Glowy Yagrush

The kids had their winter break toward the end of February, so I was without FFXI while we were on vacation.  After we got back, it took a good week to get back into the FFXI groove.  I had been feeling stuck; frustrated that I wasn't making any progress on the projects that I have started (Yagrush, Carnwenhan, Fomalhaut, WHM/BRD JPs...).  But staying away from the game wasn't helping me accomplish those tasks any faster, either.

I eased back in by helping Sligs farm up a few Briareus Helms to go toward the Almace that he's started working on.  I went WAR/NIN to cover red procs for KIs.  I thought I had all of the WSs covered, but it turns out I was ~10 skill shy of being able to use the G. Katana WS.  I picked up a Fazheluo Helm from the AH and had a Moepapa Annulet on a mule for some G. Katana skill, but I was still ~5 skill short of the 175 that I needed for Tachi: Koki.  I could either farm the drop from the Jailer of Justice, or I could head back up to Escha - Ru'Aun and kill the Warder of Justice again (we just killed this guy a bunch of times for Wack's Combatant's Torque and Kakashi's WoC popset).

Wack and I headed to Escha - Ru'Aun  to see if we could get the torque to drop.  Our luck was with us as we got the warder to pop twice in ~45 minutes and got the drop.  So now when I go farm Abyssea NMs on WAR, I'll have the skill that I need for red procs.  The torque from Warder of Justice put me at 4/7 needed for a combatant's torque of my very own, so Wack and I started farming Warder of Faith.  We only saw the NM pop once before we headed out to PL Jar's RUN in Reisenjima.

For the PL session, I would pull a bunch of mobs and Wack would Fell Cleave them.  I went BRD/SCH (for stoneskin, blink, and cures).  I wanted to be able to put stoneskin on Jar since he was only level 7 when we started and he wouldn't be able to survive much in the way of AoE damage.  Unfortunately, I forgot to put up reraise and ended up getting KO'd on one of the first few pulls.  Luckily, Ferrous Coffin will cast Raise, so I was able to get up and continue pulling after a short break.  We found a bit of a groove and were able to get Jar up to 71 before I had to log off.  By the time I see him again, he'll probably be 99!

Wack, Sligs, and I went out to Doh Gates to get some JPs on WAR, BLU, and BRD.  We had a lot of fun wrecking bats.  Over the course of the weekend I got almost 200 JPs on BRD.  I'm about 150 JPs away from that sweet 5% song duration gift (at 1200)!  I should just get in a party and knock it out...

I put Wack, Braego, and my Tyger pops to good use by getting the clears that I needed for my Yagrush trial.  After we did Braego's pop we went into Zhayolm to kill the Chariot boss for my next trial.  It wasn't a particularly quick run, but we got the win.  A couple more quick(er) solo runs after allowed me to complete that trial.  I had the Mulcibar's Scoria and beitetsu ready and am now the proud owner of a fully-upgraded* Yagrush!

*R0 as I doubt I'll work on upgrading this in Dynamis

Now I'm free to focus on Carn/Fomalhaut.  For Fomalhaut, I still need Kirin/WoC clears. I have a WoC pop ready, I should see about selling/trading it to a merc for the clear.  Kirin clears look to be selling for ~5m.  It would be worth it to just be done with the Escha - Ru'Aun NMs.  For Carn, I'm making slow progress on ichor, very slow progress on Alex, and no progress on tokens.  I'm hoping people will be interested in doing some NNI during this month's campaign which should boost my tokens a little.

Speaking of this month's campaign, the login campaign includes Abyssea NM trophies.  I'm going to use all my points to start collecting items for my own Almace.  I should be able to collect 56 items each time these are available with login points.  I need a total of 175 trophies, so after 3 login campaigns I'll be close enough to just farm the last few items that I'll need.  When I get to that point, I'll actually start working on the weapon (camping a bunch of NMs).  I think the abyssea trophies only come up twice per year, so this is a long-term goal. 

Mid-Week Update

Slayne was online last night and wanted to try killing Yilan a few times for an Iris.  He's planning on gearing up his BLU for some sweet, Jaroldo-esque damage output.  At about the same time Kakashisensei asked for help getting the last KI he needed for his WoC pop. How very convenient.

So, we went up to escha sky and started by farming Warder of Justice.  He popped for us in ~15 minutes or so and went down very quickly to us as NIN, SMN, and BRD.  Needing just the KI and not a particular drop was refreshing.

We found an empty island and popped Yilan a few times.  Kakashi wanted an abjuration so he had a few pops available.  Turns out he's a piece of cake with a light SC and SMN MB.  The fights were over in a matter of seconds.  Kakashi got his abjuration on the first kill, Slayne got his Iris on the 3rd or 4th kill.

Since that went so smoothly, we decided to try our hand at a single Pakacet kill.  Unfortunately, the spikes were too much for us to handle, and we wiped before we could kill him. 

We changed the scenery a bit and knocked out a quick Wing II einherjar then headed back out to kill Hanbi for something that one of them wanted.  Now, Wack and I duo'd Hanbi a number of times a few months ago when I wanted my Akademos's for SCH as WAR + BRD.  We never really had any problems with him.  I would lullaby the adds and WS on them to take them out.  If there were more than 1 up, then Wack would Fell Cleave them.  Knowing this, I figured that we would have no problem as NIN BRD SMN.  A quick SC + MB and he'd be dead.

Unfortunately, the trusts that we had out don't cast silence.  So, Hanbi got a dread spikes off and before I could hit my finale macro, Kakashi and I were both dead. It was great seeing a crit for over 1700 damage!  Not so great seeing the 943 damage that it reflected to me.

So, I switched to RDM to make sure we had a reliable silence, but we didn't need it as Slayne just 2-hr'd and wrecked him.  Both Kakashi and Slayne needed to go AFK for IRL stuff, so we called it a night.

Seems so much different than our last few trips out there hunting NMs or drops.  Warder of Love specifically has been very shy and not at all generous.  It was nice to actually see some of the loot we were after.

Yagrush / Carnwenhan Progress

I didn't play much the past week.  Instead I found myself watching movies and TV shows.  The little break was nice.

I finally logged in and actually played some FFXI over the weekend.  I spent most of my time on Saturday working on Yagrush's Mythic Boon kill trials.  I prepared by making the WHM Oboro weapon and off-handing my Yagrush.  This meant that my WSs actually did some decent damage and I wasn't at risk of missing a WS (which happened a few times when I started the Yagrush trials).  The killspeed wasn't great (averaging ~80/hour), but I had the camps mostly to myself, so it was pretty relaxing.  Next task: kill Tyger (x3)

Not Pictured: Accuracy +50, Attack +30, Double Attack +5%

Saturday night saw some Warder of Love camping for the last torque that Wack needs to synergize his Combatant's Torque.  We were there for ~1.5 hours and only saw 2 pops (back-to-back no less!).  No drop, unfortunately.  We're definitely getting burned out on this NM...

Next we went out to kill Glazemane a few times.  IDK what everyone was after, but we went NIN, BRD, and Sligs came out on DNC.  That fight can go sour pretty quickly... We ended up going 2/4 with nothing but a few fangs, and an x-potion to show for it.

Before calling it a night we went in to do a quick Ambuscade for our weekly seal. Still NIN/BRD/DNC, we called a few healing trusts to see how it would go.  With no way to silence the BLM mob, we needed to kill him and then the trusts couldn't handle the curse/petrify.  So, I switched to RDM so that we'd have the silence handled.  We had Yoran-Oran and Cherukiki for support trusts.  Cherukiki is nice because she uses regens and will debuff the mob.  For casters, she'll even silence them. For this fight, however, the main NM is pretty much invincible unless he's casting a spell.  And Cherukiki kept him silenced.

The fight should have taken a couple of minutes but ended up taking closer to 20.  Lesson learned, I guess.  For the rest of this month, if I'm doing ambsucade I'm going to be on WHM.

It was Superbowl Sunday, so there wasn't much going on in the evening.  During the day, however, Braego and I were busy building Tyger pops.  The biggest bottleneck was getting through Arrapago Reef as we couldn't get a darn Lamian Fang Key to drop for the 2nd set of doors.  Eventually, I just warped and came in from the back (after getting my free key out of the Mire).  He grabbed the Caedarva Mire survival guide right after so it should be very easy to build Tyger pops in the future.  Now, between Braego, Wack, and myself we have the 3 Tyger pops that I need to finish my next Yagrush trial.  I'm hoping to have it 119'd very soon. 

Yagrush trials for the nerds in the audience.

I was only 1 NM away from a Sarameya pop, so I did that real quick, too.  I already had a Tinnin trophy AND a Tinnin pop.  Now I'm all ready to get those T4 ZNM trophies for Carnwenhan when the time comes. 


Throw in some Einherjar thoughout as we had time, and that was my weekend in a nutshell. 

More nerdage...

Four Months

Over 4 months.  I've thought about posting updates many times in the past 4 months, but never found the time.  I have been playing.  I have been making progress.

With Wack in Northern Sandy getting our synergy on.

So, what's happened in that time?  Here's the short of it:

- Master SCH
- Started and finished Excalibur (AG)
- Started and finished Gjallarhorn (99)
- Finished Daurdabla (99)
- Finished Yagrush (75)
- Started and finished Mandau (AG)
- Working on Master WHM (~300) and BRD (~750)
- Started Carnwenhan
- Lots of Omen
- Some Dynamis

And here's the long of it:
I like playing SCH.  I had a lot of fun in both the healing and nuking roles in CP PTs.  When coupled with a 2-3x xp/cp campaign it didn't take long to get it mastered.  I have made good use out of it when we need a little extra support to clear content.

Then, Wack finished his Bravura.  He had been working on it for a long time and had finally accumulated the currency to finish.  After that, we focused on trials to get it to 99.  I realized that it was actually quite cheap to buy all of the currency that is needed to finish a relic and the Magian trials weren't too much to handle when done in smaller chunks.  I had been spending most of my time on RDM at that time and had a nice chunk of gil sitting around, so I decided to make Excalibur.

I was able to use the refunded 30 currency to get a start on Gjallarhorn and completed that soon after.  But it is no fun being a 3-song Ghorn bard, so I renewed my efforts to collect the Iron Plates and Colorless Souls (I had already collected all of the Apademak horns through login campaigns).  Shortly after, I had finished Daurdabla!

And the trumpets sound

Braego felt stuck on Spharai, but had already collected 70 of the 100-pieces he needed, so I bought the 10k piece and he gave me the 70 pieces he had + the 30 returned.  I helped him out a little bit, but most of the magian trials he completed on his own.  He's currently collecting plutons to get that sweet AG.

For Yagrush, I figured I'd slowly work on alex as it would take awhile to collect all of the ichor that I needed.  Well, Jar, Wack, Braego, and I had spent a lot of spare time doing the random Einherjar.  Just a run or two here and there.  Jar is working on Tizona, so he didn't mind getting the ichor.  I already had over 140k Nyzul Isle tokens from all of the Nyzul we did in the static years ago.  It turned out that I had all my ichor in relatively short order.  I spent a bit of time in salvage, but bought most of my alex and was able to finish it earlier this month.  I have started doing the Magian trials as I'd like to get it to 119 (if not AG'd), but it isn't a whole lot of fun trying to melee on WHM with a level 75 club.  This is something that I'll set as a very low priority for now.

Lazy WHM: GO!

I finished the trials I needed to get my TP Bonus +1000 gun for COR.  I haven't had a chance to use it yet, but next time that Savage Blade COR is needed, I'll be ready.

I was spending more and more time on BRD and wasn't really pleased with my dagger options.  I still had the 100 currency left over from Braego's Spharai and a bunch of random currency on my mules, so I turned that into a Mandau.  I have to say that doing the Magian trials on BRD was pretty enjoyable.  Being able to round up a bunch of mobs, sleep them, and then pick them off one-by-one made the process a lot less tedious than when I was working on Excalibur and Yagrush trials.

I'm loving the glowy-stabby

I started working on BRD mythic as I want my songs to last from Ni/Tro to Ni/Tro.  I already had some of the ZNM trophies and didn't need to re-do any of the king kills.  I've completed the 50 assaults and turned in my ledgers.  Unfortunately, aside from alex, the roadblocks are back to being Ichor and Nyzul Isle tokens.  When I did Yagrush, I stopped after getting just enough ichor/tokens to complete the quest which means that I'm basically starting from scratch.  I'll have a lot of time to work on those as I slowly collect alex again.

I haven't made much progress on Fomalhaut, unfortunately.  I've got Zi'tah cleared.  All I need to finish Ru'Aun is WoC and Kirin.  I haven't tried very hard to get into shout groups for those clears.  I have a WoC pop ready which I've considered offering in exchange for the clears.  It would be nice to finish it so that I can start working on another (probably Marsyas so I can have Honor March).

Lately though, it has just been nice having people regularly in LS.  Weekends have consistently had 5+ people on, which makes it perfect for getting stuff done.  We've done dynamis farming, a bunch of Omen, quite a few Geas Fete mobs, and a lot of Ambuscade.  Unfortunately, their schedules tend to run quite late, but for weekends, I'll make an effort to stay up late to hang out with them all.

Until next time!

The fruits of our (Wack's) labor

O Captain! My Captain!

Captain rank, woo!  More on that in a bit.

At ease, soldier

So now that I've mastered GEO, I figured I would start working on WHM.  You know, get some of the slow job points out of the way.  Then Braego and I got to discussing Vagary clears and how we may be able to clear some zones, but there are mechanics in other zones that we need specific jobs for (like SCH SCs, for instance).  Since SCH only needs 550 JPs to reduce the strategem recasts, I figured I could probably get that done quickly enough to be able to fill that role.  So, I'm now working on SCH.

I spent a lot of time (and gil) getting all of the SCH JSE reforged and upgraded to 119.  I ended up running out of the necessary Rem's Tales that I needed to fully reforge all my gear, so I did a few high-tier mission battlefields to get the ones that I was missing.  Not sure that I'll use all of the pieces, but at least they're all done.  I've been trying to work on my equip sets and macros, but I'm really having a hard time figuring out how to make it all work.  I feel like I should be at a really good starting point, with all of the crossover gear that I have from BLM/RDM/GEO.

Braego wanted an iLVL cure potency staff for WHM, so we went out to kill the UNM Arke in Sauromogue Champaign a few times.  We went COR + MNK and had a pretty good time.  The kills were pretty quick and low-risk.  He was definitely putting out better numbers damage-wise with his new ambuscade gear.  Eventually he got the NQ staff and between the two of us, had enough Arke Wings to upgrade it to +1.  That will definitely help us out as we attempt to tackle higher level content.

Wack and I did a few Omen runs.  I'm trying to collect RDM cards so that I can +3 the body, he was after NIN cards to make his legs +2.  The first run we actually timed out in the first room.  We killed the last mob with seconds to spare but couldn't make it to the next floor in time.  The 2nd run went much better and we had 1 Transcended Pixie left to kill when we ran out of time.  Wack got the cards he needed but discovered he didn't have enough beads (he spent them all on Eschalixir +2's to augment his new +1 Souveran pieces).  So, we killed Met a few times for beads.  We got the beads he needed to upgrade his armor AND got the real drop he was after: Amar Cluster.  I decided to upgrade my RDM gloves to +2 for an extra 2% enhancing magic duration. We also did a few Tenzen runs in an attempt to get a Ginsen for him, but unfortunately, that drop still eludes him.


Braego and I did a few more Ambuscades.  Turns out with his new ambuscade armor that we were able to duo the V2 scorpion NM on Difficult.  Now he's starting to collect +1 Mummu pieces.  I was able to get the last two metals that I needed to upgrade my Jhakri robe to +2.  I think I'll work on the Meghanada Gloves +2 next for the extra WSD.

Random uber skillchain damage

There were 3 Ilrusi Atoll assaults standing between me and Captain rank, so I figured I would make an attempt to get them done.  According to the assault solo guide, these ones are very difficult to do solo (Apkallu Seizure, Lost and Found, Desperately Seeking Cephalopods).  While the were difficult, being on COR really helped me get them done.  Having access to Tactician's and Bolter's rolls meant that I could quickly move around the map and that I had TP to WS whenever I encountered a mob.  I ended up going 1/1 on all 3 and was rewarded with Captain rank!  I can now use the Runic Portal and get into Alzadaal Undersea Ruins for free (no longer need to carry around Imperial Mythril pieces to pay the guards) and get an extra Assault Permit.  I immediately turned my werebuster into Naja Salaheem to officially start my mythic quest.  There is still a long road ahead, but I'm officially on my way!

Still a long ways to go...

I was curious to see what was needed to get to the 3 beast kings and was pretty happy to see that I already had 2 of the 3 keys to get to Gulool Ja Ja.  I headed off to Mamook to get the last key (which I got on the first kill) and try to find the NM.  Unfortunately, it was pretty late and I'm not at all familiar with Mamook, so I wasn't able to actually find him and logged off.

I hope to have some progress to report next time.

Master GEO

After checking the gobbie box on all of my mules (got a ~4m item to sell), I did a quick Yorcia WKR to get the last KI I needed to buy another Animikki Bullet.  I think I'll get a few extra to keep on mules just in case I accidentally shoot it again.

When I was done with that I saw a CP PT shout for a GEO.  It was still pretty early, so I joined.  I figured even if it was a crappy party, I only needed ~65 JPs to get to master.  Since people are allowed to use JPs to upgrade/augment REMA and Dynamis [D] weapons/accessories, we got a REMA Master COR.  Pretty sure we had RUN, COR, SCH, BLM, SMN, GEO.  The BLM actually pulled most of the night, which was pretty nice as I got to sit tight and just let my bubbles do their thing.  The SCH would stun-ga, the BLM would sleepga and breakga, and I would just bind/grav/etc to tag mobs.  I don't know what the SMN was doing because most of the time the mob was dead after the SC. Occassionally the BLM would get a MB in.  In any case, it was very fun and productive.  The PT lasted a little over an hour and I walked out with 185 JPs.  Enough to get master and 110 to spare.  Feels good, man.

After, Braego and I hit up AMAN Trove a few times.  First time, I got opened 5 boxes (a mix of noises and thuds) and then decided I shouldn't press my luck.  I got a couple of +1 alluvion skirmish stone pouches, a couple of sellable drops (Pil's Tuille, Macuil Plating).  He went and had similar luck.  He got 4 or 5 boxes of noises/thuds, then exited.  He got a alluvion skrimish stone +1 pouch, a fern pouch, and the Naga Hakama to use on his MNK.  We tried again, but both ended up getting the mimic.  He was ~5 boxes in before he got the mimic.  I had checked 7 boxes before I got mine.  Maybe I need to change my strategy?  I mean, I'm really only interested in the Omen/Reisenjima drops.  As far as I know, they only come from loud thuds.  My strategy has been to open until I get a loud thud and then exit.  Most of the drops that come from the regular thud or noise tend to be from high-tier battlefields or escha zones.  I've already collected most of the gear from those zones that I'm interested in.  But it is still really hard to walk away from 7+ spoils.  I've got a few more vouchers that I can get on Truece, and still have 2 or 3 orbs that I can use on Trutaru.  Hopefully I won't have to make any decisions about if I should leave or not because I'll actually see a loud thud!

This month, the login campaign has Empy boss drops for 1000 login points.  I should be able to buy the last of the Apedemak Horns that I need for Daurdabla.  I haven't started on the colorless souls/iron plates yet, but that should go pretty quick.  I regret not participating more in last month's VW campaign.  I could really use the heavy metal plates; I'll need 1500 of them and 60 riftcinders to become a 4-song BRD.  I will have a few login points left over, maybe I'll look into collecting items for another empy (Almace or Ukon?).

Until next time!

End of Summer Update

SE introduced A.M.A.N. Trove with the August version update.  Braego and I checked it out and managed to get a few high-tier battlefield drops, a couple Reisenjima pieces, and an Omen body (Udug Jacket).  I think we're both looking forward to doing it again when the Monthly RoE objectives reset.

I picked up the Malformed Gun KI to officially start on Fomalhaut.  I was torn between making Death Penalty or Yagrush as my first mythic.  Since I was already (nearly) capped on beads, I decided to do the Aeonic gun so that I didn't have to worry about upgrading Death Penalty to 119.  I also am almost done collecting Apedemak horns for Daurdabla.  So, I'll work toward a 75 Yagrush, 99 Daurdabla, and a 119 Fomalhaut.

I'm just 3 assaults away from Captain rank.  Looking forward to getting started on Assaults again and the slow collection of titles/kills/Alexandrite that are needed to complete the Yagrush.  I think I have 2 boss kills already, but I've never set foot in Einherjar, so I've got a long road ahead of me there.  I'm above 130k Nyzul Isle tokens, so that part is almost done.  Unfortunately, I've never done zeni NMs and I've only got ~100 of the 30k alex that I need.  I'll focus more on collecting alex once I get to the point where the NPC will hold onto them for me.  

I got in a few nice CP PTs and am currently just 63 JP from master GEO.  Looking forward to finishing that off so that I can start working on WHM. Or BRD.  Part of me doesn't want to do anything on either job until I have the awesome gear, but the other part of me doesn't want to wait, either!  Either piece will make my job so much easier (and desireable by PTs).  I just don't want to have to wait to complete either, as they will both take a very long time.

In other news, Wack is back! I spent some time doing Ambuscade with him and Braego.  It was fun!  Unfortunately, his work schedule doesn't overlap very well with Braego or my schedules.  We should be able to get together at least once/week, during the afternoon on the weekend.  

I'll leave you with my summer lockstyle.  Until next time!

Well, I'm back. Again.

Currently working on Yagrush and Fomalhaut.  When I'm not doing assaults or trying to figure out how to kill NMs, I'm trying to master GEO.

Braego has been back since the spring 'free two weeks' campaign.  Sligs has been back for the past month or so.  Unfortunately, my playtime doesn't really overlap with either of them.  Braego logs off before I can log on and I end up going to bed before Sligs logs in.

There's always the weekend, I guess!

I've capped xp/merits on all jobs.  I also leveled Trutaru up to 99 on RDM and SMN.  I'm thinking I might take Vellaide to 99 soon, too (just as soon as I convince myself that it is worth it to go through LB60).

Free Trial Shenanigans

Back in the Game
I took advantage of SE's free trial for returning adventurers and spent some time trying to get back into the swing of things.  I was hoping to be able to access Adoulin areas, but SE support was never able to get me the seekers trial content IDs that I needed.  :(

I was really lacking in the gear department, so I decided that the best course of action was to make some money.  Potestas bomblets were still selling for ~1.5 mil, so I geared up DNC and headed to Upper Deklfut's Tower.  After ~4 hours I got the bomblet.

Since I didn't have any friends playing I went back up for another.  This time, it was a bit more elusive.  I was able to completely cap merits while farming.  It was about 20 hours this time before I got the bomblet.  I also nabbed a couple of automaton attachments that sold relatively quickly and for a nice chunk of gil.  I was tired of killing gigas so I changed it up a bit and headed out to U.Range to try my luck at a dark spirit pact.

The version update provided warps between homepoints, which is super convenient and makes it so much easier to get stuff done, or to just get started doing the things that need to be done.  I spent a bit of time running around re-registering home point crystals for ease of access and also started collecting proto-waypoints for those harder-to-reach locales.  One of the locations took me back to Deklfut's Tower, so I killed a couple gigas and got another bomblet to help the ol' bank account.

Along with a couple of extra drops (d.cloth from gold box in Abyssea-Konschtat, a couple of malboro fibers when using up some of Ia's seals) I was able to make a little over 6 million gil in ~1 week.  Also, with the addition of the Copper AMAN vouchers and rewards for one-time Records of Eminence objectives, I've been able to make quite a bit of gil by selling plutons.  I've sold ~20 plutons at 200-250k gil each, so an additional 4-5 million gil.  Not a lot by most standards nowadays, but enough for me to start re-gearing some of my jobs and make me feel less gimp.

Records of Eminence
After seeing the Eminent weapons, the first one I picked up was the dagger since I do all of my soloing and farming on DNC.  As it turned out DNC couldn't equip the dagger (WTF SE?!), so I picked up the H2H and G.Axe.  I tried out the H2H in Abyssea-Grauberg on pots using the brand new (to me) Gnarled Horn atma.  I was able to knock out multiple 500+ damage trials and completed the 1k damage trial in very short order.

Next I tried out the G.Axe.  This thing is just incredible.  Against most EP mobs, the minimum damage is 500+, so I'm completing a RoE trial every 200 swings of my axe (or less, given the damage on multi-hit WS).  It is nice that Easy Prey finally feels like easy prey!

I summoned Kupipi, Excenmille, and Nanaa Mihgo and laid waste to the Mamool Ja Staging Point.  I can completely clear the area in time for repops.  Defeating multiple enemies, dealing 500+ damage, wind crystals, and the occasional experience points timed objective make this place a gold mine for farming sparks and gaining XP.

Trust
Trust NPCs have got to be the biggest boost to this game since Abyssea Atmas were introduced.  I unlocked all of the Trust NPCs as soon as I could.  Now, I can solo on jobs other than DNC, WHM, or RDM and not have to worry about down time.  The NPCs know their roles and are very powerful.  I almost prefer to have a party of NPCs and my fellow over other players!  Now, with Shantotto and Ajido-Marujido there is so much damage potential that it feels like the entire world is open for exploration and soloing!

New Shinies
The potential rewards for the current login campaign include upgrade items for Empyrean +2 armor.  Since I don't think I could quickly farm mobs for my own items, I've been turning my login points into +2 armor.  By the time this login campaign is completed, I will have upgraded WHM head, legs, BLM body, hat, hands, legs, BRD head, legs, and SCH body to +2!  I also spent some time farming gold boxes in Abyssea-Konschtat and finally got a Wivre Hairpin augmented with refresh.  The only pieces that I need to complete my idle refresh gear are the serpentes cuffs/boots.

I also upgraded some AF armor: WHM and DNC bodies, BRD feet.  Some of these pieces are very nice macro pieces, so I'll need a lot of sparks to upgrade them all.

Mugido
During my farming, I made sure to have Mugido out and he as reaped the benefits.  He was capped at 75 when I reactivated, so I made sure to do his limit break(s) and have taken him all the way to 91 so far.  His normal melee attacks are closing in on 200 damage (on EP mobs) and his weaponskills can break 1500.  He's come a long way from when we first started adventuring together!

More to Come
I'm not sure when the free trial will be over as it was originally supposed to end on Dec. 23rd, but I'm hoping to keep playing indefinitely.  There is still a lot more that I'd like to accomplish.  I'm just 300 pet kills away from buying (geodes/titanites) the rest of my Pet -dmg axes.  I'd like to get back into doing dynamis regularly.  I've got a lot more sparks to earn to upgrade AF armor.  I would like to take THF and NIN to 99.  If I ever get the Seekers of Adoulin expansion, I'd like to also take GEO and RUN to cap.  Almost all that I want to do, I can easily accomplish solo thanks to the Trust NPCs.  We'll see what happens!

Until next time!

Massive Cravings

I did okay for almost a year and a half...

In the spring of 2012 I decided to stop playing.  I didn't want to go so far as to drop all of my RA/EX stuff and delete my characters, but I did cancel my service.  To discourage myself from wanting to come back, I sold just about everything that I could and distributed almost all of my gil and semi-valuable items to my friends.

When my wife and I first started playing the game, a stranger gave 100k gil to her 'to help a newbie out' (gogo mithra?). I decided that I wanted to do something similar.

I also remember the good ol' days of running around various zones and PLing random people.

I set out in Windy and the Sarutabarutas looking for a noob. I wandered through both zones without finding a single person. Next, I hit up the dunes, thinking of the old days where I'd spend my time just PLing random groups there for funsies. I was able to find a level 30 WAR without a subjob, so I offered to help them get their subjob items and gave them 200k when they got their last item. I didn't feel like going to babysit an alliance in Gusgen, so I kept looking in the dunes. Eventually I found a trio that seemed grateful for my assistance. I spent an hour doing the healing and gave them each 150k with instructions to "pay it forward". Made me feel good. Makes me wish I would have spent more time helping other people instead of waiting in my mog house for friends/LS mates to log on.

I played the game for more than 7 years and spent ~$2500 on it. I was logged in on my main for more than 717 days (quite a bit of overnight/AFK time in there). I felt that it was time to move on.

I never felt that I was rich. I always had reasonable gear for my jobs, usually the best NQ stuff from the AH. By the time that I cleaned out my mules, and sold most of my stuff for 1/2 price in Port Jeuno, I was able to give away almost 30 mil gil!

But now, I just can't seem to shake the urge to return to the game.  I tried to get excited about FFXIV: ARR but it just didn't work.  For some reason, the two new jobs really seemed to pique my interest.  I spent probably 20 hours over the weekend watching videos of people playing FFXI as GEO.  One dude had a 12-hour stream of him doing a marathon of GEO from 46-99.  I watched almost half of that stream (before technical issues on his website stopped me), even when he was leeching in a FC PT (not even keying) and was just spamming GEO spells in an attempt to skill up.

I know that I don't have many friends who still play the game and I know that I'm very far behind when it comes to new content and gear, but I still want to play again.  I'd like to think that I'd take a much more casual approach this time and not get so stressed about things going wrong.

I've got a beta invite to Elder Scrolls Online which I hope to play with for a bit.  Maybe that will satisfy my MMO cravings.

I hope it does, anyways.  Time will tell!

Some Magian Progress

Braego came up for the weekend, so I didn't get much accomplished in-game.  I spent most of my time AFK in the Temple of Uggalepih, hoping to walk by my PC and find some rainy weather so I could make some progress on my pet -PDT axe trials.

By the end of the weekend, I was able to get both axes up to the 4th or 5th trial.  Now I'm at the point where my pet has to have the killing blow on mobs during earth day/weather.  It'll be pet kills until I have to start turning in geodes (currently at 6/110 geodes, 0/30 titanites).  I'm debating just doing one axe all the way, then working on the other. There is a lot of work left to be done, but I just need to stay focused an keep working away at it; the reward will be worth it!

BST is a fun job.  The jug pets seem to be quite powerful and sturdy (at least against EP and Too Weak mobs) but I haven't had a chance to use BST for anything serious yet.  Maybe this week? 

BST is 99, but not done

Thanks to an exp session vs. pots with Wack and Zman, some GoV with Wack and strangers, and a pretty epic doll alliance in Abyssea - Altepa, I was able to get BST to 99 with a capped buffer. I must say, I put out some uber damage.

You can't make this stuff up

After 96, I didn't get any new awesome gear to add, but it is nice to once again be able to idle in some decent regen gear, I guess.  The inventory I gained from selling off the lower level gear that I used to level BST was lost in pet food and jugs.  It'll be worth it in the end though, right?

Wack wanted to hit up Abyssea - Konschtat to use up an Eccentric Eve pop to try to get Zman the Atma of the Voracious Violet.  We went WAR, WHM, BLM to try to get red stagger.  We knew that the biggest problems were going to be the mob's charm and instant KO moves.  While we weren't able to get the red stagger (it was either katana or G.Katana) things went well. That is, until ~10% when the thing just kept spamming the charm move.

It went yellow, we lost whatever staggers we actually got, and we pretty much ended up doing the zombie thing until it was dead.  No atma, nothing but the 100% drops.  At least 1 more person would be nice to have, 2 would be perfect.  An extra healer, and a backup tank would go a long ways toward staying alive the whole fight.  I still have an Eccentric Eve pop, but I think I'll save it until we have a couple extra bodies.

After that, we went to pop the zone boss.  It is a peiste called Kukulkan and it is a pretty easy duo.  Wack changed to MNK and we waited for night so that we could blue stagger as he wanted the belt that it drops.  While the first pop wasn't exactly smooth, the 2nd was just about perfect and dropped the belt that we were after.

Checking out Wack's new belt!

After killing Kukulkan, we went to Grauberg to pop the T2 VNM Gamayun for MNK body seals.  None of us had pops, so we started by popping the T1.  That was a mess.  The T1 VNM in Grauberg tends to pop in the middle of a bunch of goblins.  Add in the fact that they are elementals, and that Z's BLM isn't quite up-to-par yet gear/atma-wise, and we had some very long kills.  By the time my abyssite finally changed it was super late, so we just popped the T2.

The T2 was pretty easy and he dropped 2x MNK body seals for Z.  Of course my abyssite changed after 1 kill...  I figure we'll all build T2 pops on our own and try again some other day.

Much love to Gamayun for dropping 2 MNK body seals for Zman!

A couple days later we went to Abyssea - Attohwa in an attempt to get some BLM and MNK feet for Z.  PLD, BLMx2 for azure and amber lights.  We ended up doing quite well on TEs and amber light, but we didn't do so well on feet armor for Z.  I think we had RDM, WHJMx2, THF in the 2 hours or so that we were there.  I'm pretty sure we also all built MB pops, so we'll probably head out there to kill him a few times real soon.  Z went back in with Sligs after Wack and I left and was able to get his BLM boots to +1.

Since BST is finally 99, I decided to start working on the Magian pet -PDT axes.  The first trial was pretty easy and I finished it in no time.  The 2nd trial is proving to be troublesome.  Need 50 bee kills in Dark/Water/Earth/Ice weather.  Not many options for bees @ 99 that will give exp AND pop in a zone that has the required weather.  I spent a few hours in Crawler's Nest [S] and the Temple of Uggalepih, but never saw the weather that I needed.  I'll be happy when this trial is over (x2).  It seems like I always say that about magian trial, yet here I am doing 2 more >.>

Wack and I hit up Dynamis - Beaucedine in an attempt to get the BST relic feet (I can't believe that I didn't already have them).  We were able to kill the goblin TE, which is usually the most difficult pull, without a single link.  Then, the eye TE in the hydras, which is usually a very simple kill, caused some trouble.  We fought in a bad place and ended up getting links from a hydra DRG, MNK, and BRD.  We both died once trying to kill them all.  It turns out that the DEF down effect from Aegis Schism is killer when you're fighting a MNK mob.  Even though it only checked DC, it's hits were landing for between 150-200 on me.

The DEF down from Aegis Schism is deadly

The yagudo TE was in a bad spot, but I didn't feel like waiting for the stars and the moons to align to get a clean pull, so I just pulled all the yags away and wiped while wack got the kill. The orc and quadav TEs went perfectly, though and we got to farming. We didn't do great currency-wise, but we managed to get 3 forgotten touches for Wack's NIN or MNK head and I got my BST feet, so it was a success in my book.  We also killed 4 NMs, but didn't see a 100-piece.

We are going to head back out sometime this week so that Zman can tag along and get some relic. It could possibly turn into a regular thing, too, which could be nice for the pocketbook.

This week I hope to be able to make some progress on my ToM axes.  I would also like to get my +1 BST empyrean legs. Might be tough to accomplish those goals as the forecast has the high temperatures in the 70s this week! 

BST Progress

This past week was interesting.  Wack, Lun, and I (and Skadan) hit up Vunkerl to build some bukhis popsets to try to get some more stones for Wack.  While we were building the popsets, I got to come as WAR for red procs.  It was a nice change of pace and I was able to stagger each NM. Slayne got out of work earlier than normal and I invited him to come out and join us as we were about to actually pop Bukhis.  Unbeknownst to me, he and Wack were having some issues and Wack wouldn't invite him.  That pretty much ended the night for us as neither Lun nor I wanted to use our pops with him just standing there, outside of the party.

The whole situation was really odd.  I hope they get things worked out soon.  When things are all sorted out, we've got 3x bukhis popsets ready to go!

The following night, we went to Altepa to build some Orthrus pops for the same purpose.  Despite some heavy amarok camping by other groups, it was a successful night.  We popped Orthrus 3 times and wack was able to get enough stones to finish his WAR body, plus start working toward his PLD body.  We got a 2-boxed CB an atheling mantle (not that he'll use it) and I now have 4 jewels of ardor to put toward BLM, DNC, or RDM bodies.

Maybe this week we can take some time to get the other 4 cards of ardor that I need to upgrade either BST, WHM, SCH, or MNK bodies.

I spent a lot of time in book burns getting BST leveled.  I got up to 57 in the crawler's nest, then to 70 in Sandy's sewers.  I tried some solo FoV in Cape Terrigan, but it was painfully slow, so I went back to Sandy in an effort to get to 75.  When I finally left, I was 80!

This opens up quite a few gear options for me (Perle, bullwhip belt, haidate, brutal/suppa) and will help ease my inventory problems (once my lower-level gear sells, that is).  I did end up putting my BRD and RDM AF/relic/empy armor into storage to make some additional room.  I need to look and see what BST relic I've got stored with the Porter Moogle and also consider questing some of the AF.  I could also re-do the ACP and ASA add-ons to augment my body/pants toward BST, since they're not getting any use on any of my mage jobs.  I figure at the very least I should get any pieces that enhance the BST JA reward.

I have 12 or 13 merits stored up which I need to figure out how to spend.  I'm thinking I'll work on reducing the reward timer first, then maybe work on call beast recast.  To be honest, I haven't done much research into BST merits.  I figure if I've got questions, I can just ask Lun or Slayne, but I'd rather figure it out for myself.

I also have a couple of Pet -PDT magian axes to begin working on.  I think I'll wait until I have BST capped, just to make the trials that much easier to finish.  Plus, I doubt that I'll be doing much with BST until it is 99 anyways, so I won't really *need* those PDT axes for awhile.

This week:
- BST to 99
- Make progress on Pet -PDT magian axes
- Figure out BST merits
- Figure out what I'm going to do for BST gear

Should be a fun week!

I'm a BEAST(master)!

This past week was pretty eventful.  We did some Nyzul Isle to get Lun's runic key and her DNC dagger so she could unlock Pyrrhic Kleos.  Ev tagged along as well and we just stomped through the place.  SE tried to slow us down by giving us something like 5 or 6 soulflayer leader floors, but in the end, we were just too hot to handle :)

Here are the four of us getting ready to destroy floor 100!

Floor 100, here we come!

Zman recently came back to the game, so he, Lun, Jethor, and I went to Abyssea - Altepa to pop Orthrus and get Z his atheling mantle.  It was a long fight with Lun's pet tanking.  Jethor came as SMN instead of BST, and his SMN is merited for Shiva.  Since Orthrus is fire-based, she wasn't dealing as much damage as another jug would have done.  Eventually, after sacrificing Zman, we got the kill.  Z got his mantle and a dude there bought the claws from us for 100k each, which was split amongst the 4 of us.

Lun, Wack, and I all had Bennu pops, so we took an hour to go kill him a few times.  I was able to get a couple more Cards of Ardor.  I'm currently at 5 or 6 of 9 for my SCH body.  I'll need 18 27 more to finish bodies for other jobs (MNK, WHM, and BST).  Yes, I said BST... more on that in a minute.

Slayne solo'd Suzaku for me on his BST in an attempt to make some money for me.  Then, he informed me that he can solo Horns of War, one of the KS99 BCs that drop black belt items.  As I had 600+ KS, I took him up on his offer.  We went a total of 4 times, but haven't seen a tongue drop yet.  At least each kill is pretty much a guaranteed million gil from the Beastly Shank (used to pop Behemoth outside of the BC).  The gil from selling those shanks has finally brought my gil above 10mil!  /cheer 

I was bored one day so I went up to the top of Delkfut's tower to try and get a Potestas Bomblet out of a brown treasure casket.  I was up there killing for a little over 2 hours when I finally got the drop.  It should sell for ~1.5 mil.  Unfortunately, it looks like someone is trying to screw with the price and bought the last 2 for something like 2.4 and 6 mil each, so they haven't been selling.  When it does, it'll be a nice addition to my wallet ^^

With all of the soloing/duoing that Slayne and Lun have been doing lately, it really made me want to level BST so that I could do that stuff on my own.  My concerns were the ToM trials and the atmas that I would need to be an effective BST.  As it turns out, Lun said the trials weren't hard at all and that she was able to get hers done in just a few days.  I was only 1 Dominion Op in Grauberg short of having the most important BST atma: Ducal Guard, so I thought maybe I should look into leveling BST.

I scoured my storage and my mules for low level gear and hit sarutabaruta as a level 11 BST.  With an emperor's band/novennial ring, it wasn't long before I hit Tahrongi Canyon and Buburimu Peninsula.  My first session I went to 20.  My 2nd session took me to 28. It was a lot of fun this time around. 

I remember that I couldn't quite get the hang of it when I first tried it out.  Back then, there may have been an xp penalty associated with pets.  I remember being super disappointed at my slow leveling progress and didn't understand how anyone would be pleased doing a BST solo or duo all the way to 75.  Well, the changes that SE made to the xp from EP-EM mobs is really noticeable now.  DC mobs were giving up to 300 xp (with xp bonus on).  It turned out to be faster xp to just decimate every mob in my path instead of targeting the mobs for the FoV/GoV page that I was doing.  Solo, I was getting somewhere in the ballpark of 16k/hour. 

Protecus wanted some XP on his dancer to bring it up to cap and Ev wanted xp for his gimp BLM sub, so they joined me doing FoV and GoV pages.  When Wack finished his DNC sub, I had dinged 34.  Ev had to leave, but Wack changed to MNK and went to PL me on pots in Abyssea - Grauberg.

He started by doing a quick page 6 so that I could unlock ducal guard, then proceeded to beat up on the Sinister Seidels.  It was actually slower xp than what I was getting solo (thanks to the novennial ring and the long walk back and forth to the Dom Sgt. for pages, which took me out of xp range).  In the last ~20 minutes or so the xp/hr finally surpassed what I had been getting solo and what we had been getting as a trio.

When we were all done, my BST had just dinged 38.  I will probably try to get into a book burn in the crawler's nest to get up into the mid-40s.  Maybe I'll be able to land a key-whore spot in one of the scars zones.  If either of those options fail and Wack is online, I'll join up with him for more pot-slaughter.  I'd like to have BST at 75+ by the end of the week.

Starting a new job is really straining my inventory while I'm cycling through lower-level gear.  As a result, I think I'm going to put my BRD and RDM AF/relic/Empy armor into NPC storage.  I virtually never play those jobs anyways, so I think the extra space will do me wonders, at least until I get BST to the point where I can wear some of my WAR gear. I had been collecting seals for THF and NIN AF3, but I guess I'll have to change gears and focus on BST seals! 

I'm really hoping to be able to solo a bunch of NMs for +2 upgrade items and also make some extra money solo (I'm looking at you, Dynamis).  I never thought I'd level a pet job, but I'm glad that the pet job that I chose to level isn't PUP or DRG! :)

I'll leave you with the last screenshot that I took on Ia.  What an imposing set of mages!

Who says Galkas can't be mages?

SCH > RDM

I got rid of the last of Ia's things and officially cancelled her account (again).  I really think that this is it for her character.  She has such little interest in playing FFXI compared to other games.

Over the weekend I spent some time doing dynamis with Wack.  We hit Sandy (MNK + DNC) to collect touches that he needed for his Melee Gloves +2. That zone is pretty tight and each TE is guarded by a PLD and RDM.  Well, we couldn't seem to get the TE w/o adding it's guards, and Chainspell really gave us some problems.  The 4th TE easily took us 30 mins to take out since we kept on getting nuked to death :(.  It should be mentioned that his MNK was only 91 at the time.  Eventually we were able to get all the TEs and do a bit of farming.  We didn't do great currency-wise or forgotten touch-wise, but we learned that we need to just focus on getting the TE out of the way before worrying about adds.

The following night we went again, this time as NIN + RDM.  Having Protect/Shell and sleeps really helped a lot.  We camped over by the manor and had a pretty steady stream of mobs coming in.  Once again, we had a pretty meh run when it came to drops.  Despite the fact that I was almost constantly casting one spell or another, I really felt kind of useless/helpless.  It was nice to be able to wear the +2 hat and have 5mp/tic refresh in my idle gear, but I just didn't feel like I brought enough to the table.  I had considered going /DNC to melee, but I'm glad I didn't.  My gear/macros/everything is not where I want it to be for RDM, so I generally don't really look forward to playing it.  Plus, and I've said this before, I hate being a sole healer on RDM.  It just doesn't have the MP conservation tools that WHM(/SCH) or SCH have, even when I do go RDM/SCH.

The night after that we decided to drag Lun along for funsies.  Just as we were about to enter, Skadan showed up wanting to tag along.  After we got inside (and got all of our TEs) Lun asked if Genesisblue could join.  We ended up with SCH (me) NIN (Wack) THF (Skadan) BST (Lun) MNK (Gen).  We really kind of cleaned house.  Wack got the last of the forgotten touches that he needed and decided to not take his split of the currency, so everyone else ended up with 23 or 24 currency.  I also had 3 touches sort to me, for an extra 120k.

We were going to do Nyzul after, but Lun went AFK for food and it was getting late, so Wack and I hit Horlais Peak to do the orc KCNM 'Last Orc-Shunned Hero'.  This is a pretty straightforward and easy fight, even as a duo.  We both managed to get the greaves, which is a nice 1.5mil.

On Sunday we finally managed to do some Nyzul Isle.  First we did a climb for Lun's runic key.  We went from 65-70 as NIN DNC SCH very easily.  For the 2nd run, instead of climbing some more, they decided to do the Uncharted nyzul (geared towards 99s).  I don't understand why they wanted to do this lowman.  Regular Nyzul is understandable as it was geared towards level 75 characters.  Taking 3 99s in there is a walk in the park.  But the uncharted version and lowman just seems kinda pointless.  We managed to clear a total of 3 floors (getting to floor 12) before we exited due to lack of time.  I don't want to do uncharted again unless we've got a bit more firepower and support going along. At least 4 people!

We got two real ??? items from our run: Serket Ring from Serket, and Bravo's Subligar from Oqdan(sp). 

After Nyzul, Wack and I did another dynamis, this time opting for Xarc for some forgotten hopes.  There was a THF there who wanted to get some exp on his +2 relic trial, so he joined up with us.  We managed to take out all 5 TEs in about 5 minutes, then spent the rest of the night camping in the middle of the map, laying waste to everything around us. The dude's TH was working overtime and we ended up walking out with almost 200 currency.  Wack got 8 hopes to add to his collection (bringing him to a total of 19) and I managed to get the DNC relic that I had been wanting.  When all my currency sells, my split will be ~575k.

With all the dynamis that we've been doing and the lucky drops on the KCNM, I'm currently sitting on the most gil that I've ever had.  It's probably not a lot compared to what others have, but I'm very pleased and would like to keep working on the ol' bank roll to see if I can break the 10mil mark.

So, I had a chance to take both SCH and RDM to dynamis and I have to say that SCH just beats the pants off of RDM.  It has so many more useful spells to bring to the table, and much superior MP recovery/conservation tools.  I like the gear that I have for RDM, but SCH is way more enjoyable for me to play, especially in a solo-healer (or solo mage in general) role. The only thing that RDM had that I wished I had on SCH was addle.  It made fights against BLM/BRD/BST pets so much easier.

This week, I expect to do more dynamis, maybe some more Nyzul Isle to get lun's disc up, and maybe work toward getting more Cards of Ardor for my +2 SCH/WHM/MNK bodies.

Here are a couple of funny stagger poses from the Xarc run: 

Have a good week!

Melee Gloves +2

I didn't do much over the weekend.  I picked up the Forgotten Touches that I needed to upgrade my Melee Gloves to +2.  I'm looking forward to trying them out along with the 5/5 upgrades that I finished putting into Shijin Spiral.



Wack and I duo'd the MKD mithra fight in Chamber of Oracles.  We went NIN/WAR + DNC/NIN.  I think he was a bit confused about which fight it was since when we got in, he said that he forgot that we needed sleeps.  We went for it anyways and did very well.  Managed to get the win without much trouble and now I'm at the point where I run around Beaucedine Glacier and Xarcabard investigating pips or something like that.  After that is the level 1 run through Castle Z, then the final fight and a nice, new, inventory -1 hat!

I've been toying around with picking up some gear for WAR, specifically the Fazheluo Helm. 



I currently TP in Walahra Turban, so this offers a little bit more for the same amount of haste. I think if I picked this piece up, I'd mule my turban, even though I still use the haste on it for the recast timer on spells like stoneskin.  In reality, I very seldom have to actually wait on the recast timer for most of my spells, so I think I could get away with it.

Inventory got a little tighter over the weekend since Ia said that she doesn't plan on picking FFXI back up.  So, I started getting rid of her sellable stuff, and took all my BRD instruments back.  As nice as it is to have a pocket mage handy, I don't feel like paying the extra $12.95 every month, especially since she wants to resubscribe to WoW.    I was looking forward to playing with her again, but we just need to admit to ourselves that she's done with this game.  She enjoys other games more... What is the point in paying for/playing a game when you know you could be having MORE fun playing another game or doing something else?

I'm not sure what's in store for this week since today is a Version Update day.  Maybe SE will have some good changes to implement.  I might have to redo a whole bunch of merits after today's update!