Monday, February 12, 2007

Fun Things to Play With

Weekend was fun in FFXI and got a lot of new and fun things to play with. So of course, here's the recap.

Notorious Monsters

Remember our failed attempt at Shen last week? Well this week we were going to attempt it again. The night before I managed to get enough ingredients for 4 pop items with the gracious help of Eckardt and Dukenukem. Unfortunately I don't know any Goldsmithers. With some begging on my part, Elteriak found me one through his many contacts, Dagna. Unfortunately at the time I only had 3 moblin putties and Dagna was going to bed soon so I whisked over to Bastok while Eckardt and Duke were still farming the worms in the Uleregaurd (sp?) range (I usually tab it in game). No breaks! And I tipped him 100K for such short notice (plus GS is an expensive craft to level). The morning of the Shen fight I managed to find another GS through Kniko. Kwontess synthed the last pop item and asked for a Tele-Vhazl in return (refused my gil tip). I was happy to oblige.

So this time we were 18 strong with several tanks. We worked out 3 seperate Skill Chains to burst Thunder spells with. Our first fight for Kavita went really well and she got her Reverend Mail. On my turn (next) we had 2 WHMs and a BLM go AFK. We wiped. For some reason my fights for items tend to be pretty awful (except for Charby). My R. Pumps run was a nightmare and over 1 hour long for my fight. Now one of the NINs, Grimzilla, suggested poision potions since he read that Shen's poison wouldn't override it. So I trekked over to the AH and bought 3 stacks of poison potions for 17K each and "sold" it in my bazaar for 1 g a piece to all the melee (much faster than trading). Meanwhile, Zaon decides that he doesn't want to die anymore and leaves. This is the same guy that complains that he can never get any help, I wonder why. Luckily Fullen was on the way. My second time around went really well and I got my Reverend Mail. Following me was Kalaria, Kniko, Dragoces, and Dwayna. We attempted to get one for Blueeyedbeauty with my last pop item but I think we missed one of the SCs (e.g. the second SC didn't go off) and Shen retreated into his shell sooner than the other fights. So we have to still get her a mail. But you have 6 pretty happy WHMs now. It's nice because there isn't a lot of endgame gear for WHMs.




Following that exhausting trial we went to do 4 O.Hats for people in the LS (and one associate of the LS). So now Bdawg (associate), Soloiix (dynamis shell), Pluelf (social shell), and Dukenukem (Social, dynamis) have their O.Hats. Notice how many WHMs we had there? The fight was much easier than Shen. The WHMs were bored...lol.



After that we went on a swift belt run. We had to kill a lot of fomors to get hate high enough for the Hume. We were only seven at the time since it was late for everyone else. Kniko (WHM), Vallis (RDM), me (BRD), Lorddocster (WAR), Legos (NIN), Fullen (MNK), and Dukenukem (THF) were there for a couple of hours. Four codexes later (no wipes to the Hume NM) and we were left with 1 swift belt. Congratulations to Legos who amazingly organized the melee for the Shen fight and is one of our main callers in Dynamis (and a nice social LS member). Gotta go back and farm more codexes to try and get belts for everyone else.

The next day was even more fun. To start off we did Dynamis-Beadecine again. No wipes up to the mega boss. Yavie did a wonderful job of Perfect Dodge, flee, and sight aggroing the dragons and eye and Isildor grabbed the eye and let it debuff him until Yavie got the dragons down to the pass zone. We proceeded to beat up on the NM (I always get nervous at fights so I usually forget to get a pic of them). Once we defeated it, the people that needed the win touched the ??? and we dropped our glasses. We had a mule outside with a glass that replicated it and we went in again with 10 min weakness. We proceeded to farm. We tried the formor area with their vanguard eye. They're not too bad (the eyes) but the fomors are killers. We had a lot of deaths there. Our run ended when we got a bad link (2 eyes and all their formors).

Went to exp in sky for a bit with the LS mates. Lorddocster (WAR), Legos (NIN), Fallyn (WAR), Vlacatocc (MNK), Kavita (WHM) and I (BRD) went to exp off decorative weapons in the main camp. I've never pulled in sky (just partied there once on WHM a long time ago) so I didn't know the pulling patterns. I think we have to start in one of the end rooms and work our way to the other end room to get high chains. We managed about a consistent chain #6 to 10 though so was pretty fun. Someone said we were making just about 10K an hour. There was no competition. It was so much more relaxing than the new areas. I won't mind BRDing over there.

I did my first Limbus run with Ruinous Omen right after that. My friends Arizod and Gheldhart start it up after they got sea. Why am I not doing it with LoH? I'd love to, but they are EU based and want to do it on Thursdays which is morning time for me and not very feasible. We managed to scrape together 10 people and went to Apollyn SE. Did very well but wiped once on the skele floor when 3 linked at one time. We managed to reraise and work our way to the 4th floor where we beat the final NM and got the chip. And won! Woohoo! Limbus is faster paced than dynamis and shorter too. The only thing is it costs 50K each run...damn SE. So together with Dynamis and Limbus I'm going to have to make some gil. I hate making gil! We each got 3-4 ancient beastcoins. It'll take me forever to get a musical earring...*sigh*



Right after that I went to a gathering of Divine Might. I had tried this once with Brandondl's shell before it merged with GNA (I was just guesting, helping out a bit). We wiped each time 0/3. Our last try we were so close but got kicked for time. This time my friend Arizod knew of people setting up a run. So we joined them. We had a total of 4 BLMs, 2 RDMs, 1 WHM, and the rest melee (2 NIN and 1 PLD). It was quite comical. I have a feeling that a lot of these melee had wiped numerous times to DM and they were very anxious and serious about it. Our RNG, Zorian kept DCing and I thought several of them were going to have heart attacks. I was laughing my head off and telling Arizod that these guys were crazy. We went in on Iresh's pentasphere. Unfortunately the BLMs didn't time their first nuke of TT well and things went to hell with him teleporting all around. Pets were slept, tanks took the wrong NMs. Chaos ensued. We wiped.

We gathered outside again, went over strategy and made sure EVERYONE knew what they were doing. The RNG dc'd again and couldn't get back in so we got Gheldhart as a SMN. I was leader of the BLMs (just calling out a time nuke for TT) and this time we managed to hit him at once. I ended up dying in the first volley of nukes by the other wandering Ark Angels before they were claimed. But we got TT and MR and the Galka (can't remember his initials) and we all wiped on the stairs (except on set of kiters in the circle). We reraised and Gheldhart did predator claws on HM right before the BLM's nukes hit him. The melee's went in and WS and moved away and we continued to hit HM with spells while EV was kited. He did 2HR but he had only 4% of life so we managed to survive it. Eventually he went down and so to did EV! I got the kill! And the Win. And my Suppa earring for WHM/NIN!





The one sad thing about leveling BLM is that BLM is indeed one of the major players in "endgame". Even in the quasi-endgame things that I do. The last time I was a WHM in Dynamis was over 3 months ago in Sandy. Most of the Hakutaku fights I go as a BRD. Limbus I was wanted as a BLM. And Divine Might I was wanted as a BLM. I kind of miss WHM. About all I do on WHM now is help people out doing coffer keys, eye hunts, testimonies, and learning BLU spells. I want to get better clubs for my WHM, the DS mauls are starting to pale compared to some of the nicer equip I got (yay Reverend Mail). I managed to duo with Lorddocster on Princes for the 6K exp I lost doing all of the above.

Crafting

Now I have this other friend named Aznmahavalio. He's really into making warp cudgels and is trying to corner the market by buying up all the anima synth material that he can. Which means he has stacks to synth up. And since my Alchemy is right in the leveling stage of anima, he lets me skill up on them. I donated about 3.5 stacks of mercury to his effort. So I started out at 67.4 alchemy +1 (alchemy key item) so virtual skill of 68.4. Out of about 6 stacks of synths I managed to get to 70.4! Now Brin is an Artisan in Alchemy. I'm still about 60K short of GP for my apron (I bought a lot of alchemy synth tools as you can see by my craft profile). I can ride anima synths to 75 but I might have to look at another synth since I don't think Azn will have a huge stack any time soon...heheh. Wish me luck!

2 comments:

Jowy said...

What's this ? Divine Might week :D
Gratz for your suppa too^^
That fight was cool and I absolutely luv the bgm **
Not nice the fact you were 0/3 before ;;!

And Limbus; I'm looking forward to it!

Unknown said...

woot, congrats on getting the cool reverend mail, and beating DM too^^

the ironic thing that's happening in our server is that, while everyone wants BLM for end-game stuff, no one wants them for merit parties; my brother soloed stuff mostly before he got tired of it and quit ffxi. most of my friends who have BLM jobs either pair up to mana-burn stuff in Mt.Zhaylom, solo, or level another job to play too =/

aye, saving up for the Limbus items will take awhile /nodnod - before the limbus team i was in disbanded, i almost obtained enough for another earring lol (currently i have 65 coins deposited with the NPC).

levelling in sky may be "a tad slow" nowadays compared to the new areas, and can be a pain due to either competition or people flipping switches; otherwise yeah, racking chains on weapons is more fun due to low resists.

hehe.. all the best for the crafting! ^^b