The Road Darkens ...

I still have not made up my mind as to what to do. Why post this? Well, it helps to get it off my chest. There are always two sides to the story so of course things are colored by my personal feelings. I've tried to explain things to my friends, but it doesn't seem that they can understand my feelings. Hence a lot of fun I had on the game is kind of gone. How can things be fixed, I don't know. Last night I felt empty and sad. And if a game makes you feel like that ... it's time to take stock.

GYS (GraveyardShift) did a lot for me, that I am thankful for. I don't see how this will ever be mended (all I was looking for was an apology in the beginning). I still have the LS pearl. It's hard for me to throw away something that represents that first year in Vana'diel and all the fun I had. Who knows, maybe it will be broken someday, maybe sooner than I think. Until that time, I'll keep in in my MH.

So in case I decide not to play a lot anymore, or if I decide to leave ...





"Faithless is he that says farewell when the road darkens." -- J.R. Tolkien. So I'll try not to be faithless ... but I honestly don't know.

Somber Memories

Yes, we beat Dynamis-Bastok. Now up for Dynamis-Windurst.

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Ever feel disconnected in a way? Well I do. I'm sort of thinking of not playing FFXI anymore. We'll see what happens. I used to have fun just chatting with people and friends. But ever since my break with GYS, I find myself still irritated and annoyed. I never felt that people supported me after the rude things that a player had said. And if you can't count on friends ... whom can you count on. So that does color things a lot for me. So continue to have fun in FFXI. Maybe it's time for a permanent disconnect.

NM 'R' Us

For Enedin, who asked me, when the heck am I going to post again: Posting!

So we entered Dynamis Jueno once again. My first experience with Dynamis Jeuno was two full wipes in the first two pulls. This time, it went much better. Even with only 2 BLMs, the RDMs were nuking their hearts out. Now, the boss was something different. It took us a while to figure out how to get that sucker back to the MH. We defeated the boss, but right when we took it out a WHOLE MASS LOAD OF GOBS AND STATUES came pouring down on us. Luckily our two good WHMs had their RR3s up. However, the gobs glitched and stuck on the stairs so we had to eventually exit. But it's win #2 for me. We're supposed to try for Bastok. Scorpions, evil.



Now the walletaru is becoming tighter. Verrick has spent a lot on RDM lately. So he's been trying to get the spider torque (600K on AH) for free from the Dune Widow. Sadly 0/8 at this point. On the other hand ... I decided on a whim to try and camp Mysticmaker in Onzonzo. The first time I was there, I got outclaimed. So I noted down the time, went to eat a very late dinner and came back on with about 15 minutes to next pop time. This time I got the claim, and I got the EARRING! Go go Verrick. I also got Thundaga III for my BLM. I now have a whole ton of BLM spells littering up my various MHs. I will have to level the job sometime.



After being less than 2K away from her chef's hat and about 1.6 levels down from the 81 cap of Pamama Au Laits, Wist finally went back to crafting. I had hoarded honey for the longest time. I cranked out tons of au laits, but finally made it to 81. On to glaces I think. For the past several days, the GP items for cooking have just, sucked. Today was pea soup which has easily gathered ingredients. Synthed them up for enough GP to get my Hat! With me is Munami (in his tarutaru form). Thank you Munami for lending Wist your robe so she would look halfway ... decent ... in the photo. Now comes the long haul of the apron then the cordon bleu set. Lanoire will definitely beat me.



I always have fun partying with Valynne. She has come with me on some loooong quests and boring farming sessions. But she's always fun to chat with. Today we decided to hunt some NMs in Bedeaux. We claimed a lot of them, but they dropped sort of worthless things. But I got a new hat that I can wear in town instead of my condom hat (even though it's a nice AFv2 one). We will get that Holy Phial for you yet Valynne!

Remember ...

A moment of silence and reflection please. I posted this one day past the day it happened, but ....



Do you remember where you were? I hardly ever listen to the radio. I was just getting to Queen's Hospital to do my surgery rotation that morning about 4:30 AM. When I pulled into a parking space a classmate pulled up beside me and told me what had happened. I was flaberghasted. It was on all of the television stations at the hospital. It was a very somber day.

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For those who were keeping track of the infamous Anna (posting name Clefairy on Allakazham) here is what she finally posted on the Garuda forums.

I know I may be whipping a dead horse here, but hear me out

She's been level 50 THF/WHM for a while. Wonder if she can't get any help on LB1. NOrmally I like to help people with LB1, but ... not her. Now that unpleasantness is out of the way.

Tonight was our level 20s static time to level. This party had started out in the tunnels near bastok and was aimed at getting some jobs to the full subjob. For Lanoir and myself this meant NIN. For Alci, it was first DRK, then SAM. For Valynne, it was a magey job, WHM. Later Guankim joined as a WAR. And Kenshin today as a WAR. We headed toward Yhoater Jungle (luckily by the time we left Anna was gone). The mandies were alittle tough I the beginning at 27s And I tend to pull slow. PLus competing against 2 other parties. So Chain #2s at most. There were a lot of deaths (none of them ours, thanks to our great WHM Valynne) in other parties. All in all, I have offically become a level 30 NIN. Scary isn't it? Just 7 more levels and NIN can be tucked away for good. Maybe this time I'll sell off my NIN gear, space is becoming limited again.

Notorious Monster ... Hunted

So ... I've been kind of burned out on crafting. And I don't really like pick up parties and since Guankim wasn't on didn't level RDM. BRD and NIN are scheduled to be leveled later this week. So I decided to hunt some NMs. First was the Dune Widow that pops in Eastern Altepa Desert around G-8 from Spiders. I killed spiders for about 40 minutes when she finally popped. Got 3 spider webs but no spider torque. Since somepage listed the pop window of 1-4 hours (usually 90 minutes) I decided to take a trip to Valkrum to see if I could get VE. I had glimpsed him once when he was being killed, but never took him on myself. So I started killing damselflies for about an hour. I decided one last run through the flies before I head back to altepa for a second shot at the Dune Widow. All of a sudden, there he was! So I killed it ... and it dropped the hairpin. I was so excited as you can see below.





Sadly the Dune Widow did not pop again, and I was there in the area for at least 6 hours. Ugh. I have a theory. Female sounding NMs I see once and kill, never get the drop and I never see them again. Happened with Stray Mary. I'm 1/1 on Jolly Green, 1/1 on Spiny Sipi, and 1/1 on VE, yes I don't hunt NMs very often.

We wiped on Windy Dynamis again. No AF dropped that I can recall. But Windy is supposedly the hardest of the starting cities. Wish us luck in the next run. Finally got to level 50 as RDM. Then Lorddocster and Demonslayer (both RDMs) helped me get my coffer keys and all of my AF for RDM. So third set of AF completed. And in storage. Hehehe. Leaving you with a picture of Verrick.

Survivor: Dynamis-San d'Oria

Well today was a first. After I think 10 separate runs, LordsofHydraDynamis (note the creative name) beat Dynamis-San d'Oria! We had about an hour left by the time we reached Reapertongue Gadgquok a SMN NM who triggers the final boss. The last time we did San d'Oria we had reached this point with a few minutes left and the charmga got us and we wiped after the avatar 2HR. This time we reached him with about an hour to spare. The first time we pulled him, we got him down to almost death before he 2HRd and wiped us. However, more people had reraise items this time, and we were up and running. We defeated the sucker (in no time flat the second time) and triggered the Overlord's Tombstone. This one went down pretty quickly! So I finally have a Dynamis win! Kudos to Linkamule, Fade, Vlacatocc, and Lorddocster for nice leadership.



The second most exciting thing about this Dynamis is that ... I have my second piece of AFv2. This time my cleric's cap dropped! So now I have both the hat for BRD and WHM. This cap is definitely taking the place of my gold hairpin until I can get a whalara turban (which will be forever since I don't party in the new areas much). Plus the -emn is pretty nice on it. It just looks a little funny with the noble's tunic (but it's not as bright red as the regular AF).



Other news. I've slowly leveled leathercraft on Sarn to 43. Need to make more wool thread to get to 49. Then back to fighting tigers to get tiger hides. My BLM deleveled down to 41 (had only bene like 72 into level) due to some deaths during Under Observation. However, no peacock charms dropped. Slowly turning in GP items, getting close to hat in cooking. Yesterday I was farming rams for ram skin and I ran into Lanoire leveling her WAR. She was in her metal bikini and whacking things. I figured I'd post a picture of her to end this post. Still excited about the Dynamis win!

The Valynne Update

Per Valynne's request (although she rarely posts a comment) I will update my page today. So everyone thank Valynne for your fix of Verrick's Garudian Adventures.

As this entry is dedicated to Valynne I will start off with a few pictures and quotes. It always saddened me that Verrick was too short to see over the top of many tables. In addition the secretary set I've had for a long time now was sitting on the floor. So Valynne told me that Tarutarus can see over a workbench. So I had her make me a signed one so I could have a furniture with her name on it. Eventually I want a signed piece of furniture from my friends in game, in particular Lanoire and Alcindor. So work on that WW guys.



The infamously slowly leveling (when we first started we did it pretty often) "fifties" static, previously known as "Sunday" static met again on Tuesday. We went up against the Lesser Colbriri (I call them pink flamingos). They have a move called feather tickle which reduces TP to 0. So it was challenging to beat it so Zaria (our resident NIN tank) could do some WS. I managed to eek out level 58 (went up about 1.25 levels). We have basically no downtime with Alcindor (our WHM) a lot of the time ending with the majority of his MP (thanks to refresh and MB II and MBI) but the higher you get, the more exp you need. *sigh* Poor Alci, wants level 75. I think he'd be better off leveling another job to 75 faster than we do. One more level to Carnage Elegy. Two more levels to full AF (the hands, the hands!). Fourteen levels away from my AFv2 Hat. And in 1 more level, Valynne has a surprise for Dahoman and Zaria!



I got asked by Lorddocster and Lordesequiel to static with their manaburn as my BRD. I told them I think Valynne would kill me if I left (not that I want to leave the static now, there were times when I did not get along quite well with Zaria). But they were desperate for a refresher (and I was about 5.6K exp behind Val who is our leader) so I said I'd come refresh them for 4K exp. Trudged out to the Valley of Sorrows to pit ourselves against the Raptors. Apparently they were having a hard time finding a good BRD, e.g. one that could stick lullaby and one that could refresh them. This was my first time in a manaburn party. So the SMN carby pulled, I lullaby with Apollo Staff/Mary's Horn and stick it (missed 2x in party). Then I cast Terra Staff/Battlefield Elegy, then Lightning Threnody. The 4 BLM cast Burst and hopefully one shot it. If not, I get ready with another lullaby to sleep the mob while they prepare other spells to kill it. Pretty simple once you get down with it. The SMN would cure and remove status effects with Leviathan's Spring Water. Elteriak (from the long party night) is in this static as well. In about 20-30 minutes I had my 4K (they got 6.5K with the band) and had to leave.



This segues me into something exciting. Take a look at the picture to the left and what do you see? Yes! I am now the proud owner of a Mary's Horn. I was borrowing Japyaa's horn all these months (before that Sumiko's Horn but that was given back after the incident). Lorddocster was on a hot streak on 8/31/06. We went after his coffer key for BLM AF. In Davoi he got it in 3 mobs, in the Necropolis he got it in 2 mobs. Switched to BLM and found the coffers within 5-10 minutes each. The easiest AF I've ever seen. I jokingly told him that I wouldn't count him lucky unless he could find Stray Mary and get her Horn and kill VE and get Empress hairpin. He took me up on that challenge. Now Taritai and I have spent months each on our sever hunting for this NM. I've seen her once and killed her while running through the highlands but only got Mary's Milk to complete a quest. Since then I've killed thousands of sheep but she never popped. So what happens? Within 20-30 minutes I see Lorddocster silencing Stray Mary. Then Mary's Milk and Mary's Horn pops up on my screen! Thank you so much Lorddocster! We tried for VE next, but someone else was camping it too. It popped in about 5 minutes, so know i know that VE exists. Tried for Centruion x-i but I was too slow with the claim. So Munami and Skylee no more trying to hunt for that stupid horn!

Dynamis LS has been doing Dynamis-Bastok. We get closer and closer each time to getting a win. Yesterday's run was the closest ever, we almost got to the last boss. Unfortunely aggro and trains did us in at the last minute. Bard's Cuffs dropped, but I got outlotted ; ; I want a win Damnitaru! Then I can start worrying about AFv2.



I went out leveling my RDM again with Guankim and Kenshin the other day. For the life of us, we can never find a true TANK when we party. Once we had a PLD, but he was mediocre at best. We've been using WAR/NIN bouncing hate tanks. This past night, however, there was only one WAR/NIN available. So this was our party set up. WAR/NIN (to tank), THF/NIN (Kenshin), COR/NIN (was originally RNG, but they wanted her to pull so she switched to /NIN), BRD/WHM (Guankim), RDM/WHM (Wwcc), RDM/BLM (me). Yes, heavy support. Now WAR/NIN are pretty nice damage dealers, but as sole tanks they have it hard (once their shadows drop and they have no access to Ni until 74). BUT with Healer's Roll, Evoker's Roll, and MB I (plus etudes, +int for me +mnd for Wwcc) I mainly nuked and BLM enfeebled (cured a bit), Wwcc healed and nuked, and Gunakim back up healed. The WAR/NIN to his credit held hate very very well. The COR/NIN was always ontop of her rolls and was shooting as well. Kenshin's modified SA + VB did well. All in all we did really good. The RDMs were riding their convert timers to a T though. Got to about 3K away from level 48. Almost at AF time.

One incident marred an otherwise enjoyable party. Anna, yes, Anna. The stupid, idiotic THF/WHM was in the basement as well. As a level 49 THF/WHM. Come on Garuda, why do you keep partying with her? This is what she says the instant we drop down.



Now that just irritated me. Aside from her infamous posts on Allakazham, I've watched her several times, and she's not a very good THF. I shudder to think what her WHM is. In her mind, however, she is goddess. She even has a mentor sign on which makes me cringe in horror. I basically said in /say Anna is an idiot. So I make a plea to all Garudians, STOP PARTYING WITH HER!

To end this on a happier note ... here is my current title.



I got it after helping the Elderly Elvaan lady in Upper Jeuno get a candle. Poor Eckardt was out killing Rams for a while and never got a lanolin cube. He sent me some ram skin though. Thank you dude, and congratulations on level 60 BLM. Your work is about half done!

So all in all, eventful. Highlight is definitely Mary's Horn! And Valynne, I better get a comment this time!