Posting Frequency is inversely proportional to excitement

Yes, I haven’t posted in a while. I suppose I should make two posts, as most of what I’m about to talk about revolves around FFXI, so I’ll put all that here, then put the real life stuff in another post.

So, as some of you may have caught me ranting about inflation in FFXI: it’s gotten really bad recently. Certain items which I needed (and in some cases still need to) buy have been steadily going up, in some cases to the tune of 10% per week. The cause of this has been theorized by many armchair economists is gilselling — people who farm insane amounts of gil and sell it on websites to impatient players who want the quick in-game buck. As more gil enters the system, it devalues the gil. It also puts gil into the hands of people who haven’t earned it, so it has less value to them, so they very easily pay the inflated asking prices of these items. In a normal, healthy environment, an item would get to a certain point and plateau once people would refuse to pay any more and items in the Auction House started being sent back to the seller without being sold after the 9 game-week period.

In a recent patch, however, many of these issues were addressed by Square-Enix. Whether or not it’s a step towards solving it, it remains to be seen. (A few things were done, mainly changing around things so that monopolies on certain items were harder to get, and giving replacement items for some of the harder to get, monopolized items.)

Personally, I’ve been chugging along in my progress. I had stopped at level 60 for a while, because I hadn’t done the level limit break to get past 60, and because I wanted to get caught up on my equipment so I was better prepared for the road ahead. Fortunately, I’m at the point where every spell I have left to buy is cheap in comparison to other jobs’ spells, so it was all equipment. I saved up and bought most of it, then I got lucky.

While doing the level 60 cap raising quest, I managed to run into an NM in Beadaeux, and killed him for the Valkyrie’s mask, which sold for 300,000 gil. I had also a few days prior gotten a Military Pick from garrison, which sold for 200,000 gil. This influx has funded my equipment and spells, gotten me up to snuff, and made me ready for the long grind up to level 70. And it is a grind. From level 60 to 61 is 20,000 exp, but from 61 to 62 it was 30,000. From 62 to 63 is 31,000 and it just keeps going up. Someone once told me that, numerically experience point-wise, you’re halfway to 75 when you’re at level 64. Fortunately, you start making more experience as you get further on, but it still takes an awfully long time.

I also did mission 5-1 a few days ago, just one boss fight now and I’ll be Rank 6, able to buy two of the pieces of equipment I’ve wanted and able to start the Rise of the Zilart missions.

If you want to take a gander at my equipment, I keep fairly up to date on my ShirtNinjas Character Manager profile. The fun equipment is in my “RDM Levelling” profile.