Improvements to Mythic Acquisition

[Wolfandre]

*DISCLAIMER*- I don't care if this is the 1,000,000th Mythic post you've seen. This is meant to be a constructive thread that we can build on. Hopefully, we can come out of this with a solid idea and the Community Team will pick it up for submission to the Developers.

Problem
So, we've got this amazing Nyzul Isle Assault update that will, no doubt, increase the Alexandrite on the market. That 30,000 goal doesn't seem so bad now. Manageable, even. However, I do have one grumble.

It still takes something like 200 days to complete a Mythic Weapon.

I don't think any of us would have a problem with this if it weren't for the fact that you can get a decent Empyrean or Relic Weapon in less than a week. By way of stats, most Relics and Empyreans are better than Mythic Weapons. For the few that are still amazing, however (Kenkonken, Ryu, Nirvana), they get left in the dust. What can we do to fix that?

Proposal
A few changes can make building Mythic Weapons fun, rather than daunting, while still imposing a challenge. Hear me out, forum-posters and Community Team.

Assaults are fun, easy missions that have a 24-hour repeat on them. Meaning, your Imperial I.D. Tag refreshes at Rytaal in the Commissions Agency a full Earth day after you obtain your first and goes on from there. The idea, here, was to prevent Assault spams to obtain high-level equipment and gain entrance to Salvage. Subsequentially, this puts a hard cap on Mythic Weapon requirements, as you must do all of the Assault missions. Twice. That's 100 days right there.

However, we have moved on. No longer are we spamming Excavation Duty every few days to obtain a Chivalrous Chain. Even the easiest to obtain equipment at the level 99 cap is better than most, if not all, of the Assault Point items.

The creater of this thread recognizes the need for balance. So the proposal is to cut the refresh period for Imperial I.D. Tags in half. By three-fourth's would be optimal, but I won't press my luck.

Half would make the minimum time in Assaults 50 days instead of 100. This will coincide with the average, casual player attending Dynamis every night or farming Empyrean Key Items on the same time table.

This also presses a choice upon us. Do we attend more normal Assaults in order to obtain Assault Points? The outcome here is to spend those at Salvage to obtain Alexandrite and have a shot at Salvage gear (some of which is still very viable, even at 99). Or, do we attend the Uncharted Nyzul Isle Assaults with our Imperial I.D. Tags and hope to obtain Alexandrite from there? A person could weigh the benefits of each and plan accordingly.

Side-tracking, let's see how Einherjar weighs in on this.

100,000 ampoules of Itherion Ichor is required to obtain Balrahn's Eyepatch, and you may do Einherjar once every 72 Earth hours, refreshing at the Conquest Tally. Let us assume one were to do a rotation of Wing 1, Wing 2, Wing 3, and Odin's Wing (960 ampoules for Wing 1, 1440 for Wing 2, 1920 for Wing 3, and 2880 for Odin's Wing). Each rotation nets you 7230 amoules of Itherion Ichor. In order to obtain 100,000 ampoules, you would need to complete 13.8 rotations, taking two weeks to complete each rotation. In a perfect world in this perfect scenario, it would take 166 days to complete Einherjar.

My proposal for Einherjar is to increase the frequency for visits. Every 24 hours would cut the time needed to complete it by two-thirds, for about 55 days. One could concievably complete Einherjar around the same time Assaults are completed.

However, there is also the matter of Nyzul Tokens. You need 150,000 Nyzul Tokens to obtain Wyrmseeker Areuhat. I will leave this section open for editing because the Tokens gained from Nyzul Isle Assault Uncharted has remained to be seen. However, the problem has always lied in the fact that Nyzul Isle shares Imperial I.D. Tags with normal Assaults.

The proposal here, without seeing Uncharted Nyzul Token acquisition, is to make Nyzul Isle Assault completely seperate from the others, and on it's own refresh timer. This would encourage players to attempt both Assault and Nyzul Isle Assault in order to obtain their Runic Keys, as well as attempting their Captain Mercenary Rank and their logs.

The last, and final, submission I bring forth is the Beastmen Leaders. I request from the Community Team the full details on their respawn or a system that the three keys required for entry instead initiates a battlefield to fight the leaders. Too often do I hear of people tracking down those keys and entering the area only to find the Leader being fought, overly camped/botted, or nowhere to be found for days on end.


Like I mentioned, this is a work in progress. I want to hear from you. Yes, you. Anyone who has thought about obtaining a Mythic Weapon, or is in the process of one, or even those of you that are tired of hearing the rest of us complain about it. Give us your ideas. After being discussed and improved, they can be added to the OP for editing and whatnot, and finally, hopefully, it will all be submitted to the Development Team by our awesome, superb, amazing Community Reps! (shameless plus are shameless)

Thanks!

EDITS:
2/13/2012 3:11PM EST: 6th Grade math error and added Einherjar proposal.

[Byrth]

7230 ampuoles realistically is once every two weeks (theoretically every 12 days). 13.8*2 weeks = 193 days (or 166 days if you go every 3 days exactly), so you did something wrong there.

[Wolfandre]

Yeah I just noticed that a few minutes ago, but browser difficulties prevented me from editing. Thanks a lot! My brain somehow decided that 7230 was the amount you get per week...or something. Not sure. Don't care. It's fixed. Thanks, Byrth!

[Zikon]

About time this is correct. Even if they just lower the amount of alex required that would be a huge boost in mythic creations.

But at this point they need to overhaul the Mythic weaponskills realistically doesn't really matter if more people can make mythics now... The weapon skills suck in general. So yeah even with the 99 30% increase in the weaponskill relics and empyerans own them hard.

[Geabrielle]

We don't know how the mythic weapons behave on the weapons themselves because of the lack of creation. So we can only say they suck based upon normal weapon's usage. That being said, I'd like to see a little more adjusting with the mythic creation process. They said they weren' t adjusting the necessary amount needed when we asked last time, but we can keep asking and hopefully they'll have mercy.

I support this message!

[Trisscar]

Excellent points, but the problem is much worse than that. Einherjar, which you have to repeat so often for an excessive amount of Incor, still costs money each and every time you enter. True, 500k by itself isn't much but if you are doing it every day that cost adds up quick. It needs a one time charge like Dynamis has now.

You also forgotten the NMs you have to eliminate as well. T3 ZNM, the Salvage bosses, and the three kings. Who does all this anymore? Unless you have some good friends are an active LS that still does old school stuff you are SoL if you want to make a Mythic.

And then there's the assaults. I know you mentioned them before, but take a closer look at them for a moment. Assaults from the depressingly easy to the annoyingly hard ones all require three people to tackle. That's fifty missions you'll have to clear over the course of an annoyingly long amount of time with at least two other people who hopefully won't get bored a ditch you. And then there's the missions themselves, half which are the type of missions you don't want to do for yourself, much less for someone else.

Square has a lot of issues to address here before Mythics become relevant to the players.

[Byrth]

Einherjar costs 60k every time you enter. I am paying 240k every ~7500 Ampuoles and expect to pay 3.4mil total for 100k Amps. Also, I do this of my own volition and sometimes lot the random crafting items at the end if I'm feeling poor. So far I'm about a mil in the hole, which is utterly insignificant compared to the amount of gil I blew on Alexandrite.

Totally, utterly, not even in the same ballpark insignificant.

The problem is that I can only go once every three days. It took me a little over 2 months to get 30k Alexandrite and I'm still farming Ampuoles.

[Helel]

Whyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy do they not increase the drop rate of alex in salvage? One of the community reps posted that the dev team was considering doing this? Why haven't they done this yet? Why? Seriously, what is so hard about increasing the drop rate? God, I've been waiting for this forever, and now it seems like they aren't even going to go through with it.

Some mythics are the best of their class; some empyreans are the best; some relics are the best. There's absolutely no reason why mythics should be 10x more difficult (require more effort/gil, whatever) to obtain.

Increase the drop rate please! Let's go!

[Trisscar]

Einherjar costs 60k every time you enter. I am paying 240k every ~7500 Ampuoles and expect to pay 3.4mil total for 100k Amps.

Thanks for the correction, which does nothing to invalidate my point.

[Wolfandre]

I don't think he was invalidating it, rather he was accentuating it. Cost is HUGE of Mythics; you're almost forced to buy Alex and you ARE forced to buy Einherjar entrances.


There were a lot of things I left out of the OP, some on accident, others on purpose, for I didn't want to get too whiney like 80% of the threads on this forum. If there is something you'd like me to add, start a discussion.

[Byrth]

Thanks for the correction, which does nothing to invalidate my point.

After 300 million gil worth of Alexandrite, are you really going to complain about 3 million gil worth of lamps? It's insignificant.

Heck, I got two Scintillian Ingots the other night (120k each) and made back an Odin worth of glasses. I sold 24 P.Tatters at 100k each that I made from abjurations that I got free lot when no one wanted them for real and made back 40 glasses worth of gil. 10 Neptunal Tatters sold for 100k each for another 16 glasses worth of gil. I'm only at ~45k Ampuoles and I've already almost made enough gil from DOING Einherjar to cover the whole thing.

The problem is the freaking delay timer, not the nominal amount of gil they charge you to enter. If 120k per week is too rich for your blood, then mythics really aren't for you.

[Trisscar]

Heck, I got two Scintillian Ingots the other night (120k each) and made back an Odin worth of glasses. I sold 24 P.Tatters at 100k each that I made from abjurations that I got free lot when no one wanted them for real and made back 40 glasses worth of gil. 10 Neptunal Tatters sold for 100k each for another 16 glasses worth of gil. I'm only at ~45k Ampuoles and I've already almost made enough gil from DOING Einherjar to cover the whole thing.Okay... I need a better way to make money.


The problem is the freaking delay timer, not the nominal amount of gil they charge you to enter. If 120k per week is too rich for your blood, then mythics really aren't for you.
No, compared to the 500k entrance fee I thought it was, 120k per week is reasonable. Seriously, thanks for the earlier correction.

[Byrth]

No problem, lol. I'm just bitter that I've had all the Alexandrite done since the beginning of October and still don't have a mythic.

[Trisscar]

No problem, lol. I'm just bitter that I've had all the Alexandrite done since the beginning of October and still don't have a mythic.

I can understand the frustration and even share it. I'm still stuck on working (translation: struggling) my way through the ranks and getting the kills I need. I am not going to get mad if they make Mythics more accessible.

[Arcon]

You also forgotten the NMs you have to eliminate as well. T3 ZNM, the Salvage bosses, and the three kings. Who does all this anymore? Unless you have some good friends are an active LS that still does old school stuff you are SoL if you want to make a Mythic.

Yes, you're SoL if you're trying to solo a mythic weapon from start to finish. On some jobs. Others could probably take down the NMs. Worst case, you'll have to trio them. If you can find people to do Einherjar with (for months on end no less) I'm pretty sure you can find people to help you with those NMs.


And then there's the assaults. I know you mentioned them before, but take a closer look at them for a moment. Assaults from the depressingly easy to the annoyingly hard ones all require three people to tackle. That's fifty missions you'll have to clear over the course of an annoyingly long amount of time with at least two other people who hopefully won't get bored a ditch you. And then there's the missions themselves, half which are the type of missions you don't want to do for yourself, much less for someone else.

Most are actually soloable. Some aren't, I admit that, but you shouldn't have any trouble finding help for it. And I know for a fact that several people even on our server are still interested in doing them (both mythic builders and just completionists going for the Captain rank). My LS has more than 6 people who all want Captain rank and we're gonna start two parallel static parties soon (including me, doing it for the mythic requirement as well).


Square has a lot of issues to address here before Mythics become relevant to the players.

I honestly think the Alexandrite requirement is the only unreasonable thing. Einherjar may take longer to get if you're rich enough to buy all the alex, but honestly, if you consider you can finish it in almost half a year (at no penalty of teaming up with other mythic pursuers or a few of the plenty people who want either Einherjar items or just enjoy doing the event), that doesn't sound too bad to me, especially if you consider that most people probably still have ampoules left over from when they were actually doing Einherjar for Odin items or abjurations (most people I know capped on ampoules for Kilusha items pretty quickly). Only sucks if you could afford to buy enough Alexandrite at once and are now sitting there and waiting for the remaining Einherjar time to pass by, but I believe that very few people are in this position (considering buying all alex will cost anywhere between 450M and 600M on Leviathan at current rates).



Einherjar costs 60k every time you enter. I am paying 240k every ~7500 Ampuoles and expect to pay 3.4mil total for 100k Amps.

Thanks for the correction, which does nothing to invalidate my point.

They already lowered the entry cost for Einherjar (was 180k, I believe). If it was 500k per entry, you'd be looking at another 28M, in addition to the Alexandrite. However, with 60k per entry, you're looking at 3.36M, which is laughable compared to that. As it is now, it really does not need to be lowered, especially if you could find some arrangements with other mythic holders, or find a shell that does Einherjar regularly anyway.

I actually have a different question: is it possible to do two mythic quests at once? The quest, as it reads on wiki, requires you to trade a weapon to Abquhbah, which I assume will be your final weapon. However, I'd like to get the assaults done right away, although I'm not sure which weapon I should take yet. Is there a way to start two weapon quests, then finish the assault requirement and then choose which weapon to upgrade further?

Edit:
I completely missed this second page. Some of what I said was already covered here, just disregard it in that case.

[Byrth]

It is not possible to do two mythic quests at once.

Also, for such a difficult requirement Alexandrite really went down easily. You can get ~100 per day duo (with a third person to enter you) including linen drops, which makes it 300 days to farm 30,000 Alexandrite. That's not super far off the time Einherjar requires and takes about the same number of man-hours at 99.