Hey guys, it's been a while. As some of you know I was back home in South Africa for a while and now I am in Tôkyô, Japan for an entire month.

Before I left for Japan I was able to test out the FFXIV closed beta for a bit and I must say, I was impressed. :D

Tôkyô has been amazing so far. Akihabara has to be the best place in the world for anyone who loves games, I know that I already spent too much money there haha. These are my pickups so far. I even got those Dengeki Ryôdan FFXI books that I wanted. :D

Visited the Tôkyô Tower last night, was amazing.

FFXIV is pretty hyped over here. Every electronic store in Akihabara has the trailer playing 24/7 and the posters are everywhere. I'll be back home on October 2nd and am looking forward to FFXIV's release.

As for my plans for FFXI, I still want to continue playing. I'm just behind atm, need to level my subs again for the new level cap release.

I'm off to the Square Enix shop today and hope they still have the Taru figurines on sale, so wish me luck guys.

I'll update some more at a later time, have fun in Eorzea and Vana'diel everyone, and remember to be nice to little Tarus! :D

Wow, another post this has to be a record haha. xD

So last night I was just sitting at home playing some FFIV DS when a friend asked me on MSN whether I would like to come level in Abyssea again. When I heard that I was allowed to come on my SAM I immediately ran over to Tahrongi. xD

Abyssea seems a bit changed since the emergency maintenance, it took us an hour longer than usual to increase XP. I did however go from lv75 (uncapped xp, no buffer) to halfway through lv78. :D

I was up until 4am so I slept in today till who knows when. xD When I logged onto the game this afternoon I saw my buddy Konda was in Abyssea levelling. So I jokingly sent him a tell saying to recommend me if a spot opens up. Sure enough 10mins later I was asked to come. :D

Setup was not as good as our usual ones but it was a lot of fun. Only problem was that XP did not want to increase. Took ages for my XP to become decent. Guess SE really did change something or there are still knuts and bolts to be sorted out.

I did ding lv80 in the end. Can't believe it really. Wanted to finish my DNC and WAR subs and get rose strap before lvling my SAM again but now my SAM is 80 already haha.

Once I get back from my vacation I'll need to look into tweaking my SAM a bit, but for now I am content. I did quite well in Abyssea even though I am missing a Rose Strap. (Means I can't use Dusk Gloves instead of Hachiman Gloves).

Of course I also got some Perle Gear. Body for when Acc is capped, feet for Y/G/K and hands for my Pentathrust Set. :D

Fancy taru is fancy. *____*/

Also found my AF BRD set in storage and had to wear it for a day, Hobo Taru!

I thought my previous post was going to be the last one before I leave for my vacation but seems I was wrong. xD

Last night I was about to go to bed when a friend invited me to come level in Abyssea. Of course there was no way I could turn down an offer like that!

Waiting for everyone to gather.

And off we go!

Magic pewpewpew!

The whole activating the right lights at the start is a bit confusing to me but thank goodness our leaders knew what they were doing. I was just the little Bard who helped the other Bard pull and was on perma sleep duty. :D

WTF ding lv79?! I was 76 when we started lol.

Ice Magic is pretty. *___*

Holy Smokes, lv80! *_____*/

I took the time to zoom in the the stuff we were killing and they are actually darn cute. O.o"

We entered at around 11.15pm my time and I left at 3.15am. I went from lv76 to lv80 with a 40k buffer and I got around 40k Cruor. Just before I left we even hit the XP cap of 600xp per mob. Simply amazing.

That was one of the most fun experiences I have had in a long time. It's just very strenuous on the Bards. Even with two of us Karaek and myself died quite a few times since bats tend to either link or randomly pop on top of you and aggro. xD Thanks everyone, I had an amazing time and now I can go into my holidays feeling happy and content. :D

Ooh, I splurged and got myself a full Teal Set. Bard only gets situational uses out of it (Feet for Lullaby and Elegy, Hat for stoneskin and cure set etc., Body almost same as Errant/Osode for enfeebles) but I wanted it anyway. I like the look of it on a Taru, now I look like a blue smurf RDM. xD

Hey guys. It's been quite a while since my last post. As some of you know I had exams this month as well as that big paper that needed to be finished, so I was not able to play as much as I would have liked.

Big changes in the game since my last post, the gigantic version update breathed new life into the game. :D

Luckily I had 3 merits stored up so I was able to do the new Genkai Quest immediately once the server was back up.

Lol the shiny Moogle hit me with some shiny stars. O.o Reminds me of the animation the chocobo summon had in FFVIII as well as the fake Meteor in FFIX's play at the beginning.

I also purchased Abyssea and got some nice cutscenes.

Hewwooo. :3

Kabooom o.o

Due to all the times I died in Einherjar (sheesh that event hates bards haha, always killing us xD) I had no proper buffer. I got invited to a very fun party with some Japanese players. Our party's warrior was also the 2nd lv80 on Caitsith. Was so exciting. :D

Yay, lv76 Buttons!

My Einherjar LS had another Odin and it went so well, was tons of fun.

Drops were really good, two E-Bodies! Personally I was disappointed though, I was first in line for Shadow Coat and it did not drop. ;_;

After this I had my exams and was busy studying non-stop for quite a bit. Luckily they all went well. Don't have the results yet but I had a good feeling.

This weekend I was finally done with this semester so I went to play a bit. Litto Vivi's BLU is now lv80 and has a cool pink outfit. xD

Did some random Abyssea exploration with the LS, such an interesting zone.

Exy also has one of those new snazzy sets, looks really nice.

On Friday I tagged along on an Aybssea run with peeps from my Einherjar LS. I was under the impression we would be levelling but sadly it turned into a NM run. None the less, we had tons of fun.

Huge Tiger. O.O

Yay drop!

Deadly Bunny.... O,..,O

The ring dropped, but in the end no one wanted it lol.

Yesterday I was dead set on levelling in Abyssea. I've been reading stories about amazing xp in Abyssea and I wanted to try it out so badly.

Karlean and myself seeking for an Abyssea party.

2hours later Buttons still seeking...

6 hours later and still nothing.....

I was really disappointed. I turned down a few invites to normal parties since I wanted to try out Abyssea xp so much. But for some reason no one wanted to invite me, really made me sad. :(

Exy tried to cheer me up though so we went to Abyssea-Tahrongi to get the Confluxes, to make future runs there faster.

Such a cool zone....beautiful.

Sneaky sneaky sneaky past all the big baddies!

Oi! Dragonses?! I didn't sign up for this, don't wanna get eat'arud!

We also found miniature sized Adamantoise...ok they're still as big as a cow, just miniature compared to the big bad NM one. xD Can I has one as a pet pwease? :3

We managed to get all Confluxes in the zone and my Cruor ran out. :( Now I have zero Cruor, am still lv76...definately need an Abyssea party to fix that! :D

Afterwards the three of us did a few Royal Jelly runs. Not a single good item dropped sadly, and to make matters worse I accidentally zoned and lost my entire lootpool. Went to bed feeling pretty sad and disappointed.

On a more exciting note, I am going on a pretty long vacation! :D

I'll be heading home to South Africa for the first time in seven years. Am soo excited. I'll be leaving in 10 days and will be back mid-August. But wait, that's not all. I'll be going to Tokyo Japan for an entire month! August 29-October 1st! It's going to my first trip to Japan but as a Japanology major I simply have to go. xD

I'll be going with two fellow students. We rented a nice apartment in central Tokyo for the four weeks, only 3 mins walk from the station and 10-15mins ride to pretty much everywhere we wanna be. On top of that, the Tokyo Game Show is in mid-September. So I'll definately be attending. Have always wanted to attend but neevr thought I would be able to, really a dream come true. :D

I am very excited, but am also a bit sad. During the summer I usually catch up with my friends online since I am always so busy studying during term. This year I'll be gone from FFXI for roughly 2 months. I'll miss my friends dearly and I would so like to finally have the time to level my jobs lol.

I'll be back in October and the new semester will start shortly afterwards. As to what my gaming plans are, I have no idea yet. Ideally, I would really love to stay in FFXI. The people in the game mean a lot to me and I have so much I still want to do. I did however order the Collector's Edition of FFXIV and I am planning to buy a new PC once I am back from my trip. So I'll definately try that new shiny MMO, maybe even try to play both.

But for now I don't want to plan too much in advance. One way or another Buttons has a million adventures ahead of him. See you guys once I am back from my trips. If I get any interesting gaming goods in Japan I'll post them on my blog. ^_^/

It's time for another little update. :D yay.

Obi-taru is a rare Taru, you don't see many blue onion-head Tarus around. :O

Headbuttarus!! xD

I had a long day. As I mentioned in my last post I had been busy the past few weeks working on a paper for my japanese law course. It was handed in last week. I didn't get to really relax though, since today and the rest of this weekend we're having a seminar in which we present our results. I was the first one to do a presentation in our course but it all went well and I had the feeling the people enjoyed it. Now I just have to sit there and listen for the rest of this weekend.

Anyway, when I got home I logged on to just chat with some friends. The LS was levelling in Qufim though so I headed out with my 38 WHM which I wanted to finish.

Yay, lv40, first sub done for the update.

I quickly changed to NIN for which I had no gear whatsoever lol except some RSE stuff. xD It was fun playing Ninja in Qufim again. :D

Buttons made the wormy go kaboom!

Woot, NIN lv40. Now my Bard subs are done for the update, DNC and WAR will be lvled to 40 hopefully soon'ish.

Vivi also finally came back to the game and got 75 BLU in like a week or two. Insane little taru, grats Vivi. :D

Hey guys, it's been a while. I had a big paper to write for my seminar on Japanese Law so that had me busy for the last few weeks. I did howwever get a lot done during this weekend ingame.

With my trusty anni ring in tow, I set out to finally finish my WHM sub.

Was the first time since levelling my WAR that we went to kill Sahagins, was so much fun.

Hewwo. :D

Seer's Gear is soo cute on tarus.

No sub levelling run can be complete without a visit to Qufim. :D Went from 27-35 in one afternoon.

Had an awesome East Ronfaure party with the LS, am now 800xp away from lv39 on my whm. So one more level and 800xp and whm is prepared for the lv cap increase.

With my new sub done, I waddled over to Hazhalm for my very first ever Odin. The LS has recovered and now we have a nice roster again, Odin was tons of fun.

Drops weren't that exciting, was hoping one or two Hadean Abj. Bodies would drop since there is only one person in front of me for Shadow Coat. :D Pyth did get a Hofud though, I love the way that sword looks.

Thats all for today, see you guys next time. ^_^/

Time for an update again. :D

For the first time in months we did an Ultima again. Our Limbus group had quite a few new people who had never done it before.

Everything went well and according to plan until at 20% things went a bit awry. For some odd reason Ultima's Citadel buster glitched. Our Nin had hate and everyone else ran and was out of range. I two houred and put up Light Carol on myself and the tank when Citadel buster went off. It killed most of the alliance except for the two of us who had Light carol on. O.o" The weird part is that everyone was out of range, far far away. Everyone quickly got up and our NIN died. Suddenly there was a big bad Ultima attacking a little Taru Bard.

I actually managed to tank that thing for a while until Pythean on his Blu and Arte on RDM came to help out and took over tanking.

It was a very exhilarating experience suddenly tanking a bigass NM as BRD/NIN lol.

After that it was a challenge getting everyone up and rebuffed with Ultima blasting us right and left and killing off everyone trying to tank it. I know I held it a few times before someone else took over again. Oddly enough I think I was the only person not to die once during the fight. @.@

In the end our efforts were rewarded. Triple drops. Great job everyone, not every LS can recover from such a wipe. :D

I also did some Campaign again this weekend with some friends. Was a lot of fun. :D

Just one afternoon and roughly only 10k of Xp netted me this. :D Only four more rank ups and I will be able to get a Rose Strap for my SAM. Yaay!

Found some cute Tarus in jeuno

Our Einherjar shell is back and going strong. Many people came back and we recruited lots of new nice people. :D

Tarus ftw!

We finally were able to do something over Wing 1 again. We did a Wing II and did an excellent job and won. Makes me very happy considering it was the first ever Einherjar for a few people and we only had two bards. Little Laugana and myself were working our asses off in BRD rotation, then sleeping all the mobs as well as sleeping charmed people during the Boss fight. Awesome job Lau! :D

That's all for today folks, tune in next time for more Tarutaru adventures! ^_^/

Crumpy is going back to his original server and I wanted to dedicate this post to him. He originally transferred to Caitsith to meet me and have fun in my LS. We had tons of fun together and I'll miss you Crumpy, was awesome having you aboard. :)

I wish you all the best in Bismarck, hope you get lots of shiny stuff in your new endgame shell and I hope you'll continue to have lots of fun. :D
You'll be missed little Taru. ;_;

Hiya guys, it's been too long since I last posted. The new semester started for me so I've been busy with course-work and classes again, but here is a little update of what i have been doing ingame.

I've been making some progress with my gear. I finally got my Omegas Ring, AF+1 Brd Legs and AF+1 SAM Legs. Am a very happy Taru. Thanks guys! :D

Vivi finally got his Deulist Chapeau, grats little taru!

Einherjar is still fun as always (Buttons always gets to borrow a Manteel xD), sadly a few people left and now our attendance is horrible, so we'll need to see what happens to the shell.

I also helped my friend Exy camp that Orc NM in Monastic Cavern. Was a lot of fun.

Levelled by WHM sub a bit more when I found the time, lv27 currently so still a few more levels to go.

Since I kept losing the same damn campaign rank 5 times in a row I went on a campaign spree for an entire day and had tons of fun with friends.

I managed to get a few merits for my SAM and finally got a rank up! Unfortunately I still have a ways to go until I have the rank for Rose Strap. :(

Makam has such a funny hat. :D

Yesterday I helped the LS do some MMM NM runs to get some members an Ermine's tail. We did 4 runs and none dropped in the first or second chest, I was about to go to bed when we decided to let me copy the maze as well and to give it one more go.....

The main treasure chest had nothing in it. I open the second chest which drops directly into the Maze owner's inventory and ..... got an Ermine's tail. I felt so bad, some people really wanted one and I don't even have dagger skill levelled. >.