In the Name of Windurst

Tired of waiting for a certain region to appear under your nation's control? Looking for a certain Outpost Warp (OP) out of convenience or to finish collecting them all? Well look no further, because today, I will be revisiting what it took to conquer Valkurm Dunes in the name of Windurst!

For starters, each Outpost NPC will exchange a small amount of Regional Influence for weapons or armor. The influence is dependent on the sell value of said items to local merchants; the more your item is worth, the more influence your nation will receive. Generally, it will take a lot of gil to win over a starter area, such as Ronfaure, than a region like Zulkheim.

This collage depicts my first (failed) attempt at conquering Valkurm Dunes (with ~200k worth of items). In general, another nation loses influence when you donate items and the difference is then added to your nation. Moreover, the nation that loses influence seems to be random because both Bastok and San d'Oria lost influence (above) at different points in time.

It would be almost half a year before I made a second attempt, and this time, I found a much more economical way to obtain influence. It turns out that Iron Ram Shields provide the best gil to A.N. ratio at 1.36 gil per A.N, but the downside is that you can only hold one shield at a time (unlike most Conquest items).

To bypass this limit, I sent my shields to a mule, and with 180k worth of shields ready, I waited mere hours before the conquest tally to prevent an influence reversal. As luck would have it, Windurst was already the dominant influence the night before, but I decided to donate all my shields just in case.

It worked. While I do not claim all the credit for stealing the Valkurm Dunes, I would like to point out that 200k worth of items moved the influence bar only once rather than thrice before. With the Valkurm Dunes OP under my belt, I can now teleport to any region from Windurst, and this OP will be very useful for the day I level new jobs.
















As an aside, I forget two items for my previous GUPS post: a Goliard Chapeau and a Caract Choker. On the former, I received the hat after a friend asked me to temporarily replace him in a Nyzul static, but the latter came out of a brown casket from Sky. The Caract Choker is not as useful as my new hat, but I suppose I could use it right before my Uggalepih Pendant kicks in.