The Hunt and Alexandrite: Before and After 2.4

Before 2.4:
Every 20 A Rank NM's killed yielded 4 Alexandrite.
Every 375 A Rank NM' kills yielded 75 Alexandrite.

After 2.4:
Every 20 A rank NM's killed yields 3 Alexandrite.
Every 500 A Rank NM's You will have 75 Alexandrite.

25% nerf, 25% more time needed to obtain a Novus Weapon. 200 hours becomes 250 hours. You get the idea. It's simple math. you can hire a 5th grader to solve problems through numbers before the problem even occurs.

Yeah, I am still in the process of working on my first and only Novus....and I can understand the nerf to the amount of soldiery the hunts drop, since they did decrease the amount of soldiery needed to exchange for a mysterious map to do to get an Alexandrite....I do wish however, that the amount of elite marks needed for an Alexandrite was lower. I mainly use my marks for those, but 200 always seemed a bit high. I thought maybe 75 or 80 was a decent number for Alexandrite, but even 100 would seem appropriate since it would take a few days of doing the daily hunt marks to get 1 if you don't go for A ranks or S ranks.

I've posted this before somewhere but in case you didn't see it I farmed brayflox 700+ times in 30 days to get my novus before hunts existed. And I know of people that got theirs before me on other servers. So they ran 16 more brayflox runs for each day sooner than me that they got it. Be glad you don't have to do that ^^;

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Originally Posted by KaedrianLiang

Before 2.4:
Every 20 A Rank NM's killed yielded 4 Alexandrite.
Every 375 A Rank NM' kills yielded 75 Alexandrite.

After 2.4:
Every 20 A rank NM's killed yields 3 Alexandrite.
Every 500 A Rank NM's You will have 75 Alexandrite.

25% nerf, 25% more time needed to obtain a Novus Weapon. 200 hours becomes 250 hours. You get the idea. It's simple math. you can hire a 5th grader to solve problems through numbers before the problem even occurs.

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because having one piece of content be the end all be all way to get something done is totally good design :rolleyes:

or you could just do daily roulette quest + other roulettes for tomes and get them from maps probably a lot faster.

25% more hunts. 50% LESS roulettes. Less QQ more PewPew.

No, it is not 50% less dungeons. While the maps are 50% of the cost they used to be, we're also only getting half of the soldiery vs. what we used to get for myth. So, no they are not actually 50% quicker to obtain.

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Originally Posted by ManweSulimo

I've posted this before somewhere but in case you didn't see it I farmed brayflox 700+ times in 30 days to get my novus before hunts existed. And I know of people that got theirs before me on other servers. So they ran 16 more brayflox runs for each day sooner than me that they got it. Be glad you don't have to do that ^^;

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Not about how it was done before. I'm questioning the devs implementing unfavorable modifications, for a feature that didnt need to be modified.

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Originally Posted by Kaze3434

because having one piece of content be the only way to get something done is totally good design :rolleyes:

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fixed

Though I never used Hunts as a one-stop shop for all my tome needs, I did use it from time to time for Alexandrite/soldiery gain when I just couldn't push myself to run another damn dungeon. Sometimes I just want things to be quick.

Now though, Hunts aren't even worth that. It sucks when you have to wait at an A rank just for a Full party to gather. Yes, it's awesome that you can experience the mechanics of an A rank fully but it's just not worth my time.

It's also not a good means to distract myself from how boring dungeons can be either. I wish it would give back poetics... Maybe in the future when the devs make it easier to obtain soldiery. As of now, it's just awful all around. Farming for soldiery is such a damn chore.

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Originally Posted by KaedrianLiang

Before 2.4:
Every 20 A Rank NM's killed yielded 4 Alexandrite.
Every 375 A Rank NM' kills yielded 75 Alexandrite.

After 2.4:
Every 20 A rank NM's killed yields 3 Alexandrite.
Every 500 A Rank NM's You will have 75 Alexandrite.

25% nerf, 25% more time needed to obtain a Novus Weapon. 200 hours becomes 250 hours. You get the idea. It's simple math. you can hire a 5th grader to solve problems through numbers before the problem even occurs.

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The sample size is so small that your results mean nothing.

I welcome the change as hunt becomes less crowded and less mandatory.

Before 2.4, you are almost required to do hunts to keep up in progress making them super crowded to the point that A ranks disappears on you just because there is too much people.

The game should not be revolving around just 1 or 2 pieces of content but more spread out.

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Originally Posted by NorthernLadMSP

No, it is not 50% less dungeons. While the maps are 50% of the cost they used to be, we're also only getting half of the soldiery vs. what we used to get for myth. So, no they are not actually 50% quicker to obtain.

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So far getting soldiery for the maps doesn't seem that bad compared to before with myth. On top of buying my first ninja animus book yesterday I have enough to get 2 maps from just a weekend of absent minded dungeon-ing to gear ninja up

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Originally Posted by Saccharin

The sample size is so small that your results mean nothing.

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You don't need a sample size for conversion rates. 1 A rank fate has a known value, and 1 Alexandrite has a known value. It doesn't have randomness so it doesn't need something like a minimum sample size. Unless this was sarcasm.

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Originally Posted by KaedrianLiang

Before 2.4:
Every 20 A Rank NM's killed yielded 4 Alexandrite.
Every 375 A Rank NM' kills yielded 75 Alexandrite.

After 2.4:
Every 20 A rank NM's killed yields 3 Alexandrite.
Every 500 A Rank NM's You will have 75 Alexandrite.

25% nerf, 25% more time needed to obtain a Novus Weapon. 200 hours becomes 250 hours. You get the idea. It's simple math. you can hire a 5th grader to solve problems through numbers before the problem even occurs.

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Oh no its gonna take more time to get my 5th novus :p

The topic flies over EVERYONES head.

The point is they -increased- the time required to obtain one step in the relic quest.

Currently nexus is old news yet its not easier to get nexus, its more time consuming to get novus, and if youre a dps you have to fight ninja leveling queues to get your animus.

Simply put we put all this effort into obtaining our first Nexus yet it wasnt even the best weapon in the game for more than a few months and we cant obtain them easily for our subsidiary jobs.

It makes no sense.

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Originally Posted by NorthernLadMSP

No, it is not 50% less dungeons. While the maps are 50% of the cost they used to be, we're also only getting half of the soldiery vs. what we used to get for myth. So, no they are not actually 50% quicker to obtain.

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They were referring to daily roulette. It's easier to get 400 soldiery from doing roulettes than it was getting 800 myths from doing roulettes. Dungeons themselves remain the same as you mentioned (both the cost and dungeon reward ere reduced by 50%), but that's not the direct conversion for the daily roulette bonus, and especially first time bonus.

The only thin 2.4 did was nerf how fast it was to get tomestones via hunting. And some of us agreed that it was pretty overpowered and oversaturated the game with mythology tomes, as if it wasn't enough that you could buy alexendrites with allied seals too (which remained unchanged.)

tl;dr : Finishing animus/novus exclusively by hunts was nerfed. Finishing animus/novus through daily roulettes was buffed.

Hunts in 2.3 were the most over-rewarded thing I have ever seen in any game. It was awesome while it lasted but I think the changes in this patch reflect that SE agrees that they were too overpowered.

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Originally Posted by Daniolaut

The topic flies over EVERYONES head.

The point is they -increased- the time required to obtain one step in the relic quest.

Currently nexus is old news yet its not easier to get nexus, its more time consuming to get novus, and if youre a dps you have to fight ninja leveling queues to get your animus.

Simply put we put all this effort into obtaining our first Nexus yet it wasnt even the best weapon in the game for more than a few months and we cant obtain them easily for our subsidiary jobs.

It makes no sense.

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They increased it through hunts. Decreased from other sources. This wasn't a change for Nexus, it was a change to balance hunts.

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Originally Posted by RiceisNice

They were referring to daily roulette. It's easier to get 400 soldiery from doing roulettes than it was getting 800 myths from doing roulettes.

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Exactly this.

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Originally Posted by Daniolaut

Simply put we put all this effort into obtaining our first Nexus yet it wasnt even the best weapon in the game for more than a few months and we cant obtain them easily for our subsidiary jobs.

It makes no sense.

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Um what? o.O

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Originally Posted by KaedrianLiang

Before 2.4:
Every 20 A Rank NM's killed yielded 4 Alexandrite.
Every 375 A Rank NM' kills yielded 75 Alexandrite.

After 2.4:
Every 20 A rank NM's killed yields 3 Alexandrite.
Every 500 A Rank NM's You will have 75 Alexandrite.

25% nerf, 25% more time needed to obtain a Novus Weapon. 200 hours becomes 250 hours. You get the idea. It's simple math. you can hire a 5th grader to solve problems through numbers before the problem even occurs.

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Only if you do only hunts, no expert roulette daily quest and spend not a single sold tome on alex maps.

You realize a lot of us did our weapons before the hunt was even out with just the daily quest and fates.

The fact is because A rank give poetic tomes, on any level, hunts are all but dead. S ranks die on site. A rank are treated like lawn gnomes you sidestep as you're walking by. Just not worth doing anymore.

Did i miss something? Are Hunts the ONLY way to get alexandrite?

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Originally Posted by MageBlack

Did i miss something? Are Hunts the ONLY way to get alexandrite?

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As far as this topic is concerned, probably.

Yes, getting alexendrites via hunt is slower in 2.4 than it was in 2.3
No, it is not harder to get soldierly tomes for alexendrites in 2.4 than it was getting mythology tomes for alexendrites in 2.3.

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Originally Posted by RiceisNice

As far as this topic is concerned, probably.

Yes, getting alexendrites via hunt is slower in 2.4 than it was in 2.3
No, it is not harder to get soldierly tomes for alexendrites in 2.4 than it was getting mythology tomes for alexendrites in 2.3.

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You're right that It's the same for the roulette and I certainly prefer the 2.4 expert roulette to the 2.3 expert roulette. The hunts did make it much much much faster to gain alexandrite in 2.3, so I get the complaint. It was easily the fastest way to get myth in the game and gave you the extra perk of every 10 A ranks was another alexandrite over and above the maps from myth.

Alex still isn't difficult to get.

Allied seals from hunts are not balanced well with the cost of Alexandrites in 2.4. Soldiery rewards and cost of the maps is adequately balanced in that you can obtain more than a 180+ soldiery from a daily roulette that has new players present and a lot of new dungeons offer 60 as a base amount...of which there is no limitation on how many times can run those dungeons and they can be farmed easily and quickly while quite often granting you the new player bonus. It currently takes over 40,000 soldiery to buy the 75 maps but this is offset by the fact there is no restriction on running dungeons and gives vastly higher quantities.

Leave the cost of maps as they are but lower the cost of Alexandrites to bring that more in balance. The option of buying Alexandrites using seals should be a good way/offer another way of obtaining them if running dungeons constantly is not what you enjoy but currently it is not as balanced given it costs over 20,000 seals for all 75 yet seals are vastly harder to farm with only 20 gained from actual A rank hunts, none from B rank (ones that are not part of your weekly bill), none from S rank and around 32 a day restriction for daily hunt and only 50 per week restriction from weekly hunt.

Lowering the soldiery reward from hunts was a good thing, removing poetics from hunts was also good but the quantity of seals earned from A ranks is not good, the restriction placed on daily and weekly hunts plus quantity earned from them is also not good or balanced vs cost of Alexandrites. This is my opinion and I do not expect everyone else to agree with me but it will not change my opinion if they do not. As far as I am concerned they need to increase the amount of seals hunts provide or lower the cost of Alexandrites bought using seals.

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Originally Posted by Snugglebutt

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You're forgetting that you have a daily quest that rewards you an alexendrite map. While its true that it'd take over 40k tomes to get 75 alexendrite maps, nothing is forcing you to get 75 alexendrite exclusively through soldierly tomes.

And 200 allied seals for one alexendrite seems pretty generous, considering you get the asme amount of tomes as you would allied seals, by the time you'd get 400 soldierlies via hunt, you would've have enough allied seals for 2 alexendrites.

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Originally Posted by RiceisNice

And 200 allied seals for one alexendrite seems pretty generous, considering you get the asme amount of tomes as you would allied seals, by the time you'd get 400 soldierlies via hunt, you would've have enough allied seals for 2 alexendrites.

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Your analogy would only work if dungeons also gave seals in my opinion and what you are using for your analogy is what I call false equivalence. The fact you can get seals and soldiery from hunts merely reinforces the fact maps are more balanced vs cost of soldiery given the amount of ways can obtain them and massive quantities which can be farmed. Seals on the other hand only come from hunts and are a tiny fraction of the quantity earned compared to soldiery...that fraction is not half the quantity but less than half the quantity compared to soldiery earned from content including dungeons, so much so that simply reducing the cost of the Alexandrites to half for the seals is not balanced because you are not given half the amount of soldiery in the form of seals from the content open to the player.

The way I see it. SE decided that there would be a "choke point" on relic, so that they wouldn't blaze though the steps quickly. Previously that choakpoint was Atma, but since they needed to keep players around so that the game remains profitable they decided to move it, so they devised a clever scheme.

1. Increase Atma rates (seems simple enought but since SE still has to keep the tedium aspect, a later step to be made harder
2. So they implement a DPS class, the first new class since the relaunch, That fact alone would cause massive hype
3. Players, consumed by the hype, clog the DF with Rouges and Ninja making Animus take just as long as Atma was initially and also moving the RNG aspect to that step
4. But Dungeons were just a small aspect of the Animus quest And those that already have it would be unaffected they have to slow Novus down too. The way they did was simple, slow the alex gain, by making it harder to gain Alexandrite they make the road to nexus slower

They could have just balanced the system by adjusting maps to 200 soldiery. I've done the math. The time sink is practically the same to earn 200 soldiery, dungeons vs hunts. They're just trying to force everyone to do dungeons so everyone waits less in que, plain and simple, especially when dailies are so rewarding.

And that's just balancing soldiery for relic builders. I haven't even mentioned poetic rewards for hunts which are able to be balanced. Again, they're just trying to force everyone to do dungeons so everyone waits less in que. And that's fine to me, I've quit my axe relic until Dec's update, although I can still finish farming my atma. I'm just not going to play ball with them and suffer 3 months of using DF to farm soldiery tomes. I'll farm it as much as I need to for other reasons, but my relic building days are over for the time being. It's not like we're hurting for weapon choices, anyway.

Just for the record, my math involves the three new dungeons vs hunts for soldiery. It also includes ST. I am fairly certain if I were to go further into this I would find that for the most part anything that drops worthwhile soldiery and poetics in the DF is balanced rewards as far as dungeons go. If maps were adjusted to 200 soldiery it would instantly revive hunts. People would farm hunts for soldiery/seals, and they would farm dungeons for soldiery/poetics. It can't get anymore balanced than that. But again....they're just trying to force everyone to do dungeons so everyone waits less in que. That basically means making tanks/healers join DF, btw. We all know the DPS que has gone to hell.

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Originally Posted by Valcro

But again....they're just trying to force everyone to do dungeons so everyone waits less in que. That basically means making tanks/healers join DF, btw. We all know the DPS que has gone to hell.

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Doubtful since the majority of the population plays dps it does nothing to curb the high dps queues already present due to rogue/ninja, trickling in a few more tanks and healers isn't going to stem the tide of dps flooding DF.

TIL hunts are the only way to earn soldiery tokens. Strange, I could've sworn those dungeons I ran last week to cap poetics gave me a few.

You guys are forgetting one important fact:

@ 2.2 , myth rate is about the rate of solidery atm. books were still 1500 myth, maps were 800 etc...

2.3 spoiled everyone, seriously.

If any ratios got changed (such as with mythology:soldiery conversions) you can pretty much bet it was intentional.

So, you can pretty much bet they did this to try to wean people off doing hunts and to do other things instead (which is also why the soldiery gear costs as many seals as it does, too)

I have said this on other similiar topics but i say it here again, Frontline! that is the most fastest place to get both tomes specially on primetime. After 2.4 its pretty common to only see 5-10min que times in there, so if more peoples would que in there the que would be even shorter. Tho only downside of it becoming "mainstream" is the increase of clueless/not careing players who are just there for tomes so not sure how to feel about that.

It was quite the struggle to get nin animus. I did the daily rewards EX runs, yielded around 280ish then i had to grind out 5 runs to reach 500 solds for a atma book. After the bonuses are gone, i had to farm it out hardcore. 20-30 min runs for 50 solds x 10 runs = 500(5 hrs). Then doing the books themselves was quite the chore. Wait 2-4 hrs for a fate to pop. Im so exhausted. im at 62/75 alexes, grinding these out will probly kill my spirit so im debating weather our not to just do the daily quest til i have enough. Then theres the question of materia cost. IVs on my serever have reached 600k. Not sure what im going to do. Its all to much and its not even BIS anymore. Why isnt it BIS, the amount of work involved its quite astonishing. I see people say coil weapons should be BIS, but why. They just drop after memorizing a few gimmicks.

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Originally Posted by Saccharin

The sample size is so small that your results mean nothing.

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...that's not a sample size. That's a set rate, no "results", no RNG involved.

Also gimped the same way for buying alexandrite maps:

pre 2.4: 10 A ranks = 800 myth = 1 map
now: 20 A ranks needed for 400 soldiery = 1 map

And yeah, dungeons/roulettes aren't 50% easier either, as previously corrected as well. All content is overall either exactly even or harder to get maps.

Yeah... I got my animus and then just quit. I'm working towards the soldiery weapons instead, and I swapped my shield for the Ironworks Magitek i120 version as they're far more accessible. I'll use my old Animus as glamors, but that's about all its good for now.