Mage of All Trades

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:

My very first 75 was Red Mage, and when I dinged 75 I had a few pieces of gear I really really wanted to get: a Duelist’s Chapeau, which dropped to me in Nov of 2008; W. Legs, which I managed to get in the summer of ‘08…and a Morrigan’s Robe.  Prior to hitting 75, I really wanted a Dalmatica because refresh AND 50 mp was like the coolest thing in the world back then (yes, I was one of those RDM who full timed the whole AF set and stacked MP wherever I could! D:).  At that point, 2M for the cursed body was way beyond my price range, which I think is part of the reason why I didn’t even dream of a Morrigan’s Robe at that point.  Shortly after I dinged 75 though, Morrigan’s gear was something I REALLY wanted.  Leveling black mage later on didn’t help make me want it any less, either!  Today, I’m finally 3/3 on the big items I wanted in game…and couldn’t be happier 8D

Of course, there are always little upgrades here and there — INT+2 and MND+2/3 earrings, for example, and finishing off more salvage things…but those are the three BIG items!  The same night I turned all my mats in, Wiggin turned his in as well, so our salvage group went from 0 to 2 bodies in one day!  He, Star and I were rocking it up in Ahty this morning :)  Star and I also went out to poke puddings to see how my robe worked, and it was niiiiiiice.  I resisted twice :<, so I’ll have to look over my numbers and see if I need to swap INT or MAB out for MACC somewhere else, but overall I’m very happy with it :)

Look, an entry and a fun quote, all in one!  After probably like the 25th Bhaf boss run…

Incoming pictures of Morri Robe tomorrow ;)  Not sure if it was the swearing, or the fact that I came BLM, a job that can actually USE Bodb’s Robe vs WHM like I normally do…but I sure as heck am glad it finally dropped!

SO.  I debated doing one of these, but I looked back and it was fun to see what I remembered most about 2008, and how far I got on goals, so I’ll do it again!  Below are the biggest things that happened game wise in 2009 for me, in no particular order.

1. Dynamis linkshells!  Divine Might broke (May), and I joined Consumed (May)…which also broke (Nov)!  Star then created his own dynamis linkshell, and we reused an old linkshell I had created a while back titled TheGreatPerhaps.  All’s going well now, and we still have several people from Divine Might and are very happy with how things are going :) Fantastic group, and now that I think attendance/members has stedied out we should be a-ok to shoot for Xarc!

2. Dynamis GEAR! January saw me completing my Duelist’s armor when my tabard dropped in Beau., and then in September I netted FIVE Xarc relics: WHM, BLM, SMN, SCH, COR.

3. I started doing Salvage!  I’ve wanted to do salvage ever since before I dinged 75 on my red mage; a Morri Robe has been on my wish list for as long as I can remember.  In August we started doing salvage, 2x/week, and ended up working our way up to four times a week.  HOWEVER, most weeks we do more: last week, for instance, we ended up doing 3 extra runs!

4. Salvage gear! I haven’t been able to upgrade anything yet :< But I’m 2/3 on 3 pieces of Morri gear: robe, pants, and gloves.  Once the bosses start putting out, the Morri gear will just start flooding in!

5. Limbus — WE KILLED PROTO-ULTIMA!  Proto - Omega has never been a big issue in my linkshell, but Ultima has given us SO many problems.  I joined this linkshell ONLY to get Nashira Seraweels, and it was so frustrating that we didn’t have the numbers, and then when we did have the numbers to watch us time out with Ultima at less than 5%.  However, we’ve killed Ultima at LEAST 5 times this year, probably more, and each time he’s gotten easier :) We’ve made so much progress and I’m so proud of the linkshell I’m in.  Also: getting Nashira Seraweels at the end of the year was most certainly a good night ;)

6. New 75s!  I got Scholar to 75 in January (though I don’t think that should really count since it was like 71-73 at the end of the year!), and Summoner to 75 by the end of summer — and I AB’d all of 5k of it!  I also spent a good chunk of time leveling Paladin, but needed a break once I dinged 65 this spring.  It’s now sitting pretty at 71 :)

7. New friends!  To name a few: Lz, Saytay, Aneu, Barbar, and SO many more that I’ve not mentioned.  It’s also great to do more stuff with old friends again, like Wiggles!

8. Becoming an end game gal…ugh at mentioning it, but I suppose swapping from a social ls to full timing my dynamis linkshell pearl was a fairly big change.

9. Not -in- game, persay, but meeting so many ffxi people irl — Kaaley, Ruhiel, Despain to name a few new people, and then of course Mazken, Venser, and Cerealkiller who I’ve met before.

10. Merits!  I completely capped out RDM, WHM, and BLM merits this year! :) Magic is capped out, INT is capped out, MP is capped out, and I’m working on the Misc category now — Spell Inturruption down and then I think Critical Hits Taken -% but we’ll see!

Like I said, no particular order, but those are the big things of 2009!  As for goals…

1. Get Corsair to 75 :) Possibly BLU, but we’ll see, I think trying to level just one job next year would be plenty!

2. Finish Bonecrafting to 100 .___. Had this as a goal last year but I only got to 74, and I can’t even recall what I was at at the start of the year.  Oh well!

3. Finish capping out merits!

4. 5/5 Morri. gear! This one I actually have very little control over, as it depends on the drops in salvage.  I’m already going 4x a week at the least, and I can pretty much fund it all at this point besides the hat, which I can do Royal Ramble to fund!

5. Finish more story lines! Right now I need to complete: ACP (on final fight), COP (beat 8-4), RoZ (beat Bah. v1), ToAU (on Puppet in Peril), WotG (on one of the very first ones…), and Windurst (on 8-2).  Lets say…finish at least 4 of them next year!

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Other than that!  Star and I played with synergy quite a bit after it came out, which I forgot to post about in my last entry.  We both have shiny new bodies now — for his monk, and my paladin — and I’ve gotten the PLD head as well..  Needless to say, it didn’t take me long to get PLD to 71 so I could equip it :)  Right now mine doesn’t have any evoliths on it because I’m not entirely sure what I want…really bummed out that most effects is VS.  Oh well, maybe they’ll put new ones out! Star got +Atk and +Acc vs undead, which works really nice in salvage :)  We’re not sure but think it might be glitched out atm because he’s doing double the dmg of what our other MNK is doing (say, 100-150 normal hit vs 300 or so on a normal hit, if I remember right), but it’s pretty darn nifty :)

Synergy is really fun, it’s a lot more envolved than other crafts.  Star and I both upgraded our crafting bodies, though I don’t really use the special ability much — it gets to be expensive!  If you’ve not tried it, you really should :)  It’s nice that you cannot lose materials with it, and that multiple people can work on the same synth together — you can even get skill ups after helping others! I’m sure this is a really belated post and that most people know this by now…the joys of taking forever to update!

As I’m on vacation, I’ve not been online a TON…though a coldspell in Mexico atm has me inside much more than I thought I’d be!  I made half of a salvage run the other night — Star logged me in for the start and lotted some cells for me, and I got on in time to help cure for the boss.  It was our first real SSR attempt, as Seite has decided our first one doesn’t count ;)  We got it to 20% before wiping, but we all died a lot :<  I was on WHM and all but useless since I didn’t have /SCH (no SJ cell and Star dragged me as I was, and so I wasn’t even /SCH if I had one) or a Spiss cell.  I had a body cell, but no refresh body :<  We had done RvB right before salvage, and so I swapped to WHM/BLM to R3 Star when he died in a freak accident, and went to salvage with 62/65 inventory slots full of BLM gear!  I think we’d do a lot better with our regular healers though — typically Lz and I rock the healing but he was busy with his son, and I was super gimp, so we had two different healers.

I also logged in today to see I had 2 new staves…Star synthed an HQ Terra’s Staff and Jupiter’s Staff for me!  Granted, I already had 8/8 HQ staves, but I’m super excited to have signed ones now! :)  To end this entry, a quote from Seite!  We were talking about having lists of people we don’t want to merit with, etc… due to bad experiences in the past, and apparently I made his :<

So, I started this entry on December 10th…obviously, it’s been quite some time since then! I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas and a happy New Years!  Last year I did a top 10 of 2008…maybe I’ll do one for 2009, but for now I’ll just do a normal entry :)

Salvage

We recently completed our first body (well, sort of…)!  One of our members joined with a 35 Ares’s body, and we recently got him both his 25 and his 15, which we’re VERY excited about! He’s chosing to wait to upgrade since he’s got a friend who will be skilling up off Imp. Wootz Ingots soon, but it’s really nice that we have all 3 pieces!  When we got his 15, I also netted the 15 I need for Morrigan’s Robe! This gives me the 35 and the 15, AND I recently purchased my last few Imperial Wootz Ingots, putting me at 12/12 sitting in my inventory :) I’ve got nearly 60k IS, so I really just need that stupid 25 to drop from Bhaf and I’ll be set! We’ve been doing Bhaf boss about once a week, so it’s just a matter of time.  At this point though, we really have gotten EVERYTHING except that body to drop from the boss :< Just my luck! Oh! And we also finished Seite’s Marduk hands; it wasn’t on his wanted list, but he had the 15 and 35 from a previous group and then just recently got the 25 from a Bhaf run.

To date, we’ve gotten Bhaf boss down pat — each run he’s even easier.  We also have a pretty good grasp on Zhayolm boss; he’s not given us too many issues.  We actually had a pretty epic run in which our RDM DC’d on the last floor, and Barron (DRG/RDM) and myself (WHM) rocked the cures for the win that night.  I’m still having a blast doing salvage; drop rates are kind of dissapointing, but it’s just a really fun event.  We’ve poked Arrapago boss once or twice, but never focused on it.  I think last time we tried we went in with 10 min remaining, and plugged away pretty steadily at it and timed out at 50%.  After that though, I’m not too worried about getting the win…we just haven’t NEEDED it yet.  As for SSR…that boss is nasty.  We’ve only poked it once so far, and again, didn’t have much time for it, but he handed our rears to us.  Hopefully if we go in with more time and a better plan it’ll go better.

Limbus

I joined Sea Monkies about a year ago, and I joined for ONE thing: Nashira Seraweels.  For the first several months, we never even attempted Proto-Ultima due to low numbers, and then when we DID try, timed out after an hour long battle with Proto-Ultima at well under 10%.  Talk about disheartening!  HOWEVER! We have much improved since then, and now quite happily kick Ultima’s rear :)  2-3 months ago, our very first pair of Nashira Seraweels dropped off the pop set I had been carrying around for a while.  This month…Sea Monkies netted our very first Nashira Manteel, which went to our fearless leader, and our second pair of Nashira Seraweels, which went to…

Needless to say, I was ECSTATIC that night :)  I still am — it’s SO nice to finally have these pants, even though I use BLM more than RDM now, and SE is lame and makes most mobs resistant to enfeebling magic :< I’m at a lovely 337 now on RDM though, if I remember right!

Dynamis

…is dynamis! It’s not going poorly, but it’s not going SUPER well either.  Then again, we knew that we’d have troubles when we started right before the holidays… ^^;; Over all I’m pretty happy with how things are going; we’ve got some great members, and just picked up several more old friends, so I’m excited to pick back up now that Christmas/New Years are over!  Here’s a cute SS from one of our last runs — Make a Wish!

I shall end this post with a screenshot I took in a recent RvB run…SE cheats :<

So! November was a busy busy month!  RL wise, school continues to kick my rear — they sure don’t make Nursing classes easy!  I was out of town for Thanksgiving as well, visiting Staren.  FFXI wise, Salvage and Limbus have been going along steadily, and our new Dynamis linkshell has started off fairly well.

Salvage

We’re still going 4x a week, which makes me feel like I log in and have time to do events and nothing else.  We did though get a pair of 35 Usu feet, which is nice! We’ve been after those for a while :) We’ve gotten a few other 35s as well, though nothing of note that I can remember offhand.  Of course, this puts us at needing several bosses now; we need multiple 25s from every boss except Arrapago now.  And actually, we have 2 35 Marduk bodies in the group…just no one has that very high on their wanted lists! Most of us have 35s though so we’ve been doing about 50% boss attempts and 50% 35 farms for our few dedicated members who haven’t gotten a 35 yet (needs moar Morrigan’s Pigaches and Usukane Haidate 35s!)

Bhaf continues to be the only boss we can win with any frequency, though we haven’t tried the others more than a few times.  Arrapago we’ve poked once or twice after farming, and it seems easy enough.  We just haven’t focused on it since there’s no real need.  SSR hasn’t been attempted yet, and Zhayolm we’ve been timing out on.  Oh well, practice makes perfect!

Limbus

Nothing new really with limbus, other than I’m doing a little bit more here and there as an officer.  It’s so crazy that I can be a leader in 3 events, and each is SO different.  Limbus is so laid back, it’s very relaxing.  Last night I was asked to lead when only myself and one other leader were on–we’ve got 5 officers now, I want to say?  For the most part, Q and Raven do a lot of the work, but Raven was gone and Q was having an off day, I believe.  We did Temenos North, which worked very nicely since we’re nearly always in need of the Ivory Chip since most of the officers hate the zone.  One of the newer members pulled for me, so the two of us were chatting the whole run about what mobs to pull, chests to open, etc.. and it went pretty smooth.  Previously when I’ve lead I’ve been really stressed out because I’m not used to doing it all, but it wasn’t like that at all last night which was very nice :)  I still probably won’t lead a ton, but it’s good that I’m able to do it now without too much stress.  Thankfully I still had Q to poke when I had questions though!

Dynamis

Ahhh…mine and Star’s new baby.  This is a horrible time of year to be starting a new group — so many people are on/off for holidays!  Our first run went amazing — we did a Sandy run and netted a 3.25M profit and got the win.  Next zone we ended up doing was Jeuno, and we were missing several people due to the holiday.  The next Sandy was rocky for the same reason, though we still got minor profits off both.  No wins though!

Our forth run was Bastok, which put out TEN relic armours (the others only gave us maybe 2-4 each :<).  Not as nice of a profit as the first Sandy, but bills don’t sell for much so that’s no surprise.  No win again, we were just a bit slow and then had a very poorly timed NIN 2h blow most of us up.  Overall though I’m pretty happy with how things are going…just need a few more people to make up for some people not being able to make every run and we’ll be set! :)

Other

I’ve recently picked up leveling paladin again.  A while back, Star and I leveled PLD and BRD together, and at about 65 I called it quits.  I knew I’d finish it up some day, but I was just so sick of the job and needed a break.  We went on to level SMN and MNK together, and we’ve been done with that for a while now.  Those were finished…early August?  So I’ve not touched paladin since spring this year or so.

Anyways, I’ve been having a blast with it.  Unfortunately I sold most of my gear for the Morri robe I -don’t- have yet QQ, but I’m told just using AF works fairly well.  I’m going to have to rethink gear though, and look at what I’ll want at 75 and start collecting some of it.  I’m waaaay too anal about wanting “decent” gear.

Other than that, I’ve not really been meriting too much.  BLM and RDM are both fully merited now, and WHM is nearly done — just need 3 more merits and I’ll finish Regen Potency 5/5.  I’m not sure what I’ll do next — probably Spell Inturruption Down and Critical Hits Taken Down, which will then make all of my generic merits completely finished, save for weapon skills.

With starting dyna again my BLM’s been taking a beating, so we’ve been spending a good chunk of time recapping buffers — everywhere from Beaucedine Glacier [S] to Mount Zhayolm to Sea.

Star and I also duo’d 7-1 and 7-2 in Windurst missions and got rank 8 :)  We’ll be doing 8-1 at some point; I didn’t feel like buying crystals when I exp often enough, so we stopped after I ran out of what I had on hand.

After leveling PLD though, and I’ve gotten 2 full levels in the last half week or so, so 55k exp or so, I’ve got maybe 7-8 stacks of crystals which should last me to rank 9 or so :)

The only other note to make of is my laptop has been really wonky lately.  I took it with me when I went to visit Star, and used it during my layover.  It was really laggy, but I didn’t think anything of it.  When I got home…it was still super laggy :<  Star’s gonna look at it; hopefully we can figure out what’s up with it!

Anyways: to end with a quote! This was just before salvage; I DC’d and so leader got shifted.  The guy who got it was having waaay too much fun, randomly kicking people and reinviting them before we were ready to get in.

With the spliting/breaking of Consumed, I’ve spent a lot of the last week doing salvage runs.  We got 500k for our first glass from the Consumed bank, which is stupid since the whole linkshell was supposed to go to Staren when Rev and Arrey stepped down…but it ended up being a “oh, we’re breaking the shell and keeping the gil.”  Oh well, it is what it is.

Star and I met these really nice guys doing a salvage pick up run — one of our very first dynamis officers came with for the run and he’s super nice, so it was fun to see him again.  Since then we’ve done 3-4 salvage runs with these two, and it’s gone really well.  We’re still doing our 4-a-week static with friends, but that gives us 3 extra tags a week…and we’ve been using them.  Last night was a double boss run — we did Zhayolm and got to like 6% before wiping :<  We had an all but useless white mage and monk though, and it kind of took it’s tole.  We did fairly well until the last 10% when we got 3 discords in the span of a minute, I kid you not.  I’m told the boss is typically zerged for the last 10%, but we were recovering from an earlier mishap where our two good monks died, and we just weren’t able to get on top of things by the 10% mark between the crummy WHM and 3rd MNK.

Right after that was our static’s run, and since we were missing a few people (Saturday is so hit or miss for us, like 5 people are maybes on Saturday and I don’t think any were there last night), so our friends from this pick up group tagged along ^^ Hopefully we’ll be able to do another run with them tonight since we don’t have dynamis — we decided after the break, and the other group stole some of our memebers (and by that, I mean Star should have gotten everyone who wanted to do dynamis, and these people basically said come join us and didn’t mention Star was still a leader…), that we’d take a 1.5-2 week break to recruit some new members and whatnot.

Hmm, what else have I been up to…

Einherjar: It’s been canceled for the last few weeks due to Aion’s release.  The linkshell I go with apparently has a LOT of people missing due to the new MMO o:

Limbus: We did an Omega and an Ultima within the last two weeks, and managed to get a few nice pieces: Shoes/Body/Hands off Omega, and Hat/Hands off Ultima.  I’m first in line for Nashira Seraweels now, and really looking forward to getting them :)

SMN: The other day, Q and I ended up going to duo Imps on our Summoners, and it was really fun :D Not anything else about it to really make note of, other than I rarely ever use my summoner and it really is a fun job, so it was nice to be able to dust my gear off and play with it for a bit :)

Sea/Ix’Aerns: Probably a week and a half ago or so, Star and I and a few friends popped Ix’MNK and got the kill — only a deed dropped, unfortunately, but hey it was 40k or so for each of us.  Yesterday, I got on and found Star and Q in sea, camping Ix’DRK, so I ended up joining them.  Iwas on WHM, and thought they had said Ix’DRG so I swapped to BLM and then had to change to RDM ~_~ Lots of changing!  It was fun though, we killed probably 4-5 rooms and just as I was going to log for a nap, Q got the message in his chat log so we popped the NM and off we went.  It was actually a really fun fight — out of all the Ix’s it may be my favorite, sans the bagillion reraises (I think we had 7-8, which isn’t horrid; first time Idid it we had around 20).  Star pulled the Aerns out of the room to the zone and got all the ghrahs, and then I grav/bound the two Qo’Aerns and ran them to the zone while Q ran to the balcony room.  He ended up dying :< so on my way back I grabbed Ix’DRK and kited him by myself for a good 10-15 min while I waited for Star to unweaken and Q to hp and run back.  Pretty easy with D. Chapeau and W. legs!  Only a deed off him too, but oh well!

Anyways! More later I’m sure~ Until next time! :)

Note: This is a rather shitty entry, and I’m not happy writing it, but  I want to have something posted in response to the bullshit that’s going on in game recently.  Feel free to ignore the rest of the entry, as it isn’t anything fun.  I’m really not trying to be nasty with this entry, but more of just show that there’s two sides to the story, and I’m really not sure how things went so far downhill other than people convincing themselves of things that aren’t true.

As anyone who follows my Twitter is aware, there’s been a good chunk of dynamis crap going on over the last few days.  Essentially, the linkshell was lead by a couple, one of their friends, and my boyfriend.  The four got along pretty well–they were all friends, at least.  Having couples lead is dangerous; things typically aren’t very balanced.  Star was rather frustrated because it was very much so a “we’ve decided; we appreciate your input but you have very little say.”  Recently the 4th officer quit the game, which left Star and the couple to lead.  About two weeks ago, he got in a spat with one of them.  He said the truth, and she wasn’t very happy.  This couple hates a good friend of ours because he said the truth, and now they hate Star for it. Now they’ll hate me for it: the linkshell is run by one person.  She gets what she wants, and will do anything including lie to get it.

Example: Someone wants to come SMN, not RDM.  Ok.  Reasonable solution: Talk to Star, who creates the parties, sometime outside of dynamis when he’s not busy, and nicely say that he needs to let said person come SMN.  Yes it’s not productive, etc.. but the guy shouldn’t have to always come RDM.  What happened: After Star said for him to go RDM, he fussed to another officer who went behind Star’s back and told said person it was fine to go SMN.  When Star realized it, and asked “why are you not on RDM?” this other officer stepped in and lied, saying “Well, I’m dualboxing WHM and BLM, and I can’t focus, so I needed him to come SMN so he could heal better.”  First of all, RDM > SMN for healing.  Secondly, if you cannot focus dualboxing, you should not be dualboxing.  Star later got flack for this instance, with the SMN fussing about how “it’s so sad that one officer feels like they need to lie to protect me.”  You’re right, it is sad, especially since that was not the only possible option.  Always with the lying, and the blaming others.

Last night, when we were discussing what was happening now that the couple has quit the linkshell, leaving it to Star, one of them popped into the linkshell and was saying how their leaving had to due with the attitude of two people.  Star quickly responded yes, me and you, which, it was quite apparent that’s NOT what she meant.  In some warped way, her and Arrey’s leaving is being blamed on me.

The SMN mentioned earlier and his wife are both leaving the ls to form their own.  A few members also left, though we’ve still got a solid 18+ who stayed.  Rev and Arrey both joined this linkshell, less than few hours after leaving this linkshell.  Of course, at this point it’s not nice stuff that’s going on; everyone is getting a tell to leave, and they’re not above being incredibly nasty to Star and myself to try and “win” members to their side.  Star got a message last night from a good friend, telling him he was horrible and just a lapdog, and that “bitch,” myself, had him perfectly trained.  If that’s the case…I want a refund, he does NOT do what I want him to do! ;)  I forget what else was said, but it was just a lot of nonsense.  The SMN has no idea what’s going on, and he’s just saying some awful stuff.  He’s heard everything from Rev, so of course it’s going to be biased, and since she’s not above lying…a good chunk isn’t true.

This is the second to last conversation I had with Rev, about 24 hours before she officially left the linkshell, me “causing” her to leave the linkshell.  Aren’t I awful?:

The above blurred out words were names of potential officers, which I didn’t think needed to be posted publically especially since the linkshell’s no more. Again, you can see more examples of lying — she did honestly say at one point I shouldn’t be an officer because I’m dating Star, yet she was dating the ls leader and was an officer.  She tries so hard to find a nice way to say what she means, but her being “nice” is her lying…is it all that hard to tell the truth? :/  And I did, DO, consider her a friend, even saying all of this.  It’s not the nicest thing to do, but that doesn’t mean it’s not true and if she truely isn’t aware of what she’s doing maybe hearing it for a 3rd, 4th, 5th time will help.  We’ve had an odd friendship for quite some time, but we’ve never resorted to being nasty to each other until this last conversation I had with her (where Aria is Rev’s mule):

Considering I said nothing to her between the two conversations, either she was lying when she said she “adored” me, or she talked herself into thinking I was to blame.  I was 100% honest in that conversation with her, and I really don’t see what all the fuss is about.  Oh well, it is what it is.  She’s talked herself into hating me, which is really too bad.  She and that SMN though, they’re really just making fools of themselves :/  Most of the ls is staying with Star, there’s no need for them to try and stir up trouble.  If they want to leave, that’s fine, but threats of tanking the linkshell bank is rather harsh.  Even if you hate Star and I, what about the other 16+ people who put in time last month towards that gil?  You’re not just robbing us, you’re stealing from them too.  Some “leaders.”  This whole thing just makes me really sad; can’t we just be adults here?

This week’s been a lot of Salvage, like normal.  Monday saw us do a fl1/2 Bhaf. farm, and oooh did the first rampart put out.  We entered the zone with 8ish people, and as we’re getting ready to kill Mad Bomber, Seite asks our red mage to pull the rampart with Blind, since it’s Darksday.  I pipe up that it was Lightsday when we entered, and that Zhaylom functions based on what day we entered…so why don’t we try that!  He agreed, and I pulled with Flash~.

A few minutes in, Gate Widow pops, dropping not only a coin purse but also our second pair of Macha’s Cuffs!  I call out who gets it, and get a tell or two asking me why I’m not lotting when I have a right to.  However! I’ve already got Macha’s Robe and Macha’s Slops at this point, the latter of which I outlotted our red mage for~.  I just quietly respond that I’ll get the next pair…and before the first pair of Macha’s Cuffs left the treasure pool, another Gate Widow spawned, dropping both a coin purse and another pair of gloves ^___^  As was pointed out to me, I’m now 3/5 on Morrigan 35 pieces, and am very excited about this! Now if I could only finish the pieces!  Before my Macha’s Cuffs dropped to me, a THIRD Gate Widow spawned, dropping a coin purse as well as the Marduk 35 legs, which our bard was quite happy to snatch up.  We got a fourth Gate Widow before all was done as well, but it only dropped a coin purse.

Unfortunately, the second floor rampart wasn’t quite so nice to us; no NM, no rocks, no 35s.  We called it there on Monday.  Tuesday we planned a fl4/boss Bhaf. run, which was a disaster.  The first gear used restoral 3-4 times, and then warped away on us :<  Lame.  We then killed the chariot to weaken the boss, and zoned up.  We were a bit low on members, but we were hoping it’d be ok.  Right after we engaged, our white mage disconnected, leaving me the only healer and causing a full wipe :(  At that point we only had 15 minutes or so left so we just had to call it, which was very dissapointing.  Wednesday, we found a few new members, and Star and Seite pushed for another Bhaf. fl4/boss farm to get revenge since Tuesday went so poorly.  No fl4 rampart again, got a freak link.  The boss went well though, netting us the exact same drops as last time, aka: no Morrigan 25 body for me!  Both pieces were wanted though, so that was nice.

Our new members on Wedsnesday was a bit rough; apparently they have a history with a few other people in our group and it wasn’t exactly the nicest welcome.  It was quite tense at the start, but as we got in the swing of things it went much smoother.  People were just really snippy at the start, particularly the new people, but by the end we were joking and teasing, so I think it’ll work out well :)  Fingers crossed!

Anyways, no screenshots tonight, and no dynamis rant (though oh boy would I have a good one, Star and I nearly left the shell and still may, depending on how it goes~.), because that’s unpleasent and I’d rather not discuss it just now!  Maybe I’ll go through and find some once ones tomorrow, but as for now, I think it’s time for bed!  Until next time~

Lately…I’ve just not been feeling like playing nearly as much.  I still enjoy the game, but ugh.  Between early(ish) classes and late(ish) events, my sleeping schedule is WAY out of wack.  We’ve recently tried upping Salvage to 4 nights/week, and I don’t really think it’s helping, that’s for sure!  Right now, my schedule looks like this:

Monday: Limbus 7:30-9:30, Salvage 10-12
Tuesday: Salvage 10-12
Wednesday: Salvage 10-12
Thursday: Dynamis 8-12
Friday: Limbus 7-9, Einherjar 9:30-10
Saturday: Salvage 10-12
Sunday: Dynamis 8-12

I always said I didn’t want to do events every day of the week, that I wanted at 2-3 days to relax and do other things…and that clearly isn’t the case anymore!  On the one hand, I LOVE doing salvage; really, I enjoy all of those events.  I miss doing sky, I wish I could do sea.  Right now though, with working 2-3 days a week, I honestly just want to sleep in the afternoons to make up for sleep I didn’t get at night due to events or homework!  Which…leaves me no free time in game.  Most nights, if I’m not doing an aforementioned event, or something like assaults or ISNM or meriting to keep up with the events…I’m not online.  I sit in my mog house and stare at my moogle!

I’m almost tempted to say I’ll push through this stupidly busy schedule until I get a few Salvage pieces, but I know that won’t work.  I do Salvage with friends, and it would be 100% awful to get my stuff then get out.  But…I don’t really want to quit anything else, either.  Oh well, I’m sure I’ll figure something out!

So: little updates on the above listed items~

Salvage: Well, I touched on this last weekend!  We’ve had some pretty good luck this week though, that’s for sure!  A week ago today we did our very first SSR, and Monday was our second — from which I netted a pair of Macha’s Slops!  Tuesday was a failed Bhaf. boss run :< from which I still need my 25 Morrigan’s body, and Wednesday was a 35-less Arrapago farm.  Tonight, though, we tried our very first Zhaylom! There’s still tons of room for improvement, lotting was a bit sloppy.  Our biggest mistake was that we didn’t get our THF an ability cell, so we were kind of hurting on the 5th floor.  We didn’t even get to the 6th, which is were our wanted items were :(  We killed the 5th floor froggie with a good chunk of issue due to TONS of charm, a mistargeted DoT, DoTs wearing, Star being weakened at the start…basically a whole slough of things. HOWEVER!: we did get a 35 for our troubles!  We killed the NM with 3 people alive and less than 5 minutes remaining, but we DID get the Marduk’s 35 body piece :)  Star was going to pass it to me, but I’m glad he ended up getting it.  We’ve gotten…7 35s total now?  Marduk/Morrigan Body, Skadi Feet, Usukane pants x2, Morrigan pants, Morrigan Cuffs.  Right, 7.

Two went to me, my #1 and my #2, so I’ve been really lucky with that.  Star’s actually gotten two too now — Marduk body (which was completely open), and Morrigan hands (which was one of his interest pieces).  Overall I’ve been pretty happy with Salvage, we’ve had some pretty big bumps but nothing we couldn’t handle.  7 35s in 9 weeks isn’t too shabby!  Of course, we’ve only finished 2 pieces, but we’re working on it :)  I think only 2-3 of us have our #1 35s, so we’re making sure to focus on the 35 farm runs as well as boss runs yet.

Dynamis/Limbus: Nothing TOO interesting.  Completed another Ultima pop set last night, so we’ll hopefully be doing that a week from Monday!  Friday was the kings route of Apollyon for the BLM SWAT party I was in, and I had a blast — that’s my very favorite limbus zone.  Dyna, we won Sandy last Sunday, and farmed Bastok Thursday.  We were short members so had someone swap to PLD for the first time, and on a pull they accidently pulled the wrong NM, not realizing there was 2.  Not a huge deal, we’ll be back to Bastok sooner or later.  Making some nice currency compared to our all snow month last month, I can say that much!

Assaults: I’m now either 16 or 17 away from Captain, and really excited :) Star and I haven’t been as good about doing assaults as we should be, but hopefully it won’t be too long until we’ve both got captain rank and can focus on getting some of the Yigit pieces we want!  Yes, I realize I’m crazy…working on Yigit and doing Salvage as often as I am .___.  I’m thinking I’ll swap to doing RvB 4x a week once I get captain, and trying to do 3 runs a week to get points for Yigit stuff.  Not sure if that’ll work though since I typically have to help leech people in our Salvage group points. Oh well!

Merits: I haven’t been doing a TON of this, but a decent amount.  My White Mage is getting pretty close to capping out, I think I’m at 15/20 job specific merits now!  @2/5 Regen potency and @3/5 Cure cast time I think.  I debated on going for Barspell, but I don’t really do anything that NEEDS it.  I’ve got Shellra V fully merited, and have relic pants and Blessed body, so that should be pretty good for most things I do, I’d think!

Einherjar: I gave Star crap for not putting BRD on his application (he didn’t want to go BRD, which was fair enough I guess), but UGH, it’s 3 weeks in and I’ve been BRD every stinking time.  I mean, I know that’s only 3 times, but I really do believe I’ll ONLY be BRD :<  I’ve been spoiled, I get to bounce jobs pretty much everywhere else, and BRD is not my favorite job.  I enjoy it, but it really erks me in einherjar.  I keep telling myself it’s so much easier to recap BRD buffer though than it would be anything else.

Anyways! That’s about all I’ve been up to lately…maybe I’ll level another job or get a live outside of events at some point, but it sure doesn’t seem to be anytime soon!

Quotes of the Day:  First one is of Ty and I talking during dynamis, about the AB/SMN thing.  He started to tell me this really amusing little blurb, and I DC’d in the middle…so he kindly repeated it for me so I could SS it!

I don’t remember the exact context of this, but it amuses me.  I think it had something to do with us getting incentive, and that we needed to use that gil for RR?  That and this month the incentive would be much nicer than last month!