June 2022 Version Update

M39-40: 606,296

Edit: Stopped being lazy.

ok, so it takes 1.8x as many Exemplar Points to get from 30 to 40 than it did from 0 to 30.

(plus monsters yield fewer exemplar points every 5 master levels, etc., probably more like twice as hard in practice)

AoE Crawler's Nest parties average about twice as good as pre-CN single kill parties from my experience, so if you did 20>30 before CN it'll probably feel similar if you hold out for AoE ML parties.

The Chac-chacs are not totally worthless. Music notes appear around you after swinging it! Same effect as the Maestro's Baton, RIP.

Jeeezeee. My precious maestro baton in the grave

M40-CAP: 769,426 (Delta: 163,130)

just quit bro you're so bad lmaoooooo

THIS. These DI dragons should be easy for anyone trying to justify "actually, forcing flail was more efficient". Who cares if you have to stand in front? Oh the horror, sometimes you might pull hate on Quetz and get terrored...

I wish this topic would get terrored and warped, it's so dumb that people are even making a big deal about it.

I guess the meaning of the term "long term" has changed in FFXI, lol.

When I reactivated in March, I started casually grinding ML mostly solo and practice how to play FFXI again. I joined about 4 AoE parties that lasted about 1-1.5 hr each. After a few weeks I got to ML30, I counted total of 23 hr of grind from 0-30, but only 3.5 hr of them were spent in AE pt, 1.5hr-ish were spent in CJ pt pre-nerf, rest were my causal solo/gameplay practice with 5 trusts.

If all my grinding were done with AE pt, I estimated 6-7 hr of grind at 400k EP/hr from ML0-30. I've heard people claimed to do more than that with huge 100+ mobs pulls, so my EP/hr aren't even on the high end maybe.

If 30-40 is 1.8x more EP required, it would take about maybe 20 hr of AoEing from ML 0-40, or somewhere close to 30hr if you count competition or leech slowing down the progress?

Just FYI, I know someone who has ML30 on all jobs spending a month AoEing in CN_S.

So I guess 20-30 hour of grind in FFXI is now "long term" when back then it took months to get 1 job 75. How things has changed lol. Not saying it's a bad thing for me but I find it funny :p

A lot of people find this "grinding" is insane, it's probably because they don't actually prioritize ML in a proactive way. So they spend their time doing other stuff. Or they only do single target kills party. Then ML will take much longer to finish like that.

For people that's actually determined to get ML out of their way, capping ML is just the matter of spending a few nights setting up coordinated AE parties that last 2-3 hr each. And it'll be done really quick unless your server has competitions(mine does during JP prime time btw).

Personally, as a returning/casual player, I kinda enjoy ML. Because it's something that I can do casually, solo or with a few semi-afk friends working and playing FFXI on the same time, with low gear and skill requirement. and it improves character performance noticably from reward:ratio pov.

It's much easier than Odyssey NM which needs this job and that job, this gear and that gear to do lol. If there is anything that's a "long grind" in FFXI atm, it's Odyssey, not ML. :P

Edit: fixed numbers based cuz my math suck.

Sending all my characters in behind mireu on pld one after another in an endless chain and never getting killed because warps ftw!

So back to the other issue with this update... a mission NPC is also a campaign NPC, is there any way to check where they are atm or ideally speed up their return to town?

It's STR+1 and MND+1 yo! savage blade has 2 mods. ;>

I already murdered my soul soloing dyna in 2012 every single day for 600m getting that Quick Draw damage +20%. I have nothing left to murder for STR+1 and MND+1 anymore. Only that STR+1 and MND+1 can fill my soulless empty heart. :D

To make ML that fast you need COR with Corsair roll and someone with low ML to sync to. Otherwise your EP/h will drop like a LOT at ML35. I would say its around 10-25h from 30 to 40 in AoE party, depends if you have cor and lvl sync. Most parties last 1-2h max, so you need to add time of shouting and travel 5-10 times there. For people with 10+ jobs thats for sure a super long grind.

The intelligence NPC can tell you current unit movements to a degree of accuracy, speeding up their return in (most) cases should be just as easy as completing the battle they are involved in, but one of the NPCs needed is generally dispatched defensively so you might just have to wait for deployment to end in that case if a battle does not start.

You grind your way up to 75 in the old era, along with merits. Then you grind your way up to 99 with the level cap increases. Along comes job points to master your job, and having to do that on each job. Once you master your jobs, you have to master your masters, like you didn’t already master them.

All of this is wasting time which could have been spent on introducing actual content, but SE would rather give us something to waste several hours a day robotically doing the same thing we already did back in 2004. I get it, we were stuck at the same level for so many years and progression is nice. But did it have be so damn monotonous?

Also, if the rewards for progressing master levels were substantial, you’d feel a sense of accomplishment by grinding it out. But as others have said, you don’t seriously need to have M40 anything, it’s just nice to have. So where’s the motivation, other than wasting time that could be spent doing something fun? And it's not like every job is AoE friendly, unless you're fine just standing around as a leech.

Hmm, I'm thinking of taking some people out to the cogs, DD's would have to be ML30 with good sets to hit the acc required with basic buffs.

No, this is the beauty of Mlevels. If the upgrades were substantial they would suck, because you would have to do them.

Mlevels are one of the best things they have added to the game in a long time, because it is custom made for the mentality of the kind of person that plays an old school mmorpg.

Some people love to grind them out hardcore, to be among the first few to get to the cap. It doesn't matter if you think it's stupid, they like doing it (there is an entire speed running gamer community out there, so you know the mentality is there) and so to them this is gold.

To serious players, it's more progression which they love. It's a reason to use their pimped out main, it's a reason to build an aoe set, it's a reason to join a group.

For more casual players it's just something to work on while watching a movie, something to go do when you can't think of anything else you wanna do. It's content you can do it you're not really into endgame but still wanna get some progression and +1s.

For everyone it's progression while doing other things, doing omen / ambu? you're getting Mlevel while doing it.

Doing endgame content, trying to win the next parse by improving DPS by 1% is about as "fun" as doing the same in ML pt to me.

If you setup goals and challenges for ML pt, such as "I wanna hit chain 35 solo next time!" "I wanna outparse that guy with 5/5 r25 Nyame!", Then it's about as "fun" as seg pt. Because there are goals and challenges to overcome. Your mind will always think about the next optimal move that you can do to improve performance.

If you do ML with brains turned off and seeing it as a chore with no goals set, of course it's robotic. Because without goals and challenges video games won't be fun.



ML is different from 2004 in a way that optimal setup and playstyle is different now. Since finding the optimized builds in FFXI is part of the gameplay, I'd say it's still a different challenge.


If all stats +40 and all the extra accuracy/HP isn't substantial, then idk what to say lol.

People would pay like...50m for a STR +10 ring, and you are saying +40 STR isn't substantial? Lol.

Having the extra accuracy also completely changes optimal food combination btw.

And that's before considering the SJ benefits.

SE said ML is not a need, they meant they balance content difficulty around players not playing at max potential, so you can beat it without perfect gears/playstyle. It doesn't mean the difference is small.

You are comparing the grind most end game players have today with the grind for one level 75 job back in the early days. But most of us don't play just one job because oddysey mandates job variety. I have 8 jobs I'm maintaining, and my end goal is to gear and play 10. I've got friends who are maintaining 12-16 jobs. The grind from 1-75 on one job versus the Mlvl 40 grind for 10-16 jobs is not the same thing. For anyone who'se playing in the current era of the game mastery levels are a much larger time investment than you make them out to be.

Outside of the first 10~15 ML's, it's not absolutely important to have them capped. Most of the job changing benefits happen in the first few extra SJ levels.

Precisely. I got 6 jobs to get master levels on, and have no interest grinding them out until they make it easier in a year or so. Setting your own "goals" only works for so long. You're still doing the same crap you already did many times over, just at a different level. It's exceedingly dull. And you can't compare the grind of the 75 era to now, where you may have had 1-3 jobs back then, compared to 6-20 jobs the average player has now.

Fair enough, do it in your spare time and don't think much about it. But most players pay a subscription to do fun content, and nothing is at the moment. If you've done Aeonics, Omen, Vagary, Odyssey, and everything else to death, there's nothing left but to grind Master levels. New content couldn't come soon enough. Master levels is just a cheap way of keeping us busy until they get around to that.

So you guys choose to maintain 10-16 jobs, then complain about the grind being insane? >.> How about choose not to maintain 16 jobs so that won't be a problem.

I mean even if ML isn't a grind, for people who likes to add more goals on their to-do lists instead of cutting them down, they'll be overwhelmed no matter what. Not because of the game is actually grindy, but because of time management.

I do Odyssey, and I mainly use 3 jobs in 3 different roles, one of them being super easy to gear aka whm. Because I value my time and I'm not going to keep adding more jobs on my job list and overwhelm myself with endless new tasks. I may add one more job to the list months later if I feel I need it, that's about it.

Despite Odyssey has unique mechanics, many jobs are interchangable in terms of roles. For example, If you need piercing, pick one job between THF DNC WAR DRG or something, you don't need all 4. If you need a tank, pick one between RUN and PLD, you don't need both pld and run to cover tank role. Geo is completely skippable for Odyssey and COR slot is the easiest to find people so I'd skip it unless you are a COR fanatic like me.

So something like RUN WAR WHM or BRD gears at top level allows a player do segs and pretty much every NM that I can think of, gets all 3 damage types, has 3 roles covered, and it works in BLM setup too.

Why do you need 10-16 jobs to do Odyssey? It makes no sense. >.>

If you only play 10-16 jobs for fun or 3x RP run, then you don't need ML40. ML 40 is for the hardcore wanting to do things the hard way. RP x3 farm requirement is pretty low because you don't need to kill the NM.

Personally, I don't see "I play 16 jobs" being a good argument. Just because you can do it in FFXI, doesn't mean it's the best choice from reward:effort ratio pov.

And that makes them different.



Just because you "Have" a job, doesn't mean it "needs" ML 40. Players have more jobs now because progression is faster now.

The comparison is fair. At 75 era you can't even join content without jobs at 75. These days a ML0 100 JP whm can do v20s.

Funny thing is, getting ONE perfectly geared jobs at 75 would take more time than getting 10 ML 40 r25 jobs now anyways. How many DRKs had relic+mythic+dring+KC+ebody at 75? It took years to grind those at 75 too. I am not even sure if I've seen one.

Pick 3 jobs to work on as your mains. Trust me, it will be a massive weight of your shoulders and you'll enjoy what you're doing far more if you do this.

Some people can handle having lots of jobs to work on, some people become mentally locked when they login and think of the mass of work required to keep them all at the top and just nope out.

When you come back to the game in a year you're going to have the same problem and you'll just quit again. It's a mental block because you've built up this massive weight of tasks to keep them all relevant.

Heck, maybe even just pick 1 job as your main for a while.

The defining feature of this game is the flexibility and freedom that the job system allows. It's more than likely the reason many players were drawn to the game in the first place, but absolutely the reason why players like me can still enjoy it almost 20 years later. Asking people to just stick to a few jobs given the games foundational principle is irrational.

If every melee job wasn't identical, it'd be a true statement.

The key here is that not every job needs to be ML99 to be effective. Most of the bonus abilities from SJ happen in the first 15 or so ML's (SJ50-52), after that it's mostly just bonus points. Important for DPS jobs, not nearly as big a deal for everyone else.

MMMmmmm Grinding.

Also, Asura has the weirdest small *** energy villains I have ever seen. The guy really got a hard-on when he saw the patch notes lol...