Mage of All Trades

/sarcasm.

Anyways!

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

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

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

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

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

Z’s so mean to me ; ;

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

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

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

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

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

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.

Oy.  Talk about an overdue entry!

Dynamis_____________________________

September has become anti-city month in Consumed…which is fine by me.  We’ve done a few Xarcs, a few Beaus, and I think one Qufim?  Nothing super exciting, lots of drama as usual, but that’s what Consumed is!  Kinda burnt out on the drama, certainly not enjoying it.  I don’t really feel like venting though, I’ve done a lot of that to various people recently…so I’ll let the cat hold my tongue ;) This month I did manage to net both an Argute M.board as well as a Summoner’s Horn — off the same Xarc, no less!  It was a pretty good night, other than I died a lot :<  Both went open lot though, and I was lucky enough to win both of them.  That puts me at 3/6~7 of the relic pieces I need out of Xarc!  Black Mage is actually what’s on my list, and after I got my second hat I made a comment about “watch, NOW my hat will drop”…and sure enough, it did.  It went to Star though, so I’m not too bummed out.  I would though love to get it before the month ends so I can put WHM as my Xarc list for next month.

Other than Xarc, I need several dreamworld pieces–SCH acc is the only one I have.  I’m not too concerned about them; we don’t do dreamworlds enough.  City/Beau-wise, I need SMN body and hands, BLM gloves, and PLD shoes…so I really don’t have a heck of a lot left.  My wish list is slowly dwindling down, which is amazing.  7~8 pieces of non-dreamworld dyna gear and I’m done with what I need…until I level  new job ;)  Very happy with how things have been going lately, drop wise at least.

Limbus______________________________

Sea Monkies has seen a lot of change over the last few weeks, and most of it has me really excited.  When I first started we had probably 12-15 regular members, which worked fairly well.  We did 2 runs a week, and whenever we did Proto-Omega we had a few old members come to help out — people who didn’t need coins or AF+1 mats and so didn’t show up regularly.  Proto-Ultima was only a dream really, which was really dissapointing.  We tried it with our rag-tag bunch and timed out at like 10% or so, possibly less, and at least 2-3 deaths per person.  Our RDM actually lost between 15-20k exp that fight.

Fast forward to this last month.  Star suggested Sea Monkies to a few people in our dynamis linkshell, who in turn suggested it to others in the shell…in the last 30 days, we’ve had SEVEN people from my dyna shell join my limbus shell.  On top of that, we’ve had several people from other misc. places join as well.  Now every night we have at least 18 people, and unless it’s a boss run we’re doing split runs.  I’d imagine if we get a few more people, say 3-4, we’ll be doing split runs even on boss nights.  It’s amazing to see the shell like this, and really fun to be apart of.  Lately I’ve been doing a lot more leader-type stuff too; Raven leads the larger group, and I take a small group to do a low-man run.  It’s a blast!  Typically I steal Q or another officer so I’m not doing it all alone, but I get to work with Raven to see who gets how many members/what jobs etc…, and get to do things my own way :D

With Ultima taking 6 runs, and Omega taking 4 to get pop sets for, we’re not able to get an Omega pop in a week and an Ultima pop in a week and a half — plus, we’ve got a lot of partial sets.  We’re doing a boss every other week now, somtimes every week.  Just a few days ago, my honey got his Homam body (we also got two pairs of gloves that night).  A week or two before, we netted our first pair of Nashira Seraweels, by far our most wanted piece.  Now there’s only one person ahead of me in line for those, which is really exciting–potentially I could get them off the next run if double legs drop — a girl can dream :)

Salvage/Nyzul_______________________

…has been dramatastic lately, unfortunately.  Nyzul has offically come to an end, and we’re doing a third weekly salvage run on Saturdays now in place of Nyzul.  This leaves Star and I with 7 tags a week to work on getting Captain, and we’ve been taking full advancage of that.  I actually just finished up the FL quest today, and got to watch the graduation ceremony :)  Unfortunately I’m still only 26/51 or so to getting captain, but it’ll be nice to have a break from doing rank up quests.  I’m really enjoying assaults, and the different rank up quests were quite fun.  I’m hoping by the time we’re done I’ll have enough points to get both Yigit Gages and Crackows, but we’ll see.  I think I may have been spending my points in Lebros though, where Crackows come from, because I’ve done over half the assaults and have less than 5k points :(

For Salvage, I’m super excited to say we’ve gotten 3 35s in approx 5-6 weeks.  Two of them were secondary pieces (though for one of them the guy who wanted them was missing, so they went to someone else instead, though they were still wanted), and just the other night we got our first primary 35 piece!  We’ve gotten 35 Morri hands, 35 Skadi shoes, and 35 Usukane pants…not half bad!  Last night we were hoping to do Bhaf. fl4 rampart for 35 Skadi body (someone is 2/3 for pieces on it), and then the boss for the 25 that matches a few of the 35s we’ve gotten, but managed to time out :<  We opted to do the fl4 rampart, and for all that we got the NM 4 times, we didn’t get a single 35 off it.  Oh well, that’s Salvage for you!  Skipping the drama again because it’s really stupid stuff and I don’t wanna escalate it or anything, but certain people need an attitude adjustment — this is for a GROUP, not single people, thanks.

Drouggle_____________________________

Mr. D’s gotten quite a bit done lately, though I haven’t been on him too much for the last week or two.  He’s now 67 black mage, and has his /whm completely finished at 38~  Bastok’s been in 3rd place conquest wise so I can’t get fame in Windy for him (<3 the cornette quest), but he does have Teleport-Holla/Dem/Vahzl/Altep.  Need to get him to 42 WHM for tele purposes, as well as for when I start doing CoP on him.  He’s got dyna access, but no wins due to it being anti-city month.  We did Jungle Boogymen the other day to get a few of his torques, and netted an elemental torque, an evasive torque (which was traded in the group for a dark torque), and an ore worth 120k that I sold to buy him a spider torque.  I’m pretty content with that; his gear is at par at least now.  I started doing RoZ on him, and am now at the QSC fight — one day that we’re free Star and I will probably finish up getting him Sky access.

Misc.________________________________

Not really anything misc. I guess…was gonna include assaults here but put that above! :D  Oh! I don’t think I ever posted here…but I finally dinged 75 SMN a few weeks ago ^___^;; That Summoner’s Horn went to use ASAP after I got it :D  And here’s a fun quote to end the post, even though I’ve already included several:

As if sensing the presence of the protocrystal, the tuning fork begins to softly resonate…

…Who interrupts my slumber?
Was I dreaming for but an instant,
or an eternity?
The radiance that illuminates all, lost…
Which is the real world, and which is
the dream?
Am I…?
But enough…
Wager your life to prove your skill.
Let us see if you can provide me
with a moment of amusement.
Are you ready, you who is one yet many?

We sleep in a time that is neither
an instant, nor an eternity.
Is this world a dream,
or is the dreamworld an illusion…?
Very well, child of Vana’diel.
I will grant you a fragment of my power
to bring order to this chaos.

Over the last few days, I explored the nooks and crannies of Vana’diel with a handful of friends in tow.  A good friend of mine recently rejoined good ol’ xi, and as a summoner it was easy to convine him to accompany us.  With my summoner at 65 presently, and my paladin static!buddy on vacation for the week, I decided it’d be a great time to work on the last few pieces of gear I need for my summoner.  Other than Ying Yang Robe (which, conviently the maintenance that’s occuring as I write this will reset Mr. Shiki’s ToD — and the honey and I logged out so we’ll hopefully have a shot at getting claim in a few hours!) and Evoker’s Ring, I’m pretty much set on gear.  Thus — our fun adventures poking various avatars recently.  Star needs a few more avatars — even though he doesn’t have summoner leveled he wanted to nab them while he had a chance for when he eventually decides to.

We started our trip with myself, Star, Uddles, and Usmc, a friend from our old linkshell.  The avatars were no issue really, though their Astral Flow damage was very unpredictible.  For every Astral Flow, we had buffs up — blink or utsusemi, stoneskin, bar-element, shellra v, etc…  The first avatar we did was Garuda, and her Astral Flow killed me through all 3 buffs, when I was at full health.  Star, who was kindly taking on his THF, took close to zero damage, while Uddles and Usmc went down to about half HP.

The next few fights, people would either take small doses or moderate amounts of damage, but no deaths.  Then, randomly we had Usmc and Uddles both die, but I remained at full HP — my SS didn’t even wear.  It was really odd.  Later on, we had two other friends — Omni (BLU) and Nego (DRK) — tag along.  Omni threw up an AoE Saline Coat for an additional Magic Def. Bonus +50, and of course, just to prove the randomness of damage, Omni was the sole person to die.

Anyways, odd damages aside, we had a pretty easy time with the avatars.   On Saturday, we poked all six original avatars, as well as Diabolos.  Uddles and Star both had a few whispers already, so they both missed out on a few fights.  For all that we got the wins rather easy, we did have a few mishaps on getting people wins.  Our last avatar of the night was Levi, and just as we got to his home, Usmc’s internet went down for maintenance.  We had no way to get ahold of him though, and so after waiting for ~30 min we went ahead and did the fight without him.  It was late and we all wanted to head to bed, and we jumped the gun on engaging Levi — Omni accidently got left outside :<

As such, on Sunday we repeated Levi for Omni and Usmc right after JP midnight ^^  The point of all of this was to get me my Evoker’s Ring items and to be able to fight Fenrir as well for my last item and to get a few people the purple puppy as a summon.  As Omni joined us halfway through our Avatar-killing spree, he wasn’t 6/6 on whispers.  After Star and Usmc turned in their whispers to get their Moon Bauble for Fenrir, we all grabbed another Tuning Fork of Wind to get Omni the last whisper he needed.

It was an absolute blast to travel Vanad’iel with friends over the last few days to poke the avatars.  For all that summoner isn’t my favorite job, I really love the avatars in this game.  The script the avatars say is really nifty, and being able to do these fights with my friends make it even more enjoyable.  These fights are something I looked forward to doing ever since I started playing, and even thuogh I already have all the avatars, these fights still make me smile.

We actually got to meet and help someone who joined our old social linkshell since we left as well — on Sunday Uddles was helping her get Shiva, and the two of them tagged along to get her Garuda as well.  It’s been weird, doing things with people from my old shell — which I left on bad terms.  I’m very glad that Uddles is back in the game though, and if it means  I get to do things with him I don’t mind so much.  It’s not that I really dislike anyone from the shell, but I’m not on good terms with one or two members and previously made pretty much a complete break from the shell, which is no longer complete.

When we finally went to fight Fenrir Sunday afternoon, it was a bit of a dissapointment.  Right as we got to Windurst the first Mog Tablet was found, so of course people were off and checking zones to try their luck — my honey was actually lucky enough to find one.  We checked two zones to try and find one for me but didn’t manage to, and he checked a fourth as well and missed just one section of it due to everyone being ready for Fenrir…and shortly after someone found a Mog Tablet there.  Bummer!  Anyways, our final party for Fenrir was myself (SCH), Star (BLM), Uddles (SMN), Usmc (RDM), Omni (BLU), and Eni (PLD).

The fight ended up as a total disaster :(  With the Mog Tablets happening, there was a good hour or so of dinking about before the fight, which, people started to afk, have other things they needed to do, etc… so I think everyone was a smidge distracted.

Eni got slapped with a double attack, one of which was a critical hit for 540+ damage, and went down very quick at about 60%.  It didn’t take long for the rest of us to wipe after that.  Then, to make matters worse, Omni had to leave due to some rl-stuff going on.  Due to the fact that I wasn’t really sure what we could do differently and that we had promised Star’s brother we’d visit him and Omni’s leaving we decided to just call it.  Usmc and Uddles also both had things they needed to do irl, and as much as it sucked to walk away defeated I think it was the best call.  It just means we need a rematch with the purple puppy soon!

When I got him as a summon I went with a party of 4 summoners, so I’m thinking if worse comes to worse that’s what I’ll try later this month.  I’ll wait until I ding 70 SMN for the new bloodpacts, and then beg Stoters and Uddles to come out on SMN and try to hunt down a 4th and possibly a 5th and kill him that way.  We’d be able to leech a few people through that way so that Star, Omni, and Usmc could also get the summon.

Another interesting stragety I found on wiki involves a manaburn party, which is certainly an option as well.  One idea would be to have a RDM and two BLMs, which Star and I could try with Stoters next week, or to have 4-6 BLMs which would be a bit harder to put together but still do-able.  It’d be great if Star, Stoters, and I could trio it — I almost want to try just to see if we can.  It’d be a blast to do.  I know another friend with both RDM and BLM leveled who says he can duo Fenrir so I may poke him for advice as well.

Anyways, it’s just been a rather nice weekend — doing things with old friends is always enjoyable.  Star and I had planned on doing a few things this week that Stoters’ is gone on vacation, and I’m glad I’m so close to my last two pieces of summoner gear that I need.  I’m 6/7 on Evoker’s Ring items — I’ve turned in 3 of them, have two in inventory, and need to snag one from Kazham yet.  I’ve also turned in my second whisper from Garuda for 10,000gil, and will need to turn in my second Garuda whisper as well for another 10,000gil.  After that I’ll be able to collect tuning forks again and be ready whenever to do avatar fights again!  Fenrir will be taken care of within the next week or two, and I’ll hopefully have my YY Robe tonight, or at least within the next few weeks.  Ooh, speaking of gear for my summoner — this isn’t anything to quest for or camp, but I’ve been watching the Auction House over the last week or two to try and snag a Blue Cape +1.  This will be my main back piece for summoner, and I’ll also get some use on it on red mage, white mage, and scholar — possibly even black mage as a HP down piece of gear if I ever decide to get rid of my Dark Grip or Star Necklace.  I finally managed to get one today, and I think the 200k pricetag is fairly decent for the 40 mp as well as how much use I’ll get out of it.

Anyways, seeing how long this post is — I’ll leave my Diabolos experience and screenshots for another day, and talk about how limbus and dyna have been recently in that post.  I’ll end this post with a fun quote and screenshot:

We were talking about which jobs we wanted to level next, and I lol’d fairly hard at Uddoro’s response to my saying I wanted to level corsair.  When I originally said I wanted to level corsair, blue mage, or ranger, he said I should level corsair due to the fun hat — he’s got a hat fetish.  And apparently he likes their guns as well!

As for the screenshot, this is from when we were waiting on Usmc to kill Levi the first time.  Omni found the deepest patch of water and sat down in it.  Wearing his Homan hat, he proclaimed he was a shark.  Here’s me panicking at the visible “shark fin” showing through the water, hehe.

Limbus_______________________________
A few weeks ago, I was promoted to an officer in my limbus linkshell.  So far, that’s not amounted to a whole lot — I have inventory -7 for a full Ultima/pre-Ultima set and a metal chip, I post news updates, and I can help call out drops and edit wanted lists.  Last night, Q said that Raven was going to lead the run, and that on Friday Anexia would be leading.  Que double take here.  My very sophisticated response: orly?  I actually wasn’t even looking at the computer when Q said that — Star was sitting behind me on his laptop and goes “apparently you’re leading limbus on Friday.”  And then, of course, I have Stoters sending me “hahas” in tells, silly guy.  So anyways!  I poked Q a bit about it, and found out that he’s wanting me to pick a Temenos run since we just did Apollyon last night…and I’m leaning towards Temenos West.  Q -hates- that zone, but we do need the chip for it.  Q got me a full Ultima set, and then when we did Temenos West for my pre-Ultima set, two other officers lotted on the chip because that was the only chip they needed to complete -their- pre-Ultima set.  So, provided Illi or N are on, that’s what we’ll be doing methinks!

If they’re not there, of course, that means back to the drawing board, but that’s what I’ll plan for (:  I’m not sure what all the other officers have for chips, but I’ll figure it out ^^  Here are my more recent shinies from Limbus, both of which I picked up on Monday:

Summoner____________________________
After what seems like entirely too long, I partied on my summoner again last night!  I had a blast with Star and Sto, and our friend Ryo caught his RDM up to us while we were taking an unplanned break from leveling, so he joined us in party as well.  It was just a really relaxing night — we goofed off on vent and joked back and forth, and managed to get 15k exp or so.  Star, Sto and I are all now level 64 — just a few levels off of the Mire, which I think I’m the only one who’s looking forward to that, lol.  Though, getting silenced is going to be a pain in the rear since I need to run in for buffs…maybe I should see if I can snag an Ecphoria Ring for myself so I can release my avatars.

We also had an interesting conversation about Astral Burn parties — and when we think they are vs. aren’t ok.  We all agree that when your skills aren’t capped, or you’re leveling a job that you want to take to 75 vs. a support job, Astral Burn parties are not the way to go.  If it’s a job you want to take to 75, you really need to know how to play it, and getting lots of exp fast via Astral Burn parties may get you to 75 asap but you lack an understanding of how to play the job.  Thinking about it now, you technically can learn how to play the job and cap your skills once you ding 75.  The issue then becomes this: people astral burn, from my understanding and experience, so that they can level jobs quickly.  They then try to play the job at 75 before they have the knowledge, skills, etc… to play the job well.

In Nindo’s recent blog entry, a good example of this comes up.  She partied with a red mage who, at lvl60+, did not have Cure III, Cure IV, Haste, OR Refresh, because they “didn’t think they needed it.”  IF you’re going to astral burn your way to 75, at least make sure you cap skills, are up to date on spells and gear, and that you know what you’re doing before joining a non-AB party or try to do end game on that job, please!  Of course, there are a few times when I have no problem with Astral Burning — our THF in dynamis, for example.  I’d LOVE it if we as a linkshell could Astral Burn a few times a week to keep his exp buffer capped since he dies to benefit the lot of us.  Capping buffers and meriting is a-ok for ABs, in my opinion.

Anyways, that said — I randomly got an invite to join an Astral Burn party today, and since I’ve never done it before…I decided to try it out to get a first hand experience.  To be honest, I was rather dissapointed by it.  I got invited at 11:30 or so, and it took a good hour and a half to actually do it.  On top of that, we got all of 5.5k exp, which is nice enough for 3 minutes of work on my end…but the fact that I was waiting for 90 min kind of negates that.  I was making 10k/h in my party last night, so in 90 min I would have had 15k rather than 5.5k.  Anyways, each to their own.  I think Astral Burn parties are acceptable in some situations…but for every time it’s ok there are a handful of times it’s misused, in my opinion.

Other Events___________________________
Other than limbus, I’ve had dynamis and nyzul both recently.  And both have been about the same: uneventful.  We did four Nyzul runs on Saturday, and got a lovely pair of uncontested Denali Kecks for our ONE pick up member, and an uncontested Goliard Saio for our ONE (different) pick up member.  For fl100 we managed to time out/wipe for both runs.  After our fl80 run, I got a tell from Ryo saying “Well now that we’re done getting pick-ups gear…”, to which SE responded, more or less, “well, if you don’t want pick ups to get gear, then you won’t get any gear a’tal.”  Boo! :<

For dynamis, we did a Sandy run last Thursday, which we ended up getting a Bard’s Roundlet for Star — which we were both estatic about.  The last run of June was a Sandy, and a Bard’s Roundlet dropped which should have been Star’s, but he passed for me <3  A second one dropped later in the night just prior to a full wipe…and after a stressful five minutes on our end it free dropped to someone else.  Needless to say, we were both very happy when it dropped to his inventory last week.  On Sunday, we didn’t do a run, which I was frustrated about.  I mean, I understand why we didn’t — Bastok was the only zone open that we could do, and no one that was a regular attendee needed anything — and none of the flaky people who needed items were there.  Moreover, bills on Remora aren’t worth very much, so we’d be doing several hours of work to break even and not get any gear that anyone has on their wanted lists.  But still, boo to missing an event :/  We need more people or the people we have need to be more reliable so that we can finish up with city zones and focus on outlands.  Ah well.

I’ll end with a fun quote of the day — we were talking about why people are mentors and what exactly it is that mentors do.  Here, one of our dyna members is pretending to answer a newbie’s question:

I, for one, am very excited about the Mog Bonanza!  Last year I was super excited, and then very disappointed afterwards, but this year I *know* I’ll be super happy with the results.  Reason: the new mog house decorations!  …yes, I know I’m odd ^^;;

Wiki Link to Info~~

Last year, I was so excited, I really wanted to win something big, and of course I didn’t.  To be honest, I don’t even think I grabbed my exp scrolls.  This year though I’ll be able to go in expecting to only win those pretty little statues–I hope they’re not R/Ex so that I can get all 3! (One on Anexia, and one on both of my two mules–I’ll get 30 marbles, just like last year, but am not going to go all out crazy getting marbles).  One other good thing is I should probably nab myself a pair of Dusk Gloves and Dusk Ledelsens, and they’ll be much cheaper after the Bonanza.

See!  So even though I don’t expect to win anything amazing, I still have plenty of reason to be excited!!  Cheaper Dusk gear, and pretty new statues for my mog house!  Also, the gil thing is nifty–I know a lot of people were worried about gil flooding the market, and having winnings depend on gil made through the bonanza is pretty nice.  Though…should I win something bigger o:

Rank 4! — Whichever gil item sells for the most (or perhaps the second most, seeing as plenty of people will be getting the largest item, flooding the market), seeing as I already have all of the R/Ex gear.

Rank 3! — Nashira Seraweels!  …or, I hate to say it, but MAYBE Hauteclaire…dunno ><;;  Not likely I’ll win, but I’d have a hard time picking between the two of those.

Rank 2! – …nothing really jumps out at me here.  I’d probably just take gil, tbh.  Possibly a blackbelt, but if you get at least 3M gil or more, you could easily just BUY the items for it, so dunno *shrug*  Possibly a Velocious Belt belt too, but meh.  Both of those items would be for jobs I’ve not yet leveled.

Rank 1! — This would be hard ._.  I would be torn between Morri and Novio, though I do sea and we will eventually get to JoL (…I am pretty amazing at waiting for stuff, joined sky and dyna at the bottom of pts list but was the first person to get items I wanted 8D  So I easily could do that for Novio wouldn’t be the first time…)  Ditto for Morri, though I don’t do Salvage *yet*, I hopefully will be sometime within the next few months.  My probably with getting Morri really is gil, so I may just get gil.  That’d probably be the best choice–if it’s 100M like last year, Novio is what, 15-20M?  And then I’d be able to afford Morri AND Marduk upgrades when I get to Salvage.

Like I said though!  I’m only -expecting- to get one (possibly more!) statues for my mog house, and a discount on dusk gloves, and I’m pretty darn excited for just that 8D  Anything else would be shiny as well, but I’m really not counting on it :3

Be warned: this will be a lengthy post.  I’ve had more than my fair share of drama in the last few days (dammit, all that avoided drama I didn’t have in middle school is catching up with me!) so I’ve not really been in the mood to post, but I think this is an important question to ponder.  Opinions would be most welcome, if you get through all this!

What does your linkshell say about you?  Both in general, about players, and about you in particular?  Everyone looks at this stuff differently, and I find that I’m somewhere in the middle.

For example: a few people that I know either formed a pop NM run for Soboro or joined one.  They all just so happened to be in my end game linkshell.  This makes sense, I mean, people do tend to do dynamis and other endgame events with friends, no?  This mixed group of people-from-my-endgame-linkshell and other random pick ups proceeded to kill this NM.  Unfortunately, the people from my linkshell had to leave before everyone was finished–they had limbus.  Ok, pretty crappy that not everyone got their items, but not the end of the world, right?  I mean, just a few weeks ago the same thing happened to me while I was doing a ISNM, we did 5 runs and people had to leave before my run.

Does it suck?  Oh, most definately.  I was annoyed, and made note not to do ISNMs with the 1-2 people who left again, not that I can remember any of their names now.

One of the people from this pick up Soboro run spent the next eighteen hours /sh in Ahty the following message: ” * WARNING * Divine Might DMLS officers ruin events!!”  I saw this, made an odd face, and sent the guy a /tell to see what was up.  He told me the above, and kept shouting.  He was so upset, he checked their linkshell, googled it, and saw that one of the people who was there was a “linkshell leader.”  I then corrected him, saying that he’s not the linkshell leader, or even an officer–he helps out with calling drops.

He then went on to tell me that these people were -my- responsibility, and I personally should kick each and every one of them out of the linkshell.  My…end game linkshell, that I have no control over.  Hmm.  I asked him to please stop /sh, because what he /sh was incorrect (no one was a leader, and it had NOTHING to do with the linkshell–people just so happened to be in it, and they thought they would have enough time but didn’t), and that it was not within my power to kick any of them out.

I personally don’t think this reflects poorly upon the linkshell.  I mean, if a HNM linkshell uses bots, or something similar where people are purposly doing unacceptable things, and you don’t care and stay with them…then, yes, that speaks poorly of you.  But if a few people in their free time did something to make someone else unhappy, that doesn’t reflect upon the linkshell, that reflects upon THEM as individuals.  They screwed up, it sucks, but it’s not the end of the world.  It took longer than they thought, which is unfortunate, but nothing else.

That said, I’ve got another example to throw out, which happened a few weeks ago but was brought up again tonight.

I gave this sweet girl a link pearl for my linkshell, and told her how awesome it was, and warning her that person x, y, and z should be avoided.  Within the next day or two, one of my friends sent me a tell saying that one of the members told her that “if she didn’t like this guy who was a huge ass to everyone, she should just fuck off because she wasn’t welcome.”  Mind you, the person who said this was someone I didn’t know incredibly well, but I liked him and thought he was a pretty nice guy.

At this point, the actions of other ls members -do- reflect upon me.  In a social linkshell, there’s no reason to be SO nasty to sweet, new people.

I sent the girl a tell, apoligizing that someone had been so rude to her, and she told me word for word the same thing that my friend had told me.    At this point, I decided to poke the person who told her to F-off, and said something along the lines of “multiple people have told me this, and if it’s true, that’s not ok in this linkshell.”  Considering this was someone who I liked and thought was a decent person, I really wanted to see if that really was what happened–there’s always two sides to any story.  He proceeded to clear things up, and everything was just fine; there was a miscommunication and he didn’t mean that.

Tonight, the person I chatted with about this told me that he hated me because of what I did–”it was none of my buisness and I shouldn’t have butted my head in.”  I explained my reasoning–that I wanted to clear things up with him what happened, because if what they said was true I would lose respect for him and I didn’t want to assume, and because if he really did do that, someone needed to let him know it was unacceptable.  He told me again it was none of my business, and I said that we didn’t have to see eye to eye on it, we were allowed to view things differently.  I explained things, he didn’t “get it,” and he still believed what he believed (which he is entitled to, I never told him he was wrong).

Like I said, it’s a really intersting question: what does your linkshell say about you?  What kinds of people do you associate with?  To what extent do you think that other people’s actions should reflect upon you?  The first person clearly things that everything anyone does who’s even slightly connected to me is -my- fault, where as the second person says the exact opposite.  Everyone’s different–everyone sees things from a different perspective.

What I find amusing, though, is that when I tell people that “you can think whatever you want, we’ll just have to agree that we see things differently” and the like, they continue to argue for THEIR point, insisting mine is wrong.  When I try to be mature and make sure I’m not only hearing one biased side of the story, I get told I’m sticking my nose into other people’s buisness, even if it changes my opinion of people.  And I find it REALLY funny, that I’m the one being told to “grow up,” when everyone else are the ones who are harboring grudges that could easily be cleared up by asking me.

Anyways, got off on a bit of a tangent on the end ^^;;  I do honestly believe though that some actions, such as someone you respect treating someone horrible, require action in order to be delt with properly, while other actions, such as the Soboro example, are just plain silly.  I’m sure each of you reading this has a slightly different opinion as well, though hopefully no one demands that their opinion be the only legit. one, or are way at one side of the spectrum!

So. My linkshell officially sponsors Relics now. Get it to stage four, and they’ll pay for the last upgrade. They announced it last night, and my chat log exploded. Maybe because I’m actually one of the oldest members (which is crazy for me!) and I’m nearly always there, but I had so many people sending me tells about it. Not a single one was a happy tell. I’ve done a lot of thinking about it, and I’m still kind of meh on the whole thing. I was seriously just staring at my screen in shock though with how many people I was talking to at once about it.

I had one witty comment of “This is the part where the linkshell leader steals the bank and transfers servers,” which had me cracking up pretty hard. Previously, we’ve all gotten gil at the end of the month, and this month we won’t be getting any because the bank is too low. I had a few people tell me flat out that they were quitting the linkshell–they weren’t willing to put in work and have someone else benefit off it, which I can’t blame them. I feel the same way…I’ve just got a lot invested in this linkshell. A few others said they were going to get their gear and get out ASAP, which…again, it’d be nice to be able to do, but I have so much I want and I rarely get relic pieces. Others just fussed, which is where I’m at right now.

Do I think they should have changed the rules? Absolutely not. With a result like this… The officers voted 2/3 to pass the new rule. The linkshell, as a whole, voted 15/25 against the new rule. Apparently 5 or so of those people later sent tells saying “wait, I changed my mind, I want to have the linkshell fund relics,” but it was 15/25 public vote against. I guess my strong reasoning, other than the fact that I don’t like the new rule at all, for saying that it shouldn’t have been passed is because of how many people have left/want to leave. When 1/3 of your linkshell is ready to leave because of a new rule…it doesn’t matter that half of the linkshell is ok with it. That half that wanted the change, not a single one would have left because the rule wasn’t passed.

What really kills me is how many of my friends have left/are going to leave because of this rule. Three people said they were leaving: Staren, Vidrie, and Pikel. To be honest, despite the fact that I’ve got enough points for 15 relic pieces or so at this point and am at the top of the line basically, I was ready to leave. The new rule, whatever, it’s stupid but I can deal with it. I don’t want to deal with my friends leaving. Within a few minutes of hearing them all say they were leaving, and several other of my friends say they were leaving as soon as they got gear, AND having 2-3 people be complete assholes about people leaving (comments such as “good, I’m glad you’re leaving, I’m sick of your fucking attitude,” “great, people are leaving! that puts me higher on the list to get relic equipment!,” and “haha I bet the people who are quitting are crying in their social linkshell about how mean we are right now” are ABSOLUTE BULLSHIT and I never, EVER want to hear people say shit like that–linkshell leaders in particular should know to behave better than that) I was very seriously considering leaving. I do limbus with this nice guy, a friend of Pikel’s, and I like the group–everyone’s sweet. I recently swapped to doing einherjar with him as well due to me having class Tuesday nights (still unsure if I’ll be staying with them or swapping back to DM when I’m done with class, but that’s a ways off yet), so obviously I like the guy. And last night I spent quite a bit of time discussing the ins and outs of his dynamis linkshell with a serious intent to swap shells. 3 of the officers in limbus are actually officers in this dynamis shell as well, and I really like all of them.

However, I soon found out that Pik has an ex in this shell, so he refuses to join it…and so Vid won’t either. Then, Star said he decided to stick with DM for me after talking with the linkshell leaders, so that gets rid of my main reason for swapping anyways–to be with friends. I still don’t like the new rule, and I am incredibly pissed at how the leaders are behaving–at this point, I have respect for ONE linkshell leader out of 3–but I’ll give it a go. If things keep going like this though…it’s a game, it should be fun. With how people are treating others, it’s not so much fun anymore. But I’ll certainly try it.

Anyways, it’s not that I’m AGAINST dynamis linkshells sponsoring relics, however, I don’t think that every group is able to do it, and I don’t think mine should. If I was in a linkshell with a dedicated 25-30 people who showed up every night, and who we did events 6 nights a week or something I would be all for it. Right now, we’ve got over 50 members, many of which don’t show up regularly, and although this group does dynamis (2x/week), sky (1x/week), einherjar (1x/week), and limbus (2x/week), we’ve evolved to be this. Dyna and Sky were the original events, and they ran independently–only 1/3 the people from dyna did sky or so. About 1/3 of the dynamis group did sky with another linkshell. Then we swapped to doing einherjar instead of sky 1 day a week, and again, everything was independent…a few people did einherjar with other linkshells still, etc.. Then they started up limbus. At first it was just a few of us from DM casually doing it every once and a while–I wanted to do it regularly, so Star and I joined a different linkshell. After that limbus became a linkshell event–but there were people who already had limbus linkshells. Plus, while 50+ people work together for dyna…only 20 or so do sky. Only 30 or so do einherjar. Only 12 or so do limbus. Provided the people who benefit and get relics do every event…how many of those 50+ people really get a decent benefit from them having it? And who’s to say people won’t leave the shell? Stuff comes up, who’s to say they won’t quit ffxi? Then it’s the work of 50 people that goes down the drain, and none of us have anything to show for it. Then what?

So, anyways. Really not happy with how things have gone, but this is how it is. Gotta roll with the punches.

I just threw away my Benevolent and NecessaryIllusions sky linkshell pearls.  It’s funny how bothered I am by the whole thing.  I feel like it’s my fault, that everything I said was wrong, and if it wasn’t for me the linkshell wouldn’t have died–and I know that feeling is stupid, and I’m wrong.  But it’s hard when it looks like everyone’s pointing their fingers at me.

It was fun while it lasted; I joined February 10th, 2008, and it was fun for a good 6 months.  I got my fast pants, my Z. Crown and Mitts, Kitty’s Haidate, and Kirin’s Osode–plus 1M gil that I cashed in points for.  Supposedly they’re splitting up the linkshell back, so I’ll probably end up with more…too bad it ended on such a sour note.  Apparently it’s wrong to think that people can act decently.  Wish things could have gone differently, but I think that’s enough /emo’ing for a gaming blog, so I’ll end it at that.

That said, I’ve updated the “Anexia” page–removed Bene/NI, obviously, and have added SeaMonkiesLS…good thing I just joined a limbus/sea linkshell.

Today saw my Black Mage dinging both 50 and 51–time for my first AM scroll as well as the wonderful elemental staves, and I’ll get my first AF in one more level!

I started out soloing in Cape Teriggan as level 49, getting ~150 exp/mob with my empress band. Shortly after I dinged 50, a friend invited me to duo with his Black Mage, which was level 44. I spent 45 minutes or so duo’ing with him, which got me 1/3 of the way into level 51, and him level 46–we were holding steady at about 13.5k exp/hour.

So! When I finally find a copy of Freeze for myself, I should be more than set to start exp’ing in Gustav Tunnel, one shotting poor, innocent leeches (:  Until then, I’ll have to occupy myself with obtaining my AF!