Final Fantasy XI - Journal!

[Alisha]

more like so many destroyed friendships. FFXI brought out the worst in some people. but at least it didnt divide people up like DCUO and WoW did with factions. some of my fondest memories were KRT parties before ToAU came out. only started to get truely fun after 75. i remember hating SE job updates since monk never got any offensive tools yet warrior seemingly always did.

[Agent D.]

At least you weren't a dark knight waiting to actually be on par with either warriors or monks. Highest strength, highest attack, strongest weapons, and arguably the best zerg ability in the game...yet every update seems to destroy us more and more.

Now we get a new 2 hour that lets us absorb tp with normal attacks....shame our best weaponskill is still done better on warriors.

[Hathen]

Interesting bit of news - since they stopped production of the PS2, it looks like FFXI no longer supports the platform. It's been removed from the FFXI and the Seekers of Adoulin site.

FFXI official software page.

Maybe they'll actually get around to that DX9 upgrade they kept dancing around. Though its doubtful we'd see an engine revamp with FFXIV:ARR on the horizon, one can still dream. So many great memories from FFXI.

It was never there to begin with actually. A couple months ago they had done a survey asking what systems players played XI on, and it seems like few enough people answered PS2 for them to just not bother translating the PS2 version of the game from Japan at all. I'm pretty disappointed with the player response to this (Most of players basically went "fuck you" to the PS2 owners that complained and told them to just get the PC version of the game), because even if they dropped PS2 support entirely, I doubt they would spend the extra money/manpower to update the game in a way that the flaws caused by the PS2 would be fixed.

They're going to have to remove PS2 released from the Japan side as well to even imagine anything changes as far as that's concerned, at least.

[Tenchi-no-Ryu]

I reactivated recently to play with some old friends and have been enjoying the old game immensely. With the new cap of 99, we were looking into clearing alot of content that went by the wayside when we were still active. We are going to try to trio Nyzul Isle investigation to finish Feight and Suspiria's Runic Discs and farm some precursor Mythic Weapons for the WS's and start the main quest. Since I know quite a few people reactivated, I figured I would ask to see if anyone still needed to finish Nyzul and was interested in joining our little static.

[Agent D.]

I'm playing on an erratic schedule if you can even call it that, but if you're on leviathian, i'll assist. I finished nyzul ages ago, but don't mind helping out in it to stay fresh, since neo nyzul is a triple bitch. You should also consider trying out meeble burrows. It's fairly interesting, and offers nice rewards for completing an entire research level. Again, I play randomly, if at all right now, bunch of rl shit going on so I don't like hunkering down for hours of an mmo when I know it's going to be interrupted. Agentd in game, so throw me a friend request if you like.

[Hathen]

I play sporadically as well, but I'm still around sometimes. I'm almost always up for assaults of some kind, either for assault points or Nyzul Tokens. Meebles is the new "low man content", and Salvage II is actually quite friendly to groups of 3-4, but you need pretty good gear and specific setups to beat them properly.

As for what I've done since last time, I finished this little thing recently!

[Agent D.]

Finally finished your mythic, eh? Sorry I wasn't there for that, but I'm glad you're done. I can finally stop denying payouts from salvage with you, lol.

My relic greatsword has made almost zero progress since last mention, think I bought 2 more 100 Byne Bills. Between no dynamis buddies, lack of voidwatch shouts, and an overall lul in the game again, I don't see much happening til adoulin comes out, which is thankfully march 26th.

[Ramza]

My relic greatsword has made almost zero progress since last mention, think I bought 2 more 100 Byne Bills. Between no dynamis buddies, lack of voidwatch shouts, and an overall lul in the game again, I don't see much happening til adoulin comes out, which is thankfully march 26th.

I need to see if I can get back my old account.

If anyone on Leviathan server sees the character "Faithful" -- he was the caretaker of the Tonelico account for the last 2 years. Could anyone help a brutha out?

[Tenchi-no-Ryu]

These new merit WS are giving me a headache. I fully merited Exenterator, but haven't been too impressed with it. I haven't had a chance to play with it outside Abyssea, which is supposedly where it shines. I was thinking of doing the GS and H2H. Though I've read the GK and Polearm WS's are pretty sweet. I'm really annoyed that we can only take 3 to full. Any suggestions or feedback would be appreciated. So far the Mythic WS's seem to be winning out easily over these new ones.

[Hathen]

The merit WSs are more heavily gear-based than any WS that has come before it because of their 100% stat mod, as opposed to older weapon skills, which are modded anywhere from 10-60%. Every single one beats Mythic WS (Except Drakesbane) if you are gearing correctly for it and you have it fully merited. Inside Abyssea critical weapon skills are still king. For that reason, Empyrean weapon skills are actually generally the most competitive with them.

When geared correctly though, they are pretty much always the best option outside Abyssea for that weapon type. This is assuming 5/5 of course.

They plan on patching it sometime by making the 1/5 WSs about equal to a current 4/5 WS (with the 5/5 still the same strength), so when that comes along at least you can opt to choose versatility over specialization.

[Tenchi-no-Ryu]

Would it be worth meriting the star modifiers? AGI for example. It just seems alot of merits for such a small boost vs gear.

[Hathen]

I'd stick to 12 STR and DEX merits since those are a lot more all-encompassing than merits in other stats. The only non-mage job that merits something other than DEX as their second stat is probably RNG.

I also forgot to mention that a couple of the merit WSs are unique in that the fTP bonuses from elemental gorgets and belts apply to every single hit rather than just the first one, which makes those pieces the best choices for those slots (Requiescat, Resolution, Ruinator, Entropy, Stardiver, Blade: Shun, Realmrazer and Last Stand).

[Tenchi-no-Ryu]

Awesome. Thanks Hathen! I think I will do GS and GK. Any idea if they will raise the merit cap for that category. You mentioned them strengthening 1-4, do you have a source link?

[Hathen]

Yeah it was mentioned here, a pretty big post about some big changes to combat. Optimistically we'll see these changes either alongside the release of Adoulin or in the second patch of it. I don't expect any patches to come along while they're prepping for their big launch. As pretty much every SMN update has shown though, they do have a pretty bad habit of releasing stuff like 2 years after they initially announce "working on it". I'd like to think major core battle system adjustments are a bit higher priority though.

The WS part uses different numbers than the playerbase tends to use because they multiply in the level-adjustment value before showing the value to us (at 99 its .85, so they say 85% instead of 100%). Motenten posted a little chart to clear up confusion on that.

[Agent D.]

Tenchi, I have the GS merit ws, it's beyond awesome. Resolution does ridiculous damage. I'm also a Elvaan dark knighy with maxed strength merits and +80 str in gear, so I'm just under 200 strength for Resolution. With a Hoarfrost blade, I can average 2-3k on most Voidwatch enemies.

Tachi Shoha, the great katana merit ws, is equally impressive, but the damage is terribly inconsistent. I've seen guys do 4k, then out of nowhere...300 damage. It's odd, but still, it's some of the best spike damage a sam will put out, and you can make the magian store tp gkt for it as well.