After a collective 20+ hours (lost count of exact time spent, but 20 hours than I can positively account for)
My final attempt involved keeping Ark logged in while I was at work to keep track of ToD (using the periodic conquest update). Took about 8 conquest messages before I headed down to SSG. Killed the PH once and 2boxed Chary as a 79 Thf, and 78 Rdm. Was way too easy... as Slow 2 owned him. I could easily put up Utsu Ichi between his attack rounds.
Next up are Magian Trial daggers. I opted to go for the AGI dagger pre-update, since at the time I wanted to work on my Evasion Thf build.
This was the maxed out version pre-update, but since then the "maxed" version turns into a level 80 with even higher stats. As you can see in the screenshot, I've started the next trial, but I think I'm done with this dagger. AGI+4 Eva+12 is just fine with me, and the amount of work involved is not worth it. I posted partial estimates on how long it took my last post, and looking back, I think it took me somewhere in the range of 20 hours or so to complete it. I did learn alot though, tricks and whatnot, which allowed me to COMPLETE my other Magian dagger.
This is one that doesn't have that impressive of stats. It's one that proc's evasion down, but does not boost any stats. That wasn't why I went for this one though. My main goal was to get a dagger with a high base damage, and this one appeared relatively easy to do. It has 39 base dmg! 39! That's the same as a Mandau! And doesn't take nearly as long to get, though it doesn't have all the cool bells and whistles that a Mandau has.
This one took a maybe 17-18 hours? I suck at keeping metrics, and that's coming from a stats major. For shame! These trials were a little more kickback, and required the weapon to proc X times on a certain mob type, and not killing X amount of mobs. The beauty of it was that it did not require any specific day or weather, and involved me engaging the mob and catching up on my tv shows while I auto-attacked. I didn't mind these trials that much since I was on autopilot half the time, with a quarter of the time allocated to healing myself, and the other quarter finding mobs to kill. The bad thing about these trials that require the weapon to proc is, it can only proc once, at a time, per mob. Once it does proc and hits the mob with evasion down, you gotta wait for the evasion down to wear before it has a chance to proc again. This slows down the speed of trials considerably, but for me, I was watching TV while doing these trials, so it wasn't too bad.
So reflecting on these Magian weapons, yes they did take considerable amounts of time to do. But when I thought about it, all noteworthy gear in FFXI takes some amount of time to obtain, either by way of farming or doing events. In rare instances you can luck out and get something really awesome with little work involved but more often than not, you gotta work for it. For instance my Joytoy. Spent countless hours trying to pop it only to lose claim a couple times. Other times spent hours in SSG only to give up and having to go to bed without it ever popping. Maybe a bad example since some ppl luck out and can pop Chary instantly. So I'll look at how long it took to me to get my Homam. Again I lost count of this, but each run took roughly 2 hours. I know it took me more than 10 runs to get my first piece of Homam (I use 10 runs at the rate of 2 hours per run to be comparable to the 20 hours it took to do a Magian weapon).
So as discouraging as it sounds, the amount of time needed to do certain Magian trial weapons isn't that bad. It definitely could be better, I won't argue there, but it's kinda understandable. I did purposely steer clear of some of the tougher Magian weapons, i.e. the non soloable ones or NM camping ones because they just add more variables into the mix. Too much of a hassle for me.
Lastly though,
Amemet Mantle +1. Relatively boring stuff, but for me... having my name attached to it is exciting stuff. I am now level 91+2 in leathercrafting.
