For The Shinies! A Guide For Thief

We wont even know, until someone win and risk taking one of them. Same for h2h really. Dragon Blow can be anything. How stupid they are to put it behind bonanza...

You mean, how smart they are.

Every. Single. One of you are going to buy 15 mules to get 16 shots at these. Maybe even on your two boxes and three boxes.

And they're running it twice, so that's $30+ from all of you, for something you will. not. win. But can't resist. (yes you can pro-rate last day log in for like 5 cents)

Not me; I only have one mule nowadays. And there's a very high probability they aren't even same account sendable.

Don't make "not same account sendable" your excuse, they've been changing that to include a lot of new things.

Still don't buy into it, but don't make that your reason. You will be extremely salty if they can be.

Only characters who are at least 32 days old in Earth time are eligible to purchase Mog Bonanza marbles.

So no, they wont get additional $ from anyone, unless you already had those mules made at some point.

Also what do you mean by running it twice? Havent seen anything about 2nd one I think.

They said since they missed one earlier this year due to covid, there will be another one soon in like February. They said the weapon types that are missing in this one will be in it. Dunno if that means only those weapon types and other new stuff, or more likely this current list of weapons with the additional weapons added.

You can have a 32 day old account for dec 11 cut off if you made mules when the knowledge dropped, It wouldn't make it as of today though. And we're ~90 days out from feb when the second one runs.

(and you should already have 15 deactivated mules for abyssea login mats that they never want to give back...***, and mars orbs)

Uh... no? I have one mule and that's plenty for me. I used to play on it when adoulin was current and I got it to the point it can partake in the dark matter campaigns whenever they're up so I keep it around for both that and nostalgia reasons. Gil handouts are meaningless to me... I've run out of stuff to buy for the jobs I play. I literally have no use for my dynamis proceeds as it stands so it just piles up. That's the state the game is in right now. We really do need new content... and I don't play the lottery in real life either. There's no way I'd make a bunch of mules just for the mog bonanza at this stage in the game's life.

You can't safely use zerk while going unga bunga on a mob though because you WILL have the mobs attention. Removing the defense penalty from berserk is huge. I still wouldn't give up Chango for it but like Shining One there are situations where it would be BIS. (Shining One is amazing on any fight where you have to hold TP)

Thats only for totally lazy people with too much money. 15 mules is what 45 items total during a whole month of logging in and out? Not sure how it is on Asura, but on most other servers, getting 45 items for any weapon is just like 8 hours of farming top for the worst ones (much less if you multibox). Im not paying 15$ just to avoid that and remembering to log in and out 15 mules every single day.

Beats the hell out of tahrongi farming.

+ mars orbs, SP keys, silver vouchers, extra DM, extra odyssey keyers, extra card farmers, extra DI points, extra AH slots. (if you care about such things, lots of easy money)

Can't truly min/max if you aren't running 15 mules.

Oh 15 mules at 99 with DM access is whole other story, but then they dont need to release Bonanza to get 15$ out of you, since you are giving it to them every month anyway.

Well, that's why I said deactivated, there's no reason to have them paid for atm. (if DM was the only reason)((or abyssea freebies))

So you would turn them on just to collect a marble. (yes, already said you could wait for prorate discount)

Back in the day I funded my relic by farming wildgrass on 5 accounts and I also won the mog bonanza once (I'd always use a spread off sequential numbers to maximize my chances). This was around 2007ish.

New and returning player here for 4 month now, just got a Twashtar (yay!) and I've been trying to understand this whole DEX/WSDAM%/ATT modifier on WS in general and I've noticed that in the Thief guide on BG wiki, the gear changed quite a bit recently and I now I'm a bit confused.

Could someone explain why Plun. Bonnet +3 is better for solo Rudra's instead of Pill. Bonnet +3. (It really is a question of TA+/ATT+ VS WS DAM; similar to C. Palug Stone vs Seeth. Bomblet +1.
Which also is why im wondering about Plunderer's Vest +3 vs Meg. Cuirie +2, which I keep reading cuirie is better but guide says otherwise.

I guess it might be a question of preference but most likely be that I'm not understanding the math behind it all.

Thank you in advance to anyone taking the time to answer the questions :)

You have to look at the titles of the sets. It's pretty straight forward.

Attack matters in conditions where it matters. Pillagers has none, plunderer's has a pile of it. Plunderer's+3 body beats meghanada+2 in dex and attack

I get seething+1 beating cait's stone too, again, it's the attack and str. You'll read that no one gives any consideration to STR at all because "capped on everything" but we simply aren't.

It's also worth noting that we're talking 10 dps differences between this and that. Target matters. Trust/Buff selection matters. Food matters. These all matter more than the difference between headpiece A and headpiece B.

This is kinda old. Many people lately include "trust" setups in guides or even focus on them. At least that's my impression. Maybe I watched too many Logical's video tho.

Assuming no Twashtar yet, what is the best off-hand for an Aenas?

I would say Ternion Dagger +1.

So logging in 15 mules every day is too much work, but running 15 mules through Reisenjima and logging those 15 in every day of a campaign is not? Lol

I only have one mule and that's just for storage. Extra Gil/DM/orbs etc just doesn't appeal to players much who have gotten to a certain point in the game. You're just building a mountain of cash and gear stats with nothing to use any of it on. It always comes back to having content that makes having such an advantage worthwhile.

Just need to find a reason to keep makin gains other than gear shiftyeyes.jpeg

You're never done buying things for your mog to dance with!

I just know of a lot of people who go that route and make bunch of characters and quickly get burned out because they grind so fast things that shouldn't be possible playing normally. 'Gotta have it' mentality. Then when you get it, what is there to do with it? Lol. That knife always cuts both ways every time.

Switching mainhand to a Tauret instead?

Seriously, as a THF with Aeneas as my only RMEA dagger... I can barely justify using the thing. I guess in limited use cases like if you're only doing WS and not TPing (e.g., HELM Sandworm) it's probably nice. It's somewhat better on DNC, IMO. Full disclosure, I don't have it R15 - just threw a handful of swarts at it to get it to R3... but that's because the augments are pretty weak so it's my absolute lowest RMEA augment priority (minimal DMG increase, Exenterator damage - yuck, and some accuracy)

If you must use Aeneas, agreed that Ternion +1 r15 is prob best.

If you don't have augmented Twash or Vajra, I really just don't see how Aeneas is that good outside of extremely niche situations. Infiltrator even removed it from my /lockstyle rotation! Happy to hear advice on other good use cases for it on THF though.

So Tauret is better than Aenas? Sorry I haven't used thf on anything outside of farming for quite a while so I don't know much about it lately.

I still use Aeneas and OH all 3, depending on the scenario: R15 Ternion (my default), TP Bonus OH for Rudras spam, and Tauret if I'm going for Aeolian Edge. But I'm making Twashtar and will probably never use Aeneas ever again once it's done.

i use aeneas/twash and am very satisfied with them for solo play. tauret is better sometimes, like alexander bcnm. but rudra's will always do better than evisceration as you add proper buffs.

I use all the daggers minus vajra which I don't have in various circumstances. If I'm just trying to apply th and spam ws I'll use tauret / sari. If I'm gonna spam rudras I'll use twash / cento. This month in ambu I did really well with aeneas/twash multi stepping and closing the last step with a SA rudras. Most of the time if I'm on thf I'm on it specifically for th purposes and not dps, so I use sari quite often. If I wanted to focus more on dps I'd probably go dnc or another job in those situations, so sari has more value to me than it would appear on paper. Aeneas/ternion is probably the strongest pairing for that weapon barring twash.

I think if you aren't taking advantage of SC damage tauret main hand is the way to go, personally. In group content that's mostly what I use even as a R15 twash owner.

Most situations, yeah, Tauret with Evisceration spam does really well. Likely THF's best default option behind Twash MH (with Centovente or Ternion +1 offhand) or Vajra, and Tauret is even pretty competitive with those in many situations.

In theory, Aeneas with Rudra should be at its strongest when you are focusing on SCs... but in practice, I find Tauret Evis spam ends up performing just as well if not better.

There also aren't that many situations I actually run into where THF SCs are even very practical these days:
- Dyna? Too many DDs to reliably SC.
- Omen farming? Stuff dies too fast to take advantage of SCs.
- Odyssey? See Omen, except for NMs... but there's little reason to fight them other than for fun.
- UNMs? Maybe, with a lowman setup.
- Farming Adoulin and any earlier content? Too weak to SC.

You're basically left with the occasional Ambuscade with limited DDs and a coordinated SC as the most viable use case. Maybe a few Geas Fete mobs where you're doing a lowman melee SC approach.

Also potentially a handful of high tiers, but Rudra's SCs are not so hot on the Selbina ones:
- Lilith? No darkness SCs, Tauret/Evis is the best THF setup for this fight.
- Alexander? No WS with added effects (Rudra), or repeated SCs. Tauret/Evis is the best THF setup for this fight.
- Odin? Kinda sucks to do on THF for melee DPS purposes, and Darkness isn't gonna do well on him anyway. If you're bringing a THF to this fight it's likely more for TH purposes than caring much about optimal DPS.
- Cait? Probably the most viable of the lot for lowman Rudra SC setups, although Evis spam is likely just as good (particularly considering Mewing Lullaby wiping TP)

EDIT:
A few other Tauret tips that may be obvious to some here but can't hurt to mention.
- /DRG is great, subjob WSD+7% that applies to all hits of a multi-hit WS (i.e., it's especially helpful to Evisceration)
- White damage is excellent due to the very high crit rate paired with THF's high TA rate/TA dmg and and good THF crit dmg+ options.
- Generally, you want to spam WS as soon as you can at 1000tp. Tauret's crit rate during TP phase is higher when you're at lower TP.