Dynamis: Kiki? In Dynamis?

It's time to add a new category here. I've decided to join a Dynamis shell, mostly just to see what it's like. Vawn/Latch recently joined a new shell, SnakesInDynamis, and its hours fit with my playing schedule, and Vawn said it seemed like a group of nice people. So he talked me into it.

My first run was to be San d'Oria on Saturday, but the LS is having some troubles getting off the ground with enough committed members, and we only had 11 people show up. Narsat, co-leader with Atreyu, decided to get draconian on the no-shows and have some stricter rules in place going forward. He cancelled Tuesday evening's run, and we'll hopefully have a run on Saturday.

I don't understand why people would sign up for a Dynamis shell and then not show up because they're busy doing other in-game things, like leveling. Real life interruptions are unavoidable, but in-game? /sigh.

My main problem with doing Dynamis will be the exp loss. I'm actually going to have to exp on PLD to keep my level. There just aren't enough Besiegeds for me to keep pace with multiple deaths every few days.

Missions: One to be Feared, Round One (CoP 6-4)

Our CoP static finally was able to get to the infamous airship fight on Friday. Unfortunately we didn't join the 1/1 club, but things went quite well and there are a couple things we could have done better that give me hope for our next attempt this coming Friday.

Grym and I spent over two hours on Thursday getting ready - shuffling gear around so that we had nothing in our gobbie bags that wasn't going to be used for the mission, making yagudo drinks, buying supplies. It's a level 60 capped mission, and everyone recommends that all the melee sub Ninja to help protect them from AOE attacks. Our set up looked like this:

Itera MNK/NIN
Splinte WAR/NIN
Grymalkyn THF/NIN
Elboron BRD/WHM
Wendell WHM/SMN
Tsakiki PLD/WAR

This mission has a 45 minute time limit, with three different parts. The first has you facing 5 Mammets that are pretty much the same as the 3 Mammets in Cop 2-5. They change jobs (can be kept in one form using Yellow Liquids), they use Transmogrify which causes physical damage to heal them, and they like to spam -ga spells when they're BLMs. The second part is Omega, a mechanical weapon that spams damaging AOEs, and has enstun. You can use CCB Polymer from Cid (or the auction house, but we're cheap, so we farm chips for the CCBs) to supress Omega's activity for a minute. Finally, it's Ultima, another mechanical weapon with a different set of annoying attacks. The CCBs also work on Ultima.

Having done a lot of reading up on different strategies for this mission, we decided the best thing to do would be for Kiki to use as much evasion gear as possible and "super tank" the mammets. Omega also has accuracy issues, so evasion works best for it (which makes people think a NIN would work best), while people say Ultima works best being straight tanked by a PLD. Here's what I ended up with for gear and consumables:

Gluttony Sword
TK Army Shield +1 (Windurst controlled the area)
Dark Staff/Earth Staff (didn't use either)
Bibiki Seashell
Emperor's Hairpin/Gallant Coronet
Fortified Chain/Reraise Gorget/Parade Gorget (didn't use)
2x Melody Earring/2x Drone Earring
Scorpion Harness/Gallant Surcoat
Gallant Gauntlets
Verve Ring
Vigor Ring
Mermaid Ring (didn't use)
Nomad's Mantle/High Breath Mantle/Knightly Mantle
Steppe Belt
Combat Caster Slacks/Gallant Breeches
Gallant Leggings

Consumables:
scroll of instant reraise (for my second reraise - faster than the gorget)
Persikos au Lait
Pear au Lait
Melon Juice (for mammets)
Yagudo Drink x5
Tavnazian Tacos
As many Hi-Potions (+3, +2 and normal) as I could carry, got more from others

We decided to do dry runs on this, for the first time in our CoP career. It worked out pretty well too, since we learned a few things. The idea for the dry runs was to use no items other than melon juices, and get past the mammets and as far into Omega as we could before wiping and having Wendell raise us all.

Our first dry run wasn't so good. We got to the airship, read through the cutscenes, buffed up and headed into the mammets. Elboron gave both Splinte and I double mambo, and I ran up to body aggro all of the mammets. I then proceeded to kite them up and down the airship while Splinte was in charge of grabbing one for everyone else to fight. Since I didn't do anything to the other mammets, Elboron and Wendell could cure me without pulling hate. What didn't work so well with this plan was that I couldn't really cure myself, since I was running the whole time. I got killed, and I think all 5 turned into BLMs and -ga'd everyone else to death pretty quickly.

Reflecting on this as we were waiting for weakness to wear so we could do a second dry run, I decided I should stand in one corner with my mammets, curing myself with help from Elbo and Wendell, while everyone fought the mammets one at a time in the opposite corner. With double mambo and all my +evasion skill/+evasion gear, they barely touched me with physical attacks. This plan worked much better. As the group killed off each mammet, Splinte would come grab another from my group, usually one that was a BLM type to help reduce the spell casting. Grymalkyn was on Yellow Liquid duty (we'd quartermastered her so the yellow liquids from each mammet would drop to her immediately for use on the next mammet), Wendell would keep the mammet being fought silenced and heal people, Elboron kept running back and forth between me and the other group to keep our songs up and help with healing, and we picked them off one by one. It was a bit annoying when they used Transmogrify and we had to stop fighting, but we got pretty good at noticing it quickly and turning around. When we got down to two mammets left, I started fighting my single mammet, and they all came to help when they finished theirs.

We then moved onto Omega, and learned quickly how not to start out our fight with Omega. Again Splinte and I got double mambo from Elbo. Our plan was to fight Omega in the left back corner near our spawn spot, while Wendell and Elbo would stand off in the right back corner, out of AOE range. I ran in to provoke Omega and drag him back, and got hit with Guided Missle for a lot of damage. Wendell quickly cast a Cure IV on me to save me, but pulled hate in the process, so it was a sloppy start. I ended up dying pretty early in the fight, but everyone else managed to get him down to 50% before we wiped.

Satified with what we'd learned on our dry runs, we rested up and got psyched up for the real thing.

The mammets decided to use Transmog a bit more on our real run, which made us take a bit longer than I would have liked to move on to Omega, but we still had over 36 minutes on the clock, so I wasn't too worried. Omega wasn't so bad when we were using items and going all out. We designated Grym, Splinte, and Itera as the CCB users, since they were right there. I think they used them at around 50%, 30%, and 10%. We lost Splinte towards the end of Omega, and he reraised and ran away to recover while we finished Omega.

One of the really nice things about this fight is that you go back to full HP and MP between the three parts of the fight. Unfortunately, Splinte was still weakened when we finished Omega, so he didn't get to benefit from that. We waited for his weakness to wear. Meanwhile, Elbo, Wendell and I traded our CCBs to Itera, Splinte and Grym for the next fight. I switched into my "real" tanking gear, using my High Breath Mantle for the extra enmity, and restocked my hi-potion supply from Grymalkyn.

We headed into Ultima with around 24 minutes left. Ultima was definitely more of a pain than Omega. We were constantly getting hit with paralyze, petrify, silence, and other annoying negative status effects. I ended up dying when Ultima was around 50% (and I was petrified), but instead of deciding to have everyone keep fighting without using 2 hours or CCBs until they wiped on top of me, we decided to keep going full tilt. I reraised, but before my feet were back on the ground, I was dead again. Everyone kept going, and it was so very very close. They had Ultima to a sliver when everyone was dead. They started reraising, but not everyone died far enough back and Ultima spotted them and we were all dead with no reraises active any more. I ended up home-pointing to the Safehold, and came back to Raise I Wendell, who then handed out R2s and R3s to the rest.

It actually is a very fun fight, and instead of dreading it, I'm looking forward to going back next week, and hopefully winning it. I may change my tune if we end up having to do it another 15 times though. We weren't running out of time - Grym's food was still active when it was all over, which means we should have had at least 15 minutes left. That should have been plenty of time for us to reraise, recover and finish him off, had we done it right. Next week, if I die on Ultima before we've used two hours and CCBs, we'll have everyone die on top of me, since I should be right at the wall, safe from aggro from Ultima after he moves back to his starting spot.

We had Elboron use Soul Voice at the start of the Omega fight. I haven't decided if that was the best spot, but it probably made the Omega fight easier than it would have been otherwise. Itera and Splinte used theirs on Ultima after I was dead, and Grym used his after reraising and trying desperately to get Ultima dead. Unfortunately Perfect Dodge only blocks physical attacks, and Grym was dead again pretty quickly.

The six of us headed to Pso'Xja on Saturday night and we all got our new sets of chips within two hours. We headed to Bastok and got our new CCBs, so we're set for Friday, at least as far as that's concerned.

New title: Omega Ostracizer

Besieged: Update Changes (Level 6)

I was very surprised last week to log in after the update maintenance on Tuesday to find that Al Zahbi was not being attacked by three level 6 forces at the same time. Apparently our last Besieged on Monday night was enough to defer any post-maintenance attacks. On Wendesday evening, we logged in to find the Trolls were getting ready to head to Al Zahbi, for our first Level 6 Besieged (the Undead and Mamools had attacked earlier in the day, but Lakshmi fought fiercely and drove them off).

They've added temporary items to Besieged, which are really quite interesting. Apparently there are 15 potential items you can get, based on the presence of particular NPCs in Al Zahbi. If they are being held prisoner, you don't get the item for that NPC. For this Besieged, we had quite an assortment of goodies. A Giant's Drink which doubled our HP for about 15 minutes, a Wizard's Drink (double MP for ~15 minutes), a scroll of instant reraise, Max Potion +3, Max Ether +3, Carnal Incense (immune to physical damage briefly), Spiritual Incense (immune to magic damage briefly), a potion to restore all HP/MP, a revitalizer that resets all Job Ability timers, including two-hour, an item to reduce an enemy's TP, and so on. It was fun using the different items.

The fight itself didn't seem much different than the normal Level 5 Trolls. There's a new NM Troll puppetmaster that has 3 different puppets attending him. They can be pretty deadly, but people tended to focus on the Troll and ignore the puppets, since if they died, he'd call another, and if he dies, they disappear along with him. So killing the puppets is a bit of wasted effort.

Saturday morning, we had another Troll invasion, and we got fewer items (more prisoners being held), but got Daedalus Wings, which are like Icarus Wings in that they give you full TP, but different in that they don't give you a medicated state, which is good, since some of the potions do. It would be hard to use all of the items in a single attack if they all put you into a medicated state for 15 minutes, preventing the use of another medicated item.

My staff skillups have been getting better as I'm getting higher. I also have a bit more +ACC for the moment (bought a Scorpion Harness for the CoP 6-4 Mission battle), which can't hurt. I'll be pleased when I finally get that capped (249 now, 269? is cap). I really need to get a group together to do the WSNM for Retribution too. I think I'll focus on Great Sword next, though Club is tempting.

Events: Trick or Treat!!

It's Halloween time again. This year's Harvest Festival incorporates everything from the past two years, and they've added new Witch Hats and Coven Hats, as well as a Lantern from each city: Bomb, Pumpkin, and Mandragora. Since this was Ohrly and Yarly's first Halloween, we decided they had to get Witch Hats, and we set out the first evening of the event to see if we could figure out what we needed to do, before the walkthroughs started showing up on the web. We took them out into Windurst Woods, each supplied with about 50 Ginger Cookies, and we decided to try what had worked last year for getting pitchforks. We had one get turned into a shade by the Kuzotz vendor not too far from the moghouse, and the other turned into a ghost by the Derfland vendor near the East Gate, then met up at the Bomb decorations by the Manustery. Sure enough, they both got a pitchfork.

Then we learned that Windurst Waters was the place to be for the new part of the quest. There are the spirits of two witches wandering through town, and we're asked to follow them and learn their secrets. In order to do this, we had to be in a costume, and avoid being in their line-of-sight as we followed them through town and they would stop and turn as they reflected on their past. If they saw you directly, they would realize that you were not really a monster and your costume would disappear. We learned that the costumed NPCs wouldn't give you a costume or an item if you used the same treat twice in the same game day (though if you waited long enough, they might, but it was very random), so it was a bit of pain to have the witch spot you and you'd have to scramble for another costume. It took us a few tries, but Ohrly and Yarly both got their Witch Hats.

On Saturday, Grym and Kiki had to get both their Witch Hats and Coven Hats, since of course we had to get all the new furniture items, and in order to do that, you have to be wearing the Coven Hat when talking to the Event Moogles that are selling them. If you have no hat on, they only offer Jack O'Lanterns. If you talk to them in your home city while wearing a Witch Hat, the lantern from your city is available. If you talk to any of the event moogles while wearing a Coven Hat, you can get all three lanterns (for 10,000 gil each).

Grym got her Witch Hat in Windurst, and then went to San d'Oria with Kiki (the second, harder witch in Windurst is a Tarutaru, and it was hard to see her well enough to watch for her turns while following her). Kiki got her Witch Hat and then had to wait a game day before attempting her Coven Hat. The second witch is a lot trickier, and it took us several tries to follow her successfully. Fortunately, if you get spotted, if you get another costume, the witch will continue where she'd left off, so you didn't have to start over from the beginning. We did end up spending a bit of gil buying over-priced treats from bazaars in order to get some treat variety, but I don't think we spent more than 1000 gil total, so no harm done.

We finally got our hats, bought our lanterns, then headed home to Windurst to get them set up in our Moghouses.

Fishing: Time to Get Serious

Grym and I made a big mistake last year after we got our Waders from the Fishing Guild. We figured we'd get to level 68 sooner rather than later, and built up another 100,000 Guild Points each so that we'd have enough to get our Fishing Aprons when we hit 68. This has kept us from getting contracts with our other guilds (Alchemy for Grym and Woodworking for Kiki), and in retrospect, was quite dumb. Especially when we take into consideration how easy it is to accumulate GP for fishing. We should have waited until we were in the mid-60s.

I've decided we really have to make a concerted effort to level our fishing. I want to get to 68 and get our stupid apron. None of this "let's catch some squid" once every two months when Grym needs sushi, or "I've got 15 minutes, I can catch a couple Bream/Sazanbaligi" when in Windurst or Al Zahbi. Instead, we need to fish for a few hours a day, targetting fish that will skill us up.

Saturday morning, we logged in to Al Zahbi, and saw the Trolls were amassing their forces, but it would be awhile before they arrived. I got dressed for Besieged, grabbed my fishing rod and shrimp lure, and headed to the Auction House and started fishing. Before the Trolls arrived, I had got .7 in skillups! This really shocked me, but I've decided that the closer you are to the level cap on a particular fish, the better skillups will be. Sazanbaligi, like Gold Carp, cap at level 56, and I started out the day at 54.4. My skillup streak continued later in the day, and I finished up at 55.5. Grym wasn't yet 54, and wasn't seeing the skillups I was.

Sunday evening, we were in Tavnazia, having done the cookbook quest that morning (my NIN is now 27 - only 10 levels to go!), so we headed out to Lufaise Meadows and fished for Gold Carp from the bridge over the river just outside the Safehold. This has to be the best spot in the game for gold carp. There are no items in this spot, and using a shrimp lure, the only thing that gives you a single "!" is the gold carp. Any "!!!" will be a monster, and it's easy to avoid reeling those in. As soon as Grym hit 54, she started getting skillups quickly, and before we knew it, she hit 55. This just reinforced my "close to skillcap" theory.

When I hit 56, I had to find a new place to fish. Since I want to target fish that will only give skillups, heading to the ferry for Noble Ladies wouldn't work, since we'd waste too much time with Cone Calamary and Gugru Tuna, though Qiara could use the tuna for cooking skillups. Crescent Fish (67 cap) can be targetted at the Lake in East Sarutabaruta using a Fly Lure, but I was worried about the bite rate, as it had been bad when we'd been fishing there earlier this year. It would be a convenient spot, since town was close by, so I tried it out. The bite rate was bad, so I decided to head to the waterfall near the Temple of Ugallepih in Yhoator Jungle. Here I could target Elshimo Newts (cap 59) using a Frog Lure.

I didn't stay too long last night, since it was getting late, but I logged Kiki out at the waterfall. I think this will work well, though the fact that the Newts are not stackable is a bit of a pain. There are no items here at least, so I don't have to worry about filling up my gobbie bag with rusty junk. We want to have Qiara use the newts to make Goblin Drinks, since those are still selling pretty well, and she can skillup on them as well. When my pockets get full, I can warp to town to send the newts to Qiara and use the OP teleport to get back to the Jungle. I think Grym will stick to Gold Carp until she hits 56, but at the rate she was going, that will be pretty quick. I ended up getting 1.7 levels over the two days. If we can keep up the pace, 68 may not be as unattainable as it has seemed at times.

Quests: Airship C.I.D.? I don't think so

When we were leveling our BSTs in Pso'Xja, we both got chunks of Ordrynite ore, which is used in the quest The Naming Game. This quest has two precursors: Teak Me to the Stars and Hyper Active. Sunday evening, we set out to complete these.

First we headed to Carpenters' Landing off of North San d'Oria to catch the barge in Phanauet Channel. We needed to get a rare/ex piece of Garhada Teak Lumber for Raibaht in Cid's Lab, to help Cid with his ariship. These will supposedly drop off of any mob on the barge, so we were prepared to keep riding the various barges until we both had a piece of teak. We fished as well, since the rides are short and the mobs are infrequent. We went as PLD/THF and THF/WHM, and it only took 4 or 5 trips before we both had what we needed (and both pieces dropped from Oozes). Grym teleported us to Dem, and we chocobo'd to Bastok to turn in the Lumber. We were rewarded by Raibaht with some gil.

Next Raibaht wanted us to track down an adventurer that had been sent to Jeuno to smuggle back a hyper altimeter. He'd been caught and was being forced to fight a monster in Delkfutt's Tower as punishment. We were asked to find him and get the hyper altimeter from him, and bring it back to Bastok. Raibaht gave us a special box that would help us get it through customs. We took the airship to Jeuno and ran out to Delkfutt's Tower. In the basement, we were attacked by Orna and two Fomorian Spears (all evil weapon types), which we easily defeated. Then we found the adventurer, who told us he'd hid the hyper altimeter in a streetlamp in Lower Jeuno. We walked back to Jeuno and found the hyper altimeter. We both had put our Ord. in our moghouse storage in Windurst, so to save an extra trip to Bastok, we warped to Windurst, grabbed the Ordrynite, then Grym switched to WHM and we teleported to Altep and escaped from Korroloka Tunnel to Bastok.

Raibaht was excited to have the hyper altimeter for Cid, and gave us a bit more gil as a reward. Next he told us that the last thing Cid would need was a chunk of the fabled Ordrynite. Both he and Cid were astounded when we handed it over to them, and Cid decided to let us name his airship. I called it "Ultra Sky King", while Grym chose "Psycho Morphin Robo". If we ever get more chunks of Ordrynite, we can rename it again (and get more gil too).

New Title: Hyper Ultra Sonic Adventurer

Quests: Trials by Fire, Water, and Lightning

On Saturday evening, just after the Ninja Blues static arrived at their camp in the Eastern Altepa Desert, before everyone had dismounted from their chocobos, Charcole had a knock on his door. With unexpected company on his doorstep, he logged out then and there, leaving the rest of us wondering what to do. Getting a replacement didn't see to be a viable option, so we decided to go get the avatars that we were missing. It took awhile for a few of us to get back to our level 75 jobs, what with the lack of inventory space, not to mention the dozen juices we'd made just for the exp party.

Wendell teleported us to the Yhoat crystal, and first we ran to Norg for Elboron to get his tuning fork of water, then we chocobo'd back to Kazham to get the tuning fork of fire for Elbo, Grym, and Kiki. Back to the Yhoat crystal, and we ran to Ifrit's Cauldron. Itera had brought an ice cluster, but a duo was going through at the same time and we didn't need to use it. We made it to the Cloister of Flames without too much trouble, and had a short battle with Ifrit.

Another Teleport-Yhoat, and we ran to the Temple of Uggalepih and made our way through to the Den of Rancor and the Cloister of Tides. Leviathan kept healing himself, drawing out the fight, but other than that it was trouble-free. Those were the only two avatars that Elbo, Grym and Kiki needed, but Itera was still missing a couple.

We decided to fight Ramuh next and headed to Mhaura to pick up tuning forks there. Unfortunately, Elboron hadn't turned in his whisper from the last time we'd fought Ramuh, so he couldn't join the fight, but he came with us to the Cloister of Storms and gave us a couple songs before we entered the fight. Ramuh went down pretty quickly, and we were done for the night. I believe Itera needs Shiva and Titan still, so those are on the agenda for the near future.

The next morning, Grym and Kiki headed to Norg and Kazham to turn in their whispers and get their pacts with Leviathan and Ifrit, and when back in Windurst headed out to West Sarutabaruta to play around with them. As a PLD75/SMN1, I have well over 550 MP, so it was easy to keep the avatars out for awhile. The net MP loss with my auto-refresh plus my parade gorget was only 1 per tick for the avatars. Some day we'll finally get Diabolos and Fenrir, and my collection of avatars will be complete. I still don't know how serious I'll be about leveling SMN, but at least I'll be ready if I ever do.

Assault: Saving Private Ryaaf

On Saturday, Yobun, Izan and Kiki were the only three who felt like tackling some assault missions. Given our limitations job-wise (Izan only has DRG at 75 and Kiki only PLD), we decided that Saving Private Ryaaf was the only one of the Superior Private missions that we might stand a reasonable chance of success. Most of them involve killing a lot of monsters, and we didn't think the three of us could manage that.

This mission involves finding 3 NPCs in the caves of Periqia, and freeing them. They can be in five different locations, and are hunched over when you arrive. To make it a bit trickier, two of the rooms will have a Fomor hunched over, hoping to trick you. There are Experimental Undead roaming the corridors, and nasty Cursed Chigoes in each of the possible rooms for the prisoners.

We did the mission the first time as DRG/RDM, PLD/RDM, and Yobun as PLD/WHM. The chigoes are really nasty - they hit hard and fast, but are killed quickly with a damaging job ability such as Jump or Shield Bash. We cleared the first room quickly, and got lucky and found one of the NPCs. Using the walkthrough on the wiki, we knew which rooms the other two would be in, and finished the mission without needing to fight a single Fomor. The second room's chigoes were much more difficult, as we hadn't waited for our Job Ability timers, and we found that it was really hard to actually hit the chigoes, and so it's really hard to build TP. Fortunately, we did get in critical hits, which do kill them, and another time, Yobun was able to get enough TP from being hit by them that he was ablne to use Circle Blade and kill several at once.

We ended up doing the mission another two times (probably would have gone a fourth time, but I had to get ready for Ninja Blues (needlessly as it turned out)), and Izan had switched to DRG/DRK to have Weapon Bash available in addition to his Jumps. Izan got killed by the chigoes on our second run (they also can curse you, reducing your max HP), but we did get better at getting rid of the chigoes without too much pain and suffering.

Again using the wiki walkthrough, we decided the best way to do this mission is to check the north room first. If the hunched-over figure is facing east, it's a fomor, and you know the figure in the west room will be an NPC. Based on who it is, you will know which of the other two rooms have the NPCs. Similarly, if it's facing north, it's an NPC, and by knowing who he is, you know where the other two are.

It's really too easy, especially for jobs that can instantly kill the chigoes - DRG, PLD, DRK, SAM and anyone subbing any of those. I think THF with SA and TA would work well too, since those will guarantee critical hits, but it might be tricky to get behind for a SA, since the chigoes are so tiny.

Beastmasters: Leveling In Quicksand Caves Again (59 -> 60)

Thursday evening, Grym and Kiki were in Windurst, and they got prepared for heading out to exp on their BSTs before they logged for the night. This included using their Empress Bands so that they'd be ready to use again as soon as they wore off the following evening. Friday, we logged in, and headed into a nearly empty Toraimarai Canal (there was one person /anon, but we knew he was neither BST nor /BST and probably wouldn't be anywhere near where we planned to fight).

I wasn't feeling great, and was admittedly a bit cranky, but I just didn't like the Canal. We fought 3 skeletons using bats and pugils and then headed back to our moghouses and logged out for the night. Saturday morning, we headed back to Quicksand Caves and had a productive day there. We probably stayed longer than we should have, but we got to Level 60 and another 2k for a safe buffer. We had a couple close calls again with the BLMs, but managed to survive them all this time. There were a couple times when the linked Anticans kept going after Grym when she left her pet, but with the zone nearby, it was more of a pain than a hazard. I guess if the pulled Antican happens to have more hate for Grym than the pet at the moment the other Antican(s) links, then it will go after her instead of the pulling pet. Our new Kabrakan's Axes didn't slow the mobs as often as we would have liked, but any additional effect is always nice.

Even at 60, there are still VT Anticans, so the exp would probably continue to be good through to 61, but we'd really like to try Uleguerand Range before we're too high for it. There always seems to be a BST or two there when we check on the other BSTs around our level though.

We've noticed that there seems to be a lot more BSTs on during typical Japanese playing times, and judging from their comments, they are indeed Japanese players. There is one Japanese lolPartyBST that we keep seeing looking for party more than we see him actually in a party. I think he'd be doing better if he actually was out there soloing, since he was several levels ahead of us, and now he's several levels behind us, and he always seems to be on when we are.

It's another "goal" crossed off the list: getting BST over 60 so that we can wear complete AF. This of course prompted my husband to say we've beat the game and can quit, as he will do every time we meet one goal or another. One of these days, he'll be right, but I'm certainly not ready yet!

Quests: Creeping Doom with 3xBLU (Balga's Dais BCNM30)

Elboron, Grymalkyn, and Kiki did three runs of Creeping Doom some time last year as THF/RNG, WAR/MNK, and WHM/BLM, using the sleep bolt strategy, but we had timed out twice and won only once. Now that our BLUs were over level 30, we decided to try it again. Since it was just an experiment, we only used one orb. We weren't sure it would work, and the drops don't seem to be so great. Elbo and Grym subbed WHM for poisona and paralyna, as well as protectra and barparalyze, while Kiki subbed RDM since she still hasn't got her WHM over 9 yet.

For this BCNM, you have 15 minutes to defeat Bitoso, a crawler that uses Cure III and Paralyzga in addition to the normal crawler TP moves. Our plan was to basically Head Butt him to death, stunning him out of his spells. It worked wonderfully - he only managed to get off one of his Cure IIIs, and between Head Butt, Bludgeon, Helldive, Claw Cyclone, plus our sword damage, we killed him rather quickly. Unfortunately, we ended up with less than 10k worth of treasure, including the 1000 gil we each got from the treasure box.

Theoretically you can get some decent loot from this, but I'm not sure it's worth wasting the orbs to try again. It's really tempting though, since it was so easy. We didn't take a lot of damage, but all three of us had autoregen from equipping both Healing Breeze and Sheep Song, plus we had a pear au lait. I think we each used a single Melon Juice, and we still had over 100 MP left when we were done, despite constantly spamming Bitoso with our spells. Poor thing didn't really stand a chance. We did get hit with Poison Breath a couple of times, but no real harm done. I think only Grym got hit with Sticky Thread, but the slow effect didn't seem to impede her at all.

Quests: Undying Promise (Qu'Bai Arena BCNM40)

Last week, we decided to try the Undying Promise BCNM40, which is a 15 minute, 3 man fight against a skeleton that reraises so you end up fighting him 5 times. We opted for Itera as MNK/NIN, Grym and BST/NIN, and Kiki as RDM/BLM. Our first run went really well until the fifth version. I think he gets stronger as he goes along, and we weren't really expecting that. I ended up pulling too much hate with Cures and we ended up wiping. Grym's Funguar didn't seem to be living up to its reputation against skeletons either for some reason.

We were better on the second run, but it still got a bit iffy towards the end. Grym had switched to BST/BLU since /NIN wasn't really doing much for her. Grym used her two hour on her funguar this time, and that seemed to help quite a bit.

By the third run, I think we had it pretty well under control, but I don't see that we'll be rushing to try this again. The drops from the two wins amounted to about 110K per person, but it can drop Utsusemi Ni, which Itera will need for his NIN in a few levels. It's fun to try the different BCNMs though.

Missions: Getting Ready for Omega/Ultima (CoP Chapter 6)

Our CoP static spent a couple of evenings farming chips in Pso'Xja for our CCB Polymer Pumps that we'll need for the fight against Omega and Ultima for CoP Mission 6-4 (One to be Feared). It was actually kind of fun running around in the uncapped towers, and getting used to the layout. We fought diremites and lizards in the Nue Tower (west part of Beaucidine) for the grey and carmine chips, and fought treasure chests in the tower closest to Ranguemont Pass for the cyan chips. We had to get the blue and green bracelets for Grym, Elbo, Splinte, and Wendell, but the NMs were trivial for a full party of level 75s. The first evening we farmed, we were missing Wendell, but Erock joined us to help. He's decided to come back to play on occasion, which is really nice. (Fight the addiction! Fight it!) I've missed having him around.

The second evening, Itera had a treasure chest key and got the real chest that Grym and I had been eyeing for hours while exping our BSTs next to it earlier that day. I really would like to get the Pso'Xja map one of these days, so we'll probably make a trip out there specifically to hunt a key and find a real chest.

After we'd got Wendell's chips, we headed to Misareaux Coast to fight the three detectors for Mission 6-2 (A Place to Return). Itera spawned them before Splinte was in the zone, so we ended up fighting them twice. Grym and I finished up all the cutscenes through to Mission 6-4, and took our chips to Cid for our CCB Polymer Pumps.

Grym and I decided to check out the Mission 6-4 fight cutscenes, so we went to the Tavnazian Safehold, set out homepoints there (we were planning to do the Secrets of Ovens Lost quest as soon as we were finished), changed our jobs to SMN1, and headed into the "fight". The cutscenes are quite long, and in order to preserve as much time for the fight when we really do it with the static, it makes sense to have everyone do this so they can take their time reading the dialog without fretting about the minutes lost.

Our SMN1 duo didn't last long against the Mammets, but it was amusing to actually try to attack them.

Leveling: Ninja Blues vs Evil Weapons (29-31)

The Ninja Blues finally managed to get together for the first time in ages, and we had a somewhat abbreviated leveling session in Sauromugue Champaign, fighting Evil Weapons. Their AOE Whirl of Rage was pretty hard on us, and some of the weapons seemed to be IT+++ (just took us a long time to kill), but in general, they went down pretty fast, and we were getting really good exp from them as well. Elboron (BLU/DRK) started playing around with Last Resort, which is probably going to get him killed one of these days.

All three of the BLUs ended up learning Smite of Rage, which is a level 34 spell we may never use, but we so far we're insisting on being completists with our Blue Magic, so that was a nice bonus. Charcole, Itera, Elbo and Wendell all hit level 31, but Grym and Kiki hadn't used their Empress Bands (we'd used them earlier in the day on our BSTs), so we were left a bit shy of leveling when we called it a night.

After the party broke up, we headed to Qufim with Elboron and fought several giants there until we'd all learned Grand Slam (a level 30 spell). It only took us 4 giants to learn it, and I think two of those didn't actually use it before we'd killed them.

The next morning, Grym and Kiki headed to Meriphataud Mountains and learned Chaotic Eye from some coeurls, then Sound Blast from the Axe Beaks there. We were hoping to get to 31 as well, but started walking back to Jeuno and fought things along the way. A bit shy of our goal, with the Jeuno gate in sight, we spotted a Tough Goblin Pathfinder with his Beetle, and decided we'd try it. We rested for MP, buffed up, and killed the poor goblin so fast we were wondering why we'd even been at all concerned taking on a tough. We got our level, killed his beetle, then headed in to town.

Beastmasters: Quicksand Caves (Level 58 -> 59)

On Monday, we were hoping to level in Toraimarai Canal. Before we logged out Sunday night, we got ready for exp, including using our Empress Bands. This way the timer would be ready for us to use them again Monday afternoon. When we logged in, another BST was in the Canal. Ulegeurand Range didn't look like a good option until 59, so we decided to go try using the Sand Lizards to fight Anticans in Quicksand Caves.

We're not big fans of fighting Anticans, since they have some dangerous moves, and they can just take so long to kill. However, time flew by, and it was really a pretty decent camp. Most of the Anticans were VT, and the lizards ranged from DC to T. We'd usually charm and leave the tough lizards to try to convert them to DC or EM, but we fought them from time to time as well.

We had a couple of close calls with the BLM types. Kiki actually got killed by one, getting hit by Magnetite Cloud as we were running away to heal ourselves after taking two tier III -ga spells in a row, but Grym made it out to the desert and came back to raise Kiki. Another time we were left with 13 hp for Kiki and 28 hp for Grym. If I hadn't had TP for Rampage, we both would have been dead.

We liked the Rangers the best - they were pretty soft, and less annoying than the BLMs. The PLD we only fought once. It took forever to kill him, and was a waste of time. The WARs were harder to kill than the BLMs and RNGs, but we didn't avoid them.

After we hit 59, we stayed for another 2k exp to get a safe buffer, and headed off for the night.

Beastmasters: Level 57

Still Can't Find a Camp

On our search for a place to level at 57, we went to look at Toraimarai again. We deemed ourselves still too low for that, and headed to Garliage. Kiki ran down to the basement to assess the situation (too many people), and managed to get aggroed and swarmed by 5 sets of Citadel Bats on the stairway out. /sigh We headed to the Labyrinth of Onzozo, where Kiki soloed a DC cockatice to get the few points she needed to get her level back, and then we headed to our camp from the previous day. However, it was occupied by a duo leveling NPCs, so we headed back to a now seemingly empty Garliage, but there was an anonymous BLM57/BST using the same pets/prey as we needed, as well as a party hunting coffer keys killing other potential prey.

We ended up trying to fight a few pots, but they were damaging us a lot more than the pots we'd fought in Fei'Yin and Pso'Xja, so we gave that up (turns out Spinning Attack is a frontal AOE, and we might have had better luck if we hadn't been on the same side of the pots as our pets).

Pso'Xja (Level 57 -> 58 )

We made the long trek to Beaucidine, and went back (inside) (blue bracelet) (building) in Pso'Xja and spent hours (over two days) charming bats and lizards and diremites, fighting lizards, diremites, pots, cryptonberries and gargoyles. There was a real treasure chest near us (Pso'Xja is filled with fake treasure chests, just waiting to eat unsuspecting treasure hunters), but unfortunately, we didn't get a single key in the 16K exp we gained there. Half of what we were fighting were key droppers too. Throat Stab was a little hard on our pets, but we took extra care to not pull hate when fighting the Cryptonberries so we weren't on the receiving end ourselves.

We left Pso'Xja at level 58, without a buffer, and ran to Windurst to get our Beast Jackcoats out of storage, then stood around admiring ourselves for awhile before getting ready for the Ninja Blues static on Saturday night.

Beastmasters: Levels 55 and 56

Level 55 - All Over the Place

Level 55 seems to be one of those levels that's pretty hard to find a good camp. We started out in the basement of Garliage Citadel, but there were just too many people. Next we headed to Pso'Xja and dropped down behind the blue door where we used bats to fight pots, but we weren't thrilled with it. We did learn Rampage here though, and that was very exciting. It makes it a lot safer for us to get rid of the last thread of a mob's HP after we release our pets.

By this time, Garliage seemed to have emptied out, so we went back there and actually managed to fight a few hellmines with funnel bats, but a BST58 camped right on top of us and spoiled our fun, so we left for the day.

The next day we headed to the Labyrinth of Onzozo, and had a decent time fighing Flying Mantas with scorpions, at least until a mischarm and a link ended up getting us killed. We headed back to the basement of Garliage Citadel, and had a pretty good time there until it was time for us to get ready for a BCNM with Itera. There was a party fighting the beetles, so we didn't have to worry about aggro from those, and we had plenty of bats to use as pets on the Hellmines.

Behind Banishing Gate #2 (55->56)

We had been hoping for coffer keys while we'd been fighting in the basement, but didn't get any. So I decided we had to get people to help us get back behind Banishing Gate #2, and we would stay there until we both got our coffers for our level 56 Beast Helm Artifact Armor. Demin volunteered and brought Ijin along to help open the two gates, and we happily settled in. I joked about staying back there until we hit level 58, and I might have even meant it at the time.

We were a bit distressed at first when we discovered there were no bats back there, and the beetles were all level 56 or higher, but we managed to aggro the Acid Greases through the Banishing Gate, and when they came through the gate to attack us, we'd charm them and used them to fight beetles until we hit 56.

Once we hit 56, there were some even match beetles, which we would use to fight tough beetles and hellmines. The exp from the hellmines was pretty nice, even with the pet penalty. It seems like a lazy way to fight though, having two beetles hitting a bomb until they kill it or it self-destructs, as we stand back and simply watch. A coffer appeared on the stairs near where we were camping, and when a key finally dropped, it went to Grym. She ran up to the coffer, opened it up, and got her Beast Helm.

The next coffer showed up in the alcove behind an IT Tainted Flesh, which I didn't want to have any part of. However, a second key dropped, and being a bit bored (?!) with the Hellmines, I decided I could send a pet in to fight the Tainted Flesh, get my coffer, and we would warp out using our Treat Staff IIs. Another option would have been to get to a safe spot and log out, but I was afraid the pet wouldn't last long enough and we'd end up getting killed. So we equipped our staves, waited for the timer to count down on them, and I charmed a beetle, sent it to fight the Tainted Flesh, ran behind, opened the coffer and got my Beast Helm, then used my staff to warp out, while Grym did the same. Apparently using a warp item generates a lot of hate, as the Tainted Flesh turned around and hit me twice, hard, before turning back to the beetle. I made it out alive, and we happily ran around Windurst with our fuzzy helms on.

Wishing We'd Stayed Behind the Gate (Level 56)

We did a lot of running around after leaving the peace and quiet behind Banishing Gate #2, making me rue my decision to leave when getting my coffer. We went to check out Quicksand Caves (the entrance in the extreme southwest corner of West Altepa Desert (off-map)), but the lizards there were all tough. Next we headed to Toraimarai Canal, where Grym somehow got swarmed by a zillion leeches, but I managed to run away and avoided death.

We ended up back in the Oubliette for a bit of exp before we headed to bed for the night.

The next day, we got to level 57 fighting tough birds and anticans in Western Altepa, using scorpions and cactuars as pets. It was a bit slow, but pretty safe, and it sure was fun having cactuars shred the giant birds for 1250 points with 1000 Needles. After we hit level 57, we decided to check Quicksand Caves again (we were still too low), and Grym got jumped by an Antican that we swear was nowhere near her when she started recasting sneak. She soloed for awhile back in West Altepa to regain her level and get caught back up to Kiki and we continued our search for a level 57 camp.

Beastmasters: Levels 53-54

The lack of blog updates over the past week and a half was due to the fact I was on vacation, and as usually happens while on vacation, I didn't have time to write entries (I usually write on the train while commuting). Grym and I spent a lot of time leveling our BSTs in various spots around Vana'diel. We really prefer the spots way off the beaten track, where no one else comes along to take either our pets or our prey, and we were pretty successful in finding such spots at times. We'd do a search on all the BSTs from 50-60, see where they were, then would do searches on the areas where the BSTs weren't, to make sure they weren't overrun with parties or other people farming or leveling NPCs (this was pretty hard to tell at times though).

Working together as a duo certainly makes BST a lot safer than it would be solo, and we really have a lot of fun with it. It's really nice when we can get a good chunk of time where we can level BST and feel like we're making progress.

Sea Serpent Grotto (Level 53)

At level 53, we headed to Sea Serpent Grotto, behind the Mythril Door. Here we mostly used leeches against Sahagins, with a crab thrown into the mix from time to time. Then Grym pulled a sahagin with a funny name, and I said, "An NM? Can we handle it?" He replied, "An NM?!". It was Myuu the Waverider, and we decided we couldn't handle him, and logged out while our pets were keeping him busy. Fortunately the 30 second logout timer wasn't too long for our pets, and we got out safely. When we logged back in a minute later, we decided that if we were going to stay there, we'd have to kill the NM so it wouldn't bother us. So we snuck back to Norg, switched to our PLD and THF, and went back to take out Myuu. It was a tougher fight than we'd anticipated, and would definitely have ended up in our BSTs deaths had we tried to fight him. We killed him but didn't get the polearm he drops. After finding a coffer to use one of the keys we'd got, we headed back to Norg and decided to seek out a new hunting ground rather than continue with the Sahagins.

Bostaunieux Oubliette (Level 53)

We ended up heading to the sewers under San d'Oria, where we used Dark Aspics to fight Werebats. We decided to take the exp cut by having pets, and used our two hour on the Dark Aspics to keep them charmed for a full 30 minutes, and makes them tougher as well. They really tore through the bats, and the exp piled up. I had a lot of work interruptions that day, so it actually worked out pretty well - we'd fight for half an hour, I'd do some work, and our two hours would be back, and we'd repeat the process. We made it to level 54 before calling it a night there.

Bostaunieux Oubliette (Level 54)

We headed back into the sewers, but ran into an anonymous NIN55/BST27 at the Ronfaure zone. He asked to team up with us, and we decided to give it a try, but it was really a miserable failure. He pulled hate off of the pets and we had to blow through our limited MP curing him, and we ended up with blood aggro and deaths. After our second homepoint, we gave up the experiment. If we hadn't been using our Empress Bands, we would have had an exp loss for the 90 minutes of experimentation.

A few hours later, the NIN was off in Whitegate looking for a normie party, so we headed back into the Oubliette and had a pretty easy time getting to Level 55.

Notorious Monsters: Goblin Wolfman

For ages, the mystery of how to acquire the Parade Gorget had stumped most of the Paladins and Dark Knights of Vana'diel. It was rumored to drop from the Goblin Wolfman, but people didn't know how to spawn it, other than knowing you had to trade a drink of some sort to the "Scrawled Writing" that would pop up in Oldton Movalpolis. Theories ran from a bottle of Movalpolis Water (obtainable only when a country has control of the Movalpolis region, which hasn't happened for two years on Lakshmi), to cursed beverages.

So last month, the game developers leaked the secret to the masses. What was needed was a Goblin Drink, and they gave away most of the recipe, and everyone rejoiced.

The recipe contains cheap, easy-to-get items, and though it is above the skill level of Qiara, it's not so far as to be undoable for her. Kiki set off to Carpenters' Landing with a stack of Shell Bugs (damn the tree cutting nerf!) and fished up 8 Phanauet Newts, and met Qiara back in Windurst. Qiara had a lot of breaks on the synths (and no skill ups), and Kiki ended up with 5 bottles of Goblin Drink.

Grym and Kiki headed off to Oldton Movalpolis to see where the spawn points were and didn't plan to actually be able to spawn the goblin themselves, since the area was fairly crowded, but we did get to see someone else spawn and fight the Goblin. He was a level 73 Paladin and didn't have much trouble killing the monster.

Over the past week or so, we kept an eye on Oldton, and finally on Monday night, the place was nearly empty. We headed there, and sure enough, there was the "Scrawled Writing", just waiting for us. I traded a bottle of Goblin Drink to the spot, felt a chill run down my spine, and suddenly the Goblin Wolfman appeared. It was a pretty easy fight (as it should be for 2 level 75s fight a monster that's around level 55), but I did take quite a bit of damage when he used Blood Weapon. We killed him, and I got my Parade Gorget! Now I can get 2 MP per tick as long as my HP stays above 75% of my base HP. This will be especially handy for my DRK when I get that to 50, since DRK doesn't have a native autorefresh like PLD.