Assault for solo players are broken

[radar]

Some assaults are very difficult to complete solo for casual or new players, especially on low pop servers. The reason more established players do not complain about this, is they cheat and used 3rd party tools to complete them.

Suggestions to fix assaults, and make them less awful:

Azure Ailments:

https://www.bg-wiki.com/ffxi/Azure_Ailments

It's next to impossible for debuffs to land in this assault, since I119 gear. I suggest giving the player a massive -magic evasion stat when you talk to the npc so buffs can land easier.

Imperial Agent Rescue:

https://www.bg-wiki.com/ffxi/Imperial_Agent_Rescue

The monsters have low HP, and doing damage means they die so fast. Increase the monsters HP pool, and add far more monsters to the area. You end up having to stand there and spam dia on the monsters to feed it tp.

Lebros Supplies

https://www.bg-wiki.com/ffxi/Lebros_Supplies

The amount of food you get solo, and the number of trips makes this assault near impossible solo. Boost the amount of points per food, or just remove all low points foods so they are all 5, 7, or aoe foods.

Lost and Found

https://www.bg-wiki.com/ffxi/Lost_and_Found

This assault is near impossible to solo, the ??? is too hard to find because it disappears so quickly and was designed for more than 1 player to triangulate the ring. Make the ??? always active and visible, instead of it being invisible.

The level cap raised, but many of these assaults are almost impossible still because they were designed to be done with more than one player. Changes need to be made to these, when they are so important for mythic weapons. Them being the way they are just encourages cheating.

Any developer or community manager should try these assaults solo and see how you go, they are near impossible to the point of being broken. Please fix them.

I'm not asking this for myself, I have numerous characters so can easily complete them all. Solo / new players players cannot, this is effectively broken content in many ways that was never updated with how the game changed when trusts / 119 was added.

[Voidstorm]

Some assaults are very difficult to complete solo for casual or new players, especially on low pop servers. The reason more established players do not complain about this, is they cheat and used 3rd party tools to complete them.

Suggestions to fix assaults, and make them less awful:

Azure Ailments:

https://www.bg-wiki.com/ffxi/Azure_Ailments

It's next to impossible for debuffs to land in this assault, since I119 gear. I suggest giving the player a massive -magic evasion stat when you talk to the npc so buffs can land easier.

it's not all jobs, but having negative resistance to an element kind of makes it impossible to full resist a status effect.
https://www.bg-wiki.com/ffxi/Bullwhip_Belt


Imperial Agent Rescue:

https://www.bg-wiki.com/ffxi/Imperial_Agent_Rescue

The monsters have low HP, and doing damage means they die so fast. Increase the monsters HP pool, and add far more monsters to the area. You end up having to stand there and spam dia on the monsters to feed it tp.

the trick to this is to /rdm basically. do NOT engage since the mamool's weapons break before they can throw them when you land a crit hit. just spam dia or diaga with the door behind you. can make it faster by nuking them down to <25% for 1000TP WSs from the mamools.


Lebros Supplies

https://www.bg-wiki.com/ffxi/Lebros_Supplies

The amount of food you get solo, and the number of trips makes this assault near impossible solo. Boost the amount of points per food, or just remove all low points foods so they are all 5, 7, or aoe foods.

you must have never even tried this on a lv.99 corsair with roll+ gear. it's actually not bad, i've solo'd it 2 out of 3 times. one time i only got stewpot once the whole run. it takes 2 stewpots to complete solo and to actually pay attention the rest of the time so you complete 3 out of the 5 groups with normal food. VERY doable solo.


Lost and Found

https://www.bg-wiki.com/ffxi/Lost_and_Found

This assault is near impossible to solo, the ??? is too hard to find because it disappears so quickly and was designed for more than 1 player to triangulate the ring. Make the ??? always active and visible, instead of it being invisible.

The level cap raised, but many of these assaults are almost impossible still because they were designed to be done with more than one player. Changes need to be made to these, when they are so important for mythic weapons. Them being the way they are just encourages cheating.

Any developer or community manager should try these assaults solo and see how you go, they are near impossible to the point of being broken. Please fix them.

I'm not asking this for myself, I have numerous characters so can easily complete them all. Solo / new players players cannot, this is effectively broken content in many ways that was never updated with how the game changed when trusts / 119 was added.
okay, yeah. lost & found was never meant to be done solo.

my own addition:
Orichalcum Survey
https://www.bg-wiki.com/ffxi/Orichalcum_Survey
Please, let us trade the NPC an Orichalcum Ore from auction house. this assault is hell. Or at the bare minimum, let us use pickaxes from outside the assault instead of limiting us to the 1 pickaxe the NPC provides.

[radar]

Did you not read the end of my post?

The issue is new players are going to try these things, see they are utterly broken and just quit if they were working on a mythic. They should be doable without doing silly things, and they were originally designed to be so.

If the devs fixed the exploit most players use to beat these assaults without even doing them, everyone would be complaining in the way I am.

For new players coming from xiv the state of assault is utterly unacceptable and is a quit the game moment.

[Voidstorm]

I did, but the assaults were always like that.

Azure Ailments: method to complete hasn't changed. get resist- gear & win or don't and ~maybe~ get lucky & win.

Imperial Agent Rescue: you were never meant to DD them to throw their weapon as a critical will make you realize you've wasted your time. it's always been a dia spam slog.

Lebros Supplies: they fixed it to be possible solo with provided stewpots unless you get real unlucky. get 2 or more stewpots and flee the whole time and you win. go on anything other than COR and you're going to need people to help you.

Lost and Found: how would you even solo this? how could you change the assault without trivializing it in the process?

Orichalcum Survey: how could you not include the literal worst assault in your list?! this assault should be made much easier. even with a group of 6, you'll fail a bunch.

[radar]

You and I are a different breed of mmo player, if the button doesn't work (assaults are effectively broken) we will build a 10 foot pole out of twigs and some tin foil to press the contacts off in the distance. Most mmo players will not do that, if the content does not work properly they will quit in frustration.

I know one of the reasons it's like this is under-investment and lack of staff, but it's still not acceptable that most assaults are in effect broken by most players standards. Even if they fixed one assault every couple of months it would be progress, but not even that.

As I said, if not for the fact people abuse a certain 3rd party thing to beat assaults without doing the content there would be far more complaints about them being so broken.

[Dragoy]

I would not call them broken nor impossible, and I never felt like I needed to use any third-party crud to play and/or win the game for me.

I also don't remember seeing talk about other players cheating a lot on Assault missions in particular, but I suppose I don't interact with such forums or/and players (yay!). Perhaps someone should report the exploit that is being referred to here, so that it can be fixed, and maybe people will start complaining more and things will be changed? Probably no.

The missions can be frustrating and annoying, yes. The title is Final Fantasy XI after all. :]

I'm not saying they should not be adjusted, and small tweaks here and there could certainly make things better.

Lebros Supplies I am pretty sure I remember soloing already before the stewpot was added, most likely with the help of Ninja Kyahan and/or Sprinter's Shoes.

Lost and Found is also doable alone, with some good luck sprinkled on top of it. No need for the NPC taking her time pondering even! The ??? target appears when close enough, and indeed, disappears pretty fast when far enough, but they are always there as long as one is close enough to them. Running around they're very easy to miss, but walking instead will make them very spottable. Of course, the area is quite sizeable, and walking is slow... so getting at least some directions from the NPC will probably be necessary without a lot of that good luck stuff.

I, too, would probably place Orichalcum Survey on top of the top annoying ones ranking at this time. They really probably should reconsider mining that location.

Also, somehow I don't feel like making Mythic weapons is something a new player would be focusing. Nothing wrong with that, of course, but I don't know... maybe there are some better things to do, though I suppose the grind and disappointment overall is good practice.

[radar]

I also don't remember seeing talk about other players cheating a lot on Assault missions in particular

It's rampant.

[Gwydion]

I have a suggestion: let us completely skip all 50 assaults if we have completed 1 Mythic (includes Captain rank) and completed TVR.

If we're never getting I-Level Assaults or Rewards, after 1 Mythic, it is completely pointless.

[Voidstorm]

I have a suggestion: let us completely skip all 50 assaults if we have completed 1 Mythic (includes Captain rank) and completed TVR.

If we're never getting I-Level Assaults or Rewards, after 1 Mythic, it is completely pointless.
I could get behind this!
I've already filled out 30 assault books: just end it there.
fyi I've solo'd 48~49/50 assaults most of the times I made my mythics. Still don't see how you would solo Lost & Found without ungodly luck.
I've solo'd Orichalcum Survey several times, but it's like spending 2+ hours on attempts until you finally get lucky. Guess the same could be said for Lost & Found but GG that would be literally spamming tab the whole time you grope around the zone hoping one of the 1~3 ???s you actually manage to find happens to be the right one.

[radar]

Community managers, I dare you to do these assaults and show them on twitch for how broken they are!

[Kaminat]

As a returning player interested in completing content from my youth, I've been trying to complete all 50 assaults to make a Mythic weapon.

Orichalcum Survey is uniquely frustrating because it should be very simple to make this Assault soloable (just increase the drop rate of the Orichalcum).

The only other Assaults I have not found soloable are:

Lebros Supplies - There isn't enough time to feed all the soldiers even with Pom Pom Fruits and Thief. Simple solution could be to increase rate of stewpot.

Seagull Grounded - Someone controlling the NPC while another runs ahead and kills the monsters seems like the most viable way to do this one.

I am able to complete Azure Ailments using /BST, stripping off gear and melee with a 1 damage weapon to feed TP.

TLDR - Please increase drop rate of Orichalcum Ore in Orichalcum Survey to make the Assault soloable.

[Zenion]

For what it's worth, thief is a terrible choice for Lebros Supplies; Flee is a lot of movement speed but it's sorely lacking in duration. Bard, dancer, summoner, and especially corsair are the big winners with their long-lasting quickening effects; dancer and summoner are at a bit of a disadvantage because they don't have a good +18% movement speed gear option, but they can still get it done. Corsair with carmine cuisses +1 and bolter's roll, though... you can spend nearly the whole mission running with flee speed with just a bit of gear investment.

And yeah, I know, that's setting up a whole job just for assaults, but this isn't 2010; picking one favorite job and sticking with it just isn't a luxury we can count on any more.

[Chromium]

If they just adjust one assault every couple of months it would be a huge improvement, they don't need to do them all at once.

[Voidstorm]

The only real option for Lebros Supplies is COR.
With bolters roll with roll+5 or better gear and carmine legs you can reliably solo the assault within the time limit.
you will be running at approximately flee speed the entire time.

[Alhanelem]

The only real option for Lebros Supplies is COR.
With bolters roll with roll+5 or better gear and carmine legs you can reliably solo the assault within the time limit.
you will be running at approximately flee speed the entire time.
Will you run any faster if you sub THF and also use flee?

[Voidstorm]

depends on your roll+ & what you rolled i guess.
https://www.bg-wiki.com/ffxi/Bolter%27s_Roll

if you're at the movement speed cap, no.

[Chromium]

You can't force win some of these if you do them solo, it's luck. Lebros Supplies, if you get too many white loaves you'll lose. The one where you mine, the win condition is based on number of successful mines and if you get too many worms you'll lose.

The biggest problem is as we all know, a lot of people don't do the assaults properly and cheat. Because of that the people who do them legit can't get help usually.