Where does the time go?

It's been over 2 months since my last entry, and though I've been as busy as ever in-game, I guess I don't feel I have much to blog about. I've noticed a tendancy for me to pull back a bit from blogging when I start getting overly annoyed with other players, since I don't like to have negative posts in my blog. And this has been the case over the last few months. I really question why I still play this game at times, but I do enjoy my friendships with the nice people I know.

Of course, there's the addiction that keeps me playing every day. Have to keep getting those constant little rewards, like exp points, skill points, another title, another bit of gear. It's been nearly two years since my husband broke free, and he's still waiting for me to be done. In the meantime, he been playing other games, but his penchant for playing/creating FFXI-inspired levels in Little Big Planet make me question whether his own FFXI addiction was truly broken.

So I keep chasing the dragon, and I just can't see an end. I pretend I have a shot at some absolutely hopeless quests, like Aegis or Burtgang, but unless I win the lottery and play full-time, I just don't see either of those happening. And if I did get either, then what? I'd still be doing the same old stuff, with a marginal improvement in performance. It's not like they open up whole new worlds that were previously unavailable.

Now I even find myself working on another job to 75, just to be "more useful" while trying to get more bits of gear for my PLD. I am enjoying the leveling (WAR is now 62), as much for the sense of "progress" as for the activity itself, but it makes me a little sad that I felt it was needed. I love being a PLD, and I wish that was all I "needed" to be.

Having said that, I agree WAR will be handy to have for assaults, merit parties, and salvage. The day I'm asked to bring WAR to HNM fights will be a sad day indeed, and hopefully will never happen.

Just Call Me Lenneth

With all of my long "breaks" from blogging about Kiki's Adventures, I'm having a hard time getting all caught up. So much to write about and then it gets short shrift when I'm in catch-up mode! Oh well, on to the latest Einherjar update.

It's been months since I first wrote about Einherjar with Eminence. We have our two runs a week, and are rotating zones to make sure we have 1 person with all 9 feathers, and as many of us as possible with a feather from each of the three tiers. It's still a lot of fun, with enough variety to keep it exciting. Some times the luck of the draw is awful - the bombs are just plain evil - but in general the fights don't give us much trouble, and my ampoules of Therion Ichor are building up, even after spending 15,000 of them on my Ritter Gorget.

We've fought Odin 5 times now, fighting him about once a month. I've been at 4 of the Odin fights, co-tanking on three of them. I missed the first Odin run, but co-tanked the second with Genno. The fight didn't go so well, mostly because the Valkyries that Odin summoned we all over Genno and I, and once we were dead Odin and his summons picked everyone off.

A month later, Tanta and I were co-tanks. This fight went much smoother, with a better focus on Odin's summoned Valkyries. It's a pretty fun fight, and Odin has some very annoying moves, one of them being a dispelga at every 10% of his HP. It even takes off food, so I end up going through nearly a stack of Pescatora at each fight. He also curses, silences, binds, all sorts of good stuff, using up medicines and MP from the mages to recover. His signature move is Zantetsuken, which he uses at 10% HP. This is an instant-kill ability for anyone in range. However, if you /heal before he does it, it misses you, since it's supposed to be a decapitation sort of thing, and if you're healing, it passes over your head. I won't get into the logic behind why all the short Tarutarus get their heads lopped off when they're still shorter than the /healing Galakas and Elvaans, but it works. Our timing on our /heals wasn't so good on this fight, and a bunch of us, including Tanta and I, were KO'd. The other tanks took over and we won the fight. Hurray for new titles!

Our Odin fights have gotten quicker and smoother with more experience, but we've been a bit disappointed with the drops we've been getting compared to some of the other linkshells. We did get Lakshmi's first NA Valkyrie's Fork, which went to Jeny, and people have wanted most of the abjurations, but they haven't been the most-desired ones, like the E Body.

This past Saturday was our 4th Odin win. Relatedrate and Infi were main tanking, while Tanta and I stood off to the side, running in to help absorb the 10,000 Needles damage every 25%. We felt like we needed Pom-Poms to be proper cheerleaders, but at least we could help out on healing people who needed it. This time, our loot pool was very Paladin-friendly: M Body, M Legs, Valhalla Helm, W Body, and P Head (which went free lot). Relatedrate was very excited to finally get his Koenig Cuirass, and Tijet his Koenig Diechlings, but the most excited was Kiki, who out-lotted Ragnorok on the Valhalla Helm! I love the way this thing looks. The only bad thing about it is that I can't wear it full time, since it has no enmity, and the +5% Slow on it just doesn't work well for /NIN. Too bad we can't meld multiple pieces of gear into a single one, combining their stats. But the -5% damage and the +30 HP are great to have, and it's a very nice addition to my situational gear.

I've only seen one other Valhalla Helm on Lakshmi, on Fallen of SnD, who's Elvaan. It's much much cuter on a Tarutaru. :-)



New title: Elite Einherjar

Stabbity Stabbity

One of the long-standing items on my wish list has been that pointy blue sword that "everyone" but me had, the Joyeuse.


However, I had a couple things standing in my way. First, it's from an NM with a long pop window, so even if you have ToD, you can still be killing place holders for 8 hours or more without Charybdis spawning. My schedule, both in real life and in-game, have made it nearly impossible for me to have any sort of hope of camping it. Secondly, I really have a difficult time asking anyone for help with something I want for me, and this is something I couldn't do without help.

A few people have helped me with some random attempts over the years (like Erock, Yobun, and Narsat), but it just seemed I would just have to live my life in FFXI without a Joyeuse, unless I happened to get lucky at some point. It's truly not a necessity, but would be really nice for things like merit parties and Nyzul Isle, where I'm not really tanking things. After getting my Justice Sword, and having troubles keeping myself supplied with the Virtue Stone it required, I have been feeling like it would be very nice to have one after all, but still gave it up as a lost cause.

However, I got lucky this week, thanks to my friends. :-)

Goldfish has been leveling PLD recently, and several days ago remarked to me that he was going to see if he could manage to solo Charybdis as THF/NIN for his Joyeuse. I whined to him about being the only PLD in the world without one and wished him luck on his solo attempt. Goldfish was surprised I didn't already have one, and offered to try to get one for me if his soloing worked - even if I couldn't be there, I could leave Kiki in SSG, in party with Goldfish. I hated the thought of leeching a sword like that, but was a viable option, assuming he could indeed solo it.

On Thursday, Goldfish headed down to Sea Serpent Grotto, and found the place empty. He killed the place holders, and Charybdis spawned on the next round. Apparently his solo attempt wasn't as much fun as he had hoped, and Allia headed to SSG to help him win his shiny blue sword. Allia also thought I already had a sword, so with ToD in hand, they offered to get one for me that evening, after the Thursday linkshell event for Eminence. I was hoping that we could get an early spawn, so I wouldn't have to leave, but when I arrived in Charybdis' room, there was another group camping her as well.

They had 2x THF/NIN, RDM/WHM, and MNK/NIN. One of the THFs was after the sword, and offered us 500k if we'd fight with them and he could have it. He'd been camping "non stop" for days, and had been after the sword for years, but "non stop" wasn't really non stop, since he hadn't been there for Goldfish's earlier kill. I told him that I didn't need gil and I didn't have a Joyeuse. I wanted one as well. Lugh came to help as well, and the four of us were watching for spawns. On the third round after we arrived, we fought the first devil manta that spawned. The other group did a bit of a fake-out and pulled one of the outside devil mantas up to the door to fight it, so we assumed that the second spawn was outside the door, so we figured it was 16 minutes until the next spawns and put down our guard as it were. Suddenly, Charybdis spawned, and the other group got claim, since they had faked us out with the other devil manta, and were watching still. However, they wiped fast. They had no hope of handling the kraken. It was basically whap-whap-whap-dead, move to the next, and repeat.

I felt bad for them not being able to handle the fight, but we took claim when the four were dead, and had no troubles whatsoever with the fight. Goldfish was tanking, while I started out just curing him, waiting for him to have plenty of hate before I joined in fighting as well. With double Mambo from Lugh, and the enfeebles/debuffing from both Allia and Lugh, the fight was painless and over quickly. And I finally had a pointy blue sword to call my own! And best of all, I didn't leech it, and I even got to bed at a (sort of) reasonable hour. I was happy too that the other group got the claim and proved they couldn't handle it.



Thank you so much you guys! It really means a lot to me.

Goldfish, Allia and Lugh returned the next morning to get one for Lugh as well. Apparently they were there for close to 8 hours before Charybdis spawned. There had been quite a few campers with them, but they had all given up about an hour before the spawn.

I haven't gotten too much chance to play with my new toy, but did try out dual wielding justice/joyeuse. With double marches, it was fun to watch the swords double attacking. TP builds up really quickly, and it should be a lot of fun on the "kill everything" floors in Nyzul.

Sundering and Subjugating

Eminence took on the three ToAU Beastmen "Kings" this summer. I wrote about Gulool Ja Ja earlier, but haven't posted about the fights with Medusa and Gurfurlur the Menacing. We fought Medusa the first Saturday of August, and Gurfurlur on the first Saturday of September. (Screenshots courtesy Alibeemac!)

Medusa was definitely the easiest of the three, but the most difficult to get to. The Arrapago Reef is just not a fun place to travel through. We had more than a full alliance for the fight, and when the door to Medusa's chamber was opened, the lag was so bad that I couldn't get through the door before it closed. Sayoran was also left behind with me. So we dragged one of the nearby Lamia up to the door and had it kill us. The group tractored us through the door, raised us, and we started the fight when we were back to full health.

We split the group into the main fighting alliance, with extra tanks and DD on the side to replace people when they got knocked out, plus a separate party to hold Medusa's 4 companions - a bard, whm, and 3 nins and a rdm/nin. Tanta and I were the co-tanks to start the fight, but 20 minutes later, Medusa was dead and the only casualty had been Goldfish. It was a fun fight, and while we did have some moments where it didn't look like Tanta or I would make it through the whole battle, our support crew kept us safe. The most annoying move she has is a petrification move. It's hard to defend oneself when turned to stone.

Gurfurlur the Menacing lives in the depths of Halvung, and it takes awhile to reach his chamber. The trolls were preparing for Beseiged as we made our way there, and we were worried that he'd start marching to Al Zahbi for Beseiged while we were fighting him. They were at Level 6 when we started the fight. Unlike the chambers for Gulool Ja Ja and Medusa, Gurfurlur's was full of regular trolls patrolling the area. We killed these before we started the fight, but our spare damage dealers were kept busy with the repops during the battle. I guess it was good for their TP at least.

As with the other two Leaders, we had a separate party to hold the 4 companions of Gurfurlur, with 4xNIN, BRD and WHM. Cauge and I were the first co-tanks. Gurfurlur has some pretty nasty attacks, and we did have to rotate the tanks out as we were killed.

Infi and I were the two tanks in for the final part of the fight. People were concerned that we wouldn't make it through his Hundred Fists, but we did, with the help of Invincible. Another fear was his "bad breath" type attack when he got under 20%. The WHMs were planning to Bene-cide to clear the tanks of our status effects, and would rotate in new ones. He only did that attack once, and Jeny ran in, used Benediction, and was walloped by Gurfurlur for her troubles.

I was lucky and managed to be in for the kill on all three of the beastmen kings, getting me three of the titles I need to work on my Burtgang (more about that in a later post), so I'm pretty excited about that. Eminence is planning to do more of these fights to get the titles for more people, especially those who had been in the holding parties. Hopefully I'll be able to be part of the holding party as a PLD/NIN, and let other people in on the main fight.

New titles: Gorgonstone Sunderer, Troll Subjugator

The One Where Kiki Stopped Going to Limbus

It's been quite awhile since my last Limbus update, and it's even been over three months since my last Limbus run with TheNewUltimates. Overall, things were pretty routine through my last 4 months in Limbus. We'd collect chip sets and fight Omega and Ultima when we were ready, and consistently won. We even had death-free Omegas! Lucrezia left the shell after seeing us through our second Proto-Ultima win in April, but had already been attending less before then.

I found I was getting really stressed out over leading the shell, and would get unreasonably angry at small things. I especially hated when we had over 18 people, but not quite enough for dual runs to be successful. Plus no one wanted to be on the "coin farming" runs, even if I had someone I could trust to lead them. I was happiest on nights when we had 12 to 18 people show up, and we could just trounce zones, but even then people would find ways to irritate me. :-)

In mid-June, I gave a 6-run notice, and left the shell after using the Ultima and Omega chip sets I'd been collecting. Limbus, once my favorite thing in the game, had become something that caused me undue stress, and it just wasn't worth the aggravation any more. I got Erock and Wyat more involved with the runs before I left, and Erock's done a great job since he took over. I do miss the Proto-Omega and Proto-Ultima fights!

Astonishing Wyrms

Rather than clear my backlog on all the exciting things I've done with Eminence, I'm skipping ahead to the most recent adventures. I intend to go back and cover what I've missed, but I'm too excited about the lastest to let it sit. Thanks to Alibeemac for her wonderful screenshots. They sure put my PS2 ones to shame!

The second Bahamut fight, as the BCNM The Wyrmking Descends, takes a bit of work to get to the point where you can do it. Everyone needs to have completed the Chains of Promathia missions, won the first Bahamut fight (The Storms of Fate), and then gathered Cloud Evokers, which are a rare drop from various ENMs. The Cloud Evokers are used to fight the BCNM Ouryu Cometh, where you face Ouryu. From winning this fight, you get a Monarch Orb, which allows a group to enter The Wyrmking Descends. I originally did Storms of Fate as a tag-along with Eminence back in January '07, so I had that part out of the way.

Eminence hadn't faced Bahamut V2 for quite awhile, and we finally had enough Cloud Evokers to plan the runs. For our Thursday event on August 21st, we had 3 Ouryu battles lined up. We headed out to the proper spot in Riverne Site #A-01 with more than an alliance, planning to rotate people in so we all got to fight at least one of the BCs. Naramaska wanted the PLDs to try with /RDM subbed, so most of us did that. It works so well with the Jailer of Love, I was curious to see how it worked with Ouryu. The basic strategy we were following was to sleep Ouryu when he was on the ground, and nuke him while he was in the air.

I sat out the first fight, but co-tanked the second with Sanjiyan's PLD/NIN. Kachiko was in the tank party with her relic horn, and the fight went really great. I had endless mp, despite spamming flash, bind, blind, gravity, dispel, and my cure-kit, and it was really a lot of fun. Sanjiyan couldn't keep up hate-wise without the extra spells, but did what she could to keep Ouryu under control along with me.

For the third fight, Tanta and I were co-tanks, both of us as PLD/RDM. Kachiko had to leave, so we just had a "normal" bard. The fight was so very different from the first. I had a lot of MP issues, getting devotion from Alibeemac twice, in addition to my chivalry. Hate was a lot looser. Ouryu also seemed to use more of his most annoying moves, making it that much more of a struggle. We still won, but I don't think we'll be using PLD/RDM on it again, at least not on both tanks.

With three Monarch Orbs available, we had The Wyrmking Descends on the schedule this past Saturday. A lot of shells melee-zerg this fight now, but we needed to use an army of black mages. Again, we had more than a full alliance available, so we rotated people in for the different runs.

Tanta went over strategy with the PLDs, and stressed that this is the hardest fight to tank in the game, since the main tank is solo on Bahamut, and doesn't have the safety of a co-tank. We went as PLD/NIN, with two per fight: one on Bahamut, one waiting for the wyrms he summons, as well as being ready to step in if the main tank was killed. For the first fight, Tanta was main tank, and I was on summons duty. I helped cure Tanta while waiting for the other wyrms to appear, then would flash the wyrm and bring it near the BLMs for them to quickly get rid of it. On our second summons, we got Vrtra, and he charmga'd all of the BLMs when he was at about 5%. They quickly killed me and ran around killing everyone else. It was a wipe, a wasted orb, and a sad loss.

For the second fight, I was main tank, with Infi on summons duty. I felt I did horribly on the fight. It started out poorly, with me taking so much damage trying to get Bahamut into position that Muffins pulled hate keeping me alive.

Over the course of the fight, I used up too much mp for healing and didn't have much left for hate. I always seemed to get my shadows wiped just before being terrorized, wasting the support crews' mp healing me. I had a hard time keeping Bahamut lined up properly as well, partially because I was having camera issues with my character being right up against a small wall to reduce knockbacks. Overall, it was a frustrating fight, but fortunately we won, with only 5 minutes to spare. And I learned a lot from it and hope to do better, given the chance. We won a Bahamut's Mask, which went to a happy Ragnorok.

On the third fight, Infi main tanked, with Karupt on summons duty. I sat outside the unstable displacment, going over my problems with Bahamut with Tanta, and got some good advice. As long as I can learn how to improve my tanking, having imperfect fights isn't bad. The third fight was also a win, and I was very surprised to see Ali say "kiki and karupt lot the mask". I really didn't expect to be able to obtain a Bahamut's Mask so soon. I was invited to the alliance, and out-lotted Karupt, winning one of my "dream" items for my little Tarudin.

I really thought I was further down the list for this, but with Solarus on a bit of a break from the game due to real-life circumstances, a couple other PLDs not there for the event, and Infi feeling the PLDs without an Aegishjalmr should get it first, I got really lucky. Karupt and I were within 10 points of each other in DKP - he's been with Eminence for years, but hasn't played a lot recently, and has spent a bunch of points in the past, so I actually had a few more than him.

I love my new mask! I still can't believe it's mine.



New titles: Ouryu Overwhelmer, Wyrm Astonisher

Nyzul Isle Musings

Just as for everything else, it's been quite awhile since I've posted about our Nyzul Isle static's progress. Things seem to be winding down a bit, as we've got nearly all of the armor that people were interested in, but we're still missing desired weapons, and at least Erock would like to get a runic key (he hasn't raised a disc yet). And I need at least 129,000 tokens for my book for my Burtgang :-).

My last Nyzul update covered our disastrous first run on Floor 100, where Anastasia's disc got wiped. Since then, we've leveled my disc from level 61 to Floor 100, done another 9 Floor 100 bosses, raised Daden's disc to 96, and done lots and lots of farming on various levels. We've been doing quite well on our runs, with occasional bad luck giving us some really tough floor combinations, like Psycheflayer families, five lamps in the right order and huge kill-all floors. Floor 100 hasn't been generous to us, and so far, we only have had 3 hats in 11 runs, but they were the 3 Askar Zucchettos that people really wanted the most, so that was good at least.

Other than the hats, we've been having really decent luck on our drops, and we haven't yet had to toss something no one wanted while trying to get a particular desired piece. Our Floor 60 luck has been phenomenal - we've got 9 drops in 9 kills, and they were all the ones we wanted. Recently, I completed my Askar set, getting the Askar Manopolas on our 4th level 60 run of the night. Two weeks earlier, we had 3 level 80 runs for body pieces, and got Goliard for Erock, and Askar for Yobun and I.

Overall, we have a 66% drop rate on boss kills, ranging from 30% on hats to 100% on hands. We've won 31 pieces total out of 47 kills. Of those 31 pieces, 16 were Askar, 9 Goliard, and 6 Denali.

Anastasia has leveled SCH to 75, and has been coming on that instead of BLM. This has been working out quite well for us, especially on the boss floors. At times we've missed her Sleepga II and Stun, but the benefits of SCH outweigh the benefits of BLM for us. The rest of us pretty much stick to RDM THF PLD SAM and SAM, though Daden has been coming on his WAR once in awhile instead of SAM. I just don't understand why the general opinion of PLD in Nyzul is bad. It works very well for us.

I still really enjoy Nyzul. We've got a really good team that works well together, and the randomness of the floors keeps it different enough to not feel like you're doing exactly the same thing every time, with the same mobs in the same spots over and over again, like Limbus and Dynamis.

We also finally got Lucrezia her X's Knife from Requiem of Sin, on something like our 30th attempt. To replace that pre-Nyzul activity, we've started in on the Ashu Talif quests. We did the first, Scouting the Ashu Talif, two weeks ago, and though it was a bit messy, we won. Last week we moved on the Royal Painter Escort, and were surprised at how easy it was. The goal for this is to repeat the third quest, Targeting the Captain, and hopefully we'll get some of those Barbarossa's Zerehs for people who want them. So far so good, as we won a pair on our first run last night. Anastasia has some very nice new shorts for her PUP!