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Post by Iyouboushi on Sept 12, 2004 13:24:45 GMT -6
Last night my linkshell leader invited me along to help kill the Windurst dragon for a few people who needed to kill it to get to rank 3 (myself included). First off, before I explain the dragon.. you should know that I had been waiting over one week to kill this because Tolan asked me to wait and do it with him. Last night we were about to go kill it when he realized he had forgotten to buy "sleep" and it took him forever. We had to stop, turn around, run back, he ran to the scroll shop fist to check the price then, disgusted, ran to the AH in the next area (which also takes FOREVER to run to), bid a few times to get it, turn around, run two screens of Windurst back....to get it. By the time he got it and got back I had to go, so we just logged off. I originally got on last night to go to the area and check it out (i.e. to see how hard it is) and got invited on the way. I'm glad I accepted because, to be 100% honest, that was the MOST fun I've had in all the month of Sepetember. Everyone says the dragon is easy but I don't know what game THEY'RE playing. It was hard as hfil. Even with a full party it was so chaotic and fast and people were losing life at an insane rate. Apparantly the dragon has the ability to "curse" you. Curse, if you don't know already, is the same thing that happens when you're RAISED from death. All your stats are capped at a low level (I think it's like 10 levels below you, or something like that) as well as your HP and MP. The LS leader got cursed and her stats went from over 500 HP and MP down to 100 HP and 1 MP. The dragon can also do AoE (Area of Effect) attacks that hits EVERYONE at once. Whoever said this dragon was 'easy' is either extremely lucky or extremely stupid. But anyway, it was fun. After we beat it we all decided to go NM (notorious monster) hunting for a member who needed two rare-ex shields for a quest. The NMs in that area (except for one) are a freakin joke. I soloed two of the NMs myself, and had help on the third one (though I didn't need it). After that we all decided to head up and get keys for our Kazham airship pass. These monsters were harder than the NMs, which is so sad it's not even funny (well, maybe a little). About 1 1/2 hrs into it we saw the super NM that spawns there (the level 40, the others were all level 18 I think). So we all ganged up on it and beat it down. That was fun. 2 1/2 hrs after we had started hunting keys we all had one and it was time to head back to Bastok to finish my mission. The leader switched to white mage and casted teleport (to wherever each person had to go) so we wouldn't have to wait a year and a half for the stupid boat or try to take a chocobo back. I ran to Bastok, finished the mision, switched to white mage and suicide-ed so I'd end up back in Windurst so I can basically rinse and repeat tonight with Tolan. I bet he'll be mad that I didn't wait for him...but oh well. I waited over a week for him and there's really only SO MUCH you can do during a week in that game. I fished until I was ready to be sick; I farmed; I camped leaping lizzy twice (once with Scott and Glenn); I farmed some more; I went mining; I mined; I mined; I cooked for awhile; I mined some more; I farmed some more....you get the idea. It does get old. So I'm glad that I was invited to go do something FUN for a change. I got video of the dragon battle..but I'm not sure how well it would come out once I capture it to the computer. We'll see. If I can get it in a decent (not even "good" just decent) quality I'll upload and show everyone... I'll be sure to cut out the spoilers though (there's some before and after the battle). Whoosh! 1 key to go and I can ride the airship to Kazham and be that much closer to getting samurai! -Edit- Here's the dragon fight! Before I post the link, I should warn you that the quality is the best I can get and even at that it's subpar. It's not that good. The reason being, I don't use a program such as FRAPS to capture it. I don't have that much HD space. Instead, I use my video capture card to output it to my VCR and then hit "record." My VCR is over ten years old and can barely do anything (in fact, I'm surprised it still works). The quality it records isn't very good and then you have to consider that I have to re-capture it back to my machine, then compress it. The overall result is that quality suffers the big one. Sorry. Another thing to realize, it doesn't capture sound that well. If you wanted to hear the original you'd have to put your speakers up to max and pray that's enough to hear it. I don't know WHY it doesn't capture sound that good. It should. Oh well. So that's why I just added my own music to it. On the plus side, there's no spoilers here (I cut off the story that happened before and after) and if you're just looking to see what the battle looks like...this is for you. (movie down, sorry) Enjoy.
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Post by Smz on Sept 18, 2004 21:18:49 GMT -6
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Post by Dead on Sept 20, 2004 18:13:35 GMT -6
lol as much as I used to say I'd never get into MMORPGS, I can honestly say Im addicted to FFXI, lol Scott you should take some pics of my char and post em. I would but I dont know how to do that.. lol. Im so addicted to this..argah. Im up here in Albuqerque again, and wishing I had brought along my ps2 so I could play.. agh.. withdrawals!! Really tho, ever since I got FFXI, I have saved so much money on games. Lol I haven't bought a new game since I got this one a 2 weeks ago, and most likely will not until I get tired of it (but when will that be?! ITS SO FUN!!)
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Post by Iyouboushi on Sept 22, 2004 0:02:14 GMT -6
It's only addictive when you're progressing. By that I mean, when it comes down to where you have to kill a monster (or monsters) over and over [commonly known as farming] to raise money for 1 spell or 1 piece of equipment you'll lose interest pretty quick. Tolan FINALLY got his last freakin kazham key and Cal beat the dragon today (with me and Tolan's help) so we're finally ready to progress again. It's been almost three weeks since I've "progressed" onwards, making this game almost unbearable. Thank God I can move forward. #007 - Bee Madness This comic that I drew today will give you an idea of what I've been doing almost every day in the past 3 weeks (except for obvious times, like when I went with you and Scott to level my mnk, or help Tolan/Cal beat the dragon). Can't wait until I'm samurai.
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Post by Iyouboushi on Sept 23, 2004 0:36:16 GMT -6
After spending three straight hours I've decided to post again. This time to talk about what you two have to look forward to in the upcoming future.
I guess I SHOULD state that it may be different for Andy, since he's playing a mage. Scott will be able to relate closer since he's going to be melee, even if it's not his warrior. Of course, it all depends on how many people are progressing with you guys as compared to me. With that in mind..
If you didn't know, once you hit around level 16 there's really only three places to go until you reach level 30. Up until level 16 there's plenty of places to try and solo or get a one or two man group to try and conquer (the highlands for example, or in my case Giddeus near Windurst). Once you hit level 16 that's it. You'll basically be forced to head to Valkurm Dunes. The dunes are, for lack of a better word, awful. There will be tons of new players there working on their first jobs (like you two), as well as a mix of other players who are either working on a sub or an advance job. The older/advanced players are often impatient and rather rude because they have to deal with people who don't know how to do certain things or are still learning the aspects of being in a party. On the other side of the spectrum, you have just what I said--people who don't know how to do certian things and are trying to learn how to play their jobs. Fun.
I don't think I had that much trouble getting a party in the dunes but dying was a major problem. I died. A lot. You probably will too. You'll also have to put up with people who think they know everything (usually these are people working on their advanced or sub jobs) and their idiotic ideas. Example, you may be in a party of level 16's and one guy who thinks he knows it all will say "Let's try pulling a pugil" (huge fish if you haven't seen them before). At level 16 you cannot kill a pugil. Or you can, but you'd have to be extremely lucky and know what you're doing (renkei+magic bursts with a bit of luck). Pugils are for levels 19 and 20. Or you may be in a party where you'll get aggroed by a goblin (gambler/leecher) and people in the party thinks it's a good idea to try to take it down. Let me tell you this, at level 25 a goblin leecher just about killed me (I had 50 hp left) and I had more HP than most warriors and the best equipment for my level. Think about it.
Even if you're lucky enough to find a party willing to try a different area you will have to go to the dunes to get your three items for your subjobs. No matter what you WILL experience a bit of how bad the dunes are.
Next after the Dunes you'll be told to head to Qufim island, which is connected via tunnel in Jeuno city. Getting to Jeuno is a pain in itsself and requires either blind luck or getting a few high-level players (I'm talking level 30+) to escort you there. My recommendation is to switch to a level 1 job that you don't care if you die and just make a break for it. Try to save at the outposts that way if you die you won't have to start over at the city. Also don't forget to bring 4 gausbit grass with you as the prices are MUCH cheaper in the starting cities (400 each in starting city or 1000 each in Jeuno). You'll need 4 to do your Chocobo quest. Anyway..
I've already made many posts on Qufim island earlier in this topic but I'll comment again. Qufim is almost like the dunes only not as pretty. It's dull. It's gray. It's got very, very dangerous monsters at night that will be the bane of your existance. That's not to say the other monsters aren't bad, but the undead that spawn at night are just awful. Shame on SE for putting level 40+ monsters in a level where you're only level 20 to 25.
Warriors and Melee can expect to wait anywhere from 20 minutes to over an hour to get a party and that's if your equipment and subjobs are up to date. Yes, it's that bad. After spending some time in Qufim you're going to wish you could just go back to the dunes. The dunes are a walk in the park compared to Qufim.
Then you'll be taking a break to get your three keys so that you can get your Kazham airship pass (unless you're uuber rich and can afford just to pay 150,000 gil for it). The keys themselves are a pain to get for a level 25. I had help from a level 40 WHM to get one of my key and a level 46 (I think) RDM to get my last key in the orc place. The good thing is, by the time both of you are ready to get your keys I should be able to help you with it. A level 30, and two level 25's, should be good enough I would think. Also sometime in here you'll be doing the dragon mission as long as you've been keeping up on your other missions. Scott's dragon mission will be different from Andy's however, since both of you are from different nations. Andy: Bastok's missions are fairly easy and if you haven't done any, I would recommend doing at least the first few to get rank 2. By level 25 you should be able to get up to 2-3 which is the dragon mission (actually it's a two parter, but at level 25 the first part is easy).
So then you're off to Kazham and the jungles that surround the city. This is where I went today with Cal and Tolan. "This'll be a synch" I thought. "With Cal as leader he can invite people no problem and we'll be getting exp like crazy." I seriously expected to walk in, spend three hours, and walk out a level 27 at least. This is extremely far from what happened.
The jungles outside of Kazham are more like the dunes only without sand and lots of trees everywhere. I say they're like the dunes because there's TONS OF PEOPLE EVERYWHERE! Qufim had people, but not that many. The dunes always has tons of people in it, and that's how the jungles are. Tons of people means that there's no monsters to pull (bring back to camp). The guides I read said to pull Ivory lizards and fight those until level 26 or 27 then move up into the little plant guys (forget their names). Well, there were NO LIZARDS at all. None. Three hours there and I only saw ONE and it was a pet of someone, wasn't even a monster we could fight. So we had to fight the little plant guys. These guys are HARD and take quite a beating. Not only that, they use sleep like every other seconds so it's almost impossible to chain them.
The EXP sucks in the jungles too. A full party of all level 25's were only getting 150 xp for every three kills. "Well, how much XP did you get for the two inbetween?" you're asking. The two inbetween were only giving around 60 xp. Considering how hard it is to find one of those things to pull back to camp, and how little exp we were getting.. I almost wish I could go back to Qufim. Yes, it's that bad.
It's so bad there that I used a mithkabob which lasts for 30 minutes and began to count how many mobs we killed before we ran out. Ready to find out? .....................we killed two. That's right. TWO. TWO monsters in 30 minutes. Total xp for that 30 minutes? 210. How much do I need to level? Around 5300. That means I'm only getting 420 xp an hour. I'm sure you can see why I hate this place already.
The worst thing is that we're stuck here. Before the expansion Kazham wasn't in the game so that it was impossible to level there but no one knows of anywhere else to go. There HAS to be another spot (I doubt people got to level 25 and said "That's it, we're done. There's nowhere else to level up!") but it's been DRILLED into people's heads that "Kazham = levels 25 to 30" that no one is willing to TRY anywhere else. At this rate I might get one level every two days (assuming I play 3hrs a day and never die) so we're looking at another 10 days to get to level 30 before I can even attempt the samurai quest. Someone shoot me now.
I should add that monster trains are especially bad in the jungles near Kazham. In the dunes there were goblin trains, yes, but there were usually people around who could take them out (since high levels went to Selbina all the time to either do that one corn quest or ride the boat to Mhaura) so it wasn't that bad. In Qufim there were rarely any real trains because the zones are so far apart that you'd never make it. The closest thing Qufim had was a few giants near the tower (you'll see what I mean eventually) but again, those were usually taken care of pretty quickly because there were a few high levels around to fish/farm the giants (or the undead if you were lucky). The jungles outside of Kazham are the worst. Goblin smithies spawn almost right near the zone on a regular basis and there's usually no one around to take care of them. They also link super easy so if you're fighting one you might have 3 or 4 wander over to join in. Try to zone and you'll have 5 or 6 hanging around the zone making it impossible for anyone to do anything until they're cleared out. And unlike Qufim or the dunes, there's not many people around that area that can take them out--the players that can are usually in the second jungle fighting the higher level stuff.
So there's what you have to look forward to, and what I'll be doing for the next week or so. ;_;
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Post by Smz on Sept 23, 2004 18:36:05 GMT -6
Oh boy! Sounds like fun. -_- Well.. right now, I'm trying to get to level 16 at least so I can get better equipment. I think I'm at like... 2000/3600 (I'm not sure, I haven't logged in since the other night). I would like to get the armor for level 15, but naturally, it costs an arm and a leg for each part of the armor. It's going to take forever to level Thief to 30 it seems like, I barely do any sort of damage with it. I usually do like 7 - 10 IF I'm lucky.. That's why I'm not going to level it more until I get a subjob and sub Warrior to it. Maybe I should just use a sword instead. I could still solo at level 16 if I wanted to, I could probably take on the other Quadavs and Orcs now (Well, of course not if they link). Those are level 10 - 16, so I can kill one at a time and be fine, as long as I don't mess up. On the Dragon; I think I can still be able to fight the one you did, just depends on where I go first on the mission (or so it says on the guide). Oh yeah, the Dunes isn't the only place to get subjob items, there is that other area you can go to as well. Yeah, I know I'll have to wait forever for a party since there are like a billion Warriors. And the fun doesn't stop there. Just reading on how there are a lot of Dragoon Gil Farmers (getting gil so they can sell it for real money and such), which means most likely when I'm a Dragoon, people will probably automatically assume I am one unless they know me. Seems like Asura has the most of them too, heh. Oh well, guess we'll see what happens when that comes around.
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Post by Iyouboushi on Sept 23, 2004 19:05:06 GMT -6
Yeah, you're right about the dragon. I totally forgot that you'll get to do the windy dragon as well as long as you go to Bastok first and do their little side mission. This is similar to how Andy has to go to Sand d'Oria first to do their little side mission (killing the warchief is Sandy's first part. I don't know Bastok's). As long as you both do that, you'll be able to team up and do the windy dragon and I'll help too (I love killing that dragon. lol) and I'm sure cal/tolan will help as well. And yes, gil farmers are a serious problem on Asura. According to Glenn, Fairy (the other server he plays on) has almost no gil farmers what-so-ever. He says he's only seen one the entire time he's been playing there. I see over ten a day on Asura and I'm sure there's much more than just ten. In fact, I know there are (by reading other message boards). I've seen a huge list, up to around 30+, and almost all of those people are dragoons subbing thief with treasure-hunter. They camp the farming spots (and farming spots just means any place where you can get good gil by trading in the items that monsters drop--an example of a great farming spot is where I kill bees to get the beehive chips in North Gustaberg), they will emote you non-stop to try and ping you out, they'll beg you for cures even if you're not a mage then cuss you out for not helping them, they may even pull a lot of dangerous monsters then warp/exit so that you (or your party) has to deal with poweful monsters. Then laugh at you when you die because of it (this is commonly called MPKing, or Monster Player Killing). The GMs won't do anything about them, even if they MPK but if you do the same to them they seem to snap back and throw your char in jail. These people have been giving dragoons such a bad name that it's almost impossible for dragoons to get a party now-a-days in fear that they're gil farmers. People assume that dragoon = gil farmer = we shouldn't help them get any higher because all they'll do is go and farm the farming locations making it impossible for us to get gil without paying $300 online for it. Asura has the worst amount of gil farmers and my theory is that it's because Asura is still fairly new. It may not SEEM new to you or me, but it's been around for a lot less time than say Fairy or Bahamut. They figured that people on the other servers have already gotten tons of gil and don't need to buy it online whereas people on Asura aren't as rich and there is a demand for it. Thus they've concentrated their efforts on farming the crap out of Asura and making it horrible for everyone else. I suspect the new server SE is setting up will become even worse than Asura since it'll be fresh meat to them. They'll probably send even more gil farmers to the new server in hopes that everyone on there will buy gil online from them. Sigh. The worst part is..there's nothing we can do. the GMs at SE are worthless and won't do squat because the gil farmers still pay the $13 a month fee for the game, thus it's earning them revenue. The only time they'll do something is if we, the players, decide to strike back and do something about it (MPK the gil farmers). Sigh.
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Post by Smz on Sept 23, 2004 19:22:14 GMT -6
Yeah, even worse for me since I'll be using Dragoon/Thief as well until I can get to level 60 with Dragoon so I can unlock Samurai.
Well, I've read that Asura was originally made so higher level people can move to it to avoid new people, but obviously there is a lot of new people on it now.
Yeah, I saw four of them one time I was walking back into the Bastok Markets from the Bastok Mines (They was on the bridge leading to the mines). Thought I was seeing things since they moved all at once, but then noticed they had the same names, just with 'a, b, c' at the end of their names in that order.
Of course, I read one of the posts on another forum that someone MPK to some Gil Sellers and a GM tossed the person into the Jail.
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Post by Iyouboushi on Sept 24, 2004 4:25:51 GMT -6
Boy do I have a story to tell you guys. But first I should mention that the gil farmers are getting out of control on Asura. In consequence, the prices on the good ores (darksteel, platinum, etc) are dropping considerably. Platinum is now at 12k (or 11k, I can't remember) and darksteel is now only 5k. I'll get to that more in depth here in a few minutes. Also the gil farmers are getting meaner and meaner. When they were first on here they wouldn't say anything, just steal your mining points. Then they took a step up and tried to lag you by emoting you non-stop or sending you constant tells. Now they've taken it to the next level where they MPK you (monster player kill--basically taking a huge train of monsters and somehow, I don't know how they do it, make them turn on you). I got on tonight and decided to go back to Bastok to play with Scott for awhile. So I decided I'd leave my homepoint in kazham so that tomorrow all I have to do is suicide with whm and I'd be back in Kazham. So I got on the ship, rode to Bastok and we decided we were going to go try to mine in Palb Mines. I buy him a full stack of pickaxes and myself one as well. We get there..and I tell him to mine the first floor while I mine the second floor since the second floor he would pull aggro and die...but on the first floor he'd be perfectly safe. Plus we'd cover more ground in case it popped on either floor. So I head towards the way up to the second floor. Right before I go up to the second floor I see a quadav train (of about 10 quadavs) heading his way so I warn him. Odd enough that I didn't even see the guy who started the train, but anyway. Before it passes me completely I provoke one quadav off of the train and kill it just in case it were to attack him. Alas, the train ignores him and goes on by. I shrug and continue my way up. I get there, spend 5 ~ 10 min looking for a mining point, with no success, so start killing quadavs up there to get gil that they drop (had thf subbed so I'd have gil finder). I circle around and get to that part where the refiner lid/lever is (towards the bottom of the map on the second floor) and I see about 30+ quadavs heading my way. No joke. Someone had trained EVERY quadav in the mines, I think. There was every kind of quadav in the there (brass/copper/old/vetern/onyx/etc. etc. etc.) You can only imagine what kind of lag I'm now experiencing as 30+ quadavs are running around me. Because of the lag I never saw WHO was doing this but the punk either teleported out or invisied or something. I'm 99% sure the guy MPked me since he stopped right when he reached me. Every quadav decided "hey, let's get THAT guy!" and headed right towards me. There were so many of those things that I couldn't even move. I tried to run out a little bit but no luck. I was trapped. Thankfully I was still near the edge so I pushed my way through (meanwhile I'm losing HP like crazy) and drop down. The train turns and runs off to find their way down while I start to panic and figure out what to do. In short, I didn't escape and they killed me. Now I'm POed because my home point is in Kazham and I was looking forward to spending more time with Scott, plus I just lost a ton of XP that took me more than 2 hours to get in that stupid jungle. Thankfully Scott was able to find me a WHM that was willing to come out to where I was and raise me. I sent him a tell and told him what happened and gave him 1000 gil for helping me out. Thank God there's still nice people in the game. I've been in the Palb. Mines for days at a time and NEVER had a problem like this. NEVER! As I said before, I'm 99% sure this was done on purpose. My guess is that the guy was POed that I took ONE quadav off of his train from earlier on, OR he was a miner who wanted the whole place to himself. I do reconize that there are just general idiots and mean people in the game, but I can't seem to get myself to believe that anyone would be THAT mean just for a chance at the ores that are losing value every moment. So after being raised, and letting the anger die out, we decided to just try the other mines (the ones in Bastok) lest this happen again and I delevel. We headed back and, gasp, surprisingly there's NO BOTS! No gil farmers! WHAT HAPPENED?! What twilight zone did I walk into? Surely they will be back any moment and getting a mining point will be impossible, but no. There's a few, talking and enjoying, players in there that we pass a few times but no bots and no gil farmers. And shockingly we were able to find plenty of mining points and get tons of ores. I mostly got copper (like 9 out of 10 were copper for me) and a few irons. Finally I got this message: It says that I found a darksteel ore! I was estatic. I've been through tons of stacks of pickaxes and had never found one before. This is before I saw the prices of darksteel. I was thinking I'd get around 8k at least for it. No. I've been forced to put mine up for 5k and am still waiting for someone to buy it. The worst part is, because of all the botting/gil farming, there is now over 112 darksteel ores on the auction house. That's right. 112! My ore will never sell. We went back in a little while later and I found my second darksteel. I was still happy. But kind of upset that the prices of it have dropped so much. Well, guess I should stop writing now.
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Post by Smz on Sept 28, 2004 22:01:47 GMT -6
Yeah, I kept getting a lot of Copper Ores too, but also got Tin Ores and some Iron Ores.
Now that I can finally play the game again, I'll have to go finish selling the items that I started to do before the modem died and wouldn't let me reconnect (The Internet light on it would not light up at all).
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