Thursday, October 28, 2010

Discipline of the Land

Got some progress on Mining and Botany while I was trying to get some hummus (necessary to upgrade my Maple Wand to a Budding Maple Wand).  I also got some Goldsmithing done.

Not much else to report.

Physical: 34, Hand to hand: 9, Sword: 15, Axe: 10, Archery: 7, Polearm10: , Shield: 8, Thaumaturgy: 11, Conjury: 11, Woodworking: 13, Smithing: 13, Armorcraft: 13, Goldsmithing: 14, Leatherworking: 14, Clothcraft: 16, Alchemy: 16, Cooking 14, Mining: 15, Botany14: , Fishing: 14.

Stready Progress

Last night was a night for steady progress.  It started off with some local guildleves which allowed me to ding Weaver 16 and Tanner 14.  This was followed by working on the Conjurer job and getting it to 11.  Nothing particularly tricky or difficult.

Here are some pics from the exploration session I didn't post of yesterday:

Northern Thanalan


Mor Dhona

Oh and yea, can't wait until we see some of the more advanced magitech introduced into the game.  We're still at a low level so we don't see much but we know there will be guns and what not introduced.  We'll have to wait and see.

Physical: 33, Hand to hand: 9, Sword: 15, Axe: 10, Archery: 7, Polearm10: , Shield: 8, Thaumaturgy: 11, Conjury: 11, Woodworking: 13, Smithing: 13, Armorcraft: 13, Goldsmithing: 13, Leatherworking: 14, Clothcraft: 16, Alchemy: 16, Cooking 13, Mining: 14, Botany: 13, Fishing: 14.

Wednesday, October 27, 2010

Exploring

I started the night killing stuff around camp Skull Valley.  In this case I was concentrating on getting my main combat job (Gladiator) to advance and catch up to my alchemy.  I did not catch up yet (that will take a bit more killing).  But I did get it and the Sentinel job up another level.  Then to take a break from all the leveling it was time to go exploring.

Many wondrous sights and a few deaths later, I had a string of aetherial gates and camps added to my list of teleport objectives.  May I add that Evil Eyes smart when you're rank 15.  Ouch...

Once in town I proceeded to dispose of all my ill gotten gains and craft some of the craftables out of it.  This allowed me to get some Growth Formula Beta.  I should be able to upgrade my conjurer's wand when my conjurer job hits 12.  I'm still rather low for dodo skin on the leather trade side.  I think a push for leather crafting to 15-ish is called for at this point.

The end of the evening saw me in Ul'dah with the following stats:

Physical: 33, Hand to hand: 9, Sword: 15, Axe: 10, Archery: 7, Polearm10: , Shield: 8, Thaumaturgy: 11, Conjury: 10, Woodworking: 13, Smithing: 13, Armorcraft: 13, Goldsmithing: 13, Leatherworking: 13, Clothcraft: 15, Alchemy: 16, Cooking 13, Mining: 14, Botany: 13, Fishing: 14.

Tuesday, October 26, 2010

Bit of progress

I was not on for long last night.  I did manage to get some things accomplished though.  The 2 slots of dark bass occupying my retainer have been delt with.  Interesting side note:  Fish glue, if you would take the Dark Bass, Sea Cucumber, and shards, and see what they would vendor for.  Then add in the cost of buying some Muddy Water, the base cost per Fish Glue works out to 67gil per fish glue.  Fish glue vendors for 163gil (so it's worth making and then vendoring the results if you were going to vendor the fish anyways).  Also never sell Fish Glue for less than 200gil per.  If you're about to, simply vendor the glue.  My fishing is now level 14.  I now have a Harpoon.  The effect of this is to reduce my un-replaced equipment down to only the Weathered Axe.  Then of course I proceeded to work on my Lancer rank.  I got it up one notch to 10 before I quit for the night.

Since I'm low on shards, it was more a case of finding a good camp and upping the slaughter rate against stuff that's mostly green or yellow.  The area between Skull Valley and Aleport was a little too busy for my tastes (although the Puks and Sheep are tasty).  So I switched to Jellyfish just south of Aleport but up on the bluffs.  Nice little camp there.  I should note there is another Jellyfish camp out north west of this spot as well that would have been about the right level as well.  Because the Jellyfish family is water, I was still getting wind and I must admit that with alchemy (and dyes) I need water in quantity as well.

Physical: 33, Hand to hand: 9, Sword: 14, Axe: 10, Archery: 7, Polearm10: , Shield: 7, Thaumaturgy: 11, Conjury: 10, Woodworking: 13, Smithing: 13, Armorcraft: 13, Goldsmithing: 13, Leatherworking: 13, Clothcraft: 15, Alchemy: 16, Cooking 13, Mining: 14, Botany: 13, Fishing: 14.

Monday, October 25, 2010

End of the weekend

The end of the weekend brought my character some progress.  I'm slowly re-filling my shard bank and I've managed to level some jobs and even get some others close to leveling.  Here is where we stand at the end of the weekend:

Physical: 33, Hand to hand: 9, Sword: 14, Axe: 10, Archery: 7, Polearm: 9, Shield: 7, Thaumaturgy: 11, Conjury: 10, Woodworking: 13, Smithing: 13, Armorcraft: 13, Goldsmithing: 13, Leatherworking: 13, Clothcraft: 15, Alchemy: 16, Cooking 13, Mining: 14, Botany: 13, Fishing: 13.

Sunday, October 24, 2010

Bringing up the rear

This weekend has been a weekend of getting the laggards of the floor.  The first laggard I address is on the crafting side.  Through the use of targeted local leves and some work on gathering, I have managed to get all my crafts up to at least level 13.  Since I'm now suffering from a critically short supply of crystals and shards, it behooves me to concentrate on some of my lagging combat skills.

I managed, by plowing through many squids to get to level 11 before repair needs drove me back to a repair dude.  I intend to get all combat skills at least to 10 (preferably 13) before I get back to personal crafting.  I've also decided to pick up the three missing upgraded main hand tools/weapons from other crafters.

Not having a lot of luck with that...  Basically what's happened is that the "first wave" crafters have barreled ahead and gone for level 20 and 30 goods, so there's currently very few level 10-ish goods on the "market".  Note to self: when extra retainers are available - make sure lower level goods are on the market - they should be plenty profitable and based on the lack of "coverage" make good gil.

Also Arbitrage would be good.

Thursday, October 21, 2010

More Fish Glue and Beige Hemp Dye

I started the night last night with a run to the Thanalan area.  I decided that since my fishing was lagging my other gathering professions, that some fishing of Dark Bass would be a good way to get it higher.  Dark bass being the main ingredient in Fish Glue.  Which is used in an enormous amount of weapon and tool recipes.

So at the end of the session I find myself in Ul'dah at the alchemists guild, crafting away after selling the bye-catch. Although I was trying to work on my fishing and botany, this will result in my alchemist skill climbing nicely.

Physical: 32, Hand to hand: 9, Sword: 14, Axe: 10, Archery: 7, Polearm: 9, Shield: 7, Thaumaturgy: 8, Conjury: 10, Woodworking: 12, Smithing: 12, Armorcraft: 13, Goldsmithing: 12, Leatherworking: 13, Clothcraft: 15, Alchemy: 16, Cooking 13, Mining: 13, Botany: 13, Fishing: 12.

Wednesday, October 20, 2010

Rubber!

I start out the night harvesting in the skull valley area.  All goes well until I decide to see if I can hunt down another quarrying spot other than the one in the cave just to the south west of the camp.  I eventually wander a little too far and a Flytrap zaps me in one shot.

Once in town I proceed to the selling and processing of the inventory.  By some miracle I managed to HQ the yellow copper ore synth and get myself some brimstone.  This allows me to divest myself of my latex by way of making some rubber.  You will note that I try not to keep raw materials on hand unless they have a lot of secondary materials that are derived from them.  The reason for this is pretty simple.  One raw materials often only stack to 12 and the processed materials usually stack higher.  The other reason is that it means less processing when it comes time to make finished products.  The tricky part is deciding what items to keep on hand with the limited inventory space we're currently working with.

This of course should solve itself with the November update.  Which can't come fast enough for me.  I also had some Blue Quartz and some Raw Lapis Lazuli.  So I was able to make some Copper Circlets (Lapis Lazuli) and some Sheepskin Workboots for my gathering set.  I now have a full blown gathering set incidentally.  I also did some crafting of bronze nuggets (trying to get rid of the left over tin).  Crafting that however I ran out of Fire Crystals.  So I decided to go to the Tradescraft Ward and see if I could get some fire crystals.  No really good deals were found.  Man will I be glad when the search feature will be implemented.  I got lucky and also spotted a Black Oyster thingy which allowed me to make my Bone Hora. 

This means there are only 3 jobs left where I have not yet replaced the Weathered version with an upgraded one.  The Axe for Marauder, the Spear for Lancer and the Fishing Pole for Fisherman.  The pole needs iron wire.  The various Marauder axes need buffalo leather straps of various hues.  It looks like I should be able to make the harpoon though since my Goldsmithing is within striking distance of the synth needed.  I just need a soiled femur or two.

Gathering Gear

Here's a picture of me with all my gathering gear.  The head, body, hands, legs and feet pieces all have gathering stat boosts.  The shirt and hat are fishing specific (they'll still help out with other gathering professions, just not as well).  The pants, boots and gloves all support all 3 gathering professions.

Gah, I still need to remember to do the local leves.

Physical: 31, Hand to hand: 9, Sword: 14, Axe: 10, Archery: 7, Polearm: 9, Shield: 7, Thaumaturgy: 8, Conjury: 10, Woodworking: 12, Smithing: 12, Armorcraft: 13, Goldsmithing: 12, Leatherworking: 13, Clothcraft: 15, Alchemy: 16, Cooking 13, Mining: 13, Botany: 13, Fishing: 11.

Tuesday, October 19, 2010

Once again I burn thru my shards

I must learn to control my personal crafting.  I got some wood working done last night.  Managed to get it up one rank.  Then, after trading an iron ingot and a fine sand for some iron nails, I had all the materials for making the level 7 and 12 saws.  Which I proceeded to do.  2 Chocobotail Saws later and One was put up on the Bazaar for 45k and the other was use to replace the Weathered Saw I still had.

So the "quest" to replace my saw represented most of my play time last night (4 separate jobs used to make one item).  Unfortunately doing so ran my personal reserve of crystals (especially wind) into the ground.  I was down to 2 wind crystals...  I also discovered that even with master support, 13 Leathercrafting is not really high enough for working with Dodo Skins.  Ah well.

And of course I do this right after all the leves reset...

Ah well I will just have to do all 8 local leves tonight.

I also managed to make 3 Lauan Pattens.  One for myself (yay crafting stats on the feet) and two for sale.  So I've decided that the next few days (local leves aside) will be dedicated to farming crystals and working on my harvesting skills.  Initially I'll be in the grade 2 La Noscea area.  We'll see how it goes from there.

In other good news I noticed in the directors address to the players that the November update will be the one that allows us to get more retainers (drool, slobber, slobber).  I might actually be able to store quantities of raw and processed materials more than the bare minimum...  The sort function is also apparently coming in that update...  Oh bliss, Oh joy...

So in the meanwhile we will continue to enjoy an extra month of free access (it's like an extended beta).  My personal opinion is that it's nice but not totally necessary, but then again, I expect an unfinished product with a staged release over the first year out of MMOs.  Anyone thinking differently is highly delusional.  It's the nature of the beast.  The thing that IS important is that "the hook" needs to be there from day one.  EVE has it.  WoW has it.  I think FFXIV has it (for me at least).  In my case it's the evolution of the crafting from being a supporting player to being a major part of the game.

I think that the panel in the most recent GDC that was filled with the producers of MMOs that are over 5 years old was full of good advice for MMO manufacturers.  The pertinent point is that the company needs to plan for up to 1 year after release and a game has up to that point in time to "find it's audience".  The usual exception to the rule is EVE of course.  Personally I think this is because on so many levels EVE was ahead of the curve.  Seriously way out ahead of the curve.  It's audience is still growing up as the current generation of MMO player age, and it continues to evolve.  WoW is starting to imitate its longevity techniques with the upcoming Cataclysm release.  We have until next September to see where FFXIV settles on the spectrum.  The problem I had with getting back into FFXI was the restrictions of inventory and the necessity of configuring all those macroes and the changes in subjobs indicating a need to level up another job.  Sure it's all gotten faster, but still it represented more work than I wanted to get into.  I won't be going back to FFXI now that I have FFXIV.

Physical: 31, Hand to hand: 9, Sword: 14, Axe: 10, Archery: 7, Polearm: 9, Shield: 7, Thaumaturgy: 8, Conjury: 10, Woodworking: 12, Smithing: 12, Armorcraft: 13, Goldsmithing: 12, Leatherworking: 13, Clothcraft: 15, Alchemy: 15, Cooking 13, Mining: 12, Botany: 13, Fishing: 11.

Monday, October 18, 2010

More Progress and an EXP party.

I finally finished off all the Malm Kelp.  Got me to 3/4 of the way from 15 to 16.  Very nice, I'll have to go back to that one once I finish getting other crafts up to 15.  I have noticed that various crafts have a sort of a plateau at around 15-ish where more cross craft dependencies are located.  For example Antelope sinew cord is doable with master support at level 12, but would be more comfortable at 15.

So I made a decision to get all my crafts and gathering up to 15 before intentionally moving specific crafts higher.  As a break from all the crafting, some members of the LS got together to do a classic EXP party.  We were mostly in the 13-15 range.  With myself as tank.  We initially tried near camp Tranquility (Black Shroud).  Killing crabs and monkeys...  This was sub-optimal.  We eventually got good with the crabs but the re-spawn rate was not good and the monkeys were not great.

So we went to the Emerald Moss camp.  Tried the Cellars.  Not so good, squirrel killed but I ended up in the dirt.  And there was only one even strength squirrel of the bunch.  Then we went upstairs in the grade 2 harvesting area killing anglers... Ah, revenge was sweet, but the problem was the anglers were too far between each other.  Then we went to Coerthas.  Does and Squirrels oh my.  Much better camp.  Plenty of mobs so re-spawn was not an issue.  Still the occasional problem with the tank and the healer getting erased from existence but not as bad as the other camps.  I dinged 14 Gladiator and 7 Sentinel in this party.

As you can see, we're still collectively trying to find that "comfort zone" where you can kill a lot, get good exp and not die a lot.  Part of this is equipment.  The server as a whole is still not equipment rich.  Part of this is experience.  We're still all learning where the proper level mobs are for a given party composition.  Exploration is fun!


I also discovered ffxivorigin's sig generator.



Nice but it doesn't list everything.

 Physical: 31, Hand to hand: 9, Sword: 14, Axe: 10, Archery: 7, Polearm: 9, Shield: 7, Thaumaturgy: 8, Conjury: 10, Woodworking: 11, Smithing: 12, Armorcraft: 13, Goldsmithing: 12, Leatherworking13: , Clothcraft: 15, Alchemy: 15, Cooking 13, Mining: 12, Botany: 13, Fishing: 11.

Sunday, October 17, 2010

16 Stacks of Malm Kelp

At the end of all that fishing.  I had over 16 stalks of Malm Kelp.  This got reduced down to 16 stacks (a nice round number) by the simple expedient of selling off the non-dozen stacks.

About half the stacks got done (bringing my Alchemy to 14 and my Cooking to 12).  Then I took a break to do other things like local guildleves and helping out some LS members with some cloth crafting.  We combined up to make some new low level Pugilist clothes for Khalie.  Then we went and did some regional guildleves.  It was interesting the difference Physical level makes.  While we were about the same job level, I was Physical level 29 and she was Physical level 9.  And although we were about the same level of Pugilist (7 and 8 respectively) I had about 300 more hit points.

The crafting leves also allowed me to hit Weaver 15.  This also unlocked the next quest in the main Limsa Lominsa story line.  I proceeded to do it.  40k gil and Parley unlocked (I'll have to try it at some point).  There was also much crafting of tools.  My combined levels allowed me to make the rank 12 armorer's tool as well as the rank 12 alchemists tool.

All in all it was a good first day of the weekend.

Physical: 30, Hand to hand: 9, Sword: 13, Axe: 10, Archery: 7, Polearm: 9, Shield: 6, Thaumaturgy: 8, Conjury: 10, Woodworking: 11, Smithing: 12, Armorcraft: 12, Goldsmithing: 11, Leatherworking: 12, Clothcraft: 15, Alchemy: 14, Cooking 13, Mining: 12, Botany: 13, Fishing: 11.

Friday, October 15, 2010

Malm Kelp

When I logged in I was in a rather out of the way place.  So I decided that working on some lower level combat jobs followed by some targeted fishing was the way to go.  So I switched to my Archer class and headed off to the sheep camp.  One more level was attained before I ran out of arrows.  Then it was Lancer for a while.  Got that up to 9.

While ranking up the Lancer, an LS member that I wanted to trade some stuff with indicated that he was currently in Limsa.  I proceeded to head on over there so we could trade stuff.  Then I vendored the trash while keeping some of the loot for immediate processing.  Said processing took about an hour.  Didn't ding any crafting jobs but I did get some good progress towards 15 weaver.  I almost have 3 full stacks of cotton thread ready for when I get in range of the cotton thread->cotton cloth synth.

Once that was done and my gear was repaired it was off to the cliffs of La Noscea.  Here is the idea.  When one fishes with Chocobo Fly lures, one gets just about only Malm Kelp.  Then using cooking one can turn half the Kelp into sea sand.  Once that is accomplished one can use alchemy to make Table Salt.  Apparently one can ride this synth right up until one dings about 20 Alchemist.

So it was off to fish.  I managed to get my Fishing skill from 10 to 11 while fishing up 7 full stacks of normal Malm Kelp.  I still have place in the inventory so I'll probably continue fishing when I get back.  While I'm logged of course we'll have the update.  Indeed this update IS the one with the market ward changes.  Still no extra retainers.  Still no sort.  Still no search.  I do not think this will be as successful as they wish.  On the good side though it should spread people out a bit instead of making them all sit in the first ward like sardines.

I also discovered how to get rid of the interface in order to take full screen pictures.  Since my keyboard does not have a scroll lock key, it's kind of awkward but oh well.

Reeling in the Malm Kelp

Physical: 28, Hand to hand: 8, Sword: 13, Axe: 10, Archery: 7, Polearm: 9, Shield: 6, Thaumaturgy: 8, Conjury: 10, Woodworking: 10, Smithing: 12, Armorcraft: 12, Goldsmithing: 11, Leatherworking: 12, Clothcraft:14, Alchemy: 13, Cooking 11, Mining: 12, Botany: 13, Fishing: 11.

Thursday, October 14, 2010

Armorer and Weaver push

Local Guildleve time again.  Instead of wasting my own crystals on junk synths, I decided to run all 8 leves in 2 crafts.  I managed to get Armorer to 12 and half way to 13.  Weaver got from barely 14 to over half way to 15 so that is progress.  Obviously now that things are above 10 they are slowing down.  As far as the crafts go here is a list of what tools I have by job:

Hand to hand: 1
Sword: 9
Axe: 1
Archery: 6 with 1 ammo
Polearm: 1
Shield: 5
Thaumaturgy: 6
Conjury: 7
Woodworking: 1
Smithing: 12
Armorcraft: 7
Goldsmithing: 7
Leatherworking: 7
Clothcraft: 7
Alchemy: 7
Cooking 7
Mining: 12
Botany: 7
Fishing: 1.

So my slow replacement of equipment is getting things up there.  Most of the left over items need to get to rank 15/20 to be able to make the materials.  As soon as I get various crafts up there I'll resume replacing my equipment.

As for the lack of inventory space.  Here's hoping that on the 22 (or thereabouts) when the "trial" period ends, I'll be able to get some more retainers.  I seriously would like to keep more items.  Here's also hoping some form of inventory sort feature gets implemented...

The end of the evening saw me as follows:

Physical: 28, Hand to hand: 8, Sword: 13, Axe: 8, Archery: 6, Polearm: 8, Shield: 6, Thaumaturgy: 8, Conjury: 10, Woodworking: 10, Smithing: 12, Armorcraft: 12, Goldsmithing: 11, Leatherworking: 12, Clothcraft:14, Alchemy: 13, Cooking 11, Mining: 12, Botany: 13, Fishing: 10.

Wednesday, October 13, 2010

Slight Progress

Didn't have much time last night.  Processed some leftover loot and a pile of Bone Chips (goldsmithing).  Finished off making some more Midnight-Black Dodo Leather Dye.  I did manage to get some level 10 guildleves done with a linkshell member.  This on a trip to Gridania and some Funguar killing allowed me to make a small reserve of Growth Formula Alpha (needed to repair the level 7 conjurer's wand).  Gladiator also saw some progress towards level 14.

The two main things I was able to rank up were getting Blacksmith to 12 and getting Alchemist to 13.  In so doing I was able to create a pair of Bronze Hatches.  One for use (replaces the weathered one) and one for sale.

As you can see I'm still in the process of upgrading what tools and weapons I can.  Fishing will remain un-upgraded until my armorcrafting hits the 20's (curse you Iron Wire), but at least the other two gathering professions now have rank 7 and 12 tools respectively.

I plan to continue to upgrade my tools over the next few days.  As well as run leves - both regional and local.

Physical: 28, Hand to hand: 8, Sword: 13, Axe: 8, Archery: 6, Polearm: 8, Shield: 6, Thaumaturgy: 8, Conjury: 10, Woodworking: 10, Smithing: 12, Armorcraft: 11, Goldsmithing: 11, Leatherworking: 12, Clothcraft:14, Alchemy: 13, Cooking 11, Mining: 12, Botany: 13, Fishing: 10.

Tuesday, October 12, 2010

Clothes Horse

It was a long weekend for me.  As you can see by the distance from the last post.  There were 3 fronts of progress I needed to address as the weekend started.  First I needed to rectify the severe shortage of shards and crystals I was suffering from.  Specifically water, wind and lightning to a lesser degree.  Then there was the ongoing equipment upgrade as I can manage (i.e. I have the skills) and afford (for the ones I buy outright from other crafters).

All in all it was a good weekend.  Between the local guildleves and the crafting of various pieces I managed to get various crafts to ding up.  Then there was the re-examining of the sheep camp.  Indeed I had left enough time pass and it was once again decent.  That alone managed to get my Marauder and Conjurer classes to 10.  Not to mention fixed my shard shortage quite nicely (along with some air squids for the water).  This allowed me amongst other things to craft up an over supply of beige hemp dye.  The over supply of beige dye was due to fishing up some bass which allowed me to also make some fish glue.  So that brought my personal reserve of beige hemp dye to 99 and I had 55 left over for sale.  Those went over the weekend (ka-ching).  As you will see, I was able to make myself a Hempen Robe (Grey).  Making that brought my personal reserve of lead-grey rather uncomfortably low so while I was doing some regional guildleves out at Skull Valley, I picked myself up some lead-grey dyer's moss "en passant".

So various things I made/acquired include:  Bronze Head Knife (Rank 7 Leathercrafting main tool), Copper Alembic (Rank 7 Alchemy main tool), Birdsbeak Hammer (Rank 12 Blacksmithing main tool) purchased from a linkshell crafter, Bronze Pickaxe (Rank 7 Mining main tool) which I made, then immediately upgraded to a Plumed Bronze Pickaxe (Rank 12 Mining main tool) thanks to the donation of an iron buckle from another linkshell mate (cotton cloth was npc purchased), A Maple Wand (Rank 7 Conjurer one handed main tool), and a Copper Scepter (Rank 7 Thaumaturge one handed main tool)  were also in the list of things crafted.

On the clothes side of things, the aforementioned robe, some Sheepskin Culottes and some Hempen Trousers were made.  Both of the later were way over level for my current job levels but since they still managed to up my stats I'll be wearing them bearing in mind their bonuses (i.e. they are better than what I've got and I'll grow into them nicely).  I also discovered that Rank 12 Miner gets 7 cracks at a Grade 1 site.

As a break from all the sheep slaughter (I passed 1000 killed mobs) and local leves (passed 50), I also progressed the main quest sequence to the point where I need a level 15 job to continue.  At the end of the weekend I end up with basically 3 sets of clothes.  One combat (heavy on the defense), one gatherer and one crafting.

Fighter wear

Here we see my fighter wear.  Heavy on the defense, not much for crafting/gathering stats.

Gathering wear

Then there's my gathering wear.  Plenty of boosts to gathering output and perception.

Crafting wear

Finally there is my crafting togs.  Plenty of stats to help the crafter not blow things up.

Physical: 28, Hand to hand: 8, Sword: 13, Axe: 8, Archery: 6, Polearm: 8, Shield: 6, Thaumaturgy: 8, Conjury: 10, Woodworking: 10, Smithing:11 , Armorcraft: 11, Goldsmithing: 11, Leatherworking: 12, Clothcraft:14, Alchemy: 12, Cooking 11, Mining: 12, Botany: 13, Fishing: 10.

Friday, October 8, 2010

Dye coverage

Sure enough a few trips around the sites with concentration on the correct harvesting site was able to procure me 4 Mole-brown Dyer's Moss.  Since some of the sites were mining sites, this also dinged my mining.  A trip to Ul'dah later and I had my Mole-brown Hemp Dye reserve.  At this point I decided on a little "me" time.  This means crafting stuff for myself.  I was able to craft myself a Hempen Hat (grey), a Hunter's Hat (grey) +1, a Hempen Dalmatica (grey) a pair of Hempen Work Gloves (grey) and a Maple Wand.  All of this cloth crafting managed to get my weaving up above 13.  The Hempen Hat will replace my coif entirely as all my jobs are high enough and they all get better crafting bonuses from said hat.  The Hunter's Hat will probably wait until I get a Hunter's Vest together before it sees use (with the archery job).

I then finished off the evening with some local guildleves.  This managed to push my Alchemy up to 12.  Never a bad thing.

The storage situation, is of course a debacle.  I keep paring down my inventory just to see it balloon up each time.  Not to mention all the crafting has left me, once again, critically short of wind shards (surprise surprise).  I'm going to have to synth some of the wind crystals into wind shards I do believe (water as well).  At least I have the fine sand necessary to do so.

But, because I have been lax with the screen shots, here is a little montage of various wears.


Dalmatica, Smithy's gloves and Hunter's Hat

First up is the Dalmatica.  I will probably never wear this in earnest.  It's a Rank 1 body piece and I no longer have any jobs that are Rank 1.  The Smithy's gloves are definitly part of my "crafting set".  The hunter's hat will be great for the archer job in 3 levels but I'll want the Hunter's Tunic as well.


Turban, Shirt and Work Gloves

Next up is the Hempen Turban, the Hempen Shirt and the Hempen Work Gloves.  This will become my standard "gathering set" as all the pieces bonus gathering.


Shirt, Hat and Vambraces

Until a better body piece comes along this will probably be my crafting hat and casting set.  I really need to get a proper casting body piece and some proper caster's gloves.  Amusingly, since I can now equip the 1 handed conjurers weapon, my Conjurer can also equip a shield...

Everything I could make gray I did.  Still haven't found a recipe for making Sheepskin Vambraces (grey).  Now since I tend to prefer grey clothes, I am going thru the grey dye at a much higher rate than the other colors.  I may need to do a trip to Limsa Lominsa to get some more lead-grey dye material.  But first is the ongoing quest of the fish glue supply.  Not to mention shards, OMG, am I short of shards.... 

So at the end of the session:

Physical: 26, Hand to hand: 8, Sword: 11, Axe: 8, Archery: 6, Polearm: 8, Shield: 4, Thaumaturgy: 8, Conjury: 6, Woodworking: 10, Smithing:11 , Armorcraft: 11, Goldsmithing: 10, Leatherworking: 11, Clothcraft:13 , Alchemy: 12, Cooking 11, Mining: 12, Botany: 12, Fishing: 8.

Thursday, October 7, 2010

Elusive Mole-brown dyer's moss

After a bit of fishing I decided to get serious about locating the harvesting site with Mole-Brown Dyer's Moss.  The fishing was a wash in the Gridania area.  I'll be able to make crayfish balls out of the crayfish.  Not so sure what to do with the Dart Frogs...  (/me goes to look at the yellow gremlin site)... Ah, level 21 alchemy.  Well that will be a while so might as well vendor trash em or river sand them.  My shard reserve will determine which.

The salmon will get vendor trashed.  No choice there.  Unfortunately until further storage becomes available it is unrealistic to go after cooking ingredients.  They are just too varied and spread over too much area.  Single recipes usually have 5-8 ingredients and the source is multiple areas and for some of the ingredients, multiple disciplines (alchemy for the flowers and oils for example).  This makes the gathering for food storage intensive.  Mainly because when you go to any particular area you'll get resources for multiple un-related recipes.  Then you'll head over to an other area to get more resources.  Again they'll push various recipes forward but you still won't have everything.  Then you'll hit a 3rd area (or more) and finally start completing the various recipes.  This is storage intensive.  This is compounded by the limited number of slots the vendor system allows each player.  Which means we will be seeing few volume merchants.

I'm coming to the conclusion that the Asian market models used in MMOs is based on a pining for yesteryear of the small markets where individual vendors had few wears each.  Unfortunately this makes for a very in-efficient market in which RMT can thrive.  If there's one thing EVE taught me it was that to have a truly efficient market, there must be a large number of long term sales slots per player, plentiful storage and the market must allow for the efficient finding and trading between players.  Without the above FFXIV's economy will never truly take off.  But EVE also taught me not to play the game I wish I was in, but to play the game I'm in.

But enough bemoaning the lack of storage or sales slots.  Having no luck with finding any Dark Bass, and having read that it's actually located in the Ul'dah area, I decided to continue my quest for the last missing hemp dye moss.  What followed was an evening where although I didn't get the moss yet, I did identify which harvesting site yielded it, and I also nailed 3 of the Grade 2 harvesting sites.  Now I know where 2 of the grade 2 harvesting sites are in the Limsa area.  3 in Ul'dah and now 3 again in Gridania.  I'm beginning to suspect that there are 3 grade 2 harvesting sites in each Grade 2 zone.  I've also empirically established that the harvesting zones are in a rather limited geographic area.  Once someone publishes harvesting maps I think it will become blindingly obvious where the areas are.

So all I need to do now is just be patient, cycle some sites and get the moss tonight.  Then do local guildleves.  Then onto Ul'dah to see if I can nail that some Dark Bass.  As you can see, I hit physical level 26 and Botany 12 with all that harvesting/logging.

Physical: 26, Hand to hand: 8, Sword: 11, Axe: 8, Archery: 6, Polearm: 8, Shield: 4, Thaumaturgy: 8, Conjury: 6, Woodworking: 10, Smithing:11 , Armorcraft: 11, Goldsmithing: 10, Leatherworking: 11, Clothcraft: 12, Alchemy: 11, Cooking 11, Mining: 11, Botany: 12, Fishing: 8.

Wednesday, October 6, 2010

Crafting 10+

I started the evening killing stuff south of camp Skull Valley.  I managed to get enough wind crystals to melt all the Sea Sand into Fine Sand.  This got my goldsmithing to 10.  I was progressing fine with the intention of staying here until I had plenty of crystals when I got a spawn aggro from a Spriggan Collector while fighting a Plains Rat.  Unfortunately the rat did not go down fast enough and I got killed with the Spriggan at around 10%.

This is when I found out my "respawn" point was in Ul'dah...

Change of plans for the rest of the evening.  Local guildleves managed to get my armorcrafting to 11 and my woodcrafting allmost to 10.  Then it was off to Gridania and I completed a Willow Shortbow for myself (bye bye Weathered Shortbow).  That pushed my Carpentry to 10.  This means all my crafts are level 10 or above.  I plan to continue in the Gridanian area with fishing in order to see if I can get some Dark Bass where we suspect it may be.  I've also read reports that it might be found in the Ul'dah area.  I will investigate that later as well.

Physical: 25, Hand to hand: 8, Sword: 11, Axe: 8, Archery: 6, Polearm: 8, Shield: 4, Thaumaturgy: 8, Conjury: 6, Woodworking: 10, Smithing:11 , Armorcraft: 11, Goldsmithing: 10, Leatherworking: 11, Clothcraft: 12, Alchemy: 11, Cooking 11, Mining: 11, Botany: 11, Fishing: 8.

Tuesday, October 5, 2010

Fish and cooking

The night before yesterday Faeye having problems getting Sea Cucumbers in order to make Fish Glue.  Now I had told him where I had acquired the ones we had combined earlier in the day.  So just to verify that my advice had been correct I decided to go on a serious Sea Cucumber hunt.

So I ended up in Aleport.  With my fishing skill somewhere around 6.5 and I proceeded to setup a rotation between the 3 Spearfishing spots at the beach in Aleport.  Now the Sea Cucumber IS a rare drop at these locations.  And you need to do quite a bit of spearfishing in order to get a decent quantity.  I ended up with over 80 Merlthor Goby and Vongola Clams as well as the targeted 11 Sea Cucumbers.  This brought my fishing skill up over 8 in an hour and a half.  Oooo based on what we've surmised I should be able to go after the necessary Dark Bass now that my fishing is high enough.  We'll see.

Spearfishing clams, gobies and cucumbers


I then proceeded back to town to divest myself of the inventory.  Looking at the contents.  After the incidentals were sold and some plans for the two sheep leathers and single rat pelt with formic acid were made, I decided that fish cleaning all the gobies and clams was the way to go.

Well even at 1 wind shard a cleaning I blew through my reserve of wind shards...  I still have 8 gobies left.  BUT! my Culinarian sill lept from low 7 past 11 in this stint.  To process the 4 and a half stacks of Sea Sand I currently have would take more wind crystals as well so It looks like I'll be killing stuff that drops wind this evening when I get back, but at least the skill that was lagging most of the crafting is now firmly in the "above 10" group.  I will not complain about that.  Also I have some rye flour left over from the moss hunt (lots of rye wheat was harvested and turned into flour in order to give extra alchemy synths).  This and a reserve of bloodworms (so THAT's why I kept those), mean that I should be able to transform the last 8 gobies into Goby Balls (a fishing bait).  Right before I go for the Dark Bass.  Lord knows if I will get any but it's worth the try for the fish glue.

Still when all is said and done I think most of tomorrow will be spent getting wind crystals and processing what is left over of the gobies.  I must also remember to concentrate on some moles as I need 5 more Formic Acids in order to free up a slot in my crowded inventory.  Not to mention turn those stacks of Sea Sand into Fine Sand (useful for turning crystals into shards).

So, here is the pic from yesterday.  My equipment after the weekend's crafting.  Note that the Hempen Shirt (gray) is +1 and the Rope Belt is +2.  This was also taken before I replaced my Weathered Shoes with some Sheepskin Leggings (gray).  Other visible Items are the Hempen Coif (gray), the Hempen Slops (gray) and the Smithy's Gloves (gray).  Also visible is the sewing frame representing the Bronze Needle +1 I crafted back at that start.

Letrange

Physical: 25, Hand to hand: 8, Sword: 11, Axe: 8, Archery: 6, Polearm: 8, Shield: 4, Thaumaturgy: 8, Conjury: 6, Woodworking: 8, Smithing:11 , Armorcraft:10, Goldsmithing: 9, Leatherworking: 11, Clothcraft: 12, Alchemy: 11, Cooking 11, Mining: 11, Botany: 11, Fishing: 8.

Monday, October 4, 2010

No longer drab

I apologize for the lack of pictures in this post (they're cropped on my home computer and not available atm).  Well THAT was a good Sunday session.  Both for my own progress and for the way the crafters of the linkshell are working together better.

There are many recipes that call for dyed materials.  Unfortunately not just for looks.  There are plenty of better equipment that are simply not available if you don't have dyed materials available to you.  Now the dyed hemp cloth items ARE available - for a price - from the Ul'dah weavers guild.  None of the dyed sheep products are however.  So this means we need dyes...  Okay, this means we need dye base materials...  Queue the search for the rest of the dye bugs and mosses.

This went on for most of the weekend.  Here is what I have established:  The sheepskin dyes are made from bugs available from Grade 1 quarrying sites.  I have found a site that yields Slate-gray bugs in Ul'dah and a quarrying site that yields Taupe bugs in Gridania.  The hemp dyes are made from moss available from Grade 2 harvesting sites.  I have found a site that yields Lead-gray moss in Limsa Lominsa, Sand-beige in Ul'dah (man that one was hard to find).  So the only one I'm missing is the Mole-brown moss that I assume will be available in the Gridanian area.

The grinding on the alchemy allowed me to create the dyes associated with this.  The most nerve racking part of the procedure was the Flax to Linseed Oil synth.  Man that is expensive.  It's a good thing that the sheep dye is used in much smaller quantities than the hemp dyes (1 per 4 leathers instead of 1 per 1 cloth).

The end products of all the running around allowed me to craft up some grey versions of existing clothes I was wearing as well as some new pieces.  I am no longer going around in starter shoes.  I now have leggings.  As a side note, there are some other things I need to get up in order to get some different shoes.  The leggings would be great to hide those horrible tights I see some people wandering around in though.  So if you wear tights and are a male character.  Please save our eyes and wear leggings or some other thigh high boot over them.  Please.  Slops however look fine with shorter foot wear (at least if you're a guy).

Also during the weekend there were plenty of spots where various of us crafters/gatherers were trading materials (or in my case giving some excess raw materials away to ls mates).  One of the key ones was Faeye and myself working together to get some fish glue made.  3/4 successes making fish glue at Alchemist 11 using master support.  I know the sources for sea cucumbers and Faeye knows where to buy cheap bass (which gives us a clue where to fish it up once one of us gets his fishing skill high enough.  This means weapons!  We will finally be able to make some more tools and weapons.

Looking at the things we can make and what we can't I'm going to have to get my carpentry and my goldsmithing up to 11'ish.  After that the priority will probably be to get weaving up to 15'ish so it can catch the wave of cotton I've been synthing up.  Which will in turn imply more advanced mosses - probably grade 3 sites...  Wonderful.

So the quest to replace all the starting equipment is complete.  I even look relatively coordinated.  Now I need to upgrade all my primary tools and weapons to the next levels. 

Don't ask me about my storage situation.  God do I need a sort function.  And more space...  MUCH more space.  Come on SE, get with the program, give us a patch or 3...

Oh, and incidentally, anyone know what to do with Vert Lacquer yet?.  Looks like we'll eventually be able to make linkshell shields or something based on the colors I see in the paints.  But that's just a pet theory based on the lack of current uses for some of the lacquers and the spread of lacquers available in the game, which surprise, surprise exactly match the color pallet available when making linkshell devices....

Physical: 24, Hand to hand: 8, Sword: 10, Axe: 8, Archery: 6, Polearm: 8, Shield: 3, Thaumaturgy: 8, Conjury: 6, Woodworking: 8, Smithing:11 , Armorcraft:10, Goldsmithing: 9, Leatherworking: 11, Clothcraft: 12, Alchemy: 11, Cooking 7, Mining: 11, Botany: 11, Fishing: 6.

Saturday, October 2, 2010

A push on some levels that were lagging

I did some work on the plan but I'm coming to the conclusion that specific patches of ground or maybe specific areas of the world only have certain of the base dye materials.  For example on the patch I was farming Friday night I only ever found the lead-gray moss.  The other spot yielded only midnight-black bugs (dodo leather dye which I can't use yet so into storage it goes).

The amount of stuff I am vendoring is "substantial".  This is due to pretty much running out of storage.  I BADLY need those extra Retainers (hereafter called "flunkies" in case that was not clear).  I also ran into some stuff that was rather hard to fight at a few points in time so I decided to regroup and come up with a better plan.  While I was regrouping I put a push on some goldsmithing crafting with some advice that if I was going to vendor the results anyways I might as well work on spear butts instead of bone rings.  Some quick analysis of the situation revealed that this was sound advice:

1 x Bone Chip + 4 x Wind Shard = Bone Ring.  Vendors for 180 Gil.
1 x Bone Chip + 2 x Wind Shard = Bone Harpoon Butt.  Vendors for 180 Gil.

So I crafted a pair of rings for myself and then blew 2 stacks of chips making harpoon butts.  Goldsmithing is now at 9.  How nice.

I then looked at my shard situation.  Yikes that's kinda desperate.  Ok time to put some serious crystal grinding in place.  Everything except fire was low...


So I decided to work on a nice spot I found near the starting camp and get my Conjurer skill up off the floor.  It being the last job at 1.  Some grinding of Wharf Rats and the occasional Spriggan Collector allowed me to get it to 6. 

At this point an EVE player trying out the game got in touch with me wanting to join the LS.  Since I have not had a conversation with the guildleader regarding his policy on this, I simply gave the player a link pearl from my personal linkshell.  I'll probably use that to give to any eve players I run into (or more likely run into me) so we can keep in touch regardless of how the situation with the actual LS I'm in works out regarding random people joining.

I then decided to take a break from the rats and go say hello to some Puks and jellyfish.  Since I don't actually need sheepskins and my harvesting found WAY MORE Moko grass and cotton bolls than I can use, I decided that Puks were the way to go to get wind crystals (the rats having provided me with a decent number of earth shards) if you want to avoid the sheep.  And with the opening of general access I was highly motivated to avoid the sheep camp.

This went very well and I got my Gladiator job to 10 and climbing fast.

At the end of all of this:

Physical: 23, Hand to hand: 8, Sword: 10, Axe: 8, Archery: 6, Polearm: 8, Shield: 2, Thaumaturgy: 8, Conjury: 6, Woodworking: 8, Smithing: 10, Armorcraft:10, Goldsmithing: 9, Leatherworking: 11, Clothcraft: 12, Alchemy: 10, Cooking 5, Mining:10 , Botany: 10, Fishing: 5.

Friday, October 1, 2010

Local Guildleves and a Plan

Last night I decided to put a major push to get armorcrafting and blacksmithing and alchemy all 10+.  Since this was guildleve night, I was able to do this even while I'm slowly running out of storage space...  If you are like myself and you do all crafts, SE's being slow to implement multiple flunkies is proving to be a SERIOUS pain...  

The plan for the evening went off on rails.  I was able to get Blacksmith, Armorer, to 10 and Alchemist to 9 with 300 exp to go until 10.  Some lucky crafting allowed me to get a new bronze dome hammer head (2 blow ups and a success) which allowed me to get my level 7 armorcrafter tool!  The slow replacement of the level 1 junk continues.  This makes 3 jobs that have their appropriate tools.  I also determined that once a synth's level is know - you really do need to wait until you are at it's level.  If you are, and you have up to date equipment, it seems to be rather easy.  If you have lower level equipment and are under the level even by 1 level, it becomes failure prone.  (Note to self - get armorer up some more and get that copper alembic built - post haste).  I did take advantage of some spare materials to make two Copper Barbuts.  One for myself and one for sale.

Some distilled water synths allowed me to get alchemy pushed over the top.  At which point I discovered that I had the materials and the level to get some lead-grey hemp dye synthed.  6 of those later and I though some of my crafting blockages were done.  Unfortunately further examination of the situation revealed that no, there were further problems to address.  Namely TAUPE sheep leather.  Gah! that stuff is used everywhere...

So a new plan was formed.  Upgrade the gladiator weapon if possible (I got lucky and had 1 success followed by 3 failures making the blade (had enough of the rest of the materials for 2 daggers but hey, some times you need to know when to cut your losses - two blow ups at 100% means that once I get one more blacksmithing level, this should be more do-able.  I did get one made though, so I now have updated combat weapon for my gladiator job.

The plan is to go on a harvesting/grinding rampage and get the materials for all hemp/sheepskin dies.  This involves some killing of plants that are levels 10-14 which is why I needed to upgrade my weapon and then I'll need to upgrade the skill's rank.

Letrange

Above you can see me with my upgraded equipment, ready to head out to the wilds in search of moss, bugs and Flax and Alumen.

Physical: 22, Hand to hand: 8, Sword: 9, Axe: 8, Archery: 6, Polearm: 8, Shield: 2, Thaumaturgy: 8, Conjury: 1, Woodworking: 8, Smithing: 10, Armorcraft:10, Goldsmithing: 6, Leatherworking: 11, Clothcraft: 11, Alchemy: 10, Cooking 5, Mining: 9, Botany: 10, Fishing: 3.