Ennayram

Enn's on the move!

2009-01-05T20:08:00.000-08:00

I was made an offer I couldn't refuse, well one that piqued my interest for change so I accepted and have moved my blog.

Come check it out here!

Enjoy

Its all about starting with a bang!

2009-01-05T09:15:00.000-08:00

Hi everyone. Thanks for stopping by again as we get this new year started and boy did we get it started right. As you are probably aware, I've been away for the past month visiting family and friends in New Zealand. It was great trip and the time off work went by so fast as it tends to do. I was fortunate enough to have this past week off as well after we got back home on the 29th and the time was well spent recovering from the trip (which was an epic adventure in and of itself) and catching up with FFXI friends and activities.

So while I was away, the Nyzul static got together a couple of times for some 100 runs which ended in some success with Al and Loren picking up their askar hats and Byany picking up his Denali. It was nice to come back from vacation to see that they had been able to see some success in the hat department.

This past Tuesday saw us all back together again for the first time in 4 weeks and what a session we had. With 3 hats left to obtain for people, we were just hoping to knock off a couple and maybe finish up next week. How about Askar first try which I ganked as it was my #1 item since starting, Denali 2nd run for Dyl and Askar 3rd run for Enin. The 3 hats we needed in 3 runs! It was beautiful. The 4th run was to 40 in hoes of knocking off some Denali legs for Byany but the turtle gave us Goliard trews which also went to Enin. 4 for 4 in one night of which all 4 were needed items! Unheard of for us.

Personally, I only have Askar hands and Goliard feet to go before I have all the gear I wanted from Nyzul. I should probably get the pants too to complete the Goliard set but we'll see. So as we get closer to finishing with Nyzul Isle, the plans for a Salvage static are starting to be made. It looks like most if not all the people in the current group are interested in Salvage as well as a couple of outsiders joining up with us. I'm hoping for 8-10 solid people. Stay tuned as we look to start this new venture in February.

With new years falling on Thursday, it was doubtful we'd do our normal 2 runs due to people being away drunk/hungover/miscellaneous so we ended up doing some Brenner. My first time trying it and I haven't had as much fun in a while. Being able to kill ones friends is the height of enjoyment and killing certain friends is even better...right By?

One of my happiest moments in FFXI. I'll have you all know that while By did kill me a couple of times, he had help! Also, PLD/DNC is hax when trying to melee them. I tried Al a couple of times as SAM/DNC and got owned each time though I did get a little pay backs lighting him up with a skillchain when Silkitty and I teamed up against him.

All in all, its cool to see that each job has its strength. Where a SAM might destroy another melee face to face, they fail against PLDs but that same PLD wouldn't stand much of a chance against a BLM for example.

I hope we go and do that some more. Super fun just messing around with friends.

This past week also enabled me to get a few things finished up or close to it. Al helped me out with skilling up Archery for SAM by letting me shoot his targets while pets tanked. Currently sitting at 222 skill with 8 levels to go. Spamming Sidewinder is going to be fun too. I had a chance to take it to SE Apollyon and see how it did and even with 222 skill, my acc seemed good. The numbers put out were kinda nice too. Heres a shot of Sidewinder spammage while skill in the Mire with Al...

I had to redo a gorget before I went away also since Flame gorget only really covered Kasha for me. I decided to get a Shadow gorget for Penta as well for the day I get my Tomoe (for which I have 2 popsets now) so thanks again for the help those of you who helped.

And this week also saw me finish my SAM AF upgrades when i finished off my hat. I have no need for the feet or body upgrades so I'll be moving on to BST and WAR.

Lastly this week, I got ~10 merits or so with which I was able to finish off Overwhelm and start finishing Blade Bash. Once Blade Bash is done, I am done with SAM specific merits and will move on to RDM. I know I still have to get stuck into STR but those 3 9's are scary. Having so many jobs to merit is beginning to be a pain >.>

On a merit side note, congrats Al on zerging that last 10-12k Imperial Standing for your Perdu GA as well as finishing off the GA merits. Now you're a real WAR eh? :p

Well, we're all caught up now. Get ready for a fun year. It's started off so well and it is exciting to consider to possibilities for the coming year. Hope you'll follow along and leave me comments etc to motivate me to write more :p

Cya soon!

Merry Christmas

2008-12-25T09:20:00.000-08:00

Merry Christmas everyone and happy new year in advance!

Thanks for visiting this year and I hope you enjoy the coming years posts as much as I do posting them.

OMG, it DOES still exist!

2008-11-26T09:31:00.000-08:00

Things all of a sudden seemed to come together and a whole bunch of projects were completed last night. As you well know if you have followed my blog of late, our Nyzul mission has been to secure Enin his Askar body so we have spent the last few weeks (4 iirc) spamming 80's in this pursuit. Last night was our last night all together before I go on vacation next week for the month of December and I was really hoping it would drop for us then. Well guess what...

Yay, it still exists. After a flurry of Korazin drops when we first arrived at 80, this is the first one in months we have seen. Mucho congrats Enin. Thanks for your patience on it and all your help with everyone elses drops since you joined. Thanks to the rest of the group for all of YOUR patience as well. When I get back, we'll be spamming heads!

A theory was put forward about why we had such horrible luck with that last Korazin. The theory stated that because Byany, our bard, refused to take a Goliard body, going as far as to pass on it for our first time THF Dawn last week, Nyzul refused to give anything else till he got one. So last night, the first 80 boss dropped nothing, 2nd dropped Goliard AGAIN which Byany took as no one else wanted/needed one, 3rd was Korazin. Hmmm.

I accidentally deleted the screenshot of By in his body but you get the idea in Enin's one above. We also completed all of our weapon needs with Dyl getting his WAR GA and Loren getting his COR gun, both weapons not even for jobs that are at 75 yet. Its a good feeling to know we are checking stuff off the list.

And congrats to Loren on finally attaining SL rank, getting Perdu GA and getting rid of that damn awful Berserkers axe. So nub looking if you ask me.

A running joke with our group is the existence of a character called LorAn who always seems to be in the vicinity when we are doing our Nyzul runs. This being a joke because we have our member LorEn. Anyway, he decided to make a cameo last night both in screen and vocally. Kinda creepy really.

In other news, Limbus provided the mats for my RDM hat upgrade. A nice piece for me. I'll use it often for sure.

And my SAM seems to be progressing nicely too. I have a lot of things I want to do with it, things that are not really necessary but just in the interests of making it as good as I can with resources available to me. Of course merits are a big thing. I finished Group 1 SAM merits recently and started back into the Group2 ones. I reluctantly decided to open Blade Bash and Shikikoyo before finishing Overwhelm. That done, Overwhelm #2, GO!

After Overwhelm is finished, I'll finish the other 2 before moving on to RDM or STR.

Another thing I have been working on has been /RNG. Sidewinder/Soboro spam is just too intriguing to pass up so I finished RNG sub, got my Breeze gorget (Sidewinder AND Kings Justice tyvm!) and even got Hachiman Domaruuuuuuuuu and pants made/signed by friends for it. Since then, my Archery skill rose high enough to get Sidewinder which I immediately tried out. Encouraging numbers to say the least.

Archery at 185 and climbing steadily!

Tomoe still remains high on my list of SAM priorities too. I got enough Zeni and killed all the mobs to acquire the pop item for Armed Gears. Now I just need the people and luck to make the kill and get the drop. I even got an Shadow gorget as well for Penta/Kasha. Yay for the winning lot??!!

Gorgets now are Snow (Gekko/Yuki), Shadow (Kasha/Penta) and Breeze (Sidewinder/Kings Justice). Flame into storage. When I get Tomoe, I will also work on capping Parry skill. Kinda placebo but useful nonetheless and helpful in making my SAM as good as it can be.

So there you have it. Lots done, lots acquired, lots of happiness. A great way to go on vacation. The blog will not be updated again till January some time though I will be checking in on the Shout box periodically. So if I don't talk or hear from you again before then, merry Christmas, happy new year, good luck in your game pursuits over the next month and thanks for your interest in my writings over the last year.

Cya soon! ^__^/

Pictures worth a thousand words.

2008-11-21T10:02:00.000-08:00

So yesterday was equally as annoying and frustrating as it was good and funny. Another 2 runs at bosses in Nyzul Isle resulted in no drops again. Our 100 floor Cerberus was unusually easy whereas a couple of deaths on the way to Hydra on floor 80 cost us the valuable seconds we needed to finished her off. Back to back Pyric Bulwarks ended up our undoing and we were ejected with about 9% left on her.

I did get this cool shot though. If you can't make it out, Hydra turned all black after a WS or spell that was cast on her. You see it now and then on mobs when you cast fire on them and they turn and stay orange. I had never seen black before though. I'd be very interested to know why they do that if anyone knows. Does it do anything of note to the mob? Are the temporarily weakened to spells of that element? Please advise if you know.

Equally frustrating was our Limbus run. Was the first time I have been to SE Apollyon as a melee. I didn't realise how much damage the mobs take in there provided you aren't using a weapon that is weak to the current floors mobs resistance. First floors were slimes that I knew took no damage from blunt weapons. OK yay GKT right? Waited a few seconds for PLD to get hate then did a Tachi: Rana which is usually quite weak anyway. 1156. Say what? Next thing I know, mob hits me twice for 303 and 294 then BAM! Fluid Toss right in my face for nearly 800. Hmmm, ok. Got up thinking ok that must have been a particularly unlucky shot I took, decided to do a couple of Jumps on the next one when it was 50% dead and Fluid spread owned me again. 5 minutes later when I'm unweak, I start meleeing again, did a WS at 50% for like 1500, BAM, BAM, Fluid Toss, I'm dead AGAIN! orz

So I sat out the rest of the slime floors and waited for crabs on the next floor on which I could use Polearm (strong to slashing mobs). At 240 skill, I figured I'd just poke away but I ended up doing over 1k on each Penta. No deaths this time so that was fine. Hesitant kicked ass on PLD especially on that floors boss. Invincible > Hundred fists yo!

On to the skeleton floor (strong to piercing obviously) which resulted in my best self Darkness chain yet. A little biased I know since these mobs all take a lot of damage but still, I'm a numbers whore and flashy ones make me happy. Biggest Rana to date too by the way.

Skeletons went down without a hitch and we moved over the the Corse boss. Of course Bubbo and I got charmed and went after the next person on the hate list. OHAI2U Alessandra! ^__^/ The next screenshot made my day. All the aggro and frustration of the day dissolved away in one glorious moment in time.

Wheee. Only thing that could have made that better was if it was Aless who was charmed and I could WS for big numbers. But hey, I'm happy nonetheless.

So we ended up winning the zone with ease, 6 coins each giving me enough to upgrade my RDM hat. Byany went over to the other party to tele our new THF but she had warp already and by the time he realised, the rest of us were already teleing out ourselves. LOL. Cya!

Nyzul update

2008-11-19T09:19:00.000-08:00

Oh the joys of Nyzul Isle. The ups, the downs, the highs, the lows. A great snapshot of how FFXI is in general.

Now that we are all at 100 with our Runic keys and weapons, our focus has been purely on acquiring the Askar body for Enin who has been with us for a while now without getting his number 1 piece. So by my count we have spent some 3 weeks, 6 tags a week, and no Askar body. Hell, when we got to 80 the first time, we got 4 in quick succession! Now all we seem to see is Goliard bodies. /sigh.
I guess I shouldn't really complain. Once we get this Askar body, we don't need more than maybe 2 other pieces to finish 80 forever. I guess its just frustrating when you have other goals in mind and the lure of 100 hats is extremely prominent.

Anyway, here are the latest drops from floor 80!

Congrats guys. Hang in there Enin. We'll get that Askar body for you yet! Grats Dawn on acquiring an armor piece on your very first run with us.

In other news, I have discovered for myself the wonders of Level Sync over the last week or so. My Ranger sub had been sitting at 23 for a long while when I decided that I needed to get it finished. It would provide a means of piercing damage (while I wait for Tomoe) in Limbus and a fun alternative sub for bird camp.
So I joined a few Level Sync's with Al and got to 28 then grabbed Bubbo on her COR (which was doing more damage than my RNG >.>) and Al on his WHM and we trioed a few levels in North Gustaberg [S] and finished it all off with 2 parties from 31-37 over the last few days all under the Level Sync restriction. Wow I say. Apart from not having the higher 30+ ability to Barrage, it was awesome. No need to have lowbie gear kept on a mule. Just join, go and have fun watching your levels fly by.
So I finished that off yesterday and have started the arduous task of leveling Archery to 230. Seems to skill up ok. I got 15 levels in about an hour last night so if that keeps up, I'll be able to Sidewinder by weeks end. really looking forward to seeing what that can do.
Now all I have to do is level PLD (05), MNK (15), BRD (21), DRK (32) and SCH (1) to 37 to be done with subjobs/Maats Jobs to 37. I think I'll do DRK and BRD first then see about PLD. PLD might be fun enough to take further but we'll see.

Ohai2u Kreutzet

2008-11-11T02:18:00.000-08:00

So after camping Kreutzet with Dylorian over the weekend, missing the one pop we saw to another group and then not seeing him again for a few days, we decided to go and hang out there for a while again after Limbus (which might I say went very smoothly) and see if he would pop for us. Dyl had a friends character out there for the day and no pop had been seen so we had a chance.

A couple of hours of messing around making enormous 3 step Darkness skill chains for fun, wind weather came up for the 4th or 5th time since we'd been there. Guess who decided to show up?! Ohai2u Kreutzet!

I grabbed with Animated Flourish and ran him over to Dyl at the tunnel where the handing out of asses begun. I did my best to support as /DNC as Dyl two-boxed his WHM friend. Yay for capped Meditate and Meikyo Shisui which gave me over 500 tp to use on cures for the duration of the fight. I wonder if in the history of SAM Meikyo Shisui has ever been used to solely cure...

After watching the gimp THF in my last post take some 20 mins with RDM and BRD support, Dyl destroyed it in about 5 mins and got DORP!

Mucho congrats guy (yeah I'm your guy now eh buddy?!). Well deserved after camping him since Friday. Note the Ulthalam's ring from yesterday's ToAU mission fight too!

We played around with it afterwards and his tp gain went up considerably. By came back from a long afk just as he died so he rejoined us, Soul Voice Marched us and the Hundred Daggers began. So much fun. Sure with Hundred Daggers and Hundred Great Katanas (Soboro) wailing away on a mob, fed tp is kinda huge but hell if it ain't fun right?! This would be one of those huge, straight golf drives I spoke about last post.

Small accomplishments make it all worthwhile

2008-11-10T09:27:00.000-08:00

Another good weekend this weekend. FFXI, Poker, Mountain Biking, naps. All these things make for a fun relaxing weekend though make Mondays that much harder to endure. Good thing tomorrow is a holiday in Canada so this particular Monday is somewhat easier to deal with.

Nyzul was decent this past week as well. We started at 85 on everyones disc and successfully climbed to 100 without a problem. Now that anyone can lead any given run, its simple to target specific weapons for people. Enin still lacked a couple of weapons so we have him lead the first run as MNK and Byany lead the 2nd 100 run that night on BRD acquiring both Enin's weapons.

Only 2 weapons left to get, those being Loren's COR gun for his level 17 COR and Dylorian's WAR GA which he doesn't really want at this point. No gear drops from the 2 100 bosses though. Needz moar head. >.> (/em awaits the pervert translation that Loren just thought up.)

Speaking of Nyzul weapons, I finished cleaning my last one this week too. RDM sword was one of the ones I was particularly looking forward to due to the cool animation. Did not disappoint animation wise and the damage was about what I was expecting. Apparently, this can strip a mob of any enfeebling resistance it might have had. Here's the end of the exploding rose animation. Sounds cool too.

In addition to cleaning Vorpal sword, Dyl helped me clean the weapon that had become the bane of my existence, my Trials Spear. Trouble with cleaning this weapon is that SAM can't use Wheeling Thrust to make a level 3 skillchain so I had to resort to Gravitation which only gains me 3 points per chain as opposed to the normal 5. Argh! Had that weapon for 2 or 3 months. Camping Kreutzet with Dyl was actually time well spent in the end even if some gimp ass THF with these on won the claim and got the drop that went to his full AF1 level 75 RDM friend. Good times eh Dyl? Need Tomoe now to make it worth while.

So this weekend, I hung out with Dyl a fair bit. We did Brothers ENM and got a large chunk of exp while burning King Buffalo waiting for the weather to clear which resulted in enough merits to finish SAM group 1 merits. On to Group 2 now with Overwhelm getting priority. Any advice for how to distribute merits between Shikikoyo and Blade bash are appreciated.

We camped Kreutzet who popped right on top of us and we still missed claim ; ; We also farmed organs for obi's in sea with Loren and finished the weekend with the easiest run through Nashmeira's plea I have ever been involved in which resulted in Dyl getting the last fight done and getting his new ring. So it was a weekend to thank Dyl for all his help and willingness to be helpful over the past few months. Also much thanks to Liseth coming to help us with the fight. Note to anyone doing this fight. Having a RDM with 340+ enfeebling skill to sleep the BLU in between nukes makes that fight EASY!
Next weekend, we will hopefully do the prerequisite quest for and the fight of Requiem of Sin and hopefully get X's knife to drop and pimp out our Nyzul THF even more.

In other news, I finally got SAM pants upgraded. Since I don't do sky anymore and my WS accuracy seems to be capped, these will more than adequately suffice till the lucky day I get Hachiryu pants. I'll also use them for my Jumps when /DRG.

So another fun weekend resulting in some success. I find this game to be somewhat like Golf. You tend to fumble your way through adequately having a decenet amount of fun and then every so often you hit a clean straight drive that sails off into the distance or a nice precise pitch onto the green that rolls right up to the cup which makes the rest of the time spent in the game all worth while. I seem to have been hitting a few straight drives of late. ^__^b

The weekend from...heaven?

2008-11-03T12:31:00.000-08:00

One word: WOW!

A great week led into an even better weekend. During the week we made a push for 100 in Nyzul Isle as a group so that everyone had access to the weaponskills ASAP. Unfortunately we were thwarted a couple of times and ended up with everyone at 85 for now. We put the last 2 tags toward a couple of shots at 80 which resulted in...

...and then....

...which resulted finally in....

Again, maximum respect to my group who got Cerberus down to 1% before we all died with only meds, Paeon and 2-3 2 hours in hand. I never saw so much Magma Hoplom spam in my life. Had it been Khimmy or Hydra, we woulda won it EASY! All in all, it was fun especially now that we do things on Skype. Makes things far easier not having to type out instructions and calls in addition to everyone being hilarious. Oh and congrats Al on Grimace body.

The week also saw me temper my desire/plan for Maat's cap. While it is still my ultimate goal in this game, I have settled on just working slowly toward it instead of spending all my spare time on different jobs. This has led to a sense of relaxation that I had lost after considering the mammoth task ahead as well as being able to continue focusing on merits. The plan at this point is to get PLD, MNK, BRD, DRK and RNG to 37 which will put all my Maat jobs at 37 or more also opening more subjob options like RNG on SAM. After that, I'll just choose a job at a time and play with it to ~66. Slow and steady wins the race right?

The weekend arrived which saw Al and I decide to work on our Orc SNM popsets. We had duo'd 3 items so far making a little money along the way. We put away another 3 as a duo as well as killing Onyx Eye again in hopes of getting a Mirror Tiara to drop. Onyx Eye is an easy BST duo and the tiara sells for 400-500k. Easy money...if it drops. We did get Llwyd's clogs and Viator Cape as pricey drops from the day however. The BLM NM was #7 in line and we were ready to do it when a couple of other BSTs came into our camp and started on the RNG. Needing the pets they were using, we decided to team up with them and get them on their way sooner and get our camp back. One of them dc'd midway and we got the other into our pt for the BLM afterwards. The BLM would be np to duo but we were getting tired and wanted to wrap up our popset ASAP so we trioed him easily. Some shots of the successful kills...

Lastly, we attempted the DRG mob but I am convinced he is nigh on impossible to take as a trio or less. As his HP diminishes, his Jump power (which he spams incidentally) increases. At 50%, he we jumping for 1300+ and taking half of a pets life. Needless to say, pets were dying too fast and we ended up zoning. I think we will save him for when the LS gets together for the SNM and take him Omega style.

So we ended up 7/8 items for our popset in Al's possession and 2/8 in mine. Gnadbhod's helm, you will be mine!

Evolpmal had also planned to get together on Sunday outside of our regular schedule and burn some Kindred seals for everyone. We also got a couple of extra tag along friends who we helped gladly. Its good to be able to help friends out where normally they'd pay someone else to do the work for them.
So the plan was to burn two orbs each and hopefully make some people some money. After all the fun including this hilarious moment...

...I had the best run I have ever had scoring two Damascene cloths (kids, make sure you have a good buffer before playing on a job that takes a lot of hate and dies easily). With the extra one I bought from Enin from his drops, I ended up paying about 200k for a shot at a Vermillion cloak. A decent price to be sure! My RDM has been in need of a refresh armor piece for a while and with this opportunity to get it cheaply, I decided to jump on it. I asked Bubbo if she would sign it for me to which she agreed. Check out the most unexpected result...

Woot! Signed HQ gears ftw! Thank you so much Bub. I'll be keeping this till I get rare/ex refresh armor for both BLM and RDM which will probably never happen or a dire need for gil arises which I can't see happening because I also saved enough gil to purchase my Haubergeon +1 this weekend as well! Now I am at a point where I don't need to buy anything else for my jobs. Everything else I want/need comes from drops that are rare/ex. Its a nice position to have worked ones self into.

Also helped Rathiel and Nelwynn out with Amaltheia for Kurosawa.Kuro is just starting on his Aegis quest so I was happy to come along and help them beat the sheep down. Yay kill shot!

Great weekend resulting in some gear that I have needed/coveted for a while all in the company of friends who make the game fun. Thank you everyone ^____^b

Omega who?

2008-10-28T09:44:00.000-07:00

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

2008-10-24T09:16:00.000-07:00

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!

2008-10-22T09:11:00.000-07:00

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

2008-10-15T09:48:00.000-07:00

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

2008-10-13T11:40:00.000-07:00

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?

2008-10-10T15:36:00.000-07:00

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

2008-10-08T10:19:00.000-07:00

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?

2008-10-06T10:42:00.000-07:00

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!

Oh, it's ON!

2008-09-25T10:12:00.000-07:00

I love Samurai. I love it! I love every aspect about the job and what it can do and am so happy I went ahead and leveled it. I have a few tweaks to go on it till I have it at a point that I'm really happy with but even now in my semi-merited state, I love that I can keep up and even get ahead at times. I loaded up a recommended parser recently which has added a whole new element to a merit party. That element is further enhanced (or is it Augmented now SE? :p) by the inclusion of friends to the party I'm in.

So last night we got a meripo started consisting of Aless (BRD/NIN), Loren (WAR/SAM), Byany (BRD/WHM), myself (SAM/WAR) and 2 really good JP Galka's (WAR/NIN, RDM/WHM) and we were lucky enough to snag the middle bird camp. After the last meripo with these guys, I was very curious to see how my performance had improved against Loren going from 5 GKT merits and no other SAM merits to capped GKT, 1 Overwhelm, 2 STP and 1 Meditate.

Very early on it became apparent to me that I still wasn't quite there yet. The first thing I noticed was the DoT. Each of his swings hitting for around 140-150 to my 90-100 even though I was swinging slightly quicker. Then the WS's started coming. I knew it was going to be a focused party with neither of us really stopping to speak along the way with the exceptions of the odd "hohoho" when tp was tickled away or a WS missed. In the end, while I was very happy with my progress increasing my overall accuracy, WS acc and power, and total damage, it wasn't to be my night as per the snapshot parse results below.

WAR/SAM is certainly THE powerhouse melee in my eyes though SAM/WAR isn't far behind and as I finish off merit categories and tweak my gear, I'm still confident that I will catch up and pass him. One thing I will do differently in a party where I'm TRYING to parse the highest is not wait for others to WS so I can SC off them. I will usually do this as it helps the party with faster kills from the SC damage but I was quite often at 150+ tp by the time a Raging Rush went off. Thats a lot of wasted tp for a job that relies of WS's to keep up in a parse. Keep in mind I'll only be this way in the odd party, not most parties.

Another happy result of the party was my first time to chain 100! I was very focused on the kills and when I finally noticed the chain, we were suddenly at 84, then 96 then BAM! 100.

Finally! lol. The chain ended at 123 as fate conspired to keep us in check. 123 is now my new record. I can't wait to break the 200 cherry now.

Like I said at the beginning, I really love this job and I think my favorite part is doing SC's like the one below after following a Raging Rush. It's all about the epeen!

Earlier in the night I finally got Polearm to cap. Yay! Now to get Impulsive Drive (more for completions sake than anything), a Tomoe (which will be handy for my parry build to cap Parrying skill) and get to work on testing out Penta Spam at bird camp. I'm very interested to see how it stacks up against GKT for myself.

After the party, Byany and I got together to start work on my trials polearm. We got to chatting about the meripo and about how I was curious to see how his NIN that he has been working quite hard on would parse in that type of environment. It would seem my good friend By is very confident...

So now I am gonna look like a total chump and/or Byany is gonna look like a champ. I'm very interested to see. Personally (no offence to NIN's worldwide) I can't see how a NIN can keep up in that type of setting but like I said, I'm very interested to see. I have seen a few NINs in my time pump out some really nice damage and I think By has enough skill and understanding of the job to do the same. Stay tuned for the result!

A quick congrats to Enin on his Nyzul Isle GKT (Windslicer). Rana is a cool WS to have!

Loren and I were working on his Great Axe latent at the Tree one night recently while I was also working on my polearm skill. The venture provided a good a reason why you should never poo poo an NPC for messing with your SC's. You just let them do their thing and go on about your business. They just might save your ass one day!

And lastly, why is it that when I'm around Al, I tend to end up like this? /sigh.

^__^/

Listen to me! I'm usually right!

2008-09-22T09:12:00.000-07:00

And its all for your benefit! :p

My latest "discussion" with someone was with Frab this weekend trying to convince him that Great Axe will far out damage Axe/Joy combo (and probably any Axe/Axe combo he could acquire). So he was trying it out in our little meripo we had going for a few rounds and and his 400-800 Rampages turn into 1k+ Raging Rushes. Still unconvinced, we got to this...

In the end though, it came down to him not liking the delay. I guess I can't really change that idea even though DoT goes up and WS average goes up and WARs look cooler wielding a huge Axe. /sigh. To each their own right?

The meripo was a fun one with all people I know except the RDM. 2 BRD parties are always fun as are parties with people you know. Lots of good things came from this party. Al got 75 on BRD making it #4 75 job for her, I got 5 merits which went into Store tp and Meditate, Frab saw that GA was better than Axe (even if he won't admit it >.>), got a new high for Tachi:Rana which made for a sexy self darkness chain and got a new high exp chain even though its still comparatively low to chains I have seen posted elsewhere. Oh and one funny lowlight of the party. Picture spam...GO!

Aless and I also tried our hand at BSTing a ZNM mob. Brass Borer was a prime target since we could easily pull to a spot where lots of pets hang out and just throw the world at it...which we did.

My luck with ZNMs continues to suck ass but I'm on my way to a Cerberus pop set now I guess. I'm confident we can duo some of the ZNMs in Woodlands and Thickets now too. I'm thinking the Puk, Marid and Wivre ones are doable. I'll post as that happens for sure.

And finally today, the regular Campaign highlight of the night moment kinda thingee. Cya! ^^/

100!

2008-09-19T09:02:00.000-07:00

Wow. Very exciting night last night! Congratulations to Evolpmal on our first Runic key and access to floor 100. Pretty smooth final climb that gave us Khimaira as the last obstacle in gaining the Runic Key. Khimmy's HP went down 89% in a matter of seconds before Fulmination almost stopped us dead. That para is STRONG!. But we held on and got the win with a couple of minutes still remaining. I feel like a real loot whore but along with my Windslicer, I got this...

Lovin' Goliard chapeau for my MND build. I'll prolly live in this piece for the most part especially in Nyzul Isle. Thank you so much Evolpmal. Really excited to climb us all on Byanys new disc and get everyone up high enough to open Nyzul weapons fast.

Speaking of which, after Nyzul Isle, we had Limbus then Byany and I teamed up to work on our weapon skills. Byany on NIN with this (congrats)...

...and Mercurial kris was a lot of work to keep up with tp wise. Congrats also to Al on WAR GA, By on BRD dagger and Aj on NIN katana (I think that was all >.>). About 30 minutes later, Tachi: Rana showed in my weapon skill list. JOY! A quick trip to Jeuno was required to lock in the WS for any GKT.

I REALLY like the look of this WS. Nowhere near as strong as YGK (well on /DNC anyway) but the ability to 2 step and 3 step Darkness solo is really cool. Sekkanoki Rana <-> Gekko makes Darkness and Kasha > Rana > Gekko > makes Gravitation into Darkness. Here's a couple of action shots.

I am really loving SAM at this point. Everything I have done with it of late is just so much fun and makes the game really fun to log into. I'm even looking forward to spamming WSs to help the others in the group open their WSs sooner. Another couple of pics showing my hang time are needed!!

LOL, the terrored Gekko was cool. Hung there for about 5-10 seconds.

My motivation to merit is also at an all time high and resulted in this.

Sad to drop some of my Axe merits that I have enjoyed so much on BST but I have come to some realizations about BST that while I love the job and what it can do, show me its limitations but the ability to do the job with less buffs to the job speaking as a non-career BST). I'm able to do everything I did before (showing how great BST is) with less CHR gear and less DD gear. And that frees up some more gil to be able to buff the jobs like SAM which need the gear and gil to perform at its peak.

So a really good night last night. Thanks again to my friends in my group. Special thanks to Katie for stepping in for the 100 floor effort in Enin's place.

Stay tuned for more excitement out of Nyzul Isle and from across Vana'diel!

Of Americans diets etc.

2008-09-16T10:22:00.000-07:00

Wow, its been too long. 3 weeks for the loss. To my small number of readers, sorry. Hopefully this makes up for it.

As per the title of this post, lets start with one of the many deep and philosophical discussions that we seem to have each week. As a little background to it, it started with me making myself these awesome homemade burgers that I had to tout as the best ever made. Mmmm, even now they make me hungry though that may just be a side effect of starting this experimental two week gluten free diet but doesn't a homemade burger with bacon, camembert cheese, cheddar cheese, tomato, onion, lettuce, ketchup, mustard and mayo just sound awesome??!! Anyway, I digress, on to the conversation...

Sidenote: I don't REALLY hate Americans. Just parts of their culture and habits. Just so wrong.

Apart from having to organize a new person to add to the static every few weeks it seems, the group is going really well. I decided to make a new LS for it and the people who are involved. A way to give info out for the coming week etc and a place to hang out for friends that aren't in my main LS.

With the recent update and changes to Nyzul Isle, I think interest is at an all time high. While I was away last week (right after the changes were implemented), the group did a few low floor runs resulting in weapons dropping. It will be a big focus now to get everyone from 1-100 on their own discs so as they can break the latents on their weapons much faster and gain access to the new WS's on offer. Here's one of the weapons that Loren picked up (the first one I had ever seen in person funnily enough).

Grats to the others who got weapons too. I had a pic of Enin getting Denali hands too but lost it somewhere so grats to you too 9!

Loren, Aless and I also spent a little more time in Onzozo trying to pop Ose for the jerkin. Loren wants one for his one day 67 DRG. Its a fun outing messing with the various NMs down there. 2x BST and a PLD/THF ftw. Its funny how much difference even the first level of Treasure hunter makes as seen here...

In the end, we got Narasimha and LoO to pop. Once again, PLD/THF wins the day even if the amount of work actually done by him is all but nothing >.>

Aless happily loot whored the drop which I hear was very fun on 72 BRD. Whiff whiff whiff whiff whiff whiff whiff whiff, right Al? :p

Campaign continues to be a great time waster for me. After getting SAM to 75, I can now easily solo most if not all normal mobs in any given fight. About the hardest I find are the damn Gnats with their fast attack speed and tp erasing moves. HATE Gnats. Anyway, here was the first time I saw Campaign Fafnir. Very cool to see it fighting for us.

I tried my hand an one of my most hated Campaign bosses, Ga'Dho Softstep. I seriously hate this guy but he was the only one left and I had just been invited to party so it was a quick way home to try him. As I started meleeing him, I noticed his regular hits weren't too bad. Then it happened as normal...

Hate that guy. Seriously.

Can I just say, it's also fun to randomly come across friends and LS mates dead on the battle field. I wasn't taking a dump Big. Just watching the action.

While I'm talking about Big, during our recent spat of ZNMs, I got this pic of Big as 75 BLM nuking Dea with Bubbo on 75 RDM. Big, you shame us lol...

So we have started messing with the ZNM system. I personally haven't tried one since the update where the mobs are supposed to get harder as time goes on but overall, they are fun to do as a small group. I haven't really gotten anything of note yet but grats to Bub, Big and By who have. I really would like Tomoe though. Too bad Armed Gears was an ass on my pop item. Check out my new friend Cheese though.

Limbus is also going well. MeneoCecus does really well in there low manning everything at the moment and succeeding most of the time. Low man runs also allow for lots of ABCs for everyone and more AF upgrades. I got another set for BST gear last night though I'm saving for SAM at the moment. I think I'm done with BLM now after gaining this piece...

Lastly, SAM has been going great. Got 75 recently as mentioned earlier and I just love playing on this job right now. Its everything a damage whore like myself could want. Here are pics of my gear setups for melee, WS and Oshi moments right now.

I am happy with where I am at as far as AH items go now after buying Peacock charm. My current gear goals include upgrading SAM AF hands and legs for WS (Acc is so important to me. Nothing worse than missing that big WS. Selling Alky's = a +13 DEX swing and only a -4 STR swing. I can deal with that), Askar helm (maybe tonight!), Bushinomimi, Justice torque and Black tathlum one day and a few Arhat pieces of Oshi eventually though these don't matter much at this point. My current Oshi gear is more for Campaign when Third Eye is down than anything to be honest.

I've been meriting hard of late too in an effort to get GKT skill capped ASAP. I killed all my sword merits and half my axe ones to achieve this and finished it last night.

Now I'm on to Overwhelm once, then cap STP, Meditate, finish Overwhelm, one into the share tp one and finish off with Blade bash. I'm very excited to see how much difference this is going to make in a meripo with Loren who OWNED me in the parse over the weekend. Enjoy it while it lasts Elf.

Meripo's are generally very fun. I usually end up in pt's with friends who know what they are doing like this one with Enin where the RNG was weilding a Kraken Club and this WS below was about the average. OWNED!

But every once in a while you get into a pt like this one where you get a SAM like this...

BUY ACCOUNTS MUCH?! Yes, he has Kirin's Osode, Cerberus Mantle, PCC, Tiphia Sting accompanied but level 36 DEX ring, Rasetsu +1 gear, and Ohat as melee gear. W...T...F! I like to think I take time and care in my gear to be at least decent in what I do. People like this make me sad. Thankfully he left quite early before I blew a gasket and left myself and we ended up getting another good SAM who had great gear and skill and together we tore up the mobs. Here's a couple of damage pics from that pt. First one is solo Fusion (Gekko > Kasha), second is Light off the other SAM's Distortion (Yuki > Gekko > Kasha). This is why I took up SAM ^__^b

The party even had fun moments like this where the BRD mispulled half the Greater Colibris in the world. Lets just say it was over very quickly.

So that about does it for yet another installment. Hope it made up for the long wait and that you enjoyed it. As always, comments and observations are appreciated.

See you soon!

GM revelation

2008-08-25T20:25:00.000-07:00

Hohoho! What's this? 2 posts in one day??!! Well this was too cool not to post right away.

Everyone can empathize. Every now and then, you get some douchebag who doesn't understand that he doesn't own all the mobs in a zone. Take one of those mobs and fear his wrath right? WRONG! GM call, {You can have this.}

Said douchebag decided that he was going to try and either damage all the mobs so that when we claimed them, we'd get no exp (which didn't work for some reason) or that he would cure bomb us again to mess with our exp (which didn't work, only made Lorens job easier). While this was funny, it wasn't really helping us with exp so much so BAM! GM call.

Anyway, had a nice conversation with this nice GM who was very helpful. At the end, I asked if he would show himself which he gladly did. I proceeded to shoot at his head!

NO! I KID! But it looked kinda funny that he would pop in front of me like that.

I have always wondered what the deal with them shimmering is so I asked and was kinda surprised to get the following response...

VERY COOL IMO! Some might not think so but I do. Kind adds to their mystique and intimidation factor no? Anyway that is all.

Oh wait. BAM!

Yay moar CHR on charm gear! I have been trying out a theory that I heard Neurotic made in that if you have Apollo's staff, more CHR has diminishing returns (or something to that effect). While I'm not hardcore enough to rid myself of all AHable CHR gear, I have been trying out charming in my AF and AF+1 gear and so far, I'd have to agree. Even tougher to charm mobs like Korrigans don't seem to resist at any increased rate. So yay for AF upgrades that provide both CHR and +charm!

For fear of the masses

2008-08-25T10:37:00.000-07:00

So I realize my posts of late have been average, mediocre at best. With threats of physical violence to my very person from some of my readers weighing heavily on my mind and limiting my sleep patterns, I have endeavored to put some time aside and make sure this post has pictures aplenty to placate my more aggressive readers.

....I'm not scared of you Alessandra!

....sorry, I lied. I'm really scared ; ; Please don't hit me again.

Anyway, so yes. It's been a while since we had some pictures so I hope this makes up for that. Seems like lots has been going on both in RL and FFXI which really does inhibit blog postings.

First off, MISSIONS!

Aless, Loren and I caught up on the WotG missions recently. Its quite a cool story so far and the cut scenes are far more detailed than they have been in previous missions. Here's a few shots to illustrate my point.

BEST SHIELD BASH EVER! I was too slow to capture the shot of him nailing the next demon with his polearm. Cool jump landing on the demon impaling him through the chest. All kinds of win!

As you'll recall, Al and I had been doing the Windy missions a couple of posts back and we finished them recently. Initially, I had wanted to just duo through them as I'm sure we could have done but in the end, it just became too much of a pain in the ass so in 2 or 3 of the fights, we roped Loren into helping us as well.

I really enjoyed these missions. I like to take an interest in the characters of the game somewhat and after reading on wiki about Karaha Baruha, I was stoked to see how the Windy mission set dealt with him to some extent.
We ended up doing all the missions in about 2 weeks, taking it easy and doing them when we were both on or when there was nothing else better to do. Now we have the Sandy missions ahead of us and I'm really looking forward to them. I hope they deal with King Ranperre somehow but I'm not looking to closely so as not to spoil the surprise. Finishing Sandy will give us the set of flags too. My MH wall looks a little weird with it missing.

Also been doing a TON of Campaign of late. I find my hours of play at times are not conducive to quick invites as the JP population tends to stick with their own when pting. Apparently, its too hard to communicate with us NA's. JP ONRY!
Anyway, Campaign is really quite fun on SAM especially now that I have Curing Waltz II and Drain Samba II.
I've done so much Campaign that this was easily obtained...

...and now I'm waiting on the new update to provide more rank up availability. I'm very interested to see what items can be bought with Allied Notes once we are able to get Medals.

I'm not sure if you notice these things or not but as a blogger always on the lookout for picture opportunities, Campaign provides. Some things are kind of amusing, some are annoying, some are weird, some are down right stupid but all things that make me take notice and take the shot in case it can be used in a blog post. Check out some of the recent ones.

NPC's love me ^__^/

What happens to Allied boss NPC pets when they warp out? ; ;

LOVE Azima! I crave her Thunder V and Thundaga IV spells!...

...but as with any NC boss, watch out when they are getting low on HP coz if they die this happens...

And yes, death comes frequently. Thank you SE for making it so that we don't lose exp to deaths in Campaign. I'd be back to level 50 by now I sometimes think.

SAM is coming along nicely. With the acquisition of Tachi: Gekko and Tachi: Kasha, my desire to play it has risen. I recently dinged 72 and dinged into Hagun, Fuma sune-ate and my sea gorgets for YGK. Thanks again to Aless for helping me get the aern organs very quickly and easily.

I took this pic in a Caedarva Mire party against Imps. Can I just say, as a DD melee, the Imps provided for exp in ToAU areas while immensely annoying with the amnesia move, provide for some nice numbers on WS's and great exp. Check out this ironic number done on one such Imp. Get it? 666 on a demon? :/

Muwhahahahaha! Enna's evil skill rises 0.5 points.

For some unknown reason, I seem to be hanging out with Loren a bit of late. We have been duoing RNG and WHM together on worms. For those of you out there without these jobs leveled at least as subs, this is a fun way to do it with a friend. RNG shoots worms, WHM silences, cures and dias. Easy exp with little to no risk. No deaths at all yet and we have gone from 10 to 22 so far.

Having a PLD/DNC tank to hold mobs for you while you unload as a SAM in Campaign is really nice too though we seem to reach the hate thresholds of each mob quite quickly.

After helping Aless and I with a couple of Windy missions, we decided we would pay him back with an Assault Jerkin for his up and coming DRG (which is like level 20 atm lol) so off we went to Onzozo. We hung out there for a while killing Toramas. I killed PH's for LoO, Hellion and Narasimha while we waited as well. In the hour or so we were there, we got Peg Powler, Ose and LoO. Surprisingly only Ose was a tight ass that day. My eyes about popped out of my head when I saw this...

...and even more when my crappy 80 lot was better than Al's. Her lot was about right though. Everyone knows Al is only 10% as good as me :p...

...and even MORE when some douchebag PLD/THF lotted after doing nothing but give it a love tap for TH. GIMME BACK MY CLUB DOUCHEBAG! lol no, I'm joking. I don't need inventory -1 at the moment and that makes us even for missions right Loren? ^__^b

And continuing on with Loren's lootwhoring....

Man, some people just take, take, take am I right? Maybe I'm just aggro that of the only 2 semi decent ??? item appraisals we have had since we start Nyzul Isle, one had to be a frikkin Mushroom Helm. :p

Have you ever seen this before? This was after Loren got raised in Campaign. I've seen it quite a lot after people die and get raised. They move about with their arms glued to their sides dead straight and with their weapon stuck to the bottom of their foot. Kinda looks like the typical elf with a carrot up their butt right? Weird.

One last jab at Loren for this post. OK. Get this. He dies by the NPC in Jugner Forest [S]. Orc's milling about aimlessly waiting for some unsuspecting noob to come near them so they can gang rape them. I get a guy from an old LS to cast raise and comment how Loren can't really get up anyway. He begs to differ and we get this piece of hilarity...

On another note, here is a couple of other interesting shots I have seen lately. This first one was in Nyzul isle. Periodically, you can get boosts or reductions to any given stat. Here's one with a MND boost. EXTREMELY nice for a RDM casting debuffs in there. My para really locked a couple of mobs down on that floor.

And here's me and Raka with our new swim suits after the Sun Breeze festival. Don't we look fly? Yes. I said fly. Thats still a cool word in my vocabulary. >.>

And lastly here's me after a long day of adventuring. 5 o'clock shadow and all. Aless wouldn't take off her hat to show hers.

As we wind down fro this posting, I'd like to share with you all a piece of late night philosophy with my new friend MogKnight. Part of it is wise and educated. The the part is that maybe I'll get a JP party!

Hope I didn't get you in trouble with Liseth Mog but your wisdom is astounding and must be shared with the masses! :p

Finally, congrats to my good friend Bubbo for finally acquiring her Black belt. My uber MNK friend just got uber +1. Great job Bub. Its been a while coming and hope it was worth the wait.

Thanks again for reading. As always, us bloggers covet your comments and shouts on our blogs so do your thing to keep us motivated to provide you with fun reading material while at work or camping some lame ass HNM! Cya soon!

Almost there now

2008-08-20T14:11:00.000-07:00

So yay. Got SAM to 72 the other night. Dinged into Hagun, Fuma sune-ate, and my 2 sea gorgets for YGK. Omg, my damage just went through the roof! Had my first party with Hagun last night (dinged 72 in campaign with friends) and that coupled with gorgets pushed my damage way up. /THF in a pt with a NIN was even more fun pushing out 1300 Kasha's on Imps. Can't wait to see what I can do once I have 75 and merits with the gear thats either waiting for me or that I plan on acquiring.

So with 75 coming up soon, I thought I'd post my gear as of this moment with improvements in brackets at 75. This is my plan after seeking advice on the SAM forums on KI which can I say are very helpful.

TP:
Main - Hagun
Sub - Pole grip (I use Mythril +1 when I /THF before 75 and DA gear. 2% DA doesn't seem like enough to use until then)
Ammo - Smart grenade
Head - Optical Hat (Walahra turban if no Askar head by the time I hit 75)
Neck - Chivalrous chain (PCC to come)
Ear1 - Minuet earring (Brutal earring)
Ear2 - Fowling earring
Body - Hauby (Askar for merit mobs when I have enough acc from merits)
Hands - Dusk gloves (Prolly use Hachiman Kote when I cap STP merits for 6 hit build)
Ring1 - Rajas ring
Ring2 - Ulthalams ring
Back - Foragers mantle
Waist - Swift belt
Legs - Myochin haidate (Byakko's haidate)
Feet - Fuma sune-ate

WS:
Main - Hagun
Sub - Pole grip
Ammo - Millefleurs sachet
Head - Hachiman jinpachi( Wyvern Helm if no Askar head by the time I hit 75)
Neck - appropriate sea gorget
Ear1 - Minuet earring (Brutal earring)
Ear2 - Fowling earring
Body - Hauby (Askar for merit mobs when I have enough acc from merits)
Hands - Alkyoneus's bracelets
Ring1 - Rajas ring
Ring2 - Victory ring (Flame ring)
Back - Foragers mantle
Waist - Warwolf belt
Legs - Myochin haidate (Myochin haidate +1/Shura Haidate if I ever get back into Sky)
Feet - Marine F boots (might get Rutters sabatons)

So I feel like I'm about set for the most part on SAM now. I certainly have a few more items I'd like to acquire. I'd like to do some Salvage one day when Nyzul Isle commitments finish and get Usukane feet.

I'll post pictures at some point in the nearish future when work slows down some. Busy time of year at work means little love for blog ; ; Sorry to my readers who like my pics.

If you have any further gear suggestions, feel free to leave a comment. I appreciate constructive advice. ^^b

To ease the panic...

2008-08-13T15:51:00.000-07:00

To all my readers (all 3 of you), don't worry folks. I'll have another update in the near future. Busy part of the year at work lately so blogging has had to be put on the back burner.

Included in the future version update: Samurai progress, Campaign, Windy mission progress, funny stuffs and astounding sights.

Stay tuned for further information.

(Did I sound a little like our friends at Square Enix?)

In the meantime, please enjoy these funny websites. I've been having a real riot reading them. ^__^\

lolcat

Cyanide and Happiness

Hilarious.

The world abroad.

2008-07-30T11:17:00.000-07:00

Some of you know I'm a New Zealander (Kiwi) in real life living in lolcanada. This has afforded me ample opportunity to get around traveling whereas being in NZ kinda hampers that due to the fact that we are so far away clinging onto the bottom of the planet. So from Canada I have been able to get around all over this continent, down into Central America, into Asia and planning a trip or 2 into Europe. I like travel but that said, I'm very much a home body. I like to be at home relaxing, playing FFXI, hanging out with friends and family, riding my bikes etc.

So like my RL move from NZ to Canada, I decided to make the move from Bastok to Windy now that SE made it so we don't lose our OP warps when changing alligence's.

I wonder if they will have to put me to sleep when I get back to Bastok after doing all3 mission sets. Hmmm.

I roped Aless into coming with me on the idea that we would duo most if not all of it and then move on to Sandy to complete the missions and have 3 flags hanging on our walls. I think it's good to get the whole story in any game you play and this is the way to do it. The decision to move was a tough one as I really do like the easy of movement through Bastok and having all the worlds OPs with Bastok. I'm all about getting from point A to point B as fast as possible in this game which requires soooo much time moving about. Our timing for the move has been really good though. Key OPs that we both use have been in Windys control of late and so gaining them has been one of our biggest priorities.

Windurst...what can I say? Its frikkin huge! Wish we had OPs around the city from MH. Those little warp taru's are certainly a big help but damn, its too big! In saying that though, I really like the ambiance of the place. My new MH actually feels nice and light and airy. Gotta keep the Basty colours flying too!

We have made it to rank 5 solely as a duo so far. The only part that gave us a little grief was the fight with the dragon and the ahriman but that was only because we both went in gimp as hell. 2nd time around, Al got a good lance for DRG and we saved ourselves a little more for the dragon. Much easier.
Now we are at the fight with the bones in Fei'yin before the fight with the infamous Shadowlord. We're looking forward to that but a little dodgy over the fight with the bones. I'm thinking we will go BST/WHM + RDM/NIN or /WHM. Al can take the main NM with 2 CCs and snarl while I'll support her I think. I'm thinking that this and the 9-2 fight are going to be the only ones we might have trouble with as a duo.
Anyway, I always like new quest lines. They always cater to my love of new sights in this very intricate game. Check out a couple of the pics from the missions to date.

Stalk much Sibyl? And didn't I do away with these two already when I was living in Bastok?

So I'm hoping we can push through the remaining Windy missions in about a week or so, RL commitments pending. Then we can move on and do the Sandy ones.

Last night also saw us get some of the WotG missions done as well. I postponed Nyzul Isle for a week as a few people including myself were either doubtful or just plain not going to be on this week. So Loren Aless and I got together for a couple of Assault runs to try and rank up. Dyl ended up joining us for one as well. We got 3 new ones out of the way and I finally got my SL rank!

OHAI2U Perdu Voulge! Finally. Funny thing is, is that with my up and coming SAM, I prolly won't use it too much. But I get to toss Byakko's GA and Perdu makes up for my loss of acc from bomblet sale. I'm +25 attack with bomb core/perdu over bomblet/byakkos (if my math is right).

After assaults, we hit Sandy [S] for the missions that Loren was keen on doing and I needed to get done anyway. The fight against the Orc in Jugner [S] was funny and fast. Funny coz in the cs the little arrogant elf kid face kicked the traitor elf. Fast coz Al and Loren both MS's 200-300tp Steel Cyclones and made Orc go pop. It got even funnier with the ragingly gay dancer dude in later cs's. Cait Sith who must be my favorite NPC at the moment made a big appearance which was highly entertaining. Heres a few pics from the mission.

More to follow as it happens.

Campaign has been really fun of late too now that my SAM is high enough to actually do damage. I got 65 and Gekko in my last party and haven't gotten another since and now I'm 66 lol. Thank you Campaign! I really need a party soon a) because I want to /WAR and do Gekko's on Imps and b) i need to cap my GK skill before it gets too far behind. SE should really allow skill ups in Campaign.
Gekko rocks! Its one of the main reasons I wanted to level SAM and it doesn't disappoint. Here's my first one (1000+) at the end of my last party.

Other than than its been Campaign, Campaign and more Campaign. At least my rank is going up right? Aless and I have teamed up once or twice. BRD gets to wear silly things like Mushroom helm :p

I seem to die a lot too. I can't really solo a mob yet (prolly by level 70 with Dran Samba II I'd say) and often I seem to pick the wrong mob to help with and get bum rushed by the swarm.....like this.

Its all good though because of the no exp loss thing. I wouldn't come near it otherwise.

Seen a lot of new things in Campaign too. Check out these pic's from my recent runs. Maximum respect to the uber cool looking Yag SAM. I kinda want hair like that when I get to 75 please.

So thats it for now. More updates in the near future so stay tuned. Don't forget to comment or drop a line in the shoutbox. I like hearing from my readers but just don't be a douche coz it gets deleted ^^b Constructive, funny, observant, questioning are all modes of comment I like to see.

See ya soon ^__^/

SNORT! - Nyzul Update #9

2008-07-24T12:52:00.000-07:00

So my biggest reason for people being on time to Nyzul has been reevaluated. It used to be that a) I HATE waiting around idly in FFXI and b) I HATE making other people wait especially when I know they need to be somewhere else and are doing the group a favour by being at the event in the first place. That said, the new reason is to avoid the downward spiral into insanity that we experienced this passed week while waiting for Booch (Fish) to get on.

The conversation as I remember it went from "Who are we waiting on?" "New guy" "FISH!" as Booch is now known as in the group to Loren shouting for people to say his name after our discussion about The Neverending Story and Sebastien having to call out the empress' name or something like that to Loren describing the average at work blogger...

I was even getting to the point where I thought that pressing my man boobs against Aless' would be a fun idea >.>

It was decided soon after that we would just enter Nyzul with the 5 that were there instead of descending even further into madness. So in we went and we did really well reaching the boss with like 12 mins to spare. An easy Behemoth resulted on Askar boots being dropped which I missed the screenshot of and Dyl got new boots for his upcoming SAM (45 at the moment?).

Booch had come to Whitegate by this time and was ready to go. We picked him up and proceeded to bomb through the next 2 runs without drops. I think one of those we reached the boss in like 11 mins or something. Last run of the night was prolly the roughest with us reaching Adamantoise with about 5 mins to go and Aless dcing the floor before. So 5 mins to go, 5 members and a big turtle in our way garnered a 2 hourfest. He went down without too much problem and again much to our general dismay, Askar feet dropped. We need like 3 or 4 pairs of Goliard and have seen one pair since we first started. I never thought I'd ever be sorry to see any Askar piece drop. But congrats to Aj, our last remaining member to get a pair. I'm sure you'll have a job high enough at some stage right?

No gear screenshot this week since neither of the guys who got the drops actually had a job they could equip them on high enough. More screenies next week with any luck.

In other news, Bubbo and I finished off our UFO organ farming. We got Aj to come along on THF for TH to make it a less painful ordeal. The fight itself is easy and fun. Its just brutal to do it and see no drop. So Aj would tap the UFO then just steal hate from me and TA once in a while. We even had him sub BRD on one for march and ballad. So 4 UFOs later we had our 3 organs needed. Bubbo had the other organs for her gorget all set too so she was good to go.

Now all I need to do is farm 20 shark organs, 5 Aerns and 5 Xzomits. Good thing BLM is the solo master is sea. I'll just see about having one of my THF buddies come help me out for some easy exp. And I'm sure my good buddy Snoochyfish will come and do this with me a bunch more too. Right?

Byany had asked me previously to solo him a UFO organ on BLM as well but since Bubbo and I were so good at duoing them, I asked Bub if she'd be keen on helping By out with me and she was good to go. Had By sub THF and one UFO kill later...

Grats man. Glad we could help you out.

After this...

...and this...

...I decided to go and start Campaigning again while looking for parties to join for exp. Its been a while since I dabbled in Campaign and it would seem that the Beastmen Confederate was gotten a LOT stronger. Nowadays, pretty much the whole world is in their control with constant attacks on the main cities. Heres one instance of Bastok getting pwnd with many dead bodies lying about.

Campaign is actually really good fun while waiting on parties as a SAM. Now that I can actually hit the mobs that is. And periodically, you see things like this Gigas that I hadn't seen before.

And of course there are the uber NPC bossed that make me jealous, especially this BST NPC from Windy with 2 normally uncharmable pets and my Guttler. /jealous on.

So thats about it for this post. I'll leave you today with some wonderful insight from my good buddy Ajninx while we were in the NA party I spoke about last post.

He qualified that saying ti was because I was out damaging both the WAR and DRG combined. Gimp NA players fail -.-

See you next time!

JP vs NA parties.

2008-07-23T09:44:00.000-07:00

Ever since I started FFXI, on the semi-rare occasion that JP's invite me to join them, I am always amazed at how smoothly and efficiently and therefore fun their exp parties are. I can not recall a single party with JP players that I have not enjoyed. Almost as rare is the amount of equally smooth, efficient and fun NA parties. WHAT THE HELL?!

Why is it that there are so many more gimp, sub par, unskilled NA players that make getting into a group and working through the levels such a poor experience? Is it the general attitude of us westerner's of not taking pride in what we do, overall laziness and sloppiness, the mentality that "I do what I want, when I want, how I want and to hell with everyone else" that makes NA players as a whole so noticeably worse at this game than JPs?

I do concede that there are gimp, sub par, unskilled JP players but one has to admit they are far less common than their equivalent in the NA population. Even then, a gimp geared JP person is not always a bad player. Quite often I have noticed that a gimp JP will either do respectable damage while not pulling hate and being an MP sink or will keep up with mage duties such as healing, hasting, refreshing etc quite nicely.

Take my parties last night on SAM which got me thinking about this. Now it's not that the NAs in my first party were gimp. Well maybe the 63 WAR using a Great Sword and a Scorpion harness but everyone else was great. PLD, WAR, SAM (me), DRG, SMN (Aj from Nyzul group), RDM (JP). The PLD was very good, the DRG was respectable though should have used sushi for penta spam or so I reckon anyway, Aj did awesome keeping everyone buffed and assisting with the cures, and the JP RDM (who coincidentally was the RDM in the next party) was never out of MP before Convert was ready. The exp came nicely and I went away relatively happy with my progress towards 65 and GEKKO!
As I was running back from the party when the PLD had to go to bed, this JP BLM sent me a tell asking if I'd like to party even before I had put my flag up. I was actually going to go to bed but I couldn't resist the JPness so I said {Yes, please} and boy am I glad I did! NIN, SAM, SAM, BLM, BRD, RDM. OK, now I know you are going to say "Wait a minute Enna. The JP party was obviously going to be better with the RDM BRD combo" and I agree. But the exp was DOUBLE what we did in the respectable mostly NA party beforehand. The BLM never over-nuked and pulled hate but finished mobs off quickly, again the RDM never ran out of MP, the BRD though a little slow on finale's kept everyone buffed and assisted curing, the other SAM and I worked together to keep the hate on the NIN with TA-Yuki, and the NIN didn't seem to ever get hit except by Incinerate. The experience even between a decent NA party and a JP one was just so different though this is probably not the best example to use in proving my point below but its what got me thinking anyway.

I really understand why so many of the good NA players refuse to party with people outside their linkshells or circles of friends. The chances of getting a gimp NA in your party that you can't coach, instruct or suggest alternative ways of doing things (in a friendly manner!) is just too high. And Lord help you if you get one of these people and try to coach them in ways of playing better and enjoying the experience more themselves. "What do you know about doing this job?!", "I've got 2 level 75 jobs already so I know what I'm doing!" And my favorite "........" Silence.

Now I don't claim to know all the ins and outs of this game. I don't claim to be great at everything I do. But I do feel (and I think a lot of people would vouch for this) that I do things very well, pay attention to the little things and try to give my best effort gear-wise and play-wise in all parties and events.

If this post gets just one person who plays below the standard they a) know that SHOULD play at b) didn't realize they COULD play at, then I will be every happy. Until then, I'll just keep my fingers crossed, hope for a JP party or one of the few really good NA ones when my flag is up and continue to try set a decent example for other people that get to experience playing with me :p

Nyzul Update #8 and more!

2008-07-16T11:05:00.000-07:00

Well then. Quite the entertaining past few days to be sure. New weapons, SAM update, Nyzul run, Yovra farming, funny friends and more all in this post!

Lets get started with the Nyzul update.

Last night was our first night with Snoochybooch along with us after the debacle of the last posting. Things worked out just great. It's nice having someone like Booch join us where there is no need for any coaching on how Nyzul isle is done. Only things we had to talk about was little things we do specific to our group like who calls drop etc.
Anyway, Booch is coming WAR/NIN for a while till I get SAM to 75 at which point, he can swap over to RDM either permanently or periodically. We'll see. With Booch on WAR/NIN, that allowed Loren to go WAR/SAM and deal some extra damage. It worked really well having that extra damage and having him paired with a good tank like Booch for the "all" floors. Booch and Aless did great tanking the whole night.
After being with us for a while now, Ajninx hadn't received a drop yet and we were adamant that we wanted to see our primo BRD get the drop of his choice for his first drop so I gave him the choice of which boss level he wanted to farm. He really wanted to pimp it up with the rest of us in our Korazin's so it was decided floor 80 spam would continue till he got his Goliard Saio. Lets go!
Fist run saw Hydra waiting for us at floor 80. Yay not Cerberus! And usually Hydra drops something.....cept this time. >.> Round 2....Cerberus -.- This was kind of a good thing as I wanted to see how our WAR WAR WAR THF melee team did without SAM. Apparently it went great as Cerb went down without too much of a problem. Though we hate Cerb for all his Magma Hoplom spammage, he yet again garnered our love with a drop....GOLIARD SAIO! BAM! Congrats Aj! Well deserved indeed.

So now that Aj had his drop, we could start working on some other floors for the multitude of other drops we needed. I decided we'd finish our last 2 tags on easy floor 20's. Note the word "easy"? Floor 16 of our first try. ToAU bosses...Flayers. Hmm, ok. Lots of undead on the floor and we got some HP aggro which finally ended in lots of death. Took us like 15 minutes to kill the bosses. -.- Hate flayers. Floor 17, specific enemy. Oh good, an easy one. Floor 18, ToAU bosses again...Frogs. Orz. This isn't going to end well. Oh well, we'll finish this floor and leave. Just take the tokens. NOT SO FAST ENNA! Linked Frogs = no tokens for j00! Booch got charmed which he was happy about apparently...

...then after everyone was dead, Aj tried to get up for raises...

...well at least the frog is classy about it and we all got a bunch of laughs from it. lol

So we had one more tag for the night and I'll be damned if we were ending like that so we had another crack at 20. This time we BREEZED to 20 and happily saw behemoth standing there waiting. last tag of the night also = 2 hour spammage ^__^b. behemoth got his ass handed to him again and drop! Askar feet. Decided that Booch could lot them even though it was his first night with us. No one else had them on the list as something they really wanted so I felt good about that. he played well all night and looks to be a great addition to the team so its nice to be able to give him some incentive to enjoy the event with us on a long term basis. Right Booch??!!

Congratulations on the drops guys. Lets keep up the great work!

After Nyzul, I organized with Bubbo to go Yovra organ hunting. We both need 2 organs. 2 for Bubbos Light gorget and 1 for each of my Snow and Flame gorgets for SAM.
I had read that the Ul' versions can be duo'd "by a skilled MNK and RDM" so what the hell, lets give it a whirl!
Turns out they are actually quite easy though maybe thats more just a sign of how good Bub is on MNK. We got one drop from 4 UFOs last night which in hindsight I should have just let Bub have. I think it was the /random 5 that I had to beat that made me not think properly about just passing. Sorry Bub >.>

Anyway, I'll see about a THF for TH next time we go and make sure Bub gets her 2 before I get my last. And whoa! Slow II looks massive when cast on these things!

In other news, I'm loving playing on SAM. Even more so now that I have reached level 59 and can wear Hauby. One more level and GKT WS's won't suck so bad when I get Yukikaze. Penta Thrust is nice in the meantime. Just means so as not to be gimp for damage in an exp party, I only use Polearm so I grab a friend periodically to help me skill GKT to cap each time. Anyway, Anni ring is all used up now in my attempt to get to 59 and Hauby quickly ; ;

And can I say, Penta thrust is very nice both in terms of damage and skill up rate ^__^

We had our last sky run on Sunday with the LS as a whole before the infamous server jump. Went well for the most part. The Kirin fight was really slow as I don't think people were really into it cept those who stood to gain something. I like Kirin fights though. Its the reason I sank 3 merits into Tornado II.
I got lots of hate and I think I have become quite good at kiting him lol. Like this!

...though sometimes, his memory doesn't fail him as well and he comes looking for me after I think I'm in the clear. >.>

The funniest part was telling Bubbo to stand back as I go in to induce Astral Flow....like so....

The even was also made more humorous by Rath informing me of the following omission in one of my previous posts.

Before Sky, By had asked me to help him get his subligar for Gaudy harness (BRD48 at the time) to which I was more than happy to help with after he helped me skill GKT the night before. Got down there, charmed the IT slime and murdered the BST lickity split. My success rate on this is like 2/3 now. ^__^b

And to live up to my word in my shoutbox, here is my obligatory "make fun of By" section of the post lol.

Finally, check out these cool weapons that were added to the game recently.

See ya next time!

Orz

2008-07-14T10:42:00.000-07:00

If you don't like reading long ass rants, stop here and go read some other blog today......OK you are still reading so I guess you are curious to hear what I think.

"Orz" for me as I understand it, is a picture of a person on hands and knees in distress, despair, frustration etc. Its depicts how any situation in which it is used is just silly, stupid, retarded, dumb, annoying, frustrating, sad etc.

Well this "picture" describes my thoughts and feelings to the recent goings on in our linkshell more than adequately.

It all started with a couple of core linkshell members deciding they were going to head for greener pastures on another server. Orz, okay, fine. If thats what it takes for you to enjoy this game we pay $20 a month for, then fine. Do what you have to do to make the game fun for you. Its a GAME after all.
But in saying that, it is a game in which you have to interact with other people and therefore have a bearing on how much they in turn enjoy the game. This game really shows some interesting characteristics people have. On one hand, the internet allows people to slag each other relentlessly and mercilessly on forums, in game etc without consequence due to the annonimity (is that a word? blogger doesn't think so) the interwebs provide but if that person had the same beef in real life, face to face with the other person, GUARANTEED 99% of those people would be far more polite about it. On the other hand, you might notice the selfishness that I'd put money on the fact that these people are so inclined in real life.

The biggest thing I notice more than anything is the level of common courtesy that people lack in this game. If it is something that is a pain for you to do in this game, you just don't do it regardless if it would only take you 2 minutes and help someone else out immensely. Especially if that someone has done things for you in the past. Lets use Infamouszero as our example...
I approached him to join our Nyzul group because I knew he was good at what he did and that he would like some of the Askar gear especially the body. I bring him into the group, try to make his life (as I do for the other members) as easy as possible for the runs and make it an enjoyable and successful event each week. The group exceeds so well that we reach floor 80 quite easily and start farming some bodies for people. Now Zero has been with us for a couple of months at this time which is far less than 2 others that have been with me from either the start or soon thereafter. The 2nd Korazin drops (I took the first one after passing on a few other pieces earlier in the climbing) and I give it to Zero to show my appreciation for his help and dedication to the group making the other 2 who have been there far longer (but did get an item or 2 from lower floors) wait till the week after. No big deal right? Everyone is happy. So a week or so later, I hear THROUGH THE GRAPEVINE that Zero is leaving the Linkshell with some friends for another server. Say what?! OK, I guess I'll need to find ANOTHER person to fill a hole in the group. Orz. Just when we had things rolling smoothly. When I went to Zero for confirmation, all I get is "yeah", "I'm going with friends". No "Sorry man, sorry I couldn't find a good rep for you, sorry I couldn't give you more time, thanks for having me, I appreciate you and the group helping me to get my Korazin". Now I see why its so hard to lead LS's seeing people use the group to get something they want then bailing. I guess I should have known better as I reflect on how AS AN OFFICER, he never once that I saw passed on an item he wanted for someone else in the shell. Sure he earned everything he lotted on by being at all the sky events but I guess I just expect officers to be more mindful of the members in the shell and at least let a few crumbs fall to the floor right? Orz.

Anyway. So Piuriu and is group of friends decide they are leaving and effectively tearing the heart of the LS out. I will say that Piuriu handled most of the debacle with a lot of class as I would have expected him to, well from what I saw anyway. Others might disagree with me but I didn't see any of what they did and with all the deception that seems to have gone on, its hard to know who to believe. Anyway we had our last sky session last night with them all here. lol. It just turned into a childish load of BS. Some people bailed on the event claiming they didn't want to help those leaving us. Then there were "mis-tells" between other officers that came out in LS chat slagging those leaving, then the pearls of all but the officers were all broken by either one of the officers leaving or one of the ones staying trying to make someone look bad. The Kirin run was brutally slow. There was lots of talk about CFHing, lotting drops that weren't yours to lot, just generally assery from all directions. Orz. The drops were nice. N.body (Infamouszero), Osode (Xyv), shining cloth etc. It was announced that the gil in the bank would be distributed among those who stuck it out so I did. Would be nice to get SOMETHING from this shell. The money drops from the day were also being /randomed on. lol I found it equally annoying and funny to see that Zero lot the Shining cloth (which he won) after getting the N.body. You couldn't have just let someone else have it? (no I wasn't the next highest lot). Just one time? Orz.
So the shell is remaining in tact for now with the remaining members adamant they will revive the shell and keep events going. I have seen this before and as much as I hope they succeed, its usually just a matter of time. So I have made moves to join another shell. I just want to get in somewhere where they do things I want to do (remember the theory above about enjoying the game we pay for each month?), they know what are doing, do it well and are not going to fall apart in the next 6 months (hopefully longer). Somewhere where I can just be. Where I can meet new people, make good friends and feel the loyalty I felt when I was with good shells like Paragon and RogueRiceBalls.

Best of luck to Piuriu and friends on the other server. Hope it was all worth it and you find what is obviously lacking here on Carbuncle.

Orz.

Nyzul Update #7 - Its raining bodies!

2008-07-09T10:21:00.000-07:00

Loving floor 80! We've been up there for 4 or 5 weeks now and every week we seem to knock off another desired body piece from the list. This week was the best yet! Last week, we were happy to see our 2nd Askar body drop (seeing that we had 4 of 6 members who wanted one) and Zero got his first drop that was on his initial list and to top it off, his most desired piece. Yay Zero!

So this week, we were hoping for another piece maybe 2 from our 4 runs to see if we can really start paring down the list so we can farm other floors and start the push to 100.
Our first run was...you guessed it...another Askar body! Wheeee. Our good friend Cerberus who we all love for giving me my Askar Korazin was generous again. Loren and Aless got to lot together as they were in even standing for the next one. It was a close lot but Loren was rewarded with his new body piece. Grats man!

Second run. I think this was the floor where we got easy lamps, impossible to gauge normal mob, free floor before 79 turned out to be ToAU bosses (Chariots which I hate -.-). We got to Khimaira with like an hour to spare! Aless seemed to like dying last night so we waited for her to unweaken from her face tanking exercise before laying a beatdown on Khimmy. Drop? Hell yeah! ASKAR BODY! lol. Grats to Aless this time. Uncontested lot and well deserved acquisition.

Third run. Another easy run to 80 and another Cerberus. Its funny. We seem to get a lot of Cerberus just like we got a lot of Fafnir on the lower floors. I kinda hope we don't have the same "luck" heading into floor 100. Anyway, another kill and another drop.....Denali >.> Meh, I'm not complaing. Freelot that Aless scooped up. Prolly should have gone to Aj who is yet to get an item but I guess now, he has lot preference on ANY drop at floor 80 lol. Damn Aless, lootwhore much? :p

Fourth run no drop but hey, 3 drops from 4 runs? I'm certainly not gonna complain. In fact I'm gonna say thank you very much SE! ^__^b Don't our WAR's look spiffy?

I'm really happy with this group. Everyone knows exactly what their job is and adapts to situations as needed. Whats more, they really care about each other....right Loren?

In other news, I've decided when I grow up, I wanna be a mob. Mobs can hax. JP's have hax too but I'm trying to keep my dreams and aspirations realistic. I wanna be a mob so I can hax and defy the laws of Vana'diel.

SAM is coming along nicely now. Did my AF quests except for the body piece which turned out to be a royal pain in the ass and since I will NEVER use Domaruuuuuuu, I will leave it till I have more patience to go looking for coffer in the Temple of Uggalepih. Some nice panorama's while waiting for the 5 birrion "wait till JP midnight" parts of the quests.

I finally experienced how sexy polearm is against birds last night. My crappy 150ish Jinpu's turned into food losing 600+ (topped out at 707 last night) Penta thrusts...with 13 point lower skill level (lol uncapped weapons)! I have said this before and I will say it again. I frikkin LOVE PLD tanks. Even though I was doing these huge fun weaponskills, the JP PLD we had last night had little trouble holding hate or getting it back. <3 PLD ^^

Also been working on HQ aern organs for my Merciful cape. I'm at about 0/8 now? All with 3 organ pops. Nevertheless, I soldier on in the hopes it will one day drop for me. This means I get to play with my old friend Snoochybooch who I met way back in Paragon. Booch decided to google me for some reason and found my blog. He wasn't happy that he wasn't in it so here Booch. Stop your whining! ^__^

Aerns are fun mobs to solo/duo. They hit like a frikkin truck though. Check out this crit through my maxed out Stoneskin...

lol...me > j00 Aern! :p

Lastly, I like to think I keep a relatively low profile on the Carbuncle server. Its weird to think that others that you don't actually know recognize you on occasion. For those of you who read this, don't feel bad if this is the first time that this has occured for you as well :p

See you next time with MOAR NYZUL DORPS!

Orly?

2008-06-27T16:50:00.000-07:00

So I came across a link to this personality quiz that I thought might be a hoot on a Friday afternoon while waiting to leave work for the week. So I jumped in and did the quick one and all I can say is WOW!

My Personality Quiz Results

Its actually very close to describing me well and that in turn is scary! lol

Some particular things to note. I do not feel ashamed of myself. Well maybe when I get caught picking my nose or something embarrassing like that but who doesn't??!! lol. Note the first sentence in the "Openness to experience" section. >.> NOWAI! Overall, a very accurate report as I read over it more thoroughly.

I think its good to take a look at ones self periodically so examine whether or not you ought to try and change small things in your character. I'm not talking a total character makeover that changes the very core of who you are but we all have to admit there are things in each of our lives that don't need to be there and can be detrimental not only to ones self but to the ones we care about and surround ourselves with. Its these things that I believe we can all at least consider changing to be better people and more enjoyable to be around.

Anyway, I'm freaking myself out over who philosophical I'm being on a Friday afternoon so I'm outta here! Happy long weekend Canadians!

Nyzul Update #6 - BAM!

2008-06-25T10:08:00.000-07:00

Hmm, I remember a time not long ago when these updates were a little fewer and farther between. I guess that must mean we are having success there? HELL YEAH WE ARE! lol

Note the "MINE!" call at the top of the dialogue. A little embarrassing but you get the idea now that this was one of the reasons I started this group. Mucho thankies to my awesome Nyzul Isle static. It is a beautiful thing watching you guys tear that place apart. I'd like to complain about how crappy our drop rate is but right now, I'm just too stoked to be crabby about that. So stoked even that I go to floor 81 instead of taking us out at times. >.>

Can I just say, I look totally sexy in this piece, don't you agree? The helm and pants will cap it all off nicely but thats a few weeks away yet me thinks.

It's kinda funny how when I was initially reading up on how to do this thing, I read that Hydra was by far the worst boss to come across. In this pic, she died again in about 30 seconds. So fast that Zero had just used Meikyo Shisui when it died and Aless had a bunch of tp to use again too AND we had attack speed own inflicted on us. Gogo last run of the night 2 hour fest!

Cerberus on the other hand is a pain in the ass. He did give up my Askar Korazin so I can't be too aggro at him but damn, hes an ass pain. I wonder how much of a different tune we'll be singing when we hit the floor 100 bosses.

Anywho, I'll leave off on my short but happy Nyzul update with a little good form by our very orderly LS at our last Limbus run. WHEEE ASKAR BODY! ^__^/

Nyzul Update #5 - New acquisitions

2008-06-21T17:46:00.000-07:00

Been a fun week or so lately. New items, new things I haven't seen before and fun LS events of late to tell you about.

Nyzul team has been doing really well. We farmed floor 80 for the first time this passed Tuesday and though we only got one body piece, we made it look easy doing it. Congrats Zero.

There was also call for doing a couple of runs on another day of the week. After talking to everyone individually, Loren and Dylorian were the only ones who couldn't make Saturday nights for a couple of runs so we have picked up Dolar and Byany from the LS and tried our first 2 farming runs last night. Saturdays will only be farming runs used to try and knock off some gear from the list as well as give a couple of other people a shot at some of the gear. Last night went ok with us failing the first run by a matter of 3 seconds. I was JUST clicking the rune to get us out after we zerged Behemoth (with no drop) when the time expired. 2nd run was far smoother with our new people getting the hang of it. We arrived at our good friend Fafnir with a solid 12 mins or so to go. Took him down without trouble and netted a pair of these...

Congrats Aless. I know you have wanted those for a while so yay for you. Condolences to Zero for missing out with such a crappy lot lol.

Lastly for Nyzul Isle and leading off the things I haven't seen in person before, I believe I will make a rule about wearing diapers to a Nyzul run coz this made my eyes bleed ; ;

So apparently the cities in the past can now be attacked by the Beastmen Confederate. They may have been able to before but this was the first time I had seen it. Gotta say, I'm pretty proud of the boys in blue. GTFO outta my town Shadowhorn! lol

The LS has been very active as always. The new ZNM system has really got some of them going making life even busier. This is a good thing. Its nice being in a shell where something is always going on but its not so hardcore that EVERYONE has to drop what they are doing and be there for it.

So Friday night saw us attempt Iriri Samariri, a Porrogo ZNM in Mamook. lol it was quite the disaster but fun nonetheless. We really only needed one more BLM to ga the babies he popped and to make sure DoTs were always on him so he wouldn't regen for when this happened.

This week also shed some light on the mentality of our mighty LS leader Byany. Quite the interesting fellow he is turning out to be. Heres a couple of statements I caught on camera for your amusement lol.

Finally for this post, my new acquisitions!

I'll start with merit points. My list made it passed the half way point this week with me capping our my Combat merits. That was nice to see and certainly makes the ordeal of capping them out seem a little less daunting.

I also had the opportunity to go and lot on Genbu's shield if it dropped when a couple of RDMs were duoing him. Yay it dropped!

And lastly, yesterday was our LS Soboro run. I was lucky enough to be able to be on for it when earlier in the week, it was looking like RL would have me out of game at that time. It was a great run netting us 5/6 Soboro's if I remember correctly so congrats to those who got their very cool GKT!

{See you again!}

Adventuring fellow fun

2008-06-14T15:07:00.000-07:00

The June update provided us all a bunch of new content. New mobs, gear, merit caps, quests and missions. Congrats to Jazlyn and Frenzy on the first kill of Dark Ixion on the Carbuncle server. Jaz, I really would like your new cape please ^__^b

One of the bigger things I was happy to see in the update was the option to increase your Adventuring Fellow's level cap from 65 to 70. This involves a fight AGAINST said NPC in the quest called Clash of the Comrades. Now I use my NPC quite a lot from farming to weapon latent breaking to a backup Cure V when I'm doing something a little more on the risky side of life so I jumped at the opportunity do this quest.

Meeting up with Luto in Upper Jeuno, I was shocked to hear about Raka making a name for herself without me. Even more surprising was the mercenary fees she has been raking in...

! !

Oh hell yes I'm gonna fight you. I'm gonna fight you, kick your butt and take your frikkin gil!

I've been soloing a ton in Campaign on WAR/DNC with my fortitude axe so the survivability of that combo was what I was most confident would lead to an easy win over my moneybags NPC and hence what I ran off to Qu'Bia Area for our showdown as.

The fight started as expected. She didn't any harder than Campaign mobs, less even. I had read she would prolly be NIN for the fight. Shadows don't pose much of a threat with Retaliation active.

Turns out I should have been a little more worried about Mijin Gakure. >.>

Stunned. About the only word that described how I felt about that effort from my good friend Raka Maimhov. STUNNED! This took a lot to actually post as I don't usually post many if any at all of my failures lol. Well then, that called for the big guns to be pulled out. You wanna play like that Raka? Lets do this!

DING DING! Round 2...

Yeah, thats right. It's not so fun now is it!?

RDM/NIN made this fight stupid easy. About the way I expected it would be the first time. So easy that I really wasn't too impressed by her performance on the same job. Her RDM /NIN has hax MP though.

A few minutes later....

To be fair though, that was a fun fight against someone I spend a lot of time with. Good to see she still knows whos boss though. Am I right?! lol

And it was all for this purpose...

Congrats Raka!

In other news, I should perhaps make a continuing post of oddities in Van'diel. This isn't really that odd but it just looks funny right?

And yay! Another of the ultra slow and elusive parry skill ups!

Some of you might have noticed my list of merit to-dos on the right side of my blog. I try not to every time I open my blog but I guess it keeps me motivated if a little depressed. Well, I posted that after this...

...and soon after did this!

WAR/SAM really is quite fun in the right party surrounded by the right players. This party was O...K but the RDM was whiney and the SMN who put it together was a little noobish. Hey, I got merits so I'm not complaining. I guess my point is RDMs shouldn't seek a party if they aren't willing to do their job. That job in ToAU meripos is HEAL. USE THAT MP NOOB! I understand that if I or another party member is taxing your MP pool so hard that you are out with 5 minutes left on your Convert timer, thats a problem. If your Convert timer was up 5 minutes ago, we are doing fine and you are being a whiney %@$#!. Also, /SAM is a great sub for WAR. Don't tell me otherwise when the WAR/NINs in the party are taking the same if not more damage than I am while doing half the damage overall.

/em breathes. I digress. I try to keep my blog rants to a minimum. :/

Funny picture I saw that I can relate to at times. This shows perfectly the attitude of BLMs that leveled after the release of ToAU and the decline in invites for BLMs to parties where they would have traditionally learned HATE CONTROL! lol

This week should hopefully see another body piece or 2 from Nyzul Isle. We also start our second weekly run this Saturday to try and trim our wanted items list down a little. Stay tuned!

Nyzul Relic WS's

2008-06-11T16:16:00.000-07:00

All I can say is I hope these are real...

Nyzyl Relic WS's

If so, my desire to do Nyzul Isle just got even more stoked. I just hope they are real and that some of the posts talking about the massive quests it takes to upgrade them are a little exaggerated. I really hope these are weapons that are not "easy" but not insane like Dynamis relics are to obtain. Some of us have a life outside of FFXI SE!

I particularly like the WAR GA, RDM sword and BLM staff. I'm disappointed in the BST axe ; ; Was hoping that would be something to drool over but oh well.

Nyzul update #4

2008-06-10T22:16:00.000-07:00

Well then. I'm so stoked about tonight that I decided I would blog it right away!

So the last couple of weeks have been great! Last week, we decided we were going to build up Aj's token amount some and work my disc to 60 which we did with awesomeness mixed with a little 1337ness. This week, the goal was 80 so we could start farming body pieces that we need to get done. Unfortunately, with work, RL and general forgetfulness, a couple of people only had 3 tags for this week so with some quick roping in and help from good friends Bubbo and Rathiel to get us from 60 to 65 without our 2 normals, we quickly dispatched the 61-65 climb. Thanks again for your help guys.

The other 2 rejoined us for 66 and up and we were unstoppable tonight. Flayer boss? Sure. Flayer leaders? Why not?! Ordered lamp floors? Just try it! We couldn't be beat for some reason. 66-70 fell by the wayside in some 18 mins. 71-75 didn't fare much better. Climb to 80? Well at least the game tried. I believe we got something like ToAU leaders, all, ordered lamps, all, Hydra and somewhere in there I believe we had a no ninjitsu restriction before we reached 80.

Our first Hydra. I have to admit, from what I hear she sounds the hardest and I was nervous to see her after reading about some of the problems shes has posed for other groups. Oh and then I noticed SE's real attempt to deflate my feeling of invincibleness....

O...K....

So I admit. I panicked a little. But after quick recollection of thoughts, Paeon was put on our melee as they tp'd on the rampart and Body Boosted. Nervous as I was, the call was made to zerg Hydra when the 5 min warning came up. I readied my nukes and watched the onslaught begin....

...15 seconds later...

Gogo Soul Voiced melee with 2 hours, Fanatics drinks, Dusty Wings and Body boosts ready to rock! lol honestly, 15 seconds is not an exaggeration. Barely had a chance to touch anyone. I'm not sure if they 2 yellow HPs are Hydra inflicted or just still low from the floor before lol. I didnn't even get to nuke coz she put up her magic shield about 5 seconds in. We were even happier to see a body piece drop which Dylorian was able to lot.

Congrats sir!

This team is one that I am supremely confident we can destroy Nyzul Isle with. Since it came together, I don't recall a loss yet and unless we get EXTREMELY unlucky with floors (/em touches wood), I don't see us losing any time soon. Over confident? Maybe but see if I'm wrong in future updates :p

In other news, new update means new Campaign rank which means I have to get my rank up again so I have been hitting the Campaign trail with Bubbo and soro over the last night or so. Hoping to rank up tonight before I go to bed.

Last night was a blood bath at Rolanberry Fields [S]. Even uber Bubbo got caught in the cross fire....

...then you have to deal with whiney NPC bosses. Well, they better not whine too much or there is plenty more where this came from. I mean seriously, how is the Legion to extend its mighty arm when it's generals are whiney like little school tarus?

Night! ^___^/

FFXI Version update

2008-06-09T20:03:00.001-07:00

So I get home from my weekend away to see that the June update is now available....

...../start update....

Time remaining in current process 3:50....4:30....5:19....6:17...

Then Bubbo sends me this link with all the new gear that is coming available.

OK so now I know that SE is just trying to make my brain explode after I thought I was relatively comfortable with a lot of my gear and stats on certain jobs. Now I'm just gonna be gimp ; ; {Good job!} SE. You have officially locked me into this game for the next 5 birrion years or till my head explodes from trying to get back to some semblance of decentness on my respective 75 jobs.

Should be an interesting few months pouring over the various job and game forums deciding what I would like/need/try for. STAY TUNED TO THIS CHANNEL!

Omega who? And so much more!

2008-06-06T09:43:00.000-07:00

Busy, busy, busy! I keep bugging others to update their blogs but look at me being a slacker! Anyway, we have a lot to get through so settle in for a fun read...

As I told you last time, I decided to level SAM to 75. Well that died out with this announcement. Now I have WAY too many merits to work on so I have decided to put SAM on hold for the time being. Its sitting at 49 right now so I'll use exp scrolls to get it to 50 and a buffer and by then, I should have my Soboro to play with. Aless surprised me after a few days away with the pop item for Soboro for which I am very thankful. I hear it can be a pain to get. Thanks Al! ^__^ Here's a shot of the last party I was in on SAM before I decided to put it on hold.

Another reason to put SAM on hold was because my time playing on BST has drastically dropped. I hadn't been out farming for some time and so after the decision was made, Al and I got together and went on one of our farming sessions. AG was hanging out and died soon thereafter then we hit up Onzozo to check things out there. As I went to kill the PH for LoO, Al happened upon Ose and quickly set a pet on him. Apparently another group was hunting him that we didn't see and they immediately started killing our pets in the vain hope that we would wipe. Silly JPs. Onzozo has like a bajillion pets for us to use. When they saw we could use manta's as well while we waited for Torama's to repop, they tried to start clearing that room too. By the time we killed Ose, they had half of the zone linked to them....

....and we totally would have given them the Assault jerkin if it dropped (which it didn't by the way) if they had just been good about it since neither of us needed/wanted it. I really dislike that style of play against BSTs. Killing their pets to hopefully kill them. That needs to be considered MPK and for a GM to step in but I digress because we didn't even come close to dying.

On the lighter side of Vana'diel life, here are my numbers as of the last census or so.

I also did as every single other soul in the world did and got my Bonanza marbles for the big lottery to come. I'm not really expecting much but if I win, I'll be stoked. I didn't make an assload more mules to make sure I win. Just myself and my 2 mules. Rest assured, I'll be posting the winnings or lack thereof after the lottery announcement.

Moved another step closer to my Perdu Voulge just recently too. Only 2 more rank ups to go. I certainly have the IS for it lol.

And I also got my new Boxer's mantle too. Another goal to delete from the list. I'll be using this on BST solo and NM farming where I don't need Forager's attack or STR so much.

I experienced something I don't ever recall experiencing before in my life. Usually when I put something away, its away for good. Necessity demanded that I bring my RDM out of retirement recently for my Nyzul group after Ny's departure from the game. To begin with I wasn't too stoked about it but this is how much I want Askar Body and Head so I begrudgingly did so. Surprisingly though, I have really started to enjoy it again. I certainly do not want to be an LS RDM that has to take it to events etc which demand top end gear that I don't want to bother with but for personal things like Nyzul, Ix'MNK kills, Avatar kills etc, I actually really having fun with it. I am actually considering taking it and meripoing on it!

So I decided I would finish the quest for the Promise badge so thatIi wasn't in my Grandoise chain full time (lol) and add a chunk of potency to my enfeebles. I really do like seeing a mob get locked down by my capped Slow II and a potent Paralyze. +50MND ftw!

I was also chuffed (that means stoked/happy in NA speak >.>) to see this happen in Nyzul lol...

Barring the odd death in Nyzul, we probably rope in a good 2k in exp each 4 run session. It's really quite nice to have exp coming in from this activity especially for someone like me who likes to keep his exp capped.

Speaking of Nyzul, the group has finally rebounded from the loss of Nyena and Tulaq to RL. Roped in some great players from our new LS and the jobs we have now are what I think is going to be a fantastic group all the way to 100 and beyond.

This passed week was just fuel to my fire on how good this group is going to be. Dylorian was called in to work at the last minute and after checking with Bubbo to see if she wanted to come help us out for the night and her telling me she only had 2 tags, I decided we'd climb from 40-50 on my disc as a 5some and have Bub join us for the boss run to 60. So in we go as 5 and we kicked ass! Got to 50 without too much trouble. The hardest part was prolly 40-45 where we got 3 "all" floors and 2 sets of lamps (order -> same time). The first "all" floor had 2 stupid NMs. Roc benedictioned on us and then the last mob turned out to be Energetic Eruca which took no damage from anyone except Aless' joytoy. Apparently he's immune to slashing. Too bad for our Axe WARs and GKT SAM. So I had to grav/dot/nuke him down. Did pretty well if I do say so myself. Funny thing was we meet Mr Eruca again 2 floors later. LOL

Anyway we got through that and we were brimming with confidence as Bubbo joined us for the run to 60. We got there with more that 10 mins to spare and found Khimaira awaiting us. /joy! Our melee destroyed him and we were happy to see a drop (though not one of the preferred ones at this time).

Since no one had declared their desire to attain Goliard Hands, they went free lot...

Ninja lot! GO! lol. Wait, I thought Aj was the Ninja?

Seriously though, congrats Bub and thank you for coming and helping us reach 60. Next week its on to 80 where we will spend some time farming some of the 7-8 body pieces we need and getting a bunch of points on Aj's disc. There is also talk about us doing this twice a week to start really getting into clearing off the desired drops list. Stand tuned for further progress and drops!

Last night we went and did our 3rd Omega.

Our tanks did an awesome job of holding hate on him again. I don't recall seeing Omega wander away from them even once. NIN/DRK ftw!

He's really a joke. All we need to do now is get the farming of pods technique down. We brought him from ~88% to 32% in one session on his 4 legs. Byany asked to take him just a little closer to 25% and automatically a couple of BLMs went crazy and took him to 23% and locked him in his final form where he doesn't eject anymore pods. But we still did a fine job of taking him out.

We did get a Charcoal chip drop from this pod that did emerge which is nice....

....and we were even happier to see the drops from Omegas death....

Congrats to Aj, Dyl and Oki, the winners of those items!

MeneoCecus WINS! lol We dance when we win.

And lastly, I wish I could make my hair do this ; ; See you next time!

Uggy pendant run

2008-05-31T20:52:00.000-07:00

So a couple of our BLMs had asked that we killed Golden-Tongued Culberry for them sometime so they could get their pendants for more BLM pwnage. Being the awesome LS that we are, a few peeps turned out to lend a hand and try our luck killing an NM that we hadn't tried before.

First pop was kinda messy and lots of Death insued. But in the end, we got the job done. Sorry Piu, no pendant that time. Maybe next time?

I think I ate "death 2 or 3 times when I couldn't quite get out of range. Here's one of those times...

I'm pretty sure By was eating dirt more often then me though, right By? I'm pretty sure he was there just to take a dirt nap and watch his people tear it up.

Piuriu did a great job keeping him debuffed as well. Here he is fleeing his pursuer. Look at those little legs go!

...then me and Xyv chasing after him again moments later.

Mr. Golden-Tongued and I had a nice exchange of magics at one point resulting in him finally eating it.

2nd run we knew what we were in for (not that it resulted many less deaths though) and he went down about twice as fast. This time we were happy to see the drop and Shippoumaki happily lotted her pendant. Yay Shipp! I like to believe it dropped coz I got the kill shot >.> No? You're prolly right ; ;

We feel the love. ^__^/ I would have lotted like 5! lol

And finally, heres me meditating upon the events to come. I'm pretty cool looking if I do say so myself and since its my blog..I SAY SO! lol I just wish I had meditated on the plan to MPK Bubbo and not forget the screenshot >.>;

See ya next time!

Hax, humps and new Linkshell

2008-05-23T11:00:00.000-07:00

So a lot seems to have happened over the past month or so and I must admit my picture taking to capture those moments in history has been somewhat average, mediocre at best.

In the last little while, I have decided I want SAM to be my melee DD job of choice (BANDWAGON!) , I joined a new linkshell with Bubbo and Alessandra, I got hump ambushed by Rath, done lots of campaign, help some friends with different things and took SE's bait by getting into the BONAAAAAAANZA!

I don't think anyone with half a brain would NOT want to have a chance to win 100,000,000 gil eh? Thats one hundred million in case the 0's just overloaded your brain. I decided I would not reactivate my canceled mules of the past but I did level Arhtim to 5MNK to get marbles and ran Obyron back to Windy (24BLM) to get his marbles too. I'm only taking gil or synth materials on them IF they win. I'll get my marbles on Enn over the next day or so. I'm for sure taking the 100,000,000 on her if I get rank 1, 10,000,000 for rank 2 and then I don't know for the others yet. I guess I'll wait and see. We get a month to decide after the announcement so no pressure. I have to admit though a Morrigans coat, Ridill and Adaberk are all very tempting. Stay tuned to see how I fare.

So yeah, I joined another Linkshell. RogueRiceBalls has all but disbanded now after Nyena decided she didn't want to lead anymore and then her and Tulaq went MIA after it was announced they were having a baby together. Maximum congrats to you both ^^/. So I tried a friends LS for a few weeks but that didn't work out as they wanted me to be at more events than I could or wanted to commit to. So I spoke to Bubbo who had joined a friends LS and after getting the info I needed, I joined up and so far it has been a great move! They are a very relaxed, easy going shell. Lots of motivated people who want to get things done. Its mostly Sky and Limbus at this point but we are starting to delve into sea a little more too.

This past Monday we won our first Omega (maybe it was because it was the first one I made it to? :p) and did it in beautiful fashion. Bubbo and Byany tanked (RDM/NIN + NIN/DRK) and did a primo job of holding hate. The melee burned any pods and jumped Omega at the last 20%. We had 5 BLMs along to provide the damage from 100% down to 20% and except for a little overnuking by one little Taru who got splatted for her efforts, the tanks held him off us while still allowing us plenty of room to drop some big bombs. All in all, it took us about 14 mins from engaging to death to take him out. Fastest I have ever seen though I know the uber shells out there can take him much faster. 14 MINUTES! lol. G'wark MeneoCecus! And yay me with the kill shot :p

We were hoping for another Omega last night but the set holder was not on for whatever reason so we decided to go farm SE Apollyon which was fun and I picked up the BLM item from there again. Think I will do the body for enfeebling and then the hands for god/HNM nukes for BLM AF+1 gear and be done with it.
I knew we were gonna meet up with the Corse NM in this area who likes to charm the big DD's in a group and send them after other zealous DD's. After declaring that Zero was now my new hero due to his uber SAM damage, I mentioned that he's prolly gonna get charmed and beat someone down. Turns out that someone was gonna be me >.> Pity really. Silly Corse shoulda sent him after someone who could deal with a charmed SAM a little less effectively....

...and lol Oki. You gotta go level that staff of yours. I counted 2 whiffs while I was casting without Stoneskin up. Was half tempted to blow him up coz blowing up other BLMs is fun ^^.

In other news, I've been doing a bit of Campaign to make sure my rank is at the highest it can be before the new update sees more ranks and gear added. So I got myself to Holy Knight Emblem and made sure I'm not far from the next rank up for when we can do that.
During my Campaign adventures, I have come to realise that WAR/DNC with a Fortitude Axe is just hax. BUT! Not as hax as this guy...

WAR/DNC hax is even better when you get buffed out the ass by everyone around you. This is while I'm resting weakened but imagine if I was fighting with Bergressor, Retaliation, Warcry, Mighty Strikes, Drain Samba II etc.

I really like how SE made it so that AoE buffs like SMNs do affect everyone in range. Gives them lots of points to make up for the lack of DoT from them and gives people like me lots more room for error.

I also like the uber NPC bosses that come with the reinforcements. I decided I wanted to be like this one until yesterday when I decided I want to be like Zero >.>

Speaking of SAM, I have started on the path from 37 as a sub to 75 as a main. Aless and I have staticed the whole way so far and we picked up Ajninx on his RDM at about 46. I THINK I have a friend who is on NIN who might go a ways with us too but we'll see. After that, finding a couple of DD is easy right?
I decided I wanted the Hume RSE sachet for my Ammo slot. MOAR STR PREASE! While it isn't as good as the Elvaan one, its better than a kick in the nuts. I'll prolly get a Tiphia Sting at 58 and macro in the Sachet for WS onry. But what an ordeal to get it! You have to wait till its your race/sex time in Vana'diel till you can pop the mob in whichever of the 3 zones it pops in which means you have to watch something like Vana'Navi till it comes around when you are a) at home and b) have the time. When that happens, the ??? pops 30 mins after the NM dies and the NM has a HORRIBLE drop rate. So my night had about 5 hours for me to camp it so I killed the NM every 30 mins then went upstairs and watched TV/had dinner/hung out with the missus etc for 30 mins till the next spawn. FIVE HOURS this went on and then at my very last opportunity before my time was up...

Yay! RSE Sachet for SAM: GET!

Got another intimidation for the growing list too while helping Fidelis get his Scythe WSNM done. Still love the fact I have a 75 BST available. Its so handy and the reason I wanted to level it in the first place was to help friends just like this. Throw in a BST friend or two like Aless and it just gets better roaming Vana'diel exping, duoing NMs and exploring. Anyone reading this on my server, feel free to ask if you ever feel like my BST could help you with something. I'm more than happy to help unless I'm already occupied elsewhere in which case we can just reschedule. Check the list out HERE!

Lastly, I have been working on a tribute to a good friend for a while but since he doesn't play as much anymore or I just don't see him around since we aren't in the same LS anymore, my material source has diminished some so I have decided to post it and just add to it as the material for it comes my way much I like I update the BST intimidation post.

/salute Rathiel.

It is inevitabbbbble!

2008-05-21T11:13:00.000-07:00

Yep, I'll have an update in the very near future for those of you who apparently NEED one (/poke Bubbo). In the meantime, I added my blog to Tarutaru Times so that more people could enjoy the fun and excitement that is my FFXI life.

If you want some more extracurricular reading of different FFXI blogs like I do, check this out....

Tarutaru Times

See ya soon! ^__^/

Holy Freakin' Update Batman!

2008-05-02T15:14:00.000-07:00

Yes, yes. It's been too long.

I'll start with saying Enna is a sad panda due to my Nana passing away yesterday ; ; She meant a lot to me and it's been quite tough being in Canada while my family lives in New Zealand. I'm thankful to have something like FFXI to take my mind off of it all. Anyway, /kneel, /hug/ love Nana! You're in a better place now.

And with that little slice of unpleasantness out of the way, how about the update eh?

You'll recall in a recent posting, I acquired a Mercurial sword to skill up my Great Sword skill. The goal came to fruition just a few days ago when my good friend and uber MNK Bubbo and I duo'd the WSNM Tiger, Maharaja. On a side note, for those who don't know Bubbo well or at all, just beware of the "Wrath of Bubbo"...

Can I just say, easiest WSNM so far and I have done quite a few (8 if I remember correctly?).

Thanks again for the help Bub ^__^

Also been getting out and about with Aless recently too. The normal NM camping, farming and then a few rarer NMs that we either hadn't tried before as a duo or just simply hadn't tried. Zizzy Zillah is shall we say interesting as a BST duo >.>

And this passed week, we started anew with Nyzul Isle. Welcome to the 3 new members of the group. Infamouszero our uber SAM (every Nyzul group should have a SAM of this I am now convinced), Dolar our new TH whore and Dylorian my RDM #2. So for the 55 and below floors we are now WAR, WAR, SAM, THF, RDM, RDM. Boss floors above that will be PLD, WAR, SAM, THF, RDM, RDM. This gives us a lot of MP power, plenty of melee DD and a primo tank to hold mobs off us all. And I'm very excited to see THIS! The new Nyzul weapons.

Finally got Aless a drop in there too. Congrats Al on the new Askar Dirs which I see are being well put to use on your BST. You have to wait patiently now for the feet to match! Gotta share the love around with the new peeps too!

My new linkshell is going well after RRB broke up. On a side note, much congrats to Ny and Tuly on the baby and I'm glad to see you put each other and the baby ahead of FFXI. We'll miss having you around though.

MeneoCecus is relatively new. Focusing mainly on Sky and Limbus, we seem to have a lot of fun and the shell has that family feel that I like in a shell. They also let me come on WAR to events too ^^ I still love playing BLM and seeing the big numbers like this while farming...

...but being able to mix it up with some melee fun is great too. Check out some damage shots on Ulli and Kirin.

Note the paybacks t(>.<)t....

And then I have been farming a bit recently too. I discovered that Lars is a great farming pet and with his hour depop time, I use less of him than Carries. That and he hits like a frikkin truck meaning mobs die faster, meaning I get richer faster. He absolutely owned Novv the Whitehearted and got me the drop (though the gil/scrolls from drop and Mug are why I kill him) of the Minstrals coat. I didn't realise BST could wear that...

...or why we'd want too >.>

So thats about it again. I'll leave you with the screenshot I took in Pashow Marshlands [S] recently. Holy crowded with NPCs zone Batman!

Until next time, a very lagtastic farewell to you ^^/

Fun with numbers as a Warrior (well mostly WAR)

2008-04-17T23:27:00.000-07:00

HP numbers:

Evil.

Leet. (I love when conversations end in random realizations lol)

Meripo numbers:

Merit points.

Limit chain. (highest chain so far)

Weapon skill and Skillchain numbers:

I love big shiny numbers in all shapes and forms ^__^

Nyzul update #3

2008-04-17T23:11:00.000-07:00

Well Nyzul has gotten weird since we hit floor 60. ToAU bosses are quite a bit harder than the normal bosses. Couple with the crap drop rates even with TH4 and the leaving of at least one member of the static maybe 1 or 2 more, I have taken to rebuilding and consolidating. I need to see where a couple of members are at and see about new people for the static.

It was sad to see our BRD and/or SCH leave the game this week. Thanks for your help while you were here Az. Too bad you took gear only to leave the game ya jerk! :p No I joke. It was good having you man. You'll be missed. At least I got this in before you left...

We had some frog fun in our last session including the kill above, heres a couple more shots from it.

We got to the 60 boss 2/4 attempts that week. One resulted in this....

....and the other in this....

Grats again Loren. 2/5 pieces down.

Stay tuned. I will not be letting this group die. I MUST HAVE ASKAR HEAD AND BODY! muwhahahaha!

Up in Arms - BST style

2008-04-03T15:58:00.000-07:00

Aless and I decided recently to burn some of the Beastman seals that all BSTs seem to acquire in numbers on the Up in Arms BCNM in hopes of snagging a Kraken club. We roped Serpical in as well and between us had 5 orbs to burn. None of us had tried this before as a BST trio and so after a little reading, we had a game plan and were ready to go.

Very fun fight utilizing all BST attributes such as Snarl, Rewards, Killer effects, Sic and straight out damage.

Also check out the growing intimidated list :p

For those of you who haven't tried it before, use Fungar as he takes about the same damage as Carrie but puts our WAY more damage as seen here.

I even got Fe'e shaped Armory crate! ^__^

So we went 5/5 wins with no deaths but sadly, no uber Kraken club drop for any of us though I think we all knew what the chances of seeing that were anyway.

I leave you this time with a little BST love and a jealous Taru looking on. See you next time!

Warrior fun

2008-03-28T13:18:00.000-07:00

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

2008-03-13T11:15:00.000-07:00

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

2008-03-13T10:39:00.000-07:00

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!

2008-03-06T10:34:00.001-08:00

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.

2008-03-01T20:59:00.000-08:00

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!

Life is good ^^/

2008-02-28T14:06:00.000-08:00

So first of all. Decu, I hate you -.- But congrats man!

Now that we have that unpleasantness out of the way, yes life in Vana'diel has been pretty good of late. Got DNC to 35 and will finish it off to 37 with exp scrolls, WAR to 69 and thanks to campaign during JP primetime, getting close to 70 and lots of fun new gear, random NM hunting with BST friends and we reached floor 40 in Nyzul! Grats to Az on new Denali pants. The photo didn't work so I'll get one next week and post with our next drop.

Aless and I duod very effectively all the way from 10 to 32 before we ran out of decent exp mobs and just finished the last 3 levels solo with exp ring.

Note to those who do this: 33-35 in Attowha Chasm is great as long as you have exp ring. I did mine with my NPC who had enfeebles, similar damage to me and random cures. This resulted in faster kills, chain 4-5 every time and with exp ring, good exp even with the cut. Without NPC, I'd think this would go kinda slow due to the kills taking twice as long.

Got WAR to 69 and dinged into my Hauberk. Even though it doesn't really make a difference for WAR or BST, the AGI- and evasion- on Haubergeon just makes me gag a little. Glad to be back in the Hauberk.

Next level I get Barone legs, Fowling earring, Optical hat, maybe a Fire Bomblet if the prices come back down a little again, Joyeuse option, Wardancer GA (which looks REALLY cool asthetically), SAM sub opens up Saigen for Third Eye, and DRG sub opens up High Jump. Can't wait!

Oh and heres a little evil fun on WAR too ^-^

Had a lot of fun with Bubbo in Campaign lately. Been ranking up nicely and coming across a bunch of mobs I haven't seen before. One of the more fun ones was Dee Xalmo the Grim, one of the Yagudo NMs. This dude spams, I mean SPAMS Doom. Bubbo and I decided to avoid and kill other non NMs for a bit. On our way back to the OP, I saw he was being tanked and down to 25% so I thought "hey, he's almost dead. no way I'm getting hate and doomed now" so I go in for a few whacks. Two swings in...BAM...Doomed.

I had resigned to dying and started asking for a raise when the battle ended and it wore off. lol FTW!

Now the news many have been waiting for. BST FUN!

Been trioing NMs with Aless and Ryanium lately. For those of you who don't know Ryan, he's weird. Thats it. WEIRD! Cool guy but weird!

We got together one night and decided to hunt some NMs. We decided to start with AG in the Tree of course. We got there 2 minutes too slow and saw 2 other BSTs (who we highly suspected of being RMT -.-) killing him. We just watched and it was all I could to hold Ryan and Aless back from being shady and stealing him. lol

Unfortunately, I had to go after that so a couple of days later after checking the Tree, we headed to Onzozo to see if we could pop LoO, Narashima and Peg. We killed the PHs and while waiting saw SoulStealer up and decided he should die.

Easy fight and when Aless arrived, she promptly died to a beast of a Bomb Toss. Now this was funny but what made it even better was when she got up, she came and rested near where Ryan was fighting a Manticore. Of course, Murphy's Law states that Aless must die for this and the Manticore Heat Breathed her good. lol 2 deaths in 2 minutes is highly entertaining especially when its by mobs that normal don't pose a threat in that regard.

No other mobs popped so we decided we wanted to try some of the Mamook mobs after seeing them killed by Neurotic and his peeps. After waiting an hour for Ryan to realise he didn't HAVE to wait till Beseiged was over to leave the zone, he ran out the front gate and headed over to meet us.

Devout Radol Ja was up and knowing not much about him, we decided he was worth a shot. Lots of natural pets around so off we went and he was dying FAST. We got a little cocky about it and decided to melee when he got to about 20% not knowing that his def goes WAY up about then.

Pets died or were released and we all had to pop CC's and snarl off hate. Got a little hairy but we pulled through. In the end, his def went so high, it took about 15 mins to go from 14% down to 4% when he promptly Benedictioned and kept his def. Not wanting to be there for another 3 hours, we zoned and came back to try Zizzy. We each got a 2 houred VT spider, meleed with them and promptly dispatched him....to no drop >.<

Still, we 3 BSTkateers are quite the team. Its fun doing things with people who are good at what they do as well as fun to be around.

Ryan and I did a little duo exp in Bibiki Bay also. About 7-8k in an hour. Got a couple of good WS's out including this one. Mobs need to realise the complex we BSTs have in that we need to push out as much dmg as we can on WS's for epeen and show those damn WAR's we can DD too damn it! In realising this, mobs might be best NOT to Berserk and lower def when we have tp sitting waiting. I learned this camel good.

Aless and I are doing the previously mentioned exp scroll quests together also. While doing the CN escort one, we went and found Demonic Tiphia up and decided to have a go at her. I had heard she spams Cure V and Pollen which she certainly tried to do. Pollen went off a couple of times for 3500+ each but with 2 BSTs and 2 Carries pounding on you, its hard to get a Cure V off. I was happy to see I scared her. You can see the updated post of me intimidating the world HERE.

We got the drop too ^-^ A nice 150k to split for 2 minutes of work. Thats good money in my books.

Like I said to begin, life is good in Vana'diel and I'm gonna keep riding that wave as long as I can. It looks like a bunch of fun things coming up soon too so check back frequently to see them all right here.

/farewell (^-^)/

Recent BST happenings

2008-02-16T00:41:00.001-08:00

Sorry that my posting has been somewhat slack lately. Lots of RL stuff goin on. All back to nromal now so here is a little of whats been happening of late.

Of course, the DNC duo is going well. Hoping to have it to 37 in the next week or so.

Aless asked me to help her and some friends kill Xolotl to which I agreed heartily. He's a big ugly stingy sucker! Has a kinda cool staff that I would like though >.>

He had pets. We had pets. Good times ^-^

In the end he was a really stingy bugger though. No drop at all -.- Fun to do it BSTstyle though.

In other BST news, I seem to have had some cool drops/synths of late. Nothing really "WOW!" like but cool to see lots of the items you want drop on any given kill.

I even got an HQ3 crafting Lars hugs. Happy day indeed!

Sucky news of the month...I decided to have another go at killing AG solo after my last attempt/win. Ended up dying 5 times in a row. In the words of Belan (and I know you are thinking it too) "lol and why?". Answer...I just couldn't let him live after pwning me so hard. In the end I recruited a PLD/BST who was farming in the area and we took him down. Meh, no GKT again -.- I really hate this guy now.

DNC duo ftw!

2008-02-15T22:47:00.000-08:00

So as you remember, Alessandra and I have been duoing our DNC's together and my oh my have we been duoing! So much fun. The most fun I have had on any job below 40! We made it to 25 tonight attaining Divine Waltz (Curaga), Aspir Samba, Spectral Jig (Sneak and Invis in one simple package!) and new gear. Fun times all around.

Can I please suggest that if you ever do this, do it with someone who thinks in similar manners as you do when it comes to health, HP and exp. Aless and I tend think similarly in those ideas keeping each others health up, taking hate when needed and exping at a rate that is fun and comfortable for each other. We even heal each other at the exact same times sometimes!!

Its also nice to ding at the same time :p

And some of the exp we get has been awesome...

All in all, DNC to 37 is a ton of fun to duo with a friend. I highly recommend it! XD

One hell of a Song and Dance

2008-01-31T13:06:00.001-08:00

I sing....

....and I dance!

I decided I would like to level DNC as a sub for solo, campaign, misc etc and after hearing from Bubbo and Loren that it is fun and easy as a duo into the 30's, I asked Alessandra if she wanted to level with me to which she heartily agreed.

We leveled to 10 solo and then got together last night for a little less than an hour and made it almost to level 12! When we hit 15, theres just gonna be no stopping us! Gogo Curing Waltz! Worms are our prime target due to low HP and crappy acc on their part and DNC'd relatively good evasion.

If anyone wants to try this, we have found that DNC/BRD is great. It allows for 2 songs on you at any one time. We use Paeon and either Minuet or Minne (usually Minne to reduce the damage taken which can be quite a difference). Plus it's a singing and dancing fiesta!

Wheee! DNC duo is fun!

Skyserpent saga

2008-01-27T22:08:00.001-08:00

As many in Vana'diel can atest to, the is a very cool line of quests detailing how the generals in beseiged came to be. Here are just a few of the cooler pic's I snapped as I went through the quests.

NM hunting BST style

2008-01-27T19:41:00.000-08:00

Yesterday, Aless and I decided we'd take a page out of Decu's book and go hunt some NMs in the Boyahda Tree, the Labyrinth of Onzozo and various other places.

No Ancient Goobbue today sadly but Aless did make a showing of how mean she can be and wtf Belan?

We arrived at Onzozo to no NMs up at the time so we decided we kill the placeholders for LoO, Narasimha and Soulstealer Skullnix. A few minutes later LoO pops in front of us! Can I just say Torama's are very hardy pets down there.

LoO wasn't feeling very generous though ; ;

While we were killing LoO, I ran around the corner to see Narasimha sitting there waiting. Happy day we thought and once LoO was down, mini Kirin was next. He's even scared of me.

Soulstealer must have gotten word that we were in the area and rocking these bigger NMs and decided not to show up.

Of course we were feeling very chipper at this point and decided to go check Kuftal for Guivre. No luck. Madkix and the Sabotender NM didn't want to come out and play either so we run through Cape Terrigan to Gustav to find Taxim hanging out. I didn't realise he was so weak >.>

Our last stop saw us in Ifrits Cauldron to check on Tunnock but to no avail.

A fun evening with a good friend. To anyone thinking of leveling BST, I love it. So much freedom that you just don't get on other jobs. Its even more fun with a friend!

Nyzul Isle Update #1

2008-01-23T12:46:00.001-08:00

Our second week of being able to farm floor 20 yielded some more boots this week. Another pair of Askar on our first run which I got to have (yay, 1/5 though they WERE last on my list of desirables lol) and another Goliard for Ny who got out lotted last week. We will do a few more farming runs at floor 20 as well as starting our second disc and advancing mine over the next few weeks. The hope is that we can get 3 more Goliards and one set of Denali in that time so we can leave behind floor 20 for good.

Our 3rd run of the night (Tuly only had 3 tags unfortunately) saw us get boned royally. Floor 16 was kill Specific enemies which turned out to be wide spread Soulflayers. I have decided they are more hated than Goblins for me now. >.< 17 & 18 passed by without a hitch only for 19 to arrive and have us kill the leader of the floor which was.....you guessed it, a Soulflayer. Ny and Az end up dead from add's due to us rushing and the evil Bio Flayers can inflict. We arrived at 20 with 4 minutes remaining and Fafnir waiting for us. Hmmm...weakened RDM and BRD and less than 4 minutes remaining. Can we do it? NO! but we tried anyway ^^ This gave Loren the opportunity he apparently was waiting for to MPK us all by inducing a Spike Flail which coincidentally is absorbed by TWO shadows.

What was Loren's response to being called a jerk? lol

I was happy to see we got him down to about 75% in 90 seconds without the use of any 2 hours.

All in all, another fun night getting more boots for our group and don't I look rather sassy in my new boots?