Corsair - Possible for the casual player? Follow

To begin I should introduce myself and speak a bit about my history with FFXI, as well as a bit about my real life situation in order to provide a solid context to the rest of the post. If you wish to skip right to the meat and potatoes of what I want to say feel free to do so, but I feel it is necessary to provide you guys with a thick description of my current situation in order for you all to better understand and perhaps advice me with regards to my issues.

I am a veteran FFXI player, started playing in 2003 back when I was in my first years of high school. At that point I was leveling a warrior and after that a Dragoon and Warrior to 75. I continued to play on these jobs until around 2006 when personal issues both in game and real life compelled me to delete my character and cancel that account forever.

I came back in 2008 feeling confident about my ability to handle the game at the time. I was in the middle of my summer vacation in my first year of college. Things seemed easy to get back into and I got a new character to level 60 with Dragoon before quitting again.

I made yet another return to the game in the Winter of 2009 from November - January. Got that Dragoon to 75. Some friends quit the game leaving me with about 40mil gil at the time. Bought the full barone+1 gear with some solid AH rares as well and once again quit the game. This was due to lack of time because of a part time paid internship.

Came back again with the release of the first Abyssea expansion played until level 80 and was forced to quit the game due to the high work load and pressures of my upper division courses. Obtained virtually no gear and did no end game content.

Finally I once again return to FFXI. I came back in November and have for the first time in my history with the game found a linkshell that accepted me and actually helps with end game content and gear. They are not a hard core linkshell or what would have been defined as an HNMLS back in the day. They are simply a small close family linkshell that has the potential to do Empyrean+2 AF or AF3+2. I am currently very happy with this linkshell and all the wonderful members, the new leveling style the game has taken has allowed me to play even during my limited amount of time. Making gil is not quite as hard as it used to be given the new curror exchange methods. This being said I am still very limited because of my school, classes, and now also part time internship.

I am unavailable to play the game at all on Tuesday and Thursdays, Monday's and Wednesdays I have my internship, and after work i return home and usually do catch up work for my classes or study. Truth be told the only real times I have to actually sit down and play the game for longer than 1 hour at a time is on Thursday nights when I usually play from 5pm-3am and on Friday which I usually pull a 6-10 hour playing session as well. Saturday's are usually reserved for studying and Sunday's are reserved for my ethnographic study research.

Overall my FFXI play time comes down to about 24-28 hours a week give or take 2-4 hours depending on various situations. Keeping all of this in mind I now come to the meat and potatoes of my actual post.

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I now have a level 95 monk with AF3+1. Nothing special in terms of rare gear, Rare/ex equipment, no empyrean weapon or anything like that. It has taken me the past 5 weeks to get the AF3+1 and to get monk to 95. My Dragoon is 95 as well. I have always had an interest in corsair ever since the job first came out. Yet, before I was never able to even afford bullets for it. Now that I can make about 400-500k a week within my play schedule. I have been able to level corsair to 95 as well but unfortunately without the proper gear that i see many corsairs on these and the official FFXI forums say corsairs should have. Furthermore, I am unable to afford high level bullets past the Iron. Given this information, I must ask the following questions.

Am I in a position in which leveling corsair would be possible in an effective and useful manner in various contexts including the possibility of end game content in the future?

As a casual player, are there alternatives to the long term NM camping or high time consuming gear such as the Altdorf's earring, Wilhelm's Earring, aquiline belt, Armageddon, etc. ?

Some of the AH equipment for Corsair is a bit outside of my budget, such as the Stormsoul rings which run at about 1.2-1.4mil in my server each. When you include the price of ammunition those rings become quite the challenge to obtain. Is there any alternative that I could pursue on this end as well?

Lastly, considering how many breaks I have taken from the game, and how long the gaps between my breaks generally were, (between 1-2 years). Is it even possible to catch up to end game anymore, considering my full time school, part time internship, and limited hours of play schedule?


Is it possible to get to end game with corsair under these circumstances or was corsair made with the more hard core player in mind?


This is really all I wanted to ask all of you. I am trying to figure out how in the world I am going to play this job under my current circumstances. Perhaps there are things I have not thought about yet that would change my current situation in game. Maybe there are multiple ways that I am unaware of to obtain gear for the job, or maybe corsair was made for hard core players and I should choose a job more suited for some one with my limited play schedule. Whatever your reply maybe, I ask that it be constructive, and relevant to the topic at hand. I appreciate your time in reading this and will check back regularly in hopes of getting some good replies from you all.


Thank you.












Edited, Jan 5th 2012 7:04am by alazar14

To play COR these days it really helps to get an Armageddon. Totally changes the nature of the job. I think that is the first question you have to ask yourself. Do I have the means (BST solo, NIN + WHM dual box, empy static, gilz for mercs) to acquire this weapon? If you can answer that as "yes" then you can definitely play COR casually.

I'm a casual player and have been able to complete AF3+2 and Armegeddon 85 with my LS group. If I can do it, most other players should be able to. Additional benefit is that once you have this gear, COR's expense drops considerably. An Orichalcum bullet for QD and Bronze bullets for Wildfire is mostly what you need. A few stacks of steels or Oberon's for TP as needed. Some Fire cards and Light/Dark cards.

Without WF you are relying on Last Stand as WS damage and that is pricier to maintain since you need highest tier bullets to get best damage.

Armageddon is one of the easier empy paths.
The inital stages require camping NM's but the spawn rates are typically 1-2 hrs and you can get credit for the kills afk if you team up with someone.
VNM stage is a bit harder since you have to wield the gun and can't solo these mobs on COR. But there is often groups killing these mobs so teaming up is often possible or forming a shout group.

(Edit: not that you can't QD solo these NM's but rather its a major pain in the ass and requires skilled pulling to the pinning site to do so)

The Abyssea items require two NM's to get a level 85 Armageddon.
Carabosse is a pain herself but farming her pops is quite easy as the lesser NM's can be solo'd/duo'd without much trouble.
Cirein-Croin is a total joke. The KI's can be farmed in gold chests and the mob can be solo'd with any mage job. I already had 15 lanterns by the time my empy group started on my weapon just from soloing the big fish on RDM.

I'd say the biggest hassle in the whole thing was getting the VNM's done.

An empy static of 4 people is ideal (NIN, WAR, WHM, THF). You can kill everything with that setup and get all red procs. Significantly speeds things up over trying to do it all solo or dual boxing. Disadvantage is of course finding 3 other likeminded individuals with similar schedules. We actually formed a group of 6 just so we could do things even in one or two folks couldn't make it.

Edited, Jan 5th 2012 2:09pm by Dartagnann

Camping NM is actually even more causal than EG stuff, just log in, kill PH every 5~15 min, afk after each PH's killed. And leech for kill count if there's someone else doing it. In fact I only camp NM when I wanna do something else irl and still want to make progress, just because other stuff like dyna requires more attention than camping.

Also you don't have to camp it 4hrs straight. You can just do it whenever you have free time and do it again if no pop. Once I spent 3hr to camp an NM no pop, I just warp and gave up. Next day when I go camp the same NM again I saw it up just right there and got a kill count right away in 1 min. Even if you only have 1~2hr of play time a day you just gonna get it someday, can't be THAT unlucky that it always pop 2hr+

Edited, Jan 9th 2012 6:41pm by Afania