Producer Matsui, you have significantly improved the new player experience.

[OKOA]

Thanks for your replies, OKOA. I've decided to start a new character on Odin! Made it to level 15 last night and will be applying for my chocobo license soon.

While I will surely be bumbling along at a much slower pace, let me know if you ever need a hand with anything. And keep me posted on your adventures -- I enjoy reading these updates.

**Character name is Nozzleton. Having some problems getting a forum account set up for the new character.

That's great news!

Feel free to message me if you need any help with anything.

Also, check out the Friends of All Nations linkshell on Odin. They have a light aquamarine link pearl, and most members are also sackholders. Try to flag someone down from the linkshell and get a pearl. They are a new player friendly shell.

[OKOA]

I did not have as much time to play this weekend as I usually do, but I'll put a quick update here for anyone following along at home.

Real quick, one goal I had independent of other goals I've listed was to unlock all of the Trusts.

1) I missed Zeid (for the time-being), but I purchased Lion through the login campaign.

2) I easily unlocked Tenzen easily with conquest points.

3) It took 1 full night of play to unlock Valaineral…Going into the past, unlocking the maws, signing up for the fighting fourth, doing an Ops, and finally fighting a couple campaign battles.

4) Joachim was another night’s worth of play because it involved getting into an Aby party to get the cruor.

5) I still haven’t unlocked Mihli. I did however finish the quest to travel to Whitegate.

If I get desperate, I will trade copper vouchers for Imperial Standing in order to buy Mihli.

For now though, I liked actually earning the currency the old fashioned way.

I might pop a couple of Emperor band charges and beat up some ToAU mobs the old fashioned way for my 2000 IS if I can find the time before Feb 2nd.

I really liked the way they set acquiring these 4 NPCs up! These rewards seemed really well thought out. They should do a few more Trust acquisition campaigns like this.

On to the Meat & Potatoes

First things first, after I finished Limit Break 3, I did a couple pages then returned and quickly finished Limit Break 4. There are certain things the new homepoint system is really nice for. It should be further expanded.

My level cap was now 70, so I paired up with a couple linkshell mates to go kill some worms and get the cruor I needed to unlock Joachim. The party we created ended up being a big success and I capped out pretty quick. I was also able to get my RDM leveled up quite a bit.

Here’s where things start to get a little sketchy.

The trust system made it easy enough to get a WHM testimony. Of course I spent probably 3 hours farming one up because that’s just my luck.

This entire time I had just assumed I would waltz into WHM Maat naked and it would be that easy. My first fight I literally did not even eat any food and just kind of ran in thinking it would be easy enough to just kite him. It wasn’t.

Clearly I had underestimated the fight, having never done it on a caster before. So, I got an Earth Staff off of the AH which brought be down to 0 gil, and I got the Salted Fish buff from the Field Tome. For the record, there was no armor on the AH either time.

Even though I took half as much damage the second time, it still just wasn’t the right way to do the fight. I used Benediction too early, and I just barely lost.

So I bought a bunch of medication, and went in for a 3rd fight. The 3 fights per testimony is kind of a nice change.

I made it about 2 minutes into this fight with no resistance from Maat at all and a guaranteed win with all the medication I was packing (none of which I used). For some reason though I derped at that moment, and a crit took me down before I could cure myself.

This should be a super easy fight, so I chalked it up to a couple of tactical mistakes on my part.

1) Even though I’ve done well on spell acquisition, I use Kupipi, so I’d never bothered buying the rather expensive Protect and Shell spells. Missing out on the 120 defense from Protect IV is making this fight unnecessarily easy.

2) I decided to complete all of my AF1 solo before trying again. And not because it’s absolutely required, but just because fighting Maat naked is against my core value of playing this game to be a hero.

More on the AF

I’m going to cut this short and just say that these quests are pretty dated and it shows. I doubt much will change here, but I’m going to go out on a limb and say that most new people to this game should be completing their AF before moving on past level 75.

The problem is that there is a power disparity that makes it pretty unenjoyable to do the quests at 70, and completely absurdly easy at 99. Most people will just find a convenient way to skip doing it until 95 or so, but people who pick a job with a hard Maat fight won't have that luxury.

Needless to say, I’m trying to enjoy the challenge, and just finished my 3rd piece.

It does feel good to get this done solo, whereas without the Trust system, there would be no prayer of doing so.

These quests were badly designed, and reflect a bygone era of woefully bad design choices in this game. It is sad that this is still the first impression this game will give new players.

I like that intentionally better design choices are being made in the late game, but I find it incredibly vapid that the "winning strategy" is to just skip ahead to the stuff that wasn't badly designed.

[Olor]

yeah AF... ugh. Even overleveled it can be a pain. I tried for an evening to get started on thf but it requires stealing an item... and I just can't steal it! I spent several hours trying to steal it, no dice. Then I got bored and decided it wasn't worth the pain.

[Xantavia]

I haven't fought Maat on whm (only doing the jobs where this limit break finishes up a storyline) but a few thoughts. Forgive me if you have attempted any of these.
Can you Repose him to buy some time? Make sure you put up blink/stoneskin/aquaveil. Use the stance (solace?) that grants cureskin. I learned while attempting to heal back in the day that regen can be the difference between victory or defeat. Make him come to you after he is active so if you die, you can reraise safely. Don't focus on beating him up but run out the clock by staying alive.

A lot will come down to luck. BLU was the fight I needed to advance to 71. First 3 attempts were pathetic and I lost quickly (don't forget echo drops as a mage), but the 4th go went so easy I can't believe I lost to him earlier. He chose to cast some less effective spells this time, and I also made a whole new macro set-up just for this fight.

[OKOA]

I haven't fought Maat on whm (only doing the jobs where this limit break finishes up a storyline) but a few thoughts. Forgive me if you have attempted any of these.
Can you Repose him to buy some time? Make sure you put up blink/stoneskin/aquaveil. Use the stance (solace?) that grants cureskin. I learned while attempting to heal back in the day that regen can be the difference between victory or defeat. Make him come to you after he is active so if you die, you can reraise safely. Don't focus on beating him up but run out the clock by staying alive.

A lot will come down to luck. BLU was the fight I needed to advance to 71. First 3 attempts were pathetic and I lost quickly (don't forget echo drops as a mage), but the 4th go went so easy I can't believe I lost to him earlier. He chose to cast some less effective spells this time, and I also made a whole new macro set-up just for this fight.

Thank you for following along, and also for trying to help. I really do appreciate that you would take the time to do so.

I too once leveled BLU as my first job, and MAN was that a tough spot to be in. However, the feeling of success must have been great when you finally triumphed.

For some reason I had it in my mind that WHM was a very easy job to break 70 with. Certainly it must be one of the easier ones, but BST is still much easier and can be done completely naked.

As for finishing the AF armor, my play time was severely limited this week, but what little time I did have largely resulted in failure. My bottom line here is that it's just easier to use medicines and skate through maat, then come back to this later. So yeah, I will just end up beating the old man nearly naked I guess.

Unfortunately money is tight and I had forgotten about Repose anyway, but yes, I believe that is the key to what makes this fight such a cake walk.

I will probably spend some time farming gil and maxing out my divine magic before trying again.

A successful Repose would have made my second attempt laughably easy as I just barely lost the fight by a matter of seconds.