Finally, BRD Relic is Done (kinda)

The only events of any significance that I've done in the past week or so has been dynamis. I've been trying to stay clear of abyssea. We've done a valkurm, buburimu, and sandy (I think) since my last post. I don't really remember what happened in Valkurm, other than getting the win (which was the last that I needed to have Tav access). In Buburimu, I made out like a bandit, though. I got my MNK -1 hands, BRD -1 hands, and WAR acc (also got NIN acc, BLU-1 hands, and COR relic, but those auto-sorted to me).

I have the BRD -1 head, but have yet to see a nq roundlet drop for me to lot on. Well, we had Sandy scheduled after buburimu, so there was a chance that I'd finally get that drop.

Before dynamis, I found that my gil was in short supply. Prior to doing all of my brigid the stylist quests, I had ~3.5mil just collecting dust. Well, then I went and upgraded some gear, adding some +HP gear to my Martyr/Devotion set and upgrading my G.Axe to something a bit better than my augmented Erlking's Kheten. I ended up gearing MNK and heading out to Castle O. I left after about 6 hours with 800k or so profit.

While I was there, I was in the room with the High Priests, needing only a scroll of Tornado and Aero IV to complete my farming sessioni. I had the room all to myself, which was nice. Suddenly, right as the prelates were about to repop, a couple of THFs show up. One engages the prelate as it pops, but I get claim w/ a chi blast. Of course, he didn't like this and said something like 'try that again' in /say. I ignore him, lay waste to the mob, and move toward the next pop. In the meantime, he engages a different mob and starts killing. I manage to snag all 4 BLM pops while he's fighting other mobs, and head back to the tunnel for safety while I wait for repops.

For something to do, he decides to kill the High Priest, but links an assassin as he's pulling it from the platform. Now, he's /NIN and is using bloody bolts to try to keep his HP up. But, with no way to silence the High Priest's -ga spells, he really starts to struggle, getting hit with either jubaku or paralyze. He does manage to keep one of the mobs slept for a decent amount of time while slowly whittling down the other. At this point, he mentions in /say that I should just stand there like a scrub and not help him.

I find that funny, since I had considered helping him with his links. But, to be honest, I was more interested in watching him wipe from those EP mobs. A BRD and MNK mob links up with him, but he is eventually able to kill them all (at one point he was down to ~5% HP, but he got lucky ). As soon as he's done he /says 'You can kiss your account goodbye, I'm going to gm you'.

I thought that was interesting and was actually hoping to be contacted by a GM.

As he's resting, I go out and snag the 4 BLM mobs as they spawn, then return to the tunnel until the next round of pops. He eventually teams up with a RDM, BLU, and another THF. In /say he says stuff like 'I don't care who gets the kill so long as that POS MNk doesn't get the claim'. (At this time, I was AFK getting lunch on for the girls)

For the next ~2 hours or so, he continues to try to goad me into something, calling me a scrub MNK and telling me that I'm going to be banned from the GM.

Of course, I was never contacted by a GM. I wish that I had been. I almost considered calling a GM on him for harassment, but I figured that he wasn't really doing anything that couldn't be solved by /blist.

Eventually, he and his party left, and I had the room to myself once again. In the end I got just about every scroll worth more than a few thousand gil, so it was a worthwhile farming session. I just wish there was something that I could have done/said to that retarded (Kingcrossis was his name, or something like that) THF. Oh well, I guess haters gonna hate. It was painful how long it took him to kill a mob...

Anyways, since I was still relatively low on gil, I decided to comment synth mats in sandy, even though I needed BRD head still. The reason is this: the last 3 or 4 times I went to sandy, and had the brd head commented, it didn't drop. All of the other runs that I've done with the group, there is, at most, 1 other person lotting BRD stuff, even when it goes freelot. Recently, it seems that if a piece of AF drops once, it drops a lot. Also, one of the synth mats that drops in sandy sells for ~100k. I decided I wanted a shot at inflating my pocket book some more and would just have to hope that the BRD hat would go freelot.

I ended up winning the first griffon hide that dropped, but losing out on the rest of them for the remainder of the night. A total of 2 BRD heads dropped (the first went to someone with it in their /seacomm) of which I got the 2nd w/ no competition @ freelot 75.

After dynamis, I bought the items to have it upgraded to the +1. I didn't have to buy any byne bills since I had some from last week's run when I wanted to upgrade MNK hands (the GD synth mat hasn't been on the AH for almost 3 weeks >.>). On Sunday, I'll have a nice new Bard's Roundlet +1 to use. It will only be useful in a max-skill build, which isn't really useful at all, but at least I've got it. So now I've got all the pieces of BRD relic. Well, I did until I made one +1. I could focus on getting that piece back so that I can store the set, but with the porter moogle, that isn't really necessary any longer.

I still want the BLM hat/body from dynamis. I don't have the BRD or BLM acc, but neither of those are all that useful to me. I might just be done with dynamis really soon... I'll have to think about it some more. I do generally enjoy the event, but what do I really get out of it other than a couple thousand gil (if I'm lucky) in synth mats and negative XP?

After dynamis, I logged out in Castle O. I'd like to do a few more farming sessions out there, maybe bring my gil up to ~5 mil before the mog bonanza numbers are announced next week.

Also, shiji can go diaf. I /blisted him after his last screw-up. If he were someone that I stumbled across in a pick-up group, I'd have /blisted him a long time ago. Since he's in the LS and I've done stuff with him before, I've given him a few chances, but I'm not gonna deal with his crap any more.

Posted Jan 26 2011, 12:12 PM

+1 x 2

I've spent a lot of time running around in abyssea - altepa doing quests for body seals (BRD, WAR, WHM, RDM). I managed to finish my BRD and WHM +1 bodies over the weekend. The BRD body is a full-time piece (except for lullaby, but I'll get to that in a minute) and the WHM body is an idle piece, which could eventually become a curing piece (also more on that in a minute). As of today, I'm 6/10 on WAR seals and 4/10 on RDM seals. The more I look at those two pieces, the more I want to have both of them!

Friday night we did dynamis valkurm, and got the win which was pretty nice since it was the last CoP win that I needed to have tavnazia access. I also lotted and won a Duelist's Chapeau -1. I was 1 of 4 people to lot, and similar to when I won the regular chapeau in Xarc last year, I was the last person to lot. The highest lot was a 8-something, so I didn't have much hope (earlier in the night, I lotted a 34 for the WAR acc). It turns out that luck was with me 'cause I lotted higher than the others. Immediately after dynamis, I went out and traded everything in to get it +1'd. It's a meh upgrade, but I'm liking it as my very first piece of +1 relic!

Back to the body seal questing. As BRD, w/ ASA legs, I could do both quests in 6-7 minutes. I could have cut that down to ~5 minutes if I would have warped out instead of running out, but I didn't want to lose cruor every time, even if it was only a 100 cruor loss. The BRD/WHM seal quest was Brygid the stylist returns. She asks you to wear specific pieces of body and leg armor and then model it for her. Originally, I had planned to do that quest as WHM or BLM, since the list of armors that they could wear that she would ask for was relatively small. But, since the other quest that I wanted to do involved a lot of running around, I ended up doing both quests on BRD. The problem with BRD is that they can equip mage gear, but they can also equip a fair amount of melee gear. In the end I was carrying 20 pieces of armor for this quest, which was rough on my inventory. It didn't help that every time you completed the quest, she'd give a piece of augmented subligar as well, so each run was inventory -1. Now, I could have just dropped each piece as I received it, but I elected to save them and NPC 'em when I was back in town. They only NPC for 600 gil, but that's better than nothing!

Most of the augments were pretty meh. I was pleased when I got hMP+4, light resist +20, and CHR+10 augments on 3 separate pieces. One of the last augments that I got was pretty epic, though... I almost NPC'd it, as a matter of fact! This augment was Refresh +1... in other words: auto-refresh on a piece of leg armor! The armor is level 70, equippable by all jobs, so it makes for a nice idle piece for all of my mage-ish jobs. Gotta tweak all my macros again Now, if only I could come across the hairpin in konschtat highlands that can also have a refresh augment on it. That would give me an additional 2mp/tic refresh on WHM, BLM, and BRD from gear... I might actually try to pursue it sometime soon!

Various LS folks have helped me camp/kill Mangy-tailed marvin a few times, hoping for an Orison Cape to drop. We've killed him ~10 times but haven't seen a cape yet (we did get 4 adler rings, which aren't terrible TP rings). Recently, we killed Ovni between marvin pops since Shiji wants a bullwhip belt, which has 7% haste on it. Our kill we didn't manage to proc blue !! but we did get the kill. He dropped the Augur's Jaresan, which has INT/MND/CHA +13 light elemental magic accuracy +10, summoning skill +10, and enmity -5. Of course shiji didn't want it since he's got morrigan's robe for BLM/RDM, and wack didn't have any jobs levelled which could equip it, so I lotted it. It's use is very limited but it makes a great repose/lullaby/requiem piece. We also killed pallid percy a couple times and managed to get a couple RDM head seals out of it, which puts me @ 3/8 on that upgrade.

I also decided to pick up a medicine ring for WHM, which has a latent (75% or lower HP) of 10% cure potency. With that ring, noble's tunic, +2 surya's, and orison cap +1, I am at 49% cure potency! I was avoiding it for quite awhile because I was worried about hitting and staying in yellow HP. However, with some recent additions to my gear, I found that on BRD, I was dropping my HP to 63%. (previously, I was only hitting 74%, which was very frustrating when trying to keep myself in latent for 4 songs @ 4-6 seconds each, before auto-regen from /WHM would take me out of latent) I haven't really looked into what % that gear puts me @ on WHM, but I'm pretty sure it will be easy to maintain a < 75% HP for the extra cure potency. The nice thing about medicine ring is that it brings me that much closer to being able to get rid of my noble's tunic and still maintain that 50% cure potency.

So, I'm starting to sell my brygid armors back (at a loss, but I consider it the price to pay for having two body armors +1'd), which is relaxing my inventory a bit. I'm getting some nice gear which I feel is making me a stronger player, which is great.

This week, maybe I'll be able to finish WAR and RDM bodies, pop that t2 VNM in vunkerl for my crooner's cithara, and finish selling back the rest of that armor and/or farm a bit to recover some of the gil that I've been throwing away the last couple of weeks.

Posted Jan 17 2011, 11:25 AM

Going out w/ a Bang!

Well 2010 went out with a bang (as far as FFXI goes). In the last week of 2010 (including he first of 2011), I was able to finish my WAR Legs and feet, and BRD hands and head. All 4 of those pieces are full-time able (TP pieces for WAR). This means that I get to sell some of my gear which is nice because it helps my pocket book and my storage problems.

The BRD hand seals were particularly interesting. I went in a group of 4 to fight the bomb NM Upas-Kamuy (sp) in Ule. Range. Since that particular NM spams spells, it was very hard to get the yellow !!. I think we were out there for almost 5 hours. During that time we got a fair amount of RNG and PLD seals, but only 6 BRD seals, and even fewer BLU seals. Eventually, the leader just quit, so the PT disbanded with me @ 6/8 seals. Later that night, a group of slayers was out killing VNMs for wack and decided to help me kill that bomb for another shot at my last two seals. The fight went very smoothly and we were able to trigger !! relatively quickly. In the end, that treasure pool had 3x BRD seals in it! It was nice to see a treasure pool go my way. A second pop gave us all possible drops except for the BST belt, which would have been trash for everyone involved, anyways.

I'm sitting on 3/10 WAR body seals and 3/10 WHM body seals, but I'm not sure if I"ll actually actively pursue those. It would be nice to finish MNK head and at least a couple BLM pieces (I feel gimp for not having any BLM pieces done).

Since I have my BRD head done, I'm not sure if I'll continue doing dynamis. There are only 2 pieces that I reallly wanted (BRD head and BLM body) but the BRD head has been out-done by the empyrean head +1 and the BLM body would only be an idle piece until I finish the BLM +1 body (which could take awhile). Unfortunately, MementoMori doesn't seem to do Beaucedine very often and with the introduction of the porter moogle, there's not much reason for me to complete the relic sets for storage purposes. I might do it just for something to do (some of the accessories and +1 relic might still be nice to have), at least until something better comes along.

Posted Jan 3 2011, 12:31 PM