I’ve lost a lot of will to actually Play the game lately. I’m more keen in finding interesting bits of the game to do. I’d like to do Salvage, because the idea sounds awesome. Start in an overwhelmingly powerful area with severely limited skills, and fight your way out! Of course, I’d like some Morrigan too, but like I’ll ever get that. I’d like to get some Dynamis time in, but with my work schedule being slightly shifted due to new clients, I’ve missed and will miss quite a few runs.
So, for now, I craft. On my first character I had a fun crafting experience. I got Woodworking up to 88, and got my Apron, Gloves, and Desk, along with all the key items. I promptly Deleveled that, and got Goldsmithing up to 88, to do the same thing, Glasses, Apron, and Fool’s Gold. I deleveled that to go back to Smithing. I took that to 98 before I sold the character.
Why would I go through that? Oh, that was before the Ranger nerf. Hellfire +1s sold for 80-90M. It was, and I believe still is, the best gun in the game short of the Relic gun. I had the market cornered on those puppies.
Funny story: I started FFXI initially because of the crafting system.
Now don’t get me wrong. I love Final Fantasy games. The stories they weave are beautiful, and the environments are always astounding. There are other parts of the game I love. There is, to my knowlege, no other MMORPG out there which will allow you to play All Available Jobs on 1 character. And not only that, but combine 2 completely different jobs at any given time. Those things, along with so many other examples, are why I always call FFXI my home.
However, the crafting system is simply the best. Lets look at some other MMORPGs and their system.
Let’s look at the Elephant, WOW. Crafting is simple: Gather materials into Inventory, tell your “Recipe” maker to construct, oh, 200 copies, click “Create” and boom. Minutes later you have successfully crafted a crapload of stuff. No failures, no High Quality, skill means nothing but more recipes. Oh, you don’t even have to Remember recipes. They’re stored in your book. Granted, that is a feature I’d love, to instantly call up a recipe and not have to look to a website. However it’s not vital, and acts as a pseudo-barrier to making you think.
You get 2 “Professions” you can take to max. The other ones you can’t even dabble in. Subcrafts aren’t required, or even possible. Sometimes you need materials from other crafts, true. You can never make those materials for yourself most of the time, forcing you to use the Auction House. Of course, that may be a plus, but it’s definately a Minus for trying to maximize profit.
Most games use the same basic formula. You pick 1 craftskill, and you can’t dabble in the others. If you need Cloth, find a Clothcrafter and pay their price. End of story.
Now that this rant has gone on long enough, I’ll get to the meat. I spent the time in the past to get Smithing to 82.5. I capped out Woodworking. I got clothcraft to 53, where it will likely stay for a while, because I simply do not want to blow up silk cloth for 7 levels. Leathercraft is 49 right now, but within a day or so, I’ll get it to 60 and be done.
That will basically leave Goldsmithing, Bonecraft and Alchemy. Bonecraft I will probably dabble in as I go. It’s honestly not all that important to a Smithing main, but there are a few good profit recipes that use it. Goldsmithing is basically waiting for me to cap Alchemy. I plan to go the Bullet route, as pouring millions into a subcraft just does not sound fun. Alchemy, of course, is cheap. And it’s fairly easy to 60. However, it is time consuming. Quite frankly, I’m so burned out on the game I don’t think it’s worth doing right now. I’m not going to use the Gold sub anytime soon anyway, so it’s a wash.
So there we go. What next? I’m definately going to focus on the DKP for the 3 shells that have been begging me to get it worked on for them. I’m thinking about starting up a Low-man group to go do fun stuff. Mercenary type stuff like God kills, NMs, etc.
Oh… And I want to do a Summoner Burn from 13->75. Anyone on Hades interested? I plan to go to 75, and basically focusing on that for a few days, to a week. Whatever it takes.
