While my Summoner is still sitting at level 74 (having no Ying Yang Robe or seeing no SMN drops at all in dynamis makes me quite sad) I managed to get some lolMerits as long with some BRD buffer with linkshell people. Got like…9 merits in few hours. Could have bring both WHM for more [...]

Before any FFXI stuff, I'm happy to report that the assumed-abuse of fictional children (fictional, as they do not exist) will no longer be punished by LJ! The top LJ guy (while Brad is away) apologized for their actions. To those who weren't following this drama, that meant that people who posted stories about an underaged Harry Potter having sex with a related adult character were getting their LJs banned because incest is against LJ's ToS. Again, these are characters who do not now nor have they ever existed. There is no way to really hurt them, as they're not real people. Fiction, not reality.

I've not added 'chan' back into my interest list because all this has made me wary. Instead I like animarelic's idea:


---

Anyway, on to FFXI! I wasted too many hours farming/camping stuff, though at least I got to add Bloodpool Vorax to my list of killed NMs. He didn't drop anything at all, but it's no biggie. I got a stack and a half of beastman blood in the 5 hours of leech-killing to make him pop.

Caught another level 1 Besieged (you weren't on, Achi, otherwise I would have poked you). Yay 300 limit points.

Spent the rest of the night helping get another LS BLU spells. I like killing things and free XP is good, so yay.

I actually ran around as DRK for the first time in forever, and I'm totally reminded as to why I stay on BRD 24/7. Running at normal speed is so slow! Took forever to get anywhere! *is so spoiled* It was fun doing Besieged as a DD though, so much easier than BRD!

While running around getting spells, I saw my first mirror! The mirror looks like a mirror! Fancy that! We also saw a NM (Farlander the Shrewd), but I totally forgot to get a screenshot. I'm kicking myself, since he's not listed in BG's Unclaimed NMs thread yet. :( I suck.

Hot & Cold in the Jungles is very very cool. Today I got a buffalo hide! And today and yesterday I got two adaman ingots made with anima (frigid and inferno). Both are kind of useless, but would be a free level 99 synth to any smiths skilling out there! I've also gotten two of the ingots to make reraise earrings (worth 25K each once Chaser makes them!), and a piece of that special coral to make RR hairpins. So nice! So different than H&C elsewhere!

And lastly, I wonder how long this mule will last?

No plans at all for tomorrow. I think I'll go to the DMV on Tuesday during the 7.5 hour downtime on the game. :(

But I am *really* good at claiming Mee Deggi. 2/4 tonight, 5 hours or so total, bout 3 played I guess. 2 more impact knuckles. Sat LFG all night long, even tried to make a PT twice. Once lost the tank, once lost the Red Mage. What level is Black Cloak and [...]

First AS claim, lol. No sword or club.

Ryken recently returned to the game after a break for several months, and he's pretty much retired his PLD to focus on MNK. One of the items on his to-do list was to finally get Destroyers, the coveted rare/ex Hand-to-Hand weapon that drops from a couple different KSNM30 battles. He'd tried several times in the past and wanted to put together a sure-fire team for Double Dragonian, and recruited Anastasia as BLM, Yobun as RDM, Albany as WHM, Demin as RNG, and hoped for help from one of his NIN friends, having read that stinky PLDs can't tank this fight.

My own previous experience with the KSNM wasn't so great, so I didn't jump up and volunteer either. However, the appointed evening arrived, and none of the Ninjas were available. So he asked if I could help them out. I agreed, warning him of my previous near-failure - I didn't want to be responsible for any lost orbs. However, I have more experience with big dragons, enhanced PLD abilities from updates and better gear than I had last summer, plus a few merit point enhancements as well, so maybe it wouldn't be so bad.

I warped off the ferry, where I'd been fishing, changed my sub-job and made sure I had all the right gear, paid the taru to send me to Windurst and used the OP Teleport to Ronfaure, and headed up to Horlais Peak, the last to arrive. I was briefed on the strategy: kill the warrior, kite the bard. We buffed up and headed in. I opted to use Pescatore for its defense and HP boosts, though I knew it would be stipped off at some point, and started out in my "tanking" gear. We ran up the ramp, and Ana opened with a sleepga on the dragons. I ran in and engaged and provoked the Warrior, and we proceeded to tear him apart. With Sentinel and Phalanx II, I didn't really take all that much damage. Ryken ended up pulling hate off me and got cursed, then Ana turned the dragon and a Body Slam took out both Ryken and Demin. Demin was hit for 1000 damage, and his max HP is less than that. I guess they didn't have their shadows up either. I had a momentary twinge of panic, but the dragon was nearly dead, and Ana was able to finish it off.

Ana and Yobun kept the Bard asleep while Albany got Ryken and Demin back on their feet. Meanwhile, I built up my hate on the Bard by provoking and flashing when I could. I'd also switched over to my full enmity gear at this point. After a few minutes, the Bard started resisting sleep, so I started kiting it up and down the long valley, with Yobun and Ana keeping gravity on it, and binding it from time to time as well. When the lads were back to full health, they started chipping away at the dragon, while I tried to keep its attention and keep it moving. I took a few good smacks, but Albany kept me healthy when I couldn't cure myself.

Soon, the Bard was dead as well, and when we popped the crate open, we found Ryken's Destroyers. Hurray!

Demin and Yobun both had orbs, so we decided to do two more runs. The next two were even better, with no deaths or even close calls. On the second run, a Subduer dropper. This is one of the best greatswords available for PLD, once the latent is unlocked, so I asked for it and now have to get 500 weaponskill points on it to turn it into a worthwhile weapon. I'll use it while skilling up, and some day it will be ready. A friend of Albany's (Drxcrist) needed a pair of Destroyers and came out to Horlais Peak, but got there a bit too late. We had a second pair drop on the third orb, and he didn't arrive in time and they auto-lotted to Albany. Drxcrist also brought an orb, so we did a fourth run for him, with his MNK replacing Ryken's. That run went smoothly as well, but no Destroyers in the treasure chest.

I really had a lot of fun doing these runs, and am pleased they went so smoothly. We had a great team, and worked very well together. It was nice to be able to show that stinky PLDs can indeed do that particular fight!

Patron: How are you?
Me: I'm alive.
Patron: You're alive? That's not good.
Me and Patron's Friend: ...

I really need to find a new way to respond to that question.

At least she realized what she said after she said it. =O

… of which I could use a lot of right now.

Another installment in the Belzevuthe/Sweetiepie saga. The full picture can be found on my DeviantArt: Rested EXP. This one takes place after a long battle. I might’ve overdone it on the blood. >.>

Possibly the first of a series of annual drawings for A. Time will only tell!

  

so today, unfortunately, i missed a fight i wanted to participate in. king vinagerrooooooon. my linkshell got the drop, 1/1 ace's helm. congratulations :)

meanwhile, i was busy putting a hurting on mobs in a nyzul cannon that wouldn't stop. we broke at close to chain 200, people were tired/sleepy/bored/hungry. :( i picked up several merits.













**

after meriting, we had a TOD for serket, so we went and camped. wow, havent camped anything like this in awhile. kinda funny because, ive never actually fought serket.

that changed tonight :D








[gimpy as hell drops.. even on 100% full moon myth]

From a test I took today:

I don't really understand what is happening.

I think SE has gone off the deep end.

SE is a Japanese game company, not known for its flexibility, but in the last couple of updates SE has made some changes to the game that, although are not major changes to the game overall, have radically improved the game. Is this a new trend in forward thinking? I don't think so because the changes have been needed for a long time, but it is the first recognition that the game had some major problems and they needed to be addressed. It is also a recognition, and here is the most important part, that the oldest content needed adjustments because it was getting old. Fixes to Ullikummi spawning and changing Rare/Ex drops of high-dollar items are just the most obvious fixes. But looking forward, the recognition of the problems with the economy and adjusting prices of for Limbus is more evidence. This would have, in the past, taken a year for SE to fix. Here is the thing, I think they are recognizing that it is not the content aspects of the game that make the player base upset. It is the annoying little things, e.g. Limbus is a drain on the wallet of the normal player, so adjust it until the economy stabilizes. Big additions to the game are the shock and awe of updates, the things that stand out like in the most recent updates, Salvage, Nyzul Isle and now Einherjar, but the things that please the players are things that they can do anytime, like letting people get Ullikummi, O's Kote, E bow's; and things that just make it easier to play, like storage of more gear, the Sky warp quest, etc. So what is SE thinking? I have a thought.

Originally, when FFXI was created it was the first second-generation MMORPG. It looked at the problems of the first-generation of games (EQ for example) and started by making a game that didn't have those problems, but that just opened the door for new problems. And those problems were fixed by third-generation games like EQ2 and WoW. For a long time it appeared that SE didn't want to look at what WoW and EQ2 were doing correctly and wanted to forge their own path. The problem with this was that the game was still falling behind. The beginning of the end of the this kind of thought happened with the introduction of ToA. I think the first and most obvious change that SE made to recognize that others were doing good things in other games and they should adopt them was the introduction of instanced zones. Assault, although still used in a slight flawed manner in that I believe it could have been better instituted and more accessible, maybe with better rewards, but technically fine, was the first step in this. Salvage was the second, and Nyzul Isle, although technically still an assault, added something new: variation in design within an instanced zone. We will have to see how Einherjar is implemented but it appears to be more like Limbus, where you pick a zone and it locks others out just from the discription, but it is a larger event than say Assault or Salvage so I think they are approaching it with that as the intent, anyway.

Where does that leave the players? Much better off thats for sure. The last few updates have been completely packed with new additions and very few changes that people have not liked. Sure, you will have the occasional psycho who doesn't like improvements, or the player that enjoyed the exclusivity of an item that is now more available, but one has to wonder if the exclusivity of the items that the players had enjoyed was really because of item rarity or because of RMT, or actual perceived worth that was not true. Thief Knife for example, was it really as great as people made it out to be? SE is pretty good at determining if the player base should have certain items, even if needy players (I am talking about gear obsessive people, not owners of exclusive items) can't recognize that, and maybe TH +1 isn't as great as players had hoped. SE is definitely opposed to breaking their own game, even though they do regularly do it on accident, LOL, but in this case it was an intentional decision they made to increase an items availability. Maybe it was to offset the major profits that RMT were making on the Thief Knife, anything thing is possible, but for the majority of players this was a good move. Greatest good for the greatest number maybe? Very utilitarian, but changes like this will definitely please a good number of players.

Why this dissertation on the way SE has been doing things? Well, the next update is coming and it is chalk-full of yumminess for the players, and because, well, all I did yesterday was Dynamis-Valkurm which we lost and got no drops from, and though it may have seemed like it just wasn't our day, I don't think the attention level was that high for the run, it just seemed that we shouldn't have had as many problems as we did. And another problem I am having is that people that don't show up to CoP Dynamis runs actually end up costing me gil. The cost for CoP Dynamis runs are split between the members, and when people no-show they actually increase the cost for those that do go, all the while holding a place on the sign-up usually preventing people from going because they are already on another run. After Valkurm, I just harvested until I died from some aggro and just went to bed. It was nice to actually get some sleep. :) But it left me without much to report for today, and no pictures. I have already gone over everything from the update that has been released so far, and I guess I only have one more thing I would like to speculate on...

I think that there is an opportunity in the new expansion to open up Time Magic for the game. And here is the reasoning, first their are already time related spells in the game, that could be used. Slow and Haste being the most obvious, but there are other time related things that are not in the game but available in other FF games that could be use. For example, Slow and Haste effect recast and weapon delay, but only Fast Cast effects spell casting time. Slow Cast could be an offensive spell that could be used to slow spell casting time. Or maybe a spell that delayed the use of JA's? Or sped them up? Other obvious things come to mind, like Stop which could be a more powerful very of stun, or what about other spells that effected things time related? I could see the old spell Confuse being introduced here, bending time to throw off your victim. There is more available here, more AoE versions of spells already available, etc. I am hoping for more jobs from the coming expansion, and not just more DD's. I think that there are still a variety of directions that SE has yet to explore, like more buff/debuff jobs, and especially a new tanking job. They are only limited by themselves.

Thats it for today, see you tomorrow. :)

Edit: Ailee has pointed out that Stun and Flash are 45, so a level cap raise to 80 wouldn't effect them, and I also checked on my own and Ninjustsu enfeebles are at the lowest 44 and Refresh is level 41. This would only become an issue at level 90, making level 80 cap that much more feasible.

A bountiful feast yesterday! I ate some Poison Breath, Soporific, and chased it down with a Screwdriver!

No, that doesn't work for me even though I'm semi-leveling BLU. =o

So Besieged last night...

Wait, I didn't do Besieged last night. =o Even though there was one.

Well, I did watch Phantom of the Opera for the kajillionth time...

Wait, dear god no. =O

Okay, enough identity theft. =p *hides from everyone*

So I spent yesterday on BLU. I was going to seek COR but by the time I did, there wasn't much time left for me, so I decided to go learn some spells.

I learned Poison Breath from the doggies during my work hours.

When I got home, I went to Carpenter's Landing against another BLU's commentary about it and learned Soporific on the first mob.

Afterwards, I went out to Valkurm, did my Chocobo Hot and Cold, which apparently really sucks in Valkurm. Maybe I need that Treasure Finder ability?

Anyways, after I failed at Valkurm Hot and Cold, I went to learn Screwdriver. As I pull the first mob, I get a /tell from the real Kariel. =O I die cause I was typing back to her rather than casting spells.

Anyways, she comes out to Valkurm to help me out, and she gets asked for a Raise from a nearby party. Apparently it's Biddinger's party. He thinks I'm on Kariel at first, but then gets surprised when she makes comments to him that only she'd know. =p

After I learned Screwdriver, I killed a few more mobs, then switched to PLD to show Kariel that I was doing it, she was the one that inspired me to do it after all.

Though I do have a story about whilst I was on BLU, and Kariel was helping me with spells.

Crazy decided to send me a /tell after I learned Screwdriver, and before I switched to PLD. She's getting really bad now. =o She's actually offering to help me learn spells, which the next spell I need to learn is Grand Slam, and I've got awhile before I get to that. I didn't want to go learn Grand Slam. I was hanging out with Kariel. =O

She decided to try to plead with me, but it wasn't working too well. Won't she give up? =/ If she tries again tonight, I'm going to have to pull out the big guns. =o

I did stop talking to her several times that night, and she did eventually stop sending me /tells. So maybe she's getting the hint. =o

So here I am again, complicating things for myself in yet another MMO. I don’t know why I even try anymore, I should just stick to my small handful of close friends, and not try to reach out to a bunch of people I don’t know.

Especially a bunch of people not my own age, that obviously live by completely different rules and standards.

I left Dawn of the Rebellion today. A couple days ago Celius and I, in a total wild hair moment, made a little guild for our Alts. Taking everything we’d seen humours in guild names, we created Hoodie Pirates. And we made a bright pink tabard with the stereotypical skull and crossbones. It was very exciting, not to mention it made us look very fashionable. We kept our mains (along with my warrior) in DotR, since we enjoyed the company of most of its members tremendously.

However, the leader caught wind of this, and felt it pertinent to send me a tell, asking what was going on. I tried to explain that it was an alt guild, and was met with a threat that I would be demoted from my Agent status (a rank one below the one the only two Commanders hold). It came across as very crass, and while I tried to keep my head on my shoulders and tell them that I didn’t mind getting demoted, they still tried to drive home the point that it “looked bad” that one of their Agents was in a second guild.

I know you FFXI people are going to scratch your heads at this. Most of us had 2-3 linkpearls, if not more. Yes, it was usually taboo to be in more than one end-game linkshell, but there was never anything wrong in having multiple social pearls.

DotR was not a raiding guild. It was completely social. They made sure to let us know that quite a few times, because the old family of members that had founded it was much too burned out on end-game to do it again any time soon.

But again, WoW is a completely other world, it seems. The same rules don’t apply.

So I snapped. I told the leader exactly why I moved my Alts: The guild was getting too big, and the recent addition to it was an alpha-female that hit on anything that had a penis, and greeted the guild with the SAME broken-record greeting whenever anyone logged in. It was starting to tick me off, and I told him about it. In return, I got, “I think she is very friendly, and (the person whose husban was hit on the most) likes her.” I dont think my personal feelings were ever even taken into consideration on this topic. It didn’t matter to them that I decided to remove myself from the situation while on my alts - which I don’t even play much. All that mattered was that I was in a second guild and that it “looked bad.”

I am so hurt and disappointed with this. The image that they had put out ever since I got in was that they were a family. That they cared about each other, and once part of this family, you would be treated accordingly. I guess I never reached that point, even though I had tried so hard, and thought that maybe I was important enough to matter.

But I was tossed to the curb like a LV18 noob constantly asking for a Stockades runthrough, or gold.

Am I overreacting? If you ask them, probably. This is what I get when I mess with people older than I am. I’m not sure my opinions ever even really mattered, anymore. I was just another “Scavenger” in the guild.

And the only person that could have said something, that could have stood up for me, made the least bit of effort to keep me in there, did absolutely nothing.

Not even a “goodbye.”

  

Shoes
Shoes
Omg!
Shoes


Anyway, did more CoP last night, out of three paths now!! :D

Did all my CSs and now I'm on 6-4..the mighty U/O, wonder how our static will fare against them. Gone 1/1 on everything except Sin Hunters..which Finn showed us how to do. We had the wrong setup all together for that, no AoE damage at all.

So, as usual I took a shitload of pics and here they are. Oh and expect a vid from the moblin BC..reminded Ama to film it this time and I got some cool music to put with it so expect a link in my next entry.

16 hueg images inc. Cause of the way LJ formats my entries (hai2u uncustomizeable LJ resolution) right click and go View Image.

...but yes, I haven't died...well, twice knocked silly while running around as a samurai, mind you, but nay, I still exist. My times are quite...skittish recently, and between a combination of overtime and other menial tasks, the adventuring that I have been doing is quite little. So you get a small blog as well with basically a list of recap things that I don't have much time to describe. Gee, how kind to the journal I am, ne?

1) Went with LoH to kill for Diorite, later came to help kill Genbu and Kirin. Sadly, the other sky days, didn't get to go play with the other gods. ; ;
2) Got all jobs up to a minimum of level 20, a step on the mini-goal of clearing lower level gear from my MH clutter. Not being able to login at regular times really adds to the incentive of just grabbing a small job and soloing or going with a few friends, though.
3) Ran about getting Kazham keys for three people, which proved to be not as time-consuming as I remembered, even going RDM/WHM for the easy teleportation, there are a lot of new people joining Garuda, it makes for interesting times.
4) I was invited to a wedding! This should be great fun, Elianna and Bigpapa are having a traditional Tarutaru wedding, so in the meantime, I'm going to help with a Bachelor's party or something. Hmmm, but where to go for that...Seeing how Whitegate is lag central, unless the Hostel gets separated from that (ie instanced), not interested in that slow zone. Valkurm, perhaps.
5) Did some Hakutaku fighting, and realized that I need to adjust my mules and line things up, so I will probably have to take a whole day just to do that. My MH, ML, and ST are all cluttered. There's a new (at least to me) item called "9-Drawer Almirah" that gives 7 storage spaces each! That's almost double from the cabinet layout that I was using for mine. Maybe if I can gather enough of those for all my mules to have 80 storage, then I can adjust my own setup to assist more with Goldsmithing, a bit of lightning or Fire depending on what I'm crafting at the time.
6) Just last night, had a fun run of Assaults with the old GYS crew, so that brings me up to 10/25 for next promotion, I really haven't been doing those recently, shame on me, I know.
7) Tried to go skilling with Eck for old times' sake, but I fell asleep in the middle of fighting a Steelshell! >

so was supposed to merit tonight, but some ELVAAN was too late ;( so i ended up having a marathon at upper delkfutt tower.

and let me tell you, what a joy. lol....













[missed last ss of no drops, probably was pissed. lol]


then i tried alky...








0/3 pallas

0/1 alky


ugh ;( got another horn that i'll try another time.

FFXI Community Team @ AnimeExpo 2007. ARGH!!  And I’m a former cosplayer, myself… who happened to have recently spent too much time looking at some awesome Japanese FFXI cosplay photos she saved… and getting too many ideas on how to make Dynasty Warrior 5 cosplays. (>___<;) That, and I’m having a hard time making myself not use my “free time” [...]

Can't beleive I forgot to update considering the rarity of these, but...



Yay! Assasin's armlets finally :D

Manaburn hasn't seen these in over a year, Jan2006 to be exact, and they finally dropped from a random monster.

Being next in line, I lotted them, thus completing me 5/5, and then I went and bought myself a cheap ol' thief knife for 63k :P I'm now yet another TH4 weilder. Nice considering the week before, SML got assasin's armlets for Demonlord.

Now in Manaburn, TH4 :

Athial (with +1 armlets woo!)
Thrillhouse
Vistani
Demonlord
Burginator
Lordwafik

In SML , TH4 :

Lordwafik
Vistani
Demonlord
Darkvivi

Over memorial day, we had Dynamis Jeuno in SML, only about 15 people showed up, despite being many more in LS, I nearly called it off, but then remembered, it wasn't that long ago when I used to do it with a maximum of this many :P

So after a little bit of job adjustment, we farmed ourselves a Dynamis Jeuno! Was very nice, at the end there were only 13 ppl left, and a decent amount of coins dropped (279), 12 people wanted in the sell/split, so we split it nicely and everyone gets rich hurrah!

PT setups were :

THF,MNK, NIN, WHM, BRD, RDM

THF, NIN, NIN, WHM, RDM, BRD

RDM, BLM, BLM

Drops were good with 11 AF2! ( MNK x2, DRK x2, WHM, RDM, BRD, RNG, SAM, NIN, WAR)

Was pretty fun, a few people swapped jobs, I had to make some people change jobs against their liking, to get it working (for example, changed our TH3 thieves to their DD nins, so I can be TH4 thief instead, while maintaining a higher tank count), but at the end it was fine and we were all having fun at the fact we're doing it with such tiny numbers.

What surprised me was when I attempted the jeuno fountain from the bottom instead of the top, and clean pulled every stone except the last ones that autolink. If i'm pestered enough on a rainy day I'll draw a diagram, but between learning blu spells and such, busy busy busy!
Still yet to upgrade SML main page >< I think the reason I don't like to update it much, is the hassle of doing it, LJ is so much easier , PHPfusion sucks donkey dick to do.


Oh yeah, before I go, lvl4f North Zhayolm frog has been found in Salvage, which means Marduk legs, Skadi Mask, Usukane feet, are now upgradable. How to pop the 4f Madame? Speed!

Madame wants you to be there within 30 mins, so that means you've gotta do everything, including not giving some people cells, and rush there within 30 mins, she has 3x 100% drops so it's ok. You'll be doing this only a few times / when you need it.

The way we did it, had NIN MNK MNK WHM BRD RDM, for pt1, and for PT2, BLM BLM RDM. I came on BLM out of laziness, because I knew I wasn't getting any cells, I wish I came on BST instead for widescan though, woulda helped out the group much more instead of being nearly completely useless - although I did help with the Froggy sac pull (hence why I'm alone in the room in the SS below) .  A warning - run too far and  froggs deaggro, including the madame. The RDM and BLM in my pt only got magic / stats unlocked, nothing else, the other pt got unlocked a fair bit. It's very possible to do this with 6.



Ea's Brais > Pergatory
Njord's Mask > Isachan (her thf will make more use of it, I have heca)
Hoshikazu Kyahan > Amastacia

Amas has been fapping for these boots to be found forever, now we can go after them :) Good thing is, if the shoes don't drop (lvl35), there's a chance for the mask to drop from the same NM, so it'll be either/or amas/isa on them.

Anu's Brais will be yays for me, because they drop from Gate Widow, who also drops Macha's cuffs. If I get those, the rest will be up to luck on Long Armed Chariot.

Seeyas later!

Yuck. 0/12, 0/2. Oh and did you know that Stun can be beaten midcast by a voke? I stunned, saw the casting animation, and someone ran by me and voked in that split second, and the Stun didn’t finish. Was weird.

No dealing with Crazy Person last night. I was on Kariel's character all night, so I'm sure she didn't bother to look that way. Lucky me.

Not much to post about. I could tell you about the wreck involving five people that went to my high school, two dead so far. Apparently they were driving down one of the worst roads I've ever driven down. It's suspected they were speeding. =o I don't like going down that road at the speed limit.

Merit adjustments announced today. Group 2 merits for the new jobs. And now, I don't have to choose between H2H and sword! I can do both, and still cap my evasion or shield! I dunno which to cap between those. =o

Update on Monday, I'm half-tempted to log out at the entrance to The Shrine of Ru'Avitau to exchange my lolsuppa for a lolknight's. Though maybe I shouldn't. There's so many jobs I want to level that would benefit from the suppa. =/

Ah well.

Merit Points! The maximum limit for point allocation in the “Combat Skills” and “Magic Skills” merit point categories will be increased for all jobs. “Combat Skills” maximum total ability increases: 12 > 20 “Magic Skills” maximum total ability increases: 8 > 16 Source: Playonline.com Merit Whore like me can finally go back to the xp camp again! I can now [...]

The first thing I want to note today is that an Earth Staff is next to worthless on Kirin. I haven't kited Kirin in a long while, but I used to use an Earth Staff the few times I have done it in the past, but this time right after the mini-god's I switched over to an Ice Staff to deal with Great Whirlwind, and I cut my damage taken by a whole lot. In general, you will get decent resist rates on Kirin anyway, without doing anything in particular to decrease the damage, but with an Ice Staff, resists become pretty common and the damage taken in general is reduced. Since it is a kited fight, and Kirin only uses TP moves, it is very easy to keep shadows up, so the main goal is to decrease the damage that shadows can't stop. Great Sandstorm is bad, but compared to Great Whirlwind it is not as bad. Heat Breath isn't bad enough to worry about, and with a Bomb Queen Ring on, getting resists will be near impossible. I have been using my regular -dmg/HP set up on Kirin but I am definitely going to tweak it in the near future.

Main: Ice Staff/Aquilo's Staff
Ranged: Ungur Boomerang
Head: Genbu's Kabuto
Neck: Evasion Torque (Going to get a Harmonia Torque)
Ear1: Eris' Earring
Ear2: Eris' Earring
Body: Arhat's Gi
Hands: Seiryu's Kote
Ring1: Bomb Queen Ring
Ring2: Mermaid's Ring
Back: High Breath Mantle
Waist: Warwolf Belt
Legs: Koga Hakama
Feet: Suzaku's Sune-ate or Fuma Sune-ate (Ninja Kyahan +1 at night)

The major difference here is that I am basically dumping all of my Haste gear for HP or defense. Haste is a lesser concern in this fight, so the focusing on HP and Enmity is a better idea. I started putting this idea together when I saw Aable show up to the fight with his Koga Hakama on, which made me consider what else could be changed to make things more efficient for a fight that is not straight tanked. The feet slot is something I am still considering because Fuma have a slight HP bonus over Suzaku's but Suzaku's have more defense. I will probably go with Fuma because as noted before, you don't get hit by very much direct physical damage so more HP is never bad. I am definitely not concerned with a wind resist set up because Great Whirlwind is not bad enough to justify it, definitely not going to one-shot me, but since the Earth Staff is near useless, it is definitely an added benefit for direct damage reduction.

Kirin itself was pretty run of the mill, and the drops were horrible. It would be nice to get some decent drops, maybe next week. The best thing we got out of the whole thing was a cute and cuddly pic with Elfaria. ^.^/
Now, on to game related issues. Honestly, I got up this morning and checked the POL site because I still needed to upload the pictures from last night, and none of the new information that was available was up at the time, and lo and behold when I get to work, there are updates! :) Ok, so the version update will happen on Monday, June 4th, which is a lot sooner than I expected. I don't really get what is going on with SE right now... giving players what they want... new events... new ways to get gear we all want... and now this? Confirmation of the new merits and the new weapon/magic merit caps? What is the world coming to? In the soon-to-be released version update, we plan to introduce "Group 2" abilities for the blue mage, corsair, and puppetmaster jobs. We will also be increasing the maximum limit for point allocation in the "Combat Skills" and "Magic Skills" merit point categories for all jobs.

New Merit Point Category for Blue Mage, Corsair, and Puppetmaster

In the upcoming version update, we will be adding the "Group 2" merit point category for blue mages, corsairs, and puppetmasters.
Each of these jobs will gain access to four new job abilities and traits that should prove invaluable in a variety of situations. See the tables below for a description of each ability.

*Convergence will also increase the power of blue magic spells that are originally single target effects.

Maximum Point Allocation for Combat Skills and Magic Skills

The maximum limit for point allocation in the "Combat Skills" and "Magic Skills" merit point categories will be increased for all jobs.

"Combat Skills" maximum total ability increases:
12 > 20

"Magic Skills" maximum total ability increases:
8 > 16

*The maximum limit for each of the abilities within these categories will remain unchanged.

Further adjustments will be announced on the day of the version update. Like the AF for the new jobs, these new merits look a lot more thought out than those for the old jobs. BLU's get an obvious boost with their merits and it will probably be difficult to decide what to merit, because they all have definite benefits for the job. Probably more Blue Magic allocation points being the most obvious one to merit. COR has a wider arrangement of options but still all generally good, and PUP probably have a good set too, but I don't know much about the job to make a definite statement. The more intriguing thing to me though is the new cap to weapon and magic merits. 20 merits will now allow for two fully merited weapons, which I am sure is pleasing the Axe/Ridill WAR's of the world, but hey they were already broken, so its not like it going to break them much more than they already have been. But it will let me put merits into Marksmanship, or Great Katana, or Polearm, or maybe even Axe. I think the 4 left over merits are probably going to go into Evasion. I am still not positive about all that yet, but the opportunity is now available and I am quite pleased with the situation. :) Looking forward to next Monday, that is for sure.

Oh and I forgot to mention that SE is going to be at some anime event at the end of the June into July. Usually, even from these kinds of events we get more information, and at least an interview or two. Hopefully, some more information will trickle out of the event about the new expansion... I am starting to put some thought into this new expansion and their mention of new magic and spells. I will have to read exactly what they said again, and see if they meant new spells for the jobs that already exist or if they mean a new class of magic. The more than I think about it, the more that I think that Time based magic might be a viable option. I think I will go into that more tomorrow.

I still fucking hate leveling SMN though.

I've been leveling summoner just kinda randomly, so I can use it for promys and have it maybe at 37 for subbing on WHM if I ever feel like it.

Summoner SUCKS. At least in the dunes. What the frick am I supposed to do? I can't heal well with only Cure I, and I don't want to either. I can't do damage, using an offensive (note: carby is the only summon I have that has a defensive BP right now, and I have 'em all except Fenrir and Diabolos) blood pact once a battle doesn't do jack. It doesn't even do good damage. The summons suck at meleeing, if they ever hit its a pitiful amount of damage more fitting for a dagger, except they swing as fast as like a great axe. Should I be meleeing? Really? Cause its looking realistic. Its frustrating as hell to be aware of the fact that if I went afk for about an hour we'd lose maybe 10-20 exp/hour out of maybe 3000/hour.

I guess the upside is so far I haven't been in a single party without a WHM, so I've never had to main heal (not that I can but retards in the dunes would ask me to anyways).

I guess on the one hand its going to feel good when I finish leveling it, but for crying out loud I'm only 14 now, theres going to be a LOT of pain before I get it up to the point where I can even do useful things for the party, let alone enjoy it. After this I need to get RDM up for mage subs as well, then as SAM moves up I'll have pretty much all significant subs leveled for just about anything, or at least the basic exp ones. . . oh well.

UPDATE: Banish (from SUBJOB) does roughly the same thing as any of the offensive blood pacts (from MAIN JOB) and Cure (from SUBJOB) does more than healing ruby (from MAIN JOB), which is my only defensive blood pact. I might as well just de-level my WHM to 7 and party with that, it'd be the same freaking thing.

I write the following rant, because I feel like I need to clarify the reason why some issues, namely the upcoming difficulty downgrades on CoP send me into cautionary tirades in various venues of FFXI conversation. I also want some folks to understand why I'm not regularly online every night.

When I began this blog, I did so with the intention of bringing something different to the table.

I wanted to chronicle my experiences as a FFXI player who is part of a demographic that is as much underrepresented as it is largely insignificant in size to the overall population in most MMOs, much less FFXI: the parent gamer. But not just any parent gamer, mind you.

Not the parent gamer whose kids are out of the house. Certainly not the "I'm so hip I play MMOs with my kids" parent gamer. I mean the sleep-deprived, newbie parent of toddlers, living in a home that still smells faintly of diapers. The parent who begins to realize the lifelong art of juggling increased priorities -- among them career, parenthood, love life, physical health, free time, and (blessed) sleep.

As a part of this odd group of gamers, I'm faced with a choice when I stare at the Playonline screen: do I want to spend the 2.5 to 3 hours of free time that I have tonight playing an MMO? And "spending" that time is really what I do. It has a cost, consisting exactly of what I could be doing rather than carrying out a virtual life in Vana'diel.

In the brief span of time between my kids' bedtime and my own, I could read one of the slew of books I've deceived myself into thinking I actually have the time to read. I could watch a good film with an appreciation that can't really be achieved during the kids' waking hours. I could continue to hone my writing, or finish the odd number of poems I began years ago. I could have a meaningful, uninterrupted conversation with my wife. Hell, maybe I could play something other than FFXI for a change.

What I think some of the other adults playing FFXI don't understand is the impact of this trade-off. We can't just come home from work, put in a few hours, log out, and go do something else in RL. Those few hours are it for some of us.

This frames the game in such a way that the quality of my RL sometimes becomes inversely proportional to the rate of my accomplishments in Vana'diel. And this realization affects how I, and others in my situation, play the game.

Sometimes, though probably not as often as I sanely should, I choose not to make the expenditure in favor of FFXI, and I shut down the machine. Sometimes I do this for extended periods. These outages usually aren't planned. They're just the result of the constant juggling act, and FFXI has to hit the floor every now & then.

But I'm patient, and realistic, and continue to chip away at the game for my own pleasure, my own little spot of Zen order in all the chaos. When I do decide to log in, my usage of the 3 hours at my disposal also becomes a bit of an economic exercise (though not an unpleasant one), between EXP, crafting/skilling, missions, and linkshell activities... when I do have a linkshell.

This sporadic and slow approach to FFXI doesn't always lend itself to strong longstanding social connections in the game.

I have several close friendships on Ifrit that I consider myself extremely lucky to be a part of, but I could just as easily see someone in my situation wandering through the game for years without gaining firm social ties. Part of it is the piecemeal nature of our commitment to the game, but much of it is also due to the social gap between those with parental priorities and those who constitute the leisure class of FFXI: the early twenty-somethings with expendable time.

We just live in very different worlds, and when we connect it's usually a serendipitous occasion.

So... I say all of this because I want people to understand that it's hard and sometimes nearly impossible for some of us to get certain things done in this game. And doing them isn't just a matter of determination, or ingenuity, or perseverance, which I know many of you have demonstrated with your considerable accomplishments. It takes either a fluke or a nearly unacceptable cost to the quality of our RL hours to complete the task.

I'm not whining. Believe me, I know what whining is... I'm simply stating the truth.

So before some of you take too hard a stance on what you consider to be acceptably or justifiably difficult in the game, separating the proverbial wheat from the chaff in FFXI, consider that there are people for whom content such as "Sea" has been out of reach for quite some time, and for perfectly valid and inevitable reasons. SE's recent announcement might very well be a good thing for them.

I'm not even really speaking for myself, since I probably still wouldn't have the time for a Limbus group. But I know there are parent gamers out there who would make significant contributions to such groups. Consider Lifthrasir's flawless Promyvion runs that I recounted awhile ago. I personally think that the largely adult leadership of that group had quite an impact on how those forays into CoP played out.

On behalf of players such as these, I say bring on the kinder gentler CoP. Let veterans' reactions to the opening gates of Sea stand as a testament to their own self-worth.