Catching up

So I haven’t posted in about 2 weeks. Lots of things have happened but I just haven’t had the time to write an update. SO first things first. There was an update done that increased the damage done by two-handed weapons to bring them more in line with what the dual wielders in game were getting. I was thinking “Yay” because I was leveling up SAM a bit anyways and any boost is nice right?

Well SE did more than just bump the damage by a little. They made two-handed weapons extremely powerful and while I must say it was fun leveling SAM, it also made us a bit too strong I think. I leveled up to 32 before I stopped since literally there was no way for me not to tank on SAM now since I pulled so much hate through damage. It was nice at first but now I can’t even use berserk from subbing war since I just obliterate mobs and no tank can reasonably be expected to maintain hate off a well equipped 2 hander, which face it any level 32 job can be with not much gil. I might still get to 34 before taking an extended GIL break since I do have my GK for 34 and can sell back the one I’m using now for a bit of GIL and another inventory slot. After that though I’m either camping for OKotes or saving a ton of Gil and farming like mad.

PLD I’ve put on hold for just a bit. I need some gear upgrades for this too and well I don’t have the gil for that either. I need to get a new sword, a shield torque, upgrade my shield, and I need some new rings as well. When I do that it’s pretty much good until 70 and that would be a nice place to stop for a while to get the last bit of gear to take it to 75. Another reason I’ve put it on hold is because of the weapon changes and the melees going crazy and not even trying to watch their hate levels while having fun with the new upgrades. SE has announced that there was a problem in the calculations, which anyone could plainly see, and will fix this on the 10th so I’ll hopefully be ready to give things a go by then provided I can get the funding.

I’ve been meriting a ton on RDM. Convert is now at 4/5 upgrades and I have 2 merits in the bank needing just three more to cap out convert. After that it’s on to Ice accuracy and MY RDM specific stuff is more or less done. One reason I have been meriting so much is because its more or less free for me to do. Mage MP food is cheap and I earn the gil back just of the basic crystal drops so it cost me nothing and I can even make 1~2k. Yea not much but at least I don’t lose money.

Also, I have been working on refining my convert setup. I’ve been at 1k plus mp for a while now but I’m trying to get it even higher and I’d like to get my normal casting gear higher as the mp difference in casting gear to convert gear is pretty large at 206 mp. That’s a lot to try and burn off so as not to waste it. The things to do this however are not cheap.

For the first part to increase overall convert MP I got a dirt cheap lamia mantle. It’s 24 mp and cost a lousy 4k. This gives me 15 more than my current back piece and is great for merit parties and max MP. Next, in the last update SE introduced grips for two-handers and a few are mage types. The staff grip gives 20 mp, which I can keep on full time, as well as -3 enmity which I guess never hurts. This does cost 20K IS points though so I need to xp to get the points. I’m at 19k now so one more session should do it.

The next phase, getting higher mp in my normal gear, is where the expenses come in. Before my break we had been doing limbus runs and I was saving coins to get a Loquacious earring. I was at 59/75 coins before my connection crapped out. When I came back the limbus runs had stopped I have no reasonable way to get coins other than buying them. They're going for about 14 k each so I need to spend about 224k to get the earring. Yuck… I did see I guy shouting he was selling 5 for 12k and reluctantly decided to buy them. I didn’t really have the Gil to spare but figured I could at least sell them back at 14k if I was in dire straights for cash. So I am at 64/75 and if I find more for 12k need to spend another 132k for my earring. I am hopeful, however, that once my schedule changes in October I can do some Limbus Runs again or at the very least get someone to Duo some areas with me. Either way, I need to Farm up some Gil.

The other purchase also requires limbus coins, ugh. If I’m going to get that, the tabard +1, then I’ll certainly want to have a group or Duo for limbus to lighten up the GIL situation. So all in all with those 4 pieces I should increase my overall mp up 59 and my standard setup will increase 84 points leaving just 181 mp from convert to burn off. And on a “hey that’s neat” note I can get 1k mp without food and have zero sky/hnm gear and I still have 3 more mp merits I could get.

Last but not least, I’m hoping to do some ToAU missions. Marlow wants to set a group up and id love to be able to do it with the guys again. Me, bemi, and Zorb went and got up to mission 14 and hopefully we can get that knocked out soon. After that its all CS until about mission 22 so we can then start moving along and with what little I have read up on most the mission seem pretty easy. Not sure where Marlow and Janaka are at mission wise but hopefully we can catch up fast and get this expansion done.

Um so yea, that seems like a lot for one update.