Campaign Battles

Now for the part of the expansion that has consumed most of my time and attention: Campaign Battles. In the past, the Shadowlord's forces are constantly attacking the areas that Altana's forces control, and vice versa. We have a campaign map that shows where the battles are currently raging, and an NPC in town that can teleport us to the battlefields for a small fee of Allied Notes. Once you get to the battle, you check in with a Campaign Arbiter, and receive Allied Tags to show that you're participating in the battle. With the tag active, you do not lose experience points if you're killed, and you gain experience/limit points and allied notes for the battle, based on your contribution to it. A sword icon appears next to the names of players and NPCs that are participating in the battle.

In areas that are under the control of the forces of Altana (the good guys), we defend the fortifications from waves of Beastmen attacks. Frequently, there will be squads of NPC fighters to help fight the Beastmen. Some times they'll be there before the battle starts, some times they swoop in at the end, and other times, they never show up. They're very powerful and kill the Beastmen pretty quickly, so people try to pull the mobs off of them to have fights last long enough to get some decent points.

Campaign battles are perfect for quick, casual exp points, and I've been using them to keep my buffer capped and have been getting a lot of merit points with it as well. It may not be as efficient as a merit party, but it's also easy to do in small chunks of time, and is really perfect for someone like me. If I get online early enough before Dynamis or Limbus, I can pop into a battle and pick up 600-2000 points before heading to the Trail Markings or Sagheera. And it's even good for those Saturday afternoons when I just don't feel like being committed to a merit party for 3 hours (I think that's most Saturday afternoons...).

Paladin is a very good job to take to Campaign, since you can tank, fight, and cure. All of these things build up your points, and also make you pretty self-sufficient (except on the Beastmen NM leaders). It seems like 50% of the players in Campaign are Paladins. Puppetmasters also seem to do really well in Campaign, and probably have the same troubles getting merit parties as PLDs.

I also go as PLD/WHM, since I really feel I have to have reraise on at all times. I often end up in Campaign battles where I am the only PC, and those NPCs aren't going to toss me a raise. I really would like to try PLD/DNC, but I'd have to be with someone with raise before I'd want to try that out.

My favorite Campaign battles have been ones that have a small group of players show up and work together. Some people are eager to form parties and help each other out, and it's really a lot of fun. We usually let the fortifications "tank" the horde of mobs, and pull them off one at a time, leaving the NMs for the end. Some of the fights with more players (like Jugner and Rolanberry) are a bit more chaotic and free-for-all, and people seem more reluctant to help each other or to take on the NMs in an organized manner. I've been bringing most of my gear with me, and go into full turtle mode on the NMs, and usually hold hate and stay alive with help from other people curing me, but toward the end, as my MP runs out, I either get killed or lose hate.

I also really like being the only player in a campaign battle, since I can do quite well points-wise. I have to be careful to let all of the beastmen get past me and pull one off the back of the train and then drag it to a safe spot. Then I just whittle them down and find another. This works better with some mobs than others. The magic casters can be pretty troublesome, as I'm built to resist physical damage better. But even if I have to fight the Shadowhand's minions, I can still get plenty of points despite dying, reraising, resting until unweakened and start fighting again.

Campaign's really been helping a lot with my merit points, as I mentioned. I've capped enmity, which meant backing out my 2nd level spell interruption I did back when I wasn't planning to be an end-game PLD and only did merits that would help me leveling other jobs, like BLU. It was a bit sad to actually throw away the two merit points that had cost. I'm currently working on my Sentinel recast, and need 5 more merit points for the final upgrade to have a 4:10 recast instead of the normal 5:00.

Campaign has ranks to go through, but they're different than what we've seen in city missions and assault. Every 5 days you can undergo an evaluation, and if you did well, you get the next higher level medal, but if you did poorly, you can be demoted and lose your medal. The medals are only good for 30 days, so if you don't participate in Campaign for a time, you can lose your rank. There are currently 3 groups of 4 medals - Ribbons, Stars, and Emblems. I'm on my 9th medal, which is the first Emblem level: Copper Emblem of Service. Higher ranks allow you to purchase more items with Allied Notes, gives you access to more Campaign Operations, with the higher leveled ones giving you more exp and AN for reward, and you also have a higher exp point cap for Campaign battles.