Current Prime Party Spot

[Spre]

Where is the current prime level 38MNK party spot to get decent EXP parties? I have just been wandering around rolanberry and khazam soloing but I am in the mood for partys


thanks

[Concerned4FFxi]

Book burn crawler's nest, or if you don't mind gimping your skills, level sync under 20 book burn gusgen mines.

[Spre]

Ok I have been gone a long time from the game, book burn?

Spose I figured it out, since I went from 38 to 59 in less then an hour in crawlers O_o now I must quest for higher levels!

[Concerned4FFxi]

Ok, If you havent already done so, start the quests for abyssea and get your first traverser stone key item.

Now, with that key item, go back and finish leveling your monk to 78 in crawler's nest.

Next, at 78, goto the auction house and buy the full aurore set. then, make sure you level dnc sub, and in the future ninja sub (it's more expensive so start with /dnc first)

Take your 78 mnk/dnc to cape terrigan, and skill up. You should hit 220 in skills fast, it starts slowing down after that. you can also try the boyahda tree, too. Once you hit about 220 in your h2h skill, try teaming up on mobs that are decent challenge or better to you at 78. If you can find and solo decent challenge at 78, then good for you. You may need some help because your gear and skill is a starter set.

Now, 78mnk/dnc, skilled up to around 250+ in h2h, go find any abyssea shout party in jueno that is in the following three zones: la thiene, konschtat, tahrongi, the reason for these three is because mobs are going to be closer to your skill at 250+ h2h then the heroes zones will be. And with mobs closer to your skill, you will hit them more and actually do damage instead of totally missing.

Below is a list of advice i've compossed from my own thoughts and otehr players. read it, hiope it helps, good luck, enjoy the game, and I hope you stay.

[Concerned4FFxi]

Buy a mog sack for 9,999gil

Learn to macro in gear/spells/job abilities etc.

Make friends, but dont ask the same ones repeatedly for help spread the wealth around

Try to do things at least once or twice on your own first, if its a quest and you need help do everything you can do first solo, before asking for help. People will help more often if your prepared, use wiki to get the info you need about what you want, and have the key items ready from when you solo. Example is the nation rank quests. I love to help people, I hate to have my time wasted. I come to help someone and they don't have all their key items ready before a fight that they need my help on pisses me off. That's why you need to solo what you can, people are understandable if you didnt get a key item or drop that you can't solo but nobody wants to wait around for you to either get the cs you need still before the fight or ask a million questions because you don't have wiki access. Use the pulblic library if need be and print out your lists in advance.

Read wiki about level cap quests (after 50 you will need to do these quests every 5 levels to break the next cap) and prepare for them.

Look into the goobie bag quests, your "fame", and mog locker.

There's also many areas you need access to first, before you can explore them: shadowreign areas from wings of the goddess add-on, abyssea, sea, sky, aht urhgan whitegate from treasures of aht urhgan

First priority should be leveling your character and sub job(s) to cap, currently 95. This will enable you to do many more things easier than at lower levels and open the door for other things to you.

Gear: I recommend not spending much gil on gear, untill you hit cap (currently 95). Get yourself a decent weapon for whatever level you currently are at, and that's it. there are a few rings and such that may benefit you earlier, but as a new player your more likely to buy the wrong one and waste your hard fought gil, so just suffer for the time being or buy cheap gear that fits a purpose. Check other players, talk to people, see what is good for that job at higher levels. The goal is not to buy for today, buy for tomorrow because xp is fast in this game now and gear gets outdated even faster before you hit cap. Once you hit 75, start a magian trail for a weapon that you are interested in doing. Again, ask around to see what is worth it some weapons are junk while others outshine. It may be a little to early to ask yourself this, but consider an empyrean weapon or just build something to get you thru until you are established then you can start your empyrean weapon (explained more below). Once you hit 78, you will have access to perle, teal, and aurore gear sets. These are cheap and decent gear. You can buy off AH or from npc in abyssea with cruor (abyssea currency).
You can then start working on your empyrean armor (af3) post 78, or sooner if the oppurtunity arises.
You can do artifact armor and weapon(af1), starting at 40 for most jobs, but because xp is so fast these gear peices are often outdated and not worth time investment. However, talk with decent higher level players, some af1 is still great macro peices. for certain jobs and can not be replaced. Once you have 78+, start trying dynamis in your spare time. There you will get ancient currency that can be bazaared for gil and relic armor (af2). Relic armor is mostly for your macro sets, but each peice and job are different. Like af1, some is outdated while other peices are impossible to replace.

XP: Ok, at low levels (10-29) the best places for experience points is alliance style fights in gusgen tunnels (level cap 10-20) or crawler's nest (no clue on the best cap there i've had all my jobs past 30 a long time and burn in abyssea). There are many zones that offer the same xp, the trick is finding a zone that has alot of level sync'd people and a field of valor or grounds of valor book. The trick is to get a page from the book and spam the mobs listed there to get the extra xp called "book buring". Just try those two zones first, turn your party flag on, and shout for a party or ask the leader of a group if you can join.

Abyssea XP: First, unless somebody knows you or pities you, odds are your not going to be leeching in abyssea unless you have a 70-75+ dd (damage dealer) job or magic damage dealing job, a whm with cure 4+ (42), or a rdm 55+ (cure 4) or similarly leveled sch with cure4 (not sure when they get their cure4). Or without a few hundred thiousand gil to pay someone to let you leech their party. To leech a abyssea party generally you need meet one of three requirements: 1. you are of job and level as stated above, 2. you have cruor so you can "key", this means you will be opening chests for the party in exchange for leeching rights. You need cruor to buy the keys though, and so its a catch 22, as you need already have been to abyssea long enough to get cruor or have a 75+ job to do voidwatch to get cruor from there, 3. start you own abyssea party and leech your own party. I DO NOT recommend or like new players that host abyssea xp pt's, the reason is most new players do not understand enough of the pt makeup and lights in order to host a successful party. I suggest that during your first abyssea party that you do not host you ask questions and learn about abyssea so later on you can host your own party. Keep in mind people rememeber lamers in this game and a bad party can ruin you fast in the eyes of other players. That said, abyssea is the best place for xp, period. Perhaps, as was suggested earlier, leveling whm for your first job would be most beneficial to you. You can leech to cap asap in abyssea at 42 with cure 4, and as explained latter you can get more invites for empyrean armor +1/2 farming and empyrean weapon items.

Abyssea empyrean armor/proc: Ok, this is the other reason people are in abyssea, the gear. First, you need understand about proc (process weakness). Since abyssea, SE has used proc in other area as well, so keep in mind dynamis now has proc, as does voidwatch (VW). For abyssea, there are three proc, blue, red, and yellow. Wiki explains the difference, but what yuou need to know is if a party does process a Notorious Monster's weakness, then the drop rate is increased for the corrisponding weakness. What that means is, most people dont just go kill notorious monsters (nm), they go to proc the nm first, then kill it. In the case of +1 armor items, four different +1 drop from the same nm. Becaue of this, most +1 parties are made up of no more than 4 people, because each persopn rather lot a single +1 and have the party agree beforehand that that +1 is theirs. Four people, four different +1, get it. Now to proc +1/+2 drops, magic weakness must be triggered. this can be done with any sub job nin, a whm, a blm, a blu, and a sub job bard. While rdm and sch can proc yellow for magic weakness, they lack the spells that whm and blm have and so they are not as often invited. Add the cure power of a whm and its easier to understand why whm is suggested as your first job to cap.

Abyssea empyrean weapons: not gonna be long here. Point is they take alot of time and work to get, but are attenable for the average player with a just a few friends that are dedicated to results. Once you been around the block a few times you'll know how to proc weakness and you will have a better idea if empyrean weapons are your thing. You will prefer to have a thf, war, nin, whm at the least, and most likely add a blm to your unit. Larger groups use other jobs such as cor with empyrean gun to cap amber fast and brew speed kill, or a blu to solo burn chests/te/etc. Some nin's can straight solo some hnm in abyssea with the right atma/gear, I personally dual box mine so many combo's work but i listed the pt size for farming empyrean weapons as about 3-5/6 on average to give you an idea of the amount of people you will need. Note, these 3-5/6 would have good atma and experience to be successful at low manning but once you get the hang of things you'll do fine. Read wiki about atma.

Try these websites
ffxiah.com
gamerescape.com
http://wiki.bluegartr.com/bg
http://wiki.ffxiclopedia.org/wiki/Main_Page
www.ffxi-atlas.com/
http://ffxi.allakhazam.com/

Moghouse: There's a few quests related to furniture which will increase your mog safe storage to 80, also you can purchase furnature to put in your mogsafe that gives you access to mogstorage (again 80 cap and only available in your home nation) For mog storage I suggest when you can afford one get a
Panetiere. Also, look into moglocker and if you've been on for a few months and are gonna stay grab a mogsachel from the mogtoken ($9.99, mine has lasted me a few years now).

Travel: This one is big. 1. Start doing supply quests to get yourself outpost (op) access from the npc in your home nation. 2. Depending on supekupor power, teleport moogles maybe available for transport to the cities and selbina/mhuara. 3. Get all the telepoint crystals and recall crystals. 4. Get access to all the abyssea maws asap, even if you can't get a party (pt) just visit them to uinlock the maw and cutscene (cs) associated with each of the 9 abyssea zones so that you may warp to them. 5. Chocobo license, 6. once you attain 75+ speak to the voidwatch npc's in the 3 cities and get you key items to do those events. Even if you don't do VW, you can at the least use the npc's in the cities and other locations to teleport you to certain areas of the game. Theres other travel, but this is the main stuff and fastest.

Keep track of stuff: at the least, write down what boss and caturea nm clears you have from abyssea, and what op's you have if you can't remember. For abyssea you are gonna want these clears and all merit, furtherance, lunar, sojourn, and celerity abyssites asap. Ask around about atma and what ones are best for which jobs.

Gil: once you are using abyssea regularly you can convert cruor by buying chocobo blinkers (see wiki) or the three gear sets (perle teal etc) and selling this to npc's in vanadiel. Mind you that eventually you will need cruor to buy brew in abyssea but this will get you past the hump. You can also farm dynamis once you get the hang of things.

Hope this helps, goodluck and don't be discouraged.

Basic advice:

1. If you haven't done it yet, there is a tutorial NPC in each nation designed for newer players. You'll get some nice rewards from it designed for newer players.
2. Remember to always get Signet from a gate guard before you head out to kill stuff. Save items you get and sell them on the auction houses. If you wish to increase your Signet duration, you're going to need to run missions for your nation.
3. Look for Fields/Grounds of Valor books, they will increase the xp you gain significantly, and provide gil and tabs. Tabs can be used for some useful bonuses on the battlefield.
3. Gaining levels quickly: These days most people go to Gusgen Mines at level 10 and join the alliances there. They continuously do the skeleton grounds of valor. At level 30 many people go to Crawler's Nest.
4. At level 18, you can unlock a subjob. I'd recommend the Elder Memories quest in Selbina to obtain it. You'll get the Magicked Skull for it while leveling in Gusgen Mines, and the Worm and Apron can be obtained solo safely when you're about level 25. You can ask for help too, of course. Keep your subjob leveled.
5. At level 30, you open up more jobs, but they all require running a quest to obtain.
6. As said above, Mog Sack can make managing your inventory out on the field a lot easier. If you want to make your inventory bigger (this will more or less be required as you get into higher levels), you need to build reputation in Jeuno. You can look it up on the wiki if you want detailed info. The quests to expand your bag are called The Gobbiebag.

Skill ups- this is another important thing, try to cap your skill on your main weapon asap. The more skill you hjave, the more damage you can do to higher level mobs. If you skill is around 120 and your level 95, you are basically like a level 95 job stat wise, but hitting like a level 35, so though you may be 95 that level 65 crab m,ight eat you for breakfast so watch out. Inquire about skill with other players, here's some quick info though and read the wiki and ask questions:
skill level 30-80 quifim island, grab a page and start busting on worms, when your skill ups slow down, hit up the crabs, if your low level avoid fighting at night time as the undead come out and agro blood (read up on the types of aggresiveness mobs have and read about hate and enmity) and especially near the lake in the center at night.

If you can get access, east ronfaure (s) 80-120 on birds, 120-140 on lady bugs, if not try east altepa desert.

Here's some areas I've outlined for you to fight stuff there at the following weapon skill level, not to be confused by job level. Remember this is for skill ups, though you may or may not get xp.

140-160, kuftal tunel
160-190 rabbits and lizzy in cape terrigan 190-210 on crabs there, and 210-230 cockatrice, mantacore there can get you as high as 270ish, but I'd stop at around 250-260 then finish skilling 250-300 in an abyssea la theine/konschtat highlands/tahrongi canyon.
300+, try bird camp in misareaux coast (a) or any party up to and including including dom ops (dominion ops) at this point.
350+, definitly need dominion ops in the heros of abyssea zones, its like fields of valor (fov) or grounds of valor (gov) for abyssea.

Side not about xp, get the emperorer band from your nation's signet npc, do not waste conquest points on emperess band. Also, if you drop any xp band such as these, don't worry, you can renew it once a conquest tally or trrade it to recharge it from the same npc, your home nation npc signet giver or a jueno signet giver

Conquest tally- is every earth week, and the count down is displayed in the menu.
menu>region info>conquest>it's on the upper right hand corner of your world map, should say "next conquest tally in X days."

Foods- there are many type food available, to start you might want to, once you can spare a little gil, and you start to skill up your jobs more, buy crab sushi by the stack(12) for about 4-5k a stack from the AH (auction house under: Food » Meals » seafood), this gives about +10accuracy (acc), if you are going to skill up and your confident that you will not die, buy a marinara pizza (auction house under: Food » Meals » Breads & Rice) this is the best acc and attack food for the price. Later on, when you are closer to your weapon skill cap and want to do more damage, buy cheap attack foods such as Meat Mithkabob ( Food » Meals » Meat & Eggs). Eventually you can buy better, more expensive attack food, eventually.

Rank- Each nation has up to rank 10 mission, the higher the mission the longer signet lasts, and the more access you get to some things such as dynamis. (need be on mission 6+ to access dynamis) Also, each mission rewards you with some gil, more for the higher missions. Check wiki, some can be skipped by trading crystals to the signet npc in your home nation/jueno) and most expect the early ones can only be flagged (flagged- term used to denote availablity of a quest) after trading a certain amount of crystals to the signet npc (check wiki, each mission requires a specific amount).

COP (chains of promathia) - Once you get your 90+ job and 49+ sub job leveled, skilled, and somewhat geared, or sooner, check out the wiki and look at COP. This quest line will reward you with one of the, if not the best, dd ring in the game, the rajas ring and sea access after 8-1. While tamas ring (you may only get one or the other or the long forgotten tanking ring, not worth it personally) was useful at one point, this author feels that this ring, tamas, can be replaced by alternative gear. While the replacements won't be as good as tamas, nothing gets the job done for a dd like rajas, and SE has stated that rajas will get a 99 level facelift, so expect this ring to once again come out on top.

WOTG (wings of the goddess) starting the first questgives shadowreign access (past). a note to you, when you go through a maw in the past always come back through to the present immediately, this will unlock the maw on both sides for you. If you fail to do so and die, you are not gonna be able to access the past again unless you have access somewhere else via another maw you opened in the past or going thru the gates in garlaige citadel which is a SOB. In other words, your first maw is the only time you can go thru the present to the past without going thru the past first, after that ALL maws in the present become locked and you HAVE to go thru the maws in the past individually to access to unlock them for use in the present. completion of the WOTG missions and quests (it's confusing at first, you need do both nation quests and missions to progress) grants some items (depends on which nation you choose to be allied with in the past, you can do all three eventually) and a moonshade earring with varrying augments on it, some are either latent refresh (mp restores 1mp/tic with weapon not drawn) or latent regain (tp restores at 1tp/tic with weapon drawn), as well as several others.

ZM (zilart missions or rise of the zilart) grants sky access and if you do DM (divine might) instead of mission zm14, you can get a decent earring. Pull up DM and see for yourself. the suppanomimi earring is a good one.

Quest- Apoc nigh - need have completed all ZM and COP as well as Bv1 (bahahumat, i botched the spelling I think, first fight) and another quest to gain access to this final fight and it's earring rewards. Ethereal earring is a decent pick.

there's also the add on's and there respective gear for completetion, type ASA, ACP, and AMK for the list of missions and goto the end to see the gear with it's augments you may choose. Again, the COP ring is probably the best item, but other add-ons are still decent, depends on the time you wish to invest in these rewards. There's a few add-ons I left out, mythic ws from nyzul isle, and the TOAU quests, mercanary rank, assualts, salvage, einherjar, limbus, and more. Interested? Check em out.

White mage is probly your best bet if you want to get into an abyssea pt w/o a veteran's help or a 75+ job. The spells are somewhat cheap compared to other mage jobs and you dont have to process weakness as much in a empyrean amor pt, plus you only need a few spells to start out for xp. You can do this at around 41/42 when White mage gets cure 4(attempt abyssea leeching without knowing someone). Granted not everyone will let you in but some leaders won't mind so long as you can cure 4 from time to time. Remember to read ahead about your 50+ caps and quests, and purchase cure 5 before you can use it, because if your in abyssea and level you and your party will want you to have that.

Beastman seals, Kindred Crests, High kindred crests, and kindred crests: when I first started playing, I tossed about 50 of these away because I was running out of storage space quick and nobody offered to explain to me what they did, or what they were worth. These are used from various things like level break quests to certain battles called BCNM, KCNM, etc, basically, head to port jueno and trade all of these seals that you have to the npc there named shami. He will store all of them for you, and you many retrieve any number of the storaged ones back from him at any time in the future by speaking with him. Also, he will convert them into different orbs which are then used at certain burning circles to enter these battlefields which drop a variety of decent gear, spells, and Auctionable Loot.

Field of Valor “Elite Training” NM: Now adays, this is worthless because the new cap has outdated it, and SE has yet to adjust or fix this system. But, when I joined it took me awhile, again because nobody would help me, to figure out what this was. You may purchase with your tabs (that you earn by completing FOV or GOV pages) these key items, you then go to a specific ??? In certain zones and trade gear, gil, or beastman seals in exchange for gil or augmented items. I don’t suggest using this now, because gear gets outdated so fast and you cant sell augmented gear to other people and have to either drop it or accept the shity rates the npc’s will pay to buy it off you. But, FYI, you trade the item to the ??? And you lose the key item and it pops a NM that you fight and upon winning drops a chest with the reward in it.

If in the future they make it so that the rewards are always positive (currently you can get some pretty crappy augments that are permeant) like the abyssea augmented gear in chests and gear from dominion op notes/trophies, and the ability to erase the augment if you don’t like it like you can with SKY augmented synergy gear, than yea, totally worth doing but as of Dec 20, 2011, don’t bother with this but it’s a little game trivia for you to know.

This is pretty much the right part, so don't worry about that.

The order of achievement inside Abyssea should be like this:
1. Necessary Atma/Abyssites
2. +1 gear
3. Other Atma/Abyssites
4. +2 gear and miscellaneous items (gear and weapons)
5. Empyrean weapons

I've seen too many people come to Abyssea and wanting Empyrean weapons and +2 gear, and that kind of thinking is wrong. You will need some prerequisites to be able to do the other things realiably, unless you have a group you can leech stuff off. So let me go a bit into depth with the aforementioned points, and keep this in mind: if you do it right, it's very easy.

The "necessary" Atma/Abyssites are the ones you'll need for +1 farming. If MNK is your only job (is it?), you'll probably only need RR. RR and GH are a good combination for you at this point. For this, you'll need two Lunar Abyssites. One you can buy with 100k cruor (which I assume you have from lvling MNK to 95?), another you get from defeating a zone boss. Easiest to farm and kill are probably Bennu or Resheph, however you can just go to Abyssea - La Theine, Tahrongi, Misareaux or Attohwa and see if anyone is fighting the respective zone boss in there. People will often let you leech the win.

The sad part is, this is what you can't effectively do on your own. You will need some kind of help with those Atma and Abyssites (or zone boss wins). If you have a LS or some friends to help you, great, if not you'll probably have to read up on it and shout to find other people who need them. However, while all of that can easily be duod by skilled and equipped people, it can be quite difficult for a party of Abyssea newbies, so this will be the hardest step.

So mobs you'll want to kill for Atma and Abyssites include Sobek and Ironclad Pulverizer (both in Abyssea - Misareaux), as well as Mictlantecuhtli, Warbler and Xibalba (the latter two being dangerous for inexperienced groups) for their merit Abyssites. Also, you should buy all Abyssites you can with cruor, as well as the quested ones (although this may take a decent amount of time, it should only be done for the important ones for now, merit, furtherance, celerity and sojourn).

Next is the +1 seal farming. With this basic set you should be able to DD efficiently enough to be the primary DD for seal parties. That means, you'll only need a WHM and a BLM (and possibly a THF) to make an efficient seal party. These you can usually get by shouting for people who need seals off the same mobs you do. As an example, for MNK head seals you'd go to wiki and search for "Tantra Seal: Head". You'll see a list of mobs that drop it. You just pick the easiest one of them (in this probably case Berstuk, since Amun is a timed spawn and Gaizkin can be kinda nasty on unsuspecting people). You usually find that out from reading testimonials on the wiki talk page.

Let's stick with Berstuk for now. You see that it also drops THF, NIN and DNC seals, so you shout for people who have a WHM or BLM and need those seals. Then your party is set. You usually do that until you have all seals for everyone in the party or until people have to leave. Once you've done that, you can repeat that step for the other pieces, until you have a full +1 set.

+1 sets are usually a good start for any job, most can be upgraded in plenty of ways with other gear and macro in situational gear, but once you have all +1 pieces, you can be considered a decent DD for Abyssean purposes. That's the point at which you'll want to get other Atma and Abyssites that you'll be missing. You should focus on merit and furtherance Abyssites. Once you get some of these, you may wanna start getting other zone boss kills. Seven zone bosses means you'll get to equip a third Atma. I'm not really sure about MNK choices, but other Atma that spring to mind are Sanguine Scythe (off Bukhis) and Voracious Violet (off Eccentric Eve).

At this point, you'll also want to skill other weapons, namely Club and Staff. Most people will expect MNK to have both Club and Scythe skilled up to 230~250, for their WSNM weapon skills (Retribution and Black Halo in this case). This will also help with acquiring further Abyssea gear (since gear drops often depend on the blue stagger).

At this point, there isn't really any order, and you can approach the rest of Abyssea in a similar fashion. Mostly with small groups, either friends or shouted. You can start working on +2 gear, slowly work towards Shinryu access as well as pursuing some harder to get items (Epona's Ring springs to mind, not sure if Zelus Tiara is worth it for MNK, but you get what I mean).

Once you're decently decked out, you can start pursuing empyrean weapons, although that will require some teamwork (people to hold key items for you and help you kill harder NMs). Once you're at this point you'll have Abyssea all figured out anyway, so there's not much else to say here. In general, it's pretty much all the same: check out what you want, what's required for it, and work your way towards it. As long as you don't try to jump too far ahead, you'll have no problems getting stuff done. Only the beginning can be a bit rough, but once you have your basic Atma and Abyssites working for you, you'll be able to get the rest a lot easier.

Happy hunting ^.-

[Spre]

heh I typod that I ment 49, then I hit 50 not to long after that I still need to do the quests to go higher then 50, I won't be able to do abysea untill next week when i can buy it, my local gamestop doesn;t have anything for it, so i have to wait untill I get money on my card to buy it online.


Hopefully Valkurm and khazam are still good exp party spots from 10-about 35 I think untill I can get some help with the level quests I will level my (in the first order( LV1 NIN, LVL14 DRK, LV8 RDM,)) I have a 11WHM and a 10BLM but those are on my mule that I mainly use for crafting and selling in jueno.



What sucks is everyone I knew that played FFXI quit and don't plan on playing again, I have a huge friends list I will need to delete.

[Concerned4FFxi]

theres really no parties in the old camps anymore, its all book burning in crawlers nest and gusgen mines, or abyssea leeching. if u cant find anyone, come to bismarck

[Spre]

I found some, It just makes me wonder how newbs learn their jobs, for end game fights.

[Michae]

I found some, It just makes me wonder how newbs learn their jobs, for end game fights.

They dont alot of the time lol. I have been in a pt with a 95 pup who didnt know what an attachment was, a 90 smn with only carby, a 95 thf who had no clue what th was and any newb thf couldnt tell u what sata is for 10m gil. And forget about sch knowing what the heck to do with weather or stratagems. That being said endgame doesnt really take much skill nowadays anyway. CoP has no lvl caps anymore and you can burn thru most content with a handful of ppl. And not ALL newbs are this bad but they are more abundant then you would think.

Just need to forget the xi of old and try to enjoy it in its new incarnation

[Concerned4FFxi]

Aurore gear is fine for leveling until you get your af3+1 or better, the fact is you are a noob now, returning player or not. Your gil status and gear status is that of a noob, and while you shouldnt play like a noob you should definitly conserve your gil and spend it wisely, hence not wasting it on gear that will be replaced soon and using the perle, teal, and aurore at 78. For the amount of money it costs to buy, the amount of money you get back when you sell it, and for the level and it's easy availablity to all new players and those who dont have decent gear or gil, THERE IS NONE BETTER at 78, period. It's not like your going to jump into a great gear set at that level without investing time or resources, so this is the best option and gives you more time to do things you need at the 78+ bench mark, like xp and do missions. Screw what people think, your not gonna be stuck wearing it forever. Why would you waste your gil on something that your going to replace soon anyway, dont spend your gil on gear that is going to get replaced in 5-10 levels.

Just get a decent weapon for every ten or so levels, until you hit 95. Like I said, consider the magian trials as soon as you hit 75 and work on one of those. Work on your af3+1/2, af2+1/2, see what cheap gear is on the AH for jobs 95+. That is were you want to spend money on gear, 95+, not on gear under 95, unless that gear is still useful/affordable alternative at 95+.

As for bb, its going to costs about 4.5-5.5m gil on my server to purchase all three items from mercanaries (1.5m for behemoth tongue, and 1.5-2m each for the other two items, 2m is reasonable, this is an idea how much you should be paying, at least on my server so don't pay too much more on yours, and dont trade gil first until item drops and make sure you can trust the people doing the bcnm for you to buy the rae/ex from). So yes, that's in your future once you start npc'ing cruor from abyssea, no your not going to jump into gear better than aurore right off the bat without a sponser. I've been playing for years and I have under 1000 kindred crests, so doing the bcnm and thinking you are going to get your bb that way is complete bull, now that kindred seals are useally replaced by kindred crests and high kindred crests. Back in the day, you'd have over 1000 kindred seals from xp pt, today you'll have over a 1000 kindred crests instead from your xp pt. It's just the way things work.