Mage of All Trades

We did our first few Nyzul runs with our static on Saturday; it was a bit of a bumpy start, but it went ok overall. Star and I were the only ones in game until about 10 minutes before we were supposed to start, and were told that Rae would be ~30 min late. Everyone else trickled in over the next 40 minutes save for our bard, who was AWOL. Since he was at floor 6, we decided to do floors 1-5 because one or two people needed it yet.

I shouted and snagged a red mage, which let me go white mage (yay!). We were a bit slow, but worked through everything a-ok, and got the win on the first try. It went really well, imo, and I managed to net one of these!:

The next two runs didn’t go so well–we tried floors 6-10 twice, and timed out both times. We didn’t have any horrid wipes though or anything, which was encouraging.

On an unrelated note: campaign! I hate campaign. I mean, it’s really not that bad…but I don’t enjoy it when I feel like I -need- to do it. Once I’m in a fight I have fun, but trying to hop around and find one, etc… isn’t so nice. However, with Star and I dinging 68, I’ve been feeling the need to work on that again. I really want to grab a pair of Cobra Unit Crackows–I wanted them for black mage, and now for scholar as well. Last time I didn’t manage to rank up and had to settle for renewing my current rank (which is better than losing a rank, I suppose), but the other day I managed to get this!:

Last note for the day: bonecraft guild points! Though I paused from leveling bonecraft to work on getting scholar to 75, I’ve still been doing the guild point items every day (or as often as I can!). I’m making nice progress, if I do say so myself:

I figure I’ll -hopefully- get Scholar at 75 within the next week or two, and then can get to work on meriting (…I ALWAYS say I’m going to merit) and back to bonecrafting. Hopefully by the time I’m high enough skill to get the body I’ll have enough guild points!! :D

A bit late, but here’s my 2008’s Top 10 (in no particular order):

1. Joined a Dynamis linkshell–DMLS, have been a member for 11 months! (February)
2. Joined a Sky linkshell–which later crashed and burned, but the 9 months or so it ran was a blast. (February)
3. Got Sea access. (May)
4. Did Limbus randomly–duoing, trioing, and with my Sky and Dyna linkshells before finally settling down with an actual Limbus linkshell–SeaMonkiesLS. (November)
5. Got White Mage to 75! (February)
6. Got Bard to 75! (August)
7. Got Black Mage to 75! (November)
8. Got Salvage access, and did Salvage with my social linkshell and had a blast, though we didn’t get much for drops. (Summer)
9. Started dating Staren in game, meeting him in real life (:  (August)
10. Chaperoning Vidrie’s and Pikel’s wedding (November)

Goals for 2009:

• Join a Salvage linkshell that does events 2-3x/week; make some progress on obtaining Morrigan’s/Marduk’s gear.
• Get a runic disc at floor 100; obtain 3 (feet, hands, body) if not 5 (hat, pants) Goli. Saio pieces.
• Captain ranking for assaults.
• Work more on meriting, and less on leveling! …while still getting a few more jobs to 37~40 for subjobs/level capped events.
• Bonecrafting to 100!  And 2-3 subs to 60.

Late, but better than never (:

Star and I have been leveling quite a bit–wee for BLM+SCH duoing.  He’s been BLM/NIN while I’ve been going SCH/RDM…except the one day I managed to go SCH/BLM.  He pulls, I sleep, we both nuke, and the pet is dead (:  For as much as /BLM sucks for SCH because of no defense at all, the way we do it I may as well always be /BLM tbh.  I’ve got blink as /RDM, which really doesn’t do a whole lot, and I’m used to sleeping/nuking between getting mauled from leveling black mage.  The elemental seal would be really nice too–I’ve been AoE’ing my Sleep II’s for when Star links the beastmaster, which rarely sticks on the gigas so have ES would be pretty nice all things considering.

Yesterday the two of us managed to both ding 68–or, to be honest, in the 1-2k before I dinged Star managed to die twice…so when I dinged he was 3k tnl and we were both ready to quit.  He finished up his level via campaign ops this morning though, so we’re still both just 300 exp apart which isn’t bad at all.

We didn’t do limbus really this week–we went on Monday but had to leave early, and didn’t make it at all on Friday.  Likewise, we didn’t make einherjar on Tuesday, and then dynamis was canceled on Wednesday, so it’s been a pretty wonky week.  Nyzul tonight though, I’m excited!  Time to get cracking on those goals for 2009! (:

{Vunkerl Inlet [S]}, how I’ve missed you. Staren, Vidrie, and I ended up heading out to trio today, and it’s really nice to be back. I spent so much time here on Black Mage–it’s like coming back to an old friend. Vid’s on her RDM, and Star’s on his BLM, so we’ve got a nice little group. Star and I are both a bit disappointed though, with our damage output. He’s got a full Sorc. Ring setup, and isn’t very happy that when I’m unresisted I’m doing more damage.

For my part, I’m not too happy that I seem to be resisted at random, and quite often too. I’ll do 295 dmg, or 595 dmg, or up to 650ish dmg. I keep telling myself it’s just because we’re low (soloing on BLM started at level 66-67 or so, and we’re only 63 so we’re quite a bit lower–yay for increased resists D:!). I’ve got 62 + 33 INT, plus another +3 INT from food. I’m +21 elemental magic above my level’s cap as well from merits and gear, so I’m sitting at 228. Between that and keeping both Firestorm and Klimaform on myself for my Fire III’s, it’s not too horrid…I’ll just be happy when I stop resisting so often!

Other than leveling SCH…I did two Nyzul 100 runs! Was helping Brodin with it–he’s been wanting to finish his Askar set, and Star really wants the Denali bonnet. I said I’d lot Goli. if it dropped, but wasn’t super excited about it…Goli. Chapeau is #4 on my Goli. wish list. The first run dropped Askar and Bro won the lot. Second run dropped Goli, and I lotted an 880! However, the other brd with lotted an 889 ._.;; I’d have been tickled if we had gotten Star Denali and Bro Askar, but apparently it just wasn’t meant to be. I’m just hoping now that Bro’ll be nice and take Star and I for a few more 100 runs so Star can get his hat–we did help him with a handful of runs. Me personally I helped him with his very first few runs, before he was even at floor 20 drops wise.

First of all, I meant to get this up sooner but just didn’t get around to it–though I’ve still got an hour and thirty five minutes before it’s the 25th here!–Merry Christmas everyone!

Star and I ended up getting snowed in today, so we ended up hopping on and doing a level sync party for my scholar, which resulted in this:

It was fun–we were in a party with nearly all friends at first: Vid (RDM), Ryo (PLD), Rice (SAM), Star (THF), and myself (SCH) with just a pick up for the last member. Later on Ryo had to leave and was replaced with a nice guy from our dynamis linkshell…it showed that we’re from the same dyna-ls in the party today! We have someone in our linkshell who ALWAYS does job specific “congrats”–{Cover}ulations, {Convert}ulations, etc.. Another guy always does {Egg Dishes} instead of congrats…which no one understands. When Vid dinged 66 in the party, she got a {Convert}ulations, and so someone of course had to pipe up with a {Egg Dishes} as well.

Oh!  I got a gift from Star in game as well today (:  A Serket Ring! :D  It’s something that I always planned on getting “one of those days,” “eventually,” etc… but never really did it, and he got one for me! :D

After that of course we had a nice real-life evening of family Christmas things :3 But yes, main point of this entry: Happy Holidays everyone! (:

Earlier today Star and I level synced with my Scholar again…it was a rather disappointing party at first. Good set up–brd, rdm, sch for healing/support, pld for tank, and thf, mnk for dd. Within the first hour, we had replaced SEVEN people. Just, ew. The exp was flowing in at the start at about 14k/hour and then of course dropped off drastically because people suck.

Anyways, after recruiting a few linkshell members, and finding a few more reliable people, we headed back to Aht Urghan for Star to Tele-Nashmau us via his spiffy pimp coat. After flopping around people and switching from Lesser Colibri and Spiders (as Eni, our ls pld, pointed out, it was an “awkward camp”–he couldn’t have food because of the birdies, but he needed food for the spiders) to Marsh birdies and getting a nice 10k/hour, leading to this!:

…yes, I fail at taking screenshots. I tried once before to have the “Level Up!!” below my face and missed the comment in the chat window…now I was just a bit too slow and it’s covering my face. One of these days I’ll get it! I ended up leaving the party for limbus with a good 6.5k buffer, with plans to head out and ding 60 later tonight now that limbus is finished :3

For limbus tonight we did the same zone as on Friday–Central Temenos, 2nd Floor. If dynamis hadn’t proved it already, Carbuncle is MEAN. We managed to come back and win tonight though, which was nice! The only AF+1 piece we got was for BST, which no one wanted, but I’m excited…this puts us closer to our next (and my first!) Ultima fight! :3 We were originally told that we’d do Ultima before the end of the year, but I don’t see that happening at this point…I’m just excited that we’ll be doing it sometime in the near future! :D

Dynamis-wise, we did Jeuno last night, just like I had my fingers crossed. I ended up piping up on the forums that Vid just eneded a win there for Beau. access, and someone else pipped up that another person only needed that win, so we did Jeuno! \o/ I netted a nice pair of WHM pants, which I was pretty ecstatic for. I’ve been wanting them for a while–it’s the one city piece on WHM that is really shiny, imo. This puts me at 3/5 now–body, pants, hat.

We’ve only got one dynamis left before the end of the month when want-lists change, so I’m reallyREALLY hoping for a late Beau run so I can get my Duelist’s Tabard and Vid can get her first snow dynamis in. I’ve now got no doubts about switching to SCH for city runs–I was going to regardless of if I got my pants or not, but it was just really nice to finally get them and not have to worry about it anymore!

Putting stuff about the blog being down, etc.. under a cut at the end because it’s longish :3

Scholar!  It’s been a whirlwind–Wednesday I started out as level 49, and by Saturday night I had dinged 58.   Oy.  On the 11th, so the Thursday before last, I was level 38.  In 9 days, I got 20 levels.  That is ridiculously fast for me @_@;;  I’ve gotten just about all of my AF now–the only piece I don’t have is my hat, but I’ve done everything I need to except go back to pick it up.  At this rate, I’m going to set my dynamis want to Scholar in January.   City runs, definitely scholar, and if I get my Duelist’s Tabard before the end of the month (so basically if we do another Beau., which I’m hoping we do Jeuno > Beau since people need wins, because we seem to always get a Duelist’s Tabard) I’ll set outland to SCH too–just need the hat now!

Hmm, other than that…  Did limbus/dyna runs, nothing too exciting.  We did a Xarc. run but didn’t get any hugely great drops, other than a pair of THF hands–they went to a 67 THF.  We’ve got probably 2-3 75THFs in ls who don’t have the hands yet, but they rarely come THF to dyna, and neither were there that night.  As far as limbus goes, we did one run with elements that totally flopped, and we did a rough Omega on Monday but ended up killing him and getting some shiny drops.

I’ve not been leveling bonecrafting lately, though I have been trying to turn in guild point items.  A handful of them require subcrafts, of which I’ve got none, so I’m debating working on a few of those so I can at least hand in guild point items.  People are nice about making them for me in Ahty but I feel lame /sh for stuff like that.  I’m up to 45k guild points or so, I’m excited :D  Am hoping to have 100k by the time I can get my apron so I don’t have to wait at all 8D

Read the rest of this entry »

Well, THAT was interesting. I’m kind of sad, to be honest, at how things happened yesterday. The conversation I had last night with the guy who stumbled upon my blog–I wish he could act like that all the time. He acted like that when he first started, and I had no issues with him. He can be polite, helpful, and just an all-around decent guy who I’d love to have be a linkshell leader. He answered all of the issues I had on my blog for me, as well as a handful of other things that I hadn’t posted on the blog…and then when I talked to Star today, I found out that he was incredibly pissed off with me and wanted to kick me out of the linkshell without discussing it with the other linkshell leaders.

It’s sad that the only way to get him to treat people/me decently is for him to be pissed off :(

And to be honest…the reason I -hadn’t- been publicizing this blog–having the url in my bazaar comment, up at ffxiah.com, etc..–was because I wasn’t setting out to hurt anyone’s feelings, even if I was telling the truth. Because the 2 people who I fussed about a bit in this blog now know about it and have read it, I have no reason not to do this. I’ll double check with the linkshell leaders, but if they don’t have any issues with it, I’ll definitely be able to go back and do that (:

The other reason I didn’t have it everywhere was because I like to keep track if people I know are reading it, which isn’t possible. However, now that my blog’s been dragged through the linkshell via vent and people sharing it with all their friends–or so it seems–what difference does it make if strangers on my server, or people who find it via ffxiah.com, read it?

Though there’s no public rule stating I can’t write whatever I want anywhere, I found out last night/this morning that I can’t vent about members/leaders? (I’ll have to ask, not that I plan on doing it, but because I like to know) on websites like bluegartr, killing ifrit, etc.. (which I probably spelt wrong because I never use them!), so before I put it up in bazaar/on ffxiah.com I’ll certainly ask, though I’d -think- it’s ok because it’s just a link, not actual complaints.

Anyways, at this point I’m just hoping it’ll blow over soon–I mean, my blog isn’t THAT interesting, it can’t stay the focus of everyone’s attention for too long. If nothing else I’ve just gained a few more lurkers to read my posts -shrug-. Though, why you’d read the blog of someone who you don’t like, and who doesn’t like you, is beyond me, but it’d be silly to continue doing so knowing that, and even sillier to then complain about it. So! We’ll see. Things should be back to normal soon enough, methinks methinks.

Before I start this, I would like to remind you that you don’t HAVE to be here. The lovely little red “x” in your upper right corner will always be there–if you don’t like what you’re reading, please stop. That said…

I just had a conversation in game with someone who stumbled upon my blog. I’m writing this and am going to find a way to sticky it somewhere obvious, because I’m not setting out to offend anyone. The situation was actually handled quite well, but it was with one of my less-than-favorite people in game based on his actions–how he treats people, etc..–so it was a rather interesting conversation.

First of all, two important notes about what I write in this blog:

1. I typically try to avoid using names of people I’m not happy with in game. When I -do- use names in regards to me being unhappy with someone, I use abbreviations. My goal is not to tell everyone what a horrible person so-and-so is, but rather to write about what happened in my opinion.
2. That said, I try very hard not to exaggerate. If something is bothering me, if something was handled poorly, I write what happened and why I was bothered. Should anyone who was there when it happened, and who knows who I’m talking about, read any entry, they should be able to remember the general conversation and know that I’m telling the truth. I may have a different perspective on what happens, but I do try very hard to not lie.

That said, of course if I’m writing about a friend I’ll often times use nick names as well, but I’ve got nothing against using full names in that case. I just did a search for the person who called me out on my posts in game, and I found 2 entries in which I used his name. Once, I used his full name, and it had nothing to do with me being unhappy with him. The second time, I used an appreciation. On top of these, I’ve got several posts in which I avoid using his name entirely. This is how I write entries, and a good chunk of my entries have no complaining about any person in general at all.

I’m sure this person is not happy with me at all right now, and I would imagine that if I was not disliked already I am now, but I did get answers about the linkshell I’m in–how things are handled certain ways, and I was happy for that. I didn’t purposely go around showing this to people because I -do- realize that some of what I write would upset people; in order for anyone to find it, they’d have to go looking for it.

To be honest, I’m not sure what else I could have done. I don’t feel as though I’ve done anything wrong, and my only other options would be to either a) not blog at all–but I enjoy it, and having a personal site to keep track of things; with my merit guide, equipment lists and guides, goals, etc.. me complaining about anything/one is a very small portion of the website, b) lock the blog so no one could read it–but I enjoy hearing input from people about the gear I’m using/trying to get, etc..!, neither of which are very good options imo.

_________________________________________________________________________________________________

Anyways, THAT said and out of the way: I dinged 48 on scholar today! Had surgery this morning so I’ve been kind of out of it on/off all day, but yay for 48. Tonight, Star, Vid, Pik and I dinked around in a manaburn party, which was fun, if not overly productive–we didn’t have enough mobs or enough clean pulls :( Ah well, it was interesting. Pik pulled a lovely “LEEEEEEEEEEEERRRRRRROY JENKINS!” into a crowd of goblins, which I found rather amusing.

For limbus tonight, two of us were drugged up on hydrocodine! It was amusing; one of our pallys just had surgery 2 weeks ago, so the two of us were pretty loopy. Apparently at one point while using hydrocodine, she thought she was a ninja, though we were informed she tanks very well while drugged up, hehe. We did Omega and got body, hands, and hat, so not too horrible. Of course, nothing for myself, Star, Vid, or Pik, but Star was the only one of us who wanted anything from Omega anyways. Am hoping we start doing Ultima runs soonish, though I was told we’d do one in December! :D

Well, I’ve officially gotten my first piece of Scholar relic!  I’m kind of excited; this is the first time I’ll be able to ding into relic.  Such a shiny piece too.  However, getting this wasn’t a super happy occasion: not 2 min before this dropped, a Duelist’s Tabard dropped.  It should have been mine, but unfortunately it went to someone else.  I won’t get into the specifics, but I felt cheated and still do, and am quite disappointed by the entire thing.  I am happy with this piece, it just ended up feeling like a less-than-stellar consolation prize.  I would have been 5/5 on Duelist’s Gear too!  Ah well…

I’ve gotten a handful more levels on my scholar–I’m at 47 now.  I’m anxious for 50; I can’t wait to start collecting my AF pieces!  I’m glad to be getting new spells too, though I haven’t had much use for them.  I’m actually thinking I may end up taking the soloing route with scholar, because I’ve got so little patience to lfp.  If I get an invite right away, I’m good, or if I can start a party, but I do NOT like waiting 1-2 hours for an invite and just sit here twiddling my thumbs while I wait.  I’m just not sure how that’d work in Gustav/East Sarutabaruta [S] where I used Ancient Magic on Black Mage, and I really don’t want to set my home point in Cape Terrigan again for the lvl 45-50 camp.  Once I get another ~10 levels I can easily start camping out in Bibiki Bay and then shuffle on over to Vunkerl Inlet [S], but that’s a ways off yet…

I also picked up these shiny gloves today when I logged on this afternoon:

I got pretty lucky; it was just last Sunday that I picked up my Choral Cannions +1.  On Monday I got Brown Doeskin, and Friday I got Coiled Yarn, and Star was nice enough to loan me some ABC’s so I could upgrade these right away (:  The last bard piece I want to upgrade is the body (20 HP, 10 VIT, 10 CHR, -3 Enmity, 6 String Skill), so I can sell my Kirin’s Osode (30 MP, 10 VIT, 10 MND, 10 CHR, 52 DEF), and I’m not in a super big hurry for that.  I just wanted to upgrade these cuffs so that I could lot another doeskin/yarn combo, so that I could switch my want list after that, rather than holding onto the set I had for cuffs and waiting for ABC’s.

I’m not sure what I’ll ask for next in Limbus; I’ll probably swap Black Mage from secondary to main lotting, and put Red Mage as secondary.  White Mage gear is all pretty meh, and I have both mats from limbus I need to upgrade a piece atm anyways–I’ve just not wanted to waste the ABC’s on it! :x  As far as Scholar, I’ll lot of it’s free lot, but with other pieces to upgrade and only so many ABC’s, I won’t worry about setting it as main/secondary for the time being.

…I found that pretty funny.  Uddoro, my 75SMN friend who’s taking a break until he gets a new laptop, did not find the image funny.

And! Ding, 44 Scholar!  Brodin found out today that I was leveling scholar–he was enjoying being the token scholar in our ls, and was kind of annoyed with me that I was leveling it ^^;;  His is at 65 now, and right after I dinged tonight he goes “I think I’m going to pick up scholar again and finish it off.”  Hehe :3