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Starting fresh, anything I need to know?
rabalais
Member Posts: 19
Played from the US launch to just about the beginning of the Wings of the Goddess expansion.
What do I need to know? Is there a server that I should aim for that is heavy on the US players? Any linkshells still recruiting?
Comments
I am on ragnarok which is a merger of ragnarok and caitsith. It has an extremely large NA population on it. I think it is actually the 2nd larget server now (or close to it). Pretty sure Odin in #1 as far as numbers go.
Not a lot of linkshells recruit new players but there are a few out there that you shouldn't have an issue getting into. The great thing is though it takes no time to catch up. Even if you lost your character it took me only 5 weeks to hit 99. Many i've met were faster than me some were slower.
What you need to know.
xp parties don't exist the way they used to. 1-10 exactly the same
10-35 is gusgen mines page burns, after that it's crawler's nest page burns too 55ish, followed by boston oblleitte potentially til 99. You can however go into abyssea at 30 but starting out with no 99 jobs this can be difficult unless you have people helping you.
Let me give you a greatest piece of advice for how the game is now. GEAR DOES NOT MATTER, not like it used to. Do not waste your gil on items bellow lvl 75, just get the bare minimun cause you will outgrow it in a day or two at most. (seriously I wish someone had stressed this more when i restarted)
Jeuno is the place to be again not Aht Urghan. Some jobs are useless, others are only considered usefull if you are extremely well geared. Everyone and their mother has a relic weapon or empyrean (new style relic). But don't be discouradged it is 1000x easier now. Been back 3 months and I almost have 1, prolly end of this weekend. Could have done it faster if I had really wanted to.
If you do decide to join ragnarok send me a PM here and I can point you towards a decent low lvl ls. I don't belong to them any longer but they are a decent starting point for new players.
What else. Oh lvl caps are gone on all CoP missions you can solo the entire line at 99. Testimonies work for 3 tries against maat. Drop rates for other level cap quests have been heavily adjusted to make things easier. Only level cap that is a pain is 95 only real strat is 6 bst/smn and combo works but need at least 4 in pt. Or if you have an Ochain/aegis pld friend he can pretty much solo it. Hope that helps. Its a totally diff game now but still has the same old feel. Downtime has been erased completely if you want to do something just go and do it. It's really that simple now.
This is actually ½ of the reasons that discouraged me from playing again.
So you liked the fact that 1 out of 1000 people was actually able to get a relic weapon? Actually probably less than that. I knew one person who had a relic in the old days. Only way to get one was to sponsor dynamis runs which not all linkshells allowed.
Let me be straight with you. The difficultly level of things has not decreased just the time, waiting, and other BS factors that were in the way have disappeared. If you don't know what you're doing or have people around you that don't know what they are doing you will still fail at things in this game.
I have no problem with this at all. Its that rarity of certain equipment that made them truly epic to behold. If everyone could easily and quickly obtain the most powerful items in the game, those items would lose their value.
I remember being on my DRK and seeing another DRK run by with an Apocalypse strapped to his back. I wasn't jealous, or felt that somehow I deserved one more than him. I was completely in awe at actually getting to see one. It gave me that "maybe some day" feeling, which became another long-distance goal for me to aspire towards.
I never got my own Apocalypse, and I was ok with that. I also never got my own Krakken Club, Excalibur, or even Leaping Boots either, but the fact that not everyone had these items is what made them all the more precious, and all the more legendary.
If Dynamis linkshell leaders want to horde all the spoils of the raid for themselves, and their members are collectively ok with this, it's not a fault of the game, but of the community for allowing these people to monopolize the profits of everyone's hard work. Luckily, I was a member of a linkshell that created a point system to allow every participant a chance at some of those rare items each run. If someone is unable to find such a fair-minded shell leader, they'res nothing stopping them from starting one of their own for this exact purpose (that was how ours got started after all).
I don't think you understood what i meant by sponsoring runs. What I meant is you could fork over the 1mil or later 500k for the hourglass and got to keep all the currency that dropped from that run. Otherwise you would have to separate the currency evenly and then buy whatever you could off people selling it. I knew of a few LSs that allowed this because most people just wanted the armor but mine was not one of them because too many people would have been wanting to sponsor runs.
If you came back now and wanted to get yourself an apocalypse it would still be a gigantic achievement though. I've been helping a drk friend of mine get his ragnarok and even spending a fairly large amount of time farming currency it will still take 3-4 months at the very least to get it. That's with him spending every ounce of gil he has on currency too. The major reason you can acquire one faster is because you can do dynamis everyday now.
Plus there is still that omg nobody has it stuff. For instance if you do get that said apocalypse good luck getting it upgraded to 99. There is about 12 people in th entire game who have done that. Also with the new empyrean weapons, it's not the time it's the difficulty. Plus good luck getting one of those upgraded past lvl 90. Getting a empyrean upgraded from 90-95 is about as hard as getting a relic. So if you see someone with an 95+ empyrean or 99 relic it will still cause you to drool and wish you could do that too.
If you loved the game before like I did don't let the apparent lack of difficulty sway you from starting up. I was worried about that too if I was completely honest with you the whole raising the level cap thing irritated the crap outta me. Now that I've come back though I can tell you the game is just as fun or more fun than it was before. Plus SE just released the new roadmap for 2012 and they are updating all the old content and adding even more new stuff.
Yes, I know exactly what you mean by sponsoring runs. The Dynamis shell I was a part of used a system where you earned points for both attending a run, and staying til the end of a run. When any 100-piece currency or armor dropped, any member of the alliance was allowed to bid their points in a secret auction for the item in question. The sponsor of the run adhered to this ruleset as well. The single-piece currency was pooled, the sponsor kept enough to cover the cost of sponsorship (according to whatever the average going rate was) and the rest was distributed evenly at the end of the month among members who participated.
I did, however, just subscribe to FFXIV. Figured I'd take advantage of this new deal they're offering where if you sub for a cumulative 90 days before 2.0 goes live, you can keep playing for the $9.99 price forever instead of paying $12.99. The free chocobo at the 2.0 launch sounds nice too.
Now I just need to hope that 2.0 is actually good.
You mentioned "useles classes" before too...which classes are considered useless? Puppetmaster? PUP was my favorite class last time I played. I'd really hoped they improved it a bit since most people didn't like to party with them.
Puppetmaster isn't completely useless. If you like it puppetmaster and beastmaster they are still great soloing jobs (I lvled bst oldschool to 75 but use it to farm dynamis now). Both do very well at farming dynamis currency. Sadly In group events like Voidwatch and abyssea both of those classes lose their usefulness because slots are filled with proc jobs mostly.
Sadly two of the least used jobs now are paladin and red mage. In voidwatch DDs tank while spamming temp items and in abyssea ninja tanking remains supreme. Some groups use Paladins in Voidwatch for upper tier mobs but if you don't have and aegis, almace, and an ochain (3 relics for 1 job) they will easily find a pld that does and you will have to change jobs or leave. So you put all that work into it and barely get to use it if at all. Redmage isn't used much anymore because you can sub it for refresh, it doesn't have all the black magic procs that blm has, and is super gimp compared to whm in the curing department. Plus in aby my crappy mule whm has like 14 tic refresh so you never run out of mp.
If you liked how it used to be check out this discussion http://www.ffxiah.com/forum/topic/30355/a-linkshell-for-those-who-loved-ffxi-in-2004-2007/2/#1847994 you are not alone in your thought process but as you can see many more people have the same mindset I do.
Also saying jobs are "useless" I admit is a bit of a stretch but there are a handful of jobs that are extremely useful. In abyssea if you have a whm, blm, ninja, and a warrior you can do 99% of all abyssea content with nobody else. You can switch out that ninja for a mnk in some cases but you'll be missing some red staggers. The group I do most stuff with is Ninja (me), whm (me), whm, blm, thf (only for TH), war, war (one war goes as whatever he has 5 relics and almost every 99 geared and he is the other whm). That's only 4 people though 3 of us play 2 chars at a time.
The reason they are so useful is that you need procs and therefore blackmage, warrior, ninja (and whm of course to stay alive) are very sought after, those 3 jobs alone can do 90% of all the procs. If said blm subs brd then you are only missing bluemage yellow procs. A ninja and a war can all red procs. But if you are needing blue procs you can switch out that ninja for a mnk and do things during blunt time and have all blue procs. If you did say decide to lvl puppetmaster and only puppetmaster you would need a blm, whm, war, and ninja friend to help you do everything in aby or everything would take 4x as long. The cool thing is you could lvl puppetmaster then level one of those jobs quickly just for abyssea and get all kinds of gear for your puppetmaster. If you joined my ls we have 0 puppetmasters and 0 people ever wanting to lvl puppetmaster so any and all puppetmaster gear just gets tossed. We got 3 body piece sets the other day while farming stuff for war, smn, and bst all pup stuff got tossed.