R/M/E 99 to 119 upgrade info and findings

[Sapphires]

drop rate on SKC is from my own experiments in SoA zones pretty terrible, I spent a couple of hours soloing jagil and crackclaws on my dancer in Foret, and the SKC drop less often than one sees the Zaffre Ygrette Shards.
It seems like they added a minimum time limit before SKC can drop, so I cant get one sooner than 5 minutes since the previous one no matter how many things you kill, kind of like how they slowed us down from mass farming things like flame geodes with AOE burning.

[FaeQueenCory]

When you do the new bcnm there is personal drops and chest drops. Difficulty is 1 - 5. If you soloed something on lv1 you would get 2 personal drops, and 1 from the chest for a total of 3. Also update notes are vague and don't give the full story and often have translation errors.

Ah!
Thank you for clarifying. (and I know better than most how the production notes will have translation "errors" in them... it's why I follow the links to the JP release and read those too.)
This makes getting 10 a lot easier... even if one has to solo it. (I'd rather PUG... cause... I enjoy the social aspects of MMOs.. gasp!)
But that's still a huge mess of seals to get! (though not 1000 at least)

drop rate on SKC is from my own experiments in SoA zones pretty terrible, I spent a couple of hours soloing jagil and crackclaws on my dancer in Foret, and the SKC drop less often than one sees the Zaffre Ygrette Shards.
It seems like they added a minimum time limit before SKC can drop, so I cant get one sooner than 5 minutes since the previous one no matter how many things you kill, kind of like how they slowed us down from mass farming things like flame geodes with AOE burning.

You have to "cheat" to get a bunch... read: zone every time you get a seal/SKC to drop.

[Angrykitty]

I would like to see trial of magians weapon progression upgraded to level 119 as well. I'm sure i'm not alone on this idea. But rather than make it a monster grind to go past 99, there should be some other method to complete the upgrades...

[Glamdring]

this is a case of something where you "can't win for losing". 1st, with the reives, why bother? 2nd, they deliberately made colonization easier so people could get to battles; great, but it removed most incentive to just fight in the areas. if you put any of that back people will bitch about the need to waste time trying to keep paths open when they only want to get to the battles, like they did when you 1st made the changes. I don't envy you the decision on how to make old school play-regular mobs- relevant when old school partying is dead. but since I preferred that style I hope you can make it happen.

[Ravenmore]

Love you people bunch of dee dees.This is what you all have been asking for really. This is the game you all missed. A massive amount of grinding for something that may or may not be just a side grade or situational piece. Everyone should want a piece or two of the 99 af some of it is best in slot but no harm in only getting those pieces for the jobs you want you don't have to have the whole set.

If they made it the same as run and geo then the content would be dead in a week or two simple as that. Don't like tell you friends to leave 14 and come back....oh wait it was this way for years will 1% drop rates grinding a bunch of NMs with nothing for rewards to fight the big bads that drop the item you and the whole alliance wanted. The game has never delivered content at a reasonable rate so all the content we got took grinding it forever to finish it. People say they are sick of delve what they really mean is no reason since unlike Kirin that getting 18 people W.legs back in the day was a lol goal that everyone knew wasn't going to happen but they kept showing up hoping that it would be their turn before people burned out or left after they got their, worst yet the LS decides that they done enough of sky and it was time to move on.

[MarkovChain]

Box don't seem to come from SKC20 very hard mode, or at least they are not 100%. Got 1 single and one case. Also there were 3 AF-mats in the common pool and 4 in personal pool if anyone cares.

Bleh, did a second run and we got 1 single pluton and a single bouler from the chest... seriously wtf.

at least we got a title : "yagudo coopkeeper"

[Demon6324236]

The issue with what you are saying is the fact we would likely be waiting months still to get the RF for our jobs because to do that they would likely create a story around it too, unlike now where the story is as simple as getting things that tell them how to make our gear better I assume, like the plans for Salvage were. The fact they would have to create new stories on top of characters, animations, new ???s, monsters, quests, and so on, all would make it take much more time than this. While I can agree with you that I would rather have a real quest system to obtain them, I can understand that realistically we would have waited months longer for it, and that time can be better spent, that's why I actually prefer this way in light of everything else.

[Demon6324236]

I am not sure how it is illogical though. They spent a small amount of time redoing fights that no one did anymore to be relevant and threw a reward in them for people, then added a new difficulty system that we have not had before in these kinds of battles on top of it, rather than spending time to make individual battles and/or quests for each job. I mean, if you are talking about having the exact same quest for every job that's 1 thing, but that's also stupid in my opinion as this solution is because then your just spamming battles all the same, just on a different job, or on the same job for a different job's rewards.

Also, if you have some friends or LS-mates to do it with it would not be that bad, the fact that even on Normal, which is not hard at all if you have some well geared people, you can get 2 pages every time, and only need 5 a piece, that's 13 battles at most on normal for a full set. If you win lots or do higher difficulties you can get even more from it.

[Demon6324236]

Its not logical to stay in a LS if the LS is not doing anything and has no members. It sounds like you need a new LS. What I am saying is logical so far as the quests go is the fact of how they developed it, development wise it is logical to do it as they did. The fact they are harder than new jobs really sucks, but its to be expected, they are not the same as the old jobs, the same way that ToAU jobs and WotG jobs worked differently to make their AF. The difference between then and now is the fact that the level increased, and so you can expect even more changes because of that. Am I saying its 100% fair? No, I am not, I do have to work harder for my RDM RF than RUN did for its AF, yes, but that does not change the fact that I can understand that from a development point of view it was smarter to do because it saved a lot of time.

As for it being the same as the Bayld gear, its not, its attuned to your specific job, including abilities and stats you would never see on another piece, in the case of your PUP, sure, you can pick up that Bayld gear, but you will find no Maneuver bonus, no Automaton Haste, no overload reduction, and when the time comes for the next update, you will be able to upgrade your RF to 119, the highest level in the current game, where as the Bayld gear will not. The advantages are worth more than you give them credit for. I can agree with the fact it is unfair to a point, but I think you exaggerate it to much.

The real issue I have with it is that they tied it to the poor seal system at all, without fixing the seal system itself. The drop rates should not be on a timer, they should not be as low as they are, and there should be a reason to kill normal mobs. If we could get seals off anything we kill in the level range and the highest level enemies dropped it once every 2~4 kills, that would be perfect to me, the lowest level can have a drop rate of once every 8~10 kills. To me, it would be balanced, harder mobs, higher risk, much higher drop rate, and no timer rules to dictate drops, that is a bad idea from the start.

[Demon6324236]

You say I think everything is fine unless it effects my RDM, as though I have never complained about VW, WKs, Reives as a whole, the way content was outdated to the extreme, VNMs, Item levels, NNI's near total luck reliance, and so on. I have had various problems with this game in the past both with RDM and completely ignoring it. To me you seem to look at everything from the worst possible view, or are simply pessimistic with things. I know stunners who do not bot, I myself can stun without a bot, and I know of no linkshells who will force you to use one except one you mentioned, I have never heard of another that I can recall.

I am not here to defend SE nor to attack them, I am here to speak my mind on every subject I feel the need to. Do I understand your complaints? Yes, but I also understand the foolishness of some things you say too. For instance, there is no reason you can not leave the LS your in and all join a new shell, or recruit, or make a new shell and recruit if the shellholder is no longer present. Saying that you do not want to because of the memories or because of what the shell once meant is a bad reason in my opinion, I am in the fourth incarnation of a long standing Linkshell on Phoenix, it was originally ScarletRain when I joined it, becoming Convicts, ConvictsReborn, and now PuntDeTaru. Every time the name and shell changed it was because the leader either left or stepped down, as I did when it became PuntDeTaru, and one of our best members took over the shell.

I see the same pessimism in your talk about other Linkshells as I saw in your talk about Empyrean weapons, where you made it sound as though all Linkshells were ran by people lording over others forcing them to build the leader a weapon against their will in hopes of currying favor with said leader for later on. My point being, you seem unwilling to try what I am saying in fear of things which may not happen, even if they did happen, you found a bad Linkshell, why not look for another. If all Linkshells are that bad, perhaps its not the Linkshells, but rather the server of which they are located.

Another thing is you say I am acting like a cheerleader for SE, yet at the same time, part of what I am defending it seems is the community, since the community is every LS of which you seem to think is bad, and while I do not agree with any of those you have complained about, I know that all Linkshells are not like that, as I said, if they are on that server then its not only a community issue, but a server issue. In this case, I think what they did from a development viewpoint was good, it was fast, got us content we wanted, and they are upgrading it further next update so it can be some of the top gear in the game. On the other hand, from an in game viewpoint it was worse than quests, its a bit unbalanced and unfair, but it at least exists and will again, be upgraded to the point it is top tier gear.

Lastly, so far as the AF being your free option, it changed. Right now your free option is the Bayld gear, the same gear you complain about throwing away and having to buy a new set every month, that's your free gear. The RF gear right now is top tier gear, at this very moment its got some pieces which are the best you can get, and others which are not far off, once the update comes it will be top tier across the board most likely because of how item levels work.

Am I saying its perfect? No, but I do think you over-exaggerate the issue and when told to play with others who want to do it too, use your previous bad experiences with Linkshells as an excuse as to why its not fair.