Around the first week of playing the game some might remember me mentioning that I believed that Square-Enix should put together a huge world-wide epic event where it was basically what happens in the opening movie--the beastmen arrange a huge amount of forces and go attack the outposts and towns. Well, I recently found out (like an hour ago) that Square-Enix HAS something like that. It's called Garrison.
Highlevel beastmen drop certain specific items (for example the quadavs drop a Darksteel Engraving) on occasion. These rare/exlusive items can then be traded to an outpost guard at a specific region (the DS Engraving, for example, goes to Gustaberg North outpost). Once you trade the item, Garrison begins. What is Garrison? Waves of monsters attack the outpost and it's your job to defend the outpost and several NPCs that arrive just before the beastmen attack. In other words, it's a full-scale attack by the beastmen on the specific outpost.
Those who are not IN the garrison event will still SEE the event happening, but not able to participate. They CAN be affected by "area of attack" techniques (certain spells, "sleep," etc). From what I've been reading and hearing, there's three waves of attacks. The amount of beastmen that attack each round depend heavilly on how many people that you have in your party. A party of six, for example, may only have eight beastmen for the first wave, ten the next, and thirteen at the end (along with a special commander NM monster). A full ALLIANCE, however, may expect to see anywhere from fifteen to twenty on the first round and increasing numbers each round.
The object of Garrison is to defeat all the monsters of each wave and then the captain of the beastmen at the end of the third wave (typically this is a really hard NM monster). To make it worse, the more members you have in your party the more people there are you have to defend from the invasion--and they've got really dumb AI and will attack the monsters, begging to die. To make it even more difficult, there's a level cap of 20--meaning anyone who takes part in this will be a level 20 and will only be able to use level 20 weapons/equipment. Oh yeah, and lest I forget... any beastmen that happen to wander by the garrison event will be more than willing to join their buddies in the attack--meaning you need a few people to hang around outside of the garrison event to take care of the wandering beastmen.
All that aside, it sounds fun as hfil. I seriously cannot wait until I'm able to try this. I've been looking forward to something like this in a game since..well....ever. Imagine 18 people fighting blobs of beastmen sent to utterly destroy the outpost. OH man, it just gets my blood pumping and my heart racing. I can't wait! But I have to wait.
I'm not doing my first garrison event until my samurai is level 20. Why? Because if you die you still lose XP and my warrior isn't level 30 yet. If I die now, it'll just take that much longer to get back up to where I can unlock samurai and unlocking samurai is my #1 goal at the moment. You can guarantee that I'll be recording the garrison event, provided I can find a tape with enough space on it to actually do it. But I can also guarantee that it's going to be hard because there's going to be tons of lag..and if even one person drops, we'll be in serious trouble.
I've gone ahead and planned out what equipment I will be wearing for this when I finally get back up to it.
WEAPON: Nodachi (or Nodachi +1) DMG 30, Delay 450, (DMG 31, Delay 437 for the +1)
AMMO: 99 poison arrows DMG 16 Delay 120 +poison effect
BOW: Self Bow DMG 14 Delay 450
BACK: Dhalmel Mantle+1 Def 4
BODY Mercenary's Gi Def 15 Vit +1
Ear 1: Shield Earring HP +10 (MP-10, but that doesn't matter)
Ear 2: Shield Earring HP +10
Feet: Mercenary's Kyahan Def 4 Earth +6
Hands: Cotton Teko +1 Def 6
Head: San d'Oria Bandana Def 6 HP +4 Agi +1
Legs: Mercenary's Sitabaki Def 11 Evasion +1
Neck: Wing Pendant Agi +1 Earth +1 Wind +1
Waist: Warrior's Belt Def 1 HP +3 Vit +2
Finger 1: Balance Ring Dex +2 Lightning +4
Finger 2: Bastokan Ring HP +3 Dex +1 Vit +1
Overall, here's what I SHOULD have at the end of this:
DMG: 30 ~ 31 normal; 30 ranged (+ poison effect)
DEF: 47 (49 after including VIT)
VIT: +4 (adds +2 def)
HP: +30
AGI: +2
DEX: +3 (improves accuracy)
Evasion: +1
Earth: +7
Wind: +1
Lightning: +4
Then I'm going to buy some food/drinks to help my accuracy and keep my HP up.
Food: Shark Fin Soup HP +10, hp regen while resting +9, atk +15%, dex +4, mnd -4
If I can't afford a Shark Fin Soup, I'll just get a Meat Mithkabob (Str +5, Agi +2, Vit -1, Int -1, Atk +21.9%)
Drink: Apple au Lait hp regen (while standing) +2/every 3 seconds for 3 minutes (meaning 120 hp total)
Can't wait until I can do Garrison.