+1

I did manage to finish my Surya's Staff +1 relatively quickly. Ev and CB really came through for me on some of the trials.

Ev (Millennia) came up to Ro'Maeve on BLU to help me with arcana kills during Lightsday. We managed to get all the kills that I needed in a single day.

Later, he helped me get the light-based kills in Jugner S using Carbuncle's Holy Mist. We managed to get ~90 of them done before he logged off. I went to Grauberg to help CB get Fantod from the 'grifs out there, and when he got that, we returned to Jugner to finish my trial. After that, was two trials which involved releasing bottled pixies in the fay spring in grauberg. It turns out that I could solo the Yagudo High Priests (100% droprate on the pixies) in 6-10 minutes, depending on if it spawned EP or DC. Then, it took me another 7 minutes to recall-pashh, and cocobo to the spring. A quick rest for MP and it was a total of ~25 minutes round-trip solo.

Ev came out on RDM and helped me out. We managed to get all 25 pixies done in a total of 4.5 hours. Once that was done, it was the two trials I was dreading the most: elemental kills in light day/weather. Since I would have to have the staff equipped, I wouldn't have the luxury of my HQ staves, and I wasn't 100% confident in my ability to 1-shot an elemental (even if it was a pet) without my staves.

It turns out, I shouldn't have worried. When I got out there, I got into an alliance and managed to kill ~70 per game day. The last two trials involved killing 150, then 175 elementals. Even when it was just me and a RDM we were able to knock out 60 kills in a day, so I managed to get those two trials done in just 5 lightsdays. Now, I've got a shiny new 20% cure potency staff to make my heals even more uber on WHM, and slightly better on BRD/RDM/BLM.

In typical fashion, since I had this new toy to play with, I promptly put it in the mog safe and switched to MNK for some abyssea XP and a shot at some AF feet. I managed to knock out another 10 merits and finish MNK group 1 merits (which I didn't actually do last weekend), but we saw 0 feet armor.

I need to finish BRD group 1 merits, then all my 85s will have group 1 merits done. Then, I'll start working on group 2 and STR/weapon skill merits. I still have a lot of merits to go, so I'll have lots of time in Abyssea and hopefully will generate a bunch of cruor which I can either turn into gil by NPC'ing armor, or save it for some new shiny when the next expansion/version update is announced for December (I hope).

Also, I sold my Sha'ir Manteel this week in anticipation of it's value dropping through the floor when they announce the abyssea body armor. I also sold my hedgehog bomb, since that extra MP isn't really useful to me any longer. Those two sales, coupled with the scrolls that I've been farming and the armor that I've been NPC'ing has my bank up ~4.5mil. I have never had that kind of cash before and I don't really have anything that I plan to spend it on, either. For now, I'll continue to save up and see how big the pocket book can get

Posted Nov 8 2010, 03:21 PM