Finally!!!

Well, tonight they finally dropped for me! What you might ask? My Abyss Gauntlets! I was totally shocked and since it's loldrk relic I had no counterlotters (though I'm pretty sure if I did that they would've passed, hehe).


Hurray! So of course promptly after the run I went and gathered the 1 byne and got Nolie to make me a Darksteel Sheet since the AH was out at the time and I turned them in.


Good times. I'll be sure to post a pic of the +1s when I get them as well. Aside from that, been a good few days. Got a few merits that I put into critical hits then Mirewen and I got our low lvl jobs to level 20. Can't wait to try out those Boreas Cesti at lvl 30!

Today was a good day

Well, nothing majorly noteworthy has happened since my last post until today. There were a few nice random things. I finished off my whm merits with a blm cannon pt with my friend Mirewen and some random BLMONRY members. I also got NINE xp scrolls during the time since my last update. 5 of them took SMN from 36 to 37 and 4 of them took RNG from 23 to 24 (just wanted to get to the level where I could equip Empress Hairpin before I level this job again in the future). No DRK gloves in dynamis and no Swift Belt, though not from lack of trying. I ended up using 3 codices in the span of 3 days and went 0/3. Grats to Willian and Tryxie and everyone else that got theirs though.

Today things were a little more in my favor, though I have to admit it didn't look that way at first. Today we did Dynamis-San d'Oria in Encore. I had to go as BRD which was my first dynamis experience as BRD. Not too bad, but I don't really like it that much for dynamis. So anyway, I have the WHM relic from sandy so I was only lotting Bard's Roundlet. Well as luck would have it, about halfway into the run one drops. This is my first time in a while actually getting to lot on relic and I lot a monster lot of 21 and lose it. I wasn't too upset since I don't get relic often, even though the roundlet is a really great piece. But then about 3-4 minutes before our timer's up another one drops. I have the winning lot but a few people are dead. We get them raised to pass but someone's afk. Somehow we manage to get a BLM into their pt to d2 them and I get the relic, but it was a REALLY close call, almost lost it.


Luckily I got it and was really excited about it. I haven't gotten relic that I actually wanted in ages so this was a welcome change.

After an nq Adamantoise that died in like 15 seconds to someone, Cami asks me to help him duo Leviathan so I figure I'd lend a hand and then we'd enm afterwards. In all honesty, my being there probably wasn't necessary, though I'm sure Barwatera helped out a lot on the 2hr. It was an easy win. Afterwards we head to do the eft enm in Boneyard Gully. What about these apples?


I didn't even know that was possible, but I sure as hell didn't complain. A Maneater each for 30 minutes of work, good times.

Whatever

Well, first and foremost just an announcement that for the time being, I'm putting PUP on hold. It just isn't holding my interest and the people I enjoyed levelling it with have been busy doing their own thing. So instead I've decided I'm going to start levelling another random job, and for now that job is MNK. I might change once I get it to 37, I might not. But I'm trying to do a duo static thing with my friend Mirewen (on her BRD). One person's schedule is a lot easier to work with than several people's.

So we started off just duoing, just trying to get to the point where we can go to Qufim Island or whatever. We went to the Maze of Shakhrami hoping to kill worms. However, they were a little bit tougher than expected and it ended up just being faster to speed chain the goblins. We snuck in a quick level there each, bringing her BRD to 17 and my MNK to 18 (hurray Purple Belt!). I also took Guarding from 50 to 52, yay! I took a ding screenshot but this stupid crawler was a camera hog so it came out silly looking, oh well.

Well, since I'm planning to go to at least 37 and usually don't have much else going on in the mornings while I work, I decided to camp Kirata for Boreas Cesti to pop on my MNK when it hits 30 eventually. Only took two mornings before he was polite enough to drop for me.


That's about it until this evening. There were some Dynamises with my new Dynamis LS Encore, and some sky farming in Element, but nothing majorly exciting happened there.

Then this evening we helped Jamal out with Amaltheia, a giant ram that drops an item needed in the upgrading process of the relic shield Aegis. This is a fun fight in that you fight it out in Lufaise Meadows and it summons every single sheep and ram (the VT-IT to lvl 75 ones) in the zone to come help it out. As you can expect, lots of Stonaing and Erasing Max HP Down-ga and all that fun stuff. The fight took right about 30 minutes or so, but it was fun since it's something I haven't fought before.


After that, I went and soloed myself a Fomor Codex really fast then helped Tryxie get one since Element's doing a Swift Belt run on Sunday and I still don't have mine yet. Hopefully on Sunday I'll be posting about getting Abyss Gauntlets (which I have the -1 item to upgrade with!) from dynamis tomorrow and getting my Swift Belt on Sunday!

I haven't forgotten about you

I just haven't had anything to say! FFXI has been pretty meh this year and I haven't done much. Let's see if I can remember anything worth mentioning in this rather brief update...

On the first of January, we tried killing Ouryu. We didn't really have much of a strategy coming in, just wanted to see what we could do on a few trial runs since we have a ton of evokers. The first run went pretty poorly but on the second run we got it down to about 30% or so before time expired. We're pretty sure we know what went right and what went wrong well enough to take him down next time.

There was also a New Years event this year where you could get a few items. One looked like a spanking paddle and one was a furnishing that gives Moghancement: Money. I snagged both on those in about 15 minutes. I took screenshots but meh, not really that interesting. Moving on.


Next up was a pickup Storms of Fate group from QCDN. This was somewhat of an unpleasent event for me. It started WAY late, after the time at which I was hoping to be done. I'm training myself to go to bed earlier and wake up earlier this year as part of my resolutions so this was pretty irksome. After a lot of stupidity we finally made it to the fight itself. Now I've heard this fight is really easy, but we just barely won. There were a lot of deaths (at one point I got Terror'd and then Fire V'd), but we somehow pulled through. It just reminds me of why I hate doing pickup anything, almost never on-time. :/

We're up to the 10th now. Between Bahamut and today not much really happened. I fought Ose 2 or 3 times trying to get Tryxie an Assault Jerkin but he isn't dropping for us. Encore (the replacement shell for TheDynamisShow) did our first run in Jeuno. Something like 17 relic ended up dropping, 5 of which were Scout's Berets that no one wanted. Of course, Cleric's Pantaloons didn't drop, though with the new lotting rules of Encore they are no longer guaranteed to go to me anymore anyways. Oh well. So the 10th finds us claiming King Behemoth which was nice since hnm times have been really wonky the past few weeks due to maintenances and we haven't been able to camp much (and even now that we can again, S-E has another maintenance scheduled for Sunday, thanks guys).


Run JB Run! It's always nice taking down a king, but the drops were pretty meh.


That's pretty much it. Whenever I'm in-game this year I'm usually either idling in my mog house with the game minimized or just doing random things like checking my chocobo, camping Ose, or just talking to people. Haven't done PUP in a while, kinda miss it and kinda don't. As much as I want to level the job to a high level just because it's rare to see 75 PUPs, I just don't know if I can stomach 30+ more levels of it, especially since I know it's just going to keep getting worse and worse as I progress. We'll see.

FFXI's inherent flaw

Haven't played much due to the holidays and not a lot really has happened. I had some good things happen that aren't quite ffxi-related so I won't go into them. Most of my ffxi experience the past weekish have been pretty bad, and remind me so much of why I more and more find myself not wanting to play anymore.

But before I start going over what all I can remember of the week, here's a Jew with a bagel:


I spent a lot of time letting random things beat on me for Guard skillups. I started with Thickshells in La Thiene, then moved on to Poison Funguars there before finally hitting the jackpot with Sylvestres in Buburimu Peninsula. I've gotten Guard up to lvl 50 now, and it is definitely more noticeable than it was before I started levelling it (lvl 37 I think).


I also messed around with dat editing for the first time, mainly to try to help Tryxie figure out how to do it. First I turned myself into an Aern wannabe while I was checking out a BLU af recolor she wanted to see:


That was a little too much for me though, so I ended up just changing it to a slightly altered version of normal WHM gear (note the shades are just a replacement for the fugly walahra turban):


I haven't totally decided if I like it or not. It's okay, and I definitely like not having to see walahra turban so if nothing else I'll at least keep the shades, hehe.

Other than that, I xped a few times. I got my 8th and final Max MP merit and some buffer on my BRD (this was accidental, forgot to swap to merit mode, sigh). I also xped a bit on PUP as well, which I'll get into in a minute. We haven't been camping many HNMs lately because maintenances keep happening at 6-7am est and screwing with ToDs, so pretty much had no real obligations to the game.

So now to talk about the bad stuff. The dynamis shell I'm in, TheDynamisShow, is going through some rough times. I'm not sure how much longer the shell will be able to continue, though honestly I saw this coming months ago. When you have leaders that can't seem to agree on anything trying to lead people that just don't seem to care, nothing happens. We had a crappy showing of people on Tuesday (day after christmas, but that wasn't the real reason) and ended up going to San d'Oria where we wiped 3-4 times then just gave up. It was pretty sad, and probably a sign of where things are going. I might just call it quits even before the shell dies of natural causes, we'll see.

But the real thing that has me bummed with FFXI again, and no it's not a new problem or anything but it just hasn't been a problem for me in a while, is the whole job dependency thing. This game is too dependant on certain jobs in order to make a pt, and when you can't find said jobs, it's tough shit for you. Yesterday it took over an hour to make a pt because of lack of mages. We lucked out and a good whm and rdm both started seeking at the same time and I managed to nab them both. We did a dual tank setup where Ishaela (WAR/NIN) would voke, then Tryxie (THF) would SATA onto me (PUP). This would give me enough hate to co-tank with Ish, and it worked fine. Generally healing was no problem and rarely did we have to pause for mp, even though Calcobrena was in damage mode instead of healing mode (we started the fight with a different strategy but later changed to this to make the pt work better). Willian's SAM was in the pt as well, and we all gained a couple levels (my PUP went from 40 to 42).

Today everyone was on earlier than usual and we were all psyched about another chance to xp. Again we had the mage problem but this time about 15 minutes after gathering a WHM popped up (Kiali). I don't think Kiali was really going to be a very good WHM. S/He wanted to sub NIN and dual-wield clubs. I obviously wasn't wild about the idea but healers are healers and we wanted to camp cockatrice in Onzozo so Stona is essential. I was moderately worried when the WHM mt'd to me something about not wanting to leave the pt she'd just joined because s/he'd feel bad, but was assured it was just a lot of people trying to invite.

So anyway, I see a JP COR seeking and invite them. They are out in Rolanberry so it takes them a couple minutes to get to town. We all start to gather at the signet dude in Lower Jeuno and suddenly the WHM vanishes. I wait a few minutes and they come back, send a tell about their "terrible internet connection" and then vanish again. At this point I have this JP COR and all the pt needs is a WHM or even a RDM or SMN or anything and we're good (with a non-WHM we could've done gobs up in Yhoator). We sit there about 30-40 minutes, nothing remotely resembling a mage shows up. At this point I'm pissed. When it's just my friends, it's okay to sit around a bit. We can chat it up or whatever. But now we're wasting the COR's time too. Eventually a JP WHM pops up but never replies to my tells and goes off to do something else. After that, Kiali logs in again and starts seeking pt without saying anything to me. I got so mad about that that I just apologized repeatedly to the COR and tried to explain in auto-translate that we just couldn't pt without a mage. He was very polite and didn't mind at all, thankfully.

But that brings me to the inherent flaw of FFXI. We had all we needed minus a mage. There's always that one thing, whether it's a healer, refresher, tank, whatever. There's always that one thing that keeps you from putting together a pt pre-merit cannon. It's so incredibly frustrating to have to sit around and waste away your day because there's not a fucking healer available, and then you luck out and invite one who ends up being a total dick just because they can be. The game is TOO dependant on the whole pt setup, and it takes away a lot of the fun after you've been dealing with it for so long. Something needs some reevaluation here, but no one cares. S-E makes their money and we say "well, there's always tomorrow..." and that's just how it is.

Down Goes the Jorm

On Friday, I xped on PUP once again with Tryxie's THF and Willian's SAM. However, there was no tank seeking so we decided to try out PUP tanking. The initial pt started off as PUP, THF, SAM, WHM, RDM, BST. The RDM wasn't very good but other than that, we actually did pretty well against Nest Beetles. Willian would be first voke then Tryxie SATA'd onto me and for the most part I could keep hate unless luck was bad and I got hit a lot. It was a pretty neat experiment, and worked okay. I'm sure it'll be much better once Calcobrena learns Cure 4. Anyway, we stayed a while, eventually the WHM left and we got a better replacement one that we'd partied with before and shortly afterwards the RDM left and we just got Ishaela to come on her WAR (RDM wasn't really enfeebling or dispelling anyway). Good times, and we made it to 40 before ending.


Of course level 40 means AF, so I promptly went and flagged the quest after the pt. Seems that a poor taru had his automaton swiped from him while he was too busy staring at girls' asses.


Skip around a bit and we get to where I have to fight a big blob guy in the middle of the Caedarva Mire lake near Nashmau. He was a pushover, quickly keeled him on WHM, though his hp was a little high.


So that was that. Found the automaton, though didn't actually take it back to the guy (won't go into detail in case you wanna do this sometime). Got my Turbo Animator. Yay for af that doesn't really do anything!

So fast forward to Sunday, where Element decides to try killing a wyrm for the first time. Jormungand is obviously the way to go for first wyrm kill since it isn't really sought after like the others. We gathered and after a late start things were going okay. We got it to about 85% then one of the tanks (Decidence, the NIN/DRK), had to go afk for a bit. The hate got wonky at this point and a few people died, myself included. As I was sitting by myself waiting for weakness to wear, I see a CFH on my radar. Oops, someone CFH'd Jorm. We all die/logout and then start to regroup.

Unphased by the CFH, we go at it again a bit later. Hate is very well controlled, and although the fight is a bit dull as the WHM in the tank pt (barblizzara, barparalyzra, rebuff after roar, paralyna spam during spikes, occasional C3/C5/Regen 3) it's somewhat fun watching that health bar go down. We do a really great job throughout the fight. Things got a little tricky from 20ish% onwards, but we kept focused and avoided making enough mistakes to cause a flail. We got the win and it took under two hours from start to finish. It was a great showing of what Element can do taking down a wyrm on the 2nd try after unfortunate mishaps on the first. Definitely shaping up into a good ls now. Plus I got the title, which I didn't have before and I heart new titles.


Grats to Nolie for getting the Mercurial Pole that dropped and grats to everyone involved for making it happen.

Monday was maintenance day. I was hoping to do datamining afterwards but the way that data is stored in the dat files changed so I wasn't able to. No biggie. Some super crazy good armor was added but it's going to be a huge pain in the ass to get so I'm not sure if I'm going to really put a lot of effort into it yet. Prices for needed items are skyrocketing and all that jazz. So after maintenance when Tryxie got home we went out to get a few of the new BLU spells for her. Duoed Wild Carrot, Blank Gaze, and Zephyr Mantle but couldn't get anyone else to come along for the others so after getting the crag-to-sky teleports taken care of we took part in the Christmas event.

It's weird this year. A Twinkling Treant pops in the town (god, I want the real treants back, best event EVAR). Massive /cheer spam ensues then a christmas taru pops and makes you find the fake santa. It was a good chance to get the Dream Robe and DR+1 that I missed last christmas, but it was a stupid event. Oh well, at least we got to look festive for a while!


Today my parents arrived from out of town to visit for a few days. My FFXI time will be pretty limited. I might hop on sometimes at night when everyone's asleep (ie now), but we'll see. As for now, Rappa's sitting around taking a beating from several crabs to try to raise Guard skill. Basically, a whole lot of what you see below. It's been about 45 minutes now and I've gained one level. Guard sucks.

Is dat sum rare title?

First off, you'll notice I added a lil' bit of extra info to the sidebar thinger. I plan to add more as I think of more stuff to put there, just a bit of basics down first (mainly wanted my merits there so I could keep a running goal of what I'm accomplishing as I near completing my whm merits and prepare to start on the billions of drk merits I need).

Anyway.. yesterday I found myself bored in the morning and usually boredom leads to gil being spent. Sure enough, I had an itch that needed scratching so I explored Batallia Downs, did some shopping, and...


And... that's about it for that day. Don't recall doing anything, probably watched TV. Edit! I remember what I did now. I merited w/ Windaria, Miisha, Johnnyb, Cami, and Unmaligned. We got a good 5 or so merit points in our couple hours out there, enabling me to get my level 7 mp merit.

For today, spent the early hours helping Tryxie out levelling her RNG then took a break to eat and came back prepared for a dynamis but got a tell from Antor that a certain rare NM was up. So, being the collector of titles that I am I dashed to the scene so I could put some smackdown on a mr Taisaijin.


Was a pretty boring fight, no spelunker hat dropped either. But I finally got that ever so clever title in my list.


Nothing of note after that either. Had a really shitty Dynamis-Qufim run, then played some Marvel Ultimate Alliance for several hours then came back and watched Windaria solo Dark Spark (which somehow resulted in my dying, not sure how that happened, haha). And now I head to bed!