Mage of All Trades

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 :<

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

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

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

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

So: little updates on the above listed items~

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Oy.  Talk about an overdue entry!

Dynamis_____________________________

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

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

Limbus______________________________

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

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

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

Salvage/Nyzul_______________________

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

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

Drouggle_____________________________

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

Misc.________________________________

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

FRIDAY night was a pretty fun night for me, limbus wise!  We did the kings path of Apollyon, which is always a blast.  I got to go BLM for it, which I was estatic about.  Then, Brown Doeskin dropped to me, which resulted in the following over the weekend:

This is the last piece of BRD AF that I wanted to upgrade–I recieved AF+1 hands and pants last fall and have been holding onto Coiled Yarn for weeks/months.  The fact that I had an Osode from the start was kind of a joke — I hate pulling on BRD, and that’s the only thing it’s REALLY good for.  +10 VIT and +10 CHR make it a great pulling piece, though Choral justaucorps +1 has both of those as well.  Osode also has +30 MP, but since I don’t full time it (I’ve got Yigit Gomlek) that mp is wasted between macro changes.

So now I’ve got a piece of equipment which is pretty much equiviliant to KO, and it didn’t cost me anything.  I’ve not sold a single ABC from limbus, so I was able to upgrade immediately, which was nice.  Even if you count each ABC costing 8k or so, that’s 360k, and I sold the Osode for 1,850k.  Very nice ^_~  Since then I’ve changed my wishlist to Primary/BLM, Secondary/SCH, which I’m pretty excited about being able to lot BLM mats now.

However!  The above was not my only source of excitement for Friday night!

SM being SeaMonkiesLS, my Limbus linkshell, and Quendi being the linkshell leader.  And that fun little icon next to my name is a pearlsack!  He said he had been wanting to promote someone for a few weeks, and was hoping to promote someone with XX chromosomes since all of the current leaders were male…which, I guess, gave 4 choices in a linkshell of 15~20 or so (you’d think there were more girls though with how vocal we are though!).  I started posting updates on the website about two weeks ago, and I’ll continue doing that, as well as helping out with whatever ^___^

Speaking of SM’s girls being rather vocal (Neart being the only non-female in this conversation)…

MONDAY saw us doing Proto-Omega, which was interesting, seeing as one of our PLDs came /war.  Not our cleanest Omega win, but we did manage to smush him!  We ended up with head, body, and shoesies for our trouble, which was pretty nice ^^  It was also my first night on Skype with SM — I prefer Vent over Skype.  I just don’t like having to always have everyone hear all the noises on my end :<  For good reason too — my sister came down mid limbus and was chatting about new clothes, what pants made her rear look large, etc… not exactly stuff the rest of the linkshell needs to hear!

It was funny though — Q had a normal voice, and the other people I talked with all had these SUPER deep voices, and then there’s me with a very girlish voice.  I had someone ask me how old I was :<  and someone else piped up that I sounded like I was 12 ~_~ Hehe.  Ah well.  Not the first time I get asked, certainly not the last.

CRAFTING wise, I’ve been pretty busy with Bonecrafting.  Anyone who’s following me on Twitter is probably sick of my tweets about it!  I’m finally finished with scorpion synths, which is exciting! I’m now onto ladybug rings, which requires me to farm in East Ron. [S].  I’ve been lucky enough to manage to use Star’s very nicely geared TH4 thf for farming in the paSt, which certainly helps!  I planned it out with Star ahead of time, and I’ll hopefully get by ok with 25 stacks of ladybug wings to get the 5ish levels that I need.

I had 11 stacks today, and decided to go ahead and use those — I ended up with 1.9 skill ups, so with a total of 25 stacks I’ll probably only get 4.3~ or so skill ups rather than capping on the synth, but that’s fine with me.  Just another 14 synths to go!  I’ve also been keeping an eye on the NM that spawns from the ladybugs — the E.Ring sells for 40-50k, and I could be 4-5 stacks of ladybug wings for that price!  I’m really hoping to not spend money unless I have to, but if I were to get that ring while farming I’d be perfectly content to sell it and use the profits to buy wings ^^  I’ve manged to come out ahead for the last 10-15 levels or so of bonecrafting, which is really nice.

LEVELING has also been happening over the last few days — my SMN’s been getting some attention!  I realize it’s kind of a day late/dollar short type thing since /SCH has all but completely replaced /SMN for WHM, but it’s certainly still got it’s uses.  I just dinged 37 tonight, so while WHM/SCH will be my main, I’ll be able to /SMN to solo the mimics assault. When I ding 40 I’ll be able to do Caramine Dobsonflies, and at 50 I’ll be able to SMN burn Ouryu as well as PM5-3: Mithra fight.  At 60 I’ll be able to wear full AF, and fi I’m that close I may as well take it to 75!  We’ll see though I certainly won’t be rushing with it.  Star’s anxious to level his MNK though, so I’ll probably tag along with him.

Other than that…I’ve not been up to a whole heck of a lot!  Until next time~ <3

Probably not the -best- title for this entry, but my head hurts and that’s what I came up with without concentrating too hard on it :D  I was dinking around in Bibiki Bay getting rather miserable exp–about 3-4k/hour or so.  I started and was about 11,000/26,000 tnl, and figured I’d maybe knock out half of that or so before I gave up.  However! Enim piped up in linkshell that I was high enough to go do another zone and duo, if I wanted to–which I gladly took him up on his offer.

It’s a camp in Meri. Mountains [S], and it’s AMAZING.  Very little Yagudo movement, it resummons it’s avatar just about the same time MP is full…it’s just wonderful.  We did a timed AM–either Flood or Flare, and it killed the avatar every time.  Except once, when we both got resists, orz.  Anyways, we ended up getting ~8-9k exp/hour, so it was just really nice after Bibiki started being crummy exp.

I dinged 66! And am now just about 5k to level 67, so I officially have FOUR jobs high enough for the Maat fight (:  Enim dinged during our duoing as well, and is now 73, so it was a productive day!

Today I also worked on tidying up one of my guides–the Bard one is all shiny and fixed!  It’s my “End Game” Bard Equipment Guide, basically just with gear I’d like to have at 75, as well as a wide variety of options :3  It started out as just a goal list for myself, but I’ve made it much broader now ^^;;

It has all popup displays from FFXIAH.com, and I have a list of 40+ pieces I need to add to it soonish but haven’t yet.  For my Black Mage guide I have another 35+ items to add, AND I still need to fix it to have pop-up displays rather than links to Wikipedia.  AND, on top of that, I need to make a “End Game” guide for Black Mage as well, as the current one is just for Levels 1-65 really.  So much to do, so little time!

Hmm, then later tonight my dynamis linkshell did Einherjar…and failed, miserably, like always.  I originally started, not caring how we did persay.  I wanted ichor, and still do–Omega Rings are amazing.  However, a few of the Shadow pieces look really shiny, Clogs and Trews in particular.  Additionally, it’d be nice to get to Odin and have that win (:  Staren and I are currently toying around with the idea of switching to a different linkshell for Einherjar, but it’ll depend what we can find and when their times are.  If worst comes to worse, we stick around to get our ichor for our rings and then go back and do Einherjar later, maybe, for Abj. and Odin win.

Also! Staren and I along with a few other friends (Sloss in particular) have been trying to set up an Assault Static; we’ve been wanting to do Nyzul Isle Investigation and Salvage, but have decided it’s best to get to Captain rank before trying either of those :3  Anyways, we (sort of) started that tonight after Einherjar–it was 4/6 of the people who are in the static, anyways.  Fun stuff!

I’m excited! *dances* 22 hours or so~ and I’ll be in Dynamis – Xarcabard again, with any luck :D Not that I’m expecting my hat to drop, but it sure would be shiny if it did! We did Beau. on Wednesday, and within the first five minutes Tabard dropped…and I’ve commented enough that I’m passing all bodies (though I’m first in line, wee) until I get my hat, but oi, it’s still not fun to pass them! A friend got it though, so that was a bit nicer, I’m happy for him! And with any luck I’ll have my hat tomorrow, and then I can work on getting RDM body, BRD hat, and WHM pants~

Oh! A BIG congrats to Leahcim!:

He also got his Shura Togi from Kirin this Tuesday (BB was yesterday, the 10th), so it’s been a fun week for Lea! :D As for me! I got this shiny just today (and don’t lol too bad at my failed screenshot attempt…but I caught the “dinging” animation, does that make up for it? D:)~~

Other than all this, not a whole heck of a lot has gone on lately :3 I helped Enim with his last four Saving Private Ryaaf (or, as he and Yap have taken to calling it, Shaving Ryaaf’s Privates…) runs so he got his shiny Yigit Gomlek today! I was glad I could help–he’s the one who got me mine for bard a few months back, so I was glad I could help return the favor! :D

With my last tag today I helped Brodin with a Nyzul Isle run–we attempted to get him to 85, but unfortunately did not :( We did however get 3 weapons–SAM, WHM, and PUP. The SAM went to a pick up guy, the PUP went to Oheyo, and Yap and I both lotted on WHM and I just barely out lotted him. I looked at how to unlock the weapon skill though…and I will be putting my shiny Kraken-Club-looking Werebuster away until I do Nyzul Isle from scratch….14,000 WS points, {No, thanks.}!

Other than that, I’ve done a few level sync parties, which are fun~~ Both parties have been synced to me though :D I got a level for SMN the other day, and am just about to start another one for my SCH–both are at 27 now~ :3 Just 10 more levels for each and my WHM has shiny new subjobs!

I’ll end with a cute screenshot–Yappers was following me around, isn’t his costume adorable!?

It was really funny, the two of us were LOL’ing pretty hard…he was auto-following me, and so many people stopped to look at him! From one person we got a “What in the hell!?” to start the conversation, and it ended with a “Get in my belly!”