This emergency maintenance kinda given me chance to write out what I've been doing since the content release.
1st, overall grinding xp was actually quite nice compared to Anemos days. Players are more urged to do chain grinding, and it's stull a trend nowadays. One of main reason was aside from mobs that used to pop NM FATEs, there's other type like adapted and mutates. Adapted simply seeing said mob grow larger in size and boosted stats, but gives multiply amount of xp when killed. Mutates are just like adapted, except they are mutating into whole different figure that's still relates, like mutating from opo-opo into an ape. And best of all, they dropped special cold lockboxes which would fork mostly materias, but also furnitures like mannequin or hanging halberds. Tarutaru minion also came from this (although normal lockboxes has low random chance dropping the minion as well), but the most sought is the uber rare /shiver emote which still nets 8 digit price over MB.
And before I continue, I've been joining Eureka discord channel, so
feel free to join as well since there's many info one will find very useful. :)
One of thing players have to unlock quickly is the EL (Elemental Level) 25 quest, which will unlock ability to farm lights. These will gather from random chance of killing normal mobs, multiplied if they're adapt/mutates, and also a sum from FATEs as well. However, this is where things would felt imbalance, will later discussed further below.
Aetheryte placement this time are much progressive. Simply put, the area player to progress will start toward east end, then moved to northwest, and ended up at northeast. Mount ability also quite unfortunate that it only gained on current capped EL, which is 35, but I guess it has it's own reasons.
I almost forgot this: one of 1st thing player will notice is this particular FATE that seems to pop very often, which revolves defending pagos bunnies. These strangely didn't reward any xp or drops like normal Eureka FATEs, but instead, players given random chance to have one of bunny following you for special time-limited treasure hunts. These unfortunately would lead players to many dangerous territories, and one shouldn't surprise if got felled by said dangers. And so, these FATEs are usually highly suggested to do after capping your EL. While these FATE seems less interesting, later investigation discovered the relation of bunny FATE as one of base requirement to pop normal FATE in Pagos.
Back to the rares, this time we got sneak peek from latest 4.36 patch notes, which introduces stuff veteran FF11 would immediately recognize, since two of them are optical hat and speed belt. Unfortunately however, just like their FF11 counterpart which is still notoriously famous for being uber-rare drops, it was quite similar tale in Pagos as well, given the fact that these items still hitting 8 to even 9 digit figure over MB.
And back to bunny treasure hunt, they will most often discovering either bronze or silver boxes, although there's much rarer chance to pop the gold box, which houses weird eye craft materials, as well as another rare minion: Copycat bulb. These rare eye material would be later required to be crafted into eye cluster, used as a bait to guarantee get the optical hat from certain NM, but they also not cheap over MB, at least still in their 6 to 7 digit figure, except the gold one which only came from mutated boxes and very often.
Next is the loot gain and the next Eureka relic upgrades. From that EL25, player would need to condense those collected light into special frozen crystals which act as base material for relic upgrades, needing in total of 31 of them to make a full current Pagos relic. The other is Pagos crystal which only exclusively came from normal NM FATEs while the final ingredient are just like Anemos counterpart, needing 5 of them per relic. However, as of this time, the rate of gaining those 3 became very imbalance. With the final ingredient, they could already support more than 9 relics, while normal crystal gain already can make up to 7-8. Frozen crystal, however, only could make up to 3 relics, which is huge gap. I hope there would be future-alternate ways to gain them faster. Even with farming adapted sleeping dragon, which many deems as fastest light farms, still can't catch up with other ingredients.
These... however... still wouldn't compare with overall rares which is greatly increase in RNG compared with Anemos loots. Understandably, since those rare gear loot will provide major boost for just in Eureka content, and the stats even stacked. One can only wonder if they would get a luck obtaining any of these. The /shiver emote however, are unnecessarily really low in chances, some said it's around 0.5%.
Overall, I guess the grinding experience kind off improved from Anemos and many ended up doing lot more of grinding parties instead of NM trains that is the norm at Anemos. Unfortunate though that this time, the rares has very low chances compared with Anemos loots. Even I personally only gotten that copycat bulb & 4/5 mats for getting optical hat. Just like Aquapolis/Uznair, Pagos adapted the layered RNGs with the introduction of bunny FATEs. And somehow I've spend much longer in Pagos, compared with Anemos days back then.
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Anyways, here's the summary of notable stuff in Pagos:
Aetheryte unlocks:
southeast, EL21
northwest, EL30
northeast, EL32
Quest progression:
EL21, 23, 25, 29, 35 (mount unlock)
Pagos Relic progression, requires EL25 quest where Gerolt will give player a special kettle that could accumulate light farms. Can only hold max 9 vitilated aether crystal, don't forget convert them into frosted protean crystal using crystal forge located at (6, 21), only accessible from NW aetheryte and drop into sidecliff leading to secret cavern.
1st step, 5 frosted protean crystal
2nd step, 10 frosted protean crystal & 500 pagos crystal
final step, 16 frosted protean crystal & 5 Louhi ices.
Notable loots
Normal lockboxes
Boutique Batiste
Boutique Boarded Leather
Reishi Mushroom
Lizard Tail
Wind-up Tarutaru
Frosted lockboxes
Chainmail Hanger
Crossed Halberds
Golden Hakutaku Eye
Wind-up Tarutaru
Ballroom Etiquette - Insufficient Petticoats (/shiver emote)
Bronze bunny chests
1000 gil
Pagos Spring Water
Pagos Sage
Random grade V materias
Silver bunny chests
10000 gil
Random grade VI materias
Stuffed Happy Bunny
Bunny triad card
Gold bunny chests
100000 gil
Random grade VI materias
Copycat bulb minion
Wooden Hakutaku Eye
Burning Hakutaku Eye
Earthen Hakutaku Eye
Damp Hakutaku Eye
Notable FATE rares (except for noted guarantees & cards which is semi random, rest are very rare):
Taxim (25, 28) => Taxim triad card
Hakutaku (29, 22) => Optical hat, non marketable, guarantee drop but requires crafted Hakutaku Eye Cluster which is marketable.
King Arthro (9, 15) => Speed belt
Hadhayosh (31, 19) => Behemoth pelt (used to upgrade that old 2.0 behemoth glamour into all class-equipable)
Copycat Cassie (22, 14) => Cassie Earrings
Louhi (36, 19) => 2 * Louhi's Ice (guarantee drops), Louhi triad card
