Verrick's Tales

I'm Baaaack!

2010-02-08T12:26:00.002-10:00

Just a short note. I officially relogged in after about an 11 month absence. And lo and behold who do I run into as I zone into Bastok Mines? Zephiris! (on her mule that is). Since no one was in LiberiFatali at the time, Zephiris invited me into Shibby. Saw some familiar faces again. Eckardt, however, ran right past me without a wave (he claims it's because I'm too short and the computer didn't draw me in). I also said hi again to Fullen, Hypnotizd, Demesis, and Blaire. Not sure who else is playing, but looking forward to seeing.

Also I heard about some of the updates. Synergy!?!? Gardeners banned and then reinstated (I wonder if I would have been banned if I was actively playing at the time). Not too many job updates, although the ranger ones are fun (now I don't have to do velocity shot every dang 5 minutes, still need an auto attack cause my fingers get sore).

I was telling Eckardt that I didn't have a Blau for my THF. Then I reread my earlier posts and realized, I actually do have one. My bank account is still relatively healthy. I think I have about 7-8 mil on all my different characters. Going to work on finally getting Alchemy to 100 on Brin, I'm somewhere at 99.x. Then getting goldsmithing to 60 (at 58) on Verrick.

It was funny. I couldn't remember how to get to places. How to even lot on treasure. Or how to start a party. It's amazing what you forget. Well I'm sure I'll have fun again. Also heard about FFXIV.

Favorite Sigs

2009-01-24T00:10:00.004-10:00

Just was waxing nostalgic talking about signature making in my LS Imperium. Haven't done one in a while, but was looking through my old ones and finding the ones that I liked the best. I have trouble making good ones for myself.

I really liked the sig I made for Tonyo. It just seemed to capture the duality of PLD and BLM.

Even though he eventually failed as a LS leader and overall "good guy" Lorddocster was a friend for a long time in FFXI. How he ended is quite sad to me. He asked the LS to update his sig for him. Enedin and I had a little sig making war to see who would win.

Hewison's signature was simple in design, but it looked so peaceful and calm. I was fooling around with layering and opacity and thought it came out really nice. I was almost tempted to erase Hewi's character and replace it with mine!

Dukenukem is a great friend in the game. He recently returned along with Kavita. I found this really nice smoky night picture and thought that it would go well with Fenrir. I was happy I found a pose for his PLD.

This is one I made for Duke and Kavita. Both of them are really nice people. And they have some adorable little girls. This was around the cherry blossom time so I was inspired by FFXI's ingame motifs.

Demesis was one of my favorite people in the game. He was part of my second CoP static. Hypnotizd, myself, and Demesis trio'd our way to most of our Yigit sets. When we were almost done, Demesis abruptly disappeared from the game. I don't know where he is. Never got to say goodbye.

Didn't really know Dalkar all that well. I think he was a transfer from Shiva. I just like this sig a lot. It's monochromatic, but just appeals to me. I've never been able to recreate that background.

This one is one of my favorite ones. Simple and clean. This was right after Boktai got his YY robe finally.

Arizod is my favorite galka in the game. Vlacatocc is a close second. Arizod and Gheldhart may be returning to the game in the near future. I'm excited. Arizod and I used to duo our lower level characters. Now with level sync it will be even easier! Get back in the game, damnitaru!

This is my other NIN sig. I think it turned out rather well. I had to do some quick freezing in Altana view to get the characters. I really like Zetuei's kneeled pose.

For myself, I think I like this sig the best. I was caught up in the magic of CoP and was BRD through a lot of it. I felt a resonance with Ulima! I just like how the colors flow through.

I'll post some more about my recent adventures soon!

Epic Battle for the Ages!

2008-12-17T07:14:00.003-10:00

Caution: long post

Now, it has become a rarity for me to blog very often, usually once every few months, but reader's your in for a surprise! Nary a month has passed an another picture fest from me. What prompted this? Epicness!

I managed to get to CS in terms of assault Rank. It's kind of sad though. I've only done 10/50 assaults. Yes, I was spamming the same ones over and over to get my Yigit Set. I'm doing a few new ones with Godswrath and Jukoss. So hopefully it will be better soon. We managed to get to Nyzul Floor 75. Sometimes frustrating because members don't show up or don't have enough tags. I kind of want to do Salvage, but can't seem to find a group with good times for me.

Dynamis

We have this JP Linkshell that somehow has decided to form and take all the northland zones about an hour or 2 before we go in. It gets so frustrating. So instead of Xarc, we moved to Dynamis-Qufim. It actually went pretty smoothly. Had a little hiccup on MegaBoss, but the pull went clean and the battle wasn't too bad. We had a ton of WHMs, though. I probably should have come as BRD (since it turns out I was in a party with 4 BLMs and another WHM; but it was fun with Bardon!). Unfortunately I have to go into the hospital to see patients before Dyna run so I don't always have the luxury of knowing what job to show up as. Here is the obligatory picture of my death in Dynamis.

On a funnier note. I finally managed to be first in line to get my coin from Pastor. And he graced me with a Bastok coin! The bastid!

Gil

I had manged to sink my funds on my bank to about 2.9 million after buying a Blau for my THF. So it took me about 2 months of gardening, crafting, and some farming to get my bank back into a healthier state. I usually get up to a million on Verrick and then shift 800K to my Bank so I don't spend it all. Luckily I don' t need much gil every week. Just 30K for limbus and sometimes for Dynamis. Yes, yes, I need to buy a hedgehog bomb, but sue me. I'm a cheapskate.

Now to the meat of the posts!

Epic Awesomeness #1

I was just randomly crafting and chatting on the LS when Aeora asked if there were any BLMs that wanted to KSNM. I asked if they were willing to do CopyCat so I could try for a Destroyers. It took a while but the leader said ok. We had one BLM level 70 and Zephiris from the LS who also decided to come. Zephiris was new at the manaburning KSNM idea. So it was a little rough on the job training. We went through various orbs (Zeph got a V.Claw!) until mine. Actually managed to kill it fairly easily (given that fact that some BLMs didn't have two AMII spells). And I managed to snag an O.ingot (that the party leader promptly bought for 200K), a Philospher's stone, an adaman ingot and ...:

Now the reason I wanted a Destroyers was not for me. My MNKey is at level 14 and have no interest in playing it. But our MNK in the small shell, Zadine, hasn't been able to get a Destroyers. And he's always willing to drop stuff and help out. So this went to him! I was so estatic. Everyone else's orb was kinda meh in terms of drops. But we did manage to help someone else get a Destroyers (he was 0/14 before).

Epic Awesomeness #2

I was randomly crafting again. I was chatting with Kaerwyn over Yahoo! and also in the LS chat. Part of the CoP static were trying the airship. I have fond memories of that thing, and also frustrating memories. My first time through, I went 1/9. I think it was because we had too much of a back line (WHM, BRD, and RDM) and not enough Oomph in terms of the melee department. We managed to recruit a BLU for headbutt spam and that's how I got my first win. The 2nd time through I went with my other static with a WHM, RDM, RNG (me!), WAR, NIN, and BLM. I think it took us 5 tries (mainly because the mammets were evil and turned to BLMs like3/5 times and wiped us early).

Unfortunately several members had to leave after doing 4 dry runs. They asked me to come as RDM. Unfortuantely I didn't have a CCB pump so had to buy one off the AH, but Kaerwyn reimbursed me. We had 5 CCB pumps, a PLD/WAR, THF/NIN, MNK/NIN, DRG/NIN, WHM/SCH, and RDM/BLM. I thought I was on a time crunch to do Nyzul in an hour and a half (one member didn't show). So we went in for one dry run since the DRG (Zephiris) hadn't been in the other dry runs. It went kind of bad, BLM puppets, locking the one we were fighting in Hand Mode.

Time was running out so we decided to just do it for real. The plan (and I admit I was bossy and took over the run) was this. Kill Mamets quickly. Kaer focus solely on PLD, leave me the rest. For Omega we would use the Pump at 25% and then another one when it wore off. Zephiris to use her 2HR on Omega. For Ultima the plan was Pump at 40% (Zephiris), followed by Kaer after which Lordstorm would invincible and Zadine would hundred Fists. Miur to use his pump if needed.

Needless to say that didn't happen...

Mammets went down easily enough. We were in pretty good shape. Then came Omega. That thing is nasty. My heart was pounding through the battle. We were starting to have trouble at around the 35% mark so I had Zadine use his CCB pump. Unfortunately Omega killed our tank and then went around killing the mages. Lordstorm managed to reraise and go and die in the safe spot, along with Kaerwyn, Zadine, and myself. Miur and Zephiris died in aggro range. So we reraised. While I was healing, Zephiris reraised, aggro'd Omega and pulled him to me! MPK! (at least she didn't go kill the other 3, hehehe). Luckily I had put reraise back up.

So we regrouped. After we unweakened, the plan was this. Lordstorm would pull and CCB pump. Then Kill as fast as we could. I was going to have Zephiris 2HR, but she said she'd lose her wyvern. So in the end decided just to go all out and have Miur reraise and move out of AoE range. The plan worked perfectly! I was in a little trouble there at the end, because Omega didn't like my nuking him. But we managed to live and kill him!

So while we were waiting for Miur to unweakend we formulated strategy. We were going to have about 10 minutes or so for Ultima. Plan was to use CCB pump at 40%. Kill hard. Kaerwyn would use his pump when he saw Ultima readying a move. Then Lord and Zadine would Invincible and Hundred Fist and hopefully kill him fast. We walked out and saw our time left.

Plan went pretty well until ...

You can see how concerned I was. I forgot to put a period after Shit. Kaerwyn and I were just a fraction late in healing Lordstorm. I thought we were a gonner then.

Luckily Zephiris had managed to place a CCB pump on it! I had Lordstorm raise and while weakened he popped his invincible and Zadine popped his Hundred Fists. I popped Chainspell and started nuking. Next thing I see is Kaerwyn using his CCB pump when he saw Ultima begin a move. My heart was pounding in my ears. I looked at Ultima and right when Kaerwyn used his pump he was already at 9%! I had a mini heart attack when he was at 1% and I couldn't nuke anymore (yes I had MP I had just converted). I think it was lag because I saw this right after ...

So we managed to get that Bastid down in about 6 minutes! Much smoother than my other runs. Kaerwyn was shaking when he won! He tossed his hat off in elation! I gotta say this group was fun to work with and dedicated. So go Imperium! Took several pictures in the Meadows and I'll end the post with them! Congratulations team Imperium! Next week Airship for the remaining static (Makina, Kiabrightblade, and Disfunctional). And much luck on your road to sea!

Happy Holidays!

2008-12-07T07:22:00.006-10:00

Happy Holidays to everyone out there in FFXI blogger land. Admittedly I haven't been updating very regularly. Real life has been crazy. I recently bought a new house and have been moving in and working hard. I mainly log in to FFXI to do Dynamis, Limbus, and garden. Real life will be slowing down in a bit, so you might see more of this tarutaru!

Oh and I have to update my jobs on the side. I managed to get THF to 75. Yes, my second job ever in FFXI (RDM was first, then THF, then WHM for those of you who haven't been paying attention) is now 75. That puts me at 6 jobs at 75 and likely to stay that way for a while. I don't have the urge for Maat's cap (although Eckardt is crazy and aiming for it). THF is fun, nice and relaxing. I did most of it through campaign though, so still getting used to TA and SA and such forth. Need a haste set going (yes yes I need a swift belt).

Dynamis

So what is a Verrick blog without Dynamis? Nothing!

Yesterday, we did Dynamis Jeuno. I've nicknamed it Dynamis-Jeuno: Operation Overkill because we had a crap ton of people. Vlacatocc wanted to clear the zone. But some of those pulls were like 40 mobs at once. Needless to say I died multiple times, about 3K loss. Did I ever mention I HATE Dynamis-Jeuno?

I managed to snag some RDM legs. This puts me at 3/5 (hand, leg, feet) for RDM, 3/5 (body, leg, feet) for BLM, 3/5 (head, leg, feet) for RNG. I'm not even thinking about going for THF. At the rate I accumulate points though it will probably be another 3 years before I see a RDM or BLM hat. So better get back that buffer! (And I'll probably stick to being WHM at Dyna, hehehe).

We seem to have a lot of Galka in DynaLounge! It's scary.

Crafting

I decided to make a push on Wist to get cooking up there. It was languishing at 86 for the longest time. I thought, hey might as well get 2 crafts in the 90s (although they are only Alchemy and Cooking, the easiest crafts by far to level). I haven't been motivated to craft much, since I don't spend much gil and don't have to work to make much gil. Been slowly replenishing my gil back after I bought a Blau for my THF.

Randomness

As I was muling around, I randomly get a tell from Winzip asking me if I could help him. He must not be used to people agreeing because when I said ok (after he told me what it was) he was very surprised. I think he was Japanese, but he had a good grasp of English (some odd syntax only). He assured me that as a 75 BLM I could kill the NM leeches for the NIN job quest with ease (2 or 3 AoE he said). So I trucked down to the tunnel. Sleepga. Thundaga III ... and ...

Season's Greetings

Just thought I'd end this post with some holiday cheer. Pastor is one of the fune people that I do Dynamis with. He has his own LiveJournal blog (which he needs to update too!). In fact, Pastor was the one that charged me with updating my blog. So here's for you Pastor!

In other good news, I randomly got a phone text from Arizod. He has a new phone finally! We lost touch after a while when Aznmahavailo irritated me to heck. Then Arizod and Gheldhart left the shores of FFXI. I'm imploring the galka to come back! And his little tarutaru fiend ... I mean friend.

Happy Holidays, Season Greetings, and all that Jazz. See you in 2009!

Finally, Freakin' Finally!!!

2008-09-27T14:31:00.002-10:00

The picture should say it all ... except it should read 8/12/06 to 9/27/08. Was too excited and rushing to get this posted!

Dynamis

I started Dynamis with LoHDyna, an offshoot of my social shell LordsofHydra. It was rough in the beginning. We had no clue what we were doing and had many, many wipes. But the group got better and stronger. And we kept on going. Pretty soon we were an established shell doing Northlands and some CoP.

Then the shell broke for various reasons. Mainly the LS leader, Lorddocster, running away to Kujata to join ... Demo. Along with the LS bank. And his cronies of Fade (now Byte) and Fallyn. I still have not forgiven him for that piece of idiocy. Nor did he ever seem contrite about it.

So most of the old shell moved to OceanidsDyna, an offshoot of the endgame shell Oceanids. Unfortunately due to my playtime I could only make Saturday runs. For a long time we were in the cities to help new people get the wins. Then we did runs to win the Northlands. Then we killed the Dynamis Lord. And spent a whole ton of time in CoP Dyna. Along the way, the dynamis shell broke away from Oceands to become DynaLounge.

I had frankly despaired of ever getting my full WHM AFv2 (not couting relic belt). I could only make Saturdays and could not drum up the points to stay at the top of the list. I had received only RDM feet and hands for a year of being in the shell. With us doing CoP dyna I was getting more and more discouraged. Especially after Hypnotizd who started doing Dynamis a while after me got his full WHM AFv2, BST AFv2, and most recently BLM AFv2 Hat before me. I was feeling discouraged and frustrated.

With the new dynamis entrance fees and drop rate we were able to do some more Northlands. In Xarx 2 weeks ago I managed to snag the cleric's mitts that Kavita had outlotted me for way back in LoHDyna. Last week we did the glacier. I was up for RDM Body and RNG feet, but had to pass in order to keep my spot on the WHM list. Needless to say, the briault did not drop. My last chance was this weekend, because after we were going to be doing a lot of Xarx and cities to get new people the win.

Bardon (who also started Dynamis after me, but is able to attend both runs doing the week, and got his full AFv2 a while go) kept on trying to encourage me. He predicted it'd fall this run. Wooooodum (who leads the shell and was an old friend and member of LoHDyna) tried to buck up my spirits. Eckardt (who incidentally has full NIN AFv2 from a while ago) also predicted a drop. I wasn't too convinced, seeing as I had not seen the drop in over 2 years of dynamis (the one time it dropped it went to Acreana since I was unable to make that one run in LoHDyna).

But lo and behold, the damn thing FINALLY, FREAKIN' FINALLY dropped! And as a consolation prize, RNG feet dropped again and I got to lot it. So, after over 2 long years of Dynamis I finally have the coat the inspired me to start it all! YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS!

Incidentally ... we managed to snag 18 AF this run and three 100 bills. Damn never had it this good.

RDM - ENEDIN for 15 points
BST - FULLEN free lot
PLD - FULLEN for 15 points
BLM - ACREANA for 15 points
WAR - ELBRYAN free lot
THF - BOI for 15 points
WHM - VERRICK for 15 points
BLU - BOKTAI for 15 points
RNG - VERRICK for 15 points
PUP - VLACATOCC for 15 points
PLD - KIRCE for 15 points
MNK - OLHADO for 15 points
BLU - GUIVOND for 15 points
PLD - ETAF for 15 points
PUP - GUIVOND for 15 points
WAR - ECKARDT free lot
DRK - ETAF free lot
WHM - OLHADO for 15 points

The Hiatus Update

2008-07-01T14:59:00.002-10:00

I haven't really been gone from FFXI. Just been really busy with real life and not updating the blog as much as I used to. A lot of things have happened in the meantime so here is a chance to recap it. I haven't been as faithful taking pictures so bear with me. Been under pressure from Kaerwyn to update.

ToAU Missions

At the last writing I was on Gessho, proceeding merrily along with the Imperial people. Well, we actually managed to bludgeon our way through the rest of the fights. The BLU mage fight with the gears actually went pretty well. We were a little unprepared the first time we fought and gears came on in a rush and several of us died. I actually went as a RDM. However, we were able to regroup and actually complete it. Then we decided to try our hand at Alexander. That evil BLU hurt us a lot on our run throughs. So we decided to try again the week after.

Kiabrightblade bought some equipment to reduce physical damage. Our static was actually 7 people so we had to stagger a bit. Kia (PLD), Makina (DRG), Zarovich (BST), Kaerwyn (WHM), Thayos (RDM) and myself (BLM) went in first. It took us some strategizing but basically we manaburned the BLUs 1st form. Then TP burned the 2nd form. Then killed as fast as we could on the 3rd form. Most of the Eyes on Mes were stunned and the few that got through, Kia survived with his new Equipment and the healing of Kaerwyn. The interlude was a joke. Alexander was a fun battle. Bright sparkling lights descending on the PLD and him being terrorized. His mega move flattened us, but we recovered and went to do battle. At the last few seconds I managed to beat him down with a blizzard 3 (after manafronting for some AMII). We actually won with 9 seconds left.

It took us a few weeks to do the fight for Zephiris (DRG). This time we won with a minute to spare. We would have been faster, but as luck would have it, when Thayos Chainspelled and I Manafronted, Alexander decided to be immune to magical damage. It was frustrating and comical at the same time.

Dynamis

I've continued on trooping with OceanidsDyna. I managed to snag 2 RDM pieces, but the cleric's briault continues to elude me. *grumble*. Triple *grumble*. We did manage to beat all the dreamworld CoP so now I have access to Tavnazia.

We're going to try and actually kill the DL in the next few weeks. I get to come as BLM then switch to BRD for the final fight. I still want my full WHM set. And after 2 years, I'm still without my briault or mitts. *sad face*

Limbus

I have some sad news regarding Limbus. Limbus is one of my favorite things to do in FFXI. It's short, fun, and some decent gear (although Nashira is lacking compared to Homan). I, however, had to leave my Limbus shell. The leader of the shell constantly aggravated me. He was continually late because he had to cycle through his DB. We left later and later, sometimes waiting over an hour. He would never respond to things in the LS. He would blatantly disregard basic strategy. In addition he caused he aggravation when we were leveling in our static. He left without warning, wouldn't show up, and basically showed disdain. In addition, he lotted on all the AF (yes he has a Maat's Cap) even for jobs he swore he hated thus depriving people of valuable AF material for jobs they used. I basically had to leave to keep my sanity. I miss the rest of the people in the shell and wish them the best.

I was randomly farming things in Zitah when I struck up a conversation with a friend of mine, MadKatter. She found out I was limbus shellless and mentioned to me that she was about to go on a run. She asked them if I could join and viola I have a new limbus shell DeepSea. I actually like it a lot. We leave on time generally. We have been splitting up Apollyon zones so we do bosses faster and get more coins (e.g. 5-9 a run). Proto-Omega and Proto-Ultima went down flawlessly.

Legion

The social shells of SageWanderers and Imperial joined together to form Legion. Basically we're sort of lax popped NM, CoP shell. We got together and farmed pop items for Gration and for the Uggy Pendant. My first time ever fighting for the Uggy Pendant and it was a ton of fun. I actually on the lot on the single pendant we won (we went 1/3 on drops). We had some fun taking pictures.

Ranger

I managed to level up my RNG to about 74 in the PLD, RDM, RNG semi-static before I lost my patience with Aznmahavailo. I actually manged to ding 75 through a series of campaigning and mini LS events. Currently I'm working on capping the XP through Campaign and the Worm Assault to get my Yigit Pants (the last part of the Yigit Set I need). I love playing RNG, but I sometimes wince when I think of the gil I'm spending. I finally get to use my Kirin's Osode for a good purpose.

Crafting

After many many months and years I got Brin's Alchemy to 99. I went on a little crafting spree and managed to make another million or so from Alchemy profits. Since I didn't win in the Mog Bonanza I'll have to be content with that. Thinking of getting into crafting again.

Statistics

Overall

I'm still enjoying myself in FFXI. I'll eventually work on my COR again. Maybe SCH. Maybe even DRG. I'm inspired by the DRGs in my LS, seems like a fun overall job. I have to get my butt going on the WotG missions. Some sad things have been left behind, new friends and opportunities have arisen. FFXI lives on!

Shadows of an Ultima Dynamis-Windurst in the Path of Darkness

2008-02-17T15:25:00.004-10:00

Dynamis-Windurst

Last week Saturday OceanidsDyna chose to do Dynamis-Windurst. Our regular puller Vlacatocc was unable to make it. Instead Zalia got to pull. They didn't do too badly, but we had several wipes due to uncontrolled linkages. We killed the MB but it died in the last 30 secs so we didn't get the official win. This time with Vlacatocc pulling we managed to kill the MB with 30 minutes to spare and farm afterwards. No BLM or RDM. In my time with the shell no RDM AF has dropped (I can only attend Sats though). Meanwhile Hypnotizd (from my LS AlwaysFUNE) managed to get a cleric's briault (I've been lusting after this one for a while) in his Dyna :-(

Storms of Fate

After finally kicking the little twerp's face in ZM17 I heard about a possible Storms of Fate run. However, I was in an xp party at the time and couldn't go. Much to my delight it got postponed until Saturday. Right after Dynamis I got a tell asking if I wanted to go on a run. It took a while to get set up and I managed to see a lot of familiar faces from my past. Ultimatechidori and Sesshi (from LoHHNM/Valour), Kiobi (from GYS), Guivond (from RuinousOmen) were there and I got Ashur (AlwaysFUNE) and Zarovich (Imperial) invited too. I died to a cluster (wasn't paying attention when casting) but finally made it to the area. Once there we buffed up and hit it as hard and fast as we could. There were several deaths in a heart pounding battle, but we managed to win! Now I have to climb the promies and then I can FINALLY do AN!

Proto-Ultima

RuinousOmen finally finished up another Ultima set. This time around we had several new people from the crew that used to come. We missed Eldercid, Toxicity, Loren, and Dubajaba. The battle was intense and long. Several dissipitations went off which threw a kink into things. Our PLD/NINs died quite fast leaving Arizod and Vashstarwin (WARs) tanking for a bit. Nice to see WARs who were not afraid of vokes. Citadel Buster was irritating. It took a long time to wear him down (we need to hit harder during Citadel Buster and let the guy die instead of running at 30). But we managed to snag the win and the title. Belgarath got the feet and Hovaz got the head. For our three Ultimas we have received 4 Turbans...*sigh* a hand and a foot. Given that Ultima is so much harder than Omega I find it funny that our win percentage on Ultima is 100% and our win percentage on Omega is 87%.

ToAU/CoP

The Imperial ToAU static (Zarovich, Thayos, Kaerwyn, Zephiris, Makina, Kiabrightblade, and myself) managed to get to the Gessho fight. We tried to straight up tank him a few times with Kia but he ended up dying too fast. Luckily you don't lose XP in ToAU battle zones. Our 3rd try we decided to kite kill him ala Kirin. Zarovich charmed/kited Gessho as BST while Thayos enfeeb'd and took care of the clones. Our DRGs (Zephiris and Makina) and PLD (Kia) hit him when they could and Kaer and I healed. It wasn't the most elegant of fights, but we won! Gessho is a pain in the ass.

I'm actually enjoying the CS of ToAU, the story is getting to be interesting too. We have 2 more fights to finish the missions off! Hurrah!

I enjoy being in Imperial, especially since AlwaysFUNE tends to be a little slow at my prime times on the weekdays. On Saturday we did Promy-Mea for Zadine. 3 SMN, 1 PLD, 1 WHM, and 1 MNK raped Mea! I think I'm going to have some fun doing CoP for a third time ^^.

I also have fun and get to chat with Pikko in Imperial. I listened to her radioshow with Exodous today and it was entertaining. I find it funny that I know both Allakhazam admins from Garuda and they're both in the same LS. We were waving to Pikko's little boy who loves her character.

Registery

I managed to learn how to make FFXI beautiful by tweaking the background resolution. However, my computer can't run it. When I oversample it, I get 4 frames a second. I wish I knew what I needed to do to keep it like these pics ... I wonder if I have to get a new graphics card.

DATs

I found some really nice .dat files to switch up. I really like the Young Griffin armor from the Sandy Past. It's now my "Naked Taru" armor. I also found Nation Moogles! They have a Windy, Sandy, Basty, Jeuno, and ToAU one. I really liked the ToAU version. And I didn't realize, I have a mule (Stal) who is the same model as Pikko! BTW, if you're on Garuda and get a chance to know Pikko ask to see her MH. It's really nice.

Coming Full Circle

2008-02-09T06:00:00.001-10:00

I'm back and hopefully will be updating on a semi-regular basis. I was gone from FFXI for a while due to a computer meltdown. My processor just decided to stop working. I borrowed a laptop for awhile and got a little playing time, but didn't have photoshop or image capture program loaded on. I finally got myself a new computer so things are back to normal. I'm still the attendance monkey for my Limbus shell. I'm still part of AlwaysFune, but also have joined Imperial.

I'm not sure how many people still read this, but here's hoping for some comments! And I gotta track down Taritai's new journal. So if you read this taritai or anyone who knows where it is, can you drop a line?

Red Mage

When I first started Final Fantasy XI I chose to be a Red Mage. I had been ready the Brady Guide and thought that Red Mage seemed like a good balanced job. I could use both White and Black Magic (I tend to be a magey person) but I could also swing a sword decently. So I grabbed my gear and headed outside of Bastok to wail on things. However, after 7 levels of Red Magery I gave up. For some reason it didn't appeal. So I thought, hrm, maybe I'd like to be a melee. And that THF had Treasure Hunter and the gil multiplier thingie.

That lasted a whole 3 levels.

Then I tried out White Mage and Verrick's Final Fantasy journey began. It took a while slogging through the levels, questing the tele-scrolls, whoring and begging for Erase, eeking through the limit breaks, saving and saving for my blessed and noble's tunic, but I finally hit 75 on WHM. After that I went through BRD, and eventually BLM (after swearing I wasn't going to level BLM, but you know, it's sometimes fun to blow things up). I then started up COR and realized I needed RNG as a sub. So I decided to level RNG up and stopped at 65 (getting some xp on RNG through ENMs) after my static broke when I was on leave from FFXI due to a move. So what does a taru do when he comes back?

He goes back to his roots.

So I picked up my RDM again. I had left it at level 41 right after I received refresh (I had finally leveled it for a soloing sub for BLM). I'm in HI so my playing times are limited/screwed up with the rest of the nation. The famous RDM invite rate seemed to elude me. But I slowly managed through main healing parties and sneaking in with BLMs to duo/trio. Finally on January 28, 2008 I was about 4K from 75. I managed to snag a party on Greater Colibiri and hit 75, capped xp, and managed to get a merit.

Congratulate me. I'm finally a 75 RDM after 2.5 years!

In honor of this momentous occasion I finally made myself a new signature.

Missions

Eckardt and I finally managed to make our way to San d'Oria. After getting some help on the 2-3 dragon and the 5-1/5-2 mission fest we worked our way through the long-neck missions. With gracious help from AlwaysFune members, Bardon, Blaire, Kael, Lavina, and Aznmahavailo we managed to hit Rank 10 in San d'Oria. The Sandy missions were kind of dry and you had to listen to long-winded and haughty elvaans talking.

Exploring a little bit of the past, however, brings you face to face with the Young Griffons. Young Elvaans in the past are cute.

During one of the missions (I can't remember which) there was a ray of light that bathed me. I had to snap a screenshot because I happened to be wearing some of my WHM gear at the time. It just seemed to me the perfect backdrop for a WHM.

I managed to FINALLY do ZM-17 and beat that punk kid to a pulp. Now I have to figure out a way to finagle a Bahamut v.1 so I can do AN and get another earring.

My CoP static broke apart after they beat 8-4. Demesis left for a while. Nojoke joined an HNMLS and basically doesn't come into the social shell anymore whlie loot whoring. So I was talking with Thayos. I did some ENMs with Imperial (the promy ones) and had a blast. They were also going to do ToAU missions and I just happened to be on the mission they were on. So I managed to join up and hopefully will be able to finish up ToAU too! The story is just starting to get interesting and make some sense.

I finally got around to unlocking the WotG jobs. I still haven't unlocked BLU or DRG yet. I have no real urge to play DNC (although it seems like a fun job), but I had been hearing about SCH as a subjob for WHM. After reading about it and seeing how Light Arts can affect casting time, recast time, and MP I felt it was a good sub for WHM. So I've started to level it. It's fun and seems like a good sub for RDM if you don't need the -na spells from /WHM. I managed to slowly get to level 11 with some soloing and some duoing with Arizod on his mule. I want to get Accession and be able to AoE regenII, AoE protect and shell on other parties in the alliance (go go BLM alliance). Maybe SCH will be my next job. Poor COR and RNG. On the back burner yet again.

Returning to the Homeland

2007-11-08T10:07:00.000-10:00

Verrick was created on the Garuda Server with his home city in Bastok because I was playing with RL friends from that city. Bastok was a comfortable home for the first few years as I got to know more about Vana'diel. I never felt at home in Windurst whenever I visited. It seemed to so vast and difficult to maneuver through.

All that changed recently. I took the plunge, erased my OP warps, and changed over to my homeland: Windurst! I've become better at navigating through the sprawling city using the warp tarus. And I got the chance to see my nation's unique storyline.

I will say that Windurst missions and their stories were more satisfying than Bastok. Bastok was so clinical and technologic. Windurst has the mystery of magic and faith. It just seemed grander and more fitting to a taru. Eckardt and I plowed through from Windurst Rank 1 to Windurst Rank 5 in one night. We managed to snag some help for the 5-1 and 5-2 fights. We managed to pick up Pikko (yay, Alla administrator), Demesis, and Kavita along the way. Once you start doing the missions you really want to know what happens next in the storyline and this took us on long night missions. You can see we got a little loopy sometimes. Here is the first of some Eckardt and Pikko posts I'll have over the next few posts.

You've gotta love the tarus that beseech you for help. This one taru is completely adorable.

We revisited the Full Moon Fountain for some exciting battles and beautiful CS.

The final battle was epic. Kavita was a WHM (a taru seeking to overthrow the Star Sybil and become the Star Vita), Demesis was a WAR, Eckardt came as a RDM, and I was a BLM. We joined the battle against the cardians. Our first attempt did not go well as we did not realize those cardians aggro'd from such a far distance. I was unable to get a sleepga II off. Our second attempt we were much more prepared and took them down without too much trouble. A NPC joined the fight casting AM. Eckardt took the Wyvern while we picked on the manticore the NPC chose. Unfortunately, Demesis voked the manticore away from the NPC, but the NPC decided to teleport straight into the maw of the Wyvern who promptly killed him before Vita could get a bead on his location.

So we tried a third time which went extremely well. Eckardt died while kiting the Wyvern but we were able to triumph! I lost the Rank 10 animation in the Cutscene, but I did manage to get the flag!

Next up (after Eckardt comes back from Vacation/Work) is to infiltrate the long-necks and take down the city from within! *cue evil tarutaru laugh*

I'll post more in the upcoming days/hours. But I'd like to leave you with a quote from Demesis when we got to Sea after beating Tenzen.

A-LA-PEANUT-BUTTER-SANDWICHES! Now who remembers who used to say that?

Sad Ending but Bright New Beginnings

2007-10-17T14:23:00.000-10:00

I have returned to Vana'diel. But it's a different Vana'diel than when I left.

I left my social LS grown into an 'endgame' shell. Valour was doing pretty well, attempting to camp kings, etc. They did Apocalypse Nigh and so on and so forth. Later I got some text messages from my friend Eckardt telling me that Vlacatocc had left for Oceanids. Then I heard about a lot of issues going off in the background.

I returned to FFXI to level my RNG with Eckardt and Lorddocster. However, with a new job I've become very busy and was not able to make it every night to level. Then one day I hear that Lorddocster has left and gone to Kujata. Basically I came back to a broken social/endgame shell.

Now I had talked to Lorddocster on Teamspeak and he was on my friend's list. He helped me out with a lot of things, camping NMs, AF, etc. And I tried to do the same. Yet I find out that he applied/got into Demo, one of Gardua's most infamous LS that moved to kujata. And ironically one of the shells he used to quote disdain for. And he left without a single message explaining (and yes he was on my friend's list).

He has had some tough times in real life. Not sure what his motivations or what exactly happened. All I can say is I was sorely disappointed in how it was handled. Now there are two others that apparently have moved servers with him. I've had my share of disagreements with those people, and they were a part of issues that people had with the social/endgame shell as well. I'm sad, disappointed, and somewhat angry.

So now people are scattered to the winds. We have created a new social LS called AlwaysFUNE with Boktai as the leader (FUNE was based on a mistype I had a long time ago). The new LS captures the same spirit and fun the old LS had when I first started. We're no longer together in terms of endgame though. That makes it sad. Vlacatocc and Enedin have spread their wings to Oceanids completely. Dukenukem may be applying for SA. Eckardt has been doing things with PwnShop. Hypnotizd has joined an NA dynamis shell.

I've decided to break with most endgame activities. I never really enjoyed doing sky/camping kings. I had turned down other endgame LS that used to salivate when they heard I had BRD, WHM, and BLM (although so many people now have leveled those jobs, I doubt there is a shortage). I only did them because it had grown out of my social shell. I've joined Oceanids for Dynamis since it has a lot of old LoHDyna members.

Right now I'm just having fun talking in the social shell. I've joined up as a permanent member in Hypnotizd CoP static. I had helped them out before but with some members moving back to Shiva they asked me to be part of it permanently. I've had a blast going through CoP a second time. Demesis (WAR), Hypnotizd (WHM, BST), Endril (RDM), Ashur (RDM, BLM), Nojoke (THF, BLM) and I have been progressing well. I joined up permanently with them at 4-3 and we've made it past the 3 paths and are ready to take on the airship. Let me tell you Snoll Tzar with 3 RDM chainspell Fire II + Flare from a BLM + Mighty Strikes/icarus wing GAxe WAR, and a WHM for cures was super fun. And bonus, I get xp now! Yes, they made CoP a little easier, but it's still a challenge of staying power to do all the CS and come back week in and week out to do battles and farm the needed items.

I'll post more about my recent adventures with pictures later. And lastly I left Bastok for the greener pastures of Windurst. After languishing for almost a year on Bastok Rank 7 and blitzing through to Rank 10, I have turned my eyes toward the other nation storylines. I've enjoyed Windurst's story very much. And have achieved Rank 8 in the short span of 2 weeks (well 3 days to be precise).

Gone from Vanad'iel for a Time

2007-08-31T10:09:00.000-10:00

Well, folks. The reason I haven't posted much is that I'm in the process of moving from Oahu to Hilo (a different island in the Hawaiian Chain). I'm going to be losing my net connection until September 19th. Been busy packing and cleaning so not much going on.

Valour is doing well. Claimed KB and they killed it. Unfortunately their in EU hours so I don't do much king camping (since I'm about 12 hours behind them). If not for Valour growing out of my social shell, though, I probably wouldn't do any endgame activities. I'm going to be sad if the Cleric's Briault drops in Dyna when I'm gone. I've been lusting after that piece for the past year in Dyna.

Quick Updates:

RDM has made it to 63. With some horrible parties and some really nice parties. It can get stressful playing RDM at times.

The NIN, BRD, and RNG static made it to level 64 before I have to leave. I'm having fun with my S.Bow and shooting silver bullets. It's costing me a fortune though. I haven't really made time to make gil, so I'm down to about 380K on Verrick and about 4.4 mil on Jorn. So sad.

My next job would be COR. I have the crimson hands waiting for me for RNG and COR. Just got to get my mitts on Seiryu's Kote for RNG and work on assault pieces. My COR was stopped at 41 because at the time my RNG was stalled at 21. I would never have believed I'd enjoy RNG so much. But looking forward to going back to COR, esp with the Steel bullets (hopefully they become cheaper), enlarged AoE and improved buffing capabilities. Should be fun!

That's about it from my front. Unfortunately no time to make little pictures. I was going to have a post about 666 (e.g. all the times I've seen it pop up in the game) but I'll get to that in a subsequent post.

Wish you all happy adventuring while I'm gone.

Pimp Hat Go!

2007-08-16T15:52:00.000-10:00

Red Mage

Did you know RDM was my first ever job in FFXI? I leveled it to level 7. Then for some reason thought that THF would be better. Hah! Got that to level 3. Then I started on my journey on WHM. Those first 10 levels or so were very painful. I remember using a staff (yes I didn't know better) and being PL'd by Lanoire on her WHM. It was then playing catch up to Lanoire and then Sumiko's WHM.

I don't quite remember how I got RDM to 37, but somewhere along the way I hooked up with Guankim and Kenshinshiro. We started a semi-static that leveled very slowly. Basically whenever we found time. It was RDM, THF (Ken), and BRD (Guan). However our work schedules became so diverse that we hardly ever saw each other online. It's been a year since I've had my RDM AF in storage. So as you can tell I decided to branch out on my own.

It had been a nice circle to have all the mages (at the time) to 75, WHM, BLM, and RDM. Now there's BLU but I don't have the urge to play it. I've had some frustrations with RDM lately, idiotic parties, diconnects, you name it. I've been called on to main heal by myself and haste 5 other people as well as refresh a PLD and a DRK. Sometimes it gets too much.

My last party went pretty well. We had a NIN, MNK, THF, BRD, RDM, and SAM. One of them was dualboxing a RDM named FantasyApple (I think). However, that character would occasionally toss out a cure and haste (I think it was the MNK who was dualboxing). So it wasn't a true PLer. Thank gosh, cause I can't really stand those. However, we were lucky they were there. The BRD, for some reason, was tickled pink when he linked 5 spiders together. Needless to say, my MP doesn't stretch that far especially since I didn't have sleepga and could only target sleep mobs. He did use Horde Lullaby. But sickle slashes are nasty. We did get a chain #7 in there.

Then the BRD kind of stopped moving. He'd sometimes sing songs, sometimes just stay stationary. I sent him a tell asking him if he's going AFK, but instead he says he's falling asleep. Eventually he just stops moving. Ugh. The party was going to disband, but luckily they said they'd stay for my level. So now I FINALLY can wear that PIMP HAT. RDM 60!

In other news I've been assigned to be the attendance person for RuinousOmen, my Limbus LS. We defeated Temenos W. And thankfully time chests dropped there. I hate that one when no time chests drop. I was 2 coins short of my loquacious earring, so Eckardt was kind enough to lend them to me. In the end I decided on the Loquacious instead of the Brutal because I felt that I would just use the Loquacious more. The Brutal would be for having fun on WHM, since I really don't have any REAL Melee jobs.

Pretty in Black

2007-08-08T11:41:00.000-10:00

Dynamis

Today was Valour's first Dynamis-Beaucedine run (the LoHDynamis Shell merged together with Valour the newly named LoHHNM shell). We had about 20 odd people show up which is not bad since we have to work on getting access for the rest of the members (hello city runs again).

We had about 3 BLMs, 2 RDMs, 1 WHM, 2 BRDs, 1 SMN, and a decent amount of melees (which is better than the 13 WHMs we sometimes field in city runs). It was actually a relaxed and fun run although Landar (MNK) and Snajper (BLM) did die quite a bit. Not sure who won, but my gil would be on Landar.

Again, I prayed and hoped for my WHM body (the only body we had received in the last year of dynamis went to Acreana when Dragoces and I couldn't make one run). I'm 3/5 on WHM AFv2 (Kavita outlotted me on the gloves when they dropped in Xarc). Been wanting this relic body since I first started playing WHM, my first job. However, it was not to be. Instead I got to lot on this:

So I got my BLM body before my WHM body, so sad. When you compare this to the NQ Igqira Weskit (which I have) you sacrifice +6 MAB and +2 Conserve MP to get -2 enm, Refresh, and some MP. I think I have to rework my macros now to switch over to JSE in the middle of casting so I can keep the refresh bonus as long as possible. Of course I lose out on the -enm bonus. Maybe I'll use the coat more when I'm soloing or during hard NMs where I want every little bit of -enm I can get and I can sacrifice some damage potential and conserve MP potential for refresh. Not sure.

Red Mage

Since I don't get to see Guankim much anymore, I decided to try and level RDM on my own. Got into a party last night with Belanus and his cronies. I remember partying with them in Garlaige Citadel a long time ago on my BRD I think. At that time his friend Lep (something) was our tank and dc'd when his mother pulled out his xbox. Then the party had broken up because Belanus didn't want to party without his friend. I should have thought of that this time.

So we start off in the woodlands fighting pink birdies at level 53-54. At first he told me we had a WHM so I was estatic. When I joined it turned out he had a 51 BRD and I'd be main healing again. I couldn't land enfeebles with any great accuracy even with my HQ staves and Glamor Jupon. It was so depressing. Then all of a sudden, the WAR (Lep) starts to DC. Belanus (NIN) stops moving (no red dot yet) and the BLM Dcs. While I was frantically trying to cure the NIN I pull hate and end up dying. The RNG kills the bird with EES. Then I see the red dot appear as I'm laying dead. I was getting annoyed. THey come back on and he goes lol, playing at the same house.

So we continue on and then on the 3rd fight after that guess what? All 3 Dc again. This time the BRD and I eat it. The RNG manages to get onto a chocobo and lose hate. The 3 never back on. I was so annoyed. Then I get a tell as I'm waiting for beseiged asking if I want to party. I had been afk reading a book and took like 2 minutes to get to my comp. I say sure, and then Thedarklord goes, sorry party full. That was very annoying too. *sigh* RDM may turn out to be the bane of my existence in this game. And to think I had wanted it leveled up before BLM.

Sidewinder: Or How to Die Faster than an Overnuking Taru BLM

2007-08-07T19:34:00.000-10:00

Ranger

Up to this point I had been having fun with Ranger. Something about shooting things to death appealed. One thing that was lackluster was the weaponskill. They were not all that impressive. With each increasing static, however, I inched toward that miraculous level 55 RNG where I could learn Sidewinder and Slug Shot.

Last night I finally made it. We decided to head toward the squishy and fast repopping birds in ToAU (yay for piercing damage bonus). Our core static of Badray, Lorddocster, Eckardt and myself were joined by Edmund and Cromax. Now Cromax I knew from our Dynamis days so it was fun. So the party of WHM (Badray), SMN (Lorddocster), Eckardt (NIN), Verrick (RNG), Cromax(RNG), and Edmund (BRD) headed out our merry ways. I couldn't seem to land acid bolts on the pink birds and the holy bolt added effect was quite meh. But we were steam rolling along with poor Eckardt trying to keep hate off the 2 RNGs. It all ended when Cromax and I learned Sidewinder and Slug Shot!

Now what was a little irritating was the birds somehow continually ate my food. So on top of struggling with taru's poor STR stat (I think I was at base 41 and Cromax was base 54) I had to be without food for a bit. That being said Cromax was hitting harder than me most of the night. He parsed about 40% of the damage and I did about 38%. But with minuet on us, plus Fenrir buffs, murdering the birds were totally fun. The most fun I had was Sidewinder, followed by Barrage, then another Sidewinder. Of course that earned me enimity fast and I did die 2x last night. But it was so much fun!

I did bow in deference to Cromax's lovely WS numbers though. Here's my best and here is his (which incidently closed Reverberation SC for 600 extra damage, curse him!).

Crafting

I spent a mini-fortune on Philosopher stones. And managed to craft my way to 98 alchemy. I have platinum nuggets to sell but someone keeps undercutting the prices. Earlier last month it was 28K a stack, now it's being down to 18K a stack which makes this a pretty nasty loss synth instead of a slight profit synth. I'm not too happy about that. SO there went about 800K of my gil.

I HATE undercutters.

Sin Hunting: Or I Never Thought I'd Ever End Up Here

2007-07-23T13:51:00.000-10:00

Take a look at the jobs to the left. WHM was my first 75. Then came BRD. Then came BLM. RDM was on par to be my next job to 75. Had even toyed with the idea of COR being my next job. What do all these jobs have in common (well except for BLM)? They are support jobs. Now BLM really isn't a support job, but it is magey. Now what does this have to do with anything? Well. Remember my post about trying to get RNG to level 37 before I would go back to COR (since my RDM is sort of stalled in a very slow moving semi-static)? Well, I managed to get RNG up to 37. And beyond.

It started out kind of haphazardly. Aurridaur was getting together a party in the jungles made up of level 24-26s. I had jokingly told Guankim that if they wanted to wait an hour I could go (since I'd have to mule and buy a lot of things). Apparently Guankim didn't realize it was a joke, and told Aurridaur I was going to go. So I scrambled around looking for gear. Wouldn't you know it, Aurridaur dc'd right as we were about to start. So we went on without him. Got to about level 26 or so. The next night Guankim (BLU), Eckardt (NIN), Nlsmo (THF), and I continued on from the night before. We gathered some more people (including a very odd JPN THF that told Eckardt that he spoke funny) and managed to go on until Guankim fell asleep. I think we hit around 29 or so.

Then Lorddocster stepped into the picture. For those who don't know my LS leader, he is a leveling fanatic when he gets his teeth into it. He, for some reason, wants SMN to 75 (I think it does more consistent, hate-free damage than his BLM). He had been in a SMN static, but they were not moving fast enough for him. So he picked up myself (RNG), Eckardt (NIN), Nlsmo (THF) and we went back to the jungles. He had his brother's character to heal us. We picked up a WHM (I think) and managed to get to about 30ish. Then we continued on till about 32 as a foursome and broke for the night. I had been trying to get Eckardt to borrow NIN equipment and he finally did. Unfortunately Guankim couldn't make our HI times (so his BLU has been left behind ; ;).

Along the way we hit Garlaige Citadel (Muloki joined us as PLD for a bit; Mhisty on SMN for a bit; Gravvick as BLM for a bit) and Gustav Tunnel (again Muloki as PLD for a bit). In Gustav Tunnel we picked up Badray (as NIN) and proceeded merrily to 41 there. Somehow the RNG ends up pulling, not the THF. That makes my pulling experience as a THF, RNG, COR, and BRD, ugh! We manage to go to Western Altepa Desert with Badray changing to WHM. So our static now consists of Verrick (RNG), Eckardt (NIN), Badray (WHM), Lorddocster (SMN), and Nlsmo (THF). We try to pick up a RDM and the ones we have had in Gustav Tunnel and the desert have been exceptional! We've also had some LS members scome in for spells like Fey (RDM) and Choupuchoupu (BLM).

So, now I'm standing on a RNG 41 and realize I have to do AF. Ranger is kind of annoying since you can complete AF1 during the Full Moon. I manage to grab the glittering sand and we proceed to kill in Western Altepa Desert until Full Moon arrives. We take a break and I whisk to Junger Forest to complete the CS (saw Dahoman at the same tree!). On one of my free times I manage to solo all 3 of my coffer keys needed for AF (Garlaige, Monastic Cavern, and Crawler's Nest) the shrotest in 3 fights, the longest in 7 fights. We've managed to hit up to level 46/47 and will be resuming nightly statics for now.

I've been reading up on RNG a lot. I've decided to do mainly xbow for experience unless acid bolts don't stick or holy bolts added effect doesn't proc. I've managed to get a hold of a parser and consistently parse about 90-93% ranged accuracy. Usually doing about 28-35% of the party damage total. Keeping my archery capped though too. And I'm having a BLAST! Also I'm throwing away a lot of gil, but it's still fun. The added effect of Holy bolts really add up and the best part is the added effect doesn't accrue hate! I'm able to SC with the THF and occasionally barrage. It's so nice not having to scramble for a tank (and read up on Eckardt's journal e.g. DJDigital for his take on NIN).

The only other annoying thing about RNG is getting the "top notch" equipment. I've basically not thought about guns yet (thinking if I have to go as RNG to big events but I doubt it since my BRD, WHM, or BLM will probably be wanted). But the top bow consensus (other than relic) is the E.bow or V.bow (the rare/ex version of the E.bow). However, the E.bow is about 2.3 mil on AH. I've yet to try the BCNM60 for it. The Rare/ex version is a Fei-Yin pop from 16-24 hours or so and I'm not crazy enough to do that. So what do do?

Go after the 2nd best bow, the S.bow. Now this mob can only be spawned during Full moon (white Coney) or New Moon (Black Coney). It turns out that New Moon was right when I logged in. So after doing some assaults I head up to Ulereguard Range (Sp?) with Demesis (WAR) in tow and a stack of San d'Orian Carrots. Cerene (RDM), Alinaaset (WHM), Thorhammer (PLD), Kattsu (THF), and Aznmahavailo (NIN, then THF) joined us. We managed to get all the pops in a 3 hour period (and that rabbit footprint moves bloody fast 5-10 secs so need a trade macro) much to the sadness of another group of people camping it. In those 2 hours we had 2 bows drop. One for me and one for Aznmahavailo. Cerene didn't want to stay and try for his bow, but I'm more than willing to help out again.

So after that I decided to go after the O.Bow. I was killing Goblins slowly as WHM/NIN. Was there for about 2 hours and no pop. Lorddocster came down to chill with me and we proceeded to kill all the gobs for another 4 hours. We were winding down (him to shower, me to bed) when all of a sudden the darn NM pops. I pulled and kept it busy until Doc came back. Things were going well until an EES killed doc and the NM flattened me. Of course then another NIN and a BRD came strolling up. We managed to reraise (with LordValour's help; doc was dual boxing another WHM). Doc pulled the NM and another gob and then proceeded to suicide with the gob behind a lot of other goblins right when the other NIN was drawing his katanas. That gave us time to regroup and the other NIN and BRD just left. We proceeded to pull him again and this time made short work. And I got my O.bow!

So no more bow hunting forever! Just need to keep gear up to date! I also managed to sign some Hawker Knives for myself (using Brin), no +1 though ; ; I still can't believe how much fun I'm having with RNG.

Signature Maker Part III

2007-07-13T00:43:00.000-10:00

Side Note:

Been busy these past 2 weeks and haven't really caught up with what the heck is going. Social shell --> Sky shell --> HNM aspirations. Now social shell had initially branched off to a dynamis shell (separate from social) which has been going for about a year now. We've cleared the 4 starting cities and Beceadine (sp?). Got our first Buburimu clear the other day. Just don't seem to have the numbers for Dynamis-Xacarbard which is why we've been clearing the cities for people again. However, now the Sky shell metamorphosed into a proposed HNM shell with people from Shiva (I'm still meeting all of them). LS leader wants to merge the HNM shell with the Limbus and Dynamis shells and restrict them to members of the HNM shell only (apparently had issues with another LS that we used to do Kirin with coming into our shell to get ToD). I'm sad about this because I really enjoyed the Dynamis shell and the people in it, honestly. I do Limbus separately due to time commitments. I'm sad that the Dynamis shell is breaking and I didn't want this. And I know people are not happy about this after working so hard this past year. But I got outvoted by the majority (partly I haven't really been playing/keeping up on website due to being busy). Now it remains to see if the Valour shell people come to Dynamis.

In leiu of more earthshattering news here are some recent sigs I've made:

and my own:

I can't seem to muster up the enthusiasm to make myself a sig. Anyone want to give it a shot?

Experience Points for Ranger

2007-07-03T05:55:00.001-10:00

A Busy Sunday

Now i haven't seen Arizod online much, partly due to our busy schedules. But he managed to log on Sunday so we decided to do a couple of quests. For me I hate finding parties at the lower levels. I also have no urge to really level my RNG in a party setting, but I want it leveled to 37 as a sub for COR. So ... I've decided to level it up with EXP scrolls! So this is my typical EXP scroll hunt.

1. Escort Quest: Sandoria
I like this one because it's extremely short. Eldime Necropolis also is a playground for WHMs and hexastrike! (Did this with Bardon, Arizod, and Vlacatocc this past Sunday)

2. Spice Gals
This is a pretty easy quest started in South Sandy. You need to be past Promathia 2-5 mission to attempt this. Basically I like to go to Riverne B since I only need 1 giant scale to get to the point of the ??? for the Rivernewort. Arizod came as NIN and I went as WHM to facilitate obtaining the giant scale. After getting the item it's a pretty easy trek to the ???. Just have to wait until the dragons and bombs aren't looking at the spot.

3. Monarch Linn Patrol
Since we do the Rivernewort and Monarch Linn is essentially right there we decided to try the Patrol. It was a single Mamet-800 against the 2 of us (it adds an extra mamet up to 8 or 9 for a full alliance). It actually was a bit tougher than we thought because we didn't have a macro for the yellow liquid. Arizod tried to use it during the BLM phase, but ended up stalling it on the sword phase. That was bad news. We eventually won. I like doing this one because an exp scroll is quoted to be about 50% of the reward (other 50% an item including mannequin pieces).

Interlude: On our way to the Sacrarium we decided to finish my Knocking on Forbidden Doors quest to pose mannequins. I had earlier went to the Aqueducts to click on the ladder at C-9 for a CS (died once as a taurs turned right as I passed it, grrrr).

4. Secrets of Ovens Lost
This one is started in the Tavnazian Safehold. After that you run through the Sacrarium looking for a particular ??? that can pop in 4 out of the 6 rooms.

So the typical route is:
Go to Sandoria and trigger the Escort quest and the Riverne quest. Go to the Tavnazian safehold and trigger the Secrets of Ovens Lost Quest and Monarch Linn Patrol Quest. Grab a yellow liquid off the AH. Gear up in level 50 gear and bring along level 75 gear for the Patrol. Start off with Riverne B and farm a giant scale. Get the Rivernewort. Then to Monarch Linn to beat the patrol. After that head to the Sacrarium to get the cookbook. Then head back to the safehold and get your xp scroll from Secrets. Talk to Justinius to see what your reward from Patrol is. Head to the Necropolis and complete the escort quest. Then head to Sandy to complete. If Justinius gives you an xp scroll it's possible to get at least 4 a week. These give from 700-1500 exp a piece.

Right now my RNG is sitting at 3K into level 24! Woohoo! Plus it's fun to do the quests with a friend. Don't you think?

Alchemist

2007-06-26T10:40:00.000-10:00

Crafting

On a whim I decided to grab some giant bird feathers after choco racing. There was only enough for 3 synths (at the price I was willing to pay). Not expecting much I sat down to synth them on ice day with moon at about half. My first synth I got a 0.1 skill up. I was so darn excited. Next synth nothing. Then I was rushing through the last synth so I could go mule equipment to someone in the LS and I saw the above. Estatic! The icarus wing hell is now over! In celebration I put my last wing up for 1 gil to give someone a cheap wing. It sold for 8K (going price is 10-12K). Don't worry, the wing prices after me jumped back up.

Not exactly sure my route from now. All that push for the GP and 6 levels of icarus wing hell has left me a bit drained. I think my next route will be the panacea (yay for 13-15K philosopher stones) [cap 98] which will then be used to make platinum nuggets x9 [cap 96]. But it will be slow going since philosopher stones can't be farmed and only got through BCNMs. I figured the fireworks [cap 97] was too ridiculous esp with a rainbow thread in the recipe plus artifical lenses and glass fiber and won't sell for much. I think with the nuggets I might come out break even, small loss, or even small profit depending how much I get the stone for and how much the platinum leaf sells for. After that cantrella to 99 (depending on the availability of fresh orc liver) and pro-ether/sun water to 100. Sun water doesn't sell much, but at an insane profit. Pro-ether is more of a small loss/break even venture. One day I'll be 100+3 (100+6 with advanced support).

Chocobo

I managed to get GhostWhisper's STR to Firstclass and END to Outstanding. Tonight is day 64 where care plans cease to mean much. I've been choco racing like a mad fiend and spending lots of gil to get this choco's stats up (I messed up a few times while raising). Not sure if I should pour gil into getting his discernment up to a decent level. Even if his STR and END outclass the "super chocobos" in the races I still can't seem to beat them, even using a speed apple. It's so discouraging sometimes.

I'm thinking of trying chocobo digging out sometime. If anything to relieve my frustration with crafting at times. I still want to try clamming out as well. I might raise another chocobo, but this time going for the MIND stats. I'd like it to be red so I suppose I must search for a red male and female chocobo, preferably with one of the digging abilities.

Craftaholic and Zombie Goblins

2007-06-20T18:46:00.001-10:00

Crafting

I've managed to snag myself the Alchemy Furniture: Emeralda! So now I'm 92.8 +3 officially. I got Kavita to make me some consoles with 6 lightning energy and 4 storage spaces to activate the mog enhancement: Alchemy Skill. I can change to water energy if I need to for alchemy based water synthed. I'm so estatic. Just 3 more alchemy tools and I'll have everything. Probably doing Iatrochemistry first.

I get nervous when people ask me to synth expensive things. Case in point the Hakutaku Eye clusters. Ever since I crit broke the first one I ever tried I've been shy about it. Two LS members need it synthed so I got them to come on lights day. Luckily I was successful both times. I'm glad they had faith in me.

Dynamis

We did dynamis-jeuno without our illustrious leader Vlacatocc since his computer is busted. So us old foggies joined up to take lead. Not a single DD wanted to call, so I got assigned as a WHM/NIN to do the calling. The BLMs lead and our sole NIN pulled. Our sole PLD voked the statues. We eventually won. But the MegaBoss came with a train of mobs so we wiped after killing the boss. The mobs glitched on the stairs however, so we had a hard time raising. SO we decided to call the GM. This is what I saw next.

Someone managed to call the GM and he came, invisible, and insta-killed all the mobs. I didn't realize what had happened and turned around seeing dead mobs. It was so odd. The weirdest one was the zombie BST NM. He was killed, but kept jumping up and summoning a slime. This slime would disappear in a few secs but it got caught in a sleepga or 2 so we had to nuke it a couple times to kill it.

I ended up with the BRD slippers. No currency, which sucked. I did manage to finally cap my club skills while calling though ^^

Notorious Monster

I met my old nemesis the Dune Widow while trying to get mythril beast coins. I claimed her but didn't get the drop. Later the day I was running through the area again and she popped after I killed a few spiders. This time I got the drop! I promptly put the torque up on the AH for a slightly inflated price of 300K. And it sold. Life was sweet.

Note: Fully updated sidebar now, I think.

Hodgepodge of Updates

2007-06-13T12:12:00.000-10:00

Items

The mean old turtle named Genbu finally decided to grace us with a shield. So I have Genbu's shield to solo around with. That's about all that I wanted from sky. I suppose I could tip my hat toward the Zenith gear now, but I'm not really a fan of it. And the day that a BRD manages to swipe the other god gear...heheh.

Dynamis Windurst

What is odd about the dynamis linkshell is the sheer number of WHMs in the shell. Especially in the starting cities. For Dynamis Windurst we fielded at least 11 WHMs. I had been in my WHM gear and raced to Windurst (helped on PM 3-5 the night before). When I saw how many WHMs there were I offered to change to BLM. LS leader had different ideas though. He said any WHM that could come /NIN or /WAR and melee should do so. And so I did. I unfortunately forgot my Suppa in my MH. I bought sole sushi for the first time in my life. And just whacked mobs. I didn't do too badly. Regular hits for about 30-50, crits 80-100. Hexastrikes were about 200-500. We won't talk about my performance on the MegaBoss.

I did manage to have a lot of fun pretending to be a DD. And I also managed to snag a lot of club skill ups. It was more fun than pounding endlessly on crabs. I went from 246 to 255.3 at the end of the day. Just a few more skill ups to cap club. I wonder if I'll get to whack at dynamis mobs again someday.

Maps

Ifrit's Map has been a thorn in my side for a while. I managed to get a lot of other maps but this one would be a pain so I kept putting it off. Boktai managed to get me to Ifrit's, he as SMN and I as BRD. We took about an hour or so to get the key. And the coffer ... was just around the corner from where we were. It was so funny. And I was so happy!

Since I really don't have the urge to level on my RNG I figured I'd start feeding it exp scrolls. So I managed to cajole Lorddocster into helping me get some Giant Scales so I could do the Spice Gals quest (need a Rivenwort in Riverne site B). After getting 4 scales I went and found the Rivenwort.

I was talking about how easy the quest was to Arizod and Guankim and offered to guide them there if they wanted to. So we geared up as a WHM (me), NIN (Arizod), and BLM (Guankim). We decided to try for the Riverne site map as well which requires defeating 3 NM moblins (a BLM, RDM, and WHM). Immediately when you zone into their spawn area they start attacking. Unfortunately Guankim was first in (we wanted him to ES+Sleepga) and he died very fast. In the end we wiped. After raising everyone we were resting for weakness to wear off. Then someone zoned in and spawned the NMs again. Instead of running off to die somewhere safe, they instead run around the small island and end up coming right in front of us. Needless to say we were still weakened and the mobs killed us (go go MPK!).

So we reraised and then took the spatial displacement away. After getting back to full health we were determined to try it one more time. Arizod zoned first and I went right after to keep him alive. Guankim came in after and slept them all. We killed the BLM pretty quickly. We then went after the RDM. That damn thing is so annoying. It took us forever to kill the RDM and the WHM kept waking up and healing the RDM (I did some ES+ sleep and Guankim ended up ES+sleeping again too). After a long protracted battle we managed to beat the RDM and the WHM although it was a very close thing for a while. But we got the Riverne site map!

After that I went to the Sacrarium to do the Secrets, Oven Lost quest for another exp scroll. So now my RNG is halfway to 23. *sigh*

Crafting

Right now I've been focusing on Alchemy and letting my other crafts slowly level as I gather some materials. It's been icarus wing after icarus wing from level 87 to cap 93 (hopefully). The unfortunate thing is that each synth requires 6 giant bird feathers and 2 beeswax. For a while icarus wings dropped to 6K and the feathers were 12K a stack which is a loss since you have to figure in the beeswax. I had tried to farm giant bird feathers but at 1-2 an hour I gave up and took a loss. I decided to try harvesting pehedro hive chips (much better return on beeswax).

It worked out fairly well. Then I got an offer from Kattsu to help me farm bees and I ended up with about 5 stacks. For a bit over the weekend wings had jumped up to 15K and feathers were down to 9-10K a stack which was a nice 10K profit. Unfortunately some dork dropped the wings down to 12K and the feathers are now up to 16K a stack. *sigh* I had one very nice crafting run. In 6 synths I got a total of 0.5 skill ups. So now I'm sitting at 92.4 in Alchemy. And no feathers in sight on the AH with wings dropping. Ugh. I'm not looking foward to the next synths. Looks like it's either panacea and platinum nuggets or Papillion with rainbow thread as the ingredient. Then after that...I'm scared. And alchemy is the cheapest craft outside of Cooking. I have the gil to get me there I think, but I hate to use all my gil. Right now Jorn is sitting at 5.1 mil, Brin at 1.1 mil, Whit at 1 mil, Sarn at 1.1 mil, Wist at 490K, Verrick at 640K, Bron at 100K and some other little amounts on other mules.

There isn't much I want from the AH these days. I suppose I could buy stuff to make myself better, but meh. I just farm up the gil for Dynamis and Limbus lately and haven't really focused on making gil. It's funny, if you look Verrick up on FFXIAH.com, most of my sales were yag drinks or crystals. Yes, that's how I make my 100-150K a week. Sad ain't it?

A little bit of frivolity

I just had to sneak this in at the end of my post. We went after Omega again in Limbus and killed him pretty easily. We had to random for coins at the end. As usual I didn't get one (damn my rolling skills). But Gheldhart's roll was even worse than mine. I've never seen this personally so I had to put it in.

Hero Among Heroes

2007-05-28T10:01:00.000-10:00

GhostWhisper

After 180K worth of Chocolixers, GhostWhisper finally managed to learn Canter. The difficulty with Canter is you can't learn the story until you reach the adult stage. My mistake was doing the choco whistle quest. I think until you find the hankerchief, you only get those CS and don't get the random chance to meet Brutus. I had to learn a different story first on my long walks. Then the game wouldn't let me meet Brutus for a while. I was anxious to learn the canter story because I wanted to shift my chocobo plans to physical attributes, instead of focusing on discernment (wanted high discernment to learn the abilities).

So now GhostWhisper will be delivery packages and getting Vomp Carrots. Hopefully he turns out to be a moderately fast Chocobo. Not sure if I will raise another one. Have quite a bit of ways to go.

Bastok Missions

After waiting for people to catch up on missions, then to see them zoom past me and complete them all without asking me along, I finally started back up on Bastok Missions. Avinateri (PLD/WAR), Forbiddenhate (MNK/NIN), Ashur (RDM/BLM), Akiracobalt (WHM/SMN), Volander (BLM/RDM), and Ashke (WHM/BLM) made up the main crew. Ashur and Ashke had finished the bastok missions and had come along to help. We started from mission 7-2 and had planned on basically getting rank 8 at least.

It was quite an interesting storyline. You got to learn more about the Galka race and their unique rebirthing. Zeid, the DRK, plays a large role in the storyline.

Our 7-2 battle went very smoothly. I guess there is something to say about being level 75. The main thing that held me up was needing to find 6 other Bastokers to do this with, which sometimes proved difficult. Mission 8-1 and 8-2 proceeded very well.

Our main snag was on mission 9-1. I had recruited Dukenukem and Kael to help out (both BLMs) as we had to defeat the miraculous multiplying slimes. Dwyana (WHM) came along as well. I sneak popped it and Ashur slept it and we brought it back to camp. We actually managed to kill the slimes with only one death (poor Kael). On our way to get the ??? to finish the mission Volander managed to lose his sneak in 5 seconds and continued to run into the skeletons. Of course he dies and can't complete the mission. So we rest him to full and send him out to pop the ??? to do it all over again. Wouldn't you know it, his sneak manages to somehow wear again right after he hits the ??? so he proceeds to die, and so does Ashur.

So we tractor them both back from the pool and raise and redo. This time Volander managed to keep his sneak up and pop the slimes. We managed to kill them again and he managed to get to the pool without his sneak wearing. I didn't want to take any chances and I escaped him from the pool while the others escaped from our fighting site.

So we decided to go for Rank 10! Thanks to Akiracobalt who remembered how to get to the Throne Room! We took on Zeid and his shadows. It was actually quite a quick fight. The storyline, however, was very interesting! The end CS was a bit touching as you got to hear the opinions of people about living and being from Bastok.

Quite excited actually. I have my nation flag and about 104K worth of CP to spend. I'll probably get an Aketon for my mule to he can run faster to the alchemy guild. I'm not sure if I want to change nations. I kind of want to see the storylines, but I don't want to lose all my OP warps. It took me forever to get some of them, although I would presume it'd be easier with Windurst or San d'Oria. Bastok is usually last, sometimes second place in conquest. And it took a while before we actually got control of some of the regions. We'll see!

Anna's More Idiotic Twin?

2007-05-24T10:52:00.000-10:00

GhostWhisper

GhostWhisper has finally grown up! And he turned out to be a fine specimen of a black chocobo. He's at above average discernment and receptivity now. Have to go on a couple of long walks to learn the canter story and then teach it to him. Hopefully then I can get him to a moderately fast chocobo. I did get the hankerchief finally to get my chocobo whistle to call him to the field. But his str/endurance is poor, so I doubt I'll be riding him soon. Once I ride him though, expect that top picture of mine to change!

A person more idiotic than Anna?

See this and judge for yourself:

My friend Arizod had logged on in the middle of the night and got accepted into an experience party. I had been planning on getting some exp on elementals in sky when he was telling me about some deaths of the WHM. Curious, I trudged out to the Mire to watch.

Here's the kicker, the mire was empty except for their party and they could not get above a chain #5 if any. And here's the reason why. Party set up was MNK/NIN, MNK/WAR, SAM/WAR, NIN/WAR, WHM/?, and ... RDM/BRD. Aliesha was the RDM/BRD, in the mire, meleeing with full errant gear and MP rings with a lust dagger. She sat on 500 MP and did not haste anyone/buff anyone. The SAM had to pull as she was busy whiffing. When they had links she didn't sleep anything allowing the MNK and WHM to die. Not that the WHM was spectacular (they didn't haste anyone either nor remove silence) but at least they did cure. Half the time, Aliesha was resting away from the fight and essentially just leeching. When Arizod told me she was bragging how good she was, I had to laugh.

I ended up sort of PLing them ... as a BRD/WHM. Yes, I lullabied their links, cured, and removed statuses. It was totally pathetic. The SAM/WAR, MNK/WAR, RDM/BRD, and WHM were in the same LS. The MNK/NIN had enough of dying and replaced himself with a WAR/NIN (who appeared to be confused as to the party as well). Eventually Aliesha changed to RDM/WHM and stopped meleeing. But ... she rarely threw haste out and never did sleep anything. After Arizod and the WAR got a merit, they bailed. The other four stayed in the Mire.

Now I thought no one could compare with Anna in terms of sheer idiocy. But I think Aliesha might take the cake. And she brags she's skillful? And that she's on the way to Maat's cap. If you're on Garuda, I'd avoid her. She's useless. Could she have had a bad day? I suppose so. Could she have been fooling around with LS members? Yes, but when you invite someone outside the LS for an exp party, you do your job. And if you're going to melee, at least put on meleeing gear! Especially since she wasn't doing anything remotely magical.

Whitemage

After 2 long years I have finally managed to ... cap my healing skill! Now I have all blue numbers. Thanks to Hachi for needing LB2 and letting me get my skill up on the Boreal Tiger!

A Momentous Day in Sky

2007-05-19T23:29:00.000-10:00

Shen

Well we went after Shen again. For some reason Shen has been a pain in the butt the last several times we fought him for a LS member. So today we grouped together before Sky to take this evil thing down. And you know what? It worked like a charm this time. The fight was over very quickly and we finally got Blueeyedbeauty her Reverend Mail. This Mithra deserves it. She is always there to die, raise, heal during all of our fights. One of the most selfless people and doesn't complain at all. So happy that we finally got it for her. Below is a picture of us before we took on Shen!

After that it was sky day. We started off with a warm up on Byakko. The kitty was nicely tamed again today, so life was good. The pants, axe, and hands dropped, so we had some happy people. Then we geared up for Kirin.

We had 2 full pop sets on us. We joined up with another sky shell, FinalHeaven which actually contains quite a bit of our dynamis shell mates. They popped their Kirin first. By the time all the adds were killed we had Kirin down to 60%. It actually went pretty well, although the add alliance was devoid of BLMs so it took them a while and some deaths to bring them down. Eventually they got the crimson legs out of it. Our Kirin went pretty much the same way. We got the Heca body.

I had to leave after the adds were killed on the third Kirin (FinalHeaven's again) due to a meeting. What was utterly evil and hilarious was I made sure I didn't have the current hate when I disbanded. I go to the back to rest in case I made it back before they finished. Then Kirin comes out of nowhere and flattens me with a StoneV (I had nowhere to run). I wanted REVENGE!

When I came back about 2 hours later they had Kirin (our 2nd pop of the night) down to 15%. I rushed up there to try and help but the damn teleporter kept sending me to the wrong room! Amazingly ... he dropped an Osode, a Pole, 2 Shura Togi abjurations, and a shining cloth. Best haul ever. 2nd Osode for the LS off our 4th Kirin.

And guess who got the Osode?!?!?

Yay for BRD pulling! No more super evil bad stats with the Errant body ^^ So my one huge thing from sky is mine. Now if that damnable turtle would just drop his shield...

Thank you so much LordsofHydra shell members! And FinalHeaven shell members. Couldn't have done it without you. See what a social shell can do?

I hope they increase the amount of magic merits one can do. I have 4 in singing and 4 in wind for my BRD. But when I go as BLM, I have to pile on elemental skill gear that could be used for int slots. If I could put some merits into ele skill, maybe I wouldn't be so damn resisted on Kirin. It sucks when your aerogaIII hits for 70 ; ; I do get to kite Kirin when My ES + Tornado IIs hit for about 1.1K.

Limbus

I forgot to take screenshots of Proto-Omega again ; ; This time we beat him in 10 minutes. Only 2 deaths, Dukenukem (tarutaru BLM) and myself (as a WHM) due to unfortunate AoEs. Carolann got the Omega Legs and Aznmahavailo got the Omega head. We did him with 14 this time. A totally different change from our first fight where we wiped with 12. We just have a better idea what to expect.

One day we'll do Ultima and I'll get my shot at the Nashira gear!

But all in all a fun day in sky and Sea!

Proud Papa!

2007-05-17T12:19:00.000-10:00

Chocobo

GhostWhisper has grown up to an adolescent.

Based on the tip colors I think he's going to turn out to be a black chocobo. I've been feeding him a green (he likes the sour ones) and a Z. Carrot to boost his discernment. He managed to learn gallop after 2 story tellings. I have to wait until he's an adult before I can get the canter story and teach it to him. After that he gets to go on a physical diet/exercise regiment of V. Carrots and package delivering. He's doing really well. So far he's only got sick once. Thanks to all the handy advice from Ashke, Eckardt, and Kavita! When GhostWhisper has to be retired, I might like a blue chocobo ... a discerning one.

Limbus

We've fought Proto-Omega a total of 3 times. Ruinous Omen 2 Proto-Omega 1. The first time we went in with about 12 people and disaster. The second time went much smoother and we managed to get Homam parts for Eldercid and Dubajaba. The third time it went really well with only a few deaths. And this is what we saw when we opened the crate.

The melees were panting over Omega's Heart! Loren ended up winning the lot on the body piece. Kenne and Puretaru got the other parts. I think Aznmahavailo and Carolann are up for the next Omega pieces. Gheldhart and I are still waiting to do Ultima for our shot at armor.

Meanwhile we continue to do the regular zones with much better efficiency. Our first Apollyn NW, we skipped mini-Faf and barely managed to kill Kaiser Behemoth. Last night we took on mini-Faf (2nd time doing so). Notice how many mages (on the right foot) and how many melee (on the left foot). We managed to kill him and Kaiser Behemoth with a lot of time to spare. Damn we're getting better. The only zone we sometimes don't win is the Tremenos one with the enhanced mobs. We get screwed if we don't get an early time chest to pop.

I'm enjoying Limbus. It's one of the few times I get to play WHM. In fact, I finally got ShellraV. I managed to coerce Aznmahavailo to come farming in sea with me. Instead of 1-2 organs (or more frequently 0) in 3-4 hours, we got about 11-12 in about 1.5 hours. Damn TH3 seems to work at least for that! I got my dark obi. Now I need to work on organs and tissues for the light obi and the ice obi at least. If I got the BLM AFv2 pants, I might try for the other obis as well.

Notorious Monsters

The Sky LS is going well. I can't make it to most farming sessions, but I can make it to the gods themselves. Our last foray we did Byakko x 2 (only one pants dropped), Suzaku x 2, Seiryu x 1, and Genbu x 1 (damn turtle didn't drop my shield yet). Suzaku tends to give us the most headaches since we don't always have a RDM/DRK for chainspell stun. We end up shadowbinding but sometimes people disengage a little late or stay right next to the god while it's shadowbound and end up dying. Kirin is up for this Saturday. I hope we have enough people so it's not a super long fight again.

I managed to snag a Jelly Ring as well. Lorddocster was soloing with NPC as a NIN and Sewer Syrup popped. I left sky (where I was duoing with Eckardt on Enkidus) and got there fast. We were forbidden to help (Doc was taking on Sewer Syrup and a Mousse) because he wanted to see if he could solo it. And solo it he did, and I got my Jelly ring! Now if the shield drops I can have -15% damage reduction when I solo as WHM.

On a side note I like soloing in Sky on Elementals or Enkidus. I get useful things (crystals, mercury, mythril ore) to sell or use. The exp isn't too bad. And it's not crowded at all!

Signatures

I was asked to make a few more sigs for the LS. I can't come up with a good idea for one of my own. But I think these turned out ok. Not super fancy, but I never claimed to be a graphic artist. I leave that to Jowah ^^

Return of the Dreaded R0

2007-05-08T11:05:00.000-10:00

So ... social LS decides to invade sky. Farming triggers and such. Killing the gods one by one until we kill Kirin. Hours in sky. *sigh* Anyways. On Saturday we attempted to do Divine Might. A couple of us had already finished. Our shell has quite a few new people to sky and 75 so we decided to try. It was not a pretty sight. Thing got miscommunicated, BLMs died left and right so we couldn't help nuke the AAs. The melee couldn't take them down fast enough. Needless to say we went 0/3. Now ... we go after Kirin. Of course after 3 DM, people are tired and decide to leave. So we have quite a few new people to sky/gods and some of the more experienced people had left. For support we have 2 RDM/DRKs and 2 WHM/SMNs. Ouch.

Actually the beginning didn't go too badly at all. We killed Suzaku, Byakko, and Seiryu without many problems. However, our kiting party (yes we don't have the fancy toys and jobs to kill Kirin super fast) died when Genbu popped. For some reason Genbu was not being cooperative and he took a bit to go down. So we had to raise the tanks and kite Kirin. That battle was super long. Another LS (one with Blayden in it, from our social shell, I think TrueVirtue) came in and helped a little with some raising.

Now I'm definitely not an endgame BLM. I have no elemental magic merits, not all the fun nuking toys. I get resisted a lot on Kirin. But every time elemental Seal is up, Tornado II does about 1.1K damage and Aeroga III does about 800-900. So I get to kite him for a while. Our problem is our BLMs are not really focused on BLM. For most of us, it was a second or third job and our merits are in other places. Our MNK/WHM Chi Blasted about 1500 every time, and our 2 SMNs tossed out 500-800 damage consistently. Our two poor WHMs were running around trying to heal people and raise people. We died so much. Much different from our first Kirin fight where it went much smoother (I think it's because our whole tanking party died and it was super chaotic).

After much death, running around, reraising, etc. (I was running around weakened with my black cloak, healing the NIN kiter while the WHMs ran around raising people) we managed to down Kirin. And he dropped ... a shining cloth (all our WHMs have noble tunics already, most of us had them before we entered the shell, but the 2 new ones got it from cloths from our first Kirin and from Suzaku?Seiryu? I forget who drops one), Damascus Ingot, and 2 wind crystals. No pole, no leg abjuration, no body abjuration, no Osode ; ;

Blayden's shell asked if we could help to kill their summons, but they asked in say and I missed it until most of us were gone. But I decided to help out and asked if Lorddocster and Nojoke could stay. I'm not sure why they decided to pop Kirin when they were <20 people. But they did. When the summons started coming, the RDMs enfeebled but no BLMs were nuking. So I started to nuke gently against Byakko and Seiryu. Turns out their BLMs were AFK *sigh*. This ended up with the kiting party dead, most of us dead, and Kirin with Genbu and Suzaku out. It was a comical tractor raise, tractor raise, die, tractor raise for a long time. Hale died and reraised so many times, I felt bad. Amazingly we managed to kill Suzaku and Genbu while kiting Kirin. Then settled into the longest Kirin fight ever. So many deaths. And not even for my LS ; ;

In the end I was 16K down for the whole day. It was painful. So I decided to try and recoup my losses over the next few days, a few K here and there. Last night with Eckardt, I went to Mount Zhalyom duoing princes. Through the night we had several R0/time outs which were annoying. The worst was when I was about 900 tnl, the mob had a sliver of health and R0 for both of us. I log back in dead. I was so annoyed. So now I'm 1.5K to capping.

GhostWhisper

My chick hatched and I named him GhostWhisper. Assuming he'll be black, but you never know. I watched him dutifully as an egg over 100x and he hatched regarding me as his parent. I've been feeding him carrot paste and some greens (he likes the sour ones). I take him on daily chocobo walks and watch over him. He gets to listen to music. Hopefully I can get his discernment up so he can learn stories, then raise his physical attributes. Plans are to be able to ride him. You have to love the butt wiggle they do when they are happy to see you no? Just a few more days (currently day 14) before I see what the tips of his feathers are. Hopefully with a Black Chocobo Father and a Black Chocobo Mother he'll turn out to be a Black Chocobo. I was tempted to make his name from the different parts of his parents ... but the only acceptable one would have been ShadowFury. I did not like ShadowFirecracker (too long as well), QueenFury, or QueenFirecracker (too long as well I think).

Been trying to grow Z. Carrots and V. Carrots. Have had much more success with the Z. Carrots. Sometimes I hate gardening.

Tried Camp Kweh with Guankim's Chocobo. Cute CSs.

BLM > WHM > BRD ? So says the Quiz

2007-05-07T14:31:00.000-10:00

You scored as Black Mage. Your a black mage. You like to blow stuff up. You get in mana burn, and as a bonus, you can level super fast. Your job is as deadly as they come.

Black Mage

75%

White Mage

66%

Bard

63%

Summoner / Beastmaster

53%

Paladin

53%

Ninja

50%

Red Mage

47%

Ranger

44%

Dragoon

44%

Thief

41%

Samurai

25%

Warrior

22%

Dark Knight

13%

Final Fantasy 11 Job
created with QuizFarm.com

More proof that playing BLM corrupts you. WHM is #2 and BRD is #3. Most of the questions are fairly obvious, but I tried to answer honestly. Can it be that I like blowing things up?

Zilart All Over Again

2007-04-23T12:58:00.000-10:00

Zilart is going to be mashed in the middle of this post since it happened chronologically in the middle, so bear with me.

First I managed to snag a BLM testimony while helping someone complete LB3 and also hoping for a key so they could obtain their RDM AF. Now I have no illusions about getting a Maat cap (because that would mean I'd have to level a DDish job) but I hate to throw things away. So I decided, what the heck, let's just try the Old Man again. Went in without any preparation, just my normal BLM gear. Of course, it helps that I'm level 75, with a lot of +elemental magic skill, +int, +enfeebling skill, and merits. I did wait for Earthsday to pass so less chance of resist on Burst II. Walked up to him, Burst II followed by an ES + Sleep II. He managed to Manafront and cast Bio II on me before my Sleep II hit him. Then I followed up with a Freeze II. Results as below.

To my surprise there were several people in my social LS that did not have sky yet. They had just achieved level 75 and were interested in getting Sky as well as joining our frolic against the Sky Gods. So after being assured that they had all the CS done up to ZM4 we went farming unlit lanterns. Ashur (RDM/BLM), Demesis (WAR/NIN), Avinateri (PLD/WAR) and myself (WHM/NIN) went to various locations in the Temple of Ugglies and Den of Rancor to attempt getting these items. We were unsuccessful for about 2 hours. I managed to coax Dukenukem with this THF 45 to help us, and were unsuccessful for about another hour or so. Then I managed to corral Nojoke (THF 75 with TK) into coming (he had logged in the temple anyway camping pop item for TK). First Maledictor we fought, a latern dropped. The Second one we fought, a lantern dropped. Now Dukenukem had a lantern from before so all we needed was one more.

Disgusting isn't it? 3/3 Unlit Lanterns (when I did mine other people had the lantern already). So we saddled up to hit the BCNM. I changed to BLM/WHM for ES Sleepga II, Duke changed to PLD/NIN, and Kavita (WHM/BLM) consented to join us. I sent Ashur, Avinateri, and Demesis to Norg to do the Tonberry hate quest. Then all of use removed our hate (except Duke who never started the quest). I had made sure everyone had bought silent oils/prism powders and we traipsed out to Den of Rancor. Made it in one piece and entered the BCNM. Managed to defeat it with no problems (it is so much easier at level 75 than when I did it at level 60 WHM). Duke, Kavita, Ashur, and Avinateri had to log.

Demesis and I continued on because our LS leader had said if I got them through ZM5 he'd take them to sky. Nojoke came along because I planned to sacrifice him to the Ash Dragon and then raise him somewhere. Luckily I found a nice map online with the route (I still need a map of Ifrit's Cauldron) and we went through without too much of a problem. Demesis accidentally got Ice Crystals instead of Clusters so we had to patiently wait. The Ash Dragon was firmly against the far left wall so we managed without any aggro! We killed the NMs at Behemoth's Dominion, Ifrit's Cauldron, and Sanctuary of Zi'Tah. Celestial and Lorddocster took Demesis to the rest of the headstones (I needed food, sleep, and to craft sleeping potions for a LS person).

After Sky the next day (where we defeated Suzaku x 2 and Byakko x2 [finally one without a death and a leg dropping for a NIN]) I saw Demesis and Ashur nearing Ifrit's Cauldron (they had done all of the solo headstones for Ashur while we were skying). I dragooned Doc, Ashke, and Nojoke into going along without realizing that Ashur had shouted for a group in Aht Urghan Whitegate. I almost killed the DRK when he said he didn't have any more silent oils...grrrrr. Nonetheless we managed to do all the headstones again. Doc lead us to ZM6 and at that point Doc, Ashke, and NJ left our group.

So we had a PLD/WAR, DRK/WAR, WHM/SMN, RDM/BLM, WAR/NIN, and a BLM/WHM and vowed to get sky. ZM6 wasn't a problem at all. Unfortunately two of our members had thrown away their Delkfutt's Tower Key so they ran up the way. ZM8 was pretty easy with one death, the WAR, when Light Blade managed to go off. After all the requisite CSs we headed again to QSC. I suggested clearing out the worm so it wouldn't aggro us while we rested back for TP. Unfortunately someone popped the ancient vessel. The PLD ended up dying before we realized the vessel had popped so Demesis and the DRK took turns tanking. We managed to beat it and were off on our way to Sky. I took them through Ro'Maeve a couple of times for the CSs. Then I took them on a tour of sky.

Explained what aggro'd and how to use the Blue teleporters. I remember my first time there trying to figure out what people were telling me so I could get to Genbu and help out (at the time I hadn't done any sky gods and I was just guesting on shells because they wanted a BRD to help and friends had asked me). They were so excited. I had to rush to Limbus after.

I got bludgeoned into starting to raise a Chocobo. Ashke and Lorddocster both have black chocobos who have been groomed for speed and endurance. So I dutifully sent ShadowQueen (Ashke's Black Female) and FirecrackerFury (Doc's Black Male) on a Jeuno Date. My egg should be ready later tonight and then I have to figure out how to raise this chocobo. Probably going to use it mainly as a riding chocobo.

Hopefully I parent it well and it doesn't hate me ^^

Return to FFXI

2007-04-19T10:34:00.000-10:00

After that disastrous Limbus run I took a nice two and a half week break from FFXI. Read a bit in my free time including my favorite fantasy series, Heralds of Valdemar and The Belgariad. Didn't have the will to re-read The Wheel of Time series by Robert Jordan.

Upon returning Arizod and Gheldhart urged me to return to Limbus. I took an additional week to think about it and accepted. I did apologize to the shell for losing my temper that night. We're supposed to try Omega again sometime soon. I did manage to scrape together enough coins to get a musical earring (cheer!). That actually helped me land elegy on some of the sky gods with better regularity than before which I am happy about. Next up is the loquacious earring (another 75 coins).

I actually participated in the Easter Event this year. Mainly because I wanted the glowing egg. I pulled my other egg lamps out of storage. I was too lazy to randomly get eggs so I cheated and bought eggs from bazaars (I found them to be 500-2000g range since I did it near the end of the event). I had to get the egg helm first and then managed to grab my jeweled egg. I like them so much that I've left them permanently in my mog house for now.

I've been fooling around with .dats as well. I found Fausley's .dats for hume male which I use on my mules for their "naked" gear. I found a nice black and red chocobo as you can see from above. And I found the Link Costumes (I use Red Link for the tarutaru RSE and the Green Link for my field gear). And best of all, I found the moogle hoodie (by Strawberrie) and the pants with Taru on the side (I forgot who made it). .dat switching is fun.

I finally decided to get myself a relaxing earring for an additional +2 hMP. I did not know what I was getting myself into. I spent hours soloing the flowers of death. All in all I got about 30-40K exp doing this. I had Dukenukem along sometimes as BLM and sometimes as SMN. He managed to MPK me a bit (hehe) but we had a good time doing it. The drop rate is horrible. But I finally managed to snag the earring!

I tried my hand at mining in Halvung and Mt. Zhalyom. Halvung is like Ifrit's Cauldron and to my chagrin I died a bit. Mostly carelessness (e.g. forgetting bombs aggro'd to magic). The mining was o.k. but since I can't take on the trolls solo it does leave many mining points out of reach. I think I prefer Mt. Zhalyom. I managed to dig up a gold ore (5K), a couple of troll armor (about 2K), moblin armor (desynth them), demon horn (4K), and some Aht Urghan brass (5K). I desynthed one moblin armor into a gold ingot (25K), and had enough brass to sell 3 separately and make one ingot (20K). So it was an ok haul. Harder than making Yagudo Drinks, but somewhat entertaining.

Qutting Limbus

2007-03-21T20:49:00.000-10:00

I really enjoy limbus, but as of tonight I have quit Ruinous Omen.

First atempt at Omega. It was not pretty. 12 people, 3 BLMs, 1 WHM, 2 NIN/WAR, 1 MNK/WAR, 1 DRK/NIN, 2 SMN/WHM, 1 RNG/NIN, 1 RDM/WHM. Regen II on the main NIN tank at the beginning and Haste while he was kiting. He was at full health. Later a Cure III. After first form changed, got hit by some silences. The NIN died before I could get off a cure after my echo drop. Then he complains, Cure where?

There are a lot of deaths naturally. For all the NIN's vaunted expertise, a single cure III on him pulled hate and guess what, I died. I'm so tired of Toxicity. I'm tired of waiting 45 minutes to an hour each time. But when Toxicity had the nerve to say Cure III and Regen II don't cut it and the WHM has an easy job to just focus on the tanks I lost it. I'm sorry, but I'm not in Limbus to listen to whiny, aggravating, ego-centric, holier-than-thou, idiots.

I'm sorry about porting home, but I was so upset that I couldn't stand it any longer. Sorry for leaving the rest of you with R1s. Enjoy the rest of your time in Limbus.

I'm close to just not playing the game anymore. People aggravate me too much.

Heigh-Ho!

2007-03-15T07:02:00.000-10:00

Ever since that infamous update I've had R0 in at least 2 places, Bastok Metalworks and Den of Rancor. Which meant that I lost my ability to Outpost Warp (damnit) and I couldn't participate in the Hakutaku series of fights that my LS was doing (it was to help others, I've had my O.Hat for a a while). But...as of yesterday...I didn't have any R0 in Metalworks! (Too lazy to try and check Den of Rancor). Thank goodness!

Crafting

Haven't been doing much leveling per se. Just been dressing like Link instead.

Been mining in Oldton. Why you ask? I'm cheap. It kills me to spend 2.6-4K per synth at level 17 smithing buying iron ores to craft iron ingots. I guess I've been spoiled by Alchemy and Cooking (a lot of NPC buyable ingredients), Clothcrafting (relatively cheap base materials in the beginning buying from guild/airship vendors), and Leathercrafting (easily farmable hides). I'm still not sure how I leveled Goldsmithing to 33 on Brin (but he did dip under 1 million after that stretch, I think I lost about 100K when I did that, buying a lot of my ores).

Oldton was nice to me. Except for the frickin' goblin dice. I got so many of those and they are supposed to be a rare mine. Got a lot of zinc ores and a few iron ores. The Zinc went to my GS on Verrick so I'm slowly reaching cap. What makes Olton so nice is the amount of moblin gear I dig up. Turning them into brass ingots, cotton cloth, and Glass Fiber. If Verrick's crafts get high enough to desynth it'd be nice to do it in the field and not have to go back to unload. I did manage a HQ3 desynth on Brin and got a gold ingot. I dug up a platinum ore too. Those two funded my pickaxes.

Later I tried my hand at Yughott Grotto. Much better for iron ores! The only downside to mining is my pickaxes break a lot and I'm wearing the field gear. *sigh*

Limbus

Did Limbus again last night. Super fun and super coordinated. Got about 3 Ancient beastcoins for my efforts. Now I'm up to 11, just 64 to go. Gah.

Now this technically isn't Limbus but these guys are members/leaders of my Limbus shell. I've posted SS of Arizod, but Gheldhart hasn't been in many. So without further ado:

Aznmahavailo has a taru fetish. So he finally got his wish with the doll festival and became a taru for a brief moment in time!

I did a few more sigs:

Now I just have to come up with an idea of for my own signature and one for Gheldhart.

Signature Maker

2007-03-12T09:52:00.000-10:00

Been on a signature making kick lately for people from my LS for our LS website. Now I am definitely not a graphics/photo manipulation person nor could I be called anything remotely like an artist (stick figures are what I can manage). But since I was having fun, thought I'd share some. I think Tonyo's came out the best. My own signature is kind of blase. It shows a Promy Gate and a Crystal at the Dawn Battle. I meant to put the words, From Dem ... to Dawn, but neglected to.

Here is a retrospect of my own signatures:

Redemption

2007-03-07T10:39:00.000-10:00

Shikigami Weapon

Be careful what you brag about in your LS. A member of the social LS crowed about his brother got the YY robe NM and the drop after the party wiped. Of course he didn't know that some of us were there and loved how his brother just stood there watching us. Generally if someone claims an NM I try to help them out with cures, etc. whether it be the Dune Widow or the NM that drops the O.Kote.

Well we figured that not too many people would be able to figure out the pop time since it took over an hour for the weapon to die so we sadled up again. This time we had 3 tanks, Snakegod, Timuljin, and Poetsave (2 NIN and a PLD). Kniko (SMN), myself (WHM/SMN), and Vallis (BLM/RNG) provided support. Nojoke (THF/RNG) came for WS and TH hopefully. We split up into 3 groups, on on the West, one on the East, and one in the lower middle platform (where he spawned yesterday). There was another group that was waiting, about an hour before we got there. When the NM popped Snakegod claimed it. Everyone else used sneak this time and got there without aggro. One link from the area which was slept by Vallis and the weapon was toast (see how easy it can be). And this dropped:

Kniko was beside himself and stated that he was shaking. It's funny how many SMN devote their lives to this robe...before they hopefully get it.

ToAU

I had hoped to be on top of all the missions for ToAU since most of them are CSs anyways, but my little mini static for the missions missed out last Sunday. So with the update I'm behind one major battle then whatever comes this way. ToAU is definitely not as challenging as CoP, but the storyline is entertaining nonetheless. The Lady Puppeteer seems to be somewhat of an airhead and is she controlling the pupets or they her? Gotta love Shantotto no matter where you see her. And...I want my glory crown back. Naja stole it from me. There are wild speculations as to what the reward will be for completing these missions. I hope it's not a crown, I've had enough of the opo-crown on my head.

Craftaruing

So I've been on a crafting kick lately. I managed to get Adept status through making polyflan. I scrounged together enough materials to make it to 83 (cap). Since my friend Arizod was at level 28 alchemy I suggested he level to 30 on eye drops and then use the polyflan (which NPCs for about 114g a piece) to make polyflan paper (cap 36) and then NPC the results. The paper is used to make a few attachments and COR cards, but the cards use a light crystal (which are admittedly cheaper now) and a cluster of the particular element to make 33 cards (more if you HQ). Easier just to buy from the NPC vendors.

So since my next synth required a ram leather I went on a ram hunting spree.

I also bought Ram skin from the AH for 800-1000 a piece. I managed to get Whit up to 35 even on leathercrafting (which makes it a full 3 times leveling from 0-35 in leathercraft on 3 different characters). I had figured I needed about 3 stacks per synth level so I managed to scrape together 12 stacks of ram leather. The other ingredient was Holy Water so I bought up a ton of light crystals to synth. Now since making the holy water would not give me any skill ups I offered to have Arizod synth them for me. So I pushed him to get to 40 on potions, then to 43 on vitriol. He pushed to 44 on Acid boltheads (he was close enough to cap on Alchemy to get skill ups from breaks, but his smithing was way too low, level 5, to actually synth any boltheads). Then I set him to work making holy water for me (I provided the materials, much like Aznmahavailo did for me). I had synthed up about 5 stacks previously so we were both in the alchemy guild synthing.

Now the conditions last night could not have been better. It was New Moon and Lights/darksday so perfect for both of us (since we were doing light based synths). I managed to craft up to 85 on lightsday then waited for darksday (while buying more materials for Arizod to synth). On Darskday I managed to get to 87 (cap!) with about 3 stacks of ram leather left over. I gave Arizod the extra holy water to synth into holy bolt heads (caps at 53) and gave him some suggestions on the path to 60. I synthed him up a firesword (after he bought the iron sword) for his guild test item and he managed to get to level 51 alchemy. He is a veteran cook so Alchemy to 60 will help him HQ snoll stuff. I couldn't resist a pic of us in our aprons.

Retribution

Prior to this I went to help out on Retribution for Aznmahavailo and Gheldhart. I was somewhat offended by the PLD's remark when we got to Ifrit's Cauldron basically telling me to put RR3 up. I had it up from before we tele'd. As if I don't know my own job. I was a bit short already because I had to wait for Azn and Gheldhart to get ready (and I was itching to do synths to prep for the lightsday I saw coming up). We get to the place but instead of clearing the aggro mobs, Azn pulled the NM. So I notice Gheldhart's life going down and see a bat attacking him. And neither Azn nor the PLD were voking. Talk about not knowing your job (Azn was main tank on the NM, so I can excuse him, the PLD was just whacking thigns). I had to tell the PLD to voke before Gheldhart died. Another bat aggrod and we were all almost out of MP. So I had to benediction to keep us alive. I didn't see the PLD use invincible at all. So I get whacked and they just barely manage to get hate off of me. Eventually we kill all the NM and all the links. They get their annals of truth and I warp out to get ready for my crafting session (see above section).

Limbus

I can't say enough good things about Limbus. I totally enjoy it. Ruinous Omen is a nice shell. And with members who have done it before it is easy to transition into it. On our last run I managed to snag my 2nd BRD upgrade item. I had planned on trying for a musical earring first (75 Ancient Beastcoins) but once I got my BRD items I could not resist this:

So I borrowed 2 coins from Arizod and bought a manticore leather off the AH. As luck would have it, the run was on a Saturday so I managed to get my Choral Cuffs +1 the next day (after conquest tally). +10 Singing Skill, +7 CHR! Now I want to upgrade the pants for +8 Wind Skill. Unfortunately upgrading your AF to AF+1 uses up the item so I was no longer able to store my BRD AF. So what's a taru to do? He goes requesting it.

After paying 10K to erase my memories, I went to beat up Tros for my AF1 weapon to start it all over again.

Easy, but...I learn something. If I want to replace the item and complete the mission I have to dump my Paper knife. So I trudge to Bastok to throw my Paper Knife away and have to go all the way back to the pond. At least I didn't have to fight him again. Then I start AF2 quest and then open the hands quest. I had forgotten that the stupid thing was in Castle Zhavl Baileys...*sigh*. Aurridaur and Nojoke came with me to try and get a key. Unfortunately we weren't able to and they both had to leave. I decided to stick around a bit and managed to get a key on my third kill after they left. This is so much easier with Ni (I can even take the eyes without too much trouble). Then I went on the coffer hunt (luckily you can open this coffer without being the right job since it is a key item). I found the coffer surrounded by eyes. I waited until they were not facing it and opened the coffer, but forgot that opening the coffer now also cancels sneak. So I died and becuase of some too rapid button pushing I canceled my RR and had to HP. Grrr.

So I girded my loins to take out Dark Spark as WHM/NIN. First time trying it solo and it was a success. So I managed to get my choral cuffs back and stored my BRD AF. If I get the pants I have to go coffer hunting in The Evil Quadav place...*sigh*.

FFXI Update

There are a lot of new things with this update. Ulli is supposed to be a pop NM now. So is the THF's knife. Have to see how this works out.

One thing I am totally disappointed in is the no loss of exp from CoP battlegrounds. Granted they made CoP easier (from what I undestand) when they introduced some items to assist in the battles. But not losing exp? I guess they're trying to entice people to help others out without the threat of losing exp and their precious merits. But come on, that is a little too ridiculous. Where is the challenge anymore?

NM Stupidity

2007-03-05T22:07:00.000-10:00

/RANT ON

People are stupid when it comes to NMs. They see the NM and stop thinking. We went after the Shikigami Weapon in Ro'Maeve for Kniko. There was only one other part of 3 as competition, we had 6. When the weapon was up in the East, I started casting magic on the safe stairs. Everyone else ran by and doing stupid thing like linking weapons. Think about it, if you have a full alliance sure you can handle the 5-10 links, but not just 6 people and especially with a party of 3 as competition. So the NIN tank is fighting a cursed puppet, a THF has a weapon, I end up with 2 weapons on me. The SMN and RNG died while running after the invisible weapon. The BLU died shortly after.

We actually get the weapon and do some raising, but didn't think and didn't move the weapon to the safe stairs. Then the NIN tank Dc's. I get the SMN up to help heal but he pulls aggro and dies again. Leaving me with barely any MP and weakened (I died to the 2 weapons). I ask at least 3 times to be healed so I can devotion someone for some MP but no one listens. The BLU is still trying to melee the weapon when he would have been more useful as a back up healer. So of course the BLU dies to AoE. I have the THF PD and try to get some MP back, but things have popped already. I die and the THF dies. The other party of 3 just sat there and watched and took the NM from us as we died. Eventually they killed it. Nice cooperative spirit there eh? The SMN did stay behind and raise me.

I was VERY PISSED at the whole situation. People just become stupid and don't think about things. The weapon is not that hard if you think. But then again, perhaps I expect too much out of people when they reach the 70s. And the dead RNG had the gall to tell me what to do when he stupidly died in the first place. Peope learn to THINK.

/RANT OFF

Craftaholic

2007-03-01T20:35:00.000-10:00

Most of the time crafting is an appendage to an update. Well this time around I get a big crafting headline and a smaller section devoted to a turtle.

For some reason the crafting bug has hit me again. Whether it's to pay for Dynamis and Limbus 2 x a week (about 140-150K a week) or whether I just want to subject myself to agony, I'm not sure. I stubbornly managed to get Verrick up to 60 in Alchemy on Scorpion Claws x 2 + Lightning Crystal --> Venom Dust. Then I faithfully made all those dusts into Venom potions (Lightning crystal + mercury + venom dust) on Brin. Mercury itself takes lightning crystals. So I plunked myself in my lightning crystal spot as a BLM, took up a good book, and farmed me up about 40 stacks of clusters. Aznmahavalio had graciously taken me up to level 70 on Anima synthesis for free (I donated a few mercury stacks). Arizod helped me farm up scorpion claws (I can kill the scorps in CN, but with a big Galka NIN/WAR by your side, they die a lot faster). I managed to make a ton of Venom boltheads to get to level 75.8. I took the Reishi mushrooms I had stored away and got one more level off of x-potions. Used a stack of beastman blood I had been hoarding to make some bloody bolt heads. I did try farming the blood, but found out it was totally worthless to do (didn't get a single blood in over an hour).

So I decided to make Polyflan. Unforunately you need Chimera blood (drops off of puks) and flan meat (off of flans). I kicked myself for all the times I NPC'd the blood (from parties in the thickets) and the flan meat (from manaburns). SO I resorted to asking LS people and buying off the AH (blood 7K a stack, meat 2-3K a stack) which is super cheap for a synth at this stage of the game. And guess what it takes lightning crystals...lol. Managed to get to 77.3 with tons left to synth up (caps at 83). After this I plan to do holy leather to 87 so I've been farming rams as THF/RNG. But the biggest news is:

I finally have a crafting apron! Thank you to Kavita and Nojoke for synthing me weapons to turn into GP items since my smithing is far too low. Now Cooking I have the level for the apron, just not the GP. For Cloth and Leather I have over 100K GP, but not the requisite levels. I finally do feel like a craftsperson!

Genbu

My social LS has made forays into Sky. We've killed some of the pop triggers and managed to get triggers to kill Genbu x 2. About 16 of us trekked up there, including 2 newish WHMs to sky (one 75, the other was 68). We managed to get the abjurations for zenith mitts x 2 (one to Snuggle, the other to Kniko), the abjuration to Koenig hands (to Snakegod) and a Genbu's shield (to Enedin). The fight wasn't too bad, but Genbu kept one shotting the NINs. Still I managed to scape through on BRD without any deaths. Not sure if I really want to keep doing it. There is nothing I really want from sky, nor would I be high on the priority list for anything. I suppose if I ever got COR up high enough, crimson finger gauntlets would be useful. *shrug*

Still very excited about the apron!

Want to see the DL?

2007-02-22T08:06:00.000-10:00

Dynamis

Remember how I said we'd do a dry run of Xarcabard next? Well it happened. Dynamis is an interesting storyline. We gathered at the trail markings fully prepared to die multiple times. Our LS leader(s) [Vlacatocc does so much prep work, I'm truly impressed] ran through some basic strategy. We've managed to win Beaucedine the last 2 times so we have some people with access to Xarcabard. We fielded 37 people (one of the WHMs left the shells since he can't make the times often enough) so we went in with 36 (or so we thought). Turns out one of our BLMs didn't have the Beaucedine win so we went in with 35. Gotta love the CS with the multiple warp in to defeat the Dynamis Lord.

We managed to snipe a few eyes with 7 BLMs without any aggro and took out 2 time extensions without problems. Then we went on to the 15 NM demons. The BLMs sniped the eyes from behind then we moved to the front. Legos and Timuljin (NINs) would kite 2 of the NM demons while the alliance fought the third. Acreana (WHM) went to keep the kiters alive. Our first trio of NMs our kiters went down and so did the WHM, but we managed to beat them without any alliance wipes. And you know what? We managed to beat all 15 NM demons without any wipes. We got much better at them by the final trio.

Then we hit a spot with about 6 eyes in a row. The plan was for the BLMs to snipe them without drawing hate (this means all 7 BLMs needed to hit the eyes at the same time to kill them instantly, spawning the demons but no hate on any BLM). Managed to kill 2 eyes without problems. I lagged seriously on the 3rd eye and my macro didn't fire. Another BLM was a fraction late and that loosed an eye and about 9 kindred demons on the alliance. Back in the beginning of the shell that would have spelled wipe for sure. But you know what? Our RDMs were spot on with sleeps, the callers and DDs moved quickly to kill demons, and the BLMs helped out with sleepga II and nukes. And we managed to kill them all with just a few deaths (and everyone was so on the ball that I reraised in the middle of all that and didn't die). Unfortunately we couldn't snipe the other 3 eyes since they ahd spawned their NMs already so we took on another train of demons and killed them all. We were pretty high on our success at that point. A few members who had beaten the dynamis lord (like 2) and a few that had done Xarcabard before (but never seen the DL) were impressed.

We went to take on the Vanguard Dragons next. BLMs on the cliffs and the DDs below with Legos bringing each dragon. Those dragons were ridiculously weak to magic. So the BLMs had a field day just spamming nukes and killing them before they reached us on the cliffs. And before we knew it, all the Vanguard Dragons were down. We moved our way to Ying and Yang, the twin dragons that needed to be killed pretty quickly after each other otherwise the twin will summon the dead dragon back to full health. The alliance stayed away and the BLMs and BRDs went to Thundaga III them. I think we might have had a resist or two somewhere in there, but we managed to take Ying down in the first volley of nukes. Yang we had some problems as he raped the BLMs but the alliance helped out and the remaining BLMs nuked him as well and got him down.

Then this big puppy spawned (we had 20 minutes left on the run).

Now here was our situation. Thirty four people (one of the BLMs dc'd) who never thought we'd make it to the Dynamis Lord. We had figured we'd die multiple times getting used to the zone and probably wipe to one of the demon NM trios. But what the heck we decided to try to take him on. No one had icarus wings, opo necklaces, sleeping potions, etc. It was super fun. We managed to get chainspell stun for about 2 minutes but in the end he and his pet dragons (Ying and Yang reincarnated) raped us. We got DL to 80%. Not bad for a first run at Xarcabard with a smallish amount of people. And a great deal of fun too! We just need to optimize our damage and get more people to have access. Congratulations to Lorddocster (Duelist Chapeau), Timuljin (Koga Tekko), and Dukenukem (Valor Surcoat).

Limbus

Did Temenos W tower with 12 people with Ruinous Omen. I love Limbus a lot. We did the animal tower.

Can you say unlucky? We got a single time chest in the whole tower. We managed to get up to the slime floor before we ran out of time. But it was super fun and a great group to go with. I managed to snag a coiled yarn for BRD AF+1. Tons of samurai pieces dropped (but no SAM in the LS). I got 4 ancient beastcoins (total of 40 dropped, would have been more if we got some time chests). From what I understand this is the most random of towers in terms of completing since it's dependant on how many time chests you get to randomly pop.

Craftaruing

Managed to get Verrick to 56 in Alchemy. I went with Arizod's advice and hunted Lightning elementals where Behemoth spawns. Since Lightning weather is often up in Qufim areas this was a nice place. I went as WHM/BLM, but I think I can farm elementals much better as a BLM since spells do reiciculous amount of damage to elementals. Got about 10 clusters and meant to hunt scorpion claws to make venom dust to get to 60. The plan is to turn the venom dust to venom potions (On Brin, although Brin is past the cap for this one) and to turn those into Venom Bolt heads (cap of 76 so Brin will get skill ups). Then do X-potions for however many reishi mushrooms I have (Guankim gave me some a while back). Was initially going to do bloody boltheads to 81 but beastman blood is a lot. Might do polyflan instead if I can get enough chimera blood.

Mapaholic

2007-02-20T10:06:00.000-10:00

A couple of big accomplishments (but I forgot to take screenshots; I was too happy when it happened). My social LS wants to fool around in sky a bit to try and get items from the gods. Now I don't really have a huge urge for god gear, but I'm willing to go with them. Needless to say it's easy to get lost up there. We managed to do our business (more about it later) and I got a Ru'Ann Garden's key out of it. I had a key to the Palace in sky for ages but had never got around to finding it. I went searching for the coffer for the palace, but died when I wasn't paying attention to a nasty detector (I was BRD). Later that day I decided to give it another whirl and went as BLM/WHM. I managed to find the Ru'Ann coffer key fairly quickly which I was happy about. Then I went to look for the coffer for the palace. I figured I might as well look for the ??? for Curtana at the same time. OF course when I decide to do that I find the coffer in the 2nd place guarded by a weapon. So I elemental sleepII the weapon, grab my coffer, and escape out of there. Mission accomplished!

Emboldened by my luck in Sky, I decided to go after the Den of Rancor and the Oldton Movalopalos (sp?) maps since I had their keys rotting in my MH. The Den of Rancor wasn't that much fun. I ran all over that place without finding the coffer. So I had to exit to the jungle (and hopefully it was in the other pop place since I forgot my clubs to fight the Temple Guardian and was lucky that some people wer efighting it already the first time). Went in the other way to the Den of Rancor and behold found it surrounded by Opos. Waited for them to move away and got my map! Oldton was nice since I don't aggro anything there and I found the ma pin the 5th spot I checked. I love having maps!

Notorious Monsters

On our way to skill up/break latent weapons we came accross Aquarius. We had a WAR who was interested in the Franchescia so we went and beat up on it. First time I ever fought it. The only other time I saw it was when I leveled in the Tree with a static and our puller accidentally pulled it instead of a regular crab. Congratulations to Totalkaos on his new weapon.

As I mentioned before my social LS went up to sky. Now most of us are relatively new to sky (I've done a few farming sessions and god battles, but just a few). We made it to the Ulli camp without problems but after 2 or 3 hours of being there and him not popping we decided to try and life our morale with a forced pop. We went to fight Aura Pots to get a Ro'Maeve water. That took us forever. We had some people leave in frustration/boredom/late night. But we finally got the damn water to drop and got our pop item. I can see why people buy pop items especially when some NMs pop every 3-12 hours or so. Sky just isn't worth it, but I suppose if the social LS wants it, I'll go with them. At least I'm learning how to navigate through sky and with my maps it will be eaiser to compare to my printed maps. I did get about 3 stacks of light crystals which is a good thing ^^.

I managed to break my Dagger of Trials doing level 2 skill chains over the course of a few days which was nice. The WSNM fight for Evisceration is pretty easy.

Also helped Blueeyedbeauty get Black Halo (along with Fullen and Dukenukem). That NM fight was just as easy as I remembered.

Dynamis

We decided to try Buburimu again. Our first run we wiped to a dragon and wiped to multiple links. So it wasn't a success. This time we were better prepared. Killed the voidsong dragon without too much difficulty. Killed a few NMs (but wiped on a bad link of 4 statues). We regrouped and killed the NM, but ran out of time to kill a lot of dragons. So we fought the megaboss with him having quite a bit of tricks left (including heavy stomp, manafront, and bodyslam). Needless to say it was bad. But we got him down to 60%. So that was pretty good. Just need to get a feel for the place and how to pull the mobs faster and without links so we can get enough of the bad moves away from the megaboss.

Doing a dry run of Xacabard next.

Craftaruing

Smithing can be expensive. Decided to do a bit of leveling on Verrick. Buying Iron Ores for 600-800g a piece sucks. That's about 2400 to 3200 a synth. I can't sell them back because Iron ingots are used for like the next 10-15 level of synths. I might have to resort to mining to reduce costs. Got Smithing to 17.8 on Verrick before I called it a day on Smithing to get my 9K back on BLM.

Before the update I decided to go farm some sleepshrooms to get Verrick's Alchemy up to 56 and hopefully finish him to 60 on Venom Dust (caps at 61). Killed exorays in CN and got 4 stacks of shrooms. Plunking down about 500g per poison flour and about 132 g per chamomille per synth it came out to about 650 g per synth which isn't bad. What was frustrating was a string of breaks and a string of no skill ups. Managed to synth about 4 stacks of sleeping potions which are going for about 18K on the AH right now. That isn't a bad amount of profit I suppose but nothing staggering. I ended up buying a stack of shrooms for 5K hoping to cap out my alchemy but it didn't happen. So I'm stuck at 55.3 in alchemy. I forgot how horrible the skill ups can be in the 50s.

I don't think I'll be leveling a job much in the forseeable future. Crafting has taken hold again!

Items Galore!

2007-02-15T12:02:00.000-10:00

One day Aznmahavalio asked Arizod and myself if we wanted to do a BCNM20 with him using his Pirate chart. So we agreed. I went as SMN, Ari as PLD, and Azn as a SMN. Basically when he pulls up 3 NM, Ari aggros, vokes, and Invincibles. Then Azn and I both Judgement Bolt and dead NMs. When he opened up the chest we found:

This kris is going for about 9 million on Garuda now. Azn was extremely lucky!

Arizod and I did a failed attempt at completing ZM. It was right after I helped a DRK friend of Arizod's and Gheldhart's get through the Tenzen fight. We took Arizod (WAR), myself (BRD), the Arnagamon (DRK), Deathseeker (DRK), Arton (PLD) and Charmedangel (WHM). Now first of all if people don't know where they are going don't run off and pretend that you do. We got lead to Kirin's pop instead. So I manage to find the way to the BCNM area with Charmedangel in tow. I had been told to come as BRD. We decide to do a dry run. I tried to sleep the orbitals but Lullaby wears of fairly quickly. We did manage to get the boy to 4% which was nice, all without major food or 2 HRs. So I ask if someone can help me pull one of the orbitals away from the main boss so I can sleep them but no one helps. So I have to run in and pull them with elegy one at a time and get hit by a lot of AoE. Arizod was unable to target the exoskeletons for the majority of the fight. The WHM is a complete idiot and only cures the PLD. So I'm left in red HP trying to alternate sleeping orbitals and shadows without receiving any support. So I die. And I say thanks for the cures and the WHM condenscendingly says that other people need healing. I'm super pissed right now. I received not a single cure in either battle. Then the DRK says, you died from the orbitals. No crap sherlock, it's a little hard to sleep them when I have less than 100 HP. The WHM wanted to try again and she brilliantly comes up with the idea that she'll cast Dia to pull an orbital. What a complete idiot! I would never party with either that DRK or WHM again.

The day after I send a tell to Arton to thank him for his kind words. He had told me he wasn't sure why the WHM or the other DRK were getting in with me as he saw that I had kept them off as long as I could. That resulted in him asking me if I could join him in an exp party as a BRD. No pulling and I could sub WHM. Which is nice for me since I have lag in the Thickets for some reason. So I go and we make about chain #10-15 at a nice pace and I had a good time. People left and people replaced and then all of a sudden we had the thickets to ourselves (the other party had left). A WAR changed to RDM and I changed to BRD/NIN and pulled with the RDM helping me to sleep (my lag causes my macros not to fire very well). We managed to do this:

We lost the chain because 5 sea puks popped on us in rapid succession and we got a little sidetracked trying to sleep them all and the melee got confused on which one they were fighting. But Chain #110 was pretty good, and broke my record of #66 in the Mire. I don't think I could ever get #400, my concentration would just slip.

So I decided to go fishing with Arizod yesterday on Valentine's day. We had a couple of pirate pops but no pirate in Vermy in the middle so no NM. So sad. Gheldart joined us a little later about 2 hours before limbus. I finished fishing up 6 stacks of nebs and we were ready to head to Jeuno. But we decided to take one last boat ride to see if the NM would pop. I got so excited when I saw the glitch (that lets you know when pirates would pop) and then the central pirate had a Vermy! So Silverhook popped. This time I had a NIN/WAR and a SMN/WHM to help me out.

and then:

This thing is so much fun!

Right after we went to Limbus. We decided to do Apollyn NW to finish off a chip set. Limbus was super fun again! We managed without any deaths and just one link on the Wyvern Floor. We skipped the boss on the Wyvern Floor, the mini-Fafnir. We defeated the mini-Genbu. The fifth floor was super fun but hard as hell. Kaiser Behemoth managed to sneak up on us and killed the majority of us (except for me and the RDM). We managed to run around and raise people and one of the BLMs kited Kaiser while everyone got unweakened and healed. The RDM and the 2 BLMs (I was one) tossed on as much DoT as we could. Eventually we managed to kill him in an organized fashion and scored 4-5 Ancient beastcoins a piece. That equals to 8/75 for me for my first earring.

Did Dynamis-Bastok earlier in the day. I swear I died tons of times which sucked but we got the win again, even with a messed up mega boss pull that linked an Effigy Shield and about 3 other links along with the Mega Boss. We had 4 BLM AF drop and a THF AF drop. I was 5th on the bid list for the BLM AF...lol. For my deaths and exp loss I got 1 byne bill. *sigh* But still enjoy Dynamis, but I'm going to go as WHM next time...for RR3.

Fun Things to Play With

2007-02-12T09:13:00.000-10:00

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!

It Finally Happened

2007-02-05T09:53:00.000-10:00

You knew this would happen someday.

I finally reached BLM to 75 on 2/3/07. And the vast majority of it was soloing. For a while the social LS was fixated on manaburns since the LS leader was RDM and BLM and wanting to get merits. And I barded for a lot of it. Now the LS is fixated on TP burns which means my BLM was left out in the cold. I'm probably not going to party with my BRD until BLM gets a full compliment of exp to cap. Eckardt and Guankim were there at the momentous moment. Recently been duoing with Eckardt when time permits.

Been doing some KSNM runs when I can find the time to help out the service. It's usually jam packed. *sigh*

Notorious Monsters

Got a tell from Kavita if I would be willing to smack down an NM in Junger forest. So I sadled up my WHM/NIN and went after this huge tree. Turns out it drops the bellicose mantle. But this thing has a very high regen rate and between my spell casting (stoneskin, dia, paralyze, slow) and shadow spamming the darn thing was getting HP back more than I could dish it out it seems. So Kavita got her husband Dukenukem to come as PLD and we took it down. Unfortunately no drop. But fun seeing 3 pint sized tarus going after this huge ass tree.

I was seriously disappointed in people this Saturday. WHM get asked all the time for teleports and raises and we oblige when we can. No tanks showed up at ALL for our shen fight on Saturday. What pissed me off was one PLD, Snakegod, whom basically had us kill Charby for his joytoy did not show up when he said he was going to. Our first try one of the BLMs cast before the SC went off. Shen delayed bringing his filtrates out, but I was the only BLM left standing with no MP at about 8% before he retreated into his shell. Then the filtrates took us out. I should have Manafronted now that I think about it. *sigh* Our second try went even worse as he pulled out the filtrates at the beginning. Got it to 40% before wiped. One BLM was only level 60 so he wasn't doing much damage. If we had a tank that could keep some hate off the BLMs it might work better. Maybe some RDMs as well. Maybe the BLMs could have logged for hate issues and come back it. Hopefully try it again on Saturday.

The Yinyang Robe has been a source of frustration for some people that I know. I posted about Sali finally getting his. I lost track of the ToD and didn't know when to go to Ro'Mauve to help Gheldhart out. I get told it was going to be a 6 AM HST pop time so I manage to wake up at 5:30ish and log in. Didn't have time to change from BLM/RDM to BLM/WHM so I OP'd to the Sanctuary and run. Arizod (who was controlling Gheldhart as well) told me the weapon popped early and he accidentally aggro'd it and wiped to it. When I got there, another LS had the weapon but were faring pretty badly. They had links up the wazoo and were ineffectual at handling them. They wiped and Arizod tried to voke the NM, but it ignored him and cast invisible and went running around. I tried to cast magic, but aggro'd another weapon. Arizod and I took care of it and gheldhart got aggro. Then amazingly the NM aggro'd us (whether magic or link not sure) and we got claim. Now the weapon isn't the easiest thing in the world, especially when your main tank is controling the main healer, so I ended up main healing. Sali managed to work his way back to us with a weapon on his tail (he was tyring to aggro it in another section). We fought off two links and the NM. I got the kill. And the robe dropped. So now I'm 2/2 on the robe when we get the claim. Maybe I'm a lucky charm?

Gil

It's been a long time since I've seen this:

Most of this was the D.Ingot I got at a KSNM run. It was promptly used to buy an Austere Staff. Now I'm 7/8 HQ staves. Not going to get the Water unless I get my SMN up high enough for staff usage. I managed to BCNM Wild Wild Whiskers with my friend Arizod. We duo'd it the first time and I managed to get my Penitent's Rope! Since this has a 600K price tag I was pretty happy I didn't have to buy it. I gave Ari the rest of my loot since he helped me out. We went back yeterday with Arizod (NIN), Eckardt (RDM), and myself (WHM). Definitely made it a lot smoother with Eckardt there to BLM enfeeble, refresh, and help with curing and nuking. Unfortunately Eckardt and I ended up with gleeman's belts. Arizod got the big money drop of the night with a Penitent's Rope. I think this Galka is my new best friend ^^

Dynamis

We managed to beat Dynamis-Beadecine on our 4th try (I was present for only one of those). Smooth run without any wipes to the Mega Boss. Puller sight aggro'd, used perfect dodge and ran the dragons to the beginning of the zone. Meanwhile the PLD voked the Megaboss and let it debuff him while we waited for the dragons to be kited away so they wouldn't aggro and help the megaboss. Tossed the SMN and /SMN pets on it so we could follow as it teleported around. Had a RDM/DRK Chainspell Stun when it used it's chainspell. He was our only casualty as it got off a death/doom spell. And we won. We tried to kill the dragons for fun, and killed one off but could take on the other three. Plans are to have a BLM warp out when the boss is at like 10-15% and run back to the markings. Then everyone drop the glass when they win and hand out new glasses. Come back weakened for 10 minutes then go back to farming. Anything to avoid those dragons. We had tried Buburimu in the past and I'm not looking forward to it in the future.

Spreading the Joy Around

2007-01-29T23:48:00.000-10:00

Apparently receiving a Joytoy has sparked an avalanche. There are several people now sporting a Joytoy after my fateful procurement of one. Lorddocster, Snakegod, Dukenukem and now Dustmite. I'm tired of SSG, honestly. It's possible to win without a BRD, just supposed to be harder. I actually fell asleep during Dukenukem's run and didn't hear the call, but they still beat it. Just take as few people as you can to kill it because massive DDs on Charby = massive TP to Charby = Massive amount of AoEs that can kill a lot of people.

I couldn't resist playing with it.

Recently picked up a heartsnatcher from a KSNM. Currently my Sword skill is 208, Dagger is 205 and I'm 143/500 weapon skill points to breaking the latent on the heartsnatcher. I don't think I'd ever get a Blau Doch so the heartsnatcher looks to be a nice bet for solo BRD. Joy is fun, totally fun. Love seeing myself hit 3 times.

On another happy note, Sali finally received his Yinyang Robe after over 15 straight days camping. For those who are new to this, this mob spawns invisible with flee on. The only way to claim it is through magic aggro or linking with other weapons. Dangerous both choices in Ro'Maeve it is. This last time that we tried I managed to bring several people from my social LS to help out. I saw Valynne and the dreaded Sumiko but I did not have to say anything to Sumiko. Sali graciously had asked me if I was alright with people from GYS coming to help. Anyhow we managed to get that darn weapon and it finally dropped. That's a nice reward for people who help others out a lot. A member of my social shell, Mixlplix, actually got the direct kill (he's a MNK). Congratulations Sali! Thanks for keeping an eye out for the rest of us.

Feeling the Joy

2007-01-27T09:20:00.000-10:00

The pictures are back and not just cutscenes either! Joy!

Red Mage

After a long while, my semi-static got back together for RDM. Guankim (BRD) and Kenshin (THF, he has a longer name, I just forget the whole thing at this point) teamed up with my RDM and we went a searchin' for a party. Amazingly we found a NIN tank which for us is good because we usually have to make do with a less than ideal tank (e.g. solo WAR/NIN, WAR/NIN x 2 bouncing hate, WAR/NIN + SAM bouncing hate). We added a WAR/NIN and a MNK/WAR into the mix. I was main healing with Guankim as back up. The party actually went pretty well in Kuftal. I think I managed to get my haste and refresh cycles down pat. Eventually the WAR/NIN had to leave so we got a SAM/WAR replacement. Damn the damage just went super high after that. Everytime I party with a SAM, esp a Tarutaru SAM, it makes me want to level it more. I managed to eek out to level 53, seven more levels to full pimpness. Maybe in about a year? It also gave me a chance to try out my glamor jupon that I received a while back while helping on a swift belt run. I am in love with the armor. But then again I'm a +skills type of guy. Joy!

Meanwhile I get this creepy party invite while running around as a RDM:

Yes, it's from Anna. The infamous WHM/THF and THF/WHM of Garuda. I posted stuff about her a while back. She's still doing those combinations, but at least not bothering us on Alla boards. The scary thing is she's becoming known on other servers as well. I don't understand why she would invite me. After all I was one of her non-ardent supporters (yes believe it or not she has her fans for her "individuality"). I almost laughed in her face. But I was polite. No Joy!

Summoner

I haven't touched Summoner since waaaaaay back after I got it to 38. Part of my reason was I wanted to have Fenrir before I went further. Other parts was finishing WHM to 75, playing BRD and BLM. I've been wanting Fenrir for a while but I'm horrible at starting party/missions. Luckily some friends, Arizod and Gheldhart were looking out for me. They planned to do a Fenrir run for Sali to get his Evoker's ring and some other people to get Fenrir. So they invited me in. We had SMN/WHM, SMN/WHM, BLM/WHM, BRD/WHM, RDM/WHM, and NIN/WAR. Luckily we fought him on Lightsday. Dark Carol really helps on his 2 HR, but the damn beast loves to dispel. He caught a couple of us by surprise with his vehement use of dispel the first battle (a couple of us were Fenrir Virgins) but I managed to sneak out a RR without it being dispelled before we wiped. So we reraised ready for revenge. This time it went much smoother, although Gheldhart did die. I managed to get dark carol up, but Fenrir dispelled right before he 2HRd, evil damn wolf. But now I have him on MY side. After I get BLM going could SMN be next? Probably a part time thing, since I want to level COR next. Go go Support Jobs! At least Fenrir is in my arsenal now. Diablos, hrm. Joy!

NPC/Crafting

I took Vimechue out for a spin. I've basically neglected her. She tried to get my attention back by wearing her leather outfit. We went a huntin'lizards in CN for lizard tails. I'm getting Verrick's Alchemy to 60 cap so was working on ptions for levle 35-40. I want him to make venom dust to 61 so I can use it on Brin to level to 68 (venom potions) then 76 (venom bolt heads). Anima synths look nice, but the cheap memories are always not in stock in the AH. Plus I heard you can't sell Anima to NPC. Got some stacks of lizard skins which sold for 10-15K and some lizard eggs which sold for about 3K (I remember when chocos first came out, the lizard eggs were going for 20K a stack and CN was crowded).

I managed to get to 56.7 on Hunter's Cotton on Whit. I'm a few K short on GP for Whit's Apron, just have to get him to 68 first. Wist's cooking has been stalled in favor of other crafts. Sarn managed to get to 52 on Catebolas leather. I'm about 40K away from his apron. Brin is sitting at 67.4 in Alchemy, about 60K shy of his apron. I really have to start working on Alchemy GP. Still haven't decided on Verrick's crafts but I'm starting to craft more again. Joy!

Silverhook

No pics of this one. But I was randomly fishing up nebimonites to level fishing (got from 22.7 to 24.3 in one night, woohoo!) and I saw a pirate attack. Then I saw the middle pirate in a vermy. So I whacked the Ship Wight...and Silverhook appeared. WHM/NIN solo attempt. He's a tough one, I just did not have enough firepower. Some random BLM/WHM tossed me a few Cure IIIs. I managed to get him to 8% and was ready to fire off another Hexastrike when he blood saber'd me to get to 15% health. I knocked him to 5% and then ran out of time ; ; In retrospect I should have asked the BLM/WHM to join me and maybe heal/nuke. No Joy!

The real meat of the Post, Joy!

I, however, have even better news to report. On 1/25/07 I get a tell from my friend Arizod. He asks me coyly what I was doing at 12 AM EST (7 PM my time). Didn't have anything planned so he asked me to meet at the entrance to SSG at 7PM. Turns out, Sali had camped the ToD on Charybdis, otherwise knwon as Charby to me. The 8 hour mark truned out to be 12 AM EST. So I trooped down there as BRD/WHM, Arizod as NIN/WAR, and Sali as NIN/WAR. We start killing PH. There was another trio camping it as well, but after about 3 hours we noticed they had left. Which left us all alone, except an independant RDM that was waiting for ToD. Sali was worrying (rightly) about firepower so he managed to recruit Lokina (THF/NIN) and Kattsu (THF/NIN) to help. He changed to SMN/WHM. After about 6 hours of camping the NM finally appeared! Arizod was so excited he immediately voked (even though there was no competition). Unfortunately our SMN and I were low on MP after the whole party had fooled around on some fish people outside. Then we didn't pull him up the ramp so ended up with a manta link as the other "PH" popped. W emanaged to kill off the link but eventually wiped to Charby. We reraised (and nicely the RDM didn't swoop in and try to solo it) and proceeded to kick it's ass. So my friend Arizod got his joytoy! Joy!

The next day I was trying to burn some of my KS since they were taking up space in my MH. My Social LS LordsofHydra recently started up a KSNM service which is nice. I brought 3 orbs. It was a long day waiting. Since Kaboom closed up shop, I think people are starved for KSNM so there were a LOT of people there. Now if timing isn't good some BLMs can die. Vallis who is often quite wishy washy about being helpful and not liking the dying gave up and warped himself out. So I got asked to bring my subpar BLM to help out. So I ended up being part of the KSNM service. I only died once in the whole ton of battles we did. Made about 100K just in the 3K gil that drops after each battle. On one of my orbs I was lucky to get a D.Ingot which sold promptly for 1.35 million, so I have some gil again. I'm supposed to get some of the profits from last night. While I was waiting for my orb runs (before I joined the service) I was talking to Isildor whom I saw in SSG during the new pop window for Charby. It turns out he was fighting it at the moment for Argalo. Now Isildor and Argalo were part of the 15 man to end CoP mission, plus members of the Dynamis shell. They managed to beat Charby and get Argalo his Joytoy. So now I knew the new ToD. Joy!

Unfortunately, LoH is a lot of EU players. Most of the NA players are about levle 30-60 and the new pop window time was in US time. My friend Arizod logged in about 2 hours before the pop window so I asked him if he'd come tank again. He said sure. Our KSNM run had just finished so I asked Dukenukem if he'd come as well. He agreed to come as BLM/WHM since I was told Charby eats PLDs. Sali also said he'd make it. Unfortunately when the pop window came about Sali wasn't logged in (turns out he had to do something for his brother ASAP), so Arizod, myself (BRD/WHM) and Dukenukem went to SSG to camp. Two independent RDMs were there getting ToD. We started to kill some placeholders while I made passionate pleas in the LS. One person Zaon, said he'd only come if he could lot. Grrrr, so he didn't come. Demesis a level 67 (or 69?) WAR/NIN offerred to come out. Then my friend Munami (75 THF/NIN) popped on and I begged him to come. Eventually Sali popped back on and came as SMN/WHM. Two PH pops after Sali arrives Charby pops up. Munami pulls, I double Mambo the melees, elegy Charby and ballad the mages. Arizod had brought Gheldhart as well for R3 and random cures and hastes (as he was controlling Gheldhart as well). And we managed to kill Charby without any deaths. And guess what? I got Joy! Joy!

I am now the devoted slave of Sali, Arizod, Gheldhart (who was there in spirit), Demesis, Munami, and Dukenukem. I got to try out my new toy on a PH manta and managed this:

Yes my sword skill is low, I need to level it. But that Joytoy's two time hitting actually happens quite often. TP fun. So with a Peacock Charm and a Joytoy it's starting to look better for COR every moment. Need to purchase me a gunbelt and get started pouching bullets. That and level RNG to 37 for a full sub...hehe.

After we attempted to go to Ro'Maeve for Sali's YinYang Robe NM. This NM is kind of ridiculous as it spawns invisible (can see on Widescan) and has permanent Flee until it aggros magic or links to a weapon. Poor Sali has been trying for over 2 straight weeks, showing up at every pop window. I think he's got a few claims but no drops. Last night we didn't get the pop again, and some other group got it. And got the drop. Sali was getting frustrated of people going 1/1. Hopefully he gets it soon!

WHM/NIN

After helping Sali (or trying to help) I suited up as WHM/NIN to take down robber crabs with my friend Kalia from my LS. She's a 74 WHM and was trying to break her trial of clubs. We had been doing this off and on when she took breaks from her BST leveling. We actually managed to break it rather quickly (gotta love Black Halo to Hexastrike for a level 3 SC and 5 points as she closes it) so we're all set for her WSNM in Ro'Maeve. Joy!

Joy!

I talked to Valynne yesterday since I found strategy guides that she had lent me a long time ago before my "blow-up" and frustrations. I'm going to return them to her on Tuesday.

All in all, had an adventure in Garuda. Never thought I'd get a Joytoy because I always thought there would be too much competition and I was not willing to camp for a ToD to know when the pop window would open. So much thanks goes out to Sali (for camping the original ToD for Arizod) and for Argalo and Isildor for telling me the new ToD. I made my LS leader Lorddocster jealous when he logged on again showing him the Joytoy (he's a RDM, BLM, and WAR 75). So of course I told him when the pop window would start and he decided to camp it. I went to sleep and logged in about 1.5 hours into the pop window (I had logged off in the pop place). He had 10 people there with him, camping against the 2 RDM who were at my battle (camping the ToD). We managed to get the claim and he know has the Joytoy himself. Joy!

So much Joy! spreading around. Hope everyone is having fun. Drop me a line ^^

Unclear Directions

2007-01-24T08:12:00.000-10:00

AFter completing CoP, I'm not quite sure what to do in the game. Slowly been picking crafting back up. I don't even have the urge to level BLM much. I probably should work on my rank one day, been stuck at 7-1 for ages. I had been waiting for people to catch up in levels for a long time since we were all from Bastok, but that didn't work out. Oh well. I'll probably just meander for a while. Maybe do some limbus things if I can find a shell that has times that are good for me. Or maybe I would try and do them solo if I ever get my BLM to 75 and get some merits into it. Kind of adrift right now ... hrm ...

I did get my Alchemy to 67.2 with the help of Aznmahavalio who funded my crafting by having me do anima synths for him. I was hugely under the cap and I broke a lot which I felt horribly guilty for. But I'd like to thank him for helping me through this crafting challenge. Recipe's just get more and more expensive. I never had this real big urge to make gil, so I guess I have to start doing that more if I want to continue crafting. *sigh*

Banisher of Emptiness: CoP Completed

2007-01-18T08:19:00.000-10:00

After the momentous CoP battles, I went to finish the Cutscenes to complete CoP and achieve my title of Banisher of Emptiness. All I can say is that I really enjoyed the ending cutscenes and in particular the last Cutscene. CoP has been much more rewarding than the Zilart Missions and the storyline is very intriguing. I feel much more accomplishment of finishing this set than ZM. And I finally have my precious Tamas ring. I wish I'd remember to take pictures during the battles themselves, but I'm always so keyed up that I forget to and only take them during the CS. So without further ado, all the picutures I have been promising.

These are from the CS after we defeated Promathia. The first form of Promathia was easy to kill. The 2nd gave us nightmares. The first time we fought him he got an AoE silence on all of us that is unremovable by Echo drops. Everyone died and soon I was alone as RR had been dispelled. As a BRD/WHM it was me, Prishe, and the boy (I can never remember his name). I tried to heal Prishe as best I could and she took Promathia down from 40% to 24%. Eventually we died. The 2nd try I decided to go in as a WHM instead of BRD (I don't think I landed elegy, managed a threnody or 2). So we went in with PLD/WAR (changed from NIN), DRK/NIN, BLM/WHM, WHM/SMN, WHM/SMN, and THF/WAR. Our goal was to keep Prishe alive, that girl is a machine! Battle went much better. I think everyone died at least once (except for me). I was kept busy running around after the THF and DRK while they were kiting. Unfortunately they managed to kite out of my healing range when my spell would have gone off. The DRK/NIN managed to stun Promathia quite a bit. Promathia was at 1% of life when the DRK managed to get 300%TP. He went in for the kill while I was trying to heal him...and Promathia flattened him before my cure got off. The BLM was able to reraise at this point and finish him off with a Tier III spell. And we got to see the very nice CS at this point and pat ourselves on the back:

Here is my precious Tamas ring!

The final CS completes the storyline. We get to find out what happens to Prishe and all our other friends that we have made during this long and strange journey. FFXI has some of the most beautiful scenery around.

Here is Sarn applauding Verrick's accomplishment. Notice his Tanner's gloves.

{/cheer}

I just want to say a huge thank you to Erecia for putting together For Glory: Erecia's Guide to All Things Chains of Promathia which was an invaluable resource for everything. Some things are easier than what he made it sound like, but they had to do numerous battles just to figure all this stuff out. One other word of caution, no matter how much you prepare and think you know what is going on, nothing can prepare you for the actual battle ahead. Good luck everyone and I'll see you in {Al'Tiaeu}.

Averter of the Apocalypse: Promathia Defeated

2007-01-15T23:31:00.000-10:00

Short post because it was an exhausting day. Will write more later. But ...

Five of the static beat Promathia on 1/15/07. Just need to wait for JPN midnight to finish the CSs and get my coveted Tamas ring! I never thought I'd get this far in CoP. A great salute goes out to GraveyardShift for helping me complete the beginning promies and to LordsofHydra for helping me from Mission 2-3 to the end.

Side note: Sarn got his Tanner's Gloves. More pictures later.

Emptiness Bleeds: Sea Obtained

2007-01-12T14:15:00.000-10:00

Sorry, been away from the whole posting on the blog thing, but hopefully I'll update a little more regularly. Hope everyone has had a wonderful holiday and things are getting back to normal. I made a new signature for the LS forum. I have had a ton of pictures, but too lazy to go through them all, adjust them, upload them, and then post them so the few I have will have to do.

Now ... on to the big news:

Yes you are seeing that correctly. After thinking that I'd never get past the Minotaur fight (CoP 2-3) I have finally made it to Sea! I had done the Promies in one frenzied night with my old LS Graveyardshift and was stuck on it forever. I didn't have the motivation to do the rest of CoP. Others in LordsofHydra I helped through the promies but could not make it during their Minotaur fight and they surged on ahead. They sort of stalled on the Three Paths. In the meantime, a few of them came back to help me through the Minotaur fight. I teamed up with Guankim one night when they needed a WHM for the Mammet fight. That night I pushed through the rest of the early Mission set 3 with them. From then We gathered up Kniko and Vallis and went through the Diablos fight. With Oruyu we picked up Dukenukem, Snuggle, and Legos (Snuggle and Legos went on a month hiatus though). Cutedeafy joined us somewhere in the midst of The Sacrium.

Once we were on the Three Paths, the CoP static was formed. Lorddocster, Vlacatocc, Enedin, Kniko, Vallis, Fullen, Dukenukem, Torrin, Verrick (me), and Cutedeafy. We managed to go 1/2 on the Snoll Tzar (well 2/4 since we had to do battles twice). Then we took a bit of a break for the holidays. When we came back we had planned a day for all 10 of us to get together and posted it on our website. We helped some other people (Xxander, Isildor, Dragoces, Zorrow, Braveheart, and Argalo) to get through Snoll (with some extra BLM oomph) while waiting on Cutedeafy to show. We waited for over 2-3 hours without any word. Her brother eventually logged on as her and he could not find her equipment so we decided to proceed and catch her up later since everyone else was here. Unfortunately she came on late just as we were about to go in the BCNM against the moblins and proceeded to yell and scream. If you cannot show consideration to the other 9 players telling us that you'll be late I don't think you have the right to berate us. In any event she was not a very skilled player and did not take time to be prepared for the missions. She refused to bring medicines, she did not reset her Formor hate when we reminded everyone repeatedly to have it done, she missed completely on her Astral Flows all the time, etc. SO in any event she was kicked from the shell because she did not cease her constant screaming in LS chat while we were trying to concentrate on the BCNM fight we were in. Luckily we managed to go 1/2 on the moblins and got the rest of our groups through as well. We ran the gauntlet of Tenzen's path together and the 15 man CoP static got moving.

The Airship fight took a lot out of us. The other six could not make it on a certain day so did their airship battle the day before and WON, the lucky bums! The Airship fight was so disheartening for us. Our first try we wiped to Omega at 60% but decided since we didn't use any CCB pumps to just exit the fight and try again. We got Omega to 30% on the second fight and had used just one CCB pump so we decided to try again. Our third fight we got Ultima down to 3% but wiped. We reraised, but the RDM was weakened and didn't have enough MP for chainspell to do much and we were ejected for lack of time ... it was a sad heartbreaking battle. Some of us stayed for a bit longer and tried 3 more times, always getting Omega down to 1-3% but never having quite enough oomph to kill it. Some of them tried 2 more times the day after but Omega was our bane. I went on a CCB polymer farming trip and got two full sets and another CoP mate got 1 set with me.

Our initial 3 tries were with a RDM/NIN, WHM/SMN, BRD/WHM, WAR/NIN, PLD/WAR, and DRK/NIN. We just couldn't deal enough damage fast enough. Our next 3 tries were with a PLD/WAR, NIN/WAR, BLM/RDM, WHM/SMN, BRD/WHM, and DRK/NIN.

So we steeled our hearts for battle and girded our loins. We initially went in with a RDM/NIN, DRK/NIN, WHM/SMN, PLD/WAR, BLM/WHM, MNK/WAR. We wiped to Omega at 1% with his magic shield up. We reraised, waited some time, and our BLM killed him (we had hoped the shield would have worn). We rested to full and went to take on Ultima with only 13 minutes left. We got kicked out for lack of time when we had Ultima down to 15%. And were disheartend.

Our next party went in (with some help from the other 6) as WHM/SMN (Dragoces), BLU/NIN (Zorrow), BRD/WHM (me), PLD/WAR (Fullen), BLM/RDM (Lorddocster), and MNK/NIN (Vlacatocc). Mammets were cake. Omega we chipped away at. During the fight Vlacatocc and Zorrow went down but reraised to join the fight. We got OMega down to 3% again and the 3rd CCB pump had run out and he was spamming discharger like mad so our BLM could do nothing against that shield. Our WHM used the 4th CCB pump and the melees were finally able to get him down witht he PLD using Invincible. My heart was beating fast. We rested until fully healed and then went to face Ultima. This guy went down so much easier than Omega. We used one Pump at 40% and the MNK 2Hrd. Our BLM 2Hrd with AM and was finally able to kill Ultima with an Aero III. We had finally beat the stupid airship battle in 30 minutes. I went a total of 8 times and through 3 CCB pumps.

Our other group then tried. Initially RDM/NIN (Enedin), DRK/NIN (Torrin), BLM/RDM (Lorddocster), BLM/WHM (Vallis), WHM/SMN (Kniko), and PLD/WAR (Dukenukem). Hate control was nasty with 2 BLMs using AM and Tier III spells. We regrouped and removed one BLM (Lorddocster) and switched in the MNK/NIN (Vlacatocc). This time they wiped to Omega but was able to Reraise, time a ChiBlast and a Nuke to get him down. I was nailbiting at this time. Finally I see I am too far away from battle to get exp! They had won and our 15 people static through CoP was through the damned Airship battle! After a lot of time invested in farming and a lot of gil spent on meds and on CCB pumps we were finally through.

Some of us had to leave, but seven of us decided to push on through the CSs and see if we could do a try run at Tenzen to better get an idea of what was to come. Some people had said Tenzen was very easy, but guides I had read had stated that you had to do 12000 to 12500 damage to him fairly quickly before he did a Level 4 SC to Cosmic Elucidation. We had to get 3 NMs out of the way, but these were very easy since it was all uncapped. It took more time getting to the points than killing the mobs.

So here we were, 7 of us, elated to have finished the Airship battle and high on the smell of success, sitting in Sea Lion's Den, contemplating Tenzen. We decided to do a dry run without 2HRs and see what he was like. WHM/SMN (Kniko), BRD/WHM (Verrick), MNK/WAR (Vlacatocc), WAR/NIN (Fullen), BLM/WHM (Vallis), and PLD/WAR (Dukenukem). We let carby engage Tenzen so the tarutaru support that he has would focus on Kniko rather than the tank/melee. I tossed up Minuet and March on the Melee and Elegy on Tenzen. Went back and Ballad I and Ballad II the mages, then tossed an INT etude on the BLM. I alternated threnodies between Ice and Thunder while the BLM nuked him (slowly so not to pull hate). The Melee just WS everytime they got TP. The WHM and I were on cure duties (although Tenzen went to hating me sometimes and tossed me an arrow or two). And before we knew it...we had won in 7 minutes! And entered a long, but interesting CS and set foot on SEA!

Of course, Lorddocster was still in Sealion's Den entreating us to come back and get him there too. We let him sweat for a bit, then went back...heheheh. We swapped out our BLM/WHM for him as BLM/RDM. This time we had 2HRs to burn. So with Mighty Strikes, Hundred Fists, and Manafront we took Tenzen down in just over 3 minutes and broke the record. We attempted to do part of 8-1 and kille done est of NMs but people were tired after the long day and we resolved to finish it later. We still need to get the other 8 to Sea, but we know these can be hammered out pretty easily.

I want my Tavnazian ring (since bastok hasn't had control of Tavnazian OP since I could do the supply run there). And I can taste my Tamas Ring (almost all of my top tier jobs are magey, I suppos Rajas would come in handy if I solo as WHM/NIN but I doubt I'll ever get a melee job to 75 one day).

Now for other news, no pictures though:

I finally managed to get NIN from 30 to 37 and now have Ustusemi:Ni. Let me tell you, soloing as WHM/NIN with a FULL sub with Ni helps a lot. I went farming solo for some of my CCB chips and it was a LOT easier. WHM also got a boost form me finally winning the Cleric's Pantaloons in Dynamis Jeuno. So now I'm 3/5 on it, the other piece I'd want is the Briault. I like the Cleric's Cap whenever I do big battles due to the -ENM on it. The pants I macro in for bar spells (now I can get resistance of 110 or so) and the feet I macro in for stoneskin.

I suffered through all the scorpion shells and managed to cap Bonecraft at 60. So Verrick now has Bonecrafting, Woodworking, and Cooking at 60. Currently working on Alchemy for him (yes the side is not updated), will do it sometime). I'm still not sure what craft to do on Verrick. Woodworking has kind of left me Blah. Alchemy, Clothcrafting, Cooking, and Leathercrafting all have mules (which I have been neglecting during this CoP run/leveling run). And we already have a 91 bonecrafter in the LS. I would really cry if I had to do GS or Smithing, but it might come down to it. Right now I'm trying to get 60 on most of the crafts.

As for leveling, I managed to get BLM up to 72. The vast majority of the 60s was through soloing, on fleas or Qiqirin RNG mobs in Adywerre Subterrane (sp?). I had one or two parties in the 60s, but honestly I could probably make more exp solo. One day (me barely level 70) decided to duo with Vallis who was BLM 74 at the time on Princes. We got there, and another BLM asked to join us so we became a trio on Princes. Eventually that changed to a full manaburn on Flans. With many BLM and refresher changes I eventually leveled to 72 on BLM. I always find the 70s the hardest as there just seems to be so much more EXP that I need. I bit the bullet and bought Blizzaga III (after trying to farm it several times). I have all the rest of the spells to 75. Still missing FLOOD and I refuse to pay 200K for that since I never use it (and I tried farming this too, *sigh*). If I were truly a BLM I'd probably have to opt for getting a Penitent's rope and better rings. I'm 6/8 on HQ staves and still need the Wind staff (I should have got that first since if I ever touch my RDM again it'd be so useful for silence) and Water staff (not in ANY rush to get that one). I have the Weskit and Errant pants. Not sure what to do for the hands (right now using AF1 hands). I have my R.pumps for when I hit 75 (if I do).

So that's been what's been going on. A lot isn't it? I'll try and keep better updated. And sort through all my pictures and post some up for anyone who still reads this. I'll need to restart doing my rounds of blogs too, interested in seeing what everyone has been up to!

Dabbling Here and There

2006-11-30T10:31:00.000-10:00

Quite a lot has happened in the world of Vana'diel since I last posted. So here is the multiple updates, including pictures!

Black Mage

I actually managed to get my BLM up to 60. Time for full on AF! And most of it was solo. I admit I haven't actively sought out parties now that I can pretty much solo on my own. When you can get Chain #4 for 400-500 exp without an experience ring (even when you gain levels and it drops to 200-300 exp) who needs to bother with parties and the stresses that go along with it. Mind you, I like to MB. I haven't even done a manaburn. I've been duoing a bit with a taru named Vallis which is actually quite fun. And since my RDM is stalled I might end up getting BLM up as my next job (although at a much more leisurely pace). Maybe I'll find a party one day and get to magic burst to my heart's content.

White Mage

Nothing much to report on this homefront. I used to be capped in experience but after some of those runs noted below, I'm 10K to capping. *sigh* now gotta find a party as a WHM. On the other hand, I used to hate Black Halo. I still don't like it much as a WS, but it looks pretty cool. Especially when you spin! Been fooling around with WHM/NIN and I actually do ok. Would help with Ni though. Yes, I need to level frickin' NIN. I hate that job ^^.

I also duo'd my Nanban armor for level 30 NIN with Dukenukem. Know what is hard about tarutarus? When you have grass you can never see yourself. Case in point.

King of Items

What can I say, I managed to get a lot of shiny new items recently. My Optical Hat fight went pretty routine. Only had some suicidal SAM who were doing their best to prove that they could tank and die. My lot on my hat was horrible though as you can see below. But I am now part of the pointy hat brigade!

Another bit of good news. I finally got my Rostrum Pumps. It wasn't the cleanest of fights for me. Lorddocster devised a strategy of the BLMs zoning in and out to reset hate which worked pretty well. Legos died multiple times and so did everyone else when things just didn't go quite as planned. We managed quite a few pumps that day. My fight, however, took over an hour. We had gootten some new help and the other NIN did not realize that Dukenukem was trying to pull the Feeler antlion back tothe main group sothe BLMs could nuke it to death. So he kept voking it off the PLD. This resulted in 5 executioner antlions popping. That was murderous. But with Dwyana (WHM) kiting it a bit, Legos kiting, Anubis kiting, and even I took my turn at claiming and kiting, we reraised, healed, and eventually brought the sucker down. All that for "enhancing fast cast". But hey, I like them ^^

Another note. Lorddocster, Lordesequiel, and I went on a long night of Under Observation. We must have used at least 2 orbs each (I think I did 3). On one of my orbs it dropped Ustusemi:Ni which I was able to sell for 600K. Yay. It got to fund a grandiose chain and an enlightened chain. On one of Lorddocster's orbs it dropped an Ustusemi:NI and ... a Peacock Charm. Then, he decides that his chivalrous chain is better for his RDM/NIN solo ... and he gave me the PCC to use for my COR/RNG/NIN jobs ^^ He made me promies that we will do more runs (since I still have a crapload of seals) and that I give him the next PCC that drops. Definitely will do. So I'm gathering up gear for NIN. I'm using the PCC now during Hexastrike so more hits land and it's become more consistent.

Craftauring

Crafting has caught my fancy again. I got Verrick's Alchemy up to 30 after being stalled on 28 (Cap for Sairui-ran) for ages. Another big achievement, I FINALLY got stupid WW up to 60. I was originally planning on taking WW to 100 when I fist started, some silly dream of making signed staves for myself. I saved up 40Kish of GP items. But I hate WW and their GP items. I was planning on saving for the mitts, but when you need to turn in 100 of an item (and you don't make 33 at a time like cooking) that just sucks. So I'm going to go for ensorcellment so I can make my own warp cudgels and switch over to leatherworking guild. I want to get tanning for Verrick for when I go hide farming. Don't know what skill I'm going to go "all the way" on Verrick yet.

Wist ... Wist. She finally started crafting again. Marron glace was extremely nice to me. Not only could I sell it off for profit (yes, the price dipped down to 2000 per glace and I moved Brin and Whit to Jeuno for more AH slots) but the skill ups were nice. I had received 0.1 skill up 7 times in a row once. Does directional crafting make a difference, I don't know. I do it because I'm superstitious. But ... I got really good skill ups on Firesday using a dark crystal. Maybe the antithesis of Dark isn't Light, rather Fire (it is clockwise to dark which is the way the other elemental strengths rok). I'm getting more convinced of that, so I might try it when I have another dark synth. I did HQ once.

Chains of Promethia

I've been stuck on the Minatour fight for so long after doing the Promies. Well I eventually did 2-3 and thought I'd be stuck at 2-5 forever. It seems that's where people stall a lot as well. However, Guankim's CoP static had an opening and I was allowed to join in as WHM/SMN (Guankim asked if I could go RDM/NIN but I rarely if ever kite stuff and I didn't want to wipe the party). We had a RDM/NIN, THF/NIN, NIN/WAR, RNG/NIN, WHM/SMN, BLM/WHM group to do 2-5. We got to Monarch Linn without a single aggro. Then we decided to fight the Mammets as a dry run without using food and minimal items. This was because 4 of us had never done this before. Our dry run, however, turned out to be our winning run. We won in 19 minutes, but we took it nice and easy. The kiters did a marvelous job and the BLM back up healed to let me get MP back. It was beautiful.

Then four of us went to do 3-1 to 3-3. Those are some long CSs but very intriguing storyline. We fought the sandy leg NM and beat it with ease. I tanked as they wanted to do SATA VB --> gust Slash with MB Aero IV (it was the THF, RDM, me, and the BLM). So I opened with flash and Hexastrike. The mob never looked away ^^. Then we did the windy leg which took a long time as there are many CSs and running back and forth. We went to the NM and tried to pull him away from his spawning point so he wouldn't regen, but without a voke it was hard. He must have regened at least 5 times, but eventually we won. Then came hell. The walk up that mountain is torturous for someone with bad hand-eye coordination. Yes, me. So Guankim and Anubannu got their feathers the first try. I kept falling off at one particular point. Bryer and Anu (bless their souls) stayed with me for multiple tries. Guankim had to go and get ready for an appointment (crazy person was up at 8 AM). Eventually Anu had to sleep. And Bryer insisted we give it one more try. This time instead of hugging the wall (which used to boot me off) I took it slow on the path. And I finally made it. Got the feathers! Life was good. Now I just have to finish the CSs to complete 3-3, then do the 3-4 CSs and I'll be ready for Diablos (have to farm chips I understand). I still can't believe I got through to Chapter 3. It's so exciting. I'll leave you with some pictures from that outing.

Twenty Nine

2006-11-29T07:03:00.001-10:00

TodayI turn 29. 365 days until 30. SCary. 'Nuff said. Will update sometime soon.

Death in Spades

2006-11-19T17:08:00.000-10:00

I don't know if you remember, but I used to die a lot as a BST. Mostly from trying to charm too high level things or not really paying attention. It seems to be my problem when soloing, I tend to have my attention wander and my little taru ends up dead.

So I've been working on BLM. For a while it had lingered at 29, then it jumped into a static to get to 42. At that time I ditched it for BRD. Getting my RDM up to 50 (and getting all the AF pieces) as well as doing a lot of manaburns (resident LS bard I guess, when the BLMs want to level, I'm nominated first, plus they seem to think they can attract more BLMs if they have a BRD in tow) made me sometimes want to blow things up. Taking into account that my highest level jobs are WHM (yes, hexastrike and light SC and light MB, but really, how often can I blow things up in 2 hits), BRD (umm...yeah, go damage potential), and RDM (go nuke for 15!) and how little I solo (I'm not a very good soloer) I rarely do much damage in my exp parties. So I think it was a combination of all of that that pushed me to level my BLM.

As punishment for being a easy leveling job whore (back when WHM got insane invites, and BRD well, is just BRD) I can now feel the pain. For some reason on Garuda tanks seem to be very, very scarce. Not quite sure why. So I've been racking my brains to figure out where to solo. And it's not the easiest thing in the world to do. There are some posts on soloing but most of them start at level 60 for BLM and above. So what was a little 49 BLM to do?

Well ... he gets to die alot.

Level 49. Cape Terrigan. Verrick vs Goblin bunnies. Goblin bunnies 50 million, Verrick 5. Seriously, those bunnies are nasty. Plus soloing as BLM is a trick, gott try and kill those pets fast so they don't beat up on you. Needless to say, it was sad.

Level 50-54. Had experience parties, but not all of them good or for a long time. In between I visited Gustav Tunnel. I found a spot where there was a Golin leech (its BST master), a crab, and a goblin alchemist. Exp was pretty good, but I died a lot there. At least 15 times. Thank goodness for the RR earring. Once I understood how they moved and got access to my staves, my resists dropped way down. But with no zone nearby, one resist or the gob turning at the last minute to see their pet = dead tarutaru.

Level 55-56. Experience parties. Actually had some in the woodlands. And I discovered, the birds are aspirable. Fun times, fun times.

Level 56 - 57. Trepidations. Had read about Newton Movolopolos (spelling is probably wrong). I've died a couple times here already. Those goblins are a nasty piece of work. I finally got my shaman's cloak from the NM in Quicksand caves thanks to Lorddocster. Finally another NM I will not have to see again. I swear, the NMs must hate me.

Antlion Traps

2006-11-12T21:36:00.000-10:00

Sorry, no pictures to accompany this post.

We tried a Rostrum Pump run. It didn't go as well as it could have. The BLMs were kind of all over the place on which mob to hit so we lost our first two antlion traps. We did manage to get the pumps twice. The last battle took like 40 minutes and involved a lot of kiting and unweakening and raising. After that it was getting late and we had to call it a day. So I still have my antlion trap awaiting one day.

Did Dynamis-Beadecine today. It was quite fun actually. We made it to the mega boss, but s/he is accompanied by 4 dragons that ate us for lunch. Not bad for our 2nd time there (first time I understand they wiped a lot earlier and didn't make it to the megaboss, I couldn't go because I hadn't won Windy yet). But it was fun fun fun! I like the LS.

I had been exping in Bibiki Bay with Eckardt and Hatchetwarrior on my BRD. And managing to skill up to 170s on my sword. Don't think that's going to happen much more.

Been trying to solo on BLM. Damn I die a lot! Trying now as BLM/NIN in Gustav Tunnel. Not bad exp, about 200ish without the bad. My AM doesn't oneshot the pets too often ; ; and sometimes I get resisted. But it's better than just waiting around for a party no?

New Beginnings

2006-11-05T17:30:00.000-10:00

Things have quieted down for me lately. Been on a leveling kick for BRD, as I was burned out crafting. Here is a retrospect of what has happened. Of course there are pictures.

WhiteMage

I finally managed to cap my experience on WHM. So now I have automatic limit points. That being said I helped a linkshell mate for a few hours in a nice, relaxed traditional party set up with a SC and MB and that's how I managed to cap exp. I also managed to get another merit point. So I have 2 waiting to spend. I'm still kind of meh on the whole Protectra V (although it does look nice). I've unlocked Devotion, thinking of unlocking Martyr. That is if I ever merit. As you can see I managed to get my turban finally. I kinda of like the WHM AFv2 hat instead. But the turban is fun to run around in.

I finally participated in the Optical Hat fight on my WHM. Two seprate sessions and 21 hats later, my thumbs are sore. But not one party wipe and every single person got their hat. Here is a LS person, Kalaria (one of my favorite WHMs) with her shiny new optical hat. I've been kind of meh on the equipment since I don't melee much on my WHM. But my LS leader has made it his personal goal that I get a hat and even camped 2 of the eyes for me when I was too exhausted to continue. But I have all of my eyes now, just need to find someone to craft the cluster for me.

Bard

One of the crowning achievements on BRD is to obtain the Opo-Opo Crown. This I did with the generous time of Lorddocster, Vlacatocc, and Munami. I got the Ten of Coins Card and the sands of silence on my own. The rest I purchased from the AH as I was unable to get a wandering bulb in Fei Yin for over 6 hours solo. Lorddocster and Vlacatocc helped me get my ancient salt 1/1 and my giant fish bones (after Munami and I tried for over an hour killing those stupid tonberries). Lorddocster, Vlacatocc, and Munami managed to get my my wyvern skull in 3 kills (and 2 deaths, both by Munami; turns out he accidnetally pulled the NM and sacrificed himself and then died again when the wyvern we were fighting did an AoE). I managed the lucky egg with the help of a wandering THF after I had been trying for 4 hours. The funny thing is, the crown only lasted me a few levels. This is because I had won the Bard's Roundlet in Dynamis earlier. I'm thinking about using the Opo-Crown in Dynamis for the extra MP and HP boost it gives and I can elegy and sleep most of the mobs without the need for the extra singing skill the hat gives me.

And yes, this BRD has reached level 75. Without a NIN sub worth his name. And yes, this BRD even learned to pull. It was painful, but it can be done. Not something I totally enjoy all the time, but it can be fun. The party that I reached 75 in was impressive. It was a merit party, and we were in the overcrowded and overcamped Mire. I started out 6 K to level and in an hours time was 7K into 75. I was so busy I hadn't even noticed that I leveled. I managed a chain #66 before a mob moved before I could elegy it and broke the chain. My previous highest chain was #16 on Erucas in Mt.Z. I also had fun pulling against two parties in Bibiki Bay and maintaining a chain #5 pace.

Since people found out my BRD was reaching the upper levels, I've had invites into sky shells. I haven't taken a permamanent spot because my social LS dreams of having it's own, and plus I'm on a different time zone. I just wanted to see and fight the gods in sky. I had the opportunity with two different shells. One with Brandondl folks. I saw Genbu, Byakko, and Suzaku that day. They did pretty good, although Byakko gave us a run for our money and was killing everything in sight. The next time I went with a friend Eleteriak with his LS. They were very organized and decimated Byakko 2 x in a row. I also saw Seiryu. I have yet to see Kirin. I'm not much for the endgame scene. The only equipment I want is the Rostrum Pumps and if I can get it the Reverend Mail. Mainly for my WHM.

Dynamis

Dynamis continues to be fun. I really actually enjoy it. The picture up actually is a mistake. This was our recent run to Sandoria where we won, but somehow managed to come out all dead. But the LS beat Windurst 2x in a row, which is a good thing. I really hate Windurst. The shell is growing and people are getting to know each other, and it is much more relaxed. I had a lot of fun joking around in this recent dynamis run. I've received most of my AFv2 from the starter cities except Jeuno which both WHM and BRD elude me. I got the best piece of BRD, the puffy hat already. I'm kind of meh on the rest, but kind of want it for completeness sake. I really want the cleric's briault. Hope it drops someday.

Crafting and Leveling

Crafting has definitely taken a back seat. I was burned out. I craft here and there to make some gil and same some money. But I think the levleing craze is slowly wearing off and I'll be back to crafting.

I picked up BLM again after I had left it at 41 to change over to BRD. I guess it's because I see all this fun blowing things up and I never quite get to do it. I kind of want it at 50 so I can do my AF quests and store that away. After that, who knows.

I made a new sig for the LordsofHydra site.

The Road Darkens ...

2006-09-22T15:02:00.000-10:00

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

2006-09-19T20:44:00.000-10:00

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

...

...

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

2006-09-16T20:52:00.000-10:00

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 ...

2006-09-12T01:12:00.000-10:00

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.

...

...

...

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

2006-09-10T20:49:00.000-10:00

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

2006-09-06T15:15:00.000-10:00

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

2006-09-02T05:40:00.000-10:00

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!

Weekend Update

2006-08-28T07:20:00.000-10:00

Verrick finally found a Betta on the AH, so was able to make his second goldfish bowl. Thank you Valynne for helping me scoop up the goldfish for that second goldfish set! The sad thing was that Verrick broke his Aurora crystal and lost some ingredients his first try (and I was crafting on Lightsday too). Luckily my set and my fish weren't lost. So I hoofed it to San d'Oria, got another Aurora crystal from the woodworking guild, got advanced synth support from the smithing guild (since my smithing was the lowest at 10 and I didn't want to chance losing anything esential) and sat down and crafted once more on Lightsday. Luckily this time I got it. So now I have two fish bowls to stare at when in Bastok

Now the next section is devoted to my recent irritation. Anna. The self proclaimed THF/WHM and WHM/THF.

So here she is folks, this is Anna. Innocent looking enough eh? I almost gagged when I saw her with the Mentor sign and her search comments. I found her in Quicksand Caves so decided to scope her out. I snuck myself (so I wouldn't make sounds) and invised myself (so she couldn't see me). It took them a long time to start killing something (so I had to run away and recast). They started in on a beetle. She throws, and misses. She hits for 0-6 damage mostly. Each of her throws miss. Then the kicker was she tried to SATA VB (and at 45 a THF better damn know how to do it) and she gets 15! This was the person that was crowing that she got 200 on a SATA VB in Garlaige. Now her RDM was using a dagger and a shield to fight, but that's another story entirely. So Owens (the WHM) gets killed and it looks like a party wipe, but the BLM manages to get Escape off. For all her claims that with /WHM she can enfeeble, cure, use perfect dogde and curaga, she never ONCE used any MP. Her party broke up after that. It is disturbing that she is STILL managing to level up with /WHM for THF. I only dread her WHM/THF combo. So come on Garuda, stop inviting this idiot!

Finally we went to Dynamis-San d'Oria on Saturday. So that means I've been to all the starter cities except for Bastok. We're trying that one later. We actually did pretty darn well and almost got the win. The boss before the big boss, unfortunately, charmed almost all of the alliance which then proceeded to pick the rest of us off. Hehe. I got killed by Warr. But we're doing better and better. One good note is that I got the Bard's Roundlet! Now I just need my BRD to level 72. At one point two of the 5 WHMs had to leave which left only 3 of us to heal the alliance. We managed pretty well. The only complaint I have about Dynamis is people not bringing reraise items and not willing to take R1s. It's tough with an alliance wipe and only 3 WHMs to raise everyone. Yes, I know the WHMs are spoiled having RR3, but when I couldn't cast mine, I ate a R1 so I could help to get everyone up sooner. If more people brought RR items then we could be up much sooner and not have to stress about time. People say they don't have gil, but by the time ou're in your 60s and 70s you should have a sustainable income source, don't you think? I'll end this with a picture of Kalaria and myself in the lap of Veika. Veika has a thing for tarutarus, not sure why. Hehe. And likes to eat us. I try to let Kalaria be eaten. I just eat popcorn and watch.

I lied, not quite done. Crafting has been all consuming. Bonecrafting on Verrick is now 44 after hunting rams. Leathercraft is now 35. Wish me luck.

New People

2006-08-24T16:15:00.000-10:00

Got an interesting tell from Willium while I was in Crawler's Nest getting scorpion claws for bonecrafting. He said that he knew me but I didn't know him. Turns out that he is from the UK that found my site through Taritai. He also noticed that I posted on FFXI-garuda.com. We had a nice chat and I made a new Tarutaru WHM friend.

Eckardt is from my marathon leveling day. Turns out he is from HI. And I actually know who he is. I must put a quote from him as well.

Today I killed an NM with Enedin. We didn't get the magic slack drop. But it was fun chatting with him. Turns out he is a tall Belgian (6'1") and his brother Vlacatocc is even taller (6'6"). And I'm super short at 5'6.75" (yes .75" hehe, can't say I'm 7" ; ;)

On our last Dynamis run we tried Windurst. We actually were doing quite well until almost the entire alliance wiped to a Astral Flow from an enemy SMN. Myself and another WHM survived as we were resting for some MP far away. So we raised them all and got on our way. We were trying for a time extention by sneaking past a lot of mobs. All of a sudden a whole train of statues and Yagudos came on us and we had another total wipe ; ; Sadly we have not won yet, but we seem to be getting closer each time. This time, unfortunately, no AFv2 dropped. But only died 2x this time. Yay.

Now if you want to be entertained please read Allakazham WHM forums and find psots by Clefairy. They are Anna on Garuda and they posted a rant, Those hate THF/WHM and WHM/THF are elitist bigots and can go to hell. Unfortunately after getting a lot of angry posts and constructive criticism with them talking in circles (trying to defend themselves against an overwhelming opinion and basically sounding stupid) they erased the first post. But the posts after have many quotes and should give you an idea. Then they post something about giving everyone hugs like they are bipolar. I know Alcindor had the pleasure of partying with them as a THF/WHM. I'm still waiting for Anna to post in the THF forum about the magic of THF/WHM. Apparently they're too chicken.

First thread

Second thread

You will get to see yours truly posting in the forum. Some people get on my nerves and this person does. Unfortunately they keep on leveling. *sigh*

Craftaruing!

2006-08-21T09:16:00.000-10:00

So I spent this weekend mainly involved in crafting. On our way to Crawler's Nest, Valynne and I tried out Taritai's trick to get them to drop tree cuttings (yup Valynne reads but never posts comments). Unfortunately we didn't get any. Now that I look at it, I did it backwards. I'm supposed to tell them their pretty first and then slap them. Hrm. Will have to try that.

I have this urge to level my clothcraft again. I stopped because I could never get enough silk threads. So I figured try to do Hunter's Cotton (can desynth things for cotton threads), but I wanted to be able to make my own caprace powder. Which meant bonecrafting to 21. Now bonecrafting is expensive. Bone chips don't drop very often for me. I hunted bone chips in KRT by the crypt ghost. I ended up with 3 stacks of chips, 1 martial slacks (killed Crypt Ghost x 2, drop x 1) and 3 battle gloves (keys were dropping like flies). So I ended up buying from the guild and the AH. Basically made bone hairpins till 4, then bone arrowheads until 9, and bone rings until 17. After that I did caprace Powder until 21 (buying from the AH). Did beetle rings until 25 (after hunting some beetles and also buying from AH). Now I had been leveling Verrick's Leathercraft (yes third time through leather 0-30) and had been at 18 on dhalmel leather. So I got Val to come with me and we killed tons of dhalmels. I capped at 21 leather, but femur did not drop as often. So I ended up buying femurs from the AH to finish gelatin until cap 28. Next up was beetle arrowheads. So I hunted beetles in crawler's Nest (they actually drop the shells and jaws at not a bad rate). I saw my first Fire Elemental and Lanoire and our NPCs beat up the elemental!

I had invited Lanoire earlier in the day and she later came to skill up her sword. Now I had been in CN for the last 4 hours, no parties there. Later we moved to a tunnel because Lanoire would aggro. I get this shout can you move your NPC you're taking our mobs. Someone in the LS (who did not have his pearl on earlier) tells me in LS chat move now. I was kind of upset. They techinically camped upon us, I had been there for hours. I even had a comment saying that I was there. It turns out someone else was killing beetles as well so there were not as many mobs as there had been before. Maybe I was wrong, who knows, but I think that if you're there first you have priority. Anyways, we changed to exorays to get mushroom drops and did a few beetles here and there.

The next day I was back farming shells and jaws, no parties there. Valynne came along and we beat up stuff while she leveled dagger, sword, great axe, and staff. It got hairy once when I accidentally pulled 4 exorays together. I actually used benediction and we survived. Our NPCs have leveled as well. All in all I think I have 4 stacks of beetle jaws, hopefully it will take me further in bonecraft. Next up would be black tiger fangs. On the other hand I have a lot of caprace powder to start making Hunter's Cotton.

Yesterday, Valynne and I leveled our MNK and BLM. Valynne needed to level her BLM for her WHM sub. MNK for me was a SUB for WAR (and since it was near Val's level). We started off in Konschtat Highlands killing bees and sheeps for about 30-60 experience points. Guankim came later and *shock* powerleveled us. Yes, we were powerleveled. On the other hand, I don't think I'm going to be leveling MNK in a party. Hehehe. We got to 14, killing lizzards and gobs. It was funny this NIN in another party tried to ditch his party and join us for 15K. I told him, sorry I'm duoing with my friend tonight. There was his BST that kept linking and running to Guankim to save him. I would have let him die, BST must learn to deal with death. But turns out Guankim reminded me that this was the guy that helped us duo WAR/NIN tank while we were leveling RDM+BRD combo. The scary thing is Valynne liked BLM. Probably because not as stressful as WHM ^^.

Tonight is the 20s static of NIN/WAR, NIN/WAR, WHM/BLM, SAM/WAR, WAR, MNK and a pick up 6th. Getting NIN closer to full sub. Ugh, painful.

Worldhopping to SHIVA!

2006-08-18T05:33:00.000-10:00

So I hoppped, skipped, and jumped over to Shiva to see Taritai after she gave me a worldpass to Shiva. I created a small model Tarutaru who I named Rrev (figure that one out please). When taritai finally found me she noticed how pretty I looked. Lol. So I had some fun running around Shiva and chatting with Taritai. We talked about creole languages. I learned that English is actually the "official" language of Jamaica, but there is a Jamacian Creole, probably similar in some ways to the Hawaiian Creole known as pidgin. She said she cannot speak the JC. I said I sound really funny, like a mainlander, when I try and speak pidgin. Go figure. Must have been going to Catholic school from K-6 and then Punahou from 7-12. I have some inflections of pidgin in my speech, particularly noticable after I attended the University of Hawaii. *grin* Moat Carps are so much cheaper on Shiva, about 7K a stack in Windy. Tarutaru rice as going for 24-25K a stack. My friend Valynne (who incidentally does not have a blog, nor does she really leave comments) would be rich (she grows the darn rice, but the prices on Garuda have fluctuated a lot lately). Taritai got me my yukata so I could ditch the starting tarutaru gear (I hate how it looks). And Rrev became a level 4 WHM. Without much gil. He did put a stack of earth crystals up for 2K, hopefully it sells. He'll have to do some quests so he can get a fishing rod and some bait. It was fun chatting with taritai. I'll end this Shivaian part with some quotes from her (and the one in pink is from me, I wrote it when I could not hit a mandragora for beans with my onion rod) and a pic of the both of us.

I did some crafting on Verrick yesterday. Poor Verrick, I tend to ignore his crafting needs in favor of my mules. But I farmed a whole crap load (13 stacks of lizard skins) so he couold power his way through lizard cestis. So Verrick has a leathercraft of 18.3 now (used the 30 dhalmel hides I was saving, so now I have some dhalmel leather again, and more space). I started working on bonecrafting, but realize I need a whole tone of bone chips. So I think I will try some farming of them. See if I can get it easily or not. He got his bone crafting to level 6. Just 15 more levels before caprace powder. Crafted my goldfishbowl before, but finally put it in my mog house. I have enough to make my fighting fish tank, just have to find a betta on the AH.

Now as I was crafting away in the bonecraft guild, I noticed this mithra NPC out of the corner of my eye. I guess working with bone can really be a rapturous occasion. Anyone have a good title for this screen shot?

Die in mass woes!

2006-08-16T19:28:00.000-10:00

I saw that posted somewhere. Dynamis = Die in Mass. Touche!

So we tried Dynamis-Jeuno again today. It actually went pretty smoothly until the boss. For some reason they tried to pop the trigger and this HUGE train of gobs (reminds you of the goblin trains of the good ol' MPK days in the jungle and the dunes) came out and slaughtered us all except for Dukenukem (a PLD taru who managed to hide from them). We came close to beating it. Not bad for only the 2nd run of the LS. Several pieces of AFv2 dropped, alas none for WHM. My karma is now 6, so I can lot on the next piece of WHM AFv2. Woohoo! Or BRD AFv2, but I think I should go for my WHM first don't you think? Got two piece of ancient currency. Was going to bazaar it for 35K a piece (as what someone suggested). Turns out the leader of my social LS has this insane goal of upgrading a relic weapon fully. So he wants to buy all of our currency. More power to him, I think he's insane.

Because of two deaths during Dynamis (taking an R1 once because my RR went down right before I died) and Vlacatocc's several deaths (I think 11) we decided to try and exp some of it back. We went to Uleregaaurd Range with a party of PLD, NIN, RDM, BLM, WHM, and DRK. Now I've climbed there about 2-3 times and never had a death to aggro personally. But these people were aggro trains! The truesight mobs and the sight mobs. So I die once with the PLD as we were battling 3 mobs together and he got mortal ray doomed. Then we had a wipe with the Mohler and company. I must have died 4 times tractoring and R3ing people. So at the end of the climb I had even less EXP (5K into level only). The NIN had disbanded (thinking fake DC) so we were five. We did manage to beat up some buffalo for some exp.

Then I helped Gouvant go after his Eldime Necropolis key (sp?). We went with a PLD (Yuleen) and a RDM (Siep), both Japanese. I was kind of leery knowing tha these mobs were EP to 75s and didn't want even more death. But I had forgotten how much fun it was to wail on Undead with a hammer. Even better the PLD and I completed a Light Skillchain with Hexa Strike and Savage Blade and I got to MB Banish III. Woohoo for 600-700 damage with MB (yeah, I know, others can do more than 1K damage, but I don't have "pimped" out WHM gear).

Hopefully we'll be able to beat Dynamis one day. Seems like the poeple in the shell work together pretty well. There doesn't seem to be hard feelings even when the crap hits the fan :-)

Blogs and Scenery

2006-08-16T06:09:00.000-10:00

There have been a lot of new FFXI blogs that are popping up lately (including mine). I get surprises almost every other day. So here is a list of new blogs or blogs that I have lately taken to reading. One sad note, Tuufless' The Bloggaru is finished as Tuufless is leaving the game. Farewell Tuufless and thank you for all your hard work on Campsitaru.

Adventures in Vanadiel. Skylee was one of the players I met a few weeks ago during the marathon session as my RDM. It's been a great experience knowing Skylee and fund to chat with them. And Skylee has some really nice pictures posted.

Alcindor's adventure through FFXI in Gardua. Alcindor created a blog without even Lanoire knowing. He is a job leveling machine and a gil making machine. And always entertaining.

Through taru's eyes. Charirii's blog about Caitsith. They are the twin of Taritai. Charirii has some really nice screenshots as well and a very conversational style of writing. Enjoyable reads.

Valynne and I were going after some silica. After more research we decided to go to Misareaux Coast (since she got all of her promies done) to hunt the pugil mobs there. All I can say is this was way easier than excavating. We got 5 drops in less than 30 minutes (but I was too tired to continue). So we'll go back for more later. The Misareaux Coast has such beautiful scenery.

I took some pictures of some fountains in the starter cities. Not sure where the fountain in Windurst is.

Taritai!

2006-08-15T09:11:00.000-10:00

Look, look above. It's Taritai from Shiva masquerading as Oedara. She took a break from Shivan and came and visited me on Garuda. It was fun sitting there and chatting for a bit. For those who do not know her, Taritai has a FFXI blog named .taritai. tales a of a taru. Take a gander at it. Below I screenshotted some of her sage advice about getting tree cuttings to drop :-).

Gotta love the dreams about Beastmaster eh?

Since I did not write much about Dynamis yesterday I thought I'd post some pictures. Here is one of the opening scenes of Dynamis when I turned in the perpetual hourglass.

Below is a scene before we started. See how many people there are? It gets very confusing. Like I mentioned before our first puller pulled massive links on us so we had two wipes in the beginning. All that training of putting RR3 up at all times came in handy. I brought along marron glace and gelatto, but I think next time I'll try and make some wizard cookies as getting back MP is the most important in Dynamis. So many wipes, so many deaths. At least I only lost about 1K in exp. Some other people took a lot more death. I tried to sneak in some R3s but a lot of time it had to be R1 to get people up as fast as possible. So we did not get the win, but we did get one WHM AFv2. I might particpate more in dynamis if I can get my exp up on WHM for the inevitable experience loss. Or soon I might be 74 again...lol.

To end the post I found some glowing flowers in Windurst. Looks kind of nice doesn't it?

Mog Lockers

2006-08-14T09:37:00.000-10:00

I just saw this on someone's FFXI blog. Apparently you can trade a lot of bronze coins at one time and extend your lease on your mog house. So I don't have to return to Aht Urghan every 5 days to renew my lease. Damnit, I wish I had seen this post a long time ago!

Anyways, My first dynamis experience was ... interesting. Wiped 2 x in the beginning with massive links. We got all the time extensions but we didn't have enough time to take out the boss. Only the second run of this shell (new shell, but apparently people have done dynamis before). All the deaths hurt me as a WHM, I feel guilty about everyone dying and getting R1. I lost about 1K exp in the venture. Got one currency an O. bronze piece. A WHM AFv2 dropped, I got to lot, but didn't get it. But it was cool to see it drop. A BRD AFv2 dropped as well, but we only had 30 sec before we left and everyone couldn't pass in time for the person who won the lot. Will I do dynamis again? Maybe. I need to look at my gear and upgrade it I think.

While I was exping with the "20s" static, WHM/BLM (Valynne), NIN/WAR (Lanoire), NIN/WAR (me), SAM/WAR (Alcindor), WAR/MNK (Guankim) and random person I got a {/tell} from Zaria. He asked if we weren't exping on the 50s static because I was thinking about leaving it. I told him I don't schedule the days anymore, and that from what I understand he is the busy one. He then proceeds to talk to me about Graveyardshift (the LS I was in formerly). All while exping so I got a bit distracted. He basically says it is uncomfortable. I told him that I have not been in the LS for the past 3 weeks and longer because of two people. Him and Sumiko.

I have always been a bit ambivalent about Zaria. On one hand he was the one that got people to do my LB2 late one night after I had been sitting at 55 for a long time. I'm not much of a planner, more of a if there are people on can we do it kind of person. So I'm thankful for that. He has been in two statics that I've been a part of, so not much complaints there. When we used to do skillup parties, I'd ask for a refresh here and there and not get it or asked him to help cure but he didn't. Lets just say I did not get many skillups that way, mainly healing. In fact Sumiko used to send me tells complaining as well. The last time I was in the LS, they were planning an assault. Dime could not go because he did not have the staging point. I was asking questions trying to ascertain if I had that staging point. Zaria ignored my questions. Keana just popped on and said he was interested in an assault and poof he gets invited.

Sumiko is another story. Yes she has done a whole lot for me when I first started. And I mean a whole lot and yes I was very thankful at the time. But apparently I whine. One night in Yhoater jungle when I was still in a static with my COR she was not feeling well and wanted to get a replacement, but the leader Gshift said no, we're not finding a replacement so we shouldn't party that night. But she said to continue. We were supposed to have our NIN/NIN/THF/THF/DRK/WHM static the next day. I asked her in LS chat if we were still going to have the party, thinking that if she was not feeling well then we should cancel. I asked again as I did not get any response. Basically in the LS chat she said she was sick of my whining and she didn't know. I blisted her and basically told Gshift I was out of the static. I told Lanoire that I was out of the other static. Lanoire asked if they could replace me. Now I guess they really wanted level 37 so I said fine, although I wish they had dropped her instead. But whatever. I made a few forays into the LS after, most notably for Val's promy runs. I went as SMN which I haven't touched in ages. All she could say (apparently my astral flow did not do as much as hers) was what is your summoning level (yes it's way below cap). "You should level your Summoning magic more" (paraphrased). Not even a thank you for coming. That was the last time I was in the LS.

Guankim spoke to me about this a few days ago. He apparently talks to Sumiko as well. She was interested in becoming in on one of our parties. I've basically said this, I don't have anything to apologize to her about. Zaria said she's spoken to me in the past about our "issues" and she has not (maybe it's when I blisted her who knows). I'm waiting for an apology from her. Maybe I'm wrong, who knows. But it really irks me when I think about her, and that NIN party really did bug me. I was kind of upset about that one.

Zaria said that SHE is a big part of Graveyardshift. This I know. She's the only one that plans things for them. And since Gshift is not much of a presence anymore on the LS she has sort of become the leader. This disgusts me. It's sad to leave a home after so long on there and so many memories. I still talk to members of GYS, but I have not been in the shell in ages. For Sumiko it's her way or the highway. I've been told that she has her moods and this I know from working with her IRL for a long time. I just feel that that was out of line in the LS chat. Apparently others don't see it that way and continue supporting her. So they can continuing kowtowing to her.

I did think seriously about leaving the 50s static after that incident with Zaria. I don't know what will happen in the future. I hear Alci is sticking together a static with her BLM. *shrug* One good thing is that I've met a lot of people because of this. Entered a new LS, out of my insular world at GYS. Even participated in dynamis (which I doubt I would have ever done in GYS).

Valark = Starstruck

2006-08-12T06:10:00.000-10:00

I was just sitting around in Whitegate yesterday when all of a sudden I see Valark waves at squally. Now normally I would not have been paying attention to emotes but squally had waved at me a split second earlier. SO I had finally found the elusive Valark! I sent her a tell saying "oh wow, it's Valark!". And she sent back an lol. She had sadly run into her mog house. I asked her if she could come back out so I could take a picture of her. She obliged and the result is sitting in front of you. She gave me some fireworks and then went to log.

Now I have not really had much interaction with her. But I read the Allakazham boards frequently and she is such a helpful person. Everyone has really nice things to say about her. Once or twice I have had her comment on my posts on ffxi-gardua.com and it feels like the guru of Garuda has noticed me :-) Now if only I could have found Daffney before she went on hiatus. She's another Garudian that is held in high esteem.

Thank you Valark for making my day!

Photologs

2006-08-10T09:33:00.000-10:00

Just some random pictures of Verrick that I thought I'd share. Betwixt my typing.

So I continued to level my RDM last night with Guankim (BRD) and Kenshin (MNK). We picked up a COR/RNG (Myyah) and a PLD/WAR (Speedtwister). For the 6th we picked up a DRK/RDM (Kligsomethingoranother) because he was the only one looking for a party in our level. When asked why RDM it was because his WAR was not leveled. Great, I thought. Now the party was going ok. The COR was great! The PLD died twice due to sickle slash. The PLD was ok, he cast some flash, but did not really provoke much so sometimes hate bounced.

Now the DRK/RDM really irritated me. First of all I was casting my enfeebles. Then he would randomly cast Dia and Bio. Over and over again. I asked him why he was spamming Bio and he said, what is spamming? And he had no clue that Bio overwrites Dia. Then he self cured himself (cursed RDM sub) to garner even more hate which means he got hit more. I asked him why he didn't drain and he said I don't have DRAIN. Now this was at 45 and drain is a pretty easy spell to get. He said he did not have any FAME. Now I thought this was pretty sad. I don't know how he survived in other parties. So basically we brought back Iamweasel (WAR/NIN) from the other parties (his party chat/macros are a little annoying, but he's a pretty good WAR) as was planned from the beginning he just didn't get on in time. The DRK/RDM goes, I hit it for 132 why are you guys dropping me?

He just did not get it. I still don't understand how they got to this level. I mean he had to have a basic job somewhere to get the advanced job of DRK. And another thing, he missed relatively often and was not eating any food. ARGH! So it seems that RDM is the new sub job of choice as noticed by Alcindor. Maybe it's because of the self-curing aspects and the fact that so many people are not equipped to handle the stresses of WHM.

Eventually the PLD had to leave and the COR/RNG had to leave as well. So we were stuck up a creek again without a Tank (there has been a dearth of tanks in our level lately when we want to level). So we begged Malumake to come as a BST/WAR and have Iamweasel tank (which he gladly did). There was some debate about a 6th. Apparently Malumake mentioned that he was going to party with us and someone from my other LS (Graveyardshift) named Sumiko had told Guankim that she was interested in leveling her BLM. This caused a lot of anger on my part. Sumiko was the reason that I left Graveyardshift in the first place because of her attitude. Some members of the LS like Jai had figured out why I left. Not sure if there are people that notice that I don't frequent the LS anymore. I also dropped out of two statics, hence I leveled my THF on my own and my COR has not seen the light of day.

I basically said if that was our only choice I would take it. I personally preferred to have Highper come (a WHM who I had partied with before) so I could focus on enfeebling and "nuking". Highper got the spot. A funny thing, Guankim was asking him to move more toward me so he could be hit with ballad better...he accidentally thought he was being asked to leave and disbanded. Miscommunication over he was back and the party ran smoothly. So in leveling my RDM it's been rare to have a "real tank". Our combinations have seemed to work pretty well.

In the end Guankim was talking to me about making amends. I have no wish to really do this as Sumiko has never come forward to apologize. In some ways we are alike, and perhaps that is why we clash. But I don't like her berrating and bossy attitude. It is denegrating. I'm happy in the LS I am in right now.

I never thought I'd level RDM this high. I think it's time to dust off my BLM so I can complete the Holy Trinity of Mages (I don't really want to do BLU). Gotta start doing AF. And also continue fishing for tuna to level my cooking!

Refresh Whore!

2006-08-07T18:19:00.000-10:00

No pictures with this post, sadly.

Been leveling RDM a bit with a friend named Guankim (BRD). My RDM had lingered at 23 for a long time (not exactly sure why but remember my last RDM party being in the Delkfutt's Tower with Kiobi as PLD). Then I dusted my RDM off to main heal for some LS (LordsofHydra) members. Brought my RDM to 35. Then dusted my RDM off again when Guankim could not find a healer (had been partying as THF to 35 before that). Since then I've "staticed" with Guankim and reached the echelons of Refresh Whore last night.

So we ended an interesting party in Crawler's Nest 2 nights ago. Last night he said we should party again (knowing how I really wanted to use my refresh scroll up!). So we get a THF and then wait around looking for a tank. *sigh* Never one when you need it. After about an hour we get a NIN/WAR, a SAM/WAR, and a WAR/NIN to compliment the THF/WAR, BRD/WHM, and RDM/BLM. So seeing I was to main heal again (I really need to dust off my BLM so I can blast things) I switched to /WHM. CN was super crowded so I suggested Gustav Tunnel which was empty. We go there and proceed to have a wonderful experience party doing about 4-5K an hour (the first hour with the band was about 6K). Needless to say it was late where everyone else was. So our WAR/NIN had to leave. We get a BLU/NIN Chafarrra (who Guankim and I had partied with the other day in Garlaige Citadel) to replace them. The SAM/WAR stays for her level then has to leave. So does our WAR/NIN. Unfortunately the SAM/WAR set up her own replacement without telling Guankim. So Guankim tells one of the 2 WAR/NIN he got that we have a different replacement. Unfortunately it turns out the SAM/WAR has a WHM/BLM (with an underleveled sub) as her replacement. The poor WAR/NIN now is in the role of the tank with the THF not sure who to SATA off of. The WHM comes on in again without any food (not even cookies). The first few fights were painful. He used only Cure II and Cure III (no regens) and I was pulling off the poisana faster than him (of course I had been main healing up to this point so was still in the mode). We finally figure out that the WAR/NIN will first voke and hte THF will SATA off the BLU/NIN.

Turns out the WHM (with the underleveled sub) was not a bad guy. I offerred some pointers (and hopefully didn't make him upset) and he started using regens. I gave him my stack of cookies so he could get MP back faster. And we worked out who would cast certain enfeebles. Now to give him his credit, no one died. We started making chain #4 and #5 again. And he had to main heal with a WAR/NIN who probably was not expecting to be sole tank. The sad thing for me was that he was decked out in a linen robe and level 12 pants. He said he put all his gil into spells (which was commendable). But I warned him that he should seriously think about setting aside time for farming and getting some better equip (like seers) and saving for his erase spell (which is darn cheaper now than when I bought it) because parties would probably be expecting this in the future. He mentioned that he had been only playing for 3 weeks. Now how someone got to level 39 in 3 weeks as a WHM is beyond me.

Now by this time I had actually achieved that amazing plateu of 41. So I was a refresh whore. And I was horrible at it! I actually think about 3 others in my party were RDMs so I felt scrutinized too. I have a feel for when haste will wear but I have no feel for refresh yet. So there were times when I didn't even notice my refresh gone. I apologized profusely. But all in all I made it to 42 last night. And finally, finally got rid of my refresh scroll that has been in my MH forever!

Thank you to Guankim who has been gracious enough to party with me all this time and form all the parties (I hate forming parties). Of course it helps when your selling point is a RDM + BRD. All I can say is I want a WHM in my next party because it is stressful mainhealing and keeping enfeebles, nuking and a refresh cycle going on 4 people. I was riding my convert timer to the hair! Oh and as a little lol @ myself. I didn't realize I received Convert at 40! And the WHM kept telling me, you're scaring me dude when you do that. Ah, a man after my own heart!

Here fishie, fishie, fishie!

2006-08-05T07:20:00.000-10:00

The above fish has been the bane of my existance. I keep missing it on the AH. I need it to skill up Wist's cooking on Tuna Sushi. I decided to fish it up once on the ferry and got my ass handed to me by the Sea Horror. So I was asking Jai's advice on fishing (he's 94.4 fishing I think). So he explained the whole !!! fishing concept for me (if you have a positive message following that then you have a mob, if you have a negative then you have a large fish). It finally made sense. Then he went fishing with me and gave me his tuna! All in all I received about 16 tunas. Time to skill up Wist!

Clouds and Reys

2006-08-04T10:16:00.000-10:00

I let myself be dragged out to exp again. Kael (from FFXI-garuda.com) wanted to level his WHM as a sub for his BLM so he could manaburn his way to 75. So I pulled out my THF (which had stalled at 32 as I left a static). We had a jolly good time for a while, until Lionheartzero had to leave. He brought in his friend Cloudx (a BLM). Now this person states that he's a 63 RDM. So in all his smartness he casts Firaga on the beetles in the desert o.O. During one of our downtimes he wants to show us he can solo a spider. He tells our two WHM not to heal him. So he casts Sleep, then Bind, then Rasp! All of us tell him that he cast a DoT and he won't be able to sleep it. He again states he is a 63 RDM! So the spider merirrly whacks him when he can't sleep it and he's in the red. Poor Kael heals him. So he sleeps again and tries to bind it again. I go and start whacking on the thing to save him. And he says "the fu**ing THF woke it up!". Now the rest of us were getting kind of pissed at him. We kept telling him that he had cast a DoT spell. He would not admit he was wrong. Eventually the SAM killed the thing. Then he starts calling me names for breaking the bind (which I admit I didn't notice he had bound it, my first thought was to save his sorry ass). He continues to cast Firaga when asked not to and completely misses the MB consistently on Distortion. All the while claiming that 63 RDM and he knew better. SO eventually Kael kicked him from the party (after he was taunting our SAM that he would beat him in Ballista against his 75 MNK). Apparenlty he kept sending tells to the SAM and Kael until he was BListed.

What really irks me is that people think that their "high" levels mean they know everything. Heck, I have a 75 WHM but I know jack crap about being a THF. I can offer some pointers to the WHMs in my parties, but I begged for help with my SATA macro, ViperBite Macro and positioning. I know in theory how things work, but it's very different when you're actually playing the thing! Once we got rid of Cloudx we recruited rogerjr. Now he was a little nuke happy, but did tone it down a bit when we asked him/her. It was enjoyable after that. In the party we originally had a tarutaru WHM, a tarutaru THF, a tarutaru WAR, a Galka SAM, and Mithra WHM, and a BLU. Swapped out for Cloudx (for the BLU). Then the WAR and WHM had to leave, so we replaced with a Hume NIN and a tarutaru WHM. And eventually another tarutaru BLM. Hehe, so the Galka and Hume had a little tarutaru army following them around.

Eventually we move to Garlaige Citadel. Unfortunately Kael died on the way, but when he came back it was pretty good. I didn't have to worry much about MP due to two WHM. Eventually Moho (WHM) had to leave and we got Twigs (a WAR). Now poor Kael was the sole healer and we could only chain up to #3, but it still went well. Eventually people were tired and we disbanded (after we escaped from a nasty link).

So my friend Guankim (whose party had broken up at the same time) invited me to a new party with him (as BRD/RDM) and Iamweasel (as WAR/NIN). I volunteered to change to RDM and main heal. They recruited Coltran (WAR/NIN, and Iamweasel's "bro), Twigs from my other party, Chafarrra (BLU/NIN, but I partied with her a looong time ago in Quicksand caves, me as WHM and she as SMN), and me as RDM/WHM main heal. Twigs pulled and we did very well. Except for Coltran who went AFK randomly, did not provoke (so ended up with full HP after every fight even though they were supposed to be bouncing vokes between the three WAR/NINs). So Guankim eventually booted Coltran and received some nasty swears to him by Coltran. Iamweasel begged to have Coltran stay, but when offered the option of being replaced too if he didn't want to level without Coltran, he decided to stay. We ended up getting a PLD Bluejay who was very good! He used cover, he healed other people, my god he was a PLD. And exp was flowing. Unfortunately he dc'd after about an hour and half and never came back. (I had that happen to me the other night, I just could not log back on and went to sleep instead). So we fought bats with 5 of us and eventually Chafarra brought out her NPC.

Then Rerey, a person from my LS LordsofHydra, brought his party in and camped right in front of us. Now there were already two parties there, it would be hard to share the mobes. Kaname (from my other LS Graveyardshift) sent me a tell saying he thought Rerey was a RMT and he apologized for camping on top of us). Kaname left that party. So I asked Rerey in the LS chat not to camp on top of us. Multiple times without any answer. Now this was the same Rerey who was a 30 WAR/01 MNK because he wanted NIN. I refused to help him get his job. But you know he was on for like 36 hour straight leveling his NIN/WAR. I never got an answer out of him. Needless to say I was extremely annoyed.

I have run into my share of idiots lately. Sorry for the ranting post, but needed to get this off my chest. Happily as you can see from my profile, now i have a full RDM sub (although only 5 into level) and am getting close to a full THF sub.

FFXI Blogs R Us

2006-08-02T22:47:00.000-10:00

Imagine my surprise when I received a comment from mnj. I checked with my friend Lanoire and she said she didn't write a comment. So I figured it must have come from Alcindor. And then I had a greater shock! He had actually started a blog of his own to document his time in Garuda. So I dug up a recent picture of Alcindor (with the WHM AF condom flame hat) and Lanoire (with her spirit masque). This was from our recent EXP session with our 50s static (that we started when we were level 29). Alcindor and Lanoire are two of my real life friends. In fact Lanoire is the one that corrupted me. Then I brought Valynne into the fold. Alcindor has a nice, sizable back account that he has built as he has swindled ... erm ... earned through amazing bazaaring skills. I wish I had his business acumen. So everyone, please join me in welcoming Alcindor to the wonderful world of blogging.

I successfully made my goldfish bowl today. LIfe is good. So I leave you with pictures of the sunbreeze festival. For some reason I accidentally erased pics of Valynne and myself in our festival clothes. I'll have to beg her to take some more pictures. Hope everyone's festival is going well.

Silica

2006-08-02T08:18:00.000-10:00

Tried ENM "When Hell Freezes Over" with squallf and others last night. We wiped. Those snolls were hard. I need to start exping again, I'm getting close to deleveling on my WHM ; ;

When I was leveling my WAR in a party the other day with LS mates Zakks, Hyryu, and other members we were fighting worms in the tunnel. We were on the East Altepa side. Things were going well, we were getting Chain #3 and #4 (pretty good for a WHM level 15 without a sub to keep up with us). Then these level 50 BLMs came and started skilling up with their wands on our worms! We asked them to move and they said, "we're farming zinc ore!". Now you can get zinc ore from a whole ton of other places including mining and Zehrun. I think it's only common courtesy that you do not skill up/farm mobs that experience parties are trying to get. Then this level 20 RDM (rank 8) with 2 PLs came and started killing worms too. Her defense was "I'm farming copper ore!" Now I was really upset at this. Copper ore can be bought for 9-12 g at the guild or even 15g at any airship dock. What the hell are you "farming" copper ore for. That was just a stupid excuse. Needless to say, I wrote the offending person's names down. So if I ever get a raise request, tele request or help request from Lilwarrior, Whitekiba, or Kiwizoid it will be {Sorry, I'm busy now}, remember Korrokolo Tunnel when you took my mobs farming for copper ore?!?! I may be petty yes, but that really irritated me!

On a happier note, for the past few days I have been searching for silica. Need it for a glass sheet to make my goldfish bowl from the summerbreeze festival. Valynne has been kind enough to excavate in the maze with me for silica. It took us two days for about 2-3 hours each time, but we finally got them! I better not break or I'm going to be very sad.

In an effort to get silica I tried to go to Purgonurgo Isle to fight the pugils there as someone had suggested that they drop them frequently. It didn't drop once. But I got some really beautiful screenshots.

Rated T

2006-07-31T09:15:00.000-10:00

So Taritai scared the bejeezus out of me in the Cloister of Fire. I'm trying to lure her to Garuda from Shiva! Heheh. She's so entertaining. Wish I could make the text bigger to read.

So yesterday I finally got my last whisper, Ifrit! Thanks again to the LordsofHydra Linkshell for helping me do this. I feel like a leech sometimes, all I do is buff and heal. Have the RDM/NIN do all the hard work. And the BLM/WHM finish them off with AM.

I bought out all of the Guguru Tuna on the AH throughout Vana'diel to skill up on Tuna sushi. Got to 73.2 on about 11 tunas. So I tried to go and get my own although I'm only level 18 fishing and it caps at 41. It required fishing off the ferry so off I go. I actually catch 4 but during one part of the ride I didn't notice the sea horror. So death to tarutaru again. That leaves me only 9K exp (about 2 deaths without reraise or raise III) before I delevel to 74. Time to change back to exp rather than limit points.

So I level with part of my static last night. It was actually my real life friends. It was five of us, two NIN/WAR, WHM/BLM, SAM/WAR, and DRK/WAR. We were killing worms in the tunnel. I was kind of high so the exp wasn't that great but we managed to get everyone up to level 19 I think.

I snaped this picture while we were waiting on MP. Alcindor was "hiding" the worm. I'll leave it up to you guys to come up with an interesting title.

Who are the people in your neighborhood?

2006-07-30T09:44:00.000-10:00

To honor taritai's post about being starstruck, I thought I'd offer a glimpse of some of the "famous" or "infamous" people on Garuda. I like to read the Allakazham boards and everytime I see a name from there I need to snap a picture. I got a picture of Rhealana and Bruner because of ffxi-garuda.com.

Yesterday I finally experienced on my BRD again. We were killing the pink flamingo things outside of Al Zhabi. It was fun. The only thing that marred it were the multitude of soloers that took our mobs. When a party is there already, why do people come in and take the mobs that we are exping off of? I don't quite understand. So eventually we found another spot and life was good. Got to 56 last night form 55, and only 3K more to 57. I can't wait for carnage elegy.

I finally got Wist her raw fish handling. To celebrate I skilled up on tuna sushi! And gave it to Verrick to eat while he was a BRD.

Photolog

2006-07-28T07:42:00.000-10:00

Come one, come all. Join the Tarutaru scooping line in Rabao.

Tarutaru as so short they drown when scooping.

Death of a Beastmaster.

Don't cry for me, all you Tarutarus!

2006-07-27T16:38:00.000-10:00

I've decided, even with paragraphs, just straight text is difficult to read, especially if it's a long post. So I'll try to intersperse pictures as best as I can.

I continue to die as a Beastmaster. Partly it's because I'm watching TV and not concentrating on possible links. Secondly I think I'm overhunting. I tried to charm T to fight T and it uncharms midway through the fight. That equals a dead tarutaru. So I spent much of the day eating dirt (see below). Leveled up to 19 though, one more then I can choco from a crag and do some OP. It's supposed to get better after Leave at 35. We'll see.

Today we took on Titan Prime. This time our set up was RDM/NIN, BLM/WHM, and myself. We took him down on Windsday. No deaths this time. Easy-squeezy. So now I need to do Ifrit to get all my whispers. Then I have to figure out how to beat Fenrir and who I can beg for help.

I finally tried scooping today. Did not participate last year as I was too busy leveling WHM. The first 5 - 8 scoops I tried I was the saddest little tarutaru. Either my scoop ripped or I lost my catch. Luckily I became more succesful and was actually able to catch some lionheads. So I'm closer to getting that goldfish bowl set so I can craft my own goldfishbowl. I think I have to level some of my crafts on Verrick to be able to do that though. Oh well. Here's my haul for the day. As Strawberrie had mentioned, tarutaru are cute when they scoop. Haven't seen the other races.

Beastiary

2006-07-26T15:16:00.000-10:00

So I started to level BST again, yesterday and today. I think I'm taking a break from the whole crafting thing. Have to do some other things to keep sanity. So I decided to level BST. Yes, the dreaded Beastmaster. Now I've had my fill of irritating WHM and tanks. Granted I haven't looked for a party as I've joined parties that friends have made. Beastmaster seemed like something I could do solo ^^. It is a totally different mindset. Definitely not gaining a large amount of experience an hour, but it's exciting. Will I live this time? Will I be able to survive that gob? Will my charm run out? I must have died at least 4-5x in Buburimu Penninsula yesterday. And went up and down in experience and even deleveled to 15. So I decided to go to the Maze of Shhkrami and did much better. Only died like 1-2x.

Got interrupted by a request to help with Garuda Prime. Apparently the the WHM that needed it decided to go as SMN. Two RDM/NIN, SMN/WHM, BLM/WHM were there and asked me to come. I had to leave the maze, change, and get there. Then I died (but I had RR3 up) after the blood pact. I haven't done the primes in awhile, my placement was just wrong. But we managed to beat her. Now I have 4 of the 6 whispers needed to get Fenrir. Just need Titan and Ifrit again. Then maybe I can pull my SMN out of hibernation! Go go SMN.

Ding 35!

2006-07-24T22:07:00.000-10:00

After the update finished downloading, I went into FFXI. Was just running around when Elteriak from the other night asked me if I wanted to party. So I dig out my RDM gear and go to Garlaige Citadel. In this party was a WAR/NIN (Kotou) and a WAR/MNK (I just can't remember their name, but they were GOOD), Vengeance (NIN/WAR), Elteriak (DRK/WAR I think), myself (RDM/BLM) and a WHM/BLM named Scuzz. So we get skillchains for bats (fragmentation) and beetles (Distortion). So I figure, sounds like a good party. Unfortunately, the bane of my existence starts again, the WHM.

Scuzz was an idiot. He did not use regen (which helps to manage MP in my opinion) and did not use food (not even cookies). He would cast Bio (luckily I have Dia II) without any rhyme or reason. I asked him why he was casting Bio (he wouldn't get DRK skill ups) and he never answered. Then he starts casting shock over and over and also using water to nuke. And I end up regenining and main healing. What the hell? So I share my frustrations with Elteriak and Vengeance. They too are incredulous. Ask him several times in the aprty chat not to cast BIo and to focus on healing as THAT is his JOB. And he just ignores us. So Elteriak has a replacement come and he gets booted. Apparently he complained in tells to Elteriak.

His replacement was Sye. Now if you have the chnace to party with this WHM do so! She was awesome. Regens, heals, brought cookies, and was just plain fun to play with. We were doing great experience and chatting up a storm. Sye also spoke Japanese and English so was able to chat with Kotou as well. Then one of the WAR had to leave (the one I can't remember the name, I'm so bad), so we get Benia (a RNG) to replace. So instead of Kotou pulling she starts pulling. And doing insane damage with her shots (like 80-100 per shot). She also pushed us to our limits with pulls, but never pulled too fast that we were in any danger of wiping. The RNG was so good. In fact the whole party rocked. And we were teasing each other as well. Faith in pick up parties is restored! Poor Vengeance he had a hard time tanking with the WAR, RNG, and DRK doing a lot of damage. Here's what he said about his tanking:

And Raptor Mazurka for BRD! Yay. Although it doesn't seem that much faster to me. Now I have to start meriting someday to get my Protectra V and Shellra V. The Sunbreeze festival is starting. Get ready for dancing Tarus and repetative music. But the fireworks. I have to take pictures this year! (and I have to learn to type less).

Magicites

2006-07-24T08:49:00.000-10:00

Remember that fun pick up party that I had? Well one of the members Gottlieb looked me up the next day and asked if I'd be willing to help out him and Skylee for the magicite quests. Hehe, I had to tell him that Skylee was not near ready for that as he was on the Dragon fight (Mission 2-3). But I said I'd take him to do the Magicite quest. Now, back when I did this I was like level 30 or something. We killed the dragon (my friends Alcindor and Lanoire waited for me to get to level 30 before we edid this quest) and Sumiko took us around. In fact we did the rank 3-3 mission (delkfutt's tower) and then did the magicites all in one sitting. I was post call that day too, so much of it was a blur.

So I read back up on the quest and go and kill stuff in Beadeaux (took me a while to remember where those mobs pop). Then I place him at Dem and have him Choco to Jeuno. We start the tenshodo quest and I take him to Bastok then back to dem to Jeuno to complete. We get all the key items and head on our merry way. I figure Castle Oztraja first since it's the longest. But I somehow lost my maps of the place. So going on memory, I inadvertenty lead him toward the place for LB3 (o.O) D'oh! Escape, retry. Finally find the right place. Off toe BEadeaux and Davoi and completed those quickly. Woohoo Rank 5.

Turns out he has a friend Cazim who he plays with (real life friend). Gottlieb actually got his BLM ahead of Cazim's MNK with our party. I think Cazim was a little put out that Gottlieb did Rank 4 missions without him. So Gottlieb asks me if I can do the missions for him (Cazim was at work when we did the missions initially, he work until late in the night). So I say sure and start the whole process again. Turns out Cazim and Gottlieb have played FFXI 2 times before, but never really got farther than this mission (and around the 40s job level). This time they want to go all the way and Cazim really wanted this mission done. He had actually read up on the missions and printed out maps. So things went pretty fast (plus I didn't get lost this time). Woohoo Rank 5 again. Turns out Cazim likes fatasy novels so we chatted about that while doing the missions.

Yesterday, I got asked by Lorddocster to powerlevel his ninja. He desperately wants NIN to 37 so he can be a RDM/NIN (which he claims are "gods" of the game). Meh, gods. Until one of them wipes and wants an Raise III (hehe, RDM didn't get Raise II in the update) [see my post about Davoi below]. Now I really hate powerleveling at times, it's kind of boring. Plus everyone wants the PL to be the tank. So I lay out ground rules. The party should function as normal. People provoking, doing SC, MB, and no freakin' WHM meleeing and casting banish, banish, and elemental magic. And we set off to the Eastern Altep desert. He actually told me, "I'll give you 100K per level and 100K per hour". But I really hate powerleveling, but I have a hard time saying no. So we get to the desert and he assembles his team. And gives me 500K off the bat, I try to refuse, but he keeps trading me and tells me to take it. Somehow they have an idiotic PLD who has no concept of how to voke or rest for MP. Then he goes AFK for ages (on the "loo"). So this was bothering me. Much to the fact that I didn't really notice the WHM. Now they eventually boot that PLD for being AFK for a long time and get another PLD. Now this one I liked! Voked, cured, rested/healed and I hardly tanked at all. They also picked up a BLM to complete the party (e.g. a WAR/THF had to leave).

Now I start noticing the WHM. Doesn't use any food I can tell. Has never heard of regen. Basically I'm curing the party while this mithra rests for 3/4 of the battle. Then she pops up and uses Cure IIs. I ask her to regen the tank. No answer. I ask her to regen the SAM (who was stealing hate a lot), no answer. Although she did cast regen ONCE! (and just once after I asked). Argh. Eventually we move to Garlaige Citadel. Before the move I get another 500K for leveling bonus I was told. Now this was too freakin much. But he wouldn't take no for an answer. Now the RDM was never magic bursting to the set up skill chain but he was new and I could forgive him. I ran him to bastok so I could warp 2 him but his HP was in the desert so I Warped him to the desert. So I tele him and he makes his way to garlaige.

So in garlaige, I was getting more and more frustrated by the WHM. She essentially is not doing anything, I'm the main healer. Eventually she has to leave so she gets replaced by another WHM. Well actuallly they had 2 WHM for a while because the RDM just up and ran off for no apparent reason. o.O. So I start off a conversation with this new WHM when I see her use regen off the bat. Hallelujah! I give her my remaining ginger cookies and we work out a battle plan. The SAM was still an MP sink. But I wanted her to enfeeble to get her skills up. So I watched the SAM and NIN HP in the beginning while she enfeebled. Then she regened and cured whil I was her back up. Now the NIN was pulling way too fast for a convetional party and for people to get MP. She would tell me when she got low and I main cured for a fight. It was very enjoyable. She had to leave eventually and got this WHM named Pakka who also used regen! And he macro'd in some emotions while curing (so I could tell when he was doing cure and cure II, hehehe). So Lorddocster had to finish when he was 35 (it was 6AM in England) and I was up 1 mil in gil.

Now recently Verrick's bank has been low. I had been fluctuating between 400-500K, but after my last party where I bought the seer's set, centurion set/sword with CP, extra food for people, and the merc capt doublet, I was down to 232K. So maybe karma is a good thing? My friend Lanoire recently added up all of my mules' money. Turns out I have like 8.4 million total. Never thought of it that way. Each of my mules has their own account. I rarely transfer gil between characters. The mules in the cities have to spend their cash to buy crafting materials and send them to others, so my Sandy mule has recently dipped from 1.5 mil to 1.4 mil (damn Sandy has been in first for 3 freakin' weeks).

Anyhow, the new update is being implemented right now. I guess I have to start meriting so I can get Protectra V and Shellra V. And as a BRD I get Raptor's Marzurka (level 37) whoohoo!. Slight boost to walking speed. Anyone need a WHM in a merit party?

A Long Day of Leveling

2006-07-22T09:30:00.000-10:00

So I was stuck sick at home. I hate being sick. So what do I do, I log into FFXI, fully intending on crafting my GP items for the day and maybe trying to make some progress in Alchemy or Cooking. So I pop on and equip the LS pearl of LordsofHydra (yes the majority of their LS came from the XBOX live). Now there is a crazy person named Lorddocster who is the leader. Hehe. I leveled my WAR with him from 13 to 16 with his NIN. Then yesterday I dragged out my poor RDM and leveled from 23-26 with his NIN. So yesterday he offered me a spot in his party for my RDM. I can't refuse a LS mate, so I pull out my gear and go a leveling.

We were in the jungle at the time. Now he brought along a powerleveler since I think he really wants NIN to be done so he can sub it for his 75 RDM (yeah he levels like a machine). Now the party seems really good except for one glaring problem, the WHM. Yes, I'm a career WHM so I tend to notice the WHM off the bat. He was a "legendary" dragoon at level 75 he claimed. But he had no concept of how to use Regen. He relied totally on the PL. That made me sad. Then when it was time to move to the other jungle we pick up a NIN/WAR who apparently is well known as well. He brings along his wife who is a RDM and we could only find a WAR/MNK as a DD. The unfortunate thing was the WAR was 27 and his sub was 09 MNK. Yes, yet another underleveled sub. Sometimes I wonder if people care anymore.

So we move to the second jungle. Still the WHM has no clue. The RDM is skilling up with a STAFF? I said STAFF? And she said, my sword is capped. But RDM has no native staff skill. She wasn't going to get any skillups anyways. And the delay time on a staff is so much longer and can't en-spell it. *sigh* And she could not magic burst to save her life. When there is a PL I want the party to act normal and the PL may be there to offer assistance (e.g. let the freakin' WHM and tanks do their jobs). But the NIN refused to provoke saying the PL was the tank. Lorddocster, bless his heart, provoked. People don't understand that it's hard having the PL be the tank, as the mob keeps moving and running all over with no clear hate line. The MNK was relaly good though. The WAR was using a great sword and kind of did not have a clue.

So we level to I think 28 and decide that they want to go to Altep. Now I think we should stay in the jungles till 30 cause beetles are a little tough at 28. But I get overruled. Meh. So we regroup in Jeuno in an hour (giving me time to get more stuff for juice making and to upgrade my armor). And off we go to Altep.

Now of course we struggle with beetles. The NIN is still an idiot. The poor PL is hleping the darn WHM out. *sigh* But we manage with the PL. But eventually Lorddocster and the PL have to leave (since it was freakin' late in England that crazy Lorddocster). And the party kind of breaks up after that. Leaving me with a MNK, WAR, NIN, and MNK. We gather some new allies a WHM (still had the crazy NIN). After a while the NIN and one of the MNKs had to leave. So this left me with MNK, WAR, and me.

Now the MNK (Sidewinder) and the WAR (Fightinghard or something like that) were really nice and good. We collected a THF, WHM, and PLD. The WHM named Highper was excellent (using regen, resting whenever he could) so that I didn't have to cure as much. The NIN actually turned out to be a not bad tank. The PLD on the other hand was a complete idiot. He had no clue on how to set up for SATA which I can forgive if he's new, but after multiple explanations he still couldn't do it. He would rest forever and not get up until the middle of the fight while the poor WAR was getting hit and hit. He never used his MP to cure anyone (as I asked him to so he could regain hate). I gave him juices which he never used. He was not using any food to boost defense. The THF was excellent (name: Calypsiana) and we were having a good time chatting. Unfortunately the WHM disconnected after a few fights, poor guy was having connection issues. SO we get a WHM named Doof to replace him. And Doof is just as good using juices and cookies. So I figure woohoo! good party (except for the PLD).

The PLD was getting more and more annoying. And I was chatting with a friend in private tells. When I accidentally and really accidentally typed in the party chat This PLD is an idiot! OMG egg on my face. But the THF was annoyed too and backed me up. She tried to find a replacement but couldn't find one. So she continued to pull. I offerred to kick myself and find a replacement as I opened a can of worms but Sidewinder asked me to stay. Now we eventually get a BLM (Gottlieb) replacement for the WAR and life is going ok. Then the MNK has to leave and brings a DRK in to replace him. The DRKs name is Elteriak. And he offers to bring stuff from the AH. Unfortunately we had miscommunication and he didn't get the fish mithkabobs I asked for the tank. So I had a friend of my bring steamed crab and also a mercenary doublet for the MNK (he wanted a soil gi as he only had 20K, but I felt he was a bright spot in the party so I shelled out the other 20K for his doublet).

Eventually the WHM had to leave. The THF was going to leave too because she was kind of high for our party and decreasing the EXP. Then the PLD just announces he has to leave and logs. Without giving warning or finding a replacement. Now we had a THF on the way named Skylee and a WHM coming to replace Doof (who happened to be Highper). And no tank. Absolutely no tanks. All the 31-33 NIN, PLD, and WAR were taken. And we were feeling really bad for the THF who chocod all the way from San d'Oria because he couldn't get a Teleport Altep (yes he had the crystal after only playing for 3 weeks, and he did it himself, dying 4 times). And I felt bad for the WHM since I hated being invited and then having the pt disband on me. So I continue searching in vain. The party is really cool though we chat about everything.

So Skylee mentions he has a WAR at the same level and he could change to tank. The THF then said she'd stay if we didn't mind her being higher leveled than us, because she felt bad too. So I take Skylee to Rabao (he had never been there before) and we get him the map of the desert and I ask the pt if they can give me 10 minutes. So I warp to Jeuno and do some shopping. Skylee only had the lizard armor from level 17 (and I remember how hard it was to afford gear back then). And our BLM had never heard of seer's outfit until that day actually. So I buy the Centurion Armor and Sword for the WAR (with my conquest points) and by the BLM the whole NQ Seer's gear. I bring some Steamed Crab for the WAR tank and get back to the party. I actually really liked the BLM and the WAR and thought I'd help them out. They were pretty happy about it.

So the party ended up being one of the best and most fun I had. We were chatting about a whole ton of stuff about the game. Skylee was asking lots of questions about crafting, tanking, macros, and SATA. And guess what, explanation of SATA once and he did it! So the exp wasn't the fastest, yeah we were getting chain #4 and #5 but with about 40-120 per kill. But it was relaxing and fun. And I actually gained level 33 (go go phalanx). And then were were all so tired at the end we had to stop. But about half the party reached 35! So yes, I had leveled for a good 16 hours (from level 26 to 33) yesterday. But I added three new friends to my list. And Highper (WHM) and Doof (WHM) replaced my faith in WHMs. Calypsiana (THF), Elteriak (DRK), Highper (WHM), Skylee (WAR), Gottlieb (BLM), thank you for the wonderful party and the goodtime. And helped me remember that pick up parties can be fun!

Craftaruing!

2006-07-18T08:44:00.000-10:00

So yesterday's GP items were:

Woodworking (Apprentice): Oak shield (bought for 15K each)
Clothcrafting (Journeyman): Soil Hachimaki (actually made linen thread from flax flowers --> linen cloth --> soil Hachimaki
Leathercrafting (Novice): Studded Vest (got my friend Malumake to make me the iron chains)
Alchemy (Craftsman): Antidote (easiest one by far to synth)
Cooking (Aritsan): Roast Trout (bought the suckers)

So my running total on GP is:

Verrick (WW): 27,596 GP | Key items: Lumberjack
Whit (Cloth): 26,283 GP | Key items: Magnifying spectacles
Wist (Cook): 27,232 GP | Key items: None (debating raw fish handling or noodle kneading first)
Brin (Alch): 4,150 GP | Key items: Caduceus
Sarn (Leather): 34,996 GP | Key items: none (he might be the first to get his 48 item on time).

I was asked to synth fishing gear (except for the hands) by a random person in Windurst (when I was making my soil hachimakis). He gathered all the ingredients and I plunked down gil for advanced support (I fgure increase my chances). So he got a NQ tunic and NQ boots, but I managed to get a HQ hose. So his friend gets an Angeler's hose (not signed by me, because I need every last bit of GP I can get!). On a more annoying note, I was making my linen threads from flax flowers and someone asked in a tell, Can I bum 2 linen threads off of you? I responded Bum? And he said NVM. For crying out loud he can synth his own. Or at least compensate me :-) (he wa smaking soil hachimakis too so he's capable).

I'm hoping to reach the 30K mark in GP for cooking. Not sure which key item to get first. One of my friends Malumake suggested noodle kneading. He says he likes the pasta. I always though I should get rawfish handling first to be able to make my own sushi. But maybe I should do that noodle kneading thing. Malumake has helped me out so much, I'd like to help him out. Although the ingredients for pasta are not always very cheap!

Other news

I've been having an enjoyable time reading .taritai . tales of a taru. The writing style is conversational and interesting. And it's is an enjoyable read. Let's cheer on this tarutaru! (plus I'm hoping to convert her to WHM).

Frustrations

2006-07-17T08:19:00.000-10:00

I am amazed at how people play FFXI. Granted I'm not the best quest completer in the game, but a new attitude seems to be rampant in the newer players. One of the LS I belong to has a whole crop of newer players. Some of them have underleveled subs (as I mentioned in previous posts) and are in a rush to reach level 30 so they can get "advanced jobs". A DRK I was helping out was level 56 and didn't have the Drain scroll done yet. He had not even heard of the mog house exits. I was shocked. One player said, I hate doing quests I just want to kill stuff. So I'm pretty sure there will be a race to 30 then a race to 75. Granted I focused on leveling for a long time, to get my WHM up. But I had all my spells (except for Erase which took me a bit to get the gil for) at the level. I usually carried the scrolls for my next levels in case I could use them. When I was leveling RNG in Korrokola Tunnel, the WHM (who was level 15) did not have Silence (which I found out to my dismay) as he was waiting on things to sell at the AH before he bought it. I almost left the party right then and there to go buy the darn thing for him. Am I just plain nuts for expecting certain things?

So to my adventures in the game. Yesterday I had logged on with intentions of doing GP items and then farming water clusters and honey. Yes, I know, I could be more efficient farming up more expensive things and buy the clusters and honey. But I'm a strange little taru who likes to farm his ingredients. While checking my mule in Jeuno, I see a shout from Lorddocster for a teleport vahzl for 15K. It just kills me to see people having to pay those prices (esp since I know Lorddocster from ffxi-garuda.com). So I change to Verrick and get myself to Jeuno (was in Whitegate). Turns out they were going to kill Darkspark, so I tagged along and got my Bard AF hands!

Then I went farming. But my TH was broken yet again and not a single pot of honey fell (and I could not steal one to save my life in Tahronghi Canyon). So I was happily killing elementals in Pashhow Marshlands (sp?) when I see in the LS chat that the DRK is thinking of buying Drain. So I give him a beastman blood, show him where to check his fame, describe the quest to him and tell him to go quest it. Got a little frustrated by that so I logged and took a nap. When I came back on I saw "Anyone have Raise III"? from the same DRK (who is the LS leader). So I ask why. In a gist there was a group of people that wiped in Davoi and needed R3 and said they'd help him get a coffer key if he could get a Raise III. So I pick up the DRK and head to Davoi.

I get tells from the group that they only have 16 minutes before they HP. *sweat* So I find them, dead in an encampment full of orcs. Luckily we arrived in time and I was able to R3 the whole lot of them. I actually met Darklordoftoast (the poor mnk had wiped) from Allakazham. So I raised their 75 RDM first and after he was unweakened, he held off the orcs while I raised everyone else. Turned out they wiped to the NM for the PLD AF quests when they ran out of healing power. So they asked me to stay and I said ok. Took us a while to get our first key. Then one of the DRKs lotted and got the coffer we passed on the way in the Monastic Cavern. Luckily another key dropped and the DRK I came with lotted on it. I automatically passed. Then we kind of stood around while people decided what they wanted to do. Most asked for a tele so I obliged. After I escaped us through the tunnel to Bastok, I see my DRK sending me a tell saying, I can't find my f*'in key. And I was OMG, my fault. I didn't check to see if the key had dropped before I tele'd (I just automatically assume people pass immediately). He was kind of pissed off for the rest of the evening.

I turned in my GP items for clothcraft, leathercrat, and cooking. Then I was tired so I went to sleep.

Here's what I did yesterday morning before I logged on. I created a wallpaper of FFXI with me and my RL friends from the game. I love this model viewer.

Promyvion-Holla

2006-07-15T18:16:00.000-10:00

So today I teamed up with my old LS, Graveyardshift, to do Promyvion-Holla for a couple of people in the linkshell, including my RL friend Valynne. I honestly couldn't remember my own run because I was half asleep when we did all three in a row. I went as a summoner then, and I went as a summoner this time. I crafted hi-potions, ethers, muslum, poison potions, and echo drops. I also had the ingredients for yagudo drinks. Our set up was SMN/BLM, SMN/WHM, WAR/NIN, BLU/NIN, RNG/NIN, WHM/BLM and I think THF/NIN (he just came along for the run to the Spire). My friend Valynne helped me farm up the psychoanima and hysteroanima. We got a little aggro in the first three levels, but nothing that bad. Ever single memory recepticle we fought amazingly took us to the next level. On the 4th level one of our party d/c'd but we all managed to get to the Spire. Entered the fight and buffed up. We both called Ifrit up and the melee's went to town. 4 of us used our psychoanima during the fight. EES and two Astral Flows at 50%, + Mighty Strikes and the mob was dead (we didn't have the BLU or WHM 2HR). Without any deaths. Amazing because one of the members of the party (whom I did my runs with) usually died. So either we were a) lucky b) better prepared or c) more skilled? So one down and two more to go for others.

My other linkshell xCirclexOfxShadows has been kind of interesting. I'm not on there as much since none of my mules have pearls and I've been spending an inordinate amount of time crafting. There are players that don't want to fit the mold and are partying as 30 RDM/15 SMN (which is an improvement on 30 RDM / 6 SMN, but I digress). I still don't get what /SMN is going to do for his RDM, but then again, I really haven't played much RDM. It seems that a lot of people in the shell are gunning for 30 to get the advanced jobs, sometimes to the detriment of their subjobs. On the other hand, there are a lot of new players so it's kind of nice to be able to help out where I can. I kind of miss that in the other linkshell (apart from the infamous incident, at least infamous in my mind) as mostly everyone is in their higher levels. I actually got to help someone do their complete LB1 (soloing the mobs). He didn't believe that I could do it...hehe. I'm sure I'd be better as a WHM/NIN with dual mauls, but my poor nin is at 19. Don't really have the urge to level him anymore. We needed help to open the banishing gate. But this PLD is a lucky guy. His mold dropped on the first exoray we fought. Then I took him to get his vahzl crystal. Then in the necropolis we only killed like 10-15 mobs and he got his paper, mine took HOURS! And of course the bomb coal dropped instantaneously.

Craftaruing!

Brin managed to get enough GP points to get his Caduceus yesterday. So now I can officially say I'm 61 +1, hehehe. Today is a Holy Dengen, now that majorly sucks.

Wist is still stuck at 69. Haven't figured out what to make next. Might just wait for pears until tomorrow. Then to pear au lait until 72 then Pamama au lait until 81. At least that's the plan. I still have to make the raisin bread.

Signature Maker

2006-07-13T11:28:00.000-10:00

I've been spending a lot of time at FFXI-garuda.com much to the detriment of actually playing the game. But it's a fun forum, the people are nice and helpful. And there are new fathers on the way. Rhealana (from Garuda) had posted a path to get to the FFXI model viewer, which essentially allows you to look at all the character models from the game and take screenshots. Since I wanted to update the header of this page I had gone on a picture taking quest (not the new ToAU one) for screenshot goodies. I liked Lufaise Meadows, and yes I know you can't ride a chocobo there. So I decided to fool around with the model viewer and make an avatar and a signature for myself using those tools and my meager photoshoping abilities.

People then started asking me where I got my sig. And so I made some more last night. This new toy is way too much fun!

Crafting

I managed to get Wist from level 63.4 (where we left her after she had done some melon pies) to level 69 (no jokes here please) on colored eggs and San d'Orian Tea. Now she needs to make some raisin bread and she'll be all set for the higher ranks. I still need to get my GP items. I'm so far behind because I've been mindlessly leveling cooking the past few weeks and most cooking items only give you 2K of points a day. So sad.

Craftaruing! (Is That a Word?)

2006-07-11T16:01:00.000-10:00

In Game Antics

Didn't do to much in game today. Found Kietsu and gave him the Centurian armor and Centurian sword as promised. He seemed to enjoy it. Poor guy is also looking for his Invisible spell and Escape spell. Now I've sold a few escape spells, and it's about 10K asking price on AH. Invisible I haven't sold before. A friend of mine helped me get it from a drop off Goblin Leechers. When I looked at the AH it was around 15K to 40K for the spell. Damn I should have been farming invisible spells this whole time. So I told him I'd be on the look out for the spell.

Helped Glued get his Teleport-Vahzl crystal. It was relatively uneventful except that I always forget where that stupid crystal is. I have it marked on my map, but it doesn't transfer to the XBOX 360 so I had to look it up on the Atlas. Needless to say I bookmarked it right then and there. The LS I'm in now (Glued is a member) is relatively laid back, but it ranges a wide level of player base. One of the people was partying as a 30 RDM/06 BLM and didn't see anything wrong with that. He wanted the summoner job. Now he's going out as a 30 RDM/05 SMN o.O. My friend Valynne told me she saw him in Jeuno shouting 20K for guisebait grass (for the choco quest) and that he also has an airship pass as a rank 1 (she saw him listed on an airship). Not quite sure what to make of it. As it is, I was mainly shuttling between all my mules (and only Verrick has a pearl) so I wasn't on the LS much. One of my mules has rank 1 and an airship pass (proceeds from crafting) but I don't think it's his mule. Only time will tell I suppose. Disconcerting to say the least.

Craftaruing!

So I spent the rest of the day posting on ffxi-garuda.com and crafting. The GP items today didn't suck that badly so I actually turned them all in.

Alchemy (Brin in Bastok): Craftsman (61.x), Cooking (10), Goldsmithing (32.x), Smithing (17.x)
GP Item: Silence Baghnakhs (HQ 1/6, NQ 5/6) Turned in 5 (sold the +1)
GP Total: 62,691 (no items)

Cooking (Wist in Windurst): Craftsman (63.8), Fishing (4)
GP Item: Roast Mutton (HQ 2/13, NQ 11/13) Turned in 13
GP Total: 13,960 (no items) thinking of raw fish handling first?

Clothcraft (Whit in Windurst): Journeyman (50.x), Fishing (12.x), Leathercraft (30.x)
GP Item: Soil Kyahns (HQ 1/4, NQ 3/4) Turned in 4
GP Total: 15,354
GP Items: Magnifying Spectacles

Leathercraft (Sarn in San d'Oria): Amateur (35.x), Clothcraft (5.x)
GP Item: Solea (bought them in Selbina and sold a stack of sheep leather to cover cost) Turned in 17
GP Total: 24,426 (no items)

Woodworking (Verrick from Bastok): Apprentice (49.0) ,Alchemy (28.0), Bonecraft (4.0)
Clothcraft (8.x), Cooking (60.0), Fishing (18.x), Goldsmithing (4.x), Leathercraft (4.0), Smithing (4.x)
GP Item: Crossbow (bought them in Bastok) Turned in 8
GP Total: 16,396
GP Items: Lumberjack

I skilled up a bit on Sand'Orian Tea on cooking but only made it from 63.4 to 63.8 on Firesday with advanced support with 2 stacks of ingredients. Then I ran out of space. I'm seriously thinking of raising Wist's fame to get all the gobbiebags done for all these unstackable items. I think she has level 7 fame in Windy, but nothing in the other two cities.

I find it hard to turn in Verrick's GP items (partly because I hate the woodwork GP items usually) and that he's not in that city to begin with. It takes effort to get to Jeuno and ride that airship.

Oh well, I think I had enough FFXI for the day so far. I think I'll play with the FFXI Model Viewer that I asked Kupotaru about and she graciously asked Rhealana to find the link and post it up. It looks like fun. Now I just have to figure it out and how to port the images into Photoshop. And then I have to figure Photoshop out.

Yes, I know I'm addicted to crafting. I want to level BST (16) up as well as BLM (42) and RDM (23). And I should finish THF (32) up to full sub. I need to get a Moldative Earring for BLM (and I hate camping NM) so who knows when I'll level. Plus all the HQ staves, only have Apollo's and Terra's for now. So many things to do. I give all of you guys who have been playing for longer than I have credit for not going insane.

Atop the Highest Mountain

2006-07-11T00:48:00.000-10:00

Today I helped out on Limit Break 2. Saw a random shout in Jeuno for "LB2 need a WHM". So I left the airship dock to San d'Oria and migrated out toward Port Jeuno to give whatever assistance I could. I remember my own limit break 2. I waited for a while (stalled at level 55) because at the time the members in my LS were in their 60s at the highest (with a very few 75 members). One night Zaria drummed up enough LS support that took me on my run. Since then I have helped to get my friends LB2 (duoed two NM with Zaria) and also helped a random BRD get his LB2 (again duoing with a RDM/NIN). So I figured, what the heck, should be relatively fast/easy.

First of all it was an alliance that went. Seems like we had about 5 level 55s that needed it. So I changed my HP to Jeuno and ported them all. Then it got kind of confusing. There wasn't a definite leader so people were aimlessly wandering. PLus a couple of them were melees and didn't have access to invis/sneak and apparently no oils/powders. So we ended up fighting our way through a lot of aggro (eventually I fugred out they weren't using stuff and convinced people to sneak/invis them). People jumped into the fight without waiting for the mages MP or for me to buff them (had to protect everyone in the alliance). All in all it took about 1.5 hours, we killed lots of things. I came out with 4 dark clusters (which is a bonus given that dark crystals are going for more than they used to now, and I need them for leathercrafting). No deaths.

But what was exciting was how greatful they all were to have LB2 finished and done with. I remember thinking at that time, one step closer to that elusive 75! And it made all of the faux paus seem minor. I gotta respond to more random shouts for help (but I'm rarely in Jeuno nowadays).

Been spending a lot of time perusing through the ffxi-garuda forums with great delight. Had a PM chat with Kupotaru and had a few tells from her and Rhealana in game. Their LS sounds really nice as well and they both seem to be pretty cool people. Plus I got excited that I have comments on this blog, from both Kupotaru and Tuufless.

Crafting

Been working diligently on my cooking skill. I HQ'd 4/9 of my GP item today, salmon subs. At about 11K GP right now. Probably should get raw fish handling as soon as possible.

Wist went from 60 to 60.3 today. Leveled on Melon Pie (cap 64, bird egg version) crafting on Watersday. Ran out of ingredients to take it to cap. Sells for about 2k a stack and NPCs for about 1.4K a stack. Most likely will NPC them for a tiny loss. Debating where to go from here. I really don not want to do colored eggs. I think I will go for San d'Orian tea (cap 70), but maybe not to the cap. It seems to sell as a relatively good pace (although not as freakishly fast as Yagudo drinks can go for) and a not bad price for the ingredients needed (sage and fire crystal the most expensive). Then I think I'll move to pear au lait. Haven't looked further than that.

Leveled from 54.3 to 60.0 yesterday on Yagudo drinks. Just finished selling all of what I made on the Jeuno and Windy AHs for about 3K each. I grossed about 200K, so probably netted around 100K or so (have to figure in the cost of ingredients).

GP items kinda sucked today as well. Elm staff for Woodworking (but about 7-8g/GP). Clothcrafting was Heko Obi today (which requires cotton cloth x 2 and I didn' t have the time to synth my own). Leather was Vagabond's boots. I didn't turn any of the three. I turned in Deodorizor that I had made previously for Alchemy. 15K to go for my Caddeusus.

So things to do:

Get a picture of Rhealana, Kupotaru, and Valark (to see if I can)
Continue on my crafting spree. Also have to think about leveling my other crafts up again.
Respond to more random shouts
Get better pictures of my tarutaru
Find my model viewer for FFXI that people talk about (all the links I follow are dead) so I can learn to make nifty avatars
Find Kietsu to get him some armor
Start leveling a job again, otherwise crafting may just drive me batty

Times Change

2006-07-10T00:28:00.000-10:00

My first day back playing FFXI for over a week. It was fun to play again.

Got my cooking mule, Wist, from Cooking level 54.3 to 60.0 on Yagudo Drinks. Had to make a ton and am still trying to sell them all off on the AH. Started farming lizard eggs for colored eggs (level 66 cap) since Elshimo Uplands are under beastmen control this week and I can't find cinnamon to make pies elsewhere. And I saved all that pie dough. Made a few colored eggs and got 0.3 skill up points. NPC'd the whole 12 I made for a paltry sum, 109 gil per egg, my first loss synth since the early juices (OJ and apple juice) from 0-20.

Left my first linkshell Graveyardshift. It was comprised mainly of people that lieve in HI so I was kind of sad to leave it. My friends in RL are in that LS. I had to leave because I just didn't feel apart of that LS anymore from an incident a few weeks back. I had received an invitation to XCircleXOfXShadows from Glued on the FFXI-Garuda.com forum site. In the LS was a tarutaru known as Blue Mages. It was a nice surprise. He was the BLM that took my clueless pick up party through Mission 5-2 and helped us beat the shadowlord. None of us in that party knew where we were going (I hadn't even planned on getting my rank 5 missions done at that point, but someone in my LS had told me to come along). I enjoyed my brief time in the XCircleXOfXShadows LS so far :-)

On an odder note. I was running through Whitegate this evening to send something through the mail. Ecki did an emote as I was passing by: Ecki steals you. Then he sent me a private tell: ; ; I replied ?? He said he was trying to steal me. I said for what? And he responded {Tarutaru} {Pet}. I had a good laugh as well as looking at him oddly. I have no idea with Ecki is a male or female character, dunno even which race (totally forgot to /sea all him/her/it).

So all in all, today was a good day. Except for GP items, they just plain suck.

Let Me Back In!

2006-07-09T07:42:00.000-10:00

So after waiting patiently (well actually very impatiently) for my shiny new credit card to arrive in the mail I finally have it in my hot little hands last night. So you figure everything would be good to go, right? Is anything with FFXI that easy? Of course not. I try to re-register my card and get a "there has been a system error" message. System error message? What the heck? It said "try again later". And of course customer service (for a game that goes on 24/7) is not available on the weekends. I was seeing RED :-) So I gave up, checked on the various posts, and turned into bed (had just finished going to my aunt's burial and helping the family out with things).

So this morning, I wake up and decide to give it the old college try again. Amazingly this happened without a hitch on the first try. And then I find out, it only reactivates your playonline ID. You have to go through and reactivate each and everyone of your content IDs (including your main character). And you cannot do this enmasse. Argh! Frustration!

It's been fun having time away from FFXI (although talking to my friends made it a little difficult as one of them got their chef hat during my imposed hiatus). It was actually entertaining to read posts and actually post. And I got a reply to one of my posts from Valark! On FFXI-garuda.com. It was like getting a message from the leader of Garuda. I haven't actually seen her in the game, but the one time I saw Rhealana it was like...Ooooh, I should snap a picture (I didn't though). All these famous people I see.

And one day I'm going to learn what orz, emo, 1337, QTF and various other slangs are. I think I'm getting old. Reading some of the posts are painfully difficult for me. People sometimes laugh when I chat in game. I capitalize, use commas (and the occasional semi-colon), and even end my sentences with punctuation. I guess that comes from all the darn typing I do as a pediatrician (with the electronic medical records).

Anyway, I get to go back to the game! As soon as I finish these content IDs (grumble). The guild point items suck for today. Cerment Sword anyone?!?!

FFXI AA

2006-07-08T00:57:00.000-10:00

"Hi, my name is Darrett and I am a Final Fantasy XI addict."

There I said it. Who would have thought that I'd start a blog based on my adventures in Garuda. Of course, not being able to play for the past week due to credit cards expiring and replacements getting lost in the mail, I had to resort to other things for my addiction.

I've been playing on the Garuda server for about a year now. Currently my fascination and frustration comes from the world of crafting. And not just on my main character. I've got an Alchemy mule, a Clothcrafting mule, a Leathercrafting mule, and a Cooking mule. This gives me a grand total of 5 guild point items to turn in on a regular basis.

Most notably during this "hiatus" from the game, I actually posted on Allakazham (had to use the name Verr as Verrick was apparently taken...grrrrr) and on FFXI-garuda.com. Not too sure how many people will be reading this (I expect very low numbers if at all), but I felt it was something to do. And who knows, it might actually turn out to be an interesting adventure.