Caladbolg Or Apocalypse

This is how I use Apoc tbh. Particularly solo, if I'm in an event where I have access to trusts, I will have somewhat decent buffs and heal support, so Calad will be what I start with. If the trusts die or I need to survive, Apoc comes on. I specifically do this when soloing a triple RP run in Gaol and DRK is my third job. By then, the trust selection thins out and I have less healers and buffers to keep me alive, so Apoc is the last resort, no pun intended. I think it's a cool weapon to have, but I would classify the same as you did: Caladbolg = damage/party weapon, Apocalypse = survival/solo play weapon

Prime is better for both of those fights due to WS wall but Primes are a whole different can of worms especially for a player picking their first REMA.

Depends on server too. On Phoenix, ancient currency has gone up significantly in recent months. I made an Excalibur last year and bought most of my currency at under 200k per 100 piece. Now, 100 Byne, M.Silver, and Jadeshells are at least twice that. They have been consistently selling for about 350k, 430k, and 450-500k respectively.

For Apoc, it's 105 Jades + 16 Silvers + 62 Bynes. So on my server, we're looking at (105)(450,000) + (16)(430,000) + (62)(350,000) = ~75.8mil in relic currency, and that was assuming the low end of the market on Jadeshells (it's closer to 80mil if you go with the higher 500k/shell that is frequent on my server).

By current Phoenix prices:

Apocalypse:
75M - relic currency
5M - Plutons (~50k a stack)
7M - Marrow (1.4m each)
60M - Detritus (~10m/stack)
---------------------
147mil total to R15
133.5mil if you sell the 30 Jadeshells you get back


Caladbolg:
66M - HMPs (~4.4mil/stack)
18M - Riftdross (~300k each)
20M - Boulders (~200k/stack)
60M - Detritus (~10m/stack)
---------------------
164mil total to R15

So only a ~30m difference on my server, even assuming low end of the market for Jadeshell prices. Even closer than maletaru's (not unreasonable looking) numbers of 186m Caladbolg and 133m Apoc, for a 53m difference.

Do you need to do the riftdross phase?

You didn't reduce the jades for the 30 you get back.

Prices obviously vary by server for all of these things, I used Asura prices which were ~400k per dynamis 100-piece.

Yes, 60 Riftdross/Riftcinder, depending on weapon, is required for the level 95-99 phase for all Empys.

You might be thinking of the not-mandatory afterglow version of the 95-99trial, which requires 3000 dross/cinder (and allows you to skip the 10k Boulder step, but that's obviously not even close to a worthwhile tradeoff)

Ah yep, you're right. I always forget that since I tend to just toss those in Storage and hoard them. Updated my original post, thanks for catching that!

Still, I think both of our points illustrate that the difference in price between a relic and an empy might not be what it once was. Relics were dirt cheap a year or two ago, and have actually increased a bit over time.

How can you have a cost analysis but ignore:
The ~8 hours doing trials for relic weapon

And

The ~40ish hours doing nm trials for emp
The ~20ish hours farming trophies

DRK does fine in Odyssey segment farms. No, it's not as strong as Warrior because of damage types, but it still does very well.

Because this was just a cost analysis?

And honestly, Empys are easier for me. I do the NM trials on a second screen while I work, just look up whenever I have a free few minutes and kill a placeholder. It's very low impact and low attention required, even if it takes more total minutes to completion.

In comparison, it's WAY more hassle for me to go out and do 1600 Catastrophe killing blows (where I'm paying full attention the whole time), then 5 annoying Glacier NM pops.

Also worth considering that for the Empy trophies, Caladbolg is BY FAR the easiest path. Carabosse and CC are pretty easy pops, 2 KI each and only one timed NM spawn between the two. And Isgebind Hearts are kind of a joke, with few KIs competing with gold chests in Uleguerand and a single KI needed to pop Isgebind. The difference in annoyance between building Calad/Armageddon/Masamune and something with awful Chloris or Glavoid paths is VAST.

Time = money

Ive personally watched Ankubut and Okyupete take well over 6 hours to respawn. To say thats irrelevant in cost analysis is extremely flawed. Unless the target audience is buying gil of course and that time doesnt need to be spent on gil making schemes.

I only bothered with the calculations because someone asked about it, but I was shocked by how close they've gotten in price.

It will depend on your server though, many items have WILDLY swinging prices between Asura, Carbuncle, & Phoenix.

I have both weapons and I've used them both a fair bit. Apocalypse damage is trash-tier, and should only be wielded when you need the heals. If you have a prime scythe there is absolutely no circumstance under which you would ever need to use Apocalypse. The JA haste from the AM is not worth using in any realistic scenario; any changes you could make to your TP set to make up for this difference would be blown away by the fact that you're using a TERRIBLE dps weapon. Similarly, even if it can help you cap haste for the ~10% of the time where LR is down, you're still wearing a terrible weapon (and either swapping /losing TP, or wearing it during the LR time as well) so the increased TP speed will either barely negate its terrible damage or not even make up for its terrible damage.

Caladbolg is a great weapon so long as you don't have concerns with using Torcleaver (WS wall, SC, etc.). If there are problems with using Torcleaver, DRK has plenty of other excellent REMA you can use in place of Calad and still do respectable damage; Apocalypse is not one of them.

People actually do those trials legit without any form of botting?

If youre botting trials, youre botting your gil making methods.

The point still stands that it is time taken away from making gil.

If we completely valued our time without any ethics or morality:
-Bot trials while doing door dash/side hustle.
-Use side hustle to buy gil while enjoying complete trials.
-????
-Profit?

How far down the rabbit hole of morality are you willing to go?? How far are you willing to move the goalposts??

Guys doin a cost analysis and ignoring a solid chunk of the emp route. The gil youre using to buy the currency and materials comes from somewhere.

Even if you want to suggest the trials and NM camps are botted, only one person who posts here is botting the trophy farming.

If the target audience spends their day botting FFXI and buying gil, I dont think the cost analysis matters much to them. No one whos bought $500 USD in gil (probably a RMTed char too but I digress) is gonna go “oh its only a 17 million gil difference to R15!”

Maletaru and I were both doing the same thing: we were responding to specific discussion points about the price of relics (and just that aspect) due to some comments about relics being really cheap. So we did the math to show the current pricing.

Nobody was saying there are no other requirements to consider aside from price. You make a valid point that the Empy NMs take time, in addition to the sellable items. That wasn't what we were talking about in that moment though.

Again though, even when you do talk cost/benefit analysis and the opportunity cost of doing something else in game instead of camping an NM... this is very much a YMMV situation. I'm not playing FFXI to make gil during the time I would idly camp NM placeholders (literally while I'm working my real job). I'm occasionally looking up at the screen when I have some time. Sometimes I'll just sit there for hours and not kill anything because I was busy with some other RL stuff, but when I have 30 seconds to look back at the screen and kill a ph, I do.

It's very low stress and low attention required. If you have to get the final stage item AS SOON AS POSSIBLE and stare at the screen the whole time and think "I COULD BE MAKING SO MUCH GIL RIGHT NOW DOING SOMETHING ELSE", then my method probably isn't what you're going for.

And in either case, who really cares if it takes longer? That should not be the determining factor in whether to go for an Apocalypse instead of a Caladbolg.

I get that, but time is still money, I dont think it should be ignored in a discussion of cost analysis.

Skarwind then when on about botting, which I was avoiding with my initial point when I brought up the unavoidable time investment both have that cant be bought (RMT not permitting, and here we go down another rabbit hole how half of the currency on AH was farmed by RMT). Perhaps I was mistaken, but Im presuming the target audience for that statement was someone who is mostly playing legit: short term use of tools, no extended botting sessions and no RMT.


I mean, youre responding to me directly, but you have nothing to say to Skarwind after their “people actually do these trials legit? Lol” comment?

I made 2 ghorn and 2 aegis when currency was dirt cheap when RMT farmed it 24/7. I swear I only paid 30m each for them. Next time I considered making a relic was Apoc, and it was about 150m and I couldn't be bothered at that price.

Yours was a reasonable point that had more relevance to the overall discussion, even if I had some differences in perspective.

That "legit?" comment was just bait lol.

I unno, I find the time = money/cost-benefit stuff rather silly. Not every activity you choose to do in your time should be put against time spent making Gil or whatever. If your goal and choice is to be as efficient as possible…. Sure? But generally if you derived value from ann activity you’re done, that’s good time spent imo.

I'm not saying every second playing FFXI should be about making gil, I'm not Eiryl. But if you're assessing a cost analysis of something, I feel that time invested in the product that cant be bypassed via the auction house should be part of the analysis. As I said before, the gil you're spending at the auction house had to come from somewhere, time was spent getting the gil so you could get the currency and materials from the auction house instead of Ambuscade or the source content (dyna, VW, etc etc).

Of course, that goes out the window if you get your gil via RMT, but I doubt the 17 mil difference is much of a breaking point. The first site that popped up when I searched for "buy ffxi gil" offers a 5% bonus if you buy 400 million gil or more, which costs $241 CAD.

Spending time acquiring gil is part of the core gameplay. For most of us, it doesnt matter, we all probably have enough gil to get whatever we want when we want it. Maybe I'm wrong with this next statement, but I'm pretty sure the venn diagram of "has to take the gil difference into consideration" and "has limited playtime" overlaps significantly. If you only have 3 hours a day to play, those NM trials and trophy farming may turn into a multiple week venture. Someone with limited playtime may be stuck on Ankubut and Okyupete for over two weeks.

Newer players (if they aren't RMTing) have way more time than gil and much less lucrative options for farming gil, so the math is different for them. I'd say gil cost is likely to play a large role in deciding which weapon to get.

Unless you're on asura, then just swipe the CC and buy it all

I think you just put yourself into a corner:
If newer players have more time than gil, and reliable options for farming gil are few and far between, then they wouldnt be able to use the auction house to speed through the currency/materials reliably

They'd be stuck relying on ambuscade and the source content. Source content for Empyrean weapons is voidwatch, and a new player may have problems getting materials from that (depending how you feel about farming VW outside of campaign), whereas a player running NQ Ambu gear could farm dyna easily for currency.

I dont think this is a discussion about brand new players though. I did consider it, but OP has been around since 2012 minimum.

I'm (still) not trying to advocate for one path or the other. I just think there's a difference between someone who has hundreds of millions / billions of gil and does full clear seg farms every day & 2 dynamis [D] a week, they would value the time much more than the gil. A newer player with not much gil and who's not doing dyna/segs regularly, their gil may be more important and they should be more willing to spend their time on weapon requirements over spending more gil.

Anyways to my original question ? can’t you skip the riftdross phase and go straight to the RBBs?

So far as i know, you still need to do the 1st dross/cinder dump, the 2nd one can be skipped via the RBB

The first Trial of the Magias path for Riftdross requires 60 to get a Lv99 Empyrean. This one is not skippable. The next Trial of the Magias path after that is to get the 99 II Afterglow, which costs 3000 Riftdross. Nobody does that path, as you can go directly to 119 via 300 stones through Oboro, then do the 10k stone path from Oboro.

You prob just overlooked the earlier response, two posts after your question (I didn't quote you and Maletaru snuck in a reply before I hit post, probably why): https://www.ffxiah.com/forum/topic/58007/caladbolg-or-apocalypse/2#3717545


I will say that we have an guy in the LS who just returned in the past year and hadn't been back since the early Adoulin days. DRK was always his main, so he wanted to gear that back up but he had almost no ilevel gear (he was rocking like, Delve DA earrings and common gear from that time).

We got him a Montante +1 to get him going, some v0 Gaol wins to get Sakpata/Nyame access, and he got to work on a Caladbolg. He focused on stuff like Ambuscade and segment farming (with its nice gil reward) whenever possible, working on Caladbolg stuff in his spare time. Made the Caladbolg and got it to 119 and started throwing swarts at it, and he's now a deadly DD.

It was absolutely the right call, he would be far weaker had he gone for Apoc first, even though he probably could have finished that more quickly. And the Caladbolg even helps him make money faster, with better segment run results and faster Ambu wins, for gil that he's now putting into a BRD (or could put into stuff like situational DRK toys such as an Apoc).