Part of this, I'm sure, is that I didn't have Dedication running the entire time - Empress Bands only last so long, and I was reluctant to fire off my Anniversary Band this early into the experiment. Out of two hours played, I earned only 4500 experience. It's just obnoxious.Īs the single longest session in the whole project, this one really drove home the essential problem that inventory space presents when leveling solo. Realistic? Not really - the items in question are of vastly different sizes, yet each takes up one spot in the inventory. A disproportionate amount of time each session is spent trying to make five pounds of flour fit into a two-pound bag. If I could, I would also like to take an extra moment to impotently curse at whoever decided to make inventory space in Final Fantasy XI so mind-bogglingly anemic. Rock Eaters and Goblins both proved to be excellent targets of opportunity as I moved between my training regime victims, which helped up my experience without a great deal of extra effort. Ironically, it was also the only session during which I didn't level up, due largely to the fact that I had started only a sliver into the level. This session worked even better than the first - I played for a single hour and made 3000 experience. Regen largely took care of my HP, with most of the enemies on the mid-to-low range of Easy Prey. Relatively speaking, it was easy to both arrive at and return from my destination. Sheep and crabs both concentrate around the small lake in the northern center of the map, along with worms, goblins, and the occasional bat. I had picked largely on a whim and found it to be an excellent regime for the level range because everything fit into the same general area. That's not awesome, but pretty solid considering I was all alone in lousy gear. Instead, I played for about an hour and fifteen minutes and managed 3000 experience, which comes out to roughly 2400 an hour. I had expected to play for a while and wind up massively disappointed. Except where noted, each session was engaged with the assistance of an Empress Band, and most sessions ended when I was stuck in the "limbo" between training regimes. I've organized the results by sessions in which I ran around, including the area I was working in and the Fields of Valor page I made use of as a training regime. Enough so that there are some worthwhile final observations at the end, as well as ongoing testing beyond the scope of one column. It still produced some interesting results. A Poisona here, a Cure to reduce downtime there - it would not invalidate the results, just skew them slightly.Īnd despite my jokes, I understand that this experiment fails at most qualifications of scientific rigor. While I admit a new player wouldn't have the subjob, for the most part it didn't have a major impact on the experiment. Rhio existed prior to the experiment, had her subjob but naught else unlocked (including airships), and had monk sitting at 18 - well into the point where my admittedly archaic knowledge told me she couldn't level without a party. Was leveling possible? Difficult? Easy? This was - and is - the Rhio experiment.īefore anyone asks, the methodology in place was largely informed by necessity. (Alt text is your friend.) And so I logged in and put a hard theory to the test: what could a Final Fantasy XI character do without anything more involved than a subjob? No advanced jobs, no airship passes, no special access. But as xkcd so eloquently put it, you don't use science to prove yourself right, you use it to become right. Of course, at the time, I mostly wanted to point and enjoy the sour grapes of being proven right. If I was so certain that there was no population to play these areas, why didn't I try soloing them to see how things worked out? I was still smarting over the VanaFest announcements and the whole idea that nothing would be done to help the lower levels. Or more accurately, I had a tiny nub of an idea that seemed as if it would be very relevant later. A long time ago - like, when I started this column - I had an idea.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Details
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |