Mage of All Trades

Another Salvage post!  I’ll start with the happy stuff, since, well, it’s happy!  To date, our salvage group has gotten 5 35s, which isn’t half bad considering we’ve only been going 2-3x/week for 8 weeks!  We’ve gotten: 2 pairs of Usukane pants, 1 Morrigan Robe, 1 Skadi shoes (which has since left the group :<), and one pair of Morrigan hands.  Of course, none of these have been completed yet, but we’ve gotten the 35s for it!  Since 4 of those are from Arrapago, last week we did two Bhaf. bosses to try and match up some 25s.  Monday night we got Skadi shoes 25 (which went to Star, since the guy with the 35 left D:, putting him @2/3) and Ares’s mask, which went to Seite who was actually @2/3 on that piece from another group, making Monday complete our first upgrade!  Tuesday we netted the Ares’s 25 body and the Usukane 25 pants…thus starting the shit storm.

Our lotting system is pretty strait forward; it’s a group for friends, but we have priorities etc.. so we know what to focus on.  We also have interest pieces, so that if they drop people can have claim on them, but we don’t go out of our way to get them.  So, my list looks like this: #1 Morri Robe, #2 Morri Slops, Interest Morri Pigaches, Crown, Gloves.  One person had Ares’s Body as #1, one person had it as #2.  Ditto for the Usukane pants.  The people who had it listed as #2 both were very unhappy that they couldn’t lot, and complained.  So the question that’s on mine and the other “leaders” is: WHY DO YOU NOT HAVE IT LISTED AS #1 THEN?  I mean, I’m really not sure how much clearer we could get…

One guy was ok with it, but the other guy…wow.   He was livid that the first guy got Usu legs instead of him, because he “just joined.”  Our Salvage group is made up of our Nyzul group; this is someone from our Nyzul group.  He didn’t come for the first seveal runs due to RL stuff, but it wasn’t like he got the 25 on his first run.  Moreover, he also had the 35; we didn’t give the 25 to someone who needed the 35 over someone who could upgrade now.  Bleugh.  Anyways, I was then told I was a liar because Rae wasn’t with us from the start, and I “ninja added him”.  I kid you not, that’s what I was told.  This Salvage group was BASED around our Nyzul static…but I ninja’d someone in from Nyzul.  Then he went off about how I told him that we couldn’t change any wanted gear (which…I didn’t; I’ve let 3-4 people change their gear within the last few weeks, and chatted with the other “leaders” about people swapping gear too), so we’re fucking him over because we’re not doing CC @ SSR for his Usu body, which, btw, he claims we can do with ANY old 6 people.  Anyone can do it.  Also, he knew I was changing people’s gear, and he told me “well I thought you guys were my friends so I looked the other way.”  He never once asked me about it, yet he holds ME responsible for not knowing that he was having issues with the lotting system, because I didn’t go to him and ask him if he wanted to change it.  I’m not a babysitter, really guys, I’m not.  I work at a daycare with toddlers, I expect this kind of behavior from them.  Not from an adult.

Anyways! One specific example: We were planning on doing Arrapago Sat, SSR Mon, and Bhaf boss Tues.  Because this guy was so upset about not doing SSR, and insisting that us not doing it due to low numbers was BS, we tried it last night with 6 people.  We just wanted to fix things with him; when he doesn’t have something lodged up his rear he’s a very nice guy and we DO want to get him his gear.  He’s a friend and we’ve always wanted to help him.  So we went with 6.  The first bit of the run went well, he was telling us what to do and acknowledged that we wouldn’t get to CC just then but we’d learn for Monday. We get to the 4th floor with less than 20 minutes left, and suddenly he changes to completely unreasonable and a HUGE jerk.  He’s complaining to Star about person x and person y, and how they suck so bad at their jobs and why can’t they just get it right.  He’s telling the RDM that he needs to gravity and bind everything after it’s slept, despite the fact that we’ve got like 4 things at camp and there are things like recast timers.

This is the lovely stunt he pulled on me last night.

I was on bard; I’m NEVER on bard.  At the start of the night, I asked if Marchx2 was acceptable, and was told yes, that was fine.  So anyways, we’re on the 4th floor, and he asks for mad/min when we have ONE minute remaining.  Except, he doesn’t ask.  He tells.  And, he insults Staren in the process, as Star has a blackbelt and he doesn’t.  Star’s belt has NOTHING to do with this; our other bards always cast Marchx2, and did this BEFORE Star started to come as monk. Moreover, I ASKED, and was told March x2 was good.  I was a smidge miffed given how the evening had gone, but I tried to be nice about it.  Looking back, that ;) may have been ill-timed since he was mad too but I honestly didn’t mean anything bad by it.  So anyways, we get kicked out a minute later, and this happens:

He’s mad because he “told” me to sing mad/min for the gears.  As you can see here, I’m all but positive he did not.  Despite this fact, I explained why I was confused and acknowledged that I misunderstood what he meant if he really did ask for this for gears on the 4th floor.  Of course, I then had to go back and double check.  This is what he asked for earlier:

To which I responded “ok”.  I don’t know…he may have thought it, but I can’t read minds, and I do not see ANYTHING about needing min/mad for gears or for floor 4.  It’s not in the SS, but I double checked and he asked for this we were killing…the Rampart on fl3!  So after we killed the rampart, I went back to Marchx2!  I just..I don’t even know.  With this guy, EVERYTHING is someone else’s fault.  He was complaining this week about how he got shit from our Nyzul static, when he got askar shoes and pants.  He said he wanted body, and when it droped it was his…and he TOLD Rae to lot against him.  Rae won, and our static fucked him over because he got “shit”.  I lied to him because I said Rae was a part of our Salvage group from the start, and I fucked him over because he didn’t ask me if he could change his wanted list.  Obviously I’m stupid and didn’t realize that he wanted mad/min for fl4 gears…I mean, how could I have missed that that’s what he was asking?  Nothing is *EVER* his fault.  It’s always someone elses.  I’m thinking it’s about time to cut our losses, and I’ll be sad to see him go because he was a good friend, and is a great player.  But this bullshit isn’t acceptable.

He told Star and I both that we shouldn’t “mistake his kindness for weakness.” Oh, we won’t…but we also won’t mistake your elitism that we somehow missed, or your pigheadness, for strength.

Anywho! Enough of that, if anyone is still reading!  And this last SS, my “quote of the day”, is very nice (: Out of the 6 people present…guess who the only female is!

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:

I know this may seem silly to many, but this is a huge accomplishment for me, and I’m SO very excited that I received my Bonecrafter’s apron today!

Edited to add: AND I just got Goliard Cuffs from Nyzul!! I’m 4/5 on the set now, with my only missing piece being pants which I don’t really care to get…hooray!  Next entry: much fussing about the lack of good bonecrafting synths between 66 and 73~  8D

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 ^^

I enjoy limbus, I really do like it.  Over the past 8 months or so, I’ve upgraded quite a few pieces: bard hands, body, and legs; scholar body; black mage body; summoner shoes.  For bard, it was all win-win for me; it was my third job, and I tossed the pieces I’d never use into storage.   Starting with BLM though, and for SCH and SMN as well, whenever I’m not on that job, the AF is with an armor storer.  With 8 jobs past 50 with full AF sets, it saves SO much space to not have it on hand.  That said…it’s a HUGE pain in the rear to upgrade anything and have to request that piece to restore the set :<  Particularly when you upgrade pieces back to back D:  Not only do you have to quest that particular piece…but you also have to do all of the prequests.  So far, I’ve requested the SCH af1 scroll just to toss it, and ditto to the SMN af1 and BLM af1 weapons.  I’ve also requested my SMN bracers, just to toss them, so that the Calling Hands quest would be labled complete.  Pain. in. the. rear.

That said!  I now have a few nice shiny pieces for my SMN once I get 70+.  I’ve got Evoker’s Pigaches +1 at level 74, in addition to Summoner’s Spats at level 73.  I’m not too worried about getting my Evoker’s Ring–that’ll be pretty easy.  YYR will be intersting to camp…but I like poking Shiki ^^  I’ve helped a handful of friends get their YYR–four now, I think?  So with any luck one or two of them won’t mind coming to help me, and I know Star’ll help.  Other than that…I found the CUTEST dat-mod for tarutaru–isn’t she adorable?

Dyna’s been fun lately!  We’ve now got 4/4 city wins, and will hopefully be doing a Beau. on Thursday!  Our first Windy run (we’ve done three now) was pretty darn crappy — we got ONE relic piece, war, and no one wanted it.  Second and third was much better, netting probably 15-20 or so relics between the two runs.  The second run I lotted a pair of Cleric’s Duckbills, putting me 4/5 for White Mage, and the third run I netted a pair of Summoner’s Spats ^__^  I passed a pair of PLD shoes that I debated on lotting…but oh well :<  Hopefully we’ll do enough Windys to get me the gear I want!  I just need PLD and BLM from Windy now before I’ll have everything from the zone I want :D  Though…hmm.  I want brd hat from Sandy, nothing from Jeuno, and nothing from Bastok…wow!  Three pieces and I’m done with city gear!  Here’s a fun dyna SS that I took during our last Windy run:

As far as Sea goes, Star and I have been doing some more farming but haven’t had a ton of luck…we’ve gotten a handful of ghrah chips, ONE HQ Aern Organ.  We’ve both got capped buffers though, so I can’t complain ^^  On a similar note — I’ve also been doing a bit of meriting~  I’m now 5/5 on INT merits!! :D  I did a bit more meriting after that and put a second upgrade into Freeze II (: Just antoher 7 upgrades to cap out BLM!  Other than just meriting and farming in Sea, my limit points have increased thanks to a few CoP missions…mainly 8-3 and 8-4!  Omniflare and Ryong, two friends from my Nyzul Static, finally reached the end of CoP missions and let Star and I tag along to the BEST fight in the game!  8-4 is SUCH a fun fight, all of CoP is worth it for that one fight (:

Nyzul wise…we actually had a bit of luck last weekend!  Two floor 80′s yielding two Askar bodies, and two floor 100′s yielding one Askar hat…which unfortunately hit the floor due to us timing out :(  Oh well ^^ That’s two Askar bodies down!  Now our big pieces for Nyzul still to get are: Askar pants x1, Askar body x1, Denali hat x1, Denali shoes x1, Goliard Shoes x2, and Goliard Cuffs x2…still quite a bit but if we have more nights like last Saturday it won’t take us too long!

Yes, that is 11+ Statues in the background. And yes, this is Dyna - Valk!

The past few days have been quite busy, in a very (for the most part) productive way!  I’ll try to go in order:

Wednesday — saw us doing Dynamis – Valkrum, our second attempt ever.  The last one was a LONG time ago, and went so bad that we never tried since.  Wednesday, though, it went quite well!  We only killed 1 NM to weaken the Mega Boss…but had no problems with her, oddly enough!  We had four RDM/DRK ready to go–I was second, and she died less than halfway into my CS.  Of course, we then got slaughtered by the mini-malboros, but we got the win! 8D  Star got a THF cape, and Ecly got a SAM belt, so I was pretty happy for them!

I had my fingers crossed that a D. Chapeau -1 would drop, but it’s probably for the best that it didn’t.  Because of how infrequently we do dreamworlds, we don’t have good rules regarding them — I’m second in line for dreamworld RDM gear, but the girl ahead of me doesn’t have NQ D. Chapeau.  I probably wouldn’t have been too happy if it dropped and she got it :< Sweet as she is, it woulda spent MONTHS in storage before she got the NQ, with how often we do Xarc, and that would have been very dissapointing.

Friday — We did Temenos for Limbus, and it finally dropped a SCH AF+1 mat for me!  After a bit of debating, I decided to upgrade my Scholar’s Gown.  Unfortunately, this means I need to request it so I can restore the set.  This is my first time requesting AF, so it took me way too long to figure out how to reset the AF memory and that not only do I need to request my gown, but also the lvl 52 hands, and the lvl 46 spell.  Wee.  I’m now in the middle of requesting the hands (though I’ll have to drop my current hands to get it…), and then I’ll finally be able to request the gown to restore the set.

Goofing around with Star <3

After Limbus was Sea — we did a Jailer of Hope which went REALLY well.  We’ve tried both of the other Tier II Jailers and have had issues with them, but Hope was easy-peasy.  Then…we looked for Ix’DRK.  I really hate Ix’DRK.  We started at about 12:30 AM, and the plan was to spend “45min-1h” looking for him before calling it a night.  Of course, he pops right at the 1h mark.  Someone got the message in their chat log just as the ??? moved rooms, so we frantically looked for it.  We got him popped, but hadn’t cleared any of the Aerns in the room, so right away we had 6 angry Aerns on us, including Ix.  We got him pulled to the balcony room, and attracked 2 pots and a ghrah or two on the way.

The next 20 min was spent trying to seperate Ix from his friends…3 deaths later, we finally managed to do that.  19~20 reraises and 2 hours after THAT, Ix FINALLY stayed dead.  By this point it’s 4-5AM for everyone, and not only do none of us ever wanna fight Ix’DRK again, the BLUs never wanna /thf again or cannonball anything.  Me?  I just never want to go BRD to sea again :<  No cape of course, but at least we got a deed~~

Saturday — was just an uneventful Nyzul, we were 0/4 on drops :<

Sunday — Ecly, Star, and I tried trioing the Hagun ENM for the second time.  We killed it, and were quite pleased with that — last time we timed out :<  No Hagun, but I was just happy we beat it ^___^;; Maybe next time for the hagun!  We also actually did a snow dyna on Sunday!  Other than my computer being stupid (the chat log is only a few lines, so I often have to pull up the whole log and scroll up when things fly by too fast — my computer has been deleting the chat log lately :<), the run went well enough…we got the win, but got horrible drops.  For all that we only got 5 relic though, I got my BLM coat, and Ecly got his BLU body, so that was pretty nice ^^

Monday — was amazing.  We tried Ultima for the second time since I joined the linkshell (5th time since the ls started, I think?) and WON!  I was about dancing around my room I was so excited.  It would have been too much to expect Nashira pants, but I was hoping they’d drop so that Q and/or Raven could get because a) they’ve both put in a lot of work and haven’t gotten all that much from the ls and b) so that once they get theirs, I can move up in line for mine!  Of course, Ultima wasn’t feeling generous, but I’m just super excited we beat it!

It was pretty funny — we got it down to ~22% and I /tell Omni “and now for the moment of truth.”  Which, by the way, poor Omni — trial by Proto-Ultima! What a nice welcome to limbus!  All hell broke loose once we got Ultima below 20%, but we won!  We had 3 SAM who 2h’d one after another, and a DRK who 2h’d closer to 10%.  Pretty quick way to get Ultima from 20% to dead!  Our PLD had better gear this time around too, and it was a HUGE improvement.  One died earlier in the fight, but neither died to CB.  I think CB only went off 2-3x, and both PLD were left with 300 HP or so.  Anyways, like I said, VERY happy that we managed to take Ultima down.  We got a Turban and a pair of Crackows, and I got the Turban 8D!

Tuesday — today!  I’ve got sea tonight, but I logged in this morning to have a friend poke me about doing Salvage.  He’s trying to get a group going regularly, and while Star and I won’t be able to go frequently due to the times they go at (mid morning for Star and I — we’ve got class and school!), we did get to tag along today.   I’ve always loved Salvage, and have always wanted to do it regularly, so it was nice to do it today — though I’m sure Star wasn’t too happy with me fussing about wanting to do it more after we finished!  Right before timing out I managed to snag an Anu’s Tiara, which I was pretty pleased with!  Now I’ve got Marduk’s head (15) + hands (15) as well as Morrigan’s pants (15) + feet (15).  Nothing super impressive, but hopefully it’ll help once I do Salvage regularly!

Oy!  I think maybe I should update more often, so that my posts don’t get quite this long ^^;;  Oops!  Anywho, back to requesting my SCH af again — yay for reclaiming my inventory space!  Here’s a SS of all of my recent shinies:

Sunday proved to be an interesting Dynamis – Beau. run!  Star and I showed up, built our typical DD/pulling party of friends (BRD, WHM, RDM, SAM, DRG, THF), allianced with another DD pt and the paladin party…only to hear on vent that “hmm, there are only two black mages tonight…Ane, Star?”  Hehe, it wasn’t long before I got a tell from Star: “who told Issy we had blm!?”  Needless to say, the two of us quickly dropped alliance, got picked up by the BLAM party, and were warped back to swap jobs.  Just as we were doing this another black mage logged in so we had a nice 5 black mages total, and we stole the bard from the party I had built, so it wasn’t too bad.

So! My very first every dynamis run as a black mage :D  It’s so odd–I hear people say that “if you have blm, you’re ALWAYS blm in dynamis.”  I’ve had black mage at 75 for a good 6 months now, and this is the very first time I’ve had it in dyna!  Of course, I’ve also heard the same thing about bard, and I rarely come bard either…hehe.  That though, is by choice–I was bard only from the day I dinged 71 pratically, and I didn’t mind being brd in the blm party, but it really sucks in melee parties.  I stopped getting invited regularly to the blm party, so I stopped coming brd, ever :D  That’s fine though, <3 WHM and RDM.

Anyways, it was a fun run–we had our very first assassian team!  One of our members is close to being able to upgrade his relic (needs 10 more 100 pieces, I think? gil’s not an issue though so it won’t be too long~), and is needing his Attestation of Force.  The assassian team basically runs through certain areas, aggroing mobs to get certain things to spawn.  Lots of death is involved, and they meet up with the group later on.  We killed the mob that dropped the Attestation we needed, but got Excaliber’s attest. rather than the GAxe one.  By the time we killed this NM, we had ~10 min left, and we were so bummed out that we weren’t going to get the win–I had several friends with who needed it, and we botched our last attempt at the win.

Star came to the rescue though, and dragged us off to hit 3-4 timers, giving us an extra hour or so!  We did end up getting the win too, which was fantastic–I think we had all of 3-4 min left!  This, of course, is with “time saving” actions–you’d think we’d learn from our last Dynamis – San d’Oria run that meleeing Orc NMs was bad? o:  But no:

All in all it was a fun run though!  Our relic equipment drops were odd though–we got 1 off the first mob, 2 off the first pull, and five within the first 30 minutes…and then got 1 more for the rest of the night.  Woulda been nice if we got some BLM or BLU to drop, but ah well, there’s always next time!

Hmm, other than dyna, there was, of course, the wedding!  But I’ll post about that later–I had a friend fraps it for me, and I’d like to include the video when I post about it 8D  It was so fun though!  Very pretty *^_^*

Saturday night saw four of our static members reaching floor 100!  It was very exciting, and we’re all 100% planning on doing the same floors again this next Saturday for the two people who missed it…we just had people ansty to get their new weapon skills!  I, of course, jumped onto this too, and Star and I have spent the last few days leveling my WHM’s club skill so I could do light with him (Shark Bite + Hexa Strike and vice versa, so I could get Mystic Boon and he could get Mandalic Stab), and after both of those were unlocked we went out to the Boh. Tree and dinked around with Mandalic Stab + Savage Blade for light so I could unlock Death Blossom as well!

I think I’ll do the BRD one next, seeing as my dagger skill is capped, and then move onto BLM and SCH, both of which will require me to level my Staff skill.  PLD will be fun, too, once I get to 75, seeng as I’ll be able to Mandalic Stab + Savage Blade again for light 8D  Not sure what I will/can do for dagger and staff, if I’ll be able to make light with Star, but we’ll see!

Hmm, other than that, Star and I have been leveling PLD/BRD again–all/mostly friend parties are amazing.  Lately we’ve been with Omni-blu/drg, Ecly-drg (who just dinged 75 on blu), Doc-blu/drg (noticing a trend on what jobs my friends like? :D), and Q-thf quite a bit, and it really sucks that we can only party with 3 of the at time so we can have a healer too ._.  Last night saw us dinging 56 though, which was nice!  I survived my first birdie party!  I was actually really nervous about that, because my first party there was the kiss of death for my ninja–I’ve not touched it since!  It was considerably more enjoyable on paladin though <3

After dyna last night, Fishie poked Star and I to come help him kill Simurgh.  We went out to help, and he dropped Trotter Boots!  I have a hate-hate relationship with Mr. Sim, but this fight didn’t go half bad! …granted, we did have nearly a full alliance, but still!  Stupid birdy has killed me too many times D:  Anyways, Fishie (THF), Star (THF), and a RNG were all allowed to lot on the boots, and I was so excited when Star got a 932! …until the RNG got a 942 :(

Before Sim, we did Dynamis – Bubu…and oy, did it go poorly.  This is probably our 9th or 10th time at doing it, and our third loss.  The first one I don’t think counts because no one knew what we were doing, hehe.  After that though, we’ve had pretty much no troubles, other than one really bad A. Beast that we lost to…and then last night was just AWFUL, the worst one we’ve ever done.  I think we got all of 10-15 coins, and only two city pieces for AF.  We didn’t even get close to the boss, which was dissapointing, but oh well.  Star vaguely knows how to pull the zone (I think), but he hates Dreamworlds with a passion.  Back when our old dynamis leader was also puller and teaching Star to pull, they had an agreement that Star would never have to pull dreamworlds…and last night he wasn’t there, seeing as he quit several weeks ago.  Though, when Star told the current leader that he hates dreamworlds and won’t pull them and the leader said he didn’t care and still to do the zone…I place the blame on the leader for picking a zone without having a puller.  Not that it’s a huge deal.

I’ll probably suggest to Star though that next time it comes up for him to maybe pull the zone if, and ONLY if he’s teaching a new puller for the zone so he won’t ever have to pull it again.  I think that’s reasonable?  Star’s not a leader, he shouldn’t HAVE to pull, he does it for city/snow zones because he doesn’t mind it, but he dies a LOT.  We’ll see, I don’t see us doing Bubu again anytime zoon regardless.

Nyzul on Saturday was pretty uneventful, though I did get the SCH weapon!  We did 4 boss runs, and managed to go 0/4 on gear drops D:  Ooh, and I did some meriting last night, which resulted in this:

I’m 8/10 now on group 1 merits for Black Mage (hah, not that I ever use it…), which I’m pretty excited about! :D  just another 90k worth of limit points and I’ll have group 1 maxed out!  Other random news: Star got me a shiny!  He spent several hours poking caskets for me and got me a pair of Gothic Gauntlets! <33  We leveled a bit last night and both dinged (PLD 46, BRD 47 now)…and I got eaten by spiders in QSC ;_;  I knew I would, I’ve seen so many tanks die from spiders while leveling my mage jobs…I guess it was my turn, hehe.

Oh, and I know I posted last month about Star and I getting approved for our in game wedding…well we finally announced it publically o:  It was so fun, to post at our social, dynamis, and limbus linkshells about it!  Here are some funny comments we got as a response:

And that’s it for today!  *Fingers Crossed* I’m better about updating…that was what, 3 weeks without an update?  Tsk tsk, shame on me o:  Now, the question is: To merit (:D), or to campaign (D:)?