I'd have to say my own personal experience the Patch is awesome

- Chocobos are extremely helpful
- SP is broken, we were killing in new Beastman Strongholds in 2 parties to get through, place is like Abyssea or Dynamis now. We died but what was crazy is we got the chain up to the point we were getting about 800 SP a kill and we were killing A LOT! The more you have, the crazier and merrier it is!
- 1 quest was super annoying requiring you to kill 6 baby NMs all over again...but any newcomer would have gone crazy for this...as they would kill baby NM's and get gear drops in the process, interestingly thought out...this actually reminded me of R30's BCNM with the dragons in FFXI Rank missions
- Don't be too worried about getting all members from same grand company in R30 Ifrit, iirc the reward was double SP / seals

- Have to grind yet again...MUST build Spiritbond from DATED gear to CONVERT to materia. Then I think I have to build spirit to MELD onto more updated gear for some crazy uber stats!

http://www.ffxivpro.com/materia

*now just which materia to apply?

- I have virtually lost track of time playing this game from this particular update with all the crazyness there is to do.

Yeah I seriously am unmotivated to play simply for how lost I feel at the moment. Im like whelp, I have no clue what to do so ill just stand here and stare for 5 mins and log off lol. Im sure ill get the hang of it. Its nice to know that theres a need to SP grind after all your classes are 50 though (spirit whatever)

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man, its just so much. really gotta dig into this and research

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u can keep dated gear if u want tho, right? its not going away is it

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Just has worst stats than the "un-dated" counterparts.

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And now to actually reply to the thread topic. haha...

I think the patch is pretty solid. The chocos are fun, they added a lot of side things to do, like the caravan escorts, more quests and company quests. I can't wait to try the ifrit battles, but I didn't feel like going around and killing all the baby NMs just yet.

I really want to grind with you all in one of those strongholds and work on getting my dated gear spiritbound, so I can convert it and get new gear. Going to have to do all we can to prepare for the ifrit fight!

Maybe we can grind some exp out tonight and work towards that.

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Sounds good Rid. Grinding in the stronghold is crazy SP.

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You dont have to gain spiritbond in order to meld, just to convert equipment into materia. I melded my first item last night on a new piece of gear

how come my u/u gear has spirit bond on it? i thought we couldnt convert that crap into materia

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It will say on each item whether its "Convertable" and/or "Meldable"

Convertable = turned into materia once the spiritbond is 100%

Meldable = Can add materia to it regardless of spiritbond

yeah, just wondering why spirit bond is there if its not convertable. whatever not a big deal.

questions that matter a bit more i'm still wondering:

1) is it 5 materia per item?
2) what slots can we put material on? (rings,wrist, body, etc)
3) PIE now contributes to mp pool, is it still magic accuracy as well? and wtf does mnd do now, magic evasion and cure potency?
4) speaking of magic evasion, wtf is it? chance of resisting spells but wont lower damage cap?
5) wondering whats better, HP materia or VIT materia (same for MP vs PIE)

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The absolute maximum is 5 per item. However:

A) To add more than 1 materia you need a forbidden materia melder. You can only obtain this after melding materia a certain number of times, so most crafters (if any?) simply can't do this yet.

B) The first materia is 100% success rate. Each successive piece of materia has a sharp decline in success rate. Failing the materia melding synth will DESTROY the original item. Don't try attaching more than one piece of materia to your rare NM gear unless you're willing to lose it.


I think it's: Body, Head, Hands, Pants, Feet, Weapon, Shield. Maybe belt too? You definately can't attach them to any accessories or any pouch/consumable slots.


Sorry, dunno, magery isn't my area.


Not sure, this is unfortunately not as easy to test as before since we can't just re-allocate stats. Maybe I'll try to work it out tonight using my VIT rings or something.

Depending on the materia you get...it actually tells you what type of body part or gear the materia can be applied to.

so me and ket tried the pie/vit contribution to mp/hp. it seems to be about a 1 to 1 ratio

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any good place to exp from 20->26 these days?

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RIP Shiloh - I'll never forget ya

20 - 26 in 30 minutes...just join a higher tier player and have them destroy everything...done! Rank Up!

OK...after playing into this for a week now I will begin my QQ-fest

Solo Battle/Faction Leves
The most unbalanced thing at the moment. Battle leves are useless so I don't care about them (*see power lvling) too much but it will be important for people needing guild marks. HNM FACTION is damn near impossible with just a few people currently. Most people that have done solo battle leves at this time are getting spanked when the star rate is increased.

Gear
*Gear will hardly ever be bought AND resold again as people will just convert what they have into materia in the long run.

This does 2 things:

1) Kills any new players hope of "borrowing" lower tier gear off the wards and then re-selling helping their bank and leveling progress as they rise in ranks saving them money.
2) Actually decreases wards overcrowding/garbage/crap being sold and allows for specialization of certain crafter retainers.

...In the long run, everything is going to be a money sink. Doing so will encourage RMT moreso in the future to this game I feel. The power of the game has now been put directly into the hands of "item farmers/gatherers" and crafters. I feel this needs some re-balancing because pre-patch crafters totally got screwed by dungeon gear...now they have total power over the market by level 50. The only current balance is level 25 and 35 baby NM gear to curtail this. But that isn't all that neccessary because we have...

Power lvling
Party - Stronghold - a player can literally go from 34 - 46 in a mere 16 hours of playtime..such leveling took a player about a 2/3 to 3/4 longer pre-patch.

Great for anyone trying to level up and needs this however...

How many Rank 50's soon won't know jack about their "chosen" job?
Materia will overflow but what route will people choose to make gill again?
Does it cheapen a sense of accomplishment, yes, but I feel SE did this to get people to come back to the game moreso than piss people off that got 50 already

The same can be said for gathering / crafting now...
Just wait for aspect and leves to build...buy a SP scroll..crank through them 1 - 2 days on the weekend for exorbitant SP! I am literally saving all my leves this week just to see and parse how much a botanist can get with 56 leves and aspect+scrolls at their disposal this weekend.


Shposhae -
should any RMT grow a brain they will live here for random drops and coffers that open chests like every few minutes for gill and NPC'able items

Materia System
I feel I understand it and haven't melded anything yet because I wanted to be certain I was maximizing potential of the gear I melded. Congratz to Ringo who got 2 pieces of level IV materia on 1 piece of gear which is seriously a risky accomplishment. After that his chances were 8% for a 3rd piece. Presently I don't know anyone crazy enough to go for that so getting 5 must be like PowerBall Lottery chances.

Content
1.)Chocobo - Check

2.)What else was there? Oh ya...Grand Companies...wait that was for Chocobo...

3.) Did Ifrit speak in his Primal battle or anything else like a few ffxi mobs once did...nope...sad face

4.) Beastman Stronghold Raids...Need lots of folks to do it currently

5.) A few sidequests...people didn't finish Darkhold..oh that was last patch...

Just my thoughts currently now.

anyone want to PL my LNC 20 to 26? in exchange i'll PL you for equal time
lame system, but whatev

i miss the early days of ff14 when exp parties seemed doable

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I haven't done any leves since patch, but I thought the whole point of 1 star vs more than 1 star was that 1 star is for solo. The fact it was possible to beat guildleves your own level at 3 stars or more was likely unintentional.

I think the biggest problem with gear and the economy right now is that NM drops no longer count for shit. Even weapons that are crafted from NM drops are seriously low on stats compared to purely crafted stuff. There shouldn't be a 30k Sword in the wards that is better than a sword that has to be crafted from a reasonably difficult NM drop. You also shouldn't be able to easily craft crafting body pieces that have better stats than a Dodore Doublet.

This isn't just a "wah my existing gear is no good any more" -- this is pointing out that there is simply no point to killing the likes of Dodore anymore, especially considering how damn difficult the fight is in comparison to killing a few sheep in Coerthas. This is even BEFORE you factor materia into the equation. Its almost like they forgot they had NMs.

Once you throw Materia into the equation, this becomes even more of a mess. Any single piece of gear, even old crappy low levelled gear, instantly becomes better than any NM drop in the game once you put a single Tier IV materia on it. Well you could put a Materia on the NM gear too, sure, but then you've got the forbidden materia melding.

The success rate of second piece of materia is around 20-25%, which isn't that bad in all honesty. If you don't mind possibly blowing up 3-4 pieces of gear you can easily get a second piece of materia on, catapulting it far and beyond the stats of anything else in the game. If it's "only a crafted item" then you can just craft 3-4 of them and spam materia on it a few times until it attaches, and bam, you've got one of the godliest items in the game. That NM drop weapon though? Are you really going to want to farm it 3-4 times so you can do the same thing?

So yeah my point is that materia and crafting is great, but they need to make NMs/raiding/loot important again. Gear that takes hours of group team-work and dedication (and luck with drops) should always outclass anything that you can just buy off the market. Sorry crafters.

Basically, any rare NM drops need to always have better or equal starting stats than materia'd crafted items. But this doesn't mean crafted items are worthless. NM drops are rare and take hours to obtain, people still need gear in the meantime, and they also need gear they can use to turn into materia too, so it's not like having good NM drops is going to put them out of business.

However, i think that the materia market destroying gear is a good thing. One of the biggest problems FFXI's market had back in the day was this "borrowing" of gear. Once a piece of gear was created it was never lost or destroyed, and eventually you have more items floating around in the economy than there are actually people to ever wear it. Crafting new gear becomes both worthless and pointless. Most MMOs get around this by having BoE (bind-on-equip) on all of the decent gear, preventing the market from constantly recycling gear. As long as gear is being taken out of the economy by materia crafting/melding/blowing up, crafters are still a big part of the economy. They just must not outclass NM drops.

tl;dr: NM drops must be better than crafted gear or their associated content is pointless.

Powerlevelling is broken, yes, so SE have said they're "tweaking" (read: nerfing) this in the 1.19a patch next week. Power level while you can.

But a lot of these things are long term issues that i'm pretty sure are going to be tweaked before we reach that stage. So I don't think it's anything to QQ over yet.

the powerleveling is gay, as bad as what xi has turned into. nerf nerf nerf asap se. apparantly 1.19a is around the corner and this powerleveling will be done with.

overall i think the materia system is pretty damn nice. yes it sucks that pretty much all that dungeon gear i have is meh (well its still nice for when i realized i converted everything to materia and cant even change class without my weapon now haha). before this i felt like i did all this work getting my crafts to high levels to wear all rare/ex gear which was pretty lame, only real use was that i could fix my own stuff. materia system reminds me of merit pts, gives you a reason to go senselessly kill stuff even if youre rank 50.

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I find Supa's latest post rather amusing. Amusing in a sad way. I've been playing the game more recently, and kind of enjoying the change to local leves, but I do agree with pretty much everything he said.

And if this patch has got supa to say these things, then I fear that Ruby may be the only S-E white knight left in the LS. lol.

I want the game to succeed, but I think having crafting set to the same leveling mechanics as fighting jobs was just such a fundamentally bad idea, and I don't see them changing that.

I never even thought about the hand-me-down gear market being affected by Materia, but supa is totally right on this. People aren't going to sell stuff they outgrow, they're just gonna turn it into materia. I guess the saving grace on that is that everyone and their choco can level up crafting jobs now with the new system. I think I did like 8-10 leves and got an entire rank of weaving from 40-41. (~71k). That's pretty sick.

I'll keep playing it, and I'm having fun farting around in it now. I've complained less, at least. haha. But the economy still worries me. I really don't want to see RMT in this game.

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I just assumed that they made lvlng so much easier because they plan to raise the lvl cap for the ps3/jobs/expack whatever release. Also more exp so that materia isnt a nightmare to grind for

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im fine with the rate of exp. i just think its stupid you can let a 50 in pt kill all your shit and gain from it just as much as if you were all lowbies

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I think I really like the change to local leves, but I'm not sure. I used to sit and grind crafting a lot, and it was starting to take forever just to get a level. I kind of like that it's a bit easier, but I think the accessibility might be a bad thing, either flooding the market or just having people be able to get up faster just on a whim.

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i tried to solo as 20 lancer and its just way to slow to even bother trying

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RIP Shiloh - I'll never forget ya