Mage of All Trades

I know this may seem silly to many, but this is a huge accomplishment for me, and I’m SO very excited that I received my Bonecrafter’s apron today!

Edited to add: AND I just got Goliard Cuffs from Nyzul!! I’m 4/5 on the set now, with my only missing piece being pants which I don’t really care to get…hooray!  Next entry: much fussing about the lack of good bonecrafting synths between 66 and 73~  8D

Last fall, after Star and I both got our BLMs to 75, we decided we wanted to duo Brothers.  Our attempts never went too well — we always made stupid mistakes, and managed to do this probably 3 or 4 weeks in a row before deciding it wasn’t worth it to continue.  Since then, we’ve both gotten better gear — we’ve both got Uggly Pendants, Oracle’s Gloves, and I’ve gotten a Sorc. Ring, Genie Weskit, and Wizard’s Coat +1, etc…, so Star wanted to try it again yesterday.  While I was finishing crafting, he ran Star up the mountain, and then while I made lunch he ran Anney up too.  Just as he got both characters there and I brought lunch over, ice weather faded and we ran through to the ENM.  We ate, buffed up, and headed inside…only to realize that we weren’t in pt :<  Well, that sucked, but since we’re here may as well at least poke them rather than warping back.

So…I buffed up, used Elemental Seal, and ran in to Sleep II the one that would be good and sleep for me.  I then cast the following spells on the other one:

• Bind
• Dispel Shell III
• Freeze II
• Gravity, should have before the Freeze II
• Blizzard IV
• Bind
• Blizzaga III
• Manafont, Blizzard IV
• Drain

At that point, the other one woke up :< and started to cure his friend.  The above though was enough to get the first one down to 4 or 5% or so!  What I notice now is that I never used Stun, and that probably would have been a good spell.  Moreover, since a planned wipe would be needed between the first and second mobs anyways, I probably should have used either Thundaga III or Burst II after Manafonting to kill the first one back in the tunnel since I wouldn’t get inturrupted — that way he would have died even if he did some damage to me, and the second one could have finished me off back there.  Either way though, I probably wouldn’t have been able to finish the second one because I totally forgot Yag Drinks, and I -DEFINATELY- didn’t bring a Vile Elixir (or +1) which I probably would have needed to finish the second one off.

Either way though!  I don’t think Star and I ever killed the first “brother” between the two of us last fall, and now I was SO close to killing one solo — I used to think it was crazy that people could actually solo Brothers, but after that little attempt…it’s very possible.  I’d have to find a way to do it without a Vile Elixir though to make me consider it, because that’s a lot of gil to waste on -maybe- getting a shiny drop from the box.  I think though if I ES+Silence’d the other one after I got it below 50% and grav/bound it and rested for a bit it -may- work, but I’m not entirely sure.  I’d have to make sure my hmp set was up to par though~  For the time being though, I’m more than happy to duo it with Star…provided we manage to get in party with one another!

Dynamis____________________________
Dyna was canceled last night for Father’s Day, which Star and I greatly abused by staying at his parent’s house until nearly 1am playing Magic with his brothers.  The last run before that was Consumed’s first SNOW run, which was great.  Our puller though was having connection issues, so poor Star was pulling on his BLM.  We didn’t get particularly good drops: MNK and maybe one or two other pieces, but it was a good try.  Didn’t get to the boss, but we just wanted to get the linkshell’s feet wet, so to speak.  We got every timer except the two up by Hydras, and we’ve never gotten those, not even with DM.

Limbus_____________________________
With Limbus, Friday put me at 6/6 for Temenos Chips!  We did the Western tower and got a crazy amount of coins.  Typically we get 3-4 coins each from limbus, and on Friday we all got 6-7 coins each.  Not bad!  What made me sad though is SCH dropped…but I already had it :(  Needs more Apollyon!  I did net another SMN material, but I’m not sure if there’s any other pieces I particularly want to upgrade.  No one else wanted it so I lotted it just in case, and if it ends up getting tossed, well that’s what would have happened if I didn’t lot it anyways.

Nyzul Isle___________________________
Our Nyzul runs this weekend were better than they have been, but left something to be desired.  One of our DD was out due to his computer needing to be reformated and FFXI had to install yet, and another DD was out because he decided last minute to go bowling with his wife…I understand RL > FFXI, but when you have a static expecting you to show up, not showing up because you decided to go out last minute is pretty crappy.  How hard is it to randomly decide to go out a different night?  When you have people counting on you, it’s really crummy to ditch out on a whim.  Moreover, we’ve proven time and again that we’re flexable — we’ve swapped nights for Nyzul due to people’s schedules before.  Star and I went to a baseball game with friends one Saturday, and we just poked everyone 4-5 days early to see if we could swap to Friday night in case we weren’t home in time, and everyone was ok with it so we just moved up a night.  Anyways!  We did two fl20s, and got one pair of Goliard Clogs to drop which went to Star — we need one more pair yet for Omni :<  We also did a fl60 and fl100 but wiped on both of them to Cerb.

We’ve NEVER had an issue with Cerb before, and then in one night we wipe to him twice :/  Part of it is because we didn’t have our static and had two pick ups I’m sure, and that not everyone grabbed the right meds that they needed…but he was just taking us out one by one.  He was pratically one shotting people, and spammed paralyze-aga up on everyone several times, as well as some other not fun nasty stuff.  Anyways, next week will be fl20×2, fl80×1, and fl100×1 probably.  Our big pieces yet to get are: Goliard Shoes, Askar Pants, Goliard Cuffs, Askar Body, and Denali Bonnet.  There are a few more people wouldn’t mind getting, ie Goli hatx2, Denali shoes x1, Goli Cuffs x1, a few Askar hats, etc… but those are the “big” pieces ^^

I enjoy limbus, I really do like it.  Over the past 8 months or so, I’ve upgraded quite a few pieces: bard hands, body, and legs; scholar body; black mage body; summoner shoes.  For bard, it was all win-win for me; it was my third job, and I tossed the pieces I’d never use into storage.   Starting with BLM though, and for SCH and SMN as well, whenever I’m not on that job, the AF is with an armor storer.  With 8 jobs past 50 with full AF sets, it saves SO much space to not have it on hand.  That said…it’s a HUGE pain in the rear to upgrade anything and have to request that piece to restore the set :<  Particularly when you upgrade pieces back to back D:  Not only do you have to quest that particular piece…but you also have to do all of the prequests.  So far, I’ve requested the SCH af1 scroll just to toss it, and ditto to the SMN af1 and BLM af1 weapons.  I’ve also requested my SMN bracers, just to toss them, so that the Calling Hands quest would be labled complete.  Pain. in. the. rear.

That said!  I now have a few nice shiny pieces for my SMN once I get 70+.  I’ve got Evoker’s Pigaches +1 at level 74, in addition to Summoner’s Spats at level 73.  I’m not too worried about getting my Evoker’s Ring–that’ll be pretty easy.  YYR will be intersting to camp…but I like poking Shiki ^^  I’ve helped a handful of friends get their YYR–four now, I think?  So with any luck one or two of them won’t mind coming to help me, and I know Star’ll help.  Other than that…I found the CUTEST dat-mod for tarutaru–isn’t she adorable?

Dyna’s been fun lately!  We’ve now got 4/4 city wins, and will hopefully be doing a Beau. on Thursday!  Our first Windy run (we’ve done three now) was pretty darn crappy — we got ONE relic piece, war, and no one wanted it.  Second and third was much better, netting probably 15-20 or so relics between the two runs.  The second run I lotted a pair of Cleric’s Duckbills, putting me 4/5 for White Mage, and the third run I netted a pair of Summoner’s Spats ^__^  I passed a pair of PLD shoes that I debated on lotting…but oh well :<  Hopefully we’ll do enough Windys to get me the gear I want!  I just need PLD and BLM from Windy now before I’ll have everything from the zone I want :D  Though…hmm.  I want brd hat from Sandy, nothing from Jeuno, and nothing from Bastok…wow!  Three pieces and I’m done with city gear!  Here’s a fun dyna SS that I took during our last Windy run:

As far as Sea goes, Star and I have been doing some more farming but haven’t had a ton of luck…we’ve gotten a handful of ghrah chips, ONE HQ Aern Organ.  We’ve both got capped buffers though, so I can’t complain ^^  On a similar note — I’ve also been doing a bit of meriting~  I’m now 5/5 on INT merits!! :D  I did a bit more meriting after that and put a second upgrade into Freeze II (: Just antoher 7 upgrades to cap out BLM!  Other than just meriting and farming in Sea, my limit points have increased thanks to a few CoP missions…mainly 8-3 and 8-4!  Omniflare and Ryong, two friends from my Nyzul Static, finally reached the end of CoP missions and let Star and I tag along to the BEST fight in the game!  8-4 is SUCH a fun fight, all of CoP is worth it for that one fight (:

Nyzul wise…we actually had a bit of luck last weekend!  Two floor 80’s yielding two Askar bodies, and two floor 100’s yielding one Askar hat…which unfortunately hit the floor due to us timing out :(  Oh well ^^ That’s two Askar bodies down!  Now our big pieces for Nyzul still to get are: Askar pants x1, Askar body x1, Denali hat x1, Denali shoes x1, Goliard Shoes x2, and Goliard Cuffs x2…still quite a bit but if we have more nights like last Saturday it won’t take us too long!

Dynamis

Dyna has been going pretty darn well for us — our first four runs were the four city runs, of which we got one win.  The next two were city runs again, and we got wins on both of those; as of now, the only win we need is Windurst.  Unfortunately, most of the people who NEED the wins haven’t been showing up regularly :<  Ah well.  We’ve had a few problems with people, but nothing TOO horrid, and for the most part everything’s been worked out.  Star’s one of the four officers, so I’m able to be involved with a good chunk of the decision making — he uses me as a sounding board for his ideas, and I’m able to poke him with mine to bring up with the other officers.  It’s really nice to actually have  a say in what happens in dyna!

That and it’s really enjoyable to play BLM in dyna — before this linkshell, I went BLM once, maybe twice…in Consumed, I’ve only NOT been BLM once.  Star’d be useful on his TH4 THF, but he’s been on BLM too…we’re really short on BLMs, unfortunately >:  We’ve got four atm, which is all fine and dandy…but if one or two are gone on the same night we’d be in trouble.  We’re really hoping to get 2-3 more BLMs, so that we’ve got a bit more flexiility.  If Star and I DIDN’T have to come BLM we could be on other jobs — he’s got TH4 THF and BRD, I’ve got BRD RDM WHM SCH, and I know another BLM also has a handful of other jobs…but we’re always there on BLM.

Limbus

Our {Mega Boss} leader has been missing for the last few runs — he has some military trip over in Germany for a few weeks this month.  Raven’s been doing a great job in his absence, and pretty much has Q’s whole absence mapped out, which is nice.  Just before he left I completed my Ultima set, and now we’re going back and forth between finishing Raven’s Omega set and finishing my tier 1 Ultima set.  Tomorrow we’ll fnish Raven’s set, Monday will be Omega, and the following Friday we’ll complete my Ultima pre-set.  I’ve also gotten pretty lucky with drops/upgrades lately:  before I even had my SMN AF, I had both mats that I need to upgrade!  I’m 5/5 on SMN AF now, and am in the process of requesting my AF shoes with the set stored so I can upgrade those ^^

I’m at 1/2 for Scholar again, just need my stud from Apollyon now.  Oh — and I also got this shiny:

I debated a bit on what to upgrade — I really wanted hat, body, and gloves.  Pants would also be nice, but those’ll be my 4th upgrade, if I get that far.  Not so interested in AF+1 shoes.

Things with Friends

Lately Star and I have been doing quite a bit in game with our good friend Sto — we’ve done limbus and dynamis with him for quite some time.  We’ve also been static’ing my SMN, Sto’s PLD, and Star’s MNK together, though that’s sort of died off. We’re all just a few levels away from Ahty zones too!  Other than that, we’ve been poking about in Sea quite a bit.  We trio’d a single pop-item Ix’MNK w/o drop, but the fight was pretty easy.  We also got Ix’DRG to spawn, and got the deed…and then managed to escape before it dropped :<

Oy.  The last few days have been SMN, SMN, and more SMN.  With Star pushing for 75 for his MNK in preperatin for us doing Salvage, my poor Summoner is being dragged along for the ride!  At a fairly low level we realized that a good friend of ours was leveling his PLD, so we’ve sort of formed a three-man static.  I know SMN’s not the ideal support position :< but I do fairly well with heping heal and keeping up Ice Spikes with a nice DD Blood Pact thrown in.  So…that leaves us to find a healer, and two DD — typically not too hard! :D

I’m at 46 now — hopefully will be 47 or 48 by the end of tonight! I’ve got a full Austere set waiting for me at 50 — much <3 to our PLD who’s kindly letting me borrow it.  He’s got 75 SMN, and it’s amazing to have someone to poke in pt with my SMN questions, hehe.  I’ve got 6/8 HQ staves, and will be picking up Neptune and Vulcan soonish, so my SMN should be pretty much set for the next little bit :D  Once I ding 50 I’ll have to get AF of course, and actually should probably grab my Staff before that — not that I’ll do anything but toss it!  I’ll actually have to do it twice — as of last night I have both materials needed to upgrade my Summoner AF!  So I’ll get my Staff, start AF1, get my shoes, upgrade them, then erase my memory and do it all over D:

Speaking of AF+1 materials, last Friday I got my second piece of Brilliantine!  I upgraded my Scholar’s Gown a few weeks ago and after I get my Apollyon material I’ll be able to upgrade something else too!  I’m leaning towards M.board atm, but I’m not entirely sold, and I’ve got a bit of time to make up my mind.  I also got both chip drops from the last two Limbus runs — 1st and 3rd floors of Centeral Temenos putting me at 2/3 of an Ultima set!  It was kind of odd — Q and I were the only leaders/officers at limbus last night.   In a few weeks, he’ll be leaving the country for military duty for 3 weeks.  If a night like last night happens again…I’ll be the only one in charge, scary thought that!  He asked me which I wanted to do last night, and I said it’ be GREAT if we could get a few Ultima pop sets ready for when he gets back, since we won’t be able to do it until then :<  It’d be nice to do 2-3 within a month or so of him returning though!  As I explained, haha, we both really want Nashira Serawheels but we’re not first in line…so we need to do it several times so we can hopefully get them at about the same time as the first person to get!

Anyways, hmm.  Other than that!  We did our first Dynamis run on Sunday with our new linkshell!  It actually went fairly well, though we didn’t get the win :<  We had a LOT of people who weren’t 75 though, which was weird for me.  We had ~27 people, about 15 of which were from my old linkshell.  For our first run though, we netted I think 2.2M worth of coins, and 10 pieces of relic, so it wasn’t AWFUL.  Our newbies got their feet wet a bit, and we built up the bank a bit ^^  My biggest pet peeve of the night though was that we weren’t killing the SMN mobs first — they killed them towards the middle, and we had avatars waking up all over the place ~_~  We probably lost a good 10-15 min due to a full wipe caused by one of those avatars.  That and people didn’t wipe when they should.  I lol’d pretty hard at having about 10 mobs, most of the alliance dead, and about 4 people alive casting sleepga.  What they were hoping to accomplish, I really don’t know.  In retrospect I probably should have just cast diaga or something and gotten it over with.  Without those few little messups costing us time though we could have won fairly easily though~  Live and learn!

FRIDAY night was a pretty fun night for me, limbus wise!  We did the kings path of Apollyon, which is always a blast.  I got to go BLM for it, which I was estatic about.  Then, Brown Doeskin dropped to me, which resulted in the following over the weekend:

This is the last piece of BRD AF that I wanted to upgrade–I recieved AF+1 hands and pants last fall and have been holding onto Coiled Yarn for weeks/months.  The fact that I had an Osode from the start was kind of a joke — I hate pulling on BRD, and that’s the only thing it’s REALLY good for.  +10 VIT and +10 CHR make it a great pulling piece, though Choral justaucorps +1 has both of those as well.  Osode also has +30 MP, but since I don’t full time it (I’ve got Yigit Gomlek) that mp is wasted between macro changes.

So now I’ve got a piece of equipment which is pretty much equiviliant to KO, and it didn’t cost me anything.  I’ve not sold a single ABC from limbus, so I was able to upgrade immediately, which was nice.  Even if you count each ABC costing 8k or so, that’s 360k, and I sold the Osode for 1,850k.  Very nice ^_~  Since then I’ve changed my wishlist to Primary/BLM, Secondary/SCH, which I’m pretty excited about being able to lot BLM mats now.

However!  The above was not my only source of excitement for Friday night!

SM being SeaMonkiesLS, my Limbus linkshell, and Quendi being the linkshell leader.  And that fun little icon next to my name is a pearlsack!  He said he had been wanting to promote someone for a few weeks, and was hoping to promote someone with XX chromosomes since all of the current leaders were male…which, I guess, gave 4 choices in a linkshell of 15~20 or so (you’d think there were more girls though with how vocal we are though!).  I started posting updates on the website about two weeks ago, and I’ll continue doing that, as well as helping out with whatever ^___^

Speaking of SM’s girls being rather vocal (Neart being the only non-female in this conversation)…

MONDAY saw us doing Proto-Omega, which was interesting, seeing as one of our PLDs came /war.  Not our cleanest Omega win, but we did manage to smush him!  We ended up with head, body, and shoesies for our trouble, which was pretty nice ^^  It was also my first night on Skype with SM — I prefer Vent over Skype.  I just don’t like having to always have everyone hear all the noises on my end :<  For good reason too — my sister came down mid limbus and was chatting about new clothes, what pants made her rear look large, etc… not exactly stuff the rest of the linkshell needs to hear!

It was funny though — Q had a normal voice, and the other people I talked with all had these SUPER deep voices, and then there’s me with a very girlish voice.  I had someone ask me how old I was :<  and someone else piped up that I sounded like I was 12 ~_~ Hehe.  Ah well.  Not the first time I get asked, certainly not the last.

CRAFTING wise, I’ve been pretty busy with Bonecrafting.  Anyone who’s following me on Twitter is probably sick of my tweets about it!  I’m finally finished with scorpion synths, which is exciting! I’m now onto ladybug rings, which requires me to farm in East Ron. [S].  I’ve been lucky enough to manage to use Star’s very nicely geared TH4 thf for farming in the paSt, which certainly helps!  I planned it out with Star ahead of time, and I’ll hopefully get by ok with 25 stacks of ladybug wings to get the 5ish levels that I need.

I had 11 stacks today, and decided to go ahead and use those — I ended up with 1.9 skill ups, so with a total of 25 stacks I’ll probably only get 4.3~ or so skill ups rather than capping on the synth, but that’s fine with me.  Just another 14 synths to go!  I’ve also been keeping an eye on the NM that spawns from the ladybugs — the E.Ring sells for 40-50k, and I could be 4-5 stacks of ladybug wings for that price!  I’m really hoping to not spend money unless I have to, but if I were to get that ring while farming I’d be perfectly content to sell it and use the profits to buy wings ^^  I’ve manged to come out ahead for the last 10-15 levels or so of bonecrafting, which is really nice.

LEVELING has also been happening over the last few days — my SMN’s been getting some attention!  I realize it’s kind of a day late/dollar short type thing since /SCH has all but completely replaced /SMN for WHM, but it’s certainly still got it’s uses.  I just dinged 37 tonight, so while WHM/SCH will be my main, I’ll be able to /SMN to solo the mimics assault. When I ding 40 I’ll be able to do Caramine Dobsonflies, and at 50 I’ll be able to SMN burn Ouryu as well as PM5-3: Mithra fight.  At 60 I’ll be able to wear full AF, and fi I’m that close I may as well take it to 75!  We’ll see though I certainly won’t be rushing with it.  Star’s anxious to level his MNK though, so I’ll probably tag along with him.

Other than that…I’ve not been up to a whole heck of a lot!  Until next time~ <3

The timing of this absolutely amazes me.  We were still working on the kinks last night, and I posted pretty much right after the end of DM was announced, but I’m really pretty happy with how things are turning out.  Just before Dyna, Star poked me and said that Arrey, our old dyna leader–he left probably half a year ago? I’ve done a few odd things with him outside of dyna as well, he’s a nice guy–was starting  a new dynamis linkshell and was trying to recruit Clim, one of DM’s red mages.  Omni also told me that he applied, and was approved, to join another end game linkshell who’s times and lotting rules suit him better.

After Issy made his announcement, I poked Tuabug, a good friend of Arrey and his girlfriend — all 3 used to be in DM.  She was shocked that it ended, and we talked about her joining Arrey’s ls…and somehow Star and I ended up seriously considering joinig them as well.  He had gotten names of 12-16 people from DM who still wanted to do dynamis, and Arrey’s linkshell was only at 18 people.  They’re events are Sun/Thurs rather than Sun/Weds…which really isn’t a huge change, and their dyna runs are at 8pm rather than 9pm–which means I’ll actually get to bed at a decent time (hopefully)!

They’ve yet to start–their first dyna run is scheduled for May 17th.  Everyone will be starting off with zero points, and everyone from DM will be accepted, no questions asked.  I’m really quite pleased with this — it’s not like our points went to waste, we did get gil for any unspent points.  It will be more than half of DM, as well as some old friends we’ve not seen in ages.  The very first leader of DM is actually in this ls — I was only in DM with him for maybe 2-3 weeks, so it’ll be nice to get to know him now!  I know and respect Arrey, and I adore Rev and Tua, who will both be officers.  I’m pretty excited.

For all that I never would have wished that DM would break…this is the best possible outcome, I think.  Rather than a mixed leadership with some people that I like and some that I can’t really stand (as well as a few members I don’t care for), and late events I get to trade for fun and approachable leaders and better event times with a mix of current dyna friends and old ones that I’ve missed.  Of course, there’ll be a few people I like that don’t switch to this new LS, I’m sure, which is sad :<  And I won’t get to do Sea with these people, or any other end game events really…but all things considered I’m pretty content with how things turned out.

And so ends Divine Might.  I just…don’t even know what to say.  I joined Divine Might the first week of February, 2008.  I know people have been in linkshells for longer than that, but this was my very first end game ls — I did dynamis with them twice a week for 15 months strait.  I think I missed all of 5-6 events.  I did Einherjar with them, I did Sea with them.  I even did a few Sky and Limbus runs with them.  I did multiple pop NMs with them.  I’ve spent 20-30+ hours a week with this linkshell for 15 months.  And now it’s done.  I don’t even know what to say.

I’ve got so many memories with this linkshell, this is beyond upsetting.  The quest for my Duelist’s Chapeau…I think at one point Issy even said he’d shave his beard if it didn’t drop.  It did, finally…and people homepointed for me.  I wanted to do dynamis for so long — ever since I dinged 75 Red Mage in August 2007, I’d sigh whenever I saw a Red Mage in relic.  I finally got mine.  It’s not like it’s not been a productive 15 months — 5/5 RDM, 5/6 SCH, 3/5 WHM, 2/5 BLM, 2/5 COR, 2/5 PLD, 1/5 SMN… it was fun.  I’m just sad to see it go.

Sometime late Jan/early Feb I took a break from crafting–I’ve decided recently that I needed to get back into it.  I left off at a fairly decent place–I was at 53.x Bonecraft, right in the middle of Scorpion synths.  For those not familiar with Bonecrafting, Scorpion Arrowheads cap at 53, and the next synth is Scorpion Rings, which caps at 60.  Kind of a mean gap — that may have had something to do with why I took a break.

Anyways, I left off with ~95k guild points or so, and I had 5-10 stacks of Bone Chips (needed for arrowheads) and 30+ stacks of wind crystals (needed for both) on a mule, as well as nearly 2 stacks of Demon Horns, which is the synth AFTER rings.  I’m nothing if not thorough!  After deciding I wanted to get back into crafting, I decided a few things that I wanted to do:

• Set up my Satchel. Ehh, I’m sure most people were super excited to get theirs…me, not so much.  I finally set it up yesterday (?), and today had to spend a good 20-30 min trying to log in.  Tried the same SE password the entire time, it just refused to let me log in.  It finally decided to work but I have no clue why it didn’t work from the get go–do not like the “extra security.”  Don’t trust it ~_~  Hopefully I don’t get locked out again.  +60 space though is AMAZING for farming/synthing.

• Switch to Windurst. I’ve not done this yet, and I’ve been saying I want to for forever, but now I really will.  The Guild for Bonecrafting is in Windy, and it’ll be SO much easier being from that nation to turn in guild points every day, and for whenever I want to craft.  In addition to the better location, I’ll be able to net quite a bit of gil from going from rank 1 to rank 10.  Certainly a plus, and this gil’ll go hopefully a long way to fund my crafting!  I’ll also finally be able to get the 3 mage portal charm thingie, as well as master caster’s bracelets!  Lots of perks ^^

• Merit more. Every stinking party I have, I get 3-10 stacks of wind crystals, and I typically NPC all of them.  Now that I’m crafting again I’ll be able to keep and use them!  With my satchel I’ll be able to just toss all the crystals I get in there and hold onto them–my 30+ stacks of crystals I had stored up…I used more than 2/3 of them between yesterday and today.  I’m hoping to not spend a fortune crafting, and farming my own mats (at least that which I can) will help.  Plus, I always need more merits!

That all said…  Once I got my Satchel set up yesterday, I went to farm.  I brought 4-5 stacks of wind crystals and bone chips so that I could synth claws I got right away into arrowheads so I would have more room for shells.  I farmed for another 2h~ or so today before heading to Windy to synth.  I picked up my Protective Specticles, and got to it.  I had 62 shells, and did probably 65-70 synths (gogo partial fails that let me reuse shells!)…and got a whopping +2.6 skill ups.  I did end up with 7.5 stacks of arrowheads though!  With them selling for 18k a stack or so, that’s not half bad for profit!  I ended up with 60 scorpion rings as well, and each one sells for 500gil or so.  I’ll sell 4-5 stacks of the arrowheads, and the rest I’ll ship off to Star, who with his mighty Woodworking skillz can turn them into Scorpion Quivers!  More gil, but more work and they don’t sell super fast ~_~  It’s something though, at least!

Anyways — I’ll probably try to get another 1-2 levels on Scorpion Rings, just because they’re easy enough to farm (and someone jacked the price up on Demon Horns…) rather than swapping to Demon Arrowheads now, though I -could-.  Not looking forward to buying horns off the AH — I know I’ll get the gil back, I just would rather stay even or go up than drop down at all :<  Anyways…we’ll see how far I get this time, lol.  I’ve got it all planned out until 61-62 or so–maybe 63 since this may very well be a good way to get gil.  After that I’m not sure though — lady bug rings is an option, but a pain to farm, and I forget what else.  Reraise Hairpins are 80 I know, and I think there’s a demon knife somewhere in between there.  Oh well, I’ll cross that bridge when I get to it!

In other news!:

Last night, Star and I, with a few friends, did Jungle Boogymen.  JB is by far my favorite BCNM — I’ve yet to find another one that is fairly regular in gil drops.  A few of us had done it, a few people were new, but by the end of the night we all loved it :D  The worst drops of the night was ~100k total or so.  I always tell people that the average is 100k-400k or so, but that average is a smidge low.  It’s basd on gil drops from torques, but there are other good drops too.  It -is- possible to get less than 100k, but rather rare — 1/5 x 1/5 x something else, so it’s less than a 4% chance of getting less than 100k.  Not too bad of odds, if I do say so myself.   The biggest treasure pool was just over 1M ^^ I got the second least (:<) with ~400k, and Star netted 850k or so, if I remember right.  Not too shabby!

Star also found a buyer for our Ghrah M Chip collection!  We had 23~ and he sold 18 of them, and found another buyer who wants 12, so we’ll be farming a few more chips ^^  We -can- turn them into our LS for points…but we’d get gil AND points if we sold the chips and just bought a few other pop items that are harder to farm.  We’ll be getting 840k for the lot of them, which is rather nice!  We’d get 1pt for 3 chips, so with 30 chips we’d get 10 pts.  Or… Deeds from Ix’Aerns are worth 3 pts each, and cost 150k.  We’ll be able to  spend 450k buying 3 Deeds for 9pts, and STILL have a 390k profit ^^  1 pt in Sea certainly isn’t worth 390k!

So…yeah!  Between crafting, BCNM, and Sea, I’ve made a nice chunk of change this week ^^  We (Ecly, Star, and myself) also finally got something worth noting from our weekly Hagun ENM run — not a Hagun or Could Evoker, unfortunately, but a 120k piece of cloth…which is something, at least!  Hopefully we’ll get a Hagun for Ecly soon ^^  Oh! And I finally got my Argute (Hot)Pants the other day!  5/6 atm, just need my silly hat!  We did an AWFUL Qufim the other day, and while it dropped my pants…it was pretty sad.  We opted to kill the golem NM (removed 100 dmg/hit cap) rather than the kraken NM (removes “high”-AoE).  THAT was funny.  I was the first CS+Stunner; when I finished, he was at ~95% or so HP.  When we only removed regen, we got him down to ~30% or so before wiping.  Need to either zerg faster, or figure out how to kill both of them.

Anyways, I think that’s plenty long enough! Until next time! *^^*

Yes, that is 11+ Statues in the background. And yes, this is Dyna - Valk!

The past few days have been quite busy, in a very (for the most part) productive way!  I’ll try to go in order:

Wednesday — saw us doing Dynamis - Valkrum, our second attempt ever.  The last one was a LONG time ago, and went so bad that we never tried since.  Wednesday, though, it went quite well!  We only killed 1 NM to weaken the Mega Boss…but had no problems with her, oddly enough!  We had four RDM/DRK ready to go–I was second, and she died less than halfway into my CS.  Of course, we then got slaughtered by the mini-malboros, but we got the win! 8D  Star got a THF cape, and Ecly got a SAM belt, so I was pretty happy for them!

I had my fingers crossed that a D. Chapeau -1 would drop, but it’s probably for the best that it didn’t.  Because of how infrequently we do dreamworlds, we don’t have good rules regarding them — I’m second in line for dreamworld RDM gear, but the girl ahead of me doesn’t have NQ D. Chapeau.  I probably wouldn’t have been too happy if it dropped and she got it :< Sweet as she is, it woulda spent MONTHS in storage before she got the NQ, with how often we do Xarc, and that would have been very dissapointing.

Friday — We did Temenos for Limbus, and it finally dropped a SCH AF+1 mat for me!  After a bit of debating, I decided to upgrade my Scholar’s Gown.  Unfortunately, this means I need to request it so I can restore the set.  This is my first time requesting AF, so it took me way too long to figure out how to reset the AF memory and that not only do I need to request my gown, but also the lvl 52 hands, and the lvl 46 spell.  Wee.  I’m now in the middle of requesting the hands (though I’ll have to drop my current hands to get it…), and then I’ll finally be able to request the gown to restore the set.

Goofing around with Star <3

After Limbus was Sea — we did a Jailer of Hope which went REALLY well.  We’ve tried both of the other Tier II Jailers and have had issues with them, but Hope was easy-peasy.  Then…we looked for Ix’DRK.  I really hate Ix’DRK.  We started at about 12:30 AM, and the plan was to spend “45min-1h” looking for him before calling it a night.  Of course, he pops right at the 1h mark.  Someone got the message in their chat log just as the ??? moved rooms, so we frantically looked for it.  We got him popped, but hadn’t cleared any of the Aerns in the room, so right away we had 6 angry Aerns on us, including Ix.  We got him pulled to the balcony room, and attracked 2 pots and a ghrah or two on the way.

The next 20 min was spent trying to seperate Ix from his friends…3 deaths later, we finally managed to do that.  19~20 reraises and 2 hours after THAT, Ix FINALLY stayed dead.  By this point it’s 4-5AM for everyone, and not only do none of us ever wanna fight Ix’DRK again, the BLUs never wanna /thf again or cannonball anything.  Me?  I just never want to go BRD to sea again :<  No cape of course, but at least we got a deed~~

Saturday — was just an uneventful Nyzul, we were 0/4 on drops :<

Sunday — Ecly, Star, and I tried trioing the Hagun ENM for the second time.  We killed it, and were quite pleased with that — last time we timed out :<  No Hagun, but I was just happy we beat it ^___^;; Maybe next time for the hagun!  We also actually did a snow dyna on Sunday!  Other than my computer being stupid (the chat log is only a few lines, so I often have to pull up the whole log and scroll up when things fly by too fast — my computer has been deleting the chat log lately :<), the run went well enough…we got the win, but got horrible drops.  For all that we only got 5 relic though, I got my BLM coat, and Ecly got his BLU body, so that was pretty nice ^^

Monday — was amazing.  We tried Ultima for the second time since I joined the linkshell (5th time since the ls started, I think?) and WON!  I was about dancing around my room I was so excited.  It would have been too much to expect Nashira pants, but I was hoping they’d drop so that Q and/or Raven could get because a) they’ve both put in a lot of work and haven’t gotten all that much from the ls and b) so that once they get theirs, I can move up in line for mine!  Of course, Ultima wasn’t feeling generous, but I’m just super excited we beat it!

It was pretty funny — we got it down to ~22% and I /tell Omni “and now for the moment of truth.”  Which, by the way, poor Omni — trial by Proto-Ultima! What a nice welcome to limbus!  All hell broke loose once we got Ultima below 20%, but we won!  We had 3 SAM who 2h’d one after another, and a DRK who 2h’d closer to 10%.  Pretty quick way to get Ultima from 20% to dead!  Our PLD had better gear this time around too, and it was a HUGE improvement.  One died earlier in the fight, but neither died to CB.  I think CB only went off 2-3x, and both PLD were left with 300 HP or so.  Anyways, like I said, VERY happy that we managed to take Ultima down.  We got a Turban and a pair of Crackows, and I got the Turban 8D!

Tuesday — today!  I’ve got sea tonight, but I logged in this morning to have a friend poke me about doing Salvage.  He’s trying to get a group going regularly, and while Star and I won’t be able to go frequently due to the times they go at (mid morning for Star and I — we’ve got class and school!), we did get to tag along today.   I’ve always loved Salvage, and have always wanted to do it regularly, so it was nice to do it today — though I’m sure Star wasn’t too happy with me fussing about wanting to do it more after we finished!  Right before timing out I managed to snag an Anu’s Tiara, which I was pretty pleased with!  Now I’ve got Marduk’s head (15) + hands (15) as well as Morrigan’s pants (15) + feet (15).  Nothing super impressive, but hopefully it’ll help once I do Salvage regularly!

Oy!  I think maybe I should update more often, so that my posts don’t get quite this long ^^;;  Oops!  Anywho, back to requesting my SCH af again — yay for reclaiming my inventory space!  Here’s a SS of all of my recent shinies: