New Jug Recipes

[Jerbob]

I think it's important to be aware of the distinctions between consumables (and non-consumables that aren't even comparable) that jobs use. Jug pets and pet food items are (unfortunately) an absolute requirement for beastmasters at this stage of the game, so making them difficult to synthesise is just absurd. Ninjutsu tools are a good parallel, and no-one will argue that shihei are difficult to make or farm/acquire materials for. It's like any other system of mandatory consumables - you should have the option to craft them yourself or buy them. For newer pets this isn't possible. Phogg mentions that his wife levelled cooking specifically for Beastmaster - if that was practical all the way to level 75, it's insane for it to all change now.

Almost all existing jug pets and pet food items are relatively practical to make using materials that aren't that hard to acquire at the level that you'd be using them - at level 75 we even had CourierCarrie which you could make absurdly cheaply. Requiring level 100 fishing and an Ebisu fishing rod, or a readily available supply of dragon meat, is undeniably a new level and it's completely impractical with regards to creating your own consumables.

In my opinion, this is just another one of those things that SE makes pointlessly irritating or refuses to fix for no good reason. Jug pets could be modified to work across zonelines years ago. I don't think we've ever been given a good reason why all pets disappear when a Confrontation status is applied in eg. Voidwatch. Charm could easily have been fixed creatively; something as simple as bringing a charmed pet to within 0-2 levels of your own when Run Wild is used, for example. It just takes a bit of thought, and an understanding of how things work in practice. Regrettably this seems to be something that SE isn't keen to demonstrate.

[Economizer]

This could still be an outrage to Beastmasters, I don't really know, but I think it somewhat shoes what SE has for exceptions of the job, maybe the issue is that the pets SE expects players to use more are the cheaper ones. Pets (stack prices from my server listed for an example after each pet) like Nursery Nazuna (~10k) and Gooey Gerard (~20k) are dirt cheap and solid choices for most content, but if you want a THF pet, you pay a premium, whether it is Dipper Yuly (~90k) or Faithful Falcorr (~70k). Few pets cost more then 100k a stack on my server.

I think a good comparison for these isn't just tools/cards/bullets/arrows, but also foods in addition to those consumables.

For example, getting higher performance from say, a high end attack food like Dragon Steak (~35k, 3 hours) or Dragon Soup (~20k, 3 hours), Red Curry (70k, 3 hours), Red Curry Bun +1 (200k, 30 minutes x12), or the lesser/cheaper Hedgehog Pie (15k, 3 hours) isn't something everyone does all the time, but when you want to be at your best, you use it (and I'm greatly simplifying here, there are a variety of other relevant foods as well).

All that said, Crude Raphie (~400k) is pretty expensive, so the question is "in what situation will this be a cost effective pet?" Regardless of if there is a good answer, I suspect that Crude Raphie goes the way of the Elixir and is rarely if ever used.

-

As a bit of a side note, I know SE said they have no plans of making biscuits stackable, but perhaps they would be open to a sort of bag of pet treats. If price is really an issue, the thing are barred from the AH (or even made exclusive) so that Beastmasters have to bag them themselves using the relevant NPCs. The item to bag them could be something really simple too, like a chocobo feather. And since treats stack to 12, perhaps the bags could stack to 99.

[Jerbob]

The difference lies, I believe, in that a beastmaster's pets are the reason that you level the job and the tool that allows you to play it at all, whereas food is (sometimes literally :P) just the icing on the cake. I can definitely understand the point that some pets with distinct features are more difficult to make (and therefore more expensive) to offset the value of those features, and I wouldn't be surprised if that was SE's motivation, but I feel that SE has taken this to extremes. A level 100 fish that's nearly impossible to practically catch without what is essentially a sort of relic item is a step too far. Items with 0.5% droprates are not things you can try to obtain for yourself without going insane.

If SE wants to preserve the idea of "junk pets" like NurseryNazuna and FlowerpotMerle and "specialist pets" like DipperYuly etc then fair enough, but I think it would be more fair to make the divide a little less ridiculous. I know people's metric for worth in terms of currency is different across the board, but 400k for a stack of 12 jug pets is just beyond rational belief to me. Even 90k is pretty costly for a stack of 12 consumables that not only disappear in all sorts of situations, but due to its specialist nature is going to be used in tougher situations where it will be dying or need tons of food pumped into it.

Obviously things are priced at what people are willing to pay for them, and that's fine, but with synths like these that you can't make yourself (or have a friend able to help with) then there's no choice. I think that's what people have a problem with.

[Daniel_Hatcher]

Not once did I mention they were equal. My point I was making that if you want to do your job right then yes you're going to be spending a lot of gil to do it. The idea why I don't see 100k as a problem is it gives me the options to go out and make money without having to split it with other people.

Also keep in mind that 100k a stack of jugs is pretty foolish if you're using it just for that. Going out and making gil can be done very cheaply, *Nazuna* and if you're fighting a NM then you swap out to your money pet and get the job done.

This is easily a point of knowing how you handle your money when it's best to budget yourself when you're farming.

Anyways my point still stands. Every job in FFXI has costs. Be it from scrolls, ammo, NIN tools, or even buying all your instruments you will be spending a ton of money. Find your balance when you're working around costs and whatnot on BST and you'll find yourself making way much more money then you spend to get the job done.

Perhaps, but it doesn't mean SE should be so unbalanced where BST is concerned.