Should I Farm/Sell That - 40M download quest rewards, Castle Exdeath (FFV MK week 2 exploration), The Road Less Traveled (event trial reruns)

Slow week but somehow lots of gear to review...

Also, screw you Alim/Gumi for making a weapon that requires a lot of analysis to show how bad it is because it's been hyped in the sub for some reason. Spoiler: Excalipoor is terrible despite the 1.25x average damage variance.

40M DL quest loot

Mog Hat
[hat]: 13 DEF, 18 SPR, Mog Hat => Increase drop rate of items (50%)
Reward for 40 arena runs.

Most things we want to farm are either guaranteed drops or rare drops so this isn't quite as useful as it may sound. Drop rate boosts cap at 100% so if you have Pod 153 (100% boost), you don't need this. Units with this passive only have 50% so you can use this to cap the drop rate (or just bring two units with the passive).

If you don't have Pod 153 this might be worth dropping on your general use team. But that assumes you might need the drops. Awakening materials aren't used for 5 star base units and the crafting materials are rarely used for anything worthwhile. The gil gained from selling them isn't big enough to really matter either.

Mog Shield
[light shield]: 40 DEF, 12 SPR, Mog Shield => Decrease encounter rate (30%)

Unless you're doing explorations quite often, this isn't particularly useful. You can get charm bangle (accessory, 25% reduced encounters) and reduce encounter (materia, 25% reduced encounters) with star quartz, diabolos with that node active, or use one of 15 units with this passive. The effects are negligible after 100% so no point in having extra.

The 40 DEF is halfway decent but without any stat boosts, elemental resists, or status resists, you'll likely never use it.

Another easy pass for most players.

Mog Blade
[sword]: 72 ATK, Mog Blade => 15% XP from battle

This is the only weapon that gives XP boost so it's worth keeping this sword if you still level units the old fashioned way. 72 ATK is way too low to be useful for anything else.

Castle Exdeath Exploration

Icebrand (FFV)
[greatsword]: 65 ATK, ice element

While this is the only ice greatsword in the game, the 65 ATK makes this extremely niche. 65 ATK is too low for a TDH unit (due to damage formula that punishes low ATK and lack of good variance) and most TDW units will be able to equip Hyomonto (3 star TMR, katana, 110 ATK), Northern Lights (3 star TMR, spear, 120 ATK), or Fryevia's Needle (5 star TMR, sword, 92 ATK, 112 MAG).

Partisan (FFV)
[spear]: 63 ATK, High Jump => 100% jump damage

63 ATK is too low for TDH units so you'd only use this on your TDW jumpers. For those of you unaware, Cid prefers TDW builds now.

The only other 1H spears with jump damage boost are Dragoon Lance (limited, 55 ATK, 10% jump damage), Dragon's Whisker (trial, 138 ATK, 50% jump damage), Crimson Blood (rainbow TMR, 145 ATK, 50% jump damage), and Kain's Lance (STMR, 168 ATK, 50% jump damage).

This is outright better than Dragoon Lance, but whether or not this is better than the other 3 spears will depend on your unit and other gear. If you have a lot of jump damage boost already and a can hit 200% TDW, the higher ATK on those spears can overcome the 50% less jump damage.

Excalipoor
[sword]: 1 ATK, 1-1.5x ave dmg var, The Strongest Sword? => just a label for the damage variance

For those of you that don't want to read this long section for just one weapon, here's the tl;dr: It sucks.

Okay, you'll need to understand a lot of DW mechanics to understand the pros and cons of this weapon.

• DW only uses the right hand weapon's variance (left on equipment screen).
  
• If you attack without using a multi-cast ability, you'll attack with the right hand (left on equipment screen) followed by the left hand (right on equipment screen).
• If you use a multi-cast ability, only the right hand weapon (left on equipment screen) is used for all attacks.
  
• LB always uses the highest ATK weapon regardless of which hand has it equipped
  
• The current damage formula (FD nerf) uses the average ATK from both weapons when determining the damage modifier. The weaker the weapons, the lower the modifier will be.
  
• Only the ATK from the attacking hand is used in damage calculations (total ATK minus ATK of weapon in other hand is the correct ATK for calculating damage).
  
• The eqATK boost from TDW from both weapons is used by both hands.
  

Based on all those DW quirks, the optimal use for Excalipoor would be on a LB spamming TDW unit. Equip Excalipoor in the right hand (left on screen). The LB will use the left hand with the stronger weapon to attack but also make use of the 1.25x avg damage variance. You WILL lose out on a decent chunk of ATK due to the low ATK of Excalipoor.

Next best use would be non-multi-casted DW attacks. Excalipoor would be in the right hand (left on screen) for the variance. It will be extremely important that your chain doesn't break (or you cap the second hit if finishing) as the second hit will be significantly more damage than the first hit. Both hits will make use of the higher variance.

Worst DW use would be multi-casted attacks. You'd want Excalipoor in the right hand (left on screen) for the variance but all hits will use that lousy 1 ATK weapon. You'll still get the eqATK boost from the other weapon though.

Okay, ready for some math?

Let's start with assuming a modest 120 ATK weapon in the left hand and Excalipoor or another 120 ATK weapon in the right hand. Excalipoor hand loses 357 ATK compared to a 120 ATK weapon. The left hand only loses 238 ATK.

First we need to sort out the damage modifier due to weapon strength. DW formula for the modifier is: log (((ATK of weapon 1 ATK of weapon 2) / 2) 30) / log (185)

Excalipoor 120 ATK weapon: 0.863
2x 120 ATK weapons: 0.960

Looking at the LB case (best case scenario for Excalipoor) and assuming a pretty good 2600 ATK (attacking hand value, not total ATK) with the 120 ATK weapon and 2362 ATK with Excalipoor:

120 ATK weapons: 6,489,600 before all other modifiers
Excalipoor 120 ATK weapon: 6,018,394 before all other modifiers
Double 120 ATK weapon is 7.8% better.

Okay, let's try again with a higher total ATK (for attacking hand) as that would favor Excalipoor). We'll use 2800 which is difficult to reach with 120 ATK weapons.

120 ATK weapons: 7,526,400 before all other modifiers
Excalipoor 120 ATK weapon: 7,080,747 before all other modifiers
Other weapon is still 6.3% better

Break even point an impossible ~4200 ATK. And that's only considering the LB turns. It's a lot worse if we consider the full rotation.

Having a stronger weapon in the left hand favors Excalipoor so let's try an extreme example. Let's put a mythical 200 ATK weapon in the left hand. To further stack the odds in favor of Excalipoor, the other right hand weapon option will be only 100 ATK. Let's stop for a minute to consider how utterly insane your luck would need to be if your two strongest weapons had 200 ATK and 100 ATK. We're also sticking to the LB scenario so the impact of low ATK on Excalipoor is minimized. This is stacking the deck in favor of Excalipoor waaaaaay beyond what is reasonable.

Let's get the damage formula modifiers for these weapons:

Excalipoor build: 0.933
100/200 ATK build: 0.995

The gap is much closer so this really favors Excalipoor now. The eqATK boost loss is only 198 now which also favors Excalipoor.

Again, let's assume 2600 ATK with the 100/200 build thus 2402 for Excalipoor.

Excalipoor build: 0.933 * 1.25 * 2402² = 6,728,801
100/200 ATK build: 0.995 * 2600² = 6,726,200

That's a 0.03% difference which is effectively identical damage.

Let's assume a 3000 ATK now (good luck getting that higher with a 100 ATK weapon equipped) :

Excalipoor build: 0.933 * 1.25 * 2802² = 9,156,467
100/200 ATK build: 0.995 * 3000² = 8,955,000

That's a 2.3% difference.

Once more with 3200 ATK (pretty sure this isn't possible):

Excalipoor build: 0.933 * 1.25 * 3002² = 10,510,250
100/200 ATK build: 0.995 * 3200² = 10,188,800

That's a mere 3.2% difference.

Now remember, this calculation is for only LB attacks which always uses the strongest weapon regardless of hand. The loss of damage when attacking with the Excalipoor hand will be far worse.

In case any of you are in doubt, here's the damage we'd expect from the Excalipoor hand. For fun, let's set ATK to 4000 ATK on the attacking hand. (loss of ATK is 3 * 99 now due to 99 from Excalipoor and 2 * 99 from TDW)

Excalipoor build: 0.933 * 1.25 * 3703² =15,991,864
100/200 ATK build: 0.995 * 4000² = 15,920,000

Excalipoor wins by... 0.5%. And that's with an extremely impossible to reach ATK.

Okay. But what if you have less than 200% TDW? That's a pretty fair situation even for veterans right now.

Let's use more a realistic scenario for this:

• T-cast so only the Excalipoor hand will be used.
  
• 50% TDW
  
• We'll compare Excalipoor to a 120 ATK weapon with a 145 ATK offhand weapon.
  

damage formula modifiers:

Excalipoor build: 0.888
120/145 ATK build: 0.975

Assuming 2600 ATK in attacking hand (which would be pretty impressive to reach with only 50% TDW and 120/145 ATK weapons):

Excalipoor build: 0.888 * 1.25 * 2422² =6,511,353
100/145 ATK build: 0.975 * 2600² = 6,591,000

That's about 1.2% less.

For LB attacks (or offhand if not using multi-cast):

Excalipoor build: 0.888 * 1.25 * 2541² =7,166,916
100/145 ATK build: 0.975 * 2600² = 6,591,000

That's about 8.7% more. This means you'll see small gains using Excalipoor if you have 50% or less TDW and are NOT multi-casting your abilities (or you're spamming LB).

If you have more than 50% TDW, Excalipoor is pretty worthless. A veteran with poor TDW gear will likely have better TDH options than Excalipoor so this is newbie only gear.

The Road Less Traveled (event trial reruns)

Yellow Balloon
Rats from the Gutters fight
[accessory]: Focus Attention => 15% chance to be targeted.

This isn't as good as Wrapped Gift ( 20% passive provoke, 20 DEF/SPR) but this can help get you 100% passive provoke. With units with 50% draw attacks, you'll also want to equip Moogle Plushie and Jewel of Strength (materia, raid craftable from Octopath event, 10% provoke). Craft that materia before selling your Octopath materials if you don't have Wrapped Gift.

False Saint
The High Seraph fight
[materia]: 10% MP, 20% MAG

Better than MK materias but still trash.

Wind Resistance 15%
The High Seraph fight
[materia]: 15% wind resist

Only good if you're lacking wind resist gear.

Onion Gauntlets
Hein the Mage fight
[accessory]: 3 DEF/SPR, 10% MP, 15% ATK, Lance => (OK and OK Refia only) HP/MP drain

The 15% ATK might be decent for new players.

Water Resistance 15%
Hein the Mage fight
[materia]: 15% water resist

Only good if you're lacking water resist gear.

Ulric's Kukri
The Wicked Beast Cerberus fight
[dagger]: 84 ATK, 20 SPR, 20% MP, 10% resist to all elements

GET THIS. This is extremely good for the elemental resist. It's often BiS for elemental resist builds. If you aren't caught up with trials yet, this will be extremely helpful for you.

Lightning Resistance 15%
The Wicked Beast Cerberus fight
[materia]: 15% lightning resist

Only good if you're lacking lightning resist gear.

Aranea's Helm
Fort Vaullerey - Battle with Aranea
[helm]: 20 ATK, 24 DEF/SPR

Stats are too low for veterans but this is a very good pick up for newer players. EDIT: This is tied for the second highest ATK helm other than TMR/STMR so it's worth keeping if you don't have better helms available to you. That said, helms are somewhat niche (other than dragoons there aren't many units that prefer helms over hats).

TL;DR:

Potential BiS:

• Ulric's Kukei (dagger, 10% resist to all elements, potential BiS for elemental resist builds)
  

Niche (you might use it):

• Mog Hat (hat, increased drop rates for normal items)
  
• Partisan (FFV) (spear, 100% jump damage, other spears potentially better for TDW jumpers due to low ATK)
  
• Yellow balloon (accessory, 15% passive provoke, needs a limited materia to reach 100% passive provoke for most units)
  
• Wind resist 15% (materia, 15% wind resist)
  
• Water resist 15% (materia, 15% water resist)
  
• Lightning resist 15% (materia, 15% lightning resist)
  
• Aranea's Helm (helm, 20 ATK, still decent if you have no luck getting better (S)TMR helms and use units that can't wear hats)
  

Very niche (you probably won't use it):

• Mog Shield (light shield, reduced encounters in explorations)
  
• Mog Blade (sword, 15% XP from battle)
  
• Icebrand (FFV) (greatsword, ice element, low ATK)
  

Newbie only:

• Excalipoor (sword, 1H weapon with 1.25x avg dmg var, 1 ATK, only use if you have 50% or less TDW)
  
• Onion Gauntlets (accessory, 15% ATK)
  

Trash:

• False Saint (materia, low stat boosts)
  

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