Miscalculation on Floor 100

The best-laid schemes o' Mice an' Men, Gang aft agley -- Robert Burns

And gang agley they did on Monday night. We took Anastasia's disc from 81 to 100. The first three runs went very smoothly, even with an inadvertent sixth floor on the second run. It was an "eliminate all enemies" floor, but we managed to win and exit in time, so the extra tokens were nice.

Again we went with our "new" line up of SAMx2, PLD, THF, RDM, BLM. As we prepared for our run up to Floor 100, we discussed when Ana should warp out, and reinforced that we could not kill the boss before Ana left the zone, otherwise her disc would be erased, making it useless for farming boss levels.

Since Ana was warping out, I got the armband for Assault command for the extra tokens, and we headed in. We bought our items from the vending box, and Ana took us to Floor 96. It was a horrible level - another "eliminate all enemies" level, with Psycheflayers and NMs. The next 3 levels weren't so bad though, and we hit Floor 100 at 8 minutes. We were so happy to see Khimaira there instead of Cerberus.

We buffed up, and started in on the fight. It went a lot quicker than we expected, and Ana didn't quite make it out in time. Her warp spell had completed, but she was still in the zone the moment Khimaira died, wiping her disc clean. That was such a disappointment, since it means we only have my disc now, which is at Floor 60.

However, it was also a happy victory, as we got an Askar Zucchetto and the SMN weapon, Scepter Staff. Since Yobun's the only one of the group with SMN at 75, the weapon went to him. Luckily, I won the lot on the Askar Zucchetto, since I won't be able to be on Floor 100 for a win now for a long long time, since I'll be warping out before we beat the boss, missing any chance to lot on any treasure. And believe me, after losing Ana's disc, I'll be warping out pretty quickly too. :-)

It's a very nice helmet, with +4 to STR, DEX and VIT, along with decent defense and +4% Haste. It replaces both my Voyager Sallet and my Walahra Turban (except when I need +30 MP I suppose). I do lose 1% haste, but I think the benefits outweigh that. I'll have +17% from gear instead of 18%.

Our new plan is to get my disc to 100 and farm bosses while I have the tokens for it, then we're going to raise a "third" disc to 100, which will give me a chance at getting the PLD sword, Brave Blade. We debating whether to have Lucrezia carry the next disc, since presumably TH4 will still be active when she warps out, or to have Yobun carry it, making it possible do his twice. This way we can take advantage of his 11 jobs that are 75, and the 4 that are 66+, and target specific weapons. This works because if you have the runic key item from completing Floor 100 once, the next time you're up to Floor 100 on your disc, the weapon for your job that you entered with will drop. We'll have to see how our random luck is on weapons as we go along.

Orastery Woes

After finally getting Ground Strike, the quested weaponskill for great sword, in March, I've been working on raising my club skill to 230 so that I could pick up the quest for Black Halo, the quested club weaponskill. I used some of my Saturday afternoons and Tuesday evenings for this, which meant I neglected my Campaign duties, but with all the scheduled events I have, I don't have much time for all the other things I'd like to do, so I have to pick and choose.

I'd already had it around 168 from messing around with it over the years, so I started out with the handy Windurst Walls entrance to Toraimorai Canal. As PLD/RDM with phalanx and regen on, I could walk away from the game and leave Kiki fighting Impish Bats without me paying attention. One really nice thing about leveling club is that I still have my shield on, and shield skill really helps Paladins an awful lot.

The next skillup spot was the Robber Crabs on the lower level of the Boyahda Tree. These are still easy enough for phalanx/regen/not-really-paying-attention fighting, and have the very nice side benefit of dropping coffer keys. Every half hour or so, I could take a little break and run around looking for treasure coffers, netting 10-13k gil from each. :-)

After gettting club skill to around 200, I had to move up to the DC-T Steelshells on the top level, since my skill level was getting too high to get reasonable skillups on the Robber Crabs. It was no longer the carefree task it had been on easy mobs, especially when I had a Tough Steelshell to smack. In order to conserve crabs, I would fight the one at the zone to the Cloister of Storms, and I would zone when I had it down to a sliver of health. That way it would despawn when I zoned, and a replacement would repop within a minute. If I had killed it, it would be 16 minutes for the next spawn, and I would have to go find another crab to fight. If there are other groups working off latents, skilling up, or Beastmasters leveling, the Steelshells can get pretty scarce at times.

Depending on the level of the crabs, I'd either wear my DD gear or my "turtle" gear, and I'd keep Phalanx and Stoneskin up. Stoneskin would usually get used up about the time Flash was up, so it was relatively easy to get Stoneskin back up with the help of Flash. On Tough crabs, I'd usually end up using Chivarly in the middle of the fight to recover 400-465 MP, but it still was pretty easy fighting these.

One evening, a Mithra WAR/NIN when flying past me into the Cloister, with an angry Steelshell hot on her tail. She came back out just after her attacker despawns, and knelt to heal. I tossed a Cure IV on her as I was working on my own crab, and she asked to team up. I hesitated momentarily, since I don't like to spend my skillup time healing other people, but since she was working on club skill herself, it seemed likely I could hold hate, so I teamed up with her.

Turned out she was less than 1 point to cap on club, then switched to her great sword. She also neglected to mention that she'd wanted to work on parrying skillups as well, so instead of just having someone lightly rapping on "my" crab with a club, not interfering with the rythym that works so well for me soloing, I now had to deal with someone using provoke to pull hate off of me, along with berserked greatsword weaponskills. She didn't keep her shadows up either, and took so very much more damage than I did with phalanx up. So my last hour of "skillups" netted me 0.1 skillup and I spent most of my time curing her and resting for MP. She didn't even pull either. Nothing like being treated as though I was someone's personal Soothing Healer NPC... It was a good reminder of why I prefer solo skillups - or at least self-sufficient skillup partners.

On May 5th, I finally hit 230 in skill, and headed back to Windurst to pick up the Orastery Woes quest and get my Club of Trials from Kuroido-Moido. I figured it was best for me to try to fight things that would give me club skillups (PLDs have an A- skill in club, which caps at 269), and since I needed an 108-Knot Quipu from DC Yagudos in Sauromogue Champaign [S] (for the quest, Knot Quite There), I decided to give that a try. It took me a couple of sessions, but I finally got the drop, and had some skillups and plenty of weaponskills in the meantime. The BLM Yagudos there are a bit deadly, but there's a handy Pixie patrolling the area, which helped a lot when I was fighting those.

Since the Steelshells are so much easier to solo, I finished off both my trial club's latent and capped my club skill over another three days in the Boyahda Tree. I even had Balu-Falu join me for a bit. The Haste was certainly handy, and he needs to get some exp once in awhile. I teamed up briefly with a NIN/DNC who had 4 levels to go on getting her Dagger skill to 230 to pick up the quest for Evisceration. She and I were a compatible duo, and both benefited from the other's abilities, so teaming up isn't always a bad thing...

I finished my trial weapon before I capped club skill, which surprised me. I also thought I was keeping good track of the points, but I was off by about 30. Maybe my skillchains with Balu-Falu counted. I headed back to Windurst, and turned in my Club of Trials, and asked the linkshell for help with the WSNM - Eldhrimnir, a magic pot in Ro'Maeve.

Serenity, Ranzz and Erock offered to help me, so we met up in the Sanctuary of Zi'Tah, Serenity as SMN/WHM, Ranzz as RDM/WHM, Erock as WAR/NIN, and me as PLD/WAR. We made our way to the SE corner of Ro'Maeve, and killed an Apocalyptic Weapon that was near the spawn point for Eldhrimnir. I ran over and touched the ??? spot, and the pot spawned and I ran back to the group. We killed it fairly quickly, though we did aggro a Cursed Puppet in the process. While the others killed that, I ran back to check the ??? spot and obtained the Annals of Truth for Kuroido-Moido.

I hurried back to Windurst to complete the quest, and thanks to my helpers, I can now use Black Halo. It seems to be quite powerful, and as with all of the quested weaponskills, it has a more interesting animation than the "normal" ones. Kiki does a cute little spin as she gets in her extra hits with the club. I'm still not sure how much I'm really going to be using it, but I like having the ability there for when it makes sense to use it.

The Investigation Continues

I'm still really enjoying our Nyzul Isle Investigation static. It's definitely the most fun I have in the game these days. The static has solidified, with Daden joining us as our sixth. He usually brings his SAM, with Yobun using DRG/RDM for climbing runs and BRD/WHM for boss runs. We've currently got Ana's disc up through floor 80, and mine up through floor 60. We've done a lot of farming on the 20th and 40th floors, but still need to get more gear for Daden and Yobun on those floors.

We've been doing pretty well on our drop rate on the bosses, at least comparing notes with other people. For boss fights we've actually won, our drops have been 9/10 on floor 20, 5/11 on floor 40, 2/2 on floor 60, and 1/1 on floor 80. We haven't had much luck with the ??? items from all the NMs we've encountered though, with only two that are the real items, and those two being somewhat useless - an Elemental Charm and a Malflame Ring.

Our plan of alternating climbing and farming on two discs isn't really working out so well token-wise, so it's likely we'll level a third disc to take care of farming on 20 and 40 at least. Last week, we had a set of really bad runs. It was our first attempts at floor 80, and we had a lot of really tough levels thrown at us - eliminate all Psycheflayers, eliminate all enemies with lots of NMs, charming frog leaders, and so on. So we ended up exiting on floor 78 twice, and made it to 80 twice. Both times we hit floor 80, we found Cerberus waiting for us. The first time we had less than 7 minutes, and had him down to a sliver when we timed out. We just couldn't get through his stoneskin fast enough. The second time, we had 10 minutes, but had the same end result, only with a couple of deaths this time.

So this week, we had Yobun come as SAM instead of BRD, and quickly made it up to the 80th floor. This time we faced the Hydra, and it was a pretty quick fight. Ana now has a Goliard Saio added to her collection of gear. We decided to spend our other 3 runs getting Kiki's disc higher, and had three really good runs, ending up with Khimaira on the 60th floor, and a set of Denali Wristbands for Lucrezia as our reward.

Things got pretty exciting on one of the climbing runs, a "kill all the Poroggo Gents" floors, with tons of undead to be slept and no BRD to sleep them. We got a bit overwhelmed, lost both Ana's BLM and Erock's RDM, and ended up destroying a gear we weren't supposed to and lost weaponskills as a result. We managed to complete the level with under a minute for someone to rush to the Rune of Transfer and get us out for the win. It was sure nice having 4 successful runs, with 2 boss drops in the mix, after last week's disappointments.

We're keeping up with Requiem of Sin before our Assaults, but haven't seen X's Knife yet. We did get a second scythe though, so my Mithra mannequin is hanging on to that for the day my DRK hits 72. /roflmao Since Daylight Savings Time went into effect, Anastasia's three hours behind those of us in the Eastern time zone (Ana's in Arizona, which doesn't do DST), and can't ditch out of work early enough to help out on the BC, so we recruited Daden to join us. That's been working out quite well, but one day I'd like to see Lucrezia get X's Knife from the treasure box.

As an aside, I finally capped my parrying skill on March 31, getting the final skill up against the Sin Hunters. I still can't believe it took nearly two years of tanking pretty much daily as a PLD75 to get that skill capped.

Up in Arms

Vawn and Yobun have both been sitting on stacks and stacks of Beastmen Seals with all the leveling they'd done for their Maat's cap, and Vawn decided he'd try to get a Kraken Club from the level 60 BCNM Up in Arms. He did a few with various people, and since I had quite a few seals myself, I joined him and Yobun for a total of 27 runs so far (9 orbs from each of us). For this BC, you have 15 minutes to kill Fe'e, a Kraken.

We used a burn strategy, with both Vawn and Yobun as BLM60/WHM30, while I dusted off my RDM gear and went as RDM60/BLM30. I even updated my gear a bit, since I never did get any level 60 gear, since I stopped leveling it at 60 over 2 years ago. I added an Enlightened Chain for more INT than my Black Neckerchief, and a Bugard Strap +1, for a point of INT and MND while using staves. It was still weird seeing Kiki dressed up as a RDM, with her pimp hat. I suppose I'll never get used to that.

They would start the fight with one of their AM spells, then rest for mp and cycle through the elements, while I would sleep Fe'e, and try to keep it bound and gravitied, and keep everyone Refreshed. It was really pretty easy, though we did have a bit of trouble on one of the fights and Vawn actually got killed. We recovered well though and still won.

We didn't get any Kraken Clubs (and Vawn was on 51 runs total and never saw one drop), but the treasure boxes always yielded stuff that was worth at least 50k gil, selling to NPCs, so it wasn't a bad way to use up a bunch of seals, though a Kraken Club sure would have been nice. If I had won one, I'd probably have used it to cap my club skill, then try to sell it and put the gil towards my Aegis pipe-dream.

I still have enough for 3 more orbs, but I'm not sure if we will be doing more runs soon or not, since Vawn's used up all of his seals at this point.

The Shield of Dreams

"If you build it...", oh wait, that's something else entirely.

Lately, I've been day-dreaming quite a bit about the ultimate shield of FFXI, the Aegis, and entertaining thoughts of actually attempting to acquire one. I've always "wanted" an Aegis, with its incredible damage reduction properties and massive Shield Bash damage, but it just seemed so impossibly unattainable, especially for a Taru who said she was never going to do anything in end-game.

However, since I've acquired so many nice things for my Paladin over the past year and a half of Dynamis and Limbus and "end-game lite" events like Nyzul Isle, things I never thought I'd ever have, my wish list is getting awfully short. So I've started considering maybe, just maybe, I could indeed one day wield an Aegis. (Does one wield a shield? Or simply wear it? Since you can bash things with it, I'm going to go with wield...)

Here are the cold, hard facts on what I need for an Aegis:

12,500 Ordelles Bronzepieces
2,500 Tukuku Whiteshells
2,500 Byne Bills
Relic Shield (x2, since I need one to pop Almatheia)
Bulwark Shield x2
Almatheia Leather
Orichalcum Sheet
Ancient Lumber
Buckler
Round Shield
Koenig Shield
Attestation of Invulnerability
Shard of Necropsyche
Supernal Fragment

I've kept a relic shield in my mog safe for months, after having dropped several that auto-lotted to me during various Dynamis-Jeuno runs. I'd been saving my bronzepieces for over a year, to use for relic upgrades, but until a month or so ago, I'd sell off the whiteshells and bills for the gil. I currently have about 135 bronzepieces, and 25-30 of shells and bills. I also hung onto a Shard of Necrophyte that auto-lotted to me in Dynamis-Xarcabard (we normally pass those if we're not working on a relic, but some times it's too hectic to remember), rather than NPCing it for the gil.

Recently, we've been going after attestations for people on every Dynamis-Beaucedine run, since there are several people at, or close to, the point of needing them (for the level four upgrade of their relic weapon). In mid-April, we hit the NM that drops the attestations for sword, great sword, great axe and shield, hoping for a great axe one for Fliggity, but instead we got an Attestation of Glory (for the sword Excalibur) and an Attestation of Invulnerability for the shield. I guess I'm the only PLD in the shell with such a crazy dream, and I lotted on the Attestation. So it sits next to the Relic Shield in my mog safe, taunting me.

Now I find myself wondering how in the world I'm going to come up with the 85-100 million gil I'll need to turn this daydream into a reality. It really seems impossible with the way I'm currently playing the game. I'd pretty much have to stop doing anything other than working on earning gil for the currency. I'd probably be so sick of it that I'd want to quit as soon as I got the silly thing. It's really something I should have decided on years ago.

Some Dynamis linkshells allow sponsorships, where the sponsor pays the million gil for the hourglass and gets to keep all of the currency that drops. In the city zones, this can be a really good deal, with 300-900 pieces dropping per run. On the open market, currency will run you 4k-9k a piece, depending on the type. TheUltimates doesn't allow sponsorship though, so that would be out of the question.

Then a week ago, along came something to add fuel to my daydream's fire: the announcement of the Mogbonanza lottery, in honour of the 6th anniversary of FFXI. The top prize is 100 million gil (or the choice of quite a few very nice, very difficult to obtain items like the Salvage body pieces and HQ abjuration bodies). That would certainly change things. If I did win that (1/100,000 chance for each of the 120 entries I'll be getting), it would still take me months to accumulate the currency, but at least I wouldn't have any worries about the money!

Scolded

I'd been spending too much time working on my club skill over the past few weeks and not enough time participating in Campaign battles, and was in danger of losing my Holyknight Emblem. I managed to do enough Campaign battles last week to retain it though, and got it renewed for another 30 days.

I sure didn't like being scolded though. I don't like being a disappointment!

I'm trying to maintain my medal so I can be ready to rank up as soon as they add more ranks, which will hopefully be in June, with the next version update. I'm really hoping they add more Iron Ram gear to go with the Sallet and Dastanas I got with the last update, and it would be fun to get it as soon as it was available, if possible.

There's some talk on the internet about the possible stats on the body armor, based on people supposedly finding a DAT file for it. I'd talked about the gear in general when the hands/head pieces came out with Draden and Lumikumi, and based on the stats compared to the Valor set, we speculated that the Iron Ram body piece would probably have a bit more HP and Enmity than Valor, with a Magic Damage Bonus, but that just seemed too good, since it would be a better full-time piece than the Valor Surcoat, which is really pretty hard for most PLDs to acquire.

However, the scavenged stats do indeed seem to bear that out, though the "bit more HP" is actually more than double - the rumour is that it will have +50HP compared to the +23HP on the Valor. I still can't believe that they'd basically give this away. It's just too good. Time will tell though, and I want to be ready to get it when it's there.

Yes, I understand that amassing Allied Notes and gaining ranks in Campaign does require a lot of time and Campaign participation, but it's so easy to do all by yourself, and what with the popularity of Campaign with PLDs, there are undoubtedly many in the same position I am (top medal with lots of Allied Notes available). Plus that's all just a side benefit of the real reason I participate in Campaign - to save the world and regain lost exp and build up merit points! To get relic gear, you're paying money for your share of the hourglass, dying countless times over the months and months required to get your relics, losing exp in the process, and no benefit besides the gear for yourself and others. Not to mention there's no guarantee that your relic will drop, or that you will win it if it does. Buying better gear with Allied Notes that I get while saving the world and gaining exp just seems so easy!

If the stats on this do prove to be true, my cherished Valor Surcoat will become merely a piece to macro in for Cover. That makes me a bit sad, but I think I'll get over it.

Seeing Ghosts from the Past

Two weeks ago, on a Tuesday evening, my only free evening of the week, I got myself ready to head off to the Boyahda Tree to work on club skillups. I was in Whitegate, having gone to bed there after our Nyzul runs the previous evening, and I popped out of the moghouse to drop stuff off at the Delivery service and Auction House before warping to Windurst. Suddenly I see "Elboron waves to Tsakiki." O.o! o.O! Elboron! He really came back!

It'd been over 14 months since he last played, quitting after we completed CoP, just like Grymalkyn and Wendell. He'd been talking about coming back from time to time, but I'd given up on ever seeing him again. But he proved me wrong. He'd installed the Wings of the Goddess expansion, so I spent the next few hours running around in the past with him. I hope he didn't feel too rushed as I dragged him all over the place and got him to enlist with the Cobra Unit Mercenaries in Windurst.

It was a lot of fun, especially fighting the NM Coeurl in Fort Karugo-Narugo. I'd gone as PLD/DNC and with his BRD/WHM we had no troubles beating the cat that slaughters so many hapless solo players.

However, I'm starting to think I imagined this all. I haven't seen him back in-game since then...

Since my schedule is so filled with my various group events, I don't have a lot of time to do stuff with him, and I'm not sure if he's either interested in joining any of the activities I do, or if his schedule is regular enough to do so even if he was interested. But it's great to see him playing again.

There seems to be a sudden influx of returning people, as Splinte, Omnius, and Muirnin all have started playing again in the past few days.

"Who's Your Mommy!"

Has it really been a month since my last entry? Oh dear...

TheNewUltimates celebrated their second victory over Proto-Ultima a week ago Sunday. We went with the same mage-heavy set up:

PLD/NIN PLD/NIN NIN/DRK RDM/DRK BRD/WHM WHM/BLM
BLM/RDM BLM/RDM BLM/RDM RDM/DRK BRD/WHM SAM/RNG
SMN/WHM SMN/WHM COR/WHM RDM/DRK RDM/DRK WHM/BLM

I talked Ryken into coming as the other PLD/NIN, since he needs to use his Homam pants and boots more often. It's such a fun fight, probably my favorite in the game (especially when we win), so it wasn't too hard to convince him. He seemed a bit hesitant at first, but it could well get him to fall back in love with his PLD.

The fight went really smoothly, though we did have a handful of deaths through out the final 20%. All of the Dissipations were stunned, which saved us so much grief. Ryken's massive Galka HP kept him alive through two Citadel Busters, but he resisted less on his third one, and did end up dying. I was hit by one or two myself, but it wasn't my HP that saved me - it was my gear. I didn't die the entire fight, which surprised me a bit.

The sad part of the win is that Lucrezia has now left TNU. Several months ago, he expressed his need to free up some of his time, but promised to stay until we'd beated Ultima twice. I'll really miss having him there, but we'll soldier on.

We got three drops - two for the turban and one for the manteel. Meshe and Morgoth were still under our veteran clause and each took a turban, and Fliggity was first in line for the manteel, being the only person with the top job priority for the piece (BLM or WHM). It's so nice to have a few more pieces of Nashira in the shell! Hopefully we'll beat it every time from now on, since we seem to have got a strategy that works for us.