Wednesday, November 4, 2009

Evolith System

So we have some new update news today...

The Latest Evolution in Equipment—Announcing the Evolith System! (11/04/2009)

We're pleased to announce a new system that promises to offer adventurers unprecedented customization options for their equipment! Named the "Evolith" system for the curious stones whose powers must be harnessed to reap the benefits, it will be introduced in a version update coming as early as late November.

Introducing Evolith

Little more than nondescript rocks at first glance, the substance known as evolith has long escaped the notice of the inhabitants of Vana'diel. Closer investigation, however, has revealed that these ancient stones harbor elemental power to rival that of crystals. With advances in the emerging discipline of synergy*, the time has come that their latent potential may at long last be tapped...

*Synergy is a new form of synthesis conducted using a "synergy furnace."
This system will be introduced in detail in a future Topics article.

With each piece of evolith possessing unique properties (*see example screenshots), adventurers may mix and match them in various combinations to bolster compatible equipment with the exact combination of attributes they desire.



*Development screenshot—subject to change.


Evolith 101
Adventurers may enhance their equipment with evolith through the following procedure:


1. Acquire evolith
- Evolith can be obtained by completing new NM hunting regimes accessible from "Hunt Registries" that will be introduced to certain areas alongside the Evolith system.
- Note that each piece of evolith is defined by a unique shape, size and elemental affinity.


2. Choose the base equipment you wish to enhance
- A vast assortment of equipment will support evolith, from several hundred existing items spanning a wide range of levels to new equipment slated to be introduced alongside the Evolith system.
- You may check whether or not a particular piece of equipment supports evolith by trading it to one of the "Synergy Engineer" NPCs that will be dispatched to certain cities.

3. Prepare your equipment
- A maximum of three evolith-holding "slots" may be etched into a given piece of equipment via synergy.
Note that each slot will have its own shape, size, and elemental affinity, to correspond with the evolith itself.
- The etching process will require the use of dedicated items.
- Similar to augmented items, etching evolith slots into a piece of equipment will render it untradeable and unauctionable.

4. Confirm compatibility
- Ensure that the slot is of the same shape and elemental affinity, and is large enough to hold the piece of evolith you wish to attach.

5. Attach evolith
- Evolith may be attached to a compatible piece of equipment via synergy.
- It is possible to outfit a piece of equipment with as many pieces of evolith as slots it contains.



*Development screenshot—subject to change.

The Finished Product

Should your synergy be successful, congratulations! The help window for your newly evolith-enhanced equipment will appear like this:



*Development screenshot—subject to change.

- Evolith Replacement and Slot Removal
Should you wish to replace an attached piece of evolith with one offering different benefits, this may be done at time via synergy. It is also possible to remove evolith slots entirely—thereby returning the equipment to its original state—through synergy using a dedicated item. Note that in both cases, the previously attached piece of evolith will be lost.

With countless varieties of evolith in existence, the possibilities are endless. Seek out the combination that best suits your playing style, and the equipment of your dreams can be yours!


This looks interesting, but like most things SE releases, I'm going to take the "wait and see" approach.

My initial take on it is that it looks like Augments V2.0. I never really got into the augmenting system as I've had other things to invest my gil into. I know there are some rather fantastic augments out there (re: Izman's Acc+6 Forager's Mantle and...Izman's INT+6 Weskit), but the notion of throwing semi-expensive items out the window more or less wasn't something I felt compelled to do.

That's not saying I think the augmenting system is bad. I think it's a neat spin on a lot of different things and this Evolith system is looking pretty similar.

So the questions I have to ask are this:

1. How much of a pain in the ass is it going to be to pick up the Evoliths?

2. Will the "augments" on these rocks be randomly chosen or will they have set patterns?

3. Is this going to make the FoV augmenting system obsolete?

The answer to those questions at the moment we "We don't know."

I like that they've made this so you can remove evoliths from pieces of gear. This essentially means, as long as your rock matches the shape and elemental property, you can keep upgrading rather infinitely. Which is nice.

It seems like every update we get, there's a little gem that pops up like this one that initially looks like a great idea and ends up being really horrible or really cool.

The other thing that I want to point out is this:

The past few updates, we've seen some sort of new "system" put into place. We've gone from ZNM to ANNM to SCNM to FoV to Augments and now apparently to Evoliths. While the updates themselves are things some would consider too little, too late, I have to say SE has seemingly been giving us a lot of new stuff to play with over the course of the past 1-2 years while they're working on FFXIV. I'm not naive enough to believe this will continue as they ramp up for the release of XIV, but I just feel this needed to be pointed out whether you like the systems or not.

Outside of that...did anyone else think of this when you saw this update?

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Qtipus' Information

FFXI subscriber since NA release.