On the Campaign Trail

Hello! Tis I, Saikyo! You may remember me a whole host of FFXI related blogs. This blogs were usually characterised by the following:

#1: Bitching
#2: Moaning
#3: Talking about fishing.

Well, as some of you may already know, Dema and myself quit FFXI around last November - December time. There were a number of reasons for this, which I won't bore you with, but a key factor was disillusionment with the party system. Hours spent fruitlessly LFG eventually decays your very mind. But without it, how could you ever level up?

Of course, we left just as Wings of the Goddess was released, complete with its Campaign system. On returing to the game, this was one of the first thing I wanted to examine, mainly as two linkshell buddies had told me they had level all the way to 75 purely through Campaign. That sounded very tempting for a jaded old Samurai such as myself.

So I trotted off, did the quests to get into the rather wonderfully named 'Iron Rams' of Sandy. (Thought 'Rampaging Rams' would have been a cooler name... or maybe 'Rutting Rams'.... maybe not.) I read up on how Campaign worked, didn't understand it but saw it involved killing things for XP, and so headed out to East Ron with my trusty great katana.

First of all, I was flumoxed by the fact there has to be a battle in progress to actually get campaign tags. I ran around looking for an NPC who could get me started for about 5 minutes before I actually realised this. I blame the fact I was drinking tea at the same time.

Anyway! A battle soon started, and I followed the crowd of players to get my tags. Beastmen held East Ron at the time, so it seemed to involve beating on the walls of a tower for about 10 minutes. This did not seem particularly thrilling. Then a message appeared saying "The Orcs of Ass Kicking are making a stalwart defence of East Ron".

"Hmmm." Thought me. A while passed, and no orcs appeared.

I kept beating on the wall.

Then I saw:

Orcish Ultimate Fighting Champion hits you for 4232 damage.
Orcish Ultimate Fighting Champion hits you for 546 damage.
Orcish Ultimate Fighting Champion crits you for so much damage it actually can't be expressed in numerals.
Saikyo was defeated by Orcish Ultimate Fighting Champion.

Said Orcish Ultimate Fighting Champion proceeded to lay waste to all PCs who were foolish enough to stand in his way. (His real name was something 'Poisonhand' but my description fits better.)

I lay around dead for bit, and then battle ended. Even though I was dead, I got 1100 XP. Basically all I had done was attack a wall for about 8 minutes, and then get killed! It was a bit like the Siege of Troy, except with Orcs.

However, buoyed up by the prospect of XP for essentially nothing, I decided to play some more Campaign. A lot of Campaign. So much campaign that by the end of it my eyes were drooping out, I had levelled up from SAM 65 to SAM 66 (13000xp or so) and all I could mutter was 'The horror....the horror..."

And horrors there are! The Beastmen NMs range in toughness from relatively wussy (a big Ahriman called 'Shadoweye' seems to be laughably poor, and gets hammered in seconds by a decent sized group) to monstrously unstoppable. (An Orc Warmachine NM - didnt catch the name - killed about 20 characters with just a few AOE moves... gave me Promyvion Death Squad flashbacks).

There's a huge amount of stuff I don't understand about Campaign. I don't understand how and why Beastmen waves spawn the way they do, nor do I understand how or why you sometimes have tons of NPCs reinforcements, and other times none. Attacking a wall could hardly be described as thrilling. Equally, running in terror from a mass of {Impossible to Gauge} beastmen is not much fun either. You get killed an awful lot (but at least you don't lose XP!)

But gathering a little team of PCs and teaming up to take down the Beastmen one at a time is strangely addictive. Surviving a Beastmen onslaught gives an odd feeling of satisfaction. In fact, much like fishing, I find that the entire thing is oddly compelling - and it gives you XP!

I picked up about 13000 XP playing campaign, enough to level up with a buffer. Disappointly, when you level from campaign you don't get that great little fanfare, but levelling up is still levelling up, so I'm not complaining!

So, to conclude.

#1: Saikyo is back.
#2: He isn't bitcing.
#3: He's found something he likes in FFXI almost as much as fishing!

Yahoo!