Warrior fun

So I have been leveling WAR for a while now and got an invite the other day from Zitale, a friend and RDM in my new Linkshell, to come and merit with them. "All right!" I says and off we go not realising the fun I was in for. I was about 25k to 75 at the time and was just hoping to keep up damage wise. I think I did alright on that front. Anyway, it turned out to be my first ever WAR WAR WAR RDM BRD BRD party. Can I just say....O..M..G! I think I'm ruined. Heres a shot of one Raging Rush at 74 under full 4 song BRD buffs....


Up until this party, the highest chain I had seen was 12. Pitiful I know.This pt got to 43 but then the stars aligned and I died to an evil Firespit. Still, 43 was cool to me....


.....then last night I got a WAR MNK MNK SAM/DNC BRD RDM party. Chain 80! I forgot to send the screenshot to myself to use but I will post next time. But the best part was....

DING!

The merits I got last night (5 total) went toward opening Warriors Charge and an upgrade each for Double attack and Great Axe. I decided to go and give Warriors charge a go. I built up 300 tp on birds outside Whitegate, started to buff up, hit Mighty Strikes and just as I did (before Warcry and Charge), I got tickled. %@$#! So I had to do it without Mighty Strikes and at 200tp on the next bird. Landed for a little over 1700! I was quite taken aback to be honest. Very curious to try a 300tp fully buffed one. I'm relatively sure it will fly over 2000. Stay tuned...

So for WAR merits (which I'm going to focus on to make myself better in meripos for merits on other jobs), I'm going to work on Great Axe and Double Attack first then finish Warrior's Charge then do Berserk/Aggressor evenly which will leave one merit which I think I will put into Warcry. After that will be STR, finish sword and then work on finishing BST merits and maybe something else in WAR group 2, probably Tomahawk. Thats the plan for now and as with all things in FFXI, is fluid and can change at a whim.

I also decided I would start working on leveling up my other weapons. Not for any particular reason, just coz. I started with Polearm coz I wanted to see myself use Penta Thrust. That was cool but once I got Penta, it got boring so I decided Great Sword would be next and that since I had a little cash sitting around, I'd buy a Mercurial Sword to level with and sell back once I was done. Any job out there that needs to skill GS, should do it with Mercurial sword if you can use.

SO....MUCH....FUN!

I started at 20 and after 45 mins of whacking gobs in Gustav tunnel, I was at 95. Heres a shot of the hax that was going on in Gustav.


After that, I decided, I'd try Lesser Colibri since they were EP and would give a little EXP, drop seals and perhaps skill up parry. With all the acc gear I have and /DNC's acc boost, birds were easy to hit and I was not disappointed.


I'm at about 178 now and have spent all of maybe 2 1/2 hours total skilling. I think next, I will go play in Kuftal with the crabs down there.

Well thats it for this post. I still have lots of screenshots to post so more updates soon. I'll leave you with a Zen moment....

Nyzul update #2

OK, after my complaining recently about the drop rates in Nyzul, I must admit, we ARE slowly chipping away at peoples gear needs. Still only getting about a 25% drop rate but when I make a post like this, it doesn't seem SO bad. Guess I was just spoiled by our first 4 boss runs all dropping a piece of gear.

Anyway, a little sad new. Bubbo, our uber Monk, decided she had to prioritize her time a little better and felt that she couldn't keep Nyzul Isle in the mix so she stepped down from her place in the static. Sad to see her go but this opened up a full time spot for Aless to join us. We are now WAR, WAR, THF (with broken TH4 right Tuly? :p), BRD, RDM and I have decided to bring my BLM to the chagrin of many BST friends as it pumps out a lot more damage in a shorter amount of time and I haven't found MP to be an issue yet either. I still want to try WAR as well once I get to 75 so we'd have WAR, WAR, WAR, THF, BRD, RDM. That will prolly just be for fun floors. In the long run, my BLM will prolly be more useful with DD, support, and one more body out of AoE range.

Anyway, with the update, Loren decided he would start using GA with Retaliation. A heavily merited WAR with this new buff is evil...

Yeah, no kidding "Loren defeats the Ameretat" >.>

Recent drops include Tulaq's Denali pants about 3 weeks ago....

...Azurea's Denali pants a week or so ago...

...and Nyena's pretty hot Goliard pants this week.

I'm stoked that we are getting gear for everyone but I'm still a little choked about the slowness of drops. IT'S SUPPOSED TO BE ~50% SE!

Anyway, I digress. Congrats guys on your new gear. Lets keep up the good work. This coming week, we will be bringing Ny's disc up to floor 40 and then leapfrogging her over me to 60. We'll certainly make time for a couple of farming runs in between but thats the basic plan for now. Stay tuned...

March 10th Update plus various other fun

So SE had a rather large update just this week. It was a really long download (3 1/2 hours for me, up over 7 for some I read) but in my opinion worth it. BST got a little something in the form of reduced Reward timers, BLM got a new scroll and WAR got "Retaliation". Some new areas were loaded, new gear, quests and NMs. All in all, a cool update. Click here to read the details.

So the first thing I did when I got on was go and get my new BLM scroll, Retrace which transports the person the BLM selects to their home nation IN THE PAST! OMG, YAY! No more running from home nation in the present to the past.

I did the quest with my funny little Taru friend from RRB Velvetj.

It was quite a bit of running around but totally worth it if I do say so myself.

SE also added in the AF gear for Scholar and Dancer both of which looks asthetically pleasing. Especially on Mithra's. Too bad we all know Az is a dude -.- Nice skirt Az.


Also some new Ninja magic. The decidedly handy sneak Ninjitsu called Monomi is more than welcome in my book. I had to have so off to Kazham I went.


In other news, been doing a little more NM hunting on BST. Check out the Intimidation post updates. Aless and I got an Ose one night but no jerkin drop though neither of us need it. Also got a scared Zizzy for which we DID get a drop. Nice little bonus of 160k of which I keep forgetting to send to Aavan and Uchiha their share. I promise guys, I just keep forgetting! >.>


Also dinged 72 on WAR. I'm actually 73 now and swinging a mean Fortitude axe. I'm still slowly chipping away at Assaults to get my Perdu Voulge though. The new WAR ability Retaliation is AWESOME. It proc's so much and gives tp. WAR/DNC with Fortitude axe, Retaliation and Double Attack has NO problem needing tp for both WS's and DNC cures.


When I dinged 71, I went and got my trials axe right away and got to work on it with my NPC. Aless kindly came down and helped me break the most of it with Darkness chains that I could finish. All up, it was broken in less than 90 minutes. Later after Nyzul, Tulaq and Nyena graciously came out to the Sanctuary of Zitah to help me kill the WSNM for Steel Cyclone. Easy fight against a scared tree. Even Lars was getting in on the intimidation fun. So Thanks to Aless, Tuly and Ny for your help on this task. ^__^

And as a final note, check this dude out that I saw in Whitegate the other day. Very clever XD

C'mon drops!

Nyzul has been going well for us lately....except the drops!

We have done a bunch of floor 20's and started on 40's but after our first 4 floor 20's which ALL got a drop (lucky I know), drops have really dried up. Since those 4 lucky initial drops, we have seen 2 more. Thats like 2/15 or something! We have TH4 and our total drop rate is what...25-30%? WHAT THE HELL??!!

So I have decided to get one of these....


If anyone knows how to get drops a LITTLE more often, please let me know so I can post more on my blog about the items we get.

I'll post in the next couple days about the drops we DID get in recent times. Stay tuned.

Hakutaku meets his doom.

One of our LS PLDs asked me if I could help him with Hakutaku today to which I happily obliged. Having done the fight once before BST style, I knew what to expect so I reigned in a couple of BST friends for the task and off we went.

The party was 5 people consisting of 4 BSTs and Bigwill (the Ohat needer) who was on COR. Can I just say that Puppet roll really helped our pets to land their hits. Coupled with Evokers roll, we never needed to rest either even whle maintaining Stoneskin and using sneak every so often.

Overall this went by very smoothly and the only time there was the HINT of trouble was when we were all getting lazy seeing how easy it was. No problem for BSTs though when you can whip out a Carrie, snarl all your hate onto her and carry on.

His HP seemed to drop really quick at the start. This shot seemed like it was about 2 mins in.

Most of the fight we just stood around...

...but sometimes we got just a little too chill and slacked off >.> lol

For those of you who have never fought Haku or his kind, their tp move Hex Eye inflicts a WICKED paralysis as our pets experienced first hand.

And everyone needs to get in the obligatory poke against major NMs. Its just considered good form.

In the end, Hakutaku was no much for Beastmasters and he went down to Bigwill's joy.

Congrats Will. May your Optical hat serve you well for a long time!