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

[Apelila]

If you do take SMN up first its one of the 'easier' matt fights. Just make sure you skill up a bit first, if you can get [a] Emphermeal paradox access and a refresh atma that's the best place to do it.

[The Stig]

Not returned, nearly!

But for BSTs, are they still entirely dependant on jug pets (I know there's been new ones) inside Abyssea? Or is there charmable stuff floating around. Although I cannot gauge at the moment, I do feel that with call Beast being 5 mins (4:30 merited?) it still seems quite limiting, or are they even more buffer/powerful than before now?

Also, how are the 4 new pets? I was most interested in the Genbu one lol.

[Byrthnoth]

The jug pets are much more powerful than you remember. Downside is that there is essentially nothing charmable in endgame anymore. You can get your Call Beast timer down to 3:55 with 5/5 merits and ACP body. Also, Monster Gloves +2 make your pets always come out at your level.

Best pets at the moment are Dipper Yuly (TH3, Triple Attack, high evasion, Ladybug) or the new Hippogryph pet (expensive q.q), who also has all those JTs and moonlights as a total badass.

[Ramru]

I've read over the whole thread and think I'm am starting to get a feel for the majority of the new content, but I have 2 questions:

If my friend and I are planning on duoing our way though the majority of Abyssea with him on 99THF, Should I level BLM/BRD for procs or WHM to keep him alive? We have a friend who has both jobs leveled, but, unfortunately, she's not an incredibly competent player, so I'm hoping to delegate the less important role to her. I'm assuming that going BLM/BRD for procs takes slightly more skill than cure spam, but I could be wrong. My only issue with this is that IF there were a time where she was unable to come WHM, would we be unable to duo as THF + BLM/SCH?

My second question is, "How viable is THF these days"? I remember various events at the 75 cap (Salvage) that basically weren't even worth attending / going through without TH4 in the party, but with the new lights system, would he be better of just leveling NIN? TLDR: How good / bad are drop rates these days?

Thanks for any and all help!

[Alvein]

WHM doesn't require much competency these days in Abyssea. Main thing you need are cure macros, -na macros, haste macros.
However if it's a player that is afk, can't focus, whm isn't for them, it's easy but you do need to have a good refresh, haste, cure V, cure VI rotation.
BLM/BRD is more expensive than anything for a new player. Looking at probably 1.5 mil for the spells depending on current rates on your server.

Timing for procing yellow probably more important than anything. probably the easier of the two, also is nice to have your skills up so you can help DD. THF can survive well but most thieves can't deal damage very quickly without feeding the mob a ton of TP. That's where nin/war is superior.

Honestly towards the beginning red procs are going to be more important than anything as you get your atmas, abyssites and KIs done. You can duo/trio abyssea but you're gonna run into the annoying scythe or great sword red proc that will trip you up. I'd say get your warrior up if you haven't already. If you want to fight with just a couple ppl you'll probably have to warp out and change a lot or fight multiple times.

[Isiolia]

My only issue with this is that IF there were a time where she was unable to come WHM, would we be unable to duo as THF + BLM/SCH?

If you were taking a sub for support, you'd probably want to use /WHM rather than /SCH - get Cure IV, Haste, etc, and some Light procs to boot. It'd likely depend some on what you were fighting, but there's a fair bit you could manage.

I remember various events at the 75 cap (Salvage) that basically weren't even worth attending / going through without TH4 in the party, but with the new lights system, would he be better of just leveling NIN? TLDR: How good / bad are drop rates these days?

TH is still desirable, but with Abyssea it's a lot more about the procs. Between THF and NIN, it'd depend on what you were targeting. If what you want is affected by yellow proc (seals, +2 items), then THF is fine, since you can cover most NIN procs with /NIN (Kurayami being the exception, as it won't reliably land from sub). NIN would be far better if your goal is proc'ing red (key items, including Atmas/Abyssites), though you'd still have a couple you couldn't get access to. Blue Proc you'll have a hard time guaranteeing your ability to get unless one of you levels MNK. Easiest way to lock that down is MNK + WHM and fight during blunt time. MNK can cover almost everything for H2H/Staff/Club, and WHM can get whatever they can't (like Hexa).

As mentioned, your initial goals should likely be more KI focused, since having Atmas/Abyssites will make things easier in general.

IMO, if you're planning to duo/trio, plan to level multiple jobs. XP is far easier to come by these days, so that's really not setting the bar too high.

[Kurp]

Even now I see a decent amount of shout groups filling up for the key atmas like Minikin, Beyond, Razed Ruins, Voracious Violet, etc. Going that route would probably be pretty painless. You can do that for Caturae and zone boss clears also. I would strongly suggest doing that first, because good atmas makes everything in Abyssea so much easier. It's hard to overstate how much of an effect they have. My group was clueless and starting farming seals without atmas and it was incredibly slow and tedious. With atmas, shit went from taking forever to being pretty quick and painless.

BLM/SCH is really nice because Dark/Light Arts makes up for your terrible skill levels as a new player, but it's pretty poor at supporting people compared to /WHM or /RDM. You don't get Haste or Cure IV and -na spells are all under Light Arts.

One thing to note about BLM is that yellow proc spells add up to be quite a bit of money for a new player, probably around 2 million gil. Almost all of them can't be quested, Drain and Aspir might be the only ones. If your friend already has BLM and those spells, you'd probably be better off leveling WHM first unless someone will give or lend you money. There are plenty of other things you can be doing if they aren't around to proc yellow for seals. It did take me a lot of time to get all those BLM spells and the majority was funded by questing and selling Teleport and Recall spells.

THF or NIN is probably personal preference. Either way you're going to have to make money to get the ninjutsu spells, or raise Tenshodo fame to be able to quest most of the expensive ones (other than Utsusemi: Ni). Dancer is also worth considering if someone wants to play dual wield style and lacks support.

[Ramru]

Thanks for all the responses! One additional piece of info. is that, while I'm starting a new toon, I'm not an entirely new player and I'm thinking of reactivating my old account to take the gil, ISP, ect. that I need off of it.

I'm not too worried about the cost of spells, but I guess my next question would be, "What would be the ideal jobs for two new players looking to maximize their time spent in Abyssea?" I get a strange feeling that WHM is going to be one of them, but what would you guys recommend for the second? That, or I would love to hear if someone had ideas about the order that we should level our jobs in (I.E. you should go WHM->BLM->... and he should focus on WAR->NIN->THF->...). I understand that we're going to have to focus on Atmas/Abyssites first, so maybe there's some variance in the jobs required for that, ect.

Luckily, my friend and I are restarting on Bahamut, which is a server where we have a lot of close friends who merged over from Ramuh. My two closest friends would probably be a guy who has a 99MNK, BLM, RDM, BST, RNG, SAM, NIN and SMN all well geared and a girl who has 99WHM, RDM, BLM, SAM and WAR all decently geared. It's not like I can never rely on these folks, but my friend and I who are restarting want to be able to work on the new content, as much as possible, by ourselves.

Thanks again!

[Radec]

Thanks for all the responses! One additional piece of info. is that, while I'm starting a new toon, I'm not an entirely new player and I'm thinking of reactivating my old account to take the gil, ISP, ect. that I need off of it.

I'm not too worried about the cost of spells, but I guess my next question would be, "What would be the ideal jobs for two new players looking to maximize their time spent in Abyssea?" I get a strange feeling that WHM is going to be one of them, but what would you guys recommend for the second? That, or I would love to hear if someone had ideas about the order that we should level our jobs in (I.E. you should go WHM->BLM->... and he should focus on WAR->NIN->THF->...). I understand that we're going to have to focus on Atmas/Abyssites first, so maybe there's some variance in the jobs required for that, ect.

Luckily, my friend and I are restarting on Bahamut, which is a server where we have a lot of close friends who merged over from Ramuh. My two closest friends would probably be a guy who has a 99MNK, BLM, RDM, BST, RNG, SAM, NIN and SMN all well geared and a girl who has 99WHM, RDM, BLM, SAM and WAR all decently geared. It's not like I can never rely on these folks, but my friend and I who are restarting want to be able to work on the new content, as much as possible, by ourselves.

Thanks again!

WAR(/nin) + WHM is a great duo to deal with going back to get all the abyssites/atma without a group. It'll take some skilling up and gear, but the key-item triggers https://www.bg-wiki.com/bg/Abyssea#Red can all be hit by a war with a pile of katana/gkat skill gear/merits - it's probably not worth getting Bushinomimi for tachi:koki, but the others aren't terribly hard. Don't worry about the katana/gkat procs right away though, 10/13 with just war-main weapons will do most of the time.

It's not as easy to get the abyssea +2 armor just duo, best bet there would be thf/nin + blm/whm - which can be a lot of stress on the blm, depending on the fight - adding your other 2 friends, BLM(/brd) WHM THF <some other melee> will cover 6/7 of the af3 material procs https://www.bg-wiki.com/bg/Abyssea#Green

If you're definitely going to split 1 person mage, 1 person melee:

war>30, nin>49, sam>49, war>99, thf>99
whm>30, blm>49, sch>49, whm>99, blm>99

would be the fastest way to cover most of abyssea content in a duo - could probably even move the sam and sch subs until done with first pair of 99's.

Edit: Additionally, whm and war both have relatively easy maat70's (sleep tp, mightstrikes, ragingrush, Icarus wing, ragingrush) and (Repose, wait til wears off, repeat until win)

[Apelila]

If you can reactivate a character it might be better to do that than level a new toon for a couple reasons. The biggest would be if your old character had a lot of conquest/imperial standing, or any crafts leveled.

If you wanted to level with your friends from the very start, and you had mostly mage jobs leveled before then you could roll a mule for melee only and go through old content with them on that. That would also give you the added bonus of intentory + from not having the rare/ex stuff on your main. Since a good portion of Rare/ex stuff can be sent between characters on the same account now you wouldn't be forced to come on that character to get a drop either (unless it wont send).

[Milo]

So I've been doing some more thinking about what I would like to accomplish if I were to come back to the game. I've always had this dream to play with the BST sub job, capitalizing on the fact that "charm" from /BST has a success rate at whatever level the main BST job is.

Knowing this, I've often thought about how fun it would be to level BST, and then go back and level a few jobs as /BST. (this is coming from a person who enjoys soloing as BST, a wonderful aspect to FFXI that many people do not get to experience) RDM/BST, WHM/BST and PLD/BST would be fun. They each put out damage that hopefully wouldn't steal attention from their pets, while playing with enfeebling, enhancing, healing, and damage-mitigating abilities that a BST main never had access to. BLU/BST would be fun if only for the adventure of learning BLU spells as you go, mixing and matching BLU abilities as necessitated by the camp grounds. (I could see NIN/BST, THF/BST, DNC/BST, and BRD/BST working also)

So I've been doing some research but I figured I'd ask here. Are there FoV/GoV available all the way through high levels? With Charmable mobs? (Since only BST main can use Jug Pets) Do BST themselves even solo anymore? I'm not really interested in getting to 99 in a week or whatever, I want to enjoy the journey there.

[loyaltrekie]

Terribly noob question that I could probably dig through the internet to find but yea.. thanks in advance.

My buddy and I played XI from PS2 release, jumped to 360 with Aht Urghan/WoTG, and quit a bit after the first mini-expansion(ACP iirc). Were planning on coming back but going to do so on PC, how does SE handle access again to content? Would I need to buy a new box for PC for a new serial key, or is it global regardless of which box you bought? What if a buddy of us wants to play with us but only has AhtUrghan(what would be the best box to actually buy, the abyssa collection one)?

Bonus question: We've both got maat caps, but we quit way before the level increase so were just a...tiny bit behind. What should be the first few things we should do after logging in(aside from the exploring we'll be doing, lol).

[TSFFXI]

Just buy the abyssea bundle. It's $20ish and you need the three abyssea expansions anyway.

Unlock abyssea and voidwatch so that you can start accruing stones, then get to Lv.99, and then go from there.

[TSFFXI]

So I've been doing some more thinking about what I would like to accomplish if I were to come back to the game. I've always had this dream to play with the BST sub job, capitalizing on the fact that "charm" from /BST has a success rate at whatever level the main BST job is.

Here are the available pages for FoV and GoV. As you can see, fields stops shortly after Lv.80 and grounds goes all the way to 99.

The game has changed a little since you left. BSTs do still solo, but rarely for EXP. The reason is that it is very easy to get EXP now, so much so that it only takes a matter of days to get to Lv.99. You say you want to enjoy the journey of leveling, but I'd encourage you to just Abyssea burn to 99 and then enjoy the other aspects of the game; there is quite a bit of new content that you can work on. You can still do GoV for fun, and you might come across rare items which can be found in the gold boxes.

On a side note, DNC/BST was some of the most fun I've had before the level increases.

[loyaltrekie]

Another silly question but I'm guessing SE is still not doing official add-ons; glanced through the thread a bit and didn't see anything about windowerer and the such - is that gone/no one using it or has all the 'unofficial addons' gone away now?

[Radec]

The one linked in the op [http://store.steampowered.com/app/39250/ ] is still the best box to buy as of now right? Grants all current ingame content from what I can see; but admittedly I haven't exactly kept up with the game in the past 2 years.

That's the one, but it's often cheaper at amazon or other places, steam one stays right around 20$, occasionally sale for 10$.

[Apelila]

Another silly question but I'm guessing SE is still not doing official add-ons; glanced through the thread a bit and didn't see anything about windowerer and the such - is that gone/no one using it or has all the 'unofficial addons' gone away now?

Windower.net - still around, there's just other threads for it. See here And there's a few additions to it since.

[bungiefan]

Well, I may be returning soon. JP support emailed me finally a week ago, after 4 months without any word. They say they'll attempt a one-time cross-region POL account transfer to another SE Account. They're not sure if they can make it work, and I'll never be able to do it again, but it should be enough to let me finish everything I want to do with the game.

American billing allows Crysta to be bought with PayPal now right? In any increment? I'm only familiar with the billing system from when I got kicked out in July, and mainly the Japanese one since that's what I was stuck using.

[bungiefan]

Well, I may be returning soon. JP support emailed me finally a week ago, after 4 months without any word. They say they'll attempt a one-time cross-region POL account transfer to another SE Account. They're not sure if they can make it work, and I'll never be able to do it again, but it should be enough to let me finish everything I want to do with the game.

American billing allows Crysta to be bought with PayPal now right? In any increment? I'm only familiar with the billing system from when I got kicked out in July, and mainly the Japanese one since that's what I was stuck using.

[kamugi]

Well, I may be returning soon. JP support emailed me finally a week ago, after 4 months without any word. They say they'll attempt a one-time cross-region POL account transfer to another SE Account. They're not sure if they can make it work, and I'll never be able to do it again, but it should be enough to let me finish everything I want to do with the game.

American billing allows Crysta to be bought with PayPal now right? In any increment? I'm only familiar with the billing system from when I got kicked out in July, and mainly the Japanese one since that's what I was stuck using.

You can buy crysta with paypal through 'ultimate pay,' and there's an option to specify an exact amount of crysta to purchase. This is actually how I pay for my accounts too, and I don't get any random extra fees when I do it, 1 penny = 1 crysta.