Astral Ring

[Miriel]

What's the best way to go about obtaining this much sought after ring?

[Rostum]

Farming gil to buy them? =P Or you could try the level 20 BCNM to get them, though I hear it's a fairly rare drop.

[Roogle]

I had to buy mine. I bought it before it became so expensive, though, so I couldn't really give any advice for how to go about getting that much money.

[Luc]

I think you can get it from that BCNM50 Treasures and Tribulations.. but I wouldn't do that, too high of a chance for failure.

[Gustafson]

Well, I know BCNM 20 is a great way to obtain these rings. If you have 2 levle 20 BST friends then your in great shape! I'm a little too tired now, but I will post a link and a complete walkthrough for you when I get some free time tomorrow.

[Yeargdribble]

Me and my wife just level'd both of our BSTs to 20 to get the remainder of the rings we had not yet bought. It's true the droprate isn't ace but I've seen worse. If you are going with only one other person that you can trust it's a very easy way to get your Astral after a few orbs. I'd guess the droprate to be 1/4 or 1/5.


-Alright so take your 2 BST/WHMs to the little hut BC in Ghelsba with your Cloud Orbs. You should bring a few Vampire Juices if you can get them. Also bring Yag drinks if you can get them. Just make sure you have some Refresh and Regen foods.

-After entering the BC you should buff each other with Protect, Barpoisonra etc. Rest to full and then use your Regen/Refresh and go the Furies. Each person should pick which Fury they will charm ahead of time and charm them now.

-You can manage this BC without 2hrs but I would strongly suggest you don't. Me and my wife were in the same room so often we could just pick who was gonna 2hr based on who had the first successful charm. This wasn't always possible because one of our 2hrs may have been exhausted so one person specifically had to 2hr. This will be the same for your case probably. Pick ahead of time who will 2hr and pray that they don't get resisted 8 times in a row.

*It is very important that you do no both 2hr*

-As you are charming and 2hring start attacking the Colo-Colo with your pets and with yourselves stopping ocassionally to recharm the inevitably uncharmed pets.

-Now wait for the un-2hr'd Fury to become uncharmed and attack him with the 2hr'd Fury BUT DO NOT KILL HIM WITH THE 2HR'D FURY. Use Heel on the 2hr'd Fury shortly before he kills the now uncharmed Fury. The uncharmed Fury will continue to smack away at the 2hr'd Fury who won't fight back. Eventually the 2hr'd Fury will die. Then just take our axes and own the remaining Fury which won't be much trouble and claim your prize.

*There was a glitch, and I don't know if it was fixed, that made this BC impossible to win if you were left only with a 2hr'd Fury. Theoretically you would be able to use 'ghetto leave' by just relogging. However, this causes the Fury to become uncharmed but also unattackable which means you can't kill him and you will either die or run out of time in the BC*

So there you go. Good luck with your Astral Ring. However, isn't your WHM 40+? If so you might wanna check the price of an Ether as they are generally MUCH cheaper on Fenrir than Astrals. Having 2xAstrals has benefits for capped stuff though. Me and my wife each have an Ether and a pair of Astrals just for capped stuff etc.

[Miriel]

Thanks for the advice everyone. Especially your detailed walkthrough Captain WTF!? :)

Yes, my WHM is level 45, but I've also have SMN and BLM in the 20s and mages will always be my number 1 job choice, so I figure having astrals on hand would be a very good thing.

[charles55021]

wish i could get a chariot ring, doesn't that increase the exp you get?

[Miriel]

Chariot and Empress bands increase the number of exp you get for a certain amount of time and can only be used once (or twice if you're clever enough) within a 24 hour span.

Anyone can get these bands if they have enough conquest points from one of the guards who casts signet on you. If you're going to get one of these bands, get the Empress one.

[Beyond]

You can use the Empress Band to get a 3k xp bonus in a single hour if you're sneaky enough. It's highly situational though and you're better off just using it as you can.

First off, when you only have two charges remaining on it, use the band and log off for 16 hours. Log back on, get into a party, and use the final charge when your Dedication wears off. Now, trade the band to an outpost guard to get it recharged. The timer will start fresh, and bang, as long as you're getting 6k xp an hour, you've got a 3k bonus in a single hour.

I haven't personally been able to try it, but the theory is plausible.

[SNOOZER]

How much do these rings sell nowdays?

[Miriel]

How much do these rings sell nowdays?
Last time I checked, 1.5 million.

SNOOZER, will you be my bestest friend ever and help me get them? :D

[charles55021]

why is everything so high now?

[Lich3636]

Because most for most items the only way to practicaly get them (not fighting dozens of a mob thats probably much higher lv than you ex: a lv 10 going after 2nd tier orcs for scale gear) is by crafting and many guilds ussualy run out of the needed items or simply dont carry them leaveing people to farm those items themselves or buy from ah. Now since crafters are crafters because they are too lazy to farm they will ussualy just buy from ah. so the farmers will jack up the price because the crafters will pay it because they can make a profit even with the prices. a real world example would be the shoe industry, they buy leather for say 3 dollars then the laces for say 1 dollar plus time/labor will come down to about 15 dollars a shoe then they sell the shoes for around 16 -17 dollars to the store and make a profit but if the price of leather went up to say 5 dollars then the price of a shoe would go up to about 20-21 dollars from the distributor (not from the store). so if farmers raise the price of dark steel ore everything darksteel related will go up in price as well. It is simple economics the problem is a our economy is in the hands of people who have no idea how it works but thats just how the world works you try to get as much as you can for as little as possible.

yeah i am very bored

ps about astrals a skilled smn with ramuh can solo this bcnm but at a high risk

[SNOOZER]

Last time I checked, 1.5 million.

SNOOZER, will you be my bestest friend ever and help me get them? :D

If it includes whoring myself out to old women like last time get yourself a new person! I'm not falling for that again. I got rashes everywhere last time.

[Yeargdribble]

There are a few factors that play into the high expense of some items. For something like Astrals you are paying the high price because of what level they are. Sure you could have Electrum Rings that give only 5 MP less... but 30 levels later. It's the point of so much of a stat on so low of a piece of gear. These are far and away the best MP piece for your ring slots at that level and for many to come.

Why else are they so high? Because people will pay 1.5M for them... that's why. And why are people willing to pay such high prices? It's one of two reasons.

#1 They buy gil and if it only took them a few clicks and 5 minutes on IGE to buy the gil they don't mind spending it so frivilously.

#2 1.5M is a fairly insubstantial amount of gil to the person buying the ring.

I'd say the rising cost of such items is more of a result of #1. What will happen is someone will list an item for more than it's usual rate of sale and someone else just MUST have said item immediately. Only a gilbuyer (or someone painfully rich) would spend 500k-1M higher than the last going price on an item. Over Christmas when inflation went totally whack and Astrals were up from 1M to 3.5M on my server you could've gone to any gilbuying website and noticed that prices had fallen to a record low for their Christmas Sale. Gil cost nothing to buy these crappy companies so everyone that likes to cheat bought hoards of it and spent it without a care in the world. They just fed their need for instant gratification with reckless abandon.

As for #2 it might seem unbelievable to people earlier in the game that someone could casually chunk 1M or more at a ring without much though but I fit into that boat. People wonder why I would buy HQ2s of certain items (like level 14 stat rings) and it's simply because paying 50k more for 1 DEF and a blue box isn't an issue to me. Such amounts of money are mere pocket change that I could make in minutes. I could make enough to buy an Astral in a little over and hour. However, I still have to work for my gil so while I might be willing to pay 10k or so higher than the current going rate on consumables I will not pay 500k+ over the going rate to price gougers.

For most non-crafted items the above is what leads to the high prices but for HQ of crafted items there's a whole other reason. I'd rather not get into it here as I've covered what makes something like the Astral so expensive and it would turn into a long rant.