Dancing for Fun and Profit...

Well, fun anyway.

Hello ladies, gentlemen and multiforms. I have returned to FFXI with a view to trying out the two jobs introduced in the Wings of the Goddess expansion, to explore the events of the past, to try out some of the new missions, and generally see how much the game has changed since I left in November last year.

First thing's first, when I left the game was in a state of economic flux. Inflation was rife, though decreasing slightly, and decent items like the Scorpion Harness and Haubergeon were in excess of 2 million gil. I had around 500k gil to my name, and figuring this worthless, I gave it away upon my departure, along with all my equipment, which all went to two LS friends.

I came back to the game and one of the initial things I did, knowing I'd need equipment, is figured out what little I did have knocking around, and then checked the Auction House to see what the state of the economy was like.

And was duly shocked and, I admit, a tad depressed.

You see, that 500k I gave away I could now use to buy not one, but two scorpion harnesses. The economy seems to have crashed and then stabilised at a much, MUCH lower level than it used to be half a year ago.

So anyway, my impression of Dancer as a job is coloured by the fact that I cannot afford any cool equipment, and that I'm pretty darned broke. Nothing I've put up on the AH these last few days has sold (apart from crystals) so what little I have is now dwindling further. But without further adieu...

DANCER

There were two new jobs introduced in the expansion: Dancer and Scholar. After I got the game installed and updated, I basically opened up the latest model viewer, picked out the model of the female elvaan with the same hair as Demajen, and tried on the two sets of AF. Scholar struck me as quite cute but a bit weird-looking. For fun I tried it on Saikyo and thought it very much suited him and informed him of such via MSN. I even sent him a picture. I think he was quite taken and may well try it at some point.

But it was the Dancer AF that stood out to me. Perhaps its the fact that I have a female character and AF armour almost always looks better on female characters, but the Dancer AF caught my eye and captivated me. The very first thing I did was go and start the Dancer quest, and it is only now, at lv.30 Dancer, that I pause to write my initial impressions.

Dancer is fun. Pure and simple. It can solo like no other job I've played in the game. Yesterday, at lv.27-28, I was running round Qufim soloing the worms and crabs who are all DC-T with no problem whatsoever. Worms were nice and quick to kill. Crabs weren't. But the XP all added up. It's certainly not WoW-speed soloing, but for FFXI - where soloing was never really an option back in the day - it's certainly a breath of fresh air.

The job is based purely on TP, which is a great mechanic for solo play. When you're on your own, you're the guy getting hit. Always. And you're fighting stuff with generally low evasion, so the amount of TP you get is always pretty high. All your abilities as a Dancer use TP for some kind of effect. Curing Waltz, for example, is a WHM's Cure II (just about) for the cost of 20% TP. Dirt cheap when you have close to 300% TP knocking about quite regularly in solo play. Drain Samba, the staple spell of the solo Dancer at this level, puts a debuff on the mob that lets you constantly drain small amounts of HP as long as you hit it once every 6-8(ish) seconds. This only costs 10% TP, and lasts for about a minute and a half. Most fights last over that, but its a matter of seconds to recast it.

So yeah, soloing Easy Preys is just that... easy. Soloing Decent Challenges is also fairly easy, though it takes a while, and some mobs hit harder than others. The same with Even Matches. Toughs take a long time, and only worms seem to be viable targets for this at the moment, though this could simply be due to my lack of decent gear.

Partying, though, is another matter. See, most parties in FFXI consist of people who like to see big XP numbers. Only by the 70s do people start to realise that FAST XP is as good as BIG XP. The problem with fighting Incredibly Tough mobs on Dancer is that we only have a B+ ranked skill in our main offensive weapon. This means that, at lv.28 or so like I started today's party in Yhoator Jungle, I needed a lot more accuracy/dagger merits than I actually had to be able to hit. Sure, at 30 I get an Accuracy Bonus trait which I hope will help out a lot, but it's just really REALLY hard to hit anything, and I was feeling pretty useless and leechy for most of the party.

Still, I got to lv.30. Two levels in the bag, and some new abilities to play around with. Hopefully the lack of Accuracy will get better, as obviously I need TP to perform any kind of role in a party situation. We'll see how it goes as I go through the ranks.

But first, time to try out a bit of campaign and see if I can't find a way to make some kind of money ><

~Dema