MithraPride

Pheonixhawk wrote:Its nice knowing about lvling. But do you guys have any tips on saving some gil. example: Items or scrolls I should just skip, quests, etc. etc.

For RDM, pretty much what they said. But I'd like to add that for your regular run of the mill party, Shell is pretty useless too. Also if you're not main healing you can delay getting those new Protect spells right away. And you should know by now, MND gear, INT gear, extra mp gear for convert; basic RDM. You can delay on nukes for awhile if you wanted, maybe get things like Water II and Blizzard II since Distortion is the norm. Quest Aspir, Drain, and Warp. Refresh is usually cheap. You don't need Phalanx right away. Honestly, its not very effective early on since its related to your enhancing skill. Dispel, you probably have it, otherwise get a friend with max fame to buy it at a cheaper price from npc...still like 63k though or something like that. When you hit 51, 3 basic elemental staves you'll need, Dark, Light, Ice... in that order. After that, a Wind staff is useful and then the other staves if you feel like getting them.

And for NIN, since you might only be leveling it for THF at the moment, Utsusemi is the only important one, but you can quest that along with the other NIN Ichi enfeebles that you will definitely need to start using if you level NIN past 25. For Tenshodo fame, do the quest in Bastok to trade 4 zinc ores at a time. With 0 Tenshodo fame, it'll take about 28-30 trades of 4 zincs each. After that, I recommend doing the Tonko: Ichi quest first. This is cheaper and faster than Yagudo Necklaces.

Items, I assume you mean maybe equipment? For THF, its pretty standard. Up to 45 you don't need to worry about accuracy stuff. Cap your marksmenship though and carry acid bolts at least. In the Jungle as THF, you can and probably will end up tanking...to the surprise and possible annoyance of the tank. So bloody bolts are recommended too. At least that's how it was for me 24-30. And for any job, Gobbie bags are recommended.

Gotta be more specific with your requests.

Actually the 4 elemental staves a RDM should have are; Dark, Ice, Earth and Wind. The rest are extras but those 4 will boost the 4 main enfeebles.

Barspells are pretty useless since the WHM can do them all anyways. Especially stuff like Barvirus and Barpetri, even Barsleep and Barsilence... they never seem to help anyways.

As for subbing DRK; it holds no weight over WAR, none whatsoever. For a start Souleater is majorly gimped as a sub and Double Attack is a much more useful trait. Also WAR has more DEX than DRK so you'd hit more often and punch better SATAs.

NIN is the way to go for three reasons;
1) Dual Wield means faster TP gain.
2) Dual Wield means nice stat boosts from offhand weapon.
3) Utsusemi for long pulls.
(I know I mention Dual Wield twice but it's benefits are twofold, plus you look cool )

I'm going to disagree with you about the staves.

Dark, Light, Ice and personal choice after that is best in my opinion.

Dark for resting and dark based spells.

Light since we are often back up or main healers and getting the 10% more healing is a very good thing. At the level we get the staves white mages don't have the MP pool, Cure V, Regen III or the later equipments that let them main heal without any effort or much need for back up healing. This is also the point where white mages start using Erase heavily. The 50-60 stretch was where I did alot of healing and the Light Staff was a great investment.

Ice because of the 10% boost to Ice spells (<3 paralyze) but also the 10 Elemental Skill+. Rdms Elemental skill is behind enhancing and enfeebling and the Ice staff gives us our first real strong boost to it, several levels before getting the boost our AF hat gives.

I personally went Dark, Light, Ice and Water for the longest time. I can't say the lack of Earth or Wind staffs hurt my resist rate on slow, silence or gravity. If it did, I didn't notice a difference when I finally got the staves. The difference I did notice was between Aero III without Wind Staff and Aero III with Wind Staff, but then thats to be expected.

Again, about the bar spells. Skip them if you want, I don't recommend it but you can. WHMs may have the ra versions but you may not get the effect if your standing back away from the melee or they may not cast it at all for whatever reason.

Barfire can save you from a gobby bomb, the new fire breathing crawlers and bombs self-destruct when you go after the LB1 items. Barwater against crabs, barwater and barpoison against crawlers or spiders. Or for spiders, barstone for more resist against slow. Baraero and barsilence for silence moves, Imps and Anticans have AoE versions and the Antican one is freakin hard to avoid. So, lots of uses for the bar spells and I really wish I had bothered to get them earlier.

Water? What use is that? 3rd from lost Staff I got, only useful for Poison and Water.
You really should be standing out of the AoE range of stuff, also Stoneskin will absorb quite a lot of it if you're not (can cast in between Refresh).

Think order I got my staves was: Ice -> Wind -> Dark -> Earth -> Light -> Water -> Fire -> Thunder. Had the whole set by 60 the latest, possibly around 55ish but was a while back so can't remember.

Ice was the substitute for nukes if I didn't have the right one. And it has been proved that the corresponding elemental staff for that spell boosts it, so there definately would have been a boost to sticking and duration of Enfeebles whether you noticed it or not.

Heck even with all the Magic Acc+ from JSE and the Staves I still get resisted on Para and Slow more then I care to count on ITs.

Because Posion II is a nice DoT to cast and Water obviously, but that was my choice.

I'm not disagreeing over the merits of the staves but if Earth and Wind had made a difference on my resist rate you can be damned sure I would've noticed the difference. Not having to recast a spell because it wasn't resisted isn't something you don't not notice.

About the bar spells. They cost a hell of a lot less then stoneskin does on mp cost and casting time. Most RDMs will cast SS once every ten minutes for convert. By the time it wears they may or may not have the mp or time to recast it. Yes, you should be standing out of AoE range but thats not always possible. Cramped camps don't always allow for spreading out, tanks can lose hate either out of incompetence, nuke happy blms, or damage spikes from the DDs. Mobs tend to move in battles and its very possible to get hit by an AoE move before the tank can get hate back.

For anyone unsure about how the spells work, a barelement spell (barwater for example) increases your resist against spells of that type while bareffect spell decreases the time it lasts. So pairing Barwater and barpoison together will make it less likely you get poison if hit with it and if you do it will wear quicker.

Like I said, its a personal choice on staves and bar spells. I just don't recommend going without bar spells after my experiences.

To reaffirm my earlier statement I will once again quote myself:

Sadira wrote:3 basic elemental staves you'll need, Dark, Light, Ice... in that order. After that, a Wind staff is useful and then the other staves if you feel like getting them.

I say Wind comes 4th since imho being able to land Silence without resists is generally harder than landing Slow without resists especially as you start reaching the higher levels. The Ice staff is 3rd because quite frankly, Paralyze owns. I once paralyzed hobgoblins and birds in Bibiki Bay that would only get 3-5 attacks since they were paralyzed during all of their other attack rounds. Not only that, but the Elemental Skill +10 is nice and like I said, Distortion is common, so you can use Ice staff to MB.

I like how this thread is starting to become so far offtopic. Maybe the title should be more generic, like Jobs, Items, Tips, and Gil.

Deviating from the topic for the win!
Poison, most BLM tend to cast that 'cause they want to keep their Enfeebling up. Some even do Blind. One less spell for me to worry about but I'd say Para, Slow, Blind and Gravity are more important than Poison II.

Barelemental spells can be bought from Jeuno quite cheap, same for most of the others. Still taking the odd AoE isn't bad ('cept bomb drops then WHM really should be putting up Barfira anyways) means you can Drain it back and get some Dark skillup perhaps.

Talk about gilholes? COR is worse than RNG since bullets are far more expensive than arrows and bolts. Crappy bronze bullets do crappy damage and mostly miss at this level too, but it's more fun than swinging a sword

I dont even use poison anymore