FFXI dying or in a dry spell?

[Elphy]

I recently came back. SoA was too much temptation and things went really good for awhile. Now it seems you can hear the crickets chirp most days.

Lvling is done mostly solo as book burns are few, even the FC pts have come to virtually a stop. VW /sh have become few and far between (took me 2 months to get the 3 cities and Im still stuck on Jeuno 1 for progression, the other paths I have no hope for). Havent heard 1 /sh for meeble burrows yet or any other form of endgame. Nearly impossible to get ppl for CoP, ToAU, WotG missions and so on. Even empy item and seal pts are nearly impossible to fill. I have tried setting up pts for all the above and after at least an hr I give up.

Where the heck is everyone?

[Sarick]

Did you see this link yet?

[Mirage]

I dunno, I'm not seeing a lot of these problems myself, except a lack of VW city shouts. I think the problem with those is more that there are no incentives for people to keep doing most city fights anymore.

I usually just grab two-three people for seals, and 3-4 for +2 items, and I usually don't have a lot of trouble finding people for that among the people in my LSes. I think the best way to go about most things is to look for people near your own level of progression, and see if you can get to know them and try to do stuff together regularly. Make a plan for which jobs would be smart to level, and have the person who enjoys those jobs the most level them. I'm not saying you should level a job you don't like it, but for in example seal farming, you just need one person who enjoys playing blm, and another person who enjoys playing any kind of tank, and you're good to go.

[Elphy]

Did you see this link yet?

I did not no. That doesnt bode well for this game.

[Elphy]

I dunno, I'm not seeing a lot of these problems myself, except a lack of VW city shouts. I think the problem with those is more that there are no incentives for people to keep doing most city fights anymore.

I usually just grab two-three people for seals, and 3-4 for +2 items, and I usually don't have a lot of trouble finding people for that among the people in my LSes. I think the best way to go about most things is to look for people near your own level of progression, and see if you can get to know them and try to do stuff together regularly. Make a plan for which jobs would be smart to level, and have the person who enjoys those jobs the most level them. I'm not saying you should level a job you don't like it, but for in example seal farming, you just need one person who enjoys playing blm, and another person who enjoys playing any kind of tank, and you're good to go.

The only issue with this is that most ppl do not want to lvl themselves after 30, they simply pay rmt to do it for them and not only do I not like supporting rmt, I do not have 500k+ gil to spend on lvling 1 job a few lvls. So finding ppl for progression is rather difficult in the lvling catagory and if you do not have either an e/r/m for dd/tanks or magian staffs for mages + top notch gear your SoL when it comes to getting into any endgame anyway. And like I said, finding ppl to lvl with is hard enough but also rallying a group around your same progression point to get stuff done is even harder if not impossible. Ppl get what they need and leave or come with on a run or two, get bored and never come back. So you sit in pj and /sh for an hr or so and then just log out.

And when it comes to getting atma/cats/zone wins for bosses that do not drop empy items forget about it.

It was so easy for returners or newbies for awhile and now the game has become immensly new/returning player unfriendly.

[Elphy]

A friend of mine actually has been working on an empy for awhile since he needs glavoid, he said the easiest/fastest way he found to get it done is to gold box farm the KI and then just brew them til you get 50 drops.

Absurd.

[Demon6324236]

If you need a ls I can give ya a pearl to my ls. Not the best LS ever, mainly social but we try gettin some higher end content done & can help ya gear jobs ya need in time. Tbh though, as far as Emp/Relic goes its not often really a requirement, more often than not a decent Haste & WS build along with a lv90+ wep is good enough.

[Mirage]

I'm not in agreement with that (edit: not your post, demon, but the one before that). While there are constantly some sort of probably-RMT-but-not-always PL party running, I often see people leveling up without this.

Even if there isn't a GoV party/alliance going on somewhere every time you're logged in, you can actually levelup reasonably fast with two people, targeting the right mobs while doing pages, for so to join bigger GoV parties when they show up. Of course, you might not reach level 75+ in a day, but I would say if it takes more than a week, you're doing something wrong. Even if a week might sound like a long time for a single job to 75, I seriously don't think it is a severe issue to have a job abyssea-ready just a week after you decided you wanted it.

As for the endgame, inside abyssea (which really isn't endgame anymore), it doesn't really matter that you don't have top notch gear, because almost anything is killable with far less. After abyssea, you can get by doing procs in VW without insanely good gear as well, and here you have a chance (well, the same low chance as everyone else) to get pretty good gear. Magian staves might be required for serious mages, but they are not difficult to do by any definition of the word (and you do not need every element). Time consuming, yes, impossible to solo/duo, absolutely not. As a white mage, the only trial you'll probably want help with is the two elementals/pixie stages, but with just a single DD helping you, this can be done in 4 lightsdays. Personally, I did the bottled pixies on whm as well, clubbing yagudos to death for so to teleport to drop them off.

As a whm, you also are in luck because you can kill (almost) anything in abyssea with just a monk or ninja on your side, and a pretty decent chunk with a thf or dnc too. Also, the gear requirements are not too extreme for a whm wanting to do outside-abyssea stuff either. Arka IV, +1 empy (+2 pants/hat as soon as possible), the best cure potency body you can afford (or if you get lucky with augmented battle trophy gear, you can get up to 15% potency on a facio bliaut), /sch sub and you're already gotten a long way.

As for DD jobs, yes, there is some people who will not accept anything but an empy, but at the same time, some jobs have options that are very close in terms of performance, weapon wise. OA2 greatswords with resolution, TP bonus great katana for samurai with shoha, for example. These weapons are much less time consuming to make than empys.

But I might have a skewed impression because I am good friends with 2-3 others that would help me out even without there being something in it for them. However, if you offer your healing to the right people for things they need, I am sure you could get them to help you with what you need. Switch it around. Your stuff for 1-2 hours, their stuff for the next 2 hours, etc.

[Demon6324236]

Perfect honesty here, I have been VWing on my friend's character as a SCH in Teal with little more than a couple random Aby pieces he had (Jeweled Collar with MND/INT augments, Searing Cape, cheap AH earrings/ring, Fast Cast Ammo) and the NQ all-element staff. With this I have been doing T3~4 Jeuno NMs, mainly Kaggen, Akvan, and Bitchani, so I wouldn't say mage gear is really all that important, just need the spells to proc, perhaps SCH or /SCH to make up gimped skills if need be, and your good to go with BLM/SCH procing.

Dunno about healing, cant see it as being to bad if you have the temps to support your MP as well as knowing how to heal a party/alliance well, and a few rag tag potency pieces such as +1/2 head, 1 of the many cure staffs off AH, and a Nobles or augmented Dom Ops body.

[Mirage]

MP regeneration is really the main issue for whm, but /sch does a lot for your cures with the new cure formula, as well as reducing the effective cost of a 850hp cure 4 to as little as 30-something mp with orison legs +2. On top of that, there's sublimation, of course, though you might want to drop that if you're lucky enough to have a rdm in the party with refresh 2, I dunno. To be honest, I haven't done an extreme amount of VW on WHM, but I have done a few. There is a chance you won't be the only whm in there too, so you could cooperate to devotion each others for a significant mp restoral.

I'll be honest and admit that to begin with, it will require some assistance most of the time to get anywhere, but the amount of assistance required is not huge. When you get a linkshell, the best thing you could do to improve your situation is to offer a lot of services to them, and after a while you will hopefully find someone in the LS that you go along well with, and that you feel is returning an adequate amount of favors back for what you help them with. That is probably the best way of doing it.

As for farming gold chests for KIs, that's probably the most efficient way of doing it even if you're not doing it alone. I'd say you should join him and help him out. With you along for the ride, he can get an additional pop set per session, and you can get the other drops that aren't glavoid shells. In the process, you will probably get KIs for a lot of other pops there too, which you could team up with the same person to kill for their drops. Additionally, doing potentially 25 glavoids, there is a good chance you'll end up with enough cards of balance to upgrade your orison pants from +1 to +2, which is a very significant upgrade for whm.

Additionally, when he is done with glavoid shells, he'll probably want to do this cute guy, which also drops the items you need to create orison cap +2.