Mage of All Trades

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 :]

Well! I survived the server merge with only a few bumps and bruises! Anexia was taken :< So, as of now I’m known as Anexya to the world of Vana’diel.  The only other slight changes is that I failed epically when recreating my dynamis linkshell — TheGreatPerhaps.  Thankfully the name survived…but rather than a pretty deep red color…it’s VERY pink x: Oops!  Most of the linkshell took it pretty well though, even if there was a good deal of conversation about it ^^;;

Before I get into the actual entry though…has anyone else noticed a change in magic accuracy, particularly on enfeebles?  Both of the dynamis runs I’ve done so far have had WAY more resisted sleeps than they should have, and even duo and trio’ing in sea has been a disaster.  I helped a friend with the final moogle fight as well, and NOTHING was sticking :<  Ninja-nurf?

Last days on Remora

The last few days that I spent on Remora were very productive; two friends from TGP were from Windurst also and so the four of us along with two helpers went and killed the Orc NM in Davoi for our Cursed Wands.  Star and I had gone out on two separate occasions in the past and died I don’t even know how many times due to this stupid monster, so this time we ran out with a full party.  Thankfully, it went much easier this time!  We still had a few deaths on the first kill — two orcs outside the house along with two orcs inside AND a black mage monster never bode well!  2 wands drop with every kill, so after we got our first two we chilled out inside the now empty house waiting for the monster to repop.  It was quite the fun hour or so :)

With Dirtyhand out of the way, Star and I were able to breeze through the rest of the Windurst missions, and left Remora at rank 10 ^^ This gave me my third (!) flag for my mog house <3

Besides Windurst missions, Star and I also managed to complete EVERY LAST assault!  We were both quite tickled when we were able to hold onto 4 assault tags rather than 3.  Unfortunately, neither of us had finished the ToAU missions, so we were unable to rank up to Captain :<  Still though, getting that much done the last weekend on Remora…not too shabby!

First few days on Leviathan

The first day or so on Leviathan was less than enjoyable; having to change my name was no fun a’tal :<  Several people from both of my linkshells had to change their name, and it’s just never fun to lose your identity.  After playing for over 3 years, it really sucked to lose my name to someone’s mule (regardless of if it was made by a Leviathan player ages ago or maliciously created by someone on Remora).  Add that to people /sh that anyone from Remora needed to show their green card to be welcome…it was a bit chaotic!  It’s not like we WANTED to leave Remora and be forced to change names and whatnot!

Thankfully things settled down fairly quick.  Star and I set to work on ToAU missions shortly after the merge–I was on the Puppet in Peril fight while Star was back on the Khim #13 fight.  He, Omni and I took down Khim pretty easily, and the next day Star and I along with our friend Aneu breezed through Puppet in Peril.  That fight is actually the only fight I was not 1/1 on, but it was still super easy~~  Over the next few days, we completed ToAU with a group of pick ups — very fun! It’s such a nice story line; I really enjoyed it.  With ToAU complete, I was able to pick up my spiffy refresh ring, and rank up to Captain! ^^

ToAU complete, Star and I set to finishing up with the first two expansions.  While we both technically had them done, we needed to complete Shadows of the Departed and Apoc. Nigh.  We duo’d the first as BLU and DNC, and had a few friends help with Apoc. Nigh — and now we both have spiffy new earrings! :D

In my last entry, I mentioned leveling my ninjar with Wiggin’s red mage; this has continued on Leviathan.  Before leveling with Wiggin, my NIN was at 54, and now it’s at 61 ^^  Quite the nice jump!  Our most recent party was on Leviathan, and I kind of giggled when I saw how TWO of the people in our party had /seacoms saying they were cool with doing MMM for exp.  It’s probably the only difference I’ve noticed between Remora and Leviathan as far as how we play…no one on Remora did MMM hardly, and certainly not for exp.  We partied in Waj. Woodlands for a while, and then headed over to Lower Jeuno to try this MMM exp thing…and it wasn’t too bad! I got about 1k exp from killing the monsters, followed by 4.5k exp for completing the thingie in about 25 min.  Still…just feels weird doing MMM instead of a “traditional” exp party!

Hmm, other than all that!  A few people from my dynamis linkshell needed the ACP win, myself included.  With help from two people, four of us managed to get the win! It was very smooth, until the last little bit, but we still pulled through ^^  I’ve done that stupid fight at LEAST 10 times by now, and this is my first win so I was very excited!  Unfortunately…I have no idea what body I want to get or what stats I want to put on it x: So my key is just chilling, and I’ll redeem my reward later on :)  I also helped a friend of mine get a Despot kill — he was trying to get a pair of kitty panties (and went 1/1 — grats Aneu!!), and it was super fun to “solo” for the first time.  Aneu was there to ballad me, but still!  Very fun ^^ And to think! I said I was “busy busy” in my last entry!

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 :<

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! :)

The last few days Star and I have been working on the new expansion — last night saw us finishing it!  On Monday we did the first 9 missions, and on Tuesday we did the rest of the missions but lost the final battle :(  Wednesday saw us attempting the last fight two more times, with a different stragety, and winning on our third attempt :D  The fight is actually really enjoyable — I like it much better than the final ACP fight.  Though, as a mage, I love manaburning things.  For the fight, our general stragety was to have Raven and Star, our black mages, kite/nuke the NM, bouncing hate back and forth.  I went on RDM and helped bind/gravity, as well as refresh the pair of them.

We also had a BRD, who’d I say was really important to winning.  At 50% the NM summons helper moogles, all of which I’m pretty sure are black mages — several of them opened up right away with -aga spells.  With horde lullaby’s near insta-cast, we were able to sleep them all before anything went off ^__^  He also helped with ballads :D  Our last two members were both samurais, one of which was /rdm and the other was /whm.  The moogle’s TP moves go through shadows, and them having stoneskin was really nice ^^

The only real issues we had with the fight was the main TP move and the baby moogles coming out.  The TP move draws people in (though if you’re on the other side of the BC you don’t get drawn in) and does approx. 600 dmg or so and stuns everyone.  Our first attempt was a more DD heavy party set up, and we wiped the first time the babies got pulled out due to us not having a bard and our blm targeting the main boss to sleepga…and not realizing that we couldn’t target him  .___.

Ah well, live and learn!  The second wipe was caused by the main boss doing his TP move AND summoning the mini’s at the same time — gogo being stunned while multiple mobs are casting -agas!!  Anyways, it all ended up working out in the end, so it’s all good ^__^  I didn’t get my hat yet — I wasn’t sure what stats I wanted on it, but Star got a nice piece for his monk with STR, ACC, and WS ACC for his tp moves (:

Anyways, it was just a really fun night — I’ve got three quotes for this post because Omni’s a riot–he was our bard for the night.  First one — we had just zoned into the BC and Omni got his first glance at the NM we had to fight.  His reaction:

Onto the second!  This one isn’t so funny on it’s own — we were talking about strategy and how we were going to do the fight, and we kept referring to the moogles that the main boss spawns as the “babies”.

Anyways, Omni goes from talking about it being wrong to kill babies to talking about the babies raping us, hehe.  Of curse, the first SS was before we entered the fight for the first time, while the second was when we were about to go in for the second time:

So, that was interesting.  After staying up WAY to late trying to finish the new expansion, I woke up today to try and find Mr. Shiki.  Star was working from home so he was able to help, and Udders logged in to help as well.  We also had a WAR friend on who came with to help.  I’ve killed Shiki before, and he was never too difficult so I was pretty confident that we’d fare well if we got claim.  We arrived early, and did two pages of FoV.  Then, like always seems to happen, just as his window opened a ton of people showed up.

Udders was so funny, we were all running around and he ended up dead — he goes “Well, I was running and I got stuck on something…something invisible.  So I casted to see if it was Shiki.”  Anyways, this little white mage taru was casting RRIII on himself and aggroed Shiki as well as 3-4 of his friends.  It was odd, he ended up dying as I was running over to him, and I tried to cast Dia but Shiki’s name went green…like a npc.  Didn’t get claim, but I did aggro 2-4 mobs from attempting to .__.  Managed to have probably 6 on me by the time I died somehow, and once everything ran away I got up.  Of course, by this point there’s 15+ people running around…waaay too stressful for not getting enough sleep the night before!

After several more deaths and aggroed mobs, we managed to snag Shiki.  I had just raised Udd, and 2 mobs on me, aggroed a third, and then finally Shiki aggroed.  Star got him, Giu was off somewhere else killing aggro tha the got, and Udd managed to get hit by AoE and died again .__.  I helped Star as much as I could with my 300 hp and 100 mp, while trying to keep 3 other mobs slept…it didn’t go too well, beleive you me!  I ended up dying, and got up after the other mobs went away — the people who showed up to camp were apparently our WAR’s friends, so they helped cure our melee while I was unable to <3  They also helped kill the weapons I had aggroed.

At one point I was just like you know what, we better get the drop today…because I don’t want to come back and camp against all of these people tomorrow!  Anyways, it thankfully dropped 8D  My summoner is going to be pretty darn nice once I get to 75 — I’m really looking forward to leveling it again one Sto gets back!  Summoner’s Spats, YYR, Evoker’s Pigaches +1…just need to kill Fenrir for my Evoker’s Ring! ^^

Quote of the day:

Back when we got Uddoro his YYR, we somehow got on the topic of fashion and I shared my disgust for how the YYR looks.  I hated wearing the one that looks similar on my ninja at 40, and I just don’t really care for it x:  It looks ok on mithra, but looks rather silly on humes, imo.  Anyways, it’s just really funny that he remembered that and is using it on me now, 18+ months after I gt him his, hehe.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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 ^^