Mage of All Trades

Well!  Yesterday was fun.  Star and I wanted to try Abyssea, and after a few hours finally started getting people together.  Between friends and friends of friends we were at ~13/18, and so Star shouted for five more people.  I’m sure most people have heard of this by now, but people on BG have been talking about this amazing party in which a full alliance went in with 90 min worth of stones and stayed for 6 hours with the time extensions they got.  Someone who went with got from 75-80 with 8 merits by the time they finished.  Needless to say…we were happy to try and reenact that!

I somehow managed to not get any screenshots of the chests :< So bear with me on that.  We started and it was pretty slow, say ~82 exp per mob or so.  Every two mandys that we killed though, the exp went up by 1.  82 > 82 > 83 > 83 > 84 > 84 > etc.  Likewise, the chests increase as well.  The first few chests are lame, like “full hp/mp restore” but only for whoever opens the chest.  As you continue, the chests get better.  There are several types of chests: temp items, the hp/mp restore, cruor, exp, items (big item chests and little ones, with big rewards or little ones), and time extensions.  They all scale up as you go — the first few cruor chests only dropped 200~400 cruor, but by the end of the run we were getting a steady 1000 cruor out of every single cruor chest.  EXP seemed to cap at 1250, which is what I had just gotten in the screenshot above.

As you can see, the big items chests vs little item chests are very obvious to tell apart.  The little chest put out things like gems (none of the new ones though!) and the new scrolls.  We got Stone V, Baramnesia, and two of the new bard scrolls I know.  The big chest gave us two Star Sapphires! :]  The Forbidden Key is also something we learned about and used the second run through — you can buy them for 500 cruor and they automatically open any chest.  We meant to save them for the time extension chests, but we were all REALLY excited to see the big chest ^^~

One note about the exp going up though…you MUST kill one group of mobs, is our understanding.  When we went the first time, we had gotten the EXP up to ~140exp/mob and then accidentally got one of the new mobs in a sleepga so the melee killed that…and the mandys started to give only 80~ exp again :<  We were all kicking ourselves in the rear over that!

Shamelessly stealing the above screenshot from a friend since I didn’t get it myself!  Our first run the majority of people had 90 minutes, and we got 4~5 of these nice little chests.  We went again later in the evening but only got 1 the second time :(  It was really nice though, the general set up we went with both times was: two Melee parties, 4 Melee+2 healers/support each, and one BLM pt.  The first time we brought a tank for each party but that’s not needed — our second run we nixed that.  The first time we also brought 4 blms with which we also didn’t need — the second time we brought 2~3.  The only key jobs to take note of us having someone to pull (we had a THF and a BLU pull), BLMs to focus on sleeping the mandys as the puller gets back to camp, and 1~2 people to focus on opening the chests.  Other than that, just throw DD at them and make sure they have support ^^b

And oh, is the chest person busy.  As you get going, they drop a LOT.  It was not uncommon to have 2-3 chests up at a time.  I forget for the first run exactly, but I think we got ~40k exp.  I know we got 11-12k Cruor, which was very spiffy for ~240 minutes.  The second run was was for 100 minutes and we got ~7.5k cruor as well as just under 30k exp.

It was definitely a blast.  Our two runs had only perhaps 90 min between them — most people who still had stones after the first run really wanted to go again.  The second time we only had to shout for ONE person.  Poor Seite though, having to listen to us all slaughter the pronounce of Cruor!  So, for anyone else who doesn’t know how to pronounce it ^^~  For anyone wondering…the correct way to say Usukane is “Oo-so-kah-nae” ^^b

I’ll end with this screenshot, which shouldn’t need too much explanation!

/sarcasm.

Anyways!

Right after maintenance was over on Monday, we got a group quickly and ran out to Mamool Ja — the exp was nice at first, but slowed to a painful speed as more and more people came out and camped on top of everyone.  I needed ~6k exp for my third merit though, and a few others needed some EXP to finish as well, and we got that at least!  We sucked it up for 3 of us to be able to complete LB6 and headed to Jeuno.  Then we went out to Castle O. [S] as suggested by Campsitarus, as previously posted.  The exp was ok, but nothing fantastic.  Good enough for most of us to get 76 with a decent buffer though!

Ever since though?  I’ve been in Misareaux Coast.  VERY nice exp from 75-~77 or so, and we’ve just been syncing to there.  Everyone I’ve talked to has wanted to keep it hush hush…but it’s posted on BG, that’s how we found it.  So whatever!  It’s like greater birds, but the vultures don’t reflect or steal our food!  The one complaint the melee had is that one of their mobs causes like a ~10-11 sec stun.  Pretty much the same party set up as greater birds though works great — DDx3, BRDx2 (or COR), and WHM or RDM to heal.  Our best exp though was with only one bard to pull, and in place of a second bard getting a dancer.  That party hovered at 23k~ without band, with other parties being closer to ~19k without band.  I know greater birds can get higher than that, but the “normal” I’ve seen there is closer to 17-18k/hour without band. Anyways!  All but living there has proven effective…

^^b  It was a long grind though — I was out there and on one day partied so much my rank 10 signet wore off :<  I don’t know what was worse, not having signet or realizing that I had partied long enough for it to wear off!!  So many people camped on top of us too — anyone on my twitter knows ALL about that.  I’ve been bitching about it for days.  I mean, I know that camps are hard to find…but seriously.  I know it’s  a good camp and all, but for ONE party, but not two.  With two parties there, both parties get shit exp, and at that point you may as well be off some place else.  Instead, no, you just HAD to camp on top of us and force us all to have shit exp.  It’s just so rude, there’s absolutely no reason to go “hey, I’m going to get crappy exp…lets make this other party get crappy exp too!!”  So rude.  I’m sure they were trying to force us out of the camp…but yeah.  We all know how THAT works ^^b

It’s been a bit of an off week — we’ve canceled salvage so we could all focus on 80.  It’s so weird to not have salvage stories to write about!  Instead, I’ll write about dynamoose!

I love the Orc NMs in Beaucedine SO much.  Nego, btw, is our sole galka in the linkshell.  The Orc NMs have the most amazing names ever though, seriously.  Our runs have gotten a bit messed up lately — we were hoping to get a Jeuno and a Beaucedine win before the end of the month, but someone sniped our Jeuno on Sunday and Beacedine was taken, so we went to Xarcabard instead.  That left us with two runs left in the month, and it would have been so nice to do Jeuno > Beaucedine…but Beaucedine is taken for Sunday :(  We at least got that win on Thursday though — and oh boy, have we become pros at spending as much time farming as possible before getting the win.  We typically finish clearing the Yag NMs at the pond when we get the ~10 minute marking, TYPE OUT SOME DIRECTIONS while everyone books it for camp, and have Z run to pull assuming everyone will be in the right spot by the time he gets back with the eye/dragons.

Z’s so mean to me ; ;

Thursday, since I had RDM at 80, I was actually something other than BLM.  When I’m on black mage, I’m usually at the 20′ marker to nuke, and as such if charm goes off, I don’t get hit with it.  IE, whenever charm goes off…I’m usually the one everyone chases after.  Thankfully I has +8% movement pants on black mage and can usually get away!  Tonight though?  Not so lucky.

As a red mage, I was standing with the group, and so I got charmed with everyone else…the stupid thing was at 3% too.  Unfortunately, my charm wore off and I went “hey, lets nuke this down!”  I realized everyone else was still charmed about the same time I decided to eat snow.

Other than that?  I did see a few funnies this week.  I loved seeing “So&so delevels to 75.”  That was on Star’s screen though, so no screenshot!  It just highly amused me :]  That was before I even dinged 76, when I was working on my 3rd merit.  Funny stuff!  I also saw this gem as I was zoning:

The only thing that would have been better is if they were combined — someone getting killed by the furnace and deleveling to 75.

With Red Mage done though…now it’s time to continue grinding.  Black Mage will be the next to 80 for dynamis, and then White Mage soon after since I use that quite often in limbus and used to full time it in salvage — I tend to go back and forth between White Mage and Red Mage, so it’ll be good to get up there.  Plus, it’s one of my favorite jobs!  Then…idk.  I may just get Ninja to 75 before taking another to 80, it depends on how sick of fighting for camps I am.  That can at least get synced down without me feeling bad!  For now though…not looking forward to the grind on Black Mage.

June?  Good month for salvage.  And I thought May was the good month!  I started June with Morrigan’s Robe and Morrigan’s Slops, both of which were upgraded in January of 2010.  As of June 17th 2010? 5/5 Morrigan’s!!

(Above screenshot was taken Weds, the night my Macha’s Pigaches dropped! Oh, the irony <3)

Last week was just a good week in general for salvage.  Saturday we decided we were sick of Arrapago, so we would do SSR then and Zhayolm on Monday.  We finished Star’s Morrigan’s Cuffs on Saturday with the 25 dropping from the boss.  Monday’s Zhayolm dropped a pair of 35 Usu gloves, which went to B.  Tuesday we did Arrapago again, and finished not only Wig’s Skadi shoes with the 35 but also Omni’s Marduk’s Tiara when the 25 dropped.  It also dropped the 25 Usu gloves, which went to Wig.  Wednesday’s run was Zhayolm again, which dropped ANOTHER Usu 35 gloves, which Wig quite happily lotted so he could upgrade them.  That said, I wasn’t holding my breath too much when we got to the 6th floor frog…

But I was quite pleasantly surprised!!  That’s 5 completed salvage pieces in four runs…pretty darn sexy :]  And of course, salvage is never dull with Marduckies8U!  Gotta love B’s sexy gear, and his even sexier subjob!  …how many times can I use the word sexy!?

I got a spiffy new title as well one night after salvage!  Aneu’s poked me a few times about helping with Oupire, the vampyre NM in the undersea ruins.  I’ve always been busy, or we couldn’t get people, or the NM wasn’t up…but as I was running back to Ahty, I took a wrong turn and found people fighting him! And it was Aneu! :]  I cured him for a bit, and then got invited to party and was able to help the group finish him ^^b  We got the magic def. katana for one of the tanks (Aneu had just gotten his a few nights before), as well as 3 100k synth mats! Very nice ^^  He said I was a big help but it was pretty easy from what I saw…didn’t look TOO stressful though I wasn’t tanking either!

(…I really should have blurred out what Aneu said…not sure why I didn’t.  Ooops!  Don’t worry Aneu, we wont hold it against you!! <3)

Other than salvage?  Been busy with dynamis, as always!  Had a bit of drama over the last few runs (lame!).  Ended up losing a member, which, sad that she left but tbh with the reason she did?  Hard to care too much.  She was a nice person but meh.  Another really good friend left for the same reason and it all but destroyed our friendship so…eh.  Glad B saw reason and didn’t leave!  Anyways.  Really good last few Xarc runs — one we got 3 AF and 2 hundred pieces, the other we got 7 AF and 1 hundred piece.  Not too shabby :]  I’ve also been exping and meriting!

I promised Omni I’d help get his COR to 75, so for a while we synced with my NIN (now happily at 67).

We had a quite fun party with Wig — Marduckies fun carries over into exp quite nicely!

And then let him join our merit parties a few levels early…since why does it matter with COR!?  I’ve also found a few amusing seacoms while looking for people to party with….

Jenksy you may recognize from the screenshot above of my merit party with Nommers — he’s a friend who abused the glitch when job changing and made a silly seacom to go with it :]

And that should be it for the week or two before the update came out! I started this entry during maintenance, but it finished before I could post this… I’m sitting at about halfway tnl on my RDM, at lvl 76 currently :]  Nearly all merit zones are a freaking ZOO, it’s insane.  It’s too bad I’m busy this week — work all day tomorrow, have friends visiting from out of town on Weds, and my mom’s leaving the country on Thurs so I’ll be busy with family in the morning.  Thursday afternoon I can level a bit, and then Friday I work all day again . . .  Hmm!  It’ll be interesting to see how long it takes me to get 80 on RDM WHM and BLM :]

Oh hey.

Preview of next post (already started, could log into final fantasy xi before I finished): is that girl wearing 5/5 Morrigan’s gear!?

So! Salvage.  This last week has seen us continue to spam Arrapago Remnents — I think the last five runs have been 3 Arrapago and then 2 Bhaflau.  Arrapago continues to refuse to give us the two pieces we’re interested in, but that doesn’t mean to say we haven’t gotten anything.  The other day we got our 5th, 6th? Ares 35 body.  It was on Des’s list but he kindly passed for Seite since he wasn’t going to upgrade it soon even if it is something he wants.  As far as boss drops, one night we got double Skadi pants I know –Wig and Des both had them on their wanted lists so they were appreciated, but just not quite what we were looking for.  One of the other runs, I forget what the drops were, but two nights ago…that was a pretty exciting boss.

For the longest time we had issues with this boss.  We’ve finally got it down pat, but not we’re trying to figure out timing — be to floor x with y time remaining, etc…  Cells (or lack of, I should say) can really screw us up on Arrapago.  Once or twice we’ve been on the first floor at the 60 min mark still because freaking magic/ability/weapons just WILL NOT drop for us.  Obviously on those nights we have to skip something.  The other nights though? We do as much as we can depending on how long farming the basics takes. This night was an example of us being wishy-washy on if we had enough time for the Soulflayer NM and deciding to risk it.  …and lame, I just realized now that I cut out the time text.  Oh well.

It took 8 seconds for Star’s pigaches to land in his treasure pool, and 11~12 seconds for me to get mine.  Believe you me, we were pretty darn excited when we got out of THAT Arrapago and hadn’t lost anything.  Again with the drops that weren’t what we were after, but both of those were on wanted lists so that’s good at least :]  This also puts me at 1 drop away from being 5/5 on Morrigan’s Robe set!

Des, of course, can’t let a single night go by without SOME Dragon Ball Z reference :]  Last night was funny though; someone with was NOT a fan of DBZ and Des just couldn’t understand.  I’d also like to point out that I was on White Mage this night.  Just saying!  Our Red Mage obviously doesn’t care too much about being called McGimpy though!

Random fact? My salvage group likes the word duck.  Heck, just ducks in general.  Why? I do not know.  A while back Seite (I think it was!) coined “Marduckies” when a piece of Marduk dropped.  Now? No one calls it Marduk anymore.  It’s ALWAYS Marduckies.  Or just duckies.  Des was quick to correct me in the above screenshot though…”No, you Omni and Seite have an obsession with the word duck.”  It’s not just us though!  We also like the 8U face, and it has been decided that it’s a duck wearing cool glasses.  We joked that we should make a linkshell called Marduckies8U for the salvage group, and although unfortunately 8 doesn’t work in linkshell names, I do have a spiffy BRIGHT YELLOW linkpearl now called Marduckies ^^b

Our Bhaflau runs went ok, I guess.  No drops, no NMs.  That’s the most frustrating thing: spending 100 minutes in a zone and not even killing any NMs.  I’m really glad when we used to spam Bhaflau it was to do one rampart and then the boss — at least that way it felt like the run was useful when we killed the boss.  Now? This is just disheartening.  We did fl2/3 one day, and fl1/2 the second.  Not sure what’s worse, no NMs in Bhaflau or Arrapago.  Then again, the lack of drops (cells, anyways) in Arrapago isn’t bothering me nearly as much anymore.  I’m excited for Omni to finish a piece of gear so we can switch up wanted lists — not so much for me to get more stuff as I feel pretty lucky already, but because then we can actually do different zones.  Speaking of getting new gear though…

I seriously have the nicest friends.  I did RR on 3 occasions, and got all the ingots I needed.  One friend sold his ingot to me at a discounted price (about 110~130k off the AH price), Jenks and Fen each gave me one, B gave me two, and Star gave me three :]  Time for me to find something I can help these folks with, as that was really really kind of them.  I had the kindred seals, but they more than halved how many RR runs I had to do to finish up that piece.

I’ll end with an amusing quote from dynamis — they were talking about people who brag and list their jobs, gears, etc…  Just as a disclaimer, I don’t think I’m the be-all end-all to black mages; I’ve got a decent black mage and I know how to play the job, but I’m not trying to say I’m the best one out there! I know I’ve got quite a bit yet to learn :]  Either way…this still amused me!

…and I take a LOT of screenshots.  HOLY COW.  I’ve been meaning to edit Screenshot Organizer to save my screenshots as Name/Date/Zone rather than Name/Zone/Date for ages and finally got around to it the other day.  That said, all of the screenshots below (save two, which were taken within the last week) are from yesterday.  And no…this is not ALL of the screenshots.  This is maybe half of them or so.  Never realized quite how many I take on a daily basis!

Dynamis has been going well.

Last Thursday was a San d’Oria run, which netted us FOUR M. Silverpieces.  Wiggin’s been telling us for quite some time about a new strategy that he and his linkshell have been using, and we finally got around to trying it out.  Success? I think so.  I think all city runs will see us with a THF in every party tagging every statue before the BLMs kill them.

Words like racecar are spelt the same forwards and backwards! Insert linkshell conversation about this. Also notice Kilty? Read his name backwards [;

Sunday saw us in Dynamis – Xarcabard.  It was kind of nice; being Memorial Day weekend, a lot of linkshells took the night off.  Gotta love snow with no competition :]  Sunday’s also when my Valor Surcoat dropped, making me 5/5 on Valor gear — huspag, 4 inventory spots back now that I can store it!  Crazily enough, that was the last piece of Xarcabard relic that I needed.  I don’t need anything from cities or Beauedine that I can use presently either.  Oh well!  There’s always incentive and the occasional dreamworld :]

Sunday also saw our second pair of TH4 hands to drop, which went to our resident puller.  As you can see…he’s quite happy about this!  Also, I can’t believe it, but I actually apologized for doing Xarcabard two runs in a row.  By some stroke of luck, last night had only San d’Oria and Xarcabard open…both of the runs we had done in the last week.  I felt bad for the new folks who couldn’t attend…but the officers decided as a whole that we’d rather do two Xarcabards than two San d’Orias so close together since there’s typically more competition for snow rather than cities.

Random dynamis conversations are random. Also, people need to stop watching "I'm on a Boat"!

I’m not quite sure why, but I’ve been lurking on BG’s forums more lately.  I recently discovered a thread with …interesting player names.  While gearing up for dynamis, I happened to stumble upon one and had to screenshot it~

As far as salvage goes, we’ve been steadily moving along.  Last post I mentioned that I got Macha’s Crown, putting me 3/3 on the Morrigan head piece.  I’ve yet to upgrade it (darn RR!), but since then I received a pair of Bodb’s Cuffs…making me 3/3 on Morrigan’s Cuffs! Those I quite happily upgraded this week!

This puts me at 3/5 on Morrigan’s gear, and once I upgrade the crown I’ll be 4/5!!  Just need silly Macha’s and Bodb’s Pigaches and I’ll be all done with Morrigan’s gear!  I’ve seriously got like 8 SSR Cards in my satchel too…time to spam some Zhayolm farm!  We’ve actually been focusing quite a bit on Arrapago farm/boss runs lately, but haven’t seen any Bodb’s Pigaches :<  Omni’s the last of our regular members who needs to upgrade a primary/secondary item, and since he’s got the 35 Marduk crown we’re attempting to get him the corresponding 25 from Arrapago.  Des has also come back to us and is wanting Skadi feet so it works quite well for most of us.

Yesterday also saw me dusting off my bard for not one but two merit parties.  I’m now sitting at 3/5 on Mineut merits for my bard — I figured my bard was long overdue for merits.  Even if I never use it.  As you can see, things are never dull with Des around!  He’s been really good about coming red mage to both salvage and dynamis for us, which has eaten through his buffer pretty quick, so Star dusted off his bard as well and we merited with Des for about an hour before salvage.  I don’t think a day has gone by with Des back that there hasn’t been SOME DBZ reference or another in linkshell!

Like I said…never dull with Des around!  He loves to spam people for invites etc so I figured I’d give him a dose of his own medicine :]  After all, he accused me of doing it before I did it!!  Anyways…like I said.  I take a lot of screenshots apparently!  One other thing to mention that’s not going to be SS’d in this post…Nerdie got 75!  He’s sitting quite contently at a 56 exp buffer, if I recall correctly.  I should probably do something about that at some point…  Until next month~

Just a quick update — sorry for no update in what, 6 weeks?, only to have two in one day! May is VERY nice to us indeed! We did Zhayolm Remnents tonight, and it dropped our 7th and 8th 35s of the month! Best thing is that for all that we’ve only done Armoured Chariot 2x…both of the 35s we got tonight matched the 25s we had!

It was actually a really shitty run, so it was nice to see some 35s drop :] Of course, Salvage isn’t the ONLY thing we’ve had luck with! Our last Dynamis run was Xarcabard, which put out a Duelist’s Chapeau on the first pull. Throughout the night we also got a 100 O. Silverpiece and a pair of Assassin’s Armlets, along with 2 other relics. Pretty good month if I do say so myself!

Apologizes for a photo-heavy post…pretty sure with screenshots like these I can let them speak for themselves :] Semi-chronologically, but from different nights (all May though!)

Seite, B and I all LOVE Ke$ha…gotta love randomly shouting the lyrics to one another and waiting for someone to complete it :]  Star likes her too, as you can see!

Most nights, I absolutely love my salvage group; they are some of the funnest people I could imagine doing things with and it really makes salvage a FUN thing to do rather than a forced, stressful event for gear.  Lately we’ve had a bit of an issue with mages — our resident red mage has been absent due to real life, so we’ve been switching things up.  I’ve been on Red Mage more than White Mage lately, with Seite or Xy on White Mage.  We’ve also had Wig (I think!), Jer, and Xy on Red Mage as well, and Nem’s come with as White Mage as well.  Like I said, lots of unique party set ups vs our normal group!

Arrapago’s been really good to us this month! The first week we got two Ares’s 35 bodies (though one of which went to a pick up and involved much QQing as it shouldn’t have!), completing our SECOND Ares’s body (and THIRD salvage body!).  We also got a pair of Usu pants — which dropped for one of our members on his birthday!  And then, of course, there’s my own shiny that I got recently :]  I’ve got the 25 as well, just need the 15! I’m not in a huge rush though as I have 12 rounds of RR to do before I’ll be upgrading!

Our resident bard, Nommers, got his 35 Marduk tiara recently (I think the end of April), so we’ve been spamming Arrapago to try and complete his first piece.  Killed the bad boy a few times — oddly enough, this is our first time to kill the boss really.  We just haven’t ever needed to before! We’ve done it 2-3x now, and people have happily snatched up the 25s but it’s nothing off people’s lists really QQ!  Of course though, we’ve not ONLY had luck in Arrapago…

Seiteface has been with us since we first started last August.  He came to our group with the 25 and the 15 for this body, and this was the only real big piece he wanted from the group.  There was a LOT of excitement when these stupid birds FINALLY PUT OUT.  Of course though, in Bhaflau Remnents, when it rains it pours! The very next Peryton to pop (of which we got four) dropped BOTH 35 pieces! The other two didn’t drop anything but rocks sadly, as lots of people still wanted both drops!  12 hours later Seiteface had his long awaited Skadi body, completing salvage body #4!  Wiggles got both of the other 35s that dropped, making him 3/3 on both pieces :]  He’s not upgraded body yet I don’t think, but pretty sure he’s upgraded pants.  I’m sure he’ll have our 5th salvage body upgraded soon though!

(Unrelated stuff blurred since extra text can be distracting!)

And of course, this lead to talk of Seite being nearly 5/5 on Skadi! It’ll be interesting to see if he gets 5/5 on Skadi first or if I get 5/5 on Morrigan’s set!  I couldn’t resist teasing him (again) about not getting the 35 Skadi hands when they dropped — I’m so mean!

I’ll end with this: like I said, Seite made me do it!

Well! I survived the server merge with only a few bumps and bruises! Anexia was taken :< So, as of now I’m known as Anexya to the world of Vana’diel.  The only other slight changes is that I failed epically when recreating my dynamis linkshell — TheGreatPerhaps.  Thankfully the name survived…but rather than a pretty deep red color…it’s VERY pink x: Oops!  Most of the linkshell took it pretty well though, even if there was a good deal of conversation about it ^^;;

Before I get into the actual entry though…has anyone else noticed a change in magic accuracy, particularly on enfeebles?  Both of the dynamis runs I’ve done so far have had WAY more resisted sleeps than they should have, and even duo and trio’ing in sea has been a disaster.  I helped a friend with the final moogle fight as well, and NOTHING was sticking :<  Ninja-nurf?

Last days on Remora

The last few days that I spent on Remora were very productive; two friends from TGP were from Windurst also and so the four of us along with two helpers went and killed the Orc NM in Davoi for our Cursed Wands.  Star and I had gone out on two separate occasions in the past and died I don’t even know how many times due to this stupid monster, so this time we ran out with a full party.  Thankfully, it went much easier this time!  We still had a few deaths on the first kill — two orcs outside the house along with two orcs inside AND a black mage monster never bode well!  2 wands drop with every kill, so after we got our first two we chilled out inside the now empty house waiting for the monster to repop.  It was quite the fun hour or so :)

With Dirtyhand out of the way, Star and I were able to breeze through the rest of the Windurst missions, and left Remora at rank 10 ^^ This gave me my third (!) flag for my mog house <3

Besides Windurst missions, Star and I also managed to complete EVERY LAST assault!  We were both quite tickled when we were able to hold onto 4 assault tags rather than 3.  Unfortunately, neither of us had finished the ToAU missions, so we were unable to rank up to Captain :<  Still though, getting that much done the last weekend on Remora…not too shabby!

First few days on Leviathan

The first day or so on Leviathan was less than enjoyable; having to change my name was no fun a’tal :<  Several people from both of my linkshells had to change their name, and it’s just never fun to lose your identity.  After playing for over 3 years, it really sucked to lose my name to someone’s mule (regardless of if it was made by a Leviathan player ages ago or maliciously created by someone on Remora).  Add that to people /sh that anyone from Remora needed to show their green card to be welcome…it was a bit chaotic!  It’s not like we WANTED to leave Remora and be forced to change names and whatnot!

Thankfully things settled down fairly quick.  Star and I set to work on ToAU missions shortly after the merge–I was on the Puppet in Peril fight while Star was back on the Khim #13 fight.  He, Omni and I took down Khim pretty easily, and the next day Star and I along with our friend Aneu breezed through Puppet in Peril.  That fight is actually the only fight I was not 1/1 on, but it was still super easy~~  Over the next few days, we completed ToAU with a group of pick ups — very fun! It’s such a nice story line; I really enjoyed it.  With ToAU complete, I was able to pick up my spiffy refresh ring, and rank up to Captain! ^^

ToAU complete, Star and I set to finishing up with the first two expansions.  While we both technically had them done, we needed to complete Shadows of the Departed and Apoc. Nigh.  We duo’d the first as BLU and DNC, and had a few friends help with Apoc. Nigh — and now we both have spiffy new earrings! :D

In my last entry, I mentioned leveling my ninjar with Wiggin’s red mage; this has continued on Leviathan.  Before leveling with Wiggin, my NIN was at 54, and now it’s at 61 ^^  Quite the nice jump!  Our most recent party was on Leviathan, and I kind of giggled when I saw how TWO of the people in our party had /seacoms saying they were cool with doing MMM for exp.  It’s probably the only difference I’ve noticed between Remora and Leviathan as far as how we play…no one on Remora did MMM hardly, and certainly not for exp.  We partied in Waj. Woodlands for a while, and then headed over to Lower Jeuno to try this MMM exp thing…and it wasn’t too bad! I got about 1k exp from killing the monsters, followed by 4.5k exp for completing the thingie in about 25 min.  Still…just feels weird doing MMM instead of a “traditional” exp party!

Hmm, other than all that!  A few people from my dynamis linkshell needed the ACP win, myself included.  With help from two people, four of us managed to get the win! It was very smooth, until the last little bit, but we still pulled through ^^  I’ve done that stupid fight at LEAST 10 times by now, and this is my first win so I was very excited!  Unfortunately…I have no idea what body I want to get or what stats I want to put on it x: So my key is just chilling, and I’ll redeem my reward later on :)  I also helped a friend of mine get a Despot kill — he was trying to get a pair of kitty panties (and went 1/1 — grats Aneu!!), and it was super fun to “solo” for the first time.  Aneu was there to ballad me, but still!  Very fun ^^ And to think! I said I was “busy busy” in my last entry!

Ooooh, where does the time go?  School started up again in the middle of January, and I’ve been crazy!busy since then, to the point that I’ve been on final fantasy xi very little :(  With spring breaks though comes a smidge more time to relax though, which is nice!  Of course, even a busy schedule couldn’t keep me ENTIRELY away from the game :]  ~~But, between being busy irl and a few things going on in game, I haven’t really felt the desire to blog.  The in game things haven’t been getting any better, but since they clearly aren’t going away it’s time to stop dwelling on it, I suppose!

I’ll try to do this semi-chronologically:

Two big things since my last update~~ Towards the end of January, we did a Zhayolm boss run that put out a pair of Bodb’s Slops, which I quite happily snatched up!  This put me 3/3 on Morri slops pieces, which resulted in…my second piece of Morri gear! :]  I’ve been doing salvage since last August, and as of the end of the year hadn’t upgraded ANYTHING.

Come January though~~ I was able to upgrade both the body AND the legs, which is very spiffy :]  I’m currently 2/3 on the cuffs (just need the SSR boss drop), and 1/3 on both the crown and the shoes — both of which I still need the 35 for! For the crown though, I’ve got the 25 and the 15 is a 100% drop, so should the 35 ever drop and if I manage to get it, that’ll be an easy upgrade too :]

Our static sort of seems to have fallen apart, but we’re sort of taking a break since I’m on vacation and Wiggles is as well.  I’m really hoping that in a week or two things start to settle down.  One member left due to a bit of drama (he didn’t fit into the group well and when push came to shove it just didn’t end up working out), and another joined a big HNM shell.  Another member joined a different HNM shell and has since left, but it’s never really been the same since then.  Either things will settle down with this group or we’ll get new members (and hello new server! GREAT way to get new members for our static!) and continue to go forward — several of the dedicated members are still here and wanting gear, so we’ll push through some how ^^

The next big change since my last update is I dinged 75 on my 7th job — paladin!

Star was a sweetie and set up a merit party for it, which was a BLAST.  We had 2 BRDs and 3 DRGs and me, and ooh it made me want to level Dragoon!  It was just a stupidly fun party, and the exp was SO fast ^^ It didn’t take very long to hit 75 at all! This was, hmm, the middle of February? If I recall correctly.  I’m always a kitty while on PLD, I hate how hume girls look ;;  Here’s my kitty-pld while in enmity gear — I was very excited when I was able to pick up both my Iron Ram Hose and Hauberk!  I still need to get the gloves and shoes now for enmity, and Star got me a shiny Aegis-jalmer hat thingie.  I still have a huge wish list for paladin, which consists of most of the Homam set ;;  That’ll take me a good year to finish or so I’d imagine.  I had a promised pair of banana shoes from Apathy…but yeah, I’m not following them to Shiva to get the shoes.  Oh well! It’ll give me something to work towards, and I do enjoy the job.  I’ve mostly been using it to rock campaign, though I have gone to limbus once as paladin :]

Other than those two things, it’s mostly been more of the same.  Limbus is limbus, and dynamis is dynamis.  On the way to limbus the other day though we found a fun glitch — Illi fell below the surface of sea not one, but twice!  More recently, we had another member fall below the surface too…talk about weird!

Dynamis has been going pretty well, we got our Beau win and have tested the waters in Xarcabard ^^  It was funny, one run in Beau we SO should have gotten the win and didn’t — we had about 30 min when we got to the boss, and the run was going AMAZING.  And then due to a misunderstanding or two, the puller hit the eye rather than site aggroing it, and the paladins were slept and so didn’t get enough hate on the eye…and it tore off after the puller :(  The next time we really shouldn’t have gotten the win — we had less than 10 minutes once we got to the boss and still had to pull it…and somehow we managed to pull it off.  Our group may make the occasional mistake, but we’ve got a fantastic group who rolls with the punches quite well and learns from their mistakes VERY fast.  I really do enjoy doing dynamis with this group, they make it a lot of fun ^____^

And of course, as a red mage at heart…I greatly enjoy being able to nuke down Duke Berith! :]

I’ll end with a fun screenshot of an exp party I was in.  This is as I was gearing up to head out, and the majority of the party was already at camp and goofing off while waiting: