BRD Update

Dinged BRD 50 on Suinday night, almost 51. I flagged AF quests and set to work on coffers. I'm 2/5 an AF so far, and have spent a few hours in CZB for a coffer for mage's ballad II. I opened 4 coffers, but only got gil and a fluorite. I remember CB went 1/1 on his scroll when I helped him. Why can't I have that luck?

I'll be heading back out there tonight before working out. If I get a key quickly, I'll probably try two coffers. Otherwise, I might just head to the Crawler's Nest or Castle O for coffer keys there.

Posted Oct 28 2009, 05:02 PM

BRD GO!

As it usually happens when I get bored and have lots of gil, I went on a spending spree. I decided to clear up some inventory on my mule by using some of the BRD scrolls that I had. As it turns out, I only had 2 scrolls. So, to clear up those two spots, I purchased a full set of new gear, a bunch of instruments, food, etc and went to work on BRD.

I started out on Saturday (Oct 17, 2009) as BRD 11, doing FoV in Tahrongi Canyon. Fast forward some crappy parties, a lot of solo-FoV, 2 failed invites*, and 2 really great PL'd PTs and I'm now level 40!

My gear is pretty good, I guess. Not that BRDs really nead top-notch gear. I've been buying all of my scrolls, even though 90% of them are quite useless (I'm looking at YOU, Fowl Aubade and Scop's Operetta). I spent a total of 3-4 hours skilling up string skill. I have been syncing in Qufim a lot, which sucks 'cause I love to use ballad.

Now that I've made it into and past the mid-30's, East Ronfaure (S) burns are available. In fact, last night the PT was 4xRNG, COR, BRD along with 2 PLs (tri-boxed by the PT leader), all synced to me at 36. In just a little over an hour, I had gained 4 levels. We capped out at just shy of 25k/hour, with an average somewhere between 19-22k/hour. I didn't have an xp band active at any point during this PT.

When done, I ran around and picked up all of the scrolls for 41-45, and got my BRD AF weapon, the useless Paper Knife.

Now, I'm coming up toward the weekend. I'd really like to get at least 5 levels over the weekend. Ideally, I'll be able to get to level 50 so that I can take a break while I acquire Mage's Ballad II and all of my AF. Also, taking some time to make some money would help a bit, since I had less than 10k when I logged off

Vaynard 'sold' me his Dark Earring for 150k last night. He gave me (at least) 25% off of the AH price. I say at least because they sell so infrequently and the price difference fluctuates between 200 and 300k. I'm not sure when I'll have the gil to pay him back, but I will make it a priority.

*As for the 2 failed party invites; I can't believe this happened to me on 2 separate days. I was out doin' FoV somewhere and I get an invite along the lines of 'Hey, wanna PT? level sync in 'x' zone, we're 5/6.' To which I reply 'yes, please'. Then start running back to the OP, then OP warp to the zone where the PT is gonna camp. I then start skilling up string while waiting for the leader makes his way to the camp/zone/whatever. After the leader finally arrives, I ask for the invite to which they reply: 'sorry, we're full'.

...

W T F? I don't understand how someone can invite one person, then immediately fill that person's spot. Words fail me. All I can say is that my /blist has grown two sizes. I wouldn't have minded if they had at least sent me a tell saying 'oops, sorry, plans changed, we don't need you any more' instead of me wasting my time skilling up when I could be finishing FoV pages or something.

BAH! People suck.[/s]

Posted Oct 23 2009, 01:21 PM

Recap, Last 2 Weeks

Well the last couple of weeks have been rather uneventful. I spent a bunch of time in the Labrynth of Onzozo camping Ose for either myself or Vay. I was logged in, getting the kids ready for bed last weekend, having a /tell-versation with Vay when he killed Ose and got his Assault jerkin! That was at ~7:46 PM. So, I geared up, ran out there, and started killing placeholders at 8:30 or so. I finally went to bed at 12:30AM and hadn't seen Ose. I was the only person camping.

I checked my log when I got up and noticed that someone had killed Ose at ~4:30 AM. I then went into the kitchen to get breakfast for the kids, and when I came back to my PC (maybe 15 minutes later) I saw a duo killing Ose. New ToD: 9:15AM.

I spent the rest of the day killing PH off and on (probably killing all of the Torama in the room twice per hour) for the rest of the day. After putting the kids to bed a night, I focused and actively killed Toramas. Throughout the day, I was the only camper. At ~8:30 PM, Malekith and some lame RDM showed up and started killing everything in the room... slowly. They must have been working off latents or something, because I could kill 2 mobs to every 1 of theirs (roughly). After about an hour, they go AFK.

At ~10:00 PM, I pulled a Torama and agg'd a manticore. I kill the Torama, and start working on the manticore (including DoTs) when I see Ose pop. He was too far away for me to sleep and there was another Torama between him and me, so I couldn't just run over there and sleep the NM and I couldn't sleep the manticore, so I finished it off as quickly as I could. As I'm running for Ose, I pound my Dia macro, but get lag-interrupted. Before I can get the spell off again, it goes purple and Malekith and his lame RDM pull it into the tunnel and kill it.

I as fucki'n pissed. I /shutdown'd right there and haven't been back out there since. I have probably spent 50-60 hours down there, fighting torama or just being AFK trying to get a ToD. In all of that time, I only actually saw the NM one time. This is a retarded waste of time for a piece of gear that I will only use as a weaponskill macro piece on RDM. If it was useful at all for any other job that I can wear it on (i.e. WAR), I might consider camping again. As it is, it is simply a novelty piece and is not worth my time or effort.

That pretty much killed any desire that I had to play FFXI. I've been needing to take a break from the game, so I had only been logging on for events (or to prepare for events, re: climbing Paradomo Tor).

At least the past two weeks of ENM have been mildly rewarding. Last week we got a galaetia and a Forager's Mantle. Split 3-ways got each of us 164k. Last night we got our 3rd cloud evoker and 2x Forager's Mantles. So, that should net each of us ~250k. I'm gettin' real close to having a million gil again

I also did a round of Up In Arms with Braego and Protecus. It went so much faster with RNG WAR RDM than it does with PLD WAR RDM. We were finishing in about 6 minutes, where with PLD, it was taking us 14 mins or more to finish the BC. No club dropped, but I've got enough seals for a couple more runs. Maybe we can do it again a couple of times this weekend.

Posted Oct 9 2009, 11:36 AM