10000 plutons seems too extreme to upgrade relics

[Zumi]

Does anyone else think 10000 plutons to upgrade relics is way too high?

I upgraded 2 relics to 119 when plutons first came out and it took about 3 months each do both. It was a huge long grind that didn't take much skill at doing merit point parties then doing some remedial ark angel fights.

Now they are asking us to get 10000 which is about 33x as much as the first upgrade to ilvl 119.

I find this extremely unreasonable. It took me 3 months to do 300, so to get 10000 it will take about 8.25 years, I doubt the game severs will even be up by then.

[detlef]

When Plutons first came out I think they only dropped from Delve NMs and maybe WKR. But now they drop from every hard mode BC and every SKC fight. So it won't take you 8 years.

I agree that it's a lot and if you have a lot of weapons to upgrade the numbers get really intimidating. I hope that the high tier battlefield campaign that's going on this week becomes a regular thing because it'll be needed. On the bright side, here's another thing to farm and sell that players of every skill/commitment level can use to make money. On top of that, it encourages people to team up to tackle higher tier difficulties instead of just spamming normal or easy with trusts.

[Atomic_Skull]

I own a Mandau and I'm fine with this, it should be hard.

One thing I'm not fine with is how certain relics got screwed on their updated aftermaths and added effects though.

[Siviard]

I'm upgrading an Annihilator, and I'm about 600 into it in less than 24 hours. It won't take you "8.25 years" at all. Maybe 1-2 months of casual grinding as long as you are able to stay focused and have a group to do Difficult or Very Difficult BCNMs with.

[Kensagaku]

I agree that it's a little painstaking but it'll hardly take "forever." Doing battlefields, as people suggests, is gonna be your best bet. Plus, while you're there, you can get Beitetsu that you can trade/sell depending on your server's economy (if prices are similar like they are on Valefor, it may be easier to outright trade instead of playing the AH game with people who like to overprice early on for desperate "first-ers") for Plutons. Boulders can even be traded, though depending on your server and its collection of Empyreans, your mileage may be different.

Make use of this campaign, as it opens an extra drop slot that can contain boxes (the bigger containers) instead of just cases/parcels.

[Hoshi]

I remember when r/e/m upgrades first came out and I thought it would take forever to get 300 plutons. In the end it wasn't as bad as I imagined. 10,000 is a big number but I think it's doable, just be patient! Don't buy the items at crazy prices either - eventually they'll go down.

[Zumi]

The thing is I don't know anyone who plays the game anymore I finished the first relic by doing the easiest difficulty solo because that is the solo difficulty. It only drops 1 maybe and you don't always get the right one you are looking for. Honestly I don't see how anyone could get 600 in 1 day. That is not counting the time in abyssea it takes to get merits to do the fights. Just seems like a huge grind and really not worth doing at this point.

[Kensagaku]

...Two things!

First, many jobs can solo N or higher, which gets you two personal drops. I've done avatars on PUP or RUN or BST, done Dawn on Difficult as BLU or Head Wind, Warrior's Path, or even Fenrir on N as BLU. Many of the AAs can be soloed, with proper preparation.

Two! Building merits in Abyssea what? Go to Reisenjima or one of the gates. With the EXP campaign I'm getting a merit every kill, and as I raise my chain, I'm hitting 15-17k EXP/kill. I jump over to a job I need CP on (SCH atm) and go kill things. One Chain 50 or so usually gets me 15~18 JP and caps off my merits, at which point I switch back to my other jobs for battlefields, and repeat the process. 600 in a day is totally reasonable, albeit requiring some luck and/or exchanging.

[Alhanelem]

10000 plutons is obviously a lot but I expected it to be worse.

But it's just plutons? Not the other similar thingys?

BTW where can I see the stats of the updated relics?

[Zeargi]

10000 plutons is obviously a lot but I expected it to be worse.

But it's just plutons? Not the other similar thingys?

BTW where can I see the stats of the updated relics?

Each weapon group takes a different stone: Relics -> Plutons, Mythics -> Beitetsu, Empyrean -> Boulders.

As for the stats, I saw the stats at BG Wiki. They seem to have all the items posted now.

[Ulth]

Yeah, just wait a couple months they will be back down to 50k a stack again and you can buy your afterglow for a cool 5 mil, easy peasy.

[Alhanelem]

How many / what do you need if you're one of the 10 people who actually went through the trouble of an afterglow?

[Kensagaku]

You only need one if you have an afterglow.

[BurnNotice]

To be honest, I don't think it's hard, but it is a lengthy, time consuming process. But if you think about it, it takes longer to collect 3000 riftdross/riftcinders, 250 marrows, and 150 scorias for afterglow. I think 3000 riftdross/riftcinders should be adjusted to 300 to keep it balanced with the low requirements of marrows and scorias.

Other than that, people will be spamming BCNMs and trading up CVs to hit this goal. I say it may take about 3 months to pull off.

[Angemon]

It cost over a billion gil to create a mythic or empy afterglow, quit your complaining.

[Karbuncle]

To be honest, I don't think it's hard, but it is a lengthy, time consuming process. But if you think about it, it takes longer to collect 3000 riftdross/riftcinders, 250 marrows, and 150 scorias for afterglow. I think 3000 riftdross/riftcinders should be adjusted to 300 to keep it balanced with the low requirements of marrows and scorias.

Other than that, people will be spamming BCNMs and trading up CVs to hit this goal. I say it may take about 3 months to pull off.

I'd actually dare to say collecting 250 Marrow is significantly less time consuming and easier than 10,000 Plutons. ADL is a joke on BST these days and while theres still a luck factor with his death BS, you can easily farm multiple pop sets in a single run, netting you maybe 3~9 or more Marrow a run, which you can do back to back now in Dynamis.

Where as with Plutons, best case scenario you spend ~30 minutes getting a merit and completing a D/VD fight in order to get 0-90 Pluton (and if you get 90, thats 3 perfect boxes, good luck on that). So yah, best case scenario, a single Merit fight nets you 0.09% of your total goal.

The time ratio for 10,000 of any of these is absolutely insanely high considering their best case acquisition is a box of 30. I've done 3 Merits fights right now and I'm sitting on 48 Plutons. I mean, that averages 15~ a fight, taking into consideration time to get merits (which admittedly is short) and time to gather people or Solo/Duo a N/D/VD... Literally its easier to 250 Marrow you Relic than it is to get 10,000 Plutons. Leagues easier, significantly easier.

Which Is what I imagine their intent was, to be honest.

As for Mythics/Empyreans, I can't say. Their processess are a bit more tedious, but I imagine if you could get ~18 folks for any of the higher VW's, they'd be much easier now than they used to be.

[Stompa]

Yeah, just wait a couple months they will be back down to 50k a stack again and you can buy your afterglow for a cool 5 mil, easy peasy.


To be honest, I think the opposite may well be the case.

There was a huge back-supply of these three materials, people have been obtaining them for the last few years and nobody really needed them except the occasional 300 for RME, and the occasional new/returning player needing 150 for building a JSE Oboro to give them something to use until they got an Alluvion etc.

So there really was a huge back-supply of these materials, I've been selling them at 500 gil each for years, just to get them out of my inventory, and in the hopes that I am helping a new/returning player with their JSE weapon. Even at those prices, I have had stacks of them building up in my MH. I'm sure many mules had thousands of these items that were simply not selling.

And now the situation is that many people do actually want the new JSE[AUG], some of those weapons are actually worth having, and those people will want 450 rocks just for the JSE[AUG].

And many people have multiple RME. They will be wanting not 10,000 rocks per person, but 10,000 rocks per weapon, in some case they may need 100,000 of these items for one person. This coupled with the occasional person wanting 450 rocks to build the JSE[AUG] and the many people who are still wanting 300 for the earlier RME stage, is a HUGE demand for these rocks. Currently there is still a supply in the market that has been backlogged for a few years. When that supply runs out, and coupled with the slow and fairly random farming nature of these items, we may see the 99/stacks of these items skyrocket in price over the coming years.

[Atomic_Skull]

I'm upgrading an Annihilator, and I'm about 600 into it in less than 24 hours. It won't take you "8.25 years" at all. Maybe 1-2 months of casual grinding as long as you are able to stay focused and have a group to do Difficult or Very Difficult BCNMs with.

What's the best way to grind Plutons right now?

[OmnysValefor]

If I understand correctly, there's two paths to the same 119 weapon right?

99 > 99 AG > 119 > Updated 119 (1 stone)
99 > 119 > Updated 119 (10,000 stones)

So there you have it, there's your alternate path. I haven't checked, but I'm sure the nice moogle will still give an afterglow trial?

10k stones isn't that bad. As someone who never dreamed of building an afterglow, because lol, it would be a slap in the face to the crazy people that did if it was much less than 10k.

[Alhanelem]

Wow, my claustrum will get a huge upgrade if I can actually collect those plutons... doubled the refresh on the aftermath and -20% damage taken means slightly less chance of dying in the mob's face. 60 acc for self and now the pet is included too... if only the pet also got the Magic Damage +....

As far as the upgrade paths... is 10k plutons really easier than however many ADLs it takes? Given that you can now spam dynamis X that is. (Edit: just noticed someone else above commented on it.)
For Empyreans though.... the 10k stones is probably way better.

[Shirai]

Unfortunately the augmented Gridarvor tramples all over the updated Claustrum's Pet Accuracy.

That said, going to the main topic at hand 10.000 isn't too much, it's a fine number and for a while SE's created a very reliable source of income for the many people who're willing to work for it.
My beef, like many other's, is with how they handled the Mythic/Ergon weapons, which are now in many cases the worst choice out of the bunch. Heck, I don't even need to bother upgrading Nirvana (yet).

[detlef]

When they take away the additional drop slot from the High Tier Battlefields I think we're all gonna get a little salty.

[Alhanelem]

Unfortunately the augmented Gridarvor tramples all over the updated Claustrum's Pet Accuracy. It has more pet bonuses, but that's all it has. No accuracy for self, no aftermath (15 refresh and -20% damage taken > -5 perp) no dispel, no occasional damage multiplier, no relic weaponskill. Although it's not *100%* everything I hoped for as a Claustrum owner, it is certainly a massive improvment over the base 119 weapon (which you better believe I was bummed about, considering the thing was probably better at level 75 than it became at the original 119 version).

There's no point in getting a relic and not using the weapon skill. And when you do, the relic tramples all over Girdarvor. Remember, the relics are all wholly designed as weapons to be used, even the staff. And while that doesn't appeal to some, if you're going to swing it, you're far better off with the relic than the weapon you named. It's OK though, I'm used to the hate I've gotten over the years for even thinking of making one (I started it back when ppl actually did dynamis with 40-60 people....)

And if you're not the type of SMN to ever use your weapon, there's probably better options than the Girdarvor (although the GIrdarvor requires substantially less work than upgrading a RME)

Having gotten sidetracked with that.... I'm reeeeallly wishing I didn't sell off most of my plutons/boulders/bietetsus a while back.

(I merited staff skill, 5/5 Shattersoul.... etc)

[jayzon]

Yeah 10,000 is way too much just to get these weapons to be relevant again. R/M/E should be the best because of the effort involved and not outclassed by something that takes almost zero effort to get.

So after 170,000 or so coins, horribly tedious weapon skill trials, the once expensive and hard to get marrows, I need 10K stones...Its just too much, and that is the easiest of the R/M/E grind.

So regardless of this new hurdle I of coarse went and did a bunch of HTMB's on D, and the rate of stones dropping just did not seem enough even with the event for me to even think I have a shot at upgrading my 3 relics and 1 mythic in a reasonable amount of time.

[Karbuncle]

I do feel really bad for the people who have more than 1. This trial alone has stopped me from ever considering more than 1. 10,000 I can begrudgingly grind out over a long period of time... 20,000? 30,000? 50,000? I can't even imagine.

[Shirai]

I do feel really bad for the people who have more than 1. This trial alone has stopped me from ever considering more than 1. 10,000 I can begrudgingly grind out over a long period of time... 20,000? 30,000? 50,000? I can't even imagine.

Dunno, people that had the patience making that many weapons can probably muster the same for this trial.
If not, they'll probably just go for their most loved weapon(s).

Personally, I'm not sure what I'm going to do yet. As it stands, Nirvana's "upgrade" has left me quite disappointed. Spharai's update looks nice, but the last time my Monk was used for anything has also been over a year ago and it has been left in gear Limbo ever since.

[Riggs]

i'm glade the upgrade to mandau was so crap, saves me from having to do this rubbish, i'll just make some gil selling them for now and do the upgrade in a year or so

[Siviard]

What's the best way to grind Plutons right now?

To be fair, I should have clarified my original post. A good portion of that 600 (maybe about 400 of it?) was Plutons that I had accumulated and held onto for whatever reason. However, the remainder of that (200 or so) was from doing Tenzen on Very Difficult. Though some of the group are there to farm rocks to sell, there's another guy in the group who is upgrading his Kenkonken. He and I do 1:1 trade for the rocks we need. Others in the group that have extras do the same with us. We give them Riftborn Boulders for their Pluton or Beitetsu.

[Karbuncle]

Dunno, people that had the patience making that many weapons can probably muster the same for this trial.
If not, they'll probably just go for their most loved weapon(s).

Personally, I'm not sure what I'm going to do yet. As it stands, Nirvana's "upgrade" has left me quite disappointed. Spharai's update looks nice, but the last time my Monk was used for anything has also been over a year ago and it has been left in gear Limbo ever since.

Ive made 4 relics, 2 for myself, 2 for my brother. I have patience and am no stranger to the grind (been here since Beta lol)... but 40,000 Plutons? No thank you Samuel!

Luckily one of my relics is a shield so I lucked out which is why as I previously mentioned I only need 10,000. I mean, over a long period of time, I could do 40,000 Plutons, but at that point I'd honestly just farm ADL lol and be done with it.

[Sapphires]

I think SE is going to have to add case/boxes to more content, not because we need a more plentiful supply, but to prevent people from burning out
on the cycle of merit->htBC spam happening right now.
I don't mind the grind too much and like teaming up with people to do this, I just think we need a healthy amount of variety in existing game content that will let us get these 10k pieces.

Everything else to do in the game has pretty much taken a back seat to 'omg must farm beit/pluton/riftborn rocks' ,and the limited time campaign with the extra drop slot further reinforces farming tunnel vision for the time being.

I'm going super aggressively right now on my 1st afterglow and also spending gil to supplement my acquisition speed ( 4k/10k ),
but i'm probably going to seriously chill out on farming so crazy after the 1st one is done.

I think it would be fair if it takes a diligent soloist to do the afterglow stage in a couple months by a combination of farming dyna/salvage/vw/bc/escha content every single day.
If people want to outright buy their way to completion, I think its a safe bet to say its going to cost in excess of 100m for the foreseeable future unless they make boxes rain from the sky.

[Kincard]

I'd actually dare to say collecting 250 Marrow is significantly less time consuming and easier than 10,000 Plutons. ADL is a joke on BST these days and while theres still a luck factor with his death BS, you can easily farm multiple pop sets in a single run, netting you maybe 3~9 or more Marrow a run, which you can do back to back now in Dynamis.

It's also a lot more tedious depending on how much you hate running around, because just about everything invovling ADL is a Rare/EX item. I personally would take the leisure of doing some High Level Battlefields every night as opposed to having to run around Xarcabard that much. Same goes for running around Aht Urhgan for Pandaman and Riftitems aren't even worth mentioning, only an insane person would want to do Morta etc that many times.

That and at least there's a little bit of variety in content with plutons/etc, plus you might be able to help an LS friend get some equipment they wanted while you're doing it, etc. (I'm sure by the time I finish one weapon I'll get to see Gyve Doublet drop once)

[zataz]

ya i agree it is too much a grind u should change it to were u have to trade all 5 of the souveran +1 set to get the upgrade...
ya id take 10k plutons tyvm

[detlef]

I actually like the grind. However, the variety of content is going to get stale soon and the supply is going to be a lot shittier after this campaign ends. Plus I don't like feeling the pressure to grind grind grind because I know the additional RME drop slot is only temporary. Make it permanent and add drops to more content.

[Rydal]

I actually like the grind. However, the variety of content is going to get stale soon and the supply is going to be a lot shittier after this campaign ends. Plus I don't like feeling the pressure to grind grind grind because I know the additional RME drop slot is only temporary. Make it permanent and add drops to more content.

Make a bunch of the campaigns permanent. Chain EXP/CP for one. Why bother making players only have 7-30 days at a time to do X content. High Tier Battlefields will be spammed for a week and then only people that didn't get their REM weapons upgraded during the event will spam them regularly. Same thing happens with VoidWatch and Neo Nyzul. People only really do them during the event. Otherwise it's grind grind grind because of the EXP/CP chain. If the campaigns were constant (or had a regular schedule), it'd ease the pressure of spamming something.

[Domille]

10,000 of anything is absurdly obnoxious.

If it was 10,000 earth crystals it would STILL be annoying as hell. Let alone a specific item that only drops from "now old content". Christ forbid you have more than 1, best of luck.

[Ulth]

I think they picked 10,000 based on their market value at the time and just assumed it wouldn't go up that much. Stacks of plutons actually sold for 3 million gil on my server today. Seriously at that point why wouldn't you just do marrows they are basically the same price only they don't clog up your inventory. I still can't believe people are paying that much for items that went for 50k a stack before the update.

Anyway the solution is simple don't buy at these prices. After a few weeks of having their junk rocks mailed back to them the prices will go down. Til then just save up your money or farm them yourself.

[Alhanelem]

At that price i'd definitely rather spam dynamis X.

[Karbuncle]

It's also a lot more tedious depending on how much you hate running around, because just about everything invovling ADL is a Rare/EX item. I personally would take the leisure of doing some High Level Battlefields every night as opposed to having to run around Xarcabard that much. Same goes for running around Aht Urhgan for Pandaman and Riftitems aren't even worth mentioning, only an insane person would want to do Morta etc that many times.

That and at least there's a little bit of variety in content with plutons/etc, plus you might be able to help an LS friend get some equipment they wanted while you're doing it, etc. (I'm sure by the time I finish one weapon I'll get to see Gyve Doublet drop once)

It would be to each their own in that case then. I can personally only grind Merits and Merit fights so much. Dynamis isn't much better, but that was my point really... both are tedious but I'd say "easier" probably goes to 250 marrows.

[Alhanelem]

It would be to each their own in that case then. I can personally only grind Merits and Merit fights so much. Dynamis isn't much better, but that was my point really... both are tedious but I'd say "easier" probably goes to 250 marrows.
Yeah... Though I'd probably prefer the words "probably less time consuming" over "easier." I bought all my marrows for the non-afterglow and have never actually done ADL. But if you're really dedicated and do dynamis all day long, I'd wager 250 marrows takes less time than 10000 plutons. For Empyreans on the other hand, 10k stones is far and away easier.

[Tidis]

Makes me wonder what would be less time consuming, 10k beitetsu or 60 scoria, farming ZNM for PW pops 30-60 times would take quite a while.

[Sapphires]

when you can have a BST aoe cleave 75 merits for everyone in less than 15minutes, and you can make a party that does an avatar fight on very difficult in under 10 minutes, i'd do that over marrow/scoria farming anyday. The drop rates on parcel/boxes rewards well geared+jobpoint leveled characters, which it should, and what SE balanced around most likely.

Whether you need the rocks to upgrade your own weapons or just want to make gil selling them, its hands down the most efficient use of your time right now.

[Shirai]

Makes me wonder what would be less time consuming, 10k beitetsu or 60 scoria, farming ZNM for PW pops 30-60 times would take quite a while.

Probably the Beitetsu, the BCNMS also drop the other stone cases which you can sell and you can spend that gil on buying, speeding that process up.
Apart from that, it's incredibly easy to get merits for the BCNMs.

ZNM hardly drop anything worth selling so you'll be farming scoria until the end with hardly any other means to speed the process up, the gil that drops from the NM's will probably help a bit, but not as much considering the current market price of a single Scoria.

Unless you have an army of mules to build PW pops on, then farming Scoria would probably be faster.

[detlef]

Makes me wonder what would be less time consuming, 10k beitetsu or 60 scoria, farming ZNM for PW pops 30-60 times would take quite a while.60? Don't you need 150?

[machini]

60? Don't you need 150?

I think he means farming them to sell for gil to buy the beitetsu.

[Alhanelem]

No, can't you get more than one scoria from a kill?

[machini]

No, can't you get more than one scoria from a kill?

The drop rate on a second scoria is roughly 10%.

Which is ~137 pandy kills to get 150 scoria.

However, if beitetsu are selling for 1.3mil per stack, and you need 101 stacks to do the upgrade, that's 131 million gil. Which is what they're going for on Asura last time. And Scoria are going for about 7 million gil on Asura at the moment. So you could sell 19 scoria and buy the beitetsu instead of farming 150 scoria or 10k beitetsu.

I assume the odd numbers are from prices differing by server.

[dasva]

Of course as soon as this campaign ends you can bet your bottom dollar the prices will go up and availability down

[Tidis]

My mistake, for some reason I had it in my head that you only needed 60 scoria for afterglow.

[Kincard]

Anyway the solution is simple don't buy at these prices. After a few weeks of having their junk rocks mailed back to them the prices will go down. Til then just save up your money or farm them yourself.

Someone always says this whenever something is expensive in this game. The price probably isn't going to be going down significantly on Pluton/Beitesu unless they find some way to massively increase the supply. Before you argue that right now they're expensive because everyone's rushing to finish their existing weapons, consider that the campaign and the shiny new patch smell are also causing the supply to be much higher than it otherwise would be. As long as relics and mythics are spammable in a few weeks of semi-casual farming there will be a constant demand for Plutons/Beitetsu. Boulders will go down over time if only because of how tedious it is to 99 an Empyrean, and a ton of Empyreans 99'd are Harps anyway.

But to be completely honest, I don't really think this trial is that unreasonable at all considering how powerful the end result is. I don't really see how it's any worse than the grind many people did to get their RME just a few years ago, and it's still infinitely less soul crushing than the difficulty of getting a relic/mythic in the old days, that's for sure.

[Ulth]

Plutons, Beitetsu, and Boulders pretty much drop from everything right now. They aren't like plates where they only drop from a fraction of the the fights of only one event. There is a plentiful supply of all of them as I have seen upwards of 100 stacks of them on the AH. I can't recall the last time I saw 100 stacks of anything on the AH. The supply is high, just not as high as the demand, but the demand is limited.

[Vae]

Hmm, drop from everything eh? I haven't gotten a single pluton without specifically trying to go get one at all. Wonder what I'm doing wrong? Was I supposed to use the Konami code when I logged in?

[dasva]

I think by everything he meant delve and HTBF... which is far from everything and is largely stuff players that have been keep up have already gotten most the gear they want from.

Supply is just high right now because demand has jumped way up and the campaign increasing droprates (plus them saying it was only for a week) and people haven't gotten burnt out spamming them yet

[Ulth]

I'm sure there are plenty of players that still need stuff from those events, as for the players that have done everything already well now they have something more to do.

[Alhanelem]

Can't you also trade copper vouchers for rocks?

[Vae]

Can't you also trade copper vouchers for rocks?

Not in any sort of realistic form, no.

Aside from the fact that you can only earn like a maximum of 8? Vouchers per day, the menuing system for trading them will make you rip your hair out.

[Kincard]

Ignoring that the supply right now is inflated because of the gold rush that follows a new patch (not to mention some people were probably stockpiling them due to how few uses they had before), you need to remember that those 100 stacks you're talking about is enough to complete all of 1 weapon. Relics and Mythics (especially the former) are easier than ever to get to 99, and once this gold rush ends I really doubt plutons and beitetsu will be farmed fast enough to satisfy this continuing demand.

[dasva]

Honestly for relic it's probably easier afterglowing it first

[Angemon]

Pluton/Beitetsu/Riftborn are generally 100~130m for an upgrade to afterglow.
Marrow at 1.2m = 300m.
Mythic with Scoria at 6m = 900m,
Empy with Cinder at 1.5m = 4.5 billion gil.

Do the comparison and realize how royally screwed anyone who made AG had gotten. You can say "well that was gonna happen anyway!" but there was 0 indication of it especially considering the previous ilevel upgrade had the paths separate as well. SE should have refunded all the materials used to afterglow and just had those people farm 10k like everyone else, instead of the slap in the face they got. I can't believe people are complaining about this, it stimulated the economy and gave the average player something to do to farm gil. It stimulated content by making people go back and clear these HTB battles and opened up the shouts from escha only to include more things.

They are probably going to have this HTB as part of the campaigns regularly to increase supply but these items drop like candy and from a lot of content. People were saying this about Alexandrite and that it was in such poor suppy, SE opened up Salvage to lower cool down and there are Alexandrite on the market 24/7. People will be farming these to sell for a long time, I don't see the supply drying up even without the campaign.

[dasva]

Well I meant easier farming under normal circumstances. Prices are all funky right now so hard to get a read on what it will be after campaign ends. Even if the supply still exists it will go down and the farming efficiency will as well leading to higher prices

[Alhanelem]

Pluton/Beitetsu/Riftborn are generally 100~130m for an upgrade to afterglow. That's if there were 10k available for you to buy right this moment, which there probably isn't. Odds are the price is on its way up, not down.

[Angemon]

How much do you even think they will increase to? Let's say they are 20k, thats still only 200m to finish. That's less than a mythic costs, let alone an afterglow. Are you trying to suggest that AG users weren't screwed over? Or are you trying to suggest that this is actually something that is hard? Kinda confused on your point there, look around though as I'm sure you already see a lot of afterglows running around. This isn't hard to accomplish at all.

[Ulth]

Did anyone before the update think an afterglow was a wise investment?

[Vae]

How much do you even think they will increase to?

How low does human IQ go? The price will climb until the IQ:Gil ratio balances out.


Are you trying to suggest that AG users weren't screwed over?

Afterglow is completely worthless showpiece being "screwed over": subjective



Or are you trying to suggest that this is actually something that is hard? Kinda confused on your point there, look around though as I'm sure you already see a lot of afterglows running around. This isn't hard to accomplish at all.

Don't ever call something "hard" or "difficult" let's avoid that 12 year old debate. Nothing is hard, things are simply "time consuming".

Obtaining 10,000 pieces of shiney from content you have no other reason to do, is a pretty tough pill to take. it's a tad excessively grindy. If boxes dropped 100 pieces, then eh...

Example I've already got every. single. piece. of Delve gear, and every piece of HTB gear, there is absolutely no reason for me to ever do another one of them... Except now that I need 140,000 plutons, well that's essentially the entirety of my remaining life Spent doing meaningless content.

[Shirai]

Did anyone before the update think an afterglow was a wise investment?

Nope, and I'm still of the same opinion now, but this is unfortunately the path SE chose to stick to.
We can choose to either follow it or hop off, because we all know the complaint department is on permanent hiatus anyway.

As for the whole "AG owners have been screwed over" bit; Are you suggesting you didn't see that one coming the moment they told us how they were planning to do this gig?
As I said before, Afterglow was a mistake on SE's part, one which we are all paying for now.

[Angemon]

People were saying this exact same thing about Alexandrite and how there is 0 supply, yet people make mythics all the time. It really isn't that bad like you are painting it out to be. Then on the other end if SE made this super easy where you trade a small amount of x item that takes you all of 10 minutes, people would be complaining they are bored and quit. Then you have people complaining that everything is too easy and too quick to get equipment and this and that. There are barely any grinds left in the game outside of REM. Also keep in mind that SE plans to add more battlefields come APR, they stated they will have an update every month from APR onward that brings new battlefields (HTB and UNM are a given, but maybe something else that will drop these items.)

I would suggest to SE that they add boxes (just boxes not other versions) to UNM as a possible drop instead of either gil or the random synthesis materials.

[Tidis]

My only complaint about this is most people upon making a 99 R/E/M looked at the afterglow path and said "That's dumb I'm not going to do it" whereas a handful of people who wanted to stroke their ego went ahead and made afterglows, content in their minimal afterglow bonus, which for the record are:

Relic: Accuracy/Ranged Accuracy +15
Mythic: Attack/Ranged Attack +15
Empyrean: Critical Hit Rate +5%

So yes, this is what we're all spending 10k stones on.

So in the end my biggest gripe with this is that we're now being forced into a grind for something we didn't care to get because a handful of other players decided they needed afterglow and SE doesn't want to completely devalue the massive waste of time they put into the afterglow trial.

[Kincard]

Agree with the above as far as the whole "people are being forced into this" thing. Afterglow was always a vanity goal so its dumb they decided everyone needed to do it. Nobody came out happy- people who had Afterglow don't have their special shiny anymore and people without it are forced onto an incredibly tedious trial.

I mean, this 10,000 stone trial really isn't as a big deal as many people are making it out to be, but the point is that SE made a decision that annoyed pretty much everyone, with the only consolation being that they actually bothered to do some decent non-base damage related overhauls on the weapons for once (especially Relic AM).

Also I really have to wonder where they're going to go from here. Are we going to get a 30,000 pluton trial another 2 years into the future?


People were saying this exact same thing about Alexandrite and how there is 0 supply, yet people make mythics all the time.

You're talking about what people said about salvage when a lot of that was back when you needed 3 people to enter and Salvage II didn't exist?

It's not really something you can directly compare, the way to access the content is completely different and a run of HTB will get you a totally different amount of plutons etc. compared to how much Alexandrite you get in a run of Salvage. If everyone was doing super efficient 6-man parties spamming VD then I'm sure the progress-per-time you're getting would be as much or even more than what you get in Salvage, but I'm willing to bet a ton of people doing it right now are doing it at a snail's pace solo/low-manning Normal or Difficult.

By the way, that's my advice to a lot of you complaining about how hard this trial is- get a couple friends, figure out how to run a VD quickly, and you'll soon realize just how much time you're wasting trying to solo Normal/Difficult by yourself.

[Alhanelem]

Example I've already got every. single. piece. of Delve gear, and every piece of HTB gear, there is absolutely no reason for me to ever do another one of them... Except now that I need 140,000 plutons, well that's essentially the entirety of my remaining life Spent doing meaningless content. In fairness: Players were never meant to get 14 superweapons. The original design called for them to take at least a year to create when they were introduced. By their estimation, you should ahve just gotten your 12th one or so if you never did anything else in the game.

It w as your choice to get that many, now it's your choice which ones you want to actually use.

[Vae]

In fairness: Players were never meant to get 14 superweapons. The original design called for them to take at least a year to create when they were introduced. By their estimation, you should ahve just gotten your 12th one or so if you never did anything else in the game.

It w as your choice to get that many, now it's your choice which ones you want to actually use.

If they would stop screwing with mechanics, and making 1 super job every six months while making the other 16 COMPLETELY USELESS I'd love to pick one job and ONLY play it. You know that's impossible. Your statement is invalid. OVER buffing and SUPER nerfing is real. If they had ANY semblance of balance, I wouldn't have this issue.

Yeah, you can square peg yourself into it, but when you do that, you're just being an ass and making things harder on your friends that "allow" you to be a snowflake.

[dasva]

Should also note this has greatly distorted the market/economy. Dozens of various items I'd sell just don't sell anymore. Good luck with selling any of the synth items lol. One item that I noticed still does (alexandrite) supply has gone down a little and price has jumped way up. Things have shifted so far in favor of both buying and selling the upgrade items it's hurting completely unrelated content/items. If/when things every go back to being sane I'd say prices would be significantly higher than right now

[Alhanelem]

If they had ANY semblance of balance, I wouldn't have this issue.This is totally true, but it doesn't invalidate anything.You're doing something SE said over a decade ago was going to take forever. They aren't good at balance, but I can't think of there having been 14 flavors-of-the-month over the years. Most of the time it's been SAM lol.... before the great nerf it was RNG.

At any rate the point was, it's not like there's a law that you must upgrade all of them. I had completed the mythic staff up until the heavy metal plate stage (where I gave up and went back to the relic I had started ages before). well, since they're for the same jobs I guess it's a little different. But do you really need to upgrade them all?

I do sympathize with your plight in a sense- but they clearly didn't expect anyone to do so many. I didn't post that to upset you, but obviously the parameters were set the way they are because


1) o the (now) outdated assumption that most people would have one or two of these things. However over time the difficulty of the grind fell enough that many players considered making weapons when previously it was too daunting for all but the most dedicated.
2) they don't want to totally ruin things for the people, however few there are, who did afterglows. Of course the y could have just offered non-afterglow versions, but that's another topic altogether =\

[Vae]

Every job, at some point has been the pinnacle of use. Even dragoon had moment(s) in the sun. A very small moment, a very long time ago. At some point this phrase has always been used:

"A (jobnamehere) is a *MUST have for this (thing we're about to do)" Or at least like in DRGs case, "it would be ideal to have a (jobnamehere)".

Pup is possibly the only job that has never been in the spotlight, and that spotlight is kinda on pup right now, though the people who play pup are smart enough to keep that on the DL so bandwagons don't ruin it.

You -DO- have to upgrade them all. What's the point in having/making them if all they can do is collect dust.

[Karbuncle]

In fairness: Players were never meant to get 14 superweapons. The original design called for them to take at least a year to create when they were introduced. By their estimation, you should ahve just gotten your 12th one or so if you never did anything else in the game.

It w as your choice to get that many, now it's your choice which ones you want to actually use.

I remember them saying that and I get what you're saying here, but thats not a fair excuse to use, at all. They know darn well it wont take a year to get one of these weapons anymore, it not like it crept up on them slowly or that we're to blame from zealoted farming... they're the ones who have made the adjustments to Salvage and Dynamis to be much more accessible. They're the ones who removed the time entering restrictions too, so I mean... they know what they did.

They know they're player base better than we think, I know they know there are people out there with multiple Ultimate weapons, lots of them... so I have to assume they thought 10k per was reasonable for people with 7 or 8 of them, thinking they'll pick their favorite and work on the others slowly.... Which is where I can strongly disagree with their choice.

I understand they want these to be a difficult thing to obtain for many players, its the likely final stage of Ultimate weapons... hell, Its not even terribly bad with the campaign right now... I'll do it but i don't have to like it!

I remember a while back I was perusing FFXIAH achievements and some dude had every single relic weapon and a few mythics. Bet they'd be killing themselves about now if they even played. lol

[Alhanelem]

You -DO- have to upgrade them all. What's the point in having/making them if all they can do is collect dust. Are you actually going to use every one of these things? I know people who made them just to make them. Although I had other functional reasons in mind, I didn't create a Claustrum specifically to become a superior summoner. I partially did it just to join the rather exclusive club of people who posessed one (and partially to enhance my style of play, mainly when playing solo).

So yes- there are people who got them as collector's pieces, knowing that they were not the greatest weapons. Then there were some who did it for science e.g. to get data on the weapon skills. There's more than one reason people created these weapons, and not all of them were specifically to mash monster's heads in. :p



Pup is possibly the only job that has never been in the spotlight, and that spotlight is kinda on pup right now,True. but RNF has never been particularly desired either, although maybe I was sick the day it was popuilar?

------------------------------------

Karb, you do have a point, but they're obviously using outdated thinking. But could they have made these trials much shorter without producing a torrent of tears from people who already did the afterglow?

(Obviously, i'm of the camp that it was stupid to design it this way in the first place, JUST MAKE NONAFTERGLOW VERSIONS, but... yeah...)

[Sapphires]

Pick your favorite job and weapon and glow that one first.
The power increase from the last stage upgrade isn't going to magically let you beat content you didn't before, nor is it going to magically break the current metagame for the remaining high end content or get you in a apex party on a job people didn't want to bring beforehand.

People need to check their sense of entitlement to the latest RME upgrade. In a game that won't be doing large content updates anymore, people are certainly in a hurry to complain there is nothing to do by wanting the afterglow upgrade to be made easier.

[machini]

Pick your favorite job and weapon and glow that one first.
The power increase from the last stage upgrade isn't going to magically let you beat content you didn't before, nor is it going to magically break the current metagame for the remaining high end content or get you in a apex party on a job people didn't want to bring beforehand.

People need to check their sense of entitlement to the latest RME upgrade. In a game that won't be doing large content updates anymore, people are certainly in a hurry to complain there is nothing to do by wanting the afterglow upgrade to be made easier.

You mistake entitlement with frustration with SE's decision to undo a design choice they made, and up til now had stuck to, simply because adding 2 versions of each of the upgraded weapons, for afterglow and nonafterglow paths, and then afterglow trial/upgrade for the non-afterglow ones, was too much work.

Meanwhile, they're making mounts.

Part of what is frustrating here is how the man hours they have available are being allocated.

[Mithlas]

You mistake entitlement with frustration with SE's decision to undo a design choice they made, and up til now had stuck to, simply because adding 2 versions of each of the upgraded weapons, for afterglow and nonafterglow paths, and then afterglow trial/upgrade for the non-afterglow ones, was too much work.

Meanwhile, they're making mounts.

Part of what is frustrating here is how the man hours they have available are being allocated.

Emphasizing something that could be held off to design better content items/balance issues/etc.

[Sapphires]

Not everything added to XI from here on out has to be more endgame monsters and more loot+power creep.
Work on job balance? The meta just will shift and then a different majority of the 22 jobs will be told to get lost when doing whatever content it is that's relevant.
All mmos should just fiddle with job balance a bit every few months to stir the pot and make people play something different awhile.

The work on mounts is actually interesting, and maybe it will open the door to make combat while on a mounts possible, give people a reason to not instawarp everywhere, or something new noone has thought of.
That's the great thing about game dev is that working on different things sometimes leads to new and fresh things.

Maybe they'll mess around with monstrosity again after that, or social/aesthetic upgrades or QoL stuff.

I'd much prefer the dev team work on a diverse set of things.

[machini]

And while that is your opinion and your desire, there are others of us who really wish game balance was the highest priority at this point, since development is winding down, and we don't want to be stuck for the rest of the game's life span, however long that my be, with a retarded meta where people only ever play six different jobs.

Not to mention the fact that a lot of the decisions in general feel rushed and not at all thought through.

[Alhanelem]

Emphasizing something that could be held off to design better content items/balance issues/etc.
Some people do want different mounts and have been asking for it for years, actually. There's a lot of worse ways they could be spending their time.

Machini, I'm of the camp that getting better game balance is a pipe dream. Even games with a whole team dedicated to game balance, there are still flaws, still things being used in unexpected and unplanned ways, etc. So it's almost a waste of time beyond the biggest critical issues.

[Vae]

Playablity takes priority over vanity.

AFTER the game fixes some complaints, then I'll put on a party hat and give a crap about riding a tiger. This isn't wow. I haven't rode a chocobo since 2009.

[machini]

Seriously, if we want mounts, just let us summon our chocobos in Adoulin and Escha 'cause moogle magic.

[Alhanelem]

Seriously, if we want mounts, just let us summon our chocobos in Adoulin and Escha 'cause moogle magic.
Don't forget the northlands.

If you can call your bird on the upper level of batallia (only accessible from BCD), then I see no reason you shouldn't be able to have it in the northlands.

[Alhanelem]

I always believed that SE were trying to make chocobos more realistic, and therefor more loved by players, by going with the "birds don't like cold weather" angle.That's not the reason. The reason is the only way to access Beaucadine on foot is through a cave. It's caves/dungeons that chocobos won't go in.

It's been that way since the beginning, so I'm guessing that even though WOTG made a ramp in batallia for BCD, that they just kept it that way because they were lazy.

[cengeal]

Seems a little late in the game to be adding new mounts. And really, what would be the point? I can't even remember the last time I rode a chocobo. Not that it's completely pointless, I'm sure there are people who still do.

Back to the point of the thread, I think the 10k count is too high only because farming them takes so long. As if ARME's weren't expensive enough already, they want us to dump another 70-100 mill into them to get them to the point they should have always been at it in the first place. I was really hoping getting my Kikoku to its final stage would be more fun. Instead, it's just another stupid grind. I would much rather have needed 1k plutons and needed to do Reiseinjima NMs or something.

[Alhanelem]

There are chocobos in Altepa desert, which you travel through Korroloka Tunnel (cave dungeon) to reachThe people of Rabao brought them there. Same for the jungle (mhaura or Norg). There's no settlements or people in the northlands to keep birds.


And the rental chocobos in Norg use the Sea Serpent Grotto (cave dungeon) to exit into the jungle too, since there is no other way.Acually, they do not, the Chocobo NPC in Norg tells you they built a special exit for them.

[Stompa]

The people of Rabao brought them there. Same for the jungle (mhaura or Norg). There's no settlements or people in the northlands to keep birds.

Acually, they do not, the Chocobo NPC in Norg tells you they built a special exit for them.


Presumably those people brought the chocobos to their settlements, by travelling through the caves. Also when I call my chocobo using whistle, she appears in Altepa and the Jungle, I am assuming she travelled through the caves to get there.

In Norg, yes they say you can not ride the bird in SSG, but if you actually look at Norg in relation to the exit areas in the Jungle, Norg is a long way from the actual exit point in the Jungle, and so the chocobos "special exit" would still have to be a long tunnel through the caves.

In any case, the fact that my chocobo is very happy to be called in the desert and jungle areas, but refuses to be called in Northlands, is because she doesn't like the Northlands, and I believe this is because it is cold.

[Kincard]

Seems a little late in the game to be adding new mounts. And really, what would be the point? I can't even remember the last time I rode a chocobo. Not that it's completely pointless, I'm sure there are people who still do.

I know this is the wrong thread to be stressing this point, but I really have to say I agree with this sentiment. Why now, after SE has basically declared no new areas will ever be added to the game again, do they add new mounts? I mean, it's nice and all, but was there really nothing better for them to work on?

I'm not sure I really agree that that same effort would've gone to RMEs though, since it's probably largely graphics/animation work which is probably a different group than the people designing items and the like, but I'm pretty sure people would've appreciated, say, a unique monster model for Quetzalcoatl more than they would being able to ride a crab.

Or maybe...SE could take the time being spent doing that and instead slowly work towards having more models/animations for a larger XI project...hint, hint.

[Angemon]

I did find it odd Quetzalcoatl was a wyrm, kinda cheap if you ask me!

[Unctgtg]

I did mine and wasnt that bad. I know of 3 people on my server that farmed farmed farmed like crazy on the BCs, and did theirs in about a week. Kept the plutons, sold off the other two and bought more plutons. Its doable.

[Vae]

It's just excessively boring. And a little... weak. Plutons/Beitetsu/Boulders are actually overused.

Every other time they come up with some fancy new item from some new content that we haven't already done 600 times. There's nothing interesting about doing Tenzen for the 600th time, after you've done it for all of 2015 before 10,000 stones were needed.

They could've at least added a new +1 version of the thrown out gear to make it slightly less of a slap in the face.

[Shirai]

I did find it odd Quetzalcoatl was a wyrm, kinda cheap if you ask me!

Could say the same for Jormungand and Vrtra, both those, like Quetzalcoatl, were also serpents in their own respective mythologies.

Then again, going by those, this game's interpretation of wyrm isn't accurate either.

[Alhanelem]

Presumably those people brought the chocobos to their settlements, by travelling through the caves. Also when I call my chocobo using whistle, she appears in Altepa and the Jungle, I am assuming she travelled through the caves to get there.

In Norg, yes they say you can not ride the bird in SSG, but if you actually look at Norg in relation to the exit areas in the Jungle, Norg is a long way from the actual exit point in the Jungle, and so the chocobos "special exit" would still have to be a long tunnel through the caves.

In any case, the fact that my chocobo is very happy to be called in the desert and jungle areas, but refuses to be called in Northlands, is because she doesn't like the Northlands, and I believe this is because it is cold.I'm going to continue to assume it's specifically because of the dungeons, because that's more consistent with other final fantasy games. in FFXIV they don't care about cold places (Ishgard even still raises black chocobos), they only won't enter dungeons, the major cities, and some other interior places.

[Alhanelem]

Why now, after SE has basically declared no new areas will ever be added to the game againAre you really comparing brand new areas to mounts using existing assets (e.g. the raptor we were shown)? Really?

A new area requires a ton of work from a bunch of people e.g. artists and level designers. A new mount can leverage existing assets and systems.

Do we really need new areas right now anyway? It will just make it less and less likely that you'll bump into other players. There's tons of empty space in existing areas that could be put to more fuinctional use.

[Kincard]

...No, I was making the point that without new areas, the incentive to run around and explore is significantly decreased, so adding mounts is a whole lot of work into something very few people will appreciate. Even ignoring all contextual clues if you read the rest of the post you would've realized that.

[dasva]

...No, I was making the point that without new areas, the incentive to run around and explore is significantly decreased, so adding mounts is a whole lot of work into something very few people will appreciate. Even ignoring all contextual clues if you read the rest of the post you would've realized that.

It does sound like a bad idea but it does sound like SE. So much work poured into various things that were destined to never really be appreciated or just once a day check (hello monster rearing) or stuff that had potential but they left it half finished... like monstrosity or pankration.

Honestly I'm thinking this is more along the lines of this is a more for the devs thing. It's not about usefulness or playability but something cool the devs have wanted to do for awhile. Ditto the patio

[Kincard]

See the patio is something people will actually appreciate because people go into their houses all the time. That's fluff content I'm supportive of. Chocobos lost their function after they decided to add about 4 different ways teleport around the world.

[zataz]

hey u all said afterglow was optional well. so is finishing your weapon 119 is 119

[Afania]

It's just excessively boring. And a little... weak. Plutons/Beitetsu/Boulders are actually overused.

Every other time they come up with some fancy new item from some new content that we haven't already done 600 times. There's nothing interesting about doing Tenzen for the 600th time, after you've done it for all of 2015 before 10,000 stones were needed.


Kinda irrelevant to the discussion but just curious, why'd everyone spam Tenzen over leviathan and ifrit to farm stones? It's significantly slower and if grind is boring, you may as well spam them faster and get it over with.

Also the point of farming boring items is so that players without friends/ls can complete a skill 269 weapon slowly on their own time. Killing Reisenjima HELM is fun(and stressing on the same time), but that doesn't mean all types of player can do it and it's still out of reach for majority. Having a way to do casual grind and get a skill 269 weapon is a good way to give majority of players a long term goal to do.

[Vae]

Kinda irrelevant to the discussion but just curious, why'd everyone spam Tenzen over leviathan and ifrit to farm stones? It's significantly slower and if grind is boring, you may as well spam them faster and get it over with.

Tenzen VD dies in 1 skillchain, something like < 30 seconds, the run up to the avatar takes longer than tenzen does to kill.

I don't know why people do what they do.



...fun...

No, not really. Just another generic fight. Nothing exciting, or interesting, or new, or entertaining.

[Afania]

the run up to the avatar takes longer than tenzen does to kill.


Really? That's very interesting. Am I missing any HP near tenzen BC? Which HP did you use? Because the running from my usual HP near Tenzen BC takes longer than killing avatar itself. I guess I probably missed some HP right outside of BC which caused tenzen spam a lot less efficient.

Also since you mentioned the run up to the avatars, I've been thinking of having one person /THF or main THF flee pull it to entrance or toward everyone else to save time, but I haven't try it yet.




No, not really. Just another generic fight. Nothing exciting, or interesting, or new, or entertaining.

So grinding from easy BC is boring for you, doing Reisenjima HELM is "generic fight, nothing exciting/interesting/new or entertaining". What else in this game that you find it fun/interesting/exciting? Why not play a different video game? Because really, you don't seem to enjoy playing this game at all and I can't think of any current content in this game that you may enjoy.

[Ladynamine]

I just like to say, 10,000 is not extreme. I expected something like this in a form of escha way and not something that already existed. But 10,000 imo seems reasonable.

[cengeal]

I just like to say, 10,000 is not extreme. I expected something like this in a form of escha way and not something that already existed. But 10,000 imo seems reasonable.

Personally I think it would be reasonable if there were more methods to obtain the items we need. The only way to really farm them is by spamming High-Tier Battlefields at the moment, but if there's a better way, please, tell me. I think 1,000 would be reasonable, maybe even 5,000. But then again, reasonable is a subjective term.

[Ladynamine]

Personally I think it would be reasonable if there were more methods to obtain the items we need. The only way to really farm them is by spamming High-Tier Battlefields at the moment, but if there's a better way, please, tell me. I think 1,000 would be reasonable, maybe even 5,000. But then again, reasonable is a subjective term.

Any FFXI player that's played this game for years should know that if you want the best out of a relic, mythic, or empyrean weapon that you have to earn it. The people who took the time to afterglow these weapons beforehand by previous methods had to work hard for theirs either by farming the 5 + 250 marrows, 3 + 150 scoria, or 6 + 60 Riftdross/Riftcinders, all at which at the time were not so easy to get unless you had a huge pocketbook of gil at that time. Square-Enix wasn't going to simply just give people a hand out on Afterglow weapons. In fact, it could have been worse. It could have been 2,500 umbral marrows, 1,500 mulibar's scoria, or 600 riftdross/riftcinders needed.

For those that did the Afterglow weapons beforehand, they got rewarded by only needing 1 stone of the type of weapon. Otherwise, 10,000 is not a really bad deal at all. Quite frankly, I rather deal with the 10,000 requirement. Regardless you're getting rewarded w/ stones to upgrade and whatever you don't need, you can sell for either profit or put towards more of what you need. Also, I think it takes less time to just go farm the merits to do the fights than it would to go farm pops in dynamis or zeni nm's, or rely on a less that 1% drop rate on riftdross/riftcinders at maximum lights on voidwatch.

[Alhanelem]

Square-Enix wasn't going to simply just give people a hand out on Afterglow weapons. In fact, it could have been worse.The thing is, the afterglow was painted as an optional project for bored people with a lot of time/money on their hands. It wasn't painted as something that was required to use your relic or something that would be required in the future.

[Ladynamine]

The thing is, the afterglow was painted as an optional project for bored people with a lot of time/money on their hands. It wasn't painted as something that was required to use your relic or something that would be required in the future.

I agree w/ that comment, but for people who did it, it's still something you had to earn and take a lot of work to do. Pretty much, people who are like "why did you make this 10,000 stones. that's too many. only high-tier bcnm's drop them" don't want to work for the boosted stats that much*, hence my "Square-Enix wasn't going to simply just give people a hand out on Afterglow weapons" comment.

For me, I didn't want to hunt down 125-250 more Arch Dynamis Lords, 75-150 more Pandemonum Wardens, or god knows how many Morta's, Ig-Alima's, Botulus Rex's, or Bismarck's I had to kill before and after this announcement on upgrading these weapons happened, but I still wanted an afterglow weapon. So I took the other path, and I felt I earned my first weapon farming/buying 10,000 more stones. I farmed about 80% of the stones needed for it and bought the other 20%.

I didn't make much profit off of other stones not needed because I made a deal w/ another player on trading 1 type of stone he needed for the type i needed as we worked together on duo'ing VD Ark Angel MR fights. We averaged 400-800 stones daily for like 3 weeks.

*: Edited to add more to my post

[cengeal]

Any FFXI player that's played this game for years should know that if you want the best out of a relic, mythic, or empyrean weapon that you have to earn it. The people who took the time to afterglow these weapons beforehand by previous methods had to work hard for theirs either by farming the 5 + 250 marrows, 3 + 150 scoria, or 6 + 60 Riftdross/Riftcinders, all at which at the time were not so easy to get unless you had a huge pocketbook of gil at that time. Square-Enix wasn't going to simply just give people a hand out on Afterglow weapons. In fact, it could have been worse. It could have been 2,500 umbral marrows, 1,500 mulibar's scoria, or 600 riftdross/riftcinders needed.

For those that did the Afterglow weapons beforehand, they got rewarded by only needing 1 stone of the type of weapon. Otherwise, 10,000 is not a really bad deal at all. Quite frankly, I rather deal with the 10,000 requirement. Regardless you're getting rewarded w/ stones to upgrade and whatever you don't need, you can sell for either profit or put towards more of what you need. Also, I think it takes less time to just go farm the merits to do the fights than it would to go farm pops in dynamis or zeni nm's, or rely on a less that 1% drop rate on riftdross/riftcinders at maximum lights on voidwatch.

Like I said, it's all subjective. Could it have been worse? Yes. Could it have been better? Yes. Each one of those ideas is as equally effective/ineffective as an argument point.

I'm not interested in turning this into some kind of debate or feud, just remember that not everybody shares opinions. Some people will agree with your statement, some will agree with mine, and others might have a view that's completely separate.

Now, I'm putting myself into the hypothetical situation where I upgraded my Kikoku to have an afterglow. Am I happy that I have less trouble to go through than most other owners? yes. However, I'm also imagining myself to be quite irritated that it cost me about an extra 100m (that's comparing the current prices of plutons vs. marrows) to do it. At best, that's a bittersweet feeling. At worst, I'm feeling that my motivation betrayed me.

[machini]

To reiterate, up until this, Afterglow had always been something optional, at 99 and at 119 I. For as completely worthless as afterglow is, forcing us to attain it, even if it's at half of the gil cost, is extremely disrespectful in terms of them going back on the 'afterglow is optional' thing.

[Alhanelem]

To reiterate, up until this, Afterglow had always been something optional, at 99 and at 119 I. For as completely worthless as afterglow is, forcing us to attain it, even if it's at half of the gil cost, is extremely disrespectful in terms of them going back on the 'afterglow is optional' thing.
Yes indeed- people would say it's disrespectful to the people that did the afterglows as well if the trial wasn't long, but that was exactly our point when this stuff was announced- if they simply kept the two seperate paths, all would have been well.

[machini]

I honestly don't think I'd ever seen someone with afterglow before this.

[Angemon]

Doesn't mean they didn't exist. They should have kept the two paths separate, this current one only screws over previous AG users (which are in the vast minority so nobody cares about them sadly.)

[Rydal]

Any FFXI player that's played this game for years should know that if you want the best out of a relic, mythic, or empyrean weapon that you have to earn it. The people who took the time to afterglow these weapons beforehand by previous methods had to work hard for theirs either by farming the 5 + 250 marrows, 3 + 150 scoria, or 6 + 60 Riftdross/Riftcinders, all at which at the time were not so easy to get unless you had a huge pocketbook of gil at that time. Square-Enix wasn't going to simply just give people a hand out on Afterglow weapons. In fact, it could have been worse. It could have been 2,500 umbral marrows, 1,500 mulibar's scoria, or 600 riftdross/riftcinders needed.

Just to correct you, it costs 60 Roiftdross/cinders to get to 99 and 3000 to get the afterglow so....it is worse.

[Alhanelem]

I honestly don't think I'd ever seen someone with afterglow before this.
There are a few. I've seen one before on shiva.

[Ladynamine]

Just to correct you, it costs 60 Roiftdross/cinders to get to 99 and 3000 to get the afterglow so....it is worse.

Thanks for the correction. Just now saw the mistake in the post. 3,000 is indeed alot worse on just the 99-2 path alone.

[MiriOhki]

Here's another annoyance: Once you start it, you're locked in. I wish I had known that before i started working on my Verethragna. I can't augment any of my JSE gear until I get another 9400 boulders.It'd be nice if you could do so, perhaps with another stone you're not using on your R/E/M.

[Alhanelem]

Such a task as this should have been put on its own NPC if the NPC isn't allowed to talk about anything else while you're on it. =\

[Vae]

Such a task as this should have been put on its own NPC if the NPC isn't allowed to talk about anything else while you're on it. =\

They ran out of ideas with the current staff they have. Give em a break, they re-used plutons/boulders/beits for a second time, and they re-used oboro. They clearly didn't have the five extra minutes it would've taken to make a second NPC next to Oboro.

[Stuzey]

You can retrieve or augment the JSE weapons while doing the REM upgrade, I got a new JSE weapon and augmented it last week, while my mythic is still being worked on.

But, you may not be able to use the same stone which is used to upgrade your REM

[Kensagaku]

I'll admit I was skeptical, because I tried everything to try and get him to accept my Aettir to upgrade while working on my Ryuno in the past, but I just went back to try again, and lo and behold it worked. Here's what I did:

1) Talk to Oboro. Since he has my Ryunohige, his options were "Ask what the deal is" and "Nothing." If you select "Nothing", then he'll mention that he wouldn't be averse to augmenting other pieces of equipment at the same time.
2) Talk to him and you'll see the list of JSE weapons, just as if you were trying to get him to make one. Go down to "About the weapons" and he'll explain that he will pause working on your RME to work on this weapon, though he won't return materials. This made me nervous, but it doesn't actually halt the RME process, so it's fine.
3) Trade him your JSE weapon and a stone of your type (Boulders, Beitetsu, Plutons) and he'll accept it and mezzotint your weapon (i.e. prime it for augments) so that you can use that stone with the weapon.
4) Trade him the JSE weapon and however many stones, and it'll get augmented.

And I made sure it didn't mess with the RME process, because I traded a bunch of Beitetsu afterwards and it was immediately put towards my Ryuno, with the same count as before. So yay, we can do JSE and RME together.

[Zumi]

Well I came back again due to free week and its still 10000 plutons with no good way to get these. I had 47m gil on my character that isn't enough to buy them all. I could solo those ark angel fights but getting merits points to fight that takes a long time and the drop rate seemed about 1 in 10. Since they added new merits I should spend the merit points on those and nobody does stuff like abyssea anymore so getting merits is one huge pain now.

It would be cool to finish the relic as one last hurrah but nothing has changed these are still very hard to get.

[detlef]

They're incredibly easy to get which is why they are a fraction of the price they were whenever you left. 47m is just about enough to buy the 10k you need, give or take.

If you're looking to farm them yourself, people solo or low man fights such as VD Leviathan all the time. Also people haven't done XP in Abyssea in a several years. Consider XPing in Escha zones (Zi'tah probably being the friendliest to your skill/gear level).

[Zumi]

They're incredibly easy to get which is why they are a fraction of the price they were whenever you left. 47m is just about enough to buy the 10k you need, give or take.

If you're looking to farm them yourself, people solo or low man fights such as VD Leviathan all the time. Also people haven't done XP in Abyssea in a several years. Consider XPing in Escha zones (Zi'tah probably being the friendliest to your skill/gear level).

The easiest difficulty gives of ark angel fights seems to give a fairly large challenge when I did it last. I farmed them all to get those papers to upgrade my AF1 and it took so long it was mainly the exp grind in abyssea to buy the entry item and I think I saw very few plutons drop. Not sure about leviathan bc fight because they didn't have that when I last played. Those plutons were about 500k a stack on the ah so I would run out of gil just before finishing.

[Hawklaser]

The easiest difficulty gives of ark angel fights seems to give a fairly large challenge when I did it last. I farmed them all to get those papers to upgrade my AF1 and it took so long it was mainly the exp grind in abyssea to buy the entry item and I think I saw very few plutons drop. Not sure about leviathan bc fight because they didn't have that when I last played. Those plutons were about 500k a stack on the ah so I would run out of gil just before finishing.

Have you tried getting the xp somewhere other than abysea? If I am out and about in an adoilin or escha area, usually end up capped with 65 merits (not up to full cap yet) before I know it. Usually realize capped when don't see a merit point announcement for a lil bit while killing things. And if specifically after them, capped in about 15-20m tops if in an area without competition.

[Zumi]

Never really got merits outside of abyssea since coming back. Definitely don't have max merit capacity leveled or most of the stats and stuff since they added a lot higher caps to everything since the abyssea days.

[zataz]

Well I came back again due to free week and its still 10000 plutons with no good way to get these. I had 47m gil on my character that isn't enough to buy them all. I could solo those ark angel fights but getting merits points to fight that takes a long time and the drop rate seemed about 1 in 10. Since they added new merits I should spend the merit points on those and nobody does stuff like abyssea anymore so getting merits is one huge pain now.

It would be cool to finish the relic as one last hurrah but nothing has changed these are still very hard to get.

Lol let me know when even 3 of those = to even half of what ochain takes.

[Urmom]

Yeah if you ilvl up farming plutons and such is pretty easy. If the easiest difficulty of ark angels gives you problems you really really need to work on getting basically any ilvl 119 gear first

And right now in xp campaign you can go from zero to capped 75 merits in just a few minutes getting 10-25k limit points per kill on reisinjima mobs. Of course it's gotten so easy that the prices have plummeted and it's often not even that good of gil/hr unless you multiboxing