Omega who?

Seeing MeneoCecus come full circle from the divisive break we had some 6 months or so ago is an exciting thing. After having two thirds of our member base leave for another server, the game or just bail on the group for other options (I admit shamefully that I was almost one of them), it's great to see how people have stuck in there with the LS and helped to rebuild us to a point where we have a good little group that can take down Omega again. I am excited to see how we grow from here. The plan I heard was to keep it small and tight which is perfect in my eyes. It means we can take the things we want out and get drops for people without the long waits in between rewards due to a high number of people.

Last night was our second attempt since the split. The first one a couple of weeks ago saw us attempt him with one NIN/DRK tank (Byany) who did exceptionally well till he got broken at the last 30%. Up until then, he barely took any damage and help hate through the BLM bombardments wickedly. After Omega killed him though, I think he caught everyone else by surprise somewhat and he slowly picked us all off. In the end, we wiped and went away sad with no gear.

This time we had a few more options for the alliance setup. If I remember correctly the group was as follows: NIN/DRK x2, BRD/WHM, RDM/WHM x2, THF/NIN, BLM/WHM x5. Our strategy was an easy one. Have the supported NINs hold Omega, the BLMs would bring his HP down slowly to begin and then have a volley of IV's or AMII's each time he went back to 4 legs removing about 20-25% each volley, and have the THF grab and hold any pods to be burned with 2-3 IV spells.

It worked to a tee! Yellowman and Byany tanked like champs taking little to non damage, Fokyah did wicked grabbing any pods the second they popped, the NIN support didn't falter in the least keeping them both buffed and healed at all times, and the BLM party bought him and his pods down quickly and efficiently pulling hate maybe twice for a second and managing MP beautifully.
At 34% we rested up fully and got fresh buffs up in preparation for the final form. The word to charge was given and the nukefest was on. The NINs had such good hate built up that he didn't look our way until after the 2nd volley in a row at which point he was well under 20%. I took a Colossal Blow that I survived and reset my hate allowing me to Manafont and go nuts till he was dead. I don't think anyone died during the fight and it lasted all of about 15 minutes. Dorps came Eye and Foreleg (Homam head and hands respectively). Congrats to Dylorian on hands for his uber THF (which benefits my Nyzul group :p) and to Yellowman on the head item for his THF also.



Knowing what we know now, next time we will be able to farm him for coins for 10 minutes or so as well as getting the win provided we have a similar setup. I am confident that we could take him down with as little as 3 BLMs using the same method if need be but the same setup as last night will lead to many successful Omega runs and lots of Homam gear for our members that can/want to use.


YAY US! Great job guys. A pleasure working with you all. I think some of the momentum we had last night comes from the groove we got into jamming to Al's music. Maybe? No? OK, its just fun to get your groove then I guess.

The ultimate goal

As I alluded to last post, my ultimate goal has become attaining my Maat's cap. I have always thought of myself as a dedicated enough player to this game to have a relic of some sort and while Maat's cap isn't really a relic per say, I figure that it best fits the level of achievement that I can and have reached. I say this because the relic and mythic weapons while awesome to acquire, are just a little out of my league. I sorta put them in the bracket for players who LIVE on this game. Now while I do spend a lot of my free time on FFXI (read: most), I'm not one of those players that attends EVERY event, gets up at all hours of the day or night to claim an NM, and must have all the best gear in the game for my character. I prefer things I can do myself or with small groups of friends and at times that suit my life outside of the game. I also don't put myself in the Relic bracket because I don't have or want to bust my ass for a means to fund it. I like having the gil I have for the things I like with nominal effort/time afforded to it.

So Maat's cap has become my ultimate goal. It is something I can do at my own pace, on my own time, whenever I want to work on it. It's something that won't cost me 10's of millions of gil to reach and will provide a reward that is both relatively rare and extremely useful for most of my jobs especially SAM.

At this point in time, I have 5 level 75 jobs. BLM, BST, RDM, WAR and most recently SAM which I class as my new main. I will continue to merit and buff these jobs as they are the only ones I plan to have at 75 for the foreseeable future. Who knows. I might really love another of these jobs required to level for Maat's cap but after much pondering and thought on which jobs I wanted to take to 75, the only job I can see myself possibly taking to 75 is PLD. POSSIBLY!

So that leaves me with NIN, THF, MNK, WHM, DRK, BRD, SMN, DRG, RNG and PLD remaining to get to 66ish to fight Maat for his hat. As I said last post, I have decided to level NIN to 66 first as it is the job I least like of the 10 and I have soloing options for when I either don't want to party or don't have the time to set aside for it. After NIN, I think I'd like to do a job that will get fast invites and is enjoyable so prehaps BRD, PLD or MNK.

I know I have a very long way to go but I think with the Level Sync system in effect now and the company of friends who are leveling other jobs as well, it will be a fun journey that will also afford me a good base knowledge of all the older jobs in FFXI, allowing me to see how people play these jobs and when to consider someone as having done a great job in a party with me or a substandard one.

As a quick aside, we had 2 quick runs at Nyzul last night originally intended to try and get Enin his Askar body but for some reason he didn't show so we took a shot at 60 with the goal of getting Al her much coveted Askar hands. Both runs went very smooth. The first floor 60 boss was our good friend Cerberus. While we HATE this guy for the Stoneskin spam, he has put out more than any of the other bosses and didn't fail to please this time either.



The 2nd run was decided that we would shoot for 60 again to try and get Byany his Denali hands. Another smooth run was met with the squishy Hydra at the end. After a quick raping, she dropped Goliard hands that no one really desired. Al and I had them far down on our lists so we both lotted. I wouldn't have been upset at all to see them go her way as I have Zenith mitts for nuking but lotted because I knew I would use them whereas Al would only have them for completeness' sake. Now that I have them, I will be using them on RDM for nukes fulltime. The extra magic accuracy will be certainly welcomed.




I laughed at the implied courtesy between us as Al decided on whether or not to lot and then her enormous lot for the loss. LOL!

More and more, we are becoming alike Al and I. Perhaps I need to spend some time away to reclaim my identity? LOL NOWAI! :p


Lastly, any advice from anyone on my Maat's cap journey will be well received. Those who have started or completed their journey there are people I most wish to hear from so don't be afraid to comment here if you have any advice.

Obtained-ga!

When it rains it pours. I happily indulged in the truth of this saying this week. Things have really been picking up with Nyzul Isle among other things and people are getting things they want. Its great to see things come to fruition like this after all the time we have spent getting to the position we are now in.
This week we decided to climb everyone to 80 and after the success of that climb last night, we will climb on to 100 next week in order to get everyone to a point where they can get any and all weaponskills they might want done as quickly as possible. Only having to get 250 points is cake when you have friends that can make a level 3 chain with you. Takes all of an hour....tops.

Khim was stingy at 80 this week but after seeing Dylorian (the only one without a weapon so far) get his THF dagger finally as well as 3 other needed weapons, coupled with everyone having 80 access on their disc now, I count it as a successful run.






Al's BST axe was last week but meh. It fits in well here :p Dyl put the acquisition of his THF dagger very adequately...


Stupid frikkin WHM weapon >.< I'm done with my weapons now having gained Vorpal Sword which I will break in the next couple of days to gain Death Blossom. I'm very interested to see how it performs though I imagine I will like the animation more than anything.

Last Thursday also saw Goliard body drop which I got. I have quite a few uses in mind for this piece and am happy to have it though I admit that initially, I wasn't really very interested in the Golaird gear at all. I have head and body now and think I would like feet for sure. I'll collect the whole set if it comes but the feet are the only other piece I'd really like.


Oh and grats to Al on gaining Atonement. Apart from giving me a seizure (like Rana does for others I guess), the skill can do some nice damage once hate is accumulated and makes Light with Shark Bite and the other skills in that grouping. Seems to help her hold hate nicely in Limbus so far.



After Nyzul, I grabbed Booch and Dyl and we went out to pop Gration. I have popped him some 6 times now and seen 2 drops including last night. So thanks guys. The gil is warmly welcomed at this point as I seek to attain Maat's cap (more on that to follow).


Also saw the NM bat Upyri hanging out by the zone to Riverne as we bought Gration up to die so Dyl and I burned him down quickly while Booch kited Gration. No earring drop but meh, a kill of an NM I have never seen before.


Booch and I went looking for trouble with Ix'MNK after Gration and after a semi-botched pull (3 organs used) we got him to the Ebon room and whittled him down. I like this fight but I have really learned to hate the NM and his suckass drop rate. I'm like 0/6 or 7 now on the Vice. All but one of those pops has been a 3 organ pop.

So as I mentioned above, I have decided to try and work on Maat's cap. I REALLY, REALLY, REALLY want it. Such a cool looking piece with a lot of exclusivity and useful on all my jobs to some degree especially SAM. I figure that I have 5 jobs at 75 now which well over 50% of the exp needed on all the jobs total and considering that most of the other jobs needed have already been leveled to 37 or close as subs, makes the decision to go for it a little easier. Only 2 jobs below 20 and 3 jobs between 20 and 37. So I figure I will chip away at it and see how it goes. Some jobs will suck to level either by pure lack of enjoyment in the job or lack of invites from pt's so I will endeavor to mix them up with jobs I do enjoy and will get invites without a problem.

The first job I decided on was NIN. I didn't like NIN as I leveled it to 37 and at the moment I don't like it a whole lot better just yet. I do like that I can solo it on BST pets and the other night Al and I got together as NIN & DNC and Sheena joined us on his level sync'd RDM and we nuked the crap outta the pets for frequent chain 5's upwards of 250 exp each. So I'm level 41 now and on my way to 66. Duoing with Al will make this a little more fun too. Oh and capped skills from other jobs make this even more fun. AF1 down.


Next up I am thinking with be PLD which is the one job needed that is below 10, read 1. I think PLD will be fun and doubt invites will be rough to 66ish. Stay tuned.

All this talk and organisation for Maat's cap lead to a clean out too. My MH is now organised as such. Mog Safe for RDM and BLM, Mog Locker for SAM, BST and lolWAR, and Storage for the current job being leveled.


I'm trying hard to not contemplate the enormity of the task ahead. The journey of a thousand miles starts with 1 step?

Nyzul update

Great night last night. One of the best sets of runs we have had in some time drops wise. The plan was to climb everyone up to 60 last night to unlock Aless' and Enin's new weaponskills (PLD and SAM respectively) and then continue to focus on getting Dylorian his most coveted piece of gear since he was the one who hadn't gotten much since he joined us so long ago.

So 51-55 was simple and saw Al get her BRD knife. 56-60 saw us come up against Khimmy who died quickly and dropped Goliard hands. I had time to confer with Dyl on whether or not he wanted them as we had around 9 minutes left when Khim died. Dyl took them and we were off to floor 20 again (forgot screenshot ; ;).
The first 16-20 was cake and saw Denali feet drop which were #1 on Byany's list of gear so he took them as well as a wightslayer for his upcoming BLU.
The 2nd 20 of the night and our final run was shall we say interesting. I forget the exact series of floors but 18 was ToAU bosses which turned out to be chariots. Side note for those of you who are new to Nyzul Isle, chariots link. Not only was the floor objective to kill chariots, it was to kill all FIVE chariots. This was made more fun when after killing the first 2 without a problem, we encountered the remaining 3 in the same room all bunched together. -.-
Here's where my team yet again showed their quality. Dyl pulled one and fleed away to drop the links which worked well. Loren died one the first of those 3 so Aless and Enin (and Dyl when he got back) went to work on the others. Bang bang bang, each chariot went down. 19 was lamps at the same time again with 5 of them. Time was at 5 minutes when everyone had found the lamps and we headed up to 20 with about 4 minutes to go.
OHAI2U Behemoth! Bombs away lads! By sang, melee 2hour zerged, I healed/nuked, Behemoth died, Goliard feet dropped. It was a thing of beauty and the piece we were after dropped. One minute left and everyone passes the feet to Dyl as planned and out we go with 30 seconds to spare.






3 drops on 3 boss runs. Haven't seen that since the first set of multiple boss runs we did WAAAYYY back when we started.
My team kicks ass. I've said it before and I'll say it again. I'm stoked to have such a well oiled, fun, persistent, dedicated team as you guys. Congrats to Dyl and By on your new armor's and grats to Al, By and anyone else who got a new weapon too. Now we focus on getting Enin a piece of gear he wants. GOGO Askar body!

On another note, after almost beating Omega the other night, I had lost some 4500 exp in deaths to the one fight. Here's where I love being a BLM combined with exp ring.


Recapped in 30 mins as a duo. Thanks Big for the exp. We will own Brothers in the next day or so!

Bai Suppa

I did it again. I threw my 2nd Divine Might earring away in plans of getting a different one again.



I WANT MORE STR AND GKT SKILL! ISN'T MY INTENT OBVIOUS??! I'm thankful that I can request this (unlike stupid Evoker's ring -.-) as my job priorities evolve. Having started out as a BLM and thinking I'd be a career one, Abyssal was my first choice. Then BST and WAR came along and Suppa was my new focus with the whole Dual Wielding thing. Now that Great Axe pwns Dual Wielding axes, I realise that BST can't quite cut it if you want to be a TOP END DD, and that SAM is my new favorite job, Bushinomimi has taken top spot as the earring of choice from DM. I gave consideration to what jobs I might level in future and none of them involve sword to a degree that I would merit it and make good use of Suppa nor do they involve Dual Wielding to any large extent. I can make much more use of a free Triumph earring, GKT skill and lolparry even (which I plan to work on capping in the nearish future). 297 GKT skill is gonna be nice as I work on capping my acc on evasive merit mobs. Now to find a DM pickup >.>

Had some downtime over the weekend late at night so I finished off my First Lieutenant ranking.



Mini game quests are O..K I guess. Kinda boring but funny rock paper scissors game was mildly amusing with big ass bombs. Yay, now all I have to do is finish all 50 assaults for Captain rank. Maybe the Nyzul static will be interested in it once we get a bunch more gear etc. We'll see.

Thanks again to Loren helping me polish off my Nyzul WAR GA weaponskill. Kings Justice is actually really nice. More consistent than Raging Rush though not as high a spike. Only RDM weaponskill to get now and then I have all 5 of my 75 jobs with a new WS.


Lastly for this post, Limbus fun. We organised a little manaburn of the HNM Apollyon zone which Byany had me help lead. Very fun run even when after reiterating time and again to not get hate behind the Fafnir mob, Big dropped a 1300+ Burst II on him which induced....


SPIKE FLAIL! Was kinda funny even though Big didn't get why it happened thinking he had been in front of him enough to now induce it. Oh well, next time we do it, we'll do even better I think. We won with like 10 mins remaining. 5 coins each and no SAM or RDM pieces so I upgraded these.


A little more CHR for charms and Primal Rend. +charm is always handy too. I think I will do BST head next of my BST gear. More INT for Tame and a nice chunk of MND for reward. I have seen a few screenshots of 1000+ rewards with a big MND build so I think I will make a better Reward macro with that in mind. My ~450ish Rewards seem like such a waste when I have a lot of MND gear to begin with. I just need more space in my gobbiebag. Also makes me want to get an Osode again but I will wait a while till I have some more gil saved I think.

It's been HOW long?

I just noticed my blog is 13 months old now and wanted to say thanks to everyone who reads. I hope you all enjoyed the posts as much as I have creating them so far and that this 2nd year of blogging provides just as much if not more entertainment for you and me alike.

{Impossible to gauge!}

Bringin' sexy back

Action packed few days for me. Limbus, Nyzul, Beastmen NMs and general cruisin' about have been keeping me happily occupied. I also decided I wanted to play just a little less in order to avoid getting sick of the game and being bored as I have found myself getting a few times later at night when most of my friends are in bed asleep. So coupled with my attempts to play just a tad less, the time I do play is nicely packed up with no boredom in sight. No one needs to fret though. I'm not leaving Vana'diel any time in the near future. This is just a precaution to keep the game fresh and fun for me.

First up, first time I have seen this since it's release. I hadn't noticed it was a body piece. I imagined it would be a neck piece but there you have it.


We have been farming Limbus for a while now as a low man group which usually results in a nice stack of coins for everyone. Seems like we average 6-7 a run lately. I really enjoy the event with MC because the reward to effort ratio is nice and the people we do it with are for the most part cool people that I get on well with and have a lot of respect for. I have two gripes though.

1. I can appreciate how we need to get started as close to the posted start time as possible. I for one hate to wait around pointlessly as people shag around getting setup for it. That said, I think I would happily wait for one or two people to change jobs to something that fills a hole in the group and makes the run a hundred more efficient and successful. I've said it before and I'll say it again. I HATE DYING! This is why I have never leveled a tank job. I accept the fact that I will die periodically but when its unnecessary, it just drives me insane. Like the last Limbus run where we had 3 THFs (in our group of 9) feeling a crapload of tp to the mobs resulting in not only my death but a ton of wasted MP and other deaths all because we couldn't wait an extra 5 mins for at least one to change to RDM when we only had a WHM and a BRD as support for the group. Not that it was the THfs fault. I'm just asking why we couldn't take the time to begin with. This is what I mean. 3 THFs on a Mandy in Limbus and I do one WS, pull hate and....


2. RERAISE ITEMS! OMG, why can't people bring reraise items to Limbus? It makes the run faster and more efficient because the healers don't have to waste time raising and then resting after the MP spent and people are back on their feet sooner and therefore recovered sooner and back into the fray. Yet it seems that only 2-3 of our regular 5-6 melee ever bring one instead relying on the mages to raise them. I have even seen them have the audacity to request an R3 because their buffer is so low. COME ON! Show a little respect to your team, linkshell and friends by giving the events the effort that others are putting in for you in return. Now that Limbus is half price there really isn't a reason not to have one.

Our mages and support members do a frikkin amazing job in there. Not only do they organise the run but keep everyone alive brilliantly considering the strain on resources at times. I hope that those in the group who read this see it purely as constructive criticism and take the rant as intended, that is to improve our primo little raid team into a force that can do this and more in an efficient, successful manner....that I don't keep dying in! :p

On the funner (is that even a word?) side of things, while we were heading to Limbus, the inevitable shark aggro happened. Of course it soon wish it hadn't bothered us and was promptly dispatched dropping a piece of tissue on its way out. People get to lotting and here's where Aless and I step up and win, err fail.


We even like to fail together lol. Oh well, at least we look good doing it right? We bringin' sexy back!


The two of us put another raid on La Vaule [S] the other day as well. Hawkeyed Dnatbat was the first to feel the BST powah though he only drop gilz. We would have liked his 300-400k crossbow but we'll see him again soon.


Askmaker was next on the list but he also failed to drop anything more than gil. His sandals gave us a nice little reward last time but not this time.

And last on the agenda due to time constraints, Agrios was paid a visit by the BST duo. Most interesting fight yet. We wanted to pull him over to the tigers and fish camp we like but as I was pulling him, I forgot to put invis up as I ran by the Orcs on the elevated section in the middle of the area. Consequently, about 5 birrion VT orcs stormed down the hill to rape me. Al was on the ball though and grabbed Agrios and finished the pull. Now I pride myself on accumulating very little hate during the course of an NM battle as BST. I make all my commands out of detection range, I swap pets once Al's pet has some hate and I rest well out of range too. I don't know what the hell was going on that fight but I couldn't for the life of me keep my hate levels down. Maybe it was the speed with which we had to keep swapping pets. Maybe he has a longer detection range (which I doubt), maybe we just weren't on the ball as we usually are. Either way, we really had to work to get this guy down and I think I died like 3 or 4 times which we all know I love doing. Well in the end it was worth it...



Yay dorp! Looks to be fetching a nice price on the AH at the moment so if it sells for around that, I'll be happy to recap my exp with the gil in my pocket. And holy crap! Coolest looking GA model I have seen in game so far.


Last nights Nyzul went really well too. Thanks again Bubbo for stepping in to fill the position of one unnamed WAR who didn't have his 4 tags for the 2nd time. *cough*LOREN*cough*. The goal was to get Byany's disc up to 50 so that everyone had a little easier time unlocking WS's from their Nyzul weapons. Al's sword should have unlocked we think but forgot to ask.

Had the coolest random buff from the area last night too. REFRESH! Check this screenshot out!


See that??! TWO REFRESHES! Coupled with sanction refresh and 2x Ballad, I had 18mp/tic! I think I messed myself a little over it >.> Of course, I went to the next floor with full MP.

On our way to 50, we passed by our friendly floor 40 boss who put out for the second time in a row. I think they may have adjusted the drop rates slightly with the emergency update of Nyzul recently. Just guessing coz our luck hasn't been good enough to provide 2 drops in 2 boss runs since we started the group and got 4/4 on our first 4 boss tries. Anyway, pics!




Grats Al. Inventory -1 for your BRD. Yes the set will be "nice" >.>

Next week will see us farming floor 20 as we continue our struggle of Dyl's Goliard shoes. Wish us luck!

Evolpmal > Nyzul?

OK. Longish update...INCOMING!

Addressing the title first, I love my Nyzul Isle group. We have gotten very good at co-ordinating what to do, when to do it, and how to do it. Everyone pays attention for the most part (cept Aless and her damn YouTubing!) and gets things done so efficiently, it makes the event very entertaining. Sure we have our bad floors but even they USUALLY don't hold us back from getting the win. So to those from Evolpmal and our standby helpers that are reading this, great job over the last few weeks and thank you for helping make this venture a successful one. Now lets try and make Dyl fix his TH to get some Goliard shoes eh?

Since the September update that adjusted the drop rates and locations for the weapons from Nyzul Isle, we have seen a LOT of weapon drops. If I remember correctly, Loren has his WAR GA and PLD sword, Aless has her WAR and PLD sword, Enin has his BLM staff, SAM GKT and one other (>.>), Byany has his BRD dagger, NIN katana and almost his BLU sword if only he had a connection that didn't keep DCing him, I have my SAM GKT, BLM staff and BST axe and 3-4 other people have various weapons from helping us out from when someone was away. Not the least of which includes my good friend Mogknight who scored thus in one or 2 runs a week or so ago...




He likes to give his 100% efforts in everything including his lots it seems >.>


We even get so many weapons that we are throwing a ton away. Damn that WHM club! Damn it to hell. Dyl's luck with drops from the HNM bosses extends even to his weapon drops. Not a single THF dagger or RDM sword yet.

Having a Runic Key has allowed me to unlock my respective weaponskills with relative ease.



Oh and this happened while breaking my BST axe. Onry 2 more to go!


Of the 3 new weaponskills I have so far, I think I like Primal Rend the most. Tachi: Rana is very handy in opening solo Darkness but Rend is nicer for me in that it provides very consistent weaponskill numbers. Much better than Rampages ones with far less effort on gear.

Last week, we got everyone except Byany to floor 40 which gave Loren King's Justice after a few weeks of spamming Darkness and solo WSs. CRAB BATTLE...GO! He wasn't the only one who was excited to see it and how well it did so after our last run of the night, we hit Wajoam Woodlands to splat some unfortunate birdies.





It performed really well in Nyzul Isle too. I look forward to seeing how it goes in a merit party where I can Kasha after him and make Light.

And finally for Nyzul Isle updates, last week saw these!




Yay BST pants. I will be using these over Byakko's haidate now. My focus is very much solo and duo BST these days and these have far more appeal in that regard.
Also congrats to Loren on Empress hairpin. Our 2nd DECENT drop from a regular NM in Nyzul (the other being Dune Boots very early on).

Speaking of BST duo, Aless and I had a session in La Vaule [S] the other day and played with a couple of the NMs there. We ended up with 2 of the 8 items needed to enter the new SNM there and a few nice drops that padded our bank accounts a little. I think we can take most of the needed NMs to enter the SNM as a duo though I'm not sure how we will handle the DRG one yet. We'll figure that one out later I think. Here's a few pics from the expedition...







Also been spending some time working on my merits of late too. Enin invited me to one particularly good party that ended up setting another record for my longest exp chain.



Funny thing seems to be that every time I notice the next 50 above my last highest chain (150 in this case ), the chain seems to end shortly thereafter due to a bad pull or a death. I think I jinx it somehow by noticing >.> I got to try out my new SAM WS hands in the party too!


I am very pleased with them. The +13 DEX swing reassures me that my WS accuracy is capped on birds and will be capped on Mamools. I also feel a little more confident on any NMs that I might be on SAM for. A lot of people might think it's a placebo but I'm not seeing a reduction in the average WS so I'm happy.

Lastly, as I was going through my screenshots last night and found a few pics of me and my friends goofin' off. Parental supervision advised!





Flea costume is the best one yet! It's good to be around people in this game that have fun together. Things as silly as this make the game more enjoyable. If you don't have said friends, I can't imagine how this game would provide sustained enjoyment for anyone. Right? And Dyl makes me blush...

BAI!