Shulula of Asura

So I called the information center on Monday and they told me I was perma banned. I had come to terms with it after I saw all those post on BG about the LM-17, but still held out hope that it might be termporary. So that's the end of Shulula.

I can say that I had fun playing FFXI, but took it way to serious at times. The last couple months I was mostly without an LS and focused on the WoTG missions, Nyzul Isle and leveling RNG and RDM. RNG was quite fun, but got banned at 54, one level before sidewinder and e-bow. RDM was at 65 and doing pretty well. I don't see why some RDM don't want to main heal. Seriously you can can put in another DD or support job if main heal and drop the WHM or SCH. 

I still have Fifi, and will keep that account active for a while, but as of right now I don't plan on playing FFXI any longer. I'll keep the journal up for a bit, but wont be updating it.

Thank you to all those who have read. 

On Thursday I saw all these post on BG about people getting banned. I thought it was the usual round of RMT bans, but this post had 50k views in a very short time. As you know it was from the bug in SE code that blurred the lines between party/ally and outside groups. I quickly logged into my account and saw the same vague LM-17 message. Shortly after that Comcast went down so I had no phone, internet or cable. I still haven't bothered to check to see if mine is temp or perm, so I'll just wait to see tomorrow.

During that time w/o service I came to terms with the whole thing. Of course this is SE's game and they can do as they want, and we as players have no recorse. Whether its temporary or permanent, I know my perception of the company has not so much changed, but been cemented. SE has a horrible history of customer relations. Thank god they can write a good story because if you treat your customers the way they do, you'd be out of business quickly. There is basically no direct communication with they company and the player base. And not until recently have there even been any customer surveys. When have they asked you what you'd like to change in the game? And forget the fanfests and interviews... they just ignore questions or feed you the same line of crap about PS2 limitations and game balance.

On the other hand, it seems that the JP audience gets quite the treatment. Recently a poster on BG found a published book of FFXI items that included hidden effects. He graciously translated the text for the English audience and we found out quite a  bit of information. I've spent some time on this blog doing testing on Treasure Hunter. We've repeatedly asked SE simple questions about a job trait for one of the original jobs to no avail. Why is it that its so hard to get a straight answer from the company? Or why do they want to keep game mechanics hidden from their users?

Lets talk about this dupe bug in salvage. Its actually a bit more than just a dupe bug. After we started working with it, we asked the question if this is really a bug or if this is how the system was supposed to behave. I know it sounds crazy that we'd think SE would program a way to triplicate items, but at the time, the only place we thought it worked was salvage. And Salvage itself was a vague activity with many "tricks." 

Some of the "tricks" in Salvage included.

• How to pop certain NMs (Aspid, Frogs, Ramparts)
• How to duplicate cells (trade cells to slot and get back 2x as many)
• How to weaken bosses (kill all gears w/o aggro to weaken boss)
• How to spawn gate NMs (we were working on this but still unknown)

None of this was documented by the company. Instead it was the user base that tested and published information through BG, Wiki and Blogs. I can understand the excitement of discovering how things work and sharing it with the community. That's what has kept many players online and allowed sites like wiki and BG to flourish. However, it seems backwards that they ban people for exploits of game mechanics, but don't want to give any information on game mechanics.

The actual "bug"
One day we go in with 2 alliances, but before we can pop the first chest we decide to re-arrange some people. We move one guy into the main ally then pop the chest. I was in the main ally with 6 as a MNK and saw everyone lot their items. I made sure to pass whatever I didn't need, but the items stayed in the treasure pool. A few of the cells were designated for the one person in the second ally. We kept telling him to lot his cells and he said he already had them. Eventually we found out that he got 1 of each cell in the starting chest, plus we got 1 of each cell for our party. 

We didn't understand what happened, and shortly after this I took a break from the game to get married and go on my honeymoon. When I returned they had a solid grasp on what happened. It turns out that the bug blurred the line between party/ally and outside group. If you perform certain actions, you can see the party chat of a person outside of your alliance. On top of that, you can cast party only magic (like refresh) on those outside of your party. AoE spells like Diamondhide and Ballad also hit anyone in range, in party or out. The most famous result is that you get separate loot pools for each party.

Bug?
With all the unknowns of the zone, and the silence by SE about anything having to do with their game, we started to question if this was a bug or a design. Salvage was notorious for low drop rates (some as low as 1% with some reporting 0/200+) and this basically fixed most of that issue. It didn't allow you to force a mob to drop anything, but when it did, you were able to share it with 3 people. Some of the other mechanics were also interesting because they allowed you to have a party behavior with an ally of people.

What made me realize that this was not a design is when I heard reports of people using this to duplicate Sandworm drops. Sandworm has some very valuable AH-able items that people were selling to fund all sorts of things, including relics/mythics. Obviously SE had lifted the same code into their new instanced zones. Like I said, there was already a "legit" way to duplicate items in salvage using the slot NMs.

Community Response
At first there were very few groups who knew about this bug. Maybe 2-3 other Salvage groups were using it. Then it started spreading and you saw some groups being created with the sole purpose of duping and selling drops. The word started spreading form Asura to other Servers and you see some groups saying "we have become very efficient at unlocking salvage bodies."

Although some knew, there seemed to be a tacit agreement to keep it hush hush.  People started using it for Salvage, Nyzul Isle, Sandworm, Ashu Talif, Assaults... you name it. I heard that people reported this to SE several times with no result (big surprise there). Finally someone sold this exploit to a site that pays (and sells) this sort of information. No doubt SE must have an account, and they quickly patched the bug.

Once the patch hit, there was a long thread on BG where people were trying to find out what this bug was. Some people gloated and others called names. I'm sure many players felt left out, or betrayed by SE. No response or communication from the company outside of their short maintenance note (as usual). Then BAM! you're banned. 

SE Response
Personally I feel that SE really dropped the ball on this one. This is where they could have taken the lead and engaged their community. Instead they retreated into their tower to deal "justice" and refuse to answer any questions. "Take what we give you and shut up!" 

When I ask why people play the game, the response I get over and over is the community. Well I feel like the FFXI community took a big hit with this one. Sure the game will go on, but I don't know if you'll see the same level of involvement or testing that we've enjoyed this far. 

If you just want to grind away at a game, there are plenty to choose from. Many of which reward much quicker and give you a better interface. SE could have opened a forum to discuss this issue. The issue being bugs and debugging the game. If there is no incentive to report bugs, or no way to do so quickly and efficiently, people won't do it. Shit I'd be scared to report a bug just to have a GM jail or ban you for using it in the first place.

So the last post was about a horrible salvage run where I was expecting to get the final item for my Morrigan's Robe. True to form, we went back and spanked the zone and picked up my 15 armor. No luck on the other NMs, but it feels good to have that one done. I traded in all the items and it looks pretty good.

I took it out to see what kind of damage I can put out with the weather bonus:



It really looks good with Homam on my BLU. Having a 2 tick refresh full-time is very nice, plus all the stats are useful.


Our salvage group has been spamming one zone in particular trying to get one of our newer members his first complete armor. Right now he's sitting on 15 and 35 Usukane hands and the stupid Boss keeps dropping Ares Feet. Since everyone was getting bored with the same route with the ghost, we decided to go after your local friendly Soulflayer.

Of all the moves in Salvage, Reprobation must be the most annoying. He dispels every single buff you've got including food. That trumps charm big time, especially when he does it as a parting gift.




But with drops like that, its hard to get mad. We've actually been very lucky with his drop rate. I've seen him drop over 50% of the time. Unfortunately the Boss gave us more Marduk and Ares gear, so we'll be going back to AR in the very near future. However, that makes me 4/5 on Morrigan with only 2 more drops to complete the set. Only need to go after Powderkeg for the Morrigan Legs so it was off to SSR... and to my surprise




!!! That cheap bastard Hammerblow finally dropped something. This is the first time I've seen him drop anything but a coinpurse in well over 50 kills. After almost a year of doing Salvage, I finally feel like I'm making some progress. You really have to go consistently because the drop rates are so random.

Now I need to get hold of some orichalcum ingots since the AH is empty. I'm thinking of the Royal Ramble BCNM but I've never done it. If you have any info on setups or what to expect, let me know.

Wow Salvage was a mess tonight. Before the run we discuss zones, and several mention SSR cause we haven't done it and people need some drops from there, including me. We had 3 people who wanted 15 body, several who are on the list for 35 usukane body and a few who need 25 items from boss. I send a friend a tell to bring his Z card to pop the slot NM and we all gather.

As soon as we go in a couple people need to AFK. By the time we get to Hammerblow room, we're down to 5 from 8. Takes us longer than usual to kill all the mobs and the NM himself (no drop, don't ask). Second floor is slow too because a new group needs to AFK. By the time we get to the 3rd floor we're behind and somehow we have 2 Rampart aggro and Gyroscopic is raping us. Finally get him down and ready to pop NM but... duh duh duh... no card.

I was pissed. Lead told my friend not to bring the card after I sent the tell. For what reason I dunno. He said he forgot some people needed it, even though we just talked about it before we entered. Since we were so behind on time lolAspid was a no-go, so our only solace is the Boss.

We get there with 9 min left. Usually not a problem but BrainJack eats up time especially when people forget to switch weapons and you have to try to bind them. Big disappointment for me. All we got was some garbage 15s and a few alex.

I've had a very good couple weeks. One of my goals was to explore Nyzul Isle, but Salvage eats up most of my assault tags. I started climbing with a few friends, but getting a time that works for everyone has been difficult. In the meantime I've done a few pick up parties and managed to snag the item at the top of my list, the Askar body. The Store TP, Attack and Double Attack are very nice. The big negative is the lack of accuracy, but that's not usually a problem and when it is I can change over to Haub. The Store TP allowed me to get rid of my Hachiman feet in favor of Fuma Sune-ate ans still keep a 6-hit setup. On top of that I upgraded Usukane hands which adds +10 acc and eva. In total I picked up +44 eva on my SAM which helps a ton for survivability, one of my biggest faults for the job..

Salvage has been great as well. Seems that our LS has been very lucky lately. In the last 4 weeks we've completed about 16 armors and completed our second full set. Shaana, our resident THF, picked up the last item of Skadi armor. Big ups to him.



Surprisingly the Rats and Frogs have been good to us. Like I said earlier, I picked up 35 Usukane Hands recently. These past couple weeks I've picked up the following items.

I upgraded the Skadi Legs and the added Store TP is very nice on THF. This was the number one item I wanted for my THF from Salvage since I have Trotters. I still need the 15 BLM body to complete that item along with 2 others in our shell. Good thing we have several people with cards to pop the NM. Yesterday I picked up my last Imperial Wootz Ingot. Unfortunately one of my synths failed, loosing one Khroma Ore.

I also upgraded the Morrigan feet which really boosted my Magic Hammer setup on my BLU.


I admit I cheated for the 255 damage by using my 2hr, but regularly I get 200-206 damage on it. For those who don't have blu, the damage = MP so it functions like an aspir. With a 40MP cost, that's 160+ aspir almost every fight against imps, which is the main target for BLU merits. I can get 8-10k/hr solo on my BLU, so when I have a ring on it jumps to 13-15k/hr. Once I get Morrigan Body and Legs I might squeeze out a bit more. I should be 3/5 morrigan by next week, which puts me only 3 drops away from a complete set (35 head, 25 leg and 35 leg).

However, getting a merit party like this really makes me want to have full Usukane, especially since MNK was my first job.