Oh Boy... And I'm supposed to be in bed

I have a Salvage run at around 2PM EST and now it's... about 7AM EST. I'm pretty sure Lissy is gonna log on FFXI and going "wtf mog, why aren't you in bed?"

Well, anyways, I can't sleep so lets talk about the subject at hand then: Salvage.

Now, believe me when I say this: I am not a Salvage expert and while I got 2/5 Usukane, I still don't know every single thing about Salvage and I've really only know Bhaflau pretty well and probably a good half of SSR. But anyways, lets talk about it for a bit, especially for those who want to do it but haven't done so because they can't find a group or are too afraid for it.

First thing's first: A lot of things in Salvage don't require more than 2 parties... in fact, a lot of things in Salvage don't require more than 9 people. This is one of those things where having more people can kill you rather than help you. Like Limbus, you can bring 18 to a damn SE Apo run if really wanted to and have a way higher chance of winning. Salvage is very precise, you need to take in mind of your resources, you need to look at jobs at a different way and you also need to take in mind how much damage one extra person can bring in. Yes, one extra unneeded person can screw up the run. I mean one extra person can screw up anything if they're careless and stupid but no... In Salvage, one extra person even though they're very nice and helping as much as possible, can end up being so much dead weight. So you don't need big numbers but you do need to take in account what you're taking in.

To expand on this fact alone, this means you're going to have to do Salvage with people that you know. Pick up salvage groups tend to be really hectic and not at all fun unless you go through and jam everyone's head with what you're gonna be doing and how you're gonna do it. Because of this, I highly recommend a static. Even a LS pick up group can be pretty bad because again that's more explanation that you will need to do unless everyone is already familiar with it. Not only that, if you join a pick up group, expect to get only 15s. You might get a 25 if you're lucky... you MIGHT get a 35 if you're extremely lucky... but don't bet on it. Either do Salvage constantly or don't do it at all. If you do a pick up, don't expect anything.

Usually when you do Salvage, you have a goal in mind. Be it killing a specific NM or kill the boss or whatever. This goal is usually focused on benefiting one person or one group of people. What I mean by this is lets say... You have MNKs/NINs/SAMs wanting the Usukane Feet (which is nice for all 3 jobs... I think) and you have to farm the 35 item which drops off of an NM Bee that can spawn off of this Rampart that needs a specific requirement that is out of the way of the boss of the area. By the way, this NM Bee rarely shows up and even if it does, the drop rate sucks. And by "this NM bee rarely shows up," I mean.... it RARELY shows up. There's probably a specific condition to spawning it but who knows? Anyways, there are other things that can drop in this one specific zone... but you're not gonna do them all, there's just not enough time to allow that. Bringing in more people to those said zones isn't gonna do anything to make it go faster.

Again, with that fact, how can you hope to get anything in a pick up group? You want Usukane Feet 35? You're gonna have to tell the group to spend the time to melee kill the Flans required (there's 4) and then you have to let all the bees spawn and the NM might never appear. That's ~40 minutes of the run already when you only have 100 minutes. Now you got 60 minutes to get the rest of the cells you need, either choose to do one of the later ramparts (which take a bit of effort to get to might I add and its not really a good idea to do both of the later ones) or straight up hit the boss while trying to nerf it down (which also takes a bit of effort and time).

So, get yourself a static group for this.

If that wasn't clear enough.

Oh yeah, so to help clarify this more...

You need 3 items from 3 different Salvage zones, each of them has a 15, 25, and 35 version.

15 are common drop. Well, they aren't very common but they're common compared to the 25 and 35s. Some 15s require you to go out of your way to kill a specific NM or a slot NM but some 15s will drop as you kill mobs.

25 drop from bosses... At least, I think all of them drop from bosses, I could be wrong on this. But, 2 are guaranteed off of a boss, usually you go after this after you get a 35.

35 are as rare as AF2 drops in Northlands. Okay, maybe that's a bit of an overstatement but some of them are pretty rare. These are the things that will frustrate the living crap out of you as you will go from 0/infinity on most of those drops. For the most part, if you have the 35... you have the piece already, just need to get the effort to get the other two.

Anyways, a good guide on Salvage can be found on BG-Wiki. Good luck in your Salvage Adventures and stuffs. You're gonna need it.

Oh and Shameless Plugin: I started a new blog for FFXI beginners and casual players in hopes to bring some new light into old things or new things in FFXI. Its called "Final Fantasy XI for the Casual Folk" and it can be found at http://ffxicasual.blogspot.com/. I'm still prepping up content for it but I hope it'll open some eyes for people. I started writing about newbie stuff but I will soon venture into stuff like Chocobo Racing, Chocobo Digging, soloing, crafting, so on and so forth. So check it out if you have nothing else better to read.