thessalian (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
thessalian) wrote2006-11-08 04:46 pm
thessalian) wrote2006-11-08 04:46 pm
Entry tags:
40 Acres and a Mule
So my deathgnome is having a bit of an issue about gil ... as in, she doesn't have nearly enough. I mean, Jeuno's expensive, being for the higher-level players and all. The prices at the Auction House are ludicrous and even when they aren't, the transaction fees make up for it by being exorbitant. And in order to circumnavigate the price-jacking in Jeuno, one has to go to one of the starter cities, and to do that without dying, you need a Teleport, for which you have to pay unless you're very, very lucky and have a very nice high-level WHM in your area. (Even better when said nice high-level WHM happens to be on your LS, but that's rare.) So I needed a way to make some gil without having to spend everything I made on Teleports. It would also be nice to have access to an Auction House that didn't charge transaction fees up the arse.
So, as I was renewing my FFXI account for another three months (end of Feb now; nice to at least not have that to worry about with the redundancy, not that I suppose it matters in the long run but I'd rather not be deprived of fun on the off chance I wind up deprived of a paycheque), I decided to look into the cost of getting another character. And since it was 70p per month per new content ID, I decided, why not? It's adding just over £2 to the bill, and a second character is really necessary at this point.
Anyone on my friends list who has played this game before is already nodding. Anyone who hasn't is going to be confused - why on earth would I want another character on top of the one I've already got?
This second character would be what is referred to as a 'mule'. Now, mules serve a few different functions, all immensely useful. First of all, as the name suggests, they're additional storage space for items. Your mog house gives you the space for 30 items at lower levels, up to 50 at higher levels, and sometimes it just isn't enough. With that second character, you've got at least 30 more slots to put items in, provided you're in an area where you can send items to someone else on your server. (Additional characters seem to stay on your server, which is good.)
Then there's the fact that your mule starts in a starting city of your choice. The prices for just about everything in these cities are far more reasonable than in Jeuno, so if your mule has gil, you can use it to buy the things your main character needs and then have the mule send them to your main. Shopping extravaganza! Plus the Auction Houses are much more reasonable to deal with, so any crystals or low-level items that you need selling can just be shipped to your mule.
Not to mention the fact that you can send your mule out farming and such for you. Look, when you're partying, you have to share the spoils of war, which means you earn less overall than you do soloing. Since partying is mainly an XP thing, this wouldn't ordinarily matter, but it does if you're skint. Since your mule starts as a lvl 1 character, there are ample opportunities for farming because the drops tend to be better - the devs, I assume, are aware of the fact that starting level characters need to get gil quickly to get out of that starting-level armour and into something decent. So the principle is that you start out your character, sell all those lovely crystals at auction, and then hand off the gil earned to your main ... or use it in crafting.
Oh yeah, a mule can also be useful in terms of crafting, fishing and/or gardening. After all, if your stranded in a Rent-a-Room in Jeuno, you can't garden. However, if you have a character you don't give a shit about living in their own mog house in their own starting city, you can garden all you like, provided you remember to check in once a day. Also, the fishing in Jeuno sucks so if you want to go fishing - say, for example, do that "buckets of gold" quest in Bastok or gather the 10k moat carp needed to get the Lu Shang rod from the fisherman in San d'Oria - it's better to have a mule somewhere to do all that work and send the proceeds to your main. And then there's the option of having your mule earn gil, use it to buy crafting materials, build up a crafting skill and sell what's been made for yet more gil, which can be sent to your main.
Basically, a mule is a gil-making dynamo and storage space. And when it gets to the point where you can't advance any more without buying new gear or what have you ... well, you switch your mule to a new job and level that for awhile. Maybe you have to buy a new lvl 1 weapon or something, but that's about it. (This is why Humes make the best mules - they're pretty much average at everything, so you're not going to suffer when you switch jobs.) And when all your job possibilities are exhausted ... then you delete the character and, with the still-valid content ID, make a new one in a new city and start the whole process over again.
So, to sum up for those who didn't want to suffer from tl;dr syndrome: Second characters are called 'mules'. They're basically disposable characters that act as storage space and gil farmers. Divide your attention up right between the two, and you wind up with a much stronger, better-equipped main character without the horrors of gil buying. So, like I said, very much worth the extra 70p per month. Which means that, as well as the deathgnome, I have a disposable lvl 3 Hume thief named Thessaly running around Bastok. *shrug* It's a living.
In RL news, yesterday's endoscopy-related misery means that I have absolutely no idea what's wrong with me and therefore no idea when it will be better, which means I have no idea what to tell employment agencies about when I'm going to be able to start working. This makes job searching a bit of an impossibility. The only thing I can think right now is that I'd best update my CV and put it out there anyway, remembering how long it took to get even a nibble last time I went job-hunting. Better to have to say, "I can't yet; I'm unfortunately ill" than to have no paycheque when I need one. I'm probably going to give it until Monday, though, in the hopes that I'll hear about the date for this barium swallow thing I have to do so I'll have a better idea of when I'll get a diagnosis. If push comes to shove, I put my CV out there with the agencies and take tempwork despite the illness. That way I can at least make sure there's some money coming in, and can make myself unavailable for a week or so if I really need recovery time. It's all I can think of to do right now.
Oh, and my throat still hurts from the various attempts to stick things down it. I really hate this...
So, as I was renewing my FFXI account for another three months (end of Feb now; nice to at least not have that to worry about with the redundancy, not that I suppose it matters in the long run but I'd rather not be deprived of fun on the off chance I wind up deprived of a paycheque), I decided to look into the cost of getting another character. And since it was 70p per month per new content ID, I decided, why not? It's adding just over £2 to the bill, and a second character is really necessary at this point.
Anyone on my friends list who has played this game before is already nodding. Anyone who hasn't is going to be confused - why on earth would I want another character on top of the one I've already got?
This second character would be what is referred to as a 'mule'. Now, mules serve a few different functions, all immensely useful. First of all, as the name suggests, they're additional storage space for items. Your mog house gives you the space for 30 items at lower levels, up to 50 at higher levels, and sometimes it just isn't enough. With that second character, you've got at least 30 more slots to put items in, provided you're in an area where you can send items to someone else on your server. (Additional characters seem to stay on your server, which is good.)
Then there's the fact that your mule starts in a starting city of your choice. The prices for just about everything in these cities are far more reasonable than in Jeuno, so if your mule has gil, you can use it to buy the things your main character needs and then have the mule send them to your main. Shopping extravaganza! Plus the Auction Houses are much more reasonable to deal with, so any crystals or low-level items that you need selling can just be shipped to your mule.
Not to mention the fact that you can send your mule out farming and such for you. Look, when you're partying, you have to share the spoils of war, which means you earn less overall than you do soloing. Since partying is mainly an XP thing, this wouldn't ordinarily matter, but it does if you're skint. Since your mule starts as a lvl 1 character, there are ample opportunities for farming because the drops tend to be better - the devs, I assume, are aware of the fact that starting level characters need to get gil quickly to get out of that starting-level armour and into something decent. So the principle is that you start out your character, sell all those lovely crystals at auction, and then hand off the gil earned to your main ... or use it in crafting.
Oh yeah, a mule can also be useful in terms of crafting, fishing and/or gardening. After all, if your stranded in a Rent-a-Room in Jeuno, you can't garden. However, if you have a character you don't give a shit about living in their own mog house in their own starting city, you can garden all you like, provided you remember to check in once a day. Also, the fishing in Jeuno sucks so if you want to go fishing - say, for example, do that "buckets of gold" quest in Bastok or gather the 10k moat carp needed to get the Lu Shang rod from the fisherman in San d'Oria - it's better to have a mule somewhere to do all that work and send the proceeds to your main. And then there's the option of having your mule earn gil, use it to buy crafting materials, build up a crafting skill and sell what's been made for yet more gil, which can be sent to your main.
Basically, a mule is a gil-making dynamo and storage space. And when it gets to the point where you can't advance any more without buying new gear or what have you ... well, you switch your mule to a new job and level that for awhile. Maybe you have to buy a new lvl 1 weapon or something, but that's about it. (This is why Humes make the best mules - they're pretty much average at everything, so you're not going to suffer when you switch jobs.) And when all your job possibilities are exhausted ... then you delete the character and, with the still-valid content ID, make a new one in a new city and start the whole process over again.
So, to sum up for those who didn't want to suffer from tl;dr syndrome: Second characters are called 'mules'. They're basically disposable characters that act as storage space and gil farmers. Divide your attention up right between the two, and you wind up with a much stronger, better-equipped main character without the horrors of gil buying. So, like I said, very much worth the extra 70p per month. Which means that, as well as the deathgnome, I have a disposable lvl 3 Hume thief named Thessaly running around Bastok. *shrug* It's a living.
In RL news, yesterday's endoscopy-related misery means that I have absolutely no idea what's wrong with me and therefore no idea when it will be better, which means I have no idea what to tell employment agencies about when I'm going to be able to start working. This makes job searching a bit of an impossibility. The only thing I can think right now is that I'd best update my CV and put it out there anyway, remembering how long it took to get even a nibble last time I went job-hunting. Better to have to say, "I can't yet; I'm unfortunately ill" than to have no paycheque when I need one. I'm probably going to give it until Monday, though, in the hopes that I'll hear about the date for this barium swallow thing I have to do so I'll have a better idea of when I'll get a diagnosis. If push comes to shove, I put my CV out there with the agencies and take tempwork despite the illness. That way I can at least make sure there's some money coming in, and can make myself unavailable for a week or so if I really need recovery time. It's all I can think of to do right now.
Oh, and my throat still hurts from the various attempts to stick things down it. I really hate this...