Verrick's Tales

I'm Baaaack!

noreply@blogger.com (Darrett) — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 22:26:00 +0000

Just a short note. I officially relogged in after about an 11 month absence. And lo and behold who do I run into as I zone into Bastok Mines? Zephiris! (on her mule that is). Since no one was in LiberiFatali at the time, Zephiris invited me into Shibby. Saw some familiar faces again. Eckardt, however, ran right past me without a wave (he claims it's because I'm too short and the computer didn't draw me in). I also said hi again to Fullen, Hypnotizd, Demesis, and Blaire. Not sure who else is playing, but looking forward to seeing.

Also I heard about some of the updates. Synergy!?!? Gardeners banned and then reinstated (I wonder if I would have been banned if I was actively playing at the time). Not too many job updates, although the ranger ones are fun (now I don't have to do velocity shot every dang 5 minutes, still need an auto attack cause my fingers get sore).

I was telling Eckardt that I didn't have a Blau for my THF. Then I reread my earlier posts and realized, I actually do have one. My bank account is still relatively healthy. I think I have about 7-8 mil on all my different characters. Going to work on finally getting Alchemy to 100 on Brin, I'm somewhere at 99.x. Then getting goldsmithing to 60 (at 58) on Verrick.

It was funny. I couldn't remember how to get to places. How to even lot on treasure. Or how to start a party. It's amazing what you forget. Well I'm sure I'll have fun again. Also heard about FFXIV.

Favorite Sigs

noreply@blogger.com (Darrett) — Sat, 24 Jan 2009 10:10:00 +0000

Just was waxing nostalgic talking about signature making in my LS Imperium. Haven't done one in a while, but was looking through my old ones and finding the ones that I liked the best. I have trouble making good ones for myself.

I really liked the sig I made for Tonyo. It just seemed to capture the duality of PLD and BLM.

Even though he eventually failed as a LS leader and overall "good guy" Lorddocster was a friend for a long time in FFXI. How he ended is quite sad to me. He asked the LS to update his sig for him. Enedin and I had a little sig making war to see who would win.

Hewison's signature was simple in design, but it looked so peaceful and calm. I was fooling around with layering and opacity and thought it came out really nice. I was almost tempted to erase Hewi's character and replace it with mine!

Dukenukem is a great friend in the game. He recently returned along with Kavita. I found this really nice smoky night picture and thought that it would go well with Fenrir. I was happy I found a pose for his PLD.

This is one I made for Duke and Kavita. Both of them are really nice people. And they have some adorable little girls. This was around the cherry blossom time so I was inspired by FFXI's ingame motifs.

Demesis was one of my favorite people in the game. He was part of my second CoP static. Hypnotizd, myself, and Demesis trio'd our way to most of our Yigit sets. When we were almost done, Demesis abruptly disappeared from the game. I don't know where he is. Never got to say goodbye.

Didn't really know Dalkar all that well. I think he was a transfer from Shiva. I just like this sig a lot. It's monochromatic, but just appeals to me. I've never been able to recreate that background.

This one is one of my favorite ones. Simple and clean. This was right after Boktai got his YY robe finally.

Arizod is my favorite galka in the game. Vlacatocc is a close second. Arizod and Gheldhart may be returning to the game in the near future. I'm excited. Arizod and I used to duo our lower level characters. Now with level sync it will be even easier! Get back in the game, damnitaru!

This is my other NIN sig. I think it turned out rather well. I had to do some quick freezing in Altana view to get the characters. I really like Zetuei's kneeled pose.

For myself, I think I like this sig the best. I was caught up in the magic of CoP and was BRD through a lot of it. I felt a resonance with Ulima! I just like how the colors flow through.

I'll post some more about my recent adventures soon!

Epic Battle for the Ages!

noreply@blogger.com (Darrett) — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 17:14:00 +0000

Caution: long post

Now, it has become a rarity for me to blog very often, usually once every few months, but reader's your in for a surprise! Nary a month has passed an another picture fest from me. What prompted this? Epicness!

I managed to get to CS in terms of assault Rank. It's kind of sad though. I've only done 10/50 assaults. Yes, I was spamming the same ones over and over to get my Yigit Set. I'm doing a few new ones with Godswrath and Jukoss. So hopefully it will be better soon. We managed to get to Nyzul Floor 75. Sometimes frustrating because members don't show up or don't have enough tags. I kind of want to do Salvage, but can't seem to find a group with good times for me.

Dynamis

We have this JP Linkshell that somehow has decided to form and take all the northland zones about an hour or 2 before we go in. It gets so frustrating. So instead of Xarc, we moved to Dynamis-Qufim. It actually went pretty smoothly. Had a little hiccup on MegaBoss, but the pull went clean and the battle wasn't too bad. We had a ton of WHMs, though. I probably should have come as BRD (since it turns out I was in a party with 4 BLMs and another WHM; but it was fun with Bardon!). Unfortunately I have to go into the hospital to see patients before Dyna run so I don't always have the luxury of knowing what job to show up as. Here is the obligatory picture of my death in Dynamis.

On a funnier note. I finally managed to be first in line to get my coin from Pastor. And he graced me with a Bastok coin! The bastid!

Gil

I had manged to sink my funds on my bank to about 2.9 million after buying a Blau for my THF. So it took me about 2 months of gardening, crafting, and some farming to get my bank back into a healthier state. I usually get up to a million on Verrick and then shift 800K to my Bank so I don't spend it all. Luckily I don' t need much gil every week. Just 30K for limbus and sometimes for Dynamis. Yes, yes, I need to buy a hedgehog bomb, but sue me. I'm a cheapskate.

Now to the meat of the posts!

Epic Awesomeness #1

I was just randomly crafting and chatting on the LS when Aeora asked if there were any BLMs that wanted to KSNM. I asked if they were willing to do CopyCat so I could try for a Destroyers. It took a while but the leader said ok. We had one BLM level 70 and Zephiris from the LS who also decided to come. Zephiris was new at the manaburning KSNM idea. So it was a little rough on the job training. We went through various orbs (Zeph got a V.Claw!) until mine. Actually managed to kill it fairly easily (given that fact that some BLMs didn't have two AMII spells). And I managed to snag an O.ingot (that the party leader promptly bought for 200K), a Philospher's stone, an adaman ingot and ...:

Now the reason I wanted a Destroyers was not for me. My MNKey is at level 14 and have no interest in playing it. But our MNK in the small shell, Zadine, hasn't been able to get a Destroyers. And he's always willing to drop stuff and help out. So this went to him! I was so estatic. Everyone else's orb was kinda meh in terms of drops. But we did manage to help someone else get a Destroyers (he was 0/14 before).

Epic Awesomeness #2

I was randomly crafting again. I was chatting with Kaerwyn over Yahoo! and also in the LS chat. Part of the CoP static were trying the airship. I have fond memories of that thing, and also frustrating memories. My first time through, I went 1/9. I think it was because we had too much of a back line (WHM, BRD, and RDM) and not enough Oomph in terms of the melee department. We managed to recruit a BLU for headbutt spam and that's how I got my first win. The 2nd time through I went with my other static with a WHM, RDM, RNG (me!), WAR, NIN, and BLM. I think it took us 5 tries (mainly because the mammets were evil and turned to BLMs like3/5 times and wiped us early).

Unfortunately several members had to leave after doing 4 dry runs. They asked me to come as RDM. Unfortuantely I didn't have a CCB pump so had to buy one off the AH, but Kaerwyn reimbursed me. We had 5 CCB pumps, a PLD/WAR, THF/NIN, MNK/NIN, DRG/NIN, WHM/SCH, and RDM/BLM. I thought I was on a time crunch to do Nyzul in an hour and a half (one member didn't show). So we went in for one dry run since the DRG (Zephiris) hadn't been in the other dry runs. It went kind of bad, BLM puppets, locking the one we were fighting in Hand Mode.

Time was running out so we decided to just do it for real. The plan (and I admit I was bossy and took over the run) was this. Kill Mamets quickly. Kaer focus solely on PLD, leave me the rest. For Omega we would use the Pump at 25% and then another one when it wore off. Zephiris to use her 2HR on Omega. For Ultima the plan was Pump at 40% (Zephiris), followed by Kaer after which Lordstorm would invincible and Zadine would hundred Fists. Miur to use his pump if needed.

Needless to say that didn't happen...

Mammets went down easily enough. We were in pretty good shape. Then came Omega. That thing is nasty. My heart was pounding through the battle. We were starting to have trouble at around the 35% mark so I had Zadine use his CCB pump. Unfortunately Omega killed our tank and then went around killing the mages. Lordstorm managed to reraise and go and die in the safe spot, along with Kaerwyn, Zadine, and myself. Miur and Zephiris died in aggro range. So we reraised. While I was healing, Zephiris reraised, aggro'd Omega and pulled him to me! MPK! (at least she didn't go kill the other 3, hehehe). Luckily I had put reraise back up.

So we regrouped. After we unweakened, the plan was this. Lordstorm would pull and CCB pump. Then Kill as fast as we could. I was going to have Zephiris 2HR, but she said she'd lose her wyvern. So in the end decided just to go all out and have Miur reraise and move out of AoE range. The plan worked perfectly! I was in a little trouble there at the end, because Omega didn't like my nuking him. But we managed to live and kill him!

So while we were waiting for Miur to unweakend we formulated strategy. We were going to have about 10 minutes or so for Ultima. Plan was to use CCB pump at 40%. Kill hard. Kaerwyn would use his pump when he saw Ultima readying a move. Then Lord and Zadine would Invincible and Hundred Fist and hopefully kill him fast. We walked out and saw our time left.

Plan went pretty well until ...

You can see how concerned I was. I forgot to put a period after Shit. Kaerwyn and I were just a fraction late in healing Lordstorm. I thought we were a gonner then.

Luckily Zephiris had managed to place a CCB pump on it! I had Lordstorm raise and while weakened he popped his invincible and Zadine popped his Hundred Fists. I popped Chainspell and started nuking. Next thing I see is Kaerwyn using his CCB pump when he saw Ultima begin a move. My heart was pounding in my ears. I looked at Ultima and right when Kaerwyn used his pump he was already at 9%! I had a mini heart attack when he was at 1% and I couldn't nuke anymore (yes I had MP I had just converted). I think it was lag because I saw this right after ...

So we managed to get that Bastid down in about 6 minutes! Much smoother than my other runs. Kaerwyn was shaking when he won! He tossed his hat off in elation! I gotta say this group was fun to work with and dedicated. So go Imperium! Took several pictures in the Meadows and I'll end the post with them! Congratulations team Imperium! Next week Airship for the remaining static (Makina, Kiabrightblade, and Disfunctional). And much luck on your road to sea!

Happy Holidays!

noreply@blogger.com (Darrett) — Sun, 07 Dec 2008 17:22:00 +0000

Happy Holidays to everyone out there in FFXI blogger land. Admittedly I haven't been updating very regularly. Real life has been crazy. I recently bought a new house and have been moving in and working hard. I mainly log in to FFXI to do Dynamis, Limbus, and garden. Real life will be slowing down in a bit, so you might see more of this tarutaru!

Oh and I have to update my jobs on the side. I managed to get THF to 75. Yes, my second job ever in FFXI (RDM was first, then THF, then WHM for those of you who haven't been paying attention) is now 75. That puts me at 6 jobs at 75 and likely to stay that way for a while. I don't have the urge for Maat's cap (although Eckardt is crazy and aiming for it). THF is fun, nice and relaxing. I did most of it through campaign though, so still getting used to TA and SA and such forth. Need a haste set going (yes yes I need a swift belt).

Dynamis

So what is a Verrick blog without Dynamis? Nothing!

Yesterday, we did Dynamis Jeuno. I've nicknamed it Dynamis-Jeuno: Operation Overkill because we had a crap ton of people. Vlacatocc wanted to clear the zone. But some of those pulls were like 40 mobs at once. Needless to say I died multiple times, about 3K loss. Did I ever mention I HATE Dynamis-Jeuno?

I managed to snag some RDM legs. This puts me at 3/5 (hand, leg, feet) for RDM, 3/5 (body, leg, feet) for BLM, 3/5 (head, leg, feet) for RNG. I'm not even thinking about going for THF. At the rate I accumulate points though it will probably be another 3 years before I see a RDM or BLM hat. So better get back that buffer! (And I'll probably stick to being WHM at Dyna, hehehe).

We seem to have a lot of Galka in DynaLounge! It's scary.

Crafting

I decided to make a push on Wist to get cooking up there. It was languishing at 86 for the longest time. I thought, hey might as well get 2 crafts in the 90s (although they are only Alchemy and Cooking, the easiest crafts by far to level). I haven't been motivated to craft much, since I don't spend much gil and don't have to work to make much gil. Been slowly replenishing my gil back after I bought a Blau for my THF.

Randomness

As I was muling around, I randomly get a tell from Winzip asking me if I could help him. He must not be used to people agreeing because when I said ok (after he told me what it was) he was very surprised. I think he was Japanese, but he had a good grasp of English (some odd syntax only). He assured me that as a 75 BLM I could kill the NM leeches for the NIN job quest with ease (2 or 3 AoE he said). So I trucked down to the tunnel. Sleepga. Thundaga III ... and ...

Season's Greetings

Just thought I'd end this post with some holiday cheer. Pastor is one of the fune people that I do Dynamis with. He has his own LiveJournal blog (which he needs to update too!). In fact, Pastor was the one that charged me with updating my blog. So here's for you Pastor!

In other good news, I randomly got a phone text from Arizod. He has a new phone finally! We lost touch after a while when Aznmahavailo irritated me to heck. Then Arizod and Gheldhart left the shores of FFXI. I'm imploring the galka to come back! And his little tarutaru fiend ... I mean friend.

Happy Holidays, Season Greetings, and all that Jazz. See you in 2009!

Finally, Freakin' Finally!!!

noreply@blogger.com (Darrett) — Sun, 28 Sep 2008 00:31:00 +0000

The picture should say it all ... except it should read 8/12/06 to 9/27/08. Was too excited and rushing to get this posted!

Dynamis

I started Dynamis with LoHDyna, an offshoot of my social shell LordsofHydra. It was rough in the beginning. We had no clue what we were doing and had many, many wipes. But the group got better and stronger. And we kept on going. Pretty soon we were an established shell doing Northlands and some CoP.

Then the shell broke for various reasons. Mainly the LS leader, Lorddocster, running away to Kujata to join ... Demo. Along with the LS bank. And his cronies of Fade (now Byte) and Fallyn. I still have not forgiven him for that piece of idiocy. Nor did he ever seem contrite about it.

So most of the old shell moved to OceanidsDyna, an offshoot of the endgame shell Oceanids. Unfortunately due to my playtime I could only make Saturday runs. For a long time we were in the cities to help new people get the wins. Then we did runs to win the Northlands. Then we killed the Dynamis Lord. And spent a whole ton of time in CoP Dyna. Along the way, the dynamis shell broke away from Oceands to become DynaLounge.

I had frankly despaired of ever getting my full WHM AFv2 (not couting relic belt). I could only make Saturdays and could not drum up the points to stay at the top of the list. I had received only RDM feet and hands for a year of being in the shell. With us doing CoP dyna I was getting more and more discouraged. Especially after Hypnotizd who started doing Dynamis a while after me got his full WHM AFv2, BST AFv2, and most recently BLM AFv2 Hat before me. I was feeling discouraged and frustrated.

With the new dynamis entrance fees and drop rate we were able to do some more Northlands. In Xarx 2 weeks ago I managed to snag the cleric's mitts that Kavita had outlotted me for way back in LoHDyna. Last week we did the glacier. I was up for RDM Body and RNG feet, but had to pass in order to keep my spot on the WHM list. Needless to say, the briault did not drop. My last chance was this weekend, because after we were going to be doing a lot of Xarx and cities to get new people the win.

Bardon (who also started Dynamis after me, but is able to attend both runs doing the week, and got his full AFv2 a while go) kept on trying to encourage me. He predicted it'd fall this run. Wooooodum (who leads the shell and was an old friend and member of LoHDyna) tried to buck up my spirits. Eckardt (who incidentally has full NIN AFv2 from a while ago) also predicted a drop. I wasn't too convinced, seeing as I had not seen the drop in over 2 years of dynamis (the one time it dropped it went to Acreana since I was unable to make that one run in LoHDyna).

But lo and behold, the damn thing FINALLY, FREAKIN' FINALLY dropped! And as a consolation prize, RNG feet dropped again and I got to lot it. So, after over 2 long years of Dynamis I finally have the coat the inspired me to start it all! YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS!

Incidentally ... we managed to snag 18 AF this run and three 100 bills. Damn never had it this good.

RDM - ENEDIN for 15 points
BST - FULLEN free lot
PLD - FULLEN for 15 points
BLM - ACREANA for 15 points
WAR - ELBRYAN free lot
THF - BOI for 15 points
WHM - VERRICK for 15 points
BLU - BOKTAI for 15 points
RNG - VERRICK for 15 points
PUP - VLACATOCC for 15 points
PLD - KIRCE for 15 points
MNK - OLHADO for 15 points
BLU - GUIVOND for 15 points
PLD - ETAF for 15 points
PUP - GUIVOND for 15 points
WAR - ECKARDT free lot
DRK - ETAF free lot
WHM - OLHADO for 15 points

The Hiatus Update

noreply@blogger.com (Darrett) — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 00:59:00 +0000

I haven't really been gone from FFXI. Just been really busy with real life and not updating the blog as much as I used to. A lot of things have happened in the meantime so here is a chance to recap it. I haven't been as faithful taking pictures so bear with me. Been under pressure from Kaerwyn to update.

ToAU Missions

At the last writing I was on Gessho, proceeding merrily along with the Imperial people. Well, we actually managed to bludgeon our way through the rest of the fights. The BLU mage fight with the gears actually went pretty well. We were a little unprepared the first time we fought and gears came on in a rush and several of us died. I actually went as a RDM. However, we were able to regroup and actually complete it. Then we decided to try our hand at Alexander. That evil BLU hurt us a lot on our run throughs. So we decided to try again the week after.

Kiabrightblade bought some equipment to reduce physical damage. Our static was actually 7 people so we had to stagger a bit. Kia (PLD), Makina (DRG), Zarovich (BST), Kaerwyn (WHM), Thayos (RDM) and myself (BLM) went in first. It took us some strategizing but basically we manaburned the BLUs 1st form. Then TP burned the 2nd form. Then killed as fast as we could on the 3rd form. Most of the Eyes on Mes were stunned and the few that got through, Kia survived with his new Equipment and the healing of Kaerwyn. The interlude was a joke. Alexander was a fun battle. Bright sparkling lights descending on the PLD and him being terrorized. His mega move flattened us, but we recovered and went to do battle. At the last few seconds I managed to beat him down with a blizzard 3 (after manafronting for some AMII). We actually won with 9 seconds left.

It took us a few weeks to do the fight for Zephiris (DRG). This time we won with a minute to spare. We would have been faster, but as luck would have it, when Thayos Chainspelled and I Manafronted, Alexander decided to be immune to magical damage. It was frustrating and comical at the same time.

Dynamis

I've continued on trooping with OceanidsDyna. I managed to snag 2 RDM pieces, but the cleric's briault continues to elude me. *grumble*. Triple *grumble*. We did manage to beat all the dreamworld CoP so now I have access to Tavnazia.

We're going to try and actually kill the DL in the next few weeks. I get to come as BLM then switch to BRD for the final fight. I still want my full WHM set. And after 2 years, I'm still without my briault or mitts. *sad face*

Limbus

I have some sad news regarding Limbus. Limbus is one of my favorite things to do in FFXI. It's short, fun, and some decent gear (although Nashira is lacking compared to Homan). I, however, had to leave my Limbus shell. The leader of the shell constantly aggravated me. He was continually late because he had to cycle through his DB. We left later and later, sometimes waiting over an hour. He would never respond to things in the LS. He would blatantly disregard basic strategy. In addition he caused he aggravation when we were leveling in our static. He left without warning, wouldn't show up, and basically showed disdain. In addition, he lotted on all the AF (yes he has a Maat's Cap) even for jobs he swore he hated thus depriving people of valuable AF material for jobs they used. I basically had to leave to keep my sanity. I miss the rest of the people in the shell and wish them the best.

I was randomly farming things in Zitah when I struck up a conversation with a friend of mine, MadKatter. She found out I was limbus shellless and mentioned to me that she was about to go on a run. She asked them if I could join and viola I have a new limbus shell DeepSea. I actually like it a lot. We leave on time generally. We have been splitting up Apollyon zones so we do bosses faster and get more coins (e.g. 5-9 a run). Proto-Omega and Proto-Ultima went down flawlessly.

Legion

The social shells of SageWanderers and Imperial joined together to form Legion. Basically we're sort of lax popped NM, CoP shell. We got together and farmed pop items for Gration and for the Uggy Pendant. My first time ever fighting for the Uggy Pendant and it was a ton of fun. I actually on the lot on the single pendant we won (we went 1/3 on drops). We had some fun taking pictures.

Ranger

I managed to level up my RNG to about 74 in the PLD, RDM, RNG semi-static before I lost my patience with Aznmahavailo. I actually manged to ding 75 through a series of campaigning and mini LS events. Currently I'm working on capping the XP through Campaign and the Worm Assault to get my Yigit Pants (the last part of the Yigit Set I need). I love playing RNG, but I sometimes wince when I think of the gil I'm spending. I finally get to use my Kirin's Osode for a good purpose.

Crafting

After many many months and years I got Brin's Alchemy to 99. I went on a little crafting spree and managed to make another million or so from Alchemy profits. Since I didn't win in the Mog Bonanza I'll have to be content with that. Thinking of getting into crafting again.

Statistics

Overall

I'm still enjoying myself in FFXI. I'll eventually work on my COR again. Maybe SCH. Maybe even DRG. I'm inspired by the DRGs in my LS, seems like a fun overall job. I have to get my butt going on the WotG missions. Some sad things have been left behind, new friends and opportunities have arisen. FFXI lives on!

Shadows of an Ultima Dynamis-Windurst in the Path of Darkness

noreply@blogger.com (Darrett) — Mon, 18 Feb 2008 01:25:00 +0000

Dynamis-Windurst

Last week Saturday OceanidsDyna chose to do Dynamis-Windurst. Our regular puller Vlacatocc was unable to make it. Instead Zalia got to pull. They didn't do too badly, but we had several wipes due to uncontrolled linkages. We killed the MB but it died in the last 30 secs so we didn't get the official win. This time with Vlacatocc pulling we managed to kill the MB with 30 minutes to spare and farm afterwards. No BLM or RDM. In my time with the shell no RDM AF has dropped (I can only attend Sats though). Meanwhile Hypnotizd (from my LS AlwaysFUNE) managed to get a cleric's briault (I've been lusting after this one for a while) in his Dyna :-(

Storms of Fate

After finally kicking the little twerp's face in ZM17 I heard about a possible Storms of Fate run. However, I was in an xp party at the time and couldn't go. Much to my delight it got postponed until Saturday. Right after Dynamis I got a tell asking if I wanted to go on a run. It took a while to get set up and I managed to see a lot of familiar faces from my past. Ultimatechidori and Sesshi (from LoHHNM/Valour), Kiobi (from GYS), Guivond (from RuinousOmen) were there and I got Ashur (AlwaysFUNE) and Zarovich (Imperial) invited too. I died to a cluster (wasn't paying attention when casting) but finally made it to the area. Once there we buffed up and hit it as hard and fast as we could. There were several deaths in a heart pounding battle, but we managed to win! Now I have to climb the promies and then I can FINALLY do AN!

Proto-Ultima

RuinousOmen finally finished up another Ultima set. This time around we had several new people from the crew that used to come. We missed Eldercid, Toxicity, Loren, and Dubajaba. The battle was intense and long. Several dissipitations went off which threw a kink into things. Our PLD/NINs died quite fast leaving Arizod and Vashstarwin (WARs) tanking for a bit. Nice to see WARs who were not afraid of vokes. Citadel Buster was irritating. It took a long time to wear him down (we need to hit harder during Citadel Buster and let the guy die instead of running at 30). But we managed to snag the win and the title. Belgarath got the feet and Hovaz got the head. For our three Ultimas we have received 4 Turbans...*sigh* a hand and a foot. Given that Ultima is so much harder than Omega I find it funny that our win percentage on Ultima is 100% and our win percentage on Omega is 87%.

ToAU/CoP

The Imperial ToAU static (Zarovich, Thayos, Kaerwyn, Zephiris, Makina, Kiabrightblade, and myself) managed to get to the Gessho fight. We tried to straight up tank him a few times with Kia but he ended up dying too fast. Luckily you don't lose XP in ToAU battle zones. Our 3rd try we decided to kite kill him ala Kirin. Zarovich charmed/kited Gessho as BST while Thayos enfeeb'd and took care of the clones. Our DRGs (Zephiris and Makina) and PLD (Kia) hit him when they could and Kaer and I healed. It wasn't the most elegant of fights, but we won! Gessho is a pain in the ass.

I'm actually enjoying the CS of ToAU, the story is getting to be interesting too. We have 2 more fights to finish the missions off! Hurrah!

I enjoy being in Imperial, especially since AlwaysFUNE tends to be a little slow at my prime times on the weekdays. On Saturday we did Promy-Mea for Zadine. 3 SMN, 1 PLD, 1 WHM, and 1 MNK raped Mea! I think I'm going to have some fun doing CoP for a third time ^^.

I also have fun and get to chat with Pikko in Imperial. I listened to her radioshow with Exodous today and it was entertaining. I find it funny that I know both Allakhazam admins from Garuda and they're both in the same LS. We were waving to Pikko's little boy who loves her character.

Registery

I managed to learn how to make FFXI beautiful by tweaking the background resolution. However, my computer can't run it. When I oversample it, I get 4 frames a second. I wish I knew what I needed to do to keep it like these pics ... I wonder if I have to get a new graphics card.

DATs

I found some really nice .dat files to switch up. I really like the Young Griffin armor from the Sandy Past. It's now my "Naked Taru" armor. I also found Nation Moogles! They have a Windy, Sandy, Basty, Jeuno, and ToAU one. I really liked the ToAU version. And I didn't realize, I have a mule (Stal) who is the same model as Pikko! BTW, if you're on Garuda and get a chance to know Pikko ask to see her MH. It's really nice.

Coming Full Circle

noreply@blogger.com (Darrett) — Sat, 09 Feb 2008 16:00:00 +0000

I'm back and hopefully will be updating on a semi-regular basis. I was gone from FFXI for a while due to a computer meltdown. My processor just decided to stop working. I borrowed a laptop for awhile and got a little playing time, but didn't have photoshop or image capture program loaded on. I finally got myself a new computer so things are back to normal. I'm still the attendance monkey for my Limbus shell. I'm still part of AlwaysFune, but also have joined Imperial.

I'm not sure how many people still read this, but here's hoping for some comments! And I gotta track down Taritai's new journal. So if you read this taritai or anyone who knows where it is, can you drop a line?

Red Mage

When I first started Final Fantasy XI I chose to be a Red Mage. I had been ready the Brady Guide and thought that Red Mage seemed like a good balanced job. I could use both White and Black Magic (I tend to be a magey person) but I could also swing a sword decently. So I grabbed my gear and headed outside of Bastok to wail on things. However, after 7 levels of Red Magery I gave up. For some reason it didn't appeal. So I thought, hrm, maybe I'd like to be a melee. And that THF had Treasure Hunter and the gil multiplier thingie.

That lasted a whole 3 levels.

Then I tried out White Mage and Verrick's Final Fantasy journey began. It took a while slogging through the levels, questing the tele-scrolls, whoring and begging for Erase, eeking through the limit breaks, saving and saving for my blessed and noble's tunic, but I finally hit 75 on WHM. After that I went through BRD, and eventually BLM (after swearing I wasn't going to level BLM, but you know, it's sometimes fun to blow things up). I then started up COR and realized I needed RNG as a sub. So I decided to level RNG up and stopped at 65 (getting some xp on RNG through ENMs) after my static broke when I was on leave from FFXI due to a move. So what does a taru do when he comes back?

He goes back to his roots.

So I picked up my RDM again. I had left it at level 41 right after I received refresh (I had finally leveled it for a soloing sub for BLM). I'm in HI so my playing times are limited/screwed up with the rest of the nation. The famous RDM invite rate seemed to elude me. But I slowly managed through main healing parties and sneaking in with BLMs to duo/trio. Finally on January 28, 2008 I was about 4K from 75. I managed to snag a party on Greater Colibiri and hit 75, capped xp, and managed to get a merit.

Congratulate me. I'm finally a 75 RDM after 2.5 years!

In honor of this momentous occasion I finally made myself a new signature.

Missions

Eckardt and I finally managed to make our way to San d'Oria. After getting some help on the 2-3 dragon and the 5-1/5-2 mission fest we worked our way through the long-neck missions. With gracious help from AlwaysFune members, Bardon, Blaire, Kael, Lavina, and Aznmahavailo we managed to hit Rank 10 in San d'Oria. The Sandy missions were kind of dry and you had to listen to long-winded and haughty elvaans talking.

Exploring a little bit of the past, however, brings you face to face with the Young Griffons. Young Elvaans in the past are cute.

During one of the missions (I can't remember which) there was a ray of light that bathed me. I had to snap a screenshot because I happened to be wearing some of my WHM gear at the time. It just seemed to me the perfect backdrop for a WHM.

I managed to FINALLY do ZM-17 and beat that punk kid to a pulp. Now I have to figure out a way to finagle a Bahamut v.1 so I can do AN and get another earring.

My CoP static broke apart after they beat 8-4. Demesis left for a while. Nojoke joined an HNMLS and basically doesn't come into the social shell anymore whlie loot whoring. So I was talking with Thayos. I did some ENMs with Imperial (the promy ones) and had a blast. They were also going to do ToAU missions and I just happened to be on the mission they were on. So I managed to join up and hopefully will be able to finish up ToAU too! The story is just starting to get interesting and make some sense.

I finally got around to unlocking the WotG jobs. I still haven't unlocked BLU or DRG yet. I have no real urge to play DNC (although it seems like a fun job), but I had been hearing about SCH as a subjob for WHM. After reading about it and seeing how Light Arts can affect casting time, recast time, and MP I felt it was a good sub for WHM. So I've started to level it. It's fun and seems like a good sub for RDM if you don't need the -na spells from /WHM. I managed to slowly get to level 11 with some soloing and some duoing with Arizod on his mule. I want to get Accession and be able to AoE regenII, AoE protect and shell on other parties in the alliance (go go BLM alliance). Maybe SCH will be my next job. Poor COR and RNG. On the back burner yet again.

Returning to the Homeland

noreply@blogger.com (Darrett) — Thu, 08 Nov 2007 20:07:00 +0000

Verrick was created on the Garuda Server with his home city in Bastok because I was playing with RL friends from that city. Bastok was a comfortable home for the first few years as I got to know more about Vana'diel. I never felt at home in Windurst whenever I visited. It seemed to so vast and difficult to maneuver through.

All that changed recently. I took the plunge, erased my OP warps, and changed over to my homeland: Windurst! I've become better at navigating through the sprawling city using the warp tarus. And I got the chance to see my nation's unique storyline.

I will say that Windurst missions and their stories were more satisfying than Bastok. Bastok was so clinical and technologic. Windurst has the mystery of magic and faith. It just seemed grander and more fitting to a taru. Eckardt and I plowed through from Windurst Rank 1 to Windurst Rank 5 in one night. We managed to snag some help for the 5-1 and 5-2 fights. We managed to pick up Pikko (yay, Alla administrator), Demesis, and Kavita along the way. Once you start doing the missions you really want to know what happens next in the storyline and this took us on long night missions. You can see we got a little loopy sometimes. Here is the first of some Eckardt and Pikko posts I'll have over the next few posts.

You've gotta love the tarus that beseech you for help. This one taru is completely adorable.

We revisited the Full Moon Fountain for some exciting battles and beautiful CS.

The final battle was epic. Kavita was a WHM (a taru seeking to overthrow the Star Sybil and become the Star Vita), Demesis was a WAR, Eckardt came as a RDM, and I was a BLM. We joined the battle against the cardians. Our first attempt did not go well as we did not realize those cardians aggro'd from such a far distance. I was unable to get a sleepga II off. Our second attempt we were much more prepared and took them down without too much trouble. A NPC joined the fight casting AM. Eckardt took the Wyvern while we picked on the manticore the NPC chose. Unfortunately, Demesis voked the manticore away from the NPC, but the NPC decided to teleport straight into the maw of the Wyvern who promptly killed him before Vita could get a bead on his location.

So we tried a third time which went extremely well. Eckardt died while kiting the Wyvern but we were able to triumph! I lost the Rank 10 animation in the Cutscene, but I did manage to get the flag!

Next up (after Eckardt comes back from Vacation/Work) is to infiltrate the long-necks and take down the city from within! *cue evil tarutaru laugh*

I'll post more in the upcoming days/hours. But I'd like to leave you with a quote from Demesis when we got to Sea after beating Tenzen.

A-LA-PEANUT-BUTTER-SANDWICHES! Now who remembers who used to say that?

Sad Ending but Bright New Beginnings

noreply@blogger.com (Darrett) — Thu, 18 Oct 2007 00:23:00 +0000

I have returned to Vana'diel. But it's a different Vana'diel than when I left.

I left my social LS grown into an 'endgame' shell. Valour was doing pretty well, attempting to camp kings, etc. They did Apocalypse Nigh and so on and so forth. Later I got some text messages from my friend Eckardt telling me that Vlacatocc had left for Oceanids. Then I heard about a lot of issues going off in the background.

I returned to FFXI to level my RNG with Eckardt and Lorddocster. However, with a new job I've become very busy and was not able to make it every night to level. Then one day I hear that Lorddocster has left and gone to Kujata. Basically I came back to a broken social/endgame shell.

Now I had talked to Lorddocster on Teamspeak and he was on my friend's list. He helped me out with a lot of things, camping NMs, AF, etc. And I tried to do the same. Yet I find out that he applied/got into Demo, one of Gardua's most infamous LS that moved to kujata. And ironically one of the shells he used to quote disdain for. And he left without a single message explaining (and yes he was on my friend's list).

He has had some tough times in real life. Not sure what his motivations or what exactly happened. All I can say is I was sorely disappointed in how it was handled. Now there are two others that apparently have moved servers with him. I've had my share of disagreements with those people, and they were a part of issues that people had with the social/endgame shell as well. I'm sad, disappointed, and somewhat angry.

So now people are scattered to the winds. We have created a new social LS called AlwaysFUNE with Boktai as the leader (FUNE was based on a mistype I had a long time ago). The new LS captures the same spirit and fun the old LS had when I first started. We're no longer together in terms of endgame though. That makes it sad. Vlacatocc and Enedin have spread their wings to Oceanids completely. Dukenukem may be applying for SA. Eckardt has been doing things with PwnShop. Hypnotizd has joined an NA dynamis shell.

I've decided to break with most endgame activities. I never really enjoyed doing sky/camping kings. I had turned down other endgame LS that used to salivate when they heard I had BRD, WHM, and BLM (although so many people now have leveled those jobs, I doubt there is a shortage). I only did them because it had grown out of my social shell. I've joined Oceanids for Dynamis since it has a lot of old LoHDyna members.

Right now I'm just having fun talking in the social shell. I've joined up as a permanent member in Hypnotizd CoP static. I had helped them out before but with some members moving back to Shiva they asked me to be part of it permanently. I've had a blast going through CoP a second time. Demesis (WAR), Hypnotizd (WHM, BST), Endril (RDM), Ashur (RDM, BLM), Nojoke (THF, BLM) and I have been progressing well. I joined up permanently with them at 4-3 and we've made it past the 3 paths and are ready to take on the airship. Let me tell you Snoll Tzar with 3 RDM chainspell Fire II + Flare from a BLM + Mighty Strikes/icarus wing GAxe WAR, and a WHM for cures was super fun. And bonus, I get xp now! Yes, they made CoP a little easier, but it's still a challenge of staying power to do all the CS and come back week in and week out to do battles and farm the needed items.

I'll post more about my recent adventures with pictures later. And lastly I left Bastok for the greener pastures of Windurst. After languishing for almost a year on Bastok Rank 7 and blitzing through to Rank 10, I have turned my eyes toward the other nation storylines. I've enjoyed Windurst's story very much. And have achieved Rank 8 in the short span of 2 weeks (well 3 days to be precise).

Gone from Vanad'iel for a Time

noreply@blogger.com (Darrett) — Fri, 31 Aug 2007 20:09:00 +0000

Well, folks. The reason I haven't posted much is that I'm in the process of moving from Oahu to Hilo (a different island in the Hawaiian Chain). I'm going to be losing my net connection until September 19th. Been busy packing and cleaning so not much going on.

Valour is doing well. Claimed KB and they killed it. Unfortunately their in EU hours so I don't do much king camping (since I'm about 12 hours behind them). If not for Valour growing out of my social shell, though, I probably wouldn't do any endgame activities. I'm going to be sad if the Cleric's Briault drops in Dyna when I'm gone. I've been lusting after that piece for the past year in Dyna.

Quick Updates:

RDM has made it to 63. With some horrible parties and some really nice parties. It can get stressful playing RDM at times.

The NIN, BRD, and RNG static made it to level 64 before I have to leave. I'm having fun with my S.Bow and shooting silver bullets. It's costing me a fortune though. I haven't really made time to make gil, so I'm down to about 380K on Verrick and about 4.4 mil on Jorn. So sad.

My next job would be COR. I have the crimson hands waiting for me for RNG and COR. Just got to get my mitts on Seiryu's Kote for RNG and work on assault pieces. My COR was stopped at 41 because at the time my RNG was stalled at 21. I would never have believed I'd enjoy RNG so much. But looking forward to going back to COR, esp with the Steel bullets (hopefully they become cheaper), enlarged AoE and improved buffing capabilities. Should be fun!

That's about it from my front. Unfortunately no time to make little pictures. I was going to have a post about 666 (e.g. all the times I've seen it pop up in the game) but I'll get to that in a subsequent post.

Wish you all happy adventuring while I'm gone.

Pimp Hat Go!

noreply@blogger.com (Darrett) — Fri, 17 Aug 2007 01:52:00 +0000

Red Mage

Did you know RDM was my first ever job in FFXI? I leveled it to level 7. Then for some reason thought that THF would be better. Hah! Got that to level 3. Then I started on my journey on WHM. Those first 10 levels or so were very painful. I remember using a staff (yes I didn't know better) and being PL'd by Lanoire on her WHM. It was then playing catch up to Lanoire and then Sumiko's WHM.

I don't quite remember how I got RDM to 37, but somewhere along the way I hooked up with Guankim and Kenshinshiro. We started a semi-static that leveled very slowly. Basically whenever we found time. It was RDM, THF (Ken), and BRD (Guan). However our work schedules became so diverse that we hardly ever saw each other online. It's been a year since I've had my RDM AF in storage. So as you can tell I decided to branch out on my own.

It had been a nice circle to have all the mages (at the time) to 75, WHM, BLM, and RDM. Now there's BLU but I don't have the urge to play it. I've had some frustrations with RDM lately, idiotic parties, diconnects, you name it. I've been called on to main heal by myself and haste 5 other people as well as refresh a PLD and a DRK. Sometimes it gets too much.

My last party went pretty well. We had a NIN, MNK, THF, BRD, RDM, and SAM. One of them was dualboxing a RDM named FantasyApple (I think). However, that character would occasionally toss out a cure and haste (I think it was the MNK who was dualboxing). So it wasn't a true PLer. Thank gosh, cause I can't really stand those. However, we were lucky they were there. The BRD, for some reason, was tickled pink when he linked 5 spiders together. Needless to say, my MP doesn't stretch that far especially since I didn't have sleepga and could only target sleep mobs. He did use Horde Lullaby. But sickle slashes are nasty. We did get a chain #7 in there.

Then the BRD kind of stopped moving. He'd sometimes sing songs, sometimes just stay stationary. I sent him a tell asking him if he's going AFK, but instead he says he's falling asleep. Eventually he just stops moving. Ugh. The party was going to disband, but luckily they said they'd stay for my level. So now I FINALLY can wear that PIMP HAT. RDM 60!

In other news I've been assigned to be the attendance person for RuinousOmen, my Limbus LS. We defeated Temenos W. And thankfully time chests dropped there. I hate that one when no time chests drop. I was 2 coins short of my loquacious earring, so Eckardt was kind enough to lend them to me. In the end I decided on the Loquacious instead of the Brutal because I felt that I would just use the Loquacious more. The Brutal would be for having fun on WHM, since I really don't have any REAL Melee jobs.

Pretty in Black

noreply@blogger.com (Darrett) — Wed, 08 Aug 2007 21:41:00 +0000

Dynamis

Today was Valour's first Dynamis-Beaucedine run (the LoHDynamis Shell merged together with Valour the newly named LoHHNM shell). We had about 20 odd people show up which is not bad since we have to work on getting access for the rest of the members (hello city runs again).

We had about 3 BLMs, 2 RDMs, 1 WHM, 2 BRDs, 1 SMN, and a decent amount of melees (which is better than the 13 WHMs we sometimes field in city runs). It was actually a relaxed and fun run although Landar (MNK) and Snajper (BLM) did die quite a bit. Not sure who won, but my gil would be on Landar.

Again, I prayed and hoped for my WHM body (the only body we had received in the last year of dynamis went to Acreana when Dragoces and I couldn't make one run). I'm 3/5 on WHM AFv2 (Kavita outlotted me on the gloves when they dropped in Xarc). Been wanting this relic body since I first started playing WHM, my first job. However, it was not to be. Instead I got to lot on this:

So I got my BLM body before my WHM body, so sad. When you compare this to the NQ Igqira Weskit (which I have) you sacrifice +6 MAB and +2 Conserve MP to get -2 enm, Refresh, and some MP. I think I have to rework my macros now to switch over to JSE in the middle of casting so I can keep the refresh bonus as long as possible. Of course I lose out on the -enm bonus. Maybe I'll use the coat more when I'm soloing or during hard NMs where I want every little bit of -enm I can get and I can sacrifice some damage potential and conserve MP potential for refresh. Not sure.

Red Mage

Since I don't get to see Guankim much anymore, I decided to try and level RDM on my own. Got into a party last night with Belanus and his cronies. I remember partying with them in Garlaige Citadel a long time ago on my BRD I think. At that time his friend Lep (something) was our tank and dc'd when his mother pulled out his xbox. Then the party had broken up because Belanus didn't want to party without his friend. I should have thought of that this time.

So we start off in the woodlands fighting pink birdies at level 53-54. At first he told me we had a WHM so I was estatic. When I joined it turned out he had a 51 BRD and I'd be main healing again. I couldn't land enfeebles with any great accuracy even with my HQ staves and Glamor Jupon. It was so depressing. Then all of a sudden, the WAR (Lep) starts to DC. Belanus (NIN) stops moving (no red dot yet) and the BLM Dcs. While I was frantically trying to cure the NIN I pull hate and end up dying. The RNG kills the bird with EES. Then I see the red dot appear as I'm laying dead. I was getting annoyed. THey come back on and he goes lol, playing at the same house.

So we continue on and then on the 3rd fight after that guess what? All 3 Dc again. This time the BRD and I eat it. The RNG manages to get onto a chocobo and lose hate. The 3 never back on. I was so annoyed. Then I get a tell as I'm waiting for beseiged asking if I want to party. I had been afk reading a book and took like 2 minutes to get to my comp. I say sure, and then Thedarklord goes, sorry party full. That was very annoying too. *sigh* RDM may turn out to be the bane of my existence in this game. And to think I had wanted it leveled up before BLM.

Sidewinder: Or How to Die Faster than an Overnuking Taru BLM

noreply@blogger.com (Darrett) — Wed, 08 Aug 2007 05:34:00 +0000

Ranger

Up to this point I had been having fun with Ranger. Something about shooting things to death appealed. One thing that was lackluster was the weaponskill. They were not all that impressive. With each increasing static, however, I inched toward that miraculous level 55 RNG where I could learn Sidewinder and Slug Shot.

Last night I finally made it. We decided to head toward the squishy and fast repopping birds in ToAU (yay for piercing damage bonus). Our core static of Badray, Lorddocster, Eckardt and myself were joined by Edmund and Cromax. Now Cromax I knew from our Dynamis days so it was fun. So the party of WHM (Badray), SMN (Lorddocster), Eckardt (NIN), Verrick (RNG), Cromax(RNG), and Edmund (BRD) headed out our merry ways. I couldn't seem to land acid bolts on the pink birds and the holy bolt added effect was quite meh. But we were steam rolling along with poor Eckardt trying to keep hate off the 2 RNGs. It all ended when Cromax and I learned Sidewinder and Slug Shot!

Now what was a little irritating was the birds somehow continually ate my food. So on top of struggling with taru's poor STR stat (I think I was at base 41 and Cromax was base 54) I had to be without food for a bit. That being said Cromax was hitting harder than me most of the night. He parsed about 40% of the damage and I did about 38%. But with minuet on us, plus Fenrir buffs, murdering the birds were totally fun. The most fun I had was Sidewinder, followed by Barrage, then another Sidewinder. Of course that earned me enimity fast and I did die 2x last night. But it was so much fun!

I did bow in deference to Cromax's lovely WS numbers though. Here's my best and here is his (which incidently closed Reverberation SC for 600 extra damage, curse him!).

Crafting

I spent a mini-fortune on Philosopher stones. And managed to craft my way to 98 alchemy. I have platinum nuggets to sell but someone keeps undercutting the prices. Earlier last month it was 28K a stack, now it's being down to 18K a stack which makes this a pretty nasty loss synth instead of a slight profit synth. I'm not too happy about that. SO there went about 800K of my gil.

I HATE undercutters.

Sin Hunting: Or I Never Thought I'd Ever End Up Here

noreply@blogger.com (Darrett) — Mon, 23 Jul 2007 23:51:00 +0000

Take a look at the jobs to the left. WHM was my first 75. Then came BRD. Then came BLM. RDM was on par to be my next job to 75. Had even toyed with the idea of COR being my next job. What do all these jobs have in common (well except for BLM)? They are support jobs. Now BLM really isn't a support job, but it is magey. Now what does this have to do with anything? Well. Remember my post about trying to get RNG to level 37 before I would go back to COR (since my RDM is sort of stalled in a very slow moving semi-static)? Well, I managed to get RNG up to 37. And beyond.

It started out kind of haphazardly. Aurridaur was getting together a party in the jungles made up of level 24-26s. I had jokingly told Guankim that if they wanted to wait an hour I could go (since I'd have to mule and buy a lot of things). Apparently Guankim didn't realize it was a joke, and told Aurridaur I was going to go. So I scrambled around looking for gear. Wouldn't you know it, Aurridaur dc'd right as we were about to start. So we went on without him. Got to about level 26 or so. The next night Guankim (BLU), Eckardt (NIN), Nlsmo (THF), and I continued on from the night before. We gathered some more people (including a very odd JPN THF that told Eckardt that he spoke funny) and managed to go on until Guankim fell asleep. I think we hit around 29 or so.

Then Lorddocster stepped into the picture. For those who don't know my LS leader, he is a leveling fanatic when he gets his teeth into it. He, for some reason, wants SMN to 75 (I think it does more consistent, hate-free damage than his BLM). He had been in a SMN static, but they were not moving fast enough for him. So he picked up myself (RNG), Eckardt (NIN), Nlsmo (THF) and we went back to the jungles. He had his brother's character to heal us. We picked up a WHM (I think) and managed to get to about 30ish. Then we continued on till about 32 as a foursome and broke for the night. I had been trying to get Eckardt to borrow NIN equipment and he finally did. Unfortunately Guankim couldn't make our HI times (so his BLU has been left behind ; ;).

Along the way we hit Garlaige Citadel (Muloki joined us as PLD for a bit; Mhisty on SMN for a bit; Gravvick as BLM for a bit) and Gustav Tunnel (again Muloki as PLD for a bit). In Gustav Tunnel we picked up Badray (as NIN) and proceeded merrily to 41 there. Somehow the RNG ends up pulling, not the THF. That makes my pulling experience as a THF, RNG, COR, and BRD, ugh! We manage to go to Western Altepa Desert with Badray changing to WHM. So our static now consists of Verrick (RNG), Eckardt (NIN), Badray (WHM), Lorddocster (SMN), and Nlsmo (THF). We try to pick up a RDM and the ones we have had in Gustav Tunnel and the desert have been exceptional! We've also had some LS members scome in for spells like Fey (RDM) and Choupuchoupu (BLM).

So, now I'm standing on a RNG 41 and realize I have to do AF. Ranger is kind of annoying since you can complete AF1 during the Full Moon. I manage to grab the glittering sand and we proceed to kill in Western Altepa Desert until Full Moon arrives. We take a break and I whisk to Junger Forest to complete the CS (saw Dahoman at the same tree!). On one of my free times I manage to solo all 3 of my coffer keys needed for AF (Garlaige, Monastic Cavern, and Crawler's Nest) the shrotest in 3 fights, the longest in 7 fights. We've managed to hit up to level 46/47 and will be resuming nightly statics for now.

I've been reading up on RNG a lot. I've decided to do mainly xbow for experience unless acid bolts don't stick or holy bolts added effect doesn't proc. I've managed to get a hold of a parser and consistently parse about 90-93% ranged accuracy. Usually doing about 28-35% of the party damage total. Keeping my archery capped though too. And I'm having a BLAST! Also I'm throwing away a lot of gil, but it's still fun. The added effect of Holy bolts really add up and the best part is the added effect doesn't accrue hate! I'm able to SC with the THF and occasionally barrage. It's so nice not having to scramble for a tank (and read up on Eckardt's journal e.g. DJDigital for his take on NIN).

The only other annoying thing about RNG is getting the "top notch" equipment. I've basically not thought about guns yet (thinking if I have to go as RNG to big events but I doubt it since my BRD, WHM, or BLM will probably be wanted). But the top bow consensus (other than relic) is the E.bow or V.bow (the rare/ex version of the E.bow). However, the E.bow is about 2.3 mil on AH. I've yet to try the BCNM60 for it. The Rare/ex version is a Fei-Yin pop from 16-24 hours or so and I'm not crazy enough to do that. So what do do?

Go after the 2nd best bow, the S.bow. Now this mob can only be spawned during Full moon (white Coney) or New Moon (Black Coney). It turns out that New Moon was right when I logged in. So after doing some assaults I head up to Ulereguard Range (Sp?) with Demesis (WAR) in tow and a stack of San d'Orian Carrots. Cerene (RDM), Alinaaset (WHM), Thorhammer (PLD), Kattsu (THF), and Aznmahavailo (NIN, then THF) joined us. We managed to get all the pops in a 3 hour period (and that rabbit footprint moves bloody fast 5-10 secs so need a trade macro) much to the sadness of another group of people camping it. In those 2 hours we had 2 bows drop. One for me and one for Aznmahavailo. Cerene didn't want to stay and try for his bow, but I'm more than willing to help out again.

So after that I decided to go after the O.Bow. I was killing Goblins slowly as WHM/NIN. Was there for about 2 hours and no pop. Lorddocster came down to chill with me and we proceeded to kill all the gobs for another 4 hours. We were winding down (him to shower, me to bed) when all of a sudden the darn NM pops. I pulled and kept it busy until Doc came back. Things were going well until an EES killed doc and the NM flattened me. Of course then another NIN and a BRD came strolling up. We managed to reraise (with LordValour's help; doc was dual boxing another WHM). Doc pulled the NM and another gob and then proceeded to suicide with the gob behind a lot of other goblins right when the other NIN was drawing his katanas. That gave us time to regroup and the other NIN and BRD just left. We proceeded to pull him again and this time made short work. And I got my O.bow!

So no more bow hunting forever! Just need to keep gear up to date! I also managed to sign some Hawker Knives for myself (using Brin), no +1 though ; ; I still can't believe how much fun I'm having with RNG.

Signature Maker Part III

noreply@blogger.com (Darrett) — Fri, 13 Jul 2007 10:43:00 +0000

Side Note:

Been busy these past 2 weeks and haven't really caught up with what the heck is going. Social shell --> Sky shell --> HNM aspirations. Now social shell had initially branched off to a dynamis shell (separate from social) which has been going for about a year now. We've cleared the 4 starting cities and Beceadine (sp?). Got our first Buburimu clear the other day. Just don't seem to have the numbers for Dynamis-Xacarbard which is why we've been clearing the cities for people again. However, now the Sky shell metamorphosed into a proposed HNM shell with people from Shiva (I'm still meeting all of them). LS leader wants to merge the HNM shell with the Limbus and Dynamis shells and restrict them to members of the HNM shell only (apparently had issues with another LS that we used to do Kirin with coming into our shell to get ToD). I'm sad about this because I really enjoyed the Dynamis shell and the people in it, honestly. I do Limbus separately due to time commitments. I'm sad that the Dynamis shell is breaking and I didn't want this. And I know people are not happy about this after working so hard this past year. But I got outvoted by the majority (partly I haven't really been playing/keeping up on website due to being busy). Now it remains to see if the Valour shell people come to Dynamis.

In leiu of more earthshattering news here are some recent sigs I've made:

and my own:

I can't seem to muster up the enthusiasm to make myself a sig. Anyone want to give it a shot?

Experience Points for Ranger

noreply@blogger.com (Darrett) — Tue, 03 Jul 2007 15:55:00 +0000

A Busy Sunday

Now i haven't seen Arizod online much, partly due to our busy schedules. But he managed to log on Sunday so we decided to do a couple of quests. For me I hate finding parties at the lower levels. I also have no urge to really level my RNG in a party setting, but I want it leveled to 37 as a sub for COR. So ... I've decided to level it up with EXP scrolls! So this is my typical EXP scroll hunt.

1. Escort Quest: Sandoria
I like this one because it's extremely short. Eldime Necropolis also is a playground for WHMs and hexastrike! (Did this with Bardon, Arizod, and Vlacatocc this past Sunday)

2. Spice Gals
This is a pretty easy quest started in South Sandy. You need to be past Promathia 2-5 mission to attempt this. Basically I like to go to Riverne B since I only need 1 giant scale to get to the point of the ??? for the Rivernewort. Arizod came as NIN and I went as WHM to facilitate obtaining the giant scale. After getting the item it's a pretty easy trek to the ???. Just have to wait until the dragons and bombs aren't looking at the spot.

3. Monarch Linn Patrol
Since we do the Rivernewort and Monarch Linn is essentially right there we decided to try the Patrol. It was a single Mamet-800 against the 2 of us (it adds an extra mamet up to 8 or 9 for a full alliance). It actually was a bit tougher than we thought because we didn't have a macro for the yellow liquid. Arizod tried to use it during the BLM phase, but ended up stalling it on the sword phase. That was bad news. We eventually won. I like doing this one because an exp scroll is quoted to be about 50% of the reward (other 50% an item including mannequin pieces).

Interlude: On our way to the Sacrarium we decided to finish my Knocking on Forbidden Doors quest to pose mannequins. I had earlier went to the Aqueducts to click on the ladder at C-9 for a CS (died once as a taurs turned right as I passed it, grrrr).

4. Secrets of Ovens Lost
This one is started in the Tavnazian Safehold. After that you run through the Sacrarium looking for a particular ??? that can pop in 4 out of the 6 rooms.

So the typical route is:
Go to Sandoria and trigger the Escort quest and the Riverne quest. Go to the Tavnazian safehold and trigger the Secrets of Ovens Lost Quest and Monarch Linn Patrol Quest. Grab a yellow liquid off the AH. Gear up in level 50 gear and bring along level 75 gear for the Patrol. Start off with Riverne B and farm a giant scale. Get the Rivernewort. Then to Monarch Linn to beat the patrol. After that head to the Sacrarium to get the cookbook. Then head back to the safehold and get your xp scroll from Secrets. Talk to Justinius to see what your reward from Patrol is. Head to the Necropolis and complete the escort quest. Then head to Sandy to complete. If Justinius gives you an xp scroll it's possible to get at least 4 a week. These give from 700-1500 exp a piece.

Right now my RNG is sitting at 3K into level 24! Woohoo! Plus it's fun to do the quests with a friend. Don't you think?

Alchemist

noreply@blogger.com (Darrett) — Tue, 26 Jun 2007 20:40:00 +0000

Crafting

On a whim I decided to grab some giant bird feathers after choco racing. There was only enough for 3 synths (at the price I was willing to pay). Not expecting much I sat down to synth them on ice day with moon at about half. My first synth I got a 0.1 skill up. I was so darn excited. Next synth nothing. Then I was rushing through the last synth so I could go mule equipment to someone in the LS and I saw the above. Estatic! The icarus wing hell is now over! In celebration I put my last wing up for 1 gil to give someone a cheap wing. It sold for 8K (going price is 10-12K). Don't worry, the wing prices after me jumped back up.

Not exactly sure my route from now. All that push for the GP and 6 levels of icarus wing hell has left me a bit drained. I think my next route will be the panacea (yay for 13-15K philosopher stones) [cap 98] which will then be used to make platinum nuggets x9 [cap 96]. But it will be slow going since philosopher stones can't be farmed and only got through BCNMs. I figured the fireworks [cap 97] was too ridiculous esp with a rainbow thread in the recipe plus artifical lenses and glass fiber and won't sell for much. I think with the nuggets I might come out break even, small loss, or even small profit depending how much I get the stone for and how much the platinum leaf sells for. After that cantrella to 99 (depending on the availability of fresh orc liver) and pro-ether/sun water to 100. Sun water doesn't sell much, but at an insane profit. Pro-ether is more of a small loss/break even venture. One day I'll be 100+3 (100+6 with advanced support).

Chocobo

I managed to get GhostWhisper's STR to Firstclass and END to Outstanding. Tonight is day 64 where care plans cease to mean much. I've been choco racing like a mad fiend and spending lots of gil to get this choco's stats up (I messed up a few times while raising). Not sure if I should pour gil into getting his discernment up to a decent level. Even if his STR and END outclass the "super chocobos" in the races I still can't seem to beat them, even using a speed apple. It's so discouraging sometimes.

I'm thinking of trying chocobo digging out sometime. If anything to relieve my frustration with crafting at times. I still want to try clamming out as well. I might raise another chocobo, but this time going for the MIND stats. I'd like it to be red so I suppose I must search for a red male and female chocobo, preferably with one of the digging abilities.

Craftaholic and Zombie Goblins

noreply@blogger.com (Darrett) — Thu, 21 Jun 2007 04:46:00 +0000

Crafting

I've managed to snag myself the Alchemy Furniture: Emeralda! So now I'm 92.8 +3 officially. I got Kavita to make me some consoles with 6 lightning energy and 4 storage spaces to activate the mog enhancement: Alchemy Skill. I can change to water energy if I need to for alchemy based water synthed. I'm so estatic. Just 3 more alchemy tools and I'll have everything. Probably doing Iatrochemistry first.

I get nervous when people ask me to synth expensive things. Case in point the Hakutaku Eye clusters. Ever since I crit broke the first one I ever tried I've been shy about it. Two LS members need it synthed so I got them to come on lights day. Luckily I was successful both times. I'm glad they had faith in me.

Dynamis

We did dynamis-jeuno without our illustrious leader Vlacatocc since his computer is busted. So us old foggies joined up to take lead. Not a single DD wanted to call, so I got assigned as a WHM/NIN to do the calling. The BLMs lead and our sole NIN pulled. Our sole PLD voked the statues. We eventually won. But the MegaBoss came with a train of mobs so we wiped after killing the boss. The mobs glitched on the stairs however, so we had a hard time raising. SO we decided to call the GM. This is what I saw next.

Someone managed to call the GM and he came, invisible, and insta-killed all the mobs. I didn't realize what had happened and turned around seeing dead mobs. It was so odd. The weirdest one was the zombie BST NM. He was killed, but kept jumping up and summoning a slime. This slime would disappear in a few secs but it got caught in a sleepga or 2 so we had to nuke it a couple times to kill it.

I ended up with the BRD slippers. No currency, which sucked. I did manage to finally cap my club skills while calling though ^^

Notorious Monster

I met my old nemesis the Dune Widow while trying to get mythril beast coins. I claimed her but didn't get the drop. Later the day I was running through the area again and she popped after I killed a few spiders. This time I got the drop! I promptly put the torque up on the AH for a slightly inflated price of 300K. And it sold. Life was sweet.

Note: Fully updated sidebar now, I think.

Hodgepodge of Updates

noreply@blogger.com (Darrett) — Wed, 13 Jun 2007 22:12:00 +0000

Items

The mean old turtle named Genbu finally decided to grace us with a shield. So I have Genbu's shield to solo around with. That's about all that I wanted from sky. I suppose I could tip my hat toward the Zenith gear now, but I'm not really a fan of it. And the day that a BRD manages to swipe the other god gear...heheh.

Dynamis Windurst

What is odd about the dynamis linkshell is the sheer number of WHMs in the shell. Especially in the starting cities. For Dynamis Windurst we fielded at least 11 WHMs. I had been in my WHM gear and raced to Windurst (helped on PM 3-5 the night before). When I saw how many WHMs there were I offered to change to BLM. LS leader had different ideas though. He said any WHM that could come /NIN or /WAR and melee should do so. And so I did. I unfortunately forgot my Suppa in my MH. I bought sole sushi for the first time in my life. And just whacked mobs. I didn't do too badly. Regular hits for about 30-50, crits 80-100. Hexastrikes were about 200-500. We won't talk about my performance on the MegaBoss.

I did manage to have a lot of fun pretending to be a DD. And I also managed to snag a lot of club skill ups. It was more fun than pounding endlessly on crabs. I went from 246 to 255.3 at the end of the day. Just a few more skill ups to cap club. I wonder if I'll get to whack at dynamis mobs again someday.

Maps

Ifrit's Map has been a thorn in my side for a while. I managed to get a lot of other maps but this one would be a pain so I kept putting it off. Boktai managed to get me to Ifrit's, he as SMN and I as BRD. We took about an hour or so to get the key. And the coffer ... was just around the corner from where we were. It was so funny. And I was so happy!

Since I really don't have the urge to level on my RNG I figured I'd start feeding it exp scrolls. So I managed to cajole Lorddocster into helping me get some Giant Scales so I could do the Spice Gals quest (need a Rivenwort in Riverne site B). After getting 4 scales I went and found the Rivenwort.

I was talking about how easy the quest was to Arizod and Guankim and offered to guide them there if they wanted to. So we geared up as a WHM (me), NIN (Arizod), and BLM (Guankim). We decided to try for the Riverne site map as well which requires defeating 3 NM moblins (a BLM, RDM, and WHM). Immediately when you zone into their spawn area they start attacking. Unfortunately Guankim was first in (we wanted him to ES+Sleepga) and he died very fast. In the end we wiped. After raising everyone we were resting for weakness to wear off. Then someone zoned in and spawned the NMs again. Instead of running off to die somewhere safe, they instead run around the small island and end up coming right in front of us. Needless to say we were still weakened and the mobs killed us (go go MPK!).

So we reraised and then took the spatial displacement away. After getting back to full health we were determined to try it one more time. Arizod zoned first and I went right after to keep him alive. Guankim came in after and slept them all. We killed the BLM pretty quickly. We then went after the RDM. That damn thing is so annoying. It took us forever to kill the RDM and the WHM kept waking up and healing the RDM (I did some ES+ sleep and Guankim ended up ES+sleeping again too). After a long protracted battle we managed to beat the RDM and the WHM although it was a very close thing for a while. But we got the Riverne site map!

After that I went to the Sacrarium to do the Secrets, Oven Lost quest for another exp scroll. So now my RNG is halfway to 23. *sigh*

Crafting

Right now I've been focusing on Alchemy and letting my other crafts slowly level as I gather some materials. It's been icarus wing after icarus wing from level 87 to cap 93 (hopefully). The unfortunate thing is that each synth requires 6 giant bird feathers and 2 beeswax. For a while icarus wings dropped to 6K and the feathers were 12K a stack which is a loss since you have to figure in the beeswax. I had tried to farm giant bird feathers but at 1-2 an hour I gave up and took a loss. I decided to try harvesting pehedro hive chips (much better return on beeswax).

It worked out fairly well. Then I got an offer from Kattsu to help me farm bees and I ended up with about 5 stacks. For a bit over the weekend wings had jumped up to 15K and feathers were down to 9-10K a stack which was a nice 10K profit. Unfortunately some dork dropped the wings down to 12K and the feathers are now up to 16K a stack. *sigh* I had one very nice crafting run. In 6 synths I got a total of 0.5 skill ups. So now I'm sitting at 92.4 in Alchemy. And no feathers in sight on the AH with wings dropping. Ugh. I'm not looking foward to the next synths. Looks like it's either panacea and platinum nuggets or Papillion with rainbow thread as the ingredient. Then after that...I'm scared. And alchemy is the cheapest craft outside of Cooking. I have the gil to get me there I think, but I hate to use all my gil. Right now Jorn is sitting at 5.1 mil, Brin at 1.1 mil, Whit at 1 mil, Sarn at 1.1 mil, Wist at 490K, Verrick at 640K, Bron at 100K and some other little amounts on other mules.

There isn't much I want from the AH these days. I suppose I could buy stuff to make myself better, but meh. I just farm up the gil for Dynamis and Limbus lately and haven't really focused on making gil. It's funny, if you look Verrick up on FFXIAH.com, most of my sales were yag drinks or crystals. Yes, that's how I make my 100-150K a week. Sad ain't it?

A little bit of frivolity

I just had to sneak this in at the end of my post. We went after Omega again in Limbus and killed him pretty easily. We had to random for coins at the end. As usual I didn't get one (damn my rolling skills). But Gheldhart's roll was even worse than mine. I've never seen this personally so I had to put it in.

Hero Among Heroes

noreply@blogger.com (Darrett) — Mon, 28 May 2007 20:01:00 +0000

GhostWhisper

After 180K worth of Chocolixers, GhostWhisper finally managed to learn Canter. The difficulty with Canter is you can't learn the story until you reach the adult stage. My mistake was doing the choco whistle quest. I think until you find the hankerchief, you only get those CS and don't get the random chance to meet Brutus. I had to learn a different story first on my long walks. Then the game wouldn't let me meet Brutus for a while. I was anxious to learn the canter story because I wanted to shift my chocobo plans to physical attributes, instead of focusing on discernment (wanted high discernment to learn the abilities).

So now GhostWhisper will be delivery packages and getting Vomp Carrots. Hopefully he turns out to be a moderately fast Chocobo. Not sure if I will raise another one. Have quite a bit of ways to go.

Bastok Missions

After waiting for people to catch up on missions, then to see them zoom past me and complete them all without asking me along, I finally started back up on Bastok Missions. Avinateri (PLD/WAR), Forbiddenhate (MNK/NIN), Ashur (RDM/BLM), Akiracobalt (WHM/SMN), Volander (BLM/RDM), and Ashke (WHM/BLM) made up the main crew. Ashur and Ashke had finished the bastok missions and had come along to help. We started from mission 7-2 and had planned on basically getting rank 8 at least.

It was quite an interesting storyline. You got to learn more about the Galka race and their unique rebirthing. Zeid, the DRK, plays a large role in the storyline.

Our 7-2 battle went very smoothly. I guess there is something to say about being level 75. The main thing that held me up was needing to find 6 other Bastokers to do this with, which sometimes proved difficult. Mission 8-1 and 8-2 proceeded very well.

Our main snag was on mission 9-1. I had recruited Dukenukem and Kael to help out (both BLMs) as we had to defeat the miraculous multiplying slimes. Dwyana (WHM) came along as well. I sneak popped it and Ashur slept it and we brought it back to camp. We actually managed to kill the slimes with only one death (poor Kael). On our way to get the ??? to finish the mission Volander managed to lose his sneak in 5 seconds and continued to run into the skeletons. Of course he dies and can't complete the mission. So we rest him to full and send him out to pop the ??? to do it all over again. Wouldn't you know it, his sneak manages to somehow wear again right after he hits the ??? so he proceeds to die, and so does Ashur.

So we tractor them both back from the pool and raise and redo. This time Volander managed to keep his sneak up and pop the slimes. We managed to kill them again and he managed to get to the pool without his sneak wearing. I didn't want to take any chances and I escaped him from the pool while the others escaped from our fighting site.

So we decided to go for Rank 10! Thanks to Akiracobalt who remembered how to get to the Throne Room! We took on Zeid and his shadows. It was actually quite a quick fight. The storyline, however, was very interesting! The end CS was a bit touching as you got to hear the opinions of people about living and being from Bastok.

Quite excited actually. I have my nation flag and about 104K worth of CP to spend. I'll probably get an Aketon for my mule to he can run faster to the alchemy guild. I'm not sure if I want to change nations. I kind of want to see the storylines, but I don't want to lose all my OP warps. It took me forever to get some of them, although I would presume it'd be easier with Windurst or San d'Oria. Bastok is usually last, sometimes second place in conquest. And it took a while before we actually got control of some of the regions. We'll see!

Anna's More Idiotic Twin?

noreply@blogger.com (Darrett) — Thu, 24 May 2007 20:52:00 +0000

GhostWhisper

GhostWhisper has finally grown up! And he turned out to be a fine specimen of a black chocobo. He's at above average discernment and receptivity now. Have to go on a couple of long walks to learn the canter story and then teach it to him. Hopefully then I can get him to a moderately fast chocobo. I did get the hankerchief finally to get my chocobo whistle to call him to the field. But his str/endurance is poor, so I doubt I'll be riding him soon. Once I ride him though, expect that top picture of mine to change!

A person more idiotic than Anna?

See this and judge for yourself:

My friend Arizod had logged on in the middle of the night and got accepted into an experience party. I had been planning on getting some exp on elementals in sky when he was telling me about some deaths of the WHM. Curious, I trudged out to the Mire to watch.

Here's the kicker, the mire was empty except for their party and they could not get above a chain #5 if any. And here's the reason why. Party set up was MNK/NIN, MNK/WAR, SAM/WAR, NIN/WAR, WHM/?, and ... RDM/BRD. Aliesha was the RDM/BRD, in the mire, meleeing with full errant gear and MP rings with a lust dagger. She sat on 500 MP and did not haste anyone/buff anyone. The SAM had to pull as she was busy whiffing. When they had links she didn't sleep anything allowing the MNK and WHM to die. Not that the WHM was spectacular (they didn't haste anyone either nor remove silence) but at least they did cure. Half the time, Aliesha was resting away from the fight and essentially just leeching. When Arizod told me she was bragging how good she was, I had to laugh.

I ended up sort of PLing them ... as a BRD/WHM. Yes, I lullabied their links, cured, and removed statuses. It was totally pathetic. The SAM/WAR, MNK/WAR, RDM/BRD, and WHM were in the same LS. The MNK/NIN had enough of dying and replaced himself with a WAR/NIN (who appeared to be confused as to the party as well). Eventually Aliesha changed to RDM/WHM and stopped meleeing. But ... she rarely threw haste out and never did sleep anything. After Arizod and the WAR got a merit, they bailed. The other four stayed in the Mire.

Now I thought no one could compare with Anna in terms of sheer idiocy. But I think Aliesha might take the cake. And she brags she's skillful? And that she's on the way to Maat's cap. If you're on Garuda, I'd avoid her. She's useless. Could she have had a bad day? I suppose so. Could she have been fooling around with LS members? Yes, but when you invite someone outside the LS for an exp party, you do your job. And if you're going to melee, at least put on meleeing gear! Especially since she wasn't doing anything remotely magical.

Whitemage

After 2 long years I have finally managed to ... cap my healing skill! Now I have all blue numbers. Thanks to Hachi for needing LB2 and letting me get my skill up on the Boreal Tiger!

A Momentous Day in Sky

noreply@blogger.com (Darrett) — Sun, 20 May 2007 09:29:00 +0000

Shen

Well we went after Shen again. For some reason Shen has been a pain in the butt the last several times we fought him for a LS member. So today we grouped together before Sky to take this evil thing down. And you know what? It worked like a charm this time. The fight was over very quickly and we finally got Blueeyedbeauty her Reverend Mail. This Mithra deserves it. She is always there to die, raise, heal during all of our fights. One of the most selfless people and doesn't complain at all. So happy that we finally got it for her. Below is a picture of us before we took on Shen!

After that it was sky day. We started off with a warm up on Byakko. The kitty was nicely tamed again today, so life was good. The pants, axe, and hands dropped, so we had some happy people. Then we geared up for Kirin.

We had 2 full pop sets on us. We joined up with another sky shell, FinalHeaven which actually contains quite a bit of our dynamis shell mates. They popped their Kirin first. By the time all the adds were killed we had Kirin down to 60%. It actually went pretty well, although the add alliance was devoid of BLMs so it took them a while and some deaths to bring them down. Eventually they got the crimson legs out of it. Our Kirin went pretty much the same way. We got the Heca body.

I had to leave after the adds were killed on the third Kirin (FinalHeaven's again) due to a meeting. What was utterly evil and hilarious was I made sure I didn't have the current hate when I disbanded. I go to the back to rest in case I made it back before they finished. Then Kirin comes out of nowhere and flattens me with a StoneV (I had nowhere to run). I wanted REVENGE!

When I came back about 2 hours later they had Kirin (our 2nd pop of the night) down to 15%. I rushed up there to try and help but the damn teleporter kept sending me to the wrong room! Amazingly ... he dropped an Osode, a Pole, 2 Shura Togi abjurations, and a shining cloth. Best haul ever. 2nd Osode for the LS off our 4th Kirin.

And guess who got the Osode?!?!?

Yay for BRD pulling! No more super evil bad stats with the Errant body ^^ So my one huge thing from sky is mine. Now if that damnable turtle would just drop his shield...

Thank you so much LordsofHydra shell members! And FinalHeaven shell members. Couldn't have done it without you. See what a social shell can do?

I hope they increase the amount of magic merits one can do. I have 4 in singing and 4 in wind for my BRD. But when I go as BLM, I have to pile on elemental skill gear that could be used for int slots. If I could put some merits into ele skill, maybe I wouldn't be so damn resisted on Kirin. It sucks when your aerogaIII hits for 70 ; ; I do get to kite Kirin when My ES + Tornado IIs hit for about 1.1K.

Limbus

I forgot to take screenshots of Proto-Omega again ; ; This time we beat him in 10 minutes. Only 2 deaths, Dukenukem (tarutaru BLM) and myself (as a WHM) due to unfortunate AoEs. Carolann got the Omega Legs and Aznmahavailo got the Omega head. We did him with 14 this time. A totally different change from our first fight where we wiped with 12. We just have a better idea what to expect.

One day we'll do Ultima and I'll get my shot at the Nashira gear!

But all in all a fun day in sky and Sea!

Proud Papa!

noreply@blogger.com (Darrett) — Thu, 17 May 2007 22:19:00 +0000

Chocobo

GhostWhisper has grown up to an adolescent.

Based on the tip colors I think he's going to turn out to be a black chocobo. I've been feeding him a green (he likes the sour ones) and a Z. Carrot to boost his discernment. He managed to learn gallop after 2 story tellings. I have to wait until he's an adult before I can get the canter story and teach it to him. After that he gets to go on a physical diet/exercise regiment of V. Carrots and package delivering. He's doing really well. So far he's only got sick once. Thanks to all the handy advice from Ashke, Eckardt, and Kavita! When GhostWhisper has to be retired, I might like a blue chocobo ... a discerning one.

Limbus

We've fought Proto-Omega a total of 3 times. Ruinous Omen 2 Proto-Omega 1. The first time we went in with about 12 people and disaster. The second time went much smoother and we managed to get Homam parts for Eldercid and Dubajaba. The third time it went really well with only a few deaths. And this is what we saw when we opened the crate.

The melees were panting over Omega's Heart! Loren ended up winning the lot on the body piece. Kenne and Puretaru got the other parts. I think Aznmahavailo and Carolann are up for the next Omega pieces. Gheldhart and I are still waiting to do Ultima for our shot at armor.

Meanwhile we continue to do the regular zones with much better efficiency. Our first Apollyn NW, we skipped mini-Faf and barely managed to kill Kaiser Behemoth. Last night we took on mini-Faf (2nd time doing so). Notice how many mages (on the right foot) and how many melee (on the left foot). We managed to kill him and Kaiser Behemoth with a lot of time to spare. Damn we're getting better. The only zone we sometimes don't win is the Tremenos one with the enhanced mobs. We get screwed if we don't get an early time chest to pop.

I'm enjoying Limbus. It's one of the few times I get to play WHM. In fact, I finally got ShellraV. I managed to coerce Aznmahavailo to come farming in sea with me. Instead of 1-2 organs (or more frequently 0) in 3-4 hours, we got about 11-12 in about 1.5 hours. Damn TH3 seems to work at least for that! I got my dark obi. Now I need to work on organs and tissues for the light obi and the ice obi at least. If I got the BLM AFv2 pants, I might try for the other obis as well.

Notorious Monsters

The Sky LS is going well. I can't make it to most farming sessions, but I can make it to the gods themselves. Our last foray we did Byakko x 2 (only one pants dropped), Suzaku x 2, Seiryu x 1, and Genbu x 1 (damn turtle didn't drop my shield yet). Suzaku tends to give us the most headaches since we don't always have a RDM/DRK for chainspell stun. We end up shadowbinding but sometimes people disengage a little late or stay right next to the god while it's shadowbound and end up dying. Kirin is up for this Saturday. I hope we have enough people so it's not a super long fight again.

I managed to snag a Jelly Ring as well. Lorddocster was soloing with NPC as a NIN and Sewer Syrup popped. I left sky (where I was duoing with Eckardt on Enkidus) and got there fast. We were forbidden to help (Doc was taking on Sewer Syrup and a Mousse) because he wanted to see if he could solo it. And solo it he did, and I got my Jelly ring! Now if the shield drops I can have -15% damage reduction when I solo as WHM.

On a side note I like soloing in Sky on Elementals or Enkidus. I get useful things (crystals, mercury, mythril ore) to sell or use. The exp isn't too bad. And it's not crowded at all!

Signatures

I was asked to make a few more sigs for the LS. I can't come up with a good idea for one of my own. But I think these turned out ok. Not super fancy, but I never claimed to be a graphic artist. I leave that to Jowah ^^

Return of the Dreaded R0

noreply@blogger.com (Darrett) — Tue, 08 May 2007 21:05:00 +0000

So ... social LS decides to invade sky. Farming triggers and such. Killing the gods one by one until we kill Kirin. Hours in sky. *sigh* Anyways. On Saturday we attempted to do Divine Might. A couple of us had already finished. Our shell has quite a few new people to sky and 75 so we decided to try. It was not a pretty sight. Thing got miscommunicated, BLMs died left and right so we couldn't help nuke the AAs. The melee couldn't take them down fast enough. Needless to say we went 0/3. Now ... we go after Kirin. Of course after 3 DM, people are tired and decide to leave. So we have quite a few new people to sky/gods and some of the more experienced people had left. For support we have 2 RDM/DRKs and 2 WHM/SMNs. Ouch.

Actually the beginning didn't go too badly at all. We killed Suzaku, Byakko, and Seiryu without many problems. However, our kiting party (yes we don't have the fancy toys and jobs to kill Kirin super fast) died when Genbu popped. For some reason Genbu was not being cooperative and he took a bit to go down. So we had to raise the tanks and kite Kirin. That battle was super long. Another LS (one with Blayden in it, from our social shell, I think TrueVirtue) came in and helped a little with some raising.

Now I'm definitely not an endgame BLM. I have no elemental magic merits, not all the fun nuking toys. I get resisted a lot on Kirin. But every time elemental Seal is up, Tornado II does about 1.1K damage and Aeroga III does about 800-900. So I get to kite him for a while. Our problem is our BLMs are not really focused on BLM. For most of us, it was a second or third job and our merits are in other places. Our MNK/WHM Chi Blasted about 1500 every time, and our 2 SMNs tossed out 500-800 damage consistently. Our two poor WHMs were running around trying to heal people and raise people. We died so much. Much different from our first Kirin fight where it went much smoother (I think it's because our whole tanking party died and it was super chaotic).

After much death, running around, reraising, etc. (I was running around weakened with my black cloak, healing the NIN kiter while the WHMs ran around raising people) we managed to down Kirin. And he dropped ... a shining cloth (all our WHMs have noble tunics already, most of us had them before we entered the shell, but the 2 new ones got it from cloths from our first Kirin and from Suzaku?Seiryu? I forget who drops one), Damascus Ingot, and 2 wind crystals. No pole, no leg abjuration, no body abjuration, no Osode ; ;

Blayden's shell asked if we could help to kill their summons, but they asked in say and I missed it until most of us were gone. But I decided to help out and asked if Lorddocster and Nojoke could stay. I'm not sure why they decided to pop Kirin when they were <20 people. But they did. When the summons started coming, the RDMs enfeebled but no BLMs were nuking. So I started to nuke gently against Byakko and Seiryu. Turns out their BLMs were AFK *sigh*. This ended up with the kiting party dead, most of us dead, and Kirin with Genbu and Suzaku out. It was a comical tractor raise, tractor raise, die, tractor raise for a long time. Hale died and reraised so many times, I felt bad. Amazingly we managed to kill Suzaku and Genbu while kiting Kirin. Then settled into the longest Kirin fight ever. So many deaths. And not even for my LS ; ;

In the end I was 16K down for the whole day. It was painful. So I decided to try and recoup my losses over the next few days, a few K here and there. Last night with Eckardt, I went to Mount Zhalyom duoing princes. Through the night we had several R0/time outs which were annoying. The worst was when I was about 900 tnl, the mob had a sliver of health and R0 for both of us. I log back in dead. I was so annoyed. So now I'm 1.5K to capping.

GhostWhisper

My chick hatched and I named him GhostWhisper. Assuming he'll be black, but you never know. I watched him dutifully as an egg over 100x and he hatched regarding me as his parent. I've been feeding him carrot paste and some greens (he likes the sour ones). I take him on daily chocobo walks and watch over him. He gets to listen to music. Hopefully I can get his discernment up so he can learn stories, then raise his physical attributes. Plans are to be able to ride him. You have to love the butt wiggle they do when they are happy to see you no? Just a few more days (currently day 14) before I see what the tips of his feathers are. Hopefully with a Black Chocobo Father and a Black Chocobo Mother he'll turn out to be a Black Chocobo. I was tempted to make his name from the different parts of his parents ... but the only acceptable one would have been ShadowFury. I did not like ShadowFirecracker (too long as well), QueenFury, or QueenFirecracker (too long as well I think).

Been trying to grow Z. Carrots and V. Carrots. Have had much more success with the Z. Carrots. Sometimes I hate gardening.

Tried Camp Kweh with Guankim's Chocobo. Cute CSs.