Abyssea Discussion

[Raffi_XI]

I also think there might be a rough cap on total light you can get. Last night we did the corpselight camp in canyon for 7-8 hours. The first few kills we kept focusing on blue chests, got 15-20 or so then tried for pearl chests for 15-20. People kept screwing up and we got way too many azure lights trying to get the 15-20 pearl. After we finally got the pearl light cap it seemed (almost 2 hours in maybe), we tried for red chests and could not get a light at all. Shortly after someone passed out so we replaced them with a new guy. I told the new guy to try to get kill shots with weaponskills so he could maybe get us the reds. It worked nicely. Eventually towards the 4-5 hour mark we hit the 600 cap and everything went smooth.

So basically it seems people have a personal cap, and to fix the problem get a new guy and have them build for you?

[Chen]

does bhumi and the shiney key item giving mobs in abyssea-mea show up on widescan? hunting atm, only 2 exp alliance sin zone, and finding nothing atm.

[mai ikari]

does bhumi and the shiney key item giving mobs in abyssea-mea show up on widescan? hunting atm, only 2 exp alliance sin zone, and finding nothing atm.

Just got out of an abyssea run, Bhumi shows on widescan when he's alive. Can't speak for the ephemereal mobs because I wasn't the one on RNG.

[Karbuncle]

Just got out of an abyssea run, Bhumi shows on widescan when he's alive. Can't speak for the ephemereal mobs because I wasn't the one on RNG.

Ephemereal mobs do indeed show up on widescan. i can attest to that.

[Noneko]

Though I'd like to also point out Elemental WS's count as Azure, not Amber.
http://img192.imageshack.us/img192/4017/rlbazure.jpg

Seems like tahrongi mobs are special or bugged.

Xped on mandies numorous times and never had ruby light from ws on them. ONLY from red chests.

As for Ele WS kills, just posting my confirmation (from Konshtat not Tahrongi)

http://img843.imageshack.us/img843/8230/16092505.jpg

After a while, Giant gold chests were dropping like candy.

[Seol]

Did bugards 3 days ago with 16 ppl, brd+cor on both DD pts, our only DDs were MNKx2, SAMx2, BLU and the two CORs, the rest were healers and BLMs (and like 2 leechers!) Both BRDs were pulling and mobs were dying left and right. We had no trouble getting any desired lights at all, we had so much time and caped merits we ended up doing NMs, and even after we saved 90mins.

So today we went back to spend our 90mins on Bugards... but this time we didn't have that many ppl, we only had one brd as puller and as our only buffer. DDs were: RNG, DRGx2, MNK, and PLD with sword/KC pretending to DD, 3 blms, 2 rdms, 1 whm, and 2 leeches. We were killing fast enough with only 1 puller, but we had trouble with pearlscent light, -Melee were delivering the finishing blow- and we weren't getting pearlscent or a light at all, we had common ruby light with WS kill, and Azure with magic on every kill, but pearlscents was very rare, every 8-10 (I'm not exaggerating) melee kill would yield a pearlscent, even wyvern kills weren't giving any kind of light, anyone had this problem? We had our BLMs hold on kill shots for melee to finish off with regular hits out of desperation and no lights at all, fights weren't taking that long, but were not as fast as our first time, needless to say we didn't get more than 12 chests and they were mostly Red boxes with Ebon light-- we ended up timing out.

[urat]

Just got out of a 7 hour Mandy run before we finalyl timed out. We consititantly hovered around the 20~30 min mark, sometimes dipping into 10 mins but then we'd get 2 TEs back to back and be good.

got level 80 and 5 meripos, which rocked.

Anyways, I got some interesting info. Alkaline Humses did not drop for our party once everyone got one. We killed 3 hours worth of mandies and did not see a single one drop after one fell from pool because we all had it.

Had a member join who did not have humus and they started dropping like crazy again but his inv was full so they kept falling to ground.

Just thought you may find it interesting.

[miokomioko]

I've been in Blood Bat runs where Bloody Fangs kept sorting to the ground because everyone already had them but they kept dropping.

[Shamaya]

Just got my BLM from 59-80 in a single alliance off of only 1 traverser stone. I'm sure EXP has been talked-to-death about, but I wanted to emphasize a couple things.

Orchestrating the Alliance (lights)
One of the most valuable things you can have in a pickup alliance is a good leader or at least someone "orchestrating" the flow of things properly. In marathon exp alliances, other than opening boxes and having enough keys to do so, the most important thing you can do to keep it alive is to dictate which lights to farm and when. Like many others, I go in the order of Azure -> Pearlescent -> Ruby -> (Amber, if this is possible). You're going to do this in cycles. When you've gotten about ~2-3 DD reps, that's a good time to restart the cycle. Don't want your new people, or old people that only started with 30-60 minutes, to time out.

Knowing when and decisively calling this is the key to longevity. You want to start farming azure and pearl again before it becomes a problem; i.e. before a 'TE drought' happens. TE drought usually starts to happen after you get a series of reps at once, including couple DD's. Killspeed slows down at first. People become lazy and you have to get on their asses and kick/rep people that have fallen asleep and chastise people for general fuckery (afk'ing, engaging slow, WS/magic killing when they're not supposed to, not voking, not /assist'ing, poor CC; general stuff). If you're not prepared, what will happen is that you suddenly get a bunch of new reps, things slow wayyyy down, and when they start to pick up again you experience the drought as box/TE rate is garbage for a good 30-45 minutes. Unfortunately if you don't switch from Red back to Azure light promptly when you see signs of this happening, you'll run a big risk of having several people time out, potentially killing your alliance.

Managing Reps
It's probably pretty nerdy, but when I lead something with pickups I always write down the alliance setup with names/jobs on wordpad so I can have a clear idea of it at all times. If someone is repping someone I scribble the name of the rep next to the person being repped. If someone DC's I mark their name so I don't forget.
Party1
Heals - flowooo --- Rayix
DD - preet
DD - Cyleena
DD - raiviont**
Brd - Dalik ---
Cor - skymeck
So this would mean that Rayix is on the way to rep flowooo. The --- next to Dalik means he needs a rep but we haven't found one. I've got the **'s next to Raiviont, indicating he DC'ed. Since when I make a pickup alliance, I have to do all the work when it comes to reps and such, having this all written down (from the very beginning) is extremely helpful. I'd advise anyone leading a run to do it ;X

Zantetsuken
People know about this. But I just wanted to add that I heard the max amount of mobs you could kill with a single zantetsuken is 4-5. That is pretty awesome, considering restore chests drop all the damn time. I haven't verified if it is true but if it is I do think Smn makes a rather good chest bitch >.>


I'm really lovin this alliance exp. It may be a little too good though ;/. I think some people are irked that a difficult to level job can be leveled from 37-80 in a weekend. Hell, my Blm is naked, has no AF, and I have ~70 elemental magic skill. Thinkin maybe I'll do Pld next. The great think about making your own pickup abyssea runs is that nobody can question you. It's a damn lot of work but if you wanna make urself box bitch on a useless level 37 job, nobody is gonna stop you :3

[Kilorilo]

Being "box bitch" could also net you some nice gil, wouldnt be surprised if after a long pt of ~8hrs walking away with 5m in sellables.

[Tomino]

I'm really lovin this alliance exp. It may be a little too good though

It's fun how things like a lowered exp amount from 60 to 75 once generated a community civil war while being able to go 37-80 in 2 days is most often recieving praises.

[Onorgul]

It makes perfect sense to me. It encourages people, at least those with half a brain, to actually make use of the content. I'd speculated that if SE wanted to retain their userbase with 24 new levels to grind through, they'd have to either reduce the XP to level up or make the levels a breeze to go through. If they'd just made the TNLs something like 5k (or whatever), people would simply solo them or bang them out ASAP on practically anything. Now we're being made to actually use the content and, of course, we're being made to pay for it.

Seriously, I don't think anyone was looking forward to having to grind levels the old-fashioned way. That's one reason people were (and still are) in a tizzy about being able to sync down to 75 for pink birds or not.

[krizz]

Party yesterday had Carby kill mandy by accident and dropped a TE chest.

This didn't have anything to do with what I said. The killshot doesn't determine the chest for that particular kill. Your overall light does.

What I said is that no avatar killshot would give azure light. They're pearlescent (and not 100% either).

[urat]

There's something about hanging out with an alliance of random strangers, meeting new people, that's just more fun than the usual 3 hours of almost complete silence bar ws macros on colibri. There's just no way 18 random people can be tossed together to beat the shit out of stuff and not start chatting and joking.

It has a lot less of the tedious feel to it than your average meripo, the chests and changing battle start to aim for different lights makes it feel less like exping and more like a fun end game.

Combined with the fact that your level doesn't matter for exp, you'll still cap out at 600/kill, anyone can join the pt and not gimp the exp down as long as they pull their weight.

Toss in the fact there is damn near limitless camps, the ability to obtain shit worth good money from chests (got a dark ore last night) Free high demand spells, key items and pop items, and on top of that the fact that you are getting exp better as an alliance than a 6 man thus cutting overflow of people into a third, and you have what is IMO the best damn 10 bucks you could spend in ffxi for the exp alone!

[Asmoranomar]

Now if only SE would allow a similar method of exping for an alliance of level 20-60 players.

[Plow]

It makes perfect sense to me. It encourages people, at least those with half a brain, to actually make use of the content.

Sure, but... have you looked at normal exp camps lately?

lol...


I'm not saying anything bad about abyssea in any way, I absolutely love the shit out of it... but holy fuck @ the utter and complete death of normal parties. Every camp in the world is completely wide open at all times now.


Which, after 7 years of the same (ok, 2 years of complete bullshit and 5 years of the same), is pretty damn nice to be away from, really. It's still thoroughly amusing, though.

[NynJa]

I've been in Blood Bat runs where Bloody Fangs kept sorting to the ground because everyone already had them but they kept dropping.

Thats because someone was full inv >.>

[vinelle]

So today we went back to spend our 90mins on Bugards... but this time we didn't have that many ppl, we only had one brd as puller and as our only buffer. DDs were: RNG, DRGx2, MNK, and PLD with sword/KC pretending to DD, 3 blms, 2 rdms, 1 whm, and 2 leeches. We were killing fast enough with only 1 puller, but we had trouble with pearlscent light, -Melee were delivering the finishing blow- and we weren't getting pearlscent or a light at all, we had common ruby light with WS kill, and Azure with magic on every kill, but pearlscents was very rare, every 8-10 (I'm not exaggerating) melee kill would yield a pearlscent, even wyvern kills weren't giving any kind of light, anyone had this problem

My LS tried bugards for the first time last night. I didn't go with, but they reported that pearl lights were very inconsistent. I think they said they got some at the start, but then they just stopped getting them at all until they were lose to timing out (which they did).

[Malacite]

Just got my BLM from 59-80 in a single alliance off of only 1 traverser stone. I'm sure EXP has been talked-to-death about, but I wanted to emphasize a couple things.

Orchestrating the Alliance (lights)
One of the most valuable things you can have in a pickup alliance is a good leader or at least someone "orchestrating" the flow of things properly. In marathon exp alliances, other than opening boxes and having enough keys to do so, the most important thing you can do to keep it alive is to dictate which lights to farm and when. Like many others, I go in the order of Azure -> Pearlescent -> Ruby -> (Amber, if this is possible). You're going to do this in cycles. When you've gotten about ~2-3 DD reps, that's a good time to restart the cycle. Don't want your new people, or old people that only started with 30-60 minutes, to time out.

Knowing when and decisively calling this is the key to longevity. You want to start farming azure and pearl again before it becomes a problem; i.e. before a 'TE drought' happens. TE drought usually starts to happen after you get a series of reps at once, including couple DD's. Killspeed slows down at first. People become lazy and you have to get on their asses and kick/rep people that have fallen asleep and chastise people for general fuckery (afk'ing, engaging slow, WS/magic killing when they're not supposed to, not voking, not /assist'ing, poor CC; general stuff). If you're not prepared, what will happen is that you suddenly get a bunch of new reps, things slow wayyyy down, and when they start to pick up again you experience the drought as box/TE rate is garbage for a good 30-45 minutes. Unfortunately if you don't switch from Red back to Azure light promptly when you see signs of this happening, you'll run a big risk of having several people time out, potentially killing your alliance.

Managing Reps
It's probably pretty nerdy, but when I lead something with pickups I always write down the alliance setup with names/jobs on wordpad so I can have a clear idea of it at all times. If someone is repping someone I scribble the name of the rep next to the person being repped. If someone DC's I mark their name so I don't forget.
Party1
Heals - flowooo --- Rayix
DD - preet
DD - Cyleena
DD - raiviont**
Brd - Dalik ---
Cor - skymeck
So this would mean that Rayix is on the way to rep flowooo. The --- next to Dalik means he needs a rep but we haven't found one. I've got the **'s next to Raiviont, indicating he DC'ed. Since when I make a pickup alliance, I have to do all the work when it comes to reps and such, having this all written down (from the very beginning) is extremely helpful. I'd advise anyone leading a run to do it ;X

Zantetsuken
People know about this. But I just wanted to add that I heard the max amount of mobs you could kill with a single zantetsuken is 4-5. That is pretty awesome, considering restore chests drop all the damn time. I haven't verified if it is true but if it is I do think Smn makes a rather good chest bitch >.>


I'm really lovin this alliance exp. It may be a little too good though ;/. I think some people are irked that a difficult to level job can be leveled from 37-80 in a weekend. Hell, my Blm is naked, has no AF, and I have ~70 elemental magic skill. Thinkin maybe I'll do Pld next. The great think about making your own pickup abyssea runs is that nobody can question you. It's a damn lot of work but if you wanna make urself box bitch on a useless level 37 job, nobody is gonna stop you :3

SOB That hadn't even crossed my mind yet... Awesome EXP post summary ty. I've had a lot of morons on a certain other forum I like to frequent telling me Abyssea is little more than a glorified "TP Burn +1" and that I'm "Elitist" for claiming otherwise... (also trying to explain why Perle is actually Trash, at least IMO, compared to other quality end game items but still pretty good I guess for newbies.)

I mean, there's no way in hell I'm giving up my Nocturnus & B. Haidate.

[Onorgul]

Sure, but... have you looked at normal exp camps lately?

I have. It seems rather deliberate that the XP options to get to 80 outside of Abyssea are painful, sluggish, and unpleasant. SE has spent the past several years reminding us that they are nothing if not whores for micropayments. If only people hadn't bought that Tidal Talisman, maybe we wouldn't be nickle-and-dimed for simply content.