Pretty, Pretty Lights

So when the new update came out I was very hesitant to start doing synergy. Star has spent lots of money over the years working on craftskills and I didnt want to repeat that experience without seeing the benefits from synergy. So we actually focused on staying ahead of the curve with the ASA missions. While Star was stained in the blood of crawlers and dust of skeletons I was reading away on the forums at BlueGartr at what was being discovered.

Then cue the nudgings of new Dynamis members and friends. Kaiyan notified me that the Kraken in Qufim was up and unclaimed and he wanted to kill it. So feeling almighty and bored on my blam I geared up and went out to the snowy island of qufim. Turns out you kinda need movement speed plus gear to kill this nm and luckily I had my new shantoto pants so I didnt die but Kaiyan kinda sat there and made snow angels. No drop but that got me wondering what the crap this hard hitting denizen of the deep dropped.

Then came the discussion of what aptants did. People were slowly finding the recipes for the ebon gear and some people were finding that aptant corresponded with the upgraded ebon armor for synergy recipes. Then coloring came into question and looking for what did that. Needless to say after weeks of watching the researchers at work I decided to get involved. With a capped blam buffer and friends I went out to go try for aptants and pigments. This was early christmas and Ane was working on her paladin so I set my eyes rather quickly on the aptant durus for her pld gear and then knowing she loved rdm the furia pigment. Blowing some of my savings (and by some I mean about 3 mil) I bought the ebon breastplate and the ebon armet for her body and head since they were the most useful upgraded. I actually had someone craft her breastplate. Braaska was rather upset that he hq’d this lvl 100 synth and it had no hq results :(.

Then came the fun part. The aptant is dropped off the kraken nm and a few others but we just stuck to the kraken. Ane got extremely lucky :O and went 2/2 on aptant drops in the same day. Then her luck failed on her pigments. The kraken could be blm kited around the pond at qufim but no one had posted strats for the triumvirate that is the faeries that drop the pigments. Peaseblossom, Tiffonette, and Melina are out in the open in zones and can be blm kited to kill if you’re careful. The important part here would be to list the careful part.

Finally we got all the stuff together and started to synergize when surprise surprise we needed a smither and we wanted to get a hang for synergy. So I started soloing my crafting smock to skillup and got to about level 20 before I convinced Anexia to join in on the fun. Got her to about level 10 and got impatient and actually successfully synthed my apron into a smock. Then we got me a couple levels and her a couple levels turning her apron into a smock and again got impatient and just finished the synergy. Having not much else to synergize we got a couple smithers to join our party to do the Ebon Haubert synergy and then the Furia Haubert synergy with the pigment. After the difficulty of the aprons these synergies were a sinch! We quickly did the ebon galea and then the furia galea and were just having a blast! We were finished so fast we offered to turn the others aprons into smocks for them. So at this point Ane and I had a bonecrafting smock, carpenters smock, blacksmithers smock, alchemists smock, ebon haubert, furia haubert, ebon galea, and furia galea under our belts. Ane and our friend Barron were the first people on our server with the Furia Haubert and both were not high enough to wear them :x.

Spent the next few days leveling Ane’s pld to 71 so she could wear that sexy armor and then she was showing it off in whitegate and we were getting tells requesting to synergize these items for people. It wasnt long until I was wanting a new synergy item for one of my jobs. I decided that the ginhaku togi looked too hardcore to pass up. The togi actually parses as well as an nq shura togi and almost as well as the Mirke Wardecors with acc and atk augments which i’m told is equivalent to usukane body without the rest of the set.

This proved to be more of a pain than I thought it’d be. The nm to drop the aptant that was blm soloable triple atk’d 100% of the time and hits HARD! If you dont have stoneskin and phalanx up it will one shot a blam. I killed this thing 2-3 times a day for a week and got no drop. Finally had to get a rdm Eriuddo to solo all three nm’s for me for a day everytime they were up and it finally dropped on the 20th kill. I had a full 44k buffer at the start of this and by the end I was down to a 3-4k buffer from what we’ll call mistakes. I thought I’d get lucky and get the pigment from a faerie. Turns out that only the new HNM’s from the update dropped this pigment. Eriuddo offered to solo Scylla for me and I was very happy to accept. Another hour or two down and the pigment drops on the first go. So now we have these new shinies!

Until next time my friends keep synergizing! ( /promotes synergy like a bawss!) If people would like me to go more in depth on synergy please comment and ask I can do another post to explain the process I’m also attempting to get onto the PFA episode to discuss this ^_^ so hopefully you may even get to hear it from me with your own ears :D.

Goals achieved in 2009
So last year I wrote that I hoped somewhere along the way:

I get some homam gear: Currently I have homam hands and body

finish leveling my blm to 75: 75 and almost fully meritted

finish woodworking as it is currently at 75.6 : Hit 100 over the holidays a post on that to come.

I really just wish I can continue as I have been, sharing all these adventures and moments of happiness with Anney and my friends and I can help them all out as much as they’ve helped me.

I’m still with Anexia, however alot of our older friends have passed on to the real life. We’ve made several new friends however and have been keeping up with them in endgame.

Greatest Parts of 2009

1. Married Anexia in game still probably to you readers a bit overly head over heels for her, but I am truly blessed.

2. Making some great new friends! In no paricular order Lzander, Seite, Jereml, Lllen (who left us shortly after she joined miss ya lady), Nemyri, Daruin, Kasumin, Despain, Headows, and Barron to name a few off the top of my head have all in several ways helped the insanities and calamities of the last year more bearable.

3. Started Salvage! Our friend Wiggin who recently started doing salvage with us summed it up best. “The last 4 salvage runs I’ve done with you guys has been the most fun I’ve had in the last 4 years in game.” I leveled monk specifically for salvage and I’m absolutely loving it. The amount of interaction and teamwork needed gives you this sense of accomplishment when things run smoothly. We’ve got 2/4 salvage wins and now just need to get the remaining 2 and to get the damn bosses to put out.

4. Getting my blackbelt! So much work and time and effort and help from friends to get an item that I am starting to take for granted. Its such a staple peice for monk I couldnt imagine using monk without it.

5. The starting and running of The Great Perhaps ls. Its always fun to know you can be self sufficient but its hella better to know your friends have your back and will help you through the hard times of life. Even if they do make you leader, and want to tear your hair out most nights. Great people are what make this game enjoyable.

Goals for 2010

1. Now that woodworking is 100, i need to get both the drawing desk and the signboard and I want to have at least 2 subcrafts at 60 by next year.

2. Salvage goal! Get Ane her 25 body peice. Then from there work on getting more drops for the group as well as work towards 5/5 morrigans gear for myself :D.

3. Finish Meritting BLM. Meritting got put on the backburner to finish meritting monk and was left only halfway complete so my goal is to have that finished by 2011.

4. Limbus goals, I’d like to get homam pants and at least 1 blm af+1 mat this year.

5. Get BLU to 75 by next year and maybe start another job on the path towards maats cap so I dont feel to bad for leveling a non maat’s cap job.

Thats it for now true believers! 3 Posts already written up just need to get home and add screenshots and fancify them! So spoiler alert Synergy, Salvage, and Synthing oh my!

Until next time God bless you all in the new year.

Disclaimer: 1) a renunciation of any claim to or connection with; 2) disavowal; 3) a statement made to save one’s own ass.

Though it’ll go without saying ten minutes or so into these proceedings, this post is a bit of a rant about running endgame and the drama involved.

A long update from me, and I have no real excuse for myself. I read other ls leaders blogs and they have time to post regularly about their accomplishments. I guess for me I just go with the age old addage if you can’t say nothing nice dont say nothing at all. The drama llama has been running rampant with alot of the efforts we’re trying to make with our friends on Remora.

Short and sweet of it all.

Dyna shell broke due to a couple’s dictatorship. They then took the bank (a measly 4-5 mil) but left us with 500k to buy our first glass. They then joined a new dyna ls with 5 other members and told everyone the shell broke and if they wanted to keep their points and get a payout from the bank they needed to go with them. LS was literally split in half. Instead of being adults about the issue they felt the need to get other people involved and I got nasty tells in game and on msn from people I thought were friends. So now my black list is more full and msn friend list a couple people shorter.

Our new ls is about twice the size of the old ls’s trusted attendance. We had our first run last sunday and next sunday will be our second run. We will pickup thursday runs the week after thanksgiving. Our first run went very well considering it was our first run. We only had one wipe and managed to net 6ish AF and 3.25mil worth of coins.

Salvage has been a revolving door of people going in and out. Salvage saw the end to our friendship/associations with Sei as we spent a month or so trying to get people accustomed to salvage. We werent doing his run enough due to only having 6 people max showing up to most runs with little or no salvage experience. When he claimed we could do it with six and we made an attempt he spent the rest of the night blaming people for why it went wrong. Rev/Arrey the former couple leaders of our Dyna shell came in and out as well. Arrey left for real life reasons and Rev left due to not feeling included and feeling like we didnt do her runs enough. This led to the introduction of some new and old friends to the salvage group. Barron, Jereml, Lzander, Cerealkiller, and Nemyri stepped up to help us fill out our numbers and do more challenging runs. However shortly after Stotan dissappeared due to real life getting hectic. Omniflare went on break from salvage for the same reasons. Nemyri took a break to get her Yigit Body which big congrats to her on! Barron had a few weeks he couldnt make it for real life reasons. Which led to quite a few weeks of us trying to scrounge up players for the event we needed 6-9 people for.

Enter Forsaken and Oki. This decision came pretty quickly as we were desperate for members but we found out rather quickly that they had a history with 3 or 4 of our members already. However we all agreed for the sake of salvage we’d give them ago. They were always very testy and when you read what they say and so much easier to handle their opinions and criticism over vent. Cue the night my vent doesnt work. We end up, through Cereal asking a favor, on Snow LS’s vent. Soon after we’re being troll’d by Genrye and Forsaken and Oki decided to join in with him on bashing Seite who was doing his best to call logistics for the run. At this point they had gone too far and we had to ask them to leave. Much like our former Dyna officers they felt the need to include other people and I was soon being flamed by Lorddeciever on his mule Flameburner. I’d post the conversation here for your enjoyment as he kept spamming that I was stupid, or that I was a noob, and that I needed to go fight him in Brenner. Congrats to you sir you have a 3 insult vocabulary and are an expert in the one pvp part of this game no one gives a care about. This point due to low attendance and catching flack for having run events for friends I was seriously about to just quit the game.

Then we meet a few new people who transfered servers to come try to get into apathy. Samraye and Rosepetal were a couple of guys me and Ane met on pickups runs for salvage. These guys have well geared jobs and good experience, low manning things with them lately in salvage has made it fun again for me. We had our friend Sageofhalo joined us for a short duration but left shortly after due to not being able to keep up with assault points.

Meet the axiom of running a salvage or znm group. People will never have assault points before the run or zeni before the start time. Just not going to happen. We’ve taken it upon ourselves to get people together to get AP before the run but its still not working. Ane and I are just two people and it takes both of us to do RvB so we can only get one person points. That being said our current constant attendees are: Barron, Cerealkiller, Lzander, Nemyri, Jereml, Rosepetal, Omniflare, Raeyn, Seite, Anexia, and myself. On any given night we have about 6-8 of them show up. If you take out Ane, myself, and our leech that leaves 3-5 other people needing assault points that night. So we generally end up entering an hour or two late because we had to wait for everyone to get AP. I’d really love to hear how other salvage group leaders handle this it really is starting to become a big problem.

I’ll do a personal update tomorrow but wanted to get this all out of the way before I did so it didnt leak in and the personal update would be a bit more interesting to read.

You never really understand the gravity of an item until you try to get it for yourself.

That being said when I was nearing level 71 I wanted to have my black belt when I dinged. I thought it would be fun to have an item that shiny to ding into. I then spent a week or two trying very hard to sit through the the pop windows of the 3 kings of ffxi. 9 hours out of my day slowed our ability to level and started to make salvage (which was waiting for my monk to hit 75)  look like a distant future moreso than an actuality. Not to mention at that point I had only 3mil saved up and people were paying 2-3 mil per item.

Now months later and my monk well past 75 and into its merits and over 2-3 months of showing up for almost every pop window I could feasibly make some even beyond the stretch of feasibility. I have recieved my black belt. I cannot express how happy I am but, I’m sure just as anyone else who has waited the long hours for this, I’m more happy to get the 9 hours of my in game life back :D.

The quest to get the blackbelt and all its cs’s included alot of great quotes and storyline. It was short and sweet but itwas still quite amusing. The better parts of the quest concerned the great Maat.

I then later got to take my new toy out to a merit party and enjoy having haste cap gear, haste the spell, and double march which all add up to near hundred fist speed on my monk :D.  The only thing that can describe it is this quote from the cutscenes, or can sum it up in one word. SEX.

Now that the delerium has faded time to use this power for good. Black Belt GOT!!!!!

Its been about a year and four months now from when I dinged 75 on my thief. Though it seems much longer which I’m sure in the greatest extent is due to me doing so much endgame. Though I can now proudly state that my bard and monk have dinged 75 and have capped their skills. Though there is still a shit ton  of meriting to do and some endgame gear left to get for both of them they are both what I would call above average in gear for what they have. With the acquisition of my denali bonnet from nyzul we’re drawing that static slowly to a close and looking forward to salvage. Anney’s breathing a deep sigh of relief as she has wanted to do salvage since before we started dating. Also now that our next 75’s are almost finished we’re already looking towards our next jobs I’m stuck between pld and rdm and Anney’s looking at blu but very hesitantly. Stotan, our friend and static buddy, wants to level drg and Aneu our new buddy wants to level cor. Add a partridge and a pear tree to that mix and you can bet we’re going to have fun.

We started doing ISNM’s and ENM’s with a passion. Anney saving up for that Morrigan’s Robe she’s been dreaming about for about 2-3 years now and I’m saving up for a blackbelt which I’m going to be spending a ridiculous 6 mil on.

We finally have beaten brothers. Twice at that! The fight is so much easier with better gear on our blms and alot more practice duoing together from farming. This is fun but does make us a bit sad when they dont put out the climbs the worst part of the fight at this point.

If anyone on Remora doesnt know the almighty galka of legend Sei. I’m very sorry you havent been blessed with his presence. We do alot with Sei and are always just awed by the sheer power and ability to overcome he has. We just started doing the hagun enm with Sei and on our first run with him a Hagun dropped. Needless to say Anney and I were not surprised. This is the galka that when told to wipe in dynamis managed to take out 2 statues solo and not wipe. Seriously if I find out Sei is really Chuck Norris I wouldnt be surprised. In ffxi everyone we know who know’s Sei makes Sei facts.

Some of our favorites are:

When Sei got his Maat’s cap Maat thanked Sei for letting him borrow it.

SE originally planned for Sei to be the final boss for jailers but since he cannot be contained they settled for AV.

General Zazarg wants to be Sei when he grows up.

And they just keep going. We all love Sei he is the most selfless and humble guy you’ll ever meet and if he actually wanted to do endgame with Apathy he’d put Sinus to shame. But Sei’s just too laid back and fun to ever put in that much time and take away from real life and I really admire that about him.

So enough Sei praising. Funny story. I got my monk to 75 and was happy with myself and my gear. Until I came back on my thief to pull for the party Stotan Aneu and Anney were in and they had gotten a monk. I was feeling pretty good about myself seeing as this monk was still in af legs (really I have no clue why) and then I saw him do something that made me feel gimp in comparison to this gimp geared monk. He used Asuran Fists. My last two jobs having been mage jobs I completely forgot about the WSNM’s and breaking latents. I had Destroyers, Burning Fists, and my Knuckles of Trials left to break.

Needless to say some friends came to the rescue. My trial weapon was broken in about two hours duoing with Seite in kuftal tunnel and oh was that interesting. Ever try duoing Amemet when 2-3 other lizards link. I’m still surprised we managed to kill it. Then Aneu and Hobbestails joined us to do the WSNM fight so I am proud to say I am no longer a gimp monk.

My next post will be detailing salvage but I do want to touch on a few things about Dynamis. This is mostly concerning Astral Burned players. I CANNOT BEGIN TO SAY HOW MANY ASTRAL BURNED PLAYERS THERE ARE NOW IN THIS GAME. You know them, I know them, hell level 1 players just starting the game probably know them. These people are nice, but either just dont have the time to level a job properly or are just plain lazy. Our Dyna shell is made up of a lot of veterans, some new people who are great at their jobs and then a lot of astral burned players. So much so that we finally had to put on our application that we needed screenshots of your character and their skill levels and gearsets. Its so bad that at this point we even have people trying to let us bring in their mule and let them dual box b/c their mule is high enough to come but their mules have been astral burned. Hell we even put on the main page we dont want summoners anymore.

Not before people start thinking I’m a crazy old nut against people leveling fast let me say this. I have no problems with people using astral burn to A) RECAP BUFFERS omg thieves would love the smn’s in their ls’s if they could leech and recap buffers B) MERIT. Merits are merits are merits you got the job to 75 the right way and capped skills and gear along the way sure abuse this to get 4-5 merits in 10-15 mins by all means. C) To level a job YOU NEVER PLAN TO USE IN ENDGAME and need for maats cap. Those are the only three reasons I would ever be ok with AB players. But the Astral Burned Monks, Red Mages, Black Mages and hell even Summoners are completely useless to any endgame shell. We seriously had a person with 75 RDM well geared and merited and skills capped tell us they wouldnt come any job to dyna other than their Astral Burned monk or blm. So now I have to make a real dd with merits gear and skills capped come rdm instead when they could actually be doing real damage. So now in dynamis with mules and AB players I have 4-5 parties I’m making TANK, MAIN ASSIST, BLM, Sometimes and extra real dd party, and then the crappy leftovers party. Sadly I have to give a perfectly good cor or brd to this party but its full of smn’s rdm’s blm’s and the like that have been astral burned. They really are practically dead wait just freeloading off the linkshell. I am trying to get the other officers to do something about it but hell even one of them is trying to bring in an Astral Burned mule to dynamis. I’m going to lose my mind seriously. Anyone have any suggestions, comments, prescription medical help?

Just ninja’ing a short post here, after Star’s rather depressing LAST entry: he now has both his Bard’s Rountlet AND his Denali Bonnet.  He got his muffin hat several weeks ago, & got not only his long awaited Denali Bonnet this weekend but ALSO a Goliard Chapeau.  And…while we’re speaking of hats — he also got a nifty hat from the new MKD expansion!  He got the light DD one for his MNK.

Back to your regularly scheduled blog posts!

I dont know if the people SE are just hating me or what or God or whoever. This is terrible. Last night the peice of gear I wanted since I created the nyzul static I’ve been in dropped. Been waiting almost a year for that, I was completely astonished at my luck even lotted a 764 on it. Not to mentioned it dropped after a kill all first floor with a dahak. An activate all at the same time lamp floor. A second kill all floor, with Capricious Cassie and finally a kill enemy leader floor with a Mokku. I mean we seriously thought SE hated us and was determined that we wouldnt win that run. Get the kill with 1 min and denali bonnet dropped.  Then after my nice lot, the pickup a friend invited from his flist decided he needed the drop more than I did even after being told he couldnt lot it and yelled in party chat to pass he lotted a 901 and swore he was never told denali was off limits.

Now to add insult to injury bard roundlet dropped this sandy run. Anney’s been waiting for a year for it and I was first in line. To be nice I passed and hoped a second would drop. The second drops in the middle of a bad pull. Everyone but 2 people had wiped and I had rr up. I got up to lot and die down and a sparkling stone had dropped to me without me knowing. I couldnt lot because inventory was full and the mobs turned on me instead of the people with hate. I went down and couldnt get back up. Then the remaining people are casting utsu using two hours to stay up as much as possible seriously what the fuck of the words wipe do people not understand. Then the whms who had rr got up and started raising plds and people who could raise first even though there was only a minute left in time on the item. No hat for me and seriously fuck endgame. Oh and I also managed to miss a wyrm beard drop which I’ve been waiting on for a while now. Two really bad days that arent getting any better.

So, I’m getting a crash course into the world of Dynamis LS Officer-ship.  I was the fourth and final officer add on. Coming into a group, even though they’re friends, I’ve been integrated into 3 people with very like minds. While I understand they value my opinion and appreciate the ability to make input. One on three will always make me the person who keeps the votes from being unanimous. No biggie, its not my ls persay and I could have run my own but I wanted to be with Anney <3 and I wanted a voice so this is what I asked for.  We’ve all agreed to let things be for a while and see where we stand in a couple months so I guess it isn’t terrible.

However, 5 mins into dyna I think several of us realized the problems weren’t going to be with the officers but with the people who act like they are.  Seriously. The 4 of us have been doing dynamis long enough we know how to pull, the routes, etc.  However, we had a couple members who felt we were all oblivious to this information for whatever reason.  Now I know we’re all just coming out of our comfort zones, and getting used to doing an event with some new, interesting, personalities.  So for the moment it may just be a bad first impression.  However it is sad when I feel I need to start muting people on vent less than 1-2 hours into our dyna run.

Maybe its just my pet peeves so we’ll start with these and tbh some of these are common courtesy

1) Asking where the th is.  Seriously, whether you believe its a 5% flat rate added to the drop, or a random roll for the item to drop. Its there, it may not be working amazingly because lets face it drop rates suck in general in dyna but its there. 5% Means 1/20 mobs drop it. Averaging 2-3 mobs per statue thats maybe 7 pulls before by odds alone for th to kick in and have one drop. Anyone who’s played ffxi knows that you never hit the odds (killed aroma leech 13% drop rate + 5% th means I should have gotten it by odds on the 5th kill try 6 hours of camping that bad boy and not getting drop until the 12th kill).  So please dont whine and moan about TH. The thieves in your ls feel impotent enough when they notice nothings dropping no need to remind them. I mean we could -not- come thief and you’d prolly not notice much of a change and our buffers would appreciate the break.

2) Speaking of buffers. Seems everyone in their brother believes that a sack pull will magically make everything better in Dyna. Let me say this, I am uncomfortable sack pulling with a paladin I know and trust because it can still go wrong. This is a very delicate procedure…I’m not going to risk it with someone I’ve not seen prove themself as a paladin. Secondly, most of the thiefs in your ls should know the sack pulls in the zone. We will more than likely pipe up and offer to sack pull when we know it will work and its appropriate.  If you feel like a sack pull will fix this offer up your own exp and figure out how to do it :p and as for not having flee if you feel sack pulls are so neccesary sub thief :p.  Really frustrating when you are at the back of Dynamis Jeuno about to kill the repop statue and someone recommends a sack puller to agro the zone so you can kite the statue to the boss pop zone.  Three problems with this thought process 1) statues move really slow, 2) Aggroing the entire zone puts all mobs up and gives a greater risk of aggro/link to the alliance later and 3) the most important one…the boss requires a sack pull. I will sack pull when its useful but never for hair brained schemes.

3) Arguing stupid points and wasting time. I dont care who you are, a paladin will not be able to solo tank and kill an nm from 30% to death with 5 other mobs attacking him or slept waiting to attack him even if he has a healer. I’m a thief I was hitting for 20-30 a hit and it took me 3-4 attack rounds to take off two percent. Your paladin with 1 weapon and no haste gear has no mathematical chance in hell. You’re only stalling the inevitable and wasting time. When we say full wipe dont chase windmills. Waiting 5-10 mins for a paladin to realize they cant do the impossible is another 5-10 mins later we could have used clearing our way to the boss. Admit you wasted our time dont tell me you’ve seen it done.  The only person who I know as a pld that can do that would be Sinus or Papy and last time I checked we werent in Apathy. If you have a valid suggestion ask in LS dont shout it and argue about it over vent.

All in all however we had an amazing first run for all the people we had below 75/ with no dyna experience during this run. Had we had about 10 minutes more we would have made the boss pull and gotten the last time extension. 10 AF dropped and I walked away with a whole new appreciation for being an officer in a Dyna Shell. Can’t wait til we can try our next run!

Ok, so. Yeah. Screenshots and me dont go well together. I cant even remember half the crap I get in a month anymore. If you ever want the cure for absent mindedness do not come to ffxi. My days blur into weeks, my weeks into months, and the next thing you know I’ve been playing ffxi for 3 years and some months.

As you’ll hear in the rest of this post. Star’s been changing and molding. I dont know how else to put it but if you can’t adapt you can’t survive. Star has definitely been doing alot of adapting.

Dynamis/Sea

Well we had the unfortunate news of our Dynamis LS being broken up. The leaders were tired of running such a large group and dealing with issues. I can’t say I blame them. Anyone who reads this blog regularly knows I’m a very opinionated person. I have my opinions and I like to make them known. I have this wonderful woman in my life teaching me to do otherwise. I tend to bad in these situations as I’m a type A personality in some ways. I like to help run things and I hate seeing people be at a disadvantage. My biggest flaw is I want everyone to be happy and in most ways that makes me unqualified to lead anything. I stretch myself bend myself and even break my values and morals to make people happy. In the end it causes issues makes people dislike me and everyone is still unhappy. So I was hoping I could jump into the driver’s seat and change these things about me. Until I was told I shouldnt lead things. Which caused some introspective thinking and assesments. I had about 12 people approach me and ask me to run a new ls so that they didnt have to stop doing Dyna and me being someone who wants to make my friends happy I was very quick to oblige.

I then ended up being proded by a friend who used to pull dynamis with me and his girlfriend (Hi Arrey and Rev!) to join their newly forming linkshell for dynamis. I told them about the situation and they agreed to take all of my friends in no questions asked. With that I agreed to join their shell. A new group ready to try things.

The plot thickens!
I then ended up approaching Arrey about doing sea because several of the people from DM were used to doing sea and they had no ls for it. We agreed it may be somewhere the ls goes in the future and I’d be more than willing to run it for them. Then Rev a few days later asked me to join them in the group of officers and be in charge of updating points and keeping screenshots ^_^. Let me tell you how much of a relief it was to be asked this. I felt I could trust the people who were officers but to know that I can now be an ear for the linkshell was very comforting. I say an ear because I’d like to think anyone who knows me knows they can approach me with issues. So I will gladly be there for people with issues and be a voice in the linkshell. Not that I’m assuming any problems will crop up as these people are all friends and I’ve never had a problem with their viewpoints or ability to talk things out :).

So a new chapter in endgame opens and Star’s standing at the door of an adventure :D.
Limbus…

With the above mentioned statement of me being opinionated let me apologize to anyone in limbus I’ve offended :p. We recently had an issue with someone coming back and getting their points back. It was stupid and I almost got away from my firm viewpoint of everyone deserves something for their time in an ls. Its a job, and jobs should put out :p unlike SE, the hagun enm, and slot machines.

We had a fun omega run and now some people have some shiny gear ^_^. More people off the list and more room for me to be in line for shiny’s myself. Was outlotted for blm af+1 mats T_T I’ll get them next time really want af+1 hands for 320/120 set (apathy’s recruiting!…lols as if but it’s nice to pretend someday I’ll be doing hnms).
We’re as ghost’s in this! (Previews of Salvage)

I’m going to be creating with Anexia a salvage group. I’ve been married to her in game for a while now and dating her IRL for a while. I cannot remember a day when she didnt see someone pass in salvage gear and sigh, or tell me how much she wishes we were doing salvage. Wanting to take care of this problem I’ve set out to creating a 9-12 man group to low man salvage. We’ve pretty much have people in mind for all the spots the only problem being we lost a monk. To alleviate this problem I started leveling monk monday. I’m currently lvl 32 and with the help of my friend Leahcim ^_^ I’ve got all the gear minus AF that I -need- to lvl to 75. I’m going to be putting bard on the back burner and focusing on this for the time being we need a second monk and I dont want to make Anexia wait any longer for something she’s dreamed of for a while.

On a personal note. I’ve been loving the game more than ever lately. There’s so much to do and so much to learn. I hate standing still and I dont like just doing the same things over and over again to get nothing from it. I feel like I just needed a change of scenary. Anney’s been amazing at keeping me grounded and helping me learn to love exploring Vanadiel again. I am getting to do things with old friends and making new ones. There’s a world of things to do. If you’re ever getting burnt out I truly suggest changing your schedule or adding new things to the mix to make things bright and shiny again.

As Alan Rickman says at the end of Dogma “Crisis of Faith ended?”

I’ll gladly say yes. I’ve found a new passion for Vanadiel, my burnt bulb has been changed and its time to get back to enjoying the game for what it is a game.

Star is a married man :D. After months and months of waiting and being madly in love with Anexia we finally were married in Witchfire Glenn. Its hard to look back and imagine how long its been since we were just dinking around in The Bohyada Tree and Sky. No real honeymoon of sorts unfortunately for us it was married and then back to the real world of endgame. Literally we went from the wedding to the zone we were doing dyna in that night.

Update on what we’ve been up to :D. Anexia and I went on a hardcore leveling streak when she got back from her visit here last month. Her paladin is 65 and my bard is now 66. We pushed to 50 and then farmed all our AF and then pushed to 60 in a week and go her a jelly ring and me a minstrel’s coat. But unfortunately the flame that burns brights burns half as long. We both got burnt out terribly and now the jobs are stuck at that point. I’m thinking I may work on getting 1 level a week for the next month or so to finish brd off. Next on deck is monk, which should have been first on deck but i needed to lvl blm to duo things with Anney which has turned out wonderfully btw more on that to come, and brd to be able to merit faster and build merit parties with Anney with me as the puller.

Time to talk about ACP. Ummm yeah the best way to describe it is like the description of the Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster in The Hitchikers Guide. Its like having your brain smashed with a gold brick and wrapped around a slice of lemon. The first few quests are easy enough and just require ALOT of farming. I mean so much farming we were begging for a BCNM. Then the next two fights and quests are quick. But the last two missions…SE are just mean. Climb Delkfutts tower at lvl 30. Yeah if you dont plan on climbing once for the mission and then again for the bcnm this will take forever.  Only dnc whm rdm nin and sch can climb up and sneak and invis themselves. And out of those you’ll only want two of them for the fight. So be prepared for a long climb. Then the bcnm is really freaking hard. 11 easy missions 1 hell of a fight. Nothing really prepares you for this. After two climbs and two lost fights I’m burnt out and really dont want to try this again soon. But the gears too shiny to pass up I’ll have to go for it sooner or later.

Under the SEA!!!!!

Sea is amazing, I mean limbus is alright, but SEA is amazing. Especially for black mages. Anexia posted a while back a comment about blm soloing and needing to to be good at their job. In the quote the person mentions soloing your obis and earrings. I thought they were off their rocker but I went out with a level head and remained calm and learned very quickly that most of the sea mobs are pushovers when they come up against a good blm. I solo’d my ice and thunder obis and Anney and I duo’d my dark obi it was amazing ! I also managed to solo most of my relaxing earring but teamed up with my friend Ravenclaw for the last organ and tissue. Now we spend most of our time farming pop items duo/trio for the linkshell and camping ix’drg. Its an amazing meriting spot too considering we’re getting 5-6k exp an hour and points for the linkshell. Though one really funny experience came out of this:

Staren casts Thunder IV on the UFO

The UFO takes 1% dmg

Staren sleeps the UFO

The UFO regens 1% dmg.

Though I’ve been told it can be trio’d I’m not jumping up and down to try it.

My next post will be full of screenshots of me wearing some of the shinies I’ve gotten over the last few months and explaining my plans for new gear as well as problems with gear setups I’m trying out. Hopefully I can put up a link to the video of the wedding soon. If not ss’s of that will be in the next post as well.