Raising Marksmanship

[guyincorporated]

Hey gang, I need some advice. So my latest project is getting my marksmanship up to a respectable level, so I got it from 50-94 over the last 2 days. Most of that was spent as my 34 warrior because, unlike thief, he can acutally use cheapy 6-gil bolts instead of all the more expensive specialty bolts.

Anyhow, I finished up as a thief with a couple stacks of sleep, acid and bloody arrows picking on worms and scorpions and fatbats in maze of shakrami (figured as long as I was skilling I should collect scorpion chunks for crafting). But I pretty much outgrew it. Furthermore, I know that around 100, skillups really start to slow down, so... my overly elaborate and complex introduction is over:

1. What (combination of) bolts (or *gasp* bullets) did you use?
2. What xbow did you use?
3. Did you attack any specific mobs? I found picking on worms to be extremely rewarding, personally.
4. Any other tricks you feel like imparting?
5. How long did it take? How many stacks of these things did you go through?

[DelennFFXI]

Don't have time to review and proofread, so I apologize in advance if this is confusing.

Key points:

• Your skill value isn't as important as your job skill level cap. You'll see what I mean.
• Even match mobs (ie. the same level as you) theorectically allow you to cap all your skills.
• If your job skill lvl is higher than the mobs level, you will NOT gain skill ups (you've capped on them).
• Mobs WAY above your job skill level cap result in VERY low skill ups; usually due to missing. Hence, don't do that unless you like being horribly inefficient

With that in mind...

1) Find your skill level here:
http://www.ausystem.org/~aushacho/gbox/ff/skill-e.html

Example:
Marksmanship is Rank C+ for Thief
Marksmanship 94 coincides with thf33 cap

2) Search for mobs close to, but with a min level higher than your job's skill level (hence mob's lv34 or higher) here:
http://ffxi.somepage.com/mobdb/

I prefer mobs with a min lvl 3+ higher than my job skill lvl for guaranteed skill ups without moving too much.

Example:
http://ffxi.somepage.com/mobdb/display-mob.php?mob=688
Evil Weapons in Rolanberry fields are lv36-38 and are easily accessible. Skill up on them until you hit marksmanship 103 (thf36 cap), then move.

More preferences:

• Tight level ranges are good (limits danger).
• Pick easy mobs via common sense.
• Bloody / Sleep bolts are your friends.
• If you can, level on farming mobs (that's what I did).

3) After hitting your skill cap for the minimum mob level go to step 2 and repeat (with higher level mobs) until all skills are capped, or mobs become to difficult to solo (ie. skill up pt time)

The key points still apply in skill up pts.

This is what I did, and it's been smooth sailing all the way to marksmanship 195 (thf62 cap), as well as profitable since status bolts let me fight harder mobs with little to no downtime.

Hope that helps,

[DelennFFXI]

Re: Raising Marksmanship

Originally posted by guyincorporated
1. What (combination of) bolts (or *gasp* bullets) did you use?
2. What xbow did you use?
3. Did you attack any specific mobs? I found picking on worms to be extremely rewarding, personally.
4. Any other tricks you feel like imparting?
5. How long did it take? How many stacks of these things did you go through?

1) Venom for mobs that didn't pose a threat (cheap), Bloody for HP regen (harder mobs), Sleep for links / much harder mobs that require me to reapply utsusemi. Acid is also VERY good if you're farming high def mobs. Blind is only really worthwhile on DC+. Most mobs easy prey and under miss too much even without blind bolts.

2) Started with Power Crossbow; currently use Velocity Bow (lower delay = faster skill up = safer when I'm in trouble)

3) Mob varied as I capped. I loved my tiger / cockatrice days though for obvious reasons (petrify can STILL suck, so be careful on higher level cockatrices).

4) If you're leveling on dangerous mobs that can link:

/equip Ammo "Sleep Bolt"
/ra <stnpc>

is INCREDIBLY useful.

Sleep bolts also allow you to SA+DE mid-battle, if the situation permits (TP/cooldown). Just remember sleep bolts only last ~10 seconds (2 rounds of swings with my Corsair's + Garuda's).

5) A long time and many. However, it was either relatively cheap (venom), or paid for itself in downtime saved while farming (bloody bolts rock). You may be spending gil, but there's no reason not to make more gil with the utility gained

[guyincorporated]

118 Skill! I'm a machine! Thanks for the reply, that was far more than I could have hoped for.

[warcrow]

I skilled up crossbow solo using pretty much only sleep bolts as my 66thf starting from lvl 10 heh ><;

Pretty costly, but if you can land the sleep bolt, the mob can't hit you back I skilled up to 146 I think in Crawlers Nest vs Hornflies, Soldier Crawlers, Exorays and Blazer Beetles I think.

Then I moved on to Kuftal and soloed worms to 177~ and moved on to Crabs from there. When I hit 196+~ I went to Cape Terrigan and pelted the poor goblins 'till my menu displayed blue numbers.

[DelennFFXI]

Congratulations on 118 !

Glad to see it was useful and apologies again if it was confusing. As you can probably guess, mob lvl comparisons work for all skills, not just marksmanship

I've been meaning to make a more general post (ie. "Monster Level, Experience Points, Skill Points, and You!" like I did for my LS), but I've been too lazy to do so. This was a rough draft of sorts

[John Doe III]

Took me two days to get Marksmanship from about 6 to 165ish.....so have fun!

[guyincorporated]

Originally posted by DelennFFXI
Congratulations on 118 !

Glad to see it was useful and apologies again if it was confusing. As you can probably guess, mob lvl comparisons work for all skills, not just marksmanship

I've been meaning to make a more general post (ie. "Monster Level, Experience Points, Skill Points, and You!" like I did for my LS), but I've been too lazy to do so. This was a rough draft of sorts

Well it was handy. I definitely knew the "outline" of what you were talking about, but the link to the somepage searchable beastiary was one I hadn't come across (and I spend way too much online looking at ffxi stuff...) and was really helpful. Before that I was just ballparking it. "Hrm, 90 skill... I was level 27 when I got it, so I should go kill mandragoras outside kazham." Muuuuch easier to just say "gimme a list of all the level 27-34 mobs nearby."

Also I have a suggestion for others that want to raise marksmanship (or archery or throwing). You don't get parry or shield skill unless you are in battle-mode, but I found that with my dagger out, I was slaughtering the mobs too fast. The solution: Get yourself a club (or whatever you want to skillup). You get club skill, you don't hurt the mob too much, and it allows you to get shield and parry skill, too.

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Edit: 129, woot!

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Edit Edit: 146! Hoo-Rah!

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Edit Edit Edit: 168! Sha-ZAM!!