Alexandrite V2

[Draylo]

Another Alexandrite post incoming! :mad:

Currently, on my server at least, buying Alexandrite is really hard. There is almost never a supply and there are an obscene amount of people upgrading mythics (at least 10+ other people that I know of) and trying to buy whenever they can. The price for Alex has risen to ridiculous amounts, people are now selling for 17~20k each and are actually being bought by the JP community. This is a problem because the effort required to create these weapons is not even close to the reward you are given. A lot of these weapons (with a few being an exception) are severely underpowered compared to their Empyrean or Relic for the weapon type. Let's do a breakdown of what it costs currently with these new prices and current prices:

Current price (10,000 per Alexandrite)
= 300,000,000 gil to complete.
New prices (17,000 per Alexandrite)
= 510,000,000 gil to complete.

Those prices can obviously be brought down by spamming the lovely and FUN event called... Salvage! For just 1 hour and 30m of your time you can repeat the same monotonous event OVER AND OVER for 70~150 alex a run! That way it can take you over 10 months just to complete this weapon.

10 months to complete a weapon that doesn't perform on the level of a weapon that takes two weeks or less to make.

Possible solutions:

1. Make Mythic weapons require less Alexandrite
2. Increase the supply of Alexandrite through other means than Salvage (Nyzul Isle if they are planning to adjust it for new level increase)
3. Make Mythic weapons actually worth the price tag/time investment.

Also I see the other thread was locked, I don't understand why you can't have Alexandrite turned into pieces of 100 like currency so you can save inventory space. Or you could change the stack from 99 to 999 or something.

Thanks.

[Aarahs]

If it's so "underpowered" then why are you bothering to make one? One of the joys of supply and demand.

[Vortex]

The obvious solution is they would have to make salvage more desirable, so people actually want to do it.

[Draylo]

If it's so "underpowered" then why are you bothering to make one? One of the joys of supply and demand.

I want to, that is reason enough.

[Sotek]

Reposting, for great justice.


I do hope that if you took the time to lock my thread (http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxi/threads/14762-Alexandrite), you took the time to take the OP to the devs, SE.

Simplest solution I can think of for Alexandrite is to turn it into a points reward system like Cruor, lets say Remnants Tokens. That way rather than Alexandrite being a competitive element of Duties, Tasks and Deeds, it becomes something you can do as a team. Obviously Alexandrite would already be left in the game and we'd all be stuck with stacks upon stacks of worthless stones, unless SE adds an option to Zasshal (or Ghanraam) to trade Remnants Tokens for Alexandrite. You'd still be in competition with others to buy from Bazaars, but at the very least you can triple your Alexandrite drop rate per run.

Just to flesh it out a bit more (and repost my stacking system which has pointlessly been locked):
-Every mob in Salvage drops ~100 Remnants Tokens, Gears/etc. ~150, NMs ~250, zone bosses ~500.
-Every 100 Tokens can be traded to Zasshal for 1 Alexandrite.
-100 Alexandrite can be traded for a 100 piece Alexandrite.
-Every 10,000 Tokens can be traded for a 100 piece Alexandrite.

With that, every Salvage run would earn you alone about the same 70 Alexandrite average, but every individual earns that same amount. The Salvage aspect of the quest becomes a collaborative effort like the rest and the amount of Alexandrite in Bazaars should at least triple. If you have friends simply helping you with Alexandrite, you earn at least 210 Alexandrite a run, if not you're earning what you currently get before splitting. A win win situation, no?
It still wouldn't remove the fact that the Alexandrite section is ridiculously disproportionate to the rest (150,000 Nyzul tokens needed, 3,000,000 Remnants tokens...), but it's the best I can come up with for what they've already given.

So, SE, feel free to lock and ignore this now.

Obviously numbers there are just there for simplicities sake, if something like this were to happen, I'd expect an increased yield per run, rather than it remaining the same. And I think I mentioned it in a later post, but I'd keep Alexandrite drops and coin purses in place too. Salvage gear +1 places along side this would be perfect as well. People would be doing Salvage for the gear they never got, for the +1 items and for Mythic. At the very least supply would sky rocket, at this point I could care less about the price, I just want to see some Bazaars that actually stock the damn stuff.

[Draylo]

Yeah there really is almost nobody selling them. Good ideas though.

[Helel]

Ichor to alex. I suggested it in the einherjar thread. Really nothing to use ichor on now @95, other than the eyepatch.

[nitsuj]

bump for visibility.

@14,000/30,000 :(

[Draylo]

We can't let this dieeeee. Cmon people, I know 50 billion people are doing mythic.

[Staren]

What do you tell a white mage, who's a main white mage when they look at endgame weapons. They spend the hours helping every melee build empys and relics and seeing their output go through the roof. Then you hand them the empy staff and go here go stand in the corner with this laughable shiny. Then you ok well maybe a Mjollnir will be better but oh wait its another melee weapon for a WHM for crying out loud. SE what the hell do you think you're doing expecting a white mage to melee. So they're left with the mythic which currently has a 600 mil price tag if you buy from bazaars and a 1 and 1/3 year timeline if you dont pay a thing and do salvage everyday. This is not acceptable and while people are right its only a slight upgrade. Its embarassing to have a member of your group who loves a job not be able to get their only useful endgame weapon because of a price tag and self justification that the upgrade isnt worth the pricetag. SE waiting until Sept/Aug of next year is not acceptable you need to add a fix soon. This is ridiculous and the more you remain silent on it the more its frustrating people, breaking groups, and causing people to contemplate leaving your game because of the effort involved. I spent all weekend farming almost 30mil gil which was not easy and required me to be in game almost 30-40 hours. With this I was only able to buy around 1200 alexandrite. Which is 1/30th of your requirements. Even if you say oh well then thats only 30 more weekends of your time (almost a year) its not like its common to see 1200 alexandrite on the market and the prices went up by 5k after I bought those. This needs to be fixed, you need to stop hiding and you need to fix this.

[Alkalinehoe]

This is ridiculous and the more you remain silent on it the more its frustrating people, breaking groups, and causing people to contemplate leaving your game because of the effort involved.
Mjollnir, breaking groups since '04.

[noodles355]

Mythic topics are destined to get very few replies, or get deleted. Topic that get replies either:
1) Affect the majority of the player base.
2) Have a lot of arguments and debates.
As soon as flame wars erupt, then the topic ends up lost and is likely eventually deleted.

Mythics affect a small minority of the player base, most players dont know enough about them. There's also nothing really to debate and argue about anymore. But we know the community reps read pretty much every topic, it would just be nice to know if anything has been passed on to the dev team regarding our concerns, even if they haven't given a response yet.

[Staren]

Mjollnir, breaking groups since '04.

Either this is an inside joke I don't get or you didn't read my post correctly. I'm going to assume the first as the second would seem rude.

[Malamasala]

We can't let this dieeeee. Cmon people, I know 50 billion people are doing mythic.

Would be 50 billion if alexandrites didn't put people off from doing it.

[Afania]

Those prices can obviously be brought down by spamming the lovely and FUN event called... Salvage! For just 1 hour and 30m of your time you can repeat the same monotonous event OVER AND OVER for 70~150 alex a run! That way it can take you over 10 months just to complete this weapon.

10 months to complete a weapon that doesn't perform on the level of a weapon that takes two weeks or less to make.

Possible solutions:

1. Make Mythic weapons require less Alexandrite
2. Increase the supply of Alexandrite through other means than Salvage (Nyzul Isle if they are planning to adjust it for new level increase)
3. Make Mythic weapons actually worth the price tag/time investment.



The biggest problem is actually not spending months on farming those, since it's meant to be a weapon that takes long time to complete, and those who wants it will do it no matter how long it takes. And I'm sure whoever's been working on it thinks it's worth the price and effort no matter what. It's more than just a weapon, most ppl been working on it for a sense of achievement because everyone wants to be a unique slowflake XD

The biggest problem is, the way SE makes currency rain in dyna with recent update, and the way SE not giving any info on how and when they're gonna adjust Salvage, makes it hard to decide whether to invest the time and money to farm them now or not. You go farm alexandrite now by doing daily salvage, what if 1 year later SE makes it rain in Salvage and you can finish 30k alex in 1 month instead of 10 months? Then you just wasted 9 months of time/money for nothing.

[MDenham]

What do you tell a white mage, who's a main white mage when they look at endgame weapons. They spend the hours helping every melee build empys and relics and seeing their output go through the roof. Then you hand them the empy staff and go here go stand in the corner with this laughable shiny. Then you ok well maybe a Mjollnir will be better but oh wait its another melee weapon for a WHM for crying out loud. SE what the hell do you think you're doing expecting a white mage to melee.Wait a moment, this has already gotten out of hand.

1) Being WHM main, my first reaction upon looking at endgame weapons is "Huh, that'll speed up the stuff I do solo. And maybe some of the stuff I couldn't do solo before, I can now."

2) WHM can't equip Empy staff. Empy club... is kind of a waste of effort that actually would be better spent on a Mjollnir.

3) What do you mean "what the hell do you think you're doing expecting a WHM to melee"? How else are we going to get things killed when nobody else wants to do it? Nuke it? Riiiiiiiiiiight. We're going to melee it. We're going to bust out haste gear (since we get crap for accuracy gear, we might as well speed up the hits we are getting), throw on a pair of hammers, and beat the everloving crap out of it. We're going to unleash a ridiculous hellspawn composed of blunt damage and critical hits that other one-handed weapon users only dream of being able to control, because that's what we do.

And before you say "well, just do it on another job": congratulations, the point is way the hell off in the distance and you missed it entirely. We do it this way because it's an accomplishment doing things the hard way. Especially when people are like "there's no way you can do that, you're only a WHM".

That's right. I'm only a WHM. And I destroy lesser beings, like the naysayers, for a living.

[Thunderlips]

The Alexandrite was always the hardest part of the time management test that is Duties, Tasks, and Deeds. I get that you don't have as much of the population doing salvage anymore but then again it is easy enough to just keep spamming Salvage for more alex. Also if we end up being able to augment Salvage gear and need 15/25/35s to break down into tatters you might see a lot of people doing salvage again and with that lower alex prices.

If you have friends/your LS see if they would be willing to do some farm runs and offer to buy the alex off them at a reasonable price.

I do agree that a lot of the mythics aren't as powerful as other options (then again a lot of the mythics weren't too impressive compared to relics at 75), but making them easier to obtain isn't a good fix for that. I was annoyed that they made the T4 ZNM drops 100% as that makes finishing up mythics a lot easier (Tyger can go die with its old trigger drop rate).

With the changes to dynamis, relics are going to become a lot easier to obtain now so if you need a quick/easier trophy piece go for emps or relics. It is nice that (at least for now) something in this game isn't a cakewalk and actually takes some time/effort to obtain, even if the reward isn't exactly the best option in the game.

[Taruguru]

I have a solution that would bring people back in Salvage. Make salvage gear upgradable. I know Morrigan robe and some other gear are still used on a regular basis. So giving those gear a +1 version, a bit like sky item got their upgrade, I think it would help bring players back.

[Yygdrasil]

I've been working on a Mythic for over a year now. I'm at about 15k Alex, Chariot wins, Odin win and only 1/3 beastmen wins. I still need to find a static to work on Inchor... but I personally think that the effort is worth the reward. When I'm the only SMN on Lakshmi holding a Nirvana, it'll be nothin but envy. I'd trade 8 Empy weapons for the chance to own Nirvana.

[Staren]

Wait a moment, this has already gotten out of hand.

1) Being WHM main, my first reaction upon looking at endgame weapons is "Huh, that'll speed up the stuff I do solo. And maybe some of the stuff I couldn't do solo before, I can now."

2) WHM can't equip Empy staff. Empy club... is kind of a waste of effort that actually would be better spent on a Mjollnir.

3) What do you mean "what the hell do you think you're doing expecting a WHM to melee"? How else are we going to get things killed when nobody else wants to do it? Nuke it? Riiiiiiiiiiight. We're going to melee it. We're going to bust out haste gear (since we get crap for accuracy gear, we might as well speed up the hits we are getting), throw on a pair of hammers, and beat the everloving crap out of it. We're going to unleash a ridiculous hellspawn composed of blunt damage and critical hits that other one-handed weapon users only dream of being able to control, because that's what we do.

And before you say "well, just do it on another job": congratulations, the point is way the hell off in the distance and you missed it entirely. We do it this way because it's an accomplishment doing things the hard way. Especially when people are like "there's no way you can do that, you're only a WHM".

That's right. I'm only a WHM. And I destroy lesser beings, like the naysayers, for a living.

I misspoke on the staff, I did mean club thank you for the correction. I am not going to get into the argument of melee whm being the intended role for a healing class, there have been melee rdm's for years who cant be convinced otherwise, and its probably the same reason people level pup instead of monk. You're on an MMO, so soloing doesnt register idk its a free world have fun but they make RPG's single player and you can avoid the monthly subscription fee! Secondly you're on an MMO that lets you play multiple jobs on a single character without any penalty there are plenty of other complicated non heavy dd jobs that you can have a difficult job soloing on that are actually melee jobs! Thirdly meleeing on a healing class just to make the game harder sounds like you need a new game to play. For the rest of us with friends and not so masochistic tendencies whm is a healing class only. So for every whm playing their class as intended there's only one option. Out of hand is when you assumed whm was a melee job. I pray you're a troll, if not God bless and play you're own way Naturebeckles needs friends too!

[Cesil]

I've been working on a Mythic for over a year now. I'm at about 15k Alex, Chariot wins, Odin win and only 1/3 beastmen wins. I still need to find a static to work on Inchor... but I personally think that the effort is worth the reward. When I'm the only SMN on Lakshmi holding a Nirvana, it'll be nothin but envy. I'd trade 8 Empy weapons for the chance to own Nirvana.

I want to make a Nirvana too eventually..but I am waiting to see what SE does with it. Also I have seen a few Nirvana's on Lakshmi. The stats on the 95 are amazing :) Filloux (sp?) has one.

[Yygdrasil]

Also I have seen a few Nirvana's on Lakshmi.

My dreams...

[Draylo]

You people can't just "wait until SE changes it" you need to voice your opinion and get them to tell us something. If we all start threads about this or post here then they will be forced to do something.


The Alexandrite was always the hardest part of the time management test that is Duties, Tasks, and Deeds. I get that you don't have as much of the population doing salvage anymore but then again it is easy enough to just keep spamming Salvage for more alex. Also if we end up being able to augment Salvage gear and need 15/25/35s to break down into tatters you might see a lot of people doing salvage again and with that lower alex prices.

If you have friends/your LS see if they would be willing to do some farm runs and offer to buy the alex off them at a reasonable price.

I do agree that a lot of the mythics aren't as powerful as other options (then again a lot of the mythics weren't too impressive compared to relics at 75), but making them easier to obtain isn't a good fix for that. I was annoyed that they made the T4 ZNM drops 100% as that makes finishing up mythics a lot easier (Tyger can go die with its old trigger drop rate).

With the changes to dynamis, relics are going to become a lot easier to obtain now so if you need a quick/easier trophy piece go for emps or relics. It is nice that (at least for now) something in this game isn't a cakewalk and actually takes some time/effort to obtain, even if the reward isn't exactly the best option in the game.

lol seriously? Most Mythics are terrible compared to their Empy/relic counterparts, why does Dynamis get to rain currency (less so after recent update, but still) while alex is completely restricted? If you read the OP, you get maybe 70ish alex a run on average, only farming the same zone for the most part. GL getting two other real people to farm the same zone with you over and over and over until you're done, even after they have capped gear. It still takes 10 months+ only farming alex at 70+ a day. The weapon isn't worth the time, they need to adjust it.

[Falseliberty]

im trying to build a mythic
underline the word try, there isnt any at all on the market atm. everytime i check a bazaar all i see is dyna currency
while i this point i dont even mind paying the outrageous prices. there just isn't any out there. people ain't exactly doing alot of salvage (the few people that are doing salvage are of the belief that salvage gear will be upgradable

[Thunderlips]

lol seriously? Most Mythics are terrible compared to their Empy/relic counterparts, why does Dynamis get to rain currency (less so after recent update, but still) while alex is completely restricted? If you read the OP, you get maybe 70ish alex a run on average, only farming the same zone for the most part. GL getting two other real people to farm the same zone with you over and over and over until you're done, even after they have capped gear. It still takes 10 months+ only farming alex at 70+ a day. The weapon isn't worth the time, they need to adjust it.

Yes seriously. I probably farmed close to half of my alex with a group of people and though most of them donated the alex to me for free, I always split all the alex among all members and offered to buy each and every piece of alex off them. I never had a problem getting people to fill any extra slots or just running with a few people and doing bhaf floor1+2 ramps to get some 35s/make some gil off helping me. There were also plenty of runs I walked out with a hell of a lot less than 70 alex too.

I agree (and stated) that many of the mythics were well below relics/emps but they have been that way since mythics were first released.

Like I said before if you deem the weapon to not be worth your time, do a relic or emp.

[nitsuj]

To be fair, Thunder, when you finished your DP alexandrite was A LOT more plentiful than it is now. There is definitely a problem for people who are sitting 50% alex handed in or so and can't find the supply to buy :/

[Staren]

Not to mention back then I'm assuming he got when alex was selling for 3-5k. Versus the 13-20k it sells for now.

[Thunderlips]

Not to mention back then I'm assuming he got when alex was selling for 3-5k. Versus the 13-20k it sells for now.

I believe i was paying 6-8k each but that saved me a ton of money vs what people are paying now. On Odin I believe I have seen the alex usually sell for like 10-15k


To be fair, Thunder, when you finished your DP alexandrite was A LOT more plentiful than it is now. There is definitely a problem for people who are sitting 50% alex handed in or so and can't find the supply to buy :/

Yeah that's true. I wonder if it would help out people more if they would let you retrieve any alex you had traded to the rat so that way people who have given up on mythic can sell it all. Even if they add upgrades to salvage armor, are enough people going to it to really help out the market? I though it would at first but thinking about it longer it might not bring that much more to the market.

Draylo suggested them adding alex as drops in NI from floors 101-200 (if that gets implemented) and after thinking about it for a while that really is a good idea, especially if they make the mobs work on a stagger system like dynamis. That or convert salvage mobs to be able to be staggered and drop more alex/better chance on pouches.

[noodles355]

If they make a nyzul boost that drops alex then I really hope they make it so that you can buy remnants permits with nyzul assault points.

[Shoko]

16,189/30,000...!

SE, Y U NO FIX ALEX REQUIREMENT!?

(╯°□°)╯︵ ┻━┻ RAGE.

Seriously though, fix the alexandrite requirement and/or acquisition rate. :p

[Thunderlips]

If they make a nyzul boost that drops alex then I really hope they make it so that you can buy remnants permits with nyzul assault points.

I wish they would have done this so long ago. I have way too many NI tokens and nothing to spend them on.

[Shoko]

So wassup on this update!?

[Draylo]

Alexandrite is now 13~20k on my server, no lie. Can we get a response on this SE? Or do you honestly think a Mythic is worth 600m or that we will spend 10 months farming salvage everyday.

[Shoko]

15k on my server as well. Forced myself to stop at 21k alex. It's just too insane atm.

The irony is that I complained when it was 3~5k. Never know how good something was til it's gone, I guess.

[Staren]

We spent 45mil ish this weekend and got up to 14,000 alex. 10mil in debt at the moment but will be back to buying again by the day after tomorrow. SE Seriously needs to fix this we've spent 200 mil and farmed more already on this. 450 - 600 mil for a mythic is just too outlandish.