So for the last few weeks I've been gather gear so I could level my subjobs. This meant spending gil, camping NMs, working logistics, identifying gear, and basically getting up the nerve to actually level the jobs. As one of those packrat type players, I have four mules just for gear alone, one holds my Ninja gear (though not much, he mostly holds Ninjutsu crafting materials), one holds mage gear, one holds melee gear under level 25 and one hold melee gear over 25. Between all those mules I had good gear for each of my subjobs, so the first thing I needed to do was identify what gear I did have and what gear I would need to upgrade on the way to 49. Once I had the gear identified I had to decide if I was willing to spend the gil, camp the NMs or do the quests to get it. What this ultimately meant was, for example, was I willing to purchase/camp Bravo's Subligar for my Thief (no), or would I be willing to do the quests to obtain a Promise Badge for my mages (yes). After I vetted my top choices, I had to backtrack a bit and decide what gear I was going to get instead.
The next stage was to start purchasing the gear (and spells) as well as track down the R/E items I planned to get. Took me about two weeks camping the AHs to track down all the purchasable gear I wanted. During this time I camped a number of NMs (like Qull the Shellbuster and Nue) and picked up quite a few things, but there were a couple snags, Jujitsu Gi, Brown Belt and Gothic Sabatons. Camping the Jujitsu Gi reminded me of why I didn't have it to begin with, there's always someone there and the drop-rate is crappy, at the same time the price was dropping on the AH and I ended up buying it for around 100k. Camping the Brown Belt was a slightly different issue, I had Dodo Skin from way back in the day, so I only needed to kill the tiger and marlboro. Nue was easy, no one was ever there, but I went 0/15 on the damn drop and became despondent, I checked in on Morbolger a few times, but he was never up. In addition, the prices on the Brown Belt started plummeting on the AH (it was 380k when I started all this), eventually I said to hell with the camping and bought it for a measly 200k. The Gothic Sabatons have been absurdly tough to get, they are a brown casket drop in Behemoth's Dominion and at one point I saw 2 brown caskets and 50 blue ones, the percentage odds have not favored me. At this point I just plan to wait for the Kupower Mystery Boxes: Frontier Lands because trying to camp it as is has pushed me to the edge and I consider this piece necessary for WAR and DRK. Aside from the Gothic Sabatons there is one piece of gear left to get and that's a Voyager Sallet. I haven't went after this item because I'm waiting for the level cap to be removed for the CoP zones, so this is something that will have to wait til June.
The final step in all of this was taking inventory of my gear and determining what to move, when I was going to be done with it, and what to sell. This was easy, but it took some time to coordinate everything between nine subjobs and four mules (this also includes R/E stuff I have in storage). What I have in place now is a level by level gear guide for each of my nine subjobs and all the gear and spells I'll need to go with them and when I need to change my gear (and sell the gear in some instances).
I plan to level my subjobs solo as I'd rather do something than wait on a party, but all of them I leveled over the weekend were invited to level sync, so it seems like solo will be more of a personal choice depending on the job (everything is skilled so I don't lose much from syncing anyway). My plan is to get everything to 40 first and then 45 if I have time, getting to level 49 will probably come later in the year.
My tally as of today:
WAR 52 - WAR was my first job, I gave up shortly after reaching level 50 to become a full-time Ninja, all I did here was modernize the gear.
MNK 40 - This isn't much of a subjob for NIN, but it's something I've kept up with in the event I want to break it out.
RNG 40 - This isn't so much of a subjob as it is my next job to 75+
SAM 40 - Like MNK, this gets used every so often, the last time I subbed it was for ZNMs.
DRK 39 - I started on this last night, Horror Voulge, Bloody Bolts and Drain have made this a formidable job to solo on.
WHM 38 - When I solod WHM to 37, it was surprisingly easy, I'm hoping for more of the same.
RDM 37 - IMO, RDM is going to be the subjob of choice for NIN tanking once we hit 99, NIN/RDM looks more exciting than ever!
SCH 37 - This will be the worst job to solo, I'm going to have to pray for party invites because it's going to take a long time by myself.
THF 37 - I plan to do this after I get DRK to 40, but damnit if I would rather leave it be.
There are two other subs that I have thought about in passing, but I doubt I ever bother to level, those would be BLU and DNC. BLU looks like it will have a number of the spells that will make RDM so useful, so it's something to be mindful of. DNC is probably the ultimate solo subjob, but that doesn't mean I have to level it (prancing around and doing pirouettes is NOT something I want to see Drakus doing).
Stating the Obvious
Tuesday, April 27, 2010
Wednesday, April 21, 2010
Don't Stop Til You Get Enough
So yeah, once I completed the Gear Macros for my database I got another bug up my ass and decided to add a Craft Calculator to it. I've had a calculator I created in Excel for some time now, but I've always felt it was a bit limited and now seemed like a good time to flesh out all my ideas and place the whole thing in Access.
Now, making a crafting calculator isn't the most straightforward thing if you want to do it right as there are a number of factors to consider. The first of these factors is breaks, SE put a maximum success rate of 95% on everything, but when you are under the craft's synth level, the percentages drop to as low as 50% (anything 11 levels and under can't be crafted at all). Now the standard calculators don't take into account just how far below the synth level you are, they just factor in 50% and leave it at that. However, the closer you get to the synth level, the less chance of breaks so the first stage of my calculations and to take this progression into account. The next factor is HQ Rate, once again this takes into account your levels, but unlike break rates the HQ rates are tiered and much easier to factor in. The difference I had to look at was the percentage each stage of the craft yield could HQ, and this is where the calculations turn into a mile long statement. After all of that was processed, I had to create a way that would display single yield items (like armor and weapons) and stack items (food and ammo) in the same form without making the form appear too busy.
When it was all said and done, I decided to add some flair. The first thing was being able to search for a craft, this is useful because the database holds all of the data input (by design) and without being able to search against it, one could lose track of their calculations very quickly. I also added a NQ/HQ compass and NQ/HQ days that change based on the crystal used in the synth. Getting the look of the HQ/NQ parts actually took much longer than writing the code and formulas. At any rate, the two below images are just a couple of examples.
Now, making a crafting calculator isn't the most straightforward thing if you want to do it right as there are a number of factors to consider. The first of these factors is breaks, SE put a maximum success rate of 95% on everything, but when you are under the craft's synth level, the percentages drop to as low as 50% (anything 11 levels and under can't be crafted at all). Now the standard calculators don't take into account just how far below the synth level you are, they just factor in 50% and leave it at that. However, the closer you get to the synth level, the less chance of breaks so the first stage of my calculations and to take this progression into account. The next factor is HQ Rate, once again this takes into account your levels, but unlike break rates the HQ rates are tiered and much easier to factor in. The difference I had to look at was the percentage each stage of the craft yield could HQ, and this is where the calculations turn into a mile long statement. After all of that was processed, I had to create a way that would display single yield items (like armor and weapons) and stack items (food and ammo) in the same form without making the form appear too busy.
When it was all said and done, I decided to add some flair. The first thing was being able to search for a craft, this is useful because the database holds all of the data input (by design) and without being able to search against it, one could lose track of their calculations very quickly. I also added a NQ/HQ compass and NQ/HQ days that change based on the crystal used in the synth. Getting the look of the HQ/NQ parts actually took much longer than writing the code and formulas. At any rate, the two below images are just a couple of examples.
Tuesday, April 6, 2010
The Latest Wiz-Bang Piece of my Gear Database
As I've mentioned in the past I built a database that allows me to search all the gear and food in the game by their attributes. From time to time I have epiphanies and add parameters or rewrite the code to be more efficient, but last week I got the ultimate, "Wouldn't if be cool if I could...?" idea. I thought it would be great if I could have the database write my gear set scripts for me.
Now, for sake of honesty, I use Windower, I don't get into all the gadgets and add-ons for it so save the dirty looks for other people. I mainly use it so I can switch back and forth between my monitors, however, I shamefully go to town taking advantage of setting up macros to switch gear (I also use EXPWatch and Clock). It's at this point I decided my database could intervene. You see, the gear sets are simply .txt files stored in a folder under FFXI. In the past when I've picked up new gear or switched between weapons I've had to go into each of these files and physically change the data and save them. It's not like doing that is hard, but I often forget what I've changed or even forget to change things back and on occasion I misspell things. Plus there are about 30 of these files that I've created on my computer and things can get confusing when trying to update 10 or so at the same time.
The database solves all my issues, I have the gear names, what slot they go in, what jobs they are assigned to and whether or not they are R/E. All I had to do was give the database the ability to create a gear set and then allow it to update the gear selections and overwrite the .txt file for that set. About 20 minutes ago I created my first Gear Set and saved it directly to the folder without leaving Access. My efficiency rating has just went up a level and I can now do what FFXIAH and PimpMyFFXIGear only dream of!
Now, for sake of honesty, I use Windower, I don't get into all the gadgets and add-ons for it so save the dirty looks for other people. I mainly use it so I can switch back and forth between my monitors, however, I shamefully go to town taking advantage of setting up macros to switch gear (I also use EXPWatch and Clock). It's at this point I decided my database could intervene. You see, the gear sets are simply .txt files stored in a folder under FFXI. In the past when I've picked up new gear or switched between weapons I've had to go into each of these files and physically change the data and save them. It's not like doing that is hard, but I often forget what I've changed or even forget to change things back and on occasion I misspell things. Plus there are about 30 of these files that I've created on my computer and things can get confusing when trying to update 10 or so at the same time.
The database solves all my issues, I have the gear names, what slot they go in, what jobs they are assigned to and whether or not they are R/E. All I had to do was give the database the ability to create a gear set and then allow it to update the gear selections and overwrite the .txt file for that set. About 20 minutes ago I created my first Gear Set and saved it directly to the folder without leaving Access. My efficiency rating has just went up a level and I can now do what FFXIAH and PimpMyFFXIGear only dream of!
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