[Jahi]

30 minutes to go! Forgot how long it takes to update.

[Atkasha]

Hey everyone, I'm a totally brand new FFXI player. (This is actually my first serious MMO in general) I've always been interested in this game but never got the chance to become apart of it until recently.

I'm currently on my second week of playing and have a level 50 RDM under my belt and am currently leveling a WAR (who is at 18 right now) for my future plans to create a Nin, Sam and whatever else comes to mind. However, one ideal issue is keeping me from effectively progressing to where I wanna be. A lack of gil (In this game it's expensive to pretty much do a lot of things for a beginner and ways of making steady money until you become pretty damn strong are very slim) and the lack of true non-endgame parties that need things such as the Genkai missions, AF gear etc.

Long story short, I was wondering if there are any people on this server (Bahamut) that are capable of helping me out every once in a while so I can get where I wanna be (At the point where I can form endgame parties for people and contribute effectively). I'm available pretty much everyday for a while (just graduated high school, no internship for a bit) so time isn't really an issue. My characters name is the same as my username so feel free to send me a friend request and track me down when I'm on or just send me a /tell to see if I'm on. Cheers guys.

[Churchill]

Whenever I low man stuff outside of Abyssea it's great to have a RDM and preferred due to versatility/enfeebling, though good ones are hard to find...

Inside Abyssea, if I had a RDM who could land enfeebles on certain things, and we have enough of whatever else we need then yes...otherwise our WHM army curebombing performs better.

[Churchill]

Hey everyone, I'm a totally brand new FFXI player. (This is actually my first serious MMO in general) I've always been interested in this game but never got the chance to become apart of it until recently.

I'm currently on my second week of playing and have a level 50 RDM under my belt and am currently leveling a WAR (who is at 18 right now) for my future plans to create a Nin, Sam and whatever else comes to mind. However, one ideal issue is keeping me from effectively progressing to where I wanna be. A lack of gil (In this game it's expensive to pretty much do a lot of things for a beginner and ways of making steady money until you become pretty damn strong are very slim) and the lack of true non-endgame parties that need things such as the Genkai missions, AF gear etc.

Long story short, I was wondering if there are any people on this server (Bahamut) that are capable of helping me out every once in a while so I can get where I wanna be (At the point where I can form endgame parties for people and contribute effectively). I'm available pretty much everyday for a while (just graduated high school, no internship for a bit) so time isn't really an issue. My characters name is the same as my username so feel free to send me a friend request and track me down when I'm on or just send me a /tell to see if I'm on. Cheers guys.

And if you ignore my above post praising RDM, I'd leave it at 50 and start leveling something that will: a) get you invited b) allow you to participate in a cost effective manner for yourself c) gives you some leeway to accomplish missions and level other jobs

You primarily need to get to 90, and iirc you are stopped at 50 and 55 for limit breaks which require help, so do some shouts and find other people looking for the same thing or even ask someone who is partying with you to help out afterward. When you have leveled your useful job (note, doesn't have to be something you want to play much) like WHM or BRD to 90, now you can do stuff like sell your dominion notes weapons for gil, do missions, get cash money and sex up some ladies. Don't buy Raise III, people don't need it and you're looking to be cost effective. BLM would normally fit into the category of useful stuff to level but it's extremely expensive right now. You can also do quests for stuff and sell the scrolls (Teleports, Recall, Retrace come to mind) If you plan on playing a job that uses those scrolls, consider not selling all of them so you don't need to buy them back later. Even if you sell them all now to gear your WAR, you can always make more money later so it's not terribly important.

A couple regen atma's on WAR and 1-2 amber lights gets you sisyphus fragments for 200k each in Ulegerand, so yeah.

[Apelila]

BLM isn't expensive to level spell farming wise if you have time/patience. Most of the $$$$ spells are quested, but doing the quests is a gigantic pain in the ass time wise. Hence why they're expensive.

Sleepga 2 is actually easier now than it has been in the last 2-3 years due to the number of people doing the quest. It involves trading items that you can only get through the quest and the number of people doing it now is higher than its been for a while. If you are never going to level BLM for instance, sleepga II goes for 1 million on my server. Some of this is people who quested/sold the scroll back in the day who are now leveling BLM for the hell of it, the other part of it is that gil for the most part is easy to get @ 90.

Hell the fact that you can look ahead and ask for input puts you ahead of 50% of the players already.