Campaign!

So I finally got around to exploring some of the areas of the past in the new WotG expansion. I liked the new(or old?) West Sarutabaruta and it’s BGM. I now agree when Sireen told me the music for this new expansion is a lot better than the previous ones.

Or maybe we’re just sick of the old ones.

Anyway, I have now travelled to San d’Oria [S] and Windurst [S]. (What does S mean anyway?) But I still haven’t visited Bastok.

At first, I couldn’t decide which nation to pledge allegiance to. I couldn’t decide between San d’Oria or Windurst. So after I found out you could do the missions for all 3 nations and you can easily switch between the 3, I chose San d’Oria in the end.

Next is finding out about campaign battles. Tried to teleport to a battlefield but I didn’t have allied notes to spend. Figured I’d earn a few of them while killing EPs on my way to Passhow Marshlands [S] to activate the maw there, but I didn’t earn any.

Just then, a campain battle began in Passhow so I signed up for it and earned 400 AN at the end. It was a pretty quick battle and I got to see a large group of female DNC NPCs. :D

I’d say it’s because of this new campaign system, a lot of people who don’t get merit PTs easily now actively participate in campaign battles instead of hoping for besiged now. Which may also explain why the Astral Candescence was taken this morning, during the last 5 minutes of besieged, haha.

I’ve been participating in so many besieged battles, I think I’ve earned around 50 merit points from it.

The exp/time from campaign is a lot better than besieged. And it’s also more often, making it easy to earn exp/limit points. I’m going to try and see if I can finish my last 2 STR merits and then level WHM through campaign battles.

As DRK/WHM, I was able to solo the RNG and PLD orcs in Jugner’s battles. The warmachine here is crazy but you can survive if you have enough fire resistance. I think I had 60~65, and that already reduced a lot of damage from the warmachine’s fire weaponskills.

Another very good thing about campaign is, unlike besieged, all the effort you put in isn’t lost if you die at the end of the battle. You get awarded with your exp/limit and AN when you get raised.

I’ve only read a bit on campaign ops, but it seems that quite a few of them are designed for solo play. This is a great thing for a lot of people like me. There’s so much stuff in FFXI that I want to do, but can’t do because of timezone differences or language barrier or the need for a large group of people.

If there’s an equipment as good as Ares’ set or Adaman Hauberk and that’s redeemable through Allied Notes, you can be sure I’ll be happily grinding my way to be one of those well decorated soldiers :P