Suggestions for Fixing Abyssea Seal quests.Follow

My solution? 8 different quests per slot. Upon completion you get 1 seal of your choice. They are repeatable, but you can't get the same seal twice from the same quest. The quests don't all have to be easy or quick or cheap, but they should be achievable solo and provide a reasonable alternative to NM hunting.

My reasoning:
The uneveness of the quests is what annoys me the most. Some jobs quests take 10 times as long each run as others. That's just not at all ballanced.

But even ignoring that, it's still ultimatley an unchallenging grindfest. Repeating the same quest over and over again is mind numbingly dull. At least with AF2 farming in Dynamis there's something interesting going on, and you're getting currency for your efforts at the same time. You feel like you're getting something for the effort you put it. But spamming a quest 100 times? 200? More? How is that remotely challenging beyond having the time in the day and patience to do it?

Even if you are complacent with the drop rates and alternatives, you shouldn't be complacent with how poor and lazy the design of seal quests has been. Some of them are very basic indeed, and lack any real substance. Travel to 3 spots on the map, click on ???s, report back to NPC. OK, the first time is interesting and you need to find a safe route and a couple of confluxes, but the 2nd time onwards all that interest is gone.

Really, AF3+1 is nice but it's not that nice. Not compared to AF3+2. For most people getting their seals is merely the first step towards getting AF3+2, which comes with it's own challenge. The effort of getting the seals for +1s is disproprtionate to the reward you get.

Did the sassages quest last night/this morning.120 sassages traded, 12 RDM, 8 PUP.6 DRK, 3 RNG. I would have happily warped to change between my three jobs (not PUP) if it meant them being job specific in reward. SASSAGES!

Stupid android interwebs.

Edited, Sep 20th 2010 7:06am by Paskil

Some jobs get screwed on these quests. Like SAM/BST/WHM/THF for their head seals requiring 3 amoeban pseudopods. On my server those are at 90k+ each, making the low reward rate completely not worth it right now. You pretty much have to do the NMs for those seals or just be really patient and wait for the market to crash on them in a few months. The drop rate on seals from the quest doesn't really make it worth farming amoebas either.

You shouldn't compare AF3 +1 to Relic +1. They don't equate.

AF3 +1 = Relic
AF3 +2 = Relic +1

Cook book recipe quest takes 10min you say? You must be really bad. It can be done in minutes per trip. Getting my WHM af3 legs took about 5 hours or less. The pop location has a pattern, it is not random. So you always know where it will be next.

It's the unbalanced quests people have issues with. Look at the Miserable Coast ones... cookbook gets annoying after a while, but it's relatively fast, ramming sausages into a galka - least it's quick and simple, then you've got get a key item from popping a blue chest... have to zone to re-do it so you can't even easily spam it while in exp parties in there.

The head quests - the pseudopod drop rate is riduculous - you need 3 per quest for a chance at a chance of the seal you need... versus other ones just involving running around.

Yes you can do NMs - if you've got a group together, and no, RDM can solo isn't a decent work around for those who don't have RDM levelled - it's just the inbalance, coupled with SE's random number generator at its worst that's getting annoying. After a couple of days of it I was willing to stab someone with a galkan sausage - and what the hell's he doing with them all anyway?!

I'm sure that'll be a great consolation to the casual players who don't NM hunt, and still wont have their seals.

Plainly the quests were added as an alternative. If the seals were not meant to be quested, the quests would not exist at all. The issue is that the alternative is poorly implemented and - for most seals at least - not at all challenging, just horrifically time consuming. I for one have far better things to do with my life than spam these quests, so it'll be NMs only for me. But I do pity those people that don't have that option, for whatever reason.

Heh, I am prepared for that :) For me, the key point is that killing NMs is at least entertaining. I don't mind burning time if I'm enjoying it, or even repeating tasks as long they are fun. Some of the NMs are low-manable, and that'll get even easier after the next cap increase, and strategies can be continually tweaked and impoved with each attempt. There is only so much tweaking that can be done in a fetch quest though.

how do you know? if they weren't why were they put there.

SE decided to give more casual players a chance to upgrade their af, it was a good thought, but just poorly implemented. that's all.

I am sure an adjustment will come sooner or later.

personally, I hated the cookbook quest but I'm glad it was there. I got 5/8 Raider's Seals doing it. By the time I was done I could repeat it 3 times per ??? each time it moved, averaging 2-3 minutes per quest.

And while, I whoel heartedly agree with Melph that fetch quests are stupid, this is the only reason I got them so fast.

Edit: I was starting to think that maybe the possible seal drop could be tied to which ??? you retrieved because toward the end I got 3 Raider's in a row.....but I doubt it.

Edited, Sep 22nd 2010 1:34pm by ThiefKiller

But NM's require a group, pop items and more time to kill (especially if you want to keep the group small). Quests for the most part can be soloed (so all the seals are yours) and take little time for many of them.

So im not sure some one in a big group hunting NM's will get his seals any quicker than someone spamming quests. The big problem is the latter is repertitive boredom and the former is at least moderately entertaining

On average, I see about 1.5 seals per NM. It's usually 1 or 2. Sometimes none, sometimes up to four. With a group of about 12 people, most NMs go down in about 5 minutes. There are a lot of NMs which are so easy that any pick-up group should be able to handle them. In fact, most of the tier 1 NMs (the ones that drop seals) are in this category.


Groups are easy, there are countless people wanting to do this right now. You should be able to form a pick-up group in Whitegate in a matter of minutes. As for the pop items, they are ridiculously easy to get. You can usually farm one in the 3 minutes it takes for the ??? to repop.

You want a THF with you for sure. Did some 90 min NM kills and on average got 0.8 seals per NM. We were about 4 splitting the seal types 1 per person (WHM, COR, DNC, WAR), we got about 3 WAR, 1 DNC, 1 WHM in 90 min. So about 5 seals in 90 min, which isn't really dropping like candy.

Of course I was part of this, and my luck is usually terrible on anything but getting WAR drops (my WAR is 31).