The End-Game Balancing Act, Part One

A player wrote us a long letter about the end game. The short version: the best way to play was to sit in one zone and run the same raid boss until your eyes bled, and nothing outside the raid was worth the walk. They were right on both counts. This patch is the first part of the answer.

The raid pays for variety

Three changes to what a Driftmark clear pays. The first clear of the day of every trial at every tier is untouched; everything here is about the second clear and beyond.

• The day's element. Vana'diel's day changes every 57.6 minutes and walks all eight elements. Trials fighting under the day's element pay +50% on everything the clear earns, base and first-of-the-day bonus alike. The board says which element today favours, and the element tab wears the bonus.
• A chain of different trials. Clear one trial, then a different one within ninety minutes, and the second pays extra. Keep changing trials and the bonus climbs ten percent a link, up to +50%. Clearing a trial that is already in your chain resets it; letting the clock run out ends it. The board shows your chain and what the next new trial pays.
• Repeats step down. The second clear of the same trial at the same tier in a day pays 75% of base, the third 50%, the fourth and beyond 25%. It turns over at Japanese midnight with the dailies. Once you have been paid for a rung today, the board shows what the next repeat actually pays.

All three are account-wide, like the marks themselves. A full sweep of the roster on the right day is now the best hour of raiding there is, and the fourth Savage of the same boss is the worst.

Stones in the world

Pluton, Beitetsu and the Riftborn Boulder, the stones the Magian Moogles and Oboro ask for on the relic, mythic and empyrean ladders, were only ever sold on the raid shop's Materials page. From this patch they drop, and where they drop tells you where to go:

• Sky pays relic stones. Byakko, Genbu, Seiryu and Suzaku each carry three Plutons and a coin-flip on a fourth; every pop monster in Ru'Aun, Ve'Lugannon and Ru'Avitau carries one.
• Sea pays empyrean stones. The six Jailers carry three Riftborn Boulders and a coin-flip on a fourth, the Jailer of Love six, Ix'Aern two.
• Aht Urhgan pays mythic stones when its gates open: Tinnin, Sarameya and Tyger six Beitetsu each, Cerberus, Hydra and Khimaira four, every other Zeni monster two, and the Salvage chariots four.
• The three apex fights pay all three. Kirin, Absolute Virtue and the Pandemonium Warden.

These are ordinary drops: they go to the treasure pool, Treasure Hunter and the server's drop rate apply, and /scan lists them on the monster. The Materials page still sells the same stones at the same prices. It is now the slow way, not the only way.

Nemesis

• Two hundred and forty-seven monsters. The Sky gods and their pop monsters, the Sea Jailers and Absolute Virtue, forty Zeni monsters and Aht Urhgan kings, the four Salvage chariots, and eighty-four more classic names from Swamfisk to King Vinegarroon have joined the first hundred. The Aht Urhgan ones are fightable now, before their zones open: the arena is the Throne Room, and it does not care where the monster came from.
• Entry fees are halved. Field is now 10,000 gil, Dungeon 25,000 and Legend 75,000. Testimonies are unchanged.
• A stone in every chest, one time in ten. On top of the monster's own drop table, each chest you open has a one-in-ten chance to hand you a Pluton, a Beitetsu or a Riftborn Boulder. It is not gear, so it never touches your Mercy meter. And because a Nemesis copy rolls the same table as the original, the chests of the new bosses above carry their world stones too.

The Pop-Items shelf

The Drift Board's Pop-Items shelf asks fewer hundred-pieces: Hunts 2, Sky pop items 3, Kings 4, Kings HQ 5. Same items, same board, a shorter wait.

Also in this patch

• Squad members hit as hard as you do. A painted member's attack was footed on a monster rank instead of the character's real weapon, so a weapon skill from your alt landed for about three-quarters of what your own would. It now equals a live player of the same shape, and item-level 109 and up weapons carry their item-level attack on members too. Accuracy, defence and evasion are deliberately untouched.
• Forty-two more buffs on the gambit enhancing shelf. Auspice, Enlight, Endark, Reprisal, Crusade, Temper, Flurry, Embrava, Klimaform, both Sublimation halves, the Gain and Boost stat buffs, and every remaining en-spell and bar-spell can be kept up by a member.
• Delete your own account from the launcher: your password plus the registered email, then a 72-hour hold before anything is removed.

Update your addons

Update dwraid and dwnemesis through the launcher for the new lines on both boards. The typed !raid and !nemesis say all of it in prose. The numbers throughout are a first guess; say so if they feel wrong, and part two will follow the feedback.