quick update

After reading Kuuhalee's Blog, I got some inspiration to do my own, so here it is. I finally got the forumla inserted and everything up to date so whenever I raise a level in anything, all I have to do is change the total and everything is automatically calculated. Don't ask about the STR and evasion... the previous guy thought his RDM/NIN was actually a melee job that needed merits tossed into.

maybe worst night ever?

I started out having a bad night, I was soloing in sea on SMN for xp buffer with Empress Ring on, and for some reason Ifrit was putting some gimp ass numbers up for Flaming Crush. Usually with the Om'hpemde's mouth open it does 1500-2500 damage. Well... Ifrit was putting forth some lame BPs, averaging about 900-1200. All my normal gear was on and macro'd. The worst was when I desummoned, summoned from far away and waited for the mob to come to me and the avatar. Ifrit whiffs the mob, and I take a hit. With it's mouth open it hits like 2-3x harder than normal. Stoneskin down, 129 damage. I let Ifrit smack it once and use Flaming Crush (which generates enmity). I get hit again without any stoneskin on for 318. Down to 500 HP and Ifrit's BP MISSES. Now I'm screwed... cause Ifrit has yet to get hate back and I'm getting beaten to a pulp. Next hit is crit for 567... and I'm dead. Of course I didn't use reraise because I never die to these things. I get a pity raise and head to Whitegate because we were going to get an Assault in before we gathered for Salvage.

We get our tags and enter PFC for Mammol. It's very easy, and we go RDM, NIN, NIN and just trio the 12 mobs. It's 1k APs everytime, and is never any trouble... but tonight is tonight, and tonight is a crappy night. I pull the 1st mob, haste the NINs, and debuff the Mamool. I head off for the second pull, cast Sleep 2 on a Mamool down below, and it loses one of it's shadows (cause it was a NIN). I now have hate so I start to pull it back to the party and ready Sleepga. Suddenly I'm being hit by a Puk? I was like "WTF puks don't aggro from the bridges!" Puks also don't link with Mamools, so I have no clue where this stupid bug came from. The NINs had their timers down and I was being hit by 2 mobs and couldn't get Sleepga off. So I died, again... without RR up. They tried to duo the remaining 11 mobs, but only got through nine and a half before they ran out of time. It sucked, I got my 2nd pity raise of the night... At least it was almost time for Salvage.

Well, after being disappointed in losing an Assault I was told Salvage was now being cancelled because we lieterally had no MNKs (or any melees for that point) and all mages. Something like 8 mages, a THF and a SAM. Won't get too far on that setup. Instead the LS of wasting people's Assault Points, my static burned through our remaining 3 tags. We did Mamool again (with RR on this time) and it went flawlessly. We picked up a 4th member and did a Leujaoam Sanctum run called Orichalcum Survey. Seems all you have to do is get a key item pickaxe from an NPC, mine the multiple mining points in the zone, and once you get an Orichalcum Ore you return it to the NPC and win. Sometimes while mining for the ore a Mineral Worm pops. Kill it, wait for it to disappear and start mining again. There are also many Qiqrin Miners that are NPCs while you mine up the ore, but once you do finally get the ore, they start to aggro. I got the ore at the 24 minute mark, turned it in to the NPC and got 1680 APs since it was my 1st time and I had the armband bonus.

The 2nd attempt wasn't so easy. One of our NINs got the ore at the 20 min mark but I got aggro because I was stupid and forgot... so I died but at least the NIN by me avoided the aggro, and waited in a safe spot till the other NIN with the ore turned it in. Well, the BLM and other NIN got aggro, and since she had the ore she had to stay alive to turn it in. The BLM unfortunetly subbed SMN (I tried explaining why you should be /WHM and wearing a Black Cloak the entire time but the point was missed so I gave up) and since the BLM didn't have enough MP to stun/bind/sleep/cure... you can see where this went. The NIN died, the BLM died, and the other NIN in the safe alcove just used Mijin Gakure to exit the zone. So we wasted 2 out of our 4 I.D. tags last night which equates to about 2k APs which equates to about 1 Salvage run... so when we got kicked after 3 dead minutes I just HP'd and called it a night.

I know, I tend to complain alot, and I earned the name Gorocry... but this rant was justified.

Triple play

What an eventful night! I got my 3k on BLM using the old Emp ring coupled with BLM/RDM at the Marid camps. After I got a little addition to my buffer I headed out to Dynamis-Valkurm. We had alot of people there and ended up sending a dozen or so to Dyna-Jeuno.

We entered and things went well, we got all 3 flies right away and headed to Fairy Ring. Then, for some reason, leadership told the raid to go to Selbina and the pullers to FR. I had somewhat of an argument about it because I told them without a RDM to grav it, it would be too long a pull. Well, 2 dead RNGs later I think I made my point. We pulled it clear across the western beach to Selbina and took it down. As soon as it died I headed towards the Gobbue out towards Konschat Higlands. We pulled the Quads, got no non-currency drops, and started for the Gobbue... yet again leadership said to stay at quad camp, they were going to pull this NM across 1/3rd the zone to the raid. Again, I said we needed to go to the other end of the tunnel, but I was superceded and we stayed at quad camp. Again, all pullers died and we lost the pull on the Gobbue. We had 18 mins on the clock and some were calling it quits, but we decided to go for the mega boss anyways, something I had never done in Obsidian before.

We engaged with 9 mins on the clock and killed the mega boss relatively easily. It used charmga at 2% which annoyed me, but it died and we got the Dynamis-Valkurm Sliver. On a side note I really wish leadership would listen to me sometimes. I know that the strats I use are from another LS (props Obsidian) and I am well aware they have one once with these strats involving MASSIVELY long pulls... but efficiency and reliability should trump 1 single past experience. I hope in some future run they attempt it the way I am used to and see how much easier the pulls on the 2 NMs are.

After getting the title we farmed for 63 minutes. First Wyrm Armet -1 dropped (grats Luna), and it went dry until we killed a hippo that dropped... yup... Summoner's Cape. Something I really wanted and was hoping for. My lot was 479, Elvay was 337, Mittens was 669. No cape for me. I wasn't really all that upset for a few reasons. One, Mittens is a very nice player, and some of her gear could use an upgrade. I'm not trying to insult her here at all, but if you compared my SMN gear to hers, mine is somewhat better so it's nice to see a good piece go to a good person. Second, the cape is pretty much an Intensifying Cape that has enmity-1. It's a nice cape to have and was damn uber before that Assault cape came out. Now it's still a nice piece with nice stats but nonetheless... stats you can get elsewhere. Anyways, after that we got a Cleric's Cap -1 (Terren) and a Bard's Cape (grats PK with your impressive 178 lot). Of course with 3 minutes to go we got an amazing drop, one to rival all drops! Monster Helm -1 dropped and went to the resident french Garka (grats Kingkang). Was overall a good run, and with 5 mins left we were informed that Tiamat was up.

We headed out toTimmy and, well, not much to say. Went pretty flawless, they are trying a new tank party setup and it worked just beautifully. I even got off a 988 Predator claws, but it still didn't beat out my 1018 from late November.It took just over an hour with 22 people and drops were Oxblood, Wyrm Horn and Herald's Gaiters. We waited about 3 minutes and Xolotl popped, and since we had a full alliance we destroyed him and got a whopping Chain #1 for 33xp. Oh well, 3 titles in under 3 hours, I was happy but exhausted. Only zone left is Dyna-Qufim and then I am flagged to enter Tavnazia.

Mucho downtime

The last 10 days or so have been major downtime for the LS. We've done some CoP Dynamis runs, we've tried to catch up on Assaults (got Lance Corporal), and trying to beat Salvage. So far we've gotten about 3 pieces of Morrigan Ingredients, 2 of the BRD/WHM, 2 MNK/NIN, and I think 1 of the THF/COR and WAR/PLD pieces. Still no win though. Last night I ended up in a SMNx5, THF party for Dobsonflies because someone saw them alive te previous night. We took an hour to gather, farm some scales, and enter the Unstable Displacement... only to find that they had died. I logged for the night, real life has been really hectic. Work is draining me, but this should all end tomorrow when the fiscal year ends.

Finally, big "Thanks alot" to SE. I sit at 27,200 GPs and today's item is worth 1760, leaving me at 28,960 GPs for cooking (1,040 short of 30k which is needed to learn Noodle Kneading). Guess my market crashing Carbonera session is going to have to wait one more day

Christmas edition

So it's sorta been break time at the old LS. People starting Salvage, stocking up on Assault Points, meriting all day. It's been a lax time but they have found time to get an Aspi adn KB in the past week so that's nothing to really look over. I'm not going to go into every pice of Salvage armor, because plenty of people are doing that in their own blogs. I will say that in our last 2 runs we have gotten 2 Morrigan Pigaches ingredients, 1 Marduk's Tiara ingredient, 2 Usukane pieces, 1 Skadi and 1 Ares piece. Still, we haven't beaten one yet but drops may not be as rare as we feared. This forsee this becoming a nightly event with the next month or two.

Personally I merited today, got 5 merits as RDM in the Mire, and plan to pump them into capping my Lightning Potency on BLM. After that I will probably move onto capping Elemental Skill or maybe put some merits into my SMN. Right now I'm about halfway merited on SMN but still have 3 levels left for Avatar Accuracy and Attack. I still haven't unlocked Freeze II yet but seeing as my Ice Potency is only merited one level I doubt Freeze II would do all that much damage. The last thing I'm planning on is Max MP, as being an Elvaan has its limits. It just hard to put 50,000xp into 1 level of MP which at the end of the day grants me a whopping 10MP more.

Finally, I got an early Christmas present in the form of not 1 but 2 payments from items the LS sold. It took months to sell but the payday finally came today so that was a nice thing to wake up to. Still, unfortunely there is very little that I need to buy for my SMN or BLM that can come off the Auction House. The only things I have my eyes set on (besides Salvage gear) is Summoner's Horn, Summoner's Spats, Evoker's Gages, Nashira Gages, Zenith Mitts, Sorcerer's Petasos, and a Magnetic Earring. Not one of those can be bought, so this gil will hopefully fund some cooking and maybe I can turn a profit with this newfound capital.

*capped Lighting Potency (5), and got 2 additional merits which I used to raise Ice Potency (2)

Mad scramble

The update came today, and boy did it bring alot with it. One of the first things they announced was that you were going to be able to reach sky from the 3 crags, you just had to "meet certain requirements". It's been figured out you need to trade a Clear Chip to each machine in each crag's Hall of Transference, and then change your title to the one yo get after beating CoP 8-3. Also, big news was Lord of Onzozo will no longer drop Kraken Club! They actually want more players to be able to experience this weapon so it seems they are going to move it elsewhere, maybe a BCNM like Peacock Charm.

SE had another huge release which was all this new gear, and boy did they not disappoint. They made sure they covered all the bases, making it pretty much better gear than AF2 or Abj armor, but so far it looks like only millionaires will be able to own it for a while. The NIN headpiece alone needs 12 O Ingots and they are at 200k but I see them hitting 1M each, making the NIN headpiece run 12M + gil. You also need to collect 3 items from Salvage to trade in with your Imperial Currency to get these final items. I won't get too far into it, but I see the synthesis materials that you can buy on the AH sky rocketing soon. (yay)

Also, pics of the armor were released, and I must say that while I am stunned by the amazing stats on them I am disappointed with the models. Yet again SE just took models that are already in the game and just added some flair to make them look new. The BLM/RDM/BLU pieces are just a reworked set of Errant gear, the WHM/BRD/SMN gear is just a reworked set of BLU AF, the MNK/SAM/NIN/PUP gear is reworked Shinobi gear, the WAR/PLD/DRK/DRG gear is reworked DRK AF, and I believe the THF/BST/RNG/COR gear is a reworked Raptor set. The last time we saw new armor was the PUP/COR/BLU AF, and before that was Sipahi and Jaridah gear! The last major update we got gave us Yigit (Sha'ir), Pahluwan (THF AF), and Amir (Homam). I really wish SE would come up with new looking gear... sorta like they did when we got Barone, Igqira, and Bison gears way back in CoP. This new gear (while statistically amazing) looks absolutely horrible and recycled.

Last night we logged on to find that Salvage would be VERY hard, and since we didn't want to waste Assault Points we set out to get the teleports to sky activated. We didn't know much, and soon found out we needed a chip at the apparatus in each Hall of Transference. We thought for some reason it would be some new chip so we prepared for a Promyvion farming run. We spent 45 minutes gearing up and right before we headed out, we found out about the clear chip which is bought from any of the 3 city Goblins... so we gave up on farming and decided to just xp/merit. We need ISP to get the coins used to make the new gear anyways since you know Gold Coins are going to go from 17k to about 500k a piece (of course I sold 5 coins this weekend for 17k each). Anyways, I needed a buffer on my SMN and even though xp was super slow it was easy as hell and alot of people were out exploring so we had most of the Mire to ourselves. I now have about a 17k buffer which should be good for at least a month or so. Now I can go back to solo-meriting on SMN in Sea when I am bored.

Tonight is an Ultima run and I am hoping that Nashira Gages drop because the last time we did an Ultima was months ago and I was on the No Loot List. Since then we have gotten tons of Homam, even 3 pairs of Homam Cosciales in the past 2 runs... so I am hoping that I luck out on the gages. Oh, and we did a Mamool Ja Training Grounds Assault and poor Moonpie DC'd with us standing at the Rune of Release with 2 minutes on the clock... and it took her 10 miutes to reboot and log back in. Sorry Moon! We'll get you your 1000 points back soon enough!

(pics to come later tonight, I'm at work right now)

We suck, it's all your fault!

Drama on the high seas. Bismarck server dead ahead, ETA, 1 single Aspi window. Ok, enough stupid talk. Today was a day of mind numbing video game playing. I leveled on my WHM for a while, which was fun because I had put it off since before my break and I wanted to finally wear a damn Nobles. Got it to 60 on a weird party. Started off WHM, BRD, PLD, MNK, RNG, RNG. We had the damage but no hate control and after each Sidewinder a RNG would pull hate and get the crap smacked out of them because they just had to sub WAR for the STR/attack that comes with WAR sub. Well without ninjitsu they would get smaked for 200 damage and that meant curing the RNGs as much as the damn PLD. After an hour both RNGs had other things to do, and we ended up replacing them with another MNK (taru) and a lolDRG. The last time I leveled with an lolDRG was WAYYYYY back in Bibiki Bay on my RDM (prolly June '05). All I remember is the lolDRG saying all anyone thought he was good for was making Light with a DRK. Well, except for the fact I had to tell this lolDRG to Call Wyvern after the 2nd pull, he did not only amazingly but our kills went about 5x smoother. No one spiked hate and caused major curing needs. It was just steady xp from mobs that gave 220+ on Chain 0 and 340 at Chain #4 and #5. After a few hours we all got a level and a half cleared, and when the PLD pulled with me having 63MP and died the MNKs 2 houred and kill the Colibri. People said they were tired, the (Japanese) BRD said it was 5:25am JST so we all headed out. I grabbed Reraise II and made some new gear choices (Healer's Mitts over Magna Gauntlets as well as Raven Beret over Gold Hairpin. Going to head back to it and hopefully get it to 62 so I can wear my Wood M Ledelsens

I then went and solo'd on SMN for about 45 minutes, making about 3k with my XP ring and getting the XP back I lost when we fought Timmy. Was easy stuff, if only I could use Empress Band more often. After I releved I did a quick Limbus run where we cleared ApollyonSW and got THF and RDM and 2 coins. We had Assaults planned to finish but some people did Waughroon Shrine KS30 runs. I went off fishing, getting no skillups but enough Bhefhel Marlin that one of them, when cut open, had in it a Pirate's Chart. This is the trigger to enter the fight for Mercurial Kris but I'm really in it for the Pelican Ring or the Albatross Ring. More to come on these developments.

Finally, the good stuff. Drama. It's what makes the world go round. I ran through 2 Mamool assaults and then helped 4 people get ToAU missions 11-15 done. When we finished the final CS we headed out to Aspi and that damn turtle popped 1st window! Some Japanese LS got it but they lost claim almost instantly. We were voking/spamming from the possible claim when it popped, and it got claimed by us. Then the /shouts, /says, and general whining and complaining ensued. We didn't get MPK'd, nor did we try to MPK anyone. We didn't hear from a GM and in the end we really didn't do anything wrong. They could not hold claim on the mob. It's like if Nid popped and 5 people cast stun on it. Should I be angry and act childish to the players who created more hate on the mob when it popped, and thus got the claim? Of course not. We made short work of Aspi, and in the end A.Body dropped. I sent a tell for it but I'm behind all the RDMs and BRDs in the shell. Even though I have RDM, because SMN and BLM are my mains, the RDM-main and BRD-main members get precedent. The Dalm went to Poundkake, and he'll definitly put it to good use. Now he's our giant Garka Christmas Tree. We had an official tree lighting ceremony when he got it uncursed in Sandy.

breathe

Crazy night last night at Ouryu. I'm writing this from my work and am exhausted. We had an Ouryu planned at 9EST last night and didn't enter the fight until 11:48EST. Ugh, and we were doing good but we were never ahead of the clock. At 51% we had 30 mins left. It took forever and a day to shuffle the alliance around to get the right people As far as I could tell we went in as PLD x2, WAR, SAM, BLMx4, SMNx4, WHMx2, RDMx2, BRDx2. Damage was steady but Ouryu hits like a armored truck. We went the PLD/WAR route to some people's chagrin, but we didn't really have any trouble along the way, we just weren't outright overpowering it.

The one thing I saw was that 4 BLM are more than enough to kill the elementals. I could have probably come SMN and done more damage to the wyrm. We kinda called it at 30% with under 10 minutes left. Kinda sucked but what can we do? For some this was their 1st Ouryu Cometh fight. No one screwed up and caused a flail, no one called for help. The things I would suggest are possibly making some sort of Distortion SC because I found myself free nuking whenever there weren't any elementals. I would make it 5 SMNs and 3 BLMs since 4 was more than enough, and maybe PLD/NIN. Dun seemed to want to come /NIN and after getting punched in the face by Ouryu I believe that's his current stance on it.

Tonight is Friday, an ENM night, and I'm going as SMN dammit. I have a 746 buffer on my SMN and I need that 3500xp from the ENM. Afterwards I'm going to probably level my WHM or BST. With Monday (sea), Tuesday (limbus), Wednesday (dyna-xarc), and Thursday (event night) one has very little time "to themselves". Thank god the king camps are 6-10am right now or else I could be summoned to stand in Dragon's Aery for 3 hours hoping some douchebag doesn't claim, CFH, then wipe. On a positive note I'm 2/3rds to Noodle Kneading. Soon I will be a carbonara whore and either get rich off it or crash the market on it. Details to come!

p.s. if you haven't seen "Kiss, Kiss, Bang, Bang" yet please do so. Robert Downy, Jr is great as always and Val Kilmer friggin STEALS the show with his rendition of "Gay Perry". Trust me on this, you will thank me afterwards.

surprise surprise

Cleared 15 NMs, and not 1 AF2. DL dead, no shadow gear (AGAIN). Just a stupid Jadepiece. At least we destroyed the Animated Gun for Melena. That was long overdue. Farmed for 2+ hours and got another 100 piece, THF, DRK, and PLD. I'm hopeless at this point. The horn is LS restricted and it still won't drop. I've been to like 12 Dyna-Xarcs in the past 15 weeks and 1 horn has dropped... and it was during one of the 3 that I didn't attend. Irony.

Oh yeah, we got Dunpeald his Amatheia Hide finally. He should have his Aegis possibly by New Years. That would be nice. Tonight is event night and we're doing Ouryu BCNM and hopefully clearing Bahamut v1 for the people who need to catch up and get their earrings.

Oh yeah, during the sky run Tuesday night they managed to farm a Genbu set and I logged before they completed said set because it was getting late. Of course Zenith Mitts dropped. Just to add to my run of good luck. w00t!

New lows

Just when you thought LS drama couldn't get any more pathetic, another LS goes ahead and proves you wrong. More to that in a moment.

Last night was just Limbus. We were doing an Omega run (our final set... this is like the 4th in a row) and a chip run. I wasn't in the Omega alliance but they killed it in about 10 minutes. I wish they would hold him at 10% and farm Gunpods, but alas, they only killed 2 Gunpods before dropping Omega and getting 2 Omega's Hind Leg which make 2 Homam Cosciales. They went to Evilbob (nemesis) and someone else I can't remember. After loot dropped we entered Apollyon and farmed NW. We ended up with WHM, MNK, RNG and NIN as well as 3 coins each (we had 18 ppl!).

Now, onto the wonderful drama. I wouldn't normally air dirty laundry but this can possibly be a warning for LS's on Bismarck that didn't know that this event happened and maybe they can be more aware of this shell. Lunarians claimed Xolotl while we were in Limbus. They either pulled it late or took too long to kill it, because they were fighting it during the daytime. Seems they were all standing around him and he used Charmga. A WHM died and he went unclaimed/white and it was daytime. It depopped. IRON went to Xolotl and waitied till nighttime with Lunarians. When Xolotl spawned, IRON claimed. They were doing fine and then Minidragon (the tank) got charmed. Then Lunarians, pissed that they lost claim to IRON, decided that retribution was in order so they all ganged up and killed the charmed tank Minidragon.

How fucking pathetic can a LS get?

I guess I shouldn't expect much from a LS that can't even kill Tiamat alone, they had to go and create a seperate linkshell with ArchDominus because they can't kill it alone. I sure am glad when I went LS hunting I was steered away from Lunarians.

fantabulitastic!

So tonight was Dyna-Windy. We ended up with NIN, DRK, THF, WAR. WHM, WHM, and SMN!!!! And one of our main RDMs outlotted me.

yup.

So no SMN pants for me, since rules say that if you have the job at 65 or higher you are allowed to lot it. I honestly didn't even know this person had SMN, much less ever use it. I have always seen him attend events in his full RDM AF2. Even still, we had like 5 people lotting it. Lotting was 2 guests, a main RDM, and 2 main SMNs. The hard thing to swallow is that SMN gets nothing but total shit for legs. I would have rather lost lots on the Summoner Horn than the Summoner Spats because at least Austere Hat gets you by until you get Horn... The Evoker's Spats pale in comparison to any other armor that SMN can wear on the legs, and Summoner Spats are lightyears better than the Evoker's Spats. Since I lost that means that I'll still get stuck with shit for legs and the other RDM stores his newfound in his moghouse until the one time they mightneed his SMN instead of RDM. I'm pissed, not at the person who outlotted me, just at the situation; but rules are rules and that's why we have them. It would have been nice to see them get passed to the 2 main SMNs in the LS, but by no means was the RDM expected or obligated to do so. Sometimes it works out for some people like last night when 3 people passed the Plaited Cord for Mini to get his AF+1, sometimes it works out like tonight.

I don't know when we'll be back in Dyna-Windy, I hope it's soon, unfortunetly I doubt it. Most people who needed Windy got their flag tonight.

Slow Saturdays

Saturday tends to be a slow day. Today was an emergency maintenance, so it shut down from noon till 2pm. We headed out to Fafnir and logged as the server dropped. When we came back 2 hours later we thought we had the window figured out. Slowly more showed and Faf wasn't popping. On the 2nd to last window we spammed for 90 seconds and pretty much 3-5 seconds after a leader typed "over", it spawns. My dumbass was going into the spell menu to recast protect which had worn off, and as I see it appear I get stuck on the "Chat" tab and entered into the GD onscreen display keyboard. The most annoying part was that for all previous windows I had been spamming 30 seconds after each window supposedly closed, just in case, but I had to stop or I'd catch one of the respawning Darters. I blame myself as much as I blame whoever said the window closed, just because I wasn't being consistant like I had for the previous 2 hours. Oh well, they only got Hrotti, A Feet and E Hands. We woulda been bummed had a Ridill or A Hands dropped.

We did camp Adamantoise but again one of the newer members didn't pull properly, died, had to be tractored and raised by me. While we waited for his sickness to wear off another LS gathered up the people and killed it. The are minor mistakes but if this isn't corrected this could present bigger problems. This is the 2nd Adamantoise I've been to where we've claimed, lost it due to a mistake... only to watch another LS kill it. That's just unacceptable in my eyes and extremely frustrating. If we are going to tout that we are "Bismarck's Leading HNM LS" then we'd better start showing it.

Moving on we did some Limbus. It was Temenos Central floor 3 (beastmen gods) and we ended up with 4 coins each and a Plaited Cord. That's the 4th NIN we've gotten in the last 2 runs... but Mini got his much deserved 2nd piece of NIN ingredients to synth up his Ninja Tekko +1. Now if only Diabolic Silk dropped, then I could finally get my Wizard's Petasos +1. The 2nd alliance got MNK only so that wasn't much of a help either. Everyone broke after Limbus and I did some personal stuff. I came back around midnight to check on things. Not much was organized for any type of LS event and it was too late for me to start XPing (or I'd be up till 4am... no thanks) so I logged for the night. Catching up on some old pics though:

This was our last KS99 run. Was flawless for the most part. I wound up with Purgatory Mace and a Behemoth Horn. Netted me about 700k I think. Pretty much all KS99's (including Horns of War) have dropped in profitabilty. The only way to make gil is to get maybe Unsho, Behemoth Hide, or a Shining Cloth. Otherwise you're only going to be netting about 1M gil per orb. On a final note I did some nice WHM leveling last night. The party was skeptical at first, but in the end it worked out. The people weren't SUPER hard core but very understanding and it was nice to just get into a mid-level xp party, make some mistakes, correct those mistakes, and have fun while getting good easy XP. The setup was WAR, THF, SAM, MNK, WHM, WHM. Not a real tank in there and no refresher but we tried to make it work. At first we tried Puks which was a mistake. Though they gave 300+ xp with ring on, but we couldn't chain them past Chain #1 and they hit the WAR hard as hell. We moved to Lesser Colibri's by the porting pad out in Waj Woodlands and the xp flowed. It was easy and the WHM (which only spoke japanese) started to get into the flow with what I was doing and we were very effective as a team. We lost the SAM and got a NIN which made it all the much better. Everyone was getting Haste, the NIN was keeping good hate, and the WHMs had so much MP left we started to spam Holy and Banish II. I got about 20k in just over 2 hours and called it a night. We all leveled up and warped out happy. I'm currently 59WHM and have all my spells and gear. At 60WHM I will get Reraise II. There are no spells from 57-60 so this is a very boring stretch. The cool thing was we both were elvaan and both had on the same gear, so not only did I respect him for his good gear I was pleased other people chose enmity and MP over just wearing full AF1 like some WHMs I see.

Anyways, that was too long for a 1am post. I'm headed to sleep and hoping, hoping, HOPING that Summoner's Spats drops in Dyna-Windy tomorrow because I really need to finish this SMN out. Also, the good news I heard is that on Wed's Dyna-Xarc run Summoner's Horn will be restricted to IRON LS memebers only! I'm pretty sure that includes me... and me only at this point. If those pieces dropped from the next 2 Dyna's I'd be content to say my SMN is complete. Summoner's Doublet is cool and all, but I'd give it up for Sorcerer's Coat any day of the week and twice on Sunday. Until tromorrow, I bid you adieu.

Been meaning to post this

This was 2 Tiamats ago but I'm still proud of it though...

Your love is like a Rollercoaster baby, baby I wanna ride

Chilipeppers stuck in my head. Meh, anyways, Wednesday was Dyna-Xarc. We all know what happens there... (no drop of SMN horn) After the obvious happened, we took out old DL in nice time, dropped no Shadow crap tho which was weak. Took Animated Gun down to 7% before he warped out. Farmed some more, and ended up PLD (Dun), RNG (Guapa), DRK (Resi), and MNK (Zart). I am very happy that all of those pieces went to some very deserving people, even if Guapa is getting every damn drop in December (I kid).

Thursday was event night, and for shits and giggles we took a stab at Vrtra. I had never fought him before and most of the newer members of the shell hadn't either. We did very well (I thought) and took it to 22% before it started spamming wings and BLM and tanks started dropping. At that point add control was breaking down. We had about a 75% wipe and pretty much threw in the towel. Most people couldn't get up with blood aggro, Vrtra wouldn't stop spawing new summons, and it was becoming overwhelmig to the point where we decided it wasn't worth it. I hate to quit, and the one thing that made me feel ok about calling it was that we had a flail at about 50% which caused about a 90% wipe and we recovered from that! Still, we got the experience we wanted from it, we had a good turnout, and we all learned something.

I learned that's a frustrating fight.

• you must have poison pots on because his wings AoE damage and sleepga
• you must have stoneskin on to rest mp because you have a poison pot on draining HP
• SMNs are the main DD'rs, so you have to have a steady form of MP (i.e. you must rest alot)
• kiting him is a pain in the ass for SMNs, because if you BP he'll run out of range, thus wasting a BP and 57 more seconds

It was still a hell of a lot of fun to do, and if I was still Gorokai 75BRD and in need of a manteel I'd push to try Vrtra tillwe won, but alas those are the old days and what I really need is that GD SMN HORN. Thank God its a restricted lot next week.

some bardtastic memories

Man I made a sexah BRD...

exploring Arrapago on day 1 of Aht Urghan

Full BRD AF2, thank you so much to Obsidian LS on Odin

Full Sha'ir (this was in December '05, sold manteel for 35M in Feb!!!)

busy bees

Yet another long night at work but luckily after I logged in Tiamat popped within about 3 minutes. We redirected from our Limbus gathering and ran out there right away. The other major shells were in Dynamis so we had Timmy all to ourselves. I didn't know this until I got out there, and since I was a BLM for Limbus I rushed back to be SMN... woot.

Thank you SE for putting Timmy only about 7-10 minutes form a crag. That at least eased my suffering a tad. When we pulled him we decided to time it. We didn't have the convenience of 2 Gjallarhorn, so it wasn't going to be a 40 minute Timmy. Still, we only had about 2 deaths and 1 sleep cycle to recover, and the fight was just under 80 mins. Not bad, drops were Wyrm Horn, Divine Log, Dragon Heart, and Noritsune Kote. Fun times.

Fafhogg's window opened when Timmy was at 10% so after we killed Tiamat we joined the people we had already sent to Aery. We got there and had half the zone, which was awesome turnout. Of course it didn't pop until the 2nd to last window and of course it was Nid. The claim was ours and we reshuffled our alliance so we had the proper number of skillchainers and magic bursters. The fight went almost flawless except we have a few BLMs who are pretty damn uber (Eowyyn/Qinny), and when you get a 1943 MB on Nidhogg you won't be standing for very long. Still, Dunpeald held hate amazingly for his 1st PLD tank on Nid and we got the kill in just over 30 minutes. Drops weren't stellar (only 1 abj) but we did get Earthen Abjuration: Body which went to Guapa. Big congrats on that, I hear it's somewhat a nice piece of armor.

stupid melees.

NO CFH! All right!

So last night was a Dynamis Jeuno run. Was retarded as usual... drops went THF, MNK, NIN, DRK, RDM, THF, MNK, DRK, THF. Yay 4 jobs' AF. We somehow got four 100 pieces though. No BLM dropped and I already had rdm tights. Later we headed to Dragon's Aery for Fafnir. Hopefully this time, a bunch of immature kids wouldn't claim and CFH when they start dying.

Wouldn't you know the stupid dragon popped on his 2nd to last window, but we got claim anyhow. He died in 27 minutes. I was hitting my MBs left and right. It was weird though, my first couple hit well, (one Burst II hit for 1660). Then toward the middle of the fight I was getting resisted, and once I MB'd for 168 Burst II... Towards the end it picked back up and I got the killshot on him for 1558. Drops were Neptunal Abjuration: Head which I think went to Resi. I logged after that cause I work Monday morning.

Oh yeah, over the weekend we took Tiamat down and got the greatest drop set I have ever seen. Seriously, this has to go down as THE most sought after item in the game. The gil I will get from this single item could possibly pimp my character out for good, or I could power level through a craft with all the gil due to me. The item in question?

Fire Crystal

yup.

disgusted

So I come back to FFXI hearing about all the success that my LS is having without me, getting a few Dalmaticas and Wyrmal Bodies, not to mention a Summoner's Horn (of course). So my 1st Dynamis back we do Beaucidine and get 2 AF... after they got 19 combined the previous 2 runs. The next weekend I camp Fafnir with them. We don't get claim on the final window (force pop ftw) and the LS that claims it says "If we start wiping I'm going to Call For Help".

Awesome.

So we escape out and wait on the ledge and the LS that claimed it had a BLU meleeing under a wing and a NIN that voked a few times near the back foot while trying to tank Fafnir in a Haub. Yes. A Haub. At 10% they of course turned it and Spike Flailed themselves. Assassin, the guy who threatened to CFH if they wiped, reraises after the flail, and of course he calls for help. How mature.

Yup, CFH under 10%, and of course stupid ass Straight LS claims it and doesn't let it regen, killing it while in CFH mode. No drops for anyone, thats how we roll. If that wasn't enough we got claim on Adamantoise this morning and took it to 10%, then one of the newer members mistakingly called for help on THAT. Why? I have no clue. We had 6 people there and had no trouble with the adds seeing as 2 SMNs could use carby to kill them and still get MP refresh (we both had yinyang robes). Instead a member of Unreal finished the final 8%... so yet another wasted king placeholder. This makes 2 of my last NQ ground HNMs dying while in CFH mode. Awesomeness.