Wednesday, October 31, 2007
Monday, October 22, 2007
Unexpected accomplishments, and a fond farewell
During my week-long vacation with the parents and my brother, I was able to clock in a few more FFXI hours than usual (we had quite a bit of down time because my parents are a bit... slow to get going). I finally managed to cap my Great Axe skill during a Periquia Assault session with Feon & Cozmos & the gang. I'm still working on unlocking that pesky latent on the Rampager, though.
I also got quite a bit of fishing done, because I was automatically resuming my "limited FFXI time" activities without realizing it (old habits die hard, even on vacation). Cone Calamary skilled me up more quickly than I'd anticipated, and I climbed a couple of skill levels while targeting the money fish (bluetail, nobles), up to 35.
During one of my trips back to Whitegate, I overheard a fellow San D'Orian shouting for a Mission 7-2 party, and of course I joined up while I had the chance. It was a pretty easy fight even with our group of 4.
After ranking up and earning a nice 60k, we picked up a couple more players for Mission 8-1, which was also a pretty straightforward fight especially since we intentionally let Valor despawn before we defeated Honor. We would have gone on to complete 8-2, but needed to wait until 12AM JP time the next day to launch, and I wasn't on the next day. I'm sure the opportunity will come up again later.
On a sad note, my good friend Lexxi is preparing to leave the game at the end of the month and has been selling off her equipment over the course of the past few weeks. As I told her on our LS community board, I'll miss her terribly but will be happy to know that she's finding enjoyment and peace outside of the game. I'm certain our avatars will meet again in another virtual world someday. In the meantime, we'll be lurking each other's blogs ;P.
She needed to get her taru mule from Windy to Jeuno to speed up sales a bit (rather than sending stuff constantly to her main and sitting in Jeuno). So I accompanied her through the Canyon and Sauromugue, chatting the whole time and forgetting to invis her (der):
That mule is the cutest Taru I've ever seen, by the way. Pity she didn't level it more ^_^.
My most recent session was comprised of a relatively quick Sabotender Bailarina camp with Feon and the gang, for Ninjax's Dune Boots.
After this was completed, we made another attempt at the Elvaan for ZM 14 (the last one for Ishmael and me), but were again unsuccessful. Yes, my kiting still sucks, and I still hate that Elvaan with a passion.
I also got quite a bit of fishing done, because I was automatically resuming my "limited FFXI time" activities without realizing it (old habits die hard, even on vacation). Cone Calamary skilled me up more quickly than I'd anticipated, and I climbed a couple of skill levels while targeting the money fish (bluetail, nobles), up to 35.
During one of my trips back to Whitegate, I overheard a fellow San D'Orian shouting for a Mission 7-2 party, and of course I joined up while I had the chance. It was a pretty easy fight even with our group of 4.
After ranking up and earning a nice 60k, we picked up a couple more players for Mission 8-1, which was also a pretty straightforward fight especially since we intentionally let Valor despawn before we defeated Honor. We would have gone on to complete 8-2, but needed to wait until 12AM JP time the next day to launch, and I wasn't on the next day. I'm sure the opportunity will come up again later.
On a sad note, my good friend Lexxi is preparing to leave the game at the end of the month and has been selling off her equipment over the course of the past few weeks. As I told her on our LS community board, I'll miss her terribly but will be happy to know that she's finding enjoyment and peace outside of the game. I'm certain our avatars will meet again in another virtual world someday. In the meantime, we'll be lurking each other's blogs ;P.
She needed to get her taru mule from Windy to Jeuno to speed up sales a bit (rather than sending stuff constantly to her main and sitting in Jeuno). So I accompanied her through the Canyon and Sauromugue, chatting the whole time and forgetting to invis her (der):
That mule is the cutest Taru I've ever seen, by the way. Pity she didn't level it more ^_^.
My most recent session was comprised of a relatively quick Sabotender Bailarina camp with Feon and the gang, for Ninjax's Dune Boots.
After this was completed, we made another attempt at the Elvaan for ZM 14 (the last one for Ishmael and me), but were again unsuccessful. Yes, my kiting still sucks, and I still hate that Elvaan with a passion.
Thursday, October 11, 2007
Today's Idle Thought on Idle Thoughts
I'm wondering if I'm aberrant in doing this, but since FFXI fills much of my leisure time, I often catch myself daydreaming about certain aspects of the game. This usually happens during down time at work, or browsing the FFXIclopedia during the few moments when the kids are entertaining themselves.
Maybe daydreaming isn't the right word, but something more along the lines of a mental "login"?
It's hard to describe, but it strikes me that I still do this after four years of playing.
My sessions currently consist of:
Maybe daydreaming isn't the right word, but something more along the lines of a mental "login"?
It's hard to describe, but it strikes me that I still do this after four years of playing.
My sessions currently consist of:
- Virtual check-ins with friends. Wondering how their day has gone, what they're up to in RL and Vanadiel.
- Fishing and crafting plans
- Estimating X amount of time before getting X amount of gil for X item
Wednesday, October 10, 2007
Pirate's Chart... Beginner's luck?
Just as I was preparing to stop fishing up Bhefel Marlins until I skilled up a bit more (I was losing a few due to inadequate stamina depletion), I received the Pirate's Chart on my 4th trade to Zaldon...
For a 3% drop, that's pretty damn impressive. Now if I can successfully complete the fight, I'm guaranteed an Albatross Ring, and of course the slim chance at a Mercurial Kris, which would be as amazing as it is unlikely.
In any case, targeting the Bluetail with a Hume Rod and Minnow on the Ferry was a great way to simultaneously fish up such money makers as Noble Ladies and Cone Calamary (once synthed), but also provided some much needed skillups, bringing me to level 33. I think a couple more levels will make it a bit easier to reel in those Marlins.
I probably won't continue trading the Marlins until I get rid of the chart, since I'd rather not lower my chances of getting either chart on each trade. The items are RA, and it will remain unknown whether possessing one of them "toggles" the other item to drop, or whether it just kills the drop altogether.
For a 3% drop, that's pretty damn impressive. Now if I can successfully complete the fight, I'm guaranteed an Albatross Ring, and of course the slim chance at a Mercurial Kris, which would be as amazing as it is unlikely.
In any case, targeting the Bluetail with a Hume Rod and Minnow on the Ferry was a great way to simultaneously fish up such money makers as Noble Ladies and Cone Calamary (once synthed), but also provided some much needed skillups, bringing me to level 33. I think a couple more levels will make it a bit easier to reel in those Marlins.
I probably won't continue trading the Marlins until I get rid of the chart, since I'd rather not lower my chances of getting either chart on each trade. The items are RA, and it will remain unknown whether possessing one of them "toggles" the other item to drop, or whether it just kills the drop altogether.
Tuesday, October 09, 2007
Honing the Rampager and Defeating Diabolos
I've continued my usual pattern of skilling my Great Axe (and simultaneously burning the latent on the Rampager), hanging with Feon and the gang for some Assaults, and working on NPC related quests with Lexxi. She and I did a brief run this week to Promy Mea once our NPCs hit the bond level requisite of 33 and finally started talking about "the Emptiness." Getting the Tactics Pearl was pretty painless, although my MH is once again cluttered with 30 cap equipment now.
I've reached level 275 with my Great Axe, 1 level away from cap. Totally lost count on the Rampager WS points, but I figure I'll eventually burn it with enough merit parties.
The fishing bug has bitten me once again, so I'm working on fishing up some bait for Marlins for the Inside the Belly quest, if only to have an excuse to fish & do something interesting with it... with the added possibility of a Pirate's Chart of course. I really want the Lu Shangs and I'm tempted to push my way to 2 million and eventually just buy the rod for 1.5 million, since the cumulative value of the carp I'm fishing up actually exceeds the market cost of the rod, by roughly 1 million.
On a random note, I found someone shouting for a CoP 3-5 run a couple of nights ago and joined up. After waiting for 2 hours for someone who ended up flaking on us (/fume), the leader called an LS favor and brought a 6th member in. Everyone was prepared and the fight went exactly as planned. We pulled Diabolos to the center tile under the ledge and the mages stood on the center tile on the opposite side. Diabolos only managed to pull off one Nightmare, which I'm assuming the mages took care of since it wore off so quickly. We killed him right as he knocked me back into the Diremite pit ^_^.
I can't wait to do this again with the Roughnecks group, now that I'm a little less apprehensive about the fight. We really just need 2 mages and 4 DD, which might take awhile with our fluctuating roster of active players with varying degrees of progress on our last CoP mission (at least one hasn't scaled the mountain yet), but the fight itself is totally feasible for us.
I've reached level 275 with my Great Axe, 1 level away from cap. Totally lost count on the Rampager WS points, but I figure I'll eventually burn it with enough merit parties.
The fishing bug has bitten me once again, so I'm working on fishing up some bait for Marlins for the Inside the Belly quest, if only to have an excuse to fish & do something interesting with it... with the added possibility of a Pirate's Chart of course. I really want the Lu Shangs and I'm tempted to push my way to 2 million and eventually just buy the rod for 1.5 million, since the cumulative value of the carp I'm fishing up actually exceeds the market cost of the rod, by roughly 1 million.
On a random note, I found someone shouting for a CoP 3-5 run a couple of nights ago and joined up. After waiting for 2 hours for someone who ended up flaking on us (/fume), the leader called an LS favor and brought a 6th member in. Everyone was prepared and the fight went exactly as planned. We pulled Diabolos to the center tile under the ledge and the mages stood on the center tile on the opposite side. Diabolos only managed to pull off one Nightmare, which I'm assuming the mages took care of since it wore off so quickly. We killed him right as he knocked me back into the Diremite pit ^_^.
I can't wait to do this again with the Roughnecks group, now that I'm a little less apprehensive about the fight. We really just need 2 mages and 4 DD, which might take awhile with our fluctuating roster of active players with varying degrees of progress on our last CoP mission (at least one hasn't scaled the mountain yet), but the fight itself is totally feasible for us.
Monday, October 01, 2007
Questage, Crafticism, and some Gilification
While most of the Roughnecks besides myself and Lexxi have been away playing Halo 3 this week, I've been busying myself with miscellaneous activities.
Lexxi and I completed the Past Reflections quest earlier in the week, raising our NPC bond cap to 70. I initially thought this raised the bond level (being unaware of a cap), and assumed we'd be able to do our Tactics Pearl quest, but this would require us to raise the bond by an additional 3 points in order to proceed. This amounts to 1 call and 2 chats minimum, so we put the quest off for another day.
I reached 18 in Smithing and moved on to other crafts to open up the "cross-craft" skillup options. The climb to 5 in Goldsmithing was rather painless, but moving forward meant collecting a bit of Zinc Ore, which I wasn't really in the mood for, so I sought out other diversions.
One of these was my list of jobs. I noticed that I still didn't have SAM unlocked (shut up, Feon), so I ran over to Norg to launch that quest and kill my pseudo-NM's, etc, etc.
On my way back to Norg, I was once again distracted by the thought of camping for my Frog Trousers. Granted, these aren't a huge improvement over the Elvaan RSE, but I enjoy wearing slightly unusual RA/EX equipment on my WHM for some reason.
Not to mention that this would give me yet another excuse to prance around in my WAR AF and fulfill SE's grand vision of the Warrior class in FFXI: half-naked, slinging a Great Axe, and screaming for a Cure IV.
Who am I kidding ... like I need an excuse.
It was an easy camp down in a godforsaken corner of SSG, where only the lost or the treasure chest hunters would wander by. My first NM kill yielded junk drops. Having nothing better to do, I remained there for the subsequent 2 hours to spawn the next one, graced with the kind company of Cozmos.
I unfortunately had to log out about 20 minutes into the pop window... Cozmos later told me she'd killed it about an hour after I left and didn't get the drop. I eventually got it on the next kill, however. So no more ice capades pants for this Elvaan!
Having amassed 19 Eastern Gems, I decided it was time to do some questing. Enter the Venerer Ring quest (Chasing Dreams), which gave Lexxi and me the opportunity to travel around a bit and chat and have fun. I'd forgotten how enjoyable this aspect of the game actually is when you're going through it with a good friend and I hope to make it a regular occasion.
Once we got our rings, we moved on to the subsequent quest, getting as far as farming 2 Copper Keys, but were stymied by the need for a Giant Scale to access the specific area where we would use the key. We were already cutting it close with the Vultures, since my level 40 set was purely DD oriented, so Firedrakes would probably be a bit too challenging for a WHM WAR duo. This put the questline on the back burner for now. Our next activity will probably be the Tactics Pearl, which should be fun.
Last night, Feon invited me to a KSNM Operation Desert Swarm run, which went quite well. Everyone knew what to do and we ploughed through 6 or 7 iterations of the fight, netting us two V Claws and a Pole Strap in money drops. There was some deliberation concerning the claws, leaving us to vote over whether we would gamble and attempt to have both claws crafted into Scorpion Harnesses (by a friend with 100+3 Bonecraft), thereby giving us the chance at an HQ (or 2) for 800k, or sell the unprocessed claws for 240k each and avoid the potential loss. Guess I'll find out tonight!
Time for an epic roll shot:
Lexxi and I completed the Past Reflections quest earlier in the week, raising our NPC bond cap to 70. I initially thought this raised the bond level (being unaware of a cap), and assumed we'd be able to do our Tactics Pearl quest, but this would require us to raise the bond by an additional 3 points in order to proceed. This amounts to 1 call and 2 chats minimum, so we put the quest off for another day.
I reached 18 in Smithing and moved on to other crafts to open up the "cross-craft" skillup options. The climb to 5 in Goldsmithing was rather painless, but moving forward meant collecting a bit of Zinc Ore, which I wasn't really in the mood for, so I sought out other diversions.
One of these was my list of jobs. I noticed that I still didn't have SAM unlocked (shut up, Feon), so I ran over to Norg to launch that quest and kill my pseudo-NM's, etc, etc.
On my way back to Norg, I was once again distracted by the thought of camping for my Frog Trousers. Granted, these aren't a huge improvement over the Elvaan RSE, but I enjoy wearing slightly unusual RA/EX equipment on my WHM for some reason.
Not to mention that this would give me yet another excuse to prance around in my WAR AF and fulfill SE's grand vision of the Warrior class in FFXI: half-naked, slinging a Great Axe, and screaming for a Cure IV.
Who am I kidding ... like I need an excuse.
It was an easy camp down in a godforsaken corner of SSG, where only the lost or the treasure chest hunters would wander by. My first NM kill yielded junk drops. Having nothing better to do, I remained there for the subsequent 2 hours to spawn the next one, graced with the kind company of Cozmos.
I unfortunately had to log out about 20 minutes into the pop window... Cozmos later told me she'd killed it about an hour after I left and didn't get the drop. I eventually got it on the next kill, however. So no more ice capades pants for this Elvaan!
Having amassed 19 Eastern Gems, I decided it was time to do some questing. Enter the Venerer Ring quest (Chasing Dreams), which gave Lexxi and me the opportunity to travel around a bit and chat and have fun. I'd forgotten how enjoyable this aspect of the game actually is when you're going through it with a good friend and I hope to make it a regular occasion.
Once we got our rings, we moved on to the subsequent quest, getting as far as farming 2 Copper Keys, but were stymied by the need for a Giant Scale to access the specific area where we would use the key. We were already cutting it close with the Vultures, since my level 40 set was purely DD oriented, so Firedrakes would probably be a bit too challenging for a WHM WAR duo. This put the questline on the back burner for now. Our next activity will probably be the Tactics Pearl, which should be fun.
Last night, Feon invited me to a KSNM Operation Desert Swarm run, which went quite well. Everyone knew what to do and we ploughed through 6 or 7 iterations of the fight, netting us two V Claws and a Pole Strap in money drops. There was some deliberation concerning the claws, leaving us to vote over whether we would gamble and attempt to have both claws crafted into Scorpion Harnesses (by a friend with 100+3 Bonecraft), thereby giving us the chance at an HQ (or 2) for 800k, or sell the unprocessed claws for 240k each and avoid the potential loss. Guess I'll find out tonight!
Time for an epic roll shot:
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
