How the Japanese are celebrating the 5th year of Final Fantasy XI:
http://www.playonline.com/ff11/event/sep2007/
Square Enix Party 2007. Events include: Exclusive quests, cosplay contest, movie contest, a concert, etc...
How everyone else is celebrating the 5th year of Final Fantasy XI:
http://www.playonline.com/ff11us/index.shtml
Adventurer Appreciation is Back! (05/02/2007) The following weeks mark the fifth anniversary of FINAL FANTASY XI. To celebrate this monumental landmark, we will be providing adventurers with tokens of our appreciation in the form of several exclusive in-game items. Distribution begins at midnight on Friday, May 11th.
Wow wow wow wow is all I could say as I was exp'ing the other day.
Xlotol was coming up, dynamis had just ended, and we wanted to do a small wad of exp before that, just to bring our buffers back up. We were only 4, so we were thinking of places to exp, Colibris would work but that's always packed, mamool/puks are boring, sea on aerns inside the palace was mentioned, but that's not really that good exp for how long it takes to kill them anymore (my old LJ entries show this as good exp with 4 people, but oh how times have changed with exp/hr :P ).
So while on the lines of sea exp, I brought up Phuabo. I remember a long time duoing them for really decent exp, and seeing how sea works with signet, we would be getting an exp bonus with our small group. Aurik mentioned that Phuabos get "big monster" exp bonus, so that was another 10% exp bonus when we fight them, so we definitely were heading to sea to exp.
The plan was to exp on phuabo really, with 4 of us we would be able to kill the 4 that are near JoPrudence while they repop - myself on RDM, Aurik(MNK), Amastacia(NIN), and Cadenza(BRD). I had to afk a tad, during that time Cadenza dc'd, cassanda and vistani joined instead, so we had 5, which was still ok. While waiting for cassanda, I told them we should just start exp'ing. We didn't intend to do what we did, but boy was it freaking fun.
Off we started around JoP area, we were just killing the Phuabos, but then after a while we realized there were only 3 in the spot instead of 4, so with quick thinking we started killing anything EM upwards. Was really helpful that Hpemde follow us around ;p I'd cast sleep on the one I checked to be EM or above, to avoid confusion, then the melees would fight the red monster instead of having to /c them all. Chi blasts, vokes, etc went flying on every monster around them, and the thing is these die muuuuuch much faster than the normal T mobs you fight in ToaU , because nothing has stupid evasion bonus TP moves, or Flash, etc. They just have 1 shadow TP moves or similar, at most they have impact scream or Aerial Collision, while slightly straining on MP as a RDM, with ballads and quick wit you should be fine.
Anyway here's some pretty pretty pictures in chronological order. We stopped at chain 46 and headed out. Not the most exp/hour, not the best setup, but it was fun above all things. It didn't feel like typical FFXI exp where you have 1 monster and you're all fighting it, it felt like another game, where you're running around on a roaring rampage and killing everything in sight, and they all have low HP. It was FUN!!!!! Going from JoPrudence to JoLove and back to JoPrudence, demolishing everything on our way? Yummy.
Cie Here! /waves So, me, Jaish, Kys, and Solly were contracted by the Aurastry to hunt down their missing minister. We were each given a 'guide' in the form of a smart-assed talking doll.
The Doll lead us north, to the ruins of Ro'Maeve, where he was receiving strong energy readings from the Qu'Hau Spring. Unfortunately, The Minister wasn't there, just some short, tonberry looking thing, which freaked the Doll out.
Well, after the Doll calmed down, he pointed us south, to the orcish stronghold of Davoi. We soon found the minister, there, holding back a wave of orcs.
He told us that he was waiting for backup from San d'Oria, and that if he left his position, they'd be overwhelmed by orcs. He also mentioned that there was an orc nearby using curse wands to weaken his efforts to keep the orcs at bay (hint hint) So, we all set out to crack some skulls and take some wands. We got kinda bored while waiting for the NM, so we rested on his couch till he showed up. he wasn't happy to see us. ;.;
Anyway, long story short, we asked nicely for his wands, and he refused, so we had to crack some skulls.... We took the wands back to the Minister, and found out that we was leading a double life as a female taru penpal for Prof. Koru-Moru. (cool points +5)
We then went back to the Aurastery in Windurst, to report what we found to Moreno-Toreno, who seemed shocked that the doll had given us wrong directions, but decided that it was nothing to worry about... I'm not so sure >.>
A couple of weeks ago, Anrita gathered together a group to fight Fenrir Prime. At least one of us (me) had never beaten him and a couple others wanted items for the Evoker's Ring quest, and still others just wanted to help out. We had Anrita (WHM/BLM), Allia (RDM/DRK), Habanero (BRD/???), Frobro (MNK/NIN), Fliggity (WAR/NIN), and Tsakiki (PLD/WAR). The fight started out pretty well, but we didn't do enough damage during Allia's Chainspell-Stun, and ended up wiping, with Fenrir at a sliver of health. We sort of hoped Anrita's Dia II would be enough to finish him off, but it wore pretty quickly. We agreed to try again in two weeks.
So yesterday, the same group gathered, only with Itera joining us as MNK/NIN instead of Fliggity. We went over our strategy in detail before heading in, and confident that we knew what we were going to do, we headed into the burning circle. Frobro, Itera, and I slept for 100%TP, Anrita buffed us up, Habanero used soul voice with madrigal and minuet and we ran in to fight the big puppy. As usual, he was hitting pretty hard, but Anrita kept us well-healed. I used Sentinel and then Invincible to help hold hate and keep my damage down. Once Allia started using her chainspell-stun, both Monks used 100 Fists, and I pretty much didn't have hate for the rest of the fight.
Fenrir managed to get his two hour off between stuns, but we all survived. I missed the message that he was readying it, and didn't get Rampart off, which might have saved us a lot of damage. Anrita ran in for Benediction, and Fenrir didn't even look her direction - he was too mad at the monks to bother with the little white mage. Frobro took a huge Eclipse Bite, knocking him down to 28 hit points and I ran over to cover him, but Itera had pulled hate, so cover didn't really do anything. We got Frobro's HP back up, and cure-bombed Itera to keep him going. Then all of a sudden, it was over. Fenrir was defeated! Finally I could have a pact with Fenrir, after 5 failed attempts.
These fights are sure a lot more fun when we win! Anrita escaped us from Full Moon Fountain back to East Sarutabaruta, and we ran to Windurst Waters to talk to Leppe-Hoppe and get our rewards.
I headed to my moghouse to switch to PLD75/SMN1, and headed out to West Sarutabaruta to pick on some tiny animals, just to play with my new puppy. Hopefully I can leech with a group of Monks and a RDM/DRK to win against Diabolos Prime, and have my avatar set complete. I'd still rather be an integral part of the team, but my 0/6 record on him is making that look unlikely. I don't really see that I'll ever level SMN, but I always wanted a complete set of avatars.
Well, it finally happened. We killed Byakko, the Haidate dropped, and I didn't DC. LOL The fight was great, and I think it was Izman's first time tanking Byakko, let alone any god as PLD/NIN and he rocked! Really, it was one of those fights were everything worked out. As I understand it, the gods can spawn at different levels, and maybe this one was a really low level one, but it just seemed much easier than even the Suzaku we did right before... the Suzaku that killed me with two Firaga III's right before its two hour ended. Ah well, Akanea stepped in and kicked ass for the rest of the Suzaku fight with Izman. Speaking of Izman, he finally got his E. Feet from the same Byakko! And he even called it, said he got a feeling about it, and knew they were both going to drop. A nice pic of him right after he got them made! Pretty good day for Izman and I, I must say. Here are some stat pics of us in our new gear. First, the best NIN pants in the game: And some of the best feet gear for WAR in the game: A quite pleasing day, especially considering that Byakko has been really giving with everything except for Haidate and E. Feet for us.
Speaking of sky, we actually had to spend some time camping Faust, its getting a little ridiculous. Basically, we stationed someone at Faust for a while and did something else, farming for Diorite and getting Zip, but after a while when nothing was up we actually moved down to Faust's room to have to claim him.
Honestly, its actually probably easier to kill Faust in the room and here is an explanation on how to do it. Its pretty easy to avoid aggro even if there is a Aura Butler in the hall because the walls block out the magic aggro radius. As you can see in the picture above, Izman is standing backed into the corner opposite the monolith in Faust's room, and the mages are generally grouped by Omoikitte, where their magic detection area is blocked out by the wall in that area. So we have a Aura Butler in the hall very close to everyone and no still no potential for aggro. I was subbing DRK at the time and Ashhhhh, our resident BLU, and I were standing opposite Omoikitte to avoid aggro on our side. This situation is only slightly difficult for BLU which have limited range on some of their ranged magic attacks, which is sad as Ashhhhh was doing a good bit of damage on Faust as it was. Doing Faust in this manner avoids complicated issues such as the pull; dealing with the yellow door; and honestly I do not like how we position mages on the teleporter in the yellow door room. That is because if they pull hate it almost guarantees that its going to smack everyone, rather than just a few people that are much further away. This reduces total damage taken in the event of lost hate and increases the amount of time the tank has to get hate back before it can hit someone else. This is only really important for cases when a NIN has to tank Faust, because Izman, as usual, is a champ and Faust never turns away from him.
Its sad that we have to camp Faust in its room now, but not as bad as waiting on Ullikummi; no place holders, and he is going to pop much more often. Sadly, we will probably have to do the same thing for MG, but at least we can wait and farm water while we are waiting on MG to pop. Again, its because of the RMT, but its better than it was before. There are also a million and one new Sky LS's running around, but really we haven't had much trouble with claims as of late, the only wrinkle being that RMT are more spread out now.
Just wanted to toss in this really cool picture, that Elf mentioned before we fought Suzaku. Elf said it was scenes like this that just make FFXI better than anything and make us love it so much. WoW doesn't have scenes like this. It was a perfect day in Sky, Suzaku and Byakko, perfect drops, perfect scene, no aggro on the way to Byakko, and I didn't have to use my AK. :)
We have kind of formed a small group to do Nyzul Isle and we headed out to do that after Sky. We have five steady members of Izman, Omoikitte, Eternalpain, Lilkathy and I and we have been rotating in a sixth of support/DD. Now, Nyzul Isle is very interesting and very random, and it definitely takes one or two runs to get your feet under you so you know what is going on. I am going to assume that you, the reader, knows what is going on in Nyzul generally, but I will go into some more detail here. Essentially, there are two different kinds of objectives. Kill certain mobs, and light lamps. First, killing mobs. This breaks down into a couple of different sub-groupings but essentially, for whatever objective you have you will have to kill one, multiple or all, of the normal monsters that check as Impossible to Gauge. You will not have to kill any named NM or Archaic Machinery, so you will want to avoid them unless you want to go for the drop of the NM. This can include enemy leaders like our friend here: There is an exception to this, and this you may have to kill specified Archaic Chariots called Racing Chariots, which was our only roadblock to getting to level 6, as we had three of them piled up in one place and couldn't get a good pull on level 5.
The second kind of level is lighting lamps, essentially three different kinds. One, everyone light one lamp. Two, everyone light their own lamp. Three, everyone light their own lamp in order. This last one is really hard and we have gotten it just once, but failed because of it. Lamp floors are definitely more challenging than regular floors.
Here are my initial suggestions for doing Nyzul Isle. First, bring sneak and invis items, this can include just the spells but be wary of magic aggro like always. This is especially important for levels where you just have to kill one normal mob that checks Impossible to Gauge, as avoiding other fights is much more worthwhile. Second, bring a wide variety of gear. Some mobs are really weak and easily dispatched, some are tougher, and some require tanking gear for NIN. So some are just TP burned, and some need skillchains to kill quickly. Being ready for a wide variety of situations is best. Third, have one person that leads everyone, and one person that scouts and pulls, we did this to start and Aable reinforced it when he mentioned it, but it makes for getting around easier and getting to the mobs you need faster. Fourth, when you are instructed to avoid Archaic Gear(s) I would do so at your leisure, and not worry about it too much. They are easy to sleep and very weak at the lower levels, so if you are instructed to not kill them, then just sleep them and move on to the objective. If you are instructed to not be detected, just pull them with ranged attack or a job ability so they do not port away, then make quick work of them. This avoids the problems of getting a detriment from killing or being detected.
We almost made it to level 6 last night, which would have been our first save point, but couldn't get the pull right on those Racing Chariots. Well, after only three runs we are feeling good about this and hopefully we will soon be at level 20, ready to kill our first for the new Nyzul drops.
After Nyzul, Hellzfury, Izman, Thaz, Omoi and I went to Sea to farm for more M Ghrah chips and let me tell you, TH3 makes a huge amount of difference here because we got something like 8 M Ghrah chips in an hour. Which gives us three stacks of chips for more Fortitudes, we were also trying to get some HQ Euvhi organs to drop but didn't see a one the entire time we were there. Ah well, we already have 1 or 2 of those so far, but more would be nice, because outside of Ix'Aerns Jailer of Faith is our next major goal. Good night overall, and I still haven't spent my merits, I really need to get on that.
I mean, really. It's been 3 years, and I'm still going through the newbie cycle of extended play (EXP and other non-gil-earning activities) punctuated by periods of desperate money-grubbing. Frohike's too old for this sh**.
That said, it's not incredibly difficult to find ways to earn gil. I've stumbled across several. They're just not fabulous ways to earn it quickly and in large amounts. The methods I use are more suited to small, extended, incremental earnings that add up to large amounts over time. I should have been doing this all along, like once or twice a week, or every other day. But I didn't, and now I'm broke and bored as I wait for the gil to roll in.
Thanks for the responses to the last post. While fun, and a good way to skillup parrying/evasion on my WAR, Ule Tiger farming just didn't pay enough for the time invested. I'm back to crafting consumables for 3-7k profit per stack and making plans to level my crafting further. I'm also getting some more fishing skillups under my belt, although the 'you didn't catch anything' messages are absolutely out of control. Thanks for breaking fishing, SE. -_-; They'll fix it someday, I suppose.
I had an exciting weekend, with lots of things to write about, but the one I'm most excited about is TheUltimates' Dynamis run on Saturday. We actually managed to do Dynamis-Xacabard as Venn planned. The Japanese shell that seems to be there every Saturday evening (Sunday morning for them), must have had something else to do. We still don't have the numbers to want to try taking on the Dynamis Lord, so it was just to be a farming run. Lumikumi won the lot for main tank, with me as backup. Jarbit came as PLD, and Daden was our only NIN. We'd only had three tanks on our previous run, and I felt more comfortable going in with 4 of us.
The first time statue pull didn't go quite they way we wanted it to, but we only had two demons come after us, and the BLMs got the statue and the time extension. The two eye pull went smoothly, now that we all know what to do. We made our way to the second camp, and while killing the eyes and demons there, a Melee Crown dropped! I'd never seen Relic drop from a normal mob in Xarcabard, but apparently TU has had a couple pieces drop over the years. Itera and Rassiter both lotted, and Itera won! Hurray!
We continued on to the NM demon trios, and had a number of deaths in the process, but overall, things were much cleaner than the last time, mostly because we had a "spare" tank to jump in when one of the others died. All the pulls went pretty smoothly, with just the BLM NM being troublesome, having blasted Daden with a Thundaga III before he moved off of his platform. We had to make a second sacrifice pull to get him.
On the final set of NMs, the Dragoon King dropped the Wyvern Helm. Venn was the only lotter, and finally, after 3 years, he's completed his Dragoon Relic. It was pretty exciting! At this point, had we been going for the Dynamis Lord, we would have snuck past a line of demons and eyes to get to the dragons in front of the Castle. Goldfish told us it had been a really good run so far, and we would have had plenty of time for DL, so that was really encouraging.
Since we weren't going for DL, we were going to kill all those demons lined up on the way to Castle Zvahl's. The first pull looked clean, but then turned a bit ugly. We were swarmed with angry eyes and demons, and ended up with a full wipe. We dusted ourselves off, rested up, and worked on killing them a few at a time.
After cleaning them up, we headed south, I think, for more farming. Goldfish pulled an eye, and we got quite a few warrior, monk, bard, and white mage demons. We went through them rather efficiently, with a few deaths, then on to the the next set. Lumikumi had gotten killed, and I jumped in to take over on a Kindred Bard. I was so surprised to see "You find a valor surcoat on the Kindred Bard" when we defeated it. Jarbit, Lumikumi, and I were the only main-lot PLDs. We cast our lots, and mine was the highest (then I was promptly killed by the Kindred Monk I was tanking). I couldn't believe it! I'm never that lucky. I'm currently the only person in TU with the Valor Surcoat. It seems to be a curse for the LS, since the PLDs who've won them in the past either quit the game or leave the linkshell. I don't plan on doing either.
We continued killing mobs and another Melee Crown dropped, completing Rassiter's MNK relic set. And then another mob soon after dropped the BLM hat, which has been promised to Sarntur. He'd won one on a previous run a year ago, but the hourglass expired before the hat had dropped to him and it was lost. That piece completed Sarntur's BLM relic. So it was an amazing farming run for us: 5 Xarcarbard relic pieces, which completed 3 sets, and the other two made Itera and I very happy, and our wins were blissfully drama-free. I think it's pretty neat that we both got our pieces on the same run. Now we should both get our Glacier drops on the same run too. :-)
As time was winding down, we had another swarm of angry eyes and demons that killed us all, so Venn called it a night and people were given R3s. I really hope we can have more Northlands runs like that. We need more relic armor for everyone!
I still can't believe Kiki actually has a Valor Surcoat. I remember talking about it with Yobun maybe two years ago, when what may have been the first NA linkshell to beat the Dynamis Lord got the Surcoat. We both figured it was something our PLDs would never have. Of course, back then, there weren't many good NA dynamis groups yet, nor did I think I'd be doing Dynamis, or any other "end game" sort of activity. Since then, I've seen Valor Surcoats popping up all over the place, so it was no longer had the unobtainableness it once had. I never thought I'd have mine just over 6 months after starting Dynamis, and just over 4 months with a shell that had enough members with access to the Northlands. I'm 3/5 on my relic now, with the hands and legs missing. I had been planning to upgrade my AF Surcoat with Limbus items, but now I think my AF pants are the logical upgrade.
I have three main goals of this post, Recap, Merits and Party Set-ups (as suggested by Ailee). Lets see if I can get to them all. Also, as a bonus to those that read this at lunch, I will be making sure to have at least something published by Noon EST, so you have something to read while eating.
Goal 1: Recap.
Ok, yesterday and the previous days had some really interesting goings-on so I want to go over that.
Now, to go over the days past that I have not mentioned. On Sunday Obsidian did a Dynamis-Xarcabard, where we have the same problem as many different Dynamis LS's. Duelist's Chapeau refuses to drop. Well, after almost a year with no drops, Gawayne finally got his drop! The reaction in the LS was a bit over the top but it was well deserved, as we have all worked hard to help Gawayne to be able to finally get his hat. (Note that Gawayne dies just after it drops LOL, we had to make sure that he got up and lotted before he died again!) And even more amazingly, we got TWO RDM hats to drop. Yep, a 200% increase over the last year. It was a pretty impressive screenshot at the end of the run. Gawayne with Chapeau and Excalibur, pretty neat. That was Dynamis, but we also had a rather interesting day in Sky on Sunday. RMT, and people buying from RMT are the bane of this game, and really, its people like them, the ticks and leeches, and the people they feed that are the bane of society as a whole. I will avoid a diatribe on how RMT are nothing more that drug dealers pedaling to elementary school children. Anyway, this is our purchaser. I don't know if they were there for D. Legs or B. Haidate but they were there with the RMT. So if you see a JP player by the name of Vision, do not invite them, do not party with them, kick them out, and tell them to fuck off. Seriously, people like this can die in a raging inferno for all I care. Well, its not like the GM's care much at all, they just watch and don't do anything, hands tied by whatever ridiculous rules that SE has set up for itself. This is the one that Malasia called when the RMT were just dicking around on Byakko's island. I don't even know why they showed up. Anyway, while we were in Sky, Biblo managed to get a Bartholomew's Knife from BB. LOL It never seems that our THF's get the knife but anyone else that needs it, no problem.
Finally, while we were just messing around one day, Omoi, Glacian and I went to do the event. It was fun and silly, just look out for the Mithra, it is crazy, and it freaking aggros. I ended up getting my Shinai relatively easily but it took Glacian a long time to get his for some reason. But in the end we all ended up getting ours and I still have mine floating around somewhere in my MH. It looks really cool, much better than the other event items in general. In other news, Iz went with me to do the next Assault Rank up mission. It was pretty quick but I still need to go back and do the mixing of the liquids to finish up the mission. Finally, I thought I should point out this guy that I xp'ed with the other day. Nice gear, and a nice guy in general.
Moving up to yesterday, I got my Leathercraft to 13. For some reason I am finding this much slower than say Clothcraft which I got to 35 relatively quickly, I don't know if I want to continue Leathercraft where there is more definite steady income or Clothcraft where the is more income at higher levels but higher cost at getting there. I am going to focus on Leather for now because it is easy to make a short term profit.
Limbus was next, and we did Apollyon SE, pretty simple and done quickly. Just need to do one more Apollyon then we have another Omega set :). After Limbus, we tried to get Ix'DRK to pop but with no success. I did get a merit, though. ^.^/ But after 2 1/2 hours of killing Aern's we didn't "Sheer Animosity" once. I have camped this a bunch of times now and only gotten it to spawn once and that was a long time ago and we were unprepared for the result. LOL Oh well, maybe next time.
After Sea, we had a nice but short XP party, I got another merit on top of the one that I got while just killing Aern's in the Garden, bringing me to 6 in total, and time to spend them. Which brings me too:
Goal 2: Merits and AF upgrades.
Ok, so now I am sitting on 6 merits, so its getting close to time to start spending them. I am fine on NIN. I don't think that Subtle Blow or Ninja Tool Expertise is something I should be breaking my back over to get any time soon. But RNG and SAM do have tier 1 and tier 2 merits I need to look at. So, I mentioned a few yesterday, but I am going to go much more in-depth than I did then. But before we do that I want to mention that I believe there are actually three different kinds of Tier 2 merits: Merit 3 times, Merit 1 time and Don't waste your merits. Merit 3 timers are the best of the best, usually a strong ability that is further powered by the merit, reduces an already short recast or lengthens the effect of the ability. Merit 1 timers are usually those that are very nice but have a very long recast and the merits to decrease the recast don't do anything to reduce the recast to anything you would need in 99.9% of fights. Don't waste your merits are the WTF was SE thinking when they gave us this ability. But before we get into Tier 2 merits, lets look at Tier 1 for NIN, SAM and RNG (DRG is happily done if you were interested).
NIN Tier 1: * Subtle Blow Effect (+1 per upgrade) * Katon Effect (+2 damage and +2 seconds resist down per upgrade) * Hyoton Effect (+2 damage and +2 seconds resist down per upgrade) * Huton Effect (+2 damage and +2 seconds resist down per upgrade) * Doton Effect (+2 damage and +2 seconds resist down per upgrade) * Raiton Effect (+2 damage and +2 seconds resist down per upgrade) * Suiton Effect (+2 damage and +2 seconds resist down per upgrade) All are blah, and have no interest from me. Subtle Blow would be nice, but not for a long time and after I have spent my merits on a myriad of other things.
RNG Tier 1: * Scavenge Recast (-10 seconds per upgrade) * Camouflage Recast (-10 seconds per upgrade) * Sharpshot Recast (-10 seconds per upgrade) * Unlimited Shot Recast (-6 seconds per upgrade) * Rapid Shot Rate (+1% per upgrade) Scavenge and Camouflage are just ridiculous to reduce the timer on their ridiculous, a complete waste. Sharpshot is at least something that I use, but still its reduction in recast is useless, same with Unlimited Shot. Rapid Shot Rate improvement is at least something that would be useful and I could definitely benefit from meriting. The more Rapid Shot proc's I get the more shots I get to fire. Its kind of like Double Attack or Triple Attack merits for WAR and THF but obviously not as powerful. I will definitely merit Rapid Shot Rate, but not immidiately.
SAM Tier 1: * Third Eye Recast (-2 seconds per upgrade) * Warding Circle Recast (-20 seconds per upgrade) * Store TP Effect (+2 per upgrade) * Meditate Recast (-6 seconds per upgrade) * Zanshin Attack Rate (+1% per upgrade) Third Eye Recast is pretty much useless because it is kind of nerfed when Seigan is up so it doesn't reduce the recast of Third Eye by 2 seconds. I would be very powerful if it did stack, so that recast was down to 20 seconds. Its more like 25 seconds, which could be nice, but I just don't think that is enough to justify the expenditure compared to the other available merits. Warding Circle Recast, LOL. Store TP Effect, this is the first definitive "must have" Tier 1 merit, as at its 5th upgrade it is one full additional TP point gained per swing. Meditiate Recast another very nice upgrade, at its 5th upgrade it drops Meditate down to 2:30, which is significant on such a strong ability. Finally, Zanshin Attack Rate seems to be a very nice improvement but I dont know if it will be that much more beneficial. I generally use SAM only in Dynamis and a few other select places, which means that Zanshin would be beneficial because I still use meat in those zones even in Xarcabard.
So in Tier 1 it would look something like this is priority order: Store TP Effect: 5 Meditate Recast: 5 Rapid Shot Rate: 5 Subtle Blow: 5
Now for Tier 2.
NIN Tier 2: * Sange (-2 minutes 30 seconds recast per upgrade) * Ninja Tool Expertise (+5% activation rate per upgrade) * Katon: San (+5 Magic Attack and +5 Magic Accuracy per upgrade) * Hyoton: San (+5 Magic Attack and +5 Magic Accuracy per upgrade) * Huton: San (+5 Magic Attack and +5 Magic Accuracy per upgrade) * Doton: San (+5 Magic Attack and +5 Magic Accuracy per upgrade) * Raiton: San (+5 Magic Attack and +5 Magic Accuracy per upgrade) * Suiton: San (+5 Magic Attack and +5 Magic Accuracy per upgrade) Ninja Tool Expertise is the only thing worth mentioning, I can see a full upgrade to +15% but nothing else is really worth it.
RNG Tier 2: * Stealth Shot (-10 Enmity per upgrade) * Flashy Shot (-2 minutes 30 seconds recast per upgrade) * Snapshot (-2% Delay per upgrade) * Recycle (+5% activation rate per upgrade) Stealth Shot would be OK, if I used RNG on Gods and such, but I just don't because I would be on other jobs. Flashy Shot is nice for a 1 Merit upgrade and I have already done that, so no worries there. Snapshot is something I really like, fully upgraded 6% haste is definitely something I am into, and I will definitely do that, because it benefits me a lot for XP and Dynamis. Recycle is probably where the rest of my RNG merits will go, but it will only be 2 because you can only have 6 total upgrades in this category.
SAM Tier 2: * Shikikoyo (-2 minutes 30 seconds recast per upgrade) * Blade Bash (-2 minutes 30 seconds recast per upgrade) * Ikishoten (+3 TP gained per upgrade) * Overwhelm (+5% Attack Bonus per upgrade) Shikikioyo is definitely an ability that I need to get, but it will only be a 1 merit ability with its 15 minute recast time, being able to hand out TP is definitely a good thing. Blade Bash is one of those wasted merits if you ask me, a Weapon Bash every 15 minutes? No thanks. Ikishoten is something that interests me because of what I have already mentioned before about Zanshin in places like Dynamis. I would only be able to upgrade it twice because of Overwhelm, but it would still be a nice little addition. Finally, Overwhelm, especially considering that I have basically given up on SAM/RNG (why would I need it when I have SAM and RNG at 75? LOL), this is something that I am going to put a full three upgrades into. It lets me use SAM/WAR and SAM/THF more effectively, considering as evidence that Glacian basically just needs to use TA to get almost equal damage to his SATA WS. SAM/WAR is just a nice boost in XP or other situations.
That leaves me with this for Tier 2 merits: Overwhelm: 3 Shikikoyo: 1 Snapshot: 3 Recycle: 2 Ikishoten: 2 Ninja Tool Expertise: 3
How will I integrate Tier 1 and Tier 2? I am not sure yet. LOL
Goal 3: An alternative party set-up.
This is something I have been advocating for quite a long time, but let me reiterate. Killing mobs is a much faster way to get XP than sitting around in Whitegate waiting for a party with a bard. That being said, here is one alternative party set up that doesn't follow the rule of the traditional burn party but is equally as effective for gaining XP. This is the NIN, NIN, SAM, BLM, BLM, RDM party. I also like to call it the skillchain burn party. It is actually very simple, the two NIN's stand on either side of the mob, and when either NIN has TP they use Blade: Ten or Blade: Ku and the SAM, presumably subbing THF but not necessarily, closes with Tachi: Gekko for Darkness and with two Freeze II, Blizzard 4 or Blazzaga III's you have a newly dead mob. Generally it is better to use this kind of party for higher mobs like Trolls or Mamool Ja, for example at the Jade Sepulcher or Nyzul Isle camps. PLD/NIN can be substituted for NIN's in this case using Swift Blade, even a few other jobs can work with this if they don't mind tanking for a minute after the SAM sets hate on them, and other substitutions can be used for the SAM but they will have to be able to build TP quickly which might be difficult for some jobs.
Of course, the initial objection to this kind of party is ZOMG, my e-peen is shrinking. Yes, the NIN's are not going to be getting the numbers they would from Blade: Jin, but they are going to be benefiting the SAM a whole lot, and the BLM's even more. A good group can get this going for over chain 5 regularly on trolls. The other problem with this set-up for the small minded is that people might have to hold TP for longer than they think they should, again hurting their parser results but not much else. On the mage side, the BLM's are pretty much required but depending on the situation a different mage from the RDM is fine, if the BLM's aren't having much difficulty with their MP.
Ok, so after a bit of a conversation with my BF about how “not fun” it is to be on a PVP server in WOW (Lightning’s Blade, BTW)… I’ve decided to somewhat “remake” my characters on an older, non-PVP server my BF was on earlier in his WOW-game, Bronzebeard.
This time, I stuck to keeping Aerroenu to [...]
Surprise! Time for something cheerful, the drab darkness of the standard LJ theme set such a bad mood on me I think! So I want something colourful for me to look forward to. Also a change is nice now and then, I suggest everyone do it once in a while, that's probably why I change my sigs so frequently (but funnily enough I like to keep my avatars static as a sense of recognition).
Edit : Looks like the size of my top-page banners will have to change with this new layout, they used to fit 550x80, now I think 400x80 will give it the space it needs on each side, as 500x80 doesn't even cut it.
Anyway update time!
Ouryu was a blast, was the first Wyrm for a lot of people in my LS, and we managed to set the record. So either a lot of people on Asura don't do ouryu, or we got a nice first time going on.
I created the parties with the mindset of my previous Ouryu experience, I've fought him plenty so I was reliable to get the parties set. I wanted to do the manaburn path, just because it's the easiest path to take with him, especially with a group that has no Wyrm experience.
The plan was to have 8 blms, but 2 of them couldn't make it so I replaced one with a THF (which didn't seem to change much with drops), and another one with a nin/drk who was not there to tank, but there to support, and he worked amazingly well! He would spam Hyoton? (whatever the thing is to reduce ice resist), bards landed ice threnody on Ouryu, and our blms nuked with Ice in the air / sleep2 on the floor. Glade was our support ninja and he worked nicely stunning the water ele's -ga3 and such.
Here's a pretty picture I made of Ouryu event, was only intending to fix the sky but as usual I get carried away.
The BLM PT1's rdm ended up dc'ing the whole way through ouryu, and at the end we just entered without him for the second and managed to break the record once again (Don't know how fast this is done on other servers, I hear 22 mins, we did it in 37 with manaburn setup with 17 peeps).
Touched up pic here, Original underneath, quite a difference :p
Decent pay off this one, this pays mages in the LS, melees will get a turn to make gil off our TP burn Baha2 we'll plan in the future. We decided to just give the sword/katana to LS members considering the pain you have to go through to sell them. But yay! Very fun, everyone was happy.
After that, we decided to head out to do some salvage.
Arrapago Remnants was fun this time because we were doing something different, proving that we can kill the boss. We have gone to the boss floor with 5 mins on the clock before, and engaging with 4 mins and no 2hrs, we managed to take him to 64%. His special move is pathetic! Mortal Revolution is the name, and it's the only move that doesn't go through shadows, it's also not extremely accurate, you can completely evade it. It's physical based, so it's effected by blind/acc down on the boss, which is another thing, casting Blind on this boss is a key, he doesn't have high acc to begin with, and blind makes a nice difference on him which you don't see on the other bosses.
We have confirmed the whole "1 item" thing to be true, I guess it's due to how easy this guy is. This was a sub 15 minute kill, and without too much struggle.
PT 2's mnk was a support monk, he was given gears and everything last, he was there just to help speed up our gearing up of the tanks etc, he was fully aware of his situation and was really nice about it (nothing annoys me more than people who complain about cells / nothing to do and such especially considering they know what they're getting since it's salvage)
Yay for pioneering, first Arrapago boss kill on Asura. And wtf @ it throwing more Usukane at us, we have seen a whopping of 0 morrigan peices from all the bosses we've killed yay!
And finally, poked around @ Xlotol, yet another nice SS, and a nice drop too!
Ugh, I hate being sick and having extraneous health issues, but at least I am at work to do this update, unfortunately I didn't download my pictures for this entry. Oh well, I have been rather busy so lets start with jobs I have been leveling.
For some reason I am still finding it difficult to get XP on my WAR. The first party I had I died twice because the mobs were fighting were too hard, then it disbanded, down 4k XP. The next party I had, I died twice because the RDM wouldn't stand out of the way of AoE sleep from the Fly traps, I would Rampage, get hate then the mob would AoE sleep and I would die because the RDM was asleep, another 4k XP wasted. Then finally I got a decent party where I got two levels, Kirameki has to be so far ahead of me in XP by now, LOL. In this party we met a nice Taru NIN that also has a 75 WHM, that wanted to join Versus. So that was a definite bonus.
I also got my BRD to level 23, it is moving quickly along with Omoi's SAM and Izman's THF. We usually have a PL for most of our forays into random killing of stuff. Last time Glacian and Aable came along, and Glacian brought his pocket BRD, a friend old character, to kill aggroing mobs and to keep us alive. :) In other news, I got my RDM to level 5! Wootz! LOL And I did some xping on my RNG, which was nice, and I think I will be using that in Dynamis until I can get some more xp on my SAM, because that has been hurting a bit since I hardly ever xp it and I use it in Dynamis all the time. I have also been working on some Merits, I have 4 right now and I am unsure how I want to use them.
More in a bit. Alright where was I, what did we do this weekend. Ahh, well, I got a Bomb Queen Ring. :) We only had about 11 people for the last run, but it was pretty easy. Aable spent most of the time just counter-tanking it anyway, but it is nice to have the BQ Ring, instead of using the Jelly Ring which isn't always beneficial. Also, we did sky and got another Despot, but no MG or Faust, looks like we are going to have to have people waiting at the spawn points to alert us when we need to head down because the RMT are all over these things now that they can't have Ullikummi, same with Curtana. It kind of sucks, they just shifted from one thing to another, but still its way better than Ullikummi was before.
Now before I get to my evasion set up, I should mention that SE has announced the next update and it looks pretty good from just the small blurb we have gotten so far. The next version update for FINAL FANTASY XI is scheduled to take place in early June. Players can look forward to a new, large-scale battle system, as well as additional Assault Missions, Aht Urhgan missions, quests, monsters, merit point abilities, and more! Now, the first picture has been speculated to be Hades, or maybe an unmasked Dark Rider. The middle is of course Aphmau and one of her automatons, and the most interesting is the picture on the right, of Hazhalm Testing Grounds which has already been alluded to in the story line, but not openned as of yet. It appears it will be a new form of battle, like Dynamis or Salvage, but I hope that they tweak it in a way that is more open to larger LS events than something like Salvage or Limbus. Maybe 36 people instead of 18 or 64. And hopefully rewarding like Limbus and not like Salvage.
As, I don't have pictures of my Evasion set up I think I am going to skip that today and talk about my potential Merit Point abilities. I had a nice xp party last night with Izman, Omoi, Bg and two JP players, one WHM and a RDM named Turbo and the guy was stacked with good gear, even had Morrigan's Robe. o.o; It was pretty sweet, in that party without a BRD we managed 15k in one hour. Two merits for me, bringing my total to 4 and the need to spend them soon, without letting them rot. So this is what I am looking at: RNG: * Snapshot: Reduces delay for ranged attacks, -2% delay per point. SAM: * Shikikoyo: Share TP above 100 with a party member. * Overwhelm: Grants a damage bonus with weapon skills perfomed face-to-face with an enemy. Increased damage bonus 5% per level.
I think that I am favoring Snapshot and Overwhelm first, just because they mean more damage over time, and free 6% haste on ranged attacks is pretty neat considering there is no other way to haste them.
Thats about it for today, sorry about the lack of pictures but once I am feeling better things will get back to normal.
I decided to quit WHM, this time for good. Not that I have anything against WHM- after all, it was my first serious job, and I took it all the way to WHM62 before switching over to BLM. It's just that with three mage jobs, one of them was bound to eventually get the boot, and in this case, it just so happened to be WHM.
Literally everything I get called for calls for me to come on either my RDM or BLM. My WHM? Maybe the occasional Raise III here and there. Either way, I have very rarely used my WHM for anything since I actually hit WHM75.
Quitting WHM and selling off all my gear would free up a lot of the money that I have stored in gear, but also free up my Mog Locker which I need if I am to pursue other jobs (seeing as how I'm very pressed for space at this time). Just today, I went on a merit party with my WHM, and I was so out of practice, I made up my mind there and then that it was time to move on.
However, before I go ahead and quit WHM for good, there was one last thing I wanted to do:
Beat Maat. Again.
See, in the very, very, very rare instance that I actually level up all my jobs to 66+ and am able to obtain Maat's Cap (yeah, right!), the last thing I'd want to have to do is to revisit all my jobs again, repurchase gear, etc. just to fight Maat.
The WHM Maat fight is primarily won through endurance. I wasn't quite sure what exactly the alternate win conditions were, although supposedly it hovers around just being able to survive five minutes, or healing yourself for a certain amount. In either case, after farming Goblin Alchemists up in Cape Terrigan for about half an hour, my first attempt was a flop, mostly because I had no idea what to expect. Maat was hitting me quite hard (about 100 damage/hit), and the jig was up when he Combo'ed me for the kill.
Some more extra reading into the fight gave me the idea of damage mitigation instead. Thankfully, such items for WHM are very cheap, and so, armed with this extra knowledge, I went to the AH and picked up a few items, giving me the following gear setup:
Food: Shallops Tropicale
Main: Terra's Staff Ammo: Fortune Egg Head: Healer's Cap Neck: Memento Muffler Ear1: Insomnia Earring Ear2: Medicine Earring Body: Noble's Tunic Hand: Blessed Mitts Ring: Phalanx Ring Ring: Medicine Ring Back: Aurora Mantle Waist: Hierarch Belt Legs: Healer's Pantaloons Feet: Healer's Duckbills
The rationale was to maximise VIT, DEF and damage reduction, which explains most of the choices I made. Of particular note is the Medicine Earring, whose -30% damage reduction triggers upon
Question: Anyone have any ideas if this would be an issue with my TV or the cable company? Sometimes my picture goes black, but I still get sound just fine. 98% of the time it happens on the SciFi channel, I've only had it happen once or twice on one other channel. (I can 'fix' it by changing the channel and then changing it back to SciFi. Unfortunately this doesn't help at all on Tivo-recorded stuff.)
My TV is old, so it wouldn't surprise me if it was a TV-related issue. However, it's mostly just happening on one channel, so if it was my TV I'd think it'd be all channels...
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Today was supposed to be a special day: Our XP static disbanded, so for the first time in more than a year I did not need to set my alarm to wake up on a Saturday morning! I was going to sleep in! ...except a Besieged was due and I'm an idiot. I got up to check at 4 AM. Undead were starting to build. Okay, go back to sleep for an hour. Got up at 5 AM. Yay! Building fast! Slept for another 30 minutes, then got up and stayed up. Bah. So much for sleeping in!
However, luckily, all three waves attacked (and I caught them all! Yay!), so in my best guess we will get no attacks early tomorrow morning. Thus tomorrow I will sleep in! Or try to. I so often fail at that whole sleeping thing.
No matter when I get up, I'm going out tomorrow. Either to the farmer's market if I'm up early or just to get lunch if I'm not. I do need to do more RL stuff too (clean clean clean! Must clean the apartment spotless! Company is coming!), but I'm mostly done with what I set out to do this weekend.
On-game I didn't do too much, but catching three Besiegeds is amazingly great, so it's all good. Digging sucked so much ass (SIX charges on my whistle used trying to find a not-dug-out area). 6K in charges + lots of outposting + getting nothing but crap = a lost money day for digging. Bah. I really should stop on the weekends...
Other than that, spent the day following <3 Nai around and making sure random XP parties didn't kill her.
Lots of screenshots tonight, but first a 'One Year Ago Today' thing. I actually have a screenshot of the 'trolls on the move' message from Besieged! I wonder if 4/28/06 was my first Besieged caught? I should check my LJ post from then and see! And look at this, the radar from that time:
Remember how it used to not move you to a random place in the zone? :D How much the event has changed! (Edit: Nope, wasn't my first. But ha ha ha, Besiegeds only lasted 2-3 minutes back then, and I was going to use a one handed weapon because people thought reward was based on number of swings and number of times you plain old made contact with the mob! Hee. Edit 2: Ah ha, the first Besieged ever on Midgar was 4/26/06. I wrote "The first besieged happened on Midgar, and of course I was at work." Ha ha ha, that's the story of my Besieged life! :D)
Okay, screenshots! The first one is for everyone who told me not to beat, kick, shoot, burn, or threaten to kill my bird.
See? See? It works!
So off I went, riding on my red bird. I rode here to dig (does this count as flying? Both feet off the ground!) and I rode there to dig (I think I have to wear my aketon whenever I ride him!), but I was starting to feel bad. Green chocobos are cool because they look all camouflaged in the Woods and Thickets! My bird doesn't blend in anywhere (except maybe if I could ride him in IC...). Then I found it! The place my chocobo does blend in! Red bird camouflage!
I just need one more disc increase and then, um, four? more rec increases for him, then I can retire him and never ever ever raise another bird again! (Until SE introduces some new ability or activity that we need a bird for...)
While I was with Nai, this other party kept asking me for help. They were both nice and cute, so I kept giving them raises.
That made me giggle.
Just a quick shot I took, not set up as well as I would have liked (I was worried he'd run away). My model as a BLM. That armor may be the sexiest in the game, and I have no idea at all why BLMs get it. Mages should wear robes and cloaks and stuff, tattoos and muscles should go to DDs. I'd really like to know SE's logic of giving it to mages. :/
And lastly, the armor event. While it didn't annoy me as much as a lot of other events, it was zero fun for me. Plus my dinner got cold on Friday night while I did part of it, which didn't help matters. I didn't expect to post any screenshot from it, but the colors on this one came out too pretty to not post. Look at those purples and blues! So nice! (Watch it only look that nice on my monitor, everyone else will be scratching their heads. :P ) I got the shinai(sp?) and way more importantly the three warp objects. I'd really like to know why SE made such a useless "weapon" though. :/ It might as well have 'Storage Space -1' in its description.
Mine is a story of a bastard Mithra, and even worse, a camera-happy bastard Mithra. I'm sure I can tell about jobs, gears, levels, crafts, missions, quests, explorations, and dreams that make up the typical day in Vana'diel, but, I'd rather show.
This is an optical hat:
It's nothing terribly special, save for it having some legendary accuracy and evasion stats, being a major pain in the butt to get both time and gil-wise to get. It also has some legendary fug, but more about that later.
It is also, as far as I can see, one piece of gear where at least one, if not more, people will get screwed out of theirs. I've heard horror stories, alliances wiping, or breaking, or even once a person who had hit hat lotted on by someone else. Call it Hakutaku's Law.
See, that's the bastard up in the top right. And in the foreground, the front line of fighters seeking his hats. And in behind the camera, the various black mages, white mages, and red mages to keep the fighters up and the eye-blob stunned. Oh, and more fighters. And a Paladin, who begged us to make him part of our alliance.
So, overall about eighteen or twenty people, of all races and nationalities, about eleven of them who have a cluster to bring forth the giant optical monster of doom, some of whom have been waiting two or more hours to just get the party started, and a Saturday night. We went not by /random, but by the order in which we joined the alliance. I was fifth. Cieria was sixth. I got mine. She didn't. See, someone always gets screwed.
Time invested: 2 hours getting the party together. 30 minutes getting everyone to camp. 30 minutes per O-hat run, between downing the multi-eyeballed one, killing his slightly-less-well-endowed eyeballed minions, and getting all the people herded together. And doom toads.
So, if I was fifth, I spent about five hours total getting that hat.
All and all, the runs ran smoothly. Only the tanks, and the black mage Solare died in battle, and another Dragoon died popping her Hakutaku. Stun went down on Firaga III, no time else. The tanks face backwards, and the melee hit Hakutaku from behind. We settled into a routine, and by the time I popped Hakutaku, no one died, the only one without a death.
Then people broke away. The tanks disbanded. The white mages had to go. My support did as well. Someone always gets screwed. Not to mention, Rancor Den smells horrible between the unbathed tonberries, the rotting toadies, and the formaldehyde. I bet it even got to the humes!
Oh, that's not my Hakutaku up there. The pictures of mine ended up looking like a failed alchemy experiment. So I borrowed someone else's.
Now, on to the first confession: While I wish more people could have gotten their hats because I think everyone has a horror story, some part of me was glad that the party disbanded right after I got mine. Gah!
Let it be a lesson--Join the alliance early, and ask that the order be based on who joins, or join the alliance late and ask that things be done through /random, and hope that your 999 rolling ability prevails.
Second: I don't think the optical hat is that ugly. Yes, it looks like a hat for a mourning clown. Yes, it looks like a low level mage hat, but it has one thing going for it:
The benign Mithra smile now looks like a sneaky-inscrutible-menacing Mithra smile.
Not a joke this time, no promise of coming back on a whim, not an empty threat. I'm quitting FFXI for good.
I'll be on for the next month or two until my CoP static reaches Sea, then I'll sell off/give away my gear and stop paying.
Too all my friends who read this..I'm not gonna be with you for much longer (Sounds like I'm dying LOL) but if you want..you can reach me on MSN/Email at: stockyboy123@msn.com
My roommate shaving god knows what while leaving the shower on thinking it drowns out the noise of his electrical shaver…
Wouldn’t be too bad if he hadn’t told me a day earlier in precise detail how he cant stand hair anywhere on his body
I really want to go back home T_T
Venn, in an effort to spend every day of the week with members of his various Ultimates linkshells, has added yet another activity to the agenda. He's created a new shell, UltimatesForever, specifically for Salvage. We're meeting on Friday nights, and had our first run last week. We had 11 people for our inaugural run, and Albany is guiding us in our infancy.
Salvage is like Limbus in that you can have up to 18 people participating, you have a time limit, and you're trying to defeat mobs to get items that can be turned into really amazing gear, such as the Ares armor. It has a 100 minute time limit, with no extensions. The fee for entering is 2000 Assault Points, which means people have to keep doing assaults to get enough points for Salvage, as well as any Assault items they might want.
When you first enter Salvage, you have no access to your job abilities or subjobs, you cannot equip any gear, and your stats are all severely reduced (-50 on all visible stats at least). The mobs you encounter can drop "cells" of different types that will lift one particular restriction from the individual that gets to use it. There's strategy involved in deciding who gets what first, to best benefit the whole team.
We meant to start out with Bhaflau Remnants as our first run, but ended up in Zhayolm Remnants instead. It was pretty amusing watching the group running around in their underwear, punch mobs. Most of us were pretty pitiful, with no hand-to-hand skill, but Itera was doing a good job of killing things, even with his bare fists.
I nominated Jarbit to be main tank, since we were were the two PLDs and he's got more HP than me, so he was the first to get his subjob, then weapon and shield, then job abilities. Goto was our only WHM, and he was the first to get his use of magic unlocked. A few mobs will "drop" treasure chests, which contain temporary items such as regen milk and HP restore potions, which came in quite handy. It was a bit chaotic, and we ended up with nearly a full wipe on a Poroggo NM, but we got back up and continued on up to the second floor. We ended up timing out before we'd made significant progress, but it was really an awful lot of fun. I'm eager to go back tonight and see what we can do!
We had a nice turnout of 13 folks (2 ridills, a joytoy, and 4 blms for damage) to do Omega last night, which went as smooth as silk. We held him under 10% for quite a while, maintaining hate and decent MP throughout. We only got a thf upgrade item off the pod that popped though, and then we just decided to kill it off. GOOD drops this week though, nabbing our first pair of pants! Congratulations to Corsandryth who now has the hands and legs for his blu/drk.
Still bored with FFXI endgame at the moment, went and played a few hours of Titan Quest with Pettra after limbus last night. We made it through the end of the first level of difficulty for the original game, and are now into the new content from the expansion pack. I think we'll just play straight through that on Normal first, then wrap around and start the main quest over again in Epic.
Edit: Bonus lol. Stephen Hawking, you are officially a badass. So many others in your shoes, and with your academic prowess, wouldn't have taken an offer like this seriously. This is a great picture that reminds us all to have a little fun every now and then.
This Wednesday, we headed to Qufim Island to see how'd we'd fare in Dynamis-Qufim. Like the other CoP Dynamis zones, we'd be starting without our subjobs. We'd have 60 minutes to get the Megaboss killed, and then would get an hour extension for farming. I won the tank /random, and Jarbit was on backup. This was Amyalfrodo's first run with us - one of the cities might have been a more gentle introduction to the Paladin role in Dynamis, but I think she had fun anyway.
Things were a bit disorganized, mostly because we had to move quickly, and people were a bit anxious. We were told we wouldn't do anything right away, as Goldfish, Lucrezia, and Krimsonfury would be off in search of the ??? spots to release our subjobs. As I was getting ready - eating my food, using my reraise gorget, Firenze pulled a group of bats. I wasn't expecting that yet, and someone said "don't pull", but Firenze appeared with five bats chasing her. My immediate reaction was to use my provoke macro, but a no-subjob PLD doesn't have provoke, so that was pretty useless. I switched over to my Flash macro, and grabbed one of them. Meanwhile, Firenze died and kind of bitched at me about it. I'm not sure what she expected me to do with multiple bats - it's not like I have Flashga or anything. Plus it would have been nice if she'd given us a bit of warning, and we'd known what was about to happen. The BLMs could have been ready with sleepga, the PLDs could have been ready with flash.
We finished off the bats, and headed off in one direction, then another. We pulled a statue that popped a bunch of Quadavs. The first one killed me pretty quickly, so I sat on the sidelines while they cleaned those up, then killed a Water Elemental. Apparently the Megaboss is resistant (immune?) to all types of elemental magic, but by killing different NM Elementals that are roaming about, you remove the resistance to that particular element.
The next victim on the list was an NM Kraken. He murdered a few pullers, but we finally got him to the group got him dead, not without a few more deaths in the process (including me and Jarbit, meaning Amy got her first taste of main-tanking in Dynamis). Killing the Kraken is supposed to reduce the Megaboss's auto-regen capability, which would be a good thing.
The thieves were having no luck finding the ??? spot, and were dying repeatedly while searching. So we pressed on, heading toward Behemoth's Dominion, killing some Quadavs along the way. There were a few snoll-induced deaths when people got aggro'd, but they didn't slow us down too much. We killed the Ice Elemental, and then a set of Nightmare Rocs, but we were running out of time, so we couldn't get to an NM that you kill to reduce the Megaboss's magic defense.
So it was on Antaeus, a Gigas NM, still without our subjobs. Antaeus is a ranger, and has a terrible version of Catapult called Trebuchet. It's an AOE, and inflicts massive damage on everyone in its path. Firenze was one-shotted while trying to pull him, and then when we finally got him to camp, he used it twice, which took out almost all of our damage-dealers. The PLDs took significantly less damage, so we tried to fight it for awhile, but we didn't seem to be making much of a dent in it. The last two alive were Buffdaddy (NIN) and Meshe (WHM), but first Meshe, and then Buffdaddy were killed, just as time was expiring on our hourglasses.
All in all, it was a really good learning experience, and we'll do much better next time!
Last Saturday we had a decent farming run in Windurst. We were supposed to have a Xarcabard run, but a Japanese linkshell went in about 90 minutes before our start time, so rather than wait, we headed to Windurst. Lumikumi got his Valor Leggings, and we also got DRK, THF, and SAM relic. I didn't get any screenshots in Qufim, but here's one from Windurst!
It's been over a month since the last patch, a good patch it was, but how exactly has it changed our way we play and interact in FFXI now?
All aboard - hop on the memory train! We will stop on certain juicy parts and ride over the corpse of parts we didn't like!
First stop : Nyzul Isle
This area was advertised by SE as a place with alot of NM inside it, which have lots of treasures on them. It was kind of misleading, alot of people thought that they would be dropping their own drops, so when they got up to Fafnir's floor, they expected Ridills or Abjurations, etc, but what they ended up getting was one of 3 mediocre sets of armor (Denali, Goliard, Askar) off the big NM.
In regards to the "Lesser NM", they are fightable, although their levels have been adjusted to match the zone, for example leaping lizzy isn't going to be a level 11 lizard that you'll find outside in Gustaberg waiting for you to steamroll him, he packs quite a punch! When they're killed they drop a treasure chest, which you go to the NPC to appraise. Here comes the "fun" part, it can appraise into absolute trash, which more often than not is what you will get from Nyzul, trash trash trash. After doing over 45 floors and killing 80% of the NM and appraising, our set group ended up getting frustrated and just quitting it. Countless appraisals all ending up to be crap, the greater NM didn't even drop anything, their drop rate is about 20%, I felt like it was a waste of tags we could be using towards salvage.
Other groups have been getting up to floor 100, only to be dissapointed by getting a somewhat useless weapon and the fact that on level 100, your status is erased apon re-entering next time whether or not you have cleared. This means if you wipe to the boss, tough luck, start from level 1 again! The weapon may be useful later on, hinting at relic 2.0, whatever is special about it will just have to wait in time. Also dissapointing is the fact the hat peice isn't a 100% drop from the lvl100 boss, considering he's got a bad rate and you can only enter level 100 once per blue moon, somewhat annoying.
Nyzul is aimed however at the not so hardcore audience, a casual group, so it obviously doesn't cater for a player like me, however my less hardcore friends have much more fun in it than I do. Nyzul hasn't really changed FFXI in any realistic way, drop rates are too low for anything to be flooded, and hardly anything the NMs drop are worth any value (if they are, it's rare/ex).
Choo Choo, train is leaving, next stop is......Pop NMs!
Here is possibly the most fun part of the patch, where SE hit the nail on the head and gave the players what they asked for the longest time : To fight NMs without having to fight against RMT or Bots (same thing really?). The following NM got turned into ??? points where you trade a certain item and they pop : Alkyoneus, Pallas, Ullikimi, Big Bomb.
Ullikimi was the biggest one of all, because the sky RMT hogged them so they can deny us legitimate players a stone, so they can in turn sell them, but not anymore you silly gilsellers! I guess no steak for you tonight, as we'll be taking ullikimi off your hands ;) It was kinda funny, the RMT got really pissed off at us players once we started popping ullikimi infront of them, they resorted to /check and insulting us. The amazing full hachiman trashy geared samurai examined my very rich red mage and told me I'm too weak, anything you say Gimpurai! Unlocking Ulli means more Byakko for us, more Byakko means more Haidate, more Haidate means more players that can finally leave their linkshe errrrrr More happy players! Yes more happy players.
Big Bomb is still sketchy, this patch just helped RMT more than it helped legitimate players, because there's only 2 monsters that drop the pop item for some stupid reason, and the AH's according to ffxiah.com on all servers are just getting flooded with Fire Bomblets. We players can still get sneak a kill in here and there, but the RMT don't leave this area. This I guess is their source of RL steak.
Alkyoneous/Pallas are fun! They aren't really hard to camp/pop, not 100%, but they have a decent rate. The best thing is people who actually want the items, are camping them and getting them. If you don't want to camp it, someone else will and sell the items cheap considering how easy it is to get now.
Sozu Rogberry ok, hands up if you don't have a thief knife. Hmmm why didn't that summoner raise his hand.. Oh that's right, because everyone and their mother has a thief's knife now. Kinda funny considering nobody had one of these before, and now there's at least 5 in every linkshell. At least this helps thieves in the sense that this is no longer a requirement to join LS's, but to be a good thief (aka don't wear AJ and dual weild harpes, be a real DD and not a TH whore)
The lesser NMs all have their drops in the BCNMs, and now drop rare/ex duplicates, so now you only camp vs people who actually want the items.
What this patch has done in this sense has increased the supply for the gigantic demand. The customers are more than satisfied in every case aside from Big Bomb, which SE should look into. (This all could have been avoided if they just ban the gilsellers instead of trying to please an illegitimate audience but this IS Square Enix we're talking about, $ or gtfo)
Choo Choo, train is nearly at the last stop, Miscellaneous patch junk. Let's make this quick!
Signet - Good! No TP loss while resting, big Healing HP recovery, slight exp bonus for a small group. Wivres - Wtf :| Somewhat hard to fight, annoying TP moves, and they were thrown in the middle of the biggest TP burn camp. New DRK spells - Good! They become less of an MP sink, and drain 2 + open mouthed Hpemde = hax. Say hi to +800 max HP Mazurka Nerf - Bad! This was fun and a really cheap way to get hate fast, considering how long it lasted It was unexpected for them to remove it. Venture Roll - Wtf :| Who the hell plays this? If they wanted serious minigames, they should change all the cards and inject Triple Triad into FFXI. New Beseiged mobs - Bad! They do 700~ dmg AOE spams constantly, not very fun, the only way to block AOE is shadows, which is kinda weird since they keep telling players they don't want us so reliant on shadows.
So what has this patch brought us? Personally I don't see anything changing really aside from people realizing some items were more of a placebo(Hi thief knife, how are you? Nobody cares), some people finally getting what they want (Yay gigas bracelets), and the whole auction house going poof. Not much else really, missions were a breeze, although starting to be more full of enticing story with more plot twists than you can kill with fire, I would like a more challenging fight.
See you next LJ update. I'll be talking about TP burn bahamut / ouryu / whatever comes up :p
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2nd May 2007
