A Shantotto Ascension (Part 1?)

The third and final mini-expansion is here. Given the improvements of A Moogle Kupo d'Etat over A Crystalline Prophecy, I had some rather high hopes for A Shantotto Ascension.

Boy did Square-Enix crush those right from the getgo.

I'm not talking your regular old head shot either. I'm talking a testicle-stomping followed up by your heart being ripped out and then shot in the head while while you're staring at your own heart.

I really dislike fetch quests. I bitched about them to no end in ACP. MKE was better than ACP because you didn't really have to fight for level 20 critters that don't have a great drop rate on what you need. Yes, I know the mining/harvesting/logging stuff wasn't the most fun in the world, but at least you could fill up your inventory and still get the key item anyway w/o having to kill someone else's chance.

Going into ASA, I expected that it wouldn't be any worse than ACP. Even though I had a hard time tolerating the fetch quests in that one, I still trudged through it because I wanted that damn body piece. SE couldn't possibly make something that's worse than that, right?

Right?

Not only did they make something worse, they made something worse than what they made worse. Not only do you get to the fetch quests, now you get to park your ass in Gusgen Mines and Ordelle's Cave and collect MULTIPLE drops for this kit you have to synth together. You need 5 drops total.

Wait synth?

No biggie, I got every craft maxed. I expect the usual price jacking to occur since the materials you need for said synths are 2x Bast Parchment, 2x Parchment, 2x Black Ink.

Bast Parchment Synth - Bust. Lost Elm Log.
Parchment Synth - Bust. Lost Sheep Leather.
Black Ink Synth - Bust. Lost Gigant Squid.
Fine Parchment Synth - Bust. Lost Pumice Stone. (YAY BACK TO THE FUCKING MINES AGAIN!)
Enfeebling Kit: Blindness Synth - Bust. Nothing lost except sanity.

Keeping score?

I have every craft at 60. I have Bonecraft at 100. Yet I failed that list of synths. There's seriously something broken about the crafting system (which is usually the case after the servers go down). A quick rundown of BG shows crit-breaks of the kit synth itself all over the place along with an entire plethora of breaks involving the fetch items.

In short:

- SE gives us more fetch quests.
- SE gives us fetch quests that make you farm up more than one of each item.
- SE gives us fetch quests that have non-Rare/EX items. Gogo 50k Pumice Stones from money grubbers.
- SE forces everyone to start synthing. While the caps for the various items are unknown (like 5 or below), SE thought it would apparently be funny to toss in a 50% break formula for all synths.
- And to top it all off. You can't have a friend make the final kit for you. Really fucking awesome of SE to make every one of the ingredients tradeable, but not the final product.

AND THIS IS THE FIRST GODDAMN QUEST IN THIS FUCKING EXPANSION.

I get that once the madness to get it completed dies down, it won't be as trivial to go farm up the materials for this. I also get (for the SE loyalists out there) that I paid for the content and SE is likely taking that as a sign that I actually LIKE wasting my time doing this sort of shit.

Let's get one thing really clear. I paid for this expansion (and the monthly service fees) for bits and pieces of content. I realize there are going to be things that I won't like and that the things I do like are the reasons I keep paying, but how in the bloody hell do the designers of this pathetic piece of shit expansion (thusfar) think that the conditions they have created for us to "enjoy" are actually enjoyable? You can't fucking sum up something like this with "Well you're paying for it, so you must enjoy all of it." I don't expect perfection. Doing so means I'm ultimately let down.

But even this pitiful excuse for an expansion lets down my already low expectations.

You're fucking better than this SE.