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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Dynamis has been going well.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I’ll try to do this semi-chronologically:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Salvage

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

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

Limbus

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

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

Dynamis

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

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

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

Salvage

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

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

Limbus

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

Dynamis

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

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

Other

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Hmm, what else have I been up to…

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

So: little updates on the above listed items~

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Alternate Title: It’s been a very productive week in the world of Anexia.

Sunday saw my dynamis linkshell’s THIRD Xarc in a row, though I certainly wasn’t complaining.  Earlier this month, I netted a Summoner’s Horn and a Scholar’s M.board off the same run, and this week I managed to top that: Sorcerer’s Petas. (what’s actually on my list), Commodore Tricorne (which dropped right after my BLM hat, and then free dropped to me), and netted a last minute pair of Cleric’s Mitts as well!  This puts me at 5/6 Xarc. pieces for my 75s!  All that remains is BRD pants, which I’m not super keen on anyways, what with having AF+1 pants.  I also am able to lot Valor Surcoat since my PLD is 65…but my PLD is 65.  So I’ll wait for that ^^

I started Dynamis in November of 2007, and 1 year later I got my Duelist’s Chapeau.  Between then and this month, I got nothing from Xarc, which was fine — my hat was worth it~  This month, nearly a full year after that…I get five pieces.  Nearly 2 years and I only got 1 piece, and then in two nights, during 1 month…I get 5 pieces.  Crazy!

TONIGHT!, then.  We did Arrapago last night and got nothing really, and then went to do it tonight as well since we were low on people.  We killed like the first 4-5 mobs, and got nothing off them — leading us to joke about our THF’s fail TH4.  I, on the other hand, said we were just saving it for later.  Fast forward to the first THF Qiqirn.  Right before we get to it, my graphic card crashes (frequent problem), and so I get booted.  I go to get back on, and as it’s taking forever to log in realize that my internet’s been acting up…which means I have to restart.  I let my group know in vent, and hit the restart button.  Just as windows was loading back up…my phone starts to ring.  I run to grab it, and sure enough, it’s Staren: “Hurry, it dropped your coat!”

Needless to say, I was about freaking out as I was logging back in, but I made it safe and sound and now have my very own Macha’s Coat!!  Good week, very good week :)  Of course, I’m going to be stupidly biased now, as to what zones I want to do…finishing this robe, {Yes, please!}  Time to start cracking down on gil as well, need to figure out how much exactly I need yet~~

Just a little blurb quick on the Scholar “glitch” — I bet they’ll fix it, but I wouldn’t be surprised if they didn’t.  It’s very had to pull off from my understanding, but because I bet there’ll be bots sooner or later that make it go off correctly maybe they’ll cap it at 5-6-7, something like that, MV stacking.  Still can do a nice chunk of damage, but nothing game-breaking.  Very cool though, it definately made me want to play around with my Scholar a bit more ;)

And I’ll end with a fun quote from Salvage tonight — I responded to this one with a “good save ;)”, if I remember right!