The Tarutaru Times Online

Wyred of Odin has built a blog indexing application for the FFXI blogging community, which seems like a really nice way to keep track of other bloggers' activity. You can find it at: The Tarutaru Times Online. I saw that many of my favorite bloggers are already participating, and have updated my links in the sidebar here to remove the direct links to the blogs that are also on TTTO. This isn't meant to show I don't love you all dearly still, just to help encourage people to join the Times. :-)

Maybe I'll even get back to posting more regularly again...

Missions: Legacy of the Lost (ToAU 35)

The update two weeks ago added, amongst other things, the continuation of the Treasures of Aht Urhgan mission series (Missions 33-38). Once again, the missions were mostly cutscenes, but there was one rather annoying BC fight for Mission 35 (Legacy of the Lost). ClanBEB decided to tackle it en masse that Saturday. We ended up with 8 people, so we did it in two bunches.

This BC takes place in Talacca Cove, but you get warped right there from a cutscene at the cutter for the Black Coffin, which was a bit of a surprise. It's not like Square-Enix to give us a short cut when they could make us walk through zones infested with true sight monsters instead.

We've been set up to fight our old ally, Ghesso, and he's got a few annoying tricks up his sleeve, and it took us awhile to work out a strategy to defeat him. Our first crew had Kiki (PLD), Goto (WHM), Ryken (MNK), Diasuke (RDM), Yobun (MNK, and Lucrezia (THF). I don't know how many times we fought him before we finally won, 4 or 5 I'd guess, but what finally worked for us was to completely ignore his shadows, and have them all hitting me, since with Phalanx II from Diasuke, they were hitting me for less than 10 damage each. We also disengaged from attacking him to keep from feeding him TP for his TP moves, since each of his shadows would do one at the same time.

On our other attempts, various things went wrong, like Goto getting hate from all the shadows when they popped and quickly being defeated (I guess Goto had hit me with a Cure IV just as Ghesso was activating them). Mijin Gakure was also a big pain, especially when his shadows were out.

After our win, we got our cutscene and ran back to the starting point. We swapped out Yobun for Anastasia's BLM, and Diasuke for Ranzz's BRD, but two runs with this group didn't work so well, so we swapped Lucrezia out to get Diasuke back in - Phalanx II really seemed to make a big difference. That worked, and we were done for the day.

One of the things that was different with Ana in the group was that Ghesso warped around as hate shifted. With an all-melee group for the first rounds, he hadn't done that at all. It took us by surprise the first time that it happened, and led to our first failure with the second group.

We headed back to Whitegate for a final cutscene with Naja, and now we wait again until the next update for more missions!

New titles: Salaheem's Risk Assessor, Treasure Trove Tender, Ghesso's Mercy, Emissary of the Empress

Missions: Revisiting CoP

Over the past few months, and especially the last few weeks, Venn's been making a concerted effort to shepherd more members of The Ultimates through the CoP missions. We should have a new crop ready for Limbus before our run this Thursday, which will be nice. I've been helping out where I can, but since most of the activity has been taking place late on work nights, I haven't been able to help on a lot of them.

We've made a couple Tenzen runs for people who have just needed that last mission to get Sea, and they were both for one person each time (Goto, who's already quit TU, and Tye). It's really kind of fun to go beat up Tenzen, just as it was the first time. The melee with the biggest e-peen always pulls hate just before Tenzen lets loose with his first weapon skill, killing that run's Mr. Bigshot with a hit for 2800 damage. The rest of us continue on and Tenzen gives up quickly, and the happy person needing the mission finds himself in Sea after a cutscene. This was before the recent update that made a lot of the CoP missions easier, including the Tenzen fight. I don't know why they made Tenzen easier - we've never had any trouble with it.

I helped a group farming Hippogryph feathers in Riverne B last month, and that was rather fun. We had Venn (DRG), Ryken (MNK), Reefermadness (BLM), Albany (WHM), and Uvela (SMN). I've always done feather farming in Riverne A, usually just the easy ones near the entrance. We were getting great limit points on the Stratus Hippogryphs in B though, better than some of my merit parties in Bhaflau Thickets have been!

A couple of weeks ago, I helped on CoP 4-2 for Jarbit and Frostwitch. I went as PLD, and we had 3 BLMs (Jarbit, Neborin, Darsonavin), with Frostwitch on RDM and Albany on RNG. We decided to just head to Monarch Linn without mistmelts and do a dry run before farming for feathers (again, this was before the recent update which made the items available on the AH). We actually ended up doing 3 runs, and winning on the third. We went through a few variations of sleeping and nuking and kiting and fighting in the tunnel, but here's what finally worked, and worked so well it was quite sad when I reflected how terribly hard this was for my static to win.

Albany had to go AFK suddenly and wasn't sure when he'd be back, so we decided to try it with just the five of us. I found this particular strategy on the FFXIclopedia, and it was just a bit different that what we'd been doing, but it was different enough to make it a cake walk. What we did was have me run in and start fighting Ouryu, with everyone helping fight and keep me healthy until Ouryu took to the air. Then the 3 BLMs cast Freeze at the same time, which did a lot of damage, and brought him to the ground right away. They then slept him and we rested until he woke up and took to the air again immediately. Once again, they cast Freeze, brought him down, slept him, and rested. We repeated this once or twice again, and he gave up. I had disengaged as soon as he took flight the first time, and spent the rest of the battle doing whatever I could to keep his attention on me and not the BLMs.

Later that same night, Venn and Goto and I helped a big group with CoP 4-3 in Sacrarium. We already had the keys needed to open the door with two locks that leads to the Reliquiarium, so we didn't need to fight any Fomor or Keremet. Everyone had cleared hate on the way to Sacrarium, so aggro wasn't an issue from them, but someone had the bright idea to just fight our way through the maze. Blood aggro in there with all the undead isn't pretty. We also fought the Teratotaurs along the way, since we had such a big group. We finally got to the Reliquiarium for everyone to get their cutscene, and we left Venn behind the door and set out to check the classrooms and find the old Professor's ghost.

Since we didn't have Fomor hate, we opted to fight in the classroom, which would help minimize the time wasted when the ghost warps around. In hindsight, that may not have the best decision. Somehow Ryken hit one of the Fomor on a weaponskill just as the ghost warped away (autotarget? I don't know). So after we finished off the ghost, we had to take care of that Fomoor. I was hoping one wouldn't give us enough hate to aggro the others, but indeed it did. We had to kill two more Fomor that jumped on us, and then had to use Sneak to get back to where Venn was waiting and everyone could complete the mission.

I feel bad that people missed out on the "fun" of fighting Keremet, but it does make the mission quicker and safer to use the key that someone else had hung onto from when they did the mission.

Assault: Sergeant Kiki

We're still keeping up with the weekly ClanBEB assaults, and there are always a few assault runs before Salvage on Fridays too, so I'm making progress in the ranks, despite having few unique assaults. For the pre-Salvage assaults, I somehow have manage to end up in a trio doing Golden Salvage, with one or two Summoners. This means I stand near where the Rune of Release will pop when one of the Summoners finds the right chest. I feel pretty useless, but it gives me time to get some hi-potions out of my hi-potion tank, and the points are really nice (1100/run).

For the BEB runs, we'd been working on getting Ryken to rank up so we could start in on the higher level ones. We started out with Imperial Agent Rescue, moved on to Seagull Grounded, and then Orichalcum Survey. Ana and Yobun got Ryken through Golden Salvage and Excavation Duty, so he was able to get to PFC in less than a week.

The next week we snuck in an SP - Saving Private Ryaaf - without Ryken, then did Lamia No.13, followed by Preemptive Strike. People were short on tags, so we had a small crew on Orichalcum Survey, cutting it close, but pulled out a win.

The next week we were a bit short-handed again, so we did 4 repeats of the mining for Ryken. He was finally able to Rank up to SP, so we were looking forward to starting in on SP assaults the next week.

On Friday June 8th, Anastasia and Yobun were up for some assaults after my Salvage run, so we decided we'd give the Corporal level assault The Double Agent a try. This was really kind of fun. You headed into a Mamool Ja Training Ground area, and have to question the Qiqirn NPCs to discover which one is a traitor, and "capture" him for the win. Your points are based on how many times you try capture the wrong Qiqirn - the more mistakes you make, the fewer points you get. There are several Puks in the area that are hard to avoid, so you do need to fight a couple of them, but they're pretty weak. We ended up doing this one twice, and that gave me enough points to be able to pick up the quest for my promotion to Sergeant.

The quest for the promotion has you acting as a "dectective" to help a Qiqirn perfumer find her former teacher. There are several cutscenes in Whitegate, and you need to give a Qiqirn a Sutlac in Nashmau and then head out into Caedarva Mire for a cutscene. Other than the traveling around, it's a pretty simple quest. Since we were doing ToAU Mission 35, I was able to travel once for both the quest and the mission, so it worked out quite well for me.

So Erock decided to come back to the game, after over a year of absence. We're all thrilled to have him back, but of course this means we've got another person needing to rank up for assault, so it's back to basics again! We used up his three tags last Monday with Seagull Grounded, Imperial Agent Rescue (all three gates were broken down with thrown weapons! that was a first for us), and Excavation Duty. That sure goes fast when you've got 3 hasted Monks beating on the walls. We were able to get our three walls down at exactly the same time it took Ana to nuke her one wall. Usually the BLM finishes first.

After that, Yobun, Itera, Ana and I tried Building Bridges. This one is a bit annoying, but there's no risk of death either, so it could be pretty fun (though if we lose too much, it will be a waste of assault tags). This has a 15 minute time limit, and you have to make your way to four switches in the north, south, east, west rooms of the Periqia map. Once you've hit all the switches, a bridge appears to access the final point in the central room. Making this complicated are the Lamia NPCs patrolling the tunnels. If they spot you and are able to "catch" you, you get warped back to the starting point. I found them very hard to avoid, and never made it to a switch room. We ended up with 3 of the 4 switches flipped when the time ran out.

It will be fun trying all the new ones as we get Erock and Ryken higher in the ranks, but it the mean time, it's fun doing the repeaters. I feel kind of sorry for them as we drag them through the early assaults, without really explaining anything to them as we go, other than the minimum instruction to get them to do their part ("take off all your subtle blow gear and your weapons", "follow Kiki", "stand there").

New title: Sergeant

Besieged: Level 8!

Last week's update brought us, amongst other things, Level 8 Besiegeds. I've continued to participate in Besieged when I can, but with my schedule so full these days, I haven't been to very many. Lakshmi remains undefeated (741 wins as of June 12th), but there was a weird bug in May that reset our record back to 0. Fortunately they were able to fix the bug and restore our record, but for a few days there, the level 1 Besiegeds were a bit of a joke.

When I got logged in after the update, I saw that the Undead Swarm would be attacking after my bed time, but I wanted to stay up and see what it was like. I wasn't the only one, as Al Zahbi had reached its limit of 700 people nearly an hour before the Undead Swarm arrived.

We were hoping for a challenge, and we weren't disappointed. They arrived in greater numbers than they had previously, with several new NMs. The Nemean Lion was particularly nasty, and seemed to be able to kill people at the other side of the Parade, though perhaps that was just a lag problem. Lamia No. 2 made her way to the Whitegate zone, and stood there picking off all the weakened people "hiding" in the corners.

Things were going really rough, and many of us feared we'd finally lose a Besieged. After about an hour, we'd lost 3 of the generals. My PS2 froze, and I had to power cycle it, and by the time I got back into Al Zahbi, we'd lost the other 2 generals. Somehow we managed to get the Undead to retreat, but I got Doomed and died 2 seconds before they warped out. So no limit points for Kiki, but others got over 1800 points.

The Trolls were building their forces when I went to bed, but I heard that several alliances of people swarm Ilrusi Atoll and rescued all of the prisoners before the Trolls arrived. Both the Trolls and then the Mamools were relatively easily repelled. The Undead Swarm always seem so much harder to beat.

Limbus: Milestone

One of the many changes that is supposed to be in the update scheduled for tomorrow is an "adjustment" to the Limbus entrance fee, which has been 50,000 gil since it was introduced. People have been complaining about this for quite awhile, but especially recently, since you've actually got to work pretty hard to make gil in today's economy. It's never really been a big issue for me, since Grym and I were misers for so very long, but I have been feeling the impact of a negative cash flow.

Last week marked my 40th Limbus run - I've spent 2,000,000 gil in entrance fees. That seems like a lot of gil, but look at all the goodies I've got for that money: 144 ancient beastcoins, 3 white rivets, and 2 chunks of snowy cermet. These I've used to get some pretty nifty pieces of gear: a Boxer's Mantle (75 ABCs), upgraded AF feet (20 ABCs, white rivet, and snowy cermet), and upgraded AF pants (20 ABCs, white rivet, and snowy cermet). And I have 29 ABCs that will be going towards a Brutal Earring as soon as I have 75 of them.

The Boxer's Mantle is unique, and gives me +10 to 2 of my important combat skills: Shield and Parry. It also boosts evasion and guard skills, but PLDs evade like a brick, and have no guard skill, but it would be useful for other jobs. I use it pretty much all the time I'm straight tanking now, and use High Breath Mantles when I need more enmity.

The upgraded boots are the best boots in the game for a shield-tanking PLD. Period.

The upgraded pants were a bit of a stretch perhaps, but they are better than what I had. I do hope to replace them with better ones in the coming months, but in the meantime, I like them.

So I've got 3 pieces of gear that add to my collection of stuff to help me be a better tank, and I think they're worth more than the gil I've spent to get them.

Best of all though, I've had a lot of fun in Limbus. I wish we had enough people to fight Proto-Omega and Proto-Ultima regularly, and start getting people decked out in Homam and Nashira gear, but perhaps with the TU people we've been helping work through the CoP missions and the "adjusted" fees, we'll start getting better turnouts for our Limbus runs.