The Continuing Adventures of Tsakiki

Zerging Bahamut

2009-09-22T19:48:00.003-04:00

One of the most challenging tanking experiences I’ve had in the game is The Wyrmking Descends, also known as Bahamut Version 2, or Bv2 for short.Part of the challenge is simply because we would use a solo PLD on Bv2, with a second for grabbing the summoned wyrm buddies, and stepping in should the main PLD get toasted by Megaflare (see Astonishing Wyrms from last year). As fun as this fight can be with a manaburn style, it can be very risky if things go sour, and if you wipe, there really isn’t any way to recover, so the Monarch Orb, and all the work that went into acquiring it, is completely wasted.

So, after much urging from linkshell members, and one failed manaburn too many, Ali agreed to try a zerg strategy. For this, we had 3 DD parties, each with 4 Dds, a BRD, one with a WHM, and two with RDM/DRKs. Any DRKs would go into the party with the WHM, and the DDs would include DRKs, WAR/SAM, SAM/WAR, DRG, MNK, and a token THF. This also let people who didn’t have a PLD, BRD, WHM, RDM or BLM levelled to participate in the fight, getting them new shiny titles.

The goal in a zerg is to basically kill the monster as fast as possible, before it gets a chance to kill the team. To help accomplish this, we would all use our two hours, and take advantage of 6 soul-voiced Bard songs on each party in the alliance. First thing we do upon entering the battlefield is to have all the damage dealers either use Meditate or an Opo-opo Necklace and Sleeping Potions to build up over 100% TP. Once that’s done, the bards all use Soul Voice, and we quickly rotate them through each party, with one bard using Madrigal (accuracy), one using Minuet (attack), and the third using March (haste).

Then the damage dealers use all their job abilities and rush in behind the lead RDM/DRK, who starts the fight with Chainspell-Stun. The DDs do as much damage as they can in as short a time as possible, and within 30 seconds, Bahamut falls to the ground, defeated. No muss, no fuss, just a whole lot of damage in a very short time.

After our first attempt at this was an easy success, we haven’t gone back to our old methods. Some of us lament the lack of skill required to zerg this, but understand that there are times when taking the easy way out makes the most sense.

Plus I get to see things like this:

Soloing the Primes

2009-08-30T15:19:00.002-04:00

A couple of months ago, I decided I wanted to try soloing the 6 Prime Avatars (the Celestial Avatars) in the "Trial by (element)" quests. Lots of people have done this, but I just wanted to see how I'd fare. I was mostly worried about Garuda and Leviathan, since they can heal themselves, so I thought I'd start out with Titan.

However, I mentioned this in BEB one evening, and Yobun needed Shiva, so my first "solo" ended up being a duo. Yobun didn't really do anything, though. In fact, he sat down to watch after casting one (resisted) spell. This was a good way for me to try out soloing, with a SCH standing by in case it didn't go so well... I did go back a few weeks later for a true Shiva solo, just to keep it consistent with the others.

One the things this exercise reinforced was just how much better the Paladin job is now than it was back in the day. Yobun had tried soloing avatars years ago on his PLD, but had either timed out or been blasted by a two-hour. These days, with the changes to Rampart, Shield Mastery, Sentinel, and new things like Atonement and Reprisal, Paladin really has come into its own. Not to mention there's a lot of really nice gear available now that wasn't around back then.

The fights took from just under 8 minutes (Shiva) to nearly 13 minutes (Leviathan), so they weren't slam dunks by any means, but for most of the fights I never felt like I was in any danger of dying or timing out either. Ramuh proved to put up the biggest fight of the 6, mostly because of his en-stun effect.

I went to each fight as PLD/RDM, for the bar spells as well as innate magic defense bonus. For gear, I wore a hybrid magic reduction set with accuracy where appropriate. Valhalla Helm, Avalon Breastplate, Iron Ram hands and legs, Askar feet, Joyeuse, Ice Shield. I used Parade Gorget to help with MP recovery.

I cast Protect IV, Shell III, and Stoneskin and then rested to full MP before entering the arena. Once inside, I cast Phalanx, and the appropriate bar- and en- spells, then ran up to face the avatar. I didn't recast Stoneskin after it was broken, but in at least one fight, it lasted until the avatar was nearly half-dead. The other buffs I'd reapply when they wore, and would cure myself as needed. I saved Rampart for the Primes' two-hour abilities, which drastically reduced their power:

I would use Atonement whenever I had the TP. I think for Ramuh I did need to use Chivalry, but I didn't run out of MP on any of the other fights. It was a fun "experiment", and I even made 50k gil out of it, and got a Water Belt for my fire kit too!

Still Kicking Around

2009-08-27T18:30:00.001-04:00

So where were we? Ah yes, FFXI seems pointless, with marginal improvement for massive effort, etc. I'm not really sure why I stopped blogging for nearly 9 months, but it certainly isn't because I stopped playing. I've been playing pretty much as much as ever.

A few things have changed in the meantime. For starters, TheUltimates no longer exists. We had our last run in June. I think I'm mostly to blame, since I'd been trying to leave for months, and Allia just didn't want to lead it without me there helping out. I had tried not coming on Wednesday nights, but it still wasn't enough.

My Warrior hit 75 around New Year's, and is still a work-in-progress. I've spent a lot of gil on nice gear for it already, though my weapon skill gear could use a bit of work. Merits are coming slowly, but I do have 8/8 in greataxe and 3 of the 4 I want in double attack. I also leveled SAM and DRG for subjobs. I really enjoyed SAM and will probably take it higher one of these days (I left it at 40). THF was at 30, and is only used on rare occassions for Dark Ixion, so I have been a bit slow at "finishing" that. It's sitting at 34 at the moment.

I've been settling in to Salvage a bit better, and am often one of the tanks on WAR. Sure beats being a tag-along like I had been when I could only come PLD. Just last week I finally got my first 35 for the Ares's set - the piece for the mask. It's the only 25 I didn't have, so I still need a drop to complete the piece, but it seems more hopeful now than it ever has. I'm able to make more than one run a week now, which helps too, though often the times I can make runs, we end up cancelling because we have too few people, or are missing a critical job.

I've been very fortunate in Eminence, and have gotten a lot of nice things since I last wrote: Aurum Sabatons, Hermes' Sandals, Martial head, Fenian Ring, Algol, Byakko's Haidate, Genbu's Kabuto, Crimson Cuisses, Valhalla Breastplate, Kirin's Osode. I love my new breastplate. It was our 14th Odin kill that finally dropped it. It's pretty much a kiting or blood-tanking piece with the -5% slow on it, but it is so nice for those situations - with 50 hp, +5 enmity and the highest defense of any of my body pieces. Plus it has a hidden latent effect of Cute +10 when equipped on a Tarutaru with the Valhalla Helm. I had an Avalon Breastplate for awhile, but between the new Iron Ram Hauberk, Valhalla Breastplate and Haubergeon +1, every situation where the Avalon had been useful is covered. I turned it back in to the LS bank after getting my Valhalla a week and a half ago.

I scanned through all my screenshots to try to find something to illustrate this entry, but didn't really find what I was looking for, so I leave you with a happy Kiki in her outfit she stole from Odin.

Where does the time go?

2008-12-15T07:59:00.001-05:00

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

2008-10-13T10:23:00.004-04:00

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

2008-10-12T18:24:00.004-04:00

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

2008-10-11T08:06:00.003-04:00

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

2008-10-10T21:01:00.001-04:00

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

2008-09-03T19:24:00.004-04:00

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

2008-09-02T19:55:00.003-04:00

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!

The End of UltimatesForever

2008-08-28T22:41:00.001-04:00

It's been a long time since I posted an update on Salvage. Allia ended up killing off the UltimatesForever linkshell in June, and I suppose this is as good a time as any to post my final comments on it. I actually stopped going to Salvage after our May 30th run, my 58th Salvage. It was yet another disappointing run. I really think we just didn't do things quite right.

Overall, we did do OK I guess, as long as the goals set for a given run weren't too ambitious. Part of the problem was that some people seemed incapable of focusing their attention on the game for 100 minutes straight. I don't think Salvage is an event where you can get away with phoning in your performance.

We never managed to complete a single piece in the 14 months we ran Salvage, and I believe Venn was the only person with two of three towards one piece (Ares's Cuirass). I finally got the 100% drop part for the Ares's Mask in April, but it didn't seem like we'd ever manage to get the other two pieces I'd need to complete it.

At least my Friday evenings are free now! It was such a relief to finally be able to say "I'm not coming to Salvage any more." I felt bad for giving up on it, but some times you just have to cut your losses and move on. And really, I kept going to Salvage for a year after I wanted to stop...

Freeing the Virtues

2008-08-26T19:44:00.003-04:00

I've really been enjoying my adventures with Eminence, and I especially enjoy the variety of things we've been doing as linkshell events. These are scheduled events that take place on Thursday evenings and Saturday afternoons after Einherjar.

The first events after I joined Eminence were Sea farming excursions, gathering pop items for tier 2 Jailers, then several Jailer of Love fights after fighting the tier 2s. For the first few, I was part of an alliance trying to pop the Jailer of Temperance in the Grand Palace of Hu'Xzoi. This involved running around to 5 different spots on the ground floor of the Palace, having Quasilumins opening portals, killing aggro (or sleeping and running) as we went along. At each of the potential spawn spots, there is a Zdei that we would kill. Either nothing would happen (most of the time), or the Jailer of Temperance would spawn.

To fight the Jailer of Temperance, we had to kite it around one of the "shafts" that go through the towers of the Palace. The mages would try to keep gravity on it, since it moves faster than we can run. As the fight wears on, gravity is less and less likely to stick, meaning people get hit a bit more often. Temperance is immune to all but one type of damage at any given time, and switches between modes, making the fight "interesting" for the damage dealers. It's a pretty fun fight as far as kiting fights go (I hate kiting, really I do), and didn't give us much trouble during the two fights I was on. Getting it to pop is the troublesome part.

There was usually a second group trying to pop Ix'DRK and Ix'DRG while we were working on Temperance. I really need to get a map of the place some day - it's just not the same looking at one outside the game.

On a later run, we popped the Jailer of Fortitude a few times. This is another kiting fight, but less annoying than Temperance. He is a Paladin Ghrah in Hume form, with two helper birds that are killed first while JoF is kited around.

The next Sea event was the tier 2 gods, Jailer of Hope, Justice, and Prudence. Hope is a phuabo, Justice a xzomit with babies, and Prudence a pair of hpemde. Fun fights for the most part, and I was surprised that I was given the third Justice Sword that dropped. Weapons are a 100% drop of the Jailers, but not all of them are very desired, the Justice Sword is one of the desired ones.

I was very happy to get my sword, but am finding it hard to find time to farm organs to keep it supplied with Virtue Stones (which are used to make it "occasionally" attack twice). I pretty much have only been using it in Nyzul Isle on non-boss floors, but it would be nice to use it in campaign as well, if I could justify using up my virtue stone supply. I have had fun trying to solo different sea mobs for organs though, with varying success.

The Jailer of Prudence was the most painful of the Tier 2 Sea gods. They hit like a freight train, and we needed to swap tanks in and out quite a bit. We didn't get as many torques from the different Jailers as people would have liked, but we did get some that people were very happy to see.

We ended up doing 4 Jailers of Love on two different days. JoL is a UFO that mostly casts magic. We would have 3 tanks on it, in a triangle formation, just out of reach of JoL's melee hits. We mostly went PLD/RDM so we could spam spells like bind, blind, dispel, gravity and sleep. With Kachiko's relic horn in the tank party, mp was never an issue, and we were able to keep hate at a pretty high level. JoL will summon a group of pets every so often, so we had an "adds alliance" to pull those off and kill them separately. JoL was relatively generous with torques, but I think people would have like to have seen more items for Novio Earrings.

We had Absolute Virtue spawn after one of our Jailer of Love kills, but other than a couple people getting one-shotted for "fun", we pretty much left him alone and he returned the favor.

I could see people getting bored with Sea farming if they did it a lot, but I enjoyed it quite a bit, and by the time we get back to it, I'm sure it will still be "fresh" for me.

Now where was I?

2008-08-25T20:12:00.002-04:00

It's been so long since my last real post, I don't know where to begin. Hmmm. I know, a Dynamis update!

On July 5th, we had our third Dynamis-Tavnazia run. We were supposed to do one at the end of May, but had so few people sign up that we had to switch to another zone. Since then, we've had quite a few more people gain access, with our recent wins in the other CoP Dynamis zones.

We had more than 18 people wanting to go on the run, so we conducted a lottery to decided who would go. Since only a couple people bothered to show up for the lottery, I ended up doing the /randoms for nearly everyone. Then of course on Saturday night we had people upset that they weren't included, and others who hadn't even bothered to sign up upset that they couldn't go. We'd been telling them for a couple weeks to sign up, and had it posted on the boards as well, but I guess people just don't pay much attention.

We gathered together in at the Heiroglypics in the Tavnazian Safehold, with 1xBRD, 1xTHF, 1xNIN, 2xPLD, 2xWHM, 2xRDM, 3xBLM, and 6xDD (SAM SAM SAM RNG MNK DRG). We did our usual walkthrough, since this was the first time for at least 7 of the group. We headed in, made short work of the Bugard, ran up to the top floor and took out the Antlion, then back to the main floor where were got our sub jobs back from killing the worm.

At this point, we had a choice: try for the two ??? time extensions and then head for Diabolos, or just head for Diabolos. We opted to try for the time extensions first. We nearly wiped on the third? set of Fomors pulled, and it just wasn't going well at all. We changed our minds, and decided to head for Diabolos after everyone was unweakened.

All four of the Umbral Diaboli were clustered together right at the entrance to the hallway. We stood watching and waiting for our chance to get past them without them noticing. Allia went first, and made it through, with a few more following soon after. The 10 minute warning came up and we felt more urgency, but still waited for our chances to get through. Unbelievably, we all made it past the NPCs, so Goldfish pulled one, the Jeuno Christmas music started, and Diabolos Spade spawned.

The fight started out fairly well, but quickly became messy, with much death all around. When I was killed, Diabolos didn't have a lot of HP left, and I quickly reraised, and Serenity sent me a tell to get her up, since she still had manafont available. I did so, and started getting hit by Diabolos, but the spell completed, and she got up and started nuking Diabolos Spade. I was dead again without having been able to get reraise back up. Soon after, Diabolos was defeated. Hurray! We'd won! Now it was a race against time to get people up so they could get the flag.

Peti raised me, I popped Chivalry and had enough MP to raise Goldfish. I managed to get the flag, but the ??? despawns at the 30 second mark, and both Goldfish and Erock just missed it despite getting raised "in time". We ended up with nearly half the group missing the flag. But they got the title for killing Diabolos, and we gave them preference on the roster for the next run. It was a very exciting fight, and it was so nice to win it, no matter how poorly it seemed to go.

On our next Tavnazia run, just this past Saturday, we went straight for Diabolos right after the bugard, antlion, and worm, but unfortunately the group wasn't as stealthy as we needed to be, and we aggro'd too many of the NPCs. So we gave up on the clear and farmed the rest of the evening. The only drop was THF hands, but that was our first ever drop in Dynamis-Tavnazia besides a 100 piece once.

In other Dynamis news, we've been having a bit of trouble again with people not playing nice and using the Rusty Buckets calendar. A couple HNM shells moved to Lakshmi, merged, and call themselves Vicious now. They've got a huge superiority complex since they get so many HNM claims with their botters, so they think they don't have to work with other linkshells cooperatively. So, we've found ourselves switching zones at the last minute a lot, and on Wednesdays, that usually meant a CoP zone. This suits me fine, since I enjoy the CoP zones the most, but we do have a lot of people needing cities, and others who still haven't managed to get up to Chapter 4 in the CoP missions.

I'm still struggling with the PLD crew, since people quit, get deployed to Iraq, or just plain don't show up on a regular basis. We do have a lot of PLDs now, but I can't count on 3 of the PLD mains to be there any given run. We've also had a few runs where neither Goldfish nor Lucrezia have been able to attend. As our main pullers and strategists, we've become pretty dependant on them for the success of our runs, but we've been able to win without them, which has been good for our confidence. It was especially nice to win both Qufim and Beaucedine with our less experienced pull team.

I've completed my BST relic armor set (shown here on one of my mannequins) - getting the gloves in Xarcabard in July when lotting went to BST60+, and then the helm in Windurst early in August to complete the set, also at BST60+. With so many BST75s running around, I was surprised I was able to complete the set relatively quickly as a BST60. I doubt the CoP accessory for BST will ever drop to BST60+, but who knows, maybe I'll get that one day as well. The big question now is will I ever find the time to level it further and actually use the gear?

New Titles: Nightmare Awakener, Dynamis-Tavnazia Interloper, Confronter of Nightmares

Unintended Hiatus

2008-08-08T07:53:00.003-04:00

I haven't meant to stay away from my blog for so long, but the days keep passing without me feeling much like writing about Kiki's adventures. She's been a fairly busy little Tarudin, all things considered, but I had already fallen behind on blogging when our adored 7 year old cat suddenly got ill and subsequently was euthanized on July 20th, after 4 days in intensive care at an emergency pet hospital with no hope of recovery.

Adding to the misery, my husband, sensitive soul that he is, passed out at the animal hospital and fell, gashing his left eye and chin badly. We spent the next 6 hours in a human ER down the road from the animal hospital, where he ended up with two dozen stitches in his eyelids to put them back together, along with a couple more for the cut on his chin. The eyelids have healed up pretty well, but his jaw is still bothering him a lot. I'm so glad he didn't damage the eye itself, or break his neck even.

Needless to say, I've had too much on my mind to write stories about the fun Kiki's been having fighting monsters.

It's not fair - Willow was supposed to be around for years. It was our 18 year old cat with kidney disease that was expected to go first. Now Isis wanders the house, yowling, looking for her little buddy. It's been just over three weeks since Willow left the house for the last time, and Isis slowly seems to be realizing that Willow isn't coming back.

Hopefully I'll be back to my usual posting soon.

Invasion of Mamook

2008-07-02T06:28:00.002-04:00

The Eminence linkshell event a week ago Saturday was a fight with one of the Beastmen Kings of the Treasures of Aht Urhgan expansion: Gulool Ja Ja. The throne room for this two-headed Mamool Ja is deep within Mamook, and requires one person to have 3 rare/ex Mamook keys (Tanscale, Blackscale and Silverscale) to open the door to let everyone in for the fight.

We had around 30 people there for the fight, with 18 in the main alliance, and a party with 4 NINs, a WHM and a BRD assigned to hold Gulool Ja Ja's 4 minions off in a room to the side of the throne room. The extra people sat outside the fighting alliance, ready to be swapped in as soon as someone in the fighting group got killed. The tank party had 2 WHMs, 2 BRDs, and 2 PLDs. I was one of 4 PLDs for the fight (Solarus, Sasu, and Infi were the others), and being the untested newbie, I was the last one swapped in. (Put me in Coach! Put me in!) I didn't last too long my first round -- after a bunch of Cure IVs I got Gulool's full attention and was back on the sidelines in a flash.

I got to go back into the fighting group when Galool was around 20%, and this time stayed alive, thanks to everyone healing me, so I was part of the group that got the title for the defeat. I was pretty excited! It was a fun fight, and I'm looking forward to more in the future.

New Title: Shining Scale Rifler

For King and Country!?

2008-07-01T14:17:00.002-04:00

One of the most exciting changes in the June update, at least for me, was the preservation of Outpost Teleports when changing nations. The loss of OP Teleports was the only thing holding me back from changing nations to experience the story lines. I felt it would be extremely difficult to re-obtain both the Ronfaure and Gustaberg teleports, and decided I would switch nations only when I was ready to quit the game. With this change, I was free to switch, since I would still have all my OPs available when I switch back to Windurst.

This was the tipping point for quite a few ClanBEB members as well, so we've all switched allegiences together, and are working on the missions as a group. We didn't have anyone aligned with Bastok, so all the San d'Orians switched to Windurst, while the Windurstians have switched to San d'Oria.

I switched to San d'Oria after Dynamis on Saturday, June 14. Sandy was in second place, so I had to pay 12,000 gil for the privilege of joining their ranks. It was funny getting dropped into the starting cutscene as a PLD75 decked out in fancy gear, as opposed to the ?-mark head in her green Tarutaru PJs I was when I started 4 years ago in Windurst. Two weeks later, on the afternoon of Saturday June 28, Kiki was a Rank 10 San d'Orian, and a San d'Orian Royal Heir. I'm probably going to wait a bit to switch to Bastok, and have gotten enough of the OPs (missing Tavnazia, Beaucedine, Qufim and the starter zones) to keep me happy in San d'Oria for a bit. If the lack of conquest points starts to chafe, I'll switch back to Windurst before doing Bastok.

I had a fun time doing the missions in as much of a whirlwind as possible given time constraints and game-induced delays.

My first fun was trying to solo the Bastok dragon for Mission 2-3 as a BLU25/NIN12. I made three attempts, but it just wasn't quite working out for me, so I dragged Erock out to help me as a naked BLM25. He kept the dragon slept while I quickly killed the eye, then moved on to the dragon. With his help, it was just way too easy. My main problem with soloing was getting drawn in by the dragon while it was asleep. Cheater dragon. This pulled me too far from the eye and I wasted time running back to it and the dragon would wake up and that would pretty much be it at that point. I think I'll try again if/when I switch to Bastok.

It's amazing how quickly the "run around everywhere" missions go when you can teleport/warp places. Not to mention being able to get in places easily, like the basement of Delkfutt's Tower and the magicite areas in the Beastmen strongholds.

The morning of Saturday June 21, we were planning to do mission 5-1 for the groups working on Windurst and San d'Oria missions. We suited up with our level 50 gear and met up in Fei'Yin. We ended up doing two rounds to get the 9 of us through it, but they went very quickly. Much easier now that the first time doing this when we were level 50.

The plan was to continue on with the missions, but I had a terrible migraine and had to bow out after the 5-1 fights. We figured we could get me caught up before the following weekend.

So Sunday morning I decided I was going to try to solo the Shadow Lord (mission 5-2) as my PLD/RDM. I figured it might just work. So I checked youtube for videos, and only found a PLD/WHM who took 3 tries. I figured /RDM would work better, so I wasn't too worried. I walked there all the way from San d'Oria, thinking how much easier it is to navigate Beaucedine Glacier now with all the Dynamis runs I've been on there.

The fight itself was easier than I expected, though it did take nearly 20 minutes. I ate Carbonara for the extra HP, buffed up with Protect IV, Shell III, Blink, Stoneskin and Phalanx, and rested for MP. I started out with my Tatami Shield for the intimidation effect, and because people had said Ice Trousers didn't work with Reprisal, and I didn't look to see how they differed from the Ice Shield. Turns out Ice Shields work just fine with Reprisal...

Anyway, overall, my gear was a little bit odd, with a mix of magic damage reduction, haste, divine skill and enhancing skill. I wore my Parade Gorget as my only additional refresh, and used my Mensur Epee for its low delay and attack bonus while solo. I used Enfire, which was giving me an extra 16 points of damage per hit.

I didn't even bother reapplying stoneskin after it wore. He missed me a lot, and didn't hit for all that much (usually) when he did connect. Between Phalanx and shield blocks, I got hit of 0 a lot. I used Chivalry once, and switched over to my Ice Shield after that. Paralyze from the ice spikes proc'd a lot more than the intimidate from the Tatami. Things slowed down a bit during his melee-immune phase, but I had plenty of MP and cast Holy a few times over the course of the fight. Otherwise it was just my Dia II, Enfire, Reprisal and Ice Spikes that did any damage to him.

It was quite fun really, and I'm pretty sure I'll switch to Bastok if for nothing else other than the opportunity to do it again! Well, that and try to solo the stupid dragon...

Next up was Mission 6-1, which involved defeating a cactuar in West Altepa that loves to spam 1000 Needles. I figured I'd try to solo it as PLD/BST, with my trusty NPC helping out. First I had the two cactuars that hang out in the pond fight each other to the death, then I grabbed a nearby scorpion as my pet, and popped the NM cactuar. The fight went pretty well, and the scorpion held up better than I thought it would, despite the 5 or so 1000 Needles. Balu-Falu ran out of MP, but I had enough for the both of us, and we won the fight without too much trouble. Much more exciting than with a bunch of other people!

Anastasia and Yobun had stopped on Mission 6-2 on Saturday, so I headed to King Ranpere's Tomb to kill the wimpy wimpy skeleton there. For the mission, 3 skeletons spawn, but if you pop them with sneak up, you can pull a single one and let the other two despawn. So I did just that, pulling the WAR-type, and let him "beat on" me for a few minutes while the other two despawned. I don't think he broke my stoneskin even.

New conquest tally that morning gave me three more outposts to get, bringing me to a total of 12 for San d'Oria, versus the 17 I have for Windurst.

Monday night before Nyzul Isle, I finished the cutscenes for 6-2, and started 7-1. For a lot of the missions, I needed to either trade crystals to the gate guard, or repeat the Bat Hunt mission, which was a bit cheaper, but a little more time consuming to go through the dialog each time. But I could just get a stack of bat fangs and stand next to the mission guy taking the mission and trade him a bat fang then take the mission again until the new mission was available.

For Mission 7-1, you have to defeat a MNK Orc NM in East Ronfaure, which you get to by going through the Oubliette. I did this with Ana's SCH and my NPC, but it was really too easy for us at our level. The Orc scarcely touched me. We finished up the mission cutscenes, picked up 7-2, and headed to a BC fight in Horlais Peak with Yobun's THF, and him dual-boxing Wendell on WHM. 2 Warmachines and 3 Orcs later, we were done with that mission, and Rank 8!

On Wednesday, I started Mission 8-1 before Dynamis, then met up with Ana and Yobun and Wendell at Quicksand Caves to fight 2 Krakens. Then on Friday, it was Mission 8-2, where we met up at the Temple of Uggalepih to kill a Doll there.

Saturday morning, I picked up Mission 9-1, and headed off to the Valley of Sorrows and then Xarcabard to collect some items, then Yobun, Ryken, and I helped Lalandra with her Orc NM in Davoi for Windurst 8-1. Anastasia arrived, and we headed to the island in Batallia Downs that you get to through the Eldieme Necropolis. There we had to fight two greater birds, but we let one despawn.

Then on to the final mission, which included a BC fight in Qu'Bia Arena. So Yobun, Ana, Wendell and I made the long trek back to Fei'Yin, and handily defeated the swarms of Orcs. We had a bit of help from Prince Trion on the final three, but we could have done it without him...

And so my two weeks of running errands for the Royals was complete. We attained Rank 10, got our San d'Orian flags for our moghouses, and something like 319,000 gil in the process. Not a bad way to spend my "spare" time! I actually enjoyed the storyline quite a bit, and learned a lot more about San d'Orian history. I was a bit disappointed at the conclusion of things though. I had envisioned something with a more important role for Claidie.

New Titles: Fodderchief Flayer, San d'Orian Royal Heir

Einherjar!

2008-06-19T06:23:00.002-04:00

As I mentioned in my previous entry, one of the main reasons I applied to Eminence was to participate in Einherjar. I meant to get this posted sooner, but I've now been on 4 runs, and they're really a lot of fun. Unfortunately, the event isn't very good for taking screenshots, so no exciting colour to spark up the entries. For those of you unfamiliar with the event, here's a bit of background.

Einherjar is similar to Dynamis and Limbus in that it is a closed battlefield with a time limit and an entrance fee. You can do Einherjar once every three days, and need to have 6-36 people level 60 or over to enter. You're allowed 30 minutes for the battle. Entrance is gained by using a Smouldering Lamp, which costs 180,000 gil. Eminence pays for the lamp, and sells the crafting drops obtained on the runs to fund future runs. The chambers are accessed from the Hazhalm Testing Grounds near Nashmau.

There are a total of 10 chambers, with 3 chambers each for Tiers I through III, and the final chamber being Odin's Chamber in Valgrind. Previously, you had to complete each of the nine other chambers before being allowed to enter Odin's Chamber, but in the update on June 9th, it was changed so participants for Odin's Chamber only need to have cleared one chamber for each of the 3 tiers. The key items you get for clearing the chambers are feathers, which are from the wind of the Valkyrie for whom each chamber is named.

In addition to possible treasure drops (abjurations, crafting items, armor from Odin), each participant also gains ampoules of Therion Ichor, which can be used to purchase items from Kilusha in Nashmau, the NPC that also sells the smouldering lamp. The items are are rare/ex, so the only way to obtain them is to participate in Einherjar. The item I'm most interested in is the Ritter Gorget, a neck piece with VIT, Enmity, and HP.

On my first day in Eminence, before the update, they were planning to try a Tier II or Tier III run. Under the requirements prior to the update, I would not have been able to participate, but I made my way to Nashmau to be on hand in case plans changed. Plus I wanted to "meet" my new linkshell. :-) Because of the number of people with only Tier I access, they decided to do a Tier I run instead, and appointed me to be the main-assist. Thanks guys... great way to start the newbie out. We made our way to the Hazhalm Testing Grounds, Bleu traded the lamp and handed out copies to us, and in we went to Grimgerde's Chamber.

There were about 12 Skeletons, which Genno pulled, linking all of them. Sasu was PLD/BLM and was spamming sleepga to help hold hate off of the squishier mage sleepers, and I was in charge of selecting which to fight, with everyone using "/assist Tsakiki" to fight the right one. It was a lot like Dynamis - the mobs would die in 20 seconds, so I'd switch to the next before the one we're on was dead, avoiding the delay of putting away my sword and having to take it out again. With the kills happening so fast, I some times didn't have any hate-grabbing abilities available for a given mob. It was pretty much provoke, flash, provoke, shield bash, provoke, flash, provoke, oops, sorry melee...

Next up was a tiger, which apparently will strengthen the boss if you don't kill it. We did kill it, and moved on to the boss. The boss was a buffalo, Himinrjot, with a ton of HP and a pretty nasty AOE knockback move, so we tried to fight it up against the wall. It was all over so quickly, and I had my first Einherjar feather, and 500 Ampoules of Therion Ichor!

On the next Tuesday evening, the day after the rules were changed in the update, Eminence had over 42 people show up for the 36 slots. This caused a bit of grumpiness, but it was pretty much the first ones there were the ones who got to go. Tier III was on the agenda, to try to finish complete feather sets for Odin fights (the person who initiates the event must have all 9 feathers, while the other participants merely need 1 from each tier).

Naramaska distributed the lamps, and we headed into Ortlinde's Chamber. We ended up with three waves of monsters before the boss: Utgarth Bats, Berserkrs (demons), and Wivre-X, followed by Dendainsonne, a Behemoth. The "extra" monster on this run was a bird, Huginn, which dropped a chest with temporary items. The Wivres slowed us down a bit with their high defense, and the Behemoth was pretty hard on us with Meteor and other abilities, but we won with only a few seconds to spare. Fortunately the chest was popped in time, and we got the win. We ended up with 1460 ampoules on this run. It seems the new amount is based on the waves, with 480 ampoules for each.

Last Saturday, we had 50 people show up wanting to join in on the event, but again it was pretty much first-come, first-served, so late arrivals were left out. Another shell (SearchAndDestroy) offered to take along a few people, but most of the late people had already left the area. I believe only one went with them. This time, we entered Gerhilde's Chamber, for another tier 3. We ended up with 4 waves of mobs. First up were some skeletons, followed by Odin's Jesters (Imps), then a bunch of Soulflayers along with Liquified Einherjars (Flans). These were all fairly unpleasant, and time was running a bit short when Vampyr Jarl showed up at the end.

Vampyr Jarl was relatively squishy, and we thought we had it in the bag, but suddenly he split into a pack of hounds that took off in different directions. We had a lot of casualties, but enough people managed to do enough damage to the various hounds, and they turned back into Vampyr Jarl. The group got him down to 1% when we ran out of time. It sure was fun though, and we ended up with 1920 ampoules for our efforts.

Tuesday night was my fourth Einherjar. Again, we did a Tier 3, this time Brunhilde's Chamber. We had a full crew for the fight, and started out with a wave of chigoes. These nasty fleas managed to strip off all of our buffs, including food. Losing Reraise was especially annoying. We got them all killed, along with the tiger Saehrimnir. Then the boss du jour arrived, Motsognir, a Dvergr, or as I prefer to call them, a floaty chair dude (like in the FL assault, The Price is Right). He was accompanied by 12 named demons, which needed to be killed before Motsognir would take any damage. He would lose a percentage of his HP for each demon we killed. Kabbalah was calling, so I was assigned to try to keep Motsognir away from the group fighting the demons, and Genno was on crowd contol/backup for Kabbalah.

The demons couldn't really be slept, and we were having trouble keeping Motsognir under control. I'm not sure how hate works with him, since I had a demon run over and smack me when I hadn't done anything to any of the demons, just had been provoking and flashing Mr. Floaty Dude. He used the same annoying Hellsnap ability and cast a lot of tier IV and -ga spells. My Shadow Ring proc'd on at least one, but I took too much repeated damage for Peti and the others to keep me alive as I ran around trying to keep Motsognir's attention. I popped back up and kited while weak to buy the crew more undisturbed time with the demons, but didn't last long, so I tried yet again.

It really was a fun fight, but quite a few casualties. We won with a few minutes to spare, and the chest contained the Marital Feet Abjuration! Yeah, I know the M. Feet aren't much to get excited about, but it was an abjuration! Apparently it was the second one Eminence has seen in six months of Einherjar. Tanta and Cupcake lotted on it, with Tanta winning. There were a few Platinum ingots as well, and we all were rewarded with 960 ampoules for the fight.

This is my favorite sort of event - a battle with a short time limit, and a boss tough enough to require actual tanking. And being able to get neat items makes it all the more fun. I'm really enjoying it quite a bit. As it looks now, I won't be able to participate in the linkshell's first Odin fight, since I still need a Tier 2 feather, and they're planning fight Odin as soon as the final Tier 3 feather is obtained by characters with the other 8 feathers already. But it will be soon, and it's all new and exciting for me. :-)

Perhaps it was Inevitable

2008-06-11T06:52:00.002-04:00

I applied to Eminence last week. Yes me, the Taru that was never going to do anything end-game. I applied to an HNMLS. Really. And they've given me a trial pearl. I think Beaucedine Glacier must be melting, and flowers are blooming in Xarcabard.

This came about mostly because there are things I'd like to do in the game that I haven't done yet: like Einherjar and, as I put it in my app, helping tank bigger and badder monsters than I've encountered in the past. I was talking to Goldfish earlier last week about Einherjar, asking if he thought TU might be able to cobble together a competent enough group of people to try it, since we're probably killing Salvage. I figured most people who were interested in it were already doing it with other shells. He said "You know, you should just join an HNMLS," and added that Eminence was open for applications.

I talked with Goldfish a bit about the shell, wrote up an application, talked to Peti as well, and then the next evening got a bit of encouragement from both Diasuke and Aksukia. So I actually submitted the application last Tuesday evening. I feared my lack of end-game experience and the fact that I have only PLD at 75 would weigh heavily against me, but I do have a lot of experience with Dynamis and Limbus, and have done a lot of different things like missions, assaults, and Nyzul. And I really do have a lot of nice gear on my PLD, thanks to all the people who've helped me over the years.

The Eminence schedule seems TU-friendly, since we have members who are in both (Goldfish, Peti, Dasheeit, and Reefermadness), and the few open spots in my schedule seem to fit in nicely with them. However, I do have a lot of in-game commitments, not to mention my long commute and full-time job allowing me only a few hours in the evenings for FFXI. Hopefully this won't be a problem going forward.

The public reaction to my application was welcoming, and on Saturday afternoon, Nyx/Muffins found me in Southern San d'Oria [S] and gave me my pearl. I attended my first Einherjar run (Tier I) and a Sea farming excursion that afternoon, and it was a lot of fun, though I felt very much out of my element, not to mention nervous, while trying to make a decent impression. I felt a bit like a bug under a microscope. I'll get over that soon enough I'm sure!

The End of an Era

2008-06-09T21:15:00.002-04:00

Venn, the founder of TheUltimates and its sister shells, has quit FFXI. He'd been pulling back significantly over the past school year, as it was his first year in law school, but finally decided it was best for him to leave the game entirely. Some of us knew he was thinking of quitting, but most just thought he was taking a break for finals in April/May. However, I don't think his departure came as a huge shock to anyone. Fortunately for the shells, Venn put a good team of sackholders in place, and we'll continue to run things as we have been. Allia will get the dubious honor of being the shell owner when we re-pearl, so she'll get to head up the Complaints Department. Lucky girl!

I know he didn't have the best reputation with some people, but I was fond of our emo DRG leader. He had his ideals, and he stuck to them. His wild mood swings were even entertaining at times! Venn, if you're out there reading this, here's a /salute from one of your lieutenants. Best wishes for your life's endeavors!

Hmmm... I guess this as good a place as any for a quick update on Dynamis. The shell has been doing well lately, which is really nice. We seem to have the right combinations of jobs and players, and are beating the zones that have sometimes proven troublesome, like Qufim and Xarcabard. It's always so sad to wipe when the Dynamis Lord has just a sliver of health left. It's much more fun when we win. Even if he doesn't drop lovely Shadow items.

We're routinely going after the attestation mobs now every time in the Glacier, which provides a bit of a diversion from the normal exploratory or flag runs. I really dislike the PLD/WAR/RDM one, Goublefaupe. He uses Mighty Strikes when the sac puller aggros him, so I get beat on with huge critical hits as I drag him back to camp, usually dying just short of camp since Sentinel wears off before I get there. I used Invincible once on the pull, and that at least got me back to camp safely.

The tank pool is currently in good shape too, after a couple of months where Thom and I might be the only two tanks in attendance on a run. Lumikumi's back after a 2 month break for real life, and we've had a couple new PLDs join: Synne (our first Mithra PLD!), and Lobster. Elide is also back now one another character (Azadan), and he can come as either PLD or NIN.

One recent disappointment was not getting to do Tavnazia again. We had it scheduled for May 24, the Saturday of Memorial Day weekend, but not enough people signed up for it. I don't know if that's because a lot of the people with access were away for the weekend, or if people just don't want to do it. I really want to do that again. However, we ended up doing a terrific Qufim run instead, and got some more people access in the process.

Miscalculation on Floor 100

2008-05-22T06:47:00.002-04:00

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

2008-05-21T06:45:00.003-04:00

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

2008-05-13T22:25:00.002-04:00

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

2008-05-09T06:48:00.004-04:00

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

2008-05-08T06:51:00.002-04:00

"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

2008-05-07T06:49:00.002-04:00

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

2008-05-06T06:44:00.002-04:00

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!"

2008-05-05T19:56:00.003-04:00

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.

For the Lion!?

2008-04-07T20:05:00.003-04:00

This is exactly news any more, but the March update added a lot of new items to the game, as well as massive improvements (apparently) to the Scholar job, but the most exciting thing for me was some new pieces of Iron Ram gear available for Allied Notes in San d'Oria [S]. The only wrinkle was that the gear is Rare/Ex, which meant that Kiki had to join the Iron Rams in San d'Oria. Fortunately, when you first change to another nation, you don't lose any Allied Notes (I had 144,000 at the time), nor do you lose any medals (Holyknight Emblem).

As soon as I had downloaded the update, Kiki made her way to San d'Oria [S] (OP warp to West Ronfaure from Windurst, jumped into the Cavernous Maw in East Ronfaure, and headed into the city), and talked to the Elvaan in charge of mercenary recruitment. Kiki was sent to look for airship parts in East Ronfaure [S], which were quite easy to find. After returning to town with the airship parts, she was admitted to the Order of the Iron Ram, and then she quickly ran over to the dude who gives out items in exchange for Allied Notes, and obtained her new shinies.

The first piece is the Iron Ram Sallet, which is actually the best tanking headgear I can get without being in an HNM or gods linkshell (Bahamut's Mask, Aegishjalmr, and Koenig Schaller are probably all better), and it was free! It offers good defense, more HP and Enmity than my Valor Coronet +1, plus Magic Damage Reduction. I even like the way it looks with my Valor Surcoat, though comments from others have ranged from "it's so cute!" to "I really don't like that helmet on you".

The second piece is the Iron Ram Dastanas, which are situationally very good. They have more enmity than my Homam and Valor hands (at +4), some HP, and Magic Damage Reduction. They're my new kiting gauntlets, and part of my magic damage reduction/Citadel Buster set.

These two items are available at the Emblem level and cost 40k Allied Notes each. The first week or so I was frequently examined and questioned about the gear by other PLDs, so San d'Oria has been getting a bit of an influx of new mercenary soldiers. I'm hoping they add more pieces for the set in coming updates, so for the time being, I'm fighting for San d'Oria, as odd as it feels. Hopefully Romaa Mihgo won't be too hard on me when I want to return to Windurst.

In the mean time, I continue to participate in Campaign Battles whenever I get the chance. They made some changes in the update, which included the Beastmen strongholds of Castle Oztroja [S], La Vaule [S] (Davoi in the present), and Beadeaux [S]. I have yet to go to those for Campaign, but have at least peeked into each area. I personally like the changes they've made, since the fights actually seem better now. The NPCs can actually hold hate, and the enemies are a bit stronger. A lot of people have complained that they get fewer points now, and the Jugner campers hated having the zone on offensive rather than defensive, but for the way I've always "done" campaign, I'm quite happy with the way things are now.

New Title: Knight of the Iron Ram

Ground Strike!

2008-03-25T06:24:00.002-04:00

I decided that I needed to make a concerted effort to break the latent on my (Great) Sword of Trials, if for no other reason than to free up the inventory space, since seriously, when do I actually use Great Sword? But my skill level is capped, and the quest (Inheritance) was open, so it really must be done.

For quested weaponskills, you are given a trial weapon of the type for the specific skill, and you need to perform weaponskills on mobs that are Easy Prey or higher. The mobs in Besieged count for this as well. You need to get 300 points to break the latent, and get 1 point for solo weaponskills and 2 to 5 for opening or closing various levels of skillchains.

I picked up the quest in November, which was a bit more recent than I remembered, but it was the week before the expansion came out, and I've been spending all of my spare time in campaign battles. Since you can't break latents in campaign, I wasn't getting very far on the task. I'd done a few random Besiegeds, but at the rate I was going, I wouldn't be done for a few years. Since I hate bugging people to help me with stuff like this, I geared up my PLD/RDM and took Balu-Falu to The Boyhada Tree. My trusty NPC kept me hasted, and we killed dozens of Robber Crabs, but I quickly realized I really didn't need his help at all. With Phalanx up, the Robber Crabs were frequently hitting me for 0, and I never came close to running out of MP.

After Balu-Falu called it a day, I decided to head up to the upper level and see if I could get any parrying skillups from the Even Match/Tough Steel Shells up there. I'm between 0.8 and 1.0 points off my parrying skill cap, and I'd love to finally have that done. I switched to sword and shield, used my Parrying Torque and Boxer's Mantle to enhance my parrying skill, put on my most defensive gear, and pulled a Tough crab to the Cloister of Storms zone for a quick escape if things got bad. I was actually surprised at how easily I handled the Tough. I was able to get Stoneskin up reliable with flash, and with Phalanx and shield blocks, I avoided a lot of damage. I did use Chivalry during the fight and had to rest for mp before pulling the next crab, but still it was a bit surprising to me. Alas, despite frequent parrying, I got no skillups on several crabs, and I headed back down to the Robber Crabs to work on my trial greatsword a bit more before heading home.

A couple days later, I headed back to the Tree to see if I could finish the latent, since it had to be close at that point. Sure enough, after two or three crabs, the latent was gone, and I was finished! Hurray! I headed upstairs to try for parrying again, but after two crabs and no skillups, I decided I'd try Pucks in the Den of Rancor. This was actually much more exciting than the crabs, since I couldn't keep stoneskin up at all, and by the time my fights with Toughs that yielded 180 exp points, I had no mp, my HP was below 400, and I was poisoned to boot. I parried a lot more with them as well, but still no skillups. After 3 Pucks, I decided it wasn't worth the effort, and I'll get my capped parrying some day in Limbus, Dynamis, Nyzul Isle, or Salvage. :-)

I took my trial greatsword back to Gumbah in Bastok, and he told me to head to West Altepa to obtain the Annals of Truth to prove my worth, so later that afternoon, I asked ClanBEB if anyone could help me with the WSNM for Ground Strike. Itera, Demin, and Wendell (yes! Wendell! he's back! Sort of...) all volunteered, and we met up in West Altepa. After killing the local goblins for TP, I popped the NM Tiger Maharaja. It was an "easy" fight, though both Itera and Demin used Hundred Fists at some point, and both Wendell and I were a bit low on MP when it was over. Hurray! Thanks guys! Allia had suggested that she and I could duo it as RDM/WHM and PLD/NIN, but that probably would have taken quite a bit longer.

I ran back to Bastok to give Gumbah the Annals of Truth, and he rewarded me with the knowledge of Ground Strike. I played around with it a bit in Campaign, which was fun, but as I mentioned, I'm not sure how much use it will get. In the meantime, I'll be using my Subduer when I get the chance, and one day, its latent will be broken as well.

I guess club should be the next weapon I work on capping. Again, the uses for this are a bit limited, but there are situations where something like the Templar's Mace and its increased Cure potency might make sense (main healing as a melee PLD/WHM perhaps?).

Yes, I'm still doing Salvage

2008-03-23T17:42:00.002-04:00

I was going back through my notes to see what I should use for my next blog entry, and realized that I haven't said anything about Salvage since August. I somehow still find myself in Whitegate every Friday evening for our UltimatesForever runs, though I still haven't quite figured out why.

It seems like we've done a zillion Bhaflau runs, but so many of them are completely drop-free, and time and time again it feels like all we're doing is spending 100 minutes killing mobs to see if we can put all our armor back on. We've made a few attempts on Long Bow Chariot, but have yet to defeat it. As for the other zones, we did a bunch of Silver Sea runs in the fall, but Zhayolm and Arrapago runs have been less frequent.

The most exciting thing really in the past 7 months was when we actually got a drop off of one of those silly Qiqirn in Arrapago Remnants. It was the level 35 piece that goes towards the Ares's Cuirass, and went to Venn. We also managed to get a drop off of the Dune Widow NM (level 35 pants for the WHM set, which went to Meshe) back in November. It's so rare for us to even get an NM out of those Ramparts, let alone get a drop from it. This past Friday, we popped the Don Porrogo NM Silver Sea, and got the level 15 Ares's body piece, so Venn's now 2/3 towards his Ares's Cuirass. We got two other pieces on this run as well, but all three of them are 100% drops from their respective mobs, so the excitement is in actually getting to and killing the mobs, rather than getting rare drops off of them.

It would be nice if we could actually manage to complete a piece, but Venn's 2/3 is the closest we've gotten, and the third piece is a possible drop of LBC, so doesn't seem likely in the near term. The more this drags out, the more convinced I've become that Salvage simply doesn't work if you only do one run a week. I really think to do it "right", you'd need a group going 5 times a week, but in order to do that, it would have to be the only thing I do. It would also be difficult to find people with the assault points to be able to do that as well. It's easy enough for me with over 27,000 points stockpiled in each of the 5 zones, but so many people seem to have barely enough for one Salvage run a week (1500 AP needed).

Some of the runs actually have been a bit of fun, but in general, it's a really frustrating event. I think it's time that I reclaimed my Friday evenings, but I don't know how to quit. As useless as I feel at times, I still feel like they do need me, but that's probably more of a "any warm body will do" issue. There are others who could tank if I wasn't there. But knowing me, I'll just keep showing up.

The Liberation of Temenos

2008-03-11T21:43:00.003-04:00

It's been a some time since my last Limbus update, and it's a bit overdue now, since not only did we manage to finally wrest a heart from Proto-Omega (and tear off a foreleg while we were at it), we finally beat Proto-Ultima! Hurray! It wasn't pretty, but a win's a win, and it was much much better than our previous attempts. We opted for a "manaburn" strategy, and were very mage-heavy. Venn was the only non-caster in the group. Our team for the win was 2xPLD/NIN, NIN/DRK, 2xWHM, BRD, 3xRDM/DRK, 4xBLM, 3xSMN, BLU, and DRG.

The crucial Dissipation at 19% health didn't get stunned, but it didn't spell disaster for us as it usually does either. Having fewer people up close to Ultima helped enormously for the AOE attacks like Armor Buster, and we were really good about leaving the Citadel Buster target alone with Ultima. I did survive the one that hit me (lots of magic damage reduction gear), but the following attack for over 200hp knocked me out of the fray. I believe it was a DOT spell that ended up killing Ultima, but it was so exciting to finally see that evil biomechanical thing collapse to the ground. We ended up with two legs, and sadly the treasure assignment caused some drama, but hopefully we'll have more wins soon, and more mages with bits of Nashira gear.

Our chip farming runs are generally pretty mundane these days. Our attendance is somewhat variable, so some nights we'll do one zone with 16-18 people, romping through quickly, other nights we'll scarcely have enough for two successful runs, so often we will have one team of 6 sent off just for coin farming. We try to mix things up between Apollyon and Temenos, but whichever we do, someone complains about not doing the other. There's no pleasing some people!

Once in awhile, we have a particularly exciting farming run, like one recent SW Apollyon (fomor, treants, mimics, elementals). We linked nearly all of the 10 fomor on the first pull, and we wiped. Anrita had DC'd, but I'm pretty sure we still would have wiped on that. We killed just the ones we needed, took the time chest and ran up to the next floor. On the second floor, we killed just the NM treant to open the vortex, then ran up again. We had to fight 4 mimics before getting the time chest (but also managed to get items and restore chests). I think we had under 3 minutes to go when I found the time chest. We dashed up to the elementals, and had time to kill a total of 8 of them before exiting. We ended up with only 18 coins, but at least we'd got the chip.

The most fun I've had recently on a coin farming run was with a 6-man group in NW Apollyon. We had Erock as WAR/THF, Fliggity's BLM, Serenity's BLU/DNC, Anrita's WHM, Zorris' BRD, and my PLD. We killed all of the normal mobs in the zone, except for one of the wyverns, and the bosses from the first floor. We weren't careful enough around Faffy-lite, and kind of wiped, but we had plenty of time and recovered and headed up to get the baby behemoths as well. We ended up with 40 coins, which helped bulk up the coins from the Temenos chip upgrade run the other group had done. I don't think we could have beat Kaiser Behemoth with our group, but we sure had a blast with our coin farming.

In mid-January, we had an absolutely terrible Proto-Omega run, which reminded me way too much of our first attempt, but somehow we managed to win despite ourselves. We ended up with pants and boots on that run. Our next run, on Valentine's Day, was far superior. Not only was it our best performance yet (with one death - me, probably because I let myself get a bit distracted by some /tells), but we finally had the heart drop, which went to Luc for the Homam Corazza, and the second foreleg we've seen. I lotted a disappointing 282, but Toshimitsu lotted an even more disappointing 88, and I finally have my Homam Manopolas! Hurray!

Some time last month, I stockpiled enough Ancient Beastcoins for my final purchase from Sagheera, a Loquacious Earring. It seems pretty expensive for something I seem to only use for casting Utsusemi Ichi, but I'm sure I'll find more uses for it. It was nice to have in an exp party that I was in as a PLD/WHM main healer... I'll be selling my coins from here on out, which should help cover the costs of the Cosmo-Cleanse.

New Title: Temenos Liberator

Dynamis Lord Gives Up the Goods

2008-02-21T19:03:00.004-05:00

There's nothing more satisfying in the game than when a large group of people manage to pull things together and defeat mobs that have proven troublesome in the past. We've had two perfect Dynamis Lord fights this month, and he's started coughing up his shadow items.

Our Dynamis-Xarcabard run on the 6th didn't look like it was going to end well. It seemed that everything that could go wrong on the way to DL's castle did go wrong. We had an enormous link and a wipe on the first time statue, and then someone managed to aggro the eyes on the first NM platform while we were trying to clear the eyes and Kindred down below for kiting space. We had another wipe while pulling the eye wall before the dragons.

However, the DL fight itself was a sight to behold. He dropped a silverpiece and a Shadow Ring, which went to Lucrezia. Hurray!

From the Kindred on this run, we got a RDM hat that went to Divinities, and a PLD body that went to PLD75s, since no mains that needed it were eligible. Thom won the Surcoat, and I've been making him put it to good use lately.

Last night's Xarcabard run was much much smoother. The only glitch in the machinery was when Thunderbolt lost connection just as we were pulling the two eyes on the first platform for the time statue. We had to do the sac pull a second time to get the other eye, but other than that, everything went wonderfully. I was main tank, with Thunderbolt and Thom kiting on the NM pulls. They were also on Ying/Yang duty, while Draden and Deathstorm were on crowd control duty. We got to the Dynamis Lord faster than we ever had before.

The DL fight itself was once again perfect. The stunners kept him locked down, and the damage dealers did their work. We have a new Kraken Club DRK in the linkshell, and he showed us why people like having k-club DRKs to zerg things. We killed him so fast that he didn't even get to resummon Ying and Yang. To top of the fight: we got full drops! A Montiont Silverpiece, a shadow ring, and a shadow mantle! Lumikumi and I were the next in line for Shadow items, and I got the ring while he got the mantle. It's hard to believe that we have Shadow items, and it really pleases me that we got them on the same night!

For the past year, I'd been thinking that the Shadow Mantle, which "occasionally annuls physical damage" made the most sense for me, since mobs are always hitting me, while the Shadow Ring, which "occasionally annuls magical damage" was more of a special case item, since not every mob has magical attacks. However, after doing some research, talking with others, and just thinking it over carefully, the Ring actually seems a better item to have in my bag of tricks.

This change in my thinking is partially because I won the Valor Cape last month, and I love the HP, VIT, and Enmity it provides. I might only use the Shadow Mantle against mobs that hit really hard, and most of those I tank /NIN, so I'd end up only using the Shadow Mantle when my shadows were down. I figured Lumikumi might get more use out of the mantle than I would, and even when he's on MNK, he could swap it in and save himself some hits.

Also, PLD has so many job traits, abilities and gear to help minimize physical damage, but little to stop magical damage. The biggest single hits I take tend to be magical - Astral Flow, Mijin Gakure, tier IV spells, tier III -ga spells, and so on. Having the ring annul these from time to time should prove really useful.

Even after using points last night, Lumikumi and I are still very high on the DKP list, and should be able to get the item we didn't get last night relatively soonish. It's really pretty amazing to find ourselves in such a position after such a long time of wondering if we could ever manage to even kill DL consistently. We'll be unstoppable! :-)

Other recent runs of note:

We had a really smooth Dynamis-Tavnazia run on the 2nd. Everything went quite well, except for the fight with the two Diabolii we were up against. I think we got really unlucky with the moves they chose to open with, and they mopped the floor with us. We didn't get any drops on the run either, but I was very pleased with how well everything went. It would be nice if we had enough people with the right jobs to have two full teams for it, rather than having to leave out a lot of people.

On the 13th, we had a Dynamis-Beaucedine flag run, with the unusual twist of fighting an Attestation NMs. To pop the NMs, Goldfish took a special ops team with a BRD, WHM, BLM and 2 SAMs, I believe. They snuck off to kill an eye which would trigger the NMs to appear in the towers scattered throughout the Glacier. Meanwhile, the rest of us continued along our normal path, killing monsters looking for relic and time extensions.

We accidentally aggro'd the NM in the tower near the Orc lake (we hadn't been warned that they'd be up yet and weren't being careful). The NM and his six minions wiped us out before we knew what had happened. After we picked ourselves up and dusted ourselves off, we headed up to another tower and had a control sac pull on the NM that can drop the attestations for dagger, club, and horn. The fight itself was pretty easy, since the NM's jobs were BLM WHM and BRD. And the Attestation of Harmony dropped, making Habanero a happy Bard. We'll probably try doing these on all of our glacier runs going forward, as long as there are people working on relic weapons that need them.

Hunting the Sin Hunters

2008-02-21T06:35:00.002-05:00

After talking about it for over a year, ClanBEB has finally taken the Sin Hunters up on their offers of a rematch. The first quest is Tango With a Tracker. For this quest, you fight Shikaree X and Shikaree Y in Boneyard Gully. Once you've completed it, you can go along with other people who need it. It also unlocks the Requiem of Sin quest, which you can do once a week. Shikaree Z joins her sisters for the second fight.

We've done two runs of Tango With a Tracker to get a few people available for our weekly Requiem of Sin runs. We've done three or four runs of Requiem of Sin so far, and we're hoping to get X's Knife for Lucrezia, but have got a whole lot of nothing so far. We typically do the runs right before our Nyzul Isle static on Mondays, with Luc's THF, my PLD, Yobun and Ana's BLM, and Erock's RDM, with Ranzz and Elbryan coming and RDM some times, as does Thoron's BLM.

It's a pretty easy fight for us, but it does take awhile to hike up to Boneyard Gully. Luc aggros the three trackers and their bunny and wyvern, and I pick them off one at a time for the BLMs to nuke. When the Mithra get into the mood for a skillchain though, they don't care about me no matter what I do to try to get their attention.

With the drop rate for the knife being abysmally low, we may be at this for quite a long time!

New titles: Sin Hunter Hunter, Disciple of Justice

Nyzul Isle Investigation, ClanBEB Style

2008-02-19T19:05:00.003-05:00

Our new ClanBEB Nyzul Isle Investigation static, with 5 core members and a few of people rotating in as the sixth, has been doing better than I had hoped. We've been working with two Runic Disc (Anastasia and I are holding them), and are currently up through level 20 on my disc and level 35 on Ana's. We're currently planning to alternate farming and climbing.

We've had 8 level 20 farming runs, and have fought Behemoth 5 times, Fafnir twice, and Adamantoise once. The Askar Gambieras have dropped 4 times, two pairs of Denali Gamashes, and only one pair of Goliard Clogs. We timed out on one of our Fafnir fights, so we're 7/7 on actual drops, which seems high compared to some groups. I guess Luc's TH4 is making a difference. Hopefully it will continue to do so on the higher levels.

Our typical set-up for normal runs is PLD, THF or NIN, BLM, RDM, MNK, MNK or WAR, but for the boss runs, we use BRD instead of MNK or WAR, and Lucrezia comes as THF. This has been working out for us quite well so far. Anastasia tried coming as PUP for the first run, but decided BLM works better. Yobun is usually either MNK or BRD, and Erock either RDM or WAR. Our special guests include Thoron's MNK or BRD, Ranzz's RDM or BRD, Lumikumi's MNK, and Elbryan's RDM.

We've been learning as we go along, making some mistakes along the way, like underestimating the Poroggo enemy leader, or continuing to floor 11 instead of exiting when we'd completed floor 10. But you learn more when things go wrong, right?

The stupid levels that make you light the lamps in a specific order are particularly trying, but we did really well on it the last time we had one, so perhaps we've got that pretty well figured out. After all my frustrations with Nyzul last spring, it's nice to have it become something that's quite fun.

One of the nice things about Nyzul is that you get exp for the mobs that you have to fight. The "eliminate all enemies" floors are nice for replacing exp lost to the Raise Is we some times have to hand out, as well as for just general exp buffer maintenance. I think I'll start using my empress band before we start our round of assaults every Monday.

We haven't got any interesting ??? items yet, but it's nice that we're batting 1000 on our Floor 20 boss drops. Hopefully we can get more Goliard and Denali for people. It'll be kind of sad if we have to start throwing away Askar boots because we all already have them. I think next week we'll be climbing on Ana's disc, but we may do 4 boss runs on the 40th floor instead.

The Askar set looks pretty nice for me, at least situationally. The boots have more enmity than any of my other boots, and also have -2% damage reduction, so they are my new kiting boots. With their STR and DEX, I probably should be swapping them in for weapon skills when I'm being all damagey, but so far I'm just leaving on my Homam boots in that mode. I'm not sure the pants are terribly useful for me with the other pants I already have, but if we get enough of them, it would be nice to have the complete set eventually, for the HP bonus when wearing the set.

More Valor Dreams

2008-02-18T14:21:00.004-05:00

I've been neglecting this again... But there's been a bunch of stuff going on, so I'll be getting things back up to date again. I "finished" Etrian Odyssey, but have moved on to FFVI Advance, which will undoubtedly start to distract me from blogging, but in the mean time, I'll be posting.

TheUltimates have never seen a Valor Cape drop on its CoP Dynamis runs, but that all changed a couple of weeks ago in Dynamis-Buburimu. We had a really good run up through the Mega Boss - clean pulls, minimal casualties, and more time to spare than on any previous runs, even with only 33 in the zone instead of our usual 36. We even had 5 PLDs on the run, partly through miscommunication, and might have done even better if at least one of them had come on a DD job.

We mopped up the Nightmare Crabs after the Apocalyptic Beast, but didn't get any drops. Next we headed over to the Nightmare Efts, and had an unfortunately large link. I think we had 20 Efts on us at once. But we plowed through them as best as we could before we were all dead, with no reraise, since constant Geist Walls had stripped it off of us. One of the first few efts dropped the Valor Cape, and Lumikumi and I lotted for it, with me winning. We've faced off on 3 items now, and I've won two over him (surcoat and cape), while he got the legs before me (and was 5/5 on the main set first too). I was thinking though, if the cape's big enough for a Galka, couldn't we split it in two between the two Tarutarus? It's a wonderful back piece of PLD, and I'm a lucky Tarudin to have it! I still can't believe Kiki's 6/6 on Paladin relic now.

On a sad note, Amyalfrodo's left TheUltimates, primarily because of family conflicts with Saturday evening runs. I'll miss having her on our tanking team. Draden started on our Dynamis-Buburimu run though, and I think he'll fit in quite well with us. He's also a SAM75, so unfortunately we'll probably have to have him fight the Dynamis Lord as SAM, just as Lumikumi's MNK is needed for that fight. Deathstorm finally has access to Xarcabard, and another new PLD, Cabbyz still needs Jeuno for Northlands access, so it will be awhile for him. He's got access to the CoP zones at least though, so he'll be on those runs.

Campaign Battles

2008-01-28T18:59:00.000-05:00

Now for the part of the expansion that has consumed most of my time and attention: Campaign Battles. In the past, the Shadowlord's forces are constantly attacking the areas that Altana's forces control, and vice versa. We have a campaign map that shows where the battles are currently raging, and an NPC in town that can teleport us to the battlefields for a small fee of Allied Notes. Once you get to the battle, you check in with a Campaign Arbiter, and receive Allied Tags to show that you're participating in the battle. With the tag active, you do not lose experience points if you're killed, and you gain experience/limit points and allied notes for the battle, based on your contribution to it. A sword icon appears next to the names of players and NPCs that are participating in the battle.

In areas that are under the control of the forces of Altana (the good guys), we defend the fortifications from waves of Beastmen attacks. Frequently, there will be squads of NPC fighters to help fight the Beastmen. Some times they'll be there before the battle starts, some times they swoop in at the end, and other times, they never show up. They're very powerful and kill the Beastmen pretty quickly, so people try to pull the mobs off of them to have fights last long enough to get some decent points.

Campaign battles are perfect for quick, casual exp points, and I've been using them to keep my buffer capped and have been getting a lot of merit points with it as well. It may not be as efficient as a merit party, but it's also easy to do in small chunks of time, and is really perfect for someone like me. If I get online early enough before Dynamis or Limbus, I can pop into a battle and pick up 600-2000 points before heading to the Trail Markings or Sagheera. And it's even good for those Saturday afternoons when I just don't feel like being committed to a merit party for 3 hours (I think that's most Saturday afternoons...).

Paladin is a very good job to take to Campaign, since you can tank, fight, and cure. All of these things build up your points, and also make you pretty self-sufficient (except on the Beastmen NM leaders). It seems like 50% of the players in Campaign are Paladins. Puppetmasters also seem to do really well in Campaign, and probably have the same troubles getting merit parties as PLDs.

I also go as PLD/WHM, since I really feel I have to have reraise on at all times. I often end up in Campaign battles where I am the only PC, and those NPCs aren't going to toss me a raise. I really would like to try PLD/DNC, but I'd have to be with someone with raise before I'd want to try that out.

My favorite Campaign battles have been ones that have a small group of players show up and work together. Some people are eager to form parties and help each other out, and it's really a lot of fun. We usually let the fortifications "tank" the horde of mobs, and pull them off one at a time, leaving the NMs for the end. Some of the fights with more players (like Jugner and Rolanberry) are a bit more chaotic and free-for-all, and people seem more reluctant to help each other or to take on the NMs in an organized manner. I've been bringing most of my gear with me, and go into full turtle mode on the NMs, and usually hold hate and stay alive with help from other people curing me, but toward the end, as my MP runs out, I either get killed or lose hate.

I also really like being the only player in a campaign battle, since I can do quite well points-wise. I have to be careful to let all of the beastmen get past me and pull one off the back of the train and then drag it to a safe spot. Then I just whittle them down and find another. This works better with some mobs than others. The magic casters can be pretty troublesome, as I'm built to resist physical damage better. But even if I have to fight the Shadowhand's minions, I can still get plenty of points despite dying, reraising, resting until unweakened and start fighting again.

Campaign's really been helping a lot with my merit points, as I mentioned. I've capped enmity, which meant backing out my 2nd level spell interruption I did back when I wasn't planning to be an end-game PLD and only did merits that would help me leveling other jobs, like BLU. It was a bit sad to actually throw away the two merit points that had cost. I'm currently working on my Sentinel recast, and need 5 more merit points for the final upgrade to have a 4:10 recast instead of the normal 5:00.

Campaign has ranks to go through, but they're different than what we've seen in city missions and assault. Every 5 days you can undergo an evaluation, and if you did well, you get the next higher level medal, but if you did poorly, you can be demoted and lose your medal. The medals are only good for 30 days, so if you don't participate in Campaign for a time, you can lose your rank. There are currently 3 groups of 4 medals - Ribbons, Stars, and Emblems. I'm on my 9th medal, which is the first Emblem level: Copper Emblem of Service. Higher ranks allow you to purchase more items with Allied Notes, gives you access to more Campaign Operations, with the higher leveled ones giving you more exp and AN for reward, and you also have a higher exp point cap for Campaign battles.

The Wings of the Goddess

2008-01-13T08:52:00.000-05:00

On November 21, the content for the latest expansion, The Wings of the Goddess, was unlocked. The story behind the expansion is that there are these Cavernous Maws that have appeared/been discovered in several locations on the Mindartia and Quon continents. Upon investigating them, you discover that they take you to "twenty years" in the past, during the Crystal War, and your task is to join up with the mercenary units for one of the three nations, and help fight off the Shadowlord's minions. There are three completely new regions, a "fort" area for each city, which are bypasses for the Tahrongi/La Theine/Konschtat areas, which are not (yet?) accessible in the past.

After I got the expansion installed, I started out doing a bit of light exploration, and happened to talk to the right NPC in Crawlers Nest to get an invitation to the Windurst mercenaries, the Corbra Unit. I made my way to Windurst, travelling as PLD/WHM for reraise/sneak/invisible, and stopping to activate all the Cavernous Maws along the way. You have to go through them in the past once in order to use them in the future, somewhat like Runic Portals - forcing you to do some exploration to unlock the easier travel options. The zones are pretty much the same as they are in the future, with some different buildings, and some different mobs.

There are a lot of new monsters in the past, and it sort of makes one wonder where they all went. Did they drop stuff that was so good they were hunted to extinction? One of the nicest additions are the Pixies. They're high level WHMs, and as long as you haven't killed any of them, they simply drift through zones, handing out Raise IIIs to the fallen players, casting Cure IVs on those they see in yellow (or lower) HP.

Once I got to Windurst, I picked up the mission to become a member of the Cobra Unit, which involved three fairly simple quests. The third quest was a fight with a War Lynx in Fort-Karugo-Narugo, which was a bit harder for some jobs to solo, due to a TP move the lynx can use that drops you to 2 HP. If you're alone and not using shadows, it's likely the next hit will kill you. I didn't know this at the time, so headed up there as PLD/WHM, ready to solo the kitty, and was doing quite well against him. Then boom I was dead. As I rested while weakened, I watched the same thing happen to a MNK/WHM, and then to a PLD/WAR-BLM/WHM duo. So we all teamed up, and killed it so fast that it didn't make sense that it had killed us all just a few minutes earlier.

Over the next week, I made my way to Bastok and then to San d'Oria. In San d'Oria, I did a couple quests to get a deathstone and angelstone for one of my favorite features of the new expansion: 2 new gobbie bag quests! So I now have 70 slots in my gobbie bag, which was a big help, but I'd really like another 10. I still can't carry every piece of PLD gear with me at 70 slots, at least not with food and meds, and at least one free spot for any drops I might want somewhere.

They added two new jobs with the expansion, Dancer and Scholar. I've already talked about Dancer, but I haven't even done the quest to unlock Scholar yet. I'm sure I will eventually, but I don't currently see it as a job that I'll be leveling, so there's no rush.

The biggest addition to the game is the introduction of Campaign, the fight of the cities and their mercenary troops against the Shadowlord and his forces. There are Campaign Operations, which provide you with a small amount of experience points and a good chunk of Allied Notes (the equivalent of conquest points and imperial standing points for the past). Quite a few of these don't involve any fighting, and some you don't even leave the city to do, so they'd be good for quick bits of exp on jobs you don't want to necessarily level in an exp party. You have "tags" like for assault, and can have up to 7 available, getting a new one each day. By doing these operations, you help boost the resources, supplies, intelligence, and so forth for your nation.

This is turning into yet-another wall o' text, so I'll talk about Campaign Battles in a later post.

Limbus Centennial

2008-01-09T19:30:00.000-05:00

It's been a long time since I've written a Limbus update. This past Sunday's Limbus run was my 100th! I've missed only one since I joined the group over a year ago. That was because of what turned out to be a gall bladder attack on the last Sunday in November. I think what scared my husband the most about it was the fact that I was too sick for my beloved Limbus. He knew it had to be pretty awful for me to miss that. Gall bladders are funny things - apparently you don't really need them, so mine will be coming out some time when the Ontario medical system decides they can fit me in. In the mean time, I feel like throwing up constantly.

But enough of that.

Limbus has had its share of ups and downs, but in general things have been going very well. We consistently have enough people for successful runs, and for awhile there were fielding dual runs. I think things slowed down for the holidays, and with the addition of a few new people, we'll be back to regular dual runs going forward.

Proto-Omega has become fairly routine for us, but we still haven't beat Proto-Ultima, partially because people won't run away from Citadel Buster like they're supposed to, but also getting bad luck with back-to-back Armor Busters. Lucrezia's been reluctant to take us back to Ultima again until she feels we can follow instructions better, but I think we'll be trying again this week or next. I really really want us to beat that biomechanical nightmare.

Proto-Omega's been rather stingy with some of his body parts. We've got a total of 7 tails, 4 hind legs, 2 eyes, and 1 fore leg. So many of the tails that 7/8 of our eligible lotters have their boots, including me! I got mine Sunday night, along with Zaps. Thunderbolt is the only other person who could have lotted, and he passed for us. If this keeps up, all of our mages will have their own Homam Gambieras, which would be useful for those with jobs that can wear them, like Thom and Serenity.

We had a bit of drama this fall, with someone who took advantage of our overly liberal rules, and made off with two pieces of Homam (including the only godly-for-paladin hands that have dropped) in only 16 runs, and stopped showing up for runs in favor of leveling another job. He was a PLD main, and want to switch his Homam lot to one of the other jobs after he got the two PLD-priority pieces, so he could cherry-pick the rest of the set. He seemed disappointed that we wouldn't let him do that, and kept sneaking into the shell to see if we were going to do a run that he could benefit from, but we got sick of it and kicked him out. I'm still working on rule reform to prevent this from happening in the future, but for now, everyone's in good standing with the shell, so our liberal rules aren't being abused.

We've had a bit of trouble with duos and trios taking over NW Apollyon (Kings) when we need the chip to complete Omega sets. I really wish Square-Enix had made Limbus instanced so we wouldn't have that trouble. It's almost to the point where we should do the run every time we actually can get the zone, and just start sets with each sackholder.

It's still hard for me to believe Kiki actually has 2 pieces of Homam gear, despite the 100 Limbus runs. Between that, and full relic, it shows that persistence, and a good group of people to do stuff with, pays off. Who knows, maybe some day I'll have other things I never thought Kiki would ever get. :-)

Pinch Me, I Must Be Dreaming

2008-01-08T19:57:00.001-05:00

As unimaginable as it was a couple years ago, my little Tarudin has not only completed her Valor armor set, but even has the HQ of the coronet. Over the past month of Dynamis we've had our usual ups and downs, with two failures on the Dynamis Lord (one the melee rushed out to meet him instead of waiting at camp, messing up the mages, on the other, we just didn't do enough damage in a short enough time), some really amazing runs in Beaucedine (8 drops one night), cleared Bastok, fell apart in San d'Oria, had a rousing win in Valkurm, and a bad Megaboss pull in Qufim (but a few nice drops for people). We've had some rare Northlands drops showing up lately, in addition to my new breeches. Lucrezia finally got her Assassin's Armlets, Morgoth his Duelist's Chapeau, and Asarath won the elusive Summoner's Horn.

We're in a phase of shifting members, with some people leaving while others are coming in. We're still a bit short on full-time PLDs, with just Amyalfrodo and I, so we keep trying to rotate through all the people who have PLD at 75. Some grumble more than others, but overall, it feels like it's working OK. Most of them don't want to main tank, so if Amy doesn't make it and Lumikumi's on MNK, it's up to me. I get fewer nights "off" now, but it keeps me busy.

On our December 8th Dynamis-Valkurm run, the Valor Coronet -1 dropped, and I was the only PLD main lot on the run, so it was mine! Bwahahahaha. Oh sorry. Got a bit carried away there. It did make me reflect though, of all the goodies I've got in Dynamis and Limbus, my Valor Surcoat was the only thing I'd actually won a lot on - everything else was mine uncontested. So much for "Kiki always wins". :-) I took my Coronet, my -1, 20 Ordelle Bronzepieces and a gold ingot to Sagheera in Port Jeuno after the run, and the next morning, picked up my fancy new Valor Coronet +1. It gives me 18 more MP, another point of DEF and another point of Enmity over the NQ, and was definitely worth the upgrade, since it's my normal headpiece for most tanking duties. My original coronet was the only relic drop I had from Snakes, so it was in a sense bittersweet, yet somehow appropriate, that it's been replaced by a item I got with TheUltimates.

Last Wednesday, we had an "Expeditionary Force" in Dynamis-Beaucedine (never say the word "farm", or the game punishes you) that was more exciting than usual. Lucrezia deviated from our normal path and opted to take on the Dynamis Icon just past the Yagudos, on the way to the Quadavs. We did fairly well with our massive linkage, but suddenly there was only 10 minutes left on the hourglass, so we quickly ran up to the Quadavs and Luc got the 2 time extension statues there pulled quickly. We moved on to the cliffs, back to the Orc lake, and up to the Goblins for further time extensions, and had well over an hour of good "expeditioning". The drops were scarce until we hit the goblins, but we were fairly well-rewarded at that point, getting DRG, WHM, BRD, NIN, and PLD.

Yes, Valor Breeches dropped. I couldn't believe it, and I happened to be dead at the time (we were fighting the Hydra Corps at this point). They dropped from a Hydra Ranger, not sure why he had them. I typed, "get me up!! quick!!", and I think I had 4 people casting raise on me at the same time. Amyalfrodo was the only other PLD main needing them (Lumikumi got his earlier last year), and she lotted a fairly low double-digit lot. I out-lotted Amy, but she said she would have passed for me since they would complete my set, which is really sweet of her. She's currently the only PLD main with access to Beaucedine and Xarcabard, so hopefully we can get hers soon. She doesn't even have her gauntlets from San d'Oria yet, since we get multiple pairs only on the runs she has to miss, and none when she's present.

So here Kiki is, sporting the complete Valor Armor set (not counting the Valor Cape), something I never thought I'd see her do. Since I upgraded the Coronet, I can't store the set, but eventually I can pick up a new one in Bastok. We had a Bastok run on Saturday and one dropped, but we had a PLD on his first run with us (Deathstorm), and I let him have it instead. Technically he's not allowed to lot until after two runs with us, but he could put it to better use than me. It would have been selfish of me to take it.

I couldn't get a good look at my fancy new pants, so I dressed up my Mithra mannequin in the full set. She's showing a lot of leg for someone in heavy armor, but it looks pretty nice. :-)

"Dancing With Myself"

2008-01-07T18:39:00.000-05:00

My "holiday project" for this year was to try out Dancer as a subjob for Paladin. Early in December, I did the Lakeside Minuet quest to unlock the job. It was a fairly simple quest, with some time travel required, and it wasn't long before I found myself with another job available on my job change screen. I got my Vagabond Gear from Quincy, bought a bronze knife +1, and header out to West Sarutabaruta, as a DNC1/BST1.

My plan was to pretty much solo as DNC/BST, since it seemed like a viable combination - DNC has decent charisma and can heal itself after a certain point, and being on the weak side, having a sturdy pet to help take down the prey would be useful. Plus I hadn't tried subbing BST since they'd made the changes that allow a pet to regen while it's not engaged, and they also got rid of the pet penalty, so I was curious to see how it would work.

It was really quite a fabulous combination. I stayed in the Sarutabarutas until I was around 9, then headed into Tahrongi Canyon. At level 12, I got the bright idea of trying the Tiny Lycopodiums just outside the gate in West Sarutabaruta [S]. I charmed a DC, started fighting an EM, and got murderized after it quickly pummled my pet to death. So back I went to Tahrongi, until I hit level 14.

Dancer at the early levels is really not much different from Thief, with the exception of Drain Samba at level 5, which gives you some HP back each time you hit the monster you're fighting. Dancer has a fairly limited selection of weapons available: some knives, hand-to-hand, and rapier-type swords are pretty much it. I opted to use knives until the first sword was available at level 13, then stuck with swords until I could use my Federation Knife at level 25.

At 14, I headed back to the past, and this time, it was really a great spot. I was there until 17, fighting mandies, bunnies, and the occasional crawler, with mandies and bunnies for pets. Once I got to 15 and had Curing Waltz available, things really started to pick up. I would fight EP or DC mobs to build TP and let my pet "rest", then take on high Toughs, cure-tanking them while my pet did the damage. It was really a rush getting chain #4 for over 200 points while soloing.

Around level 17 I was struggling a bit - my pets were too weak and my prey was too strong, so I looked around for a new camp, and had a great time in North Gustaberg [S]. I had to grab a DC bird from the upper level and take it down to the lower level, then keep it alive while I got nice chains on the worms. I tried fighting a lizard, but decided that was a bad idea after a couple close calls with petrification.

At level 19, I headed back to West Sarutabaruta [S], and had a great time until level 24, using crawlers and birds to fight crawlers and birds. It was really a wonderful spot, since I had it all to myself, and there's nothing around to aggro me. And the birds don't link either. I did get a bit tired of the Campaign music playing so much, but that was pretty much the only drawback.

My next camp was in Buburimu Penninsula, where I leveled from 24-26, mostly fighting pugils with pugils, while using the crabs to build TP when I needed it. I got aggro from the anti-fishbot goblins while I was still 24, but they weren't much of a bother.

After I hit 26, I decided it was time for a new camp and was heading back to town when I got a tell from someone I'd partied with on my WHM in the Dunes last year, asking if I wanted to join a party in the Jungles. I thought it'd be fun to see how Dancer worked in a party, so I changed to /NIN, asked Erock to send me a second Federation Knife, and I headed to Yuhtunga. The party was really pretty fun. We had 3 DNC/NINs, 2 NIN/WARs, and a WAR/NIN, and it was so odd to see a functioning party with no MP. I believe we would have done extraordinarily well if there had been enough mandies to keep us going, and no goblins coming along to spoil our fun. After I hit 27, the exp really fell off, and since the group still had mostly 24-25s, I left the party. I switched back to DNC/BST and fought beetles in Sauromogue to get to 28.

I had the bright idea of trying beetles and funguars in Carpenters Landing, but getting paralyzed is really a terrible thing for a dancer trying to cure-tank. I decided to try Lower Delkfutt's Tower, and it wasn't horrible, but it was pretty slow, and I had limited pets to play with. My next day out, I headed to the West Altepa entrance of Korroloka Tunnel, starting out at level 28. At level 28, I took out my NPC Fellow, Balu-Falu (set on soothing healer), just to help me out until I hit level 29 and had more pets to choose from. There was a too-weak goblin patrolling the fishing puddles, which was handy for starting out my TP, and I fought a few leeches before deciding TP Drainkiss pretty much sucks for a Dancer. I stuck to the crab when I could. This was a really nice spot until 31, though admittedly a bit slow with my weak little knife hits on the crabs.

In my search for a camp at 31, I discovered an amazing spot that I was unfortunately a bit too high for. There's a couple flocks of Lycopodiums near Jeuno in Sauromogue Champaign [S], where there's nothing to aggro you. The Lycopodiums are all level 28-30, don't link, and don't use dream flower. There's even a pixie patrolling the area that might be handy at times. Best of all, the Lycopodiums will often stand around watching you fight, so you don't even have to run off to pull them - they're waiting right there for you to fight. Lycopodiums are a bit charm-resistant, at least for my DNC/BST, which provided for some exiciting moments. I think this might be a perfect camp for parties in the Qufim levels, if people are willing to stray from the norm.

After playing with the Lycopodiums for awhile, I headed to Ranguemont Pass, with the idea that I'd work my way to the back tunnel to Beaucedine Glacier, where the stirges should be appropriate pets/prey. Going into a zone like Ranguemont is great, since there were plenty of too-weaks/easy preys to build up 300% TP before starting my "real" fights. And having "Spectral Jig" on Dancer starting at level 25 is great for getting past mobs that will aggro. The Pass was a nice spot, and I liked fighting the weak-to-slashing bats after the levels of hardshelled crabs.

At 33, I headed to Lufaise Meadows, fighting bees and sheep, getting to 34 before I needed to get ready for Dynamis that evening. I figured I'd end up fighting in Lufaise, both near the safehold and up by the lake, until I hit 37, but I ended up trioing beetles in East Altepa with Thala and Venn as MNK/NINs after Salvage one Friday. Meshe joined us later as WAR/NIN. It was a fun little group, but a bit slow because there were other parties and solo people making beetles harder to find than I would have liked. It was pretty fun, and kept me pretty busy as I was pulling, enfeebling, healing, and even tanking at times. When I hit 35, I got another level of Drain Samba, as well as Healing Waltz, which is somewhat like a super-Erase in tha it will remove most bad status effects, one at a time.

I've left Dancer at 35 for now, since I won't get any new abilities with it at 36 or 37, so it's pretty much everything I'll get as a subjob for PLD, except for some minor stat increases. Once they release AF for it, I may consider leveling it further, since it really is a fun job. I've tried it out a bit as a sub for PLD, and haven't really found the perfect situation for it. I think it would be amazing for Campaign, especially Aspir Samba, since I'm having problems keeping my MP up. However, I really really don't want to give up /WHM and its reraise. I end up as the only PC in a lot of my campaign battles, and those NPCs just won't raise me, and at 2k a charge, I don't really want to blow through reraise earrings either. Someone told me they're adding a Reraise Samba to Dancer in an update, but even if they do, I fear it will be higher than level 37.

New title: Troupe Brilioth Dancer

Captain!

2008-01-03T19:45:00.000-05:00

OK, so I've been neglecting my blog again... This time I'm blaming Etrian Odyssey on the Nintendo DS.

We've made really good progress on assaults, and Erock, Lucrezia and I got our Captain rank on December 22, while Anastasia and Yobun got it on December 29th. Goto still needs "Operation: Black Pearl", but we should have that wrapped up for him soon.

We focused on completing the First Lieutenant assaults, picking up ones people have missed on nights when we didn't have our group of 6 all present. After we finally won Belleraphon's Bliss, we went back and picked up the ones people were missing. Now that we're pretty much "done", I'd like to see us continue doing assaults, perhaps getting other BEBers to rank up, as well as get points for items people want. A Nyzul Isle static might be worth trying as well.

Lebros Supplies (Lebros Cavern): We'd really been dreading this, but it turned out to be not so bad. We did it with 5 of us, Lucrezia as THF, Yobun as NIN, Erock as RDM, Anastasia as BLM, and Tsakiki as PLD. Most of us subbed THF and had our fancy new Sprinters Shoes from the Wings of the Goddess missions. Lucrezia and Yobun both had enhanced movement speed from gear, and did a lot of aggro-linking of the crawlers, while Erock and Anastasia would resort to sleeping the crawlers. We all ran around feeding the soldiers, and won with a minute or two to spare. We did have two deaths, with both Lucrezia and Erock getting overwhelmed by crawlers, but overall, it certainly wasn't an assault to be dreaded as much as we had.

Siegemaster Assassination (Lebros Cavern): I'd missed out on this assault when our group had done it, since we had more than 6 people that night and I did assaults with TheUltimates instead. Anastasia informed me one Saturday afternoon that there was a pickup group shouting for that assault, so I joined in with them. Daden came along as well. For this assault, you have to kill a Troll general hidden in amongst the other Old Trolls. They respawn, so you have to keep track of which you've killed, or just get lucky and kill fast enough that you get the general. It was a very quick win for us, and another assault got checked off the list.

Egg Conservation (Lebros Cavern): For this assault, you have to protect a bunch of female apkallu from Qiqirn Egglers. There are male apkallu that fight them as well. We failed this on our first attempt, though when we did it a second time, it seemed so easy that it was hard to understand why we'd done so poorly on the first try.

Operation: Snake Eyes (Periqia): This one seemed a bit odd - you have to defeat 3 NM Lamiae to rescue 2 generals that they have kidnapped. This involves some sneaking around, some fighting, and quite a bit of time spent charmed. We managed to win on our first try, and haven't gone back. :-)

Operation: Black Pearl (Lebros Cavern): This assault reminds me a bit of Blitzkrieg, but with the added twist that you're protecting an NPC. The NPC is located in an area with four tunnels leading in. Hordes of monsters come swarming in to get the NPC, and your job is to keep them from touching her. It's pretty easy to lose if you get a bit overwhelmed by the mobs, but if you have the right combination of DD and healing, it's not so bad.

Searat Salvation (Ilrusi Atoll): This is another of the annoying "escort" type assaults, where you have to lead a bunch of easily-frightened Qiqirn divers to safety. Giant Orobons are scattered about the zone, ready to chase down the Qiqirns, making your job more difficult. On the plus side, it's short (15 minute time limit), and there is no fighting or chance of death involved. It still was annoying enough to not really want to do it again however.

Bloody Rondo (Leujaoam Sanctum): For our first First Lieutenant assault, we tackled Bloody Rondo, a fight with Count Dracula. We went melee-heavy our first round, and found his AOE drain made it too difficult, so we ended up with Lucrezia as NIN/WAR, me as PLD/NIN, Erock RDM/BLM, Anastasia and Yobun as BLM/RDM, and Goto as WHM/SMN. This worked out very well for us, though was pretty amusing when Luc and I got turned into bats a few times, not to mention the Cursed Dopplegangers of Kiki running around causing trouble.

The Susanno Shuffle (Mamool Ja Training Grounds): For this assault, you have to defeat Orochi, a Hydra. It took us 5 attempts to finally win, though the first attempt was really just a "let's see what this is like" attempt without Goto. I can't remember the different set-ups we were using for the first four attempts, but we finally managed to win with NIN/WAR, WAR/NIN, BRD/NIN, BLM/WHM, WHM/SMN and PLD/NIN. We were trying for a fragmentation skillchain with Burst II as the magic burst, since we couldn't really do a light chain easily with our set up, but the silly thing kept putting up either a physical or a magical shield, hampering our efforts to damage him. He has a pretty high regen, but we managed to get him whittled down, with only a death or two on our side.

Better Than One (Lebros Cavern): Here you face a Cerberus-type monster, Black Shuck, who summons 8 fire elementals just to make your life more interesting. It took us three attempts to win this one, using NIN/WAR, WAR/NIN, PLD/NIN, BRD/WHM, BLM/RDM, and WHM/SMN. On our first two attempts, we didn't handle the elementals very well. What worked for us was having me in the NE tunnel with Anastasia and Goto and helping out with the elementals until we got rid of them, then I joined Luc and Erock fighting Black Shuck. It was a really close call on this one, as he started getting meaner when he had low health, but a well-timed Benediction from Goto saved the day.

The Price is Right (Periqia): This really annoying assault took us 4 tries before we won. In this assault, you face King Goldemar, a Dvergr on a floating throne. He casts a lot of magic, has some really annoying AOE TP skills, and also has 5 floating weapons that he calls to assist him. For our first two attempts, we tried kiting him, with NIN WAR PUP PLD/NIN SMN and WHM, but that really didn't work well at all. So we decided to have Luc straight tank the King in the entrance, with Ana, Erock and I disengaging to fight the weapons as he summoned them. We got really close to winning on this third attempt, but close doesn't count. Out of tags, we resolved to win the following week. Things went fairly smoothly on our fourth attempt, though we did suffer a few deaths and had to have Lucrezia kite the King after all the weapons were dead so we could recover a bit. The bastard finally went down, but not until after a Benediction/Invincible kept us going. We rejoiced and said we'd avoid doing that assault ever again.

Bellerophon's Bliss (Ilrusi Atoll): For our final First Lieutenant assault, we're faced with a dice-rolling goblin and his "pet" Khimaira 14X. On our first attempt, we went as NIN PLD/WAR WAR BLM BRD WHM, and decided to kill the moblin first, so Luc kept Khim busy while we quickly dispatched the moblin, then all turned our attention to the giant kitty. His TP moves were really quite hard on us, and I was taking 200-300 damage from his normal hits, which was a huge drain on all of our MP. We went back for our second try with me PLD/NIN, and this time, we decided to leave the moblin alive, since Khim. only does his TP moves when the Moblin tells him too (and occassionally refuses to listen to the Moblin).

To open the fight, I flashed Khim to get the Moblin to link to me, then Lucrezia took over tanking Khim. while I fought Khim and tried to stay facing the moblin so I could shield block some of his attacks and keep "tanking" the moblin without actually doing anything to it. This approach worked very well for us until a big TP move took out Lucrezia and I had a hard time keeping my shadows up with both the Moblin and Khim. hitting me. We kept going for awhile, but a big move took me out as well, and we kind of fell apart at that point, since Luc was still weak.

We used the same approach on our third attempt, and won! This was the final unique assault for Erock, Lucrezia and I, so we quickly ran off to talk to Naja and were given our final rank of Captain. Then it was back to pick up some of the earlier assaults for Anastasia, Yobun, and Goto.

New title: Captain

Kiki's First God Fight

2007-12-05T06:39:00.000-05:00

The ClanBEB linkshell turned 4 years old on November 13th, and for this year's event, Yobun decided we should fight Genbu, since it should be easy for our little social linkshell to do with the people we'd have show up. I was very excited about this, since I've never been anywhere near a god, so it was all new to me. A lot of jaded players dismissed my excitement with their lolGenboob comments, but hey, everything's new once. Let me have my fun.

Anyway, we spent one Saturday afternoon farming in Sky for the pop items for Genbu, getting two of the waters, and killing Zipcana once for his items. By that time, people had to go, so we decided we'd try for a second Zipcana the following Saturday, and hopefully be able to fight Genbu twice. The following Saturday, we had 12 characters show up for the event. Wendell was there in spirit, but was being dual-boxed by Yobun. So we had Yobun, Wendell, Anastasia, Itera, Erock, Demin, Daden, Ryken, Lucrezia, Ranzz, Tsakiki, and Goto for the first Genbu, and Diasuke instead of Goto for the second.

Zipcana was running around his area when we got there, so we quickly got our second pop set complete, then built up TP on pots before heading over to Genbu's island. I got to pop our first Genbu, and then proceeded to kite him around. I was a bit disappointed that I had to kite, unlike the turtle in Limbus, but it was still fun. We made fairly short work of him, despite me running through the mages while Waterga III was being cast on me, and we got Genbu's Kabuto (Itera won the lot) and a Martial Abjuration - Hands, which went to me. My first god, my first god gear! Exciting!

Our second fight was pretty similar to the first, but I got killed at one point, so it was a little bit more exciting for the others. :-) We got another of the Martial Abjurations, which Ryken took for his PLD, but that was about it. It would be fun to go back a few times and see if we could get some of the other abjurations for people, and a Genbu's Shield or two.

I'd got a coffer key from one of the pots, so when we were done, I ran around looking for a coffer for my map, which was nice to finally get. I have a few other maps I should work on getting at some point.

After that, I headed to Jeuno to buy a pair of Cursed Handschuhs, then off to San d'Oria I went to get my Koenig Handschuhs. Yet another thing I never thought Kiki would ever have. Who'd've thunk it. The hands are really nice for situations where VIT and DEF are more important than enmity or haste or attack, which means they'll have limited usage, but it's really nice to have them for when I want them!

Lifter of Shadows!

2007-12-04T07:00:00.000-05:00

The biggest news on the Dynamis front is that I finally got to participate in the toppling of the Dynamis Lord, on November 14th. Since I was in the alliance with the person who dealt the killing blow (Bizcuit), I even got two nifty new titles for the evening. It was really nice to finally have everyone working relatively well together and to win the zone, after several failed attempts over the past year. The megaboss fight itself was pretty amazing - the stunners pretty well kept him locked down, and I think the only deaths were a couple of the DRKs. The run itself was light on drops - no relic dropped, nor did the Dynamis Lord cough up any Shadow items. We did get 2 100 pieces during the run, but the win was the important thing here anyway. I'm actually kind of glad that no shadow items dropped, since there would have been some huge fights no matter whom they ended up going to. It's sad that things like that can destroy linkshells.

We've been having a hard time finding and retaining good Paladins for the team. Just when you think you've got a decent one, he decides he'd rather go be the first to unlock Dancer the night the Wings of the Goddess expansion was opened, so he flubs up the first eye pull, dies, and home-points because he simply can't wait a couple of hours. We've had other Paladins join over the months who then need "time off" and we never see them again. So we're pretty much down to me, Lumikumi and Amyalfrodo as the "regular" Paladins, just when Lumikumi thought he could come as MNK more often than not. But he got his shiny new surcoat on our last Xarcabard run, and he's got to give it a good workout. :-) We've got quite a few people with PLD at 75, but most prefer to not be PLD for Dynamis runs. I try to rotate through them, and we're starting to let NINs main tank if they're interested as well.

We had our first Dynamis-Tavnazia run on November 3rd, and I was one of the lucky 18 who got to go. We had a lottery based on so many slots for so many roles, and Lumi and I were the PLDs. It was really fun to see the last Dynamis zone, but we didn't do as well as we'd hoped, partially because of two accidentally dropped hourglasses, and the need for someone to go give the two another hourglass. But we learned more about mob placement and the pulls than you can learn from reading posts on forums, and we learned that people just aren't as good at following instructions as you would like, but I'm sure we'll do better the next time we try the zone. One problem is that it will be a somewhat different set of people, so we'll undoubtedly have more newbie moments. I'm hoping we'll actually have 36 people Tavnazia-ready, and can field two alliances, but that's probably a pipe dream.

In October, we had a really good Dynamis-Qufim run, with a satisfying win, and three drops: ranger belt, warrior mask, and Monster Gaiters -1, which went to me. Lucrezia was the only other BST present on the run (Quetzal had been there but had to leave early), and she didn't want them. I have the Gaiters, so I was told to take the -1, so I could have a relic +1 piece for my BST, if I ever manage to level it to 75.

New titles: Lifter of Shadows, Dynamis-Xarcabard Interloper

I was Kidnapped by Ninjas?

2007-11-30T19:22:00.001-05:00

It's been awhile since I've updated my blog, long enough so that people who know me have asked why I've "given up" on it. I didn't intend to have such a long hiatus, the time just sort of snuck by too quickly. I write nearly all of my blog entries during my morning commute. The 45-60 minutes of undisturbed time on the train is well-suited for it, and it's pretty much my only "free" time. I think of it as "me-time". (When you commute 3 hours a day for over 10 years, you come up with all sorts of ways to rationalize it into being a good thing.) The trip home, when I often have to stand for the first 20 minutes of the ride, I've pretty much reserved for hand-held gaming.

My current game is Izuna: The Legend of the Unemployed Ninja on the DS, and I have found myself compelled to grab my DS most mornings after getting settled on the train, rather than opening up my laptop to write blog entries for Kiki. Or if I do pull out my laptop, it has been to compose cranky tirades or proposals to post on the Sackholders-Only forum for TheUltimates over one issue or another ("I hate Salvage", "our limbus rules let people take advantage of us and need to be tougher"). And there have been mornings where I'd just sit with my eyes closed, listening to my MP3 player, thinking I'm really too old to be staying up late on work nights. The latter usually occurs on Thursday mornings, after particularly late-running city Dynamis runs. It hurts to get up at 5:45 when you don't go to bed until 1. For that matter, it hurts to get up at 5:45 when you don't get to bed until 11 too! It also doesn't help when work and life and game stress keep you from sleeping properly.

Anyway, Izuna's really a fun "rogue-like" dungeon crawler that takes me back to the days of nethack, and it really has been a perfect commuter train companion. My trips to and from work never seemed so quick before. I finally "finished" the game this week, and just have the 100 level bonus dungeon that I may end up giving up on before moving on to my next game. For the bonus dungeon, you have to enter with no items at all, and are dropped back down to Level 1 (only within the bonus dungeon, so I still have Izuna capped at Level 99 if I want to go back through some of the normal dungeons). The levels are all randomly generated, so it's really a matter of luck whether you can find the items you need to survive as you go along. When you die, you get sent back to the surface empty-handed, ready to rush back in and try again. In dozens of attempts, I've only managed to get past the 6th floor once, only to be slaughtered on the 20th floor. Just when I think I've got a reasonable weapon and a handful of healing orbs, I step on a demon trap and get surrounded by 5 monsters that quickly turns Izuna into mincemeat and sends her back to the village.

I am still playing FFXI as much as ever, and there have been quite a few things that I've wanted to write about, so look for some new entries over the days to come. My game-life is still fairly repetitive with Assualt/Dynamis/Limbus/Salvage occupying most of my time, but there's always some new things that come along. I've scarcely done anything with the expansion, but did make it to old Windurst and did the first missions, and also made it to old Bastok. I'll probably try to get to Sandy this weekend, and see if I can do some quests and Campaign activities.

Here's a recent happy screenshot - congratulations Lumikumi on completing your Valor set! It's nice to finally see you in a Surcoat - we're the Taru Tank Twins again!

Just Like Old Times?

2007-10-17T19:09:00.000-04:00

I wanted to post an addendum to my recent "Merit Points and Me" post. I had a pickup party this past weekend, which ended up having 3 other people who are/have been in both ClanBEB and TheUltimates. We sought an open camp, and ended up fighting Trolls on Mt Zhayolm. When we finally got to actually fighting, we had DRK/THF (Latta), SMN/WHM (Anadosia), a WAR/NIN, SAM/THF (Easykill), and BRD/NIN (Alfrodo), and me as PLD/WAR. We orginally had Goto's WHM/SMN instead of the WAR, but he DC'd while we were checking the Mamool Ja staging point, and Ronald's DRG/WAR instead of Alfrodo's BRD/NIN. Ronald switched to RDM when Goto DC'd, but then Ronald DC'd on the way to our Troll camp.

I had a fun time with the party, but it was a bit frustrating when the WAR was there, since he wouldn't line up for SATA from our two /THFs. When I'd move to line up the mob with him, he himself would shift so he was no longer behind.

Goto reappeared after awhile, and when the WAR left, we swapped Goto back in. Then things really got going, and Easykill and Latta were busting out Light skillchains on every mob. Alfrodo always had another Troll ready and waiting for us, though the diamondhide and PLD mobs were pretty much chain-breakers. We weren't getting ZOMG l33t exp, but we were having a fun time, and the exp was decent.

After Anadosia got enough of a buffer on her SMN, she switched to BLM, and was *gasp* Magic-Bursting on the Light Skillchain. It wasn't exactly a Lufaise Meadows party, but it was the closest thing to an Old School party as I've seen in a very long time. I still had to wear all my +enmity gear, even with the SATAs helping to hold hate, but it was a lot of fun.

Captain, Here We Come!

2007-10-16T19:50:00.000-04:00

The ClanBEB assault group has been plugging away at the missions, trying to do as many unique one as we can every Monday. With our haphazard attendance, people are missing a variety of them that others have done. I think at this point, Lucrezia and Erock have the most unique ones, since I missed a few when I helped out TheUltimates assault group one night. We'll have to start going back and filling in the gaps for people after we've done them all. I've currently completed 36 of the 51 assaults, so just 15 more to go for my Captain rank (and free runic portal use! and an extra tag!).

Some nights we have people with lower ranks join in, so we're still doing repeats, but it also gives us an opportunity to do some of the lower leveled ones that people either missed, or we never managed to do. I think our core group are now all Second Lieutenant or higher, so soon we'll get to try out the First Lieutenant ones, which look like they might be a lot of fun. We've also thrown in a few Nyzul Isle assaults, but haven't reached the 10th floor yet, so it's probably only slightly less annoying than it used to be. :-)

I've actually done a lot of new ones since my last update, so here's a quick rundown on those:

Azure Experiments (Leujaoam Sanctum): An NPC uses your group for experimentation, grafting animal tissue on to you and seeing how you perform while fighting groups of Lamiae. It was kind of fun, and I loved having perma-flee from the Raptor Tissue, but it doesn't seem to be one to spam, unless people really really want to have a Divisor Ring.

Blitzkrieg (Mamool Ja Training Grounds): This one's kind of wild - you have to kill 200 mobs that all come swarming at you. They're celebrating a molting season or something like that, so they're really pretty weak. You're supplied with a bunch of temporary items to help you out, just like in Besieged. It was pretty funny to just stand there fighting the hordes, which included Mamool Ja, puks, bugards, raptors, and ziz. Supposedly an NM Mamool Ja can spawn, but we didn't see him.

Wamoura Farm Raid (Lebros Cavern): Another kill-everything assault, the twist on this one is that the Wamouracampa that fill the area can turn into Wamoura, which are a bit tougher to fight. We only had to fight two of the nasty Mothra-wannabes on our run. I think I prefer Troll Fugitives for my "exp while assaulting" runs.

Imperial Treasure Retrieval (Mamool Ja Training Grounds): I enjoyed this one, but think it would be hard to max out your points with a small group. Our goal for this is to retrieve treasure, hidden in coffers throughout the area. Meanwhile, Mamool Jas are trying to do the same thing, and you need to steal gems from them (and avoid having them steal them from you). So basically it's a big game of tag. We found the best approach was to travel in pairs, so if one of us had our gem stolen, the other could steal it right back. When you're the victim of a theft, you get warped back to your starting point. We ended up with all the treasure and had a nice win. It seems to be an easy one to do with no fighting required.

Defuse the Threat (Periqia): The object for this assault is to find and defuse Qiqirn mines that have been hidden throughout the area, and to try to avoid being spotted by the Qiqirn, since fighting wastes time. I didn't really much like this one, because it was hard to find the mines before they exploded. Apparently it's OK for them to explode rather than be defused, since we had many blow up on us, but we still ended up with the win. This might be easier with a full group seeking the mines (we had just three of us).

Apkallu Seizure (Ilrusi Atoll): I found this one annoying, and not sure I'd care to repeat it after doing it once. You're supposed to get Apkallus to like you and then follow them back to the NPC waiting to capture them. To do this, you need to /bow and /welcome them, feed them Hamsi that you find at ??? spots scattered about the zone, and then make sure you don't annoy them on the trip back to the NPC. If they spot one of your team mates, or one of the pugils hovering about, they'll take off and run away. I'm still not sure how Lucrezia or Erock managed to get one to the NPC.

Escort Professor Clavauert (Leujaoam Sanctum): One night we were restricted to SP missions or lower, so we decided to give this annoying assault another try. We had NIN/WAR, 2x RDM/WHM, BLM/WHM, WHM/BLM, and PLD/WHM. We did a lot of cure bombing on the NPC, and tried a lot of binding on the skeletons and ghosts throughout the area. It was a really close call, but Goto and Ranzz managed to stay alive and the NPC got to the end point. I think Ranzz held off some undead there, while Goto was able to sneak back to the Rune of Release undetected. This is another one I don't really want to try again, but we had some people miss it, so I'm sure I'll go back again one day.

Lost and Found (Ilrusi Atoll): This was a very annoying hot and cold game with an NPC. There was no fighting needed (there are krakens that can aggro, but have a very small range). Once you've found "hints" at ??? spots, the NPC will tell you which party member is the closest to the ring that she's looking for. It took us 15 minutes of moving her ever so slightly in the same spot to finally get the win, and Lucrezia fled to the Rune of Release, getting us out of there with less than 60 second left.

Imperial Code (Leujaoam Sanctum): I enjoyed this one, which wasn't quite a kill-everything mission, but we did have to fight a number of Kusa along with the main object of the mission, 3 NM fomor ninjas that had a stolen cipher we were sent to retrieve. There are a lot of ghosts in the area too, but we managed to sneak past them. With just 4 of us (PUP, THF, RDM, PLD), we were pretty close to the time limit on the win. This was the first CS level assault we'd done, and gave us 1999 points for the first time win. I could see using this one for Leujaoam points if people needed them.

Marids in the Mist (Mamool Ja Training Grounds): I thought this one was a lot of fun too. We just had three of us for this, and were down to the wire for the win. We had to "capture" eight Marids, which are in four separate areas in the training grounds. The Marids are being tended by Mamool Jas, so it helps to have invisible when pulling the Marids (Erock slept some to pull them, and Luc was able to pull, flee, and use Tonko on a few of them). To capture them, you need to weaken them, and use tranquilizer darts from the NPC at the entrance to sedate them. It takes several darts before they take effect, so you pretty much have to fight them right by the NPC at the start, so you can get more darts as needed. The Marids drop Chigoes too, so you need to be ready for those. You get some exp from the Chigoes, but this isn't a good exp one. I think I'd stick to Preemptive Strike if people need Mamool Ja points and you have a good fighting group, otherwise, Breaking Morale is a quicker win.

Deserter (Ilrusi Atoll): I found this one to be very annoying. You're supposed to disarm 12 Lamiae/Merrows, and you lose points if you kill any of them. Critical hits have a chance to disarm them. You only need to disarm one for the win, but we got lucky on the first (Erock used Mighty Strikes) and opted to fight more. We ended up with two disarmed and two killed, and got less than 500 points for the assault, even as a first time win and having the armband.

Voices in My Head

2007-10-11T19:16:00.000-04:00

Goldfish set up a Ventrilo server for TheUltimates this week, and a few of us used it last night on a Dynamis-Bastok run. This should prove to be extremely useful for situations where it's not really very convenient to remove one's hands from one's controller to quickly type an urgent question/command/confirmation. On certain pulls, like the NM trios in Xarcabard, we usually have a small group of people that all need to be ready at the same time, but by the very act of moving my hands to the keyboard to type something as simple as "/s /" to say I'm ready, I'm not actually ready.

It's odd to have real voices to associate with these characters I've been playing with for months and months, but it's nice as well, since it humanizes us, and reminds us that there are indeed real people behind the pixels. It also interesting to see how other people pronounce some of the game terms. Lumikumi says "tar-oo-tar-oo", while we've always said it more like "tare-oo-tare-oo" (yet we say "paw-sta" while a lot of Canadians say "pass-ta" for pasta). I can't remember how he said Xarcabard, but it was quite different from our "zark-a-bard" (with the X like the first one in Xerox). And Goldfish says "die-NAM-is", while it's always been "DIE-na-mis" to me. Meshe has some interesting inflections on non-game words, but that's to be expected from people who aren't native English speakers! People didn't talk a lot, so I'm not sure I could pick either Albany or Morgoth out in a crowd, but I'm sure we'll get more used to it as time passes. Amy was on vent at the beginning of the run, but I think she took off her headset quite early, just before Goldfish turned off the Monty Python recording he'd been playing for us.

Dynamis has been going pretty well, with a decent mix of cities, Northlands, and CoP zones. We've even had some long farming runs in Dynamis-Beaucedine, which was a nice change from our usual "we're getting the flag for one person" runs. We've had a few new members join, and with prompting from the sackholders, Venn's resolved to face the Dynamis Lord every time we enter Dynamis-Xarcabard, since if we don't try, we can't refine our strategy and bring the big guy down. Can't win if you don't play! We've had a bit of crankiness and flaring tempers on different runs in the past month, but rather than let it tear apart the shell, people actually discussed issues and we're probably better off for the conflict. As with any endeavor that requires a large group of people, we will have personality conflicts and hurt feelings, but if people don't let resentment fester and actually get things out in the open, we can hopefully move forward.

We have a few new PLDs, either main or with other jobs also at 75, so we've got plenty of fodder for the tank party now, but there are still runs where we end up a bit short and have to make Thom and/or Phelan bring their PLD. Lumikumi can even bring his MNK once in awhile if he wants to, now that it's 74/75. One of our newer PLDs missed out on two pairs of Valor Leggings that dropped to PLD40+ during our post-boss farming in Dynamis-Windurst. He mistakenly thought we were done after we'd killed the Mega Boss and he got his flag. Other people were leaving early, so he thought we were done and dropped his glass. This probably stemmed from the Jeuno run we'd done the week before - we don't farm Jeuno after the Mega Boss. We could have sent someone out to get him a new glass for the post-boss farming, but he decided he was tired anyway. At least it's a common drop for us there, so he'll get his boots some time soon.

We regularly have to play "musical zones", what with all the different Dynamis linkshells wanting to do certain zones at pretty much the same time. Usually this is just on Saturday evenings, when we have conflicts with early Sunday morning Japanese linkshells. There are no websites for "reserving" areas (and no in-game mechanism) that are used by both North American and Japanese linkshells, so it's pretty much whoever gets there first. Since our Wednesday runs usually start at 9pm, we can't enter Dynamis on Saturday until 9pm, so it's not like we could gather early and jump into a zone as soon as we have enough people. On Wednesday nights, most of the linkshells use the Rusty Buckets calendar, but every once in awhile we'll get bumped to another zone than the one we intended to do. The night of the Windurst run I mentioned, we were supposed to do Beaucedine, but a group that had been bumped from Xarcabard decided to jump in Beaucedine ahead of us. They only had 7-11 people for a quick farming run, and I'm pretty sure they were out of there about the time we entered Windurst. It just takes so long to decide where to go (and what zones are available), and then for everyone to travel there. In this case, we would have been better off staying put, but we did get the Windurst flag (and Beaucedine access) for at least one person, and 2 100s for the shell and a bunch of relic for our members, so it's all good!

Merit Points and Me

2007-10-10T19:49:00.000-04:00

I've had Paladin at 75 for well over a year now, and have only 50 Merit Points to show for it. I think Erock gets that many in two weeks. I don't really have time to go out with merit parties, so most of my points have come in small bits over time. Some of the Assaults have been really good for points, like Preemptive Strike and Troll Fugitives, but now that everyone's pretty much caught up in assault ranks, we're no longer spamming the old zones for AP, and instead are trying to do as many unique assaults as we can. Besieged is good for points as well, since you get so much ISP compared to normal exp parties on top of the exp/limit points, but it's too random to be at all reliable.

I've been on quite a few 60-90 minute parties after Dynamis, Limbus, or Salvage, usually when we've had much death and people need to recoup their buffers. Since I try to stay capped on experience points, it doesn't take long to get back to that and then get limit points on top of that. However, the need to replenish my exp buffer really cuts into my ability to build up the limit points. At least my weekly experience point scrolls help a lot with keeping me capped over level 75.

I have joined several pickup groups over the months, but those have been few and far between. It's nice having my anniversary ring for those occasions, to get double exp while using it. I see it as my "three free merit points" ring, and will be sad when I've exhausted its charges. My pickup parties don't seem like the ones other PLDs get. I'm always reading about other PLDs using nothing but PLD/NIN for merit parties, but I'm always told to sub WAR and actually tank. I've spent a lot of gil on gear to make me a decent PLD/NIN damage dealer, but since I'm tanking, I have to wear all of my +Enmity gear instead of my fancy damage gear. And even if I do get to go PLD/NIN with some friends, I end up spending half my time curing the others, so they laugh at my pathetic damage percentage. I'd like to see their numbers if they were casting Cure IIIs and IVs on other people all the time, instead of just madly swinging away at the mobs.

I really hate the style of most of the fighting in merit parties, but there aren't a lot of options. I'd love to go fight the greater birds and rams in Lufaise again some time, with an old school set up, but finding 5 other people happy to do that is another story. Hopefully I can get a couple parties in over the next few Saturdays. I'd love to finish off HP (5 merit points for my 7th upgrade) and work on one of the other categories.

Fun With White Mage

2007-10-09T19:11:00.000-04:00

Leveling White Mage has gone from being extremely painful to being what might even be called fun, which has surprised me. It was so hard getting out of Qufim, but I got lucky with pick-up parties and got from 25 to 37 in three separate leveling sessions.

I've been surprised at how few people seem to be leveling jobs through the 20s, and as a WHM have stood around with my flag up for a couple of hours at times. One Sunday in August, I was invited to a short-lived party in Qufim, then headed to Yuhtunga as a 24. We started out with a SAM, RNG, PLD, WHM, SMN, and WHM, which went pretty well for a brief time. The SAM was replaced by a MNK, then the SMN was replaced by a DRK with a Power Leveler. When the DRK leveled and left, we couldn't find enough people to keep the party going. The other WHM and I decided to try duoing mandies with our NPCs, which worked well enough for the first one, and then the second one was a bit too much for us. We survived, but Balu-Falu ended up dying from poison because I had no MP to cure or poisona him. It was a fun experiment though. I was only halfway through level 25 at this point, and had been such a chore to get there.

A month later, I headed to Kazham as a WHM25, and got a party with a NIN, WAR, BLM, RNG and COR. The WAR was replaced by a MNK, the NIN by another WAR, and the MNK by a PUP. At that point, probably when we first started hitting 28, we headed to Yhoator Jungle, and had a great time getting chain #4s on the IT mandies there. The exp just rolled in - 280 points on the chain #4s. And we didn't have to deal with deadly goblins like we'd been fighting occasionally in Yuhtunga. If it weren't for Dream Flower, we probably would have had chain #5s. I wasn't able to enfeeble those mandies as well as the lower leveled ones near Kazham, but I needed to have my MP a bit as it was. Our Japanese Ranger didn't pause much for MP breaks, but it was never an issue and we just kept on fighting. I hated leaving the party, but Dynamis was coming up, so the party broke up with my WHM at 29.

The following week, I had similar luck. I checked the people looking for parties around my level (WHM29), decided that I wouldn't get one, and headed to Qufim to solo with my NPC. Just after I had used my Signal Pearl to summon him, I got a /tell, "(Party) (Do you need it?)". It was from a RDM26 in Kazham, so I said sure and hopped on the airship. We started out in Yhoator, with a RDM, DRK, WAR, SAM, THF, and WHM. The mandies and goblins pretty much melted under the blows of the damage dealers, and the RDM and I switched off healing duties: one would rest while the other healed. The RDM and DRK had to leave about the time we out-grew the jungle, so we headed to Jeuno to regroup and go off to East Altepa with a PLD and BLM replacing out departing members. We started out fighting beetles. The PLD was very good, and we discussed how much I should heal, with me leaving him plenty of room for hate generation. I mostly just used regen on the beetles. When we moved on to the Dhalmels, things were a bit tougher, but we managed pretty well. They hit so much harder than the beetles, and I had to watch for silence and defense down. After awhile, the PLD and BLM had to leave. We replaced them with a NIN and DRG, but the party just wasn't the same any more. Hate was everywhere, and with everyone taking so much damage from the dhalmels, I could barely make it through two mobs before needing a full rest. The SAM had a RDM75 come out to "assist", and at that point, I just was doing enfeebles and erase. I had to head off to get ready for Dynamis soon after than, and I'm sure the party didn't miss me much. They broke up soon after, as people got their levels.

This past weekend, I was hoping to "finish" WHM, and put my flag up in Jeuno, as a level 34 WHM. After about 30 minutes, I head to Qufim, summoned Balu-Falu, fought one set of bats, and got an invite for a party. Poor Balu-Falu is probably tired of being dismissed so abruptly. Our party only had 5 people to start with, but we headed to Crawlers Nest anyway, as a PLD, WHM, RDM, SAM, and NIN. The SAM had her NPC out until a second NIN was added to the party. Things went fairly smoothly, though the RDM never used Dispel. Since the crawlers pretty much spammed Cocoon, the fights did drag out a bit. After the PLD hit 37, he left, replacing himself with a PUP. Things continued on fairly well, though the SAM died zoning a link at one point. Then one of the NINs DC'd, just as we finished fighting the crawler that got him to level 75. Seemed a tad suspicious. We waited for a bit, but Ryken sent me a tell asking if we could use a THF, and we could, so he came out to join us.

It took us a few fights to get coordinated, and things went fairly well until we got a link and two of us died (I had reraise up - I'm not quite to the point where I remember to keep it up at all times, since it was a new thing for me at WHM33). The second NIN DC'd right after that fight, and we replaced him with the same PLD I'd partied with the week before in the desert. The party became vastly improved at that point. It's amazing what a difference a good tank can make. The RDM replaced himself with another RDM when he hit 37, and the second RDM was a much better RDM, and the party became awesome. We plowed through the crawlers a bit too fast, but didn't want to change camps for the Nest Beetles, since we didn't have much longer to party. When I hit level 36, I had a fun time reading my three teleport scrolls. Ryken and I had to leave to get ready for Dynamis, and others were nearing the end of their partying time as well, so we broke up after the newest party additions got a level. I got to use a teleport spell for the first time, dropping Ryken off at the Holla crag.

I really did enjoy a lot of my WHM parties, so who knows, maybe I'll end up leveling it further, but in the meantime, I finally have my fully-leveled White Mage sub job for my Paladin. I wonder how much I'll actually end up using it.

Same Old, Same Old

2007-10-06T09:06:00.000-04:00

I haven't been updating my blog very frequently lately, partially because real life has been a bit more stressful/hectic than usual, but also because I feel like I'm just repeating myself.

For a long time now, my game life has felt like a lot of of the same things, over and over. My recent AF re-questing helped drive that point home. I spend a lot of my free time helping people with missions and quests that I've already done, while my non-free time consists of Dynamis, Limbus, and Salvage, which tend to get somewhat routine as the months pass. I really enjoy helping others, and it's fun to go back and trounce mobs in missions that were often challenging when I did them the first time. And frequently, helping someone with missions and quests means that I then have more people to help out with a mission/quest that I haven't done. Assaults been like that - dozens of repeats mean we get people ranked up and can move forward to the ones none of us have done. Helping people with The Black Coffin meant more people for Salvage, and helping with CoP missions meant more people for Limbus.

There are so many things in the game that I haven't done, some of them are probably things I'll never do, and with the next expansion coming out in November, there will be even more added. It really is endless.

It's also the repetitive nature of leveling that probably keeps me from wanting to take another job to 75. I still think I want to take several more to 60 (WAR, DRK, BLM), and want to take more to 37 (THF, WHM, RNG, SAM), and I really do want to do something with Summoner, since I have all the avatars and even my Carbuncle Mitts, but I really don't see having the time for all of that. And then there's the matter of merits for my Paladin. I'm so far behind what I want to improve my stats and abilities, but it takes a long time to build up the limit points when the only exp I get is in a few assaults and an occasional Besieged.

I'm still mostly enjoying my time in-game. I'm quite fond of my game friends, and I love the sense of accomplishment when we win tough battles. It's quite nice to help people get things they want as well, but I keep wondering how much more this game really holds for me. How will I know when I'm done? My husband is patiently waiting for me to be done with "that stupid game", but as the months drag on and on, he's starting to give up hope. It's been over 9 months since he last logged into the game. I really miss playing with Grymalkyn, but he wouldn't be doing most of the things I'm currently doing even if he was playing.

First Lieutenant Kiki

2007-10-01T19:06:00.000-04:00

Last Monday night's assaults were more than enough to get me the points I needed for my final promotion quest. Since we were all Sergeant or better, I got to do three that were new for me. We started out with Supplies Recovery in Leujaoam Sanctum, where we had to get more items from Imps than two of the Immortals. The NPCs kind of cheat, since they run faster than we can, and can jump up ledges that we cannot, but we still managed to get more of the supplies than they did, so it was a win.

Then we played matchmakers for a bunch of Apkallus in Lebros Cavern (Apkallu Breeeding). This was kind of cute, and really pretty easy - just have to avoid a few bombs. You have to talk to the males (they're larger) and lead them to the appropriate female. They're matched up by the noises they make, a cipher that spells out a simple word, and the females will have a word that "matches", like "cod" and "fish", and "orange" and "apple". It's also a 15 minute one, so I could see this being handy for point spamming for Lebros.

The third new assault was Stop the Bloodshed, in Periqia. The goal here is to kill at least 35 chigoes that are spread throughout the area, while trying to avoid (haha) the Lamia "Chigoe Breeders". I didn't much like this one, but it was another win, and I'm now at 25/51 of the assaults I need to reach Captain.

We did a final Troll Fugitives so we didn't waste the 5-pointers for Erock and Lucrezia, plus we all like the experience points we get from that one.

The next evening I did the Promotion: First Lieutenant quest, which was basically three sets of logic puzzles. First I had to use the Force, err, my sixth sense to pick out 3-5 disguised Qiqirn, then prove my ability to learn some simply ciphers, and finally, face several NPCs for a modified version of Rock/Scissors/Paper. None of this was too difficult, especially with the walkthrough on FFXIclopedia, but it did take a bit of time. It might not have been so bad, but I got a black screen of doom on my PS2 just as I'd completed the first phase and was being "zoned" out of the cutscene. The game didn't register that I'd done that part, so I had to repeat it.

I've been enjoying the assaults quite a bit, and have been happy that we've been able to maintain interest and keep people doing them on Monday nights. I've been building up quite a lot of points in each of the zones, since I haven't felt the Amir armor is worth getting for my PLD, and I don't have any other jobs high enough for the sets. Since I'm getting more than the 1500 I need each week for Salvage, it will just keep piling up.

New title: First Lieutenant

First Round with Proto-Ultima

2007-09-21T19:13:00.001-04:00

We've got enough people showing up regularly for Limbus to be creative with our farming runs. One night we had a group of 11 head to Temenos C2 to upgrade a chip for my Ultima set, while a squad of 4 headed to Apollyon SE to try to find enough coins to make up for the lack of them on the upgrade run. Lucrezia took the low-man squad, while I led the other group. We ended up with a total of 54 coins for the night (35 from the farming team), so it was definitely a good way to split our resources.

Our next run, we decided to try for the two chips I needed to complete my Omega set. I had a team of 10 for Apollyon SW (fomors, treants, mimics, and elementals), while Lucrezia had 10 in Apollyon NE (mandies, birds, pots, gigas, dhalmels). This worked out really well for us. My team finished first, I got my chip from that run, disbanded and was invited to Luc's alliance, and got the second chip when they finished. Since Apollyon's all one zone, we were able to do that, despite me being in the western "lobby" while they were in Apollyon NE. We also had a whopping 96 coins total from the two runs, so we took 4 from the bank for an even 5 per person. My group could have had a few more coins perhaps, but I took the time chests on the first two floors for safety. Then on the mimic floor I got really lucky and the first three chests I opened were items, time, and restore, so the mimic level was very quick.

On Sunday evening, we were ready to face Proto-Ultima for the first time. I was very anxious about the fight, since it sounds so much worse than Proto-Omega, and Citadel Buster sounded difficult to survive. In preparation, I bought my first magic damage gear: two Merman's Rings for -8% Magic Damage Reduction, and a Lamia Mantle +1 and Lamian Kaman for +5 Magic Defense Bonus. I adjusted my PLD/NIN macro set to add a CB gear swap, and reorganized my +HP, +enmity, and +shield macros to get it all to work better (plus I got my Homam Cosciales and Ethereal Earring since my last PLD/NIN fight, and had to add them in).

Lucrezia's overall strategy was very similar to that for Proto-Omega, but we had more RDM/DRKs and BLMs and fewer SMNs this time. We started out with Luc as my co-tank, but switched over to Eulucia. Eulucia and I stood on opposite sides of Ultima, and as we reached our hate thresholds, every move we did or damage we took had Ultima flip around to the other tank. Things went incredibly well until we got Ultima under 20%. We'd take massive damage from time to time, but the stunners were hampering Ultima, and Anrita and Toshimitsu were keeping us healthy.

When the first Citadel Buster happened, people either didn't notice it was happening, or thought it would be better to stand and fight, rather than run away like we had planned. This resulted in over half the alliance being dead. People reraised, but we never completely recovered, and we ended up wiping with Ultima around 5%. At the end, Proto-Ultima was drawing in the final survivors one by one and killing them each in turn.

We did learn a lot from the fight though, and I'm sure we'll do better next time. I actually survived the first Citadel Buster - when I had buffs up, I was hit for just under 1400 (and my max HP at that point was ~1600). A later Citadel Buster that was under 1400 killed me because I was at low health, and Armor Buster got me while weakened. My final death was a 2100+ point Citadel Buster, when I think the only thing I was missing was Shell and maybe Light Carol. It was a fun fight, and I'm looking forward to a rematch.

Last night, we headed to Temenos C3 (Orcs, Yagudos, and Quadavs) for the third chip upgrade I needed to complete my Ultima set, so we're planning to head back to fight Proto-Ultima again on Sunday. This is just the second time we've done Temenos C3 since I joined TNU, the earlier being last March. I remember it as being fairly easy then, but it was just ridiculous last night. We had 16 people, and were killing all the lesser Beastmen in under 30 seconds, and even the NMs weren't too much of a challenge. We took a lot of damage from Astral Flow on the Summoner, but no one died. One of our RDMs died on the next NM from an AOE right after he used convert, but that wasn't because the zone was tough. We ended up with 50 coins, and a Cobalt Mythril Sheet which went to Venn.

Seem So Oddly Familiar....

2007-09-20T19:36:00.001-04:00

Last May, I reset my Paladin Artifact armor quests, after upgrading my Gallant Leggings and then my Gallant Breeches. Since I lost the original pieces in the upgrade process (they repair your originals with the materials you provide), I no longer had my full AF set, which is handy to have for level capped events. Plus it's nice to be able to store the set when I'm not using it. Any relief on inventory is welcome!

The first step in the reset process was to drop my Honor Sword, and then head to Lower Jeuno to pay Vingijard 10,000 gil to make me forget everything I had done for the original quest. After that, I took the airship to San d'Oria to restart the quests.

For Sharpening the Sword, I first talked to young Ailbeche in Northern San d'Oria. He remembered me as the person who'd returned his fishing rod, and needed some help sharpening his father's sword. I set out in search of a special sharpening stone in Ordelles Caves, where I had to fight Polevik, an Earth Elemental. I brought the stone back to the lad, and he was so pleased, he gave me his father's sword.

I chatted with him some more (picking up A Boy's Dream), and he lamented that his "friends" were going fishing, but he needed some giant shell bugs to use as bait. So I headed to Crawler's Nest to kill the Dreadbug 3 times over the course of a couple of hours, getting 4 giant shell bugs in the process. Ailbeche decided I should go catch the monster fish myself instead of him, so later that day, Thom (who also was re-doing the quest) and I headed to Castle Oztroja to fish up the monster fish. It was certainly easier than when I first did it as a level 50 PLD. Thom and I took our fish back to Ailbeche, and he recommended that we take them to Zaldon in Selbina. Zaldon gutted our fish for us, and we received a pair of yucky old knight's boots that Zaldon found inside. Since this is a key item, I decided to wait until I got the coffer I needed to replace my pants before I would head to Prince Trion to get my new boots, unless I needed them beforehand.

At some point, I talked to Guslam in Upper Jeuno, to restart Borghertz's Stalwart Hands quest to get my Gallant Gauntlets, and to make the treasure coffer pieces available. I didn't pursue things further until mid-August, when Meshe needed a Tavnazian Bell to replace one of his WHM AF pieces. Meshe, Erock, Anrita and I fought the mobs in the Eldieme Necropolis for a short while, ending up with Meshe's Bell and 4 coffer keys rather quickly. The next morning, I returned to Eldieme, and eventually found my coffer in the Hume Bones area. I returned to Guslam with the Old Gauntlets I had found, and then talked to the ghost of Borghertz in Port Jeuno. He needed an old flame to repair them for me, so I headed off to Castle Zvahl Bailey to fight Dark Spark. As a PLD75/RDM37, the fight was even easier than I thought it would be. Once again, I didn't complete the quest, to avoid having the new piece of AF until I was ready to store the complete set. At this point however, I dropped my original pair of Gallant Gauntlets, figuring if I needed them, I could pick up the new ones.

A couple of weeks ago, I decided it was time to finish up my re-questing. I was getting close to having what I needed to upgrade my Gallant Surcoat, and I figured it would be nice to get my AF set complete again and put it back into storage. I headed to Beadeaux with my trusty NPC Balu-Falu (set as Soothing Healer). I was hoping to get some Great Sword skillups while I was hunting for keys, but I hit 217 on the first Quadav, and didn't get another skillup. It didn't take me long to get a coffer key, probably 10 Quadavs. I discovered one drawback of having Balu-Falu helping me - when I used the Mute to get past an Afflictor without getting cursed, he immediately used Silena on me. However the coffer was next to the first Afflictor, with two Quadavs guarding it. Balu-Falu and I took care of the Quadavs, and I opened the coffer to get my shiny replacement breeches.

I walked to Jeuno to get my Gauntlets from Borghertz, then took the airship to San d'Oria to get my Leggings from Prince Trion, then I put the entire set into storage with the NPC in San d'Oria. Hurray! At that point, I had just Under Oath left to do. If I ever open a coffer in Garlaige Citadel as my PLD, I'll get another Coronet, but I'll just leave that be. I started the quest in San d'Oria before heading off to Dynamis.

The next day, I headed to Castle Zvahl with Balu-Falu to fight the coffer demons and eyes. I was actually surprised how easily I could solo them, as they always seemed so much tougher than the normal beastment coffer level mobs. The BLM ones were the hardest, but even when I had a BLM and a SAM on me at the same time, I wasn't in any danger. It took me two or three hours to get my key, and the coffer was in the next Demon room that I checked. I headed to San d'Oria with the old paintbrush I'd found in the coffer, and continued with the quest.

Last Friday, I recruited some help after Salvage, and Venn, Meshe, Albany, Erock, and Serenity came to Davoi with me to kill the two Orc NMs I needed dead in order to get a well weight. The fight was over quickly, and we headed over to the old monastery and killed the NM there for Serenity's Windurst Mission 8-2.

I sent the materials for a Gold Brocade to Venn's clothcraft mule, and on Sunday morning, I picked up my second Gallant Surcoat (with the original safely in storage with the NPC), and took it to Sagheera along with the Gold Brocade, a White Rivet and Snowy Cermet from Limbus, and 30 Ancient Beastcoins. It seems really odd to be upgrading the replacement, but as far as the game is concerned, I didn't have my original on me, so it worked. When I came back later for Limbus, Sagheera had my Gallant Surcoat +1 ready for me. I still wonder if this was worthwhile, but it has +6 VIT, so would be really good for tanking big things that I have to fight PLD/WAR and need to care about how high my VIT is. My Valor Surcoat has more enmity, a bit more HP, but DEX instead of VIT (plus the nifty damage->mp while using cover), and will remain my default body piece. But I had the items, and it's definitely a nice piece to have around.

I think that's it for PLD AF upgrades though. There's no point in upgrading the gloves (and I don't want to do my PLD AF a third time), and the coronet seems a bit of a waste. I suppose I should macro it in for cover, but I can leave that decision to some other time. Now we have more PLDs in Limbus, I won't be getting the white rivets and snowy cermets all to myself any more. They'll get much more use out of Gallant Leggings +1 than I ever would from a Gallant Coronet +1!

Not so new title: Paragon of Paladin Excellence

Second Lieutenant Kiki

2007-09-18T19:25:00.001-04:00

We still have our regular Monday evening assaults going, which has been really a lot of fun. Every once in awhile we team up with the TU assault group when both of us are a bit short, and that works out pretty well too. As people have been gaining in the ranks, we've been doing more and more of the higher leveled ones, especially when we can get people a new rank every week by doing 5 assaults that are new to them. I still haven't done any ranked Sergeant or higher, and missed out on a few of the Corporal ones recently, when I was with the TU group and the BEB group did 4 of the Corporals.

I'd gotten enough points to get the promotion quest for Second Lieutenant, and did that a few weeks ago. It was easy, but it was "expensive", since I had to keep giving Naja's bitch coins for my training sessions. I passed with flying colors and opened up another set of 5 assaults.

The new-to-me ones I've done since the last time I wrote about my assault progress are Demolition Duty, Building Bridges, and Counting Sheep. For Demolition Duty, you have to escort an automaton around to several blocked gateways, which he will clear, but a crab will spawn and try to kill the automaton. There are also imps running around that will aggro the team, but overall, it seemed fairly easy. Building Bridge we had tried before and timed out, but my second attempt was a success. Counting Sheep was an easy win, but I think full points would require a lot of luck. For that one, you have to dig up ore to get coins from a Qiqirn NPC, which you then use to pay another Qiqirn NPC to lead a Sheep to safety.

We gave the SP level Escort Professor Chanoix assault a couple of tries this week, but failed on both. For this, you have to escort an NPC that you have no control over, through a zone with skeletons and ghosts. We tried using sneak to avoid aggro ourselves, but that didn't completely work, and we tried having Carbuncle out to aggro all the mobs, but since the professor has an unpredictable route, that didn't work so well either. If we could manage to stay snuck and just cure-bomb the professor, we might be able to do it, but it still seems pretty tricky.

Last week, we decided to give Nyzul Isle Investigation a shot. I was the only one in the group of 6 who'd done it before, so I was nominated leader and keeper of progress. Since I had 1302 tokens from previous attempts, it made sense. My old Nyzul Isle static disbanded before they modified the assault, so I was curious about the changes. They definitely seemed to make an improvement, though it could have just been random luck on the floors we got on our first run. We ended up with two Eliminate All Enemies floors, two Light All the Lamps floors (which were incredibly quick and not at all annoying), and one Eliminate Specified Enemy floor. We finished in plenty of time, and took our exit at level 5, where I saved progress, so I can use 500 tokens to start us out on level 6.

Our second run was more like I remembered, and we wiped to a pudding boss on the second floor. I think we'll try to do one Nyzul run each week, as long as people are game. It'll be fun to see how well we can progress.

New title: Second Lieutenant

Dynamis-Valkurm Interlopers!

2007-09-13T19:20:00.001-04:00

TheUltimates had a very exciting time last night, when we finally beat Dynamis-Valkurm. This was either our 3rd or 4th run since I joined the linkshell in January, and the previous runs have always been unhappy events. Lucrezia modified the strategy a bit, and made perfect pulls up to Cirrate Christelle, the Mega Boss, leading to a wonderful win. Instead of sending 3 runners out for each of the Nightmare Flies, Luc pulled each in sequence. I shadowed him just in case of links, and it was interesting to see just how far away the flies could be. He pulled the fly from the northeast first, bringing it back to the outpost as people were still in the process of entering. He and I immediately headed to the southeast for the next fly, while Lumikumi led the team to Selbina when the first fly was dead. Luc brought the second fly back to them, then he and I headed to the western fly, with Lumi taking the team to the eastern edge of the Valkurm Emperor's beach after the second fly was dead. The pulls were completely clean, and the group dispatched the flies with ease.

We rejoiced to have our subjobs back and moved on to the Fairy Ring. Phelan's RNG headed into the Fairy Ring cave after Lucrezia made a sacrifice pull on all the Yagudos to give Phelan a safe passage. Phelan used Shadowbind on the funguar and ran back to where we were all waiting on the beach. Lumikumi, Amyalfrodo and I shared hate and seemed to keep it on us pretty well. The only death was Amyalfrodo. It was hard to believe we'd already made it past the Fairy Ring, with only 2 deaths (one intentional), and not a single bit of aggro.

With plenty of time on the clock, we headed east to get Nant'ina, a Goobbue NM, from Highland's zone. The group had to fight several Quadavs and statues to clear Luc's path to the NM, but nothing gave us any trouble. We thought we'd given them enough to keep busy while Luc and I skirted past several Manticores to get the NM, but it's such a long pull that they were impatiently waiting for more things to kill before we got back to them.

Now that the Mega Boss had been weakened by killing the Fairy Ring and Nant'ina, we headed over to the Selbina gate, gathered in our appointed spots near the Mega Boss (tanks with their backs to the gate, support mages to the tanks left, damage mages a bit north of the support mages, melee behind the malboro). We buffed up, some slept for TP, and we cut loose. The actual start of the fight was a little bit chaotic, as Lumikumi was counting down from 5, and the Malboro went red when he was at 3, so someone jumped the gun. We had quite a few deaths during the fight, but I think it was only around a third of the alliance. We had to immediately kill the two Nightmare Malboros that were spawned when we engaged the Mega Boss, then we got everyone on their feet and everyone got their Dynamis - Valkurm Sliver and danced around happily, basking in the moment of triumph.

We had about 70 minutes left on the clock for farming, and we were pretty lucky with the drops. We got two Cleric Belts, a Warrior's Mask -1, and a Warrior's Stone. Meshe won the first belt, while Fliggity was blessed by Altana, and won the three other items. He's now 6/6 on WHM and WAR relic, the lucky bastard!

Some of the pulls after the Mega Boss can get pretty messy, but we didn't have a lot of deaths, and pretty much just mowed through the mobs. We fought mostly Manticores, Hippogryphs, and Cactuars, with a few Sheep thrown in for good measure. Unbelievably, I survived the night without a single death (I was backup tank, so was main tanking whenever Lumikumi got killed). The lag was absolutely wretched, especially on the Nightmare Cactuar pulls. My screen froze so badly several times that I thought my PS2 was crashing.

We now have a bunch of people with access to Dynamis-Tavnazia, but I'm not sure when we'll be trying that. There's a limit of 18 people in that zone, so ideally we'd have 36 people with access and go in on a Saturday night in two waves (so the three day wait doesn't interfere with our Wednesday night runs). We'll have to revisit Buburimu and Qufim to get more people their slivers for access. I messed up the Mega Boss pull on our last Qufim run, spoiling the flag chance for a few people. I was a bit emotionally distracted at the time, but shouldn't have let that get in the way of doing my job.

We've been having some pretty good runs in general over the past month or so. We completely cleared Bastok before the Mega Boss one night, and that was exciting, and another night in Windurst, we just pulled from the Death House and killed them all while working our way through the trigger NMs. It sure made it easier to set up camp for the BLM and SMN trigger NMs.

For awhile there, the linkshell myth was that Kiki always wins (drops, main tank), but lately it's been Lumikumi who always wins. He's been main tanking quite a bit, and on a recent rare farming run in the Glacier, he won the covetted Valor Breeches. It was nice to see them drop! We got further on that farming run than we ever had before too, so that was fun.

We've been having troubles farming Xarcabard some nights, mostly because of a lack of tanks on a particular run. We just need to have more on some of those pulls. We do so much better there when we have at least 3 PLDs and 3 NINs. I think we'll be ready to try the Dynamis Lord again soon. I'd really love to see us beat him!

New Title: Dynamis-Valkurm Interloper

Breaking Chains

2007-09-12T20:02:00.000-04:00

I've been eager to complete the Apocalypse Nigh quest since well before completing the Zilart and CoP missions and fighting Bahamut last January, but never had an opportunity until this week. The screenshot here is from when I visited the BC after completing the Shadows of the Departed quest in July, and I went to the BC for the cutscene.

Last night, Teluric tried to gather together a group from TheUltimates for a run on Tuesday night, but it was just him, Tye, and I who showed up, so we parked in Whitegate, and Teluric shouted to get people to join us. It took a couple of hours, but we finally had a full group, with Chef, Doomed, and Lustt (who's actually in TU too) joining us.

We headed to the Empyreal Paradox, as a party of SMN, WHM, PLD, DRK, BLU, and NIN, planning to have the NIN kite Kam'lanaut while we took care of the kid. We miscalculated a bit, and ended up wiping before finishing off the kid. Lessons learned: echo drops are essential, Kam'lanaut's -ga spells are really annoying, and Kam'lanaut's hate reset makes kiting a bit of a challenge.

After laying in a bigger supply of echo drops, we headed in for round two. This seemed to go even less well than the first, which surprised me. I headed back to the Tavnazian Safehold before the third run to pick up my new Lamia Mantle +1 and Lamia Kaman that I had Qiyuk buy for me earlier in the evening for TNU's upcoming Proto-Ultima fight, hoping it might help reduce the damage I was taking from Kam'lanaut's spells.

As often seems the case for FFXI battles, the third time was the charm. Lustt switched to MNK, while Chef switched to NIN for this round. She pretty much demolished the kid, even with him warping away in the middle of her Hundred Fists. He didn't go far, so only a few seconds were wasted. We ended up wiping on Kam'lanaut, with him at 50%, but managed to mostly reraise and recover before taking him on again. Chef was too close to him to accept his raise, so he waited until we engaged before getting on his feet. It was a rough fight, with some of us dying twice just from Kam'lanaut. He was so close to death when I died, leaving just Teluric with Carbuncle, and Tye still on their feet. I reraised and got another good hit in, pulling hate off of Carbuncle and taking a 1100 point Light Blade to the face. Carbuncle then finished him off, and we had won! Hurray for Carbuncle! Hurray for us! I ended up losing 4000 exp over the course of our three fights, but it was oh so worth it.

After the fight, I headed to Jeuno to tell Aldo what had happened, and then traveled to Norg, where I logged out for the night. After logging back in this evening, I talked to Gilgamesh, and was given my choice of earrings. As a career Paladin, there seems to be no option other than the Ethereal Earring. This gives me some HP, attack, evasion, plus a bit of MP for all the damage I take. I wish it also reduced damage, but I'll take the free MP.

New title: Breaker of the Chains

Eternal Mercenary

2007-09-08T09:08:00.001-04:00

The August 27th update brought us, amongst other things, the completion of the Treasures of Aht Urhgan missions. Lucrezia organized ClanBEB's runs for the actual fights last Saturday, so we all got our cutscenes done beforehand. The first fight (for Mission 42, Path of Darkness) takes place at the Nyzul Isle staging point, and you have Naja Salaheem helping out. The fight has three phases, the first against Amnaf (a Blue Mage) and 4 single gears. You have to kill all the gears and get Amnaf down to about 50%, when she warps ahead. The second phase has Amnaf summoning 4 triple gears, and again you have to defeat the gears and get her down to half health. The third time, Amnaf has changed into a Soulflayer, but doesn't summon any more gears.

We ended up failing the first attempt, but learned enough to modify our strategy to win the next two fights (we had 7 people, so 5 of us had to repeat the fight). Lucrezia would flee into aggro Amnaf, and kite everything while the rest of us assisted Naja, fighting whatever she decided to fight. The Soulflayer itself was pretty resistant to physical and magical damage, but wasn't a very tough fight.

After a couple more cutscenes, we were ready for the final battle, for Mission 44, Nashmeira's Plea. Yobun had to leave after the earlier fight, so we just had a single team: Lucrezia (THF), Ranzz (RDM), Anastasia (BLM), Ryken (MNK), Goto (WHM) and Tsakiki (PLD). This fight is also in the Nyzul Isle staging point, so travel was a lot easier than it was for some of the earlier missions. For this fight, you first face Raubahn, another Blue Mage, and Razfahd. The BLU reraises twice, so you have to kill him three times, while Razfahd gives up after he's at half health and then you have to fight Alexander, a very large automaton with lots of annoying, powerful, AOE attacks. This part of the fight was actually tough enough to be quite satisfying when we won. We wiped, reraised, and finished him off with little time to spare.

We headed back to Whitegate for a few more "missions", bringing the storyline to completion. I found myself getting a bit misty-eyed at a couple of the scenes. Our group picked out our shiny new rings from Nashmeira (I took Ulthalam's Ring, which has Accuracy +4 and Attack +4, plus STR+4, DEX+4, and Regen in Assault and Salvage), then got our Glory Crown back from Naja.

New titles: Endymion Paratrooper, Naja's Comrade-in-arms, Nashmeira's Loyalist, Preventer of Ragnarok, Champion of Aht Urhgan, Eternal Mercenary

Fancy Pants

2007-09-07T19:51:00.000-04:00

After our win against Proto-Omega less than two weeks ago, we didn't want to wait long before trying again, to make sure it wasn't a fluke and we really had a strategy that worked for us. We did two Apollyon Runs for coins and chips (SE and NW), and then on Sunday night, we mustered the forces and headed back to Central Apollyon. We had pretty much the same crew as the previous fight, but instead of Ryken and Reefermadness, Serenity was there, and two new members, Lustt and Toshimitsu. Job-wise we had one less MNK and BLM, but an extra SMN, DRG, and WHM.

The plan was the same - SMNs using Physical and Magical rage bloodpacts on the appropriate forms, while the NIN and PLD co-tanked, the BRD kept up songs, the WHMs kept people healthy, the BLMs watched for gunpods and kept up stuns and nukes, the RDMs enfeebled, refreshed, hasted and cut loose with Chainspell-Stun, while the melee mostly waited on the sides for their final frenzy.

The fight was a bit more chaotic than the last time, but it also seemed to be much quicker. Luc and I lost hate to a Chi Blast from Itera, probably because we'd been hit with Pile Pitch a couple times and hadn't regained our hate yet, but I'm not sure about that. I died in the middle of the fight (3 big hits from the two-legged form when I was stunned and couldn't do anything), but Luc had things under control, so I popped back up and ran off to the side to rest. I didn't have long though, as they got Omega under 25% and everyone rushed in for the kill. I joined in and tried to help out, but I don't think I added much. I think next time, I'll try to use Invincible and Cover on one of the RDM/DRKs to try to keep them alive during Chainspell-Stun. Hopefully we can coordinate that during the commotion of the fight.

Proto-Omega was dead, and the treasure crate contained two of Omega's Hind Legs! I was first in line for those, so I got the first one, and Venn, Lucrezia and Tye lotted on the second. Venn and Luc both passed for Tye though, since they'd got a piece of Homam on our previous run. Anrita gave Tye and I a Teleport-Mea, and we rode off to Mhaura to trade our hind legs for Homam Cosciales. I still find it hard to believe that Kiki actually has a piece of Homam gear! They're a little hard to see on Kiki, as her body armor hangs down and mostly covers them. Not to mention everything's so small on a Tarutaru...

The linkshell seems to be in really good shape at the moment. I don't know if it's because of our recent Proto-Omega victories, or just a result of more and more people getting Sea access, but we've reached the limit on the roster and have started turning people away. I think maybe we need to figure out how to make things work with more than 18 people, but I don't think having a second shell is the right approach, since that could leave one or another short-handed, and also cause rivalries between the groups. It's probably best to split people into two groups for farming and even for the Weapons fights - make sure we have 18 people with the right jobs for the weapon fights, while making sure all the people likely to be eligible to lot are part of that group, and send the other people off for farming in another area that evening.

We had 17 people show up on Thursday for our farming run, which is quite unusual, but the new people need to get 10 runs under their belts in order to be able to lot Omega or Ultima parts, so it's in their best interest to show up as much as possible, plus I'm sure they want coins and AF upgrade items. Lucrezia decided to split into two groups to maximize our coins/items and get two chips. He took a group of 8 through Temenos N (Beastmen), while I took a group of 7 through Temenos E (elementals). I felt like we were a little slow with just the 7 of us, and I ended up taking 3 time chests (got a bit unlucky on the floors I needed time chests on, which wasted some tie), but chose wisely for each of the 4 items chests, and didn't get a single avatar, so it was really a nice and easy run.

Both groups finished up at pretty much the same time, so we had Fliggity come over to my alliance and lot the chip and get the second BLM item that dropped. It's too bad we couldn't share treasure pools during the runs, as they got three MNK items, and Lustt in my team could have used one of them. We ended up with 76 coins total, which meant everyone got 4. If we'd taken the entire group into one area, we would have torn the place up, but would have had only 3, maybe even 2, coins each.

It's taken us a long long time to get to this point in our Limbus career, but it sure feels nice now that we're here.

Apollyon Ravaged!

2007-08-27T19:31:00.000-04:00

TheNewUltimates finally beat Proto-Omega, on our third attempt. We've tried different approaches on our previous two runs, and we learned quite a bit from those frustrating experiences, but the standard strategies don't fit for our shell. Lucrezia worked really hard to put together a strategy that would work with the jobs we had available. Rather than wait for that perfect moment when everyone was actually available for a run (we've got several members "on leave" at the moment), Luc recruited two former members of TNU, two members of TU, and one friend from BEB (who we'd like to have join TNU, but he can't commit to two nights a week). So on Thursday night, we ended up going in with three parties, with 17 people total (I may not have the sub job right for everyone):

NIN/WAR Lucrezia
PLD/NIN Tsakiki
WHM/BLM Anrita
RDM/DRK Morgoth
BRD/WHM Ranzz
BLM/NIN Reefermadness

BLM/NIN Fliggity
BLM/NIN Darsonavin
RDM/DRK Elbryan
SMN/WHM Ardan
SMN/WHM Meshe
SMN/WHM Thom

DRG/WAR Venn
MNK/DRK Ryken
MNK/SAM Itera
MNK/SAM Tye
SAM/THF Helldam

Luc's plan was to have the tanks establish hate, with the help of 300% TP Spirits Within, then the SMNs would be the primary damage dealers for the bulk of the fight. They were to use either physical or magical rage bloodpacts every minute, depending on which form Proto-Omega was in (one form is magic resistant, the other is resistant to physical damage). The BLMs and RDMs were on a Stun cycle, along with nuking (and refresh). The BLMs were also on gunpod duty, with no tank helping them out, which was one of the "troubling" aspects of the strategy beforehand, but was a non-issue in the fight. The BRD would keep double march on the tanks, and double ballad on the tank party mages, and the WHM would do everything she could to keep the tanks alive and hasted.

Meanwhile, the melee were to sit on the sidelines, figuratively eating popcorn and watching the show as they would boost, meditate, or sleep for tp. At 25%, when Proto-Omega goes into a rage mode, they were to rush in, unleash the dogs of war, and demolish Proto-Omega. The main reasoning for this was to reduce the amount of TP gained by Proto-Omega, which would mean fewer nasty attacks on the tanks, and it would also be relatively hate-free, allowing the tanks to keep Proto-Omega on a short leash. It would also keep the melee out of harm's way until we were ready for a final burst of extreme damage to get him dead as quickly as possible.

We had an uneventful trip to Apollyon, and Lucrezia made sure everyone was fully aware of the strategy. We buffed up, slept for TP, and headed into the fight. At this point, I was wearing HP gear, and with Pescatora had around 1600 HP.

Luc and I ran in, and Luc voked Proto-Omega and moved him over to where we intended to fight him. We unloaded our TP, and Luc switched to his katanas, while I swapped in my haste/enmity/shield gear. With double march, Haste, and +14% Haste from my gear, I'm pretty sure I was at the haste cap, but I didn't really check my timers, as I was too busy at the time. It was really so much better than the first time we fought Proto-Omega, when I was PLD/NIN, but we didn't have a BRD in the tank party. Flash and the two Utsusemi spells were up so quickly, it really seemed so easy to stand there, casting shadows, flashing for hate, and using my other job abilities as needed to hold/regain hate. The stun cycle helped Luc and I an awful lot, stopping TP moves, and giving us plenty of time to get shadows back up.

We decided to let Helldam come in for a big weaponskill fairly early in the fight, which is something we probably won't do next time, since he pulled hate and got killed for his efforts.

Luc and I were sharing hate quite well, with the first couple pile pitches shifting hate between us, but then Luc got killed, and it took awhile for him to get his hate level back up (a bit dangerous when fighting weakened). I believe we lost control of Proto-Omega twice during this phase, but I was able to get him back over to me with a Flash and a big cure without him flattening someone. I was really happy that I was able to straight tank the two legged phase, since I feel like things get so sloppy with kiting. We only had one gunpod ejection, which the BLMs were able to quickly defeat.

The SMNs and mages got Proto-Omega down to 25% pretty quickly, and as we were switching Ranzz over to the melee party for soul voiced attack songs, I got killed by 3 big attacks of some sort that were too quick for anyone to do much about. I was stunned at the time, and couldn't do anything myself either. But the timing worked out pretty well, since everyone jumped in for the final zerg, with the RDM/DRKs using chainspell stun, and everyone going all out. I reraised and ran over to try to help out, but my flash and invincible didn't do anything at that point, since I was starting from 0 on the hate threshold at that point. He was quickly dead, and I think the only casualty at that point was Morgoth, one of ths Chainspell-Stunners. It was so exciting for us to finally win!

It's so very satisfying when a plan comes together, and everyone works well together as a team. We're so much greater as a whole than simply the sum of our parts, and we all need each other to succeed.

The treasure chest contained Omega's Eye and Omega's Tail. Based on our lotting rules, the Eye went to Lucrezia (main lot THF) and the Tail went to Venn (main lot DRG), so we finally have two shiny red pieces of Homam in our shell. And hopefully we'll be able to repeat our success, and get to the point where we can say "lolOmega" like people who are in shells that have long ago mastered Proto-Omega. Then we'll have to muster up the courage to try killing Proto-Ultima for the mages' fancy red gear. Even the lolOmega people say Proto-Ultima is a bitch.

I couldn't take any screenshots during the fight, so I've borrowed Thom's to illustrate this entry. Note the tiny spec in front of Proto-Omega in the top shot. That's Kiki, doing what she loves to do best, tanking mobs 20 times her size. :-)

New title: Apollyon Ravager

WHM Ready for the Jungles! (20-24)

2007-08-22T17:56:00.000-04:00

I managed to get two parties for my White Mage over the weekend, and got from level 20 to level 24, so next time I take it out, I'll probably just head to Kazham.

My party on Saturday had a THF, SAM, WAR, SMN, and another DD that I can't remember, and me as WHM. I had a really hard time keeping up with the curing on my own, and the little Summoner didn't help as much as he should, and ended up getting kicked out of the party after repeatedly failing to respond to requests from the leader. I ran into the leader the next day in Lower Delkfutt's Tower, and apparenty the same SMN had been kicked out of that party as well, by someone else. I kinda of feel sorry for the little noob, since he just doesn't quite seem to get how to work with a party. Even when he wasn't helping out with healing, he didn't even have his avatars out, so he was kind of just standing around. But he seemed like a nice enough person, and wanted to be helpful - he just didn't quite know how to do it.

We started out near Pug Alley, but there were two other parties there, so we were closer to the cliff. We ended up heading into Lower Delkfutt's Tower. I had a hard time with hate, partly because either the WAR, who was the lowest level in the group, was tanking, or the SAM was tanking, and they took lots of damage and needed lots of healing. When I hit Level 21 and had Regen available, it did help a lot, but not nearly enough, especially when fighting the low ITs. We ended up disbanding with me just 80 points away from level 23, as I had to get ready for Dynamis. I'd agreed to stay until the SAM got a level, so was already past my "cut off" time, so I didn't mention how close I was before we disbanded.

The next morning, I did my weekly chocobo race before the Conquest Tally, and used the scroll on my WHM to nudge me up to level 23. Later that afternoon, I put my flag up in Jeuno, and got an invite to a party as a "replacement". The invite came from a WHM, so I assumed I was replacing him, but I actually replaced the PLD. Apparently the WHM had decided it was just to hard to have a single healer in Qufim (an opinion with which I heartily agree), and so we were a WHM-greedy party and had two. The party had 3xSAM, a WAR, and 2xWHM. When the WAR hit 24, he left, and was replaced with a MNK, who was nominated "tank" based on his "high defense" of 113. I put up Cocoon and pointed out my defense was 151, but no one suggested I tank...

The party worked quite well. I sort of did the RDM role, and was using paralyze, slow, and dia on the mobs, while hitting people with regen, bar spells, and protectra/shellra. I also helped dump cures when damage got too high, but the other WHM did pull hate a lot more than me. At least when I pulled hate, I usually had Metallic Body up, so I didn't take much damage. The other WHM and I worked pretty well together, without really discussing it, and we rarely negated each other spells, so it was pretty nice. It's too bad that we felt like we had to have the two of there in the party.

We ended up moving into Lower Delkfutt's for awhile, and everyone got a level before we disbanded. I now could have Drain from subbing BLM, but I still think BLU will be better until level 30 (when I'd get Elemental Seal from /BLM).

Salvage Blues

2007-08-21T19:07:00.000-04:00

The UltimatesForever has consistently been doing Salvage every Friday evening, with anywhere from 9 to 18 people. We've mostly been doing the Bhaflau Remnants, and have gotten a lot of the level 15 pieces that drop there, but we've only seen one piece for the Ares set (Enyo's Leggings). It dropped with less than a minute to go, and we had a few dead people who couldn't lot or pass, so it was lost when we were booted out of the Remnants. SquareEnix really has to change that aspect of the game - force the treasure to drop just before the alliance gets booted out, based on the lots/passes already done on the loot. No one in the shell has got more than 1 piece towards any of the final pieces, but two of the Usukane lotters have their level 15 body piece in addition to their level 15 hands, so they're "further" along. The body pieces are dropped from an NM Flan in Arrapago Remnants that we used Bhaflau Cards to spawn.

We seem to do a lot better with smaller groups of people, since we all get geared up pretty quickly, but other people seem to think we need to have a full alliance of 18 people to do better at getting gear drops. I feel like when we have more than 12 people we use up so much of our limited time trying to get everyone some of their gear and abilities unlocked that we don't have enough time to fight NMs that drop different gear pieces than the normal mobs do.

Back in May, before they added the starter chest in the June update, we had one run with no MNKs, and it was a dismal dismal failure. I think we killed one of the Bifrons, but had people die, reraise and die again before getting reraise up. With no magic to raise people, no way to do enough damage to any other mob, we had no choice but to give up. Adding the starter chest has made it so much easier to get started. We always get at least a weapon, subjob, and job abilities cell for the main PLD, and magic for the main WHM. Everything just those few things make it a breeze to start in on getting more cells for everyone.

We've gone after the Long Bowed Chariot, the megaboss of Bhaflau Remnants three times now (I missed the second one), and they haven't gone very well. Granted, this is supposed to be the toughest mob in all of Salvage. Albany keeps having us try different strategies and maybe we'll figure it out some day.

We organized our cell distribution so that we get the "main" person in each category get well-equipped before letting the bottom feeders get the leftover scraps. We all /random before the run, and from that have the main PLD, the main WHM, the main RDM, the main BLM, and the main melee.

I hate being the bottom lotter when we have a lot of people. There have been runs where I didn't get a weapon, a subjob, job abilities, magic or much armor until the last 10 minutes of the 100 minute run. Since I have no H2H skill and hit for 0 when I don't actually miss, there's no point being engaged with the mob, where I'm likely to get hit with an AOE and just waste MP that could be used to cure someone who's actually doing damage. Without magic, I can't help cure or flash. Without a subjob, I have no provoke. One run, I had job abilities unlocked, so I'd just run up, use Rampart for a bit of a boost for the main PLD, then run back out of AOE range. It seems so utterly pointless.

I'm getting a bit discouraged with Salvage, and often feel like I should withdraw from the group. I don't feel very useful, even when I win the lot for main tank. Other shells seem to favor MNK tanks, and don't bring along stinky PLDs. The cells I get as main tank could be going to a MNK, who would do more damage, and yes, maybe they'd take a bit more damage than a PLD, but most things in Salvage don't hit that hard, and if they get magic unlocked and sub Ninja, they don't take much damage at all. We'll see how things progress.

Leveling: White Magery (17 -> 20)

2007-08-17T19:02:00.000-04:00

This past weekend, I decided to dust off my White Mage gear and see if I could get a party. This was partly because I was able to pick up the three main crag teleport scrolls for a small fraction of what I'd sold mine for over two years ago, when I was absolutely positive I'd never level White Mage. My husband laughed at me for buying them, since my WHM has been leveling at a glacial pace, so I figured I should hop to it and just get it to 37 and be done with it.

Saturday afternoon, I put my flag up, and used the OP teleport to go to the Dunes, and I stood by the Outpost and waited. And waited some more. After about an hour, I decided to head back to Windurst to grab my Signal and Tactics pearls to head to Buburimu to solo with my NPC instead. Of course, as soon as I got to my moghouse, I got invited to replace a WHM in a party back in the Dunes. They were fighting on Goblin Hill, but we moved to the Secret Beach as soon as I arrived. The party had a MNK, WAR, BLU, BLM, DRK, and WHM. The WAR left and was replaced by another BLM, and later when the original BLM left, a NIN joined. The party had a WHM power-leveler, but as PL'd parties go, it wasn't so bad. People mostly did their jobs, except for me - I pretty much played RDM-lite, buffing the party and enfeebling the mobs with dia, paralyze, slow, silence, and blind. The PL asked me if I had healing magic capped, showing some concern for the poor little WHM at least. It was nice being able to enfeeble though, it really helps the party. I generally can't spare the MP for too many enfeebles when I'm trying to keep the party alive.

Having a PL does make it really hard for me how to toe the hate line as a WHM, since as a career PLD, I use Cures as one of my main hate tools. It's hard for me to learn how to keep a party alive without pulling hate if I have someone else doing that for me. But since my intentions for WHM are to use it as a sub for PLD in certain situations, it's not a long term issue. I do try to hold off using Cure II until just after a provoke, but some times I don't feel I have that luxury as people are getting hit hard, and of course the mob comes running after me. Regen should help a lot when I hit level 21. The party broke up after one person hit 20 and two others decided to leave as well, so I headed back to Windurst to get ready for Dynamis, with my WHM at 19.

On Sunday, I decided to try WHM/BLU to see if Cocoon and Metallic Body might help, and I found that I was able to get a decent MND boost over /BLM, with just 5 less MP. Losing BLM spells at that level is really immaterial too, especially if there's already a BLM in the party. I headed to Jeuno and threw up my flag. I got an invite pretty quickly, as the first invite for a new party. The guy quickly filled the party, but one of the members was a linkshell mate of his: a level 19 Monk who was still in the Dunes and didn't know his way to Jeuno. So I switched to my PLD/RDM and met him at the Dem crag to walk to Jeuno with him. I kept him sneaked and invisible most of the way, and we avoided any aggro.

Our party consisted of a NIN, BLM, MNK, DRK, WAR, WHM, and we headed up to fight worms. We added crabs and bats to the mix, and things mostly went pretty well. I really do like using BLU as a sub - stoneskin and cocoon both saved my butt a couple of times. After awhile, a WHM73 friend of one of the party members came along and I got relegated to enfeebling once again, though this PL was a bit more haphazard than the one in the Dunes, so I did have to throw out cures on and off. We moved to the ice pond, since the banshees wouldn't be a problem with the PL. I have to say I absolutely hate running from worm to worm at the ice pond. The parties get so uncoordinated, and everyone thinks they should be the "puller", and multiple mobs get engaged, usually meaning disaster for the party. And as a mage job needing to rest for MP, it's just for hard to have to keep getting up and scurrying after the melee.

This party wasn't quite that bad, but when the PL had to go AFK for a bit, the party kept going at things as though I had the resources that a WHM73 has at their disposal, leaving me lower on MP than I would have liked when they started in on a new fight. The BLM decided to melee and was getting badly damaged, so I had to hit him with a couple of cures (I don't mind pulling hate on worms, with barstonra, the spells don't hit so hard). Suddenly, a crab comes tearing over to smack me, which I didn't understand until I later scrolled back in the chat log and saw the meleeing BLM had decided to use a -ga spell on the worm the party was fighting, and hit a crab. Since I cured the BLM, the crab got quite angry with me. The crab killed me pretty quickly, but the rest of the party managed to survive.

The BLM decided he'd been partying too much that day and disbanded the party. The PL came back and tractored me out of harm's way, raised me, and waited around for my weakness to wear to hit me with a Cure before I could get blood aggro, which I thought was pretty nice. The Monk and I snuck back to Jeuno (I had hit level 20 and now have Sneak on my WHM), where he looked for a new party while I got ready for Limbus.

I think I'll see if I can keep my WHM gear on Kiki rather than mules so I can easily look for parties when I have free time in the game. As soon as someone needs me to help them with something on another job or with a level cap, I'll have to swap stuff over to mules, which will make it harder to quickly get ready for white magery excitement.

Recent Adventures in Limbus

2007-08-11T16:30:00.000-04:00

As with Dynamis, it's been quite awhile since my last Limbus update, when I'd reached the 40-run milestone. Since then, we've been doing quite well with the normal runs, and not so well with the special runs. We've had several people join the shell, and for a brief shining moment, we had nearly full alliances for serveral runs. Unfortunately real life interfered for some people, and we're back to 10-12 people for runs on a normal night.

I still love Limbus, and have a great deal of fun on (most of) our runs, but without a consistently large group, we're just not going to get enough tries with Proto-Omega and start to see the big payoffs from all of our work (not to mention Proto-Ultima, which we don't even want to attempt until we've beaten Proto-Omega a few times). I love the variety of the different zones, and the beat-the-clock excitement on a few of them. And some of the bosses in Apollyon are just so much fun to tank. Two zones routinely give us trouble though: Temenos N, with the beastmen (the Tonberries are such a pain if someone gets aggro when we're trying to sneak through) and Apollyon NE, where the Gigants on the second to last floor so often wipe us out. But the frustration on those makes them that much better when we win.

We had a "metal chip run" in early July, again trying CS Apollyon. We thought we had a better plan than our first time, but sleep was resisted too much and things didn't go so well.

After we'd built up our forces with Fliggity, Darsonavin, Theodoric, Frostwitch, Jarbit, and Isengard, we tried another Proto-Omega run last month. We ended up with 17 people in the zone, but Lucrezia's plan went awry from the start when (one of) the melees didn't allow the tanks to get hate set up before getting the weapon running all over the place. We had 2 NINs and 2 PLDs, but we just couldn't get hate under control. I was on gunpod patrol, and I really should have gone as PLD/NIN - those things are slow and hit really hard. I didn't much like PLD/NIN on our first run, but perhaps with more practice and a Bard in the tank party, it will go a lot better. Hopefully we can try again in the near future.

My latest Limbus excitement was that I finally got the 75 Ancient Beastcoins I needed to pick up my Brutal Earring from Sagheera. It grants the wearer Double Attack if they don't have it, and enhances the effect if they do (by being either WAR or /WAR). That's a nice addition to my DD gear, and will pair well with my Suppanomimi for when I'm more interested in smacking things rather than tanking.

Quests: Like the Wind (Boneyard Gully ENM)

2007-08-09T06:50:00.000-04:00

Have I mentioned that Erock came back to the game, after being gone for over a year? Sort of? Well, he did. And since he gave away most of his stuff when he quit, he's been trying to rebuild his gear for both WAR and RDM. Towards this end, he's needed help with some things like the "Like the Wind" ENM to try to get a Maneater. He'd manage to get one, but since ENMs are a quick and easy way to make some potential gil, he asked Itera and I to go one night.

It's actually pretty fun - there's one Eft to fight, Race Runner, and he tears around the area. The challenge is to get enough hate to have him stand still for a bit so you can beat him up. We got a Galateia cloth, which translated to 55k gil, and 2000 exp for our efforts.

Since then we've done it several more times, but haven't got anything worth more than 10k. It's still nice getting the 2000 exp/limit points though. It feels like we had better luck with the drops in the Antlion ENM, but I don't think we could manage that one with just the three of us.

Dynamis: Dynamis-Qufim Interlopers!

2007-08-07T09:06:00.001-04:00

It's been about three months since my last Dynamis update, so here's a bit of what's been going on in The Ultimates. We've been doing lots of runs, both farming and flag, and have been getting lots of relic drops for people along the way. We frequently lose our scheduled zone on Saturday nights to Japanese shells doing their early morning Sunday runs, but no matter where we end up, people get relics and/or flags, so it's all good. Plus it's just really fun when we can roll through the cities with 40 people.

We've been coming up a bit short on members for runs lately, partly because a lot of people are taking breaks from the game, but also from general real-life activities and a few just moving on to other shells. So we're under a big push for recruiting new members right now. If you're on Lakshmi and looking for a nice bunch of people to do Dynamis with, please apply at the TU forums. We're currently taking applications from all level 75 jobs except for Summoner. Our runs are 8:30 PM Eastern on Wednesdays and Saturdays.

A couple of weeks ago, Venn promoted 5 of us to sackholder, since it's a lot of work running 3 linkshells, and his management team was pretty small. Albany, Allia, Fliggity, Lucrezia and I are now sackholders of The Ultimates and the sister linkshells that we're already in. We've had a few meetings to try to get responsibilities spread out amongst the group, and come up with ways to improve linkshell morale and increase attendance. Venn needs to have more leaders in place, since he's starting law school in a few weeks, and won't be able to spend as much time with FFXI any more. At least he'd better not, if he means to do well in school.

We recently had a flag run for Dynamis-Beaucedine, but managed to get three drops (MNK, BLM, BRD) as well as 2 100 pieces. We even skipped the Orcs for time. Itera was the only lotter for his Melee Cyclas, and now is 5/5 on his Monk Relic armor! He was a very happy Galka. We thought we'd come back in and farm after the we'd killed the Megaboss, but the dragons were still wandering back to Fei'Yin and killed us all after we'd reentered. We never had troubles with them before, so that was unexpected.

Our practice of having the PLDs /random for main and sub tank responsibilities has mostly been working out pretty well. There's this myth in the LS that Kiki always wins, but I think we've kept it spread around pretty well. It seems like there will be a few times in a row that I'll win the lot, but then I'll go quite a few runs as backup or just a kiter. Lumikumi wasn't able to make it for quite awhile because of work, but he's back in action now. Jarbit (and Frostwitch) are currently on a break, but I hope they'll be back soon. Amyalfrodo has real-life conflicts frequently as well, but we always have at least 2 PLDs show up. There are quite a few others in the LS with PLD at 75, so we could always have them show as PLD if necessary.

One of the most exciting runs in the past few months was our third (since I joined the shell) Qufim run. We did two runs in July. The first was with 30 people in the zone, and it went really well, but we ran out of time when we messed up the pull on the megaboss. However, Lucrezia and I learned a lot from that failure, and we went back two weeks later and had what was nearly a picture perfect run, except for the part of not quite killing the megaboss. Lucrezia unlocked our subjobs within a minute of entering the zone, and we quickly worked our way through the zone - killing some Quadavs, the Water Elemental, the Kraken, then more Quadavs as we made our way towards Behemoth's Dominion. We killed the Rocs, the goblins, and the Golem, then headed out to get the Ice Elemental before taking on Antaeus. Lucrezia had us approach from the side (we'd gone in from the front the last time), while everyone was camped back in the corner. I'd brought my Powder Boots for the pull, an d Luc ran in and aggro'd everything, while I grabbed Antaeus and headed back to camp with him. I think our main problem is we had all the mages too close, and a few of them got killed by one of his AOEs before they'd even got a spell off. But we ended up getting him down to just a sliver of health before we wiped. It was very exciting, and very encouraging for future runs.

Even better was our fourth Qufim run this past Saturday, with 34 or 35 people in the zone. We won! Hurray! We got our subjobs before we got to the Quadavs, and did well until someone got aggro'd by the Nightmare Snolls on the way to the Rocs. We quickly killed them off though, and ended up doing better on the Golem than we had previously. We did the Antaeus pull with 10 minutes left on the hourglass, and this time the BLMs lived through it, and we beat the Gigas with not all that many deaths! We were all very excited to have won, and went on to try to farm for the next hour, but we lost a lot of time wiping on the Nightmare Diremites (they just kept multiplying), and ended up with no drops for the night. In addition to the diremites, we cleaned up the snolls and killed some Orcs as well.

I think we're going to try to do a few Valkurm runs in the near future, and finally get the win there as well. It will be exciting to finally be able to try Dynamis-Tavnazia.

New Title: Dynamis-Qufim Interloper

Assault: Chief Sergeant Kiki

2007-07-25T20:11:00.000-04:00

This week, we were able to do a batch of Lance Corporal assaults, and since I had four tags available, I got enough points to pick up the quest for Promotion: Chief Sergeant! That was sure quick.

We started out with the Shanarha Grass Conservation in Leujaoam Sanctum. For this assault, you're supposed to exterminate the cute little bunnies that are eating all the grass. There are around 20 of them, and they split up into two groups, with one group heading north and the other south. They're not too tough, but they do hit kind of hard and fast for DC bunnies. The first set wasn't too spread out when we started attacking them, but we managed to get them all killed without dying in the process. The second set was easier, since they'd spread out pretty well. It was really a pretty easy assault for the 6 of us (Yobun MNK, Demin MNK, Daden SAM, Itera MNK, Erock RDM, and Tsakiki PLD).

Next up was Breaking Morale at the Mamool Ja Training Grounds. This one's a stealth mission, with a bit of danger. You're supposed to run in to the area, find the supply coffers, and return to the NPC at the start with the supplies you've pilfered. The trick is to do it without getting caught. The area is filled with Mamool Ja Recruits, who will attack you if they see you, and Mamool Ja Trainers, who will send you to the prison area when they see you. There's a pot of viscous liquid at the prison area, which conveniently puts you into a Mamool Ja costume, but at the cost of a heavy poison. This takes off 22 HP per tick, and slows your movement speed. We learned a few things on this run: if you get aggro'd by a Recruit, run away to find a Trainer to get sent to prison. This will shed your aggro. Watch your HP, the costume can kill you. We didn't do as well as we would have liked, but we were able to turn in two sets of supplies and got the win, at the expense of two deaths.

For our third run, we tried Evade and Escape in Lebros Cavern. We switched around the group a bit, and had Diasuke WHM, Yobun WHM, Daden SAM, Itera MNK, Erock RDM, and Tsakiki PLD. For this assault, you need to find 3 switches that can be in 6 different rooms. Once you've found all three, you need to activate them within a minute of each other in order to active the Rune of Release, then have someone get to the Rune of Relase for the win. The complication for this one is that there are 3 Daleks roaming the pathways in the Cavern. The rooms themselves are safe from their patrol, so you have to watch them and try to avoid being spotted. Yobun assigned rooms for each of us to check, and mine was the furthest from the entrance, in the southeast corner. It was kind of fun finding spots to hide from the dragons as I made my way to the switch room. We did have several deaths in the process, but we found the three switches, and completed the assault.

Our final run for the night was Shooting Down the Baron in Periqia. This one has a 15 minute time limit, and you need to find an imp and kill him. There are pugils in the zone that will aggro as well, but it's best to avoid them to save time. The imp will warp to another location, which means hunting him down again. The hide and seek aspect is a bit annoying, especially when you don't have much time, but it worked out well for us (Diasuke WHM, Ryken MNK, Daden SAM, Itera MNK, Demin MNK, and Tsakiki PLD). We spotted the Baron pretty quickly, and very nearly killed him before he warped, thanks to at least one of the MNKs using Hundred Fists. However, he did warp away, and we ran all over the place looking for him. Fortunately he doesn't regen after warping, so when Itera spotted him, he quickly finished him off, and we won the assault.

I now had 28 points towards my promotion, so I ran off to talk to Abquhbah and picked up my quest for Promotion: Chief Sergeant quest. Abquhbah's messed up an easy task and fears the wrath of Naja, and needs help getting out of the situation. I had to go find some special "scourshrooms" in the Aywadeen Subterrane, which involved picking a mature scourshroom and then planting it in a sparse mushroom patch, waiting until 4:00 the next game day, and then getting two young scourshrooms to take back to Abquhbah. I completed the quest, and was promoted to Chief Sergeant. Only one mercenary rank left, though I'm sure they'll be adding more soon. I hope they're not done with the Perdu weapons that you can get from mercenary rank and ISP. They still need a one-handed sword Paladins can use....

New title: Chief Sergeant

Besieged: Old News

2007-07-24T19:33:00.000-04:00

On June 28th, Lakshmi finally lost a Besieged, to the Mamool Ja, after 769 consecutive wins. I really thought it was going to be the Undead Swarm that beat us first, but I thought wrong. It happened around 6PM Eastern on a Thursday evening - which is pretty much still part of our server's "quiet time", when most of the Japanese are still asleep and the North Americans are still getting home from school and work. I wasn't there, apparently there were between 400 and 500 people in Al Zahbi, but they were too busy playing with the still-novel level 8 HNMs to bother keeping the generals alive, and they all fell quickly. This happened soon after world transfers were enabled by SquareEnix, so there's been rampant speculation that some people transferred from Siren to sabotage our Besieged by training the mobs into the Hall of Binding, but I think it was just our own fault. So Siren remains the only undefeated server, and people probably won't care as much as they did when we were trying to maintain our record.

The Astral Candescence was recovered within 10 hours, and we got back to regular Besiegeds starting at level 1. We quickly built back up to level 8s again, and have had a few close calls since then, including one on Sunday evening. With nearly 500 people in the zone at the peak, we should have done better than we did, but after about an hour of fighting, all 5 of our generals were dead, and some of the Mamools were in the Hall of Binding. We were able to get them out either by killing them or kiting them away, but there were lots of deaths in the process, mostly from Mijin Gakure. I think the mobs are pretty stupid - if they were really focused on getting the Astral Candescence, they wouldn't let swarms of puny adventurers picking away at them keep them from just running up and grabbing it once the Hall of Binding was open. Fortunately for us, we can divert them from their intention.

Quests: Shadows of the Departed

2007-07-23T19:19:00.000-04:00

After completing the Zilart Missions and The Storms of Fate, the next step towards Apocalypse Nigh is the quest Shadows of the Departed. You're asked to investigate three locations, one on the fourth floor in the three main Promyvions. I'd flagged this quest last January, after completing the Storms of Fate with Splinte's gods/hnm linkshell, Eminence, but never managed to get a group to do it. One afternoon during my vacation, Diasuke asked if anyone needed to do that, and I jumped up and down and said "Me! Me! Pick me!".

We couldn't drum up any volunteers for help, nor did we wish to shout in Whitegate, so we decided we were crazy enough to try to duo it. We geared up as a SMN/WHM (Diasuke) and BLU/NIN (me), and headed off to the Dem crag to see how we would do. At this point, Erock said he would come and help us, but would need a bit of time to get his level 30 WAR gear. We decided to give it a whirl anyway, and we actually did pretty repectably, but probably would have been overwhelmed by the strays with just the two of us, so we waited for Erock to arrive. The three of us had no troubles making it to the 4th floor, and Diasuke and I got our first sliver. We headed into the Spire, and Dia teleported us to the Mea Crag. Itera met up with us there as a MNK/WHM, and made things even easier.

I think they made the memory receptacles a lot easier in a recent update, and changed the mob placement as well, since it was really pretty easy for us to completely avoid aggro without excessive waiting for mobs to change position. I did get caught by an IT Craver on one of the upper floors of Mea, and that was really a close call for us, but we survived (no MP and Erock in the red, but still alive). And when we had to go through the fences on the second floor of Holla, there was an unavoidable wanderer as always, but it was no match for us. We had our share of fake receptacles as well, but overall it was a pretty painless process to get all three slivers.

Diasuke and I headed to Jeuno to turn in our slivers and complete the quest. The following morning, I went back again to start Apocalypse Nigh, and headed to the Empyreal Paradox to enter the battle to get the cutscene as well. Now I just need to find 5 people to do the fight with me, and an Ethereal Earring will be mine!

Crafting: Gourmand Gratifier

2007-07-21T11:12:00.000-04:00

Most of my "spare" time in the game over the past two months has been focused on increasing Qiara's cooking skills, building up Guild Points for Qiara, and raising Kiki's fishing skills. And hopefully make some gil in the process.

All of the coeurl subs that Qiara had made had finally sold off, so I moved her on to Tavnazian Salad and Flounder Meuniere to get her to 92 and 93, respectively. The salads were handy for making lots of tacos, both for sale and for Kiki. The Flounder Meuniere sell for a handsome profit, but they sell so rarely, it's not really worth putting them up on the AH. I sold a lot of them to NPCs for a smaller profit, to get some grocery money back for Quiznos, but since they can also turn up as Guild Point items, I've hung on to quite a few. Qiara had the ingredients on hand for a few tonosama rice balls, so she did 3 synths and got the .1 she need to push her to 93.

Next up was Black Curry, which caps at 94. Kiki had to do a bunch of ferry fishing to get the tuna Qiara needed, and got some noble ladies in the process. I also needed Grimmonites from Sea Serpent Grotto, which got me Bastore Bream and Nebimonites as well. Black Curry sells for a pretty good price, but it's quite slow unless it's that day's Guild Point item. I opted to sell a lot of them rather than save for Qiara's GP, since it's a poor gil/GP ratio.

One time when I was fishing on the ferry, Silverhook came along, with no WHMs camping for him. I decided to attack him (as PLD75/BLM35), but didn't buff up or switch out of my fishing gear first. That was kind of dumb, so I warped out before he killed me.

Fishing skillups have been reasonable, though really random. One day Kiki got 1.1 skill ups on fewer than 24 black sole catches, but then caught another two stacks without a single skillup. Kiki's at 73.5 now, and that should continue to increase as I need to have her catching Grimmonites and Black Sole on a regular basis, both for her own foods (Pescatora and Tavnazian Tacos mostly) and for selling as well.

Since Qiara got to 94, I've been having her make Rice Dumplings, which cap at 95. These also require Woodworking Level 15, so Qiara switched her focus to woodworking for a few days. She made lauan lumber, maple wands, workbenches, ash lumber, ash wands, and ash staves to get to 10, all while still in Windurst, with cheap wood available from NPCs. I typically would desynth all the items until the materials vanished, but the skill up rate on the desynths was worth it.

Qiara had to travel to San d'Oria to pass the exam at the guild, so I switched her to THF1 and walked there, taking the ferry from Mhaura to Selbina. I always enjoy the level 1 runs like that, but I was wishing I'd brought along prism powders in a couple of spots, just to save some time instead of waiting until I could safely get her past groups of goblins. Once she passed the test, she stayed in San d'Oria until she hit level 15, making mostly willow lumber, willow wands, and crossbow bolts of various types.

Another thing I need for Rice Dumplings is a steady supply of Coral Fungus. This is pretty easy to grow from Grain Seeds, so I had Kiki farming for them in La Thiene a couple times. This prompted my husband to remark that one can get a lot of Grain Seeds from harvesting, and that I'd need lots of fresh mugwort from 95 to 99 as it was. So I decided to have Grymalkyn start working as a harvester. She has lots of inventory space, and wouldn't get any aggro in Giddeus, plus she has clothcraft at 53 and can turn a lot of the raw harvesting materials into more salable goods. It made perfect sense, and my husband didn't seem to get mad at me for using poor Grymalkyn in that way, so all is good. I sent her the harvesting gear, had her buy stacks of sickles, and sent her off to Giddeus as a BST60/BLM22. She now stays there until her pockets are full, then heads back to Windurst to process/sell/distribute items as needed, then back off to Giddeus she goes.

Ohrly's been trying to grow Coral Fungus from the grain seeds, and gets quite a bit of Tarutaru rice in the process. This is always handy, since I tend to make/use/sell a lot of sushi, but more Coral Fungus would be nice too. Qiara is slowly making rice dumplings when she has the ingredients, but it will take me awhile to get her the last few points needed to hit 95. After that, it'll be years of Sweet Rice Cakes to take her to 99. I'm not sure I'll be able to get that last point to 100 though, unless I luck into a steady supply of dragon meat. :-)

In the meantime, I've been having Qiara turn in items for guild points when items are really cheap/easy to get, or if I have them on hand already, or have time to have her make them. The first 70,000 for her Chef's Hat didn't seem to take so long, and she got that just over a week ago. The 100,000 I need to her Chef's Apron seems to be a lot more daunting for some reason.

Assault: Sergeant Major Kiki

2007-07-17T19:50:00.000-04:00

Amazingly, the ClanBEB Assault fad has persisted, and I managed to get another rank last week. Over the past month, I've mostly done repeats. We got Erock to PSC pretty quickly with 4 unique assaults and 5 repeats, and then SP came quickly as well. The most notable of that group was when we did Lamia No. 13 with Yobun as SMN. Garuda really tore apart Lamia No. 13, and made the assault go much more quickly than when we'd have just the NPCs attacking her to avoid hate issues.

We tried the Troll Fugitives assault, and it's similar to the Preemptive Strike for PSC: kill all the trolls, and get experience points in the process. I think that's my new favorite for recapping my exp after a rough weekend, and for getting limit points once that's done. It's more fun than the Mamools, since the fights are more interesting - the Trolls all can use their two hours. Plus it's a bit more experience as well, and it's a zone where I really don't have a lot of assault points.

Another new SP one we tried was Sagelord Elimination. We had Daden (WAR), Yobun (BLM), Anastasia (BLM), Goto (WHM/SMN), Erock (RDM), and me (PLD). This one is pretty annoying, and I'm not sure we'll rush to be repeating it, but it was kind of fun. For this one, you have to infiltrate the Mamool area, find the Sagelord, and kill him. This means trying to avoid the other Mamool, since there are too many to kill them all. To make it more difficult, after the Sagelord takes a certain amount of damage, he takes off at flee speeds. So you're likely to pick up aggro from the others as you're running after him. We had Goto's Garuda on him to make it a bit easier to follow, but we ended up getting somewhat overwhelmed and had a near wipe. Yobun had disconnected out to shed hate, and we managed to raise safely and killed off the Sagelord for the win.

Last week I finally had enough points to pick up the Promotion: Sergeant Major quest. This exceedingly annoying quest took me hours to complete. It consists of 3 minigames where Naja has you "training" three subpar recruits to whip them into shape. You can attempt each minigame once a game day. For the first, you have to observe them doing pushups and point out the slackers to Naja. This one wasn't so bad, but it did take me two tries. Next, with a very amusing cutscene of Abquhbah in his skivvies, you need to get them to do a number of situps in unison. This too wasn't so bad, but again, took me two tries to get it right. The final part was encouraging them to keep up in a foot race. This one took me 5 or 6 attempts before I finally had them all with me at the finish line. Naja was very pleased, since I turned the poor guys into lean mean fighting machines.

So now that we got Daden, then Ryken, the Erock to SP, guess what? Yes, we had a couple more people join us. Last week, Lucrezia joined in, and she got the last points she needed for the SP promotion. And this week, Ranzz finally relented, and last night he got the last points he needed for SP as well, so we should be done with PSC and PFC for awhile!

We actually had 10 people show up for assault last night, so we broke into two teams of 5. Itera needed Mamool points to get his P. shorts, and Ranzz was only PFC, so I took Itera, Ranzz, Erock, and Anastasia off for three rounds of Preemptive Strike, while Yobun took Demin, Erock, Ryken, and Lucrezia for the Trolls, Ryaaf, and whatever other SP fun they had.

New title: Sergeant Major

Quests: Divine Might

2007-07-17T07:01:00.000-04:00

I had the past week off from work, and as usual, I probably spent more time playing than I should have. However, this has provided some blog fodder, so maybe I really will get back to posting regularly again.

Saturday, as I ran through Whitegate to get Sanction before heading out to solo Lesser Colibri to get Great Sword skillups (and work off the latent on my Subduer), I noticed a shout recruiting jobs for Divine Might, including PLD. This has been on my to-do list pretty much since we got Sky access in April 2006, but I've always been afraid of pickup groups. Last year, a ClanBEB group did Zilart Mission 14 instead, so I'm one of what seems like only a handful of people to complete Zilart without doing Divine Might.

I decided to throw caution to the wind, and I sent a tell saying I'd like to join. Since they needed a PLD, I was invited to join. We were to gather together in 90 minutes, so I headed out to work on my great sword (202 now, only 48 more levels to go...) before heading back in to town to get ready for the fight. I got all my gear and items ready, and was invited to the growing alliance as we waited for everyone to gather. It was full moon, so I grabbed a piece of parchment and went to Rolanberry to check bazaars for an Illuminink, but couldn't find one. Then I headed to Ro'Maeve from Jeuno and waited for everyone to gather together. It turns out that all the full moon nights on Saturday had weather in Ro'Maeve, so even if I'd gotten the Illiminink, I still wouldn't have been able to get an Ark Pentasphere. You can only get them during clear weather between 00:00 and 03:00 with a Full Moon. I did however get to use the bridges and run straight back to the Hall of the Gods. I'd never done that before.

So I found myself in Sky, for the fifth time ever, and first time since we'd beat Eald'narche last August, completing the Zilart Missions. I guess people who don't do gods don't have much use for Sky any more. I think Grymalkyn and I would have leveled our BST duo there if we'd ever continued past level 60.

Anyway, back to Divine Might. Finally we had everyone gathered together, and we started going over strategy. One person kept yelling to just trade the ark already. Apparently this was his 8th attempt and he was impatient to get in there quickly so he could add another failure to his list. For our first run, I think we had 3 NINs, 2 PLDs, 3 BRDs, 3 WHMs, 2 RDMs, a DRK, a WAR, and 3 BLMs. Each tank was assigned an Ark Angel to kite (I got the Galka) and the kill order was set for TT -> MR -> GK -> HM -> EV. We planned to kill the first two, wipe, reraise, and finish the rest. Unsure about buffs, we buffed once we entered the arena. The first two went down as planned, but a few of us didn't make it to the stairs before dying, so we couldn't reraise until the rest were up and unweakened and started fighting again.

We ended up timing out on the EV, but in general, the fight had gone extremely well for a first run with a bunch of strangers. We were all confident we could pull it off. People needed more reraise items and echo drops, so the other PLD headed back to Whitegate to resupply people. Meanwhile, one of the WHMs and RDMs had to leave. There was another group that had just made an attempt or two and failled, and three of their people (two BLMs and a PLD) wanted to join us if they could. Our other PLD didn't "need" the fight, so he bowed out after delivering his supplies.

For the second fight, we changed things around a bit. We knew buffs wouldn't wear, so we buffed up before entering, saving a few minutes. The tanks were supposed to kite the HM, GK, and EV up near the entrance, keeping people safe from AOEs and also ensuring no one would die in the arena. This time I was in charge of keeping the wyvern and BST pet off of the Bards as they kept them slept. The TT petrified the BLMs right at the start, which meant it took a bit longer to get him dead. The kite support people missed the memo on the kiting changes, so at one point I dumped a Cure IV on one of the NINs who'd dropped under 200 HP, which meant he was no longer kiting. We didn't even get the MR on this round. So we wiped, and decided to abandon the attempt and try again.

The third fight went extremely well. We'd learned from our other attempts, and very nearly even killed the GK before wiping. I think we would have if the person who'd had hate had brought him back to the arena when he was supposed to. For this fight, I was again on pet duty, but I also stuck close to the BLMs and helped keep them alive. We all died in safe places, reraised, unweakened, and took out the remaining three Ark Angels, without too many casualties in the process. Everyone ran off to the Palace to get their earrings, and great joy was felt within the alliance.

Many thanks to Killarutaru for gathering us all together, and to Djnem for taking charge and telling us what to do. And thanks to everyone who participated. I didn't write down everyone's name, so I won't try to list them from memory and leave someone out.

I picked the Suppanomimi over the Knightly Earring, since it's really unique in what it does for you. Even if I'm not dual weilding, it still gives me an extra 5 points of sword skill, which is very nice. It's definitely for when I'm in merit parties rather than tanking in Dynamis or Limbus, but I don't need the shield skill from the Knightly earring, since it's only a bit better than the buckler earring, and I already have other earrings I prefer for tanking (Hades +1, Cassie, and hopefully soon, Ethereal). With my normal tanking setup, I already have 313 shield skill: 276 base, +8 from merits, +10 from my boxer's mantle, +12 from my Gallant Leggings +1, and +7 from my shield torque, without wearing my Buckler Earring. At one time, I thought the Beastly Earring would be my choice, since I thought Grym and I would be BST75s, but that's never going to happen. The Suppanomimi just makes the most sense, much like the Sattva Ring made the most sense for me from CoP.

New title: Pentacide Perpetrator

The Tarutaru Times Online

2007-06-27T09:48:00.000-04:00

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)

2007-06-20T19:22:00.000-04:00

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

2007-06-19T19:03:00.000-04:00

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

2007-06-18T19:39:00.000-04:00

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!

2007-06-12T19:49:00.000-04:00

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

2007-06-04T19:11:00.000-04:00

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.

Quests: Double Dragonian x4 (KSNM30)

2007-05-31T18:47:00.000-04:00

Ryken recently returned to the game after a break for several months, and he's pretty much retired his PLD to focus on MNK. One of the items on his to-do list was to finally get Destroyers, the coveted rare/ex Hand-to-Hand weapon that drops from a couple different KSNM30 battles. He'd tried several times in the past and wanted to put together a sure-fire team for Double Dragonian, and recruited Anastasia as BLM, Yobun as RDM, Albany as WHM, Demin as RNG, and hoped for help from one of his NIN friends, having read that stinky PLDs can't tank this fight.

My own previous experience with the KSNM wasn't so great, so I didn't jump up and volunteer either. However, the appointed evening arrived, and none of the Ninjas were available. So he asked if I could help them out. I agreed, warning him of my previous near-failure - I didn't want to be responsible for any lost orbs. However, I have more experience with big dragons, enhanced PLD abilities from updates and better gear than I had last summer, plus a few merit point enhancements as well, so maybe it wouldn't be so bad.

I warped off the ferry, where I'd been fishing, changed my sub-job and made sure I had all the right gear, paid the taru to send me to Windurst and used the OP Teleport to Ronfaure, and headed up to Horlais Peak, the last to arrive. I was briefed on the strategy: kill the warrior, kite the bard. We buffed up and headed in. I opted to use Pescatore for its defense and HP boosts, though I knew it would be stipped off at some point, and started out in my "tanking" gear. We ran up the ramp, and Ana opened with a sleepga on the dragons. I ran in and engaged and provoked the Warrior, and we proceeded to tear him apart. With Sentinel and Phalanx II, I didn't really take all that much damage. Ryken ended up pulling hate off me and got cursed, then Ana turned the dragon and a Body Slam took out both Ryken and Demin. Demin was hit for 1000 damage, and his max HP is less than that. I guess they didn't have their shadows up either. I had a momentary twinge of panic, but the dragon was nearly dead, and Ana was able to finish it off.

Ana and Yobun kept the Bard asleep while Albany got Ryken and Demin back on their feet. Meanwhile, I built up my hate on the Bard by provoking and flashing when I could. I'd also switched over to my full enmity gear at this point. After a few minutes, the Bard started resisting sleep, so I started kiting it up and down the long valley, with Yobun and Ana keeping gravity on it, and binding it from time to time as well. When the lads were back to full health, they started chipping away at the dragon, while I tried to keep its attention and keep it moving. I took a few good smacks, but Albany kept me healthy when I couldn't cure myself.

Soon, the Bard was dead as well, and when we popped the crate open, we found Ryken's Destroyers. Hurray!

Demin and Yobun both had orbs, so we decided to do two more runs. The next two were even better, with no deaths or even close calls. On the second run, a Subduer dropper. This is one of the best greatswords available for PLD, once the latent is unlocked, so I asked for it and now have to get 500 weaponskill points on it to turn it into a worthwhile weapon. I'll use it while skilling up, and some day it will be ready. A friend of Albany's (Drxcrist) needed a pair of Destroyers and came out to Horlais Peak, but got there a bit too late. We had a second pair drop on the third orb, and he didn't arrive in time and they auto-lotted to Albany. Drxcrist also brought an orb, so we did a fourth run for him, with his MNK replacing Ryken's. That run went smoothly as well, but no Destroyers in the treasure chest.

I really had a lot of fun doing these runs, and am pleased they went so smoothly. We had a great team, and worked very well together. It was nice to be able to show that stinky PLDs can indeed do that particular fight!

General: Lack of Entries

2007-05-27T07:49:00.000-04:00

Sorry I haven't been posting lately - I really haven't been in the mood for it. I would have just been whining about one thing or another anyway, so it's probably just as well. I've been keeping busy in-game though, and hopefully will be returning to my normal self soon.

Limbus: Time for another Update

2007-05-15T22:41:00.000-04:00

I guess it's time I updated TheNewUltimates' Limbus progress, since I haven't written anything about it for a month or so. For awhile there it looked like we'd regularly get nearly a full alliance going, but we're back to not even filling two parties most of the time, which is too bad. We're fairly regularly clearing the zones we try, adding more chips to our collections for Proto-Omega and Proto-Ultima, but without more people, we can't really attempt those either. Venn's holding all the chips he can at the moment, Ezekiel has close to a full set, but has been having real life issues this month and hasn't been playing, so I'm getting the current chips. So far I just have two "first tier" Temenos chips, which are used to enter the Central Temenos levels.

We did one "metal chip run" in mid-April, taking on CS Apollyon. It didn't go so well, but was fun to try, and we'll know how to do it better next time. The metal chip we used for this run had been a treasure drop at some point, but you can also purchase metal chips from Sagheera for 75 Ancient Beastcoins. Because it has the potential of giving us a lot of loot, we've decided to take all the "extra" coins from our runs and put them in the LS bank to fund future purchases of metal chips.

We did Temenos North a week or so ago, based on heavy lobbying from the team, and that worked out really well, since Lucrezia, Itera, Venn, and I all got items we needed for upgrades. Since I had just got my Valor Surcoat from Dynamis, there was no need to upgrade my Gallant Surcoat, and I couldn't decide if it was worth upgrading my Gallant Breeches or not. I am hoping to get better pants than those in time, but who knows when that will happen. So I decided that yes, it was worth getting my Gallant Breeches +1, and I turned in all the necessary items to Sagheera.

I mentioned this on an AF+1 thread I had started on the ffxiclopedia forums a few months back, and got chided by other PLDs who said there are better pants: Valor Breeches, Homam Cosciales, and Crimson Cuisses. This was after I had already stated that I was hoping to get the first two, but since I didn't know when that would happen, I upgraded my AF. The AF+1 legs are better for me than the Adaman I've been wearing for over a year. And the Crimson Cuisses are from gods, and I don't do gods. Oh well. People seem to not read things very well, just pick up on one thing and tear you apart over it.

However, if we don't get more people into TNU, I'm never going to see any Homam gear, and with 5 or 6 other main-lotting PLDs that need their Valor Breeches, it's not very likely I'll get those soon either. So, I'm very pleased with my new shiny white pants. I guess it's time to start re-questing my boots and pants, and I can get my AF put back into storage. I'm pretty sure I'm done with upgrades. All my coins will go for my brutal earring next.

Assault: Corporal Kiki

2007-05-09T06:16:00.000-04:00

Amazingly, our BEB Monday night assault group has been continuing to get together and do 3 or 4 assaults every Monday night. Yobun, Daden, Itera, and I are the "regulars", with Anastasia, Goto, Thoron, Izan, and others being a bit more haphazard. We've been doing a lot of Preemptive Strike, and then to mix things up a bit, we did Lamia No. 13 and Seagull Grounded last week, neither of which Daden had done. Goto hadn't done Seagull Grounded either. After that, they were both able to pick up the quest for Superior Private rank, and we planned to do some SP assaults this week.

Jarbit's Nyzul Isle Assault static has shifted its focus a bit. We did one run of Nyzul Isle on April 27th, got two "easy" levels, and took the win. Then Goto had to leave for his gods linkshell, so we did two runs of Excavation Duty for Allia, to get her enough points for Salvage that evening. Every other time I've done Excavation Duty, we've always killed the Qiqirn to get mines, even with a BLM going off to solo a wall. So I provoked the first Qiqirn, surprising everyone else, since they'd never killed the Qiqirn - or did once and didn't get mines. Fortunately, we did get a bomb from the first one, so the time I wasted fighting one of them was made up for by the next wall going down immediately. The people who'd never used a mine were pretty impressed with how well they worked, but it really does leave it up to chance. On the second run, we just fought all the walls. With the right sort of group, it's a very safe assault and an easy win.

Last Friday, Jarbit and Frostwitch couldn't make it for our assaults, so we had a group of Salvage people do two runs of Leujaoam Cleansing, which was a new win for several of the people. We had Anrita, Venn, Habanero, Goto, Itera and I. Both runs went pretty smoothly - I like the "kill everything" sort of assaults, since it leaves less to chance than some of the others. Plus you get exp or limit points from them, which is always a good thing.

This Monday, we had Daden, Itera, Ana, Yobun and I. Goto was trying to do CoP 8-2, and didn't join us. We did three SP runs, starting off with Saving Private Ryaaf, which was new to Daden. Yobun came as PLD/SAM and I as PLD/BST. The roaming Experimental Undead were behaving well, and we had an easy time making our way from room to room, and had another easy win.

Next, we decided to try Troll Fugitives. For this assault, you have to find and eliminate 15 Broken Troll Soldiers. They all have between 25% and 75% HP, but the PLD types will heal themselves and others, so some end up a bit closer to full health. They're scattered throughout Lebros Cavern, alone, in pairs, or in sets of three. We didn't have any troubles with them, but without a strong DD group (like Daden and Itera), it would be pretty easy to run out of time on this one. Yobun had switched to RDM for this, and between Phalanx II and Sentinel, the one Troll that used Hundred Fists on me was sadly disappointed at how little damage he did.

Last up on the agenda was Extermination, set in Ilrusi Atoll. This one is also a kill everything assault, with leeches, crabs, doomed, and slimes scattered throughout the islands and boats. They can spawn an NM version of themselves when killed, and we did get one Undead Leech NM, which was much tougher than the regular leeches, but still not too bad. This is another one where you can get pretty tight on time. We left the slimes for last, and I was sent to the spot where the Rune of Transfer would appear so I could hit it as soon as everything was dead. I think we finished with about two minutes to spare. I got enough limit points to get another Merit, so I have the three I need to finish my shield skill upgrades. Next up will be HP, I think. I'll need 24 Merit points to get it where I want it. That's going to take me forever. :-(

After our assaults, Itera and I both were able to pick up the quest for promotion to Corporal. We headed out into Wajaoam Woodlands on chocobo, looking for a Warhorse Hoofprint for Naja. She gave us quartz transmitters to place in the hoofprint, which will somehow give her the ability to track the Dark Rider. I searched the southern section, while Itera got the northern section, where he found the hoofprint. Task completed, we headed back to speak to Naja and receive our promotions. Woohoo, longer Sanction time, and a new set of assaults available to us!

New title: Corporal

Quests: Summoner Preparations Complete!

2007-05-08T19:39:00.000-04:00

I had been on a Carby Mitt run awhile back with a group Plumpixie and Chanell had put together, but I was only there for the first fight. I knew that I would probably not be able to stay the whole run, since I would have to get to Dynamis-Beaucedine, so I said I would go last. I didn't want to be a "got her mitts and ditched the rest" type of person. Sure enough, after our first kill, I was summoned to the Glacier, as another LS was gathering, and we needed to get people there early to make sure the zone wouldn't be stolen from us by another group (we're using the Rusty Bucket calendar, and wish all the other linkshells would as well). I knew I'd have another chance some day, and there certainly wasn't any rush for me to get mitts that can only be worn by a level 20 Summoner.

Now that Goto's actively leveling his SMN, he really could use a pair of Carbuncle Mitts, so I tried to get some people together to help. Thanks to Luiss dragging his friends into it as well, we had a decent little group with me (PLD), Goto (WHM), Luiss (BLM), Yumex (WHM), Madbender (BLM), Itera (MNK) and Fabian (MNK). Gilgameshrulz, another BLM, wanted to join us, but got girlfriend aggro just before we got the spawn area for the Crimson-toothed Pawberry, so he had to leave. On our way there, we stopped to pick up another offering, which was for Gil, but since he left, that offering was used for Madbender instead. Yumex also had an offering, so we fought the NM 4 times.

The fights went really well, with Rampart on my party preventing any damage from the first Searing Light, but I don't think we would have been damaged much even without it. We didn't get any Light Spirit Pacts to drop for our helpers, but we got the four pairs of mitts that people wanted.

I had Balu-Falu out as a Fierce Attacker for the last fight, since Itera had to leave. Balu-Falu leveled up to 57 when we were clearing the regular Tonberries out of the room, so that was nice too. He was nearly done in by the first Searing Light, but hung in there and fought with us until the next AOE got him.

Then on Sunday, Anrita put together a team for Diabolos Prime, which Frobro and I needed. He recruited Itera, Allia, and Habanero, and needed another MNK, so I asked Thoron if he'd like to go as well. He needed it too, so was very eager to join in. The seven of us made our way to the Shrouded Maw, and the three MNKs all slept for 100% TP. We headed into the arena for the fight, with Anrita waiting outside to raise us, just in case things went wrong.

The MNKs boosted a few times, Habanero used Soul Voice and gave us double attack songs, Itera Chi Blasted Diabolos and we were all drawn in. Allia let loose with Chainspell Stun, and three MNKs tore into Diabolos with Hundred Fists and their weapon skills. I cast Cure IV on Itera, then on Thoron, and then a Cure III on Thoron, and it was over. The poor avatar never stood a chance. I feel like it was cheating, but after my 6 failures and 10,000 exp lost to Diabolos Prime last year, maybe it's not so bad. I was just making the best use of available resources. Yeah, that's it. At any rate, it was pretty impressive to see them demolish him so easily.

I headed to Windurst Waters and claimed my pact with Diabolos, and ran out to play with him for a few minutes before heading to Jeuno for Sunday's Limbus. I'm still not sure if/when I'll ever level Summoner, but if I do, I'll have a full set of avatars on hand to do so. I'm still missing three of the elemental spirits, I think: Thunder, Light, and Dark. I think the prices have come down a lot, so even if I resort to buying them, it won't be too bad.

New title: Heir to the Realm of Dreams

Leveling: Pet Static (Yuhtunga Jungle 25-28)

2007-05-07T19:04:00.000-04:00

Itera recently started a static with his Puppetmaster and Rovont's Dragoon. They added in Goto's Summoner, which led me to call it the Pet Static, since the three all have pets. It's not pet-only, as they added in Rovont's friend Varghoss (aka Bubba) on Dark Knight. I joined them two weeks ago with my Thief, at level 25.

We met up in Kazham, but couldn't find a tank, so I volunteered my NPC Balu-Falu's service as a Stalwart Shield. It worked out relatively well, though it was more difficult for Goto to keep an eye on him, and it was odd to have the tank following the puller around everywhere.

We were camped near the gate - I really hate pulling there, especially when there are a couple of other parties there. Sometimes you have to go really far to get a mandy, and then run into trouble with the goblins in the narrow path back to camp. We tried fighting goblins, sometimes with great ease, and other times with deaths, but with the town right there it was easy for one of us to change jobs and raise the dead.

Eventually we found a Ninja to tank for us. She died a lot though, so we ended up having Goto switch to his WHM75 and PL us through a few goblins to get her a level before we disbanded for the day.

This weekend, we met back in Kazham, most of us at 26, and Goto at 27. We picked up a Monk to be our nominal tank, but with everyone but Goto and I subbing Warrior, the plan was to have us bounce hate around. We started out near the gate, but the first goblin killed half of us. The area was too busy to get enough mandies, plus with Goto and Kikishi, the MNK, at level 27, the exp wouldn't be worthwhile unless we had an endless supply.

I forced us to go beat up Goblin Furriers near the outpost, which is a bit tricky without barfira and curaga, but the furriers are so soft and squishy, I was hoping we'd do ok. Other than Itera dying once (and was quickly raised by a WHM that happened to walk by), it did go pretty well, and more importantly, it was kind of fun.

I really like fighting there - it's fairly easy to avoid aggro and links, since you stay away from the malboros, and the goblins are spread out enough. There's no one else around, so there's no competition for the pulls. Playing THF in a party where everyone shares hate can be a bit frustrating. More times than not, someone would pull hate and turn the mob just as I activated sneak attack, causing it to miss. But I got in some really good smacks, especially combined with a Fast Blade. It will be fun to see what I can do with SATA Viper Bites in a few levels. I pulled my share of hate, but at least with shadows and high evasion it wasn't too painful.

I think I might start offhanding an archers knife and switch to squid sushi before level 30, just to get my bolts to land more regularly. It's frustrating to have capped marksmanship and only hit what seems like one out of three bolts. Some Noct +1 gear at 30 should help too.

We finished up the day with most of us at 28, I believe, and Goto hit 29 on our last kill. Next week, we can either try weapons in Sauromugue or by the waterfall in Yuhtunga. Bubba's talking about switching to Paladin since it's hard to find tanks, so he unlocked that Saturday and hopes to get it caught up to us before next weekend. This would also allow us to look for a WHM or RDM to main heal and let Goto be a Summoner instead of a half-level White Mage.

Dynamis: San d'Oria

2007-05-05T18:21:00.000-04:00

On Saturday night, after winning my Valor Surcoat and putting it on and admiring it for the first time, I noticed my Creek F Mitts, fondly referred to as the Oven Mitts, just didn't do my new coat any justice. I said to the LS, "When are we doing Sandy next? I need some gloves to match my my new jacket." Well, wouldn't you know it, San d'Oria was next on our agenda. So Wednesday night, we gathered together in San d'Oria, going for the flag for a couple of new members, and hoping for a good bit of farming as well.

Amyalfrodo won the lot for main tank, and despite her trepidation about the role, this being her second dynamis run ever, we insisted on throwing her into the deep end to teach her to swim. San d'Oria's really a pretty good place to start learning anyway, and with Jarbit, Lumikumi and I backing her up on the PLD team, along with Daden as NIN, we figured it would go pretty well. Goldfish was pulling like a mad man though, so poor Amy was getting a bit overwhelmed, but she's catching on quickly. Hopefully she enjoyed it as well.

We had some massive pulls, but it was a pretty uneventful journey up to the Megaboss. Amy and Crazyxen got their flags, and we continued to farm afterwards. One of the mobs killed Amy, and I took over main tanking, and I believe it was the mob that actually killed Amy that dropped the Valor Gauntlets, just as I believe it had been the mob that killed Lumikumi that dropped the Surcoat on Saturday. Since it was Amy's second run with us, I was the only PLD lotting on the glove, and they were mine! Hurray! They look so much better than my oven mitts. I miss the HP I've lost by not wearing my RSE mitts, but I think the Enmity and Defense are probably worth it. I'll keep the mitts around for when I'm a lolDDpld, and when I need max HP, but I think my Valor Gauntlets should be my default tanking hand gear, at least until I get my Homam gloves. :-)

We ended up getting probably 8 drops of relic that night, and ended up wiping horribly, twice, near the death courtyard that we had so much troubles with on an earlier run. These late night post-Boss famring runs tend to break down a bit, as people start to leave, and the ones who stay are perhaps getting a bit sleepy.

Here's a couple of screenshots comparing my oven mitts to my proper Valor Gauntlets:

Sure is a big improvement!

Quests: Spice Gals for Goto

2007-05-03T06:46:00.000-04:00

I've told Goto about my weekly exp scrolls, and he was very interested in doing them himself. In order to do Secrets of Ovens Lost, you first need to complete Spice Gals, which involves a trip through one of the Riverne sites to pick up a key item rivernewort. On Saturday, the two of us headed to Riverne Site #A01, as a BST40/NIN20 - WHM40/BLM20 duo. I prefer going through site #A01, since if I recall correctly, the ??? spot you have to get to in #B01 is in the middle of an aggro-filled island. It's true you only need one dragon scale instead of the two in #A01, but then again, there's also the fact that I know my way around #A01 a lot better than I do #B01.

We had to kill 7 or 8 Firedrakes to get the two scales we needed, and had quite an exciting time in the process, with lots of near-death experiences, and unfortunately one death for Goto. The birds I needed to use for pets were mostly Toughs, and rather than try to convert them to Even Matches, I used the Toughs as pets for a few of the fights. Of course they'd come uncharmed before the Firedrake was killed, but at least I didn't have any charm failures on my recharms.

After we got the two scales, we safely made our way to the island before Monarch Linn, where we both picked up our rivernewort from the ??? spot. I try to make sure I always have this repeatable quest active, just in case I happen to be in the area. For some reason, I'm doing well on my exp, and haven't actually gone to pick this scroll up yet, as I still have last week's cookbook quest scroll in my inventory. The ENM on Saturday night made up for most of my Xarcabard deaths, and Preemptive Strike on Monday capped me off again, since I somehow made it through Limbus without dying on Sunday.

In a mood for more exploration, we headed over to the island with the stone monument. We were careful to avoid the atomic cluster that hovers near the monument, and examined it. I'd forgotted that was the island for the Minstrel's Dagger quest, Confessions of a Bellmaker, but Goto was treated to the cutscene that starts it. It was a fun couple of hours, and now Goto can do the weekly Sacrarium runs too!

Quests: The Moonlit Path (Fenrir)

2007-05-02T09:26:00.000-04:00

A couple of weeks ago, Anrita gathered together a group to fight Fenrir Prime. At least one of us (me) had never beaten him and a couple others wanted items for the Evoker's Ring quest, and still others just wanted to help out. We had Anrita (WHM/BLM), Allia (RDM/DRK), Habanero (BRD/???), Frobro (MNK/NIN), Fliggity (WAR/NIN), and Tsakiki (PLD/WAR). The fight started out pretty well, but we didn't do enough damage during Allia's Chainspell-Stun, and ended up wiping, with Fenrir at a sliver of health. We sort of hoped Anrita's Dia II would be enough to finish him off, but it wore pretty quickly. We agreed to try again in two weeks.

So yesterday, the same group gathered, only with Itera joining us as MNK/NIN instead of Fliggity. We went over our strategy in detail before heading in, and confident that we knew what we were going to do, we headed into the burning circle. Frobro, Itera, and I slept for 100%TP, Anrita buffed us up, Habanero used soul voice with madrigal and minuet and we ran in to fight the big puppy. As usual, he was hitting pretty hard, but Anrita kept us well-healed. I used Sentinel and then Invincible to help hold hate and keep my damage down. Once Allia started using her chainspell-stun, both Monks used 100 Fists, and I pretty much didn't have hate for the rest of the fight.

Fenrir managed to get his two hour off between stuns, but we all survived. I missed the message that he was readying it, and didn't get Rampart off, which might have saved us a lot of damage. Anrita ran in for Benediction, and Fenrir didn't even look her direction - he was too mad at the monks to bother with the little white mage. Frobro took a huge Eclipse Bite, knocking him down to 28 hit points and I ran over to cover him, but Itera had pulled hate, so cover didn't really do anything. We got Frobro's HP back up, and cure-bombed Itera to keep him going. Then all of a sudden, it was over. Fenrir was defeated! Finally I could have a pact with Fenrir, after 5 failed attempts.

These fights are sure a lot more fun when we win! Anrita escaped us from Full Moon Fountain back to East Sarutabaruta, and we ran to Windurst Waters to talk to Leppe-Hoppe and get our rewards.

I headed to my moghouse to switch to PLD75/SMN1, and headed out to West Sarutabaruta to pick on some tiny animals, just to play with my new puppy. Hopefully I can leech with a group of Monks and a RDM/DRK to win against Diabolos Prime, and have my avatar set complete. I'd still rather be an integral part of the team, but my 0/6 record on him is making that look unlikely. I don't really see that I'll ever level SMN, but I always wanted a complete set of avatars.

New title: Heir of the New Moon

Dynamis: Happy Xarcabard Farming

2007-05-01T09:40:00.000-04:00

I had an exciting weekend, with lots of things to write about, but the one I'm most excited about is TheUltimates' Dynamis run on Saturday. We actually managed to do Dynamis-Xacabard as Venn planned. The Japanese shell that seems to be there every Saturday evening (Sunday morning for them), must have had something else to do. We still don't have the numbers to want to try taking on the Dynamis Lord, so it was just to be a farming run. Lumikumi won the lot for main tank, with me as backup. Jarbit came as PLD, and Daden was our only NIN. We'd only had three tanks on our previous run, and I felt more comfortable going in with 4 of us.

The first time statue pull didn't go quite they way we wanted it to, but we only had two demons come after us, and the BLMs got the statue and the time extension. The two eye pull went smoothly, now that we all know what to do. We made our way to the second camp, and while killing the eyes and demons there, a Melee Crown dropped! I'd never seen Relic drop from a normal mob in Xarcabard, but apparently TU has had a couple pieces drop over the years. Itera and Rassiter both lotted, and Itera won! Hurray!

We continued on to the NM demon trios, and had a number of deaths in the process, but overall, things were much cleaner than the last time, mostly because we had a "spare" tank to jump in when one of the others died. All the pulls went pretty smoothly, with just the BLM NM being troublesome, having blasted Daden with a Thundaga III before he moved off of his platform. We had to make a second sacrifice pull to get him.

On the final set of NMs, the Dragoon King dropped the Wyvern Helm. Venn was the only lotter, and finally, after 3 years, he's completed his Dragoon Relic. It was pretty exciting! At this point, had we been going for the Dynamis Lord, we would have snuck past a line of demons and eyes to get to the dragons in front of the Castle. Goldfish told us it had been a really good run so far, and we would have had plenty of time for DL, so that was really encouraging.

Since we weren't going for DL, we were going to kill all those demons lined up on the way to Castle Zvahl's. The first pull looked clean, but then turned a bit ugly. We were swarmed with angry eyes and demons, and ended up with a full wipe. We dusted ourselves off, rested up, and worked on killing them a few at a time.

After cleaning them up, we headed south, I think, for more farming. Goldfish pulled an eye, and we got quite a few warrior, monk, bard, and white mage demons. We went through them rather efficiently, with a few deaths, then on to the the next set. Lumikumi had gotten killed, and I jumped in to take over on a Kindred Bard. I was so surprised to see "You find a valor surcoat on the Kindred Bard" when we defeated it. Jarbit, Lumikumi, and I were the only main-lot PLDs. We cast our lots, and mine was the highest (then I was promptly killed by the Kindred Monk I was tanking). I couldn't believe it! I'm never that lucky. I'm currently the only person in TU with the Valor Surcoat. It seems to be a curse for the LS, since the PLDs who've won them in the past either quit the game or leave the linkshell. I don't plan on doing either.

We continued killing mobs and another Melee Crown dropped, completing Rassiter's MNK relic set. And then another mob soon after dropped the BLM hat, which has been promised to Sarntur. He'd won one on a previous run a year ago, but the hourglass expired before the hat had dropped to him and it was lost. That piece completed Sarntur's BLM relic. So it was an amazing farming run for us: 5 Xarcarbard relic pieces, which completed 3 sets, and the other two made Itera and I very happy, and our wins were blissfully drama-free. I think it's pretty neat that we both got our pieces on the same run. Now we should both get our Glacier drops on the same run too. :-)

As time was winding down, we had another swarm of angry eyes and demons that killed us all, so Venn called it a night and people were given R3s. I really hope we can have more Northlands runs like that. We need more relic armor for everyone!

I still can't believe Kiki actually has a Valor Surcoat. I remember talking about it with Yobun maybe two years ago, when what may have been the first NA linkshell to beat the Dynamis Lord got the Surcoat. We both figured it was something our PLDs would never have. Of course, back then, there weren't many good NA dynamis groups yet, nor did I think I'd be doing Dynamis, or any other "end game" sort of activity. Since then, I've seen Valor Surcoats popping up all over the place, so it was no longer had the unobtainableness it once had. I never thought I'd have mine just over 6 months after starting Dynamis, and just over 4 months with a shell that had enough members with access to the Northlands. I'm 3/5 on my relic now, with the hands and legs missing. I had been planning to upgrade my AF Surcoat with Limbus items, but now I think my AF pants are the logical upgrade.

Salvage: Zhayolm Remnants

2007-04-27T14:29:00.000-04:00

Venn, in an effort to spend every day of the week with members of his various Ultimates linkshells, has added yet another activity to the agenda. He's created a new shell, UltimatesForever, specifically for Salvage. We're meeting on Friday nights, and had our first run last week. We had 11 people for our inaugural run, and Albany is guiding us in our infancy.

Salvage is like Limbus in that you can have up to 18 people participating, you have a time limit, and you're trying to defeat mobs to get items that can be turned into really amazing gear, such as the Ares armor. It has a 100 minute time limit, with no extensions. The fee for entering is 2000 Assault Points, which means people have to keep doing assaults to get enough points for Salvage, as well as any Assault items they might want.

When you first enter Salvage, you have no access to your job abilities or subjobs, you cannot equip any gear, and your stats are all severely reduced (-50 on all visible stats at least). The mobs you encounter can drop "cells" of different types that will lift one particular restriction from the individual that gets to use it. There's strategy involved in deciding who gets what first, to best benefit the whole team.

We meant to start out with Bhaflau Remnants as our first run, but ended up in Zhayolm Remnants instead. It was pretty amusing watching the group running around in their underwear, punch mobs. Most of us were pretty pitiful, with no hand-to-hand skill, but Itera was doing a good job of killing things, even with his bare fists.

I nominated Jarbit to be main tank, since we were were the two PLDs and he's got more HP than me, so he was the first to get his subjob, then weapon and shield, then job abilities. Goto was our only WHM, and he was the first to get his use of magic unlocked. A few mobs will "drop" treasure chests, which contain temporary items such as regen milk and HP restore potions, which came in quite handy. It was a bit chaotic, and we ended up with nearly a full wipe on a Poroggo NM, but we got back up and continued on up to the second floor. We ended up timing out before we'd made significant progress, but it was really an awful lot of fun. I'm eager to go back tonight and see what we can do!