And copper!

I've decided to change my recording method for my logs from this moment onward.  I detected a change in a site post 25th to now.  After the 25th there was a specific drop pattern that resembled a "Tin" site in the Black Brush zone.  And I know it was recorded after the 25th since the screen cap of the location has the coordinates in it.  Last night it had the "Fire" site drop pattern.  Since SE does not note any drop pattern changes when they update, but the changes seem to happen after patch days, the leading theory is that they are adjusting zone drop patterns in the updates.  The other possibility is that the patterns change over time.  In order to establish which of these two potential scenarios, some recording of the date of drops is necessary in order to analyze specific sites over time.  From now on in each time I harvest a site I'll note the date I do it, and what dropped on that date.

In other news Ul'dah was indeed the place to go to get a supply of copper ore in order to restock my supply of  Brass and Bronze Nuggets.  I finished off the evening doing some crafting.  Wasn't on for that long as this cold is kicking my ass.

Mighty lacking in copper there

Well Bentbranch seems to not have copper.  I don't know if this is a permanent (pending rebalancing of resources) or not state of affairs.  I looks like I will have to check out Black Brush tomorrow for some copper ore.

I uploaded the updated log for Bentbranch.

No progress on levels...

Darned cold

As those around me go crazed for the sesonal event, I avoid such activities due to the lack of storage.  I'll worry about the x-mass cheer next year once SE gets the storage and market un-borked.

The weekend consisted mainly of crafting - and finishing off quests.  I finally managed to get plenty of oak logs.  Mainly due to gathering leve quests.  So currently all my tools are rank 17 or 22 except for the fishing rod and the frying pan.  Need to get my rank 22 alembic built but I'll do that soon.  I had to buy the blindfish for the rank 20 alchemists quest but was able to do the weavers quest entirely on my own.

I also finally got some more bat fangs.  Subsequently my archery went from 10 to 13 rather quickly. My physical level hit 45.  Woodworking and Leatherworking also hit 19.  So two more crafts are approaching the 20 barrier.  As I keep doing local and regional leves in the 20~ish area I'm starting to accumulate some guild marks.  The other combat jobs will need to wait until they hit 18-ish but I should be able to start accumulating marks when they get to that area.  Gladiator marks are progressing nicely.  I should be able to buy the first book once I hit gladiator 20 and complete the rank 20 quest.

Physical: 45, Hand to hand: 14, Sword: 18, Axe: 15, Archery: 13, Polearm: 12: , Shield: 12, Thaumaturgy: 11, Conjury: 12, Woodworking: 19, Smithing: 18, Armorcraft:17 , Goldsmithing:17 , Leatherworking: 19, Clothcraft: 21, Alchemy: 20, Cooking17 , Mining: 21, Botany: 22, Fishing: 17.

Quite a bit of stuff dings

I had a bunch of jobs that were getting close to leveling up and sure enough last night's session saw them ding away.  The first of course is physical dinging 44.  Shield reached 12.  Smithing reached 18. Clothcraft reached 21.  Alchemy reached 20 making it my fourth job in the 20+ zone.  Cooking reached 17.  And botany reached 22.

I did a bunch of leves (regional and local) and managed to gather some guild marks.  Gladiator and Culinarian specifically.  I also decided to progress the weaver quest and get the Alchemist quest underway.  Now the alchemist quest is going to prove to be a bit of a problem.  Blindfish are not common.  On the other hand some gathering in Horizon's Edge garnered me some Mesa-Red Dyer's Moss.  I'm running low on Alumen but I should be able to repair Ridning Hood's hood.

All in all, a night of bopping arround.  I have not used anima like that in a long while.

Physical: 44, Hand to hand: 14, Sword: 18, Axe: 15, Archery: 10, Polearm: 11: , Shield: 12, Thaumaturgy: 11, Conjury: 12, Woodworking: 18, Smithing: 18, Armorcraft:17 , Goldsmithing:17 , Leatherworking: 18, Clothcraft: 21, Alchemy: 20, Cooking17 , Mining: 21, Botany: 22, Fishing: 17.

Crafting and the future

I had a rather extended session of crafting last night.  Both for myself and for the new linkshell.  I recently did a harvesting leve in the Camp Tranquility area.  The reason for doing it was to get some guild marks.  But it sent me for oak trees.  Lord knows if these will still be Oak when I do just open world gathering,  but it did allow me to get a single oak log.

The crafting gods were with me (not to mention my crafting gear is usually up to snuff anyways) and I was able to get 4 lumbers out of it.  This, by the end of the evening allowed me to upgrade my Armorsmithing, Blacksmithing and Goldsmithing main tools.  I blew up the making of a handle for the Leatherworking tool.  Ah, well the next log for that one.

While this was going on I had my new LS leader and her lalafel character come by and pick up some pants and gloves for her archer job Cotton Slops and Cotton Halfgloves color coordinated with her existing Tabbard.  She then started some goldcrafting...  In the same clothes...  With a weathered hammer....   At rank 6...

And she was wondering why she was getting a lot of blowups...

A discussion on crafting and level appropriate equipment followed.  This was followed by me whipping up an entire set of low level crafting gear (Hempen Hat, Slops, Doublet Vest, Halfgloves, all in beige and a pair of Sheepskin Crakows as well as the rank 7 hammer.  And then had her equip it all looking at the relevant stats as she did so.  I do believe I proved my point.

Un-surprisingly all this crafting did get me some good skillups.  Most of it was just progress towards the next level.  Except for Goldsmith, where I managed to ding Rank 17.

I'm going to need to lay off the crafting for a bit and concentrate on getting some wind crystals and some ranks in my combat and magic classes.  Humm, going to need to work on fishing and cooking again as well.

On to the 2nd part of the post title.  The future.

As you all know we're getting an update today - the promised mid December update.  It's coming with a spare free retainer (and much rejoicing was heard - I danced a jig).  However the thing that worries me the most is what's going to happen about 3-6 months from now with the change of the guard that happened.  Many an interesting argument was heard about the potential change in direction of the game and it's future.  I am worried that with the replacement of a lot of the FFXIV developers with FFXI developers that the different direction that FFXIV started down will be headed back toward more of a FFXI clone with updated artwork.

I pray that crafting does not not get marginalized and I worry that it looks like the NM system will not need any crafter input in the loop.  The market needs to be fixed.  As far as this goes I simply am of the opinion that SE went entirely in the wrong direction with this.  I suspect that over exposure to asian F2P games and a lack of exposure to games with very good market systems (EVE for example) is to blame for this.  Simply put there is a very notable lack of any materials market.  This is entirely due to both the lack of storage and the limitations of the current market system (which limits you to 10 sales slots per character/retainer).  This is entirely insufficient to support any form of reasonable market.  Not to mention your main characters need to stay logged in (promoting lag) in order for your stuff to sell.  Can't use the retainers for that currently since I need them mobile in order to use them for storage...  Brilliant case of designers not thinking things through and shooting themselves in the foot.

Now the previous team had taken steps to correct these problems (pitiful shaky steps to be sure, but they were shuffling in that direction).  The fear I have is that the influence of the FFXI developers and their "you must camp mobs spawns at 4:00am in order to get necessary gear" attitude will simply put the nail in the coffin for this game.  Another fear is with the inclusion of more FFXI developers we'll see a reduction in the openness that we've seen from the FFXIV devs (for Squareenix anyways).  I figure we'll start having clues as to where things are going in about 3 months.  It will take that long for a serious change in direction to start making itself felt.

Physical: 43, Hand to hand: 14, Sword: 18, Axe: 15, Archery: 10, Polearm: 11: , Shield: 11, Thaumaturgy: 11, Conjury: 12, Woodworking: 18, Smithing: 17, Armorcraft:17 , Goldsmithing:17 , Leatherworking: 18, Clothcraft: 20, Alchemy: 19, Cooking16 , Mining: 21, Botany: 21, Fishing: 17.

Crafting

Didn't have a lot of time last night.  Spent most of it crafting.  It's always nice to be able to craft stuff that will be used instead of simply another entire level of Dodoskin vamps or something like that.  My newer LS is filled with lower level characters so plenty of crafting to go around.

Got back in

After seriously reducing my graphics settings I finally managed to get a playable setup with my older graphics card.  Pixilation for the win.  Seriously you should see the map...

This at least allowed me to get some progress again.  I started off by processing the harvest from the Skull Valley area (where I was when we last left off).  After that got done, repairs on the gear.  Then it was "what to do"...  Until I can sort out my video situation I don't feel like recording harvesting info (too awkward without the 2nd screen side by side).  So I decided to get some bat fangs while working on a low end job and dragging it up.  So off to Gridania and some bob-a-mole with my pugilist...  I must be getting better at this about 150-ish sp per kill on average and I was just slaughtering them.  Featherfoot works very well with Haymaker when soloing.

Now with the various tumultuous nature of the server as things stand.  Lots of people trying things out and only a certain percentage of them staying.  I've decided to get involved in 3 or 4 other linkshells.  Not abandoning Hokuten, but I figure with linkshell populations being what they are, being in 3-4 shells will even things out a bit.  There's also the fact that most of Hotuken - predictably - not being generalists has sped ahead of me.  So last night I joined Retribution XIV.  Seems to be a new shell made by an old FFXI player who just recently started playing FFXIV.  We'll see how it goes.

Meanwhile my Pugilist hit 14, my leatherworking hit 18 and  my Physical hit 43.

Physical: 43, Hand to hand: 14, Sword: 18, Axe: 15, Archery: 10, Polearm: 11: , Shield: 11, Thaumaturgy: 11, Conjury: 12, Woodworking: 18, Smithing: 17, Armorcraft:17 , Goldsmithing:16 , Leatherworking: 18, Clothcraft: 20, Alchemy: 19, Cooking16 , Mining: 21, Botany: 21, Fishing: 17.

Yep - good card dead

Welp I found a replacement card on my old computer but as I suspected, it's specs are just not enough to run FFXIV acceptably.  It's like playing in the bad old pre-lag fix days.  Not to mention that I had to scavenge the mdsi cable from my television to have my 2 screen setup working...  Not fun...

I should be able to get a new card some time next week.  So until then I'll be playing games that do not require heavy graphics load (which is everything EXCEPT FFXIV...).

Might be a bit

I think my video card needs replacing - the fan is flaky and I'm getting crashes on a regular basis - not good.  May be a few days before I can get in FFXIV due to that.

Some things leveled

Over the weekend I managed to get quite a lot moved forward.  And yep I keep confirming that the drop patterns have changed.  One thing I am suspicious of is that they may change yet again with the December update.  We'll see.

At any rate.  I was getting uncomfortable with all my combat jobs being mostly so low.  So I've decided to work on them quite a bit over the next little bit.  My wind crystals were also getting dangerously low.  This means Skull Valley.  I also made some Sentinel's Chainmail.  Blew two sets up.  I'm coming to the conclusion that the problem is my lack of Magical Craftsmanship with the crafting gear I currently sport.  Bear in mind that due to inventory issues I try to get by with a generic crafting set (or as generic as possible for my level).  It doesn't help that I need to upgrade both the armorcraft and smithing main hand tools to their level 17 versions.  Which calls for Oak...  *sigh*, still haven't found any Oak.

Be that as it may.  I got my Marauder to 15, my wood working to 18, my smithing and armorcrafting to 17, clothcrafting to 20 and mining to 21.

I did start the clothcrafting rank 20 quest.  Alchemy is within striking distance as well.

Physical: 42, Hand to hand: 12, Sword: 18, Axe: 15, Archery: 10, Polearm: 11: , Shield: 11, Thaumaturgy: 11, Conjury: 12, Woodworking: 18, Smithing: 17, Armorcraft:17 , Goldsmithing:16 , Leatherworking: 17, Clothcraft20: , Alchemy: 19, Cooking16 , Mining: 21, Botany: 21, Fishing: 17.

Updated Crafting Set

Since I wanted to get my crafting set coordinated for a long time, and I had all this Olive-green Dyer's Moss from looking for Oak trees, I decided to craft myself a set.

Crafting Clothes

So now at least I look coordinated.  Since I didn't want the old stuff to go to the vendor (my Bazaar is full), I donated the old set to a new LS member who was relatively under-equipped.

Azyrie gets some Handmedowns

Not much progress other wise, although my weaver job only has 6152 SP until ding.  Some crafting leves and some cotton bolls should take care of that little issue.  As you can see, I`m well on my way to getting all my jobs to 20 before I decide what to specialize in on the trip up to rank 50.

Trying to find Oak

With most of my crafts stuck in the 16-19 range I figure that getting as much upgraded to level 17 tools as possible can only be a good thing.  So I went exploring for Oak.  So far no luck in the Tranquil Paths zone.  I did manage to knock off my level 20 botanist quest though.  I suspect I will need to explore near camp horizon to see if I can find some.

In the meanwhile I upgraded my pickaxe to the Iron Pickaxe.  My Bone Hora to Bronze Knuckles.  Dinged on Gladiator 18, Armorcrafting 16, Fishing 17, and Botanist 21 as well as Physical 42.

Physical: 42, Hand to hand: 12, Sword: 18, Axe: 13, Archery: 10, Polearm: 11: , Shield: 11, Thaumaturgy: 11, Conjury: 12, Woodworking: 17, Smithing: 16, Armorcraft: 15, Goldsmithing:16 , Leatherworking: 17, Clothcraft: 19, Alchemy: 19, Cooking16 , Mining: 20, Botany: 21, Fishing: 17.