Random Question Thread (FFXI Related)

Oof putting me on the spot.

Which AMAN Trove campaign.

Test your Luck? Every May/Nov (sometimes they just decide not to do it)
Original Equipment? Every 3-4 months
Gazillionaire? Every 3-4 months

Does the Trial Log produced by the Magian Spectacles only give you the weather forecast when you have an active Magian Trial?

I don't need a trial atm but I do want three-day weather forecasts to ever complete Get the Picture.

...so I guess I'll just grab one of the Kupofried WS weapons, but still, there's not a trick I'm missing here, is there?

It's literally been 15 years since (anyone) used magian specs...

You can just go to the weather forecaster. https://www.bg-wiki.com/ffxi/Sajaaya

I can't, actually - she doesn't forecast for Arrapago Reef and picture number two requires ice weather in there!

(part of why I posted this question is that I thought it was the literal funniest thing imaginable, the juxtaposition of two different kinds of decade-old dead content)

I have a ton of silver vouchers I've been hoarding and am looking to spend them. The only drops I really care about are Omen bodies, Volte Gear, Malignance Gear, and Crep Gear.
`
It seems like I would be better off waiting for the current campaign to end, no? Since Loud Thuds are more likely to become Sroda items, that I don't need, that also means I would be less likely (even if its only like 1% less likely) to get the items that I am after.

You'd be better off waiting until this one ends if that is your goal yeah.

Plus of course in 2 weeks you've got the chance of the 10m gil drops, that's an added bonus.

So, a friend of mine who uses in-game equipsets is having a strange behaviour that I can't seem to fix.
I've already made several hypothesys and had him perform several tests, but all of them ended up being moot, I couldn't find the cause.
So I'm asking here to check what possible causes I could've missed.
The problem involves all of his jobs with magic casting, but let's make a simple example here to use as a test.

On GEO with Indi-Refresh he should be getting 16mp/tic (he has idris and 900+ skill).
If he uses his standard macro (see under spoiler) he gets 3mp/tic from Indi-Refresh, if he manually uses his midcast set, he rightfully gets 16.

His macro
Seems like a pretty standard macro. I had him remove the last 2 lines and equip the idle with a manually inputted command once the casting is over, but nothing changes.
My first hypothesis were about his midcast set having the right icons but wrong items saved, so I had him make a completely new midcast set from scratch, using the "save current" after having manually equipped all the right items, but this test too changed nothing, still 3mp/tic.

What am I missing? Where is the problem? His macro logic seems fine to me.


edit:
He doesn't get this error just "sometimes", in that case the culprit could've been quick magic or lag. He seems to be getting this problem ALL of the times. That's what he says at least.

How much fc in his precast? Indi spells are very fast. You absolutely can't use max fc or you will cast before you swap into midcast gear

For example: Indi-Refresh has 4s casting time. If you reduce that by 80% it's .8 seconds. <wait 1> means you are still in FC when the spell goes off.

edit: side note, I think the BG wiki casting times for geo and indi spells are WAY off. It says 4s for Indi- and 8s for Geo- but I just went out to test and it's not even remotely close to that.

Personally, I don't use any FC set for any GEO bubbles, but if you want to use one you need to use a minimal set, I'd say 50% or lower. Remember to keep in mind SJ FC if you have RDM sub too...it ain't pretty for non-GS GEOs.

Really? That sounds surprising to me.
Counting FC on his gear he should have ~64% FC in gear, maybe a bit more since I don't know exactly his possible augments.
With at least 15% from /RDM that's indeed around the FC cap.

So what should he do? I guess use Dunna and Idris in his FC set for sure, to begin with.


But I gave the Indi-Refresh as an example because it's very quick for him to measure it. He claims he's having this issue with most (all?) of his spells. But "having too much FC" might be the cause then.
Is there a sweet spot he should be looking for? I guess not because it depends on the casting time for each single spell, and it's not realistic for me to suggest him to create like 5 different precast sets with different amounts of FC according to how long the base casting time of the spell is.


Or maybe simply remove the /wait 1? Would that work for in-game macros with equipsets? That way he starts casting the spell with the right set, but instantly swap to midcast without that /wait 1

You have two options, and they both suck. The one I listed above (it's an edit, sorry), or:

/equipset fc <wait 1>
/ma indi-whatever
/equipset midcast bubble <wait 1>
/equipset idle (or engaged, or whatever you want to be in)

This option delays the cast of your spell by 1 second, but at the very least you can use FC and still end up in your midcast set in time.

If you (he) decide to go with the lesser FC set, you don't need to make 5 sets, just 2 basically. One for spells that are too fast (50% FC, 40%, whatever works) and then one for spells that are long enough for you to use full FC. Then you just pick the set for each spell's macro.

Full SC and slightly less than 50% (including stuff from /SCH or /RDM) sounds like a reasonable compromise.

Eeeh, guess I'll get back to him with these two options and he'll pick what he likes best.

Thanks!

Equipsets have a global 1 second delay on reuse. So you can't use equipset consecutively without at least a wait 1.

Honestly, It's so easy to hit the skill requirements on geomancy now that unless you're hyper optimizing for conserve MP or something, you could just have them make hybrid precast+midcast set.

Hit the keypoints; geomancy+, dunna, indi-duration for indi spells, and Geo+2 neck for Geo spells, then fill the rest in with FC+ and just precast and midcast in that same set. (Note for clarity, I'm suggesting separate sets for indi and geo spells here, not an all in one.)

It's a tactic that sometimes gets used for non-gearswap cures and such. No need to worry about casting the spell too fast if you're starting in the set you want to finish in.

And anyway, geomancy spells have really short cast times anyway, so even with just partial FC, they should still feel near instant.

NP. Someone should figure out what the cast times of these spells are or what manner of *** is going on with them. Maybe elemental celerity counts for geo spells or something?

My macros for indi spells (and GEO) are:

/equipset midcast
/ma indi-whatever <wait 2>
/equipset idle

And they work for every spell I've tested so far. This means the indi- and geo- spells all cast (GEO/SCH) in ~2 seconds or less. Certainly isn't 4 or 8 seconds, like wiki says.

A secondary option. While you can't use equipsets consecutively with no wait, there is no such restriction on normal /equip commands.

So you could use a few lines at the start of the macro equipping high value per slot FC pieces, start the cast, then equipset on just the midcast.

so the macro would change to something like:

Edit: I wanted to note also, that this method is often used for HP balancing purposes for non-gearswap PLDs. Can swap in a piece or two of high HP gear before doing a precast equipset, and help prevent HP loss by raising max HP before the equipset. You can't set priority on equipsets afterall, so you can't change the order in which they swap each slot.

Maybe some vanilla players reading this will get some use outta that.
Interestingly, the windower resources have all the indi-spells listed as having 2 second cast times.Not sure why Bgwiki has them listed as like 4 seconds.

Absolutely, but I was using the Indi-Refresh as an example.
He claims he's having this issue on "all spellcasting on every job" and now I know why.
He's at the FC cap and this means that every spell with a cast time of 5 seconds or lower, won't correctly swap into midcast with his current macro logic.

This includes a lot of spells not just indi.
Think about cures for instance.

So yeah, he has just 2 solutions: use the delayed macro logic Maletaru suggested (which works fine for a lot of spells/buffs honestly, maybe not so much for cures...) or create 2 precast sets: one with full FC to use with spells with >5 secs base casting time, and another with <50% FC to use with spells with 5 or less base casting time.

I guess that's it, really.

Yeah precast on equipsets sucks, nothing else to it. Before I swapped to gearswap I had to have like 40%~ Fast Cast in my precast for most spells, and one for capped FC for longer stuff like Stoneskin/Raise/Reraise etc. Playing WHM was the hardest, some of those spells are so fast you can't use a fast cast without hurting potency.

*nudge them to the darkside, Sechs. we all love gearswap ;p*

I even offered myself to create his first basic Lua, so that he can minimize the automation (he hates automating too many things) and with a very simple straightforwar lua like the ones I create, he wouldn't lose himself into 2000 lines of lua code.

But he still refuses! What can I do, I can't really point a gun at his head, can I? :-P

For WHM and RDM I use the method Martel suggested above (3 pieces of FC gear, then spell, then midcast, then idle.

For RDM I can cap FC this way easily. For WHM I have to include some cure cast time gear in my idle set to make it work, but it works and I have 80% cure FC and a full midcast cure set.

Here are my sets, in case your friend plays WHM and wants to try my way:

ItemSet 397563

ItemSet 393695

For the pre-cast, I put on Inyanga body +2 (14), Clr Torque+2 (10), and Piety Cap+3 (15). Combines with Hygieia (18), Ebers pants (15) and cape (10) for 82% (cures only)

RDM is really easy, base traits plus JP gifts etc, plus (in my case) Atrophy Chapeau, Vitiation Tabard, and Merlinic Crackows (these need 6% FC on the augment)

edit: not to get on my same old soap box, but I offer now as the time for another discussion about how equipsets are the same as gearswap */rant*.

RDM seems like one of the more likely candidates for that not to be the case, since you're going to hit the "minimum one second delay between equipset commands, but I want precast and midcast both" more often with Spontaneity and Chainspell, right?

(if there's a way around that I don't know of one so do tell please.)

If you have spontaneity or CS, you specifically do NOT want precast gear

RDM isn't as affected by the fast cast issue, but it is quite difficult to play with equipsets because you have a shitload of spells you may need to cast in any given situation and with equipsets, you need a macro for every single one of them, plus all your ws. Add in conditional stuff like if saboteur is up or if you want weapons locked and it can be quite spicy to set up.

While using chainspell it's disgusting because you can't use your normal macros and have to equip sets individually using single line macros or type them in. It's definitely a challenge, but a different one to most other jobs.

Obviously I enjoy these challenges (and I want to play ffxi, not some third party developer's idea of what ffxi should've been), but it's definitely a ball buster in some cases.

Question for anyone who might know better:

Some folks in my LS were saying that Mob HP affects Steal rate, but as far as I can tell, that's only speculation. Anybody know if that is the case or not?

That's always been the myth. Nothing ever actually looked into though.

The only thing worth stealing is the impish box and you may as well lower it's hp, it costs you nothing.

Thats an old theory based on success with stealing from Maat back in the day.
"Steal from behind or steal at low HP"

My tests prove with reasonable certainty degree that stealing at low HP has 0.0000000001% increase in the success rate

I can't seem to trigger Octavien's dialogue about Runic Weapons (and the subsequent titles for trading them in and so on) - do I have to complete all the RUN quests first or something? I did the RUN LB5 and now he's commenting on how I have done it, so am I locked into doing all the AF and stuff too?

Its been a while, but I'm pretty sure you have to do all the quests, you cant bypass anything by using deeds.

Do the points from login campaigns have a cap, and do they rollover into the next one or will I lose the ones I have if I don't spend them by the 10th?

There is no cap, you can save up as many as you want per month but iirc only 1200 1500 will carry over to next month so any above that gets lost.

1500*