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

[Ravenmore]

Why, the fights offer lowman groups the content they been wanting with good rewards for everyone and adjusting difficulty, you know everything the player base has been asking for. Yeah the seal system sucks but guess what there was going to some kind of road block you knew full well was coming. If there was no road block then the content would be dead. Like now you might see a couple of shouts flat out begging for the run and geo af fights but having no rewards that really matter for any one they sit in town for hours. The SCK seal fights do drop gil items plus af upgrade items and the harder fights drop more items for the upgrades so if 6 people got to together you could knock out whole sets in a couple of sittings and unlike the old af, that you were mocked for ever full timing even at the level you first got it, the RF is useful and like I said some of it is best in slot either for macro or full time. From what I have seen you don't need bots to do any of the SKC fights just people knowing how the game works.


Also guess what old endgame was massively flawed to, it wasn't ever that fun fighting the same mobs over and over for crappy drop rates and then hoping you won the lot had the most points or the leader decided it was finally your time to get your reward. It was only fun the first 2 or 3 times then it became a chore that you did cause if you skipped out you would either lose your favor with the overloards or point edge. How many hours did people put in just when it might finally be their time the LS disbanded, the leaders decided it was time to move on or people just stop showing up and the LS went from a event LS to a social.

[Demon6324236]

Addressing the idea of things being outdated in 'five weeks' real quick.

Since the day item levels were introduced, 119 so far has been the highest level gear. SE has shown they understand the players do not want it going higher, they have not made anything higher as of yet. They made the old WKs the same level as the newer WKs, which should indicate that new Delves will be the same level as old Delves. Since Delves have the highest tier of gear the current time, it would stand to reason that until they create all new content past Delve, which is likely months or more away, that level 119 will remain the dominant level. If 119 remains the highest level, RF gear will be level 119 next month, putting it at the top, not to be outdated for a long time.

What I am trying to say is, unlike other gear, this gear is confirmed to be top tier for some time following the update next month, and since the pages are gotten from SKCNMs right now, and next month is the update of which we get the other battlefields updated from the stories, I assume that means we will see the new pages for 119 coming from fights like Divine Might II and Dawn II, though I could be mistaken.

[Demon6324236]

As I said like five times already, people are doing the new BCNM in closed groups with longtime friends they can trust, and on VT mode for max drops, and they are not doing shout runs for the obvious reason of losing crests. So if you have a LS in which 50% of ppl didn't quit FFXI in protest this year, and that LS is farming the bcnm you are OK. If you don't have that, you're screwed. Theres your fair and logical system that you are waving pompoms about.

So shout yourself for a party of which you do YOYD(Your Orb Your Drop). If you do that, you can get a party, do the event, and no one can complain, you can offer to use your Orb first to assure everyone that in the event of failure, you are the one losing your Crests, not them. If you are not willing to put your own Crests on the line for others, why should they be willing to do it for you? Simple answer, they shouldn't be, so unless you can do this, you can not complain others will not shout for their own either.

This again goes back to the community issue of people wanting to do events but not willing to lead them, like those who complain about RME VW shouts or Oat MNK Delve shouts, but then never make their own parties for it.

I'm glad you like it now everyone has quit the game and new AF farming excludes anyone that doesn't have a full LS.

Excludes anyone who doesn't have a full LS? 6 people is a full LS? You said you had 5 right? Well, find 1 more member, your almost filled!

I hope you continue to enjoy your iLvl progression game with dwindling server numbers, as more and more people quit. Just don't ever question why those ppl are quitting, those people are WRONG because they don't have 5000 posts on a forum means their views are wrong.

I forgot, where again did my post count come into this discussion as a reason my points are more valid than yours?

And that SE decisions which exclude everyone who doesn't have a full LS on a server with 400 ppl half of which are mules, SE are right to do that and those players are wrong.

Ignoring the full LS thing, which was ^ there... SE are right to do that which gives us more content to do when it has been the single largest complaint for this game since SoA because the events went from, well, long list I don't feel like typing, to Reives, Skirmish, and Delve.

And as for farming bayld sets, wont happen, I will most likely join the thousands of ppl who quit this game since SOA / iLvl arrived, ppl who unlike me are not prepared to make a few comments on a forum to say what is wrong. And to face the relelntless OCD trolls on those forums too.

And the troll card is played. The normal internet rules, all who oppose me are trolls, no matter their argument or its validity, the only exceptions to this being when someone is either a hater, because they use aggression in their arguments, or a cheerleader, because they do not complain about everything you do. The easiest way to deflect an argument, through the use of over used generalizing statements to attempt making another poster seem bad for their opinion. Love it.

[Ravenmore]

Why do you keep going on about the 1000SKC if you got off you butt and started the shout your self you wouldn't have to do all that leg work of farming all the seal. Only reason it was done with 18 people was the people that needed were also the ones that were under geared to start with. 6 people could down it no problem but they were also the ones that didn't need it either cause they had better or already got it. But really that was endgame 7 years ago. A piece you could use pure gil to obtain was released with Toau. I wouldn't even consider it endgame it was part of midgame.

Sky, sea, limbus, all had crappy drop rates but with the SKC system of pop while not being perfect would let you finish far faster, by you know playing with other people in a MMO. Even lowmaning those events would still take a long time to finish everyone's want list or you could take a few hours of soloing the pop set then another couple of hours DoT kiting mobs or pet swapping and risk losing it at any point to some dick that claims the NM at the last 1%.

People begged SE for the solo option too and even said they wouldn't mind if it took longer so SE game them what they asked for but it is still far faster to do it with a group that at least everyone benefits from. Really I want to see exp of the best gear that didn't involve low drop rates, only thing I can think of is AH gear and W.turban.

[Mefuki]

...people are doing the new BCNM in closed groups with longtime friends they can trust, and on VT mode for max drops...

And that's why it's so brilliant that SE is finally including difficulty level choices with the events. Scalable difficulty. Finally. I've been waiting for years for them to do this because I don't have that many people to play with anymore. Now I can go in solo or in a duo and make progress. Pick the level you think your particular group can handle, get proportionate rewards. This encourages people to group up while at the same time not leaving other people behind. Is it a little slower? Probably, but I'm ok with that. What bugged me was when SE would create an event that said to me, "You want to pick up the game and play then put it down whenever you want? Well, too bad because X event requires you to have connections and give up some sleep here, another sacrifice there. After all, you're not getting anywhere without an alliance large LS backing you up."

[Demon6324236]

Seeing as having +1 halves the cost of the upgrade via pages, you should only need a total of 500 at very most, that's also assuming you do easy or very easy for every single one and none drop from the box at the end of any of the SKCNMs you do though.

[Mefuki]

...But the current system is another bunch of roses given to multiboxers and powershells who can spam high lvl mobs and burn the bcnms on VH mode for maximum drops, so its exactly as bad as your worst Tyrant LS memories, solo players and friend-group LS are getting screwed harder than ever in this Version Update.

Actually, just the opposite. Solo players and Friend group LSs have been given the chance to participate in the battles for their AF1 +2 items. Can powershells do it faster? Yeah, probably. There's more people involved. But as it stands now smaller groups get to participate too.

This system WOULD be a bunch of roses to powershells as well as solo, friend-group unfriendly if it was a system like Legion: No scaling difficulty, all good items RARE/EX or 10s of millions of gil, Alliance mandatory, only best gear allowed.

But this? I'm just not seeing why this event is so hard on solo, friend-group LSs. It's actually quite accommodating.

But SE made a version update with RME patch materials & with AF99 upgrade path, and instead of making a smart decision to have these two version update contents follow a different path to eachother, they bundled RME and af1-99 items into the same bcnms. Enquiring minds like mine might say that was a LAZY decision on their part, like screw it we'll just make all the Version Update content drop in the same Bcnms.

I thought that was actually kind of smart of them. Now people from all "walks of life" are feeding the supply of RME mats, giving an economic boon to those who sell them and perhaps encouraging others to start their own RME. And because there are 3 different items to collect for R, M and E respectively, it further encourages trading, buying and selling. Again, the bad thing to do here would have been to make them EX and only drop from Delve fractures or <insert event here>. That would be very friend-group unfriendly.

Also they made it so a solo player, obtaining 1 piece of AF upgrade item, requires 20 SKC and as you say "pick the easy battle". I have been farming the new new rabbits in the Drifts, and here is my results. 75 kills. 3 SKC. Half the night.

I presume by this statement that you haven't been reading about the info found about these dropping. BG users are reporting a drop rate of greater than 20% and very rarely as many as 5 dropping from one monster. Check out the AF Upgrades thread on BG Forums for more information.

[Demon6324236]

In that case I agree, they could have done more, and I do not like the Seal system as a whole so you will get no complaint from me in saying they should not have used it specifically, the only thing I have been trying to say the entire time is that from a development standpoint it does make sense, and it was a good choice, they used content they already were implementing in order to fulfill the need for a way to upgrade our AF/+1 into our RF.

I can definitely say I do not like that it is though X-NM battlefields, but I do like that they are at least trying to make that system better, such as right now trying to increase the drop rate. During the event going right now the drop rate is increased, the timer removed or lowered to 1 minute, that is unsure, and the amount of drops possible is determined by the number of people in your party, from 1~6 per drop depending on the amount. To me, these are amazing ideas that can help get people not only to play together to farm but help people get people together to fight the SKCNMs themselves.

Its not perfect, but it is something, and if nothing else, like RME items, they can always add them to other things later or maybe even make more permanent adjustments to the Seal system in the future, which is why I am being a bit more patient with it, if it were not for adjustments and the event they have made, I would be with you complaining about it, but I am trying to give them a bit of time with this, they already said they plan to adjust it, and they have plans for more battlefields next update, and that the RF will be going to level 119, all of which causes me to have at least some hope, enough so that I spent 3 hours on my RDM thread explaining why at that time I think some changes should be made, and why I have been trying to defend them a bit here.

But as I said, I do agree with you that the SKCNM idea as the exclusive way to upgrade these was a bad choice.

[Demon6324236]

I presume by this statement that you haven't been reading about the info found about these dropping. BG users are reporting a drop rate of greater than 20% and very rarely as many as 5 dropping from one monster. Check out the AF Upgrades thread on BG Forums.

Admittedly if that was in a party, it counts for very little, the event increases the rate and drop cap depending on the number of people in the party from what I understand, which is why solo I get a max of 1, but in a party with 4 friends yesterday I was getting 1~4. I could be wrong though, and have been just getting unlucky.

[Demon6324236]

Re; starting shouts. People are doing the bcnm in closed groups on VT mode for max drops. Nobody with enough SKC is going to waste it on /sh runs.

This assumes no one else is in your situation besides you, which I think is false, and if you say you will use your own before others pop their own, it can give others a sense of security and safety when using their own, because the first run, which you supply the orb for, can allow them to see the difficulty, and chances of success. For instance if I make a group and we fail, I lost my orb, and while it sucks, at least we tried, and we learn, if others will stay we can try again, but the fact I used mine originally helped get them to come with me because I was willing to risk my own SKCs to show how we would do. I think it should work, if you try it and it doesn't, well, I am sorry, but if it does work, you have found a way to get through it easier.

I am sure others are in the same position as you are, looking for a way to get it done, but if you never shout for people and ask them you will never know, and if nothing else you could also shout for a party to farm the SKCs, making your kills faster, easier, and potentially more beneficial because of the event.