Episode 193: Vanafest Fever 99, AvatarZZZ Job adjustments, and more! 3/10/10 2:01:04 Download audio file (Episode195.mp3) The VanaFest 2010 Website PFA/LBR Vanafest Live coverage SUCCESS! March Version Update News DJ Plaeskool- Zi’Tah: Rhythm of the Sanctuary DJ Plaeskool- On Being Taru DJ Plaeskool- Rolanberry Jam DJ Plaeskool- Melody for the Kingdom of San d’Oria

Hey guys. Sorry I haven't posted in a while. I officially have vacation atm but it still does not feel that way since I am working on one of two papers I need to finish until the 15th and 30th of March, respectively. So I'll quickly do a recap of what I have been up to ingame. :D

For the time being I have stopped Dynamis. I haven't officially quit and I love my Dyna LS but I am on an extended break now. My mood has improved a lot and I enjoy playing the game again. Putting Dyna on hold was the right decision.

ZOMG.....food! O.O"

Wonder if it's a traparu. :o

I can't reach! ;__;

Can I has it pwease? :3

Love these trees. *^^*

What do little tarus do in Whitegate when they are bored? Dance-off!!

My social LS is becoming better and better and we've been doing fun events. I helped out for a Sea run, was a lot of fun, it just took sooooo long lol.

My LS also organised a Bahamut version 1 fight, it was awesome. *__*

Afterwards we had our a ZNM run and started off with Dea. And ZOMG, it dropped my Oracle's Pigaches. Thanks guys!

Square-Enix announced that they were doing server consolidation at Vanafest 2010. This much anyone who's remotely interested in FFXI knows. They updated us again today (finally) with a notice we can't server transfer or something until they do the world merge. But still can't be assed to tell us WHEN THE HELL IT'S GOING TO HAPPEN.

A mid-March update supposedly... We're 1/4 the way through March. By my mathological calculations that means we're mid-March in about 7 days. I was kind of hoping for more than "We're still planning World Merge+Update at some time in the future."

Also, deeply cynical though I may be I'm going to go out on a limb and bet lots of people on "Source Worlds" lose all recent progress they've made on their characters upon logging in for the first time on the "Destination Worlds."

Morning in Vana'diel is your daily dose of FFXI and all things Vana'diel. Give us your thoughts on the interesting topics of the day! Is FFXI dead? Yeah, didn't you know? This game died 3 years ago! We are just playing with it's rotting zombie corpse.

Let’s take the worst case scenario: SE has decided that they really are done with FFXI and they are going to shut down the servers as soon as this year is over. This scenario is completely remote, people are still going to play FFXI, and SE is still going to make money off of the game, but just go with me here for a minute.

Say all the quitters and whiners are right, does it even matter? I say no, because even if this is SE’s last hurrah for FFXI it’s a great last hurrah and one that I am going to enjoy.

Even the most ardent FFXI defenders will admit that the last three updates have been pretty poor overall. The storylines in the expansions were great, but they were far from challenging and did not have the epic feel that many other parts of the game have felt. The other content in those updates was of generally casual appeal, and not for the end-gamer. The problem is that end-gamers are what drives a game that is 7+ years old.

While it has taken SE far too many years to realize that this is the case, it doesn’t mean that the coming updates are any less earthshaking in their effect. The raising of the level cap is for end-gamers. It is for the long time fan FFXI that even if they were not experiencing burnout were at least understanding that the current content had gone stale.

Even if SE was shutting down the servers, they are doing it with style. The coming year is a FFXI player’s wet dream. Almost all new end-game content, multiple new advancement paths, new gear, new everything. This is what we have been hoping for. This is what this game needed over the past year. I would say that it is probably a year late, and with SE’s iterative over radical design decisions I can understand the delay.

Finally, the evidence that this game is not going to die anytime soon can actually be found in the “proof” that the nay-sayers provide as evidence of its demise. It is true that the number of players has been gradually dropping off over the past year, to combat this SE took some rather radical steps to please the player base and keep them happy and playing. If, as so many of the negative Nancys claim, SE really wanted to kill off the game, they could have just continued that status quo and let FFXI peter out into nothing. This coming year is an attempt to keep people happy, and to bring back old players. Is it good for new players? Probably not, but after 7+ years I don’t think that is SE’s main concern. To be profitable all they need to do is keep those that like to play happy. And that is exactly what they have done.

 Ok. Well.

In light of the 99 cap, an ambitious taru's only resolve is to go out and level these fucking subs.

Warrior - Check
Dark Knight  (eh same gear as WAR anyway) - Check
Samurai - Check
Ninja - Check

The only things left on the list are RDM, BLM, BLU, COR, DNC, SCH, RNG, BST. I guess RDM and SCH are higher priority ones. At least it gives me something to do in game other than HNM lameness.

The bane of our Einherjar existence has been the King Behemoth Wing 3 boss, Dendainsonne.  Until recently, we'd not gotten him all that much.  But lately, he seems to be popping up every other time we enter a Wing 3 zone.  Well, we got him again yesterday ... but this time we had our handy-dandy can of 'Dendainsonne be GONE!'



Just a couple of sprays will eliminate your Dendainsonne problems until your next Wing 3, guaranteed!  Hahaha!

All joking aside, we did finally take down this boss.  I've said all along that healers are the key to beating it.  We've tried so many strategies in the past, but we just TP burned it this time with mages keeping everyone alive for the most part.  I tagged it with a 2nd Feint and then it died about 15-20 seconds later, so it was about a 2:20 minute fight.  It got off 3-4 Meteors and did the normal annoying AoE Stun move, but somehow we withstood it all and won.  

I'm not ready to say we'll beat it every time, but at least we know it can be done.  And with that, we've beaten every boss in Einherjar now.  This guy and Chair Dude just once each, but we still know we can kill them.  All that said, we're in line for our first 2 week Odin in a looooooooong time. 

Sky:
I don't talk about Sky much here, considering we only go 1-2 times a month at most, but we went this past Saturday and it was like a buffet of NMs.  All of the time spawn NMs were up when we got there and we managed to kill Brigandish Blade, Despot, and Steam Cleaner as well.  Nothing special there, but we did it all in a matter of about 90 minutes which was pretty cool.  We wrapped up with a couple of Seiryu and a Suzaku.  We're building up toward more Kirin fights again soon!

Other Stuff:
Sea was sea last week, and Jailers didn't drop jack.  We were going to do a JoL as well, but it got late so that's on hold until next time.  At least we're sitting on a pop so we can do whatever we want and be sure that JoL will get done next time. 

Dynamis-Xarcabard was failtastic.  Only 2 wanted AF2 dropped, at least one of them was THF since 9 people declared it for the run.  >.>  We may never fulfill all those drops, but at least need one less now.

On the personal front, I got my WAR to level 69 which means I'm coming down the home stretch.  My main concern now is skilling up Great Axe.  I think it's sitting around level 61 cap which isn't too hot.  I'll need to FoV on WAR or skill up GAX on DRK at some point.  ; ;  I still need Fortitude Torque, Warrior's Stone, and Aurum Sabatons for my Warrior ... and still making no progress towards them.  D:   Oh well.

The main reason I've not been making progress on them is that I've been spending my free time working on the Add-on missions.  Last night I spent 3 hours or so running around for all the early MKD quests.  It should all pay off in the end with an Anwig Salade that will easily surpass my current Weapon Skill options on both RNG and COR.

ummm yeah, so I haven't updated this in forever since I quit the game, but I plan on finishing all the posts I never put up and all the images (like of my sam hitting 75 and etc).
see ya soon.

I know this scene has been used to death but this so beautifully expresses what some people have felt recently and is hilarious at the same time… And just for Mac

So Today is my first day in being in the oldest linkshell on Fenrir, Omen. I am quite excited as I have a few long time friends there as well as a little bit of new faces. A lot of the original Omen people are still there. We ran Dyna-Windurst last night till about 2:30 [...]

This weekend was a lot better than they’ve been in a while.  I spent a few evenings off game last week just chilling, catching up with household stuff, ‘Being Human’ and various books and other games. I needed a break and I think I still need to make room for less time online so there [...]

Yeah, I dropped my Rajas Ring again. I figure with the level cap increase coming in a few short months it’s time for me to start focusing upon a few choice jobs (mainly BLM, but a couple others are in mind). It’ll be bout a month before their able to fish up the [...]

Things like not-75 BCNMs that are the sole source of Refresh people aren't doing much anymore, so I've been waiting two days to snag myself a Refresh scroll to be able to continue leveling Red Mage to 49. I could try to put together a BCNM40 run myself, but people seem to be "Kraken Club onry" and only spam that shitty BCNM60. (I even checked to see if anyone reported getting a Refresh scroll from the keys from the addon scenarios, but alas none have been reported.)

Besides level capped BCNMs there's also things that only come from the Ashu Talif Assault missions. The PUP Automaton attachments I don't have are almost entirely from that BCNM. They're all in the 1,000,000 gil price range and super rare. Several are really useful too. (Haste+%, Magic Acc+X(or+%?), less overloads, etc.) There's Rare/Ex Haste+3% pants from it too that are quite nice for the jobs left off Byakko's/Homam.

Stuff like this Square-Enix should really address as the game is getting older.

Octave Club

When the level cap is 80 for three or four months the Octave Club is going to be on par with the Kraken. Levels 88 and 96 too, but those aren't final caps. Just something random I thought of and wanted to mention. (I don't have either club or a desire to camp them/spam that BCNM.)

The HFS series will continue as I find more news from VanaFest to go HFS about. :)
So, this week:
CoP: Promathia WIN -- Rajas Ring GET
Zilart continuance from Sky this Monday, eventually leading to Bahamut V.1 and "The Last Verse".
Nyzul disc finally upgraded to 30 in helping some other LS members Super Climb 16-30 (3/3 - the 26-30 win came with under 30 seconds left. One of the LS members won a Denali at the 20 fight. Congrats.
Whoever made the Boneyard Gully and Bearclaw Pinnacle BC entrances must've really hated life!
SAM 54 -- soon to be 55.
DNC merits: Under 90K now to full. Then cap DNC, then Laila and I need to have a talk in Qu'Bia Arena.
New hobby: Cycling FoV page 1 in Ro'Maeve to finally replenish some Tabs and use the FoV NM (Kulili) battle in Xarcabard to level MNK to 65.
------------
Couple of comments I have to make on some rants:
First, about the one about Ro'Maeve: I don't think it's personal to me until I speak up. I just think that a lot of players actively attempt to block other players for the same reason many hate this jump of the level cap to 99: They want to be the Big Kahuna.
Second, about the level cap jump: One thought, in the form of a question... Do you think this is Square-Enix' clue to actually get people to select ONE JOB to be elite at, rather than be 75 in all 20 jobs??
Just a thought there...

First off, my apologies to Agent Nothing for not replying anytime sooner.  I don’t make signature images anymore (lack the time and drive), but Agent Nothing does some awesome work.  Do check them out. Anyhow, there’s been a lot of things I’ve been wanting to do but (as mentioned earlier) I lack the drive and time [...]

With the June Version Update the level cap is being raised to 80. So, I'm getting some subjob leveling out of the way now so I can work on mains later. I started with Red Mage. It's useful for both Black Mage and Scholar as a subjob and being able to Convert will be pretty awesome.

I have run into one problem though: I can't find a damned Refresh scroll. They're only 6k gil, but there's only one up on the AH at a time it seems and always snatched up immediately. It's like trying to get Raise II and Reraise II scrolls from when I leveled Scholar all over again. I'm not such a huge jackass that I'd join a post-41 party and not have Refresh, so that means I'd have to suffer through more 37 capped East Ronfaure [S] EXP. Or solo. With a Shield, Phalanx, and Stoneskin I do a pretty good brickwall impression, but good god is it slow. Kind of like Dancer. They can't kill me, but I can't kill the mob quickly either. Ugh.

Aside from that annoying setback, there's not much else I need to level before June. My /WAR will be gimped at 80 as it's only 37, but /WAR doesn't really get anything new at 40. I also rarely get to /WAR as Monk and I don't do much as Ninja that I'd be better /WAR than /DNC or /DRK. Speaking of /DRK it's in the same boat as /WAR. I don't use it much and it gets nothing of interest at level 40. Some new Absorb spells and Bio II...both of which suck subbed. I could not bother with either and I don't think anyone would notice or care.

Dancer as a subjob does get some new goodies at 40, the Reverse Flourish and Stutter Step. Stutter Step is pretty useless as it lowers magic evasion. Reverse Flourish gives you TP back in exchange for Finishing Moves. Better than not having it, I guess. Not that amazing or potentially interesting as things that will become available with a higher level cap (Haste Samba).

Subbed White Mage I get the feeling is going to be one of those jobs which has it's subbed JAs restricted. I can't see Square-Enix giving fully powered Aflatus JAs. It's mostly interesting because it gives subbed Haste. Being able to AoE Haste as Scholar could be quite useful. No Magic Atk. Bonus trait of course means that it'll tip Scholar fully into a healer/buffer role to have Haste available.

Anyone else started leveling subjobs?

Each weekend the Player Achievement post is created for adventurers to share their successes in Vana’diel with the rest of the community. To participate simply make a comment to this post and tell us what you’ve accomplished while playing this past week. Comments will be chosen at random and read during the Player Achievement segment [...]

It’s been some time since I’ve done any work to my sidebar plugin. This update consolidates my install file and widget file into 1 so you don’t have to worry about having to activate 2 separate files in the plugin area. Also, the jobs backend has gotten a make over. I’ve made it to where [...]

Episode 194: VanaFest 2010 Live Coverage Audio from the live broadcast presented by Limit Break Radio and Pet Food Alpha! 3/5/10 3:23:25 Download audio file (Episode194.mp3) We’d like to take the time to once again thank the over 550 people who listened to the live stream, participated in VanaChat, and called in via Skype. We had a great time doing [...]

Disclaimer: I drafted this entry almost year ago (4/23/2009) when I still play Final Fantasy 11 and was leveling Bone crafting on my mule, this was my route to get to 100 and might (not) a little outdated So instead of let it rot in my draft box I decide to publish it. [...]

They do exist! Summoner's Horns, that is. In about four years of Dynamis I'd never seen one drop until tonight! The NM finally put out.

Congratulations to Jacinda on her pointy SMN thingy!

Well, not really.

I mean for one thing other than Dynamis Epic/NeedsMoarRelics and |DaFunk| don't even do the same events. So, there's not much rivalry there. But I did get this rather funny, Engrishy, private message to my user account on |DaFunk|'s forum (from a spambot not from somebody in DF).For the uninitiated, "Security Tool" is some malware that does things like create fake blue screens of death (in the wrong resolution, color depth, and refresh rate...it's embarrassingly stupid), auto-closes Task Manager, and generally fucks up your PC. I removed it from my parent's computer a few days ago, and thought it was funny to see its creators have forum crawling spambots.

Should you find your own PC infected, check out this Youtube video which shows how to remove it. And don't type in and visit the URL in that screenshot, obviously.

Ok, so Eruntalo and me are really making progress. We made it to Rank 5 Bastok (Barf!). We are still leveling BLU so we can duo the mission 5-1. We did a little BLU duo. Then kind of started soloing. I got 49 BLU but then in the glory FF fasion I deleveled. So I went to go to the sand land again. Did pretty good and I would be lying if I didn't get upset and then Sickle Slash them back lol.

Recap!

Darkcow (BLU): 48-49
Bastok Rank - 4
Bastok Rank - 5


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Mistakenly complained to a new 'friend' of mine about Nycon (who's absolutely perfect in every way (^^;;) ). He proceeded to tell me that Nycon wasn't worth it, that he controls my every move, and he treats me like dirt, and I deserve much better. I guess they didn't take the hint when I removed them from my Facebook friend list and blocked them. I waited for them to log on to blist them in game.
This is a /tell he sent me from his mule in game. At first, I was joking around



oh noezzzz.
For anyone reading this on Quetzalcoatl, this is Parnthelegend who jumped server and came back with a new name. He and his significant other are total freaks who think that after six days, I would much rather sabotage a two year relationship with a six day friendship.


Not really sure what the hell is going on with pullers nowadays. I have the cutest pull macro with a pleasant «call11» macro and a cute little ゆ. However, as of late, many pullers think that they don't need to warn the party that a mob is coming. They also don't need to have a brain when doing asinine things like instead of saying BRB, just resting after a fight.




This falls under the cute category.
Seeking for merit party


Nycon and I lotted the same lot on two different crystals.




Tanking on SAM

Party set up was SAM SAM DRG WHM SCH RNG. WHM constantly pulled hate with Curaga (1). Can't do much with no spells and an Amnesia'd Provoke!


Does this () look like ?:

A few days ago, I was helping someone skill up their GK up on the top floor of Oztroja. The Yagudo used Parry, so I dispelled it. Instead, I dispelled Protect. I dispelled again, and took off Shell, and then finally, Parry.



Uhh... what mobs pop up there that can cast protect and shell? I thought only NIN, BRD, BLM, and MNK were the only Yagudos up here?