The End of FFXI, Beginning of ROSE Online

FFXI has taken a back seat in my life following the disaster in Japan where the servers went down. Since that period of time, I have only logged into the game little more than twice.

It dawned on me and my friends that what started out as a game to enjoy together became far more than that. Dedicating time and resources to accomplish the newer content had become quite taxing - and something we no longer had patience for. Before the days of Abyssea, we were quite happy leveling jobs somewhat slowly, attempting to lowman various NMs, and all in all just enjoy doing things together. Now with the introduction of Abyssea, it became more important to try the newer content. This was more so important because we could, as a lowman LS, successfully defeat the majority of the new NMs and encounters to the extent where we would be able to eventually get fully geared with the newest equipment available. What would have been a pipe dream to myself as a somewhat casual and social player could be a reality.

It started out being exciting, exploring and attempting new and unseen NMs with little to no information recorded. Months past, the Linkshell had all reached the new level caps, and the grind, pressure and otherwise time consuming events to squire the new gear had been well underway.

At this point, being a mostly EU linkshell, quite a lot of members had to sacrifice time to be able to let our friends across the pond play with us. Everyone in the UK turned up promptly on time, with pop items farmed over the course of the week ready to do what had been pre-planned. Hours into the early morning, we mostly had accomplished everything we wanted each week, only to rinse and repeat the same for the following weekend.

Abyssea became the main focus. No time was spent doing alternate content such as Salvage, Walk of Echoes or Nyzul Isle despite several of the 'core' members wanting to, be it for Emp. weapons, or just for fun. Why should we spend so much time organising events for people who wont show up to things we'd like to do?

The downtime of the servers brought this to our realisation. It just didn't seem worth it anymore. That coupled with the fact that our postgraduate courses demanded a lot of attention left us not wanting to go back to the game.

Honestly, by the time Abyssea reached its peak, my beloved RDM seemed somewhat redundant for NM fights.  The majority of debuffs didn't stick on the most important fights, everyone who needs Refresh has it through sub alongside convert, and the Cures just cannot keep up with that of a White Mage. My White Mage was quite well geared, however I would shy away from playing the job because I knew other people wanted to main it and I would never lot on the gear if someone else needed it - so I wouldn't make any real progression.

My only incentive for playing was Corsair. Having leveled it to cap, invested gil in bullets, getting some pretty nice equipment from Abyssea, and being able to bring some okay buffs to the group, it seemed quite fun. However on NM fights I just couldn't put out any damage, and let's face it, there are so many buffs in Abyssea that you may not even notice it the COR has missed a roll rotation. The only thing that could make my Corsair useful would have been the acquisition of the Wildfire weapon skill. This was something I had more or less given up on following the large disinterest of the Linkshell to join me in Walk of Echoes. I did try to farm coins with two members quite often, however the drop rate was pretty poor, and with stray people wandering in and generally messing up the whole experience, it seemed like a lost cause. Trying to clear/farm WoE with three people can be tough, and it became something we would try on a regular basis. It was just not fun, and not fair of me to ask my friends to help me out so often for such little return.

With my COR essentially gimped, my RDM redundant, my WHM taking a back seat and no interest to play my SCH, I had no incentive to play the game anymore.

Recently, several people whom I played FFXI with have taken up ROSE Online. The game is free-to-pay, with microtransactions supporting what is a very cute and casual game. The game is essentially flawed for various reasons;

1. Path finding is terrible.
2. Party health bars don't refresh often.
3. Click to move. Think Diablo 2.
4. Key bindings are forces on the F1-F12 keys.
5. Free to play means player base is mostly ~12years old.
6. Music loops every 10seconds.
7. Quests system is awful, no clue as to where to go and find things, or hand things in.
8. The world map only shows what region you're in, not where in the region.
9. No auction house, only player stalls.
10. Buggy terrain/bridges allows for players to fall through the world and get stuck occasionally.
11. Quest system usually requires you to damage/last hit monsters... Not ideal for healing classes.

So why play? It can be quite fun, and its something that me and my friends can enjoy messing around on for a while.

I am currently planning on becoming a Cleric (Priest/White Mage type class). MP is never an issue with how I've skilled up, however healing still poses a problem. Not because of MP? Then it must be that your healing spells are weak? Nope, I can cure most of my party members from almost 0 to full HP with two of my spells. The problem lies in the health bars... They just don't refresh often enough. Following a heal, it can take up to 8 seconds or so for the health bar to refresh showing them back on full HP. This can work in the opposite direction too. Someone can die in a matter of moments because I have no idea that they need healing - the game just doesn't tell me.

I joked with my friends that the healing in this game is essentially luck based. I have little inclination as to who needs healing, or by how much. I literally select anyone with less than 100% health, and spam all three of my cure spells in succession until I see they are at full health again... It is not really fun or challenging. Mostly a test of patience and a great deal of luck.

Fortunately the penalty for dying is almost non-existent. 3% exp loss is nothing.

So what is the incentive to playing? There are NMs, which seem okay to fight. The characters are all really cute, and it is pretty funny to see my friends look like angels and such :D It is very casual, so we don't need to invest a great deal of time into doing anything. But by far the most important reason to play is to be able to hang out with my friends again, in an environment where there is little to no stress involved.
 http://www.roseonlinegame.com/

Rani

This past weekend TSS attempted the final Caturae; Rani. As with Raja, we didn't expect to win the fight in the first attempt and prepared two pop sets for the NM, hoping to at least get a feel for what the fight requires in order for us to be able to successfully do it (NB: Our vision of success is doing it within the LS, without the use of a Primeval Brew).

Attempt One

On our first attempt, the encounter was treated as a standard tank and spank fight, with some attention given to doing more damage. Our setup was as follows;

• 1 x PLD
• 2 x WHM
• 1 x BLM
• 2 x BLU
• 2 x SMN
• 1 x RNG
• 1 x COR

Aware that Rani can cast *ga spells, we split the alliance up into three groups and positioned them 20y away from one another, forming points of a triangle. That way, should the ranged DD accidental pull too much hate, the support team wouldn't get nuked as a result.

The fight went slow, damage was fairly low - and we learnt that killing Rani once he gets his defence boost after 45minutes is just not feasible.Our PLD tank expressed concern that the amount of damage he took made it difficult to stay on top of the hate list, which lead to Rani coming after the Ranger in particular.

After 45minutes, Rani's defence got pretty buffed up, and we just couldn't take him down.

Attempt Two

We had a second pop, and we wanted to test a theory. The fight is ultimately a timed fight; kill Rani in under 45minutes.

Out first switch up was to change our tank. Clearly Ninja isn't eligible to tank due to the *ga spells, and Paladin just couldn't do the damage we needed. So our Paladin switched up to MNK/WAR with the task of just beating the crap out of Rani.

Aside from that, nothing changed, but it did make a huge difference. Our MNK tank dealt a LOT of damage, which allowed our DD to in turn do a lot more damage. The fight generally went pretty well, but our damage was still too low. We more or less reached a stalemate again once Rani's defence was buffed, and called it.

In Closing

Essentially, this is a timed fight. With one blood tank and two White Mages, we had no real issue keeping people cured up. Our issue is damage. Magic damage is lower than usual, but fairly consistent by the sound of it, SMNs were doing upwards of 2k per Blood Pact, our BLUs were doing over 2k too. Our ranger was putting out some big numbers, but occasionally had to hold back due to excessive hate.

I was on Corsair, and I'm the first to admit I wasn't putting out the numbers. I've become slightly phased by the fact that despite my new gear, I just can't seem to do anything. This will bring me along to my next post on Corsair in Abyssea.

Raja Regicide

As of my last post, TheSecretSociety successfully downed Raja on our second attempt, leaving us with just Rani to defeat  in order to gain access to the Shinryu fight.

Following our previous attempt, we made quite a few changes in our approach. On our initial attempt, we had two White Mages for healing and tanks comprising of two Ninja and one Monk. As far as DD went, we had four Black Mages, a Beast Master and a Summoner.

The fight went from bad to worse. The AoE damage wrecked havoc on our tanks, and with only two main healers, members started dropping as MP began to get tight.

An interesting point to note is that Raja was surprisingly easy to kite. It runs below normal speed, and as it casts *ga spells, you easily have time to run to a distance where it will be unable to hit. To put this into some kind of perspective, I kited Raja on WHM for a good 6-8minutes until members of the alliance became unweakened.

Despite our efforts however, we didn't manage to get the kill on our first attempt. Damage was too low for the amount of healing that had to be done.

Instead of giving it another try straight away; we left it for the following week to give us time to gear up a bit more. We managed to M AF3+1 head and trouser pieces for three of our White Mages, and Paladin AF3+2 for one of our main tanks. On top of that, most of the Linkshell members managed to acquire several Abyssites of Merit to help with MP/HP bonus!

Our setup was as follows;

• WHM x 4
• PLD x 2
• BLU x 2
• BLM x 1
• SMN x 1

Our Paladins tanked Raja straight up, we had four White Mages to try keep everyone alive, and the BLU's and SMN kept constant damage throughout the fight.

With our Paladins pretty well geared, and more White Mages to make MP go further, the tanking/healing side of things went well. Damage was fairly constant, and inevitably several members died at one point or another due to the large radius of the AoE spells.

Paladin's stood opposite one another, with Raja in between. White Mages were positioned such that one stood behind each Paladin, and the remaining two stood perpendicular to Raja - all at the max distance whilst still been able to cast cure/paralyna/silena/viruna.

The BLUs stood at max casting range, behind a tank - and didn't stay in to melee. The SMN would run in periodically and perform Blood Pacts, and unsummoning the avatar afterwards. Our Black Mage was nuking sparsely as not to pull hate, and had the job of raising those who'd fallen.

MP held for the most part, the Paladins did an excellent job in tanking, and after 30-40minutes, we had successfully killed him. Without a brew.

Our next step as a Linkshell is to kill Rani.

On a side note, my Corsair has received a lot of gear upgrades recently. I'm currently landing 408 Quick Draw with Red Mage sub and lucky 5 on wizard's roll. I have 2 pieces to complete my Quick Draw set, 3 if you count a gun;
Mirke_Wardecors [MAB+7 and QD Recast -5 Augments]
Desultor_Tassets  [MAB+4 and probably Movement Speed +8 Augments]

Both pieces above are obtained from ACP and ASA respectivly, and should be obtainable with my friends help :)

As for my gun, I'm still after Bedlam +2. I should be able to go through the VNM fights shortly, and then I have to start grinding Walk of Echoes for the right coins.

I gave the VNMs a shot, but unfortunately I didn't manage to pop the one I was after. That said, I did successfully solo Capricornus with the pinning fence at West Ronfaure [S]. I went /NIN for shadows, Wizard's and Dancer's roll for MAB and regen. The fights took around 40mins... Each QuickDraw hitting for 208.

Now, with a LOT better gear, and some more merits, I can reduce that time greatly, and I look forward to more soloing on my Corsair! :D

Hello!

Out of what has become an interest to learn how to play various jobs to their potential, and the amount of idle time I find myself with whilst completing Final Fantasy XI's Trial of the Magian series, I have created this page in order to try voice my opinions, findings and try to get some feedback from the FFXI community.

I hope that this blog, whilst being a reflection of my own experiences during playing FFXI, may be of some interest to others too.

My background to FFXI is far from the hardcore. I started playing in 2009, primarily taking White Mage to what was the 75 level cap. I touched in assaults, limbus and sky only within a low-man environment. Being an EU player, I'm not able to join large Linkshells in order to participate in end-game events on what would need to be a regular basis in order to get any real benefits - however, playing alongside real life friends who introduced me to the game, I have been able to partake in such encounters.

Now, several years and many experience points later, I have WHM, RDM, SCH and COR above level 75, and the Linkshell I'm part of [TheSecretSociety] has more than started clearing through the newer content inside of Abyssea. Currently the Linkshell stands at around 12 people, and as of 29th January we are currently at 9/9 zone boss kills, and 1/6 Caturae kills before we can go on to the notable encounter of current content, Shinryu.

As a player I've come quite a long way, but still find myself quite dependant on others in order to accomplish personal goals. Whilst people I play with are more than willing to help should I ask, there's always a sence of pride at stake by which I feel I've always been 'carried' by the people I play with. Whilst I've never really seen this as an issue before, I find myself deep into the Trial of the Magian series, with no real intention in asking for help completing it - other than perhaps getting coins from Walk of Echoes :)

The trials I'm working on are for the Corsair/Ranger Marksmanship gun, Bedlam +2. Currently I'm at the Hovering Hotpot stage and haven't had any issue so far with just killing the NMs to this point with my Joyeuse. Looking further down the list, it's becoming more apparent that I'll actually need to take a more active role in playing the job in order to continue progression.

I've solo'ed NMs before, mostly on Red Mage. I'm also aware that Corsair can hold its own when soloing NMs. However, I've never had any experience in soloing on my Corsair. To me, its always been a luxury job, and when I can afford the ammo, I'll take it out to play around with. Gear wise, my Corsair is slightly lack luster, and an ongoing project. My Quick Draw damage now stands at ~300 outside of Abyssea. Bearing in mind that I've heard people hitting upwards of 500damage outside of Abyssea, it's fair to say I'm pretty undergeared. However, the general concept of the solo Corsair is to refrain from being hit whilst firing off Quick Draw, keeping the target away from you with use of terrain and the monster's pathing. So whilst I may not hit as hard, it should still be more than possible to kill NMs, it will just take longer and be more expensive.

I guess in closing, before I go more into depth into the subject, I should give a mention to a useful blog article on the art of solo pinning by Kanican - http://kanican.livejournal.com/47080.html#cutid2.