Pagos - It's possibly worse than we thought

[Tigerlilley]

I just want to also throw in a few of my own thoughts on Pagos. I got to 35 in about 5 days of basically consistent grinding.

• This is incredibly casual unfriendly. If you do not have at least 4 - 5 hours a day to spare in Pagos, it's possible to get little to almost no NM pops for the work that you'll need to do to get experience. Expect at least 1 - 3 pops per 3 hour session.
• Expect to miss the NM pops as a low level with no aetheryte access or mount. Since there is no train, its possible your party can be on the complete opposite side of the map when an NM spawns. + The panic + sleeping dragons, it will take time to get to NMs. You gotta hope the higher level players will wait.
• You will need to consistently grind. If you slack in your group, you're going to drop the chain which will kill experience for everyone.
• Because of this ^ the level disparity will absolutely become an issue. Low level players in high level groups will be a dps burden.
• As a result of these ^ People are less likely to break away from their groups to help a player needing a rez. Don't go alone. Seriously.
• The low level bunny fate is, weirdly, a lot harder than the level 31 one. Voretooth is super beefy. Level 31 fate will mean your treasure will be in high level areas but its way quicker to farm.
• I farmed the high level bunny fate for 3 hours straight and got nothing except junk. There's a reason the drops are tradeable - they're have no where near the same drop rate as Anemos. In that time in our group of nearly two parties, we collectively got maybe 1 - 2 bunny housing items, 3 hakutaku eyes, a couple of cards, 2 minions. No mannequins or weapon housing drops.
• The speed belt and cassie earrings seem to be one drop per entire population present at the fight.
• The sleeping frozen void dragons in choke points seem to only exist for a train deterrence.
• As a midcore raider, I have put more total hours into completing Pagos than I did into progressing and clearing Sigma savage.
• Alongside your EXP grind, there is a Nexus light grind (renamed) at the same time. By the time I got to 35, I had what I needed for one +1 Pagos weapon with no extra grinding required.
• I wish they had have put in rare dyes or crafting materia in as drops. It might have made the lock boxes less of a bitter pill.
• I like that they have added in reskins of old glamour with no class restrictions. I hope this continues in the future.

Story Spoiler - Edit: I don't know how to format spoilers :3 A little help here?

It's treading water for very little gain for hours on end with no chance to have a break since the chain experience is your key to levelling faster. The weapons themselves seem to be nothing more than simple glamour and a check box to tick off since Tsukuyomi, tome weapons, raid weapons, HoH weapons and basically anything else in this game is nearly of equal or better stats for about an 8th of the effort.

Final thought: Pagos plays very similar to Diadem 2.0 in which the higher end fates need to meet x quota to spawn, that of which may not happen in a 3 hour lockout + one drop for the entire party like the Diadem Emergency monster thing that happened. There are layers of RNG and RNG to drops making farming for anything a completely miserable experience.

I think that last point is possibly the most disappointing of them all. It's like they literally learned nothing from that previously hated content and have managed to wedge it back in under a pretty map. I expected an expansion of Anemos, not a thinly veiled Diadem 3.0. Yoshi said in live letters that each iteration will add in more features. I expected an expansion on the magicite fighting system, not magical bunnies with crappy materia drops.

I love this game but Pagos is an absolute miss for me. I feel bad for my FC members who absolutely will not have the same amount of time I had to grind and this content will be endless, unforgiving, and ultimately, uncompleted.