Hello,

I'm making this topic to address what I feel is a problem for up-and-coming BLMs (RDMs and SCHs to an extent as well), which is getting your hands on the scrolls for Tier IV spells and AM1 spells. Most of the scrolls before this line of spells are cheap from the AH, can be purchased from NPCs, or might be common drops from enemies/BCNMs, while the spells after these two categories (tier V, -ja etc) can either be purchased from NPCs or are common drops in Abyssea.

However, tier IV and AM1 are a different story altogether. To put it lightly, most of these spells are extremely difficult to obtain compared to most of the other spells in the game. The enemies that are capable of dropping these scrolls will only drop them when the drop rate stars perfectly align, even for THFs and with max TH gear, or you have to beg people to do battlefields, mainly ISNMs, that no one wants to do anymore. Combine that with the fact that tier IV and AM1 are needed for targeting yellow weaknesses in Abyssea, and you have a very bad situation.

Here's an example I'm sure all the servers can relate to: Water IV. Let's see...only drops from the Sapphire Quadav, which are not all that common in their respective zones. Oh, and a 2.2% droprate according to the wiki? The tonberry NMs aren't much better either. And once again, good luck getting people to do those ISNMs on the list these days. The result? 400k Water IV, at least over here on Bismarck.

Here's another example: Quake. Dear Altana, Quake. Let's see...a pain in the you-know-what to camp Antica NM, 2 timed spawn Orc NMs in the deepest part of that dungeon, and Kirin. From the drop tables, Kirin is your best bet, but he still requires a competent group to defeat. The Antica is next in line, but he's a lottery spawn so he might take forever to spawn, and even then, it's only an estimated 10% droprate. Let's not even get into the Orc NMs on that list. And once again, your other options are BCNMs/ISNMs that no one does anymore. The result? A whopping 700-800k scroll on my server, and most likely the others as well.

I'll offer up a bit of personal testimony. Recently, 2 friends of mine leveled BLM because they wanted to be more useful to parties and the LS (they were SAM mains beforehand). Being the nice guy I am, I helped them burn up their levels and decided to help get spells that they couldn't get on their own. I already knew the tier IV and AM1 scrolls would be trouble, and my friends didn't want me spending so much money on them, so I decided to break out my THF and try farming them. So far, I've only been successful with the Fire line, and the Blizzard line, and that was with hours and hours of farming. I'm currently working on Aero IV, but it's not going well. In a farming session at Castle O, I usually walk away with a few Aero III scrolls, a few Aeroga IIs...MAYBE 1 Tornado if I really lucked out, and no Aero IV. And please don't get me started on Water IV again.

There are a couple of solutions I'd like to propose. The most obvious one is to allow NPCs to sell these scrolls at affordable prices for those levels (perhaps somewhere around 30-50k). Another solution I can think of is to dramatically increase the drop rates on these scrolls and/or make other enemies become capable of dropping them. One more solution I can think of is to make the scrolls drop in Abyssea, which I admit doesn't make a lot of sense, but hey it's an idea.

In conclusion, tier IV and AM1 scrolls (not all, but most of them) are vastly difficult to obtain compared to the tiers below them, and even the tier above them, and I hope that SE will look into easing the acquisition for these important spells. Any thoughts/criticism are welcome.