Lvl 99!? Seriously?

99SCH/49RDM !?

The new level cap for FFXI seems to be the topic of the day for many. When first heard this I thought it was either a joke or someone creating a rumor to get attention, but it appears to be true.

I actually was expecting something lame and over hyped as the ‘Big Surprise’ from VanaFes2010. I never would have guess they would raise the level cap. Especially since they seem to have gone out of their way to keep certain spells and abilities out of reach as a subjob.

I can’t help but feel excited at the new possibilities, but something like this will completely change how the game is played.

Considering how SE is horrible strict and unforgiving, a few major issues came to mind:

– Experience Points
This one is a huge issue and could pose a ton of problems.

It takes 42,000 for 74 -> 75 and 44,000 to cap out at level 75. This would mean you need 50,000 Experience Points to reach the new lvl 80 cap in the March update. The 90’s could even be 80 to 100k for one level. If you get in a GOOD group you can average about 10K an hr. Which means 5 hours of non-stop chain pulling would bring one level at first, but later on you’d have to pull non-stop for 10 hours. 10 HOURS of non stop fighting for a level. That is an insane amount of XP grinding.

If they decide to modify the formula to make it easier, say for example it only takes 20k to lvl from 74 -> 75 it’s makes things easier, but it’s still a negative point because it’s a big F You to everyone who’s invested all the time in getting there.

– Merit points
Everyone knows at 75 you can start getting merit points, but what happens after that? Will we have to be 99 now to collect merit points now? While I don’t think this will happen, it wouldn’t surprise me, but it would be completely unfair to everyone.
SE also said they were ‘considering’ raising the max amounts of merits. Considering it??? Major LOL!!!!! … ‘Hey guys we’ll raise the lvl cap, but you can’t have anymore merits!’
Will Merit points even matter when you’re lvl 99??

– “High End” Gear
With new levels, comes new gear. Hopefully a larger selection and not a handful of pieces in which everyone looks exactly the same. What happens to all the pieces of gear people worked so hard to get? Will it be overshadowed by the new gear? A lot of people, myself included, worked really hard to get the expansion rewards. Now it seems they’ll just be perm storage items.
Event items will also be affected. Dyna gear takes a lot of time to get, and as silly as it sounds, some people have cried IRL when they got a drop. What happens to those items now?
Relic weapons too could be overshadowed by a lvl 99 piece.

If SE modifies them, then will they also raise their lvl cap? It’d be unfair to change them from 75 to 99, but if they raised their stats then there is no effort to get new gear.

– New Spells
It’s exciting to think we could have spells like Raise V, Protect VI, Thunder VII, Refresh II, Massacre Elegy, Paeon XI (lol), or maybe even totally new spells like Reflect, Libra, Toad, or Ultima.

But each tier has to be better then the last or potentially modify each lower tier to be weaker (which does nothing but make the game incredibly nerfed and HARDER for those levels). If Thunder IV costs 171 MP, then Thunder VII might be like 300MP. AM2 costs about that much to cast now.
You’d need a huge MP pool to use spells for your level the same way you use them now and if Tarutaru suddenly had 3-4k of MP would you even need to worry about conserving it? If you mana burned a mob, there’d be more downtime to go from 0 back to full. Unless SE added in things to make up for it, which again totally changes the gameplay.

– Sub Jobs
I can’t help but think how this could unbalance the game a little.
SCH/BLM wouldn’t gain anything all that great.
SCH/WHM would get access to ALL the teleport spells, Haste, Repose, Cura, Afflatus Solace.
SCH/RDM would get Haste AND Refresh, Magic Attack Bonus II, and Convert! SCH would be a God.
Sublimation, Convert, mATK Bonus, plus we’d naturally get Cure V and VI elemental spells.

It also makes /SCH an even MORE powerful subjob. Everyone will have access to Accession, and half the weather spells plus Klimaform. A RDM could Phalanx II, Refresh II everyone and it makes a WHM’s Curaga spells totally worthless as WHM/SCH. They could Cure V everyone in the pt for like 60 MP with no hate gain. Luckly BLM and WHM cant access Rapture/Ebullience and are still limited to only 2 charges.

I don’t really play any melee jobs but I assume they’d have their own ‘super buffs’.
I can see RNG/COR would be an interesting new combination with access to Quick Draw.

There’s also things like mobs, bosses, events, that won’t be a challenge to anyone and a few jobs could probably easy solo Sky mobs and you could prob 6 man a lot of things that you’d need an alliance for.

One thing I’m not looking forward to is player greed.
ANYTHING new will instantly be put on the AH for like a million gil. Not because it’s worth it, but just because it’s new and people on FFXI are insanely greedy when something new is released. It will come down of course, but the initial greed and e-peen from having a shiny new item isn’t something I’m looking forward to.

Another effect will be a large decrease in prices. Who wants to pay 500k for a Verm. Cloak when you can get one at lvl 80+ cloak … and one that isn’t an ugly red hood. (There’s a refresh cloak at 75, so I wouldn’t be surprised to see one at 85 or 90).

Again, this would make something like Morgans/Aries armor worthless because you could just wear a new lvl 99 breastplate with 4x better stats.

Long rantish post, but IMO if SE screws up this level cap idea it’d totally ruin the whole game.

Best Dynamis Run yet

Did Dynamis – Bastok tonight and got the best run so far.

6 One Byne Bills

Argute Pants! ❤

and I was also lucky enough to snag these …

Free lot roll on Corsair Feet!

Plus we got the win with minimal deaths, I only died 3 times and surprisingly enough we only got hit with Breakga once. I’m one step closer to getting to be able to do other Dynamis areas.

This weeks accomplishments …

YAY! I got a lot of stuff done this week in Vana’diel.

– Completed ZM12 so I now I have access to Sky.
– Completed Promyvion Mea and Dem
– Did a ENM Battle
– Unlocked SAM and BLU
– Leveled BLU to 10 and got a bunch of Blue Magic
– Opened Nyzul Isle upto floor 5

There’s a lot of things I still need to do.
– Obtain a Zvahl Coffer Key for last piece of BRD AF
– Maybe get the last piece of COR AF so I can store it, but that’s a good 30-40k
– Obtain Coffer Keys for DRG AF
– Promyvion Holla
– Level RDM 2 more levels for 37
– Level SAM for DRG Sub
– Get buffer for BRD and SCH
– Merit Points would be nice too

Nyzul Isle Investigation

I pretty much spent the day on Qufim Island because it the was the only place I could get a party after seeking for 2 days as DRG. So after that I checked the AH and noticed Cream Pies were out of stock and the price was 13K a stack. So I went to do some Cooking to try and make some money … of course someone will probably make them too and then undercut everyone else. ;_;

While I was cooking though someone in the Linkshell asked if there was anyone willing to start Nyzul Isle. I was like ‘OHH YES PLEASE!’. It seemed interesting but I never saw shouts for 1-5, it’s usually 40-80.

So with 4 tags, we managed to get floors 1 – 5 saved to our Runic Disc. We got to floor 9 on the last run up, but got owned by 2 Poroggo Gents because 2 of us were weakened and I had no MP or stratagems for heals.

Overall, it was pretty fun. It was nice to do something exciting and rather interesting instead of grinding for XP. 30 minutes goes by really quick though when you’re split up and looking for objectives and being a Mage is rather challenging though because there really isn’t no time to stop and rest. All the MP I was getting was from Sublimation and Sanction Refresh, and Conserve MP helped a lot.

All the ??? items we got that we got turned out to be junk loot though.
A Maple Wand and Mittens.

Going to try again next Thursday or so, we just be able to at least get to 10, hopefully 20.

Shell We Dance?

I got invited to do my first ENM with 2 BLMs and 2 RDMs.

It was really exciting! We didn’t get the win, because it was late and our strategy was pretty much ‘open with AM II, Tier 4 and it’ll be dead and we kite the other one around.’ It didn’t work out too well because I think we targeted the non caster first and we all got poisoned and died twice but it was still pretty fun to try and we killed one with getting the other to about 70% before time ran out.

I was happy to see my Black Magic spells were doing a lot of damage though. Especially after doing Dynamis Sunday, where I kept seeing disappointing damage numbers.

Akeda attains level 75!

Level 75! ヾ(^▽^)ノ

75SCH/RDM37

/cheer

It took a LONG time to reach this point and I even though I had to level  Bard to break the 70 limit I finally got Scholar to level 75!

Cat Sith

I got some help with WoTG missions and finally got to see the Cat Sith cutscene. He/She/It/Cat looks looks similar to the Cat Sith in FF7, except for that giant pink thing he sits on.

Dynamis – Jeuno Win

Did Dynamis Jeuno on Sunday and got the win! YAY!
Went as Bard and died 4 or 5 times and lost 75, but I won a piece of AF.

Bard’s Slippers:

Technically I didn’t win them though. I rolled 23 and someone else rolled a 500 or something, but like 2 minutes later I get a tell saying, ‘They’re yours’ and I’m all like ‘lol wait what?’. The other person who rolled on them had them as a second choice. He probably looked at the stats and thought ‘lol +string skills, no thanks’. I was a bit confused at the time so I probably sounded ungrateful about it ^^;.

All I need now is a win for Bastok and I can goto Beaucedine. I really want to do that one because I’m in love with the Argute Gown.

Mysticmaker Profblix 0/1

So I was looking up equipment to improve on SCH and I ran across Moldavite Earring. +5 mATK would be a lot better then my +1 INT earring.
It was in a super easy location to get to, plus only has a 2 hour spawn time. So I thought ‘I should go camp him’ … so I did. =3=3=3( ゜-゜)

When I got there there was a BLU running around so I thought I’d have to fight for the spawn but he/she didn’t bother me and I only waited about an hour for the pop. When he did I was ‘OMG there he is!’ and got lost in my macros for a second trying to get Phalanx and Stoneskin up. (ノｖ｀*)

I opened with a Helix spell and of course I had to get a link from a nearby goblin. ;_;

Profblix himself wasn’t too hard, with SS and Phalanx none of this spell or the adds ranged attacks were doing any damage. My nukes were doing some good damage too, so I took him down pretty easily.

I didn’t get an earring though … instead I got a scroll of Burst! Which is a 7.2% drop … and only sells for 3K gil … ugggg ＿|＼○＿

I want YOU! for the Shantotto Army!

Yeah, so I started playing again and started A Shantotto Ascension.

So far, I hate it.

I LOVE!! Shantotto, but I hate being forced to do things I don’t want to do (like leveling crafting, which should be totally optional), or spend lots gil at the very start of the quest (ok so maybe that’s totally optional).

After the initial cut scene in Windurst, you have to bring a item to a spot in Qufim Island to trigger a cut scene, the item you have to bring is randomly picked from 6 different ones.
The Good: You can buy all the items off the Auction House.
The Bad: They’re a little expensive.
The Ugly: You CAN do this for free, but if you’re like me, then you’d rather spend 30K gil to buy the items. Doing it the free way involves running to all 3 nations and killing mobs in each until you get the required drops. If that wasn’t enough you then need to synth them into a sub product required in the synth for the final product. Finally you needat least 6 in Alchemy or you’ll fail the synth. Ohh and did I mention that it’s EX? Yeah so no asking someone to make it for you and then passing it back.

Now when you finish the cutscene you get another surprise …. Shantotto tells you that you need to go to ALL the Protocrystals.

This is pretty much where I have stopped

First you have to do some major crafting, then you’re asked to run to all the crystals. I really didn’t feel like going to all the crystals, even if my SMN is 20 and I can use the tuning fork shortcut. It’s still a lot of running around.  I hope it get’s easier from here, or at least the story gets a little better.

The end reward is a pair of pants … ugly ones too.

“But Akeda! They have a dragon on them, isn’t it cool!!”
Not if you’re wearing the Royal Redingote, in which case they just look ugly. In all fairness the pants look pretty good with the Scholar’s/Argute Gown though.

The augments are the most important thing though:
“Cure” Potency +5%
Then there’s the mACC, mATK bonus or the -4 Enmity.
I got Fast Cast plus mACC on both ACP and MKE so the -Enmity would be nice since SCH only get’s Cure IV which generates the most Enmity out of all the Cure spells.