Change of plans!

We didn't have much planned for Thursday event night, so we decided to do 2-3 Kirins. Of course as soon as 20 of us gathered in Kirin's room... Tiamat had to pop.

I'm not sure how we knew it popped, but I do know that we were the 1st ones to know and the 1st ones there on the scene. The fight took about an hour. (We were very sloppy) Winraf and his brickwall tank wasn't there, and I don't think Aribeth showed until the 45 minute mark. I didn't die this time (thankfully) and when all was said and done the drops were a Damascne Cloth and Wyrm Horn.

Stupid cheapass wyrm.

Real rough night...

So I put BST on the backburner for a night, it just was annoying me too much, I'll pick it up again this weekend. Instead I headed out to sea on SMN and started to solo. Used my Emp Band, killed 3 Om'Hpemdes and on the 4th instead of using my Flaming Crush macro I used Release macro... I mean, I've done this before and that's why I renamed my release macro OOOOO on the macro set, but I was half paying attention and got my ass handed to me... with no reraise... and no one was anywhere even remotely close. Only if people were popping JoL would they find me. So I HP'd, upset with myself.

Bumped into a casino, I won 1.2M gil and walked away. I went to Windy to find out my stupid choco "KikuFubuki" hurt it's leg in group exercise. Then I raced it and it won... I am now 1/1 when it is sick, 1/1 when it is injured, and 1/3 when it is healthy. Awesome. I ate dinner, came back and bought a Prism Cape to upgrade my Rainbow Cape. Hit the casino up again cause I just couldn't walk away with the luck I was having, and proceeded to lose 1.4M and finally gave up. So not only did I spend 1.5M on a cape I really didn't need but I lost 200k on top of that. I headed to Dynamis - Xarcabard hoping that a Summoner's Horn would lift my spirits.

Nope. Not only did we not get any AF from the NMs, not only did we lose to DL from back to back Oblivion Smashes, not only did we get no AF from every single mob we hit up the 2 hours we spent farming after we lost to DL... but I died so much on BLM I deleveled 2x only to get my level back with 5 mins left. I have a 1300xp buffer on my BLM now, which absolutely blows.

Recap:

• HP'd on SMN
• Injured choco
• Lost 200k overall @ casino
• No Summoner's Horn
• No DL win
• Deleveled and lost my buffer on BLM

Liberator

Last night's event was Proto-Ultima. Started off good, got him down to 24% in 36 mins, then Win had to go and die, and Mareko 5 seconds later so we held him while they unweakened, then BLMs got hate and started to drop. Of course while we were holding him he dropped below 20% and we had to outrun some Citadel Busters... It was quite sloppy but we won in the end with about 5 minutes to spare. Drops were pieces for Nashira Gages and Nashira Seraweels. Gages went to my arch-nemesis Evilbob and Seraweels went to Lunarian, so a huge grats to both.

Afterwards I did some meriting into the night (too late because I woke up at 8:41am and needed to be at work at 9:00am). Ended up getting about 28,000 xp and am halfway to getting a fourth merit which will take me to Burst II tier 2. Other than that it was a slow night. Tried to solo BST, died twice and ended up with 200xp less than I started with when I gave up. BST is really frustrating me... I think I'm just camping the wrong place (Ule Range Hares).

Dynamis-Xarcabard tonight, is tonight my night for Summoner's Horn?

Treasure Hunter... over-rated or under-appreciated?

Last night was sea farming. To some it is boring but to me I have yet to tire of farming sea like I have tired from farming sky. Amazingly we had about 22 people show up and we were able to get alot done. We farmed up our chips for fortitude, and in the process aggro'd every single damn Eo'zdei in the area. To our luck we popped Temperence. Killed him, got virtue but no torque. I was able to snag myself a Temperance Axe for my BST. Kinda sucked cause Kulgan was high lot and was escaped, then Dunpeald was high lot... and escaped. So it kinda fell to me. NOW I am officially done with jailer weapons... I have no more jobs anywhere that can use anymore weapons. Next we went to Fortitude, popped him, killed him, got virtue but no torque. I had a nice MB and either need to merit enimty or our gimpy PLD Winraf needs to merit his enmity. Either way... I got rocked.
Then we finished our night off with a Ix'MNK. Very easy, popped all 3 of em since we had so many people, and I pulled out my BLM TH4 skills with the killshot. Who needs Treasure Hunter???Congrats Eowyyn on your new shiny Merciful Cape. The alliance broke and a handful of us went to Oldton Movapolis to pop Goblin Wolfman for Winraf and Aribeth. There was about 5 other people spread out at all 3 spawn points trying to get the target to pop so they could trade their Goblin Drink to it. We ended up getting 3 of the 4 pops in an hour and 2 of the 3 dropped the Parade Gorget. Grats to Win and Ari for their nifty neckpiece. It is an item that has been a FFXI mystery for over a year and it's finally been solved. It's got nice stats too, MP+10 and 1MP/tick refresh when your HP is over 75%.

Pretty uneventful weekend

Well no ninja stolen pics from JoL. Meh, oh well. Saturday we did Limbus, got some coins. Sitting at about 23 coins and 1/2 items for SMN, RDM, BST and BLM. Also went out and solo'd my Beast Trousers (lv60). Easy stuff. Got some help from Cerrra getting the Beadeaux coffer key to drop for the Jackcoat (lv58). Ended up popping that coffer on Sunday.

Tried to xp on BST, but I say tried... cause I wasn't that well versed in the job nor did I have any good gear for it. I died 4x in 2 hours and gave up. Netted a whopping -2500xp.

Sunday was Dynamis - Beaucidine. Was looking for Sorcerer's Coat to drop, it did. I lotted a 347, winning lot was 904. Grats Zylador, you can join Evilbob on my "hate to love ya/love to hate ya" list. Duo'd some xp on BST with Cerrra, xp was ok but nothing great. Might have to wait till 60+ in Attowha Chasm to get good xp. Finished off Sunday with some KS99 runs. We did 4 runs and the loot all sucked... badly. Most expensive drop was a 1M Baynard's Sword (which I got) but has been undercut from 4M to 1M in the last 10 sales and doesn't sell at all on the AH. No hides, no tongues... was a crap night for drops. Oh yeah, found a casino in Whitegate. Ended up winning 1.4M from this dude over about 15 minutes. Ended up paying for the melee gear I needed to buy for BST, though I still need a pair of Ryl Squire's Breeches until I hit 60BST. There's one pair on the AH and the last 10 sales have averaged 140k with one of the last 3 sales being 100k. Guess what, it won't sell to me for 200k... greedy morons. No sale for you.

Dammit show me some Love...

Last night we had only one event planned. That event was to fight Jailer of Love three times. I figured we'd get at least one Absolute Virtue... nope. Either way, still was fun. We took the first one down in one hour and five minutes and the drops were Love Halberd, Love Torque, and Aura of Voracity which when traded in was the Novia Earring. Not a bad set of drops. We rested, buffed, and took the 2nd one down in forty minutes. Was a real clean fight. We started off with BRD's 2 houring and our DRK's 2 houring and going apeshit with their KC's. We took 20% off in the 1st six minutes which is insane. When it finally died we got the exact same drops. We chuckled and sent off two people to get their COR's so that maybe we could get those 2 hours back. Well we went 0/2 on Wild Cards and popped the third and last JoL.

This guy was a pain this time. He spawned 2 sets of pets really fast and we lost our pace. After the 6 pets were killed we focused again on JoL. When he died the third and final time we checked the Treasure and he dropped the exact... same... drops. We ended up getting 3 Halberds, 3 Torques, and 3 Novias. Hell even the Halberd was lost cause I don't think anyone wanted it. AV never showed his face which kinda annoyed me but I was getting tired and didn't feel like losing 10k xp. I bought 2 reraise hairpins cause I thought I would die multiple times to either JoL or AV, and at the end of the night I hadn't died one single time. Poor Drako and Tsatin seemed to draw way more hate than me when his pets were spawned and we were all resting. My only thoughts could be that they share hate and that they were BP'ing for more than me each time which builds up over the course of an hour. Fun night, grats to Cerra, Melena, and Zzion on their Love Torques. Also to Dracosam, Tsatin, and Aidama to their Novia Earrings. Aidama now has both a Novia and Novio Earring. Her friggin taru is a little black ball of death.

(I'll ninja-steal pics when they get posted on our site)

DL dead... yay. No horn dropped... boo.

Camped Aspi, were the only ones there. Spawned NQ and we killed, no egg and only 2 ores. Stupid turtle. Headed to Dynamis - Xarc and took DL down easy, drops were Jade and yet another Shadow Mantle. That's something like 14 mantles and 8 rings. I don't know the exact count but that's pretty close. Then we headed down the slope to the Animated Gun mob. Killed that in literally 20 seconds. I had time to ES, Thunder IV, and got 50% into Burst II before it was dead.

Tanutanu got his fragment and we made some nice coin. I hear he has 2-3 more Kirin sets he bought so that he can get those elusive W Legs. Fine by us, means probabaly 1-2 more Osodes for the LS. On a sad note this was the 2nd week in a row that no Summoner's Horn dropped, and I'm a little disappointed. My Austere Hat is nice but that horn is so much better. There's always next week. What else... I did end up buying the Vulcan's Satff (now 5/7 HQ staves missing only water and earth), then put 3 merits into Meteor Crush. I headed out to sea to get my 3000xp off my empress band and found that M.Strike hits for about 1500 and costs about 182mp while Flaming Crush hits for about 2000-3500 and costs only 164mp. All I know is if I put 2 more merits into that BP it better out-damage Flaming Crush...

Tonight we have 4 pop sets for Jailer of Love. I'm buying 2 RR Hairpins cause I just know we're gonna pop at least one (maybe two) AV's and there's going to be a fair amount of death before we "lock him" into a beatable mode.

"OMG I CLAIMED ASPIDOC...um, crap... Adamantoise.

Well I got home in time to camp Aspi, he popped and yours truly claimed him. That's my first ever claim on the turtle, but not until I pulled him to a clearing did I see that I claimed Adamantoise. Funny thing was it wasn't until after I type "OMG I GORT HIM!" Anyways, he died in almost 30 seconds and we got 4 ores and I lost my cool Nid title. Oh well, I'm sure he'll pop during our Dynamis - Xarc run tonight anyways.

Afterwards people kinda dispersed into xp parties, I landed in one that was sorta questionable but tried to make it work. SMN, RDM, THF, NIN, RNG, DRK. Pulled in 10k after about 90 mins but I was using an xp ring so it was prolly closer to 7k/hour. Wasn't meriting, I badly needed a buffer on my SMN, so I got it 1/4 full and then sorta logged. Was a slow night, no sea, no assaults, no dynamis. This morning I tried calling POL to buy a content ID so I can befriend some people on Odin and found out that a POL customer service guy bent the rules for me last week and now I can't get an id.

I'll explain. On Sept 1st I called in to reset my email password. I was able to provide everything but a registration code so the rep issued what they call a "one time exception". I got the email password reset and was fine. The very next day my ID's were deactivated because I transferred money into savings, not checking... POL still got paid but since there was a banking error they deactivated the IDs. I called them up and tried to confirm the account. I was asked the regisration codes and again was unable to provide them. The sales rep was cool and said he'd go ahead and put down I provided my codes if I could verify all the billing info. I did, and he reactivated my IDs. Now I call up today asking for a Content ID and this asshat is telling me that he can't update my IDs without the registration codes, and since my account says I verified them when I called about my deactivated IDs... it says in the system that I know my registration code (which I don't!). His reply was, "If you really want another character than you need to verify you current codes or purchase a new copy of the game and use that registration code".

If I could jump into my cell phone I would have gouged that schmuck's eyes out with a spoon and fed them to him through his nose. So... since I refuse to pay $20-$30 for the game only so I can spend $1 more a month for a new ID, I won't be creating a character on Odin. Feck.

Multi-hitastical

Last night we camped Aspi, got Adamantoise (I just know it's gonna pop on us tomorrow in Dynamis). Then we went off to kill Jailer of Prudence. Our 1st kill was easy, we got a Sixth Virtue but no Prudence Torque. We also got a Prudence Rod which is a 100% drop. Our second kill was kind fo ugly. About 5 people died, and at about 11% Mareko called off damage so we could get our TH4 in tot he alliance. I was about 15% into a Burst II and I moved around to cancel the spell. Some people kept hitting it and for some reason and at about 4% I still cast Burst II on the stupid NM... and killed it. Why the spell went off I have no clue, lag maybe. So of course our TH4 wasn't in alliance and we only got the rod. The third one was even easier than the first one, and we had TH4 in the alliance and still got only the rod. One of those rods went to me and that means I now have all three weapons for my lv75 jobs. I've collected Hope Staff, Justice Sword and Prudence Rod in about a week. Fun stuff.

After the jailers we headed into Hu'xzoi and and farmed up some chips to use towards a Fortitude and also to pop Temperance. We ended up with only 4 chips because ee had no treasure hunter in the parties and after hitting 3 of the 5 towers we got no pop on Temperance. It was coming up on KB window so we headed out.

I put my Jet Seraweels up on the AH for the last time, this time for 2.499M (I paid 2.8M) and got ready to go to sleep. His window was going to be 1:30am to 4:30am (EST) and sadly I usually can't go past 2am when it comes to having to get up for my crappy job. When I woke up this morning I heard we got KB! The drops were Crimson Mask and Pixie Earring. Grats to Omnaru on the mask (good god, Zenith Mitts, Dalmatica, and now Crimson Mask in about 10 days... someone is sleeping with the leadership!) and Dunpeald on the earring (I've seen Dun delevel his RNG about 10x since I joined 2 weeks ago... he deserves it). I also found that my "well undercutted" Seraweels sold finally, so now I have about 3.4M gil and nothing really to buy for SMN/RDM/BLM that I can think of. I stood at the AH for about 15 minutes and could only think of buying a Vulcan Staff for when I solo with Ifrit on SMN... and even then I couldn't bring myself to spend 1.2M gil for avatar perp-1. (though I'll prolly buy it when I get home...)

second guessing sucks

Well after a while I'm second guessing whether I should have upgraded SMN AF feet. I got the hands done which is BP delay -1. It's a nice stat, and it's what all AF2 is centered around. The AF+1 feet are avatar perpetuation-1 which is great to have if I am soloing.

Honestly I'm still going for the feet as well trying to gather up as much AF2 as I can. Right now with my gear on I am at BP delay-10 and avatar perp-4. Had I chose the AF+1 feet I'd have been at BP delay-8 and avatar perp-5.

Honestly I need the damn Summoner's Spats which is BP delay-2. Legs is the only place I dont have either BP/perp gear. Damn I'm hella bored at work, I have this window resized so only the text portion shows and I have it on top of my Outlook so it looks like I'm writing an email to someone...

*random thoughts

• Tonight I'm coming to sea farming as a SMN cause I need xp
• I have 3 merits and I don't know whether to put em into a new BP, Lightning potency, Elemental skill, or Freeze II or just save em for Level 7 Max MP.
• SMN really needs to drop Wednesday in Xarc
• I need gil... and 96 cooking/84 fishing isn't the money maker that my old 96 clothcraft was
• I need to find out what my damn registration code is so I can buy a content ID and make a mule on Odin to befriend some people

Holy Macaroni...

After getting my AF+1 I headed out to Fafnir. Sure enough Nidhogg popped early and a japanese LS named "Benediction" claimed it. They started off a little short-handed (I think they had 9-12 people) and within about 2 minutes their tank DC'd. I have no clue if he ever came back but it took them 23 minutes to take off 7% and they kept sleeping it and resting and we knew the inevitable was going to happen.

They started inviting outside players and took it to about 22% after an hour, but when that 60th minute ticked over Nidhogg went from managable NM to raging king... They were able to hold on for about 10 minutes but then the wings started coming and they were hitting for 600+ and we knew it was time to try and claim. It got to about 20% and we claimed it, and I'm not sure but I was told that it was no longer in rage mode after we claimed and slept and reset hate. Not killing a lot of kings I wasn't too versed in how to (if possible) reset rage mode, but we were able to handle it without much problem and take Nid down, and boy did he reward us... Grats to Omnaru and Ohlaeym to their new green carpet bodies (i.e. Dalmatica). Was a nice way to start the morning. We did a Dynamis Beaucidine afterwards but it was a attestation run so we didn't go full force into farming mode. We ended up getting Attestations for hand-to-hand, great sword, and dagger. The AF we got was Cleric's Briault x2, a Koga Chainmail, a Abyss Cuirass and a 100 coin. We also got 2 Assassin's Culotte which were free lots. One went to Evilbob and the other... I can't remember. No SMN or BLM AF dropped... either way it was a fun run, congrats to Fuuko and Smaegol on your Briaults and to Kulgan for his Cuirass/GS test and finally to Mirax for his dagger test. Such a plentiful day!

Limbus goodies

Didn't do a whole lot yesterday, we camped and claimed Fafnir, but didn't get any good drops from him though. I did alot of soloing in the Thickets on SMN and ended up using Fenrir most of the time. I got my Staff skill ip to about 207, unlocking Full Swing (which looks cool but is kind of a sucky WS).

At the end of the night we did a Limbus run. We did Temenos West and I got my 2nd piece needed to make my first SMN AF+1. I turned it in with a 60k Wolf Felt and 20 coins. This morning I picked up my new armor, Evoker's Bracers +1. The Summoner's Bracers (AF2 hands) are better since they have BP delay-2 and MP+25 but until I can snag those I'm wearing these whenever I don't wear carby mitts.

Thank you Tiamat!

Started the night off heading to Attowha Chasm for the weekly ENM. I didn't have to climb that stupid mountain cause last week I didn't turn in my Parradamo Stones to the NPC for the Key Item to enter the ENM... (dumbass). We gathered and waited but we weren't getting enough people to come to Boneyard Gully so we decided to camp Tiamat. We had killed it Sunday night and it being Friday night Tiamat was due to pop within the hour. Within about 25 minutes she popped and we got our people there. We already had about 10 but we needed our tanks and SAMs.

We pulled and once again had no trouble on her. This time though I was a BLM because I had come to the ENM as BLM and was really not in the mood to warp back to change jobs only to have to run back out here as a SMN. We ended up having something crazy like 1-2 SMNs and 6-7 BLMs. MB's were becoming a competition. Earlier in the day I put 3 merits I had on hold into my lightning potency bringing it up to Level 3, so I was eager to test out my findings. On my first Burst II MB, I actually ended up pulling hate and dying. The sad thing was when I got my second Burst II MB to land Tiamat didn't so much as look my way, and it hit for 43 more dmg!

I started feeling good about myself because every MB I landed they got stronger each time. Ater I landed that Burst II MB pictured aboved, Mareko used Meditate and went again for Fragmentation, but this was my result.

Wow, what a burst... I follow a 773 Burst II MB with a 68 Thunder IV MB. Go go lightning potency! Afterwards we did the ENM and it was a breeze, though we got crap drops and I didn't win lots on a single item. Still I ended up with 3500 limit points so I can't complain too much, plus the drops on Tiamat were pretty nice as well.

Finally at the end of the night we did a little Ix'DRG farming with the BLMs. This is really really easy xp and you can actually get stuff out of it as well. I ended up getting another merit there and we popped the NM after about 45 minutes. It ended up dropping only a deed but we have enough now for 3 Prudence fights, so that's good I guess. No Jailer of Love this past Thursday, we're holding that till next Thursday, though we did see Lunarians kill a JoL before Tiamat and after Tiamat AD popped AV after killing JoL. They fought it for a few hours and gave up. I heard it never got below 79% because they locked him in TP mode. At least they didn't lock him in spell/2 hour modes. Either way, another depop for a mob people still don't have any proven strat for.

I'm far from Captivating

Last night was a sky raid. We started with Olla, then headed to Genbu. He dropped A. Head and Kabuto. I always feel bad for Genbu, he's such a joke to fight and dies so easily. We moved over to Seiryu and I was able to witness something amazing while fighting him... When Seiryu used Hundred Fists Winraf didn't invincible and he solo tanked through it's 2 hour. He got down to 200HP once but for the most part he just stood there and let it whack him for 30 seconds. That's the beauty of a D. Ring, Shadow Ring and Shadow Mantle coupled with an Aegis. Truly something to behold. We got got D. Head, W. Hands, and Kote from the dragon, and then over to Suzaku where we got D. Hands and Sune-ate. We were headed to Byakko but AD was doing like 5 of them so we were lucky in that our "contracted member" logged in.

I had never known this but there was an agreement from this taru WHM that he wanted W. Legs. He "contracted" IRON to do two Kirins for him, and we could keep any and all drops except for the W. Legs. Sounds good to me, so we popped the 1st and took it down in record time, was like 30 minutes or so. Dropped Osode, Pole, and D. Body. Sucks for him but we just got a free Osode. We waited 15 minutes and popped the second one. Same story different chapter. Took him down in about 30 minutes and he dropped another D. Body and two O. Ingots. The taru was probably a little upset, but I'm sure this guy bought the seals since when I checked him he had the most amazing gear, including relic club, Triumph+1, and a HQ Errant cape...

Then he let leadership know he had a third and final set of seals. Damn boy, he came prepared. We popped Kirin and he decided to Astral Flow while we were fighting Byakko and it hit pretty much everyone. While we tried to recover he summoned Suzaku. We had a near wipe, I think 20/25 people died. We slowly raised and sac'd to keep him up in the middle, and when we were out of weakness we were able to kite the bird and take the cat down. Once we started in on Suzy it was smooth sailing, and when Genbu died Kirin was at about 85%. We got our brickwall (aka Winraf) into the alliance and that sob straight tanked Kirin on PLD from 85% to 0%. It was really one of the most amazing things I ever saw. We took it down quickly and to the taru's dismay (not to ours) we got another Osode and Quake! So when it was all said and done we had 3 Kirins, 2 Shura Togi's, and 2 Kirin's Osodes and didn't use a single seal from the LS vault. Not a bad bounty.

By this time AD was done with Byakko so we headed out for our final 2 fights of the night. We got 2 D. Legs and a D. Log from the 1st Byakko (wtf) and on the second we got E. Feet and a B. Hide. Ended up going 0/2 on Byakko's Haidate and it was the only god gear that didn't drop last night, but still it was a successful night all in all. I got screwed on my Astral Flow though when we took down the 2nd Byakko... see pictures below, they speak for themselves.

Astral Flow for fun

then

Good way to end the night, 2 Astral Flows, 1 hits for 62 damage and the 2nd is paralyzed. Whoopee!

/doze /slap Amateur

Last night was the normal Dynamis - Xarcabard run we do on Wednesdays. Before we gathered at 9pm EST we farmed Ix'DRG and popped him early. We killed him for a Deed of Sensibility but no Vice of Aspersion which meant no Astute Cape. Cape interestes me actually, because it's MP+25 and summoning skill +5... still, I doubt I would get it being on the NLL for the next two and a half weeks. Either way it was a non-issue. We spent the next hour or so trying to pop him but no luck. I was able to get a merit though, and really would like to do this more often if we can get 10k/hour farming him.

At 9:45pm we gathered in Xarcabard and entered at 10:00pm. Not 1 AF from the NM's, but we did end up with 3 Montiont Silverpiece. We pulled DL and took him down without a single death. Was a great job all around. We had about 45 people or so and it was very clean. A Shadow Mantle dropped as well as another Montiont! Tonkar ended up getting it (grats BLM!) and we went off farming. We had almost 2 hours to farm, and in those two hours all that dropped was a Abyss Burgeonet... and even that was open lot since no one had it in their search comments. I was 2nd highest with a 878 lot, Cerra got it with a 908. Here's where the title of the post came into play... when we went to our final camp I started resting MP, but I fell asleep. It was creeping up on 2am and I had worked all day and slept 5 hours the night before.

I woke up found that I was completely logged out of PlayOnline (wtf) and when I logged in I was in Whitegate and the run had ended 10 minutes ago. I felt so shitty, worrying that something had dropped and I couldn't pass on it. I'm pretty sure that being in the BLM party I was warped out and kicked from the party. Either way, I wanna apologize to IRONdynamis for losing consciousness. It's not a common thing and I guess eating dinner late coupled with work and little sleep did me in. Luckily no other AF dropped (that I can tell) so I feel a tiny bit better.

Tonight is sky gods, I think we're doing 2-3 gods and then a Kirin or two. Should be interesting and a welcome change coming to an event as SMN!

Mecka Lecka Hi Mecka Hiney Ho

Kinda slow last night. Caped Faf (which popped early) and the claim went to Unreal with 7 people. It took them 41 minutes to kill the damn thing. Kinda sucky since the window is now opening while I am about to leave for work but I was semi-smart and logged out in Dragon's Aery this morning.

After Faf we headed to Limbus and did the HQ Beastmen floor. It was even easier with IRON than it was with Resurrrection. Astral Flow was a weak Diamond Dust for about 600 dmg. We ended up with 3 coins each and we got a NIN item which went to Minidragon (grats taru!). Once again I went on my BLM which I have been taking to almost every event since we started. SMN was used at Tiamat but at Limbus, Dynamis, Jailers and Faf I'm always asked to come BLM. Doesn't bother me, hell I pumped 6M into the gear. Still it's fun to be a SMN and just BP, rest, Cure III, BP, rest, ask for ballad.

After Limbus we kinda split up and did whatever. Omnaru asked me again to farm some Kamans with her. I needed Aht Urghan mission 13 done so I dragged Cerra and Omnaru out to the graveyard next to Nashmau and we killed the fomor NM. Thanks both of you! We then went back to the Periqia gate and farmed 3 bows, which brings our total to 19 Lamia Kaman-1. She wants to hit 24 before she synths them up. While in "the Mire" I downloaded Ventrillo and got into the LS channel. I finally ended up meeting my CEO, Tredvolt, and we talked for a while about my Odin past, IRON's past, and what he expects from everyone in the future. Really nice guy, and the reason I called him my CEO is because he runs the LS like a business, and so far it has been very successful this way. As I was getting ready to log off for sleep they said Adamantoise popped and they got claim but no egg dropped. Tonight is Dyna-Xarc and I'm really really hoping that a Summoner's Horn drops for me this time. No one else lotted it last time except Evilbob (who outlotted me in Evil-fashion) so if it does drop I hope no one else decided they want a horn this week.

Justice has been served!

Seems Fafnir is becoming our standard daily camp as long as it's in our time slot. We were due for a Nidhogg and sure enough it popped... on the final window. So many friggin HNMs have popped on their last window in the past week. I/we didn't get claim last night. I lost my stun because a Darter was claimed by us. Why was a darter claimed? Well at the 10:00 mark before each of the windows we clear all darters. The other LS's just stand by and watch us clear them. It helps everyone, and we never expect a thank you. Yet there is this asshat LS on Bismark called Unreal. They always kill the darters at the 16:00 mark on the final window? Why? To be asshats so that they repop right smack dab in the NM's window. It seems like we always have someone who can't understand that a darter will pop and they always claim one right before Faf pops.

Now why does this upset me? Well it shouldn't if they pull a single darter in sleep it, but was it slept? Nope. It flew in my screen that was in 1st person mode and I started stunning the damn thing. I tried running but it's stun and I had Aquaviel on. With Stun down and 37 seconds left on timer I watched Nidhogg pop just to the right of me, and stay yellow for what seemed like 2 whole seconds. We didn't claim even though we had almost 30 of the 100 people in the zone. I'm not annoyed that we claimed a darter. It kinda disappoints me that people's trigger fingers are so unreliable that they know a darter will pop and still end up accidently claiming it. I'm annoyed because that LS named Unreal does this crap all the time. It not only screws up everyone else's chances but their's as well. They didn't claim Nid, so what benefit was it for them? Morons...

We realized ArchDominus (AD) had enough to kill it so we warped out for sea jailers. We started with the Jailer of Justice and did him twice. He isn't that hard really, he charms but it seemed like only 1 melee got charmed each time, which wasn't too much of a problem even when Winraf got charmed. He also spawns babies which can be 2-shot, and they do this annoying mijin gakure move where they blow up but it only really does any damage if you have no blink up. I got a few good nukes in before we killed em. We ended up with a Fourth Virtue and 2 Justice Sword but neither dropped Justice Torque. Luckily I was one of the people to get one of those swords and it's damn nice too. I played around on RDM/NIN with Justice Sword/Joyeuse and a Virtue Stone equipped. I was getting 3-4 hits in per cycle and gaining 20% or more with each cycle. Against an EP Colibri I ended up using 12 stones which isn't really that bad, it just means I have to start farming up a crapload of the Luminion Chip. Anyways I digress...

After Justice we moved into the Garden and started searching for the ??? to spawn the Jailer of Faith. Again it was pretty straightforward fight, our brickwall of a PLD kites, our SAM and RNG or SAM and THF skillchain and we BLMs hopefully MB thunder. I got one good shot in as you can see from above. We ended up doing it three times and two of the three we got ourselves a Third Virtue. Along with the regular crappy Faith Baghnakhs that no one wanted but we got robbed and didn't get a single Faith Torque! Five jailers, zero torques, but we did end up with 3 virtues. It was getting late for me and the plan was to camp Adamantoise since it was looking like it too would be a pop in the last window. Real suspense when it pops on last window...

Trouncer

Sunday was spent more or less running around Vana'diel getting my final cutscenes for Chains of Promathia. Starting at 11am I headed out to the start of a long and somewhat annoying journey to view 10 or so cutscenes. Trekking from Sandy to Ule Range to Movapolis to Bibiki Bay and everywhere in between. On my way I was even lucky enough to run into Intulo but I was on my 55WHM. After buffing and trying to kill it with a Fire Staff I realized that this wasn't going to happen. I quickly bound it and warped. I changed to SMN to rushed back hoping no one claimed it. When I got there he was still up. I summoned garuda for Predator Claws but soon realized she did not have to BP to kill this thing. She was hitting it for over 150 a swing. When he died 6.3 seconds later I ended up with yet another Curaga earring, which I promptly offered up to Fuukochan later as a thanks for the help at Promathia.

Finally about 4 grueling hours later I ended up in Upper Jeuno at the Marble Bridge. I got my last CS's for that mission and chose my Tamas Ring. It replaces my lame Ether Ring which I can sell now and finally my BLM and SMN don't simply have MP+ rings. I'm sporting Tamas + Diamond Ring for BLM and Tamas + Evoker's Ring for SMN. Later I headed to Blueblade Fell to get the last and final CS for CoP, the one that's like a music video that shuts off all chatting and closes the book on the CoP storyline. I took a few screenshots, and looked towards Bahamut v1.

We camped Faf again and even though we had 1/3rd the people in Aery (2 major LS's were fighting Absolute Virtue) yet we still lost claim to Unreal (which seems to be the most disrespected endgame LS on Bismarck). Between the 2nd to last and the last window we found out the Tiamat was up. We made the decision to go for a possible Nidhogg instead of head to Tiamat. When we lost claim on Faf (no Nid!) we ported out immedietly. I changed to SMN and we all descended onto Attowha Chasm.

I must say, after watching BBQ fight Tiamat a few times I could not believe that they had the trouble they did. I'm not saying BBQ is a bad LS, they are a great LS. I just didn't see any problem in Tiamat. We had 3 SMNs, 4 BLMs, 2 BRDs, and 3 RDMs. The rest were melee. We had an add party that must have been doing well because I never once saw an add aggro me. We had our SC's down, we used Garuda/Leviathan on the ground and Diabolos in the air. The ground blood pacts hit for about 550 while Diabolos' Nether Blast was a steady 254. We had about 3 deaths total and that was mostly from SC'ing and 1 gigantic massive MB. It took us 40 minutes to kill Tiamat and when he finally died we got crap drops... Wyrm Horn and a Malboro Fiber. Kinda sucked but we got ToD and hope to be ready to take him down next pop. Bismarck camps wyrms, while Odin the wyrms are fought when LS's kinda feel like it. Still, I got my Tiamat Trouncer title and once again had a new and exciting experience here on Bismarck.

On a crappy, annoying, and discouraging note... the person who I traded to get this account (who told me they wanted to trade and play Goro) is now selling Gorokai on eBay for $550... So to that person who lied to me and now will turn over Gorokai to a person who pays money for accounts I salute you: t(-.-t)

Tamas!! (finally)

Saturday is notoriously a slow day. I started off soloing on SMN (shocker) and then farmed up some Lamian Kaman -1 with Omnaru so that maybe he can make another Lamian Kaman +1. The are selling for about 8M and we ended up getting 16 of the -1's so hopefull he can turn at least 2 of those into +1's. We later did a Limbus run that was really easy. It was the NQ beastmen floor, we ended up getting 2 WHM and 2 DRG (wtf...) items and 3 coins each. This was a new run for me, I think it was Temenos North, but it was quite easy.

Later on in the day is when the excitement picked up. We camped Fafnir and sure enough when it popped Duwie claimed it like a beast. We got him into the alliance and managed to take Fafnir down in 14 minutes. Yup. Fourteen minutes. It annoyed me that Faf was spamming wing so much that I had to wait for the Stoneskin recast to come back half the time. Either way, we made quite a statement taking it down so fast. Drops were abjurations for Zenith Mitts and for Adaman Mufflers.

When everyone warped out I convinced some people to head to the Empyreal Paradox and finish up the last CoP fight against Promathia. This is a fun fight and sadly it's incredibly easy. We went in and took the first form down in about 2 minutes. When we got to his second form we all ate 1 Meteor but I was on SMN and luckily Promathia did it at the start and Earthen Ward took about 90% of it's damage. No one ever got into red HP, and the 2nd form went down without and issue. I got my win and needed to wait until midnight JST to get my Tamas Ring. I want to give a HUGE thanks to the 5 people who came out.

• Winraf - PLD
• Mareko - SAM
• Aidama - BLM
• Shadykay - RDM
• Fuukochan - WHM

Overwhelmer

Last night I logged in just in time to get to Fafnir for the 1st window. Went on BLM of course becaomes it's becoming clear that I'll be a BLM about 90% of the time while doing any LS events. So we get there and camp, and we wait through the 1st, and the 2nd... and 3rd and 4th and... that bastard waited till the 7th window!!!

punk.

When he finally did spawn it was (again) right in front of me. I was pretty sure I'd be able to grab him and waited that extra 1/2 a second to stun. I shoulda waited that extra 3/4ths of a second longer, cause I was interrupted. So since we had spent 3 hours in Aery we decided to get to Ouryu.

After switching to SMN I headed out to Rivere Site #A01. After getting myself lost and found again (I had never fought him nor did I have a map), we all entered and buffed up. We were on the 1 hour clock and ran in. It started off really well, we got him down to 50% in 17 minutes. Then the stupid elementals and worms started piling up. Stoneskin was a joke too, I would cast it and then that fat bastard would land and he would knock it right off. We got the adds under control and got him down to 3%, then he spammed terror 3x in a row. Well after losing Duwie (we only lost 2 people the whole fight) we got him up and made a push for the last 3%. We had about 17 minutes on the clock so I used stoneskin, a wizard cookie, and rested MP to about 700. They got some shots off on him and at 1% I used Predator Claws for 395 and at the same time Mareko used a weaponskill. Annoying thing is I don't know who killed it since it said "Ouryu falls to the ground" like it does for KB in KS99. Took us 44 minutes to kill and our drops were:

• Imanotsurugi
• Tutelary
• Kunwu Ore x2
• Wyrm Horn
• Dragon Blood
• Behemoth Hide
• Monarch's Orb

After we won they planned to do 2 Bahamuts. Unfortunetly, since I don't even have CoP done I couldn't do Bahamut... though I want more than anything to pimp a Bahamut's Staff. Since I couldn't go to Bahamut, I teamed up with Omnaru and we headed out to Caederva Mire to farm some Lamian Kaman-1 mobs. We were about 1/6 last run and this time we went a whopping 0/9. All right! In the end I got about 3k limit points though since they give about 412xp per kill with xp ring on. I'm gonna keep farming with omnaru though, since he made a Lamian Kaman +1 this week, and that thing goes for 8m. I think heard they lost the 1st Bahamut (at 3% I think), not sure though. Wish I coulda been there to help em out. Luckily, I'm not going anywhere cause I'm having just too much damn fun.

Emotional rollercoaster

Tonight was Dynamis Xarcabard, we do it every Wednesday night... something I proposed to Obsidian long before I even considered leaving Odin (and had nothing to do with my decision). Either way we started to gather for it. Last night the LS claimed Faf without me. The went from Limbus (which I wasn't told about) to Faf. I was a bit upset and needed xp on SMN so I solo'd that night, but was told that they got claim and Ridill!

Well I headed out to Xarc to go afk until the run when I saw lil Tsatin using outpost warp. He went to Li'Telor so I port out to mea and grab a chicken. We get there and camp 3 windows, and it pops on the 3rd. I'm spamming stun but much much slower this time, and 3 seconds after the window opens I see it pop but it's much farther than it was on Monday. Still, I can target it and instead of mashing the button and hoping the stun gets registered I slowly made sure I stunned him. Sure enough, this was what I got:

My claim! My first ever claim too. Fighting Fafnir as BLM is much different than fighting him as RDM or as BRD. Pulling hate is way too easy, and now I see why taru BLMs merit enmity- and also why SE put an enmity- song in the game. Still, it's fun as hell to pull an 1100 MB which is gimp for most BLMs but seeing as I have no Phantom Tathlum, no Jupiter's Staff, no Tamas Ring no Zenith Mitts or even Yigit Crackows... I was impressed. Even without those necessary pieces I can (and do) still pull hate on some of my casts. For the 2nd time in two fights, I pulled hate and died, getting myself kicked from the alliance at less than 10% and ao I missed out on another title. Not that I mind really, it's obviously not the last Faf I'm gonna do since we've claimed 3 of the last 4 I think, only missing out to Nidhogg on Monday. Zenith Mitts abj dropped and we all headed out to Xarcabard, but I got a trade from a LS leader.... and I got my pearl!

That's right I am now an official member of the best LS on Bismarck, IRON. We entered Dyna - Xarc and I did a quick check of who needed Summoner's Horn (the horn is what I am really after and it drops in Xarc). I saw only 1 other person, Evilbob, who wanted to lot it. My chances were 50/50, which aren't all that bad. We made our rounds to the NMs and when the SMN NM came up, I made sure to watch that treasure pool and sure enough... it dropped! I was elated that I might get my 2nd AF2 for SMN.

I quickly hit cast lots... and cast a 333. Statistically I was a 3:1 favorite to lose. Bob cast a 525 and got the piece. I can't really be that upset since Bob was the guy I outlotted for the feet on Sunday. Not to mention that is their 15th horn they've seen. That's 4 more than their other highest drops. I'll see my horn soon enough seeing as no one else wants/needs it anymore. We did our rounds, DL was an ass again. We screwed up by not voking soon enough and the RDMs were too far for some stuns. We lost but had an assload of time left to farm. In almost 3 hours we ended up with only a Montinont and a pair of Bard Cannions.

The title of the post is pretty much indicative of my. Happy to have my AF2 feet and Hope Staff, pissed off at dying and HP'ing two times in 3 hours. Elated that I claimed Faf, disappointed I died and missed the title again. Ecstatic to be an official IRON member, then saddened by my crappy lot for the SMN horn. Even if I was disappointed on not getting the horn I got something 100x better, a IRON Linkpearl. Rock.

Three steps forward, two steps back

Ifrit sucks ass. There, now that I got that out of the way... I had a day off from work today and I solo'd SMN in sea. I've found that the Om'hpemde can be nice xp when you use an xp ring and all you have to do is wait for them to open their mouths and then blood pact. Ifrit usually averages 2400 per Flaming Crush. sometimes 4k, sometimes 1k... Usually it hits pretty hard.Then Ifrit began to slack off.

I started off with 1k buffer, got up to 4k, and then died. This moron missed 2x and I ran out of MP. After HP'ing I was back to about 1k buffer. I still had my xp bonus on so I headed back out there. I got into a groove, when Ifrit whiffed I could pull out Carby and buy some time while I got 1 mp/tick. I got up to about a 5k buffer. The only hard part is when you resummon Ifrit from far away, the mob has hate on you until Ifrit hits it. Well I was getting smacked and low on HP, so I ran away, released him and resummoned him. If I used stoneskin I wouldn't have enough MP for a BP, so I waited for him to get hate. Moron misses 3 times and I end up dying and having to HP.

Back to 1800 xp buffer. What a well spent 3 hours.

Jailbait

After a relaxing three-day weekend I decided to put some time into sea farming and jailer fighting. I started off the morning doing a little soloing (seems like I'll be doing alot of that with 75SMN, 75BLM and 75RDM). After about an hour I got my 4th merit. Put them into Lightning Potency and Elemental Skill. Figured Burst II potency could wait a few days. After getting the merits I went ahead and did some chip farming. We got our 12 chips in about 2 hours and then took a break before sea.

I went out to Qufim for the 1st time and started fishing for Black Sole. I hooked about 3 before I lost my damn lure. Fishing's a pain in the butt... maybe it's because I'm 84 and the sole cap at 87... but the rod flies back and forth so fast it's damn near impossile to keep up, much lesss wear down the fish's HP. Once I lost my Sinking Minnow I was forced to use a Shrimp Lure. This kinda sucked because it did hook sole but only about 1/8 times. The other 7 times I was hooking Tiger Cod or Nosteau Herring. The herring is garbage, but the cod I will make into Sliced Cod and use it for bait to target sole and Gigant Squid only. Maybe later on tonight I'll head back for some sole/squid. I ended up with a stack of sole and +0.2 skillup and then left to meet up in sea.

There were alot of Jailers on the schedule. We had pops for 3 Hopes, 2 Faiths, and 1 Fortitude. We killed Fortitude easily since our kiter is a friggin brick wall. Winraf has so much good gear it's sick. Defending Ring, Shadow Ring, Shadow Mantle, Aegis, Koenig Cuirass, Crimson Cuisses and so much more insanely uber PLD gear. He kited that thing without sweating. Unfortunetly all we ended up with was a Fortitude Axe. After that it was off to Hope. He's a phaubo and he was a little harder but not so much. We killed the 1st and got all thee drops (Fifth Virtue, Hope Staff and Hope Torque). He wasn't much of a problem and after he was dead we realized that Fafnir's window was coming up.

Off to Mea! We raced in and camped for 5 windows. Nid spawned right in friggin front of me and I got smacked by SE's updated claiming system right in the face. My stun was interrupted...

That is so annoying, so after Nid was at 40% we ported out to head back to Jailers. We had 2 more Hopes and 2 more Faiths. The next Hope dropped all 3 drops again! We rested and waited for the ??? to respawn, then they aggro'd an Om'yorva and someone got themselves a Yovra Organ for a nice gorget. The third and final Hope brought us back down and dropped only a staff (which I got!!!). We moved on to our final 2 Faiths.

Faith sucks ass. Simple as that. He spawns a copy of himself and when you kill the 1st the 2nd uses hundred fists to the death. We aga'd them the 1st time and when the 1st died the 2nd had like 20% HP. He went down without a fight. The 2nd one was a pain... We killed him without aga'ing and when the 1st died the 2nd was at 100% and going buck wild on Winraf. Like the trooper he is he took hundred fists for almost 5 minutes. Whenever someone pulled hate, they died (me included). The annoying thing is hundred fists isn't his 2 hour, perfect dodge is. So when he uses PD we have to nuke him to do damage (which of course pulls hate). At one point all BLMs were on their backs, with only poor Eowyyn to sing to herself. We got up and killed him, and he dropped a Prudence Torque and Prudence Rod but no Sixth Virtue. We called it a night and I switched up to SMN to sport my new shiny trinket. I was quite happy, and now I have to farm those chips to get Virtue Stones so it will attack twice. Hello skillups!

I'm a busy bee

Today started out pretty good, got to duo with Omnaru on BLM for about 2 hours, we each ended up getting a merit on Marids. We then gathered for Dynamis - Sandy and got the win. It's been a longtime since I did Sandy, and forgot how many damn SMNs they have their. I even ended up getting myself my 1st piece of AF2! I am very pleased with those feet. The Blood Pact delay reduction is a dream for SMNs who solely rely on their BP's for optimal damage output. Now I need legs, hands, and head! We got the win and then took a 2 hour break. KS99 was later on and people needed a rest.

We gathered for the same KS99 most people do, Horns of War. There were 9 people wanting to use orbs. Me, being a applicant to IRON, of course would go last. We got through 4 orbs, the first 2 drops were crappy, the 2nd two were pretty good. I saw a Behemoth Hide drop and a Bayard's Sword as well. Good gil, not the best of items but at least one of the 4 dropped a Behemoth Tongue hopefully getting a MNK 1 step closer to Black Belt.

About 90 mins in and starting our 5th orb someone said that Fafnir was up... unclaimed. Faf died the previous night around 2:50am, and we got this message at midnight, which means he was unclaimed and up for a good 10 minutes! What a weird server! Tiamat is camped, Fafnir spawns for 10 mins and walks around. We rushed out to Mea, a few people outpost warped to Li'Telor. It was a footrace because ofther LS's were making a mad dash at it as well. I got to the waterfall in The Boyhada Tree when our 1st members walked into Aery. Minidragon claimed, and Ondria slept. When he awoke someone didn't have Sleep II up and accidently cast Sleepga II and pulled all the Darters. Luckily we were there in time to clear the Darters and engage Faf. It was such an easy fight, MUCH cleaner than the LS we watched kill it before. We had our SAM's skillchaining Fragmentation and us BLM's were bursting it each time. My biggest MB was my last MB. I got hate and eventually got chewed up and then kicked from the alliance. It dropped Aegishjalmr and Aquarian Abjuration: Feet which I really woulda liked, but who am I kidding... a) I'm not even an official member of IRON yet and b) even if I was I've only been tagging along for 5 days. I'm sure there are PLENTY of more qualified and deserving people in the LS above me. But it's a good sign of what this LS can do. They are awful strong and well coordinated.

After Faf a small group of us went up to Sky, a place I have not been to in long time. We tried to pop Despot but no spawn so we headed up to water and killed Olla, then farmed water, got water, then killed Olla again. By this time it was real late and people were drained. We called it a night and got ready for Sea farming on Monday.

XP, then some xp, and I'll end it with an experience points party...

So today was an xp, xp, xp day. I started out soloing marids on BLM while looking for party. Two hours later I was still soloing and said to hell with it. I got my Igqira Manillas (NQ) and then I finished up my Choco Egg quest and turned in my egg. I should have a chick hatch in about 4 days. I'm not sure if I'll repeat the same name as last time (Beau Coureur) or choose something else.

After Lunch I did some sea farming. We worked on popping the Ix'aern (DRG) [NM] in the Garden. We were there for quite a while, which didn't bother me because I was just refilling my buffer on xp for BLM. After about an hour we got him to pop, and it was an interesting fight. We disbanded our party and pull him to the teleport zone cast a tier 4 nuke on him, and then zone. When he goes unclaimed the next BLM starts nuking. You do that until he's at 5% and then you make a party. Once the last person zones and he goes unclaimed you -aga the the wyverns and nuke him down. A fun fight, no Vice of Aspersion dropped just a Deed of Sensibility.

Soon it was time for Limbus. It was Temenos Central Floor 2 which was the elemental/avatar floor with Carby as the mega boss. Was a fun fight but the 3 avatars we killed baffled me. Leviathan's 2 hour didn't cut through my Stoneskin, nor did Titan's. When we fought Shiva I had a new stoneskin up, barblizzara, and Ice Carol... plus I was like a mile away. I ate a 1200 dmg Diamond Dust... That confused the hell outta me. After we finished it off we took on Carby no problem and finished the whole thing up in about 25 minutes (allowed time was 45) and I earned 2 coins.

After Limbus most people were gonna crash, I asked around and weaseled myself into a burn pt (as RDM). I had to re-write all my macros over again but I was able to pull in about 16k xp in about 90 mins or so. After I warped back I unlocked Burst II. It's a nice spell, but over time Thunder IV is better. Seems like Burst II is best used (right now) as a MB. I calculated it out. I was getting about 1298 damage against marids. That comes out to about 4.5 damage per MP used. Thunder IV on the otherhand was hitting for 958 but it's damage was 5.1 per MP. That might not seem like a whole lot but over time it adds up. I'm sure when I pump 2 more levels into it then it will be much stronger, but for now it's strictly a MB spell.

At the end of the night we camped Fafnir, and he popped at 1:07:32am. A JPN LS named StraightLS claimed it. They started fighting it but weren't skillchaining... and then they managed to cast on a Darter. Then that Darter linked with a 2nd, and 3rd, and 4th. After sleeping Nid and killing the darters they started resting up. I'm typing this while they are trying to recover right now. Its 31:00 into the fight and it's slept and regenning HP. They cleared their links, but aren't doing any damage to it. In the 30 mins so far I have seen 1 single SC, and it was a Light SC with a Burst II MB. Our Nidhogg on Odin took 40 minutes, and that was the king, not Faffy...

And so begins my journey on Bismarck

This week I ushered in a new era for my FFXI gameplay. Let me introduce Nivaud, a 75SMN, 75RDM, and 75BLM (mostly... I'll expain later). This is my character now and it is located on Bismarck server. I am currently applying to the IRON linkshell which plays very similar to the way LimitBreak did on Odin, but these guys aren't overly militaristic. They do Limbus, Dynamis, Wyrms, Jailers, ENMs, and the occasional KS99.

Wow. This is exactly what I was looking for.

Upon logging in and checking my items there were a few things I noticed. Firstly I had a crapload of seals, 4 stacks of 99 Kindred Seals and 7 stacks of Beastmen Seals. This was obviously due to the soloing efforts of the 75SMN and the 56BST. Secondly I needed items. I had about 6M on hand and have a 12M Enhancing Sword I need to sell. In the meantime I needed to hit the AH.

First was for my BLM. I had a Weskit but I needed armor for back, waist, hands, and feet. The character has a Abyssmal Earring (Dark+5/INT+2), Moldy Earring (MAB+5), and Ugg Pendant (MP+20/MAB+?). I ended up buying Wood M Ledelsens (MP+30/INT+3), Forest Rope (MP+60/INT+4), and a Rainbow Cape (HP+9/MP+9/INT+3/MND+3). There were no Igqira Manillas (Ele skill+5/MAB+2) on the AH so I bought up all materials to have a pair made. I needed Avatar Blood because none were in stock, so I switched to RDM/NIN and then noticed more things I needed.

I returned to the AH and bought a Narasimha's Vest and Wise Braconi. I wanted to buy an Amemet Mantle +1 but settled on a NQ one for the time being. I headed out to Pso'Xja and after finally finding the damn Diremites I killed 5 before I finally got the blood. I did get a Florid Stone though, so I can use that for The Shrouded Maw ENM later. I returned and found that IRON was doing some jailers after winning their Proto-Ultima fight. I joined in.

As a SMN in endgame events it seems that you are there to run in and just BP as much as possible, alternating Earthen Ward with Predator Claws. I tried Shiva's Heavenly Strike but it needs to be merited more for any real damage. We finally popped the Jailer of Temperance [NM] and I learned quite fast how strong his AoE is. I went down before he hit 50% and watched the rest of the fight while flat on my back. When it died it dropped all 3 drops, and one of the WHMs got themselves a Temperance Torque.

Next we headed into the Garden and went about spawning the Ix'aern (DRK) [NM]. After 3 camps we ended up popping him, and we pulled him to a ramp. LB approaches this much differntly than we did. They actually train him and his pals to another room with more Aerns so as to kite the Qn'Aerns. Looking back now that's foolish because of all the adds you get. We fought the 1st Qn in the open area (no links since all 3 PH's were dead), then pulled one Qn to one ramp and Ix'Aern to the other. When repops came none linked, and when the 2nd Qn went down it was full attack on Ix. That mob is a pure punk, we killed him 12 times before finally he finally stayed down and offered up some drops... We got a Deed of Moderation used to pop the Jailer of Justice [NM], but no Vice of Avarice dropped, therefore no Altruistic Cape.

The following night we did a Dynamis - Xarc. Boy do they do it differently than Obsidian. First off they sac ALOT of eyes. I made the mistake of aga'ing the eyes at the 1st time extension and ended up killing like 10 people (welcome to BLM dip$hit) so after that I held back a bit. In my defense I only started to aga after I saw a fellow BLM aga, yet I didn't see him cancel... so technically I didn't pull the first gun, but I did pull the first trigger. After that it was smooth sailing. In Obsidian we go tower to tower, aga'ing the eyes then kiting 2 of the 3 NMs. In IRON they sac the eyes and pull the NMs to a camp. There they bind 2 of the 3 NMs and we go all out on one. It's very efficient but you lose the chance for 100 coins from the eyes, (though I've only seen 3-4 ever in Obsidian in about 20+ Xarc runs).

We killed all 15, only got BRD to drop. We readied for DL and everything seemed to go fine. Suddenly he used Sleepga and slept all the melee, then smashed their faces in, drew in the mages, and ying and yang ate us up. It was unfortunate but it happens. We never saw a Sleepga at the open for our 5 DL runs in Obsidian. This was a first for me. After the loss we had almost 2 hours to farm. Two hours later we got kicked out with no more AF2. Was a fun run even if it only yielded Bard's Cannions. I hope to attend more with them.

Finally (I know.. this is a LONG ass post) last night since the LS was doing Ouryu and had 28 people for an 18 man BCNM... I decided to solo some. First I started with SMN. I tried my hand at soloing Agloolik in Ule. Range and I must say, it's a gamble up there. The objective is to have Carby feed it tp and get it to use Hypothermal Combustion and blow up. Sometimes it takes 1 carby summoning, other times it took 10+ to have him explode. Other fun factors are aggro from just about everything in the zone from elementals to other bombs to buffalos to Jorm (who was up and wandering around). I got about 4k limit points and then ended up heading out to sea for a bit. I had some fun killing some Hpmedes then I tried a Xzomit and did something stupid. I carby pulled the main Xzomit and then instead of letting him die I released him. Idiot. When I resummoned carby I saw 3 incoming... and I didn't last long. Having played BRD and RDM I have had the ability to always sleep adds. It's a disheartening feeling to be alone, see multiple enemies incoming and know that you can only deal with one... and to zone the mobs you have to view an event (which means death). After dying in Sea and HP'ing I decided to do some BLM soloing on the Marid in the Woodlands.

When I got out there I was 4k/10k towards a merit. I made it to about 7200 before a Chigoe/Marid did me in, and I deleveled!!! I haven't delveled in over a year! I HP"d and two marids later I was back to level 75 and finished out my merit. Right now I'm sitting at 5/44,000 (yes, I have a 5xp buffer) but I have 2 merits. I'll get a 3rd this weekend and put it into Burst II, then merit up either Freeze II or a new SMN bloodpact. These 2 jobs are new to me and ALOT of fun, even if I don't have much of a buffer. I'll probably do some merit parties for a week strictly on XP mode, then switch when I have at least a 20k buffer.

My fingers are dead tired, (I bet your eyes are just as tired) so I'm stopping. Thanks for reading!