So, I've hit a wall...

[Seiowan]

Been catching up with a lot of new content over the last couple of weeks since the Return to Vana'diel promo, and one of the new things was the Rhapsodies of Vana'diel missions.

Everything seems to go fairly smoothly until you hit a wall in Raisenjima. Of course when I say 'hit' I mean it hits you and by 'wall' I mean a four-armed beast who has a long range forward cleave that kills everything in one shot.

Now, it's clear I need to get better gear, as I'm currently using the 117 sparks equipment. The highest I've even seen is only 119 though. I fail to see how a mere 2 levels could have quite such a dramatic impact, but that's neither here nor there.

Problem is, I don't have a clue how to get anything higher than 117. I've seen some terrifyingly long grinds to upgrade artifact armors to 119, but even if I started now I wouldn't be finished until gone past Christmas, mostly because of the huge number of sparks needed for those books. Surely there is something I'm missing.

I took a look at the Delve rewards on the wiki, but the highest ilvl I could find (I admit I didn't check every single link in the list) was 113, significantly lower than my current gear.

I'm not asking for a magic bullet, just to be pointed in the right direction. So far the newest expansion has left me rather confused and not knowing which way is up. The story has frozen in its tracks, presumably waiting for me to complete another 10 thousand courier runs, and I'm not even sure if I can even access any of the higher level content yet, or where to go if I wanted to.

[Cabalabob]

Using trust is helpful, those mobs have really high evasion so magic damage is better than physical. As for gear, it depends on your job. I'm a SMN main so I just did my reformed armour (even just the 109 sets are good for the job specific stats), got an eminent satchel for 115 pet, farmed some job points and soloed tenzen hard mode for a seraphicaller.

Sparks aren't as hard to get as you think they are, set a load of objectives and just play and you'll have more than you know what to do with in no time. Also doing the daily and unity ones is good as they give first time bonus every day.

Hard mode missions and unity wanted NMs are a good way to get some fairly easy 119 weapons.

But job points are where your best stat increases lie, maxing out BP damage and pet attack m.dmg has been a huge boost for my pets, let alone the gifts. Should definitely consider some capacity points farming.

[Seiowan]

But job points are where your best stat increases lie, maxing out BP damage and pet attack m.dmg has been a huge boost for my pets, let alone the gifts. Should definitely consider some capacity points farming.

At 200 CP per kill, it's going to take a very long time before I can do anything noteworthy with job points. Most of the capacity point upgrades seem to be gated behind Rhapsodies quests, which is precisely where my brick wall is.

[Catmato]

At 200 CP per kill, it's going to take a very long time before I can do anything noteworthy with job points. Most of the capacity point upgrades seem to be gated behind Rhapsodies quests, which is precisely where my brick wall is.

If you check the mission RoEs, they all have a permanent capacity point bonus for completing them. I believe all Reive RoEs do as well.

Edit: The FINAL mission RoEs have the bonuses, not every one along the way.

[Helldemon]

Also the RoE's for WKR/Lair/Colo Reive completions in each zone give small CP boost bonuses I believe.

[Limecat]

Summon a full party of trusts, and definitely try to get a bit higher iLvl(level difference IIRC has the biggest impact of all calculations when it comes to final damage/evasion). Might also want to do it on a pet job if you have one spun up for a bit extra damage. Alternately try shouting for help, someone might come by and whittle down/hold them for you to pick off. If you're having trouble finding 119 gear, there are new Eminence tasks under Tutorial --> Intermediate that will spit out some 117 sparks stuff at first but then hand you some 119 weapons and gear(there's a semi-wall here in the form of a task to complete any wildskeeper reive, sniff around during the day and you can probably catch a group farming one or another to sneak in with for your clear). Other events like the "Nyzul II improved ??? junk" one we just had are good ways to trip over 119 equips. Also save any SP dial keys you get until the gobbie box bonus that makes the SP dial give gear more often happens again.

On top of that, if you have the Amchuchu trust and a healer trust you're comfortable with(Apururu UC being a good idea since she actually stays away from AoE range most of the time) along with DDs that work well for you, many of the T1 Geas Fete NMs in Escha Zi'tah can be soloed with just a little elbow grease. Fighting them costs you nothing but 1000 silt and your choice of crafted items to trade for the pop(fish mithkabobs are a cheap option). I suggest Amchuchu simply because these NMs are very element-themed, so she can mitigate a lot of their damage being a RUN. If you have BLM at 99 all the better, because then you can stagger the hell out of them yourself for pretty simple wins. They'll drop 119 equips directly.

[OmnysValefor]

First, I guess it's important to point out that Sparks gear is, sadly, deliberately poorly balanced. I came back with a load of of 106 and 113 (and 119 weapon) and was pretty disappointed in the Sparks gear. Regarding sparks gear, higher-ilvl does not mean better (sparks vs lower ilvl). If it doesn't look better, it probably isn't.

Also, weapon ilvl is the one that matters when calculating the potency of trusts. Those four-armed skeletons are rough for a 117 person. Use trusts like Zeid II and Ullegore because they stun, or find some help if you can.

Delve I (Morimar, Foret, Ceizak) drops 113 armor and 119 weapons.

Delve II drops 119 armor. I'm not saying its worth your time to do these, but it is there. If you have friends willing to help (since Delve requires 3 to enter), this might be an option.

There's also your JSE weapon which augmented with 300 riftworn boulders, plutons, or beitetsu (these range in price per server, so pick the cheapest one and buy three stacks). For melee, even when you get a better weapon, this weapon may be handy to keep around if you find an NM that you don't have the accuracy for. 1h weapons get +50 acc fully augmented, and 2h weapons get +70 acc. The 1h are especially nice for offhand for dual-wield if you find yourself needing that extra accuracy. You'll need a few pretty simple clears to be able to get the "quest" to get these weapons, but hopefully you can find the help.

Also, the ambuscade gear should be a significant upgrade from sparks, even though we don't know the stats for 3/5 of the sets yet. Solo Very Easy or Easy if you can, enough times, get the NQ armor and use that to get in groups to get the HQ armor. Points are not "wasted" on the NQ armor as its about Total Hallmarks earned. It's a very generous point system.

Edit: There's also a plethora of quests under Records of Eminence > Tutorial > Beginner and Intermediate that you should find very useful.

[Urthdigger]

ilvl 119 is quite a lot like level 75 gear back in the day: All the same level, but a drastically different level of power between individual pieces. I'd say to try and get alluvion skirmish gear at the very least, that should hopefully pump your acc up enough to do other things.

[Seiowan]

Regarding 119 gear. Your first stop should be farming basic original Artifact armor 5/5, and then upgrade this to level 109 and 119 by farming Records Of Eminence sparks to purchase the REM's Tales chapters 1-->10.

I respect your advice, but I don't really agree with it. For a little perspective, when I re-started the game, I went through a ton of RoE objectives which I had already completed. This covered things from missions to job levels to quest. I ended up with around 100k sparks, of which I spent 34k on getting myself to item level 117 (17k per set for 2 jobs).

Those REM books cost 7.5k each, and I'd need 5 of them for each item, assuming I went through the upgrade process on all my old relic gear to get a +1. That's a total of 187,500 sparks for one set of gear! And that's not even including the weapon. With most RoE objectives giving 100-300 sparks, it's going to be a very long while before I'll be anywhere close to having enough to complete a set.

Then there's the small issue with most of the crafted items not being readily available on the auction house these days. Those that are, tend to be quite expensive. This may be less of an issue for those with well developed crafting skills, but I don't think my level 7 weaver is going anywhere fast.