Heh, only lost 1200 exp tonight

[Nameless]

I'm so sick of this, I die at least once every night, no one will invite me to PT, no one responds to my PT invite. God I'm sick, I spent 4 hours on saturday to get a pt and make 300 exp, I hate it. I don't even have fun as thief. I don't have sneak attack, the only thing thiefs live fore, I don't have treasure hunter, steal never works, my entire LS has passed me in level, it seems everyone is better than me, and I'll never have fun with them, doing NM hunt or something. 2 or my LS members have gotten advanced jobs and both passed me in level.

I KNOW I won't hit 15 this month, I bet everyone in the LS chat that it wouldn't happen. I used to have hope, but I've been 13 for 2 weeks, have more play time than most my friends, and I'm unwanted, but everyone tells me it gets better at 15, when I can't even get there.

I'm sick of this, seems worth quitting thief at this point

[Soller]

If your only dying once a night, your doing pretty good I usually die 4 or 5 times a day. Anyways, if your having trouble leveling, try just farming easy cons. I've gone from 9 to almost 12 farming crawlers for quick cash and xp seems to go kinda fast. Sometimes I go to the canyon and solo easy/decent con rarabs and bee's. I dunno about Bastok or Sandoria hunting spots, since I left bastok the moment I could survive taking an ambusher shot in the back.

[Intrigue]

why not just have a break and change jobs for a while. then go back to it later.

[Fuuko]

THF is a hard class -_- I was about to give up with my THF when I was around 13~ too, but somehow I made it to 15, mostly soloing or with all melee parties + 1 RDM in the Shakrami Maze:

We were a party of unwanted thieves, we all were like 13-14ish, we had no WHM to heal us, just a RDM (I've always thought that RDMs doesnt like to be the WHM of the group). Eventually in that night everyone got to 15, so everyone got Sneak Attack, after that we owned that place, we killed these worms really fast and got the fastest exp I've never got before.

Also I found out that daggers are just so creepy at low lvls, I find it way more usefull to use HTH weapons with a sub MNK, at lvl 25 I'm doing 140's damage with Sneak + Combo in Qufim.. and the items drop like mad.

You should try to solo some birds in the Tahrongi canyon (warning: they link), just becareful of Ghosts, skels and everything that's more than "Easy prey".

[John Doe III]

Re: Heh, only lost 1200 exp tonight

Originally posted by Nameless
I'm so sick of this, I die at least once every night, no one will invite me to PT, no one responds to my PT invite. God I'm sick, I spent 4 hours on saturday to get a pt and make 300 exp, I hate it. I don't even have fun as thief. I don't have sneak attack, the only thing thiefs live fore, I don't have treasure hunter, steal never works, my entire LS has passed me in level, it seems everyone is better than me, and I'll never have fun with them, doing NM hunt or something. 2 or my LS members have gotten advanced jobs and both passed me in level.

Here's the thing you forgot . While your Linkshell goes searching meaninglessly for items on Genkei or Sub Jobs etc. you can kick back and do it all easy with Treasure hunter. TH2 is even better. While they fight Leaping Lizzy 6 times and no drop you can fight a few or once and get it then leave . If you give up on Thief you will be broke when your higher level. I can promise you that. And try using H2H instead of daggers if you are. If you need any help just IM me or PM me.

[pug]

just stick with it, i think i got to 15 doing easy cons in the fumaroles or some place like that. you can kill a ton of monsters in a row without resting, and even though i should have been using a sword or h2h, i used a dagger. still try to lvl your dagger up, but go with either sword or h2 as well. they become especially useful once you get sneak attack, as they have weapon skills that stack with it, and you can do some pretty enviable dmg with a high tp for your lvl.

for a while i was getting one lvl a night, but then 13-15 i probably spent 4-5 days on. the main thing is not spending time trying to find a group, just go off and solo easy cons, even if you only pick up 14-24 xp per fight, if you can kill 15 of those in a row without resting it adds up quick. it does get a little tedious, but it's well worth it. since i've been 15 i've been loving thf, and am thinking of changing my past plan of going to 70 with dragoon when i could and sticking to thief. good luck to you.

[Goronath]

I'm sorry but for people that complain about groups that much I say either you're not trying or you havent spent the time to figure out how the game works.

Very simply, type /search area inv 12-14.

This will give you a list of everyone in your zone with looking for group flag up between lvl 12 and 14. You should easily be able to find a bunch of people that are seeking a group.

It is true that thf is a relatively weak class prior to lvl 15, but a taru blm that easily dies with 1 hit from most mob's special attacks is at least as hard to play for early levels. My LS had about 5 thf (before everyone switched to advanced jobs) and everyone hit at least lvl 20 by the first week. Of everyone in my LS I probably had the hardest time at early lvls since I died like 10x a day.. 1 hit from a mob's special attack did more damage than my max hp.

Simply take the time to socialize, make some more friends closer to your lvl now if your whole ls has passed you up, i've been in the same situations before.

[Not.Bad]

I feel your pain but in a different way.

I hit 16 (Mithra Warrior) a few days ago, met some nice people along the way but for the most part i've met really really really really really stupid people.

I get in parties and unless I take FULL charge of the group, something always goes wrong. People go AFK, Warriors watch my life go down to critical before saying "Hey? Maybe I should provoke off him." To which I usually end up dying. Then you get the party members who aren't satisfied with the targets you are pulling go off searching themselves and get aggroed by three goblins. The healer (if we have one, so damn hard to find WHM's) heals them and the goblins chase her, so while the Warriors are running away instead of turning and helping the White Mage, I again do my job, provoke off the healer and run away and usualy die.

Then their is the bickering. The "I want to fight this monster for this item!" Even though we can't take that monster down and 5 out of 6 of us are here for the exp.

Oh and if I am not the party leader many times the party leader will turn around and invite his level 14 or level 20 friend because hey "Thats what friends are for right?" Not even bothering to realise that the level 14 would be better off soloing and won't be able to help us at all and that the level 20 is skewing our exp like a pitch fork.

So after about 2-3 deaths in that party I get fed up, leave and try to find a new one.

To bad the WHM stayed with them and the chances of finding a new WHM is slim at best. So after 45 minutes of extensive searching, you get a party together, with a WHM. Usually what happens in my case is all the above, again.

By the third party i've gotten lucky, and i'll make a few 1000 experience points but then I have to go to work, or sleep or w/e. So I wake up the next day, do it all over again, losing about 600 exp to death. Overall? I make around 400 exp a day at most. Today for instance I actually just LOST 400 exp and now I have to go to work in a hour =/.

If I play 5 hours in a day, 3 hours is usually wasted.

Maybe its just me, maybe its the Siren server, but I did my research, I know how to play my job, I know how to work as a group and I know how to skill chain, but 90% of the rest of the players don't and I end up paying for it.

Hearing your story discourages me greatly as my intent is to be Thief Main, War sub. Having to go what you go through as well as what I am going through now may just push me over the top.

I think I may switch to White Mage. This way if I quit a party because of stupidity I have some bitter sweet knowledge that I will get a new party faster then they can get a WHM.

I've been in ONE really good group before that was with Japanese players whom I couldn't communicate with. We still managed to do more skill chains, gain more exp, and overall have a better time then I have ever had with english speaking groups. To bad they were all just leveling mules and I haven't seen em since they went back to their high level chars =/ -sigh-

[Nameless]

Originally posted by Goronath
I'm sorry but for people that complain about groups that much I say either you're not trying or you havent spent the time to figure out how the game works.

Very simply, type /search area inv 12-14.

This will give you a list of everyone in your zone with looking for group flag up between lvl 12 and 14. You should easily be able to find a bunch of people that are seeking a group.

It is true that thf is a relatively weak class prior to lvl 15, but a taru blm that easily dies with 1 hit from most mob's special attacks is at least as hard to play for early levels. My LS had about 5 thf (before everyone switched to advanced jobs) and everyone hit at least lvl 20 by the first week. Of everyone in my LS I probably had the hardest time at early lvls since I died like 10x a day.. 1 hit from a mob's special attack did more damage than my max hp.

Simply take the time to socialize, make some more friends closer to your lvl now if your whole ls has passed you up, i've been in the same situations before.

You try that in Valk Dunes, it's impossible, there are about 4 people not taken for group and they are higher than me. or they are all BLm (not really usefull to me).

I'm currently leveling WAR and MNK to 10, because I'm so sick of thief, I died twice tonight, once because I saw a ghoul with almost no hp, but it was running and I had combo ready, so I chased it, got aggroed by a gob and died, makes me so mad. God hates me, I swear.

[Tomoh]

Nameless, I was going to suggest you level other jobs like WAR or Monk. You're doing the right thing. You can always come back to Thief once you finish the sub-job quest. Having a WAR as sub to Thief would help somewhat.

I had the hardest time Leveling up to Thief 15. I don't plan on leveling up at Valkrum based on horror stories I have heard from my LS members.

[Nameless]

Yeah, it was valk or shak, and personally, I like Valk more.

I'm leveling in Konshat Highlands at D7, I can solo worms there and get around 36 exp, so it's pretty good. I'm going to try to get WAR and MNK to 10 though, then just be patient and take THF to 15....slowly lol.

[Icemage]

The quality of English-speaking players on the various servers seems to vary radically. The servers which recieved many of the beta testers seem to, as a whole, now have higher quality players (Ragnarok, Phoenix, Bismarck, Midgardsormr).

While I do run into the occasional "total newbie" groups (I was victimized by one yesterday) on Midgardsormr, the high number of experienced players shows, as the "veterans" tend to show the newer players how to best make use of their characters, not only by explanation (i.e. how to correctly perform renkei/skillchains), but by example (i.e. don't cast Silence on that crab ^.^).

The situation being described by Not.Bad is pretty crazy, but I find it easy to believe. Lots of new players have never read up on the game at places like this (and not to knock FFXIOnline, but even here there seems to be a chunk of the population that posts here that doesn't know what they are talking about either).

The best thing to do is just find a few players to play with on a semi-regular basis. Yes, for you anti-social types out there - that means you have to make friends with the people you want to play with. Amazing concept, isn't it?

As for disastrous party members, the best solution I've found to that problem is to simply get rid of troublemakers by kicking them from the party, or apologizing and disbanding. What you'll find start to happen is that other players will pick up on the fact that you actually have some common sense and will start looking to party with you.

When people suggest that they're horribly inappropriate level <whatever> friend join the party, simply explain that the XP will suck and if they insist, then again, exercise your right to leave the party. You should not put up with party leaders who are satisfied with 12 xp gains per kill. ^^

The real key is to build a reputation among players around your level - if you show that you know what you are doing, word will get around. If you're an idiot and you get everyone around you killed just by breathing the air around them... well, word gets around there too.


Icemage

[Not.Bad]

Thanks for that insight Icemage. I may switch over to one of those servers you talked about. I'm a new player, and new to MMORGS, but I work hard to try to understand a games mechanics so I think I should fit in well. As I said I already find myself having to take over parties because my knowledge is just that much more then the others who have not read up.

The only reason I played on Siren in the first place was to play with some friends. Unfortunately they got the game earlier then me and are all peeking at lvls 25 + with no signs of slowing down for me. This is part of my frustration since I have to spend my hours leveling and nothing but in order to catch up to them instead of enjoying the game at a pace I can deal with.

The other thing about playing with particular friends is I am an importer =). I live in New Zealand so the time zone difference hurts major in getting the same players to play with. Which of those servers you mentioned would have alot of english speaking Japanese players? I have two Korean brothers, so I get along with Asians well and understand their culture (though Korea and Japan are very different I know). They are closer to my time zone as well. I think I would greatly enjoy playing with them.

[Icemage]

I don't know what the situation is like on most of the servers, but Midgardsormr has a very large English-speaking population. The number of English-spekaing Japanese players is relatively low, however (a situation which I imagine is probably true on all of the servers). Even though English is taught in Japanese schools, that in no way means that they can carry on a live conversation with you in an online game. The in-game translation tools can help convey simple concepts, but that's about it.

I suspect Ragnarok has a higher-than-average amount of English-speaking Japanese, as many importers gravitated to that server. I should probably also mention that Fairy has a very large NA presence, as it was the least populous of all the servers when the NA version was launched.

If you'll accept some advice, though - whatever you do, whichever server you end up on, don't fall into the trap of thinking that you have to keep up with your friends. One of the things that was realized very early on by those of us who were in the NA beta was that no matter how hard you try, you won't be able to stay within levelling distance of another player for very long - and that is ok, honestly.

Play the game at your own pace - don't rush. Play safe, play conservative, stay away from players who don't, and you will find yourself progressing just fine. Remember - this is about having fun for you - not your friends. If they really are speed demons who love to spend every waking moment playing, then so be it - you shouldn't feel obligated to follow their example.

As a whole, your best contacts in FFXI are going to be people who like to play the same way as you do, and at roughly the same pace. These are the people you will be playing with on an extended basis - friends are friends, and you can share information, items, or just a little light banter in a linkshell chat if you like, but when the chips are down and you're getting chased by an angry swarm of Crawlers, you're going to want to have the people you've played with most there to pull you out.


Icemage

[Not.Bad]

Thank you again for your post Icemage =).

From the sounds of it, Midgar seems like an enjoyable realm =). I may move there yet if there is a better player base.