Mage of All Trades

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

I’ll try to do this semi-chronologically:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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! :)

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!

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:

Diabolos________________________________
Earlier this week, a few friends and I watched the Diabolos prime fight.  Star’s been wanting Diabolos as a summon, as well as a Diabolos Earring for his monk.  With yesterday’s update, he was sure (and ended up being right) that SE would fix the glitch that allowed puppetmasters to solo Diabolos.  On Remora, at least, there is a puppetmaster who’s been shouting for weeks that she’ll solo Diabolos for gil, and so on Saturday afternoon Star poked her to see if she’d take us and a few friends.  I don’t really like spending gil on something like this — it’s much more fun for me to actually be a part of it, but since 1. I already had Diabolos, 2. Star needed the win and wanted to do this, and 3. I was kind of curious to watch Diabolos being soloed I went along also.  It was pretty fun, we went with Uddles and Usmc again — it was actually our first avatar of our crazy-avatar-filled weekend.

With a puppetmaster, we were able to all stand on top and have the puppet nuke down Diabolos without ever getting drawn in, which has now been fixed.  It was pretty cool to see, all things considering, and I’ve now got a nifty Diabolos Pole.  I’ve been needing to cap Staff skill anyways, or at least get it to a decent skill — it’s barely over 100 right now.  I figure getting a nifty new weapon’ll help! ^^  It was fun though, towards the end of the fight Uddles was being a goober and summoned Diabolos, and goes “oh no, how did Diabolos get up here!?  There’s two, oh no!!”

End Game_______________________________
So, end game.  Nyzul ended up not happening this weekend due to only 3 people being on for it, which is fine — we just continued traveling Vana’diel and poking various avatars that night.  Dyna was fairly interesting this week; we did Beau. on Thursday and got our first snow win!  We’ve now got about 30 people with Xarc. access, so hopefully next month we’ll be able to do one or two ^^  It was a very long night though — another linkshell entered about 90 min. before we were due to enter, and they were supposed to be done because they had a short run planned, but they ended up taking quite a bit longer — we ended up entering over an hour late.  Also, another linkshell ended up showing up just before the first group was done, and we were all pretty pissy that they thought they could come and get the zone .__.  Thankfully they left though!

Limbus was canceled on Monday due to the update, which was fine.  I’ll be trying to solo Apyollon NW this afternoon, I wanted to duo it with Star but he doesn’t want to :(  Oh well, even if I get just 2-3 coins it’ll pay for the run so it’s all good.  I’m hoping I can get fairly far in it, but we’ll see.  I’ve duo’d and trio’d the run before, back before I had black mage leveled, so this’ll be fun to try ^^  Last Friday was the run that I got to lead, which was a bit nerve-wracking.  I kept forgetting to lot coins…oops!  It was kind of a crummy run, but in my defense I picked a zone that everyone hates because we never have much luck with it.  Regardless, we still need the chip from it, which we managed to get!  It was interesting to pick which chests to open, and to try and balance out time chests with item chests.  Each time chest gave 15 minutes, and we ended with 5-10 min remaining…so I picked pretty good!  We only got 3-4 AF+1 items though, if I remember right, and just 2-3 coins each.  Ah well.

Moogle Expansion_________________________
After ACP came out and I spent several hours that night doing the first quests, I swore I’d never do it again.  But…I kind of spent all of last night doing the new expansion x:  It was actually pretty nice — we ended up doing it with myself, Star, Raven and Illi from limbus, and then a few strangers I didn’t know.  It was set up pretty close to ACP, but it didn’t annoy me nearly as much.  It starts with a CS, and then a fetch quest just like ACP, but the fetch quests had drops from more mobs than ACP.  In ACP the fetch items dropped off only 30~ mobs or so, where as in this expansion there are 100~ mobs that drop the item.  Then, instead of a second fetch quest, you get to go logging, minning, and harvesting.  Later on you also need to chocobo dig, and possibly fish (you need an item that is only fished up, and there were none on the AH on my server)

I personally feel like SE listened to the players complaining about the silly fetch quests in ACP — this expansion has been much more fun so far for me.  This one just has a lot more to do, rather than CS > bot low level mobs, rinse and repeat.  I’m about 2/3 of the way done now ^^  I really disliked that in ACP everything was stupidly easy but very annoying until you got to the fights, and then those were stupidly hard, so here’s hoping this expansion has nicer fights.  I really don’t mind buying these mini-expansions, but I wish they were like 5.99$ or 6.99$ rather than 9.99$.  That just seems a bit high, considering 3×9.99 is the same price as a full fledge expansion, which these three mini-expansions certainly won’t amount to.  Ah well.  The story line for this expansion is super cute too, gogo moogle mafia!

I’ll end with an amusing quote from our first Glacier Dynamis run with this new linkshell:

In my current linkshell, we put our glasses in bazaar so that if we’re AFK at the end of a dyna run, or if we’re dead, an officer can buy our glass to kick us out so they can get coins.  It’s –supposed– to be 1gil…but I put mine in for 10gil, hehe.  More often than not, even though no one’s supposed to, at the end of runs when the officers say it’s ok to drop glass we all go on a spree buying everyone else’s glass.  It’s a contest — who can kick the most people out, and is rather fun.  Stoters wasn’t happy with me that I jacked up the price, lol.

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:

At the start of the last conquest week, I recieved notice that I was approved to chaperone a wedding!  BTW, interesting fact about weddings…when you get an approval, it doesn’t list names.  Makes things a smidge tricky if you’re applying to chaperone multiple weddings, as I learned!  Thankfully I had copies of my original applications ^___^  I’m really happy for the couple who got approved — I’ve been applying for them for weeks.

I haven’t been up to too much lately — my little sister came to town to visit me for the last week so I’ve not been on 11 much lately.  I did manage to get a few more merits though, and am now at 3/3 Freeze II and Burst II merits — just another 20 merits and I’ll be capped out on BLM!  After that I’ll upgrade Spell Inturruption % Down and consider my Black Mage –fully– merited out!

Limbus____________________
The last limbus run that I did was last Friday — I managed to forget soap on Monday :<  I had gotten my second SCH AF+1 mat the Monday before, and so had turned in my M.board to upgrade, and then on Friday received my second RDM AF+1 mat ^___^  I’ll be turning in my W. Chapeau this weekend to upgrade to +1 for a few more INT.  Monday was a dissapointment though, I was actually able to come SCH to limbus…and then forgot soap, as previously mentioned :<  I’m pretty happy with my SCH gear — AF+1 hat/body, relic 5/6 (missing hat), full HQ staves, omega/tamas/snow/aqua rings, etc.. — and I -rarely- get to use it.  Of course, I still need to merit it out…I’ve got no job specific merits but full MP/INT/ele. skill/enf. skill certainly helps ^_~  But yeah, rarely get to use it, and the one time I would have been able to I managed to not get soap ~_~  All I can think of is I talked to the NPC and got my Sch. M.board +1 and when I talked to her again I clicked the wrong option to get soap?  Really not sure.  Ah well.

Goofing around in Sea on Scholar after being left out of Limbus…gotta love how pretty the zone is!

Dynamis___________________
We canceled dynamis on Sunday due to the holiday weekend, and then the run before that was on Thursday…which probably should have been canceled.  Our group is still fairly new and we’re not awful but we’re not amazing either.  There’s definitely room for improvement.  Anyways, we’re used to going with 20-24 people or so, and last run we did with only 16.  We got a few pieces of relic, and some coins, but all in all it was not our best run.

Synthing___________________
As stated in my last update, I managed to ding 68 to get my Bonecrafter’s Apron.   Since then, I’ve gotten myself up to 71.2~ or so.  Not a huge difference, but my next 7.8 levels of skill ups are on synths that I’m more or less breaking even on or even profitting a small chunk for–hip hip hurray!  Star and I tried our hand at clamming to get Coral Fragments for myself and lumber for his woodworking but it went horribly, so I’m thinking I’ll just stick with Tigerfangs (:

Anyways, like I said…not too much has been going on lately.  Today I’ve been trying to merit but apparently no one wants a bard — people who say bards always get invites, remember this :p

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

We’ve NEVER had an issue with Cerb before, and then in one night we wipe to him twice :/  Part of it is because we didn’t have our static and had two pick ups I’m sure, and that not everyone grabbed the right meds that they needed…but he was just taking us out one by one.  He was pratically one shotting people, and spammed paralyze-aga up on everyone several times, as well as some other not fun nasty stuff.  Anyways, next week will be fl20x2, fl80x1, and fl100x1 probably.  Our big pieces yet to get are: Goliard Shoes, Askar Pants, Goliard Cuffs, Askar Body, and Denali Bonnet.  There are a few more people wouldn’t mind getting, ie Goli hatx2, Denali shoes x1, Goli Cuffs x1, a few Askar hats, etc… but those are the “big” pieces ^^