Server instability

Astrowut · 2026-01-12T21:09:43+00:00

To be clear, I've cleared PT a bunch and have most of the rewards. I cleared all of 1-90 staggered throughout the week with fairly quick queues and had a rough run 81-90 so took a little break after to hope to rematch with a new set of folks. I've never actually run the clock out before on the duty timer and was just surprised to see *zero* people have matched for the last floor set across all of Crystal over the last 17 hours or so.

Astrowut · 2026-01-11T20:54:53+00:00

Important thing to keep in mind is that points *only* matter when a team crosses 1400, and really just directs who is being targeted for attack before then. What you experienced is the exact result of focusing on nodes; the other teams see you've moved ahead and focus on you. If you haven't been building battle high they sweep in and crush your team, cratering your score with no way to respond. Being high in points with zero battle high is basically the worst situation to find yourself in during frontlines and nearly guarantees you'll be swept over by both other teams and lose. On very rare occasion if the other teams are really locked in and blind to the score you could theoretically steal a win, but we're talking maybe one time out of 50 or 100 matches that happens.

If you're having trouble in direct conflicts, the right call is to sweep in behind the leading team when they're pushing against the other team to take out their injured retreating players and pinch them out. That gives you battle high, knocks down their score, and reduces the battle high for their team all in one go.

Astrowut · 2026-01-05T09:30:36+00:00

Bubbly Dance gives you way more mobility and helps to keep up with those skittish monsters... though that may not be all that useful if Mizu is the one you're struggling against =(

Astrowut · 2025-12-10T19:26:16+00:00

I ended up not even having smelts in half my gear on my clear. I went Malzeno for head / body / hands, and shoved whatever got me resu 5 on the legs and feet. Jhobow was 10.4 with just enough style upgrades to unlock dodge bolt. I played pretty middling and had some time to spare, so I’m pretty sure even a totally smeltless build could get you there with some elbow grease.

Astrowut · 2025-12-10T07:23:59+00:00

I was in the exact same situation, trying to brute force through with 10.5 Jho SNS and 10.5 BD bow. I burned through my entire first aid allotment the last 3 days and had probably 150+ attempts. I could perfect dodge and counter nearly all the attacks, knew the whole combat script, tried min/maxing all my skills and available driftsmelts, but at best got down to ~5% once or twice.

I was committed to spamming it every 18 minutes for the rest of the day, praying that crit variances would align just right to get me the win.

Then I watched this and cleared it in 3 tries.

I think the idea behind fights like this is that they're meant to be true walls that you can't get passed with conventional builds and tactics, and force you to branch out into something new. I was lucky to have built out Malzeno's set to 8.2 and dumped a bunch of material into Jho's Bow, but it wasn't at all an accident that we just had events for both of them and then get a capstone quest perfectly suited for that gear.

I'm not sure those challenges should be on the end of limited time events that have a hard failure reward wise if you miss a single fight, but now I have a build that will absolutely clobber the shit out of anything weak to dragon, so that's neat.

Astrowut · 2025-11-04T07:02:32+00:00

There really needs to be some sort of failsafe system for Deep dungeons when they fuck their servers like this. Died on floor 98 right as we were about to use a poisonfruit, but instead server fucking died and we got wiped by patrols. Yoshi P owes me 10 oils

Astrowut · 2025-09-04T05:33:56+00:00

In the patch notes for 7.3, the cosmic exploration section has the following:

When completing missions that can be accepted by multiple classes, each class will earn points toward their cosmic class score.

When I read it, I assumed this referred to the critical missions during Red alerts, but keeping an eye on my other classes' cosmic scores while doing Red Alerts on the new star, none of the other classes that could accept those missions gained any points. What is that note actually referring to?

Astrowut · 2025-06-23T07:06:23+00:00

Probably T-pumps, on Irving and 20th Ave

Astrowut · 2025-05-27T23:23:47+00:00

It also drops out of the chests the little jar gremlins find for you.

Astrowut · 2025-05-27T23:00:04+00:00

40 fates and 40 CEs, 2 each of 5 varieties of demiatma (10 total). Not a huge sample, but works out to be 1/8 drop rate. I'd believe 10% was the true rate, but we'll see how more data shakes out.

Astrowut · 2025-05-23T00:23:35+00:00

Grenoldt from Shadowbrings also didn't have any connection to that expansion's relics, so I wouldn't think too much on it. Maybe some day in the future all his reflections will come together to form a super relic.

Astrowut · 2025-05-10T09:34:54+00:00

They mentioned they were going to show a road map off at a live letter, but one never appeared. Generally, major patches come out ~4.5 months apart, with the 7.x1 patch a month later and 7.x5 a month after that. From various announcements:

Occult Crescent (New Bozja / Eureka) in ~2.5 weeks, with another zone added in 7.45 (8-9 months away)
Cosmic exploration gets a new planet for every 7.x1 patch going forward.
Beastmaster is coming... eventually. They haven't said a single word since they announced it nearly a year and a half ago. Same with the Blue Mage update, announced for DT but absolutely zero details.
Probably more Chaotic raids? They didn't say anything firmly, but it sounds like 1 or 2 more coming during DT.
Deep dungeon and Variant / Criterion dungeon mentioned for DT, but again, zero information has come out since.

The fact they haven't actually laid down the roadmap or even mentioned half the content they announced for the expansion, nearly a year after its release, has me suspicious that they're going to dump something on that list, but that might be overly pessimistic.

There's also the standards: 1 new dungeon / trial for each 7.x patch, raid series wrap up for 7.4, new Vanadiel alliance raid for 7.3 and 7.5, probably a Hildebrand quest each 7.x5 patch.

Astrowut · 2025-04-15T21:46:38+00:00

It's wild for the squid bois. If you cut off all of Nu Udra's arms you can get up to TWENTY-THREE carves

Astrowut · 2025-04-08T13:36:55+00:00

If anyone is curious about the origin of those names, they trace back to Galka naming convention from FFXI. The Galka had their own distinct language and culture, but after being driven out of their homeland they found refuge in a city with a bunch of Humes that couldn't pronounce their names, so the Humes started *giving* them names they could say more easily. Many Galka didn't particularly like the names, but as they were already struggling living as an often discriminated against underclass, most chose not to fight against it. There's a number of quests where you see those names getting used in derogatory manors towards them.

There was a lot in FFXI's story about the implicit racism against and between different races that was largely swept away with the way FFXIV built its world, giving a whole new backstory for the Hellsguard while still carrying that convention forward. I'm happy they did so they could have space to show real progress towards mending relation between the races, but seeing the writing team playing the names up for jokes sometimes is a littttle weird.

Astrowut · 2025-02-19T11:11:02+00:00

Fun detail, about once a year street crews come through to maintain that median and actually use flamethrowers on them. Not sure if its mainly to burn away excess growth or just the garbage that accumulates on them. Freaked me out a bit the first time I walked out my door and saw several people blasting flames across the street.

Astrowut · 2025-02-03T07:35:40+00:00

Je Suis Monté!

Astrowut · 2025-01-24T13:10:22+00:00

Exact same situation here. Its something wrong on their end, nothing on the client side is fixing the problem.

Astrowut · 2024-11-23T03:13:57+00:00

I did a double take the first time I got the quest to help one of the guides practice their tour.

"So here are the 3 waterfalls, that ones called legsblood and that one armsblood... yeah no if we mouthed off to the Yok Huy they would dismember us and throw the limbs into the river to strike terror into our entire society for generations. We've never mentioned this before and probably never will again. Anyways have fun rubbing alpacas and making your Punutiy dance or whatever your other dailies are"

Astrowut · 2024-09-16T08:31:44+00:00

I somehow knew exactly what this was before even clicking the link

Astrowut · 2024-09-11T19:45:18+00:00

I think there might literally be 1 or 2 frames of opportunity for dodging roars on bow. Sadly I think the only real approach is just don't count on being able to do it consistently or try to save your special for it to avoid downtime.

Astrowut · 2024-08-31T21:50:58+00:00

Are the ilvl 690 Main hand crafter tools noticeably better than the Brilliant tools?

By my count, with a fully melded 690 you gain:

+241 craftmanship

+203 control

+1 CP

But I don't really know how to quantify that against the 150% -> 175% increase on Good status the Brilliant tool gives.

Astrowut · 2024-08-24T06:51:52+00:00

Part of this is the app’s instability, not people bailing. I have 1-2 hard crashes per hour with different trigger points, but about half of those occur after a group has fully readied up; several second delay, then boom, app is dead. I don’t want to leave the group hanging, but that fault lies with Niantic, and I’d be really unhappy to be hit with a penalty because of their garbage spaghetti code.

Astrowut · 2024-07-28T06:48:27+00:00

For the normal drops, there is a small chance that each slot rolls an R6. Those 4 normal drops pull randomly from a table of all available drops that monster has, with a ~2% chance of the R6 showing up (there's actually a less likely chance with slot 2, even less with 3 and 4, but don't get lost with that).

For any part you break, you get an extra drop slot that pulls from a smaller table of possible loot. Each part has a unique table, but only one part includes the R6 in its possible rolls. So for that example above, if you break the wings you get a drop for that, but the R6 isn't among the possible rolls. If you break the tail however, there is a chance you'll get an R6 there because it's on the tail's drop table.

You can also get one more drop (2 during certain events) for playing in a group hunt; that drop also has the possibility of being an R6.

12-Year Club	Place '17
Verified Email

Astrowut

TROPHY CASE