Impressions & Questions - Day 1

Someone remind me later to do a screenshot post, because I have 30 or so to share.

Before that though, let's talk about this update and my feelings on it. Here we go.


I haven't started WotG yet, and I feel awful. When I first signed on, my goal was to reach Jeuno before it got so congested that people got kicked out of the zone. (ie, the day of the World Merge.) Fortunately, Genkai 6 is ultra simple. Five Kindred Seals is a joke, and three merit points sounds pretty easy when you consider how much time people spend meriting here. So for that, SE, I thank you. They actually made it simple for us to jump right in and get started.

I saw Lisamarie online and in Promyvion-Dem. When I asked what she was doing, she mentioned trying to party. I was capped on DNC exp and figured I'd go hang out with her for a bit. Unfortunately, I don't have a map of Dem and got lost on the first floor. On another embarrassing note, I died on the first floor. Not paying attention to where I was, I ran right into a group of IT++ Wanderers who quickly took me down. Thankfully, I had RR up for some reason. I caught up to the group, but not before taking down a Gorger for a memosphere. Naturally, once I lotted on the item for something that I killed, others started lotting and I lost the item. Meh.

We all started killing some Wanderers for exp, and I was able to not only recap my exp, but take my first step into the new high-level range. Yay 76 Dancer!



After that, we all headed out to Abyssea to see what it will be like. Aesthetically, the zone appears to be in a perpetual sunset. The music is definitely fitting of the zones' appearance. Very calming and eerily soothing. Once you arrive, you are given a 5 minute countdown before you're kicked from the zone. I guess that's to give people who don't have enough of the key item a chance to see the zone and maybe get some items. I'll explain that in a moment.

In the zone, you're not greeted with boundless enemies from the start. You're actually standing in front of decent sized group of NPCs. You have to talk to a Corflux Surveyor, or something like that. You can use your Traverse Stones to gain a Visitant Status, which allows you to stay in Abyssea for 30 minutes per stone. Unfrotunately, you can get one stone every 20 hours. This makes it feel more like an Assault than anything, but I think you may also be allowed to save your stones and get an extended trip. Since this is only day 1, I don't have a lot of information on that yet.



We only saw a handful of enemies, but they are strong and have plenty of new moves. We found two Blue Mage spells, but our BLU in the party was too low to learn them. (Feels weird saying a 75 BLU is too low to learn something.) The enemies we encountered were all fun to fight, and very refreshing to see something new. We found some item chests, but these didn't actually give items. Instead, they gave exp to the party. 200 in one, and 500 in another. That's pretty decent for a random treasure chest drop.



We also ran into an NM rabbit, Mangy-tailed Marvin. I don't know why common sense didn't kick in to leave it alone, but we fought it anyway. It hits damn hard, and it Foot Kicked a PLD from full HP to zero. Whirl Claws was doing 800+, and we had to give up when most of the party was wiped. An interesting thing happened though. I was one of the few in the alliance who didn't die, and somehow it never came back to attack me. I think it went off to chase someone for awhile, but when it returned to where I was, it's color was yellow and it was happily moving along. Guess these NMs have a different system of enmity.

We noticed that not every enemy gave exp either, despite it checking above Too Weak. Again, more information is needed but, after the kill, there is a system message about your body glowing. If you emit a faint glow, no exp is awarded. Stronger "glows" correspond to more exp from the enemy. I'll go back in Abyssea tonight and see what I can find out.

Once that was over, Lisa and some of her party went to sleep, and I went to the sandbox for a bit. While there, I switched to DNC/WAR just to play around. Holy shit, that was fun. I know DNC isn't a notoriously strong job, but being able to bring a Sand Cockatrice to 2-hits before death with a single Darkness Skillchain is something I'm pretty damn proud of. Of course, the sandbox was full of people either leveling, doing Magian stuff, or just being a jackass on the road to "me-firstdom."

While there's still a lot more to explore, I will say that I'm pleased with the direction of things so far. I've been checking BG, and I see a lot of over reactions to the new gear and already calling every piece of gear in existence currently as outclassed and outdated. Nevermind that this new gear is level 80 and not raining from the sky, but you know how people are. Kirin's Osode will be 500k within a month, you heard it here first. It's already 1.2mil on Cerberus, with people saying "Lower the Price ok!"

In other news, this update has brought out a major question for me. What's the future of Epic now? Since my last update about running a linkshell, I haven't really seen a change in how things are being done. Of course we still do events, but with all of this new content, are we going to make a push to get through the existing stuff so we can all move onward, or will this be something we all have to explore for ourselves?

I wonder when the next LS meeting will be. Time to get some questions answered!