Bad job?

[Frizze]

Ok, i pulled your character data. Your gear is basically fine. The gathering shirt is basically worthless(and shirt IS the 2nd most important piece behind weapon), but at level 15 the difference isnt huge. So lets do advice to clear this quest in 3 phases.

Phase one: Not required, but worthwhile. At the Quicksand there should be an NPC named The Smith who has a sprout icon over his head. Talk to him, and he'll let you do some short training missions. They may or may not actually help you a ton with figuring out the combat system, but they do give you a complete set of left side armor and the best ring youll find until level 50. You can actually do the training with each seperate role(so tank, heals, caster, melee, ranged) and get separate armor pieces(they all share the ring). It has an ok look, and the stats can carry you until around level 30.

Phase two: Probly more important then phase one. Your casting rotation. Thaumaturge/Black Mage has a right way to play, and many wrong ways. So lets go over the right way real fast. You have 2 stances: Astral Fire and Umbral Ice. Umbral Ice reduces the strength of Fire spells, and increases mana regen(at your level, 3 ticks to full mana from 0). Astral Fire turns off mana regen, reduces the strength of ice spells, and increases the cost and strength of fire spells. If you dont currently have one active, you gain either stance by casting a spell of the right aspect(fire spell for astral, ice spell for umbral). Next up is your spells. THM/BLM spells dont work or upgrade the way you might think based on previous FF games. Enemies dont have elemental strengths or weaknesses, so you use the same rotation on a fire elemental as you do on a wolf. And a spell having a number next to it doesnt mean that its an upgrade, different spells have different uses. Fire is your basic nuke spell, Fire 2 is an AoE that does much less damage to one target(but more damage overall if you have 3+ targets you can hit at once). Bliz works the same way as fire but does less damage, Bliz 2 is a worse AoE then Fire 2. Thunder is a DoT rather then a nuke. Scathe is basically worthless. Sleep is handy for small scale solo instances, but in a group combat setting it proves ineffective as any stray hit will wake an enemy early. And finally, you have the ability Transpose that swaps between your fire and ice stances.

So putting that together, your typical combat scenario would see you spam Fire until your mana ran out, Transpose to ice to regen, then swap back when ready. Something like Thunder, Fire, F1, F1, F1, F1, F1, Transpose, Thunder, Bliz, Bliz, Transpose, and repeat from Fire. For a group scenario where you know you can trust the tank to keep the enemies focused on them and you have at least 3 enemies bunched up together, you would do Fire 2, F2, F2, Transpose... if the enemies are too dangerous to be close to put Thunder on 3 of them then Transpose and repeat, if you can stand close(this matter because while Fire 2 is an AoE centered on the target of the spell, Bliz 2 is an AoE centered on you) then Bliz 2 three times instead and Transpose and repeat Fire 2's. The BLM rotation changes every 10 or so levels, but what i just typed will last until 30+. When you get a new spell, read the description and if you cant figure out how to use it then ask someone.

Phase three: You need to learn the Glamour system. This would let you project the appearance of gear you like onto the actual gear you should be wearing for stats. So you could keep the gathering vest appearance while actually having a caster robe or somesuch on. In Western Thanalan if you follow the path out of Horizon away from the city you will eventually come to the port of Vesper Bay. A female roe NPC named Swyrgeim in the central area here should have a quest that unlocks the glamour system, and a second that unlocks the dye system.

And boom, hopefully that takes care of the problem. If not, pay attention during the fight to anything the NPCs might be saying. Its possible that you arent supposed to fight the target youre looking at, and should instead be focusing on something else. If there are other NPCs in the fight who are on your side, stay somewhat near them as one of them might be a healer who can keep you standing. Black Mage is arguably the strongest class in the game, but that doesnt always mean one on one fights will be easy. With that said, the devs balance these fights to be clearable by any class. BLM might burn down a target quicker to survive, WHM might heal through more attacks while slowly whittling the enemy down, PAL might use defensive skills to outlast an enemy. And as such, youll find different classes think different fights are the hard ones.

[Iscah]

You can actually do the training with each seperate role(so tank, heals, caster, melee, ranged) and get separate armor pieces(they all share the ring).

...

Something like Thunder, Fire, F1, F1, F1, F1, F1, Transpose, Thunder, Bliz, Bliz, Transpose, and repeat from Fire.

There are only three sets of training courses (tank, DPS and healer) and three sets of gear (tank, DoW and DoM) to be earned – the mismatch between courses and rewards means that if you do it with a caster first you'll do the DPS course to get your DoM gear but then you have to do the same course all again to get the DoW set, while doing the healer course will give you nothing new.

Also you'll have to manually redo the first shared lesson on dodging AoEs if you want the gloves for the later sets.

The gear from the first dungeons has the same stats as the Novice gear, though.


Also re. rotation, I would put Blizzard before Thunder so your MP starts recharging faster once you can have two stacks of Umbral Ice. From memory you don't need a second Blizzard then.