.DAT Mining: 5/14/2014 Update - Findings and Discussion

[Yeager]

TBH I'm surprised SE didn't implement a system similar to Conquest Points or Imperial Standing.

I know 10% of EXP per mob doesn't seem like much, but considering how large EXP chains can get in SoA areas, it would add up very quickly.

[Prothescar]

it's evident why they didn't do it, they want to force you to participate in the colonization system. of course, a lot of that got thrown out the window once skirmish became easily accessible, but still.

[EjinCaitsith]

basically just illustrates SE's lack of foresight. yet again. they should've stuck RUN and GEO weapons into the main mythic questline, then made ergon weapons a separate thing for every job: SoA's legendaries.

Honestly I'm not sure it's fair to compare these to the first mythic weapons. This is an entirely different era where mythic weapons, the ones that these ergon weapons emulate to the T, are so significantly less of a time investment to make that it's borderline ludicrous.

Save the larger time grinds for later if legendaries need to be upgraded again. Not right now when the jobs need their mythic-equivalent weapons to be seen by the mainstream as relevant and they have absolutely no other options to achieve that.

I couldn't agree more that GEO/RUN got the shaft; not having a RME to use like every other job makes it near impossible to be absorbed into the game's current meta, especially RUN.

But in terms of difficulty I want to see SoA's ultimates at, I'd say it's overboard in the time sink aspect. Just right with the money aspect. And way too easy in terms of actual difficulty to obtain, like others have said, just timesink and gil.

[NynJa]

But I'm curious. Why bring up Alexandrite when the discussion topic is currently about HP Bayld?

I was mocking your attainment difficulty scale by including freebies from others. It didnt have to be alex, it could have been currency, HMP's, anything. I just used alex.

[Damane]

This was exactly the same problem with alexandrite for a time(before neo-nyzul/salv). I'd be lucky if I could find 100 in a day of camping bazaars most of the time. You're absolutely right that it's insane right now, but definitely not impossible. And situations like this have existed a few times before.



IIRC, people had to do this for the first few mythics, didn't they?

you cant compare it to back then, when mythic were introduced there were the triple amount of people on the servers compared to now.

[EjinCaitsith]

you cant compare it to back then, when mythic were introduced there were the triple amount of people on the servers compared to now.

Which not many knew how to clear efficiently and dropped pathetic amounts of alex. Not to mention, it was on a 24hr cooldown and you needed a group to attempt it. Now anyone with spark gear and trust NPCs can farm bayld at their leisure.

[Damane]

Which not many knew how to clear efficiently and dropped pathetic amounts of alex. Not to mention, it was on a 24hr cooldown and you needed a group to attempt it. Now anyone with spark gear and trust NPCs can farm bayld at their leisure.

there is tough no incentiv to farm bayld tough, ecxept for HP bayld, which many wont give a fuck about. Salvage you got endgame gear?

[Byrthnoth]

Not entirely true. I got 3.5 million Bayld somehow, and it sure wasn't by going out and farming it specifically.

[ccl]

Honestly, the currency part isn't that bad, it's annoying sure, but if it was any cheaper, anyone with legend would finish both mythic in like a week? Between skirmish and the ability to get 10 level 1 mule legend on courrier give you 440k ish bayld a day + the ability to litterally spam skirmish bayld atm can prolly get at least 500-600k bayld a day(so about 250 days?) not playing that much, wich is about the time it take to goes from rank 0 to legend ?

[EjinCaitsith]

It comes back to them nerfing everything so drastically from their original vision. Remember when skirmish was released and parts were <1% drop? They obviously wanted reives to play a big role in what we do in SoA. Even after nerfing skirmish parts, which was obviously really terrible and needed fixing, they added JSE capes to spark more interest, which worked very well. I believe they will continue to put a heavy focus on reives, be it through new JSE accessories or something brand new entirely and we'll have more incentives to participate(Hades and Inner Ra'Kaznar maybe?).

[Damane]

Honestly, the currency part isn't that bad, it's annoying sure, but if it was any cheaper, anyone with legend would finish both mythic in like a week? Between skirmish and the ability to get 10 level 1 mule legend on courrier give you 440k ish bayld a day + the ability to litterally spam skirmish bayld atm can prolly get at least 500-600k bayld a day(so about 250 days?) not playing that much, wich is about the time it take to goes from rank 0 to legend ?

the currency part wouldnt be bad if people would be willing to convert them into HP-bayld, atm tough everyone is sitting on their nails waiting for ergon-wapons to apear for thier other jobs and keeping all the bayld thei can get to themself.

[Fwahm]

Honestly, the currency part isn't that bad, it's annoying sure, but if it was any cheaper, anyone with legend would finish both mythic in like a week? Between skirmish and the ability to get 10 level 1 mule legend on courrier give you 440k ish bayld a day + the ability to litterally spam skirmish bayld atm can prolly get at least 500-600k bayld a day(so about 250 days?) not playing that much, wich is about the time it take to goes from rank 0 to legend ?

Expecting someone to spend $10 extra per month (minus $1 per mule you already have) just to get bayld isn't reasonable.

[Yeager]

I was mocking your attainment difficulty scale by including freebies from others. It didnt have to be alex, it could have been currency, HMP's, anything. I just used alex.

I'm not complaining at all! Please also consider the fact I'm still working on Coalition Assignments. Once that's done I'll ramp up my efforts. In the meantime I'm accumulating HP Bayld as cheaply as possible (or free) from other sources. And if my LS mates choose to donate to my GS then that's their call. No reason to mock that.

Again, I'm not complaining at all. IMHO the number of HP Bayld required is fair.

[ccl]

Lot of people have alt just to fish and they aren't rmt, and that cost them 12.99$/months and it give at best 2m a day; 440k bayld at 10k each for item would be 4.4m a day better than fishing and don't have to afk bot it.

[Prothescar]

Well yeah, but those people are idiots if all they use the alt account for is fishing. One alternate account is worth more than just some extra bayld if it's used properly, but spending extra money just to get bayld isn't a reasonable proposition. If you're balancing multiple XI accounts already and maybe some other MMO subs, that shit adds up. Adding more onto it for pretty much no reason isn't that great for most of us.

I actually question whether having a mule on 24/7 just to fish is worth the added money on an electric bill.

[dasva]

I actually question whether having a mule on 24/7 just to fish is worth the added money on an electric bill.

Last tell I got was $1-2$/mil... so you figure only $2-4 for a days worth of fishing on one character. Electricity usage differs a lot with loading and components but assuming it's just the game running I believe 100 watts is fairly reasonable approximation. I could probably check my bill and figure out exactly but meh. So 2.4 Kilowatthours per day. Prices also vary a lot. Some states average almost 8c/Kilowatthour some *cough Hawaii* are almost 40c/Kilowatthour and some areas in some states are way different than the average. Some countries also average over 40c/Kilowatthour so you are basically looking 19.2-96cents a day to run your comp doing something just like that...

Of course if you do more and factor in the monitor it will be more but then you would be using it for those things and just adding a little load for the fishing. Worst case scenario assuming you could sell at the same price as the vendors you'd net like $20/month just using a comp to fish with 1 account lol

[ccl]

Most people won't do it of course, but I wouldn't be surprised if some people do it, specially if HPBayld cost like 20-50k that will be 8-20m/day!

[Prothescar]

Last tell I got was $1-2$/mil... so you figure only $2-4 for a days worth of fishing on one character. Electricity usage differs a lot with loading and components but assuming it's just the game running I believe 100 watts is fairly reasonable approximation. I could probably check my bill and figure out exactly but meh. So 2.4 Kilowatthours per day. Prices also vary a lot. Some states average almost 8c/Kilowatthour some *cough Hawaii* are almost 40c/Kilowatthour and some areas in some states are way different than the average. Some countries also average over 40c/Kilowatthour so you are basically looking 19.2-96cents a day to run your comp doing something just like that...

Of course if you do more and factor in the monitor it will be more but then you would be using it for those things and just adding a little load for the fishing. Worst case scenario assuming you could sell at the same price as the vendors you'd net like $20/month just using a comp to fish with 1 account lol

varies greatly by PC, but in my intelvidia system with clock and voltage downstepping enabled, on both GPU and CPU, those two components alone while running XI in one window are sitting at a combined 2.163V; 3.038V counting SLI. my rough electrical math that I haven't used in forever using the average amperage of my PSU puts that at around and average of 120W (150W for SLI), to make it look pretty.

Duke Energy charges 9.6701¢/kWh. Puts me at $3.60 (if you remove my second GPU it's $2.88) a day to run my PC with one FFXI window active, not counting monitor, speakers, keyboard, mouse, hard drives, RAM, background processes spiking CPU/GPU/whatever usage, etc.

So for me it'd be more efficient just to buy gil, but that comes with a higher risk of account suspension/termination and some guy in china stealing your identity, so the risk isn't worth the extra cost, but still. For an even more ridiculous PC setup it becomes less and less efficient. Even without that being considered, breaking off from fishing to go run a quick salvage or something would be a more efficient use of time. One salvage run can be worth more than a whole 24 hours of fishing, and it takes 40~60 minutes at the absolute most.

Why did I just spend time doing this?

[dasva]

Most people won't do it of course, but I wouldn't be surprised if some people do it, specially if HPBayld cost like 20-50k that will be 8-20m/day!

Actually not a bad idea... especially since I got all my gear, crafting etc mules soa access for those periods where you could get crazy stuff from the flotsam and I have to log onto them for the log in points anyways... and in the process level them up so they can do speed runs in salvage!

[fantasticdan]

stuff

You also have to figure in the wear it's putting on your computer parts, especially if you're leaving a computer on overnight where you otherwise wouldn't. FFXI has always put an undue amount of stress on your cpu and hdd due to how incredibly poorly optimized it is, but I suppose there are ways to lessen that with ultra low graphics settings, .dat swaps, etc.

You're very unlikely to be able to move your gil at the same price as those large scale sellers thou. You're generally selling at a discount to people as an alternative to those vendors, or more likely, directly TO those vendors. There is also the percent of money you end up losing to paypal/escrow fees. And if you aren't automating the entire process, you have to factor in the amount of your own time spent moving your character around to fish/npc/craft bait or fight people for lures/etc.