Some thoughts on the update:

Abyssea

Wow. Triggers that don't have a pain in the ass drop rate for NMs that don't have pain in the ass drop rates. Timed NMs that don't take 21-24 hours to repop. A means to exp and farm cruor for decent gear. Working towards an area boss where the lower tier NMs actually drop stuff that people want. Not bad for once, S-E. Not bad.

Empyreal Weapons

I was not surprised at all regarding the requirements to unlock these. Honestly, I don't see why people were thinking these would be easily accessible.

New Magian Trials

More of the same. My thoughts on Magians is mixed. I think the concept is neat on paper in that anyone who is dedicated can unlock a potentially great weapon, and that people can work on trials together in a non-competitive environment. But, some of the trials are just assinine time sinks. Especially after having gone through several trials myself for the staves and having to allot a certain time to do certain trials on certain days, I wonder if the devs could have been a bit more lenient on the conditions or at least the amount of kills necessary. For once, I'm kind of glad I don't have a relic.

Armor

OK, S-E has finally done it. They have, at least in my opinion, reached a point where gear has become so saturated into the game that people actually have options. Now, I'm no BG mathologist, so I'm not going to preach about best on-paper gear. Plus, I like having shinies. But, I feel that with Abyssea gear so easy to get and offering some fairly decent options for some of the "harder" to get gear like Salvage, Homam, and Sky (keep in mind harder is in quotes) that they've reached a point where the gear progression might not be exactly linear for a lot of jobs.

Level 80

Honestly, S-E should have done this years ago. Most people have been capped on merits for quite some time. Still, it's nice to see people actually out exping again and going to areas other than Bhaflau Thickets. It is nice having goals again, but there is way too much content that was created with the assumption that 75 is the cap. For example, in Salvage we've been destroying zones now that our DDs are 80. What will it be like at 85? Or higher?

All in all, I think the update is probably one of the most game changing ones and it's only the first major update out of several more to come. While this update hasn't completely obsoleted a lot of the heavy hitters like Ebody, S-E has definitely shown that they're pushing the envelope in that direction so it's probably only a matter of time before better gear comes into play. With FFXIV right around the corner, S-E seems to be not holding back any of the punches when it comes to FFXI, and frankly it's almost overwhelming to keep on top of every possible endgame event. It's nice that they're throwing the FFXI players a bone (or a pile of bones) instead of focusing solely on FFXIV.

----------------------------------------------------------------------

First thing's first, on the day of the update I head straight to Promyvion-Dem and camped Satiator. Of course, it wasn't up but surprisingly there weren't as many people as I had originally expected. So I went to Salvage and came back and logged at Satiator's spawn. The next day I logged in and it wasn't up again. I waited for a few hours and was surprised at the number of people who were moving through the zone to do the mission. Having done the CoP missions years ago when a lot of people actually needed to do them, I took for granted that people actually need to get these done and were unable to find people who either also needed the missions completed or were willing to help. For them, I would imagine that this update was a blessing. Anyways, Satiator finally pops and I get claim. I then dragged Braeden with me to Promyvion-Vahzl for TH4 powa and got me an easy mode Stone Gorget. Thanks Braeden!



Before the update, I was actually working on a +15% cure Teiwaz. Since I was going solo, I couldn't decide if BLM or RDM would be more efficient in terms of kill speed. For trials where you're actually waiting for weather to pop in order to rack up kills, I would think BLM is better.



But, for the most part I completed the trials on RDM. I was actually on the third trial when the update happened which was kill anything during light weather or on lightsday. I was something like 60 kills in, and since the requirement was halved with the update, I was able to progress onto the fourth trial of arcana during light weather or lightsday. This trial actually wasn't that bad, and I was able to solo ~25 kills in Ro'Maeve on a single lightsday so it only took 2 game days.



The next trial was killing 150 beasts using a light based spell doing 50+ damage. Mobwise, this trial wasn't that bad. Lots of Beastmen BSTs have beast family pets and are quite plentiful. I used Goblin's Rarab in Bibiki Bay. Since I don't have SMN, I had to use Banish since I didn't have Meteorite. At first, this was really painful because my divine magic was barely 100 plus I obviously couldn't use Apollo's Staff. So a lot of kills either took several casts to kill the rarab or they didn't do enough damage to count towards the trial. Once my skill got to ~150, the kills came a lot faster as I wasn't getting resisted as much and was able to bounce between 2 goblin BSTs fairly quickly. It took me about 4 hours to get all the kills required as I wasn't always able to get the 2 Gob BSTs to myself and sometimes had to stick it out with 1.



Next was trading 10 bottled pixies to the Fey Spring in Grauberg. This trial actually results in something that is actually useful, so I was glad to have reached this point. The good news is that Bottled Pixie is a 100% drop from Yagudo High Priests in Meriphataud Mountains in the past. The bad news is the amount of distance you have to run between the Yagudo High Priest and the Fey Spring. I timed it to be roughly 20 minutes round trip, so it took a little over 3 hours to finish the trial.





At this point I chose to stop since I didn't really want to farm more Bottled Pixies and I wasn't level 80 yet so I wouldn't be able to use Surya's Staff. So, time to exp!



I find it funny how much my standards have dropped when you are desperate to hit 80. A merit point is a merit point so I'm usually pretty picky about my parties, but not being max level lacks finality so I end up taking whatever I can get. Of course, RDM was my first 80 and I'll probably do SAM > BLM > BRD. I'm really not looking forward to levelling BLM since I absolutely hate manaburning, so I see myself soloing here and there.

Salvage has been going really well. I'm not sure if it's just me being convinced of something because I want to see it, but it seems that level 80 melees just wreck Salvage. We've been clearing zones 10-15 minutes faster fairly consistently.







More importantly, I've completed Morrigan's set! This is a goal that I've had ever since I started Salvage all those years ago, and it feels great to have finally accomplished it!



Shoutouts to:

The original Karasu Salvage crew - Merona, Avinor, Blackhatchy, Jatayu, Cheech, Lyriane, Vilhem and everyone else I've forgotten since it's been years since 7 days a week nightly Salvage craziness.

The "Afternoon" Karasu Salvage Crew both pre and post ban - Merona, Blackhatchy, Nicblue, Livinlegend (I hope your power doesn't go out), Penello, Jiyo and Vilhem.

Breakfast of Victory - Map, Bagel, Ziegh, Curoles, Valacar, and others who have sadly been forgotten since 1/22.

Equilibrium LS - Liltulip, Zubuis, Arcsol and a ton more cool people.

Random LS - Braeden, Dreaubaut, Jyessisnya, Lycidia, Anbuis, Majk and History. Also thanks to Ondori, Rora, Fiddlerx's Advancing March, Machera and Kojack.

Thank you all!

After camping the AH for almost a week, I finally got all 12 ingots! I was all excited while riding the train from work to come home to this:



Time to pose!



Bawwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww!! So cute so cute.

As promised to machinaezeracy, I give you my SAM gear.



1 GKT TP
2 GKT WS
3 Polearm TP
4 Polearm WS
5 PDT
6 MDT

Ambiguous stuff: MKD helm is +15 WS acc, +4 STR, +2% WSD. Balt begins with the letter V. Kotes are Bandos and Bracelets are Alkys. Earring is Bushi.

MDT set is a mess and I need to work on fixing it up once I get some more gil. I need to pickup at least 1 more Merman's Ring since that's a cheap 100k for 4% MDT.

Any critiques are welcome.

I also finally got the highest campaign medal!



Unicorn actually unlocked Fiat Lux again, but I didn't get a chance to go with anyone since I don't really know anyone outside of my own Salvage group and only 1 other guy has Medal of Altana. :/ I did join a pickup group, but my power went out in the middle of Castle Zvahl. ><

I did manage to get another Allied Ring though after burning up my old one. It made the trip from 30-40 DNC quite bearable and I got almost 2 merits from charges alone. RDM merits are almost done. Group 2s are done and I need to do 4 more Ice ACC and I can switch gears to SAM combat merits.

With Unicorn getting access to Fiat Lux twice now, Hecate's Cape prices tanked so I picked on up for fairly cheap.



I'm not too sure what I'll use it for. The magic acc is nice for black magic enfeebles since I don't have Altruistic Cape, but I'm not sure if I'd use it for nuking compared to Gleeman's.

Lastly, I tried to solo Holy Cow instead of Brothers, and have to say it's a really easy solo for RDM.



I'm not too sure if I'll do this regularly over Brothers since it only has one real gil drop (Gigant Mantle) versus Brothers 2 (Hedgehog Bomb and Scouter's Rope), but it's nice not having to wait for the ice wall to disappear as well as getting 500 more exp.

Random has received quite the member shakeup since I joined in February. Out of the 9-10 people that were in the shell when I first joined, only 3 people are left. We've had several people quit the game (including both of the leaders) or just flat-out disappear from the server, but we've filled in the ranks and continue to go strong with a solid group of 7. I find myself in the drivers seat of things once again, but thankfully it's more of an administrative position rather than having to tell people what cells to lot and tell people where to go or what to do. Having a preset order of cells (something my old group never picked up not that I don't <3 you guys) and Vent really streamlines things. Most of the new members are Salvage vets and the one SAM we recruited who was green to Salvage picked up things very quickly, thankfully. I mainly just maintain the wishlist, post screenshots on forums, deal with potential applicants and buyers and handle scheduling. Easy peasy.

We spend 1 week per zone, and I was sacked at the very top of the rotation being Arrapago. That was a pretty good week with 3 35s, one being a Macha's Coat for Lycidia. Other drops were a Macha's Crown to me and Enlil's Kolluks which I also won freelot.



Bhaflau was next and was a disappointment as usual with the only saving grace being boss drops. We sold a pair of Skadi feet for 1.5mil and we completed Lycidia's Morrigan Robe. We still need 5 25s from this zone and 9 35s, however. :/

This week's Silver Sea Remnants was completely amazing. We had 2 nights where 2 NMs dropped 35s and a third night where we got 1 35. All of them were needed, so our needed SSR 35s went from 10 to 5 in just one week with the total haul being Hikazu Kabuto (Anbuis), Macha's Slopsx2 (Braeden, Xerlic), Freya's Gloves (Majk), and Hikazu Hara-ate (Xerlic). Both of my drops actually came from the same run, leaving me completely stunned.




These drops put me at 5/5 Morrigan 35s and 4/5 Usukane 35s. The sad thing is, I still need 2 25s to finish the Morrigan set..

It's been a great month for Salvage for me and the group as a whole. I kind of feel like a douchebag for getting 4 35s in less than 1 month, but the Macha's Crown is my first 35 with the group after almost 4 months of runs. XD

When I joined Random, I was fourth in line on a lot of items on my wishlist, and I never really thought I would end up with the SSR 35s so soon. The Macha's Slops, especially, feel special to me because they were the piece I fiended for when I had original Xerlic since I was 14/15 Morrigan. In the end, that was the piece that drove me to use duping and eventually and rightfully so caused my char to get banned. But, it actually feels quite rewarding to have finally gotten them and eventually complete the set legitimately.

To see more screenshots (or possibly apply as we can use 1 more dedicated member!) check out our forums: Random LS. End Shameless plug. :p

My other random adventures have been pretty uneventful. I'm almost done with campaign rank-ups and got Patronus's Ring and an Allied Ring.











Unicorn just unlocked Fiat Lux again this week, so I need to blow through my current ring in order to get another one next week.



Patronus Ring puts me at almost max Physical damage down on RDM. AFAIK, the only pieces I'm missing are Defending Ring (haha...) and any possibly augmented gear with -PDT. -MDT is still a work in progress, and filling out the HQs will probably be put on hold until I get more gil. :x

Speaking of gil, I've had some burning a hole in my pocket, so I decided to finally spend it on something.



I gotta say, I do miss having a Novio. But, between this purchase and having to buy 12 ingots for Usu Body, I'll pretty much have spent all of my gil.ll wait until Bonanza until I buy the ingots in order to save a bit of cash since prices usually come down a bit.

I also upgraded my Mog Locker to 80 spaces.



This is actually kind of embarassing because I thought that 70 was the inventory cap on Mog Locker. When Machera quit the game, he told us he was selling his account, we looked for it on EGS and found it. I noticed that he said he had 80/80/80 inventory and I was like wait a minute...70 isn't cap haha.

Finally ENMs have been fairly decent. I got 3 foragers and 1 scouters over the past month, which is decent supplementary gil. I also got an empty Sheep in Antlion's Clothing which I've actually never seen in like 3 years of doing this ENM...



Also, Dreaubaut and I have been doing WOTG missions with the update right around the corner. I actually never made much progress on WOTG missions on my first char, so it was kinda cool doing something "new". We duo'd from the first nation quest up to the Cait Sith fight in 1 day and hopefully will be caught up by the end of this week. The storyline is pretty interesting, and the missions themselves aren't too difficult. I guess nothing will ever compare to the original CoP missions.

Till next time.

I've been doing a lot of pickup parties on BRD during the weekends and on weeknights when I have time. I have to say that it's been a pretty long time since I subjected myself to meriting with randoms, since when I was in Karasu on original Xerlic, we merited all the time as a linkshell. I have to say that after several years of putting myself into that pool of 75s, for the most part nothing has changed. First off, I almost always seek for party on BRD. My reasoning is simple:

-If I'm on BRD, then the pt has to have a BRD. Logic ftw.
-Playing a DD in a pt of randoms is a mixed bag. Ideally, you either want the DDs to have similar capabilities to keep hate somewhat level, or be strong enough that mobs die fast enough for shit not to matter. Also, you need a competent mage. All of these are wild cards when it comes to partying with randoms.

The thing about randoms on BRD is you get these princess DDs who rely on your songs to make them be super awesome without giving a shit about the rest of the party. For example, many times I've partied at Colibris (btw, I have yet to party at mamools from seeking) where a DD will ask for Madrigal because "I need it to do damage". Also, 99% of the time said DD is using something like an Askar Helm. This is usually the result of said DD using a wacky weapon such as a WAR/NIN using Axe/Ridill or a Polearm SAM who doesn't want to use Sushi. Most of the times I'll pianissimo madrigal onto that DD because I know madrigal will be completely wasted on the rest of the DDs, but I still get vexed that in 2010 you still get these people who think that all they have to do is swap a weapon and use the same gearsets for TP and WS and call it a day. Oh, and forget spending 15k on a few stacks of sushi, because that notion is just bat-shit crazy.

The best was a merit party where a WAR/NIN aka a DD with Utsusemi didn't want to voke mobs and the RDM died after a convert. I said something in party chat and got this response:



Holy crap, get over yourself man. I wasn't aware that a DD with Utsu tanking a colibri for the 30 seconds that it's alive = mp sponge.

Anyways, the goods news from all of this nonsense, is I'm kinda done with SAM merits.





Store TP was finished a long time ago, and I'm not too concerned with the rest of group 2s. Shikikoyo and Blade Bash would both be nice to have 1 merit in, but I have other priorities in terms of merits. I'm still unsure on what to do about Combat Merits. Since SAM is my only DD, it would make sense to just do 8 polearm and 8 great katana. However, putting 8 merits into an A+ weapon seems kind of pointless in case I do level another DD, but as time goes on I'm thinking that's even more and more unlikely to happen. I plan to do HP/MP next then finish up RDM since I need like 4 more to cap Group 1, then start the grind on STR.

ENMs have been fairly nice, though Hagun's price is dropping like a rock. Still, considering it's a solo it's still a decent chunk of change into my pocket.





I'm convinced that I spend way too much time on BG because I got it in my head that having a PDT and MDT set is key to success is whatever I do. So, I've been blowing money on mats to get Darksteel+1 and Coral +1 crafted. I wanted to get the body pieces out of the way, and managed to snag a Darksteel +1 body off of the AH. Coral took quite a bit of gil, but I about broke even since it took roughly 7 stacks of coral@100k each (1/19).



Thanks for synthing Dre. :)

I did the Odin fight that was put in the last update, but not the Alexander one. I was planning to do the fight 3 times to get earring, torque, and summon, but lost interest in spamming it pretty quickly given what it takes to get the key item to enter the battle.



I went with the earring first for Penta Thrust and to use in campaign on RDM. Speaking of Campaign, I began working on ranking up to get some of the items.







Still got a ways to go, but I'm pretty close to being able to get the Medal Rank items.

I've been camping the 2 Mage earrings that were added in the November update on and off since they were put into game. I didn't actively camp them. Only when I had a spare hour here and there.

For some reason, I put more time into camping Blighting Brand at first, and only went after Eldritch Edge when BB's window wasn't up. Both NMs weren't that difficult to camp, especially if you knew how to pick out the placeholder mobs, but the drop rates are absolute garbage.

So of course, EE drops first after 8 kills.



With the one earring, I took a more active approach to camping BB. I pretty much would leave my character logged in Sauromugue and would only leave for Salvage and to solo ENMs. On weekend days, I was getting 3-4 kills in per day and I got pretty good at claiming BB. I only lost a handful of claims even against people who would be camping with 3-4 people/2-boxed accounts.

After 20 kills, I stopped keeping track of my record and got to the point where I would be checking my inventory, mog house, storage, mog locker etc to make sure I didn't get the drop sometime in the past and just didn't realize it. Yea, it was that bad.

Well one Saturday, Merona came over to my apartment and we were about to go out. He asked me what the hell I was doing in Sauromugue, and I told him that an NM now pops here. I told him that we had to wait for 1 more BB pop. On the next PH, the NM spawns and I start to fight it. He said you're gonna get the drop, but I remained skeptical... I go for the killshot and..



I was floored. It was more of a relief at this point that I was finally done than actually being able to utilize the drop. I mean, the pair of earrings isn't really -that- good. And since I've been expanding my equip sets on RDM, inventory is becoming even more of an issue. The biggest upside to this is I was able to sell my enfeebling earring and make ~2mil, and no real loss to inventory since I swapped Moldavite and Enfeebling for Helenus and Cassandra.

With that out of the way, I've been able to get back to other menial tasks. With the coming June update and the raising of the level cap to 80, I wanted to finish my merits since everyone will be focused on levelling plus I assume the 75 camps will become obsolete at that point.

Finally, it's nice to see that someone has began updating Karasu's frontpage again. Keep it up, guys.

Sorry, no pictures this time. Just words.

First off, it should be mentioned that I'm now on Unicorn. I had a lot of fun on Seraph with some really awesome people, but for some reason or another, I felt like things didn't really click like they should have. EQ is a fairly largish linkshell. As it goes with larger linkshells (same held true for Karasu), things can be kind of clique-y for the established members. As a server transfer, I felt kind of lost.

Not to say that efforts weren't made by others at feeling welcome because they a lot of people did, but I knew about halfway towards the 90 days that it wasn't right for me. I also found the schedule pretty full, which is the sign of a successful linkshell. But, it got kind of hard to attend everything on top of work and social life and my own endeavors, and honestly I really just wanted to do Salvage. Also, I'm way too used to point systems to follow any other type of system. I'm simply not a fan of officer decision. I wish to say thanks to EQ and especially to its leaders for the welcome, and I wish you guys luck in your endeavors.

So, why Unicorn? I joined a Salvage linkshell. As a linkshell it does Salvage and nothing else. Kind of boring to many, but it serves my goal of wanting to complete my sets and isn't as time intensive as other linkshells since it focuses on one event only. Things also come down to brass tacks because a good part of the linkshell is only there part-time with several members having other main shells. To me, it seems really business oriented, which actually works in my favor because I don't feel like I need to log on other than for Salvage.

The other hot topic at hand is the vanafest update. I feel that this is something that FFXI really needs. Balance issues and general "sky is falling" bullshit aside, there were very few goals for long-standing players to work towards at this point in the game. I think FFXI did a great thing with allowing multiple jobs on a single character, but with many people already getting Maat's caps and becoming capped on merits, a lot of people don't have much to work towards. And, let's face it, a grind is the perfect way to keep ppl playing your MMO. Just look at Aion.

Personally, I wasn't too excited about the announcements because I see this as FFXI's last hurrah before FFXIV comes out which I'm pretty certain I'm gonna pick up. For the person who is committed to FFXI tho, this breathes life back into their game.

Things have been going really well since my last update. We did 2 Odins, both of which dropped Wbodies. But, at least they went to people who actually had them wishlisted. We claimed a random Nidhogg which dropped an Ebody for Knightro. I solo popped Ix'DRK and lost animosity because I waited too long to click the ???. I then got animosity back on the next kill and we proceeded to watch Ix'DRK reraise like 5 million times over the next 2 hours. Fun times.

We've gotten quite a few 35s in Salvage. Raistlinratt finally completed Morrigan Robe and Ares Legs, Corrderio got Skadi Legs, Sashimiaru (who lives in Mt. Z) mined up enough Khroma to complete her Marduk's Jubbah, Yvan got an Usu Head for his level 30-something MNK, and I'm sure there are a lot of other pieces that I cannot even remember.

We were on an Ultima rotation, the road to which was somewhat chaotic. There were some bumps along the road with lotting chips and then an upper Temenos run where someone aggro'd Carbuncle with only 2 of the elementals dead elevating Carbuncle to ass-kicking status. We still managed to bang out the win, though.

Ultima itself was rather uneventful. The fight was rather smooth other than seeing Barnesy trying to be slick by sneaking in a Gekko before a CB and ended up catching it with his face.

Drops were pretty good at Head, Body, and Legs. The head could have been something better, but it's hard to complain with a Body and Legs in the pool. Arc got Legs, Fievel got Head, and I got Legs.



In Salvage we've been hitting SSR and Zhay pretty hard. Morrigan Legs continue to elude us, both in 25 and 35 form. We continue to get stuff we don't need, such as Yvan's Usu Head, but also stuff that is nice to see such as Corr's Skadi Legs. The 6f frog finally put out for me:





With these next 2 pieces of gear, I believe I'm finally at the point where Wubby has all the RDM gear that Xerlic had at the time of ban. Off the top of my head, the only thing I'm missing are Novio Earring and Altruistic Cape. And honestly, I think Merciful Cape is more useful for RDM than Altruistic Cape. :x

The past week or two have been all about RDM. I posted my gearsets on BG, and while it stroked my ego to receive complements, I was also glad to hear criticisms and possible improvements. On original Xerlic, I never really micromanaged that well. I mainly concerned myself with stats and such, and never took that much note of things like my Max HP/MP and wearing damage reduction gear in slots that don't have a relevant piece of gear for a certain spell. My first goal is to get a set of Darksteel +1 for my PDR set. They rarely pop on AH, so I'm having Rubicant craft them for me (thanks!). Gonna start on the harness (currently 0/8) and work my way down. I'm not sure if I'll bother with Merman's for MDR since coral is a lot more expensive than darksteel and I'm not really into RDM tanking, but we'll see. I really want to get better at RDM soling, and there are several solos that I'd like to try out just for the hell of it: Charybdis, VV, Faust, etc.

Zub was throwing together some Nyzul runs, so I decided to tag along since my runic disc was at level 95 for at least half a year and getting the key was just something I've been putting off. Unfortunately, someone else had already asked to host the run on DRK to force scythe to drop on 100, and I needed a windslicer for SAM. As luck would have it, the GKT dropped off of the floor 100 boss.



I had moved my other 75 RDM acct onto Seraph a few weeks ago to help me farm Aern organs, but stupid me forgot to check if he had Sea (of course he didn't). But, at least now I got some use out of him by making skillchains to break Nyzul weapons. I got his sword skill from 25 to 165, too lol.





Lastly, Mog Bonanza. I didn't make out too well this year....





:)

EQ had a pretty eventful week. There was the usual Dynamis craziness. We squeezed in 4 Bahamuts that dropped 4 scythes!!!!!! We have another set of Bahamuts tonight since we're down to like only 10 monarch orbs. Hopefully these put out better stuff.

Odin was last week and the drop pool was pretty good.



Can't really complain about Ebody and Valhalla Breastplate. In true EQ fashion, neither of the 2 people lotting it out on Ebody broke 200. Grats to Kolokoy on the Ebadi and my balut eating brotha Fist on Valhalla.

On the topic of Einherjar, I got Gleeman's Cape. I think this pretty much finishes all the Ampoule items that I want. The cool thing about Gleeman's is it kinda doubles for Sorc Ring proc, so I was able to sell my Astral Ring. Hoorj for +1 INT and +100k.



Salvage has been OK. We've been getting a bunch of decent drops. Talphon finished Morrigan's Set by getting 35 Head from the flayer and 25 Feet from the boss, so grats to him. I saw a quite uncommon double drop from 5f Zhayolm frog.



Raist got the 35 Skadi Legs, so I can no longer make fun of him for not having them. :( J/K grats, man.



I ended up with the hands which is pretty useless for SAM. At least I have no hands to run in instead of Dusk, I guess. They're also pretty good for when Third Eye goes down, I suppose.

ENMs have been pretty good, as well. My luck is certainly much better than when I was on Titan, but I'm kind of anxious that my luck will run out soon..





I also finally got Walahra Turban after I've been meaning to grab it for months. It's kind of sad that I've waited this long especially considering Ace's Helm is kinda bleh for GKT Samurai, but then again who uses GKT on SAM amirite?



Finally, this last pic is kind of funny to me.

First, let me tell you a story. So a long time ago when we had our original characters, Blackhatchy, Ichthyos and I decided one day that we would farm Ix'MNK until we all had capes. BH was one of those few DRKs who really was into dark magic skill, and I had BLM so the cape was a no brainer (at the time). So we spent many hours farming HQ aern organs, as anyone who has farmed Ix'MNK knows how shitty a drop rate they have. So 20-something pops and 13 deeds later, we gave up and move on to greener pastures.

Fast forward to present day. After Kotan-kor Kamuy, I decided to begin working on another drop and figured I'd take a crack at Ix'MNK again. I needed buffer on my BLM anyway, so I headed to Hu'zxoi and farmed up 4 HQ Aern organs after a few days.

I decided to do a 1 organ pop test run since it's been a while since I've done this, plus last time I had a duo partner so I wanted to make sure I knew how to pop and sac properly by myself. That run went off without a hitch, so I was confident to start 3 organ pops. I decided on 3 organ pops since my linkshell would have use of the deeds and I was certain I'd get a few of them before if/when I got the cape.

So, I did my first 3 organ pop and separated MNK from the adds at the ebon panel room. The fight was your standard RDM DoT kite and went off without a hitch. As MNK died, I was expected to see a deed, but...



I was somewhat surprised as I was fully expecting this to take several weeks. I didn't really want the cape that much for use, though it is useful. I'm actually most excited about getting the highest possible Phalanx DR tier without the use of merits than the Elemental Skill. The Dark Magic is pretty nice, as well.

As far as my next project.. I'm not too sure what to do. The 2 new earrings from the weapons mobs seems kind of interesting, but it's such a minor upgrade for 2 inventory slots. It would be nice to have them for non-MND enfeebles, though. Hmm, that's not a bad idea, I guess.

Happy New Year, all.

I promised myself that I wouldn't post until I got a certain drop, and it just happened to coincide with the beginning of January, so that worked out pretty nicely.

I've been having a blast in EQ. We've been getting such amazing drops such as this:



Don't be jealous, please. Seriously though, it's been fun. Everyone is pretty laid back and I'm digging that attitude.

We also did 6 Ouryus and have a total of like 10 Monarch's Orbs. Sure, that fight is great for PLDs and for gil, but I think I came out the real winner that evening.



That's right, capped string. I was about to post my amazing accomplishment on BG, but I didn't want to steal the thunder away from people who've killed PW or something.

Not wanting to be outdone by that double Eye drop, we went and did Odin and got Dfeeted.



Lani was pretty stoked to get that Abody tho, so congrats to him. I've actually seen very few Abodies from Odin.

I got these for my BRD which is super cool(?).



I really wish they also had INT on them so they could replace Goliard, but that would make too much sense. Either way, thanks EQ!

Salvage has been going well, but no surprise there. I ended up with these as my first 35 from EQ!



Sure, I don't have any jobs that can wear them, nor can I stick my feet in them and get +10 MND. But if I ever level THF, RNG or COR, I'll be set!

Onto a drop that I can actually get somewhat excited about, it's been about a year since I've seen one of these:



Once that sold, I picked up one of these:



To continue my domination of RDM and BLM, I decided to craft myself a Vulcan's staff since I've been at 7/8 HQs for a while now. Actually, the real reason was I was like 1/30 on Ice Threnody on Ouryu, and I didn't want a repeat of that embarassment.



I was really only hoping for 1, but I'll take 2. It's like I get the HQ staff for free!

I decided to show my SAM some love this month, as well. My penta gear is pretty lacking, so I set out to improve that.



This guy reminded me of camping Mysticmaker back in 05/06 since you had to allot a block of time to just sit there and get ToD then come back once you had it. Luckily, the time I got the belt to drop I actually showed up to camp to see Belladonna just walking around. 1/4 total.

Fish's group was doing MKD missions, so I tossed my BLM hat and tagged along for the final mission to get a SAM hat.



+15 WSAcc, +4 STR, +2% WS Dmg which seems to be the norm.

I decided my RDM needed some love as well, so decided to camp Jasper Tathlum since it's the only non-augmented MND ammo in the game that RDM can use. It's not exactly a huge upgrade at +1 MND, but figured it'd be a pretty easy NM to camp. It was an easy camp, but the drop rate is another story....



Ended up 1/14 on this one with TH1.

Not satisfied with 1 drop that marginally improves performance from an NM with a horrid drop rate, I decided to camp Kotan-kor Kamuy. This guy was a bit tougher since it's not like I can just engage him and go make myself a sandwich like with Timeworn Warrior, but it's still a pretty easy RDM/NIN solo. Unfortunately, that means no lolTH1.

So 3 merits, 2 weeks, and 12 kills later, I finally got the drop on New Years Day.



Until next time.

Hi.

First off, I want to preface by saying that a good friend of mine, Insoluble, quit the game back in September. When he quit, he left me with quite a bit of his gear. Some of which I could have bought but never did because I'm cheap (Sorcerer's Ring) and some of which I would probably never get on my own means due to being extremely expensive (Dusk Gloves +1). I just wanted to say to Insol that it's been fun, and I hope you have the best of luck wherever you may go. And also thanks for hooking me up.

So I haven't really been posting that much due to not really having much to say. The Salvage group had been plugging along pretty well, but we had our setbacks of people quitting and having to replace them. No drops etc. We made quite a bit of gil selling off pieces that we didn't need, but we weren't getting the pieces that we actually wanted. Then Jiyo quit the game and Blackhatchy moved and was no longer able to log on. I also moved in October and found myself on the verge of quitting myself. I needed something to rekindle my interest in the game, so I did something that I've been toying with for several months: I worldshifted.



Equilibrium Linkshell on Seraph. Now I had actually wanted to worldshift a long time ago, but I never did out of respect to Aeterna, who gave me Wubby to begin with. Unlike some people who he also gave an account to, I respected his wishes. But, when Aeterna himself started coming to me with some of the similar feelings I was having towards Karasu and Titan and worldshifted to Hades to join Excellence. At that point, I had the green light and took the plunge myself.

Anyways, for several weeks I had been browsing various linkshell websites via BG seeing what they had to offer. I was pretty set in what I wanted. The events couldn't go that late since I have to wake up early for work. They had to do a Salvage and it had to be something that was incorporated into the linkshell, not something that started at like midnight after all other events. Camping HNMs was something that I wouldn't mind doing, but didn't want it to be a focus of the linkshell. Ultimately, I settled on Equilibrium since their goals met my own rather well, and I have to say that I've been really happy with the decision. They're a bunch of great people and I'm enjoying the more laid back atmosphere. There was definitely a transition period since obviously it's a different environment and a different group of people, but they also approach certain situations differently than what I'm used to, but I'm getting into the swing of things well, I think.

Anyways, enough with the words. What LJ post of mine wouldn't be complete without some lootwhoring?

First things first, ever since that debacle with the Macha's Feet, I decided that I needed to have more inventory space.



I haven't had any problems with losing Salvage 35s since..

Several months ago, I decided to drop my suppanomimi and replace it with bushinomimi when I saw that Karasu was going to redo the Divine Might fight. Well, stupid me didn't realize you needed to get some key item using a light ore during full moon, so I was unable to get a new earring. I got the key item a while back and as luck would have it, I saw someone shouting for Divine Might in whitegate so I figured what the hell. I was kind of surprised that they were using a standard setup alliance and not the much easier manaburn method. Plus, I gathered that quite a few of the people present were doing the fight for the first time! It was kind of fun doing it this way since I haven't done so in many years, and of course we had to employ a death + reraise, but the fight itself was pretty easy since it was implemented into the game before merit points and a lot of gear that is now considered the standard. It made me a bit nostalgic.



I figured I had to get back into the swing of things with campaign since I want that magic acc ammo, so I set myself to getting some campaign gear.



Leet RDM soro.



MND gear etc.



3/3 on Black Belt. This would have been an accomplishment like 3 years ago.



So, I've had the 35 Morrigan Cuffs since March. It's mentioned in an earlier entry. I've had horrible horrible luck with LAC since then. I finally saw the 25s drop just last week on a full SSR NMs + Boss run with less than a minute left to go. Huge thanks to the salvage group for getting the hands sorted in time.



Until the next time I have more interesting stuff to say.